First, Tha NEWS.

I keep wanting to say "this past weekend" when the weekend I'm about to describe was actually not this past, but the weekend before. It's mildly frustrating. But the point to be had is that if the timeline in any of this seems fucky for some reason, it's because time doesn't work in my head and Tuesday is too early in the week for a new This Past Weekend.

Which is all to say that I went to Vintage Computer Fest Midwest in Schaumburg on the [checks calendar] 12th, and hand an impossibly good time. We went for three main purposes: to see a talk by Clint from Lazy Game Reviews, to find some RAM for Dumpster Mac (The Mac What I Pulled from a Dumpster), and find some RAM for the ancient Windows XP laptop we found ourselves stewards of. And we accomplished all three of those goals! It was an exhausting day and we were there almost the entire time the floor was open, but we got to actually take our time and learn shit and we even came home with a couple things we weren't expecting: a test equipment wave generator and an unpopulated circuit board for a memory adapter for the Commodore 64s we have. The kiddo got to see old school television recording equipment, we stopped and talked to the Shadytel guys, who run the on-site wired telephone network, I saw more trans women in one place than I've ever seen anywhere, I saw people running ham radio setups with digital packet comms on Tandy TRS-80s. It was great.

The day after that we went to see the newest installment of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I laughed so hard I cried. Earlier that week I had my poetry reading for After Hours. All in all it was a very important and necessary week for me. And then the intervening week, aka last week, was mostly recovering from that exertion. My body was very angry, especially the shoulder and neck bits. It finally resolved itself late last week, but I spent several days just... laying down on the couch because of the pain. Resistant to stretching, NSAIDs, TENS, massage, and heat. I was about ready to start throwing gummies at it when it finally gave up.

So work was largely off the table last week, though I did get in a viewing of Possession so I could take notes on it for audio production purposes. I think that, having seen it three times now, it's mostly lost its squick factor for me, and the laser focus I had on it for that last viewing (that is, the focus of finding audio cues to hack out for samples) has mostly gotten me to start looking at it technically, because it's a very good movie from a film-making point of view... color theory, film stock choices, framing, writing, effect, etc.

As for writing, I'm one poem closer to buttoning up the 22 Cards section of 22 Cards, and just this morning wrote some more ephemera that grew out of therapy homework that started with a line that came out of an apology I wrote to someone ("I am not the arbiter of irrationality") because apparently nothing is not content for some ridiculous reason, and that's been the bulk of things for the past few weeks. (I also wrote the notes for the 22 Cards poem, both of which are on my Patreon.) The last poem for the Cards is The Emperor, which technically requires some research that I haven't done yet because my reading is still recovering from ADHD burnout. I'm doing better in that regard, but it still ends up being a non-essential activity, even though it's very much essential and I don't know why my brain sees it that way.

In any case, The Work continues in an excruciatingly slow manner.

As for the most recent "news" item, I found four more IKEA GNEDBY shelving units, which you haven’t been able to get in US/CAN stores for six years, on Marketplace and managed to pack all of them into the Sonic without having to disassemble anything. The kiddo cleaned em up last night and everything has been rearranged and they're in place. Now I just have to move every piece of physical media we own! Again!

Second, INTERLUDE.

I can't help but listen, but I don't wanna hear

~ Peter Gabriel, “That Voice Again”

Third, CONSUMPTION.

• Mentioned this above, but we went to see the new MST3K episode by the Rifftrax guys, Sting of Death. You will never look at jellyfish (or tardigrades) the same way ever again!

• New CHVRCHES. You guys. New. CHVRCHES. We've been preparing for this! Now is not the time to... NOBODY PANIC! REMEMBER THE TRAINING! IT RIPS!!

• At Half Price Books the other day I freaked out because I found a vinyl copy of AC/DC's The Razor's Edge for ten bucks and got home to discover that it was ten bucks because it's warped and cupped real bad. Not quite sure if I can address that or not. It's certainly not as bad as the copy of Metallica's Load I had where one disc was drilled off-center and thus had a very bad pitch wobble to it. I also discovered at the same time, that I've been operating for several years on the assumption that I have Back in Black on vinyl and you know what? I DON'T. What in the world? What other things do I know that I don't??

• This isn't really a CONSUMPTION thing, but it is an answer to the previous, and that's that I completely forgot how to route audio around in my computer, particularly when I wanted to play guitar along with songs I know (or have written!) and then I suddenly re-remembered last week. It was a very strange thing where I just... forgot a thing for like two months. Weird!

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.

I don't have an actual OUTRO this time around because I'm trying to get this out on the same day I start it, but there's a thing I would have included if I had that thing done. It's just gonna have to wait for the next one. But it's something I've never posted online before! New scary things!

...but not today. Keep an eye out, though!

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