Hey! Conspiracy Morons!

Those lines of water vapor you see high in the atmosphere are called contrails. They are not called "chemtrails". They are, however, made up of chemicals, mainly condensed water vapor. Yes, my moronic "chemtrail" fellow citizens, water is a chemical compound. It consists of two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one atom of oxygen. Life on Earth can't exist without it.

Water is an amazing substance. Here on Earth it exists at what we call the triple-point. That is, at the temperature ranges and atmospheric density on our planet, H2O can exist as a gas (water vapor), a solid (ice) and a liquid (water).

For you morons, here is what you see when you look up into the sky and perceive your stupid, fucking "chemtrails": you are seeing the contrails produced by cooler, moisture-laden air (that would be water vapor--please pay attention, you fucking morons) flowing over and through jet engines that produce heat and cause the water vapor to condense into first tiny droplets of liquid water and then ice crystals. Both the condensed droplets and the ice crystals are very tiny and very light and they tend to remain suspended in the atmosphere for extended periods of time at the extreme heights at which they are formed.

Eventually, winds will disperse these elongated contrails, and sometimes a weather front will emerge and engulf them. But they are not trails of poisonous chemicals created by dastardly super-villains sitting in subterranean lairs or in their billionaire penthouses in New York, Berlin, and Moscow.

Contrails have been around since the first meteors and asteroids began to pelt the surface after the atmosphere formed with high levels of water vapor. An incoming meteor will also create a contrail. No evil scientists needed. Humans began to create contrails with the invention of the first high-flying aircraft. There were contrails reported over the battlefields of Europe during the First World War. Fighter craft such as the Fokker DVII could climb to 20,000 feet (6100 meters) and they certainly left contrails under the right conditions. While military engineers were involved in creating the Fokker DVII (and other aircraft) they certainly were not trying to control the minds of human beings through the application of some wily chemical brew.

It's water vapor, you fucking morons.

"But there are so MANY of them, Mr. Smith! Explain that!! Gotcha!"

Alas, you stupid fuckheads, you again show your ignorance and display the fact that where your brains are supposed to be there is, instead, a vile wad of shit.

On most days in the USA there are close to 90,000 flights, a huge portion of them being aircraft with large and powerful jet engines flying at high altitude. Those warm surfaces on (and in) those engines encounter otherwise invisible water vapor (the gas I mentioned earlier) and transform it into airborne streams of liquid water droplets and then into tiny ice crystals which form the human-caused equivalent of skinny cirrus clouds. And keep in mind that even propeller driven aircraft create contrails. You don't have to fly to 30,000+ feet to create a contrail.

So, instead of poisoning your already weak minds with bullshit delivered via websites about comic book conspiracy theories, read some science tracts my dumbass "chemtrail" numbskull citizens. It's bad enough that I have to share the Earth with more than seven billion humans. I'm supposed to deal with fucking morons who don't understand basic chemistry and the simplest of physics?!

Contrails created by B17 Flying Fortresses during World War II. Multiple contrails for the bombers with four engines, and single contrails for their fighter escorts.

Contrails, you dumbass "chemtrail" shit-for-brains! Water! Look it up! Understand its properties. Read some basic science you fucking morons.

Morons I Have Seen

I once saw a clueless tourist walk up to a bull bison in Yellowstone. The bison was lying down in the dust. Massive, one-ton beast. The tourist walked up to the furry critter and leaned back against the bison's spine so that his equally stupid wife could snap a photo.

Unfortunately, the bison took it all in stride and did not squash the two morons into paste. But it could have (and probably should have) been otherwise.

Bull bison. I took this from a great distance. Keep your distance, people.

I once saw an idiot tourist in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park walk up to a bear and begin to toss it slices of bread, one slice at a time. After a few tosses the bear realized the freaking moron had a whole bag of bread and was just doling it out like a greedy asshole. So the bear charged. To, you know, get the whole bag. The moron tourist had his tiny toddler daughter beside him. When the bear charged he ran. Just left his tiny girl there, alone. Fortunately for them all, he dropped the bag of bread and so the bear veered aside at the last possible second and did not trample the toddler. (It had no interest at all in the girl, only the bag of bread.)

Black bear I encountered while hiking in Douthat State Park in Virginia. I took this from a great distance as the fleeing bear turned to make sure I wasn't following him. Keep your distance, people.

A few years back I hiked into the Shining Rock Wilderness Area. It was on a Saturday so that wilderness was packed to the gills with humans, many of them having set up tents. This wilderness does not allow fires (signs posted at all trailheads), and being a wilderness, all plants and trees are protected. As I hiked along the air was filled with firesmoke. Every campsite had a campfire. In addition, I saw people with axes chopping not just dead, dry timber, but actively felling living trees. I even saw some of these scumbags chopping down living rhododendron.

There are few things less likely to burn in your campfire than the wood of a living rhododendron. Don't cut them down.

We don't have anywhere near enough rangers (a classic case of politicians trying to starve our parks and wilderness areas into extinction); but I also cannot imagine being a National Park ranger and having to put up with so many idiots.

