Summertime Rag Blues

     First, sorry about the mixed musical metaphors in the title.  Trust me, it will make sense.  This month will mark the first time in twenty-nine years that I will not be getting an issue of Entertainment Weekly through a subscription.  I first subscribed to EW through, no joke, Publisher's Clearinghouse.  Yes, the sweepstakes.  I had seen the magazine for over a year in waiting rooms.  I liked what I saw, but few stores carried it locally.  So, I decided to subscribe. I really liked the irreverent take it had on entertainment.  In fact, I believe the first issue I received in the mail had the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the cover, wearing nothing but socks, in strategically placed areas.  And, they may have been printed upside-down.  After so many decades, I may be misremembering.  Anyway, for many years I would read the entire issue, even the articles on subjects that really didn't interest me.  I enjoyed finding about topics outside of my normal zone.  Of course, I particularly enjoyed features on topics I loved.  For about forty-eight weeks per year, I would get a new issue.  Sure, sometimes an issue would get lost in the mail and I would have to ask for a replacement, although some stores finally started to carry the mag locally.  Then, about five years ago, things began to drastically change.  Yes, some of the satiric tone had left and recurring features were dropped, but I still liked EW and read every page.  It took me awhile, but I ultimately realized that there were fewer issues published each year.  Five years ago, they went down to less than forty per year.  Two years ago, just after I renewed my subscription, the magazine went to a monthly format without changing its title.  The magazine began focusing on more topics that I had no interest in at all.  I began to skim articles instead of reading them.  Reviews went more niche interest:  movies went more art house (partially due to the pandemic), television focused on streaming and new shows instead of older ones, music chose narrower genre artists over big-name stars, and books, ugh.  The book section went towards a literary bend, in both fiction and non-fiction.  Many of the titles and authors were those I didn't know or barely heard of, and I own a book store.  Sure, they might be "important," but I knew I wasn't interested in them and neither would most of my customers.  So, I chose not to renew.  If I see it on a magazine rack, I might look at it, maybe.  There is still the magazine's website, which is somewhat interesting and still has some of the style that first got me interested in the mag.  Unfortunately, I have other 'rag' problems.  For instance, I was finally able to go somewhere to pick up my first issue of Billboard in over a year.  I bought it without looking at it.  I was surprised to find out that it had gone monthly too.  I normally only check it out online, so I hadn't realized the change of frequency.  Not only that, but the issue only had three charts in it.  I don't know how long Billboard had been monthly (I'm almost certain it was still weekly), but the last issue I had gotten had a full selection of charts inside.  Sure, if that issue was a monthly as well, the charts were old when I bought it, but the issue would have had a broad selection.  When I'm online, I rarely have the time to search multiple charts.  I can still see all the charts online, at least the free one which I believe would be the majority of them, but I don't think I will buy another monthly issue if it isn't fully representative of all music.  I don't want to get into how it can take a week for copies of TV Guide to show up on the newsstand.  It used to show up within two days of when it is supposed to be put out nationally.  For the past few months, I have to wait five days, minimum, to find a copy.  Once, earlier this summer, it took almost two weeks before I finally got a copy, this when only three days were left, but there were still pertinent articles and puzzles left.  Still, this is not acceptable.  It might be a distribution problem, but other magazines aren't as effected.  At least is still get Games World of Puzzles on a regular schedule and early, usually, and I have had multiple subscriptions to it for over thirty years, but that is a whole other topic for a post.

