Not only that, but if you don’t want to eat the skin, just cut it in half and eat it with a spoon

Watermelon rind preserves and pickles are a staple in my family. One of my cousins grows them, so we all learned about making the most of them.

And they’re easy. Preserves in particular are just sugar, a few slices of lemon, and heat. That’s it, if you want the simplest version.

And they’re so yummy on a nice biscuit

I mean, c’mon.

Dude had to know he was doing something stupid. Which means he did it knowing exactly what the outcome could be. So fuck that guy.

I eat chicken. I have pet chickens. I have no issue with feeding already killed chickens to other animals. I have no problem with animals in the wild eating other animals.

But there’s a line. The line isn’t the eating, and it isn’t the killing. It’s how it’s done. You don’t just throw a live animal to a predator in captivity unless there’s no other way. And gators will eat anything, they aren’t some kind of panda or koala with a niche diet.

You don’t do it for entertainment, and that’s what this asshole did.

Now, is anyone required to agree with that opinion? Hell no. Opinions are like assholes; almost everyone has one and they’re all full of shit. But that’s my opinion, and I stand by it.

Overall good.

Our rooster is unhappy, what with the rains lately. The volunteer hen has been hiding, and our pet hen is indoors currently, so he’s lonely, but too grumpy to stay on the porch where he could be dry and have more frequent visits.

The pet hen is indoors because she had a bit of bumblefoot, and there’s no point in her being outside in all the wetness with that healing up and bandages in place.

But they’re all otherwise healthy. And they’re all still endearing idiots lol. The rooster is the biggest idiot of them all, but chickens are not exactly bright.

The pet hen, she’s decided this is her house, and we servants are not moving quick enough to follow her orders. Her orders are usually either : give me that food, monkey; or: move me to that place, monkey. With her foot bandaged up, she can’t just jump everywhere since that foot slides off of things sometimes, so she’ll come and squawk at one of us until we follow her to where she wants to be, then pecks a foot while hopping until she’s lifted into place.

Most of the time, that’s the old cat hammock in the window. She nestles in there and scolds anything that walks or flies by.

Sometimes, it’s “her” spot on the couch. But that’s actually my usual spot. If someone else puts her there, she screeches and squawks at them if they try to sit down. Then, if they walk away, she does the same thing because she didn’t say they could leave without getting me. If it’s me and I try to walk away, it’s the same treatment, but she’ll jump off and follow me, squawking and flapping her wings until I go back, put her up, and then sit down.

No pets, only sits. No, get your damn dirty paws off of me monkey, no pets, only sits.

She likes sitting on the arm of the couch with me in the seat. But petting is by appointment only, and her calendar is full.

Normally, she only comes in for a few hours in the evening, and isn’t that demanding lol.

Believe it or not, she’s good company. I’ll put on some music and we’ll sing along. Sometimes, she just wants to be close to me, nestled up to my side, or sitting on my leg. When she’s in that mood, she makes those cute chicken trills and purrs, just content to be there. Which is why I put up with the rest lol. The damn bird loves me as much as a chicken loves anything but food.

She’s actually right here next to me, alternating between preening, pecking at the letters on the tablet screen, and making cute noises so I’ll pay attention to her while she preens.

Maybe five years ago?

I like having paper maps in the “oh shit” bag

Yup.

Was playing Santa, going around to the patients of the home health company I worked for at the time. We were in the boss’s car and she had a dedicated GPS device. Can’t recall which brand.

But it’s easy to get lost in the more remote sections of the tri-county area, even with GPS.

Before GPS became ubiquitous on phones, the grunt labor for home health had to rely on mapquest and such to get to the right area, and prayer to find a specific home.

There were some of us that knew the area well, and we’d get calls from the office asking for directions to places that weren’t mapped right. And that would be while we were working, or even at weird hours.

