Remembering September 10th, 2001

I was in Fort Leavenworth, near Kansas City. I’d been there three or four times before, shooting the yearbook portraits for the Command and General Staff College. It was a good account. We all made money, the people at the Fort were all nice, and it’s beautiful in the area at this time of year. The Wife and I would often take a weekend and go to the KC Ren Faire, or eat at one of the many great barbecue joints the city is famed for. Our favorite spot was KC Masterpieces, which sadly is no more. This was a…

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Deadnaming

Deadnaming is the practice of calling someone by a name they no longer go by. A common trivia question might be who is Marion Morrison or who is Reginald Dwight? Stage names like John Wayne and Elton John are common in the entertainment world. And yet, when Prince died and several people in the media announced that ‘Prince Nelson’ had died, I found this totally offensive. Prince is Prince, full stop. If Price couldn’t keep from being deadnamed, what do you really think your chances are? The media likes to deadname people, because using aliases is usually the practice of…

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Toxic Fans

Or as they used to be known, ‘fans.’ I was a bit shocked a few years back when the creators of Breaking Bad said that fans such as myself, ones that wanted Walter White to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after, were toxic people who didn’t get what they were saying. No, we got it all too much. Walter was the hero of the show and we were willing to follow that hero wherever he went and cheer him on in whatever he did. Yeah, he was a bad guy, but so was Spike in Buffy…

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Calypso by David Sedaris

Listening to David Sedaris’s Calypso a few days after Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is a bit jarring.  David talks about his sister’s suicide with the same cold disinterest that he talks about everything else in this small collection of personal essays. His sister’s problems are on a par with bickering with his husband, wasting money on odd clothes in Japan, and picking up trash as he walks around the English countryside. This is nothing new, David has always been a narcissistic sociopath. His lack of empathy just seemed to stand out a little clearer for me this time around. I had…

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On Going Blind

Well, going blind in one eye anyway. A few weeks back I noticed a smudge at the bottom of my vision. Like a bit of fluff stuck to my eyelash. I couldn’t clear it, so I went to a doctor. Who sent me to another doctor. Who sent me to yet another doctor. Seems to be glaucoma and/or some kind of optic nerve damage. The new Doc prescribed a couple of eye drops. I’m mostly blind in my right eye. Imagine a large bit of cardboard with a fairly large hole in it. The hole is covered with gaze. That’s…

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The Bicameral Mind

One my favorite podcasts is Stuff to Blow your Mind. Lots of fun stuff. They had a couple of episodes on the theory of the bicameral mind. The main idea is consciousness is something new. Humans used to function by using both sides of thier brains. The Voice of God was really just a voice in your head. One half of the brain talking to the other. I read a book a couple years back by a man who suffered a brain injury. The Ghost in My Brain was filled with interesting stuff, but the most amazing to me was how the…

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A few thoughts about HBO’s Confederate

The first great alternate history book I remember reading was Guns of the South. It was by Harry Turtledove and told the tale of a group of South African racists that wanted to change history by giving the Confederate Army machine guns. It was an interesting read and spawned countless sequels set in the alternate universe. I read The Man in the High Castle at about the same time. I also grew up watching The Twilight Zone, which featured a lot of alternate history stories, time travel stories, and parables of one sort or another. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an interesting…

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Coffee shop

I love the story that JK Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book in a coffee shop. To me it tells how she was able to fall into flow and block out the rest of the world. I do love that feeling myself. It also makes me think that she needed to get away from home. Homes are very demanding places if you care about things like clean dishes, floors, and porcelain. So nice to be away for a bit. I remember drinking coffee while sitting on my father’s lap. One of a handful of fond memories having to do…

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Smartphone

About six months ago I joined the rest of the world and got a Smartphone. In December a hit and run driver slammed into my 2006 Grand Caravan. It was a minor wreck. I called the police and when I was done, I drove home. But that was it for the van. A car that had taken me all over the country. Totalled…as the insurance company that wrote me a check for six hundred dollars called it. Now my world is altered. I have things to think about. Choices to make. I decide that I need a newer car and…

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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

“We’re all one head injury away from being someone else.” -quote from a book about the brain I have forget all of but this line. I first read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about thirty years ago. At about the same time I read If You Meet The Buddha On the Road Kill Him. Another very interesting book. I remember enjoying Zen and it’s tale of a madman traveling around the Northwest with his son riding along behind him on his trusty motorcycle. I mainly remembered a scene near the start of the book about a clumsy mechanic…

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