A worker at the Hadera power plant in Israel found a strange artifact in the sea. The object turned out to be a medieval hand grenade.
The grenade was filled with Greek fire (naptha) for use in fighting between wooden ships. The clay grenade was intended to break open and spill its contents, which would ignite on the enemy ship and catch it on fire.
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Sometimes, I’ll read a book or watch a movie that is so brutal I’m left going, WTF? Then I’ll try it again and end up thinking it’s genius. I keep waiting for that to happen with Andy Kaufman, but even so many years after his death I’m still going WTF. CLOCKWORK ORANGE, on the other hand, is a good example. I found the film disturbing when I first watched it at a ripe young age and not in a good way. Years later, I watched it again and found it brilliant.
BLOOD MERIDIAN is a good example of a book that struck me that way. I recently reread it and this time it nailed me. The novel, written by the great Cormac McCarthy, is in my opinion as grim as his seminal apocalyptic work THE ROAD. It tells the story of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old boy adrift in a world of violence in the American West in the 1850s. He signs up with a group of independent operators hoping to overthrow the Mexican government and set themselves up as kings. After the Comanches end their ambitions, he ends up joining a group of homicidal maniacs contracted to hunt Apache scalps for various governors in Mexico.
The story is based on historical events occurring along the Texas-Mexico border during that time period, but McCarthy’s prose transforms the story to the mythical. BLOOD MERIDIAN subverts romantic notions of the Wild West while elevating senseless brutality to poetry. The most intriguing character is the Judge, who may be the devil, God or simply the brutal spirit of the West. He chews up every scene with his embrace of the natural world, chaos, hedonism and violence, and plays the antagonist to the Kid. McCarthy’s signature beautiful descriptions take you through myriad cultures and geographies but always bring you back to an almost nihilist outlook that people are violent and animalistic pleasure seekers, and life is cheap. The Wild West he paints is both gritty and mythical, a form of Purgatory in which the Kid lives a violent life contradicted by occasional kind deeds, and in which the Judge would make him a disciple or destroy him.
Overall, BLOOD MERIDIAN is a powerful Western epic that will stick with you and make you question the darker side of human nature.
In Japan, there is a museum of rocks that look like faces, or jinmenseki. Officially, the Hall of Curious Rocks.
When I first heard about this, I was like, well, that’s Japan for you.
My second response was, wow, these rocks are kind of cool!
The museum is located in Chichibu, Japan and hosts a large collection. The main requirement is the rock must look like a human face and be completely natural with no human artistry.
Here’s a photo for you below. I think my favorite is the happy little chunkster on the bottom right.
Check out more here at ThisIsColossal.com.
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on the Spilling Ink podcast along with author D.L. Young, author of the DARK REPUBLIC series. The show is hosted by Katie Salidas and David Jones. We rapped indie publishing, beta reading, dime novels, works in progress, and more.
Check it out here:
The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment was a series of experiments exploring delayed gratification in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The first study was conducted by Walter Mischel and Ebbe Ebbesen in 1960. In this study, children (aged four through six) were taken into a room empty of distractions. A treat of their choice, such as a marshmallow, was placed on a plate. They were told they could eat the treat right away but if they waited 15 minutes, they would get a second treat.
More than 600 children took part. A minority ate the treat right away while the rest tried to delay gratification. One-third made it all the way and won the second treat.
The experiment is fascinating in that it explores the concept of a present you and a future you. You say, on Tuesday, I’m going to exercise. Then Tuesday rolls around and you’d rather sit and play computer games, so that’s what you do. You say, I’ll exercise next Tuesday for sure, and you feel good about it. Then next Tuesday comes…
What’s interesting is researchers followed up on the children in 1990. On average, the children who delayed gratification showed better SAT scores. Another follow-up study involved brain scans of the children in middle-age, which showed their brains are structured differently.
Can’t wait to try this on my kids …
Here’s a video of Silvia Helena Barcellos describing why we tend to want instant gratification:
Recently played DEAD BY DAYLIGHT, a multiplayer game that captures the terror of slasher horror movies.
The game combines competitive and cooperative gaming. As one of four survivors, your job is to find a series of power generators and repair them. As the monster, your job is to hunt the survivors and mount them on a handy meat hook as a sacrifice to your dark god.
I played the game several times as both a survivor and the baddie, and had a great time doing each. The survivors and monster have different capabilities and advantages, but overall it’s really hard for the survivors. No matter, it’s one of those games where it almost doesn’t matter if you win or not, it’s all about how you play and how much fun you have. The monster is genuinely scary, it’s like being in a horror movie. When I was the monster, I particularly enjoyed sneaking up behind my friend John and starting up the old chainsaw, laughing maniacally as I did so.
Check it out if you’re tired of watching movies and want to be in one for a change.
Here’s a video I found on Youtube that shows an example of game play: