Double Double Toil and Trouble

"Punkin Head" on a neighbour's lawn - Photo by YYC - not long after 9/11 - Ottawa Ont.


Double Double Toil and Trouble

At first a hearty laugh -- too soon a harbinger?

I've had so much coming at me in the past few days that I haven't been able to formulate a blog post. I had intended to use the above photo at Hallowe'en.  Or Halloween.

Merriam-Webster: How in the Halloween should you spell it?

"Mr. Punkin Head" above now seems to have been my very own portent of possible upcoming "ghosts in the machine: the movement of mankind towards self-destruction".

When I snapped the photo I was laughing. Now I think of Paul McCartney's "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". How did Paul McCartney know?

He said: “'Maxwell’s Silver Hammer' was my analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as it so often does".

That analogy could also apply to: Ghost Stories of 9/11

Children's nursery rhymes are not as sweet as we think they are. Think of the hidden message in this one:

Poetry Soup: "Ringo-a-ring-a Rosies! Husha, Husha, we all fall down."

and listen to the wisdom of this:

The Ink Spots: Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

... not to mention that ...

Paul McCartney's "Silver Hammer" seems like a premonition:

WorldNewsDaily: Ringo Starr Claims “Real” Paul McCartney Died in 1966 ... Replaced by Look-Alike 

Nobody noticed?  Nobody said nuthin'?

Now suddenly: WorldNewsDaily: "Paul McCartney" Refutes Ringo Starr’s Allegations

And a woman is claiming she is the "real" McCartney's daughter and wants her inheritance.

Faster Forward: John Lennon is shot to death.

Where was George Harrison in all this? Minding his own business, it seems. But then he died too early of lung cancer, the same lungs that a crazy intruder had earlier stabbed with a knife!

Maxwell's Silver Hammer (video) came down on all their heads!

Long before all that there was: ... Shakespeare's Witch's Brew:

• Double, double, toil and trouble.
• Fillet of a fenny snake,
• In the caldron boil and bake;
• Eye of newt and toe of frog,
• Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
• Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
• Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
• For a charm of powerful trouble,
• Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Trick or Treat?  With today's technology be prepared to be tricked if you're not super careful.

Our favourite geologist, Roger Higgs, doesn't mind my telling you that he got fooled -- along with a lot of other people, by a widely promulgated video entitled "Daytime Moon in the Arctic" -- but mainly because it was a highly-educated NASA acquaintance of his who had sent him the video, and who, one assumes, would have known better -- yet got tricked by crafty manipulation of an earlier video on YouTube.  See the fake video on Twitter.

It's been debunked, of course:

Telanganatoday: There's No Gigantic Moon for 30 Seconds Between Russia and Canada

The caption in the email to Roger was:

• Imagine that you are in a place between Russia and Canada in the Arctic during the day, where there is 24-hour daylight in the summertime. At a certain time, the Moon appears for 30 seconds just above the horizon - which explains it's enormous size - and after it covers the Sun for about 5 seconds it disappears again! A fall-to-the-knees moment!

Well, it is Fall, isn't it -- a time of ghosts and hobgoblins -- and, as Robbie Burns said, the plans of ordinary humans "gang aft a-glay". In this age of technological manipulation, it's no wonder that people got fooled. The video is an absolutely brilliant fake, but lowly blogger that I am, one has to be sure that what one publishes is verifiable, so I had to drop the bad news hammer.

What is true, however, is that we Canadians are often treated to a bona fide vision of the moon and the sun together (sort of) in the sky during the daytime. (Space.com)

I want to close this post with a photo sent to me by reader M.R. whose spouse took the pic. Gaze into the gentle, smiling eyes of the lovely nutcracker and see its pleasure at the gift it's found in M.R.'s garden.  And then maybe muse on the idea that things might not be quite as crazy as they seem and that light may soon be seen glimmering at the far end of the tunnel.

​There, I didn't mention Covid once. Ooops!

We gotta make it through the tunnel; that's all there is to it.  YYC has spoken.