Left Eating Shadows

Left left eating shadows, laughing most hollow dark of the dungeon the colourless void alone in the dark without earthly light the darkness is fell an adequate feast food for the lonely a pitcher of void a whirlwind to reap — repast of the air — filled by the empty hungered in darkness

Right and sipping the night, he tastes lack of light a good snack to chew; it's "champion stew" yet flavours of joy he still will enjoy; yet starlight still shines upon which he dines in dinner for one: his cup's overrun he'll spoon up with zeal so scrumptious a meal the banquet complete this soul lies replete

A Depressive Dig

Now, who could say what darkness lies within

The damnéd core of one lost human heart?

This soul in hellfire burns, but not for sin;

The mortal form has seized this fairer part.

The clods of lightless poison, dim-lit slime,

Surround the sight and choke the ears with hate

And force the mind forget the march of time

And surge with sting and ache that shan’t abate.

So shall this be, save I should harrow up

This misty mud that churns oblivion

And dig, and swim, sink through this bitter cup

To find what bedrock all this lies upon

I’ve peace, because beneath all this filth lies

Eternal, golden hope that never dies.

- TAB III. My poem, not yours. Grr.

P.S. As I will continue to say with any and all poems I may write on here, please do not steal this. If you like it and for some reason want to do something with it, please contact me and ask permission first.

And, if you want to know the events in my life that inspired me to write this poem in the first place...

Somniferous Sonnet to the Sleepless

If anybody knows the artist of this picture,
please let me know, so I can give credit.

Nocturnal conversations with the stars
Too seldom send the weary spirit sleep
And meditating on thy heart-borne scars
But lets thy thoughts of pain, not dreams, be deep
And should thy waking eyes seek to perceive
An absent treasure, like a golden fleece
Thy healing dies with dreams thou shan't receive;
Sans thy consent, not even gods grant peace
But would it be too bold of me to ask
Dear Morpheus to smite thee with sweet dream?
Or plead good Artemis permit thee bask
In pale recourse of comforting moonbeam?
Now rest thy head, and further rest thy soul;
A watch I'll keep, whilst sleeping makes thee whole

- TAB III



I did say I was thinking of posting more poetry onto this blog. I don't know if I'll do this again anytime soon; I'm still struggling to figure out what exactly people on the Internet are willing to read. But there you go — a Shakespearean (English) style sonnet about insomnia. Write what you know, after all. Heh.

P.S. Don't you dare try to steal this and claim it as yours. If you like this poem, well, thanks. If for some reason you want to post it somewhere, please contact me and ask permission first.

I will tell you straight-off that I don't want it plastered onto a generic pretty background and turned into a meme that floats around Tumblr or Pinterest or such, so don't ask.

Other than that, I hope you enjoy it. Have a nice day, and sleep well. As long as you're not operating heavy machinery or something.

¡Chao por el momento!

Violent Video Games and Choosing Christ

I have a question. Well, actually, it was handed to me, but that means that I have it all the same.

(Isn't metaphysical figurative speech fun? Hee hee.)

The question that was handed to me went as follows:

(Yes, I know there's a typo. Please don't bother me, or KiteTales about it. Typos happen.)

Oh, hey! That's me! Well, not exclusively me, as you can see from the 61 Likes, 25 Retweets, and 51 replies at the time I came across this Tweet. Still, I thought I would volunteer to help respond.

The follow-up and my response looked sort of like this:

Complete with my fake user name and fake Twitter handle! Ha ha, you guys still don't get to know my real name. Not until I decide that I'm ok with giving that out. Someday. Maybe. Or not.

And... here we are, doing that! ¡Maravilloso!

Now, if you don't know who KiteTales is, that won't make a difference as far as understanding what I'm about to say. But I also say, you should go watch and consider subscribing to her channel that she shares on YouTube, with a guy named Flex. (As you can tell, I'm all about giving out people's real names on this blog.) I'm not saying that because they're paying me to say that, or even because they feel the need for more subscribers; I just think you might like some of the videos they make. Maybe you'll join the very vocal group of viewers who continually want to know when the next episode of Amiibo Life will be finished. Who knows?

The link is here, by the way: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2CsoZoHmPHv7q8Vea6IliQ

My favourite song by this band is called, "Hyut! Hya! Ha!"

And Link is here, by the way. →

But anyway, that was the question today: As a Christian who plays video games, do I feel that viewing violent media contradicts the kind of life that I promise to live?

If you want the "tl;dr"* answer, you can go with what my Tweet said: "Not necessarily."

But if you want to learn something today, and you're not afraid of writings that are longer than five paragraphs, then let us descend past that jump break!

