Home For Fiction – Blog

for thinking people


Aesthetic Education: Missing in Action

September 16, 2025

In a recent discussion we had, my friend Igor used the term aesthetic education to refer to being exposed to a diverse set of artistic experiences in one’s formative years. I quickly realized that was a deceptively simple term, one containing vast universes of meaning.

More importantly, I realized aesthetic education is a concept both misunderstood and (as a result) absent in modern times, where everything is about quantification and measurement.

Aesthetic education – which I will define more precisely in a moment; likely it isn’t what you think it is – has been missing in action for a long, long time.

aesthetic education. image of man with a peacock feather.
Aesthetic education today can teach about color symbolism, what tight cropping does, or what a peacock feather might allude to. Real aesthetic education is about relating everything to lived experience as well as finding connections with other, (only apparently) irrelevant concepts.
(more…)

Scammers and Spammers: 5 Ridiculous Emails

September 7, 2025

It’s no accident “scammers” and “spammers” are only one letter apart. In most cases, their roles overlap. That is to say, scammers send a massive number of unsolicited email (spam) hoping a few naive people will take the bait.

Obviously, Home for Fiction also receives some such traffic. I’ve several safeguards in place, so I can’t complain, and ever since I moved Home for Fiction to a different server, which I control fully, the situation has improved further, as now I can implement more fine-tuned defenses.

Still, every now and then messages by scammers and spammers get through. And that’s fine, because they’re hilarious! So here are 5 ridiculous such emails I’ve received, for me (and you) to have a laugh with.

Spammers and Scammers. Image of Punning Walrus holding a sign reading: grumpy mode activated
Spammers and Scammers make Mr. Walrus very, very grumpy…
(more…)

Cinema Today: a Disappearing Art

September 1, 2025

This post has all the ingredients of an old man tilting at windmills or rosy retrospection and all that, but at least I have backups! That is to say, I’m not alone in lamenting the state of cinema today and dreaming of other cinematic realities.

This post is based on an ongoing discussion I’m having with my good friend Igor da Silva Livramento, fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.

Both Igor and I agree that cinema today – especially mainstream, mass-produced US-made films – rarely has anything of value to demonstrate. It’s once again, a living example of what happens when art is industrialized.

Cinema today. Painting of sunset by Chris Angelis
In a discussion about cinema today – more generally: art – and the effects of mass production, I felt it appropriate to use my own paintings as accompanying images. My technique is rudimentary and one can freely criticize my artistic ideas but guess what: At least I have artistic ideas.
(more…)