Fantasy

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Let airplanes circle screaming overhead

After my little test yesterday of the “writing a blog post directly on the app related to my WordPress account”, I considered writing this morning’s post directly on that app, just to see how it went.  However, I don’t yet know how to keep track of my word count on that app*, and I don’t feel like doing any trial and error exploration this morning‒not of that, anyway.

So, I’m writing this instead on the usual Google Docs app.  Google Docs has the advantage that when I write this document on my phone, it automatically saves to my Google Drive, and I can then readily open it up on any computer that has an internet connection.  That’s fairly handy.

Of course, it means that I’m putting many eggs in the Google basket, but for these purposes, I’m okay with that.  Also, when it comes to phone apps, Google Docs is so far the best word processor I’ve tried, as far as interface quality goes.  The same cannot be said for the desktop app, but it’s perhaps better than it used to be.

I don’t really like to leave my fiction in Google’s hands if I can help it.  I like having a hard copy, so to speak, of my fiction writing.  So far, except for those which were written with pen and paper for the first draft, all my fiction has been written on MSWord (and even the handwritten ones were completed on Word).  I used to recopy each file onto a thumb drive after a day’s writing, in addition to keeping it saved on my mini lapcom, so I knew I had at least two up to date copies.  Then‒once it became a thing‒it would also auto-save onto my Microsoft OneDrive.

The inception of the latter made me think that maybe I could write everything on the Word app for smartphones.  It auto-updates in a fashion similar to Google Docs.  Alas, it’s not nearly as fluid and seamless as the Google app.  If it were, I would probably use it, although‒the nature of Microsoft accounts being what they are‒I wouldn’t be able just to pull it up on the work computer, since it uses a different (boss-related) Microsoft account.  So, I would have to send a file as an email or something no matter what.

I’m sure there are ways around that‒or, well, there may be ways around that‒but the phone app for Word just is too cumbersome for now.  It’s not worth the effort.

Sorry, I know this is probably dreadfully dull to all of you.  I’m impressed that you’ve read this far.  You may know, I guess, that I don’t plan these posts out ahead of time, I just spew out whatever comes into my head.  If you find it tedious or infuriating, just imagine how I feel!  You, at least, could always navigate to another website.  What am I supposed to do?  I can’t even get away from myself by sleeping most of the time.

Anyway…

I’ve been doing a little bit of rereading of some of my fiction recently.  For instance, yesterday afternoon, while waiting for my train, I finished rereading The Chasm and the Collision.

I still like it.

I have a hard time feeling good about things that I do (and am) but I think CatC is a good story, and I think its world is interesting and that the characters are good and so on.  I think there are probably a lot of people out there who would like it.  And, like I mentioned sometime earlier this week, it would be really cool to encounter fanfiction based on it.

Alas, I am not good at self-promotion.  I don’t like myself, so it’s hard to find the will to promote my work, even when I like the work.  It’s quite dispiriting, and the fact that I can only hold myself, and my nature, responsible for it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow that bitter pill.

Now I’m rereading Unanimity: Book 2, though I’m not sure if I’ll read it all the way through to the end.  That’s another book that I think is good, though it is long, and some of the characters aren’t as likeable as in CatC.  Of course, they’re not supposed to be likeable, when they’re not.  It is a horror story, after all, and in many ways it is one of my two most horrifying stories.  Weirdly enough, those two most horrifying stories are my longest and my shortest works.

On the other hand, my sister recently pointed out to me that‒ironically‒my most lighthearted story is The Vagabond, which is a sort of old-school, gonzo horror story.  She’s right.  I guess that lightness shows that I wrote it (originally) while in college and med school.

The heck with it, all of my stories are good.  Some are better than others, and different people would surely prefer different ones, but I think they’re all pretty good.  Even the stuff only published here like Extra Body (which is complete) and Outlaw’s Mind and The Dark Fairy and the Desperado (those two are not complete) are good.  So read them.  Read all of my stories.  Tell your friends and families and even your enemies and strangers about them.  Spread the word far and wide across the land.  “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juice bone”.  Okay, well, maybe not that last bit, but do get the word out.

Thanks.

Okay, well, tomorrow I work, so expect a blog post tomorrow, whether you like it or not.  I may do another test post this afternoon if I get a bit bored, mainly to see if I can sort out the word count stuff on the app for WordPress.  If so, I’ll post it.  If not, of course, I won’t.  It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?

I hope you have a good day.

*I need to keep track of that because I can sometimes get quite carried away.

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Had I but pens enough, and time…

Here we go again, again.  It’s Monday‒the last one in April this year‒and I’m writing another effing blog post.

I keep trying weird little things in the hope that they engender or otherwise encourage something positive in my life.  For instance, after briefly using a blue Bic® Round Stic™ pen on Friday, I realized that I had on some level missed writing with them.

I wrote Mark Red and The Chasm and the Collision, and the “short story” Paradox City all with blue and/or black medium Bic™ Round Stic® pens.  These were the only ones available through commissary up at FSP.  After a while, the guys who did tattoos would just give me new ones to use as long as I gave them back when empty/traded an empty one for the new one, so they could use them to make tattoo guns, and I went through such pens pretty quickly.

I thought to myself (since I have trouble thinking to anyone else*) that maybe if I started using these pens regularly again, I might help give myself the energy to start doing some new fiction writing.  So, I ordered a box of them, which is at least quite inexpensive, and I have one in my pocket now.

It’s a fairly childish notion, perhaps, but just because something is childish does not mean it’s wrong or bad.  Adults get rid of too many childish things‒sometimes on the advice of effing Saul of Tarsus of all the pathetic losers to whom to listen‒and adopt too many “adultish” things that are no more sensible, not as rewarding, and are reliably productive of negative outcomes.

Of course, some childish things do need to be left behind.  Ideally, one does not want to keep believing in Santa Claus or monsters in the closet or that stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back any longer than one must.  Wetting the bed is also worth stopping as early as one can.

But it can be good for one to keep asking questions about how things work and what they are and what they do and how they got to be the way they are, and being delighted in seeing and learning new things, and enjoying simple games and going outside and stuff like that.

