Monsters & Metaphors Made Flesh  

by Brandy | Mar 29, 2024

On the Monster in Western Society The word monster, coming from the Latin root monstrum, meaning a divine omen or a portent, first makes its appearance (to my knowledge) in the written English language in Chaucer’s Monk’s Tale,   “Was neuere wight sith that this...

Poetry is about feeling  

by Brandy | Oct 17, 2023

I’m going to ask for a little bit more of your time for this one, because I’d like you sit through a couple of videos. And if you can’t, you’re not going to get very much out of this blog. In which case, I’d like you to skip it.   I want to ask you to feel...

Popular vs Good: The Leviathan of Social Demand and the Ethics of Revolution  

by Brandy | Sep 27, 2023

In April of 1651, a 63-year-old white man published a book that would go on to influence the rise and fall of governments, societies, nations. Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan detailed the theory of the social contract, the idea that in a society, people give up the power of...

On the Shoulders of Giants: When Metaphor Isn’t Metaphor 

by Brandy | Jul 3, 2023

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”   Everyone knows this quote. The thing is, it’s difficult to say if it means what you think it means. Sure, Isaac Newton, was referring to his teachers and the philosophers whom he...

Sandman and the Enchanted Universe  

by Brandy | Jul 3, 2023

The the transition of the old gods to the new  *this contains spoilers for the comic Sandman and for the comic Lucifer. If you’d like to read those works without insight into the plot, do come back later.   In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (published 1989-1993) the...

Cocks and Weathervanes

by Brandy | Apr 14, 2023

On the convoluted origin of words   Sometimes things are not what they seem.   That’s true with a lot of things, but with words in the English language, it’s more common than not that a word might be so convoluted in origin as to be bordering on the...