Rocket Ships

Except for the last month or so, if you hop over to livemeteors.com on any given day, this is typically what you'll see. This chart represents two smallish, short-duration meteors coming in. Occasionally you'll see a bigger, more colorful dot, or one that stretches into a line that indicates duration, and then some days you might have to wait a while to see anything at all. That's why these latest graphs have been so mind-blowing to me and other people who happen to keep up with these things.
 From a strictly aesthetical point of view, these images are beautiful. It looks like some graphic-design project. It's like some game designer trying to emulate some of the old 8-bit video games, and he's trying out different designs for space ships. Some of the other images remind me of koi in a koi pond; cartoon laser beams; looking at ornate chandeliers when you're tripping balls, and a whole bunch of cool rockets. This stuff is art. I'd hang it on a wall or put it on a t-shirt. Here's a few of the "rocket ships." Enjoy the tour of the outer space art gallery. No charge. Support the arts.

Screamer

This SOB came in last night. The way I knew that is because it made a heinous howl and I heard it from the next room. Each meteor is recorded visually and creates a tone. There are two separate tones, and I'm not sure how that works exactly, but if the blip is to the left there's one tone, and if it's to the right, another. Something like this behemoth causes both tones to chime at once and it makes a dissonant, two-note chord. When this one came in it made a warbling, bloody howl that was yet another first for me on this site.
 I was about to walk through the door to go outside when I heard it. It reminded me of the ending of the song "The Talking Drum" from "Lark's Tongues in Aspic" by King Crimson. The song ends with a screeching violin that sounds like a cross between an unpleasant visit to the dentist and a fire alarm in Hell. I didn't listen to that album for a year after that. Anyway the laptop was two rooms away. I thought my ears were playing tricks on me since I've been hearing these two tones for going on a month now, but I realized it was real, and I grabbed the phone and backed up the video and snapped a pic. This is a beast. I'd like to know how high it was when it exploded. One like this could be a real game-changer of it got too close.
 Small meteors which only last a second or two, like the ones you might happen to look up and catch on any given night, are about as big as a grain of sand. Ones that last a few seconds are about the size of a grain of rice. It seems hard to believe that something that tiny can put on such a big show, but friction is some powerful stuff. After rice-grain size it goes up roughly like so: Raisinettes, peanut M&Ms, cherry tomatoes, shooter marbles (if you know what those are), golf balls, kumquats, grapefruit, bowling balls, breadboxes, ovens, cars, buses, houses, etc. I have no idea how big some of these monsters are, but I do know that there's a site in Canada I believe, that plots these meteors on a 3D, horizontal graph, and some of them have caused it to clip, or slice off the tops of the biggest peaks. In other words the graph isn't made to record such meteors, if that tells you anything. They're literally off the charts. Tryin' to tell you something.
 There's a guy from Germany in the chat room right now. He seems to be talking to himself, but he's saying all this stuff about velocity, crater formation, pressure, debris formation and such. I'm trying to learn what I can but it's over my head; just like these crazy meteors. I do know that the number of videos about this is growing by the minute. I've got livemeteors on the taskbar and I'm pulling that up every two minutes, and I see thumbnails with these images in Youtube, and I've already put up a million posts with these images. Sometimes it takes a minute to figure out which one I'm looking at. It's a maelstrom of meteors. Heads-up.

Still More Meteors

I'll quit talking about this just as soon as it stops. Just as there's a bit of a lull in the activity, one of these beasts comes in. This one clocked in at about 1:55. Here it is starting out at around 11:54:15.

Still going strong at 11:54:55.

11:55:23

It finally winks out at 11:56:10...almost two minutes long. This is gonzo stuff. I'm talking to a guy right now in the chat room. He's educating me on things like millibars in space, speed of meteor travel and such...things I don't know much about. He says that right now there's "horrible" amounts of energy being released. I do know enough to agree with that. Now he's comparing these meteors to Tunguska. My, my. This is some shit. This is Star Wars shit.

Meteor Mystery

I love a mystery. We got one. Right now meteors are pouring in, and no one is sure where they're coming from. It's literally a straight line right now, as the ionized tail of the meteorites is tracked and recorded. It's unreal. Stardust is falling. It would be a great time to do the thing I mentioned a while back, where you lay out a big sheet on the ground overnight, and whatever sticks to a magnet next morning is either meteorite dust or iron oxide dust from an incoming planetary system. Either way you can sell it on Ebay.
 I've mentioned livemeteors.com a million times, but the way it works, besides the visual representation you see here, is it emits a shrill tone every time it detects a meteor. Actually for some reason there are two tones; maybe about a minor second apart. Maybe a stone meteorite causes one tone and metal ones another, but I don't know how that works. Alls I know is I've been hearing those tones so much the last three weeks that I hear them in my head. I should probably figure out the interval on a keyboard just for curiosity's sake, but it doesn't matter. In any case they're coming in so steadily that the two tones are making a constant chord. It's obnoxious unless it's turned way down. I keep it running quietly on the taskbar, and when the tone gets really loud and long I'll click over and check it out. It's nuts. It does make pretty patterns on the screen.
 They've been saying since last year that Earth is passing through a debris field, and it would seem to be true. Space is a big place. They were always running into crazy shit out there on Star Trek, and while what we're seeing on livemeteors probably isn't the Megalons' doing, it's definitely a debris field, and it's thick as molasses. Out of all the videos I've seen, only one has named the source of this current round of meteors. All but one have said it's an unknown debris field, but one guy matter-of-factly stated that these were from the Aquarid meteor shower. The Aquarids do happen at this time every year but they peaked way back on the 6th. What's odd about that video is that the guy was talking about the Aquarids peaking on Friday night, which was almost three weeks after the actual peak, and not only that but the video came out Saturday morning. Why would he put out a video, which was incorrect to begin with, after the fact? I've almost quit questioning things any more. Gotta let a bullshitter be a bullshitter I guess.
 Shooting stars are in my Top-5 favorite things in the world, obviously. I've seen hundreds if not into a thousand or two easily by now, and I still want to see more. Every clear night I walk I lean my head back in an unnatural position to look up, and I try not to walk straight into mailboxes. This latest mystery has been going on a while. About three weeks ago we had the Lyrid shower, and right after that peaked they said we were going through the tail of Halley's Comet. The Leonids and the Perseids are usually the main showers every year, but with breaks of maybe a week in between, there's always some shower going on all year long. In all the years I've been on this site I've never seen such constant meteor activity as I'm seeing this very second, and according to the charts there's nothing going on meteor-wise.
 The only piece of this latest puzzle that's missing for me is that I've yet to see a two-minute meteor. In January of 2016 I saw a huge green fireball that went nearly across the entire sky, but it didn't last but about six seconds or so. Then last Summer Sally and I saw an incredibly slow-moving meteor; at least I think that's what it was, that lasted at least fifteen seconds. So far that's the craziest thing I've ever seen relating to meteors, and I'm really glad there was another witness. That was incredible. Still it's a long way away from a two-minute meteor. There's probably a dozen videos about this very topic right now, and after people click on this site and see all this, there will probably be a dozen more.

