Category: OCF

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.

26FEB2023 – OCF Update

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Well, today is a chore day.  I’ve got to scrape away the inch of snow off the driveways in anticipation of the eight inches due tomorrow night.  It won’t take long but it breaks up the morning and gives me an excuse to skip my exercise.

Princess Sack of Potatoes is staying over this weekend and we’ve had an abbreviated game of Dead Pile already.  But I’ve begun the pivot to reading and writing.  She’s got those workbooks that can be dry erased so we’re working on printing the letters.  Later on we’ll conquer the “at” family again.  And we’ll use that convicted racist Dr. Seuss to hammer home the words.

I read with dismay that Brad Paisley has recorded as song in honor of Zelenskyyyyyyyy.  Oh, well.  I remember he had an Obama song too so apparently trying to toe the line is standard operating procedure for him.  Too bad.  He has some fun songs.

I’ve been following some of the various websites following the Ukraine war.  I think the latest theory is that the Russians intend to use the “glacier” model.  They’re going to pulverize the Ukraine army but at a glacial rate of advance.  Their assault on Bakhmut is proceeding at about one square mile a day.  But depending on sources some number of hundreds of Ukrainian casualties a day are occurring.  At the current rate in about two weeks the city will be completely surrounded and cut off from resupply.  At that point the Ukrainian soldiers inside will be faced with the choice of surrender or extermination.

Apparently the Russians have decided that wearing the Ukrainians down is the correct strategy.  Blitzkriegs are no longer possible in this age of real time remote target identification.  A column of tanks can be spotted and destroyed from five hundred miles away.  The other problem for the Ukrainians is the fact that we’re running out of munitions to give them.  By the summer we’ll have used up our entire stockpile of artillery ammunition and the Ukrainians will have to reduce their artillery firing rate to a small fraction of their enemy’s.

Funny world we live in.  Looking at the tactics and objectives of their rule I’d have to say that the policies of the present United States more closely resembles that of the Soviet Union than the present day Russian Federation does.  Isn’t that a remarkable thing.  Well, if we can manage to avoid setting off a thermonuclear war perhaps a time will come when we can pry the United States foreign policy away from the neocons and find a way to coexist with the Russians and the Chinese that allows each nation to follow its interests without a shooting war breaking out every few months.  I know it’s far-fetched but an old man can hope can’t he?

Well, hopefully later on I’ll think of something reasonable to write about.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Dead Pile and the Angry Polar Bear

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Today was a busy day.  Princess Sack of Potatoes wanted to play Dead Pile, and later on, The Angry Polar Bear.  The latter is a very taxing business where I chase her around the house growling and trying to carry her away to the “Ice Flow of Death.”  All that growling takes its toll on my larynx and the dogs go nuts trying to defend her from this seemingly homicidal activity of mine.  But one does what must be done.

As you can tell by the descriptions, death has become a part of her imagination.  Of course, all those who end up in the dead pile are the bad animals, never the good ones.  And the Ice Flow of Death has only ever been fatal for the polar bear and even then, he always seems to be brought back for an encore.  It’s funny how little kids imagine things for which they have very little experience.  Other than a hermit crab, her little world has been untouched by death.  At least as far as she is aware.  She’ll be spared knowledge of actual deaths that have occurred while she was too young to even understand the concept.

Of late Camera Girl has introduced the concept of dog heaven to cover the eventuality of what to tell her when our older dog does die.  And she is very curious about it, “Will Kaylee have anyone to play with?  Will she get her favorite treats?”  All these were manageable reactions.  But then she asked about herself going to heaven.  That was a bridge too far.  We assured her that she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a long, long, long time and she should stop thinking such things.

And that passed.  Now we’re back to the cheerful mayhem of dead pile where bad velociraptor and evil giraffe get their comeuppance but never is heard a discouraging word.  She has introduced some innovations that may be a form of humane treatment or possibly just safety precautions.  Now before any of the bad animals are hurled onto the dead pile, they are first “put to sleep.”  This sounds suspiciously like pet euthanasia.  I hesitate to ask where she got this idea.  Maybe one of her friends had a dog or cat that had to be “put to sleep.”  But we’ll let it slide for now.  Dead pile has been wildly popular but I think the first waning has begun.

And just in time.  It’s rather repetitive.  And it’s time for the princess to begin to read.  We’ll start with the ats (at, bat, cat, fat, skip gat, hat, mat, gnat, pat, sat, forget tat and finish with vat).  And then we’ll do a few more families and it’ll be on to Dr. Seuss.  We’ve got to hurry because before you know it it’ll be September and she’ll be off to kindergarten.  And then she’ll be too old for The Angry Polar Bear and too sophisticated for her old pastimes.

