Category: OCF

Dunwich in the Time of Mud

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Spring has arrived with its endless supply of muck and slop and just in time with it the town has gone topsy turvy.  Revolution has broken out.  The Old Guard and the Young Turks are having a set to and I’m caught in the middle.  I’ll be working more and making a little extra money but being of an extremely lazy nature I’d prefer the opposite.  But there are some interesting aspects to this turn of events.  New England town democracy in action is a bizarre force to observe.  The fact that the Old Guard is putting up a fight is almost unheard of in this neck of the woods.  I’ll have a ringside seat for the proceedings so it may make an interesting story when all is said and done but I expect that much angst and hard feelings will spill over into everyday life.

But at the same time, it will also cut into my blogging time, in fact it already has.  And on top of that I’ve mended my ways and now have begun applying myself to my fiction writing.  I cranked out four thousand words over the last three days and that has also cut into my posting.  But that’s all to the good.  The story is expanding and becoming more interesting.  I’ve definitely decided to nuke my hero’s base at some point.  I mean what’s a science fiction story without an atom bomb somewhere?  No one calls them atomic bombs anymore.  It’s nuke this and nuke that.  Thermo-nuclear.  Who came up with that name?  Thermo- implies heat.  Are there any cold nuclear explosions?  I guess if they ever figure out an actual cold fusion process, we could talk about it but anyway I think I’m going to nuke my base.

I’ve had to write some personal scenes into the book.  The hero gets to see his family for the first time in a long while and there are grandkids and his son’s widow and that was tricky.  I think I did alright which surprised me.  I’m not a very touchy feely kinda guy but I could see that leaving out his relationship with his family felt fake.  So, there you go, human interest.  What’s next, an Oprah interview for our hero?  I’ve even added an AI character.  That’s actually kind of fun.  It’s funny once you get going these things kind of write themselves in.  Anyway, the story is percolating along.

But all this stuff really just enhances the blogging.  You can’t just write about national stories all the time.  It’s just too much of the same thing.  We’ve got to be in the story too, or what’s the point?  I could just listen to Tucker Carlson or some other talking head.  That’s why I like when some of the guest contributors have something to add.  I like to get some other angles on things and I’m sure that’s the same with everybody else.

I think the whole Trump indictment story is both a ridiculous joke and at the same time an important object lesson.  It’s important that everyone on our side realize that this is not our country anymore and it doesn’t work by the rules we were told apply.  The people in charge change the rules as needed.  They don’t play fair and they play as rough as needed.  And if the January 6th prisoners aren’t enough to convince you of that just wait till Donald Trump gets his treatment.

So anyway, busy, busy, busy but still keeping my nose to the grindstone.  Wow, that sounds painful!

20MAR2023 – Spring Equinox – The Canada War

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A work day and a writing day.  Having added a couple of thousand words to my story I felt extremely virtuous.  So, I looked at the headlines to see what I had missed.  Yikes!

What I saw was plenty of panic over the bank failures and the subsequent actions of the Fed and the other central banks.  The narrative is that the Fed and the regulators are going to thread the needle by raising the prime rate enough to keep inflation from igniting but save the banks from imploding by trading their underwater bonds for new ones.  Now of course the bond swaps will be wildly inflationary but the thought is if we just keep pumping cash into the banks it will keep the economy from imploding.  What could go wrong with that?  I’m thinking of converting all my assets into Doritos, the only known commodity that never loses its value and that all people recognize as cash.

Meanwhile the MSM is beginning to get interested in the reports of the Biden family receiving Chinese influence peddling payments, and even CNN admitting on the air that “this doesn’t look good.”  So, what can Mumbley Joe do?  Well, he says it ain’t so.  But nobody believes that.  So, he starts yelling about “assault weapons.”  But nobody even blinks an eye anymore at that ploy.  So, what’s a grifter to do?  I assume he’ll try to wag the dog.  He’s wanted to get the Russian oil and gas but it turns out the Russians have guns and aren’t afraid of rainbow flag waving soldiers.  Plus, it turns out they still have those nukes.  Not good.

My guess is he’ll try for a safe war.  Maybe he’ll invade Canada.  They’ve got oil and gas just like the Russians but no nukes and they’re kind of light in the loafers, especially that Trudeau guy.