Anyway, I doubt this particular choice of pens will actually get me to write any fiction again, but maybe it will at least feel good to use them again for a while.

As you know, I have at least a few stories, such as Outlaw’s Mind and The Dark Fairy and the Desperado that I have started that I’d like to finish, and I have some other stories on the back burner that I’d like to start and write.  If I could just find a patron to support me while I write, so I didn’t have to do anything else, I could probably do it.  But despite its name, even Patreon doesn’t really work that way.

People who support “creators” on Patreon pay regular, specified amounts and expect regular, piecemeal output (like daily blogs, for instance, though being the intellectually stunted populace that we are, people more often seem to want video stuff).  If I put up a Patreon, or a “Go fund me” thing (whatever the proper term for that is) I doubt that I would get a lot of people supporting me and just waiting while I work on a long form writing project.

If anyone wants to do that, and is able to do it, let me know.  Just remember, I’m slightly paranoid, so I will probably suspect some scam at first if you approach me‒unless I already know you, of course.

All of this is really just fantasizing, obviously.  I might as well request that the person who wants to be my patron for writing fiction is also a beautiful woman who is just my type (whatever that might be) and who wants to be in a long-term relationship with me.  Oh, and also, she owns a dragon, as well as an FTL spaceship.  Hey, maybe she’s a Time Lord and has her own TARDIS!

Actually, if I had the use of a TARDIS, it would probably distract me completely from writing fiction.  But I probably wouldn’t spend as much time (har) just traveling and having adventures as most of, for instance, the Doctor’s companions do.  I would want to learn how this technology works!

I don’t understand why none of the people who enter the TARDIS and gape at the whole “bigger on the inside” thing don’t right then and there ask how it works!  (Occasionally some do so, rather halfheartedly).

And when the trite little, dismissive answers such as Nardole gives are offered, they should say, “No, no, I mean how does it actually work?  What is the science and technology involved, how is it carried out and maintained?  What is the physics underlying it, how was it discovered, how was it harnessed?  Do you have any primers on that, any online courses, any textbooks, even any ‘how does it work’ for kids books?  And for that matter, how does the time stream and everything work, how is it traversed, what is the physics behind the functioning of the TARDIS?  We’ll get to the biology of regeneration in due time, but I want to understand all this.  To Hell with going and fighting Daleks or whatever, you can literally do that whenever you feel like, because you have a time machine!”

I guess it wouldn’t be a very fun show, just to watch someone studying Time Lord science and technology, but in real life, if I had access, I like to think that’s how I would spend a lot of my time.  And I think I think correctly.

All right, that’s enough stupid fantasizing for today, wouldn’t you say?  None of those or any other good things are likely to happen to me (some are far more probable than others, but none are worth betting on).

I am much more likely to keep developing new and harder to control pain and more frequently recurring and persistent pain and greater and greater frustration and despondency and depression until finally, at long last, it kills me.  Then, at least, everyone in the universe overall will be just a little bit happier.  On average, anyway.

*Though in a certain sense, this blog is an instance of me thinking to other people.  But that requires the other people to be active participants, and it certainly cannot be done all day every day or any such thing. 

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What do we call a day on which we bread and cook things in hot oil?

It’s Friday.  It’s also pretty cold here in south Florida; it’s about 44 Fahrenheit right now.  We are now just over halfway through the month of January in 2026.  Yesterday we were just under halfway through.

Actually, no, that’s not really correct.  Since January has 31 days, the 16th (today) should be considered the median day.  There were fifteen days before this, and there are 15 days after, and there is this one day in the middle that stands alone.  So, maybe I can reasonably say that we are now rather precisely halfway through January, or at least we will be at noon.

Enough of all the date and number nonsense.  I’m probably the only one here who enjoys or even notices such things.

With respect to anything else, “enjoyment” is an even bigger question.  I did spend a bit of time yesterday watching some of the rather nutty inventors/amateur engineers on YouTube making and testing various odd devices, including some particularly nifty ones, such as various kinds of homemade flame throwers.  I’ve made homemade flame throwers myself, with varying degrees of success, so it’s nice to learn from the successes and failures of these other people.

It’s briefly amusing, but that’s about it.

I didn’t do any more problems on Brilliant dot org yesterday.  I’ll try to do some today.  But so many things distract me and get in the way, and work is not the only issue.

Mainly, I think the issue is that I am mentally exhausted.  Work contributes to that, of course, but not as much as my chronic insomnia, which is no better than ever.  And, of course, there is the dysthymia, which I think is officially designated now as “chronic depression”.  I guess that’s a more straightforward term, and I cannot deny that it is fairly clear, but I like (the word) dysthymia better.  The “dys” part carries the very sharp, ancient-world imprimatur of things going wrong, of shit not working properly, as in dysfunction, dystopia, and so on.

Believe me, there is shit that is not working properly here in this head.

Speaking of working and not working, the office will be open tomorrow, I hear, but I don’t yet know if I’m going to work or not.  That will probably depend on what my coworker(s) are doing.  I guess if I am working I will write a post in the morning.  I don’t think it will be a happy one.

I tell you, that high-rise, fancy balcony room (with king sized bed) in the fancy hotel in downtown [name redacted] near me is looking more and more enticing.  The daily rate is not very expensive, even on the weekend‒especially if you’re not going to have any expenses at all afterwards.  I guess I’ll keep that option in mind and keep checking the rates online for the nonce.

I don’t know why the nonce wants me to keep doing that, but so it seems to desire.  I do a lot of somewhat irrational things for that annoying nonce.

Okay, that’s enough of driving that particular joke into the ground.

I am still having trouble calming my mind without making myself more depressed.  Still, I have to admit, depression (in general) is somewhat preferable to extreme tension and (mainly social) anxiety, especially because, in me, anxiety presents as hostility, sometimes global and even cosmic levels of hostility.  Chronic pain doesn’t help that particular set point, of course.

