I Recommend the Following...

Thoughts in my head one minute, blank slate the next moment...ADD is not helping me be a writer right now.

However, I always wanted to do random things on a blog (a decade or so ago, I dreamed of having my own website - but this is MUCH easier). I wanted to make lists of things, recommendations of things, etc.

Here are a few things I highly recommend that you, dear reader, check out / try, etc.

~ Listen to old radio detective shows, like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and Pat Novak For Hire and Line Up. A) they totally RULE, and B) they are great company / background for when you're doing chores, or walking around the block, or driving, or trying to fall asleep, or wrapping gifts when it's Christmastime, or waiting for an appointment, or whatever. I especially particularly recommend the following Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar episode "The Royal Street Matter".


* Put blueberries in your chocolate ice cream - tastes great, especially if it's dark chocolate flavor.

> Any time you're near a fountain (of reasonably large size - not a water fountain that you drink from), especially if said fountain shoots streams of water in arcs, try to keep your eyes on one droplet of water from the moment it shoots out of the nozzle, up into the air, over the top of the arc, and down again into the pool of water. Of course, you can't really latch your eyes onto just one droplet of water without binoculars - but do try to keep your eye fixated one piece of the water's stream, as specifically as possible, up and over.


This will freeze the water for a surreal few seconds, and it will feel like you're looking at stop-motion photography -- but in real time. Like this!

It may sound goofy, but if you try it, I'll bet you'll find it diverting and possibly even fascinating, as I do.

+ If you like the book Jane Eyre, and you are at all geeky or a fan of fantasy or sci-fi, then you owe it to yourself to read Jane Slayre. It is SO well done, and I really enjoyed looking through both books simultaneously and seeing which parts of Jane Slayre were word-for-word the same as the source material, and which bits were much the same but slighly altered to fit the situation.

Also, if you were always a little (or a lot!) turned on by Mr. Rochester, I suggest you check out the book Jane Eyrotica. Yep, it's what it sounds like. ;D

* Any Bryan Ferry and/or Roxy Music fans in the metaphorical house? You should know, if you don't already, that the Bryan Ferry Orchestra put out a CD of many Ferry and Roxy songs RE-DONE AS 1920s JAZZ TUNES. Yes. They. Did. The CD is called The Jazz Age, and it is SO awesome!

To wit: here is "Virginia Plain", by Roxy Music:

and here is "Virginia Plain, by the Bryan Ferry Orchestra:

So...there are a ton of other things that I notice and enjoy, which I'm not sure that everyone has taken the time to notice and enjoy. I plan to revisit this topic quite a bit. (I'm also one of those people who delights in using a jukebox to play Amateur DJ to the entire restaurant.) When will the next post be? Who can say? To quote Dirk Gently: "Pray God I am not too soon!"

One of the podcasts I listen to and love is called The Great Detectives of Old-Time Radio. I shall emulate the host.

This is Kat Finger, signing off.

A little bit lighter now...

So - about my blog in general: as I may or may not have said already, I intend for it to be random - I'm a big fan of randomness.  And, although important things are important when they are important, I plan to balance the profound with the trivial. To that end, I present....

Thoughts on The Very Best Cartoons of "my"* Age
I was born in 1972 (thank the gods!!), and although there were many cartoon choices, the best ones shown at the time, and the only ones that are still as wonderful today, were and are the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies-type cartoons: the kind that featured such outstanding characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, Sam and Ralph, and Elmer Fudd.
(*I know the aforementioned cartoons were all made way before I was born, but since I watched them as a kid they feel like part of my personal kid-in-the-70s past and therefore legitimately "mine".)

Many of my favourites are probably your favourites - although I've never been able to remember the actual titles of the cartoons, thus leading me to utter sentences like "The Kill the Wabbit one is okay, but the Daffy-Duck-Robin-Hood one is way funnier". Recently, however, I scoured the internet for one particular obscure cartoon which I barely remembered but which has always been one of my favourites, and my investigation led me to create and assimilate the following lists and summaries.

