Category Archives: General

Books/Literature, General

Been a while…

…and I’m sorry for the dearth of posts for -gasp- something like a month now!

The past month has been, emotionally exhausting.

Issues regarding the collapse of Champlain Towers South -and the death, among others, of my parents- has moved to its end stages, and the family and I have been incredibly busy getting everything readied.

There are two stages to the various lawsuits: First is the value of the lost property itself. The owners and heirs of the apartments are entitled to a portion of the sale value of the property and we needed to provide paperwork verifying our status as heirs. This was known for a while now, but things need to be signed and verified nontheless.

The second part of this is the wrongful death lawsuit, which involved filling out the paperwork for the deaths of my parents along with writing testimonials of what they meant to us. We also made an appointment with the judge who is handling the whole situation and, in his courtroom last week, presented their life story and what they meant to us.

It was, to say the least, a difficult thing to do. There was no telling how it would go and how coherent we would be. This was the first time, truthfully, we expressed our feelings about our losses outside of our family and… it was tough.

Tough but, in the end, cathartic.

I was proud of my sisters and their families. I was proud of my own family. We presented our feelings and memories and I believe we did well in telling the judge who our parents were and what they meant to us as well as the unimaginable horror of this loss.

So we did it, and now we sit back and wait to see what happens.

There are those out there who have speculated all the relatives/heirs of those lost in Champlain are going to get a big payoff, as if the money somehow will justify the horror we’ve gone through.

It may be a good amount. It may indeed wind up being a very big amount.

And I just don’t know how I feel about it.

Because there doesn’t pass a moment where I think about a world where my parents are still alive and most of their possessions aren’t lost in the rubble of the collapse of Champlain Towers.

In the afterwards to my latest novel, The Ebb of Time, I wrote this:

As cliched and silly as it sounds, I urge everyone out there reading these words to take a moment of time and hug your loved ones or, if you can’t, at least reach out and tell them you love them.

Things can change dramatically from one moment to the next.

I know.

Don’t leave things unsaid and, as my father used to say, please, please enjoy your day.

I do hope everyone out there has a good day.

Books/Literature, General

This n’ that…

Been a very, very busy couple of weeks. Not only have I just finished off and released The Ebb of Time, my latest novel and that’s just the first of a seemingly endless amount of things I’ve been up to.

First, though, and I know I already posted it before, the paperback cover/backcover of The Ebb of Time.

I like it a lot!

What else has happened?

Welp, I traveled to my daughter’s new home again and spent a week getting stuff fixed up there. Getting a new home and fixing it up is serious business and my wife just spent 2 weeks -longer than she intended- dealing with the various handymen/plumbers/what-have-you.

I told my daughter before we embarked on this that she would grow to hate pretty much all the people we hire to fix things and, for the most part, that seems to have happened.

Not to everyone, though, and that was a relief.

But you get people who promise to be at the house on certain days and they don’t show… multiple times. We had one person whose company was supposed to specialize in renovating stairs and it’s safe to say the guy didn’t seem to know the first thing about his so-called business.

Thankfully, the incompetents proved the exception rather than the rule and -even more thankfully- we spotted them quick and let them go.

After returning home, I was met with another wave of stuff to do. As I’ve mentioned before, my parents perished in the collapse of Champlain Towers South. The wrongful death lawsuits are coming to their end and it was time for me to go over the paperwork needed to send in regarding this. Included in the wrongful death form was a narrative I and my sisters wrote regarding the loss of our parents and…

It’s not an easy thing to do.

Emotions run high and, soon enough, we’re going to go before the judge overseeing this case and talk about our loss. I anticipate yet another very emotional series of hours.

Anyway, for those who have picked up and read The Ebb of Time or any of the novels I’ve released, my thanks. I hope they proved entertaining and thought provoking.

General, TV

Just wanted to say…

…sorry for the dearth of posts of late.

It’s been a very busy week for me and, frankly, so many things are going on of late and so many deadlines and problems to face that it’s gotten me down.