I’m reminded of two different movie quotes, the first regarding fear and its consequences, from The Phantom Menace, spoken by (the criminally overrated) Yoda:  “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”  I always want to reply to that with, “Yeah…it leads to the suffering of the people who pissed me off.”  But that’s not very constructive.

The other quote comes from the (criminally underrated) movie Dragonslayer, when the old wizard, Ulrich, describes Vermithrax (the dragon) with the words, “When a dragon gets this old it knows nothing but pain, constant pain.  It grows decrepit.  Crippled.  Pitiful.  Spiteful.”

I feel you there, Vermithrax.

Incidentally, I’m not sure I understand the reason for the periodic eating of individual young virgin girls; that doesn’t seem to be nearly enough calories to sustain a giant, flying reptile that breathes fire.  I guess magic must be involved somehow.  And if the energy required for survival comes from some magical field, maybe food is only needed to provide raw materials but not to fuel metabolic activity.

I’m probably overthinking this.

I could use some magic now and then, I can’t deny it.  I don’t mean “magic” such as stage magic, though when I was little I got kind of into that stuff for a while, and I had several different books on how to perform magic tricks.  I mean “real” magic, like Harry Potter or Doctor Strange or what have you.  Of course, if such things existed in reality, they wouldn’t be “magic” except perhaps for nostalgic reasons.  They would be science.

I have long been irritated by the fact that there is no real “science of magic” in the Harry Potter universe.  They have all these classes about doing magic and so on, but as far as I can tell, even someone like Dumbledore (or Hermione) doesn’t get into the fundamentals of magic, the physics of magic, if you will.

But there has to be such a thing, of course.  Clearly the magic there has laws, it’s not just a “make a wish” kind of magic.  There must be a dynamics and kinematics and so on of magic.  But even the things they supposedly investigate in the Department of Mysteries don’t seem to have anything to do with fundamental magical laws.

Again, I’m probably overthinking things.

It’s a problem a lot of the time, and it often gets in my way.  I refer you to my point above that depression is probably better than the anxiety, tension, and hostility that seem to be my other option(s).  Maybe I should just lean into my depression, stop trying to be upbeat in any way, stop cracking jokes or even watching or reading comedy, stop trying to talk myself out of certain feelings, CBT-style, but rather just embrace and embody all my nihilism and pessimism and self (and other) loathing.

I don’t know if I can do it.  Still, it might be worth a try.  It’s hard to see it making things much worse.

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Discussions of my “first draft” styles and a bit of shameful self-promotion

I wrote yesterday’s post on my miniature laptop computer‒what I call a “lapcom” if you remember, and even if you don’t‒and today I am writing this on my smartphone, because I didn’t feel like lugging the lapcom when I left the office.  It’s not done deliberately (by me), but I am curious about something.

You see, to my surprise, yesterday’s post appears to have been rather popular and successful.  I say “to my surprise” because to me it felt rather disjointed and erratic and like it didn’t go anywhere.  I’m not sure why that is or to what it is in response, or indeed, whether it was merely a fluctuation in a chaotic system and had nothing whatsoever to do with any particular thing I had done.

Still, as you may know, I do feel that I write differently when using different tools for doing it.  On the lapcom, I tend more easily to run off at the page, if you will, because typing on a word processor is just so easy and natural for me.  That doesn’t necessarily make the writing better, though.  I fear that I get too verbose sometimes.

And, of course, writing on the smartphone is less fluid, more cumbersome.  It also tends to exacerbate the arthropathy in my thumbs, for what are probably obvious reasons.

Pen and paper‒for first drafts, anyway‒ is certainly my most long-standing method of writing, and I don’t think I tend to get quite as carried away with that as with typing.  I suspect, but don’t by any means know for certain, that the things I write by pen and paper‒the fiction, at least‒are somewhat better, or at least more fun, than what I write on either a phone or a computer.

Here’s a bit of a rundown.  The following stories I wrote by hand in the first draft, having no other options:  Mark Red, The Chasm and the Collision, and my long short story Paradox City.  I also wrote my stories House Guest and Solitaire with paper and pen, the latter in one sitting, the former way back in high school.

I wrote the first draft of Son of Man at least partly on a very small smartphone that I really liked.

The Vagabond is a bit of a mixed bag.  I started it while at university, and finished the first draft while in med school.  Part of the first draft was written by hand (i.e., with pen on paper) but most of it was written on a Mac SE using the good old word processing program WriteNow.  Does anyone out there remember that one?

The rest of my stories, at least the published ones, were written on mini laptop computers (well, some here and there would have been on full-sized ones) from the beginning.  Most notable of these, perhaps, is Unanimity, which is very long.  But many of my “short stories” were written on regular keyboards, including the other two stories in Welcome to Paradox City, and my “short” stories, Prometheus and Chiron, “I for one welcome our new computer overlords”, Hole for a Heart, Penal Colony, Free Range Meat, and In the Shade, the latter of which‒like House Guest‒appears only in my collection Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities.

Oh, right, and of course Outlaw’s Mind, Extra Body, and The Dark Fairy and the Desperado have all been written (so far) on the lapcom.

If anyone out there has read a sampling of some of these, or all of them, and can give me any considered feedback on any overall difference in quality between the means of writing, pros and cons, I would certainly appreciate it.

And if any of you haven’t read any of the above, well…what are you waiting for?  If you’re a fan of fantasy/sci-fi/horror, you might like some or all of my stuff.  If you’re not sure where to start, by all means, I’ll give you recommendations based on your personal preferences, if I can.

I suspect that The Chasm and the Collision would have the broadest popular appeal, especially for people who like the Harry Potter books and similar stories.  Son of Man is probably my purest science fiction story, but this is not “space opera” type science fiction.  “I for one welcome my new computer overlords” is basically science fiction*, too, in case the title didn’t clue you in.

Everything else is horror of one kind or another.  Most of my horror is supernatural in one sense or another, and I veer into the borders of Lovecraft’s universes in at least two stories**.  Mark Red is supernatural and in some senses horror-adjacent, since it involves vampires and so on, but it’s really more a teen/young-adult supernatural adventure, a story originally intended to be a manga.

