Category: culture

the need for vengeance

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I understand the impulse, from a fiction standpoint. Who doesn’t love a good revenge story?

John Wick isn’t what it is for nothing. (They killed his dog, so he spent four movies murdering everyone that’s ever been even tangentially related to the guy who did it. As a dog owner, I’ve never been more invested.)

The problem is that revenge seldom works out the way we want. The fantasy that plays in our head of getting that asshole boss in trouble with HR or having the perfect takedown of that bitchy girl in your friend group, more often than not, what happens is… nothing.

HR doesn’t care, because that asshole boss is so far up his asshole boss’ ass that HR finds him untouchable. That bitchy girl, she’s been insulting people so long, she rebuts with a brutal takedown of her own, and it has truth in it, and you’re cut to the quick. Your friends all titter, because they, too, are assholes.

Congratulations, you’ve just made your life worse.

All I’m saying is that as nice as the fantasy is, unless you’re some superheroic powered individual like John Wick, it probably won’t work out for you. Better to cut those influences without words, and move toward your happy, rather than your revenge.

Of course, some of us can’t, and that seething anger becomes all consuming, until we’re delusional about the whole damn thing.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 360 words, comic: Western Cradle #2

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X (and Alex Haley, I guess)
Comics: Preacher 9-12
Music: New Wave, Against Me!

original sin

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I don’t believe in original sin. I think it’s fucking ridiculous.

Only a deluded soul could believe that anyone is born evil. Babies are babies; they just are.

Evil is not born. It’s bred.

It’s influenced and created, it has supervillain origins. Origins often tragic and relatable, but it doesn’t ultimately matter because the evil is so ingrained as to overwhelm any compassion one might hold.

It’s a henchman created by an overbearing boss, a desire to please, a fear of independent thought, or whatever.

It’s selfish, narcissistic, and considers no one’s needs but its own. It feeds and feeds and feeds, growing larger and larger, until someone cuts off the damn trough (or it empties its own and starts feasting on everyone else’s, which is when true evil begins).

It needs a slap in the face.

And sometimes, it’s so far gone, so committed to its story of itself as hero, itself as victim, itself as the only character in the story whose needs need to be fulfilled, that there’s no chance of turning back.

There’s only awful behaviour, and ultimately, exile or death.

If, in your story, you are the only one that matters, or you think your needs are more important than anyone else’s?

Fuck you. You’re the problem.

You weren’t born that way; circumstances pushed you a certain direction and you didn’t bother to course correct once you knew.

And ultimately, you started making the choice to be evil, all on your own.

So, fuck you, overentitled pieces of shit, bigoted assholes trying to pretend you love freedom and not just hating on others.

Fuck you, snooty pricks staring down your noses at people for not having the “right” views or the “right” look or having read the “right” books, when the extent of your engagement with justice is a fucking social media post to mask the fact that all you care about is status.

Fuck you, too, people who stand up and say, I’m decisive, I’m advocating for myself, I’m a strong person, but are, in actually, just assholes who treat everyone else like shit over the pettiest bullshit in order to prop up the fiction that they’re somehow worth more than everyone else (your insecurity is showing). Your obsessive need to prove yourself, your obsession with validation, it’s destructive – to you and everyone around you.

And it’s led, time and again, to the same choice – grow, change, be a better person, or close down, stop thinking and fuck everyone else.

Otherwise known as, you know, evil.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 3085 words, comic: Western Cradle #1

Read: The Art Of Asking, Amanda Palmer
Comics: Chu 9-10
Music: New Order Essentials, New Order

sergio leone

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I’ll be honest, I’m kind of obsessed; his ability to create a mood simply by creating a static shot with a hint of movement is unreal. The cinematography in his movies was never without purpose.

He once said “the myth is everything” and when it comes to creating a piece of art, I think he’s touched on something that transcends the idea of merely being creative or tapping emotions or cool concepts.

It’s EVERYTHING.

(Hell, it’s technically the entire reason for the MAGA movement, given that they’ve created a whole alternate reality where everything that promotes compassion, freedom or you know, intelligence is considered evil, a web of conspiracy thinking that has no actual basis in reality – often except as applied to the Trump grifters running the joint. See Gaetz, Matt. Where’s a man with no name when you need him?)

Anyway, huge fan of Leone, and at this point, praying he doesn’t turn out to be problematic, like every other artist I’ve idolized over the years and who continue to prove my point:

There is no correlation between skill and the relative morality of its wielder.

