Adaptive Curmudgeon

Butterfly Story Update:

I related to Mrs. Curmudgeon that her theory that butterflies emerge from the chrysalis desperately hungry is incorrect. It’s unsupported by my experience. She asked about the sugar mix.

What’s to say? It was sugar and water.

WRONG!

Turns out, the sweet white powder I presume to be sugar… because it looks like sugar and smells like sugar and is in a what I perceive as a sugar-bowl… is not sugar. The sugar is in a different unlabeled container that is nearby and also looks like a sugar-bowl. The two containers and the substances within the two containers appear identical to me… but they’re not. My pet butterfly figured it out but I didn’t. I’m baffled. If I had XX chromosomes (or wings) everything would make sense.

Apparently I was trying to feed that poor butterfly a mix of Stevia and sugar. It knew this and wanted nothing to do with it. Smart!

As for me, I’ve just learned there are a several canisters of God knows what near the coffee pot. I thought they were all the same. I assumed we had many small canisters instead of a single larger one because they looked cool, or fit under the counter, or maybe if ants get into one the others are unharmed. I never pondered it before.

I think my wife has been trying to improve my health by stealthily slipping Stevia into my food supply. Or maybe roofie me. Hard to say which.

Such are the beautiful eternal mysteries of marriage. Mrs. Curmudgeon leaves similar but different food items around the kitchen because it’s obvious to her. I’m a Neanderthal that can’t differentiate between similar foodstuffs. If I pick up a container and it looks like sugar I’m pretty much out of ideas what it might be other than sugar. My mental search routine has coarsely identified the substance and calls it a day. Why would I inquire further?

This is mildly disconcerting. In the morning when I need strong Death Wish coffee and I need it right now, I’m not prepared to differentiate among seemingly identical chemical elixirs. If I reach for what I thought was sugar that’s what it is in my mind. It could be sugar. It could be an unholy butterfly killing mix of Stevia and sugar. It could be dish soap. Regardless, it’s going in my coffee.

Now I doubt everything in the kitchen. Is it flour or cocaine? Is it sea salt or spackling compound? Is is allspice or polonium? Things are suddenly more interesting. Part of the joy of life is knowing my wife might have a personality traits that overlap with a poisoner. She keeps my on my toes!

[Note: This post will have an image I expect has “never before been seen” on the internet. I’m cool like that.]

That was fun. The caterpillar I captured has grown up, decided to self identify as a butterfly, and flown away. It’s probably on it’s way to Mexico where it’ll cavort with other young butterflies and drink margaritas on the beach. It’ll never think of poor left behind creaky old Curmudgeon who’s going to shovel snow all winter. Punk!

A heartfelt note: I’ve experienced something I tried to experience when I was a kid (maybe something like 9 years old?) and it was just as fun as if I was a kid (even better because I didn’t have to go to school… school sucks!). If you’re trapped in social media or fretting about politics or the world weighs on your shoulders… I heartily recommend sticking a bug in a jar and watching it. (I’m aware of the irony of blogging recommendations about avoiding social media. Life is a conundrum.)

If there’s something you wanted to do as a kid and it’s reasonable… do it. Especially if it’s cheap and simple. Go ahead and buy that Lego set, block out a Saturday morning to watch coyote cartoons and eat sugary cereal, get the big box of crayons, put a swing-set in your yard. Do it now. You’re gonna’ die one way or another.

Raise a butterfly while you can.

First a shout out to Mrs. Curmudgeon. I’d been checking the chrysalis daily but she texted me to remind me “the chrysalis is about to pop… keep an eye on it”.

I carefully moved the jar next to my computer. A couple hours later it was out and struggling in the jar. Lesson learned: butterflies emerge from a chrysalis without a sound.

I had this idea that it’s super important not to mess with a butterfly as it’s emerging from a chrysalis (same with baby chicks and eggshells). So I watched as it struggled to climb over one measly leaf to get toward the upper edge of the jar.

