Cumann Na mBan

Cumann Na mBan is an Irish woman's organization, simmalar to our Avon ladies, but with guns, not mascara.

See? they already had the guns.

This is their lapel pin:

did you know darling daughter Rose was a member and almost 100 years old?

True.

And here she is today:

Go figure.

Oberlin College

Students are filling the school newspaper with complaints and demanding meetings with campus dining officials and even the college president.

Why?

General Tso’s chicken was made with steamed chicken instead of fried

Banh mi Vietnamese sandwiches served with coleslaw instead of pickled vegetables, and on ciabatta bread, rather than the traditional French baguette.

Worse, the sushi rice was undercooked in a way that was, according to one student, “disrespectful” of her culture.


 The cafeteria there wasn’t serving enough vegan and vegetarian options and had failed to make fried chicken a permanent feature on the Sunday night menu.

The Nevada-based Universal Society of Hinduism joined the food fight last week after students discovered that the traditional Indian dish, tandoori, contained beef.

The Horror. The Horror.

Some years ago 18 year olds were storming beaches, not bitching about what kind of bread the sandwich is made of.

Tell that guy your sandwich is on the wrong kind of bread.


I remember once the copier broke at work, and some guy said "This is the worst day ever."

I said "You should go have a talk with my grandfather, his worst day ever was Anzio"

He said who is Anzio?

Something tells me some people will never get it.

Medivac

Want to drive your velocipede at murderous speeds? 

Have no idea what you are doing?

Come to Freeland and be entered in a chance to WIN A FREE HELICOPTER RIDE!

 

Some kids were driving ATV's in the woods, based on what I was told, in the 35 acres where I was to be hunting.

I really doubt I would mistake a 15 year old on an ATV for a deer or a turkey, but whatever.

Anyhow the kid ran his bike into a tree and needed to be medivac-ed  to a better place.

Tis the season

Well,
Christmas is upon us again. But no fear, if Christmas kind of sneaks up on you, and catches you off guard,  The Family Dollar on South St. will be open on Christmas.

So if you need to get that special someone a dollar's worth of AA batteries, a really nice pair of flip-flops or a set of citronella candles, I can hook you up.
It is only about five blocks from School St.

But don't sleep in, they close at 5:00

Then Mary said the signs on the left and right indicate things might cost more than a dollar, as  it clearly reads $5.
I said yes, it reads five bucks, but you get five of what ever they are selling.


So there.

A word from our other sponsor

And now a word from our sponsor

No place like home.

I was thinking about the woman at staples, who was amazed that we moved from New York to PA.

 Then I thought, while I lived in Westchester, yes, I went to NYC, but my favorite place was the Beat.

In Port Chester.

I went there every night after work, and almost every weekend night.
One good thing was that right down the block there was a greasy spoon called Texas, where you could get great burgers with chili fries for less than $5 after 3:00 A.M.



The Beat was a hole-in-the-wall, and one of the first punk/alternative clubs outside of New York city.

It had a capacity of about 75, but usually filled to 150. Many bands of the era played there, including many appearances by the Smashing Pumpkins, Helmet, The Reverend Horton Heat

and others. These bands were scheduled to play in NYC, so you never knew ho would show up.  You could, if you got there before 6:00 (or came with me) see a band that the next night would be playing in NYC for $50 a ticket for free. or show up at 8:00 and pay a $5.00 cover charge.

For the most part, if it was not on commercial radio and it did not have a synthesizer, it was welcome at The Beat.





So why did they do it?

Gin up attendance in NYC.



The weekends were mainly DJ based until the early to mid 90's

But I stopped going there just before 1990.

You know, marriage and all, 

But the weekends were DJ based.

When I went there, I knew all the staff barmaids and bouncers, and I never had to pay the cover charge, they just let me in.
And they let me stay after closing, to hang out with the employees and the bands. I did have to mop and sweep, but that was OK.  I think they liked the idea that someone else was moping while they smoked Kools with the bands.


But, for pushing a mop, I was in after hours, drinking for free with the band and staff, having a good time  and talking with this dude.

