Adam P. Knave
Adam P. Knave wrote this, but you knew that, since this is his site. That's kinda how it works.
My Top Ten Albums of 2021
I like music. That may be an understatement, actually. I desperately need music. I write to it. I edit to it. I just sit and play it, work out to it, everything. I also don’t stream music. Nothing against people who do, mind you. I just like to buy my music, a mix of mp3s and CDs. I don’t do vinyl because, honestly, I grew up at the end of vinyl and then rebought things on cassette and then CD and I can’t go backwards. I just can’t. That’s me. Again, however you listen to music you should enjoy it. I get albums and tend to think of music in terms of albums not singles more often than not. Which is why I am not doing the Top Ten Songs. I digress mightily! This year, for the first time, I…
Arthurian Legend – a small thought
Arthurian Legend. I mean I am not an expert, I’ve met experts so I know I ain’t one here, but I have some familiarity from being obsessed with it as a kid and from co-creating The Once and Future Queen, you know? And I have some Arthur thoughts I need to get out today. They’ve been on my mind a while now. Because I feel like a lot of people seem to identify Arthur as a story about how what we need is a strong leader to unify under and … for me … that misses the actual point of the story. Arthurian stuff is not about A STRONG LEADER coming to save all of us. It’s about how any one of us, regardless of social class or anything else, can BECOME that leader. That we have to step up…
Family Story Time – The Party
So let me tell you a story about my father. I don’t often get into these stories as, well, they tend to sound made up. I get that, I do, but this is 100% pure truth. It’s just one of those perfectly normal, kinda doubt your own sanity, things. When I was nine or ten, my dad told me we were going to a fancy, giant, party for my great aunt Hattie. I will say right now, the name might have been Harriet. But how, you might ask, could I not remember the name of a family member? Well… Growing up I knew of the following, on my father’s side of the family: His father died when my dad was only two. His mother, my grandmother, I knew and saw a bunch. His brother I knew of, and lived on…
Robot Rage
(this is from an old collection of humor essays of mine called I Slept With Your Imaginary Friend and I thought I’d put it back up here because it makes me laugh) Robot Rage What the shit is up with Transformers and go-Bots? I mean, aside from the usual nonsense. All right, I have three big issues just this second and they apply to both bunches of robots that are, wouldn’t you know it, in some form of shape-shifting disguise. First of all, all these fucking robots fly all the time. Just in their basic robot forms. They all fly. All the time. No propulsion visible, nothing – nope, they just damn well fly. And yet! And fucking yet, a bunch of them transform into jets or helicopters or some shit. Why? Why the hell would you be all “Hey,…
Ish
I wasn’t planning on posting this, must less right now when I have a bunch of stuff to get done right now and I’m all busy and argh and… anyway: Religion. Faith. All that jazz. Not something I tend to really talk about in public. Not because I’m afraid of controversy, fuuuuuck y’all know me, but just because it has always been, for me, something that wasn’t anyone else’s business. At least not the internet-at-large’s So let’s talk about it. My family, from my grandparents (on both sides) back, is religiously Jewish. My mother and father, however, both converted away from Judaism before they even met. I, personally, have never asked why. None of my business. My mother is Protestant, my father was Catholic. You know, nominally. In the way a lot of people are. They’ve certainly both seen the…
One piece of clothing
I only have one piece of clothing I actually deeply and truly care about. I mean, I have lots of stuff I like that I wear, but it’s not the same. No this is something utterly different for me. In 1996 (maybe 97? maybe 95?) I decided I needed a good leather jacket. I’d never owned one, good or bad, and wanted one. So that summer, while wandering the West Village I came across one of those stores that had been shit all around the area. Those tiny, over-crowded, jacket/clothing/shoe stores that had too much crap and always had a “Closing Soon!” sign to try and get you to buy something quickly before they died. I went in, just to look around and saw a Hudson Leather motorcycle jacket. I do not now, and never did ride a motorcycle. Doesn’t…
Culture’s Skeleton except
Jake wandered toward his meeting slowly, taking more time than he strictly needed. He just didn’t want to deal with crime today. Sometimes you need a day off your job, even if it’s your passion. People who like to claim that doing the thing you love means you never work a day in your life obviously don’t do the thing they love for as living. The dirty secret is you work harder, that way. The even dirtier secret is that if your job, and passion, is illegal, then you work even harder than that. It’s akin to building a tower out of blocks. Most people think that sounds like fun, and it could be. When your job involves building the tower, you realized the blocks you stack have to also be able to stay standing when bumped into by the…
A bit of Culture’s Skeleton
With Culture’s Skeleton (you can buy the book here) coming out, I thought I Would share about a thousand words of it, to, hopefully, help explain the city the novel takes place in: Mur. So here you go: ——————— We were, earlier, talking about Mur. Mur, the original city. Mur, the mighty and timeless. The city itself spun around space and time like a child’s toy kicked by the family dog on a bender. A word not often used to describe Mur: simple. Words often used to describe Mur: annoying, desperate, and “Where the fuck am I and where are my shoes?” That last isn’t, strictly, a word, but allow for a bit of license. If you’re going to understand Mur, you need to know that this is true. Pure truth, uncut by niceness and concern for the established structures…
Pronouns
Last year I started wearing a very pretty pin on my con lanyards. It said “He/Him” and I wish I could remember the artist who did it, because it is pretty. I saw, I think it was a Google conference, where they offered stickers with your pronouns for attendees to put on their badges. Also cool. But for me I felt this needed to be bigger, in a literal sense. I mean I love my pin, and stickers are cool – but they are small. And in a con environment when you’re meeting people and remembering them, you also want to know their pronouns so you can be a decent person. Making that easy to see, so you don’t have to lean in and look at all the pins and buttons and stickers on a badge or lanyard to find…
Five Across
My office has a cut-out for what should be a closet. Instead it’s just a space set back from the rest of the room. Except for the fact that the fronting hides some hidden internal vertical space and there’s a bit of molding along the bottom edge of the upper drop. You can see it in the header image, and I am sure there are smart terms for what it is. Whatever. It is a space I had nothing hanging in. Oddly sized I considered what I might want to hang there since I can see it from my desk all day. Finally, a while back, I did some quick measuring and realized I could fit five comics up there if I wanted. But what five? I ended up choosing five comics that were special to me for various reasons….
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