Kurt R.A. Giambastiani's Blog, page 4

It’s Time—Check Your Registration

Summer is winding down, and it’s a year divisible by four, so you know what that means. It’s Voting Season! I know, I know; it seems like Voting Season began in 2022, and if you’re like me, then the last month seemed like a year all on its own, but for most people—no judgement here, […]

Summer Nights

for some it is the Moon’s occultation of Saturn or the needle strikes of Perseids across a spangled sky that speeds their heart but for me it is a late summer evening when the world is parchment I step out onto the front stoop while the wind swollen with the scent of moisture shakes out […]

Old Man Gamer: Exception to the Rule

One of my standard rules is: Do not spend more time fixing something than your time is worth. In other words, I won’t spend a couple of hours on the phone to get a $5 overcharge fixed. It’s literally not worth my time. Of course, that’s harder to quantify now that I’m retired, but when […]

Vignette—30Jun24

He let the book down onto his lap and closed his eyes.

For Your Consideration

Well, that was a bloody disaster. I’m talking, of course, about last night’s “debate” between Biden and Trump. While Trump played the usual bloviating, grievance-fueled prevaricator who couldn’t manage to actually address 90% of the questions put to him, Biden’s performance was—there’s no way to sugar-coat it—feeble, stumbling, and unfocused. While I don’t see the […]

BBQ Rub & Sauce

I am not a pit-master nor am I an aficionado of All Things Barbecue, but I know what I like, and what I like in BBQ is a deep, earthy base topped with a tangy-never-sweet sauce.

(Hidden) Child

Yesterday was Father’s Day here in the U.S., and it was a rather difficult one for me. Unexpectedly so. My pop died back in 2016, at the age of eighty-six. His final years were not pleasant for him (nor for us, in many ways). He’d outlived two wives, had lost a lot of his vitality […]

With Tears in my Eyes

There was a lot of celebrating, when the verdict came in, and a lot of gnashing of teeth, as well. I fully expected, given the outcome, to be in the former group. I wasn't.

Edge of Forever

I see stars swimming through eternal soul-dark seas the horizon nears

Seattle Lights

Summers in my tween years were not pleasant. Most of this was due to the standard tween-centric issues—the struggle for self-definition, the complete lack of agency, the all-too-natural desire to take the bit in one’s teeth and reject all elder pressure to conform—but there was one recurring event that made those summers even less pleasant: […]