From the The Universal Household Assistant or What Every One Should Know (1884):

Cockroaches — ways to destroy. — 1. The disagreeable odor which the cockroach emits, and which soon permeates all places that it inhabits, proceeds from a dark colored fluid which it discharges from the mouth. The cockroach loves warmth and moisture, hence its populousness in kitchens where fire and water are almost ever present. It is a night prowler, and swarms out from its secret lairs on the departure of daylight.    For the destruction of the cockroach we recommend a mixture containing a tablespoonful of red lead, the same amount of indian meal, with molasses enough to make a thick batter. Set this on a plate at night in places frequented by the insects and all that eat of it will be poisoned. Another preparation is composed of one teaspoonful of powdered arsenic, with a tablespoonful of mashed potato. Crumble this every night at bed-time where the insects will find it, and it is said to be an effectual poison. Great care should be exercised in the use of such dangerous agents. An innocent method of destroying cockroaches is to place a bowl or basin containing a little molasses on the floor at night. A bit of wood, resting one end on the floor and the other on the edge of the vessel, serves as a bridge to conduct the insects to the sweet deposit. Once in the trap its slippery sides prevent retreat, and thus cockroaches may be caught by the thousands.    2. The following i said to be effectual: these vermin are easily destroyed, simply by cutting up green cucumbers at night, and placing them about where roaches commit depredations. What is cut from the cucumbers in preparing them for the table answers the purpose as well, and three applications will destroy all the roaches in the house. Remove the peelings in the morning and renew them at night.    3. Common red wafers, to be found at any stationers, will answer the purpose. The cockroaches eat them and die. Also, sprinkle powdered borax plentifully around where "they most do congregate," and renew it occasionally; in a short time not a roach will be seen. This is a safe and most effectual exterminator.    4. Borax is a very good cockroach exterminator. Take some pieces of board, spread them over with molasses, only sufficient to make the borax when sprinkled upon it stick, and place the boards in their haunts. Gum camphor is a speedy remedy to clear the house of cockroaches.

The right closet of my bedroom is filled with the squeaking of baby birds. There's a nest under the floorboards, which is where the roof meets the side of the house. The parents must be entering in a hole right above or below the gutter. By the frequency that I see house sparrow out front, most likely that's what's in there. Little birdies growing up right under my feet. It makes me happy, it's spring.

I've had some interesting dreams recently. The night before last, I dreamed I was on a holodeck. I kept switching through setting, but I was changing more than my environment. I was not only trying on different clothing, but different bodies. However, at some point I stopped changing and the room began changing more like a standard Star Trek holodeck. The finally room I was in was filled with shallow wooden boxes with large amounts of baby budgies. They were all blue and just getting their feathers in. They were pulling themselves from box to box, in the baby-budgie head-first method of locomotion. I was in a happy place.

Last night, I dreamed I was in a maze of a house. There was a strange man in whiteface who was running the place. The house was so large that it had a lake and a hill with cars. It was almost a village in a house. There was something wrong, a sinister air. I felt compelled to investigate what that wrong was. I followed these streams of crusty liquid up the hill and found an old stationwagon that had rusted with the years. purpleglitter was with me then and at that point had been with me on my explorations in the house even though she hadn't been with me earlier in the dream. We got in the car and I was able to start it. There was a road at the top of the hill; and after driving a short distance, we realized we were on the outskirts of Moscow. We drove back to the hilltop and looked down. There was the house and all it's trapping that we had departed. I concluded that there was some sort of portal to Moscow at the top of the hill. purpleglitter and I decided to drive around and explore the outskirts of Moscow. purpleglitter's cell phone miraculously worked and we called zarthon who told us we ought not be traveling around through portals willy-nilly and should head back at once. But we ignored him. Who was driving kept switching seamlessly in the dream, sometimes it was purpleglitter sometimes it was me. The controls on the car ended up locking up and we skidded into a ditch. It faded out after that.

Somewhere in last nights dreams purpleglitter and I were in a bank trying to stop a $2500 transaction from her account to a con artist. The bank was entirely bureaucratic and unhelpful, and we felt as if we were fighting against time. They kept asking invasive questions that had nothing to do with banking. Odd randomness. Why must bureaucracy even invade my dreams?

gacked from kyrene:

How Spoiled Are You?

( long survey )

Last night I had many layers of lucid dream. I kept waking from one to only arrive in another. I became quite good at figuring out it was another dream over the course of the night. In many of the dreams I was a Japanese girl that had her memory erased after a car crash and was living with several strange people. My room had turned into a swamp, from which I kept having to rescue the cats. Luckily my two favorite things to do in dreams is go underwater and fly. I spent much time doing both. After several layers of dream past someone found a dead baby in the swamp. Since I had my memory erased, I was a worried that I might have had done it. I never did find out who killed the baby. The dream went on for an extraordinary amount of time, and was much more complicated than I'm writing here. Places I visited were my old highschool, a highway that turned into a dirt road (I wasn't in a car, I was flying right above them, which I often do in dreams), a strange house with wires all over it, and the ocean. I discovered that in dream I can't always fly the direction I wish, often if I try to fly off the plot I'll involuntarily turn back to the direction the script sends me. Dream flying for me is a false sense of freedom, I must go where the dream takes me.

Much of Mark Twain's work is still quite timely. Written in 1904, but published shortly after his death in 1910, The War Prayer is one of those works. For those of you who haven't read it (and for those of you who want to re-read it), here it is:

The War Prayer by Mark Twain It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way. Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation: "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!" Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory – An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!" The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said: "I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. "You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." (After a pause) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.