Last Wednesday of July Open Post

by | Jul 29, 2020 | Open Post | 389 comments

In my tiny hometown, summer Wednesday nights meant one thing: village band concerts on the lawn in the village square. It was a Big Deal. Nearly everyone came out to listen, visit with neighbors and friends, and partake of the ice cream social that raised money for the volunteer fire department.

The village band was composed of everyone and anyone from the village and surrounding rural area who wanted to play. We had kids who were just starting out on their instruments, oldsters who first learned to play 60 years in the past, local music professionals, college kids home on break, music teachers, and everyone in between.

Of course, being band geeks, one of my siblings and I played in the band year after year. We’d all get together and practice on Tuesday night, then hit the square on Wednesday. Some weeks (and years) the band was better than others depending on who was away on vacation or who happened to be visiting town and sitting in. But, nobody cared if there was the out-of-tune note there or the slightly off-rhythm passage here.

The audience would bring blankets or lawn chairs, or just claim a spot of grass and sprawl. Little kids would run around the perimeter of the square or stand in front of the bandstand and dance.

It was an enchanting evening that happened week after week, year after year. This is the stuff that builds communities.

 

Here at Glibertarians.com, we are no less a community even though we gather mostly virtually. And one of our own traditions is the Open Post.

Enjoy yourselves!

About The Author

SP

SP

I've got an idea! How about we just stick to the Constitution as written and then the government can leave me the fuck alone.

389 Comments

  1. Yusef drives a Kia

    Sounds like a nice way to grow up,
    Howdy SP!

    • SP

      Howdy, Yusef!

  2. UnCivilServant

    All I’ve done is move stuff to its proper place, and now my house is unrecognizable.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      I have spent the last 2 days converting my living room into a music studio, and not even close yet,

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m not doing anything intentionally transformative, just making it presentable for guests.

      • Nephilium

        Guests. There you go. Allowing outsiders into the sanctum sanctorum.

        One of my goals for tomorrow is to reorganize the brewing area of the basement. It got… disrupted… when the guys were here to install a new furnace. Secondary goal is to cut up the giant branch that fell into my lawn on Monday (it’s already been hauled to the back patio).

      • Sean

        Is this visit a special occasion? Or just a visit?

      • UnCivilServant

        Just a visit, my house is along their route to new england.

      • Rebel Scum

        Guests? My doormat says “Go Away”.

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s my mother. I’m not going to be rude.

      • westernsloper

        Before my parents last dog died they liked to walk it on my property. The last time I caught my mother doing it I asked her if I had to put up no trespassing signs and a fence.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        It’s my mother. I’m not going to be rude.

        Living the dream

    • Hyperion

      “All I’ve done is move stuff to its proper place, and now my house is unrecognizable.”

      So, the same thing my wife does at least once a week? Right before I can’t find things that I’ve had for years?

      • UnCivilServant

        I’ve been finding things I’ve been looking for for years.

      • Hyperion

        That’s going to happen when we move again. Then it’s up to me to ward all my stuff off in a man cave.

    • slumbrew

      Will you be able to maintain it once they depart?

  3. hayeksplosives

    Throw in a snow cone stand, and you’ve got small town America.

    • TARDIS

      Funnel cakes, or I’m outta here!

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Bacon wrapped hot dogs FTW!

      • UnCivilServant

        Ugh, funnel cakes, all grease and sugar without any balance.

      • Sean

        Carnival eats are not keto friendly.

      • Nephilium

        You mean you don’t have fair food festivals around you? It’s probably one of the only things keeping a lot of these small family owned businesses alive.

      • TARDIS

        The force you do not understand. Funnel cakes are the dark side. Your frail body is the light. Join them together… and blow it out your ass tomorrow.

      • Hyperion

        The two awfullest things ever are corn dogs and crescent dogs. Mother of abominations.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Dude…..Fletcher’s corny dogs are da bomb.

      • Hyperion

        Dogs belong on a bun with condiments and stuff.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        It is (in) a bun….of corn-meal. Piss on condiments. People, with their desire for acetic acid-based “foods”….

      • commodious spittoon

        Imagine a corn dog on a hotdog bun with all the fixings.

        issuchathingevenpossible.gif

      • pistoffnick

        Fried cheese curds

      • Mojeaux

        Funnel cakes can be found in my kitchen upon occasion.

      • Aloysious

        Elephant ears. With butter and strawberries.

      • DEG

        YES!

      • Gender Traitor

        I miss the freshly-made cinnamon doughnut holes we could get at the local Single A ballpark. I miss everything about a summer evening at the ballpark (except the rain delays.) : (

        Finally got the letter from the team listing our options for dealing with our season tickets since there’ll be no season. Opted to have the cost applied 100% to next year’s tickets. I hope there’s a season next year.

    • Hyperion

      A friend of mine who lives north of here, in what I call God’s country, it’s one of those towns. I asked him about it and he said ‘Well, we have a hardware store and a snow cone stand, and there you have it. And when we’re eating dinner, we look out the window at my neighbors cows’.

      Yeah, been there, done that.

    • C. Anacreon

      When I was a kid I had a plastic snowman where you’d put an ice cube in his top hat, turned a crank, and shaved ice came out a hole in his belly. Came complete with snow cone style paper cups and different colored syrups. Always dreamed I would open a stand with it.

      But it took about a half hour of grinding to make enough for half a cup. About as realistic as thinking you’d open a cake shop with your Easy Bake Oven.

      • UnCivilServant

        Duh, attach an electric motor to the handle.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        No, dammit! Just, no! You keep that dream alive; you hear me?! That is an awesome dream from childhood!

      • Chafed

        I would have expected you to have played Operation and dreamed of opening a stand alone surgery center.

  4. hayeksplosives

    Not a community band, but the Mr just departed the house to go to the Moose Lodge for dinner and drinks.

    He brought along a guitar and amp, just in case. They used to do a musician casual sit-in on Wednesdays, variety of skill level. The COVID postponed that, but the Moose might be ready to bring it back…

    • Ted S.

      Not a Møøse Lodge?

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        exactly

  5. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    we had something like that in our town growing up, but it was more of a showcase for local professional and semi-professional bands and orchestras. We didn’t take as much advantage of it as we should have.

    My dad is selling the house tomorrow, and getting the hell out of there. Our quaint farming community of a few thousand turned into a landlocked suburb of nearly 100,000. Community is hard at that scale.

    • Viking1865

      Northern Virginia?

      • Viking1865

        A suburb of Indianapolis, Fishers has grown rapidly in recent decades: about 350 people lived there in 1963, 2,000 in 1980, and only 7,500 as recently as 1990.

        Yikes.

        Yeah I am, to say the least, not a fan of sprawl. Blame zoning and land use regulations.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        yeah, me either. whether it’s regulatory or just a combination of various factors, it really colored my view of the suburbs. I find them to be soulless places.

      • Nephilium

        It may be that I grew up in suburbia, and there’s still a blue collar vibe there and in where I am now. I can deal with it. There’s certain politics, and culture that are a part of it.

        If you get invited to a party, and don’t show up, you’re in the wrong if you call on the cops before 04:00 (bars shut down at 02:00 here). And you should talk to the people at least three times before calling the cops. And you’re still probably a dick.

        If you learn your neighbor hunts, and is willing to trade for venison, you cannot complain about him draining a deer on his property. And you should ask to join him sometime.

        You never call in a complaint about a neighbors RV or boat.

        If you’re thinking about calling in a complaint about your neighbors lawn, offer to mow it yourself.

        If there’s a backyard fire/cookout and you’re not invited. You’re cool to show up if you bring either 1 lb. of meat or a six pack of craft/import or a 12 pack of BMC.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I grew up the first half of my childhood in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody, and we spent time with many of our neighbors, and at the very least knew them by surname and would be remiss if we didn’t say hi. Many of them had lived in the neighborhood since it was built (25 years earlier).

