Please enjoy this week’s dramatic reading of Monday’s post: “We are simple worms, yearning to melt our permafrost”👇
Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
This one’s a real pep talk. For me, for you, for everyone. One of the things it got me thinking about—which I touch on briefly in the video—is what else will be revealed when things melt out of glaciers and permafrost. We all feel the aliens will come from the sky, but I think there are probably plenty of aliens on Earth we have yet to meet.
I also mentioned a call quadrupeds in the piece, so before you jump on me and say humans are bipeds and why are you telling the Zebras (or whichever four-legged animals you think of) to wake up, well, I’m not really. We all start out crawling. This is an example of being too subtle because most people won’t take it that way. A great case of Janeen not thinking things through in terms of the reader not being in my head and seeing what I see.
That said, I actually don’t think it matters much because I added in worms to that call too, so it still holds together however you interpreted quadruped. I think. The fact that I don’t want to actually change the word means I’m ok with how it sits. But there’s a little insight into the writing and the weighing up of word choices after it’s gone live.
EDIT: I went on a bike ride and changed my mind. Got back and changed it to bipeds. I decided that if I feel that I have to explain it, it’s too subtle and feels a bit like me trying to be too clever by half. I’ll leave the original in the audio on this post - because I think it’s good behind-the-scenes content - so only the paid folks will know it ever was thus! When it eventually makes it to Field of Streams, it will be recorded correctly.
Also, wake up quadrupeds!
Speaking of meeting (call back to first para), until next time we do, love what you love, and I’ll see you out there, making stuff.
Your Captain, Janeen 🫡
Thangs from this video episode…
👩✈️ Stories about the worm that turned1 … it’s life around!
I put a link to the New York Times story in Monday’s post, but here are some others if you get presented with a paywall:
The NPR story from a couple of days ago includes a picture of the fossilized gopher burrow. Just looks like a lump.
Video of the lil’ squigglers wrigglin’ at this one.
Some etchings of its internals at CNN and a close-up of its mouth, nom nom.
Ok, that’ll do it. You now know more than you ever wanted to know about defrosted worms.
👩✈️ Sea Monkeys
Speaking of things that wriggle, I mentioned Sea Monkeys in the video, something I used to obsess about as a kid looking in comic books. I had no idea until well into adulthood what they were.
👩✈️ X-Files - Ice episode 30-second breakdown
👩✈️ Hot Coffee Trailer
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but this was an eye-opening documentary for me when I first watched it. It’s not just about the hot coffee cast against McDonald’s. It’s about the perception of “frivolous lawsuits”
👩✈️ Dead musicians jamming
I don’t have any footage of dead musicians jamming in the afterlife, but it did get me thinking about making a supergroup. Who would I choose?
Hmm… I mean we’ve got Prince, Bowie, Aretha, Tina Turner, Elvis, John Prine, Kurt Cobain, it would be hard to pick out the list. Maybe if you did it by positions in the band?
Frontman/woman: Tina Turner
Between Tina and Aretha, it had to go to Tina for me in this particular band.
Lead Guitar: Prince
I was gonna choose Hendrix, but if you put Prince in as guitarist, you’re double dipping on singing/songwriting/musicianship and I think he and Tina would be a hellavuh duo.
Bass: John Entwistle
This one was hard because I couldn’t think of any—but then I remembered Lemmy was a bassist. And then I read something where he mentioned John Entwistle and it became obvious that’s who it should be.
Drums: John Bonham
That is… a weird group, Janeen. Yeah, but I’d go see ‘em. Sounds like it could be wild.
Who would be in your supergroup? Let me know in the comments
👩✈️ Worm poetry
Update: I completely forgot to put the poem the worm poem is based on!
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Thanks for listening/watching/being and sharing pieces of your brain with the world in whatever form. If I missed anything you were curious about, leave a comment.
Do something great this weekend. Do something great your whole life if you can.
Do. Make. Be.
🫡
The Worm that Turned was a Two Ronnies bit when I was a kid. I had absolutely no recollection of it beyond the dramatic delivery of the line “The worm that turned” and I just looked it up and… I don’t know if it’s positive or negative.
“The Worm That Turned was set in a nightmarish future Blighty — 2012 to be exact — and one in which women have gained the upper hand. The once-fairer sex rule the country, and have forced the traditional male and female gender roles to be completely reversed. Men are essentially under curfew, oppressed and subjugated with women’s names, nasty frocks and — even worse — forced to do the housekeeping.”
The female secret police that ruled were a bit… Nazi-like. Femenazis? I sort of want to watch it again to see what they were trying to say. It could go either way!
Behind the Streams, Ep 19: "Worms"