iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Was telling a friend how my father-in-law tried to make a golfer of me. Failed. How about the other son-in-law? This was a guy so rarefied and intellectual after he got through explaining what he did on his job you still didn't know what his job was.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The Great Dog Arctic Flake chased a skunk into the barn, mouth wide open, roaring a roar. "No little critters allowed in MY barn." A minute later Flakey staggered out of the barn and spoke this time in English for the first and only time she or any dog did so as witnessed by me. "Kill me," she said.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I'm not sure Derry actually intended to kill anyone. Early in our relationship she put me on the ground and stood on my leg. She was correcting my attitude and I knew it. I hopped up and slugged her hard as I could. "Fair enough," she said. "But you'll mind your manners henceforth?" "Right," I said.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I attended an experimental college in a period when the faculty ran the joint. I was connected to NPR when the creatives were active and one didn't know who the suits were. I got involved in writing kids books when it wasn't hard to protect the work from the helpers. Nothing but luck all my life.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Red bearded Viking-looking professor turns up. Derry Icelandic horse, approaches on hind legs, paws the air makes squeaky noises. Me: "Horse wants to kill you." Prof: "Why is she doing like that?" Me: "Fixing to kill you." Prof: "The fence." Me: "Can hop over. Get in car. Go now." He went. He lives.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Looking at photo with camels, I'm aware of first thing I liked about Icelandic horses--not so high above the ground. BTW 1976 coast-to-coast bicentennial horse race, an Icelandic, Lokkur, finished in the low numbers. 300 pound rider. I owned him later, Lokkur.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Why haven't they planted new forests? I don't know. Maybe not the Viking way. Icelandic horse trainer: "Your horse not very good--is kind we would eat at home." Horse, Derry, my close friend, makes a fair try at killing the trainer. Trainer: "Actually, this horse not so bad." Me: "You eat horses?"

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Used to be, maybe still, you'd take a 2nd horse when you went riding. Why? To run your horse into when you wanted to stop. We taught our Icelandics whoa, no problem, but it is not the Viking way. Running into a wall also works, as would a tree, but deforested to build boats 1000 years ago.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Shipping the sleeping bags home rather than shlep. On the bill of lading was Icelandic steamship co. logo a swastika. Flag on ship swastika. "That your trademark?" "Ja." "Must have caused problems during the war." "Ja, both sides sank our ships." "Ever occur to you to change it?" "We had it first."

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

They're not ponies. They're short horses.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I love those Icelandic horses. I am proud certain ones have been my friends. I feel similarly about you, only we have not breathed into one another's noses.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

So it is not you telling me I am your most untalented client, and half-witted with it? That's a relief, except I'm pretty sure you've told me those things in person. I'm glad you are my agent just the same.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Jean Shepherd was in Chicago. Studs Terkel interviewed him on 3 successive days. Shep wanted to show off how he had surpassed the master, but Studs was unsurpassable, got Shep to reveal, maybe to himself, that every time he got in front of a microphone he felt as though he had never seen one before.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Doesn't matter that YOU're sick of him. Every marginally functional human is sick of him. Always has been sick of him. I was sick of him in 2 minutes when he was a local clown in NYC. What matters is that a heavily invested enthusiastic minority sees something in this swine, likes him. We are toast.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Break during walk. I say "geh shluffn" Yiddish for "go to sleep." Dog: "Wha?" I repeat "geh shluffn." Dog: "Hm." Me: "geh shluffn." Dog: "Is it this?" (lies down) Me: "Yes! Good dog!" I repeat 3 times--she does it three times. 2 days later, break again. Me: "geh shluffn." Dog drops. That's a collie.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Tell Webmaster Ed he's a hero. He's a physician now--can't be as much fun as running the podcast. I already knew I was a good reader.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Jill and I swapped the big TV for two little ones soon as we got married--a good decision. At the midpoint of the Hoboken Chicken broadcast, she came to my room. "You're not watching your own thing?" "I forgot it was mine! I got bored." I was watching a Dragnet rerun.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I did see the video. I thought the book was unadaptable, not cinematic, thought the same when Benny said he wanted to do it. "Why this one?" I asked him. I thought there were other books of mine more suitable. "Because I can see it," he said. "I will shut up now," I told myself.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I knew this would happen sooner or later, but I assumed it would be after I was dead, in black and white and running once on a PBS affiliate--which would have been fine. I didn't expect a whole Hollywood thing with a hot director and a big movie star. This way is more fun for me, the book writer.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

