Post-Apocalyptic Erotica

I went to Amazon's Kindle book section and started typing 'post-apocalyptic fiction' into the search field to find something inspirational to read, but among the suggestions for the search was 'post-apocalyptic erotica'. Well, I accidentally clikked on that of course and found that there are 28 pages of 435 post-apocalyptic erotic offerings for your panting, I mean prepping, pleasure. Prepper porn: Who knew?

This could open up a whole new market of potential preppers among the erotica-inclined: "Marsha stroked her shapely AN-M14 TH3 incendiary grenades as she softly moaned 'Oh, yes, Dirk, yes! I love it when you go full-auto!'"

"ALUMNI DIRT": A Commencement Speech I'd Like To Hear

“Me? Speak at Commencement? No. Impossible.”

“But why not?”

“I might say something funny. Someone might enjoy it. Completely out of line for a Commencement speech.”

“Bosh. Don’t worry. There isn’t a funny bone in you.”

There was more to the conversation, but you get the gist. In a fit of submission, I submitted. It was a ghastly mistake. At least the school said so when they tracked me down afterwards.

In any case, the moment finally arrived. I sauntered gamely to the lectern.

“Students, Parents, Grandparents, Faculty and Administrators, Trustees, Homeless Seeking a Glass of Free Punch,

I have been tasked with the responsibility of boring you all into slack jawed stupors for half an hour or so, and I shall do my best.

When, many years ago, I was badgered into volunteering here on a project to frame mouldering old pictures from the school archives so that the then current crop of promising young scholars could see they actually had predecessors who looked just like them, I commented to my overseer that the school newsletter was sorely lacking in anything worth rea...I mean: Pizzazz. It lacked Pizzazz.

It’s all very well to brag about how many were National Merit Scholars, which team had trounced all others in state competition, to which colleges and universities the graduates were fleeing, who had ponied up for the Alumni Fund and how much, but where was the single thing to which every jaded reader would first turn before all others?

No, not a faculty center-fold. Good grief: Get your minds out of the gutter.

However, since we are already speaking of the gutter, the newsletter really would be perked up with a column called something like “Alumni Dirt”.

What reader could possibly resist the latest on who has been indicted, the salacious details of truly sordid divorces, horrific revelations at trials, and which classmate was incarcerated where?

Imagine if Lizzy, your dear friend of Sophomore year, had achieved international prominence in the serial ax murder industry. Wouldn’t you want to know? For a modest fee, she might consult.

Everyone wondered why her junior year boyfriend hadn't come to the 5th Reunion pig roast she threw at her parents' lake house, until it came out in her trial that, in fact, he had.

And the poor country club. What were they supposed to do with the FBI digging up all the sand traps for numbers 3 through seven? I mean, people had standing reservations for tee times.

Suppose Lizzy was now doing thirty years to life in Sing-Sing. Why, simple alumni solidarity would dictate you drop Lizzy a note now and then. Once every five years or so seems about right: She isn’t going anywhere.

Lizzy always was suspiciously chirpy. Anyone that cheerful has to be an ax murderer. Or will be. You chirpy types: You know who you are.

Say your old friend Moxy who you used to double date with, has brought down the family bank with unauthorized trades, and all she got out of it was a measly $25,000,000 buyout. Wouldn’t you want to know so you could send a sympathy card to her at that absolute hovel she is reduced to in Cannes?

What about your sister’s boyfriend senior year. Is Interpol still looking for him? How much is the reward? Who would have imagined he was going to put a real blade in the guillotine he built in Shop class and go all French Revolution on those smelly community organizers? He certainly had them fooled.

And his sister, Sukie! Who else, I mean really, who else but Sukie would have taken some banged up beer kegs from that pick up bar she bought and turned them into an Iron Maiden? I guess she didn't actually like pick up artists, did she? She took enough of them home, though, according to the prosecutor.

Such is the news which stirs alumni souls.

At this point, our beloved alma mater apparently doesn’t even track, much less report, the most interesting alumni dirt. Why, I had to find out for myself that a classmate’s wife had quote “a really unusual legal situation, and spent the entire first year we were married in jail.” Unquote.

Now that is the sort of stuff to which readers would turn, especially if told that my classmate had managed to keep his mother in the dark about it. She apparently wondered aloud just why his dear wife was never home whenever MaMah called during that first year, but apparently accepted that Snookums was working late, meditating, at book club, or jogging with the goldfish.

