MJ's Journal

28 years ago my grandmother died. In the years since I've often recounted that day, and hearing for the first time the desperate, primal wailing of a son who just found his mother on the floor as my uncle beat our door in the morning, screaming and inconsolable. I want to spend this anniversary remembering who she was, or at least who she was to me . Above all, Ortha Marie Chapman Kotlarz was as faithful a woman of God as she knew how to be. When we moved to Blackbottom in 1995, we all stayed in the house on 49th Street with her and her husband, who (whom? Whomst even knows anymore) we called Poppy and whose given name was Ken, for a couple weeks and my mom found soon that the house she grew up in on 47th Street was available for rent. And the landlord, Roger, was a legitimately kind man, and as such had no business being a landlord. I hope all his dreams came true. We'd have been homeless for most of my childhood if not for that man's kindness, and if you know anything abo...

i have a reminder in my phone to give my oldest her meds. every night at 10pm. i'll see it pop up in about half an hour. she doesn't live with us anymore and i hope she's doing okay. she lives with her bio dad in ashland. he's a good guy and he's doing the best he knows how to do. but she's struggling. and i'm glad i have the reminder. i'm not one to pray, but it reminds me every night to think about her and wish her happy and safe. i think it's ultimately the same thing. if nothing else, the 'nothing' i'm putting out into the universe for her is a reminder she is loved, even if I am terrible at it. Nikki is a collection of saints in the body of a ridiculously hot woman, and she got the kids ready for Picture Day at school while I slept in an extra fifteen minutes. They look amazing, of course, and Nikki got pictures. They're my kids, though, so you'll hafta go through The Zucc if you wanna see. Chances are you came here from ther...

Meh. Have some memes I stole from various places.

no idea what to write. so a train of thought. you clicked the link. you brought this on yourself. where to start?  AI. Might as well. AI doesn't know what it's like to stare at a blank page and a blinking cursor. AI fills the page, lorem ipsum coproscriptum all down the page, aggregated stolen works divorced from the souls of their original writers and slapped onto the internet for 'content' to keep enough eyes on it for advertisers to sell you NordVPN or a boner gummy. AI doesn't actually know anything. I feel like the distinction between AI and the human mind, at least for now, is that it's incurious, and for that we should be thankful; its inability to judge us might be, ultimately, why we're not going to end up slaving for Alexa and Siri in the not-too-distant future.  AI cannot properly place value on lives. I know this because, if you read my first post, you'll find that I don't believe even humans can. And tech bros are desperate to have AI ...

I don't have much today. There is stuff I want to write about--two days ago, I finally got to see my best friend for the first time since we graduated high school and introduce her to my family and that was amazing and wonderful--but it deserves a better write-up than I currently have the energy to give it. I also need to write up the amazing experience Nikki and I had at a new Indian restaurant in Richmond. Seriously awesome service, and the guy running the joint, Deep, comped us hot chai to counteract the freak snowstorm. I can't tell you how much I appreciated the kindness in addition to the amazing food, but I'll try at some point when I have more... well, ability to focus, and can do it justice. Also, I got photos. For now, though, here's the day. Woke up Too Early and put on pants. You're welcome. Got to work with time to spare to make a cup of coffee and dunk a couple chocolate hazelnut crepes from Costco in it. I finished setting up the new Windows 11 hardwa...

I'm struggling a lot with even the concept of 'worth,' especially as it relates to me. According to various people and agencies, my worth fluctuates between "$22 an hour" and "why are you still here? Shouldn't you be in the ground feeding the worms?" There is an ever-dwindling number in a bank account that tells me exactly how much I am worth, and it's up to me and my partner to work out how to use that number to sustain our family until it briefly bumps up a little bit once every two weeks. One thing I've been trying (and largely failing) to remind myself is that these numbers are not reflective of who I am--if anything, they reflect what I do . Essentially these numbers are the collective response to people, corporations, and governments asking "how useful is this person to me? To what degree can I exploit this person for their utility to me?" To me, human beings have inherent value (with the possible exceptions of tho...