Thanks for Giving Us the Plague

We’re all sick.  My mother-in-law brought home some wacky virus or other, which naturally is hitting my husband the worst, because they always do.  As I compose it’s only 5:49 in the evening (black night this time of year at this latitude) and after eating some thanksgiving themed gruel, he’s gone back to sleep again.  At least there’s no wheezing.  They say rest is supposed to be good for sickness, right?

MiL cooked the gruel tho, and I said thanks to her for that.  Wish she’d ever wear a mask.

I’ve been thinking about how much of a social outlier you have to be to wear a mask these days.  Practically nobody does it.  That makes it a conformity thing, I think.  There is no way the vast majority of the population in a blue state feels easy-breezy-indestructible about disease and/or nihilistic enough to not care who suffers or dies for unnecessary transmissions.  Some of these people would do it, if they weren’t afraid of looking like a freak.

So when you see somebody wearing a mask properly, understand that person is either a cowardy custard whose germophobia exceeds their social fear, or they are a person so fucken cool they genuinely don’t give a fuck what other people think about them – mostly the latter.  Props either way, because vulnerable people like my husband don’t deserve this shit.  I wish his mom wasn’t a slave to conformity.

After a few hours of interruption, back to finish the article up.  He woke to eat two bites of pumpkin pie and went back to sleep.  Snoring again.  At least that’s breathing.

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Nostromowrimo

when i say my writing group is doing an unaffiliated writing month, i mean to say only my husband and i are, because the world is lousy with sluggy-ass slugheads.  i like to have consideration but it gets my goat a lil.  i can do some on this hand on that hand -ness…

on one hand, if i can try to write a novel in a month, why can’t the rest of those bums?  i’m workin’ full time in the ugh factory.

on the other hand, i may be creativities georg the outlier who should not have been counted.

on the other other hand, my husband is too, and surely there wouldn’t be two creativities georgs.

on the other other other hand, these people have all succeeded at novel months in the past.  what are the odds they’d all be so enfeebled now?

on the other other other other hand

my own husband is a good example of a person becoming progressively more disabled, which seems to be a recurring theme among like every art person i know, like wtf, is art like a slow-burning cancer.

on the other other other other other hand, my husband is one of the people who is noveling this month, already hit 50k words and is now just aiming for completion of the story with no specified word count goal.

on the other other other other other other hand, i can believe there is a sort of pandemic of distraction, demoralization, or something, that is oppressing the masses, making us less capable than we used to be.

on the other other other other other other other hand, what is it, truly?  it’s real hard for me to imagine there’s a decent excuse for how slugheaded the world has become.  you don’t think i’d rather be vegging out, watching tv shows, sleeping every chance i get?  if i did that, life would pass me by.

anyway, this is detracting from time i can be writing so i’m leaving now.  point is, i know i’m better than most at this, but i shouldn’t be.  come correct, ye sluggardly masses.  you princes of new york.

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I Uncle Hui’d It

In the movie Hard Boiled (辣手神探/Lashou Shentan/Hot-handed God of Cops), there’s a big warehouse fight scene that just keeps going and going.  It’s a pivotal moment or two, so that’s fair.  Early in that scene, when Johnny Wong’s crew are attacking rival mobster Uncle Hui’s property, one of the defenders calls up the boss to let him know what’s going down.

In my head the line was something like “Uncle Hui, Uncle Hui.  At the armory.  There’s a raid going on.”  “Armory” was said more like “ermory.”  Side note, I’m talking about the dub, because I love the early english dub of that movie.  Anyway, the actual line?  Completely different.  I can’t easily find a version to double check at the moment, but going from memory is where I went wrong in the first place, so not sharing it.

Why did such an inconsequential line take real estate in my brain?  The dub voices were so funny to me I couldn’t help repeating lines, sticking on them.  The obvious ones to hit over and over again would be your “Give a guy a gun and he’s superman, give him two and he’s god!” and, oh, practically everything Johnny Wong says.  Maybe I was more likely to get those ones right, so the lesser lines suffered memetic drift in my head.

