Poetry Advice?

Just in case I get hit by a bus before august of 2023 (feeling imminent bus hit vibes at the moment for reasons), I wanna do something special for my boyfriend’s birthday.  Safe to talk about it here because he only reads posts I call to his attention.  Anyway, I’d like to write him a poem, but I can’t think of an approach that feels right.

He doesn’t like to think about his corporeal existence so talk about how he physically appeals to me should probably be kept to a minimum.  I’m way out of practice being romantic because I excised most of those feelings from my head in response to some bad relationships past, and the rest bled out when age diminished my ardor (sez the 46 year old geezer).

Any poets, bards, or modern day troubadours in my audience have a notion?  A form or structure for poems you’re liking lately?  An angle for waxing poetic when inspiration is hard to pin down?  I could contemplate this guy in writing here, but he’s a private person and I’d best not.  Not sure what to say.

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Poached

My spam filter was getting a bunch of bot comments advertising poaching adventures for evil whiteys.  An evil whitey who was involved in helping arrange that kind of shit was found executed gangland style in South Africa.  I’d like to think that was the work of somebody who cares about nature, but realistically it was a fellow gangster that will likely continue in the same line of business.  However, I am no longer seeing those particular comments in my spam trap.  Almost certainly a coincidence, but again, I’d like to think…

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The Rift – Our William Brinkman’s New Novel

Our FtB man William Brinkman is dropping a novel for y’all this week – on July 13th, my birthday.  But I had a birthday present in June when he made a review copy available to his people.  Thanks, man.  Below the fold are some very long form thoughts I had before and during my read.  Above that, the review I’ll post wherever I have an account.

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I had a good time reading this book, though I had some reservations before I started.  As soon as the adventurous part of the story began – which was pretty quickly – you could feel the author entering his comfort zone.  With all the disappointment and crap involved in Disney’s monopoly on entertainment, I’ve been hoping to see more adventurous fiction that doesn’t rely on any of their properties – in spirit, like fic with the serial numbers filed off.  And being an AMAB reader over the age of forty, post-YA wasn’t going to do it for me either.

The Rift was an entertaining high speed journey into Brinkman’s “Bolingbrook Babbler” universe, inspired by the UFO / amazing bat-boy end of the tabloid spectrum, and best of all it required no prior knowledge of his oeuvre.  We follow a character being introduced to the world of paranormal conspiracies and don’t have to choke on a bunch of references to deep lore.

This is one of those books that *needed* to be self-published because it’s too unconventional, too niche, to be sold to major publishers.  You can have a story with wild original content, but to sell that it needs to fit into some kind of recognizable mold, like surreal literary fiction or magical realism.  The Rift is genre fiction in a very functional 20th century style, without the frippery of Catherynne Valente or poetic ostentation of litfic regulars.

I’d place it in what was once called “men’s fiction” – the kind of adventure stories that once sat near the checkout stands at supermarkets, like the tabloids that provided The Rift’s milieu.  Stories about spies, war, survival, treachery.  And yet it isn’t a very comfortable fit for that genre either.  The ladies in those stories are objects and props, and this one takes pains to establish that ladies have lives and agendas wholly independent of our adventuring protagonist.

That said, The Rift does center the perspective of a man who becomes enmeshed in the world of internet misogyny.  Of course he has a shot at redemption and can change in the course of the story, but the close third person perspective on him could be off-putting to those who have been most bothered by those internet misogynists in real life – regardless of the author’s intentions and the story’s ultimate direction.

Which gets us back to the issue of niche.  While this novel does not depend on prior knowledge of Brinkman’s Babblerverse, I feel it does require some knowledge of skepticism as a culture, and of the rift that brings us the title.  If you don’t understand what skeptics are about, the story’s introduction to the concept might feel off-putting or confusing.  If you weren’t privy to the fall-out of “elevatorgate,” when the skeptic movement split into progressive and reactionary factions, then you might have a harder time understanding the very point of the story and most of the events within it.

