Picture Sunday

Hello, Sundayers. Welcome to another scintillating edition of Picture Sunday.

This was an odd weekend for me. Best described? Boring. Boring! No trip to B'burg this weekend, therefore yesterday was a day of basically doing nothing at all. And I made a very startling discovery. I seemed to have reached the end of the internet. I've been everywhere there is to go. Nothing else to see, ma'am, so move along.

Then today I slept late, had a little coffee, and made that trip we all hate making, the grocery. Just needed a few things, so it wasn't the worst trip in the world, and I decided to take the long way round town to get there, and took my trusty camera along. And so I got a couple of pictures for you from around the old burg.

The first is from a long-defunct school in B'field, on the West Virginia side. Shame, really, because it's such a nice building it's sad no one can find anything to do with it, save for letting it sit there on the hill, like the big monolith it's become, with broken windows and graffiti covering it.

Now, I've always liked this building for one reason - it's a school, and right there on the building it has - scholars! Yes, a very smart boy and girl, standing there as beacons of learning to all who entered. As you can see there, they're right at the top of the school, as if to say, "Hey, look at us, here hanging on the top of this school. Aren't we smart?" Now they're just, well, lonely.



Wonder how tall that boy and girl are in real life? My guess would be about five feet, but I'm horrible at estimating such things, so I wouldn't even try.

Now, while speaking of defunct things, let's just talk about B'field on the West Virginia side in general. The whole city is defunct. There is no downtown area anymore. It used to just bubble and bustle, was full of stores and banks and people and activity. Now it's dead. It used to be run by the coal and railroad business, and when the coal business went bust it took the railroad with it, and, well, to put it succinctly, *pbbbbt*. The whole thing slowly collapsed like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard says.

Anyway, I went down by the railroad and decided to take a picture anyway. I like the railroad, you know. I like trains. Always have. This photo was taken from the Grant Street Bridge.



Now, our next photo is of a decidely experimental nature. See, Sherman was working on a project. Peabody was having him do an experiment on cause and effect, so little S came up with an idea that he would play music, and I would do something while he was playing music. I would be the effect of his cause. He originally was going to play the clarinet, but he became quite scared that my effect would be to take a knife and rip his little cloth body to pieces. And so he chose to play his new electric guitar for me instead. And so I began to draw as he played.

After the playing was over, Sherman looked at my drawing and decided he liked the results so much that he wanted to jump right into it. And so I invited him on in, and he's decided that when he releases his album of Rock Guitar Classics, that this may well be the cover. And for Sherman, it answers the question "Are you experienced?" with a resounding "yes."



And on to this week's recipe du jour. For some unknown reason, it's called Turkey with Noodles.



Now, I'm wondering exactly why this is called Turkey with Noodles, because I'm seeing a distinct lack of both turkey and noodles in this particular dish. I prefer to call it Brown and Yellow Stuff with Red Monster Blobs. There are monsters in this dish! Sure, The Card says tomatoes, but those are Red Monster Blobs, plain and simple.

Anyway, it's a big heaping bowl of crap, and that's not all - we get what may be the worst idea in the history of food, a molded Waldorf Salad (I'm sure they meant molded as in "stuck together," although I tend to think of it as "full of mold"), and while we get to see some way-too-fluffy cornbread on the table, The Card doesn't mention cornbread and says we must also have buttered peas and pumpkin pie. Give me the pie, and I'll go eat it in front of the TV, away from the rest of this. Those Red Monster Blobs are scaring me, frankly.

Happy Week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Hey, did I mention that my idol Alan F's little movie wowed Sundance this past week? Didn't win any awards, of course, but audiences apparently loved it and it sold for a large amount to a major studio. Wanna see a couple of clips from it? Of course you do! Go here, and you can see two.