Category: Life

Weekly Round-up, July 12, 2025

John Winkelman

A small snail on the boardwalk at Huff Park.

[A small snail on the boardwalk at Huff Park.]

I was on vacation for the past two weeks, and much to my surprise, the more vacation time I had, the more my energy level diminished. I suppose that is just another symptom of burnout and depression, or maybe it is simply because I am 56 and not getting any younger.

Reading

Currently working my way through Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation because I look so cool when reading it in a cafe. But before that I read Travis Baldree’s Bookshops and Bonedust, a prequel of sorts to his wonderful Legends and Lattes. Bookshops and Bonedust was decent, but not as good as Legends.

Writing

Back in 2018, for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a book called Neighbors: A Malediction, which was a lightly-fictionalized version of my encounters with an obnoxious neighbor over several years. I completed the first draft, as much as a first draft is ever completed during NaNoWriMo (really more of a zero-th draft). Since then the work has been sitting in my Google drive, gathering dust.

Earlier this week on a whim I collated all of the chapters into a single Word document, did a quick round of formatting, and had the draft printed and spiral-bound at Kinko’s. At a little over 54,000 words, and printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, with 1.5 line spacing, it comes in at 120 pages.

Even if I don’t do anything with the manuscript, it sure feels good to see it in printed form.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Cyborgs, Precursors
Setting: Bar
Genre: Magic Realism

Listening

Midnight Star, “Freak-A-Zoid”, from their 1983 album No Parking on the Dance Floor. I was a freshman in high school when I first heard this song. I wish I appreciated it as much back then as I do now.

Interesting Links

  • “Cops’ favorite AI tool automatically deletes evidence of when AI was used” (Ashley Belanger, ArsTechinca) – As if cops needed any help avoiding accountability. They were doing just fine before they started using an AI tool deliberately designed to protect cops from the consequences of their actions.
  • “A New Far-Right American Party?” (John Feffer, Portside) – The Democratic Party is America’s right-wing party. The Republicans are the American Nazi Party. Musk’s “America Party” will also be a Nazi party, as Musk himself is a Nazi, as are all people who support him in any of his political ventures. The only moral way to interact with Nazis is with a guillotine.

Weekly Round-up, July 5, 2025

John Winkelman

Onion blossom

[An onion blossom, in our backyard garden.]

So.

Thanks to literally every Republican voter, and literally every elected Republican at every level of government, the United States of America is now a full-on fascist state, and if conservative Christians have their way – and it looks like they will – within a generation the USA will be a christofascist ethno-state, which has been the end-goal of all of American conservatism from the day the Declaration of Independence was signed.

To be clear: All legislation which enforces the consolidation of power or wealth (which is really the same thing) is inherently fascist. Per Wilhoit, any politics which relies on hierarchy is de facto conservative, and there has never been a version of conservative politics which does not rely on in-groups having the freedom to arbitrarily abuse out-groups.

This version of America is, and has always been, the Real America. The ascendancy of Donald Trump became inevitable the day the Supreme Court decided that money is equivalent to free speech. Trump ran on a platform of white supremacy and all of conservative America just gobbled that shit up. The GOP/MAGA/KKK/ICE/DOGE voting bloc (hereafter referred to as “Republican”) views immigrants as an expendable resource to be treated as little more than slaves, and they define “immigrant” as “anyone who isn’t white.” This is true of everyone who voted Republican at any level of government, in any location, in any election since 1980. Any Republican who claims otherwise is lying. Any Republican voter who claims to have been tricked or misled or lied to, is lying.

Now that the Project 2025 Big Beautiful Bill has been passed, some Republicans are expressing surprise and regret because they and their loved [sic] ones will be negatively affected. This is all performative bullshit. Just like the Musk/Trump feuds of recent weeks, Republican regret is rehearsed, scripted, and utterly false.

There is no path to redemption for Trump supporters. They must never be forgiven, and their actions must never be forgotten. They deliberately, and with malice, voted for the party that thinks the only protected group should be billionaires, and all other humans are meat for the machine. So let the MAGA crowd be ground up in that machine. Let them lose their families, their homes, and their livelihoods, since that’s what they voted for for everyone else.

