The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 03: Come On In

[TarnishedPenny]

No petrol bombs or gunpowder, but my father had made an impractically-powerful (estimated 400 lb draw) crossbow when I was a child. Firing it out over the lake at night either with flaming petrol-soaked rags or 4” firecrackers was always - always - a crowd-pleaser.

 

[Hypoxia]

Pet hamsters are boring. No, not like Musk's firm.

Shall I admit to all that I destroyed in my childhood? No, wouldn't be prudent.

I grew up near drag strips and nuclear targets. Fireworks were superfluous.

Too lazy for coffee now. Genmai-cha tea will suffice.

Then I get to drive through deep snow. Maybe I'll be back, maybe not.

 

[Handley_Page]

Fill coffee mug here for you, HP. Just make sure the Gerbil has climbed out first, okay?

Like, what are tampons for?

Tampons are really for plugging into bullet holes

Serious question Chloe; would a tampon in a 'bullet hole' work by way of initial first aid (to stop the bleeding) ? Obviously not too deep, I guess.

I do hope that the Gerbil that my Dragon caught and cooked wasn't someone's special pet ?
Time for a nice cup of Tea (it's late round here).

 

[TxRad]

One cuppa tea coming up, HP.

I must say, I've never considered a tampon when working on bullet holes but... We didn't have many tampon users in Vietnam.

I have used them for scent pads when deer or hog hunting.

Evening coffee is ready for the Friday night crowd.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Serious question Chloe; would a tampon in a 'bullet hole' work by way of initial first aid (to stop the bleeding) ? Obviously not too deep, I guess.

I do hope that the Gerbil that my Dragon caught and cooked wasn't someone's special pet ?
Time for a nice cup of Tea (it's late round here).

Good for a flesh wound where the bullets gone in and out. Plug the hole, tape it and it’ll keep the blood loss down. So I’ve been told, never tried it myself. But it’s more or Less what tampons are designed to do.

 

[Voboy]

Serious question Chloe; would a tampon in a 'bullet hole' work by way of initial first aid (to stop the bleeding) ? Obviously not too deep, I guess.

We always heard these kinds of stories in the army, that it was some sort of field-expedient technique for the green berets.

I’ve always assumed it would work okay on small-caliber subsonic wounds, or on through-and-through pistol wounds. Rifle rounds would like likely cause more damage than a tampon could cope with.

But you’d need a pretty damn small tampon.

 

[ChloeTzang]

We always heard these kinds of stories in the army, that it was some sort of field-expedient technique for the green berets.

I’ve always assumed it would work okay on small-caliber subsonic wounds, or on through-and-through pistol wounds. Rifle rounds would like likely cause more damage than a tampon could cope with.

But you’d need a pretty damn small tampon.

Yes, and with all the modern trauma stuff available that’s designed for this it seems a bit of a story to me. Maybe years ago.... still, it’s a good story. Well, there I was, high in the Pamirs and all I had was a pack of tampons and some tape.... and not forgetting both my grandads excel at these “well there I was...” stories. Especially after a few beers. And they can do it with poker faces.....

 

[Hypoxia]

"It's not the bullet that kills, you, it's the hole." --Laurie Anderson

I suppose the same holds for stilettos, icepicks, and hot lasers.

The wise sicário has a tampon on the ice pick to soak up evidence.

But I digress. The car is still stuck in deep snow. And the hard cider is almost gone. Tragedy! But not as tragic as the grey squirrel frozen in a block of ice, a look of terror on the ratty face, even worse than receiving a federal subpeona.

Okay, think positive. Power was only out five hours last night. We're still stocked with coffee, rum, chili, chowder, and candles. No pumas are prowling here. Whew. Thus, all is well.

A flashback: We climbed the steep Temple of the Sun. The surrounding jungle erupted with conservative howler monkey screams but we didn't take it personal.

Did I say coffee? Doesn't this place serve té maté? With a metal straw?

 

[Voboy]

Yes, and with all the modern trauma stuff available that’s designed for this it seems a bit of a story to me. Maybe years ago.... still, it’s a good story. Well, there I was, high in the Pamirs and all I had was a pack of tampons and some tape.... and not forgetting both my grandads excel at these “well there I was...” stories. Especially after a few beers. And they can do it with poker faces.....

Every army story starts the same way: “So. No shit, there I was: knee-deep in grenade pins.”

