Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
Every year about this time, I complete my annual ritual of being an arsonist.
No, don't worry, I committed no crimes. I just set fire to the pile of wood and brush that accumulates every year at my St. Albans, Vermont home. I even got a burn permit for it.
Our dog Jackson keeps a watchful eye
on my annual brush pile burn yesterday.
Actually, there was LOTS of brush to burn this year. I was on a branch clearing frenzy all year, plus we had some storms. I actually had three piles.
I had to drag the material from two of the piles over to the one I set aflame. The job turned out to be a wonderful full body workout. I would have stacked everyting in one pile, but that one have created such a big conflagration the whole town would have burned down.
I'm blessed with great weather every year, it seems, when I schedule the burn. This year was typical. There was a bit of snow on the ground, which discouraged embers from setting a forest fire in the back of the house. And the breeze was strong enough to fan the flames through the burn pile but not enough to choke the whole neighborhood in smoke.
And as you see in the picture, I had Jackson the dog out there to keep a watchful eye on things, lend moral support, provide comic relief and move sticks though not necessarily to the burn pile, he just like playing around with them.
I'm sure the sticks Jackson left scattered about will feed next year's bonfire.
I guess I can understand the logic. It's such a pain fighting the traffic, the crowds, the high prices to get the stuff to decorate your property for Christmas.
Maybe the two women figured it would be less stressful to grab the stuff from the neighbor. Besides, who could resist the decorations they stole. Especially the hugging penguins and the Mickey Mouse on a horse.
What the women didn't plan on is that the decorations' owner, actually gets out of her house and has been known to walk or drive at least a half a block. So it was inevitable she'd find her stuff and call the cops. The fact the theft was caught on a home security camera surely didn't make the police investigation any tougher.
Well, how generous. Or not. The guy was apparently on drugs, according to the police, so his behavior was just erratic. But how could they tell it was the drugs? Isn't everyone's behavior erratic around Christmas?
No, I have no idea why the squirrel ran up the guy's pant leg,
To give the guy some credit, I realize that a squirrel in your pant leg is not a common problem, and there's not many how-to advice books on ways to deal with the situation. Still, the man's response will not him any pest control industry awards.
He apparently thought the best way to rid himself of the squirrel menace was to shoot it with a .22 rifle. The good news is the squirrel survived to torment another Oregon resident another day. The bad news is the man shot himself in the foot, so he required hospital treatrment.
Now that we know squirrels up the pant leg are a serious threat, we need to think about ways to combat the problem in ways that leave the squirrel victims more or less intact. Maybe if the pepper spray cop from UC Davis loses his job, we can hire him to pepper spray squirrels.
Everybody who knows me realizes I'm not a big fan of Christmas. As I've said before, Christmas is a great idea that was ruined by commerce, along with enough sticky-sweet schmaltz to induce a diabetic coma.
Don't worry, I won't be negative this entire post, but I get the bad out of the way before we get to the good. Think of it as surviving until Boxing Day. (December 26. Praise God!)
Members of the British Royal Navy ham it up
for Christmas aboard the HMS Ocean
Among them are crowds, bad holiday music, Christmas shopping and being forced to be nice. I'm usually nice, but why do I have to be in a certain mood because somebody says so? Especially when it's some obnoxious person in a holiday advertisement telling me I have to be happy to buy their worthless, overpriced product with money I don't have and if I don't buy said product with a smile on my face I'm a worse person than most serial killers out there.
And you wonder why I say "Bah-humbug."
The only one of the eleven in the Consumer Reports list I don't experience is "disappointment with gifts." That's only because if somebody was nice enough to try to get me something, at least there were thinking of me. Who cares if the gift was iffy?
In any event, it's nice to see sometimes that some people out there in Christmasland get it. A few people are appropriately kind and goofy and fun and giving during the holiday season. Here are at least two examples.
There's a guy in Reading, Pennsylvania, who wishes to remain anonymous, who goes out into the streets of the town and passes out $100 bills to people who look like they could use the help, according to The Reading Eagle, the local newspaper.
The guy is copying from another philanthropist who does similar stuff out in Kansas City, but this kind of copying is just the ticket.
Here's a vid out of Reading that explains it all. Very nice to watch:
Next, for the more fun, goofy aspect of the season we go to members of the British Royal Navy aboard the HMS Ocean. They've been away from home for 217 days and are getting a little punchy. The good news is their due home this Friday. The better news is while out there, they lip-dubbed soliders, in hilarious fashion, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You."
