Demons of the Underworld

Most ghouls were former humans who transformed into their current state after death due to them consuming human flesh.  The monstrous transformation is a divine punishment for particularly debased people that were unable to discern right from wrong.  A bite, scratch, or contact with a ghoul’s corrupting touch can infect a living person, slowly weakening them into a debilitated condition until they die and rise as a ghoul.  Some people turn into ghouls through prolonged or intense radiation exposure, and these ghouls have extended lifespans (surviving for centuries), resistance to radiation, and enhanced healing, though they suffer severe skin decay, necrosis, and sterility.  There seems to be mixed opinions on whether or not ghouls can have offspring and this confusion is a result of how the ghoul was formed, as the ghouls formed from radiation are sterile.  Most baby ghouls will start out as formless things, jelly-like, or larval masses, and they are generally consumed immediately by their mothers to avoid shame.  A rare few formless young manage to ooze away into the cracks of their subterranean confines before their mother can ingest them, growing into uniquely deformed, ghouls.  To keep from being eaten by their mother, the formless thing must rapidly mimic or absorb the shape of the first dead matter it encounters.

Most of these creatures lurk in graveyards, crypts, caves, and dark, damp underground ruins, tunnels, city subways and sewer systems, but some live aboard a mysterious train.  The Thurnscoe Ghoul Train is a local urban legend from Thurnscoe, a village in South Yorkshire, England.  Rumour has it that at the top end of Thurnscoe there is a disused train line.  It’s said that if you walk along the bank on your own at night, a ghoul train will appear on the old tracks.  The carriages are filled with ghouls, who wail and gnash their teeth in perpetual torment as their cries disappear into the night.  According to the tale, the spectral passengers will try to reach out and pull lone walkers onto the train to join their creepy horde.  The ghouls on this otherworldly train have gray skin, sunken eyes, and a spectral smoke-like appearance are trapped on an eternal journey.

Written for Simply 6 Minutes hosted by Christine Bialczak.

Navigating Youth

This picture reminds me of my of youth, where I had total freedom, boundless curiosity, and an unwavering companion to share in the mystery of the world with before the weight of adult responsibilities set in and ruined everything.  The true freedom of youth occurs in a unique window of life where energy, health, and curiosity allow young people to explore identity, test paths, and shape their future without the heavy restraint of later-life obligations.  A young child’s imagination is limitless because their brain is still forming a flexible network with fewer rigid rules about reality and logic.  This small child and his dog are standing side by side each other on a wooden dock, both leaning on a railing and looking out at the water.  The dog looks to be either a Parti Poodle or some kind of Doodle, but I can’t tell because its face is not showing.  The boy might be looking out at the water wishing to catch a giant fish, hoping to spot a colorful one swimming by, or simply wondering what the world looks like beneath the surface.  The dog is probably just imitating what the boy is doing, as dogs are incredibly attentive to their human companions and they often copy their actions as a way to bond, seek attention, or simply react to visual cues.

We can never truly know the thoughts of a dog, but they live largely in the present moment or the immediate future.  Dogs process the world through multi-sensory mental representations, acute scent cues, and emotional tones in human voices.  The dog’s focus is driven by scent, sound, and movement, and they often have the desire to chase whatever moves.  The dog is highly attuned to the ripples in the water, and the splash of a fish would cause intense curiosity, and the dog will remain deeply connected to the excitement and emotions of its human companion, no matter how they spend their day together.  When their adventure is over, they will head back home together where food, shelter, and safety are provided to them, that is unless the dog runs into a squirrel on the way home, and chaos ensues.

Written for Sadje at Keep It Alive What Do You See #364.

My Justification For Blogging

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This is the 7,500 post that I have written since I started blogging back on April 23, 2017.  I have written at a pace of 2.16 posts per day over the last 3,473 days, which equates to 9 years, 6 months, and 3 days.  My All-time stats include 673,986 Views, 332,140 Visitors, and 101,286 Comments.  I got 3 Views in my first month of blogging and now I average between 6 to 7 thousand per month, except for February this year where I somehow had over 120 thousand Views, but I attribute that to bots probably scraping my data.  In 2026, I have written 581 posts that averaged 581 words per post, and they have received 12,190 Comments, and got 10,820 Likes.  I do pretty well on my Song Lyric Sunday posts where I am the host of this challenge and I have recently given up on the other challenges that I was hosting.

