Pixeless Scroll 4/2/18

It’s not so much the long day I just put helping deal with business for my mother, it’s that forgot to pack my mouse along with the laptop.

So let’s make this a do-it-yourself Scroll — pitch in whatever you’ve got!

Then, as Scarlett says, “Tomorrow is another day!”

164 thoughts on “Pixeless Scroll 4/2/18

  1. [self-important fussing]

    The Shambling Guide is urban fantasy.

    The Devil You Know is municipal fantasy.

    [/self-important fussing]

  2. Danny Sichel, I’ve read the Shambling Guide and loved it. Given that, do you think I would I like The Devil You Know? (That is to say, is the latter grimdark and dire, or is it a light breezy fun read with occasional horrific elements like Shambling?)

  3. @Laura Resnick – whaaaat? Bat guano is the best! It doesn’t even smell bad, if you get the dried powdered stuff. Just smells, I dunno, odd and musty. Not as bad as mushroom compost. If you live anywhere near Concan, Texas, you can buy big bags of it from the cave there. Sadly I don’t, so I gotta get the smaller bags from the one weird hydroponic garden store.

    Fair warning, some dogs DO find it fascinating. My hound ate about a quarter of the bag a few weeks ago, resulting in…well…once it goes through a dog’s digestive tract, it becomes a potent force for evil in the world. We thought of burning the house for the insurance money.

  4. As a Christian – I don’t actually find people calling out other Christians behaving in an extremely unchristian manner at all personally hurtful. There is a difference to my mind with all of us failing to live up to the ideals of our faith, and people who use the word as a shield against criticism or as a claim of oppression. I find them more harmful to the faith than I find people snarking at them.

    I *do* think we need to be careful in how we phrase snark upon people, so as not to spatter others needlessly, and mine is not the final say – if someone else feels hurt, my not feeling hurt doesn’t invalidate that.

    I also think we sometimes need to take care in the other direction, in not needlessly defending people who happen to share a trait of ours from valid critique of them that does not tarnish us.

  5. @OGH: I don’t know about “most human beings” — but your latest response expands your focus so far as to blow up your claim about Christians realizing they fall short of Christ. e.g., ChINOs may feel shame&worthlessness about appearance, skills at X, …; some appear to be using their professed faith to make up for other perceived inadequacies, with no acknowledgment that faith by itself is only one of the teachings. This edges on a very long-running dispute of Faith vs. Works, but the original sayings (as opposed to how they’ve been pretzeled since) are clear that faith does not cover misdeeds.

  6. @Cassy B —

    Danny Sichel, I’ve read the Shambling Guide and loved it. Given that, do you think I would I like The Devil You Know? (That is to say, is the latter grimdark and dire, or is it a light breezy fun read with occasional horrific elements like Shambling?)

    I have not read the Shambling Guide, but I like the Felix Castor books (The Devil You Know) very much. Not grimdark or dire, but also not light breezy fun — I would call them somewhat dark and cynical with occasional violence and humor. Hmmm. It’s been too long since I read these — may be time for a reread!

  7. Chip Hitchcock: @OGH: I don’t know about “most human beings” — but your latest response expands your focus so far as to blow up your claim about Christians realizing they fall short of Christ.

    Huh. And here I thought it would help make sense of it.

  8. I personally get very, very tired of OMG CHRISTIANS ARE HYPOCRITICAL!!!!! Yeah yeah yeah. Take a number and get in line. If you want me to care, first aim high. Some doofus on the internet is a jerk? I’m sure everyone here has scraped worse off their shoe. Speaking as an Internet Atheist, if it isn’t someone who is Professionally Christian*, I don’t really care.

    And if you do have a worthy target, try to make it entertaining:

    *The All-American PC, not like that leftwing SJW PC we all hate.

  9. @Hampus. Great article on the weak man, thanks. I’ve seen that dynamic happen many times, but not been able to name/ categorize it.

  10. Quantifying the grimness of the Felix Castor books… oy. They’re not unrelentingly grim, but… they involve a lot of ghosts. Which are primarily the result of murders.

    Felix isn’t as manipulative an asshole as, say, John Constantine (who he resembles in more ways than just being written by Mike Carey), but he does do things to people that he ends up regretting.

  11. @Jeff Jones: That makes sense – Crosstalk and the Doctor Who episode I’m thinking of are probably drawing on the same romantic comedy tropes (Connie Willis is a big fan of that genre of film, judging from “Remake”).

  12. @ Red Wombat:

    Fair warning, some dogs DO find it fascinating. My hound ate about a quarter of the bag a few weeks ago, resulting in…well…once it goes through a dog’s digestive tract, it becomes a potent force for evil in the world. We thought of burning the house for the insurance money.

    You are not making a persuasive case for bringing bat guano into my life.

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