Large Fierce Mammal

On the Long Winter’s Night of 29 December 2017 I proclaimed this morale booster.

The Fire Without and the Fire Within

By LFM

It’s only just started, but coming to pass
Is a Winter as cold as a well digger’s ass.
Yet it’s still not extreme if the truth’s to be told,
For it used to be worse, just go ask someone old.

Its fury brings failures of power and phone,
Where the Internet’s out and you’re sitting alone,
And there’s nowhere to hide, it will find where you are —
No Pornhub for you while you’re phoning the Czar!

Now pull up your zipper and get off your ass!
Be true to your breeding, each bucko and lass!
From heritage wrought by those too tough to die,
Now stiffen your back and put fire in your eye!

For life’s made of stories, not fretting and yelling,
So let’s light some candles and get to the telling!
Break out the rum, toast the brass monkey balls
We festooned our tree with while decking the halls!

Enough of laments and your impotent rage.
Remember your kin of the glacial age!
With stone tools and fire, both without AND within,
They hunted the Mammoth while wearing its skin.

Even as I find myself smug in the presence of my Exquisite Wife, three delightful Sons, and loyal Canine retainers, I am abundantly aware that not all in life is guaranteed. Whatever your situation, keep your chin up Goode Reader as we call upon Abba to sing us out. (more…)

“You’re dying but you don’t have to cooperate so enthusiastically with the process.” ~ Leonard Cohen

Back on Day 4, Season 10 of our annual Dark Sentiments series, I wrote,“If ever human flesh were formed to personify the Truth that only in darkness can one see the light, it’s Leonard Cohen.” I will forever stand by that, and persist in that line of thought on this Long Winter’s Night.

Shortly before Cohen died on 7 November 2016, he spoke to David Remnick of The New Yorker about the kinds of things you might expect from such an exceptional Man under the circumstances. (more…)

This Long Winter’s Night is dark indeed, coming as it does hard on the heels of yesterday’s preamble. Be warned that it will deal with extremely adult entertainments, the plurality of that word serving to set apart what follows from the distinctly singular “adult entertainment”, which term has come to define all things that are simply pornographic.

On an October evening of dark reflection some years ago, I wrote in part:

“This is no rape I speak of here,
For each and every night
The lure of dark seduction gleams
Beneath the bedroom light.

“‘Tis not to say all women crave
Such ravishment as this.
And if you think that’s what I’ve said
There’s something that you miss.

“A Lover worthy of the name
Is one who’s come to find
The truest path to heart’s desire
Lies through a woman’s mind.”

~ Force Continuum (excerpt) ~

The primal hunger of the Doe compels her to submit to the will of the Buck, even as both of them in turn rut to the greater command of Nature that goads them. In this she will eschew the ravening interests of the Wolf for she seeks to be devoured in a different way — perhaps as many different ways as possible. This is not to say, however, that her position in the realm of Conjugal Rights is one of abject servitude, and to more eloquently present this vital point we have called in an expert.

(more…)

A Long Winter’s Night is the perfect time for telling stories around the fire, and often those take a reflective bent on where things are, how they got here, and where they’re going in that handbasket. We’re doing that tonight to the chagrin of those younger members of the assemblage who suffer the stories of their elders as quaint reflections of a time when people were struggling to learn what everyone who is now older than ten has the agreement of their peers they already know.

At this point in time, society has ghettoized into echo chambers inhabited by people of mutually, albeit not widely, acceptable ilk, and this is because the overwhelming majority of these exist on social media websites where apartness may legitimize itself unopposed, and even the most heinous weirdness feels emboldened to self-normalize, even if only from the shadows. This seems to be rediscovered by the greater consciousness — and by that I don’t mean greater as in good, just wider in scope — when what was once hidden, or at least willfully ignored, inevitably effervesces to spill over into the mainstream media, or worse yet, onto you personally.

Something you must have noticed by now is that the long standing mantra deciding the triage of front page worthiness — “If it bleeds, it leads, — has an evil twin, and one you’ve probably heard of.

Sex. (more…)

Source: https://www.clipart.email/download/2362562.html

Point of Vantage

By LFM

The higher that you climb a Tree,
The thinner are the branches,
And he who keeps ascending finds
The slimmer grow his chances.

Climbing Trees will teach a lad
The need for solid roots,
The virtues of a Trusty branch
For questing hands and boots.

A Tree will offer refuge to
Who higher would abide,
And depending on how tall it is,
Grant vantage far and wide.

And learning this he’ll come to know
He needn’t heed the call
To charge the heights, then spend himself
Just trying not to fall.

The summit’s not the point my Son,
How high you need to be
Is often not the very top,
Just high enough to See.

Source: http://newyorkwritersintensive.com/the-shepherd/

The story you are about to hear was written by Frederick Forsyth as a Christmas gift for his Wife Carrie who wanted a ghost story. A former RAF pilot himself, the dutiful Husband veered wide of the usual terrestrial hauntings and delivered what you will hear tonight.

The Shepherd is set on the Christmas Eve of 1957, at which time I would have been eight months plus a day upon the Earth, snug as a bug in a rug far away from the fictional runway in Germany from which our 20 year old hero is about to launch his de Havilland Vampire into the night on a routine flight to spend the holidays with family in England. Along the way, Murphy’s Law, unfortunate weather, serendipity, and the timely assistance of a de Havilland Mosquito converge.