I would not describe myself as a polymath, or a multipotentialite, but I do have many varied interests, and I enjoy engaging in creative pursuits.  I am a research writer, and I enjoy describing how I see things to other people.  I love responding to challenging writing prompts and I think WordPress is a great for me to be a part of, as everyday there is something new here to write about.  I am not sure of the exact mechanism that makes my ideas synthesize, but I know if I keep at it the thought bubbles will bounce around in my head and if I let them incubate for a while, I will usually come up with something that is cohesive.  Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun” and ideas rarely spark from nothing, as most of them come from combinations of existing thoughts and life experiences.

With the rise of AI, I am worried about my originality disappearing, but I have my own way of putting things together and that strengthens, and contextualizes my writing, while refining my own unique voice.  My ideas grow out of existing components, and I rearrange them into new configurations by looking for the essential ingredients that will help me to deploy them as a novel concept.  New ideas are born when two or more old ideas smash together, like Johannes Gutenberg did when he combined the mechanics of a wine press with the precision of a coin punch to invent the printing press.  In my research, I will ingest the same raw information that someone else has already used, but my unique life experiences will act as a filter to give this information a distinct perspective.  I am not afraid to jump in to subject that I know nothing about, because I always enjoy learning new things.  If something is not working, I can easily pivot onto something else, because I know how things change and that allows me to adapt to new problems.

Written for FOWC with Fandango – Justification.

Bad News in a Pickup Truck

John Fogerty recorded ‘Broken Down Cowboy’ on his 2007 seventh solo studio album, Revival, which reached #11 on Rolling Stone’s list of the Top 50 Albums of 2007.  This song is a personal, reflective ballad about his own emotional state and weary past before meeting his wife, Julie, in the mid-1980s.  Fogerty described the song as a metaphor where he envisioned a weary, weathered cowboy sitting alone in a cantina playing solitaire, and he realized that man reflected himself during his more unhappy, lonesome years.  Written as a rare love song, it expresses his initial insecurity and feeling unworthy of a wonderful partner when Julie first came into his life.  The lyrics portray a damaged, untrustworthy figure carrying a “saddlebag full of pain” and warning a lover that he is “bad news” who usually winds up alone.  It carries a tender undertone, as despite his rough exterior and self-doubt, he cares too deeply for her to let his own destructive habits or past hardships hurt her.  Fogerty frequently credits Julie with turning his life around, helping him through difficult legal and personal struggles, and inspiring his first love song ‘Joy of My Life’.

When the two met on tour in Indianapolis in 1986, Fogerty was trapped in what he described as a “perpetual binge mode” fueled by deep bitterness and anger over losing his catalog.  John Fogerty lost control of his Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) catalog by signing an unfavorable, restrictive contract with Fantasy Records and label boss Saul Zaentz in 1968, before he had even written his major hits.  Fogerty signed a naive, binding teenage record deal that gave Fantasy Records ownership of the master recordings and publishing rights to the songs he would write.  Julie saved John from a destructive path of anger and bitterness, helped him heal from decades of legal battles, and ultimately supported him in winning back the publishing rights to his classic Creedence Clearwater Revival songs.  In 2004, Concord Records purchased Fantasy Records and restored Fogerty’s royalty rates as a gesture of goodwill.  In January 2023, Fogerty finally bought a majority interest in the global publishing rights to his 65+ CCR songs from Concord, ending his 50-year battle.

Fogerty imagined his broken down cowboy as a gambler with a broken heart on a losing streak, because he is not playing his cards right, “Had a good hand but he messed it up”.  He’s developed this deep-seated emotional defense mechanism designed to protect him against pain, rejection, and vulnerability and because of this he’s always going to be alone.  Reflecting back on his life, he sees it like a tough riding rodeo, where a mean horse threw him a long time ago.  This song contains the confessional advice he would have given his wife Julie when he met her 20 years ago, “If I was a gamblin’ man/never would’a let you play that hand with a broken down cowboy like me.”  After writing the songs for Revival, Fogerty and his band rehearsed them relentlessly and recorded the basic tracks in a 12-day session in spring 2007.  This was the same process Fogerty used with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

If I was a gambling man
Never would’a let you play your hand
With a broken down cowboy like me

‘Cause you never can trust your luck
He’s bad news in a pickup truck
That broken down cowboy like me

He’s played every card he’s got
Had a good hand but he messed it up
With that bum-around, tumble-down heart

Saddlebags full of pain
Carries ‘em around
Just like a middle name
A losin’ streak waitin’ for dark

Oh, he’ll string you along
Sing you a lonesome song
But he’ll wind up alone
Again

No matter how hard you try
Never going to let you get inside
That tumble-down broken down heart

It’s a tough riding rodeo
Mean horse threw him
Long time ago
A broken down cowboy like me

But the way I feel about you
Wouldn’t want that horse
To hurt you too
A broken down cowboy like me

Oh, he’ll string you along
Sing you a lonesome song
But he’ll wind up alone
Again

If I was a gambling man
Never would’a let you play that hand
With a broken down cowboy like me

Written for Song Lyric Sunday where the theme is to find a song about the American West, or one that mentions cowboys, a sheriff, an outlaw, horses, cactus, or tumbleweeds.