Meanwhile Mrs. Curmudgeon texted “feed it”. I’m a dutiful husband so I follow directions. I quickly mixed up some sugar water. I used a wood coffee stirrer with one drop of sugar water and held it to the butterfly. It extended a (frankly terrifying) coiled “proboscis” (I’m unsure of the vocabulary and it would take the fun out of it to look it up so just humor me if I’m wrong). It was like “fuck no… you’ve been stirring coffee with that”.

Also it was still doing an impressively bad job of climbing over the “leaf of impassibility”.

I wondered if it wanted to climb down? Maybe some sugar water there? So I poured a half shotglass of sugar water into the jar.

The critter was like “Holy shit! Flood waters are coming!” It made a sloppy but valiant effort to climb over the “leaf of impassibility” and dipped a (still bent) wing into the liquid.

Finally I was like “this thing is gonna’ fall over and drown in a quarter inch of liquid”. So I got a fresh wooden stir stick and held it out. He grabbed it like a drowning man and I gingerly lifted him out. I leaned it against a set of binoculars and a tape dispenser.His wings folded out better but then he moved around and knocked the stick over. Soon he was struggling on the table. Sheesh, how do these things survive in the wild? I let him get a grip again, lifted him up, and taped the stick to the binocs. That seemed to work.
Wind was buffeting him so I put up a box of ammo as a windbreak. How did he thank me? He took a shit on my desk! That brownish dot on the bottom of the image is genuine butterfly shit. Poor bastard had been holding it for weeks.As far as I know, there is no other place on the internet where there’s a photo of butterfly shit. See? Tune into my blog and you get content nobody else has! This is EXCLUSIVE!I’m sure, by now some of you have Googled “butterfly shit”. I don’t dare do it myself. If you’re looking at disgusting imagery of a cosplay/furry weirdo taking a dump… you brought that on yourself. I’m just assuming there is no “butterfly shit” on the web because I like to believe I live in a sane and reasonable world. I’m only putting it here because it’s in context dammit!

Mrs. Curmudgeon kept texting “feed it”. I tried again but the butterfly was “that’s yucky, fuck off”. Then it took two more dumps on my desk.

Thus I have acquired new knowledge. I present to you this new empirically deduced biological/phenological data that heretofore I did not know: A monarch butterfly needs three dumps before it can fly. I’m all about science y’all!

After a while it looked like it was ready to go. I took it outside, set it on the ground, and stood watch lest the cats decide to turn a moment of renewal into one of hating cats.

Trust me, no butterfly was ever more safely guarded than this one. If a cat ate the butterfly the cat was going in the woodchipper. The cats seemed to understand.

Mrs. Curmudgeon texted “did you put it on a flower”. Nope, I stuck it on a dandelion on a cement step. ‘Cause I’m a guy. Following instructions I put out a jar lid with the sugar. The butterfly was like “buzz off”.

I switched cameras to get one good photo. (My GoPro takes a better photo than my shitty phone.)

Then he was gone. Adios little buddy. Thanks for the visit from childhood.

I’ve been checking every day. Yesterday morning Sebastian’s chrysalis was the usual green with gold flecks. I began to wonder if the little bugger was dead. This morning the chrysalis was in full “translucent with wings showing through the skin” mode. That was quick! I took a photo but my chickenshit quasi-smart phone camera made a hash of it.

I can’t remember if I checked at night or not. I’m curious if the transition took a full 24 hours or just overnight. I’m betting on the latter. Won’t be long now. I am pleased.

Success is within my grasp!

In my last post I discussed my memories from the strange and distant alternate universe called the 1980’s. This included a few cultural artifacts that are long forgotten. As a service to younger readers (and because it’s important to remember how goddamn weird the world really is) I provide the following “study guide”.

Robert Preston, The Music Man, 1962. This is exactly what it feels like when everyone suddenly picks a single obscure thing and decides it is corrupting society. Robert Preston nailed it!

