Month: May 2022

  • Me at the Gym

    I have just started my fourth month of working out, and I can’t say that I have come to love it. But I can say that I do look forward to my thirty minutes, four times a week, of listening to my music, and having time for myself. And I will admit that I did have one session at the gym where I left feeling pretty good about myself. With three months under my belt now, I feel that going to the gym has now become a healthy habit in my life, which is a very good thing.

    The other habit I have formed is that I “sing” while on the treadmill. I used the quote thing, as I don’t actually sing out loud – at least I don’t think so. I, more or less, mouth they lyric of whatever song that I am listening to. And I have a playlist right now that contains several songs that I like to sing along with. The music and singing does help me focus and kind’a push through the minor aches and pains that flair up when I start running, so I don’t plan on stopping this habit.

    I have lost 6 pounds, but I don’t feel better about myself. Maybe I need to change up my diet, I don’t know. Sadly, all of the other benefits of working out have yet to appear for me. Still not sleeping better, and I don’t feel like I have a better attitude toward life. I don’t feel more focused, or any of that Ginsana crap. (Just ask Scottie Pippen)

    Maybe this has to do with me. Maybe I’m too pessimistic. Maybe I’m the outlier. I’m not going to stop going to the gym, as I know some exercise is better than none. But what I feel like is that guy at the party who smokes the joint which is being passed around, but I didn’t get high.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • Read the Guidelines!

    I don’t think it’s a secret that I am trying to get one of my stories published in a lit magazine. I don’t know if this is the right way to start a career writing fiction, or if there is a better way to go about it, or if there is no right way and you just got to figure it out. (I think it’s the last option.) Either way, I write and then I send the stories out to magazines, then wait to see what sticks to the wall.

    Almost every magazine says two things; please read an issue of their magazine before you submit, and please follow the submission guidelines. I have started reading some of these magazines, and I have enjoyed discovering new writers and new ideas on how to tell a story. As for following the guidelines… yeah, I still suck at that.

    In fact, I was rejected yesterday for that exact reason, even though the form letter that was sent to me never mentioned that I had failed to follow their guidelines. I thought that it was very polite of them not to mention my complete inability to follow the most basic rule they set forth. I know I was rejected for not following the guidelines because the magazine stated that it could take three months for them to respond, and they rejected me in three days. I went back to read the submission post, and that’s when I reread the rules, and realized that I didn’t follow them. Oops…

    And I know what happened. I found this magazine, and got impatient, and wanted to send out right away as it was on my mind right now!

    I feel a little silly. I should have known better. I should have slowed down, taken my time.

    Remember people, read the guidelines.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)

  • ODDS and ENDS: Dr. Solomon Hughes, Tottenham End of Season, Stan Getz, and The Car

    (Get in loser, we’re going listen to me talk about stuff)

    I have been watching Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on HBO. It’s good, a little uneven in parts, but it is catnip for Gen X males like me who lived through this stuff, and are now finding out what “really happened.” It’s embellished, and I knew that going in to it, but it is fun. Yet, the greatest accomplishment of this series is Dr. Solomon Hughes who plays Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Hughes is just “killing it” (as a friend of mine said) as the legendary NBA superstar. His portrayal of Abdul-Jabbar is nuanced, intelligent, subtle, and brimming with an intensity that is compelling to watch. Dr. Hughes is doing the most difficult acting trick there is; playing someone intelligent and also indicating the unspoken thought process that his character goes through. And this is Dr. Solomon Hughes first professional acting job. You read that right, it’s his first acting gig! As of last night, Dr. Hughes didn’t have a Wikipedia page, which made it very difficult to find out who he is. As of today, that has been rectified. If nothing else, just watch Winning Time to see this performance.

    The Premiere League is coming to an end this month, so I don’t know what I will be talking about when it comes to sports this Summer. (Cubs, yes, but that’s always a slog.) (The World Cup isn’t until November, remember?) So, basically, Tottenham has to win all of their games from now to the end of the season, and stupid-old-late-to-the-party Arsenal needs to lose at least none match. If Tottenham finishes fifth on the table, Kane is out of here. The future of the team is riding on these last matches. That’s it, I’m done. Totally not being overly dramatic.

    I have a new apparition for Stan Getz. I have been listening to him a lot, and I don’t know why I skipped him for all of these years. In the same sense, I don’t know why I ignored Roxy Music either.

    We got our car back from the shop today. Back in the middle of April, someone backed into it in the middle of the night while parked on the street. I missed the car, and I can’t believe that I am saying that. I missed sitting and doing the alt parking stuff. I am changing, to a different person that I didn’t know that I would like.

  • Money

    I was trying this morning to write a blog, and I just couldn’t get anything to stick. The reason for that is that I had to sort out what was going on with our bank, car insurance and the shop working on our car. And the faster that I tried to get it all sorted out, the longer it took. Finally, at 11am, I gave up on the idea of getting a blog done out my self-appointed deadline, and just gave in to doing on the family budget for the month.

