My favorite customer ever.

Posted on September 7, 2026 by murphy

It was a busy Thursday afternoon, and I looked down to see an adorable little boy, maybe eight or nine years old, approaching the counter. His mom stood a ways behind him as he walked up to me; clearly he was being given the responsibility of making a purchase with his allowance money all on his lonesome. I finished ringing up the customer ahead of him, bagged his comics and wished him a good day, and then the youngster took his turn.

“Excuse me, sir, do you sell pogs?”

Huh. Technically speaking, no.

I mean, we had pogs. As far as I was aware, we’d never actually sold any pogs.

Pogs were the predecessors of the collectible card games that redefined, and kind of wrecked, comics and game stores in the early-to-mid 1990s. Originally a pastime invented by poor Hawaiian kids, it consisted of collecting the cardboard inserts from the caps of a local fruit drink—passionfruit, orange, and guava flavored, hence POGs—and playing a sort of marbles-eque game with them. You’d stack up your pogs in a circle drawn in the dirt, and then you’d take turns slamming down on the stack of cardboard discs, trying to get them to fly out of the circle. Any that landed outside the border, you’d pick up and add to your collection, and then your opponent would take his or her turn.

The comics industry leapt on the concept and attempted to make pogs the “next big thing” by printing character imagery on cheap cardboard discs and declaring them collectible. They also sold heavy “slammers” that you would use to smack the stack of pogs, and kids were meant to get excited about winning uncommon and rare discs.

The problem is, nobody wanted to play fucking pogs. We’d had several boxes languishing in the storeroom as long as I could remember, boxes of mylar pouches filled with cardboard imprinted with DC or Marvel superheroes. They were universally derided as being dumb as hell, and as far as I knew we’d never sold a single pog in the years I’d been there. They became a running gag in the shop; we’d occasionally take out a pack and throw it at someone, and if the pogs touched you, you had to take them out of the shop. No take-backs.

But this little man wanted pogs, and he was polite about it, so by God I was going to sell him pogs. “One moment, please!” I said brightly, and dove into the back room. I scrambled, pawing through the shelves, trying to remember where the damned things were. I finally found a dust-covered box buried on a low shelf, ripped off the plastic, and hustled it out to the counter. I opened it like a treasure chest in front of him, and he was delighted.

“How much are they?” he asked.

I paused.

I had no fucking clue. We’d never sold any of them and I couldn’t remember what they were supposed to retail for. “Two for a dollar?” I suggested.

He looked at the money in his hand. “Can I have four?” he asked, pushing a handful of change at me.

“Absolutely, my good sir,” I said emphatically. I let him pick out four packs, and he laid them on the counter. I rang him up, picking out the coins necessary and pushing the rest back to him before bagging his four chosen packs. While he carefully recounted his change and put it back in his pocket, I swept the entire box off the counter into the bag as well, and then handed it over with a grin. The young man thanked me and returned to his mother, excited for the additions to his pog collection.

Will walked over, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you actually got money for pogs.”

About fifteen minutes later, they returned to the shop. His mom walked up to the counter, obviously chagrined. “There must have been some mistake,” she said. “He bought four packs, but it looks like you gave him way more than that.” Her son looked a little crestfallen that he was having to return his windfall.

I glanced back at Will, who absolutely anticipated what I was about to do, stepping past me into the back room. “I appreciate the honesty, ma’am. In fact, I appreciate it so much, I feel like I owe your son a reward.” Will popped out with a second box of pogs, and we handed it over, along with the initial bag. “On the house.”

She protested. I reassured her that we didn’t get much demand for pogs, and that they’d be doing us a favor by taking them off our hands. It took some convincing, but she finally acquiesced, and her son was absolutely over the moon. Grinning from ear to ear, he walked out into a fall afternoon with his two entire boxes of pogs, absolutely chuffed at his unexpected bounty.

Little man loved pogs.

You got the music in you

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The Story So Far.

Posted on September 6, 2026 by murphy

I installed a word count plugin in the dashboard, and was pleasantly surprised to see that in a little over a week I’ve racked up 10,000 words on this thing, putting me solidly in novelette territory. Admittedly, the lion’s share of that is talking about Sid, and those were pieces from the heart, so they flowed a lot easier. But as a proof of concept, I think the concept is proving.

