Month: September 2025

charlie kirk

Posted on by admin

Let’s be clear: political violence, and indeed, violence of any kind, is not okay.

But let’s not do the thing we always fucking do when someone dies and pretend like they weren’t a complete asshole. This man actively spokes against the rights (and lives) of gays, trans people, women, blacks and various other minorities, often in hateful, violent terminology.

All you really need to know about the guy is that he thought gays should be stoned and it was fine if toddlers died in school shootings because it meant he got to keep his guns.

So, no, I’ll decry violence to the end of days, but I will not shed a single fucking tear for a man who believed the murder of toddlers was fair game, and that empathy was something to be exterminated.

And don’t pretend, right wingers, like you’re on the higher path here: you did nothing when children were shot, you mocked Democrats who were shot or beaten, made fun of George Floyd and Paul Pelosi, and were upset that the kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer was stopped before it happened.

You cheer concentration camps and openly assert it’s right and good for people to die of preventable diseases. You laud Donald Trump’s violent, divisive, bigoted rhetoric and are fine with the U.S military blowing up a boat of people without warning or due process, even when they had no actual idea who was on it.

So, yeah, spare me your false equivalence.

If you despise political violence, you do it across the spectrum, as I do – and I’ll say it again – the shooting of Charlie Kirk, no matter what he was, is not okay. If you only care about it when it’s some guy you only just realized existed because Donald Trump somehow broke the news before the rest of the world knew?

Well, then fuck you and your disingenuous sanctimony.

It doesn’t serve you, or this world, unless your only aim is more, not less, violence.

As long as it’s against the people you hate, right?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1555 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Carpet People, Terry Pratchett
Comics: Tomb Raider 46-49
Music: Welcome To The Pleasuredome, Frankie Goes To Hollywood

three down

Posted on by admin

That’s it. The villain has been shanked, the prison’s a riot, the mayor’s fled the country.

All of this will make sense.

None of it will make sense, because it is about nonsense.

Our current nonsense.

LET THEM EAT LAW.

(Sorry, don’t know why I went all Dredd there for a minute – speaking of which, who saw the Karl Urban version? Fuckin’ terrific! I love Lena Headey! Something tells me she’s one of these people who plays an incredible villain, but is an absolute sweetheart in real life. Or so I hope. I honestly hope everyone is sweet in real life.)

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1408 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Time Machine, H.G. Wells (better than I remember, but I'm still icked by the classism)
Comics: Tomb Raider 43-45, Tomb Raider: Arabian Nights 1
Music: Welcome To The Drama Club, Everclear (underrated band, for sure)

a few last notes

Posted on by admin

And then tomorrow, I’m done with the third draft, until the fourth draft.

And the fifth, sixth, seventh… The Mungk had thirteen total.

Hopefully, this ain’t that.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 260 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
Comics: Tomb Raider 39-42
Music: Welcome To Paradise, Green Day

i mean, like, it’s getting there

Posted on by admin

I’ve got one scene left to revise in my third draft, and despite all my great notes with their wonderful additions and new directions and ideas and such, I’m not sure they all fit, or could fit, without monster rewrites and possible storyline changes, at this point.

Still, it’s a good start, and I will endeavour in the new round to go through all those notes and take whatever will really work, will add to the story and make it better than it is, and put it in.

That’s going to be a major task, I’m sure, and I’m starting to worry my end of year deadline isn’t going to be one I can reach.

I finished The Mungk on time last year; it was a novella.

This is much more ambitious and has taken up considerably more time and effort.

I imagine the next will be that again.

A book a year; maybe I’ll have all my work done before I’m eighty. Or even ninety. Ninety-one, perhaps.

I’ll retire on my ninety-first birthday. How’s that?

And then I’ll fucking die.

If I make it there first.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 2869 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Captain Paul, Alexandre Dumas
Comics: Tomb Raider: Sphere Of Influence 1, Tomb Raider: Takeover 1, Tomb Raider 37-38
Music: Welcome To New York, The Rolling Stones

rants that went the wrong way

Posted on by admin

But were still somehow kind of right? Like, it’s the stuff you don’t want to say out loud, because it’s the kind of thing that a good and just society would never say or do, but ultimately, knows sometimes needs to be done?

