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The Eyes Have It.

Author: February 15, 2025 5 Comments

I was walking through a hospital when I was taken by surprise by a pair of googly eyes. I shouldn’t have been that surprised. It’s not exactly pareidolia but people like to turn things into faces by sticking googly eyes on them. There’s even a Googly Eyes Foundation that promotes the googlification of everyday items by providing free googly eyes.

That led me down a rabbit hole of the history of googly eyes but that’s where murky. The name may come from the syndicated comic strip Barney Google And Snuffy Smith which debuted in 1919 and more than a century later is still making lazy, awful jokes based on tired stereotypes of rural people. Check out The Comics Curmudgeon to see the strip regularly get the treatment it deserves.

Googly eyes may have originated from German dolls made in the early 20th century, and the term “googly” may even have come from German. Like I said the history is murky. They really became popular in the early 1970’s with the invention of Weepuls which were a really big fad at one time and while it’s died down it never completely went away—there’s still a Weepuls organization.

As much as I like digging into history I also like it that there are some things that remain mysteries, that may always be mysteries. Like who put the googly eyes there.

American Graffiti.

Beware Of The Flowers.

Author: February 14, 2025 4 Comments

Valentine’s Day is a time for giving flowers because nothing says love and affection like giving someone something that’s going to wilt in hours or days, or, if it’s a living plant, that they’ll have to take care of but at least isn’t dying. Roses are the most popular, especially red roses, because nothing says love and passion like something that’s ridiculously difficult to cultivate, doesn’t like to get its leaves wet, and, if not handled correctly, will stab you.

The symbolism of roses is one of the last lingering remembrances of a time when there was a whole language of plants and flowers. In Victorian England, and even earlier, there were flower glossaries, like decoder pins. A bouquet could send a message, or several messages, and depending on what book you were using, could even mean contradictory things. An amaryllis could mean “pride” or it could mean “timidity”. I’m not sure if it would be the giver or the receiver who was timid. I guess it depends on whether or not you sign the card. Dahlias could mean “elegance” or “dignity”—I’m not sure why they’re so special—or they could mean instability, and that seems like it’s going too far in the other direction. Anemones—the flower—meant “frailty” or “sickness” or “expectation” so you had to be really careful about giving those. A potato meant “benevolence” and a cactus could mean “humor” or it could mean “imminent danger”, and I guess it depends on whether you were about to sit on it. Passion flowers meant “piety” and not, well, “passion”, and while a red rose meant love a yellow rose could mean “jealousy” and a white rose could mean “I am worthy of you” which I think would be up to the recipient to judge. A striped carnation meant “refusal” and I hope the person who got them knew that. Meadow saffron, a crocus that only grows in Britain and Ireland, meant “my happiest days are behind me” which seems weirdly specific, but then it’s got a limited range. And some are, I think, more understandable. Violets meant “shyness” because they like to grow in shady places, and a shy person might still be described as “a shrinking violet”. Then there are pansies which simply meant “thoughts” and I have no idea what they were thinking. Calling someone a pansy is still supposed to be an insult, meaning they’re weak or, if they’re a man, effeminate, but I see pansies blooming in the bitter cold which is why I think they should mean “survival in adversity”, or just the botanical equivalent of a middle finger to anyone who thinks “effeminate” is an insult.

In 1875, at the same time that Victorians were sending all these flower messages,  Charles Darwin published a book called Insectivorous Plants. It didn’t get as much attention as his previous work on evolution which is a shame because it could have opened up a whole new area of flower language. The Venus’s flytrap does show up in flower dictionaries—it meant “deceit” and not “cleverness” or “ingenuity” which would have made more sense if you ask me. Sundews, which were ignored, could have meant “I’m stuck on you” and the gift of a pitcher plant would be a nice way to say “I’d like to drown you in digestive juices”.

And that reminds me of the time I texted a musician friend, “The only thing better than roses on your piano is tulips on your organ.” He texted back, “I’M IN CHURCH RIGHT NOW!”

The Weekly Essay

Out To Lunch.

Author: February 11, 2025 3 Comments

A coworker asked me where I went for lunch every day and then immediately apologized because she realized that, well, that’s an invasive question. She was just curious because every day at noon I pass by her cubicle with my journal. Not that I have anything to hide but I’d never ask someone where they go because they might have their reasons for wanting to keep that information private. I don’t know if anyone else is like me but when I’m off the clock I want to get as far away from work as possible, and when I’ve gone to lunch with people I work with I try to steer the conversations to pretty much anything but work. I have the advantage of working on a college campus and even when classes are in session there are a lot of empty classrooms or just lounge spaces where I can hide out for half an hour. I’ve worked in office buildings out in the middle of nowhere and felt trapped during lunch because there wasn’t anywhere to go. There was a break room and a dining area with vending machines but if I wanted to get out and walk, go somewhere truly away from work, my options were the parking lot or, just beyond that, the interstate.