Still got work to do on the theme. Going to make this look very different, but the overall structure is going to be the same moving forward, just various flavors of prose on various topics. Got a lot to learn about WordPress and what happens when your domain registrar and your hosting provider don’t enjoy hanging out.

Also, I’m going to eventually start posting progress on the books, as well. The one I’ve alluded to a few times is called Elsewhere, and it’s the one I’ve gotten the furthest on. The problem is, I’ve been writing it vignette-style. Instead of starting from point A and plotting my way through it, I’ve been working on scenes as they come to me and threading it all together post-hoc. The problem with that is I’ve got a fair bit I could post, but none of it would make a lot of sense, and it certainly wouldn’t land the way I want it to land without the buildup. An emotionally intense scene between two characters won’t mean a ton if you have no idea who those characters are.

The other book is more along my usual lines, a science fiction story called Zero. It opens with a man waking up to find himself dead and simulated inside a computer as part of a project designed to explore the survival of consciousness. I’ll be frank—if you’ve read Dennis Taylor’s Bobiverse books, the beginning is going to seem really familiar.

Upon discovering he’d written a book starting from a similar premise, I had to bite the bullet and check out the series. That’s always a pitfall as a writer; you have an idea, and then you find out somebody beat you to the punch and you have to abandon it. Way, way back I had a story percolating about a supernatural investigation and regulation organization and was fleshing it out before I saw the movie Men in Black and saw them do it much better but with aliens. (And the original comics were supernatural and not extraterrestrial, so I was doubly beaten.)

So when I picked up We Are Legion I was utterly horrified to see his book start out very similarly to mine—but then I breathed a sigh of relief as his went in a very radically different direction early on, so I figure I’m safe on that count. Zero is a begin-at-the-beginning style of plot, so I might have a chapter to post sooner rather than later. But my muse has ADHD; I’ve got the first book pretty solid in my head, and a sketch of the second, and one scene I’m absolutely dying to write that goes at the end of book three. Just gotta get there from here.

And I’ve been hacking at the opening to Elsewhere as well, it’s just trickier because of the stylistic and framing choices I’ve decided to burden myself with. (Playing with a cliché a lot of people hate; figure I’m doing that thing comics do where they try to lose the audience right out of the gate so they can win them back.)

So, yeah. I’m getting in the swing of putting words out there in this public leap of faith. I’ve given a few people in my real life the link, which was scary as all fuck, but it’s me trying to atone for never showing my work to those whose opinions I treasured the most throughout my life. And in the meantime, it’s nice to have a little niche to stack words in whenever I feel like it on whatever topic I choose. I’ll do my best to put up something each and every day, even if it’s brief.

And who knows, I might just stay sane in the process.

Will I still be perfect tomorrow

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Maybe J. Jonah was right.

Posted on September 5, 2026 by murphy

It was a slow Monday in the comic shop. One of my coworkers, Will, was busying himself making a list of the gamebooks we needed to reorder, and I was flipping through the Diamond catalog trying to figure out what new comic series were worth ordering. The bell on the front door jingled, and I looked up to see not one of our usual clientele, but two rather severe-looking men in suits. They removed their sunglasses, and one of them looked directly at me. He began to cross the shop while his partner waited near the entrance.

My imagination runs away from me at the worst of times, but I had a feeling this guy wasn’t going to walk up to me and ask for the latest issue of Cerebus. He strode up and without preliminaries said, “Good morning. Are you [Murphy]?”

“That depends on who’s asking.” I meant it as a joke. I realized it was a pretty stupid thing to say after I’d said it.

He pulled out a badge and identified himself as an agent of the Secret Service. I immediately panicked and tried to think of anything nasty I’d said about the administration on USENET recently. Will, wide-eyed, dropped the notebook and came over to watch what was going on.

“Yes, sir, I’m [Murphy]. Can I help you?” I said, stammering a bit and trying not to freak out.

The agent eyed me for a moment, and then he gave me a name and asked me if I recognized it. I didn’t, and neither did Will. “He’s not one of your regulars?”

“Not that I know of,” I said. “I don’t know everyone’s name that shops here, but I don’t have a pull list for him. That’s, uh, our subscription system, when the books come in every Thursday—”

He held up a hand. “I get it.” He apparently decided to have mercy on me, so he explained. “We’re investigating a counterfeiting case. We think he’s been passing fake bills in the area. Can I show you a lineup and see if you recognize anyone?”

