Category: reading

hard decisions

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You ever find something you love, that you’re really into, but the time sink is just too much with everything else you need/want/have to do?

I feel that way about baseball. I love the old game, the strategy, the drama, the fact that everything can change with one great pitch or one great swing or one great play (or one big fuck-up, to be fair).

But I can’t do it. It’s too much. It’s too much of a time sink. The stats, the game length, the fact that it’s three hours a day every day for almost half the year… would that I had nothing else in my life, but I do.

My love of ball is less than my love of reading. Or writing. Or love.

Such a shame is life.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1938 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Voodoo v2 8-9, Grifter v3 9-10
Music: Frogstomp, Silverchair

oh, i’m sorry

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Was I supposed to write today? To read?

To do things that actually mattered to me?

Guess not.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 907 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: In Search Of The Castaways, Jules Verne (in search of something, I am... time, for a starter)
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. v5 6-9
Music: Freak Magnet, Violent Femmes

we need to talk about wil

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I’ll be honest. I find a lot of commonality with Wil Wheaton, even though Wil Wheaton and I have lived very different lives.

My parents weren’t particularly overbearing, but I definitely feel the anxiety and the insecurity, the desire for people to think I am more than I am, and the head-up-the-assiness of my fully filled with bullshit youth.

How’s that for a sentence?

My first thought when reading Still Just A Geek was, my god, he’s still stuck, still defined by his bitterness and angry from decades before. Thankfully, it mellowed out a bit, but there was a moment there where I was genuinely concerned for him, that he was going to be forever caught in this bitter hatred, this ravaging insecurity, only now, instead of blaming Hollywood and overplaying his hand, he was blaming his parents.

I mean, shit, is he ever hard on young Wil, even as he’s telling young Wil that it’s not his fault. Plus, there’s an oversensitivity to his own insensitivity, in that he wants to give himself a break for being hard on himself, but excoriates himself repeatedly for even the most minor of politically incorrect offenses (never really truly acknowledging that while we know better now as we’ve grown, it’s just not someone we understood back then, and we cannot live our lives in perpetual guilt for the smallest of past actions, and outrage for the current ones by everyone else).

I worried he’d traded the bluster of overperformative insecurity and anger for the bluster of overperformative modern social standing (and believe me, it is a major pet peeve of mine when it comes to people whose use of modern political correctness is done solely as performance art, to make other people think of them in a way that doesn’t reflect who they truly are – for example, those who think a social media post is all that’s needed to end racism or transphobia. Exposure helps, but if your only interest is in how it makes you look, well then, fuck you. You’re the example right wing fascists use when they want to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the left – and while they’re still assholes and fully in the wrong about pretty much everything, there’s something to that.

Don’t be a hypocritical asshole.

In any case, I made myself do what I always do – devil’s advocate. Because I didn’t want to dogpile on the guy. I enjoy his work. I just worried he’d moved into a space where he’d not really moved, but only shifted the focus, or done some minor redecorating.

Of course, again, this was 2021 when he did all these annotations, so another five years gone and who knows where we are now? I’ll guarantee dredging through those old memories was a trigger for past trauma, so while he may have started with the best of intentions, he may have let that past anger infect him a little. It shows in some of the comments he makes. The second half is better, with more recent and more inspired stuff, but at times, it feels like he’s a little scared to really get into it, to let us dive deep into his psyche.

Then again, as he himself mentions at points, he’s under no obligation to share any of that.

And he’s not. He’s right.

Anyway, this sounds like I’m being a jerk, but I really do identify with the whole thing. I want Wil to be happy because I want myself to be happy. If he is, if he grows and changes and moves on to a full life without all the baggage, well, shit.

Maybe there’s hope for us all.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 726 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Still Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 47-49, Voodoo 4
Music: Foo Fighters Essentials, Foo Fighters (it's been a few foo foo kind of days)

process vs 4.0s

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I was thinking about Tom Sterner’s note of the conundrum of actual learning versus the grades-based culture of modern education. How if a 2.0 and a 4.0 GPA go up against each other for the same job, the job will go to the 4.0 every time because the 4.0 represents to our product-based society the most potential.

On the other hand, if the 2.0 had focused on learning what they needed to learn, learning to live in the process, but not scoring well, they’d have nothing to show for the fact that they knew more and were better long term learners than the 4.0.

It’s presented as a paradox, but the more I think about it, it doesn’t matter. Maybe it matters to the hiring party, but functionally, having learned to live in the process, the 2.0 is better off in a thousand different ways, including self-sufficiency and quality of life and presence.

