Kurt R.A. Giambastiani's Blog, page 48
July 14, 2015
Taking Wing
This week, just as local fledglings are leaving their nests, trusting their futures to untried wings and thin air, so are copies of my résumétaking to the digitalskies. Ten went out yesterday and today, panic has set in. Am I ready? I spent the weekend drafting and re-drafting my CV, reducingit from an IT-heavy, initialism- […]
July 8, 2015
Doctor, Doctor
Remember those miniature license plates for your bicycle? The personalized ones with your name on them? Cute, right? Yeah, Ihated those damned things because theynever had one with the name “Kurt”. I also hatedRomper Room because at the end when Miss Nancy took out her magic mirror and searched to see who was out there […]
July 6, 2015
Let’s Be Poor – Part III
I used to love programming but it’s changed so much in the past 25 years, I can’t stand it anymore.When I only stay at a job for the salary and the time off, when I hate everything about what I do, when I wake up at 4AM with my heart pounding because my brain is […]
June 29, 2015
Let’s Be Poor – Part II
Your reactions to Part Ilanded in one of two camps: Most readers remembered fondly their own youthful creativity when funds were thin, while a few wondered why the hell I’d even contemplate this at all. I enjoyed the anecdotes you shared, and it reinforced my belief that being short of cash when young is a […]
June 19, 2015
Let’s Be Poor – Part I
I know from poor. Not poverty–I’ve never known poverty–but I know what it is to be poor. As a music major at SF State, I earned money playing orchestra and quartet gigs, worked minimum wage jobs, but still didn’t have much by way of money. To supplement my meager budget,I used to go around the […]
June 16, 2015
Sense8 is Binge-Worthy
I sucked up the first four episodes of Sense8like a parched man drinks water.This was the show I’ve been waiting for all year. It has it all: the writing, settings, plot, characters, the performances, all are markedly above the line of expectation. So, why hadn’t I heard of itbefore? One reason is that the show […]
June 12, 2015
School of Blog
In my last post, I suggested that blogging steals time better spent writing novels. The flip-side is what blogging has taught me about writing. So,what have I learned? In the past three years, I’ve published over 550 posts here, racking up over 400,000 words, so the first thing I’ve obviously learned is how much I […]
June 2, 2015
To Blog or Not to Blog
Is writing keeping me from writing? I did not start this blog as a marketing tool. Good thing, too. I experienceenough failures in my life without creating more of my own. No, I started this blog as a writing tool. At a time when I was struggling to find the time and mental discipline to […]
May 29, 2015
The Feel of the Thing
It was my mother’s social ambition that taught me to love books. My mother–the eldest of her siblings–had a hard-scrabble childhood. She experienced family disruption at an early age, knew it well in fact, as her mother (my grandmother) was widowed and abandoned byhusbands and inamorati at a fearsome rate. Moving from city to city, […]
May 21, 2015
Comedy Tonight
Well, since my discussion of Churchill’s Black Dog was received with all the enthusiasm of a root canal, let’s turn to a topic that’s less…depressing. Shakespeare. Twelfth Night (or What You Will) is without doubt my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’ve seen many productions of it both live and on screen. Before, I was […]
