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Magical Thinking
Wishing won’t make the pain go away, but concentrating on more productive matters will at least distract me from it. I’m having a regular brainstorm this weekend, so I’m taking advantage of the rare bit of git ‘er done that has overtaken me.
Practical Magic
A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work. ~Colin Powell
Well, unlike in recent days, I’m feeling pretty determined to get something cooking. I have a slew of ideas and finally have the gusto to actually follow through with them.
The idea of responsive coding has been rattling around my brain of late. I have an experimental squeeze page that I cooked up some time ago. It looks great on a full-sized monitor, but it isn’t mobile responsive and looks horrible on tablets and phones. I need to get my head wrapped around responsive styling to improve the performance of my lead generators.
I’ve got an idea for a seasonal promotion on my prepper site that I’ll talk about a bit more in the next section.
I also need to capitalize on the popularity of the water-oriented videos on the corresponding channel. Who knows, it might even get its own lead magnet and autoresponder sequence.
The topic of water is covered regularly in the main email sequence, but that seems to be the topic that resonates for most of the channel’s visitors. So, find out what people want and give it to them…
I also have my Christmas calendar planning underway. I’ve picked titles and topics for Thanksgiving through Saturday, December 1st. That’s unusual for me. I’m usually picking that the week before the Holiday Season kicks into gear. I have a notion for stocking the store at Christmas All The Time this year. Hopefully, I’ll get to that after I’ve written and scheduled the daily posts.
I am slowly getting to the condition in which I can return to my preferred posture for writing. I know it probably sounds stupid to you, but I really do my best writing when I’m laying prone with a cushion under my chest and a notebook out in front of me.
In years past, the big hangup was that the dog seemed to take this as an invitation to lick my head or stand on my notebook. If it wasn’t him, it was one of my cats laying down across the notebook expecting to be stroked. I didn’t mind petting the dog or the cats, but they really didn’t need to be on the paper.
They’ve largely gotten over the need to interrupt me while I’m writing, but I’m still not in a position where I can lay flat on the floor. That just isn’t physically something that’s going to happen just now. Maybe in another three weeks? Gosh knows. Just as well, I have way too much to catch up on in the virtual world.
Of course, I’ll still be here twice a week waxing philosophical and randomly griping about my aches and pains. You didn’t think you were getting off that easily now did you?
I just love this song, so I’m putting it here for you to enjoy.
That Voodoo That You Do
What’s October without ghosties and goblins?
Warning: Harsh Language
Warning: Harsh Language
There’s nothing I like better than watching all the classic monster movies throughout the month. As it turns out, some of those old classics are in the Public Domain.
If you don’t know what Public Domain is, it’s when copyright lapses on a work such as a book or a movie. It enters the Public Domain and is freely usable by anyone. This is how Walt Disney made his fortune. The fairy tales that he based his earlier movies on were works that were in the Public Domain. As such, they were open to interpretation by anyone who wanted to make use of them. My friend, Dave, explains this in the video below:
So, I began thinking: what’s the survivalist niche without a Zombie Apocalypse? Do you think there are some zombie movies that are in the Public Domain?
Why, yes there are!
And I wondered: is there a way to get those onto DVD so I can sell them for fun and profit?
Why, yes there is!
So, I thought: is there any reason why I shouldn’t crank some out?
Why, no there isn’t!
So, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. As it turns out, there are a variety of kinds of zombies.
The ones most associated with survivalists are the viral zombies that were first seen in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. These nasty creatures seem to have been accidentally reanimated by some kind of strange contamination from space. This idea has been revisited in World War Z and the hit TV series The Walking Dead and many, many others.
Of course, anyone who knows anything about zombies knows that the term originates in Haiti where practitioners of Voodoo were said to be able to raise the dead to serve as their slaves.
Rule #1: Don’t dis the witch doctor!
As it turns out, the bokor (voodoo sorcerer) would use a paralytic agent like curare or tetrodotoxin to put the intended victim into a state of apparent death. This would seem to have been the result of a curse, but the toxin could be delivered in a powder that was blown at the victim during the imposition of the curse or the toxin could be slipped secretly into food or drink.
| Watch how Bushmaster poisons Luke Cage with the paralysis powder as a Bokor would curse a zombie. | Legendre spikes Mr. Beaumont’s drink to enact his revenge |
Thinking them dead, the family would bury the cursed individual. In the anesthetized state, the victim’s breathing would be shallow. All the same, being buried for any amount of time wouldn’t afford them much oxygen and brain damage would soon set in.