Time Magazine, June 19, 1972. Frankly I didn’t realize how long the whole Satan thing lasted. I thought it fired up in the early 1980’s. 1972 is a lot earlier than I thought.

Hee Haw (1970’s). As God is my witness, people watched this on TV in the 1970’s and in reruns in the 1980’s.

Benny Hill, 1980. (NSFW?) This was PRIME-TIME in 1980. I’m not saying TV is any less stupid now, I’m just saying adults were watching this on black and white TVs with antennas in the exact same era when they though immoral heavy metal was leading their teenagers into sin and perdition.

Ow My Balls (Any Day Now). The excellent future documentary used “Ow My Balls” as an example of how low society would degrade in an idiotic future. Go ahead and compare this to Hee Haw.

Dio, Last In Line, 1984. I’ll admit it hasn’t aged well but so what? Also, I don’t give a shit how juvenile the lyrics are… the opening section of the song is brilliant. Dio shamelessly and non-ironically heaps up a 45 second pile of lame ass schmaltz. A happy kid on a bicycle; just like the kids on “Stranger Things“. Then, just when you’re going to puke from all that sugar, Dio immolates every molecule of schmaltz with a 5 second scream that’ll straighten your spine! (Which is something of a parallel to the plotline of Stranger Things.) Imagine a kid trying to explain the whole “juxtaposition of good and evil in both tone and instrumentation” to an adult who’s hyperventilating about Satan! Also, it’s wrong and cruel to expect a hearty young man to subsist on a diet of the Bangles on FM.

One last point. There was a time when MTV (Music TV) played music videos on television. It didn’t last long but it was pretty awesome for a while.

AMC Gremlin, (pictured model is from 1978). What. The. Fuck!?!?

The term “mass hysteria” is generally dismissed as something that happened to other people who were stupid because history is from a long time ago. I disagree so I’m going to relate an event I perceive as (mild) mass hysteria. Note: It was mild. No witches were burned in the making of this story… though it technically involves witches. Also, this isn’t a researched scientific paper. Inaccuracies or mistakes are from my faulty memory.

This is a story I saw with my own two eyes. If you’re of a certain age you did too.

Many moons ago, when kids rode bicycles without helmets, adults smoked in airplanes, and phones were screwed to the wall, people in California (why is it always California?) encountered a novel situation. They’d developed a form of psychotherapy that allowed people to recover “repressed memories” from many years ago. In so doing they’d “recovered” lurid tales of evil satanic rituals in preschools. The stories included seriously weird shit. Hitchcock level depravity!

You might hear “therapeutically recovered memories of preschool satanic rituals” and default to skepticism. Back then, people just went with it. I don’t remember anyone at the beginning pondering corroborating evidence or scientifically investigating the accuracy of “recovered memories”. I don’t know why, but everyone bought into it.

There were evil Satanic cults on the loose! It was on the news. It was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by many of the adults around me.

In retrospect, I think it was a mild form of mass hysteria.

Heavy metal rock bands played into it. They’d been doing the whole “look at us, we’re evil” thing for years and now it was getting traction.

Kiss, 1980.

Perhaps I was cynical. Perhaps I’m under the spell of the dark one. All I know is the whole thing was bullshit.

My logic was infallible: nobody sane takes KISS seriously!

I inferred that rockers tend to dress like lunatics because, lets face it, it’s show business. Also they might occasionally be fucking nuts. So what if they howled at the moon while drawing pentagrams? Nobody takes life advice from a rock band so what’s the big deal?

I also knew that it wasn’t really happening (at least locally). I hiked the woods all the time. If groups of people did anything in the forest, I’d know. Yet the media kept delivering shit about the Satanic menace. It was this guy:

Walter Cronkite in 1980. (Background image has nothing to do with Satan.)

