Category: philosophy

sellin’

Posted on by admin

I was reading old posts (Christ, 2024 Empty, what the fuck were you thinking?) and I still haven’t figured it out.

How the fuck do I get people to buy my stuff without having to go full social media whore or pretend to be something I’m not?

People both love and hate preachy; see Tolle, Eckhart.

But I hate it. I’d rather be honest (even if I’m not always) and show warts and say, here, I did something cool!

Or better yet, take myself fully out of the equation.

Here’s a cool thing. Enjoy!

Don’t worry about the man behind the mask. We never used to.

Now, it’s up to us to be paragons, or be cancelled.

Unfortunately, only one of those things is ever actually possible. Anything else is a fucking act.

PR to stave off the betrayal when we find out we aren’t actually perfect.

Flawed in private, public perfection. Fuck that. I’m perfectly imperfect, and proud of it.

It’s the only way we ever could be. It’s only how we feel about that fact that makes a difference.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1267 words, comic: The Stuff #2

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (we're into the weeds now)
Comics: Fables 122-123, Fairest 8-9
Music: November 1994, Astoria Theatre, London, Beck (bet you thought it was going to be Nirvana)

do you have it?

Posted on by admin

I don’t, I don’t think.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the right stuff, the thing that makes astronauts what they are.

This is due to the series I’m writing right now, wherein I question the nature of the stuff and show it’s not innate; it’s learned.

And unlearned.

Do I have it?

I don’t know.

We’ll know by the time I’m dead, I guess.

Or not. That’s the way of the stuff. You never really know until you’re in it.

Am I in it?

I doubt it.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 402 words, comic: The Stuff #2

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier
Comics: Fairest 4-5, Fables 119-120
Music: June 26, 1992, Roskilde Festival, Nirvana

i pull a card every day

Posted on by admin

It’s a wishful thinking thing, like a horoscope, but more personal.

Today was supposed to be a good day.

And it had its moments.

But mostly, I wanted to fall asleep. To do the few things I needed to do (read, write, sex, etc.) and go the fuck to sleep.

I did edit. And I read, a little. Not as much as I’d like. If I want to do any better at it, I’ll have to do it before bed.

Which I hate.

I’m already exhausted. Why rush it? Of course, if I don’t do it, it establishes precedent. Starts a habit. You know how in your mind, once you do something, even once, it becomes possible to do it again and again? The whole four minute mile thing, and sadly, acts of evil. Do it once and you know you’re capable of it.

Do it again, and well…

Let’s just say Donald has practice. This doesn’t happen overnight. His soul is as warped as a soul can possibly be.

But let’s not think about him. I have a couple more issues of Fables I’d like to read…

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2017 words, comic: The Stuff

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (fascinating stuff - never know I could be so into cryptology, outside of Digital Fortress)
Comics: Fables 110-113
Music: August 27, 1991, Aladin, Bremen, Nirvana

rage

Posted on by admin

I had ideas about what to write today, but things went so far off the rails, from taking a coatrack to the head, being utterly abandoned by anyone and everyone and just the universe, doing its complete fucking of me, again and again.

I need to stay off social media. They’ve gone looney tunes down south and my blood pressure is through the roof.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 4500 words

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier (prophetic and interesting, as a time capsule during a time I would have been a lamer script kiddie)
Comics: Fables 107-109, Jack Of Fables 50
Music: November 25, 1990, Off Ramp, Seattle, Nirvana

for a writer, i don’t write good

Posted on by admin

Or rather, I think I write well, okay at best, but I rarely know what I want to say. I read other books with these incredible telling details or unbelievable insights into the human condition and I think, why not me?

What am I saying that’s not been said before?

I suppose there’s something to be said on saying something that has been said in a different way, and different voices reaching different people in different ways, but yeah.

I always wanted to be original. Unique. At the vanguard of something new.

But I don’t know what. It’s the essence of constrained – having something inside of you building like a new big bang, but being so essentially weak of spirit as to be unable to unleash it into the void.

And that’s what out there – void.

No one reads my shit because I don’t promote my shit. I’m Holden Caulfield, if he lived now and on social media. If he thought he hated phonies before, man, wait until he gets a load of Instagram and Twitter.

He’d be dead before the day was out.

I was eased into it, and despite knowing these are the tools I require to be successful in today’s age, I am increasingly convinced that social media needs to be phased out of my life, and out of existence entirely, if we are to survive.

Otherwise, none of us may last the day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1476 words, comic: The Stuff #1

Read: Secrets And Lies: Digital Security In A Networked World, Bruce Schneier
Comics: Fables 103-106
Music: August 17, 1990, Palladium, Hollywood, Nirvana

we are not who we think we are

Posted on by admin

It’s common in Taoism, Buddhism, etc., to assume that the mind is not who we are, that we are something beyond our conditioning, our monkey minds, the trappings of our social circles and belief systems.

