Author: DOuG pRATt

Policy Change

Until now, comments have been wide open, with no restrictions. You don’t have to register with the blog or enter an e-mail address, and comments appear instantly. But, alas, after two months online, the spammers have found us.

For the past week I’ve been fighting spam entries in the comments. I have an exclusion list of suspicious words, but it isn’t enough of a deterrent. Every day I delete twice as many as the previous day, and the trend is on an upwards curve.

So from now on, every comment will be held until I approve it. Sorry! You don’t have to do anything more than wait for your comment to appear, but it won’t show up automatically. If you don’t like that approach, I’ll offer another alternative, such as site registration.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

May The Font Be With You

Strip it down to its essential text — and I mean text literally — and the first Star Wars movie is still a lot of fun.

Click here, and please be assured that if a security warning appears, this is perfectly safe to launch! It presents no risk whatsoever! I’m just trying to save you the trouble starting a remote terminal session manually. But if you’d rather do that, follow these steps in Windows:

Start → Run… → Open: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl → OK

Be patient while the widescreen “video” prepares to roll, and enjoy Star Wars Episode IV as it was never meant to be seen! Be amazed by the stunning textual graphics that will transport you to another time and place, long ago and far away … !

Ankle’s Away

This didn’t scan well, but it’s one of many MRI views I have of my right ankle. I have a running injury, my first in 33 years of pounding the pavement. Frankly, I started blogging because I couldn’t go running every evening, as was my habit for many years.

Initially I was told it was tendonitis, and I went through six weeks of physical therapy. It still hurt, so a second doctor ordered the MRI. He said it looked fine. But the truth is, it isn’t fine, it still hurts, I can’t run on it, and it isn’t getting better.

Friday afternoon I’m taking the MRI films to a podiatrist surgeon who comes highly recommended. If I’m going to run the Boston Marathon, the week between Christmas and New Year’s I must start 16 weeks of hard training. I need to know if I can do it. Indeed, I need to know if I’ll ever run again.

Jewel is a Peach

If you happen to come across the calendar view of this blog, you’ll notice that nothing was posted on Sunday. It’s easy to explain. We — me, son Eric and friend Dennis — went to a fanboy convention in Springfield, MA to meet actress Jewel Staite. Actually, Dennis went to meet Monkee Peter Tork, but I don’t think he minded meeting Jewel.

Blame it on my friend Bismo! It’s his fault. He got us into watching DVD’s of the short-lived 2002 TV show Firefly, which is best described as an outer space western. Staite played the character Kaylee, the space ship’s mechanic. It’s like this, see? The ship’s engine has a glowing yellow tail, that’s supposed to make it look like a firefly and the significance of that is, well, uh …. never mind. There is no significance. But anyway, that’s where we were on Sunday.

Next weekend we get to meet Morena Baccarin, another cast member from the show, at yet another geeky fanboy-filled event. Hey, somebody’s gotta do the tough job of showing these struggling actors that their hard work is appreciated!

Oui Wii

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Movies/Wordpress/NOV06/South_Park.flv 400 300]
Eric has, at last, experienced the eagerly-anticipated Nintendo Wii! At a demo kiosk in the Natick Mall.

It’s been a long wait for the Wii, which was originally going to be called the Revolution. Here’s hoping Santa does a good job making sure they’re in ample supply for the Holidays Christmas! No! Wait! I got that backwards. Holidays Christmas. *Whew* There, that’s better.

There’s another Eric who’s anxious to play the Nintendo Wii. The foul-mouthed kid on South Park. Well, every kid on South Park is foul-mouthed. The language on the video above has been reasonably cleaned up with some judicious editing.

I’m not particularly a fan of the show, in part because of the needlessly gratuitous profanity. I made a point of watching the Scientology show, however, and it was quite good. I’m not saying the writers don’t score points against their targets, but for me the swearing muddies the message.

Vet’s Day


LIFE Magazine photo of American soldiers in Hürtgen Forest, Germany, September 1944.

 

Click For GalleryI didn’t want to let Veterans Day pass without sharing something special. I have in my possession an original paperback book, printed in Italy at the end of World War II. It’s a collection of cartoons by Bill Mauldin.

Click here or on the picture of Willie and Joe to go to the gallery to see selected cartoons from the book. I found this book for a dollar at a used book store many years ago. The inscription is fascinating in itself. Who was Grace? Who was Eugene? Were they just friends, or were they in love? Did they marry?

What immediately catches my eye in Mauldin’s cartooning is his superbly confident and slap-dash brushwork. Keep the photo above in mind when browsing the gallery, and you’ll see that Mauldin’s depiction of ragged and weary soldiers was no exaggeration! Below is a LIFE Magazine photo of Bill Mauldin with his infant son Bruce at the end of the war, probably taken around the time the book was published. More WWII cartoons by Mauldin, posted by Stars and Stripes, can be seen by clicking here.