Musings of a Lemming

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Plucked Duck

 

As I wrote last time, Lipps' wife asked a Catholic priest to exorcise their cabin of the broken souls released from those dumped Diz-knee Star Wars DVDs and it didn't work. So the resident "ducktor" decided to do it himself. If you've ever studied exorcism rites in any culture, you'll know they're difficult, taxing, and not for the weak of faith. Lipps has neither the physical endurance nor the faith in any higher power. Instead he just streamed The Exorcist to figure out how to do it himself.

 

I finally just called the Church of the Jedi myself when I saw the flashing lights and flying feathers in his front window. Two hours later they showed up, went in for all of twenty minutes, and things calmed right down. After they left the quack came out without a feather left on his body. By then a crowd had gathered outside, myself among them, and he walked right up to me and said two little words:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Ernest Lemmingway]

A Return to Insanity

 

As I read over the last few pages of my Musings, I realize I've been too focused on the serious and not enough on the crazy. My veterinarian agrees, too. I went in for a checkup and he found some issues. My blood pressure is so high I gush crimson if I get a paper cut; my brain is shrinking in places because of stress, affecting my...my...I can't remember ?; my digestion is so out of whack food just passes through me, especially those little X's in Lucky Charms that hurt when they come out. I'm a mess and watching things like the news, or just YouTube channels like Thequartering and It'sAGundam, are actually making things worse. It's a bad sign when you need to be totally cut off from reality. Like all corporate executives. ::doubles over in pain::

 

So I'll share with you all the events of the past few days. The weather was wet and rainy during the Memorial Day weekend, and yet we got numerous campers coming up to the glen and the surrounding areas. Kids who don't know what to do with themselves when cut off from sociopathic media or video games, parents trying to salvage a vacation that could have been saved if they'd just watched the weather, young people blowing off steam after college finals, old people trying to get away from the young people, all converging at once. Meanwhile we critters were smart enough to stay in our homes while it rained all weekend. Not even the prospect of stealing food and quality beer could coax us out.

 

By Monday the humans were leaving, as unhappy and miserable as they were when they arrived. Somehow none of them even noticed that a duck was inhabiting an electrified cabin with indoor plumbing. How's that for being overlooked? Species-ist humans!

 

I'd like to say things got better after they all left but that isn't the case. They got...weirder. Cecil, as I mentioned earlier, has quit Skyrim and cleaned himself and his domicile up. What Dave thinks we don't know because we haven't seen him lately. At first we thought it the CCAC got him but he's still lurking around, vainly looking for the chicken that got away. How he got permission to return after being dosed with funky fungus fluid I don't know. I was sure he'd be caught in the state's draconian laws regarding substance abuse. But what would I know? I'm a lemming.

 

And it's odd that Dave disappeared when he did. His birthday was last Saturday but he wasn't around to be roasted. So we're just holding off on it until he returns if he thinks he can escape his fate by simply laying low. Mm...roast chicken. ?

 

Millie has likewise gone off the deep end. I knew when we were dating that she was n...not well in the head. But after that massive blowout with Melissa, she seems to have snapped completely. The first sign was when she started pelting imaginary green whales with pine cones from her tree. Then she gave away all her nuts and her collection of unicorn figurines. Finally, she built a bonfire made out of her shoes. Her shoes! We critters don't normally bother with footwear, yet I've never met a woman of any species that doesn't have a dozen different shoes of the same color covering the entire rainbow. She was taken off by animal handlers in clean white coats in a padded truck. The whole thing is just...nuts!

 

Cecil was spotted at a local restaurant with a female gerbil. A date! Suddenly it makes sense that he took my advice about washing the Cheetos dust out of his fur. He did find a girlfriend despite his protests to the contrary. By Dog! Our geeky little electrical engineer is finally growing up.

 

And if you're wondering about Moose, we managed to save him from a fate worse than death. His employers were adding an ingredient that the FDA only recently linked to increased intellect among moose, caribou, and their ilk. There are already reports coming in from Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, and Russia about the creatures becoming smart enough to realize how lousy reality is and threatened to sue over this newfound, unwanted self-awareness. Thankfully the effects are temporary and the ingredient was outlawed in a secret session of every country in the world. Just imagine what would happen if humans became intelligent enough to realize what was really going on around them! Hollow-wood would go out of business! Tabloids would lose all their readership! Unreality TV would cease to exist! Whole governments could collapse! And... ? They'd stop making processed foods as everyone goes over to healthy foodstuffs farmed using sustainable methods! NOOOOOO!!!!!!!

 

::clutches chest:: Okay...I may have gotten myself overexcited with that last bit. I need to go calm down and watch some more Looney Tunes and Troma movies.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Dave turned up. But we can't roast him. He's been saddled with a mantle of great import among us critters. That of "Crazy Mountain Chicken." Part sage, part hermit, part oracle, and total loon. Basically the animal version of psychics and news reporters, only reliable. More details to follow.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Return to Insanity, Part 2: Crazy Mountain Chicken

 

I would have posted sooner, but I'm still recovering from heat exhaustion I suffered three days ago. Despite drinking enough water and sports drinks to drown my tissues. Lemmings are not designed for hard work. Especially thousands of miles below the Arctic Circle. Even after shaving for the summer and losing all those grams I'm still wiped by doing things like painting garage doors early in the morning when it's still relatively cool (by local standards). Maybe if I'd stuck with that rather than help my father mow his lawn as well (which is the lemming equivalent of a quarter-acre large) afterwards...

