for the record, charity

I don’t think charity is necessarily a negative or that it’s always motivated by selfishness.

My personal opinion is that all charities should exist to solve a problem (solve, not just mitigate), then close up shop and let donations flow elsewhere.

Where money is involved, there will be corruption. That’s an inescapable fact of money.

Where exists the possibility for greed, there will be greed. And greed has no place in charity or kindness.

That’s the point I’m getting at – after all. the Trump family runs numerous charities and we all know they don’t give a shit about anybody but themselves.

Solve the problem and get out. Exist only on what you need to exist; make sure the bulk goes where it’s needed, not where it’s desired.

And remember – kindness need not cost a damn thing.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1617 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne
Comics: Dynamo 5 14, Brit v2 5-6, Noble Causes 34 (reading this version of Brit makes me feel like I'm having a stroke; or the writer is having a stroke, or the writer's first language isn't English, and has used 2006 Google translate to create the English dialogue.  The sentences don't even make sense, and if it's for effect, the effect is unintelligible pseudo-babble.)
Music: Frankenchrist, Dead Kennedys (okay, Frank Turner on hold, getting too into it)

here’s the problem

And here’s why it so enervating and dangerous.

Accusations of sexual assault are serious – they need to be treated with seriousness, while maintaining the assumption of innocent until proven guilty for the accused. Balance is required.

However, in our hyper partisan, hyper sensitive climate, even the whiff of an accusation can sink a lefty, mostly because the left actually cares about these things. The right doesn’t, as their overwhelming protectiveness of a known rapist and very likely pedophile attests.

Establishment Democrats know this. They know that there doesn’t need to be any reality behind the accusations. That used to matter; Trump taught them that it no longer makes a difference. The accusation is enough. People still think Haitians were eating people’s pets in Ohio, despite the fact that it was an obvious fabrication.

A true progressive, whose message resonated with what most people want these days, won overwhelmingly in Maine. That’s bad for Democratic donors, and the “middle-of-the-road”, centrist Democrats, which is code for corporate sellouts fighting for billionaires and not people.

So, they come up with scandal after scandal against a grassroots campaigner and strong communicator with a message that really hits home for an overwhelming majority. None of it sticks. He addresses things head-on, apologizes, and to me, shows what we want out of people in reality (or should – many lefties want condemnation and eternal torture, not growth and compassion). He wins with seventy-three percent of the vote – an unprecedented asskicking for establishment politics.

In comes the sexual assault accusation. For years, the left has crowed about believing victims, forgetting about the presumption of innocence. For them to suddenly call for sanity and level heads and waiting for actual facts would seem hypocritical, even though it’s clearly the right thing to do.

The timing, like the last batch of scandals, is convenient; an establishment Hail Mary.

And here’s the thing. If it’s true, I hope they charge him and prosecute fully. If it’s not, I hope he sues the pants off her and the DNC.

But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. True or not, it makes no difference – it took him out as a candidate, and gave the DNC a way to wiggle back in their billionaire friendly candidate, who will lose and possibly doom the whole country by losing the Senate. They’d rather lose and keep their corporate donors happy than save the country from fascism.

And there’s the rub. Because the other thing that’s true, and that all of a sudden, a lot of people who are pissed about the timing and convenience of all this are realizing, is that centrist Dems do not care about them – they care about billionaires. For as much as they talk about being for the people, this makes it incredibly clear.

They absolutely do not. They do not respect the democratic process, and their overuse of the words “open and transparent” when talking about the new race for their candidate suggests that they’re monstrously overcompensating for the fact that they’re about to screw three-hundred million people.

So, what now?

New parties? Republicans are fascists, and Democrats so blatantly corrupt that their hypocrisy is now revealed. They are not just the Chamberlain to Trump’s Hitler. They’re fucking Mussolini.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 2254 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Wizard At Large, Terry Brooks
Comics: The Pact 4, Invincible 29-30, Noble Causes 19
Music: Fortune Faded, Red Hot Chili Peppers

too much anger

Not just in the world, but in me.

I’m angry at the world’s situation.

I’m angry at myself, for wasting so much time.

I’m angry at myself, for not being a better man.

I’m angry at circumstances beyond my control.

I’m angry at being blamed for things I didn’t even do, and never would.

I’m angry at greed.

I’m angry at corruption.

I’m angry at myself for allowing depression to dictate the terms of my life.

I’m angry at other people, for constantly invading my time and space.

