Silflay Hraka

I have no idea why, but it’s the best year for lightning bugs that I can remember. For the last two nights Ngnat, Scotty M–who refers to them as “gold bugs”–and I have caught between 60 and 70 in the thirty-five minute period between 8:10, when the first one typically lights up, and 8:45, when it gets too dark to track them effectively after the flash.

Last night the captured fireflies spent their evening in jars, one for each kid’s bedroom, but tonight we let them go once it got too dark to keep going. My reasoning was that even the most hardy firefly would suffer if it had to spend two nights in a row cooped up in a Mason Jar with 40 of its brethren. Ngnat and Scotty didn’t seem to have a problem with that. At least, they made no objection to the new plan.

In any case, both much prefer the hunt. In past years, I was the stalker of the bugs, but now each races across the yard upon sighting the neon yellow J of a male firefly on the make, hand cupped and ready to strike. Their technique is somewhat sloppy, and Scotty’s captures enter the jar somewhat the worse for wear, but both are successful more often than not.

So, afterwards we sat on the deck stairs, watching as the 60-odd temporary detainees of our glass Guantanamos mounted to the lip of their erstwhile prison and flew off, save for the three or four Coleopteran exhibitionists that simply could not wait and had begun mating inside the jars. As if to make up for lost time, the others began flashing immediately upon exit. Adding their efforts to those of the other 60 or so that we had not caught, it became quite a show. For the next 15 minutes, 5 or 6 flashes went off every couple of seconds somewhere in my field of vision. For a while Ngnat and Scotty were duly impressed, but eventually became blase about the whole thing and headed in. I stayed on the deck until the displays faded to one a second or so.

Like I said above, I’m not sure why we have so many this year, but after some googling, I have suspicions. It seems that the larvae of some species will burrow underground and go several years before metamorphosing into adults. What do they eat while crawling around in the dirt? Snails, slugs, and…earthworms.

Come with me now, on a trip into the distant past.

“You spent 65 dollars buying worms off the internet?” Warm.

“So, after it rains, our lawn will be covered in literally thousands of worms.” Monotone. “That WILL be the envy of the neighborhood.”

Thanks, Uncle Jim.

Turns out that Beer Goggles have a basis in biology.

One of the study’s overseers, Professor Barry Jones of the University of Glasgow, says “Everyone’s heard of the beer goggles effect but we wanted to measure once and for all whether a moderate amount of alcohol increases the judgment of facial attractiveness.”

The study also shows that everyone gets prettier incrementally. As Jones states, “The increase in perceived attractiveness appeared to be the same for the ugly people as the pretty people. Attractiveness provides a very important signal of mate quality, it shows you have good genes and a healthy body.”

Immort Ale.

Vast in character, luscious & complex. Brewed with peat-smoked barley, this strong ale is brewed with organic juniper berries, vanilla & maple syrup. It’s aged on oak and fermented with a blend of English & Belgian yeasts.

It’s a repeat!

I can say this for the Immortal Ale. It goes really, really well with butter-fried poundcake.

Yes, butter-fried poundcake. It’s delicious. Melt, oh, about a half of a stick of butter in a saucepan. Soak both sides of a slice of poundcake in it, then fry until the yellow body of the cake is covered in a delicate brown lace. Serve immediately. Hell, eat it straight out of the pan. That way none of the butter goes to waste.

There’s a smoky flavor in tonight’s brew that’s much more obvious than it was back in 2003. It seems less sweet, as well. I’m wondering if it’s because I don’t have any butter-fried poundcake to go with it this time, or if the recipe for this years is altered from that of four years ago.

Quick Movie Review: Ngnat and Scotty M are watching Nausicaa, rather than playing outside this fine morning. That’s fine with me, since I was paged three times overnight, and am still suffering from cotton head. As for Jabba, ….er…..the pregnant lady, right now anything that keeps them out of her hair is acceptable.

Like the rest of the Miyazaki oeuvre, practicaly all of which they’ve seen multiple times, including Princess Mononoke…

Zod: Bad Parent!

…Nausicaa is excellent, but unlike the other movies, the Hisaishi soundtrack is intrusive and, at times, annoying. Why he thought fast, tinkly synthesizer music was appropriate for outdoor scenes, even if they are action scenes, is beyond me. I could see making that choice if one was illustrating an urban scene, but given Nausicaa’s setting, it’s like choosing Tangerine Dream for the Pastorale in Fantasia rather than Beethoven.

The Farce is strong in this one.

Cunningly, Lucas begins the film like a comic book or radio serial that’s already been running ten years. Most movies are concerned to simplify — eliminate this character, combine those two — but Lucas hooked his Star Wars groupies with a Tolkienesque multitude of creatures, most of whom are entirely superfluous. For this ‘special edition’, he’s inserted Pizza the Action — sorry Jabba the Hutt, a sort of giant computerised cowpat — into a scene with Harrison Ford, but for no particular reason. Every background now teems with computer-generated Jurassic Park dinosaurs, out for a stroll, retrieving newspapers, looking for Jurassic lamp-posts. Though distracting, they complete the sense that this is a film constructed wholly from bits of other films. There’s a Tin Man — the droid C-3P0, though he comes over like a gold-plated John Inman — and a Cowardly Lion — Chewbacca the Wookie; there’s a bearded, robed Biblical sage — Obi-Wan; there’s a Bogart figure, Han Solo, a strictly-cash-terms cynic played by Harrison Ford. ‘I wonder if he really cares about anything. Or anybody,’ muses Princess Leia, though the fact that Han Solo sounds like a euphemism for masturbation should have been the first clue to his self-absorption. Late in the movie, Lucas suddenly remembers he’s forgotten to introduce the hero’s best pal, so belatedly shoves in Luke Skywalker’s chum Biggs Darklighter purely for the purpose of killing him off two minutes later.

Zod: Farce? Who are you, Mel Brooks?

No, Mel would have gone in to a riff here.