#NIGHTMARE SUPERHIGHWAY

[korkskrew2000]

NIGHTMARE SUPERHIGHWAY HAS BEEN UNLEASHED UPON THE MASSES, PRAY FOR A SWIFT DEATH.

[discodeerdiary]

A big part of this whole mess is that people on social media seem to be no longer able to distinguish between sexual content and sexual interaction. This is kind of by design; social media as a whole is engineered to blur the lines between content and interaction. Shitposts become impromptu roleplaying games become collectively written poetry. Your favorite writers and artists are in the room with you at all times. Everything is one big mishmash of joking and telling stories and sharing photos and videos and giving speeches and flirting and crying and teaching and mumbling to yourself in front of an audience of millions. This was the dream of the information superhighway I guess, but it turns into a nightmare when you try to neatly slot it into nondigital standards of conduct.

The new informal zoning rules of the internet, where if you so much as mention sex in passing you're expected to label it 18+ or put "minors dni" in your profile, are making me freeze up every time I try to write something about sexual OCD. Cause on the one hand I don't want to be yelled at for "putting sexual content in front of minors" but on the other hand it feels deeply deeply unfair to say "this info about navigating mental illness is for adults only" when the illness in question doesn't care if you're over 18 or not, and is indeed more likely to strike you if you're "too young to think about sex", given that OCD thrives on the idea of Forbidden Thoughts.

Maybe I'm just being a coward, and maybe I'll be able to be less of a coward in future, but for now I'm just posting my thoughts onto the internet in a vague attempt to sort them out.

[12-cluh]

Minecraft Story: Plot

Welcome to the kingdom of Minecraftia, a land of sprawling plains, massive hills, and machines of marvel. The story begins with Lord Patrick and a squadron of guards opening the door to King Daniel’s throne room. Daniel is talking to his royal advisor, Dr. Trayaurus, when Patrick informs them that a Creeper went off in the lower east end, with at least two more attacks predicted within the next week. Daniel sends Trauaurus to provide relief. Before there was barely one attack every few months, now it's several within two weeks. Over the next 3 days, nothing much happens. We see the daily lives of everyone, we get introduced to Clay, Daniel’s right-hand man and head spy, as well as his protege Tommy. Maybe there's foreshadowing, a reference or two, but nothing major happens. Then a massive explosion goes off, and an army of mobs spills into the lower areas. As the guards race into the battle, they see normal mobs, Creepers, Zombies, Spiders, and Endermen, but they see mobs that no one recognizes. Skeletons with charcoal crafted to their bones, yellow flying robots surrounded by tendrils that shoot fire, massive flying ghosts with tentacles shooting large fireballs. As Patrick, Clay and Tommy send the Iron Golems and join the fight against the mobs. Patrick walked through the crowd before a large explosion went off at a specific house. He runs away, telling Clay that he is in charge for the time he's away. As Clay is battling the horde, he notices them. A being made entirely of darkness with a pure white sword, a man who looks shockingly like him with a scythe, and a man in a white cloak with beaming red eyes. As he was focused on the trio, Tommy got his attention. He told him that the city was being overrun, and they had to retreat to the castle. Daniel met up with Patrick, Clay, Tommy, Doctor Trayaurus, and his pet skeleton wolf Grim. He told them that they had to get out of the city using the castle's underground minecart superhighway that lead to a safe area. While they are zooming away from the castle, an explosion sends them off the rails. The last one who is not knocked out, Tommy, sees the being who caused the explosion. His vision was hazy, but what he did see were two glowing white eyes in the air. The eyes pierced his very soul, but then they vanished, and Tommy finally passed out. Tommy has nightmares about the eyes, imagining what being could be behind them, before waking up in a bed he didn’t recognize. He sees everyone else sleeping around him, before leaving through a door. As Tommy rounds the corner, he sees a large breakfast spread, with a large orange tabaxi putting a final pancake on a very large stack. He introduces himself as Stampy Garret, with Daniel, Patrick, and Clay coming from behind him. They all sit down hesitantly before Stampy tells them what happened to the kingdom. It is now overrun by mobs, and a new king taking the throne. Patrick wants to go back, but Daniel tells him it would be a death sentence. Clay suggests the idea that they could go all over the world, trying to assemble a coalition of kingdoms to oppose them. As Trayaurus finally wakes up, they all agree to leave the next morning. We get to see what Stampy’s life is like before tomorrow comes. They all get their gear and essential supplies, before setting out across the plains. They will travel many biomes, and make many friends and just as many enemies. They will be betrayed, but they will push through it all.

Through all the adversity technology gave me, I finally did it. Hope you enjoyed!

[yateshq]

The Stanley Hotel. Infamous for serving as the set of The Shining––you’ll see it on every list of Top 10 Most Haunted Places in America!––and has a reputation for leaving its guests prone to nightmares weeks after their visit. Rumors has it that the ghost of maid Elizabeth Wilson still haunts Room 217, the exact room where Stephen King got the idea for his novel. That spiral staircase in the lobby? A staff member coined it “The Vortex”; a slew of terrified guests claim it’s a superhighway for the spirits residing in the hotel. If I were you, I’d watch my step. 

The best traditions are born of ‘happy’ accidents. After a Kincaid student nearly burned down the Winthrop building in 1992, the Stanley Retreat––now just called ‘FRIGHT NIGHT!’––was conceived by some of the more macabre students as away to promote unity and harmony between the societies. Now every spring, each society at Yates foots the bill to fly all of its members out to Colorado to spend a weekend in the Stanley Hotel, renting out the entire building and allowing students free rein. And the time has come again... are you ready for FRIGHT NIGHT?

