sabotage

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Listen up, y’all.

There’s not a guy in my generation that doesn’t know every fucking word of this song, and immediately wants to dress up like a Seventies cop and with a bad moustache and slide over a car hood.

It’s immediate and visceral. I’m not the biggest Beastie Boys groupie, but hell, who doesn’t love that song?

Of course, followed by Come Alive by Foo Fighters, it’s a poignant, hard moment.

Makes me feel like a fucking teenager again, fucked up and wallowing, twisted about in depression and frustration, longing for something more.

And now, middle-aged and overweight, knowing it’s all a horrid lie.

Target: 600 words
Written: 447 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Artemis IX 1, Apollo IX 1, Poseidon IX 1, IXth Generation 5
Music: Oh Boy - The Best Of Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Buddy Holly & The Crickets

mother’s day

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Today, we brunch and we honour our mothers, those of us who have them, and all the many things they’ve done for us, while ignoring the fairly complicated relationship we’ve had with our parents over the years.

Mother’s Day is a good time, a sticky wicket and a timebomb waiting to happen all in one.

My mother is a good mother; it doesn’t mean there’s not complexity there.

Like many GenX kids, we were largely latchkey, left to our own devices and using that time to spoil our minds with alcohol, drugs and the seedy underbelly of non-corporate living. Part of me wonders if things would be different if we had helicopter parents, but then, I’d never have the freedom or independent mind I was forced to cultivate by virtue of being left alone to figure it all out.

Perhaps a blend would be nicer; I regret a lot of my actions, but I don’t regret being able to think on my own, to be self-reliant.

So, for that, thank you, mothers. For the freedom to be, and the understanding that responsibility is inextricably entwined with that freedom.

We do what we will, and the consequences come, as is inevitable. There is no free ride; only free choice.

Target: 600 words
Written: 141 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: IXth Generation 3-4, IXth Generation: Hidden Files 1, Athena IX
Music: The Offspring, The Offspring (wherefore art my offspring)

pickle-palooza

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Is anyone else more than a little concerned about social media and AI’s ability to predict what we want and what our lives should contain?

For example, Facebook has apparently decided that I’m attending an event called Pickle-Palooza today.

I’ve never heard of this and I’m not entirely certain what it is. Is this a farmer’s market for brined cucumber-philes? Or is it a Farmers Only event for um, those with pickles?

I don’t know, and I don’t know why Facebook’s algorithm thinks I need this in my life?

AI is just weird.

Target: 600 word
Written: 199 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX 11, Aphrodite IX/Cyber Force 1, IXth Generation 1-2
Music: Off To See The Lizard, Jimmy Buffett

jet fresh flow

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I ain’t got it.

Beck’s better at it than I. So is Flava Flav, Eminem, Ernest Hemingway, Erica Jong and Jules Verne.

I ain’t got it.

My niece raps better than I do. The other one sings better.

Everyone connects better with one another.

I am a non-valence electron, there but not involved, outside the chemical process, lurking in the outer ring.

I ain’t got it.

Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Awaken The Giant Within, Tony Robbins
Comics: Aphrodite IX: Hidden Files, Aphrodite IX v2 8-10
Music: Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, OK Go

oh god that poor child

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That’s what I think when I hear super rich people are having children, especially when they’re known to have been shitty little people themselves.

That poor fucking child.

And here I am, writing the length of a tweet for the thing I love.

Poor fucking child.

Target: 600 words
Written: 140 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX v2 4-7
Music: Odelay, Beck (the jet fresh flow... wait... get fresh?  I like jet fresh better)

flame out or flicker

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I thought, when I was young, I was going to join the twenty-seven club. It was a dream.

Explode through the atmosphere, a fucking rocket on its way to etch its name across the sky only to explode spectacularly and leave its legacy falling from the sky.

Instead, I’m a half-broken sedan (well, more minivan based on weight), middle-aged and failing, and the only mark I’ve left on the world is some pets that loved me, and whom I love.

At least I know I made that difference.

(I miss you, little butts – Magnus, Loki, Nyka and Cassie Bear).

Still, is there a forty-seven club?

Could I start one?

How about ninety-seven?

Things never go how you will them to; it’s coincidence, circumstance and bio-mechanics that determine where we end up.

And for most of us, it’s the dirt, not the sky.

Target: 600 words
Written: 108 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX 4, Aphrodite IX v2 1-3
Music: Odds & Sods, The Who

met gala

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Who cares? At least, it wasn’t entirely ridiculous this year, but honestly, it always pisses me off when you see these celebrities dressed absurdly, in a stunning display of myopia toward the lesser off classes beneath them.