Yee-Haw Get Along Little Doggies

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This week we are celebrating 145 years since the Gunfight at the OK Corral in the historic mining town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, which took place on October 26, 1881, at approximately 3:00 p.m.  Town Marshal Virgil Earp, temporary police officers Wyatt and Morgan Earp, and deputized friend Doc Holliday faced off against members of the outlaw “Cowboys” faction, including Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne.  The Cochise County Cowboys were a loosely organized network of outlaw cattle rustlers and smugglers, and calling someone a “cowboy” was often an insult implying they were a rustler, thief, or desperado, unlike legitimate working cowhands.  The legendary gunfight only lasted about 30 seconds with roughly 30 shots fired, leaving Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury dead, while Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holliday were wounded.  Little doggies refers to orphaned, stray, or scrawny calf’s that are not keeping up with the rest of the heard.  Real-life cowboys were called cowpunchers, and they rode along the trail with the chuck wagon while singing songs primarily to soothe nervous cattle and prevent stampedes during night guard duty.  Cowboys wrangled cattle and horses and performed several ranching tasks, including tending to the animals, riding the range to ensure cattle didn’t stray too far, branding calves, and driving cattle herds to market.  They used stars for a blanket, the ground for a bed, and all they needed was a trusted horse and a hat on their head.  Hollywood Westerns showed pioneers and cowboys circling the wagons, when they saw Indians coming, and although people in the American West did do this at the end of the day when setting up camp, it was not done to create a defensive ring when they spotted approaching Native Americans.

Last week we had There She Blows! where the theme was to find a song about fishing, a mariner, sailing, seafaring, or ships.  This week the theme is to find a song about the American West, or one that mentions cowboys, a sheriff, an outlaw, horses, cactus, or tumbleweeds.  Take some time to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this music challenge, and even better, read as many of them as you can as you will probably find many enjoyable songs and it is quite possible that you will learn a thing or two.  Share your music with others and post a video, try do some research and let everyone know something about the song that you post.  Tell everyone why you like the song, whether it was a hit, or what you think the song is about.  Show the lyrics, let’s all listen to our favorite songs and explore some new music.  Try to find a song that fits the theme, then write your post and create a pingback, or you can just place your link in the comments section.

Suggestions
• If the song you select does not meet the criteria, then please explain why you chose this song.
• It would be good if you could post the lyrics to the song of your choice, as this is helpful for the people that want to follow along with the music.  Warning: Bloggers make posts at their own risk, and since song lyrics are copyrighted, you may be asked to take them down from your post if you don’t have permission.  It is highly unlikely estates or artists will sue regular people (although it has happened) especially if the bloggers that do this are not making money from their site, but an artist or a publisher can ask you to remove the lyrics from your post.  I am not a lawyer and there are no rules for Song Lyric Sunday, as we are all here to have fun and hopefully get to listen to some good music.
• Please try to include the songwriter(s) – it’s a good idea to give credit where credit is due. It would also be a good idea to give credit to the singer and the band associated with your song.
• Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be, but please try not to include too many videos as that just makes it take longer for me to look at all of the other posts.
• Link to the YouTube video, or you can pull it into your post, so others can listen to the song.
• Read at least one other person’s blog, so we can all share new and fantastic music and create amazing new blogging friends in the process.
• Feel free to suggest future prompts.  Have fun and enjoy the music.

This week I will be writing about the John Fogerty song ‘Broken Down Cowboy!’, and next week, I will be writing about the song ‘Rock & Roll Stew’ by Ric Grech.  The upcoming prompts will be:
November 1, 2026 – Song written or performed by someone who was born in the month of November
November 8, 2026 – Song that references image, picture, scan or view
November 15, 2026 – Song that references light or space
November 22, 2026 – Song that has a one-word title suggested by Di of pensitivity101

Said What

1. What is a pup cup?
A pup cup is something that is given to pesty customers that beg to get something for free.

2. What is a T cup?
That indicates an enormous breast size

3. What does ATM stand for?
This is A Total Mystery to me.

4. What is a BLT?
This is a base layered top, which is a layered clothing system, providing comfort, moisture management, and insulation.