That there is something, someone beneath all that, so completely in tune with the universe that it can, if we can fall back into it, blow away all the bullshit of our selves and lives with a gentle breath, to reveal the bodhisattva at the centre of it all.

I believe this to be largely true. I’m not a religious man, but when I’ve sat and peeled layers, letting each go in turn…

I’m in there. I’m at the centre, not matter how rotten the layers get as we head toward the outside of me.

And that centre is everything.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 2105 words, comic: The Stuff #1

Read: The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. "DawggyDawg" Salinger
Comics: Cinderella: Fables Are Forever 4-6, Fables 102
Music: April 10, 1990, Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, Nirvana (yeah, I got the bootlegs)

2026

Posted on by admin

Well, a relaxing night last night amidst weird changes – I’ve become convinced I’ll be rewriting the penultimate scene before the climax and epilogue of Boor & Aghast. We’re enforcing sobriety on someone, in the hopes that they won’t kill themselves or others driving.

We’ve lost most of our friends, inexplicably, and the ones who’ve stuck with us are true.

I’m not sure what the rumour mill is, or the allegation, or whether it’s just people tired of me not kowtowing to right or left wing hardlines, despite being entirely anti-Trump.

Sorry, but outrage is a terrible way to live, and proportion is a conversation that must be had.

We end people’s lives over stuff that isn’t actually all that traumatic. A micro-aggression is no reason to blow somebody up. It’s a polite conversation for understanding; not a social media smear campaign designed to destroy families, careers, relationships, and ultimately, probably radicalize the individual in the opposite direction.

If a kid swears in front of his parents, we don’t treat them like a murderer; we talk to them about the appropriate use of language.

Perspective and proportion, always. You don’t use a tank when a flyswatter will do.

Anyway, happy new year; here’s hoping this is the year some sanity returns.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 765 words, short story: Perspective

Read: The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
Comics: Fables 99-100, Jack Of Fables 48-49
Music: 1989, Taylor Swift (I have great memories of garage dance parties with my niece to Shake It Off, so don't be haters - I love that kid, and she's the reason my algorithm skews to Swift, Rodrigo and Eilish)

we are all going to die

Posted on by admin

I mean, probably. Well, definitely. The question is really when and how.

Is it when Trump starts the end of the world? Is it a pandemic exploding through us because morons think vaccinations are somehow worse than the disease they’re designed to protect against?

Is it climate change?

When I write, I’ve often dreamed of it as being read still hundreds of years hence (I imagine that’s true of many artists). At this point though, hurtling toward climate collapse at least, I’d be happy if we still had books at all in twenty years. Or if anyone was around to read them.

Maybe someday, aliens will settle our barren, self-destroyed plant, and find those written and using supercomputers we haven’t dreamed of, translate them and think, Jesus, what a bunch of fucking assholes.

And then they blew it all up.

Damn, dirty apes.

(A story, as told by a fatalist, using cultural references aliens probably won’t get, because I don’t think we ever beamed Charlton Heston to space. We are the monkeys, man! The monkeys are us!)

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1071 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Tesla: Man Out Of Time, Margaret Cheney
Comics: Fables 40-43
Music: 06.27.01 Peel Session, The Strokes

truth telling

Posted on by admin

I mean, I know we all think we know the truth, but the reality is that the truth is what it is and we are not always aware of all of the aspects of it. Multiple things can be true at any given time.

I have not lived an exemplary life. I’ve lied, I’ve cheated (my family and all my friends banned me from playing Monopoly) and probably worse, if I’m honest about it.

I am still not entirely honest with myself and the people around me, because I feel rejection. I have issues with insecurity and depression.

None of these things means I’m a horrible person by necessity, but neither do they make me an exemplary one.

Truth and perspective are the two things I chase most in my life, and as I get older and open myself up to that more, instead of living in safely comfortable fictions and denial, I find the truest thing I know is that truth and perspective are often not in accordance, but more of one inevitably creates more of the other.

Enough perspective and truth is revealed; how could it not be?

Truth knocks us out of our fictions, our blind spots; it provides perspective where none may have existed.

More truth. More perspectives. These are the only things that matter.

There is truth. There is perspective.

These things are not mutually exclusive. But one perspective, held without truth…

Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it?

Target: 1400 words
Written: 791 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Prozac Nation, Elizabeth Wurtzel
Comics: Fables 5-8
Music: Working Class Hero, Green Day (by way of John Lennon)

reminders

Posted on by admin

This book is reminding me of why I love the Hip, and Gord Downie in particular, and why my heroes went from being rebels who gave everyone the finger, to nice people who weren’t afraid of hard truths and dark places.

Loudmouth boors be damned.

Give me a soft-spoken purveyor of real things, dark and light, any day.

Target: 1400 words
Written: 1407 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: The Never-Ending Present, Michael Barclay
Comics: Youngblood v6 4-7
Music: Without You I'm Nothing, Placebo