This Week's Writing 4/14/23
Holy shit people may actually read this.
This was kind of a crazy week for me on Substack. The platform launched its social media feed, and the algorithm decided I should be the first creator most people saw when they joined the platform. My subscriptions almost doubled, from around 1225 to more than 2300. Paid subs went up by like 40%.
So that means that for like half of you this is your first weekly round-up. So…hello! I write really a lot about politics, movies, culture, poetry, music—kind of whatever catches my eye. There will sometimes be cat pics. We have a lot of cats (Ecgwynn, Eustacia, the Creature, Luna, Henry, Kitkat, Poppy, Earnest—though around half of those are my mother-in-law’s who lives upstairs. Some of them visit sometimes though.)
Also a pitbull named Goose.
I think I’m going to try opening comments on these weekly posts and see how that goes. So say hello if you feel like it! I’d love to find out more about my readers and what you’re interested in.
And thank you for joining us here!
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And onto what I wrote this week.
If you read one thing by me, read:
Biden should order Thomas’ cases to be reviewed. (Independent)
On Substack
Elon Musk vs. his own business model. (EIH)
Substack takes over the world! (EIH)
On going (sort of) viral on Substack. (EIH)
Politics
Why does Clarence Thomas’ benefactor own Nazi napkins? (Public Notice)
Howard Schultz pushes the myth of meritocracy. (Editorial Board)
The Holocaust isn’t a feel good story for Christians. (EIH)
Cultural Criticism
Jeff Vandermeer’s reissued first novel, Veniss Underground, shows he’s gotten weirder. (LA Times)
Tommy Guns is a weird zombie romance war anticolonial movie. (Chicago Reader)
Nothing much happens in Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up.” (Splice Today)
The white actor in Sirk’s Imitation of Life. (EIH)
Far From Heaven shows we’re still in Sirk’s world. (EIH)
In important ways, films are more open about sex now than they’ve ever been. (EIH)
The 25 greatest guitarists of all time. (EIH)
Poetry
A searching investigation of Heidegger’s philosophy. (dadakuku)
The Kleenex box
rests on Being and Time.
Gesundheit, Heidegger
you fascist piece of shit.
Cat poem. (Five Fleas)
When you are a cat
the world past the window
is filled with things
that might be birds.
Short poems on movies and impossibility. (Five Fleas)
There was a time I would have said
“That’s impossible!”
But now I know
it doesn’t matter that much.
The movie ends
and we go back
to dark
without a plot.
A robot poem. (Five Fleas)
Everything is better if you rebuild it
as a giant super robot.
A eulogy for Webley cat. (EIH)
I’m one of the new ones. You picked a perfect newsletter title! 😅
I guess I’ll be one of the first to comment.
A bit of my story. I’m a 71 year old man, set in his country ways. Born, and raised, on a farm in the very early 50s in Palm Beach County, Florida. I can tell you it was a LOT different then than it is now.
I worked the farm with my dad until I went off to college. Here, I’ll admit I was really tired of working my ass off, going to school, and, the fact of being out of the house, on my own the very first time had its affect on me. I screwed around in college and flunked out my second year. So, it was back home, to the farm for me.
Then, I got married, the first time. Anyway, fast tracking through several years, and marriages, I ended up in South Carolina working in law enforcement in 1971. Divorced, I worked in law enforcement and firefighting there until I lived back to Florida in September of 79. I worked on my brothers farm with him until the crops came in March 80, when I started with the Florida Department of Corrections. I flipped to the local county Sheriff’s Department and worked there until the following election when the sheriff got his ass handed to him on a platter. He fired everyone in the department because he lost. I returned to FDOC and remained there until I was medically forced to retire in 95.
During my tenure in law enforcement, I became an instructor, a federal firearms instructor, and took numerous training courses in everything they offered, plus completed my degree in criminology in college. I also was loved about the southern end of the state to several institutions opening, and operating “Close Management Units (units where the worst of the worst inmates were housed in total lockdown 23/7. They couldn’t live in ‘open population’ on the compound, or with anyone else). All while being married, and raising 4 stepchildren (2 boys, 2 girls). I also worked a second job as security for a company protecting the power trucks and power poles at their local plants. And a third job as a ‘cook’ at a local restaurant during the graveyard shift, or whatever shift I wasn’t on duty at the prison, or sheriff’s department. Plus I was a volunteer firefighter for the county, and city departments. I also was a certified firefighting instructor.