Happy Independence Day.

Reading

I finished a re-read of The Maverick Poets, an anthology I return to every few years. I also finished Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Albina and the Dog Men, which was entertaining but light.

Writing

Haven’t had a lot of energy for writing this week. I knocked out a rough draft of a poem a few days back, but I doubt it will go anywhere.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Mutants, Cyborgs
Setting: Wilderness
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

The Dead Kennedys, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.”

Interesting Links

  • “Trump’s Neo-Stalinist Pentagon Photo Purge” (Arnold Isaacs, Naked Capitalism) – MAGA defines “DEI” as “Anyone who isn’t a straight white man.” The reason Trump supporters are against DEI is because, to a person, they are all too stupid, too untalented, and too weak to compete for success on anything remotely close to a level playing field.

Weekly Round-up, June 28, 2025

John Winkelman

A milkweed beetle on a milkweed plant

[A milkweed beetle on a milkweed plant]

This was another busy week, leading up to a couple of weeks off (more or less) from work. Whether or not I have any actual down-time during my break remains to be seen…

Reading

I randomly pulled Wolfgang Hilbig’s novella Old Rendering Plant off the shelf and read it in a couple of days. It wasn’t bad. Mostly atmosphere, and some very good writing which, purposefully or no, strongly echoes Lovecraft. So a good but light read.

Writing

Having been inspired by this past week’s Grand Rapids LitFest, and specifically by the all-day Grand River Poetry Collective event at the Wealthy Street Theater Annex, I have begun to assemble the many poems I have written over the past decade, to see if enough of them are competent (or even “good”) enough to turn into a manuscript. I expect this project will take at least the rest of this year, and likely a good chunk of the next.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Music, Economics
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Magic Realism

Listening

“Horses” by Rickie Lee Jones, from her 1989 album Flying Cowboys. Until recently the only RLJ song with which I was familiar was “Chuck E.’s in Love.” Someone made a post about Jones on Metafilter and that put me on something of a deep dive, as much as an hour on YouTube is a deep dive. I really like this song.

Interesting Links

 

Weekly Round-up, June 21, 2025

John Winkelman

Milkweed blossom

[Milkweed blossom, smelling like heaven.]

A super-short post this week, on account of I am insanely busy.

Reading

Late Thursday evening I finished Zig Zag Claybourne‘s excellent Breath, Warmth, and Dream. The story is engaging, the writing poetic, and the reading experience was a delight.

Writing

Nothing. Too busy.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Aliens, Super Powers
Setting: Ruins
Genre: Utopian

Weekly Round-up, June 14, 2025

John Winkelman

A House Finch nestling perched on the edge of its nest, amidst fern fronds.

[A house finch nestling perched on the edge of its nest, on the verge of becoming a fledgling.]

Several weeks ago, just after hanging fern baskets around my front porch, a pair of house finches built a nest in one of them. A week later there were five eggs. A couple of weeks after that there were four hatchlings. Up until a couple of weeks ago we had three nestlings, and finally, a single fledgling. I like to think the other two youngsters fledged earlier, as I didn’t find any little bird bodies in the area, nor evidence that they had run afoul of one of the many neighborhood cats. And there are currently several house finches around our small property, so at hopefully that number includes my temporary lodgers.

The fledgling in the above photo took off and joined its parents in exploring the neighborhood a few days ago. I have probably seen it at our bird feeder.

Nature finds a way.

Reading

Still reading Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Claybourne’s Breath, Warmth, Dream.

Writing

Too much chaos in the world right now to focus on creative pursuits.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Dragons
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Horror

Listening

Sly and the Family Stone, “Sing a Simple Song”.

Sly Stone died a few days ago. He had a hell of a life, but he and the Family Stone left behind a whole lotta good music.

And as I am writing this post, I see that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys just died. Damn.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, June 7, 2025

John Winkelman

House Finch nestlings in a potted fern, about to become fledglings.