Alan “Fireside Al” Maitland recorded a reading of The Shepherd that has been broadcast in Canada nearly every year since 1979 in the last episode of the CBC Radio One show As It Happens that comes to air on or before Christmas Eve. (more…)

“Waiting For Santa” by Kristin Elmquist. Source: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/waiting-for-santa-kristin-elmquist.html

Merry Christmas Aulde Sotts one and all, Gods help us, every one!

I pray you will all find some peace today, and in that spirit present you with this selection of seasonal offerings to punctuate your day. (more…)

I have written here a number of times of Krampus, the dark side of the good cop, bad cop equation that is the reality of the visit from St. Nicholas, predominantly blamed on Austrian Christmas tradition. Most particularly, on this day in 2015, I presented A Krampus Carol, in which I said in part —

“A Krampus Carol is an animated short film originally intended for airing on the Travel Channel in an episode of Anthony Bourdain‘s series, No Reservations. But as reported in a Gawker piece titled Travel Channel Pulls Touching Christmas Special About Child-Licking Demon,

“‘… when executives got a look at Bourdain’s take on the Austrian legend of Krampus, they quickly pulled the plug. Apparently, they felt the world was not quite ready for a stop-motion retelling of Santa’s ‘whip-toting sidekick’ who ‘whips and licks naughty children’ with his 12-inch tongue then ‘carries them off in his sack’ — a source tells us they cited sensitivities regarding the Penn State scandal when delivering Bourdain the disappointing news. (The leering portrait of the Pope in the background probably didn’t help matters, either.)”

I will now reprise that wonderful bit of artistry as the opener for tonight’s double bill. (more…)

Crossing the County Line on Highway 103. (Source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/94/ce/bc/94cebc751ea5eee1bccb11a8839a4173.jpg)

When I was growing up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, long before the cultivation of Christmas Trees as agricultural operations had become a major industry, my Father had innumerable friends and customers who owned woodland we were granted freedom to harvest our annual Balsam Fir from. It was a big deal because my Father had high standards, and it was a point of pride for him to find a tree that was perfectly proportioned and “bushy” enough, to use his terminology, to permit hiding the inevitable bald patch in the corner.

Now, Lunenburg County touts itself as the “Balsam Fir Christmas Tree Capital of the World”, having added the species specific reference a while back to soften the edge in the face of umbrage from a competing Pennsylvania claim.

Add to this that the House of LFM and associated holdings stands adjacent to a Christmas Tree plantation, and it will come as no surprise that the tale of Nooks Lindell’s Weihnachtsbaum caught my attention. (more…)

Your carriage awaits! — Lajos Markos (1917-1993)

Welcome back to the hearth Goode Reader, and this incarnation of A Long Winter’s Night.

The Winter Solstice stole upon us at 12:19 Atlantic Time this morning and today offers 14 minutes short of 7 hours less daylight than at the occasion of the Summer Solstice in June. The bittersweet news is that it all gets brighter, and colder, from here for quite a spell.

As you know, today marks the first day of Winter as defined by the calendar, but from a practical perspective our ancestors saw the season’s beginning as soon as Nature decreed the temperature too cool, the hours of daylight too scant, and the Sun’s angle too oblique for agriculture.

I summed this up on another Long Winter’s Night, on the Christmas Day of 2012:

A Song of Winter

By LFM

The equinox of Autumn
Sees the harvest gathered in.
All store rooms packed, all larders full,
Each cellar, loft, and bin.

A bounty bought with sweat and toil,
With dash of blood and tear.
Long days afield preparing for
The shortest of the year.

Each morn the sun must struggle
Just to bring the light of day,
And daily weakens in the fight
To keep the night at bay.

Such knowing weighs the brows of Men,
As ice doth bend the bough,
With naught but snow to meet the scythe,
And frozen earth the plough.

Yet glorious day, the Solstice comes
With casting off of dooms!
Now’s the time to feast and drink!
To plant strong bairns in wombs!

For now is seen the Sun’s rebirth
And how the Night doth flee,
Giving back the land to let
Another harvest be.

This year we’ve got trips to the tree line to shoot down a Christmas Tree, the usual selection of seasonal documentaries and animated short films, booze, sex of course, and assorted skulduggery every night from here to New Year’s Eve. So let us commence this first day of our annual Long Winter’s Night series with this ditty.

Time Wounds All Heels

By LFM

“Time wounds all heels,” I have long heard it said,
And I’m certain by more than just me,
So this long Winter’s night finds a few empty seats
Before the Grande Evergreen Tree.

While some wounds are mortal, and others just hurt,
They all have their standards of care,
And the scar that each leaves on the soul and the flesh
Comes with memories, foul and fair.

Let who sits with us here in a skin that’s pristine,
Soul unstained as at birthing’s travail,
Be advised to keep tongue safely locked behind teeth,
While they speak who’ve the courage to fail.

Some scars come from teachable moments, you see,
While still others are gifted by time,
And yet more are mere badges of hopelessness from
Doing stupid things time after time.

But hoary or mint, raise your glass with me now,
May the Gods grant this single desire,
That our scars for next year be but burns from the rug
Earned by rutting in front of the fire!