Taking Care Of Business

 

A busy morning. Get up, feed the Blue, make hot tea, enjoy that tea on the back porch while scanning the news, say Morning Prayer, you might say "Mattins," walk to the Pick 'n Steal, observe a new iteration of the Meth Shack, get back to the Compound, answer emails and then... drive over to Tom's Tire to get your rig inspected.

You have to do it every year, the State demands it, and we must obey. But it's no big deal, just 7 bucks and an excuse to go to Montes for a delicious brisket burrito. Tasty and then some. Next stop? 

A dinosaur museum, conveniently next to the diner. It used to be a filling station and then something else, followed by something else, and something else again, amounting to yet another vacant, asset stripped country lot. But now it's a dinosaur museum. 

I ambled over, pleasantly aglow with brisket and homemade tortilla's, only to be ambushed by a fit young fella with a dinosaur T and a Ho Chi Minh, obviously a paleontologist. "What's up, man!" he asked. I looked him straight in his expensively rimless glasses and asked, right on the nail, "Is this museum open?" To be fair, it rarely is, and he said yes, step straight on in, which I did.

What a great little museum! Big fossils of the ferocious beasts that used to roam North Central Texas, and small fossils too, to say nothing of aboriginal artifacts. These, if you know where to look, which I mostly don't, can be found by the boxfull here in Hill and Bosque counties. How old are they? Good question.

Museum over, collect the rig, get it registered, go to the 1st Inconvenience Bank and then to the lake. I won't lie, it was quite chilly, only about 100*. Is it too hot to fish when your eyelids start dropping sweat on the inside of your cunningly polarized glasses? Hardly, all the more incentive to carry on regardless.

4 Blue Gill later it was time to head home, in yet another episode of being glad to be in Texas.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

DFTR

I feel this relevant,

LSP

Cooking With LSP

Typical Cooking Kukri

Ah yes, cooking with LSP, that tired old trope. Tired! No, this is a recipe that's ever old and ever new, equally at home in the wintry wastes of Northern England and the oven intense heat of a Texan summer. (Stop it, I'm warning you. Ed.). OK, here it is, Cottage Pie, and it starts at the grill.

A Grill

You know how it goes. Grill up some 80/20 burgers, yes they're delicious, eat half, freeze the rest, repeat. A week or so later open the freezer and behold the frozen medium rare, seared patties. Defrost the icy offerings and chop up an onion, celery, and a carrot. Saute the veg for a few minutes until it smells and looks right. You'll know, then add a clove or more of minced garlic. I prefer more, you may not, no rule.

Add  Some Flour, It's Not Hard

Next add the meat, stir it 'round, break it up, and simmer on medium high 'til it looks right, as in browned. Perhaps you think that's a sly, racist, reference to POCs. It's not, we're just talking cooking. Meat and veg together as one, add 1/4 cup of flour. 

Chuck it in, don't be afraid, then mix in 4 tbs of tomato paste, 1/2 cup of cheap as you like red wine, 2 cups of beef broth, 1 tsp Thyme, 2 dried Bay Leaves, 2 tbs Worcestershire Sauce, salt, pepper and chili powder to taste. Alright, the chili's not trad, but I like it, and I'm willing to bet that dry English mustard wouldn't go amiss either. Anyway...

Simmer Down!

Simmer this beast until the sauce reaches desired consistency. I let it run on medium high, stirring occasionally, until the oil and sauce start to separate, as in Bolognese or curry. Your call, just don't leave off in a fit of weakness and find yourself with a watery sauce. That's an error.

Just Enough Potatoes

Sauce/gravy achieved, take it off the heat and let it cool down. This will, maybe, prevent the filling of the pie from seeping into its mashed potato top. Not a disaster if it does, but better if it doesn't; preserve the integrity of the pie, as we should the electoral process itself.

Most Awesome

Potatoes mashed, cover the sauce with the creamy spuds, sprinkle with Parmesan or some other cheese, grind pepper over the thing, add a tbs of butter or olive oil, and put it in the oven at 350 until golden brown. Perhaps you want to texture the mashed potato top, maybe add a slogan. Up to you, some say it makes for a better pie.

Cottage Pie

Kick back for 30 minutes, have a glass of wine, sharpen a kukri,  load magazines, clean weapons, whatever, then take the pie out of the oven, let it rest, and fall upon your scoff.

Like a Warrior,

LSP

Rock Apes

 

When you think Rock Ape your mind instantly goes to the RAF Regiment, but not so fast. Rock Apes, Batatuts or Nguoi Rung, people of the forest, are evidently a form of apelike, bipedal cryptid living in the jungles of far east Asia. Travelling in packs, the apemen would attack US patrols along the Cambodia/Laos border. A veteran states:

Rock apes are the real thing. I saw a band of them up on "Carlie Ridge" in Quang Nam Province in the spring of 1970. It was nightfall and I saw them through a Starlite scope. 10-15 of them headed away from us up a steep incline. They weren't VC because they walked as a pack side by side in the jungle and not in a military type line. They all looked to be very broad bodied and up to 5 ft tall.

