Edward's November 2022 Mix

 

 November is all about heralding in 5:00PM darkness, rain soaked leaves stuck to windshields like crepe paper, and a chill that portends winter snows to come. It draws me to the indoors and a brain buzzed by the blue light of an e-reader or a phone in bed, or movies and shows causing the darkened living room to glow. The lack of sunshine is a temptation to succumb to depression, but with music, movies and games to enjoy, who can be depressed?  

James Seven on CD: When you hear the first song, “Born of Frustration” start as you spin this CD you’ll say to yourself, “Wow, I remember this; it was such a cool song!” And this song segues into a series of such good songs. Seven was the album that came out a year before Laid which was their big American hit CD. Fronted by singer, Tim Booth, a real renaissance man (who portrayed the villainous Victor Zsasz in the movie, Batman Begins.) I first discovered them in an X-Files episode in which Jack Black plays one of their songs on a jukebox before being incinerated. The song he plays is “Ring the Bells” which is on this album. The live version on their Greenpeace compilation album is in my opinion a better version. The band’s heydays were the early 90s. They were a true alternative band back when alternative reigned supreme.

Need for Speed: Shift 2 on PC: I know you are getting tired of seeing a write up about this game every month in my beloved blogpost, and believe me I’m getting tired of writing about the game! My goal was to finish it by the end of this year. It looks like I’m not going to make it. Close, but no cigar. This game has been like climbing Mount Everest. June 20, 2021 is supposedly the first time I booted the game up, this is according to a game tracker app I use that records all games and the length of time it takes to beat them. (Hit me up if interested.) As of this writing I’m 73% to completion. And I think I told you, it’s a “sim-cade” but I’ve had to take the difficulty down to easy. I just want to get it over with!

Company of Heroes 2 on PC: It took me forever to finally get to this game being I’ve loved the original Company of Heroes so much. (I still consider it my favorite RTS.) I finally did take the plunge, however, and found the campaign quite enjoyable. Whereas the original hosted the allied invasion of Europe in 1944 and the ensuing battles, the second game in the series focuses on the Russian VS German side of things. New elements such as morale (and eventually physical constitution) being affected by extreme winter weather, and commanders having many more perks than the original game, this is definitely a good update. I pretty much eased through the campaign with the exception of the penultimate mission which took numerous tries (and a Let’s Play lookup on YouTube.) And now my friend, Vic Berwick and I are campaigning through the co op missions. I’ve been missing out; I should have played this game much sooner.

Terminator 2 on 4K Blu Ray: I’ve always been a fan of the Terminator movies. I always hear comparisons of the original movie compared to this, the second one in the series, and the consensus is the second one is much better. I’m not so sure. Of course, Terminator 2 had a much bigger budget (100 million plus, making it the most expensive movie ever made at the time it was made). We do see Arnold Schwarzenegger portraying a machine, as in the first movie, however, this time shedding his clinical inhumanity to become more humanlike and sensitive to the human condition. But the real star of this movie is Robert Patrick as the T-1000. Living in his car at the time, he was awarded the role during his first tryout. Director, James Cameron, wanted someone lithe looking and Patrick watched films of predatory animals in action, and then mimicked their style, lowering his head when giving chase to manifest forward movement. He ran in his workouts so he could run in the film and never appear out of breath (which he does later movies to come, this movie is regarded as one of the best SF-action movies ever made. The upscale from 4K to Blu-Ray was adequate enough. I didn’t see much of a difference to be honest.

Lost Season Six on Blu Ray: I once compared this series to Gilligan’s Island for adults. I’m finally nearing the end of this compelling series. It’s been played out, for sure. But I’m still enjoying it. One episode turns into two when I sit down to watch it. It reminds me of the cliffhangers of old. The characters are memorable, but the real character is the island itself. Given its proximity I always wonder how close I would have been to it during my treks across the Indian Ocean. That sense of being there, it’s probably why I love old pirate movies and sea yarns. I abhorred the Navy, but I did love the ocean.  

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo: My mother gave me this book on a recent visit. Looking like a typical junior high book, I thumbed through it. “Yeah, I’ll read it if you want me to,” I told her. Turns out, it wasn’t half bad! I wrote a review on GoodReads stating, “A gem in the guise of a children’s book.” That does, indeed, sum it up. An errant stray dog stumbles into the life of a girl and her reverend single father, the mom/wife having abandoned them. Each “chapter” reads like a self-contained short story. Interestingly, the first book DiCamillo wrote received 437 rejections before being accepted. My works had not hit 100 rejections and I gave up!

