#pismire

[a-book-of-creatures]

What words would you have to someone who believes Wyverns aren't dragons?

1) ants are called emmets in heraldry, that doesn’t mean they’re different from ants.

2) also they’re called pismires which is just embarrassing, really.

3) hang on, what was I talking about?

4) wyverns, right. Outside of being a synonym for viper (which is synonymous with snake, which is synonymous with dragon) there is literally no wyvern mythology. And if you want to broaden the search to its linguistic variants, there is no one appearance, and all of them could just be replaced by the word “dragon” with no change.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Stellantis wants to make scabbing woke

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

I know, I know, it's weird when the worst people you know are right, even when they're right for the wrong reasons: like, the "Intelligence Community" is genuinely terrible, pharma companies are murderous crooks, and Big Tech really does have a dangerous grip on public debate. The swivel-eyed loons have a point, is what I'm saying:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

When conspiratorialists and reactionaries holler about how the FBI are dirty-tricking creeps who are framing Trump, it's tempting to say, "well, if Trumpists hate the FBI, then I will love the FBI. Who cares about COINTELPRO and what they did to Martin Luther King?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

It's a process called "schizmogenesis": forming new group identity beliefs based on saying the opposite of what your enemies say, and as tempting as that is, it's extraordinarily foolish and dangerous:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

It means that canny reactionaries like Steve Bannon can trick you into taking any position merely by taking the opposite one. Bannon's followers are even more easily led, so it's easy for him to convince them that we have always been at war with Oceania. The right has created an entire mirror world of "I know you are but what am I?" politics.

Anti-vax co-opts "bodily autonomy." Climate denial becomes environmentalism ("wind turbines kill birds"). Transphobia becomes feminism ("keep women-only spaces for real women"). Support for strongmen becomes anti-imperialism ("don't feed the war machine in Ukraine"). These are the doppelgangers Naomi Klein warns us against:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

The far right has even managed to co-opt anti-corporate rhetoric. Culture warriors rail against "woke capitalism," insisting that when big businesses take socially progressive positions, it's just empty "virtue signalling." And you know what? They've got a point. Partially.

As with all mirror-world politics, the anti-woke-capitalism shuck is designed to convince low-information right-wing pismires into buying "anti-woke pillows" and demanding the right to pay junk fees to "own the libs":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

But woke capitalism is bullshit. Corporations – profit-maximizing immortal transhuman colony organisms that view workers and customers as inconvenient gut-flora – do not care about social justice. They don't care about anything, except for minimizing compensation for workers while maximizing the risk those workers bear; and locking in and gouging customers for products that are as low-quality as can be profitably sold.

Take DEI, a favored target of the right. It's undoubtably true that diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives have made some inroads on correcting bias in hiring decisions, with the result that companies get better employees who would have been excluded without this explicit corrective.

However, corporations don't value DEI because they abhor their history of hiring bias. Instead, DEI is how corporate management demonstrates to workers that their grievances are best addressed by trusting corporate leadership to correct their error of their ways – and not by forming a union.

Before the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, corporations would create fake "Company Unions" whose leadership were beholden to the company executives. These were decoy unions: they looked and sounded like unions, but when they negotiated with management, they were actually working for the bosses, not the workers.

This is more mirror-world tactics. They're the labor equivalent of the "crisis pregnancy centers" that masquerade as abortion clinics in order to fool pregnant people and trap them with endless delays until it's too late to terminate their pregnancies. Company unions get workers to trust in negotiators who are secretly working for the bosses, who emerge from the bargaining table with one-sided, abusive contracts and insist that this is the best deal workers can hope for.

Company unions were outlawed 90 years ago, and for decades, labor had a seat at the table, with wages tracking productivity gains and workers getting protection for discrimination, unsafe labor conditions, and wage-theft. Then came the neoliberal turn, and 40 years of wage stagnation, increased inequality, and corporate rule.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Finally, finally, we have reached a turning point in labor, with public approval for unions at levels not seen since the Carter administration and thousands of strikes and protests breaking out across the country:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/

It's not just the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, either. For the first time in history, the UAW is striking against all the major automakers, and they are winning:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/striking-uaw-workers-win-key-battery-plant-concession-from-general-motors/