But, I’m hoping, the worst of it may be nearly over and I will hopefully get back on track with the regular grind.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, perhaps too many times, but it’s been a rough year to say the least. In large part it’s been the tragedy of Champlain Towers South’s collapse and the loss of my parents and all the events that have followed that one. I’ve also been working hard on my latest novel and dealing with issues regarding a home fix up which have driven me to the brink of insanity.

There was a time I enjoyed watching all those HGTV shows about how they rehabilitate a home and everything seems to go so very, very well and how the biggest problem winds up being our hosts butting heads about which subway tile to use in their renovated bathroom.

These shows, and most “reality” shows, alas, present viewers with a condensed, easily digestible version of what is real.

The other day a comic book artist friend of mine presented me this video from the (yes) reality show Shark Tank and said the people presenting their book got really lucky…

After watching this piece, however, I was left with a lot of questions and some really strong doubts about the overall legitimacy of this presentation.

To begin with, it seemed not one of the panelists actually opened and looked at any of the books they were supposedly there to invest in. Further, the sales figures the creators were citing sounded rather… incredible, frankly. I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve these lofty sales numbers, but as someone with more than a cursory interest in the comic book field, it’s strange I haven’t heard about these people at all and especially given their very strong sales numbers.

Their promo video was ok, I thought, but not all that spectacular (this is, of course, a matter of personal taste and nothing more… I found the promo reel only ok) and yet based on those very few minutes these people presented their ideas they get offered $500,000?!?!

Again, at least in the above clip it seemed no one opened even one of the books. No one read any of the material within any of the books. Yet based on a sizzle promo reel and sales figures which, again, I wonder about, they were willing to drop a half a million dollars on their venture?

I dunno.

I told my friend that I suspected there was more to this story than was presented here. That the hosts had to have been more aware of what this company was doing and, at the least, someone had to have read these books.

Thus, I told my friend, it wouldn’t surprise me if this segment was totally staged, that Kevin Hart and company already had a much more solid idea of what these publishers and their books were like and this segment was more fiction than reality, that a deal was already probably made and this was a summation for the cameras of that deal.

The “story” presented in this segment is a very positive one and one always roots for creators to have success in their ventures, but like too many reality shows, I wonder where the reality actually is.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll be back ’round these parts a little bit more in the following days!

General

June 24, 2021 to June 24, 2022

Today marks the one year anniversary of a date that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It has been one year since the collapse of Champlain Towers South and the deaths of 98 residents within that building.

Among them were my parents.

There are memorials being made during this day, religious services, and general gatherings but I don’t know if I have the emotional strength to attend them.

Since the collapse of the building one year ago, I have ventured near 8777 Collins Avenue only one other time. I went to the Red Cross station at 93rd street, some six blocks north, a couple of days after the collapse to provide DNA samples via a swab. These samples were used to identify my parents’ bodies and truthfully since that time I haven’t had a desire to drive by the site either before or after the rest of the building was knocked down.

Since that day, June 26th, I haven’t passed near that area and, frankly, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to see the now empty land that once housed a building my parents, and I for near a decade, lived in. I don’t want to come face to face with what’s left of two lives I still hold so dearly and can’t believe are gone.

So I sit at home, remembering their smiles and the many times we spent together while trying to understand the unfathomable.

I spent the past year working at our family business and finishing writing my latest novel, which in many ways has been my grief therapy. I finished the actual writing of the novel a week ago and, by an odd coincidence, I strongly suspect the cover will be completed today and I should be able to start the process, on this day of all days, to upload it and perhaps even make it available… at least through Amazon Kindle.

But there will be hours I’ll be sitting around today wondering if I should go and join the other mourners. I don’t know if I have the courage to do so.

Truly, I don’t think I have that courage.

It’s been a very tough year, frankly, and I can honestly say there has been maybe one day where I’ve felt like my old self, a day where I actually felt good.

Today, I’ll have another flood of memories along with the realization of the passage of time. I will once again mourn my losses, as will my family.

But I’ll get through it.

One day at a time.

General

This n’ that

There’s been plenty of… uh… interesting news of late.

In the Ukraine, the war between Russia (or should I say Putin?) and that country rages on and… what a fucking mess.

Seriously.

