Kurtomitch's Mental Itches

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

New Mugs a-comin' ... real soon!

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

A Stranger Side of Red...

Kurt Mitchell's first full-length novel, A Stranger Side of Red, is now available as an eBook on Amazon.com


A Stranger Side of Red by Kurt Mitchell

A short sample can be read here...

Check it out!

Friday, May 11, 2012

What a beautiful day! It's time to think of food and a BBQ!

Thursday, May 10, 2012

New as of today on Amazon...

Scratched From Dreams is a short story anthology by Kurt Mitchell in which he pays stylistic homage to some of his favorite authors. From Bradbury to O'Connor, from King to Serling, this collection runs slightly to the darker side of things. Each story is illustrated by a well-known illustrator; all are friends of the author.

Scratched From Dreams is now an eBook...

Sunday, May 6, 2012

"Electricity"

One day about 40,000 years ago, somewhere in the south of France, Og and his brother Howard were hard at work decorating a client's cave wall with painted pictures of horses, cows, and bulls. Og turned to his brother and remarked, "You know... I wish we had something to turn off at the end of the day so we would know that it was time to go home..." And so was put in motion a quest for power, and the lack of it, that continues to this very day.

Our universe is full of atoms, tiny little things that clump together to form what we know as "stuff"... and when we look even closer, we see that these atoms themselves are comprised of tinier subatomic particles- protons, neutrons, and electrons- that cling to each other due to inherent qualities called charges. Protons possess positive charges; electrons possess negative charges; and neutrons have no charge at all (they're just not into possessions.) Positive and negative charges are said to be "opposite" of each other, and these opposite charges attract each other. Imagine your right hand and left hand clapping. Easy, right? I know! Now imagine your two right hands clapping... not so easy, huh? That's because "like" charges repel each other... they're just not meant to come together. We can use these charged states of attraction and repulsion to pull and push electrons between neighboring atoms. If the neighboring atoms are of a conductive metal and pulled into long thin wires, we can move electrons along quite easily. Movement of electrons is known as an electric current, and depending on how we manage and manipulate their flow we can use electrons to light our homes, cook our food, make our music, and tweet our friends.

...And to think it all began 40,000 years ago because Howard's brother wanted to turn something off and go home. Cool.

-The preceding essay was sent in the pursuit of another high-end rejection letter, and proved to be very successful.