I finished the audiobook of “The Hobbit” recently and I can confidently reassert that it is easily one of my favorite books ever. No allegory, no topicality, none of the incredibly long deliberative sessions or historical digressions that flood the Lord of the Rings trilogy… Just a wonderfully creative story made for the sole intent of entertaining. I love this book so much that I would even go as so far as to say that it is the most influential…
I recently came to know a beautiful young woman. With a smile cold and blue as an iceberg. In its infancy, I had hoped our encounter to be born under the auspices of great Romance. Much to my dismay, I soon found myself mistaken. Her interest, though perhaps as physical as mine, was business-like. A professional it would seem, though not quite of the consummate variety. And as the weight of her shrewd bargaining fell to me with all the…
During a recent trip/fall down one of YouTube’s innumerable rabbit holes, I bumped into a video which I actually found somewhat alarming. The premise of the video itself is fairly innocuous in that it is just a man conducting an interview with an AI language model. At face value this scenario sounds a bit quaint, perhaps even approaching the silliness of “choose your own adventure” text-based games from decades ago, but while I watched this video I found myself genuinely…
Took a quick trip over to Honolulu… Figured I’d share a few photos 🙂
Broke in a new pair of boots and started hiking season off with a run up Skyline the other day. I ended up post-holing through knee deep snow about a third of the way and another third was a muddy slip-and-slide, so the already “arduous” trail rating definitely let me know where I stood in terms of cardio and constitution. Still, it’s a beautiful hike and I was glad to get out. After the typical Alaskan winter my body is…
Ghelat knew everything about this mountain. Everything about this moment. Ten thousand times, he had seen the same afternoon sun bleed slowly into its resting place on the western horizon. He knew the shape of the cold whisper of wind that flew up through the rigid valley below, the feel of how it whipped and danced softly in celebration of its freedom from the dense foliage beneath it. He recognized each individual among the small, jagged rocks he stood upon….
2020 Vision is a collection of sci-fi short stories written roughly during the mid-70’s which were then compiled together in 1980. When I bought the book, I had thought it would be fun to close out the year with a light-hearted review of the whole collection or possibly just one of its better pieces. I had hoped to make note of particularly poignant or striking predictions that had been posited about our potential future, and to possibly compare and contrast…
I’ve decided to share a bit of a detective story from my larger project for the holiday. I don’t think there’s too much that needs to be laid out before reading, although there is a fair amount of “in-universe” vernacular for periods of time that pass and some basic fantasy-ish backstory… I hope these terms are not distracting, but I think the reader should be able to guesstimate more or less what the words represent. If something is odd or…
I got some time off last week, and while my original plans to do a Homer trip didn’t pan out, I did do my best to not waste it. Here’s a few photos. Skyline Williwaw Lakes Cat Tax
I’ve been reading a bit of Keats recently, and while the first half here sounds nothing like him, I feel that the two poems together would fit within his works. There are a number of capitalization, meter, and punctuation inconsistencies within the second poem and they are somewhat intentional. Regardless, hope you enjoy. -WellTree Thistle’s Winter Request I need a lover like the summer,one that lives to melt a frozen heart.I need a love that makes me wonder,how I’ll survive…