Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Greetings, Friends and Family out there in Internet Land! It appears I am again operational, after some number of days in what I wryly refer to as "Zombie Man" mode. It happens when I am sleep deprived. I may LOOK normal, but I can't think coherently, my coordination is WAY off, I have little (if any) short-term memory, and I may experience auditory or visual hallucinations. That used to be a regular thing, back when they were treating my chronic pain condition with morphine or fentayl,  from 2005 until 2012. The fentanyl gave me horridly vivid, repetitive nightmares, and the morphine kept me from going to sleep at all, for up to three nights in a row.  That's what lead to my forced retirement in 2007; I was no longer capable of doing my job as a school counselor. At the very end of my time employed, I arranged with the campus police officer to give me a field sobriety test, if there was any question about my fitness for work. And, a couple of times, I failed that tes...

A great good morning to you, Internet Friends and Family! Just the other day, I had to look something up that was in a prior blog post, and noticed I had put NOTHING up for three weeks. Sigh. Pause. GREAT BIG sigh.... ...because this is something I WANT to do, but with my attention to some other matters, posting here just fell by the wayside. Maybe I should consider making a schedule, or a to-do list every day. These days, I ALWAYS make a list before going out to the store, and examine it closely when making my purchases, and it works, but I'm not nuts about making the commitment. Like this, maybe. So, this morning, while I am waiting on my son to come downstairs, I'm starting this blog, because it is about things significant to me. In Matthew 13, we read of Yeshua  teaching in parables. I love parables; they were the only parts of the Bible I understood when I was a kid. The rules and laws, I understood, in the sense that I knew what the requirement was, and that it applied to...

Greetings, Internet Friends and Family! It's that most wonderful time of the year, when we are cooped up with people bringing us gifts, food, and whatever virus they have encountered in the last week or so. 14-year-old Kenneth woke up on Christmas morning with a fever of 102.1, and Papa had it by the next day. A cold is a virus, and unless you took action before you knew you needed to, there's nothing to do for it but treat the symptoms and wait it out, and try not to infect other people. My gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, has returned to the work place to see if she can spread a little disease there. That's mostly because she has this unbending streak of job loyalty, which won't allow her to take time off. Not me, though. I did ALMOST go out yesterday to get some things I need, but then ran out of time and energy, and just started another pot of jasmine rice, and took a nap. Best thin...

A link for those who aren't running an ad blocker:     And for those who ARE running an ad blocker, I have a link for YOU, too! And here is your graphic. Everyone likes graphics! Not claiming any relationship to the text, though. Two questions I must address first: 1. Why MORMON Steampunk? 2. Why am I, a non-Mormon, and a member of a high commitment, non-traditional Christian church, reviewing this work? My response to the two questions. 1. Why MORMON Steampunk? I have only quotes by the editor, but whether those answer the question, I am not sure. James Wymore, in his introduction, offers these as something that may constitute an answer to 'Why is there an anthology of Mormon steampunk?': A. Steampunk has always been good to him B. He is a faithful Mormon C. He was asked to do it.  Those work as answers to me, but if you have more questions, direct them elsewhere. I only review, I do not justify.  A very cursory run through my memory reveals no corresponding volume which...

A person who posts from time to time on a social networking site I'm a member of alerted me to this article on Gizmodo , and this item in the New York Times. Let me give a tiny summing up, and why it matters: 1. Facebook, Amazon, and other agencies shared user data without permission. 2. They continued to do so after they said they had never done it, and they wouldn't do it again. 3. The resulting data mining led to some invasions of privacy, including 4. Amazon deleting a book review a user submitted, saying she had a relationship with the author. 5. There WAS no relationship between the two; they were both members of some Facebook group(s). In addition, both had attended a conference. How do you prove a negative? Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and it is VERY difficult to prove that Reviewer A is not friends with Writer B. Rather it is very difficult to prove that Writer B is not receiving inequitable advantage from Reviewer A. A few years ago, Amazon had some signi...

What follows is a link to the book on Amazon, BUT, if you are running an ad-blocker (as I am) you won't see anything.     For those who can't see it (like me), it's a nice thumbnail of the cover, with a purchase link. Ad blockers don't like pictures with purchase links, so, if you run your system in the same way I do, you get zip. I don't like it when I get zip, and I imaging most people don't. There is a way to pause your adblocker, but I also don't like having to do that, and I REALLY don't like trying to provide instructions. But I do not wish for you to be deprived of a link and a picture, just because you run an ad blocker. Therefore, I will provide for you THIS LINK TO THE BOOK , and a picture of me cuddling my newest granddaughter, Miss Evelyn. Papa and Miss Evelyn Hart, 11/19/18 Preliminary note to the review: I grabbed this book the INSTANT it was released! No, not really. It was released on September 5, and I got it September 7. But I did read...

If you DON'T have an ad blocker running, you will see a graphic link to the book next:     Don't  feel left out, in case you DO have an ad blocker running (as I do)! Here is a link to the book for you, after a picture of a chicken:    CHIKENS R GUD FOR U!!! (Because you ad-free people didn't get a graphic) A variation on 'In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,' is that brand of lovely escapist literature (and movies) about being in possession of advanced technology among primitives. There are LOTS of ways to make this happen, from time warps via messing around with superstrings, as in the 1632 universe, or Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen,  to landing on a primitive planet, as in a million movies and Twilight Zone episodes, to all of the post-apocalyptic stories, regardless of the nature of the apocalypse.   Now, while I PERSONALLY would favor being provided with lots of weapons, ammo, and magic healing devices if I were to be dumped in a pre-indust...