Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

21MAR2023 – Microscopic Images – Snail Munching

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Many years ago I kept snails as pets.  I remember how creepy it was listening to them munching egg shells that I gave them to help grow their shells quicker.  They are weird and interesting critters.  I once started a science fiction story where a geneticist combined the brains and tentacles of a cephalopod with the body of a giant African snail to produce a sentient creature that survives a thermonuclear war and becomes a threat to the surviving humans.  But I got bored with the story and never finished it.

 

20MAR2023 – Spring Equinox – The Canada War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts After a Hectic Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tax Day!

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One for you nineteen for me!

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

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

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

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

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Cthulhu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

08MAR2023 – Dunwich Complainer – Retail Democracy

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Cthulhu

This week Dunwich will celebrate old style New England democracy at its most authentic.  We’re going to have a referendum.  Back in 1653 the Town Elders codified a law that banned witch burning on every day but Monday.  The intent was that this would provide the maximum time before Sunday for the smell to dissipate.  The puritans were deeply religious folk and they feared to offend the Lord by allowing burnt witch funk to permeate their worship.

Fast forward three hundred some odd years later and Dunwich is a much less pious place.  And witch burning is big business.  Having an inhabitant declared a witch and burned at the stake is the town’s most lucrative revenue stream.  You see, the statute declares that the possessions, real and personal, of the convicted witch are forfeited to the town and can then be sold at auction.  Of course, the successful accuser of the witch stands to gain a 10% commission from the proceeds of the sale, tax free.  So, the trials are stacked up like planes circling Arkham airport.

And that’s the problem.  Whereas the trials are getting banged out day in and day out, the burnings are way, way behind.  The municipal witch pit can only accommodate fifteen burnings a week.  So, there are currently twelve hundred witches cooling their heels waiting for stake time.  Now the witches aren’t complaining.  They’re willing to wait forever to be honest.  But the town budget is a mess.  First Selectman Cthulhu has already spent all the money that the backlog represents on aromatic bath salts.  He’s a big proponent of the long languid soak in a tub.  Although in his case the tub is reworked municipal reservoir.  But suffice it to say that requires an awful lot of bath salts.  And now the bath salt merchandisers refuse to float him any more credit until he squares his accounts.

Well, he’s finally lost his patience and has threatened to eat everyone in town alphabetically unless a referendum repeals the “Monday only” part of the witch burning law right away.  And so, we’re set to vote this week.  We’ve set up the “no electioneering” line 75 feet from the polling area as state law requires but being hundreds of feet tall Cthulhu has threatened to toe the line but lean his head through the gymnasium skylight to watch over the voting and eat anyone who votes no on the petition.  Last we heard; the poll workers say there’s nothing in the handbook to forbid this activity.  This seems a little suspect to me but I know the First Selectman is a fairly persuasive character when up close and personal.

The Dunwich electorate is a feisty group.  Several of our oldest and most religious citizens have openly declared that they will vote no.  To ensure that nothing tragic befalls us the Town Clerk has decided to call in Dominion to provide the ballot reading machines, and in that way, fortify democracy or at least prevent us all from being eaten alphabetically.

Well, I’m a little sad to see the old ways discarded one by one.  It will certainly change the character of the town to have acrid black witch smoke wafting around town twenty-four seven.  It’s been proposed to replace the witch burning pit with a modern natural gas fired witch kiln with a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot stack to send the smoke down wind to Arkham.  With that kind of automation, the danger will be that we may completely depopulate the town in a couple of months.

And I guess that’s the way of progress.  But I’ll miss the days when a man could bring his family to the witch burning pit and get good seats from which to hiss at the old crones and maybe even chuck a rock or two at them.

Well, we have to be realistic and live in the present.

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.

Cutting a Swath Through Life – Part 1

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I’m stalling.  There’s about three inches of dripping wet snow on my driveway and probably another couple of inches of the same that will be falling until tonight.  I should be out there right now shoveling it.  Not snow blowing.  It won’t work on it.  The machine is leaving the bottom inch and that will turn into an ice layer if I try it.  So, shoveling it must be.  But doing it twice is just too much for my lazy nature.  So, I’m stalling.

I was gonna exercise but I convinced myself shoveling was more than enough of that.  I read all the news.  Oh, my aching head.  Blather and more blather.  I’m so tired of it all.  I’m even more tired of the talkers on our side.  And I’m most tired of listening to me!

