Smock Blogs

“I don’t have anything to say”.

That’s not true.

We have things to say.

Just that we think they’re not worth listening to.

Some of that’s ego.

Sheltering itself, avoiding rejection.

Most of that’s not being heard.

That when we move the words outward, they’re not received.

Because everyone else is talking, too.

Or trying to find ways to say nothing.

Except about everyone else.

In criticism, there is safety.

Security.

A parapet to launch from.

Walls to hide behind.

Defending ourselves from each other.

Drug tested today as part of a job application process.

Collection centers are grim places, filled with the kind of cheer better suited to a DMV.

Big bureaucrat energy aside, I’ve never gone into one without feeling like I needed to explain myself.

They’re a system designed for a specific purpose, leaving little room for humanity on the part of clients or staff.

A lot of places get me to do that.

Start blathering that I’m just here for the employment screening, or that I just haven’t had time for a haircut lately, and of course I’ve been flossing regularly no matter what my mouth looks like.

It’s partly my big dumb brain, as the default setting for my ‘tism is either apologize or explain, and it’s usually stuck somewhere between the two.

But it’s also the nature of systems to get us to justify ourselves, explain why we’re coloring outside lines clearly drawn for our benefit.

We hear it all the time.

The system doesn’t work right.

The system’s broken.

The system failed.

Those are comforting words.

Words designed to instill belief that something is in place.

That if we just tweak it enough, it will save us.

The problem is that systems don’t break.

They don’t fail.

They work right.

All the time.

Because systems are designed, as it's been explained to me, "to depress, oppress, and repress".

And they do that very, very well.

Brendan Depa is a “hulking” Florida boy who “viciously beat” teacher’s aide Joan Naydich last year after she took his Nintendo Switch away.

Brendan’s also an autistic high schooler with an Independent Education Plan and whatever else Naydich learned in 20 years in the school cafeteria, it didn’t cover what to do when a kid like Brendan has a meltdown.

And Brendan’s also a kid who got his GED while in jail with the help of a retired special education teacher who found him “engaging, funny, smart, sensitive, and inquisitive” as well as “impulsive, naive, and a bit defensive”.

The system didn’t fail Brendan or Naydich.

It didn’t fail them when the school hired Naydich on a provisional basis before completing required special education certifications because they were short handed.

It didn’t fail them when Brendan’s IEP was ignored by other teachers at the school, leading to the events culminating in what happened to Naydich.

It didn’t fail them because the system did what systems do: benefit those most likely to contribute to the future of that system.

Brendan and Naydich don’t qualify.

That system makes decisions about who it will help.

Those it will move forward.

And those it will spit out, left to their own devices.

Naydich’s injuries led to her losing her job, her life forever changed by what happened last year.

Pleading no contest to the charges against him, Brendan’s facing 3 to 30 years if the judge decides to sentence him as an adult.

The system works, and that’s its problem.

Sources

• https://flaglerlive.com/depa-sentencing-day-1/
• https://flaglerlive.com/brendan-depa-my-son-story/
• https://flaglerlive.com/brendan-depa-i-know/
• https://flaglerlive.com/depa-lawsuit/#gsc.tab=0
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11802533/Teen-knocked-teacher-arrested-THREE-times-battery-charged-adult.html

Here’s all I know about Cinco de Mayo:

1. It’s not Mexican Independence Day
2. In Mexico, it’s only really celebrated in Puebla
3. The holiday started out as a celebration of Mexican American culture in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Chicano movement in an effort to establish that community’s identity in the United States and was co-opted starting in 1985 by the Coors Brewing Company and their $350 million in donations to Latino organizations as part of the settlement of a boycott by the Hispanic community against Coors for discriminatory practices.

Margaritas, brought to you by The Man.

Probably won’t stop me from liking tacos, though.

References

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/anthropology_museum_studies/115/

I’ve never been what you’d call consistent.

Except at maybe starting things.

And (re)scheduling things.

It’s that “re” that’s critical.

Subtext in my daily gratitude practice is that there isn’t a limit on the number of times you can change things in a Google calendar.

