Steven Harper Piziks

Good Friday Creep

2026-04-03T15:42:58Z

A lot of people don't know what Good Friday is supposed to be. Good Friday is the day Jesus was crucified. By tradition, he was nailed to the cross at noon and hung there for three hours, whereupon he was taken down and entombed until he rose from the dead on Easter Sunday.

When I was in school, Good Friday was not a holiday. If you were Catholic, you were allowed to leave work at noon so you could go to church and sit vigil until three o'clock, at which point you were expected to return to work and finish out the day. Banks, stores, and libraries closed at noon and re-opened at three. I remember some of my elementary classmates being pulled out of school at 11:44. Some, not all. And those kids showed up to school in dress clothes, too. They went to church and arrived back at school a little after 3:00 so they could take the bus home at 3:15 and their parents could go back to work.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, the schools started closing for a half day on Good Friday, probably because the teachers got tired of figuring out how to plan lessons that they couldn't hold the Catholic students responsible for. All the way through high school, we had a half day on Good Friday. It made for a chaotic day, since this was also the Friday before spring break, or Easter break, as we called it back then.

When I started college, we got Good Friday holiday creep. Businesses and banks started closing at noon and not re-opening until Monday morning. The university, which had ignored Good Friday entirely, also started closing at noon, meaning your morning classes were on, but afternoon classes were canceled, making a headache for professors who had a morning and an afternoon section of the same class.

Over the years, the creep continued. Places started closing all day on Good Friday, on the grounds that it wasn't worth it to show up for only half a day, and too many employees were taking a half sick day anyway. Schools followed suit. So did universities.

Now Good Friday is a full day off. It's NOT a government holiday, but lots of banks and credit unions are closed anyway. It's become an unofficial holiday on the level of Christmas Eve--not officially recognized by the government, but most schools and banks and many businesses are closed anyway.

This bothers me. Other religions haven't gotten a holiday added to the national calendar. We already have the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter recognized as government holidays. Why is Good Friday allowed to sneak in, too? We don't have Ramadan creep or Eid creep or Beltaine creep. The new Good Friday shouldn't get special treatment either.

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Schadenfreude Day

2026-03-30T15:15:05Z

Today's Schadenfreude:

www.nbcnews.com/health/mens-health/rfk-jr-rotator-cuff-injury-treatment-shoulder-surgery-pain-what-know-rcna262741

RFK had to have rotator cuff surgery, the same kind I had a few years ago that turned my life into a misery for months and months. It's not a surprise, really. That video of him making an exercise ass of himself was almost certainly a strain on him. He's 72. Also keep in mind that video took many, many takes, so the exercise we see on screen is only a fraction of what actually happened. I don't know that his cuff was torn during the video, but it seems likely.

Anyway, he's in a sling. He claims he'll be back at work next week.

Ho ho ho.

It was three weeks before I was able to function well enough to work, and even then I was still on powerful painkillers. Everyone is different, of course, but if he's full-bore at work in only two weeks, I'll have to call it miracle--or everyone in the office is doing the job for him.

Cuff surgery is fucking painful, and when it isn't painful, it's uncomfortable. And when it isn't uncomfortable, it's inconvenient. He's in for a rough time.

I'm glad.

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Oh, Look! WalMart Is At It Again

2026-03-23T15:40:08Z

You can't tell me that once this goes into effect, WalMart won't use AI to change prices. They would never use AI quickly and often to set prices based on number of shoppers in the store, the time of day, the day of the week, the amount of stock they have, and even the weather. (During bad weather, people don't shop much, so lowering prices would be a way to move stock faster.)

WalMart is swearing they would never, ever do this, but they =already= do it with their employee scheduling. An AI watches all the factors I mentioned above and makes a prediction about how many people they'll need in the store down to the hour. Employees are expected to be in contact with the store regularly because their schedules can change. It was supposed to be sunny today, but it's raining after all, so five people have their shifts canceled at the last minute. The snowstorm wasn't as bad as predicted, so we'll need three more people to come in. And so on.

They do this to people. Do you think they won't do it to prices? Ha.

My prediction? They'll start using "dynamic pricing" until their customers notice. Someone will reach for a jar of pickles or a shirt or a board game and see the pricing screen blip up 10 more cents. Someone else will notice the bag of chips they took off the shelf for $3.29 rings up at $3.99 at the register. And people will howl.

WalMart will deny doing any such thing. It was glitch, they'll say. We would never try to rook people. And they'll stop doing it.

During the day.

Seconds before the store opens every morning, the AI will make predictions about how much local demand there'll be for everything in the store, and it'll set the prices for the day all at once. And all the clerks who used to go around changing prices on the shelves will be quietly fired, victims of the AI-generated economy.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/walmart-rolls-digital-price-tags-234500560.html

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Extra Work? Extra Pay!

2026-03-20T01:04:21Z

I posted this as a comment elsewhere, but it's worth repeating here:

I taught school for 30 years, and it was ingrained in the culture that we would have to work outside the school day because there just isn't enough time in a 50-minute prep period to make lesson plans, grade papers, contact parents, and do all the zillion other non-teaching jobs teachers do. This attitude is absolutely fomented by the districts as a way to get free labor. ("Everybody runs a club after school. It's just part of what we do. What do you want to run?")

It made my first few years teaching an exercise in exhaustion. I was making new lesson plans from scratch. And then, in my second year, the district announced it was adopting a new curriculum, which meant my first year plans were worthless, and I had to start all over again. Additionally, I was coaching forensics after school and on Saturdays for peanuts. I spent five and six hours a day on Sunday trying to get caught up.

