Tag: humor

The Hummingbird is a Blur!

Yesterday I noticed a hummingbird hovering about the flower pots on our porch. I hurried to get my point and shoot camera and shot video, through a window as usual and it was getting a little late in the evening too, so light was low.  

Can I blame the bird for always looking like a blur—or not? Anyway, the video looks similar to others I’ve managed to capture in years past, except this one was the closest I’ve ever gotten to one. I tried messing with the clip using my video editing software, but I ended up believing it best to leave it mostly unmessed around with.

On the other hand, the one I got about 6 years ago was pretty fair for an amateur backyard birder. Same camera, same software although I was closer to the birds and I’m pretty sure I was sitting outside and very patient. They were very interested in our little feeder.

I think the hummingbirds we’ve seen are ruby-throated species partly because that’s the most common in Iowa. Typically, I think it’s just the males who have ruby-colored throats; our visitor didn’t.

I guess the usual way to attract hummingbirds is with a feeder but other people say there are other reasons hummingbirds visit us. More common to the indigenous peoples, they may be thought of as the spirits of those who recently died and are visiting those they were close to.

I don’t remember the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” so well but I’ve glanced briefly at web articles which connect it with hummingbirds, which has something to do with their ability to fly backwards or in a figure 8, maybe connecting that with reverse aging or infinity. Other symbolic connections are with joy, healing, and partnership. There are so many connections they seem to blur together—sort of like the bird itself as it hovers and flits from flower to flower.

I think this hummingbird just really liked Sena’s flowers.

After The Rain II

We were playing cribbage and Sena noticed a lot of birds out in the back yard—as well as the woodchuck again. We both grabbed the cameras and forgot about cribbage for a while.

You have to gaze at the pictures long enough to see there’s more than one or two birds perching in various places.

That juggler guy is back.

Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Cat” vs The Weather Report

The atmosphere for the Svengoolie TV show airing of the 1934 movie “The Black Cat” was nothing short of electric—as in electrical storm. I thought the mood of ambivalence in the film was firmly set for about the first half hour of the movie. That was how long the TV station weather alert was on screen, shrinking the viewing size of the movie somewhat to make room for a map of the counties at risk and the scrolling warnings about which east central Iowa counties were affected by the flood watch and guidance about what to do.

Anyway, the film is not related in any way to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same title. The movie was directed by Edgar Ulmer and starred Bela Lugosi as the Hungarian psychiatrist and ex-WWI POW (that’s right, I said “psychiatrist”), Dr. Vitus Werdegast; Boris Karloff as the satanic and necrophiliac Hjalmar Poelzig, the former WWI commander of the Fortress Marmorisch and a famed architect who built an ultra-modern mansion on top of the grisly site where thousands of soldiers were killed. Vitus and Hjalmar play chess for the souls of the aspiring novelist Peter Alison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Jacqueline Wells) who, unfortunately get stranded there along with Vitus after the bus carrying them crashes on the way from the train station to various hotels and Disney World.

The mood of ambivalence I thought was evident, contrasting the creepiness of Hjalmar and Vitus grimly gambling in a chess match for the lives of Joan and Peter and the comicality of the two policemen interviewing the Alisons and the two heavies about the bus accident. The lieutenant and the sergeant arguing with each other in a “My hometown’s better than yours” exchange reminds me of Abbott and Costello. I recommend you see it for yourselves on the Internet Archive; it’s about 35 minutes in.

Contrast this with the hysterical cat phobic Vitus (despite being a psychiatrist) throwing a knife at one of the many black cats prowling around the house after it ejects a hairball on the floor! Or Hjalmar thumb wrestling with Vitus until the latter chooses to pick up what looks like an emery board from an array of much larger knives and bazookas on a large table—and prepares to flay Hjalmar with it. This would only make Hjalmar look even more excruciatingly well groomed, along with the precisely trimmed haircut carefully smeared with a pound of Brylcreem.

I think “The Black Cat” is a hoot. It’s a litter box full of nuggets of melodramatic ailurophobia with here and there a hairball of ambivalence but hey, nobody’s purr-fect!