 

In every mountainous area in every part of the world where chickens exist, there dwells a being that all critters look to for answers during times of trouble. They're called the Crazy Mountain Chickens. The diviners of truth in an age when any idiot with an Internet connection can spout whatever lies they want, fonts of wisdom when the world is losing its head over anything (basically all times), and complete nutcases who need to be separated from the masses lest they spread their unique breed of madness called "intelligence." Humans can't handle reason and logic and critters, I'm sorry to say, aren't much better.

 

When the old CMC is ready to retire, or dies, it's tradition to pass the mantle on to one who is at least forty chicken-years-old. Dave only just turned thirty, however. Sadly, he's the only one who's qualified within twenty miles. All of his brethren are too caught up in sociopathic media, urinalism websites, or are so salty they resemble Lot's wife. So it falls to someone rather young for such a position, no matter how poultry. Our fowl friend is leaving us to take up his new role as the new arbiter of sanity because the previous CMC is too old to continue in his position. He'll be retiring to Florida next week to live out his golden years. I'd say "golden brown years" but a cock that old and stringy...nah, not worth a joke.

 

We all helped Dave move into his new cave lair. Which is actually nicer than the hollow stump he and Cecil shared for years if only because it's a lot more spacious and doesn't reek to high hell of old Hot Pockets and pizza bites. After hauling up a ton of junk on a twisty mountain trail, we had a grill party (a "barbecue" to most 'Muricans). I'm not sure what happened at it because as I was carrying a package of rib-eye steaks, I was crushed by the mass of moo meat. Normally I just shake off being squashed like a pancake but apparently that isn't true if I'm weakened. My life is a cartoon.

 

When I woke up I had an ice pack on my forehead that visibly melted and then exploded in a cloud of steam. It must not have been the first because Melissa sat there with a dozen more all ready to go. And the mirror on the ceiling was fogged over as well. In between ice packs she put a cast iron skillet on my head and fried some eggs. Sometimes it's hard to tell if she finds me handsome or just handy (poor Red Green plug). And to make matters worse, she called Lipps over to take a look at me! He's just been waiting for a chance to pay me back for calling that Jedi exorcist to take care of what he couldn't. His recommendation? Just some pain relievers...via suppository! I'm still walking funny days later.

 

Cecil seems to be taking his long-time roommate moving out quite well. Just today he had a crime scene cleanup company come in, followed by a more domestic cleanup company, and an exterminator. It turns out his hollow stump has wall-to-wall carpeting! He didn't even know that. And the walls are white! What used to be a dingy, dark, and dank place that looked more like my dungeon has turned out to be a rather bright, homey place once all the grunge was cleaned. He even invited his new lady friend over now that he's not humiliated by his bachelor pad.

 

Meanwhile Dave is settling in as the new CMC quite well. He doesn't have to work anymore unless someone comes to him for advice. He can do whatever he wants the rest of the time. I'll give him a week before he's driven up the walls from sheer boredom. And Dave gets weird(er) when he's bored. He once built a working thermonuclear device from scrap electronics and a million phosphorescent watch faces because he got bored. Or he might just continue work on his vaunted female robot. This is a guy...er, chicken, who should not be left alone for any prolonged amount of time. He's going to make the "Crazy" part of his new title a fitting one.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Tabobi...ACHOO! ?

 

I caught a late-spring cold. And not one where I'm stuffy and coughing. One where if I sit up the room starts spinning and I haven't had a drop to drink. Where my throat hurts so much I can't talk...er, not that I can actually vocalize much more than "tabodi." And where I'm in bed all day--alone. For me, it's not just being sick that's miserable. I missed a day of class and a day of work, which eats at me until I can make up for the missed time. Which is why today I'm even worse than I was two days ago when I took a sick day. My vet is pissed at me now.

 

Melissa is even more upset. I was supposed to rest but instead I hauled my sickly, fuzzy butt into work and to the tech center to take a make-up test yesterday. So today she strapped me into bed and I don't mean in a kinky way. I've got my arms free but my legs and a chest strap are holding me in place. And they're secured with padlocks. Do not piss off a woman who can do things to you in the night. The strap and restraints I can tolerate but not the damned catheter! As painful as that is, what really makes me want to cry is the fact I have no one but myself to blame. She told me not to get out of bed until I was feeling better, I disobeyed, and now I'm paying the price.

 

Thing is taking her side and refuses to get the key to the locks. In fact I woke up four hours ago after a scant six hours of sleep and he hit me on the head with a mallet! I woke up less than half an hour ago. I think Melissa bribed him with a manicure. I just hope he's taking care of the berries. I do not want to turn pink again. Dungeon Master is likewise taking full advantage of my predicament and showing off his latest inventions for torturing bad little b...bunnies! Right now he's down in the dungeon grabbing his latest device while I quickly try and post this.

 

Before I got sick, though, I gathered some news on what's going on in the glen. Dave is adjusting pretty well to being the new Crazy Mountain Chicken while Cecil is a step away from writing on the walls in his own blood. At first he was happy to have his slovenly roommate out of their stump. It certainly made keeping the place clean easier. Now he's learning how lonely it is to live by himself. And he's finally realized he won't have anyone to play with if Skyrim Together ever gets released. The rest of us have had him visit us in the evenings more than once and the last time he stopped by here was really bad timing. Melissa had something "special" planned that night and had to postpone things for two hours. She was merciless when we did get some time alone. I think that's why I got sick, too. I got no sleep that night and was dehydrated the following day.

