Post-The-Rona

The weather here in Columbus, Ohio is currently engulfed in a civil war. One side is fighting for all things sunny and flirty and beautiful; the other is hell-bent on thunderstorms and gloom, which has a beauty all its own.

Which side will win? It doesn’t matter.

Our household is slowly coming down from our brief experimentation with Covid. Both Jess and I are largely feeling much better. I’m still experiencing some general fatigue, and have a persistent headache and some body aches, but it’s been manageable and I was able to work most of the week. If we had to get Covid – and let’s be real, we were bound to get it eventually – I’m grateful that it was now, three years after the rona first reared its ugly virus face. Now, after we’ve been vaccinated and boosted, and things like antivirals exist and, in this country at least, are readily accessible. Paxlovid can be a bit of a motherfucker while you’re on it, but its efficacy at reducing the length and severity of Covid, as well as lowering the risk of experiencing long Covid health issues, has made it, to me, worth it.

All told, the last two weeks could have been a lot worse.

ADDENDUM: I wrote the majority of this post on Saturday morning, which apparently was interpreted by the universe as me giving it the finger. Because on Saturday night, Jess developed what is colloquially referred to as “rebound Covid.” Apparently, in 4% of people, five days of Paxlovid isn’t a sufficient length of time, and their Covid symptoms return. In theory, those symptoms are supposed to be mild, but we shall see. In the meantime, our household shall live with the fog of Covid a little while longer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It be like that sometimes.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks.

I finally finished THE GLASS HOTEL, by Emily St. John Mandel. This is the second novel I’ve read by Mandel, after SEA OF TRANQUILITY, and I can quite honestly say she has become one of my top five favorite authors. THE GLASS HOTEL is set before, during, and after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. A key plot element involves a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme collapsing, and those both involved in and impacted by it, but that’s not the main point of the story. The narrative is not linear, continually jumping all over the timeline and switching points of view. It’s occasionally jarring, but by design. This could be annoying and confusing in the hands of a lesser writer, but Mandel is the opposite of a lesser writer. A subtle feeling of the surreal threads throughout the book, especially in the last seventy pages, which gives it a dream-like quality that just enhances the story. Mandel’s writing is gorgeous and haunting, sharply funny at times, and very easy to get lost in.

Watching:

BONE TOMAHAWK: A gritty, character-driven Western for the first hour that turns into a brutal horror movie for the second hour. It’s really good, but some of the more horrific scenes are hard to watch. Kudos to the sound design team, though – while you might be able to close your eyes, you can still hear everything, in vivid, squelchy fashion.

DO REVENGE: A darkly funny teen/revenge film loosely inspired by STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and every teen comedy you’ve seen from the past 30 years. This makes for a hilarious and chaotic viewing experience. I loved loved loved this film. And it boasts a killer soundtrack, to boot.

Wanting:

I’ve long admired the work of Belgian artist Sammy Slabbinck. One of his more recent pieces, THE EQUATION, is quite stunning and will one day find a home on my wall.

Listening:

I was out somewhere a while back and heard a song that I vaguely remembered from my youth. Didn’t know the band or song title, only that it was from the 90s and had the line “I only wanna do bad things to you.” I googled it and all the results were for some shitty Machine Gun Kelly song. It took a ridiculous amount of detective work (10 minutes on Google and Wikipedia), but I eventually found the song I was looking for. Turns out the actual lyrics are “I never mean to do bad things to you,” and my brain had just misremembered them. In short, the shitty MGK song included interpolated lyrics from the 90s song I was thinking of, which is what was confounding my google search. Apparently, both my brain and the songwriters of the shitty MGK song had independently arrived at the somewhat hornier lyrics of “I only wanna do bad things to you.”

Anyhow, that’s my long-winded way of saying I’ve had Fastball’s “Out Of My Head” stuck in my head for a while.

And Kirby:

While Jess and I may have not felt great the last two weeks, Kirby has been having a marvelous time being connected to his mom’s hip even more so than usual.

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J’en Suis Certain

Took three years, but the rona finally caught us.

While we don’t feel great, we could be much worse off. I am supremely grateful if we had to get covid, we got it now, three years into the pandemic, and not a couple of years ago, before vaccines and antivirals were widely available.

Regular service at josh bales dot net should resume next week. In the meantime, take care of your bad selves.

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Forty-One

The 11th of March marked the terminus of my 41st revolution around the Sun, and the beginning of my 42nd. That’s an extremely cool and in no way dorky way of saying I turned 41 yesterday.

I started the day off with a very large cinnamon roll for breakfast — made even better because it was a “yesterday’s cinnamon roll” from Kittie’s and only cost a dollar. Spent the majority of the day hanging out with Jess and Kirby. Then last night we were invited by friends to a fundraising dinner for Niche Seekers, a newer non-profit with a really cool mission. The cause was good, the company great, the drinks very strong, and the food very elegantly delicious. There was even a mashed potato bar!

