Wednesday, September 5, 2018

28% of children in my birth year died of a preventable cause.

Twenty-eight percent.  Just shy of 1/3.
1,566,900 of them.
 In the USA alone.
One million, five hundred sixty-six thousand, nine hundred.
In just one year: 1989.
From a completely preventable cause.
1,566,900 is a very large number. To give it a little perspective, consider that the total number of US service members killed or wounded in the Vietnam war (1964-1975) was 243,523.
This means that more than a MILLION MORE children died in ONE single year, than all the United States casualties in the entire ten-year Vietnam war.
I just…thought you should know.
I try to keep things mostly sweetness and light around here…but I needed to share this with y’all. It’s something I don’t talk about much, but live with every day. 

Joy


As you live your life, you may ask yourself what you will remember in the future, what moments will stay with you and what will vanish...and I don't have an answer for you.

But this year I had the chance to look at a photo album with my grandpa. He probably hadn't looked at the album in 60 years, some of the people and places were hard for him to identify with certainty. The minute we turned the page to this photo, though, he lit up. "you put a firecracker in the tube, and then a rock, and it shoots the rock!" I'd swear he had the same gleeful look on his face that he had in the photo...eighty years later. 

Sunday, July 8, 2018

UFO Sighting...




So in around 1998 or so? I started an afghan. I was just beginning to learn to crochet and my stitch improved so much over the course of making it that it would not be flat in any way, let alone square. So I wadded it up and ignored it for 20 years. I now have better skills and was able to make it much flatter, if not much more square.

But now that it is over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life….
I wonder if the post of Dread Pirate Roberts is vacant...

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Heartsing

(Because why have a blog if I can't put up random stuff I wrote? This is the first piece of fiction I have ever written that I am both happy with and that did not cause me acute pain. For this I am indebted to one Wulfpig whose writing class is unlike any other.)
 
 -----

For Hobden,it was a day like every other day.
The forge by the ford in the Heartsing river was the same as ever, the smell of fire and horses and hot metal all pervasive in the June sunshine. The village was quiet in the mid-day heat, silent except for the sounds of contented livestock and the flow of water.

Business was slow. A few horseshoes, the odd armor repair for a wandering knight.
The small village barely supported its one smith, many people wondered why he remained at all. But Hobden's father had been a smith before him, and his father before him, as long as there had been a village there, and some men said as long as there had been a ford.

He looked out of his workshop, down the dusty, broad swathe of the main street, unable to shake the feeling that something was about to happen. The heat haze was making the false fronts of the few shops waver. Was it only the stillness of a midsummer noon that gave him the feeling that something dire was impending? His gaze wandered through the cluster of houses, past the steeple of the small church, following the road until it wound out of sight among the surrounding hills. There was nothing there, but he could not shake the feeling that he was waiting for something.

There was nothing there.

Nothing but a small cloud of dust. And a faint scream that was coming closer. And a larger cloud of dust behind that. A cloud of dust made by something unnaturally tall and broad, like a man but taller than any of the houses.

The small screaming dust cloud reached the far end of the village, identifiable now as one of the children who had been out watching the livestock. The townsfolk began to emerge from the shops and houses, wondering at first, then breaking into panic as they saw what was bearing down on them. Hobden could see the panic spreading toward him in waves. Everything on legs was running, trying to get away from the monster bearing down on them. Now he could see that it appeared to be an armored man. Only larger than any man could possibly be.

It was effortlessly, almost casually, wrecking everything in its path. First one house, then another was leveled; bludgeoned apart by the monster's metal fists. Fire ignited as more buildings were torn apart. Everyone was running.

Something snapped in Hobden's mind, and, hammer in hand, he began to run too.

Toward the giant.

It was a moment of blazing clarity.

This was what he had been waiting for.

Waiting his whole life.

.....

The story is that he ran up the side of a building, ran over the roofs and caromed off the church steeple before bringing down his hammer onto the giant's head in a blaze of lightning.

Whether the story is true, I cannot say. He appeared to have no memory of the incident when I spoke to him, years later. He only talked a little about his work, that business was bad, that the feeling had been growing on him lately that he was waiting for something.

What, he could not tell me.

 

Monday, May 26, 2014

Captain Haddock - from Abecedarian to Zapotec

We now present, for your pleasure, a more-or-less complete list of Captain Haddock's pseudo- expletives.
Please note that not all the combinations (i.e. "billions of blue blistered barbequed barnacles") are included, these are left as an exercise to the reader.



