Category: Life

Weekly Round-up, June 29, 2024

John Winkelman

The view west from the new GRCC parking ramp on Lyon Street in Grand Ramids, MI

[The view southwest from the new GRCC parking ramp on Lyon Street in Grand Rapids, MI.]

Not much to report from this past week. Many distractions intruded into my life and left not much room for relaxing and enjoying the little things. Like sleep. And silence.

Reading

Just before this post went live I finished Tim Marshall‘s excellent Prisoners of Geography. The ideas therein will be quite helpful for the world building phase of my current work-in-progress.

Writing

I didn’t write much this past week. Work tasks, an unexpected power outage, and cat drama used up most of my free mental energy.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Cyborgs
Setting: Library
Genre: Procedural

Listening

After discovering that Soul Coughing is touring again, I went back and revisited some of their tracks. They are still excellent!

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, June 22, 2024

John Winkelman

Green Darner dragonfly on a sandstone slab.

[A Green Darner dragonfly, soaking up the sunlight on our front steps.]

For this whole past week, the daytime temperatures were at or above 90°F. And at night the air seldom dropped below the mid-70s, and that usually around dawn. The humidity has been 80% or above, so even with the cooler temperatures and windows open, the air was sticky.

So I haven’t had a lot of sleep this week.

But insomnia has benefits. I have managed to read a little more, and some of the knots in my muscles have relaxed in the constant, sauna-like air.

Reading

I finished Eat Your Mind, the Kathy Acker biography, and it was most excellent. I also finished Glen Cook’s novel The White Rose, and am now reading Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. I have put Capital Hates Everyone on hold until the air cools off and my brain can handle works of that complexity.

Writing

I’m doing some world building for my NaNoWriMo novel-in-progress Cacophonous, and have identified a place where it could be tied into the work from the previous NaNoWriMos, Up the River to the Mountain and its sequel Racing the Flood Down to the Sea. While the “vibe”, characters, and approach to storytelling are different, they could all take place in the same universe, and indeed, in the same city, and using some ideas from the earlier stories could plug up some potential logical holes in the world building for the current story. So I feel tentatively optimistic that I can knock out a new first draft by the end of the year. Or earlier, if I get laid off from my job, which is always a possibility.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Music
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Utopian

Listening

After a week of 90°F and above, I’m happy that ’tain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.

Interesting Links

 

Weekly Round-up, June 15, 2024

John Winkelman

Some beautiful leaves in the morning light.

[Closeup of one of the plants filling our landscape.]

I spent some time over the past week updating the AI Notebook page. I looked specifically for articles comparing corporations to AI (a la Charles Stross‘s idea that corporations are “slow AI”), and instead discovered articles about AI incorporating itself, which was disturbingly familiar, as in one of Stross’s earlier books, Accelerando, AIs incorporating themselves is one of the early stages of the singularity.

Reading

I just finished Jason McBride’s biography of Kathy Acker, Eat Your Mind. It was a hell of a good read. I was aware of Acker when I worked at the bookstore in the mid to late 1990s, but only by the titles of her books, not Acker qua Acker.

Writing

Came up with a few more story ideas based on previous writing prompts. Also did some worldbuilding for one of the previous half-finished novels, which might go somewhere at some point this summer. And I knocked out a draft of a poem about ageing, which makes me the first middle-aged  dude to ever write a poem about getting old. And not one word in it about how I wear the bottoms of my trousers. Take that, Elliot, you hack!

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Cryptids
Setting: Urban
Genre: War

Listening

I listened to a LOT of Moby at the start of my career as a web developer. Play had just been released and every song on it was, by the standards of the time, a banger. “South Side”, in particular, struck a chord with me. This version, featuring Gwen Stefani, is particularly good.

Interesting Links

  • US supreme court unanimously upholds access to abortion pill mifepristone (PDF of decision here) in the case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Given that the court decision rested on the plaintiff’s standing, not the merits of the case, there is every possibility that the Christofascists will try, yet again, to reduce child-bearing people to the role of expendable incubators, which is the sole purpose behind every attempt to limit access to, or outlaw, abortion.

Weekly Round-up, June 8, 2024

John Winkelman

A Thistle plant in the morning sunlight.

[A thistle plant in our back yard, lit by the morning sun.]

The schools are out and summer is in full swing for the next two and a half months. I have arranged some time off from work at the end of July, and now my partner and I can begin to plan an adventure of some kind.

This past Wednesday was my fifth-fifth birthday, which means we are probably approaching the middle of the of the Age of John, or the Winkelcene (not to be confuse with the Winkelscene, which is my yet-to-be-created slam poetry/martial arts cafe, where any disputes between poets will be handled in the ring).

