What To Do, What To Do

What To Do, What To Do

So another Thursday approaches with yet another round of target rich environments (ye deities, it’s worse than the strawberry garden, which is producing in such embarrassing profusion The Husband and I can’t eat all that we harvest every day), so much so that the whole mess is committing the ultimate sin of getting boring.

Honestly, what’s an Evil Impaler to do? Watching the disaster can be fun, but when your opponent can’t seem to manage more than the whiny toddler level of opposition it takes all the pleasure out of giving them a nice high view (admittedly with the uncomfortable seat, but hey, if you want to hang around in high places, a good sturdy 18-foot stake with a nice rounded tip will do the job. For a while. And since I’m a bit of a completist, you can watch your minions enjoy their view from the 12-foot stakes arrayed in front of you).

Yeah, I know, I’m old-fashioned. I was raised to know better than to spank the baby with a tactical nuke, even if the baby is doing her level best to earn it.

Of course, the baby has no such restrictions and worse, because he’s not sure all those other folk out there are really real people and not just things that are made to serve him, he’ll happily lob nukes like “Raaaaaciss!”, “Seeeexiss”, “Neo-Naaaaaazi!” and of course the ultimate in evil, “Voooooox Daaaaay!” then throw a massive tantrum when he realizes that those other folk don’t all want what he wants and don’t all want to please him.

Now, I may be Evil, but I have standards. One of those standards is that minions do not say things that bring the Evil Legion of Evil into repute (we’re Evil, we’re in disrepute more or less by definition), and they do not ever mention the Legion’s secret donations to the orphanages and no-kill refuges in any situation where it could reasonably be interpreted that they are acting in their official capacity as a Vile Faceless Minion. Such as, you know, pushing the League’s business on their personal Facebook accounts.

But back to our spoiled babies (I have no idea how old they are physically, but boy do they act like babies just starting to walk and still in diapers). They don’t think there’s any such standard because they are the sole standards in their world. Baby wants, baby gets, or there will be screaming. And throwing of things. And all of it will be the fault of Baby’s minions (who aren’t real people, unlike the Vile Faceless Minions who have generous vacation allowances and a really good retirement plan that can be used for funeral expenses if need be) and those dreadful creatures that tell Baby no and must be the worst things ever to exist (Since telling Baby no is the ultimate crime).

So of course, when any of the sane adults – or even the quasi-adults who’ve managed to negotiate a respectable bargain with sanity and can pass for normal on a good day – disagree with Baby or tell Baby that no, she can’t do that, all heck breaks loose (Baby doesn’t realize this, but she’s been far too sheltered to have any idea about hell so this is as bad as it gets). Those of us who know damn well what hell is like because we’ve been there and clawed our way out (ignore that trail of demon corpses. They really don’t like losing customers down there) mostly roll our eyes and let her scream herself out (We’re not her mother, and we don’t particularly wish to be busybodies about it, either).

Baby believes this makes us weak and we’ll eventually give into her. We know better. We know if we do intervene, she’ll get the spanking of her life, and if she’s caused too much damage, that spanking will be a Rowan Atkinson-style fatal beating (honestly, so many children would behave so much better if they’d had a few more fatal beatings when they were younger). The true art of Evil includes knowing when to apply the Iron Fist and when the Velvet Glove is more appropriate. The Iron Fist inside the Velvet Glove is too complicated for Baby to understand, so she has no idea what she’s playing with.

But really, she’s no challenge. She’s just a spoiled, privileged brat with no idea about anything. The first time reality smacks her in the face, she’ll crumble.

And she won’t even realize that if she hadn’t been such a spoiled little monster, the people she’s been calling names would rush to help her.

35 thoughts on “What To Do, What To Do”

  1. You know, you can easily freeze your harvest for later use. I used to wash, hull, and pop them into a ziploc, adding a few at a time until they amounted to something. For one thing, they made great ice-cube substitutes in a drink or smoothies.

    1. Unlike ice cubes, frozen strawberries add to the flavor.

      Of course if you don’t want to be adding strawberry flavor they don’t serve that well…

      1. I used to do this with all kinds of berries in iced tea or lemonade. I need to get back in that habit now that I’m drinking unsweetened tea, it will make it much nicer.

