I work tonight, so unlike many, I shall not be partaking this evening.
Archives
All posts for the month December, 2025
Alright, not right now anymore. $HOUSEMATE was visiting various people in Texas this past week. As he was in Texas, he partook of various Texas things. One of them being Blue Bell ice cream:
Mind, as the freezer has several large cartoons of his favorite flavor, Homemade Vanilla, I do not know if this was bought and sampled, or if the photo was taken just to send to me. Moo.
An amusing little tune:
“They had learned that were species that could stare into the abyss, and then go about their day without flinching.” Yeah, we called that the ‘Cold War’. You aliens might wanna do a tiny little bit of historical research. Been there. Done that. SURVIVED. Multiple times over. You are so… cute.
Oh, yeah… from this:
Every genre has tropes. The HAW (Humans Are Weird) genre has them.. They might seem Perfectly Normal to earthlings, but that’s sort of the point HFY (Humanity F[rell] Yeah!) also has them, same point.
Yes. there is going to be pro-human/pro-earth, pro… whatever bias. That is expected. What kind of species has any significant amount of stories about their own vile-ness or even maybe incompetence? Sure, a healthy species will have a tiny few sentinels issuing warnings – and they will occasionally even be right, and sometimes even heeded. Really, by the time many authors realize the problem, it has already been solved (see: Karl [dick swallowing] Marx. By the time he was published, the free-market had already solved ALL of his supposed problems – it just hadn’t made a useless piece of [MANURE] lay-about comfortable. Really, the workers could earn and BUY THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION.. or shares of it, at the very least: Marx is asshoe and forever will be. What a dou-Che). If you have access to a time machine, forget Hitler, fix Marx or Engels or, even better, that utter fink (I am being FAR too kind) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (or arrange for him to meet his “noble savages”) and do some REAL historical repair.
One of the, admittedly minor, irritants is all the authors (or so-called “AI’s” that are just Artful Idiots {NOT Imbeciles – Imbeciles are almost INFINITELY smarter!}) going on about sounds in “harmonic frequencies” that are just painful to those who actually have even HALF a clue about what fundamentals and their harmonics really are.
Ox ancient, slow, and set in old ways, alright, got it? Good. So ox still in harness and pulling. BUT… Friend of ox took retail job for a bit. Friend of ox earn money. Friend of ox buy 3-D printer(s). Printers means of production. Fellow has own business, owning means of production. Karl Marx is still asshoe. Capitalism FREE MARKET let friend build wealth, BUY means of production, and go into business to benefit. Greatest problem is taxing PARASITES stealing the results of his work to give to useless Marxist parasitic layabouts. Supporting kids not yet about to be able to earn and lacking family? Alright. Supporting the truly disabled unable to work? Fine. Supporting the old and infirm that gave their all for ages and have earned rest? Fine. Parasitic Schicklgrubers that believe they are above work and others must be by force of government enslaved to support them? LET those futhermuckers starve until ENLIGHTENMENT sets in. Or they drop dead. Their choice. They wanna do nothing? Fine, they can do it… all the way to their self-chosen and much-deserved grave.
The “chambersticks” of a few posts back ought to have an accompanying wrought iron snuffer, right?
Thus this:
So have a kerosene powered (cold) blast from the past (2021):
Without me, your show wouldn’t be
Professional right down to a “T”
Yes, I’m the one who pulls the curtain down,
Yes, I’m the one you’ll never see. — Encore by TACO
The alarm goes off, if you bothered to set it last night.
The lights come on with a mere switch-flip, or are even automatic.
The water flows at the turn of a faucet – and it’s clean and safe.
Things go down the drain and are Dealt With – without adding to misery by disease.
The gas flows, keeping the house warm and the water hot.
The signals propagate through space, or cable, or even fiber.
Even with automation, someone, somewhere, is watching over things. Monitoring the monitors at the very least. Calling forth and adjusting generating capacity up and down as needed. Seeing that reservoirs are neither overflowing nor draining excessively. Flow rates and pressures kept in a nice, safe, useful range. The transmitters watched over, signals fed to them. A very few, the newsreaders and anchors, are seen providing the signals. Unseen, the cameramen (or persons) the audio engineers, the technicians.. keep the signals going, the power, water, and gas flowing. Other places, those businesses (and services not necessarily for profit) still open, also go on. Travelers can fill their tanks, get coffee, and something to eat even if it isn’t a “proper” Christmas Dinner. The cops can be called. If need be, fire crews summoned. Medical emergencies dealt with. And way off, those in the services are serving – hopefully not needing to use everything they know how to do – but will do them if they must.
Merry Christmas.
And remember the folks in the background, quietly (hopefully quietly! – for success means being all but invisible and forgotten) keeping the world running.
Since it’s worth repeating, I am stealing, er, echoing Dio’s post:
Behind the scenes
A life I know and loved.
Orvan Taurus illuminates the backstage a bit in this little post [See above – Ox]
it’s not the faces in the news that keep the wheels on and turning. Nopes, they usually are part of the problems,,,
It’s the little guy, the quiet ones, the un-thanked ones, the ones who get cursed at for all the orange traffic cones when you are in a rush,,,
it’s the sound man in the dark that gets it ‘just right’ at the Trans-Siberian Orchestra show, the lighting guy who matches the lights to the mood seamlessly, the costume chick who nails down the image the character portrays.
it’s the operator at the sewer plant working Christmas day, the plowman on the streets at 3 AM, clearing the ways for morning traffic. The electrical engineer at the distro watching the gauges as Christmas morning pulls surges, and keeps the power flowing smoothly.
Yeah. The unsung heroes of our modern world.
Ox here: I have not been any of the above, as such, but I have been one of the “unseen” on and off for some time. You see the shoemaker, not the elves.
Though too many people assume they draw from the same well. They DO NOT. I can do ad-lib (and often get carped for it….) but Improv is another matter. I have a couple examples, not going into too much detail.
One was a game (done on IRC) that was turn-based with a cartoon (think WB bent Reality) theme. The problem is I’d see a Golden Opportunity… and plan for it, but intervening players would screw it up, take things a completely different way and nothing I could come up was nearly as good (or even any good) as the original thought.
Another time, I was recruited into a bit at a smaller RenFaire. It sounded good in theory. Alas, my work on it… let us be truthful… was garbage.
Meanwhile, at different Faire, a fellow was taking video from a distance of a fellow in a comedy sword troop while not performing. He asked for commentary in addition to his own. The comedy swordsman was evidently “chatting up” a gal and someone else said somethings about “…and now he’s telling her about his organ.” And I added, “And now he’s pulling out all the stops.” and that was it. This happened on Saturday. Sunday, the fellow who had been taking the video told me he missed the quip at the time of recording but when he reviewed things Saturday night it hit hard. He really wasn’t expecting me (or anyone) to take “organ” as an actual musical organ and come up with a quip that still worked in/for the situation.
So, I can ad-lib – at least somewhat. But improv… not a Good Idea. Not for me, anyway,
There was a discussion of the problems of clothing made entirely of plastics. They don’t breathe, they get infused with perspiration and they never quite get fully cleansed of that. I made the mistake of mentioning the 1970’s and the ridiculous thing that was the leisure suit. For what it’s worth, I never wore, nor owned one. But someone had to feed Midjourney the prompt “Minotaur in a leisure suit” and this happened:
The Elegant Ungulate 