I believe in consistency, in things like “atomic habits” and the like.

What I don’t believe in?

Me.

Trusting myself.

Believing in my process.

Because I’m at a point where if I’m not earning, there isn’t much point to the effort.

And because I’ve let me talk myself out of so many things over the years, I don’t have something to fall back on that I’ve been secretly crafting behind the scenes.

Working on fixing that, on sitting still for The Muse instead of hiding out like some kind of direct-to-video Fugitive reboot and yeah, we’re at that drain pipe, and my artist’s way feels more like jumping off the edge than some careful, calculating accumulation of words.

Isaac Asimov called writing “thinking through my fingers” and I’ve done a lot of that over the last few years.

Not that much of that has seen the light of day, but it’s there.

Laughing at me from the screen.

I’m happiest when I’m writing for me, not you.

Nothing personal, reader, and sure, I’d like to bring life to things that resonate.

Find a true thing that connects.

But I don’t know you.

So I can’t write for you.

I can only write for me.

Because I’m you.

You’re me.

All of us part of the One Big Thing.

Fragments of a universe.

Walking each other home.

Based on the pitchfork stacking on LinkedIn, Simon Sinek has committed the great sin of pointing out that nonprofits have a perception problem.

The word alone evokes images of positive penury, of volunteers glistening in the African sun as they stand side by side with villagers digging a well, their Birkenstocks tossed aside for a pair of TOMS because that’s the sensible brand to wear.

I’m working on writing something more in-depth, because as someone who’s worked in the nonprofit sector and regularly thinks of himself as an idealist with a mortgage, I’d like to better understand the animus around Sinek’s podcast episode.

Part of the problem is that, as Sinek points out, the word alone already is stating what you’re not about, and that’s a problem for us as humans.

It’s like describing the Mona Lisa as being not a big painting. You’re not wrong, but you’re also not giving me a picture I can get my brain around.

Plus as someone pointed out to me when talking about the fuss, “a hit dog always hollers”, which is probably the most country/Southern phrase I’ve ever put on paper before.

We are our own prophets.

Prophets have no honor in their own country.

Because prophets bear little good news.

They blame God.

The universe.

What tortilla showed them.

Our own tidings to ourselves are mostly grim.

Glad tidings bring us hope.

And when their tale is proved false, disappointment follows.

Better, we tell ourselves, to lower our expectations.

Be surprised by joy.

But because we have shown ourselves a dimmer future, that surprise never comes.

Prophecy.

Fulfilled.

Halfway through explaining myself, I heard it.

Justifying my existence.

They’re always needing that.

Some explanation for my behavior, my choices.

Because they’re incapable of grace, of seeing me for what I am, and letting that be enough.

What we’re looking for is validation.

That stamp that says we’re OK to park here.

Be here.

Act as ourselves, more than anything else.

Validated without question is to live in a state of grace.

Here’s hoping you find that grace today.

It’s that 30 minutes we get here in Texas when the days are just warm enough to be pleasant, there’s still some relief when the sun goes down, and the tornadoes are still bothering other parts of the country.

As I’m writing this the sun’s just coming up, and I would love to tell you that I’m outside basking in the glow of a new day, sipping some French press and dreaming of a world where floppy hats are king.

Instead, I’m huddled over my keyboard like the introverted troll I can be most of the time.

If I have a happy place, it is this: in the middle of building something, or planning something, if I’m honest.

The building part has been tricky over the years, as paralyzing fear of failure somewhere in the future creeps in and robs me of whatever joy might be had in actually finishing something.

Working on taking that one day at at time, as with most things.

Spending less time looking up at the mountain, more time looking at the compass, making sure I’m headed the “right” way.

Something about having a “blog” has taken me back to a previous version of myself that I didn’t know existed.

I never really had a personal blog.

Not TypePad, Blogger, MySpace.

Updated Facebook for a while, but nothing like a blog.

I’d try a few entries, then it always felt a little too navel gaze-y, and lint mining just isn’t my thing, not really.

Ran across Pika, and while it’s not the only one out there trying to bring back a simpler time on the web, they’re my current favorite.