Purple potatoes: Tasty treat or a key element in the secret Eucharist rite recognizing Grimace?

And of course, we had to take the obligatory selfie as proof that we really do leave the house and do stuff sometimes.

(Quick aside: While we were taking the below photo, I realized I now only own one nice shirt that can be tucked into pants. I wore it for my Cincinnati Dinner Train birthday shindig last year, then again for a funeral last October, and now last night. The in-office to remote wardrobe evolution is real, y’all.)

I’m happy and smiling, I promise.

To cap this birthday week off, later today we’re going to get Mexican, where I may or may not drink a margarita the size of my head. All in all, it’s been a fine way to begin this next year.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

Working my way through THE GLASS HOTEL. It’s quite good, but this week’s been busy with other stuff, and I just haven’t been in the mood to read as much.

A fascinating look at Arnold Schwarzenegger at age 75.

Watching:

THE INVISIBLE MAN. This was so hard to watch. Two hours of watching this poor woman be gaslit and emotionally tortured by her “dead” but invisible ex, an abusive piece of shit of the highest caliber. Murder really should be legal sometimes.

Watching INFINITY POOL was just me saying variations of “what the actual fuck?” over and over again for two hours.

Wanting Acquired:

My current media center is eight or nine years old, and has been a solid comrade during that time. But it’s old, tired. Its OS is no longer supported. It periodically can’t find one of its hard drives (I can relate). It’s time for it to retire and move to Arizona, where it will spend its golden years living on a commune with other retired computers, growing apricots and weed, and making hemp bracelets to sell at the farmer’s market.

I’ve backfilled its position (har har) with a Synology NAS (networked-attached storage) and an 8 TB hard drive, which, paired with Plex Media Server software, essentially create a compact, powerful media server connected to my network and that can stream to any device in the house. I was wary about setting it up — it seemed like it was a bit above my weight class, but it was ludicrously easy to set up. Took less than an hour. Now I begin the arduous task of converting my physical movie/tv collection into digital, because I doubt I’ll ever want a wall of Blu-rays in my house ever again.

Listening:

The new Miley album dropped Friday. I’ve listened to it once so far. It’s no BANGERZ, or even YOUNGER NOW, but I dig the vibe.

And Kirby:

Kirby and the neighbor boy, Alfredo, saying hi. Right after I took this photo, Kirby marked his territory on the fence line. And right after that, Alfredo marked his territory in the same spot, but he is so much taller that his golden arch of urine landed on Kirby. And after that, Alfredo did that instinctual, ground-kicking thing dogs do, and kicked a few pieces of mulch onto Kirby’s head. Alfredo is the sweetest boy, I think he just doesn’t know what to do with a tiny, blind, old man of a dog. Kirby was over the whole experience, and I nearly expired from laughing so hard.

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In German, San Diego Means

I flew home from San Diego this past Tuesday. It was a smooth and easy travel day, especially in comparison to my outbound trip the week before, which was full of things like bad weather! canceled flights! unscheduled stops in Phoenix for fuel! dropped pretzel bites from Auntie Anne’s! In the end, the important thing is I did make it there and back again. The rest of this week has been about easing my way back into the real world. Coming home to Jess and Kirby helps.

This was my first time in San Diego since 2019. Up til that point, I had been at least once a year since 2012. I was scheduled to make my annual jaunt on March 19, 2020 — flights were booked, plans were made — but that didn’t happen for reasons that rhyme with “bran gimmick.” 2021 and 2022 were also clustercusses of a year, so I didn’t go then either. This year, I was determined to go even if it meant shipping my dead body in a pine box by cargo train, like some kind of Midwest, knock-off brand Dracula. Rail freight transport ain’t cheap, so thankfully that scenario didn’t prove necessary.

Being back in San Diego felt good, like a power-up to the soul. The weather wasn’t what one typically associates with Southern California. It rained several days — one inch on Saturday — and was generally chilly. There was one pleasant day when I was able to feel the sun on my face. None of that really mattered, though. I don’t go to San Diego for the climate. I go there to see one of my favorite humans in the world. So long as that happens, the location, while lovely, is irrelevant.

This time ‘round, I watched a bunch of movies, dined at Jeune et Jolie, my first time at a Michelin star restaurant (my closest encounter with one previously was Gabriel’s restaurant in EMILY IN PARIS), saw COCAINE BEAR, played a Buffyesque version of D&D — my drop-in character, essentially a guest star of the week, was a lockpicking cheerleader named Sheena — got a Thai massage, watched more movies, and generally just hung out.