“Oh, sure!” I was relieved to be off the hook. He opened his case and pulled out a folder, and inside there was an array of six pictures of men, some young, some old. He laid it on the counter in front of me and I scanned it, wracking my brain. Apologetically, I said, “I don’t really recognize any of them.”

Will walked over and glanced, then shook his head. Then he paused, and pointed at the one in the bottom right. “Hey, didn’t that guy play Spider-Man on TV?”

“That man threatened the president,” the agent responded. After a beat he added with a straight face, “I don’t know whether or not he ever played Spider-Man on TV.”

We finished up, he thanked us for our time, and we apologized for not being more help. He and his partner went out and headed for the shop next door. We laughed about it and returned to business as usual.

A couple of hours later one of the other guys showed up for his shift. Will jokingly called out, “Man, you missed it, Murph got questioned by the Secret Service. He nearly had a heart attack.”

“Oh yeah,” Mike said. “They came by last week and asked me some questions. I told them they might want to check with the manager, and he’d be back on Monday. Did I forget to mention that?”

I nearly leapt across the counter at him.

And flower you’re the chosen one

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A Tale of Two Transcripts.

Posted on September 4, 2026 by murphy

My absolute best day as a transcriptionist came when the broker sent me a file that was tagged as academia. Most of what I used to do was media, TV shows and movies (and a lot of reality TV in particular). I occasionally got jobs across the spectrum, though, and we’d had more than a few academic clients. Details were often pretty sparse; we didn’t need to know much to do our jobs.

This one was a grad student who was apparently doing a philosophy project, and it was anonymized. She was interviewing her godfather, an older man, about his life and his philosophy. I prepared myself for a real mess, as older speakers can be difficult to follow. I cracked it open and got started.

Immediately I was struck by what an orator the subject was. He didn’t stammer and stutter, he didn’t fill time with uh, and um, and er, and he didn’t hem and haw. He had an amazing voice, and he spoke with clarity and charisma and wit. I was immediately drawn in, listening to him describe his childhood growing up in the Bahamas. His voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

As he went on, indulgently answering her questions and allowing himself to be guided from topic to topic, I started to get a weird feeling of déjà vu. Bits and pieces of his story sounded like something I’d heard before. He talked about growing up on Cat Island, and his early days learning about life and his place in the world. He talked about life in Miami, moving to New York, and his time in the Army.

It was when he finally talked about winning his first role on the stage that it finally clicked and all the stuff I thought I vaguely recognized snapped into focus.

I was listening to Sidney Poitier.

 I was getting to listen to Sidney goddamn Poitier talk about his life, his philosophy, his thoughts on aging and death for a whole hour and a half. I was getting paid to listen to Sidney Poitier give a private interview.

When I turned in the transcript, I told the broker that I would’ve paid her for the privilege.

My worst day as a transcriber came with another broker. This one did a lot of captioning work, but he also had a variety of other clients, and one of them was a law enforcement agency in the upper Midwest.

Typically, the tapes came in two flavors. Bodycams, usually of DUI stops, were often hilarious. There are very few things that entertain me as much as a drunk idiot who thinks they’ve got it under control. And then there were interviews, either witnesses or suspects being questioned. They had a detective who was straight out of Central Casting; he’d let you talk for two hours telling whatever nonsense story you wanted, nodding along all the while. And then five minutes from the end of the tape he’d lean in and say, “Now let me tell you what I know,” and utterly destroy your alibi. With receipts. It was always a masterclass.

But this tape was a different one. It wasn’t a bodycam, and it wasn’t one of the interview rooms. It looked more like a kindergarten. A middle-aged woman dressed like a teacher brought in a young boy, and they began playing and talking before she steered him towards answering questions. She spent a lot of time and effort on the concept of truth, being truthful, and knowing how important it was not to lie. I was fascinated, and it made sense—I mean, if you ask a five-year-old who they saw robbing the gas station, they’ll tell you Spider-Man did it. I followed along with the process, intrigued.

Right up until she got to the actual questions, and asked the young boy what the adult had done to him.

I hit the fucking roof.

I shot the broker an email and read him the riot act. “Hey, not cool at all springing this on me without any warning whatsoever.”

