Have had a lot of thoughts over the past few days and weeks about the upcoming presidential election, and the general state of America.If you've ever read "Isaiah's Job" by Alfred Jay Nock, and you found it resonated with you, then this video may interest you t...
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Monday, January 08, 2024
The Berenstain Bears learn about sound economic policy
I knew it! I just knew that I hadn't imagined this. A cartoon from 37 years that I saw only once ago and I still remember it!Around the mid-Eighties there was an animated series based on the beloved Berenstain Bears children's books. The show ran on Saturday mornings on CBS. It was pretty good as I seem to recall. And often quite humorous.Well,...
Saturday, January 06, 2024
EEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!
All this time for the past several years I've been trying to write a book. About my life especially regarding the impact manic depression has had on it.I've been working on a number of bits and pieces of it, going back and forth on those. But there has never been a "plan" per se. I've been assembling fragments but this project lacked structure. I was stumbling around without a clearly defined plot.For a very long time,...
Thursday, January 04, 2024
Latest "episode" of my new video series
Still very early in this endeavor. Right now I am mostly working on camera angles, lighting, a better intro sequence... and my own presentation. I used to publicly speak better than I do now and I have to wonder if the meds I take to manage my manic depression might have taken some of that away. But there's no way to improve without jumping in and DOING it. Perhaps I will indeed improve with time.Anyway, here's the latest episode....
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
The Knight Shift turns TWENTY!
Twenty years ago today, on January 2nd 2004:"Here we go, fast and furious..."I'll be honest: I really never thought this blog would make it past the first year or so, It would be something for me to play around with and then I'd get bored and abandon it.This has not happened yet.I think The Knight Shift fulfilled a need in my life. To actively chronicle the...
Friday, December 29, 2023
Tammy's decoy
Last night Tammy, my miniature dachshund, got on the sofa. And she brought along one of her Christmas toys: a plush dachshund toy, which came courtesy of my cousin Lauryn and her husband.So she got up under her blanket, on my lap, and I noticed that she and her toy each had their tale protruding out:Which one is Tammy?? In real life it really does look like there...
Thursday, December 28, 2023
Twelve Years Later: Forgiving Mom
The realization hit me this morning that today is the twelfth anniversary of Mom's passing. I've written about her before, here. Maybe too much. Sometimes all the hurt and anguish builds up and demands, even needs a
vent. Some people do that with art. Or going out for a drive. I
learned a long time ago that I can't paint and I'm a threat...
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Christmas 2023: Return of a Tradition
To be honest, I don't know if I should do this. It seems like it would be more ideal to bring this back during a better Christmas.But when would that be? We aren't guaranteed a tomorrow, much less a holiday that could be years from now.It's like this: for a very long time, every year in the days before Christmas, I would post an article that I wrote for my college's...
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Tammy and me at Kitty Hawk
Today is the 120th anniversary of the first powered air flight, by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.In May of 2017, not long after coming back east after nearly a year of traveling across America, I took my dog Tammy on a day trip to the Outer Banks. I wanted her to be able to say (to other dogs anyway) that she has seen the...
Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Got to see Godzilla Minus One last night
Many years ago an idea hit for a Godzilla movie. There are strong doubts that I'll ever get to make it but the notion still occupies my mind whenever a film about kaiju is released. My idea for a Godzilla film is to set it in Japan in 1954, the year the original film came out. To treat Godzilla as a force of nature like an earthquake or tsunami. Shoot...
Sunday, December 10, 2023
DOOM is thirty years old today!
Doom, arguably the most installed piece of software in the history of anything, today celebrates the thirtieth anniversary of its release. It was at 12:01 AM on the morning of December 10th, 1993 that the team at id Software uploaded the first one-third of the game - the shareware version - to an FTP server at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Within minutes wanna-be...
Wednesday, December 06, 2023
Testing for un-named weekly series
It was my friend Matt Smith who first encouraged me to start a weekly video series like his own Sunday school videos. He suggested some equipment and I've been playing around with shooting footage with my iPad Pro. Today I tried it again, this time with a wireless lavalier microphone.This is still VERY rough, but I thought it could be shared with y'all. Few things from making this: the mic should be further up my shirt (crossing...
Tuesday, December 05, 2023
The Knight "Many Santas" Hypothesis
Work with me here. This is something that popped into being inside my gray matter a few weeks ago. Personally, I can't find any argument about how this is not a viable theory. Although I confess that I did ummm... "borrow" some things from current pop culture. But as Santa Claus is a character who has borrowed much else across the centuries I...
Sunday, December 03, 2023
Sharing something very special tonight
So, this past week a memory just popped into mind. About something I had written a long time ago as a student at Elon. Awhile back I discovered an online archive of every issue of The Pendulum, which was the college's newspaper. I've shared a few of the op-ed pieces I wrote for the paper already.I don't know why I found myself thinking of it but I went looking...
I'm feeling as if Kipling is in order...
The Godsof theCopybook HeadingsRudyard Kipling1919~As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in...
Sunday, November 26, 2023
Chris sees Doctor Who's "The Star Beast" so you don't have to
"Doctor... I let you go."~ final words of the Twelfth Doctor Oh dear Lord. It was so much worse than I was ready for.I keep hearing Peter Capaldi's last words as The Doctor, now several minutes after watching "The Star Beast": the first of the three hour-long specials "celebrating" the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who. Because that is what I'm...
Monday, November 20, 2023
God and me: How I found my faith again
I wish that I could tell you, faithful readers (all two of you) that my spiritual life is one that has been a beautiful one. A life that has somehow escaped all trouble and heartbreak. This month is the twenty-seventh anniversary of my first coming to having faith in Christ. And you would think that all of that time would have resulted in... well, something...
