Category: OCF

03FEB2023 – The Dunwich Complainer – Polar Vortex Blues

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , , ,

As predicted the bottom fell out of the thermometer today.  The surrounding areas of southern New England will be experiencing temperatures as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit and fifty mph winds that will be blamed on the polar vortex.  Of course, here in Dunwich we have a slightly different climatic event.  The pole that our vortex is generated by is the galactic pole of the Milky Way.  The Supermassive Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* causes a worm hole to open up from time to time in the center of the Dunwich town dump.  Out of that cosmic orifice flows an irresistible plasma of pure neutronium moving at 99.99999% of light speed.  Today the beam punched a perfectly round eight-foot hole through Josiah Whatley’s barn and astronomers believe that it sliced Pluto in half on its exit from the solar system.

But much more importantly, it knocked out the electric power and cable access to First Selectman Cthulhu’s abode.  Now the First Selectman is a big fan of Vanna and Pat.  He watches Wheel of Fortune religiously.  Well, that is if the word religiously can be used at all to describe a blasphemous eldritch creature.  But suffice it to say he was not happy.  I could hear him stomping up the hill toward my house.  You see he doesn’t use a cell phone, he’s got a land line that runs over the same cable so he had to visit me personally instead of calling.

Since he’s a hundred feet tall I could see him coming from several miles away.  Wanting to avoid the possible blowback from Camera Girl sassing this squid-headed town official I went to meet him.  When I got within shouting distance, I greeted him politely and he began to ooze slime from his mouth.  It was quite nauseating and frightening.  “Alright you insignificant morsel of bland monkey meat, I want you to restore the cable before 7:30 pm.  It’s LX week and that means there’s the potential for an extra forty thousand in the bonus round and I hear Vanna’s going to be wearing a sparkly dress tonight and she always looks completely delicious in one of those.  So, make it happen.  Right?”  I said I would get right on it and he let out a deafening bellow that whipped slime into the air.  Then he turned around and plodded back down the hill toward his lair.

I drove down to the dump and sized up the neutronium beam.  I could see that after exiting Whatley’s barn it had taken out a telephone pole that fed the street that ended near the First Selectman’s cave.  It seemed simple enough to have the cable company temporarily bypass around the beam and restore the service.  And the cable company truck was right down the road.  But I could see that the license plate on the truck was from out of state.  Apparently, he wasn’t local so perhaps he had never seen a tear in the fabric of space time up close and personal.  Also he probably had never seen Cthulhu before.

When I reached the truck, I saw a man in his thirties holding the steering wheel in a death grip and staring popeyed at the neutronium beam.  I had seen this kind of reaction by out of towners quite often.  I tried to be casual.  “Howdy friend, how’s it going?  Hey I’m glad you’re here to get the cable working again so soon.  Looks like an easy fix.  What do you think?”

He was hyperventilating and I could tell that he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.  It occurred to me that he probably had seen the First Selectman saunter by.  I reached into the window and pulled his key out of the ignition and opened the passenger side door and got in.  He saw me and his head turned sideways toward me and he made some gurgling kind of sounds.  “Now look here, there’s nothing to get excited about.  You’re a professional and you can’t let a little thing like a hundred-foot squid-headed dragon stop you from providing an essential service to the community.  I’m sure that your company has provided you with the standard sensitivity and diversity trainings.  Well, here’s your chance to put that training into practice.  Cthulhu is a proud American just as are you.  He’s been an inhabitant of this locale for over 450 million years and he is a pillar of the community.  He cheers on our local high school teams and attends the harvest carnival fair without fail.  Sure, he may eat the prize-winning bull from time to time but who doesn’t get a little carried away with all that carnival junk food.  As you very well know diversity is our strength.  Whether it’s transgender women excelling in athletics or undocumented Americans voting in their first election or a Great Old One enjoying a classic American game show while snacking on a really large portion of road salt.   So come on man, buck up and let’s get that cable back up pronto or he’s going to come pounding down that road and eat you and your truck in one mouthful.