But then, for all its bloat, Ghost?

Pretty freaking cool.

Think I’m just going to stick with date entries for now, rather than coming up with a headline.

Treat this as it should be, a space, to paraphrase Asimov, to think through my fingers.

I grew up listening to Petra.

Not grew up, exactly, because in our house Christian rock was still rock and since rock was the devil’s music and originated from the rhythms of Satan worshiping African tribes it had no place on the family hi-fi, which was not at all racist but a Very Biblical Worldview.

But then in high school my parents mellowed, slightly, and while I couldn’t crank the Def Leppard within earshot of Mom and Dad, I could be seen toting around cassettes of bands like Petra, or Mylon Lefevre and Broken Heart, and Whiteheart.

The Walkman is gone, but I still crank those now and then out of a sense of nostalgia, because even with all the associated religious trauma, these guys could play, and let’s not go full baby and bathwater with our music.

Today’s Petra-related earworm:

Seen and not heard, seen and not heard

Sometimes God’s children should be seen and not heard

There’s too much talk and not enough walk

Sometimes God’s children should be seen and not heard

True whether you’re Christian, Muslim, or something some other -ish/-ist/-ism.

Walk the walk, whatever it may be.

Except.

Don’t forget that part of walking that walk as we’re all trying to get home to see and hear each other.

As a neurodivergent autistic person who’s somewhere on the spectrum that makes me a high functioning asshole much of the time, that gift of being seen/heard is one of the most precious things anyone has ever given me.

And I haven’t had it often.

That scarcity has taught me to do what I can when I can to give that gift to others.

See them. Hear them.

Doesn’t mean I always get it right.

Some days I just want to crank up the Walkman and walk right by.

The hustlers talk about runway.

In the finance world, it’s how many months a business has before it runs out of cash.

A couple of years ago I stepped off the treadmill, thinking that I had a novel in me, and that if I could just focus my energy full time on that, I’d have a bestseller in no time.

Here’s the part where I tell you that I finished it in record time, beta readers loved it, but I just struggled to find an agent, or a publisher.

What happened was that I got about 85% done, panicked, thinking that I’d put all the eggs in that basket, and that if this failed, then I’d have nothing left, that I’d have nuked my life personally, professionally, and financially for no good reason.

Rather than facing that, I just tapped out.

Stalled.

It’s been sitting there, nearly done, for over a year now.

And today I’m taking a 2nd interview for a job that won’t replace even half of what I really need to make the ends meet.

Because the runway’s about gone.

And I need to start building another one.

What I hate about the runway as a term is that as an airplane fixated guy, I think of runways as places to launch from/land on.

The finance term is more Tim Gunn than Top Gun.

So I’ll take that second interview.

Get me a grader.

Start ploughing under the old runway.

Start a new one.

I want to hate Logan Paul.

I thought my special interest was safe.

One of them, anyway.

I mean, wrestling.

Athletes in spandex in a kinetic soap opera.

Far from the zeitgeist of clout and clicks.

Then 2022 happened.

WrestleMania 38.

And there’s Logan Paul, in kit that looks like someone saw Bumblebee and went, “But what if he was a wrestler?”

Wait.

The guy who tased dead rats.

That Logan Paul?

What’s he doing in the middle of my thing?

I thought I was doing this right.

Avoiding YouTubers, streamers, influencers.

Off in a corner of the world where that wouldn’t intrude.

No way he’s going to be…any good, right?

Well that’s just fine, then.

Because D-Von Dudley knows his wrestling.

So does Eric Bischoff.

And judging from the parade of WWE talent that shows up on Paul’s podcast, they’re not alone.

He’s good.

Really good.

And works hard.

Respects the business.

Still.

Maybe he’s a heartless asshole to his girlfriend.

The kind of guy who’d just toss her a ring like it’s a Prime t-shirt.

Oh good, there’s a longer version.

At one point, just before he pops the question, whatever hate I had in my heart evaporated when she sees he’s having actual feelings, and she asks him what he’s “emotioning” right now.

My wiring sparked at the made up word, but.

What. The. Hell.

