Michael Prescott's Blog

Faster than a speeding bullet

I experimented with StripGenerator, a free program that lets you create simple comics online, and voila - a new comic book superhero is born! 

A cryptic post

To celebrate another year of blogging, here's a cryptic crossword with themes drawn from this blog's contents. Click on the image to see a full-size pop-up.  

When the puzzle is done, the red squares, read from left to right, line by line, will spell out a message. 

If you haven't done a cryptic crossword, here are some hints on how to solve one. 

Print out the image and the clues, and sharpen your pencil. Answers will be provided in a later post. 

CLUES

ACROSS

1. “Cry, sis,” a parishioner said unerringly to a ghost 

6. Ghost hunters study things that go this in the night

8. I feel fart developing in postmortem existence 

9. Partic. sixth sense

10. Like a blog post or a legal case

13. Mystic river

14. Stock index dictated the way

15. Lore and complicated British clairvoyant 

17. Not the end? 

19. Control lapel flower in another life

20. Sounds like Santa’s vehicle will do Buffy’s job

21. Debunking project: no beta males need apply

22. Skeptic hides in lusher meringue

DOWN

1. K.C. announced sleeping prophet

2. Skeptic Asimov is a current designation

3. Boston medium and Irish exterminator 

4. Randi’s alter ego? 

5. His pony’s possibly a path to past lives

7. Mixed-up guerilla joins E.R. without a psychic showman

10. What 7D may do to dinnerware

11. My shrew upset by “F” from psychical researcher 

12. Charles’ pie

13. Starting with D-Day there’s no place like it, and there was no one like him

14. Russell’s goal omits E.T. 

16. Addled heart on physical plane

18. Declare a toast to psychic experiment 

The Ministry of Silly Thoughts?

Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail tweeted this link today. It's a short, funny, and smart skit featuring John Cleese as a scientist seeking to explain the whole world in terms of reductionistic materialism. 

Yes, I'm on Twitter now, though so far I haven't had much to say. My Twitter identity is M_Prescott2011 .

Or should that be @M_Prescott2011 ? I don't know. It's all new to me. 

I intend to use Twitter mainly to promote my ebooks, if I can figure out how. By my count, I've sold 140,000 ebooks so far this year. When I started, I thought I'd be lucky to sell 500 a year. 

 

Trivial pursuits

A miscellany of minutiae ...

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Here's an interesting news story about identical twins who both passed away, at age 92, within a few hours of each other. 

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I've been playing around with the idea that some of the ambiguities of paranormal phenomena might be best understood as occupying borderlands between states of consciousness. Not sure if there's anything to this, but for purposes of discussion, here's a chart I worked up. (Click to enlarge.) Note that I'm not claiming there's anything scientific about this hierarchy, nor am I claiming to know exactly what level of consciousness should be assigned to particular life forms. 

 

 

As I say, I'm not sure there's any value to this, but possibly it may be a way of understanding how gradations in consciousness allow for "anomalous phenomena" on the margins (or at the transition points). The idea, such as it is, is not really worked out. 

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Speaking of charts, this chart-topping new single immortalizes the Weinergate scandal with wit, style, and aplomb. Yes, it's the whole package! Content warning, not suitable for work, may offend those who are easily offended, etc. 

Weinergate

The largest news of the past week is, of course, Weinergate. 

In all honesty, the number of column inches devoted to this story seems disproportionate to its subject. The story may be big, and it may continue to grow, but I doubt it has the potential to be huge. Even so, there is no doubt that the scandal will be hard on the congressman and his staff.

There is no need to magnify the story or extend it. The facts, laid bare, are straightforward enough. It appears that the congressman pulled a boner and was caught with his pants down. He issued a brief statement, which may have been premature and seems to have been a stretch. It appears he got overly excited and wasn't using his head. As a result, his story is encountering stiff opposition and has prompted penetrating questions from the hardened press corps, who see him as fair game for whacking. 

Though the media continue to pump the congressman, his answers have come up short. Even as reporters flog him, he has remained rigid in sticking to his story. Apparently he has decided to run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes, while trying to beat off all inquiries. In all of this, I can't escape the feeling that we are being jerked around by Congressman Weiner. It's almost as if he is trying to screw us.