So, I listened to some music.  Some country, some opera, some old folk music.  All kinds of stuff.  That cheered me up.  That was good stuff.  It got me out of my funk.

There’s just been too much bad news lately.  Local stuff.  Like that girl beaten up on the school bus and those elementary school kids in Ohio who were brutalized by the black kids forcing them to pledge allegiance to BLM.  Nightmarish stuff.  And that synched up with Scott Adams’ statements about anti-white hate.

So, I was going to write a cautionary piece about schools and homeschooling and Florida’s new laws protecting school kids from CRT and LGBTQ grooming and all that crap but I’m too tired of listening to myself drone on.  By now parents should be figuring out their options and doing something about it.

Today I want to talk about living.  We get one life.  These buggers are trying to take that away from us.  Well, instead live it to the hilt.  Cut a swath through this world.  Leave your mark.  Leave a trail of people who remember you and when they think of you, they smile.  Think back on the people you’ve come in contact with in your life.  Which ones are vivid and alive in your memory?  They were the people who put something of themselves into their day-to-day interactions.  Even if you were something as stultifyingly boring as a telemarketer selling children’s books if you put some of your personality into the pitch and some honesty about what you were doing you could turn this dehumanizing rote sales chore into a human interaction that both parties might look back on fondly.

I know this to be the case.  Back in the good old days when I was between careers and schools I once had three different jobs going.  On the day shift I was sorting stock certificates at a Wall Street brokerage house.  On the night shift I was a telemarketer selling anything we were asked to sell; kids’ books, tv commercial gadgets, whatever.  And on the third shift I was a proofreader at a law firm in the World Trade Center.  To say that I was in a twilight existence would be putting it mildly.  Depending on which day of the week it was I might be having my main meal at 6pm or 1am or 9 am.  It was pretty insane.  Luckily, I eventually got a full-time gig at a brokerage house.

But when I was doing the telemarketing, I was in a big boiler room operation and you could hear the salesmen all around you saying the same lines you had on your own script.  And it was fascinating to hear the differences between the pitchmen.  And what you could tell was that the people who approached it as a human interaction in which their actual personality was present had better success.  And they seemed happier when we had our break time in the cafeteria.  Now there were exceptions.  There was this one guy who was a veritable machine.  He never took no for an answer.  His hard sell was frightening.  I had it from one of the quality guys that “the machine” had been involved in a complaint where the script said, “We think (fill in the blank) is eight years old.  Is that right?” and the mother answered, “Bobby died last year.”  And the script handled such an eventuality with the answer, “I’m very sorry for your loss.  I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”  “The machine’s” answer was, “Tell me ma’am, do you have any other children that might be interested in these books?”

Now “the machine” was a great salesman but I think the auto dialer that he was connected to probably had more soul than he did.  But on the other side of my cube was a middle-aged woman who didn’t use the hard sell and probably only got through 40% of the numbers “the machine” got through but her sell rate was much higher and she smiled and talked like a human being during the meal break.  Now which of those two people can I remember as having an actual face and voice.  “The machine” is just a droning noise and all I can remember of his appearance is that he shuffled along staring at the floor.

The sales lady was an old woman (to the kid I was) but with a pleasant voice and smiling face and someone willing to help the newbies with advice on doing their jobs and navigating the system at that office.  She was a human being with a personality and took the time to make her surroundings better for the people around her.  And so almost forty years later she still lives in my memory as a living being.  “The machine” is just a cartoon character and a cautionary tale.

So that’s the point.  A human being is an enormously powerful creature.  But in order to bring that power to bear you have to find a way to leverage your talents and use them for good.  That’s the trick.  You have to find a way to bring your humanity to bear.  And it seems like the world is making that harder and harder.  But that’s what you have to do.  Look at your environment and figure out how you can make the biggest impact for good.  You don’t have to be a politician or a super genius or even an authority figure.  Just find something useful and do it right.  And treat people like they deserved to be treated.  Some of them will turn out to be awful.  But give everyone the benefit of the doubt to start with.  Later on, you can bring out the brass knuckles.  That’s my thought.

Well, that’s enough stalling.  Out with the shovel.  Oh, my aching back.

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.