TV commercials have been promoting The Savannah, a new Theme Park Condominium Complex. I suppose it'd be exciting to live in a theme park, although I'd hope you didn't have to navigate the rope bridge across the turtle pond every day, even just for fetching milk and tortilla chips from the convenience store. I hope the cartoons of animals aren't promising animatronic wild beasts within the community gates, because that would make the experience too much like a Michael Crichton novel.
In further lousy news, Jerry Juhl has died. He was one of the head writers for The Muppet Show, as well as for Muppet projects from Sesame Street through to Muppets In Space. Notably, he's credited with -- alongside puppeteer Dave Goelz -- making Gonzo change from the one-joke initial idea into the Muppet everybody wanted to be, after Fozzie and Rowlf.
A couple of reptilian lanterns now. One's a dragon of some kind, with an enormous tail and a rather appealing color scheme. Also in a small pond -- with a precariously narrow trail of black rocks leading across, making a shortcut that's both irresistible and dangerously overcrowded during Lantern Festival nights, to the point I'm amazed I've not heard about anybody falling in -- was a huge serpent, reaching several dozen feet long. It's poised right on the water, making one really appreciate waterproof electric cables. A different angle gives a better view of the terrain, and the surrounding electric frogs. They're the same lanterns; that just shows how weird the camera will process the challenging internally-lit objects at night in a humid atmosphere, and how Photoshop cleaning up levels and contrast will make further variations.
Trivia: Auguste Comte's reform ``Calendrier Positiviste'' dedicated October to the abstract concept of women, and the concrete person of William Shakespeare. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, E.G. Richards.
Currently Reading: The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick: How a Spectacular Hoax Became History, Peter Lamont.