Magic: The Gathering Arena on PC: My good friend, John Wallen, introduced me to this game many moons ago. I have since participated in numerous tournaments (and even won one!) I’ve been dabbling in online play as of late. Epicgames.com is the place to go. The game is free. If you’ve never played, it’s a great site to come up to speed. My true feelings are rather ambivalent about the game, truth be told. I would buy cards to play and carefully hone my decks to be formidable. Then I would go to a shop for a tournament and then discover cards in my deck were suddenly “banned” I would be forced to buy new cards. It was easy to see Wizards of the Coast (the property proprietor of the game) was turning this into a cash cow. But none of that matters if you play in unrestricted tournaments or your old friends with their old cards.

 

 

Edward's October 2022 Mix

 

 

 October hosted my second favorite holiday when I was a kid. Construction paper cutouts done in black and orange of black cats, jack o’lanterns and witches on broomsticks affixed to the school windows set the prelude for the evening’s ebullience of trick or treating. But this year, that holiday caught me at work. No time for distributing candies to eager tots, not when the duty of the almighty paycheck beckons me away. I did have time, however, for some diversions involving movies, reading and gaming.

Whitesnake Greatest Hits (2022 Remastered) 96 kHz 24-bit on FLAC: A very good rendition of Whitesnake’s hits all on one volume, in high resolution to boot! Whitesnake was a band I loved upon my first listen back in the 1980s. David Coverdale had a majestic rock and roll voice. And the band had all of that hair! Truly an 80s hair band. Despite the band not having a real presence in the States (they are Britons) until 1980 with the release of Ready an’ Willing, I didn’t really catch on until the release of Whitesnake (1987). The band’s formations/dissolutions, present and former members and influences read like a Who’s Who of rock and roll music. David Coverdale has been accused of plagiarizing Led Zeppelin, which is humorous considering Coverdale and Jimmy Page created an album together in 1993. This album sounds incredibly good in hi-res, and if you don’t have a Whitesnake album in your collection, this is a must have.

The Witcher 2: Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski: This is the second book in Sapkowski’s medieval fantasy series involving Geralt of Rivera, a work for hire monster slayer. I first encountered Geralt in the PC game The Witcher which debuted in 2007. I was enthralled to discover the game was based on a series of books. I’m reading this on my Kindle, and it’s clearly the source of the second season Netflix series. The leather glove fist action in these books is akin to dime store western novels of yesteryear. And being a fan of the Netflix series, I must admit, using these books as source material, they’ve done a good job translating the stories to the TV screen. 

Hell Let Loose on PC: I’ve mentioned it here before. This is the game that places you into a time machine and sends you back to battles in World War II. Staring as a grunt soldier, you are able to voice communicate to the rest of your squad and your squad leader (who in turn has the ability to communicate with a commander overseeing the battlefield. If you played army as a kid, this is the same thing, played by grownups in fuzzy slippers and pajamas. Granted, the dirt, the grit, the blood and the ear ringing explosions are all virtual, the immersion factor has you feeling as if you are really on the front lines. The game is authentic enough that if you spawn as an armor crewman, your tank won’t move without two other members. Combat has an odd subtlety to it. You never see the bullet that gets you, and upon firing your own weapons, you may never realize you nailed someone until after the game. You may see a crouching enemy behind cover, he peeks out, you nab him, and then you just don’t see him again. You’ll wonder, did I get him? Is he still waiting there behind cover? It’s a chance you’ll just have to take. I have actually sweated while playing this game.

The Thing on 4K Blu Ray: I’ve seen this movie multiple times. It’s a classic story about isolation and trust and paranoia. Based on John Campbell’s venerable novella, “Who Goes There?” published in 1938, John Carpenter took this idea and ran with it. He was inspired, of course, by the 1951 movie, The Thing from Another World which he stated scared him to death as a kid. He teamed up with Dean Cundrey, as the director of photography, who worked with him on Halloween, The Fog, and Escape from New York to make a rather excellent horror/SF movie that has become a cult classic. Kurt Russell plays MacReady, one of the Arctic base scientists who inhabit an isolated station in which an alien has become thawed and uses its ability to shapeshift into any human or animal it has come into contact with. I’m sure you’re familiar. The movie came out in 1982. Admittedly, despite this is such an ugly movie, this is the most beautiful 4K Blu Ray version of a movie I’ve seen. The colors pop and each scene looks like a masterpiece painting. Doctor Copper, the resident physician at the compound is called that because he wears a copper earring in his nose. I hadn't noticed this before, not even in the Blu Ray release! The 4K resolution makes this movie look even better than the original theatrical release.

