Category: junk drawer

  • Looks around, sees things

    I’ve been doing lots of navel gazing when I haven’t been writing Vengeance, My Heart, which is why my activity has diminished somewhat on the site.

    Some of it is getting around to coming up with a useful term and framework that I can hand people who ask me about my spiritual practice. I know, most folks are not clamoring for information here, so that isn’t the issue. But it does come up in conversations at times. And I’ve discovered that people prefer a tidy couple of words when it comes to answers of that sort rather than my rambling, ambling version of it (which is almost as much about what I am not as it is about what I am). Plus, it is time to settle down with it without sounding so darned intellectual about it.

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  • Sunshine Blogger Award

    The Sunshine Blogger Award is making the round again this year. Generally, I don’t participate as it is intended you participate when it has come my way (posting commented answers to the posed questions but not posting as a participant). However, Veselin, Natalie, and Sandy have all kindly nominated me to be a recipient in this round and I feel like I should act as part of the community rather than stand outside of it.

    Thank you, all three of you for the nominations. If I forgot someone who recently nominated me, please let me know so I can correct that.

    So, for the first time since these awards started circulating…

    Let’s do this thing.

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  • [Retracted] Potentially bad idea

    I decided to remove this post because I’m less interested in the conversation that I originally imagined.

    Please disregard if it shows up in your feed as the original post.

  • Suchness and Winter Words

    Maybe it’s the day.

    Or maybe I’m just done.

    Watched an old All About Eve video. It doesn’t matter which.

    We’ll use Wild Hearted Woman/Every Angel. Why not? It’s even got annoying credits running through the second song. And it’s cut off. Brilliant.

    “Michael, what am I supposed to take away from this?” you may ask yourself.

    Is it their best video? No. Is it something about All About Eve? Not really (I still adore Julianne, but that’s a personal problem — even therapy has given up on me there).

    It’s something intangible that I have no words for today. Lost little words Saturday, we’ll call it.

    Maybe… It is the suchness of those things… I’m tired of not feeling a suchness. In madness, there isn’t a suchness to grasp onto.

    Smile for me, roll your eyes. “Oh Michael,” you’ll say with exasperation, thinking you understand what I mean by this all. Except you probably don’t. Because the words were lost and we can’t find them in the snowdrifts and in the winter words of December. Shine bright, Lady Moonlight.

    Can you tell me: Are you lonely?

  • Page Added — Serialized Fiction

    While I know most readers view this site through the lens of WordPress/Jetpack Reader, I like to tweak with the site as I go along to make it more user-friendly for those who swing by to see things up front, close and personal.

    In preparation for having an anticipated longer-running bit of serialized fiction, I have created a landing page for those folks who don’t want to scroll though my posts to find individual episodes for a given series.

    Swing by and let me know what you think, if you are so inclined. It just so happens that I also added a navigation element linking to this page as well, in case, you know, you want to catch up with one of these stories.

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  • Me no likey the block likey

    Some days, you can’t win for the losing.

    In trying something out for WordPress on a test site, I saw a new block that I thought would solve a frustration of mine about the .org version of WordPress, where you have to force folks to click on the post title to “like” a post when they visit outside of Reader. I finally had a block to add to my front page for likes (on those short poems).

    Which is fantastic. Except… It doesn’t appear to be registering likes in the notifications on either of the versions of Reader (web or Jetpack App), which is where I keep track of such things. Which means the functionality is broken and I need to rework the site design to get back that functionality to where it should be.

    TARNATION!

    This is a consistent problem with the Jetpack plugin for WordPress. They push out a feature without really testing it prior to launch and it breaks things. Last year, it was the commenting system until an update. Other times, features don’t do what they are functionally designed to do. Reader regularly gets web updates that are headscratchers at best, and breaks Reader until someone can hotpatch it at worst.

    I love the folks at WordPress, but they really need to do a better job of testing their incremental updates before something goes live.

    Back to your regularly scheduled programming. I just needed a quick vent.

  • Twenty years of WordPress

    I wonder if I’m eligible for the Dyson bladeless fan or if that’s 25 years…

    [If not obvious, this is an example of my not-very-funny sense of humor. WordPress does not give out anniversary gifts as far as I am aware.]

  • ICE = State Sponsored Terrorism

    I cannot believe I am posting that another civilian was shot to death this morning in Minneapolis by Border Patrol or ICE. Details are scant at this time and I reject the official DHS account because they have been so willing to lie and manipulate the truth about so many things in the past 18 months.

    The current credible account is that the person had a 9mm with two loaded magazines. We do not know if he was acting violently towards anyone or not. We have conceal-carry laws in our city (with permit) — it is not known if he had that permit. DHS officials claim they were conducting a “targeted arrest”, but did not disclose if this person was the subject. In the past, those words have been described to account for detailing and arresting racially profiled people and an excuse for demanding citizenship papers.

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  • yes, Virginia…

    It is damned cold out there… (That’s in Fahrenheit, BTW).

  • Back to Tyria once again

    Warning: Videogame things ahead. Enter at your own risk.

    Full disclosure: I’ve been favoring distraction over substance lately.

    Some people find their escape going on exotic vacations to exotic places. Some people go out drinking and carousing with their mates. Some people watch paint dry.

    Me? I tend to lean into music or videogames when I need to escape.

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