Don Pizarro's Manual of the Seven Wudan Tiger Shaolin Monkey Kung-Fu Style o' Death
![Comic panel by artist Lynda Barry of a Lola telling her grandchildren, "If [the ghosts] are hungry, give them adobo and San Miguel Beer."](https://i0.wp.com/donfoolery.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/00barry-image-03-superJumbo.webp?resize=728%2C1024&ssl=1)
Lynda Barry describes watching THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) with her lola.
From “It’s Halloween, but the Monsters Are Already Here” – which is locked, sorry. I did see this via a gift link, but alas it’s not my link to re-gift.
I’ll be back in the high life again
All the doors I closed one time will open up again–Steve Winwood, “Back in the High Life Again”
In the past couple of months, I took my first intentional post-pandemic steps back into the spec-fic writing world. I’ve dipped my toe in the waters for a couple of years now, what with the occasional local event or online con like Flights of Foundry and a bit of Wiscon online.
Last month, I was graciously invited to take part in a local reading series, and managed to find things that I was actually not embarrassed to read out loud. Hell, at the beginning of the month, I even submitted a short story for the first time in god-knows-how-long. (I don’t know because I’ve purposely avoided that particular page of my Submission Grinder account.)
Yes, I’m officially back on my bullshit! Now, I just need to find a way to make it sustainable.
Like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn just about every year to the Friends of the Tompkins Co. Library Book Sales. They’re held over three weekends in May, which coincides with Ithaca’s Spring (W)rites festival, and in October. It’s one of those local rituals one falls into in this town, whether you’re here for four years of college or for twenty-to-life.
I always, always manage to find a few treasures, even when I saunter in on the last weekend of the sale when books are the cheapest and the shelves have been all but picked clean. It looks like I neglected to post last year’s haul, but I got a lot of stuff in 2023.
Anyway, here’s what I found this time around…
For music fans, today is Earth, Wind & Fire Day. You don’t have to be a superfan to figure out why. It’s all in the first line of EWF’s classic, “September”
Do you remember the 21st night of September?
Love was changing the minds of pretenders
While chasing the clouds away
The song was co-written by legendary EWF founder Maurice White and equally legendary songwriter Allee Willis. Willis has one of those bodies of work people look at and go, “Oh hey, I didn’t know that was her!” She says she learned a key lesson as a songwriter that I think any writer–any artist for that matter–can use.
Apparently they went a couple of rounds about White’s chorus…
Ba-dee-ya, say, do you remember
Ba-dee-ya, dancing in September
She wanted to him to change it.
“And finally, when it was so obvious that he was not going to do it, I just said, ‘What the f*** does ‘ba-dee-ya’ mean?’ And he essentially said, ‘Who the f*** cares?’” she says. “I learned my greatest lesson ever in songwriting from him, which was never let the lyric get in the way of the groove.”
Never let the lyric get in the way of the groove! For me, it’s a motto for writing and for living.
It’s a breath of fresh air to see my fur daughters sit this close to each other in peace. This is not the norm. I’m sure one of them threw hands after I left the room, but even they know when to take a time out, which was definitely a lesson for me.
Since last time, I’ve had my week’s staycation, the highlight of which was making enough food and freezing it for my work lunch for the next two weeks. I’m not being sarcastic, it seriously brought me joy to do that. Good thing too, because when I got back to work there was a LOT to do. If I was running on fumes the Friday before my staycation, I was at most one tick above Empty by 5 o’clock the Friday after. Still, knowing when to rest and when to throw hands definitely helped, and it applies to the stuff I have to write about today, too.
WATCHING:
I seriously can’t get enough of PROFILAGE, aka THE PARIS MURDERS on PBS. (GDI, I hate that title.) I’ve only seen the 4th and 5th seasons so far, which TPM shows as seasons 1 and 2, and I gotta say I love how they resolve season finale cliffhangers so far!
Sure it’s like a compressed version of CRIMINAL MINDS (with the whole BAU wrapped up in one character), but it’s a palette cleanser–even an antidote of sorts–after watching FIT FOR TV: THE REALITY OF THE BIGGEST LOSER. TBL just wasn’t something I had the time to be into in its heyday. I’d heard only vaguely of some of the scandal, but got’damn I had no idea how perverse the whole enterprise was!
READING:
Before I went back to work, I picked up a couple of anthologies from a local publishing house: SHIFT by Daniluk, Hunt, Shaffer, Strebenk, Thompson, & Young which seemed like my thing looking at the cover, and WHIMSY: A LITERARY DOOM & GLOOM ANTIDOTE ed. by Naomi Daniluk which, by looking at the cover and the theme… well… did not. But I’ve read the first couple stories and have no regrets!
