Ironically, this whole Father Lightning is supposed to be teaching me about kindness.
I don’t think it’s working.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1975 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig
Comics: Gen 13: Science Friction 1, Gen 13 v2 63-64, GenActive 5
Music: 3, Violent FemmesWe will always buy what we’re selling, even if we don’t know it.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 2601 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig
Comics: Gen 13 v2 58-60, Gen 13: Medicine Song 1
Music: 23 Live Sex Acts, Against Me!I mean, I’m a bit off today because yesterday was St. Patrick’s and I have to get right in there and get back to work, but I’m starting to think of possibilities that might help me move forward.
I’m thinking of possibilities that might break me free of this dreary life.
This bland and weary work.
This modern malaise.
I am planning.
Picking a way forward.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 2163 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Code And Other Laws Of Cyberspace, Lawrence Lessig
Comics: Superman/Gen 13 2-3, Gen 13 v2 54, GenActive 2
Music: 21 Guns Live, Green DayIs 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: 20th Century Masters - The Millenium Collection: The Best of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Big Bad Voodoo DaddyI 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 HI 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.)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: 20 Years Of Hell, Vol IV, Anti-Flag/One If By LandI’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)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: 2+2=5, RadioheadYesterday’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)