Month: March 2026

  • Where Did That Come From? Aliens?

    I got a little tiny cut on the knuckle of my left ring finger, right above my wedding ring. It is a tiny little cut, barely there, but there enough to let me know that there is a tiny little cut on that finger. The perplexing part of this injury is that I have no idea how I received it. I just know that when I was walking home from parking the car this morning, I felt it on my hand.

    I didn’t come in contact with anything sharp as I completed the task of moving the car. Yet I know that I didn’t have it when I left the apartment, or at least I know that I wasn’t being annoyed by a tiny cut when I left home.

    This isn’t the first time of late that I have discovered some sort of injury on my body that I have no idea where it came from. Most of the time, I chock it up to playing around with the kid. I had a small bruise on my arm once that was a total mystery. A little scrap on my knee I discovered over the winter – when I had been wearing pants every day.

    Am I getting to the age when I forget things, or becoming so numb that I just don’t notice when something hits me?

    Even though this situation is nothing like the example I am about to give, but what this reminds me of is people being abducted by aliens, and the weird cut and bumps they discover after their encounters. Maybe that’s what’s happening to me?

    Or, what if I am being abducted by aliens, and I’m losing time in all, but what if the aliens are really clumsy with people? Like they have trouble keeping humans walking in a straight line, and the people walk into doors or walls? Or the aliens drop instruments on people. Not all the time, but accidents are known to happen, right?

    And then, what if these aliens got written warnings and bad performance reviews, and they lost their jobs abducting and probing people because of their sloppy work ethic?

    Then there is some alien sitting in a bar back on his home planet, getting drunk and bitching to his friend how his boss was a total dick, and he was set up to fail because his boss never offered any help or guidance, even when he asked for it. Then that alien goes on to tell his friend that his boss is totally screwed now because he was the one that kept the whole abducting and probing operation working, and it’s going to take them months to get everything back on track because that alien was the one who knew how everything worked.

    But then the alien’s friend tells him that the abducting/probing job wasn’t that great of a job anyway. They order another round, and talk about starting their own abducting/probing company if only they could get the money together.

    Or maybe I cut my finger on a sharp key on my key chain when I reached into my pocket.

    Maybe.

  • Okay, So I’m Going to Talk About Tottenham

    I know what I said on Friday, and I don’t care. I need to talk to someone about Tottenham Hotspur after their match with Liverpool, and it looks like it’ll be the four of you who read this.

    So, I had written off the team as of Friday, being that Tottenham had a bit of a meltdown in their Champions League match (I don’t think they will make it past this round) and looking ahead, I saw that they were playing Liverpool on Sunday. And though Liverpool isn’t the same team they were last year and they have they issues of their own, Liverpool is still sitting at the top of the table while Spurs are swimming around the bottom. AND the match was going to be IN Liverpool also lead to my feeling of dread.

    But who knew that a couple of guys on Tottenham actually gave a shit? I’m talking about Richarlison, Tel, and Porro. From my perspective, Richarlison threw himself into this match, and had at least three solid scoring chances in front of the goal, all headers that were either blocked or were just outside. Tel also seemed to be digging and working for it. His play was improved and created several scoring chances. And the last was Pedro Porro, who was severally tested by Rio. I do have to admit that Rio might be someone to keep your eye on, as that guy looked like he was fearless out there. BUT, Porro kept up with him and stopped him, though it was close.

    I know that the one point they received from this draw didn’t change anything in the standings; it’s still a fight between Spurs, Nottingham Forrest, West Ham, and Leeds to see who will be relegated. Yet, getting a point for a team who hasn’t won anything in 2026 was like a weight being taken off their backs. (Mine too.) Also, Spurs got that point against a way better team on that team’s home pitch. So yes, going to Liverpool and getting a point does feel like a win.

    I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Spurs still have a ton of injuries, and time is running out on the season. Lots of things can and will go wrong from now to the end of May. Yet, on that 90th minute on Sunday, just for a second, all did not seem lost. Hope showed up. Stupid and unfair Hope.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Weather Talk, We Don’t Talk About Tottenham, Brackets, and Walking Around NYC

    (Hey! Who said that?)

