Calloo! Callay!

I did it!  I did it, Mother!  I really did it!

Whoooooooooooo ...

"Leave It", ©Jeff Glovsky

Introducing Jeff Glovsky

... on WordPress:

Compendium

random SHORTS

3 Monsters

Developing Characters

Old Is New(ish)

©michaeljayphoto

New (Dis)Contents

jglov.wordpress.com

Jeff Glovsky on WordPress

When Blogs Collide ...

Draft-y (Spring Cleaning)

The first line suggests some riff on, or nod to, ERB ... The photo might too, actually.  But really, I have no idea where I was going with this (begun and abandoned 3/21)...

--

Nice!  EPIC!

As of 2 day, right now, we have a

 --

The End?? 

more Unfinished Business
by Jeff Glovsky
 

Intent, Purpose

In the flurry of world Angst which has defined the past weeks, it's occurred to me, I've gone about as far as I can go here.

With this blog, and these posts, I've said just about all I have to say, and have more or less achieved my goals setting out:  to right the wrongs done to my personal name; my business, but also personal reputation ... I've at least had my say, my quarrelsome days, in the kangaroo court of public opinion.

There's no need left to slag off the lawyer's wife, whose husband, in a rambling, epithet-filled, late night SCREAMFEST, using his law firm's email account, attacked me ... offended, insulted, abused, accused, swore ... because he (WRONGLY) decided he was "scammed" by me;

there is no longer any need to chide the clueless, sometimes mental, entitled-feeling, when they're demanding rental "discounts" or expecting "deals" ... or making threats to me, because they destroy or make filthy a piece of my property, yet somehow don't think they ought to pay for anything!

No more need to waste time ... There are nasty assholes on this planet.  At times, I am one of them.  No one cares, and in the Big Picture, why bother arguing?

There are much more important things to address, fight and stress over ... Messes requiring insights beyond my largely unread blog of personal grievances (received or given), or remembrances only half-heartedly "shared".

I've come to the end of my intent and purpose with "The Fall of Jeff Glovsky"; for all intents and purposes, nearing the ...

 

Sony, North Korea and Me!

As an American, I’m confused:  do I thump my chest and stress about complete and utter capitulation … the weaselly collapse of an entire segment of population … the industry that feeds it and the “weakness” of our nation?

Or am I glad that things aired on the right side of caution, and that fate wasn’t tempted?

* * *

(Thanks, Rene, for the reblog!)

Why Is It So Big??

Story of my life!  I get asked all the time ...

Why is your blog so ridiculous??

I smile, wink a little ... proudly, yet truthfully, say "I don't know."  Ask if I should change my dongle.

"Your dongle's fine ... ".

I smile again.

"Dude!  What the fuck?  Stop simpering at me!"

"You tell me why it's so big!  That's why I called you here, to look ... Here, let me open things up for you ... "

"Holy shit," she says, as it smacks her eyeballs ... "That is big!  Is that as small as things get?"

"Yes," I say, sheepishly.

"It's like my parents' telephone ... "

"I know!" I say proudly.  "I was looking at it the other night, and thinking the same thing!"

"My mom's small fingers get lost all over it.  My dad can flail away though, and never misses!"

"I hear ya'!"

"Can I ... ?"

"Absolutely.  See, I've got no control over how big it looks ... "

"You should resize this manually."

"I have, believe me.  I do!  All the time.  But then it just springs back to this size again."

"Even if you snip it?"

"Snip it, crop it ... It's like a worm.  It just keeps growing back!  Nothing I do ever makes it smaller."

"I'll make it fit the way you want it."

"Thank you, Gina."

"That's why I'm here ... "

And how was your weekend?
 * * *

more annoyances / episodes

Ghosts and Skeletons

My friend Mike, whom I've known for more than forty years ( ...! ), is a history buff, and a dedicated nostalgic when it comes to shared memories and our personal histories.  I can always count on Mike, whenever we have any occasion to catch up (which is not nearly as often or enough as it should be), to remind me of some tidbit from not only our childhoods growing up together, but also my own experiential Akasha ... which should never have become wiped away in the first place.

I thought of Mike the other day when I 'stumbledupon' something I forgot even existed:  "(Mostly) Unpublished writings by New York City author, poseur, poet and flâneur" ... JgNYC.