The automakers are getting desperate. Stellantis – Chrysler's latest alias, reflecting the company's absorbtion into corporate-human-centipede of global carmakers – has mobilized its DEI programs, trying to get marginalized people to believe that scabbing is a liberatory activity:

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/10/uaw-auto-strike-stellantis/

Stellantis calls each of its DEI silos a "Business Resource Group" (BRG): there's a "Working Parents Network," an "African Ancestry Network," "Asians Connected Together," a "DiverseAbilities Network," a "Gay & Lesbian Alliance" and more:

https://blog.stellantisnorthamerica.com/2021/07/20/business-resource-groups-drive-inclusion-and-diversity/

The corporate managers who lead these BRGs have established a scab rotation for each subgroup, calling on members to cross a UAW picket-line at a Michigan Parts Distribution Center run by Stellantis subsidiary Mopar:

Each BRG will pick a specific day of the week/weekend to volunteer as a team. Help continue to be the RESOURCE the BUSINESS can count on! Stellantis needs your help in running the Parts Distribution Centers (PDC) to ensure a steady supply of parts to our customers while negotiations continue. Working Parents Network has identified Friday, October 13 as WPN’s BRG Day at the PDCs!"

Now, these BRGs weren't invented by marginalized workers facing discrimination in the workplace. They come from literal union-busting playbooks produced by giant "union avoidance" firms that charge bosses millions for advice on skirting – or breaking – the law to keep workplace democracy at bay. All the biggest anti-union consultancies love BRGs, from Littler Mendelson to Jackson Lewis. IRI Strategies touts BRGs as a way to "union-proof" a business by absorbing workers' grievances in a decoy committee that will let them feel listened to.

BRGs, in other words, are the Crisis Pregnancy Centers of workplace discrimination. They're a Big Store Con, a company union dressed up as corporate social responsibility.

Now, let's not pretend that unions have a sterling record on race and gender issues. Giant labor organizations like the AFL had to be dragged into racial integration, and trade unions have sometimes been on the wrong side of anti-immigration panics:

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html

But unions have also been the most reliable way for people of color and women to win better workplace treatment. The struggle for racial and gender justice was fought through labor organizing. Remember that MLK's "I've Been To the Mountaintop" speech was given in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis:

https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/mountaintop

Black organizers have always been militant labor organizers. Labor Day commemorates the victory of the long, hard-fought Pullman strike, where Black workers brought one of the most powerful companies in America to its knees:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike

And women have always fought for gender justice through the labor movement: the New York shirtwaist strike is the Ur-example, when women-led unions fought thugs and scabs on icy New York streets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909

It's no surprise that labor activism, anti-racism and feminism go together. Since the earliest days, the labor justice struggle was also a social justice struggle. To learn more check out Kim Kelly's Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

The most exploited, underpaid, and abused workers in America are also the most marginalized (duh).

From nurses:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kaiser-healthcare-union-says-week-long-strike-possible-early-next-month-2023-10-09/

To teachers:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-04-18/l-a-teachers-win-21-wage-increase-in-new-lausd-contract

To Amazon warehouse workers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Labor_Union

To publishing assistants:

https://apnews.com/article/harpercollins-union-strike-ends-0a94238718879066d9b21af6266be526

To baristas:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/29/business/starbucks-union-wages/index.html

To fast-food workers:

https://www.ufcw.org/about/

The vanguard of today's labor surge is Black, brown, female and queer. Without a union, workers who face discrimination are on their own, hoping that their bosses will voluntarily do something about it. Black workers in Tesla's rabidly anti-union shops face vicious racism, from slurs to threats to violence. Without a union, they have to rely on the shifting whims of an Apartheid emerald mine space-Karen for relief, or hope for help from the NLRB or a class-action lawyer:

https://apnews.com/article/tesla-racism-black-lawsuit-class-action-21c88bddf60eca702560be58429495de

The far right isn't wrong when they holler that woke capitalism is bullshit. As with so many of their mirror-world causes, they've got a point, but only a limited one. The problem with woke capitalism is that it's no substitute for a union. The problem with relying on Business Resource Groups to fight racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia is that these struggles are all class struggles, and a BRG is never going to fight against the company that created it.