The story grew. First it was something from long ago in a single preschool in California. Soon it was current time and all over the place. Then, probably because bands invited it, it was no longer associated with preschools but had shifted to heavy metal music. Then the press jumped the shark with “it could be happening right in your town”. People interpreted “there’s a non-zero probability of this unlikely thing” as “You’ve got trouble right here in River City”. (Youtube link.)

I’d never personally experienced so much as a whiff of anyone who was seriously & truly Satanic. Either they had ninja like stealth or it was a rare and overstated issue from wingnuts in TV Land. Unfortunately, many adults around me suddenly thought Satanic rituals were as common as rainwater.

I shared my skepticism to no avail. “You seriously think nimrods are forming covens to sacrifice goats and stuff? Have you seen them with your own eyes? Why am I not invited? Aren’t goats expensive? Where are they getting them? Is there a goat farm to ask about this?” My teachers were like “Shut up youthful Curmudgeon, you don’t know shit.”

Which is true, I didn’t know shit.

Gradually it morphed into a threat to, of, and by teenagers. Adults had followed the incorrect (but frankly excusable) logic of “if many people do something trendy and stupid but I don’t know about it, then it’s teenagers”. (Insert jokes about Tide Pods and Fidget Spinners here.)

My parents (God bless ’em) quickly decided there was nothing to worry about on my behalf. I was a prickly teenage asshole and the only thing a teenager worships is himself; not Cthulhu. My folks also knew I don’t join groups. If the power of evil required meetings and memberships I’d nut punch old scratch himself to avoid it.

Then, presumably someone who’d never read Tolkien, decided Satanism was associated with Dungeons and Dragons. There was a TV movie about it. I don’t recall if the movie caused people’s stupid ideas or was derived from them.

I liked (and was starved for) heavy metal music and also played Dungeons and Dragons. This means I was a nerd with questionable taste. Did I really have to explain that bad taste is not the same as demonic possession?

Despite being bullshit, it affected me.

The local radio station practically fled from heavy metal; playing even shittier music than its baseline of balless half-rock. Craving music with some fucking spine, I spent my extremely scarce money on a Dio cassette (questionable taste, remember). I bled for every spent penny! I’d have bought more but the only store around stopped carrying heavy metal… and any other music that didn’t suck. I tragically cut off from loud overwrought juvenile guitar rock!

On the other hand, I had to admit Dio was milking it for all it was worth. Here’s the cover:

Dio, Last in Line, 1984.

Christ on a cracker! Could they be more blatant? It was even more dipshit than KISS! No way could I explain away a cover with radioactive visuals like that! If my parents saw it they might torture me with long boring discussions about “my future”! In my experience, adults lacked the common sense to realize a cassette is just a cassette. How ironic! A generation after masses got naked and fucked in the mud at Woodstock, society suddenly worried immoral music would taint America’s youth!

All I wanted was music with testosterone. FM was saccharine and getting lamer by the minute. Meanwhile, Walter Cronkite stirred the pot and anything more aggressive than Huey Lewis was at risk! How do you deal with people who take dumb shit seriously?

I get mixed up about what happened next. Shortly after the Satanic panic’s peak, Al Gore’s bored wife started testifying before Congress about censoring music. I think it was because of a Prince album cover with pubic hair but the well was already poisoned. Half the adults in my town were convinced youths listening to Twisted Sister were an inch away from sacrificing the family cat. Tipper was a disaster for me! FM radio in my area gave up all spirit. This was long before the internet. I scarcely heard any good music most of my youth.

As for Dio, I loved it. It was shitty music but I never sacrificed a damn goat so everyone could fuck off. No regrets!

Also, now you know my secret. I had bad taste. I still have bad taste.

Just for the record, I own it.

Everyone else had bad taste too. I listened to Dio in a society where Hee Haw was in primetime syndication. In a Dio video he hits a demon in the balls with a fantasy light saber. Hee Haw had jug band jokes about boobies. CBS also featured Benny Hill ogling bimbos to the tune of Yakety Sax. In a world with Hee Haw and Benny Hill, guitars for Satan is almost clever.