It was a goddamned delightful time. I can’t wait to return next year.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

I didn’t read for most of the trip, then read Jane Pek’s THE VERIFIERS in basically one day. I love detective fiction, especially when someone has a clever take on it, which Pek definitely does. THE VERIFIERS is set in the world of the dating app industry, and the protagonist, Claudia Lin, is a detective of sorts for an agency that folks hire to verify the identities of people they’re dating. It’s a fun concept, but what really makes the book stand out is Claudia’s family. They’re complicated, funny, and feel very real. I enjoyed the bits with them just as much as the overarching “mystery.”

AI is magic, but the bullshit kind.

Watching:

COCAINE BEAR is everything you could want from a movie called COCAINE BEAR. Even better, the characters are generally well-drawn and interesting, which is unheard of for most horror movies. Also, the kids actually talk and act like real kids.

I watched BEVERLY HILLS COP on the outbound flight to San Diego. It had been years since I’d seen it, but I was confident it was a safe bet to watch on a plane, and if there were anything too risqué, then Delta would surely edit it out. Reader, there was and they did not. There’s a whole scene in a strip club that I had 100% forgotten about. The uncomfortable experience of watching this five-minute scene, full of shots of topless women with big 80’s hair dancing badly, was shared with the sweet old lady seated next to me, who in theory was watching THE BIG BANG THEORY, but was also definitely glancing at my screen.

THE MENU: holy shit was this good. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this, and I mean that in the best way possible. We watched this after dinner at Jeune et Jolie, so I was able to better appreciate things like the amuse-bouche.

Wanting:

A new computer chair. Mine is ten years old and has been steadily sloughing off its skin for the last six months. Considering I spend at least 8-10 hours a day in it, it’s time for it to go live on a nice farm upstate with other aging computer chairs. I’d like to get one that is more ergonomic, and also not shedding. I have no idea what to look for in a chair, beyond not shedding and [waves hand vaguely] “ergonomic.” I am open to suggestions.

Listening:

“Thunderclouds”: What a chill, lovely, catchy song. (Yes, I realize it came out like five years ago. I don’t care. Shut up.) This week I watched its music video, which operates on an entirely different level, for the first time and under ideal conditions. Hypnotic, beautiful.

And Kirby:

Patiently waiting for his dinner. Photo by Jess.

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Out of Office

I am in San Diego visiting friends, so there is no update this week. JBdN will return next week.

That said, I don’t want to deprive you of your weekly dose of Kirby content, so:

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You’re My Natural Selection, Said Darwin to His Wife

Valentine’s Day. February 14. That special day each year when we celebrate love, romance, and the 1779 death of the British colonizer Captain James Cook, killed by indigenous Hawaiians after he tried and failed to kidnap the Hawaiian chief, Kalaniʻōpuʻu.

Yes, surprising absolutely no one, I am not a “Valentine’s Day” person. I love Jess, and enjoy showing my affection and appreciation for her in my own way. Doing so on a D-list holiday weaponized by the Valentine’s Day Industrial Complex to encourage performative demonstrations of love to one’s significant in the manner of flowers, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, and a trip to the Garden of Olives? Not for me.

Fortunately, Jess has similar if, admittedly, less melodramatic feelings regarding Valentine’s Day, and we typically stay in. This year, though, we decided to mix it up, and traveled to Dayton to see a special 25th anniversary showing of YOU’VE GOT MAIL at the Neon. There was a signature cocktail and an array of desserts made by Megan Smith, the founder of St. Anne the Tart. It wasn’t til after the movie was over and we were about to head out that I realized the drink and desserts were a salute to Café Lalo, a NYC restaurant that was apparently made famous by the movie. There was even a cute neon sign that I wanted to abscond with. Alas, I had no pockets that were big enough. Say la vee.

My attitude towards Valentine’s Day remains unchanged, but even I will admit that this was a fun way to spend it, and the best person to spend it with.

Next time I’ll wear JNCOs.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

Finally finished THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU. The first half was slow and hard for me to get into — not much happened, and there was a little more focus on romance than is perhaps my cup of tea — but the second half more than made the experience worth it. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s next book, SILVER NITRATE, due out July 18, definitely sounds more up my alley.

I’ve rented two books for the Kindle from the library for my San Diego trip: THE VERIFIERS, by Jane Pek, and THE GLASS HOTEL, by Emily St John Mandel. I am excited about both and have been saving them for this trip.

Watching:

AMSTERDAM was a peculiar film. It was a kind of screwball comedy mystery thriller? And also a period piece? It was weird and tonally inconsistent af, but it’s the sort of weird that appeals to me. Plus, the performances were superb. I enjoyed it overall.

I somehow went nearly thirty years without ever having seen FARGO, which is curious because I love a number of films in the Coen Brothers’ oeuvre and am in general a fan of darkly funny crime stories. So I don’t know, man. It’s just one of those weird cultural gaps I talked about a few weeks ago. Regardless, I remedied that glaring oversight this week. And, well — FARGO is the kind of movie that, when it’s over, you sit back and think “fuck that was good.” Only 98 minutes long, too, which is *chef’s kiss*. I kind of want to watch it again already.