I mean, it’s a great idea.  This will be easier than that famous standoff with Corn Pop.  And he could look tough while doing it.  All it needs is a cool name like Operation Desert Storm had.  Maybe Operation Arctic Blast or Operation Great White North or Hey Ya Hosers!  And this would give General Milly Vanilly a chance to actually win at something.  All he’d have to do is have his tranny division roll into Ottawa and de-pants Trudeau and demand he surrender to the obvious justice of a (nominally) heterosexual man groveling before transgender soldiers demanding his country relinquish their harmful fossil fuels to a higher power.

It makes sense to me.  It can be a form of reparations for the slaves that the white people of Canada never got around to having but probably thought about.  Maybe Gavin Newsom could get involved.  His state is looking for $65 billion dollars for reparations and right now the Silicon Valley guys are kind of tapped out.  Maybe Joe can give him a cut of the plunder from the Canada war.

You know I really like the idea of the Canada war.  We can’t lose (probably) and we can sell off parts of Canada to the rest of the world which will give us enough money to keep our economy afloat long enough to get Joe Biden re-elected in 2024.  No, this is good.  This is the real thing.  I’ve got to call up Biden and get his people working on this.  I wonder what my cut should be?  Ten percent?

Thoughts After a Hectic Week

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Just a busy, busy week.  Last Thursday we had a town political event that kept me tied down for a couple of days.  Then this week we had three days of a “winter storm” which was half snow and half rain and had to be shoveled by hand which, honestly, is kind of fun but eats up a lot of time.  And today I had to pay the piper or rather let my accountant do my taxes which turned out rather well.  A few thousand dollars will come back to me from state and federal governments and the peasants will rejoice (huzzah!).

But it’s kind of kept me from being on top of events and also significantly interfered with both fiction writing and blogging (booo!).  But I hope we’re now past most of the problems.  The forecasts I’ve seen for the remainder of March and the beginning of April seem more spring-like than wintery and I don’t foresee any major disruptions to my very carefully planned laziness by the forces of entropy.  But who knows.  C’est la guerre.

But enough complaining.  All of this is a long-winded way of saying, “I’m back.”

And I guess a thing that’s worth discussing is the depths to which Blue-State politics infects even Republican party policy with woke madness.  I heard from an official that a plurality of Republican officials voted to empower a committee to select candidates for public office on the basis of race and sexual orientation.  Supposedly the fact that only a small number of voters were present saved the party from having to accept the results of this vote but think of that.  If even the Republicans are now choosing representation by the diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense then what chance is there to have our side of things heard at all?

What the official told me is that the Republicans from the larger towns and cities feel compelled to toe the line coming from people who are obviously not even Republicans.  But with such supermajorities among the voting population, they’ve been emboldened to send ringers in to infiltrate the Republican party and essentially take it over.

So what does that tell you about the trajectory of Blue State politics?  Well, think of it now as an echo chamber inside of an echo chamber.  These northeastern states will soon be vying with California for being beholden to state worker unions but without California’s Silicon Valley tax base.  It’s already the case that the teacher’s union dictates the state budget process and because of this the pension liabilities estimated for the retiring baby boomers will very shortly make a balanced budget impossible.

If there were a responsible administration, they would be looking at this coming tidal wave and calculating how to restructure this debt and also rein in the pay and benefit packages to something that would be sustainable.  But the current administration wouldn’t dare do this.  So, we’ll be going over Niagara Falls without the barrel.

Now the smart thing to do is get out of Dodge.  But unfortunately, I’m tied down by family necessity so I’ll be getting a ring side view of the whole sickening spectacle and probably will be rendered penniless and homeless into the bargain.  But such is life.

And it will probably give me endless stories of death and destruction with which to amuse my readers.  Huzzah again!

But the whole reason for this cautionary tale is that creeping socialism is a disease for which there is no cure.  Amputation of the gangrenous appendage is the only treatment.  With that in mind the healthy Red States should think long and hard how they can inoculate themselves from the kind of citizens who inhabit these Blue States.  Government employee unions must be kept from exerting power over the legislation by whatever means are necessary and things like welfare must be minimized to avoid the situation you see where homelessness and drug addiction begins to dominate in the large cities.  And they should do this as a group , coordinating their efforts and sharing information.

Well, that’s enough for now.  How’s that for some gloom and doom for a Thursday.

