AfterPunk

What they share across years and disciplines is the grin. Uncharacteristically, you are off base with this essay, which is built on a false premise. Those who believe in psychic phenomena are under no obligation to prove its reality to scientists. That they attempt to do so and cooperate with laboratory ordeals devised by clever rationalists is on them. What isn’t on them is the absurdity of challenging whether or not psychic phenomena and abilities exist and if they are to be taken seriously, must be proven to exist quantitatively in a controlled experiment. Edgar Cayce is all the yes/no proof needed. The anecdotal evidence in support of yes is incredibly vast. Incidents of amazing telepathic links between twins, mothers and children, husbands and wives are too numerous to be counted. But counting is what myopic skeptics are best at. Counting playing card IDs, counting failed attempts at directed psychic performance, and counting poseurs out of the running based on their own narrow, b...

Lucky. Not the way Woodrow felt about black suffrage. So what’s been accomplished in terms of female accomplishment in the big wide world they wanted their fare share of? Has anybody been keeping track? I have. There can be no doubt they’ve been given the opportunity to compete and succeed… How’s it working out, this drive to the top positions in the most prestigious professions? Two additional kinds of data to provide context: 1) The primacy of engineering as an American profession, responsible for the design and manufacture of everything we need to live our modern material lives (see this old post of mine from 2019,  What We Owe All Those Evil White Men ) ): 2) The full extent of the lack of female participation in the building and maintenance of the infrastructure specified in engineering blueprints, including their low participation rates as electricians (2.5%), plumbers (3.5%), automobile mechanics (2%), construction workers (14%), house painters (16%), bridge painters (13%), ...

  She’s a little thing. Center of my life. Mad at me right now. But she chose Valentine’s Day to tell me she still loves me, I can only do the same. Recently posted this about her. Never did Jump 2 or 3. Time I did. Songs will do. Guess this is Jump 2 . I left. Had to go reclaim my vanity, my lost wonderfulness. She didn’t think I needed to do that. She’d seen the inside of my big cardboard box, knew what a writer I already was. She’d also given me the biggest crowning instruction I’d ever had, ordered me to do a “Comma Seminar” for all the proofreaders at our nuclear engineering firm. An amazing experience. Snapped everything together in my head. Completed the process that had been going in my head for four years. So, of course, I abandoned her. Amazingly, she told me this again today. We were all wrong back then. I had a career after, lost it. Completely. Called her, drunk, in the middle of the night. And she was there. Still. She agreed to meet me. No more red mane. A tiny woma...

I started  a flame war with a self-declared genius named Daniel last night. He’s 50 or so. I’m 70. The word obscured by the serendipitous downward arrow in the graphic is ‘convoluted.’ He thinks I’m that. He also said (paraphrasing), I’m Faulkner to his Hemingway. Which is funny. I am but not in the way he thinks. I could help him, but by the time you’re 50, generally, you’re set. Thought he needed a lance to penetrate his shell, so he could find the next gear before he reached the terminus of the genius years, usually pegged at 35 to 55. Overdid it probably. Or did I misinterpret the “insignificant worm” reference? I actually don’t expend private communication bursts on insignificants.  He has talent. He thinks if he says it well enough, people will swoon. Every writer’s trap. We all know how to write the poetic description of a mood, a place, an emotional conviction. But is this convoluted? The thing buried deepest at Feelmalez Station in Shuteye Town 1999. No accompanying l...

  A Ghost Put to Rest at Last. When I was 13, I had a life-changing phone call I didn’t understand at the time. All these years later, I understand that it was an example of my Dad discharging his duty as a Christian father as the epistles of the Bible described it. Call this a short story. Yeah that’s the ticket. From the guy who’s on record saying all writing is fiction. All  writing is fiction . Here goes… ********** There’s no caption in the picture above. I’m not  trying to do in his reputation from this cancel-culture perspective. But he lived, he had an enormous impact on my life, and I met him face to face only one time. Here’s the picture that rattles around in my head… Still no caption. His name was Forman Acton. He has his own  Wikipedia page . He’s dead. And he put me through holy hell. NOT saying he ruined my life, or did anything untoward to me personally, put that right out of your heads. What was he then? He was proof of my Dad’s determination to do h...

  The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory She’s ba-a-ack! 20-25K years old and taking over again. Yes, I have a theory. I’ll present it in overview here, at greater length elsewhere, as a satirical fantasy rather than an academic dissertation. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue. It means I’m picking a medium more accessible than a scholarly peer-reviewed publication whose subscribers don’t even read it. It’s also more realistic than compiling footnotes from sources I’ve read and studied in some detail but don’t physically possess anymore and therefore won’t be quoting from. None of them has figured out what I’ve figured out anyway.  I’ve said before that all writing is fiction, which is also true. The ones who have the hardest time learning and understanding that are, ironically, scholars and academics. Why you can never trust what they say. The best way to read fiction is, as everyone knows, giving the writer your willing suspension of disbelief. Not that much to ask really. Understanding ...