I’m not all grimdark, all the time and I probably needed a literary antidote anyway since I’m halfway through SOME PEOPLE NEED KILLING, Patricia Evangelista’s memoir of her time reporting on the extrajudicial killings of the Duterte regime in the Philippines. I’ve also been meaning to get back to Lidia Yuknavitch’s THE BOOK OF JOAN, but why don’t I get through the Evangelista book first, otherwise I might end up needing a lot more antidote.
LISTENING:
I slept on the release of Lake Street Dive’s latest, GOOD TOGETHER. I’m definitely glad to hear more horns on this one!
What was this the antidote to? Well, for some odd reason I kept coming back to the song, the classic “A Remark You Made” by Weather Report. I dunno, I just kept coming back to the image of a band playing its last song of the evening during last call, laying a vibe that somehow makes you feel more intoxicated as you hum in while stumbling back home.
I’ve always been a sucker for these kinds of tunes, probably ever since I heard what I still consider to be the closing song of all closing songs, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’S “Waltz in A”.
Slow and steady wins the race, but it’s usually difficult for me to see progress as it’s happening. But as cynical as even I can be, even I have to acknowledge milestones when I see them.
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The past couple of weeks have been cramming to get things done before I start my weeklong “enforced” staycation tomorrow – enforced in so far as if I don’t start burning accrued PTO, I stand to lose some of it and I’ll be got’damned if that happens!
It was a productive couple of weeks, though. There’s some stuff I’ve been slowly working my way toward for the past couple of years that are finally bearing fruit now. In a way, it’s the worst time for someone like me to take a vacation, because now I want to capitalize on the momentum! But see, I always want to capitalize on the momentum and what that usually does is burn me out.
Well, not today, Satan! Slow and steady…
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Finished Reading:
Started reading:
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One of the things I’ve been binging with my new PBS Passport subscription (in support of WSKG, the PBS station closest to me) is PROFILAGE–which I refuse to reference by its US title, THE PARIS MURDERS. I mean, I can understand why the BBC One’s SPOOKS was re-branded MI-5 in the US. I didn’t know any better because it was still indicative of what the show is about. But retitling TF1’s PROFILAGE (“Profiling”) to THE PARIS MURDERS just doesn’t do the show justice. I feel like it’s got the best characters I’ve ever seen–not just the main cast, but the suspects as well.
From an overall life-management standpoint, this past week was pretty uneventful. I should just count my blessings. Obviously that doesn’t mean These Trying Times(TM) are over. But I’ve reached an age where I find myself appreciating the calm between storms.
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I missed this episode of INDEPENDENT LENS the first time it came around, but when I found it online, I had to give it a go. (It’s free for about another 3 weeks if you’re interested.)
And So It Begins follows the Philippines’ turbulent 2022 presidential race, with the son of ousted former dictator Ferdinand Marcos waging a combative social media campaign against his more progressive opponent, incumbent Vice President Leni Robredo. Following it all is independent journalist and Nobel-winner Maria Ressa, with an eye toward the specter of increasing autocracy.
It took the Philippines a good 50 years to bury Marcos’s Proclamation No. 1081 in a deep-enough memory hole to elect another Marcos. I guess since the U.S. isn’t willing to learn from its own history (2016), I suppose it’s going to take Martial Law happening here? I hope not, but if past is prologue–that is, three years in the past in the Philippines–then I don’t like where this is heading.
My parents came to the U.S. barely six months before Proclamation No. 1081. Wouldn’t that be some bullshit if Martial Law would be why I might have to leave?
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First Ozzy Osbourne passes, and now Tom Lehrer…
When Lehrer wasn’t teaching college-level math, he was sitting at a piano making people laugh — and worry — about the world. His targets included politics, nuclear destruction, and even social harmony.
Tom Lehrer was one of the most subversive things I, as a Fil-Am kid living in the Midwest going to a Catholic boys high school in the ’80s, could possibly get into. I never heard of him until a friend of mine came to school with a cassette tape on which he’d recorded an episode of a weekly comedy show that played on college radio. (I know, I know, “Tell me you’re old enough to crumble into dust without crumbling into dust.”) On that tape were bits from George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, songs from Dr. Demento, a nice bossa nova from Martin Mull, skits from The Firesign Theatre, and what I’m 99% sure was this song if memory serves…
::takes off eyeglasses and raises them:: Here’s to you, Tom!
