Responding to a challenge of brevity — There are those on this platform, such as Lisa Gerard Braun and The Celtic Chameleon, who make the mistake of encouraging me. At least, SWMBO seems to think encouraging me is a bad idea: “Don’t encourage him!” She tells people “It only makes him worse!”. Not that the encouragement, on…

More importantly, who isn’t? — So on the same night I get into discussions about the end of the Mass Effect Trilogy and why Superman isn’t so great. This gets me to thinking about heroes and the nature of heroism. This in turn gets me to inflicting my ideas on you. Shepard the Hero The Mass Effect Trilogy…

Without the one, the other will eventually fail — Definition of democracy 1a: government by the people especially : rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) Definition of education 1a…

Skin-changing is part of many myths and much folklore across the world — Even a man who is pure in heart, And says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, And the moon is full and bright As many of you doubtless know, that verse was part of Curt Siodmaks’ script for the film The Wolf Man (Universal…

A furry new chapter begins — We lost our last cat — Luna — in the Spring. She was 14 years old and had been fine. But on that day, she’d not been herself. We weren’t unduly worried, cats have their off days too, but thought that if she wasn’t better by the next day, we’d…

And thanks for all the things America has given us! — Things such as: The theme tune for Monty Pythons’ Flying Circus. The hilarious mental image we get when John Wayne says “Git offa yer horse and stick yer hands up yer bum!” Showing us that it is indeed possible to turn any kind of TV show into a soap opera…

Single-issue politics will be the death of America — Guns. Abortion. Race. LGBTQ+ rights. Four issues. Four issues which, it seems to me, are the only ones that American voters seem to think or care about. They are also the only issues over which American politicians ever seem to disagree. So these are the issues America agonises, debates and…

It’s what it doesn’t say…. — OK, in answer to your first question, I know it’s Midsummer, so why am I writing about Christmas carols? Well, this particular hymn is not, in so far as I can see, directly connected to Christmas. At any rate, there is no mention of that specific festival in the lyric…

Old age and guile, my boy! — Infiltration Winter light. Everything monochrome except the yellow flashes on the guards’ uniforms and the green pine trees round the perimeter. The middle of the area is all storage containers, arranged in a grid pattern. Four guards patrolling, two north-south, two east-west. Three more on the perimeter. A hut near the…