Tag: dailyprompt

Vacationing in the Mushroom Kingdom

Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?

I would love to tour the Mushroom Kingdom, the world of Super Mario Bros. Strolling through a valley of giant mushrooms, snoozing on the sunny beaches of Gelato Beach, relaxing in Flower Fields … Such a vast, detailed world of make-believe to enjoy.

The folks are friendly, the sites are beautiful, it’s a fairly safe place all around, and the jerks and villains that do exist get beaten up by a pair of heroic Italian plumbers. Not bad, all in all. As long as I stay way from shady places like the land ruled by that nasty big turtle King Bowser, I think I’d do alright in the Mushroom Kingdom.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.


When’s the Last Time Anyone Used Cursive, Anyway?

What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?

Gather around, you young whippersnappers! Let me tell you what school was like back in my day! grumble grumble, dagnabbit …

I remember learning cursive in elementary school. “Fancy writing” that did serve a practical purpose despite how unintuitive and confusing it could be. Cursive allows one to write faster and more efficiently. The line of each letter flows into the next, creating a long string of interconnected symbols that aren’t slowed down by print writing’s need to lift the pencil and move it over to start the next letter.

It’s quite beautiful, actually, but cursive is hampered by a basic fact of modern life:

How often does anybody need pencil and paper anymore?

Typing is all the rage. Keyboard, smartphone, you name it. And those letters on the screen are in print, so how urgent is it to learn cursive? Do they even still teach it in schools nowadays? Well, you whippersnappers? Do they?

Truth be told, as basic and mandatory as cursive once was in my school days, it’s practical value was limited even then. I grew up in the dying days of cursive handwriting, and I certainly don’t use it anymore now. I could likely remember the forms if I was pressed to give a demonstration. Probably. Maybe.

Beautiful, but obsolete. Maybe in another ten years it will become a secret code of sorts. The kids won’t have a clue what you’re writing down in front of their eyes. It’ll be a whole new form of cipher. Faced with cursive letters, people will be at a loss to explain the strange, archaic glyphs. Hmm, that has possibilities …

Maybe the old can find a new purpose, after all.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

CDs Deceased, DVDs Done For

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I miss CDs. I miss the days when my computer games were on CDs. I could go to the store and buy an oversized cardboard box that contained a small disc and maybe a booklet, then I went home and popped the CD in my computer. Those were the days.

I miss DVDs. I miss the excitement of the days when DVDs replaced videocassettes and all the possibilities that came with Digital Technology (!!). I miss DVD menus that had cast information and special features and documentaries in addition to the movie itself.

I miss the days when computers had CD and DVD ports. You slid the disc into a built-in player. Nowadays, you need a separate external player or you just stream things online.

More than anything, though, I miss owning my media. I miss having a tangible thing in my hand when I bought a movie or a video game. I miss my row of discs on a shelf and seeing what I own with my own eyes. Those days are gone. They’re just memories now. Should have recorded them on DVD.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Farewell to Cents

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

Farewell, paper money. Farewell dollar bills. Farewell pennies and nickels. You were good friends, but your time is over. The credit card now rules supreme.

I regret the trend of cash payments dying off. Credit and debit cards are handy in a pinch, no doubt, and paying for things online is a tremendous convenience. I’m not playing the hypocrite here, I use my credit card regularly. But I miss the time when cashiers expected you to pay with cash.

Cash is safe. Swindlers can’t steal your personal info from a dollar bill. They can’t swipe your identity from a dime. Cash takes time to use, what with counting out the bills and fiddling with the coins, but it’s more secure.

“But, Jake,” you might say, “what about counterfeit money?” Well, what about credit card fraud? Counterfeit money is a risk, but at least it doesn’t hand over your social security number, address and bank account to a perilous stranger.

I also like the tangibility of paper money. I like things that I can hold in my hand and know are real. Credit is too easy to squander. Numbers on a screen, nothing more. No sobering reminder that spending credit is spending money. Paying a hundred dollars in cash carries much more weight than paying a hundred by card. You see the money fleeing before your very eyes.

