Tag: humor

I’m Talking to Aliens! Wait a Minute. HOW?

If aliens arrived tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d ask them?

Well, after getting over my shock, I would ask them a simple question: How am I talking to you?

How do extraterrestrials know my language? Did you parse through the World Wide Web? Did you steal cable? Did you take Duolingo lessons?

What hyper-advanced technology let you decipher a language you’ve never encountered? Did you kidnap Earthlings to teach you? Are you telepathic? I’m no musician, I can’t communicate in mathematical music.

Never mind the tech and science, I have important questions. I’m a writer, and these plot holes cannot stand. How do you know what I’m saying?

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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. Occasionally, I try to be funny.

What Readers Want

How do you write what people actually want to read?

Predicting what people want to read is difficult for me. In truth, when I write a post, I’m never entirely sure if anyone will be interested in it. I make frequent use of WordPress’s daily prompts for inspiration, and they are certainly a starting point, but I don’t feel that there is a guarantee that any given article will attract attention.

But to summarize, I write things that I would be interested in reading, I try to write a variety of types of posts, I keep it short, and I try to be funny.

If an idea strikes me, I go with it. If it interests me, maybe it’ll interest someone else, too. If I’m using a daily prompt, I try not to limit myself to the question. I treat a prompt as a diving board to jump off of into a sea of possibility, not a corral to hold me in one spot. I want to hold the reader’s attention, and short, dry responses to a prompt don’t appeal to me.

I mix it up. Observations, reflections on life, and sometimes, poetry. I’m frequently surprised by what gets a positive reception. I’m no poet. I dabble in it from time to time if I’m in the mood, and amazingly enough, my amateur poems are often noticed more than my other writing. Perhaps they’re charming enough to attract readers, or maybe people are laughing into their sleeves. Either way, they get views.

I try to keep my posts short. People are busy. Some people don’t have even a half-hour to spare on recreational blogging. So, I try to keep it short and simple.

Finally, I try to be funny. Humor always helps. Not laugh-out-loud maybe, but if I can get even a small chuckle, then I’m doing something right.

If anyone reading this post has their own thoughts on what readers – what you – want from a blog, please feel free to share.

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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.

A Cat Named Flop

There was a cat in my neighborhood. My family and I would see him while going on walks.

He’d trot up to us and flop over on his back, demanding belly rubs.

So, we called him “Flop.” He was a friendly cat, if a bit presumptuous.

One day, we met his owner, who told us his real name was “Tiger.”

Tiger is a good name for a cat. But not a cute cat who flops on his back in front of strangers.

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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.

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.

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.

In Praise of Reading

Reading is a truly wonderful invention. What do great writers of history have to say about it? Let’s find out.

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Wisława Szymborska

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Joseph Brodsky

Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

E.B. White

And let us not forget these eternal words of wisdom from the novel Don Quixote:

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

A love of reading is the best sort of crazy (but do try to get plenty of sleep).

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.

Are You Not Entertained?

What’s something people take too seriously in life?

Dated references to old films aside, today’s title refers to something I commonly observe in society. We take our entertainment very seriously. Extremely seriously. As in “Do you find this even remotely relaxing or fulfilling anymore?” seriously.

Take sports, for instance. Theoretically, sports are a form of recreation that allow us to challenge ourselves and take pleasure in pushing our bodies and minds, or, if not an athlete, to enjoy watching our favorite teams compete and experience the thrill of victory and near-defeat. It’s supposed to be fun, right?

So, why do people scream and tear out their hair and beat up other people who don’t support their own team? Why do people riot and curse and weep over what their favorite player eats for breakfast? It’s … not just a game, anymore, is it?

In fact, a quick jaunt through the Youtube comments section (horrors of horrors …) on just about any subject that supposedly falls under the category of “entertainment” yields insight into a curious phenomenon: Nobody seems to hate any given activity, hobby or franchise more than its own fandom. Fans are very grumpy characters, seemingly more entranced by how [insert subject here] has been ruined forever than taking any sort of joy in it.

Entertainment must be a very fragile thing if it takes so little to destroy it. Perhaps we humans are entitled creatures, believing that a movie or video game or sports team or car brand is only “fun” when it conforms exactly and perfectly to our own specific expectations. On an individual basis. And when it doesn’t, well …

I get irked sometimes when a favorite franchise takes a turn I don’t like. I try not to take it too seriously, if only because I have a tendency to brood over the silliest details and really don’t need anything else competing for that brooding space in my head. Life’s short. Why not just … be entertained?

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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.“

Meeting Mister Fox

So I’m walking down the street in the early dawn

And who should I meet but a cocky fox sitting on a lawn.

I ask him what he’s doing there, carefree as can be

And he replies, “I belong. This is my territory.”

I smile and shrug and wave goodbye and carry on my way.

Maybe I’ll see him again sometime, if meet him again I may.

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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. Sometimes, I dabble in poetry.