As I got more skilled and had more previous planning to draw on, I was able to reduce the amount of time I spent working at home. I used to give at least two writing assignments a week and a major essay every three or four weeks. Those had to be scribbled on and graded. I had my students write journal entries three times I week, and I read and commented on them. I read every worksheet. I checked every assignment. Because that's what Good Teachers do. When the district announced that English teachers would have to give a district-wide essay each card marking on top of everything else, I decided I'd had enough. I cut back on EVERYTHING. No more journals. Worksheets and quizzes were trade-and-grade in class. No essays on tests. I also stopped coaching and refused to run after-school clubs. My god, life got easier.

Nowadays, new teachers are pushing back against this culture. When the teacher who ran the student council (a very heavy after-hours job) retired, a young teacher of my acquaintance was asked to take the job. At first she agreed. Then she talked to the retiring teacher and found out how much after-hours work was involved. She told the principal, "Sorry! Not interested after all." The principal was pretty pissed off and tried to pressure her, but she shrugged and said, "I'm not doing all that work for free." Go her! More and more teachers are adopting this line of thinking. If you want extra work, it'll cost extra pay.

As it should.

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Sale Books by Gender

2026-03-17T18:11:00Z

Every so often, Audible creates a sale list. Buy one book from the list, and you get a second book from the list for free. The current list has 150 books on it. I was scrolling through it, and I noticed something ... interesting. I went back and did a more careful examination to see if I was right. I was. Here it is:

Over 80% of the books on their list were written by women.

Here's how it broke down:

150 books

129 written by women

18 written by men

3 written by authors with androgynous names

(When the author's name was androgynous or used initials--which usually signals a woman--I checked the description of these books to see if there were any clues to the author's gender. For some, it was clear. For three, it wasn't.)

So 12% of the books have male authors. If you assume the three androgynous names are male, it becomes 14%. This means between 86 and 88% of the listed books were written by women.

The vast, vast, vast majority of literary agents are women. The same is true of editors. Is the same true of writers? According to this list, yes.

I don't know how Audible chooses their books for the sales list. Is this just coincidence? (Though when you have a 50/50 chance of any given person being male or female, the odds of 80+% female chosen at random are minuscule.) Does this list reflect the literary market at large? Did Audible deliberately choose female authors over male ones?

I have no idea. But I'd be interested in knowing.

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Same-Sex Marriage in Ukraine. Sort Of.

2026-03-10T17:20:07Z

Ukraine has sort-of legalized same-sex marriage. Kind of. A little bit.

TL/DR: Although Ukrainian law defines a marriage as between one man and one woman, their supreme court ruled that household relationships are de facto marriages and should be treated as such. So, for example, your long-term roommate can count as a spouse. This came up because a man on Ukraine's diplomatic team in Israel wanted to bring his long-term partner (who would have been his husband, if the law had allowed) to Israel with him as a spouse, like other diplomats are allowed to do. (The two men, incidentally, also got married in the USA, which bolstered their case.) The court ruled that he can do so.

My interpretation: I'm not at all familiar with Ukrainian marriage laws, but it looks to me like this makes same-sex marriage legal without actually making it legal. Two man can't get a marriage license, but they can demand to be treated as legally married if they live together. They could therefore have a wedding ceremony, move in together, and be treated legally as spouses.

This is a nice step forward (and Ukraine has a lot on its plate right now, so civil rights are going to move even more slowly than usual), but it's not true marriage equality yet. Two men can't wave a marriage license to get spousal recognition. They'd have to prove to another person or agency that they live together, and it seems to me that somewhere, someone will say, "Well ... you haven't lived together very long. This can't be a de facto marriage yet. We're not treating you as married." And the length of time they have to live together will become another court case.

Additionally, a same-sex couple is ONLY considered married if they live together. Plenty of spouses live separately, either out of choice or out of necessity (such as getting a job in another city or being in the military). Such spouses wouldn't be covered by this ruling.

HOWEVER, the way the ruling was done actually prohibits challenges to same-sex marriage from the public. This means that homophobic groups can't sue to overturn this or any other ruling regarding same-sex marriage, which is excellent news.

It's welcome progress, but there's work to be done yet.

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Shaving for Grownups

2026-03-09T21:13:04Z

You wouldn't know it by looking at my bare head, but I'm a hairy guy. My facial hair is especially heavy. I can grow a scruff beard in one day, and a full beard in three. (I currently wear a scruff beard.) I have to shave daily. I've learned electric razors don't do the job well. They're either painful or they do a poor job. If I want decent results, I have to use a regular razor.

When I was growing up, we didn't have much money, and a teenager who needed to shave every day was an unexpected expense. My mother used disposable razors, the cheapest the store had, to shave her legs, and my parents told me to use one of those. "Use it until it gets too blunt," my dad said. "Then get a new one. But try to use each one as long as you can. Those refillable razors are a little better, and they give you the handle and the first blade cheap, but they get you on the refills. We can't afford them." (My dad used a 20-year-old electric razor, himself.)

This ended up being the central shaving philosophy of my life. I always bought the cheap razors, and I used each one until it felt like I was scraping stubble off with sandpaper. Shaving was a chore, uncomfortable at best, painful at worst.

And then recently, after a bout with a dull razor that I should have tossed days ago, I said, "What the hell am I doing? I'm a reasonably well-off adult. I'm not scrouging or scavenging. I don't run out of money before the end of the month. Why am I holding onto this particular penny-pinching device? I have to shave EVERY FREAKING DAY, and it shouldn't be uncomfortable."

I decided to sign up with a razor subscription service. You sign up, pay a monthly fee, and they mail you a new set of razor refills every month, both so you can always have a sharp razor and to remind you to change the refill cartridge and not stretch it out until your neck bleeds.

Subscriptions, by the way, are something else I avoid out of reflex. For most of my life, I regularly had little or no money in my checking account on a regular basis, and an automatic subscription to anything had a good chance of bouncing now and then, incurring charges. I couldn't even auto-pay my electric bill because of this. Subscriptions were a no-go.

So I had to do some fast talking with my psyche as I filled out the subscription form, and I actually held my breath as I clicked SUBMIT.