There are places that don’t accept cash at all, now. I’m sure someday paper money won’t exist in any shape or form. Transactions will all be digital. Numbers scrolling by on a computer screen. A shame. I like bills and coins, but I imagine that when I’m old and gray, the only place I’ll see them is in a museum.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

State of Gaming in 20 Years

What’s a piece of technology you’re convinced will exist in 20 years?

Gaming hardware has entered a bit of a lull in the last ten years or so. Since the 1980s, video game technology was engaged in a race toward realism – realistic graphics, realistic physics, realistic lighting, etc. Now that that has been achieved, what is the next big leap?

Companies have been dabbling in virtual reality for a couple decades now, but I think they’re still in the kiddie pool. Advances in VR will be the next big thing in gaming. And the next big thing in VR? Haptic technology.

What is haptic technology? It is any technology that simulates the sense of touch. VR can simulate visuals pretty darn well. Even motion and balance, to an extent. But replicating the feeling of touch, of being within the artificial world, is a feat that engineers are in the process of developing into something astounding.

Imagine wearing gloves that simulate the sensation of putting your hand around a doorknob that isn’t there, or driving a car that doesn’t exist. Imagine a helmet that induces vibrations to simulate wind and air pressure. Imagine a whole suit that makes you feel like you are running through a field or climbing a mountain.

Can such things exist in 20 years? Yes, I think so. Whether they cost less than a new house, I’m more iffy on, but I do believe they will become more compact, less clunky and widely available. Haptics is the next step in immersion that gaming strives for.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

When the Future Was a Distant Gleam

What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?

As a kid I never truly believed I would grow up and go to college. Silly, of course, to all us adults reading this post, but time is skewed for a child. A week seems like a year, a year is practically a lifetime. Ten years is an epoch away, all events therein as insignificant to a six-year-old as the dimming of a star in another galaxy is to a fish in the sea.

I didn’t think about the future as a kid. All those papers teachers made us write about where we saw ourselves in twenty years were strictly academic. I never really cared, even if I dreamed and boasted of what I’d be doing. A part of me never believed it would be real. It wasn’t real, not until I arrived on the college campus the weekend before my freshman year started.

Maybe that’s why college is such a big deal. Kindergarten, elementary school, high school – the days of childhood, when the real world is far off, something that exists only in textbooks and lectures. To be honest, college is no closer to the real world, but it was the time when I started seriously thinking about a future beyond education. I thought about getting a job, moving out of my parents’ house, living on my own. Kids don’t worry about those sorts of things.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Them Tasty Mushroom Burgers

What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?

How appropriate that as the U.S.A.’s July 4th celebration rapidly approaches, I put up a post about burgers.

Actually, not about burgers in general. Mushroom burgers, specifically, and how they changed my mind about mushrooms.

You see, as a kid, I hated mushrooms. I didn’t want anything to do with them, and they certainly shouldn’t go in my mouth. I, a boy whose age wasn’t even in the double digits, confidently declared that I wouldn’t eat a mushroom until I was 50 years old.

I didn’t last that long.

You see, from what I can recall, I gave in to the savory deliciousness of mushrooms around the time that my dad started taking me to the local Red Robin burger restaurant. It was a tradition. We’d go see the latest blockbuster on a Saturday morning, and afterwards we’d go to Red Robin for lunch. For some reason, one day I ordered the mushroom burger and realized that mushrooms are really, really tasty.

I like mushrooms now. I like them on sandwiches, I like them in salads, I like them every which way, because they are, in fact, not as bad as 8-year-old me thought they were. Which will teach 8-year-old me to make bold lifelong declarations before he has all the facts.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

To Colonize the Red Planet

“I am going to colonize Mars!”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because it’s there!”

“Yes, it is there. It’s very, very far over there.”

I don’t think we’ll ever colonize Mars. And being a stick-in-the-mud, I also feel the need to ask the question: Why?

We already have a perfectly habitable planet right here. And before anyone says anything about climate change, overpopulation, wars and various other sundry problems that plague the human species, let me remind you that Earth remains habitable without having to put on a space suit to walk outside, whereas Mars … doesn’t.