Turns out it's Mariah Carey approved. Said she in a Tweet after she saw it: "This is the best thing I've ever seen, you guys just made my day! Happy, Happy Christmas xoxo to the troops"
I have to agree with Mariah that this did put me back in the Christmas spirit. As in being happy because I am, not because I've been ordered to. It will give you some cheer, too. Watch:
Thank goodness for the ever-vigilant Fox News for alerting us to the latest menance. Turns out the Muppets are anti-corporate communists who are out to destroy America and our way of life.
Fox uncovered the evidence in the latest Muppet movie, called, predictably enough, The Muppets. In the film the villian is named Tex Richman, who wants to buy and tear down The Muppet Theatre and drill for oil on that spot.
"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message,"
He added:
"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry... They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it."
Well, how un-American! How dare the Muppets do anything but portray the oil industry in a positive light! As Gainor points out, we need the oil industry to help fuel ambulances, keep hospitals heated and lit and all kinds of good stuff. I guess we need more movies about ambulances with full gas tanks and hospitals that are comfortably warm and well lit.
Frankly, I've always suspected those dastardly Muppets, despite their sunny, humorous exterior. I can find the dark side of all the characters, now that I think of it.
Kermit the Frog is the obvious one. He sings about how it isn't easy being green, an obvious appeal from radical environmentalists to let them rid the world of pavement and buildings.
At first glance, Miss Piggy seems glamorous enough, for a pig anyway, but certainly she's like those protestors who dress up in gowns and tuxes to mock the very rich.
Rowlf the dog reminds me of Ed Asner, who is well known for his liberal, decidedly left of center views.
Fozzie Bear is always saying "Wocka! Wocka! Wocka!" which is clearly coded instructions to those insurgent Occupy Wall Street protestors.
And ever notice how awry Dr. Bunson Honeydew's experiments go awry, to the repeated detriment of the hapless Beaker? Obviously, he represents an attack on chemical corporations' business. And notice how Dr. Bunson Honeydew has no eyes. That's a leftist accusation that the chemical industry turns a blind eye to the health and safety of the public.
OK, maybe Gainor is being a bit melodramatic. After all, so many story lines in movies involve underdogs who defeat the powerful. It's a standard American meme. Aspirational Americans want to get ahead through grit, honesty and smarts, and they relate to the underdogs.
And corporations, whether good or evil, tend to be powerful. Since movies like the Muppets need a powerful villian, a fictional corporation is a good stand in. Surely Gainor doesn't think that a fictional oil baron in a kid's comedy movie is anticorporate, communist propoganda.
Oh wait, he does. We're all entitled to our opinions, I guess.
And, um, Mr. Gainor, The Muppet movie was presented to us by Disney. Isn't Disney a big corporation that the communist Muppets are supposed to hate?
In any event, appropos of nothing, the Muppet movie kerfuffle has me taking a trip down memory lane. My past is goofy, and a Muppet related memory is a classic example.
When my sister Lynn and I were really little, we were enamored by this little Muppet ditty, which to this day I still find catchy:
I would do the mahna, mahnz part, and Lynn was "Doo, doo, doo doo." When I'd get carried away on the Mahna, mahnas, as the character in the video does, she'd cuff me in the head, I'd calm down, and quietly, say, "mahna, mahna," she would happily offer a "doo doo doo doo," and the whole process would start over. Ah, we were such well adjusted kids!
I hope it doesn't mean we were budding communists.
Granted, it's not been the harshest late fall/early winter around St. Albans, in northern Vermont, but I'm certainly impressed with the flower that's pictured.
This flower at my house in northwestern Vermont
continues to hang in there as of Dec. 4, despite
early winter weather.
As of today, December 5, it's endured temperatures that dropped into the upper teens, soil frozen rock solid, thawed, and refrozen, several inches of crushing, slushy snow, strong winds and next to no sun. The flower is in a pot that was part of a beautiful arrangement this summer and early autumn on my deck.
I took the pot off the deck a couple weeks ago, put it near the back door, ready to remove the dead plants and take inside, and I forgot about it. Stoically, our flower kept blooming. And no, it's not freeze-dried like that. It's actually still alive.
I might leave it outside to see how much harsh weather it can survive. But who thought something so delicate looking could be so tough? Hope I have the strength to match a little flower.
