A diary entry on the seemingly endless requirements of a full spring day.
I Guess I’ll Know When I Get There
When I was around seven or eight years old, I became fascinated by the guitar. I had a toy model with plastic strings that I would strum along to the radio, believing that at least some of the time I was in tune with whatever I was listening to. This was the instrument of choice of both John Denver and Johnny Cash, two revered artists in our household, but it was my uncle Newell in Oklahoma who first allowed me to hold a real guitar and attempt to make it sing.
The Taste Of A Dream
Before today, I couldn’t have told you what dreams tasted like. I could have told you what they smelled like. They smell of freshly mowed grass, sweat, oiled leather, dirt, stale beer, pine tar, and chewing tobacco. They sound like the crack of a wooden bat hitting a tightly-wound ball of string and leather, and the corresponding roar of the crowd as they cheer you round the horn.
How They Ruined Toto’s Africa For Me
The social media mob that tries to promote progress by negating that we evolve, keeps trying to rewrite history.
How I Learned To Hate AI
I had an almost immediate aversion to AI, right from the start. It wasn’t even rational at first; just a gut-level revulsion I couldn’t quite explain. Before I even understood its functional limitations, its unethical origins, and its insatiable energy needs, I instinctively knew it was wrong. First and foremost was the fact that it had been “trained” on the work of others, artists and writers like myself, without their consent or compensation, making it theft on a scale so grand we could barely comprehend it.
The Downside Of Fulfilling Work
Learning to keep at least some of your creativity for yourself Presumably, the ultimate accomplishment in life is getting to a place where you get paid to do the thing you enjoy doing the most. Nothing to complain about there, one would think. But as I find myself doing work…
Searching For Originality In A Sea Of Slop
Even in the midst of mediocrity, there remains a path forward for true human originality through emotional intelligence. This is the wonder of art.
No Club Who Would Have Me
Groucho Marx famously said that he refused to join any club that would have him as a member, which is altogether funny, telling, and true. How many of us feel this way about a great many things? Desiring only the things we can’t have, and entirely uninterested in the things within our grasp. If we can achieve it, how good could it really be? If we were accepted, how low must the threshold have been?
The Risk Of Inflation In The Age Of Plutocracy
Inflation is a bitch. I think it might have been Adams who said that, or maybe it was Madison. I get them confused. One of the ones worried about giving too much power to the little people. It’s a crisis foretold from the very beginning, unfolding in real time before our very eyes. One day you’re a well-respected oligarch, with so many judges and politicians in your pocket that your friends call you Corleone, and the next, you’re being outbid by oil-rich foreign governments, multinational organized crime syndicates, and adolescent tech bros. What’s a humble plutocrat to do?
Everybody Loves A Good Bank Robbery
I’m a big believer that most ideas, even the good ones, don’t have a lot of value if you’re not willing to work on them. A lot of people think a good idea has some inherent value, some worth as a concept itself, but it does not. You cannot sell someone an idea for a movie without having to first write or make the actual movie. It’s always about the execution, never the inspiration. Ideas are a dime a dozen.