I am Jack's screeching profanity

 

So about a week ago I concluded another little internet adventure.

I know a guy.  I'll call him Jack.   I've never met Jack in person, but several years ago... nearly ten, in fact... I made his acquaintance over the Internet.

Jack and I have a lot in common.  He's like ten years younger than I am, but he's a geek and a nerd and a general misanthrope without a lot in the way of social skills.  He tends to dislike people in general, and most people in specific, almost as much as I do.

As you might expect, we got along famously.... for a while.  Then he said something that annoyed me, or I said something that annoyed him... more than we were already annoying each other, I mean, because I'm sure we were, being generally annoying people... and it crossed a threshold and we were done.

Except, every once in a while, he'll send me an email, drop by my old blog, tell me what's going on... and, inevitably, invite me to some chat forum he's moderating, because he thinks I'll 'be good for the interaction'.

Last time he did this, I put it off, because my history with chat forums is kind of like the Washington Capitols' history with the Harlem Globetrotters, and by that, I do not mean, they provide me with a steady source of income.   No, I mean, when I interact with them, I inevitably lose.  

But eventually, after a few weeks of him importuning me every week or so, I went over and signed up and... oops!  He had just quit that forum in a huff.  

So a few more years pass by and suddenly here he is in my Gmail box again.  He's got another forum going, there's some good geek conversation going on there but he thinks I'd really enjoy it, he's the mod so he's got my back and he guarantees I won't have the same issues there as I've had in the past... come on in!

So I went in.

Well, it wasn't exactly scintillating conversation.  The forum is ostensibly dedicated to some obscure boardgame I've never heard of and don't play.  But they have a general chat forum where about a dozen geeks hang out and talk about comics and movies and sci fi in general (I deliberately use the term 'sci fi' in hopes of pissing off Harlan Ellison; I realize Mr. Ellison is unlikely to ever read anything I've written, but, still, we all have to have a dream) and, you know, that was okay.

Not great.  But okay.

But what Jack did not tell me when he was assuring me he would have my back and I wouldn't have any of the problems I had had with crazed mods abusing their authority on other forums was... that, because he's trying to get more attention for this forum, so, I guess, someday it can be as popular as 4chan or some shit, he has imposed an absolute ban on all vulgarity.

So, we're all adults and we're all geeks and we're all free to say anything we want... but no fucks, no shits, no goddams, no bitches, no taking the name of our Savior Jesus H Fucking Christ in vain, please.

Because if that stuff shows up, the search engines classify the site as 'adult', and the hits drop off.  

Well, fuck all that.

I am a profane motherfucker.  I do not swear as much as I did, once, in fourth grade, when it was a necessary rite of passage, nor do I swear as much as I did, briefly, in Army Infantry Basic Training, where it is impossible to communicate without profanity.

But there are times when one simply cannot convey a thought or an idea or an emotion without certain vulgar, pungent anglo saxonisms.  

Beyond that, I simply dislike it when people tell me what words I may, and may not, use to communicate.  I have come to accept some verboten words -- such as 'nigger', specifically -- because late in my life, I have come to an understanding as to the enormous weight of malice and hatred and cruelty that that word carries, coming from a white man when spoken to, or even in the hearing of, a non white man.  And I understand that refraining from using that word casually or, really, at all, unless one is specifically discussing the word itself, is a gesture of respect and acknowledgement on the part of the Caucasian race towards non Caucasians.  And I even accept that the usage of that word, and the emotional freight that it carries, varies enormously when a non Caucasian uses it.  

But, you know, that was a big one for me to swallow, because language is language and I hate it when ANYone tells me there are certain words I must not use, ever.  

So, anyway.  There's an automatic filter on this forum that takes forbidden words and changes them into other words.  Such as, 'shit' becomes 'poop'.  'Bitch' become 'female dog'.   And 'douche' becomes, for reasons I could not being to understand or articulate, 'female washing'.

Which, you know, greatly dilutes and even changes the meaning and impact of my words, when I write and post them.

So I complained bitterly about the autofilter  to my friend Jack the mod who had begged me to come join this forum while promising me he would have my back, and was told, nope, sorry, the swear filter is non  negotiable, because God forbid search engines classify this site, which is entirely for the usage of adults, as an adult site.  

So I was dealing with the autofilter.  I didn't like it, it aggravated the fucking shit out of me, but, still, I was dealing.  It's not like the level of attention or stimulus I was receiving from the site in exchange for my incredibly fucking brilliant posts was, you know, anything extraordinary or, really, even more than nominal... I wasn't laughing my ass off or gasping at anyone else's sparkling wit or astonishing insights or anything.    

But, still... dealing.

But then, my friend Jack posts something exceptionally dimwitted about how he would write Wonder Woman, if he were given the chance.  (Something to do with 'she's the strongest woman in the world!  And nobody seems to ever play that up!  Well, I would play that up!  Plus, I'd make Steve Trevor cool in a way no one else ever  has that I haven't thought up yet!')

And we got into it a little bit because, well, I am a comics geek of some knowledge and I have given quite a bit of thought to Wonder Woman over the  years and while there is a great deal about the basic  Wonder Woman concept that is... troublesome... to say the least... one will not take that poor, emotionally crippled, twisted, psychologically stunted character concept and correct it by writing stories that play up the fact that she is "the strongest woman in the world!"