A secondary effect was the local bookstore got sheepish about Dungeons and Dragons. They moved them to the back of the store; like the shady draped off section of VHS rental shops where they hid the porn. (Folks born after the internet will never understand the strangeness of the “porn drapes” at VHS rental stores. Or a world where you had to leave the house to see naked women.) Back on topic, I coveted Deities and Demigods but it vanished before I could save money to buy it.

I never owned this book.

I assumed the Satanic panic is why the book vanished. I don’t know that’s true but it’s my hypothesis.

It blew over very gradually. People never actually sussed it out: “The concern that teenagers are actively worshiping the devil en masse is unsupported by personal observation.” Instead it faded.

Maybe a distraction on TV? Last episode of MASH? First episode of the Simpsons? I’ve no idea.

The lawsuit from the original event of “recovered memories” was discredited with a sledge hammer. Nationally, the topic was done by then. Over time nobody admitted taking the whole “devil worshiping heavy metal D&D teenagers” story seriously.

That’s a lesson. When everyone has the same dipshit idea and eventually they get over it… they’ll con themselves into remembering it differently than it happened. They’ll recall that everyone else had the dipshit idea but they personally never bought into it completely.

At any rate, that’s my memory of a very mild mass hysteria situation.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to crank Dio and play it deafeningly loud to my pet butterfly. Don’t judge me!

A.C.

P.S. The DiploMad 2.0 has a post that’s less “mass hysteria” and more “confirmation bias”. Ponder his experience in a Home Depot parking lot described  in “Race, the World’s Most Boring Subject”.

P.S. In case you think I’m making up this whole goddamn topic, I encourage you to read this handy summary.

In a recent post I used the phrase “mass hysteria” in reference to politics. I was serious.

Widespread outbursts starting election night 2016 (which continue today) appear to be mass hysteria. I’m not being flippant or using the term as an insult. Throughout history  mass hysteria has periodically erupted. It’s probably hard to recognize mass hysteria when you’re in it.

Remember when your mom yelled at you for the stupid things you did with your friends? “If all the kids in town jumped in a lake would you do it to?” It feels like everyone suddenly jumped in a lake. There is tremendous peer pressure to jump in a lake with them. I’m treated like a fool because I’m not jumping in the damn lake like I should. Socially, at work, on social media, in every TV show and movie, and everywhere else I am told that my I should get with the program and jump in the lake like “normal” people. I stubbornly refuse to jump in that lake with all the other people. Doesn’t that by definition mean I’m the outlier? Doesn’t it mean I’m missing out on a “mass” movement?

First lets define mass hysteria. I’m no psychologist but here’s my best shot:

Hysteria: “Behavior exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic.”

It’s entirely possible to be displeased with election results without being hysterical. Hysterical is emotion that’s excessive. Doesn’t this look excessive?

A peaceful democratic transition of power didn’t have the outcome I’d prefer.

Doesn’t this look uncontrolled?

My life in a wealthy, industrialized, first world nation is completely ruined!

We’ve all been hysterical occasionally (unless you’re stoic to the core). Once I hooked a nice pike and flipped out when the line broke. I was excessively pissed off. Perhaps you’ve met a sports fan the day their favorite team got pummeled? Often, hysterics is just a person who’s having a bad day until they lose perspective.

It’s only mass hysteria when it cascades through the population.

Mass Hysteria: “…(also known as collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective obsessional behavior) is a phenomenon that transmits collective illusions of threats, whether real or imaginary, through a population in society as a result of rumors and fear…”

That’s exactly what we’re experiencing. The transmission of collective illusions of threats. Can you watch cable TV without hearing transmission of dire anti-Trump predictions and warnings? If you go to a mall, have dinner at a restaurant, or get a cup of coffee how often does that include a dose of anti-Trump rhetoric?