To understand how bankrupt woke capitalism is, conside this: Stellantis is calling on its "Working Parents Network" to scab this Friday. Stellantis is also being sanctioned by the Department Of Labor for discriminating against nursing mothers – the same "working parents" that the BRG is meant to protect:

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2023/02/08/investigation-finds-stellantis-violated-rights-of-nursing-mothers-at-sterling-heights-plant/

Woke capitalism is just another kind of "predatory inclusion," like Intuit's campaign defending its "Free File" tax-prep scam, where they're claiming that ending this ripoff is racist because it denies Black families the right to be tricked into paying for something they are entitled to get for free:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

When I learned about Intuit's wokewashing, I thought I'd found woke capitalism's rock bottom, but I was wrong. Stellantis's call for woke scabbing is a new low.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#inclusive-scabbing

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[rincewinds-hat]

anyone here likes The Carpet People? As in, Terry Pratchett's first book EVER???

I very much enjoy it. Bane my beloved. Glork you himbo. Snibril the smarter and knowledge hungry younger brother. Pismir the philosopher. Brokando the tiny angry king. They deserve love too

[fourovcups]

I've been reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire as research for a project of mine, and it has certainly been an experience.

Desert Solitaire was one of these titles I'd heard bandied about in American nature literature growing up (the kind of thing teachers recommended once you finished Hatchet), but I don't here his work mentioned as much anymore. I recently re-encountered the title on a literal ecofascist reading list. While Abbey doesn't sound like an ecofascist himself, I can easily see why nature Nazis like him.

The book chronicles Abbey's time as a seasonal park ranger at the Arches National Monument in Utah There is a kind of uncertainty and inconsistency in the way he writes, even in the way he acts towards his surroundings in the desert. Silent Spring had only been published a few years before Solitaire was, and the eco-cultural revolution was not yet in full swing. Abbey writes lovingly about his desert environment. He describes in stunning detail, for example, the everyday beauty of a bumblebee alighting on a cactus flower, and decries the reckless "development" initiatives of the Bureau of Public Roads. But on the next page, he will say something like this: "...it's a foolish, simple-minded rationalism which denies any form of emotion to all animals but man and his dog. This is no more justified than the Moslems are in denying souls to women." Sure dude. Okay, fine, he was writing in the sixties. Some insensitivity is par for the course. But then, after pages and pages of decrying humans driving desert flora and fauna towards extinction, he describes with glee an instance where he stones a rabbit to death for no apparent reason.

It's a bizarre passage, and shows Abbey at his most unhinged. He describes the rabbit as "cowardly" for running away from threats, unlike the brave mountain lion, who stands and fights. He throws the stone and hits the rabbit's head: "He crumples, there's the usual gushing of blood, etc.," and the creature is dead. "I continue my walk with a new, augmented cheerfulness which is hard to understand but unmistakable [...] I try but cannot feel any sense of guilt." Reflecting on the incident, he concludes that his killing of the rabbit has made him a part of the desert, a membership bought by killing or being killed, being "predator or prey". Even so, he decides not to eat the rabbit, which he says is probably diseased anyway. He also describes using his walking stick to crush and stir up an ant colony, also without any reason beyond not liking ants. "Don't actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires." These are far from the only times that Abbey violates his personal philosophy of reverence for all living creatures.

It's clear that Edward Abbey came to Arches National Monument already dissatisfied with the outside world, and with some authority issues to boot (some quick googling on his background shows two demotions as a military police officer for clashing with higher-ups). The freedom of the desert, its simplicity and balance, is a significant part of what makes it appeal to him. But its harshness, the hostility of its sandstorms and lurking rattlesnakes, draws him in just as much.

Edward Abbey is not an ecofascist. If anything, his ill-defined political beliefs can be vaguely defined as anarchistic, if they can be defined at all. Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus that fascism is "a cancerous body rather than a totalitarian organism". It is fluid, mutable. Sometimes it lies latent, benign; at other times it rushes outward, colonizing piecemeal and erratically, in "flows capable of suffusing every kind of cell". Elements of Abbey, and of Desert Solitaire, contain such microfascisms.

Let's turn back to the linchpin of it all: the killing of the rabbit, which he sees as a joyous, cosmic act; one that links him into a (circular? pyramidal?) chain of being he was previously alienated from, in the atomized world of civilization. His joy is only augmented when he realizes he is not guilty for killing the rabbit. In per-modern hunting customs across the world, the taking of animal life is never free and unmediated. Thanks may be given to the spirit of the animal itself, or to the unseen powers that led the hunter to their quarry. Naturally, the sacrifice of an animal to a god was just that: for a god, not the human involved. What Abbey describes in the killing of the rabbit is something utterly different.