There are rumors going around that Putin is ill/has cancer and one wonders if this is indeed true and that perhaps he’s got a terminal illness, if that may have been part of the idiotic impetus of his to launch this ill conceived attack.

Either way, the news coming out of the Ukraine is maddening. Cities essentially left in rubble, people dying for essentially nothing but a madman’s whim, and unimaginable tragedy.

Ukraine has held off Russia incredibly well but as time goes on, one wonders if they can sustain their defense of the country. Russia, similarly, seems to be low on soldiers as reports have surfaced that they’ve allowed people over 40 to enlist.

More worrisome are the threats Russia keeps making. Many of them, I suspect, are hollow and laughable. But Russia has nuclear arms and one has to nonetheless deal with this bully in as strong a way as possible.

*****

Ah the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp defamation trial.

It ended last week and, frankly, I was shocked by the verdict. The jury essentially found Heard had ”defamed” Johnny Depp and… I just can’t see it, frankly.

Johnny Depp’s career was already swirling the proverbial toilet well before her supposed ”defamation” of his character in the article she wrote about being an abuse victim.

Bear this in mind, folks: That’s what this entire trial was about, despite the fact that it got so out of hand with so many other things. Johnny Depp was suing Heard because he felt the editorial she wrote defamed him.

That’s it. That’s all.

One article.

This despite the fact that well before the article was written his career was essentially in the toilet and he had starred in one flop movie after the other. This despite the fact that there was ample evidence he was an in an incredible spiral involving drugs and alcohol and had become unreliable as an actor. That he wrote some truly horrendous text messages about Heard to friends. Messages that were as dark and bleak as can be. That he admitted to hitting her but now claimed he had ”blacked out” due to said drug use.

Convenient!

Was Amber Heard “abusive” to him? Quite possibly. They clearly had a very corrosive relationship but there was evidence she was trying to get him sober and, finally, simply gave up.

But, again, did she defame him with that article?

Really?

Now, her career and reputation is in the toilet, and all because -I strongly suspect- Depp and his people decided to go nuclear against her online. For a while there I couldn’t help but stumble into commentaries that were incredibly nasty and incendiary against her. I’m not the first person to wonder how many bots were hired/used to insult and, yes, defame Amber Heard through the course of this trail.

And isn’t it curious most have essentially disappeared following the verdict?

I also blame the judge for this. She allowed this trial to be televised which, given we are talking about abuse, and would involve deeply personal and embarrassing things related to not only Heard but also Depp, it shouldn’t have been presented to the public. In the end, televising the trail proved another way for those who had skin in the game to parse and rip apart any action Amber Heard took during the trail, up to and including her testimony.

Again, I don’t doubt this was a toxic relationship, but I find it incredibly difficult to accept that Amber Heard, and ONLY Amber Heard, was in the wrong here, especially given all the evidence presented against Johnny Depp in this trail. And especially given a similar trial was held in England against a newspaper and where it was found they had not defamed him when they said he was an abuser

*****

Elon Musk.

Oh, Elon Musk.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again: I have a Tesla Model 3. I recently purchased, for my wife, a Tesla Model Y.

I love both cars to death and feel they are a quantum step up from gas powered vehicles. Further, despite the many other EV models that have appeared of late, I believe at this moment in time and given their price and the wonderful Supercharger network, the Model 3 and Y are probably the best choices for EVs.

I really wish Mr. Musk would focus on the competition and try to make sure Tesla remains at the forefront of the EV revolution but it seems like he’s decided to be as out there as possible in the past few weeks.

First was his newfound ”conservative” political ideation.

Look, its fine to feel comfortable politically in one place or another. But Musk made most of his gains, and managed to get his company going, thanks to the very liberal state of California and the very liberal aid of the Obama/Biden administration. He received plenty of tax breaks and incentives to get his company moving and boy oh boy oh boy does it feel like he’s decided ”well, I got mine, screw everyone else”.

Suddenly he’s attacking ”liberal” ideology. For Mr. Musk, the timing couldn’t be worse given we’ve had the Roe v. Wade leak from the Supreme Court (I will get into that in a moment) and all the mass shootings which have resulted in the conservative ideologues doing their best to blame everything but the gun for these massacres.

It’s… all too typical, sadly.

