Category: OCF

Meet the Breeder

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner

I am a profoundly lazy man.  Disrupting my routine for onerous activities is highly disagreeable to me.  But Camera Girl possesses super powers that no one else in the world has.  At the utterance of a word, I will move heaven and Earth to keep her happy.  So as promised today I crossed beyond the reasonable boundaries of time and space so that she could meet with the breeder of her new puppy.  And there was much joy and rejoicing for Camera Girl and for me, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, because I know what lies before me.  But as a veteran husband in good standing, I know that a happy wife makes for a happy life.  Well, at least if the wife is a good one.

But I fully realize that this new addition to the household will wreak havoc with my peace of mind.  It’s bound to do many things that will irk me.  It will chew and destroy many of my possessions.  It will inevitably decide that my feet are the chew toys that it will choose to embed its pin sharp baby teeth in.  And without a doubt it will pee on anything I leave around within its sphere of control.  This will not be easy.  But it must be done.  So off we went to the breeder’s.

Now all dog breeders are crazy people.  This is indisputable fact.  But the level and type of insanity varies greatly within the group.  And the breeder we met with today was a very benign case and also a very nice woman to boot.  She had kids and grandkids and even sounded like a conservative based on her statements about crime and punishment that came out incidentally while we conversed.  I guess whenever I speak to someone some of my preferred topics bleed into the conversation unintentionally.  But hearing it did make the conversation more pleasant.

And when we met the little whelp, it would have taken a heart of stone not to smile at the sight of this floppy eared furball cradled on Camera Girl’s lap while she petted and crooned at the diminutive canine.  She smiled and carried on with the breeder about all their opinions about this type of dog and all the qualities real and imaginary that they imbued them with.  She was ecstatic.

Now this is directly linked to our granddaughter’s entry into kindergarten yesterday.  Camera Girl has been in a period of mourning over the loss of her time with this little girl.  Her maternal instinct was crying out for something to mother.  Well, in my book a puppy isn’t a child.  But it is a surrogate for one.  It is small, helpless and needs mothering so if this creature can transition her through the maturing of her grandchildren from babies to school children, then so be it.  I’m on board.

And it’s definitely better than the Belgian Giant rabbit that she was earlier proposing.  That would have seen me trundling all winter out in the snow to feed, clean and water said rabbit.  And when all is said and done a dog is a hundred times better than a rabbit.  And a Belgian one at that!

So, I spent all of today travelling back and forth to wilds of northern New England on this quest and a return journey will be necessary in the next week or so to pick up the little refugee not to mention the thousands of dollars needed to purchase, medicate, vaccinate and equip it for life at the Compound.

But it’s short money.  The good will I’ve already purchased is priceless.  Suddenly I’m the conquering hero.  I’ve made all her dreams come true.  Of course, it won’t last forever but for at least the next year she’s got a project that will energize and satisfy her feminine instincts.

And I won’t have to deal with some stupid Belgian rabbit.  Take that Brussels!

IT HAS ALL BEEN SAID

photog Current Events, Movie Reviews, My Fiction, OCF, OCF Classic Movie Reviews, photog's Corner, Photography, Reviews

I’ve looked over my output for the last year.  It’s all the same thing.  It’s all been said.  I can’t say it again.

At this point talking about what needs to be done has very little value.  So, I’ll talk about things that I find interesting.  Maybe it’ll be technology or science or photography or science fiction or maybe it’ll be some current event that I think is noteworthy.  I’ll try to keep the outrage over Biden’s atrocities to a minimum since we all know they’re coming and talking about them doesn’t really accomplish anything.

If I see something happening that is progress, that’ll be discussed.  For instance, the red state governors sending illegal aliens to sanctuary cities worked!  It struck a nerve, it discombobulated them.  It was successful and that is newsworthy and worth discussion.  And if someone has some original and thought-provoking theory on how the world will be changing in the future and I think it’s worth discussing I might link to it and put in my two cents.