My darkest story has no supernatural elements in it at all.  That’s Solitaire; it can be had in stand-alone form for Kindle, and it also appears in the middle of Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities.

Well, that’s been about as much self-promotion as I think I’ve ever done here before.  I didn’t really intend to do it, but once I got going on discussing my various story drafts, it just seemed to go that way.  I hope I haven’t been too insufferable.  I’m really not a raving egomaniac, though I may be some other type of raving maniac.

I hope you all have a good day.

*And I guess Extra Body is sort of light-hearted sci-fi.  It’s even somewhat comical, as my story If the Spirit Moves You is a sort of supernatural comedy (expect no laugh-out-loud moments, though, since they are dry comedy at most).

**The Death Sentence, which appears in Welcome to Paradox City, and In the Shade, mentioned above and in my other collection.

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One of a new pair o’ digms

Hello again.  This is hopefully going to be the first event in a new pattern of behavior in which I write blog posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Saturday and write fiction on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  The future is always in motion, of course, at least from our “worm’s eye view” of the universe without any access to enough information (let alone computing power) to make us anything like Laplace’s Demon, so things may not turn out according to plan‒but it is the plan.

I used the MS Word app on my phone to take a look at Outlaw’s Mind yesterday, just to see whether it looked like I might want to work on it again sometime.  I think it might benefit from eliminating the opening portion, which has an adult Timothy Outlaw approaching what will be (according to the original story idea) the climax of his tale.

I wrote this based on a story idea that I had written down in my “Story Ideas” file (appropriately enough), and the rest of the tale took off from there.  But I think‒perhaps‒that it has changed into a slightly different story than the opening idea, and I think it might be better if I just throw that little concept away and focus instead on the account of Timothy’s difficulties with rage and his exploration of his mind and its nature and the real or imagined horrific forces that plague him.  For one thing, this story connects with ideas that involve the larger Omniverse of my stories, including everything from The Chasm and the Collision and my potential story Changeling in a Shadow World, all the way back to my first completed (and now lost) book, Ends of the Maelstrom.

I like the process and concept of joining disparate fictional universes together, as in Stephen King’s whole Dark Tower concept, to say nothing of the (earlier) multiversal connections in comic books and graphic novels such as, for instance, Marvel/DC crossovers, and even, on a less “meta” scale, the merger of Asimov’s Foundation novels with his robot and empire novels and so on.  I’ve certainly done this on smaller scales myself already; careful and committed readers of my stories (if such people exist other than I) will know that the world of Unanimity is the same as the world of Hole for a Heart.

I guess that’s all still up in the air in many senses.  Extra Body, the story I’m ostensibly working on “now”, has some references‒highly speculative ones‒to a particular world of light-hearted, classic sci-fi.  It will be a rather nerdy sort of speculative connection, but I have no trouble with that.  I am certainly a nerd.

In other news, I did indeed walk to the train station again this morning, and I feel reasonably well, physically.  Yesterday I walked a total of about seven or eight miles, roughly, and I feel fairly okay.  I considered walking back to the house from the train in the evening, but my boss‒quite correctly, I think‒warned me against overdoing it.  This is quite sensible.  I think for most of this week I will stick with just the morning walk, but then next week I intend to add the return journey and eventually work my way along from there.

As for sleep:  well, I didn’t seem to get any worse a night’s sleep than usual, though it wasn’t particularly better.  I still started waking up very early, but knowing that I was going to be walking allowed me at least to put a decent spin on that fact, since I could just tell myself that, if I was unable to go back to sleep, I would just get up sooner and start walking sooner.  I did finally leave about five minutes earlier than yesterday, and I took a slightly different route, just to keep things fresh.

Yesterday while walking I listened to the audiobook of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, volume 1, whereas today I listened to some of Sean Carroll’s latest AMA podcast.  I highly recommend this; it’s both enjoyable and educational.  In the book, yesterday, I had to rewind and relisten to portions a number of times when I realized I had zoned out on some things he said (or wrote).  That’s fine.  It helps me learn better.

I wish there were an audio version of Quantum Field Theory, as Simply as Possible, and some others.  I suppose I could offer to do the audio myself, and by doing it, would learn the subject better.  It’s something to consider.

We’ll see.  I’m going to call this to a halt for the moment because my train stop is approaching and‒funnily‒I’m dozing off while writing.  That doesn’t happen very often, but maybe I’m getting into a relaxed state because of the exercise.  Either way, I don’t want to miss my stop, so this’ll be it for today.  Talk to you Thursday.

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Morgoth, Arda, redemption, morality, and blame (not the name of a law firm)

I was out sick yesterday, but the following is audio I recorded this morning about ideas of redemption and recreation in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien, especially as goes for beings and characters such as Melkor/Morgoth and Sauron and the like.  It’s a bit meandering, I fear, and it’s longer than other recent stuff has been, but please let me know if you find it interesting, and if you have any comments on the subject(s), or on such audio posts in general, I would be glad to receive your feedback. I’ll probably be turning it into a “video” eventually, for YouTube.  I don’t know, are those easier to partake of than the audio here on the blog?  Certainly the storage availability on YouTube is functionally unlimited, but I’m not yet anywhere near the limits of my personal storage here on WordPress yet, anyway.

This probably almost would count as a podcast, though I don’t know whether I feel comfortable arrogating that status to my measly ponderings.

Let me know what you think, please, and thank you.

Addendum:  Here is the link to In Deep Geek.  

I also highly recommend Nerd of the Rings.

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For the satirical blog says here that old men have grey beards

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday again, though it doesn’t feel like it should be, because I didn’t write or go to work on Monday.  I also haven’t been doing any significant walking since the end of last week, as I’ve been feeling quite physically low.

