Let's be young men together.
Been thinking about music lately, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't care how popular or cool/uncool it is -- I reserve the right to like anything. I also reserve the right to DISlike anything, which is why I am hesitant to list favorite bands. There's never been a group I liked in its entirety, and I generally like only a handful of the stuff by a lot of the cool underground groups that would otherwise earn me Mad Cred.
Also been thinking about titles, which ones I like and why. I notice songs and poetry (unsurprisingly) are typically good at putting together memorable words and phrases. Take "Omegaman" by The Police (just because I heard it recently). What's an omega man? The last man, or a metaphor, or both? It sums up what it's about without being too literal, plus it takes two meaningful words that usually aren't together and makes something unique. Even the sound is iconic because of the syllable alliteration: oMegaMan. The way something rolls off the tongue is important to me. I'm probably overthinking this, yes, but it's been giving me trouble and if I want to meet my end-of-the year goals I don't have infinite time to dick around and hope something randomly comes to me. We'll see!
Since the Discovery Channel is starting a second season of The Colony, survival post! Actually, they aren't even calling it a second season, but advertising it as a new series. This is heartening since it suggests this show will be formatted differently from the first, which had the potential to be a lot cooler than it was. The first episode aired last night, and they're setting it around New Orleans so there are actually large, legitimately abandoned areas to play around in as opposed to the contrived warehouse from last year. Plus there are only seven people, and most of them have practical blue-collar jobs (lots of contractors) instead of the uber-specialized engineers and marine biologists. Semi-Spoilers: They set up a water filtraion system in the first 20 minutes, then got their asses handed to them by raiders in the last half. Of course this is a show with cameras everywhere and you can't kill or seriously injure the cast, but even so they must have signed quite a waiver because people were getting whacked and pepper sprayed willy-nilly. The actual event was probably frightning anyway: the raiders outnumbered them more than two to one and the colonists were completely at their mercy, helpless.
Too bad "survivalist" has really extreme connotations. I am, uh, a casual survival enthusiast, someone not remotely worried about the world ending in my lifetime or any of this info becoming a necessity rather than a hobby, but I sure do think it's cool. (Are you hearing this, Amazon recommendations?) I love seeing people start a fire from batteries and steel wool, knapping glass from some old bottles into workable arrowheads, and all the Foxfire books.
Though if you have to get just one book, Camping and Woodcraft is a great one. Horace Kephart, the author, had an interesting life in his own right. Dude just traveled all over the wild Appalachias with his Japanese photographer BFF. Another book, Where There Is No Doctor, I read at a friend of the family's house a few weeks ago, and it was awesome too. What if you flip through a guide during an emergency and it says "see doctor immediately," but there isn't one? It's full of hand-drawn illustrations about how to get rid of parasites, and how to tell if a baby is in breech position or not by groping at the mom's abdomen. Hey free downloads!
This has also been on my mind thanks to the garden here. My alumni is fortunately one of the two university land grants that make up the Cooperative Extension Service -- basically a state organization that exists to produce educational resources on anything related to agriculture. That's a mouthful. Long story short, we get all these cute little pamphlets on everything from growing different varieties of blueberries to books on food preservation, and this summer I've helped with a lot of canning. Tomatoes mostly -- 59 pints of them. And it's been a real asspain, too, but all the work was done in two separate days. Peeling is the hardest part; you'll want to scald them before peeling unless you really hate yourself. It's pretty neat to see all those rows of cans, though.
Also been thinking about titles, which ones I like and why. I notice songs and poetry (unsurprisingly) are typically good at putting together memorable words and phrases. Take "Omegaman" by The Police (just because I heard it recently). What's an omega man? The last man, or a metaphor, or both? It sums up what it's about without being too literal, plus it takes two meaningful words that usually aren't together and makes something unique. Even the sound is iconic because of the syllable alliteration: oMegaMan. The way something rolls off the tongue is important to me. I'm probably overthinking this, yes, but it's been giving me trouble and if I want to meet my end-of-the year goals I don't have infinite time to dick around and hope something randomly comes to me. We'll see!
Since the Discovery Channel is starting a second season of The Colony, survival post! Actually, they aren't even calling it a second season, but advertising it as a new series. This is heartening since it suggests this show will be formatted differently from the first, which had the potential to be a lot cooler than it was. The first episode aired last night, and they're setting it around New Orleans so there are actually large, legitimately abandoned areas to play around in as opposed to the contrived warehouse from last year. Plus there are only seven people, and most of them have practical blue-collar jobs (lots of contractors) instead of the uber-specialized engineers and marine biologists. Semi-Spoilers: They set up a water filtraion system in the first 20 minutes, then got their asses handed to them by raiders in the last half. Of course this is a show with cameras everywhere and you can't kill or seriously injure the cast, but even so they must have signed quite a waiver because people were getting whacked and pepper sprayed willy-nilly. The actual event was probably frightning anyway: the raiders outnumbered them more than two to one and the colonists were completely at their mercy, helpless.
Too bad "survivalist" has really extreme connotations. I am, uh, a casual survival enthusiast, someone not remotely worried about the world ending in my lifetime or any of this info becoming a necessity rather than a hobby, but I sure do think it's cool. (Are you hearing this, Amazon recommendations?) I love seeing people start a fire from batteries and steel wool, knapping glass from some old bottles into workable arrowheads, and all the Foxfire books.
Though if you have to get just one book, Camping and Woodcraft is a great one. Horace Kephart, the author, had an interesting life in his own right. Dude just traveled all over the wild Appalachias with his Japanese photographer BFF. Another book, Where There Is No Doctor, I read at a friend of the family's house a few weeks ago, and it was awesome too. What if you flip through a guide during an emergency and it says "see doctor immediately," but there isn't one? It's full of hand-drawn illustrations about how to get rid of parasites, and how to tell if a baby is in breech position or not by groping at the mom's abdomen. Hey free downloads!
This has also been on my mind thanks to the garden here. My alumni is fortunately one of the two university land grants that make up the Cooperative Extension Service -- basically a state organization that exists to produce educational resources on anything related to agriculture. That's a mouthful. Long story short, we get all these cute little pamphlets on everything from growing different varieties of blueberries to books on food preservation, and this summer I've helped with a lot of canning. Tomatoes mostly -- 59 pints of them. And it's been a real asspain, too, but all the work was done in two separate days. Peeling is the hardest part; you'll want to scald them before peeling unless you really hate yourself. It's pretty neat to see all those rows of cans, though.