The look of horror on his face didn’t disappear.  It sort of twisted sideways a little bit.  It’s hard to describe.  His left eye mostly closed and his upper and lower jaws were a little offset sideways.  But his right eye seemed to focus on me and he made some slightly less incoherent noises and he tried to climb out of his truck.  He fell out and ended up on his back.  But this seemed to have a revitalizing effect on him and he sat up and looked almost sentient.  I said, “That’s the spirit.  Let me help you up fella.  You’ve got this, don’t you?”

Well, by five thirty he had managed to get the cables spliced together and although they were laying on the ground they restored cable service to the draco-cephalopodic occupant of 407 Dagon Avenue.  I told him the polar vortex would shut down in a few hours and a proper repair could be done by the local service crew that was currently repairing other more mundane problems in the area.  At this point most of his hair had turned white and he had a tic in his left eye.  I slipped him a ten spot and told him to have a nice evening.  He drove off very slowly and he may have veered over the divider a few times.  I hope he made it.  Seemed like a nice guy.

I returned home and had dinner and later on while Camera Girl was watching Wheel of Fortune I remarked to her, “You know that sparkly dress really does make Vanna look completely delicious.”  She scowled at me and said, “You need help.”

Women.

Renewable Energy Comes to Dunwich

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The Town of Dunwich was recently ordered by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay to show progress in eliminating the production of greenhouse gases by switching over to renewable energy sources.  As the only engineer in town, or for that matter, the only person familiar with the decimal point among the denizens of this benighted hellhole I was ordered by First Selectman Cthulhu to, “make that happen.”  And since, as in all things ordered by Cthulhu, the penalty for failure is being eaten alive by a 100-foot-high squid-headed flying dragon, I got to work right smartly.

What I discovered was that currently 100% of our electrical energy supply is generated by burning sperm whale oil.  It’s a little known fact that Dunwich, along with certain Inuit tribes is  allowed under treaty to hunt sperm whales and since the market for whale products long ago dried up we utilized the carcasses as a source of fuel.  The carcasses are hauled up on the shore and trucked to the power plant where the oil is drained off.  Then the meat is turned into Dunwich’s world-famous blubber chowder.  And the bones are packaged for resale to Dunwich’s werewolf (or for the politically correct term, lycanthrope) population.

I contacted the DEP to see if this treaty allowed for our whale oil to be grandfathered in as a green energy equivalent but, alas, there was a whale-lover on the staff there so, no soap.  I began to get panicky so I called in a consultant to see what other towns were doing.  The consultant described the latest scams that currently passed for “green” energy.  The favorite was “converting” natural gas to hydrogen to use in a fuel cell.  After looking at the material balance I could see that this process produces almost the same amount of carbon dioxide as combustion does.  When I questioned him about this inconsistency, he waved his hands around for a few minutes while claiming that the science was settled.  Anyway, the price tag for the installation was so high I realized there was no way we could switch over to this particular scam.

I asked him if he had a cheaper scam that we could invest in.  He looked disappointed.  I guess most of his clients aren’t as primitive and poor as Dunwich.  Finally after dejectedly checking through his inventory he noted that he had several generators that were reclaimed from some wind turbines that had fallen down and been carted away as scrap.  He could let us have those for a pittance.  Out of desperation and to buy time I ordered the parts and sent him on his way.

Then I had an inspiration.  We had some old caterpillar treads left over from some heavy machinery that had broken down and some other odds and ends.  I had the maintenance crew rig these up into a gigantic treadmill and hook it up to the generators.  I had the highway crew dig a pit out near the bicycle path that runs through the scenic area of the ghoul haunted forest.  And I had them catch and imprison the biggest shoggoth they could find in town.  It was a big, ugly, smelly, hungry one.  I think we might have lost a couple of the crew that caught it.  Oh well.

The next part of the plan was the good part.  Along the side of the bicycle path, I put a sign leading over to the pit that said “Contribute to Green Energy.”  Over the pit I had built a sound-proofed shed with a revolving door that led into a dark room with a pit trap.  When someone falls into the pit it raises a panel that separated the shoggoth from its dinner.  Once the shoggoth starts moving toward the victim it turns the caterpillar track and begins powering the generator.  As long as the green power enthusiast is able to run on this treadmill and stay ahead, the shoggoth continues to pursue.  But when the friend of Gaia tires, the shoggoth will get its lunch and the treadmill will stop and the power will go out in town.