This one just now came in, and it's just a little one as of late. A year ago this one would've freaked me out. Actually, a month ago it would've. As of the last three weeks this is nothing. I'm already jaded? That's amazing in itself. Right now I'm having to keep the volume on livemeteors as low as I possibly can, because it's now almost a constant, dissonant, two-note chord. I think it's safe to say that the sky is saturated with meteors right now. I've never seen anything like it, and I'm definitely not alone. Stay tuned. Heads-up.

Quote of the Day

"All is numbers." - Pythagoras

THAT Girl

The El Rey Network is doing a marathon of the 70s TV show The Incredible Hulk. You probably know the basic story...a regular guy (for a scientist, anyway) experiments with gamma rays during a lightning storm and gets zapped, and from then on occasionally when he gets pissed he turns into a giant green monster. Nice-guy-actor Bill Bixby played normal guy David Banner, and bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno played the Hulk. It was way pre-CGI of course, and the effects were done old-school.
 When he changed from a regular guy into the Hulk, at first he was just Bill Bixby with green contact lenses. That predated Marilyn Manson by decades. Between actor changes, they'd show closeups of David's shirt being ripped open (by expandable air bags inside the shirt). Next thing you know it's Lou Ferrigno painted green and growling. He'd have on the same shirt of course, only it would be shredded. The Hulk would always toss it aside. That was perfect for the show, since it showed his green, brick-shithouse torso.

This composite photo, which appeared at the beginning of each episode, shows more of the elite special-effects (aka trick-photography) of the day. It's the beast that dwells within us all I suppose. When the Hulk would finally finish fucking around and change back to David Banner, they'd blur Ferrigno's face into Bixby's. He'd still have the contacts in and he'd be painted a less-intense shade of green. His shirt would be gone. It was state-of-the-art stuff.
 What I could never work out was the pants. Usually he wore blue jeans. They'd be frayed at the cuffs and six inches too short like clamdiggers, but they never once came off or even had an embarrassing split in the rear. His shirt would be fifteen sizes too small and shredded to shit and completely useless as clothing, yet his jeans always stayed on. I don't think they made those stretch-poly jeans back then. Plus he jumped off cliffs and tossed around huge boulders and cars like Superman and generally acted like a maniac, which he basically was because the transformation temporarily wiped his memory and made his brain revert back to that of a beast, only with ethics against killing or anything besides knocking the bad guys the fuck out cold. He hulked-out usually at least twice an episode, and the show ran for years. His pants stayed on every time. With all that jumping and running and raising hell and everything I'm really surprised he wasn't running all over the place with his big green ding-dong flopping around.
 I caught a few minutes of an episode and it had this girl. Nobody'd remember her these days but she guested on a million TV shows. She was one of the fillies in my fantasy stable back then. She was one of those "Ooh, it's THAT girl" girls. She was in everything from Bonanza to Star Trek. She was definitely hot, and she also had that strange, vulnerable quality, and she had the best "worried" face in the business, so she often played fucked-up parts; like she always had something really serious going on. She could work it too. She made me horny. Maybe it was that hot, slightly off-kilter but who cares because she's really hot thing. She was blind in this episode. Somehow, no matter what role she played on what show, they seemed to find a way to get her into a nightgown. Loved it. Sorry, but they knew what they were doing.
 I paused the episode to snap a photo, and my jaw literally dropped. I saw something that somehow I'd apparently missed. After all those years I finally noticed she had gargantuan breasts. How could I have possibly missed that? I don't get it. I saw her in a hundred shows and I honestly don't think I ever noticed. Better late than never I guess, but that's odd. Maybe I was a gentleman, and I was looking at her beautiful face the whole time, and not her quasi-unfathomable breasts. Nah...there's no way I'd have missed titties like that. Retroactively I feel bad- like I was off my game. Oh, well. Man, it would've been so funny if they'd made her kind of like the Hulk, only when she got angry, her breasts grew. I wouldn't care if they were green. I'd like to see 'em. She gave me boners. My jeans stretched out too. Just kidding. It's not easy being green.

The Flying Trousers of Doom

The other morning Sally woke up a little cranky. Around 5am the dogs detected some wild creature somewhere between the backyard and the next county and went off barking. That's never a good way to wake up. On top of that she'd somehow managed to turn the dryer knob counterclockwise and the dryer wouldn't turn on. She'd washed her work clothes the night before and her pants were nowhere near dry. It was chilly that morning and she was picturing going to work in wet pants. She was getting less happy by the minute. What I said next only made it worse.
 I told her I'd hook her pants up to the ceiling fan and send them for a spin and they'd be dry in no time. She thought I was messing with her and she looked like she was about to cry, but I quickly reassured her I was serious. "Really?" she said. 'Yep." She went on to say that maybe I was a bit useful after all, because she didn't think she'd have ever thought about doing laundry that way. I told her that it was exactly the same as hanging them in front of a fan, only different.
 I left the pants on the hanger and made a loop of duct tape and hung it around one of the blades and through the hanger. It had to spin between the fan blades and the tops of the lights without hitting anything. The clearance, Clarence, was only an inch between the hanger and the lights on the fan, and I had to pick it up and sling it over the lights and sort of give it a spin like an antique prop plane, but after it got going it was smooth as silk, as you can see in the photo. It made a nice cool breeze and it was somehow relaxing to watch. I was pleased.
 Sally was too. She commented that it reminded her of something out of Indiana Jones, and I told her it was Indiana Jones and the Trousers of Doom. She made her usual chuckle at the cheeseball joke but she's used to them by now to say the least. Cheeseball jokes are okay once in a while, and they make the good jokes seem better. The main thing she was concerned with is that my crazy contraption was going to work. I reminded her that it was multitasking with air, and also green, since we weren't burning any juice running the dryer. I finally managed to put a smile on her face. Well, maybe it was the coffee, but either way she turned that frown upside-down and I was glad.
 A few minutes later we realized that "Trousers of Doom" wasn't all that far off-base. The first couple of times we tried to make it across the room we were slapped rudely by a pair of wet, spinning trousers. The fan blades would lurch to a halt and moan and groan, and we'd have to pick up the pants and sling them over the lights and try to get them spinning again and not have our fingers mangled by the fan blades, so there really was an element of danger, and to me that made it more fun. To Sally it was an annoyance, but it wasn't too bad since the pants were starting to get dry. Once we got the hang of it though, and we got the timing down, we could walk perfectly in between revolutions. It was like a ballet routine. Maybe it wasn't as deadly as what Indy had to face, with all the bottomless pits and revolving knives and swinging blades and big-ass boulders and whatnot, but we had to stand back and survey the situation and figure out the timing and do a trial run in our heads first, just like Indy, so in that respect it was exactly the same as the movie. You could almost smell the popcorn.
 Not every woman necessarily wants a mega-jock, but it's good if you can do a few things. Like most girls I think maybe Sally gets a little kick out of it when I rig up a spur-of-the-moment deal, especially since more often than not they actually work. I reminded her that duct tape is the Universal Stickum, and that miracles can be worked with a roll of it. I also told her that necessities, along with Frank Zappa, are the Mothers of Invention. More cheese, but with an upgrade. The moral of the story is that she went to work with dry pants.

