Tag Archives: Instruction Manual

How to See the Pair in the Middle

The rune carvers thought in pairs. They had a whole pronoun classification for the two that are also one, so it is no surprise to find pairs in the Rune Poem, matched thematically: the end to the beginning, then the next two, reflecting each other in pairs to the middle. With an odd number of runes the middle one stands alone. This is Eolhx, the fifteenth of twenty nine runes in the poem, the only one without an opposing pair, though there may be a pair built into it, more than one. To see it, you must do two things:

1. Center yourself in a landscape or on water with a nice view of the horizon, east and west.

2. Count the days and choose the beginning or end of the middle one as your moment. Choose both. The start or end of a day is up for debate in any case, the rune … More

How to Navigate by the Sun

I do not advise navigating by the sun. It’s a mathematical mess with all parts in motion, the sun, the sea, you. Pure chaos. If you must get in a boat, stick to the coastline where you can see landmarks, read the marine life, always the same fish in the usual places, watch the birds.

If you have to cross the open sea do it at night, when you can travel by nice comfortable starlight. The stars are dependable, they never deceive, but the sun will burn you the first chance it gets. It’s shifty, you can’t trust it, not unless you know it really well. Look at it right now. Don’t look at the sun. Remember where it was yesterday? It’s shifted its position along the horizon. it does it every day all year long, and not uniformly. Its movements vary depending upon your longitude and the time of year. If you … More

How to Play the Game

You don’t just play this game. It’s fun, yes, everybody battling peacefully united, but this is more than that and deadly serious. Focus. If you want to win you have to immerse. You live in this game. Make the game is an extension of your body and after you are gone they will find the game board intermingled with your ashes.

Decide which of you is going to be the eorl with the þegns and who wants to be the attacking sæmanum coming from the four corners to take el jefe in the middle, but don’t let that happen. That’s not going to happen. Not on your watch. The boss holds it all together and you will fight with everything you have to defend him. Ok. You’ve chosen. You’ve got the center ground.

There’s more attackers than you, You’ve got somebody important and powerful right in your very center, but they’ve got strength in … More

How to Make Poison

You’ve murdered before. Good. Now you’ll want to refine your technique and go for a killing more subtle, more elegant. Undoubtedly your next move should be poison. It is clean, classic, and with just a few basic ingredients and a bit of alchemy performed in even the most modest of kitchens, you can achieve a fine toxin useful for dropping into a drink or rubbing onto the shaft of an arrow. Wear gloves for that, this one can be absorbed through skin. You will need patience for your efforts as well, unlike a loud splashy war or a more intimate stabbing, a successful poisoning is not enhanced by anger. Let your rage go, for now. Holding onto anger is like poisoning yourself and expecting your enemy to die.

First, source a yew tree. Yew trees are so delightfully toxic that even inhaling the sawdust or pollen can kill you, though it would … More

How to Travel by Night

The dark obscures everything and restricting one’s travel to only daylight hours can be limiting depending on latitude and season. To travel by night successfully you will need light, which you will not have much of. Endeavor to take your journey during the full moon or bring a torch.

Beware of torch blindness. You will see more clearly by it, but you will not be able to see as far. Beyond the light all else will appear far darker than it would have without it. Use a torch if you want to see the ground beneath your feet, do not use one if you want to see what is coming for you.

If you douse your torch and there is no moon to travel by, chin up. All is not lost. You are not lost, you can find your way: the stars will not deceive you. Look for Orion, easy to spot, … More

How to Eat a Birch Tree

You don’t choose to eat a birch tree, this is not food, but it is food adjacent. A birch tree is close enough to being food that at the end of winter when you are out of everything and nothing’s fresh, you’ll see greens for your meal in the birch tree first: a gift from the sun to the earth and thereby you, an early edible tribute you badly need.

The shoots and the sap, go for them first. They happen first. The shoots, the tips of the branches, the new green leaves, they’re all nice in a stew and you can eat them fresh right off the tree. It’s a little bitter, but tender and will clear your bronchial passages which you might enjoy after a winter by smoky firelight.