Target: 100 words
Written: 405 words, comic: Western Cradle #1

Read: The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith
Comics: Chew 49-52
Music: The New America, Bad Religion (I know, I know, not exactly comfort music given the situation, but hey, as a man raging against machines once said: anger is a gift.)

i get it; i’m late

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For all the things I wanted to do with my life, I probably would have had to start as a teenager.

Unfortunately, the lessons I needed to learn, the skills I had to grow (and am still growing), the mindset, the life experience, all that stuff… it unfolded a little slower than it probably should have.

Maybe I could have gone a more traditional route, and maybe I could have been content with that, but when have I ever been content with anything? In the moment, I can be, in the midst of a good meal or a great book or great sex, a nice moment in the sun while walking the dogs.

But isn’t that the only time ever?

I know it will take me probably until I’m a hundred and no longer able to function physically or mentally to do the work that I want to do, to see the places I wanted to see, to have all the experiences I’ve desired.

I probably won’t make it, barring terrific medical advances. Of course, I could live that long but the growing spectre of fascism, the threat of climate change, bigotry and hatred, the complete breakdown of both civility and the willingness to stand up for what is right, in action more than words, is likely to end this planet (or at least my life or the ability to do the things I desire to do), all that pretty well guarantees that this is a fool’s errand.

But what’s the alternative?

Giving up?

I know I’m a late bloomer, but hell. Fuck it.

There’s no do-overs, so it’s now or never, and if I die in the attempt, without making the impact I would have liked, well, there’s no shame in trying.

Only in giving up.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1479 words, short story: Late Riser

Read: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (also, this has nothing to do with this book, it was garbage, like Eckhart Tolle fucked Hans Christian Andersen and their baby read The Secret on the way out - stuff like this is why people get stuck in their own heads thinking they just have think things into existence, or that all skill is just natural, instead doing the fucking work.)
Comics: Chew 42-44, Chew: Warrior Chicken Poyo (POYO!) 1
Music: The New Abnormal, The Strokes

the pushpull

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It tears at me. This urge to drive myself forward, to drive myself into something better, while simultaneously fighting not to give in to all the shit people of the world (and there are many).

It’s the dream of free people everywhere; it’s the slavering desire of every monster to put a stop to it.

It’s those close to us who behave in ways that benefit only themselves; who’d screw over their own blood for their own sick self-interest; who are so lost in their own little world that they fail to see that other people are not simply NPCs in the game of their lives, to be slaughtered or ignored as needed (or at a whim).

My biggest concern is that I’m one of them; my biggest fear is that I’m not serving myself by consistently taking myself out of the equation.

I know I need to help more. I know I barely have enough energy to hold my insides in. It’s a virtual certainty that if I stop holding it together, my body will burst and disintegrate, spilling my entrails to the floor.

Is it too much to ask for wings to emerge from the viscera?

I don’t believe in God or heaven, in no small part because it sounds fucking tedious and hypocritical, but I’d like to think peace is the end result, rather than an eternity of regret.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 432 words, poem: Feathers Falling

Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 20-23
Music: Never Let Me Down, David Bowie (apparently, he hated this album, which, like, okay, I guess it's less lyrically poignant than most of his others, but it's not exactly horrible, which just goes to show how good he was, I guess. If the work you hated is still pretty good, you must be doing something right.)

better already

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Man, sometimes, you just have to suck it up and take your medicine (if you can afford the medicine, which is a whole other issue, and thank goodness, I live in Canada, at least until Poilievre gets in, which he looks increasingly likely to do, the slimy, deceitful fuck).

Sofi’s better already. Two doses of antibiotic and some probiotic and she’s already pooped, slept through the night and seems so much more content.

Poor baby.

I wish she didn’t have to go through that. Would that no one would, but I suppose it shapes character.

Still, that’s kind of bullshit. We can learn through happiness as much as we can through sorrow.

We just don’t.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1872 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Words For Pictures, Brian Michael Bendis
Comics; The Boys 17-20
Music: Use Your Illusion II, Guns 'n' Roses

100 bullets

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Why isn’t this a show on HBO yet?

Other than maybe Y: The Last Man, I’ve never read anything that doesn’t so perfectly beg to be made into something onscreen.