As I get a chance to make some progress on my sf book, I’ll probably put a few chunks of it up for comment.  And I’ll start doing more reviews of movies and books.  But banging on the “something must be done” drum has gotten too dull.  I’m preaching to the choir and the choir will start heading for the doors soon.

Things will be changing but hopefully folks will still find stuff here that they find interesting and worthwhile.  So, my daily announcement that the sky is falling has been cancelled and instead I’ll leave something entertaining.

 

22AUG2023 – Scenes from a Family Gathering

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,
Christmas Cooking, Sony A7 III, Sony 90mm f\2.8 macro lens

Driving from a rural area toward a megalopolis is almost always a frustrating experience.  The closer you get to the heart of darkness, the worse the traffic becomes and the more likely it is that you will accidentally cross the event horizon and be sucked in, never to break free of the bumper-to-bumper traffic of the black hole collapse.  Or so it seems to me.

By comparison driving in the reverse direction, away from the beast, feels like a continuously increasing sense of relief as the road and the entrances become less and less congested and the craziest of the homicidal drivers are left behind or at least no longer have the traffic density needed to ensure maximum mayhem.

Now all of that was true yesterday as I arrived and departed from the party that I travelled to.  But despite the tension of defying the human density gradient around the suburbs of Gotham City I was sorry that the party couldn’t have been extended indefinitely.

Everything about the gathering was congenial.  It was almost the entire family.  And that’s no mean feat.  We are many and we are scattered much more than in the past.  And Sunday is a tough day for travelling.  Saturday being the optimal day to allow for recovery before work resumes.

And everyone there was splendidly sociable.  The talk was the usual mixture of family events, politics, current events and reminiscing about crazier things and planning for crazier things.  And I learned things that I had never known about people I know very well.  And I saw what the youngest generation is starting to look like when they socialize.  And despite all the dire warnings and predictions they seemed quite healthy and normal.

Of course, food is always a highly important component of one of these shindigs and the hostess was extremely wise in her choices and provisioning.  There were several completely different themes with respect to the menu and there was never any danger of running out of the favorites which is always comforting.  I will admit that I no longer make the impact on the buffet table that I used to.  And that is necessary.  I wouldn’t have survived my former exploits as a trencherman.  But I still grazed high and low and tried a bit of everything.  Wonderful.

But the highlight is when the old bulls stagger into a corner, collapse into a circle of chairs and start pontificating about what’s wrong with the world and what we should do about it.  And eventually we come to agreement that things are going to go to hell no matter what we say or do and then we come to agreement that at least the world has us in it to make it a world worth living in.  Now this was what I remember when the old bulls were my father’s and my grandfather’s generations laying down the law and telling us what was wrong with my generation.  And now, heaven help me, I’m at my grandfather’s age and making my last speeches before shuffling off the stage permanently.  What a strange thing time is.

And just in time the cake and coffee are served and we lapse into a warm glow of caffeine and pastry ingredients.  And all too soon it’s time to go.  We need to leave before it’s too late to make the drive back.  But of course, there is at least a half hour of goodbyes, to each and every one.  Back slapping and hugs and hand shakes for one and all and then last-minute details remembered and plans for the next gathering.  And then we’re on the road and headed home.  But the glow from the party is still with us.  We talk about what we’ve heard and seen.  We talk about those who couldn’t make it and those who are gone.  But it’s all a happy feeling.  A good feeling.

The country and the world have gone straight to hell.  There’s no denying it.  But good things still exist.  And the best of those things is family, is the humanness of family.  The ties that bind and the hope for a future and the precious, priceless treasure of the young in our midst.

The world is not all ruin and depravity.  There is hope.  And I can see it when we get together.

20AUG2023 – The Last Gasp of Summer 2023

photog Bigus Macus, Current Events, Guest Contributors, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, TomD ,

Camera Girl and I journey today to the southernmost border of New England where the smoldering ashes of what was once Gotham City color the horizon with a somber palette.  But we will be celebrating family and life and all that stuff.  This week will be Camera Girl’s greatest challenge.  She will be besieged by teeming hordes of berserk descendants desperately trying to fend off thoughts of the impending school year.