For the sap, stab the birch with something sharp, just into the inner bark. Pull a little bark outward under the wound … More

How to Calculate a New Year

To calculate a new year or any other kind of newness, you must have some idea of oldness too. New is not new unless there’s an old. This truth requires a sense of a trajectory between one and the other, as well as a direction, so you must have some idea of a beginning in your new year reckoning. Calculations, like language, happen via a linear trajectory no matter how many forking paths it might take to get from A to B. A line is a line. This will be your main problem when determining a beginning: that temporality does not exist in the way your tools of calculation and language assume it to exist. There’s nothing linear about it. There are no beginnings. However, by wanting to calculate a new year I assume you imagine some sort of temporal line upon which you might locate your new year. Good. You will have to think … More

How to Change the World

How to change the world? Invent something, something important. Look at the stirrup: a metal rounded triangle you can attach to a saddle as a place to put your feet. Very simple, basic, but it is one of those culturally transformative technologies like the wheel and the printing press that changed everything about how people live and think and believe.

Why? You can ride a horse without a stirrup, yes, but you must work to maintain your balance or one good jostle and you will fall. You’ll want a bit of leverage to hold yourself on, especially when your intentions are warlike. Have you ever tried to shoot an arrow or drive a spear into somebody from horseback? You’ll need something stabilizing to push against or you will go flying. The right saddle can be everything, and innovations were made in this direction to solve the same problem. But with a stirrup, you and … More

How to Stab Somebody with an Icicle

You want to stab somebody with an icicle. Good. It’s best when the murder weapon disappears. Here’s the plan:

Acquisition of Murder Weapon
If you are harvesting from the wild, look for something sharp, sized for the hand. Cultivating your own icicle is preferable for the amount of control you have over the finished product. In this case find a steep roof and dribble water down a corner daily. Once ready, your icicle can and should be carved and shaped for a good penetrative point, but not one so slender it will break. There’s a middle ground here so you may wish to preform a few practice murders before the real one. Trial and error.

Placement of Murder Weapon
Is the crime scene cold? If it is, sky’s the limit. The best place to hide something is plain sight, right in everybody’s face. Try blending your weapon into a fancy ice sculpture. Or … More

How to Listen to a Horse

Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Ingaevones Territory
Year 98 of the New Calendar

Gnaeus Julius Agricola
Governor, Britannia, ret.

Dearest Father in Law,

How are you, I am fine. Julia sends her love. I am still in Germania, moving in the direction of Gaul, separated from this place by rivers, mountains, and mutual dread. This is a land rude in its surface, rigorous in its climate, cheerless to every beholder and cultivator.

Today I observed the practice of conjuring, which one cannot avoid as no people are more addicted to divination by omens and lots. Of their methods, some are familiar and civilized for instance auguring from the sounds and flights of birds, others prove most unnatural, such as deriving admonitions and presages from horses. These are the omens they deem most important:

When a horse neighs, the people foresee a meeting or gathering, of which they sit to many, most often fully armed. If the … More

How to Listen Beforehand

You ok? You look a mess. Well, you knew this meltdown was coming. We all did. There were signals and patterns and that was a massive red flag back there, but no. Some people don’t listen. Well, don’t just stand there looking at everybody else’s better deal, you need to pay attention now before the next thing grabs you, and it will grab you. Like a fist around your heart, squeezing. So listen up. Hwat! Pay attention.