Heartbreak Ridge on Blu Ray: This is a movie I get a hankering to see every couple of years and ranks among my favorite of war movies. It almost makes me wish I’d been a Marine instead of a sailor. (Ha! Just kidding. I wouldn’t have made it through Marine boot camp.) Clint Eastwood pulls off his usual stoic gruff and tough guy role, but it’s the Marines he whips into shape that make this movie. Mario Van Peebles was the real star. His wit and one liners make me laugh every time I watch the movie. Like Top Gun or Stripes it’s a movie that will make you feel patriotic and have you start searching for the nearest recruiting office. From the esprit de corp Gunney Sergeant  instills into his band of slackers to the rousing Phillip Sousa march playing during the closing credits, it’s a fun movie to watch.,

The Golden Rendezvous by Alistair MacLean:  Alistair MacLean was an adventure writer who excelled in the 1970s. This book, penned in 1962, was considered one of MacLean’s best works. Much like his other novels, the book is so visceral it reads like watching a movie. (As a matter of fact, this book later became a movie, like many of MacLean’s other works.) Having to do with a hijacked passenger liner, a hidden nuclear bomb, and the main character’s self deprecating wit I enjoyed this book, although it’s severely dated by today’s standards.

 

 

Edward's September 2022 Mix

 

 

 This was a mildly important month for me. I turned sixty. When I was a kid, I remember the catch phrase was “Life begins at 60.” I realize now that may not be entirely true. I’ve not turned to rust yet, but when I wake up I am welcomed into the day by stiff sore muscles. I feel like a pressed suit brought out of someone’s closet. I’ve been busier than I’d like to admit. It makes it difficult to enjoy my books, my music, and my movies when I spend most time lately working and sleeping. But like John Ritter and Michael Landon used to say in the commercials, “Where’s there’s a will, there’s an A.” And I do steal snippets of time where I can still have my fun. It reminds me of a poem by Jack Gilbert called “A Brief for the Defense.” We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

 

Guild Wars 2 on PC: I invested some real time and tenacity in getting my friend, Brian Bartley, to forsake his beloved World of Warcraft and give this game a try. Well, it worked. I’ve been playing this with Brian and his son (who seems to have natural ability when it comes to the game’s treacherous jump puzzles, which I abhor.) Releasing in 2012, the game still has a massive player base of probably the friendliest people in a massive multiplayer game. There are so many things to do, you could play this wholly as a single player experience and have the time of your life.

This Terrible Beauty by Katrin Schumann: On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man. When Bettina falls in love with an idealistic young renegade, Werner discovers her infidelity and forces her to make a terrible choice: spend her life in prison or leave her home forever. Either way she loses both her lover and child.

The best book I've read this year. It's not often we get to venture to the remnants of Germany directly after its loss of WWII and the ensuing aftermath of being consumed by two superpowers. Schumann does a wonderful job of portraying this, in her character of Bettina Heilstrom, a young idyllic woman, who longs for a family and a Germany as it once was.
Schumann has a penchant for evocative language and incredibly complete flawed, forgivable and noble characters (despite their being infallible.) I am so looking forward to reading more of Katrin Schumann's works.

Vegemite: Have you ever been on a country road on a blistering summer day when a road crew is putting fresh tar on the roads? You sit there in your vehicle waiting for the flagman to flip the sign from “STOP” to “DRIVE SLOWLY” and you have this horrible oily tar pit smell invading your nostrils as the tar is being disseminated. Well, Australians have found a way to capture that redolence and put it in peanut butter jars, market it and make major bank! I finally got to try some of it (despite having been there and passing up on the opportunity). I have to say, it is, indeed edible. The preferred method is take it slow. Simply, spread a small bit on a hot muffin or toast with a morning meal. I’m told it’s the scum atop batches of processed beer which is the secret ingredient. It is very “yeasty.” I can’t say I’ll ever buy another jar, but I can also state I’ve never tasted anything like it.  

