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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I bought an emulation handheld so I’m revisiting my past.

    Played Codenames with friends at the bar yesterday. It’s a fun and frustrating came of word association.

    Going to try to get the handheld set up on the TV for “level or life” shenanigans later in the week. If not, there’s an agility game where you stack little plastic chairs that is more fun than it has any right to be after a few.


  • One of my favourite pastas-

    DON’T SHAVE YOUR ASS-HAIR! Before shaving your ass hair, READ THIS

    STOP! Before you do, read this. You may change your mind.

    I have recently made a mistake in my life, and I offer my story to all though tasteless, that you may learn from my error. It all started, as many things do, with me having trouble pooping. No, I was not constipated; this was not a regularity problem but a matter of technique. It seems my ass-hair had grown to such a length that tiny grogans were constantly getting tied up in the matted jungle between my asscheeks. It led to much frustration, with me KNOWING that I still had something to drop, but unable to shake the tenacious turd loose from its butthair dwelling.

    Eventually I would have to do two things: either reach down with somepaper and try to pinch off the lingering loaf (which required careful precision to avoid smearing the creature all over my rear, especially since I had no way of seeing what I was doing) or just go for broke, start wiping, and hope that I could remove all the leftover fecal matter before the toilet paper reached its Can’t-Be-Flushed threshold. I was contemplating this problem, when I had what seemed at the time to be a bright idea. “Hey, this is my butt and my butt-hair, right? So why don’t I just eliminate all the hair, and then my grogans will flow out like beer from a keg!” I said to myself. It is a statement that will go down in history with a lot of other regretted statements. “How many Indians could there be?” said by General Custer. “Looks like a good day for a drive!” by JFK. “There! America On-line now has complete Usenet access!” by some idiot system tech. Such was my anal shaving idea.

    I performed the operation that night, with a cheap disposable razor and a towel to sit on. Starting from the bottom, and shaving from the crack to the cheeks, I began the arduous process of ridding my ass of hair. Occasionally, I would have to clean the razor of accumulated hair, which I did by wiping it on the towel. Slowly, my twin mounds and the between-ravine began to resemble the hairless cheeks of a newborn babe. Finally, I wiped the razor one last time, and surveyed my work. The towel was covered with a pile of hair. My ass was smooth as ivory. I smiled, satisfied, thinking my troubles were over.

    Little did I know. I now have a great respect for anal-hair. Like everything in this world God created, it has its mighty purpose in existence. It was only after I had removed it that I started to learn how much I had been taking it for granted. For one, it provides friction. I learned this the next day, when I walked out into the sun heading for class. After climbing two flights of stairs and starting to sweat, I started to notice something unpleasant. The sweat was accumulating in my crack, and was causing the unpleasant sensation of my two asscheeks sliding past each other with every step. I thought about going to the bathroom and wiping it off, but had to get to class. Eventually, I thought, it would dry. Unfortunately, it did dry, but only after mingling with the microscopic poop -molecules lingering around my brown starfish. When I stood up after class, my cheeks were stuck together with a slimy sticky poop/sweat combination. As I made my way back to my dorm, it started to itch. God-DAMN, did it itch! Felt like a swarm of ants was making its way up and down my crack. Fighting to keep from jamming my hand down there and scratching away, I rushed back to the dorm. Unfortunately, this exertion caused me to sweat, and when I finally reached my room, my cheeks were sliding back and forth against each other like a pair of horny cane-toads. I quickly dropped my pants, and attempted to dry my ass off by sticking it in front of a fan and spreading my cheeks.

    As I pulled the two mounds of flesh apart, a horrible stench burst free and filled the room. Every dog within a 4 block radius started to howl. I had it worst of all, as the ripe aroma of festering poop/sweat went into the fan and blew back into my face. I fought to keep from heaving. And as I sat there, fighting vomit, my ass cheeks spread and dripping, with the concentrated aroma of my body odor mixed with the tangy smell of my own poop blowing right into my face, I had only one thought: “It will be like this until the hair grows back. Weeks.” Later on, trying to deal as best I could, wiping my ass at every opportunity, I discovered another wonderful use for ass-hair - ventilation. I attempted to launch a fart, only to have it get stuck between my asscheeks.

    Apparently, with no hair, the two pink twins can get vacuum sealed together, and the result was a frustrating fart that slid up and down between my cheeks like a lost gerbil. As if that wasn’t enough, I am now enduring further torture. As anyone who has ever shaved anything knows, when hair is first growing in, it comes in as stubble. Imagine your ass having the texture of a brillo pad.