        The second half was the stereotypical suburbia. Passive aggressive HOA letters. A rotating cast of friends who either moved away or spent half of their time with another parent. Most neighbors were seen through car windows only. There were parties and bonfires, but those were sporadic and were really just us and another couple families.

        Perhaps it was the new growth aspect of it all. I’ve liked some of the suburbs I’ve lived in since, but I can’t find anything relatable between your suburban experience and mine. they were polar opposites.

      • Nephilium

        Never spent time in an HOA. When I was purchasing a house, I made that a condition. There was some great fun back when I was in High School when we expected that everyone could jump a chain link fence easily, until we had our first rural friend try it.

        My neighbors across the street in one direction probably make an order of magnitude more then me. We can still hang out and talk. One of my next door neighbors has never said a word to us. Another has made sure to invite us to every party. Then there’s the people down the street we met at a brewery downtown in the before times. We got invited to multiple parties because of that.

      • KibbledKristen

        (I was gonna guess Leesburg LOL)

        (BTW, I have heard nothing about renaming the town. Selective anti-racism, I guess.)

      • Hyperion

        MY only question to both of you, ya’ll like racin? Which of you can name the most Nascar drivers?

      • KibbledKristen

        Dale Darrell Waltrip Richard Petty Rusty Awesome Bill Ervin Gordon Earnhardt Smith. Johnson. Junior.

        I didn’t even have to Google that.

      • Hyperion

        OMG! She’s one of them! Just please tell me you’ve never been Duckpin Bowling (looks around, acts innocent…).

  6. Crusty Juggler

    You wax nostalgic, when I wax my balls itch!

    Folks!

  7. LemonGrenade

    Lovely memory, SP.

    Good evening Glibs. Hope to hear everyone is, at the very least, doing better or feeling more accomplished than they were yesterday.

    • Nephilium

      Nope.

      But at least I’m on PTO until next week, and on an island in Lake Erie for most of the weekend.

      • LemonGrenade

        PTO is good and so are islands. Hope everything gets better otherwise.

    • Count Potato

      Still not working.

    • DEG

      Not bad.

  8. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    I just got done writing a client for authenticating with a vendor’s system using SAML. I don’t know if it’s SAML itself or our particular implementation, but it was horrible.

    Redirect after redirect. Post after Post of regenerated tokens. 7 layers in and it finally punted me out the other side and gave me the file I wanted. Didn’t help that the only help on the internet was “watch how Firefox does it and try to replicate that flow”

    • Hyperion

      Last system I did uses Shibboleth auth.

  9. Nephilium

    I’m rewatching Winter Soldier, remembering the better times, and enjoying that I’m off for the next week.

    Still looking forward to being on an island this weekend.

    • egould310

      Have a fun and relaxing vacation, my dude. Ride a bike; kiss that girl.

    • DEG

      Still looking forward to being on an island this weekend.

      excellent!

    • dbleagle

      Good for her. Watch it soon before it gets memory holed.

    • kinnath

      I would say that is amazing, but in reality she’s just confirming my biases.

      • Nikkodemus

        Mine as well, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t stand up and cheer.

    • DEG

      Excellent.

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      And, FFS–if you’re going to criticize her for being off the plantation, I’ll caution you to be sure you know the difference between ‘your’, and, ‘you’re’.

      What’s next; ‘would of’?

  10. commodious spittoon

    Last Wednesday of July

    Is that the Juneteenth of July?

  11. KibbledKristen

    On summer Saturday nights in Vermont, we could hear the stock cars from Catamount Speedway, about miles as the crow flies. Such a good memory

    • KibbledKristen

      *5 miles. Fucking keyboard

  12. I'm Here To Help

    Before the COVID hit, a coffee shop in our small town had a bluegrass night at least once a month. We went to check it out not long after we moved into the house, expecting only a couple of people playing guitars, with a banjo and mandolin if we were lucky. When we got there, purchased our coffee, and took it to the upstairs room where the musicians were gathered, we had a big surprise. There had to be at least 30 musicians in there with a good variety of instruments (lot of guitars, a half dozen each of mandolins and banjos, a couple fiddles, and two upright basses). Someone would call out a song and start playing, with the rest joining in when they felt like it, and they’d take turns doing mini solos/improvisations. Ages ranged from one that looked to be about 10 to someone at (or very near) triple digits.

    Can’t wait for the COVID to die down so we can go back…

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      We have “Private parties” at our local bar, illegal but Fuck off, I have quite a tab now, we can’t pay til the shit is over,

  13. Yusef drives a Kia

    I remember Summer nights, Ghetto birds flying overhead, spotlighting our BBQ, Gunshots, car wrecks and screams, and I lived in a suburb of LA,

    • Ted S.

      William Barr, not Bob Barr.

    • TARDIS

      And he’s got a wicked back-hand.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        My God, that is fantastic!

  14. Sean

    How long is too long to leave a gun on the dining room table?

    • UnCivilServant

      Until either A: someone steals it, or B: it collects dust.

    • straffinrun

      Not long enough if you’re Christopher Walken.

    • TARDIS

      Until it tries to go out and rob a: bank, gas station, or neighbor without permission. This sounds like a recent discussion interchange at my house.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Those things go off by themselves All. The. Time.

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      In my mom’s clan you don’t leave a gun on a bed: it’s a long story.

      From that I was keen to other not-on-the-bed traditions and heard all these shall-nots.
      * Polish: no shoes on the bed
      * Irish: no hat on the bed

      Or is the bed thing just Catholic stuff?

      Or is it an archetype that recognize in many cultures?

      • Nephilium

        Nope. You just don’t leave shit on the bed. That’s for messy people. You’re not messy or sloppy are you?

        /gets hit a couple times with a stick

  15. westernsloper

    In my hometown people did some things as a community not so much others. I don’t remember what nights every member of the community (that I remember) sent their kids to get firearms training in pee wee gun club but it may have been on a Wednesday. I only remember certain nights when the almost the whole town/county got together and those nights were high school football nights and the 4th of July.

    • Nephilium

      Back when I was a yute, several things were traditions. Most of these traditions have been banned in the past 30 years. The one I remember with the most fondness was a grade school/middle school (the Catholic school I went to was K-8) shaving cream fight through the city. It got so bad for several years that you had to stockpile shaving cream for months before hand, as the convenience stores wouldn’t sell to kids (and we were all too dumb to go to a grocery store or drug store). The true asshole kids always used Nair, the mild assholes used shaving gel (due to its greater range).

  16. Hyperion

    I seem to have this uncanny ability lately, of showing up at the ass end of threads and not noticing until I post 10 comments and then notice no one else is posting…

    • Sean

      Blame your interns.

      • Hyperion

        You mean the orphans?

    • Aloysious

      So… you like ass? No shame in that.

  17. The Hyperbole

    Meh, sounds a lot like communism.

  18. Crusty Juggler

    My most vivid summer memory is when my mother caught me watching her change from behind her lilac bushes, and she pulled me inside and poured hot chamomile tea over the tip of my penis.

    • pistoffnick

      You have my attention…GO ON.

      • Crusty Juggler

        The scent of chamomile produces an immediate involuntary orgasm.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        But, not lilac?

        Or, bushes?

    • Mojeaux

      I legit LOLd.

      • westernsloper

        Don’t encourage him.

      • Crusty Juggler

        🙁

      • Mojeaux

        He amuses me. Like Brochettaward.

      • westernsloper

        I am kidding. One never knows when ones comments are being taken seriously. For the record, never take one of my comments seriously.

      • SP

        Are you still a quitter?

      • R C Dean

        Same here, Moje.

    • juris imprudent

      Crusty will pass the Voigt-Kampff.

      • UnCivilServant

        Is that the question where the correct answer is to shoot the tester?

