Category: philosophy

back to workin’

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I got a little ahead of myself for a bit again, with the longer edits, but now, I’m back to having to meet actual targets again.

Hence the bump in target words.

I’ve been trying to build it like a muscle. Every once in a while, bump the target up, increase the reps, the duration, the requirements for the cardio and endurance and lifting power of the thing.

Hell, it’s everything I do.

Slow increase in exercise, in meditation, in the difficulty of the material.

More beautiful desolation. More tragic pathos.

More little nobodies, thinking they’re somebodies.

More me, thinking I’m not nothing.

Feeling empty and alone, the best and worst feeling in the world.

Target: 900 words
Written: 888 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hilarity Ensues, Tucker Max
Comics: The Magdalena: Seventh Sacrament 1, The Magdalena v4 1-3
Music: Random Thingies, Overflow

friday the 13th

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Thank the universe, finally a day I can get behind.

I’ve always had luck with this number, probably being born on it (and its opposite, seven), so I feel like my entire life is a good luck, bad luck story, but with most of the luck actually being supplied by my own decision making and the unfortunate decision making of others.

Plus, you know, random fate.

We control our response, our decisions, our behaviour.

When we talk of freedom, this is what we mean.

Total freedom isn’t freedom from responsibility or consequence.

It’s giving in absolutely to the knowledge that total freedom means total responsibility.

We are responsible for the consequences of our choices, our actions, our words, our behaviour.

Sure, we can have neuroses and trauma and all that informing it, but we are not helpless.

Don’t believe anyone who says you are, or that you just have to snap your fingers and you can move past it.

It’s not easy; but not impossible. Total freedom means total acceptance of what is, and making the decisions and taking the actions that you want to take, and understanding that if you make poor decisions or demonstrate shitty behaviour, there will be consequences for that.

That’s what Republicans and Conservatives don’t seem to understand: freedom is not freedom from consequences. It is not a license to behave as irresponsibly as you want without any fear of retaliation or judgment.

Guess what? You can say whatever your want, and act however you want, but you live within the world; the world can (and probably will) push back.

Target: 800 words
Written: 530 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Hilarity Ensues, Tucker Max (I recognize the irony of this blog post versus this book)
Comics: The Magdalena v3 1-4
Music: Random Stuff, Linkin Park

/end rant

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I guess I should apologize. I hate to rant like yesterday, that shit needed to get off my chest.

Not only for the release, but because we know, ultimately, we can’t do anything about it.

What are the options? Fight back, get fired? Lose our second income? Go to court for probably years in order to either lose or get less than we deserve, and not enough to pay the bills?

Quite frankly, any system that allows this is not just.

One should never silenced solely because the other person, the clearly guilty other person, has more money than you.

A system that doesn’t protect its least powerful can never be a just system. A system that allows the threat of having to engage in the system as a means to silence dissent can never be a just system.

Our system is broken.

Target: 800 words
Written: 144 words

Read: It's Just A Thought, Thomas Sterner
Comics: Ain't No Grave 1-2, I Hate Fairyland v2 14-15
Music: Another Lonely Day, Ben Harper

ride on

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I’m not ready for the forgiveness conversation. Not yet. I know what I want to say, up in the head, but for now, suffice it to say that a better slogan would be this:

Don’t ask permission; don’t need forgiveness.

Show us you’ve thought about the consequences of your actions. Show us you’ve thought about the people and world around you. And if the gatekeepers are still unfair, still blocking creation, still blocking joy or sustenance or the application of basic human decency, well, then, fuck ’em.

Fuck ’em all.

Target: 800 words
Written: 1633 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Grimm's Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm
Comics: The Me You Love In The Dark 1-4
Music: Underground V4.0, Linkin Park

ask forgiveness, fuck you

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I mean, that’s the gist of that phrase, right?

Its origins are obviously in the idea that certain people or organizations act as gatekeepers and therefore, the way to be successful in that field without these fucking creation cops is just to do it anyway and ask forgiveness after it works out.

The problem, like most other platitudes, is that it’s been co-opted (sort of) to become something worse.

Allow me to explain.

Not bothering to ask for permission has been adopted by the extortionists masquerading as capitalists and fascists masquerading as politicians – do whatever the fuck you want and if someone complains, well, then, they must be a whiner or a gatekeeper.

We’ve forgotten the ask forgiveness part.