Six Students in Search of a Class

     Well, I've started my latest classes for my online Master's program.  Or should I say "class?"  Let me explain.  My first class in on early dramatic literature.  I will be reading one play a week for three months. At least each play is shorter than your average novel, so that will mitigate some of the work.  Pretty much all my assignments are for the last month of the course.  The first four play are from Ancient Greece.  Translated, fortunately.  I've even read at least one of them, maybe two.  The play I'm certain I've read is Lysistrata.  For those unfamiliar with the play, it is about how the women of Athens "withhold" themselves from their soldier husbands in an effort to stop a war.  Many 'spear' puns and double entendres ensue.  Yes, it is a comedy.  The next three are from Ancient Rome. All of the rest are from England, I think.  I'll have to double check, but I am mostly sure.  My other class is supposed to be on advanced poetry writing.  I'm more of a fiction writer, but some of my greatest works are poems.  Hey, the class should be easier than some other possibilities.  That is if it ever starts.  After a week of problems trying to get the textbook for the class, the class has yet to start.  Nothing has been put online.  No syllabus.  No discussion page.  No contact information. Nothing.  I believe this class is being taught by the same professor I had for my fiction class a few years ago.  During that class, he disappeared for about a month in the middle of the course.  No explanation.  Now, I don't know if he is a little late setting up the online module or if there is some other problem.  To keep on track with my plans, I need to take two courses this semester.  There is only one other course I could theoretically take this fall, and it requires over one hundred fifty dollars worth of books.  I'm not sure if there are other, less expensive options for the class.  I would have had to register to find out.  However, I doubt I would be able to get and/or read anything in time for the first assignment.  So, I am stuck without knowing what is going to happen.  Maybe the class will be up by the time I check again this afternoon.  If not, I have no idea what my next step will be.

Ooh Baby, What a Wildlife World

     This past weekend, I saw a raccoon.  Actually, it was three raccoons.  They were huddled together on the road and scattered away when my car got close.  Two went one way and the third went another, up the hillside.  I would have taken a picture, but I thought it would be safer for both my car and the raccoons if I kept on driving as opposed to grab a camera from the back seat.  That is a problem I frequently have.  I encounter a great animal sighting, but I can't prove it because I don't have a camera on me.  My own digital camera keeps having problems.  I don't own a smart phone, although my mother does, but that still doesn't help me out.  Getting my Mac out and setting up its camera would be too much work.  Anyway, I have been missing opportunities like this for a while now.  Just in the past year, I have had other wildlife encounters that I didn't get to photograph.  In fact, I meet more animals while driving than while just staying put.  Except for the occasional luna moth, I am rarely in a position to take pictures of of any animal I see.  Let me give you some examples.  For this post, I will focus only on mammals and birds.  While I have seen more forms of wildlife than this driving, I just want to focus on the larger creatures.  Or at least the more well known.  First, let's go with the smaller cuddlier creatures.  I have seen numerous chipmunks, squirrels, and rabbits.  Any day with a bunny can become a good day.  Strangely enough, I have also seen a few rats and mice while driving.  There are more raccoons, as well as possums, woodchucks (I prefer groundhogs, but I digress), muskrats, and at least one otter.  Next, some larger beasts.  Deer are the most common.  I have seen them singly, in pairs, and whole herds, including one pack that ran across the road near the Pikeville floodgate.  I have even been able to take a picture on occasion.  Of course, I have also seen elk.  I did have my camera ready at the most recent sighting.  Unfortunately, they were in weeds taller than they were.  I couldn't get a good angle, so I didn't take the pic.  However, I have seen rarer animals, but let's check up on some birds first.  Songbirds, including woodpeckers and crows, are so commonplace that I won't mention them by name.  Turkey flocks are a little more common.  I've even seen those flying over the road.  One even flew down into the parking lot of the shopping center where my store is located.  Then, there are the herons.  For some reason, just started popping up everywhere a few years ago.  Mostly, I've seen them flying, frequently alongside my car.  Once, I almost hit one that was walking along the road.  One also flew up from the creek (or maybe its just a large drainage ditch) near where I live.  The closest I've been to the big birds.  I've seen up to four buzzards together up close, picking over a carcass in the road, or near it.  Finally, I am pretty sure I have seen at least one bald eagle.  Perched, not in flight.  This leads me to the rarest finds.  I have seen at least one beaver, fox, and coyote near the road.  Okay, the beaver was in a creek, and I wasn't driving at the time, but I did see it.  I have seen a mink.  It was the middle of winter, so I doubt it was a young similarly looking creature.  I think I may have seen a skunk, but I can't remember for sure.  Just a few months ago, I saw a weasel darting across the road.  It was long, skinny, and very dark brown.  It was so dark in color, it may have been an escaped ferret instead, but I'm thinking weasel.  I've seen at least one ferret up close, so I know what they look like.  However, aside from a large furry thing that I saw from over a quarter mile away that may or may not have been a bear, the rarest sighting I have had is a lynx.  That's right, an actual Kentucky wildcat.  It was last year, a few weeks before that wildcat incident at a local store.  It was the afternoon when the feline crossed the road just in front of my car.  It had the familiar ear tuffs, so I am fairly certain it wasn't just a big domestic car.  It was about halfway up the Pike county side of Abner mountain.  In fact, many of these sightings have been in the area:  raccoons, deer, buzzards, turkeys, various rodents, and so on.  My only complaint, besides not being able to take pictures of most of these things is that why I never saw them until starting just a few years ago.  The animals were always here.  Okay, not the elk, but most of the rest were here.  I don't get why they just starting to show up "out of the woodwork" as it were.  It just doesn't make much sense to me.  At least I get to see them now. 

