Picking Up From Last Year...

I returned from my "walk" a little past five o'clock (actually, I was out exploring in an unfamiliar neighborhood an hour's ride away) I heard a loud chorus of cicadas and started looking for what I hoped would be there;  and yes, this time I wasn't disappointed -- the guards hadn't beaten me to it!  

Here is what twenty-two nymph shells look like in my palm:

And after I laid them out to dry out from the rain:

One of the shells was clinging to a tree next to an adult cicada.  I tried to pick it up as well, and it flew up and grabbed onto me.  Cute, no?  Look at those plump little thighs -- reminds me of frog legs^^

Related posts:  What To Do, What To Do...;  What To Do, What To Do... Pt. 2;  Cicada x 2

Wet Leaf

The wet weather continues.  On my customary walk I came upon this rain-soaked stray leaf on the sidewalk.  How beautiful!

A Few More "Dreamlike" Images

 

The last one -- is it perhaps too horror movie-ish?  But we've all had creepy nightmares, and it actually kind of matches the feel, if not literally the look, of this hospital dream from 2013. 

My Most Recent Acquisitions

Tiger's eye spheres, a fidget toy, and a miniature icon. 

Another Rather Starting Sight

Related post:  A Butcher With A Sense Of Humor

Snagged

Related post:  Marooned In The Sky: A Tragicomic Yarn

On A Drizzly Afternoon

I saw a cat leap over a building in Jongno, Seoul.

A Menace To Aviation

 

Speaking Of Lucifer...

This sight made me think of the Shining One, God's favorite before his failed rebellion, attended by a host of lesser angels.

Related post:  The War In Heaven

So It Was An "Orb"?

Back in April, I wrote this post about an unusual image I accidentally captured back in 2018.  Although not very likely, it still might possibly have been:  #1. a lens flare;  #2. a droplet of water;  #3. or a mote of dust on or near the camera lens.  Here is a detail from the photo:

In the post I humorously compared it to the "Vitons", a fictional race of beings normally invisible to humans.  At the time no other possibility had occurred to me.  Then today I happened to be checking out some old photos, and among them was a series of shots of my old digs in Los Angeles.

Notice anything unusual abut the middle photo?  I don't know how it escaped my notice back then;  it's a textbook example of the so-called "(spirit) orbs", kissing cousin of the "spirit photograph" and a supposed indicator of the presence of ghosts or paranormal activity.  Here are a few of the orbs, close up (with heightened contrast).

Don't they look just like the "Viton" photograph?  But then, I belatedly looked up spirit orbs specifically -- and well, you could have knocked me over with a pinky.  These are identical to the orbs in my photos:

While I know absolutely nothing about the conditions under which these online images were taken, what makes my orbs unlikely to have been dust or reflections or whatever, is the fact that they are not visible in other shots taken just before and just after, even though they were taken under identical conditions and from the same part of the room.  However, if you were to ask me "But then, why are they not in the other shots?", well, I couldn't tell you.  Maybe the spirits are capricious, or maybe you have to be in just the right state of mind.

So am I now a believer in the paranormal definition of the "orbs"?  Was my flat being haunted by ghosts?

Well...

Absurd Mirror (Or Column)

A mirror hung outside a guard shack.  That in itself is a little unusual, but that column!  It has to have been added after the mirror was placed there -- surely no one expects to wedge herself in and stand barely a foot in front of a full-length mirror to primp and preen!  But why, if a column was needed to bear the load of the roof, was it not included in the original plans?  And why was the now-useless mirror not taken away?  Surely it can be put to good use at some other location!

The War In Heaven

If it happened today.  If it was made into a movie.  A sci-fi movie about a power struggle among some advanced parahuman species who are mistaken for angels by ordinary mortals.  Starring Chris Hemsworth as the archangel Michael

with James McAvoy

or maybe Michael Fassbender

or even Keanu Reeves playing Lucifer.

And the War as seen from the ground might just look like this^.

 Related posts:  War In Heaven

Accidental Juxtaposition IV

In some cultures moths traditionally have been associated with death.  Perhaps because of their often ominously dark coloring and nocturnal ways, so different from their delightful diurnal counterparts the butterflies, or perhaps because of their fatal attraction to flames.  In any case, I know I found them repellent in an almost instinctive way when I was a child.  So, not so surprisingly, I found this moth resting by a clock to be a worthy focus of rumination on mortality.