Then there’s the whole Twitter silliness. With a great flourish Elon Musk announced he would purchase Twitter at a certain price and now he seems to be doing his best to backtrack and/or cancel those plans.

Again: You are a very busy man, Mr. Musk. You have a successful car company that has arguably shaken the entire auto industry from its internal combustion engine status quo. You have a space company that seems to be cutting edge. You even have satellites in outer space providing internet connectivity to Ukraine…

…why did you get into this Twitter mess?

I genuinely don’t understand the motivation or the end game here. Is Twitter really that important? I know many people have used it quite successfully (Donald Trump may not have become president without his ability to ”tweet”… which IMHO shows just how toxic it can be!) and Musk is among those who have used it to their advantage.

But his latest craziness is neither endearing or particularly helpful to his career and his companies.

*****

A few weeks back a shocking leak of Justice Alito’s opinion against Roe v. Wade, the decision which legalized abortion, was released. To this date, no one know who exactly leaked Alito’s first draft opinion and, tellingly, while we suspect the court will ultimately strike this very popular civil right (don’t believe me, just google it!), it doesn’t appear they have come close to figuring out who did this.

Currently, the Supreme Court’s popularity is at a low and part of the problem lies not only in this potential new ruling but because people increasingly view the Supreme Court as just another political apparatus versus the supposed ”fair umpire” that Chief Justice Roberts has tried to portray them as.

There is precedence regarding Roe v Wade, fifty years of it, and those much smarter than me who have read the Alito draft have noted some of the more specious arguments he makes to reject it.

But perhaps the very worst aspect of all this is the cool calculation made by Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, to not allow Barack Obama his choice to bring Merrick Garland into the Supreme Court and, subsequently, the speed and hypocritical efficiency these same politicians had in bringing 3 new Justices to the court under the presidency of Donald Trump.

This ensured a very right tilting court and, frankly, it seems to me we’re going to soon see a ”what goes around comes around” type of situation. If the conservative justices are so quick to strike down precedence, they need to beware that this could be a two way street.

It may take a while but once the dam is broken, the waters unleashed could wash away just about anything in its path.

If precedence no longer matters in law, then where will this lead?

General

The latest big news…

Yeah, lots of news going on and haven’t been ’round these parts for a while now.

I suppose the two biggest issues of this day are the continued fighting in the Ukraine against Russia. It’s a horrible situation initiated by a lunatic who seemed to think he could just waltz into Ukraine with his mighty army and everyone would simply give up when faced with their overwhelming might.

The reality, if it weren’t for all the lives lost and cities destroyed, would be the stuff of bitter comedy. The Russian forces have been exposed as under-trained, ignorant of what they are doing (not their fault), and brutal (very much their fault). The fact that Ukraine looks to be about to go on the offensive and is only miles from the Russian border is yet another element that almost makes you want to laugh at the ineptness of the Russian forces… but again, only if we were to ignore the rapes, murders, general war crimes, and savagery this war has created.

Oh, and you gotta love how some Russian media is mulling the use of nuclear weapons as a potentially legitimate thing going forward.

Way to make a bad situation all the worse, eh?

Speaking of which, the leak a few days ago about Supreme Court Judge Alito’s Roe v Wade ruling, effectively gutting it, has also sent out shock waves across the country.

I suppose we once again have one of those “if it weren’t so fucking terrible it would be a comedy” type situations. Love this short video, presented on twitter, from The Daily Show…

The Daily Show on Twitter: “These judges make lying fun. It’s the Black Robe Comedy Tour!

Serious shit, truthfully, yet also hilarious because it’s so fucking true as well.

Alito and his ilk, as so clearly presented above, lied their way into their Supreme Court “jobs” and now are in hiding because of the furor of this ruling, something they claimed beforehand to “respect”.

I’ve noticed that some of the more right wing elements out there, for instance, the truck drivers who were creating blockades in Washington DC, were perplexed when people shouted at them and gave them the middle finger.

“How can you be against us when we’re trying to free you?” I recall one such demonstrator stated.

It’s a delusion, truly. A feeling that you know what’s right and everyone else is going to go your way, even though you clearly don’t know what’s right and a majority of people are very much against your actions and ideas.