(Even if that was some kind of extraordinary characterization engine -- and it's not -- Wonder Woman is not "the strongest woman in the world!"  That, in the DC Universe, would be either Supergirl or Power Girl.  Or possibly Lois Lane or Lana Lang, if either of them  have drunk a magic potion lately.)

So I waxed rhapsodic about how most successful characters and concepts had a central concept/characterization driver without which they do not function, and that the major problem with Wonder Woman is that she does not have anything such.  

(Example:  Spider-man makes Peter Parker miserable.  Peter Parker could be perfectly happy if he could give up being Spider-man... he's constantly covered up in babes, he's a brilliant scientist, he's a gifted photographer, he has all kinds of influential friends and contacts.  But Spider-man constantly fucks his life up.  But he cannot give up being Spider-Man, because Spider-man is his eternal penance for Failing Uncle Ben.   All good Spider-man stories are driven by this basic premise. Occasionally writers have forgotten this basic premise, as Stan Lee did when he had Parker marry Mary Jane  Watson after revealing his secret identity to her.  This was a mistake.  Parker needs to be lonely and miserable because Spider-man always comes between him and those he loves.  Otherwise, the Spider-man concept does not work.  This is also why Spider-man should never join a superhero team or have close superhero friends.  Spider-man is the source of Parker's misery.)

None of these wonderfully articulated and elaborately supported and frankly irrefutable points fazed Jack in the slightest.  Instead of acquiescing to my superior knowledge and intellect and acknowledging me his master in this and every other possible area,  he simply repeated --  "She has a concept!  She's... THE STRONGEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD!!!!"  He then advised that not every character or concept needs a defining theme or central characterization engine, and asked me to please describe Captain America's central character concept.

So, I spent about twenty minutes answering his question.  (Short answer:  Cap has no concept.  But Cap was poorly written throughout the Golden Age and for much of the Silver Age because of this.  Steve Englehart briefly gave Steve Rogers a concept when he had him stop being Captain America after he felt betrayed by his country.  But then he had to take that concept away again, because sales demands dictated that  Steve had to become Captain America again, even though, realistically, he never would have... the reality of America is something that Steve Rogers, decent man that he is, would never willingly represent.  He should have stayed Nomad forever, and someone considerably more conservative and gung ho should have taken over the Captain America mantle.   But the mighty dollar is god everywhere, and even Steve Rogers must bow his head before it; frankly, it was amazing that Marvel had ever let Englehart mess around with the central premise of the title as much as he did, for as long as he did.)

(Interestingly, modern Marvel messes around with the central premises of their various titles all the time.  But modern comics aren't supposed to make money and, in fact, rarely do.  They are regarded these days as mostly free advertising for multimillion dollar movie and TV tie ins.)

So I typed all this up at considerably greater length and with enormous wit and, yes, a few profanities, and when next I looked at the post, not only were there the usual comical autocorrects, but also, in places where the autofilter had apparently failed, my good buddy Jack had gone in and thoughtfully substituted lines of asterisks for words he felt were improper or would convey entirely the wrong impression as regards his forum to the world at large, or, at least, its search engines.

So I fucking quit.

Jack's not happy with me, but, you know, I yam what I yam and that's all whut I yam.  

Plus, fuck it.

Use this

I get that editors and publishers may have strict standards, or need their contributors to adhere to very specific formatting guidelines.  I really do understand that.  And I understand that, even in instances where these writing gigs don't pay you a cent, still, the editor/publisher has every right to expect that those they select to contribute to their publication will have to be both able and willing to jump through their hoops.

But here's what I don't get.  An editor or publisher needs new book reviewers.  They send out the call -- hey!  review books for us!  Get free books!  You respond, saying, hey, I'd love to review books for you.

They respond back to you.  You need to format your reviews this way, you need to include the following things in your reviews, you need to follow a certain sort of style... and, oh yeah... sorry, forgot to mention this before... you need to live in a country you don't actually live in.

Sorry, didn't I mention that?

Also, they include about two paragraphs of snotty bullshit about how, if you're working for them, you can't use a pseudonym, you have to write under your own name, and hey, maybe you'll find that to be a liberating experience, to behave in a more mature fashion for a change... this last because, apparently, you wrote to them from an email address that was more creative than firstname.lastname@ihaveagiantstickupmyass.com.

Even that, though, is not the kiss of death.  What is the kiss of death, for me, at least, is when they employ the following phrase:  "If you can't do this, then I can't use  you."

Here's the thing: There is a very small number of people in this world who are allowed to 'use' me without paying me money.  In fact, that list is pretty much, my wife, and when she 'uses' me, well, it's fun for both of us.

If you're offering me the opportunity to do the one thing in the world I do really well and you don't want to pay me to do it, well, you better talk awful sweet to me.

Telling me that you "can't use me" just makes you a fucking douchebag.

A 'will' issue

The trainer drew what looked like a U on the whiteboard with his marker. "This is the worst thing we can see," he announced to the class.