Tax Day!

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One for you nineteen for me!

So that dreaded day has arrived.  Today I gather up my forms and receipts and other documents and bring them to the accountant and get whatever news there is to hear.  Will I owe money?  Of course.  Will the government make my life worse?  Of course.

But it’s a ritual.  There’s a purifying aspect to the whole thing.  I stopped doing it myself when the IRS first began plaguing me.  That time it turned out they owed me money but it took a real accountant to figure that out and I didn’t want to leave myself open to the mercy (!) of the federal government.

I’ll be back later and hopefully I’ll be in a mood to write.  One for you, nineteen for me.

Dunwich in Crisis or at a Crossroads or Something or Other that Starts With a C

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Cthulhu

The partisan divide that has attended the upcoming Witch Burning Referendum has ripped away the illusion of civility and civic spirit here in Dunwich.  The latest flashpoint has been a state commission’s report that witch burning as currently practiced, falls afoul of Arkham’s stringent state greenhouse gas emissions standards.  The review has declared that from now on witches will have to be burned using solar power.

An opinion solicited by the First Selectman from the leading solar energy researcher at Miskatonic University, Professor Nehemiah Scrimshaw was obtained by this newspaper and a few of his conclusions were:

  • There are only 0.00035 seconds of usable sunlight in Dunwich per month.
  • In order to fully oxidize an average sized witch in that window of time, a magnifying glass with a diameter of 10,000 miles would be needed and this device would weigh in at 6.9 X 1023 tons and would require an enormous nuclear power plant to power the servo motors to maintain the focusing function correctly.
  • The professor also estimated that it would require forty or fifty years to obtain the needed licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and until the licensing was in effect no witch burnings would be permitted at all.

Parenthetically, the professor remarked that since the mass of the magnifying device would be approximately a hundred times the mass of the Earth the actual means by which the device would be manufactured and tethered to Dunwich was unachievable using current human science and engineering.  But he did say it posed an interesting thought experiment for his current graduate students.

We tried to reach First Selectman Cthulhu for comment but the reporter we sent has gone missing.  Our eye in the sky OCF traffic copter was able to spot the First Selectman as he bee-lined for the state capital in Arkham.  Based on the debris field in his wake it is estimated that not much will remain of the state house or most of the downtown area of Arkham.  But it seems this will put to rest the question of state environmental permitting and also state government in general for that matter.

It is worth noting that the anti-witch burning party has within the hour disbanded its headquarters, erased its Facebook and Twitter pages and from what we can tell left town heading south at a good clip.  And in fact, there was a goodly caravan of pro-witch citizens joining them.  The Town Clerk’s office has described the results of the referendum (which was supposed to occur tomorrow) as completed, audited and certified to have been unanimous to extend witch burning to 24/7/365.  And the other selectmen have hurriedly and unanimously passed an appropriation for fifty tons of the first Selectman’s favorite bath salts.

At press time it was noted that on his return from the state capital the First Selectman detoured to pass through the campus of Miskatonic University and it is now believed that Professor Scrimshaw has retired from active teaching and also, sadly, from breathing.  But he’ll always be remembered for his remarkable lack of a sense of self preservation.

Hell Week Begins Well

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Cthulhu

Work, work.  Work, work, work.  As stated earlier this week will be very busy.  But not as bad as previously imagined.  Today was surprisingly reasonable.  Good.

CPAC established that Donald Trump is still the primary candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.  It’s not clear to me how Ron DeSantis and the GOP establishment will deal with that.  And honestly, I don’t much care.  As the Z-Man likes to say the Democrats have “fortified democracy” in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Michigan.  It probably won’t allow for Republicans to win in those states anymore.  Or at least not until cannibalism breaks out pretty convincingly in those places.

The other stuff in the news is relatively tame.  Bakhmut is about to fall in Ukraine but the billions keep flowing to Zelenskyyyyyyyyy and company.  East Palestine Ohio has disappeared from the headlines but Mayor Pete will now be dressed as the construction worker instead of the policeman whenever YMCA is played during pride month.  Mumbles Biden is no longer even trying to fashion coherent sentences or even use actual words.  His utterances look like the gibberish that science fiction writers used to make their alien creatures spew.  Long strings of zees and exes intermingled with random vowel sounds.  You know; izzichthizzzzexxxx zeep seep eeeee!  It’s funny.  I think every single Democrat president has been worse than his predecessor since all the way to Jimmy Carter.