Because if I hate him in that moment, what I’m saying is that no one who’s that successful, that wealthy, deserves to have feelings like the rest of us.

Yes, he’s having them on the shores of Lake Como.

But.

If I believe that we’re all just here to walk each other home, then what I feel isn’t hate.

Because he’s found his person.

Doesn’t mean there’s a happily ever after.

Just that now.

We all deserve that kind of happiness.

Even.

Logan.

“The Maverick”.

Paul.

Editor’s Note: I’m in the process of pulling in things I’ve written before, figuring out where it fits into the current site, and this was something I did back in April when Arizona was wanting to party like it was 1864 with an abortion ban.

I’ve debated posting this for a couple reasons:

1. As of September, that ban has been repealed
2. A reluctance to wade into topics like women’s rights

However, it’s pretty indicative of my personal beliefs, my editorial tone, and it’s time I stopped sanitizing what I put out under my own name because I’m worried what people will think. And if I can’t say what I have to say as me, then maybe I shouldn’t be saying it at all.

Like it? Let me know. Don’t? Same. Really don’t? It’s okay to unsubscribe.

160 years later, Arizona’s Supreme Court has ruled that something written 48 years before the state existed and 39 years before the invention of the wire coat hanger is now the law on abortion.

Since the Copper State’s judiciary has seen fit to reset the clock on women’s reproductive rights to 1864, it’s time to talk to your 10 year old daughter about consent, as William Thompson Howell intended.

To help make that conversation less awkward, here’s the text from Section 47 of the Howell Code, same document that’s spawned Arizona’s current ruling on abortion:

Rape is the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will. Every person of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall have carnal knowledge of any female child under the age of ten years, either with or without her consent, shall be adjudged to be guilty of the crime of rape, and shall be punished by imprisonment in the Territorial prison for a term not less than five years, and which may extend to life.

Since life expectancy was about 35, that would make 10 the new 20, high time to talk to your daughter about consent.

Assuming your daughter knows what that word means, or you do, since education among those settling in places like Arizona was somewhere down the list of priorities after pillaging, colonizing, and fighting off those you just pillaged and colonized.

The most likely context for a consent conversation is going to be when Asa from down the way seeks to have consensual carnal knowledge of your 10 year old, and since she might object, as her parent you’re obliged to correct her, and if she dies in the process of that correction, provided you were moderate in your remonstration, ‘tis merely a “misadventure,” per Section 34.

Excusable homicide by misadventure is when a person is doing a lawful act, without any intention of killing yet unfortunately kills another; as where a man is at work with an axe, and the head flies off and kills a bystander; or where a parent is moderately correcting his child, or a master his servant or scholar, or an officer punishing a criminal, and happens to occasion death, it is only a misadventure, for the act of correction is lawful; but if a parent or master exceed the bounds of moderation, or the officer the sentence under which he acts, either in the manner, the instrument, or quantity of punishment, and death ensue, it will be manslaughter or murder according to the circumstances of the case.

Same applies to slaves, since this was 1864 after all and owning people as property was what helped make America great in the first place.

Sidebar: Little is known about Howell, but we do know that this code was written in 90 days by a committee he chaired, and I can’t help but think that this section…

…as where a man is at work with an axe, and the head flies off and kills a bystander…

…feels like something someone really needed to be added.

Howell: So that’s it for Section 34…yes, Jebediah?

(No, I don’t know why they all have vaguely Book of Mormon sounding names.)

Jebediah: I do think we would be remiss if were to exclude from misadventure any time when an axe head were to fly off and kill someone watching someone else chopping wood, when that someone had been told at least three times to go back in the house and start dinner.

Howell: I confess, that is oddly specific, and I hope faulty axes aren’t common here in the territory, but I’ve still got ink in the well, so why not?

Section 34 also covers teachers killing students, and as a Texas resident I can attest that here we’d view “didn’t empty a second magazine” as “moderate” disciplinary behavior.

Laws like the Howell Code were of a time and place, and pulling them into the present only serves to make issues like abortion the litmus test they shouldn’t be.

Because no one issue should be the only reason we elect a candidate for office.

