Open Thread - Thurs 30 Jun 2022 - An Epic Battle!

A Tale of Two Warriors and Their Final Battle

Something about Tuesdays recently... my Tuesday was screwed up again. Last week it was the internet going down, this week it was the electricity. Minor complaints, but yeesh, it's hard to get my little open thread post assembled without the computer!

We had very warm, for the PacNW, weather on Monday with 90+ highs in some places. It was high 80's here. Then the high pressure went away and the winds started coming in, first from the interior (and hot!) and then from the coast (and strong and cool). Temperature dropped over 20 degrees. We had winds as strong as we get in the gales of winter, but no rain. The winds knocked down some trees and took out our local power! Now, this is not horrible or anything, and it did mean I got more house cleaning (the by hand kind), napping, and reading done than usual, but no research and writing!

A few years ago I wrote this little story about a battle I witnessed while milking one of my goats. I was trying to make it sound 'Viking' or 'Heroic' or 'Medieval' or something. I dunno if I did that, but it's fun and funny, I hope!

It was hot. I was hungry. I had just fed the goats their grain and their evening hay. Miss Moonshadow gave me the look. ‘Yes, Yes, I’ll be in to milk you right away,’ I murmured to her. I collected the milking pail, the extra grain she got on the milking stand, the udder wipes for cleaning her. She jumped on the stand and soon I was into the rhythm of milking. Scoog, scoog, scoog... the sound of the milk hitting the bottom of the pail was soothing. It even drowned out the growling of my hungry stomach. I started to daydream, eyes drifting up and into the corner of the barn.

‘Ahahahahahah!’ said the 20 (or is it 40?) legged slithering Worm as it stepped daintily onto the silken field of battle. ‘You can’t get me! And if you do, it won’t matter, because I taste and smell like the bile from your very belly. You will spit me out and I will exhult over your remains!’

‘I’m not a human. I don’t care if you taste like bile, I shoot poison, from my own jaws, that is worse tasting than the stomach dredge from an underwater baleen carrier!’ shouted the 8 legged Scream-Inducer. ‘You... Are... MINE!’ And battle was joined.

The slithering Worm feigned, advancing with half his body and retreating with the other half. Scream-Inducer moved closer and struck rapidly, pulling Worm into his many, many, many handed clutches. Worm rolled up on a ball and spasms beat across his skin. Suddenly he burst forth, straight like an arrow, and pounded Scream-Inducer upon his head right between his hundred orbed eyeballs.

Scream-Inducer cried, ‘Arghhh… bargle!’ a sound which began with a low and very manly tone and ended high and very weak. He bit down with his powerful jaws and then scurried with his 8 legs back across his silken field, down into his silken drapped hidey-hole.

Worm quivered, raised his soft head, and whispered, ‘That’ll teach you,’ and took his 20 or 40 legs and his slack soft body to the edge of the shiny battlefield. He laid there, stretched a few times and began to move. ‘I can get out of here,’ he promised himself, but with each movement and each promise he weakened and stiffened. The Scream-Inducer’s battle poison was raging through him.
Scream-inducer carefully came out of his silken hidey hole and marched up to where the Worm lay frozen. ‘Told you. Poison. Idiot’. He pulled the paralyzed body of Worm into his soft matrix of silk and began to weave.

“I really need to clean that corner of the roof,” I thought to myself, making a face at the large spider who hovered over his caterpillar victim. “Oh well, maybe tomorrow.”

There has been a lot going on in the world last week which I've sort of ignored and sort of despaired over, all at the same time. The Roe vs. Wade and other Supreme Court decisions, while not unexpected, are so aggravating I want to scream. I've protested this crap before, I've fought for women's rights and abortion rights, I've fought against religions taking over. But it seems like it doesn't matter.

