Alan J

Editor, fiction writer, film reviews/critiques, poetry, essays. Sample writing on request.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@0xleegenz I have ADHD, and even with medication and coaching and medication, it is not fun. I hate the term 'neurodivergent.' Youay has well call a dead person "terminally challenged."

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

Cool. My friend was on an Amtrak train when he saw a man in front of him reading a copy of his short story collection---a book that won a PEN/Hemingway prize. If you know about those prizes, the winners usually have sales of maybe a couple of thousand. He got so excited, he wrote an essay about it that ended up in a book of essays that was nominated for a Pulizer. I'll try to get the essay title. It's funny.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

If I were to teach a poetry writing course, my first impulse would be to assign writing prompts or ideas by looking around the classroom, and say,
"Try writing a poem about _____." And then I'd just fill in the rest of the sentence with the first idea that entered my mind. But since I can't write that on a syllabus, does anyone have an idea of what three book titles to add? They could be How to lubricate a boeing jet engine to How to become a Forest Ranger to How to write a book that will be a best seller in 96 years or your money Back.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@StephanieHefli7 @C_Sommerfeldt Neither.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@JDaviesPhD The DSM 4 was drawn up by a group of drunk psychiatrists who were getting so frustrated at not being able to agree on a taxonomy, they got drunk and things got easier.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@effthealgorithm People are now very conservative, both in their behaviors and thinking. In the 19th Century, nearly every literate family read the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare. How many "educated" families today could even understand Shakespeare?

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@adrianmckinty Lucky Jim was the first novel I was assigned in college freshman English. I looked at it and thought, "People write novels in England?"

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

The last propulsive book was a real disappointment. I read it on an Icelandic Airliner, traveling from the U.S to Europe. The plane lost an engine over Nova Scotia and the trees of Nova Scotia seemed to be coming closer as we lost altitude. The flight engineer came out of the cockpit and stared out the passenger windows. Finally, the pilot announced all liquor would be distributed for free because the chances of having it available for a future flight were slim. My, friend, who had studied aircraft engineering laughed, and said, " We lose another engine and we're going down, baby. " I forgot the name of the book.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@davidmbarnett A complementary reading or listening would be Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain is Going to Fall."

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

I would be very wary of information provided by a TV show on ADHD. The explanations would be truncated and the researchers interviewed would probably be the first ones that agreed to participate. I have read just about every research study on it and led a doctoral dissertation on disambiguating ADHD from the effects of childhood trauma. In 50 years, I predict treatment for ADHD will have changed and the early 21st century will be looked on as the dark ages.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

It makes me feel good to "believe in God, so if you don't like it, go f_,ck yourself". Stephen King

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@pensandpoison All you have to do is check off the "soul stripping option" and they will leave you alone.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

Geez, Chris Nolan beat me too it, and I picked the wrong epic!

Aeneas, my brother
Half warrior
Half poet

Traveler between seas,
Exiled from the warm womb of Troy

Adrift on a raft,
Surrounded by sea and sunlight,
Searching by starlight

Where night is so vast,
Your reflection dissolves
Into black water

Then for a moment
Your vigilant eyes rest,
The ache of your body, stilled

No longer destroyer
Nor singer,

The household gods at peace
With the gods of destruction.

Until day breaks in the east
And the scarlet sun
Rouses your blood.

You resume your flight
Towards Latium,
That country you may not enter

Though the people praise you
And call you king.

© Apr 24

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

I have a friend who lived in Beijing for five years. No air conditioning. I'm the summer night, it was too hot to sleep. edThe family would wait until a breeze wafted acroo the house. They would scurry off to bed while the coolness lasted & sleep finally. That's what I call a soporific draft.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@JamesDiddams @FukuyamaFrancis Most people that has read his work, even going back to the 1980s figured that he was full of shit.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

Have you ever considered why there are dozens of books that claim to offer self-taught programs on Photoshop, novel writing, coding, operating systems, MS Office, computer repair, increasing your vocabulary, improving your memory, how to make friends, how to become a literary critic, how to buy a used car, but never a book on how to teach yourself brain surgery?

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@ClaraBenne9673 Your post on Twitter.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@ClaraBenne9673 I am an author. I am not sure what an "indie" author is.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

It would be appropriate in this age of publish at all costs regardless of the quality or lack of quality of your written work to simply learn some basic WordPress website and place your own completed work on the site. It's simple to create a name and URL for your own online journal that need not resemble your name. You could have friends agree to serve as absent editors so their names could be displayed on the landing page. Becoming proficient using WordPress would only take a week or so. Every writer could have a self published journal . No worries about submissions.

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

I understand Nolan's point. But there is a. Big difference between accepting a religious belief on faith and a contemporary belief that is science based. Religious beliefs are immutable. Belief in a scientific principle is based on replication so that the odds of a fact being not true are phenomenally unlikely. If I flipped a two sided coin 10,000 times and it comes up heads 10,000 times, would you be confident I was using a fake coin? Suppose I flipped it for 30 days & it was heads. Woulld you say that was proof? Actually scientists wouldn't. They would say it was provisionally true. Religious belief isn't provisionally true. It's true. If you are a devout Christian would you say I believe in God unless someone disproves it,or would you just say yes?

[Alan J @ajgerstle]

@404lucknotfound @Favwontmiss Go in where?