[House Finch nestlings in a potted fern, about to become fledglings.]

My birthday was two days ago, and O BOY, is the world getting more interesting as we move farther into 2025. Ukraine took out a sizable chunk of Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers with swarms of off-the-shelf hobbyist drones, Trump and Musk broke up and are performatively feuding, and the financial aftershocks of Trump’s tariff nonsense are hitting the street.

But other than that, things are going great!

Reading

I have returned to The Wretched of the Earth and it is once again blowing my mind.

Writing

I managed a couple of pages of world-building notes for Cacophonous, as well as a couple of lines of verse, though they weren’t very good. Or rather, interesting ideas poorly executed.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Undead, Kaiju
Setting: Battlefield
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Alice Coltrane with Pharoah Sanders and Joe Henderson, “Turiya and Ramakrishna”, from the amazing album Ptah the El Daoud.

Interesting Links

56, or 7x2x2x2

John Winkelman

Happy birthday to me! For no particular reason, I have decided to to a retrospective of the past forty years, in five-year intervals.

40 years ago, I had just finished my sophomore year at Springport High School. I was learning to program on my new Commodore 64 and made my spending money milking cows, baling hay, and shoveling manure. I think this was the summer that I was hired out to a neighboring farm to help with the hay baling for $2.00 an hour, which was substantially less than the $3.00 an hour I made milking cows on our farm.

35 years ago, I had just finished my junior year at Grand Valley State University and was living off-campus for the first time, in a terrible apartment on the northwest side of Grand Rapids. I worked for a landscaping company, then for a moving company, then for Meijer. My roommates and I were taking classes at a local Shorin-Ryu karate school and playing a lot of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. For my 21st birthday a few friends took took me to Tootsie Van Kelly’s bar in the Amway Grand, where I drank many beers, shots, and mixed drinks, including Ouzo, Guinness, and something called a Blue Motorcycle. Was it fun? Yes! Did I get horribly sick? Also yes!

30 years ago, I was living on the southeast side of Grand Rapids and working at Schuler Books, which was in the middle of leveling up to become Schuler Books & Music. I was an up-and-coming student at Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.’

25 years ago I was living in a different place on the southeast side and working at CyberNet Engineering, my first “real” developer job, and discovering that, for some employers, the idea of work-life balance was a thing to be roundly mocked and derided. I was now an instructor for Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu.

20 years ago I was living in an apartment on the northeast side, which was in a house owned by a friend and occasional co-worker. I had recently quit my job at BBK Studio and was working as a contractor for Waterfall Productions, just about to be brought on board as an employee. Master Lee was training me and senior instructor Rick Powell to teach Iron Shirt Chi Kung to some of our most dedicated kung fu students.

15 years ago I was living in my current house on the northeast side, and working for PeopleDesign, the new iteration of BBK Studio. Rick and I were teaching an Iron Shirt class to a group of about ten students, three mornings a week, out of From the Heart Yoga, the studio owned by Rick and his wife Behnje.

Ten years ago I was working for my present employer and living in my current house. Caffeinated Press was just getting off the ground. Rick and I were still teaching the Iron Shirt Chi Kung class. Thus my average week included about seventy hours of work-like activity.

Five years ago my partner Zyra and I were enjoying our first summer living together, and also the first summer of the COVID lockdowns. We were also entertained by our new kitten Poe, who we had adopted from a farm in the Upper Peninsula. Zyra and Poe still live here, so we must have done something right.

And now here is me, 56 years old in 2025, still in the house with Zyra and Poe and our second cat, Pepper, who we adopted from the same farm where we got Poe. I am in my eleventh year at my current employer and things continue to go reasonably well. With a little luck, I will get to post a few dozen more of these annual updates.

Thanks for stopping by!

Weekly Round-up, May 31, 2025

John Winkelman

Baby House Finches in a nest in the middle of a dense fern plant in a hanging basket.

[Baby House Finches in a nest in the middle of a dense fern plant in a hanging basket.]

