Category: Life in Dunwich

My Adventures in the Mythical New England Town of Dunwich

06JUN2023 – Coffee Walk Reunion

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

From the farthest reaches of the known universe, a hardy crew of hard-bitten desperados descended upon a tavern to relive old glories and trade lies about their exploits.  Well anyway I had to travel for an hour or so.  So, I sojourned out beyond Dunwich to consult, confer and otherwise hobnob with my fellow wizards.  Old times were remembered.  Fallen comrades and enemies were recalled and mockery for the masters of the universe that we had suffered under flowed freely.  So many funny stories.

And we compared notes on the worst of the changes that had slowly turned our former corporate home from a great place to work to a bureaucratic hellhole.  And all agreed that the problem could be described with three letters … DEI.  The most recent outrages were some of the worst.  DEI has become embedded in the goals of every manager.  But how can you advance DEI when there’s no budget to hire new people.  Surprise, surprise.  You have to eliminate white men.  And the way to do that in the zero-sum game of corporate competition is to give them bad reviews.  No matter how valuable they may be or how carefully they work to accomplish their goals it is absolutely critical to advance minorities and women.  So, the white men must be demoted.  And if you’re a normal man and that’s what you’re told to do it’s going to stick in your craw.  Eventually if you can, you walk away.

And that’s not an easy thing.  These jobs pay very, very well.  The perks include stock options, five figure bonuses and retirement plans that any peon would give his right arm to have.  But at a certain point stomaching the things you have to say and do can become too much.

Opinions were espoused about the 2024 race.  I was sort of a downer with my, “We can’t vote ourselves out of this” schtick.  But I was happy to listen to everybody’s opinion on the Trump versus DeSantis question.  And everyone laughed at Biden’s last few fails like tripping over the sandbag and wandering off stage whenever his handlers lost track of him.  And gallons of beer (no Transheuser Busch ordered at that table) were imbibed and mass quantities of meat were wolfed down.

So, we commiserated and compared notes on families and summer plans and vowed to drag the wives into a larger gathering involving grilled meat of a ribeye variety that we have agreed is optimal.  Whether all can attend this upcoming event is of course problematic.  Wives are troublesome, fretful creatures who rarely acquiesce in the expansive plans that men imagine.  Their problem is that they lack the big broad flexible outlook on life.  They want to nail down time and place and attendees and food budgets and other troublesome details that just complicate their husbands’ days.  Why can’t a woman be more like a man?  Wait, scratch that.  Maybe I’m really glad that they’re completely different from men.  Look at all the trouble Matt Walsh has had just getting “experts” to define “WhatIsAWoman?”  Let them be as different as they want as long as they stay just as they are.

So, a very good day.  Reconnecting with the guys is critical.  Camaraderie is of the essence of a normal male life.  We have to spend so much time providing for our families and interacting with the wife and kids that it’s essential now and then to escape from those twittering voices and flighty emotions and hang out with coarse, vulgar, boorish, insensitive, cruel, funny, inventive, enthusiastic and masculine peers.

Well, I’m home now.  The fun is over.  Back to chores and routine.  No more pastrami Reubens.  Just healthy food and diet.   Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

01JUN2023 – Unofficial Summer Begins

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner

In his ode to summer, “Dandelion Wine,” Ray Bradbury identifies June, July and August as summer.  And as opposed to the calendar and the astronomical basis for the definition of summer that it measures, every school boy of my generation knew it to be these same months.  And this year especially, the beginning of June is every bit as much summer as the more legitimate last week.  Today will be close to ninety degrees.  Nothing defines summer more than that Fahrenheit measure.  Ninety degrees Fahrenheit is summer.

And so, the laziness that is the glory of summer already holds me in thrall.  I have a laundry list of yard chores and yet I spend my time walking around the yard looking at flowers and bugs and listening to the birds quarrel over their nest sites and the fattest grubs.  Every once in a while, I’ll pull a weed but despite Camera Girl’s hectoring, I rarely carry the plucked plant to the mulch pile.  I usually just drop it where I found it.  Just too lazy to make the effort.  And that is the beauty of summer; giving in to the pleasure of lazy heat.  Every dog, every lizard knows the ecstasy of laying in the hot sun.  The heat bakes into your bones and the oven air scorches your lungs.  It’s remarkable.  And that is why the seashore is so perfect a summer setting.  It allows you to get that feeling over and over again.  You take the heat until it becomes unbearable, then a plunge into the cold water quenches the heat and you’re ready to do the whole thing over again.  The therapeutic effects of a week or two by the sea can sometimes offset a whole year of office drudgery and even a long New England winter’s worth of cold.

