Avaunt

Positive I have not read either book. Maybe I confused it with something else some time ?.

I don't actually have an address at the moment, but I am not stressed to let it wait a while.

On 11/2/2021 at 11:50 AM, seventhcircle said:

recently got into the "culture" series. I'm a bit in love.

 

This is The Way.

Far and away my favourite is Excession.

It just rewards re-reading in a way that few other books have done imho. Up there with Pride and Prejudice.

Well. It is a commonplace to say accommodation options are limited in major cities, but it is quite crazy here. I can't find anywhere that suits me.

And my boss is getting too old to physically continue the work involved in cleaning boats, he is sick of the hour commute from home and the hour and a half back.

So he proposed to me that I buy a boat myself, put it into the berth he owns in Westhaven, and take over the monthly expenses. Then I  put a cheap work van in the car park that goes with the berth, and work-from-a-floating-home for five years.

It will actually work out so much cheaper than where I am renting atm, that the difference will be about $50 000 over three years. And that isn't even factoring in the travel cost saving, which would be about another 2500 a year depending on where I was renting. And the TIME saved.

But the OBVIOUS plus is I will have a boat to go hoppity hoppity around the gulf in.

So your furry mate is going to be a Pirate.

Absolutely anything from your hand, will be a treasure.

That sounds melodramatic, but then, I am a soft toy.

Books are good.

I will post it to you when I have finished it, me old china.

Any chance you are coming down to the end of the world, do you think ?. Are we ever going to travel again ?

OK. If I have ever even been in the same room as "Correct opinion" . . .

If anything I have ever recommended has had some small value to you . . .

If you want to be astonished by someones virtuoso Alt-History riff-ing on that past, seminal era of the world that flared with Danton, Robespierre,  Pitt and Wilberforce . . .

"A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians" H G Parry

Whom is a Kiwi girl !

What a FUCKING amazing book. OMG ! ! ! !

Goodness me, they have made an extremely  nice looking, straight-faced, Wheel of Time show !.

Is this relevant to Mr Mahons' Interests, do you suppose ?.

Some things saterise themselves.

Yes, I was really impressed with how understanding and decent he tried to be. There is a lot of interest in the piece. Not just getting his thoughts and observances, but you get a feel for the guy, and at the same time a feel for what he is unconscious about himself.

I reckon he would have been a Trumpet or at least sympathetic. All that nonsense about the nobility of Farmers and the cities being a burden on "Truth". Andrew Jackson the Race Hero . . . ugh.

Plus there is the whole Jewish thing/Anti-industrialism/Business is doomed to failure and soon, obviously . . . even though he really tried to "see" without preconception, he totally tanked the attempt.

I would read stuff like this till the cows came home.

I think I mixed in the aliens from the Ships of the Law books by Greg Bear.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_I_saw_in_America/In_the_American_Country

I found this cool travelogue/rumination on America, by Chesterton.

He is so wrong about many things he guessed for their future, but curiously right in an arse-about-face way about stuff too.  And of course, the normal mellifluous writing a pleasure to run over your minds' tongue.

2 hours ago, Lou K said:

Craziest thing I think I ever saw. We were staying in the northern part of Michigan, very rural, on a large property in the woods. They had a pond stocked with Blue Gill and these fuckers must have been starving cause when me n Murph Dog walked up, they flocked right to us, and followed us around the pond as we walked. I never seen anything like that, usually they scatter.

I told Max, "Let's go catch some fish" and he was like "I don't think we'll catch any" and I said "You watch. YOu can't NOT catch a fish here". So I strung up his rod with a small hook and a bobber and a red worm. I had to cast it for him and hand it over, but then BOOM first strike. After a while he was able to figure out how to cast it himself so all I had to do was string up a worm and get the fish off the hook. He probably caught over a dozen. 

 

I'll see if I can upload a picture

. . . I am not a religious man, but that sounds like you stumbled onto the place Good fishermen go when the time comes ?

Awesome !.

Working your way along the Dad List.

  I have not gone fishing very often since Dad died, because of how inextricably memories of him are bound to fishing in my heart. Even if I am feeling super "up" and resilient, I got melancholy if not actual "existential dread" level depression.

I was pleased to discover the effect has dissipated with the time passed.

In local viral news, everyone except Auckland has been allowed slightly less in the way of "Go home and stay there damnit!"

It SEEMS as if there are no community transmission cases outside of Auckland province. That said, SOMEHOW two people got on a plane from Auckland and flew South yesterday. People have been able to do so but only with extremely narrow justification of the need, multiple negative tests, and written permission from the health department . . . so quite how two separate people were able to fly with NONE of that hasn't been established yet.

