Category: Politics

  • ODDS and ENDS: World Cup Time, Coffee Shops, and Mother’s Day

    ODDS and ENDS: World Cup Time, Coffee Shops, and Mother’s Day

    (This rock had got to roll…)

    Man typing on laptop in a busy NYC coffee shop with pedestrians outside
    It’s uncanny how much this AI image looks just like me.

    Just about a month until my favorite world sporting event which is run by one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. I speak of FIFA, and I am not the first person to say this, but the funniest at it would be John Oliver back in 2014. I won’t beat that dead horse again, but I will say that outside of the ridiculous train tickets to get to MetLife Stadium, or the lack of hotel reservations, or how everyone thinks the tickets are too expensive, everything seems great for the tournament! I hate the fact that everything going into the World Cup is nothing but greed and bullshit, and at the same time, the whole thing starts in a month, and I am stuipdly excited about it! I download the FIFA app, and yesterday I started looking at the schedule to figure out which matches I will be watching. I have a good feeling for a month, I won’t get shit done. No writing, reviews, or parenting in fact. Nothing will be happening other than me parked in front of my tv watching football.

    I wrote in a coffee shop yesterday and it was pretty cool. I hadn’t done that in a long time, and I was a tad self conscious about it for a minute. But I needed to make a change in my writing habits as I had run into a wall and wasn’t getting the productivity at home like I used to. The main reason was that there are too many distractions at home, which is also one of the big reasons I never liked working from home. I will watch tv and nap before I will get any work done. But if I go to an office, or some place that I am paying to be at, then I have skin in the game and that makes me focus. Which is what I received yesterday in the local coffee place, that was out of my neighborhood, but still was a cool place to be.

    Call your mama.

  • Short Story Review: “Process of Elimination” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

    (The short story “Process of Elimination” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh appeared in the May 4th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Jake Hollings

    There was a moment when I was reading Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s “Process of Elimination” that I had to ask myself if it was possible to have a reliable narrator in a story who is completely unreliable because of the situation they find themselves in? On one hand, that doesn’t feel so much like a question, but more like an unsolvable literary riddle. But on the other hand, having this conundrum of a narrator kept me on my toes reading this story, happily figuring out which situations were and were not misinterpretations.

    The story follows a guy who unfortunately has the same first name of one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and that terrorist attack plays in the background of the piece. This guy is a recent hire at coffee shop which is located on a university campus in a New England, two states away from Boston. As the story begins, our narrator is informed that he is about the be fired from this job. At first he assumes this termination is due to a missing tip jar, but it is also implied that his name might be part of the reason.

    What I enjoyed about the protagonist is how normally flawed he is as a person. Maybe a little too eager to please, a little lazy, and perhaps prone to “get out over his skis” when it comes to events, but not a bad guy. He does his best in the situation he finds himself in, a minor crisis of employment and unemployment, trying to figure out what events, statements, actions are connected, and what actions he should take next. And when he receives a resolution that he desired months later; he is faced with the fact that he truly didn’t understand all the factors coming into play with his termination. There is a nice O. Henry touch of irony there with his guilt, and a wonderful last line to the story, that gave me a laugh as the narrator had failed up.

    “Process of Elimination” is another solid story from Saïd Sayrafiezadeh in The New Yorker, and I do commend his skill of working in several different tangents to this piece, to build a layered theme, tone, and setting. This wasn’t a “big” dramatic story, and there is a nice mix of humor in this piece as well, but it touches on the dramas and crises that make up our day to day lives which unfold while larger events develop around us; perhaps even unintentionally influencing our actions? Seems like a rather timely story, if you ask me.

  • ODDS and ENDS: C’mon Rangers, Time, and Keep it Together

    (I’m just waiting on a friend…)

    I grew up in Arlington, Texas and as such I spent a lot of time watching the Texas Rangers. The ownership of that team has always sucked. Sad to find out that the owners and management are continuing the tradition of being awful.

    I am bad with time. I was supposed to spend an hour on writing this little blog post, but I am now entering my second hour of work on this. Mind you, fifty-five minutes of that first hour was looking stuff up online. Things from Texas history (due to the article above) and general curisoty of stuff, like “what are the best lights to buy for an art display in your living room?” I knew I needed to get my writing done, so I could clean up and go run my errands… But I could stop farting around. I don’t think this qualifies as procraternation… just a general laziness and… well… farting around.

    There are many thing I do for my family, but the one I have found myself doing the most this week was being the calm guy in the room. Which isn’t my natural state, as I am loud, talk too much, and can be a rather obnocious drama queen/king from time to time. But being in a family means that sometimes you have to take on different roles to get things accomplished. I think in the olden days, this would have been called “being the strong one.” What it really means is that I can’t freakout until everyone else is doing freaking out. There’s nothing major going wrong; just getting the taxes done, and the kid dealing with school.

  • So, We’re All About to Die (Unedited)

    For the record, I believe that Trump will chicken out at 8pm tonight, if not earlier, claiming something has happened which has caused him to reconsider destroying Iran off the face of the Earth. Because that’s what Trump is; all talk and a big chicken.

    Now, if I am wrong and he orders the US military to destroy the infrastructure of Iran, then Good God, we’re all going to die.

    I wish I had some rather original insight to share with you. You know, something, some thought that no one has expressed yet as to the absurdity of the situation the world find itself in because the US and Israel started a war for no reason. Sadly, I find myself at a loss for words even to express how I feel about all of this stuff.

    I’m a pacifist, and I believe in negotiating peace with your enemies, no matter how long or difficult it is. I know and think often about how we all live on a tiny little planet in the “backwoods” of our galaxy, and most of what vexes us on a daily basis is rather meaningless, and if we really pulled our collective head out of our asses, we will make this planet a safe a peaceful place for generations of our shared humanity to exist as long as we see fit.

    I would give anything to be up on the Artemis II right now. To be off this rock, away from all of this bullshit.

  • Didn’t See That Coming, Sort’of… (Unedited)

    Israel going off and bombing Iran; not surprised at that. The US going off and bombing Iran; a little surprised. I do use the qualifier “sort’of” because I did read an article last week how the USS Gerald Ford was making its way across the Mediterranean toward Israel. And in that same piece it mentioned that the USS Abraham Lincoln was sitting out in the Arabian Sea. Not that I know a ton about Navy operations, but when I read that two of our aircraft carriers are on the same theater of operation, it does make me pay attention.

    That having been said, I’m rather nervous about this “war.” In a very large sense, that area of the world is rather volatile, and I fear that things could spin out of control with many unforeseen consequences. Mainly being that this could grow into a larger conflict, dominos fall, and we find ourselves in a World War. Unfortunately, other world wars have been started for lesser reasons, like you built a fort on the wrong side of a river, and there was that Archduke thing…

    And yet, like the idiot I am, I have allowed myself to sit in front of the TV and flip between CNN, MS Now, and Fox News seeing if I can gleam something, anything new off of what is going on. To say that each network has a radically different take, I feel, is an easily understood understatement. “We’re all going to die!” or “We might die, but maybe not!” or “Good thing we’re not going to die now.” (I’m sure you can guess which network is saying what…) See, because I can’t trust the internet, and anything that I see on my phone or computer, I just assume is AI slop. In the end, I feel left in a helpless state, not being able to trust anything that is being presented to me as news.

    So where does this leave me?

    Being that I was a pacifist before, it’s pretty easy for me to stay a pacifist now. No to War. No to Bombing. No to killing.

    The worst thing we can do to humanity is to rob ourselves of our humanity.