 

Moose was ambushed by some bow hunters who thought they hit the jackpot. Instead their arrows bounced off of his muscle-bound hide. While he was watching wrestling. The only thing left after his rampage was some torn safety orange vests and a pair of bows. So either the predators finished off their mutilated remains or there are two naked hunters out in the woods somewhere. I'm inclined to think the latter simply because we've been hearing strange howls lately in places where there are just coniferous trees; no leaves to wipe with, just pine cones.

 

Dungeon Master has returned. I'll try and continue this later.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Sorry for not updating in so long. The glen is undergoing a major heatwave and no one has the energy to do anything. Even Moose is having trouble watching pro wrestling because it's too damn hot to even get up the energy to plug in a DVD. I had fried eggs for breakfast and didn't even have to turn on the stove! I just went outside and used a rock. As for what happened after DM came back, I'll get to that as soon as I can bear to leave the freezer. I'm typing this on my phone and it's a pain the butt to do long posts!

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Tabobi...ACHOO! ? Part Deux

 

The squirrels, whom Millie is still not among as she's still in a psych ward, had their nut stashes raided. Now it's not unheard of for some squirrels to steal others' work--just like editors and publishers do with authors--but the prints found were too narrow to be a squirrel. We have--well, had--a new resident, an acorn woodpecker who isn't happy harvesting his own acorns...and walnuts, and almonds, and pinyon nuts. Oh no, this guy is a thief smart enough to wait until the squirrels expose their subterranean stashes but not smart enough to realize others can see him hammering the stolen goods into the trunk of a tree. We know it was him because, somehow, he stole a jar of cashew butter the squirrels took from a hunter. A rather expensive, high-quality, organic brand that isn't sold locally, either. I'm not sure how this birdbrain stole a jar that weighs twice what he does.

 

Now guess whose burrow is located right next to the tree where this thief tried to store his stolen goods? It's hard enough to sleep with a damned woodpecker hammering on a tree, especially after Dungeon Master left me terrified by showing me his new torture techniques for b...bunnies by including numerous pictures of those lamentable lagomorphs, but when a family of a dozen squirrels comes along and tries to string him up for said theft? Anyone who thinks the woods are a place of peace and quiet is an idiot. There's nothing quiet about a lynch mob and a bunch of tree rodents prying nuts hammered into a tree out with a chisel and hammer! I think they've been watching my cousins' show because they stood on each others' shoulders to make themselves tall enough to use human-sized tools and acted in concert like...well, lemmings!

 

It was dark before things quieted down and I finally thought I'd be able to sleep. Then the rangers came in with a volunteer search party to look for those bow hunters that interfered with Moose's pro wrestling time. With vehicles, bullhorns, and massive spotlights because it was dark. They couldn't hold off until the morning. It was a little after four AM before they finally found the men they were searching for. A scan two miles away. With pine cone scratches in places I cringe to think about. Using local flora to hide their shame...leaves that came in bunches of three. One was fine, three others had rashes in a very sensitive place. I know the time because I couldn't fall asleep with the noise and what happened because all the other animal denizens told me about it two days later when my fever broke and I was freed.

 

If you've never stayed stock still for days, or had to remove a catheter, I envy you. I had a sore twig for days and it took nearly as long before I could move my fore and hind limbs without feeling like I was moving through wet concrete. And just as I was about to punish Melissa for putting me through that extreme pain, the weather turned H-O-T! If that credit card we used last autumn hadn't evaporated the pond, it would have done so now. I went outside to check on my berry plants and somehow they had obtained little cocktail parasols and tiny sunglasses so they could sunbathe! The 200-year-old oak next to my burrow was wilting like a man without Viagra. And I mentioned earlier how I used a rock to fry eggs. Why on Dog's green Earth would it be this hot this far up the mountains? Among this many trees?

 

In disgust, I finally just fed a plastic hose from an aquarium pump to the inside of a chest freezer to spend the un-Dog-ly hot days. DM and Thing apparently lazed around a kiddie pool while Melissa donned a parka and joined me in the freezer. I think the one who suffered the most was Moose, though. He had to go for two weeks without any pro wrestling! It was just too hot for his satellite box or his DVD player to function; he started them up and they'd immediately shut down again thanks to their heat sensors. As well as the fact even he had a hard time moving more than a couple of feet before he collapsed from heat exhaustion. He wound up staying near a creek hot enough to steep tea in to avoid dehydration. Just more examples of the sheer strangeness and egregious violations of every law of science you care to name that I live with every day.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

I've been feeling a serious lack of energy for nearly six weeks now, enough that I've had to undergo a panel of blood tests. Hopefully my therapist who ordered the tests will have some news. Not that there's been much news from the glen. The dog days of summer came early and are really dragging on. About the only thing worth mentioning was a series of rolling brownouts that killed my air pump, forcing me to leave the freezer to fix it. That or suffocate. Since I didn't feel like turning blue down to my skin I had to brave the un-Dog-ly heat and use human-sized tools to fix it. Now I know how the astronauts felt when they first tried to use tools in zero gravity.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Lemming Leaving

 

Everything that's been going on for me IRL, that's happened on the boards with my own failures to consider my words and/or others who just want to hate me because of said words, I realize I can't stay here as a poster. Downloading and enjoying mods, sure. But I just can't find the time or energy to continue being a part of the community. Also I'm afraid of melting down and saying something that will alienate everyone.

 

This is Ernest Lemmingway, signing off.