He was apologetic and mystified. He thought I was complaining about the tape quality or something. When I explained what it was, he was horrified—he hadn’t had the chance to listen to every single tape in the batch, and didn’t see that one of them was very different. Aghast, he apologized over and over. He said I didn’t have to do the transcript, he’d kick it back to them to find somebody else to handle it, no harm, no foul.

I went outside and walked around the block to clear my head. And then I came back in and I told him I’d do the job.

“What?! Are you sure?”

I was. The way I saw it, I knew I could do the work. I’ve never had any illusions about how filled with horrors the world really is, so I knew I’d be able to get through it if I had to. And I knew somebody had to do it, this was an important job. And most importantly, I saw it as a chance to play some tiny, infinitesimal part in maybe getting this victim some justice. My transcription career up to that point was filled with the most godawful banalities; I saw this as a way to actually do something meaningful to maybe start to balance out all the reality-TV fluff.

The broker was unsure, but he let me go ahead. And I worked the tape. It took me about six times longer than normal, as I kept having to go outside and lay in the grass or punch a tree. It was approaching dawn when I got it finished and sent in, and then I went out to watch the sun rise. The only alcohol in the house was the leftovers from my brother’s latest batch of White Russians. It took me a couple days before I was sleeping okay again.

Many months down the road, I got an email from the broker with a single hyperlink in it. Turns out that state has open records, and it was a link to the case that the interview had been attached to. I flipped through the pages, following the events to their natural conclusion, and saw that the perp had gotten something on the order of 14 years.

Yeah, I would’ve liked to have seen him go inside for all day, but he hadn’t gotten away with it—and I wouldn’t have put money on his chances of making it through with that on his papers. I had myself a proper drink that afternoon.

Over the years I did four more cases for that client, and all of them resulted in convictions or plea deals that included jail time. It felt good, knowing that I’d had a very, very tiny part in helping to achieve that. And it gave me an absolutely unshakable respect for the people who have to work those cases in detail for their entire careers; I got to do the job and put it down, and that’s not the case for those men and women because there are always more monsters to catch.

I was always relieved, though, when I opened a file from that customer and it was just some idiot on the side of a road bungling the alphabet backwards.

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Old Discordian proverb.

Posted on September 3, 2026 by murphy

“If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, then perhaps you have misunderstood the situation.”

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The call.

Posted on September 3, 2026 by murphy

flight attendant (panicked): oh my god is there anyone on the plane who can recite Brick Top’s “nemesis” speech from Snatch entirely from memory

me (rising): today, fate has chosen her champion

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The coolest cat ever, or…

Posted on September 2, 2026 by murphy

My comic book shop was in the “eclectic” part of town, so I was used to odd characters. But that afternoon, one of the oddest I’d ever seen walked in. I was minding the store myself, while my employee Ian went over to the Texas Taco and Chili Company for lunch. The cook was a good guy and would occasionally make us random dishes and deliver them; the only downside of the place was they were inexplicably a restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama that didn’t serve sweet tea. Seriously, when you ask for sweet tea and they point at sugar packets on the table, someone’s taking their life into their hands.

The trio that walked in, well, two of them were pretty much on-brand. There was a young man in jeans and a t-shirt with a few piercings and tattoos, and an attractive young woman with a similar aesthetic. The third member of their trio, however, looked like someone cosplaying a character I’d never heard of. He had a beard and dreadlocks, and he was wearing an elaborate jacket and—I shit you not—a velvet top hat.

“Welcome to the Lion and Unicorn,” I said. “Can I help you guys find anything?” I immediately made myself a bet, and lost it when instead of asking for Vertigo horror books or indie titles, they wanted to look at cape books. I walked them over to the back issues and started going through Avengers and Spider-Man titles with them.

We talked about the comics for a while, and I noticed the dude in the top hat kept kind of smirking at me. Whatever, maybe he was an asshole, we certainly got our share of those in the place. I ignored it and fielded all their questions, dug out some issues they were interested in, even recommended a few arcs we had complete runs of. They picked out a stack of comics, and walked up to the register. The guy in the top hat paid cash, and kept smirking at me.

I saw them off with a wave, and muttered under my breath about manners. And then Ian came rocketing into the shop. He slammed the front door open and wailed, “Why didn’t you come and get me?!”

I was mystified. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He dove past me into the back room and there was a loud clatter as the stack of CD cases flew everywhere. He came back, holding one of the albums he’d brought in to play over the store stereo. It had a psychedelic design—and there, front and center on the cover, was the dude in the top hat.