      • Crusty Juggler

        Like you want to with your hot, fruity jizz? You sick fuck.

      • UnCivilServant

        No, you’re not invited back.

    • commodious spittoon

      Shrimp are bugs, and bugs aren’t animals. They’re mobile plants.

      • TARDIS

        Sea roaches are delicious.

    • westernsloper

      My mom never made shrimp. Might have never cooked shrimp in her 75 years on the planet. last night I had six jumbo shrimp cooked in butter and garlic and a sort of stir fryed ginger beef on a salad. I am glad my mom does not cook for me.

      • Nephilium

        Both my sister and I learned how to cook because of our parents. I didn’t know beef could have a color other than grey until my 20’s.

        We now share cooking tips and stories.

      • juris imprudent

        My first wife introduced me to pork that was not the consistency and texture of shoe leather (which was how mom cooked it). Mom did make a kick-ass potato salad.

      • Nephilium

        The girlfriend still doesn’t trust rare (sous vide) pork. She will deal with it cooked more, or sliced and pan fried.

        From my mom, the terrible food that still has a soft spot in my heart is ostensibly bad food. Tuna Noodle Casserole. Canned tuna, egg noodles, and cream of X soup.

      • UnCivilServant

        You forgot the peas. They break up the monochrome of the tuna noodle casserole.

      • Nephilium

        That’s not part of my childhood Tuna Noodle Casserole. It was always egg noodles, canned tuna, and cream of mushroom soup. That was all.

        As terrible as it is, It still has a comfort food slot in my heart. If I make it, I expect that I’m going to be the only one to eat it. For all I complain about the girlfriend, she learned how to make it this way without understanding the importance.

      • Rhywun

        For us it was Tuna Helper with green beans.

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        a HS buddy joked about how poor they were:

        they relied heavily on Hamburger Helper Helper

      • DEG

        Mett is delicious.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        cream of X soup

        “Fond memories of the kitchen of his youth–his mother pre-heating the oven, while Malcolm stirred the pot with his dick.”

      • Fourscore

        I was about 20 before I knew what shrimp were. We didn’t have those, we had a lot more bullheads though. Now we have lots of different things that weren’t available, either due to economics or logistics.

        Does anyone else remember something called ice cream that was made in freezer trays? After we got REA electricity, 1953, and an electric refrig my Mom made some packaged stuff, maybe with milk and froze it. I can hardly remember it but it sure wasn’t ice cream. We ate it, said it was good,, compared to nothing else. Jello was cheap and good.

  19. Hyperion

    Last small town I lived in was about 5000 people. Completely surrounded by square mile after square mile of corn fields. It’s one of those places where almost everyone knows everyone else.

    I remember I’d go in the grocery store, the only one in town and I’d know more than half the people in there. And inevitably one of them would walk up and say something like:

    ‘I saw you drive through the Burger King this morning’

    ‘OK’

    ‘Saturday we drove by your house and you were out there raking leaves’

    ‘OK’

    I remember when I moved away and the quote ‘God save me from nice little towns’ kept going through my head. I recall going to the grocery store, not seeing a damn person I know and the chances of doing so was right around zero. It was a great feeling, like freedom.

    • SP

      My hometown is still just about 2000 year round residents. The business district is, no lie, one block long. One place to get your hair cut, one family diner, a library, a 19th century village hall, a volunteer fire station, a coffee shop, a small independent pharmacy, a sub shop, a pizza joint, a bank, a post office, and two bars, although one of those is around the back of the block.

      But it’s also a college town with a large international student population, so it was a great place to grow up. One of the universities had a music program, so we saw super famous musicians in concert all school year practically free for faculty kids, and they had master classes and band festivals run by some of the biggest names in instrumental music. It was terrific.

      • Fourscore

        SP, we lived 16 miles north of that same town but it had everything, even a music store, a Gambles hardware and maybe 3 other hardware stores. 2200 people.
        Now Main Street is empty junk stores that are getting torn down 1 by 1. A couple restaurants that are open short hours. Summertime had the music, baseball/softball games. Each local business sponsored a team, bowling in the winter.

        Us country kids had a .22 and chased the bunnies

      • C. Anacreon

        Watch out. That’s the kind of town drifter Jack Reacher typically ends up in, and after a skirmish at the diner, kicks some serious ass.

  20. mrfamous

    I have never lived in a small town. Indianapolis is the smallest town I’ve ever lived in.

    • Hyperion

      Oh, you don’t know what you are missing, you have to move to the great corn fields outside Indy, where every Hoosier around has a complete log and diary of everything you’ve ever did since the day you moved there and will talk about it with you every time they see you.

      • Nephilium

        The counterpoint is that you know everything about them. And if you have a modicum of computer knowledge you gain access to all of their shit on the first day and teach them that their way of doing things has consequences.

      • Hyperion

        “The counterpoint is that you know everything about them.”

        I failed to care.

      • Mojeaux

        You don’t have to care. You have to let them know you KNOW.

      • Nephilium

        /raises a glass to Mojeaux

        /hopes she figures it’s alcohol and caffeine free

        /realizes she’s smarter then that.

        /ducks and covers

      • Hyperion

        I failed to care enough to let them know I cared.

        If you don’t fit in, they’ll know it immediately. It’s like Hoosier radar. They’ll find you and after they ask you who every member of your family is on all sides going back to the Medieval ages, you’ll get ‘THE’ question:

        Did you see the game?

        What game?

        … You watch basketball?

        Nope.

        You’re not from around here, are you? *eyes you suspiciously*

      • UnCivilServant

        “Who are you? Why are you asking me all of these questions? What sort of freakish stalker does that?”

      • Nephilium

        I expect I won’t fit in anywhere.

        I have to spend times learning the community and the rules (even here). I try to make sure I’m not violating any local mores.

      • Viking1865

        … You watch basketball?

        Nope.

        You’re not from around here, are you? *eyes you suspiciously*

        Well, if you had to choose between IU football and IU basketball……

        Fun fact: the big aerial shot they took of Memorial Stadium on gameday to sell in the bookstore is of a day they hosted Ohio State, that way they’d be sure to have a full stadium of fans wearing red.

      • Hyperion

        “What sort of freakish stalker does that?”

        All of them. Don’t you know where the word Hoosier comes from?

        Who’s your mother, who’s your father, who’s your …

      • UnCivilServant

        “Nunyabusiness, nunyabusiness, nunyabusiness. Nosy fucker, ain’t ye?”

      • Rhywun

        That sounds like hell.

      • Nephilium

        I always consider it a Faustian bargain. You come and talk to me, we’re good. You call in a complaint to me, I’ll try to find out everything about you and use it against you.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        basically this. of course, the reverse is if I’ve told you to knock off the fucking music 3 times on a Wednesday night, and you’re still making noise, I’m gonna let the cops sort it out.

        /this is why I prefer living on acreage

    • Drake

      I grew up in a fairly small farm town that’s now a suburb of Boston – I hate the place now.

      We never used to lock our doors or cars.

    • Hyperion

      Swallows well? *snicker*

    • westernsloper

      He should only be referred to as Representative Pull My Finger.

  21. pistoffnick

    I spent most of my summers in Longville, MN (self proclaimed turtle racing capital of the world). It’s a little north and a little west from where Fourscore lives. They held a street dance nearly every Saturday night. Afterwards we used to play frisbee on the runway in town (it is still unfenced). Or rearrange people’s yard art. Or chased girls. Or went to the bar outside of town that would serve us alcohol without asking how old we were. Or seeing how far a Ford Pinto station wagon could go up an old logging road before it got stuck. Or surfing on the roof of said Ford Pinto station wagon while it was being driven by the friend you just taught to drive a manual transmission not 30 minutes before.