[Psalam]

9 hours ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

Lemming Leaving

 

Everything that's been going on for me IRL, that's happened on the boards with my own failures to consider my words and/or others who just want to hate me because of said words, I realize I can't stay here as a poster. Downloading and enjoying mods, sure. But I just can't find the time or energy to continue being a part of the community. Also I'm afraid of melting down and saying something that will alienate everyone.

 

This is Ernest Lemmingway, signing off.

Lest it fail to be said, I am most certainly going to miss you and your humor. I wish you the very best IRL and, as usual, if I can do anything to help, including just a sympathetic ear, feel free to PM me.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

11 hours ago, Psalam said:

Lest it fail to be said, I am most certainly going to miss you and your humor. I wish you the very best IRL and, as usual, if I can do anything to help, including just a sympathetic ear, feel free to PM me.

I guess I owe folks a little bit of an explanation. First off, my job has forced me to take a leave of absence from school just as I'm entering the last three months of courses before I earn my certification. To make matters worse, an executive (now a ward of the state) forced me to help her do something with the computers that would have embezzled untold sums over a long period of time had I not alerted the proper authorities. The case was closed PDQ because the company already suspected her and had all the evidence it needed to secure a conviction in court. I still have a job but my professional reputation has been destroyed since I'm now a "whistle blower."

 

Then there's everything that's been going on with video games. The urinalists, publishers forcing studios into doing things that alienate their customers, people still buying from these companies despite everything. I'm a man...er, lemming of logic. None of what I've been seeing and learning makes any sense! It's gotten so bad I've found myself repeatedly falling into the same traps of letting my emotions--especially a growing hatred for these groups--inform my actions and online posts. I try so hard to stay objective but as anyone who's read my posts here can tell you I tend to fail at that when it's something I feel strongly about. It's gotten to the point that I've just quit caring and following what's going on.

 

Finally, the malnutrition I mentioned in Ask A Lemming. Stress and one of the most insidious symptoms of starvation (lack of appetite) have conspired to make things worse despite some serious lifestyle changes. Another test (don't ask what kind, it's gross and embarrassing) recently showed that despite eating semi-regularly and more healthily, my body is simply not absorbing nutrients like it should. The root cause? Stress--or more specifically, stress hormones. And right now the biggest source of stress is my job, one I can't get any PTO from because of Microsoft's lies about Windows 10 being backwards compatible with older software. Put rather simplistically, what should have been done three months ago is looking like it will take another five at least thanks to all the workarounds and fixes the IT team needs to implement. They won't even let me take medical leave and I can't afford to litigate.

 

I don't know if I'll be back or not given how things are playing out. My priority right now is to simply survive.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Return of the Lemming Dead

 

For an untold time I felt nothing, saw nothing. Then some weird chemical came and caused me to wake up, in pain and screaming, "BRAINS! WHY CAN'T PEOPLE USE THEIR BRAINS!"

 

Coming back to myself, albeit hungry for something 99.9% of the population doesn't use, I took stock of my situation. I'd quit my job in Dec. 20 at the employee Xmas party when the Secret Santa gift I got was a literal whistle and the others laughing. Thankfully I'd negotiated my contract so that if I felt the work environment was hostile, I could quit and still receive two months pay as severance (two months of my pay, which is five times what the cubicle convicts earn, remember). The floor manager begged me to stay, but I'd had enough. So my pay is being garnished from the others' paychecks and the company is already nine months behind schedule where they were six months behind when the lemming was there to deal with the legacy system.

 

Without a job that was killing me, I finally got back in school to finish my lab tech certification. One month of classes, two of internship. Only in the first week I'm back I run into an SJW who pitches an absolute fit over getting a 75% on a practice job report she's too young to have ever done before. Campus security had to escort her out of the building and she hasn't been back since. Thankfully. At this point I've run out of empathy for the entitled, privileged twits who refuse to grow up. It was a practice assignment to figure out what you needed help with, get over it. Those who show a willingness to leave the Twitter cult and deal with real life, I'm willing to give them a chance.

 

Meanwhile the glen has been hit with the wettest, coldest winter in decades. Even I've been forced to wear more than mittens, a scarf, and a woolen cap. Of course that could also be because Melissa has been forcing me to eat healthy and I've no winter fat on me. A blue lemming should not weigh only 30 grams! Moose, meanwhile, has bought himself an insulated shed using his paychecks from Blue Moose of Boulder. One big enough to hold him, his collection of pro wrestling DVDs, and enough bean dip and Frito's corn chips to last him until spring. Meanwhile Cecil hasn't left his tree stump in months. He's alive--we make certain of that--but he's been playing Jedi: Fallen Order and other things from Evil Arts. And Lipps? His honeymoon is over. His wife hasn't let him migrate south for this winter and drags him to Catholic Mass three times a week. I think the good ducktor has been sampling his own wares as an escape; lately he's been acting very daffy...or rather, Daffy.

 

I'll wrap this up here. I'm hungry for ?.

[Psalam]

1 hour ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

Return of the Lemming Dead

 

For an untold time I felt nothing, saw nothing. Then some weird chemical came and caused me to wake up, in pain and screaming, "BRAINS! WHY CAN'T PEOPLE USE THEIR BRAINS!"

 

Coming back to myself, albeit hungry for something 99.9% of the population doesn't use, I took stock of my situation. I'd quit my job in Dec. 20 at the employee Xmas party when the Secret Santa gift I got was a literal whistle and the others laughing. Thankfully I'd negotiated my contract so that if I felt the work environment was hostile, I could quit and still receive two months pay as severance (two months of my pay, which is five times what the cubicle convicts earn, remember). The floor manager begged me to stay, but I'd had enough. So my pay is being garnished from the others' paychecks and the company is already nine months behind schedule where they were six months behind when the lemming was there to deal with the legacy system.