    Now that I’m at the local library to write, I’m trying again to blog. I sat here at the main table for a minute or two trying to focus on some literary or political point that I wanted to make, or maybe crafting a 300 word joke. But, what is on my mind is money. Well, rather the lack of it, and the attempt to get on top of it.

    Yes, yes, we all know the cultural norm of not talking about money, as it is embarrassing for someone, or at least, we are told someone will get embarrassed if the conversation happens. I don’t think I have ever hidden the fact that my family has a large amount of credit card debt, student loans, and we have a car. It’s a chunk of money, but not insurmountable to take care of. We are fine; no one in our house goes hungry or lacking what they need. Out level of indebtedness is best described as having to plan in advance and save. If we want to do something big, we just have to plan for it, and save.

    But it does ware me down. The last time that I had no debt around my neck was when I was twenty-two. (Oh, what carefree days those were. I used to pay cash for things.) At forty-five, I would like to own a home, pay for the kid’s college, and maybe retire. The normal American Dream shit. BUT, I’m forty-five and I have none of those things. Sure, we are getting closer each day, but we still haven’t arrived.

    And this is what keeps me up at night, if I let myself think about it; I don’t want my daughter to have it worse than I did as a kid. There are days, like today, where that thought is hard to shake, and I feel like I’m not getting it done.

    At fort-five, I do know somethings about myself. Like, I’ll go to bed worrying about this stuff, and then in the morning, I’ll get up and try again to make it better.

  • Short Story Review: “Nondisclosure Agreement” by Said Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Nondisclosure Agreement” by Said Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 9th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I see dead people and SPOILERS ahead!)

    (Note: This review was updated on 5/8/22)

    I don’t like being a grownup; it sucks. I’m not saying that I want to be a kid, because that also sucked. What I am saying is that adulthood is not all that it’s cracked up to be. The narrator in Said Sayrafiezadeh’s story “Nondisclosure Agreement” seems to be discovering this as well.

    The narrator is a relatively recent grad school graduate in literature, who misses being in school, and has been finding dissatisfaction in post grad school life by meandering through a string a meaningless low paying service jobs. That is until he lands a position doing data entry at a mail-order catalog company. From the get-go, the story lets you know that this job does not work out, though the narrator is offered double the salary than he was expecting. The narrator enjoys his large paycheck, and gets a larger apartment, a new car, and better clothes. Then one day the narrator and his boss have a moment where they discover that they both have a love of poetry and literature. Turns out the boss originaly wanted to publish a lit journal, but his bankrolling parents wouldn’t allow it, so the boss was forced to create the mail-order catalog company. The narrator suggests to his boss that he should read his work, including his grad thesis. The boss loves the work and decides to publish them, which starts a process of editing and reediting with no end in sight, as the boss keeps moving the publication date off further and further into the future.

    I started off liking this story, and then I just became confused by it. The story felt like it couldn’t decide what style or form it should take, like it was at odds with itself. From the beginning, the story seems rooted in realism. Yet, these slightly Kafka-esk elements are dropped in, like how the narrator is the only full-time employee, doing data entry for a company in a dying industry, the never-ending edits, the delaying of publication, and how money just comes out of nowhere.

    Then there is the narrator. For the hero of the story, he does nothing heroic. He just puts up with everything. The character is shallow, selfish, and gullible when someone shows the slightest interest in his work. I don’t think those are disqualifying traits to have for the main character, but the character still has to confront something, or at least make a choice. Unfortunately, the narrator makes no choices, which leaves the story feeling unfulfilled.

    Which brings me to my final point, as this story executes a trick that I have been seeing in several other short stories of late; the foreshadowing of a climax that never materializes. (I’m sure there is a succinct one-word term for this that I am not aware of, most likely in German.) It works like this; the story tells us from the beginning how it will end, then the reader is reminded two more times in the story how it will end. When the ending of the story arrives (and it’s an ending not a climax) it’s not the ending that was foreshadowed, but a different one, but it should lead to the foreshadowed ending. It’s a literary bait and switch, as in the climax doesn’t happen in the story, but sometime after the story ends. We are told there will be a lawsuit between the boss and the narrator, and we are also told the boss is crazy. The lawsuit is meant to function as the climax, and the craziness of the boss, which is his inability to publish the journal, is never given any evidence as to why he would behave this way. Yet, the story is being presented in such a manner that the reader needs to accept these two criteria for the story to reach its conclusion. Sadly, this trick doesn’t work.

    What we are presented with is a story and a narrator who straddling between the two worlds of child and adulthood. Both worlds may suck, but inevitably, you have to make a choice to live in one. Maybe that was the point of “Nondisclosure Agreement,” but it’s not clear, because no one made a decision.

    (Say, don’t forget to like this post, or share it, or leave a comment. I got bills to pay, you know.)