Unfortunately, my physical health doesn’t seem to be recovering much, yet.  I still have an irritating, dry cough, and my nose is stuffy, and I feel rather crappy.  But I slept well (for me) last night, getting almost five hours of sleep, and possibly a little bit more.  I didn’t wake up feeling particularly good, but I think that’s just mainly because I’m still sick.  It doesn’t seem like the sort of illness that will be life-threatening, but we can always hope.  After all, it’s possible for a simple viral upper respiratory infection to lead to a secondary bacterial infection that ends up becoming a lethal pneumonia.

Fingers crossed, everyone!

I haven’t shaved this week—I normally just have a sort of goatee (not a fancy one, just a straight, old-fashioned, The Master style goatee, as shown below), but occasionally I let the full beard grow out a bit.  It tends to be irritating because the spacing between whiskers on my cheeks is wider than on my chin and lips, and also the whiskers on my neck get irritating.  Obviously, it’s possible to muscle through that, but another problem I have is that, apparently, when I have a full beard I look quite amiable, and strangers start talking to me out of nowhere, much to my surprise and discomfort.

I never wore a beard at all while I was married.  My (ex-) wife thought my goatees looked “too aristocratic”, which I take to mean that they made me look vaguely villainous.  I was also in the Navy when she and I first met, and of course, I couldn’t wear a beard then.

I don’t know quite what the fetish is in the US armed services about being clean-shaven and having short hair; maybe it’s born from days of fighting lice, though being completely shaved would be better for that.  I’ve been shaved-headed before, and I found it quite pleasant in many ways.  If you roll out of bed late, for instance, no one can tell if you haven’t showered.  Apparently, I also look a bit like a real life version of Doctor Evil when my head is shaved, but less funny, more actually evil.  I’m okay with that.

My ex-wife also had an interesting attitude toward beards in general, which was her explanation for why she didn’t like them:  She always had the feeling that men with beards were trying to hide something.

Think about that.  If you’re a man who actually does grow a beard, that means you are genetically programmed with that secondary sex characteristic.  Without modern technology, once you hit puberty, you will start growing a beard.  Not all human males (or related alien species or replicants or changelings) grow beards, but for those that do, it’s just what happens when one doesn’t take other action, much as getting old is just what happens when one doesn’t die young.

What that means is that, when someone who would otherwise grow one does not have a beard, that is the more unnatural situation.  It requires regular (usually daily) effort to be clean-shaven for a post-pubescent man who grows facial hair.  That seems like a situation where people might be trying to hide something.  Specifically, they seem to want to hide the fact that they are adults, that they grow beards, and whatever comes with that.

Maybe they want to appear boyish and thus less threatening?  That couldn’t explain the military tendency, but that tendency is clearly only a modern affectation.  Traditional warrior classes tended to have beards.  Think of the Vikings, and the hordes of Genghis Khan, and the Spartans, and of course the many middle-eastern warrior peoples, from the Persians to the Ottoman Empire and beyond.

Also, of course, it’s pretty clear that every Abrahamic patriarch and/or prophet, from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed, all had beards.  Even King David almost surely had a beard by the time he whacked Goliath (it’s hard to imagine a hunting bandit, leader of a band of outlaws, being preadolescent and/or taking the time to shave every day).  Michelangelo made one heckuva statue of the young King as clean-shaven, but that doesn’t have to be any more true to life than it is literarily accurate to put pointy ears on hobbits and elves in Middle-earth*.  Also, of course, by most accounts, the illustrious (and sculpturious?) Mr. Angelo had quite the beard, himself.

It’s a bit weird, all of it.  Maybe the admiration for being clean-shaven harkens back to some not-so-secret preference of the medieval church higher-ups for prepubescent boys.

It’s probably at least partly just random, or at least stochastic, with the highly nonlinear equations of sociology producing weird eddies and fluctuations in local social mores that aren’t necessarily motivated by anything inherently logical.  But still, it seems rather silly to me for someone to think that men who simply allow their faces to do what those faces naturally do—i.e., grow beards—might be hiding something thereby.  It’s a bit like imagining that an apple tree is being slyly malevolent by growing fruit.

Still, the whole amiable appearance thing is a much better reason for me to avoid beards.  I feel very awkward and tense, engendering urges toward literal physical aggressiveness, when strangers talk to me.  Apparently, my tendency to grow “wizard eyebrows”, as my ex-wife described them (fondly) is not off-putting.  Perhaps when I have a full beard, I look like a kindly wizard too much.  Whereas with a goatee, I look more like a Warlock (which used to be my nickname in high school).

Now, if having a full beard encouraged beautiful, intelligent, interesting women to come up and talk to me out of the blue a lot, I might be less displeased (though I would almost certainly be at least as tense and anxious).  But that seems vanishingly unlikely.

Anyway, that’s enough nonsense for now.  I don’t have any idea what Shakespeare quote I might alter for the title to this post, but you will know by the time you read this.  Of course, yesterday’s title was an actual, full-on quote—from Gloucester, AKA the future Richard III, in the play Henry VI part 3—but that was unusual, and I did put quotation marks around it.

I’m sure I’ll find something adequate.  I have all the works of Shakespeare to use as a source for my material.  That’s a hell of a deep well from which to draw.

TTFN

the master worried about his future

*Think about it.  Tolkien went to great pains to describe how hobbits had curly hair on their heads and on the top of their feet, that they are smaller than the bearded dwarves (and that they themselves do not grow beards) and that they tend to be rosy-cheeked and stout around the middle.  But he never once said anything about their ears.  You would think, if their ears were meant to be pointy or otherwise remarkable, he would have specified this; he was an obsessively meticulous creator of his world, a tendency he self-parodied in his short story, Leaf by Niggle.  There is apparently some obscure reference in his notes that could be taken to be saying that his elves might have had slightly pointy ears, though I’m unconvinced by what I’ve read even of that.  Certainly in the Bakshi version of LotR, the hobbits and the elves all had “normal” ears, and that’s the way I have always pictured them in the dozens upon dozens of times I’ve read the books.  The ears are my only major complaint about Peter Jackson’s original trilogy.  I consider their presence an instance of pandering to the “broader” audience of people who aren’t actual Tolkien fans.

