New Media

Be The Hero

jnarvey — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:58:54 +0000

A recent podcast episode I recorded with the prolific podcaster Shane Birley for the Sound of Awesome dealing with relationship advice.

Short version: “Be there for the one you love. Don’t be a dick in the most important relationship you have and you’ll probably wind up happy.”

Thoughts On Love A good friend of mine is getting married soon. This...

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Happy Mother’s Day!

jnarvey — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:46:23 +0000

Love you, Mom!

Thoughts On Love A good friend of mine is getting married soon. This...

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My Favorite Part of the Avengers Movie

jnarvey — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:03:01 +0000

When the atheist Incredible Hulk meets Loki and attempts to cast doubt upon the Asgardian’s godhood.

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A Fetus Is Not A Human Being

jnarvey — Fri, 11 May 2012 07:30:50 +0000

There. I said it.

I’d be standing with the people throwing condoms. And you can put away your crucifixes, “March for Life” dudes. We’re not fucking vampires.

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Book Review. An Occasional Walker

jnarvey — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:54:16 +0000

An Occasional Walker
D. W. Walker, 2011

I haven’t read a book like An Occasional Walker since… wow. That takes me back. William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, I think. The style is definitely akin to Burroughs’ “cut-up technique”, whereby bits of text are seeded throughout the chapters, sometimes to help the reader understand, but sometimes causing a kind of pleasant literary disorientation; it’s absinthe in trade-paperback.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. To be sure, if Dagald Walker ever met Burroughs in their younger days, I suspect Dag would have whipped the poor fellow with his belt, cursing this world filled with lousy hippies and degenerate post-modernists.

This collection of Walker’s writings from the No Dhimittude blog reads at times like a stream of consciousness from a scripture-quoting American Tea Party recruiter. There are diatribes against the Islamist threat that (belatedly) burst into the public’s consciousness on the day of the 9/11 attacks; rages against policies of civilizational suicide in the wake of non-assimilating (and occasionally openly seditious) immigrant communities in the West; odes to the oil companies; screeds against environmentalists; nostalgic looks back at shoot-first ask-questions-later cowboy role models.

But occasional breaks in the commentary clue you in that you’re reading something more akin to a work of art by a tortured soul; there’s pain there. Rejection. Grim anecdotes of survival amid gritty poverty. Descriptions of places that might be war zones or just some plain old slum that looks like a war hit it. Haunting slices of life as a derelict. Love in the shadows.

An Occasional Walker is a hard book. Sometimes amusing, other times perplexing; often surprising. Just stay away from the absinthe while you’re reading it.

No related posts.

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On Entering the Priesthood

jnarvey — Mon, 07 May 2012 04:29:46 +0000

The last couple of Tuesday nights with my RPG-gaming buddies, it’s been fun playing a headstrong Priest in the Weird West. In real life, I’m an atheist Jew with no particular respect for clergy of any kind, so I feel like I’m stretching my roleplaying muscles a bit.

I decided to honor the character with a backstory over at the Savage Games blog: Walking in the Promised Land

Check it out, fellow nerds. Cheers.

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Ice Cube Says It’s Friday

jnarvey — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:55:56 +0000

I’m inclined to believe him.

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Thoughts On Love

jnarvey — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:28:37 +0000

A good friend of mine is getting married soon. This makes me happy. I know he’s going to have a good marriage because he’s a good dude. I haven’t met the bride to be, but I hear she’s a lovely lady.

I’ve been married a good while. So I think I know a little bit about how this works.

Some people think that marriage is the end. It’s where the relationship hits its zenith. That’s it. The end. Everything after that is only a pale reflection of that happy day. The relationship can’t evolve from there. You’re done.

Not true. I love my wife more every day. And I will love her more every day until I die. On the ten-thousandth day of our union, I will love her 10,000 times more than the day we were married. That’s just the way it is. Love gets better with time.

That is my message to my friend and to everyone else who loves. It doesn’t stop. It only gets better.

If you want it to.

That’s the secret. You have to want to love. You have to want to make the person you love happy. And that’s what you get. Happy times.

Happy times all around. And happy Friday.

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Blood-Curdling Tales from the Master of Horror

jnarvey — Wed, 02 May 2012 01:12:06 +0000

Stephen King agrees with Warren Buffett: rich dudes like them should pay more taxes.

Senate Republicans are so horrified, they opposed this rule even though most Americans (and most Republicans nationally) are actually in favor of the Buffett rule. Scary stuff.

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How Do I Get Inside Your Head?

jnarvey — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:36:49 +0000

Do I have to brainwash you through elaborate illusions manifested through my tentacle-powered psionic abilities, or what?

Well, maybe. If you’re playing in a Savage Worlds RPG. If that’s the case, the process can actually be a lot of fun for everyone involved. Some thoughts on this over at Savage Games.

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