We Are Reading What? June 2023

by | Jun 25, 2023 | Canada | 153 comments

Fourscore

Hank Williams, The Biography, authored by Colin Escott and a couple others. A lot of information about Ol’ Hank and his short career. Hank was lucky that he came along at the time when music began to be recorded for inexpensive home entertainment. The country music, hillbilly if you will, was not only a Southern phenomena but reached up to the far north where a 3/4 ‘Score was developing his own musical tastes. The local dances often had a singer that would sing the latest juke box country hits and we could slow dance with the lady of our teenage dreams.
Hank’s trials and tribulations are greatly detailed, the gritty personal life, the attempts to make a living with ad hoc bands, the friendships along the way and of course the booze that he drank, and the drugs he used from the beginning until his end at 29.
So many of the big names from the Opry were getting their start at the same time, Minnie Pearl, Roy Acuff, Ray Price, Little Jimmy Dickens and many, many more that the Boomers would remember.
After his death the pushing and shoving of those concerned to try to capitalize on Hank’s work, songs and reputation was unreal. Even today Hank Junior enjoys a career that his dad helped along, though Hank Junior has always been his own man.
His Songography is in the 1000s, his discography is somewhat less. Some crossed over to the pop charts. A lot of his songs are still being covered today, by unlikely groups. Listening to a country station today we might recognize the song when we don’t know the artist.
If anyone is interested I’d be happy to send the book along. Copyright is 2004, the paper shows its age.

 

Richard

This month’s literary journey commenced with a re-read of Neal Asher’s The Technician the events of which precede those of his Transformation trilogy. If you want to know what Amistad and Penny Royal were doing on Masada then this is the book for you:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7704959-the-technician

I then re-read two novellas set in Ben Aaronovitch’s “River of London” universe: What Abigail Did That Summer and The October Man:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55855546-what-abigail-did-that-summer
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42389859-the-october-man
The latter was a Christmas gift in dead-tree form. An Aunt and Uncle asked me what I wanted and I gave them the titles of two books I hadn’t read. They went to the local Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of a signed limited edition. It’s arguably my best book. Aaronovitch is obviously writing with the possibility of Major Motion Pictures for the Modern Audience in mind. What Abigail Did Last Summer’s protagonist is a young teenage girl. She has adventures with a young teenage boy who has some kind of spectrum disorder and nearly all the adults she encounters are women. Nightingale makes a few cameo appearances.
The October Man’s protagonist is a man but his boss, his police partner, her boss, the Female Protagonist, and the police’s magic department’s medical examiner are all women. There is a group of hapless men, some of whom are killed and one of whom is the killer.

I then embarked on a re-read of  Nova Roma 1: De Itinere in Occasum written by some joker calling himself Anderson Gentry. He doesn’t seem to care about Major Motion Picture for the Modern Audience possibilities:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55781931-nova-roma-1
The plot is simple: An army fleet from the old Roman Republic gets blown to North America and brings conflict and war (but not disease) to the peaceful Indigenous Peoples 1500 years before Christopher Columbus. The protagonists are all men: Warriors, Leaders, Statesmen, and Husbands. The few women mentioned admire the men and want to marry them and bear their children. The peaceful Indigenous Peoples aren’t even matriarchal! Despite all these failings I’m going to buy a copy of the second book in the series when it comes out this August:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175671726-nova-roma-2

I just returned from an annual fishing weekend at my family’s cottage on the shore of the Missisquoi Bay of Highgate Springs, Vermont. Adjacent is a ritzy family resort called “The Tyler Place” run by generations of the Tyler family. I went to the gift shop and bought the last copy of  Ada of Enosburg which is a history of the family and of the beginning of the resort:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27907321-ada-of-enosburg
It excerpts many letters to describe what life was like in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s in Northwestern Vermont. This is my second copy. I lent the first one to a dear friend and never got it back. It’s probably in the Vermont History shelf of his library.

This month’s new book is The Aeronaut’s Windlass the first book of Jim Butcher’s The Cinder Spires series:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24876258-the-aeronaut-s-windlass
A friend mentioned that the second book is coming out late this year, eight years after the first. I’ve read Butcher’s Dresden and Codex Alera series but had never heard of  The Cinder Spires.