In Federico Finchelstein's Fascist Mythologies, Finchelstein says that in fascism, "consciousness was not a repression of inwardness (as Freud understood the workings of the Ego and the Id) but its actual distillation. [...] [Fascist consciousness] was not contemplative but similar to that of a sublime sensation of ecstasy."

The fascist subject is most "conscious" precisely when they loose themselves in the ecstatic abandon of the act. Such fascist consciousness is the foundation of the free, easy violence it facilitates.

When Abbey describes casting the stone at the rabbit, it is in a Meursault-like twilight of awareness. He sets up the encounter as a game, one in which he is a scientist experimenting on a rabbit that has been "volunteered" to him, and whose death is justifiable through its natural cowardice. He hardly realizes that the action he is carrying out, and when the rabbit dies he is shocked out of his reverie for a moment.

"For a moment I am shocked by my deed [...] but shock is succeeded by a mild elation."

For Abbey, primordial violence is what at last allows him union with the sacred world of the desert.

"No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us [...] Long live diversity, long live the Earth!"

By carrying out this act of bare violence, Abbey frees himself from the civilized world and achieves union with the world of Nature, in which violence is a simple act: one that creates its own order rather than supporting existing ones. It is this union that, while the moment lasts, allows him to rejoice in his newfound "innocence and power".

That is where I will leave things for now. There are other, more overt themes that Abbey explores that are the chief reason Desert Solitaire appeals to many ecofascists, such as its characterizations of industrial society and "Progress". Abbey's later work, such as The Monkey Wrench Gang, set even more explicit examples of direct action and sabotage that inspired right-wing accelerationists as well as left-wing environmental activists. This is my first long-ish post; if you're interested in these kinds of posts on ecofascism and ecocriticism, let me know and I might make more in the future.

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Snippets (209)

In S3E2 Murder and the Maiden (around July 30 according to my timeline research), Hugh proposed the wedding date “What about…Saturday, 14th September 1929?”. Within a month, they had done a lot of preparation, including sending out the invitations to family and friends. Well, more Dot than Hugh, really, since he took a couple of weeks off to go “fishing” shortly after that. Anyhow, the efficiency of wedding planning was quite astounding.

Then, Dot decided to push the wedding early to be around September 3 because of Miss Fisher’s sudden departure to escort her father back to England. It was a bold move by the bride as none of the Collins or Williams family members were invited. The groom, to our amazement, was not scandalized by the call. After confirming this was what his sweetheart wanted, he voluntarily took on the difficult task of convincing Father O’Leary that God invented the miracle of science, who then recanted his earlier threat of “Pismires and spiders be in your marriage bed, if you ever get a priest to marry yer, for I will not!” and officiated the intimate ceremony. The couple tied the knot surrounded and blessed by their (true) loved ones. Now that, my friends, was just perfect.

********************

p.s. The wedding hymn here was by American musician, poet and author, Sidney Lanier (1842-1881).

(Posted 14-Sep-2024)

[ukdamo]

On The End of the Iliad

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

They brandished their births like spears. Being there wasn’t enough. Their names Needed their fathers and their cities And their spears and the red air of Ilium.

There’s Apisaon lying on his liver As it curdles and leaks out rib-mangled From his wound like a clicking tongue In froth, mind-deep in its porn.

A grey scholar near the end of his talk Pauses, turns hazel in the maze of his thoughts, And as he gazes out the window asks, Why would the father at the end of the Iliad

Peer into Achilles’ tent and, through the bloodgold fire And smoke-slow seafog, pismire and simply stare At his son’s stupendous butcher? He waits for an answer from the weather.

He kneels before the cancelling hands of Achilles That did what they do to the dead of his son Because they could; and he kisses them. The father is our first noble disaster.

He knows his role. He knows he’ll beg. (Though not for the life: the life’s already gristle.) He’ll beg for the body. He’ll beg like a pagan for the body.

Even those who survive Achilles don’t. Priam returned, finally, to Troy’s dented doors And with every step he took toward the parting gold ruin,

Hollowed-out Hector bucked up and down on his back.