The first set of razors showed up in the mail. It was a kit with a handle, two sets of refills, a travel cover (nice, that), and a can of shaving gel. The next day, I tried it.

Oh, did I love it!

The good razors glided over my face so well, it didn't even feel like I was shaving. No scraping. No burns. I used it on my head with equal success. It was a delight!

And now I HAVE to toss the cartridge every week, or the refills will pile up. My razor will always be new and sharp. Where has this been all my life?

I like being a grownup.

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Tornado Strikes

2026-03-07T04:59:59Z

This evening, Darwin and I went to a movie. About halfway through, a thunderstorm slammed into the theater. It sounded like an ocean was pouring over the roof. It continued until the movie ended. Rain was still pounding down as we left the theater. I could barely see to drive home. Giant thunderbolts snapped across the sky. One bolt was so big it left an after-impression of giant sparks.

We got home safely, and then I checked the weather apps to see how long the storm would be continuing.

The app reported that there was a "slightly elevated chance" of a rainstorm. Not a thunderstorm, mind you. A rainstorm.

Later, we learned a tornado ripped through Union City and Three Rivers (about 80 miles west of us). Videos showed it destroying a big box store and a parking lot-ful of cars. It tore through a series of houses on a lake and filled the air with debris. It was terrifying to watch.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2364027517444219

The app continued to say "slightly elevated chance of a rainstorm."

I check the weather app often. Like a dozen times a day. Not once today was there a single word about a storm. The app reported fog and, later, a chance of rain. No thunderstorm watches, no thunderstorm warnings, no worries about tornados. Nothing.

The earliest tornado watches came 45 minutes before the tornado formed. Only 45 minutes. Usually, we get tornado watches two or three hours in advance, and thunderstorm watches further out than that. Not this time. And this storm was huge. I looked at the radar maps. It didn't spring up out of nowhere. You could see it march across the continent toward us. But watches and warnings weren't issued until 45 minutes before the strike. Four people are reported dead so far, with more than a dozen injured.

How many of those people would have escaped injury or death if they'd had more advance warning? I can tell you that if I'd seen a weather warning before we left for the movie--and I checked the weather, as I always do--we would have stayed home.

Why did this happen?

The baboon defunded NOAA. They laid off dozens and dozens of meteorologists. There simply aren't enough people to interpret weather data and turn it into forecasts--and warnings. This storm was bigger than many states, but it slipped by because NOAA has nothing but a skeleton crew. It's like the police missed an elephant stampede because they only had one officer left on duty, and he was on the other side of town.

But remember--cruelty IS the point.

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Is the Collection Worth It?

2026-03-02T16:36:34Z

I collected comic books for decades, and my collection was decently valuable. When I was starting a family, I was kind of looking forward to sharing the comics with my kids. What kid doesn't like comics, right?

Apparently mine. None of my sons showed any interest. Zero. I once took the three of them into a comic/manga/gaming shop and told them they could get whatever they wanted, and then we could all get ice cream and read comics in the park. My oldest just hung out by the front door, waiting for us to leave. My middle son grabbed the first thing he saw just to make a choice quickly. My youngest browsed around a little and said he didn't want anything at all. We ended up just getting the ice cream.

Collectors often say they want to pass their collection (of dolls, comics, Legos, game cards, whatever) down to their children or grandchildren because they're valuable and will garner thousands of dollars for their heirs.

But the heirs in question rarely share the interest, and they usually know next to nothing about how to market a thousand Barbie dolls or fifty long boxes of old comics, so they either sell everything quick and cheap at an estate sale, or dump everything in the trash.

If you have a valuable collection you want to pass on, ASK your heirs if they want it in the first place, either to keep or sell. If there's no interest, sell the stuff yourself before you die and pass the cash on to your heirs. Not only do they get the money you'd like them to have, you also ensure the stuff goes to someone who will appreciate and enjoy it.

I sold my comic book collection myself. My sons won't miss it--I doubt they've even thought about it--and now they won't be saddled with it later.

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Hockey Victory for English!

2026-02-22T20:30:37Z

The USA hocky team scores a gold medal! Yay!

One of the players is Connor Hellebuyck. I actually had him for freshman English. I remember him a little, and I do remember that he had a thing for hockey, though I didn't know it was THAT big a thing!

As his English teacher, I take full credit for his victory.

ETA
Unfortunately, the win is tainted. While Kash Patel guzzled champagne and whooped it up with the team members in the locker room (because that's something the Director of the FBI does), the baboon called to congratulate the team and invite them to the White House. He also said that he had to warn them that he would have to invite the women's team or they would impeach him (because women don't really deserve to be invited to the White House, even when they also win the gold). The hockey team's reaction? Laughter and cheers. No one has apologized as of this writing.

However, five members of the men's team have joined the entire women's team in refusing the baboon's invitation.

Regardless, this event sullies their win, and my respect for the players has dropped.

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Substantial? Nope!

2026-02-22T03:19:33Z

I haven't done all that much since I retired last August. Oh, Darwin and I have done some traveling. I've organized some areas of the house that really needed it. I've played a lot of video games. I've kept up with my exercise.

But I haven't done anything =substantial.= In the last six months, I haven't practiced my harp very much. I haven't enrolled in a class. I haven't looked for a part-time job. I haven't volunteered anywhere. And I haven't written all that much.

This is strange for me. Usually I have a bunch of projects going all at once. Usually I'm extraordinarily busy. Usually my days are full. I figured that when I retired, I'd feel liberated from the job I =had= to do and gleefully dive into the jobs I =wanted= to do. It hasn't happened.

I'm in a position I would have killed for twenty years ago. Hell, even two years ago. I can write ALL DAY LONG! If inspiration strikes, I can drop what I'm doing and follow it. I can do eight, ten, twelve pages, and not have to go to work the next day feeling like I had no time to relax. And I'm not taking advantage of it. My past self, the one who once wrote two novels at once while teaching full-time, is pounding his head against his keyboard and weeping.