Shrilling chicken rating 4/5

The Garden After the Rain and Some Juggling

Sena got some video clips of the backyard garden. The woodchuck was out there but pretty much left her stuff alone. She caught a clip of what looks like a house finch as well.

For some reason, possibly involving extraterrestrials, there was some guy juggling out there.

Cribbage Lingo in The Crib Song by Brett Kissel

I modified the YouTube cribbage video “One for his nob short” to be about the same length as Canadian country singer Brett Kissel’s song about cribbage “The Crib Song.” I didn’t change any of the subtitles on the video because they fit the game play in the video.

There is no audio in the short version because you’ll need to play the YouTube video of the song “The Crib Song” along with our cribbage game video (see below). We think they still go together.

I found a Facebook entry on the web that must below to Brett, because it shows images of the computer cribbage game Cribbage Classic (which I’ve reviewed in the past, see my YouTube channel) and he says. “I’m a legend. I will play anyone at crib. Except if you’re over 70 years old. I won’t be able to beat you if you’re 70+.” I wonder why. I don’t have a Facebook account so I can’t ask him about the lyrics of The Crib Song.

Anyway, I found the lyrics for the song. OK, it clips along but I can’t verify some of the cribbage lingo in it. Maybe they’re common parlance for cribbage players in Canada. If any of you know what the following mean let me know:

Romney’s-no idea but it’s evidently something Ebs keeps getting

Loins-if all you get is “loins,” what are those? Sounds like if that’s all you get you might be lucky or good or maybe neither.

Gino-from context it sounds like something you win (“I just won a Gino”)

There’s another that I couldn’t figure out:

Piled-this is connected to “Deuce Neon” in some way (Deuce neon got him piled”); maybe a player?

There are a few I recognized. The kitty is another name for the crib (the two extra cards from the non-dealer and the dealer which are for the dealer). A flush is a hand of cards all the same suit, which can include the cut card. You can’t get a flush in the crib unless the cut card is also of the same suit.

The lyric “I’m looking for that 29” is about that very rare hand of 29 points: the nob jack (jack of the same suit as the cut card), and 3 fives in your hand, the cut card being the other 5. And a score of 19 is slang for zero points because 19 is not a possible score in cribbage.

I think the lines below are about forming sequences during pegging:

“Don’t give away your hand

I’ll rope you right into a run

Peg 8 or 9 or 10

Looking at your face”

You can find lists of cribbage lingo, but admittedly they’ll probably be mostly American usage. The American Cribbage Congress (ACC) list is pretty good and so is the Cribbage King list.

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Cat”!

Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!

What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken? Something else Svengoolie has to dodge. Keep reading for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) attempts at this joke.

The upcoming Svengoolie show movie this Saturday will be “The Black Cat” which I’ve never seen before. One of the posters I see on the internet implies that it’s based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name.

I never read the gory story until a couple of days ago and I’m hoping the film won’t be like that. It also reminded me of a novel about animal cruelty given to me as a gift when I was a kid. “Beautiful Joe” was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders and it emphasized how people can treat animals humanely. It was a true story about a dog that was rescued from a sadistic master who mutilated the animal by cutting off its tail and ears in a fit of rage.

Just for fun I tried to find out AI would come up with when I asked it about a joke which would start with “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a chicken?”

The AI answer: “Something which scratches the furniture and lays eggs.” Other answers were “Cluck-ty cat” or “Meow-ster Hen.”

And when I asked for the AI joke using “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken?” AI came up with:

“That’s a classic riddle! The answer is: A lucky squeak!” And the AI goes on to explain: “It plays on the idea that black cats are considered unlucky, and rubber chickens make a squeaking sound.”

See what he did there? Neither did I.

The “It Takes Two to Tango” Mistake in Cribbage

Yesterday while playing cribbage, Sena and I accidentally switched non-dealer and dealer roles during the cut and pick the starter card phase of the game. I was dealer and by mistake cut the deck. Sena was non-dealer and by mistake picked the starter card—which happened to be a jack.

