kiltedkeefe

Latest Posts by kiltedkeefe

It's inevitable, really. Humanity is already steering us towards the Intersection. Who do you think the mechanical elves are?

BEHOLD THE FUTURE!

In 2718 the Omicron Epsilon, The Time Intersection, will give us a chance to reshape the Solar System. Behold the future form, praise the many manifestations of "Bob"!

I'm fascinated by the history of the Grand Guignol. Even read the collection of translated plays, and properly done with modern practical effects, they could still hold up today. If anything, it's deserving of a revival, possibly in concert with some dark burlesque and apropos musical acts.

To be precise, the "all female crew" aboard the flaming phallic symbol were not crew, they were cargo. They did not interact with the flight computer, they did not relay information on craft condition to ground crew, they got buckled in by others and bounced around during zero G.

btw the katy perry/bezos' girlfriend/other four irrelevant billionaires 10 minute space stunt was not the first all female expedition no matter how much they try to market it as such. the first all female mission was in 1963 with soviet cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova, Irina Solovyova and Valentina Ponomaryova - all three of which were working class and had to pass incredibly hard exams to be chosen from 400 potential candidates. just in case we started falling for the propaganda machine again

This guy is an artist like Ed Gein was an interior decorator.

A gross oversimplification of the history, usually from the tankie's POV.

If we're just sticking to WW2, Poland (Division of Poland from the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact), Finland (Winter War 1940), Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia (Baltic Invasion 1940) and Japan (Invasion of Manchuria 1945) all deployed troops against the Soviets. Ukrainian partisans were a grey area.

I think this has been posted on here before but this one always makes me laugh

Wind is fierce tonight. Expecting more heavy winds and torrential rains tomorrow. Hopefully no tornado this time, as the county is still cleaning up after the last one.

Though I cannot fathom as to why there's still no designated storm shelters? Gonna be messy, I guess.

Kung fu exorcists

Apparently in China peach wood (Along with the rest of the plant) is believed to have properties that repel evil spirits, a little similar to silver in European legends or iron for both European fae and West Asian/Middle eastern Jinn. Taoists sometimes keep swords made of peach wood because of this. This made me realize something. If you took a peach wood stick, and attached studs to it of both silver and iron you'd end up with a club or staff (or mace, flail etc.) that would have the weaknesses of many kinds of supernatural creatures while still retaining effectiveness as a normal weapon (peach is a hardwood and silver's poor edge retention doesn't matter for studs). You could even keep adding new stud materials to get something ridiculous that affects over 120 catalogued folkloric monsters. Since you just need a few little studs you could even get some really expensive materials like meteoric iron (a thumb tip sized meteorite can still cost like 10-20 bucks I think). I could somewhat feasibly make a weapon that affects every monster ever thought to walk the earth, from vampires and werewolves to jinn and jiangshi and even mankind.

This is the kind of thing that gets you put up in front of that court in the Hague in an ill fitting suit and a 1970s earpiece for the translation.

This person needs to be arrested im going to cry

All's groovy when the weather is nice and the cabin is comfy. Rainstorms and tea, sunny days in the hammock, idyll and pleasantry. There are a few things that you need to know, though, in order to get by:

You will need a knife. All of the time, especially when you don't have one on you. It needs to be sharp, and sturdy, and you need to be willing to use it. Tactical knives are poo for this, as are expensive ones. Find one for your pocket or belt, one you can pull a thorn with or cut an errant root.

Firewood comes by the rick or cord. Ricks can also be called face cords. A full cord or bush cord is a volume of well stacked firewood, four foot high and across, and eight feet deep. A rick is a single row four foot high and eight feet deep. Split firewood is 12-16 inches long, no bigger than three-five inches in diameter. If you can find someone who delivers, great. If you can find someone that stacks the delivery, latch on quickly and get some wood. You're going to need at least a cord for the winter, probably two, maybe more if it's really cold.

Invest in good slippers. When you wake up in the morning, or get up in the middle of the night, and the fire is down, your feet will thank you.

Have a pantry with preserved food, at least enough for everyone in the house for a week. It can be canned or jarred or dry, monotonous or varied, but if you get snowed in and can't get to the market, you can at least eat something.

The forest is going to actively take the land back. You're now locked in eternal battle with Queen Anne's Lace and blackberry canes.

I am still fucking losing it at this tweet

It's time for a drastic change in politics. We need more transparency and honesty in our parties.