I’d just sold comic books to Rob Zombie.

Not only that, I’d just sold comic books to Rob Zombie while having no idea who he was.

Not only that, but I’d just sold comic books to Rob Zombie while having no idea who he was and while playing “La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1” on the shop stereo.

Either he thought I was the coolest cat ever or the dumbest motherfucker alive. (I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to place odds.)

Fortunately, Ian was able to grab his CDs and catch up to them. They were playing a concert nearby, and Rob graciously gave him a couple of autographs.

Ian never let me hear the end of it, though.

I want more life, fucker, I ain’t done

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The parable of the gamblers.

Posted on September 1, 2026 by murphy

Three gamblers were in a saloon playing Fan-Tan when someone rode through the street, crying that the end of the world was coming. They walked outside, and saw a distant line of clouds, a storm enveloping and destroying everything in its path. They had about an hour before it would arrive, and they returned indoors and began to discuss what they would spend their last hour on Earth doing.

The first gambler said, “Gentlemen, I believe I shall go behind the bar and grab a bottle of fine Kentucky bourbon and a handful of cigars and spend my last hour upstairs with one of the ladies.”

The second gambler said, “Gentlemen, I believe I shall cross the street to the church, go inside, and pray.”

The third gambler returned to the table and said, “Gentlemen, I shall finish the game.”

I shall finish the game.

I don’t know where I’m going, only God knows where I’ve been

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On writing. (With apologies to ol’ Steve-O.)

Posted on August 31, 2026 by murphy

I am the entertainer, I bring to you my songs

I’ve always said that if you want to write to make money, you’re not a real writer. If you want to write to become famous, you’re not a real writer. And if you want to write to impress people, you’re not a real writer.

If you write because you have to, because it’s the only way to get the burning ideas out of your brain, because it’s the only way to stop the dogs barking in your head, you’re a real writer.

I’m a real writer. Have been for as long as I can remember. I was an avid reader as a child, and somewhere along the line it struck me that if I couldn’t find a story I wanted, I could make it up myself. I became a storyteller, guiding my friends through adventures in many different fantasy and science fiction worlds. I wrote, hacking away at ideas for story after story, but I rarely finished anything and even more rarely showed them to anyone. But telling my stories did stop the dogs from barking, so it wasn’t wasted effort.

I am not the only traveler who has not repaid his debt

It was being a storyteller that brought us together for the first time.

Well, not exactly. I first met her in passing at a party. We didn’t really speak, but I remembered her. At the time her hair was jet-black and cut short with a luminous white streak, and she reveled in the attention it drew. I paid attention from a distance.

Very late, an argument ensued about the nomenclature of time, and whether or not it was still “night” or if we were approaching “dawn.” Someone made the claim that in Middle Eastern countries, tradition held that if you could tell the difference between a black camel hair and a white camel hair, it was dawn. So she promptly pulled out one black strand and one white strand, volunteering for the experiment. When no one could tell the difference in the inky blackness, she picked out the right one—only afterwards explaining that she could tell by the texture.

I saw her again at another party some time later, and her hair had returned to its normal shade. She was avoiding the attentions of a would-be suitor who apparently was too persistent for her liking, and to ward him off she settled in with the group of misfits hovering around me as we talked about gaming and movies and assorted other nerdy topics.

Her ears perked up when someone commented about the gaming shop I worked at, and some of the games I’d run. “You’re a GM?” she asked.

I nodded. I explained that I’d been running games and telling stories since I was in grade school. I rattled off some of the systems I was familiar with.

“Ever hear of Dream Park?”

“The Niven and Barnes books, right?”

She grinned at me. My first time impressing her by catching a reference; there would be many others over the years. “Yeah, it’s based on the series.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m familiar with it. We got it in the shop a little while back. I haven’t checked it out yet, though, so I can’t speak to how good it is.” I thought it was an interesting pretext; a roleplaying game in which you played people involved in a live-action roleplaying game in a science-fiction adventure park. Playing a character who’s playing a character. Very meta. (When I saw Tropic Thunder years later, that infamous line from Robert Downey Jr. about being a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude made me laugh hysterically on a whole other level, and it took me a moment to recall why.)

“I bought it, but I haven’t been able to play it yet.” She eyed me closely. “Do you think you could run a session?”

Nail, meet hammer. “Absolutely. When?”