 

The Hyperbole

Again I only read one book this month, but it was a big book. Black is the Night a collection of short stories by various authors inspired by the work of Cornell Woolrich, it has a introduction by Neil Gaiman and stories by Joe R. Lansdale and a host of other authors I’m not familiar with. As with any anthology there is the good and the bad, although more good than bad here, my only complaint is that it seems like every third story was a take on Rear Window, I get it, that is Mr. Woolrich’s most famous work but it got a bit tiresome after a while.

I am halfway through Atlanta Deathwatch the first book of The Hardman and Evens series by Ralph Dennis, so far so good, it was written in 1974, hard core detective stuff. from what I gather it’s considered a forgotten series but well respected by people in the genre. I’ll let you know next month how it pans out.

 

Reminder: The last Sunday of each month is “What Are We Reading” Day so if you want to participate get your reports in to HeyBuddyStopDoingThat@protonmail.com by the second to last Sunday.

About The Author

The Hyperbole

The Hyperbole

The Hyperbole can beat any of you chumps at Earthshaker! the greatest pinball machine of all time.

153 Comments

  1. Yusef drives a Kia

    I’m not chimkin, I’m busy writing content you hobbiton hick,
    Tall Cans!

  2. Yusef drives a Kia

    4×20, I would love that book!
    And my balcony garden is growing great.
    Cheers!

    • Fourscore

      Do you have my email address? Give me an address and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” will be blessed.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Done and done, thanks!

    • Richard

      Now I wonder if the book’s title has something to do with the movie. I’ve never understood the title.

  3. juris imprudent

    Haven’t started reading anything new, but made another book buying trip to Baldwins. Picked up via fortuitous browsing: Coming into the Country [about Alaska] by John McPhee (of Annals of the Former World), Darkness Visible by William Golding (and I had meant to buy the William Styron book of the same title – oh well), Barbarians to Bureaucrats by Lawrence M. Miller (the title simply intrigued me, since I also have a PDF of Mises Bureaucracy and I do intend to write something serious about the subject), and The Thebaid (Seven Against Thebes) by Publius Papinius Statius and translated by Charles Stanley Ross.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      McPhee is a favorite of mine, annals was a great collection.

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      Coming Into The Country is one of his best.

  4. DEG

    Andy Ngo’s “Unmasked”. I wonder who proofread this book. Sometimes a sentence reads like it is missing a word or two. Ngo covers Antifa’s activities and history. We see that Antifa is quite crafty and cunning, plus there is a little about how the media carries water for Antifa.

    Lance Lysiuk’s “A Collector’s View: The Lee-Enfield .22-inch R.F. Rifles”. Full disclosure: I helped the author out with pictures of a rifle of mine. Those pictures are in the book. Lysiuk needs an editor to help him proofread. However, there are good things in the book. Lots of the pictures are useful for collectors trying to identify what they have. There is also some good information in the book that I don’t think other Lee-Enfield books cover.

    Dale Saran’s “The Spark”. Where have I read this before? Oh, right. It hits a little differently this time around.

    • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

      I bit the bullet and purchased John Knibbs’ The Golden Century, which is a history of BSA,s commercial production. Fascinating, but much like your Lee Enfield book it could use an editor as it was self published.

      • DEG

        This one?

        I remember seeing a post on GunBoards about a guy working on a book specifically about commercial Lee-Enfield production. What are sometimes called Lee-Speed rifles. He seemed a bit annoyed in his posts about people calling them “Lee-Speeds” since neither BSA nor LSA referred to them as “Lee-Speed”. They had to put “Lee-Speed Patents” on the rifle up until 1910 because of British patent law.

        Anyways, I don’t know if that book is done or not.

      • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

        That book is not done, as far as I know, and I am waiting. I have a BSA sporter in #1 trim.

      • DEG

        That’s why I haven’t seen anything about it.

