Rock out with your cock out

Rereading STARSHIP TROOPERS. It's been awhile.

On previous readings, at (obviously) younger ages, I guess the opening pages, in which the narrator and his soldier buddies cheerfully invade an alien planet for no reason ever made clear and bounce around in their futuristic powered battle armor gleefully slaughtering sentient beings with flamethrowers and blowing all their shit up with nuclear weapons... I guess that just didn't bother me. I mean, the victims were all aliens, and rather later on in the narrative, we are told that these aliens had the poor taste to ally themselves with other aliens that Earth really doesn't much like, so these Earthly space marines were sent on a "demonstration of firepower and frightfulness". So that's cool, right? Bad aliens. Blow their shit up. Murder them.

Which, I don't know, I guess I'm just getting old, because these days, I have a cynical suspicion that, if these same aliens were to drop in and pull all this shit on any city on Earth, the narrator might well start using words like 'terrorism' and 'atrocity' and 'genocide' and get really wrathful about it.

Heinlein's casual bloodthirstiness, raving xenophobia, virulent homophobia, and rampant misogyny (not to mention his sexual interests in bondage, discipline, group sex, dom/sub games, incest, and barely adolescent girls) have long been familiar to me. I took all this shit in stride when I wore a younger man's clothes, but lately (maybe it's the fact that I'm a parent with daughters of my own now) I'm just finding it tiresome.

But honestly, I can deal with most if not all of the barely repressed, furiously seething sexual perversions that seemed to haunt Heinlein's psychic bellfrey throughout the poor schmuck's life (or, at least, since he ditched his first wife Leslie and married Virginia); hey, that's just the world and the culture and the times that the man had the misfortune to be born into, along with the lack of bravery that caused him to stay in the closet all his life about his real sexual desires. (And, perhaps, his poor choice of second wives, but the world will never definitively know what went on there, so I'll leave that to the side.) And I get that. Nobody can control their kinks and no human culture has ever been universally tolerant or forgiving of such things. You go with the flow or you get strung up by the monkey mob, and Heinlein was controversial enough for any six guys. He didn't need to incite his own stoning or anything.

But the rampant "Wow, let's blow all this shit up and kill everyone who gets in the way" attitude he's presenting here... and the way he's pitching it, not just matter of factly, as one's duty to one's culture or whatever, but with a casual, even jaunty joyfulness, as if causing this sort of destruction and mayhem is something that's not only acceptable and/or grimly necessary, but also, well, totally AWESOME, dude -- he's basically saying "If your leaders decide you should go completely fuck up a bunch of other people, hey, you might as well relax and enjoy being a murderous megalomaniac". 

I'm just having a big problem with this, as I reread it. I mean, it's not just that I disagree with it, I find it to be absolutely criminally dangerously batshit insane. 

And this is EXACTLY the attitude that our military attempts to inculcate into its combat soldiers, as anyone who has ever heard the vile and loathsome phrase "Rock out with your cock out" -- a code phrase meant to inculcate in our soldiers in the Middle East a joyful attitude towards killing people and blowing up their shit -- will well know. 

Ah, well. I guess I had to grow up sometime.

And to think, he wrote STARSHIP TROOPERS to be a juvenile book, aimed at young boys.


If you enjoyed this article, try my Heinleinesque tale of a future zombie apocalypse, The Fear Masters!

Automotive blues

I am so frustrated and stressed by my car situation right now I want to just sit down and cry.

Okay.  So when we bought this car we knew there were a few things wrong with it.  We took a mechanic we had just met along with us and he assured us that all the little issues were easily fixable and he'd do it for a very reasonable price.  So we went ahead and bought the car.

We really wanted to buy this car because the woman who was selling it was a friend of my wife's and needed money desperately, and the price fell into our (low) price range, and other cars we'd looked at at actual car dealerships were higher than we wanted to pay.  Also we were about to leave on vacation and the timing just seemed right.  So we bought it, and my wonderful wife went to a great deal of trouble to get it all registered and inspected and we got the repairs done while we were on vacation and that was all great.

As it turned out, the one really significant issue that our mechanic told us he could fix no problem, wound up being more significant than he thought.  He told us it was some kind of short in the wiring and we would need to replace some kind of circuit board that was a $500 part if we wanted the engine fans to come on like they're supposed to when you start the car up.   But he just ran a wire to a toggle switch that the driver could flip to turn the fans on when the car was started and off when the car was turned off.

