J.B. Sommerset

"Tiny little friend" (c) 2025 J.B. Sommerset Well, I guess I can't call it the quote of the week if I don't update on the regular- like weekly would be ideal for calling it "the quote of the week". But, what the hell, I'm going to do my best and call it that anyway. So, I am now back on the wagon, despite the shit-show that is my country right now. Here's todays quote, it's not mine, but it fits the times.  "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth..."  H.L. Mencken Cheers!

So, here's a quick update from my world, that is the world in the woods and the mountains. Of course, I mean everything other than fighting off the mountain lions, bears, and the mooses... meese? uh, moose's? What ever the plural of moose is ... the guy in the photo above is one of them. This one likes standing between me and my car and asking if I like to eat through straws. Out side of that, I have been working on building a green house. In part, because I get the feeling that groceries are about to take a turn and become a "luxury item". Most Americans, at least us that aren't in the 2%, might be resorting to a number of poor-man's dinners in the near future. To mitigate that, we in my household, have decided to amp our own food production up. Grow our own veggies, we got some chickens, and I am currently growing mushrooms too. However, where we live, the veggies are going to require a solution that keeps the frost out. So, a green house it is!  It's no...

"Fractals in G minor" (C) 2025 JBSommerset Some of you have asked, do I still art, the answer is yes. I do still art. Although recently my art has shifted it's direction. I have been doing two types of art recently. The first are illustrations for a story I have been working on, and the second are "mandala" works that seem to stall my urge to kill <cough> <cough>, I mean my unfathomable rage. (That's a joke for all you literalists out there.)  I decided to post a couple of these Mandalas here just to give you all some eye-candy, and to let you all know that I am still alive. I hope you enjoy them. "The Rune Wheel" (C) 2025 JBSommerset "Mushroom Mandala 1" (c) 2025 JBSommerset Cheers!

Resilient A.F. J.B. Sommerset (C) 2025     It's been a long time sense I posted anything. I had been busy trying to find ways to enact change, prepare for the worst, and stave off a tidal wave of embarrassment, anger, and some depression. I decided that it would be good to return, and post more. I hate to say it, but a lot of my writing moving forward might have a political flavor, for that I apologize in advance.      I do not say this light hearted, I do not say it because it has not been said before, or because I am prone to "hysteria" as that vapid ugly bald-ass incel  Steven Miller would say. What I write about today I write out of extreme concern, not just the people in the U.S., the good people who denounce what is happening, but I write this out of concern the whole world. We aren't the only players on this board, we never have been, and we share this pale blue dot with a host of diversity, all forms of it. Handing the keys to the U.S. over to thes...

"In The Mist" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 This week has been a long one, there is so much to do in tax season, so much to do with the businesses. Now that we have an orange butthole's friends running the show, that might get even more complicated. Who knows, at this point some of us are just watching the crapper burn down. Anyway, here's a quote for all of you out there in the interwebs- it seems we are all lost... "Let's face it, if you have no where to be, lost isn't so bad..." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

A 2025 Promise, J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 Following up on the last quote of the week, here another one about being alone. In todays modern world, where we are all connected every minute of every day, the value of being alone is overshadowed by an artificial type of connection. That being said, even today, even as connected as we are, a person can still be utterly alone. So here's a quote about it... "The thing about being lonely is this; it's worse when you have to go through it alone." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"A January Evening" by J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 This week I let my inner isolationist take the wheel for the quote. This one is from one of my old works, but I think it is more relevant today than it ever was when the world wasn't such a weird place. Hope you get some insight from this quote. "An axe, a saw, and a dog are much more a friend to the wise man than most of the persons of this world." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"January Mist" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 There are some explosive things that are happening this year. So far we haven't blown up the world... yet. We'll most likely get to that. But in the meantime, while we are still here, it's important to remember- we are still alive. So, here's a quote about being alive.  "Life is what you are doing when you're not dead, those who choose to do nothing are most likely already dead." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"A January Morning" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 Well, well, well... Look what the cat dragged in, it's 2025. We all knew this was coming, and now it's here. Another year come and and gone, and I am not so sure that's a good thing. 2024 had it's problems, but they were our problems, and 2024 didn't let us fix those problems before everything turned. We went through so much together, so many experiences, and now we have to move on to something new. Let's be clear here, when talking about 2024, we all said the same thing to her: "It's not you, it's me. I am changing and I need my space" (or something along those lines). But secretly we had our eye on 2025, at least the fickle among us did. Now 2025 is here, I find myself having regrets. Did I give 2024 enough of a chance? Was I the one that quit us? Was our relationship doomed to fail? It's too late now. Lets see what the new year brings. I took a little time off after the election to re...

"Snow again" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2024 There is an old Marxist saying that goes, "Religion is the opiate of the people." I agree in part with that quote, but there is more to that, it's summed up, sort of, in the rest of his writing. I have chosen to shorten that and add it here. So here you are, the quote of the week.  "Power is the opiate of the rich, much like religion is the opiate of the people..." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"Adolf Drump" J.B. Sommerset (2024) Wow, that election really through me off my game, I gotta make up for this somehow. Here's a quote I thought would be fitting for the times. This one isn't mine, but it needs to be said anyway: "The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice". F. Montesquieu Cheers! Here's to getting back on track.

