Grumble Goat

One of the most complex systems that humankind has created is Commerce. From our ancient origins of fighting to the death over the coolest stick, trading became the generally preferred method of ownership transfer. Eventually, placing a set value on shiny rocks helped mediate worth. When carrying shiny rocks became burdensome, we replaced the actual rocks with metal disks that represented shiny ro...

The Game of Life is a nuanced, open-world role-playing game that everybody gets to play once. While some stats are randomized, there is a lot of freedom to customize your character. There are also many rules that govern your character choices. Some rules are hard-fast and concrete, like Thou Shalt Not Kill, or the Five-Second-Rule, for instance; but some rules are a loose collection of suggestions...

Santorini is a beautiful island off the coast of Greece. A collapsed volcano has left a striking, sheer cliff rising above the sea. This magnificent wonder befuddles its visitors with awe. The island villagers have opened their land, welcoming the travelers to behold the caldera from the towering heights of the cliff. And they have gifted these explorers in building a cable car to ride back down....

Humankind has always taken to the sea.  We are addicted to exploration, to discovery, to peeking over the horizon and searching for something new.  Traditionally, that voyage is fraught with uncertainty, especially when it comes to rations.  There are no Costco Wholesalers across the vast oceans.  What food you might need must be brought, and rationed.  Seamen and buccaneers alike suffered hunger...

Humankind is a herd animal. We gather. Like lemmings to a cliff, we follow where the herd goes. We gather in cities, we gather in stadiums, and we gather outside the Apple store before a new cellphone releases. Even when we’re home alone, we use that phone to gather in a social media metaphysical space. It makes sense, then, that we gather to look at something strange and new. When we’...

From humanity’s origins in Africa, it took around 100,000 years to spread across the globe. The pace of that journey was decidedly less than ideal, and since then our feverish desire to move ourselves around the globe have led to amazing technological advances. Wind powered boats eventually criss-crossed the Atlantic, each journey taking only half a year. Covered wagons could put you in Oreg...

The Twenty-First Century is a wondrous time to exist. Humanity now enjoys an age where we can safely see the wonders of the world. We exist in this tiny window of history that is framed on one side by marvelous technology like convenient, global air travel, Google Translate, and AirBnB; but just before the collapse of modern civilization due to global air travel pollution and the annihilation of t...

Eons of evolution have culminated in creating the perfect form of life: Humankind. Unfortunately, it didn’t bother cleaning up after itself. All the failed first-steps are still lingering around, still pestering us, like bacteria… and germs. Long ago we won the battles of Black Plague and Dysentery, but the war wages on. We’ve taken on drastic measures, like quarantine, and not p...

Summertime is a joyous time. The quintessential image of peak happiness is the sun shining from a blue sky on bright green grass with birds chirping from lush trees. It is no wonder that the outdoors calls us out from our Paramount Plus couch potato caves during these precious months. And this primordial urge is not complete until we make fire and roast animal flesh. But how do we capture this mom...

Humanity has plunged into the Cyber Age at terminal velocity. Everything must move at the speed of light. High-speed internet, 5-G Lte, One-point-twenty-one Gigawatts; if you’re not keeping up, you’re obsolete. It’s going to take more than Powerade to move this fast… society runs on a full tank of high-octane, premium grade, primordial bone juice! And there is no more impor...

Grumble Goat is off this week! So Mat has commandeered the feed to bring you a preview of his fantasy-adventure novel, Zak: the Hew-Man ! Chapter 2! Welcome to Allspire, a quaint goblin city nestled in an isolated, broken hollow of the Marred Mountains. Zak – son of the Goblin chief – is preparing for his Blood Rite. This rite of passage will test his strength in the goblin art of bloo...

A picture says a thousand words. But those words are silent, and they are in your head, and it’s really you doing the work of putting those words together. A tour of an art museum might involve someone asking you to form the words. What do you think of this piece? The suppressed panic of oral book reports banishes any semblance of imagination. But the Motion Picture changed all of that. Now...

Machines require lubrication. The clockwork motion of gears and levers grinds to a halt without the grease. Proper lubrication is the key to a well-oiled machine. Like a drunkard at closing-time, Gas-guzzling SUVs demand a full flight of cocktails just to function. The Human body is a mechanical avatar with similar needs. Oils, mucus, and plasmas circulate and drip from the whole, sloppy chassis....