    • Fourscore

      Fifty Lakes had a beginner’s bar too. Every time headlights would appear in the parking lot we all head out the backdoor, until we knew who it was. The old guy that ran the place didn’t seem concerned. Good days, young and stup.., I mean, inexperienced.

      • C. Anacreon

        Fourscore, did you ever read any of the book series set in northern Minnesota where this guy has a cat that solves mysteries? Stupid, terrible books, there’s never really much if a mystery, just a bunch of the locals doing northern Minnesota small town things like organizing a charity auction. For some damn reason I read several of them. I guess it was a slow summer, and perhaps it’s because I like cats that I read them, but I definitely lost some IQ points reading those.

    • Nikkodemus

      Never in a million years did I think I would run into someone who hung out in Longville! I spent half my childhood in that town, good memories fishing and racing turtles. My dad and grandfather owned an old trailer in the park on Girl Lake. Damn, that makes me miss grandpa.

  22. dbleagle

    I lived in a number of small towns or isolated military communities. There were some great upsides, but other times I longed for a business trip where I could be an unknown.

    The housing was separated at one place so everybody would gather at the store parking lot for “trunk or treat.” The cars and adults got all dressed up and because it was a small place (less than 80 families) most parents either got full size snacks or gave multiples of the small Halloween sized snacks.

    We had a group which would run the movie theater on Fri and Sat nights with a kid matinee. Because the movies were shown for free the lawyers said we could show any movie we wanted without copyright issues.

    But there were times I would be taking my garbage out and have teens come up to me to discuss how badly I was doing my job. That is when I really wanted the business trip.

    It was great, but so was living in NYC for a few years. (Knowing that I would only be living there for a few years.)

    • SP

      Yes, I’ve lived in many different settings in many different states (but only in the United States), and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to find and focus on the great things about each of them.

      For instance, it’s hot as hell here right now, but I can see mountains from my office. 😉

    • westernsloper

      You win.

    • commodious spittoon

      Clayton County looks like something I’d make if I had to freehand draw New Mexico with my left hand.

    • R C Dean

      Been there.

    • one true athena

      Been thru there. That might also be where we camped for my dad’s shooting competition when I was about 10, but I’m not sure. Somewhere between there and Raton, IIRC. I mostly remember it because someone killed a rattler and cooked it on the fire, so I had a piece.

      • Incentives Matter

        Closest to Clayton I’ve been is Carlsbad. Love New Mexico.

  23. Crusty Juggler

    ESPN investigation finds coaches at NBA China academies complained of player abuse, lack of schooling

    The NBA brought in elite coaches and athletic trainers with experience in the G League and Division I basketball to work at the academies. One former coach described watching a Chinese coach fire a ball into a young player’s face at point-blank range and then “kick him in the gut.”

    “Imagine you have a kid who’s 13, 14 years old, and you’ve got a grown coach who is 40 years old hitting your kid,” the coach said. “We’re part of that. The NBA is part of that.”

    It is common for Chinese coaches to discipline players physically, according to several people with experience in player development in China. “For most of the older generation, even my grandparents, they take corporal punishment for granted and even see it as an expression of love and care, but I know it might be criticized by people living outside of China,” said Jinming Zheng, an assistant professor of sports management at Northumbria University in England, who grew up in mainland China and has written extensively about the Chinese sports system. “The older generation still sees it as an integral part of training.”

    These Chinee have it right. The only way to teach this woke cuke generation of weak simps is by discipline. And ESPN and the NBA have a problem with that. Why am I not surprised?

    • Rhywun

      Yep, no different than what those kids got from their parents. I’ve heard stories.

  24. Crusty Juggler

    Remembering Cancel Culture’s 40-Year-Old Stepfather

    In the movie (which was eventually released), Al Pacino stars as Steve Burns, an undercover police officer seeking to track a serial killer preying on gay men within the S&M scene in Greenwich Village. The killer—dressed in black and blue leather, almost like a cop himself—lurks around bars, seeking his prey, while Burns does his best to blend in with the clientele. It’s a simple enough story—perhaps even a progressive one for its time, given the way it highlighted the mistreatment of gay men by police officers. But Cruising’s main cultural legacy lies not with its content, but with the public rallies and boycotts that greeted its production. Activists even attempted to disrupt filming at some New York City locales.

    The controversy began when Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell, who’d written articles about real-life killings in gay leather bars during the 1970s, predicted the film would be “the most oppressive, ugly, bigoted look at homosexuality ever presented on the screen.” He also told his readers to “give Friedkin and his production crew hell.”

    Bell had been a long-time advocate for gay rights. His first piece in the Voice was an account of the Stonewall Riots. Subsequently, he’d covered the under-investigation of gay hate crimes by New York police (as well as officers’ harassment of victims). Yet, ironically, these same concerns found their way into Cruising: At one point in the movie, the police harass a cross-dressing leather-bar patron. When he complains about it, after helping officers with their murder case, he’s practically laughed out of the precinct. But remember that Bell hadn’t yet seen the movie.

    Readers took up Bell’s challenge. Movie posters were vandalized; air horns drowned out production; information was leaked on which locations were being used for filming on any given day; and, finally, rallies were held outside theaters, where picketers often outnumbered patrons. Local gay-oriented businesses even refused entry to cast and crew. Some gay extras, sick of being taunted, simply quit the set. Demonstrators blocked Greenwich Village traffic, leading to arrests. The protesters requested that New York Mayor Ed Koch rescind accommodations that had been made for film shoots.

    • Crusty Juggler

      Following that up with an interview of the God himself:

      Perhaps the most interesting thing about revisiting Cruising in 2019 is how much the mainstream perception of gay culture has evolved, which is pretty considerable in comparison to the time the movie was made.

      Well, I didn’t set out to make a film about gay culture. Cruising is about the S&M world, which was a very particular aspect. When I was making this film, sadomasochism was prominent in both the gay and straight world; the clubs were different. But this was not really about gay life or gay characters. And that’s what made it controversial at the time, because gay characters were almost never portrayed, except in smaller roles on like, say, there would be a butler who was gay. But it was an unexamined culture, especially the S&M world. And I didn’t set out to examine it. My only motivation was to make a murder mystery with that scene as the backdrop. It was actually based on a series of true stories that happened in that world, the world of the Mineshaft, which was where we filmed. Now, that whole area has been gentrified.

      It’s pretty crazy to imagine how much that street itself where the Mineshaft once was has changed, especially in the last 10 years, right?

      Absolutely. And back then, the Mineshaft was the center of the S&M world, not only in New York but in the country. It was the most extreme. And it happened to be owned by a friend of mine who was a Mafia boss named Matty “The Horse” Ianniello. He was the head of two families at the time, including the Genovese crime family, and he owned everything, namely the famous Peppermint Lounge, where the Peppermint Twist dance started, along with a number of other businesses on the West Side of New York. So I went to him and asked him if I could shoot at the Mineshaft. He was a little concerned but he gave me the number of the guy who managed the place, a man named Wally Wallace. I talked to him and turned out he was a fan of mine and a graduate of the NYU Film School. So he gave me permission to come down and look at the club. I had never seen it, so I went down there with one of Matty the Horse’s henchmen, who had a .22 in his sock because we didn’t know what the hell to expect.

      I mean c’mon.

      • Crusty Juggler

        However, you did include funk on this soundtrack, through the four songs you used by the group Mutiny. How did they set themselves apart for you?

        Jerome Brailey, he was with Parliament-Funkadelic. And when he split off from that he decided to call his group Mutiny, which he named as such because that’s what he did when he left Parliament. Their album Mutiny On The Mamaship is pure funk at its funkiest, which is why I chose to feature them in those early Mineshaft scenes instead of what was usually played in the club.

        C’mon!

  25. kinnath

    Small town Iowa.

    You go to the grocery store, and there are blank checkbooks for all the local banks sitting next to the register.

