Kyle D. Long
LightNews LightNews
banner
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Kyle D. Long
@blatherscribe.bsky.social
350 followers 400 following 3.3K posts
Writer (unpublished), Egyptologist (unfinished), migraine (continuous), human (probably). Extra-large liminal space. Always add marinara. He/him. Profile thingy is a penglion by HumanDescent.
Posts Replies Media Videos
blatherscribe.bsky.social
When you get caught between the Moon and New York City...
Pope Leo in his white robes holding a microphone close, with his eyes closed, looking like he's singing.
November 23, 2025 at 6:41 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Those who wanted to curry favor with Akhenaten, whose unusual appearance was probably due to Marfan's Syndrome, began having themselves depicted in tomb art as looking like him, with elongated limbs and necks and faces, and heavy hips and large bellies.
A statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, showing him fairly realistically, with the long limbs and face and heavy hips and bellies often seen in Marfan's Syndrome patients (a condition of which I am in no way making light). A relief depicting Akhenaten and Nefertiti and three of their daughters. The art is much more stylized now, exaggerating all the ways they were different, far beyond the actual effects of Marfan's, making them look alien (or as they would have said, divine). This is what courtiers began to emulate.
November 10, 2025 at 7:34 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Oh, no. I went to look at Benu again, and found a pen with Thoth on it! Anyone want to buy a kidney? 😭

benupens.com/wp-content/u...
A hand-painted fountain pen mostly in shades of brown and tan, depicting the bennu-bird (Egyptian phoenix, more or less) with blue plumage on the cap, and the deity Thoth (with the head of an ibis wearing a moon-crown) surrounded by ibises on the body. It's resting on a dark brown background with books and papers with Egyptian symbols and a bronze model of a scarab beetle nearby.
September 5, 2025 at 7:31 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Even before Kermit and his banjo, ol' Pogo already knew that. 😁
Pogo Possum, a cartoon anthropomorphic opossum created by Walt Kelly for satirical political comic strips. He's wearing a red and black striped shirt, carrying a floral carpet bag with an umbrella stuck under his arm, smiling, and tipping his big ol' plaid top hat to you. Above his head is "Pogo" in block letters.
August 26, 2025 at 4:42 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
A photo you took that brings you inner peace...
Looking out between two gnarled pine trees like gateposts, over the rim of the Grand Canyon. All is cloaked in mist. Nothing is visible beyond the cliff's edge between the trees but a shadow of a canyon spire, almost lost in the deep pale grey fog. It is almost raining, droplets still suspended half-formed. You can almost see the silence.
August 22, 2025 at 7:04 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Pasta shaped like Thread? 😱
Dragonquest by Michael Whelan, a painting for the Dragonriders of Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey. Dragons fly over a mountains landscape at sunset, riders on their backs directing them as they burn falling Thread (long filamentous organisms that devour any organic matter) with their fiery breath.
August 20, 2025 at 6:08 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
@whatsmacksaid.bsky.social, something arrived in today's post that has Medieval Cat's interest (don't worry, he's not attacking, just using his sword as a pointer). Can't wait to read it! 😁
A Medieval Cat stuffed toy (a yellow cat with a human face with a slight smile) points with his little sword to a copy of Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack. The book cover has the title apparently written on a core sample showing desert stratigraphy intertwined with roots and bones, with wildly blooming flowers above.
August 12, 2025 at 1:12 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
For a moment I thought you meant one of the coyotes was Loki's nemesis, which would have been cool but also a little worrisome. 😅

I've never lived close enough to get acquainted with coyotes, though I did share a mutual "WIMDY" look with one on the edge of the Badlands once.
The "WIMDY" fox, sans text: a beautiful red fox with a white chest, standing in a snowy field, squinting with ears back into a bitter snowy wind.
July 17, 2025 at 6:40 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Solid.
Larry the Mole Man from The Tick cartoon, a smallish grey fellow with big pink eyes wearing a green jumpsuit with his name on it and a yellow hardhat with a miner's lamp. He has been known to accompany his Mole King on bongos, beatnik style.
July 16, 2025 at 12:07 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Because I am Old™:

Space: 1999
Battlestar Galactica (the 1978 original)
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Max Headroom
Poster for Space: 1999, showing the iconic spaceship the Eagle (a '70s NASA-futurist ship with a long main section, four landing gear pods, a conical nose with triangular windows, and classic rocket nozzles at the back) orbiting the Moon with the Earth in the background. Poster for the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica, in traditional movie pile-of-actors style, showing painted versions of the main cast taken from unrelated stills and promos in a vertical stack on a backdrop of the Cylons destroying their homeworld. In spite of the carnage behind them, Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) is the only one looking serious. Apollo (Richard Hatch) looks smug, Athena (Maren Jensen) is apparently blow-drying her hair, Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) may be looking down Cassiopeia's cleavage and trying not to get caught, and Cassiopeia (Laurette Spang) and young Boxey (Noah Hathaway) are just having the time of their lives. The '70s were a weird decade. Poster for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, with inset scenes showing Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley), Tiger Man (H.B. Haggerty, and yes Tiger Man was his official name), Kane (Michael Ansara), and scenes of battle. In the center, Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard) points his blaster at you while Wilma Deering (Erin Gray) holds her blaster ready and stares adoringly at the back of his head. Twiki the "ambuquad" who is definitely not R2-D2 (Felix Silla) obviously thinks these humans are nuts. Poster for Max Headroom. Blessedly simple for a change, it's just Max (Matt Frewer in a latex mask of his own face) laughing on a background of colored lines. Text reads, "Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future."
June 17, 2025 at 6:18 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Joe vs the Volcano. It's funny, it's philosophical, it's surrealist, it's absurdist, and just about every damn shot is a work of art.
A still from Joe vs the Volcano: Joe (Tom Hanks) stands on a raft made of his ridiculous luggage (four giant steamer trunks), floating on the empty night sea. He is reaching up as if to touch the edge of the astonishingly large moon hanging near the horizon.
June 7, 2025 at 10:34 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
I kicked the habit.
Shed my skin.
This is the new stuff
I go dancing in.
The new Pope, having kicked the habit and shed his skin, flanked by immature popes in their subadult color markings.
May 8, 2025 at 7:16 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
I've never seen either version. The original photo was light blue-grey (HSV 220, 29, 73) and muddy gold (44, 43, 48). I just checked in a paint program. And that's what I saw. So I've always been baffled by people who *see* dark blue and black (as opposed to guessing), because it's just not there.
The light blue-grey that is one of the colors of "the dress" in the original photo. The muddy gold that is one of the colors of "the dress" in the original photo. The original photo of "the dress," showing a light blue-grey and muddy gold striped dress hanging in a shop. The dress is in shadow, the rest of the store is overexposed. Grabbed from Wikipedia.
January 4, 2025 at 7:02 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Wouldn't it be easier to just close the window?