Of course, this is a problem.  I’ve come up with some improvements.  To improve the reliability, we now run a bicycle race daily in town.  And I’ve hooked up a battery system as a form of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for the town between shoggoth meals.  But uninterruptible is probably an overenthusiastic claim.

But the important thing is the First Selectman is pleased.  He’s grown fond of the project and has named the shoggoth Tesla.  He’s tasked me with setting up a similar treadmill for his personal use.  He says he needs the exercise and donating some energy to the town is patriotic.  Also, the town is making a nice profit reselling abandoned bicycles found along the road.

Who knew going green would be this much fun.

Dunwich in the Depths of a Non-Winter

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Swamp in Fall 2

Here we are at the brink of February and Dunwich looks like early December.  There’s no snow cover and the ground is soggy with all the rainfall.  There are serious consequences from this warm weather.  Mange has broken out among various species.  Werewolves, zombies and the Mi-Go (those winged fungoid crustacean creatures) have all been observed uncontrollably scratching themselves against tree trunks to relieve the itching.  And the smell from these festering wounds has made the forested areas around the swamps almost unendurable for residents there.  First Selectman Cthulhu complains that tourism is way off and he blames it on this blight.  I don’t know.  I think it could be a result of the new advertising slogan they came up with.  I mean, “Dunwich, smell the history” might need some work.

Luckily for me I took the precaution of planting the perimeter of my property with wolfsbane a year or two back and the only local inhabitant that hasn’t fled is a shoggoth that lives under the rock overhang at the edge of the swamp.  He’s a really old and decrepit example of the species and he probably would have already succumbed to the infection if Camera Girl hadn’t started putting out scraps for it to subsist on.

As is her habit, she has sort of adopted it and calls it by a pet name, shoggy, which I find annoying.  I’ve explained many times that it is a loathsome man-eating nightmare, the very sight of which can shatter the sanity of any human being.  She claims it just needs scratching under the chin (wherever that is), some warm blankets and leftover fried chicken to make it a “boopa.”  Women are mostly insane.  I’ve resorted to poisoning the chicken but all that accomplished was to make it thirsty.  It drank down the pond and swelled up to a hundred times its original size.  It’s about the size of a city block and about three hundred feet tall.  It seems to have either the hiccups or some kind of rhythmic flatulence.

Next Friday is supposed to be a quick freeze.  Forecasts call for nighttime temperatures dipping down to minus fifteen Fahrenheit.  I believe that after absorbing that much water the shoggoth will freeze solid overnight.  My plan is to rent one of those construction vehicles with the industrial strength jack hammer attached to a robotic arm and use it to chop up the shoggoth into bite size chunks.  I figure I can probably transport them to a fishing port and sell it as chum to the commercial fishermen.  Anyway, that’s the plan.

With the cold weather coming I expect the more traditional winter activities to resume.  Once Lake Bishop freezes the annual ice fishing derby will be announced and all experienced fishermen will partake in the night before drinking binge to shore up their nerve for the event.  And whoever draws the short straw that morning will need every bit of that alcohol to get the nerve to make the run across the ice.  After all, running across a half mile of open ice dressed as a giant “kivver” with the First Selectman coming after you from under the ice with only a ten second head start is pretty heady stuff.

Last year Tanner Featherstone came within twenty feet of the shore and maybe three seconds of winning the contest and the $100 Amazon gift card.  Not to mention keeping his life.  It’s this kind of town-spirit and bone-headed stupidity that keeps this amazing tradition going despite the unbroken history of failure and the terrifying sight of a man being eaten alive by a one-hundred-foot-tall squid-headed flying dragon.  The screams and the sound of the crunching bones really makes you think.

Well anyway.  I’ve got to do some research on that whole jack hammer rental thing.  Busy, busy, busy.  I hope your winter is going well and I’ll be back soon to describe what looks like an early spring and the return of the “colour out of space” to the local foliage.  Ah those unearthly colors.  They make Dunwich the garden spot it is.

Michael Anton Quotes From OCF – That’s Pretty Cool

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Back in the before time when 2016 was shaping up to be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush I first read Michael Anton’s essay “The Flight 93 Election”.  And the fact that someone with an academic background and a connection to Washington understood just how bleak the Uniparty options were for this country impressed me greatly.

