Month: April 2026

I don’t know how I lost the day. It felt so long ago that I woke up, and here approaching 2:30 I am realizing I don’t have much day left. There is a lot to be done and we are planning to hang with the kids, but before any of that an happen I have to get this blog done… So I’ll just jump into…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “French teen charged in Singapore over a vending machine straw-licking video” It is grosser than you think… Young folks these days be trippin.
2. Looks like the kid is going to make State in the Hurdles after bringing his time down over a half second to 15.38. That is 13th in the state D1 category with the top 24 advancing. His teammate posted a 15.77 which makes him 25th. He is going to miss unless someone bows out and that sucks for the senior. Sucks for the team. Top 8 will advance to finals and the top 8 times in D1 are all under 14.9. He has more work to do to get to the finals.
3. Ready for the summer. Ready to have some time to explore being a writer and to get healthy on a daily basis. The energy here is always my excuse for not doing things. I don’t know how long that excuse will hold up.
4. Not a lot to say today. Feeling rushed but also surprisingly empty. Maybe it is the lack of coffee.

I think…

The widening expanse of social media and the pockets of false reality it creates are only deepening the divide between people. This is not only on a political but a personal level. We have increasingly become dependent as a people on parasocial relationships. These are already codified in Japanese culture as oshi-katsu, and have very much impacted the ability of that culture to create interpersonal connections. This, in a place much geographically smaller than ours where it is far more difficult to physically separate. Here, we can get away from each other and stay away and even stay in our little filter bubbles longer. This is not a good thing. This increasingly leads to diverse realities.

I think…

Politics offers us a very clear model of this activity and these behaviors. Take for example the ideas of the right that the “left” is more politically violent. This is fueled by the bubble. Fox News recently posted a timeline of every “assassination attempt” on Trump since 2016. Ten attempts listed here and most of these stories have been amplified over the years by Fox and other even more right-leaning outlets. KCCI posted a different timeline showing only attempts where suspects got close to the president(s). Most of what Fox and other right-leaning outlets listed was not included. This is not to suggest attempts do not happen. In fact, there were at least 11 attempts on Obama’s life. These were not politicized in the least, which is why most people assume there were not any. Furthermore, nobody got close to that brother, which is a testament to the people he kept around him. Trump, on the other hand, has been exposed way too often. It is almost as if they know this sort of coverage fuels political action and seek to take advantage…

I think…

I need to stick my head in a hole and start writing out my stories. I don’t have forever. I do have time now. It needs to happen sooner than later, because I want to be able to enjoy the time of seeing my work on shelves.

I think…

I am done, save for…

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Supreme Court ruling weakens a key tool of the Voting Rights Act” The decision voids majority Black congressional district in Louisiana, boosting Republican chances… This is indeed how democracy dies. Of course, we were never a true democracy. The rules ensured that.

Was yesterday, right? At the end of a semester it can feel like the hard part is over. It isn’t. In fact the shift from a well ordered semester to the end of the year and all that chaos becomes a real mess. I have a lot of things to do this summer and I have 90 days to pull it off. The clock starts in a little over a week and a half. I am in the stage of trying to figure out how to get ready for the summer sprint. Well, it isn’t a sprint if it is one quarter of the year.

Man, that is a lot to think about. For one quarter of this year I will be away and not have to be in this space and will have the Lady Talis all to myself. I’m not sure that has really sank in yet. This will be the longest continuous time we’ve been together without kids present. That in itself is a wild stat. I am nothing but ready for the opportunity.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “No spellcheck, no delete key: Cornell students tackle writing on manual typewriters” Wild. I suppose this teacher feels clever. Or is merely trolling.
2. Speaking of Trolling… “Ex-FBI Director Comey indicted in probe over online post officials say constituted Trump threat“

I took some time out of my morning to watch Surrounded on youtube. It really helped me get a sense of the popularized version of the political divide. It also has me understanding a little better what is out there on social media re: politics. This is not helpful to the growth and or continuation of our nation as I see it. In fact, it is the bloody opposite. To (mis?)quote the Star Wars franchise, “This is how a democracy dies.”

I’m worried. Seriously. It’s been a huge part of my mental space and part of the stress package shoving my pressure up up up. We are really fighting a culture war out here and while that happens, the rich are fleecing the heck out of all of us. We’re moving closer to the 1984 future promised in the past and man, it hurts to see it.

