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Dmitri Gheorgheni

@dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social
422 followers 328 following 2.1K posts

Editor of the h2g2 Post at h2g2.com. My fiction has been labeled 'poignant and humorous'. www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Dmi…

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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 15/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Local Customs. A tortoise. A giant cow. The story of a minesweeper. A really cool concert hall. Lots to learn about and enjoy in this issue at hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
A red-and-white water mine repurposed as a collection box.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
We can't keep our attributes straight: Modig meant brave: now it means moody. Go figure. Brave meant anything in the world: savage; crooked, depraved; boastful, then showy, well-dressed; excellent; courageous; warriorlike... ...so back full circle. Make up your minds. #vss365 #brave
A copy of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Found Realities. The past leaves its traces in our present. Our reporters look around. You may be surprised at what they found. Spectacular views. Also, trigger warning: big snake! hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Green Bunker in Hamburg.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The #sound of the trumpet pierced the air. It woke up the ISS. It scrambled Sky News. It preempted droning parliamentarians. It echoed in every home, business, school, and prison. It reverberated at the philharmonic. The conductor looked up, annoyed. 'I said B-flat!' #vss365
Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg. Photo by Tavaron da Quirm (h2g2)
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
#vss365 #delta
Strum, strum, plunkety-plunk. 'Since my baby left me, I'm way down on my luck, I'm talkin' to all the girls, you know that they don't give a -'

'What in tarnation are you doing?'

'Trying to compose a Delta blues song. It's hard, man.'

'Didn't your mama's folks come from there?'

'Yep. Right near the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul...you know. And that's the problem.

'See, my mama's motto was Never talk to the Devil. So I'm a really lousy guitar player. But I can sight-read everything in the hymnbook on the piano.'

'You are an idiot.'

Plunkety-plunk. 'She says that I'm an idiot, and maybe she is right, I've been sittin' on this rickety porch and playin' guitar all night, I got the I-Ain't-Robert-Johnson Miss'ssippi Delta blues...'

Image: Robert Johnson's crossroads, with sign. Carol M Highsmith, Library of Congress
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Sunday Reflections. Tour the Hamburg warehouse district and meditate on quiet waters, Halloween, and why coyotes are bigger in Pennsylvania. hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
Halloween decorations on a shelf including an orange-and-black-striped witch's hat.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Other Countries Heard From. Read about a heroine of the Second World War. Take a virtual tour of a church in Hamburg. Plus: old movie news and a Halloween message. hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
Spitfire poster
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
OneDrive provides me with email amusement. I edit an international ezine and get a lot of weird photos, so its 'on this date' montages are less precious memories than wtf moments.
A seashell display on a bench with a ship's wheel, closeup of an orchestra, a glass-case tableau with a horrified rubber chicken, a Red Admiral butterfly, and three white turkeys in a pen.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Great weather for the car show in town today.
Long view of a Chevy Impala, 1958, with original owner (skeleton). The car people must have bought every skeleton in the Halloween store: they're all driving cars today.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
#vss365 #lure in olden days a lure was another name for a group of young women they have migrated to the internet where they tell me about something called OnlyFans another is wearing nothing but two footballs this needs to stop I think I'll go fishing I'm too old for this
A mermaid sitting on rocks with a mirror and a lot of hair waving in the wind. Some fish are admiring her, or else waiting for handouts. Artist: Alice B Woodward. Courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Odds'n'Ends. A typical lazy Saturday, what with the medieval elephants and fat bears. A bit of history and some memes explained at hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
A bunch of silly-looking knights crowded into a howdah on the back of an elephant drawn by somebody who'd never seen an elephant. From a French medieval manuscript.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
#vss365 #mountain
what are your mountains like?

are they jagged ragged frozen
one's nightmare another's dream
like the man who slung his bag from a piton on K2
and slept - hanging - between heaven and earth

my mountains are impossibly old
dense, green, twisting the landscape
home to unfamiliar species and familiar spirits
keeping secrets
I sleep fine in the world they make

Image: Top: Himalayan peak, Angel Lia Dan (h2g2)
Bottom: Great Smoky Mountains, Carol M Highsmith (Library of Congress)
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Grousing, the International Sport. Bluebottle is the only person we know whose commute is spoiled by Royal Caribbean cruise lines. The Editor celebrates the endonym (and tells you what that is). Plus a classic movie. All at hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
Royal Caribbean liner seen up close and personal from the Isle of Wight ferry.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
#vss365 #bequest
See that vinegar jug? It was given to me by my late father. His grandmother gave it to his mother. She passed it on to him: a peculiar bequest with a history.