It will take all her powers to occupy these desperate young’uns and divert their attention from the impending horror.  Of course it will really help if somehow we can avoid torrential rains for the week.  That will provide us with so many more options for activities than being stuck in the house with the boob tube and my feeble wits.

But once the week is complete, it really will be fall.  And it’s been a very strange summer.  So much rain and so little sun has destroyed the vegetable garden.  Other than some tomatoes and what looks to be a decent crop of eggplants it has been a disaster.  I think we’ve gotten one zucchini and so far no butternut squash.  And while we’ve gotten a few red razzberries from the plants I put in last year and the plants have increased and spread, I can hardly say they have been a success yet.

And as far as the blueberries, whereas I managed to get a few handfuls of berries last year, this year the birds perfected their technique of picking the fruit precisely before I myself judged them ripe enough to eat.  And it was a bumper crop.  I guess if I’m really serious about eating any of this fruit I’ll have to start using netting over the plants.  Who am I kidding?  I’m too lazy to do that.

And likewise, the rain put a serious dent into the flowers in the yard.  The butterfly bush died back to the ground because of the lack of snow cover during the coldest part of the winter.  It sprouted from the roots eventually but was a mere shadow of its size and bloomed very late.  And many other plants were late and stunted.  The only pleasant surprise was the Inula helenium (elecampane)  that I put in last year.  The stalks were seven feet tall and there were plenty of bright yellow flowers.

Also there were very few butterflies this year.  Probably the sparse snow cover again.  Well, complaining won’t do any good so best to just move on.  I’ll just chalk it up to experience and hope that this year we get more snow.  Wait, more snow?  What am I saying?  Oh well.

So fall in Dunwich is a busy time for me.  We’ll be pretending to re-elect First Selectman Cthulhu which is always a painful process involving the loss of several bureaucrats in his entourage when he becomes aggravated and therefore hungry.  My part in the process is also, let us say, delicate.  I’m required by tradition and statute to second the motion for his unanimous re-election by acclaim.  If I hesitate by more than a split second after the original motion is exclaimed my fate will be sealed.  Therefore I have perfected the “echo method.”  As the motion is being spoken I echo the words coming out of his mouth almost simultaneously.  It sort of sounds like that scene in the movie “Pride of the Yankees” where Gary Cooper is saying, “But today … today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”  And so I can keep each word going just that little time extra needed to detect the last word and begin my sentence without any noticeable pause.  Actually quite ingenious.  It’s quite remarkable what fear can do for your IQ.

Well, it’s time to get going.  The sun is shining and nothing has burned down or exploded in the news yet so I can wish everyone a nice day with at least the hope that it’s possible.  Adios amigos.

 

Updates

Bigus Macus

It was down in the mid-sixties with low humidity this morning in Hampton Roads. It will be hotter tomorrow, but I’m ready for Autumn to start. I’m getting the fireplace cleaned and inspected this week and I need to cover the firewood for the start of the season.

TomD

Meanwhile, down here in the Florida Panhandle, fall hasn’t yet appeared on the distant horizon as we’re looking at a white hot week: in the 100’s with saturating humidity. It has been like this for a month, there is a big and stable high pressure system camped out in the middle of the country.

What we need is a tropical storm to come through and bust this weather stasis up. A similar pattern seems common in late summer and will just stay until pushed out by a big system.

Unlike California, tropical storms are common enough down here as to not overly upset us.

A few years ago, I decided to see what it would be like to ride my road bike (bicycle) in a tropical storm (wind only at that time). At one place where there’s about a 100’+ 5% grade hill to climb, the wind was pushing me up the hill at over 20 mph.

bianchi.jpg
bianchi.jpg

07AUG2023 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF, Uncategorized , ,

I’ll be out and about this morning.  I must venture outside of Dunwich’s accursed borders.  Like everyone else I’m a creature of circumstance and must get some things done.  But I’ll be back to work this afternoon and I’m sure to provide brilliance and mirth aplenty when I reapply my shoulder to the wheel and my nose to the grindstone.

