IF A GOOD FRIEND HADN’T died this year and cured me of a years-long writer’s block, I wouldn’t be posting this.
But he did, so I am, proffering 2018’s Top 10 Viewed Pages and Posts at this writing:
1. Home page / Archives: (683 views) marks people who have happened by from seeing my URL posted in various places (including email .sigs, business cards, our local radio station and Facebook), and/or those exploring more than the seven posts visible on each “page.”
Attentive readers will recognize some of what’s named herein but may or may not have light shed thereby, so: the Xao, Xai and Xax are, like the Aydnzmri and Mazei, descended from the “Antecedents” whose millennia-ago war broke the Exilic Lands (and first gave them that name); but unlike their more refined counterparts, reverted to barbarism. Continue reading “Across The Rimless Sea: Folk”
Fig. 1. THIS GENTLEMAN, WHO SPEAKS WORLDS while twiddling his moustache, is “Metaphoragin’ Jones”, our mascot here at The Metaphorager. He epitomizes our outlook and mission: bemused, slightly rumpled and willing to talk all day about everything in the world if necessary/desired. (He may well also appear on a CafePress T-shirt.) You may read about the origin of Metaphoragin’ Jones’ (and the blog’s) name in the post “Wrapping Round,” which signal also explains a bit about metaphoraging in general. Happy Reading!
According to the Official Couch Potato Handbook, each official Couch Potato Viewing Lodge must have its own name. Ours is the “Starbase 33 Minyan,” mostly due to a love of science fiction in general (and Star Trek in particular). The photo at left illustrates our motto, an SFnal riff on the Lubavitcher Hasid motto “Bring Moshiach (the Messiah) Now!” (Could I have ‘shopped a combadge, I’d’a done.) Sometimes, a blog is just a good place to download your brain.
(Feel free to skip if you’re not hot for ethnoapologetics.)
THERE’S AN UGLY MEME IN the Jewish community that may or may not have analogs among other minority groups: the so-called “self-hating Jew.”
This term, most often used in online Jewish fora (the Forward, Tablet, Jewschool, et al) when someone Jewish posts a critically outre comment about Israel, is more generally used to describe one who turns his or her back on “the tribe” and spends some significant time publicly railing thereupon. (Peter Beinart and Adrienne Rich come most prominently to this writer’s mind, but someone once used it to describe me when I naively asked in one forum, “Is there such a thing as ‘too Jewish?'” I don’t think so, but some apparently do.) Continue reading ““Self-Deleting Jews””
ASTUTE READERS OF THE METAPHORAGER may have noted the default use of the masculine gender (e.g. he, him, his, man, etc.). This is due neither to a slight against the better-looking sex nor a political statement, but the love of such phrases as “MAN ON MOON” or “essential love of mankind” or “There are some things Man was not meant to know,” and as an XY kind of guy it just sort of comes natural to me.
My point is, if you’re hung up on a phrase, you’re missing the point.
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Prosatio Silban in his galleywagon / Illo (c) 2008 Alana Dill, http://youbecomeart.com 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’ Narnia, or Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar.
The most addicting D&D element for me has always been “worldbuilding” – establishing an ecology of people, monsters and treasure within a self-consistent storytelling framework. It’s an excellent outlet for structured creativity, and one day, while at my day-job as an offset printer, I grabbed a pad, scrawled a coastline and bay, added some mountains and a river basin, and began describing those who lived there.
Some years later I had compiled several notebooks and folders full of maps and diagrams, charts and lists, races and religions, legends and monsters, mostly written in two-to-60 minute slices during and between offset jobs. It was a lot of fun. But it was also pretty lonely; at that point, I didn’t play D&D anymore, and I felt a bit … unrequited. And, to be honest, somewhat silly.The Exilic Lands and environs
So in 2005, I decided to tell stories to answer the question, “What would it be like to actually make a living in one of these invented worlds?” After all, somebody has to clean up all those slain dragons (and, probably, buy groceries and pay rent). Thus was born Prosatio Silban, self-defrocked holyman and mercenary cook.
Worldbuilding and its fruits have brought me great joy (and occasional comfort) during the past several decades. I hope you have found some joy in it too.
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 about privacy — and explain why I now post solely under my real name.
In 1996, I was irate with a local politician who had left a “How’m I Doing?” flyer on our door. I told her exactly how I thought she was doing, and was about to toss it in the mail, when Ann pointed out that I hadn’t signed my name to it. Continue reading “Rethinking “Privacy””
HAVING JUST RECEIVED ORDERS FROM Fearless Leader to define my principles in 106 characters or less and then disperse them yea seedlike to the multitudes, I replied as follows:
Clearer thinking. Don’t litter. Say “please” and “thank you” and mean it. And stop killing the children.
IF A GOOD FRIEND HADN’T died this year and cured me of a years-long writer’s block, I wouldn’t be posting this. 