Still, it’s weird to be somewhere on the same side of an issue as Kari Lake, as the GOP scrambles to establish itself as a party that both respects the rights of women but also wishes they’d all be quiet about it.

Party like it’s 1864, Republicans.

Talk to women like they’re 10.

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Haters.

We’ve all had them.

In my head they’re Luther and his Rogues from 1982’s The Warriors and they keep taunting me to come out to play.

Except it’s not Luther out there.

It’s the Luther in my head.

The voice that tells me this won’t work.

That disaster awaits.

And I might as well go back to bed.

Pull the covers over me head.

Wait for the world’s inevitable end.

Might as well be comfortable when it happens.

That’s Ego.

Doing me the service of safety.

Protecting me from harm, imagined or otherwise.

The otherwise coming from past experience, however tangential to this moment it may be.

Then Self starts knocking on the door of the room Ego locked it in.

And the Yonaka kicks off.

Hey there, how you been?

I’m that voice in your head, and I know you been aching

When you find me, let me in

I got power in my hands, and it’s yours for the taking

When life is less than it could be, or once was, it’s easy to forget my own power.

Hard to remember that it’s about a choice.

One I make over and over again.

The choice that moves me forward.

Step by step.

I’m aching, but I’m letting me in.

And I’m going out to play.

Let’s talk about the “A” word

Accountability.

At its best?

Partnership.

Built on support.

Mutual.

Shared.

A journey taken together.

But then?

It devolves.

Becomes accounting.

Of wrongs, for which you seek reparation.

Hold me accountable.

Holding up, holding down.

My help, or your hostage.

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m shaving my face.

Later, I start the mower.

Trim the yard, keep the HOA at bay for another week.

Maybe longer, if it’s winter.

Afternoon, and I’m tweezing my eyebrows.

Turn those same tweezers loose on the bramble emerging from my nostrils.

Eyes watering, remember my beard trimmer has an attachment for that.

Address the beard, then tame the wilds of my nose.

Later, I drive through the neighborhood, once full of pecan trees.

Trees that passed as dormant a few months ago are now clearly dead. Reminders that much of what I take for granted happens because someone moved water from somewhere else. That life as we know it depends on someone bending nature to their will.

Evening comes, and the algorithm is being its usual invasive self.

Pointing out since I’d bought a particular travel razor, I should be in the market for grooming tools that work best “south of the border”.

It’s not wrong, because even though I am A Man Of A Certain Age and fast approaching that time of life where I’m picking out my favorite kid yelling lawn chair, I still care about keeping things…at bay.

Because I can’t let things just be.

I can’t sit with myself and let events unfold.

I’m a bipedal organism with opposable thumbs.

And I want things neat.

Tidy.

Growing in ways I can accept.

Like orchards.

The lawn.

My beard.

And the nether regions.

Nature scares me.

So I beat it back.

One nose hair at a time.

Got summoned for jury duty.

Not my first time.

Just the first time I answered the summons with something other than a request for deferment.

Not because I’m not civic minded, but I’ve spent most of the time where I currently live working elsewhere.

Mostly in places where people were shooting at me.

Not me, personally, just people that looked like me.

I mean, I don’t have a particularly shoot-y face, it’s just that certain elements object to neo-colonialism, no matter how well intended.

Thanks to a combination of being “between opportunities,” a state that if it continues for much longer means I will be “between refrigerator boxes,” and a general sense that I’d rather get out of jury duty in person instead of with a phone call, I made my way to the courthouse.

Where all of us were promptly excused.

I had no objections.

Because when the current “justice” system isn’t busy privatizing the hell out of incarceration for the benefit of corporations under legalized slave labor, it’s putting people out on the streets who just entered a bigger jail, because they’re forever hobbled by past choices when it comes to exercising their basic civil rights.

All of which I had teed up as reasons why I didn’t want to be there.

And then they sent us home.

Went and got a donut.

Because systems are best when they’re doing nothing at all. Unless those systems mean donuts.

It’s right there in the lyrics:

Out on the road today
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said
“Don’t look back, you can never look back”

I shouldn’t, that’s true.