So, I stayed busy. I had to, to raise, and support, my family. Now, looking back on all of it I can say I was a complete fool. An idiot. I worked my life away instead of being the family man. I was so busy trying to earn a dollar to support a wife and children that I threw my life away.
Now, I’m disabled because of my work, not able to hit a lick at a snake. My wife of almost 40 years passed March 8, 2022, and since then the 4 children have literally taken everything, including all our pictures. Our youngest daughter, whom we lived with for 5 years after leaving southwest Florida, was evicted in February. I had no knowledge of what was going on, since I was giving her the rent, electric, water bill moneys each month, plus buying the groceries. She saw to it I remained broke and took all of my social security and retirement checks each month since her mother passed. What she did with the money the last few months, nobody knows. But she didn’t pay the bills with it.
I was put out of the house the first of March this year, and was forced to leave my medical equipment, hospital bed, everything behind. I was homeless. With no money, nothing. The landlady was extremely apologetic about it, but after she explained how she had tried to contact me and my daughter wouldn’t allow her access to me, I told her it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. The way I raised all the children, or should I say the lack of discipline and respect that I failed my children on. It was my fault.
I lived under a local bridge for almost 2 months until my youngest son found out. He, and his wife came up and located me. Took me to a hotel and put me there for two nights while they got a rental truck, contacted my old landlady and was able to retrieve my bed, medical equipment, clothes, and a few personal things. No other furniture or anything else. My son told me there’s nothing else left. Everything else was gone already. What my youngest daughter didn’t take, her older sister and brother took.
My son was able to find me a little apartment here in Albany, Georgia where her rented it for me. It’s cheap enough where I can afford it each month. It’s a very nice apartment, being completely renovated, as is the entire complex. So, when it’s finished, it will really be a very nice place. I have no furniture or anything in it, yet, but I’ll add a chair, living and dining room furniture as I go along. First things first. I have an electric wheelchair I must get fixed. My daughter had plugged it in and left it plugged in so long it burned the batteries, or the charger up, I guess. Right now, I can’t even check my damn mail!
So, in closing, I can say you now have my entire life story. Everything, except my affiliation with the greatest bunch of folks I think I’ve ever met, outside my law enforcement and firefighting families. That’s my Substack family.
I began with Substack right after Dan and Elliot began it. I joined right away because I was raised watching Dan Rather every evening on tv. All through the years he wasn’t missed. His news broadcast was one if the iconic, truthful, news broadcast presented on tv. So, when Substack started, of course, I signed up.
I began doing something I absolutely hated in school. Reading. Now, I read numerous writers on Substack every day. And, I began something new, I never liked doing in high school, or college. Writing. I used to hate term papers. I knew we had them to write every year, every semester, and I loathed them.
Now, I have my own Substack publication I occasionally write. I haven’t pushed, or advertised it in any way. But I have had 22 people join it. It’s all free. I dint charge because I don’t believe in charging for my thoughts. I’m not a ‘publicist’ or anything like that. I write my thoughts and opinions on political issues, issues affecting our country, our way of life. And it’s all my thoughts, feelings, and opinions. No one else’s. It’s open to anyone to join, if they wish, and it’s open to anyone to our their remarks. Good, bad, ugly. Doesn’t matter to me. But, be warned. You may not like my reply! Just live with it, because it’s an open forum.
You see, I don’t charge for it just for that reason. I want people to have a place they can express themselves freely, without charge, or having to pay to be able to express themselves. That, to me, is being a free country.
I do write my opinions on others writings, a lot. Usually on the current issues, politics, etc. This is where I have really met great people . People actually ‘follow’ my writing and read my opinions. And this to me is totally different.
I have said enough. I’ll shut up now so I dint start, or continue to, ramble.
Y’all have a good day, and weekend now, ya hear!