bro come on, just give us australia. you’ve hardly touched it. kind of impressed this kind of guy has always been with us i guess. rip kita ikki you could have had an extremely intense circle of tumblr followers in 2014.
7 Likes
Been reading Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford, which I largely haven’t liked (he’s trying to be witty, isn’t good at it), but, I thought this bit about “kitchen awareness” was interesting:
This continued a bit a few chapters later, with a different cook named Marco:
8 Likes
Mefitis was associated with water— particularly foul-smelling or sulfurous water— and noxious fumes. Her main temple was situated near Lake Ampsanctus, which was described as deadly by Cicero and Pliny. The temple itself was reported to contain poisonous gas that killed anyone who entered
great bit
7 Likes
Villains
Remo and Chiun have encountered a number of colorful villains, both human and superhuman. Their foes have run the gamut of pulp fiction, from mobsters to mad scientists to satires of famous real people. Notable examples include:
Mr. Gordons, a shapeshifting android created by NASA with limited emotional capabilities.
Cartoonist Uncle Sam Beasley, revived from cryogenic sleep and armed with an animatronic eye and hand.
Super-soldier Elizu Roote, a cyborg with electricity-based superpowers.
Friend, an artificial intelligence dedicated to making as much money as possible.
Nuihc (“Chiun” reversed) the Renegade, Chiun’s first pupil and nephew. Once trained, Nuihc deserted his duty of providing for the village of Sinanju to seek personal profit. This forced Chiun out of retirement to train Remo Williams.
Jeremiah Purcell (a.k.a. the Dutchman), Nuihc’s protege and a strong psychic and pyrokinetic.
Kali, the Hindu goddess who is linked to Remo.
Mr. Arieson (a.k.a. “Arieson” or “Kakak”), a spirit of “good old-fashioned” war that incites men to battle with his charisma. Introduced in An Old Fashioned War.
The Master (also called The Leader), a Chinese vampire (gyonshi) and vegetarian who is the current head of an ancient blood-drinking cult.
Wu Ming Shi (a.k.a. Dr. Fu Manchu)
Sagwa, the bodyguard and right-hand man of Wu Ming Shi, a pastiche of martial artist Bruce Lee
Rasputin, an undead Russian monk.
Dr. Judith White, a scientist specializing in genetic engineering who changed herself into a weretiger.
The Krahsheevah, a Russian soldier with the ability to walk through walls and transmit his physical form by converting into energy and traveling on phone lines, as well as other unique powers.
i don’t really want to read anything in Remo Williams Is The Destroyer series but i feel like i might need to check out the one where walt disney has an animatronic hand. i did kind of like this part from the marvel comic where he has to go undercover to investigate the threat to america’s campuses. yeah the old guy is coloured like that the whole thing.
4 Likes
The Ani-Men of Repli-Tech
Our story begins when a bio-technology firm called Repli-Tech finds out that it has over-extended itself and now faces bankruptcy and possible criminal charges for financial misdeeds. But the company chairman, a macho type called Rex Rogan, tells his board members they have an easier way out. He says they can use their technology on themselves to be transformed into animal-like creatures with special powers. The board, in blind obedience to Rogan agrees and the company’s resident scientist, a Dr. Lovecraft, soon converts the board members and other key employees into “Ani-men”.
[…]
Now armed with animal powers and aided by company guards using high-tech weaponry, the Repli-Tech officials resort to robbery and other crimes to raise their operating capital. They become so successful, they even set up an illegal arena where humans are forced to fight to the death against ani-men for the enjoyment of the decadent rich.
They were the former board members of the bankrupt corporation, Repli-Tech Industries. When Repli-Tech’s CEO Rex Rogan discovered that the company was going under, he had his top scientist, Doctor Lovecraft, use an experimental DNA treatment to transform Rex and the others into powerful beast men.
https://www.cosmicteams.com/obscure/a.htm#ANIMEN
gentlemen, we have failed to meet Q3 expectations. i therefore suggest that this board use proprietary DNA treatments to turn ourselves into a fantastic new race of Ani-Men (animalized men), the better to raise further capital.
this is a gerry conway story, so the same guy who came up with werewolf by night villains “the committee” who want to use werewolf blood to stimulate america’s economy. a man with a visison.
4 Likes
Gargantus: a sperm whale-man with great strength and aquatic abilities.
i think this is an important detail
5 Likes
I’ve been enjoying The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann. Many great excerpts from this dire tale of survival.
On hunger and despair:
“Persons who have not experienced the hardships we have met with,” Bulkeley wrote, “will wonder how people can be so inhuman to see their fellow creatures starving before their faces, and afford ’em no relief. But hunger is void of all compassion.”
“Was God seeing the things they did out here? Bulkeley still sought solace from The Christian’s Pattern, but a passage in it warned, ‘Hadst thou a clear conscience, thou could not fear death. It were better to avoid sin than to flee death.’ Yet was it a sin to want to live?”
“The men toiled even as many of them confronted the debilitating effects of malnourishment: their bodies thinned to the bone, their eyes bulging, their strawlike hair falling out. Bulkeley said of the castaways, ‘They are in great pain, and can scarce see to walk.’ Yet they were compelled onward by that mysterious narcotic: hope.”
On death at sea:
“Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea,” one sailor recalled. “The man is near you—at your side—you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss… There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.”
On the island they become stranded upon:
“They were discovering how the climate was marked by incessant tempests. A British captain who passed by the island nearly a century later noted how the fierce squalls beat down from the ever-present clouds, that engulfed the surrounding lonely heights, and called it a place where ‘the soul of man dies on him’.”
On empire:
“The authors rarely depicted themselves or their companions as the agents of an imperialist system. They were consumed with their own daily struggles and ambitions—with working the ship, with gaining promotions and securing money for their families, and, ultimately, with survival. But it is precisely such unthinking complicity that allows empires to endure. Indeed, these imperial structures require it: thousands and thousands of ordinary people, innocent or not, serving—and even sacrificing themselves for—a system many of them rarely question.”
“Empires preserve their power with the stories that they tell, but just as critical are the stories they don’t—the dark silences they impose, the pages they tear out.”
I was happily painting a sign the other night listening to the utter crushing depths of despair and senselessness man are made to weather in the name of meaning and sheer survival.
3 Likes
