Small Shiny Objects

We’re in the process of spinning things up, so there’s a bit of back-end work to be done. WordPress isn’t my first language. Content coming soon.

This project was originally going to start many moons ago. Way back when, I bought this domain as kind of a gag—my joke was that if I ever started a band, I would call it “Small Shiny Objects” so the college reviewers could be snarky and say “the crowd was not mesmerized by Small Shiny Objects.” The plan was to use this as a portfolio for copywriting and also a repository for fiction and personal essays, but it never got off the ground. Eventually I let it lapse, and someone bought the domain and tried to use it for e-commerce.

More recently, I’ve done a fair bit of writing online, and for some reason people seem to like what I create. After hearing enough people say I should write a book (I’m working on two) or that they wanted to read more, hubris mode kicked in and I decided to see about putting up a site. I looked at the domains I currently maintained and wasn’t super happy about using any of them, and then out of curiosity punched smallshinyobjects.com into a domain search engine and wouldn’t you know, it was available again.

Swept along by the relentless tide of history.

So this site is going to serve as a home for the things I write. Primarily, it will be a place for me to post snippets of the fiction I’m working on, as well as a place to tell stories from my life. I’ll also undoubtedly use this to comment on things I love or hate, random pop culture musings, you name it. I’ll use this to collect things I’ve written in the past as well as showcase my ongoing writings.

A word about content: I have a very bleak sense of humor and melancholy is kind of my “Free Bird.” I’ll go into some more detail on this subject in upcoming posts, but just be prepared for the occasional post that might have you thinking, “hey, buddy, you okay over there?” I assure you I am. I’m a big believer in the fact that life contains both light and darkness, and without one or the other, you lose context. So if you’re the type of person who always wants things to be sunny and cheerful, this might not be your cup of tea.

I will however attempt to stay well the fuck clear of politics here. Primarily because when I talk politics, I tend to piss everybody off. (No, I’m not a “centrist.” I’m so left-wing neither of the parties in this country can see me from where they’re standing.) If you want to put me in a frame, consider me a devout Carlinist. Saint George is my spirit animal.

And I’ll promise you this right now: no fucking LLMs. You might have seen an em-dash earlier; rest assured that comes from the fact that I’ve been stacking words on top of each other since I was a child and generally know what the little dots and lines and squiggles mean. I don’t even like grammar checking, which will probably become evident due to my overuse of semicolons and run-on sentences. So you can rest assured this nonsense I spew isn’t the kind of nonsense that comes from an algorithm. Some of us just write good.

(Yes, that’s a joke. It’s depressing how many times I’ve made that comment elsewhere and people didn’t get it and immediately swarmed to “gotcha” me. C’mon, son.)

So, I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, but that’s the important stuff, I feel. So with those ground rules in place, let’s see what happens.

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends

Like so many things, it begins with a girl.

(There’s also a boy, but he’s much less important. He’s only the teller of tales, a word-style hero who has occasional flashes of being better than he has any right to be. Let’s just get it out of the way, the boy is me. I’m just here to narrate.)

So, a girl, and a boy. Also to get it out of the way, this isn’t a story where the boy gets the girl, or the girl gets the boy. If that’s the kind of happy ending you need, to quote the Man in Black, get used to disappointment.

Don’t get me wrong—the boy cared about the girl very, very much. And he was pretty sure she cared for him, as well. At the very least, she let him stick around while casting off so many others who had become tiresome or predictable. They loved most of the same things, and always got each other’s obscure references. He made her laugh. And sometimes, when he said something particularly clever or charming, she had a way of smiling at him that lit up her whole face and made her, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

They were friends for a long time. She became the most important constellation in his sky. He’d have taken a bullet for her, and very nearly did once. She played a key role in him becoming the person he is today.

They fell out of touch eventually, but the echo of her presence in his life was something he always treasured.

And then one day, he found out she was gone.

And that made him feel a certain kind of a way about a great many things.

For Sid, who always made me want to be better than I was.

And for Ransom, who always made me feel like I was already better.

For some reason, the two of you really loved the stories I told. My greatest regret is that I didn’t tell you more of them before you had to leave.

And for the Usual Suspects.

You know who you are.