[A recently-hatched cicada adult, drying out before its first flight.]
This was another busy week and most of my mental capacity was occupied by the current chaos of American politics, as well as stories coming out of the Olympics, though I have yet to see any actual events. I will need to look for recordings when my time frees up. So somewhere around summer 2035.
At the beginning of this past week my partner and I drove to Chicago for a few days of visiting friends, sightseeing, and eating a wide variety of amazing food. Travel and prep for travel didn’t leave time for much else.
Vacation travel left little time for more than some brief journaling, though I did write the beginnings of a poem after returning home from Chicago. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
“Israel: Armageddon?” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism) – This is a good article exploring the possible reasoning behind Israel’s latest tactics, specifically political assassinations. However, the real meat of this link is in the comments, where many Naked Capitalism readers are filling in more details, history, motives, and possibilities around Israel’s ongoing conflict/genocide with Palestine.
And things continue to be exciting, here in the USA. As of this past Sunday (July 21), Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris as the new candidate. Assuming the Democratic party power players don’t fuck this up – and there is every reason to expect that they will, in fact, fuck this up – I look forward to voting for Harris. I don’t think she is a perfect candidate, but she is the best one at present for beating Trump and slowing the inevitable slide into full-on Nationalist Christian (or “Nat C”, which has an appropriate ring to it) totalitarianism.
Reading
I finished M. John Harrison’s Viriconium after almost a month of steady progress. What a beautiful, dense, poetic, difficult read! As I commented on Bluesky, I would shelve Viriconium between Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. More for writing style in the latter case than for content.
Writing
Though I am on vacation this week and next I find it difficult to put my head in the space necessary to put words to page. That said, I am making some good progress in my world building for Cacophonous (and slight progress for Up the River to the Mountains), and have come up with some interesting ideas for past weekly writing prompts. If only I had the focus to follow through with any of these.
And I also wrote a poem! And made some notes for improvements!
“Free George R. R. Martin from The Winds of Winter” (Maddy Myers, Polygon) – This article caught my attention (ha!) due to its discussion of ADHD and “ADHD paralysis“, in particular the line “you do want to write — you just cannot get yourself to start.” That is where I am and have been for most of the year. I don’t know if I have the ADHD part, but I definitely have the paralysis part when it comes to long-form writing.
[Our ginger girl Poe, checking out the neighborhood.]
Well, it’s certainly been a week. Just after I posted the previous roundup, word came out that disgraced former President, adjudicated rapist, and convicted felon Donald Trump was slightly injured in a shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania. Much more importantly, one of the attendees, Corey Comperatore, a retired firefighter, was killed, and two other attendees seriously injured in the attack. The gunman, a 20-year-old white male Republican armed with an AR-15, was immediately killed by secret service agents.
Already Trump’s bootlicks are blaming anybody except young white male Republicans with easy access to assault weapons. And they are blaming anything except the violent rhetoric of the previous president, who lost tremendously to President Biden and then threw a temper tantrum and tried to stage a coup. At every stage of his political career Trump has advocated for and encouraged violence in the political arena. The only way it should be a surprise is that, rather than targeting a classroom (as young men with easy access to assault weapons usually do) the gunman targeted Trump.
And already, Trump’s bootlicks are trying to make him out as a hero. This is demonstrably false. There is nothing different about Trump today than there was in the hours before the attack. He is the exact same violence-cheering fascist he was before one of his own tried to take him out. Trump is not a victim. Mr. Comperatore is a victim. Comperatore’s family are victims. Trump is not. David Dutch and James Copenhaver, the two attendees who were critically injured in the attack, are victims. Trump is not.
Trump is spinning his survival and minor injury during the attack as proof that he is fit to be president, which demonstrates a level of political intelligence expected from a failed reality show host. And the people who vote for him are eating it up. From their point of view, anyone who encourages such high levels of violence and division must be doing something right, and they feel if Trump returns to office they will be part of his in-group and will be allowed to indulge in the violence which Trump has been advocating for his entire political career. They’ll just turn it outward against their myriad imaginary enemies and oppressors, rather than inward toward the ideology which has given them permission to openly be fascists.
