I now emerge from the longest hibernation I've ever taken from this blog: five weeks. I'm a bit embarrassed at this level of slacking-off, but frankly, I needed the break. I've been on a kick of trying to make sure my days are continuously busy, and to a degree that is almost impressive I have succeeded. I get up, I jog, I work all day, I hit the gym or go hiking, I edit my fiction, I write, shoot, or edit my YouTube videos, I read, I watch some selected TV, and once in awhile meet up with friends, and then I collapse. Then, ten days ago, I bought a kitten. So yeah, by my standards, I've been pretty busy. But now I'm back, and I hope to -- at least -- resume once a week blogging. So in the spirit of covering some ground, here we go with another edition of As I Please.

* First, let's talk about the kitten. I named him Hilts, after Steve McQueen's character in THE GREAT ESCAPE, Capt. Virgil "The Cooler King" Hilts. Why? Because he's an escape artist, tunneler, and mischief-maker par excellence. My beloved familiar Spike, who I had for 17 years, passed away last year, and after a significant mourning period, I decided it was time for the pitter-patter of little feet. So I adopted a tiny black void with endless energy and no respect for personal space. Who needs television when you have a kitten?

* Speaking of television, I just lied to you because I am still watching it. And folks, I have finally found an 80s TV show too shitty for even my gutter tastes. As you know, I still enjoy even the so-bad-they're-good shows of my childhood, stuff like T.J. HOOKER and MATT HOUSTON. But yesterday I caught a shotgun blast from the past...AUTOMAN. This Glen Larson-produced piece of shit was supposed to cash in on the phenomenon that the movie TRON was supposed to produce among kids my age. But TRON was kind of a dud, and AUTOMAN, an absolutely ridiculous heap of trash, was like the sweepings of TRON crushed into a ball and thrown at an unsuspecting public, only to strike them in the crotch rather than the heart. Starring Desi Arnaz Jr., of all fucking people, it's the story of a nerdy LAPD cop who somehow creates an uber-powerful 3D hologram crimefighter alter ago called Automan. The two then proceed to, you know, fight crime, using Automan's ridiculously convenient and flexible super powers, which, like KITT's aftermarket add-ons in KNIGHT RIDER, just happen to be whatever the heroes need in any particular moment. Although loaded with credible actors, including guys like Patrick McNee and Robert Lansing, the show is not so-bad-it's-good, like, say, THE DUKES OF HAZZARD or THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. It's so bad it's gut-wrenching. It may in fact be the worst telveision show I have ever seen, although that title remains up for grabs. I pride myself that I can watch anything from the 80s, but this one may break me. I'm 1 1/2 episodes of a mercifully short 13 episode run, and I already want to quit. Funny thing? I thought it was garbage even at the age of eleven, and for once, my tweenage aesthetic tastes were correct.

* My reading campaign, this year's Goodreads Challenge, is going quite well. I have read five novels this year and a dozen or so nonfiction books. I'm currently working on Edmund Blundsen's UNDERTONES OF WAR. This British WW1 memoir is written in a lyrical, almost poetic style which mixes erudition, observation, wit and tragedy with considerable skill and not a little artistry. What strikes me about memoirs of WW1, however, is their similarity. Whether English or German, the themes, experiences, and even the physical sensations described are virtually the same. The experience of long-term trench warfare -- the mud, the barbed wire, the shelling, the rats and lice and rubble and corpses, the quagmires of filth, the mindless attack orders, the mismanaged raids into No Man's Land, the comic misadventures behind the lines, the sudden gas attacks, the bitterness of the troops toward their own officers, and of the officers toward their generals, the terrible food, the comradeship, the sudden deaths of close friends, the outbursts of hilarity amidst near-constant exposure to privation and terror -- is quite remarkable. Truly the Great War was a uniform experience, or as close to one as war can offfer.