Every president has detractors but folks are excessively keyed up about the Orange Menace. They claim Trump causes a reaction of urgent, powerful, fear, revulsion, hatred, etc… If you read the definition for hysteric, it seems to fit. I don’t think they’re faking it. They say their emotions are deeply felt and I believe them.

It’s OK to dislike the President but if you’re acting like he’s going to personally rape your cat you’ve lost perspective. People who will never be in the same room (and only rarely in the same state) as Trump act like he’s riffling through their garbage cans at night. The reaction is not justified by real world conditions. Also, throwing a brick through a Starbucks in Washington DC when Trump has been in office 11 minutes is not reacting to anything he has done in office.

The current reaction is out of scale. Reasonable citizens expect to be disappointed by elections roughly 50% of the time. I’ve been disappointed by election results. Who hasn’t?

Non-hysteric people handle disappointment well. In 2012 Mitt Romney got 60,933,504 votes but lost to Barack Obama. That’s 60,933,504 people who didn’t get what they want. Did Mitt’s supporters burn cars? Did they call Obama a Nazi and riot in Salt Lake City? Did they scream helplessly at the sky (their words not mine)? Did they wear pussy hats? Did they shoot congressmen?

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot while playing baseball. Some nations resolve political disputes in this manner, but it is not common for America.

Were there riots in Portland because Mitt Romney lost? Why not? After all, 60,933,504 voters were disappointed. Yet they quietly went about their business. Well balanced people rarely riot.

Even for Portland this is not normal behavior.

Also, there’s wildly divergent explanations for facts we all agree on. Trump garnered 62,979,636 votes. (It’s on Wikipedia ya’ll.) My explanation for this is that 62,979,636 citizens intentionally voted for Trump (or his hair).

An alternative point of view involves vaguely defining a situation were 62,979,636 votes are explained away. They’re portrayed as something other than an honest citizen’s choice. Anything from mis-counts to “collusion” with Russia.

Think about it. What exactly is this event of horrific ill-defined Russian collusion that they’ve been investigating for well over a year? Nobody argues that Putin sent paratroopers into 62,979,636 houses with 62,979,636 guns to force 62,979,636 voters to tearfully vote in a way they didn’t want to vote. So what’s the beef? What rationally experienced event could make 62,979,636 free citizens’ votes not count?

This rankles me. There was (possibly) an attempt to influence me and therefore I’m supposed to clutch my pearls and impeach a sitting democratically elected leader? Nope! I encounter attempts to influence my choices all the time. Every political speech by every politician is an attempt to influence me. Politicians claim they will “fight for me”. Really? In a cage? With clubs? Can I watch? Violent imagery is attempted influence.

Bernie said he’d eliminate my student loans. Isn’t that an attempt to influence me? Hillary said everyone who didn’t vote for her was deplorable. Isn’t that an attempt to influence me? Trump said if I voted for him I’d win so much I’d get tired of winning. That’s as unsubtle as humanly possible and unquestionably an attempt to influence me. JFK told us we’d go to the moon and he was a hero. Carter told us to put on a sweater and he was a one termer. Politics is nothing but influence.

Commercialism is influence too. Nike ads tell me flashy sneakers will help me dunk a basketball. Medical ads offer to make my dick hard and imply women will lust for my handsome physique. Women are told to buy hygiene products that allow them to ride horses and do yoga while menstruating. A hard dick and hot women? Can you get more blatant at trying for influence? Also, by what logic do tampons come with horses?

Sometimes the very act of influencing me to have an emotional response is the point: Facebook wants me to get sad about a sick polar bear. If I keep my head and reflect that bears are mortal and die every day (just like flowers and fireflies) Facebook doesn’t bulk up its hit count.

None of this is even remotely unusual. None of it means I should freak out and riot in the streets.

