4.22.2025

Driving around MidMichigan. Dad is at the wheel, a friend with me in the back. What is this place? They speak French here he says. I think of my great aunt who came back to live in the states with my grandfather’s brother after the War. She spoke French and was sweet to the kids and I knew she was different but didn’t know how. This part is Quebec, Dad says. I never knew we were so close the whole time I say. We go to a gas station convenience store. Through a window a woman with her head in her hands. The floors are dirty, spotty, there’s a smell of burning wood. To spend your whole day in a place like this. To spend your whole life standing around waiting for other people to come in and buy shit. I had a few jobs like that when I was younger and they were all excruciating. Some jobs really can be done by machines. From what I've seen the machines agree. Also I've been re-reading Asimov and that's a pretty big concern of his. The funniest and probably most alarming of the robot stories is the one where the robot goes from self-awareness straight to fanatical anti-human religion with almost no steps in between. Which if you have a positronic brain might just be the speed at which logical processing moves, but as a human storyteller I feel like he burned through some rising action there. Not that I'm complaining. There's something about that era of sci-fi where the writers were just so excited about their ideas they couldn't help themselves and were in a rush to get it all out. I can relate. The more I try to structure and package material for reader consumption the less I care about it.

Guest Artist: BK, from the series 'An Organized Trainwreck'
https://www.instagram.com/design__by__bk?igsh=cXBpZXpyem9najdh
(full artist bio will be included in Friday's Weekly Digest)