“Now.”

I blinked, then grinned back at her. “Of course.”

She hit me with that smile for the first time—the one that lit up her entire face—and said, “Consider yourself drafted.” She turned to the rest of the group. “You guys want in?”

The group around me all enthusiastically agreed that the party was dead and we’d much rather follow her elsewhere. Within the hour we were eating Chinese food in her living room and rolling characters.

I’ve been seeing things in you, oh, I think I believe in

I remember almost nothing of the session itself, outside of everyone having a good time. Eventually, the group began winding down and everyone was dozing in the early hours of the morning, but she and I were real night owls. We eventually convened in her office nook, where she sat playing an old puzzle game called The Fool’s Errand and we had the first of many long conversations, beginning to discover our common ground.

Eventually we reconvened with the rest of the group, groggily watching Saturday morning television. A new show—Power Rangers—was on, and at one point I snarkily made a comment about how all the American actors in the re-shot scenes were varying heights, but when they transformed and the show switched to the original Japanese footage, everyone was five-foot-two.

“And what’s wrong with being five-foot-two?” she asked icily. I began stammering a mea culpa—of course she was 5’2”—and then caught her grinning broadly at me out of the corner of my eye.

(Suddenly the lyrics for Randy Newman’s “Short People” popped into my head, but I decided not to press my luck.)

Eventually, everyone began making their excuses and heading towards the door, anxious to get some actual sleep. As she picked up her keys to give one of the other players a ride home, she grabbed my arm and thanked me for running the show. “Same again next week?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Though nothing will keep us together, we could steal time just for one day

Over the years, I told many more stories in her presence. She always loved them, and encouraged my creative endeavors. When she learned I was writing outside of just being a gamemaster, she encouraged that as well; I always wanted her to be my First Reader, but I never got anything polished to the point where I thought it would pass muster. I wanted to impress her, and my best never seemed quite good enough. (I’d always plot myself into a corner, get stuck, and the story would languish until I finally gave up on the thing.) And now, of course, it’s too late.

After she passed, I had a dream about us. We were out under the sky, watching the constellations above us. She made her comment about Orion, and I was telling her stories about the mythological figures the Greeks had drawn above us so many centuries before. When I woke up, though, I realized it wasn’t her, and it wasn’t me—I had the first inkling of a story. I’d actually written a similar scene years earlier for a book that never came together. I’d been writing it when I met my second wife, and the destruction of that relationship eventually killed any interest in completing the tale. That scene had always bugged me, though, feeling like it didn’t fit. I realize now it was because I was writing it for different characters entirely.

The story certainly has echoes from my life—it’s about a young man who meets an amazing young woman and she becomes the most important star in his sky. But while I did crib heavily from my past and from Sid (and I imagine I might be called to task for that on another plane of existence one day), the story became something entirely different, about love and loss and finding one’s way. I just needed an amazing woman for my protagonist to fall in love with, and I really only had one great example to pattern her after. Hopefully she won’t mind.

(I’m sure the folks who knew us both will raise their eyebrows at me. Guys, sometimes a cigar is just a p—I mean, a cigar.)

The story laid itself out in my mind in fits and starts, at first appearing with huge gaps, and then sort of backfilling with details as it unfolded. An annoying day at work or a particularly restless night would see an entirely new scene drop fully-formed into the tale, and I’d make notes and form things up. And as it grew, I began to think it might be possible to actually write the thing.

Finally, one day I drove home through ferocious afternoon storms, and I felt a power upon me. I’d been hacking at the first scene of the book and having difficulty, never being able to get it just right. So, instead, I opened a new page and jumped straight to the most important scene, one in the heart of the story, and it just flowed. I wrote page after page, and while it definitely needed some polish, it was my first time writing at length in years. I felt like Thor in Endgame, recalling Mjolnir and finding out he was still worthy.

And when I closed Word, I was dumped back to my desktop. Ages ago, I’d selected a theme which rotated pictures of dark skies, flipping through about 20 gorgeous images of stars at night. And the one that I found myself staring at bore the unmistakable figure of Orion in a place of prominence.

And I could almost hear Sid somewhere calling me a thundering dumbass for forgetting who I was for so long.

So that’s what the book is. It’s me writing a love letter to a lost friend, and a way to express how much she meant—and still means—to me through a work inspired by her presence in my life. And in the meantime, I’ll use this site to throw words out into the universe, if for no other reason than to keep my tools sharp and my powder dry.