At that point we both realized this was wrong. I was the dealer and should have got the two for his heels, but I was also guilty of cutting the deck which the non-dealer is supposed to do. Sena, for whatever reason, picked the starter card, compounding the mistake of switching roles. This actually would have resulted in her getting 16 points!

At first, she suggested she get the two for his heels points and proceed. I thought this would compound the mistake further and thought we should reshuffle and redeal—which she did after a fairly long discussion. We kept our original hands and cribs and just repeated the cut and picked a new starter card the way it was supposed to be done—nondealer (Sena) cut and dealer (me) picked the starter card. In all fairness, we’ve both done this in the past but caught the mistakes before it got as far as it did yesterday.

However, we then looked for any rule which would cover what we should have done. I couldn’t find one either on the American Cribbage Congress website rulebook page or anywhere else. The link takes you to the ACC 2025 version of the tournament cribbage rules; which gives the cut card rules starting on page 28 of the flipbook. It covers the mistakes of the dealer turning up the starter card before both players discard to the crib, nondealer looking at the bottom card of the upper pack when making the cut, and the dealer placing the cut card in his hand and not showing it to the nondealer. It doesn’t cover the wild mistake of both dealer and nondealer accidentally switching roles either by somehow switching to a parallel universe or by extraterrestrial intervention.

We also tried to ask Artificial Intelligence (AI): What happens in cribbage if the dealer cuts the cards by mistake and the non-dealer turns up the starter card by mistake?

AI answer: “In cribbage, if the dealer cuts the deck by mistake and the non-dealer mistakenly turns up the starter card, the dealer loses the deal and the crib. The non-dealer then becomes the new dealer, and the cards are dealt again.”

I couldn’t find anything on the web which supported the AI answer or its detailed explanation. Long story short, I think this might be an example of an AI confabulation (some would call this a hallucination).

However, when I searched again asking the same question, AI gave a different answer:

“In a friendly cribbage game, if the dealer cuts the deck and the non-dealer turns up the starter card by mistake, the cards should be reshuffled and re-dealt. There is no penalty for this mistake as it is considered a misdeal.”

The explanations for the AI answer make sense but tend to sound like rephrasing of the initial answer and there are links which don’t seem connected to the answer. And if I search again, I get a slightly different answer and the explanations are not really connected to the original question.

But we reshuffled and redealt. I sent a question about this to the relevant ACC representative who takes general questions about cribbage. If I get an answer, I’ll pass it along.

Svengoolie Movie: “Invaders from Mars” and Zippers are Large!

I watched the Svengoolie movie “Invaders from Mars” last night. I saw this 1953 science fiction film last year but didn’t notice the extraterrestrials wore pretty obvious green velour body suits which zipped up the back.

Anyway, the movie was directed by William Cameron Menzies and starred Jimmy Hunt as the boy, David MacLean, who cried wolf, or at least that’s what everyone, including his parents, thought of his story about seeing a flying saucer land not far from their home, in a kind of sandy outlot which tended to swallow people whole after that.

Shortly after the saucer landed, people started to go missing and when they turned up later, they acted like zombies albeit with a new and nefarious purpose in life not their own.

There were many examples of leadership. Most of the good guys including the astronomer, Dr. Stuart Kelston and psychologist, Dr. Pat Blake fit the mold: respectful, congenial, and not prone to slapping David in the mouth like somebody I could name but who I’ll just hint he’s played by a guy named Leif Erickson, a Norse explorer who discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus and evidently found the fountain of youth.

Dr. Kelston has a theory about what’s happening and even speculates about the connection of the space exploration program he’s involved in which could be causing some extraterrestrials to be leery of its ultimate purpose, which is to build tall warped looking buildings with weird music piped in. Actually, Svengoolie revealed that the settings were purposely built large because the original plan was to shoot the film in 3D.

On the other hand, the leader of the Martians was this head in a glass globe that the guys in green jump suits (the Mutants) carried around, sometimes walking backwards so as to not expose how the costumes zipped up in back. But often they had to run through tunnels, which would have been tough to do backwards. That’s when you see the zippers. They had this stiff gait sort of rocking gait which I think I remember seeing when I was a kid when I saw these scenes on TV decades ago.

