I Am Quite The Mike

 What is "art"?  Webster's Dictionary has a long list of definitions.  I think it's easier to boil all that down to its root: Art is a creative expression that evokes thought or emotion. We can go one step further and drop the 'creative' since it's partially redundant, and in itself requires several pages of definition, unnecessary to this article. The type of thought or emotion does not matter, nor does the medium of expression.  Was it an expression?  Check.  Did it evoke thought or emotion?  Check.  Great.  That's art.  The bigger the evocation the "better" the art. The type of expressive medium does not matter.  Examples include all manner of image, regardless of permanence some lasting merely an instant, others seemingly to last for all eternity.  Sounds likewise, be they spoken word, music, or simply a noise without language or structure. Whether a thing is art also depends upon the audience.  Not all art will evoke ...

A friend of mine posted a story from a well known rag, the headline was VERY deceptive.  He handled it very gracefully and I think I learned from his example, so that's cool, but it got me thinking on a tangent. What is a lie?  Well, the dictionary says it's an intransitive verb "to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive."   That seems pretty accurate.  I mean we... most of us?  ... people make false statements all the time not realizing they're wrong.  Generally getting told you're wrong is one of the most annoying things, too, so I guess that's incentive to be wrong less, but it's not a lie to be wrong.  That's just... wrong. It gets deeper though.  So someone's wrong, they get told they're wrong by someone who does not have authority in their eyes.  They don't see it that way, so now they dig in.  Well shit?  Now they're wrong and fortified.  Still not a lie. OK so lets back out of that hole realizing we have t...

Long post warning: This one is about three pages. Click 'read more' at your own peril. Just going to put my thoughts here. May be accurate, may not be. Just thinking where the general public can see it. Risky I know. Bad habit I know. I've had friends turn hostile because of it. I'd urge you to talk it out with me rather than just holding a grudge for years. Y'all know who you are. This stupid disease. If you come into contact with it, from all I've read, you have a stupidly large chance of catching it. And after just a few days you'll be running a slight fever and otherwise no idea you're even sick meanwhile spreading it to potentially everyone you get close to. You won't know you're spreading it for at least a week. Maybe you can tell me exactly every person you've come into contact with in the last week... maybe. Most can't. If you ever figure out you had it because many people - especially teenagers - won't hardly ge...

So, there's a small push going right now for people to pick up as much survival gear as they can because you never know when your bugout bag might actually become a lifesaving device. That's great! But I have a problem with it. Of course I do and I'm posting about it on the Internet because that's where people go to post brain-dumps about their ideas both good and bad. Especially when it's a brain dump about a problem they want to complain about. Single use survival gear is the least effective thing you can get, and the most wasteful, and worst of all, in a true SHTF (look it up) scenario will be insufficient to meet your needs. So, when building a survival kit, consider why you might use it, and in the case where you cannot make yourself NOT buy a single-use emergency item, buy SEVERAL. Why? Because when SHTF and you need a solution NOW, you will not have TIME to "figure it out". PRACTICE is a major key to survival. Buying a bag/tent/blanket combo...

This space intentionally ... blank? Not quite, but close. I used to have a blog here with some solid history, sage advice, musings over many years' visits to E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo), and other random thoughts. Unfortunately I tried to monetize my blog by letting Google display ads on it. After much frustration, I a software engineer by trade could not make their automated algorithms accept my blog for display of ads not for content violation or lack of content or lack of longevity, but rather configuration issues that the automated system was loathe to elucidate upon.  To make it worse the configuration itself is all automated and Blogger is owned and run by none other than Google. I am not so naive as to believe all the products owned by a single entity should work together, but if you're going to hype the fact that it's all magically pre-configuring, you should at least make sure it works and be willing to take bug reports for those who it does no...