And it took me a while to figure out why. Here it is:

I worked in a high-stress job. I dealt with long hours. I got a small, you-aren't-worth-much wage. For 31 years.

You don't decompress after all that in just a few weeks.

So I'm decompressing. I'm refusing to do anything that puts me on a specific schedule, which is why I'm not getting a job or volunteering or taking lessons. I'm not under contract right now, so I write only when I feel like it. This might last a couple more weeks, or a couple more years, or even forever.

I don't =need= to do anything more substantial. I just do what I feel like doing, when I feel like it.

It's awesome.

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Again, CBS?

2026-02-17T19:37:58Z

Oh look--it's Jimmy Kimmel all over again.

The FCC declared that Stephen Colbert's interview with Rep. James Talarico, who is running for Texas Senator, violated "equal access," which means shows are supposed to give equal air time to politicians from both sides of the aisle. Talk shows have always been exempt from this reg because they aren't news shows. (Fox has certainly ignored it.) But now the FCC has suddenly declared talk shows are NOT exempt from this, and Nazi-run CBS pulled the interview at the last minute.

Talarico is a Democrat who is saying that Texas could flip from red to blue.

It's been posted on the internet, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A

As of this writing, it has 1.9M views and hasn't been up even for 24 hours yet. (And in the time it took me to write this post, it went up my 10,000 more.) For reference, Colbert usually gets about 2.4M viewers per episode.

Streisand effect! The interview is on track to get more viewers because the FCC forbade it than it would have gotten if it had just aired normally.

Go have a look, if you dare defy the baboon! :)

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Packzi Day, 2026

2026-02-17T16:33:53Z

Today is paczki day! Packzi ("poonch-key" or "putch-key") are extra rich jelly donuts made for Fat Tuesday as a way to clear the kitchen of butter, sugar, and eggs for Lent in Poland. Michigan was a hub for Polish immigrants for a long time, and they made paczki into a local annual tradition. Even non-Catholics can participate! :) The traditional filling is prune (because dried fruit was all you had in winter back then), but now you can find them filled with just about anything, including custard or chocolate.

You're only supposed to have them on the Tuesday before Lent, though it's considered acceptable to bend this rule a little, and bakeries often start selling them a week or two early. The local grocery stores hook up with some a commercial bakery that mass-produces them for WEEKS before Lent, but afficionados can tell when you eat one that it's just a regular jelly donut rebranded as a paczki. Watered-down, cheat paczki. Bleah!

This morning, officially paczki day, I went down to Dom's Bakery, a local bakery hotspot. The place was founded in the ... forties? fifties? by an Italian family. A couple decades ago, the family sold the bakery to a Cambodian family, who took over seamlessly. So now we have an Italian bakery in America run by Cambodians. Only in the USA!

The line was long, but the ONLY thing for sale today was paczki. The entire display case was stuffed with rows and rows of them. More paczki waited on tray stacks in the kitchen area. People were walking out with full bags, boxes, and packing crates. (Well, not really packing crates, but we probably would use them if we could.)

I bought two. I'm alone in the house today, and more than that would probably kill me. And day-old paczki are absolutely not edible! I ate one, and it was still warm.

So, so good. I want to eat lots of them all year, but then they wouldn't be special, would they? It's probably for the best, then.

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LitRPG

2026-02-10T22:22:28Z

I started writing fantasy 35 years ago. (Oi!) Back then, and right up until about ten years ago, it was death by rejection if you tried to set your novel in a video game. The awfulness of the movie TRON only reinforced this. You were also told to never, ever write a book set in a world created for a fantasy role-playing game on the grounds that the world will be too simplistic by nature, and editors gleefully rejected such books.

Now?

It's suddenly the cool kid on the block. People are rushing to imitate Dungeon Crawler Carl, and the market is becoming flooded with these books.

I think a part of it is that video games have become in recent years a lot more immersive. The games hire actual writers and build actual worlds and tell actual stories. We've come a long way since Atari's "Adventure" game had you move a little square around the TV screen.

I haven't tried writing it and don't intend to--I think the genre and setting are a crutch for writers who can't build worlds or plot effectively--but I don't begrudge Matt Dinniman and his character Carl their success at it. Anytime an author succeeds in this market, go them! What bothers me are the self-published imitators who flood the market with drek until you can't find anything worth reading.

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Lynne Mathis

2026-02-05T15:40:19Z

Aunt Lynne died yesterday.

Technically, she hasn't been my aunt since I was in middle school, when she and my uncle (by blood) got divorced, but my family has a habit of keeping the exes around.

She was my mother's best friend. Her son (my cousin) Dave was my best friend while I was growing up, and his brother Mark was my brother Paul's best friend. As a result, we all spent a lot of time at each other's houses. This started when I was a baby, actually, and I still have hazy memories of Aunt Lynne's first house in Saginaw.

Aunt Lynne was funny, earthy, and outrageous. She was the relative who always makes you feel comfortable just by being who she was. Her house was cool! She had a microwave and an air conditioner! (This was in the 70s, when such things were rare.) She was a second mother to me, really. I associate her with laughter around the table, outdoor family parties, and the secret recipe for baked beans. She was the cool aunt who would talk about adult topics with pre-teenagers as if we were all grownups. She was there when I came out to my family, and she gave me a big hug and said, "There! Now that wasn't so hard, was it?"

Toward the end, her mind faded and she lost track of who she was. The rest of us will have to remember for her. And we gladly will.

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Filling the Groove

2026-02-04T02:00:06Z

This retirement thing is throwing off my sense of time. It's a strange way to live.

I've always been a busy person. When I was in college, I joined clubs and made a lot of friends to hang out with. I also worked. At one point, I had three jobs at the same time. When I started teaching, my new job kept me busy in the extreme. Then I started coaching. And then Aran was born. And then Sasha and Maksim came to us. And then I became a single dad.

Into all this, throw writing.