I was one of the last people I knew to have a cell phone at all, largely because I refuse to be at anyone’s beck and call. But the boss actually got a phone and paid me to carry it just for directions. We got along unusually well, but it was still a very aggressive negotiation on when I would answer the damn thing.

Anyway, yeah, that winter I played Santa the first time was the first time I used a GPS device. I was driving, and could have found most of the places without one, but it was nice to not have to be constantly on the lookout for that one tree that made a driveway almost invisible, or remember exactly which curve you’d come around and have to turn off a paved road that you could barely see even if the road had been straight.

Insomnia may be my favorite of his. But, yeah, hearts is a short story. Kind of a long one though lol.

Yup. Totally real. It’s all essentially public information to begin with. You have to have an address for taxes, and deeds need names on them. So there’s a certain degree of information that’s going to be available to pretty much everyone, if they go looking.

Phone books were useful at one point, though less so for individuals. They’re still useful for local businesses.

I love the reference :)

But, since this is a bit of a writing prompt rather than something that can be answered factually, allow me some self indulgence to cook something up. I don’t plan to edit it beyond spelling and typos, it’ll be freeform.

Back in the primordial nothing, so dark and empty that darkness was scared of that dark, non-existence was boring.

The formless void took a good look at itself in the mirror that was it’s own non existent backside in what may be the greatest act of solipsism in history, and said “I need a friend”.

This thought echoed throughout itself, and a ripple failed to spread through the nothingness by turning it into something that could ripple. Thus was regular darkness born.

Darkness and nothingness looked at each other. There was nothing to see, so they decided to grope each other instead. This led, as often is the case, to a lot of disappointment and some degree of carnal juices splattering.

Those juices took root, growing in the dark and the void, binding them together for eternity. The fruit of those twining vines of dark matter jizz created matter.

And, as you know, matter matters. Matter seeks other matter, and the vine flowered. It pollinated itself, creating an infinite array of fruit. Those fruit were what we might call gods. Forces like gravity, electricity, nuclear interactions, essences of the things that would later become storm and sun and moon and furtive masturbation under a blanket so your mom can’t catch you, all the things we eventually worshiped.

Those original fruits were as incestuous as their forebears, banging off of each other until the first light arose from the darkness that birthed all.

Then they looked at themselves and realized they needed a bloody bath because you can’t spend infinite moments of non-time fornicating without getting a little messy.

Thus, they decided to organize the previously idle matter into clouds and juggle them until the bits stuck together.

Stars were born. Stars exploded and reformed into more stars, and planets.

All those explosions generated the kind of places where oceans could form.

By that time, the early gods had kept fornicating until there were more gods than any universe needs, and they were all quite filthy.

So they went to the various water bearing planets and bathed. And had orgies.

What they didn’t realize is that all the grime, jizz, and raw creative forces would turn the waters of some worlds into the nastiest, but most fertile soup ever imagined.

Those little jizz particles clung to each other, forming ever longer chains. Eventually, those chains met other chains and settled down to start families. Those families were the first cellular life forms.

Everything has been downhill since.

Tbh, that makes it even more impressive to me. Those suckers are pretty damn hard to control freehand.

Well, he’s basically a rapist and abuser. The accusations are a bit more complicated than that, and even a bit worse, but there’s really no doubt at all that they’re true. So a lot of people outright hate him, and will reflexively reject any posting of his music, especially a new track that’s on a platform that would generate income for him.

Musically, that’s a matter of opinion. It’s definitely the same style of music for sure. My take is that it’s watered down and uninspired, this particular track. Pretty much phoning it in. If you like the track, there’s nothing wrong with that, all musical preferences are subjective. It just doesn’t work for me. I can’t speak for anyone else in that respect.

Well, I think the responses you’ve gotten show exactly how major a figure he is, and how divisive he can be.

Any author is a matter of taste. Nobody is universally loved. That’s just the way it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, some writers manage to strike magic in minds so that their work resonates across generations, lifetimes. Shakespeare is still widely read. A person may not like his poems or plays, but he’s impossible to ignore entirely.