Even within that subculture, the book could lose audience from its concept alone.  As I mentioned, the progressives burned by the IRL conflict may have very little interest in seeing a redemption tale play out.  Hopefully the ten years since the furor began will help them get past that enough to read the novel.  It handles the subject very well.  Everything that starts to feel insensitive, or like a misstep, is ultimately redeemed through the story’s plot.  It’s kind of brilliant at that, playing its hand with more subtlety than you might expect.

And all that said, maybe I’m not giving the average non-skeptic-culture reader enough credit here.  If the price is right and you like the idea of a feminist sci-fi adventure in a tabloid UFO setting, give it a shot.  And if you are in the book’s target demo – skeptic culture warriors – definitely pick this one up.

Full Disclosure: William Brinkman and I are both writers on the same blog network, which is for progressives within atheism and skepticism.

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Now for the deeper thoughts I had, which probably make this one of my longest articles ever, haha…

[Read more…]

Happy Gunpowder Day

Happy That-Time-of-the-Year-When-Gunshot-Murders-Take-Longer-to-Investigate-Because-They-are-Indistinguishable-From-Asshole-Ideas-of-a-Good-Time Day.  Happy Explosion Day.  Happy Give-Songbirds-and-Some-Humans-Heart-Attacks Day.  Happy Increase-in-Dog-Bites Day.  Happy Celebrate-the-Nation-Built-on-Genocide-and-Slavery-that-is-Still-Fucking-Your-Own-Personal-Rights-Apart Day.  Happy Your-President-Proudly-Does-His-Part-to-Facilitate-Human-Fucking-Extinction Day.

Death to America, babey.  Death to America.

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I Can’t Even

An international cadre of professional transphobes building on the work of internet terfs were a significant source of our current problems, and while I’m powerless against the moneyed side (see my slam poetry), we can all do our part to cut off / isolate / quarantine the internet creeps.  The Heard trial and the downfall of RvW have been a field day for terfs creeping into regular people’s reblogs.

So I had a good idea for a new side tumblr: “I steal the good ideas from terfs so you don’t have to reblog them.”  If it got popular enough, people could have a single blog for feminist posts that for sure isn’t tainted by terfery.  Of course it would take some discernment making sure the abortion resources they link to are legit and not fronts for terfery, making sure any feminists quoted aren’t eliminationist zealots, etc.

The thing is, I can’t even.  I don’t have much time between my personal and professional life in the first place, can’t keep up with chores.  I have nothing left for the fight.  That’s why one of my daily hashtags is #long live the fighters – because I’m not one of them.  To my comrades in the streets or on these internets, great love and esteem.  Thanks for doing what a lot of us cannot.

I need to rejimmy my work benefits to name my boyfriend as my beneficiary for any monetary value of them should I cark it.  Maybe while I’m at that, I can reduce or eliminate the savings plan and turn that into a recurring donation to local abortion funds for red states.  Something where I don’t have to lift a finger.  What would Hell have of its humble servant..?

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Organized Atheism Also at Fault

I’m pretty quick to point out that terves very much share blame for the recent losses on women’s rights.  Transphobia was one of the levers that helped buoy fascists and autocrats in elections across the globe recently.  But this isn’t a terf blog network, it’s an atheist one.  That’s our beat.  So to that end, let me just reiterate this point I’ve made before.

Organized atheism should always have been a force for progressivism, against the barbarity of religious belief.  But nope.  The idea of listening to even the mildest of feminist critique caused all our talking heads to leap headlong into bed with fascists, to promote the movements that ultimately led to Trump’s election and the current slate in the supreme court.  DickDawk can whine all he wants that he’s liberal, that we should believe that counts for fuckin’ anything, while he engages in piteous dickriding transphobia and platforms the hero of incel mass shooters everywhere.

There is a straight line from elevatorgate to gamergate to altright white supremacy to cheeto hitler to the end of Roe v Wade.  Terfs did their part, but we were in the game of ruining civilization as we know it when those bitches were barely getting started.  We had a lot of friends along the way in building this theocracy, but we should never lose sight of our part in subverting our own ostensible ends.  Like terfs – they should never be allowed to forget they helped set feminism back eighty years, and we should never be allowed to forget we set atheism back as well.