 

He was lucky, Nguoi Rung were allegedly known to hurl rocks at people invading their territory and attack potential aggressors with utter, apelike ferocity. There were apparently so many sightings towards the end of the war that the Communist Vietnamese Party sent scientists to investigate.

One, Dr. Vo Quy from Hanoi, discovered footprints and made a cast of the imprint, which was wider than a human foot and too big for an ape. Another expert, Tran Hong Viet, discovered similar prints in 1982, in remote jungle.

Witnesses report that Rock Apes grow up to 5' in height, are covered with brown fur, broad shouldered and show no fear, or very little, of humans. It's suggested their remote location accounts for this; having never met the ferocity of Homo Sapiens, the apemen attacked in ignorance. Or, possibly, they regarded seemingly weaker humans as easy prey.

Regardless, some of the few people who read this mind blog have been to those jungles. Have you seen or heard of these creatures? There's plenty of evidence that they're there, and I feel that they're possibly living fossils, like Coelacanths but hominins, remnants of our evolutionary tree, alive today. Or not.

Your Call,

LSP

The Age Of Man

 

It's commonly accepted that modern man, Homo Sapiens, evolved in Africa in a Kenyan garden of Eden around 350,000 BC (Pleistocene) and spread out from there, eventually reaching Europe around 40,000 BC, and the America's some 30,000 years later across the Bering Strait land bridge.

Typical

All well and good, and the schema runs something like this: Ancient apes evolve into smarter apes, who evolve into still smarter apes, until over millions of years you get apelike semi-humans, hominins. Then, at last, in the middle Pleistocene, Homo Sapiens arrives, following on from Homo Erectus. The latter being the "missing link" between us and the ape people of prehistory.

Eoliths, which you can see are clearly not shaped in any way at all

It sounds good, but what if stone tools were found dating to a far earlier period in the earth's history, say the Miocene (23-5 million years BC), in the earth's Tertiary? What's more, tools which were indistinguishable from their counterparts in East Africa (Olduvai) in the Pleistocene some million years later. Or, for that matter, from stone tools made by modern humans, in Africa and elsewhere.

Yet More Ancient Stone

Without getting down in the weeds in an admittedly complex and fractious subject, what if Homo Sapiens is far older than currently thought, and existed with hominins for many hundreds of thousands of years, perhaps interbreeding, as we apparently did with Neanderthals? What then.

Out of Africa?

All the history books would have to be rewritten, for a start, and dates pushed back much further. More seriously, the process and theory of evolution itself would come under question. As opposed to something gradual, taking place in tiny increments over thousands of years, we'd be faced by the sudden emergence of rational man at a very early date. 

Ahem

Gradualism to catastrophism? Perhaps. Maybe the same impetus that drove the explosion of megafauna after the cataclysmic demise of the dinosaurs drove the remarkable rise of our early human cousins and humanity itself. Then again, can intelligence evolve into reason? C.S. Lewis, famously, says no, the two are qualitatively different.

Hmmmmm

In the meanwhile, here at the Compound, sweet and sour pork's on the menu.

Bifacial Chipped Flint Forever,

LSP

Kill Shot?

 

Via Intrepid Reporter:

ALL... of the infected are vaccinated... These reports could be an early sign of ADE, Antibody-Dependent Enhanced breakthrough infections. This would potentially be really bad...

 

 

In order to make sure there's a BIG wipeout later, they made and designed a NonVax, and have been using it to start the process. They used the fear factor to get as many people on board as possible, and set a date to 'trigger' it off. Reason I say that is, they're currently freaking the fuck out because ONLY 56% is supposedly vaxxed. And right now? Part of the freakout is that the naturally occurring mutation (Delta Variant) is starting to activate the kill shot too early.

Oops.

LSP

In The Heat of The Day

 

What is it they say, only mad dogs, Englishmen, and members of tactical signals brigades go out in the noonday sun. Or something like that, and it's what we did, the mission being to catch some fish even if it was 100 degrees in the shade.

Sure enough they were on and before you could say Das Kapital, perch were snapping and tugging at the lines like the voracious predators they are. I pulled out a couple of fierce little beasts, looked over at the kid and boom, something slammed into his hook and it was rod double, drag out action. No fooling.

What was this monster, a cat, a bass, an enormous drum? No, it was a dinner plate sized blue gill, perhaps a Zeta Variant, and easily the best fish of the day. What a great result. Then, after another hour or so of catching we started to melt and headed for home, a good afternoon at the water well spent.

In other news, the Pope's attacking the Latin Mass. There are two classes of being which hate Latin, schoolboys and Satan.

Fish on,

LSP

Mary Magdalene

It's the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene today, who was exorcized of seven devils. We see her in the Gospels at the foot of the Cross and she's the first person to witness Christ's resurrection. In the West, she's held to be the "sinner" in Luke 7:36-50, and the sister of Martha and Lazarus.