 

Without a job that was killing me, I finally got back in school to finish my lab tech certification. One month of classes, two of internship. Only in the first week I'm back I run into an SJW who pitches an absolute fit over getting a 75% on a practice job report she's too young to have ever done before. Campus security had to escort her out of the building and she hasn't been back since. Thankfully. At this point I've run out of empathy for the entitled, privileged twits who refuse to grow up. It was a practice assignment to figure out what you needed help with, get over it. Those who show a willingness to leave the Twitter cult and deal with real life, I'm willing to give them a chance.

 

Meanwhile the glen has been hit with the wettest, coldest winter in decades. Even I've been forced to wear more than mittens, a scarf, and a woolen cap. Of course that could also be because Melissa has been forcing me to eat healthy and I've no winter fat on me. A blue lemming should not weigh only 30 grams! Moose, meanwhile, has bought himself an insulated shed using his paychecks from Blue Moose of Boulder. One big enough to hold him, his collection of pro wrestling DVDs, and enough bean dip and Frito's corn chips to last him until spring. Meanwhile Cecil hasn't left his tree stump in months. He's alive--we make certain of that--but he's been playing Jedi: Fallen Order and other things from Evil Arts. And Lipps? His honeymoon is over. His wife hasn't let him migrate south for this winter and drags him to Catholic Mass three times a week. I think the good ducktor has been sampling his own wares as an escape; lately he's been acting very daffy...or rather, Daffy.

 

I'll wrap this up here. I'm hungry for ?.

Welcome back, Lemming!

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Sheeple Gone Mad, Lemming Gone Madder

 

Things had been rather quiet for the past couple of months. No college kids coming up for a New Year's bash, no families making the mistake of camping in winter, not even any hunters which is bad for the MEL's larder. It was just as well. Once I finished my final class I began interning at a hospital and confirmed that, yes, lab techs are called "lab rats" in the industry. Which is mildly offensive to me, since I'm a lemming, not a rat! Still, the somewhat-affectionate label was nothing compared to the workload and time constraints that first week. I started the day after the full moon. Ask anyone who works at a police department or ER and they'll tell you that the full moon brings out the crazies. I think it's psychosomatic but I'm just a "lab rat" so my opinion doesn't matter.

 

After that first week things tapered off significantly, although we were still getting tasked with an obscene number of urinalysis requests to follow up on a spike of DUI arrests. I guess the local cops were hedging their bets. Not that those tests take too long to perform. But I dislike working with waste and donned what (at the time) was deemed unnecessarily excessive protection. Besides the usual gloves, I wore a lemming-sized mask and protective goggles. Bear in mind this was before the public went nuts over the c-virus, though those of us "employed" by the healthcare industry knew it was going to get bad as soon as the sheeple found out. My internship ended a full week before the panic set in and I was supposed to start at a private lab just when things started. I even had a blood test for said c-virus done there a week before I was to start; came up negative, not surprisingly. No confirmed cases in this state.

 

I was doing some shopping for the others when the dam broke. Just as I'm putting some Charmin in my cart, the crowds rush the aisle I'm in and clear out everything. Even stealing the four-pack I'd just grabbed. And yes, animals use butt wipe. It's kind of necessary in winter and early spring because there are no leaves, just needles and pine cones. I was lucky to get out of there with my life. Hell, I was lucky to get out of the parking lot with my life! The place was jammed full and as soon as I'd cleared my space, two others went for it and crashed into each other. Ugh, what a mess!

 

Back in the glen the rest had setup a news boycott, realizing that the humans were going to be insane and not wanting to deal with their mental illness. And I had to give Moose a roll of my ultra-precious three-ply because I couldn't get him the Charmin. I don't know how he uses it and I don't want to know. He went and got his own, though. Not even the manic monkeys dare fight with an eight-hundred-pound bull moose over TP. I think they were more in awe of said animal buying something using a credit card. His hooves are a lot more dexterous than most think.

 

As for me, this voluntary quarantine "social distancing" has kept me from being able to finish the last four weeks of internship I need before I earn my certification. Being stuck in the burrow all day, with nothing to do, and a girlfriend who has exhausted even her vast repertoire of "home projects," is driving me a little nutty. It's like an early preview of retirement. But without any of my non-video game hobbies available! My hands itch to get some clay and start sculpting! Even though I suck at it and don't have the tools to refine what I create. Even Melissa wants me to get some just so she can model in the nude (I suspect she's an exhibitionist). But all the crafting stores and other "non-essential" retail stores aside from GameStop are shut down around here.

 

And then there's the inevitable economic recession that will follow once this mess has run its course. That always means hunters looking to stock up on meat to save money. Which will mean we animals won't be hurting for food. Remember, we have the intellectual edge.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Alcoholic Lemming (rant)

 

If it's not apparent by now, we critters love humanity for its artifice. Including processed foods. But if we could, we'd take the artifice and exterminate humanity. What other species breeds weakness into itself by protecting and even coddling its laziest, dumbest, and most ineffective members? As Dave would say, "Cluck you!"

 

Where did this hate come from? A protest outside the lab I work at. People screeching about having to wear masks in stores, on public transportation, or to their jobs, and thinking a single-level lab next door to a family doctor's office has any sort of say in what lawmakers, store managers, or the other sheeple think. Screeching while bunched up, deliberately coughing in people's faces, and at one point throwing a brick through the glass door. The local cops were already there by then, trying to negotiate things peacefully and get this bunch to disperse. Unlike those four cops in Minneapolis, these ones knew proper compliance tactics when the "protesters" turned on them. Alongside four of my co-workers who are well trained in self-defense maneuvers and two of whom are ex-nurses who had to deal with unruly patients.