Handle of the Day

I love reading comments below articles and videos. It's a sure way to crack yourself up. You may have to poke around a bit to find some decent comedy, but eventually you'll run into some hilarious comments, and many times the commentators aren't trying to be funny, and that's even better. Generally I find that the crazier the video is to begin with, the crazier the comments are. Of course people fly off topic all the way to the dark side of the Moon, but that's part of it. Some of these accidental comedians have some pretty good handles too.
 I just ran across a guy (I'm assuming) on Youtube whose handle is "N-itron Clash Royale&More." That's outstanding. ":D" was all Mr. itron had to say today. It seems his handle-naming skills may be a little better than his commenting skills. It was a stand-alone comment and it came out of the blue and didn't seem to be a response to anything in particular. Maybe there's more meaning to emoticons than I realize, or maybe Clash is just happy today. Good for him. In any case he sure has a bitchin' handle.

Wet

After breaking the record last year for the longest drought on record since record-keeping began, like about 100% of the country we've had plenty of rain lately. Eighty degrees feels like ninety in this humidity. Let's hope for some dry weather, but the atmosphere is saturated right now. It's a good time to keep your powder dry, as they say.
 I was about to refill the bird feeder when I noticed that the next generation of birdseed plants is sprouting. Some dirt had blown in from the Dust Bowl of 2016 and it had mixed with some birdseed-husk powder and spider webs. I checked it out and it's the perfect seed-starting mix. It's light and loamy and it has enough organic matter to hold moisture but it's open enough not to get waterlogged. I'd love to have a 50-lb bag of it actually. Man, this is a crazy thing to talk about I guess, but it's like a terrarium or an ant farm for birdseed. The birdseed seems to like it there.
 Birds are mostly into carbs and protein so I doubt they'll eat it. Maybe I could juice it or feed it to the cat. My dog goes crazy for birdseed to the point that we have to keep it out of his reach. Maybe he'd dig the sprouts too. He loves any kind of greens and he eats a certain few types of grasses just because he likes them and not because he's sick. I tasted everything he eats just to see what wild edibles he's into, and this one plant is actually very tasty. It's a little tangy and minty and very sweet. I'd make a gourmet salad out of it. My dog knows his shit.
 Birdseed sprouting in a feeder. That's some stupid shit to talk about. I like it though. It serves double duty. Hopefully it's aesthetically-pleasing to the birds. I do want them to enjoy the dining experience. Tweet up.

BREAKING NEWS

This gargantuan meteor just came in. I keep thinking I've seen it all and then something like this happens. I keep talking about these meteors because when you've been so utterly familiar all your life with something, like shooting stars have been to me since age four, when it changes so much it's a paradigm shift. And I'm not the only one concerned. When this monster hit I made a comment in the live chat. Three guys joined in, and one seemed to be an expert of some sort. Both said what I've been saying and that's that these meteors are different from any they've ever seen.
 One guy put it up on his Youtube channel immediately. I'll put a link below. Those guys are freaking out too. It's not just me. Stay tuned. Heads up.

Here's a link to a video of this image I took of the huge meteor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUK7ECD0ETo

Quote of the Day

"Barring satellite problems in the future, we'll be on the air 'til the end of the world." - Ted Turner, on launching CNN in 1980

Comment of the Day

"Agora parece uma chuva de meteoros (Now seems a shower of meteors)." - Daniel P Ruwer, on livemeteors.com

Verse of the Day

"Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things which shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man." - Luke 21:36

Murky Gigs: The Rads

I just saw where the New Orleans band and general bunch of good guys the Radiators (aka the Rads) celebrated 33-1/3 years together. I love the double meaning. Once upon a time there was a bar on Hollywood Blvd. but I can't remember the name. There was a place called the Wrought Iron but I'm pretty sure it was a strip club next door. The Rads played there a lot and I'd go sit in with them on percussion.
 The Rads were one of those bands that did it right. They built a very loyal fan base by touring their butts off. They didn't put all their eggs in the "get a record deal" basket. They let the record companies come to them. They've been popular enough to make a living at music, but they can walk down the street without having to hire bodyguards. Back then they hadn't been together but a few years and weren't all that big yet, so they didn't mind a nobody like me sitting in. Years later though when I found out that my friend Scott Mogge was a huge Radiators fan, and I told him I sat in with them all the time, he was duly impressed. The Rads and the Meters were his guys. Good choices those.
 The reason I say murky is because back then when I was young and stupid (I'm old and stupid now), I thought it was cool to party on gigs. It wasn't ever like I got falling-down drunk on those gigs or was unable to play but I was high enough that I can only remember general things, and usually I remember gigs in great detail. There are a few things I remember. The bar had the typical dark vibe of the day. I remember dark walls and dark furniture. The stage area was small. I remember the drummer playing this funky, homemade electronic drum kit. I remember him wiring up triggers to a bunch of stuff on a little table, and banging on it. It was actually pretty cool, and real percussion went very well with it. They played with a lot of feeling and Funk and that was right up my alley. I see why Mogge was into them.
 They always had a good crowd but I knew they were on the road and all, so I never let them pay me a penny although they tried. I said they were good guys. There were other perks though. They had the coolest band shirts going, and they kept me outfitted in the latest Rads wear. They usually comped my bar tab and sometimes we'd go out for a late dinner afterwards and they'd usually pay. I think I enjoyed every minute of it. I learned how to adapt to working with an unconventional drummer and how to play without stepping on toes. For all the times I've said that this town, for its size, is the most godforsaken music town in America, I'd have to say that I got the best hands-on musical training here as I could've wanted. My time with the Rads may have been a bit murky but I really benefited from the experience. I got to hear their tunes before they were officially recorded, either live or on advance cassettes. It wasn't a big deal then, but looking back that was pretty cool.
 At some point I lost touch with the guys, and that part is murky too. The bar closed, and I got busy elsewhere. I did my thing and the Rads went on to semi-fame and fortune. I wish I'd kept in touch. I never even went to see then again but I was proud of them. I'm sure they've gone through personnel changes over the last 33-1/3 years, but when I looked at their latest band photos I got the impression that at least a couple of the original guys were still there, but I can't say for sure. I should look them up but I don't know if they'd remember me. Surely one or two of them would. I bet they'd let me play on their next recording, especially if I said I'd do it for free. I'd do it for free. In any case I'm really happy for them. Way to go, boys.

