Do you need hymns and prayers? I do! Boy howdy, I do.
Requested by Erlene: Before Your Throne, sung by Dallas Holm. Listen… and be at peace.
Year: 2024
Cats ‘N’ Birds So Happy Together
Domestication is wonderful. It allows animals to do things they wouldn’t dream of doing in the wild. But here the birds do them with impunity, perfectly sure they won’t be eaten.
Now if only someone could find a way to domesticate human beings…
Oops! Where Are the June Taylor Dancers?
Jambo! Byron the Quokka here again, confessing to an oversight.
You will have noticed that the June Taylor Dancers have not been credited for their part in Hoppy & Soppy. My bad! But I do have an excuse: in this episode, the Dancers don’t dance! Instead, they’re the ones having a chariot race in the background.
This mistake has eroded our credibility! And cheesed off the June Taylor Dancers’ myriads of fans. I can’t understand what made me leave them out of the program.
Well, enjoy the chariot race: actually, it’s better than the one in Ben-Hur.
Sail-Backs Galore
Dimetrodons in The Golden Treasury of Natural History
Once upon a time there were all these weird large reptiles with sails on their backs. Dimetrodon is the best known, but there are several kinds of reptiles, unrelated, that carried “sails” on their backs.
But there was also this.
Platyhystrix wasn’t even a reptile, but an amphibian.
And the motif crops up again, in a big, big way!
Spinosaurus was one of the largest predatory dinosaurs. Dig the sail! And the contemporary vegetarian dinosaur Ouranosaurus, also carried a nice high sail.
Why does this crazy feature crop up in so many unrelated prehistoric animals? Scientists don’t agree as to what the sail’s purpose might have been. The only use they’ve ruled out is… well, sailing. Heck, it might’ve had a dozen uses.
I can’t help but think God had a use for it. I don’t see it popping again and again into the fossil record as a random response to the environment.
And then there was the head of Diplocaulus, shaped very like a boomerang…
Byron’s TV Listings, April 20
G’day, boys ‘n’ girls! Byron the Quokka here, with your weekend TV treats brought to you by Quokka University, where men are men (not mantises–people keep making that mistake).
Here are a few glaring examples:
6:30 P.M. Ch. 03 NEWS WITH BOOZE–(Pretty much what you’d expect)
Where is it written that your news anchors have to be sober when they face the camera? “Makesh the wuddayacallit easier to take, y’know whad I mean?” says reporter Mushy Groves. Tonight: Sports Anchor Sheila Kabeela takes a stiff belt of rye to get through the MLB box scores.
Ch. 15 HOPPY & SOPPY–Children’s programming
The twins (O.C. Marsh, E.D. Cope) are embarrassed by Mom’s insistence that she is General Douglas MacArthur (Heather Locklear). It’s a big problem–because she’s running for school board president! Dr. Okefenokee: Albert Smarmy. FBI agent: PeeWee Herman.
7 P.M. Ch. 24 EAT ICKY THINGS TO GET RICH AND FAMOUS!–Exactly what it sounds like
Is there anything you won’t do for fame and money? Join host Bare-Knuckles Blake as he puts the hapless contestants through their paces. “Degrading! Shameful!” are among the more often used descriptive terms. This week (Forget about it! I refuse to lower myself by devoting one more word to this travesty).
7:07 P.M. Ch. 46 MOVIE–Drama: Prenatal discretion advised
Victor Hugo stars as ace detective Gerard Manly Hopkins (whose job it is to detect aces in places where they shouldn’t be) in I’ve Got a Wombat in My Bathtub (Syrian/Etruscan, 2022: 19 minutes). See the intense bridge table scene which brought down the Hawaiian government. And that was after they cut out the bit about the octopus!
Well, that ought to get you primed for a weekend’s reveling in one-of-a-kind television!
What am I doing out here??? Byron the Quokka, signing off…
‘We Don’t Need These Robots’ (2018)
How many science fiction stories are there, that warn of the replacement of the human race by robots?
It doesn’t look far-fetched to me. Keep shootin’ up with puberty blockers and see what happens to the birth rate.
But really! Having robots play games for you, so you can brag about the games you’ve won? What profound dishonesty. No wonder we’re ruled by Democrats.
By Request, ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness’
Requested by Erlene: Great Is Thy Faithfulness, sung by the Blue Rock Mennonite Youth.
How long, do you suppose, the human race would last without God’s mercy and compassion? As the Bible tells us, they are renewed every day.
Concealed Kitties
It drove Etruscan scientists just about mad, trying to find out why cats wedge themselves into unlikely places. In fact, it’s why their civilization is no longer with us. Cat motives continue to mystify human observers.
Sanity Break: ‘You Are My Sunshine’
I just can’t do any more nooze today.
This song–You Are My Sunshine, sung by Gene Autry–is one of my earliest memories. My daddy used to sing it to me when I was a toddler and had a nightmare. He’d pick me up and rock me in his arms until I was calm enough to go back to sleep. Sometimes he’d sing Sweet Violets, but I’m already close to tears and prefer not to go any closer.
Some of those nights, he’d have to get what sleep he could because his shift at the Ford Motor plant began at 6 a.m. But that didn’t stop him from comforting his children when we needed it.
UK Thought Police Swing Into Action
“We heard you’ve been thinking wrong thoughts…”
Britain’s really going down the tubes in a hurry, isn’t it?
Two police officers, along with a National Health Service psychologist (!), “visited” a man at his home because “people”–unspecified, of course–“raised concerns about your views” (https://www.zerohedge.com/political/thought-police-home-visit-uk-man-who-expressed-anger-online-about-sydney-bishop-being).
Uh-huh. A young Muslim nut-job stabbed a bishop in Sydney, Australia, and this man, thousands of miles away in England, posted on Facebook a message, “Christians must stand up.” Apparently you’re not allowed to express outrage over the nooze anymore.
Gee. Cheesed off because a terrorist stabbed a bishop who was giving a sermon at the time–wow, you must be crazy, to have that reaction! But don’t worry, the NHS is on the job! And the police have nothing better to do: they can’t be chasing robbers and murderers when people are saying Wrong Things on Facebook.
All over this fallen world, liberty is an endangered species.