Galactic Housekeeping #8

Just some quick notes:.

Firstly, Mrs. Overlord is in the hospital...again.

They just don't make these Japanese sexbots the way they used to, I'm telling ya!

Actually, I want to take this opportunity to pass on some vital information regarding your skin.

Yes, that stuff that keeps your guts on the inside. Consider this a public service announcement of vital importance:

Mrs. Overlord is in the hospital because she managed to contract TWO separate, simultaneous skin infections. Don't ask me how: the woman is a medical marvel who keeps coming up with new ways to torment doctors (and, by extension Me).

Diabetics (of which, Mrs. Overlord is one, in addition to her other malady of Myotonic Dystrophy) are extremely susceptible to skin infections. This means extra-special care must be taken with a diabetic who comes up with a cut, a scratch, a pimple, what have you, for the tiniest of wounds or blemishes can quickly become a wide variety of potentially-deadly illnesses and infections.

If you have a diabetic in your life, or know one, please, please, PLEASE, take the most-basic of precautions when it comes to skin. Not only theirs, but your own as well, since if you, supposedly-healthy-person, should have some nasty germ, bacteria, or virus upon your person, you can easily pass it on to a diabetic.

Particularly one who has itchy, dry skin, who may pick up a nasty bug from, say, shaking hands, and then scratch themselves raw, and infecting themselves with a virulent toxin that very quickly degenerates into a variety of disorders ranging from Cellulitis to Gangrene.

Despite our best efforts, the prodigious output of both the pharmaceutical and skin care industries, the extra precautions of almost-obsessive hand-washing, a rigorous program of cleanliness carried out with near-Nazi-like fervor and anal, Teutonic precision, a simple rash went from minor annoyance to "gee, we might have to cut that leg off" in a matter of days.

Even with a course of doctor-approved, flame-thrower-level anti-biotics.

We're now on Defcon-1-level anti-biotics that are only available in hospitals for the last three days.

Fortunately, Mrs. Overlord is going to fully recover. This is because we don't leave things to chance if we can help it (we're off to the doctor as soon as something doesn't look right) , and because we have easy access to the best hospitals and doctors in the Solar System (thank you, New York Presbyterian Hospital and Hospital for Special Surgery), but some might not have those luxuries. So, take heed!

Look after your diabetic loved-one's skin...and your own.

It is, after all, the largest organ in your body and the most-exposed.  Keep it clean; keep it moisturized; and always tend to cuts, bruises, scrapes, and what-not immediately and appropriately. This means you keep anti-bacterial soaps and ointments in the house to tend to wounds ASAP; it means you wash your hands after every sneeze, before handling food, and especially when tending to the ill; it means you get as much Vitamin D as you can manage any way you can manage, especially if you can't get outside and experience sunlight; it for damned-sure means that if something doesn't look right that you don't just assume "it'll go away in a few days".

We hardly ever think of skin in any other way than to politicize it, and this is not only a shame, it can be a deadly mistake.

On to Blog News:

1) Those of you who follow this word vomit on Facebook would be doing your Future Dictator a great favor if you kept hitting "like" and "share" after you've read this stupidity, and sharing posts you like and enjoy. The Overlord's following appears to be growing, which is all to the greater good (for it means more Minions), but it also means more moolah, since wider circulation translates to more clicks, which translates to more Cybercash.

And the Overlord loves Cybercash.

This blog doesn't have a tip jar , it doesn't resort to blatant advertisements, links to Amazon or other websites that flog stupid crap you don't need, and I don't beg for money like many other bloggers do (consider this more of a polite request, at arm's length). If I'm making money on this thing, it's because I'm turning out quality content that people want to read. Trust me, I'm not going to get Obama-rich with this thing, ever, but a few extra bucks every so often does come in handy.

Besides, this keeps me out of the casino.

You're doing a fine job in this regard, Minions.

2) I have mentioned podcasting several times before and as soon as I get the time to do so, I will. I will also need to come up with a concept and a format. Any ideas on what you would gladly waste your time upon watching a podcast would be greatly appreciated.

My current "format", if you can call it one, is to simply say what I want to say, usually prodded by an observation or event. However, this is often not conducive to a podcast audience who wants to tune in to listen/watch something regarding a specific topic or range of topics.

Let me know what you think I do well -- and especially what I totally suck at -- and I'll see what I can construct from the resulting suggestions.

I'm told that I am engaging, well-spoken and charming, in person, and that I can enthrall a room with my passion for historical discussion. Or with filthy jokes.

Of course, that was my mother and Mrs Overlord who told me that.

3) Hate Mail.

Yes, I get it. A lot of it.

The sources of such things have been described previously.

I don't mind hate mail. In fact, I often enjoy it. The idea that I have triggered someone on such a visceral level usually makes me laugh.

Because I'm a prick that way.

Send all that hateful invective you'd like my way -- I will enjoy it; you will not change my mind with it; and you typically just manage to reinforce all the negative stereotypes I've mentioned in the earlier post linked above.

And if the subject ended there -- at the mere sending of hateful diatribes by anonymous trolls -- life would be good. I'd be tweaking the tender sensibilities of complete assholes and having a good laugh.

It's when the complete assholes begin to think they're clever that my ire is raised. And raising my ire is something you don't wish to do. Seriously.

Particularly when the Overlord, it should be stated, is something of a technical genius. The internet may be shiny and new to most of you, but I was working with various forms of it, or the technologies that underlay it, 20 years before most of you dingbats were born. I was programming sophisticated mainframe operating systems at least a decade before your father (assuming you know who he was) got the itch in his scrotum that resulted in you.

So, if you believe that you can use the Intertoobies to somehow do stupid and illegal things, like harass my clients online, report me to various and sundry "authorities", get me de-platformed, or try to doxx me -- and do so anonymously -- guess again.

All your mean hacker and online-outrage-mob skillzzzz are pathetic. I can trace you, usually within 30 seconds. Within 3 minutes, or so, I can have access to the most-intimate details of your personal life (especially since you're all stupid enough to put them online for the world to see, this hardly requires much skill or effort). Within 5, I can probably have you fired, arrested, kicked out of college, or rendered totally undatable and marked as a social pariah (not that I would: I think that's fucking weak).

I've also worked in the Financial industry for most of my adult life, and am well-acquainted with things like credit reports and ratings, loan application processes, how the IRS and Treasury Department operate, not to mention how your Bank and Credit Card companies manage to do things,  and am quite capable of retaliating in ways that are not only PERFECTLY LEGAL, but also PERFECTLY DEVASTATING in a way that that the words "you're fucked for the rest of your life, Junior" can hardly express adequately.

If you have to result to such underhanded, childish, and often illegal behavior, to show your fundamental displeasure, then you're hardly an adult. If you can't take jokes, if you can't stand the expression of a contrary opinion, if you...just...can't...even...because you don't have an intelligent counter or anything cogent to say to me in your frustrated rage, if you think you can retaliate online and anonymously, then guess again.

Think before you hit enter, Douchebags. Think hard, and many times.

A lesson that Steven B. in Boulder, Colorado, will be learning...oh, by Tuesday morning, at the very latest (consider it good fortune -- the last you may ever have -- that this is a long, holiday weekend, Steven, you fucking soyboy, Snowflake pussy. I hope you like Mommy's basement; you'll be living there a few decades longer than anticipated, you stoner wanna-be).

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all.