It’s kind of strange. When I was a kid back in the 1960’s I rarely drank water. perhaps a moment at a water fountain for a quick sip, or maybe some water in a canteen when I went on a walk or a hike, but aside from that, we NEVER drank water.
As a kid we drank milk or soda. And the most common thing that we drank was soda.
Today, all kids in China carry a water bottle. They come in different sizes and shapes and all come with a strap and a flexible straw.
Anyways, it’s crazy just how times have changed. It kind of floors me. I drank soda, and sweet drinks, kids these days drink plain ordinary water.
I wonder about the future. You know, in some ways, it’s actually pretty promising.
Today…
Ex Fiancée Demanded an Open Marriage Saying I’d Benefit Me, I Made Her Single
Why do some people think aircraft carriers are easy targets, and what evidence contradicts this idea?
I use to pass the uss intrepid almost everyday.
I could throw rocks and hit it if I wanted. I would never and that’s not the point. American aircraft carriers are in port or out at sea.
Where? Hundreds of miles from land if not thousands of nautical miles. They travel with friends and that white water in the background might be one of many destroyers in the group. A pair of attack submarines are somewhere under the water. Currently the uss Gerald Ford is moving to the Caribbean Sea from the middle east to join the Iwo Jima group.
The two recent accidents in the south China sea from bad fuel showed us they are going via the pacific Ocean. Would you gone that way? These ships cost billions and the usn build fleets around the aircraft carriers to protect them. Over 90% of the carrier group is all defensive carrier protection. The 10% is enough firepower to wreck nations and ground other airforces.
yes They are big and every minute they disappear over the horizon because they never stop moving.
82K views
Pocket Bread (Pita, Arab Bread,
Israeli Flat Bread, Armenian Bread)
Ingredients
- 1 package active dry yeast
- 1 1/3 cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 to 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl. Stir in oil, sugar, salt and 2 cups of the flour. Beat until smooth.
- Stir in enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.
- Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.
- Place in a greased bowl; turn greased side up. Cover; let rise in a warm place until double, about 1 hour. Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.
- Punch dough down; divide into 6 equal parts. Shape into balls. Cover; let rise for 30 minutes.
- Roll each ball into a 6 to 7 inch circle 1/8 inch thick on a floured surface. Place 2 circles in opposite corners of each of 3 cookie sheets.
- Cover; let rise for 30 minutes.
- Heat oven to 450 degrees F.
- Bake until loaves are puffed and golden brown, about 10 minutes.
The rising
Written in response to: “Start or end your story with a character looking out at a river, ocean, or the sea.“
Alexander Colfer
Saharah pressed her small hand against the car window, watching the ocean shimmer beneath the afternoon sun. Four years old and this was her first clear memory, the way the water stretched forever, blue meeting blue at some impossible distance. Her father had driven them here, to what remained of Miami Beach, so she could see it before it disappeared entirely.
“Remember this, Saharah,” he said, his voice tight. “Remember when the sea was beautiful.”
The beach was narrow now, barely twenty feet of sand between the seawall and the waves. Her mother held her hand as they walked, and Saharah felt the warm water rush over her toes. She laughed, delighted, not understanding why her mother’s grip was so tight, why her father kept checking his phone with that worried crease between his eyebrows.
The water tasted like salt when a wave splashed her face. She would remember that taste for the rest of her life.
2041
The military trucks arrived on a Tuesday morning, rolling through Atlanta neighbourhoods with loudspeakers announcing the mandatory evacuation. Hurricane Zara, a Category 6, though officially they still only acknowledged Category 5, had stalled over the Gulf, pulling moisture from waters that now averaged 87 degrees. The storm was three hundred miles wide. The flooding would reach Atlanta within forty-eight hours.
“Take what you can carry,” the soldiers said. “One bag per person.”
Saharah was eleven. She chose her clothes, her phone, and a small stuffed dolphin from that day at Miami Beach. She left behind her books, her guitar, the journal where she’d written her first poems about the sea.
They marched in lines, thousands of them, heading north on I-75. The highway had been cleared of vehicles, turned into a pedestrian corridor. Soldiers flanked them, rifles visible but not raised. This was order imposed on chaos. This was survival.
The heat was crushing. September in Georgia, and it felt like July used to feel, before the climate broke completely.
By noon, Saharah’s water bottle was empty.
“Mama, I’m thirsty.”
Her mother shared hers, tipping it to Saharah’s lips. Half the bottle, maybe less. Her mother’s hand shook.
“That’s all we have until the next checkpoint, Saharah.”
“When’s that?”
Her mother didn’t answer.
An old man collapsed ahead of them, his body crumpling like paper. The soldiers pulled him to the side of the highway. Saharah watched as they checked his pulse, shook their heads, kept moving. They didn’t have time for the dead. No one did.
Her father took her hand. His palm was slick with sweat.
“Don’t look,” he said.
But she did. She saw the man’s face, slack and grey. She saw the wet stain spreading across his pants. She saw the flies already gathering.
They walked for three days. At night they collapsed in designated rest zones, parking lots, fields, anywhere flat enough for thousands of bodies. The sky stayed grey, heavy with Zara’s outer bands. Rain came in sheets, warm as bathwater, and Saharah opened her mouth to it, grateful even as thunder crashed around them like artillery. The lightning turned the world white, then black, then white again. No one slept.
On the second day, a woman went into labour. The soldiers radioed for medical support that never came. The woman screamed for hours. Saharah pressed her hands over her ears but she could still hear it, that animal sound of agony. When the screaming stopped, the soldiers carried the woman away on a stretcher. Saharah never saw what happened to the baby.
