Memoranda
HorseThief
First of all: who steals a horse?
Before the twentieth century the answer to that question would've been: anyone willing to risk death by hanging. But today?
No one, that's who.
Then again, the crew Michelle ran around with definitely qualified as no one.
Shitting Bricks
I asked another man out on a date.
He said yes.
Just two straights sitting in the niche-est brewery in a town full of niche breweries, chatting about work, design, life, and technical details. Sipping slowly at my one I-still-need-to-drive-home-later-and-no-longer-engage-in-that-kind-of-fuckery beer, I inevitably told him about all the different bricks I had shit in my life.
Red Ice
They called it the Blood Monster.
The term did not accurately describe the true nature or mechanisms behind the phenomenon, but it wasn’t meant to. It perfectly described the perception and feeling of the human beings who experienced it. Or rather, it glommed together the fears, anxieties, and revulsion experienced by those people.
Dylan carried the blood monster within him, but most nights he slept peacefully anyway.
The Healing Mountain
A great splash leapt up from a slow-moving pool in the river. Its final droplets landed very near the boy on the rocks. His friends were swimming. He was waiting.
Ajax returned to the surface with a shout, “The mighty Achilles! Defeated by a little water!”
The boy on the rocks didn’t look at them, though he could feel the eyes of Patroclus watching him from just above the water.
The boy never looks, and he never swims. They cannot see what he sees.
Parson’s Paradise
“Never, ever stick your hands through the fence.” The tour guide’s demeanor grew suddenly serious, and Trinity suspected she did not want to hear whatever came next. She was right.
The guide casually adjusted his hat with a three-fingered right hand and said, “Ask me how I know.”
PostModern: A Drinker’s Obituary
I lied to you, just now.
Did you catch it?
See, I used to frequent every cocktail bar in town often enough to recognize when they had a staffing change. For the six-and-a-half years that I’ve lived in this city, the craft cocktail scene has consistently grown, and I’ve been watching with a big fucking smile on my face.
Order Among Chaos
The problem with resetting a workshop is not in the work itself.
It’s that while the reset is happening, you can’t really work in it. Which means it stops being a workshop.
Yer’ A Hoarder, Harry!
It's not that I have too much stuff. It's that I don't have enough shelves.
I mean, it is at least a little true. Yes, I have a habit of collecting tools, materials, parts, and projects, but all this bare wall space has been going to waste for years. And in those years, my horde has been haphazardly shoved into any nook or cranny I could find, after it was removed from the workspace it was cluttering up.
(I'm not a hoarder. You're a hoarder. How could you possibly throw away all of Creature’s treasures?)
Operation Reset - 2026
Sometimes a workshop is so far gone the only thing to do is blow it up and start fresh.
Horizontal surfaces beckon to us all. An object lands somewhere, and its gravity pulls at other objects passing by until junk covers every workbench, table, and spare ledge.
It’s time to take that space back.
Holiday Portents
I love Christmas. Far more than your av-er-age atheist. Perhaps even an indecent amount by the standards of some unbelievers.
But why should the faithful have a monopoly on the solstice celebrate-a-thon?
It’s the halfway mark of the long dark night. From here on out, the sun will slowly return to us, making our days longer and more fruitful. An excellent excuse to gather with the ones we love, exude as much joy as we can manage, forgive a little more, and participate in all the traditions of our own personal history.
And I love all those traditions.
Unsolicited Art Project - Part 1
Maybe a hundred hours to craft a handful of printed pages to be shipped to less than half a dozen friends and family. What surprises me is how worthwhile it all feels.