I was sick over the Memorial Day weekend, so didn’t get out and about as much as I usually do when I have an extra day. Instead, I took care of projects around the homestead, including rearranging the basement to clear the mess created when we had to move everything to install a sump pump and drain tile. I also made progress on the big water runoff remediation project outside, which I hope will eventually make the sump pump redundant.

Zyra and I also planted more vegetables in the garden, which is about a quarter larger than it was last year, thanks to a day of lifting and moving heavy things.

Now that I think about it, much of this spring has involved lifting and moving heavy things.

Reading

While crashed out on the couch this weekend I finished Kraken Rider Z and read all of its sequel Kraken Rider Z: Thunder Kraken. One of the authors, Dyrk Ashton, is a friend I met at ConFusion back in 2015 or 2016. The Kraken Rider books are of the Progression Fantasy subgenre, and are the first of the kind I have read. I liked them! Dyrk and his co-author David Estes are excellent writers and I got the sense that writing the books was a lot of fun. And given the nature of progression fantasy, reading them and experiencing the characters as they levelled up, was quite satisfying.

Writing

My writing is still in a sort of lull, though I did jot down a couple of small piles of words which, when assembled in the right order, might become poem fragments.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Music, Fae
Setting: Small Town
Genre: Science Fiction

Listening

Prince, The Loring Park Sessions 77.

Interesting Links

 

Weekly Round-up, May 24, 2025

John Winkelman

A large hawk, perched on a power line, holding a robin fledgling in its talons.

[A hawk, having just caught one of the robin fledglings from our back yard.]

Not much to say the week. I was crazy-busy and also got sick, so there wasn’t much to do other than try to stay awake and watch the country continue its rapid slide into fascism.

I found the time and energy at the end of the week to work in our backyard garden. That was when I heard a sudden commotion from the local robins, and looked up to see a large hawk had just caught one of the local fledglings. Better luck next incarnation, little fella.

Reading

Jack Hirschman. William Gibson. Dyrk Ashton and David Estes.

Writing

Nup’m.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Robots, Super Powers
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Literary Fiction

Listening

Robert Plant, “In the Mood”, from his album The Principle of Moments.

Interesting Links

  • “Debating Trump “Ambush” of South African President With “White Genocide’ Lies” (Naked Capitalism) – Emasculated, senile, and impotent white nationalist (but I repeat myself) Donald J. Trump failed to intimidate and humiliate the South African president, and was called out on the absolute lie that is the cowardly false narrative of “white genocide”. Basically, everyone who believes that “white genocide” or “the great replacement” are real needs to be purged from the human race. And the sooner, the better. The world is better off without those racist white trash morons.

Weekly Round-up, May 17, 2025

John Winkelman

A Robin fledgling perched on an unused tomato cage in the middle of a patch of weeds next to the foundation of a small garage.

[A Robin fledgling perched on an unused tomato cage in the middle of a patch of weeds next to the foundation of a small garage.]

Spring has definitely sprung here in West Michigan. After a week off from work I am re-acclimating myself to the daily grind. Work was busy, as was life, and everything was made busier by the schedule disruptions of a new crown on one of my teeth, a meeting of the Grand River Poetry Collective, a meeting of the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Convention, and a severe thunderstorm which blew through Thursday evening, which brought almost four inches of rain in an hour as well as several tornadoes.

But other than that, everything was business as usual.

Reading

I read Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, and am now going through Jack Hirschman’s Front Lines, which I am quite enjoying. This is me making up for not having the mental capacity to enjoy poetry during National Poetry Month.

I just started reading Kraken Rider Z by David Estes and Dyrk Ashton. I know Dyrk from ConFusion, and have previously read his excellent Paternus Trilogy, so I have high hopes for this one. A hundred pages in, and it is pretty good!

Writing

Along with a return to reading poetry, I am writing a little more than usual, which is not difficult because anything more than “none” is more than usual.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Kaiju
Setting: Small Town
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

Simple Minds, “Don’t You (Forget About Me)”, from the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. This was the #1 song in the USA this week in 1985.

Interesting Links