The Miskatonic Manuscript by Vin Surprynowicz isn’t officially out yet. Release date is December 11, but I just received a beautiful hardcover review copy. The teaser on the dust jacket says in part: What if Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft didn’t just imagine the “resonator” in his 1920 short story “From Beyond”? What if Henry Annesley actually built the machine that allowed him to see into the Sixth Dimension -– and allowed creatures from The Other Side to invade us here? … [And] “What if they fought a War on Drugs . . . and someone fought back?” Good…
Category: Books and Movies
Funny how it works with these holiday Amazon listies. I might do five or six of them in a season and only one person will buy a single listed item.
But orders do increase and quite often the purchases are similar to the listings … but a different model. Or brand. Or color. Sometimes a mention of one type of gear will spark a little flurry of orders for related items. A link to a rifle scope will bring bipods, holsters, and books on reloading.
This post may do the same. I’m going to link to specific products, but it’s not the specific product that matters; this is a list of things everybody swears by. Some I’d regard as absolute necessities for every prepared person. Others are just those things that make you go, “Oh, I wish I’d had one of those five years earlier!”
And they may get the same reaction from people on your gift list.
For some reason, the NRA sat on its review of the notorious Armatrix iP1 “smart” gun and just recently released it. They probably didn’t mean it to be hilarious, but it is. Ten ways to lessen your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack. #BlackLivesMatter may get all the press, but Tommitrise Collins, college student and new mother, is a lot more impressive. Wendy McElroy found this one first, but it should be spread far and wide: thanks to asset forfeiture, U.S. cops now steal more property than all the nation’s burglars combined. What The Hunger Games movies say…
The barebones truth about life in the trackless woods. (H/T MJR) Well, that’s one reason to join ISIS. Larry Pratt: time to make it clear that we will not comply. Crybullies, crymobs, and the left’s whiny war on free speech. That last paragraph is a doozy. (Tip o’ hat to D.B.) Court rules for husband (and contract) in frozen embryos case. (Having a baby — or not having one — is a lot more complicated than it used to be.) The Che Cafe is in the red and fans want California taxpapers and university students to go on subsidizing it.…
Been deadlining, but all caught up now.
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While I had my face buried in my latest BHM house-fixup article, the world outside was getting hammered with the kind of rain that makes even a seasoned Northwesterner wonder if there’s an umbrella (or perhaps a submarine) in the house.
It’s been a decent year in life, but a tough one in the pocketbook (what with The Great Bathroom Project, more medical expenses than I’ve had in the last 25 years, and giving up my biggest client on one of those thorny, stubborn Issues of Principle). Pardon me for being blunt, but I need this Amazon Christmas season to be really, really big. So once a week between now and Chrismakwanzaahanukkahyule I’m going to feature a few cool Amazonian goodies. You faithful (and blessed) Amazon buyers know the drill. Enter Amazon through any of my Associate links and anything you…
Must get a few things done this morning, then will return to the “musings” I began the other day. Meantime, here’s some linkage … Never thought I’d see it, but here’s one pot-legalization initiative I hope falls on its corrupt, crony-capitalist face. What goes around comes around. Amazon is opening its first physical book store. The best cities for surviving the zombie apocalypse. Feel free to disagree. Is the USDA silencing scientists? Love (in a not-so-loving way) Conquest’s third law of politics. A happy (though also mysterious) dog tale via Shel in comments.
Back to the “musings” shortly. In the meantime, I must beat back the tide of open tabs … “If bacon is so bad, I don’t want to live.” Leisl Schillinger is lying about that. She wants to live — and live boundlessly well. Wil Wheaton is right!. The growing trend to expect creative people to work for free, even for large, wealthy organizations, is insane and it’s destroying us. Okay, I know it’s a few days late, but these two really are the best Halloween costumes “We need more movies like Steve Jobs so long as they’re not like Steve…
I’m reading — rereading, actually — the excellent book Isaac’s Storm, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.
One hundred and fifteen years later this remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. By a long margin. The San Francisco earthquake? The Chicago fire? The Great Peshtigo fire?* The Johnstown flood? The eruption of Mt. St. Helens? Hurricane Katrina? Forget them. All small potatoes when compared with what befell the people of Galveston.
BTW, for those who care … today is the 60th anniversary of the death of James Dean. Yes, it’s a tragedy to die young, but it’s quite a feat to achieve lasting glory (and become an eternal symbol of Troubled Youth) on the strength of just three movies. Impossible to imagine James Dean living to 84. I used to commemorate this day faithfully every year to the point where it became a running joke for my friends. Been lax about it lately. But sixty years dead and still going strong; that deserves some notice.