    • Chafed

      The editing of Ngo’s book seems to be of a piece with his reporting. Some of it is excellent and some of it not so much.

      • rhywun

        I wonder if such a book has difficulty attracting a competent editor, or if editors will just edit anything. I don’t know anything about how that industry works.

  5. cyto

    I got a wild hair and decided to revisit an old hobby… high power rockets.

    Wildman has a kit that will go Mach 2.

    Mach two!!!!

    https://wildmanrocketry.com/products/mach-2-rocket

    And it is only a little over a hundred bucks!

    Boom! Done! No further thought needed!!

    Quick check of engine availability.

    https://www.apogeerockets.com/Rocket-Motors/AeroTech-Motors/54mm-Motors-Single-Use/Aerotech-54mm-HP-SU-DMS-Motor-L1000W-18A

    Apogee rockets has the requisit Aerotrch L1000W motor.

    For $330 bucks. Don’t know about shipping.

    Ok then…. Three hundred some odd bucks per shot. Dang.

    Never mind…..

    • Ownbestenemy

      While working out at Hollaman AFB we had equipment on Tulie Peak (really a mound in the middle of the desert) where NASA had all its telemetry equipment for the shuttle.

      However, a great spot that you can see the high speed track from. In that picture that little mound is what I call Tulie Peak.

      I witnessed a high powered rocket sled that if you blinked, you missed it. Truly amazing

    • Richard

      It was almost 10 years ago that James May did a “Toy Stories” episode about making a rocket go Mach 1:

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4216978/

      It’s eminently re-watchable.

    • Chafed

      Let the owner know he should proofread his website before someone thinks he has an unusual kink:

      Aluminum-tipped filament would nose cone with stainless steel eyebolt

      • cyto

        Wildman is awesome, BTW.. I bought a bunch of crap from him almost 20 years ago as he was trying to dump some inventory at Winter Nationals.

        Nice guy. About as weird as you would expect a model rocket hobbyist who turned it onto a profession to be. He was super-nice to us as we attempted to build level 1 and 2 rockets over a weekend launch. Really generous with his time and knowledge.

  6. B.P.

    I’m about half way through Blood and Treasure, a book about Daniel Boone. I think someone on here suggested it. It’s pretty good, and provides plenty of context as to what was going on in North America and amongst various colonizing forces.

    I finished Spearhead. If anyone’s seen that famous WW II film footage wherein the new Pershing tank lights up a Panther tank in front of the cathedral in Cologne, Germany, this book tells the story of the Pershing crew throughout the campaign. The author interviewed many of those involved. I was annoyed by the storytelling style at first, but came to really enjoy it by the end.

  7. Drake

    Finished the last of the Witcher books and started Tower of Fools by the same author. More of historical novel with hints of magic. Interesting setting in Poland during the Hussite wars.

    Read Chan Thomas – The Adam And Eve Story The History Of Cataclysms. Link is to the full pdf book. His basic thesis is that ever 8 to 20 thousand years the Earth goes through a huge apocalypse. The weight of the polar ice caps sort of breaks loose the crust of the Earth at very deep level. The ice caps end up near the equator and the continents are scrambled. He rambles from history, science, mythology, religion, and back again.

    • Lackadaisical

      ‘Finished the last of the Witcher books ‘

      Do you recommend them?

      • Drake

        Yes – pretty good.

  8. The Late P Brooks

    I got a wild hair and decided to revisit an old hobby… high power rockets.

    Of course, I immediately heard this in my head.

    Once the rockets go up

    who cares where they come down?

    That’s not my department

    says Werner von Braun

  9. Richard

    Since I submitted my book report I finished “The Aeronaut’s Windlass”. It’s good but I now understand the excitement about the sequel. There are a lot of unanswered questions.

  10. Richard

    Reading a Jim Butcher book reminded me that I’d never seen the TV production of “The Dresden Files”:

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486657/

    I’m working my way through it now and it’s really good. It’s different form the books but it has to be to fit a complete story into an hour long episode. I can see why there was only one series. It must have been incredibly expensive to produce.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of amateur rocketry, October Sky is a pretty good movie.

