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I Love This Weather

  Sorry not sorry, I love this weather. If you live in North America., you may have noticed a slight change in the temperature and precipitation across the continent as a large chunk of the polar vortex spun off and lurched drunkenly toward the equator like a bro at a frat party crashing toward the DJ station to loudly demand "Livin On a Prayer" for the umpteenth time (Jesus, there goes my metaphor...), changing a rainy, muddy winter into an instant Ice Age. Virtually everywhere in the lower 48 has been effected. The Deep South is in a deep freeze. Chicago is colder than most of Alaska. The roads are ice, the pipes are freezing, kids are being kept home from school simply because of the temperature. And I love it. It's a stark scene - the glaring, blinding white of the snow under a pale sun in a hard sky, making the shadows long and blue. The air is dry and shockingly cold; every breath is sharp in the throat, and the wind bites into my cheeks and wraps the cold around my...
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Black Harvest

  Pictured: about 60lbs of black walnut fruit. Yes, it's that dread time of year...the wind blows...the branches shake...suddenly there's a bump...bump bump...BANG! on the tender roof of your car! What are these divots? What are these round, green things lying everywhere? What are these...these dark stains on the concrete...? You look up. Towering above you is a gigantic, multi-armed, inhuman being, breathing through strange fronds, and in its tentacles you see its eggs, hundreds of them! Thousands of them! Raining down upon your property! You rush to get a rake, a shovel, an axe for God's sake...but it's too late! The lurid green orbs are piling up on the porch! Slamming against the screen door! They break through the glass, bounding like murderous tennis balls, and all you can do is let out one final, despairing SHRIEK...! Yeah they're black walnuts. Everyone I know who owns or rents hates  black walnut trees, at least with the kind of bemusement that comes with t...
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Happy Labor Day 2023!

  Workers strike for safer conditions during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic - eerily similar to today! What is Labor Day? It's become a day for sales, vacations, barbecues - a fill-in holiday between July 4th and Halloween. The meaning of Labor Day has been obscured, packed away as a historical event, shuffled under the rug as an inconvenience. Most people know Labor Day as a dumb joke: "Isn't it ironic that you don't "labor" on Labor Day?" But hidden within Labor Day is the long and tortured history of American labor - the workers who, with no rights, near-universal hatred, and in desperate circumstances, literally fought for the right to organize themselves against the all-powerful companies that hired them. Workers faced miniscule pay, long work hours, no benefits, deadly working conditions, harassment and even assault by managers and supervisors, and the fear of being fired or laid off at any time and for any reason. Those who struck - stopped wo...
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Mustard Brothers Season 2 - coming June 20th!

 That's right, folks! I know you've all been waiting with bated (and slightly puzzled) breath for the next installment of Blind Alley Comics' nutso tale of two demented con artist siblings...so here it is! On June 20th, you will witness the most recent exploits of our ne'er-do-well brothers as they...well, not do well! In this outing, Jerry has an organic vegetable scam all lined up, having roped in his hapless younger brother, Derry. Unfortunately for our Boys, a small magical garden sprite is looking for the perfect host for his diabolical schemes! It's pure chaos once again as we bumble our way through yet another pulchritudinously pitiful plot full of perfidious perpetrators! Tune in to mustardbrothers.com to watch the debacle unfold, twice a week! (You may want to head back and read Season 1...I know I did! Seriously, it's all a blur. Jump back and check out the First Installment , if you dare!) Our heroes, introduced! A typical brotherly interaction...
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In Praise of the "Ditch-Lily"

 You've seen them all along the roadside as you drive down Midwestern country lanes in late June, big tussocks of bright green, grasslike leaves; out of these shoot straight stalks, topped with orange or yellow lily-like flowers. Colloquially called "Ditch-Lilies", these plants are so ubiquitous as to elicit little comment; though colorful, their blooms aren't especially noteworthy, and just seem part of the landscape. You'd be forgiven for thinking they've always been here. But in environmental circles, ditch-lilies have a more sinister reputation: native to East Asia, they were planted for their flowers and ground cover, and then - as they are today - mostly forgotten. This allowed them to steadily proliferate wherever they were planted, quietly pushing up shoots every spring until, with little notice, whole hillsides are covered with the weeds. They grow virtually anywhere, crowding out native plants and compacting soil with their tubers. One eerie aspect o...
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Sex, Death, and the Art Film: Infinity Pool (Analysis & Review)

I saw Infinity Pool  with my fiancée for Valentine's Day, and we spent the rest of the car ride home discussing it. It's certainly a thinker. I love movies that operate like intricate layered puzzles that can be picked apart for their themes - movies like Jordan Peele's  Nope come to mind. While Peele likes to wear his themes on his sleeve (not necessarily a bad thing), Brandon Cronenburg is subtler, more willing to obfuscate and play games with his audience. I really wanted to take some time and analyze this film.     I haven't seen any of Brandon Cronenburg's previous films, so I'm a bit fresh in terms of his recurring motifs; obviously I'm quite familiar with the work of his body horror-obsessed father. Brandon takes a much more cerebral tack that's still quite terrifying in its implications. **Spoiler Alert!** for the entire film - so if you haven't seen it, go out and see it! I. Synopsis Writer James Foster and his wife Em are vacationing at a ...
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Know Your Wasps! (and Bees)

( A brief word on the illustrations I used here - the main "plates" are lightboxed from Google image results; the reference photos are linked below each image. I point this out to ensure that none of my readers say, "Wow! These are incredible renderings!" since I essentially traced them. I used this technique because I felt just using the original photos was a bit lazy, and also to isolate the bugs from the backgrounds and make their characteristics stand out). Let me spin you a nightmare scenario: you and your friend are enjoying a beautiful summer day, when suddenly your friend gets stung. Immediately he begins to swell, showing clear signs of deadly anaphylaxis. You quickly spring into action and inject him with an EpiPen, saving his life. But one aspect of the incident continues to haunt you, sending your life into a downward spiral of shame. One question that, had you brushed up on your entomological knowledge, wouldn't make you sit bolt upright in a cold ...
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