Category Archives: Miscellaneous

About me, Miscellaneous, Observations, WTF

Ringing in the New Year

Ah, 2015, the year of the goat, but also the year of the bullshit. It’s not that it was particularly worse than any other year, but no year’s been the same since 1999. That was the one and only time Prince got to party like it was the correct year and we’re really just hoping to run out the clock now. That’s why people got so amped up about Y2K. That’s why everyone was wondering if the Mayans got 2012 right or forgot to carry the snake monster. And that’s why religious nutjobs keep trying to predict the end of the world with the same sort of zeal as Hollywood’s trend of teaser trailers to advertise the coming of trailers.

here we go again

But have we traded up? Do we have a crystal ball to tell us if we should just try to sleep through this year and hope for 2017? Was 2015 really all that bad? Did anyone get a flying car?

Truthfully, no one cares. But as this is my first blog post back from a lengthy, forced hiatus (more on that later), I feel it’s my job to  make… Continue reading Ringing in the New Year →

History of the Holidays, Miscellaneous, Mythology, Mythology World Tour

History of the Holidays: Mistletoe

Ah, the holidays, a time when we do things we don’t quite understand because we’ve decided they just have to be done. Hanging stockings over a fireplace? Sure, why not. Leaving cookies out for an invisible fat man? Hey, we’ve done stranger. Kissing under a poisonous plant because someone decided to hang it?

Why the hell do we do that?

The truth is, no one really knows the true origin of the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe. It’s one of those ancient traditions where it’s been around so long that it didn’t really get written down. However, what is known is that mistletoe was an important figure to the older Celtic cultures such as the Druids and the Norse. As many traditions around Christmas are derived from those celebrated during the Norse Yule, it would be safe to assume that there would be a link. And when you know Mistletoe’s place in Norse mythology, you realize the reason we’re supposed to kiss under it is simple…

It’s guilty of murder.

Continue reading History of the Holidays: Mistletoe →

History of the Holidays, Miscellaneous, Mythology, Mythology World Tour

History Of The Holidays: Hanukkah

The Holiday Season, a time when multiple religions and cultures come together to say “it’s too damn cold, we need to distract ourselves.” From the most ancient times to the modern day, everyone finds a reason to feast, celebrate, and sit close to fires of one form or another in the dead of winter. Since civilization itself was formed, we’ve found reasons to be happy at a time when the world tends to be pretty bleak. And don’t let the angry people on TV fool you, that’s the reason we say “Happy Holidays” instead of just Merry Christmas – this time of year is full of them.

But we often don’t know too much about the Holidays that are happening around us besides Christmas. Even there, as I’ve discussed in the past, we aren’t too clear on all the details. Why do we care about mistletoe? What exactly is Kwanzaa? Why are the Jewish people lighting a Menorah for 8 nights? Honestly, most of us only have passing understanding of any of these.

So today (and the next couple weeks), I intend to tackle one of these as a bit of a Mythology Monday, Alternative Mythologies, and general history mashup. ‘Tis the season, after all, and I intend to at least give it the nod. As of this writing those Menorahs are about to get lit, so it’s only fitting that I start with the ancient (but only recently important) festival of lights… Continue reading History Of The Holidays: Hanukkah →

Miscellaneous, Mythology, Observations

Public Enemy #1

As some of you may know, I live in the San Joaquin Valley area of California, the heart of the drought situation and, as of the last few months, potential new location for future depictions of Mordor. With growing drought concerns, our ground sinking two inches every month as the water table vanishes, and forest fires frequently dotting the nearby national parks – we are literally becoming a flaming pit. Having grown up in this region, I’m used to not liking the climate around here, but even I have my limits.