He did not tell us this before we bought the car.  Before we bought the car he told us that these issues were no problem and he could fix them right up.  It wasn't until we'd bought the car and were stuck that he discovered this situation.

When I was first told about this I freaked out a little bit.  I am not Presence Of Mind Guy and this was not a minor thing.  Forget to turn the engine fans on and you burn the engine up.  Forget to turn them off and you drain the battery and possibly burn out the fans.  This was not pressure I fucking needed with my first car.  But we were in.  We were stuck.  So I drove the car.

Now at first when you remembered to hit the toggle, the car ran fine.  It would get up to 200 and sit right there.  That was fine.  But I am an idiot and a bungler and sure enough I forgot to toggle one time and boiled all the coolant out of the car.  But I put water back in it at  the mechanic's advice and drove it around and it was fine.  So, good.

But then I forgot to toggle again many weeks later and then it was not fine.  Even after putting coolant back in it the car would still overheat after about four miles on the road, and as my commute is 15 miles either way, that was a bad.  And of course, our mechanic turns out to be in jail for 90 days.  So I took the car over to a local garage we've done business with before with our van and they said one of the fans was no longer working and replaced it and completely rewired the toggle switch and charged me $350.

It was more complicated than that.  First they told me the repairs would be done by the end of the day.  Then they called me back and said they thought they had it, but they were driving it to test it and it spiked over 200.  So they looked at it again and the one fan was not running right.  So they said they needed to run more wire.  So it was going to take until the next day.  But it was done the next day and I picked it up.

And the car ran great for three trips -- to work, back from work, to work again.  Then on the fourth trip, back from work, it spiked over 200 again.  So I took it back over to the garage and said what the fuck, and they looked at it and said, okay, one of the fans isn't working right, we'll fix it.  And they did.  And I drove it to work, and back from work, and to work again, and then on the road back from work I got to within 3 miles of home and I'm stuck in traffic because apparently last Wednesday  night in Louisville everyone lost their minds and their were wrecks everywhere... and the car spikes over 200 again and this time there's steam coming from under the hood so I pulled it over fast and parked it and called Triple A and wound up waiting four hours for a tow truck in a not particularly great neighborhood.  And getting up at 4:30 the next morning to catch the bus to work again.  Oh happy day.

Here's what really scared me:  the fans were off when I shut off the car that night.  I know I turned them on because I could hear them come on, but they were off when I shut it down in that parking lot.  I reached down to toggle them off and the switch was completely limp and unworkable.  That gave me a bad start.  But the fans were off.  I could not hear them and when I went out and lifted the hood to let the engine cool I could not hear them.

Then, sometime that evening, they came back on.  I could hear them.  I tried to hit the toggle switch and it was hot enough to burn me.  That REALLY scared me.

I had the car towed to the garage that had done the two temp fixes on it.  The Triple A guy was very nice and helped me pull the wires to the toggle to turn the fans off.  When he did that, we discovered that there was not one long wire running from the toggle to the fans but a long wire spliced to a short wire.  That did not thrill me either.

So I called the garage from work the next day, as we'd dropped it off at 10 pm the night before.   Well, the owner hemmed and hawed, obviously the car had serious electrical issues and he should probably have never agreed to try to fix it with that toggle situation and it having failed twice now he felt I should take it to a specialist.  He recommended a place that specializes in auto electrical work and I talked about it with my wife and she agreed so we had the car towed there.  That was Thursday.  They worked on it all day and all day today and said it was done.  $320.  No more toggle switch, they wired him up correctly.

So my wife picks me up at work and we drive all the way back downtown and get the car.  And I'm really really hoping that this is it, we've put all the money we'll need to into him for a while and now these professional experts have fixed it and that should be it.  And I'm ready for this to be behind us, I really am.

So I get in my car and start it up and I'm following my wife home again.

Now, here's the thing:  when I first got it and was driving it the heat needle would sit right at 200 and that was okay.  If it ever edged over 200 at all then we'd have problems -- the coolant would boil out or when I turned the engine off I'd hear the motor knocking as it cooled.  All that was bad; all that meant I couldn't drive it safely.  Anything over 200 was always bad.  Always.