Wanting:

This gorgeous Ganzeer print.

Listening:

One day I will talk, probably at a length far greater than anyone wants, about how much I used to love Incubus, and how, even to this very day, I still lament the change in sound they underwent, around 2001, from “oh christ this is sweet” to “a more boring and generic example of alternative rock you shall not find.” I will title that future essay “Mourning View.”

In the meantime, here’s “Take Me to Your Leader” from Incubus’s 1997 EP ENJOY INCUBUS, which I have been playing this week. The video is just awful, so close your eyes and just, like, vibe to the tunes, man.

And Kirby:

Kirby, forlornly looking for Jess. Fret not, though — he eventually found her.

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Memories, and That Time I was in the Local News Holding a Big Pink Pro-Abortion Sign

There isn’t much I like about Facebook. It’s ugly to look at, clunky to use, its leadership team displays an almost superhuman contempt for user data privacy, and it’s proven to be a very effective tool for fostering far-right radicalization. What’s not to like?

But — this piece isn’t about that.

Complaining about Facebook has become très chiant. No one wants to read about it. I certainly don’t want to write about it. Especially since, despite the aforementioned complaints, so many of us still use it or its adopted sibling Instagram, or both — myself included.

So yes, yes — Facebook is objectively the worst. That makes it all the more ironic, then, that it possesses one of my favorite features: Facebook Memories. The function where it shows you stuff you posted or were tagged in on that day in the past. It’s not a feature I would have thought to ask for in a social media site, but one I would greatly miss if it went away. So many of my Memories make me smile. They remind me of specific moments from past events, show me pictures of myself and my many comrades from over the years, make me laugh again at a funny (or funny) joke.

It’s also sometimes a double-edged sword. Not every Memory is one on which I look back fondly. For instance: I know for most of the month of March, when I crack open the ol’ Facebook app in the mornings, while I’m waiting for the coffee to brew so that I can frankenstein back to life, and I am presented with a series of Memories that let me relive painfully specific moments in the saga of a sick, dying, then dead dog, I will not be filled with the warm and fuzzies. But that’s how’s how life is. We remember, both the bad and the good. Come March, I know I’ll think about Molly more than usual anyways, regardless of if it’s in my Memories or not.

Also, LOL at the phrase “my Memories” because, as I’ve shared before, my actual memory is shit. I need tools like social media, this blog, my journal, and the 20,000 photos on my phone to help me remember my life. Which is why I’m grateful when Facebook occasionally shows me a thing I’d almost completely forgotten about.

Like when, six years ago, a picture of me, holding a large pink sign that said HER BODY, HER CHOICE at a rally for Planned Parenthood, showed up in the local news.

When people started sending me screenshots of this article, I remember my first reaction was relief — relief that I’d taken the time to make sure my sign’s kerning was decent.

And hey — better to show up in the local newspaper this way than in, say, the police blotter.

‡

The downside of this Memory is that it serves as a depressing reminder of how abortion rights are somehow worse off than they were in 2017.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

Still working my way through THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU.

I was staring at the coffee maker this morning, and the pinball machine that is my brain started thinking about a Twitter thread from a few years back where someone imagined what an ALADDIN movie starring Jason Statham would be like. This was right after Disney had announced that the live-action ALADDIN movie would be directed by Guy Ritchie, a guy who is primarily known for making violent and funny British gangster movies. If you like that first bit, the writer tweeted a few more bits that didn’t get picked up by the threadreader bot. They’re just as funny.

Watching:

Jess was out of town for some of last week, so Kirby and I held our own little film festival. Some of the entries were movies I’d seen before; others I hadn’t. We watched: BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER, SPY, THE FUGITIVE, UNFORGIVEN, PRESUMED INNOCENT, THE EQUALIZER 2, MR. RIGHT, and ABSOLUTE POWER. Here are some quick thoughts.

  • UNFORGIVEN — I love a well-executed piece of genre deconstruction, and Clint Eastwood did that with marvelously with this film and Westerns. A pretty perfect movie all-around.
  • WAKANDA FOREVER — This was… a mess. I had a whole thing written, but it was very “old man yells at cloud”-ing and I bored myself. Instead, I’ll just say: Namor chose his name because it means “No Love” in Spanish? That’s the decision the filmmakers went with. They sat in a room and said, “yes let’s do this aren’t we clever.” Okay.
  • ABSOLUTE POWER — So dumb. Poorly written, poorly acted. At least in this film, the much younger Laura Linney is Clint Eastwood’s daughter, and not his girlfriend.
  • THE EQUALIZER 2 — Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington could make ten more of these and I would be in line at the movie theater for every one of them. So glad a third film finally comes out later this year.
  • THE FUGITIVE — I have probably seen this movie 20 times and I never get tired of it. This article from THE ATLANTIC a few years back is spot on.
  • PRESUMED INNOCENT — Another film where Harrison Ford is accused of murdering someone, this time a mistress. As legal thrillers go, it’s dumb but entertaining. Bonnie Bedelia is electrifying as Ford’s wife.

