Saturn's Day Thing, 7/30/2022

If I'm not sleeping, ain't no one sleeping.

“They’re out of corn dogs.”

Hey, gang. I’ve been up all night! Again!

This has been happening at least 2 nights out of every week for months now, but it’s the first time I’m forcing you all to keep me company the following morning when I’m being kept awake by nothing more than coffee and an obligation to do something other than pass out at around 9am.

I’ve got the ground floor of a nice essay percolating that I’d REALLY like to put up sometime today; it remains to be seen whether I will just tough the whole day out and write it a little later, after chores, or after waking up sometime this evening when I finally collapse.

In the meantime, how about some bullets, since some of you actually seem to consider these little missives worth your time for some reason?

• Apparently the President is a robot now. I was certain he was a zombie, but the signs are unmistakable. He’s a robot. (To discuss in all seriousness in the comments: was this thing the fed testing out a deepfake, was Brandon on really powerful amphetamines- I took wimpy trucker pills once in grad school and went that long without blinking, too- or was this just a disturbing symptom of dementia? Or am I imagining that there was anything weird about this at all?)

• I’m not even going to get into the utterly pointless rhetoric and lies in the aforementioned weird video- the delivery was way more interesting (by which I mean disturbing) than the really lazy propaganda in itself. People were speared, Joe? Police were covered in blood, Joe? Who was killed, Joe? Why didn’t we get to see any of THOSE videos during your interminable halftime show with Ms. Piggy?

• This week was the state fair, which despite being boiling hot was tremendous fun. Despite my deep love of scatology and dumb aggression, I actually get my greatest pleasures from really wholesome, goofy shit. Husbandmouth and I took a half day and went ourselves as a date. We watched the pig races, the sea lions, rode the Ferris wheel and the flying chairs (one of my favorite things in the universe), climbed around on this year’s tractor models, caught most of the livestock showings, the goat playground, the sheriff’s department dog show, butter sculptures (and- new this year- cheese sculptures!) and ate some extremely fatty but actually really well prepared grub. Brothermouth and I went back in the evening when his employers permitted him to unplug himself from his desk. I learned that most live events aren’t worth sitting elbow to elbow with no escape in 95-degree humid heat in tiny folding stadium chairs.

• I’ve been conducting a serious inventory of protein production on Mouth Farm; our Grange prez is coming by next week to take a look at our cows and hogs and see if there’s any clear reason they aren’t breeding; my hogs came from his herd and this generation didn’t breed for him this year, either, so maybe they just heard a bunch of nonsense about climate change or something. If our adult breeding pair doesn’t produce by September, they’re getting processed; I’m looking into acquiring at least one new breeding pair regardless in the coming weeks- raising a relatively uncommon heritage breed, even one excellent for low-overhead homesteading, means a lot more legwork in finding people to trade bacon with. (Is “trading bacon” a euphemism for gay sex anywhere? Has anyone heard this? If not, I want to lock it down, so let me know.)

  • It seems likely, though we’ll confirm this week, that the cows are likely not getting it on because of bad timing: our cow still has a nursing calf (who has been at it a LONG time now, coming up on a year old which is long but not unheard of) which tends to discourage but not completely prevent her going into heat. We will likely process the steer late this year or early next year, depending on when the beef in our freezer runs out. I will be a little bit sad.

  • I’m culling our poultry to just a pair of the most robust of Husbandmouth’s original Delaware Blues and trying to incubate more Rhode Island/Leghorns and Jersey Giants; most of our original hens aren’t producing at all and are quite scrawny. The current cohort of juvenile Rhode Islands will make up for this when they mature in about a month or so.

  • We’re also getting into meat rabbits, based on some very cool showings I saw at the fair. Husbandmouth would like to start playing with pelt/leatherworking so I wanted to go with a breed that helps us further diversify protein production, still maintains low overhead feed with largely forage, but also has a nice pelt. I settled on a Rex/American cross after an intensely helpful burst of advice from random bunny farmers across Pennsylvania. Brothermouth and I will begin converting one of the old stalls in the barn into a big hutch.

• Dog #3 destroyed my entire crop of corn which, admittedly, wasn’t GIGANTIC, but was pretty sizable: about 3 dozen plants that would have fed us through the rest of the year. I honestly had no idea any of the dogs would care about the crops until I went out to plant beans and saw Dogs #1 and #3 laying in the grass contentedly gnawing away on cobs while the ground behind them looked like a very localized tornado had descended on the field. Our other veggies are fine and we’re moving their invisible fence perimeter- they’ve lost their privileges to go where anything important is growing. Oh, and killed about 8 of that previous cohort of chicks I wrote about recently when they found a hole in the fence and wandered into the yard. Brothermouth and I have since gotten the electric fence up and a few singed bird asses are worth the number of lives that have probably been saved.

  • Yes, longtime readers will have noticed that Dog #3 is a force of pure destruction; HOWEVER, she has stopped pissing and shitting in the house- occasional illness notwithstanding- and destroying inanimate objects in said house. And is very sweet and loving to all the humans in the house. And our responsibility for life. You go to war with the dogs you have, not the dogs you might want or wish to have at a later time.

• I realize I haven’t given away a T-shirt in a couple months; the main reason is that Brothermouth has a couple of designs that we want to be completely polished before we add them to the lineup and we’ve been busy with tons of other shit; we will absolutely be giving a free T-shirt (or mug, or whatever from the store) to a random paid subscriber who hasn’t already received one this year sometime next week.

• The Gutter community continues to grow, as do paid supporters, to my pleasant and shocked surprise. Without wasting a lot of time saying a bunch of cliche crap that everyone with a stack says periodically to hype growth, my FAVORITE thing about maintaining this substack has definitely gotten to be the community that has been growing up around this project I set for myself to recapture my creative energies, focus my thoughts and internal analyses more clearly by refining them for expression, and do whatever good I could possibly do by sharing it (and honestly not expecting very much on that score). The dialogue and conversation that has arisen makes me incredibly happy every time I see it in full force in the threads.

Essay planned for later today, but realistically, it’ll probably be tomorrow because I’ll be brainless in a couple more hours, if I’m even still awake. I have a colleague visiting from out of town and a friend of his joining us for two days of back-to-back range time- during which my gorgeous new anniversary revolver will finally get to stretch her legs- if I have the energy to ride along both days, which, honestly, no, I’ll probably just go tomorrow.

Brandr af brandi brinn unz brunninn er funi kveykisk af funa maðr af manni verðr at máli kuðr en til dœlskr af dul

One log takes fire from another until it is consumed 
Fire kindles from fire
People gain wisdom by speaking to other people and foolishness is born of silence 
–Hávamál 57