4 = 2 = 1

Chaotic, me? My father is a Dragon and my mother is a Priestess of Lolth, why would anyone be intimidated?

But then again my mentor is Zaknafein, so that is that, I guess, mwahahahahahahaha...

"

Morkonan wrote:

some pretty interesting things, including the link to this lovely piece of art:

Mr. Konan, thank you for your insight sir! Nice to read what you write, posts like yours —and other certain individuals', Ciaran's* and crunk's come readily to mind— are welcome contributions, without that meaning, of course, that one has to always agree with the other person's point of view. Regardless it's always a pleasure, if anything, for the sheer delight the perusal of good english has to offer, especially coming from the forum's masters of the English language, moreso in a time of... linguistic misery, if you will. Good prose from the forum's pros can't be —but— a good thing, no? Say, yer not a book critic by trade, are ye (wink, wink)? Often times you sound pretty... austere and academic. I bet half the forum's population can't even begin to fathom the meaning of your words, the other half can only be struggling --mwahahaha me included, but somehow I manage to pull through in the end, having picked a new word or phrase in the process.

As for art, I like Vermeer, he's... cute, and his Missy adorable, but I'm a Frans Hals guy myself, something about the incomplete in his masterpiece portraits... —how can I put it— I find them simply irresistible...



* I didn't misspell the name of our... Ruler, or at least if I did, I did it on purpose, he might've drawn inspiration from Greek mythology's Charon, or whatever, but Ciaran (pronounced Kee-ae-ran) is my favorite Celtic (pronounced Keltik) name, and I've already clearly stated my deepest affection for names. I use it for my elven characters, all the time.

Names. Appellations. Monikers. Handles. You... name it! Got to love them, I know I do.

Here, my darling, I offer you my heart, and this lovely, red rose! And after the rose withers and wanes, after it's gone, and after I'm gone, and you're gone, what remains? Remains naught, but the name of the rose, and a rose is a rose, is a rose, is a rose... Est ubi gloria nunc Babylonia? Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.

Who was this wise man (of olde), that once said give me a name, and I give you a story? I think it was Venerabilis Inceptor, or good Professor T., anyway he was definitely an Englishman. Any Good Name already has a story inherently, ripe for the taking, names have stories intrinsically, all one has to do is reach out, or delve deep —if you prefer— the way Michelangelo saw the sculpture in the stone slab, before he even grabbed his chisel.

Let's take a good old scotish female name, for example, Caleigh. It needs a surname, what about Haggsdottir? So, our heroine is Caleigh Haggsdottir, she's scotish, tracing her ancestry all the way back to the Norse invasion of the Dark Ages. She's not pretty, I mean isn't it obvious with a moniker like that? She needs a middle name, no? Caleigh 'Warts' Haggsdottir, it sounds... forebodingly nice, and in the creepiest way too. So what could a Caleigh 'Warts' Haggsdottir be doing in our story? With a name like that she could easily be a vendor, selling... apples, what else? But not the best quality, of course, rather quite bad apples, if not outright poisoned! Let's give her a stall in the market. A customer approaches her bench, to check out the merchandise. He's your average Scotish Lord (NOT a McDonald), he goes by the name of... Fionnaoch McGrump, and he also needs a middle name, 'Skinflint' will do nicely. A dialogue, inescapably, is bound to happen, between the two of them:

Good Old Lady Caleigh 'Warts' Haggsdottir: Apples, apples, (lowering her voice) rotten apples!

Lord Fionnaoch 'Skinflint' McGrump: And what are you selling good woman?

Good Old Lady Caleigh 'Warts' Haggsdottir: Rotten apples kind sir, the rotten kind, yer buyin'?

Lord Fionnaoch 'Skinflint' McGrump: Back off, miserable and ridiculous hag, you hear me? I'll have nothing to do with yer damnable rotten apples!

"

Nizhidrhamannit wrote:

...Say, yer not a book critic by trade, are ye (wink, wink)? Often times you sound pretty... austere and academic. ..

I'm a pompous blowhard, sometimes. It's nothing sincere or personal, it's just that I move a bit quickly through points and don't have a lot of time to take an easier, more thoughtful and gentle, approach. And... I'm really sometimes a pompous blowhard.

But, "in real life?" I'm pretty much an ol' softy and will give someone the shirt off my back if they need it. My hubris only goes so far, but I'm generally a run-of-the-mill "good guy."

