new from above/ground press: Bedtime stories for my imaginary friends, by James Spyker

Bedtime stories for my imaginary friends
James Spyker
$6

Day 1

I almost always first navigate to the home screen of Google TV before turning it off. And I mean I’m not actually turning it off.  I’m turning off the tv, which the Google TV thing will notice and then go into some sleep mode

I think

I can’t really tell what it is doing when the tv is off. In any case, I do that out of kindness. I don’t feel I need to be kind to my tv, or my Google TV. But kindness is a habit and a skill so practicing it is good.

I also take care when I lower myself into a chair, although that might be because I worry I am too fat, so let’s pretend I didn’t say that.

As to why it would be kind, to first navigate to the home screen, these unexpected state transitions are hard things to make work. I know that from my half century of writing software. Imagine if you were teaching a friend to cook dinner and at any point when a klaxon went off they would be required to immediately abandon that dinner and reset the kitchen to its “ready to start cooking dinner” state. That would be hard to do.  Should they drain the pasta before tossing it in the garbage?  Is the protein still frozen enough that it can just be put back into the freezer?  And so on.

Much easier if you let them finish making it and then just need to teach them how to safely store it for potential future consumption.

I could explain how that is a really good analogy to the Google TV thing, but that would turn this into a technical article. Analogies are so much less work than reality. I try to practice kindness towards myself too.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2026
as the thirty-fifth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

[James Spyker launches Bedtime stories for my imaginary friends in Ottawa on August 22 as part of the above/ground press thirty-third anniversary reading/launch/party]

James Spyker is a book and paper artist based in Toronto. He lives in that building where you visited your great aunt when you were a kid. He occasionally returns to writing when blank pages become too much to bear.

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