tight schedule

Weird, because I planned the day on making chili early, so I’d have more free time in the evening.

Unfortunately, I forgot we have my father-in-law for a standing dinner on Sundays, and while we appreciate having him, I’m not sure how much he appreciates it anymore.

Certainly the manner in which he somehow manages to spray everything except the toilet would suggest that maybe he’s taking things a little bit for granted.

He’s not a bad guy, just no social awareness. No concept of etiquette.

Ironic, from a young punk, who glorified the flouting of convention.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2021 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Pebble In The Sky, Isaac Asimov
Comics: WildCats Adventures Sourcebook 1, Warblade: Endangered Species 1-2, WildCats Adventures 5
Music: February 1, 1992, Melbourne, Nirvana

taxi driver

It’s been a while since I watched this. I forgot how uncomfortably disturbing it was; the perfect metaphorical encapsulation of America’s insanity, then and now.

Everything sick and venal about America, the glorification of guns and violence, of racism and corruption.

It is America, in its most unsettled base.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 740 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Call For The Dead, John Le Carre
Comics: WildCats Adventures 1-2, WildC.A.T.S. 15-16
Music: October 30, 1991, Vancouver, Nirvana

can i just point out

That the idea that somehow the market will fix things has to be one of the stupidest and most persistent lies of the past couple of centuries?

I mean, why anyone in their right mind would think that a system primarily based on the confluence of consumers and predators would ultimately end up being beneficial for the masses of humanity is beyond me.

The idea that a framework of human interaction centered around greed and selfishness will somehow, though the magic of the invisible hand of the market somehow result in benevolence toward society and people as a whole is naive at best, and criminally stupid at worst.

And yet, our supposedly higher functioning human beings, presidents, lawyers, Ivy league alums, they all pray to this deity called market, as though it’s God or something, instead of a collection of sociopathic hoarders who would cut their own mother for a dime.

I mean, what the fuck is that about?

Are these people so brainwashed or stupid as to actually believe that, or is it, as is much more likely, that they’re benefiting from it, so it’s worthwhile to them to continue to perpetrate the lie?

I strongly suspect the latter.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1454 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig (who inspired this post with an assumption that the market is magic and all-seeing, and somehow, not every bit as susceptible to corruption as government, particularly when it's in bed with the government, or the government is in bed with it - I agree with a separation of business and state, but for entirely different reasons than deregulation somehow being beneficial, and not an excuse for crass exploitation.  Theft is still theft, especially when it's called Wall Street or Silicon Valley, and sshould be policed - more strictly even, given the scale to which it can occur.)
Comics: Gen 13 v2 72-75
Music: 39-Smooth, Green Day

sorry, jonathan

I mean, my opinion on The Twenty-Seventh City stands, but yeah, there’s no need to denigrate other people. Maybe he’s a nice guy.

Maybe not.

Sorry, either way. I am trying to be kinder, and again, while I won’t apologize for thinking the book was garbage, I probably didn’t need to make it sound like Franzen was a piece of human garbage.

Unless he is.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2525 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (oh thank god, something decent)
Comics: Gen 13 vs 42-44, Wild Times: Gen 13 1
Music: February 12, 2006, Durty Nellies, Local H

march eleven

I have a lot to say on kindness, capitalism, Donald Trump, and the true new order that needs to emerge if humanity is to survive.

Unfortunately, it’s a Wednesday and there’s book club.

Not my book club. A book being used as a club.

I have a lot to say on Jonathan Franzen.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1567 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 35-36, Gen 13: Magical Dream Queen Roxy 2-3
Music: Veni, Vidi, Vicious, The Hives (FUCK. YEAH.)

cinco de marcho

I’m thinking about kindness today. It’s because I’m writing a book where it’s a large part of it, and while I need kindness to play a large role in my life and my person, I find I’m having difficulty tapping into it.

I think the past two-plus years of wallowing and anger have dulled my sense of compassion. I am an empathic being; I feel everything intensely. I am highly affected by other people’s moods.

