Author: admin

angry

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My wife says I’m angry. I say she’s angry. She says that’s just at her daughter, but it bleeds out into the rest of the world.

Mine does as well. I’m sick of other people.

I listen to A Wave Across The Bay and I want that for myself.

I want endless falling, never crashing, never landing, never ceasing to exist, but never engaging again.

Endless travel, free of care, free of responsibility.

When Sartre says hell is other people, he might be on to a thing.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1721 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: On Love, Charles Bukowski
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v6 8-11
Music: Flyin' The Flannel, FIREHOSE (I don't why it's listed in all caps)

time thief

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I swear there’s a body-possessing gremlin following me around that takes possession of my dogs or cats or children or wife or inanimate objects to ensure every time I think I might catch up and be on top of things…

I’m not.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1696 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v6 4-7
Music: Fly On The Wall, AC/DC

good lord

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Lightheaded all day.

I am blocked, and it’s a nightmare.

I want to be put to sleep.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 915 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special 1, DC's Grifter Got Run Over By A Reindeer 1, WildC.A.T.S. v6 2-3
Music: Flowers, The Rolling Stones

father’s day 2026

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Not my immediate family, but man, it’s funny how everyone says Happy Father’s Day to a person, then curls the corner of their mouth in a snide rebuff, at the word step.

Here’s to all the men who stepped in when the biological fathers could or would not.

You deserve to be recognized, and not given the proverbial asterisk.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1791 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Grifter v3 14-16, WildC.A.T.S. v6 1
Music: Floridays, Jimmy Buffett

trying to remember kindness

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This is a tough world in which to focus on kindness. I try to, but my frustration with our current political climate and people’s unfortunate behaviour makes it difficult to find sympathy.

It’s very easy to retreat.

Crippling depression and overwhelming stress doesn’t help. When one is in crisis, doing the extra for others seems a step too far.

But perhaps that’s when we need it most.

(What we really need is for someone to show us the same grace in return, but let’s face it – this isn’t that kind of world, and that’s a rare act.)

As someone who has dealt extensively with depression, I can confidently say that most kindness is tempered by judgment.

Oh, I’m so sorry, honey, maybe you should just buck up.

I feel you and what you’re going through, but maybe if you weren’t depressed, you wouldn’t have this problem (no shit, Sherlock).

He’s having a hard time, but he brought it on himself.

Etc., etc.

Do not temper your kindness with judgment; just be there. Give the hug. Hold the hand. Help clean up. Make a casserole.

Listen. Don’t be a jerk.

After all, better out than in, and judgment forces the latter, intentionally or otherwise.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1354 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Voodoo v2 12, 0, Grifter v3 0, 13
Music: Flood, They Might Be Giants

toxic masculinity

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There’s nothing wrong with strength, but posturing is never truly the mark of a strong man.

Indeed, kindness, compassion, sober second thought – the ability to see perspective and to act on a combination of conviction and data (never blinding oneself to what is for the sake of dogmatic ideals) – these are the hallmarks of a strong person.

Those who would sublimate themselves in order to help someone in need.

Those who show kindness to anyone who needs it.

Those who would stand up for those that need their help, regardless of the consequences to oneself, in the face of the laughing masses.

That’s fucking strength. That’s “masculine” (and really – it’s everyone. Nothing in this precludes anyone of any gender to be any of this – good and bad).

Anyway, that’s my point.

It takes more courage and strength to be soft and kind than it does to put up walls and pretend to be hard (and if you’re truly hard, well, then, why would we venerate you? As the Tao puts it – the hard and stiff are disciples of death; the supple and flexible are those of life.)

(Paraphrased, obviously.)

Corpses are rigid, and only move at the whim of others as they decay.

Life moves in an intricate dance, wills and choice mingling, and isn’t it better to dance well with your partners, than do the meathead thing and forget that a mosh pit isn’t sanctioned bullying; it’s energetic celebration.

Kindness isn’t toxic; neither is it feminine.

It’s human, and a fully obtainable ideal.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1130 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Voodoo v2 10-11, Grifter v3 11-12
Music: Flogging Molly, Flogging Molly (floggingmollyfloggingmolly)

hard decisions

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You ever find something you love, that you’re really into, but the time sink is just too much with everything else you need/want/have to do?