 

[vanmyers86]

Sex & the City did a great sight gag using a tampon to stop a nosebleed.

I cede to Chloe's superior knowledge on whether you could use one in a bullet hole. I would think most entrance wounds would be too small, but exit wounds tend to be larger. Now a maxi pad applied externally might work...

 

[TxRad]

It is Saturday morning, 74 degrees and raining. Uh, what? There is a cold front headed this way so 74 seems to be the high for the day. Welcome to Spring time in Texas.

A foot of snow a few miles norther of Phoenix. Several inches in Flagstaff or was that Santa Fe.

Hot coffee for one and all. I'm thinking waffles for breakfast.

I woke up at five and already have a thousand new words on a story. Later, I'll go back and see what they were and if they make any sense.

 

[ChloeTzang]

.... I woke up at five and already have a thousand new words on a story. Later, I'll go back and see what they were and if they make any sense.

You too huh? I've got my coffee next to me, it's minus 11C outside, got the fire on so I'm warm and cozy while himself sleeps in until late this morning. Minus 17C and snow tomorrow, no work until Tuesday and I have my writing all planned.

Almost done with "One Night in Xanadu", and about to launch myself into the next chapters of "Chinese Takeout" and "Happy Birthday to Me" which should make a few readers happy seeing as its been two years since the last installments. Apparently there are entire biker clubs waiting on the next installments of "Chinese Takeout." So I have been told by a member of one. So I figured I better keep my readers happy before a couple of hundred Harley's pull up outside my door and go "where the f***'s our story".

And the April Fools Day story. Can't forget that one. It's half done ("Slave to Love"). And then there's "Jeong Park's First Frosh Ball Ch 05 - Another Saturday Night Part II" - coz I promised a few readers that one, and then "Midnight at the Villa Diodati" - for the Sunday March 17th Gothic Horror story event, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” and then "Glass Ceiling" - for the mid-April "On the Job" Story Event and then "Timeo Artifices et Membra Virilia Denudens (Beware of Geeks Baring Dicks)" for the May 25 Geek Pride Day Story Event. And two novels for the publisher and rewriting and expanding "Never Ending Love."

Hmmmm. I think I better stop yapping and get back to writing.

Electric Blue - help! My keyboard is melting down.... what to do?

 

[TxRad]

My keyboards don't melt, I just bash the lettering off. My three fingers might be a blur but compared to your ten, I'm out of my league.

Those thousand words were not bad. I can use at least 990 of them as they are. I even added a few while I was at it.

Still no waffles. They won't make themselves. Now there is something for the inventors to work on.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

...

You too, Zeb. And not to worry, I have your new coffee mugs lined up on Tex's counter ready to go for the weekend.....

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61Oyqic1BlL._SX425_.jpg

My grandfathers (both of them) teamed up to teach my older brothers and I how to make petrol bombs when I was rather young. We set fire to a few things in the backyard (it was a very big backyard) and there was a lot of broken glass. My mother and my grandmothers were a little upset with my grandfathers when they got home from some day long shopping trip. We'd all had a really good time though. My grandfathers were big believers in teaching us useful and practical skills. Things every girl should know.

Like, what are tampons for?

Wait for it.... I know what you're thinking and no, wrong! ....

Tampons are really for plugging into bullet holes

I have to write that into a story someday soon.

Thanks for the mug, Chloe, that is so sweet of you. You know I never had gerbils as pets. I've only had dogs and/or cats.

As for flames and fire, never had an urge to play with it. I really did have a boring childhood. Oh well.

Cuppa in my new mug please.

Good morning to y'all.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Thanks for the mug, Chloe, that is so sweet of you. You know I never had gerbils as pets. I've only had dogs and/or cats.

As for flames and fire, never had an urge to play with it. I really did have a boring childhood. Oh well.

Cuppa in my new mug please.

Good morning to y'all.

Coffee coming right up, Zeb.

https://pics.me.me/thumb_coffee-when-you-want-to-make-a-pour-over-for-998741.png

I'm part-chinese. Gerbils? Pets? What are you talking about? What I want to know is what do they taste like?

