Jerry Stratton's Blog, page 24
February 23, 2022
Depersonalizing God in modern hymns
Hymn publishers seem to be hell-bent on removing God and faith from the hymns we sing during mass. Where Charity and Love Prevail has removed almost all personal pronouns, and implies that our faith can change with the whims of the day.
February 16, 2022
Plots are for the dead
Plotting is for directors and writers. When roleplaying narratives are plotted, they die.
February 9, 2022
My Year in Food: 2021
From Washington DC to San Diego and one or two places in between, it’s been a very good year for food.
February 2, 2022
Free the January 6 prisoners
It’s been over a year now since some of these people were imprisoned; there is no reason for any of them to be held without bail.
January 26, 2022
It’s a mad, mad, mad, psychotic world
It was once a sign of witchcraft to deny that witches exist. Today, it is a sign of madness to point out the madness of our COVID dogma.
January 25, 2022
in praise of lawn darts linked on Editorials
“the basis for a civilization of free people resides in the skills that children learn from the benign neglect of unsupervised play in an un-nerfed world”
“what must be learned is how to become self-governing. and it has been stolen from our children.”
El Gato Malo has a slightly different perspective on the loss of adult decisions in playtime that I wrote about in Childish things: the decline of toys and the fall of man.
“they never learned to make their own games, so now they need someone to tell them what game they should be playing, who their friends should be, someone to settle their disputes and hand out praise and prizes, determine virtue and vice. they cede agency for safety and that evolves into totalitarianism.”
January 19, 2022
Plot is the opposite of roleplaying
If you hunt for plot in a sandbox, you’re going to be disappointed. Plot must be created, not found.
January 12, 2022
My Year in Books: 2021
From Louis l’Amour to slavery to H. Rider Haggard, it’s been a very good year in books.
January 5, 2022
Optimistic pessimism, or utopian dystopias
Each new year brings in a new science fiction milestone. This year, it’s George Jetson.
