Don't Let the Train Hit You

"Be safe near the rails!" the public service message babbled over railroad sound effects.
Thanks for the warning, I thought. Who'd have guessed that crossing in front of a speeding freight train was, in fact, bad?
"Every two hours someone in the United States is struck by a train..." the add continued.
Every two hours? That's nuts!
A train isn't something that sneaks up on you. They're big and loud. They shake the ground. Their horn is an ear splitting bleat. Trains trigger bells and lights when they approach roads. If you still can't figure out a train is on the way, bowing crossbars are often proved.
Train don't go on chaotic rampages, like rogue elephants. Their path is predictable. They stay on the rails.
Why were people getting creamed by something so obvious? Every two hours?
I Googled some safety sites to find out.
Here's the scoop:

• Humans are terrible at judging the speed of approaching objects. It's a dangerous illusion. One second the choo choo seems to be gliding along in the distance, a second later, Wham!
  A a camera's eye view of a approaching train demonstrates this:

• Trains are not always noisy. Newer tracks lack the clickity clikity sound effect. Stealth trains.
• They're much wider than the tracks. My source says they can stick out as much as three feet beyond the rails.
  
• People aren't paying attention. I can see this. I'm walking (or driving) with my brain moored in the future*- what needs to be done, the lunch I'm looking forward to, should swing by the store to pick up a loaf of [insert sound of me being smacked by a train].
• More than one set of tracks. People focus on getting around train A and get blindsided by train B.
• People forget that something that weighs 5000+ tons and going 60 miles per hour can't stop the way a car does.
  

And, of course:

• People can be reckless. This includes anyone who:
• Tries to race the train.
• Crosses or fishes from(!) railroad bridges.
  
• Walks on the tracks (At one crossing I saw a guy wearing Walkman headphones as he strolled down the tracks. The lights were blinking, the bells were dinging, and the horn was blasting and he was oblivious! He noticed and got out of the way seconds before it roared by. )
• People who drive around lowered gates. What are they thinking? I can't wait for a train now! If I'm late they'll kill me!

*"My brain is moored in the future"- hmmm... that line came to easy. I hope I didn't lift it with via cryptomnesia.

It's Tough to be a Snake.

I was born without the "snakes are creepy" gene.
Silverfish are creepy. Centipedes are creepy. Worms are creepy.
Not snakes. Since I was little, they were colorful ribbons of wonder. As a kid, I didn't get why people disliked them.
I knew some snakes were trouble. Rattlesnakes, for example. They sometimes wandered into our quasi-rural yard and promptly got whacked by my dad's shovel. I felt a little bad for them, but their fang baring, tail buzzing shtick (and the fact that they could hurt you) didn't make them sympathetic.
What shocked me was that some neighbors gave any snake the shovel. I couldn't believe it. They know those aren't rattlesnakes. I thought. Why are they killing them? That's mean!
I checked out some snake books at the library. I discovered the truth.
Most of the world hated snakes.
The books pointed out that most were harmless, and in fact, beneficial. People either didn't understand this, or didn't care. One book had a realistic drawing of a man attacking a harmless one with a shovel. This upset me. That's not fair, I thought, fighting tears. The snake didn't do anything wrong!

Wiggle-Grams

A Wiggle-Gram is an animated gif of two alternating stereo images. The result enhances depth.
Here's some I made from old images I found on the web:

The first two are from autochromes (very early color pics) I found here:




Here's another autochrome from 1915


I like the last one the best. Part of my mind classifies 1915 as black and white fossilized age, of sorts, very different from the "real" world I live in. But Miss Autochrome in the chair looks as real as any of my neighbors and could have been photographed yesterday.

Like wigglegrams? Check out these ones someone put together from old stereo photos from Japan.

Phantom Footsteps (sorta)

You might think my place is haunted. Day and night you often hear the thump-thump-thump of people going up the steps. But no one's there!
Oh yeah, and there's no stairway at my place either.
There are lots of stairs on the building next door. We're separated by a fence and yard, but I can hear (and feel) my neighbors' footsteps clearly.
That being said, if my building did have steps, and if I believed in ghosts (I don't), it would be easy to think something spooky was going on. "I hear people going up and down the stairs all the time," I'd say. "but when I look, nobody is there."

Third Blogaversary

October 26th marked the third anniversary of Tail o' the Rat.
Over the past year I chased mice, was reunited with the Crack Monster (whom I hadn't seen in three decades), made a Flash cartoon, started another, and drew a bunch of pictures.
According to my stat counter, the blog has been visited 68,575 times by 52,826 unique visitors since it debuted ...
...okay, some of these visits were triggered by bots and search engine misfires.
I never said I was picky.

Secrets of the Green Fairy

Some call absinthe "la fée verte" or "The Green Fairy." Popular culture has personified the fairy as an enchanted muse who unlocks creativity:

Or ensures a mind bending good time*:

The magic ingredient is wormwood. More specifically, a chemical in wormwood called thujone. For years it was considered a hallucinogen. However, recent studies show:

1. Whoops, it's not a hallucinogen, and
2. Whoops, the old time versions of the drink didn't have that much thujone in the first place.

So what's with this Green Fairy stuff?
It's likely other additives- toxic green dyes, for example, caused hallucinations.
So is the drink's legendary magic reduced to bad artificial coloring? Perhaps the the psychedelic part is. But what about the creativity enhancement?
Traditionally, absinthe isn't something you drink like tequila shots or pour over ice. There's a near ceremony you're supposed to follow. Special glass. A special slotted spatula that fits on top of the glass that holds a sugar cube. You pour water over the cube, so sugar water trickles into the absinthe below. Or swap the water for fire. That's right. Spike the cube with some extra absinthe, light it on fire, and drop it into the drink (since the stuff can be up to 75% alcohol, well, good luck with that*...)
Does all this fancy prep prime your brain to think this stuff must be special! Do people experience creativity because they expect to experience it? It wouldn't surprise me. The Green Fairy could be the Placebo Fairy.

*Is it just me, or did they rip off this famous Robert Abel & Associates 7up commercial?

**in the unlikely even someone reads this, burns down the house and tries to sue me, I might add that setting flammable things on fire, is, in fact, dangerous. While I'm at it, stay off subway tracks, and don't tease anything with teeth.

Big Beak

When a strange, long beaked bird showed up at my window feeder, I thought a new species had touched town. Sparrows and House Finches were my regular customers. What bird was this?
I had a better look. He was a House finch with an overgrown lower beak. The top was tiny and misshapen. The bottom three inches long and stuck out like a sword.
I named him Big Beak. I suspect he'd damaged his upper bill long ago, so it wasn't big enough to provide the pressure to keep his lower beak trimmed. You'd think this would make it tough for him to eat. It didn't.
Anyone who maintains a feeder knows that the birds squabble over who gets to eat and who has to wait. Not Big Beak. All he'd do was brandish his pointy bill. Bullies backed off! He was free to eat all he wanted. He'd use his super-sized beak like a scoop to shovel up the cracked sunflower kernels.
I'm sure Big Beak didn't realize anything was wrong with him. He probably figured he was Alpha bird and that was that. If he thought like a human, he might obsess about how "stupid" his beak looked. How "everyone judged him" because of his beak. How his life was ruined because of his beak...