The Dark of Winter: A Cycle of Short Stories
These stories (as a whole cycle) involve strong language, violence, sexuality, and fairy-tale subjects on the darker side of the "Bruno Bettelheim" scale, the ones where bad & lazy servants gets tarred and feathered, and the wicked are forced to dance themselves to death wearing red-hot iron shoes.
Disney has
This page will serve as a central list for links to the the collected stories as I finish them and their links go live. Not sure how many it's going to take, but I know how it ends for sure. And as with any journey, getting there is most of the fun. Hope you'll take this one with me.
Share and enjoy!
5/26/09
Okay, this project is
Now other characters and other stories are angling for keyboard-time from the monkey and my multiple-short-stories has become one of several in some monstrous Christmas-themed prose literary version of a Wagnerian opera cycle which I have titled The Dark of Winter.
Sweet Elvis in his black '68 Comeback Special leathers, what am I setting myself up for?
By "Pirate"

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
- Location:Wandering the paths of my inagination...
- Jammin' to:Corvus Corax - Suam Elle Ires
I wonder if there's a deluxe version where the monkeys fling back?
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Peter Gabriel - Shock The Monkey
Patient: "Doctor, I have this terrible pain in my head"
Doctor: "Well, you have what is medically known as a headache"
Patient: "Doctor, I have this terrible pain in my joints"...
Arthritis is not inevitable, it's not about getting older, and it's not irreversible. It's about movement starvation and misaligned musculo-skeletal system.
If you have knee pain (and I know of at least 3 people on my f-list who mention it), I BEG OF YOU before you do anything as drastic as go under the knife with something as essential as your knees, read Pete Egoscue's Pain Free. Read this interview with Pete. Watch this brief video (with diagrams) further explaining how & why proper joint alignment IS ESSENTIAL, and why misalignment is the cause of much of the pain modern people live with.
I have one buddy who recently chose the knife for his knees rather than look into Egoscue, and I wish him the best. But before anyone else chooses to get their knees cut because they're in pain...
My knees used to be for crap. I've had ankle problems, back problems, and was generally softer and weaker than a self-respecting guy my size should have been since college.
I turned 40 this year. At 35 I was weak, overweight, and soft. I now do snatch/get-ups with a 20kg kettlebell in sets of 10. I climb trees. I walk everywhere, and feel my ass-muscles involved in the walking (In addition to sitting at a desk, it's riding in your car that's slowly killing you). I am literally in the best shape of my life due to physical activity (Particularly Egoscue & kettlebells) and I started 2 years ago.
To be human is to move, because plants don't need brains. Movement heals and feels awesome, sedentary lifestyle causes pain and kills. It's as simple at that.
From "You Can Live Free Of Pain":
It’s widely believed that knee cartilage doesn’t heal itself. A “when it’s gone it’s gone” type of mentality. However, Egoscue believes differently. We believe that the body has an amazing ability to heal itself... We believe that cartilage has the same healing ability and stimulus-response characteristic that the rest of the body has....EDIT: Via
I was ecstatic to read this article. It might just be the start of proving what Pete Egoscue has said forever: The knee, its makeup, and its design are no different than the rest of the body. It’s not poorly designed, it just gets into the wrong position, and a compromised knee position is most likely a painful knee position. If you get the knee in the right position the pain will be eliminated and the knee can start its healing process. Keep moving and stay healthy!
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Exercise May Improve Cartilage in Arthritic Knees
The changes imply that human cartilage responds to physiologic loading in a way similar to that exhibited by muscle and bone, and that previously established positive symptomatic effects of exercise in patients with OA may occur in parallel or even be caused by improved cartilage properties.’Moderate exercise may improve the physical composition of joint cartilage in patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA), according to a study published in Arthritis & Rheumatism [emph mine].
July 11, 2002 — Arthroscopic knee lavage or debridement was no better than placebo surgery in a randomized controlled trial described in the July 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
"The fact that the effectiveness of arthroscopic lavage or debridement in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee is no greater than that of placebo surgery makes us question whether the dollars spent on these procedures might not be put to better use," senior author Nelda P. Wray, MD, MPH, from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, says in a news release. [you can bypass registering to login by using http://bugmenot.com]
-Previously in O,DIKTO?:
-Kaiser Auditorium: The Joy of Effort
-Mah sweetie's GUNZ, courtesy of Pete Egoscue
-The Male Physique: Options
* Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease of a different stripe. But most people with "arthritis" don't suffer from that. They just suffer. And IMO, needlessly.
