Category: philosophy

and caught up

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So many distractions. So little time.

If only life weren’t so filled with insanity.

Why must we be so insane?

Who lives simply?

Can I move there?

Would they let me?

Or would I merely be a refugee, a symptom of the disease of modern living that consumed us all?

I suspect turnabout is fair play.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1507 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Last American Vampire, Seth Grahame-Smith
Comics: Youngblood 1-3, Brigade 1 (jesus, Liefeld is a garbage writer)
Music: When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King..., Fiona Apple (all time favourite female artist?  Very well could be, though I'm also big on Bjork, PJ Harvey, L7 and Veruca Salt)

fight or flight

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Actually, there’s a third option.

Fight or flight or freeze.

(Or technically, die, but that’s really more of a consequence than an action.)

Science, bitches.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1140 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Last American Vampire, Seth Grahame-Smith (wait, I thought Abe lived until the Sixties?)
Comics: Tomb Raider v3 11-12, Tomb Raider: Survivor's Crusade 1-2
Music: When I Come Around, Green Day

polarization

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I think the whole thing I’m trying to do with this Bad Neighbours thing is to really explore how absurd the political dichotomy is, and how destructive.

I’m not exploring a third option, and the crazier the right gets, there becomes an increasing need to draw that hard line and say, no.

No more.

No further.

Enough.

And then push back the other way until sanity is restored. The problem is, the rhetoric on that side, so willingly and completely divorced from any kind of reality or genuity, is almost impossible to engage on a conversational level. You can’t argue the points, because they don’t care to listen, and won’t respond in good faith.

There is no argument that will stop this anymore. We need to convince ourselves to take action, whatever action we can, procedural, legal, etc., in order to slow this monster down enough to make it to elections, which at this point, is a question of whether they’ll even happen or whether these fascists will try to find an excuse to suspend them or rig them, because they know in any even remotely just system, they’ll get blown from the water, and then, they’re all fucked.

Basically, every obstruction that can be made, every inch fought for; give up nothing without extreme cost. Make them feel it. Wear them down; they’ve shown a great deal of incompetency.

They will make exploitable mistakes.

Use the bureaucracy against them, especially since you can no longer trust the Supreme Court, and every block at a lower level just gets pushed up to the shadow docket. Plus, even when the court rules against them, they just ignore it and do it anyway.

So, block, obstruct, don’t make it easy. Make them work for every inch, make every yard a Herculean effort.

It’s the only way.

Push back, push back, push back.

And when it’s all said and done, and the extremists have fallen by the wayside, then maybe we can get back to ending the dichotomy.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1313 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Sylvie And Bruno Concluded, Lewis Carroll (god, this is shit)
Comics: Lara Croft And The Frozen Omen 4-5, Tomb Raider v3 1-2
Music: Whatever Happened To P.J. Soles?, Local H (quite possible the most underrated one hit wonder ever)

charlie kirk

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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

rants that went the wrong way

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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

guilt

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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

edited out

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I’ve noticed a weird trend among my extended family over the years.

For whatever reason, they edit us out of their public lives. I’m not really sure why; it’s not like we’re over here spouting off Trumpisms or committing acts of wanton criminality.

Still, somehow, we never seem to make it into the pictures. If you searched online and tried to find me or my stepdaughter in any picture with my granddaughter (that we didn’t post ourselves), you’d never know we’d even met. Similarly, though pictures of my nieces are routinely posted with friends and other family members and friends of the family, we, despite having spent far more time and energy on the girls, are noticeably absent. These pictures are often accompanied by comments about how great that person is for the kids.

The suggestion, by way of omission, is that we are not good for the kids.

Indeed, at both nieces’ graduations, in which we were present, we weren’t mentioned at all. Well, technically, the second one, no one got thanked at all, it was more about musing on being empty nesters, but in the first one, well, every rando from birth to that day got mentioned, no matter how little time they spent with or on the girls, except us, who were with them more than anyone, except their own parents.

My youngest niece and my wife have a ridiculously close relationship and yet, for some reason, even she can’t make the cut.

It’s a gripe I’ve had for a while, but I just can’t figure it out. It’s not like we’re embarrassing white trash, out here spouting QAnon and JK Rowling.

I’m pro-equality, anti-racist, anti-bigotry of all kinds, anti-fascism, pro-free health care, pro-basic income and taxing the rich (in fact, let’s just do away with billionaires altogether), and I believe all people should be evaluated based on the things they actually do, not whatever random defining fact, like who they’re into or skin colour, happens to be one part of their make-up. Assuming that’s all there is to a person (even if that person is yourself) is such an injustice to people as they are.

We’re all so much more. We contain multitudes, and the only thing we should really judge by is action.

Anyways, not complaining, I get it. People curate their social media and they don’t want people they consider “lesser than” ruining their carefully crafted social images. I personally want my reputation to be based on what I do, not the fucking fluff people put on Instagram.

We all know that shit’s B.S. anyway. Your performative liberalism is better than being a Trumper, for sure, but it’s also shittier than being, you know, a good fucking person.

Disingenuous is better than evil; that doesn’t mean it’s good. Same with hypocrisy. If your hypocrisy is getting people killed, obviously, that’s worse, but if it’s just stalling real progress because the only thing it does is serve your reputation by being part of the collective (and socially and mentally toxic) online outrage?

Well, shit, dude. That sucks too, just not as bad.

It doesn’t help anyone.

And shouldn’t we aim to be better than, you know, not as bad as the other guy?

I mean, I know that’s what I’m aiming for, even if I fall short quite a bit. Being a good person, a happy person (something I’ve not entirely given up on, despite the last forty-eight years of evidence), that’s all I’ve ever wanted. To write me off as an alcoholic redneck and ignore every other aspect of me and the rest of my family (and I suspect a great deal of this is rooted in ableism, even if it’s unconscious), well, then, fuck.

That’s pretty shitty, and it doesn’t feel good.

Maybe we strive for better, yeah?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1203 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: World Of Ptavvs, Larry Niven
Comics: Tomb Raider: The Greatest Treasure Of All 0, Tomb Raider 19-20, Tomb Raider Journeys 2
Music: Weezer (Teal Album), Weezer

twenty-twenty-five on speed

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Is it just me, or is this year moving like a freight train whose throttle is wide open and stuck down?

Barreling toward an inevitable conclusion that can only be catastrophe?

I’ll admit, Bad Neighbours, being largely about conflict and unreality, about dichotomy and the endless fight of us versus them, it’s done a number on me.

I know, as a writer, you have to live in the space about which you’re writing. When I did Romance #1, it was fun and goofy, ironic and sardonic. Western Cradle was about trying to make shit out of suffering. The Mungk was months of exploration into trauma and hopelessness.

The fatalism nearly got me.

But I’m largely conflict-averse in my life, so this obsessing over the fight, being at war, at odds with each other, especially in light of the world’s political situation, it’s anathema. And it’s bleeding into the rest of my life.

I’ll be glad when this is done, for more reasons than just completion and the pride of having finished it.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1794 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: East Wind: West Wind, Pearl Buck
Comics: The Seasons 6-7, Escape 1
Music: We Rebuilt This City, Closet Monster