The Unofficial Badmovies.org Random Thought Thread!

[Alex]

Got up about 8am today. I should have got up earlier to pack, but that's something I couldn't be bothered with. Should really have packed last night, but its only one day away and I can pack what I need in twenty minutes. Kristi made pancakes for everyone with chocolate drops in them. Could tell everyone wanted more, but she was looking so tired I wasn't letting anyone ask her to cook more.

Besides we still have 1/3 of the Beast to finish eating.

Finally packed and picked up all the paperwork I needed. Kristi caused a moment of panic when she told me she'd read the paperwork and I was supposed to take some kind of log book with me. Having no idea what she was talking about and knowing what ever it was I had no chance of getting it on a Sunday I grabbed the paperwork they'd sent me and reading through it still couldn't find what she was talking about. Turned out it was something for aircrew to take, not groundcrew.

Went to the shop to pick up some supplies for the day. Took Arron with me and chatted a bit with him about him temper problems. He said when he is already doing something and his mum tells him to do it, it really frustrates him. I can understand that, it gets me the same way. I wonder if he gets as annoyed as me if I am looking for something and someone says "Is it in place X?" I always feel like answering "If I knew where the damn thing was I wouldn't be damn well looking for it." Anyway, at the shop I got flowers for Kristi. I always like getting her fresh flowers. No idea why it is important to me to keep her supplied with decaying organic matter, but it is.

Some of my militant vegan friends are going on about how the world would be a better place and we'd all have enough food if everyone ate a vegan diet. Yeah, if you completely ignore human nature maybe. Trouble is that there is enough food already to feed everyone. Where the problem is, is in how we distribute it. Although, giving everyone enough food would mean more people, which in turn would mean we'd have to clear more forests and marshland and what ever remaining natural habitats remain to house more people until we end up in a situation where people are starving again. And guess what, all the animals we used to eat are now extinct. Hard truth there is, we have just too many people. I think we feel we are too self important as a species to recognise that, rather than seeing that we are just part of a whole, and we need to do more to fit in with the world rather than trying to bend it to our will before it becomes a lot less habitable.

Or maybe we will get lucky and science will come up with a miracle. Who knows?

I keep wandering way off tangent.

Said my goodbyes to Kristi before leaving the house as she was falling asleep on her feet even after just a couple of hours of being awake. She tend's to be ok in the evenings, but mornings are a killer for her. From the last pregnancy I divided things up into two stages. The first stage was sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day for the first couple of months. Stage two is more fun though and I at least have that to look forward to. Anyway, wandering way off topic again. Katrina, Leona and Arron walked me up to the camp gates and we said our goodbyes there. Should see them either in October when I go down for Stewarts wedding (which reminds me, I need to think about what I am going to put in that speach. Or since I have so much material to work with, what I am going to leave out).

Shame they live 6 hours away. Anyway, got MT to drive me out to Inverness airport. The driver was one of the guys I learned to drive from. He is now a civilian working for the RAF as a driver so we caught up on what we'd both been doing for the past 18 months. I was booked to fly with EasyJet. You can tell that was booked by the accounts department. If I'd got to do it myself like last time it would have been British Airways again. I keep expecting to see livestock in the aisles whenever I fly with EasyJet. Last time I flew with them it was when I was travelling down to Halton to start my basic training 16 years, one month and two days ago. There were eight other guys from Scotland all travelling down on the same day. The only one I can remember the name of is Johnny McAlaney. Real shame what happened to him in the end. Anyway, diverting again. Flew down the Luton (same destination as last time). Airport seems to have grown a lot since I was last here. Glad I chose not to drive to Henlow from Luton. The roads getting out of the airport seemed to have designed by Escher. When I went to get a cab I saw a line of Muslim's all sitting in the driving seat. I shouldn't be, but in my job I can't help being a little cagey around them, but in the end it wasn't one of them who was my driver. Really must work harder on that one. I mean my wife is an immigrant after all, but the fear of the unknown is often more powerful than your rational mind. At least I can accept its something I need to do better with. The gods know, I've had a lot more non-Muslims try to kill me than Muslims so not sure why they should get singled out for special treatment.

