Michael Kindt's Blog, page 400

Dæg byþ drihtnes sond, deore mannum,mære metodes leoht, myrgþ...

Dæg byþ drihtnes sond, deore mannum,
mære metodes leoht, myrgþ and tohiht
eadgum and earmum, eallum brice.

The Rune Poems are poems that list the letters of runic alphabets while providing an explanatory poetic stanza for the name of each letter. There are three such poems. The Old English rune poem, dated to the 8th or 9th century, has stanzas on 29 Anglo-Saxon runes. The above is the stanza on the rune Dæg (or Dagaz in Proto-Germanic), what we today would call the letter "D".

It means "Day" and I think it's lovely. Here's the stanza in Modern English:

Day, the glorious light of the Creator, is sent by the Lord;
it is beloved of men, a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor,
and of service to all.

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I'm starving.I am.I've always found that phrase funny."Hey, did...

I'm starving.

I am.

I've always found that phrase funny.

"Hey, did you hear about Todd?"

"No, what happened?"

"He fucking starved to death, man."

"In Columbus, Ohio?"

"Yep."

I could probably say something about privilege here, but I'm not that bored. Plus, I'm fucking starving.

So I'm cooking. I am making basmati rice with vegetables. The vegetables are leeks, asparagus, yellow bell pepper, purple onion, carrot, and more leeks because I love me some leeks.

Diced everything up and am sauteeing it in a scoche of olive oil. Once the veggies are a little softened, I will add several minced cloves of garlic and some grated ginger root. I will then toss it all with the rice, adding a little salt and pepper and curry and a dollop of sriracha. I will also add a little of the cooked quinoa that I have in the fridge for a some protein and to just get rid of it.

And then, oh boy, I am so gonna eat it all up, making numerous smacking noises and grunts.

Fucking A.

Photo

Just saw a post that called linguistic descriptivism a "leftist cause"

so what I wanna know is were the Commies behind the demise of the powdered wig?

It was a little windy here today and there's a slight leak...

It was a little windy here today and there's a slight leak under the kitchen sink.

YouTube is weird. And lovely.

So I ran out of Trout Stream. A complete and utter tragedy, I know. Angels were crying, the works. Trout Stream is one of my favorite tobaccos, so I can't be out of it. It's not acceptable. The last time I bought some was like 8 months ago, so I don't even remember where on the internet I got it. I don't smoke that much, perhaps once a day, but when I do I thoroughly enjoy it.

I just did a general search for Trout Stream pipe tobacco and ka-bang! a whole youtube world of pipe smokers was discovered.

It's very silly, just guys sitting around smoking their pipes on video. Very silly. I watched like two dozen of them. They just ramble, visit with the void. They talk about their dogs, "the wife", how they need to fix the porch, hunting. Truly random shit. They always mention what they're smoking and what type of pipe they're smoking it in. Sometimes, they'll give a review, but really it's just rambling. One guy, a delightful old man with a big ol' gray beard, talks about the weather outside his house. In every video. I watched several of them. He just sits there puffing away and talking about how he woke up to two inches of snow. "Nary a word from the weather man either," he said, reflectively.

Reflective is the only thing you can be while smoking a pipe, thus no matter what you do, you do it reflectively.

And it's international, too. I watched a Swede puff away bemusedly on the corn cob pipe he laid down heavy bucks for to get from the U.S. He opened the package bemusedly, loaded it bemusedly, and smoked it bemusedly. He was very Swedish and very bemused. Another video had an English chap (all English men are chaps, I've decided) talking about a lovely bed-n-breakfast he discovered while on holiday in Shropshire.

"Is this a cult?" I wondered. "How do I join?"

#nuts #balls #sack #bag #nards #bollocks #grapes #raisins (for...

#nuts #balls #sack #bag #nards #bollocks #grapes #raisins (for the less fortunate) #the creamery #so on

"The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from...

"The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible." — Salman Rushdie. (Artwork by Dave McKean).

A Thief in The Night of America

or How to Steal Medical Care

Let's say you're trying to fix your screendoor. Last night, it was terribly windy and it came open and flapped back and forth uselessly like a politician's tongue. You were in the next town over visiting family and were not home to interrupt the destruction.

So the screendoor is all loose and will no longer shut. It's hanging there, screaming WHITE TRASH to the neighborhood.  So you go to work on it with a Phillips screwdriver, trying to tighten the hinges, but it's a fucking bitch. You're struggling and struggling, even grunting. Suddenly, the screwdriver loses its grip on the hinge, flies up, and stabs you in the shoulder.

POP!

You go to the bathroom to clean the wound and look at it in the mirror. It's pretty bad, with a surprising amount of blood. It's a puncture wound, so hydrogen peroxide is out. You keep cleaning it, but the bleeding doesn't really stop. Plus it hurts like a motherfucker. You take a couple ibuprofens, but it's like throwing bricks into the Grand Canyon. Puncture wounds can get infected quite easily, so you worry and clean and worry and clean and say "Damn it" a bunch. You look at the screwdriver laying there on the toilet tank. It's rusty. You try to remember when the last time you got a tetanus shot was, but can't. It's been years, though.

You decide to go to the doctor, but you only have $274 to your name and you still have to buy groceries and keep gas in the car so you can get back and forth to work and school. That $274 has to last almost three weeks. It would, easily, if you didn't have to go to the doctor.

You drive one-handed across town to Rapid Care Clinic, where no appointment is needed. You're holding a wet, bloody rag over the wound as you drive. For fun, you pretend inside your head that you're a gunshot victim and are coming straight outta Compton.

"Thug lyfe," you say out loud and chuckle.

You note as you drive that your town is beautiful and is located in the wealthiest nation ever built by mankind upon this earth. The Roman Empire was nothing compared to America.

At the clinic, you fill out the form with lies. You say your name is Michael Kant, even though it's Michael Kindt. You make up a social security number, being sure to use the correct 3-digit prefix associated with Colorado. You give them the address of a Pizza Hut.

The doctor cleans out the wound with his magical sterile solution, closes it with a couple dissolvable sutures, and bandages everything up tight. He gives you a tetanus shot for good measure, plus a 3-day prescription of antibiotics as a precaution. He tells you how to keep it clean and to be on the lookout for any increased redness around the wound, as this is a sign of infection.

Off you go to the lobby, where, according to the form you filled out, the entire fee is due, all $322.46 of it. $125.50 of that is simply because you are a new patient.

"I only have $20," you tell the receptionist flatly and set the bill down on the counter. "Sorry." You'd shrug, but your shoulder hurts. "You'll have to bill me the rest, I guess. See ya."

Of course, you'll have to pay the full price for the antibiotics. If the doctor is a little bitch, he will obey his pharmaceutical overlords and prescribe you an expensive, name-brand medication. If he is a human being, he will prescribe you a much cheaper, generic version of the same shit. It all depends on if he wants to come back in his next life as a cockroach or not.

This won't work for anything super-serious or for anything requiring on-going care, but it works well for one-time colds and injuries, though. You may get caught. They may track you down. Who cares, though? So you damage your credit score, reducing your ability to become a debt serf. No big thang. True, a bad credit score can make it impossible to get certain jobs or rent certain apartments. As this century progresses, I'm sure it will be used to discriminate against people in other ways as well. If you need medical care, though, and have no money, what, exactly, are you supposed to do?

Anyway, God bless America!

*attaches flag pin to lapel*

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