These days, I traipse around the 'net while sipping coffee and balancing a laptop that has the world's tiniest, most frustrating, keyboard. My "regular typing" keyboard isn't much better, but I haven't been able to find a good one in years. :/

I've been writing since I was three years old... Well, I learned to type on a cast-iron Underwood typewrite around that age. (Still have it, somewhere...) I later learned to spell. I wrote my first "novella" by the age of seven and had a very short story published around that time. (No, I am not Stephen King, thank goodness. My "novella" was about the family dog taking a trip through spooky woods and meeting an owl. That's high friggin' drama for a seven year-old. :) My "short" was a fantasy piece about a knight befriending the dragon he was questing to destroy.)

But, enough about me. (Lot's of people write about themselves in posts, but it doesn't really serve many others, does it? So...)


Expanding one's perspective only takes a measure of will and the capability to see it realized. There's a reason we often experience that in higher education or after we complete some preliminary education - We have the time to do it.

There's a reason why patrons of the arts are generally financially well-off and why "gentlemen naturalists" helped lead Western Civilization out of the Dark Ages and came up with idiotic notions of Humanism - They had the time and the means necessary to accomplish these things.

It's not easy to learn about new things if one is living hand-to-mouth. It's not easy to find the time to expand one's perspectives if one is busy working two jobs and raising children. It's most definitely not easy to contribute to humankind's knowledge or culture if one falls asleep at six o'clock at night because one gets up at five in the morning to commute to work involving more practical labors.

Passion is an excellent second-stage of "Will." One may have the Will to learn mathematical topology, but if one does not have a passion for it then one is not likely to excel in performing... mathematical topology stuffs. (I just picked the most confusing thing I could think of and that's what came out. :))

The really wonderful thing about actually encountering a moment in one's life where one's reaction to a "new thing" is one's own personal "Eureka Moment" is that a "passion" developing to encourage one to pursue those moments is very nearly guaranteed. Will is great, but Passion is more rewarding.

But, it's oh so very difficult to manage to do that "in real life." Can your neighbor afford to take a trip to the local museum? With their toddlers? On a day off when they should be doing the laundry and going to the grocery store? Probably not. And... that's very sad. It's sad because your neighbor would probably love that experience and may actually gain something wonderful that could last them a lifetime, all in the space of a few minutes. But, the diapers need to be changed, the laundry must be done, someone has to mow the grass...

Growing up leaves few opportunities for expanding one's horizons. That's why one has to commit so much effort to pursuing that goal. There are bills to be paid, kids to be cared for, light-bulbs that need changing and too much darn vacuuming to be done.

In the interest of brevity, because I often have none, I offer this:

Devote yourself entirely to living life as is necessary, but always work hard to make time to learn new things. If you don't do that, you won't do that. It's that simple. Force yourself to do it, otherwise you'll just sit at the kitchen table, write out checks to pay the monthly bills, watch an hour of garbage on television and then go to bed, waking only to do the same thing over and over again.

Go to an art gallery. Visit a museum. Take the family to the zoo. Go to a symphony, a ballet, a play, a comedy performance and one of those crazy interpretive dance things... Do it. Do it all and be sure to bring your brain with you when you go. Go to a bookstore once a month and grab a random book off the section of shelving you think you'd like to read about. Do it. Read it. Think about it.

Lastly - hic sunt dracones - "Here be dragons."

This is all a very dangerous thing, reaching out to seek the enrichment and the expansion of one's own personal perspective. It's addicting, but often not in a "good way." There is a very real danger of becoming so enamored of a new thought, a new perspective, that one ignores others. A new thought may offer a tantalizing truth that leads one down a rabbit-hole of even more tidbits of fancy, none of which are actually very useful in-and-of themselves. Never succumb to the temptation of steeping oneself in a perspective which denies one the freedom of thought necessary to follow other pursuits. These days, we see the results of those who have become enmeshed in ideas they have found so very rewarding that they ignore all others in favor of even deeper "mysteries" their chosen ideology reveals to them. Here. Be. Dragons. This is no different than any other point in history where some people thought they had a exclusive right to "the truth." Beware, hubris.

