Month: January 2022

Maintenance notes

I started cleaning up the website a little bit over the weekend, with the most obvious change being I moved the blog back to the home page. If you bookmarked the blog at any point in the last year or so, you need to edit the bookmark so it sends you to plain old warrenbluhm.com.

I’ll be in the process of revising my various book pages, which have lacked links for purchasing for some time. You can find my stuff by doing a search at your favorite book retailer, but I suspect it would be easier for you just to click on “My Books” and “The Roger Mifflin Collection” up above – so you’ll be able to do that soon.

The weekend not far from the frozen shores of Green Bay was spent working on a handful of publishing projects that I’ll be announcing soon. My latest book, Full (getcher ebooks and paperbacks here) is divided into separate sections about creativity, freedom, and motivation. I’m working on developing each of those ongoing themes in their own upcoming books.

I have plans to grow The Roger Mifflin Collection this year, I’m working on my flow of several long-rumored fiction projects, and I have some stuff to be announced as well. 

Thanks for checking in here regularly and letting me know when I’ve shared something you found useful, interesting, fun or all of the above!

The sad case of Neil Young v. Spotify

Photo © Sergey Klopotov | Dreamstime.com

So the guy who wrote “Keep on rocking in the free world” generated a kerfuffle the other day when he decided freedom is a dangerous thing.

Neil Young didn’t agree with what Joe Rogan was doing on the Spotify platform, so he demanded that his music be removed from the platform: “You can have Rogan or Young, not both.”

I don’t know much about Joe Rogan other than Young is apparently unhappy that Rogan gives a voice to “misinformation” about the experimental medications that are generally called COVID-19 vaccines. This is exactly what I was talking about the other day when I said we’ve reached the point where it’s risky to say 2 + 2 = 4.

If a doctor tries using a generic drug that has worked against other viruses, and announces success, then Big Pharma and its allies with a stake in costly new medicines declare the doctor unfit to be heard or perhaps even unfit to practice medicine.

If unusual numbers of people start dying of non-COVID maladies, and the surge in deaths coincides with mass distribution of the above-mentioned experimental medication, you point out the “coincidence” at the risk of your own reputation as a sane and credible source.

In a free world ideas get aired, the sound ideas survive, and the unsound ideas report to the dustbin of history. In an unfree world ideas get muzzled or throttled, and a central power decides what is a proper idea. The rest is proclaimed misinformation or disinformation, even if it’s 2 + 2 = 4.

I’m going to keep rocking in the free world, because it’s clear Mr. Young had a better idea 30 years ago.

UPDATE: And now Joni Mitchell, too. This also reminds me of another fact of life: It’s better to own your music, whether via CD or vinyl or download. A stream can be edited or removed, as these incidents show. I can still listen to Neil or Joni anytime on my turntable or digital players.

The Coming of Meteor Man (Part 3)

Let’s say there was this guy walking barefoot through his house when a meteor crashes in his backyard.

There’s a glowing rock in the middle of the crater, and it’s warm to the touch when he picks it up. Why would he do that? People do dumb stuff all the time — why not pick up a glowing meteorite in your own yard?

But where did the meteor come from? Why did it transfer superpowers to the finder? Are dark forces at play or forces of light and justice?

And who is the sultry next-door neighbor who saw the whole thing?

See, that’s what I’m talking about when I say “have fun” — the above was a seven-minute jam where I started a sentence “Let’s say there was …” and, just for fun, I made stuff up as I went along, as stuff came to me. Just. For. Fun. No connections to anything else I’m writing, just a fun little exercise to get the juices flowing. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow and write that story. Maybe I’ll find it in this journal in five years and something in the back of my mind will say, “I know what the meteor is!” Maybe that’s the last I ever think about it.

But I wrote something this morning. And that’s the point.

Why do people climb a mountain? Because it’s there. Why do writers write? It’s just what they do. Where do they get their ideas? Out of thin air when they sit down to write, relax and have fun with it.