My own part was small.  I let a subtle brew of ableism and islamophobia drive me to participate in boosting new atheism, participating in the comments and the discourse, not doing enough to change the rotten core of the movement or start a better one.  I’ll own that.  I wonder if the narcissistic thunk leaders of our defunct movement will ever process the same, ever feel that as they fade from the earth.  I doubt it.

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Are You Bored?

Wish FtB was more active right now?  Need something to read?  Check out some of my old articles.  I got to thinking about old articles on my blog that never got a comment, stuff that really deserved better.  Maybe people just whiffed on those articles because something more thrilling was happening at FtB then, or it was an off day.  Whatever the case, why not peruse these GAS articles that didn’t hit the first time, but are totally righteous?  The last two articles include links to two full length novels you could read if so inclined…

My thoughts on levitation as a concept, with a fun comment game.

Similar feelings about The English Faust Book.

A cute little guest post about music by an excellent guy.

A more excellent guest post by that excellent guy.

An interview with that excellent guy re: the will to make art.

Get to know Satan:  A day in my life when I was unemployed.

Get to know Satan:  A day in my life when I worked at mega retailer.

Get to know Satan:  What my gender identity means to me.

My Philosophy:  Self and Self- Esteem

My Philosophy:  How to Be Good

My Philosophy:  Needs and Society

This one about RPGs wasn’t ignored but literally nobody agreed with me and that’s ridiculous.

An important bit of advice from me to wannabe writers.

Some sharp shit about calamity and conspiracy theories nobody commented on.

Making fun of the song Two Princes and getting too deep.

An article where you can comment on one of my finished novels (first draft).

An article where you can comment on another of my finished novels (first draft).

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Somebody Oughtta Do Somethin

Content Warning:  Back on that Climate Doom Bullshit.

There are very few people in the world with the power to course correct on the capitalism-inflicted extinction of humanity, but the facts that are as clear as day to you and I?  Those privileged few are as blind to them as we are to (most*) ultraviolet light.  I mean that.  We can be surrounded by UV, soaked in it, and not perceive it with our senses or minds.

Privilege is a powerful blinder – even at the feeblest levels.  A middle class person one medical situation away from crushing poverty is measurably less empathetic and less generous compared to the poor.  Take that effect and multiply it by a billion.  Musk, Gates, Saudi princes – they could have the plainest truths immediately in front of them, blotting out anything else, and rather than see it they will simply go blind to everything.  Hence the ludicrous fantasia of space escape.

That’s why they don’t take action.  I’ve said before capitalism is a blame diffusion engine par excellence.  Millionaires, politicians, people with hands on levers and buttons of that could theoretically take action – they want to take care of themselves and their own, can always leave it to someone else to take the meaningful action, always have an excuse.  Billionaires are wealthy enough to have a real chance of escape from that game.  The existence of trillionaires?  That means we’ve officially reached the point where a single person could easily plow through all those mirrors and illusions and games, could just decide to do something about the problem and make it real.  But they won’t.  They don’t.

I feel that blinded by god emperor privilege, maybe they can’t?  Maybe the argument that capitalism is an inevitable expression of human nature and that anything else is sky-eyed impossible dreams, while facile and defeatist, might be completely true.  But I’ll take it a step farther than the people who use that as a defense of capitalism – If this argument is true, we’re all gonna fuckin’ die like (most**) dinosaurs.  We’ll be lucky if there’s an organism like Lystrosaurus left to eke out a future for tetrapods of any kind.  I’ve said before that I think some few humans are likely to survive the climate apocalypse by merit of our social and mental powers, but if we are truly as greedy and useless the capitalist beast?  We won’t make it.

I don’t remember why I started writing this article.  I claimed once before I was swearing off climate doomposts, but originally this wasn’t meant to be about that.  I think I just wanted to expand on my “angler” thesis with some recent insight I’ve had.  What was that?  I’m too warm to think.  That kind of design flaw isn’t gonna be helpful in short order on this bitch of an earth.  Hm…

Fucking hell.  I have completely fucking forgotten my point.  This sucks ass.  I fucking despise summer.