That’s why I’m calling it mass hysteria. What just happened was the 58th consecutive quadrennial American election. The results were not as expected but that’s why we actually have elections. Otherwise we’d just ask Nate Silver to hand over a crown. To me, the 2016 election was nothing to lose sleep over. Others saw a disaster and they had an excessive reaction which they continue to transmit to like minded people.

I have some sympathy. It must suck. People in the throes of it seem to be in an unpleasant mental state. They’re unhappy. They’re stressed. They’re suffering.

How to bridge the gap? Throw a line to the suffering. “It’s not so bad, the lights are still on and the beer’s cold. Have a brew and relax.” I don’t know. It’s hard to let go of a strong emotion once it has you in its grasp. It’s hard to spend a couple years screaming in rage and then one day say “meh”. Maybe it simply must run its course.

I call it like I see it. If mass hysteria has happened in the past, it can happen today, and it would look like what we’re seeing. Presumably, it’ll fade with time. The Salem witch hunts lasted about two years. Except for the 20 executions and 5 that died in prison everyone recovered. (I didn’t say mass hysteria never comes with a body count. Ask the French about their revolution! Watch your six!)

Good luck. Keep your head and avoid crowds. This too shall pass.

In a recent post I used the phrase “mass hysteria” in reference to current politics. I was serious.

Everyone (both sides) loses their goddamn mind when politics of the current era come into play so lets step back and look at it from a distance. I aim to quit looking at trees and see the forest.

Ask yourself “if I had a time machine and used it to travel through time and space to a situation of mass hysteria…what would it look like?” Lucky for you that I, a humble blogger and mad scientist, invited you (hypothetically) into my home. “I’ve got a time machine”, I’d say. (You already know this from the saga of Garageneering: Time Travel.)

After a careful inspection by Curmudgeon’s dog you are let in the compound. The Curmudgeon hands you a beer, a pistol, and a first aid kit. (It’s an adventure y’all!) “Lets go.” He says.

“Where are we going?” You might ask excitedly. “A Jimmi Hendrix concert in 1969? A chariot race around 200 AD? Mastodon hunt in 9000 BC?” (The latter said while eyeing some of the larger rifles hanging on the wall.)

“We’re going to midwinter, 1693. Salem.”

“Why?”

“I’ve a mind to experience mass hysteria… for research purposes.” The Curmudgeon notices you scoping out the copious supplies stacked against the walls and waves his hand dismissively. “Forget that crap. You’ve got band aids and a .357. You’ll be fine. This is just a short outing anyway. If anything gets sketchy we’ll just blink out and return here. And for God’s sake leave your smartphone behind… I don’t need any more trouble with the inter-dimensional Illuminati that monitors them.”

“The inter…”

“Forget I said that!” The Curmudgeon interrupts. “That’s classified! Never speak of it again. OK hold still now.”

ZOT!

A sound method for historical research.

Curmudgeon: “OK, here we are.”

It looks less like an idyllic New England town than a Dickens novel. But it doesn’t smell too much like cholera so that’s good news. Everyone looks more pissed off than downtrodden.

Locals: “We’re surrounded by witches. Burn their ass!”

Curmudgeon: “Anyone care to elaborate?”

Locals: “Witches. There are witches everywhere. They’re seriously screwing up our lives!”

Curmudgeon: (Looking around nervously.) “I don’t see any witches. I see a horse, a cow, three dudes with pitchfork, is that a pig in the street?”

Locals: “He denies the witches! He’s in league with Satan. Kill him before he leads us into perdition!”

Poof… With that, the Curmudgeon is back in his basement. “Whew, that escalated quickly.”

Ten minutes later; you appear.

Curmudgeon: “Sorry, I forgot to mention the lag time on the second transponder. Is that tar in your hair?”

Guest: “They were starting to tar and feather me! In just ten minutes I was shouted at, kicked, punched, they started a petition to have me imprisoned, they stole my hat, and one dude farted in my face. What a bunch of maniacs!”

