Tag: half-penny thoughts

  • Half-penny thoughts — 29jul26

    Ever get that whole, “oh, piss on it all” moods?

    No angry so much as just exhausted by trying to live in a world that doesn’t seem to much care for you or what you do? A world that insists you stay in your place at the margins because your clockwork is not in full synchronization with all the other Barbie and Ken influencers that get paid to try to turn us into a commercial product (or, at least, someone who endlessly consumes)?

    Or, maybe just weary at being the only person who believes in holding doors open for another person (regardless of gender), or letting a car merge ahead of you in rush hour traffic (typically to get the bird flipped at you because you slowed down to do so)?

    Or maybe trying to do something other than what a prompt into an AI chatbox can do: music, writing, art, opinion, philosophy, (or, I don’t know, make the sparkliest rhinestone jacket anyone has ever rhinestoned), what have you — only to see people cheer on AI slop or write a “roses are red, violets are…” composition while you are greeted with crickets? And a jacket Liberace would have envied.

    Or where someone says “It’s been a while since we spoke,” acting as if it was more like “last winter”, but was closer to 20 years? And then thinking it will be as if it were last winter indeed, when you know for a near fact that you might not speak for another 10 years after they satisfy their need to say they kept in touch, or discover that you can’t go back after 20 years with the click of twin ruby slippers and chant, “there’s no place like home”.

    You get a choice most of the time: take one pill to buy into the delusion and conform. Or take the other pill and stay beyond the pale.

    Looking at one hand, then the other. Pausing. Contemplating. Navel gazing. Philosophizing…

    Eh, fuck ’em. Toss both pills over the palings, ignore everything and walk the thin, liminal places they ignore. Piss on it all.

  • Half-penny thoughts — 20jul26

    Giving name to a musical project should be easy, right?

    No. It never is.

    It’s worse than naming a character in your story. Or a fictional place.

    Everyone should be named Bruce and Sheila, and everyone should live on Main Street in Greenville. Sometimes I even write stories with placeholders like that.

    See how simple that was?

    But if I want to start a musical project… Eeesh. All the good ideas are taken.

    I swear this is the absolute truth.

    I bet there’s even a band named “Bruce and Sheila” (google tells me there are gospel groups performing under that name — several of them, in fact — so there goes that idear).

    If you were starting a band that did coldwave/darkwave music, what would you call it? Be silly. Be creative. Be deadpan serious. I honestly want to see your ideas below. It could be educational. I’ll even give you kickbacks after my first half-million if I use it.

    I’m sure Greenville is probably taken and isn’t all that coldwave, so don’t suggest it, please.

  • Half-penny dreadful, erm… thoughts — 16jun26

    I’m being abandoned with the cats like I am every summer — this is but the first family trip of two planned events. I get to scoop cat litter while kids scoop up more stuff they don’t really need. But the same could be said for the new kittens, although I am being made to say they are everybody’s kittens.

    Who gets to stay home with them while everyone vacays? Right. My kittens.

    Anyway, on Sunday next week, I get to put on my little witchy-dress and dance out under a solstice moon (although, sadly, not a Strawberry Solstice Moon) all by my lonesome. Not skyclad. There’s been restraining orders issued against that.

    If you had a day and evenings completely to yourself (and the resident clowder), what might you do if weather was not being cooperative for dancing in a little witchy-dress? Or the neighbors call the police on you? AGAIN!?!

    Unwitchy-dress dancing is welcome too. Dancing can be omitted if the idea is that I watch some witchy romcom instead. Oh! We can have a streaming party!

    Or, maybe — I should not wake up at 2.30 in the morning from nightmares and, if I do, go back to sleep even if my brain is “noping” that idea.

    It’s getting punchy over here.

  • Half-penny thoughts — 13jun26

    I was joking around with my twin daughters last night about music and starting up a band (one more than a passable singer, the other plays flute and piano). They are toying around with starting up a cover band that does 80s songs in their own style and with their own instrumentation and in the middle of the discussion I smacked my forehead and cussed.

    “Total missed opportunity,” I said. “I wish I would have thought about it when I was playing with various bands when I was younger.”

    “What?” they asked, in unison.

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  • Half-penny thoughts — 12jun26

    You know how it is when you are looking for something and you cannot seem to find it no matter how hard you try and then you stop looking for it and it suddenly appears?

    Maybe it is an object you lost.

    Maybe it is a social thing, like a new beau.

    Maybe it is a word on the tip of your tongue.

    Or a song you are trying to recall.

    You turn around and see it, whatever it is. You are in the shower and suddenly the fragment becomes whole. You sit in a cafe and a stranger asks if you have a piece of paper to spare.

    When we are no longer looking, it seems we find what we are looking for.

    Or maybe it is just me.

    Oh! Butterflies!

  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 05jun26

    For better or worse, the age of the internet has resulted in a homogenization of our lives. It has blurred boundaries in ways never before possible. Counter-culture is now the performative norm. Punk is dead; long live punk.

    It is tempting to put a sandal on one’s head in the way of Jōshū and then just leave the courtyard. Better yet would be if we could put the courtyard on our head and leave the walking to the sandal while we talk a bit about mū with a dog.

    If the normal position is resistance to authority to the point of mediocrity, there is little left to rebel against.

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  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 10apr26

    This morning, I asked Claude to provide a general evaluation of the poetry on this site, mostly for shits and giggles. Sometimes I feel I am too close to my own poetry to critically evaluate what I write, so I felt it would be helpful to get the opinion from “someone” without a stake in providing me feedback — not cog greasing or a sense of friendly obligation to make me happy. [Note: Claude was not informed that I am the author of this site, so it has no reason to lean into saying nice things to me about my poetry.]

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  • Half-penny thoughts — 06apr26

    Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

    A little bit of venting this Monday morning. If you are not into health-related posts or venting in general, you probably can skip this post.

    About twenty years ago, I went to a general practitioner with an earnest complaint about some generalized pain I was experiencing that I couldn’t explain. It was sometimes in my joints, and sometimes muscular. Sometimes both. I asked what it might be, acknowledging that it might have some of the source being in arthritis. I also suggested that because my mother had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, that it might be a factor in my increasing frequency of inexplicable pain.

    She laughed out loud at my suggestion. And I mean, nothing held back at all.

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  • Half-Penny Thoughts — 23mar26

    I’ll have to admit that I am mighty surprised by the lack of discoverable serialized fiction via WordPress Reader. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t exist, but either WordPress Reader doesn’t recognize the term, people don’t use “serialized fiction” (or variations of it) for tags or categories, or there are just not that many folks publishing such things that are connected to WordPress.

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  • Half-penny Thoughts — 09mar25

    Photo by Bharath Kumar on Unsplash

    As I delving back into the habit of writing prose versus my habit in recent years of writing almost exclusively poetry, I’m tossing around several ideas to bounce around my largely empty cranium.

    Okay, it’s more like dumping a large bucket of superballs at this time.

    Or, if I’m more upfront and honest about what I’m doing, throwing the whole bunch of superballs all at once as hard as I can and see what comes out of the bouncy mess.

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