As the meme says, bad things happening to bad people doesn’t turn them into good people.
On Monday, Trump’s owners picked J.D. “Bougiebilly” Vance to be Trump’s running mate.
At the moment this post goes live, Trump and Vance are holding a rally about a mile from here, accompanied by a massive fleet of emasculated manbabies in big trucks which are covered with decorations which advocate for violence both abstract and particular. Which is redundant, since the existence of MAGA is an act of violence.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Reading
I am still reading Viriconium. The events of the past few weeks are keeping me distracted enough that I don’t have the focus to dive into this beautiful book as deeply as I would like.
Writing
Based on a recommendation from a member of my writing group, I set up an account at Notion.so, and am playing around with building a wiki for my work-in-progress Cacophonous. I want to test things a little before I move several years of notes to a new platform.
[The bloom at the top of a six foot tall thistle plant in our back yard.]
This past week was, like so many of the previous weeks, too busy to do much beyond working, working out, and the myriad maintenance projects which come with owning a house.
Reading
I am well on my way through M. John Harrison’s Viriconium, and loving every page of it. The writing therein is difficult to read quickly, and Harrison’s prose worth lingering over, so this might be another month-long read.
Writing
My world-building documents grow in size and number, and I have taken up, as a writing exercise, writing and re-writing the first paragraph or page of Cacophonous. I think of it as revving my engine, in the hopes that one of the revs will turn into a launch. If nothing else, I will have a SMASHING first paragraph.
Book Marks – A new review aggregator site (think Rotten Tomatoes) for books. A project of Literary Hub. Browsing through here brought to my attention a new book called Black Pill by Elle Reeve. A quick search of “black pill” brought me to the following link:
“Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism” (Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco, Dr. Julia R. DeCook, New America) – Because it needs to be repeated ad infinitum, any time a member of an in-group thinks their problems are caused by members of the corresponding out-group: Never in the history of the USA have men been systematically oppressed or marginalized for being men. To believe otherwise is ignorant. To act in support of that belief is cowardly.
[A baby rabbit hiding behind a weed in our back yard. Since the major landscaping work last year, the flora has rebounded astoundingly, and this has brought an influx of fauna, like the wee beastie above.]
Oh, what a week. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent decision, the USA is now officially a monarchy. The USA has always, thanks to our style of capitalism, been a neofeudalist country, but the confirmation that the President can do no wrong (as long as his actions align with the wishes of the religious and moneyed interests which determine who gets to hold which office) makes the USA no different from any other failed state run by a dictator. And the difference between an authoritarian democracy and a straight-up monarchy is really just splitting hairs.
Reading
Many years ago I picked up M. John Harrison’s Viriconium. I thought I had read it cover to cover, but upon re-opening the book I realize I never made it through the first section. This is unfortunate, as Viriconium is currently one of my favorite reads of the year.
Writing
I had the week off from work, and I managed to sneak in some writing time, mostly world-building and some thoughts about the recent confirmation by SCOTUS that the USA is, in fact, a fascist state.
“How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term” (Zack Beauchamp, Vox) – This is an interesting title, because never in the history of the USA have white people been victims because they are white. Never in the history of the USA have white people been repressed, oppressed, or marginalized for the color of their skin, in any context, at any level. Never once. The white supremacists and christian nationalists (who are really all the same people) at the core of Trump’s fan base are indulging, as they always do, in “DARVO” (Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender). But since the American version of conservatism is nothing more than the continuation of the Confederacy, which itself was nothing more than the continuation of European Feudalism on American soil, the white supremacist mindset is at the heart of every conservative idea and action. If that were not the case, there would be no uproar about the teaching of Critical Race Theory. QED.
[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.
[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.
[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!
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.
[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).
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.