This post is for those of you here in the states, not my friends over seas. To the rest of the free world, I feel obligated to apologize for what comes next, because it’s not just going to affect us. It will have ripples that will change everything. This election was the “go ahead” for the Putins, the Kim Jongs, and the Victor Orbans of the world. For that, as an American, I am sorry. To start with, I am so utterly disappointed in so many people today. I did not vote for him, I voted for Harris. For me, the choice was obvious, and oddly enough, it had nothing to do with politics- we’ve been down that road before with this man, he lied then, like we knew he would. Last night we cast our ballots and let the statistics show the nature of our character and basic values we care about. America voted a 34-time felon, twice impeached, con artist into office. We vapidly put the keys to the country in the hands of a narcissistic mad-man and his cronies. A man, who, by our own adjudication sh...

 

"The End of the Horizon", J.B. Sommerset (c) 2024 Hello again! And welcome back. This week has been physically challenging for me, I finished a retaining wall, and it was just me doing it. So my back kind of hurts, but I have this stone wall out front now, and that's kind of cool. With all that struggle, I still fill accomplished because every time I look out that window, I am going to see that wall. Hooray! I can't say that for most of the jobs I have worked through out my life. That's why this week the quote is about crap jobs we all worked at one time or another. Here you go, served up cold, just the way we like it. "The most grievous injury a person can suffer on the job is the loss of the self, the soul, and forgetting purpose." J.B. Sommerset  Cheers!

If you haven't noticed, A.I. is all the rage these days when it comes to content creation. Art, Writing, and Music are all being flooded with A.I. driven works. And very few of them are quality. They are usually ugly things that muddy the art pool or clever mimicries of existing masters. Some people are easy to fool however- you've all seen those posts on Facebook, you know the ones, where something is just off. Then you read the comments and sure enough, it's A.I. generated. Some of the music is quite funny, some of it is a little to close to the real thing.  I have written about this before, and I am still struggling with it. I have always wanted my work to be completely original, after all I cultivated the works and the skill for years and years. It doesn't seem right that Someone can screen-cap my work then stick it into an app, craft a prompt and poof! My works originality is out there for anyone who can barely type. That being said, many wise people have said that...

"The Way Down", J.B. Sommerset (C) 2024 This should have been posted on Friday, I was, however, indisposed. So I am posting it now. One of the things about living on a mountain, and it being the fall, is that you have to get prepared for winter. This year, I have been chopping a lot of fire wood, and winterizing the house. We did alright last winter, but it was a mild winter in comparison to the one before it. This morning is the first morning since Friday that I have been able to sit down to update. So here it is, your quote of the week, it all about autumn: "Fall is the reminder that all things end, even suffering, and also that there is reprieve in the ending of things."  J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"The Way Down" (c) J.B. Sommerset 2024 Posts have slowed as the weather gets cooler. In the words of Jon Snow, "Winter is coming". Which means that I have been preparing for the colder months. We get lots of snow up here- around 7 feet and the temperatures frequently drop down below zero (Fahrenheit). Last year we hit -19 in January and it stayed that way for a couple weeks. This year, who knows? So I have been chopping wood and doing the maintenance on the craw space, the shop, and the snow plow. This year we had a nice stove installed. There are a lot of power outages up here, and it's nice to have a way to keep the pipes from freezing. We are going to run out of wood any time soon. We live in the middle of the forest. Our driveway is 2 miles long and every year trees fall across it and become firewood. This year everything will be ready when the snow falls, or at the very least most of the way there.  So, stay tuned, there will be more news and stories.  

"The Little Blue Flower" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2024 I am not sure if I have posted this one before, but this is an election year and all kinds of talking-head lip-service is occupying our time. So things get a bit jumbled. This one is about bureaucracy. I hate bureaucracy more than most things. Most of it is unnecessary, and what isn't gets buried by the rest. So, here it is, your quote of the week: "Bureaucracy is an always will be the hammer the privileged use to keep the poor and impoverished subservient to their agendas..."  J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

"Little Yellow Flower", Copywrite J.B. Sommerset (c) 2024 Folks, I am not one for drama, but sometimes people just start things because they can't live without the rush of endorphins that accompanies rumor spreading, bickering, gossiping, complaining, etc. I, in fact can't stand this kind of behavior. Some events recently led me to coin a new quote. So here it is, this is my reply to people who complain that they don't like the way people see them when they behave in certain ways: "You can't show up to the party with a big 'Shit-stirring stick' and expect that people think you are a baker..." J.B. Sommerset Cheers!

                                                      "Moe Mushrooms", Copywrite J.B. Sommerset (c) 2024 Living way up here in the mountains I have to admit a few things. One of the hardest and most obnoxious is that nature does some hard lessons on all of us mountain folk- and also that there is nothing we can do to change that. For instance, forest fires, I dread July and August every year now, because everything is on fire for two to three months. But, and this is a hard understand, there isn't much I can do about it. So this weeks quote is an admission to it: "Mankind's power over nature is and always will be an illusion as far as nature is concerned. There is no amount of action that will stop the rain from falling, and no amount of begging that will save us from the flood. In essence, we are and always will be at it's merci. We have no power to cha...