Wanting:

Another one filed under the Wanted-and-Acquired category: these reusable travel toiletry bottles with custom labels.

Listening:

This cover of Eve6’s “Inside Out” — AKA the heart in a blender song — done in the style of the B-52s, by the band the B-69s.

And Kirby:

Who do you think was happier to see the other after nearly a week apart?

Well, Jess, of course. Kirby don’t got no eyes. But Kirby definitely was the happiest to smell and hear his mom.

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Sites for Sore Eyes

Once upon a time, I built websites.

I loved doing it, in fact. I’ve been building websites since the end of the last millennium. My first two sites were built while I was in high school. The first was Elephantitic Monkey, followed by Stranded on the Edge of Infinity. Both served the same purposes:

  1. I wanted a forum for inflicting my ranting, bad opinions upon the world. Let’s just say that an insecure 17 or 18-year-old who smugly believes they are smarter than everyone else in the room, and who thinks they have a gift for being edgy-funny, should probably not have a bully pulpit. If teenage me had possessed a smartphone and a 5G connection, I would have been an absolute menace.
  2. They were places where I could hang out with my friends, both offline and online. We had writers, artists, monthly columnists, and a message board. The weird little communities that sprung up were my favorite thing about sites.

Elephantitic Monkey was an obnoxiously colorful little site. Its logo was an MS Paint image of a monkey carting around its cartoonishly large testicles in a wheelbarrow. It was wonderful and still fills me with delight. I searched through my 25 years of archives and was actually able to find it. I may be a digital hoarder, but I am at least an organized one.

Great, now this post is NSFW.

Stranded on the Edge of Infinity was a much more emo-looking site. I designed its logo myself with some image editing software that I probably acquired through extralegal means. Of the two sites, Stranded is the less interesting to me. I’m pretty sure at the time I wasn’t very happy and was also going through a self-serious phase, none of which ages well.

Both sites were created using the late, lamented Yahoo Geocities PageBuilder. It was a great tool for a teenage novice looking to infect the internet in 1999. It was also an absolute bastard to update a lot of pages at one time. So, these sites were eventually retired, and I moved onto a parallel pursuit, one whose sobriquet had been coined but was not yet in wide use.

I’m talking about blogging.

I built the first iteration of JOSH BALES dot NET back in 2001. I bought the joshbales.net domain for 15 bucks, found a cheap web host, and I was ready to go.

I taught myself HTML, CSS, and a little PHP by studying the underlying code of blogs I liked and reverse-engineering them. I got pretty good at doing a full visual refresh about once a year. I could spend hours staring at HTML code, playing with CSS, making them do what I wanted, and barely notice the passing of time. It was so much fun, and so rewarding to see the finished product. I did 11 or 12 redesigns before doing so became, first, time prohibitive — I was working full time and also had a life! — and second, became ridiculously hard to do from a technical perspective. Blogging software like WordPress, which this site uses, has evolved over the years and has some cool functionality, but it’s conversely made it harder for an amateur like me to keep up. Now I use premade themes with minimal customizability. It’s a little less fun, but it’s much easier and allows me to use my limited free time for other pursuits, like lecturing myself about how I really should be writing.

Have I been blogging for over 20 years? Yes. Do I still have those archives? I do. Will I ever add them to the current archives, which only go back to 2015? Absolutely not. The thought of anyone today reading what Younger Josh wrote is almost enough to give me the cold sweats. They’re not as bad as the stuff that was on Elephantic Monkey or Stranded, but they’re still, at best, very cringe.

Anyhow, thanks for reading my meandering TED Talk.

‡

What initially sparked this crawl down memory lane is that I was thinking it’s been a minute since this site has had a visual refresh. Black/white/gray as a color scheme is still very much me, and it never really falls out of style, but I’m tired of it. It could be the February-in-Ohio blues talking, but I want to inject a little more color, a little more warmth into the design. That’s right — it’s makeover time.

If anyone reading this designs WordPress themes and is interested in doing a custom job, shoot me an email or DM me on social with your rates and some work you’ve done.

‡

Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

I’ve been watching more movies and writing the last couple of weeks, so my reading has slowed down a bit. Currently in the middle of THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. What I love about Moreno-Garcia’s books is that she is constantly switching genres. MOREAU is a historical sci-fi. The book before this one — the excellent VELVET WAS THE NIGHT — is a 1970s-set Mexican noir. My favorite of her books — THE GODS OF JADE AND SHADOW — is a sort of fairy tale set in the Jazz Age and follows a young woman and a Mayan god of death having an adventure across Mexico.

