Heads up!

 

Cold hands, warm heart.

It's supposed to reach the sixties today, so spring fever is running pretty high at the Key Compound. Birds are singing in the morning. More lawn is exposed as the glaciers retreat. Yes, there's a chance of snow next week, but it's not a serious amount. Besides, I can't think that far ahead. If I could, my life would be a lot more organized. 

Now that it looks like Old Man Winter is finally lurching out of here, I can pass along one of the secrets for how I survived. 

The thing that bothers me most about the winter is probably that my hands get so desperately cold. Well, this year I Took Steps. And enlisted technology. Behold, the battery powered heated gloves.

Each glove has a little power pack that zips into a pocket. You can run the heat on three different levels, but I can't tell the difference between them. They are waterproof and supposedly windproof, but since I don't ride a motorbike (for whom these things are intended) I can't really tell. 

The Inclemency Gauntlet

Yes, they're from China, and yes, I bought them from our oligarchical friends at Amazon. It's almost impossible to not buy from China. Even if the label doesn't admit it, parts of everything are made there, or they just ship things to Vietnam or other places and pretend they originated there. Anyway, I couldn't find a pair of heated gloves made anywhere else.

Do they work? Yes, but not quite as much as I might have hoped. When it's really cold they don't seem to do much, but they definitely keep the edge off. The batteries last about an hour or so before recharging, which isn't bad. And I could still make snowballs while wearing them to throw at the dog. So, a success. 

For those chilly spring mornings, I'm planning to invent a heated umbrella -- it pours waves of warmth onto your head as you walk. Money in the bank, if I can think of a way to keep heat from rising.

Fred's Book Club: Mine, Mine, Mine!

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen and book lovers of all ages! This week on the Hump Day book feature known as the Humpback Writers (get it? ha ha) we have a classic adventure novel, one of the world's most famous, a novel that has set the tone for hundreds of imitators on page and screen, and so is likely to be shoved down the memory hole as soon as someone under age thirty realizes it ever existed. 

H. Rider Haggard was a classic Brit of his time, who spent years working in Britain's African colonies before beginning a career as a writer of adventure fiction. King Solomon's Mines, published in 1885, introduced his famous hero, hunter, and adventurer Allan Quatermain to the world. I think the words "hunter" and "colonies" are enough to explain why Haggard will one day be on the SJW chopping block.

But he shouldn't be. King Solomon's Mines is an extraordinary adventure, and a great yarn. It begins with Quatermain, who meets with one Sir Henry Curtis and a Captain Good. Sir Henry has been looking for his brother, who has gone missing in a supposed quest for the titular treasure. Quatermain has some information on that from a man he met named José Silvestre, and he shares the story:

“Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. ‘Untie it,’ he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper.

“Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: ‘The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was José da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the world—the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, señor; go yourself!’

“Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

“God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug him up. And then I came away.”

“Ay, but the document?” said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

“Yes, the document; what was in it?” added the captain.

“Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom José’s translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it is.”

The map, of course, supposedly can lead one to the fabled mines of King Solomon himself, source of endless diamonds -- if one can survive. They arrange an expedition, one that requires crossing a desert. In the biggest gut-check I think I've ever seen in fiction, the expedition realizes that if the one source of water shown on the 300-year-old map is not active, or not there, or not exactly where the poor map says it will be, they will be doomed to a horrible death; they cannot carry enough water to make a round trip. And they are aware that no known expedition has ever survive this quest. 

People looking for racism in the book will find it easily enough. Some natives behave strangely when Captain Good removes his false teeth -- which to the isolated people would be like me seeing a guy pull off his head: 

“What does that beggar say?” asked Good.

“He says we are going to be killed,” I answered grimly.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Good; and, as was his way when perplexed, he put his hand to his false teeth, dragging the top set down and allowing them to fly back to his jaw with a snap. It was a most fortunate move, for next second the dignified crowd of Kukuanas uttered a simultaneous yell of horror, and bolted back some yards.

“What’s up?” said I.

“It’s his teeth,” whispered Sir Henry excitedly. “He moved them. Take them out, Good, take them out!”

He obeyed, slipping the set into the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

In another second curiosity had overcome fear, and the men advanced slowly. Apparently they had now forgotten their amiable intention of killing us.

But the most determined, courageous, and clever character in the book is a black African. Moreover, Quatermain is tired of hunting, sick of the damage being done to his beloved Africa. So if you ask me, Haggard was well ahead of his time in many regards. 

The story leads to a tremendous battle scene, and boy oh boy does it look in my mind's eye like a classic Hollywood cast-of-thousands fight. And of course, there's a death-defying descent into the earth to find the treasures concealed within. 