I feel that way about baseball. I love the old game, the strategy, the drama, the fact that everything can change with one great pitch or one great swing or one great play (or one big fuck-up, to be fair).

But I can’t do it. It’s too much. It’s too much of a time sink. The stats, the game length, the fact that it’s three hours a day every day for almost half the year… would that I had nothing else in my life, but I do.

My love of ball is less than my love of reading. Or writing. Or love.

Such a shame is life.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1938 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Voodoo v2 8-9, Grifter v3 9-10
Music: Float, Flogging Molly (Float, the song, is my spirit animal)

broken nail

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I was mixing strawberry martinis for the locals when it happened.

Why there I was, in my finery, casually hulling out strawberries in the old-fashioned way, and not in this newfangled pound a straw through it method, enjoying the sweet red juice as it squeezed on to my fingers. I quartered and hulled the little red droplets, and dropped them in a stainless steel shaker with a slice of lemon and a smattering of thyme.

Then came ice, and gin.

I was on my third one when the fateful blow was struck. Muddling as I was, perhaps a bit too aggressively in my zeal for the drink, when I discovered the inappropriate nature of my grip. Indeed, thumb pointed down like a golfer, I’d mistaken speed and aggression for efficiency and muddled down, off-centre. The metal ring of the steel shaker’s bottom half, as it turns out, is a perfect crescent in the exact arc of my thumbnail, and indeed, when jamming down mightily, will slip right between the nail and its bed, and separate the two, in most painful fashion.

Don’t worry, I drank that one. The red of my blood mixed effortlessly with the strawberry mash. No one would have noticed, I’m sure of it.

Gee, Empty, this is a little saltier than normal.

Only time will tell if this is permanent, like the split in the other one, now on its fifteenth year. I don’t even remember how that one happened, but there’s a good chance it involved the drink.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 768 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh (this series transcends, like OK Computer or a Bernini sculpture - it's absolute brilliance)
Comics: Voodoo v2 6-7, Grifter v3 7-8
Music: Flip Your Wig, Husker Du

leave ’em lying

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The rule down south now. Hell, anywhere right wing leaders are – they lie, lie and lie some more, and someday, someone’s going to leave them lying.

It’s what happens to all fascists in the end.

Chickens come home to roost. Houses made of cards collapse, and pretending to be humble, aw shucks or bombastic “the big lie is the best lie” won’t mean a goddamn thing.

They’re doing it to themselves. They could stop their downfall, but they don’t want to – this is a death cult, squeezing every last bit of misery they can, for the personal profit of their own power and their own pockets.

I preach kindness and pacifism; I preach fortitude and no compromise with bigots and authoritarians.

There is no grey area in dictatorships.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1446 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Voodoo v2 4-5, Grifter v3 5-6
Music: Flick Of The Switch, AC/DC (that's how fast it will happen)

eight-hundred-ninety-seven

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That’s how many days since I first sat down and said, “I’m going to try this writing thing,” and put together a haiku about birds falling as a metaphor for our blind spots and was promptly rejected by a magazine that prints exclusively haiku, because I hewed too close to the five-seven-five rule, even though I made it split-sentence run-on, for literary twist.

That’s how many days since I started thinking about monsters under the bed, which led to more short stories about misogyny, a comic about a woman’s revenge and her self-persecution, one about astronauts saving the world by killing innocent aliens, and a book about the Odd Couple, if the odd couple were virtue signaling hypocrites and MAGA monsters.

Eight-hundred-ninety seven days since I wrote down thirty-seven book ideas, a baker’s dozen comics, and vowed to write as many short stories and poems as I possibly could.

And still, I don’t have the guts to send them out to publish.

What is wrong with me?

Wait, don’t answer that. I already know.

I’m scared.

Rejection is the worst feeling. You’re the hero of your own story, tossed away like a background extra cut from the final scene in someone else’s.

My step-son did that once; he and a friend were extras on some dance movie. His friend was considered good-looking enough to make the background cut. My step-son danced for hours to never even get in the frame.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1563 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh (I'm in love all over again)
Comics: Voodoo v2 2-3, Grifter v3 3-4
Music: Fleetwood Mac Essentials, Fleetwood Mac