Pay attention in advance of what? What is it that’s coming? That’s the question. The answer depends on what the meaning of the word is, is. If is means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that is a completely true statement. If is means now, there is nothing in any one given teeny moment of now, none, there’s no time for it, so if you ask a question … More

How to Hold it Together

You look happy on the outside but I can still see you coming apart. It’s your whole vibe: you’ve got no zip, zero, nada, and look at you. Loved by your family, yes some of them love you very deep down in kind of a fuzzy way, but they are there holding strong nevertheless. They especially love you when you’re happy. Well, they like you more. Picture yourself out of the picture. Can you do that? Find a remove from which to stand and fulcrum yourself out, look at what that looks like. Not in a wonderful christmas carol life kind of way, I see what you want so stop it. You’ve been in the world, a messy person like you, yes? Messes leave stains. There’s going to be smears of you all over the place. Getting all up in everything. You’ve always been the red sock in the laundry, bleeding. So look now. … More

How to Go Overboard

You’ve booked passage on the ship sailing farthest, doesn’t matter where. Good. Take to the sea. Three miles out and it’s a free for all, no rules, pirate radio laws. Why go? You’ve pissed off your god, that’s why go. When your deity tells you to do and you don’t do: you’re done. Fly and hope they don’t follow. Thing is, you may not have done your math properly. Did you not think that your particular god is one of both land and sea? This one doesn’t have to follow. They’re already there. They’re everywhere, and now they’re raising up a storm. A big one. This ship is about to be wrecked. Plus, your boat is overloaded and you are looking a lot like unnecessary ballast. Last hired first fired and look at what’s going on now, the people are rolling the dice to figure out who’s got to go and it’s you.

Can you … More

How to Survive a Tornado

The light outside has turned green, hail is falling everywhere, and the tornado is upon you. Literally. Oferheah over head. Surviving a tornado can be a simple thing if you plan ahead and don’t panic. Otherwise you have internalized the whirlwind, and spinning out is seldom useful.

Choose your tornado wisely. Shh. Listen. A quieter tornado contains fewer objects and will be safer than the one roaring from the sound of stuff smashing together. Also notice color. A white or gray tornado does not hold as much debris as one that has turned brown. Try to pick a nice clean one.

Also try to avoid being blown off your feet. Stay out of cars and trailers. If you have a windowless bathroom with a bathtub in it, get in the tub. Do not turn on the water and take a bath, you do not want to be hurled out of it … More

How to be Happy

You are miserable, exiled in wretchedness. Why can’t you shake your anxieties? You are lacking in prosperity, that’s why. Your troubles are nothing a little abundance can’t fix. Though you must contend with the old myth: more money more problems, happily the truth is there is absolutely no reason why wealth can’t solve all your problems, every last one of them, if you have enough of it.

How do you get enough wealth to be happy? Make it yourself.

Ingredients:

Yourself
Cream of Tartar
Washing Soda
Dung (Cow or Horse, for christsakes not your own)
Dew

Note: collect your dew during a waxing moon in spring time, preferably when the sun is in Ares. Acquire an amount commensurate with your own body mass. Some may prefer for this reason to start rather early during Ares so that you might have room to slip into Taurus or even Gemini depending on your girth. People … More

How to Skip Town

It’s time to go. It is past time. If you need to get out of here yesterday you’d better do it with an eye on the future, that knife blade of a now you balance on will cut and run, so plan fast.

You don’t want to plan. You don’t care what comes next, I get it, but if something is going to come next, you’ll need to survive long enough to see it and that takes money. Bring any portable wealth you have, the smaller the better depending on your means of conveyance. Is that your car? Load it up. Fill it with anything you might regret leaving behind. Maybe we can attach a trailer or something you can pull behind you. Take what you can because you will not know your regrets until the actual future arrives. To speed that process, leave nothing, otherwise, you will quickly discover your regrets at which time … More

How to Banish Family

You can cut just about anybody out of your life. You already have, cut them dead. You’ve filled graveyards of disconnections. Good.

Regrettably you have always felt you cannot jettison a family member just like that. That you are in fact stuck with your people forever. Not so! It is indeed possible to rid yourself of any inconvenient relative however close, doesn’t matter who, and as soon as you like too, you need not wait for the right moment or a catalyst. Do it now! Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today, as the esteemed alphabet reformer Benjamin Franklin has it, and though he failed to exile the letters C, J, Q, W, X, or Y from the family, he was successfully estranged from several of his own close relations, so he ought to know and would be delighted to tell you, were he still speaking to you, that procrastination is the … More

How to Summon an Angel

Good luck summoning an Angel because you will need it. You’ll need good timing as well because the two of you, or however many, speak entirely different languages from each other. You speak duration and they speak phenomenal flux, making them directionless, which is your next problem.

