First, Tha NEWS.

Hey, it's been a bit, huh?

This month has been a little all over the place: car stuff, both emergent and project-related; medical stuff, thankfully all planned; family trips; gaming stuff; writing news; climate change bullshit; really a bit of everything.

Got word over the weekend that I have two more poem accepted for publication, this time with After Hours based here in Chicago. One of the co-editors is Al DeGenova, who helps organize and host the Traveling Mollys reading series. One of the big things about After Hours is that the press is very active locally, and there will be a release reading for the new issue during the Printer's Row Lit Fest, which I keep meaning to go to, but it's usually scheduled at the same time as other events I want to go to (usually KnobCon and Brickworld), and so every year it loses out. But this might be the year I go! Both pieces that got picked up were from 22 Cards and Other Ephemera and I'm happy that so many of the pieces have been picked up elsewhere. I'm hoping the whole collection lives up to the expectation that I've set.

Incidentally, I'm getting closer to buttoning up the "22 Cards" portion, and continue slowly working through the "Ephemera." I still haven't decided on a set page count. 78 pages would be most relevant to the Tarot part, but I feel like setting a specific goal may be detrimental to the actual completion of the project. We'll see. I'm starting to see an end to it, and of course that means I'm thinking about what comes next.

I think the answer is "catching up on things I've been meaning to do." After THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, I decided I needed to go weirder, and in that light I've been considering revisiting my thesis project Hydrology and fiddling with it. I've submitted the manuscript probably dozens of times to contests and such, and it just doesn't seem to gather any interest, and so I think I need to finally reappraise it. Pull some of the more pedestrian stuff, maybe, make it weirder. Gayer. I dunno. After (or concurrent) with that is going to be finally recording audiobook versions of both confessions from a drainage ditch and THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT. I've been promising them for months for one of my friends who prefers the format for attention reasons, and I keep kicking that can down the road.

In other developments, a while ago now we got a Bambu P1S 3D printer, and it has changed my life. We previously had a comparatively bargain Monoprice-branded Prusa-style printer, which was finicky, slow, and ultimately starting to die. Fixing it would have cost almost as much as replacing it with a new one, and for nearly as much as we could get a much superior Bambu model. So we took the chance. It's so much better. It's faster. It's quieter. It's so much higher quality in build and printing both. We've fixed and augmented so many things around the house, both practical and silly. I printed a new step pedal for our broken IKEA trash can. The spouse made a spinning cat top. I'm currently designing a new motorcycle part for their Yamaha that is basically unobtanium. They made a cupboard organizer for all our pot and pan lids. I have a cupholder on my desk now. It's gone beyond just silly hobby to an actual useful piece of kit. Yesterday I printed a guitar neck rest for restringing my guitars in about two hours at a cost so much lower than what people charge for those things. Admittedly, this is not a thing that is necessary for us to have, but holy shit does it actually feel like living in the future.

Finally, we started our Shadowrun campaign. It's set in the Shadowrun universe of the 2080s version of Chicago: a city recovering from waves of zombies and vampires, terrorism, and a massive insect spirit invasion that was only partially stopped with the deployment of a tactical nuclear weapon, and up for grabs among rival gangs, the international megacorporations, and an ineffective but omnipresent government. So, y'know. Not that different from current Chicago.

Second, INTERLUDE.

Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief
For love ~ U2, “The Fly”

Third, CONSUMPTION.

• I managed to score a working CD player secondhand a couple weeks ago and, while it's not my perfect date, it has enough going for it that I'm happy. The biggest thing is that it has an optical digital output, which is something I've been trying to get ahold of for years. I like the digital-to-analog converters in our stereo, and so the quality of the ones in the player itself matter very little to me. I just need a clean-reading player, and this one seems to be. It's also a Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) player, which is something I've always been intrigued by. SACD and DVD-Audio were duking it out for a bit right before non-physical formats died, and while I have a few DVD-A discs floating around (a couple NIN discs, I had Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms for a while there), SACD keeps calling my name. We'll see if I end up buying anything in the format or I just stick with CDs and vinyl (and, I guess, the occasional cassette.) But at the same cost as a normal CD player, I'm not gonna say no, y'know?

• I finished the main scenario of the Shadowbringers expansion for Final Fantasy XIV, and am into the post-release content. It continues to be my favorite MMO, partially because it is unhinged. The plot of that game is constantly pulling shenanigans you'll never see from Western-focused games, which are constantly about war, war, war. War does, of course, happen in FFXIV, but it's not the story. It's not the same two (or three) factions locked in eternal conflict. And it's extremely aware of itself. But importantly, it's not trying to lock the player into constantly grinding for engagement: the dev team at Square Enix expects you to take breaks. It's nice. Game is good.

• Somehow I missed it when it happened, but Mastodon released a new song and have an album coming out in August. I admittedly haven't been keeping tabs on them well in the past year, after their very public split with guitarist Brent Hinds and his subsequent death, and their little AI tour poster fiasco, but I gave it a listen. It's pretty good. Very Mastodon-y. Brent was a huge part of the band's sound, and missing his vocals and guitar contributions will be a huge adjustment. That angry grandma voice and the inescapable banjo influence on his playing probably can't be replaced, but I'm excited to hear the new one. I'm glad I got to see them (with Brent) at Riot Fest, and they continue to loom large in my opinion of "Best Metal Bands Ever." Here's hoping for sticking the recovery.

• Managed a bit more in Jerusalem. I'm still trying to find time for reading, but considering the lack of structure I still have despite what is so far a pretty successful medical treatment of ADHD, I can't quite schedule Do The Thing. Working on it, though.

• "Parhump (Turn Your Radio Down)" is the newest song from Sparkling Urbana. Related:

Fourth, HUSTLE.

Books available:

• THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT - a serial poem influenced by 20th century sci-fi and cyberpunk, dealing with love in the age of mechanical reproduction. Novelist KB Wagers called it “a delightful electrical tangle of words and feelings.” A Kindle version is available.

• confessions from a drainage ditch - a collection focusing on growing up rural and how those experiences carry forward, both helpful and harmful. A Kindle Version is available.

• A Void and Cloudless Sky - A chapbook akin to an EP, short and experimental, and containing some of my favorite work. Musician and editor Mer Yayanos says it’s “packed with highbrow references and lofi phrases that beg to be verbalized, to be invoked.” [Note: this is my only “traditionally published” work, and I get no money from it until I hit like ten sales a year. But you get a pdf for free, just for being subscribed to this newsletter! Grab it here! It’s a beautiful object, if you’d rather have a physical copy, though.]

If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. All paying subscribers receive access to all content I post there, for as little as $1.

Finally, THE OUTRO.

We're now entering the actual hot part of the summer in Chicago, which is terrifying to contemplate for someone who has spent most of this month indoors because the sun and air have been literally deadly. There's so much to be angry and sad about.

Here's the thing, though. Being angry and sad is important, but it's not everything. We have to maintain the joy that makes us human. Rebellion doesn't have to be big swings. It doesn't have to be saving everyone. Fascism is not inevitable. AI cannot and will not overtake human expression. Make a silly drawing. Buy your friends lunch. Talk to your neighbors. Write erotica for yourself. Bake some muffins for the sheer joy of having muffins to eat. Sing songs to your pets.

We fight the big things by doing lots of little things. As Diane di Prima put it: "NO ONE WAY WORKS. It will take all of us pushing from all sides to bring the thing down." No one can do it all. But we can all do something. And the biggest thing is showing up despite it all. Don't shrink to the box they want to put you in. You, my dear, contain multitudes.

Have fun, be safe.

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