And afterwards as I perceived that he was pursuing those at at the far outer edges of conservative thought to provide fresh ideas for a political movement that was hollowed out at the top I was encouraged   Because we really do need much more coordination and honest dialog if we’re even going to survive the onslaught of the monolithic Left.

Now I’m not a great thinker.  I’m just a schmoe who got tired of being thrown off of photography and science fiction websites because I didn’t kowtow to the Left’s shibboleths and put together my own site where I can say whatever damn thing I want to.  But I practiced in my own humble way what Anton was doing.  I read far and wide on the on the internet.  Back in 2015 and 2016 there were all kinds of crazy people involved in the pro-Trump movement.  And beyond the pro-Trump movement there were the dissidents for whom Trump was just a symptom.  And I learned quite a bit about the various factions and ideologies and to be honest, the various hates that exist on the Right.

And I can see that there are strengths and weaknesses in each of them.  But what is also true is that the Left’s use of surrogates on the Right to disqualify anyone dangerous to the Left has been one of their most successful strategies.  William F. Buckley was famous for this.

And the neocons tried to do it to Donald Trump to stop him from being elected.  So I made a point to keep an open mind about fringe thinkers.  And so I read people like the Z-Man.  And I’ve found him to be spot on about a whole raft of things that affect our lives.  He’s a very smart guy.

But he’s just one guy.  We need about thirty million guys working together just to stop this train from going off the cliff.  So on balance I have to give the prize to people like Anton and even Gottfried who may disagree on a multitude of intellectual points but at least are willing to hold a discussion about their differences.  To my mind honest disagreement can be enlightening for both sides.  You don’t have to convince the other guy but you do have to make an effort to clarify your position for the readers.  And I believe that’s how we’ll end up with some kind of a coalition.

So I woke up this morning and I saw I had some traffic coming over from American Greatness.  Now I wrote a couple of posts for them a few years back but nothing recently so i was interested.  and there I saw this post by Michael Anton.  He quoted a blog post I wrote a week or two ago going over my thoughts on the Anton / Z-Man war.

I won’t deny I was pretty happy thinking that somehow Michael Anton had visited my site.  After all I had read his article about seven years ago and it had been one of the inspirations for my blogging and many other activities I had engaged in over the years.  He had crystallized many of the thoughts that had been growing in my mind ever since the George Bush presidency had destroyed my belief in the Republican establishment.

But beyond my own private satisfaction in being noticed, it gives me hope that there are people trying to build something bigger than just Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Twitter.  We need an actual identity and a mission to save this country.  We at least have to agree on what we’re trying to save.  I think Anton believes that.

It’s a start.

Question for the Readers

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Update:  The people have spoken!  Vox populi, vox Dei.

The font size will be 14 pt.  Or actually 20 px which is similar.  And in my best Yul Brynner voice, “So let it be written.  So shall it be done.”

 

Here’s a question that I’ve been batting around.  What font should this blog use for posts (and everything else).

Currently it’s set up at 12 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.  Currently it’s set up at 12 point.

This is 14 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?” This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.  This is 14 point.

This is 18 point.

“Well, now, the Emperor Charles has given them Malta, and all the rent he asks is one insignificant bird per annum, just as a matter of form. What could be more natural than for these immeasurably wealthy Knights to look around for some way of expressing their gratitude? Well, sir, that’s exactly what they did, and they hit on the happy thought of sending Charles for the first year’s tribute, not an insignificant live bird, but a glorious golden falcon encrusted from head to foot with the finest jewels in their coffers. And–remember, sir–they had fine ones, the finest out of Asia.” Gutman stopped whispering. His sleek dark eyes examined Spade’s face, which was placid. The fat man asked: “Well, sir, what do you think of that?”This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.  This is 18 point.

There may be other sizes I can get so feel free to suggest any other font sizes.  Just leave them in the comments.

 

Update:  The people have spoken!  Vox populi, vox Dei.

The font size will be 14 pt.  Or actually 20 px which is similar.  And in my best Yul Brynner voice, “So let it be written.  So shall it be done.”

 

Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.

 

You Should Learn to Code!