On the third day, her father stopped walking.
“I can’t,” he said, sitting down on the hot asphalt. “I can’t anymore.”
Her mother knelt beside him. “We’re almost there. Just a few more miles.”
“You go. Take Saharah.”
“No.”
“Please.”
Saharah watched her parents, not understanding. Her father’s face was red, his breathing strange and shallow. Her mother was crying without making any sound.
A soldier approached. “You need to keep moving.”
“He needs rest,” her mother said.
“There’s no rest. You keep moving or you stay here. Those are the options.”
Her father stood up. His legs shook but he stood. They kept walking.
2048
The Tennessee Valley Relocation Centre sprawled across what had been farmland outside Knoxville. Rows of prefab housing units, each one housing eight families. Communal kitchens. Communal bathrooms. Communal everything.
Saharah was eighteen now, thin as wire, her childhood softness burned away by years of rationing. The sea level had risen another metre since her last glimpse of the ocean. The Gulf Coast was gone. Florida was an archipelago. The Eastern Seaboard had retreated fifty miles inland, leaving drowned cities as monuments to hubris.
She worked in the camp’s vertical farm, tending hydroponic vegetables under LED lights. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. The pay was camp scrip, worth less every month as inflation spiralled. Food shipments from the Midwest had become unreliable as the breadbasket dried up, as the Ogallala Aquifer finally ran dry. Everything they’d been warned about came true with mathematical precision.
Her father had died two years ago, heat stroke during a work detail. Her mother had followed six months later. Pneumonia, officially. Grief, actually. Grief and exhaustion and the slow realisation that the world they’d known was never coming back.
Saharah lived alone now in a corner of a housing unit she shared with seven other families. She had a mattress, a blanket, a plastic crate for her possessions. The stuffed dolphin sat on top, its fur matted and grey.
The scrip ran out three weeks into every month. Always three weeks. The rations were calculated for survival, not comfort, and they assumed you had nothing else wrong with you, no extra needs, no medical issues, no bad luck.
Saharah had bad luck.
She got sick in March, some kind of intestinal infection that left her unable to work for a week. No work meant no scrip. No scrip meant no food. She spent five days in her corner, dizzy with hunger, watching the other families eat their rations and carefully not look at her.
On the sixth day, a guard named Torres stopped by her corner.
“Heard you’ve been out sick,” he said.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“That’s tough. Real tough.” He looked at her for a long moment. “You know, I could help you out. Get you some extra rations. Medicine, maybe.”
She knew what he meant. She’d heard the other women talking in whispers, late at night when they thought everyone was asleep.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He smiled. “I think you know.”
She thought about the hollow ache in her stomach, the weakness in her limbs, the way her vision had started to blur at the edges.
“Okay,” she said.
The first time, she left her body. That’s what it felt like. She floated somewhere near the ceiling of Torres’s quarters, watching this thing happen to someone else, someone who looked like her but wasn’t her, couldn’t be her. When it was over, he gave her a week’s worth of rations and a bottle of antibiotics.
She went back to her corner and ate half the rations in one sitting, her stomach cramping with the sudden abundance. Then she threw up in the communal bathroom, retching until there was nothing left.
She stared at herself in the cracked mirror. Same face. Same eyes. But something had changed. Something had broken or maybe just bent, reshaped itself to fit this new world.
She went back to work the next day.
Torres came by every week after that. Sometimes he brought food. Sometimes medicine. Sometimes just scrip. She stopped floating away. She stopped feeling much of anything. It was just another kind of work, another kind of survival.
At night, she climbed to the roof of her housing unit and looked south, towards where the ocean was. She couldn’t see it from here—she was still two hundred miles inland—but she could feel it. In the humidity that never broke. In the storms that came with increasing fury. In the news reports of new evacuations, new camps, new lines of refugees marching north.
The sea was coming. It was always coming.
2055
In July, the temperature hit 135 degrees Fahrenheit.
Saharah was twenty-five and looked forty. She’d survived two cholera outbreaks, one riot, and countless nights of hunger. She’d learnt to fight for her rations, to sleep with one eye open, to trust no one completely.
The heat wave lasted three weeks. The power grid failed on the fourth day. The cooling centres went dark. People died in their sleep, their bodies simply giving up. The camp had protocols for heat emergencies, but protocols meant nothing when the infrastructure collapsed.
Saharah survived by going underground, into the maintenance tunnels beneath the hydroponic farm. It was cooler there, maybe ninety degrees instead of 135. She brought water, food she’d saved, a torch. She stayed for five days, listening to the rumble of trucks hauling bodies away.
When she emerged, the camp had changed. Half the population was gone. Some dead, some fled. The soldiers were fewer now, their uniforms dirty, their eyes hollow. The government was retreating to the Canadian border, to the northern territories where it was still possible to live. The centre couldn’t hold.
Torres was gone. Most of the guards were gone. The system that had exploited her had collapsed, and she felt nothing about it. No relief. No satisfaction. Just the same hollow numbness she’d felt for years.
She packed what little she had, some clothes, a water bottle, a knife she’d traded for. She left the dolphin behind. It belonged to a different person, a different world.
She walked north because there was nowhere else to go.
2071
The march through the drowned South took two years.
Saharah moved with a loose group of survivors, the composition changing constantly as people died or split off or simply disappeared. They followed old highways, now cracked and overgrown. The South was emptying out, becoming uninhabitable. Temperatures regularly exceeded 120 degrees. The humidity made breathing feel like drowning.