King is no Shakespeare. But he is damn good at writing things that stick in your head. And I firmly believe he’ll still be widely read in 200 years. Likely longer.

So, even if you end up not liking him in general, he’s worth reading some of his stuff Afghan anyway

Now, I mostly like King. Dude is weird, his stories reflect that, and even his worst stuff is interesting on that level.

My picks would be Cujo, Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, Hearts in Atlantis, Delores Claiborne, and the Bachman books. You read those, you’ll have a solid feel for whether or not you’ll want to ever read the rest.

Cujo is more of a real world horror story. Nothing supernatural, just a nightmare that could happen.

Salem’s Lot is a very unique take on a horror staple. But it’s still pretty normal horror.

Needful Things, that’s one of the most unique horror stories out there, imo. But it’s weird in the way that King does well.

Hearts in Atlantis switches gears. It isn’t horror, not really. But it’s a gentle introduction into his overarching inconsistently connected metaverse of sorts.

Claiborne is my favorite of his human conflict driven writing, where it’s about people in complex situations producing conflict and pointing a light at humanity in the process. It’s not horror at all.

And, the Bachman books. The collection of them is a glimpse into his most creative side, imagining slight twists on normality, akin to Claiborne. But they’re further removed. One is most definitely not set in our world. The others could be, but there’s still a sense of the alien to them. Once he abandoned the pen name, he eventually brought that kind of thinking into the rest of his work (and the best of his work imo), but there’s a rawness and ugliness to the stuff he did as Bachman that is hard to compare to anything else.

Out of the Bachman stories, Rage and The Long Walk tend to get the most attention nowadays because of the premise of each. Running Man is the most well known outside of his fandom, what with the movie loosely based on it. But the real gem is Road Work. The glimpse inside the mind of a man that’s just hit his limit and decides to stop fucking around and fuck things up instead. Hell, if you didn’t read anything else, you should read those.

But, honestly? I’ve read everything he’s written, and none of it is bad. It’s all worth at least one read, though some can be immediately consigned to the “never again bin”. His older stuff tends to be more accessible, but it’s all decent

That’s done by hand router?

Dude, that’s legit then. I thought it was a table router when I first scrolled through and was feeling pity. Not so if that’s hand router work.

Depends on the phone, but some of them, the audio is horrible through the regular speaker for calls, but better via the bigger one. Just not necessarily enough better for everyone.

Mind you, most of the people that do that are just twits, but hard of hearing people might need to use the phone that way to be able to communicate effectively, regardless of phone quality.

Nice!

E

That is true, but it is still an acceptable action within that context.

Paladins, at least the generic form of the term, aren’t held to an impossible standard. If you pick specific versions of paladin, you might run into cases where an unintentional violation of oath works to negate their holiness, but that’s rule issues, not concept issues.

Self defense is allowed within every version of paladin because they’re knights, warriors. Illusion, insanity, trickery, it doesn’t matter because that’s external the the paladin. If their actions are righteous (and self defense is in this kind of discussion), and their intent was pure, they’re still holy.

They might need to atone for the killing anyway, but that’s a separate issue from them being a paladin.

If anything, Don Quixote’s later actions show that he wouldn’t have taken a life in his right mind, which points back to his righteousness.

Ouch. Tough post lol.

The song is meh at best. He’s capable of better, or used to be.

But the comments being turned off for the video? Lmao, somebody was thinking ahead. That would have been more entertaining than the video itself, but they had to ruin the fun lol.

Wanna bet?

I’d make it an absolute realistic pile of dust, unable to move, unable to cast magic, fight, or anything but be carried along by whatever picked it up, and when enough of the dust gets separated, death is automatic.

But I’d still allow it as an interesting edge case once.

Well, to be fair, we did win the war, so we (in effect) conquered England, which means we took ownership of the language as spoils of war.

I have no vested interest in that statement, but will argue vehemently in favor of it for entertainment purposes.