    You grab the book for your bank and write in your four or five digit customer account in the blanks boxes provided for that purpose. You fill out the amount and sign the check. Everything goes through smoothly

    If you accidentally grab the checks for the wrong bank, the bank pays the check anyway and then calls you up to come in and cover the check.

    Circa 1976.

    • SP

      I love this. That is very much how my village was and still is, in many respects.

    • commodious spittoon

      My earliest memory involving grocery stores and checkbooks is mom forgetting hers and having to run home while the groceries sat at the checkout counter. I was upset because I couldn’t get my banana.

    • Don Escaped Spring Training

      One thing a grocer’s kid learned in those days was how broken so many folk are. There are songs about the wages of sin, particularly of writing a hot check. You’re writing out your very own warrant, signing your name to it and handing it over to the prosecution. Parchman SUCKS!1!11! And yet a staggering percentage of people wrote bad checks.

      Everyone eats. You see the full spectrum of people at the grocery store; no illusions about any collective greatness of man can survive going to the courthouse to testify over $10 worth of bad paper.

  26. straffinrun

    “Google is committed to supported the US government and the military.”

    -Sundar Pichai, Google.

    That is the worst answer he could’ve given before congress.

  27. R C Dean

    Yo, SP.

    Got a post in the hopper. Should be done with it tomorrow, maybe Friday. It can be posted any time; it’s not really about news of the day.

    • SP

      Woohoo! Thanks, Mr. Dean.

    • Nephilium

      Show off.

      /hides the fact I’ve got three half finished posts written up.

      • SP

        OMWC is directing you to convert those to 1.5 *finished* posts.

      • Nephilium

        Honestly, it’s all my own fault why I haven’t finished them. I’ve been in a dark place recently, and that hasn’t been conducive to writing things that should be shared. I’m hoping after the vacation I can finish them off.

      • DEG

        I’ve been in a dark place recently,

        Sorry. I hope the vacation helps.

      • R C Dean

        Don’t overestimate the amount of time and thought I put into mine.

        They’re basically, at best, a launching point for comments. If anybody gets ensmartened, that’s a nice bonus.

      • UnCivilServant

        Sheet, I just try to entertain.

  28. straffinrun

    And I’ve gotta say that I love watching Crusty and UCS interact.

    • Crusty Juggler

      It’s even nuttier behind our Onlyfans page.

      Subscribe now!

      • Jarflax

        Bukkake isn’t my thing, sorry.

  29. Nephilium

    So… other then the other people from Ohio. Would any of you people want to know what the Lake Erie islands are like? I can probably easily take pictures (and the B&B we’re staying in has free bicycles).

    • kinnath

      Yes, please. More pictures.

    • SP

      Yes, even though I know already. I love travelogues!

    • Annoyed Nomad

      My wife and I would be interested in it. Could be a nice road trip.

    • Hyperion

      “Lake Erie islands are like?”

      Been there.

      Though, last time was South Bass Island, and for some reason, I don’t remember it too much…

      • Nephilium

        That exactly where I’m taking the girlfriend for her first trip. I haven’t been there for 15 years or so. I’ve described Put-In-Bay as blue collar Hawaii. I’ll see what I can do based on demand here.

      • Hyperion

        “That exactly where I’m taking the girlfriend for her first trip.”

        Hope at least one of you are good at drunken golf cart demolition derby driving. Have fun.

      • Nephilium

        I believe I’ve won the argument that we have no need of renting a golf cart. We lost Europe this year, but we can do this trip at least.

      • Hyperion

        Same here, no Germany and Portugal, but at least we can do something domestic. We’re looking for something in September, just not sure where yet. I was thinking either North/South Carolina or up North, maybe Maine.

    • DEG

      Yes.

    • Nephilium

      Alright all, I’ll see how many pictures I can take. Unfortunately, one of the kayak rental places is closed for the season due to the COVID. But I may be able to convince the girlfriend that parasailing is a good idea.

    • Gender Traitor

      When I was a kid, my family took the Pelee Island Ferry across Lake Erie from the southern tip of Ontario back to Ohio after taking my oldest sister to check out Michigan State. I remember the ferry ride fondly but nothing about the island. Would love to hear about the other Erie islands.

  30. Hyperion

    Anyone heard of the game ‘Destroy all Humans’ that just released on Steam? I guess it’s a remake of a game released in 2005. I watched some Youtube of it and it looks hilarious. Especially considering what’s happening these days, I think I’d like to join them and put us out of our misery already.

    • UnCivilServant

      I tried the demo, and didn’t have fun, so I stopped playing.

    • Urthona

      has gotten mediocre reviews.

      • Hyperion

        Overwhelmingly positive on Steam right now.

    • Nephilium

      It’s a remake of an old game.

    • Nikkodemus

      Remake of an old (I believe ps2) game. It was pretty good, had some funny parts. 3rd person shooter IIRC.

    • Jarflax

      I have been scrounging among my old never finished games. (After being somewhat unhappy with my last two new game purchases) I am playing Sleeping Dogs now, and really enjoying it. I don’t know if it was a hardware issue when I played it new or if they patched it and fixed the bugginess that made me stop playing it then, but it is a pretty decent game.

      • Hyperion

        I just quit playing Death Stranding, I just got bored. I went back to Empyrion Galactic Survival. Really the most improved game still in Early Access, ever. Now I’m looking at my Xbox Live for PC subscription, lots of stuff there, I was thinking about Wasteland 3, just not that much of a strategy player. All these games, and I’m bored wondering what to play. First world problems.

      • Hyperion

        Hmm, HDR, Quantum dot, 240hz, 5,120 x 1,440, Gsync.

        I’m interested. This 3440×1440, 120hz Gysnc is just not going to cut it anymore. No HDR, only 34″. seems tiny now. If I take the 2 27″ monitors I have on each side of the 34, it will fit perfectly on my desk!

        Also, that’s a pretty good price for that sweet piece of tech.

      • Hyperion

        2 things that concern me.

        The Panel Type (Panel Type (PLS/VA/TN)

        TN panels suck. Not sure what the rest of that means. I have an IPS panel now, which is great.

        Also, the aspect ratio 32:9. I have some games that still will not work with 21:9. Not older games. With Death Stranding, I had to hack the .exe file with a hex editor to get it to work, otherwise you can an ugly black border, I can’ stand that. But man that thing looks awesome.

      • Nikkodemus

        *Drools*

      • Incentives Matter

        Is it wrong to love a machine?

  31. Don Escaped Spring Training

    North MS has both hill and bottom cultures, and music is everywhere. I was born at The Crossroads, same as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, and Sam Cooke; BB King, Charlie Pride, Rufus Thomas, Albert King, and Conway Twitty had been just down the road. When my parents got back to our hills, I was barely out of diapers; an uncle married a Presley, and my mom baby-sat various cousins for change and heard all the crazy Uncle Vernon stories. Howling Wolf was long gone; Roberta Lee Streeter hit it big singing a haunting tune about a local river, married big, was out of there fast and never of again (true fact: she moved to the little island off Savannah where NewWife grew up knowing her as “Bobby Gentry”). Virginia Wynette Pugh’s Stand By Your Man remains a towering standard. Faith Hill and Marty Stuart would hit later. I would catch up to these folks later in foreign places, but the vibe and know-how and belief that just about anyone might hit it some day was a common delusion because so many wells nearby had come in.

    Everyone could sing because everyone went to church; my sect forbade accompaniment, but we filled up rafters well. Later I would meet “conservatives” in Texas scouting who would hand out the lyrics to Amazing Grace at chapel and couldn’t carry a tune and I feared for their apparently paper-thin souls; in my world you had a place in the church yard where you’d land from the day you were born, near your great-great-grandparents a few stones over, and you sang your head off all day Sunday when it was our turn with the preacher (usually once a month or better), and you knew all the words by heart to every hymn written since Washington crossed the Delaware. Anyone who couldn’t sing was regarded as a dangerous atheist.

