malada

Finished the first draft of my novel "Demon Blood". Word count: 40K. Time for a re-write.

There was a theme running through the book that didn't crystalize until the Boss Fight: "Think. Act. Don't Feel". I'm going back to sprinkle that into the text. I need to clarify some relationships and fully flesh out some characters.

Synopsis: Demonologist is killed during a summoning but his assistant - a mind mage - is saved by an infusion of demon blood. Now part demonic, the surviving mage is tasked to take up the summoner's work: a task she has not the training or talent to take up. She finds unlikely allies in a degraded minstrel and a love-sick succubus.

Yeah, there's a lot of sexy time in the story but I shut the curtains after the first kiss. It's been fun.

It seems that the US military is filled with cheeseburger eating surrender monkeys.

King tRump demands you erase your own history? A history filled with brave men and women? Many of them not white? Some of them Gay or Trans? I guess you just click your heels, salute with your arm held high and obey the man who:

calls our honored dead 'losers and suckers'

who's a coward and draft dodger

who's a felon and a molester

Yes. The glorious leader, Commander in Chief who rubs shit in your face tells you that your brothers and sisters in arms are to be disappeared - and you roll over and show your belly.

If the US armed forces will surrender to this asshole, they'll surrender to anyone.

In my morning walk I saw a skunk. It was a biggie. Of course, half of it was tail but still, it was impressive.

It might have been the skunk I saw a few months ago but I don't know. We've always had skunks in the area. I just hope it's not a sign of a skunk explosion we had a few decades ago.

So I'm reading reports that American booze is being pulled from Canadian shelves. My drinking days are long over but I remember drinking American sh*t beer and for the Canadians to lose the ability to drink that swill, that's a plus for them.

And during Prohibition we used to accept Canadian whiskey - illegally but who cared? I'm sure their homegrown stuff is as good as the American booze. They'll be missing out on some fine wines but you can't win them all.

Go Canada!

The creator of the "Trump Gaza" video speaks! It's a parody!

Via the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdrxkm6r856o

Earlier in the week I decided to cook up lasagna for my housemate's mom's birthday. Now, I usually go shopping very early in the morning: fewer people, less traffic. This does mean I'm shopping soon after I wake up with no breakfast or coffee. This leads to occasionally not so bright decisions.

Since I wanted to make lasagna with lasagna noodles instead of the egg noodles I usually use, I didn't know how many packages to pick up. I got two. And since it been a while since I made it I bought extra sauce. And the meat? They didn't have the two pound package I usually use so I got the closest one at three pounds.

Cheese? Oh, lots. You can never have enough cheese.

It wasn't until I was boiling up the pasta that I realized I had a lot of pasta. A LOT of pasta. Usually I just keep making pan after pad until I run out of something. It wasn't going to be pasta. Same with the sauce - way too much sauce. Meat? Oh yeah I had a lot of meat and it was going to be glorious. Cheese? Honestly? I could have used more!

And while I was cooking up a storm I felt this little, satisfied smile on my face. It's that smile I get when I'm doing something constructive and I know it's going to turn out okay.

So I' ended up with three pans of meaty lasagna and one pan of cheese lasagna. They're out of the oven and cooling right now. Two pans will to Momma's tomorrow and the others will go in the freezer. And I have left over pasta: enough to make two more pans, easily. The sauce was still in jars so they'll keep. I ran out of meat and cheese. It looks like I'll have to buy more meat and cheese and make another batch of lasagna next Friday when I'm off from work.

I'm not really seeing a downside to this.

.

I'm not much of a flag waver. I put out the American flag on the Fourth of July, Veteran's Day, Memorial Day and Voting day. But wonder if I should switch it out for something else.

Right now I'm sort of torn between the Ukrainian flag and the Canadian flag - just to show who's side I'm on.

President Musk is getting a contract to fix the FAA!

Maybe he'll put in all the care he puts into his rockets!

Hindenburg anybody?

'Nuff said.

To our old allies, I have a few words:

The United States is sick.

America has turned into the Sick Old Man: cranky, mean, losing it's memory. It is looking back at an imagined Golden (Gilded?) Age when Rich White Men were Rich White Men, women stayed in the kitchen (and worked) and brown people either didn't exist or were happy just to step and fetch.

America is no longer the beacon of freedom but a cesspool of corruption, greed and lies. We're sleeping with the autocrats and dictators and waking up with delusions.

You can't rely on us.

You're going to have to put on your adult pants and figure out how to move forward towards liberty and justice without us. For many of us Americans, we're at the bedside trying to nurse our country back to health but like a drunkard recovering from a car crash, there's been a lot of damage done and they still want another bottle and the keys to another car.

I can't say how long the sickness will last. Maybe after the leopards have eaten enough faces will the fever break. In the meantime, good luck.

It was the first year or two after we moved into the neighborhood that someone stole my garbage can.

Really.

We bag all the weekly trash into one bag which goes into the can. We put it out at night. In the morning someone had pulled out the bag and absconded with the can and lid.

Weird.

Then next can I bought I painted my street address on both the can and lid. This was helpful a week ago when the wind took the lid and it ended up in a neighbor's yard. To prevent this happening again I drilled some holes so I could attach a bungee cord so the lid and can would stay together.

It was stolen the next time it went out. Lid, can, bungee cord - with the street address still painted on it.

What strikes me as really weird is I think the actually cased it first. I put the can out at night. That morning I left early and notice that the lid had been taken off. Had someone inspected it first before plundering it?

Yeah they stole my garbage can. Weird. At least it lasted about two decades before being stolen.