And while I’m at play in the fields of the Lord I can forget for a few moments all of the absurd nonsense that infects the present-day world around me.  I can forget the culture war and the collapse of western civilization and even the internet drudgery that I have embraced.  I don’t have to read what the pundits are saying and what the fake news is trumpeting.  I can forget about war drones following their GPS paths to destruction and watch their natural world analog as a dragonfly patrols the perimeter of the yard, as mechanical and precise as the machine but much more lyrical.

Later on, today I’ll get around to reading the awful news and the boring opinions of the pundits.  And I will have to be out and about on my list of chores.  But it was nice to be up and around early this morning and see the fields while it was still cool and moist.  All that moisture will be sucked up into the blast furnace of noon and I will take another walk to experience that too.  The grasshoppers and the bees will be about their chores and I’ll look for a good photo or two (or two hundred) and I’ll even knock an item or two from the chore list.  But summer’s begun and the living is easy.  Enjoy it if you can.

Dagon’s Spawn Goes for a Stroll

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, Movie Reviews, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Photography, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

Dunwich is the home of more than just Cthulhu himself.  In addition to the First Selectman several of his fellow Great Old Ones inhabit the borders of the township.  For instance, several of Dagon’s descendants inhabit the various lakes, ponds and swamps that overgenerously hydrate the area.  As I’ve often mentioned I am adjacent to one of these swamps and from time to time one of its inhabitants sojourns through or near the grounds.

Today I was in the west field collecting the scattered remains of some cattle that a shoggoth must have devoured there when I heard the sound of tree trunks creaking and cracking under the strain of some horribly massive object forcing its way against them.  As I watched I could see some enormous white pines toppling over far off in the distance.  I cautiously made my way to the location where the trees had fallen and I saw a terrifying sight.  One of the Deep Ones, possibly Dagon’s oldest child was just finishing off the shoggoth as a small meal.  It was of course eating it alive and its victim was changing form and letting out the most horrifying sounds ever heard by a human ear.  Well, except for that time Kamala Harris laughed at one of Biden’s jokes.  That was worse.

When the Deep One was finished with its meal, it belched thunderously and the air was filled with a sulfurous fume that nearly finished me off before the wind changed direction.  Then it hauled its titanic bulk out of the mud and battered a path back into the deeper end of the swamp where it disappeared below the surface with a sickening sucking sound.

Later when the sun had set the foot prints began to glow with a sickly yellow phosphorescence and any creature, insect or amphibian that touched those glowing patches jumped away in pain and rapidly died.  And I happened to witness later that night when an enormous gas bubble broke the surface of the swamp and a yellow glowing fume drifted up.  All the leaves above the pond immediately shriveled up and fell into the water.  I guess the shoggoth was a little greasy even for one of Dagon’s kin.  I wonder if they make Alka seltzer in Great Old One size.

Luckily (or unfortunately) I had my camera with me during the event and I had the presence of mind to capture the great creature returning through the haunted wood.

I intend to send this photographic evidence to the Department of Cryptozoological Studies at Miskatonic University where I studied under the eminent dagonologist Clyde Crashcupp.  With his decades of study and razor-sharp brain he’s sure to earn at least a Nobel prize with this evidence.  I may have to lend him a tux.  He’s kind of a hermit and wears a rope to hold his pants up.

Well, I’d better get back to my chores.  There’s a family of ghouls in the neighborhood and I need to get the fences fixed before they wander by.

13APR2023 – OCF Update – Out and About

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

I had to leave the outskirts of Dunwich today early and only got back in the early afternoon.  Things were going well when I got a call from Camera Girl stating that her old Toyota Corolla refused to bring her home and she needed a lift home and AAA to send a tow truck (or as the locals call it a “wrecker”).

Well, what can you do?  When it rains it pours and so instead of getting down to writing I had to get Camera Girl home and supervise the overhauling of her stalled chariot.  So here it is after 4pm and I haven’t got a sentence of creative writing to call my own.  Just this sad story about a sad story.

But there was a bit of human interest even in this prosaic event.  When the tow truck showed up the driver was a little laconic for Camera Girl’s liking.  Apparently, she belongs to the “customer’s always right” school of automotive services.  And during our ride home she railed against the young fellow and demanded that he shouldn’t get a tip.

I reminded her that today it was 83 degrees out there and a tow truck guy by the end of the day is pretty tired and on a hot day probably a little irritable.  And not everyone is super chatty and chirpy at their work.  And sure enough, after the fellow performed all his work and delivered the car expertly and without incident, I handed him the tip and he thanked me profusely and shook my hand vigorously.  And he said getting a tip was a big deal for him.  What do these women know of the real world that men live in?  Nothing!