It’s really funny to me that, as is the case with a lot of older college campuses, there are lots of buildings that have old exteriors but they’ve been renovated from the inside, usually over years, sometimes over decades, and that’s created some mazelike interiors with rooms I think even people who work in those buildings forget are there. One of these days one of those buildings may be knocked down entirely and they’ll find a grizzled old professor behind a wall, still diligently working away at a monograph on Phoenician etymology.

Anyway, without really thinking about it I started telling the coworker that some days I’d walk a few buildings over to one that has a nice lounge area and an outdoor patio that no one else seems to know about since it was only added during a renovation that happened about five years ago. It wasn’t until I was on my way there that I realized I’d given away a valuable secret and now I need to find a new place to get away. Maybe there’s a space next to that professor’s office.

Adventures In Busing.

Fantasy Football, Superbowl LIX Edition.

Author: February 8, 2025 3 Comments

 

Offense            
Wide Receiver Xavier Worthy Wide Receiver Schmendrick The Magician
Left Tackle Jordan Mailata Left Tackle Buffy Anne Summers  
Left Guard Mike Caliendo Left Guard Inigo Montoya  
Center Cam Jurgens Center Dark Helmet  
Right Guard Trey Smith Right Guard Inigo Montoya  
Right Tackle Lane Johnson Right Tackle Rocket Raccoon  
Tight End Travis Kelce Tight End Lessa/Ramoth  
Quaterback Patrick Mahomes  Quaterback Xena, Warrior Princes
Running Back Saquon Barkley Running Back Jareth    
Fullback Carson Steele Fullback Hellboy    
Wide Receiver Jahan Dotson Wide Receiver Yog Sothoth  
             
Defense            
Defensive End George Karlaftis Defensive End Optimus Prime  
Defensive Tackle Jordan Davis Defensive Tackle Gamera    
Defensive Tackle Tershawn Wharton Defensive Tackle Ellen Ripley  
Defensive End Mike Danna Defensive End Peter Pan    
Linebacker Nakobe Dean Linebacker Marceline The Vampire Queen
Linebacker Drue Tranquill Linebacker Falkor    
Linebacker Leo Chenal Linebacker Arya Stark    
Cornerback Trent McDuffie Cornerback Spock    
Cornerback Quinyon Mitchell Cornerback Galadriel    
Safety Justin Reid Safety Mrs. Whatsit  
Safety Reed Blankenship Safety Ged    

 

Source: Wondermark

American Graffiti., Happy Birthday., Not Non-Fiction, Quick Takes., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault

Fire And Ice.

Author: February 7, 2025 5 Comments

It’s warm for February, a meteorological island where I don’t even need to put on a jacket before going out. The weather’s been brutally cold, and we’ve even had an unusual amount of snow, so this sudden spike, while nice for those of us who tend to be more cold-blooded, is also unsettling. February shouldn’t feel like May, though the coming May will probably, at least at times, feel like August, when it really should feel more like September. It’s even possible that May will feel like February, which will be even worse.

There were times like this when I was a kid, brief warm spells in the middle of winter, the bare trees and beige spiky grass contrasting sharply with the ambient warmth. My parents insisted I still go out wearing at least a jacket. It was still winter, after all. That’s what the calendar said and that mattered more than the thermometer. At any moment the heat could break, like a fever, like the time my own temperature spiked and I stayed in bed all day, shivering even as my body burned,a thick quilt pulled up to my forehead, and hours swirled away into a dark funnel. And the heat did break, eventually, cold rushing back into the world the way it did on those late nights when I’d open my window to listen to the darkness.

The sky then was always cloudy when it was warm, another disjunction. The sky looked like winter even if the ground didn’t feel like it. It’s cloudy now, too, the flat dull gray of cold weather, of a sky that doesn’t have the energy to do anything but spread itself out and close its eyes. 

This afternoon, though, there was a change. The clouds curled up, still swaddling the sun but there was an azure expanse overhead. And off in the distance there was the faintest rainbow, barely together, a block of the spectrum against a flat backdrop of ash.

I’m not sure how to feel about this. We have words for how the winter cold makes us feel, and the summer heat, but a warm February has me tongue-tied. How should I feel? I ask the sky as though I need some external guidance, something to tell me what it means. But I know what it means. The world is in flux, in motion, and things will change even as I am, for the moment, frozen.

 

Nature Talks., The Weekly Essay

Stick To It.

