Me telling an EMS war story that brings the vibe to a crashing halt.
America in one picture
No, nothing ever happens, actually. Nobody ever does anything interesting or worth talking about. Hosting exchange kids has, predictably, been one of the most boring experiences of my life, along with everything else.
Nah, he found a smooth reflective mask and a huge red robe, then we took a toy sickle and rubber mallet and spray painted them with gold paint.
I hosted a Russian exchange student who really liked joking about that stuff. He went as the ghost of communism for Halloween
I don't know that I'd agree that the EU and the articles of confederation are comparable. There were a few big differences, including states printing their own currency without a common exchange medium (as opposed to the Euro), and that the mechanism for funding the federal government was (IIRC) entirely voluntary. States could just choose to not send money without consequences, and most or all made the obvious choice of not funding the federal government. The articles of confederation also had a few things about it that were more progressive than the constitution; for example, if I'm remembering right, it offered automatic citizenship to all native Americans, which pissed a lot of the farmer-settlers right off.
This is how nations destabilize. States perpetuate themselves through maintaining the exclusive monopoly on violence and using that monopoly to secure certain guarantees for or against its people. The Roman empire saw a similar decline of administrative willpower and rises in both vigilantism and shitty little civil wars between the wealthy elite who really ran the show (spoiler alert). I'm convinced that Balkanization of the US is, at this point, inevitable. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good or bad thing in its own right. On one hand, it might be better for both the states and the world if we went to more of an EU type structure. On the other hand, a nuclear armed independent Texas.
This is really cool, but it would have been cooler if they'd named their scouting missions Hugin and Mugin, since they're Odin's ravens that scour the earth for secrets to give to Odin.
For me, Wolf Larsen represents or embodies Satan (at least, Satan as a literary figure). His ship is a veritable ship of lost souls, all of the ship's hands are either recruited in drunkenness or fleeing something that seemed worse at the time. He's incapable citing scripture, which would be a really uncanny thing for a captain of his day, and even curses God.
The way he finds Hump even parodies the Divine Comedy; Hump (Dante), an honest but kind of hapless writer, becomes lost. The man who would guide him comes and finds him, and lo and behold, his guide is no Virgil, but, rather, Satan. Imo, the thing that really sells this is that Hump passes out underneath the golden gate (passes through the gates of hell) and is lost and found in the fog, which mirrors the conditions in the first circle of hell, Limbo. Rather than spending their voyage showing Hump what has happened while preventing him coming to harm, Wolf puts Hump in harm's way and spends the voyage trying to convince him of what is. By the end, the formidable captain, much like the Satan of Paradise Lost, is bound in darkness, remaining proud and sure to the end.
It's wild how good this book is relative to how few people have read it.
"The only part I remember is 'I now commit this body to the deep'"
I fuck with this energy, let's get it done!
Coming to you live from San Diego
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Yeah, I've learned some discretion over the years. I once told a story that dead ass got me sent to therapy.