Humankind matured into a collective during the last Ice Age. The frigid Earth was an inhospitable place for our furless ape ancestors. They struggled to master the art of fire just to survive. Thousands of years later, our magnificent brains have unlocked the power over all of the elements. Like Avatar Aang, we easily sway fire, water, earth and air with the flick of a Bic or the turning of a ther...

The 21 st Century is a fast-paced, bustling cacophony of technologically enhanced productivity.  Computers, cell phones, and Artificial Intelligence have turned our lives into rigidly packed, chaotic scheduling nightmares.  Yet still we must eat.  Life still revolves around food, and so food is an excuse to slow down.  We’re allowed to savor our meals, and there is no greater indulgence in our bus...

In the vast, empty blackness of the Universe, there is one frail, tiny pebble bobbing along on the gravitational waves of the Milky Way. This little blue dot – that we call Earth – contains all the known life in the Universe. Humankind has taken this miniscule lifeboat in much the same way as a freshman personalizes their dorm room: punching holes in the wall, burning the carpet with c...

Veronique is off this week! So Mat has commandeered the feed to bring you a preview of his fantasy-adventure novel, Zak: the Hew-Man ! Welcome to Allspire, a quaint goblin city nestled in an isolated, broken hollow of the Marred Mountains. Zak – son of the Goblin chief – is preparing for his Blood Rite. This rite of passage will test his strength in the goblin art of blood magic; and w...

The Human Body is the perfect biological machine.  With over a million years of R&D, this high precision work of art rocketed Humankind to the top of the Food Chain. Complete with four posable limbs and two opposable thumbs, karate-chop action and full color vision, these bodies are perfect for skiing down mountains and parkouring through the densest urban environments. The supercomputer opera...

Humanity is experiencing a Technological Age heretofore unimaginable to the amoebas that began life on Earth. Unfortunately, it is happening alongside the cancer of Capitalism. Spending money has become the equivalent of personal enrichment. Modern Designers own a Macintosh, so buying a Macintosh makes one a Designer. Fit people monitor their heart-rate, therefore owning a Smart Watch to monitor m...

The Human Brain is an incredibly complex biological supercomputer. It has sysadmin privileges over every other organic function in the body as well as the ability to forget where you put your keys. This unfathomable mass of living tissue somehow captures and stores vivid memories of precise moments in time, like wetting your pants on a school field-trip twenty years ago, while simultaneously delet...

We are living in the Digital Age. It is an era of Renaissance and upheaval. The old, analog ways are dying as the new binary systems come crashing in with dizzying metamorphosis. Venture into these digital depths at your own peril. A wayward email address into the wrong website and your inbox is inundated with FR3E bON3r PilZ! An expatriated African Prince has money tied up and the only way to unf...

While there are a handful of advantages Humankind can claim over the rest of the beasts of the Earth, it is the design of our hands that allowed for our unmatchable achievements. Dolphins and ravens may have the smarts, but their flappy extremities are no opposition to our opposable thumbs. Our precise, deft digits can hold and pick and weave and craft. And therefore, it is no wonder that our hand...

Humanity has evolved well beyond the limitations of our animal origins. Our structures of steel and glass practically scrape the skies, our internet can activate our robot vacuums from a continent away, our soaps have magical scrubbing bubbles that do the scrubbing for you! And as much buzz as there is around moving into a paperless society, there is one paper that continues to outsell even the le...

The Meaning of Life is remarkably simple, cherish the people that are close to you. Unfortunately, ‘Close,’ in this instance, does not mean proximity. There are times when we are forced to share a small space with people we do not cherish. While most of our day can be spent in blissful isolation, our rooms, apartments, cars, and cubicles; regrettably there remains small human interacti...

As the year draws to an end, the world celebrates. A cornucopia of feasts and festivals replace the dwindling sunlight. A deluge of decorations hypnotize us from the reality of the dropping temperature. Our entire cognitive function is overwhelmed with feasting and caroling and wassailing right up until the New Year, where the world literally counts the seconds into the next year as fireworks expl...