Besides, if we colonize Mars, who’s to say we won’t just bring said issues with us?

It doesn’t sound like a good time. Colonists would be living in sealed rooms for the rest of their lives. You can’t go outside and play. The solar radiation is deadly, the dust storms are deadly, the air is deadly and how long can you last before cabin fever sets in? Or you want to strangle your roommate who lives within a hundred feet of you every day?

The idea is romantic, I confess. A big, bold step for mankind, just like the moon landings were. But it seems … excessive. Indulgent. Something more suitable for speculative fiction. We haven’t even gotten around to colonizing the moon. Aren’t we skipping a step by making a beeline for Mars?

Or maybe sixty years from now, I’ll read this blog and laugh at my pessimism. But, for now, I say with confidence: We aren’t going to colonize Mars.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

Just

What’s a word or phrase that annoys you?

There are quite a few words that irk me. I’m something of an expert on getting annoyed. But to keep things mercifully short and brief, I’ll focus on just one today.

And that’s the word. “Just.”

It has been reduced to such a dismissive word. With it, a statement turns from fact to degradation. A teacher. “Just” a teacher. A child. “Just” a child. A janitor. “Just” a janitor. It so effectively demeans and devalues.

Or it downplays the importance of actions and words. “I was just kidding!” you claim, after angering someone with a thoughtless turn of phrase. “It was just a little bump,” you say, after rear-ending someone at a stoplight. “It was just twenty bucks,” you say to your friend who loaned you money you never paid back.

Oh, how powerful words are, that a single one can communicate so much meaning and judgment. Carefully inserted, it changes the entire implication of what you say. And how casually we use “just” to wave away things that should be taken more seriously or to put down people who matter more than we think.

So, yes. It annoys me.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.“

An Overrated Classic?

What’s a classic book that you think is overrated?

Moby-Dick.

It feels odd to call a classic novel overrated. Classics have earned their reputation. They remain such because they speak out across generations. They aren’t a flash in the pan. There’s a reason ancient stories like The Iliad and the tale of King Arthur are still remembered and retold.

On the other hand, to be overrated means that something is given more praise than is due. It is undeserving of its hype. Are there classic stories like that? Well, yes, I think that there is a difference between reputation and quality.

Alright, “quality” is subjective in this case. Different people like different books. But even so, I think that Moby-Dick is an overrated novel. It’s famous, it’s classic, it’s praised as great literature, but I think it’s a complete mess.

It’s story is all over the place. It’s supposedly about one whaling captain’s quest for vengeance against the titular white whale, but hoo boy, does this book go on tangents. Want to learn the mid 19th-century whaling trade in minute detail? Because this novel is more of a guidebook in that respect. Want to switch from third-person narrative to monologues inexplicably written as stage directions? Want to read a thesis on why whales should be classified as fish? This book has you covered.

And these chapters aren’t part of the story. They’re just … there. Perhaps it all comes together as part of a grander vision on the part of the author, an exploration of overarching themes, but I’m a straightforward kind of reader. I prefer stories to weave worldbuilding and themes into the story, not bring it to a screeching halt in order to give a seminar. Not my kind of narrative. Far too disjointed and unfocused for my tastes.

Critics and academics call Moby-Dick one of the greatest novels of all time. They are welcome to. Maybe I just have bad taste, but I don’t always enjoy great novels.

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Many thanks for visiting my blog. I post updates on my writing career, I muse over storytelling and fiction, and I reflect on the curious and wonderful things in life.

“Hermes is not having the best time. He walks a fine line, and his duty as messenger of Olympus weighs heavily on him. Being a god in the modern age means living in a world that no longer believes in gods. How much can one deity accomplish when no one respects him anymore? And why do his instincts tell him that he, the son of Zeus, is losing favor with his own family?

Tensions abound. The upstart Young Gods play dangerous games using entire cities as their boards. Formless monsters strike from the nighttime shadows, terrorizing hapless mortals. Agents of rival pantheons scheme to thwart Olympus’ designs. In the thick of it all, Hermes does what he does best: trick, lie, and cheat his way to victory.“