 

Does local lame stream media even mention this event? No, they try and spin it as police brutality and then double-down when dash cams and the lab's own surveillance show otherwise. Then they play the victim card when people start calling them out.

 

If you haven't been paying attention, corona cases in the States have spiked sharply as anyone with any sense knew they would once the feds started opening things back up. Why? Because sheeple stopped taking precautions. No more social distancing, no more masks (if they do anything), no more hand washing/sanitizing or gloves, basically ignoring everything. And when businesses start demanding people start observing them again, they freak out and start screeching about "Constitutional rights" and gathering together without any sort of protections. Then they get sick themselves and spread it to others, including children.

 

Do you know what it's like to have to tell an eight-year-old girl she has COVID-19 because she attended a party where one of the parents was infected and didn't know it? Who got his own kid and others' sick because he attended a protest without protection weeks earlier? And then coming to this site and finding people agreeing with the same things those protesters were on about? I've tried to stay objective about this, to do my due diligence in researching things, and found not even the experts can offer solid advice because coronaviruses are do not play by the same rules things like the rhinoviruses and COVID-19 doesn't even play by the exact same rules SARS and MERS do. And lame stream media just keeps confusing things more by misrepresenting the facts or outright lying to keep people afraid. New research even suggests patients are not being reinfected but the DNA of the virus they had before is reactivating itself and causing non-infectious re-occurrences. Is that true in all cases? NOBODY KNOWS FOR CERTAIN!

 

If people don't want to err on the side of caution, then I ask they stay the hell away from me. I've had it with SJWs and lame stream media confusing things, SJWs and Hollywoke elites trying to gaslight everyone, Cancel Culture running amok, and sheeple trying to deliberately infect me as a way of regaining some sense of power in their own lives! AND NO ONE ELSE IS EVEN TRYING TO STAND UP TO ANY OF THEM!!!

 

At least if I'm nursing a bottle and I deal with them IRL again I'll have something to hit them over the heads with or slice their fucking throats when it shatters!

 

I really need to take a break from all social platforms for a while. Before I say something that I'll regret and likely others will as well.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Autumn Exhaustion

 

It's been too long since I posted here. As things settle into the "new normal" (which, sadly, includes letting racist Far Left lunatics burn, loot, and murder while claiming it's for social justice) and humans lose their damned minds over who gets into the Oval Office, we critters of the glen have been forced to grin and bear it. Life was thankfully quiet, other than Lipps's wife complaining that she couldn't attend Mass for a couple of weeks. No one was coming here and messing things up because they were all locked up in their own homes. But that also meant no hunters to steal credit cards from for the fall "harvest" at various warehouse stores. Humans made this world; we're just adapting to it.

 

Not that we'd be able to buy even a quarter of things we want just yet. Seems the local Costco isn't stocking up on "essentials" for squirrels, lemmings, moose, ducks, gerbils. and mice. Nor is Costco really the place to buy such; Sam's Club carries Whatchamacallits and other "high energy" foods me and my fellow critters require. Besides, we're just a couple dozen more foil wrappers away from fully lining an old, inside-out patio umbrella and turning it into a satellite dish. Even as I type that I can feel my neck turning very red, indeed. Hidden as it is by an increasingly blue collar.

 

No, I didn't lose my job as a lab rat. I've just been forced to work long hours--sometimes as many as twelve a day all week--doing LAMP tests for COVID. All because the local school district demands that students undergo such tests instead of simpler antigen testing. Do they care that the parents have to pay out of the nose for each kid? Or that all the labs where such testing can be done are grossly understaffed because of a labor shortage? Swing a hammer, plunge a toilet, work with electrical wire, extract tissue from someone's nose, in the end we're a lot more alike than we thought. Including a need to hit the bars (now that they're open) and bitch about everything over a beer. Only it's hard for me to keep up because I'm just a lemming in a human rig using a type-and-talk console to communicate. It sounds like Dr. Hawking joined a bunch of construction workers.

 

Then I get home--either on time or well into the evening, depending on the workload--where Millie has fixed dinner or left some for me in the oven. At this point we might as well be married because we're in a rut. The passion is dwindling and even our weekly trips to the dungeon aren't as...passionate as they used to be. But that could also be because we're both just exhausted. We both work in the human world and deal with human issues. Like the US election season, a certifiably insane mainstream media, a Hollywood that's increasingly irrelevant to anyone, and woke politics invading sports. Not that either of us cares about any of that but the people we work with sure do. And they can't shut up about it. Can you do anything about any of it yet? No? Then shut up about it!

 

But the one I feel most for? Moose. Some SJWs tried to claim he was being exploited by his employers. I know Moose doesn't come across as the most...cerebral member of the glen. But there are times I see a mad genius hiding behind those eyes. Each of the social justice wankers who tried to harass his employers? Well, they're going to be guests of their respective states for a long, long time. I still don't know how he managed to convince them to do...whatever they did. Or how he got the authorities to catch them in the act. But I will reiterate: do not mess with Moose! Just leave him to his Frito's chips, his bean dips, and his pro wrestling and all will be fine. Now only if we could harness that skill and get the likes of Don Lemon or Andrew Cuomo out of the picture...