"A capital U?" Doc mused to himself... or so he'd thought, until the trainer snapped an over-the-shoulder glare at him.

"This," the trainer went on, indicating the upper points of the U, "shows two good scores on a monitored call... but this," here he tapped the lowermost part of the U's downward arc, "shows a failing score in between those two calls. That means it's not that a person can't do it yet... we can train for that." He tapped the 'U' again. "This means that you can do it... but sometimes, you just won't. So this is a will issue."

"And that's the worst thing you can see," Doc said.

"Absolutely," the trainer affirmed. "I can give you skill. I can't correct attitude."

"Sure you can," Doc said. "Correcting attitude... what you call a will issue... is actually easy."

The trainer gave him another glare, this time straight on. "Okay, I'll bite," he said, finally. "How do I easily correct a will issue?"

Doc shrugged. "The easiest way is to pay me more money to do it your way," he said. "There's another way, too, that's somewhat harder, but, honestly, still not that difficult."

"And what's that?" the trainer asked.

"Respect," Doc said. "That will work every time, too."

"If you're not doing the job I want you to do," the trainer said, slowly, "why should I pay you more? Much less respect you?"

"If you're not paying me something remotely approaching a fair market value for the work you want out of me, much less treating me with anything remotely approaching respect," Doc replied, "why should I do what you want me to do?"

"Because otherwise I'm gonna fire you," the trainer said, relieved to be back on firm ground again.

"And that," Doc said, regretfully, "is the source of the attitude problems you're so worried about."

Everything old is... still old

I'm now officially over all these idiotic photos of antiquated or obsolete devices accompanied by cutesy captions inveigling me to 'Like' if I know what this is.

I understand the desire to feel superior to others. And I am sympathetic to that desire when it manifests as an urge for older folk like myself to feel that our age and experience makes us in some way better than the younger generation, which often if not always seems arrogant, clueless, and aggravatingly heedless of our wisdom... and even more irritatingly, the apple of the world's eye and the focus of all media attention, while our steadily aging generation often seems to be overlooked if not entirely forgotten.

I get all that, I do.
...
But the fact that you can look at a picture of a channel changing knob on a 70s era TV set and know what it is, and your teenage or twenty something child will not, does not make you better or smarter or wiser than your teenage or twenty something child. The fact that you take pleasure and pride in such a dubious and pointless non-accomplishment does, however, indicate that in fact, you are no smarter, no better, and absolutely no wiser than ANYone else, much less anyone younger than you.

I guarantee you, there are many many pictures of devices and artifacts, there are many many words and phrases, that your teenage and twenty something child will immediately recognize, and you/I will not. This does not make them smarter, better, or wiser than us.

Yes, they are arrogant, yes, they do not respect us, yes, the world and its media dote on the young, and it's really, really annoying. I know this. I understand it. I get it.

I was young once, too.

Now, I'm not.

It doesn't make me any better than anyone else who is a different age from me. It doesn't make me worse, either. My age is neither something to be proud of, nor something to be ashamed of. The fact that I can identify a 45 rpm single converter for a turntable, an 8 track tape, a 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy disc, an ethernet cord, and name every member of the Silver Age Justice League of America... means nothing.

Get over it.

Juiced

Lately, I walk into the break room downstairs and somebody is on the TV, pontificating on some steroids scandal in some major league professional sport or other.

Apparently, this is a serious moral issue.

I've given it about as much thought as I can stand to... which is about, I don't know, two minutes worth... and I've decided, I don't care.

I mean, I don't care about sports that much anyway. And I can see how you could get all entangled in this whole libertarian vs "the good of the sport" debate, and yes, I understand that if those in charge of these things just said "What the hell, you're adults, take anything you want to", then this would place enormous pressure on... well... all professional athletes who wish to remain competitive to destroy their health by taking performance enhancers, plus, it kind of ruins the whole spirit of the competition if people are artificially raising their physical capacities through drugs, etc, etc.

And There Need To Be Rules.

But here's my thing: there is no one involved in any of this that isn't there because they want to be. And the league minimum salaries for these major league sports are high enough that anyone who plays a couple of years at any level should be able to sock enough money away to live off comfortably for the rest of their life. And nobody is going to have to take performance enhancers to get through 2 or 3 years in any major league sport.

Hell, there are athletes in every sport that make a cool million a year and they almost never play in any games.

So it's all this huge artificial and ultimately pointless continuum that has been created entirely to make money. Which it does; billions if not trillions of dollars a year, in an era when we can't feed all our people, when millions need work, when we can't keep our infrastructure maintained.

When you want to start taxing the rich motherfuckers who take millions/billions/trillions out of this industry every year, and I mean, seriously taxing the motherfucking SHIT out of these bloated, gluttonous greed-besotted bitches, then I'll be happy to weigh in.

But steroid abuse? Screw it. I don't have the RAM to waste on this nonsense.

A beautiful gun

Guy who sits next to me: Look at that. That's a beautiful picture right there.

Me: (looking at his screen, which shows a woman holding a machine gun) What?

GWSNTM: That's a Bushmaster blah blah blah double barrelled blah blah automatic machine gun blah blah blah. Beautiful gun.

Me: And private citizens need to own those why?

GWSNTM: (baffled silence)

Me: Seriously. You or I need one of those why?

GWSNTM: It's... it's a beautiful gun. I used to have one.

Me: And you needed it to...?

GWSNTM: (sullen look)

Me: You needed it in case you went nuts and wanted to go shoot up a school, right?

GWSNTM: Man. You don't even...

Me: Or a movie theater. You needed to have one of those handy in case you lost your mind and decided to come kill me and 20 other people in a movie theater. Right?

I don't think he's going to show me a picture of a beautiful gun again.

A writer, a poet, a word artist, and a self expressionist walk into a bar...

The writer walked across the hardwood floor of the sprawling bar/concert venue/billiard hall. Had he been wearing high heeled cowboy boots, his footsteps would doubtless have gone clock clock clock clock, but as he was wearing sneakers, he moved as silently as a ninja... although nearly anyone could have, under the blare of some hairdo on the multiple TVs musing on just how much Tim Tebow might be able to do for his new team during the upcoming football season. 

In the back room where the Made In River City Creative Writing Contest was being held, an affable fellow held out his hand to the writer. "Here for the contest? Great! Sign up here!"

The affable fellow proffered a sheet, which the writer filled out -- name, address, phone number, email, name of piece being performed -- which phrasing bemused the writer for a moment, as, well, he normally didn't 'perform' his 'pieces'... but he plunged gamely on. 

After filling out everything to the affable fellow's satisfaction, the writer tendered a crisp ten dollar bill, hot out of the ATM in the bar's front room. The affable fellow put the tenner in a cardboard cigar box.

The writer wandered over to one of the small wooden tables and hoisted his well fed form up onto one of the wooden stools placed there. He had a short story in a manila envelope that he planned to read. The short story was about a man with the ability to travel backwards in time, which he used to solve other people's problems for them. He hoped this short story would be original enough, and well written enough, to win him this contest. First prize was $500, which wouldn't even cover the writer's rent, but it also included a publishing contract with a local publisher (that, admittedly, the writer had never heard of prior to becoming aware of this contest). And a publishing contract... well, that might be worthwhile indeed.

The writer eyed the others seated around the room. Some were dressed eccentrically, others almost formally, most were very casual. The writer himself was wearing blue jeans and a pullover black shirt... a step up from what he would normally have worn, a t-shirt with some kind of comic book or sci fi movie logo on it. 

The writer had done a little bit of research on the contest and those behind it, and was not... complacent... regarding his chances of doing well. For one thing, the local publishing company offering the contract was so small it did not, as yet, have a website, merely a Facebook page. The woman running the company, such as it was, was a local poet and self styled 'word artist'. And the other permanent contest judge was not a writer at all, but, rather, a man who owned a local art gallery that seemed devoted to using art as a medium for social change. 

The writer had nothing against poets, 'word artists', or art gallery owners who saw themselves as some sort of aesthetic guerillas, but he was reasonably sure that such people were not going to like the sort of things he wrote very much.

Still. The writer had been out there banging on brick walls for twenty years. He'd written ten or eleven novels, thirty or forty short stories, collected the usual bale of rejection slips, gone the usual electronic self publishing routes at Amazon Kindle and various other sites. He had, over the past 36 or 40 months, probably sold a few hundred electronic copies of various of his works. Spread out over 36 or 40 months, though, that didn't amount to much. 

Selling a few hundred copies of one particular novel, all at once... or maybe even just getting a bound hard copy of one of his books to put on his bookshelf... if that was all he got out of it, well, still, it would have to be an improvement, right?

And at least the 'word artist' with the apparently almost entirely hypothetical publishing company, and the social guerilla art gallery owner, weren't the only judges. There were guest judges, too. Every week the contest ran, there would be at least one guest judge.

Of course, the guest judges so far had all been poets, too... or painters. Or performance artists. Or maybe topiary sculptors or even animal trainers, he couldn't be entirely sure. None of them seemed to be 'writers', though.

And this was the thing that troubled him the most, so far... this was a 'creative writing' contest in which the words 'writer' and/or 'author' never seemed to be uttered by those who were managing and administrating it. The participants were referred to as poets. Or performers. Or were 'word artists'. Or, God love and take them all to his dear sweet Godly bosom, 'self expressionists'. 

But no one ever said the word 'writer'. It was a taboo word. It was verboten.

Well. He was here, he'd paid his ten bucks... might as well stick around and roll the dice, however loaded they apparently were.

It would, at the very least, be an experience.

The contest's advertisements had all claimed that the contest would begin at 8 pm. But there were many delays, which the writer cynically suspected might well be typical of these sorts of events, as most of them seemed to have to do with the people running the contest not knowing their asses from holes in the ground. 

Which might not have been entirely fair, as the judges, at least, seemed quite adept at finding the bar and procuring drinks for themselves. 

Finally, at 8:45, the affable fellow who had taken the writer's ten bucks walked over to a station with some electronics equipment set up at it, mercifully cut off the ska/pseudohip hop/crytoreggae/whatever the fuck non music had been blaring out of the speakers for the past hour, and said "All right, let's get this party started. Our first performer is a young lady who calls herself Twilight's Last Gleaming."

The writer firmly stifled his immediate impulse to bury his head in his hands and groan, or, alternatively, to mime the act of vomiting. 

A woman took the stage wearing a horned Viking Helmet, with an American flag hanging from her shoulders like a cape, accenting the oversized men's Hawaiian shirt she was wearing, buttoned lopsided in such a way as to show off at least half of her ample cleavage. The lower halves of the Hawaiian shirt hung down, one to mid thigh, the other past her knee. Other than the shirt, the flag, and the Viking helmet, all she seemed to be wearing was purple plastic flip flops.

She stepped to the microphone and breathily intoned, "This is a poem for all of us, for each of us, for every one of us... and..." She paused melodramatically. And then: "...for none of us."

The writer resisted the urge to take the straw out of his Pepsi and use it to rupture his own eardrums.

The eccentrically dressed woman began:

"I am no punk

ka dunk ka dunk

nor am I shrunk

ka dunk ka dunk

I'm not a lunk

ka dunk ka dunk

yet in a funk

ka dunk ka dunk..."

The recital went on for an endless droning eternity, during which the writer did the following things, in sequence:

(a) stifled the urge to beat his head against the small wooden table in front of him -- ka dunk, ka dunk -- until he lapsed into blissful unconsciousness

(b) wished the eccentrically dressed woman in Hell, or, at least, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, or, at the very least, anywhere that he himself was not currently at

(c) wondered if he himself might have died and gone to hell and simply did not know it

(d) wished to God he could, immediately, if not sooner.

At some point during the woman's performance, she took off her Viking helmet and donned a sombrero. At another point, she did a brief but enthusiastic can-can. At yet another point, Bill Paxton came into the bar and announced that he and his vampire family were going to kill everyone in it... no. The writer opened his eyes. That last had just been wishful thinking.

When she finally finished, the room hooted and hollered and applauded its enthusiastic approval for the ka dunk ka dunk'ing performer. The writer applauded even more enthusiastically, pretty much entirely because she was finally finished.

The writer could never clearly remember the sequence of events after Twilight's Last Gleaming took the stage. The blurriness of his recollections had nothing to do with alcohol, because the writer did not drink, nor with the writer inflicting various injuries upon himself to lessen or entirely obviate his perceptions of the events occurring around him, because he was far too big a baby about pain to really do shit like that. 

No, it was mostly just the merciful defense mechanism of a psyche overloaded with a constant bombardment of pretentiousness so utterly overwhelming that, had it been converted somehow into artillery fire, would have leveled every structure standing between the Ohio River and the Preston Parkways 16 Movie Theater out near the Bullitt County line. 

The writer dimly recollected that many of the 'performances' seemed to be rather angry in tone. This didn't surprise the writer very much. He had started to read voraciously sometime prior to beginning kindergarten, he had started to write somewhere around the age of 10. Now in his early 50s, he had learned over the course of his life that all serious artistic expression, regardless of the medium it is expressed in, can be concisely summarized by four short words: 

God The World Sucks.

If one is artistically expressing any other sentiment, but, especially, any sentiment that is optimistic or cheerful or even, worst of all, designed only to (God forbid it) entertain people, then one is clearly not doing Serious Art. 

And just as clearly, this contest was all about Serious Art. 

So as various performers took the stage and began to leap about, shaking their fists in the air and shouting about injustice and inequality and the plight of the working man and the existential horror that was life itself in the insectile vacuum of a universe abandoned to entropy by an uncaring God, the writer just sort of stared into space and wished they'd get it over with. It was not that he was unconcerned with such things. It was just that, in general, he felt that if someone was really all that angry about serious matters like injustice and inequality and the plight of the working man, there was probably something more effective they could do with their time than compose free verse poems about it and then leap about in a bar/concert venue/billiard hall shaking their fists while shouting their free verse poem to a crowd of generally spoiled, overfed, somewhat inebriated and enormously overstimulated middle to upper class Americans twaddle-junkies.

The crowd, however, seemed very enthusiastic about the angry performers, and the writer had to admit to himself that it was very possible he just didn't get it... or perhaps he was just a surly motherfucker who had no taste in art whatsoever.

There was also a woman who did a poem about taking her brain out and dropping it in a canister of oil, which the writer thought was really very good, and another womanl who (other than the writer himself) was the only person there who actually read a story. But it was a very long story having to do with four different women from four different tribes in some weird fantasy world who left their tribes and went off into the far ends of the Earth and sat around a fire together and realized that they were all exactly alike although they were actually nothing alike at all and went back to their tribes reassured and empowered by this realization. Or something. The writer could never clearly recall the details of the story, but at least it hadn't had a sombrero in it, or anything about the injustice or inequality or the plight of the working man (although, as to that last, the writer could not help but reflect that maybe Bill Paxton and his vampire clan could well have livened the story up a little, had they been allowed to put in an appearance). 

The writer did recollect his own 'performance'. His name had been called, there had been a perfunctory round of applause, he had approached the microphone in a state somewhere between paralysis and full on cardiac arrest, because he generally wrote his work with the intention that people would read his words on a page, and experience it that way. 'Performing' his work aloud, in front of a live audience -- this was nothing he'd ever done before, or, really, ever wanted to, and, was, frankly, terrifying.

But he stepped up there and read his story. Somehow. Fearing at any moment that he would simply faint dead away or have a stroke. Yet still, through that fog of sheer raw funk, he read his story. The story about a person who could travel backwards in time and change the immediate past, and who used this gift to help others. 

When he finished, there was silence.

And then, again, polite applause as he walked back to his seat.

No hoots. No hollers. 

The writer wondered if people would have liked his story better if he had read it while wearing a Mounty hat, and setting a small cardboard box full of styrofoam pellets on fire, which he had first labeled in big black Magic Marker letters, "AMERICAN IMPERIALISM". 

Or maybe he should have brought a dwarf along with him, to accompany him on the bagpipes while dancing a spirited jig.

And then there were a few other performers. One fellow had painted a sequence of pictures to illustrate his story, which was about a seed nurtured by a caterpillar until it grew into a giant sunflower, a tale which he recited in Dr. Seussesque doggerel. The audience hooted and hollered for him, too. 

Seeds and caterpillars were, apparently, awesome. As were angry leaping poets upset about the plight of the working man. As was ka dunk ka dunk.

Time travellers using their powers to help their fellow men? Not so much.

When the winners of the contest were announced, the writer was not surprised to discover that his name was not among those so listed. 

Which was fine, really.

Because if he'd won, and gone on to the next round, he would have had to come back the following week and listen to MORE people leaping and shouting and waving their fists in the air while wearing sombreros and Viking helmets. 

Ka dunk, ka dunk.

Some thoughts while trying to read CYBERFORCE...

As with all Image comics, there were various iterations of the series (Image liked #1 issues) but apparently the longest running stretch went to about number 32.

Image was founded by fan favorite artists who felt they had not been treated well by management at Marvel and/or DC.   These artists' major gripes were the following:

* They were given no shares or ownership in characters they felt they had created or contributed significantly to the creation of, and which were very profitable and successful.   The most well known examples of this were Rob Liefeld with Cable, and Todd McFarlane with Venom, but it was a common grievance among the Image founders, and those who joined them quickly thereafter.

* The writer was illogically and unreasonably glorified ahead of the artist.  Comics are a visual medium and as a general rule, more fans would buy comics because they liked the art than would buy comics because they liked the script.  The Image founders were sick to death of some stupid writer's name coming before theirs in the credits.  Also, they were sick to death of some stupid writer who did not care about vital issues like exactly how much a page of original art would be worth, dictating what they would draw each issue.

So, they wanted ownership and control of the characters they created, and they wanted to be able to dictate exactly what went on each page of artwork they drew, so that they could make sure that each page of artwork would sell for maximum rate.

So what ended up happening with Image Comics was, the artists 'created' the characters -- this is in quotes because very few Image characters showed even the slightest hint of creativity, much less originality -- and controlled the characters and retained all rights to the characters.  They also drew all the comics before any 'scripter' or 'writer' ever had any kind of input into the creative process at all, guaranteeing themselves absolute control over the resale value of each original page.

Some of them didn't mind making up the words that went into the little boxes and balloons themselves.  Others found that too tedious and grabbed some buddy they'd gone to school with, or whoever was sweeping up the building that night, and had them do it for them.    But the page content was dictated, not by characterization or the needs of the story or anything like that, but simply by how much eye candy could be shoved into every panel.  The formula for top selling pages is, lots of people in costume, lots of violence, and at least a few scantily clad hotties here and there.   That's what idiot fans would pay top dollar for.   That's what Image gave them.

So, if you were one of these poor schmucks who got tapped to 'write' an Image comic in the early days, what you got handed to you was twenty or so pages of hugely veined and corded men with a few strippers thrown in, all wearing ridiculously poorly designed costumes, all punching, kicking, swording, shooting, and/or blasting each other.  Sometimes the artist may or may not have drawn in some sequences where an inventive author could insert some expository dialogue explaining WHY all this violence was going on, but more often, it was just, as The Mad Maple once memorably put it, Two Mutants Beating The Tar Out Of Each Other, except, you know, at Image it was generally Seventeen or Eighteen Mutants With Cybernetic Implants And Half Alien DNA Beating The Tar Out of Each Other, endlessly, on and on, world without end, amen, amen.

Which is not to say there wasn't some semblance of a plot in many Image comics, at least, to the extent that Rob Liefeld defines such... " there’s a story going along, and the characters are wrapped up in it, battle one large villain character, and it was resolved.”  But what stories were told were... well, to use phrases like 'cliche' and 'trite' and 'unoriginal' is to insult decades of cliche, trite, unoriginal stories done to at least professional standards of quality on books like MARVEL TEAM UP.  These were stories created by artists who did not understand characterization, or storytelling (visual or otherwise) or pacing, or plot, or atmosphere, or nuance.  Artists who not only did not understand these things, but who bitterly resented the idea that such things existed or that anyone out there with money in their pockets might ever remotely give a shit about them.

