That’s also all, the Nazi salute motherfucker. He can spin it whatever way he wants; he’s still a bigoted, fascist piece of human flotsam.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 9100 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: The Oracle Year, Charles Soule
Comics: Pitt 9-11, 0.5
Music:An Unknown Album Of Angry Punks Singing About Black Flag That Shazam Doesn't Recognize, by Who The Fuck Knows?That is all.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 5184 words, short stories: Forest Edge
Read: The Oracle Year, Charles Soule
Comics: Pitt 5-8
Music: Bootleg Nirvana 90-01-06 Seattle, Nirvana, I guess, probablyWhat is it about men that seems to engender entitlement when it comes to women?
Is it a cultural thing? If so, it’s permeated almost every culture since recorded history, regardless of their proximity to one another. Is it biological?
Why do we, as men, feel so entitled to women? Why would those of us who have nothing to offer feel entitled to women who offer the most?
Why does every pathetic, loser, “but I’m a nice guy”, fucking incel feel like they have the rights to every woman’s body?
I mean, come on. I’m overweight, average looking, I don’t possess any superhuman sex skills or attributes other than an open mind and an enthusiasm for the sport.
Why would I think that I’ve got any right to a woman that I haven’t earned? Why should the supermodels of the world be mine to do with as I please?
Why would they?
I mean, come on. You have to earn it. Get in shape. Take care of yourself. Make yourself interesting as a person.
No one’s entitled to shit.
You want to fuck beautiful people? Guess what? Fat, lazy slob in the basement with cheeto dust on his chin ain’t going to cut it.
Personally, I blame John Hughes.
Ducky ain’t it.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1117 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: The Oracle Year, Charles Soule
Comics: Pitt 1-4
Music: Nirvana, NirvanaThere’s been a recurring theme in my work, mostly because as a plot device, it’s evil, but it’s always the same. I know, I know. It happens the world over, but maybe I’m utilizing it too much.
Men and women have always been a complicated thing, but the reality is that it’s not actually that complicated.
It’s the same as anything, really. Be good to each other, and things will be fine.
Unfortunately, it’s far too easy (especially these days), to be shitty to one another.
And as has always been, no matter the race, creed or culture, women take the worst end of it. It doesn’t matter what you are, if you’re a woman, it’s worse for you.
And that’s bullshit.
I mean, I lucked out, technically; I’m a straight, white male. According to most of what I see these days, I should not be allowed to comment anything on these matters, but Yes, Ma’am. I agree.
While that might sound like complaining, it’s not. I do agree, for the most part. I don’t want to mansplain shit to anyone.
I do want to demonstrate that I understood the lesson.
I’m just starting to wonder about how things seem to go in my stories, if I’ve actually taken the lesson to heart.
It wasn’t part of The Mungk (except for maybe the hints of shrewishness in Diana), but it played a big role in Get Back Again, and in my recently written, but not yet published Western Cradle series, and here it is again, in Forest Edge.
Am I really learning?
Something to think about, going forward.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 343 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: The Oracle Year, Charles Soule
Comics: Preacher 64-66
Music: Ninety-Nine-Double-Oh Demos, Local H (most underrated grunge band ever?)I’m thinking a lot about what’s evil and what is not.
I’ve just written a four issue comic series, a western based on revenge, which begins typically enough for the kind of spaghetti western I’m basing it on, but takes a wild turn at the end of the first issue (unrevealed future plot twist).
I’m a little worried it pushes me into territory I’m not comfortable representing.
That is, like Get Back Again, I’m concerned some right wing fuck is going to take it and construe it as pro-bigotry or worse, in this case, pro-life.
But that’s not what it’s about (and I’m very pro-choice); it’s similar to The Mungk in that it’s about trauma, and how it can shape us for the worse, until the evil that’s been done to us becomes us abusing ourselves, and maybe others, in ways we never would otherwise.
It’s also about whether evil can be used for good, sometimes?
It’s about guilt and remorse and self-hatred.
Because listen, I know more than a few women who’ve been through it, and despite what the right wing would have you think, most of them did not behave as though they were tossing a used Kleenex.
Most of them were genuinely distressed, upset, even traumatized by it. Not one of them didn’t have strong feelings about it, even if they didn’t want to say it out loud. It was clearly visible on their face and in their eyes.
The other thing that I know about it is that not one of them has ever said they would make a different choice. They don’t regret the choice, even if there’s still remorse.
Like putting down a terminally ill pet; it sucks, you hate it, it makes you weep for days, but even years later, if asked, you’ll say it was the right thing to do.
Anyway, thoughts and feelings on this day; I can’t imagine what the poor women go through.
Even if this case, it’s a little more… extreme.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 720 words, comic: Western Cradle #4
Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 57-59, Preacher: Tall In The Saddle 1
Music: Nimrod, Green DayThat’s what I’m coughing up now.
(Thanks, Phil Hartman)
Coughing non-stop; I’m hoping it’s the last gasps of this cold trying to cough itself out of my system; I fear it’s mutating into a chest infection.
Would that I had a doctor I could see; that our current health care situation is so fucked can only be the result of the typical Conservative “break everything, then use that as a sign everything is broken” policy of social services.
Assholes.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 746 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
Comics: Preacher: Saint Of Killers 3-4, Preacher 19-20
Music: New York City Groove, Various Artists (but mostly for the Tom Waits)I can’t complain. We had a good time last night. I stayed sober enough to drive, which was fun.
We played the Game of Death, which is always a good time. Nobody got radiAIDS this time, so I suppose that was a win.
(RadiAIDS = AIDS + radiation poisoning. I mean, come on. You have to laugh.)
