Sena got a video of a large flock of birds flying around in the outlot beyond our backyard. We thought they were all starlings, but I couldn’t focus enough on individual birds to tell for sure if there were other species mixed in with them. I couldn’t even confidently identify a starling although I’m pretty sure that’s what many of them were.
I think it’s not unusual for other small nondescript blackbirds to mingle with starlings. While we can’t make a case for the smallish flock being a murmuration, there was an impressive number of them. Trying to identify specific species by repeated attempts to focus and magnify using video editing software mostly led to my murmuring under my breath—mainly curses.
Starlings are often called pests and web sources say they are among several species of birds that spread disease. The Iowa State University Extension calls them “nuisance birds.”
My usual resource, Birds of Iowa Field Guide (2023 edition) by Stan Tekiela is a little more generous in the description of the European Starling, calling it a songbird which can mimic the songs of up to 20 species and can even imitate the sound of the human voice. Other web resources compare them to mockingbirds. Large flocks of starlings commonly mix with other blackbirds in the fall. Starlings were introduced to New York City in 1890-91 from Europe.
See if you can pick out the starlings in our video and other birds. I got mostly eyestrain from the effort.
We got about 9 inches of snow over the weekend and we’re set to get a few more inches today. People have to work pretty hard to get the snow off their sidewalks because Iowa City has some pretty strict rules about it. If you don’t get that snow removed from your sidewalk “down to the concrete” the city will do it for you—for a stiff price.
You got 24 hours’ notice for your first violation. If you don’t get it done in 24 hours, the city will fine you a penalty of however much it costs to remove the snow plus a $100 administrative fee.
You’ll be glad to know there’s a way to prevent this from happening to you. All you need to do is contact Bigfoot Snow Removal Service. They don’t have a phone number because they don’t technically exist, but that’s only what the city will tell you.
Bigfoot Snow Removal does not have a telephone connection nor a website but there’s a way to get around that. All you need to do is find a big stick and knock really hard on a nearby tree. You have to knock 3 times just like Tony Orlando and Dawn sang the song and do it like you mean it.
Then grab a big bucket and fill it up with a lot of meat. Beef jerky is good but if you don’t have it, use anything you got on hand, even Wagyu beef. I can’t help it if you paid a lot of money for it, just be glad you can get it in America. Even though 10 pounds of it can set you back over $1000, just keep thinking about how much the city will charge you to clear your sidewalk.
Set the bucket of Wagyu or whatever out in your front yard. You can set up a critter cam if you want to make sure it’s Bigfoot fetching it and not your neighbor. However, it’s only fair to warn you that because Bigfoot is an interdimensional creature (that’s why nobody’s ever found fossils or seen baby Bigfoots) you’ll never capture any footage of Bigfoot. Oh, people pass off amateur videos claiming Bigfoot posed for them and you’ll see them on TV shows, but that’s just a government plot to distract you from the price of Wagyu beef.
The nice thing about Bigfoot Snow Removal is that they bring their own snow shovels. None of them have snow blowers because they would have to go to the hardware store and buy them. That would just cause a panic because people would faint and have to go to the emergency room and then Bigfoot hunters would start setting traps, looking for tracks and making plaster casts of them which invariably turn out to be bear or collecting animal poop that is always from raccoons, playing practical jokes and whatnot.
Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
Well, I watched the Svengoolie movie, “Devil Doll” last night and was that creepy! It’s a British 1964 film directed and produced by Lindsay Shonteff (although I don’t know him from Adam. What do you take me for, a legit movie reviewer?).
Anyway, I noticed right away that I recognized one of the stars, William Sylvester (Mark English) who played a reporter trying to figure out what gives with the Great Vorelli (Bryant Halliday) a really sleazy ventriloquist and hypnotist whose stage act includes stealing Mark’s girlfriend Marianne (Yvonne Romain) and humiliating his dummy Hugo in front of an audience full of well-to-do people who smoke unfiltered cigarettes like they were going out of style.
Anyway, William Sylvester starred as Dr. Heywood Floyd in the 1968 blockbuster film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Who can forget the scene of him puzzling over the long sheet of instructions for using the Zero Gravity Toilet! I don’t think there’s a free copy of it, so it’ll set you back at least twelve bucks.
But what a contrast between the elegantly cryptic Heywood Floyd and Mark English, who is a hard-nosed, cynical journalist trying to figure out whether there’s a little guy inside the Great Vorelli’s wooden dummy Hugo, mainly because Hugo can get up and walk, even sing and dance a few show tunes like Puttin on the Ritz better than Frankenstein’s monster in you-know-which movie! Mark even gets an opportunity to examine Hugo using a set of Stanley tools, x-rays, and X-Acto knives but doesn’t get any reaction from the dummy unless you count a little sawdust.
But the tough-minded Mark gets a surprise visit from Hugo who gives him a few tips on woodworking and a hint that there’s more to him than sawdust.
The Great Vorelli has a master plan and hypnotizes Marianne which leads to a pretty complicated plot twist which involves the hypnotist learning ancient techniques for messing around with peoples’ souls which Dr. Heller (Karel Stepanek) dismisses in favor of a clinical diagnosis of catalepsy (although he didn’t directly imply Marianne was cataleptic) when Mark tries to convince him that Marianne’s personality change and delirious appearance was brought about by Vorelli.
You can check the catalepsy comment on a 16mm film of the full movie at about 1:05:40.
This catalepsy reference fascinated me because I’m a retired psychiatrist and I’ve seen patients with the syndrome. I guess there were no expert consultants available to the director.
