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Month: December 2024

2024 In Review

2024-12-312024-12-31 John Winkelman

You know, as far as years go, 2024 was a great big nothing-burger. It was just kind of…there. I am sure that with the incoming fascist regime taking power in late January, we will look back on 2024 as the Last Good Year for a very long time.

Things were…decent. 2024 started rough with a surprise dental emergency, but after that the year was quiet. A sort of “keep your head down and focus on what is in front of you” year. I read some good books and some mediocre books. I wrote in my journal a lot, but managed almost no creative writing at all, beyond rough drafts of a few poems.

I worked out a lot, cooked a lot, ate a lot, played with the cats, spent a lot of quality time with my partner, and visited some folks.

2024 was the first year in a long time when there were no deaths among my friends and family, and for that I am grateful.

Now that 2025 is upon us, it is time to ground myself and reach out to the friends and family who will be in precarious and vulnerable situations, no matter who they voted for. The country going full-on Christofascist became inevitable the day Reagan was elected, and will not change until the power of both capitalism and Christianity, and particularly the obscene melding of the two, are utterly broken. So, no time soon, unless we have some Jackpot-style global catastrophes which sweep away the entirety of all dominant global power structures. And if that happens, we will have much bigger problems than the glorification of fascism by literally all conservatives in this country.

Happy New Year.

Posted in Life comment on 2024 In Review

Weekly Round-up, December 28, 2024

2024-12-282024-12-27 John Winkelman

Poe and Pepper, asleep on the bed.

[Poe and Pepper, asleep on the bed.]

Happy holidays, everyone! My partner and I are practicing a delicate mix of laying low and avoiding people, and travelling to visit friends and family.

Reading

I have made some small progress in Doctor Zhivago, though I have a long way to go.

Writing

Not much. No mental capacity.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Dreams, Fae
Setting: Ship
Genre: Procedural

Listening

Autechre’s “Gantz Graf”. I listened to this kind of music A LOT early in my career as a developer, when cyberspace was a thing and the internet was new and cool and exciting. Now that we are living in a hellish cyberpunk dystopia built on that earlier iteration of the Online, returning to old tunes seems appropriate.

Posted in LifeTagged Autechre comment on Weekly Round-up, December 28, 2024

Weekly Round-up, December 21, 2024

2024-12-212024-12-21 John Winkelman

Grand Rapids skyline, of a sort.

[ Interesting angles and some blue sky outside of the downtown YWCA. ]

Another chaotic week finally in my rearview mirror. And a chaotic year soon to follow, though what comes next will undoubtedly be much, much worse. So everyone in the United States should enjoy the last few days of what passes for a functioning country before it is stripped for parts by the oligarchs who were knowingly and purposefully elected by the unwashed hordes of inbred MAGA cannibals. I call them cannibals because on approximately February 1, 2025, MAGA will begin to eat itself. And nothing of value will be lost.

Reading

Slowly, so very slowly, working my way through Doctor Zhivago. At this rate I won’t be done until sometime in February.

For the first time, I am planning out my reading for the next year. I plan to read mostly long-form nonfiction and short fiction. And, of course, poetry. Not that I won’t read fiction, but given the political events of the past year, and the forty or so before that, reading up on totalitarianism, fascism, oligarchy, the police state, and late-stage capitalism seems to be especially important.

Writing

If I had time to write I would be doing more of it.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Super Powers, Politics
Setting: Mountains
Genre: Noir

Listening

Jan and Dean‘s song “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” has been an earworm lately, so I am offering it to you-all. Go Granny Go!

Interesting Links

  • Public Domain Day 2025
Posted in LifeTagged Jan and Dean comment on Weekly Round-up, December 21, 2024

Weekly Round-up, December 14, 2024

2024-12-142024-12-14 John Winkelman

The Red Snapper from Mexo resturant.

[The Red Snapper from MeXo.]

As the year winds down the panicked higher-ups at work are distributing the stress to their underlings, which includes Yours Truly. Therefore I have put in some exceptionally long hours this week which has left little time for anything else. I did manage to take my partner out for a nice dinner at MeXo. Highly recommended. Particularly the seafood.