WHAT: FRIGHT NIGHT! is an annual event hosted (and funded) by the Yates societies. Think of it as a homecoming of sorts, except the game is wreck as much expensive furniture as you can and the celebration stretches for three consecutive days. 

COSTUMES: A more recent FRIGHT NIGHT! development is the costume contest. Starting around 2003, the Yates students all gather in the MacGregor Ballroom for a Halloween celebration mid-May. 

WHERE: The Stanley Hotel, somewhere in Colorado. 

WHEN: Thursday, May 14th at 2 PM to Sunday, May 17th at 5 PM. The discord event will either occur Friday or Saturday, and we will send out a poll to determine when!

[ozma914]

The Great Hamster Escape

When hamsters came into my house years ago they had little plastic balls, so they could run merrily all over. (Humans now have those, too. You’d think we could just walk.) We did have to close the door to the basement while they were out. I thought it would be kind of funny to hear the “thump-thump” of a rodent taking a ride, but the kids thought the hamster wouldn’t appreciate an E-ticket at Disneyland.

One day I found one of the balls in the kitchen, sans hamster. The lid had popped off. This triggered a panicked search, which was about as successful as panicked searches usually are. The hamster – Ranger, named after a slippery, hard to track character from a Stephanie Plum novel – was gone.

My daughters were very upset. I looked at it as a challenge … but before you congratulate me for my attitude, I should point out that I hate challenges.

After a time – a long time, during which I could have been doing more important things, like nothing – I found a little white puff ball behind the oven, as far back into the corner as he could possibly get. I could have done a few different things, but I didn’t have a gun on me, and in my experience napalm is dangerously unreliable. So instead, I tried to entice the furball out with a handful of his favorite snack, which looks suspiciously like shreds of colored paper.

Ranger instantly disappeared into the wall.

He’d discovered what I, in ten years, had not – the hole mice use to get into my house every fall. (They stopped coming after we got the pet snake, but that’s another story.) It led behind the cupboard and from there to – who knows? A rodent superhighway, perhaps, or a mouseport, or a hamsterteria.

The next morning, I found a very old mouse carcass on the floor outside the hole. I’m talking mummified. Ranger had not only made himself at home in the former mouse house, he’d even dug up the cemetery.

  “Yeah, I’m bad, I’m bad–you know it.”

Now what? Offering amnesty wasn’t likely to help. There is a homemade trap you can build, making steps out of books that lead to a trash can. Water and food goes into the can, and once inside, the sides are too steep for the hamster to get out again. The problem is, Ranger is afraid of heights. Seriously. It took him a week to climb down out of the upstairs apartment in the hamster house.

I considered leaving him in that hole, until the squeaking started.

The only time they made noise was when they started fighting each other. Every now and then they’d get into a quarrel over who gets the best piece of trail mix, or who controls the remote. Then they’d squeak like crazy until they were all squeaked out, and ten minutes later they’d be happily sitting together again. And yes, it reminded me of my daughters.

The conclusion was inescapable: Ranger wasn’t alone down there. Hopefully we weren’t hearing loud rodent sex.

  “You should have sent me in, coach–I’d have those rodents for breakfast. Literally.”

  A few days later we found the little white furball, huddled behind a bookcase that turned out to be an excellent place to trap him. I was never so happy to be a book packrat. Or is that a bookrat? Ranger was none too happy, and who can blame him? He’d had free run of the house, so it was like moving out of the Taj Mahal and into a one room trailer. He was in a foul mood, and proved it with a couple of knock down – drag outs with his old roommate.

I never found out whether his mouse friend kicked him out, but later that day I saw the mouse trying to fit an entire soda cracker through its doorway. Eating for two? How friendly they were, I don’t know – can hamsters and mice cross breed? Was I in danger of being overrun by white mice, bent on freeing their dad? I’ve had a few disturbing nightmares.

All I know is, after his brief escape Ranger was awfully squirrely– if you’ll pardon my rodent-themed pun. I feel like I’ve separated Rangero and Julie-rat.

Find all our books here:

http://markrhunter.com/ https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

[whohassummonedme]

ooc: hey friends. how’s it going out there on the Information Superhighway

my name’s weebee and i play the nightmare knight, you might know me from: this roleplay blog

you can find me (as weebee not nightmare knight) on twitter at https://twitter.com/weebeesnargles and, because of the whole twitter mess right now, on mastodon at https://mastodon.social/@weebeesnargles

[aramblingmann]

I'll sit in the cold, a dying man polarized by the static of frozen dreams. They'll still take credit for roses that bloom to spite them.

Who can say what the future holds when hands have found no other purpose than to grab. If the present is a gift, we’re all waist-deep in wrapping paper emblazoned with offensive slogans. Every day, every hour is an assault, an affront on our sensibilities, there is only trauma in truth and we are covered in festering wounds that only seem to find newer, scarier ways to seek out infection. Information has gone from an asset, to a novelty and is quickly becoming a slow death by overwhelming dread that tomorrow someone you love, someone you care about will be nominated for an award given to victims. If that’s so, we’re all winners. We’re all standing on a precipice giving an acceptance speech for complacence. “I accept this terrible existence on behalf of my own misdeeds, for the grand work I’ve done to improve the empty hole I carry with good intentions”. The road to hell isn’t a road, it’s a superhighway, a dark tunnel we don’t travel through even though we let it wrap itself around us.