Curmudgeon: “Oops. Well, at least you had a great experience.”

Guest: “You are such a….”

Curmudgeon: (Interrupting.) “Tell ya’ what, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll buy a nice latte.”

Without waiting for your response he slaps a button on the time machine. ZOT!

Things look much more familiar… though it smells somewhat worse than colonial Salem.

Guest: “Where the hell are we now?”

Curmudgeon: “Early winter. 2018. Portland.” (Glancing around.) “I see a Starbucks right here, a Starbucks over there, a Starbucks across the street, and another Starbucks inside that book store that no longer sells books. Where would you like to get coffee? I’ll pay.”

Guest: “Gee that’s nice. Thanks.” (It’s raining and chilly out. The Curmudgeon hands you a warm hat. You enter the Starbucks. It smells like hemp… and feet. They’re playing Joni Mitchel on a loop tape that’s been run continuously since 1999. A large coffee costs $7. Straws are not yet outlawed but there’s an anti-straw sign over the cream and sugar station.)

Locals: “We’re surrounded by racists. Protest their ass!”

Curmudgeon: “Anyone care to elaborate?”

Locals: “Trump. Trump is everywhere. He’s seriously screwing up our lives! Any minute now he’s going to herd us onto cattle cars and ship us somewhere terrible!”

Curmudgeon: (Looking around nervously.) “Somewhere terrible? A concentration camp?”

Locals: “Worse! Kansas!”

Curmudgeon: “Is that a pig in the street?”

Locals: “MAGA! Unclean. Other him before he leads us into wrongthink!”

You suddenly realize that Curmudgeon has given you a MAGA hat. That jerk! You’re probably not going to die (the mob which forms couldn’t outfight a puppy, much less anyone tough enough to hang out with Curmudgeon) but you’re definitely not getting your latte. You shake your fist at the Curmudgeon but he vanishes.

Ten minutes later you appear in Curmudgeon’s basement. In the tiny gap of just ten minutes you’ve endured a lifetime of schoolyard taunts. It’s still ringing in your ear. You’re a sexist, racists, oppressive, heternormative, white supremacist, rich 1%-er, Nazi, scumbag. You’ve been maced, they’ve thrown coffee in your face, someone trashed the hat, and they posted 63 angry rants on Facebook en masse (all with a Hitler mustache superimposed on your face). Some homeless chick peed on your shoe!

You remember why you never hang out with the Curmudgeon.

The Curmudgeon hands you a glass of bourbon and steeples his hands. “So, what have we learned from this exercise?”

Hat tip: Rural Revolution.

For those of you (like me) who prefer observation to Wikipedia, I offer the following: It takes a monarch caterpillar less than 12 hours to go from “hanging with your ass glued to a leaf” to “green chrysalis”. As expected, the gold beads develop a day or two later.

Other observations: I found 3 “rice sized” caterpillars (and left them out there) and have since found no evidence they ever existed; even though I checked the very same milkweeds. They don’t have a car and they taste bad to eat, so where are they? I have seen no large caterpillars and no chrysalises anywhere I’ve looked. However, monarch butterflies are rather common. I’m thinking it might be harder to find one of these buggers than I’d thought. I assumed there’d be many on any suitable milkweed resource. Evidence suggests the contrary. Maybe I wasn’t quite the complete dumbass as a kid that I ‘d assumed?

Also caterpillars give zero fucks about the world around them; making them cooler than most humans. Forgive the crappy cell phone image:

I’ve been idly pondering Emma of Normandy and Lady Macbeth (yes, I know one was fictional). It’s always good to learn something new. Meanwhile, an astute reader just wowed me with the story of Pepsi’s armada of warships and submarines during the cold war. You heard me right! I deliberately typed that ridiculous sentence and I meant it. If something like that was a plot point in a book I’d think “this thing is nuttier than talking squirrels” yet it’s all laid out logically in a short YouTube video. Enjoy: