surmising with aplomb and nary remorse
It is the ongoing global war of misinformation that, long term, I am beginning to fear most.
The damage that has been done by it just from weaponizing social media sites alone is incomprehensible to me.
And yet, for the most part, this phase of the global misinformation war is being executed by slow-moving, mistake-prone, carbon-based humans…
When AI is fully engaged in the battle…
Oh boy*…
That’s when, I reckon fearfully, the doomsday clock strikes T-minus kaboom.
Suppose two men are fighting and hit a pregnant woman, causing the baby to come out. If there is no further injury, the man who caused the accident must pay money—whatever amount the woman’s husband says and the court allows. But if there is further injury, then the punishment that must be paid is life for … Read more
The ultimate nepo baby, George Dubya Bush and his Good Ol’ White Boy (mostly) Club O’ Iraqi War Criminals drove me from the once honorable (if you go back to Lincoln anyway) and still somewhat sane (at least before unrecallable Reagan) Republican Party, and Trump, the antepenultimate nepo baby, of course coming just before his first two nepo offspring (and not counting Eric, who would, or the other two (as far as we know) burgeoning and relatively unknown (thank god) offsprings), and his dangerous cult drove me, not only from politics as a whole, but from any engagement online with anyone who might be maga-inclined, meaning I stopped posting entries here and I deleted all my social accounts.
And it was a good thing I did…
Doing a reread of Big Will’s Titus Andronicus so what better way to summon the happy dancing spirits today than by rocking out to a song by, you got it, Titus Andronicus… #letsdance
Is anyone as surprised as I am that the Nobel Prize in Literature went to an old pasty white dude?
I’m mean, it’s only been four years since the last one was selected with Peter Handke, and five years before that since Patrick Modiano was selected, and three years before that since Tomas Tranströmer was selected.
Of course, Bob Dylan doesn’t count in 2016, because, well, wtf was that all about anyway?
Nor does Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, unless you are of the mindset of the former South African apartheid government and regard those of East Asian descendancy as honorary whites.
Of course in this day and age it is treading in dangerous territory to assume the particulars of anyone’s identity, even that of assumed pasty old white dudes such as mentioned above, sans Ishiguro of course.
But I’m pretty damn confident of my assumptions.
Come to think of it, that’s a whole lot of old white dudes selected for the NPL in just a little over the past decade.
What’s up with that?
I thought, with the state of the world as it is, with global sensibilities as they are, old pasty white dudes were persona non grata when it comes to just about any form of praise or recognition.
Oui, no?
It certainly is a oui for me and I’m as old and male and pasty white as they come.
I say, to hell with old pasty white dudes, regardless of their particular talents, or lack thereof.
Can I get an amen?
It’s hard for me to believe that it has been seven years this month that my sons and I hauled ass out to North Hollywood, California to film Leave, a short film based upon my short story of the same name.
That was one fun and memorable experience.
The movie premiered as the 2018 LA Femme International Film Festival, and shortly thereafter found a home at Amazon Prime.
Unfortunately, Amazon, in a huge diss to independent filmmakers all over the world, shut down its service to short films a couple of years ago and Leave has been without a distributor since.
I had plans to find a new home for Leave, but as we all know how way leads on to way, I never did…
Until now.
It isn’t always easy doing the things we have to do.
Unless it’s one of those happy occasions, as rare as they may be,
when the thing we have to do, is something we want to do.
But whether we want to or not, we do these things anyway.
Because we have to.
That’s just the way life is.
And the way life is…
And it has gotten extremely bad lately…
I guess there is some comfort to be found in knowing…
That it could always get worse.
Yeah…
Not sure if I have the imaginative capacity, or fortitude, to imagine how.
Hope I don’t.
But, still, here we are, despite it all, moving forward…
Even if it’s just at the most timid and extremely infinitesimal pace.
Because we must.
And we shall.
So yeah, in the midst of all this, all this being our latest global nightmare of ___________ [fill in the blank]*, I finally managed to do something I have been wanting to do pretty much since the onset of the past global nightmare of ___________ [fill in the blank].
Rest forever, hero, in the peace and comfort you and your music has provided to so many…
The following article was originally published in November 2014.
Most of what little refinement I have can be attributed to my lovely and loving wife.
I would say all of it could be attributed to her, but I do have a pretty good three-object juggling technique that I’ve worked hard on over the years to perfect.
Metaphorically speaking, the wife can juggle just about anything thrown her way; non-metaphorically speaking, however, she’s not a juggler by any stretch of the imagination.
But other than my juggling skills, just about anything else refined about me — especially anything artistic or intellectual — more than likely has its foundation somewhere within in my wife’s lovely and loving intellectual and artistic brain.