If I Wrote the Book of Mormon — Moroni 7

Top o' th'...

...Darn it. When you're not having a conversation with someone in real time, you can't exactly wish them a "top o' th' mornin'." I mean, heck, it isn't even morning over here right now, not to mention that I don't know what time zone you're reading this from, either.

Alas and forsoothishly alack, and etc.

Right. Anyway, I don't need to go into a deep explanation about this post, if you read its predecessor. If by chance you didn't, here you go; click here to read that one first.

Or, if you want the short of it: I really like a book called the Book of Mormon. I'd like you to try reading it, so you can see for yourself why I like it. It's not always easy to read, though, partly because it uses an English format we haven't used for over a century. So here is how I would paraphrase one of these chapters in my own writing voice. That way, you can see (more or less) how someone in the 21st century would write the same things.

I chose to write about this chapter not only because it is one of my favourite chapters in the book, but also because I think it offers some indispensable guidance about... well, actually, guidance about literally anything, once you understand what everything here means.

And with that spectacular build-up, off you go. Have fun, folks. 😇

P.S. It is helpful to know some of the historical context to this chapter, but you will still understand this chapter even if you don't. If you do want to learn more about the context, I'll drop you a link at the bottom of this post. Until then, though, have fun folks. "😇" < once more.

Moroni, Chapter 7
Hello again. It's Moroni. That hasn't changed since last time I wrote here.

If I Wrote the Book of Mormon — Chapter 1

Ha ha, I make my titles way too ominous sometimes! Well, relax; this one isn't going to be a heavy thought.

I'm not about to write some treatise defending this book that I love so very much, nor am I going to criticize it. I just had an idea, and I thought I would share it today.

You see, I have asked some people ("some" people, he says) to try reading this book called the Book of Mormon. (Heh heh. "Some" people, he says. "A lot of" people, it should be. After all, what are our missionaries normally known for doing?) I've tried in the past, and try now, to get people to see why I love it: between the stories, the teachings, and the feeling of peace I always have when I consider the things that those writers said, it stands as one of my favourite books that I've read in my life.

But you know something? It is kind of hard to read sometimes.

One of the things that turns off a lot of people from reading things like the Bible, or the works of Shakespeare, is the old language. Elizabethan English (also known as "Early Modern English") doesn't always make the most sense to us. Sometimes it even says things that mean something drastically different, or even the complete opposite of what we would assume they mean.

And this Book of Mormon that I'm asking people to read, it holds that same problem for some people who read it. Not to mention that it wasn't originally written in English, and so some of the style and structure can be difficult to read through. (For instance, there's a sentence in there somewhere that contains the word "and" seven times in a row. That's not very good sentence structure in English, but apparently it's considered perfect grammar in Semitic languages.)

So, the thought that I had was, "What would it sound like if I were the one writing these stories?" I mean, some people tell me that they like reading what I write. Some people say that my writing voice is compelling. (Ha ha ha... I'm sure you so readily believe that. You'll have to trust me on this.)

With that in mind, I had an idea one day: if I were the one writing out the same ideas as the writers in the Book of Mormon... how would I put their words?

I'm going to try an experiment. I'm going to take the first chapter of the Book of Mormon and, changing the ideas as little as possible, show you how I would phrase those same ideas in my own writing voice. I hope that somehow or other, some good comes of this.

Not-So-Small Talk

There’s an unfortunate meme that I’ve seen become unfortunately popular as of late. It typically goes something like this:

Don't even get me started on the grammatical errors.
I see you don't know how to use an apostrophe, eh?

Oh, is that so? Well, there’s a very specific swear word I think most people would write here, if they were the ones saying what I’m about to say. I won’t use it. How about instead I go with...

Horsefeathers.

Or maybe a line from our good friend, William Shakespeare: “As you like this, give me the lie another time.” (I’m told that’s from The Tempest. Don’t worry; there’s not an exam on this. I just thought you might like to know, and I might like the reference so I can go read it someday.)

Or there’s one of my favourites, which I use with all due respect to President Dieter F. Uchtdorf:

If you'd like, you can see the full talk this comes from. Just click here.

Yes, I don’t think I can put it any better than that: Don’t lie. Stop it.

Prove Me Now Herewith

Do you really expect me to believe that meme? Am I honestly supposed to believe that the people who post and re-post it are primarily concerned with “atoms, death, aliens, sex, intellect, the meaning of life, faraway galaxies, music that makes you feel (sic) different, memories (sic) the lies you’ve told, your flaws, your favorite scents, your childhood, what keeps you up at night, your insecurities and fears?” Or that... well, one section at a time. I’ll be back to argue with the last couple sentences too. But all in due time.