They passed through what had been Chattanooga, water up to their waists, moving through streets that had become canals. Fish swam through living rooms. Snakes coiled in trees. The sea had reached Tennessee, pushing inland through the river systems, turning the landscape into a vast delta.
Saharah tried to remember that day on Miami Beach, tried to recall the beauty of it, but the memory was corrupted now. The sea wasn’t beautiful. The sea was a monster, patient and inexorable, swallowing everything.
They ate what they could find. Snakes, mostly. Rats when they were lucky. Sometimes nothing for days. A woman named Running Bear taught her which insects were safe to eat, which plants wouldn’t kill you. Running Bear had been a botanist before, in the world that was. Now she was just another refugee, her knowledge worth only slightly more than ignorance.
“You ever think about before?” Running Bear asked one night as they huddled under a highway overpass, rain hammering the concrete above them.
“No,” Saharah lied.
“I do. All the time. I had a garden. Roses. Can you imagine? I spent hours worrying about aphids.” Running Bear laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Aphids.”
“What happened to your family?”
“Dead. Yours?”
“Dead.”
They sat in silence, listening to the rain. In the morning, Running Bear was gone. Saharah never saw her again.
The group reached Kentucky after eighteen months. They’d started with over a hundred people. Twelve remained.
The Kentucky camp was worse than Tennessee had been. Overcrowded, undersupplied, violent. Warlords controlled sections of it, demanding tribute for protection. The soldiers who remained were indistinguishable from the warlords. Everyone had guns. Everyone was desperate.
Saharah found work in the medical tent, such as it was. No real medicine, no equipment, just people dying of diseases that had been eradicated a century ago. Typhoid. Dysentery. Measles. She cleaned wounds with boiled brown water, held hands as people died.
The sea level had risen three metres since her birth. The maps were redrawn constantly. The coasts were gone. The river valleys were flooded. The Great Lakes had expanded, swallowing cities. Chicago was Venice, then Atlantis.
She was forty-one and felt ancient. Her hair was grey. Her teeth were loose from malnutrition. Her lungs were scarred from breathing smoke, the fires came every summer now, massive conflagrations that burnt for months, turning the sky orange, the sun a dull red coin.
She left the camp when the food ran out completely. Just walked away one morning, heading north with nothing but the clothes on her back and the knife in her belt.
She didn’t know where she was going. Just north. Always north.
2087
Saharah found herself in what had been Ohio, though borders meant nothing now. The government had collapsed completely. There were warlords, petty kingdoms, zones of control that shifted like the weather.
She survived by scavenging through the ruins of drowned towns, pulling copper wire from walls, finding tinned goods in attics that had become ground floors. She traded what she found for food, for water, for safe passage through territories controlled by men with guns.
The world had become mediaeval, brutal, short.
She travelled alone now. Companionship was a liability. People would kill you for your shoes, for a tin of beans, for nothing at all. She slept in trees when she could, in abandoned cars, in culverts. She kept moving.
The sea level had risen four metres. The ocean had pushed up the Mississippi valley, turning it into a vast inland sea. The Appalachians were islands now, their peaks jutting from the water like broken teeth. The coasts were memories, stories told by old people like her, though there weren’t many old people left.
She was fifty-seven. She’d outlived almost everyone she’d known from before.
One day she came across a settlement, twenty or thirty people living in what had been a shopping centre, now half-submerged. They had a garden on the roof, rainwater collection, some semblance of order. They let her stay for three days, fed her watery soup, asked her questions about the outside.
“Is it true about the Rockies?” a young man asked. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. “That the rich people are up there? That it’s like paradise?”
“I’ve heard that,” Saharah said.
“You ever try to get there?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She looked at him, this boy who still had hope in his eyes, who still thought there might be something better somewhere else.
“Because they’d kill you before you got within a hundred miles,” she said. “The military protects them. Drones, automated guns, minefields. You can’t get there. Nobody can.”
The hope died in his eyes. She felt nothing about it.
She left the next morning.
The jet stream had collapsed years ago, and now storms came from impossible directions with impossible fury. The temperature swung wildly scorching heat that killed in hours, followed by freak ice storms as the climate system spasmed and convulsed. Nothing was predictable.
Saharah kept walking north until she reached Lake Erie.
The lake had merged with the ocean, saltwater pushing inland through the drowned river systems. The sea had reached the Great Lakes. The sea had won.
She found a shack made of scavenged materials on what had been the shore, now just another piece of the endless waterline. No one lived there. She moved in.
She was too tired to move anymore. Too tired to care.
2094
She was sixty-four and starving.
There was no food. The fish were gone, poisoned by the warming water, by the pollution, by the toxic algae blooms that turned the sea green and made the air smell like rot. The birds were gone. The insects were gone. Everything was gone.
She’d eaten the last of her supplies, a handful of dried beans three days ago.
Today she’d found nothing.
She sat on a piece of concrete that had once been part of a building, watching the water lap at the shore. It was higher today than yesterday. It was always higher.
Her body was failing. She could feel it shutting down, system by system. Her vision blurred at the edges. Her hands shook. Her heart beat irregularly, skipping and stuttering. She was cold despite the heat, her body no longer able to regulate its temperature.
The sky was yellow with smoke from fires burning somewhere to the west. The air was thick, hard to breathe. Her chest rattled with every inhalation, a wet sound that reminded her of her mother’s last days.
She thought about that day on Miami Beach, sixty years ago. The blue water. The warm sand. Her father’s hand on her shoulder, heavy and reassuring. Her mother’s laugh, bright and unselfconscious. The taste of salt on her lips.
The water had been beautiful once.