Having an open mind doesn't mean you let just anything in there - Learn to discriminate and learn to seek value from one's illuminations. If they hold not true value, leave them be and move on. Remember them, though. One can not always be sure one has not made a terrible mistake. :)

PS: All sort of preachy and "austere," I admit. I tend to write forcefully, argumentatively, and with direct purpose. That doesn't mean I always apply those well and certainly doesn't mean I always achieve my purpose. I try to be entertaining, at least. Doesn't mean I am, tho... ;)

Warning: Below is the secret to life. Think at your own risk.

Nah, you're alright! Only people with a natural sense of good humor can do that, I mean, sound sometimes like pompous blowhards, when in fact they're making fun of themselves, being self-deprecating and critical of their own faults, their greatest hits and misses, and NOT afraid to do so. Sound advice, by the way, for all the world to know, I mean all willing to pay heed, thanks for sharing.

"

Nizhidrhamannit wrote:

...when in fact they're making fun of themselves, being self-deprecating and critical of their own faults, their greatest hits and misses, and NOT afraid to do so....

This is my super-power. :)

Life of Buffy, the Buffoon (who thought he had it all figured)

An excerpt...

- Verba vana aut risui apta non loqui, said the pompous and dried, serious and sermonizing, knowledgeable professor Archibaldrick Moroniarty, always so... full of himself that he couldn't realize (the old... fool) he was only embarassing himself, acting all important in his undergarment!

- Tum podex carmen extulit horridulum, whistled Dingle Dimpledoot quite merrily (and it was somewhat expected being the cheerful man-child apprentice, that nothing ever seemed to dampen his spirit), then burst into a booming laughter that echoed through the vastness of the proportionate —to the owner's ego— bedchamber. A nosy maid, that was witnessing the whole scene from behind the curtain, could swear the other day, when talking to the equally inquisitive cook, that she saw the old geezer's tin chamberpot rattling like crazy, but her credibility is rather questionable —to say the least— so whether that is a fact, or not, will remain something of an enigma...

As the infamous university professor, philosopher and... avid video game player* Dr Cretinaux Jollie (I swear that's his real name — scout's honor) once said:
It is thus because I said so, now fuck off!


* If I remember correctly he even went as far to win the... academy award for the Avid Gamer of The... Century... once!!!

In a game that I very much like, there was this... trait (if I may call it that way), that all of us fans used to... love to hate; every time the game crashed —and believe you me, there were numerous occassions it did crash, especially before its countless bugs got patched through the course of many years—, the user ended up in the desktop, greeted by a window with some debug info, or somesuch tech-savvy, useless, nerdy mumbo jumbo, titled... [tada🎵] Where Is The Guru? This seemingly pointless question haunted the community's game sessions, and became a stupid meme, long before the actual... age of the memes!

Now bear with me, the previous paragraph was a tiresome —yet— necessary prologue to set the premise. At some point, you could start a quest that spanned the four corners of the game's map (the actual area was vast), it was more like an easter egg, you had to discover a chest on a remote location, fight some tough monsters, acquire a key, then unlock the chest, only to recover some notes with a hint of dubious nature at best, pointing to a different spot, and [tada🎵] another ridiculous key that would unlock the next chest. To cut a long story short, I'll just say this: ever heard of those traditional russian dolls called babushkas? Open one to find another inside, identical only smaller, then the next one, and so on, so forth... cute I know, pretty much the same deal, toss in a key!

Back at the matter at hand, if one was persistent enough, and meticulous in their exploration of the game world, one would eventually manage to solve all the quest riddles, discover all secret locations, unlock all the damned chests, to finally get one's hands on the much coveted... treasure; it was just a magic scroll, that when used would teleport the hero to a hidden cave, behind the great waterfalls, only to realize that a generic and bland character was sitting by the fireplace, roasting sausages made of... meatbugs (the disgusting little critters were all over the place). He was just a mundane spell caster, possessing neither special powers, nor unique items to loot, if the gamer even bothered to fight him (at this point in the game, he was simply a laughable adversary). The worthless simpleton didn't even have anything interesting to say, except for generic stuff, that you kept listening everytime you crossed path with a pathetic peasant wretch. As expected, one would ultimately choose to end his miserable existence, just out of spite, or —alternatively— on principal alone. And in case you haven't guessed it by now, this insignificant nobody's apellation was [tada🎵] The Guru!

What is the point of this whole rant, you prodigal son of the methodical madness, I can hear you ask? Well, no point actually, sorry. Except maybe, for the possibility that sometimes there's no real guru to be found, and if one manages to find the guru, one is in for a rather nasty surprise, realizing that the so-called guru is just another... silly clown.