- Location:Oaktownbootyville, CA
- Jammin' to:Paul Gross - Ride Forever
Of course, I and the
Boyd also said that teens who use Facebook are more likely to condescend their MySpace-favoring peers.
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Previosuly in O,DIKTO?:
-Quitting Facebook
-Class In America (both online & off)
-"What are you?
-I, Cracker
- Location:OaktownELJAYville, CA
- Jammin' to:Ben Folds - Rockin' The Suburbs
"The runners are lithe and young. None are older than sixteen. Nothing about their hair or clothing dangles in excess, though they ornament themselves in other ways: hair cut in patterns like ornamental lawns, tint cascading through the patterns like advertising. Tattoos adorn them like jewelry or ripple across their bodies like silk scarves, wet and shining in the omnipresent April rain."Srsly, if you haven't yet, you should read Kip, Running.
Previously in O,DIOKTO?:
-100% French Monkey-Powered AWESOMENESS
-Etre fort pour être utile
-CITY! MONKEY! WANT!
-Traceuse chicks are HAWT!
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Marilyn Manson - This Is the New Shit

Previously in O,DIKTO?:
-The monkey's Half-Nekkid Thursday archive
-The Male Physique: Options
- Location:Oaktownbootyville, CA
- Jammin' to:Joan Osbourne -Let's Just Get Naked
Lexica & I just celebrated out 11th wedding anniversary. We've attended gay marriage rallies and wholly support the idea of marriage. I wear a white knot on my backpack. This shit is hard work, and I support those who sign up "For better or worse".
But Navratalova's cynical towards marriage and commitment is ashes is my mouth.
Her attitude and actions would be just as reprehensible if she were het. It's just that people are working for basic civil rights, and Martina is taking advantage of being rich to fuck off on her "we will build a life together" commitments.
That's despicable.
Let us now switch the husband's gender. He is now a she: a lesbian tennis star willing to use the legal system to extract herself from another unhappy relationship. If this were a no-fault heterosexual divorce, the law would unequivocally side with Layton, awarding her alimony and some division of property. |
- Location:Team LexiMonkey HQ
- Jammin' to:Yeastie Girls- You suck!
Whoever dreamed this up... you suck. You may not want to be associated with sci-fi geeks, and think that's an embarrassing demographic.
But who the fuck are you trying to appeal to now? Your channel should die for rampant corporate assholery.
Note: [I]n Polish, "syfy" has a meaning somewhere between zits, filthy and scum... also slang for a venerial disease i belive.
Via
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Rocky Horror Picture Show - Science Fiction Double Feature
And, like most of us, he didn't beat the odds.
Though he did give us Thriller
Rest in peace.
That is all.
- Location:Bump City, CA
And as a resident of this city, from the outside the Cathedral of Christ the Light looks like the worlds biggest industrial vagina made of glass & steel.
A monument to 21st century civilization, millenial optimism, and petit-bourgeois good taste it may be, but a church it is not. Apparently, the price tag of our new communal "worship space" was about 190 million dollars, a lot of which was spent for earthquake-proofing the building Does it look like money well spent? No. Why does every modern structure have to resemble a shopping mall. This could be the Social Security administration office, the DMV, or just some conference center that we come to for a human resources meeting "Why, it's hologram Jesus! I have heard so much about you. So, my friend told me that you would look so... shiny?" See, it was stone in the original, and now they have taken thousands of mirrors and other do-hickeys and made a Jesus made entirely out of light. Pretty freakin' clever, huh? Ya get it? Who could not like a hundred foot Jesus made out of the rays of the sun? And it's a traditional image to boot, so we can all feel good about it.
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- Location:Oaktownbootyville, CA
- Jammin' to:Red Hot Chili Peppers - Catholic School Girls Rule
December 6 is the Feast day of St. Nicholas, one of several Patron Saints of Brewing...Inspired by this feast day, is Samichlaus Bier. Samichlaus is an 14% ABV doppelbock that at one time was billed as the world's strongest beer. The name means "Santa Claus" in the Swiss-German dialect of Zürich. Brewed only on December 6 of each year, the beer is aged for almost a year and released in time for the following year's feast day. Samichlaus was originally brewed by Brauerei Hürlimann, and later by Feldschlösschen Brewery. It is currently produced by Schloss Eggenberg of Switzerland.
Previously in O,DIKTO?:
-Team Wonderbike: Have you taken the pledge?
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Smash Mouth - Beer
I had expected this to come later in the sequence. But it's just about done, and it actually fits, stoywise up next.
SO...
Up next, The Long Yuletide War, Part 4: "Song of the Murderous Saint"
- Location:Wandering the paths of my inagination...