If you click there, you will enter a world of gamely attempted, lame stits and farts, before Twitter or Facebook ... before even LinkedIn!  My first post, an early slice of Slice / Life, dated April 28th, 2003 ... Apparently, LinkedIn launched that May.

first "Contact"

And then I found, resurfacing from the bowels of the deep web, one of the first online formats which granted me publication - an until now MIA zine called Strawberry Press ... which, with Underground Voices and Thieves Jargon, cut my teeth;

then, circling back to my giant, small steps into the early, first "blogosphere" -- that abandoned single page of posts on jglovsky.blogspot.com -- I became further reminded that I was, and still am (if I can find the password!!), a proud member of Zoetrope ("one of the first uses of social networking on the internet") ... a virtual writers' workshop sponsored by All-Story.

Who knew??  Who could remember any of this, when work and life demanded attention and the past four years, especially, have been starting over?

While starting to weep now, I'm actually happy:  to have come across these footprints from a more recent past ... clinging as I tend to, to my longer ago, Gen X sense of self, and the spirit that still haunts those streets and footsteps ...

Renard Might Say ...

Happy Birthday, John.

When I'm ... 74

* * *

One Of My Favourite Songs From John Lennon | The Chronicles Of Renard

(a sort of reblog)

News at 11

Via some mid-summer bleakness in Salon, here are "10 examples of 'European exceptionalism' and areas in which Europe is way ahead of the United States."

1. Lower Incarceration Rates
2. Less Violent Crime Than the U.S.

3. Better Sex Education Programs, Healthier Sexual Attitudes

    [3.5. Better Sex]

4. Anti-GMO Movement Much More Widespread

5. Saner Approaches to Abortion

    [5.5. Better Sex]
6. More Vacation Time

7. Universal Healthcare

8. Greater Life Expectancy
9. Mass Transit Systems
10. Europeans More Likely to Speak Foreign Languages
    [10.5. Better Sex]

10 things America does so much worse than Europe

ADD THIS:
11. News / Journalism

... sucks in the United States.

'Twas ever thus.

We should be ashamed.

Bad Lines and Inspiration

"Some might argue that it’s hubristic to write in the first-person.

"I (me, myself and … ) disagree.

"What I would argue is that the first-person, as a narrative form, should be retired. This would limit, if not eliminate, all the posers, pretenders and Starbucks dreamers who 'share' themselves like drunken cheerleaders. It would also pretty much lay waste to the 'blogosphere' … this, arguably, not a terrible thing.

"Several decades ago -- before our Facebook, cut and paste, 'open-source' world --  there were older siblings … also scribbling, pos(t)ing dreamily, into Barnes & Noble 'journals' the size of granny panties … or contributing to Fray."

It's All About Me(dium)

in

Inspire the World

A Year in Review

If you've searched me by name ... chances are you've wound up here. - Jeff Glovsky, "What's in a Name?", June 26th, 2013

Sometimes when I wake, sometimes in the dead of night, I ask myself, "Am I better off now than I was last year?"

This has been going on for decades.

I remember turning twenty, and bemoaning the fact that my teen years were behind me ... literally feeling "old".  At twenty!  But asking myself then, as I toiled backstage at a Rhode Island summer theater, Am I better off now than I was the previous summer, lifeguarding at a camp in the Berkshires ... sleeping with insects and rocking an orange tan?

Though the jury in my head is still out on that one ... I will say that the summer I spent doing theater nonsense did introduce me, through a production of Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies, to a lifelong significant other in jazz.  Oh, would that I could play something!  The day (or night) I wake up and think to myself, Last year, I couldn't play an instrument ... is the day I'll relax, maybe stop assessing.

Or when it no longer needs to be a question.  When the current of my life, and each 365 days prior, in particular, are clearly moving forward, and not laterally (or back!) -- so I don't need to ask myself, "Am I better off now than I was last year?" --

Then I'll have achieved something.

In the meantime, I'll just keep obsessing ...