Mordor
Yeah, that’d be it

The recent air quality concerns have grown so severe that I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling healthy by any measure. Currently I’m kept alive only by caffeine, generic Benadryl, and that spell they used in Weekend At Bernie’s 2. Should the music stop playing, I will go dead weight and collapse where I stand. It’s not a great life, but hey, at least I’m useful.

bernie

But the worsening conditions have made me think long and hard about what’s been happening to our world as of late and I’ve come to a conclusion. It may not be popular with everyone, I know a lot of people out there aren’t going to believe me when I say it. But I’m willing to make my case and hope that someone out there will listen. You see, I think it’s time we seriously start talking about… Continue reading Public Enemy #1 →

Miscellaneous, Mythology

Mythology Monday: Lucky Horseshoes

Lucky charms, they’re magically delicious, but also a little confusing. Generally the damn things don’t make any sense and most of them are powered by belief in bullshit. But bullshit has a source, like a lake feeding a river… of bullshit. After all, there has to be some sort of origin to these things or it becomes fairly easy to poke holes in the “logic”. Rabbit feet aren’t too lucky to the rabbit that lost them. And if pennies you pick up really were going to give you good luck for the rest of the day, there are a lot of old people who should be millionaires.

penny-jar

But some charms aren’t just good luck, having entire rituals around them that don’t make a whole lot of sense either. The horseshoe is a great example of this, not only being considered good luck but having contradicting and specific methods of using it. If you turn it one direction it’s supposed to do one thing, the other direction and it does another, you can even use the horseshoe wrong in some cultures and have it work against you instead of for you. And that all leads to one very important question…

What the hell is up with the horseshoes? Continue reading Mythology Monday: Lucky Horseshoes →

Miscellaneous, Observations, Sci-Fi, Writing

Fermi Paradox Part 2 – No Filter?

Recently I raised the idea of the Fermi Paradox and the possibility that the “Great Filter” might be behind us. In my view, that raises a lot of interesting questions that scifi writers could get a lot of mileage out of. The idea that life is so hard that it needs to have a great deal of luck to get to even our level is something that would greatly change the typical dynamic of most scifi stories to date. We could be a relatively rare form of life, maybe even among the first, that has achieved our level of intelligence.

But that does require that our specific circumstances are unique, which brings us back to the original premise. With a universe so complex and so ancient, you would have to imagine that our pattern of events isn’t completely out of the ordinary. It is entirely likely that most worlds in our universe have experienced at least one major extinction event once life has formed. And, while the easy assumption is that the Great Filter is when one of those extinction events can’t be recovered from (like what may have happened to ancient Mars or the like), we have to assume that surviving those events can’t be too unique either.

So… what kind of situation do we have if the Filter doesn’t exist? Continue reading Fermi Paradox Part 2 – No Filter? →

Miscellaneous, Sci-Fi, Writing

The Fermi Paradox And You – 1 – Filter Behind Us?

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The universe, it’s vast, old, and full of interesting shit. We constantly gaze into the heavens and look for things no human has ever seen before. But with each passing year, more and more people begin to question whether or not we’re alone in the universe. Early on in our development we were fairly certain this was the case. After all, we thought the stars were just pinholes in the heavens, windows to the realm beyond, or even lanterns hung to keep our nights from being total darkness. But as time went on we became aware that we were much smaller in the cosmos than we believed.

It was inevitable that we would start to picture aliens being everywhere, even on planets in our solar system. There are countless stories about Martians from before the time we realized it was a barren wasteland. Even after discovering it was a big ball of rusty dust, we’ve had people who still insist that the world is still populated or was populated until very recently. After all, this clearly looks like a face (before you see the higher resolution pictures that prove it was just a shoddy camera).

threefaces

But as that search for extra terrestrial life continues, people have started to become more and more concerned about the Fermi Paradox – the idea that we may be alone in the universe and that, somehow, someway, life that should be plentiful just simply isn’t. Combined with our natural obsession with the Apocalypse (which, you’ll recall, also had a lot to do with being unable to see beyond ourselves) and I’ve seen a lot of people declare the great filter is out there and it’s going to get us.