The temperance movement posed a serious threat to apple growers. Their first move? Hire an ad agency. 

You know the slogans. 'As American as apple pie.' 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away.'

Apples make good vinegar. Good for pickling. Good for cleaning. Look: we'll even sell it in decorative jars.

A vinegar jar survived the sinking of RMS Titanic. A lot of history for 'an odorous aqueous solution of diluted acetic acid' (so Wikipedia).

Keep in mind: what we bequeath the future is our past. Be like the vinegar jar: preserve the good stuff.

Image: A glass vinegar jar shaped like an apple, on the shelf of a vintage wooden china cabinet.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
#BirdOfTheDay theme is #Awkward I don't know how awkward it is for the nuthatch but it looked really weird to me.
A nuthatch on the trunk of a black walnut tree. The bird is sort of sticking straight out from the trunk, facing forward and staring right at the camera.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
#vss365 #purify
he scoops the water from the lake
drops in a fizzy tablet
he wants to purify it
take out all the life
I guess he wants to drink it
the microorganisms wanted to live in it
I understand if his gut biome can't cope
but he needs to understand
that the rest of this lake is committed
to biodiversity
take your ethnic cleansing elsewhere bubba
and next time bring your own water bottle
and take it home with you, too

Image: Ducks and swans in a lake, Galaxy Babe (h2g2).
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
#vss365 #nurture
behold the handiwork of Castor Fiber
the Austrian beaver
he sneaks around the playground
when the kids are gone
chuckling to himself
ich hab' auch 'ne Rutsche, guck mal, kinder
as he builds the mudslide down to the river
for the logs he drags away
a construction business on four legs
as inexorable as the seasons
he nurtures waterways, nature's landscape engineer
saved the Czech Republic 30 million koruna
in infrastructure costs
so yeah humans tell me about this thing you call
civilisation
but wait for my dinner break I've got
logs to haul

Image: A stump that has been expertly operated on and a Eurasian beaver. Stump by Tavaron da Quirm (h2g2), beaver by Wikipedia.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
#vss365 #hunger
reunification
after the Wall came down we booked
a quick winter trip to the East
in unfriendly Weimar the sights
were closed for the holidays
Gotha was magical, snow and frost
on the Orangerie, the Zeppelin port
not open for visitors: on past Erfurt
(wave at Luther) to spend
Silvester freezing in a Leipzig
cathedral then cheese and sausage in a
hotel room with fireworks from the balcony
(it's early days, they haven't got used to 
capitalism yet) and then, New Year's Day,
arriving on the train in Colditz to find
every single door in the place shut tight
a ghost town, not even a coffee shop
we climbed the hill beside the legendary castle
and found a restaurant (closed of course) with the 
proprietor's name 'U. Hunger'
which pretty much summed it all up
I don't know what we expected
but it should have been this
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
#vss365 #passion
Graphic design is my passion, the wannabe said,
and posted a kitty cat.
Drs Dunning and Kruger took careful notes,
and nobody smelled a rat.
Let civilization go, if fall it must,
the cities to ruins all rendered,
the libraries crumble to rubble and dust:
at least the observers were tenured.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
#vss365 #stormy
there's a problem with metaphors:
sermons & hymns used to talk about
sailing through stormy seas
familiar in the age of wooden ships
no more
too many office workers in the pews these days
perhaps it is because I live too far from a coast
that I don't relate to the metaphor
I mean
driving down a back road during a flash-flood warning...

'Upon a narrow, winding road
Thou'rt driving, lo, flash flood ahead,
The Heavenly Weatherman has said:
Drive on! drive on! drive on!'

nah, doesn't have the same ring to it
& it's bad advice, too

Image: Flooded country road near Patoka, Indiana, 1937, US Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
#vss365 #explore
'Toddlers like to explore.' Oh, yeah? Do you know any toddlers?