On that cliff, looking out into the world, there’s only that window left open that allows us to view one scene at a time, while our waking selves sleep through a thousand frames per second. But the window is open. It’s open enough for invisible hands to grasp what we want while force feeding us whatever is beyond without asking us if we’re hungry. I’m starving for truth. I can’t eat anymore of what’s passing through the window, even though I know if I stop eating, I’ll forget who I am. Who I am is not who I was, and where I am has no bearing on what’s ahead, but there is only forward. Behind me there is no edge, no mountain, but that flat clearing, that place where I sat and pretended the world I couldn’t touch was fine without me, it wasn’t and it passed without my intervention.

I sit behind a window that looks out into darkness through a back light, hindsight of where I’ve been to witness how the cliff crumbled before and who fell under it’s weight. If I hadn’t loved anyone who took the plunge, I may not have taken notice, but I did and I see their descent whensoever I should want to speak to them, when I need their opinions and at moments when I’m lost. I do not find their wisdom, for it is no longer there, and like realizing you’re in a dream or a nightmare, when you’re conscious of context, you aren’t really there either.

If you try to think, you interrupt yourself with intention, just now I’m attempting to dissuade a raccoon from his incessant growling, posturing and attempting to take my sovereignty by incessantly growling at me. Not because I bother him, nor am I in his way, but I’ve challenged his pride in front of his family on their evening commute to take water and eat cat food. We are being moved across the chessboard by angry raccoons, overfed animals who believe destruction and grunting is a form of communication. An invasive species of unapologetic sociopaths running amok with our fate and our belief; a belief that all human beings are capable of some form of humanity and though they prove us wrong repeatedly we continuously try to appeal to their “goodness” of which they have none or rejected in lieu of grinding up pieces of flesh to shove into their waiting mouths. They have no family beyond the camaraderie of currency, they’re related to gain and theft, upon which is the only subject they appear to agree. The only blood they share belongs to strangers, a pact of levitating culpability that lifts them just above the reach of law.

To be feral and cruel is to thrive, not to be at the top of the food chain, but to decide how it is structured and feed on the naive hope of prey that they will someday eat more than shreds of what is caste down upon them from the top of the heap, the apex of the hill, where decisions on who is fed and who is eaten are made with a wave of a hand or a grabby paw. We eat the remnants of idealists and swallow the last of their pride as we cling to the lives we are allowed to pursue. These scavengers of old ideas, they gather what is left of our love and our fervor, not to empower, but to claw at our doors and invade the last bastions of safety, to decide how much time we get to breathe and how many hours we hold our breath. Every word a gasp, sucking down hot wind that flows over the mountaintops to clear the air about who is friend and who is foe, who deserves to flourish and who deserves to be punished in order to fatten their seats. 

We’re bowing to empty chairs holding court in kingdoms of tinted glass. The breaths of our labors fog from without, desperate for a glimpse of within. Hallowed halls, hollowed to make room for death and disappointment. The empty echoes of hope only bounding to the tile with a broken jaw. How much of the penthouse have we seen from the street? An umbrella that shades the top can stay open indefinitely, and rain only falls on their doorsteps when it’s invited.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

December 18: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

(previous notes: Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

Source: UK 3D Blu-ray (this was much easier to come by than a US release, for some reason)

This movie is only 2 years old, a relative infant babe in arms. And I unambiguously loved it when it came out, both times I saw it in theaters and again when it was first released on video. But there have been dark whispers, haven't there. Snobs and haters started flooding the information superhighway with poorly supported condemnation of this perfectly entertaining sequel. Was I wrong? Was I missing some smear of shit on the screen that everyone else could see? Or is Putin up to his old tricks? Excuse me while I pop on my rose-colored 3D glasses and jot down some fresh observations.

Cool first shot, zipping through a bunch of ships that's like some kind of convoy.

Then a bad guy ship shows up and whoa is it neat in 3D.

This first exchange between Poe and Hux is funnier than anything in the prequel trilogy, my goodness was that a refreshing way to start this movie! Love it!

BB8 thunking down into the guts of the X-wing! That's the right kind of gadgety roboty attitude for a Star Wars movie, I tell you.

Bombers, there are bombers. How do bombers work in space? I ask like I'm complaining, but I'm not. I'm sure there's a Lucas-y explanation. And yes I know that Lucas isn't doing this movie, of course I know that, it's like you don't even know me.

Jeez, those bombers are getting totally wasted. Probably because they're full of bombs. BOMBS, see.

This tense scene where the bomber pilot has to kick down the remote control from a precipice, this is great suspense. The pilot sacrifices herself. The first 12 minutes of this movie have a hell of a lot going for it. But also, the look of it is different from all of the others. Stark closeups for instance. Nothing wrong with it, but feels like it's very committed to this director's personal stylistic preferences.

Now we're on Hidden Skywalker Island to find out how this plot thickens. It's a cool contrast from the space battle. And it's got Rey. And Porgs!

0:16:40 - Snoke's proper throne room. With Actual Snoke because it turned out the other one from the last movie was pretend-like. This throne room was put together by a visionary interior designer who really likes red.

Luke drinks some green milk from a plump creature who looks at Rey like she's saying "have some, it's pretty good, seriously you gotta try it, it comes from my nipples".

The scene with Rey and Luke in the book cave, it's good, I think. It's ever so slightly witty, but it makes sense as a way to get past the stubborn impasse the two were in before.

Kylo hesitated to blow up his mom because he's not too happy with his Dark Side family rn. But she's blowed up anyway and it's a pretty visceral image when that happens. Fortunately she is kind of Jesus so it's fine, she's fine, we're all fine here now thank you, how are you?

Hah, the Porgs are shaming Chewy into not eating a dead Porg! Porgs are way less in-your-face in this movie than Ewoks are in that other movie.

Enter Laura Dern! Conveys intelligence and confidence. I bet internet dicks hated her for no good reason. Other than that they are working in a non-descript office building in central Russia. Anyway, her friction with Poe is cool because she's being rational and it's just hard to argue against her points.