    Having Laura Dern in it doesn’t hurt.

  12. Tundra

    More Crais.

    Learning about radios so reading stuff related to that.

    Stumbled across this book, Going Gone.

    I follow the author on Twitter and took a flier as it was only 2.99. Excellent dystopian thriller. Well constructed and absolutely addictive. Read it in just a few nights.

    Recommended.

  13. Lackadaisical

    I read Peter Attia’s ‘outlive.’

    Decent book to get yourself some info about staying healthy and living longer. Hard to think of much earth shattering in it right now.

    Sleep, exercise and eat well. Don’t drink or smoke.

    There is some novelty within each of those 3, but nothing earth shattering.

    Key take aways for me: 3 hours/week of exercise reduces your chances of dying by 50%. This seems like the easiest cost benefit analysis from the book. There is additional benefit from more exercise, but the effect size isn’t as much.

    Protein intake should be close to 1 gram per pound of body weight. It is hard to gain muscle as an older person, but this was the one intervention that worked to actually add mass, not just stop decline. Also, the older you get, the less efficient you are at using protein so you need to eat more of it as you age.

    Sleep at least 7-9 hours a night, just like your mommy told you when you were little.

    • The Hyperbole

      3 hours/week of exercise reduces your chances of dying by 50%

      You might want to check the math on that one.

    • Chafed

      Sounds GlibFit!

      • Tundra

        I miss your columns.

      • Chafed

        Thanks Tundra. I sort of miss writing them. But by the end I was pretty burned out. My divorce is, finally, coming to an end. When I feel like myself again, maybe I’ll start writing them again.

      • DEG

        My divorce is, finally, coming to an end.

        Good

      • Chafed

        Thanks, but where’s your compassion for my lawyer?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        You’re not in pro per?

        J/k, wouldn’t expect so.

      • Chafed

        Are you kidding? My client is an idiot.

      • Fourscore

        Happy Days are here again.

        The day my divorce was final I danced a little jig. Not very skillfully but since no one was watching ATPWDDIM

      • Chafed

        I’m thinking of cracking a nice bottle of Scotch when it’s all final. So close, yet so far.

      • pistoffnick

        My divorce is, finally, coming to an end.

        Simultaneously the most pants-shittingly- and the most glorious day of my life.
        Don’t look back. In fact, celebrate the date yearly. Get on with your life!

      • Chafed

        I have every intention of doing that PON. What’s done is done. I’ve ridden the emotional rollercoaster. The ride is over. I’m moving on with my life.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        +1 FL-190 😉

      • Chafed

        I know there is good joke in there Toxeth but it’s eluding me. Help a brother out.

      • Chafed

        😂 I can’t believe I missed that. We aren’t there yet, but are quite close.

      • Tundra

        Sorry Chafed. I hope the next chapter is a great one!

      • PudPaisley

        Hey Tundra. You got me listening to Huberman Lab and some other podcasts. Just curious, have you ever tried taking creatine? If so, does / did it seem to help?

        I just started taking it a couple weeks ago at 5g per day.

      • Tundra

        Hiya Pud!

        I have been taking creatine for years. I think it’s a no brainer. Really cheap, safe and lots of benefits.

        Can I tell a difference when I skip it? No, not really, but I think it’s a good tool, especially for us aging athletes!

        Here’ a really good podcast about it.

        Hope all is well in your world!

    • Tundra

      I like Attia, but he still tends to be pharmaceutically inclined and so amazingly detailed. I put off buying his book, since I was a subscriber for awhile and got tired of being dragged into the weeds so often

      Sounds like I might need to get this one.

  14. Semi-Spartan Dad

    I tried a new series/author recently, Stiger’s Tigers by Marc Edelheit. Military fiction (Roman legion period) and fantasy hybrid.

    The first book was pretty decent, and worth a read. The author reminds me a bit of Larry Correia. I picked up the second, but will probably pause here. The books are relatively expensive for paperback fiction, especially compared to something like the Stormlight Archives.