Anyway, the leader who was just a head in a globe never talked but communicated telepathically with the Mutants. It was the Martian Intelligence (the head, played by Luce Potter) who did all the thinking and gave all the orders, evidently driven by fear of the humans who were getting ready to shoot into space and ruin their neck of the space neighborhood.

There’s the usual Cold War paranoia but with a focus on inserting alien probes into earthlings that made me think of the X-Files mythology. There’s a fairly frequent inclusion of military stock footage given the us vs them dynamic.

A fairly large number of the actors were also in Perry Mason episodes, which seems to happen to a lot of actors who eventually appear in Svengoolie movies. I had a little trouble remembering a very young Milburn Stone who played Capt. Roth, and who could sling semi-scientific verbiage around pretty well. I remember him as Doc in the TV show Gunsmoke.

There was a disagreement between the United Kingdom and America about the ending of the movie. Was this invasion all just a kid’s nightmare or what? The British rewrote the ending to leave out the dream theme.

Except for the Mutant dress code, I thought the movie was pretty fair.

Shrilling Chicken Rating 4/5

Gorging Goldfinches Distract Us from Cribbage!

We were distracted from our cribbage match today when Sena saw a couple of goldfinches out in the back yard. One of them was clearly a male, bright yellow all over except for his black wings. The other was probably a female because it was olive colored. The sunlight must have varied because at times it looked like it had colors more like the male.

At one point the male seemed to be distracted by something we couldn’t see shaking the bushes behind them. They sure were hungry. I took the video with my Canon point and shoot. Sena reminded me about the Nikon DSLR and I rushed to get it. By that time, the goldfinches were gone. I have to remember to leave both cameras out after this.

I won the cribbage game today, for a change.

Sena Got a Raggedy Ann in Cribbage Today!

This is a red-letter day! First of all, I saw this article on line about how older people can stay sharp and fit. One of the suggestions for cognitive fitness was to play “complex card games.” Cribbage counts (literally) because today, Sena had a Raggedy Ann hand!

A Raggedy Ann is, as my old medical school pathology textbook authors put it, “not excessively rare,” but it’s uncommon enough that it can trip you up on how to count the points. It consists of 8-7-6-A-A with one of the aces being the cut card, of course. It’s worth 13 points.

First count the 15s, which are cards adding up to 15: the 8 and the 7, the 8 and the 6 and the A diamond, the 8 and the 6 and the A club in the crib, finally the 7, 6, and the two A’s=8 total. Add the three card run 6,7,8=11; then add the A pair for 2 more=13.

What’s hilarious about this is that we thought it was 11 points—which is another weird hand called a Raggedy Andy. It consists of 8-7-6-2-2. But because Sena’s hand had aces, the other 15-point combo was hard to pick out. Both hands are often miscounted.

Substitute deuces for the aces and try to count it. You should come up with 11 and that’s the Raggedy Andy.

Another funny thing about this is that when I was looking on the web for the odds on getting these hands, the AI (which always comes up) got it all wrong, saying “In cribbage, a “Raggedy Ann” hand refers to a hand with a score of 28, which is also known as a “28-hand”. This hand is quite rare, with odds estimated at about 1 in 15,028.” The second time I searched, AI corrected itself and got it right.

As far as I know, there’s no particular name for a 28-hand.  Also, I couldn’t find any information of the statistical likelihood of getting a Raggedy Ann or a Raggedy Andy. I couldn’t find any explanation for how the hands got their names either although many assume that it’s because the count is so—raggedy.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s tough to spot one of the fifteens in the Raggedy Ann. Check out the American Cribbage Congress web site for more cribbage lingo.

This kind of gets us pumped for hoping one of us will get the very rare 29 hand.

By the way, the other thing we did today was to plug in the automatic card shuffler to top off the charge, so we both hand shuffled. We plugged it in at 10:30 am and it wasn’t fully charged until 4:30 pm. And you’re supposed to get 2,000 shuffles out of it, and I’m pretty sure we’re nowhere near that. Anyway, shuffling was a lot less noisy.