Watching:

Jess and I are working our way through POKER FACE on Peacock. We’re a few episodes in, and it is quite good. Each episode is its own separate case-of-the-week, so you don’t necessarily need to watch them in order. There is an overall connecting story always in the background — and occasionally the foreground — so it might be more enjoyable to watch it from the beginning. From Rian Johnson, who can do no wrong when it comes to murder-mysteries, and starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie, who is essentially a human lie detector. I have read that the format of this show is modeled after COLUMBO, wherein we see the murder take place at the beginning of the episode, thus letting the viewer already know the identity of the malefactor, and then watch Charlie figure it out. Lyonne is so much fun to watch as Charlie. I hope we will be able to spend many more seasons with her.

For the last few years, a comrade and I have been working our way through the FAST & FURIOUS series. This is my second time watching most of them, his first. Last weekend we watched FAST FIVE, which is probably the best entry in this dumb, ridiculously over-the-top, fun franchise. TOKYO DRIFT still has my heart, though.

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS, from the filmmakers who brought us NAPOLEON DYNAMITE. A kid attends a fantasy writer’s camp where he learns his novel idea has been stolen by a published but struggling author. That’s the general plot, but it doesn’t do the film justice. I saw this when it came out 15 years ago and loved it. Hadn’t seen it since, though I’ve been talking about rewatching it for years. It was as delightful as I remembered, and my comrade and I were laughing very loudly throughout most of the movie. Then a really weird thing happened near the end: the main character casually drops a transphobic slur. Bear in mind, the film’s tone and sense of humor up to this point have been gentle and goofy — then out of nowhere comes a wholly unnecessary slur. Ripped me completely out of the movie. I know cultural landscapes change and some will argue that you shouldn’t judge a piece of past art by today’s moral standards, but a) this movie came out in 2009, which wasn’t that long ago, and b) the rights of trans people everywhere right now are under extreme attack from all sides, so no. It wasn’t acceptable then, and it isn’t acceptable now. Incredibly disappointing for an otherwise brilliant movie.

Wanting:

This USCSS Nostromo hat — which I already bought in the days since I started writing this post. I’m going to San Diego at the end of the month, and this will be my travel hat.

Advising:

Here’s a tip on how to prepare for your annual performance review.

Listening:

GENTLEMEN BRONCOS did have a fantastic soundtrack, including some songs by 1990’s New Age artist Ray Lynch, which really fit the weird story-in-the-movie parts quite perfectly. Lynch’s album DEEP BREAKFAST also makes for excellent background music while writing. Here’s “The Oh of Pleasure”:

And Kirby:

Two full body shakes in the morning and this guy is ready to tackle the world (breakfast).

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Take My Hand as the Sun Descends

The other day, I ran downstairs in between meetings to reheat a cup of coffee, for probably the fifth time. I was staring at the microwave, watching the timer count down from 2 minutes 30 seconds (our microwave is very tired, and things take longer), absently humming a song from A GOOFY MOVIE, and I came to a strange realization.

I was happy.

Not like, insanely happy, but more the content variety. Things were good, and I felt like I could breathe, and I was looking forward to a few things. Then the microwave dinged, I went back to work, and didn’t think much about it the rest of the day.

I’ve been ruminating on that feeling of happiness that stood out to me like a flame in a cave, plus a few other similar but different moments that have happened recently, and I realized it all ties into a larger theme I’ve noticed. 2023 feels different than the last several years.

And like the fine folks at Arby’s once noted — different is good.

I sat down and tried to articulate why exactly this year feels different than the years that preceded it. Could it be that I am no longer:

  • Having to deal with the day-to-day reality of watching an idiot, sociopathic traitor try to Make Fascism Work Again, and failing only because he and his merry band of losers were just so goddamn inept
  • Watching a global pandemic kills millions, and gives 10-30% of those who survive long-lasting health problems that may also kill them
  • Wondering if said pandemic is going to kill the people in my life that I love
  • Just kidding, those last two are still active events; I’ve just done the best that I can to protect myself and take precautions where I can, and am otherwise letting go of the worries
  • Jealously watching millions just go about their lives like we aren’t in a pandemic while I go full recluse to do my part to end the pandemic and protect my loved ones
  • Exhausted every moment of every day
  • Actively worrying about a very sick or dying dog, and the associated caregiving and vet bills that resemble a mortgage on a nice house
  • Not knowing the city that I will be living in in six months
  • Wondering when the vault wherein I’ve been bottling up my feelings my entire adult life is going to become so densely packed that it just collapses into a black hole

Some of these things aren’t suddenly new and magically different this year. Despite his best efforts, the traitor Donald Trump has been out of office for two years now. But it feels like he’s exerting less influence on the Republican Party than he once did. So that’s allowed some relief to gradually leach into my soul. Regarding the pandemic: like I noted above, it’s still happening, still flourishing. But aside from still doing what I can to do my part, I am mentally moving on. Not saying that is the right or smart thing to do, but it’s happening.

