T’ick o’ Fog (Part 2)

| January 19, 2025

Previously in this series: T’ick o’ Fog (Part 1) Welcome back Goode Reader to this second installment of T’ick o’ Fog. Today we will look at a variety of “fog” that may not be foremost in the mind where atmospheric phenomena normally hold pride of place. I speak, of course, of metaphorical fog, which draws […]

T’ick o’ Fog (Part 1)

| January 8, 2025

2025 blew in over the shore with its own version of the vapours, alleging worldwide envelopment in mystery obscurants portending doom, and offering me an invitation, if not an outright demand, to give the situation a sniff of my own. At first, I was inspired to recall the intro to this episode of Get Smart […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 13: Oh Sheep!

| October 13, 2024

Back on Day 8 we had Pig. Today, Oh Sheep!, a six-and-a-half minute dark comedy in the form of an animated short film from the ever fruitful Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH., brought to my attention by the Filmbilder & Friends YouTube channel.

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 8: Pig

| October 8, 2024

“Society collapses as a group of animals exploit a sleeping pig by connecting a power grid to its snout. Watch as they deplete their resources and keep lookin’ cute while they do it!” ~ Pig Welcome back Goode Pilgrim. Tonight’s Dark Sentiment, Pig, is a short film that does what speculative fiction is intended to […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 5: A Man Of His Times

| October 5, 2024

“All this to bring us here tonight where no man is of a piece, unless that’s all you’ve left of him.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 2: Authority With your blood clearly still up from last night’s Sword Dance, I would be remiss in abandoning the saga of Donald McBane whose early experiments […]

Dark Sentiments Season 15 — Day 1: No Apologies

| October 1, 2024

Welcome back to our fireside, goode and weary Pilgrim, and this 15th Season of Dark Sentiments. Here, by the grim and unflinching Watchstone, we can take our ease, speak freely, and match observations with the utterances of those who would proclaim laws to have it otherwise. We don’t cater to weakness here, nor do we […]

Dark Sentiments Season 14 — Day 8: Bad Behaviour is Known By Its Outcomes, Even If Not Its Perpetrator (Part 2 of 2)

| October 8, 2023

“There’s an old saying — ‘Safe as houses’ — usually spoken in reference to situations that were anything but safe, but not always. There have forever been people who lived their lives in a wide eyed and blissful belief there can be some place where pain and death won’t find you. “Enter the ‘safe space’ […]

Dark Sentiments Season 14 — Day 7: Bad Behaviour is Known By Its Outcomes, Even If Not Its Perpetrator (Part 1 of 2)

| October 7, 2023

“To be Truly prepared to Live in the world is to understand and accept complete exposure to it in all its manifestations. No species in Nature, and you may be surprised to learn this includes our own, is naturally predisposed to ‘master’ the elements, nor holds entitlement to live apart from them. Rather, to Thrive […]

Dark Sentiments Season 14 — Day 6: Correlation and Causation

| October 6, 2023

“Spirit Messengers. The term conjures images of animals sent by a higher power to offer guidance toward the right Path. A Google search will turn up reams of pages identifying the characteristics of each creature, along with its “meaning” should it choose to make itself seen to you under a variety of circumstances. “As with […]

Dark Sentiments Season 14 — Day 5: A Certain Scent of Self-Importance

| October 5, 2023

hu·man noun A self-identified lesser god designed by a committee consisting of the feuding members of a large and dysfunctional extended family obsessed with entitlement to positions of inheritance from the estates of elders who not only aren’t dead yet, but certain to outlive them all. ~ Excerpt from Large Fierce Mammal’s Bigge Booke of […]