Again with the dubbed voices, there’s a kung fu movie where Jacky Chan steals a guy’s food.  I always remembered the line as “Hey, goddammit!  Who stole my piece of chicken?”  The actual line was more like, “My piece of chicken, who stole it?”  I get confronted with this, the limitations of memory, far more often than I’d prefer.  I call it “Uncle Hui-ing” in honor of that moment from Hard Boiled.

The original George Romero version of Day of the Dead has a kinda hilarious but heartfelt performance by the late Anthony Dileo Jr, as a guy who is losing his mind under the influence of a zombie apocalypse.  I remembered a number of those lines perfectly, but at least one was a bit off.  Uncle Hui’d!  And perfectly fitting the theme of this post, as I look at the videos I was watching just last fucking night, I can’t remember which line I had wrong or how the wrong version went.  fml.

Off topique, but that dude died from covid early this year.  Keep vaxing, and if you wanna like i do, keep masking.  Don’t take chances with your lives.

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A Mission Possible: Get Your Drank On

I was gonna save this video for Thanks4nothing, but I ran out of content before that, and the sidebar is a vanishing domain upon which we feasty dogs must fight to survive.  Before I exhorted my commentariat to find video of TV’s Michael “The Worf” Dorn talking about monkey lovin’, but it proved to be something I’d hallucinated in the past.  What I’m going to ask of you now is actually possible, so please do it.

Observe…

Now I know what you’re thinking.  “That sounds interesting, except maybe I do this this and this instead, until it no longer resembles original concept in any respect.”  And I get that.  This is FtB, and like the bloggers here, we are all fierce individualists who anarchistically never accomplish anything.  But resist the impulse!  Resist it, I say.  One, this is worth doing right, at least once.  Two, I don’t want to be the only person in the world who has ever done it.  Please don’t leave me hangin’!

I wasn’t hugely clear on the specifics of method, so take this in recipe form.

Toolz

  • 1 paring knife
  • mixing bowl
  • one ziploc sandwich bag
  • two ziploc freezer bags
  • three regular bowls, small to medium size
  • big clear glass mug
  • wide-mouth straw like they do at bubble tea joints
  • maybe roll of paper towels or a small regular towel handy for messes

Ingredience

  • 1 pomegranate
  • 1 small thingus of lucky charms, generic may be adequate
  • 1 20 oz bottle of pepsi

Destructions

  • put one freezer bag inside another, just in case of tiny holes.
  • pour the pepsi into the inner freezer bag and seal both.  do not seal a bunch of air inside because these will swell as the water within freezes, and you don’t want them to pop open.  squeeze a lil air out, careful not to spill liquid.
  • put that shit in the freezer.  set a timer for maybe forty-five minutes.
  • keep checking on it every forty-five minutes, busting up crystals so it freezes slushy, no big hard chunks within.  you may also have to let more air out as it expands.  it is finished when this is a frozen pepsi, more crystal than liquid, but slushy – not a big slab.
  • you can do more of these steps while you wait for freezing.  depending on your freezer it could take hours.
  • rinse the pomegranate.  use the paring knife to notch the rind, circumnavigating the sumbitch with the cut in at least two directions, so you can pull it apart in quarters.
  • put maybe three inches of water in the mixing bowl, and get it, one ziploc sandwich bag, and one regular bowl at least medium size, and have them within reach – along with optional towels for spills.  put on a movie or some podcasts; you’ll be here a while.
  • gently pull apart pomegranate, sinking the quarters in the mixing bowl of water.  they don’t have to be fully submerged, but water should be accessible.
  • remove all the rind and mesocarp (inner membranes) from the pomegranate arils, placing them in your medium bowl.  if it’s white, it goes.  sometimes a lil strand of pulp will be stuck to the base of an aril.  i individually knock these off, tho it makes this take a ridiculously long time.  even the best pomegranates most of us can get have some amount of rotten seeds.  chuck them in the garbage bowl too.  the water helps you get junk off your fingers as you go.  a towel may also be useful.
  • as you go, put the fresh arils in the ziploc sandwich bag.  when you got all the good ones, refrigerate.  they’re nicer slightly chilled.  these will be in better condition than the ones you get from a grocery store.  super primo.
  • at the end you will also have one bowl of rind pieces plus a few rotten arils.  garbage or compost.  the bowl of water will be yellowish and have tiny bits of plant matter in it.  send it down the drain.
  • get two more bowls and your lucky charms.  one of the bowls can be pretty small.
  • separate the marshmallows from the oat cereal pieces in the lucky charms.  the bowls help, give you something to divvy into.  you don’t need a lot of the marshmallows, maybe a little less than a handful, depending on the size of your hands.  at the end pour the oat bits back in the box, to sadden the next child who tries to pour some of their favorite cereal.  set the bowl of ‘shmallows aside.
  • you might have to wait longer if your pepsi ain’t frozen yet.  when it’s good, it’s time to play bartender.
  • make a lil conical pyramid at the bottom of your mug.
  • pour lucky charms around the base of it.
  • pour a similar amount of pom arils on top of the lucky charms, maybe a lil less.  you will have a lot of arils left.  you can use for more of the recipe for pals, or save as a treat for later.  i like to eat ’em straight or with cool whip from a lil ramekin.
  • top it off with however much of the frozen pepsi fits in your mug.
  • serve with wide-mouthed straw.
  • WARNING – the arils are a choking hazard.  careful how you succc.