I’m angry, because I’m not nice enough, and because I cannot be less nice.

I’m angry at my own frustation.

I’m angry, again, at my inability to change any of this.

I’m angry at my inertia.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1818 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Definitely Dead, Charlaine Harris
Comics: Noble Causes 8-9, Invincible 21-22
Music: For Those About To Rock, AC/DC

in the olive of a dry martini

It’s funny, how ideas jump from place to place, little things that maybe the later progenitors didn’t even realize from where they came.

A bug in an olive in a martini. I first saw it in Danger Girl; turns out, it came as a suggestion earlier by “Count Diaz” in Wonder Woman.

J. Scott Campbell and I have seen the same shows (and if you’ve seen Campbell’s work, that he would have spent some time with Lynda Carter is unsurprising).

I feel like kindness is much the same way. Someone commits a small act. Someone else sees it; maybe it doesn’t register right away with them, but later, in a similar situation, they see that as a valid course of action.

Enough acts of kindness witnessed, and perhaps, in time, it will become the default course of action for us all.

One can only hope.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1357 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Definitely Dead, Charlaine Harris (definitely boring, already a third of the way through)
Comics: Noble Causes 3-4, Invincible 18-19
Music: For Blood And Empire, Anti-Flag

toxic masculinity

There’s nothing wrong with strength, but posturing is never truly the mark of a strong man.

Indeed, kindness, compassion, sober second thought – the ability to see perspective and to act on a combination of conviction and data (never blinding oneself to what is for the sake of dogmatic ideals) – these are the hallmarks of a strong person.

Those who would sublimate themselves in order to help someone in need.

Those who show kindness to anyone who needs it.

Those who would stand up for those that need their help, regardless of the consequences to oneself, in the face of the laughing masses.

That’s fucking strength. That’s “masculine” (and really – it’s everyone. Nothing in this precludes anyone of any gender to be any of this – good and bad).

Anyway, that’s my point.

It takes more courage and strength to be soft and kind than it does to put up walls and pretend to be hard (and if you’re truly hard, well, then, why would we venerate you? As the Tao puts it – the hard and stiff are disciples of death; the supple and flexible are those of life.)

(Paraphrased, obviously.)

Corpses are rigid, and only move at the whim of others as they decay.

Life moves in an intricate dance, wills and choice mingling, and isn’t it better to dance well with your partners, than do the meathead thing and forget that a mosh pit isn’t sanctioned bullying; it’s energetic celebration.

Kindness isn’t toxic; neither is it feminine.

It’s human, and a fully obtainable ideal.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1130 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Night Shift, Stephen King
Comics: Voodoo v2 10-11, Grifter v3 11-12
Music: Flogging Molly, Flogging Molly (floggingmollyfloggingmolly)

leave ’em lying

The rule down south now. Hell, anywhere right wing leaders are – they lie, lie and lie some more, and someday, someone’s going to leave them lying.

It’s what happens to all fascists in the end.

Chickens come home to roost. Houses made of cards collapse, and pretending to be humble, aw shucks or bombastic “the big lie is the best lie” won’t mean a goddamn thing.

They’re doing it to themselves. They could stop their downfall, but they don’t want to – this is a death cult, squeezing every last bit of misery they can, for the personal profit of their own power and their own pockets.

I preach kindness and pacifism; I preach fortitude and no compromise with bigots and authoritarians.

There is no grey area in dictatorships.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1446 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Well Of Shiuan, C.J. Cherryh
Comics: Voodoo v2 4-5, Grifter v3 5-6
Music: Flick Of The Switch, AC/DC (that's how fast it will happen)

linguistics world/view

I was watching a webcast on the preservation of indigenous languages (as I am wont to do) and a very intelligent federal employee by the name of Mandy sent my mind spinning in a manner few have lately.

It was her assertion that language and culture often have a symbiotic (my words, not hers) relationship, that language forms culture and culture language, that got me thinking, but it was another participant’s story about how frustrated she’d gotten with her grandfather in trying to translate some from his language to English (I’m sorry, I don’t remember the language now), and how he’d responded, that blew my mind.

She wanted a word for resilient, a straight, word-for-word translation and he wouldn’t give it to her, because it doesn’t exist; in his language and culture, resilience wasn’t just a label, an assigned word; like many other things, it required description to truly carry the essence of resilience. A tent that stands up to Arctic winds without tearing. A man with the strength to travel weeks on end to his deer meat caches in order to feed his family in the winter.