Those things aside, the biggest reason that 2023 feels different to me — is, well, me. As our lord and savior Taylor Swift might put it:

Like I said in my ADHD post, I feel more like me than I have in a long time. I credit therapy and putting in the work to get my shit sorted, plus drugs (the good kind) for a lot of it. These things have better enabled me to make a concerted effort to get out of the house and do the things I want to do and see people I want to see. And just as importantly, if not more so — to say “no” to things I don’t want to do and not feel guilty about it. It’s all given me space to flip my own personal reset switch; to think about who I want to be and work to get there.

If you’re rolling your eyes right now, or thinking “oh god Josh has gone woo-woo-y, is he going to find Jesus next” — I get it. Doesn’t change anything for me, but I get it. I am comfortable with sounding a little woo-y. And no, Jesus seems like a cool dude, but I am not going to start subscribing to his newsletter any time soon.

So: I have no doubt that 2023 will have its troubles, because that’s life, and also because we’re all so #blessed to be “living in interesting times.” But I have a confidence now — one I’m not sure I’ve ever really possessed — that I will get through them, and things will be fine.

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Last week I shared a pretty personal look into my experience with ADHD. I received a surprising amount of feedback, all of it nice, so thanks to those who reached out and said something. If this blog feels more personal now than it used to, that’s because it is, and it’s been an active choice. My hope is that talking about some of the things I’ve been going through might help others. And if not, hopefully some of it will make you smile, perhaps even chortle. I’m not expecting guffaws, though. I’m not that kind of funny.

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Here’s what I’ve been up to this week.

Reading:

It took me a solid fifty pages to get into THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, but I’m glad I picked it up again. The majority of Stephen Graham Jones’s novel is set on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, and the main protagonists are members of the Blackfeet tribe who were friends who Made A Big Oops as kids, and are being hunted down later in life by the vengeful spirit of an Elk. I don’t read a lot of horror fiction, and I rarely read anything so firmly rooted in indigenous American culture in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative (that’s a critique on me). THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS is a wonderful example of both.

Brainiac on life after Tim Taylor: ‘He used to walk offstage with bruises in the shape of his effects pedals’: a fun if bittersweet interview with the surviving members of Brainiac about Tim Taylor, the band’s breakup after his tragic death in 1997, and their recent reunion.

Watching:

DEEP WATER. On paper, this film had all the ingredients for being right up my alley: an erotic thriller starring Ana de Armas (loved her in KNIVES OUT) and Ben Affleck (he was the bomb in PHANTOMS, yo) and, and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel (who also wrote CAROL/THE PRICE OF SALT, a novel I recently raved about) — but the way the ingredients came together, the recipe if you will, was not great, and produced a meal that was lacking in flavor. (Alright, I’m done with the awkward cooking metaphor.) This is a movie that wants you to think the main characters are clever, but they all make idiotic decisions that a person who is not a character in a movie would never make. Every movie has some of that, sure, but poor writing will derail a thriller or mystery so fast. Don’t get me wrong, DEEP WATER is an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, but a modern classic this ain’t. Mostly, it made me want to go watch another Ben Affleck erotic thriller: GONE GIRL. It’s a much, much better film and would make an excellent palate cleanser (sorry).

Wanting:

This Rymek Classic Mechanical Keyboard. Do I need it? Absolutely not. I have a great Bluetooth keyboard that let’s me easily switch between multiple computers. Am I going to lust after it anyways? 100%, yes.

Advising:

Over on Twitter, I occasionally share helpful career advice.

Listening:

It’s interesting to me to discover where one has cultural gaps in music pop culture. Things, for various reasons, we just… missed. One cultural gap I have, when it comes to music, is that I am not terribly familiar with the works of Patti Smith. This is something I’ve been enjoying remedying of late. Like this live version of “Because the Night,” which I very much dig.

And Kirby:

Featuring his dump truck derriere.

Josh Bales2 Comments

On Inattention and Teleportation

This past week I marked 30 days of being on Adderall. I had my one-month check-in with my doctor, and we determined that we’re going to keep me on it.

But Josh, you say. Adderall is for people with ADHD. You don’t have ADHD — do you?

I do, gentle reader. A doctor on the internet told me so.

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I’ve always associated ADHD with hyperactivity; you know, the stereotype of the kid who can’t sit still, is impulsive, gets easily distracted. It wasn’t until talking with my therapist and sharing with him some of the things I struggle with now, and have always struggled with, that I learned there is a form of ADHD where hyperactivity doesn’t present — the inattentive type. He encouraged me to get tested. When I got home, I did some reading on the subject, and well… let’s just say I felt seen.