Actually, no joking. This is a true story. Back in 2016 when we went down to Australia and New Zealand, my beloved was reading this book called "Getting along with Chinese" or something like that because I am very chinese sometimes, in some ways, about some things. Got it from my Mom I guess. So we were in New Zealand and there was this stuffed kiwi in a souvenir shop window (Kiwi, New Zealand, it's a very protected species. God help you of they catch you doing anything to those poor little flightless birds). Anyhow, they're about the size of a big chicken and I looked at it and I asked, totally without thinking, "What do they taste like?" and the shop assistant looks at me, and you could see it on her face. "Asian tourist! Goddamn!" Or whatever the down under equivalent is.

And my beloved cracks up laughing and pulls his book out and shows me the page he'd just been reading. "The first reaction of Chinese to anything new is to ask what it tastes like." So I'm just about falling on the floor laughing because it's so true, and my beloved shows the shop assistant and she starts laughing and before you know it we're best friends.....

Anyhow, gerbils? I imagine you'd cook them a little like guinea pigs.

Guinea Pig with Spices – PICANTE DE CUY

4 guinea pigs
2 kilos of yellow potatoes or the potatoes preferred
100 grams of roasted and ground peanuts
2 green peppers (yellow peppers)
8 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (dressing)
4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (sauce)
cumin, seasoning to taste
salt and pepper
30 grams of aji panca (special ground pepper)
4 Hardboiled eggs

DIRECTIONS: Prepare the seasoning by combining garlic, pepper, salt and cumin to taste and cover the guinea pig. Leave it to marinate for two hours or more. Then place the guinea pig in the fire (can be grilled or baked).

On the other hand, boil the yellow potatoes in water with a little salt and then peel it and cut into slices.

Place the potatoes peeled and sliced on the plate and then the cooked meat of the Guinea pig to the Center. Place sauce on top of everything.

On the other hand, if that Gerbil's been caving, forget it, dude! It's already had a shitty day!

 

[JanusGoneAwry]

Hmmmm. I think I better stop yapping and get back to writing.

Electric Blue - help! My keyboard is melting down.... what to do?

Woah!!! I thought that I was busy. My One Night in The Big Easy is in the can and just needs another round or two of edits but I'm psyched about throwing it up for the event. I'm in the home stretch with my April Fools Day submission and boy did that one pivot like a MF in the middle. Not sure what kind of reception it's going to get (cringe) but it is what it is. My piece for the On The Job event turned out to be a Lesbian affair but Yukon has offered to take a read and if it's not up to snuff I might add a dude and post it in Group instead. HP kinda indicated that the readership there is pretty flexible. I finished a new story in my Dom & Emily series tentatively titled Take Me Places that I'm quite happy with. All of those works are short by the standards of the crowd that frequent's this place but I'm still in the process of expanding my horizons and upping my game so be patient with me as I work to become a more seasoned author. That just leaves my Geek Pride Day story which I haven't started yet. I'm plowing through WestWorld stuff to research everything I can about the mysterious Arnold so we'll have to see if that one takes shape in time for that event.

That plus about 100 hours of CBT that I've been tasked to complete before March 11th and I'm still just a drop or two in the bathtub of Chloe's work in progress. You are pretty fucking awe-inspiring Chloe. Not only is your output volume impressive but the quality is stunning. You set a serious high water mark my dear.

My keyboards don't melt, I just bash the lettering off. My three fingers might be a blur but compared to your ten, I'm out of my league.

I swear Tex I have the same issue with the lettering on my keyboards. I just bought what I consider to be the best keyboard I've ever owned. It's from Logitech and not only is the quality top notch (sturdy and high-quality materials) but the responsiveness of the keys and the ergonomics are as good as it gets. The icing on the cake is that it has a notch running the entire width of the keyboard at the far edge where you can nestle a tablet and/or a phone and it connects via blue tooth to three devices that can be instantly switched between using three dedicated keys. Now I can have google up on my tablet and my manuscript up in Scrivener on my desktop and a chat or text or email up on my phone and switch between them at the touch of a button. Very cool.

Well, I guess I better bang on some keys and get that April Fools Day story done and see if a title jumps out at me.

Hey Tex, I'll take a cup of Joe if there's some left in the pot and talk to y'all a bit later...

 

[JanusGoneAwry]

Anyhow, gerbils? I imagine you'd cook them a little like guinea pigs.

I had a Peruvian girlfriend and she actually got banned from about a dozen pet shops here in Northern Virginia because she was going around and buying all their stock of guinea pigs and reselling them to Peruvian's in the region for consumption.

