Ecce Sigum

Immanentize the Empathy

Tag: Tom Waits

Weekly Round-up, April 18, 2026

John Winkelman

The Iran war continues, with Operation Epstein racking up loss after loss, all while the Epstein-in-Chief Donald Trump tries to spin the self-inflicted disaster as a win. His posts in Truth Social show that he is sunsetting, and the syphilitic dementia is growing worse every day.

And President Epstein’s supporters – which includes every Republican voter at all levels of government and society – believe every word he posts on Truth Social. They eat that shit up. They are coprophages of the soul. And I say Every Republican, because at this point there is no meaningful difference between hardcore MAGA lickspittles and the most detached, disaffected, uninterested voter who only supported the Republican school board member because he was a friend. Once infected with fascism, there is no path to redemption.

The negative effects of the Trump/Epstein regime will haunt our country for the next century. There are many paths forward out of this mess, but few of them will carry any kind of significant improvement. In order for things to actually get better, first we would need to remove from power everyone who had a hand in making things worse. But we do not have the moral or political will to purge the world of the Epstein class, because there is too much money to be made by letting them stay in power.

Reading

In my few spare moments I have started reading Quiet Woman, a collection of poetry by Katie Kalisz. These are some seriously good poems.

Writing

As usual, nothing much to report here, unless React code counts as “writing.”

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Precursors, Empire
Setting: Bar
Genre: Weird Fiction

Listening

Massive Attack and Tom Waits, “Boots on the Ground”.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, December 14, 2024

John Winkelman

[The Red Snapper from MeXo.]

As the year winds down the panicked higher-ups at work are distributing the stress to their underlings, which includes Yours Truly. Therefore I have put in some exceptionally long hours this week which has left little time for anything else. I did manage to take my partner out for a nice dinner at MeXo. Highly recommended. Particularly the seafood.

Reading

I am still in the first hundred pages of Doctor Zhivago. I had hoped to be at least halfway through by now, but the day job has not left much time or mental energy for reading works which require focus and concentration.

Writing

Ha!

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Kaiju, Reincarnation
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: Folk Tale

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, August 10, 2024

John Winkelman

[A recently-hatched cicada adult, drying out before its first flight.]

This was another busy week and most of my mental capacity was occupied by the current chaos of American politics, as well as stories coming out of the Olympics, though I have yet to see any actual events. I will need to look for recordings when my time frees up. So somewhere around summer 2035.

Reading

I am bouncing back and forth between three books – Jim Harrison‘s Farmer (which I finished yesterday), Vanessa Angelica Villarreal‘s Magical/Realism, and Maurizio Lazzarato‘s Capital Hates Everyone. All are good, and enough different from one another that I can read them all without them colliding in the extremely narrow space of my attention span and mental capacity.

Writing

Journaling and poetry seem to be the mood of this past week. Completed a lot of the former and started a few of the latter.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Language
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Weird Fiction

Listening

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, June 22, 2024

John Winkelman

[A Green Darner dragonfly, soaking up the sunlight on our front steps.]

For this whole past week, the daytime temperatures were at or above 90°F. And at night the air seldom dropped below the mid-70s, and that usually around dawn. The humidity has been 80% or above, so even with the cooler temperatures and windows open, the air was sticky.

So I haven’t had a lot of sleep this week.

But insomnia has benefits. I have managed to read a little more, and some of the knots in my muscles have relaxed in the constant, sauna-like air.

Reading

I finished Eat Your Mind, the Kathy Acker biography, and it was most excellent. I also finished Glen Cook’s novel The White Rose, and am now reading Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography. I have put Capital Hates Everyone on hold until the air cools off and my brain can handle works of that complexity.

Writing

I’m doing some world building for my NaNoWriMo novel-in-progress Cacophonous, and have identified a place where it could be tied into the work from the previous NaNoWriMos, Up the River to the Mountain and its sequel Racing the Flood Down to the Sea. While the “vibe”, characters, and approach to storytelling are different, they could all take place in the same universe, and indeed, in the same city, and using some ideas from the earlier stories could plug up some potential logical holes in the world building for the current story. So I feel tentatively optimistic that I can knock out a new first draft by the end of the year. Or earlier, if I get laid off from my job, which is always a possibility.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Music
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Utopian

Listening

After a week of 90°F and above, I’m happy that ’tain’t no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.

Interesting Links

 

Weekly Round-up, March 2, 2024

John Winkelman

Life is still busy, leaving little time for relaxing and sinking into the state of mind where reading and writing is frictionless. Since the previous update we had a record-breaking warm day, then a sudden drop in temperature which broke the record for the largest 24-hour drop in temperature (50+ degrees F). The maple trees started budding a week ago, and spring peepers are making their little noises in the swamps, and mosquitoes are beginning to swarm around porch lights. And all this in February.

This reminds me somewhat of the previous Year of the Dragon in 2012, when the outside temperature reached almost 80° on St Patrick’s Day. That’s only a couple of weeks from now, and the odds of something like that are looking better every day.

Reading

Currently reading Babel, by R.F. Kuang.

Writing

I am attempting to re-start a writing exercise I practices before the COVID lockdowns – on those days I walk to work, pay attention to the small details of the world, and when I get to work, jot down five things which captured my attention. So far I have managed to do that exactly once. It’s been a busy year. But I am adjusting.

This Week’s Writing Prompt

Subject: Fae, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Ship
Genre: War

Listening

“Eyeball Kid” is on Tom Waits‘ 1999 album Mule Variations. I listened to this a lot when I worked at Cybernet Engineering, my first “real” web development job, and the second of several terrible web developments jobs. It’s a fantastic album and well worth a listen, particularly when laboring under a bout of existential angst.

I know you can’t speak,
I know you can’t sign;
So cry right here on the dotted line.

Interesting Links