Ink Tea Stone Leaf

A place to get the words out

  • Real Music

    So far as I am aware, I have not yet been tricked into admiring a song that was composed and performed by a computer program. I can scarcely believe that we have already reached a time in history when we actually have to be on our guard against that sort of thing, but apparently we… Continue reading

  • Against the War

    Let’s just get this out of the way—this post is not what you might call “persuasive.” I am not attempting to persuade anybody that our new war with Iran is gravely immoral. It simply is, and if you don’t know that already, you can deal with that knowledge however you like. What else is there… Continue reading

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  • ICE Out Now

    About two thousand students arrived outside the state capitol building in Salem, Oregon on Friday, to protest against the Trump administration and ICE. They walked out of their schools to make their voices heard, rather than quietly accept the unacceptable regime of an unaccountable, arbitrary secret police force abducting and brutalizing their neighbors, friends, and… Continue reading

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  • We Gotta Groove: The Brother Studio Years

    The soundtrack to the 1995 documentary I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times consists mostly of new performances by Brian Wilson of songs recorded years earlier by himself and the Beach Boys. The sole exception is a demo of an obscure song from 1977, titled “Still I Dream Of It,” an uncommon ballad of loneliness… Continue reading

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  • American Music

    If you caught the halftime show on this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, I’d be curious to hear what you thought about it. In these days of cultural division, when people are increasingly unable to agree about the meaning of all the things that play out in front of our faces, I don’t want to take… Continue reading

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  • Workin’ on a post

    It’s winter here in the Pacific Northwest, and yesterday’s temperature peaked at 60 degrees Fahrenheit because the concept of “winter” is being drastically redefined in the Twenty First Century by climate change. All this unseasonable warmth has stirred something in me, and on an impulse I began working on a new musical project: assembling the… Continue reading

  • The Big Billy Club

    A poem for the henchmen and the hired goons An Arbitrary Power made me Little Lordof the Big Billy Club, to justly recognizethe virtues I embody, being “super-special,””credulous,” “obsequious,” and other wordsthat sound as dope as that—and I can be as damnobsequious as any alpha in the yard.An Arbitrary Man made me the King Shitof… Continue reading

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  • I need to stop looking at social media so much

    This could apply to pretty much every human being on Earth, regardless of their level of social media engagement, but I digress. I do spend a lot of time watching the feed go by, because I have a lot of bad media habits, and because I am curious to see commentary on the events of… Continue reading

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  • Have we learned our lesson?

    There’s no lesson to be learned. It is said that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. The fact is that those of us who do remember history are doomed to “repeat it” right along with the rest of you, so as far as being a social prophylactic goes, memory is… Continue reading

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  • The State of the Novel

    A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was striving to finish my most recent revision of The Ghost of Canard University by January First. I am pleased to announce that, in spite of my heinous executive dysfunction, I have indeed finished this revision—as of last Friday, January Sixteenth, 2026. That very evening, the revised… Continue reading