The house DJ at The Beat from 1985 until about 1992, or maybe a year later, was














 Moby.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnj8IIY7bSk&index=5&list=RDN_Qwo8sT9U0


go figure.

TV time

Way back in 1987, the TV had a show called "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

There was a Batazoid named Counselor Deanna Troi. (played by Marina Sirtis who was in 176 episodes, 1987-1994)

The story line had her involved in a romantic situation with Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes)

End of story.





No. Just kidding.

Today I was strolling down Fern St. and I see this car.

Note the tag.

So.
What do I do?

Well I high-tail it home and print this out.

Then I fold it up so it looks like a parking ticket and place it on the windshield.
Sometimes I crack my self up.

Like last night, Mary had a few friends over, and her sister said "where is the warmest spot in the room, I always get so cold".

I said try that corner over there.

It should be about 90º

She said, really? that warm?

I said, no, no.     90º, ⊾

That time again.

Every year I drag out the tangled mess that is the "Christmas lights" and wonder why I did not do a better job putting them away last year. And half of them do not light.

Then I realize that these things go for a little over a buck these days, and I should just toss them out.
I know they are carefully calibrated, and of the finest  quality for which Chingzhau State Electrical Factory #42 is known, but a buck? vs the headache of untangling and finding the tiny bulb that caused the whole string to burn out?

I don't need that kind of trouble these days.

W.P.P.

So I was in Staples the other day.
I was explaining my dissatisfaction with a two month old printer that was no longer working. As best as I could, I stated that my anger was not about the young sales clerk, that I understood she was just doing a job.

But.

I have a printer that does not print. Which is the whole point of having a printer.

She said to take it over to Lattemer St. in Hazelton.

I don't know where that is.

Well do you know where the CVS is? on 309?

No.

 We moved here a while ago, but I still do not know my way around.

She said, "You moved here? from where?"

New York, said I.

"Oh wow! I went to New York once, but that was a field trip from High school, so we were not allowed to wander around so that dosn't count"

Whydja move here?

Witness Protection Program

She said "They really have that? I thought that was just in movies! Wait until I tell my husband! No Kidding?
How did you get into that?"

When you see Vinnie "Crazy Legs" Morlino kack someone in the back of the head with a .22 you can either hope he trusts you, or  throw in with the feds. I chose the feds.


Now.

 About this printer.

So what's up wtih uze?

So,
Thanksgiving, I shoot this sap in the kisser from 30 yards.

About 2 inches by 3 inches.
Right in the noggin. thirty yards.

Unfortunately,  there are a lot of people still alive because it is against the law to put them down.




Like,

Oh well, I can't do that yet.

But soon.




Soon.

The good thing about meth.

In 1986, during the Namibian war for independence from South Africa, two Namibian guerrillas were just north of the border inside Angola

Then they became aware that they were being followed.


They split up. One man ran north and made it to safety.

The other went south and ran for the hills, and took the "breaking bad" escape.


His trail was picked up by South African Special Forces trackers who began chasing after him in APC's (armored personnel carriers).

Despite the fact that the trackers had trucks, and he was just a junkey on foot , he actually managed to out run the trucks and get miles away from the trackers.

Because he had a boat-load of meth.

He was able to run for five days straight.

230 miles.
No food or water, just meth.

Tell that to Walter White.

It's been a while

Things have been crazy here in Freeland PA in the last few weeks, to say the least.
I got some kind of cold, by coincidence right after the ole saw-bones wanted me to get a flu shot. I said no. She said why not?

Because I don't want a flu shot.

"Well that is not an answer."

Yes. It is. It is my answer today, and I don't care what flavor sucker you are handing out right now, I am not going in for the old stainless steel jab.

Then I get sick. Go figure.

So.
So my neighbor decides to make popcorn shrimp.
2 quarts of oil on the stove, battered shrimp at the ready, then get distracted and forget about  2 quarts of oil on the stove.

While the smell of smoke and the sight of burning oil is not alarming enough, try tossing a pail of water on it, and watch hilarity unfold as burning oil splashes all over the kitchen.

Then just for added comic relief, PA Power and Light cuts the power off to 1400 homes out of 3100 in Freeland, so the firemen don't get electrocuted.

