The blog network is getting a concussion, but we keep keeping on. Most importantly, am I still in the sidebar? This post should ensure I remain there a bit longer, whether it adds anything of value to the world or not. Hey, google just informed me we still have a Bee Gee too.
Mano suggested PZ get cute little grippy booties to prevent further damage to his frail corpus. What are you doing to stay alive in this benighted era? I’m trying to keep my husband’s gothery within acceptable limits, while scheming on achieving a sense of creative fulfillment in the not too distant. Will probably start posting some prose around here again, within a month or so.
I’m trying to think of a way to inflate the word count on this post. Um… survival. When I was a child, I took passing interest in the things one boyoid is meant to take interest in. I got a book on survival called, like, Survival, from the library. How to remove leeches and camouflage your bodkin whilst you sleep in enemy territory. Shit like that. It was a product of cultural Ollie North militarism, which makes me wonder how much bullshit it contained. Feeding into the idea one could be that GI Joe who lives long enough to rack up a spartanesque kill count on the faceless hordes, recruiting kids more foolish and more physically adroit than myself to enlist.
For a few months I played more “realistically” with my GI Joes before I stopped playing with them in favor of TTRPGs. Later, in high school, I had a friend who liked to amuse us all with his creative writing during lunch breaks, the future Bad Moustache Having Guy. I’m suddenly reminded he did a few stories modeled off that Hamburger Hill type Vietnam vet foolery, guys surviving by duct-taping their guts in or stapling their heads back on. I don’t remember any particular lines, just the raw idea. Thanks, BMHG. I hope your eldritch ladywife appreciates your literature as much as we did.
Alright, that will do. Stay alive, y’all.
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i got curious and looked up old acquaintances just now. none of them have any presence of note anywhere on the web. the gang fell into ignominy. goodbye fellas.
auld lang syne
ne’er!
What am I doing to stay alive in this benighted era?
Martinis, Manhattans, Mead, and whiskey and sodas.
I didn’t partake in the discussion about alcohol recently on Mano’s blog, because they right, and I’m going to keep drinking anyway.
I do take a break every once and a while and go a few weeks without drinking in order to verify that I am not developing any physiological dependency. So far, so good. Staying sober for a while elicits no physical problems. I also find that when I’m off work for more than a week my drinking drops quite a bit. But right now, by the time I get home from work, I want a drink.
The other thing I’m doing is collecting the Pyramid Books editions of The Shadow series from the 1930’s. Pyramid published reprints of 23 of the >300 Shadow novels between 1974 and 1978. They are formulaic; every character is an cardboard (deleted per ableism policy); there is a lot of implicit bigotry, sexism, and racism; and the writing is at about a sixth-grade level. But I get pleasure from reading them. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are: mind candy.
Currently on week 4 of recovering from the plague that son brought home from work. Probably covid? The lingering cough is annoying, but the dizziness and making food taste terrible is debilitating.
I really enjoyed Bad Bunny’s concert. NuevayoL is a great dance tune. IEeeyyy!! Bomba!!
I have a small collection of survival books. I’ve read all of them. I also spend regular time in the Pacific Northwest wilderness, have done so all my life. The value I get out of the books is not any specific skills, but rather awareness, so I don’t get in trouble to begin with. Started trying to instill the same in my son when he was a wee lad. After a discussion on “where would you sleep if you got lost overnight,” he went to kindergarten and told his teacher that some trees are warm blooded.
Also read any “survival” book I could get my hand on as a kid, and spent a fair amount of my youth wandering the nearby fields and forests, making snares, starting fires, weaving crude baskets, eating plants, and breaking rocks into “tools”
Anyways, interesting stuff to read as a kid, but as an adult, that “community” is full of toxic masculinity and (deleted per ableism policy). There are a few possibly useful things to learn, like starting a fire, and map/compass skills, but I think a lot is just unlearning civilized comforts, and knowing to avoid the things that will kill you quickly -mostly cold, water, exhaustion, and serious injuries in remote locations.
I’ve enjoyed Charlie’s posts about growing one’s own food and such, and there is a channel on youtube (Primitive Technology, I believe?) where some guy films himself making mud bricks and shelters, and lately even smelting tiny amounts of iron gathered from bacterial bio-films in creeks. Kinda cool.
plz take no offense to my censorious ways and thx for the comments. I’m keen on these kinds o’ tales.
I’m very slowly, and with the assistance of Mr J making marmalade. Theoretically you should do the whole job in one day, but that’s not happening in this household, and going by previous years the final product doesn’t suffer from the prolonged process. The ingredients are ready to boil up, I need to sort out (find, wash and put in the oven to warm) jars and lids, which shouldn’t be much effort as they all got put back in the boxes the marmalade lives in as each new jar was taken out. When that’s done and packed away I’ve more Sevilles to make into ginger marmalade, then there should be enough left over to make a Seville and lemon marmalade. Haven’t bought the lemons for that yet, need to see how many Sevilles I have left over first. This is all towards giving future me, Mr J and various others the pleasure of eating proper mature marmalade, it’s one of those things that gets better the longer you keep it, so when I say ‘future me etc’ I’m talking at least two years away. It’s good to have deferred pleasure waiting in the larder, how can I die when I’ve marmalade waiting to be eaten.
Well I know damn well I can still die, Big Bro that died in March three years ago left marmalade he made that January, I have a pot of his Ginger Marmalade that I haven’t opened yet. Very mixed feelings about eating it.
Jazzlet #9
Open it and eat it. That is why he made it.
Save the pot for … whatever
apologies for the policy violation.
As to that, and the general theme of this posting, I’m personally having some coping issues with my near future. I’ve no personal safety nets, and am about to get hit by those infuriatingly short-sighted DOGE cuts, and don’t have a lot of options available.
Pretty much looking at a fifty-fifty split twixt “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Into the Wild”, and I’m having some trouble with norms and perspectives and all that. Not an intentional dig on my part, and apologies for the oversight and splashdamage, for what its worth…
doge has definitely breathed down the neck of my household as well, and if we’re unlucky enough to have that axe fall, we are in extremely bad shape extremely fast. no need to make excuses. as i’ve mentioned before, i’m the last fool standing on anti-ableism-in-language policies. we live in times that make one want to scream “stupid” and “crazy” from the highest hills. but for the time being, i’m hewing to that old-time sjw religion for a lil longer. just totally no judgement against people who draw their own lines differently, i merely put a wee stamp upon yer comment and let the rest of its glory stand.
good luck avoiding into-the-wilding. i had a coworker and veteran who went rambo and shot a park ranger before he was found face-down in a creek missing a shoe.
wow do i hafta post again already, to stay in the sidebar? no time. gonna risk a fall.
You could do a post about country-western music lyrics.
My current ear-worm is “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.”.
I don’t know why it’s there but I am considering a lobotomy.
Help me
the four hungry children in that song always turn into four hundred children in my ears
kenny’s all like
“u painted up ur lips
and put on your fakest hair
bébé r u contemplatin’
goin’ out somewhere?”
“four hundred children”
jeebus
and Cletus is wundrin why she left???
Bébé #16
Well. Are you?
I don’t recommend. They(tm) are predicting snow here.
™
it’s alright kenny, i won’t take my love to town. put away the shotgun.