0:39:00 - Enter Kelly Marie Tran! Rose! Of course Sergei and Boris are social media bullies about this character. But even though she's coming into this story a little late, she's already gotten some solid character development.

So this is something I'm only realizing because I just watched Empire Strikes Back, but the two movies have similar structures in addition to being middle-of-the-trilogy movies. They both go back and forth between two subplots; one about a Jedi training a rookie on a planet, the other about just the good guys desperately trying to outrun a dauntingly large space fleet of bad guys.

Hah, Porgs getting pesky in the Millennium Falcon, I'd forgotten that.

Not so much with the wipes between scenes in this one but that one at 53:55 was neat.

And now we're in an actual casino! It's the Star Wars universe's version of Monaco. Lots of fun creatures and robots, but shot with a very flashy style that seems more obtrusive than how Lucas just peeks around in the Cantina.

The Master Codebreaker is literally Errol Flynn circa 1925.

1:00:50 - The first flashback of The Luke/Ben Incident. Kinda Rashomon-esque.

Benicio Del Toro. I love the guy, but there is often a sense in his movies that he had a very persuasive conversation with the director to let him do odd quirks with how he talks, and the director just grimaced and hoped it would turn out okay.

They break out of the stables with the racing animals, and stampede their way through the casino, satisfying!

But also, this whole Monaco planet is so like Monaco, so specifically, that it's not very galaxy-far-far-away.

First time we see Luke in the Rashomon flashback with the 'bout-to-kill-Ben look, that is a mighty fine facial expression from Mark Hamill.

1:14:35 - We're at the highly abstract Nightmare Cave sequence. This is a little indulgent, I bet Lucas did not like. He probably didn't like the equivalent sequence in The Force Awakens, but for what it's worth, I super like that one.

Rey and Kylo having a connection, I think we're not supposed to like it, and maybe that's the point? I'm okay with that. As long as it doesn't turn out that they are twin siblings separated at birth and gee what a shocking twist that would be <eye roll>.

I bet it took some discipline to have the Finn/Poe/Rose subplot be relatively simple.

1:29:00 - Weird little coffin craft Rey gets in to go to Kylo's ship. Oh, and the shot of coming out of lightspeed facing the bottom of the Destroyers! Cool!

1:30:55 - Hah! You thought they'd forgotten how to be funny, but then they do that clothes-iron gag. I like it. Reminds me of the coat hanger gag in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"I know where the nearest escape pods are" "Course you do". Hah.

Snoke telling Rey "I connected you because I knew Kylo was weak" sounds like an internet troll. Am I hung up on that? On internet trolls?

Big hanger full of troops and even flying TIE fighters inside the hanger, looks great.

Very grim situation now… the intended plan completely fell apart, and now the escape transport plan is completely screwed, and Rey is just helpless it looks like. Or is that just what it LOOKS like.

Snoke death is neat. Also neat are his guards' variable, flexible sword things. Also also neat is how the one guard gets tossed into an electro-processer and shoots out red flakes!

1:50:42 - Oh, my favorite thing, a magic battle. As Rey and Kylo try to out-Force each other to Force-get the light saber, it all comes down to who Force-gets better.

But then! Then it DOESN'T suck because they equally Force-get so hard that it just breaks, and then the neatest of all the parts of this movie, LD lightspeed-spearing the master bad guy ship! Awesome visuals and sound.

"You're a bug in the system" "Let's go chrome-dome". That's a pretty Lucas-y dialogue exchange.

As they fly away from the destruction, I love the look, how much detail there is to the wreckage.

Yeah, this final planet has those ice fox things! It feels like this Episode has slightly less zeal for "delightful new creatures", but it's not NO zeal.

Also this is the planet where the surface is salt, but under the salt surface is a mineral that is very red, for reasons of it looks cool, I guess. There's even a mechanic which can't possibly make sense, where these crafts NEED to drag on the surface just a teeny bit. But so what, I like to look at it. I'd rather look at that than look at YOU.

The underground blood crystal cave is a damn fine sight to see.

Not sure I care that much about the quick drama about Finn trying to Kamikaze the big gun and Rose stopping him. Although Rose saying "saving what we love" makes it kinda sweet and now I'm sorry I pooh-poohed it. But she gives him a little kiss, which is the only remotely romance-y thing in this new trilogy so far and do we need that? Whatever, I root for both of these characters.

We just saw the gold dice from Solo. But this movie came out before Solo, so I guess we were all like "dude what the hell is THAT". I wonder whose idea the dice was.

"Do you think that you got him". So, this reminded me when I first saw it of an early Mark Hamill movie called The Big Red One. A war drama with him and Lee Marvin, probably right around the same time as Empire. In that movie, MH shoots again and again and again at a definitely-already-dead German soldier. He just keeps shooting the corpse. Lee Marvin walks up to him as he's doing it and whispers in his ear, "I think you got him". Gotta be a deliberate reference, right? Pretty obscure one if so

Hah, Poe and Rey hadn't met yet, that wasn't obvious until now.

Okay, the final scene. It's a cool final scene, but… okay so the first time I saw it, I definitely didn't notice that the kid levitated the broom all casual-like. But I noticed it in later viewings and was like "oh, how did I miss that". Well I'LL TELL you how, because it is super freaking subtle! It's like it changes every time or something. It is FREAKING  me OUT.

But I still really like this movie. It is full of tons of great qualities, and only minor issues. It's surprisingly witty, and has a lot of non-Lucas style to it, which would be a problem if it didn't feel so genuinely inspired. So nice try, Anatoly! Go fuck yourself, Fyodor! You can turn neighbors against each other, Yuri, but you can't make me hate The Last Jedi!

