Shooting star caught in a tree,
park-full of birds and only me
and a man’s cough and fresh snow.

A squabbling dawn chorus breaks out
as the birds prepare to swoop
across the sky above my house.

But I’m out for a walk,
passing blue light and red light
and smooth cyclists.

The park’s a Narnia, that transition when
there are no fauns or queens yet,
nor any world of men.

Just me and the birds,
all of us ready to swoop
through the sky above my house.

Just lately I’ve been entering the exciting world of comments thread posting. My gateway drug was the absurd statements some of the atheists tend to make on their blogs about religious people and what should be done with/to them. That got my hackles up enough to sometimes serve as a lone voice of (I thought) reason. Lately, I feel like the atheists have been more reasonable, so that’s nice.

Now I’m venturing into the world of commenting on blog posts about video games, particularly where the whole weirdness of “virtual” ethics and so on are involved. This is something I’ve been giving a fair bit of thought just recently, particularly what it’s ethically okay to do in a video game, where we draw the line on in-game actions and so on.

I suppose I don’t have much of a point in this post beyond the idea that it’s really quite exciting to participate in the (hugely variable) online debate in these matters. It must be said that 90% of the time nobody bothers reading what you or anyone else has said before, and often you find yourself arguing with people who have little more than the ‘that’s my opinion and I’m sticking with it’ technique of rhetoric, but still… it gets the heart pumping, and it’s good practice thinking for… other times when you need to think.

When are those other times, anyway?

This evening I began writing a “proper” little journalistic article to send off to one or two respectable blogs with the idea of getting it published and seen by an audience of some kind. I’m writing about a reasonably topical Danish game about physical abuse.

It’s a strange feeling to try to write seriously. One issue I’ve immediately run into is that I write like an academic, far too dry for the World of Blog. As soon as I feel like I’m genuinely trying to convince someone of something, out comes that passive and careful tone. Further, I have hilariously found myself following my own advice from the lecture I recently gave on writing at ITU. Specifically, I had written the first draft and realised I was quite confused about my argument, so I wrote up a paragraph summary to see it better. It helped!

Obviously I’m being obtuse by not posting the article or anything, but I want to give it its fair shot at being rejected at least a couple of times before I just put it up here instead. The key is just to get it out (and back) to try and break the spell of avoiding any ambition I’m so under the sway of.