Of course, they fucked up Y: The Last Man apparently, because it was cancelled after one season, but hey, gender identity politics do kind of make that a tough sell in the current climate. Dichotomy was sort of the thing before; spectrum doesn’t really play to the story as well.

But still.

100 Bullets.

Are you fucking kidding me?

GET IT DONE.

Target: 900 words
Written: 983 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Hepatitis Bathtub And Other Stories, NOFX
Comics: 100 Bullets 97-100
Music: Uprising, Muse (what we need right now)

lost in space

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I’m back to it – the non-Molly Parker, plus-Marta Kristen version, in which I don’t understand the infatuation with the latter.

I mean, she’s beautiful and all, but she’s window dressing most of the time in the show, like her mother. Nice to look at, but ultimately, boring.

In the Netflix version, Judy and Maureen were anything but (and I would be lying if I didn’t have an unnatural attraction to Molly Parker’s Maureen). Strong women are wonderful.

Flirty and light can be fun, but when the chips are down, I prefer a woman who engages, not one who demures.

Long term, superficial is unsustainable. But the depths of a strong woman?

They can feel so big, you get lost in them.

(In a good way, an endless exploration way, not a strong woman subsumes a weak man, though certainly, in any gender context, strong personalities do have a tendency to swallow the meeker, and that’s something to explore as well, but not in this particular instance. Men who wish their women are weaker are, well, sad and pathetic, and vice versa).

Anyway, so be it. I am married to a strong woman, of that there is no doubt. I’ll be the John to her Maureen any day.

Target: 900 words
Written: 992 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 20-22, Die 20
Music: Oh, Fuck, Even More Bootleg Rolling Stones Live Shit, The Rolling Stones

the yankees are still a thing?

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I didn’t think they were any good anymore. Like not terribly, but comfortably mediocre, like most teams.

I like baseball, but do people actually care anymore?

It requires a patience and attention that doesn’t really exist in our Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok world.

After all, why have a long-lasting memory when it can just disappear in twenty-four hours. I wonder if this generation’s instances of Alzheimer’s are going to spike because of the lack of long-term memory-making abilities.

Everything has to be a filter; nothing real, nothing dirty.

Unless they want to cancel you, then even the hint of an accusation can destroy a person’s entire world. That’s something I struggle with; where’s the line between believing victims and voiding one’s own ability to determine bullshit?

Because let’s face it, in this era, everyone can make themselves a victim in a heartbeat, by referencing feelings. I hear it all of the time, and while in many cases, there’s legitimacy, in a lot of cases, it’s herd mentality, jumping on a trend to abdicate one’s own responsibility in one’s own life.

Framing is everything, and I think it behooves us to be both harsh in the judgment of those who would exploit others and open-minded to the possibility that maybe not all accusations are legit (intentionally or otherwise – sometimes people just can’t see that their hurt or spite isn’t the whole picture).

Anyway, how we got to me treading the line on cancel culture from baseball, I don’t know. 

Target: 900 words
Written: 192 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Wishsong Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Once And Future 8-10, Die 12
Music: Live! The Ramones! Woo!

irritating radio hosts

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We know a guy who runs the morning radio show on the local radio station. He sounds like a nice guy on the radio, sort of, but in reality, he’s kind of an idiot.

First, he’s a Doug Ford guy, so I think one must immediately call his intelligence and integrity into question (as one would anyone who supports these hard right wingers). Secondly, he continues to play the same dozen songs from the late Eighties to early Two Thousands (to the point where I’m fairly certain his life’s dream was to be in a boy band). When he’s not in, more modern music (on the contemporary pop station, surprise!) gets played.

He domineers his cohosts, to the point where when he’s not there, they have difficulty establishing themselves as a primary.

Personally, he’s never been anything but rude and dismissive to us, despite us being friends with his long time girlfriend (that he refused to marry or have kids with, despite that being kind of the whole thing with her). He’s definitely a bit sexist, and possibly, you know, one of those “not that there’s anything wrong with that” homophobes.

So, yeah, his voice annoys the fuck out of me.

See? It’s not only bad pop that irritates me.

Target: 900 words
Written: 848 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Gregor And The Curse Of The Warmbloods, Suzanne Collins
Comics: The Wicked + The Divine 32-33, The Wicked + The Divine: Christmas Annual 1, The Wicked + The Divine: 1923 1
Music: Random Live Stuff, Creedence Clearwater Revival (except, it's not? It's Eddie Vedder singing Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay? How did that happen?)