(next: The Rise of Skywalker)

[korkskrew2000]

(x)

[songofanothersummer]

Electric currents mimic  the symphony of synapses beneath the skin, forging something from nothing but numbers and algorithms, dragging the proverbial beast from the depths of the abyss, borne from the yawning void forever hungry at our core, fabricating a home that is  elsewhere and everywhere, here and nowhere,  for everyone and no one, a communal dreamscape rife with nightmares and sanctuary scattered throughout a landscape that defies explanation but requires none, and asks for nothing but our time, and as always, we abide.

Brittany Rubio, Drifters Roaming the Information Superhighway.

[parttimereporter]

Blogged out.

I have been a bit absent lately on here.. a few weeks have gone by and I realized how little time I had for blogging or writing ... Since the spring began, a certain bit of organized chaos also steeped its way into my life.. Nothing out of the ordinary others don’t go through, but just a bit too much to keep up with things..

It is my hope and desire you’ve still stopped by now and then to see if the page was updated. And if not.. cool too.

For those who do blog regularly, or at least have a website, there is a bit of pressure that comes with it. I don’t quite know why.... but say a big news event occurs.. you feel you need to at least link up something. Pay attention to it.. if someone comes to your site and sees nothing about said event, you look stale. You look .. well .. irrelevant.

I think over the past month of lunacy with POTUS and FLOTUS and former POTUS and RUSSIA-OTUS .. it’s been too much to keep up with. Scandals and intrigue have hit Washington DC..even the strange death of a former DNC staffer that may have spoken to Wikileaks.. could the news be any weirder? I suppose I shouldn’t ask. Trump is about to meet the Pope. That’s weirder..

I think the nightmare scenario of abundant opinions online have drowned out the sanity. I often ask if it’s worth even having this site.. Or at least wondering if I should re-imagine it.

Since I really wrote last, there have been some newsworthy events .. My local mall announced it would close. I have been covering since long-time closing since I began this website over 7 years ago.. (Check that here)... My beautiful boy Ayden is graduating kindergarden within the week.   I have been writing about him since even before he was born! 

So much of this website has been and continues to be a reflection of me.. My growth and aging process. A slow maturity (men do actually mature slower than they age) ... 

How could I give it up!  It would be difficult.  Those who have a website, especially those who have had a website for many years like me, know that it somehow becomes an online reflection of you. A piece of you in the information superhighway..

I don’t write that for the hopes of fame.. but instead somehow to document who I was. What I was. Where I was. And how I got there..

In the scheme of things, with thousands of Twitter accounts and blogs popping up by the second, I have no delusions of grandeur.  

I just wanted to say .. Hi.

The mountains are green. The skies are blue.  Life if great. How about you?

thank you for reading… The weather is fine. The company is better.. Enjoy your time With a fine wine.. The moments are fleeting.. They go by fast. Without a warning… Life’s a blast.

[paulbenedictblog]

%news%

New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

News A farm boy became a fearsome warrior at Iwo Jima. And he did it with a flamethrower. - The Washington Post

News

He turned into 21, and known as “Woody.”

However 75 years ago this month, on a Godforsaken volcanic island in the Pacific called Iwo Jima, he turned into a unsightly destroyer of the Japanese, incinerating men in their hideouts with jets of blazing diesel gas and high-octane gas.

They had to stop him.

However he saw them coming, and pulled the two triggers on his fearsome weapon.

He mute remembers how they slowed down and fell, their dresses ablaze.

He had no feel sorry about on the time. The Japanese were killing Marines. They'd rapidly extinguish his most effective excellent friend. The battle, the war, had to be obtained. “I had no qualms,” he stated.

He moved on to the next enemy fortification. By the stop of the day he had destroyed seven pillboxes, acts for which, months later, he turned into given the Medal of Honor for valor.

The 75th anniversary of the commence of the World War II Combat of Iwo Jima is Wednesday. The battle is per chance most effective remembered for the Feb. 23 flag raising atop Mount Suribachi, immortalized in a news portray and a eminent statue in Arlington, Va.

The Marine Corps plans a ceremony on the Iwo Jima memorial on Feb. 27. And the Nationwide Museum of the Marine Corps, in Triangle, Va., is recordsdata superhighway web hosting events and a stay performance on Saturday and Sunday. Williams is scheduled to hiss on Saturday.

However for those love him who fought there — and about a are mute alive — remembering Iwo might perhaps well moreover moreover be unsightly.

After the war he had nightmares by which he turned into now not shooting fire, but struggling with it. “I put out hundreds of fires,” he stated.

Once, whereas dreaming, he fearful his spouse when he jumped up, pushed their bed out of the vogue and started pounding on the wall at an imaginary wave of fire.

“I’m struggling with this wall of fire,” he stated. “Making an are trying to put [it] out.”

The battle of Iwo Jima came as World War II had turned decisively in opposition to the Japanese, who had suffered several predominant defeats, and whose fatherland turned into being pounded by U.S. bombers.

Struggling with 36 days over an apocalyptic panorama of blasted volcanic sand and rubble, the opponents outdated swords, pistols, rocks, rifle butts and bamboo lances as the Marines tried to dislodge Japanese troopers from warrens of bunkers and caves.

A wide U.S. bombardment from land, sea and air had executed miniature to roust the enemy, in negate that great of the struggling with turned into executed at close quarters. Some turned into at arm’s length.

One Japanese soldier attacked a Marine with a samurai sword, lowering his arm from his hand to his elbow.

At one point, a Marine stated, he turned into so near the enemy that he couldn’t lower his rifle to operate.

