Step Into The Spot Like Woo! What’s up, space-pigs. How are you? What’s populating your world(s)? It’s been a busy, busy week for me. I know, I know, no Monday Morning Commute. Busy Monday. So tired Tuesday that the laptop stayed in the bag when I got home. Wednesday I went to a concert. But I’m here, now! Watch me! Step Into The Spot Like Woo! This here, this right here, this right right here here? Desktop Thursday! The weekly wank-off where I show you my existence laid bare. Be it my virtualscape, my hellscape, my physicalscape. Everything and anything I’ve captured in the past seven days falls here.

I hope, friends. That you will. Step Into The Spot Like Woo! And share, oh please share, your own world(s) in the comments section!

Read the rest of this entry »

The next node over the next node over >>

It’s Monday. The next node over the next node over >> This is Monday Morning Commute, the column where I run down a list of what I’m anticipating during a given week. The next node over the next node over >> This week? Eh, I don’t know. The next node over the next node over >> I’m still struggling to accept a world wherein the next four years are going to be lead by a God-Emperor Trump. The next node over the next node over >> I had a good weekend, hanging out with a good core of the Space-Ship Omega Crew. The next node over the next node over >> Drinking, eating, smoking, watching Arrival, eating, drinking, dancing.

Read the rest of this entry »

A boom, boom, boom, let me hear you say the World is On Fire and All Effort to Correct Its Faults are Futile so Let’s Dance as the Palaces Burn!

Can I hear you say it? Are you saying it? Screaming it?

Screaming it as your white-knuckled rage is consuming you, screaming and screaming and screaming. Screaming as your throat rips, as your lungs burst, as your eyes dilate beyond capacity.

Can I hear you say it? Are you saying it? Screaming it?

Screaming it as your heart explodes, as your moment in time-space rips, as the Void collapses in, on, around, within you.

Can I hear you say it? Are you saying it? Screaming it?

No? You’re just sort of sitting at your computer? In your sweatpants? A thick, honeyed malaise slathered over you?

Hmm.

Me too.

So let’s embrace this rejection of the rejection together. Let’s share what we’re enjoying this week, these enjoyments specifically designed to keep us from screaming.

This is Monday Morning Commute.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday Morning Commute! The weekly column where all of us gather (you! and you! and you! and you and you and you! all of you!) to share what we’re excited in a given week. I’m going to level with you — this week for me it is pretty much That Game and Everything Else In My Life. A deep, delineating chasm can be seen from PsychicSpace, and it represents how neatly my life has been cleaved into two this week.

But I suppose I’m doing some other things this week, and I suppose you may be doing something else as well! So let’s gab about our existential happenings and all that gobbledygook.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the early evening on a Monday of a long weekend. The past few days a welcomed respite from the grind of the semester. The next few days an unwelcome reminder of the daily grind. But I should not be too glib — I’m well rested, psychologically mending, and certain that I can grit out the next few days on campus. Though, if I may subvert and contradict myself — some of the “longest” weeks are those coming on the heels of an extended break. The body, it adjusts so quickly to levity, gaiety, enjoyment. 11 o’clock existential start times. Alas! Alack! Enough grousing.

Allow me to embrace this Monday Morning (non-)Commute. Allow me to share what’s going on in my world, what’s on my mind, and the armada of distractions I’m either using, or anticipating, to help me through this week. Then share your own! Let’s do it as a “squad” if you “will” you know?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Planet was a promise broken. I don’t know, half-baked phrases that wiggle up out of the sludge of my brain. Dying on the shores of over-caffeination, lack of self-esteem, and attention deficit disorder. Never to evolve past their primordial stage. Never to take shape as anything other than a “hey, that may be neat to write about.” At least not in the last few years. Who knows. Maybe with a new home, my own room, and a distinct desire to create something, I’ll get beyond the “concepts generated while taking a crap-taking a drive-taking a shower” stage of my (lack of) creativity.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Monday! Which means a Morning Commute. How did mine go? Well — I was rear ended for the third time in two years as I drove on I-93 South towards UMass Boston. People! Look up from your fucking phones. I beg you. My spaghetti-brain begs you. My consistently whiplash’d neck begs you. I hope, I pray to the Old Ones, that your commute was better than mine. The only perk? The Immediate Migraine and Sore Neck meant I got to go home. Though after thinking about it, a day of lost wages and suffering doesn’t seem like fair trade for a Monday on the couch. Eh. Whatever!

Read the rest of this entry »

Fucking crap day, here. Just busy. Really fucking busy, and ineffective. My class smells blood, knowing the end of the semester is upon them next week. Today this led to a case of The Mondays in class writ large. A disaffection that was equalled in enormity only by the disruptiveness with which it manifested itself. In other words, no one gave a fuck, and everyone was talking. So class was going shit, and then during our mid-class break it became known to me through a squabble of error messages and beeping that the copier was. In fact. Fucking broken. In other words, I wasn’t able to make a copy of (what should have been) tonight’s reading. So what am I doing tomorrow? Fuck if I know. Today was the first day (and this is probably actually a good sign) in my 3+ years of teaching where I openly asked myself, “What the fuck am I doing wasting my time with this?” A shuddering, unrelenting tidal wave of bile-duct refuse and existential despair washed over me. And for it I have no answers, other than to hope it ebbs as well as flows. I’m sure it does.

Read the rest of this entry »

Holy fucking shit hanging off the cliff-nipple of a monstrous, three-headed Minotaur with a taste for my ass but no respect for the dainty nature of a human being’s sphincter. Is there anything worse than the first fucking week back from a long weekend? The Minotaur and I answer declaratively: no. So thank goodness, it’s Friday. And this is the Weekend Open Bar.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey friends. Today was a rockier commute than usual. The long, long weekend giving way to a long, long drive into Boston. Long, long silences when I tried to drag effort out of my students like poison from a wound. But I can’t blame them, because fuck this semester has been going on for a long, long three months. My head is pounding. My stomach is seething after a day of daring to fill it with food products that are neither slathered in gravy, nor cheese. Still. The Column-Spice must flow.

So.

These — these are the various things I’m looking forward to this week. That I shall latch onto, not unlike a tick. And hopefully suck the life-blood out of, allowing me to not call out sick. Which would follow with me festering under a blanket. Eating my weight in Laffy Taffy. I can do this. You can do this. We can do this.

Welcome to Monday Morning Commute.

Read the rest of this entry »