Even iridescent Helen, a trail Of billowing silks, poured herself From her paramour’s arms And descended with the rest to see

The sieged city surging to see its broken Breaker of horses. Half shout: “Hope!” Half bray: “Brave patriot’s sacrifice!” But Priam can’t bear to look at them.

He only looks back dimly at the door.

[delightingintragedy]

Mercury Correspondences

From Christian Astrology by William Lilly

(It is mostly word for word. I tried to format it to fit into a nice correspondence list, but the information itself is untouched.)

Zodiac: Rules Gemini and Virgo. Exalted in Virgo, Detriment in Sagittarius and Pisces, Fall in Pisces.

Nature: We may not call him either Masculine or Feminine, for he is either the one or other as joined to any Planet; for if in Conjunction with a Masculine Planet, he becomes Masculine; if with a Feminine, then Feminine, but of his own nature he is cold and dry, and therefore Melancholy; with the good he is good, with the evil Planets ill; In the Elements the Water; amongst the humours, the mixed, he rules the animal spirit: he is author of subtlety, tricks, devices, perjury, etc.

Profession: Generally signifies all literary men, Philosophers, Mathematicians, Astrologians, Merchants, Secretaries, Scriveners, Diviners, Sculptors, Poets, Orators, Advocates, Schoolmasters, Stationers, Printers, Exchangers of Money, Attorneys, Emperor's Ambassadors, Commissioners, Clerks, Artificers, generally Accountants, Solicitors, sometimes Thieves, prattling muddy Ministers, busy Sectaries, and they unlearned; Grammarians, Tailors, Carriers, Messengers, Footmen, Usurers.

Sicknesses: All Vertigos, Lethargies or giddiness in the Head, Madness, either Lightness, or any Disease of the Brain; Phthisis, all stammering and imperfection in the Tongue, vain and fond Imaginations, all defects in the Memory, Hoarseness, dry Coughs, too much abundance of Spittle, all snaffling and snuffling in the Head or Nose; the Hand and Feet Gout, Dumbness, Tongue-evil, all evils in the Fancy and intellectual parts.

Colour: Mixed and new colours, the Grey mixed with Sky-colour, such as is on the Neck of the Stockdove, Linsie-woolsie colours, or consisting of many colours mixed in one.

Savours: A hodgepodge of all things together, so that no one can give it any true name; yet usually such as do quicken the Spirits, are subtle and penetrate, an in a manner insensible.

Herbs & Plants: Herbs attributed to Mercury, are known by the various colour of the flower, and love sandy barren places, they bear their seed in husks or pods, they smell rarely or subtlety, and have principle relation to the tongue, brain, lungs or memory; they dispel wind and comfort the Animal spirits, and open obstructions. Beans, three leaved-grass, the Walnut and Walnut-tree; the Filbert-tree and Nut; the Elder tree, Adders tongue, Dragonwort, Twopenny grass, Lungwort, Aniseeds, Cubebs, Marjoram. What herbs are used for the Muses and Divination, as Vervain, the Reed; of Drugs, Treacle, Hiera, Diambra.

Beasts: The Hyena, Ape, Fox, Squirrel, Weasel, the Spider, the Greyhound, the Hermaphrodite, being partaker of both sexes; all cunning creatures.

Birds, etc: The Linnet, the Parrot, the Popinian, the Swallow, the Pye, the Beetle, Pismires, Locusts, Bees, Serpent, the Crane.

Fishes: The Fork-fish, Mullet.

Places: Tradesmen's shops, Markets, Fairs, Schools, Common Halls, Bowling Alleys, Ordinaries, Tennis Courts.

Minerals: Quicksilver.

Stones: The Millstone, Marcasite or fire-stone, the Achates, Topaz, Vitriol, all stones of diverse colours.

Weather: Delights in Windy, Stormy and Violent, Boisterous Weather, and stirs up that Wind which the Planet signifies to which he applies; sometimes Rain, at other times Hail, Lightning, Thunder and Tempests, in hot Countries Earthquakes, but this must be observed really from the Sign and Season of the year.

Angel: Raphael

Planetary Alliances: His friends are Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, his Enemies all the other Planets.