That is when I fall off the sidewalk in the dark.

And bust up my face real good.

I write this note
To tell you of my plight
And at the time of writing
I am not a pretty sight
My body is all black and blue,
My face a deathly gray
And I hope you understand
Why Kevin's not bloging today.

That Feeling.

Ya know that feeling you get when you look at something you have done, some work assignment or something, and you realize, you nailed it.

That feeling of accomplishment, a job well done. The kind of thing that people notice and think, he gave 120% and then gave some more.

It's the little things, the attention to details, the "Finishing touches" that separates the ordinary from the extraordinary.

The satisfaction of a job well done.

This guy never felt any of those things.

Ever.

I would bet fifty bucks and a round of shots he goes to work with his shirt on in-side out and backwards.

November 5. Gunpowder day

Remember, remember the Fifth of November, 
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, 
I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason 
Should ever be forgot. 
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 
t’was his intent To blow up the King and Parliament.

Over in England, tonight is Bonfire Night.

That commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605 by a gang of Roman Catholic activists and no-goodnicks that wanted to blow up the king.

See, when the Protestant King James I became King, English Catholics had hoped that the persecution they had suffered for 45 years under Queen Elizabeth would finally end. When this didn't happen a group of conspirators got it in their nut to assassinate the King and his ministers by blowing up the Palace of Westminster during the state opening of Parliament.

Blamo.

Guy Fawkes and his henchmen planted 2,500kg or, 550 pounds of gunpowder beneath Parliament, the idea was to light a fuse and blow the place sky-high. 

But they got caught, tortured, hanged and drawn and quartered. The bits of them were spread out across the four corners of England, as an example to the rest of the naysayers, and other non-protestant citizens. Everyone was forced to take an oath of allegiance denying the Pope's authority over the king. If not, well, there were bits of Guy spread out everywhere so you would get the idea.

See, if you were on the King's side Guy and his pals were a bunch of treasonous, murdering mad-men.  To Guy Fawkes and the others, they were defenders of the Catholic faith. It is just a matter of prospective, and what you believe is normalcy. In 1605, some thought the King was right no matter what, others thought he needed to be dead.

 I think it was Morticia Addams that said it best:

"Normal is an illusion.
Normal is not real.
What is normal for the spider
is chaos for the fly"

So,

I know of no reason Why the Gunpowder Treason 
Should ever be forgot. 

Gun powder day? They have that?

November.

01 All Saints day
02 Look for circles day
03 Housewife's day/Sandwich day
04 King Tut day
05 Gunpowder day
06 Marooned with out a compass day
07 Bittersweet chocolate with almonds day
08 Dunce day/Cook something bold day
09 Chaos never dies day (And rust never sleeps)
10 Forget-me-not day
11 Veteran's Day/Wild Planet day
12 Chicken soup day
13 Indian pudding day
14 Operating room nurse day (The old stainless steel jab day)
15 Clean your refrigerator day (What the hell is that smell?)
16 Button day
17 Electronic greeting card day
18 Occult day
19 Have a bad day day
20 Absurdity day
21 Hello day
22 Go for a ride day
23 Eat a cranberry day
24 All of our uncles are monkeys day
25 Parfait day
26 Thanksgiving day
27 Black Friday
28 buy nothing day
29 Square dance day
30 Stay at home because you are well day

You can do what you want, but I personally will not give a nod to Housewife's day/Sandwich day,  I prefer not to sleep on the sofa.

05 Gunpowder day in Freeland. Gunpowder, also known as black powder, is a chemical explosive. It is a mixture of charcoal, (75%) sulfur, (15%)  and potassium nitrate (10%). The sulfur and charcoal act as fuels, and the potassium nitrate is a burning agent. Because of its burning properties and the amount of heat and gas volume that it generates, gunpowder has been widely used as a propellant in firearms and as a pyrotechnic composition in fireworks. I am not saying you should make some, but if you do, don't let your bone-headed neighbor stir it around with a hot soldering iron.

Unless you want a house full of white smoke.

Half an hour before your mother comes home.

But that would be the neighbor down the street

The next door neighbor will call you a jackass because your car is on fire.

Whatever.

