Month: May 2024

pretense

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I think I’ve had it with people pretending to be better than other people.

People for whom a book or a band or a type of food is a status symbol, and not something that’s to be enjoyed.

People who enjoy certain things because they feel it makes them look better to their cooler friends, or better than those they consider to be of less value.

People who automatically assume others are lesser people because they don’t engage in whatever trend they do, because they don’t come from a big city, because they aren’t into something that considered cool on social media.

People who know very little about the background and lives or minds of those same “others”, and fill those gaps with assumptions of “hickness” or “redneckocity” or worse – the automatic lumping in with all the hateful bigots of the right wing.

No one wants to be associated with that – we can all look down upon that kind of evil.

But just because someone doesn’t share your exact views of what’s cool, or because they come from a smaller city, or because they have different life experiences, or different interests (or different skin colour, romantic preferences or genitalia), you just label them: lesser than.

No one wants to be labelled “lesser than”. Ask minorities. They’ve been dealt that garbage hand for centuries, and it’s far past time we put an end to that bullshit.

So, maybe, when you’re out there looking down on others because they didn’t read your snooty books or don’t like shawarma, ask yourself: do I actually like this? Or am I simply doing the stuck up equivalent of “keeping up with the Joneses”, more interested in looking cool than figuring out what actually makes me happy?

Because from this side, you look lost and insecure, and looking down on the people around you proves it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 291 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite V 2-4, Aphrodite IX: Ares 1
Music: Oh No, OK GO (so underrated, these guys)

that’s what they all say

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I am depression. Depression owns my ass. All is hopeless. All is lost.

And yet, I persist.

The drive to live is strong, even when nothing else is.

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to relate.

Yeah. Uh-huh.

That’s what they all say.

Target: 600 words
Written: 118 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 6-8, Aphrodite V 1
Music: Oh Love, Green Day

sabotage

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Listen up, y’all.

There’s not a guy in my generation that doesn’t know every fucking word of this song, and immediately wants to dress up like a Seventies cop and with a bad moustache and slide over a car hood.

It’s immediate and visceral. I’m not the biggest Beastie Boys groupie, but hell, who doesn’t love that song?

Of course, followed by Come Alive by Foo Fighters, it’s a poignant, hard moment.

Makes me feel like a fucking teenager again, fucked up and wallowing, twisted about in depression and frustration, longing for something more.

And now, middle-aged and overweight, knowing it’s all a horrid lie.

Target: 600 words
Written: 447 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Artemis IX 1, Apollo IX 1, Poseidon IX 1, IXth Generation 5
Music: Oh Boy - The Best Of Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Buddy Holly & The Crickets

mother’s day

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Today, we brunch and we honour our mothers, those of us who have them, and all the many things they’ve done for us, while ignoring the fairly complicated relationship we’ve had with our parents over the years.

Mother’s Day is a good time, a sticky wicket and a timebomb waiting to happen all in one.

My mother is a good mother; it doesn’t mean there’s not complexity there.

Like many GenX kids, we were largely latchkey, left to our own devices and using that time to spoil our minds with alcohol, drugs and the seedy underbelly of non-corporate living. Part of me wonders if things would be different if we had helicopter parents, but then, I’d never have the freedom or independent mind I was forced to cultivate by virtue of being left alone to figure it all out.

Perhaps a blend would be nicer; I regret a lot of my actions, but I don’t regret being able to think on my own, to be self-reliant.

So, for that, thank you, mothers. For the freedom to be, and the understanding that responsibility is inextricably entwined with that freedom.

We do what we will, and the consequences come, as is inevitable. There is no free ride; only free choice.

Target: 600 words
Written: 141 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 3-4, IXth Generation: Hidden Files 1, Athena IX
Music: The Offspring, The Offspring (wherefore art my offspring)

pickle-palooza

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Is anyone else more than a little concerned about social media and AI’s ability to predict what we want and what our lives should contain?

For example, Facebook has apparently decided that I’m attending an event called Pickle-Palooza today.

I’ve never heard of this and I’m not entirely certain what it is. Is this a farmer’s market for brined cucumber-philes? Or is it a Farmers Only event for um, those with pickles?

I don’t know, and I don’t know why Facebook’s algorithm thinks I need this in my life?

AI is just weird.

Target: 600 word
Written: 199 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX 11, Aphrodite IX/Cyber Force 1, IXth Generation 1-2
Music: Off To See The Lizard, Jimmy Buffett

jet fresh flow

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I ain’t got it.

Beck’s better at it than I. So is Flava Flav, Eminem, Ernest Hemingway, Erica Jong and Jules Verne.

I ain’t got it.

My niece raps better than I do. The other one sings better.

Everyone connects better with one another.

I am a non-valence electron, there but not involved, outside the chemical process, lurking in the outer ring.

I ain’t got it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX: Hidden Files, Aphrodite IX v2 8-10
Music: Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, OK Go

oh god that poor child

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That’s what I think when I hear super rich people are having children, especially when they’re known to have been shitty little people themselves.

That poor fucking child.

And here I am, writing the length of a tweet for the thing I love.

Poor fucking child.

Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX v2 4-7
Music: Odelay, Beck (the jet fresh flow... wait... get fresh?  I like jet fresh better)

flame out or flicker

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I thought, when I was young, I was going to join the twenty-seven club. It was a dream.

Explode through the atmosphere, a fucking rocket on its way to etch its name across the sky only to explode spectacularly and leave its legacy falling from the sky.

Instead, I’m a half-broken sedan (well, more minivan based on weight), middle-aged and failing, and the only mark I’ve left on the world is some pets that loved me, and whom I love.

At least I know I made that difference.

(I miss you, little butts – Magnus, Loki, Nyka and Cassie Bear).

Still, is there a forty-seven club?

Could I start one?

How about ninety-seven?

Things never go how you will them to; it’s coincidence, circumstance and bio-mechanics that determine were end up.

And for most of us, it’s the dirt, not the sky.

Target: 600 words
Written: 108 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX 4, Aphrodite IX v2 1-3
Music: Odds & Sods, The Who

met gala

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Who cares? At least, it wasn’t entirely ridiculous this year, but honestly, it always pisses me off when you see these celebrities dressed absurdly, in a stunning display of myopia toward the lesser off classes beneath them.

What’s worse is that some of the worst offenders are those who ardently support social reform in favour of the lower classes.

Not for them, apparently. It’s hard to stomach a well-known bleeding heart celebrity who then turns around and dons some absurdly expensive dress to go hobnob with other similarly well-off individuals while sipping champagne and slurping caviar.

It is one of the worst displays of concentrated wealth and the whole “first class” citizen versus the rest of us, and even the most liberal of celebrities cream themselves in order to go and wear some absurdly lavish get-up to remind us how utterly vapid they are, and how little they actually care about the social causes they espouse the rest of the year.

It’s Masque of the Red Death shit, partying in extravagance while the rest of the world burns around them.

Fuck the Met Gala.

Target: 600 words
Written: 462 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX 0-3
Music: October, U2

office days

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Well, every third week, my days get a little tighter, when they can no longer stand to be.

The noose scratches at my neck.

I don’t remember who put it on, but everyone that comes by seems to give it a solid yank.

To nudge the chair under my feet.

How soon we do swing.

Today’s dark musing brought to by L7 and One More Thing.

Target: 600 words
Written: 94 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Tom Judge: End Of Days 1
Music: Oceania, Smashing Pumpkins