  15. Richard

    What a weird day this has been in north nowhere Vermont. The National Weather Service predicted Heavy Rain and Smoke. Smoke is not something the NWS often mentions and today it proved to be true. The rain didn’t materialize however which pisses me off because I would have structured the day’s activities differently had I known.

    I’m having a hard time with the smoke. This web site:

    https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/land/hms.html#maps

    Shows more Canadian wildfires but the NWS weather radar:

    https://radar.weather.gov

    Shows winds coming from the south. I can’t imagine what Montreal is experiencing right now.

      • R.J.

        Dun.. dun… dunnnnn!

        Expect all of that to be blamed on climate change for years to come.

      • Chafed

        There is no way it could be related to poor forest management.

      • Chafed

        I am having trouble mustering sympathy for French Canadians.

      • R.J.

        I swear I read that as
        “ I am having trouble masturbating for French Canadians.”

      • Chafed

        That’s also true.

      • R.J.

        Me neither. I can’t think of a one I would masturbate for.

      • The Hyperbole

        We talking putting on a show for them or giving them a handy?

      • DEG

        I can think of a few.

      • rhywun

        One of my favorite late 80s bands are French Canadians but yeah I suppose I would not masturbate to them either.

      • Chafed

        I might be willing to do it for Rufus if he had to work.

      • slumbrew

        I have fond memories of Club Super Sexx (RIP) on Rue Catherine. Those ladies were fap-worthy.

      • Sean

        Um…no.

      • rhywun

        Incoming missives from smokeland Glibs who say this is No Big Deal.

      • Chafed

        Justin Trudeau has a sock puppet Glibs account?

      • rhywun

        I dunno about that but when NYC held the worst-air crown a few weeks ago several Glibs chimed in that they deal with choking orange air all the time so stop whining.

      • Chafed

        Ok, I completely missed that. I mean Tres Cool works in a smokestack so I’m fine with him saying it. I’m not sure anyone else has the moral standing.

      • MikeS

        Did they say “No Big Deal” or something more along the lines of, “Hey, you aren’t the only ones this happens to so maybe dial down the apocalyptic attitude?”

      • rhywun

        The “air quality” maps are nuts. I don’t really know what these numbers mean but Montreal is showing 219. Everything south of Vermont is 50 or lower.

        Sudbury, Ont. is at 476.

  16. Tres Cool

    Hey from the Bay Area.
    Good Lord this place is a mess.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      You poor soul, it’s beautiful in San Diego,

    • Sean

      Go take a dump on the street and loot a CVS.

      • Fourscore

        Welcome home, Tres

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Where are you exactly?

      Get yourself some tall cans.

      • rhywun

        I lived in SF for 11 months around 1997. I found it off-putting enough to migrate to NYC. Now I’m over NYC but I am curious how much SF has changed. It did not have the poop-utation that it does now but I found it a very confused place. Not sure what to do with itself, whether it wanted to be a Big City or rest on its laurels as the weirdo of the west. Anyway I couldn’t stand California in general so I got the hell out.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        A big state, ya know. Am not sure how much else of it you saw.

      • rhywun

        Not far at all, but yeah I get it. I could say the same about New York (state).

        It was probably culture shock. I’m an easterner stuck in my ways, ayup.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        I had a snobby English boyfriend whom I once drove up and down the coast. He said he preferred LA to SF because the latter is pretentious, while LA is honest about its raison d’être.

      • rhywun

        I wanted to like SF so much, but it was full of hicks from Kansas who kept complaining that SF was not like Kansas.

        /exaggerating only slightly

      • rhywun

        Huh, had not heard of “Hippie Hill”. I do recall the snarling gutter punks not far away on Haight Street.

        One of the more memorable aspects of SF to me is that it is arranged in such a way that you literally cannot escape any of the pathologies, unlike say NYC where it is very easy to avoid all that shit.

      • Tres Cool

        Im quite happy to be on the out-skirts. And thats still not very happy.

      • Tres Cool

        Got a 30-pack. Travel today was horrid. I kept thinking “why THE FUCK are all these people going to San Fran @ 6 am on Sunday?”
        Ill be working in the Martinez, CA area.