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So, as I mentioned a week or two ago, there’s a retroactive change I want to make to the site involving something called search engine optimization (SEO).  It’s obscure and boring and possibly make believe but I figured I should make the change to about 5, 500 older posts.  But it requires an enormous amount of manual copying and pasting so I wanted to automate it.  But the database manipulations I want to make are not routine and I thought required one of two things.  Either I have to learn how to program in the PHP and MySQL languages or I had to use two plugins (think of them as small stand-alone programs that can be added to my site’s software).  But one of the plugins costs a bunch of money so I was too outraged to pay for it.  By a stroke of good fortune, I found a different plug-in that was almost as good but much cheaper.  Yeeha!

But with all things too good to be true comes the payoff.  I also needed to upgrade my backup system and that’s going to require upgrading my cloud storage.  Gack!  Well, I’ve spent the bulk of the day setting up a link to my new storage site from the website with all sorts of problems with various layers of security programming standing in the way.  Finally, it’s uploading the backup but it’s been a humbling experience.  And I’m also getting a lesson in why working with redundantly encrypted data is a royal pain.  It uploads at the slowest rate imaginable.  But later on, tonight I’ll try to make those SEO modifications to those thousands of old posts.  If the site disappears hopefully, it’ll just be a (short) refresh to get it back to its old self.  But fingers crossed.

It’s still early in the voting but it looks like maybe some folks would like me to increase the font size on the site from 12 pt to 14 pt.  The reason I asked about this was recently I was on a website and noticed how nice the type looked.  After checking on the text I realized it was 14 pt and wondered if maybe I was making life difficult for people to read the smaller font size.  Luckily that is a very easy fix to make.  Even I can make the CSS modification.

Well back to the website salt mines for me.  Pray that my sentence is reduced down from life at hard labor.

Signed,

photog the website drudge (not to be confused with Matt Drudge).

13JAN2023 – This’N’That

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It’s been a busy week and that plays havoc with my various schedules.  I’ve of late drawn up a list of things I try to get done at various times of the day and week.  C’est la guerre.  But all in all, things are still moving along.  And my morale is reasonable.  So onward and upward.

I see that Dopey Joe has stepped in it with both feet with this document thing.  Of course, he’ll get the Democrat treatment so there won’t be any consequences but it does make the hypocrisy of what they’re trying to do to Trump even more egregious.  Good.  Hammering home all the corrupt aspects of the banana republic we now live in is probably the only useful function that the GOP and the small independent media can perform.

I spent some time at a Selectman’s Meeting and saw what an actual government is supposed to be working on; trying to find the money to pay for a new piece of fire fighting equipment to replace one that was end-of-life twenty-five years ago or finding money to pay for Emergency Medical Services that we lost through the incompetence of the state we live in.  The people at this meeting weren’t wearing three-piece suits or sipping lattes.  They were in work boots and jeans.  And they looked tired.  They have real jobs but they work in the evenings keeping the town government going even though they’d like to quit.  But then it would be done by really terrible people.  It’s not fun being a red town in a blue state.  Well, I got some inspiration at least.  And I met some good people.  They don’t resemble the mythical First Selectman Cthulhu or the other hapless denizens of Dunwich but I can still use them as inspiration.

I’ll have to think about the Biden humor pieces I started doing yesterday.  It was brought up that’s it’s devilishly difficult to parody a president as awful as Dementia Joe.  His lying is so epic that it’s hard to see how I can outdo it.  And he’s so creepy in real life that even documenting it raises concerns over matters of good taste on a general audience website.  So, I’ll try to ensure that I create a product that is both entertaining and true to the spirit of our “Dear Leader.”  I will admit that I had a bit of fun writing it.  Biden is such a hapless loser when he tries to justify himself that I can’t help but laugh when I mock him.  And there’s so much fodder to work with.  Anywhere you stick a shovel you hit paydirt.  I could probably do a whole post just on his use of the term, malarkey.  So, we’ll see how it goes.

Seeing how annoyed all the lefties were about the outcome in the House of Representatives I have to conclude that the whole thing was a net positive.  Maybe Kevin McCarthy even learned something about dealing with free people.  Now we’ll have to see if any of the changes being instituted make a difference or whether the Republicans just roll over and obey Biden, Schumer and the vested interests who donate to their war chests.  Still, I did think there was value in seeing a little real insurrection in the House.