Reading

I’m bouncing back and forth between two books. My daytime reading, usually during breaks at work, is Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution by Maurizio Lazzarato. I have read other of Lazzarato’s works in the past – The Making of the Indebted Man and Governing By Debt. Both are excellent. And, so far, so is Capital Hates Everyone.

The other book in my currently-reading pile is Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, a biography by Jason McBride. This book fits well with Twentieth-Century Boy, the collection of Duncan Hannah‘s journals which I read last summer, as well as John Giorno‘s autobiography Great Demon Kings. A lot of the same names pop up in these book.

Writing

Writing has gone surprisingly well this past week, thanks to a concerted effort to spend less time fucking around online and more time being of use to myself. I have a folder with a document for each of the weekly writing prompts here, and I have been going back through and jotting down story ideas for each of them, three or four or five a day. Some of the ideas resonate, and may well be turned into full stories when I get the time. But for now the ideas are captured.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Cryptids, Aliens
Setting: Bar
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Interesting Links

55, or 11×5

John Winkelman

Happy birthday to me! I am now officially part of the “55 and older” cohort, which both simplifies and diminishes the experience of no longer being young here in the 21st century.

Saint Petersburg, 1994

30 years ago, as of this post, I was in Saint Petersburg, Russia, celebrating my birthday with friends and classmates in the restaurant of the Hotel Rus. The above photos is from that trip, when we visited the prison where Dostoevsky was held just prior to his mock execution. I am just to the right of the window, with glasses, shaggy brown hair, and a black shirt.

This trip, more than anything else at that time, seemed to be the dividing line between my young life and my adult life. I still pull out the photos once in a while, and I still have the dozens of books, all in Russian, which I picked up on that trip. Can I read them? Not really. Not any more. My Russian is almost nonexistent at this point. Had I time and energy to do so, I would start learning the language again. I know just enough Russian to be able to pick out the line from The Master and Margarita which became my first tattoo.

If my fifty-third year was one of re-emergence, this past year was one of re-connection. I have made contact with a number of people I have not seen in years or decades. It has been a wonderful experience, and from what I have seen of the next several months, is a process which is likely to continue for quite some time. I have heard it said that as we get older it becomes progressively harder to make new friends. This may be true, but as we get older, if we are lucky, we have more and more old friends with whom we can both share old memories and make new ones.

And now, off to work. Only ten more years to go until I retire, and I am counting the minutes.

(If you are looking for my IWSG post for June, it is here.)

Weekly Round-up, June 1, 2024

John Winkelman

A flower and a bee outside our house.

[A small bumblebee, laden with pollen, attending to a flower outside our house]

Happy June, everyone. And happy Pride Month! This past week was, for lack of a better word, good. I had a productive and relatively stress-free (and short, thanks to the holiday) week of work. I read a lot. I wrote a little. I spent quality time with my girlfriend. I relaxed with our cats. And I put the finishing touches on our raised bed/container garden. Not bad for someone who will turn 55 in a few days.

And best of all, Donald “Trouser Trumpet” Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump, being a coward, is crying foul and saying that it was rigged, and that he was the victim of a witch hunt, etc. To the surprise off nobody, his brownshirts are already threatening the jury, the lawyers, the judges, etc. Basically all the things he has been saying from the first time anyone ever told him “no.” Which was probably when he was about four years old, and that’s apparently when his personality stopped developing.

Just to be clear: Trump has never been a victim of anything except delusions of adequacy (and possibly child abuse, considering the father was very much like the son). Not once. Not ever. There has never been a witch hunt. There has never been a conspiracy. Trump and his coprophages, bootlicks, and other assorted enablers have spun a wildly false narrative of being downtrodden fighters against overwhelming odds.

MAGA behavior is textbook “predatory victimhood” which is part and parcel of the supremacist mindset (white supremacist, male supremacist, Christian supremacist, etc.) Anyone who is a member of an in-group, who tries to spin being a member of that in-group as really being part of an out-group (vis. the people complaining that there is no “straight people pride month” to counteract June being Pride Month), is a person whose every utterance, indeed their entire world-view, can be dismissed without further consideration. Ignorant cowards, one and all.

And that’s all that needs to be said about convicted felon Donald J. Trump, and his ilk.

Reading

The Black Company by Glen Cook. This is a re-read. It is of a similar vibe to how I want one of the novels I am working on, so I wanted  to get my head into that space before I dive into a major re-draft this summer.