In the video I also failed to adequately describe it.  First up, frozen pepsi is what you’d expect.  Nice, if wildly sweet.  Second, you’d think the marshmallows would disintegrate, but not really?  And the way they almost crunch in the mouth is weirdly pleasing.  Also very sweet, with a touch of food coloring taste.  Lastly, pomegranate arils explode in the mouth real nice, and when they do?  Release a slightly sour taste into the excessively sweet beverage, lending it a lot of interest.

Let me know if u dun it, or if you’re a boring anarchist who had to do your own shit.  I’d be curious about an alcoholic version tho I total tee.  Comment on the blog, not on yewchoob.  Thanks.

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Bird Mystery Solved?

Remember those shiny white birds from the neighborhood of 320th ave and I-5 in Federal Way WA, that have vexed me for at least a few years now?  I think I might have solved the mystery…

Fancy pigeons.  Now I wouldn’t think somebody who keeps fancy pigeons would let them fly around, but what would I know?  This isn’t 100% because I haven’t seen the full flock in motion close enough to be sure it was the same birds, but in the same neighborhood I saw two different pigeons that were blazing white.  might have had a little darkness in the face and been a bit larger than average feral, but hard to be sure at a distance.

Why did I think they had size overlap enough with gulls to throw me?  Bloom, I think.  White objects look larger at distance, and these guys were even whiter overall than glaucous-winged gulls.  Anyway, it’s been months since I’ve seen the whole flock together, which makes sense.  A white pigeon in that neighborhood has to be total hawkbait.

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A Mission from Me

Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

Unbelievably, nobody seems to have isolated the audio from that nature documentary where Michael Dorn said “Now he’s decided it’s time for a little monkey lovin’.”  At least find me a time signature on a yewchoob video, please, I’m beggin’ ya.

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EDIT – i begged for the impossible.  spurred by morales in comments, i googled it from both the quote and the dorn side.  no trace.  feels like i had a hallucination.  humans never do that, only bad dirty robits…

Essential Milks

I made a playlist of what I deemed the best Dead Milkmen songs, following my exhaustive review of their discography, trying to have at least one from most of their albums, to get the range of what’s going on there.  Does it hang together?

The biggest problem with making this kind of thing is often the volume difference from one album to the next, however I think yewchoob might equalize stuff to have a similar noisiness, from one video to the next?  At least, I don’t recall having any radical changes causing issues – unlike burning one’s own cd, where that’s a perennial annoyance.