Well anyway, here’s to the beginning of a good weekend.  And hopefully I’ll have more to show real soon.

11JAN2023 – OCF Update – All Work and No Play Makes photog a Dull Boy

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There’s no rest for the wicked and I’m no exception.  Fate has conspired to render this week and next awfully busy for yours truly.  I’ll be out pocket most of this afternoon and then there’s more drama tomorrow.  I’ll be wearing a suit and tie then and doing my best to seem like that bright young photog of 1980.  Well, it’s a really nice tie.

So, I’ll do my best to fill the site with interesting content.  I’ve been enjoying the non-political stuff over the last few days.  Let’s face it, writing every day about Kevin McCarthy is not exactly an inspiring prospect.  In fact, I’d be happiest if the headline for the next two years is, “McCarthy continues to block all new spending coming from White House and Senate.”  All of his power is negative.  He can’t force Biden to do anything but he can stop him from inflicting any new damage.  And if he’s especially clever he might come up with a compromise bill that does more good than harm.  Then I would write something nice about him.  His epitaph might be, “HERE LIES KEVIN MCCARTHY, HE CAUSED LESS HARM THAN PAUL RYAN!”

I’ve been having fun mining “The Maltese Falcon” for nuggets of gold.  No work of fiction, that I know of, is all gold.  There’s always dross mixed in.  And the Falcon is no exception.  But Hammett had his moments and I enjoy picking apart some of his dialog for the sheer joy of its feel.  I especially enjoy Gutman’s elaborate banter.  But there are bits here and bits there for many of the characters.  I may do a little more digging on the Falcon if something strikes me.  And then I’ll look around to see what else is out there on the book shelf.  I noticed that some of Hammett is already in the public domain.  Well, it’s close to a century old but I wasn’t sure how much they extended copyrights the last time Disney bribed Washington.  But Hammett may not have kept up with his own intellectual property rights at the end.  I don’t think he was doing well toward the end of his life and I don’t think he had any heirs.

I was watching the movie “The Boston Strangler” last night.  I’d never seen it before and I guess I didn’t know what to expect.  I’ll put up a review soon but it certainly was a strange movie.  Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that although the events took place in 1963 the movie was made in 1968 and therefore absorbed a lot of the current day weirdness.  There are gay and lesbian characters and a tawdriness and weirdness about many of the minor characters that borders on parody.  Seeing Henry Fonda navigating this mess made me think, “How the mighty have fallen.”

Well, anyway, I’ll try to keep my nose to the grindstone in between my errands and responsibilities and we’ll see what I can come up with.  Excelsior!

09JAN2023 – I’m a Man Who Likes Talking to a Man Who Likes to Talk

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07APR2020 – Quote of the Day

… Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. … You’re a close-mouthed man?”

Spade shook his head. “I like to talk.”

“Better and better!” the fat man exclaimed. “I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.”  …

Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out – I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

(Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon))

One of the reasons I started this website was because I couldn’t find an on-line community that thought like I did.  That went for my particular personal interests like photography and science fiction.  But also, the general interest, news and political sites that I could find.  So, in addition to the sense that freedom of speech had been curtailed by the powers that be that ran the internet I also felt isolated from people like me.

From time to time, I’d run into someone who talked the way I did.  And that was fun.  But what I noticed was that these people tended to be either run off the sites that I frequented, or forced to watch what they said or outright banned.  And I got that same treatment too.

Now that I ‘ve become an old hand at this right-wing existence I begin to see what will and won’t happen anytime soon.  What won’t happen for the foreseeable future is the end of leftist domination of the media and most of the on-line infrastructure.  Elon Musk may have opened up the door a crack to our side on Twitter but Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, PayPal, etc. have the rest of the doors slammed shut and they can crush anyone they want as ruthlessly as can be imagined.  I’ve gotten all of that through my thick skull pretty thoroughly.  So, I’m not conquering the internet anytime soon.

But I do get exposure when maddmedic or whatfinger or duckduckgo decides to link to one of my articles.  And that’s fun because new people show up and some of them stick around.  And why that’s fun is because talking to people on the site has become my favorite part of the whole thing.  Talking to folks I’ve known for years and folks who just showed up is fascinating.  People sometimes talk about the anonymity of the internet being a bad thing.  And I guess if a hopeless troll shows up and tortures you, I could see how being anonymous could give license to him to say some pretty awful things.  But anonymity also allows people to be honest about what they say too.  And that’s something that we can’t say in real life much anymore.  And I think sometimes it’s healthy to say what you really think.  Even if it’s an unhappy truth being expressed.

