ArtieShaw

Once, and only once, the dream ended with me deciding to enter the mystic portal and me subsequently finding myself standing alone in the hallway of a Hampton Inn in Salt Lake City at 3:00am.

I was in my jammies. No socks, no room key, no phone. I contemplated many options to get myself out of the situation, but they were all objectively bad. The only high point of the experience is that the breakfast bar hadn’t opened in the lobby, so this remains something shared between only me and the night clerk. Neither of us were happy, but she was wearing more clothing.

My main takeaways for hotel stays and dreams:
-jammies must have pockets
-jammies must have full coverage
-spare key cards are in the pockets
-never enter the mystic portal that you summoned

Mystic portals: never again

Unless I’m also having an off day, the article is just really confusing. It makes sense to me that Italy would want the base back because it would be like selling a framed painting to Hitler and getting only the canvas back when it was returned. (Hitler, amirite?)

It’s probably a pretty nice base. Probably custom made for the statue shortly after it was unearthed, and probably the sort of thing that art historians would care about keeping together with the sculpture for art historian reasons.

It was a not so subtle way of saying “we love you but you’re not saved so you’re going to suffer during the tribulation.” Or, “are you sure you don’t want to accept Jesus and avoid all that?”

The rapture is not an instakill scenario for them, but the details make my head hurt.

Baptized Lutheran shortly after birth, but never attended church. It’s a long and vaguely racist family story. Don’t consider myself Christian.

My in-laws are fundamentalist end times folk, and it took years to try to make sense all of that. I love my husband, but it’s a lot to take in. And my brain naturally tends to try to make sense or analyze things, or figure out what’s motivating people.

Their older generation are very interested in controlling the people around them and they’re very good at it. I think it’s control and authority at the heart of it, with a helping of genuine trauma that makes death and reward look appealing.

Actual quote that I’ve heard a few times: “Life is hard, short, and cruel - and then you die!” \ Let me just say that Christmas visits can get really weird.

On a lighter note, they mailed us a Tribulation Survival Care Package for the 1999 x-mas, ahead of the Y2K impending millennial crisis. That was actually sort of fun, and the shiny space blanket came in handy a few times.

It was a long time ago. No worries.

I assumed that but can’t confirm. We had all just graduated the summer prior. She moved out of state and was living in a small apartment. Her family were all overseas. The police contacted us because they couldn’t reach her family, so we only got the barest details.

It felt unreal, but it was enough to understand the potential consequences of living in a shitty rental.

In my friend’s case it was just a faulty heater in her apartment. The first cold night of the year she turned on the heat, went to bed, and never woke up. I don’t know the details beyond that.

We’ve had detectors ever since. And I usually think about it this time of year.

Lentil soup. The only fresh ingredient is the greens (and you can freeze them to use later). The finished soup can be frozen.

2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 28- ounce can crushed tomatoes
2 cups water
3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped

1. Boil the lentils for 20 minutes, drain and set aside.
2. Saute the onion until soft
3. Add everything else except for the greens; bring to a simmer
4. Stir in the greens and cook for another couple of minutes
5. Adjust seasoning

Short and simplified version:

Virginia had a lot of land and it was a slave-holding state. But the western part was in the mountains, where it wasn’t really feasible to have a plantation or conduct large scale trade. Waterways were the most efficient way to trade. By the time the Civil War rolled around, Virginia wanted to continue slavery, but the people in the mountains didn’t really give a fuck. They were poor and didn’t want to fight for the plantation owners.

Post war, WV continued their status quo as a poor mountain state with mineral resources but not much else. Virginia continued to flourish with its arable land, cities, military facilities, and ports.

Addict logic, I think. It’s not the best.

I doubt there will ever be any good answers about the other deaths. The initial investigations (if any) were just too poor. In both cases there’s been a lot of rumor but no one (law or journalist) seems to be able to find convincing evidence.

It may be some comfort and solace to their families to know that if those weren’t accidents the likely participants are dead or in prison.

My main question is how he’s able to pay his lawyers. He was supposedly broke.

For the past 30 years I’ve been saying “the next time I hear that asshole’s name he’d better be dead.” Last night I finally got that wish.