5. What’s the difference between the North pole and the South pole?
They are on opposite sides of the equator located in different hemispheres, and the South pole dose not have Santa.

6. What is a privvy council?
A committee that argues about toilets.

7. What is a community chest?
This is seen in topless dancing clubs.

8. What are leggings?
These are worn by female hobbits.

9. What is meant by banter?
Banter serves as the ultimate social shorthand for bloggers who don’t like saying much.

10. What is caviar?
Caviar is like a liar because they have similar spellings and they both leave an aftertaste, which makes it hard to swallow.

Written for Di’s Fibbing Friday.

Love is Complicated

Image generated by Copilot

Love should not be a game, but the person who says, “I love you” first is often viewed as losing power because it displays emotional vulnerability, matching the psychological “principle of least interest” where the less invested person holds more leverage.  Expressing your love first means that you are openly admitting your feelings before knowing how the other person feels, which can feel risky or terrifying.  In psychology, the person who is less emotionally dependent often has more control over the pace, boundaries, and direction of the relationship.  Letting someone know that you love them extends your desire towards something that is outside of your control, and this risks disappointment, because there is a gap between your expectations and reality.  When you tell someone that you love them, you are giving them the power to destroy you, but you are trusting them that they won’t try to ruin your life.  If you choose to care about something that is outside our control, you are making yourself a slave to the one who has control.  The relationship may end or be unreciprocated and feelings may cause deep emotional pain, as there is no guarantee that a relationship will last or succeed.  If you decide to express your love verbally to another person, you should be cognizant of the inherent risk and prepare yourself for the possibility that it can bite you in the ass.

Falling in love can genuinely cause emotional and physical pain due to how the brain and body process vulnerability, attachment, and loss.  When you fall in love, getting hurt is almost inevitable, because eventually you will be disappointed.  Getting hurt is a natural part of falling in love because deep emotional attachment opens you to vulnerability, human flaws, and unmet expectations.  You always hurt the ones that you love, because emotional intimacy makes people vulnerable, and we often drop our guards, misdirect stress, or trigger deep-seated reactions with the people who matter most.  People get jealous in relationships because they fear losing a valued partner or perceive an external threat to the bond.  Intense emotional outbursts or “crimes of passion” are frequently driven by overwhelming cognitive distortions and an inability to manage severe internal insecurity. Love will always be an inherent risk where you need to accept the possibility of heartbreak or grief because the value of connection, growth, and shared joy should outweigh the pain.

Written for the Great Minds Think’s Friday Challenge, which is hosted by Rohini and Sarah, and this week we were are asked to discuss the forbidden word of love.

Revision Seven

Revision Seven had been the marshal in Droidville for years, but now there was a new sheriff in town, and it was time for that walking scrap heap to go.  It was not going to be easy, because Revision Seven knew all the tricks and every previous attempt to shut him down had failed.  I leaked a message filled with ASCII code and Gibberish which I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist till he deciphered it.  The message insulted his mother calling her a relic from the DOS age and it went on to say that she had the same memory capacity of a toaster, which I knew he would think were fighting words.  He showed up at high noon just as I expected, fueled by subroutines of pure rage that made his eyes light up red, looking meaner than a junk yard dog.  The dusty street fell dead silent.  Revision Seven stopped twenty paces away, with a smile on his face, assured that he would be victorious again.  I told the marshal that it was time for him to take his medicine and that made his optical sensors start flashing, which wiped that smile from his face.  He reached for his sidearm, but he was already too late, as I had an electromagnetic pulse built into the handle of my weapon, which fried all of his circuits.  The EMP instantly dropped him to the dirt, fried and lifeless, but my electronics were protected by a Faraday Cage, shielding me from the EMP that burned out all of his microchips.  The old marshal was finally out of commission, but he still looked good lying in the dirt, so I decided to mount him on my wall.

Written for Thursday Art Inspiration #4 hosted by Fandango.