So, for instance, I’ve lately been of the opinion that the Dissident Right is correct when they say we can’t vote our way out of the mess we’re in.  And that’s a discouraging fact.  And it removes a lot of what I typically write about.  After all, what exactly is there to say about 2024 if it’s highly unlikely that the Republicans will win the White House or the Senate.  Just repeating over and over again that all hope is lost is pretty obnoxious and boring.

But what I find is that there’s still plenty to talk about with people on our side of the fence.  Our local lives are real and much less constrained than what the Left has done to national politics.  There are still Red States that are trying to help their people and leaders that may begin to make a difference in our lives.

And there’s contact with people who think and talk the way I do.  And I think that’s the most important benefit of a site like this.  It sponsors camaraderie and provides enjoyment for me and possibly others who otherwise wouldn’t have a place to listen and talk about things they think are important.

And so, I’ll take this occasion to once again encourage anyone out there who has something to say to comment or even provide a post for the site.  People like to read opinions and they also like to state their opinions and I want to encourage that.  So, by all means jump in.  The more the merrier.  I’d love to hear from regulars and lurkers and new readers too.  And not just on politics there’s plenty of latitude for things to talk about out there.  In the immortal words of Caspar Gutman “I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.”

New Year Day 2023 – My Resolutions

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Last night Camera Girl and I rang in the New Year in our traditional manner by going to sleep at about 11 pm.  That’s right.  We missed Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest and a host of musical nobodies and cultural degenerates.  Interestingly it was 11:58 pm when we were awakened by what I assumed was a thermonuclear detonation but turned out to be what I assume were some sticks of dynamite being tossed around by one of my more excitable neighbors here in Dunwich.  After assuring myself that the house was still on its foundations, we wished each other Happy New Year and turned back over to sleep.

I hope everyone enjoyed their night last night, whether by celebrating with friends or singing along as Miley Cyrus tele-visually twerked to Auld Lange Syne.  And now we find ourselves in 2023 and like everyone else we look back on 2022 and make some course corrections to help us achieve our goals in the New Year.

And I have.  I looked at my poor performance at finishing up my story and realized that I needed a better daily schedule.  Or rather weekly schedule.  And so, I’ve blocked out my time to write fiction, write for the blog, work, remind Camera Girl that I still live here and take care of all the things that need doing around this place.

So, this morning I woke up, almost on time, and followed my plan, mostly.  And by golly it definitely helped.  I accomplished more in one morning than I’ve gotten done in the last three weeks.  Now granted the holidays are generally the worst time of the year for getting work done but I can see that following a schedule will significantly increase my productivity.  And probably getting that writing done in the morning was the best choice.  So here I am, a paragon of virtue on day one of the new world order and somewhat smarmy with self-regard.

I’ve also managed to get the web site test bed up and running on my computer and I will shortly be testing out some changes I’m thinking about.  And doing it this way I’m less likely to blow up the site by accident.  So, once again, paragon of virtue.

So, who’s better than me?  I ask you!

Of course, my track record on maintaining resolutions past New Year’s Day has not previously been stellar.  So, we will have to see how things pan out.  But I am brimming with optimism, good intentions and fat-soluble vitamins so let’s give me the benefit of the doubt.

And in line with my new regimen, I will be careful to prevent any unbridled enthusiasm over current events from erupting into overblown optimism about political saviors putting our political house in order.  From now on I’ll applaud attempts at improving things by well-intentioned individuals but I will refrain from declaring anything an outright victory until it’s confirmed by the regime.  Let’s say a declaration of defeat by the New York Times or the Washington Post.

And this is fine.  There will still be occasion to laugh when a Fredo or someone of that ilk is cast into the abyss by his own handlers or when Dopey Joe rolls down the ramp from Air Force One.  I’ll just make sure I don’t read more into these things than they deserve.  Moderation in all things.

So here we go.  “O brave new world that has such people in it.”  Let the games begin.