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Intellectual Edge, 33 and 1/3

 

Hunters made an appearance recently. A group of about four men with price tags still tied to their rifles and stickers still on their ammo boxes. Making enough noise to alert every critter in the glen. They weren't actually hunting then, just setting up camp using tents that hadn't even been removed from their boxes yet. Needless to say, we animals were not very impressed. Things just got more laughable when one of them produced an espresso machine and plugged it into a generator loud enough to disturb Ted as he was fattening himself up for hibernation. Never let it be said we nerds aren't physical. Or that bears aren't dexterous. He walked in and used his claws to slice the fuel line clean through, even stopping to help himself to a cup of Joe with all the decorum of an English nobleman. Not that the hunters saw any of that; they fled when they saw a grizzly charging their camp. It's too bad, really. They could have learned a thing or two from the discussion he and I had about human nature and the increasing tribalism encouraged by social media platforms. Not that I drink coffee of any sort; I've been living off of "lemmingade" mix lately.

 

After that scintillating conversation, we got to the business of carefully filing down the firing pins in their rifles. Not because we were concerned about getting shot ourselves but because we feared they shoot each other and bring more humans to the glen. And after 2020, we're fed up with humans. As for their food...well, there are things even we critters won't eat. Soy-based meat substitute, tofu, bean sprouts, gluten-free whole-grain bread, salad mix that could be contaminated with Dog only knows what, not a speck of real meat or dairy. Naturally that begs the question of what vegans are doing hunting? Maybe they do it for sport? Or they're determined only to eat animal products they hunt and kill themselves? Either way, they'd be going without.

 

Once they returned we watched and stifled giggles as they freaked out over the generator dying, not once thinking to check why it was leaking gasoline. Bereft of their espresso, their ability to check Twitter via a portable satellite, and taking four hours to set up their tents, they settled in for the night. That's when all of us made our move, lifting their wallets and using their credit cards to order delivery of the things we need to survive the winter online. I still don't know why the squirrels wanted a gallon of cheese spread, though. Processed cheese doesn't sound like the sort of thing that goes well with nuts. But I ordered ten pounds of solid milk chocolate so I can't talk.

 

Once we'd done what we needed to do, we put everything back and retired for the night. Good thing, too, because the next day didn't see those hunters wake up until well after dawn when it's a bad time to start hunting. Worse for them, they didn't seem understand what "stealth" in the wilderness means. Birds and the squirrels alike were chirping all day, alerting everyone where they were when they weren't stepping on twigs or brushing against low-hanging branches. They didn't even see any of us even when they walked right by me as I was relieving all that built-up lemmingade.

 

Once they returned after a fruitless day of hunting, they tried to build a campfire by throwing together wood in a haphazard pile. If it wasn't clear by now these idiots had never been Boy Scouts, their decision to throw gas to try and get the fire to stay lit just clinched it. Their fire died after three minutes and they began bickering about whose fault it was. Cold, miserable and tired, they finally retired for the night while we got to work on making sure they didn't forget their outing by stealing the distributor caps from their vehicles' engines. None of them even realized it when they opened the hoods the next day after they couldn't get even one to start. We knew we were dealing with university graduates who had no real life skills at this point and sneaked the caps back into the cabs of their vehicles in time for tow truck drivers to arrive and spot them. A little salt on the wound.

 

Cruel, I admit. But who was it that said, "Nature is cruel?" Actually, compared to humans, Mama Nature is merciful. At least she kills off the stupid and incompetent before they can breed. No wonder we animals always seem to have the intellectual edge.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Lemmings spend the majority of their time underground. So naturally we don't get that much sunlight. The fur coat doesn't help, either. Plus this little lemming works in a lab with few windows near his workstation. But imagine my surprise when a blood test showed I was critically Vitamin D deficient to the tune of needing 20,000 IUs daily (that's 2500% of the DRV) to offset the symptoms of hypothyroidism and an inability to focus, among other things. That's also why I haven't been posting: I've been too tired and unable to concentrate. I'll save what else for my next posting; I've got making up to do to Michelle who hasn't had a decent "session" in the dungeon all winter.

[Psalam]

3 minutes ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

I was critically Vitamin D deficient

Any little excuse ... (I hope that you can tell that I'm just kidding ?)

[worik]

14 minutes ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

I was critically Vitamin D deficient

? Not good... now to the bad news: a daily walk in the sunshine can help And even worse: you should keep that habit even after full vitamin D recovery

[Ernest Lemmingway]

 

On 4/12/2021 at 12:20 PM, worik said:

? Not good... now to the bad news: a daily walk in the sunshine can help And even worse: you should keep that habit even after full vitamin D recovery

 

What sunshine? Where I live, April is mostly cloudy and rainy. As is nearly ever other day of May. Then just so Mama Nature can kick us even more, the next four months are oven dry and all that growth during the rainy season turns into kindling.

[worik]

34 minutes ago, Ernest Lemmingway said:

mostly cloudy and rainy

Not sure if that is providing sufficient input for your skin's vitamin D production

Spoiler

some time back I had something comparable, and they told me even cloudy sky is doing good

 

[Ernest Lemmingway]

On 4/16/2021 at 12:27 PM, worik said:

Not sure if that is providing sufficient input for your skin's vitamin D production

  Hide contents

some time back I had something comparable, and they told me even cloudy sky is doing good

 

That's fine for when my levels are back up. For now, however, I'm stuck taking ten (tiny) gel capsules each morning for the next month or two. It's actually less than I have to take each morning and night in other pills. As the wise Red Green once put it, "You're not getting old. You're just getting better medication."