 

 

Quicker Than the Eye by Ray Bradbury: Not since I read The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine, have I became so engrossed in a volume of Bradbury's short stories. Quite frankly, this is some of his best work I've ever read. These are stories that are a return to his writing from the 50s and 60s. Two of my favorite stories were "That Woman on the Lawn" which had such incredible imagery and an ending that will leave your mouth hanging open. And "Exchange," about a young soldier stopping by his old hometown library as his train stops for a delay. He convinces the librarian to let him in (it's closing time) and he ruminates and conjures all of his memories of being a constant fixture at the library as a boy. It's a story that plays out like a beautiful Twilight Zone episode. It's a story that made me cry.

Drakkar Intense Eau de Parfum by Guy Laroche: There are many things I don’t do right. But there is one thing I am good at and that’s choosing to wear fruity colognes in the summer and spicy colognes in the winter. This concoction named after a Viking longship, is composed of top notes of bergamot, rosemary, lavender, middle notes of cardamom and geranium, and a dry down of vetiver, cedar, and fir balsam. To me, it smells of sandalwood and a firepit on a beach at sunset. I described it this way to a buddy of mine and he said, “Dude, you are dead on!” Pricey, but worth it. 

Phantasm II on Blu Ray: I remember my uncle taking me and my buddies to the drive in to see Phantasm when we were teenagers. It was the most unusual horror movie I’d ever seen up to that point, and it served its purpose. It made me thoroughly frightened. The writer/director, Don Coscarelli, fulfilled his goal of scaring kids like me, and he did it with a movie regarded as the lowest budgeted movie Universal funded in the 1980s. This movie takes place shortly after the original ends, and as abruptly disconcerting as stubbing your toe in the dark, this film opens up with a different “Michael,” the main character from the original. This guy is inches taller and several years older, doh!  Watching this movie now, it exudes much more cheese than horror from when I first saw it decades ago, but it’s still fun to watch. The transfer to Blu Ray is done quite nicely.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens: For a first novel, Delia Owens did a brilliant job with this one. Her characterizations were spot on (with the lead character being the marsh itself where the setting of the book occurs.) And then there's Kya, the marsh girl, herself. She was every bit as endearing to me as Mick Kelley from Carson McCullers' venerable The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The plot is where Owens' ingenuity really comes into play. Like the New York Times Book Review blurb on the cover says, "Painfully beautiful. . . At once a murder mystery, a coming of age narrative, and a celebration of nature." Owens pulls us in and even uses anecdotes about nature to drop hints, and I still felt blindsided by the book's end (in a great way!)

Ultimate General: The Civil War: Having a Steam review with over 240 likes on the original Ulitmate General: Gettysburg I felt inspired to give this game a try. The game looks like a lavish board game come to life. It covers the main Civil War battles and the side battles in its entirety. I tried to wing it on higher difficult levels, but had to dumb it down to the lowest difficulty. I’m in the summer of 1862 and I’m doing okay so far. Some of the mechanics are complex enough that I really need to visit a YouTube channel or read a community guide or three. Morale which is conveyed by having top notch officers on the battlefield carries gold weight in this game. General Billy Brightside does his best to keep his men in the fighting spirit.

Guinness Non-Alcohol: With its dark walnut coloring and its foamy soapy head, Guinness has a boldness unmatched by any rivalry. There is nothing more complementary to a conversation than a pint of this Irish booze drawn from a bronze tap with a pearl white handle and served atop a mahogany bar. This new NA version circumvents the trip to the bar and more importantly the alcohol itself. I honestly don’t know how they are able to create this magnificent libation without the alcohol. It’s like going to fight a war and instead of killing each other, the men are laughing because they’re pelting each other with happy paint balls. 

Edward's August 2022 Mix

 

 

The mild evenings have been conducive to one of my favorite pastimes: reading. Parking myself on the porch with an occasional stogie and a glass of beer (non-alcoholic, of course), some tuneage on my audio player and a good read is a little slice of heaven in these, the last days, crazy ones at that. I’ve upgraded my camera this month in hopes of getting out of the house more. I mean, come on! There has to be more to life than playing PC games, Netflix bingeing, and reading all of the time. (Notice I didn’t say guitar playing, because that IS the life!) Anyway, I’ve lost sight of my photography hobby the past few years, so I thought I’d do something to kick start it.