Anyway, got to the camp, picked up my room keys. Looks like I might be the only person in this three story block. Got in my room, unpacked, had a quick nosy about the block to see what facilities it had then phoned Kristi and my mum just to let them know I'd arrived safely. Went for a shower. A sign outside said it was a mixed sex facility and people were to be complementry. What, if a woman is in there I should say "Hey, nice ass!"???

That brings me up to date. Sitting here, waiting on the med board in the morning to find out if my accumulated injuries mean I'll get a medical discharge or if I can keep on serving and just not have to do the running fitness test. Not feeling nervous about it. Pretty confident I know what the result will be. My rank and trade are thinly stretched right now and I am not lucky enough to get a medical discharge with the accompaning pension and benefits lol.

Anyway, I am going to write some of next weeks D&D adventure since I am stuck in a room with only a bed and my computer for amusement for the night.

Its not been a terrible day, but compared to other days recently it has sucked.

[ER]

About a year before I was born, temperatures plunged, snows fell as they had not in living memory, a veritable mini-ice age intruded, and the Ohio River froze solid, stranding coal barges, which caused an energy crisis right in the middle of the coldest, harshest winter in ninety years. The Coast Guard deployed helicopters to rescue men from the barges, flying them to temporary shelters in church undercrofts, and empty school gymnasiums. Icicles a hundred feet long in some cases, if reports are to be accepted, formed on underpasses and bridges. Churches closed, malls, airports, hospitals, TV and radio stations went off the air, newspapers were printed but not often distributed. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare, fights and small riots occurred as housewives (in the language of the time) fought one another like gladiatrices over chuck roast and peanut butter, as well as the really important things like Pepsi and Kool Aid. Finally, picked clean as if by locusts, the grocery stores closed too.

Under the psychological strain a sort of carnival attitude came upon the region, merry at first, before cabin fever oozed into brains after days without leaving the house to go to work. People hiked miles on semi-cleared sidewalks and dared to trek across the river from Ohio to Kentucky and back, a bold feat since if the ice broke with you, you were almost certainly facing death, your perfectly preserved corpse destined to wash ashore somewhere between Covington, Kentucky and the Mississippi Delta.

My father, about twenty, made the walk, so did his friend Steve. They dribbled basketballs as they went, scaring many who thought this would crack the ice under them, and then from a position 3/4ths of the distance across, they bounced the balls off the support towers of the 1860s suspension bridge that linked two states.

Nor was the walk as easy as it sounds, since unlike a pond, which freezes to mirror-like smoothness perfect for skating, a river given over to ice buckles under the weight of the current backed up behind it for hundreds of miles, creating an uneven surface with protrusions uplifted the height of a tall man. My father climbed one, possibly ten feet high, he claims, and there stood as no one else had in a century, vowing to Steve he'd tell his offspring about all this one day: and so he did.

In that legendary though largely unrecalled winter, schools were closed for six weeks at a time, restaurants shut their heat off, President Carter asked everyone to turn their thermostats to fifty-five degrees, and snow drifts surpassed the tops of fences, like dunes, letting dogs run amok as they chose. Water pipes burst and faucets inside homes ran dry. Families in old residences with cisterns were suddenly the lucky ones. People slept in insulated underwear, and sweaters, ski caps and scarves.

The interstates famously became parking lots for a score of miles in any direction, with caravans of semis left stranded, stuck in snow at the worst of the blizzards (plural), out of fuel and abandoned in many other cases. Some unfortunate drivers, not knowing the danger, ran their heaters as they tried to sleep through the night. A few froze when their engines stopped, several died of carbon monoxide fumes. Most were probably just fine, though they gambled, knowingly or not.