She tried to remember her father’s face but couldn’t quite grasp it. The details had worn away, leaving only an impression. Kindness. Worry. Love.
Her mother was easier. She’d looked like Saharah, or Saharah had looked like her. The same eyes. The same stubborn chin. The same hands.
Saharah looked at her own hands now, skeletal and scarred, the skin hanging loose. These weren’t her mother’s hands. These were a stranger’s hands.
She watched as a wave rolled in, higher than the last, reaching for the concrete she sat on. The sea was still rising. It would never stop rising. It would swallow everything eventually—the ruins of cities, the bones of billions, the memory of what had been.
Another wave. Closer now.
The water touched her feet.
It was warm, like bathwater, like tears.
Her heart stuttered, paused, beat once more.
The water rose around her, patient and inexorable.
Saharah’s heart beat its last, and she let the sea take her home.
Why do Special Forces wear baseball caps?
Many have written accurately that this is largely ‘because they can’. There are, however, limits. I have seen generals use uniform standards rather forcefully to reinforce the reality that SOF is part of a wider whole. Some leeway is given, but just as it’s extended, it can be taken away.
Other explanations, like it’s to look ‘less military’, also don’t hold up. If you see a guy who is dressed like a warrior from the neck down … wearing a baseball cap won’t fool anyone into thinking he’s anything but some kind of soldier.
Hats and elite are a significant friction point, and I think Marines have this one right – everyone wears the same fucking hat.
When Ranger Regiment wore the black beret and it was adopted by the wider force? Regiment held beret burning ceremonies as if the … hats? Yep hats, had been tainted by mere people wearing them? You bet your sweet ass some Rangers got their pee pees whacked very hard for that kind of silliness – hats are not what makes anyone elite.
That has morphed into stupid hat rules. SOF wears green berets – cool. The guys assigned to SOF units who are not operators wear red berets. Solved? Nope, only 18 series that have been through the Q-course can. So what happens in Delta when you have Rangers, regular paratroopers, GASP! … regular old infantrymen, and former green berets? You draw up complicated rules about who can wear what hat in a menagerie of pointless hats.
And people get emotional about … hats.
That is Major General VanAntwerp. If he isn’t the best officer I served with, he’s certainly one of the best. That photo is him taking command of all Special Operations forces in the Pacific. His entire SOF experience was with Delta. He came straight from the 25th Infantry Division (with no special hat). He even commanded Delta Force and led them to absolutely crush ISIS. So no special hat … ? 🤷♂️ Is he not elite then? 😱
Of course he is.
And yet he is wearing the same hat as every single soldier in the Army … not even a baseball cap. He seems … fine. Odd.
There is Admiral Williams, Navy Seal, the guy he took over from … wearing the same hat as the rest of the Navy.
So yes, when SOF guys start thinking it’s magic hats that make them elite and not their actual skills? Generals and admirals do insist on making the point about hats. And again, to be clear, most of the guys in SOF are incredible warriors who have absolutely earned the qualifier of ‘elite’. It’s not about the hats at all. No one would look at these guys and not perceive that they are elite, regardless of what kind of hat they wore, including none at all.
The Army would do well to have just one hat. We have all kinds of distinctive patches and tabs that identify elite status without looking like a bunch of ladies trying to plan a tea party in London.
If someone starts crying over a hat change? He may lack the maturity and intestinal fortitude to be truly elite. Just ask Jeff about his hat. Dare you.
Racist Karen Gets Destroyed After Attacking Black Judge in His Own Parking Spot at the Courthouse
A courthouse CCTV camera captured the moment a entitled Karen named Ruby made the WORST mistake of her life. She parked in a reserved spot, then completely lost it when the spot’s owner politely asked her to move. What Ruby DIDN’T know? The man she was screaming at, insulting, and racially profiling was actually a JUDGE at that courthouse. And he was NOT going to let this slide. Watch as this Karen goes from confident and aggressive to absolutely DESTROYED when she realizes who she just messed with. The revenge he got was absolutely perfect.
Pictures
How come Clint Eastwood’s movies as a director are always done under budget and under schedule?
Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood on “Invictus”.
Because he’s been in the movie business for 232 years. Because he’s been directing feature films for 50 years (the second number is actually true.)
So he knows what he’s doing. The best example of why his movies come in on-time and under budget? His reputation for doing scenes in a single take (two at most) precedes him.
Actors know the rep, and prepare accordingly, as Matt Damon attests:
I was playing a South African [in Invictus] and that’s a really hard accent to do. … It’s something that just required a lot of practice and I treated it like a job. I tested that [Eastwood one-take] theory on Day 1 of shooting.
We did the first take. It went pretty well. Clint says, ‘cut, print, check the gate,’ which means we’re gonna move on. And I said, ‘Hey boss, maybe you think we could get one more?’ He just turned and goes, ‘Why? Do you want to waste everybody’s time?’
Eastwood is not casual about directing, but he knows what he wants. He uses the same crew over and over, and they know each other’s rhythms. He’s a director who lets the members of his team do their job. For instance, he doesn’t stay in the room while his editor is working. Clint watches the footage, he and the editor discuss the best ways to put it together, then Mr. Eastwood goes off to play golf, coming back toward the end of the day to see how sequences are shaping up.
Other directors might hover at their editor’s shoulder, but that’s not Clint Eastwood’s style. Which explains why his features are completed without muss or fuss. His seasoned professionals are allowed to do their work without endless second-guessing from their director.
Addendum: Clint was in a round table discussion a few years ago with other A-list directors. The other participants described how they spent long, grueling days in post, working shoulder-to-shoulder with their editor(s). Twelve, fourteen hour days.