Week Day: Wednesday

Correspondence posts for the other planets: [Sun] [Moon] [Venus] [Mars] [Jupiter] [Saturn]

[sabakos]

The fruity voice said that their beloved country was being encircled by a horde of filthy Other-nesters—at which the wireless chorus sang: When Other blood spurts from the knife, Then everything is fine. It also explained that Ant the Father had ordained in his wisdom that Othernest pismires should always be the slaves of Thisnest ones. Their beloved country had only one feeding tray at present—a disgraceful state of affairs which would have to be remedied if the dear race were not to perish. A third statement was that the national property of Thisnest was being threatened. Their boundaries were to be violated, their domestic animals, the beetles, were to be kidnapped, and their communal stomach would be starved. The Wart listened to two of these broadcasts carefully, so that he would be able to remember them afterwards. The first one was arranged as follows: A. We are so numerous that we are starving. B. Therefore we must encourage still larger families so as to become yet more numerous and starving. C. When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we shall have a right to take other people's stores of seed. Besides, we shall by then have a numerous and starving army. It was only after this logical train of thought had been put into practice, and the output of the nurseries trebled that the second type of lecture was begun. This is how the second kind went: A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash. B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash. C. We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their puny one. D. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one. E. We must attack them in self-defense. F. They are attacking us by defending themselves. G. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow. H. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits. After the second kind of address, the religious services began.

The Once and Future King, by T.H. White

[tuungaq]

i need my terror girlies to read Essex dogs so i can get headcanons about loveday and pismire and Father in their previous campaigns and thoughts on The Woman and the nastiest down-bad power-imbalance sex between romford and the black prince PLEASE do this for me

[whileiamdying]

Song of Myself (1892 version)

BY WALT WHITMAN

[…]

31

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’œuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over, And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons, But call any thing back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding or shyness, In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach, In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powder’d bones, In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes, In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low, In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky, In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs, In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods, In vain the razor-bill’d auk sails far north to Labrador, I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

[versey21]

21st February

I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail by Anon.

This poem is on the face of it is a nonsense verse, but if you take the first half of each line and combine it with the second half of the line above, the outlandish tales of the poet begin to make sense.

Source: PowerOfBabel

I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail

I saw a peacock with a fiery tail

I saw a blazing comet drop down hail

I saw a cloud with ivy circled round

I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground

I saw a pismire* swallow up a whale

I saw a raging sea brim full of ale

I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep

I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep

I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire

I saw a house as big as the moon and higher

I saw the sun even in the midst of night

I saw the man that saw this wondrous sight.

This poem, which probably dates from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, may have been used to teach the importance of punctuation, while illuminating the lesson with extraordinary visions.

*A ‘pismire’ is an old English word for ‘ant’

[homeguidees]

There are a few things you can do to get rid of ants in your kitchen. One is to clean up any food spills or crumbs right away. You can also put down some bait, such as sugar or honey, to lure the ants in and kill them. Another option is to use an insecticide spray or powder. Be sure to read the label carefully and follow the instructions exactly. If you have a lot of pismires, it might be best to call a professional exterminator.

[thecreaturecodex]

Pismire

“Imperial Ant” © Yuke’s and D3 Publisher, accessed here

[A new wave of themed monsters starts here; I’m digging through medieval bestiaries, Greek histories, folklore and other sources to find some monsters of the greater European world. This is my take on the gold-digging ant, which as @a-book-of-creatures​ describes here, is probably a marmot through several layers of mistranslation. The Herodotus version doesn’t really say what they do with the gold. So my inspiration was to draw on the properties of the gold group metals to conduct electricity. I was surprised to find I wasn’t the first person to make this connection: the image is from the game Earth Defense Force: Iron Sky,  where one of the DLC packs features golden electrical ants as an enemy.

The name, by the way, is an old-fashioned word for ant or anthill. It’s related to the smell of formic acid smelling like urine (I guess; I don’t think there’s much resemblance), and evolved into the modern term “pissant”.]

Pismire                                CR 4 N Magical Beast This giant ant is the size of a small dog. Its carapace is a gleaming yellow and the smell of ozone surrounds it.