In the meantime I provide this classic tune for your listening pleasure.

03AUG2023 – Make a Start, Make a Start

photog Current Events, OCF , ,

So, what to write about today.  Today was a day to get back on the exercise track.  I’ve been playing around with switching up the lat-machine and barbell patterns and reintroducing the rower.  The rower tends to aggravate my back so I dropped it about six months ago but I have a theory that if I improve my form then it won’t tweak my back.  Today my back’s a little sore but I’m telling myself that it’s not bad enough to shut down the experiment.  Well, we’ll see.  I’m mixing high rep, low weight with high weight, low rep sets with the rower in between for aerobic balance.

And I know nothing about exercise or how it should be done but after starting the weights a few years ago I haven’t managed to injure myself so I’m pretty satisfied that the benefits I’ve seen justify the effort and that I should continue to do it by trial and error.

Yesterday’s red pill about the truth of the regime we’re living under was a bit of a downer.  So today I want something more upbeat.  But what?

I was thinking of reviewing the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” that I was watching last night.  It’s a movie that I watch every few years because I once worked in a boiler room sales operation that was similar to the one in the movie and I can attest to the accuracy of the portrayal but it’s such a bleak, black comedy that it would just continue the black mood I was in.  But surprisingly, the movie and my real-life experience with the dark side of the marketplace ended up having the opposite effect on me.  So instead of reviewing the movie I wanted to think about the basis of the movie.  Selling.

And this positive outlook appeared because I remembered what it was like dealing with an insane workplace reality and I remembered that the lesson I learned was that these dysfunctional places were fake.  They were diseased simulations of real things that functioned correctly.  And so, the trick was to distinguish the differences and avoid the fake.  In the film, the salesmen are selling worthless real estate to unsophisticated people.  The various salesmen use slightly different variations on a hard sales pitch that attempts to get the buyers to believe that an incredible investment opportunity existed if they would buy this land immediately.  Otherwise, the opportunity would disappear forever.

The reality of course, is that the opportunity would exist indefinitely because the supply of worthless land was inexhaustible and the value of the property was completely imaginary.  So, these salesmen had an impossible job.  They were essentially robbing people of their hard-earned savings.  And every day they had to start again from scratch because none of their buyers would ever be return customers or provide testimonials as satisfied customers.  And that is the tension in the movie.  There is a mandate to increase sales and the only difference between the successful and unsuccessful salesmen is their skill at lying.  Al Pacino’s character has an innate sense of the psychological tendencies of his “marks.”  He knows how to make buying his product an exciting experience.  He is selling himself.  The other salesmen are not as gifted.  Their patter sounds hackneyed and unconvincing.  Their appearance belies their claims that they are highly successful and providing a valuable service.  The movie shows us the evil side of selling.

But experience with the marketplace will show you that there are also people that provide the real thing.  These are people who have products that have real value.  If you need a manufactured product and must pay a large sum to have something custom made, you need to know that the manufacturer is competent and, just as important, honest.  And truth be told, the only way to know the difference between the real and the fake is by long painful experience with the marketplace.

You have to know who’s out there.  You have to have dealt with the whole gamut of vendors and manufacturers and know who now has the quality craftsmen working for him and who is no longer spending the money to keep up his quality either in terms of components or craftsmen.  And the same goes for almost any product.  There is real and fake.  And the only way to learn the difference is by knowing your craft and sometimes by painful experience.  But a part of it is knowing people.  It’s funny, but the stereotypes about the dishonest salesmen are actually true.  Most of the time you can read the conman by his patter and his facial expression.  But that’s assuming you know enough about the product you’re buying to force him to lie.

And that raises another truth.  Caveat emptor.  Don’t buy things that you can’t rate.  Understand the qualities that define the thing you’re buying.  Educate yourself.  Don’t tempt a merchant by your ignorance.