If the victim managed to survive the process, the oxygen deprivation would leave them in a permanently muddled state. People who had buried a loved one might later see or be told of the victim shambling about as a mindless slave to the bokor who had cursed them. Voodoo magic, mon!
Warning: Harsh Language and Gratuitous Nudity
Warning: Harsh Language and Gratuitous Nudity
When it comes right down to it, you don’t even need voodoo or viruses to make a good zombie movie. All you need is an evil sorcerer and some dead bodies to rise up and do his bidding.
Watch out for guys with funny hats
Well, I’ve got a collection of each of these for inclusion on DVDs that can (and soon will) be sold from my Pioneer Skill Set site and channel.
🎃 Even preppers enjoy a good scare at Halloween! 🎃
Art Nouveau
The purpose of my work was never to destroy but always to create, to construct bridges, because we must live in the hope that humankind will draw together and that the better we understand each other the easier this will become. ~Alphonse Mucha
Could this quote be any more timely?
Our world is fragmenting at a dizzying pace. People who used to merely disagree on topics or philosophies are now on the verge of mortal combat. The range of opinion is so drastically polarized that it seems we’re on the verge of a new Civil War.
Like anyone else, I find myself getting drawn down into the maelstrom. The drama never ceases, particularly when bad actors are vigorously stirring the pot.
At the same time, we are witnessing a world of such infinite potential. The things that we can do with technology to improve the lives of everyone are on par with some of the wildest science fiction.
Our capacity to communicate worldwide instantaneously is nothing less than miraculous. When I was growing up, it would have been exotic as heck for me to have a pen pal from some foreign country but now I can make friends with people from all over the globe and talk to them in real time.
That should be a harbinger of world peace but we seem ready to plunge into global apocalypse.
Why?
Because bad actors are stirring the pot.
Back in the days of Art Nouveau, there was a glamor and an elegant innocence that seemed to sidestep the impending disaster of the War to End All Wars. Even that title (though the horror of the conflict seemed to justify its application) totally underestimated the depths of calamity that their hubris and vengefulness inflicted on the world a few decades later.
Will we actually learn this time around? Honestly, we’re seeing a replay of the moronic drama that underpinned the Second World War.
How stupid do we have to be to fall for this crap a second century running?
Honestly?
I’ve seen a meme which observes wryly that:
In historical hindsight, the web of international obligations that bound the great powers of the Gilded Age made it nearly impossible to dodge the trainwreck that we know as the First World War.
They could see themselves being drawn into a great morass of utter stupidity and unconscionable destruction, but their standing treaties, alliances and cultural obligations made the disaster inevitable.
That’s not the case this time around.
We have the ability to step away from the madness, but do we have the will? Are we going to be shoved over the cliff by a faction of malcontents?
I don’t think we need to answer to a handful of dramatis personae anymore.
Back in the World Wars, we had a lack of communication. We had a lack of movement. The rich and powerful could roam the world freely, but slowly. The average joe couldn’t usually see beyond the end of his block or beyond the county line. Everyone was dependent on newspapers and radio to inform them of world events.
That’s not the case anymore. We can be friends with people we’d otherwise never have heard of. We can get eye-witness reports from real people in real places instead of whatever the newsies decide is important for us to know.
We have more power to stay reliably informed than ever before in history.
Will we use it?
I hope so. I’d like to see the world improve and become a massive neighborhood.
I’d like for us all to get along.
I think there’s a lot of power in optimism and in honest communication.
We don’t need the drama. We don’t need the lies. We don’t need rent-a-rioters frothing at the mouth with paid indignation.
Get real.
If you feel strongly about something, great. If you’re getting paid to scream idiotic slogans through bullhorns at politicians, just go the fuck home and get a real life like the rest of us.
The world needs more honest communication and less scripted outrage.
There’s so much more to life than being led around by the nose by insidious malcontents with deep pockets.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~Bertrand Russell
So, while I point my mind in creative pathways I find that I am largely distracted from the little aches and pains that have haunted me of late. Getting things done is a lot more satisfying than sitting idly waiting for ribs to heal and ankle tendons to unsprain.