      • Zwak , “There is infinite amount of hope in the universe… just not for us.”

        You at the refinery there? Not that there is much else.

    • Chafed

      That’s not feces you’re stepping over. They are very tiny hurdles.

      • rhywun

        Airlift incoming – simple solution.

      • Chafed

        I really miss funny SNL.

      • rhywun

        I caught Ratchel Dratch on a Parks & Rec repeat today, and I was transported to the fun that Debbie Downer was for a few weeks, when the cast couldn’t keep it together.

      • Chafed

        That was a great skit.

      • Chafed

        That was also great.

  17. Shpip

    Back on the sixth, some cable channel was doing a Band of Brothers -thon. After a few cocktails, I pulled the trigger on Lt. Lynn Compton’s autobiography.

    Dude had a fascinating post-war life. Turned down a pro baseball to go to law school, joined LAPD as a detective, went to the District Attorney’s office where he prosecuted Sirhan Sirhan for the murder of RFK. Finished his career as an associate justice on the California Court of Appeals.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      They said that in the show at the end,
      Buck was badass!

  18. R.J.

    I now have enough movies from Romania or about Romania to host a Romanian movie Thursday.

  19. R.J.

    I now have enough movies from Romania or about Romania to host a Romanian movie Thursday.

    • Chafed

      Maybe Pie can give us a guest intro.

      • R.J.

        I can only hope. He didn’t know about the psychedelic cartoon.

  20. MojeauXX

    When I’m not reading my coding books or a client’s project, I’m vegetating with YouTube or Reddit.

    My attention span is so short, getting through a 7-minute video mocking trashy brides is onerous.

    • rhywun

      I’m a word person. I nope out of any talky video that is more than 1 minute or so long.

      • rhywun

        I should clarify, “written word”.

      • Chafed

        Henry Rollins hardest hit.

      • Tres Cool

        +1 LIAR

      • rhywun

        lol

  21. JaimeRoberto (carnitas/spicy salsa)

    Just finished Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb. It was ok.

    Currently reading Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.

    • rhywun

      Fascinating.

      Yeah, the masks seem like a dead giveaway. And the khakis and Ray-Bans.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        I enjoyed the Americans, a lively bunch,

    • rhywun

      OFFS. Hurr durr the GOP should just let the Dems walk all over them hurr durr.

      • Brochettaward

        I tapped out after the second paragraph. It’s the GOP weaponizing the government….

        We don’t exist in the same realities. I can’t even say these people are lying. I think they have put themselves into a cocoon where they are never really exposed to contrary evidence.

        You can’t get away with that on the right. You are always and constantly exposed to the propaganda of the left from birth.

  22. Sensei

    Tonight’s Japanese trivia.

    I was talking with my Japanese friend tonight discussing Japanese comic (manga) options for women and girls. She mentioned that it is a much smaller selection for women, but that BL (boys love) is a growing category.

    She noted that in her high school days that was called Barazoku (薔薇族), but she had no idea where it came from. We did some collective web searches while we were chatting and discovered the following:

    Barazoku (薔薇族) was Japan’s first commercially circulated gay men’s magazine. It began publication in July 1971 by Daini Shobō’s owner’s son and editor Bungaku Itō (伊藤 文學, Itō Bungaku), although before that, there had been Adonis and Apollo, its extra issue, around 1960 serving as a members-only magazine.[1] Barazoku was Japan’s oldest and longest-running monthly magazine for gay men. However, it halted publication three times due to the publisher’s financial hardships. In 2008, Itō announced that the 400th issue would be the final one.[2] The title means “the rose tribe” in Japanese, hinted from King Laius’ homosexual episodes in Greek mythology. The magazine was printed in Japanese only. Barazoku’s Bungaku Itō coined the term for the Japanese lesbian community as (“lily tribe”) which the slang term for lesbian yuri comes from.

    I had no idea about the rose connection and homosexuality used here. I also had no idea that this is where the origin of the Japanese usage of yuri for a lesbian relationship came from. Barazoku is obsolete, but yuri is still current usage.