The pity/financial motive was presented by the prosecution, but I think there was more to it. Prosecutors generally avoid portraying victims as complete shits. But Paul was a complete piece of shit. And he was about to become a very expensive piece of shit.

Paul (the son) was set to stand trial for a drunk boating accident that killed a teenager. It was scheduled for just days after he was murdered. He had a history of alcohol abuse, being belligerent, and hitting his girlfriends. He got into lot of trouble that needed to be smoothed over. His family also called him the “little detective” because he liked to go through his father’s things and report any drugs he found. (Alex was abusing pills). That must have brought a mix of shame and hatred.

Alex’s father was also in hospice care at the time. He had been the family’s main fixer and local influencer for years.

1. My son killed a young woman and her family is coming after us with a costly and embarrassing trial
2. My dad’s not going to be around to help this time
3. When I have to pay for the trial they’re going to find out about the finances/crimes
4. My son, who is a shit, is monitoring my addiction and telling my wife what he finds
5. My son appears to have no intention of being less of a shit in the future

There were persistent rumors that Maggie was talking to a divorce lawyer, but I think that if they were true this would have been presented at the trial.

And there were the other murders/deaths. Wikpedia has a disambiguation page.

So basically, the son was an irritating shit who got into expensive trouble and was going to be bringing more trouble in days to come. He decided to kill Paul to make that go away. Then he added Maggie because at that point, why not? He’d be an obvious suspect if Paul was the only victim. If there are two victims from his family, it looks more like an outside party looking for retribution

Not so much an etymology, but how it was used in pop culture:

Our local paper used to publish a cartoon and poem every fall. The piece was called Injun Summer, and it was printed every October from 1907-1992.

It’s very much a relic of its era, which is to say “it was weird; really fucking weird.” The image is lovely. The text is an old man telling a young boy a totally made up story. It’s folksy, wistful and nostalgic. It talks about the past and how native spirits (literally ghosts) return to the land each fall. It’s also written in the vernacular of what an old man in 1907 might sound like.

Personally, I don’t think the complaints about racism were what caused them to stop printing it. I think it was the weirdness that just didn’t appeal to anyone under the age of 50 (in 1992!).

The fist link shows the image with text. The second shows how it would have looked in print.

http://www.sewwug.org/images/injun_summer_2.pdf

https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-history-of-john-t-mccutcheons-1907.html

There’s an older form that goes back to at least the 1970s when fuel efficient Japanese cars started to become popular in the US: “Rice burners.”

There was some made-in-America angst at the time because of the oil crisis, coupled with some quality issues that made these cars more appealing. The phrase was definitely used pejoratively. I can remember my dad muttering about it well into the '80s.

My family always pronounced it “chewing them down,” so I was surprised to see it written the first time. I was probably in college.

There was at least one local accomplice: a banker who helped manage the accounts. They had been college buddies.

No one at the law firm has been implicated, and it seems his real damages against them were to their reputation. His secretary claimed to have found something suspicious but hadn’t gotten around to asking him about it before the killings.

One example crime: his longtime housekeeper had an accident on his property. Details were unclear, but she fell on some stairs, hit her head, and died in hospital. He convinced her sons, who are disabled, to hire him to file a claim against his own insurance, which he would then pay to them. Except he didn’t pay them. The banker opened a trust, took out his own fee, paid Murdaugh’s lawyer fee, and let Murdaugh sign it over to himself. tl/dr - shady shit, but largely confined to these two guys

The word order makes all the difference.

It tends to fail when you steal from your own law partners.

It means that it is required. Obligatory.

It’s a modal verb. And I think it comes from the secondary meaning of have as “to undergo or experience” rather than to possess. Or maybe not.

in any case:

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/have-to

In my dialect, you’re correct about one thing. It’s pronounced nearly the same way as half. But that would make no sense.

There’s an interesting podcast called Stuff the British Stole.

They did an episode on the Elgin Marbles, but they cover a wide range of stolen goods.

And not to lay all the blame on Britain, Germany stole an entire temple from Pergamum. It’s currently in a museum in Berlin. (I tried to see it while in Berlin, but the exhibit was closed. I’m still a little salty about that. Can’t see it in the original location. Couldn’t see it in the museum.)