Happy New Year, 2023!

 

Wishing everyone a brilliant, safe, prosperous and peaceful 2024 ... may there be peace in our time, to coin a phrase; let good health visit your home, and happiness infuse life for every one of us. 

Happy New Year from South Australia, on this sunny afternoon, New Years Eve, 2023. Out with the old, in the the new!

(A Photoshop painting in honour of the occasion)

The Night After Christmas...

 

'Twas the night after Christmas and Whoville was rocking

With the kind of wild party that brings people flocking.

The noise and the booze, all the singing and dancing ...

The racket and rumpus, the shmoozing and prancing ...

Would drive to the point of starting a riot

Any poor fellow who just fancied quiet.

And you already know who was sane by an inch:

Poised on the brink was the poor old green Grinch.

By nine in the morning even Max was vibrating

With the jackhammer jollity; it’s not overstating

That not even Max could endure so much ‘cheer,’

No matter how snockered one became on Who beer.

And by two in the P.M., oh, Maxie was worried,

For the Grinch looked so manic; the beast who’d been buried

Beneath fudge and tinsel, and the charm of a child

Had clawed back to the surface ... and my, he was wild!

All the popping and bopping, the preening and prancing,

The swinging and zinging, and -- oh, the break-dancing!

Were more than the Grinch could guess how to endure ...

And then, all at once, he envisioned a cure,

For there by the Christmas tree, flat on the floor,

Was one lonely present. A forgotten chainsaw.

And the Grinch had no sooner set eyes on that tool

Then he said to himself, “Grinchie, you’ll been such a fool,

To think you could bear all this ruckus and humbug,

This rumpus and dumpus, this scampus and scumbug,

This noise, noise, noise, noise, that these Whofolk call ‘fun,’

While the stores are all closed and you can’t buy a gun --

There isn’t a fowling piece (nor even a pheasant),

But one of these idiots forgot his best present!”

For under the Christmas tree, left on the floor,

Wrapped up in red ribbons lay a brand new chainsaw:

All shiny and sharpy, all toothy and jagged --

Just begging for gasoline! So, out the Grinch swaggered

With a light, empty gascan and a bag full of quarters,

To the gas station downtown, with a brain full of slaughters ...

There wouldn’t be any Who left to make noise!

They’d be peacefully absent, the Who girls and boys.

The Who-guys and ladies would be quiet as the snow --

And Cindy-Lou Who’d be the first one to go.

For the Grinch could envisage the headlines tomorrow,

When no Who in Whoville survived to feel sorrow --

Here was a task to which the Grinch felt quite equal

(And MGM’s already contracted the sequel):

GRINCH II: WHOVILLE CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

(Written in 2011, on Boxing Day, when the neighbours' kids were going ballistic. After three hours of their screaming, one could empathize with the Grinch!) 

Merry Christmas, 2003

 

Merry Christmas

to all,

Christmas Eve 2003

From, our house to yours ...

Hoping for a wonderful 2024, and --

Peace on Earth

"...and then I dropped my cup of tea, because something magical happened that hasn’t since I was a child, no older than Tommy is now. The living room faded away. Every light shone brighter, and snow began to fall gently, silently, around the tree. I’d promised him, if he was very quiet and still, and watched, and watched, it could happen — a ruse, to get Tommy to take a nap on Christmas Eve, while mom snatched an hour of rest where she could. He’d fallen asleep — always the plan … and I hadn’t believed in magic in so many years." 

That feeling that maybe you just bit off more than you can chew...

 

Well, it seemed like a great idea -- and it is -- but it also seemed like a simple idea that could be executed in no time at all. At that was the big mistake. A brand new gallery site for my art, photos and writing ... why not? And while I was building the template, oh yes, it was easy. No problem at all. Then came the task of feeding in the content, at which point I realized that every topic (such as Fantasy, Science Fiction, what have you) will have to be multiple pages, because images that are too large aggregate into massive downloads per page, which is ... not good. So...

...we soldier on through the project, but rather than it being simple and easy, it's turned into something of a nightmare. Not because the work is especially difficult (it isn't), but because there's so much of it, I could spend six or eight hours a day on it -- for weeks. In other words, yep, you bet, the gallery site is going to be brilliant. It just won't be happening as quickly as I'd thought it would. I simply underestimated the amount of time this monster was going to take! Still...

...if I can just get there in the end, through sheer stubborn persistence, you can see the viewing experience this website will offer. It's a gallery to be proud of, and, like the blogs I'm working on, it'll properly represent me and my work. The gallery that is currently online is very old. The newest art on it goes back to 2012, and everything in those days was a bit primitive and "undercooked" by comparison with what we're all doing now. Yep, I've known for a long time, this needed to be done, but ... I suppose some part of me suspected what a monster it would turn into into, and kept putting it off, and putting it off again, till -- here we are. Argh. 

Happy 94th, Mom

 

Remembering Mom, on what would have been her 94th birthday. This is her 65th birthday photo ... she was actually younger in this picture than I am now, and still enjoying life. I could wish things had been different, but ... what will be, will be.

I'm a couple of days late posting this (sorry Mom -- but from your vantage point, you know why). 

Her actual birthday was the first day of the two-day thunderstorm, when everything was turned off because of the lightning and the high chance of EMP, and then the power went out for eight hours ... and yesterday was the second day of a migraine so bad, by early evening, I almost went to the emergency room

Happy Birthday, Mom, wherever you are... I miss you. 

Hasn't the weather been strange?!

 

Well, obviously you've seen the lake at St Francis Winery like this before --

-- in June or July or August. In winter, yes? But --

But this isn't winter. This is tickling the middle of December, two weeks from the height of the Christmas season. And after a cool, muggy, wet spring, we're now having a wet, stormy -- and intermittently bloody hot -- summer, which is far from what we expected when El Nino was announced, following three La Nina years. 

But ... well, apparently, this is the first time there's been a positive (or is it negative??) Indian Ocean Dipole at the same time. The Indian and Pacific Oceans are both warm (too warm!) at the same time, there's no place for the usual heat exchange to take place -- which is what causes the hot dry, burning conditions of the normal El Nino summer. And according to what I've read lately, no one really knows how this will play out in the real world, in real time.

Can we say "Climate change" yet? So...

As we go into our Christmas shopping, the whole region is on on flood alert! I find myself stretching my memory back over more than fifty years to think of the last time it rained until Christmas, and yes, I do remember this. 

In 1972, the weather settled in and it rained, and rained, and the rained some more. We were living at Glenelg at the time, and I recall slogging to and from school in endless drizzle and occasional downpours, right through the school year, which ended just as the Christmas season began. So, let's immortalize this moment ...

... with a screenshot from the BOM which tells all, and what it doesn't tell is encapsulated here, in the continuing forecast through to December 15:

And there's really no answer to that, is there? So we're just going to settle in and make Christmas preparations. The tree is up, presents are wrapped, 75% of the shopping is done. There's just the menu to arrange, then we're settled in for the season, such as it is. Dave has to work through Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, same as always ... one learns to adapt. And anyway, Christmas is a time for home. 

Just as well, because this isn't the weather to be going anywhere! And as for the tree -- pretty as always. But we might get a new one next year...