The anti-choice crowd doesn’t get that but let’s see what happens in the upcoming elections. Their hubris might yet be their undoing.

One hopes.

Finally, there’s the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial.

For those living in a cave, Johnny Depp’s career has really sunk in recent years, partially because he’s been in a string of absolute stinker films and because, he claims in this lawsuit, of an editorial Amber Heard wrote which talked about -without mentioning Johnny Depp by name- being in an abusive relationship.

I can’t seem to wave a dead cat around the internet without smacking into Johnny Depp fanatics who are livid about Amber Heard and demand “justice” for Johnny and damnation for her.

And… I can’t understand it.

I’m not a Amber Heard “fan”. I’m not a Johnny Depp “fan”. I’ve seen a few of the things presented in trail so far and Johnny Depp, IMHO, strikes me as a deeply vindictive man who is trying his absolute best to destroy another person, that being Amber Heard.

His career, from what I’ve read and seen, was already very much on the rocks BEFORE that 2018 editorial came out which he claims so defamed him so already I’m wondering what this whole lawsuit is about.

There were plenty of stories about him allegedly being out of control on movie sets, of allegedly consuming mass quantities of alcohol and drugs and often supposedly arriving late to work without any idea of his lines or what he was even supposed to do. Interestingly, in the trail at one point he was asked about the movies he was recently in (perhaps to get at this point I just mentioned) and he replied he had no idea of the films he had just done and couldn’t name any recent works.

Weird.

A trail in England brought by him and against a newspaper over reports of him being abusive resulted in a very clear loss for Depp and a finding by the court that he was indeed abusive and therefore the paper he was suing had not defamed him by stating this.

I can’t help but think when all is said here in this trial, we’re going to see much the same result.

Is Amber Heard a “good” person? I truly don’t know. There is some evidence, I have read, for at least one pretty gross thing she is supposed to have done on his bed… but as gross as that is, is it abusive? Depp himself, of the stand, stated that he couldn’t help but “laugh” at that.

So… ok?

Depp claims she cut/slashed his finger, but there are contemporaneous tweets and interviews where Depp himself says he did it to himself. Was he lying then and isn’t now or is he lying now and wasn’t then? What are we supposed to believe in that case?

There are those who say both of them engaged in abusive acts and its certainly possible, but I wasn’t there nor were many of them so its kinda engaging in speculation, no?

One probably should let the trail work itself out and each side present their evidence and what happens will happen, whether Depp be vindicated or not.

Having said that, one thing I already feel works very much against Depp I’ve already mentioned above: The idea that Heard’s 2018 op-ed somehow was solely responsible for his career nosedive and not the many bad movie choices he made from roughly 2012’s Dark Shadows on.

I mean, not counting that film, these are some of the major movies he has been in since 2013:

The Lone Ranger (2013, a pretty big box office flop), Transcendence (2014 another box office flop), Into the Woods (2014 ditto), Mortdecai (2015, does anyone remember this one?), Black Mass (2015), Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (2016… I suppose this one was a success, but was it in the league of the Harry Potter films in terms of box office? Also, if memory serves, he only appeared at the very end of this film in exactly one scene, no?), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017, a definite box office success but also the film where many of the stories of his alleged bad behavior on set and the need to use stand ins to get things done originated. Again, this movie was released a full year before Heard’s editorial), Murder on the Orient Express (2017, I suspect this film did well but it was a very big ensemble cast and Depp’s role was pretty small, though pivotal, as he was the murder victim), and, going into 2018, we had such minor fare as Sherlock Gnomes (a cgi animated film that I doubt many remember now), The Professor (has some decent reviews but does anyone remember this one?), and the more well-known Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (this is his last foray into the J.K. Rowling series as by this point he was indeed being viewed as toxic).

Anyway, a lesser actor may well have fallen far more quickly based on the string of unsuccessful works he was in along with the reputation -whether true or not- he had developed.

Either way, it’s in the news and a source of curiosity, certainly, if nothing much more.

General

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction…

…yet it is something scientists have pondered: Whether it is wise to send signals into outer space so that alien races might find them and therefore find us.

