Tag: people

Ones I have known, if even tangentially.

A Complex Whiteness

YOU MIGHT THINK WHITE FLAGS mean “Surrender,” but if you’re talking about Aaron Fein‘s “White Flags” art piece — all the world’s flags rendered full-size in white cloth and embroidery — you’d better not say so in a public forum,…

Touching With Words

THE FIRST TIME I DISCOVERED that my words had an effect on other people was when something I wrote made other people cry. The people were my fellow high-school English students, and the topic was a personal essay we’d been…

Two Indigent Sketches

1. HITCHHIKING THROUGH RENO IN 1985, I wandered by the green banks of the Truckee River, where a number of seen-better-days men lived in the park, in what apparently remained of their business suits. “Hey buddy, you got a second?”…

Dear Hollywood …

WHY DO YOU INSIST ON MARKETING to us as though we were all ignorant, venal, cynical, cruel, swinish oafs? We at The Metaphorager decry these loutish generalizations and will boycott the offending generalizers: we may not starve you into submission,…

Advice to The Younger Self

TAKE THE WORLD AND YOUR part in it seriously, but not yourself. Never refuse anything offered, but be careful about entanglements. You’ll need computer skills, but you’ll also enjoy them. Write. Stake out early your points of honor. Dream. Then…

Pithyism #36

IF A PREGNANT WOMAN ASKS you for anything — and I mean anything, no matter how odd-sounding or inconvenient — give it to her immediately or sooner. (This rule does not necessarily apply to any other human situation.)

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!