"I was happy with his work — and even happier with his presence in the house because he was a great moral force."

Said the great writer Joan Didion about Harrison Ford, who worked as a carpenter on her beach house in 1971.

Imagine having a beach house in 1971, being 37 years old, having a 29-year-old Harrison Ford, doing carpentry work for you and experiencing him as a great moral force.

Didion was married, you should know. She married John Gregory Dunne in 1964, and they remained married until he dropped dead in 2003. I say "dropped dead" because I read "The Year of Magical Thinking," which begins with that scene.

But how was the young carpenter a moral force? Here's a little song:

"Brains Of Dying Rats Yield Clues About Near-Death Experiences."

 "Just after the rats' hearts stopped, there was a burst of brain activity. Their brain suddenly seemed to go into overdrive, showing all the hallmarks not only of consciousness but a kind of hyperconsciousness."

"We found continued and heightened activity... Measurable conscious activity is much, much higher after the heart stops — within the first 30 seconds.... That really just, just really blew our mind. ... That really is consistent with what patients report"....

I thought this was already well known, but I guess euthanizing rats and getting this data is new. Still, were the scientists' minds actually blown? Isn't this what they expected? Wouldn't it have been more mind-blowing if there hadn't been a brain activity burst — because that's what would support the supernatural interpretation of the near-death experiences reported by human beings?

IN THE COMMENTS: Hagar asks: "Why is euthanizing used as a euphemism for killing?" Yeah, euthanasia is killing to spare the animal pain. These rats were killed just to watch them die, like Johnny Cash and that man in Reno, except Johnny Cash didn't have electrodes implanted in the man's brain, nor did he seriously collect and analyze data or shake our beliefs in the existence of heaven and hell.

Strange ideas of the paranormal.

My Google alert on "roadside memorial" turned up this item at examiner.com:



I've already blogged about the underlying story (as another in my long series of posts about makeshift death-site memorials). This post is about the mistake of putting the story under the already stupid "astrology & paranormal" tag. Did somebody at the Examiner think actual ghosts — to the extent that makes any sense — were involved? Like, maybe it was some college town variation on the old "Ghost Riders in the Sky" legend:

"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a country and cowboy-style song [that] tells a folk tale of a cowboy who has a vision of red-eyed, steel-hooved cattle thundering across the sky, being chased by the spirits of damned cowboys. One warns him that if he does not change his ways, he will be doomed to join them, forever "trying to catch the Devil's herd across these endless skies."

Here's Marty Robbins singing the song. Or if you prefer: Johnny Cash. Or here it is by the singer who possesses the voice that is the first singing voice that I ever heard and thought: This is the greatest voice ever. I must have been about 4 years old at the time, considering the year that the greatest recording ever — as I saw it — came out (1955).

But back to "Ghost Riders." Here are the lyrics. I'd love parody lyrics applicable to apparitions of college-town bike riders.