Famished Writer

Image By U.S. Navy photo by Chief Warrant Officer Seth Rossman. [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. E verybody loves a hero. Americans love heroism so much if there’s none to be found we will make one up. Not just Hollywood but the national media is churning out everyday heroes every day.  There’s nothing wrong with that, heroes prove fairy tales can be true. A reason for hope perhaps, but we often forget the best fiction is made from non-fiction, even the Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. Mythical creatures are often utilized to separate reality from fantasy and yet these “fantastic” stories are based on humanity’s version of good versus bad. The good guy (like you) will always win.  Image By United States Army [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Master Sgt. Juan Negron, listed as an overlooked medal of honor recipient.  Most would define a hero as selfless, courageous and strong (they must survive in order to b...

September Morn (1912), Image of painting by Paul Émile Chabas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Skin, Oh skin, where to begin? As the largest and most visible organ of the human body, our skin really gets the smallest credit. There are plenty of sayings about skin but perhaps our skin has become too thick to absorb more than the skin deep (surface) meaning. Slap me some skin No skin off my back/nose That makes my skin crawl I jumped out of my skin By the skin of my teeth Comfortable in your own skin You're just skin and bones And of course, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, old sayings die hard as they say without saying exactly what is meant. Metaphorically, our skin is our container, our packaging, the exposed and judged part of our life that we carry with us from the moment we receive our first sensations of light and heat to our last dying shudder marked with chicken skin (goose bumps). Our skin has a built-in recipe for magic called hea...

It all started with a purple picture of our planet. Have you ever been shopping at a store or dining out when the power goes out or just the credit card terminal is on the fritz? It’s quite comical actually. In fact, the level of confuzzlement seems directly related to the age of the person needing to take your money. The younger the cashier/clerk/waiter is, the higher this level peaks. Of course cash would solve the problem, but who carries that anymore? I have encountered some MacGyver -esque cashiers who tear a strip of receipt tape and rub your credit cards raised image onto it, it works. Basically this procedure is like a retro version of those old plastic and metal slide credit card device with those carbon copy slips, most stores don’t even have those lying around anymore, I've even shown someone how to use one (as a customer). I’ve also seen the look of defeat on those young faces, the contemplation of “giving it away” (items or goods) instead of figuring a w...

Image taken by By Martyn Seddon [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. “…memory cannot retrace its path that far unless Another guide it.” Paradiso, Dante (Canto 18 L. 11-12) Looking back and reflecting on the crystal clarity of reflection (which is also commonly called 'logic'), I have surmised from experience that looking back doesn't do anything positive for forward momentum. I mean, certainly Kierkegaard was right about many things, namely his point about only being able to understand life backwards, and subsequently only being able to live in a forward direction. Most basically, if you were to imagine a timeline with arrows representing directional time, Kierkegaard’s well-known psychological observation would look something like this (the blurriness of the line itself is appropriate): LIFELINE                                   Understanding         ...

It is a lingua franca, or a universal game, dating back to the Han dynasty of China (206 BC-220 AD), simply called shoushilling (trans. ‘hand command’) and nearly two thousand years later we still play this simple game, called by various names all over the globe.  English speakers call it Roshambo (technically Rochambeau) or “rock-paper-scissors”, “ick-ack-ock”, or even “ching-chang-walla” and is most often played between 2 people in a decision-making challenge, much like drawing straws or plucking daisy petals, but requires no props real props.  While it was introduced to Europeans as late as the 1920’s for its portability and simple instructions, quickly gained popularity for its considered “uncheatable” fairness. In the 1930’s Rochambeau was promoted widely in America, more specifically aimed towards school-age children that could take this game with them where-ever they may be and use it to settle trivial disputes (thereby freeing up the parents/adults need to inter...

Side effects can be good. New data that science has been acquiring and collecting about the brain itself has provided an over-stimulating amount of data to condense usable information from. How much we don’t know about the brain is not only ironic, it's borderline tragic. I keep my eyes and ears on new studies published. Reading knowledgeable interpretations of information about the brain are much easier to chew on. I am hopeful the number of senses will be revised, upgrading our generation to Human version 2.0, but minimally I am hoping for an official promotion of ‘intuition’ as a new addition the team of five sense staples. I realize these chances are about as likely as Pluto getting an official reinstatement, and it’s at least as many miles away from sociological acceptance in the mainstream. Why intuition as our sixth sense? I’m not talking about ESP, or anything metaphysical (maybe hyper-real at most), but every human knows what this (intuition) is, every culture, all t...

There are two opposing opinions about the advancement of technology in the 21 st century- either you fear the machine as evil or you are genuinely excited about the future of the human race. Like it or not, technology and time are accepted momentum's we also call this “progress”. The Industrial Age has been replaced by what has been coined as the Innovation Age. And now that I have mentioned coinage, it would be neglectful not to acknowledge the alchemical concept (money) as ‘here to stay’also (and an influencer for either side of this argument).  Most simplified, these two sides of the spectrum could also be summarized as; some feel we are either destroying the world and messing with someone’s Divine perfect creation, or we are getting closer to understanding the riddle(s) of humanity, we are evolving or devolving. Who knows? I guess that theorem will prove itself. Time will tell. Image By United States Geological Survey [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. One...