Blog

  • Air Conditioners

    It’s going to be 80 degrees in NYC today, and then 87 tomorrow. In other words, we are going to die from this heat. May, normally, is one of the two best months to be in New York – the other being September. May around here is pleasant, a little cool, and little warm, everything is blooming, and green. The City feels alive, reborn, and full of life. And rarely does the temperature get above 78. Anything in the 80’s is Summer Weather – which should be the sticky and awful July and August.

    But the world is warming, and the Summer Heat Creep has begun, or more accurately, started a few years ago. The Summer heat and humidity in New York is now June through August. Sometimes it starts in late May, and can linger into mid September. I find it a tad bit sad that the Summers of old are gone, and never to come back; hot in the day, cool at night.

    With the coming short heat wave, I have tasked myself with going to our storage space to recover our air conditioners. We are the people who remove our window units in Fall, only to bring them back in late Spring. Like changing out your wardrobe, or full house cleaning, the dance of the air conditioners is another seasonly ritual we partake in. We do this so we can have a clear view out our apartment’s windows of a cinderblock wall, and a construction site. Breathtaking vistas, to say the least.

    In the end, the gathering of the air conditioners is yet another sign that the year is continuing to move on. After the a/c’s are installed, soon school will be out, and vacations and camps begin. Only to lead to road trips, and attempts to escape the heat.

    How long until Fall?

  • Getting My Eyes Checked

    This is a long overdue bit of personal maintenance, but today I am getting my eyes checked, so I can get new glasses. My eyesight has never been awful, I’m just a little nearsighted, but I have noticed over the past three years that things are getting fuzzy far away. At night, lights are stars, and not balls. All the telltale signs that my glasses need an updating.

    The one thing that I am a little nervous about, and this is all vanity talking, is that I might need to get readers or bifocals. That’s what old people have. I’m not old. Sure I might be balding and my hair is all gray, but that is a common feature of younger middle aged people…

    My father has bifocals, and I was hoping that I could hold off turning into him for a little while longer. I don’t like to admit it, but some print is starting to be too small, and I think I need to get a phone with a bigger screen. And I started listening to more jazz. I think this all might be connected.

    It is a weird dynamic being in my forties. In one sense, I feel very confidant in who I am, and have come to accept that I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty good. I like me. And then on the other hand, I can tell I’m getting older; the hair, the eyes, the twenty pounds that just won’t go away. Once I really start liking who I am, it all starts changing and breaking down.

    But I’m going to pick out some cool frames.

    I gotta go here…

  • Endless/Nameless

    I should be writing. A focused writing, where I have a clear idea that I am fleshing out. I should at least be writing a draft – a draft of this blog.

    But I am not.

    This is a fluff piece, as I cannot get my mind to focus.

    See, I did the family grocery shopping this morning, which took more out of me than I expected, and as I sit on the couch, computer in my lap… I just can’t get the act of writing to happen.

    (This is a forced act. An illusion. It appears that I am writing something, but I am just running out the clock to get to 250 to 500 words in the next twenty-one minutes.)

    I thought I could write about the politics of the current moment, or the never-ending gun violence that’s slowing making this nation callous to its horror. I thought about writing on health insurance, or public schools, or STEM programs for my kid. But none of the gripped me.

    I started looking up what a new MacBook Air would cost me, as my current machine is ten years old and staring to show it wear. But that’s a thousand dollars I don’t have right now.

    I thought about writing on the state of the job/gig market, as I still am looking for a side hustle to bring in some extra cash. But the more I think about that subject, the more depressed I feel.

    And if we are going to talk about depressing, then I could talk about being a middle-aged guy who is out of work and is attempting a writing career. But that topic makes me feel really, really depressed.

    I could talk about my lack of vocabulary as I get older.

    Ear hair is a subject that I feel doesn’t get covered enough for men.

    I could give this blog the name of a Nirvana song, but I think that would give me away as a 90’s kid.

