J. Otis Haas
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Teenage Me vs. the Technological Apocalypse
Going through old boxes of life’s accumulated detritus can uncover forgotten scraps of the past and send one down a rollercoaster of intense personal sentimentality, which is why I tend to put it off. It’s more than just the cringe of seeing one’s former-self, or worse, reading things this familiar stranger has written. These discoveries may cause pangs of embarrassment, especially when it is a collection of relics from one’s teenage years, but it is important to pardon oneself by remembering that the person so revealed, in form or thought, was subject not just to the zeitgeist of the era, but also existed without the benefit of a fully developed brain.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Photography
Getting Back to Bobby. Bonus in New Year, New Projects Challenge.
Bobby and the Bitter Water is a book I began writing during Covid. It is a story about what happens in a small town after the country’s water supplies are dosed with LSD as told through the eyes of a black cat named Bobby who can walk through walls. Though incomplete at the moment, it is my favorite thing I’ve ever written.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Motivation
It is 2050
It is 2050 and at 1212 on a beautiful spring afternoon, a [6523] detonates an unaliving vest in the lobby of a courthouse. By 1227 more than a dozen organizations have taken credit for the attack, which claimed the lives of 4 and injured a dozen more.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Futurism
Complicity
Each year's end offers occasion to reflect on what lessons have been learned during one’s recent revolution around the sun. Some lessons slap you in the face with instantaneous realization, while others sneak in over your garden walls like ninjas. My stunted development often precluded me from some taken-for-granted-by-most endeavors, like learning lessons, until recently. Perhaps it is the newness of the experience, but I have come to realize that the most important lessons are not just specific to one person or one situation, but can be shared and embraced by others. This is my attempt to do just that.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Motivation
The Sighting
“Adam said Santa Claus isn’t real, but I told him I’ve seen the effidence.” My eight year old son was standing there, on the first day of Christmas vacation, puffed up with the sort of indignation that can accompany encountering deniers at any age.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Families
Letter to My Writing Mentor Judith Marks-White (1940-2024)
Dear Judith, Even though it’s been months since I watched a rabbi play show tunes at your funeral I still regularly pick up my phone to text you. Every time my writing is acknowledged in some way, it’s you I want to tell first, and so to say that this has been a period of adjustment is something of an understatement. My world and worldview have changed drastically for the better since we met, and I owe a large part of that to the confidence you instilled in me on that day you locked me in your laser gaze, clearly seeing in me something I could not see in myself. Though many people have told me I am “good with words,” I struggle to find ways to express how grateful I am to have known you.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Humans
The Saga of the Unconscious Immaterium
The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. It was this sequence of events which finally unclogged the writer’s block in Jack’s brain, washing it away in a surge of inspiration that flooded his brain as he retrieved the queen from under the couch, happy to see that she’d landed on the carpet and had not broken her fragile wings. That morning, from the upstairs deck, he’d seen the alarming sight of the river running against its usual course, but having become particularly adept at mental gymnastics over the past year of living with his father, he attributed the water’s strange activity to further shenanigans from the quantum server farm being built upstream and went about his day
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Fiction
In the Closet with Monsters . Runner-up in Spooky Micro Challenge. Top Story - October 2024.
There was only one rule: don’t open the door. It’s a rule I made up, but Biter never wants to listen. He pushes me out of the way and jiggles the doorknob with his filthy devil’s claws just to hear the moans of fear from the other side. Even though it used to be my room on the other side of the door, Biter says little boys like me can’t make rules for things like him.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Horror
