Blog

  • Short Story Review: “13.1 Septillion Pounds” by Emily Rinkema

    Short Story Review: “13.1 Septillion Pounds” by Emily Rinkema

    (The short story “13.1 Septillion Pounds” by Emily Rinkema appeared on September 19th, 2025 at Okay Donkey.)

    Image from Okay Donkey

    I like being a dad. Fatherhood has been more rewarding than I imagined. And I will also say that parenting is harder than I thought possible because unforeseen changes seem to happen every three months. Just when I think I got it down, life with the kid takes a right turn. Though me and the wife had plans and best intentions, we learned that we weren’t in control. Reading Emily Rinkema’s cute and humorous “13.1 Septillion Pounds,” I was reminded of all of those emotions, especially when our kid was still a squirmy baby.

    The premise of the story is that two parents go to wake their baby only to find that the child has written math formulas and equations on the walls the night before. The math is accurate, as two mathematicians arrive and verify. I feared this setup was going to lead to a one-note joke; kid does something crazy therefore the parents have a crazy reaction.

    I needn’t have worried.

    What the story is playing on is the unintended consequences of the parents’ well intended actions. Perhaps the Grandma was correct and the child is just gifted, and this situation would have come about inevitably. Or, maybe it was the mobile displaying the galaxy that influenced the baby? Clearly the basketball that the father left in the crib helped the child formulate the weight of Earth. Though I’m not sure I know a parent that would leave a Sharpie in their child’s crib, but hey, I can let that one go. The truth, and the humor for that matter, of this story lies in an honest fear and hope that parents have; they hope their children will do better than them, but fear that in succeeding the child will become someone they won’t understand.

    The conclusion that the parents reach is correct, and one which makes the world right again. It is wholesome, right and honest, all the things that I hope parenting is. Most of the time, I have no idea what I am doing as a father. It’s a scary tough job. But being able to help my kid become who they are is a deep and profound privilege. It’s just a really bumpy ride that loves to make a bunch of turns.

  • Earworm Wednesday: Your Heart, I Will Not Break

    Earworm Wednesday: Your Heart, I Will Not Break

    No real shock or surprise here, the line that gets stuck in my head is “Don’t go breaking my heart.”

    Every since I was little, the song did come out the year I was born, this has always been a cheesy, non-offensive bit of 70’s pop music. Harmless to the point of slight annoyance, it is rather charming thing to sing this to your significant other while in the midst of a playful argument. But as time has gone on, what this song really reminds me of now is how my mother would put the radio on in the morning when she’d wake me up for school. She’s bop around to top 40’s music as she made my breakfast and sack lunch for school. A meaningless at the time moment, that I bitter sweetly miss now.

  • An Open Letter to the Bots from China Flooding My Site

    An Open Letter to the Bots from China Flooding My Site

    Greetings Bots from China,

    Welcome to my blog. I know you have been poking around her for the past month and a half, but we haven’t formerly been introduced to each other. So, hello! I’m Matthew Groff.

    And you are? (Please feel free to leave your answers in a comment.) (In fact, anyone who is reading this should feel free to leave a comment.) (And feel free to subscribe as well.)

    Like I said, I have noticed that you bots have looking at all of my posts, and also have been doing searches on different topics. I hope you are finding my posts interesting, and if something does tickle your interest, please give it a “like.” It helps drive traffic, I get a little more money, which will allow me to post more. You, you get how it works.

    I know that there is a chance that you bots are scrubbing my site, stealing my words, ideas and thoughts. If true, it’s not the nicest thing to do, especially if you reuse my intellectual property and try to pass it off as your own. Not cool, and I would hope that you stop.

    But there is a chance that you bots are AI training, and I would like to suggest that this might not be a good idea for you. First of all, I am flattered that you would think that my site would be positive place for your AI to get a better understanding of the world, and how humans think. But if you do go back to when I started the blog in 2017, you’re going to find a bunch of type-o’s and some really bad sentences. (Type-o’s are still a problem if I’m honest, so beware…) I say all of this because you might be teaching your AI to be rather quippy, to use too many non-sequiturs, and share lots of references to shit no one cares about. The again, if you want your AI to sound like an early middle-aged Gen-X white male who grunged too much in his teens and twenties, then you might be in the right place.

    Anyway, I hope you bots found what you’re looking for, and move on your way. I don’t know if you know this, but there are a ton of people out there that blog about home improvement stuff, which I’m sure will be fertile ground for you.

    Wish you the best but please go away,

    Matthew

  • Date Night!!!

    Rather on the last minute, the kid got invited to a slumber over the weekend. Great for the kid as she is getting to the age where she’s not so keen on spending every minute with us. So, her getting a night away from her folks was a huge victory!

    And it wasn’t too shabby for us either. With the kid gone on a Saturday night meant that we could have a fully guilt free date night! And you know what, we looked up and found a new place to go. A place with cocktails, and an adventurous menu, and it wasn’t too far from us up in Northern Harlem. It was perfect.

    Then it rolled around to time to start getting ready, which caused us to admit that we really just wanted to order out and watch a movie on the couch. Yes. We had the opportunity to go out, and we decided not to because we didn’t want to.

    This has led to wonder of the rest of the weekend; are we getting too old? We had the opportunity to go out and do something we like doing, which is trying new places to eat, and the restaurant wasn’t far away. Not like we had to go downtown or anything. And this wasn’t cute “Let’s stay in a snuggle on the couch” even. This was ordering food and sitting on the sofa in silence as we watched a movie.

    I would hate to think that we, a couple in our late forties, can’t muster the energy to go out and get and get drunk anymore.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Fly the W, Baking Brownies, and The kid Hates the MTA

    ODDS and ENDS: Fly the W, Baking Brownies, and The kid Hates the MTA

    (Love and happiness…)

    The Cubs won! They beat the San Diego Padres and are moving on the NLDS! This season I was pretty hands off with the team. Followed them through the MLB app, mainly because baseball on TV is now behind a paywall, and due to flex pricing, the better the Cubs did, the more expensive the tickets cost when they played in NYC. (But a discussion on how MLB, clubs and players have made the game too expensive an elitist will have t happen on another day.) The CUBS are moving on to the next round in the playoffs!

    Brownies make me think of home and comfort. It won’t be cooler this weekend, as Summer has returned for the next four days. No bother! It’s October and the time of the year to start making this home nice warm and cozy. That means afternoon coffee, and brownies in the oven. Warm gooey chocolate seems to solve all problems, and I will be baking on that this weekend. Not that anything awful is happening. I feel like I should be prepared just in case.

    The kid hates the MTA now, and especially the randomness of the C train. This school year, she’s venturing out more on the subway, and gaining valuable mass transit experience. And what she is experiencing is that the MTA sucks. It costs too much and the train you need is never on time. And of all trains, the C is close to the worst. Like, two of them will arrive within three minutes of each other, then the next one is in twenty minutes. It makes no sense. Her anger at the MTA is a deep dark red seething cauldron of rage and disappointment, and never have I been more proud of what a great New Yorker she is becoming.