Category: junk drawer

  • Useless

    Photo by Andrea Sun on Unsplash

    I re-opened a blog site from ancient history (2007-2008) and made it public again because one of my new readers requested access to what had been marked a private blog (or maybe not, but it is back “live” regardless).

    It is just a catalog of quotes and poetry that caught my fancy, namely of a Taoism or Zen Buddhism bent. There’s nothing terribly exciting there unless you are into those kinds of things, or if you want a peek into where my mind was about a year before I ended up choosing sobriety as a more enlightened path than wonton drunkenness.

    Check it out, if you are so inclined: Useless Tree

    I originally made the site private primarily to stop a reader from demanding new posts when I had decided I was no longer in the mood to be enlightened. And then I never got back to posting on it or making the site public again when that mood passed away.

  • Half-penny thoughts — 10sep25

    I started reading Jhereg by Steven Brust last night as part of my recent determination to create some air between my brain and various digital and social medias (streaming services including YouTube, mass-social media, news sites, video games, & etc.). I am annoyed with myself now that it has taken so long to read his writing aside from Freedom and Necessity.

    I hope that no one is offended when I say Jhereg is just the kind of pulp fiction I was looking for. It is not high literature, nor does it pretend to be. The novel is a fantasy tale of an assassin and mobster, Vlad Taltos, who happens to be a second-class citizen (because he is human) in a fantasy city full of thievery, deception and double-crossings. Plus, he has magic and a reptilian familiar.

    And, so far, it works — as a bit of a hard-boiled noir and fantasy crossover. A movie with similar DNA (except set in a futuristic Earth instead of a medieval fantasy world) might be Blade Runner.

    Like The Witcher books I’ve been re-reading, it has an easy flow to the storytelling that I think might be missing from a lot of the more recent writing out there. Even some of books I’ve enjoyed that have been written in the past 25 years seem to be trying real hard to be “good literature” when they are, at their base, pulp novels. Or, maybe, I’m just more tuned into penny dreadfuls, pulp fiction, and weird tales and would prefer to read that birdcage liner stuff.

    Sometimes I wonder if we put too much emphasis on structure, formulae and erudition, and not enough on merely telling a “ripping yarn”. I certainly don’t know. But I’m sure there are tons of opinions about the matter.

  • Random thought

    On whim and a lark, I added feta to my breakfast of steel cut oats, almonds and pepitas. I have added feta with mushrooms, sausages and eggs on my oats in the past, but was hesitant without the other savory ingredients.

    FYI: It tastes damn good, it is less work, and it is better for me than adding a tablespoon of chocolate chips when I don’t want to go through the hassle of frying up eggs, sausages and mushrooms.

  • 1%

    Photo by Jeff Wade on Unsplash

    I’m toying around with joining the less than one-percent.

    No, I’m not buying into a get rich quick scheme involving illusionary money (all money is illusionary, but that’s a topic for a different post). Or joining an “Outlaw” bikers club.

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  • Fallout

    Bass and electric guitar
    Photo by Juan Montana on Unsplash

    As I hit publish on the piece falling yesterday, I was visited with the memory of recording my very first song which, of course, had very little to do with the piece written yesterday.

    Honestly? I’d forgotten the event entirely. But fragments of the song came back and I couldn’t figure out until this morning why the song sounded familiar.

    (more…)