* I am currently working on what I hope is the very last edit of DARK TRADE, the third CAGE LIFE novel, whose planned release date is Feb. 14, 2026. That would be the ten-year anniversary of the publication of CAGE LIFE, so I think it's fitting. I'm also doing last-minute work on SOMETHING EVIL: VOLUME I: BOOKS 1 & 2, whose release date is October 31, of this year. I have some anxiety about the release of this work. It is different from anything I have attempted and in some ways is the most naked attempt I've ever made to write a book that follows none of the rules that govern my other novels. Book 1 is a slam-bang, almost nonstop action sequence 100 pages long. Book 2, on the other hand, is mostly driven by dialogue, internal monologue, description, scene-setting, and so forth: not until the last few chapters does the action pick up again. Some readers may find the transitions too jarring, or the pace too irregular, for their personal tastes: others may not have the stomach, or the stamina, or the taste, for an epic horror novel of the style Stephen King used when he penned IT and THE STAND. What I was gunning for here, and may or may not have hit, was an immersive story that takes time to build story, characters and world. Perhaps it is simply indulgent. I don't know. But I guess I'll find out come Halloween. Trick or treat, indeed.

* I recently turned 53 years old. It's hard for me to accept. So hard that my mind is deliberately playing tricks on me. The other day I caught myself saying "forty-three" not to anyone else, but to myself, in my own thoughts: with a start I realized I left 43 in the dust a long damn time ago. Hell, when I was 43, I was living in Burbank and working full time in the videogames industry. My usual commute was a slog through Toluca Lake and Hollywood to Mid-City West, specificially the Farmer's Market, where I spent countless hours at a now-defunct trailer house called The Ant Farm. The difference in my life between then and now is not just years: it is light-years, and it makes me wonder what the future has in store. Certainly my life is a bit of a Mexican jumping bean, and I never know where I'm going to land.

* Pierre Poilievre won his riding in the last round of local elections in Canada, in a place called Battle River Crowfoot. This is potentially very significant, because Poilievre could have, and almost certainly should have, become Canada's Prime Minister earlier this year. Only Trump's idiotic decision to pick a fight with Canada on trade and immigration doomed what should have been a sure-fire victory for Conservatives up north. I'm not a conservative politically, but "conservative" in Canada means something rather different than it does in the States, just as "liberal" up there means something quite completely different than it does here, too. I truly believed that Poilievre represented Canada's last chance to avoid the fate of the U.K. by undoing the devil's work of Justin Trudeau, and that the election of Mark Carney sealed Canada's doom -- it's literal end as a functioning nation-state with an idenity and a culture and a future. I still believe it, but so long as Poilievre remains in politics, there's at least a small chance he can get into actual power, and if he can pull this off in, say, the next five years, before the damage is finally irreversible (if it isn't already), then Canada still has a chance. Because believe me, folks, if that battle up north is lost, then the States aren't terribly far behind. The forces that want to reduce sovereign nations to mere units in a global economy, to open-bordered characterless waystations where immigrant workers sluice in and out in massive numbers like transient wage-slaves, where rental and housing and job markets and health care systems are destroyed, where culture and heritage are wiped away, where freedom disappears under layers and layers of red tape, have a champion in Mark Carney. They have an enemy in Pierre Poilievre.

* In my recent attempt to rewatch as much of LAW & ORDER as I want to before I lose interest in the show itself, I was deeply affected by a scene at the beginning of the second season when Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth) is forced to see a psychiatrist following the murder of his partner. The doctor is explaining the stages of grief to him, and he says, "Max is dead. I accept that. But part of me will never accept it. Y'know?" There is something about Noth's unguarded delivery that cuts me deeply. His character, a blunt, insensitive, tactless, tough homicide detective, is not the sort to admit any human emotions other than the approved one for cops -- anger. But when he looks at the shrink and says: "....y'know?" My heart just breaks. It is a genuine attempt of a man who doesn't know how to take off his armor and show vulnerability to do just exactly that: not because he feels compelled to, or because he's trying to impress the woman with his sensitivity, but because he needs to do it. The pain inside of him must be released. It's a scene I can relate to far more deeply than I wish. During the last year of my time in victim advocacy for the district attorney's office, I felt as if I were living in a juxtaposition. On the one hand my iron determination to remain in harness until I dropped, because doing the job was a form of penance for a life of selfishness and shallow pleasures; and on the other, an awareness that I was disintegrating emotionally, flaking away at the edges while burning to a cinder within. In a very real sense I was grieving for myself, just as Logan was grieving for his partner. Grieving, as it were, for the man I used to be, who needed to be buried but did not want to be buried, and who I will always miss. I accept that he is gone. But part of me will never accept it.

Y'know?