Another issue is appended intro or outro material on a track, no way to skip without editing.  That’s why I left “Life is Shit” off of this list, tho it’s usually considered essential to tha canon.  Anyway, top 20 Dead Milkmen songs in whatever order seemed the least jarring with minimal effort.  A number of these tracks break my ableism and/or doomerism policies, so beware…

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depressed, but you know

im depressed, but u kno, neurotypically, so strictly in proportion to how actually fucking depressing my life is at the moment, and ready for those dark clouds to blow away in a puff of air, should said circumstance stop fucking sucking so god damn much for a minute.  on the downside, doubt i get much done this month of the writing i want to do.  but on the plus side for you, i’m more likely to produce a few posts.  see y’all around…

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Spoonkt

Last day of Spooktober I always gotta take the losers of the voting and turn ’em into an excessively convoluted mega-post…
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SPOOKTOBER DAY XX – BONUS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, CULT, CREEPY KID, CLOWN/CIRCUS, DARK WEB/TECHNOLOGY, DEVILS & DEMONS, DREAMS & NIGHTMARES, FOLK HORROR, HAUNTED HOUSE, HISTORICAL, KILLER ANIMAL, KILLER TOYS, MUMMY, MUTANTS, NOIR, SCARY CARS, SCHOOL DAZE, AND WITCH/WIZARD

TITLE:  IN THIS COLONY

Premise:  It’s a scifi noir (Noir) scenario, where a sorta neo-midcentury lookin high school (School Daze) has straight-laced kids with pomaded hair and slacks are doing their best in a world of fascism and grittiness.  A creepy new kid (Creepy Kid) in class starts seducing one of the girls away from the gang, and Snoopi -the hacker (Dark Web/Technology) of the group- investigates her.  She finds out Creepi is somehow connected with the mummies (Mummi) that went missing from the local museum, and investigating them leads the story to alternate with the colonial time period (Historical) in the same area.

The colonial era kids are plagued by dreams (Dreams & Nightmares) that might lead to a witch panic, seeing the forms of monstrous creatures (Devils & Demons).  Gradually it becomes apparent there’s a parallel world (Alternate Dimensions) coming into contact with ours during the witching hour and other spooky occasions.  There’s a whole alien ecosystem to that place, but the energies of it seep through and grant wild powers to the children (Witch/Wizard).

Back in the future it becomes clear the same thing is happening, but the lack of historic records means it’s only clear to the reader – knowledge withheld from the characters hitchcock style.  The high schoolies start gaining weird powers (Mutants).

Back in the past, one of the kids who suffered religious abuse convinces the others to form a coven and curse the colony, attacking it with animated toys (Killer Toys) and other things.  She liked the commedia dell’arte and gets her friends to take roles from it, with herself reigning as la Signora (Clown/Circus).

Back in the future, Snoopi and the gang discover there’s a cult (Cult) within the city that has discovered there are mutants about and mobilize against them.  What’s more dangerous, the creepy kid who has snatched up their chum, or the gr’ups who want to kill them for being different?  They patrol the city in unmarked cars (Scary Cars), and could get you at any moment.

Back in the past, the goodest witch kid is too naive and uses her own powers to defend the colony from the coven dell’arte, taking out the killer toys with mind-controlled animals (Killer Animals).  In return the colonists see her as a witch and try to kill her (Folk Horror).  The bad kids save her, but many die in the fight.  La Signora takes the goodest girl away and they hide by using a power to turn into bog mummies.  They get discovered by developers in the mid-twentieth century who drain a swamp to make a suburb, and are added to the museum’s collection.  The other world beginning to cross over with the city yet again, and they are awakened.

Back in the future, the school kid mutant gang finds the haunted house (Haunted House) where their friend has joined the dell’arte coven, and have a confrontation.  Probably they have to team up to fight the cult.  I dunno.

Horror Element:  Is the other world evil?  Is it making the kids into monsters?  Or is this an innocent thing, and the gr’ups are the bad ones?

Some Nonsense:  Volach, a great president, appears in the likeness of young boy, having wings in the way of an angel, riding upon a dragon with two heads.  He gives full true repsonses of hidden treasure, in which it seems snakes appear.  But if desired, all kinds of serpents are delivered into the exorcist’s hand.  He has thirty legions under him.


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