Now, more than ever.
Remember.
When the masks come off, it will be the face of the hopeful that shine, and the face of the condemned that bleed with fear.
Remember.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 1623 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Quiet: The Power Of Introverts, Susan Cain
Comics: Shattered Image 1-2, X-Force/Youngblood 1, Extremely Youngblood 1
Music: Wild Horses, The Rolling StonesIt will never cease to feel strange when you realize that someone who’s been part of your life will nevermore be.
They will exist in memory, but eventually, even those will fade.
Our lives are sparks for the ones that remains behind; inspiration to keep going, to be better, to live.
Sometimes, that’s as a cautionary tale; others, it’s a set example.
I pray mine will be both, and in that, can avoid pillory or pedestal to maintain humanity, even when I’m nothing left but a thought.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 957 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!, Terry Brooks
Comics: Bloodstrike 17, Team Youngblood 16, Youngblood 10, Youngblood Strikefile 10
Music: WHO (Deluxe & Live At Kingston), The WhoMy aunt died. I’ve only got two; this is the one on my dad’s side and the one that lives near us.
We’ve spent a fair amount of time with them over the years, the kids were all close, even if I wasn’t particularly with her.
Different styles. She was a teacher, very prim and proper; my family torched her family’s house back during the teetotaler’s movement. We were upset (and probably a little drunk) about their attempts to ban our firewater.
And while obviously, that’s all ancient history, it’s funny how that kind of attitude filters down, even if her love of red wine was almost as great as my own.
In any case, we’ll miss her, but it’s been a long road, post-polio, cancer, all that, and she deserves the rest.
We’ll miss you, Jan. I’m sorry you had to to go through all that. I’m sorry my ancestors burned your ancestor’s house down.
Raise a glass of merlot, then. À la santé, and we’ll see you again.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 1397 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold!, Terry Brooks
Comics: Brigade v2 14, Youngblood Strikefile 9, Badrock And Company 4, Battlestone 2
Music: Whitney Houston, Whitney Houston (I... have no excuse. The worst, right?)All-fucking-ready?
Jesus H. Jehosophat.
Is that how you spell that?
Is that the same guy?
I thought he was jumpin’.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1050 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: World Of Ptavvs, Larry Niven
Comics: Tomb Raider Journeys 3-4, Tomb Raider 21-22
Music: Weezer (Red Album), Weezer (what don't I love about these guys)I had this in my notes about the nature of “alternative facts” and how conspiracy theories, no matter how insane, can go viral and I thought: that’s exactly the mentality the right takes towards reality.
Schrodinger’s cat is basically a thought experiment where if one puts a cat in a box, so one can’t see or hear it, one doesn’t actually know if the cat still exists.
The idea is that the fact of the cat’s life or death is entirely unknown, until the box is opened and facts are gathered. Until that point, the cat is neither dead or alive, but could simultaneously be either.
In right wing land, the opposite is true. As facts are revealed, the right wing becomes increasingly convinced that the entire proposition, whatever it is (the economy tanking, concentration camps, the illegality and immorality of masked men abducting people off the streets in the name of “law”), is entirely false.
However, the fewer facts there are, in this land, the more likely a right winger is to believe a thing is true (Haitians eating dogs in Springfield, the Bowling Green Massacre, 2020 election bullshit).
Basically, in a right winger’s mind, the fact that you can’t see the cat is proof of its existence – the cat must be alive. Ironically, opening the cat and showing it as it is, either way, dead or alive, is proof that the cat does not, in fact, exist.
I mean, it’s not a perfect theory, but you get the gist.
The stupider and less proven a conspiracy is, the more likely it is to be true, according to the right wing. See: Pizzagate.
The more logical and factually proven a conspiracy is, the more likely, in their minds, to be utterly untrue, a total cover-up, entirely fictional: see, Trump and Epstein, or any of the various grifts that piece of garbage has run on the American people.
One can only hope at some point that reality asserts itself, but the reality of their unreality is currently shaping the direction of the rest of our reality, creating an insane cognitive dissonance between where to draw the lines of real and unreal, which is what they want.
You can’t fight insanity with logic, and you can’t fight bullshit if you don’t know where to draw the line of truth.
I mean, we all know where the line is, and what’s bullshit, but we’re not the ones that need to be convinced.
Reality will come for us all, but whether it’s the reality of reality crashing down on their heads, or their unreality going scorched earth on our disbelief, either way, it won’t end well for somebody.
Or anybody, really.
Fuck.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1349 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Magician: Apprentice, Raymond Feist
Comics: The Sacrificers 12-13, Grommets 6, Napalm Lullaby 7
Music: We Built This City, Closet MonsterI bottle fed you and your brother when you were four weeks old and your mother had abandoned you. Your brother suffered from seizures; I remember sitting up with him at night, curled in a blanket in my chest, hoping he would snap out of it, praying I didn’t have to do the thing the vet wanted us to do and put him to sleep.
You, you sat on my knee, head cocked, watching Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone battle the dead in Zombieland. You were hyper-focused on it.