There is a fight scene between Hugo and the Great Vorelli, full of switchblade knives, a hybrid chess boxing match, and tag team with Chuck Norris although the roundhouse kick was ineffective.
You didn’t think there’d be spoilers, did you? There were a lot of ventriloquist dummy jokes during the Svengoolie show and my featured image is my stab at it. Anyway, the ending is surprising.
The snowfall this morning looked pretty gentle out in our backyard—and then the storm hit the gas. Around 7:30 a.m. the wind was barely blowing and the first snow looked slow.
A half hour later, it was blowing sideways and the plow had just plugged our driveway (Thank you so much!).
Across the street, kids came out to play while the snow was blowing. The neighborhood is still pretty new and pretty much under construction, so not much of a place to play yet.
Sena and I remember going to an outdoor skating area at East Park in Mason City when we were kids. It was really just a pond. Park staff pushed the snow away when the ice was thick enough to skate on. Lots of kids skated there and it was free.
It’s not like nowadays. The ice skating rink at the mall not far from us charges you just to fall down on the ice. I think they charge $7 admission and $3 to rent skates. Skating coaches charge $6—I don’t know if that’s an hourly rate or flat fee.
Anyway, at East Park back in the day you could fall down on the ice for free.
Well, now that we’re getting this big snowstorm, this will be the second season Sena breaks out the Voltask battery-powered 48V 16-inch snow shovel! It’s up to the task! I manned the snow plow shovel as usual-but Sena deserves all the glory.
We got outside around 8:00 a.m. and finished up at 10:00 a.m. It’s still snowing, but we’ll tackle the rest of it tomorrow. We’re pooped.
We’re going to get about a foot of snow starting tonight according to the weather report. There are webcams about Iowa that will document the storm, which will occur across most of the state. You can watch it’s progress on the University of Iowa webcam.
We’ve charged up the batteries in the Voltask electric snow shovel, which got quite a workout last winter. We took videos of using it that racked up over 5,200 views. Search my site with the term “electric snow shovel.”
Today is the day for the 2025 Thanksgiving Day Tabloid News and you better believe this paper’s got issues. Eat turkey, watch football, take a nap from all that turkey.
This post’s title was inspired by (what else?) lines from the first Men in Black movie:
Agent K: [at newsstand] We’ll check the hot sheets.
Agent J: *These* are the hot sheets?
Agent K: Best investigative reporting on the planet. Read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes.
Agent J: I cannot believe you’re looking for tips in the supermarket tabloids.
Agent K: [front-age article about farmer’s stolen skin] Not looking for. Found.
Anyway, today is a special day because we’re waiting for some new items: a premium Cribbage Wars board from Ebonwood with resin inlays. We’re also waiting for extra pegs. These acrylic and brass pegs just shipped from the United Kingdom, which doesn’t charge tariffs. Michaud Toys makes a game board they call Cribbage Rumble (actually the same game as Cribbage Wars), but they’re currently not shipping to the U.S. because of the tariff situation.
We’re still playing Cribbage Wars on our economical little board with tiny peg holes. We’re finding out we like it so much we’d prefer a larger board so we can at least see what we’re pegging without a magnifying glass.
Sena still wins most of the games. I’m working on my strategy.
Sena saw a news headline about the new hands-free driving law in Iowa that’s going to be enforced in 2026 (passed in July of this year). Guilty drivers are going to get socked with a $100 fine if they’re caught messing with their cell phones with their hands off the wheel because they might think “hands-free” means you can’t touch the steering wheel.
Drivers have been getting off with a warning for now. Hundreds of people in Iowa die every year because they fool with their cell phones while driving.
You can download a variety of free materials from the Iowa Dept. of Public Safety.
And of course, this reminds me of a Men in Black 3 quote (why not?):
Agent J: Okay! You know how you’re on a airplane and the flight attendant asks you to turn your cell-phone off. And you’re like, I ain’t turning my cell-phone off, that don’t have nothing to do with no damn airplane. Well, [Showing the crowd a crashed spaceship] this is what we get, that’s what happens. It gets up there, bounces around on the satellites, then blam! Just turn your damn cell-phone off. Now you’re gonna drive off a cliff tonight because your GPS don’t work.
The thing about GPS reminds me of a Garmin Nuvi navigator we used years ago. We could plug it into the cigarette lighter power outlet. I had to update the map data from the internet although the Garmin used satellite-based GPS signals to manage the turn-by-turn route instructions.
It worked just fine except when airplane passengers used their cell phones to play Men in Black movies after the flight attendants instructed everybody to turn them off. Most people don’t know that kind of behavior also automatically releases the frozen block of blue ice (waste) from the toilet right over Area 51 (just kidding—actually the wings just fall off!).
I’ve used my old cell phone to get directions driving once or twice but not recently. I set it in the cup holder and never took my hands off the wheel—even when I drove through the front window of Pizza Hut.
So, if you happen to be driving through Iowa in the near future, remember to abide by the new law, which doesn’t mean you can get hands for free at the discount store.
I just saw a news item today that is interesting for two reasons, at least to me. It’s about people who have Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. The physician interviewed for comments about it is Dr. Chris Buresh who used to be an emergency department physician at the University of Iowa. He’s now at the University of Washington UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
His comment was published in a couple of local newspapers and he pointed out that even small amounts of marijuana can make people start throwing up.
The other reason it’s interesting to me is that I gave a grand rounds on eating disorders back in 2016. I had a slide on Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (see featured image above). There’s a reference from 2016 that probably is still useful.
Brewerton, T. D. and O. Anderson (2016). “Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome masquerading as an eating disorder.” International Journal of Eating Disorders.
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