Hey Conservatives

Lately you’ve been trying to kill people a little harder than usual – kill people who get abortions, drive trans people to suicide, killing the old and the infirm with covid, torturing refugees and stealing and raping their children, legalize killing protestors – as long as it isn’t your own nazi buddies…  Anyway, I’m just thinking, anyone who is so horny on killing should absolutely be horny on being killed.  If you push this stuff but don’t want to be murdered, you’re being hypocrites.  I don’t even need this to be an even split.  Let’s say for every five oppressed people you kill, I wanna see one of your figureheads take their face apart on national television with their weapon of choice.  Get on it, motherfuckers, or I don’t know, stop being such homicidal fascists for TEN FUCKING MINUTES PLEASE.

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Hard Time Writing Floor Blues

I’ve been trying to be a writer for several years now, ever since my first big success with a first draft in NaNoWriMo 2013.  Not being a writer in the sense of seeking publication, because I don’t need that nod of approval from a corrupt doddering industry that will require me to bow and scrape and schmooze, to have a fucking twitter account.  No, I’m aiming to have some works edited to a level I feel at least worthy of self publication.

Self publication is a real thing now, not just the scam of vanity presses filling sad boomers’ garages with boxes of unsellable novels.  It’s not like that, but it is still exactly as ridiculous as you’d expect it to be, the field glutted with pure trash, editorial standards basically nonexistent.  But there are people trying to do good stuff and I’m going to be one of them.  Hey, look at our own Mr. Bolingbrook Brinkman, actually taking the time to edit his own masterpiece.

Right now I’m working on a story that, last fall, I was having big delusions of grandeur about.  It was a hot idea for the moment, and I was catching insomnia from imaginary interviews with Rachel Maddow.  But reality had a lot of meathooks along the way and I got real disinterested in the project, just too depressed to write.  And as I looked at it today for the first time in a month, I realize this is a “novelette” at best – finished, it will be 15,000 words if I’m lucky.

Nonetheless, I’ve decided I’m committed to getting this thing done ASAP.  I wasn’t feeling that before, so I didn’t share this, but hey, maybe putting this out here will push me to get it done.  Enjoy the rough draft of the cover, and imagine what literary delights it will hold in store for you…

 

The Vaccine Scene

 

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Got Antisocial PD?

I was thinking about different kinds of people I’ve known, or known of, and the things they got going on.  In their heads.  Which made me think about my sister, who got the formal diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder – the condition informally known as sociopathy.  If you’ve gotten to know somebody well who has that diagnosis, it might still be easy to think of them as soulless, hollow, robotic.  My sister can look sad, more often look mad, say she wants this or that out of life, but pathologically she returns to the same behavior pattern she’s been doing since younger than age four – allying with one party to emotionally torment another.  She easily rewrites her own history and seems able to genuinely believe the new story.

The condition has a grip there.  She can’t seem to do anything that contravenes it.  Abusing people is, for her, like breathing.  It is, metaphorically, autonomic.  (i’m fucken pretentious tonight)  But who is she, outside of that?  Does she have something like a heart?  Does she have feelings?  I haven’t seen her in more than twenty years but I bet I know her better than anyone she’s met since, and I don’t really know the answer for that with certainty.  But I feel like it’s Yes?

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Now *You* Have a Friend in the Diamond Business

Anybody over a certain age from the PNW has some kind of memory of The Shane Company’s dry, dry radio commercials.  I remember he was at the corner of 4th and Stewart, and I remember that slogan: “Now you have a friend in the diamond business – the Shane Company.”  Anyway, they finally gave the bear an English voice in Duolingo and he sounds exactly like those commercials.  No growl, no fun allowed.  I’m annoyed.

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Don’t Be a Coward

It’s hard to judge what a reasonable level of fear is in reaction to shitty events, and there are plenty of extremely shitty events going on in the world right now.  (Thanks, fascists!  Please eat shit and die at your earliest convenience.)  That said, there are a loooot of people on the internet right now stoking panic.  Like Putin makes a lazy threat about hacking our shit and tweets and subreddits explode, telling you to run for the hills immediately lest you fall victim to supply chain banditos.

Harden the fuck up, you ridiculous cowards.  You make it harder for people to judge what that reasonable level of fear is, by ratcheting every little thing up to “cannibal holocaust.”  You spread anxiety and dread and turn stomachs and ruin people’s days.  The way you talk, I imagine you trembling like little chihuahuas with urine running down your thighs as you clack out your terrified tweets.  Yeah, especially those of you with guns.

Do you live in America?  Are you not a member of an oppressed minority at the moment?  (No, xtians don’t count.)  You’re going to be fine.  Some bad stuff will happen.  Wildfires burning up your cabins, rising tides taking out your timeshares.  But compared to people in Ukraine, or Russia, or anywhere near the Equator?  Your life is going to be a cakewalk – at least until you’re old and infirm enough to be considered disposable by republicans.  Drink in the freedom, manbabies.  Calm the fuck down.

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The Calm

Seems like the internet isn’t being very productive for me today, but I’m intentionally not following politics.  I wonder if the people I follow on social media are all glued to TV wondering if it’s time for hot war with Russia.  What are you doing today?

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The Final Monsters

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Horror Content.

After the last day of our Monster Hearts Challenge, my writing group got to do one more monster, choosing from the following categories that had not previously won any round of voting.  Which would you write about?  Which monster would you grant the gift of human romance?

ANIMALISTIC — EXAMPLES:  Cat people, Sneeple, Ninja Turtle, Easter Bunny

BODY HORROR — EXAMPLES:  Tetsuos of Iron Man and Akira type, Blob, Cronenbergian

CONSTRUCTED — EXAMPLES:  Frankenstein creatures, Golems, Homunculi, Pinocchio

CRYPTID — EXAMPLES:  Bigfoot, Mothman, Chupacabra, Jersey Devil

ELDRITCH — EXAMPLES:  Lovecraftian, Elder god, Tentacled

GIANT — EXAMPLES:  Kaiju, Ogre, Giant, Troll

HYBRID — EXAMPLES:  Sphynx, Chimera, Egyptian God, Naga

INCORPOREAL — EXAMPLES:  Invisible man, Incorporeal alien, Imaginary friend, Ghosts, Poltergeist, Patrick Swayzes

INSECTOID — EXAMPLES:  Brundlefly, Mimic, Wasp woman, Giant Spider

J-HORROR — EXAMPLES:  Grudge, Sadako, Split-mouth woman

LEGEND — EXAMPLES:  Slenderman, Candyman, Bloody Mary, ManDoorHandHookCarDoor

LIVING OBJECT — EXAMPLES:  Living mannequin, Christine, Chuckie, Magic Mirror

TINY — EXAMPLES:  Sprite, Miniature Humanoids, Gnome, Gremlin

VIRTUAL — EXAMPLES:  Rogue AI, Hologram, Vocaloid, Max Headroom

YOKAI — EXAMPLES:  Long neck woman, Tengu, Kappa

If you remember how I did last time, you know I tried to use all of them in one concept…

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Monsters of Love

Content Warnings:  Horror Content, Unhealthy Relationships, Ironic Ableisms

My writing discord did an event called Monster Hearts, named after an RPG that’s probably too racy for people like ourselves to actually play.  The idea is, like in our Spooktober, to take a monster type and come up with a story idea to go with it – one for each day of the month up to and including Valentine’s Day.  This time, though, the stories have to involve a passionate relationship between a human and a monster.  I give you my monster hearts.  Happy lovin’ day.

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