We’re just doing whatever, fuck permission, and fuck you.

There’s more, much more to be said on that, but I went full marathon today and my brain is D-E-A-D.

Tomorrow, maybe.

Target: 800 words
Written: 2814 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: 'Salem's Lot, Stephen King (so classic, but I'm a little irritated my Kindle copy updated and all the extras somehow disappeared - not what I fucking paid for, Amazon)
Comics: Middlewest 11-14
Music: Underground 6.0, Linkin Park

anyway, back at work

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Perhaps we could just do away with the whole work thing and just kind of live?

I know that’s not really practical if we want, you know, stuff and food and shit.

But maybe we could make it less horrible, so it’s, you know, less horrible.

Less life stealing.

More enjoyable.

Better.

Please make it better.

Perhaps if we remove the profit incentive and just focus on making cool stuff that’s actually useful and providing for our needs?

Target: 800 words
Written: 654 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Brothers Of Earth, CJ Cherryh (finally, a bit of progress - it should never have taken this long for a 250 page book)
Comics: Bully Wars 1-4
Music: Unbridled Funk And Roll 4 Your Soul! Red Hot Chili Peppers!

the long drive home

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I’m going to miss it up there; I think it might be a final residence for me, if ever I can get to a level of independent wealth to be able to leave this situation.

My family may not relocate and what family I have there will probably be long gone by the time I get up there.

Hell, Torontonians will probably have invaded the place and ruined it, as they do with pretty much everything. Fucking Torontonians and their goddamn egos.

The older I get, the more I take issue with the presumed fact that cities are somehow more enlightened and their residents automatically better people than everyone else. The older I get, all I see is a sense of false superiority and unearned entitlement, over a desperate and sad posturing over status and cool.

How terribly boring cities must be, with their cookie cutter nervousness and template anxiety. Give me the calm and cruel quietude of nature any day. No bullshit in nature; only peace.

So, naturally, we’re killing it.

Everything humans touch dies.

Target: 800 words
Written: 483 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Brothers Of Earth, CJ Cherryh
Comics: The Crow / Hack/Slash 1-4 (ugh, I hate it when writers don't understand characters, and use them to push their own uninspired creations)
Music: Ultra Rare Trax, Vol. 4, The Velvet Underground

morbid wonder

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I suppose I’m giving the impression that I’m suicidal. I’m not, not really. I’ve too much I’ve not done in this life yet for that, though the depression’s relentless attacks on my ability to do any of it is wearing on me.

So, in that sense, yeah, maybe. There’s a lot of the time where giving up, half-assing it, letting go of any sort of potential for joy, all seems like the best path forward.

Sinking into mediocrity, a sort of mind-numbed endurance, its own special skill, though any and most of us have mastered it.

It’s called “waiting to die”.

Coming up here reminds me there is more to this world than our petty differences, our pointless bullshit.

There’s more than in-fighting.

There’s wonder.

One look at that sky, graded robin’s egg to to royal blue, stroked with tender brushes of clouds and one can’t help but be reminded: religion may be a fiction, but there is still a sense of the divine.

Of majesty and beauty, grandeur.

Holiness.

It has nothing to do with little men in the sky and everything to do with the sheer vastness of what’s beyond our own meager skulls.

It could be so easy to give it all up.

But then what?

Target: 800 words
Written: 584 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Brothers Of Earth, CJ Cherryh
Comics: The Crow: Skinning The Wolves 3, The Crow: Curare 1-3
Music: Ultimate Survivor, Survivor (again, why?)

remember me?

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I’m increasingly beginning to think I’m playing lute for the damned.

The seemingly unstoppable march of fascism, climate change, gun violence, bigotry, overpopulation, war, fucking microplastics…

At this point, I’m thinking I could write humanity’s single greatest work of fiction, and it wouldn’t matter, because humanity itself will be gone before my lifetime is out.

My lifetime might be tomorrow.

Armageddon might be tomorrow.

I have works of staggering genius in me, but I fear that neither I nor anyone else will live to see them.

Nor will I ever get my head far enough out of my ass to complete them.

Is it still fatalism if it’s true?

Target: 800 words
Written: 535 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: The Adventures Of Captain Hatteras, Jules Verne (it's nice to feel cold in this heat)
Comics: The Crow: Flesh And Blood 3, The Crow: City Of Angels 1-3
Music: Overrated, Mudmen (me?)