A Japanese soldier clutching an explosive cost ran up in opposition to a U.S. tank and blew himself up.

Hand grenades were thrown love baseballs before they detonated. One Marine threw again seven.

Pfc. Jacklyn Lucas, 17, of Plymouth, N.C., turned into surprised when he saw two enemy grenades at his feet. He forced them into the sand along with his rifle butt and his hands, and covered them along with his body. He didn’t even possess the prospect to shut his eyes, he wrote later.

Handiest one grenade went off. It blew him sky high. However he lived to be 80 and turned into also given the Medal of Honor.

The battle went on lengthy after the flag turned into raised on Suribachi. It devoured Marines and Japanese troopers alike. They fought over areas on the island called the “Meat Grinder,” “Dying Valley,” and “Bloody Gorge.” The terrain turned into littered with smashed banyan timber, blasted rock and mechanical and human wreckage.

At evening the scene turned into illuminated by critical person shells.

War correspondent Robert Sherrod stated he had never viewed so many dismembered troopers. “Nowhere in the Pacific war possess I viewed such mangled our bodies,” he wrote in Existence magazine. “Many were slash squarely in half of. Legs and palms lay 50 feet far from any body.”

In a single case a Marine’s severed foot turned into recovered mute in its boot. The serial number on the boot turned into famed and the foot turned into buried in a formal grave, basically based totally on creator Richard F. Newcomb’s classic yarn of the battle. Later, the proprietor of the foot turned into came all over alive in a sanatorium in Saipan.

Into the inferno

For the Marine Corps, Iwo Jima turned into one amongst its most tale battles.

It turned into entrance-page news all over the nation. A Marine frequent likened it to the Civil War’s Combat of Gettysburg, and stated it assured that there would be a Marine Corps eternally. (The eminent flag raising portray, by Associated Press photographer and Washington native Joe Rosenthal, reinsured it.)

The battle integrated one amongst the very finest Marine Corps forces ever fielded — 70,000 men — and the very finest casualty toll in its historical previous. Roughly 6,800 Marines, sailors, and one Flit Guardsman were killed, basically based totally on “Investigating Iwo,” a Marine Corps discover printed final yr.

For the Japanese, Iwo Jima turned into dwelling territory, about 700 miles from Japan and section of the prefecture of Tokyo. No foreigner had ever region foot on it, Newcomb wrote.

It had two airfields, which is why the Americans wanted it, and why the Japanese were obvious to withhold it, or exact a deadly price on the Marines looking for to verify on it.

Every Japanese soldier turned into suggested to extinguish 10 Americans.

Abet in Japan, other folks sang the rousing “Song of Iwo Defense,” and it turned into broadcast to the island’s defenders. However the Japanese frequent in hiss, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, wrote to his spouse: “No person right here expects to return alive.”

Of the roughly 20,000 Japanese defenders, easiest 1,083 survived, basically based totally on the Naval Historic previous and Heritage Account for. Two of those survivors remained in hiding unless 1949.

Iwo Jima turned into an extinct volcano, fashioned love a pork slash, about 5 miles lengthy and 2½ miles huge. Considered from the air on the first day, United Press war correspondent William F. Tyree stated it regarded discover it irresistible turned into sizzling.

And into the inferno, on Feb. 21, 1945, “haunted half of to death,” stepped Hershel Williams.

Now 96, Williams sat on the threshold of his easy chair on this rural community birth air Charleston sooner or later final month and told of his section in the battle. A dignified man, he wore glasses, a dusky leather-basically based mostly vest, grey slacks and dusky “Medal of Honor” cowboy boots.

Of the 27 Marines and sailors who earned the medal at Iwo Jima, he stated he is the final one mute residing.

In the kitchen, vials of Iwo Jima sand sat on a shelf, come an extinct portray of President Harry S. Truman giving him the medal. A duplicate medal hung from its powder blue ribbon on a coat stand in his bed room. (The customary is in the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in Chicago.)

A image of Jesus hangs on a wall, a image of the profound spiritual awakening 58 years ago in the Pea Ridge Methodist Church that Williams stated ended his nightmares and transformed his existence. He went on to possess a profession with the Division of Veterans Affairs and established a profitable horse farm.

He stated that, as a Christian, he now regrets having killed other folks.

“It’s one amongst those issues that you just put in the recess of your thoughts,” he stated. “You were gratifying an responsibility that you just swore to carry out, to protect your nation. Any time you determine on a existence … there’s always some aftermath to that whereas you happen to’ve got any coronary heart the least bit."

A mysterious weapon

Williams weighed 3½ kilos at birth and turned into now not expected to stay. His mom, Lurenna, named him Hershel for the native doctor who reached the farm three days later.

By the point he turned into born in 1923 several of his siblings had already died in the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. His father, Lloyd, died of a coronary heart assault when Hershel turned into 11.

As World War II neared, he stated he turned into impressed by the rapid “dress blues” uniform of native men who were in the Marine Corps. The Military’s “extinct brown wool uniform … turned into the ugliest thing in metropolis,” he stated. “l made up our minds, ‘I carry out now not want to be in that thing. I want to be in those dress blues.’ ”

With the exception of that, he stated, “I knew nothing regarding the Marine Corps.”

After the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he tried to affix, however the Marines stated he turned into too short.

Later, the necessities were eased, he stated, and he got in. He conception he would never must leave the nation, correct protect it in opposition to invaders.

He damage up 8,000 miles from dwelling on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific.

There, in early 1944, he and some a model of Marines got crates of flamethrowers, which they had to establish the manner to feature. The weapon turned into mysterious. It had two tanks to withhold the flammable liquid to be fired, and a third tank of compressed air to push the liquid out.