Last year, in 2013, I finally woke up from a 3-year coma.  In 2010, my name and reputation were destroyed ... maliciously, I'll maintain.  Needlessly.  Prematurely.  Criminally; for defamation -- calumny, vilification, traducement, libel, blasphemous slander -- is a crime.  If I'd known then how to protect myself from it happening ... with just the press of an "Enter" key:  with NO form of outreach, fact-checking or "rebuttal" offered until AFTER the damages already get done ... I would not have kept silent, shell-shocked from the bullying ... comatose, bent over and raped for three years.

I would not have played dead, "hiding" in plain sight, while my name and reputation, friends and lovers, innocent family members suffered, then became destroyed and flat-lined like I pretended to ...

No, I would've risen and fought back, then.

In 2013, I started fighting back now.  Enough became more than enough, and to all the bandwagon jumpers, lazy strangers, simple googlers, problem tenants and out and out troublemakers who think asshole behaviors are somehow justified ... despite never even meeting me, let alone knowing what the situation may have been in 2010, and what you're talking about when you add insult to injury; when you reject, refuse, deny and/or extort out of hand, 'cause you think you can ...

"WANTED" ... Really?

Fuck you.  That's all I have to say to you, still.  Can't express myself differently than I've already done here, and here and here and here, over the past year ... Even flailing, coming close to admitting defeat, I am resolved to keep fighting, providing some balance.

... There are others, though.  Those of you who know me, and have known me, for many years.  Have done business with me, again and again.  Have entered into new business ... Have worked with me at Tier 1 financial institutions (where, obviously, I never would be if I were a "lifetime criminal and scam artist!" END QUOTE).

There are those of you who have chosen to be / stay connected ... Have rented apartments I own without incident, have swapped apartments, wholly and mutually on trust.

There are website owners who are not extortionate; there are people of reason, who have recognized the foulness and long-lasting damages of a false and defamatory online attack, and taken steps to help me restore my name - the name "Jeff Glovsky".

To all of you, I say Thank you.  Though to be honest, I shouldn't need to run around thanking people (however sincerely appreciated they may be) ... for doing their jobs, or not publicly defaming me!  To paraphrase Chris Rock, that's what's SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!

If you're on the fence through all this, or have no idea what to think ... after all, you don't know me.  Why should you think anything?  You've only 'stumbledupon' this post and might think I'm some wack job -- assuming you've even read this far --

I invite you to know me ...

The 'real' Jeff Glovsky

* * *

Tell Me ...

Comments

are Open

... Be Gentle

Down, Back Up Again

On Defamation and Rushes to Judgement

by Jeff Glovsky

The Voice

I can turn a phrase, I'll give me that.

Not to sound like a douche or anything ... but I like to think, as a writer, that I know what I've got.

I consider myself a writer first, a "blogger" dead last ... I'm not "sharing", I'm expressing ... in fact, I'm not a writer at all ...

I compose things:  build sentences.  Craft paragraphs ...

I'm a Writer.

As a "blogger", I'm just dead in the water.  Sunk in a sea of voiceless fish ... all glub-glubbing their lists, and their how-to primers ... their Do and Don't treatises ... nasty "reviews", insipid, rude rumors, provocation-less thoughts and, generally, woefully unfunny "humor" ...

As a writer, I've become inured ... learned to repel, to tune most of it out;

as a blogger, to thrive, stay afloat and alive in the dead sea of overwrought, voiceless fish ... you are compelled, to take it all in.

As a Writer ... I remain repellent.

No Love for 'Kindness'

I recently posted a piece I wrote here, a weird German thing which I happen to like, on Medium.

On Medium, I submitted Freundlichkeit (Human) Kindness as "A Time and Place", to a number of seemingly appropriate collections, but so far it hasn't found a home.*  Another tl;dr orphan, full of too many words.

"I hate words"

"Words suck."

"I don't like stuff that sucks!"

The Unparallelled Wisdom of Beavis and Butthead

... Mere words, pooled unread around the ankles of a "friend"-poked teen  - not at all caring what I do, post or have to say!

They're out there, my words, though.  Because they can be.  Herking and idiosyncratic and jerking, and lurking like shadows in need of some light.

*UPDATE:  A Time and Place in 1000 Stories on Medium.  Thanks @torbahax.