To a two-year-old everything unfamiliar is alarming and needs to be yelled at. The word of the year is No. For a good reason: everything is trying to kill you. Especially other two-year-olds.

Me at two: in the backyard by myself. Not an  adult in sight. On the other side of the fence:  another two-year-old. Holding a lit sparkler.  From the gleam in his eye, a future domestic terrorist.

It was at this point that I made an important discovery: grownups had their uses. I ran for help as the grass caught fire.

I'll give you 'explore'...

Image: Kid with sparkler logo, Library of Congress.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
#vss365 #esoteric
I was always reading,
gathered esoteric knowledge
from dusty tomes in libraries
& then I went to college
in different lands & tongues I studied
murky waters scholars muddied,
I achieved initiation
Aquarius my generation.
I'm afraid my erudition
doesn't say
how to make bad politicians
go away.

Image: A person staring at a giant bubble as if into a crystal ball.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
#vss365 #eloquence
Job's Comforters

The first mention of 'eloquence' in the English language:

Netheles my myracle make thee not afeerd, and myn eloquence be not greuouse to thee.
Job 33:7 Wycliffe

They like to talk, these people.
They've been 'eloquent' since 1382.
Lecture to all the sheeple
who couldn't possibly know what they do.

Four thousand years ago they came
and sat with grieving Job.
Today the 'net draws as to a flame
pundits around the globe.

From youtubes, podcasts, and retro blogs
they proclaim that they know best.
They croak like the Hellene chorus of frogs,
all getting things off their chest.

They leave, or we turn off the squawking device.
We sigh for the noisy grift.
We reflect that they always bring bad advice
and no bread-and-butter gift.

Image: A page from a 1382 Wycliffe Bible manuscript, Library of Congress.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Local Histories. Celebrate local heroes & far-flung fandoms. Go shopping, historically. Listen to some old-time music: catch up on some fascinating history. hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...
Newtown, Isle of Wight. Walk and pasture.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
#vss365 #moonglade
Moonglade is a Yankee word. JR Lowell, a Harvard professor, picked it up from some New England farmer and wrote it down. He said it was a beautiful word.

They named the town for him:
the great freedom fighter.
Kossuth was a name to conjure with, 
like Che, or Mandela.
So was Lamartine:
they named the next town over for him.

Chance happens. The towns stayed small. Heroes are forgot,
poets, too: James Russell Lowell wrote
their names in verse, you don't recall.
'Thou art secure from panegyric', he wrote
to the man who gave the name
to the unincorporated community where I always remember to slow down to 
35 miles per hour. Works for Lowell, too:
he's a footnote anymore.

Meanwhile, there's a pig in a chef's hat
outside the Kossuth post office and meat market and I have the urge one night to 
keep going past the yellow house on 208 in Lamartine and turn right to the lake so that I can follow the moonglade up to where the heroes have gone.

Image: Kossuth meat market and post office.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
#vss365 #palimpsest
in the year 2525 if anybody's still alive
they may live but will they thrive? 
they may find
in the dirt a palimpsest: layers of cities east and west
Earth has a tale to get off its chest
it's not kind
tells that they rose but not why they fell
tells quite a story but not very well:
history's blind
what they did wrong isn't told in a song
what they did right gets lost in the night
all they can do is start over again
they don't mind
bury the bones reuse the tombstones
wonder at drones, broken telephones
but their new endeavor will last forever...
fate, be kind

Image: Broken glass shards on abandoned ground, Paigetheoracle (h2g2).
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
#vss365 #adroit
'Use the word adroit to describe the Administration's actions,' said the sycophantic newsdesk editor.

'No,' said the writer, wrinkling her nose.

'Why not?'

'Because it's dominancist: droit means right. I'm lefthanded. I'm tired of the sinister/adroit innuendos.'

'Besides,' she added, 'those knuckleheads couldn't find their heads with both hands and GPS.'

