Back from my vacation

This song is a bit over-the-top as a reflection of my travels. For example, no River Jordan for me. It will take me a bit to get back in the groove, but this little post is a start.

 

Murderer

Get ready for an agitated weekend with Buju Banton. 

  

Gone fishing

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I'm going to be away for a bit. I may or may not post for a week or so. To my few regulars, and my horde of faithful spam bots, try your best to contain your grief over that announcement. Nobody likes a crybaby.

 

Female soldiers on parade

This isn't the usual 'hot military babes' picture click-bait post, instead it just is of female military units marching in parades. I have odd search habits looking for curiosities to post about, and I suspect the various search algorithms sometimes struggle with figuring out just what the hell it is I'm interested in so's advertisers can bombard me with their nonsense. 

Recently the above video popped up in YouTube for me. I had done a post called Calloused feet showing an Indian military parade.  While probably not the case, I like to think it was combined with my post about a visit to a Japanese girls bar to come up with that video of a parade full of Indian female soldiers. I've included a few other videos of women soldiers high stepping down boulevards from the site.

The site is Russian. Along with marching damsels it also has a lot of Russian propaganda songs. They're quite strange. The Great Patriotic War lives on in Russian music.  If you watch any, turn on the captions so can get the lyrics.

Shadows and walls

Inferno by Fan Ho
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I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others? - Wallace Stegner 

  

Come Together

Get ready for a devil-may-care weekend with

Leo Moracchioli, Hannah Boulton, Rabea Massaad, Erik Torp and Truls Haugen

 

Buster Keaton stunts

I've always like Buster Keaton a lot more than Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin would get sappy at times, while Keaton just went for the jokes, and his physical comedy is top-notch. In the modern era there is Jackie Chan, who comes close to Buster's stunt level. These are some of Keaton's better stunts, with explanations as to how they were done.

  

Better late than never

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Recently I discovered, from the ChatGPT program, that this blog is actually about a group of friends who enjoy nocturnal camping and post about their adventures. Imagine my mortification when I realized that, in the 18-year history of this blog, I had never once posted about any of that. Seesh, talk about taking my eye off the ball.

Anyway, since AI chatbots obviously know best, I decided to rectify that oversight by posting this small collection of nighttime camping paintings. Please forgive me for my previous failings.  

Flares & AI

Homer and I are both confused
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Uhhh... about this ChatGPT program...

Q: What is the Flares into Darkness blog about?

A: Flares into Darkness is a blog written by a group of friends who share a passion for exploring and documenting their adventures through the night, from camping to star-gazing and more. The blog is a platform for them to share their experiences, stories, and photos from their nocturnal journeys.

I've been doing this blog all wrong, I guess.

 

K’akhuri

Get ready for an untroubled weekend with Trio Mandili. 

  

Paintings of canals

Click any image to enlarge

Canals are man-made waterways that either serve as drainage controls or for transportation. Mankind has been digging canals for a long time. Many are scenic as well as being utilitarian. These are some paintings of canals, from Europe to Asia. I left out the two largest canals, Suez and the Panama Canal.

I almost bought a house on a canal. We called it a large drainage ditch, but on the map it is called the Pearce Canal, so a canal it is. Alas, the homeowner was asking too much for the place, so we lost out on the bid.