Pencilcast: what I wrote with an almost used up Dixon Ticonderoga

Typecast: as American as . . .

Typecast: by the rivers of Babylon

I have to post something because this is a blog. So here's what I typed today motivated by my chronic bleeding heart liberal Psalm 137 outrage.

Typecast: Salt Lake City dreamin'

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazytom/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Thanks to lazytom for the TRAX photo.

IMG_2021
Originally uploaded by lazytom

Typecast: Motel and Zeitel's new arrival

Typecast: you can be a winner at the game of life

Typecast: the best days of our lives

Of course, thinking about shorter chunks of time than a year, I have to say I'm enjoying my life quite a bit right now. When my daughter was six months old I thought: "these last three months have been a lot of fun." So far, the fun time has just kept stretching out as she keeps growing. This last summer had some high points -- like most of July -- and some other times when a good family life was a balance against other things being dismal.

Quillcast: "politics"

Last night I carved myself a new quill pen, using the small blade of my new Swiss Army Knife. The result is rather satisfactory. I tested it by writing a short, rather pessimistic rumination on workplace "politics," after reflecting on the many instances thereof that I've witnessed in my few working years.

Pencast: Dungeon Days Revisited

As I wrote in a previous post, I used to be heavily into fantasy role-playing games, or I used to want to be heavily into them. I spent a lot of time making up characters who never saw any action and wishing I could stay away from home -- or awake -- longer on the occasions that I actually did get to play with others.

Recently I've been thinking more about this pastime from my youth. I rediscovered this brilliant 1990s comedy sketch the other day, and I've been looking through some of the few old rule books that I've kept. Recently my wife and I were shopping at the local used bookstore and picked up Wizards of the Coast's Wheel of Time RPG. Maybe I just don't like to face the fact that I'm twice as old as I was when I started playing this stuff, but I've found myself wishing again for a group of like-minded nerds to trot out my new character ideas with.

Amongst all of my old gaming stuff I found a comic strip I drew on notebook paper while I was in high school. I think I must have been 16, maybe 17 when I drew it. I meant to draw more but never got around to it. (There were other comic strips that I started and then abandoned as well. Some of them had potential but my drawing technique, such as it was, has decayed over time.)

So without further ado, here it is.

Typecast: back in the saddle

Typecast: (please hold)

This blog is not defunct

I languish without a typewriter, summer advances closer to its end.
In a home far from my own I have bent metal and sanded wood, and painted a wall.
I have chatted with teenagers about pop music and conversed with a Bulgarian in Spanish over medieval manuscripts.
Trying to maintain my faith in the rightness of the difficult and fragile,
my conviction of the wrongness of arbitrary power.
Some days it's easier than others.
The Snake River is treacherous but its valley is wide and welcoming,
gorgeous in its bounty after a wet spring.
The raspberries are on, and people sell Utah cherries and apricots by the roadside.
But living here permanently seems impossible for the forseeable future.
My soul cannot survive long, I fear, without a garden of my own.

Typecast: the "fish" metaphor smells funny

Laggard typecast: 25 things

So, after the "25 things about me" sensation has swept the nation, I finally wrote one up.

Typecast: jazz

Typecast: Wilfred Owen

SONNET

On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action

Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
Great Gun towering towards Heaven, about to curse;
Sway steep against them, and for years rehearse
Huge imprecations like a blasting charm!
Reach at that Arrogance which needs thy harm,
And beat it down before its sins grow worse.
Spend our resentment, cannon, -- yea, disburse
Our gold in shapes of flame, our breaths in storm.

Yet, for men's sakes whom thy vast malison
Must wither innocent of enmity,
Be not withdrawn, dark arm, thy spoilure done,
Safe to the bosom of our prosperity.
But when thy spell be cast complete and whole,
May God curse thee, and cut thee from our soul!

You can read more Wilfred Owen poetry here.

Typecast: Sunday memory (typed Saturday)

Typecast: filler post

Typecast: a hasty sort of Peter Pan proclamation

Typecast: new year's reflections of a former rock star

A video of our little girl

I'll get a nice typecast going in a few days, but for now: