Another's Newscaster

Flat Stanley is giving the sports from a stump in the middle of my frozen stream. Here's the rest of the winter news to come:

Both pics redshirt originals, unlike most pictures posted here.

From a certain point of view

The Devil's Ring. Not as pretty as advertised.

You've been swimming in lies since the day you were born, no fault of your own.

Like the Arabian Batman.

A new light upon the world.

Big Sports News

Yeah sure you betchya! The big dog sled thing is happening this weekend!

FREEDOM! Who can tell ya how big a soda ya can drink?! No one, for gosh sakes!

Dispatches from Gondolin

What I find fascinating about this somewhat cheesy drawing: JRR Tolkien basically invented these genres of Swords and Sorcerers, Dungeons and Dragons, Worlds of Warcraft, etc - the entire Fantasy genre, for all tents and porpoises. And this genre spawned, also,  the Sci-fi we know  and love today: Star Wars is nothing but Fantasy with robots and spaceships rather than swords and horseback. 

Tolkien set out to do just this - create a new mythology, made up of bits and pieces of all sorts of existing myths. He succeeded extravagantly, I'd say. He and L.Ron have to go down as two of the greatest writers ever if for no other reason than the numbers of people who swear allegiance to the fake religions, histories, and stories they created. One of them on a bet; the other during a lifetime of deep scholarship and research. Who's to say who'll be more successful in the end?

The end - what's that, anyways? Just a new beginning, always. Nothing ends, just transforms into other things, somethings else to play a part on this grand stage of pretending - ACTING!


Also, too: The Geo-Thermal is kicking ass.

Also also as well: You can try and justify those giant eagles in LOTR all you want. They are literal Deux ex Machinas flying in to save the day, only when it makes little difference to do so.

Stop the Presses!

The newspaper is not long for this earth. Given terrible papers like the Washington Post or the Washington Times, I'm tempted to say, good riddance. But what this will really do is remove whatever, if any, scrutiny pols at all levels of government receive. No local scandal, no payback schemes, no school board hi-jinks. Overall, the loss of the newspaper is going to be a bad trip for free expression. I'm doubtful the web will be able to fill that role.