Author: February 4, 2025 6 Comments

I’ve seen the “Please Let Me Merge Before I Start Crying” sticker several times now, including one version that had musical notes around it which made me think there was a song with that line in it. However I couldn’t find one. There should be a song. What I did find was that some people are annoyed by the sticker, which I don’t understand. Every time I see it I feel sorry for the driver and think, well, of course I’m going to let you merge. Then I realize the only reason I’m seeing it is because they’re in front of me, probably because I’ve let them merge. That makes me feel a little better. I’ve done a small thing to keep someone from crying. Of course I also avoid driving on interstates as much as I can—I’ll take the slightly slower stop-and-start traffic of regular roads simply because anything over 60MPH makes me nervous. I’ve also done the math, or rather the maps. In most cases the hassle of getting to the on-ramp, going down the interstate, and then getting to the off-ramp wouldn’t save me more than a few minutes. My morning commute would actually be longer if I took the interstate, at least in part because of all the traffic. Most of it would be the trucks getting an early start on their long hauls.

On the subject of bumper stickers I used to work in customer service for a company that provided truckers with fuel and other costs on the road as well as their paychecks. Most of the time the truckers I talked to were nice and grateful for the help but once in a while something would go wrong and a few got really, really angry. One day as my coworkers and I were sitting at our stations answering the phones the higher-ups handed out bumper stickers with the company logo. We all smiled politely and quietly slipped them into the trash. The last thing we all wanted was for some angry truck driver to come up behind us on the interstate and take out all that frustration on our car.

Most of the time while driving, though, I don’t really notice bumper stickers, or, if I do, they’re too small or go by too fast for me to read them and I’m focused on driving. Sometimes while parked and walking somewhere I’ll see a car with a fun collection of bumper stickers that makes me want to stop and wait until the driver comes back just so I can say, “Hey, I really like your style.”

That may be a little bit too forward.

Adventures In Busing.

Funny Face.

Author: February 1, 2025 10 Comments

A lot of street art is just tagging. I cringe whenever I see simple scribbles, usually done with just a plain black magic marker, on a lamppost or wall or dumpster. I think, if you’re going to leave your mark why not make it good? So even though I defend street art as legitimate art as well as the most free expression, a true testament to the idea that anyone can be an artist, I am a little bit of a snob. I try to keep an open mind but I still have standards. And there are examples of creative and, in my opinion, well-done tagging: many street artists put up their signatures in vivid colors using block or balloon lettering. After the simple tags elaborate signatures may be the most common form of street art.

It’s nice, then, to see something very different. It was so surprising and funny that at first I didn’t realize the artist had signed their work, but they did, off to the side. You can find and follow Sqish on Instagram if you’re so inclined. They do some amazing stuff. But I also felt like a signature wasn’t needed. The work itself is distinctive enough that it is their signature. Some artists are like that: their work is so iconoclastic they don’t even need to sign it. I play the game Artle every day–guess the artist from four of their works. Once in a while I get it in one. Even if I don’t recognize the work itself the style gives it away. Sometimes I have to get up to the third or fourth painting because artists’ styles evolve over time and even the ones we think of as the most distinctive and recognizable experimented a lot with different styles, but that’s another story.

Although it’s also the nature of street art that, even with a name, it’s still basically anonymous, the artists themselves unknown and their work left to speak for itself.

American Graffiti.

Through A Glass Darkly.

Author: January 31, 2025 4 Comments

Source: The Public Domain Image Archive

This week two of my friends sent me separate but similar messages they’d copied from social media sites, messages reminding adults to to take time to play, to do what makes us happy, to allow ourselves to be occasionally childlike. I’m not knocking the message but I wondered why they were sharing it with me. Both of my friends make time in their lives for fun creative pursuits. One collects and builds Lego sets. The other plays Dungeons & Dragons, and occasionally does live action roleplaying. Then I realized that all my friends have fun, creative pursuits—things outside of their day jobs that they make time for. I know I’m overanalyzing, which I might say is one of my hobbies if I thought about it too much, and, again, I’m not knocking the message which is a reminder I think we could all use occasionally, but why were they sending these messages directly to me, and why now?

That also got me thinking how much hobbies have changed since I was young—how much the internet has changed the world. When I was young if you had a particular hobby—say, building model train sets, it was likely a solitary pursuit. You might share what you’d made with friends and neighbors. If your set got really big, or it was just a slow week in your community and you lived in a small town, you might be featured in the newspaper or on the local news. If you knew fellow enthusiasts you probably met them at trade shows and corresponded by mail.

Now your hobby, whatever it is, can be shared with anyone with internet access, which definitely has its pros and cons. You can feel connected to a community and you can share what you love without feeling like you’re dragging your friends and neighbors away from something else they’d rather be doing. But it can also create a sense of insecurity. No matter how good you are you’ve likely found someone out there who you think is better than you. Maybe they’re devoting more time to what they do. Maybe they’ve turned it into a career and for you it’s still just a hobby, something you do to relieve the stress of your day job. And let me be clear: not every hobby can or should be turned into a moneymaking pursuit. If the only reason you do something is because it’s fun and it makes you happy, if it’s what you turn to when you get overwhelmed or just need a break, that’s great. I hope it always makes you happy.

But I keep thinking about how the internet has changed hobbies. It’s not just being able to share what you enjoy; it’s also access to resources and even knowledge that most old time hobbyists couldn’t imagine. When Star Wars came out my friends and I built versions of R2-D2 out of cardboard boxes. Now you can build an exact replica of the real thing in your garage if you’re willing and able to invest the time and money.

The internet changed even more than that. I remember when we didn’t even have VCRs. And when we had three channels—four if you were within range of the goofy little UFH station. If we missed that movie we wanted to see on TV it might be a year before it was rebroadcast. We didn’t have streaming services. We felt lucky if we had a creek in the backyard. And don’t get me started on music and how if we wanted that song we liked we either had to buy the album at a store or hold our cassette recorders up to the car radio. Or video games that you could only play at the arcade or the 7-11 for a quarter a game.

I’ve barely touched on how much things have changed and all this, as I’ve said, comes with pros and cons. That’s is why when I’ve talked about it with my friends and they say kids today don’t realize how good they have it I get a little grumpy and remind them that kids today face a lot of challenges we didn’t have to deal with; the world has changed and not entirely for the better. And then I start waving my cane at them and yelling at them to get off my lawn and, oh, okay, now I get why my friends are telling me to occasionally be childlike.

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

What A Card.

Author: January 27, 2025 4 Comments

Fake gravestone for Penn & Teller at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. They had this installed as a setup for card tricks. Source: The Dead Conjurers

I lost my work ID card. It was a stupid thing to do and it’s even worse that I’d managed to hang on to the same ID card for almost fifteen years. The picture on that ID is of a very different me from a very different time when I didn’t need to pull out my ID so often but since COVID there are a lot more locked doors where I work and going somewhere for a meeting or even just to find a quiet place away from my desk to have lunch can mean swiping my ID half a dozen times. So it didn’t take me long to realize I’d dropped it somewhere and retracing my steps was hampered by a number of locked doors. I also needed it to get my car out of the parking garage, though the people at the card office told me I could download a parking app, submit my information, and after a 48-hour processing period would be able to use my phone to get in and out of the parking garage.

Fortunately getting a replacement card was easy and only took about five minutes and twenty-five bucks and my new card does everything the old card did except show me a younger, slimmer version of myself.

For a long time my work ID card was also a bus pass. The place where I work has an arrangement with the local transit authority to provide free service to employees. It was really easy—I just stepped onto the bus, swiped my card, and that was it, but last year someone decided that instead of allowing us to use our cards we should use a smartphone app instead. This was implemented quickly without any warning and without a chance for feedback. Still I’m sure there was a lot of careful consideration, thought, and discussion put into this and that, after weighing the pros and cons, they decided to do it anyway.

A few months ago I decided to try the new bus pass app after downloading it, submitting my information, and waiting a week for the 48-hour processing period. Then when I got on the bus and tried to scan the QR code the app generated I got an error. The driver said “That’s happening to everybody. Take a seat.” When I contacted customer service the response was, “Oh, we forgot to activate your account.” Of course any new technology is going to take time to work out the bugs.

I’m very careful with my new ID. In fact I’ve checked my wallet three times while writing this to make sure it’s still there. With any luck it’ll last until I retire, assuming they don’t decide to replace employee ID cards with a smartphone app, which is possible, and which will probably be done without any warning or opportunity for feedback. Still I’m sure there will be a lot of careful thought and consideration and after weighing the pros and cons they’ll do it anyway.

Adventures In Busing.

Stop And Look.

Author: January 25, 2025 2 Comments

I have so many questions about the small scenes created in the hollow of a tree on a regular walking path I take regularly. Sometimes there’s nothing there, just the empty hollow, but other times there are toys. Maybe some of them have been dropped by children. Others seem to be marking the season. Did someone put them there deliberately? Is it the same person every time? Who takes them? Is it just something fun? It probably is—it’s unlikely there’s any deeper meaning, but my mind still considers the possibility that someone has a purpose in creating these scenes. I have all these questions but, as I walk on, as I pass by people on the same trail, any one of whom could be the artist, I think, some things are better left as happy mysteries.

 

American Graffiti.