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Lemming Abuse?

 

This is more of a question than anything else. Say it's been a chaotic four months and the government keeps flipflopping on what you're (not) supposed to say and do practically every week. Then you're forced to work twelve to fourteen hour days and even weekends for almost three weeks because an idiotic middle manager forces your work place and nine others to honor rush orders for corona tests, despite being told by every manager and supervisor below him that the overtime and cost overruns from ordering materials will cost more than the fees for said rush orders. Then said middle manager cuts everyone's hours when he gets his pay docked 25% to make up the losses he incurred as a result (we're waged, not salaried) to try and make up the shortfall on his year-end bonus based on the budget left over. And he ignores more warnings that the work will pile up because of said cut hours and cost more than ever due to late fees, penalties, and more overtime and even weekend pay when we're inevitably forced to play "catch up."

 

He's going to get an even bigger dock in pay and likely demoted, if he's not outright fired without severance, for such gross mismanagement. That much is assured because everyone has the documentation to prove it. Is this a case of animal (and especially lemming) abuse because of his actions? Especially since so few humans are doing the work? At my lab we've got a lemming, two mice, a dwarf breed cat, one rat, three shrews, a bulldog, and a sheeple.

[Ernest Lemmingway]

Nature Strikes Back Again for a Rotten Year

 

I won't lie. 2021 started off bad and just got progressively worse. Even when it seemed to get better, it was more a case of "one step forward, two steps back." And that was just for all of us in the glen. I can't even imagine how bad it was for humans living in cities and suburbs.

 

Watching the humans panic and try to claim a bunch of angry humans were somehow a grand conspiracy wasn't a great start. Especially since it drove several sheeple up here in a vain attempt to escape something that happened on the other side of the country. In this case we critters didn't have to do a thing to drive them off; the rangers nailed them for a campfire in a fire danger zone. Somewhat counterintuitively, cold and dry is better at dehydrating things than hot and dry. But anyone who lives in the mountains knows that. Especially if they're always tying yellow ribbons around a tree to the point it dies of overwatering. Yeah, lemmings can get swollen prostates and the accompanying issues like frequent trips to the bathroom, too. On the plus side, the resulting fire those sheeple caused did help several coniferous trees spawn and the burnt brush fertilized the soil enough that we've got plenty of saplings growing in to replace what was destroyed. Sadly it'll be a few decades before my oak tree regrows so I'm being forced to use a spruce. Don't try and substitute pine cones for leaves, by the way.

 

Spring and summer were nice...only I learned the hard way I've lost the capacity to enjoy "spring fever." Age, diet, and lifestyle are definitely catching up to me. Well, add "stress" to that list as well. Which is how spring and summer were ruined for me. After that fire in January the glen was declared safe for campfires again and we got plenty of campers coming up to make up for last year. We got a family of beavers in a river about five miles away who started using beer bottles and pop cans in their dam. I guess humans have never heard the saying, "Don't crap where you eat." Or rather, "don't crap where others eat." The only upside to that was we got a few hundred bucks when we returned all the empties, enough to pay for our fall trip to the warehouse store since there were no hunters this year. I wasn't putting in ten hour days as a lab animal just to come home and have to clean up after over-evolved apes who don't realize or care what they're doing. Thankfully Ted E. Bear gave us plenty of suggestions about what to do with the garbage we couldn't take back and recycle. Ever seen what paper plates and Styrofoam cups do to a vehicle's exhaust system? Or foil bags turned inside out and made into a giant mirror used to reflect the dawn's light right back on a tent? Especially if the humans inside were up late drinking and weren't in any condition to be around bright light?

 

In September, our resident Crazy Mountain Chicken flew the coop and left us without his guidance. We suspected fowl play but it turns out he just went south--way south--to escape the oncoming madness that the humans' elected leaders tried to impose on everyone before anyone else knew. Kind of hard for a flightless bird to travel to Argentina when there's a pilots strike going on but he made it. Then our resident quack got a visit from the Federal Trade Commission for collusion with a certain pharmaceutical company that's been praised mindlessly. That turned out to be nothing because they got the wrong ducktor; they were on the wrong side of the country, really. Our fall trip to the warehouse store was less than fruitful because it's damned hard for a moose to wear a mask and there was almost nothing in stock we needed to boot. Try talking to overworked, underappreciated retail workers with signs to find out what's going on. Something about a truckers' strike, I gathered. The squirrels didn't get their nuts, Moose didn't get his bulk barrel of bean dip, and this little lemming didn't get anything at all.

 

Winter rolls around and we're all hungry, angry, and definitely not in a joyous mood. Moose's antlers had fallen out again because of his lack of bean dip, the squirrels had frozen on the branches because their nut stashes ran out within a week, and I was having to bundle up in actual clothing because I didn't have any winter fat. Never let it be said that reactionary anger is a purely human trait. I think it's endemic to all sapient species. So when the college kids came up three days ago for a New Year's camping trip, with tents rated for summer and stereos rated for auditoriums, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and bragging about "how much better they are than boomers," we all kind of snapped. What happened next is kind of hazy but in the aftermath the college kids had fled, their tents were rags, and their stereos had been sold on eBay. Meanwhile their cheap domestic beer and bottom-shelf vodka is being distilled into something we can use as fuel for a road trip to the other side of the country. Or to go pillaging what we need to survive. Hunger can drive anything more than a little insane.

 

So if you hear on the news about "violent right-wing animals raiding 'innocent' chain stores like Wal-Mart and Costco" on the news, you'll know what that's about.