Dinosaurs, Dragons, Cryptids, and Sh*t

This didn't start out as a monsterfr*cking blog

[glassgourd]

Quick garden update. It finally rained after a week, so my garden sprung to life over night.

I found some old jumbo pink banana Hubbard squash seeds in my seed box. I had grown them successfully a few years ago. Last year I attempted to grow them again and none sprouted.

I planted about six seeds. They didn't seem dried out or bad, so I tested my luck. Anyway, two of them did sprout. If the summer treats the garden right, I get some pretty colored pumpkin bread and pies this fall.

Also tried growing watermelon again. I've never done it successfully.

[glassgourd]

I am currently on vacation. My garden is planted, save for one bed. A mother rabbit decided it was great place to have her babies. We still had frost late into May, so finally got to plant. The kits are up and about, so they'll probably vacate by the weekend, and I'll have my bed back. Probably going to plant pre-grown plants in that bed. Kohlrabi and cabbage likely. Possibly a line of beets. Even if I don't get tubers, the greens are really good as a stir fry.

I planted the last of my jumbo pink banana seeds, hopefully they'll do better this year than last year. My root parsley is doing amazing. Most of my lettuce went to seed last year, and sprouted up this year, so I was harvesting lettuce starting in May.

New veggies are tatsoi and Chinese Celery, and some type of extra thicc carrot. I find that I have more luck growing carrots in a bed than in the ground. Trying Daikon radish again, hopefully I'll have better luck. Last year was too dry and too hot and everything went to seed.

Planted sunflowers as well, as I find that a row or two of them draws in the pollinators, and birds love them in fall.

Until things start sprouting, I'm going to write. I'm hoping to have a one off posted by the end of the week, possibly two depending on how motivation and creativity treats me.

[glassgourd]

I miss old TLC. I'm old enough to remember when it would get shows from BBC. I remember being enthralled for an entire week watching The Human Body every night. I remember being awake at 1am in the morning, watching TLC dissect and discuss literary masterpieces like The Concrete Jungle, Metamorphosis, and Dracula.

[glassgourd]

Seeing people being nostalgic about Myspace is hilarious. Even when that site was active and running, people knew it was a cesspool.

One of my middle school teachers got arrested grooming a pre-teen and changed schools to be with her through Myspace. All their messages were on the site. The website wasn't even up a year.

[glassgourd]

I think of the most overlooked aspects of Mr. Transport/Choo Choo is that how this teacher manifests himself on set like a Power Ranger's monster of the week. His introduction had to be inspired by Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Instead of an intimidating monster-man, you got a senile, cantankerous geezer flailing his arms and moaning.

[glassgourd]

Garden season is nearly upon us. My own hot take is maybe we shouldn't be exclusively focused on organic, but may focus more on heirloom varieties of vegetables. All garden raised fruits and veggies are excellent, but a throw a few heirloom or weirder variaties of standard veggies. Not all of them cost an arm or a leg either, some are the same price of standard veggies.

Giant Pink Banana hubbard squash makes great pumpkin pies (with a pretty coral color to boot).

I don't like zucchinis, but the Mexican Gray zucchini is one of my favorite stir fry veggies. Waxier, firmer and doesn't get that off-mushroomy taste (which I don't like) when cooked. Heck, I once bought an heirloom variaty pack from Burpees and I was getting zucchinis from July to November. I made 80 something loaves of zucchini bread. They were ugly looking fruit, but it was a good harvest.

Crook Neck squash is horribly under rated. Sweeter, nuttier than zucchini, also holds up when cooking

Perpetual spinach swiss chard is delicious and hardier than rainbow chard

Don't like beets? Eat beet greens, tangier and sweeter than standard greens.

Heck, even sunflowers have many variaties and I like get mutliple seed packs to see what I get.

So that' is my rant for now. I plan on growing some stir-fry vegetables this year

[glassgourd]

Suffering from that same condition Jeffty had would be really boss right now.

[glassgourd]

So I own/owned an obscure piece of Godzilla media in the form of the novel "Godzilla at World's End". I did not know it was an obscure piece of media. I bought it at Walmart as a kid, I remember reading it, and it was on my bookshelf for years. It had Manda in it, who was one of my favorite Kaijus as a kid. Manda, if I remember correctly, invades either Hong Kong or China. The beginning and end, weirdly, reminded me of The Thing and Journey to the Center of the earth. Apparently, it is a reference to "At the Mountains of Madness".

I cannot find it for the life of me. Found Dogzilla (Kat Kong is currently MIA), and I still have three of the Godzilla books written by Scott Ciencin, can't find World's End. Found all my other obscure, random crap, including my Primal Rage and Power Ranger trading cards.

Next week I think I will try to do a deep clean on my old bedroom (hoping to turn it into a family library). Wonder what other goodies I will find.

EDIT: Kat Kong has been located, and some how I lost one of the Scott Ciencin books in the chaos of moving and packing. I'm doing a deep clean of my old bed room in a few weeks, hopefully I'll be able to relocate them and maybe other weird relics from my childhood.

[glassgourd]

I think Ms. Frizzle and Mary Poppins are just the final forms of magical girls.

