It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by both (as of this writing, there have been only two) World Wars. Simply because about six months or so, I learn some new insane fact about the conflicts. Nothing so far has beaten aircraft carrier submarines, though. So when I saw the Kickstarter for The Neptune Monograph Project, I leapt on it. This is the document that was used for D-Day planning and was the highest level of Top Secret (BIGOT) they had (except for Double Secret BIGOT). The end result is badass and the sort of thing you can data geek out on for weeks. There are descriptions of German fortifications. There are charts about tides and info on the type of ground they’re going to hit when they arrive. There’s a level of info that…well, I have no idea how they pulled together this much stuff. I couldn’t do it today with Google Fu. So basically it’s an important WWII document that is now fully restored for posterity and uses its blank pages to provide historical context. If you really want to deep dive on the subject, you can’t get much deeper than this. If you need one for yourself, there’s still a couple left being sold over at Amazon.
While we’re on the subject of Kickstarter, here’s another one I backed…it look a little longer than they thought to deliver it, but hot damn, it was so worth it. It’s the Lovecraft-infused culinary monstrosity known as The Necronomnomnom. It’s a cookbook of the damned, complete with notes by whoever was unlucky enough to own it before you. The recipes themselves are adapted for the use of the more mundane among us (you can substitute chicken breast if you don’t have access to albino penguins), clearly spell out how many they will serve (“4, once — and then madness”), and then give you handy, easy to follow instructions (“Boil it! Boil it all!”). The entire thing is freaking hilarious and wonderfully, dreadfully (and by that I mean “full of dread”) illustrated. Among the recipes: New England Damned Chowder, The Cake in Yellow, and The Side Dish Not to Be Named. It’s freaking fantastic. Now I just need to make some of these while picking out a small Lovecraft film festival to enjoy while I consume the results and am consumed by them in turn. If you missed it and you need it, looks like the best bet is to follow the project on Facebook…they’ll be selling more copies in the future once all the dust from the Kickstarter has settled.
Every year for our kitchen we try to get a unique calendar. We went with Atlas Obscura last year…previous years have been pulp covers and architecture of repressive regimes. Just something…odd. This year it’s both odd and glorious and I found it mostly by luck of them going viral. It’s the Vancouver Police Dog Calendar, which is exactly what it says on the tin…but with a twist in that some of the months give you awesome staged shots like the one above. And the puppies (we call all dogs puppies around here) look so happy, it’s easy to forget they could probably knock your punk ass right out if necessary. All proceeds go to the British Columbia Cancer Foundation and the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Foundation. So calendars, dogs, and a good cause, all in one. Because they went viral as hell this year, they had to go back and do two additional printings (one of which I was happy to snag). If you want to get ahead of the curve for next year, though, do what I did: follow them on Facebook.
