PEREGRINE PULP

I never knew anything at all about Halloween, other than the fact that folks in different places celebrate differently or not at all. The details are pretty interesting. The pagan festival of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win ) originated with the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland. Samhain was the festival marking the end of harvest time and the beginning of winter. Halfway between autumn equinox and the winter solstice, marking a transition between the lighter half of the year

I was just listening to some drunken, middle-aged Irishfolk. As happens four pints in, they started talking about their recent doctor visits. With two males involved, the conversation inevitably turned to the digital rectal exam. One declared he'd never had the procedure done and had no interest in having one. The other two barked and howled, exclaiming he was foolish or that, perhaps, there was something wrong with his head. I couldn't believe all the confident vigor of the

You know this phenomenon, this optical illusion, that occurs when you stare too long at something and fatigue your photoreceptors? When you close your eyes you get what is called "retinal inertia", where those burned out receptors don't stop responding even in the absence of light. What you see then, with your eyes shut, is a "negative afterimage" that is the inverse of the light intensity and colours you were just looking at with your eyes open. Yeah. Now imagine that but wi

Comedian Dusty Slay ("Okay. We're havin' a good time.") tells a story about attempting to join the army. The whole thing is a much longer story about how he reasoned that there was no chance America would be involved in a major conflict before he could get some training and life skills, do some travelling, put in time as a cook, and to save some money to pay for culinary school and maybe build a restaurant when he gets out -- and that he should have been sent to basic trainin

LIVING AND A LIVING Part of what makes this place so great, aside from the natural beauty and great climate, is that it’s almost...

Pet rabbits, primarily domesticated European rabbits ( Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus ), had been abandoned on the local university...

EARLIEST VISITS? Almost eight centuries after Norse arrival in the east and two-and-a-half centuries after the start of the Columbian...

OKAY I’m a fan of etymology and semantics and, really, everything to do with language; still, somehow I never gave much thought to the...

Much is being said about this US election and the folks coming to power. The only thing worth noting that I can spot, and something mostly ignored from what I can tell, is that many key Republicans and even lower level appointees are actually lifelong Democrats. Even their key supporters and consultants are not Conservatives but, by almost any metric, actually Liberals. Though I've seen and heard of some party flipping over the years, here and there, I don't think there has e

So many such odd things these days. So many such things and so very odd that it’s hard to differentiate what is normal and what is...

CANDISS:  But you could be setting fire to things while adding fuel. BARTHALAHMEU:  What do you mean? C:  Well, you have no information....

NOAH: Someone was telling me how the Gospel of Mark, according to Mark, St. Mark the Evangelist, was originally transmitted by itinerant...

I don’t even know how you would explain to future generations what has taken place over the last decade. So much context is needed just...

This is what I understood my ancestry to look like: My father’s family name is extremely English and my mother’s maiden name is a sort of anglicization of an Austrian surname, as I understand it. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name is also extremely English while my paternal grandmother’s could only be Scottish. And all of those folks and some of their parents and grandparents, like my parents and myself, were all born in Canada. Everyone else on the family tree I’m aware o

NON-FICTION Today, August 22, 2024, a fellow recorded a video on his phone as he witnessed the Marinovka air base, on the Don river in...

Deborahlis : Yeah, I’m calling it ‘goldfishing.’ Cephorrhoea : Goldfish? Deborahlis : Gold-fishing. Not the cracker. Cephorrhoea : ...

Some folks really hate Jared Diamond. And those folks love hating Jared Diamond. As any good polymath (with backgrounds in physiology,...

MI-CHAEL:  I dunno. It’s like how I play this game. It’s a kind of World War II simulation. The creators have attempted to faithfully...