        1. Long ago when I lived in eastern Tennessee in a area full of berry hedges and a large copse of wild plums. There were raspberry hedges: red, black and golden — oh the joy of it. Happy memories of indulging on fresh fruit … (Thank you.) Sigh!

            1. The best blackberry patch I ever met was at a camp just over the Pennsylvania line from Camptown, New York. (Yes, really, as in doo dah, doo dah…)

              1. There was a great blackberry patch at a park just near Oakland, CA. It was moist year round and there was a little stream… no one picked the berries. I think that lots of people probably tried and they were really sour and gave up without realizing that “black” isn’t ripe… you have to wait until the berry gets a little dull bloom and isn’t so shiny. My kids were little and we brought buckets. I froze most of them. If I put them in stuff like muffins or pancakes I’d break them up just a little bit so the muffins wouldn’t be full of huge purple *holes*.

                1. Where I live, they’re an invasive weed and all we want to do is burn them. Burn them with fire!

                  But yes, in august, the blackberries aredelicious.

        2. Tried raspberry flavored unsweet tea once. Not bad, and it didn’t need a sweetener.

    2. Beat me to it, and gathered and frozen until enough accumulate they can be turned into quite tasty jam with a bit of sugar and pectin.

    3. Waaaay ahead of you guys. There’s about 2lb and counting in the freezer already.

      1. Strawberry Gooball?

        It’s a recipe for whole strawberry preserves in which the sugar generally crystallizes in the jar (like rock candy) if left on the shelf for a year or so (a rare occurrence). If you’d like it, I’ll happily post it here.

        Wish I lived closer. You wouldn’t have a strawberry problem.

      2. Add tablespoons of frozen berries to equal parts light vinegar and basil infused olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and you have either a good marinate for pork or a summer salad dressing. Vary the proportions to taste.

  2. …he’ll happily lob nukes…

    One more problem with babies. A baby may like the sound of a given word. A baby may like the reaction the given word gets when used. But being a baby, the baby does not necessarily know what the given word actually means.

    These, who you describe, being spoiled babies in tantrum mode, don’t take to kindly to the discipline of education nor correction of their illusions. Still, reality doesn’t care one wit what one wants it to be — and she can be one hell of a mother.

    1. Reality, like nature, is the ultimate mother. Do it wrong, get spanked, hard.

      1. Now that you bring it up… they do bear a certain resemblance in temperament to my 7 month old when he’s throwing a tantrum (thankfully a comparatively rare event or I’d never sleep.) But he at least learns if you repeat a pattern often enough. (Which isn’t bad for a little guy who’s still working on his English.)

  3. With some of these “critters” it is an insult to call them “babies” … an insult to real “babies”. [Very Big Evil Grin]

    1. Yes, the problem is that no matter *what* you call them, you’re insulting it by comparing those critters to it.

  4. Your reputation is well served. How am I to get the mental imagine of a diaper-clad GRRM sucking on his baby bottle of spirits out of my brain?

    Cruel, cruel indeed, Ms. Impaler!

      1. There are a few people on the ASP side willing to at least try and have a conversation.

        They are a small, small minority, but they are there.

        1. And – alas – a shrinking majority as the screamers turn on them the instant they try to be reasonable. So they mostly either shut up or join the chorus.

    2. Why, thank you, sir! Brain bleach is under the bathroom sink, third door on the left.

  5. Facts bounce off them so well, that no pre-warning of reality has penetrated. I consider this a microcosm of the larger political/economic situation. See what works here, and then try to apply it to the larger world. Or use it to calculate how deep to dig one’s personal bunker, if it goes nuclear in the small arena.

    1. I tend to follow the view that the best defense is to leave nothing capable of attack.

    1. Oh, I’m not hoping for reason from the screaming mimis. I’m aiming for the neutrals who just might click through.

  7. What defines them as ‘baby’ is that they appear to have no realization that aversive situations arrive as logical consequences of their own behavior. An adult has learned that consequences are a result of THEIR behavior, and modifies it according.

    1. Well, yes. Nothing is ever anything to do with them. They have no concept of cause and effect, no concept of scale, and no concept of consequences.

    1. It is appalling that anyone thinks it appropriate to enter any place where there’s nothing harmful happening and start killing.

      It’s also appalling that anyone thinks “I don’t like your views” means “You are evil”.

      Different classes of appalling, but appalling.

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