Writing

I spent some time moving the more promising of my NaNoWriMo drafts to new folders in preparation for re-writes and edits. So more prep for writing than actual writing.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Music, Addiction
Setting: Library
Genre: Weird Fiction

Listening

Back in 2000, when I worked at CyberNet Engineering at the beginning of my career as a web developer, I listened to “Flat Beat” a LOT! The rest of the album, Analog Worms Attack, is excellent as well. You can listen to the entire thing here.

Analog Worms Attack was released in October 1999, just weeks after the official start of my career, which began when I volunteered to build the first website for my employer at the time. The fact that I only lasted about six months in that role should tell you how well that went.

I only lasted about eight months at CyberNet, which should tell you everything you need to know about how THAT job went as well. Thus was my career born in pain and sadness.

But at least I had Flat Eric to help me through the worst days.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, May 25, 2024

John Winkelman

Flowering shrub outside my house.

[Above photo: The landscaping is filling in nicely.]

‘Twas another busy week with naught to show for it except continued employment. So I have that going for me.

Reading

Still plugging away at The Reactionary Mind, which is still very good if unpleasant reading. I also pulled Moonbath by Haitian author Yanick Lahens off the shelf for some fiction to read in my evenings before bed. It is excellent so far, if heartbreaking.

Writing

Not much to show, writing-wise. I feel the urge to write, and the ideas are all lined up and ready to go, but I have not yet bridged the gap between wanting to write and actually sitting down and writing. I chalk that one up to burnout.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Death, Possession
Setting: Bar
Genre: War

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, May 18, 2024

John Winkelman

Mother opossum with a baby

[Pictured: A mother opossum carrying a baby, photographed on Mother’s Day while walking to Kaffeine Place for breakfast.]

I am not quite as busy as I have ben in past weeks, but that just leaves space for stress to creep into my life. So it goes.

Reading

I finished Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, and it was wonderful! I will definitely be looking into more of her work in the near future. I am still working my way through Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. It is slow going not because of the writing, which is excellent, but because the subject matter makes me feel…guillotiney. In my spare moments I read Joäo Gilberto Noll’s short novella Atlantic Hotel, which was decently good and weird.

Writing

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Evolution, Cryptids
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

Hot Chocolate, “Every 1’s a Winner”. I heard this song – possibly for the first time every – when Z and I walked into Bobcat Bonnie’s for dinner this past Wednesday. I didn’t recognize the song but I knew the voice, though it took some time to remember that it was the same voice from “You Sexy Thing,” which received much airplay after The Full Monty was released.

Interesting Links

  • “The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?” (Peter Watts and Dan Brooks, The MIT Press Reader) – Watts interviews Brooks about the inevitable, human-caused, ecological collapse, and what we may do to increase our chances of surviving, since mitigating is no longer on the table. This link comes via a post on Watts’ blog, where one of the commenters pointed out that the path up the technology mountain, post-collapse, will not look like the path we took to get where we are currently, because the availability and distribution of resources will be much different than it was last time. Food for thought.
  • “AI ‘art’ and uncanniness” (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic) – A long article exploring the short- and long-term implications of banning the training of LLMs on copyrighted works. To sum up: There are nuances. It’s complicated. And the real bad actors are probably not the most obvious bad actors. Well worth the read.

Weekly Round-up, May 11, 2024

John Winkelman

Our raised-bed garden.

[The above photo is the raised-bed garden Zyra and I installed in early May. Soon it will overflow with healthful vegetables.]

Reading

The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Writing

Not much, unless Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets counts as writing.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Reincarnation, Politics
Setting: Library
Genre: Steampunk

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, May 4, 2024

John Winkelman

A Mallard duck on a log at the top of the Sixth Street Bridge dam.

[The above photo is of a pair of Mallard ducks resting on a tree trunk which is stuck at the edge of the Sixth Street Bridge dam just north of downtown Grand Rapids.]

This past Sunday, my good friend Christine Stephens-Krieger became the new Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids. Christine and I go way back. We worked together at Schuler Books and Music. We read poetry at several events. When I was part of Caffeinated Press we published Christine in our literary magazine The 3288 Review. I had the honor to be part of Christine’s project An Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids. And now I am part of the Grand River Poetry Collective, a local company which Christine created at the end of 2023.

For many years, Christine coordinated the Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition.

All of which is to say, I look forward to what she has planned for the next three years.

Reading

Still working my way through All that is Evident is Suspect. I love this book so much! I also started The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, based on its mention in the Cory Doctorow link at the bottom of this post.

Writing

Not much to show this week, though I finally got into the groove of writing at least five story ideas for each of the weekly writing prompts. Those ideas are now scattered across two journals, and when I have the time I will transcribe them into a Google doc.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Dreams, Cryptids
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Lovecraftian

Listening

This is the kind of music that is getting me through long sessions of writing code for ServiceNow.

Interesting Links