 

Need for Speed: Shift 2 on PC: GameTime Tracker says I’ve been playing this game for 34 hours. It feels more like 50 hours and then some. The game, released in March 2011, was a sequel. Launched as a “sim-cade” racer, it’s still arcadey enough that I can’t use my wheel with it, though it runs just fine with my Xbox Controller. The game seems squirrelly enough that I’ve had to dumb down the AI enough that I don’t feel cheated in my victories. (With NFS games, sometimes it be like that!) I’ve had a good time with the game, but the series events just keep going and going and going. The track girls are nice. It seems after this, EA became more sensitive to liberalism and the idea of pretty girls showcasing the cars in the lineup before each race became sexist. My goal is to complete all of the NFS games made. I’ll be glad when this one is over so I can move on to the next one.

A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg: I’d never heard of Fannie Flagg until I saw the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. Then of course, having watched it, I had to track down the book. I laughed out loud so much with the book I’d have people ask me if I was okay. This story involves a terminally ill guy from Chicago who moves to a small island community in Alabama per his doctor’s orders to relocate to a more temperate climate. Oswald T. Campbell, our guy, raised in a bevy of orphanages and named after a can of soup, is jaded and bitter. His fight with alcoholism, the big city coldness, stark winters and an unfulfilled life take a turn for the better as he moves to this quiet little Mayberry like place. Fannie Flagg is probably more recognized as a women’s fiction writer. No matter, she has her hooks in me. You can’t help but look at the sunny side of life after reading one of her books.   

Book of Love: Book of Love on CD: I remember having the extended 12” dance hit, “Boy” back in 1986, gifted to me by a friend in Texas. I stumbled across this rare find and was surprised the CD included the original radio hit AND the extended club hit of the same extended song I once had in my possession. Using tubular bells, drum machines and a bevy of synthesizers, this is a band that toured with Depeche Mode back in the mid-80s. They got their influences from the likes of The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, and some of the great Motown girl groups from the sixties, and their sound nails that. Check out a listen of “I Touch Roses” or “Boy” on YouTube. I think you’ll agree.

Pandemic by Z-Man Games: This is a game in which 1 to 5 players start from the CDC stationed in Atlanta, Georgia, and move around the world in an attempt to isolate and destroy viruses run amok. Sounds oddly prophetic, doesn’t it? You choose a character with a role, something along the lines of dispatcher, researcher, medic, or quarantine specialist (among others) and players co-ordinate their efforts to beat the game. Each role has a different and beneficial perk or ability to help in the fight. The game is not easy. If you really want a good laugh, and some extra credit points, watch Wil Wheaton’s playthrough of this on his board game YouTube channel. Good stuff.

Panasonic Lumix DC-S5 Mirrorless Full Frame Camera: Remember in the preamble when I told you jumpstarted my photographic endeavors? Well, this is the beast I did it with. Considered a mid range mirrorless camera, it could have fooled me. It has 24 megapixels and shoots video in 4K. It has the same sensor as the Netflix approved heavy hitter S1H model. And it’s full frame! I’ve not had a full frame camera since my Navy days when I had my trusty Canon AE-1 35MM film camera which, unfortunately, got stolen. Maybe this will indeed, like I said, get me out of the house more. I certainly need to shake the funk this lousy Coronavirus pandemic caused.

The Animatrix OST on CD: I was never a fan of the Matrix movie trilogy like I was the animated movie, The Animatrix, which was a series of short animated films centered on the environment of the original movie. Back in 2007, I was playing Linden Labs’ Second Life (the real “Metaverse,” Zuckerberg, eat your heart out!) when I stepped into a dance club and heard a song by Photek called “Ren 2.” This prompted me to watch The Animatrix and fall in love with it. Getting a collective of all of the great music from the film makes me feel blessed in some way. There’s not a bad tune on the album. My favorite though, probably for sentimental reasons, has to be the aforementioned “Ren 2.” It has a post apocalypse barren desert Mad Max or Fallout feel to it that is both sad and beautiful. Since I’ve got the album, I’ve listened to it on my DAP on repeat every time I go outside to read. It’s that good.