Quote of the Day

"I can make your hands clap (CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP, CLAP)." - Fitz and the Tantrums

Quote of the Day

"I went there anyway - knowingly, willingly - because I wanted a number one hit. I wanted what Metallica had, even if it meant selling a piece of my soul to the Devil." - Dave Mustaine

Meteor Madness

I know I'm harping on this thing but it's a major meteor situation. There may be something fishy going on, and possibly many more meteors are coming in than are being shown. I stayed up to play drums, and because knowing there's that many meteors flying by fires me up. Not to mention they don't even know yet where these are coming from.
 I clicked on livemeteors around midnight, and as I said they were mostly small ones but they were coming in steadily. Over the next hour though they really began getting bigger, and a few monsters flew by.

One looked like a rocket ship from an 8-bit Atari game.

One looked like a cross.

They flew by like little buzz bombs.

Within an hour or so the live feed began pausing to buffer. At first it would come back after a minute or two, but it got steadily worse, and right now it only trickles through a few seconds every minute, and when it does come back it jumps back and forth, as evidenced by the time stamps. I've never seen the site glitch like this before. It's on Youtube, but that's not the problem. All other videos and live feeds are working just fine. It's not my computer or the Internet. I checked it on my phone, which is on a different carrier.
 It's funny that it should glitch just as more big-ass meteors were starting to come in. In the few seconds per minute that the stream works, nothing much but little to medium ones are displaying. It's virtually not working right now. It's as if every time a big one starts to register on the graph, the video pauses briefly, and if it turns out to be a little one, it continues for a second, but it almost seems as if the big ones are being "censored." You can see what's happening here. As soon as an image of a big one starts to appear; in this case two at once, it stops to buffer, as you can also see, and it jumps ahead a minute or so and it's gone. It's been happening over and over; almost as if it's being edited on the fly. Maybe that sounds crazy, but it's highly coincidental that just as the screen was practically going berserk with meteors, it glitches for the first time I know about.

Maybe this is why. I'm certainly not the only one noticing this stuff BTW. This is from a video from last night. It made my jaw drop. This is far beyond any of the images I took, and those were already far beyond anything I'd ever seen on the website in probably a decade. This is nuts. Just the main band in the middle is much wider, to say nothing of the side bands that extend beyond the main frequency range. The spike at the top, above the jagged line, is completely off the graph, or "clipped." I've seen it get right up to the top, but never clipped. The peak would have gone up at least two more lines. That's incredible. I probably wouldn't show this either if it were up to me. This is serious.

Maybe I spoke too soon, because this monster just flew in, but it's literally the only big one that's been displayed in the last hour, and that makes no sense. Could these meteors possibly be being censored at this very moment? They are from an unknown source. Meteors from some of the different showers are different in composition, size and duration. Maybe these meteors are megameteors or something. The whole thing is odd. It sounds paranoid maybe, but to have the stream be interrupted and glitch in a really weird way just as things were getting good, and for the first time ever that I know of, is one hell of a coincidence. I've seen plenty of videos buffer and slow and stop altogether or come back, but never once have I seen it jump back and forth like that.
 If it were just glitching normally, it seems like it would at least occasionally stop on a big meteor, but it's not showing anything but little ones, except for this one. Curious...most, most curious. One thing's for damn sure...meteors are in the 'hood and there's lots of them. In fact I've never seen as many coming in as I was seeing earlier. I wish the live stream would go back up. I really do. The sky may not be falling but some stars sure are, and daylight or dark has nothing to do with it. Like I said before I have Chicken Little on speed-dial in case it turns out that the sky really is falling. I sure hope I don't have to call him. Heads-up.

Mystery Meteors

A  little earlier tonight Sally was looking over the recommended videos on Youtube and I was trying to decide whether to pull a drum hang or wait one more night and crash tonight, and I was busy passing out on the sofa as I was trying to decide. Just as I was melting into the ether I heard Sally say something. She sounded a million miles away and when she said something about meteors I thought I was dreaming, but I came to. One of our guys had just put up a vid saying that out of nowhere we seem to be in the middle of a major meteor shower, only it's not a regularly-scheduled one. Astronomers have been saying since last year that we're going through an unknown debris field, and that's turned out to be true.
 I had to get up and check out livemeteors.com. Right now the meteors are mostly small ones, but they're coming in at the rate of up to ten a minute. Whatever the official rate, it's hard to tell because there are so many coming in at once, as you can see here. It's almost a solid line, only instead of it being one long-duration meteor like the ones coming in two weeks ago, it's made up of many individual ones. Yet again this is new in all the years I've been going to this site. There was one so far tonight that lasted over a minute, but the sheer number of small ones is impressive. A mystery meteor shower. What's next...Lucky Charms in Space?
 I only put up about 150 posts about the Lyrid shower and the one from the tail of Halley's comet, and how the signatures of some of those meteors were massive and unlike any I'd ever seen, and blah-blah, and how some of them were two full minutes in duration and how it was blowing my mind and all, but things that have never happened in my lifetime but are now happening are going to get my attention, and meteors are one of my favorite subjects.
 There's a huge ebb and flow in the number of meteors in a given event, due to the Earth turning and such, and predicting the amount of meteors per hour and when the actual peak is is very difficult. The meteors from Halley's peaked in the southern hemisphere and apparently they had quite a show. They don't even know how to identify this shower; much less predict numbers, but so far it qualifies as a meteor storm, and there's no telling how much it will go up to at peak, or when that will be. I've seen rogue meteors, or meteors that appear coincidentally during a regular shower, but aren't part of it, but I've never seen a rogue meteor shower before, but nothing surprises me much any more. Bring it on. Tomorrow night should be good for viewing, and if it's clear I'd recommend spending fifteen minutes or so outside looking up. It could be a show. Or not. I'll check tomorrow and if it's crazy or anything I'll update. I always say heads-up on these posts and I really do mean it. Recently I've heard some people on Youtube saying basically that for those people who never spend any time looking up at the sky, now would be a very good time to start, and I just couldn't agree more. As the Wiseman Ashby once said, "I get most of my flip-outs from the shy." He knows. Heads-up.