That’s resilience. And it struck me that describing things that way resonates the actual meaning so much more clearly than a simple word can. It isn’t literal, as her grandfather told her; it’s felt sense.

Mandy’s assertion from the shores of Great Bear Lake were that in her culture, language comes from a different place, a different mode of thought. Because in her culture, when one speaks and acts, when one considers their lives, it’s never, as it so often is in Western culture, and white North American culture (American culture), solely about you. Every thought, every communication, every action; it’s all in context, with the understanding that we are not separate from the world; we do not live in void. Our actions, our words, our thoughts – they happen as part of the larger universe, of the larger world, the larger community.

The larger family, even.

So, when we speak and when we act, we act and speak with all that in mind. And their language reflected that; the concepts, the methods of speaking, were reflected in the words and style. We speak as we are in relation to the sky, to our elders, to children. To friends and family. To all the things we do not know. Her assertion was that these concepts, this language, needed to be taught, so that the culture of understanding about where we exist in the world, that we are a part of it, and not separate from it, would not be lost in this me-me-me society.

It was a wonderful truth, and I agree – the more we think in terms of ourselves as part of the greater picture, and not as the whole world, the better off this world would be.

(And yes, I recognize the irony/hypocrisy of not knowing what the languages were; I could find them again, but after three days of trying to get to this, I’m squeezing it in where I can, and I’m not in a position to research it just this second – it came from a work site, and I’m not able to log in – I’ll post it later when I have the chance to find it, in addition to any resources I can find that might help keep these languages alive).

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1279 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Castle Of Wizardry, David Eddings
Comics: WildCats 3.0 24, Warblade: Razor's Edge 1-3
Music: Fingertips, They Might Be Giants

it’s been a day of revelation

Apparently, cutting grass and listening to post-Hoon Blind Melon will do that to someone, in that now, this far in, we see the shape of our lives as carved by our worst enemies.

In my case, crippling depression that I’ve mostly learned to live with, though it’s stolen so goddamn much from me.

So goddamn much.

I want to talk about language and culture and modes of thought, but this damn depression, and this damned lack of time.

So goddamn much.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 1785 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Castle Of Wizardry, David Eddings
Comics: WildCats 20-23
Music: The Final Solution - Outcesticide III, Nirvana

new ways of thinking

Or old, technically. I have a whole thing to think about involving the nature of language and culture and ways of thinking, and…

Nope.

Someone’s here to pick up my brother’s dog.

Thoughts are for tomorrow, I guess.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 998 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Castle Of Wizardry, David Eddings
Comics: WildCats 3.0 16-19
Music: The Final Countdown, Europe (why are all bands named after cities, states and countries so fucking bad?)

kindness, in mini

Let’s start small. Yesterday, I had difficulty reconciling the lifestyle of kindness and compassion with the need to punch a Nazi in the nose (because that may be the kindest thing you can do for the world, and perhaps for them).

Today, I’m just thinking about little things, and mostly, it comes down to paying attention. Instead of living in our own heads, we focus outward and really pay attention to the people around us, the people with whom we interact. How are they responding to what’s happening around them?

Do they need help? A good chuckle? A hug? A pat on the back? Some uplifting words?

Or maybe they just need someone to sit with them and be there for them.

I’m naturally drawn to the underdog, the person everyone’s ignoring in place of the most obvious victim or the cause du jour. Caregiver burnout is a real thing, and I think it behooves us to show some grace to those who do the work.

It’s very easy to feel empathy for an aging mother whose mind is wavering, or someone in a wheelchair, and very easy to criticize those who are most responsible for their welfare, who have set aside their own wants and needs in order to take care of someone else.

And it’s easy to sympathize with those who are caregivers, except when they get frustrated or dare to take a little something for themselves. Then, it’s easy to criticize; they’re bad people for getting angry at their charge, for taking a few moments to collect themselves while a child or parent is screaming; the accused, seeing the press whirl up against them without any regard for fact or nuance.

It’s easy to judge, to write off, to label as mean, as a bitch, an asshole, an abuser.

It’s much more difficult to try and understand, and in that, there is kindness.

I guess this wasn’t really mini at all.

More on that another time.

Target: 1600 words
Written: 2094 words, novel: Father Lightning

Read: Still Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 38-39, Grifter v2 11, WildC.A.T.S./X-Men 2
Music: Fat Music, Volume 5: Live Fat Die Young, Anti-Flag