My top 15 favourite cartoons that many people are probably sick of but which still make my day:

1. One Froggie Evening, in which a frog sings songs like "Everybody Do the Michigan Ra-a-ag!", dancing with a top hat and a can -- which will NEVER get old! To no one's surprise, I only know the bits of these songs that the frog actually sings.
2. Hare-Way to the Stars: Bugs, Marvin the Martian, and an Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
3. Ali Baba Bugs, with Bugs and Daffy taking a wrong turn and ending up in Ali Baba's cave. I try to work the following lines into every conversation I can: "I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm a happy miser!"
4. Bully For Bugs, with Bugs as a bullfighter.
5. Robin Hood Daffy: "Yoicks, and away!!!" The best part to quote is "Let's see now...somethin' I missed here...Ho, ha ha, guard, turn, parry, dodge, spin....."
6. The trilogy of Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs and/or Daffy: Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck!Rabbit,Duck! (These count as one entry as far as I'm concerned, since each episode features a slightly different wording of the classic "Wabbit Season! Duck Season!" exchange between Bugs and Daffy).
7. Duck Dodgers In the 24th & 1/2 Century.  'Nuff said.
8.The Abominable Snow Rabbit ("...and I will hug him & squeeze him & I will call him George..")
9. Operation: Rabbit ("Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wile E. Coyote, Genius.")
10. A Sheep in the Deep ("Mornin' Sam". "Mornin' Ralph".)
11. Zoom and Bored, the Coyote/Road Runner cartoon with the catapult that appears to have a personal vendetta against the Road Runner.**
12. For Scent-imental Reasons, featuring Pepe Le Peu & the cat who has accidentally had a white stripe painted down her back. ("Le mew. Le purr.")
13. Long-Haired Hare, in which Bugs anoys the opera singer and later makes him hold a note for so long that the opera house cracks and crumbles in on him.
14. Duck Amuck, in which the animator is mean to Daffy, drawing the wrong scenery, or taking away his voice, or erasing his body and re-drawing a monstrous body with a flag showing a screw and a ball.
15. The Rabbit of Seville, which I actually prefer over What's Opera, Doc?, aka Kill da Wabbit.
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**(Truthfully, any and all Coyote vs. Roadrunner cartoons rock just about equally.)
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And now for the very best 15 cartoons that you may have missed or at least not seen very often -- if you have not seen them, you should check them out ASAP!

1. Bugs Bonnet: in which lots of different types of hats float out of a truck, landing in the river, on the grass, and on Bugs & Elmer Fudd.
2. Symphony in Slang, the one I was having such a hard time locating, wherein the lady puts on an actual dog and a man is literally beside himself with anger.
3. Hare-Less Wolf, in which the wife-wolf screeches at the husband-wolf to go out and shoot a rabbit for their supper. He keeps forgetting what he's hunting for, and quoting him is so much fun! "Uh, let's see...a wildabeest? No...uh...a raccoon? No, no...uh...water buffalo? No, no...uh...oh yeah, a rabbit!"
4. Bedevilled Rabbit, with Bugs & Taz. I watch it just to hear them say: "John!" "Marsha!" at the end.
5. Transylvania 6-5000, in which Bugs meets a vampire. ("Abraca-pocus! Hocus-cadabra!")
6. A Witch's Tangled Hare: the best Bugs v. Witch Hazel cartoon.
7. Hair-Raising Hare, the Bugs Bunny episode with the mad scientist and the big furry monster & the Peter Lorre-type character.
8. Feed the Kitty, featuring Marc Antony (a huge dog) and Cleo (a cute little cat), in which the enormous dog keeps running around trying to save the little kitten from harm.
9. Pecos Pest: a Tom & Jerry cartoon featuring Jerry's eccentric Uncle Pecos.
10. Tree for Two, with the big dog/little dog combination of Spike and Chester, plus a PANTHER (later copied almost directly with virtually no changes as a cockney version of itself, called Dr. Jerkyl's Hyde).
11. Hyde & Go Tweet, in which Tweety grows monstrous and scares Sylvester.
12. Gorilla My Dreams: Bugs, a drunken stork, & a monkey family.
13. Pop 'Im Pop, featuring Sylvester and his son - who is ashamed and puts a paper bag over his head.
14. Devil May Hare, in which the Tazmanian Devil says my favourite Taz line: "What for you bury me in the cold cold ground?"
15. Bewitched Bunny,  the second best Witch Hazel vs. Bugs cartoon, featuring Hansel & Gretel.

Lastly, I must mention a fantastic source of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies info (aside from Wikipedia, YouTube, and miscellaneous search engines):

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-13548.html