I'm Sick

Oh, the shit that goes on inside my head...half the time I have a "parallel universe" going on alongside this one where I make up different scenarios and alternate endings and whatnot. It's just a way of keeping myself entertained.
 Sometimes I crack up in public because something will occur to me that would be the worst possible thing you could ever say or do in any given situation that would just completely freak everyone out. Generally I keep that stuff to myself. Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a sick, twisted, demented, wacko freakazoid, than to open it and remove all doubt. Wettermark and Keith is a local law firm. They're not above advertising on TV and on the back of phone books. On the surface it's just another shameless lawyer with a fancy name, with no potential for any fun.
 But Wettermark and Keith...that's too easy. "She left a wettermark on the sheets than her sister did." Ouch. That's so wrong. Help me.

My Career as a Rapper

Back when I worked in the crazy restaurant Rap was starting to go mainstream. We already had people rapping, and the one and only "Rapture" by Blondie and such, but they were just starting to wake up and smell the cash, and Rap exploded. Even white guys were doing it, so I figured I might as well try my hand at writing a Rap tune. I really didn't have a timetable.
 I got my chance one day when I was at work. I was talking to Cindy (aka DJ Cinj). Somehow the subject of Rap came up. I told Cindy that I bet I could be a white rapper. I don't think she believed me for a second. I was crushed, but I wouldn't be denied. Trouble is I had to make it up on the spot. One of the nicknames given to me by my friend and erstwhile bartender ET was "Weird Al Yankonit" because I took normal songs and made up my own stupid lyrics. I thought I could do it no problem.
 Cindy stood there looking bored, with her head tilted and her hand on her hip, as I cleared my throat and went "MI MI MI" a few times. I honestly hadn't made up a word beforehand, but I began to sing, if you could call it that. It came straight off the top of my head.

I'm a son of a bitch
I got a trailer hitch
I drove my ass
Right into a ditch, yo

Cindy didn't say a word. She just tilted her head a little more with a "REALLY?" look on her face. I didn't give up, and some new lyrics popped into my head as if by magic. I took a sip of water and started to sing.

Mutha, mutha, mutha, mutha, mutha muthafucka
Muthafucka and anotha muthafucka

Nothing from Cinj. "Well?" I said. "I don't think you have what it takes to be a rapper" she said. "That's about as 'white' as anything I've ever heard in my life. Maybe you should stick to Rock and Roll." She was right. It escaped my mind at the time, but I'd actually written an entire Rap rewrite of the Beverly Hillbillies Theme. It rocked.

Come a-listen to a story 'bout a man named JED
Po' mountainEER barely kep' his homies FED
Then one day he'uz shootin' at some FOOD
When up from da ground come a bubblin' CROOD
(Oi-oi-oi-oi-oil, 'dat is, y'all)

Too bad I couldn't try my hit out on Cindy, but I think she'd had enough Cracker Rap for one day. I hear you. A little goes a long way. I guess it's just as well I can't rap. Plenty of white doofuses rapping, yo. Word.

Sunscreen Alternatives

[NOTICE: This post is not intended to replace medical advice or treatment. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure anything besides lack of information. Have a nice day.]
 I almost went and made a faux pas. I put up a post about a scary subject and I didn't offer an alternative like I usually do. My bad. In the case of alternatives to commercial sunscreens, there are several. First, you can stay out of the Sun. Yeah, I know you want to go to the pool and try to hit that fine sister in the yellow one-piece, but you're not going to get within ten feet of her if you're all blistered and oozing. You can at least avoid midday Sun. Show up at the pool at 3:00. If one-piece chick wants to let you hit it she'll be there.
 If she's a nurse or a waitress and she works the 3-11 shift and she can't stay until 3:00, you can always wear a long sleeve T, and bicycle pants or thin cotton sweatpants. Hell, wear jammy pants. Who cares? Maybe one-piece will actually think you're different from the other bozos, even though you're probably not, and give you the time of day. Worried you'll look dorky? Who cares? My whole style is Post-Dork. Works for me. I could tell you swimming-pool stories that'd curl your toes. My bumper sticker says "Dorky and Proud."
 A third option would be natural sunscreen, and there are tons of products that appear to be at least worth trying. Some of them use minerals and other natural ingredients to form a protective but breathable layer that protects skin. I can't speak to any of these products since I haven't tried them and don't really plan to. I went to several websites and the ideas behind their products seem sound, but not having any experience with these products I won't put up any links, but please feel free to search. Sure they cost more, but you need to weigh out the whole picture, rather than cost only. Is it worth it to keep from putting that chemical brew, whether they say it's safe or not, into your body? That's for you to decide. If a natural sunscreen (or a chemical one, for that matter) keeps you from getting melanoma, what is that worth? Most places that sell those products will give new customers up to 25% off on the first order with just one click, and that can put the price more in line with the name products.

I won't put up any websites but I did find this young lady on one of the first sites I clicked. Mama. She's got the look. I hope she's legal. It's getting harder to tell these days. She uses natural skin products.apparently, and she does have that healthy glow. Not a damn thing wrong with that. Healthy rocks. Yeah, I reckon I'd practice "Safe Sun" with her about any day of the week. Just kidding. I think.












Whatever you do, please be careful in the Sun this year. I may be trying to be funny here, but skin cancer is no joke. I never under any circumstances ever try to present anything as fact, unless I've done my own research and checked out BOTH sides of the story, rather than just picking what fits my opinions. Not to toot my own horn because thankfully I'm not alone in my methods, but the world would truly be a better place if more people relied on FACTS rather than their esteemed opinions. It's great to have opinions, but ideally they should be backed with facts. I've said before but if you rely only on your opinions and never even bother to check into both sides of the story, you may THINK you know the story, but you'll truly never know for sure. That is simply beyond debate. As far as my world goes, it would be a better one if I could go back in time until I was about "Safe Sun" chick's age, and rub some all-natural sunscreen on her. Not really...I'm just kidding again. I think. Practice safe Sun. Have a UVB-free day.

