February Retrospective and March Plans

It's Hive Power Up Day and time for me to add another entry to my monthly posting routine! February has been a rough month of cold weather, head colds, and back pain. I have a lot more partial drafts than completed posts because I haven't always felt up to the task of final editing. Such is life.

Image credit

What did I accomplish in the blogosphere since the last of these posts? Let's take a look.

• Book-Banning Control Freaks are causing trouble in the library network from the right on top of the tales I told about left-wing web censorship last month.

• My library Dungeons & Dragons players encountered The Consequences of Madness.

• I countered the sniffles with Pain Snacks!

• I started a rambling series of musings on Knowledge, Certainty, and Current Events with the Chinese spy balloon story followed so far with Part 2 on Russo-Ukraine War and Part 3 on reviewing how the COVID-19 narrative has shifted.

• It turns out I found a Near-Beer I like! That post also mentioned my first-ever participation in LEO Power Up Day. I'm not sure I'll have enough stacked for this month, but time will tell.

• Remember the Macarena? If you do, I'm sorry for the trauma mentioning it may bring. The Viral Hit of 1996 was a bizarre occurrence with a strange story told in full by Todd in the Shadows.

• Some of the kids at the library seem to think "Um..." is a proper greeting.

• I most recently mused at length about Preparedness and Gear: Worthwhile and Worthless while going over my spring evaluation.

All told, not a lot of content, but there's no AI spam in there! For better or worse, it's all straight from my twisted mind to your screen. March will probably see some completed drafts, some new content, and actual progress on my long-promised post archive!

As for what I did instead of blogging, @sapadetzero got me hooked on Fallout 76, so blame him for the absence of authorship! I'm not saying it's his fault, mind you. I'm just using him as the scapegoat. The most recent season just wrapped up with a post-apocalyptic celebration of Fasnacht, and he and I frequently rampaged through the wasteland sporting owl masks and shouting, "HOOT-HOOT!"

Something about this sparked memories of the many decades of bickering between loggers and environmentalists regarding the northern spotted owls here in the Inland Northwest, particularly south toward Oregon. Since one of the key premises of the game is how radiation has changed flora and fauna, and the flaming twin bar chainsaw absolutely breaks the game for melee combat, to say nothing of common sense and mechanical feasibility, this seemed like the proper caption.

I used the Rubik Distressed Font with a couple offset text layers and contrasting colors because I am a lazy graphics n00b. I did get a bit more creative with the next image, though. Contrast and color sliders were tweaked to make the picture pop a bit more than the screenshot alone. A more rude version of the "Hoot-Hoot" greeting seems to suit this posture and camera angle. Click the spoiler text to reveal profanity.

Rude owl is rude

This mask was definitely the best loot of the holiday, although I am presently running around in pastor's vestments and the skull mask because reasons. In any case, don't forget to rotate your owl, because everyone is fond of owls, except for mice and shrews and Simon Cowels. You can't fool owls!

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