Category: culture

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 Voice: The Best Of Ultravox, Ultravox

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: Vivida Vis!, Against Me!

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: Vivid, Living Colour

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: Viva Wisconsin, Violent Femmes (I don't know what it is about these guys, but I connect so completely with literally everything they've ever done, except Vancouver, which sucks)

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.

In words only, 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: Vision Valley, The Vines

spiralizer

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I use it mostly to create zucchini noodles, but sometimes, it likes to take up residence in my head, and spin me out of control, akin to a piece of fluff floating on top of a bath, that’s being rapidly drained out.

Where does all that water end up? The sewer?

Am I a piece of fluff, doomed to hang out in the shit the rest of my life?

I used to think I’d like to aspire to living in a cardboard box, but it’s a hard life, feeding yourself and begging for enough money for booze and drugs. Too responsible.

Then, I thought I’d like to be super rich, but rich people are always fighting off scavengers for their money, and there’s a disconnection and cruelty that festers beneath the freedom, and that’s not who I’d like to be.

Plus, there’s all you have to do to get there. You have to, at least, go to the convenience store attached to the gas station and buy the lottery ticket.

There’s no escaping responsibility.

The only way out is through.

Or death, but that’s a whole other topic.

Target: 600 words
Written: 725 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Five Weeks In A Balloon, Jules Verne
Comics: Monstress 35-38
Music: Very Proud Of Ya, AFI

i know it’s been dark

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I feel like Allin, desperately trying to hold on to the last bit of possibility, as a nightmare drains me.

I am trying to find the light, the tunnel, the way through, but man, this is a hard, cruel, unfair world, and all the odds are stacked against anyone not born to privilege.

What a life it must be, when frictionless glides replace mob burns and quicksand feet.

Target: 600 words
Written: 339 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 25-28
Music: My Generation: The Very Best Of The Who, The Who

welcome back to emotional destitution

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I know people don’t care and they sneer at people when they’re suffering, the whole “suck it up, princess” thing and sometimes, that’s a valid requirement for getting out of the shit, but sometimes…

Fuck you. Sanctimonious fucks.

Those same people often rip open their chests to show us their bleeding hearts when the sum total requirement of their action and empathy is a post on social or an off-hand comment about those poor people.

But when it counts?

When it’s people they might actually have to deal with in their lives, rather than just people they can posture around? When the reality comes in?

Suck it up, princess.

Useless.

Eye rolls.

“They just want drama.”

Absolute dismissal.

If your empathy and ability to understand the struggles and needs of those around you ends with a couple of lines on Facebook or an off-hand comment to friends about how hard someone has it, in order to forgive behaviour that doesn’t affect you in the slightest?

You’re not empathetic. You’re not compassionate. You’re not an open-minded person who wants to help people. If you can’t hold that same empathy and understanding for the people actually in your life, whose behaviour influences your world?

Well, then, fuck you. You’re just another self-important prick, more interested in looking good than being good.

Target: 600 words
Written: 369 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: People Of The Deer, Farley Mowat
Comics: Monstress 13-16
Music: The Very Best Of The Original Dubliners, The Dubliners

last man

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Okay, so it’s not the first time I’ve read Y The Last Man, and it may not be the last.

It was made to be on TV, which is what makes the fact that the first time it’s adapted, it gets cancelled after one season, so damn sad.

I haven’t had the heart to sit down and watch it, but I gather they strayed from the subject matter heavily enough to make their built-in audience tune out. I heard rumblings that the show seemed overly concerned in not offending the trans community and making them a much larger part of the universe (which is fair, in a sense, because transitioning doesn’t remove the Y chromosome, so it would makes sense that trans men would play a large role as the only remaining males).

Indeed, if there’s a fault in the original, it’s that it doesn’t really explore that particular narrative very heavily, and that’s likely a product of the times, as gender reassignment surgery has mainstreamed much more heavily in the decades since its publication.

But still. Forward thinking – in our current era, with as many people transitioning as there are, it would make sense for it to be a much larger part of the world. All the men who’ve transitioned to women would be dead, given the plague’s targeting of a Y chromosome, but the other way around? Being a trans man would make one highly sought after, I would think.

I think the issue is that delving so far into that drew away from the main thrust of the book, which is Yorick and his merry band’s travels around the world. It’s like spending the Matrix movies focused on Dozer’s relationship with his brother Tank, instead of Neo, Morpheus and Trinity. It’s a nice sideline, and it can impact the main storyline, but it’s a bumper on the table, not the ball we need to keep from guttering.

Target: 600 words
Written: 530 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Sword Of Shannara, Terry Brooks
Comics: Y The Last Man 57-60 (that moment with Ampersand at the end... literal tears down my face, every time)
Music: The Very Best Of Cat Stevens, Cat Stevens (imagine that)

silence from the censorship party

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I guess censorship doesn’t require a response in Wattpad’s world. It’s been over a week now since I filed an appeal with them regarding Get Back Again, and crickets.

What a nice world they must live in, to pull any story they feel like or don’t understand, and then just ignore the cries of the creator.

I’m a lefty McLefterton (with caveats), and in my world, the censorship of art is a no-fly zone. I know Wattpad thinks it’s protecting people from outrage and offense, but to not even respond to their own appeal process?

That’s straight authoritarian bullshit, and anyone with a true desire for freedom and justice would never engage in such tactics. Do something wrong, then pretend like it never happened, while maintaining the new status quo? That’s some cowardly energy right there.

Avoiding the consequences of your ill behaviour is not a becoming trait, supposedly forward thinking company.

Target: 500 words
Written: 570 words, novella: The Mungk

Read; High Hunt, David Eddings
Comics: Y The Last Man 25-28
Music: The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground (my pretense is better than your pretense)