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It’s a day more poached or boiled than fried

First, the latest updates on the work situation:  it looks like I am going to be working tomorrow, as previously scheduled, because my coworker’s wife is still sick, but they can’t get next weekend rebooked or some such, so he will be working then and doesn’t need to ask me to switch.  Of course, there apparently exists the possibility that they will be going instead sometime during the middle of one of the upcoming weeks, but you know what?  I can’t keep worrying about this crap.  I haven’t had a “vacation” since I went up north when my mother died a few years ago, so it’s not as though I’m not due, anyway.

Vacations are something people in general enjoy with their families or significant others or some such, and I have no one around here with whom to go on a vacation.  And being just off work and being by myself around the “house”‒or more specifically, the one room in which I live‒is in many ways worse than going to the office.  So I don’t tend to take time off except when I’m sick and/or in an exceptional amount of pain.

I know, it’s an exciting life, right?  I shouldn’t share such titillating tidbits too much or people will shrivel up with envy.

Ugh, it’s sooooo muggy and humid and the air is so still today.  I’m dripping with sweat so much that it’s fogging up my glasses and it’s getting in my eyes, even though I’m just standing on the platform waiting for the train.  Oh, and the announcement says the train is boarding on the opposite side from its usual one, so there are roughly twice as many people.  At least they’re all quiet at this time of day.  Of course, the northbound and southbound trains arrive at very close to the same time, for this pair of morning trains, but presumably‒and based on past experience‒the people running the system are on top of that coordination problem.  I’ve never heard of any train collisions since I’ve been using the system.

However, apparently they’re more than capable of screwing up in other ways. My usual train arrived just now on its usual side of the tracks, and everyone who had thoughtfully noted the announcement and waited on the other side‒which included me‒had to scramble to get over to the train quickly.  Thankfully, the train waited, but it’s really bad that they did this.  I had to rush down the stairs after riding the elevator up to the bridge with about eight or so other people.  I thought it might have been good if I had tripped and fallen on my way down, but such a fall would be unlikely to be fatal; it would probably just hurt a lot.  I suppose if that happened I might have been able to sue the Tri-Rail people, but that’s not the sort of thing in which I’m interested.

I’m so sick of my life.  This is it; you’re reading about the most interesting things that happen to me.  In fact, this blog is the most interesting thing I do.  But it’s not very interesting, is it?  The stuff in between is worse.  And, of course, I could try to find other things to do and with which to distract myself (and I still do try to read books that keep my attention, almost desperately) but there is nothing that makes me feel like I want to do it.

I guess I should stop writing about this stuff, huh?  My psychological/neurological issues are pretty dull.  Yesterday’s blog was longer than usual, because I was dealing with a lot of weird and highly personal and distressing subject matter, but I think I’ll leave off on things like that.  No one really wants to read it or hear it, there’s nothing anyone can do to help me with it, apparently, and I’m tired of beating that stupid dead horse.  I’m tired of metaphorically shouting into the void with this blog.  When you shout into the void, it seems, the void shouts back at you, and when the void is shouting, you just get emptier and emptier yourself.

At least the shout of the void gives an inviting hint of pure silence that might be waiting there for you‒silence not just in literal noise, but silence in the mind, in the heart, in emotions and thoughts.  Oblivion is preferable, eventually, to cacophony.

Of course, as Sauron (in a vision of the eye) said to Frodo in the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring, “There is no life in the Void‒only death.”*  This is a bit contradictory, depending on one’s definitions.  Can there be death without life?  Was the universe “dead” for the billions of years that passed before life came into existence?  That doesn’t seem coherent to me, at least not the way I think of “death” as coming after life.

Mind you, if you define (or, rather, use) the word death simply to mean “lacking life” then I suppose the universe was dead, and in fact, almost all of it still is and probably will always be.

Maybe Sauron (as reimagined by Peter Jackson et al) just meant you can’t survive in the Void?  Perhaps he meant it was like a wasteland of sorts, a place barren of food and water, that holds only death for creatures that wander into it.  But no, that doesn’t make sense.  Sauron is one of the Maiar, and knows that he literally cannot die, though he can be reduced to a powerless, miserable spirit until the end of days (as he is).  Likewise, in Tolkien’s world, all men and elves and dwarves and hobbits and all those that are “kindled with the Flame Imperishable” do not die completely, though their bodies can die.  I assume that means that even orcs have an afterlife.

Anyway, enough.  Sorry to waste your time with my brain squeezings.  I should find something better to do, speaking of the Void.  In the meantime, I’ve got a headache from clenching my jaw, and I’ve written too much already.  Have a good day and a good weekend if you can.  I’ll be writing again tomorrow, probably.  More’s the pity.

*There is no comparable notion or connection in the books, and it’s hard to see why Sauron would speak of the Void.  Melkor spent much time in the Void both before Eä was even made and after, but he had been alone, and that was why he started to “think different” as they say.  Sauron, on the other hand, was originally a Maia  serving Aule; he wasn’t off in the Void with his eventual new master.  And, of course, Melkor was in the Void by the time of LotR, so there was life in the Void by then.

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But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me?

It’s Friday, September 22nd (in 2023 AD or CE…I don’t know what year it might be by Shire reckoning), and that day is the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, the primary characters of The Hobbit and of The Lord of the Rings*, respectively.  They are not close in age, though Bilbo had adopted Frodo as his heir.  In the first chapter of LotR, we find the two celebrating their mutual birthday, when Frodo is turning 33 and Bilbo is turning 111 (eleventy-one, as hobbits apparently say) with their combined ages coming to 144, a “gross”.  So, the age gap is 78 years, but it seems smaller because Bilbo’s life has been stretched by his ownership of the Ring.

An interesting thing to note (for me, at least) is as follows:  since 33 is clearly divisible by 3, and so is 111 (its digits certainly add up to a multiple of 3), then the difference between them, 78, must also be divisible by 3.  Which it is, of course.  78 is 3 times 26, 111 is 3 times 37, and of course 33 is 3 times 11 (which is, of course, 37 minus 26).  This also means that the combined total of 144 is 3 times 48, which it is.