If you did want to make gun powder, try not to use stump remover potassium nitrate, available at Home Depot, or Loews, because the grade in stump remover is generally high in contaminants and stabilizers, or stabilized potassium nitrate, that won't readily decompose (explode) the way it should.


What I used to use was high school  science lab grade potassium nitrate, the good stuff. just toss a five pound can out of the window, into the oleander bushes and collect it later. The Science teacher, Mr Robillard, only had one eye.  So we would say "Robillard, two "L's" one eye".

Oh, when I said "I" it was meant in the most generic way possible. I did not intend to imply that I had anything to do with missing chemicals, or at least, not without my lawyer present.


And don't even get me started about calcium carbide, and how, when mixed with water, produces a huge amount of Acetylene gas.
Very explosive Acetylene gas.


Seriously, very explosive Acetylene gas.

Other news

I almost forgot.
I am sure by now you have heard about the government 2.75 billion dollar spy blimp that went missing and crashed in Bloomsburg PA

It was dragging more than a mile of steel cable which knocked over power lines, phone and cable lines, and just about everything that got in it's way. 27,000 homes with out power.

The Amish, however, took it in stride.

The Amish don't care, they don't use electricity.
They shun fancy things like electricity
At 4:30 in the morning they're milkin' cows
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows.

Go figure

It's been a long time

It has been a while, but nothing much has happened in Freeland PA in a while.
Not anything big.

Well not this big:
Dollar store. Five lighters for a buck. Five.

Then I found a penny in the parking lot. So, five lighters for 99 cents. 

At one point I started to write a short story about how the Chinese  wanted to start a war with us, so they secretly embedded a small micro-chip in everything they exported to us, so that on a specific day  and time, everything in the US of A would catch fire. All at once. Old flip-flops, toaster ovens, TVs - everything. On fire. Not a shot fired. You can't call the fire department, because the phone is on fire. And so is the fire-house. Think about that for a moment, everything in your house that was made in China, on fire. Spatulas, fly swatters, microwave ovens, shoes, iPhones, hell, the Dollar General would be a mile wide crater in the ground.
Anyhow, I never finished putting pen to paper,  so that is that.

Fun Fact: If you have an iPhone ask Siri why fire trucks are red.

Back to Freeland.

The Gargoyle house was done up proper for the season, what else is new.

One fine night we had this for dinner:

Which turned into this:

And became this:

Dinner. Bacon wrapped roast venison, Bavarian dumplings, cranberries and rosemary garlic bread.


Now the birds are out in full force.

Let's see what is in the paper today...

Well what do you know about that...

Sargent Pepper's lonley heart band.

With all this talk of "It was twenty years ago.." or "Thirty years ago today," There has been no mention about the fact that in 19 days it will be Thirty five years ago the world was introduced to "Wild Planet"


1980https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGdkDuL_fgU

In this vid, there must be a few thousand people rocking out. 


As Jimmy Stewart said in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” well what do you know about that.






The idea of trading fish and candy for a boyfriend, well...

Who would have thunk, I saw them at Ashlee's in Baldwin Place, on Rt 6 near Shrub Oak. Perhaps 200 people.


But that was a long time ago.

In a galaxy far, far...

Oh, you know the rest.

Taken in again.

So.
So today we went to Eckley Miner's village. It is a coal patch town founded in 1854. The owners needed coal hauled out of the ground, so across the northeast, towns like this sprang up like weeds. The Owners built the houses, and the miners had to rent from them. They also had to buy coal for heat and cooking they just hauled out.

They looked like this:

That's where the miners lived, here is where the task-master lived:

Note the slight differences in the architectural styles.

Then there is this, behind the workers homes.

 That's the breaker. Those white spots are not dust on my camera, it is snowing.

The coal would be hauled up that ramp on the left, and dumped into the breaker, and gravety would pull the coal along chutes to the bottom where it would be loaded, by size into coal cars and sold.

You may recall the photo I posted, from January 1911. Breaker boys in #9 Breaker, Pennsylvania Coal Company mine at Hughestown Borough near Pittston.