But the encouraging thing is that there are still a lot of decent people selling their products and services.  And if you do your homework, you’ll find them.  And if you don’t, you’ll get sold some underwater real estate in Florida by Al Pacino.  And you’ll deserve it.

I’ll save that review of the movie for another day.

29JUL2023 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF , ,

Hazy, hot and humid.

July!

So today I have the sixteen year old grandson here.  Now I have to up my game.  Sixteen is an island and nobody from off of that island can crack the code.  Will I have to play video games?  Do I have the reflexes do I have the brain cells left?  We’ll see.

Needless to say some part of the day will be a black out period on the site.  But I also expect the day to be shorter.  No one can expect to keep a sixteen year old’s attention except with other sixteen year olds.  But I’ll do my best.

Sixteen.  A fraught age.  At that age nothing I did involved coherent thought.  So many stupid people.  So many stupid ideas.  Just surviving the age was a minor miracle.  But that was a more forgiving age.  Social media did not exist.  All our sins and stupidities, for the most part, faded into nothingness.  Today they’ll nail you on a cross for anything or nothing.

But it’ll be good.  The torch is being passed.  With the abandonment of the European Americans by the federal government it behooves all of us to marshal our resources to boost our children and grandchildren out of the wreckage of the middle class and give them a fighting chance.  And just letting them know they’ve got a family that cares whether they live or die is a part of that.

So today will be interesting.  Hopefully we’ll shoot some pool, watch some bad super hero movies, eat some junk food and who knows maybe even talk.

See you around.

21JUL2023 – OCF Update

photog Current Events, OCF

Once again I will be uprooted from my cushy lair and hurled into the outer void.  I must travel and unravel my tangled skein of thought while keeping track of time, space, and parking meters.  I will return sometime today after many frustrating and mind-deadening minutes of forced waiting.  I shall bring my new omnibus Shakespeare to while away the time.  The Bard will comfort me with his timeless prose and poetry;

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
See you soon.
photog, the idiot.

We Interrupt This Rant.  Moving Forward, Getting on With It, Recalibrating

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

We all have to get used to the new reality.  It’s a different world we now live in and some things are no longer news and other things are still useful.  And priorities change.  In 2015 and 2016 Donald Trump opened up a new way of looking at the world and that change filled up the internet and mesmerized the Right for eight years.  Well, now that outlook has spread to everybody it can reach.  And that news isn’t news anymore.  And the Left has asserted itself and plugged up the holes in its walls and stopped the peasants from crashing the castle gates.  The party’s over.  It’s time to adjust.

For me the adjustment is to dividing up my time differently.  A daily blog post can’t be only about the war between the Left and the Right.  That will be too repetitive.  Even taking events from the news and reacting or critiquing them cannot be a daily occurrence.  There’s just too much overlap from story to story.  Too much, Joe Biden, too much Deep State, too much woke capitalism, too much fake news.  Same old, same old.

Now I’m not going to abandon these things.  I’m just going to cut back on the frequency and pick my opportunities judiciously.  I’ll look for an occasion when the example has some special emphasis.  As an example, the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action would be an occurrence that merits a discussion.  It’s more than the usual background noise, it’s a significant story.  But it’s exceptional and it will be treated as an exception.

So then, what will I fill up my time with?  Well, two buckets.

One will be public interest.  And that can be anything that might interest people who read this site.  For instance, I like science fiction and fantasy.  Reviewing movies and books is something I like to do.  And not just sf&f.  I like all kinds of books and movies and I like to share things I think are good.  And I’ll share businesses that I find that are run by folks on our side of the culture war.  I’m hoping that will become a bigger part of the world we live in.  Hopefully one day there’ll be an ad on this site for a every product that I believe in and can recommend.  Who knows?  Maybe it’ll be for a right-wing beer company that Dylan Mulvaney won’t ever be asked to “partner with.”