The Eastern church believes she retired to Ephesus and lived with the Virgin Mary until her death. St. Gregory of Tours supports this view, but there's another tradition, in which the saint travels to France with Martha, Lazarus, Maximin and others, following the execution of James in Jerusalem. Between them, they convert Provence, with Lazarus and Maximin becoming bishops.

New Advent says this:

When the time of her death arrived she was carried by angels to Aix and into the oratory of St. Maximinus, where she received the viaticum; her body was then laid in an oratory constructed by St. Maximinus at Villa Lata, afterwards called St. Maximin. History is silent about these relics till 745, when according to the chronicler Sigebert, they were removed to Vézelay through fear of the Saracens. No record is preserved of their return, but in 1279, when Charles II, King of Naples, erected a convent at La Sainte-Baume for the Dominicans, the shrine was found intact, with an inscription stating why they were hidden. In 1600 the relics were placed in a sarcophagus sent by Clement VIII, the head being placed in a separate vessel. In 1814 the church of La Sainte-Baume, wrecked during the Revolution, was restored, and in 1822 the grotto was consecrated afresh. The head of the saint now lies there, where it has lain so long, and where it has been the centre of so many pilgrimages.

 

What do I believe? The Ephesus story is more prosaic, perhaps more attune to the spirit of the age. But Provence is romantic, miraculous, and chivalric, so I choose that. You might think otherwise, no rule.

Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

God bless,

LSP

I'm Covid Confused

 

Would That be a Carbon Spewing Private  Charter Jet?

I'm confused, Covid confused. We've been bombarded, especially by Democrats, with a barrage of wearing masks is very important because it protects us and others from the deadly Bat Bug. In fact, it's so important that it's federally mandated for air travel. 

Wear a mask or die or kill your loved one, runs the compelling line. Same with getting vaxxed. Get that salvation vax or you'll get the Kung Flu and die, you might even kill someone else in the process. It's like a civic duty.

If Only

That in mind, why did a crew of Democrats fly from Texas to DC without masks and why have six(?) of them, despite being fully vaxxed, come down with the China Virus? That doesn't make any sense, do you see my confusion? 

I don't men to be obtuse, but if masks were important, as the Democrat Mile High Club insists they are, how come they aren't all masked up? Strange, right. And if the all important vax works, how come vaxxed people, see Israel and Democrat jetsetters et al, get the deadly disease despite burning incense on the altar of Big Pharma?

Yum

It's strange, isn't it. Let's rephrase the conundrum with a riddle. If anthropocentric climate change is so deadly as to melt ice caps and flood the coastal regions of fragile planet earth, why are the champions of the green crusade buying seafront mansions.

Appalling Bad Taste

Could it be that our elite transnational overlords know something we can only guess at? Don't say Soylent Green. In the meanwhile, mask up, vax up, and OBEY.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

Cheer Up! Kids!

Feeling miserable?

Happens.

So cheer up.

Vindice, 

LSP

PS. With apologies to Theodore.

A Short Sunday Evening Reflection

 

In today's Gospel, Mark 6:30-44, we saw Christ miraculously multiply loaves and fish to feed 5000, a physical feast which points to a heavenly one. The elements of the miracle are telling.

5 loaves for the 5 books of the Law given by God to Moses on Sinai, the law of righteousness and love spoken to by the Prophets. And so there are two fish, for the twofold summary of the divine commandments, to love God and neighbor, as enunciated by Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets.

This Law is fulfilled in Christ, he is the love of God incarnate, righteousness itself, so the bread and fish ultimately represent him. Jesus, the bread of life, will miraculously feed the people of the new covenant with himself, he does so in the Eucharist. I found this helpful, from Benedict XVI:

The dual commandment to love God and neighbor encloses the two aspects of a sole dynamism of the heart and of life. Jesus thus achieves the ancient revelation, not in adding an unedited commandment, but by realizing in himself and in his own salvific action the living synthesis of the two great words of the old covenant: “You will love your God the Lord with all your heart …” and “you will love your neighbor as yourself” (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18).

In the Eucharist, we contemplate the sacrament of this living synthesis of the law: Christ gives us, with himself, the full realization of the love for God and the love for our brothers. And this love of his, he communicates to us when we are nourished by his Body and his Blood. This is when what St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in today’s reading is achieved: “You broke with the worship of false gods and became the servants of the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). This conversion is the beginning of the path of holiness that the Christian is called to achieve in his own existence.

 

You broke with the worship of false gods and became servants of the living and true God. This conversion is the beginning of the path of holiness that the Christian is called to achieve in his own existence. Yes indeed.

God bless,

LSP

Some Kind of Cult?

 

I'm beginning to wonder.

Is this some kind of...

Bipartisan, across the aisle...

Cult?

Disturbing, isn't it.

LSP