Only in North Carolina*

A man who alleged in a lawsuit that he was fired from a hospital system because he is a white man has been awarded a $10 million verdict by a North Carolina jury, according to court documents. Jury awards $10M to former exec who said he was fired because he is white male, NBC News, … Read more

Leave has Left the Building

And by building I mean Amazon Prime. Sadly, for reasons yet unknown to me, Amazon has decided to eliminate its entire catalog of short films, films which includes Leave and which happens to be an awesome film with an awesome director and an awesome cast and crew and which yours truly wrote and executive produced … Read more

Why does it seem stars from my generation* have such a hard time staying alive?

What gives, yo?

I mean, life’s a bitch and all but come on Gen Xers, don’t let all that depressing music from the Nineties go to your head…

Or your heart.

Man**…

I tell ya, last year we lost such notable Gen Xers as Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell*** and, before them, Scott Weiland a couple years ago, not to mention all those Gen Xer stars we lost early in their prime: Kurt Cobain, Tupac, Biggie, Layne Staley, Shannon Hoon, Bradley Nowell, and god knows how many others I’ve failed to mention.

And now this year we continue the tragic Gen X endings with the tragic death of Dolores O’Riordan.

By the time my generation gets in its natural zone of death, it seems all the stars from it will be long gone with no big names left for me to pay tribute.

But, as is evident by Delores’ recent passing, it’s painfully obvious the premature dying off of famous Gen Xers will continue unabated and I sincerely would like to pay a heartfelt tribute to the life of Dolores, for hers was a unique and beautiful voice that defined my generation*.

Sadly, like the death of Scott Weiland, I kind of saw it coming

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Poetry is for Girls

humor-image

I may occasionally write the junk, but rarely do I read it.

And it is not because I don’t like it that I rarely read it…

It’s because it, the really good stuff anyway, is so durn hard to read.

I’m talking Poetry here…

Poetry with a big, bold capital P.

And it is so hard for me to read (And by read I mean read. I mean really digging into the poem and fighting through the initial confusion and the complicated and often archaic words. I mean, not just reading the poem, but studying it and trying to close the gap in time from when the poem was written to when the poem is being read by learning about the poet and where and when and why and how he or she is from and where and when and why and how he or she lived and then coming to my own understanding of what I think the poem means and then trying to apply that meaning to my own life and where and when and why and how I live it. That’s what I mean by read.) because it takes more than a little bit of effort to read it.

I certainly don’t have time for all that junk.

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The Murky Link Between the Russian Cyber Threat and My Novel

This is a link to the live recent Senate Intelligence hearing regarding “Russian Hacking and Cybersecurity.” This is a murky link. This is a link to The Sea Trials of an Unfortunate Sailor, my book about the harsh realities of life in the navy during the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell era. What is the relevance … Read more

My Uncolorful* Character(s)

I don’t know about you, but as for me – unless it is absolutely critical to the movement of a story – I don’t need to always know every item in each room, or the style and brand of every shoe in the protagonist’s closet… and I especially do not need to know about the … Read more