Three Sisters

Mom, Aunt Jean, and sitting down, Aunt Margaret, the eldest of the four Etsell sisters. All three of these remarkable women have passed on now. They are missed. 

Shadows cast through an upstairs window
Moonlight broken by a cross and black branches
And fluttering wings
But for an instant
 

Farewell, Aunt Jean

We found out late tonight that Aunt Jean, Mom's sister, passed away on Tuesday. I'm grateful we got to see her one last time at Mom's celebration of life this summer. Aunt Jean is on the right in this image with Mom from 1950 or so. 

Aunt Jean was fun to be around. She was a genuine character and a wonderful painter. She was closest to Mom in age and, I always suspected, closest overall. 

Our thoughts are with Uncle John, my cousins Keith and Kevin, and their partners, Heather and Carolyn, and with Aunt Marjorie. We'll all miss Aunt Jean, but none more than these who were closest to her. 

 

Sisko's Pitch

These Violent Movies Have Violent Nanogenres

Some time ago, Letterboxd added theme and nanogenre tags to their films. Only a small subset of Letterboxd's hundreds of thousands of films catalogued have these tags, which is why I suspect my lifetime nanogenre stats make me look a bit crazed. 
 

Pickup Trucks

I really like the off-kilter composition of this photo, as if the trucks are leaning into the sidewalk. Very strange. 

I believe this is Dad's Aunt Amelia (Mely), and Uncle Bill in 1940. 

Grandma and the Snowman

Here's our paternal grandmother, Hope Woods, with a short-statured, fully clothed snowman. Or is it a snowman? The head looks more like paper with a face drawn onto it. Another strange mystery from the Woods family tree. OHO pun not intended, but I'll keep it. 
 

The Hate Pumpkin

Back in the mid-80s, Sean posed for a photograph while holding a jack-o-lantern up in front of his face to make himself look like he had a pumpkin for a head. I just asked Google Gemini to turn that image into a movie poster. It took just seconds. 

I'm not against using generative AI to play around and have fun, but I hate the impact it's already having on working artists. At the very least, everyone who's had their art scraped should be compensated. But how can we make that happen? At this rate, a universal basic income funded by the 1% will be the only thing that prevents the vast majority of people from sliding into destitution. 

 

Plough Horses

This photo was right next to yesterday's in Granddad's photo album, and seems to have been shot a nearly the same place and time. I believe our grandparents lived in Aylsham, Saskatchewan, at this time, though I could be wrong about that. Look how tall the guy in the foreground looks compared to the person I think could be Granddad, based on Sean's comments yesterday and my own reflection. What a hardscrabble place it looks; I remember well how Dad told us his parents struggled to eke out a living here. 

Mysterious Gardener

I know only a few things about this photo. It's dated May 1, 1941. It comes from my paternal grandfather's photo album, so the shot was likely taken in Saskatchewan. I don't think this is my grandfather; the facial features don't seem quite right. Is he hoeing furrows into the soil? 

Beyond Mortal Kenner, Part Two: The Empire Struck Back

Here's all that remains of the Kenner Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back toys I owned in Leduc. I once had a Boba Fett, a 2-1B medical droid, and Luke Skywalker in his Bespin outfit. Sean had a snowspeeder--great toy. They've all become one with the Force. 

Beyond Mortal Kenner, Part One: Star Wars

Ever since Sylvia and I moved to our current residence, I've been decluttering and sorting all my stuff into compact storage. During that decluttering, I threw away the many old toys that had been damaged over the years. 

This is what remains of the Kenner Star Wars figures I had in Leaf Rapids. I'm missing Princess Leia, R2-D2 (a real bummer, since that was the very first figure Mom and Dad bought for me at the Town Centre; plus, R2 remains my favourite character), the Death Squad Commander, Death Star Droid, all the droids from the Droid Factory (and the Droid Factory itself), my X-Wing Fighter, and my TIE Fighter. But I don't mourn their loss; all those toys were well-loved and played with often through my childhood, times shared with good friends weaving nonsense adventures in back yards and sand pits. 

At some point, I'll donate the least worn of these figures and discard what remains. But not quite yet. 
 

Slingshot Maneuver

I don't trust this
Utopian future
There's no war and no
Lust for lucre

They put me in
This gold shirt
And then we went
To Red Alert

I pushed some buttons
I made the ship go
Without training
I was flying solo

And yet we made it
To planet Fizzbin
And we delivered
Vital medicine

It felt good
To do nice things
With a collection
Of xeno-beings

But why me? 
It doesn't seem right
To leave my past behind
With space flight

My world's still broken
It needs repair
We gotta earn this future
Playing fair and square

So hurl me back
Into your past
Slingshot 'round a sun
Another chance at last
For a salvation run

The First Batmoble (Sort of)

It wasn't called a Batmobile, but as Jeff noted on Saturday, there was a "Batmobile" of sorts featured in Detective Comics #27, where Batman debuted back in 1939. Bruce Wayne's first car was the red coupe seen here in Hot Wheels form, parked next to, as it happens, the vehicle Superman famously smashed a few months earlier in Action Comics #1. 

Two famous first appearances of iconic superheroes, two first appearances of iconic vehicles linked to those characters. 1939 was quite a year. 

First Canadian on the Moon

It won't be me, but Gemini helps fake it.
 

Batman's Daylight Mission to Edmonton

This afternoon I spotted one of Batman's Batmobiles parked on the street that runs alongside our first condo. I wonder what went down there today...
 

The night comes
with giant cat eyes.

It sits looking
through our window and souls
in silent judgement
and then moves on.
 
-With apologies to Carl Sandburg

Story in a Phone Booth

 

Phoning In the Story

First-Person View of Earl Opening a Bottle of Coke

Opening a bottle of Coke while I should be writing, as the sign helpfully notes. 

Summer Birdie

Birdie perching
Surely searching
For a bit of grain
Birdie chirping
Also twerking
Courting birds in vain
Falling silent
In the twilight
Nodding off to sleep
Come the dawn
The birdie's gone
And all the children weep
 

Spaceship Launch

2 AM:
The roar of rockets
Breaks the moonlit silence
Rends the black fabric of the night

There it goes
A silver starbird
Farting its way to the firmament

Wasteland Minuteman

Owlman

Here's Owlman, AKA Thomas Wayne Junior. Owlman is from Earth-3 and the smartest member of that world's Crime Syndicate. He's basically Batman, but evil. 
 

UBER EARL X

It's the ultimate version of Earl from a parallel universe. 

Soda Can Turrets

I painted a pair of 3D-printed turrets made to incorporate soda cans. Cute! I'll use them for Star Schlock objectives.