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Stephen Colbert triple-dog-dares them–which is a fine response to These Trying Times™.
Hey, any effort to stave off Martial Law is greatly appreciated.
Weeknotes–more like “monthnotes,” amirite? It’s a personal cliche by now: a spontaneous burst of posts after an extended period of radio silence followed by a hiatus where I just “never get around to posting.” If past is prologue, I’ll keep this up for longer now until I drop out completely for a few months. But if I’m not gonna be on here for a long time, let’s at least make it a good time!
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Speaking of good times, that SUPERMAN movie, huh? It’s not often a film puts an honest-to-god smile on my face.
Look, I never hated on the DCEU Henry Cavill Superman, but I can honestly say I love James Gunn’s take. SUPERMAN (2025) exceeded every high expectation the trailers stirred up in me.
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The reading list:
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Had a birthday a few weeks ago and my driver’s license was up for renewal, so I finally got the REAL ID version. Technically, I already had one in my passport card, which is set to be renewed in a couple of years, but I wasn’t too keen on carrying that around with me, or my passport for that matter.
At least now I have something conveniently on me if and when some balaclava-wearing dude in a matching camo tac vest and blue jeans carrying an AR-15 stops me on the way to my job at an Ivy League university in a Sanctuary City saying, “Papers, please!”
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Seen out in the wild, something else to file under: some ol’ bullshit. I didn’t have “spot a racist coded dog whistle on the bus ride to work” this past week, but just my luck…
I like to think the wrinkle in the upper right was someone’s failed attempt to take it down, but maybe I’m just being too optimistic about the state of humanity at this point. But you know what? After seeing SUPERMAN, maybe that’s not such a bad thing to be.
When I write my future memoirs, I hope never to include the line, “I was napping when World War III started.” I mean, c’mon, it sounds more like the opening line of an Etgar Keret short story. But if (when?) future generations ask me where I was when I heard we bombed Iran, the sad truth will be revealed.
With everything going on, I don’t know what the point of a weeknotes post would be right now. Like Charles Bradley sang, “This world is going up in flames”. But maybe that’s why I need to write one. Proof of life as resistance.
There are moments when my typical attitude of “The only way out is through” works against me. Moments when I only have one or two spoons left and it seems like everything on my list takes at least three. And so I look for ways to use the one or two I have left to get me forward anyway, even if 99% of the time all that generates is resentment which is a lousy feeling, but better than the alternatives (not really).
I’m not the only one to know this. I came across this reading Sam Lipsyte’s THE ASK:
I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.
I had a burst of writing energy for the past couple of weeks which is on the usual trend downward and I know I’m there because while I know I need three spoons to working on my current short story, I feel like I need to be using use the one or two I’ve got to do what I “should” be doing. Like, reading all the stuff that’s won Nebula, Locus, or Stoker awards this month rather than 15-year old litfic novels. Or grousing about an article on AI boosterism I never expected to see in BREVITY, of all places.
I mean, c’mon…
And just as a hammer can build Habitat for Humanity or take a human life, the tool is dependent on the human user.
Yeah, except that hammer’s design wasn’t stolen off of the work of people’s blood, sweat & tears and mass-produced via a gross waste of natural resources. But I digress. After all, that’s not the worst thing going on in the world this week, is it?
(c) 1999 Harvey Pekar
Art by Gary Dumm
Fuck it, here’s one skirmish. Now, what’s my next one gonna be?
It’ll be a short one today. I’m tired, my family’s tired, it’s been A Week. While the world is on fire, our home had a couple of plumbing-related mishaps that had to be dealt with along with everything else. Still, we found the time and a little bit of energy to enjoy a tiny little pop-up carnival held for the second year in a row in the parking lot of the local almost-dead mall.
When you think about it, it really is our way of protesting. The Fam is actually a perfect intersection of about 99% of everything the current regime hates. ICE has already been through here once and they’d probably still be here if they weren’t busy handcuffing US Senators in California while “liberating” Los Angeles.
WRITING
I was only 3 days out of 7 trying to keep The Chain going. Like I said, it’s been A Week.
But I did have a couple of bright spots.
LISTENING
Last fall’s release of DANCE, NO ONE’S WATCHING by Ezra Collective got by me, but I rectified that this week!
I had a chance to pick up THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte on the cheap and the discovery of this passage made it worthwhile, hitting me in a personal way that I haven’t been since Etgar Keret’s “What Do We Have In Our Pockets.”
I’d had a hard time deciding whether to carry a knapsack, a messenger bag, a canvas book bag, or a briefcase. Each seemed to embody a particular kind of confusion and loss.