    Well, that is what I am dealing with now. It is a hellish torture, and there are many times when I just look out the window and contemplate why I shouldn’t just jump out and get it all over with in one fleshy splat, rather than endure this constant agony.

    Friends-DON’T SHAVE YOUR ASS-HAIR!






  • I could have but for the other two reasons I wrote about. Namely, I wasn’t mature enough to DNF, and the Fae stories are really good.

    I suppose in the end it did one better by causing me to grow as a person. Sure, books have taught me a bunch of stuff but not many I can describe as being “the” reason I “grew”.

    Today I wouldn’t have read enough of JS&MrN to even hear about Stephen, let alone grow to care about him.

    I’m sure I’m missing out on a great number of good books, great books even, possibly even formative books, by how willing I am to DNF. But, there’s so many good books out there that my calendar always seems to be full anyway.


  • Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. After that book I gave myself permission to DNF though, so it was a maturing experience for me. I mostly wanted to know what happened to Stephen and that’s what drove me, along with the “No mere book shall defeat me” attitude.

    I really enjoyed all of the Fae short stories actually. I’m not really a horror fan, but I found Fae, and mortals interaction with it, particularly gripping and memorable. I never put the book down when I was in Fae, trapping me along with the victims, perhaps that’s why I wanted Stephen to just be ok.

    It was just everything else in the book I couldn’t enjoy. The titular characters I found uninteresting. The setting, fae excluded, I was apathetic about. The structure, the footnotes, dear god the footnotes.

    But the Fae stuff? I’ll take 10 more of them in an anthology please.





  • It took me two attempts to get through Gnomon. I think the main theme is “privacy”: What is ultimate privacy? What is it’s ultimate lack? What might someone, or indeed a society, give it up for? Is that trade worth it? How does a person, who values it, live in society that doesn’t? How does that society see that person? Etc…

    I think the much more interesting question gnomon asks is: What if multiple narrators/narratives wasn’t? In the same vein that Gone away world’s was: what if narrator wasn’t? -trying to be spoiler free.

    With that said, I think the answers to those questions are disappointing in their respective books. In a rare display of focus for Harkaway, he ignores the fascinating can of worms he just opened in order to concentrate on the main theme.

    [These questions are given weight because they are at the heart of the the twists. So interesting question, given narrative weight and subsequently ignored]

    Harkaway is best when he is taking you down the garden path of batshit characters, doing batshit things, at batshit speeds.

    I usually give out either Goneaway or Angelmaker (depending on how they like the idea of steampunk bees) with the instruction of “just go along for the ride” and they are so much fun like that.

    Gnomon is harder to recommend because that ride is so disjointed and, on the surface, utterly irrelevant to other parts of itself that it’s no fun at all. Only towards the end do you learn it’s been the same ride all along, but by then it’s too late.



  • I’ve been binging "Bloodywood"s debut album. A colleague went to the Download festival and recommended them to me.

    If a fusion of heavy metal and Indian folk is something you might be into give then a go. Honestly, heavy metal flute solos was a hole in my soul I never knew I had.

    Sadly, I think the band is ten years too late, I could see their nonesense doing well on old YouTube over anime clips.


  • Not op but have used an IP to cook pasta. I could absolutely see the appeal.

    Ultimately I use the stove top but that’s for 2 main reasons:

    1 Being UK based, I have electric kettles and enough power in the sockets to drive them. Combined with a gas stove that means quick meals are quicker.

    2 The IP will fully cook the pasta and easily overcook it, I prefer pasta underdone if anything.

    Stove top just grants more flexibility for doneness for various thicknesses of pasta at the cost of another pan.

    So if 1&2 don’t apply to you give it a shot.


  • That’s a shame. Their pressure cooker and air frier are pretty good £/performance. I’m usually using one or the other to make a main/side. I even ferment doughs and yogurts in the IP.

    I’ve not found a glass jug comparable to the .5L Pyrex measuring jug. Maybe its a psychological thing, but I’m happy to abuse pyrex in a way I won’t other glass products. The shallow-wide 1L jugs seem to have pouring issues no matter who makes them.


  • In the twilight years I mostly just used Reddit as an information aggregate.

    I’m primarily wanting a place where I can read information for both niche and general topics, as well as read the dissent to that information in the same space.

    Maybe I become more engaged in the community. But going from:

    Private forums > old reddit > new reddit

    Each step felt like I knew and was known by fewer people. All while knowing less about the people I did recognise. I spent a lot of time in “off topic” sections of the private forums, commented and generated a fair amount on old Reddit, and mostly lurked on new Reddit.

    I think the whole situation has me cynical about the idea of “internet community”, and maybe that’s something I need to work on.