A speculative mind

  Having decided the next phase of my college would be at Idaho State University, I had to say goodbye to my friends and move to Pocatello. I coordinated this move with my parents. I got rid of stuff including my car as I didn’t fancy the idea of driving around in the snow in my Datsun 1200, and I could use the money. What I did not get rid of but couldn’t take with my I stored at my parent’s house (thank you, parents). Then my parents agreed to drive me the twelve-hour trip from Eugene to Pocatello (thank you again). My parents got a hotel room for themselves, but I would be staying at the track coach’s house along with the other incoming track and field refugees. My parent’s hotel was called Bidwell’s and it was just off campus. They noticed that the owners of the hotel also owned an adjacent building that had apartments that they rented out. They told me about it. We checked them out and decided to take one. I was able to get out of my coach’s house fairly quickly then, but my...

  I have a guilty pleasure. I have been reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman, and I am hooked. I read the first book a while back, and now I am up to book five. Okay, the premise may sound a little wild, but here goes. One night (or day, as this event happens all over the Earth at the same time, no matter what time of day or night) all roofs collapse. Any person who is under a roof of any kind gets smashed flatter than a pancake. Instantly. Anyone who is in a car, or a house, or a building, is dead. This leaves only a fraction of the human race left alive. Why has this happened? Aliens did it. Why did they do it? For entertainment. Carl, it seems, had gone outside in the middle of the night to rescue his ex-girlfriend’s cat (named Princess Donut). So now Carl and the cat found themselves in a subterranean labyrinth forced to participate in a game for the amusement of aliens. This game comes with nonplayer characters like orcs and goblins and dragons, but th...

  After two plus years of junior college, I had to decide where to go to continue my education. I was at a gray point in my life. I no longer considered myself a boy, but I didn’t really consider myself a man yet either. Some college done, but not complete. And what was my actual goal in life? What was I becoming? I needed to take the next step, but what was I going to step into? Track was very important to me. I had been accepted to the University of Oregon, but if I went there, I would be a small fish in a very big pond, as U of O had a nationally renowned track and field program. The coaching staff had not really gone out of their way to entice me to go there (no scholarship offer). A friend of mine had a connection with the new track coach at Idaho State University in Pocatello. The coach there (Jerry Quiller) was visiting my friend in Eugene and asked me if I would be willing to come to Pocatello and see the program. I thought it couldn’t hurt, so I said yes. We made arrange...

  Consider the Roman Empire, so vast and “eternal.” At least it would have seemed eternal to a Roman citizen living in it. At its height it stretched from Scotland to North Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean to Iraq. Imagine yourself as a Roman citizen living in the year 200 A.D. You would have considered the Roman Empire (your empire) to be something that would last forever. It had already lasted 600 years, and in fact it would continue on in one form or another for another 1200 years. It was all you had ever known. You would not be able to conceive of a day when the empire no longer existed. It was the world’s first superpower. It was militarily dominant. It exported its art, culture, and values to most of the known world. No one could remember the last time they ever lost a war. They even survived some incredibly bad emperors. I am talking: Nero, Domitian, Caligula, etc. These guys should not even have been allowed to run a tavern, let alone an empire. Yet even with these incompe...