The nozzle contained a barrel with phosphorus matches that ignited the liquid as it spurted out. He stated the Marines experimented with what create of flammable liquid to exercise and settled on a combination of diesel gas and high-octane aviation gas. The weapon weighed 70 kilos and the tanks were almost bullet proof, he stated.

There turned into no steering on how the weapon turned into to be outdated. “We had to be taught that ourselves,” he stated.

Coming ashore on Iwo Jima a yr later, Williams stated, he supervised six a model of flame thrower/demolition men in his “particular weapons unit,” he stated. However as the hours of struggling with passed they vanished one after the opposite. Uninteresting or wounded, he didn’t know.

About midday on Feb. 23, he and his comrades had been stopped frigid by a cluster of impenetrable Japanese fortifications called pillboxes. Enemy gunners fired from minute slits in the concrete walls and were nearly now not doable to hit as they mowed down Marines.

Williams stated his company commander, Capt. Donald Beck, held a gathering in a shell gap to establish what to carry out. He asked Williams if he conception he might perhaps well make growth along with his flamethrower.

Williams stated he would are trying.

He turned into assigned several Marines to veil him, and a “pole cost man,” armed with a lengthy section of wooden that had an explosive taped to the stop. His job turned into to stick the price into the fortification and region it off after Williams had fired, “to make obvious that everyone in there is unimaginative,” he stated.

However the pole cost man turned into struck in the helmet by a bullet and knocked foolish. The covering Marines were killed. And Williams turned into on his occupy. He doesn’t be aware hundreds of what came about, a but about a scenes possess stayed with him.

He remembers crawling toward one pillbox where he might perhaps well scrutinize the barrel of a Japanese machine gun protruding from a carve. Bullets ricocheted off his flamethrower tanks. He got within 20-25 yards and “rolled a mammoth ball of flame” on the enemy gunner, silencing him.

He recalls crawling toward one other pillbox when he observed a wisp of smoke escaping from a ventilation gap in the spoil. He crept up, caught the nozzle of the flame thrower into the vent and fired. “Received 'em all,” he stated.

He remembers killing the Japanese troopers who tried to glean him with bayonets.

He does now not be aware that over the course of 4 hours one afternoon on Iwo Jima he went again to his lines 5 situations for unusual weapons, and 5 situations returned to the battle.

However that’s what he did.

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Williamsport PA’s vital Golden Strip filmed without requisite morning coffee This morning’s Williamsport Golden Srip video contains two serious omissions of fact. 1. It was not Baby Boomers who returned from World War II which ended in 1945. It was the veterans who defeated Hitler and the AE pore of Japan. As with my Uncle Lou, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge ( and forever after had awful nightmares ), the veterans returned in a rush eager to have children and to make up for lost time by getting on with their lives. In Williamsport, PA the veterans, their wives ( who had helped win the War by working in defense and other plants and gave up their riveting, their jobs and became mothers and housewives ) and their booming progeny, the consequence was that by 1950 Williamsport gained its largest population ever: 40,000. By the end of the decade, their world had changed. The steel moguls at US Steel in Pittsburgh and throughout the Central PA rust belt failed to invest in the future. Buckminster Fuller, the visionary architectural genius ( and meshiniga) got it right. He said the Germans and Japanese were fortunate by having their decaying factories destroyed so they could start again with new and efficient equipment. Not so fortunate were the returning veterans who worked in Williamsport plants where their cheap bosses failed to invest in the future. Then, the country’s transportation system—the excellent transcontinental railroad which was instrumental in winning the war— was decimated by city planners who thought cheap energy would last forever. They built roads and highways and superhighways turning the population centers from cities to suburbs and further reducing the economic power of Central PA where Williamsport had dominated the region. My second big mistake was to say that one can not take a train from nearby Altoona. One can although if you are disabled like me getting off is a problem at Harrisburg, PA’s capital because the train station did not have a wheel chair ramp last year when I tried to ride my electric wheel chair off and instead had to crawl off and have a porter remove the wheel chair, pick me up and reseat me. One cannot take https://www.instagram.com/p/BxOStdfHfwq/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=98fv62of8ay6

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New Release Roundup, 29 December 2018: Science Fiction

A war between elder gods, a mysterious deep space signal, intrigue between space miners, and a full cast audio drama from one of today’s bestselling authors feature in this week’s roundup of the newest releases in science fiction.

Advance (Animus #4) – Joshua Anderle and Michael Anderle  

You don’t become the best of the best by staying alive. In the Animus, you are closer to perfection with each death you suffer.

Kaiden Jericho would rather skip the death part, thank-you-very-much.

Join Kaiden as he learns about Nexus, the Animus, and the opportunities that one fight brought him. Never has helping someone benefitted him so much.

The future is looking bright, except for the pain.

Kaiden Jericho’s life just went sideways.

The problem? He isn’t as prepared as he thinks he is.

Out in the jungles of the Amazon, Kaiden meets a new set of nightmares, and death there is permanent.

Even with all his previous training in the Animus, will Kaiden survive?

Charm School Outcasts – Jamie Hawke

I wasn’t always this adorable, badass superhero you see before you.

Well, I was, but there was a shady side to me, a part of my past I don’t like to talk about.

And that’s what led me to Supralines, the best superhero school in the Oram galaxy.

What follows is a bit of insanity, a bit of love, and a bit of self-discovery. Join me, and I promise you won’t regret it!

