Category: personal

father’s day 2026

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Not my direct 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: From London To Jamaica, The Clash

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: From Here To Eternity Live, The Clash

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: Frogstomp, Silverchair

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, even though 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: Frizzle Fry, Primus

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: Friends, The Beach Boys (not today)

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. He 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: Friction, Baby, Better Than Ezra (what a dick you must have been to have someone name a band after how much better than are than you)

happy anniversary, baby

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17 years and it feels like nowhere near long enough. We’ve been through so much, been so many places and come so far. I can’t imagine what I’d have done without you.

One thing’s for sure; it surely wouldn’t have been anywhere near as pretty.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 742 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: In Search Of The Castaways, Jules Verne (and there it is, the cannibal savage trope)
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 26-29
Music: Freeze Frame, The J. Geils Band

the official word

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I’m sick of draws. Every once in a while is fine, but come on.

Let’s have a winner sometime; and let’s make it the good guys (or gal, as the case may be).

Target: 1600 words
Written: 3611 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: In Search Of The Castaways, Jules Verne
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v5 22-25
Music: Freaky Stylely, Red Hot Chili Peppers

it’s the middle of the night

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And I’m awake with heartburn from… *checks notes*… shepherd’s pie.

What the actual fuck.

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

Read: In Search Of The Castaways, Jules (you know, as questionably racist as Five Weeks In A Balloon was, it was actually really nice to see Verne openly showing compassion for the aboriginals of Australia, and how the white man was responsible for their destruction.  Unexpected anti-racism in a book from 1867.)
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v5 18-21
Music: Freaks, Pulp