They are called breaker boys because they have to sort the coal, by hand and remove bits of rock and stuff as the coal goes along the chutes beneath them. Any lumps of coal too large has to be broken into smaller bits. As well as fingers, wrists and arms.
If your child was too young to work, the company was happy to provide forged  documents.


So after looking around for a while, I find out that the breaker is a 1/3 scale model of a real breaker, built as a prop by Paramount for the 1970 film "The Molly Maguires".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_XZzA1-24k

THEN I find out the whole town was abandoned in 1950 when the mine shut down!

The whole place was bought in 1968 by Paramount and rebuilt for a movie set!
What a gyp!

But, The PA Historical and Museum Commission took notice of what Paramount was up to, and basically said "Thanks Paramount, we'll take it from here, this is now a State Historical site".

Go Figure.



Oh, and the Molly Maguires? They were Irish who where not happy with the working conditions, the wages and being a slave to the man, so they started to stir the pot, as it were. The company then hired a private detective agency. A private police force arrested them, and private attorneys for the coal companies prosecuted them. The state of PA provided only the courtroom and the gallows.

On 21 June 1877, six of them were hanged in the prison at Pottsville, and four at Mauch Chunk.

In 1953 Mauch Chunk was renamed Jim Thorpe after the athlete.

 I guess they liked "Welcome to Jim Thorpe" better than "Welcome to Mauch Chunk, step out of line, and we will hang you too".




 

Brains Beaten Out Edition!

Here’s another vintage newspaper article. The last sentence of this one sums up why I love old newspapers so much. Can you imagine a boring modern news source like USA Today using a term like “beat his brains out”?

I think not.

December, 1887

Dead in a Car of Wheat.

PERRY, Iowa., Dec. 13.—At Aspinwall, seventy-five miles west of here, a man was found dead in a car of wheat yesterday. The body was still warm. Later in the day a young man named Ted Stevens was arrested at this place. When taken to Aspinwall he confessed to killing the man with a car pin, and that he relieved the man of $69. The murdered man’s name is Carson, and he is supposed to have friends near Tama City. Stevens is about eighteen years of age. His father lives east of this city and is a highly respected man. Young Stevens ran away from home about a year ago, and was beating his way from the west when he fell in company with his victim, whom he finally murdered by beating his brains out.

 Several times today I heard the name Carson on the internet. And brains coming out.

First time it was the news above, then used in an episode of “Hopalong Cassidy” I heard on the internet, the story led Hoppy to the place where Pecos Pete had taken two people to kill them so he could have their share of the Mine. 

It’s always a mine in the Old West. 

Always the mine.

Hoppy dropped Pete from a distance with a high-powered rifle, and the hostages were relieved, as you might expect. 

None the worse for wear, even though they’d just seen a guy’s head explode.  Again with the brains everywhere.

Hoppy’s sidekick, by the way, was named “California,” and I’ll bet it had to do with being from California. His full name was California Carson, but naturally people went with the longer, vague name.  

Then there is this:

During the American Civil War, three men set off to find $200,000 in buried gold coins. Tuco and Blondie have known each other for some time now having used the reward on Tuco's head as a way of earning money. They come across a dying man, Bill Carson, who tells them of a treasure in gold coins. By chance, he tells Tuco the name of the cemetery and tells Blondie the name of the grave where the gold is buried. Now rivals, the two men have good reason to keep each other alive. The third man, Angel Eyes, hears of the gold stash from someone he's been hired to kill. All he knows is to look for for someone named Bill Carson. The three ultimately meet in a showdown that takes place amid a major battle between Confederate and Union forces.

Tuco bennidicto Juan Maria Pacifico Remarez, Known as the Rat
(Now you have to think in your mind, "Tooie tooie tooo Waaaa waaa wa")

Well, adjusted for inflation, that $200,000 in gold would be worth today about one million  five hundred thousand and change.  Give or take a few hundred thousand dollars.




So that is three Carsons in one day.


Go figure.

October 15. 1860.

On a cold, foggy evening, October 15. 1860 Sir Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the Mile End Infirmary in east London, was walking home along the Whitechapel Road. Hansom cabs clattered by on the wet cobble stones, and Sir Frederick had to walk cautiously to avoid cracks in the pavement (Don't break your mother's back). Perhaps this was why he noticed a strip of canvas flapping in the cold wind. By the dim gaslight he could just make out the words: “ admission twopence.”