CYBERFORCE is, I will admit, better than anything Rob Liefeld ever published, and it's about as good as anything Todd McFarlane ever published.    But these comics are not what I would call 'written'.  They are drawn by idiots who do not know how to write and who do not think that knowing how to write is at all important to producing, not so much 'good' comics, as comics that will sell well and generate a ton of money for them at every market penetration point.

Now, I will note, Todd McFarlane's character, SPAWN, was probably, out of every Image character, the one that came closest to being creative, original, or even 'good'.  Spawn's powers are, essentially, that he can do anything Todd McFarlane wants to draw him doing at any given time, and his origin is a hopeless morass of Image's typical brain dead 90s military fetishism with a lot of Satanic occult crap thrown in to the mix, but still... Todd McFarlane can DRAW.   This is probably why SPAWN, out of all those horrible awful characters, is reasonably well remembered and I think still has an ongoing comic to this day.

But Cyberforce, as originally conceived, were mutants who had been cybernetically enhanced!  Good fucking God.  Alan Moore once wrote a SWAMP THING story with a memorable tag line regarding "the sound of the hammers".     If you were a writer at Image with any respect for the art form, or even yourself, then this tag line could easily be adapted to the entire experience:  "The sound of the writer's head hammering against his desk must never stop."

So if you wonder what that irregular thudding sound you hear coming from the direction of Kentucky over the next few weeks is -- that's me.  Trying to read CYBERFORCE.

And, for my 700th post... well, I'm doing this, I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Rjy5yW1gQ&feature=youtu.be

I don't even know what to say about this.

I'm a geek. I'm not proud of it, I'm not ashamed of it. I watched the music video, and what struck me was the one girl holding up the sign saying "Get over yourself".

It's good advice for nearly everyone. Especially everyone in that video.

People are dying from shit in our drinking water. People are being beaten on the streets because they are gay. People don't have anything to eat, or homes to live in, or jobs. Right now, somewhere, a few thousand kids are being tortured or molested, most of them by adults they should be able to trust not to do that. 

And now I'm supposed to be all concerned because some of my fellow geeks feel disrespected by others of my fellow geeks on the basis of their gender?

I mean, seriously. Can we all just get over ourselves?

I don't even know what a 'geek' is any more. I am snobby about it to this extent: I still feel that if you don't read for pleasure, if what you are 'geeky' about does not include written material of some sort, then you're not really a geek. Sorry. That's just me being old fashioned. But the printed word requires the use of the imagination in a way that video games, TV shows, movies, and other visual entertainment media do not. And I think that, whatever a geek is, imagination has to be a vital, essential part of it. So if you're a 'geek' because you play video games and love superhero movies and TV shows but you can't get through a page of Tolkien without going to sleep, or putting it down and picking up a remote control... no, sorry. To my mind, you're not a geek. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but that's where I draw the line.

Having said that, let me say something else: a large part of what validates the geek tag or the geek experience for me is emotional pain. Feelings of social unworthiness, of not being accepted, of not being liked or wanted. A geek, in my experience, is someone who turns to their imagination -- books, roleplaying games, drawing, painting, writing -- because mainstream real life, with all those good looking smooth talking cool folks, have thoroughly and hurtfully rejected them. 

I'm sure this can happen for female human beings as well as for male human beings, but I will say that in my opinion, it happens less often to ATTRACTIVE female human beings than it does to any male human being. And most if not all of the girls in that video were attractive. 

So if I doubt anything about the validity of their geek status/experience, it is in that I doubt that they have been rejected quite as generally, specifically, thoroughly, painfully, and cruelly as most male geeks have. 

But beyond that, I simply question the validity and significance of this as a social issue. Even presuming that 'geek' has somehow become a coveted social status that we homely fat bully magnets must defend at all costs from the incursion of lame wannabe geeks who haven't paid their dues... and maybe it has, when apparently ANYone, literate or not, can claim that status for themselves now... honestly, why do you care?

Now, I personally can name every single member of the JSA, JLA, and Legion of Superheroes, off the top of my head with no research, and all their secret identities, and for most of them, their Significant Others, too. Plus, had I had telekinetic powers my senior year I guarantee you, the site of my high school would be a salted, cindered, cratered vacant lot from which the more psychically sensitive would still be able to hear the screams of the departed victims of my humiliated rage. 

So, yes, I am a geek. I am. No doubt about it. I'm not proud of it, I'm not ashamed of it, but it is absolutely a label and a status that I have earned through pain and toil. 

But if I don't think YOU are really a geek... whoever you are, and I probably don't, if you just play video games and especially if you got dates in high school... then, really, why do you care? Why is this important?

Go make some sandwiches and pass them out to homeless people. Make a music video about THAT. 

And get over yourself.

Issue zero

A rough idea for Issue Zero (hopefully to be published after a few issues of the actual series are out, so we can do clever sly references that the readers will immediately connect to things that have already occurred, but which are yet in the future at the time this is set).  

PAGE ONE

PANEL ONE

VISUAL:  The exterior of the Naval Observatory, the residence of the Vice President of the United States.  Word balloons initially come from one of the windows of the building.

CAPTION:  The Naval Observatory, Washington D.C.:  Private office in the residence of the Vice President of the United States:

VP:  Malcolm.  Good to see you again, my friend.