One Deck Dungeon by Asmadi Games: Choose one of five brave heroes to bring on a quest to conquer one of five perilous dungeons! This is a card and dice game in miniature. The whole game box is the size of a small book, eh, maybe a little thicker, but amazing in what the small box contains: torchlight, dank dungeons, the clash of steel against dragon scale, and desperate battle cries. It’s a game designed to be played solo and it is more fun than it has any right to be. My first game I kept thinking, this isn’t so bad, I’ve got this. And then I met the dungeon boss and was one-shotted my first turn against him. Oops! Great game, great art style. The only thing I don’t like is, all of the five heroes are women. I swear I’m not sexist! Women are the loftiest of God’s creations, but I don’t like playing as a girl.

Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera by Bryan Peterson. The holy trio in photography is Aperture, Shutter, and ISO. Peterson explains why this is and how to utilize these components to the best of their abilities in this superb book written for the beginning to intermediate photographer. It’s truly one of the best books I’ve read on the subject, not to mention the great photographs inspiring all kinds of ideas to go out and shoot. I didn’t realize this until my stepdad loaned me the book, but it’s held in high circles in the world of picture taking. I can see why it is now that I’ve read it. If you get the chance, check it out, it may inspire you to pick up your own camera and see what you can do.

Samuel Adams Just the Haze IPA Non-Alcoholic: I’ve always liked the taste of beer, but I can’t drink it. It’s not good for my damaged ticker. Doctor’s orders. So, I recently discovered the joys of non-alcohol beer (and no, I’m not talking about O’Douls!) There are bars and drinkeries opening up now in many places that exclusively serve non boozy drinks. Egads! What is this world coming to? Studies show the youth of today is slowly weaning off of alcohol. This is a great thing. This non-beer actually tastes really, really, good. The only bad thing is, I have to seek out special places to buy this golden Sam Adams brew, because my town doesn’t sell it anywhere. The last time I bought it, the checkout girl had to ask a fellow cashier for assistance, “It’s not asking for his ID?” “No, of course not, read the package, it doesn’t have any alcohol in it,” she said. I had to pipe up, “’Tis true, the great taste without the guilt and hangover.” I made them both laugh.

The Rape of a City

             

 

I have a yard man. He cuts my grass with rapid efficiency. Showing up every weekend, he never fails. My yard is one of the best looking on the block, it’s become a source of pride for me. My yard man drives an old pickup truck toting a trailer bearing his zero turn beast, a weed eater and a few cans of gasoline in battered red cans. It also carries a small push mower which is all he needs to knock out my small yard.

This past weekend while chewing through the grass of my backyard he got stung four times in quick succession. He wasn’t sure what exactly stung him. The next night after work, I walked the backyard in darkness, using my mobile phone flashlight I discovered the source of his bane. Nestled in the rungs of an aluminum ladder I have affixed to the side of my storage building was a hornet’s nest. It was the size of a deflated basketball, ominous and deadly like a miniature Imperial Star Destroyer straight out of Star Wars.

 

 

When I shared my discovery with him, he was more than eager to make a return trip to destroy it. Were I to be stung by these hornets I’d be angry too. But I’m getting soft in my old age because suddenly I didn’t want harm to come to the nest. But we all have our own truths. Mine is I’m a capitalist at heart. Alex Keaton has nothing on me. I’m a believer that capitalism wins out. In this country, you can be or become anything you want to because of capitalism. Want to be a doctor? Make good grades and get a student loan. You can become a doctor. The money buys the goods. I won’t find a better yard man who charges me what he does for attending to my yard. So, I complied. I bought his weapons of destruction: two cans of wasp killer. 

 

Before he showed up to do the dastardly deed, I walked back and surveyed the nest again. Cast in my flashlight’s beam, the nest looked almost harmless. I did some reading about hornets. Their nests which are comprised of a substance similar to paper, are perfect in their construct. The hornets build the nests by mixing chewed wood with their saliva to build multiple chambers, each serving a purpose in their complexity. Hornets are a boon to gardens. They eat everything that eats a garden. They feed on caterpillars and insects that devour growing vegetables.

Arriving with a coal miner’s helmet with a huge flashlight mounted atop it, he took the wasp spray and proceeded to engulf the paper nest in a sickly looking white foam. It reminded me of AFFF foam we used in the Navy to put out fires, only instead of saving lives, this foam wrapped around the nest, suffocating its inhabitants and acting as a corrosive to melt the nest into oblivion. Under the focused beam of his headlight, I watched the nest deteriorate, none of its denizens putting up a defense. The nest simply diminished along with each insect inside, who were seemingly ensconced after a day of toil, feeding and tending to the larvae and the needs of the queen. 