Again: Is that a wise thing to do?

As presented in this article by Ellie Abraham on indy100.com, some scientists feel this is not a wise thing to do…

Broadcasting Earth’s location into space could cause an alien invasion, experts warn

If you’ve followed my writings, you know about my Corrosive Knights series and, well, what its ultimately about (not SPOILERS!).

The idea of an alien race finding out about us, one optimistically hopes, would be a good thing, that we would engage with a more advanced race and together make our way into the stars.

Of course, any race that can make it to Earth would have to be a more advanced race than ours, at least at this point. The furthest we’ve made it to taking humans ”out there” is the Moon, though we have sent automated/robot vessels to other planets within our solar system, including Pluto.

So this theoretical alien race which might get our signal and therefore might come visit us, we hope, is a peaceful one…

…but…

What if it isn’t?

I know, I know… it sounds like science fiction and all, but assuming there is a race out there that hears our signal and has the means to visit us, what’s to say it isn’t a warrior race?

What’s to say it isn’t a race with bad intentions toward any other alien races?

The bottom line is… I feel this is a legitimate concern. We want to find other alien races out there. We like the idea that we’re not alone out there. But we simply have no idea what may happen if/when we do get in touch with them.

It might be a beautiful thing.

But it might be something tragic.

General

Coronavirus Diaries 25

So today a Federal Judge struck down mask mandates for travelers…

CDC Mask Mandate For Travelers Struck Down By Federal Judge

Not a terribly big shock the Florida Federal judge who issued this ruling was appointed by Donald Trump in 2020.

Here’s the thing, though: The CDC extended the mask mandate to May 3rd, a grand total of two weeks and one day from today.

Did this judge really need to wade into something that, for all we know, may be a moot point in a very short period of time?

From the article:

A Biden administration official familiar with the White House’s decision previously told CNN the goal of the extension was to gather more information and understanding of the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus. Covid-19 cases in the US are on the rise, leading universities and the City of Philadelphia to reimplement indoor mask mandates.

COVID is most dangerous, data would suggest, to those who aren’t vaccinated. Many of those who aren’t vaccinated appear to have bought into the -let me try to be diplomatic here- hot air about lost freedoms and governmental overreach and no doubt will cheer this decision, even though they might become the ones most vulnerable to the ill effects of it.

When I used to live in a very cold climate and in winter, I -and many people around me- wore scarves over their mouths to protect them from the cold.

To my mind, wearing a mask in this time of the pandemic is the same. Only instead of protecting yourself/others from the cold, you’re doing this to protect them/yourself from transmission.

Is that really such a bad thing?

The question, alas, is rhetorical at this point.

Will the Biden administration appeal the decision? I suspect they will.

What if another even worse pandemic should rear its head? Will the CDC be completely powerless to advise travelers to wear some kind of protective masks?

Stay tuned kids…

General

Coronavirus Diary 24

You know, for a while there I was feeling like maybe we were done with this.

The number of COVID cases and hospitalizations had gone down quite a bit, almost to a near negligible level. Treatments have been developed so even those knuckleheads who still refuse to get vaccinated have a better chance of surviving, provided they get to a Doctor or hospital, than those who contracted it before.

…however…

As good as most recent news is, Dr. Fauci is warning we aren’t completely done with COVID quite yet and he worries there might be a surge in cases in the next few weeks and possibly another surge come fall…

U.S. Likely To See A Surge In COVID-19 In The Fall, Dr. Fauci Says

It really sucks to read something like this because, as I said above, things seemed to be settling/slowing down regarding the virus and I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we were finally entering the end stages of this dreadful pandemic.

Of course, Dr. Fauci’s worries are, at the moment, just that and perhaps things won’t play out quite like he worries it might.

On the other hand, he is an incredibly experienced virologist and, despite how hard the right tries to put his opinions down, has proven time and again to have a great grasp of how this pandemic has progressed. Has he always been on target? No. But when he states an opinion he’s very clear it is just that and in this case… well… I feel like one should take his words and prognostications seriously.

Hopefully things don’t pass as he worries it might.

Yet there’s no harm, in my opinion, in being careful a little longer.