Abecedarians
Abominable snowman
Aborigine
Anachronisms
Anacoluthon
Anamorphic aardvark
Antediluvian bulldozer
Anthracite
Anthropithecus
Anthropophagus
Artichokes
Autocrats
Aztecs
Baboons
Baby-snacher
Bagpipers
Bald-headed budgerigar
Balkan beetle
Band of thugs
Bandits
Bashi-bazouk
Beasts
Belemnite
Big-head
Black beetles
Black marketeers
Blackamoor
Blackbird
Blackguards
Blistering baboons
Blistering blundering bird-brain
Blithering bombardier
Body-snatcher
Boneheads
Bootlegger
Bouganvillea
Bragging nitwit
Breathalyzer
Brigand
Brontosaurus
Brutes
Buccaneers
Bully
Bunch of rats
Cachinnating cockatoo
Cannibal
Carpathian bashi-bazouks
Carpet-seller
Caterpillar
Centipede
Cercopithecuses
Certified diplodocuses
Certified ignoramus
Cheeky
Chump chops
Coconut
Coelacanth
Coleoptera
Colocynth
Cowards
Crab-apples
Cro-magnon
Crooks
Cut-throat
Cyclone
Cyclotron
Dictatorial duck-billed diplodocus
Diplodocus
Dipsomaniac
Dizzards
Dogs
Donkey
Doryphore
Dratted animal
Drunken old ape
Duck-billed platypus
Dunder headed coconuts
Dunderheaded Ethelreds
Dynamiter
Ectoplasmic by-product
Ectoplasms
Egoists
Fancy-dress fascist
Fancy-dress Fatima
Fancy-dress freebooter
Fat faces
Fat-headed fire-raisers
Filibusters
Flaming jack-in-the-box
Flat-footed grizzly bear
Four-legged Cyrano
Fresh water swabs
Fresh-water pirate
Fuzzy-wuzzy
Gallows fodder
Gang of thieves
Gangsters
Gasbag
Gherkin
Gibbering anthropoids
Gibbering ghost
Gibbons
Gobbledygook
Gogglers
Goosecaps
Guano-gatherer
Guttersnipes
Gyroscope
Harlequin
Heretic
Highwayman
Hoodlums
Hydrocarbon
Iconoclast
Ignoramus
Ill-mannered savages
Imitation Incas
Infernal impersonations
Insolent porcupine
Interplanetary goat
Invertebrate
Jack-pudding
Jellied eel
Jellyfish
Jobbernowl
Judas
Kleptomaniacs
Klu-Klux-Klan
Landlubber
Lily livered landlubbers
Lily-livered bandicoots
Liquorice
Little goose
Little pirate
Little spitfire
Little wildcat
Loathsome brutes
Logarithms
Lubberly scum
Lunatic
Macrocephalic baboon
Mameluke
Megacycle
Megalomaniac
Merino lambs
Miserable earthworms
Miserable molecule of mildew
Misguided missile
Monkeys
Monopolizers
Monsters
Morons
Moth eaten imitation camels
Moth eaten marmot
Moujiks
Musical morons
Nanny goat
Nest of rattlesnakes
Nincompoop
Nitwitted ninepins
Numbskulls
Nyctalops
Odd-toed ungulate
Old alchoholic
Old witch
Olympic athlete
Ophicleides
Orangutangs
Ostrogoths
Paranoiac
Parasites
Patagonian pirates
Patagonian savages
Patagonians
Perambulating fire-pumps
Pestilential pachyderm
Pestilential parakeet
Phylloxera
Picaroons
Pickled herring
Pirates
Pithecanthropic mountebanks
Pithecanthropic pickpocket
Pockmark
Poisoners
Politician
Poltroons
Polygraphs
Polynesian
Prattling porpoise
Prize nincompoop
Prize purple jellyfish
Profiteers
Psychopath
Puffed up Punchinello
Purple profiteering jellyfish
Pyrographers
Pyromaniac
Raggle-taggle ruminants
Rats
Reprobate
Rhizopods
Road-hog
Ruffian
Saucy tramp
Savages
Scallywags
Scarecrow
Scoffing braggart
Scorpion
Scoundrels
Sea-gherkins
Sea-lice
Sealion
Second-rate son of a sword-swallower
Shipwrecker
Slave traders
Slubberdegullions
Son of a sea-gherkin
Squawking popinjay
Steamroller
Stool pigeons
Subtropical sea-louse
Swine
Sycophant
Technocrat
Terrapins
Terrorists
Thundering misguided missile
Thundering nitwitted sea-gherkin
Tin-hatted tyrant
Toads
Toffee-noses
Traitors
Tramps
Troglodytes
Turncoats
Twister
Two-timing tartar twisters
Two-timing troglodyte
Vampire
Vegetarian
Vermechellis
Viper
Visigoths
Vulture
Weevils
Wonder boy
Woodlice
Wreckers
Wretch
Zapotecs
 

Saturday, May 24, 2014


While we are on the subject of the misattribution of quotes, it might be well to bear in mind that the views expressed by characters in works of fiction do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).

Otherwise, hilarity ensues.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Ever see this floating around the internets?

It's supposed to be all inspirationally 'n' stuff. Deep. Heavy.

But it always made me wonder how such a normally sane, well grounded person could spout such drivel.

Well, my suffering is over - thanks to wikiquote I've discovered that it wasn't him. It was George Macdonald. That quote had been around for at least six years before Mr. Lewis was even born. (here, have some evidence.)

Now I like Macdonald as an author. The Princess and the Goblin is one of my very favorite books. But as a theologian I think he's nuts.

I realize that it is too much to ask for correct attribution of this tripe. But - can we like start a campaign to attribute that air-headed sentiment to someone other than Lewis? I dunno - maybe Plato?

update: I have doubts that Macdonald said it either. Also, this  is and interesting article.