Blog Entries from Iain Aschendale

  1. The Weight of the Past

    I dunno. There's that video where the guy pauses his game, looks out the front door, and sees the steppe. Had the chance to take an overnight ferry recently. Standing on the observation deck past midnight, staring out at the darkened islands slipping slowly by, feeling the thrum of the engines and the wind on my face. Mrs. A said she could see my grandfather on me in that moment. He commanded a warship tasked with killing her grandfather. They both made it through, but they're both gone...
  2. ad Lucem

    The darkness is gone, in the light now. Fading. Limbs... Tired, so tired. Wings... Limbs don't connect. We danced, we danced and sang and sucked the sweet nectar, mated, flew through the air, the warm, bright air, after so long burrowing in the darkness, constriction, tightness and the dual emergence, first from the earth onto the Earth, and then emerging Self from self, new sensations, new abilities from a part so old it was there in the before. Will be there again. No more...
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  3. Participation Trophies

    The Baby Boom generation is generally defined as people born between 1946 and 1964. My generation, Generation X, is defined as people born between the early to mid-1960s to the early 80s. Millenials don't have as sharp of lines, but I've seen 81-96 when I looked around. So let's put that on the back of the envelope. So if we define childbearing age as between, say, 18 and 35 (yes, it is creeping upwards, and yes, creeps have managed to push it downwards since time immemorial, but let's...
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  4. Cruelty

    never, ever, follow the breadcrumbs when it comes to the internet. It will just lead to pain in agony oh, and the urge to commit genocide. LOL This started out as a "Not Happy" thread post that kinda got away from me. I hope @John-Wayne doesn't mind me using his quote as the epigraph, if it's a problem, let me know and I'll remove it. I've been watching a lot of restoration videos lately, where people buy old semi-junked machinery and tools at swap meets and flea markets and restore it to...
  5. Trust

    Long unhappy rant that makes me feel like a stereotypical junior high school girl so I'm going to wrap it.
  6. Beginnings

    I was trying to find the most current version of The Arc of a Rainbow (Chasing the Rainbow from the story contest), but I found the very first day's writing on it instead, with the prompt at the start:
  7. 3/11/11: In Memoriam

    Eight years since the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. It was my day off, vacation time, I was sitting at my computer doing something, gaming, whatever, when the world started to sway gently back and forth. I looked up at the light cord, because that's where you look, dizzy spells and trucks going by don't cause penduluming, but there it was, swinging gently. Earthquake, but not a bad one. But... It just kept going on. Usually these things last a few seconds, but this one just...
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  8. Tweety Case

    Got around to watching Netflix's "Bird Box" last night. It felt like the sort of thing Stephen King pops out on a Saturday afternoon when Tabitha is on his ass about cleaning the gutters. "Honey, they say it's supposed to rain this week, could you-" "Tabby, I told you, I've got a great idea going, don't want to lose my train of thought. Call that neighbor kid, what's his name, Dusty? Cody?" "It's Dakota, hon, but his mom says-" His hip was aching again. What the fuck am I doing sitting...
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  9. Io Sucks

    Io, on Netflix. Painful painful painful awful fucking shitty horrible piece of crap, the writer(s) should have their everything revoked. I'm not going to spoiler-wrap this because I want to save you from the movie, dammit. First ten seconds or whatever, "Some people say it was the pollution, I call it human nature." "sending ships to other planets to harvest their geothermal energy." You what?!? No, I don't care about the terminology, but Earth isn't short on geothermal energy last I...
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  10. Not Going There

    We'll never reach the stars. People have no concept of distance. Longest I ever walked in a day was around twenty miles, traveling at my own pace on paved sidewalks, with frequent opportunities to refresh myself. Teddy Roosevelt issued the first formal physical fitness test for US servicemen after seeing some fat officers. You had to do fifty miles on foot, or a hundred on horseback, with a three day time limit. A group of Marines set out and completed the test in a day, but they're like...
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  11. From the Earth to the Other One

    I saw First Man today, and I'm kind of overwhelmed with thoughts. First, kudos to Ryan Phillipe Reynolds Gosling for successfully playing a block of wood. And that's not a criticism. I've read a bit about Neil Armstrong, and part of NASA's selection process was to find the most boring person they could to take the most important first step in human history. Fuck Columbus, it was already occupied. I love Buzz Aldrin, but NASA didn't want that. Armstrong (would he have had a shot if...
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  12. Legalization

    Marijuana definitely isn't legal in my present jurisdiction. Not sure about back home, doubt it. Wait, no, an old friend of mine who used to be quite the recreational enthusiast now has a prescription for it. "My partying days are over, Iain, I actually need this stuff now to cope with the nerve damage." He shows me the scars. So, what are the medicinal properties? This is something that needs to be looked into. Some of my (former) facebook friends were of the tribe that believes that...
  13. Paternity?

    TMW you're walking home from dinner with your wife and there's a group of young gaijin outside the local market enjoying a few (!) drinks and one of them shouts at you "Oh my god, is that my dad?!?" Well, true, I take my styling cues more from Leonard Cohen and/or Mad Men than from Jay Kay or P. Diddy, but considering that the young man shouting at me looked to be in his early 20s and I'm in my late 40s, I wondered what sort of point he was trying to make. I suppose if he could give me a...
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  14. Process Description (Grading)

    So you've got the grades all ready, but you need to add the results of the final exams. Sign in, pull up the official score page. Transcribe the grades, one by one, into your gradebook. Lather, rinse, repeat as many times as necessary. Go back to the gradebook, pull up the final exam results one more time, double-check your entries. Lather, rinse, repeat as many times as necessary. Go back to the gradebook, calculate in the penalties by hand as the software isn't set up for that,...
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  15. Oubliette

    Nothing to do with this joint or you lot. "I'm so glad I could get that off my chest." "I just needed someone to talk to." "Keep this between you and me, okay?" Yeah, okay, fine. Y'know what the worst thing about being trustworthy is? Everybody knows, everybody knows, everybody knows that you can be trusted. They can tell you about their concerns about Smith from Accounting. They can tell you that Jones from Marketing is fucking Baker from Baking. They can tell you that they've been...
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