If the congressman persists in dicking around, the situation may come to a head. He risks looking like a tool, even like a bit of a prick, as he tries to make us swallow a story that would choke a chicken. 

He needs to master the situation and not be baited into losing self-control. It doesn't help him when he goes off half-cocked. He must stand tall, straighten his spine, and do the hard work of servicing his constituents. The story may be large, but it's nothing he can't handle. He just has to grab hold of it with both hands. 

To be frank, Weiner needs to show some balls.

Do stand-up and be counted

Depressed by the recent spate of bad news - chaos in Wisconsin, civil war in Libya, hell on earth in Japan? 

Take a break with some YouTube clips of the first appearances of well-known comedians on The Tonight Show.

First up, the incomparable Steven Wright. 

Next in the queue, Jerry Seinfeld, who gets a lukewarm reception and is not invited to the couch. (A couch invite from Johnny was a sign that the comic had done especially well.)

Here's a surprisingly funny and low-key Ellen DeGeneres.  

Finally, Johnny introduces the man who will one day replace him, Jay Leno. 

Want more? Here's a montage of other comics' Tonight Show debuts.  

Feel better now? Of course you do. 

You're welcome. 

Poetry corner

I once thought of a children's book called Do You Suppose. Never really pursued it. Jotted down a few lines, nothing more. Came across these jottings the other day while cleaning out some old papers. 

Here's all I wrote of my unfinished masterpiece: 

 

Do you suppose 

That the good ship Argo

Ever reached Key Largo

Or even Fargo

To bypass an embargo

And pick up some cargo?

 

Do you suppose 

That a pilot with an overbite

Ever made an oversight

While on an overnight

Overflight?

 

Do you suppose 

That the Monster of Loch Ness

Ever played chess

In state of undress

Under duress

With a lady named Bess

Or maybe Tess

And felt true distress,

Finding himself in no less

Than a serious mess,

But refused to obsess

And chose instead to confess

His lack of success? 

 

Do you suppose

That your toes

Go to picture shows

And buy clothes

And write prose

While you doze? 

No one knows. 

 

Yeah, I know, I know - I'm not quitting my day job. 

Scammed by the light

The Onion is kind of hit-and-miss these days, but I got a chuckle out of this report about senior citizens scammed out of their life savings by con artists who convince them that they've died. 

The skit is basically a send-up of the kind of material posted in all seriousness on this blog. But it's still okay to laugh.  

Reality check

Here's a dead-on accurate animated film, with computer-generated voices, about the delusions nurtured by many (most?) would-be novelists.

Good stuff.

By the way, the link to this YouTube video was sent to me by the trickster himself - George Hansen.

A minor mystery solved (probably)

Here's a fun thing that's started circulating on the Internet. Someone watching footage of the 1928 premiere of Charlie Chaplin's film The Circus noticed a female pedestrian caught on camera who appears to be speaking into a cell phone. Since cell phones did not exist in 1928, the footage seemed inexplicable, leading its discoverer to speculate - half seriously, I guess - that maybe the woman was a "time traveler."

You can watch the footage here. If you want to bypass the rather boring and long-winded introduction, the 1928 footage starts around the 3:00 mark.

So what's the answer to this mystery? Was a time traveler caught on film in 1928?

A commenter on the National Review website who goes by the name of ChugBug supplies a better answer. The thing in the lady's hand, which does sort of resemble a cell phone, is probably a hearing aid.

Yes, there were hearing aids in 1928, and yes, some of them were flat and large, like this object. Since the microphone was located in the flat part of the device, the woman was probably speaking into the mike as she walked along. I don't know who she was talking to. Maybe she was talking to herself.

ChugBug helpfully included a link to a Web page that shows a particular hearing aid, the Audiphone, that would match up very nicely with the mysterious object in the lady's hand.

Admittedly, the time traveler conjecture is more fun, and reminds me of a fine old science-fiction story called "Vintage Season."

Hat tip: Ace of Spades.