I feel like I need to go into full retreat now that the holidays are ended.
New Year’s resolution? Sell a book, write a book.
Keep on keepin’ on.
Do better today than yesterday. Start cutting out the toxic bullshit.
No more evil in my life, by my action or another’s, sanctioned by my silence.
Write. Write more. Read. Read more.
Fuck. Fuck more.
Lose some goddamned weight.
You know, the usual.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 263 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X (like it would be written by anyone else)
Comics: Preacher 5-8
Music: New Times, Violent Femmes (indeed)I should clarify yesterday’s post – I’m working on a western comic which deals with revenge, and the inciting event brings our heroine face to face with true evil, men who care nothing for the value of life or the freedom from violence to which people ought to have the right.
A key component is that afterward, our heroine thinks a lot on evil; indeed, she doesn’t (or rather, her husband doesn’t) believe in original sin. She wrestles with knowing these men were bred this way and not born, and moreso with the fact that they may have transmitted this evil into her with their vicious acts.
It’s a question of where evil is born. Is it bred? Created by circumstance? Or is the potential for it contained in all of us (certainly an indisputable fact even if it has no bearing on whether a person is actually evil – potential does not equal actual. Having all the ingredients to make a cake does not make a cake if nothing’s done with them).
What I’m looking at is real evil here, less so the more mundane evil of selfishness, myopia and callous disregard for the people and world around you that while. Not truly evil in the sense that it’s not committing violence, but evil in the sense that it creates the underpinnings for evil, for toxicity, for bad men to thrive like we see now in the right wing.
Again, the way a cake is not a cake until it’s made, we talk of the same with steel and bullets and wood for stocks.
A gun is not a gun until someone’s built and loaded it.
Then it becomes a vehicle for evil (even if it’s working in defense of justice and freedom).
A violent man will die a violent death, as it’s said in the Tao.
Or in this case, a woman?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 576 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Art Of Asking, Amanda Palmer
Comics: Preacher 1-4
Music: New Sensations, Lou Reed (good way to end the year)Year Totals:
Target Words: 248 400 words
Written Words: 256 742 words in 1 novella, 4 short stories, 3 poems and 1 comic (plus part of 1 more)
Books Read: 91
Comics Read: 1429
Albums Listened To: 520
New Recipes Tried: 171
Places Travelled: 5 (Collingwood/Kingsville/Temagami/Florida/Bahamas)
I don’t believe in original sin. I think it’s fucking ridiculous.
Only a deluded soul could believe that anyone is born evil. Babies are babies; they just are.
Evil is not born. It’s bred.
It’s influenced and created, it has supervillain origins. Origins often tragic and relatable, but it doesn’t ultimately matter because the evil is so ingrained as to overwhelm any compassion one might hold.
It’s a henchman created by an overbearing boss, a desire to please, a fear of independent thought, or whatever.
It’s selfish, narcissistic, and considers no one’s needs but its own. It feeds and feeds and feeds, growing larger and larger, until someone cuts off the damn trough (or it empties its own and starts feasting on everyone else’s, which is when true evil begins).
It needs a slap in the face.
And sometimes, it’s so far gone, so committed to its story of itself as hero, itself as victim, itself as the only character in the story whose needs need to be fulfilled, that there’s no chance of turning back.
There’s only awful behaviour, and ultimately, exile or death.
If, in your story, you are the only one that matters, or you think your needs are more important than anyone else’s?
Fuck you. You’re the problem.
You weren’t born that way; circumstances pushed you a certain direction and you didn’t bother to course correct once you knew.
And ultimately, you started making the choice to be evil, all on your own.
So, fuck you, overentitled pieces of shit, bigoted assholes trying to pretend you love freedom and not just hating on others.
Fuck you, snooty pricks staring down your noses at people for not having the “right” views or the “right” look or having read the “right” books, when the extent of your engagement with justice is a fucking social media post to mask the fact that all you care about is status.
Fuck you, too, people who stand up and say, I’m decisive, I’m advocating for myself, I’m a strong person, but are, in actually, just assholes who treat everyone else like shit over the pettiest bullshit in order to prop up the fiction that they’re somehow worth more than everyone else (your insecurity is showing). Your obsessive need to prove yourself, your obsession with validation, it’s destructive – to you and everyone around you.
And it’s led, time and again, to the same choice – grow, change, be a better person, or close down, stop thinking and fuck everyone else.
Otherwise known as, you know, evil.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 3085 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Art Of Asking, Amanda Palmer
Comics: Chu 9-10
Music: New Order Essentials, New OrderI’ll be honest, I’m kind of obsessed; his ability to create a mood simply by creating a static shot with a hint of movement is unreal. The cinematography in his movies was never without purpose.
He once said “the myth is everything” and when it comes to creating a piece of art, I think he’s touched on something that transcends the idea of merely being creative or tapping emotions or cool concepts.
It’s EVERYTHING.
(Hell, it’s technically the entire reason for the MAGA movement, given that they’ve created a whole alternate reality where everything that promotes compassion, freedom or you know, intelligence is considered evil, a web of conspiracy thinking that has no actual basis in reality – often except as applied to the Trump grifters running the joint. See Gaetz, Matt. Where’s a man with no name when you need him?)
Anyway, huge fan of Leone, and at this point, praying he doesn’t turn out to be problematic, like every other artist I’ve idolized over the years and who continue to prove my point:
There is no correlation between skill and the relative morality of its wielder.
Target: 100 words
Written: 405 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith
Comics: Chew 49-52
Music: The New America, Bad Religion (I know, I know, not exactly comfort music given the situation, but hey, as a man raging against machines once said: anger is a gift.)