The Real Sunscreen Story (seasonal rewrite - IMPORTANT INFORMATION)

[NOTICE: This post is not intended to replace medical advice or treatment. It is not intended to diagnose, treat or cure anything besides lack of information. Have a nice day.]
 If you go to the pool or the beach (lucky you) this Summer, you'll probably have some sunscreen. This will sound crazy at first but bear with me. Before you go slathering it all over your skin, take a moment to look at the ingredients. Yes, I realize no one can pronounce any of those chemicals; much less know what they are. It would take half an hour to enter them all into a search engine. Even if you were to go to the trouble to do that, you'd find official-looking websites that basically all say the exact same thing. "Ladies and gentlemen...'HexelTrexel123betaoffa-9X-alphaomegaethyl-HanselGretelB-42BINGO!tri-gloppa' is perfectly safe." Before you just go believing that because it makes you feel better, you may want to consider that they recently tried to say that a certain form of mercury was perfectly safe to ingest. They got called out on that one before the day was out. Luckily some people still had enough common sense to call bullshit, and they were busted almost immediately. Yeah, they're looking out for us. It's their #1 priority; not making billions of dollars. If you believe that something is safe just because some company-funded website says it is, then bless your naive little heart.
 Just a casual scan of this label shows aluminum. Aluminum is highly toxic in ANY form. I've actually bothered to look up some of these ten-syllable ingredients, and sure enough, I'll find a few websites that say it's perfectly safe, or at worst they'll say something to the effect of "possible carcinogen, but not enough evidence" or some bullshit like that. It's bullshit. And guess what...all the sites, with the exception of URLs, backgrounds and ads, the text is copy/pasted, complete with typos and misspellings, from one site to the next. Why would they need to do that? Because most people will simply believe it and not question. Their copycat sites come up first in searches, and push websites with actual facts and not just propaganda down to the bottom of the second page, and most people give up long before then, if they even bother to try to find out the real story in the first place. For now just remember: Aluminum in sunscreen. Aluminum BAD. That's just one thing.
 Okay, here's the crazy part. Read that label and ask yourself (seriously) if you'd drink it. Right now you're saying  "Hell, NO I wouldn't DRINK it! That's insane, and so is this fool." I get it, but hang on. The truth is, you'd be WAY better off drinking it instead of putting it on your skin. Why? You've heard of transdermal patches. Think nicotine patches, motion-sickness patches, IcyHot patches, pain patches and such. "Transdermal" literally means "across the skin," and that's how they work. You don't think lotion is any different, do you? It's no different. Here's the deal: if you put lotion or anything else on your skin, it is absorbed directly into the bloodstream. If you swallow it on the other hand, it has to pass through your digestive system, liver and kidneys. All those chemicals at once will stress your organs a bit but most of the toxins would be filtered out before getting to the bloodstream. If you apply it to your skin it bypasses all of that. Make sense? I hope so. I care. I ain't makin' a dime offa this. Do you see any ads anywhere on this page? If I was making money from this post though I can guarantee I'd be selling sunscreen that didn't have all that bullshit in it. I even have a name for it actually. I'm not selling anything. While we're at it, I'm not a real doctor either.
 I realize this sounds batshit-crazy maybe but it's a logical question. What's illogical is the idea of drinking lotion of course, but if people really thought about it, so should putting it on your skin be. If you doubt any of this, go find a friend who's trying to quit smoking, and see if you can borrow a few patches and put them all on at once. If you can maintain for two minutes without getting the worst case of the twirlies you ever had in your life, and if you aren't tripping out and getting tunnel vision and turning all green and throwing up your toenails, well...you're a bigger man than I, Gunga Din. Of course I'm not serious. Don't do that. It will make you sick. I've seen people wearing nicotine patches, and when they get the jones for a ciggy they'll give the patch a few sharp taps. Apparently that breaks up the Tiny Time Pills and they get a nicotine rush. Again it's transdermal. It goes across the skin and innnnnnnnnnnnto the bloodstream. Cheers.
 Think about it. Read those labels. Would you squirt that shit down your throat? You'd be much better off.

The Lawd God Woodpecker Returns

I saw one of the resident Pileated woodpeckers yesterday. Although I hear their calls every other day I haven't seen one since last year. It was Winter and the foliage was gone and I got a clear view of him, but I got only a couple of glimpses yesterday. He was in a big tree about 250' away. I could only make out a dark silhouette and a bit of red and white, but the size was unmistakable. They're over a foot long from head to tail. They look prehistoric, and in fact they are. They were around when the dinosaurs were happening. You never know...maybe his ancestors drank some of the same water I have in my geode I mentioned.
 For a long time they thought this bird was extinct, but some time in the early or mid 20th century they were spotted again by incredulous birdwatchers. Apparently they came back from the brink of extinction. I'm glad they did. They're very impressive. Their call even sounds prehistoric. It's a loud, repeated sort of cackle, and I can imagine that it's similar to what a Pterodactyl's cry might have sounded like. When they start pecking into a tree it sounds like a million baseball bats hitting the tree in rapid-fire succession. It's enough to give you a headache.
 One famous nickname in these parts anyway, and actually spelled out in books, is the Lawd God Woodpecker, and understandably so. You'll definitely feel like saying that (at least) if you're ever lucky enough to see one. It's cool to see something that's unchanged (and still around) since the dinosaurs.

Free Tomatoes

We've had a couple of nice volunteer tomatoes sprout. With the nonexistent Winter they've gotten a good head start. I'm not sure what the first one is but I'm hoping it's one of the German, Cherokee or other purples, but I do know it's something good since the seeds were still viable and the aroma is amazing. It's the sweetest tomato plant I've ever schnozed and it doesn't even have any blooms yet. If you close your eyes you'd swear it was loaded with fruit. When you get up close it knocks you over and you can smell it from ten feet away. It could literally be a perfume, and possibly even give patchouli a run for its money with the latterday Deadhead perfume-buying community, or even something that certain individuals might be interested in smoking. It's that nice.
 Instead of digging it up we cut the bottom out of a pot and filled it with good dirt and compost. The soil here is packed clay, sand and rocks, and it's poor in humus or organic matter. Except for a few things, everything does better in containers or raised beds. For those who don't know, the best way to plant a tomato is to cut all but the top layer or two of leaves, and plant the stem as deeply as you can. Unlike most plants it won't kill the stem, and in fact roots will grow out wherever the stem is buried. That will make the plant grow stronger and have more fruit. If you've already planted your plants, you can still "retrofit" them by simply mounding dirt around the stem or enclosing it in a pot as we did here. Cut the lower leaves off first, with an Exacto rinsed with alcohol preferable to scissors, and bury as much of the stem as you can. The plants will be just fine and you'll get more tomatoes. Get that white bread and mayo ready. There's noting better in the free world.

This one came from some organic grape tomatoes from two years ago that we forgot to eat and had basically turned into raisins. I planted them in this pot. One came up last year but for some reason it never even blossomed. It's hard to tell in the photo but this plant has a couple-dozen blooms and we should be picking free grape tomatoes within the month. Both of these are beautiful plants and so far they've managed to weather the sharp increase in UV rays that Earth is experiencing at the moment, but they don't get full sun all day long. Rest assured no Miracle Gro or any other chemical bullshit will ever touch these plants (except for what's already in the environment), and for plants that get equal sunlight, I'll put these here bad boys up against anyone's. Can't wait to try them. Free is good. Free tomatoes is extry-good.