Both cans were emptied. I saw sluggish movement within the nest, victims of a life ending firestorm. I wondered what God thought of all of this. Were these hornets created for the sole purpose of angering a fellow creature higher up in the food chain, soliciting his ire enough to eradicate their very being simply because they felt his passing mower was a threat, a force to be reckoned with? 

I watched the remnants of the nest dripping onto the ground, soon to be a memory. And looking at the spent spray cans on the ground I realized capitalism had won out, but at what expense? 

 

 

 

 

Edward's July 2022 Monthly Mix

 

 Sweltering heat or torrential rains. We get one or the other every day here. All I have to do is leave my car windows and guess what? Even more rain! I think my car spelled the demise of Indian rain dances. They simply passed out of necessity. I read an article the other day that affirmed I’m a lucky man. In the past 2.5 years I’ve not had Covid 19, despite being exposed numerous times (and undergoing two separate tests). And now there’s Monkeypox. Oh boy, that sounds like fun. Not fatal, but painful and temporarily changing your look until you resemble one of the poor underground dwellers in the 1950s B movie, The Mole People. I may have avoided Covid 19, but was it luck? My sister claims her prayers played a part. Perhaps. If it was luck, well, luck runs out eventually. Maybe it was my own safeguarding, staying in, listening to good music, playing games and reading fine literature like what we see in this month’s mix.

 

Hunt Showdown on PC: I can’t put this one down. It’s like playing a crafty one-arm bandit slot machine in Vegas less the expensive flight ticket and airport checkpoint shenanigans. Completing a bout in the game is richly rewarded with perks and levels added to your character. But death is permanent. Your next bout could very well be your last and all that you gained is lost; you start over again from scratch. Often against my better judgement I dive in like a sky jumper without a parachute. And then there’s that golden time in the wee hours of the morning when you go in, kill all the bosses by yourself, dispatch a gazillion zombies and make it out free and clear simply because you were the only person on the map. This is a game so compelling that me and my buddy, David “Drakarion” Tidwell talk about it at work. No stone is unturned, no strategy not tried.  

 

 

 

One Shot (Jack Reacher #8) by Lee Child: Child’s 8^th foray into his Jack Reacher adventures. This novel was actually what the first Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) movie was based on. The movie occurs in Pittsburgh, PA. The novel is set in Indianapolis, Indiana and some southern bigger Indiana city. Vincennes?  Being quite familiar with Indiana’s capital city, there are several out of place locations mentioned in the book. Tobacco barns and an NBC media building complete with NBC’s colorful peacock symbol, and a cloverleaf multilevel highway circling the city, enveloping that NBC building in Indianapolis? Nah, no such place. Still, malapropos notwithstanding, this is a roller coaster read. It goes into so much more detail than the movie did (though the movie was quite entertaining.) I can safely say, if you’ve not read a Jack Reacher book and you want to start, you could start with this one.  

Rush Hemispheres on vinyl: My wonderful guitar teacher, Michael Stevens, gifted me this album from his personal collection and said I looked like a kid at Christmas getting a much desired present when he did so. I often listen to my HD Tracks hi-res FLAC of this album for the sake of convenience, but when I dropped the needle on this one and cut the lights, lying back on the couch allowing its softness to engulf me, stray light from streetlights casting everything into a mellow sheen of white-yellow, I went into another world with this incredible album. It’s technically on point. The timing is perfectly tight in every song. You can “feel” the effort that went into it. Personally, I think it’s Rush’s most beautiful album from a soundscape point of view. If you want to turn one of the youngsters onto Rush give them a listen to “La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence.) And let’s not forget “The Trees,” which was Neil Peart having fun with something almost deemed a limerick. The Internet is abounded with hidden meanings and implications concerning this song. Peart would laugh about it in interviews and always reply, “No, nothing doing. It was just having fun with funny lyrics.” It turns out the song has a deeply sad interlude that about moves me to tears every time I hear it. Talk about an irony!