Meanwhile, I am absolutely struggling on my own to recognize the value of my chosen profession–writing. I make 6 cents a word. I can write, at this point, a thousand good words an hour. It takes an hour of research and editing for each of those thousand, so we’re talking 30 bucks an hour as a writer. This is not including finding a place to publish. I need to do better. That is on me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “He laughed so hard at Koo’s botched NFL kick that he had a seizure. It may have saved his life ” No comment…
2. Also.. “Prosecutors say suspect in missing students’ killings asked ChatGPT about disposing of a body” Bruh.

I have this image in my head–maybe its more of a clip or a dream or a hallucinated moment–where I look to the people out in front of me and say, “I finally got my shit together!” And in that moment it is real and known that I am the complete person promised. I’ve come round at last. This has never really happened. My life consists of a variety of failures stitched together by rare, and oft fleeting, moments of success. I suspect most lives are like that; storybook lives where the protagonist fails and fails and fails until they finally succeed. This could be why such structures work so well in story form.

As I type, the Lady Talis is out beyond the door speaking with her own eldest son (as we are a blended family we each have a first born male of which to speak). They are chatting about life and his life in particular, though he and especially his blood sister (our one girl) and his younger blood brother both often chat with her and ask after her life. My blood-born three do no such thing either to her or me. I don’t suspect they do it to their blood mother either (are you thinking the term blood mother is such a sci-fi or even fantasy coolness that it sounds quite awful in RL?). They were not programmed to care about us. I suspect they never will really see us as more than someone to come to with needs, questions, or misdirected aggression. I never taught them to give a crap about me and my life. As a result, I don’t get birthday gifts.

I got it wrong. That is the argument here. Sure, these boys could be really successful in life. All three of the blood born have a direct path to high-level success. Yet in terms of keeping us together as a family, I did not get my shit together. I never will. Sometimes the chance to make change is long behind you before you ever truly realize it. I’m starting to see that about many aspects of my life.

So, it is time to accept the things I cannot change, and to realize what those things are. It is time to move forward and give my energy and soul to what I can do from here on out.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Sabastian Sawe breaks fabled 2-hour barrier in the marathon to shatter world record by 65 seconds” I don’t think people truly realize how fast you have to go to run a marathon in under 2 hours. It is a wild level of sustained speed and endurance. Just wild.

I can tell I am worn down mentally, because I am slipping. Blog sat unpublished yesterday and here I am today trying to get another one in after my work day is done… except I didn’t do any work. Well, some work. I did some classwork, and I will probably do some teacher work in a bit here, but I am drained. I am so drained that I am not that hyped to even play Mass Effect right now. It has been a long semester. I don’t know that I did myself any favors with the amount of outside work I took on this semester either. I’m not crushing that work–especially not today, Instead I find myself here trying to make sure I get a full ten minutes in before I go do, well, who knows. More and more I find myself trying to survive these days as opposed to excelling through them.

I know I am ground down and need a break. I don’t know what that break should look like, but it should be something putting me on the path to getting back right with my health. Three months… That’s the reload.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Trump rushed from table after gunfire erupts at White House Correspondents’ Dinner” It is a Fox News link, so be warned of massive spin. It is bonkers because of how they are pitching this as how amazing and brave this dude is for coming back to the dinner. Here’s the thing though–The shots were not in the ballroom or apparently towards the ballroom, so bravery does not enter into the conversation. This is going to be spun so dang hard…
2. Pet Peeve of the Day: Any time I walk into the living room, the kids will quickly follow me out there if only to make sure they can get to the TV before I do… I’m actually not stressed about it. When I want it, I will take it. However, I find the action annoying.

I’ve been thinking about how much stress impacts my blood pressure. I stay under stress and it gets worse when family matters are off. My pressure has varied from 117/80 to 140/101 from day to day, regardless of meals or activity. Between that, work, and the world drama I am trending towards bad things. As a result I’ve tried hard to escape reality–hours and hours of video gaming as a way to detach and not have to think about anything real. I get the urges people have to escape and I do what I can myself when the pressure is too high. The problem I am facing is that I cannot escape. There is too much to be done and every few hours away from the reality makes everyone in my life more distant and angry. I have to ride this out. I have to shift away from self care and be more about the rest of the world.

I’ll find time for self care when everything else around me settles down. For now, I am going to put my main energy into locking in and working hard on all of the things I am supposed to handle.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Trump to send envoys Witkoff and Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran foreign minister” You see why I’m stressed, right?
2. Also… this: “Businesses dole out up to $4 million to cross Panama Canal during Strait of Hormuz chokehold” Makes me see that this whole game is a hustle.

I’ve been reading a bunch of draft stuff in preparation for the draft this evening. I’m even wearing a Jets shirt to send out good vibes to the team, one of two NYC crews that have two first round picks. There isn’t much I can do about the draft. There is no way of knowing if the impact of these drafted players will happen this upcoming season or later or at all. It has become so much spectacle and guess work that it seriously is the only way that football allows itself to” stay relevant over the spring term. I think this is a bad idea. I think the Spring League is a much better idea for focus than this speculative “who is gonna be good” kind of craziness.

Here’s the facts: We don’t actually know.

So many of these pundits make their careers on guessing. They make bets and hedge those bets based on the concept of how players did at the college level when we know the pro game isn’t the same. We know nothing save for how athletic these players are. That is what drives these conversations–how do they compare to pros and what pros are they “like”. I don’t like this process. More and more it creates false expectations for teams to draft people and when the teams don’t it prejudices fans against their own squads. I do not know exactly what the G-Men or the Jets need (except I do know the Jets need a QB because that room is junk), but I do know that everyone on TV thinks they do. This is how the mock drafts work–one person deciding all the picks and smugly saying they are right.

They hardly ever are–especially beyond the first round.

So, what do we expect tonight? Surprises, of course. I refuse to speculate on what will happen. I just hope whomever my teams get makes an impact.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “1 million bees make for bumper-to-buzzer traffic on a Tennessee highway ramp” Ahh the south.
2. Also this… “Buenos Aires bans stadium confetti after fire sparks panic at River vs Boca” I never considered how much of a hazard that stuff could be… I’m thinking about it now.
3. Got a new iphone. Not pleased with the dang thing yet… Haven’t used the camera yet either…

I’ve been following the Virginia redistricting fight today and realizing the spin is wild on this one. Republicans, and Texans in particular are mad about this vote. Turns out Virginia is adding more democratic seats! How is this bad? Well it is unfair that it only took a 51% vote to pass it. Sure, that would be a good argument if, well, Texas even voted. Instead the Texas redistrict was done by the gov without a vote at all. So… false argument there. This made me realize that not only is the media game more and more rigged, but the truth of these parties is that Dems cannot sell lies that big because the dem base is generally more savvy about what’s going on because they are experiencing it from a different perspective—one in which they are being portrayed as the villain while Republicans rely on the hero/victim narrative on a more regular basis. Dena talk about inclusion. Yet the argument for exclusion draws more eyes because it raises the value of those still included. This is a problem we have yet to realize how to solve.

Some Thoughts:

1. Absolutely Bonkers Headline Of the Day: “https://apnews.com/article/kash-patel-girlfriend-new-york-times-investigation-149655b7f7797d09dea9a2c8548d33cb” I know the link is bad but this is a phone post and I’m realizing I’m not very good at those. Translation: Kash Patel sent the FBI after a reporter who wrote an article about him. That guy is surely closer to being fired, right? Right?!
2. weak post tonight. The phone is a terrible medium for this sort of thing. Might be the fat fingers…
3. I plan to do a waiver come Thursday talking about the silliness of draft predictions… and then saying what I think will happen… j/k I won’t predict. I’ll just hope.

Ever have one of those days where it feels like time slips away much faster. You wake up before the sun and by the time its full in the sky you’re wondering where all that time went, and then it goes down and you’re like, “Wait, it’s over?” It is indeed over and I’m taking the ten I have left to blog a bit. My day disappeared fast. It is one of those where I can’t help but feel like I am forgetting something major and I never catch up to remembering it. I’m falling to pieces in a lot of different ways (and pieces? heh) and it has to do with feeling like I am not making much of the time I have left.

That’s a profound thing to think through–the time I have left. I think about it more and more. What does that mean? twenty hours? 28 years? I have no real idea, which is why I should be focused on enjoying this time and not feeling all of this collected stress. Yet here I am. This is not the way. I need to get back to focusing on what I can control, and actually making progress in the areas that I do control, such as refreshing myself and finding that curiosity that leads to creativity.

Some Thoughts:

1. House environment is wearing on the Lady Talis and myself. Perhaps in different ways. The result is the same. Peace is required and not being found in place.