I've actually eaten the dish that Chloe posted and frankly, it was quite good. What I found a little bizarre though was the quest for a little bone in the guinea pig's skull that was analogous to the wishbone in a turkey.

Oh, and the sex was out of this world... with the girl, not the guinea pig you perverts

 

[TxRad]

JGA, forget about writing long or short. Take as many or as few words as the story requires. I started out writing long because the first thing I ever wrote was a twenty chapter novel. About 287 pages in paperback form. It is post here at Lit in its unedited form.

My one Night story is finished at 1871 words. For me that is ridiculously short.

Fresh coffee is now available but I ate all the waffles.

 

[JanusGoneAwry]

JGA, forget about writing long or short. Take as many or as few words as the story requires. I started out writing long because the first thing I ever wrote was a twenty chapter novel. About 287 pages in paperback form. It is post here at Lit in its unedited form.

My one Night story is finished at 1871 words. For me that is ridiculously short.

Fresh coffee is now available but I ate all the waffles.

Thanks Tex. I've just started diving into your stuff and I gotta say that your characters are compelling and you know how to spin a yarn, my friend.

 

[Hypoxia]

My current story embryos have not yet insisted that they be hatched er I mean told. Are they smothered under the still-deep, immobilizing snow? Would hot coffee arouse them?

The car is stuck. Privations are starting to impose. We're down to the last nasty vodka, some supposedly apple-bred stuff. It's no good in any mocha. Imagine -- something coffee and cocoa can't improve!

A sister near Tucson is dusted with snow -- the javelinas (wild pigs) sport icicles. Another sister's family near Flagstaff is quite pounded in, almost as deep as here in the Sierras. Arizona becomes a blue state via hypothermia. And California migrants. But we returned. ONE NIGHT IN BISBEE won't explain why.

Okay, lousy vodka first, coffee later, as a restorative. We all need restoration eventually.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

JGA, forget about writing long or short. Take as many or as few words as the story requires. I started out writing long because the first thing I ever wrote was a twenty chapter novel. About 287 pages in paperback form. It is post here at Lit in its unedited form.

My one Night story is finished at 1871 words. For me that is ridiculously short.

Fresh coffee is now available but I ate all the waffles.

Who are you and where is the real TR?

 

[Voboy]

I’m not sure I’ve tried to write a story under 2k words. It’d be an interesting exercise. I missed out on the 750-worder earlier, but there’s always next year.

Just got my BDSM piece submitted, and now I’m Geeking. Fun.

 

[NotWise]

I’m not sure I’ve tried to write a story under 2k words. It’d be an interesting exercise. I missed out on the 750-worder earlier, but there’s always next year.

I don't expect all of these events to become annual.

My first two stories on Lit were exercises. For the first, I set a limit of 3500 words for a complete story. Every time before when I tried to write a short story they ended up at least novella length. For the second I wanted to cut that in half -- about 1700 words. I got it there, but I thought the sex was very dry, so I grew it to about 1900 words. I did write and submit a third exercise under 900 words, and then yanked it back before it went live.

I imagine that you give up something any time you place word limits on a story. There's art in how you prioritize, and for me that was most of the interest in the 750-word contest. I didn't post a story, but I read pretty keenly.

 

[srosa]

We have three huge black labs, who are my gun-dogs, and a golden Spanador called Benny who's my wife's pet. Benny's currently in isolation after getting his snout sliced-up by a feral cat, and even though his rabies shots are up to date, and the vet gave him a booster, the law here says 7 days quarantine. My wife had a heart attack 4 weeks ago, but she's more concerned about her fur-baby than the state of her ticker, and even the 3 labs, who usually treat Benny like the 'special' little brother (he's got the looks of both his Cocker Spaniel and golden lab parents, but unfortunately the brains of neither, which is why he took on a psychotic feral tomcat and lost) keep nosing his empty basket and whining at me. We've heard nothing adverse from the vet, so hopefully I can go down to the vet in Fréjus-St. Raphael and get him back tomorrow; his best friend is Sitka, my biggest lab, and he can't sleep without Benny, so he spends the night pacing around looking for Benny and whining.

Hope your wife is recovered!
That's such a sweet and sad story about your dogs!

 

[srosa]

Good day, everyone. Are we serving kiwis with the coffee?
I believe kiwi (the fruit) used to be called Chinese Gooseberry.