Category: thinking

  • 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.

  • 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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  • Half-penny thoughts | 29aug25

    Takes one to know one, absolutely… But I’ve grown weary of the cynic.

    It’s easy to be a cynic. It takes almost no effort at all to be one. Decide that the world is shit and there’s simply nothing that can be done about the matter. People who have a more positive spin on things are Dreamers and Sheeple. Those “in on the secret” walk into an echo chamber of like-minded cynics and we see a devil hiding under every bed. And, in that echo chamber, we tell each other that the devils are in cahoots and they are out to get us. To make matters worse, those devils are also between the sheets and every bed has multiple sheets and, just because those sheeple can’t see them doesn’t mean the devils aren’t at work making the world even more shit than it was to begin with. In secret. Then we remind each other: if you are not with us, you must be against us and you have therefore self-identified as The Enemy.

    What claptrap.

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  • For better or worse

    standing stones
    Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash

    The old notes I found have gotten my thoughts pointing back in the direction of those kinds of studies again. This is probably obvious to some of you. While it can be difficult to find reliable, scholarly texts on the matter, I find that I learn something new almost every time I read the few texts out there that are supported by scholarship. And there is always those untapped journal articles out there that are less about meeting sales quotas than they are about serious scholarship.

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  • Half-penny thoughts | 20aug25

    Photo by Dmitry Vechorko on Unsplash

    I am on the drift again. The wending roads beckoning from my within, an untethering from my abouts.

    Though the weather is still too warm still for such things, I drew on my fleece jacket, pulled up the hood around my face and over my head as I walked from car to my once-a-week-office-space and felt at home within the folds of fabric. My bare legs incongruent with the jacket over my torso, but I could care less. I used to half-jest that I was made for kilts — my legs have always been too warm and I still wear shorts at home in the winter when everyone else wraps themselves in thick blankets.

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  • Half-penny thoughts | 14aug25

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

    I have problems with the logic behind the pithy advice that in order to be a great writer, you must read. Voraciously. I know Stephen King has been credited with saying something along those lines, and I’m pretty certain he isn’t the first author to give such advice. [Oh no! Nobody Author dares counter the prevailing wisdom of the Almighty Stephen King! Heresy!]

    I mean, I think that might be partially true if you are looking to emulate a style, a genre or an author. I will submit that you should be well-read in order to know how others write — as long as when you have done so, you read or have read with a critical eye. Reading only eye-candy and consuming to consume will not make anyone a great writer. But I question the concept that the reading requirement is a persistent prerequisite for writing great things.

    It is probably a good thing that I have no ambitions for greatness. I’m quite alright just writing and enjoying the act of writing. Happy about it, even. So there’s little risk of greatness coming from my little corner of the world. I honestly should let those striving towards greatness deal with this question and not worry my pretty little head about the matter.

    But I’m not convinced being a constant reader necessarily is a requirement towards being a great writer. Especially if you want to be a writer that wants to be the pathfinder type. To boldly go where no one has gone before, or some such thing. Or the subversive, where you need to have enough freedom apart from classic tropes to break them while still remaining familiar with them. I can see several other types of writers who could benefit from not “reading when they aren’t writing.”

    When wisdom seems to not stand up to scrutiny, I get all nervy and bothered and I end up saying something.

    Am I off the mark? Probably. But I remain unconvinced that the wisdom that a writer must read as part of their formula for greatness always holds true.

    I know… I’m all duck and cover after this post. Especially after invoking and questioning the King of Horror’s holy gospel.

    Your thoughts?

    Be gentle as you tear me a new hole. I break easy.

  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • judgment

    i  swear
    i always intend
    to get out more
    meet new friends
    do new things
    but—

    peopling terrifies me now
    when every word or action
    is a litmus test to
    determine tribal
    affiliation

    it seems more sensible
    to stay at home
    and not subject myself
    to the world’s
    casual judgment

  • 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.

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