Day dawned on Elah, and Goliath strode
onto the field. Three-hundred pounds of bronze
were buckled on him, and the armor glowed—
portentously reflecting rising dawn’s
most thirsty reds. The armies of the LORD
had watched this happen every day (like pawns
resigned to death), and still the mighty sword
and spearhead weighing forty pounds had not
yet lost their fearful newness. Thrice he roared
to gather silence for himself, then shot 10
his widespread hands into the sky, and once
again his blasphemies began their hot
assault.
Character Vignette: Brorig
Note: I started this in Notes on my iPhone in December of 2017, the same time I was polishing the fantasy ranger vignette. The last edit was made in April of 2020. I’m sure the bulk of the writing was done in 2017. I think Brorig and the ranger are the same character, although Brorig may be a hermit-style monk who lives in the Underdark. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)
“I know nothing of my parents. One of them was an orc; the other was a human. That’s it. Earlier than I can remember, I was taken by the Bloodskull clan in a raid, and I was raised by one of their war chiefs as a Bloodskull warrior. By the time of my Gurk’cha ceremony at fourteen, I had already been on many raids and spilled much blood. I do not like to remember those days. Orcs live like wild beasts, and I lived as an orc.
In the summer of my seventeenth year we were raiding in the lowlands of Mortgwyern, camping in the deep woods by day, taking what plunder we could by night. I was as bloodthirsty as the rest. One day as most of us slept we were ambushed by rangers from the provincial guard. Every orc was slaughtered, but I was netted and taken alive to serve as a thrall in the provincial coal mines.
For two years I was a slave in the mines and lived in the dark and the dust with outlaws and outcasts.
It was in that place of despair and death that I first began to live.
The Song of Uka
Note: I’ve written a few poems about World of Warcraft, okay? Stop looking at me that way. The events in this poem actually happened as described. While leveling in WoW Classic, I got camped by a higher level Shaman who ran away immediately as soon as a similarly-leveled opponent came along. It was originally posted to Reddit where it received no love at all (sigh). I have mixed feelings about the enormous amount of time I put into WoW; it was very much an addiction, but perhaps not totally devoid of merits, though certainly not worth the many costs. I permanently deleted my WoW account (along with almost all my video games and social media) in May of this year. (DL, Dec. 10, 2022)
Uka the Shaman, mighty and bold,
Like Vol’jin, and Zekhan, and Thex.
He’s stronger than you if you aren’t very old,
So watch out, he’s ready to flex.
One pleasant day in Hillsbrad they say
He found him a 32 warrior.
With “Calooh! Callay!” he entered the fray,
Just right for a 41 shaman.
The battle was hard (that clutch heal was timely),
But finally he finished his foe.
Pleased with himself (he’d battled sublimely),
He spit on the corpse he’d laid low.
Then he sat on his raptor on guard for the fallen,
To show he was better than him.
As soon as he rezzed he set straight to brawlin’,
Then spit on his corpse again.
Over and over, he conquered his man,
(Though sometimes it was a close shave).
He teabagged and laughed, a jovial fan
Of the prowess of Uka the Brave.
Then all of a sudden a 41 rogue
Sapped the shit out of Uka the shaman.
It was then that he felt it was time to prorogue
His fight with the dangerous warrior.
Fighting a warrior is one thing you see,
When his level is appropriately low.
But fighting a rogue the same level as he
Takes more plum than he’s willing to show.
The rogue kicked his ass (right away so they say),
And poor Uka, he rezzed in the bushes.
Then fast as he could he scurried away,
Like manure that a bulldozer pushes.
Adventurers all, remember this tale,
Whenever you feel overpowered.
It’s better to fight those who are bigger and fail,
Than be a pussy like Uka the Coward.
Men Don’t Give Birth
"Doctors prepared to do an emergency cesarean delivery, but in the operating room no fetal heartbeat was heard. Moments later, the man delivered a stillborn baby." apnews.com/b5e7bb73c6134d58a0df9e1cee2fb8ad
If men have babies, what’s even the point of talking about gender and sex categories? The categories are literally meaningless.
First:
“Sex” and “Gender” were synonyms. They both meant male and female as traditionally understood. Girls. Boys. Pink. Blue.
Then:
“Sex” and “Gender” were separated. Sex referred to biology. Gender referred to cultural norms around biology. Male vs. Masculine. Gender—being cultural—was malleable, and things like gender fluidity and transgender became common terms.