Angels have all the foresight of a toddler who has just learned to walk. The newly mobile have no planning skills. They don’t care what’s in their futures, this is not their concern. They just want to put something new into their mouths. Angels are like that too. I don’t know if they put things into their mouths or even have mouths, but what they do have is no future and no past, and though they lack these essentials and ought be pitied for it, they do have everything else which must be some consolation.

To overcome an angel’s lack of temporal trajectory, you must shift your concept … More

How to Burn the Cotton Library

Collect every medieval manuscript you can get your hands on, the best ones, the really beautiful and important ones. Make a who’s who of the famed and the fabulous and gather them all in, from all over the place, get the bibles of every discipline and the bible too: science, literature, law, medicine, government. Religion. Assemble the works of our ancestors and make them your children. Be the mother of thousands. Be all their daddies.

Die.

Bequeath your collection, vast and priceless, to the state. Forget that the state is not yet accustomed to protecting such treasures, this is symbolism. Make a point and give it all to the nation and not to the monarch, the national body will be your library’s parent and or legal guardian now.

Store the manuscripts in a room right above a fireplace. Directly above. Prefer a temperamental fireplace with a wooden mantle.

Store firewood along the mantle, standing … More

How to make a Torch

Find a pine tree, a nice sticky one full of resin, that stuff will burn in rain. Look for dead branches, go for one near the base of the tree and cut it off as close to the trunk as possible. You’ll know when you find a good one.

Split the end of the branch with an axe four ways, north south east west, quarter it. Cut down several inches. Break nothing off.

Carve out some kindling from the inner edges of your cuts. Shave it out, make an X of airflow. Fill the X with the shaved bits. Now fill the X with fire. Try not to burn the place down.

 

How to Burn it All Down

You want to burn it all down, even the unburnable. Good. To burn it all down you’ll need a focus. Find out what it is that’s really pissing you off most, bring that bitterest pill right to your face and choke it down. Really feel the effect, lean into it. Let it spread through your chilly veins. Let bitterness be your new flavor, but don’t let it linger. You can’t linger about being bitter or sour or salty about something and still think you can accomplish a proper burning down, you have to spice it up with some heat, pica rico, get a good burn going, make it hurt.

Now, smolder right on past indignant, consume outraged and offended into ashes, and get to steaming. Irritated and irate are nothing now, you want livid. You want fury. You want fuming. Are you are fuming? Properly inflamed? Ugly angry? Ugly angry. That’s the look … More

How to Make Ink

Ingredients (alphabetical order):

Cloth (warp + weft): strains.
Ferrus Sulfate (iron + sulfuric acid): darkens.
Gum Arabic (acacia tree + patience): thickens, adheres.
Hammer (metal + wood): pulverizes.
Jar (sand + soda ash + limestone): contains.
Oak Galls (wasp + oak tree + time) colors.
Rain Water (hydrogen + oxygen + gravity): soaks, extracts.
Sun (hydrogen + helium): transforms, perfects.

Smash O into bits with H. Put into J, cover with R and leave in S for three days, strain through C and return liquid to J. Dissolve G in R. Add G and F to J.

How to Bathe a Gannet

So your gannet colony stinks of ammonia, guano, and a bit like fish, well what did you expect, they are gannets. Thousands crowding together. Eliminating. If your gannets are befouling the place and you wish to change their objectionable odor, your best route to success is via a good luxurious scented bath, into which a new fragrance might be introduced. Your task may feel a Herculean one for they do enjoy their own smell, it’s their signature scent, and if you know anybody who has a signature scent, you know they can be quite resistant to change. Ascertain if your gannets are determined to smell like a birdy pile of pee soaked herring or if they are amenable to a modernizing update. Inform the gannets one must not become too attached to a signature scent at risk of becoming predictable or seeming out of date when the fashion moves on. Woody, spicy, or musky notes … More

How to Measure a Mile

First you must gather your materials. You will need an an iron plow and a field, but not a square one. Long and skinny. And a pair of oxen yoked together. Try to find oxen who like each other and can tolerate you well enough. Some cows are just mean.  Be wary of oxen who say they are intrinsically motivated self starters who have a passion for teamwork and excellent organizational skills, as this means nothing anymore. Treat your team well, bring treats, but don’t let them bully you — give some oxen an inch and they’ll take a mile.