    My guitar story is long and boringly typical, so I’ll just say that most of us play something, but I don’t know anyone but my son (raised safely hundreds of miles away from my people) who can sight read to play. We traded (stole) licks, played everything by ear, played constantly (parking lots, campfires by the lake after work, when we should have been doing homework), and I didn’t really know anyone who owned music/records. We would sit by a radio, hear a open on our sad top40 AM station, scramble to tune up close enough, and play along for the three minutes; when I got to college I was shocked that everyone couldn’t do that.

    • R C Dean

      Reminds me of the stories told by an ortho surgeon who is a fishing crony of Pater Dean. Grew up on a subsistence farm in way back Louisiana. Didn’t have shoes as a kid. Meat was mostly what the boys dragged home – fish, crawdads, rabbits, whatever. Like a different world.

      A true American story – from barefoot to a double boarded surgeon and the kind of money that comes with it.

      • Don Escaped Spring Training

        Waylon Jennings and Roy Orbison are my favorites from your parts

        Buddy Holly was a giant, but that’s a ways away

      • Rebel Scum

        Asian persuasion for the win.

      • R C Dean

        The last line really makes it.

      • slumbrew

        “It makes the physical appearance less attractive…”

        As anyone who has even passing familiarity with mixed-race ladies, that is impressively wrong.

        Hybrid vigor FTW!

      • Rhywun

        Seriously. I just assumed it was parody.

      • straffinrun

        Maybe, but I’ve met guys that say that exact shit. So absurd, I feel zero anger.

      • commodious spittoon

        I’m guessing not white dudes.

      • straffinrun

        Yellow trash.

      • commodious spittoon

        I’m pretty sure even the white nationalists you can find with a lice comb admit that Asians improve our sad race.

        Has to be tough for a racist when your race is consistently #3 behind Jews and Japs, and probably #4 if you include African immigrants, and probably #5 when you take the Honduran menace seriously, at least as it compares to our home-grown welfare leach class.

        Not to mention, they muster up a scant couple hundred protestors to march around with citronella candles and only manage to kill one (white) lady in a couple days. Meanwhile the George Floyd protestacular is marching into its sixth or eighth uninterrupted month of jubilation, and they’ve murdered just dozens of people.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        they muster up a scant couple hundred protestors

        C’mon, cs–that’s just quality over quantity.

      • commodious spittoon

        The gaslighting… no, the miasma of lies in the last several years is astonishing, bewildering. But I guess that’s how it works. They’re not just telling lies big enough that they have to believe it, they’re lying big enough to demoralize the rest of us. All in service of tearing down the liberal order.

      • straffinrun

        Speak for yourself. I’d first have to have morals in order to be demoralized.

  32. straffinrun

    You all smell fantastic today.

  33. DEG

    Those village band concerts sound great.

  34. Yusef drives a Kia

    at the park, I threw into group, turns out they were from Florida, moved to Vegas and now bought a home here, all due to politics and a shitty set of policies, I said Welcome!

  35. DEG

    Ohio bans use of HCQ for Lil Rona treatment

    Ohio is banning the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 beginning Thursday, according to the Ohio Department of Health.

    ODH Press Secretary Melanie Amato said the drug is not an effective treatment for COVID-19. She stated that Board of Pharmacy rule 4729:5-5-21 of the Administrative Code will go into effect Thursday, banning its distribution.

    The rule prohibits selling or dispensing hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      I’m sick of this Ban, Proclamation BS, make a law or STFU!

    • Rebel Scum

      ODH Press Secretary Melanie Amato is trying to kill Ohio citizens…

    • Hyperion

      Someone who is working on a cure was about to have their buzz harshed.

    • Hyperion

      “hydroxychloroquine”

      So, this drug is illegal now? What’s the schedule?

      • mrfamous

        It’s Schedule FYTW.

        This executive order shit needed to be slapped down a long time ago by the courts and/or legislatures, but apparently this “co-equal branches of government” shit is obsolete.

    • straffinrun

      I thought the rule was, “First, do no harm.” Where’s the harm in HCQ?

      • Hyperion

        ^this^

        As in ‘it might fuck up our bottom line’ /big pharm

        You know, I’m all for profit, but I despise cronyism.

      • C. Anacreon

        The harm is if it works it makes Orange Man look good. Can’t have that.
        The real travesty is we prescribe tons of meds “off label”, in fact some meds’ main use these days aren’t FDA approved. It’s only required to be for a rational use or meet contemporary standards. This is a dangerous precedent, 100% political, which should never be a factor in medicine.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      let it burn, I’ll stand back here and wait…
      /Ghouls is right

    • leon

      The compassionate left

    • Nikkodemus

      What the fuck is wrong with these people???

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        just dehumanize them, it works for the Commies………

      • mrfamous

        They don’t view the guy as any different than Bin Laden is all. Now you do have to wonder _why_ that is, but that’s all it really is.

      • commodious spittoon

        They’d root for Bin Laden.

      • mrfamous

        Depends on who is president as best as I can tell

      • commodious spittoon

        Going forward there’s a good bet their president would root for Bin Laden, or would equivocate.

    • Q Continuum

      The comments at the Politico article are just as bad. The internet is cancer.

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      I mean….I’ll probably smile if I hear Chinchi kicks the bucket.

  36. UnCivilServant

    🙁 I cut the tip of my finger trimming my nails.

    I’m just making mistakes all over the place.

    • UnCivilServant

      Well, I’m going to go to sleep. Maybe I’ll be in better form tomorrow.

      • egould310

        Recommendation; don’t try to trim your pubes.

  37. egould310

    Grew up in New Castle, IN. There was absolutely nothing charming, nostalgic, or Americana about it. When we moved there, it was dying as Chrysler was dying, too. I fucking hated it.

    My dad was an MD and had a very lucrative practice, and my parents were active civically and socially, and were well regarded. My dad provided very good medical care to what was, at the time, an underserved market.

    I moved to LA in 1993, got married to a Cali native. Moved to Seattle almost a year ago. I’m a big city dude.

    Parents sold the house in New Castle 2016 for what they paid for it in 1977. They moved to a retirement community in Fishers, IN. It’s nice because they are close to my bro and his wife and some other friends in Fishers/Carmel.

    My dad had a very lucrative medical practice that he was not able to sell. After his partner died, My dad spent 15 years trying to bring on another partner/sell the practice. Not a single young MD wanted to work in New Castle, IN.

    #drunkenrambling

    • commodious spittoon

      And it’s people in some of the hottest real estate markets on earth rioting because they’re upset about being so terribly in vogue

  38. Gender Traitor

    Dayton’s Island Park has a bandshell. I remember going to hear concerts many times as a kid, but the only one I recall specifically was a show by the late, great Nicolette Larson. (First time I’d heard a chick singer referred to as a “chirp.”) Good times.

  39. KSuellington

    It’s cool to hear the stories of small town life as I have never had it, although I have thought a ton about moving to a more rural existence as I really love outdoor stuff. We are in Montana right now, pretty close to Yellowstone, and every time I come to this stateI want to stay. I very nearly did when I was 18 and visited here the first time. I have to figure out how to start on online biz or something that could be done remotely as my present biz is the exact opposite of that. California went from an absolute paradise when I was born in the mid 70’s to a complete fucking trainwreck that is only getting worse. The progressives have made massive headway in the past decade alone in turning it into a neo-fuedal shithole in which the tech and big biz elites ruling and the serfs serving.

    • dbleagle

      I have lived in Montana and Wyoming and my goal at “real retirement” is to move back there. A bit of advice before you move there. Visit in January or February for a couple of weeks and commit yourself to doing “locals stuff” and not just skiing or seeing the sights. Winters can be brutal. I really like the winters, but they turned my ex off those states completely.

