History Lesson, With A Beat

I recently discovered this song through the Just Dance 2020 game that my daughter loves to play: Rasputin by Boney M.

Not only does it have a good beat and an upbeat melody, the moves are definitely culturally appropriate. But the part I love the most is that it takes a largely forgotten historical figure of great importance of his time, around the Russian Revolution, and tells his story very succinctly. It takes a great amount of talent to do that, and it's sad that Boney M. didn't get more recognition for this marvelous work.

Winter Sun

 

What Women Want

 

Fox Apparels

Heat from Your Lawn

Pellet stoves are a convenient way to heat your home with a renewable resource.  But you may find buying dozens of bags of pellets disconcerting.  Did you know you can Make Your Own Pellets?  And they don't have to be out of wood. ABC Machinery has hammer mills, dryers, and pellet mills that will convert grass clippings into grass pellets on a homestead level.  The Vermont Grass Energy Partnership did a Technical Assessment of Grass Pellets as Boiler Fuel in Vermont.

Homegrown Furniture

How do you make furniture out of solid wood?  Try growing it as a single piece.  Okay, maybe it isn't something that amateurs can do at home, but the results certainly are intriguing.  Gavin Munro has come up with special molds and pruning and grafting techniques to get the trees into the proper shape.  Full Grown Furniture in England sells them, but they cost thousands of dollars and you have to wait many years.

The Future Begins Tomorrow

Five Finger Tees

It's the Pits....

It's always nice when you don't have to spend extra money on hobbies. From Inhabitat.com comes this suggestion:

How To Grow An Avocado Tree From An Avocado Pit

The big caveat is that like many other fruit trees, avocados grown from seed don't necessarily turn out like their parent, and it can take 3 to 15 years to find this out.

The Story of The Star-Spangled Banner

Just about every American knows the words to the first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner, but do you know the story behind it?  I spent six months in Baltimore in 1976, so I was well acquainted with it, but this is still an inspirational video.

For Musical Masochists...

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was born on June 2, 1740.  In honor of his birthday, I present you with the two most painful pieces of music I have ever heard:

There are many, many recordings of Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood, and I could have tortured you for hours with all of them.  They do sound pretty similar, though, leaving you with the question, is the ringing in your ears meant to be part of the music? What makes this video particularly excruciating is eliminating the human element, just seeing the pure geometry of the passing notes.

John Cage's Fontana Mix is quite a different beast.  He did not notate it in a traditional manner, so different performers can have radically different realizations.  What makes Max Neuhaus's interpretation so ear curdling is that his primary "instrument" was a speaker and microphone, which he manipulated the feedback between.

Flea Be Gone

The weather is getting warmer, so that means nasty buggies are coming out.  Plenty of ways are available to poison them, but you have to be careful they don't poison you or your pets -- even if they are natural.

O Frabjous Day!

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

How a Carpenter Says I Love You

There are many ways to express your love: words, touches, gifts.  A gift you make yourself that is exactly what the person needs is an extra special way, and when it is made by the hands of a master carpenter, it becomes a work of art:

Oh Shane, Will You Ever Learn?

I'm not sure how I've missed it for two years, but there is a deliriously funny series of pictures of notes to a Walmart employee by the management.  One of the best:

The complete list from the original poster:

• Shane, quit offering extended warranties on the fried chickens -Management
• Shane, stop asking, "Is that your final answer?" and offering to let them phone a friend after each order -Management
• Shane, when a customer asks where to find a product, give them an aisle number, not directions to Albertsons -Management
• Shane, quit putting price tags on deli equipment and trying to sell them to customers -Management
• Shane, stop implying that Walmart keeps the "good stuff" in the back -Management
• Shane, I don't know what "Swinecraft" is, but ham can not be sold as a building material  -Management
• Shane, quit putting on multiple name tags and pretending to have a personality disorder  -Management
• Shane, the deli is not an appropriate place to practice your ventriloquism, please stop making puppets out of the paper bags  -Management
• Shane, stop putting "Stoner approved" seals on the fried chicken  -Management
• Shane, stop putting out samples labelled as "Mystery meats"  -Management
• Shane, stop putting "Some assembly required" stickers on the 8-piece chickens  -Management
• Shane, any free samples you offer must come from the deli, not electronics!  -Management

While the real-life Shanenigans stopped there, on the Internet they have taken on a life of their own, with an entire subreddit devoted to Shaneisms.
 

FreEBook: Bulletin of Primitive Technology

The second free publication I'm featuring is actually a magazine, not a book: Bulletin of Primitive Technology, first issue.  At 52 pages, though, it rivals much of what is being published today as e-books.  The only thing that makes it a magazine is the variety of articles.  Some are deeply philosophical, others are intensely practical.  The magazine is no longer being published, but the material has been collected into several books put out by the Society for Primitive Technology (which are not free).

Shopping List....

Everyone is on a budget these days, especially preppers.  It's hard enough when you are just trying to deal with today's needs, but when you are trying to set aside for the future, it's that much more difficult.  One way to prioritize is to buy things which are relatively inexpensive now but which will become much more expensive later on; Urban Survival Site has a list of 40 of these.  It's mostly common sense, but it's nice to have a list to make sure you are missing any.

A Maze of Twisty Little Passages....

If you played D&D in your youth, you probably had to rely on your imagination quite a bit.  Someone's imagination was quite stimulated to create the most amazing D&D map ever created.  I think I would go back to playing if I could play on that!

Related articles

• A Collection of Traps & Hazards (D&D 5e)
• Returning to Miniature Painting
• Monstrous Mondays: D&D 5e Homebrew Tumblr
• Old vs. New: What's the Difference, and Why Should You Care?

The Horror, The Horror....

 

 Bad Idea T-Shirts

Story Time!

Apparently there is a relatively new social media site called Vine featuring 7 second videos.  One of the funniest guys on there is Thomas Sanders.  I particularly love his "Narrating Real Life" vines which start out with him saying "Story Time!" and then cutting to some random person who he talks about what they are doing and then adds a bizarre twist.

Here is the largest compilation I could find on Youtube of his material:

You, You, You Oughta Know

Ever have someone ask you to sum something up in one word?  And you really have a lot more to say than just one word?  Sometimes it's nice to have just the right word to say.  BuzzFeed has an article on 29 Obscure Words That Everybody Needs To Know.  My favorite is #28 on their list, 'hygge': they have a marvelous description, but basically it's a warm, fuzzy, safe feeling.

Foragers Beware....

Of course before you go picking wild plants to eat, you will need to know how to identify them.  Probably of greater importance is being able to distinguish plants that look similar but are poisonous.  Outdoor Life has an article on 3 Dangerous Plants That Look Like Edibles.  They are:

• Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) looks like carrot or cow parsley
• Moonseed (Menispermum canadense) looks like grapes
• Horse nettle (Solanum carolinense) looks like tomatoes

Off-the-Grid News adds several more Dangerous Look-Alikes:

• Water hemlocks (Cicuta sp.) look like carrot
• Blue flag (Iris versicolor) and yellow flag (Iris pseduacorus) look like cattails
• Indian strawberry (Potentilla indica) looks like field strawberries
• Daffodils (Narcissus sp.) look like wild garlic
• and of course, many edible mushrooms have deadly look-alikes.