But that makes me want to withdraw, not connect.

And what I need is connect.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 324 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 v2 26, Gen 13 Bootleg 16, Gen 12 1, Gen 13 Bootleg Annual 1
Music: 20 Years Of Hell, Vol I, Anti-Flag/World's Scariest Police Chases (they call him ROBOCOP)

yesterday’s point

Yesterday’s post was identifying where I’d examined previously. I cover lots of little things in my smaller works, but the big themes of my life, I try to save for the canon.

The Mungk was trauma/fatalism.

The Conflagration Of Boor And Aghast is about tribalism and the pointlessness of dualism with substance, subtlety and consequence.

Father Lightning? It’s not going to be a tale of woe; or rather, it is, but there is, as there should be in all great novels of fear, a sense of humanity.

Of kindness.

Compassion.

I spent nearly a year wallowing over the hopelessness of it all with The Mungk. I spent over a year mired in the politics of mutual hate with Boor & Aghast.

It’s time for some higher focus.

It’s time to focus on a little kindness. A little compassion.

it’s time to make the world a little better place. Rather than navelgazing and moaning into the void, or raging against everyone who doesn’t agree with my side in mutually assured destruction, I’m going to learn how to be nice.

It may take more effort than I’ve got.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2506 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Comics: Gen 13 v2 22-23, Gen 13 Bootleg 11-12
Music: February 22, 1994, Palaghiaccio, Rome, Nirvana (and thus ends, for now, my collection of Nirvana bootlegs)

fatalism

I tried to leave fatalism behind with The Mungk. The point of that book was an exploration of trauma and hopelessness; the point of The Conflagration Of Boor & Aghast was to explore the nature of unwinnable conflict.

(As well as offer a reminder that placating and avoiding the application of consequences, or the inequal application of consequences, leads to inevitable decline, abuses and ultimately, horror. The application of consequences is critical to both freedom and the suppression of would-be authoritarians.)

It is increasingly difficult to ignore that the United States is at the forefront of these two themes, mashed together into a nightmare of impending Armageddon.

All of which could be stopped by removal of one man.

Vladimir Putin (or by proxy, Trump).

This is your daily reminder that the enemy is not trans people, people of other colours, nationalities or gender, but rather, the ultra fucking rich.

THERE IS ONLY ONE ENEMY.

Remove them from power and guess what?

All of this shit goes away.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 143 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Comics: Gen 13/Generation X 1, Gen 13: The Unreal World 1, Gen 13 v2 21, Gen 13 Bootleg 10
Music: January 8, 1994, Seattle Centre Arena, Seattle, Disc 1-2, Nirvana

how far does this go?

I’m a pacifist, but if things keep escalating this way, I think there’s no chance of avoiding some kind of civil war (or world war 3, but hopefully not that).

I mean, how much more will the people take before they start dragging the ultra-rich from their houses, or turning on each other in senseless violence? How long before guillotines come back to the fore?

I hope sanity prevails before that, or that Donald Trump would have either a) an epiphany or b) a medical emergency that requires him to step down.

No one under him is really any better, but one would have to assume that without the Orange Fuhrer, the cult of personality would break down. I can’t see the masses following Vance or Noem or Hegseth the way they follow Trump.

They don’t have the mystique; whatever bizarre aura keeps people from imposing any kind of consequence on him, something that would have ended all of this right then and there if they had to courage do it when when it was still slumlording in the Seventies and Eighties, or financial corruption, or making fun of a disabled person, or any of the other smaller crimes he was allowed to get away with under the ruse of decorum and impartiality, that made him feel invincible, to himself and his followers, and led us to this.

Consequences, people. Early, often, proportionate enough to be a deterrent without shooting everyone who steals a paperclip.

Think about it.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2565 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje
Comics: Team 7 v2 3, Team 7 v3 1, Gen 13 v2 8, Gen 13: Ordinary Heroes 1
Music: April 10, 1990, Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, Nirvana (yeah, I got the bootlegs)