      • KSuellington

        Thanks DB. Yes, I have always visited in summer and I know it’s a completely different animal in winter. I haven’t ever lived in an extreme cold winter, but I did live in Holland for two and a half years and the winters there are brutal in their own right due to the northern latitude and the never ending cold ass rain that seems to go from October to May.

      • SP

        We moved to Montana on Thanksgiving, driving a rental truck towing a car, from Santa Fe. Blizzard conditions all the way through Colorado and Wyoming. Loved it anyway.

        Arrived at our new home. A week later it hit -40F, with gale force winds, and stayed that way for a couple months. The locals told us it was an extended cold snap, even for them.

        We’re most likely moving back there when OMWC retires. It is an extremely cost-effective option. And my corporation is headquartered in Sheridan, WY, so I’d at least be in the neighborhood.

      • Chafed

        Feature not a bug?

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Why not both?

        #Multitasking

      • LCDR_Fish

        What is “locals stuff” other than working?

        Btw new android update slowed my phone jkeyboard response time down by 95%. Wtf

  40. Hyperion

    I have to find a book to read for my Kindle. I keep staying up until 3-4am on week nights, I have to stop doing that. My wife was saying today that she thinks it’s because I’m at my computer gaming, or just looking at more stuff to buy, I spent about $600 shopping online last night, lol, buying mostly stuff I don’t need. Oh well, you know, it’s a guy thing, need has nothing to do with it, toys get bigger, all of that. I keep doing stuff like that and before I know it, it’s 3:30am.

    Anyway, she thinks I should come to bed and start read to cure my night owl syndrome. I never finished Hand Maiden’s Tale, I got bored. Anyone have any Sci-Fi/Fantasy suggestions? Something more recent. I was going to try Clockwork Orange, that’s one of the few older classics I have not read.

    • Heroic Mulatto

      Anyway, she thinks I should come to bed and start read to cure my night owl syndrome.

      Tell her if she were serious about getting you in bed earlier, she wouldn’t be suggesting you read, as opposed to another activity.

      • Hyperion

        Dude, I’m 60, I only have so much energy left. I really need the sleep, lol. It’s not like we can’t get enough of that during the day, no kids, I WFH, she don’t work, so it’s all good.

      • Heroic Mulatto

        Ah, there is a method to your madness!

      • Hyperion

        We’ve both actually started falling into this trap. Here we are both still up at midnight, again. But she’ll wonder off to bed soon, and here I’ll be looking for a Kindle book to read, since I need to read to fall asleep, until 4am, sigh…. maybe tomorrow night…

      • Brochettaward

        Dude, I’m 60, I only have so much energy left.

        And we all know you spend it on the truck stop restrooms.

    • slumbrew

      You looking for lightweight, escapist stuff or something meatier?

      • Hyperion

        Thanks, looks interesting…

      • Hyperion

        People are talking about reading order… which would you recommend to start with?

      • slumbrew

        I got the omnibus edition I linked to and read them in that order – the publishing order. The downside, such as it is, is that you know the fate of a fairly major character before you read the book that features them; you know in advance whether they survive.

        That said, I enjoyed the series a whole lot even with that.

        There’s the Tor article about it – which seems to boil down to “either way works”: https://www.tor.com/2016/08/05/what-order-should-you-read-the-craft-sequence-in/

    • Gender Traitor

      Have you already read Animal’s and/or UCS’s books?

      • Hyperion

        Nope, I’ve read all of Animal’s profiles in toxic masculinity articles here though, I love those.

      • Gender Traitor

        Animal’s books look to be SF. (I’ve just started reading them.) UCS’s handle is a link to his Amazon page. He has fantasy – I enjoyed Beyond the Edge of the Map, and I’ve never been much of a fantasy reader. He also has several books with superhero characters. I’ve read and enjoyed the first couple of those.

      • Hyperion

        Thanks, I’ll have to check those out as well.

    • R C Dean

      “I’m at my computer gaming, or just looking at more stuff to buy, I spent about $600 shopping online last night, lol, buying mostly stuff I don’t need.”

      Moderation, bro.

      My suggestion? The Malazan books. Good stuff, dense, engaging, and lots of them.

    • C. Anacreon

      I’m in the third book of the Atlantis Gene trilogy, which is free on Kindle Unlimited. Decent sci-fi fantasy escapist stuff, a little over the top at times, and it will boggle your mind how it has just about every trope you can imagine mashed into one story line. Ancient astronauts. Evil Nazis. Spanish flu pandemic. Anthropology. Gene splicing. Reincarnation. Demonic possession. End of the world international war. Autism. Space wormholes. Prehistoric monsters. Antarctica. And I’m barely scratching the surface.

      It was hard to put the first book down, the third is a bit more drawn out, but fun distraction on your Kindle, and it gets my eyes tired enough to fall asleep every night.

    • Festus' Mustache

      The Sylmarilion. You’ll never finish it and it’s more powerful than Ambien.

  41. slumbrew

    I didn’t have that sort of small town life – medium-sized town, I guess? But I did grow up more or less on the water (Long Island is, you know, an island). That’s its own special magic.

    I think about all the summer days spent on a little boat, dinking around the bay – I didn’t truly realize what a great, special thing that was.

    The only thing that sort of clued me in at the time: my cousin, born and raised in NYC, would come out with regularity. He once brought his buddy Kevin – I think that was the first time Kevin ever stepped foot on a boat (a nothing-special 17′ Whaler) and letting him drive utterly transformed him. Per my cousin, Kevin still brings it up now and then, decades later.

  42. dbleagle

    My last job in the Army I was based in Central California. Even in that rural area the progs were destroying life. Plus as active duty military I didn’t pay Cali taxes, car registration and by buying gas and food on base I saved a bunch of money over the residents. When it came to retire there was no way I was going to stay in Cali.

    It is a shame what they have done to that state- When I lived there I could do all the things I love to do- often at a world class place or experience- but the progs were busy killing the golden goose and just throwing the gold eggs away.

    • slumbrew

      I have to ask – are they not equally killing Hawaii? Am I even allowed to spell it like that now?

      • dbleagle

        They are. As I have repeatedly pointed out here, this state is so far left it has left the blue for the UV. As of today, there are a total of 600 active Kungflu cases and 6 Commieflu in the ICU. Because of that guv is further shutting down the state.

  43. straffinrun

    I grew up in a small town that banned dancing.

    • slumbrew

      Did you fall in love with a girl with a strict father, who was the Reverend at a local church? And did you plead your case before the city council, so there could be dancing at your senior prom? Was his objection due to his son Bobby being killed in a car crash while returning from a night of dancing, resulting in Moore’s his arranging to ban music and dancing in the community?

      • straffinrun

        How’d you know? I got out though, became a medical student then became a child diddling teacher at an all boys school.

      • slumbrew

        That time you became invisible and raped that woman was really dark.

      • egould310

        But that time he was trying to stop the meleé at the Farber College homecoming parade but instead was stampeded by a panicking group of spectators was hilarious.

        “All is well! All is well!”

      • slumbrew

        “Remain calm!”

        (amazingly, his very first role)

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Yup. How many degrees, at that point?

        23, 24…?

    • egould310

      You gotta cut loose!

    • KSuellington

      Jack, get back.

  44. Digby and the Wonder Llama

    I grew up in that part of Dallas where, when people learned where you lived, they kinda rolled their eyes, or, snickered. Because “those people” live there.

    Same thing goes on today–it’s just “those people” now have darker skin.

    • Chafed

      I’m still black from the neck down and shoulders in.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        That’s one mighty big drop.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Black neck, red ass.

  45. straffinrun

    3 high school boys waiting on the platform are giggling and pointing quietly at the MILF’s ass in front of them. The MILF knows and is loving it.