Clint gets asked the same question, and says “Well, we sit down in the morning and go over shots, talk about the sequence. Then I go play a round of golf, grab something to eat, come back in the late afternoon to see how it’s shaping up, look at the new footage that’s been cut. We talk some more and I give him some notes.”
The others were dumbfounded that he didn’t sit there micro-managing for twelve hours straight.
The Cat Who Fell From the Sky
Prepare yourself for a tale of mistaken masts, misplaced parrots, and the sheer audacity of a cat who believes laundry line is a jungle vine.
Sir Whiskerton was conducting a crucial examination of the sun’s trajectory across the barn floor—a vital part of his daily nap-spot temperature assessment—when his calculations were violently interrupted by a sound that defied geometry and acoustics.
It was a Tarzan-yell that peaked at a horrifyingly high pitch, before dissolving into a very loud, utterly off-key meow.
A blur of orange fur, a tattered red bandanna, and a trailing length of old laundry line descended from the massive oak tree that overshadowed the barn. The figure landed with an astonishing WHUMP directly upon a perfectly positioned bale of hay, scattering dust and three startled sparrows.
It was Captain Swingset, the farm’s newest and most geographically confused resident. He leaped up, drawing his cutlass (a slightly bent butter knife), and struck a magnificent, if wobbly, pose. Upon his shoulder sat his first mate: a stuffed sock with a single, googly eye, whom Swingset addressed as “Squawk.”
“Ahoy, landlubbers! I have arrived on the wings of the wind, from the mighty mast of the… er, pine tree!” Swingset roared, his voice cracking slightly on the last word. “Where is the bilge? I need to swab it!”
Sir Whiskerton, having brushed the hay dust from his whiskers, adjusted his monocle. “The ‘bilge,’ my dear fellow, is currently being confused with a particularly muddy patch near the tractor shed. As for the mast, the only mast here belongs to Professor Quentin’s experimental radio. Kindly refrain from applying your cutlass (a butter knife) to it. We have only just repaired the antenna after the last incident.”
Porkchop the Pig waddled out from his pen, drawn by the commotion and the promise of potential shipwreck rations. He watched the spectacle, baffled.
It was at this moment that The Farmer, having just retrieved his brand new, very tall ladder from the shed, arrived on the scene. He stopped, staring at the cat in the bandanna who was now attempting to swing from the ladder’s rungs.
“Did the mail-order monkey finally arrive?” The Farmer muttered to Porkchop, scratching his head. “I specifically requested one that doesn’t say ‘Ahoy’.”
Swingset, completely ignoring the humans, had spotted his next target: The Farmer’s overalls, which had been tossed carelessly over a fence post. They were stiff, faded, and slightly damp—perfectly suitable for a flag.
“Behold!” Captain Swingset declared, saluting the overalls with his butter knife. “The Jungle Flag! Land Ahoy! Every good sailor must salute the jungle’s banner!”
Sir Whiskerton’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Captain, with all due respect to your adventurous spirit, those are overalls. They hold the distinct scent of last Tuesday’s manure.”
“Nonsense!” Swingset cried. He then spun on his heels and, in an attempt to “press-gang” Sir Whiskerton into his crew, pulled a belt from his waistband. “Sir! I hereby induct you as First Mate! Your duty is to navigate the treacherous currents of the feed trough and to wear this Eye-Patch of Command!” He attempted to loop the belt around Sir Whiskerton’s head.
The Detective Cat nimbly sidestepped the heavy leather accessory. “While I appreciate the offer of increased executive function, Captain, I already hold the self-appointed rank of Chief Deductive Officer. And as for the First Mate title, I find the belt accessory to be incompatible with my center of gravity.”
Swingset, crestfallen, retreated to a corner, giving his sock-parrot, Squawk, a dejected shake. The googly eye wobbled sadly.
Sir Whiskerton paused. While the Captain’s sheer volume and misplaced swagger were irritating, the core of the cat was pure, unbridled, and—crucially—not malicious. He was simply an explorer with a map to the wrong place. The farm, Sir Whiskerton realized, had become the jungle that this cat believed it was, simply by virtue of his absolute conviction.
He felt a rare surge of warmth that had nothing to do with sun spots on the hay. Swingset’s confidence, his ability to transform the mundane into the magnificent, was genuinely infectious.
Sir Whiskerton disappeared briefly into the Farmer’s shed and returned with a long, brand-new length of sisal rope. It was thick, sturdy, and smelled of honest craftsmanship.
“Captain,” Sir Whiskerton said, pushing the rope gently towards the pirate. “A proper Tarzan requires proper rigging. The laundry line is prone to snapping, which would be a grievous lack of structural integrity for your next adventure. I suggest you rename this new gear.”
Swingset’s eyes, bright with the fire of a thousand imaginary voyages, lit up. He grasped the rope, testing its strength. “The Vine of Destiny!” he yelled, and with a surprisingly agile leap, he swung from the barn rafters, his Tarzan-yell finally hitting a note that was only slightly flat.
Porkchop watched the spectacle, then nudged the sock-parrot. The pig noticed a loose thread and pulled it, revealing a secret compartment containing a single, slightly stale fish cracker.
“Treasure!” Porkchop squealed, his eyes glittering. The farm wasn’t a jungle or a ship, he realized. It was simply where the food was.
Captain Swingset, now swinging with confidence, had transformed the mundane barn into a grand, swaying canopy. The chaos hadn’t stopped, but the meaning of the chaos had changed. It wasn’t a problem to be solved; it was an adventure to be embraced.
The End.
