Hello!
I will be updating this post beginning Friday 7.31.2026 with news of my travel to San Diego. I will offer colorful photographs and keen observations about the people and goings-on in and around San Diego over the course of a couple of days before meeting up with the rest of the BurlPres group at the San Diego airport on Sunday morning (8.2.26) before we make our way into Tijuana, Mexico, for the purpose of building a small house for a family of six. I will also, perhaps, add a few photographs on Friday August 7 once we have crossed back into the United States after having camped for five nights at the Amor Hacienda Camp east of Tijuana in conjunction with the house-building….
Check back for updates! This is the only place where I will post this content. No social media! No AI! No paid influencers!
1 Spillover: A Microfiction
I wouldn’t order a drink.
“I don’t understand why you’re being like this.”
“Being like what?”
“Like this. All….”
“All like what?”
“Like my cousin. This is something my cousin would do.”
“I don’t mind your cousin. I have several things in common with your cousin.”
“So?”
“So why should it be a surprise if we act somewhat similar? This isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this.”
“No, I don’t remember you being like this. Not to this extreme.”
“I don’t feel like ordering a drink. Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“What they want for a drink in here is ridiculous. Why do people pay for this?”
“You want me to buy you a drink?”
“It’s price gouging. I should call the attorney general.”
“People, most people, have to make their money somehow.”
“Well I don’t have to help them.”
“Somebody does. You scratch their back, they scratch yours. That’s how business gets done. That’s what makes the world go round.”
“Sounds like a rogue AI agent has hacked into boring ad copy of the S & P 500.”
“Oh, come on! Why don’t you want to go to San Diego with us?”
“I just don’t have the energy for it. I’m too old for that stuff.”
“We’re older than you are! Just come along and hang out. Eat some seafood. Have some drinks with us and walk around.”
“I don’t know. Are you going to Coronado?”
“Of course we’re going to Coronado.”
“Is the beach still closed?”
“Is it?”
“Last I knew it was closed. It had been closed for two or three years. It was sewage from Mexico, from Tijuana. The Tijuana River, working its way up the coast.”
“Well, either way. My friend wants to see the hotel.”
“Your friend.”
“Didn’t you get stung by a stingray there anyway?”
“Not me, but yeah. They were bad there, too. Enjoy the hotel.”
“I know you go to San Diego every year so this just doesn’t mean much to you.”
“Used to. I used to go every year. I haven’t been since 2026.”
“Hm. I didn’t realize that. Come out. See us. See me.”
“If it were just you I might.”
“John.”
“John what?”
[…and scene…]
2 Word Games
One letter can make a big difference in a word. Is it a copse or a corpse? Are those the crops or are those the cops? Did we order a pizza or a piazza? Is it free or is there a fee? Did we get a decal or a deal? Are you a mad man or are you a made man? Is the place close or is it closed? Do you want a lime with that or a lie? Should we eat a pie or a pile? Are you slim or slime? Quit or be quiet? Stay longer or stay a loner? Is it good or is it goo? There or here?
My rogue agent is more rogue than your rogue agent. Your rogue agent wears rouge. I am my own rogue agent. I’m going to be a rogue agent for Halloween. I’ll be able to do whatever the heck I want! Oh, that’s OK, officer. I’m dressed up as a rogue AI agent for Halloween. I’m incapable of bearing responsibility for anything I say or do!
Salton Sea, port side. Who would put salt on a sea? That ain’t right. Do you want an ounce or do you want to bounce? Have you issued an edit or an edict? Is it the end of the month or the end of a moth?
3 The San Diego Arch
I have a craving for; I crave hush puppies. What’s that about? Mitch’s is visible from the balcony. It’s nice out there. I’m on the fifth floor. The view is of the peninsula as it stretches south h before sloping into the sea.
There is some sort of sculpture out there. Mid-peninsula. Halfway down, halfway across. Higher up, along a ridge. It’s an arch…a three-pronged arch. A monument, must be. I’ll look it up.
The Arch is some sort of antenna used by the Navy to study shipboard antennas? Something like that. Here’s an article about the place (link).
The arch/antenna is nonmetallic. Underneath is a flat disc meant to simulate the ocean’s electric current. On this disc are brass replicas of every ship in the fleet.
It sounds like I’m making this up but I’m not. I’m not that creative or inventive, not in that way. This is why I can’t write what looks like fiction.
Did you simulate the program or did you stimulate it? Is this a nice pace or a nice place? Maybe both.
4 Quotes and Food Photos
I wanted to compile a few quotes and short excerpts from writing I’ve recently read. I didn’t venture out much today, Saturday. I did get out for food, though.
I am currently reading an anthology called Mexico in Mind. It has been a surprisingly enjoyable and educational read. I like the travel writing and the history of Mexico. Not all of these quotes are from this anthology though.
“The boat rolled horribly all night. I wondered if the was from the north, but I no longer cared. It is before you cross a frontier that you experience fear. Now I lay there in my clothes, on my wooden shelf, with dim curiosity and wonder. It was too bizarre and inexplicable—rolling on a Mexican barge across the gulf. Why?”
—Graham Greene, Another Mexico, 1939
“Although the morning was young, the hazy mirage was up.”
—John Steinbeck, The Pearl
“The future. Didn’t everybody know enough about the future already, without digging up the details? There’s only one thing you have to know about the future: everything gets worse. Once you have that, you have it all. The specifics don’t bear thinking about.”
—Tobias Wolff, “The Other Miller,” included in Best American Short Stories 1987, The Night in Question (collection), and first published in Atlantic Monthly.
Reddit user Duffuser writes, “I’m no expert but as I understand it “Campechano” has become a sort of shorthand phrase meaning ‘something that has multiple fillings, usually meats.
This Campechano is a seafood take on the idea. It had octopus, squid, and shrimp in a spicy tomato sauce that tasted like a ceviche with hot Bloody Mary mix thrown in. There was also red onion tomato and cucumber. I’ve had it a couple of times here now.
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