He pushed aside a greasy canvas flap and found himself looking at a huddled figure, covered in tarpaulin, and sitting on a packing case. The surgeon gently pulled back the tarpaulin, and the man looked up at him. What Sir Frederick saw made him gasp. The man’s face was hardly human; the nose was a swollen, trunk-like mass of flesh, and everything else about him was distorted.

The surgeon drew up another packing case, and sat talking to this human creature who looked like a beast from a fairy tale. He proved to be a man of mystery. His body was as distorted as his face, so it was not even clear to which sex “he” belonged. He knew that his name was John Merrick and that he was about 20. But he could only speak in an incomprehensible mumble, and could apparently remember nothing of his origins, or where he had grown up. When his “keepers” came back from the pub, where they had been drinking to keep out the cold, they told Treves that they had simply found the man wandering in the street, and had decided that he might bring them in a few pence as a freak show. But he was so horrible that women fainted at the sight of him and children had fits.

When the surgeon offered them five pounds for the monster, they could scarcely believe their luck. The next day Treves took the man to the hospital, and gave him a private suite of rooms, cut off from the rest of the building. Few nurses could bear to see him, and before a nurse was asked to bring him food or help him to dress she was given a preliminary look at him to see if she could bear it without fainting.

Yet the man proved to be gentle and charming. His gratitude touched everybody. Obviously, his life had been hard and miserable; no one had ever been kind to him. Now, at last, he had warmth and comfort, and he found it almost impossible to believe that fate had finally relented towards him.

One of his favorite occupations was cutting pictures out of illustrated magazines. One of these – his most treasured – was of Princess Alexandra, who would be Queen of England when her husband, later Edward VII, came to the throne. The princess was the patroness of the hospital, and she was deeply interested in the man.  One day she told Treves that she wanted to see him. Treves tried hard to dissuade her, but she was determined. She was shown into the man’s presence. She did not flinch as the twisted, monstrous creature dragged himself towards her, or as he took her hand in his own distorted claw and bent over to kiss it. Then she was shown out. As the door closed behind her, she fainted.

She fainted at the sight of John Merrick, Known as


the The Elephant man.

Q.E.D.

 quod erat demonstrandum

which is a translation into Latin from the Greek ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαιis

meaning "which is what had to be proven".

  thus signals the completion of the proof.

Three Skeleton Key

"Three Skeleton Key" is a short story by the French author George G. Toudouze.
George G. Toudouze (1877-1972) was born in Paris, France. Today he is remembered for a single work: "Three Skeleton Key".


The plot involves three men tending a lighthouse on an island off the coast of French Guiana. An abandoned ship, overrun by thousands of ferocious rats, makes landfall. A life-and-death struggle ensues as the men seek to save themselves from the hungry horde.

Vincent Price is the actor most associated with the play, performing it in 1950 for the radio show, Escape and in 1958 for the show, Suspense.
You can listen to the 1950 radio show by clicking on the link above.



 

But now, in real life, the Russian cruse ship, Lyubov Orlova, named after a somewhat psychotic looking Russian actress,

 has been missing in the North Atlantic since last January. 

The cruse ship was abandoned in Newfoundland in 2010 when the owners went bankrupt, and failed to pay the crew. So they docked the ship and left for parts unknown.


The Canadian government decided, last year to tow the ship to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped
 
Two problems.

1) the ship is infested with thousands of rats. The rats ate anything eatable some time ago, so now they are cannibalistic rats. The larger ones eating the small and weak.

2) The tow line snapped during a storm and the tug lost sight of the ship in the storm.

So.
So, now the ship is drifting towards England/Ireland with thousands of giant, cannibalistic rats as crew and complement. If it makes landfall the rats will disembark, looking for a meal.

 Belgian-based searcher Pim de Rhoodes said: 'She is floating around there somewhere. There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other.'

Irish coastguard Chris Reynolds said: 'We must stay vigilant.
'We don’t want rats from foreign ships coming onto Irish soil. If it came and broke up on shore, I’m sure local people wouldn’t be very happy about it.’