Image: Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in 'His Girl Friday'.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I think I broke it. Those are 3 different dialects. German dialectician colleague: How do you pronounce...? Me *pronounces shibboleth* German dialectician colleague *consults map*: Wrong! According to this map, you say 'sibboleth'! Me *laughs multilingually* I've, er, moved around a lot.
Dialect map showing Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Jackson, Miss'ssippi.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
#vss365 #elixir
'Step right up! Prof Hardcastle's Magic Elixir cures all ills! Melancholy. Fainting spells. Hangover. Only $1!'

'How can I trust this? There's no Indian on the bottle!'

'My friend, this is from the deserts of Arabia! Al-Iksir himself imparted the recipe to me!'

Pfft. The closest Hardcastle ever got to sand was Coney Island.

Image: Wallace, Sally Brittingham. [Medicine Show Wagon on Road], photograph, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth74193/: accessed September 3, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Matthews Family and Lambshead Ranch.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
#vss365 #wax astronaut on moon waxing hoverboard keeps dust down onscreen head of state waxing voluble touts his own great foresight before he can reply marble-sized meteor precision manoeuvre knocks antenna off frequency astronaut smiles doesn't mind that rock kicks up dust
The moon above a blue haze of Earth atmosphere. NASA
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Happy #Caturday from Fuzzy the farm kitty.
A long-haired calico cat with a white ruff posing prim and proper on the walk.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
#vss365 #poster
when I was a student
everybody and I mean everybody
had a poster tacked up in their room
Che or Marx or
some idiots on a motorcycle or
that universal fallback, the flowers
that said
War is Bad for Children and Other Living Things
now I was all for the sentiment but
I found the expression rather twee
I didn't have a poster at all mostly
because I didn't want to wake up at 3 am with
a giant Kafka or Hesse staring down at me
I'm funny like that 

years later I wanted to
explain to people about the posters and
I found out I couldn't use the flower one because
they'd copyrighted it c'mon man what kind of
hippies were you? anyway
here's my version no AI involved 
feel free to
share

Images: War is Bad poster with a cartoon of a Post No Bills bill poster. DG
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
#vss365 #sponge
when you are old you get a blessing
or curse depends on how you look at it
of being able to remember things that make
younger people go huh?
like erasers you know for blackboards
if the words 'clap erasers' don't mean anything
you're too young 
there weren't any smartboards in the dark ages
before you were born IYKYK

the Germans didn't like all that chalk dust
they used to use a sponge to clean blackboards
there's an old expression, Schwamm drüber
it means forget about it, it's all in the past
younger Germans probably scratch their heads, too
IYKYK

come to think of it, that statement is
wish-fulfillment
(er, you'd call it 'aspirational')
history isn't a slate it's a palimpsest
or a smartboard
the history's in there somewhere
IYKYK

Image: A hand with a sponge trying to erase the timeline of human history on the blackboard.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
#vss365 #cord
Once upon a time
a Hungarian engineer
set up a demonstration
of his perpetual motion
machine in the parking
lot of a refrigerator
company in Los Angeles
of all places. This was
in 1966, which was really
too late in the day for this
sort of foolishness. Besides,
Richard Feynman lived there.
Dr Feynman was hell on perpetual
motion machines because he was a
staunch defender of the laws of 
thermodynamics. So Feynman and his
students were standing in that parking
lot & the inventor pulled the plug to 
show the engine ran by itself and
getting cocky, he gave the cord to 
Feynman to hold and Feynman wouldn't
give it back and suddenly...

the engine blew up. The inventor sued
Caltech, for not keeping Feynman on a
tighter leash, I guess. They paid him
off.

The moral of this story probably involves
one of those formulas that abuses parentheses
and the Greek alphabet. Go ask a physicist.