“What can I say that has not been said? Interweaving novels, building new worlds, creating characters with amazing skills…Jamie makes it seem like a walk in the park. If you have not yet read a Jamie Hawke work, this is a good start.”–Amazon Reader Review

Desolation (Legend of the Galactic Heroes #8) – Yoshiki Tanaka

After utterly defeating the Free Planets Alliance, Kaiser Reinhard has brought 99 percent of inhabited space under his control.

Still, dissatisfaction and unease coil within his breast, for the galaxy’s last remaining sliver of free territory is defended by none other than Yang Wen-li.

Seeking decisive battle, the Imperial Navy moves to attack Iserlohn Fortress, but due to Yang’s unexpected plan, the battle has already begun before Reinhard arrives.

The Yang Fleet must overcome an enormous difference in force strength—while at the same time, a trap laid by the Church of Terra is closing in around Yang…

Krox Rises (The Magitech Chronicles #5) – Chris Fox 

The Godswar Has Come Again.

Nebiat has seized godhood, and now controls Krox, the most powerful elder god in the sector. Both Ternus and Shaya know she is coming, but their preparations cannot save them. She launches a strike at Ternus that cripples their home world, and shatters their fleets.

Voria desperately struggles to find a way to raise Shaya, or to rise as a goddess herself. She will do anything to oppose Nebiat, but fears it will not be enough.

Aran must confront the awful truth about the Skull of Xal, and make a deal with demons in order to gain the strength they so desperately need to overcome Krox.

And Nara must face the most awful choice of all. Will she murder the woman she most respects, or let the sector burn?

Lasso (Deep Space Mining Series #1) – Mike Coville 

Captain Greg Daniels of the DSM Boone is a handful of asteroids away from retiring when his plans are threatened by an explosion on his ship. With the risk of another more lethal attack, Greg must locate the source of the explosion or he’ll lose more than the priceless rock he just obtained – he’ll lose his life.

On the Lunar Community, Final Frontier Mining Director David Rivera has his sights set on become Prime Minister of the ISC. His hopes rest on ace miner, Daniels, bringing in the most profitable asteroid in the company’s history to keep himself in the spotlight. But when he discovers a conspiracy to destroy his company and put a stop to his political aspirations, David must hunt down his mysterious hacker while trying to save Greg, DSM Boone, and the asteroid it has secured.

One man fights for survival in deep space, another on the moon, but is there someone else pulling the strings of both? Only if they can work together, will they find the answers they need to survive.

Skywave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions #1) – K. Patrick Donoghue 

No one knows what to make of the mysterious clicks.

To Ajay Joshi, the amateur astronomer who discovered the strange sounds with his radio telescope, the clicks represent proof of aliens on Callisto, a moon of Jupiter, a theory dismissed as quackery by space agency radio experts. They contend the clicks are nothing more than terrestrial interference, so-called skywaves, or similar electromagnetic interference emanating from Jupiter or Callisto.

To Dr. Kiera Walsh, an aerospace engineer introduced to Ajay and his findings, the consistent, repetitive pattern of the clicks points to the possibility of a lost Martian probe caught in Callisto s orbit. She shares this view with her employer, billionaire and space exploration privateer, Augustus Amato, and is surprised to learn Amato disagrees with her conclusion. He believes the clicks herald something more ominous orbiting Callisto.

Compelled to learn the true source of the clicks, Amato launches a fleet of experimental probes to investigate the Jovian moon. A mission that produces a string of startling discoveries, revelations that shake the space exploration establishment to its core and spark a controversial race to preserve the discoveries before they are destroyed or suppressed.

A Star-Wheeled Sky – Brad R. Torgersen

Over a millennium in the past, humans fleeing Earth in slower-than-light vessels discovered the Waywork, an abandoned alien superhighway system that allows instantaneous travel from star to star. The problem: there are a finite number of Waypoint nodes—and the burgeoning population of humans is hemmed in as a result. Furthermore, humanity is divided into contending Starstates. One of the strongest is based on an oligarchy ruling families, but still mostly democratic. The other is a totalitarian nightmare. War seems inevitable.

Now a new Waypoint appears. Might it lead to the long-lost creators of the Waywork? If so, there may be knowledge and technology that will tip the balance in the coming war.

Three people race to make it to the new Waypoint—and beyond. These include Wyodreth Antagean, the reluctant son of an interstellar shipping magnate, Lady Garsina Oswight, the daring daughter of a royal family, and Zuri Mikton, a disgraced flag officer seeking redemption. They are facing an implacable foe in Golsubril Vex, a merciless, but highly effective, autocrat from the Waywork’s most brutal regime. Vex is determined to control the new Waypoint and whatever revelation or power lies on the other side.

Now humanity’s fate—to live in freedom or endless dictatorship—depends on just what that revelation might be. And who gets there first.

Starship Pandora: A Star Force Audio Drama – written by B. V. Larson

B. V. Larson returns to the world of his Audible best-selling Star Force series for the first time in three years with this original, full-cast audio drama.

The mysterious alien race known as the Ancients vanished before Earth’s last ice age – but not before building interconnected rings that form a highway system across the galaxy. Humanity has used these rings for years but has never figured out how to build its own, or even how to alter the connection pattern.

Now, the Imperial starship Pandora is on a mission to discover and explore new interstellar connection points. While on Venus, an unexpected guest arrives – Marvin, a rogue robot who puts his strange mind to work on reconnecting the rings into a new pattern. And everything goes haywire. Grotesque aliens come through the ring and overrun Pandora’s base camp. The good news is the aliens can be killed. The bad news is the aliens keep coming, and no one knows how to turn off the ring that leads directly to their home world.

And even if the aliens are defeated – there’s still Marvin to contend with.

  New Release Roundup, 29 December 2018: Science Fiction published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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How To Be A Professional In The Music World

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