We Aucklanders are allowed to walk for exercise, and in our bubble groups too. And we are allowed also to fish from the shore. SO today I went down to the estuary of the Tamaki river, and didn't catch a fish. It was SUPER fun sitting in the quite warm sun of Spring and trying tho.

It just surprises me, every time, what a total shit show the right is.

Enemies of humanity.

That is super disturbing. I suspect the people are not country people, in the country you tend to get quite explicit working examples of why animal pills are not mix-n-match.

I know that if you give a horse the normal drench you give to cows every morning in the spring, ( It is something like a grab-bag of anti-parasite and antacid and support mineral top-up. cows don't actually thrive on a pure grass diet. ) the horse will lay down dead in about 3 hours. And antibiotics that are good for stock, will destroy the liver of canines.

Even the various GRASSES on a farm have to be carefully matched to the particular herbivore, horses will quickly blow out on new growth, and cattle will eat just like normal but slowly starve to death in a paddock with old growth.

Yeah, well, looking out my window all day, at the Aucklanders that seem to have decided that the extremely contagious virus causing this pandemic  is over rated. One person in ten maybe was wearing a mask "It's fine, I am ONLY going jogging after all"

I don't think we are going to keep this supressed this time.

They say you can't fix stupid, turns out you can't quarantine it either.

I read that a long time ago, I suspect in around 1981 or 2, and I sort of retain a memory of it being a little bit more depressing than the average story I had read to that point. ( Holy shit I am old, and I have to say it makes me a bit unhappy. I don't wanna be old ! )

From memory, there were some other aliens then the main ones, who were fellow prisoners/novelties, and once their escape/revenge was complete they committed species suicide rather than live with Humanity?.

I should read that again if I come across it.

It gave me pleasure watching the trailer. But how do I watch the movie ? Do we even have Cinemas still ?

4 new cases confirmed this morning, including a staff member at a major hospital, and it is the delta variant.

That is basically the same as saying we have got no show of getting back to our perfect record I think. It was a good run while it lasted.

New Zealand has gone back into lockdown, level four for the entire country for 3 days and 7 days for the Auckland and Coromandel regions..

I have not bothered finding out where who or why, but there has been a community case develop, from the directions given over the phone I expect it has been an Aucklander who has also at least once  traveled the hundred miles down South to the East Coast peninsular of Coromandel. 

(checks)

Yep, some bloke who had not yet been able to vaccinate ( He is in the same age bracket as me, and we are being vaccinated at present but it will take some months to work through the 800 000 of us ) and his wife went to Coromandel and visited the largest, nicest Pub on the night that it was busiest, i.e. when the All Blacks/Wallabies * game was being played and shown in all the pubs.

They don't know yet how he contacted the infection, he hasn't been out of the country nor any friends who have. He has been infectious since the 12th. They don't know which variant he has yet.

Pretty much going to be confined to the Affluent people initially, I suspect. People who drive to a Coromandel pub to watch the footie tend not to mix with the working class. And reading another report, the guy is in fact in a financial institution "With very few daily contacts in his employment"

* The Wallabies are the Australian rugby union team, and, as you will have no doubt guessed, the All Blacks made them look like a schoolboy team. They were playing for the Bledisloe Cup, a inter-ANZAC competition that has been held since Rugby wore short trousers. We have won it every time for 19 years.

It is like they don't even WANT the thing.

Am I the only one who thinks Swift, or Lewis Carroll was taken over the script-writing for the Right Wing in the USA ?.

HOW have they become a party of people who deny science ? HOW does this serve their ultimate purpose ?.

Hahaha. He references Historical Excellence

It doesn't really matter WHY things are at the point that they are, that is just wasted typing Christian. It doesn't matter WHY the race is started, once the thing is running.

The FACT of the matter is if the USA doesn't continue to invest heavily in its military advantage ( if it still has one ) the two other superpowers will look at the FACT that when whatever present government that isn't investing is voted out, the next one will invest to catch up. This has ALWAYS happened.

And so there is a very real likelihood they will feel COMPELLED to seize the momentary advantage.

And money spent building weapons isn't "lost" it is economy fuel. It pays for the groceries of millions of Americans, it pays for research and it produces useful spin-offs.

On 7/30/2021 at 3:30 AM, dogpoet said:

Also Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. There's probably a few more I'm forgetting as well.

The mass-murdering Philippines clown too of course. The other clown, Bolsonaro ? he counts doesn't he?. Restricting the press, WILLFULLY failing the covid emergency so that half a million of his countrymen have died . . .