And to shut up those goddamn dogs.

Love you, lady of chaos. Whether or not I actually finish this, I found myself again.

But I’ll never give you up, if I ever give you up my heart will surely fail

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The elephant in the room.

Posted on August 30, 2026 by murphy

They got a name for the winners in the world—I want a name when I lose

So, let’s just get this over with.

When I tell these stories, there’s one question I tend to get more than any other.

So I guess I’d better answer it.

“Murphy, is it true you were famed skyjacker D.B. Cooper?”

No, I was not.

I do feel obliged to point out that’s exactly what famed skyjacker D.B. Cooper would say. Do with that information what you will.

I’m not Doobie Keebler, either. (If you get that reference, we are of the same tribe.)

All right, I’m stalling. That is obviously not the question.

The question is this: “Murphy, you stupid fucking muppet, she clearly liked you; why didn’t you ever ask her out?”

To respond to this I honestly just want to post a picture of myself and a picture of her and do the Khaby Lame thing. When I say she was out of my league, I don’t mean I was the backup catcher for the Birmingham Barons and she was the starting centerfielder for the Charlotte Knights. It’s more like I was the backup catcher for the Birmingham Barons and she was an all-star playing in the Proxima Centauri system. We’re talking a distance that could be measured in parsecs.

But that’s not an honest explanation of the situation, because it implies something that’s not really the case—that I had a crush, and I was the poor wallflower hiding my feelings and hoping senpai would notice me.

I think the thing people get confused about is the nature of love. A lot of people (mostly guys) have this idea that love exists in basically two forms; familial, in which it’s a close friend or a family member and it’s fondness and affection, and romantic, in which the end goal is physical intimacy. And that’s kind of reductive, I think.

There’s a lot more to it. There’s the whole concept of courtly love, which came out of the middle ages, in which a knight might dedicate himself to the service of a noblewoman—usually unattainable from his station—and perform acts of fealty and devotion to her. Or there’s the four varieties CS Lewis wrote about, which includes philia (deep friendship) and agape (selfless, unconditional love) in addition to familial and romantic varieties. So love doesn’t always mean you’re looking for the happily ever after. It can be a very complex thing.

Or it can be really simple.

Sometimes love means the mere fact they exist in the world makes it a brighter place, and that’s enough.

Sometimes love means wanting someone to be happy, without reservation.

Sometimes love means being willing to put yourself in harm’s way to protect someone, no matter what that means for you.

About that…

Hold on to your wishes if you can’t hold on to me

(Yes, I’m getting to it. Give me some slack, this one gets embarrassing.)

One of the ongoing problems in fandom and gaming is how guys react to women. Just across the board, it’s rarely mature and good, and it was even worse back then. Women attempting to enter these male-only spaces were regularly challenged about their bona fides, or if they didn’t get a hostile reaction, it was more hopeful opportunism that any girl in the space was just looking for a geek boyfriend. And to be fair, some women played on that, collecting a harem of thirsty guys and playing them off against each other for attention.

Sid really hated that shit. She just wanted to be treated like anyone else, which is one of the reasons I think she appreciated me. But as her friend, I often got targeted by guys looking for an in, and I’d have to gently wave them off or let them down easy. Not all of them listened, and some tried anyway, and the resulting embarrassment generally sent them out of our group’s orbit.

But there was one guy she genuinely seemed to like, and he genuinely seemed to like her. And like some godawful rom-com, they just wouldn’t come the fuck out and say it. I got treated to endless heart-to-heart sessions with each of them, and it became clear they really wanted to give it a shot, but they’d never admit it to one another. I gave advice, I nudged, I hinted, I cajoled, but they’d always chicken out and stop short in the end.

Finally I dragged the two of them into a room. “He likes you,” I said. “She likes you,” I said. “Discuss,” I said. And then I went out and held the door closed.

They dated for a while. It was pretty stormy, and on more than one occasion, I stepped in to try to help patch things up between them. Because I genuinely thought he made her happy, and I liked him well enough. In retrospect, if I hadn’t kept trying to keep them together, it might not have gone south the way it eventually did.