Reading

I am still in the first hundred pages of Doctor Zhivago. I had hoped to be at least halfway through by now, but the day job has not left much time or mental energy for reading works which require focus and concentration.

Writing

Ha!

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Kaiju, Reincarnation
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: Folk Tale

Listening

Interesting Links

  • “Warren Bill Would Stop Companies From Placing Shareholder Paydays Over Worker Rights” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)
Posted in LifeTagged MeXo, Tom Waits comment on Weekly Round-up, December 14, 2024

Weekly Round-up, December 7, 2024

2024-12-072024-12-07 John Winkelman

The vacant lot on the corner of 36th Street and Buchanan Avenue.

[The vacant lot on the corner of 36th Street and Buchanan Avenue. ]

This was a quiet week. Some low-level work frustrations kept me distracted from the general state of the world, which was nice. But it also meant I didn’t have a lot of mental space for myself.

Reading

My long read for Dostoevsky December is Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. I read a couple of chapters back during my Russian Studies days at Grand Valley State University, somewhere around…1991. And I watched the movie a year or so ago. So now I am finally reading the book.

Writing

Nothing, as usual.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Precursors, Mutants
Setting: Library
Genre: Slipstream

Listening

“Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago.

Interesting Links

  • “Satanic Temple launching program at Marysville elementary school, countering Christian programming” (George Shilcock, WOSU)
  • “On the Report of Poetry’s Death, or: What Does That AI Poetry Study Really Tell Us?” (Jen Benka, LitHub)
Posted in LifeTagged Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago comment on Weekly Round-up, December 7, 2024

IWSG, December 2024: Is There More?

2024-12-042024-12-04 John Winkelman

The Month of Writing is over, and for the first time since my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2013, I did not participate at all. This year has just been too busy and distracting to allow for concentrated creative efforts. I did attend the opening and closing events for the regional group, the West Michigan Author Alliance, but in between, other than cultivating a mild angst about not writing, I did nothing.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for December 2024 is: Do you write cliffhangers at the end of your stories? Are they a turn-off to you as a writer and/or a reader?

I don’t write cliffhangers. I like to wrap things up at the end of a story. Where aesthetics allow I will keep things open-ended to allow for sequels, etc. I have nothing against cliffhangers, they’re just not my style.

 

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Posted in Literary MattersTagged IWSG 1 Comment on IWSG, December 2024: Is There More?

November 2024 Books and Reading Notes

2024-12-012024-11-30 John Winkelman

November wasn’t such a great month for reading, mostly due to the existential dread of watching democracy die in the USA. Other than that, things are great!

Acquisitions

Books I acquired in November 2024.

 

  1. Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press) [2024.11.01]
  2. Kateřina Čupová (Julie Nováková, translator, Damian Duffy, lettering), R.U.R: The Karel Čapek Classic (Rosarium Publishing) [2024.11.07]
  3. Yuri Herrera (Lisa Dillman, translator), Season of the Swamp (And Other Stories) [2024.11.12]
  4. Evergreen Review Reader 1967 – 1973 (Four Walls Eight Windows) [2024.11.14]
  5. Cheryl S. Ntumy, Songs for the Shadows (Atthis Arts) [2024.11.30]
  6. Ihor Mysiak (Yevheniia Dubrova and Hanna Leliv, translators), The Factory (Atthis Arts) [2024.11.30]

Reading List

Books

Books I read in November 2024.

  1. Elvira Navarro (Christina MacSweeney, translator), A Working Woman [2024.11.12]
  2. Mona Arshi, Somebody Loves You [2024.11.21]
  3. William Gibson, Spook Country [2024.11.27]

Short Prose

  1. Jim C. Hines, “A Game of Goblins” [2024.11.25]
Posted in Book ListTagged Cheryl S. Ntumy, Christina MacSweeney, Damian Duffy, Elvira Navarro, Evergreen Review, Ihor Mysiak, Jordan S. Carroll, Julie Nováková, Karel Čapek, Kateřina Čupová, Lisa Dillman, Mona Arshi, William Gibson, Yuri Herrera comment on November 2024 Books and Reading Notes

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