If the filmmaker wasn't going to try to make it better than the book, then why make a film? It was my intention to make the book better than the thing I stole to make the book. Progress.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I messaged you using the message feature of here.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Only yesterday I bragged how I didn't make a jerk of myself with the adapter/screenwriter/director and today I got a secret peek. There are gremlins in Hollywood who make things come out the way they often do, but he seems able to evade them. Seems possible the movie may be way better than the book.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

The binding was lousy from go, so pages will fall out. $400 for a copy is what I got from a bookshop, which presumably got a retail price on top. You want?

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Too much of a good thing. I also walked out on Utamaro, Painter of Women, and Eroica, (the Beethoven story). Ich habe genug, I said.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I saw the 1967 adaptation of Ulysses. An Irish production, those people respect the book so much that the actors on the screen were yawning. I'm of the opinion Sunny Jim would have walked out before the end. I did.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I've been told it's almost unheard-of for the movie-guy and the book guy to be friends. This is probably because writers tend to be %$$#@! (writers other than me, that is), and will try to argue for their vision, not understanding a movie is not a book. I said, "I had my fun, now you have yours."

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Yes, but children can read these posts.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

I became friends with Benny Safdie, who is adapting the book and directing the film, so I know some of his thinking. But I have been told NOTHING about what The Rock is preparing except that it will be great. I have upgraded my healthy breakfast to even healthier to ensure I will be here to see it.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

You got me. I've been a robot the whole time.

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Reposted by Daniel Pinkwater

Mystic Rebelle® @mysticrebelle.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought... ― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents #coward #fool #control #thief #liar #tyrant #slavery #trump

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Reposted by Daniel Pinkwater

Jabari A Davis @jabariadavis.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

apropos of *everything

Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery. - Octavia Butler

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Reposted by Daniel Pinkwater

Laurie Ulster @floobish.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Octavia E. Butler, 1998:

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

Choose your leaders

with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward

is to be controlled

by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool

is to be led

by the opportunists

who control the fool.

To be led by a thief

is to offer up

your most precious treasures

to be stolen.
To be led by a liar

is to ask

to be told lies.

To be led by a tyrant

is to sell yourself

and those you love

into slavery.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I'd do more with the animals. Schickanander was on the right track there.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I got to write the libretto for an opera once. If Mozart had written the music, that would have been the high point, plus nobody can prove he wouldn't have said something nice about my contrib.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

I assume Mozart is the brilliant creative goof-off, and Salieri, (me), is the competent drudge. I'll take it.

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Reposted by Daniel Pinkwater

GChellie @gchellie.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Trump vs Sharpie

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Summer job in hot crappy factory with awful conditions, another boy and me, dragging heavy dirty objects. Any time I tried to steal a 5 min. break the boss would catch me. The other kid goofed off constantly, took naps on piles of boxes, and never got caught. There are people talented like that.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Know this bird exists. Should they ever migrate this way, you won't suspect your sanity.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

In the early 70s there was still an outfit doing business in Hoboken that home delivered worn and wonderful wooden crates containing thick hand-blown glass bottles made in Czechoslovakia in different colors nozzle and lever charged with seltzer. I felt like a king.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

You need a tall tapered glass and a long iced-tea spoon. I find the online recipes call for too much U Bet, making an over-sweet sticky product. MGIF (milk goes in first).

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Oh yes, my initial exposure-- Gem Spa, St. Mark's & 2nd. My credentials are in order.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

A local market carries Fox's U Bet Syrup! I was married to a woman of the Bronx, lived downstairs from a Chinese glutton from the borough, and took lessons at Captain Haggerty's School for Dogs at Tremont and Jerome, where the thing is taken for a Puerto Rican delicacy, so I know exactly what to do.

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Looka that! My name among all those good writers!

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Reposted by Daniel Pinkwater

Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

The people of Minneapolis have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The first time a city's population has ever been nominated. www.newsweek.com/minneapolis-...

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Daniel Pinkwater @danielpinkwater.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

I have these neat fans. You're one of them (since roughly 1983). Only just lately, now and then, I get an inkling of what someone might possibly find in a thing I'd written. You're a clever lot, you fans. You get more out than maybe I put in.

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