I propose a new party, the Party of the Dark Star. There will be weird rituals, orgiastic caucusing, and the party motto will be "Blood for the Blood God".

So in the interests of development of life skills, I'm going to pass down a bit of wisdom that will serve you well.

When one encounters a strange, obviously old, most definitely not a copy of the Readers Digest yearly compilation book in some strange place-perhaps like on a basalt altar you found in a cave hiking, or on a bloodstained table in the root cellar of your cousin's remote hunting cabin- there are certain rules for best practices.

1. We do not touch the book. Let it lie otherwise you'll die.

2. We do not open the book. Maybe circumstances have dictated you have to pick up the book or move it. Let it stay closed.

3. FOR ALL THAT IS SACRED, WE DO NOT I REPEAT NOT READ ALOUD FROM IT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. WE DO NOT TELL OUR FRIENDS THAT THE LATIN IS FUNNY AND READ IT ALOUD TO ILLUSTRATE THE POINT OR SOUND OUT SOME GIBBERISH PHONETICALLY. YOUR EYEBALLS STAY OFF THE PAGE, AND YOUR MOUTH DARE NOT SPEAK THE WORDS.

Practice safe eldritch knowledge.

I dunno why, but since around 2007 or so, I'm not quite sure, the mark of a modern horror movie is somebody vomiting. Usually within the first act, quite violently and with all the sound effects.

‘Legging’ was a method of moving a boat through a canal tunnel, especially in the early days of canal construction when tunnels were often built without a towpath. Such a path would have required a much larger tunnel cross-section and thus increased construction costs.

Before the introduction of motorised boats, ‘legging’ was one of the few ways to manoeuvre a boat through a tunnel. This technique involved the boatmen lying on their backs and pushing against the tunnel walls with their legs to push the boat forwards.

On top of all these other shenanigans, Ol' Pooty Pants has poured enormous amounts of money into the monastic community at Mount Athos, specifically for the Russian monastery and sketes. And subsequent to that, there's been an opening of an investigation into how the monks (who are allowed bank accounts) have been laundering funds for Putin and his cronies. Also, since the opening of hostilities in Ukraine, security services believe Russia is running a spy ring out of Mount Athos through Kirill's cooperation.

The Moscow Fiasco

At the prodding of @quonunc, here is a quick overview of the incident I fondly referred to as "the Moscow fiasco" in a previous ask about the difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. It's a subject dear and horrifying to my heart after I wrote my undergrad dissertation on it.

In short: this is to do with how the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian Orthodox Church, hereafter ROC) is entirely in bed with the Russian government, and how Patriarch Kirill (of Moscow and All Russia) has been responding to the ongoing situation in Ukraine (and former Soviet lands more generally). Picture will make sense lower down the post.

The slightly longer short answer is that Patriarch Kirill is entirely in favour of the Ukraine war, and the ROC clergy are under significant pressure to support that as an official church stance-- my dissertation topic started to germinate when, completely by accident, I came across a 10-minute video of a ROC priest explaining very slowly and carefully that when he met the Pope, he did not talk about Ukraine. Will link this video if I can find it again, but at present it's proving elusive. (EDIT: found it!!! It was the Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary. This video looks like a hostage video honestly £10 says there's someone behind the camera holding a gun to this man's head for legal reasons this is a joke).

The foundation for this belief is obviously completely political (and the history of how the ROC and Russian state are completely entwined is long and complicated to say the least!), but officially the ROC stance is that it's about reclaiming the historic Slavic spiritual unity founded on the Baptism of Rus' in the year 988 by Vladimir the Grand Prince of Kievan Rus' when Slavdom become Orthodox. Proponents of this "Russian World" theory (Russkiy Mir') basically argue that it's the influence of the West that has fractured the unified Slavic people into different, opposing nations, and that by "liberating" Ukraine of this alien ideology of nationhood, the Slavic Orthodox world will regain its historic unity under the common banner of Orthodoxy. All I will say on this is that these people have a very rosy view of Kievan Rus', but that's a post for another day.

This has obviously caused friction within the Orthodox world. Ukraine now has two Orthodox churches-- the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is in communion with the Russian Patriarchate. They are not in communion with each other, and Constantinople's decision to grant autocephalous status to the OCoU caused Moscow to schism with Constantinople. Constantinople is also accusing Moscow of heresy (specifically, ethno-phyletism). Moscow obviously denies this. Obvious question for the Catholics among us-- does this mean Russian Orthodox christians are no longer Orthodox? No, because schisms between Orthodox churches are not particularly unusual, and they remain within the general cloud of Orthodox communion links.

