Category Archives: writing

Jan 07 2009
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writing

The great titling and tagging project of 2009

So, thankfully, with the WordPress UI being completely revamped, I’m inspired to tag and title all of the previous entries.

I thought that this was an awesome, awesome idea.

Until I realized I have been super lazy this entire time that I have maintained (and I use the term loosely) this website.

It started out as a windows 2000 box where I manually updated the index.html and then moved older entries, again, manually.  Anyone remember the Code Red virus?  Yeah, that happened to me.  Oh the joys of running your own webserver.

Then blogger came along and that was a godsend.  “It can do dates automatically?!”

And then it ceased to be a godsend, and I migrated to WordPress circa 2004 and haven’t looked back.

Right now I’m contemplating a “clip show” where I round up posts that I forgot I had written and then post snippets.

This project is going to be long, but I foresee it being shorter than the “digitize old written journals” project that I’ve sort of ignored since 1990.

Euh.

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Dec 20 2008
writing

A long walk

One wouldn’t think it, but in New Jersey, Atlantic City specifically, there’s a place where the sand dunes rise above your head and the tall grass sways gently with the breeze.

There are rocks, and sand, and the water, and across that, there is Atlantic City proper.

But for now, there’s you and me.

It’s sunset, and over the water, the breeze picks up a chill as we walk between sand dunes, through houses being built, across white sand and dark grey rock.

I help you over a rocky area and then, at that moment, the years just fall away.

It’s good to see you again.

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Aug 04 2008
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writing

I

As an experiment in writing, I wrote one line of a conversation I pretended to have between two fictional characters that isn’t actually in a story.  I just wanted to use it at some point in the future.  Then I did the editing.  But as a twist, I did not actually delete the original line I wrote.  Instead, I wrote and rewrote the line until I was happy (for relative values of “happy”) with the finished sentence.

1.

So in the end, we cannot sit around and wait for deities to descend from the celestial reaches, surrounded by angelic choirs. We have to settle for the love of human beings. And this one
 loves you. And that’s going to have to be enough. Continue reading →

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May 21 2008
writing

New Post, New Story

There’s a time when you realize you haven’t done anything for a while. You haven’t written, you haven’t felt like you’ve been experiencing life, you feel like you can’t start up again.

I had started this year with good intentions. Get new media options up. Video. Audio. And for the first day of this year, I did great.

Then I had food poisoning and it all sort of went out of whack from there.

But now, five months later, I’m going to tell you a story.

It may be a real story, it may not be.

The important thing is that I tell it. It starts like this:

Dinner after work is always a conundrum. Do I go home and save money?  Or do I go out and bring home leftovers that languish in the fridge?  Or rather, food that languishes until my food poisoning paranoia sets in and I throw them out.

Today, I decide to have Japanese since we had a barbecue at work.

A bowl of miso and a tamago roll and some green tea and then a pleasant walk home.  Not a bad plan.

Today Trung welcomes me and I sit at the sushi bar at the back, at my usual spot. Peter says hello and sells me a typhoon roll, their special tonight. I order a green tea and head to the restroom to wash my hands.

When I return, there’s a family of four seated next to me at the sushi bar.

One boy, younger. One teenage girl. One blond housewife. And one dour looking man, his face blood red hot, his palms pressed against his temples as if they were the only things keeping his head from exploding.

His words feel chosen, deliberate. “I just want you to answer the question.” Continue reading →

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Dec 14 2007
writing

On Conyers, GA

The South.

My brother had this to say about it:

You know, I’ve been to Communist China, and the South still scares me.

And I can understand his fear.  Still, that wasn’t my experience when I went to The South (Proper caps) exactly one year ago.

The South still has a public relations nightmare to clean up after that whole state’s rights issue that got blown way out of proportion. Then, as usual, the only people you see on the television are folks that appear to be straight out of Deliverance. Continue reading →

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