When I started writing professionally, I took to heart the advice of an editor I knew who said new writers should write every day, and I did. Rigorously. It meant, though, that I had to give up stuff. I couldn't watch much TV, and I had to be careful about my social schedule. After a year, daily writing became a habit. Go me! But giving stuff up became a habit, too. I watched TV only when I was grading papers or running on the treadmill. I only read audio books, and then only while I was driving. I was careful to keep a trim social schedule--no more than one event per week, and it couldn't last more than half a day, except at holidays.

Irregular events became an imposition. Medical and dental appointments were a source of stress because they ate up so much of a day. Ditto for after-school stuff. And for socializing.*

Anytime I had the chance to do something else social--go to a movie, visit friends, go to a party--I checked it carefully against my mental calendar to see if I could shoehorn it in. I double-counted socializing with writing for years once I joined a bi-weekly writers group. It was both social time and writing time. Genius! When I started dating again after my divorce, I literally scheduled the time into my weekly calendar. When I met Darwin, I had to work him into my calendar.

Irregular events generated a lot stress. I couldn't cut out time out of my job for them, or out of family needs, or out of anything but writing time. But I hated and feared cutting writing time because I was afraid that not writing for one day would lead to two days, and then a week, and then a month, and I wouldn't be able to start up again.

This did happen once. I was under contract for THE HAVOC MACHINE (which, by coincidence, is now available as an audio book). It was due on March 1. The September before this, my life exploded in difficult and unusual directions. Every moment I was awake, I was either at work or dealing with a home situation. And I do mean every moment. I remember one day I was sitting at the pharmacy waiting for a prescription and I realized that these ten minutes were the extent of my "me" time for the last month. I certainly wasn't working on THE HAVOC MACHINE. I had no time, and even when I did have the time, I had no spoons. One day without writing turned into a week, which turned into a month, which turned into two. By November, I'd written only one chapter.

I called my editor and for the first time in my career, asked for an extension. My editor told me the book was already listed in the catalogs, and it would be REALLLY difficult to deal with if it was late. I slowly hung up the phone, turned to my computer, and started writing. I pounded through THE HAVOC MACHINE. I stayed up late, I got up early. No one but the boys saw me outside of work. On March 1, I emailed the finished manuscript to my editor. It burned me out so badly that I couldn't even write blog entries for three months.

Things did get better. The boys grew up and got places of their own, reducing my parenting time by 90%. And on June 13, 2025, I walked out of Walled Lake Northern High School for the final time.

Overnight, my schedule evaporated. It was completely empty. I had no job, no commute, no real parenting to do. I wasn't even under deadline.

No, I didn't do the "what will I do with myself?" thing. I love being retired and having an empty schedule. If I want to spend the whole damn day playing a Batman video game, I can. And sometimes I do. It's frigging awesome, and I highly recommend it.

But ...

I'm having trouble adjusting to HAVING all this time. Whenever something comes up that requires some kind of time commitment, I get stressed. Will I have enough time for this? What will I have to give up? How can--

And then I remember IT DOESN'T MATTER. If I want to spend a couple hours plus driving time having lunch with a friend (as I did today), I can. If one of my sons needs support at the doctor, I don't have to say, "Try to make the appointment after 3:30 so I can get there after work, and not on a Monday." I just say, "When is the appointment?" If I need to do some unexpected grocery shopping, it's no big deal.

Wow.

Recently, my mother had some medical stuff going on that required my sister and me to shuttle multiple times back and forth to her house. She lives about two and half hours from me, and over three hours from my sister's, so it's a hike and a half. The entire incident took up the better part of two weeks. (Everything's good now, by the way.) When the problem passed, I realized I was bracing myself to go back to work frazzled and stressed because I'd had little down time.

Nope! No more job. I spent the next couple of days doing little and enjoying it.

I took half a day to clean and reorganize our big closet, and didn't have to feel like I was eating away at "me" time. I drive out to visit my cousins every month on a Sunday afternoon, and I don't get back until after 11:00. So what? I don't have to get up at 5:30 anymore.

But I still have to remind myself of this. The groove hasn't filled in yet.

*Time with my sons didn't count as socializing, by the way. It was family time, which was its own animal.

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Putting the Gay in Gay Cruise

2026-01-20T22:55:23Z

Darwin and I saw a chance to grab a balcony cabin on an all-gay cruise in January, and we decided to grab it. We like going to all-gay spaces. Camping (or cabin-renting) at a gay campground is one of our fave summer retreats, in fact. It's nice to be in a space where everyone thinks like you do, in at least one way, anyway. Also, when you're an LGBT person in a hetero-dominated world, you're constantly on a low-level alert. Is it okay to refer to "my husband"? If I do, will this clerk sabotage service? Will this person on the street snarl an insult, or spit, or even throw a punch? If I say something that makes it clear I'm gay, will there be trouble? Whenever I touch Darwin in public, I have to do a quick recon and make sure we aren't within range of any weirdos.

In a gay space, none of that applies. It's completely safe to have a husband, to hold a man's hand, to put an arm around a man's waist or shoulders, to share a quick kiss--or a lingering one. You also don't have to watch every word or worry about who might be within earshot. It's a huge relief.

So anyway--gay cruise!

If you want to go on vacation, January is one of the best times for it. Everyone is coming off the holidays, and no one is in the mood--or has the money--to go out of town. This means the airport is dead. Security is a breeze. Hotel reservations are easy. Lovely!

We flew down to Miami, got on board the hotel's shuttle, spent the night, and took the hotel's shuttle to the cruise port. So easy! No crowding! And since Miami is in the same time zone as Michigan, there's no jet lag!

We didn't do anything in Miami but admire the weather. Wind that doesn't hurt your face--amazing! Though overnight an unusually cold front swept into the area and brought temperatures down into the low 60s, forcing us to stay in jeans and sweatshirts. This felt unfair, and I wanted to register a complaint somewhere, but didn't know where.