As you go forth into the world, stalwart, proud, and bold, please don’t keep all the most interesting stuff to yourself. If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, write it down and send it to us.

Especially if they are our distinguished alumni.

Thank you.

How To Open A Can With A Spoon

This looks like fun. It does look a lot less messy that rubbing the top rim of the can against a rock or piece of concrete.

Slumgullion

I'm reading Mark Twain's 'Roughing It', in which Twain takes the stagecoach from Missouri to Nevada. He mentions a rather dispiriting meal at a stop in which they were served slumgullion.

As Twain said: "Then he poured for us a beverage which he called “Slum gullion,” and it is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler." Just to be sure, I looked it up: slumgullion

cheap or insubstantial stew.

1. a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
2. a beverage made weak or thin, as watery tea, coffee, or the like.
3. the refuse from processing whale carcasses.

1840-50, Americanism; compare Scots, Hiberno-English gullion quagmire, cesspool

from slum in US sense slime + gullion, perhaps variant of cullion testicles

So, a nice thin beverage made from slimy whale testicles, which by the time they got to Kansas would likely have been rather aromatic as well as slimy.

Still, while food was extra, just like on today's airlines, the stage trip cost only $150...or more than $3500 in today's money.

Global Warming Hits Arizona

I knew there was a reason no one lived in Arizona until air conditioning.

Sabrage

I have just come across this transformationally important video, incredibly useful for anyone in a WROL grid down survival situation. Topic: How to open your bottle of Champagne using only your saber.

I can hardly wait to try it with my KaBar Cutlass Machete.

There Is Hope For America Yet Department

I suspect flour would work as well. Powdered aluminum? Might work too well.

And then there is shooting fish in a barrel:

Megyn Kelly or Sheena, Queen of the Jungle

I understand that most of my revered readers are more MSNBC or CBS kinda people, but on the off chance you saw tonight's Fox News with Megyn Kelly, what did you think of her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle leopard print outfit?:

Megyn.

Sheena.

A) Totally Intellectual: Worthy of a Ph.D in Sociology
B) Totally Babacious Empowered Woman Award: Worthy of Sheena, Bare-handed Killer of Mighty Lions
C) Totally Babaciously Intellectual: Worthy of a Republican Vice Presidential Candidate
D) Ummmm...my wife might see my reply. What's your name again? Prank Call! Prank Call!!

Does This Mean That Europeans Are Space Aliens?

Or just some Europeans?

McDonalds Or Organic Food Delight?

Two wicked, wicked Dutch guys present McDonalds food at a food convention and get some interesting responses.



With over 3 million views so far, the Golden Arches folks must be snickering in their Egg McMuffins.

Trebuchet Throws A Car

No comment needed:

The Blue Angels In Honolulu

The Blue Angels were zipping about the area yesterday and today. How do I know? This afternoon all six flew through our kitchen door and out the living room window.

Well, four of them got out, as you can see below, escaping over our shower tree from the Fanged Terrors of the Ko'olaus, Calvin Pi and Sweetie Pi, Guard Cats Extraordinaire.

The other two Blue Angels faired not so well, as it is rumored that Calvin and Sweetie, taking just umbrage at the invasion of their personal airspace by Unusually Large And Raucous Blue Birds, bigger and more raucous even than chickens, which is saying quite a lot so far as Calvin & Sweetie are concerned, bit their tails and gave them a thorough shaking. Below is Calvin, recuperating from the Defense of the Home Territories. He and Sweetie may burp up bits of blue aluminum from time to time, but that's OK: They're Cats With A Mission.

Sweetie is tuckered out from all the excitement, but she remains ever alert to invasion. It will take more than an Unusually Large And Raucous Blue Bird to get past her.

Some People Watch, Others Do

A truly inspiring bit of daftness:

An Omagh plumber tunnelled a hole from under his bed to the local pub 800 feet from his house over the course of 15 years, a court heard today.

As Patsy Kerr told the county court after he was finally caught:

“The wife has a bad snore on her and...so I waited til she was in a deep sleep and then set about digging a hole under the bed in the direction of the pub. I used all manner of tools from spoons to a heavy duty tunnel boring machine I managed to sneak down there when she was at the shops. It wasn’t until 2009 that I hit the jackpot and came up through the women’s toilet mop and bucket room.”