Start plowing in a straight line. This can prove difficult if your oxen don’t want to move, but this problem is not insurmountable. Persuade them. Good cows. Once they decide to get on with it they’ll stop themselves for a break when they’ve had enough. Lazy cows. And once they stop they will sit … More

How to Talk to God

First of all shush! Shh. You talk too much. You need to listen more. Who do you think you are? You’re not God. You are about to talk to somebody who is God and who is not chatty. So shush. Listen. What.

Before beginning a conversation with divinity, choose which divine being you wish to communicate with. Or beings. Perhaps your deity is multiple. Will you be talking to all of them? A select group? Maybe your divine one is not a one, but one of those many contained into the one deals? This can happen very easily. From the one to the infinite is but a step. Ascertain if your God is a two for one special, a throuple, or some sort of n = (n+1) arrangement, or perhaps more likely: 0*∞ = (0*∞)+1. Or if you prefer: 0/∞ = (0/∞)+ 1, it’s all one to me.

Determine as well if your God … More

X≠Y≠Z: How to Punch a Tree

X: The sun’s going down.

Y: Wait, how do I run?

X: Control W, no hold it down.

Z: Don’t lose my stuff.

Y: How would I lose your stuff? Wait, I’m stuck. Where am I? Is this a hole?

X: Spacebar

Y: What?

X: Spacebar to jump. Ok. So we need to find a tree.

Y: What for?

X: We need to punch the tree.

Y: We’re going to fight a tree?

X: No, we need to get wood to make things. And we need shelter before something gets us. Ok, punch this tree.

Y: Wait, what? What something? How do I punch the tree?

X: Left click. No, go closer, now left click. We really should be building a shelter.

Y: The tree doesn’t fall? It just stays there with the middle missing?

X: They don’t fall over. You have to get under it and punch up if you want all the wood.… More

How To Declare War

Congratulations! You are going to war. You might be feeling rather heated at the moment and may be experiencing an urgent desire to get on with the war proper, but first you must declare war. The war declaration belongs to the artistry of war making and mustn’t be ignored, steps ought to be followed from A to Z. There’s no just getting on with it in this alphabet book! Oh no honey pie, you’re not safe here. These things take time and though you may wish to skip the war declaration, common courtesy dictates you must still declare war so those friendly to you will be aware of your war’s existence and then either join in your war or get the hell out of the damn way if they don’t like it. You don’t want their help if that’s how they are going to be about it.

In order to declare war you must determine … More

How to Grab a Thorn

Don’t. What the hell are you thinking? Don’t grab the thorn. Why would you want to grab a thorn? Why? Are you insane? This is insane. I feel insane thinking about it. Ascertain if you are insane. It’s a thorn. Don’t touch it. Don’t look at it. Keep away from it, evil little sucker. The thorn hates you. And, it’s not just a thorn. It’s lots of thorns. The thorn has friends. And relations. The thorn will gang up and snag on when you least expect. What are you wearing? Is that what you’re wearing? Put some pants on! My God! That thorn is going to whip right across your skin. You won’t see it coming. You’ll be looking at the thorn in front and it’s the one behind will get you. With unmet cruelty. And you want to grab it. Don’t grab it! Don’t go near it. Cover yourself and stay back. God. You … More

How to Look Joyful

Look at yourself in a mirror or other reflective surface such as shiny metal or a pond. Be careful with ponds, you could fall in or get stuck there staring at yourself forever, wasting away until you become a flower or some such. This is to be avoided.

