Category: philosophy

it just occurred to me

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Is Jonathan Franzen going to someday read this, and call every publisher out there to blackball me?

I’m sorry, Mr. Franzen.

I take it back. It was wonderful and not at all poorly structured and written with underdeveloped characters, meaningless storylines and a deeply unsatisfying ending that inspired apathy instead of thought or emotion.

Of course, this is what apathy looks like. He might even call it a win for provoking a reaction, but I’ll tell you – this is the same reaction I had after my old roommate dragged me to both Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and the first Fast & Furious movie.

I was livid with him.

We have such short lives – why waste it on bad art?

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1549 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Comics: Gen 13 v2 48-51
Music: Family Man, Black Flag

sorry, jonathan

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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 shit.

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: Fake Plastic Trees, Radiohead

march eleven

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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: Factory Showroom, They Might Be Giants

does it count?

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If all of my kindness goes towards my cats and dogs?

I mean, that’s kindness, right?

Even if I’m an absolute misanthrope to everyone else?

Is that the way it works?

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2015 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 12 4, Gen 13 v2 30, Gen 13 Bootleg 19, Gen 13/Monkeyman & O'Brien 1
Music: Facelift, Alice In Chains

cinco de marcho

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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: February 26, 1994, Milan, Nirvana (the last of the bootlegs, I swear.  I think.  For now, anyway.)

there are times when i’m tired

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So. Goddamned tired.

How can this be a real world?

In what version of a divine being’s creation is this shit normal?

What kind of sick fuck would create something like this?

Only the cruel or the incompetent could build something so inherently awful.

Fuck you, God.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 2479 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Twenty-Seventh City, Jonathan Franzen
Comics: Gen 13 v2 25, Gen 13 Bootleg 14-15, Gen 13 Interactive Plus 3
Music: October 30, 1992, Buenos Aires, Nirvana

yesterday’s point

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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 1, 1992, Melbourne, Nirvana

fatalism

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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: October 31, 1991, Seattle, Nirvana (one of the best bootlegs I own)

so begins kindness and horror

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The first draft of Father Lightning is begun.

The mix of horror, gore and love and kindness will hopefully make for a great story.

At the very least, it will help me better understand the concept of the latter.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1487 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Comics: Gen 13 Bootleg 1, Spider-Man/Gen 13 1, Team X/Team 7 1, Gen 13 v2 15
Music: November 22, 1989, Vienna, Nirvana

how far does this go?

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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 with 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: 867-5309 (Live), Everclear