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      Ass-loving kids, and a MILF…I smell a hit movie!

      No, wait–that isn’t the movie.

      • straffinrun

        Stifrer’s mom.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        #HairPie

      • R C Dean

        But. . . . I’ve seen that movie.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        But didn’t smell that smell.

      • Q Continuum

        That movie’s been made. I saw it on a website… something hub?

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        You sure it wasn’t “rub”? That sounds much more…

        OH! Right! Gotcha….

    • Chafed

      But no pics. And you call yourself a friend?

  46. zwak

    I grew up in a smallish college town in California. Halfway between LA and SF on the coast. It was beautiful. Now it is all gone.

    All fled—all done, so lift me on the pyre;
    The feast is over, and the lamps expire.

    • Dr. Fronkensteen

      Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla, Where the brave may live forever.

  47. Digby and the Wonder Llama

    straff—you up for a photoshop challenge?

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        I just realized I don’t actually have a pic, and, I don’t want you to enact ALL my freakin’ labor.

        I just wanted a photshop of people standing in line, with someone pointing a rifle at the first person in line, with a caption like…”Dems putting Americans first”

        Or, pick a state….”Dems putting the people of Florida first”

    • Brochettaward

      These people get to vote.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        And, Biden is their Pony-faced Corn Liar….thing.

      • Chafed

        You know what he means.

  48. straffinrun

    I hate that fucking Cher song playing right now at the coffee shop. Hey, Cher, you know who didn’t believe in life after love? Jeffrey Dahmer.

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      But, he did get life after love.

      Then, death. So, it all worked out.

      • straffinrun

        Awesome. Put it together. What’s the difference between Cher and Dahmer?

        Dahmer got life after love.

    • slumbrew

      That song is ear cancer.

    • Chafed

      1. Good luck with that.
      2. I hope Portland doesn’t need any fed agency to approve any projects.
      3. I hope Portland doesn’t rely on the Army Corps of Engineers.
      4. Have fun asking for federal funds for anything.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        They really do want to test out the “Federalism”…..finally.

    • Not an Economist

      I think the Fed Gov ought to send Portland a bill for damage to fed property and law officer overtime.

  49. straffinrun

    Digs, the meme I’ve been trying to visualize goes with this idea: The odds of you spreading corona are about the same as your vote making a difference and the state insists you take both seriously.

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      Ooooh…..that IS good!

      • straffinrun

        If I could find a pic of Kermit sipping bong juice…

      • Gustave Lytton

        Rule 34… somewhere Kermit is eating out the pork.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        ?

      • Chafed

        ?

      • C. Anacreon

        Strange, this pork smells like tuna!

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Oh, maaaaan!

    • Gustave Lytton

      I dunno. Kinda early for the fireworks yet.

      Meanwhile, in Eugene’s slight more (and used to be far more) conservative neighboring town Springfield, BLM got into it with the local PD which led to the Bull Connor like visuals of a black man being dragged. Er Black man. At least that’s what the liberal racists are calling it.

      https://twitter.com/evertonbailey/status/1288704002079645696?s=21

      (Our supposed impartial news media)

      Springfield PD has been placing limits on previous protests, like not letting them block the main drag and not going through purely residential areas just to stir up shit. And that’s what the BLM offshoot was trying to do tonight. Went into a conservative residential neighborhood, one where the residents really don’t appreciate being threatened by mobs.

      https://twitter.com/zerosum24/status/1288699416631803904?s=21

      Don’t fuck with Springtucky.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        ACAB! All Commies Are Bitches!

      • Tejicano

        I doubt there are many useful lessons about much of anything which these children have learned.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        I don’t understand this guy’s rationale for what he’s reporting…the counter-protesters are videoing license plates…they are carrying knives….they are shouting at protesters….

        What the hell do you expect, dude? He seems to be implying that anyone and everyone not in the BU group should shut up and take all the screeching and verbal abuse/accusations. Does he really think the “nons” are just going to tolerate this shit?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Of course. If they aren’t anti racist, they must by default be racists.

      • Digby and the Wonder Llama

        Honkeys gettin’ tough.

  50. Yusef drives a Kia

    Too much, Good night ,My friends!

  51. Sean

    Happy national cheesecake day!

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      Gonna make that wish later. Maybe. Dunno.

    • Gender Traitor

      Ooh! Goody! The perfect excuse to get buy more of these!

    • Digby and the Wonder Llama

      an FN PS90 submachine gun

      Da fuq?? I don’t have a PS90, and I have a job! In law enforcement!

      Shoulda just “ended” that chase, IYKWIM.

      • Sean

        Yeah, that’s pretty far from a hi point.

    • Gender Traitor

      But it was a mostly peaceful pursuit!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Ah, the mysterious seeds…it doesn’t take much to get people worked up now does it?

  52. Festus' Mustache

    We grew up in ex-urbs. Walk a few blocks and you were in second growth forest. Live in one right now. There was a sense of community that is lacking now, long before the current bullshit. Our little neighborhoods always had at least one full service gas station that did repairs, a corner store, a video rental place (much later) and a Chinese food establishment. We had ball fields, a school with a football field and and out-door ice rink totally run by volunteers. We were the last generation of kids that kept the rink going. They tore down the boards and chain-link about 30 years ago. Hell, there is a pond across the highway that we would start skating on in November even though the ice would barely hold our weight. Walking around with 22’s was common. It wasn’t always idyllic but it was home. Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys are broad satires but they glean truth from the reality of being bored young white guys growing up in a place like that. Red-necks represent!

    • Festus' Mustache

      The death of Fraternal Brotherhoods like the Moose, Elks, Rotarians etc. in favor of the United Karens Of America has dealt the death blow to any sense of community in our lives. Everything has to be vetted and approved by some kind of overseer. HOA’s gone wild and not in the sexy way. Dads used to meet up, drink beer, shoot the shit and maybe make sure that Billy didn’t drown on his watch. Now there aren’t many Dads.

    • Gender Traitor

      Grew up on the edge of a mid-sized American city – Dayton – with woods right behind our house. Apparently the water table there was too high for the land ever to be developed even during the Baby Boom. We played in those woods, including in the creek that ran from a drainage pipe all the way to a creek that was big enough to have a name. Those woods are still there. (Don’t know about the creek.)

      • Festus' Mustache

        So you lived near The Barrens too?

      • PieInTheSky

        googling that all I get is world of warcraft results

        The Barrens is a large zone in central Kalimdor controlled mostly by the Horde. It is a massive savanna, with a few oases in the north-central region around the Crossroads.

      • PieInTheSky

        I do remember something about pine barrens as a sort of ecological zone

      • Festus' Mustache

        The “Barrens” are a huge part of Stephen King’s novel IT. The book was the centerpiece of his Cocaine Trilogy. Please do keep up! :sniffs:

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        That’s in New Jersey I think, one of the best Sopranos episodes takes place there.

      • Sean

        Occasionally, I miss playing WoW. I get over it.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Mornin’ UCS! Is it clean?

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, it’s cleaner. I still have work to do.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Referring to Olivier in Marathon Man. Joke fail.

      • UnCivilServant

        Bear in mind – I just woke up.

    • Gender Traitor

      Mornin’, UCS. Your latest story posts at noon, right?

      • UnCivilServant

        Well, Part 1 does, yes. It is serialized.

      • PieInTheSky

        to be honest if I was TPTB I would post them in random order, make things interesting

      • UnCivilServant

        I guess it’s a good thing you’re not responsible for scheduling.

      • Gender Traitor

        Good…::consults world time zone map:: afternoon, Pie.

  53. Festus' Mustache

    Ugh. Wifey away for another weekend. Things work better around here when she’s around. Vent off.

    • Gender Traitor

      Party at Fes’s house!!!

      • Festus' Mustache

        *Starts nailing boards across the doors and windows*