Seeds of Change?

This is the Svalbard Global Seed Bank, aka the doomsday seed vault. It contains as many varieties of heirloom (non-GMO, non-hybrid) seeds as they could cram inside. It's located near the Arctic Circle. The purpose is to be able to reseed the planet should some sort of calamity occur. It was meant to be permanent and safe from most catastrophes, and eternally frozen due to its being built into the deep permafrost. Trouble is the permafrost has been anything but perma over the last year or so, and it's melting.
 A few days ago a statement came out saying that the building had been damaged by the infiltration of water. They said the water seeped into the structure and then refroze "like a glacier" inside. At first they reported that the seeds were damaged, but that sounded funny to me. What did they do...leave the seeds in their paper packets and toss them in a shoe box labeled "Maters?" That's ridiculous. A day later they said that although the structure is damaged by ice the seeds are doing fine. Whew. Now we can reseed the planet, "as long as n'u'n don't hap'n" as my girl Rose used to say.
 You get three guesses what they're blaming it on, and the first two don't count. That's right...it's that old bullshit-bugaboo "climate change;" formerly known as "global warming." It's YOUR damn fault because you drove your SUV to work this morning. At least that's what the powers that be want you to believe. The climate is changing alright, but it's NOT because of your SUV, or anything else you do for that matter. Just wait until the "carbon tax" takes effect. Lots of people are going to suffer as a direct result. If you think I'm crazy, just wait and see. It's the biggest load of bullshit ever perpetuated on the population of Planet Earth. No joke.
 I'm NOT saying for one second that driving SUVs and burning trash or having factories or all the many other things we do have zero effect on the atmosphere and "climate change" and certainly air quality, but compared to the amount of methane and other reactive gasses that cows belch every day; to say nothing of volcanic activity and smoke from wildfires, what humans do is literally a drop in the bucket. If you decide to just roll over and take the blame for what are normal Earth processes, then it's on you. Please don't buy the bullshit.
 Look where the major pollution comes from...mostly huge factories and nuclear plants and rich, greedy assholes who don't give a flying fuck, and will dump their shit right in your backyard. While I'm ranting, take fluoride. It's INDUSTRIAL WASTE. Sure, it kills cavities, but it also kills everything else in its path. It's one of the deadliest toxins known to man, yet we ingest it every day without question. Other things kill cavities without being deadly poisons. Think about it...they're dumping their INDUSTRIAL WASTE on us, and we thank them. Look it up. It's added to many municipal water supplies and is in toothpaste of course, but not many people know that it's added to many medicines, with the worst offender being antidepressants. If you doubt this you can go to the official CDC and other websites and see actual scans of ingredient labels from medicines. While you're at it, check out vaccine ingredients. Fluoride is seriously toxic, and BTW, taking fluoride internally for cavities makes exactly as much sense as drinking sunscreen for sunburn. That ISN'T "fake news." Okay...rant over, I hope. Sorry, but it's true.
 I find it interesting that so far there's no mention of the incident on their official webpage. Maybe the whole thing is just more psy-op bullshit. It even looks like there's a polar bear sitting up in the floodlight, but it's probably just some plastic or ice or something. My Bullshitometer is pegging right now. I'm not exactly sure why but I smell a big fucking frozen rat. The seeds are fine, yo, even though they first came out saying that some were ruined, like they didn't even know what a Ziploc is. That's bullshit from word one and I'm glad I didn't buy it. Turns out the seeds are well-protected. You can take a surprisingly-extensive tour (minus the recent "indoor glacier" damage) of the inside and outside of the facility. I'll leave links below. I wonder if they'll even bother to update the site. I'll keep an eye out. Meanwhile my advice to you would be to grab some heirloom seeds of your own and store them in your own humble home freezer. And beware of bullshit. Stay chill, y'all.

Svalbard Seed Bank: https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/

360-degree tour: https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/interactive-visit/

Photo of the Day

Shift Change

Jukebox in My Head (selection: D-55)

"Puppet Man" by the Fifth Dimension. The 5th D was a vocal group that was happening from the late-60s through the 70s, although I'm sure they did the usual reunion-tour thing, and as far as I know are probably still playing today.. For Pop music that some of the rockers back in the day didn't take seriously, I thought their music was kickass. The vocals were beautiful and tight and the harmonies were as good as anyone's. On their records and live they used the best musicians money could hire.
 The songwriting was stellar and there wasn't one wasted note anywhere. They used dynamics, which back then was understood to be not only necessary for making music that was pleasant for your brain to listen to, as in being able to "take a breath" as it were, but was also actually a secret weapon.
 They understood rhythm and singing rhythmically, and that was a huge bonus. Speaking of bonus, the lady on the right, Marilyn McCoo, was so utterly smoking fucking hot that she gave me spontaneous bonuses, if you catch my drift. She could sing like a bird. It almost hurt to look at her back when I was a kid. It almost didn't seem fair to look at her somehow, but I didn't understand why. I do now. I bet she's still pretty hot. When I was an impressionable lad I wanted to make beautiful music with Marilyn. Speaking of beautiful music, the harmonies on the outro of Puppet Man are breathtaking. It's like the heavens open up. Give it a spin. It'll give you a lift.
 The 5th D was some of the first grownup music I was allowed to listen to, and my folks bought me every one of their albums. Listening to this song definitely takes me way back, but really it could've been written this morning. If you don't remember the band you've certainly heard their monster hit "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In." They still play that song everywhere. It's been covered a million times. Marching bands play it. It's ubiquitous as they say. The first version of Puppet Man is a remastered version from 2000, and any remastering before the year 2000 was done properly and not just cranked dogshit-loud just because they can. The second version is lip-synced from an episode of a 70s TV show that starred Robert Wagner. The sound is crappy and distorted and it has gaps, probably from the original VHS tape having to be spliced, but it's a little history lesson, if you want to see what they looked like in their prime.  Marilyn McCoo was pretty prime; I can tell you that. Woof. Sorry. I mean, "What a looker." Yeah, I definitely had more than one spontaneous bonus for Marilyn. How could you not? "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" is the last link. You've heard it before.
 I could go on talking about how great this tune is and how the vocals are so amazing and how the chord changes are very sophisticated and evocative and how damn tight it is and how it's infinitely listenable and how it's loaded with Funk and Swing but it still rocks and so on, but if I really wanted to say what I'd like to say about the lyrics to this song; in light of some things I've learned, except for a handful of people it would probably sound crazy. Ordinarily the lyrics would be describing some girl in love, and they may be, but in light of other connections, it's hard to say. If I talked about Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In, and how it was a major milestone for a movement that's growing exponentially today, and in fact how it directly relates to this very day and into the future, I'd sound even crazier. I'll just say that it's no accident that the song has remained current and is still being played today. In fact I just saw it covered on some awards show. It has that good-time, singalong feel, and people still react to it today the same as they did back when it first came out. It was a monster hit and it still is to this day. As far as monster hits are concerned, and 70s hits that were just written at the perfect instant that the stars aligned and made the artist several fortunes, it's no "American Pie," but it's close. The song is famous for the ad-lib vocals on the outro BTW. It's taking the class to school for that type of thing. You can't do much better.
 Anyway, I won't mention what I'd really like to mention. Unless you have a working belief that just maybe there are forces we can't see but which influence the physical world, there's really no point in talking about it and I'd be called a nutcase. Granted I might be called that anyway. People though will automatically call someone crazy simply because their ideas don't gel with their own. They won't even consider considering ANY new information whatsoever, because it disagrees with their beliefs. Quite possibly it's also a major roadblock to these opinionated people ever learning anything new, but they'll never give that a chance to happen. Otherwise they're fairly intelligent people. Most of them seem to think so anyway. But I digress. WhereTF was I?
 Oh, yeah...the jukebox thing. I was about to hop up on my freak-ass soapbox when I should stick to the jukebox and save that shit for another post, only the difference in listening to this song now, as opposed to back than, is remarkable, but maybe only to me. There's a couple of guys on Youtube I talk to here and there, and I'm going to tell them about it. They'll eat it up and I'd bet my kit one of them will do a video on it. Sometimes there's more than meets the eye. In any case it's a rockin' tune. True to 60s Pop form it's about 2:15 long. It's time well-spent. It's an example of great Pop music. Check it out. Enjoy. Have a groovy day.