Yet Another Song & Dance

On a social network last week, a minor kerfuffle erupted when I posted a picture of Super, Man!

photo via Liveleak.com

... not one of my own original Photos by Jglo ... but I found it online and linked to it, to illustrate a point I was trying to make.  Actually, I was using it as a punch line -- to illustrate "accomplishment" after reciting a children's poem -- and this is where I was perhaps misguided.

Someone called me out on my attempted humor - which, in retrospect, relied on a visual version of the "retard" / "retarded" pejorative ... though when I posted the image, I wasn't thinking so far ahead.  I was just thinking like I was ten, when most of us used to laugh and clap around "like retards", for comic effect.

Like Jerry Lewis ... or Don Knotts ... or Buddy Hackett ... or any number of rubber-faced, googly-limbed, weird-voiced childfolk, who built careers, if not legends, by "playing retarded".

Or franchises.  Dumb and Dumber, anyone?  Little Britain's Lou and Andy (speaking of 'kerfuffles') ... How about Mitch Fatel?  Some Adam Sandler ... That fat one who lived and died like Belushi.

All are, arguably, "offensive".  In the same way that I offended a few people by posting a picture I found to be contextually appropriate ... I suppose I could have just written, "golf clap".

But my point is the hypersensitivity and hypocrisy which pervades American culture, and society at large.  When I was 18, having just come to New York and attending college, there was a discussion in some class about immigration.  From the second or third row of the classroom, I piped up humbly that newly arrived immigrants, in order to arrive (and stay) in the United States, should be required to learn and speak at least a fundamental English ... which, some 25 years later (and nearly 400 years after the pilgrims landed), is still the nation's first language.

This simple suggestion of common sense, which remains my opinion and is shared by many, did not go down well.  A girl in the front row nearly snapped her neck whipping around to face me, and snarled, "A man named Adolf Hitler once believed the same thing!"

WTF??, I would have thought (if "WTF" had been around then).  Really?  That's Hitleresque?  A suggestion that new arrivals to any country be required to have at least an awareness of that country's language??

As a result of the unexpected smackdown, I spent the next four or five years in classrooms not opening my mouth - and eventually, not graduating from college.

Now last week, a woman on a social network demanded to know what my kids eat for breakfast -- what I must feed them -- because I posted a picture of Super, Man!

My startled response was to request that my own post be deleted ... which it was, together with, more disturbingly, the entire thread (an innocuous, if maddeningly pretentious, thread about Poetry).  No longer ten years old, I could see the woman's POV and understood how young Super, Man! might have upset, perhaps even "offended", her.

And this time, I let hypocrisy win.

"Song and Dance (Man!)", ©Jeff Glovsky

Stolen, Caught, Captured

The Lo-Fi Project

In September 2013, I began the Second Set photo blog on WordPress.  Continuing where the ‘first set’ of 500 Photos by Jglo left off, Jeff Glovsky: The Second Set, has been a wordless “timeline” of perceptions, moods, seasons and occasional travel … together, with its predecessor on Tumblr, over the course of nearly a year.

"Goodbye", ©Jeff Glovsky

Hysteric Indulgence

"I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying." - Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

I'm ill-fitting, and self-absorbed.  Upon hearing of Nelson Mandela's death, I posted a picture of myself, and a link to my page on Writers-Network.

Here is what I was thinking:  I was trying to illustrate his quote about saints and sinners and perseverance, by putting up a "selfie" that might have sort of worked as a visual, sort of, 'Should I or Shouldn't I?' ... 'Done that (too late!), now what's the next move?'.

And then I linked that photo to my page on Writers-Network, because the apropos quote, attributed to Nelson Mandela, has always been a part of my profile there.

The move backfired, though, when that one guy who's following me intimated that I seemed like an asshole for doing this.

Beyond which, my sincere and timely post on Tumblr -- a humble homage to one of history's great leaders, and a light and inspiration to millions -- could have achieved 'maximum viscosity' (i.e., re-blogging) if I'd only decided to bag the link ... or better yet, do away with my own photo completely.

I did end up choosing to lose the linkage.  But my photo's still there ... first of all, because I think it does, in a way, sort of lend itself to the above quote, and this was my intention.  Secondly, because it's my damn Tumblr (just like Lil Wayne's cup) and I'll post what I want there!

