Mondaugen’s Miscellany

The past is what we make out of it

The future is unwritten

Avoid over-serious people and seek the genuine smile

What have you thought about today?

(A collection of personal essays on travel, life events, and thought experiments, aiming to engage, amuse, befuddle, and inspire)

Archived blog posts are here

May 14, 2026

In my book about hand work, The Manual Manual, I recommend that people put the book down and go make something. When offered the opportunity, I often apply googly eyes on appropriate public advertisements and structures that need humanizing. A straight answer in polite conversation is a skill that I cannot master. In short, I have approached the mysteries of life by managing them the way I wish to be managed: given space to flourish, only questions that lead to other questions, a square meal and a warm bed, and a fish.

This is nothing new. My college counselor called me an “intellectual iconoclast”, a refined way to peg me as a little fucking terrorist who wasn’t going to get into any respectable college. And tellingly, I was only accepted at a school that didn’t require an essay. Telling people what they want to hear has never been my strong suit. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, I am not. I am, and thereby am inclined to see things sideways, and without tilting my head, I understand them that way. Quantum physics makes perfect sense to me, because cause-and-effect, matter versus energy, distance and time-as-an-arrow have never made much sense to me. All are googly eyes brilliant scientists have plastered on the universe to try and humanize it, and while their work is very practical (and I am grateful for it!), it explains nothing.

This is not a boast, no matter how confident I present it. It has rather been a burden, leading to strained relationships, depression, and isolation. Except for many many good friends, who give me joy in their mere existence.

The well-reasoned philosophy of absurdity is profoundly misunderstood. If the OED is any help, it would define absurdity as: “Out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical. In modern use, esp. plainly opposed to reason, and hence, ridiculous, silly,” which it thankfully does. If it were more helpful, it would add this editorial: “The ultimate human fear is the fear of absurdity because it reveals the limits of our understanding and control of our world,” but it isn’t, so I have. Christopher Hitchens was a brave coward, for his intellectual, fervent, and rational arguments against a universe of meaning created through a God.

Isn’t that the ridiculously young Ralph Maccio’s refrigerator-magnet wisdom-lesson for us all? That we have to stand balanced on one foot in a strong wind to be able to kick a bandana-wearing bully senseless? Feels scripted to me, but refrigerators are smarter than most of us, so I listen to the wisdom that shines from them.

Please stop looking for meaning. Please continue to contrive it.

When you apply googly eyes to plants so you can relate to them eye-to-eye you’re doing the universe a great favor. Personally pushing against the relentless tide of chaos and eventual universal heat death is really all we’ve got. I mean, that and bacon.

March 15, 2026

I am a big fan of the 2002 TV series Firefly. It hit a particularly perfect balance of humor, action, and social commentary about the value of political freedom.

Even though cancelled after a single season, it strangely enough was turned into a feature film. Serenity, however, did not have the magic of Firefly. In trading Firefly’s just-fighting-to-get-by character for a superheroes-fighting-to-save-the-solar-system character, Serenity lost the plot. Firefly episodes had been another-day-at-the-office in a strange but familiar space Western. The Firefly heroes were little people of beauty, honor, humor, and flaws. The upped stakes made Serenity feel strained.

Even Joss Whedon, much like Ridley Scott, doesn’t always understand the magic of what he makes. What Alien had never made it into Prometheus.

Now, apparently, the former ensemble of actors are trying to bring Firefly back, as an animated series, if I’m not wrong.

Do I want Firefly to return? With all my heart. Were I ever to meet any of the Firefly actors or writers, I would thank them deeply for the characters they brought to life.

But the chances of catching the same Firefly magic are vanishingly small. A new animated series, 24 years on, can only be something else. It cannot possibly have the same heart, even with the original writers, now 24 years older with a different perspective on life.

I wish them well, but fear that in the money-driven, too-many-cooks world of Hollywood, it will just take one powerful idiot to dose the plot with a pound of sugar when it needs a pound of salt.

I will certainly watch if it comes out. I will cross my fingers it is as good as Andor, but with more humor, little super-anxious end-of-world vibes, and just good tales of criminals in an unjust world who do good, sometimes, if they don’t fuck it up.

March 5, 2026

Jackie DeShannon may be forgotten to most of us, but in 1965 she sang “What the World Needs Now is Love”.

As a little kid in the early 70’s, I remember hearing it on the radio. I remember my mom singing along. Sentimental, sappy, naive, even corny and ridiculous, still, its innocent sweetness is hard to criticize. Would the world be worse with more love? I mean, the song isn’t trying to hurt anyone. I’d like to think Jackie and this song would be unforgotten today. Maybe it would help. Curiously, it charted at #1 in Canada, but only #63 in the US (Wikipedia).