Just like marching and protesting against wars doesn't really matter. Remember the marches against the Iraq war (when Bush, Jr, was President), marches all over the world, perhaps the biggest in history? My husband and I spent days standing on the street corners in our little town, holding up signs with others, protesting. Just about everyone passing by agreed with us. Yea, those marches and protests did some good, didn't they? Maybe they did, but it sure isn't visible to me right now Sad .

Oh well, life moves on, as always. What's on your mind today? Thanks for reading and here's the open thread!

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Sima's picture

I'm gonna spend time pruning and mowing and making the driveway so that more than my car, which is very small, can get down it without getting whacked by blackberry vines. Tuesday's winds made a lot of freshly grown brambles fall from the trees...

It'll be great to be outside. Hope you all have a great day, and a great weekend coming up! Good grief! I just looked at the temp gauge. It's 49 outside! Sheez.

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13 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

at least for accomplishing outdoor tasks
the deer ate my mate's black eyed susans and sunflowers, oh well
love the spider and caterpillar story
watch similar battles being fought in my shop windows

thanks for the OT!

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Sima's picture

@QMS
I'm not sure why my gardens and roses are not decimated by deer. For some reason, I guess because of the open fields around, they just don't come out near the house, or the barns, here. It's weird.

Enjoy the epic battles in the shop windows. Recently I saw another one, with a spider and a bunch of aphids and their ant protectors. The spider won, short term, but the ant protectors got their cattle-like aphids moved to a new spot on the apple tree, where I sprayed them with safer soap and murdered all the 'cattle'.

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4 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

Lookout's picture

Glad you were able to take advantage of your power outage. We lost power sometime last night for an hour. Have to reset clocks today.

The Phoebes have been keeping our spiders on the house pretty well cleaned up. They are fun to watch.

Well have a good day and thanks for the OT!

EDIT to add a bit of advice when dealing with pro-war posters...
troll-web_0.jpg
The most negative reinforcement is NO reinforcement. YMMV

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12 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Sima's picture

@Lookout
Exactly! It's hard when it's a good friend, who is totally into 'Rachel' and watches that blasted show religiously, and then regurgitates its 'wisdom' to me. Heh, you know, you know. I'm sure people do the same to you, hence the need for the cartoon!

Good for the Phoebes. They are lovely birds!

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4 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

It looks like good news to me

badnews.PNG

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Sima's picture

@gjohnsit
Ohh, are they talking about those stupid recruitment commercials the military have made about inclusion, LGBTwhatever and so on? I wanna know, if I'm gay, and join, do the new commercials mean I won't get raped? Or if I'm a woman and I join, I won't? Unlike those women while serving at that base in Texas and wherever else? Maybe more people would join if they stopped sending them to crap wars... ohh wait, didn't Smedley Butler already warn them about that?

I know that now they want to make women eligible for the draft (which won't solve the recruitment problem, but whatever). I'm not actually against that. But if they can draft a woman to serve, they'd better give her the right to abortions.

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4 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

news that Biden, finally, has decided to make one bold move as he has apparently come out in favor of a filibuster carve-out for abortion legislation, or more precisely bills dealing with anything in the right to privacy area. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/politics/biden-abortion-rights-filibuster... Apparently Joe was being told that his previous Do As Little As Possible approach was not well received by the D rank-and-file.

Now that just leaves the small task of getting 2 more Ds elected to the senate, Ds who are not of the Manchin-Cinéma nearly-Republican conservative/faux-D someone bought her type,.

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Sima's picture

@wokkamile
I hope it amounts to something. I really do. Biden and the Dems can force this, they should have done it back in the 1980s!