Image: 1920 cover of Popular Science showing a perplexed man in a workshop scratching his head over a so-called perpetual motion Ferris Wheel.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
#vss365 #dice in January 49 BCE, that is Gaius Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and went viral when he did he quoted a trendy meme a theatre quote in Greek about dice ignorant historians googled it into Latin now the Latin phrase is the meme go figure sic semper
TJ the cat sitting under an Ionic column.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
#vss365 #towel (You're kidding, right?)
I'm an editor
for the Hitchhiker's Guide
I go on intergalactic cruises
in my head

I have also
personally published
more pictures of towels
than I own towels
it's an occupational hazard

Image: Two towels. One with a book of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition stories. One that says 42. From the copious h2g2 collection, 25 years in the making.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Y'all kept talking about Occam. It's your fault. #vss365 #razor
Novacula Occami
lex parsimoniae
in short, Occam's razor
the TL;DR of philosophy
should be the motto of
all good detectives
BUT (as a friend used to say)
it isn't
RL cops jump to conclusions
like they were in some kind of 
lowbrow Olympics and
for tv scriptwriters
old Occam is the kiss of 
death or at least unemployment

take last night's Tatort please
detective wakes up with a 
hangover and no memory
is suspected of murder
his gun is missing (turns up
inside a teddy bear) his car is
in the woods next to a corpse
(he knows the corpse)
a dead woman isn't dead she's in 
Cuxhaven of all places
medical examiners sneak through 
windows and look up exotic
plant poisons
you get the idea
a lot of fun but can you imagine
anybody in Münster really
acting like that?

I would ask William of Ockham but
he was too busy hiding out in Munich
because he called the Pope
a heretic
now that's a plot 
complication for you

Image: Legend of the passage of the viaticum across a wooden bridge, at Utrecht, in 1277. Some dancers having allowed the host to pass without discontinuing their dances, the bridge suddenly gave way and two hundred persons were drowned in the river.—Fac-simile of an Engraving upon Wood by P. Wolgemuth, in the “Liber Chronicarum Mundi:” Nuremberg, 1493, in folio. Project Gutenberg.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
#vss365 #kettle
'I'm off to trade with the Roman peddler,' announced Wolfgang. 'Anything you want, Schatz?'

'Yes,' said Hildegard. 'Bring me back a copper kettle.'

'A what?'

'A kettle. That's what they call a cooking pot. With a lid. And a handle. To boil things in.'

'Boiling water? Like for...tea?' he asked hopefully.

She laughed. 'Yes. For tea. Get me a kettle from that peddler and I'll make you all the tea you can drink.'

'Oh, good. Hildebrand and I want to go beat up some legionaries, and we can't do it sober.'

She sighed. Isn't civilisation grand?

Image: Ancient Roman kettle. Project Gutenberg.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
#vss365 #soap
combine one part uhulu
with three parts cypress oil
mix when the moon is full

if you don't know how
to make uhulu
ask Nabonaid

cleanliness is next to 
gods-liness, you know
soap means civilisation

I'm talking about ancient
Babylonians
what do you mean, Romans?

Image: Musing Babylonian and some cuneiform. Project Gutenberg
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
#vss365 #comb
India-rubber combs
now so extensively used
are manufactured by pressing the caoutchouc 
in moulds to the required form
and afterwards vulcanizing it
or combining it with sulphur
by which means 
it attains great hardness
thus the Bel Air, Maryland
Aegis & Intelligencer
May 19, 1865

it did not go on
to draw the obvious
Biblical parallels
with gold tried in fire
or bread corn that is bruised because
'he will not ever be threshing it'

oh, well: they'd just been
through a war and 
lost a president
they were probably
suffering from 
metaphor exhaustion

better to think in Spanish
where the image of
lost labor is
a bald man with 
a comb

Image: A woman attempting to comb a man's bald head. Leonardo Alenza y Nieto, Trabajo perdido, pen and brown ink. 1807-1845.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
#vss365 #matchbox
My colleague fell asleep while watching Quest for Fire. I woke him at my favorite part, where the primitive fire-seekers invent the English Joke. He stayed awake for Rae Dawn Chong and the sex stuff.

'Only a Frenchman could make a movie like this,' was his comment afterwards.

I thought about fire. Fire from the mountain. Fire from lightning. Fire from Boy Scouts, who probably got badges for rubbing sticks together.

My own ancestors, who carried their fire-making equipment around in a tinderbox back when Daniel Boone was a fellow to say hi to, not a tv actor. A flint, a striker, some dry moss. Fire-making was art - but it was also life.