When the garage fixed it and I could drive it for those three trips when it worked before it failed (both times) it never went over 190.  It would climb up to a notch or two under 200 and stay there.  And I LOVED that.  And each time it overheated after the garage fixed it, I would see it start to edge up to 200 and say 'okay, maybe it will just stick there, that will be fine' and so I'd be sitting there in the car tense and stressed and scared watching that needle (and I'm not a good enough driver to split my attention like that, it sucks) and it would creep up to 200... and stay there...

...and then, start creeping over.

And the last time this happened, it got to like 220 and steam is coming up under my hood and I'm crawling through the most ridiculous rush hour gridlock I've ever seen on Bardstown Road and I know I've got to pull this car over FAST and I'm in the middle lane and thank God the guy to my right pulled up and let me get over.  And that there was a parking lot there and the people who ran the Firestone business were cool and didn't mind me parking it there.

So all that SUCKED.

So anyway I'm in the car which we've just spent another $300+ on and these guys are supposed to be the experts on this shit and the heat needle starts climbing.  But it gets up to around 190 and it seems to be staying there although we're not more than halfway home.   And my wife rolls through a yellow light and I get stuck at the red and as I'm at the red the needle creeps to 200.  And while I'm sitting there it starts to look like it's trying to go over and I'm SCREAMING at the light COME ON COME ON COME ON...

And finally I start to roll again and it hasn't actually gone over 200.  And as I move it seems to settle a little, not below 200 but right at 200.  And we get to the traffic light right before our house and it's still at 200... but we get stuck there and... it starts creeping over 200.

And I'm freaking out.

It's only two blocks to the lot where I can park it and there's no steam or anything but for that whole last two blocks I'm at 210 and I'm just stressing and freaking and WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

We have given so called professional experts of good reputation nearly $700 over the past ten days to fix this and THEY CANNOT FIX IT.

So I'm doing research on the internet tonight and I'm finding all kinds of answers.  Some say the normal range for a 99 Grand Am is 180 to 220.  Others say it should run right around 195.   My own experience is, this thing gets over 200, bad shit happens.  AND IT GOT OVER 200.

Right before I got it home.

And the trip from this electrical specialist to my house is maybe four miles.  Maybe.  Less than a third of my commute to work.

And if it's slipping over 200 after four miles, what's it going to do when I try to drive it 15 tomorrow?

If I thought that, after the new wiring and the repairs this new place did today, 210 was the new 'normal' and it would run okay there and I felt any kind of assurance that it wasn't going to go over 210, I'd drive it.  But I feel absolutely no assurance of that at all.  If this thing starts edging over 200 when I'm still 11 miles from work, and it JUST KEEPS GOING UP... I need to pull over.  And probably not get to work that day.  And that's an occurrence that I really don't need right now, plus, possibly a burn out engine and a totaled car sitting at the side of the road until Triple A can get to me again.  And a big towing bill.

And I am so tired of this.  I am so TIRED of this.  And we are so screwed with this.  There is no way to get our money back.  I feel like it was all just a perfect trouble pit... all these little things just kept pushing us further and further down a gradually steepening slope... wanting to help out a friend, the mechanic telling us the fixes were easy and cheap, wanting to get it done before we went on vacation, needing to keep the buy on budget... and now we're stuck.  We can't ever get our money back out of this thing.  It HAS to work.  We can't AFFORD for it not to work.  But it's not working.

When I was doing research -- and oh do I wish we'd had the time to do the research before we bought this thing, but I guess we did, we knew the make and model a week or two weeks before we bought it -- I'm finding that apparently a great many people have had this problem with the 99 Pontiac Grand Am.  And there seems to be no good fix.  Several people on the Internet have said 'if you're stuck in traffic running the AC this car WILL overheat'.  I mean, are you KIDDING me?

I can always just start taking the bus again, but that doesn't get us our money back.  We can't AFFORD to just have thrown two grand out the window.  We can't.  

And I got us into this.  My wife gave me driving lessons for Christmas and then bought me this car to give me less stress, to give me a better commute and more time at home.  She did all of this for me and I feel like my inability to just ride the bus to work and back without hating life and being miserable has gotten us into this huge hole.

Honestly, I could just sit down and cry.  I really could.

The Mountain of Truth

Hey, look what I found. 

My cousin Ashley Green Myers linked to this guy yesterday.  He'd written a blog entry about people being rude to parents whose kids are  having tantrums in public places.