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*I had a feeling I should double check that, given the depth of complexity and weirdness and nature, and found an article to undermine my simile.  Ignore that, please.   **I knew this I just wanted to say the phrase “die like dinosaurs” because like many clown-ass writers I like alliteration.  Then I felt guilty about it, hence this edit.  Now it looks ridiculous for other reasons.

A Trans Wrath Minute

Content Warnings: Transphobia, Violence, Suicide, Cussin’.  I cuss.

I’m not usually a poet but I woke up with a few lines coming to mind,
and had to spend some time fleshing out the whole thing.
It’s open mic night, babes.  Drink up ~~~

Grab your “Down with Cis” t-shirts and get on the bus

It’s time to bash back before the fucks get to us.

Every fascist from Kremlin to Pittsburgh PA

Has decided that trans is worse now than gay.

Transition’s irreversible so you better not try

Make yourself cishet or make yourself die

And god forbid nature make your gender ambiguous

Carve up your babies, so you can pass off as cis.

Black transphobes think this some “white people shit?”

Marsha was out while you were sucking hind tit

Prob’ly killed by a black guy ashamed of sucking her dick.

So many black queer folk I won’t sully their names

Bringing them down to my white level and rage.

Sick of hearing about queers? Then get our names out your mouths

We can’t be like Bill Tipton and keep our lips zipped when

Your friends in the senate order genital inspections

“I didn’t write those laws, they just reflect my positions.

It’s so many words, can’t do no one wrong.”

Mein Kampf has a death toll ten million strong.

This time’ll be different, you nazi fucks learned your lesson

There’s no need for mass graves when you can just disappear us

Use disgust powered media to make Joe Public fear us.

Pricky Gervais I’mma rip off your face.

Just Kidding Rowling will likewise be howling.

Fuckass Mulaney in such fucking pain he

Won’t know what the hell’s left of David Chappelle.

You think I give a shit about your fucking celebrity?

I’ll slap the whole fucking Oscars but why limit my enmity?

Fuck this whole goddamn world that won’t save a trans girl

And suck my motherfucking dick.

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Department of Bad Ideas – Mass Shootings

Content Warnings: Murder, Ableism, Suicide, Abuse, etc.  This is me being a shitty edgelord for a minute.

Nobody likes mass shootings, even rethuglicans.  A few people carry out the practical end of Fucker Carlston’s stochastic terrorism and gun control looks reasonable – the NRA doesn’t want that, even if they don’t give a shit about a mountain of dead children.  Nobody who knows one of these killers is surprised by them doing the deed.  Sometimes they’ve even been ratted out to the authorities, who were too slow to act on the information.  This suggests to me a solution.

If you’re very pro-gun and you know somebody who is going to kill lots of people, murder them before they can do it.  They are usually troubled enough you could make it look like a suicide easy, and who is going to believe this as a motive for murder?  You’ll know in your heart that you saved lives – you were the fabled good guy with a gun, putting one in the back of your friend’s dome like George did Lenny.  And you’ll know you helped prevent bad press for your beloved assault rifles.

Literally everybody wins.  The children live, the guns keep their good name, you get the joy of committing a murder which is something I know you all desire so richly, and your troubled friend is released from all earthly suffering – their boiling rage allowed to cool and subside into the earth along with their physical corpus.

There are of course multiple reasons this is a bad idea.  Conservatives are spectacularly bad judges of where the violence and abuse in society are coming from.  Youth Pastor Handsy?  Solid dog.  Coach Concussion?  Made you into a real man.  Officer Beatdown?  The thin blue line.  Autistic Steve with the tics?  Who let him be a janitor?  Somebody should part him out for organ donations.  Making this ask to the kind of people in a position to carry it out is both advocating murder, and asking them to be as ableist as possible about who they choose to kill.

I just felt clever in a terrible way for two seconds and had to share my faulty math.  I hope you enjoyed it as dark humor and forgive me if you did not.  Thanks.

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