Your brother made it, and so did you, and just like your other sibling, Magnus, whom several different vets told me to put down due to his heart murmur, your brother has persevered. Magnus made it to twenty. Your twin is fifteen and counting.
It kills me that you went first. Both of you were so malnutritioned. You looked like kittens in face, if not in weight, right to the end. Your eyes peered into me as we came to your final hours, in a way that Magnus, or Cassie, or Loki, didn’t, who seemed to disappear before their bodies did.
I can barely forgive myself, even though I know it was the right thing to do. I refused to let you suffer the way Cassie did, when we thought she was getting better, recovering, even as it became clearer and clearer that she was not.
Still, we waited as long as we could, gave you every last minute. Like with Cass, we pray we didn’t do that solely for us.
I’m going to miss you, beautiful baby girl. Your brother already does. He just about broke me, standing up on his back paws, his front paws reached out on the glass of the back door as he watched us lower you into the ground.
I’m not a spiritual man, preferring the Degrasse Tyson’s merging atoms to an ever-present afterlife, but your mother has always believed that souls return as animals to visit the people they loved. She talked about you meeting up with your beloved Cassie, with Magnus, now much nicer to you than he ever was in life, with Loki, your fellow white kitty and protector, and Nyka, mother of the brood, and gentle giant.
And as we dug outside, talking about what you might come back as, five freaking blue jays, FIVE OF THEM, came flying in, squawking and carrying on, flitting about our deck and tree, the roof and the fence.
When’s the last time you’ve seen five blue jays together? I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than two. They’re a bit of a lonesome bird.
In that moment, I believed. There is more to this world than dirt and stone. There is love, and pain, and hearts connecting in ways unexplainable by rational thought.
I’m going to miss you, girl, and I pray we’re a long way away from another.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1508 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Rocket Ship Galileo, Robert Heinlein
Comics: The Scumbag 1-2, Seven To Eternity 14-15
Music: Warpaint, The Black CrowesMy daughter tells me her podiatrist, a nice Muslim convert, told her that the reason Muslims aren’t into dogs is because they feel like when the Messiah returns, they are concerned that if they have dogs in their house, their barking will scare off God or Jesus or the angels or whatever that have come to take them to heaven.
I mean, I can think of a number of immediately logical fallacies with that off the top of my head, not the least of which is why would an all-powerful being be scared of a dog bark, from a dog that it created, and its apparent all-encompassing love and kindness would somehow disappear in the face of such noise, instead of turning into the completely obvious snuggle attack a being of pure love for all things would engender.
Beliefs are weird, aren’t they?
And stupid. Also stupid.
Target: 1300 words
Written: 1336 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: The Grass Is Singing, Doris Lessing
Comics: Black Science 29, Low 17-18, Deadly Class 28
Music: Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple (is she brilliant or what?)Sly Stone dies and my sister lives another year. Good for her.
Not that she shouldn’t live another year. Like all the people I love, I hope she lives until I die, at least. After that, well, I hope for her sake she lives a long time, but hell, I’ll be dead. What would it matter to me?
Then again, there’s always reincarnation. Maybe I’ll come back as a vibrator.
Assuming I’m bought by a Hollywood starlet, that’d be cool, I guess.
Or a carrier of the Republican virus, in that it only targets individuals who voted Republican, and rewires their brains to be permanently set on Mr. Rogers.
Now, wouldn’t that be a nice cleanse?
Sometimes, I think the stars aligned and decided: there is something truly, profoundly wrong with this guy.
Target: 1200 words
Written: 1715 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
Comics: Fathom v6 1-4
Music: Equal Strain On All Parts, Jimmy Buffett (fuck you, it's better than you think)Jesus is hungover. Or rather, he’s been on a bender all night watching pornography and eating Cheetos, and now, he’s wondering if he can turn those powers of water into wine into returning his foreskin to its original colour.
But, hey, it’s a day off, right?
(For the record, I’m not Jesus, and Cheetos are terrible lube.)
Target: 1200 words
Written: 1177 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
Comics: Hit-Girl v3 11-12, Kick-Ass vs. Hit-Girl 1-2
Music: Early Trax, MinistryOr maybe, he’s just figured out how to google Sydney Sweeney, and now he’s down a rabbit hole of AI-generated porn and short clips from Euphoria and The Voyeurs.
Anyway, I cooked two turkeys yesterday and a ham today, so I have not risen. I have fallen onto the couch to watch my beloved Maple Leafs destroy their hated rivals, the evil Sens. Any euphoria I have will come from that, and any voyeuring I do will be with my beautiful wife, who also has a spectacular bod.
Anyway, happy Easter, be nice to each other. I think that was Jesus’ whole deal, once you strip away the religious bullshit.
Too bad Christians haven’t quite figured that out.
Target; 1200 words
Written: 965 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
Comics: Hit-Girl v3 8-10, Kick-Ass v4 18
Music: Eagles Essentials, The Eagles