Author: Neal Ross Attinson
Neal Ross Attinson is one of those text-compulsives who feels naked without a keyboard, or at least a a pad and pen. He is unafraid of adverbs, loves astronomy and gastronomy with equally unabashed passion, and lives with/in an eclectic library in Sonoma, California.
New Feature: Metaphorager Via Email
AS PART OF OUR CONTINUING effort to serve You, The Reader, we at The Metaphorager are now offering an up-to-the-minute email subscription. Just input your e-dress to the box on the left to receive each post as it happens. (We…
How To Wash The Dishes
CLEAN DISHES NOT ONLY LOOK nice, they’re more healthy to eat from. Everyone has their own special method for this daily (or twice-daily) chore, and I’ve found this one to be most efficient in terms of time and water savings:…
Pithyism #Lazy Eight
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW how much you don’t know, tell a young child it can ask you anything.
Gritty Comfortoir
AND AFTER ALL IS SAID and done, and the horrible truth revealed The bodies taken away, the last question answered Comes William S Burroughs (the gravelly graandpa who’s done things the grownups won’t let you ask him about). “Interdimensional Alka…
First Graf: Goldfinger
IF YOU HAVE NEVER READ the original James Bond stories by Ian Fleming, you don’t know James Bond. You also don’t know sweeping prose that zips along like a rocket; lush description with a reporter’s eye for detail; fourth-wall breaking…
Who Is This Prosatio Silban, And What Does He Want?
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S DIABLO VALLEY c. 1978, Dungeons & Dragons was barely known outside the fantasy-and-science-fiction community. I first learned of it around that time via David Hargrave‘s Arduin: a created world not unlike J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, C.S. Lewis’…
Pithyism #O
FAMILY’S WHO YOU EAT WITH. (Conclusion drawn after viewing the final scene of “Safe.” Those who know, know.)
“Judaism is more than ‘tikkun olam’”
THAT’S THE TITLE OF A provocative but understated op-ed today on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website, and it’s a point of view with which I find myself agreeing: that if one sees Judaism as only an excuse for right action,…
Aside
“GOOD GOD, MAN — WHAT HAPPENED?” “Well, I was on the freeway, and my car stalled right in front of a hurtling semi. Fortunately, the orchestra changed tunes at exactly that moment and distracted everyone.” “What orchestra?” “See?”
Aside
HAPPY SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR APPRECIATION DAY! In our case, that would be those wonderful folks at sonic.net, whose founders we’ve known since they built Santa Rosa Junior College’s first dialup Internet host as a class project in 1993ish and without whom there’d be no The Metaphorager (among others). O Gallant Knights of the Cables Etheric, Slayers of Spam and Kibitzers of Kludge; Nobly-born Fighters Against Tedium, Keepers of the Causeways Electronic and Guardians of the Never-Ending Taskmasters. (szhhhhwip) I salute you. Keep the toasters flying!
Rethinking “Privacy”
RECENTLY, ONE OF MY FAVORITE blogs switched their commenting software from one which featured anonymous “handles” to one which can also link readers under their real names. It has caused me to rethink what I thought I took for granted…