Generally, I prefer to let my WordSpeak (and my Photos by Jglo) without boring, pretentious exposition.  'I wrote this piece when I was not in a good place' ... 'This next song...'.

"Shut up and sing!" I used to scream, when I'd drop into an open mic. to read my words, or be trapped in a sound booth mixing a gig, and some insecure windbag would get up before me.  'And then my dog suggested, "Eat the bone!"...my dog is my muse.  Why, I'm just a vessel.  But I can't do an English accent...'

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I used to scream ... as the audience assembled would invariably chuckle in indulgent, embarrassed anticipation at what the insecure windbag might utter next ...

Now the internet screen has become the stage ... but other than this, there is little that's changed.  I still become hysterical when I visit most blogs and read all of the reasons and rhymes for each posting; the gestation behind each creation, the excuses for what, why and how each exists.

I BECOME HYSTERICAL with explanations which have themselves no need for existing, and only serve to pad the word count (or cleverly populate search results).  Rather than letting the words, or the various images, speak -- and rather than allowing me to absorb them subjectively -- there are zillions of  "creators" all telling me what, why and how I should feel, follow, "favorite" or "like".

Of course, zillions respond to this becoming-less-and-less-subtle steerage, and the "blogosphere" gets born and is an ever indulgent, happy place ... I become hysterical!!

Though all things considered, I am happy to be weighing in.  I will steadfastly be keeping your two cents to yourself ... but I know you'll continue to 'stumbleupon' sundry Random Poetix and other works, and Wor(d)s in Progress, by Jeff Glovsky, and take what you may from them ... without any boring, pretentious exposition.

I just wanted to take this moment here, to elucidate my self-absorption.

Thank you very much.  Thanks for reading.

Good night!!!

"All of Me", ©Jeff Glovsky

The Numbers Scheme

This was not the original plan ...

The plan was to match up my number of posts here -- or 'annual output' -- with the number of each corresponding month.  For example, June, when I started, should've seen six posts ... August, eight, right (because that's the eighth month)?

October, there should have been 10 posts, etc.

So here we are now, at the end of November, and I've only had seven things to say!

Seven seems to be the mean:  the overall average of monthly posts that time (or inspiration) allows me ...

I was wandering around a carnival once, or maybe it was some street fair or boardwalk / hippie part of town (like Santa Monica Pier or Pike's Place) some place ... and these Jesus freaks were pummeling people with pamphlets promising redemption.

One pimply prophet, someone's young runaway, ran up all saying, "Sir!  Sir!  Can I just talk to you for a minute?"

It was the first time I remember ever being called "sir" - so it must have been about twenty years ago ... right at that tipping point between Youth and Now.

"Not now!"  I remember clearly snapping.  I was snapping photos, and wanted then, like now, to be left alone doing it (buildings and night skies and moods much more vital than people to me, even then, like now).  "You're like the seventh person to come up to me here.  What part of town is this?"

The pimply young prophet did not miss a beat!  "Seven ... You mentioned seven," he says to me, eerily.  "What's that about?"

"Well," I begin, mustering enough patience to be able to feign.  "Seven is a natural number following six and preceding eight.  It's the first integer reciprocal with infinitely repeating sexagesimal representation ... and in quaternary, seven is the smallest prime with a composite sum of digits.

"It's also a purty little glyph...".  I reach down and unzip my fly, and that does the trick!

The pimply prophet's off and running, not looking back.

I was telling this story to Kléber the other day, this guy who lives in the apartment below mine.  I was jockeying for a parking place (i.e., crossing several lanes of traffic while down-shifting, finishing a pretzel (wiping mustard off my tie) and sending a text message) when I ran into Kléber -- literally -- stepping off the curb in front of our building.

As I was helping him to his feet, we started talking about numerology.  Kléber was all pissed, because his wife had just accused him of removing some photographs from a family album, and he wasn't looking where he was going (that's why he ran under my Volkswagen) ... We started talking about numbers, and I told him about my run-in with the meaning of the number seven.

Then it occurred to me, while we were chatting, that each month since July -- July of course, being the seventh month -- I've posted more or less seven items ... except September, the ninth month - when I correspondingly posted nine.

... I have no idea how any of this all ties together (seeing as you asked) ... but it wasn't the original plan.