Then came the matchbox. And matchbox cars. And rock bands crooning about their mental quirks. 

Now any fool can start a fire. Let's hope somebody discovers a reason not to.

Images: tinderbox, matchbox, electrical warning sign.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
#vss365 #remote
I woke from a dream
of remote possibilities
that all involved
having been
somewhere else
at the time
or taken
a different fork
in the road
only to find today's
rain outside my window
and a world 
that is
what it is

Image: Raindrops on spider web, FWR (h2g2).
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
#vss365 #ashamed See us at hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com
we are not ashamed of
our sense of wonder
our need to make each other laugh
our love of telling stories (some true)
our diversity in a clannish world

we don't care that 
none of us are famous or rich
and nobody is running for office
or has anything to sell
or is an influencer
if you need these things
you do you we'll do us
or you can be one of us too
there's no entrance fee

https://hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
#vss365 #shrewd
Behold on the tv: a shrewdness of apes.
A what?
A group of primates are called a shrewdness. It says so right here, in The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England by Joseph Strutt, 1845 edition.
What do you call a group of politicians, though?
A noodledom of fools.
You're still upset that Count Binface didn't win, aren't you?
Yes.

Images: Man fighting boar from The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England by Joseph Strutt, 1845. Count Binface from Righanred, Wikimedia Commons.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
#vss365 #cling Oh, darling, I want to cling to you... What? Like Saran Wrap? No, of course not. In a fond embrace. Sounds sticky to me. What would you prefer? A firm handshake. Or let's just wave pleasantly from across the room. Tell you what: I'll email you. That's the ticket.
Two birds in a winter tree ignoring each other.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
#vss365 #garden
we are stardust
we are golden
and we have to get ourselves
back to the garden
no you're not you're green
and oversized
there are too many of you
and I want you OUT
and it's August
and it's a national holiday even
so here you go, neighbor
have some zucchini on your porch
while I run away
under cover of darkness

(August 8 was National Sneak Some Zucchini Into Your Neighbor's Porch Day. For you Brits, a zucchini is a courgette. For my Appalachian grandmother, it was 'a Eye-talyun cucumber')

Background image: A zucchini in flower.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
#vss365 #evil
the worst thing in the world
is a false dichotomy
black is not
the opposite of white
nor cold of hot
nor wet of dry
nor light of dark
nor winter of summer
life is to be lived
in shades of nuance
evil is a cop-out word
for lazy hearts
throw the ball, human

Image: Luna the dog in the snow, wagging her tail and looking alert. There is nothing else in the photo except her pawprints in the snow. Paigetheoracle (h2g2)
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
#vss365 #toil
if tilling the soil
is a form of toil
that's odd - the word meant 'fight'
like growth is struggle
an attempt to juggle
need with what is right

I know deer like hosta
but what bothers me most: a
deer thinks my yard is a salad bar:
but it hates Irish Spring,
so soap is the thing
that gives me an edge in the garden war

it's like water and oil
the love of nature v toil
this living at peace with creation
but we will scrape by
the bambis and I
till the fall of this civilization.

Image: Deer raiding hosta at night and running away. Montage by DG.
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
The Hooverville Hexagon: Things We Found Out Yesterday include tortured phrases from out-of-their-depth computers, with bibliography and quiz. Plus floral beauty and more duckies! hoovervillehexagon.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-...
Brown-Eyed Susans
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Dmitri Gheorgheni @dmitrigheorgheni.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
#vss365 #sprout
I first ate brussels sprouts on an airplane. How fitting, I thought, to get an exotic food like miniature cabbages while being chaired over a cloudbank.

I was free to have any thoughts I wanted because the stewardesses, as they called them then, were busy making over my baby sister. Cute toddlers make good distractions. Dressed in my Sunday best - air travel was an occasion - I peered out the window and wondered what the new place would be like.

Most of my life's transitions have been like that: up in the air, then down to a new version of Earth. Or pulling into a strange railway station. Or off-ramping from the anonymity of the highway onto fresh streets. 

I think the last journey will be like flying, though: I hope they serve brussels sprouts.

Image: TWA poster 1960s, Library of Congress.
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