Venomous Words by Jeff Oliver and Gordon Reilly

Amazing Photography, Pulse-Pounding Poetry

First and foremost, the macro photography by Gordon Reilly in Venomous Words is remarkably beautiful and oftentimes disturbing, especially given the venomous nature of so many of these subjects. The accompanying descriptions and lyrical depictions, by Jeff Oliver, of how you're going to suffer and die from some of these lovelies might make you start checking the floors, windows, and corners of your dwelling place — perhaps even under your covers before you get into bed. The close-up images of these critters convey the intricacy of nature you can rarely see with the naked eye. Venomous Words is an all-around killer.

Check out Venomous Words at Amazon.com here.

It’s Lovecraft Kind of Sky

“It was just a colour out of space.” So goes the quote in H.P. Lovecraft’s classic tale, “The Colour Out of Space,” from 1927. That was my first reaction upon seeing the western sky at sunset, about fifteen minutes ago. We’d just had a pretty good dump of rain, and when it let up, a red-pink-violet light poured in through the living room windows. I took the photo above from the front porch, and it came out pretty cool, but it fails to quite capture the other-worldly quality of the light. I have seen tornado skies any number of times, and this was much like those, only more vibrant, more pervasive. It really was kind of weird. A good many folks on Facebook in the area remarked on it as well. No doubt it’s the result of specific atmospheric conditions and the timing — right at sunset.

Or maybe it was a harbinger of doom, a foreshadowing of the return of the Great Old Ones. Either way, it was pretty cool.

After a week-long trip to Michigan, my first full day back home was both invigorating and relaxing. First thing this morning, I met a gang of august old farts (Old Robgso [a.k.a. Old Rob], Diefenbaker [a.k.a. Scott], and tbbiker [a.k.a. Todd] — the latter quite coincidentally) at the nearby Haw River State Park to hike and hunt a few new geocaches placed by friend Skyhawk63 (a.k.a. Tom). We undertook a four-mile hike under gray, occasionally drizzly skies, found four very nice caches, and brought home a crapload of mud.

For the rest of the afternoon, I took care of some estate business; watched a few episodes of Dark Shadows, which I had started from its beginning a short while back; took care of several chores; and cooked up some fabulous, very hot chicken wings for dinner. If my eyes and brain can stand it, I think I will finish out the evening making a bit more progress on Georgia: The Haunting of Tate’s Mill. It’s gonna be a busy week coming up, with house renovation, more estate business, and — hopefully — quite a bit of writing.

Be seeing you.

Marsh-a, marsh-a, marsh-a!

I see old people.

Diefenbaker, Old Rodan, and ttbiker on the hunt

Hot!

The Fungus Amungus

The world’s most dejected mushroom

Fungus is fun. I’ve always found mushrooms in the wild kind of neat, but Brugger is an honest-to-god mushroom nut. She enjoys photographing them and then making watercolor & ink paintings or mixed-media images of them. These days, whenever I go out geocaching and come upon any striking examples of ye fungus, I make sure I take a few photos of them and send them along her way. This year, the late summer/early fall mushrooms have been plentiful and, in some instances, remarkable in shape, size, and color. As I have photographed these for Ms. B., I have  found myself oddly enamored of them as well.

Yesterday at Piedmont Environmental Center in Jamestown, on a caching outing with friends Old Robgso (a.k.a. Old Rob) and Ms. Fishdownthestair (a.k.a. Natalie), I happened upon what was probably the hugest examples of fungus I have ever encountered. Big, big clusters around a huge tree, each cluster as big or bigger than three or four dinner plates. I know nothing of mushroom types or which ones are edible (so I eat none of them); only that they can be remarkably photogenic. I am including a few shots here. You try not to eat these. Very bad.

The Fungi From Yuggoth, perhaps?

More Yuggothians!

Happy mushrooms! No sign of dejection whatsoever.

More happy little dudes

A mini-mushroom forest

A pretty parasol!

L: There's a nose on that tree! R: Little dudes wearing floppy hats

It’s another Tequila Sunrise

Amanita is the name they call her.

Ma & Pa Shroomie with the young'uns