    I could write about how I have nine stories floating out in submission land, waiting for a response. I could speak about my system of sending a story out to five magazines at a time, and if it gets rejected from all five, I start the process all over again. But speaking about rejection isn’t that much fun.

    I’m always impressed with people who can write about depressing things, but you end up feeling better about life. When I write about depressing topics, I just feel worse.

    I know what I don’t want to write about. That’s a start.

    I got a flash story I need to work on so I’ll go do that.

    Thanks for killing time with me.

  • Personal Review: Let Me Think by J. Robert Lennon

    I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea how Let Me Think by J Robert Lennon made it on my reading list. And my reading list is actually a wish list on my Amazon account. This was the book that was next up. I knew it was a collection of short stories, but other than that, I knew nothing about the author or any previous works. I was going in blind, but sometimes it’s good to be surprised.

    The collection is made up of flash pieces and short stories, broken up into five sections. There are two reoccurring stories; one about a marriage, and another about a cottage in the woods. The other thing that reoccurs in the collection is the theme of unhappy marriages. And I can’t prove it, but with the book being broken into five parts, I had the weird feeling that each section was to represent one of the five stages of grief. Again, no proof of that, but I couldn’t shake that idea.

    I liked Lennon’s writing right from the beginning of the collection. The first two pieces, “Girls” followed by “Boys” showed that Lennon has a sense of humor, and likes to play with the form of a short story. Witty, this guy’s witty, and the sense of playfulness and fun comes right through. That’s not to say that the none of the stories take on a serious tone, as some do, but experimentation is happening here as well. The “cottage” stories do take on an adult tone, but they also lean into a slight thread of absurdism, or maybe fanciful is the better word to use. Yet, the best example of this tone is the story “Subject Verb” which is told in that very simple sentence structure; just a subject and a verb. It is a format that is brutal in its simplicity, but Lennon makes it an effective tool for storytelling.

    In the end, the collection was enjoyable and entertaining, but what I was left with, and made me the happiest, was that this was a book by a writer who is trying to find new ways to tell a story. The pieces don’t follow the hero cycle, or have a hook in the first line, or even try to tie up the narrative with a button. Now, some of the stories do the afore mentioned things, but the ones that don’t, the stories that try, and poke and prod at what a narrative can be – how short can a story be – how many words are needed to create an emotional pay off? THAT was the excitement of reading this collection – it was different, and it was refreshing without feeling labored to be different.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Robot Overlords, Who Are These People, and Working on My 100

    (I just want what’s coming to me, I just want my fair share…)

    I had a thought this morning; how long until all online customer service chats with retailors are run by AI? I know to a degree the start of most chats are a prompt system – you answer some basic questions, and then you start talking to a human. But if I understand how things are going, then it’s just a matter of time before AI will take over this aspect. And if that did happen, would retailors tell us it’s AI that is assisting us, or would they try to hide it by telling us we are talking to “Kevin”? If they try to hide the AI, then I had another thought; could one do a type of Turning Test on customer service AI? Now thinking of it, is it more like Blade Runner, because the Turning Test requires two people and a machine. Either way, it sounds like a challenge. You know, make the AI question its existence, you get free shipping.

    I know of no one who is excited about the Coronation of King Charles. That might be due to the fact that I’m an American, and we don’t like kings, which is kind of our thing, you know. (I also live in a city that famously tore down a statue of a king at the start of The Revolution.) But from what I keep seeing on tv, the Coronation is a big deal that people want to see. I have to believe that the major networks must have some demographic research backing up this decision. That they know this coverage will bring in viewers and they can sell ads. It’s the only reason they do anything. So, who are these people that want to see this? Who?

    I sent out a big batch of submissions this week. I’m still working my way to 100 no’s. I’m closing in on the number, which is a very strange way is putting me in a good mood. It’s not great progress, but it is progress; Getting out there, trying stuff out, getting my stuff in front of people’s eyes. I don’t like hearing no, but I understand it’s part of the process.