Now:
Sex and gender are synonyms again. But now they mean “malleable designations that mean whatever an individual wants them to mean.” The malleability of culturally-based gender notions has been back-migrated into biological sex.
Driven
In Riyadh drivers are a fact of life.
Domestics, Ubers, taxi men—they steer
the expat hordes and every mother, wife,
and daughter to their destinations here.
They come in droves from countries down the scale,
from Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Nepal,
and India—impoverished men who trail
the highways at another’s beck and call.
Each time I walk, I hear the taxi horns,
each plaintive beep, “Please white man, share your wealth
with me.” For fourteen hours, from early morns
and through each night they spend their life—and health.
I sit in back, while they the front are given.
My conscience knows who drives and who is driven.
AI and the Death of Truth
Note: I first became aware of OpenAI’s language model development work in 2019. Even then, it was clear where their work would lead. In the aftermath of ChatGPT’s release in November of last year, it’s quite clear that the disruptions to work and truth that were envisioned in 2019 are simply inevitable. I am sad for my children. I added a follow-up to the initial post a day later. Both are provided below. (DL, June 11, 2023).
Feed it the first few paragraphs of a Guardian story about Brexit, and its output is plausible newspaper prose, replete with “quotes” from Jeremy Corbyn, mentions of the Irish border, and answers from the prime minister’s spokesman. One such, completely artificial, paragraph reads: “Asked to clarify the reports, a spokesman for May said: ‘The PM has made it absolutely clear her intention is to leave the EU as quickly as is possible and that will be under her negotiating mandate as confirmed in the Queen’s speech last week.’” www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/14/elon-musk-backed-ai-writes-convincing-news-fiction
And who will be able to tell the difference?
I spent ten years as an English teacher. Trust me when I tell you most people definitely won’t be able to.
The search for truth is about to die—shortly before the planet does.
Continue readingGreat-Grandma and Typhoid
The second summer we were here was full of such sickness as I had never seen or thought of. . . . It was typhoid.
In the process of unpacking from our recent move, I have at my hand once again a letter that my Great-Grandma Nourse wrote from Louisiana in 1938 to a friend in California. It tells the story of her family’s life after their move from California to Louisiana and covers a roughly four year period during the Great Depression from around 1934 to 1938. It was written to an old family friend back in California and was later returned to my grandmother by one of that friend’s descendants.
The purpose of this post is to share that letter.
Continue readingMy Beef with Captain America: Civil War
Note: A high-school classmate regularly posts fun-to-read comments and threads on Facebook about the MCU. His “best of” lists and rankings are constantly being updated as each new title comes out. In 2018 he posted his then favorite six movies from the MCU. That led to an extended comment from me in response. (DL, Sept. 13, 2021)
Your top six [Avengers, Black Panther, CA:CW, GoG, Iron Man, SM:Homecoming] is the same as mine with the exception of Civil War. My beef with CW isn’t the convoluted plot-forcing (although as you note, it’s pretty bad). My problem is the way it handles the core moral motivations in the movie.
Continue readingAmerican Diplomacy
Capturing funny conversations for people who weren’t there is hard. But this one is worth trying. It is relevant that Pakistani Friend 2 in the dialog below is a big Pakistani nationalist, and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about international politics and the negative perceptions towards American policies.
Me to Pakistani Friend 1: “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Continue readingCharacter Vignette: Fantasy Ranger
Note: I started this in Notes on my iPhone in October of 2016; it was last edited in December of 2017. Tolkien has influenced the language, and Dungeons and Dragons has influenced the characterization. I think of him as half orc. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)
He moved through the deep woods like one long acquainted with dark places, for so he was. As always, he carried with him the same sort of kit he had carried in the armies of Dar Sheiling, although time and experience had taught him the best substitions to make in keeping with his current life.
The pair of Dar Sheiling javelins–short, heavy, cruelly barbed, and cast in the hundreds by the front ranks to break the shock of enemy assaults–he had replaced with a single, long spear. The hard, heavy, iron-soled boots so apt for wearing out many leagues on imperial roads and for treading down the fallen he had replaced with supple doe-hide boots for more nimble footing and greater stealth in dangerous places. “Besides,” he said, “If they fail me in battle, better to lose my feet all at once than to grind them to stubs day after day.”
Continue reading