Moral:
Adventure isn’t about where you are, but how you see the world. Confidence can make even a mundane farm feel like a magnificent jungle, provided you have a good rope and a butter knife.
Best Lines:
- “My dear fellow, the only mast here belongs to Professor Quentin’s experimental radio. Kindly refrain from applying your cutlass (a butter knife) to it.”
- “The ‘bilge,’ my dear fellow, is currently being confused with a particularly muddy patch near the tractor shed.”
- “I specifically requested one that doesn’t say ‘Ahoy’.”
- “He then spun on his heels and, in an attempt to ‘press-gang’ Sir Whiskerton into his crew, pulled a belt from his waistband.”
- “Your duty is to navigate the treacherous currents of the feed trough.”
Post-Credit Scene:
Captain Swingset discovers the fish cracker compartment in Squawk the sock-parrot. He immediately declares it the “Locker of Lost Lures” and sets sail on a tiny raft made of popsicle sticks across the feed trough. Sir Whiskerton is forced to rescue him after he encounters a particularly aggressive dust bunny, which Swingset mistakes for the legendary “Kraken of the Carpet.”
Key Jokes:
- Captain Swingset’s “Tarzan-yell” being a loud, off-key meow.
- Sir Whiskerton referring to Swingset’s butter knife as a “cutlass.”
- Swingset descending on the “Vine of Destiny” (an old laundry line).
- The Farmer asking Porkchop if the “mail-order monkey” finally arrived.
- Swingset insisting The Farmer’s overalls are a “Jungle Flag” that must be saluted.
Starring:
Sir Whiskerton as The Chief Deductive Officer Who Secretly Provides Climbing Equipment
Captain Swingset as The Feline Swashbuckler Who Confuses Manure for Majesty
The Farmer as The Overalls Owner Who Should Have Stick to Ordering Seeds
Porkchop the Pig as The Finder of Stale, Googly-Eyed Treasure
P.S.
If you can’t find the adventure outside, remember to always look for the fish cracker inside. Sometimes, the best treasure is slightly stale and stuffed in a sock.
Life Lesson
Depths of Empathy
Written in response to: “Write a story that includes someone swimming in water or diving into the unknown.“
Daniel Coniff
The voice yells, “That’s not the right answer!” I feel the world shake before I’m hurdling upwards at a breakneck pace. My limbs dangle and my torso rises as if an invisible entity is pulling me. Faces appear all around me. Many cry, and some laugh. Some are males and some are females. They morph into different faces as my upward barrage hastens.
What is this?
“Consequences.”
Consequences?
“Do not be so coy!” demands the voice as if berating the child. “You know what is happening, you just have to stop fighting it!” A speck of light appears, growing larger and larger.
The faces fade away and are replaced by a singular face directly above me. This is the face of a young man with a mustache and a head of curly red hair. Terror consumes his darting blue eyes. Almost as soon as the face appears, it vanishes.
That was strange.
“Was it?” The voice asks. “Is this strange?”
As the light grows brighter still, the blueness of the depths around me becomes lighter and lighter shades. Swirls of reds, yellows, and greens, like a sheen, materialize where the young man’s face was. It morphs into the scene of—a window in the sky looking at the Earth below, perhaps—a man lying face up in a fast food restaurant lobby in a pool of blood. He has three bullet holes in his chest, just like I do. This is the same young man that I saw just moments before.
Is that me?
The voice scoffs.
As I rise, the blueness becomes so vivid and the light so intense that my suspicions are confirmed; I am underwater. But why and how? I’m still unsure of the meaning of any of this.
“All will be unveiled in due time.”
The scene fades away as soon as I break the ocean’s surface. I gasp for air as I shoot out of the water like a whale. I catch a brief glimpse of an infinite sea before splashing back into the ocean. Once I’m underwater, I sink at a slow, steady pace, like a dormant rollercoaster just before it blasts off.
Before I can think about what just happened, another sheen materializes directly above me; yellows, greens, and blues wax and wane before morphing into another window, this one looking into a toddler’s bedroom as he walks towards a man and a woman standing at a door. They’re clapping and cheering the baby on. The child reaches the feet of the woman. She scoops him up and brings him to her face. She says, “You did it! You’re such a big boy! Yay!” The man leans in and grins at the toddler, “Way to go, buddy!”
This is adorable!
“I’m glad you think so,” says the ethereal voice coming at me from every direction.
The toddler coos before the scene fades away.
I can feel my heart palpitating. What was that?
“You have to remember. This should help you. Something is stirring within you, I can see it.”
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
As my descent continues, a few moments go by before another sheen appears. Purples, reds, and greys morph into a scene of a boy and a girl sitting on a couch, holding video game controllers in their hands, in front of a tube TV. The boy, who appears to be five or six years old, leans to his left with a concentrated look on his face. The girl, the sister, maybe, who looks to be about nine or ten years old, encourages her brother to reach the finish line. On the TV is a split screen of a platformer game. An overlay that says, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” appears on the screen. The boy and girl high-five and congratulate each other. Again, the scene fades away. I notice that the light from the water’s surface has grown slightly dimmer.
I’m falling deeper and deeper.
Again, I try communicating with this entity. Who are you and what do you want with me? Why are you showing me these things? In this moment, I realize something even more terrifying: I have no idea who I am. Another eery thought occurs: I have just awoken, teleported, that much I know, but I have no idea where from.
“YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER!”
Remember what? I don’t understand what’s happening.
Suddenly, I am shooting deeper and deeper at a rapid pace, the light above shrinking as blackness consumes my surroundings. A sense of serenity washes over me. No matter how hard I try to shut my eyes, they remain slightly open. All I can do is squint. The voice laughs as another sheen appears.