They eventually fell out, and she began dating someone else. We all moved in the same social circles, so her ex was still present at events, and eventually the confrontations escalated. Eventually it culminated with a very ugly scene at a party, a scene that got violent. I wasn’t present for it; I’d been trying to defuse the situation, but had failed, and took a walk to clear my head. I came back to a broken door, some destroyed possessions, but thankfully, nobody hurt. It wouldn’t end there.

I hate to say it, but it’s probably me

A little while later, her ex made some oblique statements that suggested he was going to, not to put too fine a point on it, firebomb her house and kill them the following Saturday night. Sid, not being a shrinking violet, called his bluff and slated another party. She came to me and told me what was going on, and asked me if I’d run a game session. I told her of course I would, and we kept it to our inner circle.

The gaming session was pretty tense at first, but eventually everyone loosened up and got into the story I was telling, and it was almost like any other game night. Eventually we almost forgot about the whole reason we were there… until one of the crew got up to refresh his drink, peered out the living room window, and said, “Hey, there’s somebody on the lawn.”

(Cringing already here. Get through this, Murph.)

Sid and I locked eyes, and the realization shot through the group. And then all at once, everyone moved. Some folks started heading for the back door. Someone ran for the phone. I ran for the couch, dove behind it, and pulled out the bag I’d stashed there earlier in the evening. I threw it on the sofa, unzipped it, and pulled out—well, there’s just no beating around the bush here.

I pulled out a fucking sword.

(Yes, I was one of those nerds. In my defense, I’d actually taken some kendo so I actually kind of knew a little technique. And it wasn’t a stereotypical katana, but a wakizashi—I’ve always been better close-in than at arm’s length. But it’s still godawful embarrassing.)

Most of the crew froze, gaping at me, as I ran for the front door. Through the distorted glass, I could see a figure standing near the base of the steps leading up to the porch. I saw a flare of light that in my mind could’ve been someone attempting to light a fuse. In that moment, I had a clear image In my head of what was about to occur.

I was going to wrench open the front door and hurl myself down the steps, weapon held high, like some godawful parody of a Frank Miller splash page. And I was going to absolutely fuck up the person who was attempting to hurt someone I cared about. I have no idea what would’ve happened after that. Part of me understood that if there actually were some sort of explosive or incendiary device involved, there was a reasonable chance it would go off while I was at ground zero.

I didn’t particularly care.

When I think back on that moment, it’s honestly so weird. I’m a pacifist; I believe violence is wrong. I defuse situations with wit and humor and self-deprecation. I’m absolutely the last person to get physical. But in that moment, it was all wrath, baby. Front Towards Enemy.

I got my hand on the doorknob, twisted it, and began to yank the door open. I was seconds from leaping out and irrevocably committing myself. And all of a sudden Sid wrapped herself around my right arm, leaned in close and whispered desperately, “Murph, it’s a cop!”

You win some, lose some, it’s all the same to me

I froze as my brain tried to reboot. Sid effortlessly took the weapon from fingers that were suddenly nerveless and made it disappear. I managed to continue my motion and opened the door the rest of the way. The cop, startled by the sudden movement, shined the flashlight he was carrying at us. “Evening, officer. Can we help you?” I asked, putting on as much charm as I could muster.

Turns out the alarm had gone off at the jewelry store around the corner. Some kids were apparently horsing around, yanking on the door, and had set it off. The PD was sending cars into the neighborhood looking for anything out of the ordinary. We explained we hadn’t seen anything odd, but we’d keep an eye out. He thanked us and moved on to the next block.

As Sid shut the door, I had an adrenaline crash and nearly collapsed. I was literally about to leap off her porch brandishing a sword at an armed police officer, who likely would’ve shot me six or seven times. I would’ve died with an awfully stupid look on my face, and people would’ve shared the clippings online. “Local idiot has Highlander freakout and attacks cop.” It would’ve been hilarious.

Sid looked at me with worry and everyone else sighed with relief, and then we noticed our friend who’d spotted the cop in the first place was looking utterly bewildered. “What the fuck was that about?” he asked.

And that’s when we realized he hadn’t been in the group chats where we’d talked about the death threats. He had no idea he’d been invited to a party that could potentially be firebombed.

He was utterly furious with us and we had to buy his drinks for a while as apology.

(Some time later we all went out to see the premiere of Pulp Fiction. When Butch pulled down the katana in the pawn shop scene, I turned to see every last one of those motherfuckers smirking at me.)

Although they call me a legend, they can’t remember my name

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