When asked what can be done, Pim de Rhoodes said: Try tucking your pant legs into your socks, for starters, boys.

Good call, guys. Let's see, locals not happy, pants in socks, hungry rats. what could go wrong?

 

 

My Brother

My brother made this staff for me last year, when I got out of the hospital, and was a bit wobbly on my legs.  I carried it every time I left the house for months and months.

 I still carry it from time to time. And when people ask, "why do you carry that staff?"

My answer is

"Have you seen any goblins in Freeland in the last year? No? You're welcome."

Thinking about driving again.

Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie: I dunno about this, That goon has a gun!
Mark Stiggs: It's OK! He's crazy!

Mark Stiggs: Number 1, we want zero miles to the gallon.
Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie: Right. No MPGs. It has to be a vulgarlay inefficient mode of trasnportation.
Mark Stiggs: Loud, real loud. It has to generate a terrifyingly seismic field of noise. If we could combine really loud noise with the ugliness of poverty, we'd have the ideal car.
Mark Stiggs: ...making people think that you're poor, so they know you've got nothing to loose if they crash into your car....
Mark Stiggs: Here's a list of places I want this car to be totally unwelcome. Number one: funerals. Number two: affairs of state, you know, real formal ones...ones with...chamber music. Number three: wet golf greens. Number four: the acropolis.
Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie: Ah, yes. Driving this car right in the acropolis should be completely horrifying to every civilized guy on earth.


So, here it is, my (hopefully) next car, the 1987 Yugo:

I am going to guess, if something broke, or fell off, I could 3-D print a replacement part.

The shocking case of the SS Ourang Medan

October being the season of hob-goblins, Spooks, Ghouls and nose-goblins, I will attempt to post one truly bizarre and almost unbelievable tale per week, until Halloween.

We will start with,

the shocking case of the SS Ourang Medan

In June of 1947 multiple ships traversing the straits of Malacca, which is located between Sumatra and Malaysia, claimed to have picked up a series of SOS distress signals. The unknown ship’s message was simple, and somewhat disturbing:

 •—  •—••  •—••    — — — ••—•  ••—• •• — •—• •• —• • •—• •••  —•—•  •—•• ••—

 ••—••  •—••    ••—•  ••—• •• —•—• •• —• • •—• •••  —•—•  •—•• ••—
 •—  •—••  •—••    — — —  ••—•  ••—• •• —•—• •• —• • •—• •••  —•—•  •—•• ••—




••
I
—••    ••    •
  D      I     E

“All officers including captain are dead, lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.”  This communication was followed by a burst of indecipherable Morse code, then a final, grim message: “I die.” 

The distress call was picked up by two American ships as well as British and Dutch listening posts. The U.S. ship, the Silver Star was closest to the location of the Ourang Medan, and was dispatched.

As the Silver Star caught sight of the Ourang Medan in the waters of the Malacca Strait, the crew noticed that there was no sign of life on the deck, because they were all dead,  Jim.

 Every last stinking one of them, including a dog, dead with their arms outstretched, (not the dog, they don't have arms) and a look of terror on their faces. Oh, they all died with their eyes open, even the dog.

The dead were scattered around  the bridge, wheelhouse and chartroom, with the rest of the crew below deck, in the boiler room. Why the crew decided to all huddle in the boiler room we will never know.

At this point, the Captain of the Silver Star decided to recall the boarding party and tow the ship back to port for investigation and salvage.

No sooner had they attached a tow-line, someone noticed smoke coming from number 4 cargo hold. The Captain said, "That's that." and ordered the tow-line cut.

Good thing too. Almost as soon as the tow-line was cut, the ship exploded with such force it was blown out of the water and sunk within seconds. If they had not cut the tow-line the doomed ship would have pulled the Silver Star down with it.

Details about the Ourang Medan (Which is Sumatran for Man from Medan, the largest port city in Sumatra) are sketchy but it seems likely they were smuggling potassium cyanide and nitroglycerine  for the Japanese to kill a bunch of Chinese.

But what ever they were up to, they took that, and other answers to a watery grave.