[glassgourd]

I have not read or heard all the theories of TADC. I am going to write down mine, I apologize if someone else has already thought of it. I watch the show, I enjoy the show, I will be emotionally devastated at the end, but I'm not up to date on all the theories.

I'm in the SOMA boat, the ghosts in the machine.

What I believe the players are being used to train and hone Caine's AI. It is a semi-active experiment that has been going on for years. They are volunteers.

Kinger was a dev, and was able to tweak his avatar, possibly adding the clarity in darkness in code to combat Caine's AI. His human avatar is still very much alive and watching the TADC, probably still actively tweaking his avatar to keep him from abstracting/countering Caine's code.

Ragatha being a people pleaser, was easy to persuade to get a scan of her brain, and Gangle being passive, was also easy to persuade as well. Zooble, Jax (possibly Ribbit), Pomni, maybe they entered what they thought was an abandoned building, only to find there was active experiment going on. They were blackmailed into participating to avoid fine or jailtime. Pretty dramatic, huh?

But I don't think that is what happened. As an aging Millennial, I know thing or two about stagnation and mundanity. The answer is more mundane.

They were all paid anonymous volunteers, save for Kinger and perhaps a few of the older abstractions. No name, just subject numbers, that's it. Scanned and they moved on. Possibly this takes place on a college campus.

Some volunteers who produce partial scans had their info fed into Caine's AI or into NPCs. Having a complete enough scan to produce an aware avatar is rare.

Ragatha's human is a people pleaser, so she agreed to it. Gangle was pressured. Zooble was in between jobs and did it for the money. Jax was in his early twenties and wanted a quick buck. Pomni may have wanted a break in the monotony or have some "control", by making a choice to participate.

Here is the bittersweet part. The avatars will be have all the development and growth the humans will never have. They'll be the best version of their humans.

*Hopefully that made sense. I'll probably tweak this a bit later, I just wrote this down after work*

[glassgourd]

Must I be the hero the story? Can I not be the NPC merchant they are willing to die for?

I would cross the lava fields and have my shop set up at the volcano lair gates with my specially-bred magical pumpkins with 30% burn protection just before the hero arrives and fights the magma golem.

For very reasonable prices.

[glassgourd]

You know what I miss?

90s and 80s fantasy book cover art. Like damn, we've fallen so far.

[glassgourd]

Gaslighting a reality bender would be one helluva flex

[glassgourd]

With the sanitation the internet, we're going to have to resurrect vaudeville to continue properly sh*tposting.

[glassgourd]

Writing prompt.

You are the last known surviving human in existence. You eke out a quiet living in the middle of nowhere. It is just you, a few loyal pets, some livestock, and a garden.

With no other humans about, all cryptids and paranormal entities are drawn to your homestead now.

At any given point in the day you find yourself encountering a new entity. Something large is lurking in the forest behind your cabin. Inside the cabin offers no sanctuary, as items are often moved around. Mysterious lights in the night sky. Glowing red eyes in the distance. Strange footprints in snow and dirt around your storage sheds and the corners of property.

It is a harem manga.

[glassgourd]

Not a creepy pasta

Hey! Let's talk about a creepy VHS I used to watch as a kid!

I grew up with bootlegs VHS tapes. If you were poor, they probably have a very special place in your heart, or in your nightmares, because you did not know what you were going to get on those Family Dollar bargain bin VHS tapes. The horror and aura sounding them was real.

Think you were getting classic Looney Toon tapes with a poorly rendered Daffy and Bugs on the cover? NOPE. F*cking Harvey Toons. I have plenty of slander for Harvey Toons, but I'm not slandering them today.

This is not about a VHS I owned, but one I had rented. I don't know how many times I rented this tape. I think only once, but it is burnt into my memory very clearly.

This particular VHS I rented from a local store (one I eventually worked at). The store did not own it. There was some company or person, they'd rent movies from time to time and have rotation of tapes. This VHS was one of them.

It was this VHS feature a cute black and white cartoon kitten on the cover. The VHS's name was "A Kitten named Bow-Wow". Now being a cat lover, I wanted to watch it, so my parents rented it for me and my siblings.

The VHS was a compilation of Soviet Era cartoons. The first two or three shorts featured the eponymous kitten, Bow, who was not black and white, but sort of Siamese. The cover art was a combination of the main character, and the main antagonist. It was cute, the voice acting was bad, really don't remember much of those shorts.

There were also other shorts. One was a black chalkboard style animation featuring rainbow animals. An elephant finds a thirsty thistle and hurries to get water for it. That was the plot.

So nothing scary so far, but then, there was this F*cking thing at the end:

This gave me nightmares as kid. It haunted me for years. I never thought I'd ever find it, and figured it would just be one of those foggy childhood memories. After listening the epic that was The Clockman saga, I decided to see if I could find the animation that traumatized me as a kid.

I knew the name of the legend this animation was based on (thank you Papa Beaver's story time). So I just looked it up on youtube, and lo and behold, one of the first animations to pop up.

There is an English dub, probably the same sh*tty dub I watched back in the early 90s. This video has better resolution. It is charming, a little freaky, lovely animation, and the one part that broke my heart as a kid, still breaks my heart as an adult (and freaks me out).

[glassgourd]

Maybe distracting myself with a questionable one-off fic will get me back on track with my actual writing.