I say, if you want a taste of old-fashioned thrills and chills, you can hardly do better than King Solomon's Mines, unless it's one of Haggard's other novels, like She or Ayesha. I read this Dover edition, but you can check it out for free thanks to Mongo and our other friends at Project Gutenberg. The book is foundational for the "Lost World" type of story, and set a blueprint for high adventure that persisted for a hundred years. 

The patron saint of the canceled.

Yesterday was the feast of St. John of God, a Portuguese born in 1495, of whom many interesting stories are told. By some accounts he went to war in the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, fighting the French and later the Turks. He fell away from his childhood piety and lost his moral bearing. Eventually he decided to mend his ways, and went all in for the Lord, devoting himself to helping the poor and the sick. 

There was one story about him that made me think he would be a wonderful patron saint for those facing public cancellation in these strange and wicked times. We are supposed to be a society of the free, but as you well know, making a public statement of a sort that everyone believed a decade ago (such as, riots are bad, men can't be women just by wearing a dress, all lives are important) can get you fired from your job, blackballed from your industry, doxxed, attacked at your home, blacklisted from "social" media, and if some asshat is feeling particularly asinine, maybe SWATted while you sleep. 

My use of the term "blackballed" just now might be enough to do me in, but fortunately I'm a nobody and I don't use Twitter. If I were to get the attention of the social justice orcs, I would know better than to apologize -- apologies are never accepted by the mob, and just motivate them to keep burning and pitchforking.

Modern mob justice has no interest if its victim even really did anything wrong. It just likes to collect heads. If I offend in this blog, it's probably a joke, and if they don't like it, the humorless dweebs should try telling a joke themselves; if I say something true that they don't like, I'm not apologizing for the truth. Of course, we know for the mob, truth is never a defense. 

According to the Catholic News Agency, John of God did not make a secret of his often disreputable past: 

The Bishop of Granada approved his work, and gave him the name “John of God.” A group of volunteers came to accompany him in his work, many of whom had first come to him while in dire need themselves.

      Others, who resented his work, assaulted John's reputation by focusing on his past sins – but John, unfazed in his humility, would acknowledge the truth of what was said, as a testament to God's grace in his life. He once offered to pay a woman to tell the entire city what she had been saying about him in private.

And that's why I suggest John of God would be a good patron for those who have come under attack by Internet mobs. He was repentant of his past, and he did not apologize to those who tried to ruin his reputation. He had already repented to the One who mattered, so he knew the truth wouldn't hurt him. If others attacked him anyway, he was humble enough to take it and man enough to see it through.

St. John of God, pray for us! The whole world's gone batty and everything is upside down. Help us be humble and faithful enough to endure, help us be brave, and help us not to apologize for telling the truth. 

Women.

Today is International Women's Day, and good for them. 

Some guys think a holiday like this is silly -- women outnumber us in America by 50.8 to 49.2, and since when do we celebrate a special day for the majority? There's no White Folks Day or Hetero Pride Day or Lottery Losers Day or People Who Hated Algebra Day. Special days are reserved to give minority groups attention.

Well, I don't care. Honestly, I don't personally know any women who are going out there to make a big deal of it. In New York we can barely go to a restaurant, never mind a parade. I think women, including my wife, will be happy to take pride in the advances that they have made in society in the last 150 years and see what Google is doodling for it, and that's about it. I'm just glad I don't have to buy anything. 

Tobacco Celebrates Women, 1984

This still sounds like I'm being a typical patronizing caveman, doesn't it? I guess so. No offense is meant, though. I just don't get excited over dates that have no religious or national significance. Women's Day's date of March 8 doesn't commemorate the day women went over the hill to defeat the forces of the International Men's Army or something; they just picked March 8 for no reason I can find. Russian women seem to have been the ones who settled on the date, which is even stranger to me, since March 8 is still very cold in most of Russia. I guess they had their reasons. If I were looking for a date that would be good to get a parade and show of force up, I'd go with June 5. 

Again, I'm not picking on women. I barely commemorate my own birthday. My ancestry is a mixed bag, so I don't get worked up over ethnic holidays. Even St. Patrick's Day has lost its pride of place for my Irish side since I stopped drinking. 

 

I think women are pretty awesome, and I know that women are as smart as men, and particular women are smarter than every guy I know. I'm glad women can stand on their own without men, own whatever they want, do whatever they like, and so on, and I'm sad and angered for societies where they can't. And I dislike men who put on a dress and pretend to be female so they can gain unfair advantages in sports or make their stupid résumés look better to get government jobs. That's as bad as a white guy painting his face and applying for minority grants.