Are they really disadvantaged? They actually know how to do things. They know stuff. They are enjoying the process, and that always attracts attention.

I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s all that dire. That’s all I’m saying. Would that we could do away with the grade system in favour of, you know, actual learning, and I think we’d all be better off.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1287 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Against The Fall Of Night, Arthur C. Clarke
Comics: Spartan: Warrior Spirit 2-3, Grifter 4-5
Music: Fixed, Nine Inch Nails

midnight library

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My daughter is listening to this audiobook, and I can’t help but think it dovetails with my idea of an afterlife (of just spending all one’s time exploring all the possible scenarios and things one wanted to know in one’s life), only instead of curiosity and wanting to know what one’s missed, it’s a testament to human restlessness, of its ridiculous dissatisfaction with literally everything.

FOMO is destroying the world.

Of that, I have no doubt. Envy is a real bitch.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 506 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Time For A Tiger, Anthony Burgess
Comics: Team One/WildC.A.T.S. 1, Spartan: Warrior Spirit 1, WildC.A.T.S. 22, Grifter 3
Music: Five Hundred Pounds, Big Sugar

disappointments

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You know how when your favourite artists love something, you kind of assume that because you’re into their work, you’d also be into the stuff that inspired them?

Like if Foo Fighters said they were into the Clash and the Ramones, I’d be like, I feel that, man.

That doesn’t always work. For example, I understand why Kurt Cobain would be into the Vaselines or David Bowie, but I will never understand the Meat Puppets.

The same, apparently, is true of Steve Aylett. I found him because multiple authors I was into said he was so good and groundbreaking and awesome.

Yeah.

I don’t get it.

The Crime Studio is an entire book, essentially written in the style of Luis telling his heist story in Ant-Man. And while that can be a funny bit over the course of a minute or three in a two hour movie, it’s annoying as fuck over a hundred and fifty pages (while simultaneously having the gall to slag Updike, Amis and Delillo – dude, you’re not better. This is college kid trying on an 80s movie punk persona and thinking he’s somehow managed the depth of James O’Barr, while really only succeeding in pretentious amateurishness posing as rebel pastiche. Who’s pretentious now, motherfucker? That’s right. Pastiche).

So, sorry, authors whose work I respect and adore. In this one, we don’t agree. Thumbs down.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 449 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Crime Studio, Steven Aylett
Comics: Gen 13 v4 37-39, Team 7 v4 0
Music: Fight For Your Mind, Ben Harper

good friday

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You know what? It was a good Friday.

Time off, time to write, time to read and play video games?

I’ll fuckin’ take it.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 1428 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone , J.K. (don't call me Joanne) Rowling
Comics: Gen 13 v4 13-16
Music: Ferment, Catherine Wheel

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 again

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Like, I don’t know you, Jonathan Franzen, so you could be a really nice guy. You could also be a complete dick.

I don’t mean to shit on your work. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it somehow flew over my head.

The thing is, I have a really good bullshit detector. When someone’s full of it, I pick up on it pretty damn fast. I called Donald’s rise to fascism the day he rode down that fucking escalator.

So when I see pretentious bullshit being lauded as genius, I get a little pissed.

It’s not that you can’t be a little pretentious. Look at Chuck Palahniuk or Radiohead. The difference there is that they’ve infused depth and meaning and real heart and guts into their work. It’s not just an intellectual exercise to give the appearance of infinite genius, like modern art or Moulin Rouge.

There’s a reason I’ll take the Vandals over Rush any day. And I’m Canadian.

(Rush is bullshit – there’s like two good songs, the rest is show-offy prog rock borefests. Sorry, other Canadians. You’ve got shit taste. Fuckin’ Nickelback, for Pete’s sake).

Anyway, maybe I missed the heart and guts and fun and investment and meaning of this book. Maybe you had a real vision you were passionate about.

Unfortunately, it still comes across like a rough idea that you tried to flesh out in the middle of writing it, but couldn’t keep track and then realized a lot of shit didn’t matter, characters didn’t behave how you needed them to behave and rather than going back and editing to make it all work, you just got bored of it and said fuck it. You even put your lack of care and abandonment of the idea in the book.

You were the voting public, who barely turned up and didn’t give a shit.

So why should we?

Did I just crack the riddle of what people saw in it?

Five hundred pages of poorly written setup, just to give up?

This reminds me of the time I watched No Country For Old Men and it was all build up, and then just ended, abruptly, pointlessly, in a monstrous letdown.

And the Coen brothers I like.

Target: 1500 words
Written: 436 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Comics: Gen 13 v2 45-47, Gen 13: A Christmas Caper 1
Music: The Fallout, Default