MAL:  Honored as always, sir.  

CAPTION:  John Nance Garner, the 32nd Vice President of the United States, once noted that that the Office of the Vice President was "not worth a bucket of warm piss". 

PANEL TWO

VISUAL:  We're closer to the window now and we can see VP Robert Shockley through it.  Shockley is very much meant to be a Dick Cheney type of character, and should probably generally resemble him... older, balding, stocky.. but perhaps he is a light skinned black man.  Or unlike Cheney, he may have served at some point in the military (he would certainly have arranged postings for himself that were far from combat, although at the same time, he may well have also arranged for various combat decorations and medals to be awarded to himself over the years.)  So he may be in uniform of some sort.

CAPTION:  Even before he was sworn in as VPOTUS 48, Robert Shockley disagreed with that quote... mostly because he'd always felt that a bucket of warm piss could be extremely useful in the right circumstances.

VP:  Mal, I've been looking at the THINK TANK proposal.  Lookin' hard, Mal.  Lookin' hard.

CAPTION:  Certainly, a gallon sized bucket of warm piss could make an effective bludgeoning weapon.  A trifle clumsy, maybe.  But if you were sneaky about your approach...

MAL:  I... well, Bob, I'm glad to hear that.  I hope...

PANEL 3:  

VISUAL:  We're inside the private office of the VP now.  This is the one in his residence and is probably a little cluttered.  I have no idea what the place looks like, but we can probably find some visual reference for it.   VP Shockley is behind his desk, his visitor, our Mirror Shades guy, is sitting in a chair in front of it.  The desk is covered with files and books and photos, as Shockley is neck deep in covert (highly illegal/immoral) military/intelligence/surveillance ops at all times.   Mirror Shades has a file folder of his own open on his lap.  

CAPTION:  Certainly you could waterboard one of those little Muslim motherf&@kers with a bucket of warm piss.  Or a g*dd@m hippie, for that matter...

VP:  Mal, you know I don't have to tell you, we've pulled a lot of sh%t together.  A LOT of sh%t.   Buried a lot of bodies.  Yes sir.  Yes indeed.

MAL:  Of course, Bob.  And this is no...

VP:  It's different, Mal.  Of course it's different.  This one?  I've got a pretty strong stomach, Mal, but this one... this one makes me queasy.

TITLE:  A RUNAWAY AMERICAN DREAM

PAGE TWO

PANEL ONE

VISUAL:    More of the same; it will be these same two characters in the same room for the rest of this particular scene.  I leave it to your artistic ingenuity to keep it visually interesting... close ups, pull outs, exterior shots, whatever.  What's important is the dialogue.    

MAL:  Bob... sir.  With all due respect, Mr. Vice President... 

VP:  Due respect.  Yes sir, I am due respect. I run this country, Mal.  Not that glorified Ivy League daddy's boy in the Oval.  I got put on to babysit him, Mal.  You know that.  He cuts ribbons and does the photo ops.  I get the work done.  The hard nasty dirty day to day work of running the most powerful nation in the world. 

MAL:  No one doubts that, Bob.  No one who matters.

PAGE TWO

PANEL TWO

VISUAL:  More yak yak yak.  

VP:  Here's what I know, Mal.  I don't know a lot but I know this:  the American voters will put up with nearly any g#dd@m thing in the world as long as they get warm pussy, cold beer, and plenty of NASCAR on TV.  

MAL:  Absolutely, Bob.  And we've been instrumental in...

VP:  Let me finish.  Let me finish.  Mal, they'll put up with nearly anything... but this?  This THINK TANK is an abomination.  One whiff of that in the papers and... Mal, we've trained these people like seals!  That whole 'Vietnam vets came home and were spit on by hippies' thing... never happened!  But they ate it up with a spoon!  They LOVE our boys!  They'll never stand still for... they'll be rioting in the streets, Mal!  And won't the Man-Child whine about that!

PAGE TWO

PANEL THREE

VISUAL:  Mal is being reassuring.  

MAL:  Bob... we've thought of that.  We would never hang you out to dry.  I hope you know that, Bob.  

MAL:  My guess is, you were so upset by the specs you never got to the proposed marketing campaign in the back of the file.  Would that be right, Bob?

VP:  Marketing?  Mal, you can't market...

PAGE TWO
PANEL FOUR

VISUAL:  More of the same.  We can see some kind of map of the United States in the office now, on a wall, on Shockley's desk, somewhere. 

MAL:  Oh, we can, Bob. We can.  We have it all planned out.  By the time we're done, the American public will be so sick of  hearing about military veterans... as sick as they are of  hippies, now.  

MAL:  There may be a little bit of a ruckus we have to get through.  I think you mentioned 'rioting in the streets'... yeah... we'll see some of that.  But we'll make that work for us.

MAL:  Just one thing we need from you, Bob, and your boy... besides your patience with us, I mean, and some cooperation under the table... 

PAGE TWO

PANEL FIVE

VISUAL:  Close up of Mal's finger on a map.  We can quite clearly see "Sparta City" marked on the map where his finger is resting, although we can't make out quite what state Sparta City is in.  

MAL:  ...we may need to borrow this city for a while.