Note the current state of your appearance. Do you look moody? Do you look terrible? Ascertain if you must ask yourself if you look terrible or if you already know the answer.

Begin with your posture. You must hold yourself in a relaxed manner without thinking about it. If you are thinking about your posture, you won’t be able to shape yourself naturally into a joyful position and may appear wooden and flat.

Try to relax your shoulders. Hold them too close to your ears and you look stressed, too far forward and you look defeated. Try to pull your shoulders down and back. Not … More

How to go Extinct

First of all, in many ways you are doing a fine job on your own and you must be commended for that. For example your most recent pandemic is proving quite exemplary, but is alas, overcomable. You might choose to speed your extinction process along. Extinction can take years, and let’s face it, you simply don’t have that kind of time.

To the extinction methods you are already trying (kudos for that whole poisoning the environment thing, a laudable idea) you must introduce the element of surprise. Your choices have been effective, but predictable. You cannot go properly extinct if you see it coming. In certain elements of society the desire to fix it is just too great. Find a way to be attacked from all sides. Literally. Introduce predators. There are fine moves being made in this direction with wolves. Put the wolves in other places besides the wilderness. Bring them in! Towns … More

How to Milk a Beaver

Congratulations! You have found a lucrative way to maintain your luxury lifestyle well into the future! If you wish to augment your capital, the perfume industry will pay excessively for that unique beavery smell of vanilla strawberry with just a hint of fine cordovan leather. So will the tobacco industry: beaver excretion is the taste of Marlboro country! And remember the beaver the next time you enjoy your skinny vanilla latte. Your vanilla anything. Also strawberry and raspberry. As a natural additive, that little critter gets around! You’ll find endless marketing opportunities ahead.

Have your assistant procure a beaver, male. Be sure not to wake the little guy up, the beaver not your helper, though do wake your helper up because beavers are best caught at dawn. Have your assistant be very careful, beaver teeth are sharp and do take note of its claws. It can strip bark off of a tree just like that. … More

How to Dig my Grave

Source a location. Ask yourself, why are you digging my grave? Have you recently murdered me or have I died of natural causes? If murder, you must source both a grave site and a hiding place.

Ascertain the time of year. If the ground is wet, you must find higher ground or you will end up digging not a grave but a small pond as you will surely run into ground water. If the ground is frozen your job will be much more difficult. Best time to dig my grave: summer.

Determine if you will be putting me in a box or will I be wrapped in a blanket or tarp of some sort? Will I have any covering? I am five and a half feet tall, so if using a box you will need to acomodate my height, unless you bury me in a crumpled fashion, then consider my width. A tarp will be … More

How to Die

First, you must find a reason not to live. There exists uncountable reasons but you must choose at least one and try to make it as ineffable as possible so the people you leave behind may feel suitably at a loss for words when they find you. An added benefit: it will be easier for the people who attend your wake, interment, scattering of the ashes, memorial service, whatever it is it will be none of your business, to speak in hushed and reverent tones if they find themselves capable of speaking at all. Amongst the reasons not to live you might choose: you are suffering from progressive melancholia; by ceasing to exist you will bring your existence to the attention of the person who barely knows you exist, though you maintain a unique awareness of said person’s existence; pondering the great nothingness of everythingness has inverted your thoughts into a perpetual retrospective arrangement.… More

How to Move a Cow

Get acquainted with the cow. Make friends. This is a collaboration, not a battle, so you must find a way to join forces despite the cow’s opinion of you. Ascertain the cow’s opinion of you.

Ascertain as well the cow’s motivations. Why will this cow not move? Is it stuck? Is this a choice? If so, perhaps make the surroundings less comfortable for the cow. Introduce flies or possibly a beehive or two within kicking distance.

If the cow simply will not move, you must move relative to the cow. Change your frame of reference. Run past the cow and the cow will appear to be moving.

The cow’s acceleration is equal to the total force you provide it divided by its mass. Do not allow the cow to have infinite mass.

If the cow seems un-acceleratable, you must assume it has willed itself into a state of infinite inertia.

Get acquainted with your own … More