I mean, I’m not saying anything in particular. In this case, it’s a part of Bad Neighbours, a peak point where things have gone off the rails and the main character has made a certain decision that ultimately, is the wrong decision, but also, kind of the right decision, in the way that we’d all like to ignore Nazis and let them have their little hate parades and such as long as they’re just out there playing pretend and don’t have any actual power and aren’t physically hurting other people.

But the second they do that? Well, I mean, I know how Jack Kirby would have seen it: see a Nazi, punch a Nazi, and certainly, the second there’s violence, it’s up to us to oppose it. I truly believe in the Tao concept of entering a fight like a funeral, with the same solemnity, and the intent to simply end it as quickly and peacefully as possible.

But then, what do I know? I’m a lifelong pacifist who has never actually been in a fight ever, beyond some wrestling with my older brother as kiss. I don’t think I’ve ever been punched in the face.

Then again, maybe that’s because I’m not a Nazi.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1826 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Captain Paul, Alexandre Dumas
Comics: Tomb Raider 33-36
Music: Welcome To My Dream, MC 900 feat. Jesus

sleeeeeeeep

Posted on by admin

Where does it go? Does it happen for other people?

Sorry, it’s really distracting to try and write while exhausted and while Sabrina Carpenter is signing about another woman tasting her pussy on her boyfriend’s lips.

I mean, I know she means it in a mean-spirited way, haha, motherfucker, your man goes down on not you, you get the leftovers, but still.

I guess this is the modern equivalent of lipstick on a collar or the scent of someone else’s perfume on your shirt?

Pussy mouth?

This is a wonderful world, isn’t it?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 907 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Captain Paul, Alexandre Dumas
Comics: Tomb Raider 30-32, Tomb Raider: Epiphany 1
Music: The Weirdness, The Stooges (yikes, downhill, guys)

lord almighty

Posted on by admin

The times, they are a-changin’.

And my body is freaking out with high blood pressure.

I wish I knew why.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1395 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Solar Lottery, Philip K. Dick
Comics: Tomb Raider 28-29, Tomb Raider Journeys 11-12
Music: Weird Tales Of The Ramones (Discs 1-3), The Ramones

coming close

Posted on by admin

I’m coming up on the end of the third draft. I’ll probably be another week or two, but then, hopefully, all the major components are there and it’s just tweaking and making sure all the little things, like what name I used for some mentioned place or character in scene two matches my return comment in scene thirty-one.

They kind of don’t.

I’m catching it as I go.

And all of a sudden, I’m panicking. Did I wing this shit? Is it poorly planned, poorly executed?

Damn it. I suck.

I’m sure all writers feel this way at some point, but also, at some point, it’s always fucking true.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1129 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Solar Lottery, Philip K. Dick (I like that women's fashion is apparently just walking around topless - bit pervy, kinda sexist, Dick, old boy)
Comics: Tomb Raider 26-27, Tomb Raider Journeys 9-10
Music: Weighting, Rollins Band

guilt

Posted on by admin

I mean, I’ve got a lot of it.

I try not to have it. I know people that look like me have done all kinds of horrible shit, and indeed, due to stupidity or selfishness or ignorance of the world around me, I’m sure I’ve done more than my fair share.

I haven’t been a great man. I’m still not, as far as I know.

My life has been defined by trauma – not real trauma. I was never beaten or raped or witnessed a horrible crime. I have PTSD from bad employers, but who doesn’t?

My trauma seems inconsequential; it’s not warzone PTSD or survivor’s guilt.

It’s knowing that every day, things get worse. Brain beaten, bit by bit, until my brain feels like a hockey enforcer with CTE, even if it might not look that way.

But it’s all excuses, or so I’m told. Avoidance. I should feel guiltier, they tell me. I should feel the weight of two thousand years of straight white male oppression.

And I do.

I don’t know how I stand it.

I don’t know how anyone stands it. I sit at the bottom of this world, like Atlas without the muscles, squished, guts oozing out my sides, eyes literally popping out of my skull like a sausage being run over by a Mack Truck.

And yet, somehow, still alive.

I feel it. I feel it all.

I feel the world’s pain, its anger, its suffering.

And I’m not sure how much longer I can stand. 

Target: 1300 words
Written: 2287 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: World Of Ptavvs, Larry Niven
Comics: Tomb Raider Journeys 5-6, Tomb Raider 23-24
Music: Weezer (White Album), Weezer