The Positive Polly Mindset is more of a Positive Polly Grindset. It's not a singular choice, it is an active and ongoing series of choices that are made over such a length of time that they eventually become how you are perceived as opposed to a mood or a phase.

At this moment I am not very Positive Polly. I don't think there is a singular reason for it. I just am not. It is additionally frustrating when you are generally unhappy but you are not unhappy with anything in particular. I cannot point to a specific thorn in my side and say, "this is bothering me and without it I would finally be happy". There are obvious candidates for thorn-removal, but it would not make me happy overall. That's why I say depression is a choice: there's nothing truly weighing me down, so my general misanthropy at this moment can only be characterized as a deliberate effort on my part. Incidentally that further reinforces my mood, knowing that it is something that falls on me to deal with and is not anyone else's responsibility to maintain it.

I think for years there was a hope that if we got over the LFJ/Keffals hump there would be a big breakthrough and all my wildest dreams would come true. That did now happen. I have not yet mentioned this on podcast but we "won", effectively LFJ said on BlueSky that he was done going after the forum except for an occasional doxxxxing where he felt it was warranted, but aggressively pursuing the site is over.

Now that I am a huge winner, it is back to maintaining exactly what I was before the event. I'm not further ahead, I didn't climb a mountain. I reset my footing after a deliberate effort to make us fall. That's it. The bible verse quoted at the bottom of the forum for years now (James 4:7) says "resist the devil, and he will flee from you." It does not say "resist the devil and God will cosign your mortgage". No, for that privilege I owe to you - the reader of this message - and your patronage, which is also frustrating because I owe these community pages a lot of content for their months of support and instead I'm spending weekends eating cheese and writing NCMEC reporting tools. Which is done, by the way. Thank you.

There is an extraordinary amount of work ahead and it cannot be accomplished with a Negative Nancy. If only there was something to help with that.

The cheese is in, boys.

Wrångebäck

Sweden! As if it wasn't obvious from the name. Sounds like the type of cheese you'd need an Allen wrench for.

The stinkiest of the three. Supposedly the farm is a dairy farm originally founded by Monks precisely 800 years ago this year, but which abandoned cheesemaking during WW2 in favor of milk. However the current owner has "revived" an "ancient Swedish monk recipe" to try and increase profits. Must be working because I got it somehow.

Raw cow's milk with a washed rind. That's just part of the process during aging. Sometimes they leave it alone (sometimes until the shell is as hard as a rock) and sometimes they wash it with more bacteria or some sort of seasoning. They aged for 14mo and washed it.

I want to say it's a red bacteria because it has a specific odor. You can tell the difference between the red and blue bacteria if you eat enough. A lot of people say that the red is more similar to stinky feet but I really don't like those comparisons because I don't find it appetizing.

They suggest you eat it with salami, which came with. It does go well with salami. It's very pleasant, especially for an aged red. All these cheese have a kind of woody, walnut taste to them which fits the season.

Walden

The soft cheese and also the only one from America, this time from Sequatchie, TN. It was aged only 30 days which is impressive because it has a good flavor. I think they might cheat a bit because it's very salty, but that's fine. I really like salty soft cheeses. It helps with eating them as a snack. This is a single cream soft cheese and it is impressively fatty for not cheating and doing double cream.

The card says it has notes of "buttered white mushroom" which is a bit indulgent for a description. I can't imagine how snobby someone must be to sit down and come up with that kind of description for a cheese. It's gooey and salty and American, really, what more do you want? Basically describes me.

Brabander

Show stealer and I am almost convinced I have had this either from an earlier box or in Europe myself. It's from a small company in the south of Holland (Brabant is a region split present-day between b*Lgium and the Netherlands).

I have liked every goat cheese I have gotten. I think if I ended up ever trying to make cheese I would try to make a goat cheese. There was one particular cheese that was a blend, I think of Sheep and Goat, and I remember i fondly as one of the best things I've ever had.

Weird note that this uses vegetarian rennet. I'm sure the process of extracting rennet is horrific and I don't like thinking about it. The main thing keeping me from dedicating myself to making my own cheese is that you have to keep livestock pregnant to get milk and I don't want to dispose of unwanted offspring. It's just not in me. Not my thing.

This cheese is my thing though. If you've never had goat cheese go try it. It's very goat-y but aged cheese loses that a lot. It just becomes really smooth with a complex flavor. Probably because goats eat so much more than grass.

As always thank you very much for your support. It helps so much knowing where my baseline is each month, you can't even imagine how nice it is after years of not knowing shit.

Thank you, and I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!
Josh

P.S. I super-super-super promise that in December I will 100,00% do something really fun that most people will like. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.

P.P.S. Yes, those cookies are real.