Doodle Me This

     As many of you know, Google frequently changes its logo on its home page.  Generally, these changes correspond to an occasion, holiday, anniversary, or other event.  I even accidentally adopted this style when I started changing the logo for my store, Booknotes, for its indoor display.  (I used other web browsers back before I went with Google.). I still do so for my "Making the Video" series on YouTube and elsewhere.  For the current Tokyo Olympic Games, Google did more than just a cute logo.  They had a link to a series of mini-games based around characters and figures from Japanese folklore and mythology, not to mention tropes from anime and manga as well.  Each of the seven mini-games was based on a different sport:  skateboarding, synchronized swimming, archery, rock climbing, table tennis, rugby, and a marathon (although the in-game length was closer to 500 to 1,000 meters). I found skateboarding to be the easiest one; all I had to do was randomly push buttons in a pattern to win.  The synchronized swimming was a rhythm button-pushing game similar to Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution pushing the buttons in time to the prompts and music.  I didn't play with the sound one, so I found this one a little harder to beat.  It wound up being the next-to-last one I won on.  Archery was mostly shooting at moving targets while the opponent did the same for right behind you.  Not that hard, but not easy either.  Took me a few tries.  Table tennis was basically moving to where the ball would be and timing the return.  That is until your opponent started shooting multiple balls, up to at least four at a time.  Still found a way to win.  For rugby, you were put on a team trying to get the ball to the other end of the field without the other team taking the ball back.  The other team were oni, ogre-demons from myth.  At least there were power-ups to help you out, such as super-speed or invisibility.  They were crucial for winning.  The marathon was just staying on track an avoiding the random sea creatures that would be crawling on the beach course.  This one took a few tries to, but I won.  I found rock-climbing to be the hardest.  You had one minute and twenty-nine seconds to reach the top of the mountain, while dodging snowballs being thrown down on you, while jumping from three types of handholds (stabile red, moving blue, and unstable green that would fade after a few seconds after being grabbed).  It took me multiple tries before I beat this one, and I had already finished all the side-quests as well.  See, this was also a mini-RPG where one earned trophies for various accomplishment.  Five of them opened up more difficult versions of the mini-games.  I didn't even know that there were trophies until a searched online for tips in beating the games.  I then unlocked the trophy house and found out that I was over halfway to finding them all.  The final trophy was to find the previous trophy-master.  It turned out the it was the mascot for a previous doodle game Google had done.  The mascot was playing the current "Doodle Island Champion" game that you were actually playing.  Turns out the mascot had played the original game as well, meaning that each one was playing as the other online at the same time.  Yeah, very meta of Google.  After finishing, I posted my accomplishment of Facebook.  Unfortunately, the game was taken down a few hours later, before I cold see if anyone in my social group were playing it too.  Before it was taken down, it looked like team red was winning.  I was team blue, of course.  I managed to go over the entire game, except for the team headquarters for the other three teams.  Supposedly, each team experienced minor changes in gameplay, but none that would have effected how to win the overall game.  Now I wonder, what will Google do next, and why they didn't keep the game up for more than a week?