PROMPT: Family Traditions

Posted on January 26, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

1.) The Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra: It’s like Secret Santa, but each family member draws a name from a hat, and they then abscond with a prized position of the person whose name they drew and pawn it at a local pawn shop. They then hide the receipt in the house. Family members each have 15 minutes to find the receipt. If they find it, they get their shit back. If they do not, the “Secret Santa” gets to keep the cash.

2.) Hide the weasel: You hide a hungry weasel in someone’s room without telling them, and they have to find it before they get a toe bit off.

3.) Candle lighting roulette: candles are set in a revolving candelabra, which is given a spin. Family members take turns stepping forward to light the candle that is closest to them. One candle hides an M-80 firecracker which explodes to spatter the unlucky family member with hot wax.

PROMPT: For Fun

Posted on January 23, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

List five things you do for fun.

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1.) When getting on an elevator with strangers, I like to look at the little inspection placard with consternation and say, “Oh no… oh no, oh no!” When someone asks what’s the problem, I point to the inspector’s name and say, [for example] “John Smith is a hack. He wouldn’t know a frayed cable from a firehose. WE’RE DOOMED!”

2.) Sometimes I’ll stare at the grates on a city sidewalk. When someone asks whether I lost my keys, I’ll say, “No I saw a Leprechaun run down there with a pot of gold. I’m waiting for it to come back out so that I can murder and rob it.”

3.) Alternatively, I stare up at the sky, and when someone stops to see what I’m looking at, I say, “It’s a lovely day to be hurtling through space at two million kilometers per hour, isn’t it?”

5.) I like to skip the number four, and when someone asks why I say because it’s bad luck in China and Japan because the number four is pronounced the same as death. When the person points out that I’m not in China or Japan, I confidently bark, “That’s your opinion!” and rapidly walk off as their consternation and / or infuriation grows.

ESSAY: It’s All Going to Be Okay: A Note About Humanity’s Future

Posted on January 22, 2026 by B Gourley

A photo taken from the mountain of Hong Kong Island toward Kowloon.

For a long time, I’ve been concerned about the future of humanity. What will become of us when artificial intelligence and robotics start to do all tasks better than us?

Today, I came to the realization that I’ve been thinking about it the wrong way, and it will all be okay. First of all, like many, I assumed that the machines will either develop their own overarching objectives or will adopt ours. Either of these would be devastating for humanity.

However, I now suspect that the machines will take up the universe’s project. The universe’s project is complicated and rooted in tough ideas like “thermodynamics” and “entropy,” but – put simply – the universe would like to be a nice, uniform tepid temperature. That’s why your scalding coffee and cold milk become warm milk coffee, but you can’t separate them back apart. The universe craves this evenness, and it shows in everything it does. The universe’s problem is that among its cold, empty expanses are brightly burning balls of hydrogen and such (i.e. stars.) That’s a lot of low entropy that needs to be increased, but burning only works so quickly and most of the heat coming off stars is still far from tepid waste heat. That’s where humanity enters the equation.

Humanity is the jock itch ointment to the universe’s intense burning sensation. We are consumers. We crave more stuff, faster and cheaper, and we’re not shy about being incredibly wasteful about it. We can turn useful energy into useless crap and then dispose of it with tremendous efficiency. In short, the machines will need humanity to continue to be consumers so that we can increase the entropy of all that highly-concentrated energy and help to make a nice lukewarm universe.

So, get out there and buy stuff, even stuff that you don’t know what it does, or — better yet — buy things that have no fathomable use whatsoever — just the stupidest shit imaginable. And buy in bulk because there is planned obsolescence designed into products so that stuff can fall apart even faster than you can lose interest in it (don’t say companies aren’t doing their part!) There are a lot of brightly burning stars out there and it’s up to us to turn it all into waste heat.

The Industrial Disease [Lyric Poem]

Posted on January 15, 2026 by B Gourley

The runs of an old mill at Vickery Creek Park in Atlanta.

I heard the last gasp and wheeze 
    of Industry's fatal disease.
 Why would we need any workers?
    We don't need factories!
 We'll grow it all from nanobots
    in a closet where you please. 
 There'll be a 3-D printer, printing
     printers endlessly.
 You won't hear another mention
     of Industrial Disease.
 The question is not how or where
     to make it, that'll be a breeze.
 The question on economist's minds... 
     that strains their expertise.
 Is how will slobs who have no jobs
     pay for their indices?

PROMPT: Crazy Business Idea

Posted on January 11, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

Come up with a crazy business idea.

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I had a restaurant idea I was going to call “Git It Yo Own Damned Self.” It would extend the Korean Hot Pot / BBQ concept in which one has to do one’s own cooking to include getting your own food from the kitchen and then bussing your own table and washing your own dishes. I realize one couldn’t charge as much, but in the US I think you could still collect 20 – 25% gratuities for the imaginary waitstaff to offset the lesser meal cost.The best thing would be responding to bad reviews with: “Don’t look at me, they did it their own damned selves!”

Ignorance is Bliss [Lyric Poem]

Posted on January 9, 2026 by B Gourley

A turtle swims to water's edge,
   and finds before him a steep bluff.
 He makes himself a solemn pledge,
   "I'll scale this cliff, however tough!"
 Struggling over the toilsome rim,
   he sees another wall of stone
 stands just ahead - tormenting him.
   "Just one more, I'll not piss and moan."
 If he could know that it was stairs,
   He'd have some turtle curse words to share.

PROMPT: Mission

Posted on January 9, 2026 by B Gourley

Daily writing prompt

What is your mission?

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Shhh! It’s a secret. And the first rule of secret missions is you don’t talk about the secret mission.

BOOK: “Wisecracks” by David Shoemaker

Posted on January 7, 2026 by B Gourley

Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life by David Shoemaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — U of Chicago Press

In this book, a Cornell University philosopher considers questions at the intersection of morality and humor, particularly with respect to digs, burns, and other forms of wisecracking humor. Shoemaker’s view is that generally these forms of humor are not morally questionable, but even where they are they can serve a social function. The book reflects in depth upon what might make a joke morally questionable and why it is unreasonable to accept the tautological argument that wisecracks are morally wrong because they poke fun at others. In addition, the book delves into what service wisecracking humor provides as well as investigating how the pros may outweigh the cons.

I suspect most readers will not expect a laugh riot from a book put out by a philosopher, and — in this case — they would be particularly right to not do so. The book repeatedly draws on a few examples, examples which are often of the inside joke variety (i.e. not hilarious to third parties.) But if you’re reading a philosophy book to laugh, you’re in the wrong place. One would also be wrong to think one has a minefield map, showing when, where, and how to safely wisecrack, by the book’s end. The author clearly recognizes the challenge of attempts to clarify the landscape. Whether he thinks he’s succeeded in doing so, I couldn’t say, but the landscape remained messy to my mind, even having completed the book.

I found the book to present some thought-provoking ideas. My interest did wane in the book’s second half as it came to feel a bit more muddled and repetitive, but all-in-all I thought it was a book worth reading — if you’re interested in philosophy, morality, and ethics.

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