The nine symptoms of the inattentive type of ADHD, according to the Cleveland Clinic, are:

  1. Often has trouble staying focused on tasks at work, home or play.
  2. Frequently does not pay close attention to details or makes careless mistakes at work or while doing other tasks.
  3. Often has trouble organizing tasks or activities (misses deadlines, disorganized work).
  4. Is easily distracted.
  5. Frequently does not follow through on instructions or fails to complete work assignments, chores or other activities.
  6. Often forgets doing routine chores (like paying bills, returning phone calls, keeping appointments).
  7. Avoids tasks that require long periods of mental focus (preparing reports, filling out forms).
  8. Often loses items needed to complete tasks or activities.
  9. Does not appear to be listening even when spoken to directly.

2, 3, 6, and 8 haven’t presented much of a problem in my adult life (at least the last decade or so). I am good at my job, and it would be hard to be good at my job if I consistently struggled with these things. The other five, though? Oh yeah.

Apparently, people who discover as an adult that they have the inattentive type of ADHD, probably also had it when they were younger; however, because the hyperactivity element wasn’t present, it went undiagnosed. This tracks for me personally because when I was a kid, I struggled mightily in school with paying attention, completing assignments, forgetting things, losing things, etc. In fact, it’s a piece of family lore that one of my elementary school teachers once told my parents that I reminded her of “a little absentminded professor.”

Artist’s rendering of the writer as a child.

My therapist suggested an online ADHD treatment provider, which sounded like a gray market solution to me. Was this going to be the amphetamine equivalent of pill mill, passing out pills to anyone who’s ever been too lazy to do a chore? I wasn’t opposed to such a thing, but I really wasn’t on getting scammed. Then my primary care doctor said he’d heard of the provider and felt it was reputable enough, so it seemed worth a roll of the dice. I signed up, took a looong ADHD assessment, and a week later had a telehealth visit with a clinician. She was lovely and diagnosed me with… ADHD, inattentive type in adults. To help manage things, I was prescribed a relatively low dose of Adderall.

I won’t lie: it was a relief to have my concerns validated my a medical professional, even if she is from the internet.

Nothing about the experience felt shady, which, if I’m being honest, was a little disappointing. I can appreciate and will occasionally even welcome an element of shadiness and disreputability in an experience — but from a health and well-being perspective, above-board and respectable are probably good things.

So how am I feeling after 30 days of amphetamines? Pretty fucking great, actually. I won’t pretend it’s been as lifechanging as when I started taking medication to help manage my ulcerative colitis several years ago, but I’ve noticed a lot of improvements. I feel sharper. My memory is better. I am able to pay closer attention to someone when they’re talking to me. My ability to focus is better, which as a writer has been immensely beneficial. The biggest change I’ve noticed is also one I wasn’t expecting: my fatigue has finally — finally — subsided. I can at last get through a workday without having to take a nap during lunch and after work, something I’ve been doing consistently for the last year. Even with those naps, I would still feel exhausted all the time. The whole thing was impacting my ability to do my job well, or at least that’s how it felt to me.

In general, I am just feeling more like… me than I have in a long time.

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Here’s what I’ve been up to the past week. Spoiler alert: it’s mostly involved books.

Reading:

I have continued on the JUMPER train and read the next three books in the series, REFLEX, IMPULSE, and EXO.

I haven’t read REFLEX since it first came out nearly twenty years ago. It was good, but I’m reminded why I haven’t ever reread it, especially since I love the other books in the series so much (and author Steven Gould’s books in general). One of the two main plot threads involves Davy, the protagonist from JUMPER, being imprisoned for pretty much the entire book. It’s interesting, sure, and Gould does a wonderful job at thinking through all the ways one might imprison a teleporter. But being stuck with Davy while he is methodically tortured and subjugated for half a book gets a little bleak, and eventually becomes tedious. The other main plot thread involves Millie, Davy’s wife, tracking him down while avoiding the bad guys, and eventually pulling off a rescue. Millie is just as engaging a protagonist as Davy, if not moreso, and it is ultimately her narrative that got me through the book.

IMPULSE is set 15 years or so after REFLEX, and focuses on Millie and Davy’s teenage daughter, Cent. This one is just as good as JUMPER, and Gould begins to do interesting things with the concept of teleportation and extrapolating what else one might be able to do with the ability. EXO, book four, takes the extrapolation even further and is basically JUMPER… IN SPAAAAACE.

I love this series so much.

Wanting:

The Folio Society editions of JURASSIC PARK and THE LOST WORLD. [Insert drooling emoji]

Watching:

Since I’ve spent most of my free time this week reading, I have watched zero tv. Didn’t even turn it on, in fact. It’s been nice.

Listening

The new Miley Cyrus song is a mellow bop, and I am here for it.

And Kirby:

This is one of my favorite photos of Kirby. This little dude totally doesn’t have FOMO.

[Deckard voice] ENHANCE

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