That doesn’t work the same way in reverse, of course.  Just because the difference between two numbers is a multiple of 3 doesn’t mean the numbers themselves are (though if one is, the other is).  As a relatively extreme example, 137 and 149 are both prime, but their difference (12) is a multiple of three.  Obviously, no prime numbers (other than 3 itself) are multiples of 3, by definition.

On the other hand, the difference between any two primes, as long as neither of them is 2, is an even number, since all prime numbers larger than 2 are odd numbers (the even numbers all being divisible evenly by 2), and the difference of any two odd numbers is always going to be even.

Okay, sorry to bore you with all that.  I like trivia about numbers, and especially prime numbers.  I particularly like those primes that others disrespect, or at least I want to show them respect, as it were.  I think I’ve mentioned here before that I used to always try to put 13 gallons in my gas tank whenever I “filled it up”, back in the day.  It didn’t mean anything‒I have no suspicion that there are any mystical qualities to any numbers‒I just thought it was fun, to the point of my being disappointed when I couldn’t do it.

Anyway, today is a memorable day, at least for Tolkien fans (of which there are many), and tomorrow is the equinox, the start of Autumn in the northern hemisphere, and of Spring in the southern hemisphere.  Then, starting Sunday night at sundown, as I mentioned recently, is Yom Kippur.

So, this should be an auspicious weekend for embarking on momentous “journeys” of one kind of another.  But I’m stupidly going to have to wait, out of deference to my coworker.  He went home sick after lunch yesterday, but hopefully he will be in today**.  This is his weekend to work, and I have no desire to cover for him, because he obviously won’t be working next weekend, which would make three weekends in a row for me.

I’ve worked worse and harder schedules, of course, but I was younger then, and I had actual reasons for working and staying alive.  I was literally saving other people’s lives as well, and I was also relieving suffering, to the degree that I could.  Now, I’m a few decades older, and I have no particular reason to work even just to keep myself alive.  I’m not doing any good for anyone, least of all myself.  I’m almost certainly a net detriment to the people who have to interact with me‒this seems a fairly firm conclusion, given that most people have eventually wanted to get away from me, even people who love me, like parents and spouse and children.  I’m definitely not of much benefit to the world at large, either.

I plan to fast on Yom Kippur, which I usually do, though I’m not observant in any other way, anymore.  I think the fast is a useful, or at least interesting, thing.  Since it’s only 24 hours, it’s a full fast, meaning no food or water or anything else, though one is expected to take any medicine one usually takes.  The preservation of life supersedes all competing mitzvot.

Anyway, sorry, I’m being boring again, I think.  I meant to say that I may not write a blog post on Monday morning‒just as a little nod to the day‒or I may write one early, on Sunday, and put it up with a delayed publication time, so it will show up Monday morning.  Or I may just write one on Monday as usual.  It’s not as though I have any true, deep connection to any form of ritual or observance.  Why should I fool myself or anyone else?  I certainly don’t think any external, let alone supernal, aspect of the universe cares about my actions in any sense, or even about my existence itself.

I guess we’ll all have to wait and see what I do.  Maybe something will happen and take it all out of my hands.  That would be okay.  Or maybe I’ll lose my tenuous grip on what remains of my will to live and decide that I don’t care about inconveniencing anyone anymore.  I’ve spent a lot of time and energy in my life trying to make things as easy as possible for other people, and (as I said) to relieve suffering when I could.  It wears me out.  It has worn me out.  And it’s not as though it’s had much in the way of compensatory positive effects on my own life, though I guess I should never have expected to be rewarded or admired for things that were, in the end, my decisions carried out because they were what I thought I should do at any given moment.

The universe is uncaring, and humanity as a whole often instantiates that fact quite glaringly, though they do‒occasionally‒display behavior of a nicer, kinder type.  There often doesn’t seem to be enough of that aspect to go around, even on Earth, let alone on a universal scale, but then again, benevolence and beneficence are not substances, and there are no conservation laws concerning them.  They can, in principle, increase without limit.  They can also diminish and even vanish utterly.

If I had to bet on which I thought was more likely, all things considered, I would probably bet on the latter, but I would hope to lose.  I’m okay with losing things like that.  Hey, as the theme song from MASH notes, I’m going to lose at this game anyway.  So there’s not too much point, in and of itself, of trying to drag it out for its own sake.  It’s one thing if there are other variables, other pressures, other forces, other fields, other considerations‒those can make the game worth playing for as long as one is able.  But the game, in and of itself, is not necessarily an inherent good.

That was slightly cryptic, I guess.  Sorry.  I have a hard time saying clearly what I mean, partly because I’m often unsure, myself, and at other times because I simply can’t seem to express my feelings well.  Occasionally, I think I’ve done it reasonably well in my songs, like in this one, or this one, or cover songs like this one and this one and this one and this one.  But those don’t garner much of an audience***, so it doesn’t really matter, as anyone can see.

Enough!  I’ve already wasted too much of your time.  Have a good first day of Autumn tomorrow, enjoy your celebrations of Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday (you do celebrate it, don’t you?), and if you observe Yom Kippur, then g’mar chatima tovah and good Yom Tov.

bilbo frodo birthday adjusted

*Though, of course, while the title character of The Hobbit is indeed Bilbo Baggins, the title character of The Lord of the Rings is the villain, Sauron.  Just imagine if the Harry Potter books had been titled, for instance, He Who Must Not Be Named and the Goblet of Fire.  Actually, that’s not bad, is it?

**It turns out he will not.  He has some form of sinus infection.  When I got his text I actually started to cry a little; I hope he doesn’t call out sick tomorrow.

***Certainly nothing close to the size of the audience for The Rockford Files in its heyday.  Get it?  Garner?  Rockford Files?  Never mind.

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Moods and moons and musings on mythology and morality via Middle-earth

I’m mainly over my weekend gastroenterological difficulty, so physically I’m definitely doing better than I was.  That can’t help but bolster my mood at least a bit, though the elevation bears all the hallmarks of being a supremely temporary state*.  Perhaps you think I’m being pessimistic, but I know myself and my moods reasonably well‒although I will freely admit that it is impossible to be fully objective about such things, given their very nature.

