First Meetings: Varnik, Moq, and Jeffid

Scene from Episode One of The Wizard, the Prince, the Warrior, and His Son. Seriously, I need to come up with a shorter title.

Explaining Fiction to Relatives

EXPLAINING FICTION TO RELATIVES

 

We were not them.

They were not there.

That name was used on another face.

That didn't happen.

We never did that.

I didn't ever go in that place.

 

She was not nice.

He was not bad.

That man was seldom so good and kind.

Things were better,

The days more dull.

Look for that and you'll never find.

 

It wasn't like that.

That wasn't the spot.

That certainly never happened then.

He was not killed;

She isn't dead;

But now, forever, they're who and when.

 

--August 31, 2016

 

August 1, 2000

You Make Me Sad

On the advice that maybe 'cheese crisps' would be a viable snack substitute. I searched to see what HEB, my local store of choice, had on offer. As with most 'health' foods, prices were huge in comparison to weight of product offered. The best compromise I could find was this in-store brand with almost 3 dollars for less than 2 ounces of product. The next best was 6 dollars for 3 ounces of product. And so this morning I began the great experiment.

It was somewhat less than a taste sensation, though I would not go so far as to say it was absolutely vile. I mean they could be choked down after a lot of chewing and softening. They are tiny tough discs. I cannot imagine anyone choosing it for anything other than necessity. It does give your mouth something to do, so to some degree it satisfies an oral fixation, and the taste does nothing to lure you to another bite if not absolutely killing your appetite. 

So the 'cheese crisp' experiment has so far had disappointing results. But it's early days yet. Perhaps after I have made my way through the bag I will have developed some sort of tolerance. Perhaps a more expensive brand will prove more appealing. But I'd feel rotten about sending good money after bad in a vain endeavor. But hey, you have to try something. 

I know that this is not riveting content, but I got to talk through this stuff somewhere. Hopefully I can get back to more creative efforts soon.

Update:

I'm afraid I have to proclaim the experiment an abject failure. At about 12:30 PM I experienced a sudden and horrifying vomit, of which 'cheese crisps' appeared as readily identifiable and undigestible elements. Perhaps if I had tried them under more normal circumstances they would have been tolerable; as it is, I can not face them again. Which begs the question of what to do with them: I cannot imagine even starving wild animals would accept them. 

 

A Paucity of Pictorials

I had a lineup of at least six old illustrations to enhance with AI, but after trying yesterday and today, only got two before ChatGPT seemed to have got hung up on them. But here is the Wogglebug and a Harpy, so that's some progress.

That Might Explain It

I had been worried for the last few days; after my fall, my glucose was running unusually high. This despite my extra sparse diet. This wasn't because of an particular virtue, but rather that I had lost appetite for anything. Usually there is at least one food that will appeal; now the menu seemed an abomination of desolation. I hadn't even pooped since the fall. My thoughts were muggy; I was finding it hard to write or think. I thought my high numbers might be because I was retaining everything. Then I sat down to clean out my mini-fridge, and the light dawned.

The trauma of my fall had completely erased the thought that I needed to take my weekly dose of Ozempic. I spent so much time overseeing my recovery and my daily duties that I had overlooked an ordinary health regimine. I should point out that Ozempic has not been any kind of 'weight-loss magic wand' for me. But it does seem to help. Between you, me, and the Blogosphere, I think its reduced efficacy might be because my appetite is more of an emotional problem than a physical one.

The moment I took a dose, I could poop. We'll see what tomorrow's numbers are like. In the meantime I'd like to express my vague dislike of having an image of Hathor on the package. I know she's an Egyption goddess of health, and that the medicine is developed from cows. So in a way to people who have no strong religous convictions the symbol makes sense.

Tame and Quite Elderly

"And Miramon Lluagor, too, that under Manuel had been the Lord Seneschal of Gontaron, had now gone out of Poictesme,—sedately and unmysteriously departing, with his wife and child seated beside him upon the back of an elderly and quite tame dragon, for his former home in the North. It was there that Miramon had first encountered Dom Manuel in the days when Manuel was only a swineherd. And it was there that Miramon Lluagor hoped to pass the remainder of as long a life as his doom permitted him, in such limited comfort as might anywhere be possible for a married man.

Otherwise, he could foresee, upon the brighter side of his appointed and appalling doom, nothing which was likely to worry him. For Miramon Lluagor had very wonderfully prospered at magic, he was, as they say, now blessed with more than any reasonable person would ask for: and the most clamant of these superfluities appeared to him to be his wife.

They tell how Miramon was one of the Léshy, born of a people that was neither human nor immortal, telling 63how his ancestral home was builded upon the summit of the mountain called Vraidex. To Vraidex Miramon Lluagor returned, after the Fellowship of the Silver Stallion had been disbanded, and Miramon had ceased to amuse himself with the greatness of Manuel and with the other notions of Poictesme.

They narrate that this magician dabbled no more in knight-errantry, for which the Seneschal of Gontaron—who through his art was also lord of the nine kinds of sleep and prince of the seven madnesses,—had never shown any real forte. He righted no more wrongs, in weather as often as not unsuited to a champion subject to rheumatism, and he in no way taxed his comfort to check the prospering of injustice. Instead, he now maintained, upon the exalted scarps of Vraidex, the sedate seclusion appropriate to a veteran sorcerer, in his ivory tower carved out of one of the tusks of Behemoth; and maintained also a handsome retinue of every sort of horrific illusion to guard the approaches to his Doubtful Palace; wherein, as the tale likewise tells, this mage resumed his former vocation, and once more designed the dreams for sleep.

Thus it was that, upon the back of the elderly and quite tame dragon, Miramon returned to his earlier pursuits and to the practice of what he—in his striking way of putting things,—described as art for art’s sake. The episode of Manuel had been, in the lower field of merely utilitarian art, amusing enough. That stupid, 64tall, quiet posturer, when he set out to redeem Poictesme, had needed just the mere bit of elementary magic which Miramon had performed for him, to establish Manuel among the great ones of earth. Miramon had, in consequence, sent a few obsolete gods to drive the Northmen out of Poictesme, while Manuel waited upon the sands north of Manneville and diverted his leisure by contemplatively spitting into the sea. Thereafter Manuel had held the land to the admiration of everybody but more particularly of Miramon,—who did not at all agree with Anavalt of Fomor in his estimation of Dom Manuel’s mental gifts.

Yes, it had been quite amusing to serve under Manuel, to play at being lord of Gontaron and Ranec, and to regard at close quarters this tall grave gray cockeyed impostor, who had learned only not to talk.... For that, thought Miramon, was Manuel’s secret: Manuel did not expostulate, he did not explain, he did not argue; he, instead, in any time of trouble or of uncertainty, kept quiet; and that quiet struck terror to his ever-babbling race, and had earned for the dull-witted but shrewd fellow—who was concealing only his lack of any thought or of any plan,—a dreadful name for impenetrable wisdom and for boundless resource.

“Keep mum with Manuel!” said Miramon, “and all things shall be added to you. It is a great pity that my wife has not the knack for these little character analyses.”

- The Silver Stallion, James Branch Cabell