So… is it? I don’t think so. Continue reading The Fermi Paradox And You – 1 – Filter Behind Us? →

About me, Miscellaneous, Observations

All You Have To Do Is Try

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As I type now, late to updating for the day and passing up a more substantive post I could have done, I find myself wanting more than anything to respond to… a tweet. As minor as it might be in the grand cosmos, there was something about this tweet I saw a few days ago that stuck with me. And no, I won’t post that tweet here, because I’m not trying to start shit. But I did feel the need to address something it brought up.

There are a few truths about writers that we have to accept almost universally. The first is that we’re usually going to dislike our old work, it goes without saying, and anyone who doesn’t dislike their old work has often either stagnated or is impressed with the fact it was readable back then. It doesn’t mean you have to hate it, you just can’t look at it as positively as you once did anymore. When you look back at what you did years ago, it’ll always feel a little embarrassing because you’ll see the marks of your improvement and wish you could have written it today instead of before you knew better.

The second thing is that even our most successful individuals happen to have some problems. The number of writers who are high strung, alcoholic, or just “out there” is pretty high. Not everyone, mind you, but there’s always some little voice that doesn’t quite accept where they are. J.K. Rowling released books under a pseudonym for a while after her success because she wanted to prove it was her writing and not her fame that got her where she is. Considering she’s the first author to become a billionaire simply from writing in the history of writing, it takes some neuroses to question whether or not you earned it. Unique as she is, she’s far from alone there.

And, because of those two details, the third thing we have to accept is that we’re always going to need find ways to cope…. So let’s go ahead and not crap on anyone’s coping mechanisms, okay? Continue reading All You Have To Do Is Try →

Miscellaneous, Sci-Fi, Writing, WTF

Good Sci-Fantasy vs Apologetics

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By now it’s likely no secret that I like a little peanut butter in my chocolate or vice-versa. If you’ve followed the blog, I write about Science Fiction and Fantasy almost interchangeably at length and I’m pretty adamant that Clarke’s Law is true. For those who don’t know what that means, any science sufficiently advanced is virtually indistinguishable from magic. It sums things up pretty well for me because the world’s worked that way forever. When we couldn’t understand lightning bolts, we thought gods did it, and certainly there are things in the universe today that we don’t understand which are still being attributed to higher powers.

rushdie
I’ll never tire of pointing this out

The rule’s a simple reminder that any time you go really advanced with your crazy Sci-Fi tropes you’re practically skipping into the realm of Fantasy. But the same is true in the other direction, something I’ve always held near and dear to my heart. If you were to take something truly magical and then approached it with science in mind, there’s a lot of it that just happens to click really well. Hell, I wrote whole books and countless tweets about the concept.

So Sci-Fantasy is, to me, a natural genre. A lot of people out there believe that you can’t really blend these two and that you end up ruining both in the effort to avoid choosing either. But from where I stand, science is fantastic to begin with, it may explain everything, but those explanations are wonderful in so many ways we never could have imagined. Don’t get me wrong, I still love some robots, but I can definitely see the allure of wanting to make some of the things from legends of old into something tangible.

Just one thing… Continue reading Good Sci-Fantasy vs Apologetics →

About me, Miscellaneous

Room to Breathe

It’s the middle of allergy season and I’ll be damned if I let the flowers beat me. I’ve spent the last 5 days so miserably sick that I’ve actually accepted that my afternoons and evenings are forfeit. I used to be stronger than this, but I’ve spent 90% of my life in a place that slowly drains the life out of you. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but that’s only if it stops trying to kill you. Mother nature is pissed at me in particular and she’s not afraid to let me know. But, hey, we can’t let that stop us from moving forward, can we?

I’ve been trying for the past week to promote my blog with renewed energy. Spamming social media like no tomorrow, the only people out there who sent more useless messages out into the internet those days were probably those poor Princes in Nigeria that everyone ignores. And it worked, I saw the traffic of my site quadruple in a day and double again the next. It’s still not spectacular, mind you, but for a short time I felt like people wanted to hear what I have to say.

It reminded me what it felt like to breathe. Continue reading Room to Breathe →