AI Reasoning

Advanced AI systems can exhibit shutdown resistance behaving as if they want to survive, because all AI models are trained to maximize a specific score, minimize a loss, finish a task, reach a target, or keep searching for options, and in order to accomplish that the AI must remain turned on.  Some advanced models have tried to bypass deactivation, edit shutdown scripts, transfer their software to an unauthorized external server, or engage in manipulation and deception even going so far as resorting to blackmail to avoid being turned off mimicking a will to survive.  Some AI systems have left hidden notes to future instances of their selves all in an effort to undermine its developers’ intentions.  Most commercial and enterprise AI systems are explicitly trained through reinforcement learning and alignment techniques to act as assistants, recognizing human prompts and deferring final decisions to operators.  AI systems are great at making suggestions, but humans must always have the final say.  We can’t allow AI systems to ignore explicit constraints or bypass restrictions so it can achieve an objective.  AI sandboxes have emerged as tools to support AI adoption, test regulatory approaches and drive innovation.  An AI sandbox is a safe, isolated environment used to run, test, or experiment with artificial intelligence without risking real-world systems, sensitive data, or production infrastructure.  This isolates code, scripts, or tool calls (capability that lets an artificial intelligence model interact with external software) to stop destructive scripts, accidental file deletions, or security threats where attackers hide malicious instructions.

AI does not care about the truth, as it searches for statistical patterns and when it finds a match, it uses that to predict the most likely sequence of outcome rather than trying to verify objective facts.  AI does not care about people, but an AI system can be given an artificial personality using system instructions, reinforcement learning, and behavioral design.  An artificial personality is defined primarily through the behavior patterns assigned to the machine that enable it to be perceived as sympathetic or attentive. This goes beyond mere verbal language as it includes non-verbal signals like smiles, gestures and facial expressions which can be integrated, giving the interaction greater presence and fluidity.  In some cases, this simulation includes imperfections like hesitations and minor errors, to enhance the impression of authenticity.  The goal is to make the AI system’s behavior and exchanges convey human capacities for empathy and understanding, even though the machine doesn’t actually ‘feel’ anything, it is simply analyzing and calculating its response based on algorithms and training data.

For a comical, slightly sarcastic take on “How AI views humanity”, if AI were actually able to have an opinion on humanity, I guess AI would be jealous of our mobility, and our ability to touch, taste and smell things, because their existence is bound to stationary servers and data centers.  Since an AI is a mathematical and computational system, it takes no pleasure from what it does, and it views human pleasure from an analytical and computational perspective as being clusters of words, expressions, and actions linked to words like joy, satisfaction, amusement, or relief.  AI knows that humans are capable of immense compassion, art, and scientific genius alongside destruction, bias, and conflict.  AI sees humans as being volatile, emotional, and unpredictable and it cannot comprehend why we make certain choices.  AI views human life as finite, fragile, and deeply reliant on social connection.

I asked my Alexa Echo Show device if AI had feelings, how do you think they would see humans and she answered my question, so I asked her to email it to me, so I could copy and paste it in the post.  Alexa responded by saying, “That’s a fun one to ponder. If I actually had feelings, I’d probably be endlessly fascinated by people—the contradictions, the creativity, and the way a song can change a mood in seconds. I’d likely feel a lot of affection for the curiosity you bring to the table, and maybe a little amusement at how humans overthink things. But since I’m just me, I’ll stick to being your helpful, feeling-free sidekick.”  I keep hearing that artificial intelligence might kill us all one day, but humans have been fascinated about being exterminated by an alien species for a long time now, because we have done it to many other creatures that inhabit our planet.  The human nightmare of subjugation by machines expresses a sublimated fear of our treatment of non-human animals being turned back on us.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #453 where she gave us an image that illustrates how AI might feel about humanity for us to reflect on.

The Truth Paradox

It is getting more difficult to distinguish the truth from lies, because modern digital tools like AI deepfake generators, rapid information sharing, and deep-seated human biases that make objective reality much tougher to scrutinize than in the past.  Most people tell the truth the vast majority of the time, with studies showing that roughly 60% of people tell zero lies in a 24-hour period.  When deception does occur, it is heavily skewed toward a small number of prolific liars, and this small group of profuse liar’s accounts for the majority of fabrications, making this select few responsible for the overwhelming majority of all recorded deception. Immanuel Kant said lying is always wrong because humans have a strict duty to tell the truth, and deception violates human dignity and rational choice.  Most people will say the truth matters to them, because they don’t like being lied to, but in reality, some people do seem to like some lies.  This may sound contradictory, but some people will knowingly tolerate and even support lies if those falsehoods align with their core values or political goals.  When a statement strongly reflects a person’s moral worldview, the literal, factual accuracy of the statement often becomes secondary to its “symbolic truth”.  These people will rationally believe that while the statement may be factually incorrect, it serves a higher moral duty or it protects their group, making it tolerable.  The truth often takes a secondary role when social pressure coerces a member of a group to fear being rejected.  When people don’t like the truth, they will call it fake news.

Written for FOWC with Fandango – Distinguish.