So that's all I got. If you are a woman and you're celebrating the day, enjoy it! You won't hear a bad word out of me about females. If you want to hear someone say anything bad about them, ask my wife. She thinks teenage girls are evil and women are worse backbiters, backstabbers, and passive-aggressive manipulators than men; that men are liars but aren't nearly as good at lying as women. But you didn't hear that from me. 

The Bible and broccoli.

I suspect most husbands find themselves cast into the outer darkness (i.e., the guest room or equivalent) from time to time, due to the unpleasant experience of -- dare I say it? -- gas. 

Why do broccoli and similar vegetables call forth Maria? VeryWell Health says "The fiber in them is not completely digested in the small intestine. When the good bacteria in the large intestine go to work digesting it, gas is created as a result." Lying down on the job again, eh, small intestine? This will come up on your review. 

Of course, it all could be much worse. We could be Antiochus.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a typically arrogant Hellenistic king, enemy of the Jews, just the sort of schmuck destined for a bad end in the Old Testament. According to 2 Maccabees 9, he found himself being attacked on many sides, and having been chased out of Persia at one point, decided to take it out on Jerusalem. He said, “I will make Jerusalem the common graveyard of Jews as soon as I arrive there.”

Spoiler alert: This did not happen.

So the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him down with an incurable and invisible blow; for scarcely had he uttered those words when he was seized with excruciating pains in his bowels and sharp internal torment, a fit punishment for him who had tortured the bowels of others with many barbarous torments.

It's important to keep Antiochus's cruelty in mind as the chapter continues, because his punishment is one of the nastiest in the Bible:

The body of this impious man swarmed with worms, and while he was still alive in hideous torments, his flesh rotted off, so that the entire army was sickened by the stench of his corruption. Shortly before, he had thought that he could reach the stars of heaven, and now, no one could endure to transport the man because of this intolerable stench. At last, broken in spirit, he began to give up his excessive arrogance, and to gain some understanding, under the scourge of God, for he was racked with pain unceasingly. When he could no longer bear his own stench, he said, “It is right to be subject to God, and not to think one’s mortal self equal to God.”

Hope you weren't eating! 

Antiochus sets his affairs in order by naming his son successor, and then, "this murderer and blasphemer, after extreme sufferings, such as he had inflicted on others, died a miserable death in the mountains of a foreign land," stinkin' all the way. 

Now, perhaps it is a bit extreme to compare someone who has been ingesting broccoli, or White Castle sliders, or huge amounts of garlic, or beer, or anything pungent to the vile, diseased doom of a vile regent. That all depends on how the people you live with react. 

It's probably best to go outside and let the breeze blow away the eau de ugh, then take a shower. It beats a miserable death in the mountains of a foreign land -- or sleeping on the sofa every night.

Humanity: Too stupid or what?

On the job!

I was going through a text for an updating project, and was saddened to read a section about how epidemics of the future will be handled. I'd love to quote it, but it would cost me my client (NDA, don't you know). However, the gist is, or was, back in those more optimistic times not so long ago, that medical professionals had learned from studying pandemics, and we the public could be assured that if a contagious outbreak were to arise, plans were in place to contain it quickly and protect the populace. 

Uh-huh.

So, as we've learned over the last year and change, this statement is true... except for a few little tiny exceptions. Like:

🦠If the nation where the disease starts doesn't want it known, it can cover up, arrest journalists and scientists, keep everyone in the dark while sending infected citizens far and wide, and never pay a price for its wickedness. 

🦠If the United States pays ten times more toward the World Health Organization than (let's pick a random example) China, but China gives lots of nice things to the WHO officers, then the U.S. is the world's worst nation and China is not to blame for anything. More important to fund the officers than the office.

🦠If medical health professionals really hate the president, then they can contradict everything he says, even if he got the information from them, and they will never be held accountable.

🦠Public health professionals will do anything to help the public, anything at all, as long as it doesn't have a chance of adversely affecting their careers.

🦠Public health professionals think that rioting and looting is less of a danger than a worldwide pandemic, in fact they think it's good, mainly because they don't live anywhere near the rioting and looting. And because they seem to think racism killed more than half a million Americans last year.

🦠Public health officials will go along with any program, even one like putting sick people in nursing homes, which a high school biology student wouldn't do, if they think they can get away with it, and especially if it means being able to refuse help from the president that they really hate, who sends hospital ships and things. 

🦠Politics is much more important than actual lives. Lives are temporary, but politics is forever.

🦠A lot of American governors really like ordering people around. "Emergency powers" is like having the One Ring.

🦠Leftism is the enemy of everything, right up to and including the distribution of vaccines. 

🦠Thank God Almighty this Chinese Death Virus is only a fraction as dangerous as the Spanish Flu, because if we had the 1918 flu in 2020, the nation would have been completely destroyed in order to save it.