Children by and large loved the excitement, the unexpected holidays from classes. My oldest cousin was about five and got to stay with our grandparents for a fortnight, simply because he had been there when the biggest blizzard hit and they had no way of getting him home when the next three rolled in over the weeks that came after. My grandpa put on cross country skies and traveled into town, two miles, and it took him an hour. A man there offered him cash money for some of the firewood he had stored out back, so Grandpa gave it to him for free, then took it back when the man turned out to be a scalper, selling the logs for five dollars each off a toboggan.

My grandma did the coolest thing of all, making snow cream and cooking over the fireplace, unperturbed by winter's bullying. She read, she sewed, she even danced with my grandpa to Elvis and the crooners from her own high school days. Not much could shake her spirits.

Eventually the blizzards stopped coming, the temperatures stayed below freezing for weeks, and plows created dirty mountains of snow thirty feet high and a quarter of a large parking lot in width, which lasted, according to legend, until Eastertime. Some who were there claim they saw some remaining ice piles around the time Star Wars came out that May, but I sort of doubt that...don't you?

When the thaw hit flood waters rushed down every gully and valley in the area, sending creeks and tributaries of the big river to the tops of their banks, evacuations came and families in low-lying places fled.

Everyone who lived through it said one day they'd tell about the winter, that those unborn would never grasp what it was like, even if they believed half of what they heard. But they were only partly right, it's not that the stories are disbelieved---we live amid too many marvels for doubt to be there anymore--it's that few in my generation or the one after care to think back. In a way why should we, it's over, it's done. But I always enjoy hearing about that winter, from those who were there. I think it tells us something about human nature and the fragility of civilized conduct.

All in all though that winter must have been otherworldly.

[indianasmith]

I remember that winter, although I was quite young.  Way down here in Texas, we had an ice storm so severe I was housebound without electricity for over a week!

[AoTFan]

I'm contemplating buying a crapton of those $.25 notebooks at Wal-Mart then seeing if I can flip them for massive profit six months or so down the road.  Only thing is, I think shipping would probably kill me...

[javakoala]

Most days I feel like "matt.exe" fails to load, probably due to a missing .dll file.

[Alex]

Went to my med board today and found out it had been cancelled on the 19th, but no one had seen fit to tell me. Spent 11 hours waiting in Luton airport for a flight back home.

Today definitly sucked.

[El Misfit]

Would be nice if the people next door, who is putting in new concrete, would fix the apron part of the curb in front of my house when they took it off...
In other news, Cable is going to be in the next Deadpool film.

[LilCerberus]

So, there's an eclipse in two weeks, & I'm hoping to drive down to South Carolina to see it.

Kinda wondering if I should try to get to the Columbia / Lexington area, or if I should try & make it to someplace in the Francis Marion National Forest.

I'm also wondering whether or not I should spend the money on AAA Roadside Insurance, since I'm alway having so much trouble being under that credit card.

SERIOUSLY! I WANT TO DO THIS!

[Alex]

When I got home last night Kristi had a beer sitting waiting for me. I sat down at my desk to enjoy it and was petting our new kitten (Dagon. We also have rabbits called Sylvanus and Pan). Turns out he likes to try and drink my beer. Guess Spryte is onto something there. He also seems to like to curl up either on my comfy chair of DOOOOOOM to sleep or just lie beside my computer chair and purr. Kristi is less enamoured of him as he climbs up her trousers and leaves her legs covered in claw marks.

[indianasmith]

About to sit down and try to get some writing done . . .

[LilCerberus]

RIP Glen Campbell

[El Misfit]

I'm not sure about you, but Hiroyuki Imaishi is friggen insane with some of his projects: Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann, Panty & Stocking with Garter Belt, and Kill la Kill. I love his work, total insanity.

[Rev. Powell]

I'm not sure about you, but Hiroyuki Imaishi is friggen insane with some of his projects:

I am also friggen insane with some of my projects.

[Rev. Powell]

Got stood up for a date for the first time ever last night.  I guess if you go on enough dates in your life it's bound to happen.

[indianasmith]

I have a mother in law and a lawn.
Both of them refuse to die.