Tag: John Zorn

  • Weekly Round-up, October 19, 2024

    Painted stones fond beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.

    [Painted stones found beside the Dragon Trail at Hardy Dam.]

    This past week was hectic. Far more hectic than I would have expected on a week off. But my week off coincided with the kickoff of a new project, which I am leading, so I had to pop in to a couple of meetings when I would much rather have been walking in the woods or otherwise not staring at a computer screen or listening to other people talk.

    But I did manage to accomplish some of the things I set out to work on for the week. My house is slightly improved. Our cats are verified healthy. I am too, as of my first physical in over a decade.

    Reading

    I finished the Borges interviews, and for a change of pace picked up Runes of Engagement by Dave Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell. I know Klecha from the ConFusion science fiction convention, where we are both volunteers and occasional members of the ConCom, and he has been most helpful as I learn the ins and outs of helping to manage a science fiction convention. I met Buckell at ConFusion several years ago. He is a Righteous Dude.

    Runes of Engagement was a fun read, and light, and I finished it in a couple of days. Next I read Jack Ridl’s new poetry collection All At Once, which was absolutely beautiful. Some of the poems moved me to tears, which almost never happens. Ridl is a treasure.

    Now I am reading Norah Lange‘s Notes from Childhood, which I acquired several years ago from my subscription to And Other Stories. I might have missed this one, except that Lange is mentioned more than once in the Borges interview collection, and so was floating near the surface of my subconscious.

    Writing

    With my little extra free time I began organizing my notes for the upcoming Month of Writing. Since I am no longer participating in National Novel Writing Month, I am instead participating in “That November Thing”, an event coordinated by the West Michigan Author Alliance, that which used to be the Ottawa County/Grand Rapids region for NaNoWriMo.

    Weekly Writing Prompt

    Subject: Apocalypse, Precursors
    Setting: Battlefield
    Genre: Lovecraftian

    Listening

    Interesting Links

  • Weekly Round-up, March 16, 2024

    Looking East across the Grand River at the Sixth Street Bridge Dam, at sunrise.

    [The photo this week was taken from the fish ladder on the west side of the Sixth Street Bridge dam, facing east into the sunrise.]

    This past Sunday, feeling exhausted and also nostalgic, I dusted off an old Lenovo ThinkPad 11e, fixed some issues it had with continually dropping its internet connection, and turned it into my retro gaming machine. I have scores of games purchased over the years from GOG.com, so I installed a few of them – Hammerwatch, Ultima IV, and others.

    One of my favorite games from back in the 1980s was Telengard, a sort of graphic roguelike which I played A LOT on my Commodore 64. There are a few ports and remakes available now, but while I found a few that could be played online, I didn’t find any which I could successfully install on the ThinkPad. No big deal; there are ways to get around this, including porting the Commodore BASIC source code to Javascript and having it run in the browser. It wouldn’t take long; anything that could run on a C64 is miniscule compared to even the most rudimentary of games available now.

    But my research turned up one interesting bit of trivia: Back in 2005 someone released an updated version of Telengard, which I had downloaded and played once upon a time. That person was Travis Baldree, who wrote the absolutely wonderful book Legends and Lattes. Baldree is one of the developers of Torchlight, also one of my favorite games, and one which I played A LOT back around 2012 – 2015.

    Reading

    Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. I picked this up in June 2018 at City Lights Bookstore, when my partner and I spent several days in San Francisco at the end of a two-week vacation that started with stops in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

    Writing

    Another week with little writing, though I do have a plan to start some deep worldbuilding for the rewrite of my 2022 NaNoWriMo project Cacophonous. Just too much noise in the world right now.

    This Week’s Writing Prompt

    Subject: Reincarnation, Fae
    Setting: Frontier
    Genre: Literary Fiction

    Listening

    John Zorn, Baphomet.

    I’ve been a fan of John Zorn since I first heard his album The Gift while sitting in Common Ground Coffee House in the early 2000s. “Baphomet” is a single track and also an album, prog rock by way of avant-garde jazz, and a fantastic listen. I think the theme music for writing Cacophonous, when I finally get around to it, will be Zorn’s oeuvre, mixed and randomized and on heavy rotation.

    Interesting Links

  • Weekly Round-up, March 9, 2024

    Revolving door into the Keeler building in downtown Grand Rapids

    Another super-busy week. The only time I had to myself was on the walk to and from work on Monday and Wednesday. That’s when I took this photo of the entrance to the Keeler building on Fountain Street.

    Reading

    I am close to done with Babel by R.F. Kuang, and loving every page of it.

    Writing

    Not much writing to speak of this week, other than the March 2024 Insecure Writer’s Support Group post, which discusses generative AI and its effect on creative types.

    This Week’s Writing Prompt

    Subject: Aliens, Super Powers
    Setting: Bar
    Genre: Noir

    Listening

    John Zorn and the New Masada Quartet

    Interesting Links

     

  • Monday Music: Lou Reed and John Zorn

    Yeah, this is some good stuff.