I read the entry and it's one of those 'ehhhhhh' pieces for me.  I'm a parent, I have kids, I know there is no good way to keep them under control when they're young and something triggers them.  I don't automatically see it as a parenting fail just because a kid is whining or throwing a fit in a supermarket over being denied a toy or a treat.

On the other hand, I have seen spectacular parenting fails in public places, involving the parent repeatedly entreating a child to behave properly -- put a toy down, leave that other child alone, stop singing that incredibly obscene song they learned at Bible camp, whatever... and the kid standing there, three feet away, smugly ignoring the parent, knowing that he or she is never going to be punished, that all that's going to happen is, the proferred bribes will soon start to escalate.  That, in my opinion, is bad parenting.   Reason with your children, absolutely.  Explain rather than simply command or demand, certainly.  Clout the little bastards if they still won't do what's correct beyond that point, you're damn straight.

Whatever the case, I read this guy's piece, where he bravely remonstrates with his 'fan' who had the nerve to say something he himself felt was wrong and rude, and I wasn't convinced, but, you know, I wasn't in utter disagreement, either.    Screaming kids are one of those things that nearly all humans find impossible to ignore; it is a distress signal programmed into us by hundreds of thousands of years of biological and social evolution.   I think it's understandable that someone might say something like "Some people need to learn how to control their fucking kids".  I'm not sure, if someone were to say that to me, even if the parent in question could hear it, I'd respond the way this guy did.

But I also agree, if you don't have kids yourself, you don't know what it's like.

But all that is beside the point.  Having been left with mixed emotions reading his linked to article, I hit the link for his previous one, labeled "Christianity has done more for science than atheism ever could".  This seemed a curious title to me, calling to mind as it did for me the image of an elderly Italian gent murmuring "And yet it moves" as he shuffles sadly away from those willing to torture him to death to suppress scientific discovery.

And sure enough,  here's this guy, hyperventilating into his keyboard about all those crazy evil atheists wanting to teach actual science in science classes, "without other ideas presented to compete with the theory".

He doesn't specify what 'other ideas' he'd like to see presented to 'compete with the theory'.    I'm pretty sure I can fill that in for myself.   But here's what he does say, after a few more paragraphs of sheer raving insanity about how Christians stand on the Mountain of Truth and our civilization was founded by Christians blah blah blah:

"Christianity hasn’t stifled science. Christianity has been its driving force and, for hundreds of years, virtually its only significant contributor. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Descartes, Newton, Kelvin, Mendel, Boyle — all devout Christians. You want to remove your science from my religion? Fine. But we’re keeping these dudes. You can have Richard Dawkins and his tales of “mild pedophilia.” Enjoy."

Yep.  He went there.  Copernicus, whose heliocentric doctrines were opposed by the entire Church establishment at the time, to the point where Copernicus' student, Galileo, was forced to publicly recant or be burned by the Inquisition, and then placed on house arrest for the rest of his life.  These are two of the first three 'devout Christians' that Matt Walsh will 'keep', in his relentless campaign to have Creationism taught as a scientific theory right alongside the theory of evolution.  

And not just any Creationism, either.  Mr. Walsh of course does not specify, but I strongly suspect that if our public schools were to start teaching Hindu Creationism or Cherokee Creationism or Satanic Creationism in science classes as approved scientific theories with, you know, actual observed biological and geological evidence to back them up, Mr. Walsh would completely lose his shit.  And yes, I specifically did not list Islamic Creationism because, as far as I know, Islamic teachings say that Allah is the same God as Jehovah, it's just that his Christian and Jewish followers are badly deluded, so I presume Islamic Creationism is much the same as Christian Creationism, although I also suspect that Mr. Walsh would lose his shit if anyone were to bring a Koran into a science classroom, too.

No, no... while Creationism is in every way and absolutely as valid a scientific theory as evolution -- which is, in fact, not one theory, but many -- still, only Biblical Creationism is the TRUE, historically and scientifically valid Creationism.  That Iroquois Creationist stuff about a crumb of dirt on the back of a turtle?  Thppppttttt!  That's OBVIOUSLY stupid!  That Norse creation myth involving the World Tree?  Completely retarded.  Nope, when we speak of a scientifically valid theory of Creationism that must be taught as being every bit as intelligent and reasonable as evolution, well, only the book of Genesis need apply.  All others are obviously, patently absurd.

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.