Well, that’s the way it should be.  Her world is opening up.  School and friends and all the joys and sorrows of childhood.  And I have to wonder if she’ll remember all our games and play.  She is a very intelligent child.  Maybe her memories will last.  I hope so.  I feel that my existence is bound up in the memories of those who are close to me.  My children and grandchildren will be the extension of my impact on this world, just as I passed on the existence of my parents and grandparents to them.

It’s a great privilege to get to interact with your descendants.  You can see their traits and sometimes recognize yours and your spouse’s.  You can tell them stories and things about themselves and about their parents and you can share things that you enjoyed when you were young.  Yes, it’s a rare treat.  It’s the payoff for all the hard work you did raising your own kids.

Well, it was a good day.  Busy but good.

photog Opines on Valentine’s Day

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Every happily married man has to have an opinion on Valentine’s Day.  And being in that category (most of the time!) my opinion is well known to Camera Girl.  Being a very wise woman, she pretends that Valentine’s Day is of no concern to her.  But that is a façade.  The point is for me to show her that I have a way of making Valentine’s Day a useful ritual within our domain.  In this way she doesn’t have to seem to be dependent on this odd gift receiving dynamic while I can demonstrate my romantic aptitude and at the same time rightly honor her importance in the whole male/female dynamic.

Wow.  That was weird.

Anyway, I’ve long ago given her all the jewelry she needs or even wants.  I usually check to see if she wants any perfume but she’s pretty well stocked there too.  So, this year I said I’d take her out to eat.  And at first, I thought we had a plan.  But at the last minute she changed it.  We were supposed to have the grandkids over for a luncheon of delicatessen food.  But someone got sick so we postponed it.  But apparently Camera Girl was in the mood for pastrami, which, as everyone knows, is the most sensual of the salted cured meats.

So, her idea for Valentine’s Day was pastrami sandwiches at home.  She is a thrifty woman.  And I should be more grateful for that than I am.  So today she served up pastrami on Italian bread with melted Swiss cheese and tons of brown mustard.  There was egg potato salad and dill pickles on the side and a giant mug of very good, hot coffee.  Afterward there was a big slice of apple pie with three big scoops of premium vanilla ice cream.  Now that is what I call a Valentine’s Day celebration.

It reminded me of that scene in the Maltese Falcon where Sam Spade serves corned beef on French bread and coffee with brandy to Brigid O’Shaughnessy as they warily circle each other in their dance of murder and passion.  And after all Camera Girl is a femme fatale.  Her allure has side-tracked me from my intended career as a classical philologist by, as far as I can reckon somewhere on the order of forty five years, give or take.  And there has been many a night that I suspected she was contemplating smothering me in my sleep.  I have no incontrovertible evidence for this.  But for someone who knows her moods all the signs were there.  But I digress.

So, the key to a successful Valentine’s Day gift or celebration is buy-in from the woman.  There has to be an effort by the man to imbue the ritual with some special significance for the pair.  And to do that requires good will on both sides and for an established relationship the desire to break the monotony of a settled routine with something different and in some way exciting.

And exciting doesn’t have to be the Hope Diamond or a trip to Bora Bora.  The excitement is breaking the routine.  It’s talking about different things.  It’s putting a little more of your personality into your presentation than you normally do.  And, of course, it doesn’t hurt if you drag her off to bed to consummate the proceedings properly.  But, just like Sam Spade, remember that she may be hiding a revolver under her side of the bed so sleep with one eye open.  Especially if she has two or three aliases.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day

06FEB2023 – OCF Update – The Day After the Big Day

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Yesterday was a very good day.  American Greatness (AG) ran that post I wrote on the possibility of a multi-ethnic country preserving American constitutional freedoms.  And on top of that, Whatfinger linked to both the AG article and the post about it that I put up on OCF.  That drove a large amount of web traffic to OCF and to AG.  And the comments at both sites were very lively.  The AG commenters were a mixture of dissidents, conservatives and even a couple of progressives who took a lot of flak.  I think the discussion was interesting.  And I hope it pointed some new readers in our direction.  After all every website needs some new blood to make up for attrition.  By my accounting I only need 9,997,000 more readers to reach my goal of domination over the right-wing blogosphere.  But Rome wasn’t built in a day.  I’ll bide my time.

All the heat will be on McCarthy going into the budget wars.  We will hear the media declare him a monster who wants to destroy the United States by defaulting on the US debts.  I’m very interested in seeing how much courage he can muster in the face of the attacks coming his way.  I wonder if he will replace Trump as the new Hitler.  It’s probably inevitable.  The upside is that Biden may actually stroke out during one of his demented harangues.  If he does it on live tv that would be wonderful theater.

But I haven’t figured out if Biden randomly dropping dead is better or worse for the Democrats’ succession plan.  Think of it.  Harris becomes president.  That level of stupid controlling the most powerful country on the planet might drive us to the singularity we’re always hearing about.  Starting at the point where she tries to repeat the oath of office, the White House could be sucked into a black hole of negative intelligence followed by the rest of the solar system.  Alpha Centauri should be relatively safe.