Alex Blest Fragments of Bliss on 44.1kHz/16bit mp3: I came across this on a Chicane compilation album that was played on an Internet based Chill radio station and sought long and hard to track down the original source. Praise be to the almighty Amazon for delivering the goods. Alex Blest who hails from Ukraine and whose real name is hard to pronounce Cyrillic is a DJ who’s been around for some time (unbeknownst to me.) This EP consists of four ethereal versions of the same song, different, but samey enough to realize it IS the same song. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful, and begs the question how something so hauntingly blissful could emanate from a country that is currently seeing some of the darkest events in modern history. Hit up YouTube and search for this gem. You’ll become entranced too.

The Witcher Season 2 on Netflix: I procrastinated long enough. Now I’m engaged in this compelling second season of the acclaimed show based on the stories of Andrzej Sapkowski. Back in the first season upon watching the show I commented I thought Henry Cavill was mis-cast. After having beat the first two games and reading the first two Sapkowski books I just thought Cavill was way too young for the role. Boy, was I wrong. It’s quite the opposite actually. I feel now as if Cavill was born to play Geralt! But despite Cavill’s added dialogue this time around, I think Freya Allan who plays Princess Cirilla of Cintra is stealing the show. She loses all of her glamour becoming a diamond into the rough to train as a Witcher alongside Geralt. It's heady entertainment for anyone who is a fan of the games or who is into medieval fantasy albeit with a slightly darker bent. It’s as if the color palate has almost been slightly muted for the show. Everything has a gray tone to it. It portrays a place that is always cold, bleak and on the verge of winter.

theHunter: Call of the Wild on PC: Like Euro Truck Sim 2 this is another one of my garden of zen games. I’ve brought it up here before, I’m not a hunter in real life. (I castigate my wife for being the murderess of flies who make it into our house!) But there’s something about this game, once you get past scoping a less than graceful bull moose in your sights and squeezing the trigger, watching his tremendous bulk lose its divine spark and thunder to the ground, that works like detox for your fingers and your mind. I’ve read accounts of people who bought it just to stroll through its wondrous woods and glens. There is a German map depicted in autumn, complete with distant chainsaws and dogs barking. I’ve even heard a Cessna flying over. It reminds me so much of Indiana in the fall it's almost eerie. I’ve been revisiting the same mission over and again as of late in an attempt to bag two coyotes in a specified area of the map. One wrong shift of the foot, causing a coyote’s keen ears to take note, or a change in wind direction, alerting their sense of smell, or firing your gun and realizing you didn’t have a bullet in the chamber can blow the whole mission. Suddenly the coyote steals away and it’s game over. But waiting in a clump of bushes, hearing the night birds and watching the full moon rise, despite a failed mission makes me realize this is a game where its parts are much greater than the sum of those parts.

 

 

 

The Convert by Edward C. Burton: This is my second novel manuscript, the first finally coming to fruition some years back (and available on Amazon.) This foray plumbed from the depths of my imagination involves a Stuka dive bomber pilot who gets shot down over an English reserve air field during the Battle of Britain. Captured and housed in a utility shed, he’s brought out by the Brits each time the field is buzzed by marauding German planes to clean up the resulting messes that occur. As the German prisoner works side by side with these British airmen he begins to wonder if he is in fact fighting for the wrong ideal. This is a story I was inspired to write, oddly, after playing the heck out of LucasFilm’s Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain way back in 1990. Nine months of research and 300 plus pages later I finished the manuscript and sent it to roughly forty NYC publishing houses. No takers. It nestled for years in a file cabinet. I’ve decided to take it out, revise it, and have another go at it. I’ve only gotten the first chapter done with many more to go. Now if I can just keep procrastination at bay.

Ric Ocasek This Side of Paradise on vinyl: I liked The Cars, but they certainly weren’t my favorite band back in the old days. The appeal with this album, however, is the presence of Steve Stevens. What I discovered with this record though is if you are a fan of The Cars, you will enjoy this album. Especially with the presence of The Cars members, Greg Hawkes, Benjamin Orr and Elliot Easton, one cannot help but feel he or she is listening to another product of The Cars. (Roland Orzabal from Tears for Fears is also featured on the album.) But like I said, Steve Stevens plays guitar on over half the album, and that was the draw for me. You can really hear his chops on “True Love” which he introduces with a nylon stringed classical guitar. “Emotion in Motion,” brought back memories being it was a big radio hit in 1986 when the album released.