As someone who believes that blanket trigger warnings, coddling, and misinformation are hurting us as a species, and as someone who is anti-tribalist, I am going to gamble here on you reading this through, and maybe asking me questions if I am unclear. It is only out of sincere feelings of respect that I choose … More On religion, social media, and self censorship
I’m thinking of giving up social media again for a month soon – this is something I do periodically for my own mental health but wow, today, was a pain. CAVEAT: If you continue reading you will find my opinions – reasoned ones, I’d like to think, but still my opinions. Some of them are … More Possible break notice and micro-rant
Being able to see and hear and touch and taste and smell all of those things for themselves. Being able to turn them in the light and sneeze at the dust upon them or smell the lemon of the furniture wax. Too many writers make the mistake of just telling people that it is raining … More NaNoWriMo VP 5 – It takes senses to make sense!
Shifting temporal gears here, medieval fantasy novelists, friends, you are also not immune. As someone who spent two years in the company of hard core Renn Faire artists and LARPers, let me assure you should really do some research into what your characters are carrying. Take it from me, you absolutely cannot swing a broadsword … More NaNoWriMo VP 3 – What’s In Its Pocketses, Part 2, FANTASY and Sword and Board.
So to begin with item one, in a rather famous dark cave a short little hobbit with hairy feet whilst riddling for his life once asked a seeming little monster with throat issues, “What’s in my pocket?” Okay, as a riddle this was unfair, and frankly Gollum should have called the sneaky, feelthy hobbit on … More NaNoWriMo VP 2 – What’s In Its Pocketses, Part 1
I just discovered that there is a person who thinks I was lying about making my own furniture because I was ignorant about wood glues. JESU IMMANUEL! Cultures have been making furniture without glues for literal millennium, but I am a liar because I don’t use/know glues. I am allergic to most chemical glues and … More Science!
As most of you know I am a huge fan of Dorothy L. Sayers and own everything she’s ever written, which of course includes the insanely literate and very well written Lord Peter Wimsey books. Wimsey, intellectual detective and Oxford History 1st, made a huge splash in the English writing scene way back in the … More Book review: The Attenbury Emeralds, Jill Paton Walsh
Below is a link to an essay I read today in the New Yorker dealing with a novelist and his lies. It resonates with me on many levels and raises some very interesting questions about race, culture, and identity in our modern age and very mixed American society. It is intriguing to me because the … More Some thoughts and questions about identity
So let’s talk about ethics here for a bit, okay? Well, ethics and morals. They are different despite the usage of both words as synonyms here in the US. Here is how I define the words for clarity. Ethics are the official rules, more or less, and morals, the unofficial ones more or less. And … More Do or do not? Sometimes trying is best.
Let’s talk Thanksgiving. I have been grousing all week because a global pandemic, food allergies, and so on were messing up my holidays; cussing about how I hated hanging out with my family because everyone would complain about the food, each other, and basically everything else. Today a couple of kids and their mom (Non-English … More Thanksgiving
EVOLVING MALE 