Category: junk drawer

  • Half-penny Thoughts | 12aug25

    Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

    I’ll admit it: I’ve been binging The Walking Dead again.

    If I want to pretend to be an intellectual, I’d say it was research into human nature in the face of an apocalypse. I have not recently seen evidence in real life that suggests that people will act differently than their fictional counterparts if they were faced with a zombie (or any kind of, really) apocalypse. Zombies in TWD might be the overt threat, but the real monsters are other people. The Witcher games and books, fantasy tales about a “monster hunter” mutant named Geralt of Rivia play the same tune. Horrifying creatures are a real threat, but the true monsters are us.

    (more…)

  • Half-penny thoughts | 07aug25

    Somewhere in Alaska, my photo

    My mind keeps going back to when I was driving through Alaska, Yukon and British Columbia. Not to disparage Alberta or Saskatchewan, but those landscapes were too “familiar”. Really, once you’ve seen one endless field of a particular crop, they all take on a similar character and we have a hell of a lot of examples of that landscape when you’re away from the river valleys in the upper midwestern states of North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin. My eye craved something different from what I could view a half-hour’s drive from home. And so, the last leg of my trip was not nearly as visually stimulating as the foreleg of the same.

    (more…)

  • Animals

    black bird perching on concrete wall with ocean overview
    Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

    On my recent road trip to help my friend Tara with her move — flying out to Alaska followed by a long drive down the Alaskan Highway and then down to Iowa — one of the things I hoped I would see was some of the wildlife… even if only via the moving frame of the car window. I wasn’t sure what exactly I might see that would be different than what I might see within the boundaries of my own state, but I was hoping to see something different.

    (more…)

  • Torture, pt 3

    close up photo of yawning cat
    Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com

    Well, you knew there was going to be more to this drama. The mouth pain fading off with the sunset was never an option.

    As of Saturday, my mouth was tender on the left side, but improving on a daily basis. I was all ready to blame my enflamed gums resultant from flossing and brushing malpractice by the owner (me) for my mouth hurting. Gradual improvements with diligent flossing and brushing supported the idea.

    I ate breakfast on Saturday and went to one of those wholesale clubs to stock up on food. One of the things I like to pick up as a diabetic’s alternative to candy are nuts to snack on when I feel a little peckish. So I picked up a variety while I was shopping to have around.

    (more…)

  • Leaving on a jet plane

    Photo by Lukáš Vaňátko on Unsplash

    I haven’t heard John Denver’s song in multiple decades (until today) and yet… It comes to mind for whatever reasons such things come to mind when I started to think about my impending road trip beginning about midweek. It doesn’t even fit with the theme in which the song was thought to be written for, which is generally how these things work. I’m not going off war, nor standing outside the door of a young beau looking for a last kiss before I leave, and I plan to be back home by the end of next week (so I know when I’ll be back again).

    (more…)

  • half-penny thoughts | 18jul25

    Image of a writing journal and a pencil.
    Photo by Dariusz Sankowski on Unsplash

    I visit plenty of places on the internet lately for or by writers and I recently encountered this strange theme on one site where all of the writers seemed to all be posting in the theme of “you’re a great writer, keep writing” affirmations for each other. Some were even pretty self-congratulatory (“yes, I like my own posts and I am not ashamed to”). Still others were of the “everyone here is the best writer”.

    Now… I’m not against encouragement. I’ve even partaken in it myself. But when it becomes a common, daily and reoccurring theme… I have the strong urge to pinch my nose and walk away from that kind of community. Even if it is well-intended community-building, it still smells like bullshit.

    Write, don’t talk about how great everyone else’s writing is (and god-forbid, don’t tell me how great you think your own writing is).

    What do you think?

    Am I just being a humbug? Or does it feel like a weird kind of phony? Do these folks really mean it? Or are they just saying it, hoping that others will pay it forward until it boomerangs back?

  • Torture update

    close up photo of yawning cat
    Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com

    Well, that went much more like I was used to in terms of experience before Annie showed up to make dental visits living hell.

    It has been five years since my last regular dental exam and cleaning. In spite of needing some pretty intensive maintenance on my teeth for staining, tartar and plaque, my gums were in much better shape than they had expected on Monday and I don’t need to come in for any additional “special” treatments for my gums. I have one surface cavity, which I suspected and is scheduled for repair, and a bit of a groove on one outward facing tooth that they are going to preemptively fill for cosmetic and protection reasons. Other than that? I’m golden.

    My pain appears to have been due to clenching and gum inflammation.

    Was it torture this time for my regular checkup?

    (more…)

  • Torture

    close up photo of yawning cat
    Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com

    I probably shouldn’t reveal this in public, but I think I found the torture that might push me over the edge and confess to being an accessory to John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Lincoln, should anyone want to force me to make that claim. I might even believe I was part of it, if someone were to focus on one tiny part of my body.

    No — not the lower unmentionables.

    Something much less in the manner of “naughty bits”. It would be: My teeth.

    Yes. My teeth.

    (more…)

  • Contact Spam

    Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash

    The title sounds like a communicable disease, doesn’t it? Anyhoo…

    Contacting me is changing around here.

    Just an FYI in case you have thought about talking to me about, well… anything really… one-on-one.

    I’ve decided against continuing to make the contact form available on my “about” page. For every single legit attempt to communicate with me, I get about fifty to a hundred spam contacts. Over the years, I’ve also had some very odd communications from folks as well.

    (more…)

  • half-penny thoughts | 03jul25

    Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash

    I seem to have puppets on the brain these past few days. In part, it has something (in part) to do with purchasing and playing a game that I wasn’t sure I would like. But that’s not the only thing prompting the ponders on puppets.

    (more…)