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3 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

enhydra lutris's picture

the truck from the shop. If you're used to two vehicles, having only one is a real hassle so we're glad that it is over. OTOH, we enjoyed a bit of freedom from those "oh, you have a pick up, don't you?" queries, being able to say, "not at the moment and don't know when it will be done, sorry." Now I get to go reload all the stuff that is supposed to live in the cab that we removed because better safe than sorry. This, fo course, will trigger much "keep or not" and "why do we carry this" type of internal dialogue, but that's something one shouold do every couple of years anyway. Beats thinking about world events anyway.

be well and have a good one

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9 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Sima's picture

@enhydra lutris
Yes, it's annoying, but yes, it has to be done every few years. I'm doing the shelves and drawers in the bedroom right now. Never realized I had kept so many leggings. What the heck? I'm sending all the good stuff to charity. What will be hard is the fabric stash, for sewing, someday, maybe. How do I get rid of yards and yards of good fabric? I can do it physically, but mentally?

Anyway I hope the truck is doing well after its visit to the shop!

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3 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

enhydra lutris's picture

@Sima
has a pretty good sized stash. Occasionally quilters die and their stash invariably goes to this or that quilters guild which then holds yard sale type affair that draws quilters from miles around.

So, if you are really serious, you can always donate to some quilters guild. If you find one with a "community quilts" like function where they donate quilts to needy (they are, in the end, blankets, ya know) then youo can also feel good about it.

be well and have a good one

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1 user has voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

my truck @enhydra lutris and No, I won’t help you move

Back window sticker on a buddy’s truck

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3 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Sorry you are having utility issues and computer issues. It disrupts everything, eh?
Marches do not have the intended impact anymore. Hard to win against Big Donors. And the cops.
We hope the weather radar is wrong. The rain from the gulf appears to miss us. We are brown here, with some towns issuing burn bans.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Sima's picture

@on the cusp
Marches really don't have the effect they once did. I dunno what it will take, riots? Guns against guns? Gah.

I hope you get rain. We will head into the yearly burn ban here soon, but our area has over 600% or more of the normal yearly 'snow pack' and yearly water supply. Some places nearby have 1800%! That's nuts in a different way.

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3 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

There is a funeral going on.
Well, I saw the hearse. Pulled by 2 white horses, the driver in jeans, red shirt, white cowboy hat. The hearse is the type of carriage with glass sides, gorgeous drapes, that you see in westerns.
I keep looking out my window for when the horse parade the hearse through town.
Will find out who died. Must have been a cowboy.

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8 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Sima's picture

@on the cusp
I want goats and chickens and dogs at my funeral. And horses!

Years ago I learned how to drive draft horses. I never got a team after learning, although I wanted to get one. I would have driven hearses too, why not? Much respect for the deceased, I think.

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4 users have voted.

If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so

Everyone attending was wearing western wear.
It was so interesting, my client I was interviewing went out side with me and my assistant and took pictures.
Two beautiful, well trained draft horses. Someone must do this as some gig to pay for the feed and vet care!
Adding: I was a cowgirl, then, went English for jumping and dressage, never got around to driving. I have been horseless maybe 4 years, but I still see and hear them in my pasture in all my dreams.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

I somehow didn't know that you had milk goats, I don't know why...
We had a few nanny and one billy on our farm growing up. It was a dairy farm (meaning cows), but my dad couldn't drink milk (!). So, the goat's milk was about one-quarter for dad and the rest mom made into cheese. Until I went to school, I didn't know cheese could be anything but Goat's-milk. And, wow that cheese was good!

One of my earliest memories is running and playing with baby goats. Running and laughing and tumbling and getting butted down and getting back up..

And, I liked your spider and the caterpillar story. Our old airy house is pretty free range in the corners. If a spider sets up shop, we tend to leave them alone and see what happens. Little mini-dramas play out in those corners if you pay attention. We even had a black-widow "Fred", that lived for a surprisingly long time in our "equipment closet" (8'x6' room in finished basement with unfinished ceilings. Full of camping, climbing, ski gear, plus Holiday decorations..). Fred was probably Fredrika, but they would scurry to a corner in the ceiling joists while we collected gear and then we'd leave her be. I kind of liked having her there.
Anyway, thanks as always for hosting. Until next week. And enjoy the sunshine.

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