Such dedication is truly ennobling. Mr. Kerr deserves to have his mates buy him a pint now and then.

Read the whole thing here.

If this story turns out to be Onionesque, it matters not: George Washington didn't chop down a cherry tree, either.

The Sailing Rocks of Death Valley: Mystery Solved

"The rocks move about 15 feet per minute", which is moving right along for a rock.

More here.

The Tadpole's Tail

I love the APOD site and check it almost daily. Here is a current cool space pic of the day.

I wonder what it would be like to be on a planet in the tail. Maybe not a lot different from here?

PS: I think there are only three Milky Way stars in this pic. The rest are galaxies. That's a lot of stars.

Knock knock...

Why Women Get Paid Less Than Men

Clik here. What more does one need to know, by golly?

Kitchen Knives

One Christopher Snow has a short essay in Reviews.com on the knives which are needed for a kitchen (in his opinion, not many). One comment sparked another:

Filet knifes are also quite useful: both for fish (you can sort of use the bread knife for it, but it will be awkward and time consuming and probably will wear down the knife if you do it too often) and killing intruders (you can sort of use the bread knife for it, but it will be awkward and time consuming and probably will wear down the knife if you do it too often).

Reply:

CalvinPi

Hi jeremyjanson, All the best authorities agree that intruders really do require two knives.

First, one needs a sharp 12 inch chef's knife, ideally in well-darkened carbon steel, for the actual killing part. A 12 inch is frequently capable of the easiest kill of all: one look at it and they keel over dead of fright. In the case of a particularly death resistant specimen, simply insert the blade, tip first. Nearly anywhere will do, especially if repeated several times.

There is, of course, another school of intruder chefs which prefers the cleaver, or in a few rare cases, known as Neo-Bordenists*, aficionados of the double bitted woodsman ax. Such traditional edged tools, however, are, technically speaking, not in fact actual knives, and should be discussed in a separate forum.

After one has satisfactorily used the 12 inch chef's knife, then and only then does the fillet knife come into its own.

For grilling instructions, consult "Fried Green Tomatoes".

And don't forget a good mop.

*After the eponymous Lizzie Borden. If unfamiliar with Mz. Borden's accomplishments, please refer to Wikipedia.

For the complete article, see here.

Pentagon Has A Plan For The Zombie Apocalypse

As well they ought. Just look at DC.

Under "Zombie Threat Summary," the plan highlights the different kinds of zombie adversaries one might find in such an attack. They include not only vegetarian zombies ("zombie life forms originating from any cause but pose no direct threat to humans because they only eat plant life"); evil magic zombies ("EMZs are zombie life forms created via some form of occult experimentation in what might otherwise be referred to as 'evil magic'"); and also chicken zombies.

Well finally they are getting with the program.

I wonder if vegetarian zombies can be combatted with Salad Shooters...oh...wait...I guess that would be vegetable zombies. "Attack of the Undead Carrots"

More here.

Teenagers After My Own Heart

A couple of kids on the way home from Europe seem to have caused a minor ruckus when they landed at O'Hare Airport. Funny that the European end of security didn't catch them. Of course, maybe they did and realized that such things are about as dangerous as your average doorstop.

Baggage screeners at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport have discovered two World War I artillery shells in checked luggage that arrived on a flight from London.

The Transportation Security Administration says the bags belonged to a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old who were returning from a school field trip to Europe.

TSA spokesman Jim McKinney says a bomb disposal crew determined the shells were inert and no one was ever in danger.

The teens told law enforcement they obtained the shells at a French World War I artillery range...

The teens were questioned then allowed to travel onward. They weren't charged.

The article says the shells were "seized" but does not say if they were also released. I can think of no reason whatsoever to confiscate inert shells. They are nothing but chunks of iron, and in this case also historical artifacts.

More here.

Felix Baumgartner Balloon Jump Video

Here is one way to get your heart rate to 190.

This is the video shot by Felix Baumgartner when he jumped from a balloon from 39 km up over New Mexico. I noticed that at the beginning there wasn't enough air to make the wrinkles on his suit flap.

For some reason it opens half way thru the video. If you want to see the beginning you'll have to slide the white button at the bottom over to the left.