The whole mess is then immortalised in the absolute monstrosity that is the Main Cathedral to the Russian Armed Forces, which is what I wrote my diss on. The YouTube video linked there is promotional material from Russian military-themed TV channel Звезда, and is one of the better sources of info on it-- a lot of English-language sources contain a lot of incorrect information on it-- either because they don't understand the cultural background, or just straight up lies from the Russian govt propaganda arm--, so take anything they say with a grain of salt. Kirill then gives televised sermons from this cathedral in which he talks about the glorious Russian martyrs of the Ukraine invasion, does his best to harmonise Stalinism and Orthodoxy, and oversees military parades for national holidays. This cathedral has a huge amount of weird symbolism and imagery, and I am super happy to talk more about the mosaics and propaganda going on there, because it's a lot (to say the quiet part out loud: pLEASE ask me more about this cathedral because the more I think about it the more scream-worthy facts about it I remember).

You may have seen memes with this picture of the Virgin Mary (below). Yeah that's from this cathedral. And it's a really really fucked up image. Like, more fucked up than you may think. Could have written my entire diss on this image alone and how shockingly awful it is. western orthobro converts who keep reblogging it as if it's somehow cool and macho are just showing how little they know and it's embarrassing.

The militarism of the ROC since this whole thing has also gone bonkers and there's a huuuuuge amount of corruption and weird stuff going on. The tension between the clergy and the laity has been extremely high for decades, and has spilled over most notably in Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer stunt, an exhibition called Осторожно, религия! (beware, religion!), and some shenanigans in church-building more generally. On this particular incident I would point to the blessing of nuclear weapons and the canonisation of a patron saint of long-range nuclear missiles as key moments. The cathedral also has matching mosaics of Putin and Stalin, a fact that the Russian government very much wants you to think never happened (officially the mosaics were removed, but they absolutely were not-- muggins here found them and has the pictures to prove it).

The main takeaway from this topic is that situation is obviously complicated and the repercussions for everyone involved-- particularly Russian and Ukrainian laypeople-- are unpleasant to say the least. It gives something of a window into the Putin regime and its propaganda arm (Epiphany swim, topless horseriding pictures, Soviet-style policies, I could go on) more than anything else, because the situation inside the ROC is still quite obscure. From talking to people who know Kirill personally, it's not clear quite what he thinks is going on or why he's involved the way he is. Either way. Fiasco.

omfg i forgot that i never showed tumblr my greatest achievement. my pride and joy, my pi-ass de résistance

Have all the various *core aesthetics been deprecated by Debbie Downers yet? While some I found personally silly, I enjoyed the fact people were expressing themselves creatively.

He liberated Wallachia is what he did. He impaled 10,000 turkeys or whatever the FUCK they're called, and in this house, Vlad Dracul Tepes is a hero, END OF STORY

A couple of days ago, I got some rather devastating news, set me all a jumble. Sitting out on the back porch, trying to put my head back together, and the forest decided to send some companions. I haven't seen so many butterflies at once since we moved here, and all the local species were represented. And since then, I've always had at least a couple to keep me company

Gojira at the Olympics put up the Bat Signal for culture vultures that forgot metal music exists. Well, that'll because they have the retention of a goldfish, but that's beside the point. Happened recently before that with Stranger Things and Master of Puppets. This irks me as apparently it's enough to attract their attention, and they're stirring as evidenced by their objections to Gojira's lyrical content and then the subsequent turn onto Cannibal Corpse.

First off, lemme say "get bent tourist" and get that out of the way.

Secondly, Cannibal Corpse has been around since 1988. They're a horror movie with growled vocals and blast beats. They were in Ace Ventura:Pet Detective with the original vocalist. They're not just going to up and go away because some noob wieners start flinging words like problematic around.

That's the wonderful thing about metal, all the weird little sub genres. If bands like Cannibal Corpse, Ghoul, Circle of Dead Children or Dying Fetus are worrisome to you, you can go bugger off and listen to DragonForce elsewhere. Don't harsh another metalhead's mellow, maaaaaan.

Must...walk...faster

Franz Wacik

!!! STRIDSWAGN SUNDAY !!!

Things they never told you as a child, nor did you think was coming:

You will have a favorite kitchen tool like a spatula or flipper

You will excitedly seek out new cups

You will have a preference as to food storage

You will have a signature dish