*takes a hundred snowblown snowballs to the mush*
From a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, Calvin being pasted by a massive barrage of well-deserved snowballs.
November 30, 2024 at 7:10 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Describe your in-person social skills with an image.
VINCENT (I'm not shouting, it's an acronym for Vital Information Necessary Centralized) from The Black Hole: a hovering spherical grey robot with various retractable appendages (pincers, little round feet, probes) and a round helmet-head that pops up out of the body to reveal perpetually worried-looking eyes. He can draw everything back into his shell like a very round turtle. I only wish I could.
October 24, 2024 at 7:38 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
"It can babysit your kids, walk your dog."
The TOMY Armatron sold by Radio Shack in the early 1980s: a robotic arm similar to those in automotive factories, in pale blue and dark grey plastic with an orange plastic claw. It has two tiny orange joysticks that you use to move it around and pick things up. I had one as a kid and absolutely loved it for about half an hour.
October 12, 2024 at 1:50 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Just found that BlueSky number folks have been talking about. Not within the first million, but lower than my ICQ number (if anyone remembers that)... so if this trend continues I'll be within a meaningful distance of the first users of a new social media platform in about 173 years.
The "BlueSky Number" box, it reads: Celebrating 10M users # 1,059,083 And it has my name, designation, and incept date (Sept. 18, 2023). Just three more years and all this will be gone, like tears in rain.
September 17, 2024 at 7:39 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
A Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly. Panel 1: Churchy LaFemme (a turtle) shouts, "WOW!" causing Pogo (an opossum) and Beauregard (a hound dog) to leap up into each other's arms in fright. Panel 2: With Pogo and Beauregard lying on the ground in shock and concern, Churchy says in a much smaller voice (literally, as in the type is small), "It's Friday the Thirteenth!"
September 13, 2024 at 4:43 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
If you see this post, show 4 of your favorite games. (I've never done one of these nested quote things before, whee. 😁)
Cover art for Assassin's Creed II, featuring Ezio Auditor da Firenze, a young Italian man wearing an elaborate white and red outfit featuring a large leather belt with an Assassin symbol like a stylized A, multiple throwing knives, and on each arm a fully extended "hidden" blade. Somehow we are expected to believe he remains inconspicuous in this getup. Cover art for Rome: Total War, featuring an angry Italian man in Roman leather armor and helmet raising his (just off-camera) gladius and shouting, superimposed over a view of a Roman legion in full armor with shields. Cover art for Red Baron II, a WWI flight combat game, featuring a red Fokker triplane being chased by an olive green Sopwith Camel; against the backdrop of bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds other Fokkers and Sopwiths dogfight. A magazine advertisement for Wing Commander: Privateer. An earthlike planet is in the top left; lower right is a space station like an overturned coffee cup balanced on a small dumbbell and several wedge shaped spaceships; foreground is a spaceship with a blocky body and four cylindrical engines (one on each side, two on top). Advertising text: In 2670, the Terran Confederation and Kilrathi Empire are still at war. To some, the conflict means death, slavery, or dishonor. To others, it's the chance to make a living.
September 2, 2024 at 3:11 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Baffling. Especially given that most of these ancient figures would have them executed for insurrection. 🧐

But what about the pharaoh Hatshepsut as a sphinx? What could we make that mean?
A photo of a red granite statue of the ancient Egyptian female pharaoh Hatshepsut in the form of a sphinx. She (or he, Hatshepsut used both depending on the situation) appears as a recumbent lion with the head of a woman. She is wearing the cloth nemes headdress and false beard of kingship.
July 9, 2024 at 12:12 AM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
And now it's just bucketing down. Fortunately (for me, not for others, stay safe out there) the big tornado-producing stuff is off to the south. The sump pump's getting a workout tonight.
Fairly heavy rain partially obscuring and lending a grey pall to a semi-rural street, stop sign, streetlight, and a field and barn beyond.
July 2, 2024 at 11:05 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
A few minutes ago the sky was cloudy and grey, but I could hear the rumble of thunder approaching. Now I can actually watch the full darkness of the storm roll across the horizon, and the thunder is non-stop. Tornado warnings nearby, but so far nothing bad overhead.
A cloudy grey sky looking, deceptively, merely overcast. Approaching thunder was a rumble like horses running in an overwrought movie battle scene. The sky has gone blue-grey, and in the distance the dark sky-to-ground clouds and rain of the thunderstorm march across the land. It's somewhat vague in its outlines but still threatening.
July 2, 2024 at 11:01 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
My dogs are all dead. My cats are all dead. My guinea pig is dead. And the landlord dug up all the flowers.

Best I can do is a mourning dove who sat on the front porch railing a couple of months ago.
A mourning dove sitting on a weathered wood railing, looking back as if to say, "I see you, human, and I can tell you're not fast enough to be an effective predator, so go back inside."
July 1, 2024 at 6:55 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
So... When I was 17, I couldn't afford a car, so I got a Honda scooter. The big kind, with the little cargo thing on the back.

That picture is giving me flashbacks. I was 6'5", over 300 lbs, on a little anti-cool scooter. At least I was aware I looked ridiculous. 🙄
A maroon Honda CN250 scooter almost exactly like the one I owned. It looks like what happens if you surgically remove all the cool from a motorcycle.
June 20, 2024 at 10:37 PM
blatherscribe.bsky.social
Every time I see a picture of one, I think of the old Amiga game Arctic Fox, only far, far less cool.
A screenshot from the Amiga computer game Arctic Fox (1986). It shows an info screen in the super high tech snow tank you pilot. On the screen is an enemy tank rendered with exactly 20 straight lines. It looks like something a child would make out of cardboard, or a Cybertruck. (There is also some text describing the tank, but it's unimportant.)
June 11, 2024 at 2:49 PM