Related post:  Vanitas

This Is Hilarious

And I'd had no idea!  It's been over five years now since I moved back to Korea, but since I quit smoking many years ago (except for the very very occasional puff on my favorite pipes, for memory's sake) I never paid much attention to the packets of cigarettes behind the counter at every convenience store.  Sure, I sometimes see discarded packs with gross photos of a ruined lung or some such prominently displayed, but never thought much of it.  After all, smoking is already pretty severely frowned upon as an evil habit here in Korea -- I just never realized how severely!  Today, for the very first time I happened to actually pay attention to the scary warnings on cigarette packs, and I just couldn't help but laugh.

#1.  How to have a stroke

#2.  How to acquire sexual dysfunction

#3.  How to have yellowed teeth (compared to the others this one doesn't seem nearly so bad^)

#4.  How to get lung cancer

#5.  How to get laryngeal cancer (on all the packs)

#6.  Nicotine addiction, exposure to carcinogens

#7.  How to go blind

#8.  How to acquire vascular disease

#9.  Lung cancer (just straight to the point)

#10. How to make other people sick (probably means little in China)

#11. Heart disease (again, directly to the point)

Despite The Heat,

I made the long trip to Siheung to view the lotus gardens there.  I think I must have lost a couple liters of water as sweat.  But it seems I was a bit early in the season.  There were nothing but buds, and even they were few and far between.

Still, I did manage to get a few nice shots out of the trip.

Especially of one of my favorite kinds of insect.

I'll have to go back in a few weeks, when the lotuses will be in full bloom.

A Prediction

If mankind ever establishes a large-scale permanent colony on the Moon (as a vacation resort only, I'm certain, with frequently-rotated personnel -- since the radically weaker gravity would play havoc with the bodies of long-term residents in all kinds of unpleasant ways), I believe indoor flying will become a popular form of recreation.  I picture the arena to be a gigantic hangar-type building, without any internal supports that can obstruct flight, and vastly loftier and wider than any that could be built on Earth.  The floor would be perforated with innumerable small apertures through which air under pressure would be pumped out, creating a permanent updraft;  the ceiling would be designed to receive the wind and recycle it.  The players would be taken up to a high platform, where they would be fitted with a "flight suit";  that is, a light skeletal frame shaped somewhat like a glider, in which they would lie prone, with movable wings whose shape and angle they could control with their arms and hands.  Thus prepared, they would then step off the ledge, and taking advantage of the Moon's weaker gravity and aided by the updraft -- fly!  Although it would be impossible to flap the wings like the small birds that stay close to the ground -- human anatomy just doesn't allow it -- but comparison with large, soaring birds like eagles and vultures would be apt;  it would still be genuinely self-powered and controlled flight, just like those birds of prey riding a thermal column, not the hapless "controlled falling" of wingsuits.

Errant Needle

Not in a haystack (thankfully).

[I've purposely avoided pointing out the needle in the first photo, but if you expand the image and squint, you'll see it^]

There seems to be an interesting connection here with my post from two days ago.  It was a random shot I found in an old folder, of a helium balloon somebody accidentally (presumably) let go.  Then, today I come across a needle, as if I were being (pun warning) needled to puncture it.  Coincidence?

To paraphrase a line by Damon Knight in his book Charles Fort:  Prophet of the Unexplained, if there is a Universal Mind, and it is indeed all-knowing, that still need not mean it must be sane or even particularly intelligent.  Months of drought, then a sudden downpour that produces floods -- is it in answer to prayers for relief?  If there is a Universal mind, it need not be anything but the mind of a five-year old.  Or in this case, perhaps a prop comedian.

Related posts:  errant

A Truly Weird Coincidence

It's the Fourth of July!  I was going out when I spotted this stinkbug next to the elevator.  I looked at it close, and realized it was missing most of its right antenna.

Which reminded me of this stag beetle from EXACTLY two years ago, July 4, 2023.  This guy was missing his right antenna.

And while looking up the post, I realized that EXACTLY one year later, on July 4, 2024, while touring JinGwanSa temple I came upon this beetle clinging to a lotus blossom.  And it was missing its right antenna, too!  Is the cosmos trying to send me some kind of message?  Spooky.

Related posts:  Stag Beetle;  Ambiguous Beetle; Blood Comes Back For A Visit; The Very Next Dream Log Entry