    • rhywun

      You’ve posted Boy’s Love before and now it strikes me as the flip side of the stereotypical girl-on-girl that red-blooded American men seem to be interested in. I wonder if there is even a market in the US aimed at women who are interested in man-on-man…?!

  23. Brochettaward

    The First is dead. Long live the First!

    FIRST-A-RU!

  24. Gustave Lytton

    I found the d-box! Popping the lid tomorrow morning and see what shit awaits.

    • rhywun

      I have no idea what this means. It sounds dirty.

      • Chafed

        GL is taste testing his septic tank.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Not yet! I feel for the poor pumper who got a splash with his mouth ajar.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Septic distribution box. Like this
        https://youtu.be/wFoTuYYgOHY

        Tank isn’t draining to the drain field and don’t know why. Could be the pipe from the tank to the d-box or from d-box out drain pipes. Looking more and more like I caused by felling a tree that was way too close. I also planted the tree 20 years ago. Didn’t know where the d-box during both though.

    • Chafed

      I read that as pooping the lid.

      • slumbrew

        That would pass without notice in this particular situation.

      • Gustave Lytton

        I saw that after clicking submit!

    • slumbrew

      d-box

      Ever since someone posted it recently, I keep having Who got that good D?! running through my head.

      • Sir Digby Classic

        Akshully, it was night….no, it WAS morning when I posted. Huh…excellent timing, UCS. And, Mornin’ to you, as well!

    • UnCivilServant

      You can’t tell me what to do!

    • Rat on a train

      No. I’m staying inside. It’s going to be hot.

    • Gender Traitor

      Good morning, Sean, U, and Roat.

      ***SIGH!!!*** So…exiting my bedroom just in time to witness Big Dumb Cat hurking up a hairball* is either

      1. The worst thing that will happen to me today, so it’s all uphill from here, baby! OR
      B. An evil portent clearly warning that I should go back to bed and never get up again.

      *At least it was on the ancient kitchen linoleum and not the carpet for once.

      • UnCivilServant

        You’ll never know unless you face the day.

      • Gender Traitor

        Yeah, I guess there’s no getting out of it – I have to sit in on a (Zoom, probably) meeting about the mail merge we need for a large mailing to certain members because our senior VP of Operations got picked for jury duty. 🙄 (Ummm… that’s why I have to attend the meeting – NOT why we’re sending the mailing.)

      • UnCivilServant

        Why is it my first thought was that “Jury Duty” was a euphemism for “defendant in court”?

      • Gender Traitor

        Hmmm… well, I haven’t seen her actual summons, so…maybe?

      • Gender Traitor

        If she murdered our senior VP of Marketing, no jury in the world would convict her.

      • Grosspatzer

        Mornin’, GT.

        “If she murdered our senior VP of Marketing, no jury in the world would convict her.”

        I believe every organization has at least one senior executive who needs killin’.

      • Gender Traitor

        Good morning, ‘patzie!

        You speak the truth. How are you today?

      • Grosspatzer

        How are you today?

        Had to cancel tomorrow’s dental appointment due to a meeting invite i received Friday night from a certain senior executive. It is critical, cannot be rescheduled, and is in direct conflict with my dental visit. I am feeling a bit homicidal.

      • UnCivilServant

        The appropriate response to that is, “I am unavailable at that time.”

        The more senior the executive, the less important their meetings are.

        By the time they reach “Virtual Internet People” status, you can safely ignore them entirely.

      • Grosspatzer

        This one is on the sweet spot – too senior to ignore, not senior enough to blow off. And the meeting is about a project I am leading to determine when/if it will actually happen. Gotta be there.

  25. Grosspatzer

    Mornin’, reprobates!

  26. UnCivilServant

    *sigh*

    Why must [REDACTED] always overcomplicate things?

    • UnCivilServant

      I am getting serious Dunning-Krueger vibes from these people.

      • UnCivilServant

        On the plus side, I can just check out and wait for them to catch up. I’m not running this meeting, or the training afterwards.

        On the down side, I still end up hearing them and I have an instinct to solve problems. The problem, however, is in the people involved.