So even though the day is consumed and I have no output of any kind, save for this slender reed of a story.  I am unperturbed.  My morning’s expedition was a rousing success.  The outcome of this mission was the best possible one and now Camera Girl and I will celebrate with forbidden foods.  Pasta and sausage and meatballs and garlic bread will be consumed and afterward there will be Italian cheesecake and ice cream.  So, there will be great rejoicing at the Compound and the peasants will rejoice.  Huzzah!

Later on, I will catch up on my photos and quotes and songs for the day and read some of the news of the day.  Apparently artificial intelligence is on everybody’s mind right now.  Honestly, I’m hoping that at some point natural intelligence will resurface on this planet.  We’re being led to Armageddon by morons.  It’s morons leading morons as far as the eye can see.  Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsome and on and on and on.

At what point will any of these people be held accountable for the horrendous train wreck they’ve made of this country?  Does this go on until we’re starving and freezing in the streets?

The only solace I can take is that for a huge number of people all of this is common knowledge.  None of them hold Joe Biden in high esteem.  If the next time he falls down the steps of Air Force One he manages to kill himself no one will shed a single tear.  In fact, there will be hilarity and mockery for months.  Of course, the joke will be on us because then Cackling Harris would be the Commander in Chief and that would definitely end in a nuclear holocaust.

Well, I’m digressing away from the point.  Tonight, is a night of celebration.  No more talk of Biden or auto repair bills or anything depressing.  So, I’ll try to catch up on things tonight and tomorrow but this is just how things sometimes go.

02APR2023 – Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly – The End of the Experiment

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Photography , , , ,

Back last September I posted on finding a Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar and feeding it on sassafrass leaves until it transformed into a chrysalis.

Well, yesterday it emerged from the chrysalis.

It’s kind of a crummy shot because it insists on staying by a very bright window so everything is overexposed.  But it’s a wonderful harbinger of spring.  and after Princess Sack of Potatoes gets to see it on Tuesday it will be released into the great outdoors and hopefully will be fruitful and multiply.

A small win for the forces of life against the dark powers of death.  I’ll take them where I find them.

01APR2023 – April Fool’s Day

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,

Having now lived the majority of my life in New England, I’ve come to associate April Fool’s Day with twenty plus inches of heavy wet snow.  Not because that is the inevitable result on April First but because it is the ironic result that would best capture the spirit of this odd “holiday.”

Well this year’s edition is a less dramatic but more typical version with cold rain and cool refreshing air that I find suits my mood today.  I wandered out of the living room onto the lower balcony and breathed in that freshness and approved of the weather and the day and surveyed the soggy battered appearance of the “estate.”  The forest is full of dead leaves and sodden moss.  The fields are covered in brown grass and sodden moss.  Here and there a few daffodils have blossomed.  The pond is swollen with the rain and the mallards are nowhere in sight.  Maybe ducks are just as sensible as I am and don’t like to get wet.  Maybe they’re holed up in an old coyote den waiting out the rain.  Naturalists would deny such a thing but I like to think that the animals that inhabit my habitat share in my virtues and vices.  Why shouldn’t the ducks crave warmth and eschew getting wet?  Very possibly the drake is often scolded by the duchess for forgetting to take out the trash on time and neglecting to repair the flushometer in the spare upstairs bathroom in a timely manner.  To me all these things seem possible and in some way fitting.  Although I somewhat doubt that the ducks have a spare upstairs bathroom.  Probably just the one.

April First is a pivot point.  For me it is the essential beginning of spring.  Even the rare April First blizzard is a rearguard sally during winter’s final retreat into history.  From now on it will be yard work to repair the ravages of winter and take advantage of the short growing season to grow the vegetables and flowers that we hope to produce.  And it’s the signal for outdoor activities of all sorts; more walks in the forest and the search for photographic opportunities.  It’s a very hopeful time of the year and even impossible hopes seem less impossible after the First of April.

The week ended well.  Today should be a good day to work on the book.  Well, let’s see where that goes.  I look at the headlines and it’s Trump, Trump, Trump as far as the eye can see.  Well, I haven’t got anything interesting or useful to add to that circus.  The only thing worth noting is that the term banana republic is now completely ubiquitous and rightly so.  Later on, something may occur to me and I’ll put virtual pen to virtual paper but for now I think I’ll put on a raincoat and boots and be at play in the fields of the Lord.  But maybe I should take my cue from the ducks and cozy up next to the duchess where it’s warm.  “What?  I said I’ll fix that flushometer next week!  Sheesh.”

Dunwich in the Time of Mud

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews, Trump , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts After a Hectic Week

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tax Day!

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner ,

One for you nineteen for me!

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

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

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

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

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner , ,
Cthulhu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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