11 November 2014: Tonight I lost one of the best friends I’ve ever had. A year after suffering a stroke, and a few months after we thought we lost her for the second time, today she had two seizures that left us with no choice but do the humane thing and put her to rest. She was 15. I didn’t cry until after I got home and remembered how when she was young she’d nearly drown fighting through the breakers to…
If you’re a middle-class white person quietly doing your time serving the machine of America, you probably don’t care very much about the militarization of our police force. You’re white. You have a 401K. You work hard all day and come home to your little cocoon at night where you binge on Netflix. You’re safe. Things are good. Predictable. Comfortable. Convenient. That is, until the revolution comes. Then you’ll care. Because it won’t just be an ethnic thing anymore. What…
Some days I want to rip this world apart and step through to the sea. *** Jim Mitchem
Today I turn 50. And whether I like it or not–it’s a big deal. Sure, from a distance you can say how age is just a number and how time doesn’t really exist and how 50 is the new 40. Bullshit. It’s 50. And next to the day you’re born, and the day you turn 100 in a body that is withering away, 50 is the most significant birthday of your life. It’s half a century. Five decades. Old. Let…
Saw the movie ‘Her’ last night. Was weird, but good – in a ‘Being John Malkovich’ sort of way. My wife and I differ on what we think happens at the end, though. She thinks that everyone finds themselves and then reconnects with each other. Yay humanity. I think there’s a mass suicide. But hear me out – the reason I think that the story ends in tragedy is because this movie isn’t about the humans. It’s about the OS’s *becoming* human. The…
23 years ago today I was so drunk that I don’t even remember it. I was at the end of my rope. As you probably know, Minor King is semi-autobiographical fiction. In telling the backstory of the main character, I recount some of those last days of my life with alcohol. Here’s an excerpt from the moments leading up to my (and Jim Christianson’s) epiphany: “Having never been to New York before, seeing the jagged Manhattan skyline grow on the…