It looks like the moon is very close to its full state this morning, so if it’s not truly “full” now, then it’s one day before or one day after.  If I were a werewolf, I suppose this would be bad news for people around me.  However, I clearly am not a werewolf.  Nor is anyone else**.

I’m also not one who follows all the supposed names of the full moons and all that.  There’s nothing wrong with it, and if paying attention to whether it’s a harvest moon, or a hunter’s moon, or a sun myung moon, or whatever, makes you happy, then do please enjoy yourself.  The whole “super moon” thing is a bit more laughable, though.  The difference in angular size between the moon at perigee and the moon at apogee is too small to be detectable by the naked eye.  Sorry.  Also, by the way, the fact that the moon looks bigger when near the horizon is not even an optical effect***, but is merely an optical illusion.

The weather is slightly more pleasant right now than it has been, because we have a good, strong breeze, thanks to Idalia.  Other parts of Florida are having much worse weather, with the aforementioned hurricane and all, but that’s hitting the northwestern coast of the state, and will cross farther north and east.  We are on the real outer periphery of the storm’s effects down here; we just have more wind than usual, some intermittent rain (not truly unusual) and the very nifty spectacle of the fast-moving clouds all traveling in the same direction, following their course counter-clockwise relative to the center of the storm, hundreds of miles away.

I guess, from a Tolkien-based mythological perspective, a hurricane is sort of a partnership/game between Manwë and Ulmo, though those two don’t ever really come across as overly playful, and I guess they probably wouldn’t willfully do something to cause grief to the Children of Ilúvatar.  That might be more Ossë’s thing; he was apparently associated with storms and whatnot.  Of course, most unfairly, Melkor gets blamed for all the negative stuff‒burning heat and bitter cold immoderate and all that‒but Eru himself plainly and clearly said that everything comes from him.  “Thou shalt prove but mine instrument…” and all that.

Really, Melkor is just a convenient scapegoat so that people don’t get ticked off at Ilúvatar, who gets the credit for the good stuff and gets to foist off blame for the bad stuff, even though he is the one responsible for all of it.  Indeed, he’s the only one**** who could be responsible.

From a certain point of view, Melkor is the being in Ilúvatar’s creation that suffers the most.  He is given the greatest gifts of knowledge and of power of all the created beings in that universe, but he is fated, by his creator, to be disconnected, to be alienated, to feel an emptiness that his brethren don’t seem to share‒he lacks something, he is different, his thoughts are unlike those of his brethren (I can sympathize), and that torments him into becoming the original Dark Lord, the supposed source of all evil in Arda.

But of course, as openly admitted by the being himself, Ilúvatar is the source of all evil in Arda.  It may be worthwhile‒perhaps the gain in beauty and heroism and triumph and courage gained by those who live in his creation more than makes up for the suffering caused by and to the evil creatures.  But those evil creatures are still victims‒perhaps the greatest victims.

Ilúvatar could just have repaired Melkor (and Sauron, etc.).  He could have shown them his wisdom, the error of their ways, could have cured their dysfunction.  But no, that would be boring; that wouldn’t make a good story.  How could he have a heroic and triumphant journey for Frodo and Sam without sacrificing the soul of Sauron to endless emptiness and loneliness and bitterness and fear and hatred, and finally to being blown away into the Void, to suffer there forever (or at least until Ilúvatar decides it’s time to remake the world)?

And let’s not forget Melkor, with his feet chopped off and his head chained between his knees, floating immortally in the Void, with no respite from pain and suffering, no treatment or correction for the flaws and lacks that made him what he was, that Ilúvatar put there to make him an instrument for devising things of greater beauty.  He’s the clay mold around a bronze statue, broken and cast away once the metal cools.

Melkor can’t die, can’t sleep, can’t even change his form anymore.  No wonder he has always hated and envied the favored golden Children.  No wonder he hates Ilúvatar.

Okay, that was a weird digression, and of course, it’s all fiction, though it’s great and wonderful fiction.  But it is a way of highlighting a conclusion that I think is inescapable:  if there is/were a universe created by an infinitely powerful, omniscient, omnipresent being, then that being, and that being alone, would be responsible for all suffering, for all evil.  Everyone else is just a puppet by commission or by omission.

Fortunately(?), there is no reason to suspect such a thing, and I give it quite a low Bayesian credence (though not, perhaps, as low as werewolves).  That doesn’t mean that “free will” and “blame” and “retribution” make any more ethical or moral sense than they would have made otherwise‒they don’t.  But at least we can all cut ourselves and the universe a bit of slack, all the while recognizing that we’re on our own, no one’s going to help us, and it’ll be up to us to sink or to swim…or, maybe, to try to swim but sink anyway.

I don’t know what I’m getting at, but thanks for your patience.  Have a good day, please, if you’re able.

*It was.  Even as I’m editing this, my mood is crashing.  I don’t think it was some manner of self-fulfilling prophecy, but even if it was, I don’t know what I could have done to avoid fulfilling it.  My nature is what it is, while I’m alive‒which doesn’t go a long way to making me attached to that state of existence.

**While, in principle, one cannot really assign absolute certainty to some given proposition, this is a case where my Bayesian prior‒if prior it really is‒is well above 99%.

***Unlike, for instance the fact that, due to atmospheric refraction, we see the sun in the morning before it would technically be directly in view without such refraction, and continue to see it longer than it is truly in line of sight in the evening.  That wouldn’t happen if the Earth had no atmosphere, but then we wouldn’t really care because we probably would all be dead.

****Apart from Tolkien (the author), but I’m approaching this from the point of view of Arda being real, so we’re not going to address that.  Of course, it is a fact that the bad guys in the story are used by the author to create beauty that would not exist if it were not for the hardships and struggles of the heroes.  I know all about this.  I’ve tortured the characters in my stories beyond anything any real people could ever experience.  I guess no creator of any but the simplest of things can ever be truly innocent.