- Jammin' to:Los Tigres del Norte - Contrabando y Traicion
Gordon Lightfoot gave the go-ahead, as long as the family members of the 29 crew who died aboard her also agreed.
Rather than put the families through any additional pain (and risk doing a disservice to the memory of the sinking), Gross wrote this song about a fictional event for the show. You can hear echoes of Lightfoot's melody in the tin whistle, an homage I suspect.
The song, and the dS episode which involves RMCP trainees on a tall ship setting fighting sail, running out the guns, & mounting a boarding action, FUCKING 0WNZ!
Series trivia: Diefenbaker, Constable Fraser's deaf* half-wolf companion, was the first series character to receive any fan-mail.
The Song 32 down on the Robert Mackenzie from the Due south episode Mountie on the Bountie. |
*Dief lost his hearing pulling Fraser out of Prince Rupert Sound. Dief can, however, read lips in both English and Inuktitut.
Previously in O,DIKTO?:
-Buccaneering in the land of round bacon
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:"The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound & a wave broke over the railing"
Stealin' wheat and barley and all the other grains
It's a ho-hey, hi-hey farmers bar yer doors
When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores
-Arrogant Worms, "Last Saskatchewan Pirate"
Previously in O,DITKO?:
-Pirates
-Western Canada Feels Wrath of the Tentacles
-Canada militarizes the arctic, threatens violent retaliation in the face of US, Viking pressure
-Canada Refuses to Be America's Bitch, Tells U.S. Ambassador (Politely) to Get Stuffed
- Location:Home Port
- Jammin' to:Stan Rogers - Barret's Privateers
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- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Patrick Swayze - She's Like The Wind
In this new book, The Overflowing Friendship: Love Between Men and the Creation of the American Republic Godbeer is hell-bent on convincing us that two men in colonial America could have exceedingly obsessive and passionate relationships (he calls them, variously, "sentimental," "loving," "romantic") replete with non-stop effusive correspondence that rivals anything in Barbara Cartland, and spend many a night in bed together talking their hearts out, without the issue of sex arising in any way. He tries very hard to convince us that then was so different from now, that men, in essence, in all of this behavior, had no sex drives, indeed no functioning penises that perked up when the luscious emotions and activities he is describing completely dominated the lives he is detailing. Oh, no, insists Godbeer. Most of these friendships were not in the least sexual. You know, a sort of I Love You, Man for colonial America. This historian is in such denial that he needs therapy |
- Location:Oaktownbootyville, CA
- Jammin' to:The Eagles - Get Over It
We in the U.S. have a long a tangled history with Iran that most of us (I don't think) have a solid grip on. We remember the hostages and the embassy being stormed. But we don't remember the CIA coup that overthrew the democratically elected government and re-installed the despotic Shah to the Peacock Throne back in 1953.
Did you know that people in Tehran also marched in the streets after 9/11 chanting "Death to terrorists"?
I think these vids offer buckets of valuable context to Americans, given the contentious political relations we've had with Iran recently.
He discusses the political where it intersects with daily life, but it's the daily life that he's most interested in. Sweet Elvis, but that's a gorgeous country. The mountains look stunning.
- Location:Bump City, CA

Via
Previosuly in O,DIKTO?:
-How much awesome can you handle?
-Ψ Φ, the literature of possible futures
-Sci-fi geeks: we know the future
-Steampunk w/out goggles
-The Memento school of literature appreciation (Caitlin R. Kiernan)
- Location:Team LexiMonkey HQ
- Jammin' to:William Shatner - Rocket Man</a>
Ross Kemp is an English actor from London known for playing hard guys. He's also made several seasons of his now famous series Ross Kemp On Gangs. He's met with South African prison gangs, New Zealand gangs, Orange County Skinheads, St. Louis gangbangers, Moscow neo-nazis, Polish football hooligans/neo-nazis, the infamous MS-13, and more.He's also gone to Afghanistan (twice) with the British Army regiment his father belonged to (or would have belonged to after they merged).
Who's the well-spoken skinhead going after now? Pirates!
Also, massive points for going on a show like Extras and being willing to have a bit of fun with is own image.
Previously in O,DIKTO?:
-The Media is lying to you about Somali pirates
-No Heroics
-Manliness: Neither a science nor a given, but an art
-As our military crumbles, our street gangs gain tactical expertise
-It's like they're hippies, but they're also clowns and you're on mushrooms
- Location:Bump City, CA
- Jammin' to:Stan Rogers - Barret's Privateers
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- Location:Bump City, CA