But with Biden we’ve somehow taken a horrible giant step change to something much worse.  We now have a president that is so repellant in all his aspects that you begin to wonder if it will be possible to surpass or even equal him in awfulness.  I was thinking of Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg and after review I think Biden has either of them beat.  Sure, Kamala is stupider than Joe but for all of the horrible things she had to do to get to where she is, she can’t compare to the depravity and dishonesty that Joe just radiates.  And the same goes for Mayor Pete.  Sure, Pete’s a pathetic excuse for a man.  But Joe is just plain loathsome.  Just look at what he’s done to his son and daughter.  He belongs in the asylum where they keep people like Hannibal Lecter.  Even Lecter would ask to be moved to a better cell if Joe were his neighbor.

I don’t know.  Maybe there is someone even more horrible waiting in the wings.  Is Caligula about to be reincarnated?  Could Rasputin have survived the various assassination attempts and somehow survived to end up in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just to outdo Biden?  Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.

But all of this is just misdirected anger.  It is America that is broken.  Regardless of whether we blame the evil party or the stupid party or both, we must confess that our political system doesn’t work anymore.  It’s been gamed.  We are owned by the public servants who run the intelligence agencies and the Congress.  And they are on the payroll of the corporations that cash in on the various government contracts, programs and monopolies.  The weapons manufacturers, the drug companies and the tech companies work hand in hand with the regulators, the federal agencies and the Congress to keep the gravy train going and us under their heels.

Sure, this is probably how it’s been for the last century but things have accelerated.  Running the United States isn’t enough anymore.  They want the whole planet.  And to make that work we aren’t needed.  In fact, we won’t be tolerated.  We’re in the way and they know what to do about that.  We’re going to be downsized out of existence.  And not slowly.  Active measures are being taken and they don’t even have to pretend it’s not so.  Accuse them of trying to get rid of the middle class and they just shrug their shoulders and say, “So?”

And maybe they can get away with all of this.  Most of the people in the limelight don’t seem particularly smart or strong.  But maybe the people really calling the shots are.  Maybe they’ll win because they are smarter than us.  And if they succeed in dominating China and Russia then maybe their system will overshadow the planet.  What a thought; rainbow flags as far as the eye can see and transgender armies goose stepping in front of the Kremlin.

But just accepting all this seems weak.  I think it’s worth resisting.  Wouldn’t it be great to find out that they really aren’t that smart!  Maybe it’s just the stupid party helping them win.  And maybe, just maybe, we’ll find some smart people on our side.  Okay, that’s enough for a Monday in hell week.  We return you to the horror show already in progress.

06MAR2023 – OCF Update – Dunwich’s Annual Zombie Roundup

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Cthulhu

This week will be extremely busy here in Dunwich.  It’s time for the annual zombie roundup.  We herd the zombies into the common and cut them in half at the waist.  This makes them much slower but grosser looking. And it provides a sort of spring barbecue for First Selectman Cthulhu.  He calls it drumstick week.

But it’s a tricky operation and will keep me busy for the whole week.  I’ll do my best to provide content but there are bound to be gaps.  We’ll see if there are any big things going on in the world.  But I’ll be busy enough even if it’s a boring week for the rest of the world.

Well gotta make the drumsticks.

Another Snippet from My Book

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I’ve been trying to speed up my writing but there’s always something distracting me.  but I thought it would be fun to post a little part of a scene.

“After the meeting, Director Sparks called Chastain and told him to meet him at Sparks’ temporary office in the Pentagon.  When Chastain arrived Sparks briefed him.  “We can’t play around anymore.  I’ve been given unlimited resources to catch this man.  I want you to act as the lead.  There will be three separate teams.  One will investigate the physical evidence at the Hoover building site to figure out what the hell we’re up against.  The second team will pursue the cyber trail of whoever released the video.  That leak must be plugged.  But most important, the third team will find Boghadair.  You will have first priority on all the surveillance infrastructure, public and private.  You can write a blank check for whatever you need but I want that man in custody within the week.  If not, your head is on the block.  And that’s not a joke.  If Boghadair isn’t in shackles in a week from today you’re done.”  Chastain bit back some bitter words and said, “Okay, I’ll need a command center with a room where I can crash; bed, shower, kitchen.  Tell me the cost center numbers I can charge to and give me the contact information for my three team leads.  I’ll find Boghadair for you or you can have my job.  But I wonder what else I’ll find.  Apparently, this thing is a lot bigger than one man.”

Sparks handed him a briefcase.  “All the documents are on a drive.  There’s a folder with all the contact information and the codes you need to access the databases and the systems you’ll need.  I also want a list of government officials that Boghadair might target and conjecture on the order of attack.  I want that list by tomorrow morning.”  Chastain nodded his head.  Sparks growled, “That’s all.”  And Chastain left the office and walked out of the building.  As he was leaving the building he thought, “You’re at the top of that list you fool.”

As Director Sparks left his temporary office that night that very idea occurred to him.  He was headed home to a gated community in one of the most expensive suburbs of Washington.  And he was scared.  He decided to travel back to his home by a different route.  Taking this circuitous route and seeing no cars following him he slowly calmed down and by the time he was within a mile of his home he felt foolish about his fears.  When he was caught at a red light that usually never changed on him he was a little confused.  Then he noticed that the video display on his dashboard shifted from the typical menu view to a video feed.  He could see a man in the driver’s seat of a car.  After a second or two he realized he was looking at an image of himself.  He was for a second stunned and by the time he comprehended his peril the bullet was already entering the side of his head.  When his foot slipped off the brake his car rolled into the intersection and was struck by traffic going through the intersection.  The local police were on the scene rather quickly and alerted the FBI based on the car’s license plate number.  Late that night the report reached George Chastain and his first thought was, “I guess I should let the Attorney General know he’s next on the list.””

Gee, it’s fun killing bad guys.  It just feels right.  Well, on to the Attorney General.

February in Dunwich Came in Like a Lamb and Is Going Out Like a Shoggoth

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April Snowstorm

We got about six inches of wet snow last night and we’ll probably get another coupla-three-inches over the course of the day today. So, for the first time this winter I took the snow blower out and ran it around the upper driveway.  It was repaired before the winter and the foot of the housing was adjusted higher.  So now it leaves about a half inch of snow on the ground.  With dry snow this isn’t an issue but the wet stuff we got last night can gum up the works and you end up with snow compacting into slushy ice and the blower riding on top of the ice and before you know it there’s a four-inch frozen layer that you have to remove by shovel.

But honestly, I think it was enjoyable to go out and do some work.  All of this will be gone in less than a week.  All I’ve got to do is make sure I can get the cars in and out of the driveway and the rest of it will melt more or less on its own.  So I spent a couple of hours today with about half the time being shovel work on very heavy wet snow.  And I’m feeling energized because of it.

Winter is rearing its ugly head for sure.  Eight or nine inches of wet show is nothing to scorn but knowing that it won’t be lying around for three months is a big deal.  It’s three weeks to celestial spring.  Sure, we can have three feet of snow on April Fool’s Day.  It’s already been proven.  But winter has run out of time to break our backs or our spirits.

Right now, I’m looking out the balcony door at the snow sifting down through the still winter air.  It’s kind of beautiful.  I can hear the red winged black birds squawking around Camera Girl’s bird feeders.  This week hundreds of them have appeared and swarmed the area.  Maybe it’s their mating season or something.  But all the noise tells me something about the imminence of Spring.  The daffodils that appeared last week are buried in the wet snow.  But they’ve got some kind of anti-freeze in their cells that will keep them from dying.  The mallards have been wading around the pond and their ducklings will be sure to appear soon.

Around Dunwich there’s all kinds of excitement.  The budget is a shambles and we have no money.  The peasants have broken out the torches and pitchforks.  They’ll be marching to First Selectman Cthulhu’s lair soon just in time to be his first Black Sabbath feast.  In my new role as his “Least Lackey” I will be in charge of manning the barbecue sauce pumping station.  It will be my responsibility to hose down the marchers so that His Honor can swallow them quickly and enjoyably.  I hope he notes that I’ve selected the roasted garlic and lemon-flavored sauce this season.  It adds just the right touch of piquance to the flavor of what the First Selectman likes to call “Dunwich sushi.”  Oh, he’s so droll.  Who says Great Old Ones have no sense of humor?  Well, gotta go.  The snow, it calls me.