Weekend Rewards Get Weird

I'm sorry I didn't get one up last weekend, so here's a double helping of long ones (each are about a half hour).

As we've just finished both Mission Gamma Book 1 and Huntress Book 1, I thought about maybe taking a short detour, so I have picked up two very different non-fiction bits to share with you.

The first is about ants: the answer to the accusation that animals never go to war. This is about how ants are xenophobic little bastards. It's from a book called Journey to the Ants. I mangle some of the Latin names, sorry, but it's a fun tale.

The second is truly a goofy-ass move on my part. I called the file "improvised weapons" because I had to call it something. But what I'm sharing with you is sort of a combination memoir/philosophy and not about fighting. It's great because it is everything you think that it wouldn't be, namely, it's to say people who go looking for fights or think a self-defense class or a strip mall dojo will prepare you for one are in for a surprise. I don't cover it, but in a different parts he makes the compelling argument of how a cat is an incredibly useful improvised weapon, as they will at the very least land on the opponent with claws out, if not decide to take out their frustration on them. None of the stuff in what I've read is useful save in establishing a mindset that says "fuck around and find out is not healthy."

These might be of interest in inspiring your creativity. Thinking about what ants do can inspire you to think of how societies can function in a way alien to our own. The "self-defense" (he terms it "survival" because that's more the point) is useful for getting inside the head of someone who is both on a first name basis with violence and knows its something to avoid.