What’s worse is that some of the worst offenders are those who ardently support social reform in favour of the lower classes.

Not for them, apparently. It’s hard to stomach a well-known bleeding heart celebrity who then turns around and dons some absurdly expensive dress to go hobnob with other similarly well-off individuals while sipping champagne and slurping caviar.

It is one of the worst displays of concentrated wealth and the whole “first class” citizen versus the rest of us, and even the most liberal of celebrities cream themselves in order to go and wear some absurdly lavish get-up to remind us how utterly vapid they are, and how little they actually care about the social causes they espouse the rest of the year.

It’s Masque of the Red Death shit, partying in extravagance while the rest of the world burns around them.

Fuck the Met Gala.

Target: 600 words
Written: 462 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Yellow Birds, Karen Green
Comics: Aphrodite IX 0-3
Music: October, U2

office days

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Well, every third week, my days get a little tighter, when they can no longer stand to be.

The noose scratches at my neck.

I don’t remember who put it on, but everyone that comes by seems to give it a solid yank.

To nudge the chair under my feet.

How soon we do swing.

Today’s dark musing brought to by L7 and One More Thing.

Target: 600 words
Written: 94 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Tom Judge: End Of Days 1
Music: Oceania, Smashing Pumpkins

and, we’re out

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Like I said, Leafiest way possible, with a heavy helping of referees demonstrating the league’s blatant bias.

Fact: that was not a hooking call on Knies. Fact: that was a trip on a breakaway against Knies that should have lead to a penalty shot, or at a minimum, a tripping penalty (but the rule states penalty shot).

It’s still up to the teams to execute, but other than maybe games 1 and 4, I thought they played pretty well. So, it becomes a question:

If the league calls the games fairly, and applies its own rules to both teams, and doesn’t make up penalties for one while ignoring flagrant violations for the other, how does this series go? Marchand takes, at a minimum, four to six more penalties, McAvoy (aka Marchand lite), takes at least two or three. The Leafs powerplay wasn’t doing great, but still: a goal one way or the other could tip a game in a very tight series.

If say, the league applies its own standards to the Bruins, then Brad Marchand is ejected from the game for shoving a ref, followed by the requisite and automatic three game suspension, which means he’s not in game 7. (I mean, honestly, if Brad Marchand, who would make everyone’s top five list of the dirtiest players in the game, where actually called like one of the dirtiest players in the game, I don’t think he’d even have a career. Instead, he gets a free pass and makes the league look like a joke.)

If say, the referees make a proper call on Knies’ breakaway, how does the resulting penalty shot affect the game? Certainly, if all other things remained the same, it’s 2-1 Leafs at the end of the game, and not overtime.

The fact is, this corrupt manipulation of games in favour of some teams in favour of others has gone on long enough and become more and more blatant as they continue to get away with it.

I don’t know what needs to happen, but they are ruining the game for me. I used to watch all the games; now I watched a handful, only because I happened to be someplace where it was on. I tuned back in for the playoffs, but with the expectation that I was going to see exactly what I saw – the Leafs getting fucked, them not being able to play as aggressive as the other team because they know this is the case and they have to avoid the box, and ultimately, trying their best knowing they have no chance because the League won’t allow it.

Over the past thirty-ish years with Bettman, he’s taken the speed, the offense, the physicality and now, the integrity out of the game. Personally, I think #corruptNHL needs to trend so hard he’s forced to resign, or there are congressional hearings, class action lawsuits and the teams getting screwed need to hold back parity funds.

Oh, and Boston? The league wants Florida to win (they love those money-losing, small market teams that only remain in existence because teams like Toronto, Boston and New York subsidize them), so I look forward to hearing you whine about the refs are biased against you in the second round. Now, you’ll know how it feels.

#fireBettman #fireParros

Target: 600 words
Written: 128 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Universe 5-8
Music: Ocean Of Confusion: Songs of Screaming Trees 1989-1996, Screaming Trees

game 7, for reals

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Today’s the day. Are we going to break the curse of the Boston strangler, or are going to Leaf it up in the Leafiest way we possibly can?

I don’t believe in curses, but I do believe in complacent cultures that think they don’t need to try as hard because they’re making money hand over fist.

I do believe in overwhelming personalities who don’t give a shit about that culture and drag everyone else along with them toward some grand dream.

One of these two teams has that. Tonight, we’ll find out who, and whether the NHL decides to screw them anyway.

Target: 600 words
Written: 60 words, novella: The Mungk

Read: Carrie, Stephen King
Comics: Universe 1-4
Music: Ocean Mist, Sublime