At the cruise port, we dropped our luggage off and cooled our heels at the port for a couple hours before we boarded. There was a huge passenger lounge set aside for this purpose, and right away, it was clear we were on a gay cruise. The cruise company keeps two sets of crew--the ones who run the ship and the ones who run the cruise. It was the latter group that greeted us. They were all strikingly handsome, well-built young men. It was like arriving at a gay Hooters. They greeted passengers with smiles and hugs and shoulder pats. I pointed out to Darwin that on a regular cruise, this would have caused a lot of trouble, but in our community, you'd have to work hard to find a guy who would turn down a hug from a man who could work as a runway model. We took up places on one of many sofas shaped like California king beds to await our boarding time in comfort and chat with the guys around us without worrying they might be right-wing nutjobs. When it came time to board, we were shepherded up the gangplank with alacrity, and never mind the drug-sniffing dog.

The Brilliant Lady is a brand new ship. She was launched last September, in fact. We could tell right away--the ship smells of new paint and carpet. Our cabin, at Darwin's insistence, was on the highest deck we could get. He loves the view. So do I. Our luggage was already waiting for us, so we unpacked and went down for a late lunch.

The ship sailed away right on time, and we watched from our balcony, always a nice prospect, though it was still chilly--we had to turn the cabin heat on!

This cruise was more laid-back for us than others we've done. We only scheduled a couple of shore activities and we spent most of our days loafing around and doing nothing much. But ... gay cruise! :) The other passengers are outgoing and friendly in the extreme. The population on this cruise also had a greater cross-section of ages. On our European trips, we were among the youngest passengers (!), but here there are guys who are barely old enough to drink and guys who could be their great-grandfathers and every age in between. I like this a lot better. The cruise has more of a party atmosphere, whether you want a quiet party or a loud one.

I've noticed a few other interesting differences.

After fifty years of experience, I've developed excellent gaydar. This is a useful survival tactic in regular life, but on a gay cruise, it was actually a detriment. See, when your gaydar goes PING!, your attention automatically goes to the person who set it off. Hey, look! One of us! A kindred soul! On this cruise, however, my gaydar pinged constantly. "Look!" it said. "There's one! And there's one! And there's one! And there's a whole bunch!" It became tiring, like someone was continually tapping my shoulder.

After a few days, this calmed down and I was able to function without constant distraction.

Gay men are also way more willing to wear ... fashionable swimwear than straight men. Lots of thongs, lots of mesh shirts, lots of tank tops. Stuff you don't much see on a more mainstream cruise--or beach. And there's no unwritten rule that only toned bodies can wear skimpy swimwear, thank you.

I know that weightlifting has long been a part of gay culture, but here I was forcibly reminded of it. First, everywhere you look, it's biceps, biceps, biceps. Almost every guy on board has worked those biceps, and they wear shirts that show it. (Here's a trick: to show off your arms in a loose-sleeved shirt, roll the sleeve cuff a few times.) Tight, mid-thigh shorts are common, too. Straight men don't often wear these clothes, even when they've worked hard on their bodies. You'd think they'd WANT to show off, but they rarely do. I think they're afraid of being ogled the way they ogle women.

And then there's the gym. Every cruise ship has a gym, but on regular cruises, it tends to be sparsely-attended. Fitness classes get maybe half a dozen attendees. On a gay cruise, the gym is packed and fitness classes are booked solid. I went in to do my own lifting regime and found every weight machine busy, with other guys waiting to use them. About half the guys were working out shirtless. They were pretending it was so they could see their contractions in the mirror, but they were showing off. It made for a nice bonus show, but I opted for a run in the nearly-deserted treadmill area instead.

Weightlifting in the gay community serves a number of functions, by the way It fends off the "gays are effeminate" stereotype. It's a social hub. And it's self-defense. Not many bigots are willing to gay-bash a guy who's packed with a couple hundred pounds of cut muscle. All of that was on display here.

The cruise has a theme party every evening: pink party, future party, white party, castaway party. That sort of thing. Darwin and I bought some outfits to fit them and the hunting was kind of fun, but the parties themselves ... meh. They're all the same. Everyone shows up in costumes that range from mild to wild and showing varying amounts of skin. Everyone stands in a massive crowd around the pool or around the balcony above it. Everyone tries to talk about the too-loud music. Almost no one dances. That last bit is odd, since the gay male stereotype is that we all dance like hell. Not here. That's what makes the parties kinda dull. After you've admired the clothes, there isn't much to do. So we stopped going to them.

As I said, Darwin and I haven't done much on shore for this cruise. It's partly that we don't want to rush around on this vacation, and partly because most of the stops don't interest us much. We're happy to stay on the ship and enjoy the service and the view. We did visit some Mayan ruins and a pineapple farm, where they sold pineapple corn bread. I bought some (as a tourist, I feel it's my job to buy stuff), and it was fantastic! It was more like cake than bread. I'll have to reverse-engineer it when I get home. In a couple days, we'll be in Aruba and we've booked a trip on a sightseeing submarine because it looks interesting, though submarines make me nervous. I'm going to pretend it's an amusement park ride, which will allow me to scream if things get too intense.

At this very moment, Darwin and I are on the aft deck on a big, comfy lounge couch under a shade umbrella. A waiter brought us grilled shrimp and Cokes. Later, I'll get a pina colada. The city of Cartagena is spread out across the horizon. All the skyscrapers are white (for heat management, I'm sure), making for a striking view. The weather is tropically pleasant, with a lovely breeze blowing. The weather report for Ypsilanti shows below-zero temperatures and nasty, blowing snow.

Yeah. We timed this right. Gay cruise for the win!

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Viral Update

2026-01-04T16:07:41Z

My viral post about the baboon went crazy nuts. It got ten and twenty thousand views every hour, then every half hour. Every time I checked the number, it had jumped.