Puppet Man, remastered 2000 version, with the drum intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lohkN5f3Yo0

lip-synced from TV show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeMqYz0SYWA

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPK7ZF6jfJE

Old Water

I sawr a thing last night where some British dude had found a tin of crackers that was 150 years old, but the crackers tasted fine. They certainly looked like they just left the cracker factory. I'd have eaten one. The reason they were still good is because the moisture content was near zero, and the bad bugs need it to live. That's why they dehydrate food to preserve it. I have something that's still good but it's 100% moisture. It's millions of years old too.
 This is a type of geode called an enhydro. It's just like the ones you see that look like a round rock, but when it's sliced in half you can see all the beautiful crystals inside; only with enhydros, water was trapped inside before they finished growing and sealed themselves off. The water is presumably millions of years old. Eat your heart out, Fiji water.
 You can't tell from the photo but there's a pocket of air and water inside this rock. You can clearly see the air bubble moving inside, and if you hold it next to your ear and shake it, you can faintly hear the water sloshing inside. That's how they tell it's an enhydro to begin with. When they find one they carefully shave off very thin layers until they get a "window" in the rock, as you can see in the photo. They've sliced through the outside of the rock and into the quartz layer that lines the inside. When they get it thin enough they polish it until it looks like a window made of milky glass has been put in the rock. It's a very cool thing, and thinking about it containing water from the time of the dinosaurs really takes it to the next level.
 I got this rock from the late Joe Kontzen. Joe was one of the most well-known and well-loved gemologists in the world. Any time I went to a gem show or anywhere they were selling rocks and gemstones, all I'd have to do is mention Joe and they'd light up and start telling Joe stories, and before I knew it they were offering me these crazy discounts just because I was friends with Joe. This geode was expertly shaved by his late son Eric. Eric was a long-time friend of mine. He happened to also play sax, and he was good enough to tour with the Temptations and several other big-name acts. Eric knew a lot about rocks but he was nowhere near the walking-encyclopedia Joe was.
 They had a retail store but they kept most of the inventory at their house, and for about eight years I lived just a few blocks away. They had a fortune in rocks...everything from ordinary gemstones to diamonds. One thing that stands out is what they used for doorstops. They had huge chunks of opal that weighed between 25 and 55 pounds. When I asked about them I was told they were rare and highly-prized Brazilian opal that came from a mine that closed back in the 60s or 70s, so what existed was all there would ever be. It was beautiful opal. When I asked how much the big chunk was worth, Joe casually told me it was worth 50K. I was impressed. Not being able to afford that I settled for this enhydro instead, and to me it's much cooler than some sparkly opal worth fifty large. I've had this rock for almost 25 years.
 I was over at Joe's one day and Eric was over there shaving some enhydros. He was shaving off paper-thin layers of rock with a diamond saw until the "window" was thin enough to see through. It's only a few mm thick. He was using a steady hand and he remarked that it wasn't something he ever tried to do if he was hungover. I asked him if he'd ever accidentally broken into one and he said he'd broken into one and it was fairly recently. He said all he could do was drink the water and slice it open and make a regular geode out of it. Think about it...this guy tasted water that was millions of years old. There was maybe a tablespoon of water inside but it was enough to taste. He said it tasted a little sweet and very pure. I guess so. Scientists using specialized clean chambers will drill into these enhydros and use the water to study the prehistoric atmosphere. For the record they find that the air contained much more oxygen for much of the time, and conditions needless to say were just a bit healthier that they are today. Eric was a badass in many ways, and knowing he drank water that the dinosaurs drank only added to his lore.
 I still have several pounds of all kinds of cool rocks from all over the world, and I still remember what each of them is. My education didn't stop with school and I learned an awful lot from Joe. Every time I'd go to Joe's when I'd finally leave I'd gather my pile of rocks I was going to buy and Joe would total it up on a little cash register on the kitchen table. He'd go "Oops" and hit 50% off, and on top of that he always gave me a really nice present, and this enhydro was one of them. These aren't cheap. Most enhydros are quartz crystals that look normal until you look closely and shake them. You can clearly see one or more bubbles moving around inside the enclosed pocket of water.

 Here's a beautiful quartz enhydro. You can see a big bubble about right in the middle. The yellow color is probably due to minerals in the quartz and not dinosaur piss. Examples of this quality usually go for hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't mind having a few of these but I think the geodes are more interesting. You have to look closely to see the bubble and that adds a little more mystery. It's like having a regular rock on the outside and a miniature prehistoric lake inside.
 I also love meteorites and I have several. Anything that's traveled millions of miles and possibly for millions of years always gets my attention, but enhydros may be a little more interesting. Looking into this geode is exactly like looking through the window into the past. It's nothing short of a time machine. It's really very humbling.