Greys, blacks, and browns morph into a scene of five boys, some with faces full of acne, standing in a half-circle against a red brick wall. The boy from the previous scene—he appears to be in middle school now—stands in the middle of the semi-circle. He is crying and hugging himself for warmth as it is raining, and his jacket lies on the blacktop in front of him.
“I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” the boys surrounding him all chant in between bouts of laughter.
A tall boy steps forward from the semi-circle and punches the sobbing boy in the face. Upon making contact, the scene fades to black.
Yet another sheen forms. Red, blues, and oranges morph into a scene of the boy from before, the same age, sitting in the back of a car as firefighters outside attempt to cut open his door. He is screaming as he reaches over the seat in front of him and taps on the shoulder of the driver, the woman from the first scene, as she lies slumped over the steering wheel, blood trickling down her forehead. “Wake up, mom! Wake up!” She does not react. In the passenger seat is the boy’s sister. Her legs are crushed, and she is pushed at an odd angle into the center console. The firefighters manage to bend the door enough to get to the boy. One of the firefighters grabs him.
This is fucked!
“I’m glad you see that.”
The scene doesn’t fade to black this time. Instead, it merely shifts to a hospital room where the sister is lying in a bed. A ventilator is protruding from her mouth. The boy is sitting in a chair against the window with a somber expression; he is staring off into space. The man from the first scene is standing, leaning against the wall. He watches the girl sleep with a fist resting underneath his chin.
Suddenly, each of the characters looks at me. Even the girl sits up, rips the tube out of her throat, and stares at me judgmentally. That’s when their heads explode into a bloody mess, painting the walls crimson. Alarms blare. The screens beside the hospital bed blink. The nurse runs in and screams before her head, too, explodes. The doctor rushes in. He looks around at the corpses and yells, “Code—” His head explodes. Finally, the scene fades to black. The light above me is but a distant speck, like a single crumb of bread on an otherwise spotless dining table. I move my head on a swivel: everything else, save for the light glowing from behind me, is pitch black.
What the fuck? Why are you doing this? Stop. Please, stop. I can’t take this anymore.
“You have to know.”
Know what? What do you want me to know? Confusion washes over me. I try once more to scream, but, just as before, only garbled groans come out. I don’t understand! What do you want with me?
“All should be unveiled in time, but it depends on your willingness to understand. The problem of whether or not your soul is worth saving depends on how it responds to the truth. A receptive soul can be salvaged and rehabilitated, but a hardened soul is despicable and belongs in the abyss forevermore. Now, no more questions. You are interfering with the process.”
Swaths of whites, dull yellows and browns, and blacks morph into a window looking into a hotel room. The boy from the previous scenes, a year or two older than before, sits on a bed. He wears black basketball shorts and a yellow tank top. He stares at the ground and swings his feet back and forth. A door opens. The boy looks up to see an overweight man step out of the bathroom. The man approaches the boy.
“You ready, kid?” asks the man. The boy nods, but his face is blank.
“All right. You know what to do.”
The boy begins to lift his tank top over his head when his phone buzzes. He pauses and lets it fall back over his chest. He removes his phone from his pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?” barks the man.
The boy holds up his finger and opens his phone. The screen shows a message that reads, “FROM SISTER: Hey where u at? Dad is asleep and I need help going to the bathroom. Wheelchair isnt working. I need you to come help me.”
The boy lowers his phone back into his pocket and looks at the man as he stands up, “Sorry. I gotta go.” He starts toward the door.
“You’re not going anywhere,” says the man as he grabs the boy’s arm, pulling on him.
“You’re hurting me. Please, let me go!”
With an evil grin, the man says, “Good.” He throws the boy back to the bed.
I move my head from left to right, hoping it will make the scene disappear. Instead, the scene follows me wherever I turn my head. Please! No more! I don’t want to watch this anymore. This isn’t right! That boy’s just a kid! His sister needs him!” Thankfully, the window fades away.
“Ah. This is good. Your soul is nearly ready.”
Nearly?
“Yes. You are progressing better than we hoped.”
Another sheen appears above me before I have a chance to question who “we” are. Swirls of whites, blues, and dark greens morph into the front yard of a small mobile home. There is a makeshift ramp leading to the porch next to the stairs. The door opens and reveals the boy, who now has a mustache, pushing his sister in her wheelchair. They are in a hurry out the door. The father from before follows them, holding a bottle in his hands. He staggers.
Slurring his words, the man says, “Don’t come back! Ya ain’t welcome! Y’all are a bunch of useless leaches, and I hate you!”
The boy looks back as his dad slams the door shut. The girl begins to sob, “What are we going to do now, Noah?”
Noah, fighting tears, moves to the side of her wheelchair, kneels, and gives her a hug, “We’ll be okay, Sarah, I promise. We’re going to take care of each other.”
The scene fades to black. The light from the ocean’s surface has been consumed by darkness, the light behind me now my only savior from also becoming lost to the void.
I think I understand.
I am immediately transported inside a sandwich shop. Strangely, I am looking downwards at an angle, as if I’m viewing from a security camera. However, this feels too real—everything is crystal clear yet feels so distant, like I’m actually there but not there at the same time—to be just a security camera.
A line forms in front of the register. The young man, the one who I’m assuming is me, Noah, walks up to the counter and smiles at the androgynous person standing behind the register. They smile back and say, “Hi there! How can I help you today?”
Noah says, “Hello. Can I get… uhh…” He pulls out his phone, “…two six-inch italian sandwiches on cheddar cheese sour dough?”