I now understood a tiny bit some people's obsession with how many views they get on their social media. Checking the numbers became a day-long activity. Any time I finished something like clear the driveway or make dinner, I'd check the numbers first thing. They were always up.

Would it hit a million?

The post climbed and climbed. Eight hundred thousand. Nine hundred. In the mid-nine hundreds around midnight, it stalled. Well, shoot. It's still pretty awesome that it got that much! Darwin and I went to bed.

In the morning, I checked it again. It had shot upward, and reached a million views. Wow!

And then it was 1.1 million. 1.2 million. 1.3 million. It kept climbing. Geez, how far was this silly thing going to go?

Around 1.4 million, it finally sputtered and slowed. As of this writing, it's at 1,443,292 views about two days after the original posting.

I spent a large part of the last two days putting up more posts, both political and non-, to see what happened. All my newer posts got more than double their usual views, and some got triple, so they were in the low thousands. One shot up into the five digits.

I've only gotten two new friend requests. I've gotten only two pieces of hate mail, calling me a liberal f***ot. I reported, deleted, and blocked. I also got a handful of people who attacked me in their comments. I deleted a few and let others stand. As they say, clicks are clicks and views are views! Interestingly, these incidents didn't upset or anger me as they have in the past. I was more amused. I struck a nerve somewhere, and provoked a reaction from these people. Dance, puppets! Dance! :)

Now, though, I've climbed on the social media treadmill. I'm still getting higher views than before, and I don't want to lose that audience. But to keep an audience, you have to create content. Dance, puppet, dance.

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I've Gone Viral!

2026-01-01T19:12:02Z

I seem to have gone viral. Unfortunately, it's not about my books.

I posted a pair of photos of the baboon, one that showed how bad his orange makeup is, and a second that showed a Photoshopped version where someone digitally removed the makeup. I didn't do the Photoshopping. I only found it, and I mentioned this in my post.

I posted it last night on Facebook at about 8:30 PM. After Darwin and I had our New Year's smooch, it sported 450,000 views and hundreds of comments and reactions. This morning, it was at 500,000 views. As of this writing (2:00 PM), it has 723,215 views, 5010 reactions, 53,375 clicks (from people who wanted a closer look at the photos), and 2,036 comments, the vast, vast majority of which are anti-baboon. It goes without saying that only a tiny sliver of the views come from people who are FB friends with me.

Huh.

As an experiment, I made two more posts. One was another Photoshopped pic of Trump, this one with no makeup and his hair all shaved off. The other was a reminder pitch about my books, especially the audio version of THE IMPOSSIBLE CUBE, which just came out.

The second baboon post has gotten 2,067 views in the two hours since I put it up. The book post has gotten 459 views.

You can see the algorithms at work here. FB decided that my original baboon post deserved to be shared outside my usual FB haunts as an "you may also like" kind of thing to people who have also shared their dislike of the baboon. The same seems to be happening with my second baboon post. Meanwhile, my books are getting a bit more joy. Usually posts about my books get 200-300 views, so I've gotten double the usual in the last couple of hours. I've only gotten two friend requests.

Make of this what you will! :)

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The Copenhagen Test: A Review

2025-12-30T23:55:21Z

I've been watching The Copenhagen Test lately, and I'm halfway through the third episode. (The full season dropped on Peacock a few days ago.)

I'm watching it partly because Simu Liu is in it. You know, the guy from Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? I like him, and he needs to be in more stuff!

And I'm watching it partly because Brian d'Arcy James is in it. Brian and I were friends back in high school and early college when we both were doing amateur theater and did a few shows together. I went into teaching, and Brian went to Broadway--and Hollywood. For non-theater folks, the shows you might have heard about are the musical SHREK (he originated the title character), SOMETHING ROTTEN (he originated Nick Bottom), and HAMILTON (he originated King George), though the role I remember him most for was reporter Matt Carroll in SPOTLIGHT, the movie about the reporters who broke the story about child molestation in the Catholic church.

Anyway, Alexander (Liu), is a spy who, it turns out, has been unwittingly loaded up with technology that broadcasts everything he sees and hears to an unknown adversary. Brian plays Peter Moira, a nattily-dressed fatherly figure who is second in command of the division where Alexander works. The two of them have to figure out how to trust each other while also figuring out who the adversary is. Pete has the nagging feeling that Alexander is in on the sensors in his brain, while Alexander wonders if he should vanish before Pete has him quietly killed. Trust is a major over-arcing theme in the show.

I'm liking the show quite a lot. There are layers to the storytelling, when the story backs up and shows us the same set of events from an entirely different perspective that changes everything we know. I always enjoy that kind of thing.

Another plus is that the writers got rid of that stupid, tired spy trope in which the spy is not only fighting bad guys, but is also fighting his own dysfunctional agency (because of bureaucracy, a mole, political pressure, or that the spy has been forced to go rogue and now everyone wants his head). Instead, we have an agency that WANTS the spy to succeed and WANTS to protect its own people. The administration, as embodied by Pete, is actually supportive of the spy and does its best to help him. Goodness, who knew that could happen? It's refreshing and it lets us viewers concentrate instead on the complex plotting--another thing I like.

It's way worth your time to catch the show.

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Being Cozy in Awful Weather

2025-12-30T02:09:06Z

Awful, awful weather lately. Yesterday it was in the high 50s and very rainy. The sky was so gloomy, it felt like the sun had set. Last night, we had terrible wind. It made the trees out back shudder and shake like they angry. Creepy in the dark. Today the temperature plunged. The wind stuck around. It snowed and snowed. Visibility was low most of the day.

I have to say it's been lovely looking out the window at this awful weather from inside my nice, cozy house, knowing I don't have to go out in it.