Pismires are sometimes referred to as “gold digging ants”, but the truth of the matter is that they are interested in many forms of precious metals. Gold, silver, and copper are all a part of their diets, although they only require trace amounts. These metals infuse their carapace and their nervous system, granting them electrical abilities and the ability to move at lightning speeds for short periods of time. The rest of their diet is carnivorous. As such, they attack travelers and caravans for both their coins and their flesh, and looting a pismire nest in search of their precious gold is an activity fraught with peril.

Pismires are eusocial, like other ants, but have small colonies due to their large size and unique dietary habits. A pismire queen does not leave the nest except in order to mate and found a new colony when she is young, but is certainly capable of defending herself and her brood. A pismire queen is a pismire with the advanced and giant simple templates. Instead of the zip zap special attack, she has a breath weapon, dealing 3d12 electricity in a 30 foot line, usable once every 1d4 rounds (Reflex DC 20). A pismire queen is a CR 6 monster.

Pismire                                CR 4 XP 1,200 N Small magical beast (earth) Init +6; Senses blindsense 30 ft., darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, metal scent, Perception +5 Defense AC 16, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+1 size, +2 Dex, +3 natural) hp 47 (5d10+20) Fort +7, Ref +6, Will +2 Immune poison; Resist electricity 10 Offense Speed 30 ft., burrow 10 ft. Melee bite +8 (1d6+2 plus 1d6 electricity), sting +8 (1d4+2 plus poison) Special Attacks zip zap Statistics Str 14, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 13, Cha 5 Base Atk +5; CMB +6; CMD 18 (26 vs. trip) Feats Blind-fight, Improved Initiative, Toughness Skills Climb +6, Perception +9, Stealth +10, Survival +7; Racial Modifiers +4 Perception, +4 Survival Ecology Environment warm hills Organization solitary, pair, patrol (3-8) or hive (3-30 plus 1 queen) Treasure double standard Special Abilities Metal Scent (Ex) This functions as the scent ability, except that it allows the pismire to detect metallic creatures and objects only. A pismire can distinguish between different kinds of metals with this ability. Poison (Ex) Sting—injury; save Fort DC 15; frequency 1/round for 4 rounds; effect 1d4 Cha damage; cure 1 save. The save DC is Constitution based. Zip Zap (Su) A pismire may move up to its speed as a swift action. When it does so, it deals an additional 1d6 points of electricity damage with each of its natural attacks until the start of its next turn, but is staggered on its next turn. A pismire can use this ability three times per day, but must wait 1d4 rounds between uses.

[newyorkcitywater]

join the Pismire Appreciation Society

[themonsterblogofmonsters]

Pismire

Small insectoid creatures, Pismires are found in marshy areas where they feed largely on the plentiful rotting vegetation. Cousins to ants, despite vastly different appearances, they are known for the odd patterns they etch on the wood they eat and upon each other; indecipherable etchings not dissimilar to those of Scriverbugs. Pismires are generally found in large colonies, though this is not their natural state. Instead, one Pismire will seek food and, having found it, often be swarmed by their kin. Once the food is devoured they will disperse and a new colony will form at a new site of food.

Pismires are known most especially for the etchings they leave on cauldrons; never completely eating their way through the metal, cauldrons etched by Pismires tend to create potions with odd quirks - never harmful, but always something a little off from expectation in a consistent way. Certain etchings may make a potion smoother and more runny, another etched cauldron may create more potent brews, while a third may instead cause sparks to come out of the nose of whomever drinks the potions brewed in it. Such cauldrons are often considered novelties, but studies on the nature of the etchings is ongoing by Potionmasters and Unspeakables alike.

(Image Source)

(Image is of MtG’s card Fretwork Colony. Read about Pismire in lore over Here. I hate that I have to include this but PLEASE DO NOT DELETE THE IMAGE SOURCE OR MY CAPTION.) 

[ukdamo]

I Saw a Peacock

Quentin Blake

I saw a peacock, with a fiery tail, I saw a Blazing Comet, drop down hail, I saw a Cloud, with Ivy circled round, I saw a sturdy Oak, creep on the ground, I saw a Pismire, swallow up a Whale, I saw a raging Sea, brim full of Ale, I saw a Venice Glass, Sixteen foot deep, I saw a well, full of men's tears that weep, I saw their eyes, all in a flame of fire, I saw a House, as big as the Moon and higher, I saw the Sun, even in the midst of night, I saw the man, that saw this wondrous sight.