I wonder what that would be like.  After we each crash through the event horizon would our quarks meld into Harris’ and would our essence then become as stupid as she is through quantum entanglement?  It’s too frightening to consider.  Or would our consciousness remain distinct but trapped for the rest of the life of the universe with someone endlessly spewing out drivel about a little girl sitting on a school bus.  That’s pretty close to hell.

But I digress, as usual.

We’ve run out of Chinese balloons but there’s no shortage of Russian artillery.  It appears that the long anticipated Russian offensive in the Donbass is beginning.  First up is a town called Bakhmut which over the last few weeks has been very gradually encircled.  Real information is hard to find but apparently even the Ukrainians are beginning to prepare their side to the eventuality of Bakhmut’s capture by the Russians.  After that it looks like more consolidation and then the next encirclement, probably Siver’sk.  Boy, these Slavic placenames are difficult to figure.  And I noticed several towns close to each other with the same name.  That can’t be right.  There must be some modifiers to allow the locals to distinguish between these places.  Anyway, it looks like the pace is picking up in this slow-motion war.  More misery.

Well, that’s enough for now.  Let’s see what’s the next big thing this week.  Have a good night.

Am. Greatness Publishes Rambling Ravings of Some Crackpot Named photog

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So after Michael Anton wrote his final defense of natural rights in which he very interestingly quoted one of my posts, I found a number of reactions in the comments section thought provoking.  Mostly they were apologies for the Z-Man based on the premise (which is one of the underpinnings of the Dissident Right) that a multiracial society is doomed to failure because of the biological differences between people.

I thought that was worth discussing further and so I wrote my article and I was happy to find that American Greatness was willing to feature it on their worthy site.  So here is the link and I hope everyone goes over and reads it and leaves all kinds of interesting and highly complimentary comments that proclaim my groundbreaking insights and the general brilliance of Orion’s Cold Fire as both a font of political wisdom and also a source of entertaining cultural content.

Does Inequality Make America Impossible?

 

04FEB2023 – OCF Update – That’s Brisk, Baby

photog Current Events, OCF

So, we survived last night without major incident.  The wind was banging stuff around the Compound for a good part of the night and even with the heat on through out the house it was about 64 degrees inside.  Of course, at 7am it was -12 degrees by the thermometer outside Camera Girl’s kitchen window.  So, I’m guessing it really was at least -15 degrees in the depths of the night.  It’s up to 10 degrees outside now and the middle floor is up to 65 degrees.  I haven’t had the courage to go downstairs where my gym equipment is.  I’ll bet it’s in the thirties down there.  Maybe I’ll get up the courage to work out later but it’s a daunting thought.

I’ve been reading the news items on the Chinese balloons.  I have to say our country really has descended into farce.  In fact, I think this is another marker showing how much we’ve decayed.  Our rivals now send spy equipment over our ICBM silos with impunity.  What’s next?  Will China annex Hawaii?  Considering what a pathetic figure we cut I really couldn’t blame them for trying.

Well, we’ve made it past Groundhog Day and now we’re headed for Valentine’s Day and I’ll have to think of something nice to do for Camera Girl.  The malicious part of me, the part that belongs in a strait jacket, wanted to present the new toaster oven I got her yesterday as a Valentine Day present.  Luckily my better angel got the upper hand.  I think I’ll take her out for a meal instead.  She’s been making all these great soups lately and I really should show my appreciation.

So, I finally got my “blue check” on Twitter.  It hasn’t seemed to make any difference to my visibility but at least now if I’m banished, I’ll have the consolation that they won’t get my eight bucks the next month (or whatever amount it is).

There may be a special event happening on the site tomorrow.  I had a notification about it but I’ll wait to see if it pans out before I go into detail.  The site has been livelier lately with more people participating in the comments and some new guest contributors coming aboard.  And that suits me.  I’d love to get to the point where my contributions were in the minority.  Does that make me a proponent of diversity.  Well, probably not by the definition that the Left uses.  But maybe by the one that should be used.

So, things are going well.  Next week is going to be a kind of busy week in the real world but I’ll do my best to keep the site active and heaven knows what madness Dopey Joe and his merry band of morons will be cooking up for us.  The State of the Union speech is coming up and I can’t make up my mind whether I want to bother to watch it or not.  I figure Ilhan Omar and the rest of the banshees might come wearing striped prison uniforms, manacles and leg irons.  I wouldn’t want to miss something like that but listening to the Moron in Chief gassing on and on for hours would be more than I could tolerate.  Maybe I’ll wait for the blooper reel.

Well anyway, enough of this.  Enjoy your weekend and stay warm!