The worker, still grinning, starts, “Of course! Will—”
“Oh, for fuck sake!” says an angry man in the middle of the line. He’s wearing camo cargo shorts and a hoodie with the logo of a death metal band. “That’s going to take twice as long to make!”
Noah turns around, “You got a problem? Be patient, bro. No one’s dying today.”
The angry man steps forward, and the people in the line stare at him, “Yeah, I do have a problem. One, I’m not your ‘bro,’ you scrawny twink. Second, only a fatass orders two sandwiches.”
Anger washes over me, over Noah, as his face reddens, “One of them is for my sister, dickwad.”
The impatient man approaches Noah, stopping inches from his face, “The fuck did you call me,”—he pushes him to the floor—“bitch? You did not just call me that.”
Clambering as he stands up, Noah rises back to his feet and hits the man in the face. The people in line at the register begin to slowly walk away. The impatient man staggers backward before pulling a handgun out of his hoodie and aiming it at Noah. Everyone in line runs to the exit. The patrons and the workers stuck where they are duck.
Noah stands tall and looks from the man to the gun. He gulps, “Go ahead. Shoot me! My life can’t get any worse!”
“I should shoot you! The world has too many spoiled little cunts like you.” He clicks off the safety.
Noah laughs, “You don’t have the balls. Come on man, make—” the impatient man fires three times. He looks at Noah, who stares at the ceiling with his eyes open as blood pools around him. The other people inside the restaurant cry and scream. The man lowers his gun.
I find myself back in my body and realize that I’m lying on sand again, which means I’ve completed my descent and reached the bottom of the ocean.
Wait, so I’m dead? You showed me all of that just to show me I’m dead?
“You fool!” The world around me trembles again, “How can you be so stubborn? You must understand! Do you want to suffer eternally in the lake of fire?”
The scene materializes again. The man with the gun is kneeling at the side of Noah before he gets up and runs out the door. I follow the man as if controlling him in a video game. The sound of sirens fade in as a police car with flashing lights approaches him. The man grabs a woman on a bench and holds the gun to her head. She screams and squirms.
A police officer steps out with her gun drawn, “Let the lady go and drop your weapon! You don’t want this to get any worse!”
“Get back,” yells the man. “I will kill her if you come any closer!”
The officer speaks into her radio as she maintains her aim on the man, “Responding units, be advised: suspect has a hostage and is threatening to kill her if we approach him.” Suddenly, the woman breaks free from the man’s grasp.
The man points his gun at the officer, but not before the female officer fires three shots at him. He collapses.
I am transported back to my body and notice that I am again lying on the sand. I lift my neck and cry, surprised to feel tears streaming down my cheeks and wails coming up my throat.
“Do you see the error in your ways? Have you learned? Are you ready to try again?”
“Yes! Yes, I have!” I say in a weak voice, like I haven’t had a drink of water in years.
“What have you learned?”
I think about what I have learned. Suddenly, once again, I hurdle upwards. As I break the ocean’s surface, I notice people wearing masks, scrubs, and gloves grabbing at and pulling me out of a wet cavern.
Persian Rice Pudding
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients
- 4 cups milk
- 1/2 cup raw white rice
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup water
- 3 (2-inch) cinnamon sticks
- 1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 2 whole cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon anise seed
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup finely sliced dried figs
- 3/4 cup creamed cottage cheese, beaten until almost smooth or blend in the blender or processor
- 2 tablespoons whipping cream
- Few grains salt
- 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
- 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
Instructions
- Scald milk in top of double boiler. Add rice, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 cup sugar. Cover; cook over gently boiling water 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover, and continue to cook about 30 minutes, until thickened. Remove from heat.
- Put water, cinnamon sticks, 1 tablespoon lemon rind, nutmeg, cloves and anise seed in saucepan. simmer uncovered about 20 minutes or until reduced to 2 or 3 tablespoons of liquid. Strain; stir into rice and add vanilla extract and figs; mix thoroughly. Cool.
- Serve warm.
- Just before serving, mix cottage cheese, whipping cream, few grains salt, 1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind and 2 teaspoons sugar. Fold into rice mixture.
Attribution
Posted by Olga at Recipe Goldmine 3/23/2002 9:16 pm.
What was the most embarrassed you’ve been after having had unexpected company?
I was trying to date this girl, but everytime I asked her out, she brought along her best friend to run interference.
We all ended up as platonic friends (sort of)
I had just kicked the last partier out of the house for the night, and was in bed, when there was pounding on the door. I lived in the country, it was a cold snowy winter night.
I got up and it was the girl I had been trying to dates, best friend. She had put her car in the ditch, not far from my place, and wanted me to tow her out. She was in the ditch about the same distance from her best friends house, as she was from mine, but thought a guy was more likely to be able to get her out of the ditch.
I told her I was too drunk to drive, and she would have to spend the night. I cracked us a couple of beers and before you know it, we were in bed together.
First thing the next morning, the girl I had been trying to date, was pounding on my door. She saw her best friends car in the ditch, and was worried that she might have started walking and froze to death.
She wanted me to help her search for best friend. I told her she had spent the night, and didn’t she think anything of it, until she saw her friend wasn’t on the couch.
She went to my bedroom and she was still sleeping.
Awkward!!!!
But she had made clear that she wanted a platonic relationship. But a couple of weeks later, guess who was at my door, waking me up.
Why This Babysitter is Facing 100 Years in Prison
On June 26th, 2024, the Pekin Police Department received a 911 call from a man reporting that a baby in the care of a babysitter was unresponsive. This is footage of the events that followed.