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Retired Guy Jobs

2025-12-30T02:04:03Z

Today's retired guy jobs:

--Clearing the driveway for the first time since I got married. Clearing the driveway has always been Darwin's responsibility, and I refused to learn how to even start the snow blower so the job could never be foisted onto me. But now I'm retired and Darwin still works, so I learned to start the blower. Today, I used it for the first time. Cleared the driveway right out. One snag--the plastic ignition key dropped out of its slot somehow and the motor died. I searched and searched for the key, but couldn't find it. Fortunately, a spare was attached to the start handle and I was able to finish the job.

--Clearing out many bathroom drawers. Our bathroom drawers (including a big set of drawers in the closet) are crammed with stuff, to the point where it was getting hard to find something we needed. Today, I brought a trash box into the room and went through every drawer. I tossed all the old meds, mosquito repellent, sun blocker, and more, more, more. Then I rearranged what was left into an organizational pattern that made sense. So much nicer.

--Ordered some drawer sorters online to keep the bathroom drawers orderly. Also tracked down and ordered a couple more snow blower keys in case the current one also gets lost.

Who know what I'll accomplish next!

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Dungeon Crawler Carl

2025-12-26T19:48:21Z

I just don't get the tidal wave popularity of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books. What's up with this?

If you haven't heard of this series, it's a LitRPG story in which aliens kill nearly the entire population of Earth and transform the planet into a dungeon crawl game for their own entertainment. The Earth survivors are forced to fight manufactured monsters in strange settings in order to get to the next "level." I've read two and a half books, and can't go further.

The problem I'm seeing is that the plotlines and worldbuilding are nonsensical and impossible to follow. In the second book, in fact, the author includes a disclaimer at the beginning of the novel warning readers that they won't be able to understand how his fantasy railroad system hangs together. Each level is a different setting, and these settings seem to be a bunch of weird ideas thrown together into a ridiculous mashup. In the third book, for example, we have humanoid camels; psychotic gnomes; hot air balloons; a flying house; a mutual hostage situation at city hall with an incomprehensible system of magic to enforce it; a camel-people brothel; shapeshifters; a political faction fight between said shapeshifters and the camel people; another unrelated shapeshifter who used to be human; a minor god whose mind is divided between a sex doll made of glass and big pile of semi-sentient mold which is in love with an insane human magician; and a gateway between dimensions that has more rules than government agency. There's quite a lot more, and I'm barely halfway through the book.

There's no internal logic to any of it. When Carl gets into trouble, the author just whips out a new pile of unrelated ideas that conveniently allow Carl to solve his problem. I've heard that the author crowd-sources a chunk of the books on social media: "Okay, everyone--what should happen next?" I'm guessing his followers post whatever random stuff comes to mind ("camel people!" "sentient mold!" "sex doll made of glass!"), and he tosses it all into the pot.

Additionally, a LOT of stuff happens off-stage. The author uses the same method over and over to give readers the information: another character gives big hunks of exposition through conversation with Carl. This is also hard to follow. Info-dumps can be readable when they're well done. These definitely aren't. They're dry recitation of facts that are about as interesting as an operating manual for a refrigerator.

And the rest of the writing is so damned dry. It's mostly a dispassionate recitation of events. Carl does A. Carl does B. Carl does C. Carl listens while character explains D. Every so often, the author seems to say to himself, "Oh damn! I should put some emotion in here," and we get a paragraph or two of Carl musing about his tragic past. Then we get more dispassionate recitation.

The interaction between Carl and Donut (a talking cat who wears a tiara and can cast a variety of spells) is amusing, but it's definitely not interesting enough to carry the rest of the junk.

But the books are insanely popular. The author gets mobbed at cons. He has a publicist. Crowds of readers dress up as Carl and Donut. I don't get it.

I don't begrudge the author his success. I've read that he was in deep financial trouble and the success of the books came at just the right time to rescue him. Go him! I just don't understand how the books got this rabid following.

Am I missing something?

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Looming Explosion

2025-12-17T02:33:51Z

The end of the ACA subsidies is looming. A lot of people are worried--rightly--that their insurance costs will go up thousands and thousands of dollars per year. Or per MONTH. But there are other horrors coming down the pipe.

There are patients starting chemo now who won't finish the treatments before January 1. Those on ACA insurance won't be able to afford to see it through.

There are pregnant women who are due in January and who will face thousands and thousands of dollars in hospital bills right after the baby is born. Those who have complications will face even higher bills.

There are children in long-term care wards in hospitals whose parents won't be able to afford treatment after January 1.

There are people waiting for life-saving surgery who were scheduled for January and now won't be able to afford it.

There are people in hospice, or who will enter hospice soon, whose heirs will have to deal with the bills to the estate after the person passes away.

There are people who need regular doses of medicine to stay alive (insulin, for example) whose costs will leap so high, their families will have to choose whether to buy medicine for their loved one or buy food and housing. Some of those people are children. ("Without insurance, Carrie's meds will cost more than our rent. If we buy the meds, our entire family will be homeless. If we pay the rent, we'll watch Carrie die. What do we do?")

This will happen on January 1. It won't be gradual. There won't be a one-week or two-week period of ramping up as people gradually lose their insurance because they can't pay it and then go without medical care. No, it will start =immediately.= There are people who are alive now who won't make it to February. There are children who will open presents on Christmas morning and be dead by mid-January.

This isn't a slow crisis. This is a building explosion. When it goes off, people will die.

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Wake Up Dead Man

2025-12-16T04:30:34Z

Just watched Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man. Wonderful, intricate, delightful. The English and media teacher in me adored all the visual symbols surrounding Christianity. So many Easter eggs--and the biggest one is that the movie is set over Easter. (I can't imagine this escape Rian Johnson, the writer.)

I figured out only part of the mystery, and in a couple of places, I knew something was up, but couldn't make it gel, so the ending was still a surprise, which I always love.

By the way, the word "appel" has nothing to do with "apple," and the world "l'eveil" has nothing to do with Eve--or evil. And notice that the title has no punctuation, meaning you can interpret it different ways by putting in different punctuation. All of these interpretations fit the movie.

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