But I sure as hell can.

Which is juxtaposition of an homage to the Grateful Dead slapped on the window of a Cadillac, because whoever’s behind the wheel can’t let go of a time when times were simpler.

Not easy, perhaps, schlepping around the country following a band, but simple.

They tell me that the windshield’s bigger than the rearview for a reason, and I’ve been clinging to that of late.

White knuckling the idea that if I just keep looking down the road, something will appear to divert me from the wreckage I can still see smoldering in my wake.

The choices I made looming ever larger in what was first a ripple lapping at my consciousness, but now has assumed proportions best dealt with by running like hell.

It’s not the look back that that’s the problem, it’s when I grow transfixed by the specter of whatever’s about to catch up with me.

Or I get lost in the hypnotic allure of swirling debris of decisions that could have been better, or at least better informed, if I could have been bothered to understand the assignment.

So I can pull over, let it consume me, or keep driving, looking ahead.

No promises of better decisions, or happier outcomes, because I’m sure it all ends poorly.

Except, what the windshield keeps whispering, and won’t shut up about it, is:

What if it doesn’t? Wouldn’t that be cool?

Yeah. Yeah, that would be pretty cool.

As A Man Of A Certain Age, I see a lot of intellectual property from my youth making its way to film in some form or another.

I don’t know that this is a recent phenomenon, or just me realizing that it’s happening, or if indeed there aren’t any new ideas and we’re just all hoping that everyone forgets that The Rock was once in a G.I. Joe movie.

And it’s true that as I’m firmly in the grips of middle age that there isn’t much magic left for me anymore.

Not that I’m bemoaning my place in life, although the Memento Mori life calendar that I’ve set up as a Chrome tab is by turns intimidating and inspiring.

That is, when it’s not prompting me to find a soft blanket, a pillow, and sufficient time to just push world away for a while.

What I mean is that at this point I’ve seen all the stories, and I know, generally, how they end.

Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them as much, just that I enjoy them differently.

And while what’s in my head will never equal the cinematic greatness of a Denis Villeneuve panoramic shot of a desert either on a fictional world or on the other side of a troublesome, albeit porous, American border, I like to think that how I see it would frame nicely on screens of all sizes.

But sometimes, there is magic.

In that moment when I see someone portrayed on film or whatever we use to make the pictures movie in 2024, and I think, “Well, that’s odd. Because that’s just how I saw them in my head.”

The first time that happened was when Peter Jackson reminded all of us that there’s another country in the vicinity of Australia and it would make a fine Shire, as his Lord of the Rings marched across the screen in all its ponderous self-importance.

I know I’m not alone in this, but still, there’s something…magical…about knowing that one’s vision is in someone else’s head, too.

Lost my faith a bit when Tom Cruise tried to run away with the Reacher franchise, because the only way that matched Lee Child’s brawling behemoth is if he’d shot the whole thing in lifts.

Recovered said faith when Alan Ritchson lumbered into our lives and loins portraying the kind of throwback masculinity that manages to be non-toxic but also not entirely safe for the current century.

Then today, finally got around to watching Slow Horses since I’d just re-read Mick Herron’s series and wondered if the Apple rendition was any good.

Which is a judgment I make too often, on whether a thing is “good” or not, because what I enjoy may not be your cup of tea (because it’s in the UK, after all), but regardless of quality, what’s on the screen?

Magic.

Because all of it, but mostly Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is precisely how I pictured them.

Herron himself feels the same, although he’s made it clear in at least one interview that he never pictures any of his characters, just hears them.

Explains how the man is a master of dialogue on par with Elmore Leonard with acknowledgement to the previous great of British spies, John Le Carre.

I remember arguing things like “author’s intent” in college, and because of my autistic brain, I was always wondering “But what did they mean by that?” and in response one of my better professors asking me what I think they meant.

I still wonder that about Herron’s Lamb: what he means by everything he does. If Jackson’s motives in Herron’s mind are the same as I think them to be, but in the end?

Doesn’t matter, particularly.

What does, in this instance, is that there’s still magic left. And maybe we can still make some more.