    Hey! What I find amazing is that on Monday, it was 80 degrees, and yesterday it was snowing. This is the world we all live in now. What was happening a few days ago is no guarantee that it will continue happening. And as I get older, I should talk about older people things, like the weather, and how its not the heat but the humidity.

    I don’t want to talk about Tottenham anymore…

    It’s NCAA Tournament Time! I downloaded my bracket app to my phone so I can make some stupidly wild brackets that have no chance in hell in being correct. As always, I will pick a #15 team to defeat a #2, and I will pick the Ivy League team over whoever they are playing against. Amazingly, I have a very high success rate when it comes to these picks. Anyway, I plan on watching the tournament until the Elite 8, because at that point it’s just the big schools left, and the “upset” excitement is pretty much over. Hopefully, this year might be different. Maybe there is a #7 or #11 school out there that could make it to the Final Four. Hopefully.

    I still love to walk around my City. I went out to Midtown today. Had to run an errand down there, but it’s never stopped being fun to just walk around and watch people and see stuff. It’s also fun to see how much neighborhoods can change in a year or two.

  • Short Story Review: “The City is a Graveyard” by Addie Citchens

    (The short story Short Story Review: “The City is a Graveyard” by Addie Citchens appeared in the March 16th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Photograph by Nydia Blas

    There are many things that I enjoyed about Addie Citchens’ “The City is a Graveyard,” but the one I found most enigmatic was how every time the protagonist first mentions a man in her life, she lists his Zodiac sign. What made this so interesting to me was that this was a story about her existential existence, yet these men were beings of Zodiac influence. A fascinating dualism, creating a song that I could see Apollo and Dionysus dancing to.

    Another aspect of this story was Citchens’ use of second person narrative. The use of this style can create an immediate feeling of immersion for the reader, forcing us to embody the protagonist. Yet, in this story, I don’t feel that was the intended use. The “you” is in fact the protagonist speaking to herself, attempting to objectively examine these specific events from her life. I came to this conclusion because near the end of the story, when a man approaches her while she is sitting on a bench, he says to her, “I been watching you sit on this bench talking to yourself.” The story is the protagonist dialogue with herself. I could be wrong, I doubt it, because isn’t that how we talk to ourselves in our minds? “What were you thinking” “Why would you do that?” Well… I do anyway… For me, it creates an honesty and authenticity in the protagonist.

    Because this is a story about the protagonist being honest to herself about the decision and choices she made in her life especially when it came to intimacy, pregnancy and abortion. Some were planned, some weren’t, but each were different and affected the protagonist in different ways. Citchens’ presents us with a protagonist who is complicated, not easy to define, maybe a little messy in her life (who isn’t) but this is a character who is fully well rounded in three dimensions. In essence, she’s might be conflicted on how to feel about herself, and the decisions that she’s made, but in the end, the decisions are hers.

    I am leaving lots, and I mean lots, of details out of this story, as I don’t want to ruin how the story is built, and the way the climax unfolds on a bench. I do want to add that there is another character in this piece, which is the city of New Orleans. Not only the climate of the place (hot, humid, sticky) or the tourists everywhere, but the music, and the history of that place. Citchens’ uses, for lack of a better phrase, subtle notes in the narrative on how this location is essential in the telling of this story. New Orleans is a place where the ghosts of the past are never out of sight, but it is also a place of possibility, where a future can always been seen.

  • Earworm Wednesday: Everyone Had This Album from ’95 to ’97

    I speak of The Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-78. But more about that in a second.

    I bring all of this up because “Rock’n Me” was played to me the other day, and it has been stuck in my head ever since. The earworm portion of the song is the whole song, but if I have to get more specific, the opening guitar riff wedges in my brain, along with the way Miller sings “Northern California.”

    Now to get back to the Greatest Hits album. So, in my world, between 1994 and 1997, just about everyone I knew owned this album. Like, I would go over to someone’s place, and flip through their cd collection, and guaranteed, Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits would show up. I remember going to college parties my freshman and sophomore year in college, and someone would always put this on. The funny thing is that I don’t remember any Steve Miller resurgence happening in the mid 90’s. (Unless somebody out there remembers something I don’t…) More like, it was a classic rock album that everyone was cool with.