FREE! ON KINDLE! YUP!

When I began to write with a serious eye toward publication my first ventures were in the short story form. I figured that the way to learn to write was to start with short stories and move beyond that as I became proficient in that form. Scripts, articles, and novels followed. It was the way to go.


One thing that I always wanted to do was to make money through writing. I wrote anyway, for my own pleasure, but the main thing was to try to learn how to write well enough to earn spending cash from my efforts. So when I began to send my stories out into the market I would begin with the highest-paying markets I could find. If a story failed there I would down-climb the ladder of paying markets until I reached the folk near the bottom who paid 1/2 cent or so per word.


What I did not do was give my stories away for free. If I couldn't sell one, it went into the trunk where all bad little stories go to sleep forever. Or, if they're lucky, to be dusted off and rewritten or cannibalized into something that can be sold.


One of the things I dislike most about the current self-publishing scene and the accompanying micro-publishers is that there is often no promise of payment. I see ads from online magazines asking for submissions of fiction--and yet these markets ask that stories be submitted for no payment. The author receives absolutely nothing in return for publication! Worst of all, there is no shortage (apparently) of idiots willing to give their work away.


Recently I recommended a novella to an online fan. The novella was by a professional writer and the work is quite good. The person to whom I had recommended the tale balked at buying it. Why? Because the writer was charging $2 for it! "Most stuff I get is either free or only a dollar," they wrote back. "I can get novels for less than $3. I'm not going to pay $2 for a novella."


I really do wish this self-publishing ebook market would implode. It's loaded to the gills with idiots, fools, and just by-Jove lousy writing. The purveyors of this monstrosity are, quite frankly, a bunch of jerks. I hope they all get ass-cancer and die horrible, painful deaths.

We're gonna self-publish our own novels on KINDLE! Yup!

Self-Publishing

Some of my recent tweets:

"Step 1: Self-publish your shitty novel. Step 2: Get your family & butt buddies to write five-star reviews. Step 3: Kill yourself. Please."

"Your self-published crap is free???!!! Oh! That makes your crap SO much more attractive! A pile of shit that's free for the taking! Thanks!"

 

"Oh. Your crappy piece of self-published shit is free. That makes me SO much more inclined to download it. Really, though... Stop it."

And it goes on like this. But seriously, people: Stop self-publishing all of those shitty books. You're not professional writers. You're morons. You're too stupid to see how you're embarrassing yourselves, but please stop it--you're making the rest of us nauseous.

Stupid is often Hilarious

I have to laugh. Pure stupidity must not be given sympathy.



God must go to school. (No. Seriously.)

Wilderness Etched by Man

When you're hiking the mountains of the South, quite often you will see some kind of man made structure on, or near the summits of many peaks. In some cases, you will come to an abandoned fire tower. I quite like these, as they didn't really do anything to harm the summit, and they served a good purpose. It's sad to see them slowly falling apart. Here in the eastern USA, the Forest Service seems content to just allow them to rot, and they don't treat them with any respect at all, not even as historical pieces of architecture.

The Mount Sterling Fire Lookout in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Another type of structure often encountered are stairways and fences. The stairways are to allow easier access to summit features and to waterfalls. These are okay in some places and don't bother me. In fact, I've encountered a few such stairways and fences that are quite pleasing to look at. And the fences are there to keep the morons from dancing around the edges of cliffs and waterfalls and plunging to their deaths. Sometimes the fences work, and sometimes they don't.

Stairway beside Stone Mountain Falls in Stone Mountain State Park (NC).

One time I climbed a peak in West Virginia called Potato Knob. It's not a very high mountain, but the climb was quite tough. It was what is known as "Class III" climbing. Not dangerous, really, but pretty much straight up and hand over hand in places. When I reached the top I found a park bench! What the hell? I then realized that there was a much easier trail to the top and I assume that was the one used to haul in the lumber, hardware and tools.

Park bench on the summit of Potato Knob, West Virginia.

And in a few cases the man made stuff is bare bones. On the summit of Mount Craig, the second highest peak in the eastern USA, there are logs placed to keep hikers from venturing onto sensitive sub-alpine plant habitats. These seem to be doing the job and I've rarely encountered hikers straying off the path to trample the fragile plant communities.

Trail logs on Mount Craig, North Carolina.

At any rate, here are some of the things I encountered when I climbed mountains in late 2004:

One of the cooler towers I've visited, on Moore's Knob in Hanging Rock State Park (NC). It was once a fire lookout but was altered into this fine viewing platform. A really neat place.

A fence to keep the morons from falling off the second highest cliff in the eastern USA on Whiteside Mountain near Highlands, NC.

The roof of the summit house on top of Sharp Top Mountain at the Peaks of Otter along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia.

The Icewater Springs Shelter along the Appalachian Trail just below the summit of Mount Kephart in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The parking lot and tower on the summit of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern USA. This tower no longer exists, having been replaced by the as-yet-unopened new tower. This was a cool tower of unusual design. I was sad to see it replaced. (This is a telephoto shot taken from Mount Craig.)