And the other bucket is writing my book.  Currently I’ve got slightly more than 49,000 words finished.  But last year I thought I’d be completely finished by this July.  Obviously, I need to get religion.  And by that, I mean make fiction writing the first priority of my available time.  Now for the last few weeks I’ve been pulled in multiple directions and I can forgive myself for getting behind on everything; posts, pictures, quotes and fiction writing.

But I have to start somewhere and so I’ve been prioritizing the fiction writing this week.  And I’ll continue with that plan going forward.  So, while I’m adjusting there may be some dry spells on the site.  Nothing drastic just some less busy periods.  But once I get the hang of this new routine, I expect things will return to about the same output in terms of posts and other content.  The only difference will be that repetitive rants should be way, way down.

But that won’t change the fact that Joe Biden sucks.

And now having said that I return you to end of western civilization already in progress.  Have a nice day.

Caffeine is a Powerful Drug

photog Current Events, OCF, photog's Corner ,

I love coffee.  I love the taste of it, the aroma, the way it enhances the enjoyment of various foods.  A cup of coffee with ham and eggs and a pumpernickel bagel is splendid.  A pastrami or corned beef or roast beef sandwich with coffee is incredible.  And what could be better than coffee with cake, pastry or pie ala mode?  Nothing!

It is a wonderful part of life.  At the same time coffee is very hard on my digestive system.  It gnaws at my guts.  It is not benign.

So, what’s a fellow to do?

For years I searched for the magic bullet.  Milder blends, better blends cold brewed.  Milk, cream, fat free cream, oat milk and on and on and on.

And several times I’ve given it up.  And that is an amazing thing.  I remember going cold turkey in my thirties and experiencing symptoms that were more reminiscent of heroin withdrawal.  I had the shakes and broke into a cold sweat and had blinding headaches.  Truly absurd problems getting rid of something as innocuous as the morning cup of joe.

And equally interestingly, even after getting past the physical symptoms, I eventually drifted back into the habit.  After all, I love the stuff.

A couple of months ago I decided to do something I considered smart.  I switched from coffee to tea.  And I was able to do it relatively painlessly.  The caffeine in tea apparently was sufficient to offset at least partly the craving my body has for coffee.  Maybe there were some mild feelings of discomfort for a day or two but really nothing to think about.  So, there you go.  Mission accomplished.

But I didn’t reckon with one thing.  Tea is the most boring drink in the world.  There’s no there, there.  So, I tried to jazz it up.  I tried Thai tea and chai tea.  I added sugar and honey and lemon.  Nothing.  Insipid.

 

In desperation, I asked Camera girl to start me on cocoa.  We tried 100% cocoa.  Not so good.  Then we tried some versions with varying amounts of sugar.  Too sweet.  Finally, we hit upon a low concentration that isn’t too sweet but still has enough taste to qualify as a beverage.  And so, we thought we had arrived at a workable solution.  But something happened.

Camera Girl and I were out for the day for an out of state family party.  I had breakfast with my now customary thin cup of chocolate.  No problem.  When we arrived, it was early afternoon and I wasn’t starving.  So, I sat down and was talking to some people.

And it was the strangest thing.  I couldn’t think.  I was stumbling over words and thoughts like Joe Biden without a teleprompter.  It was the damnedest thing.  And then I realized, I was completely out of caffeine.  Now granted I was also low on food at that point.  So maybe I needed blood sugar or something.  But I was so groggy that I am convinced that I now need a certain specific amount of caffeine in my body just to keep my IQ in triple digits.

I asked my host if he had any coffee or tea around.  All he had at that moment was Red Bull.  Well, it was like some miracle drug.  Within moments I was back to normal.  Later on, I had a large cup of coffee at dessert with my large piece of cake.  Of course, I couldn’t get to sleep until 3 a.m. but what can you do.

So now I’m once again in a quandary.  Do I endure the “enstupiding” whenever I’m low on caffeine or do I cave into the lure of coffee?  I stand on the edge of the cliff.  May I find wisdom.