The Chameleon's Dish

It doesn't always repeat but sometimes it rhymes

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 03:32:30 GMT

Today I watched Coppola's "One from the Heart". Every scene is a set: the hotel, the airport, the parking lot, the highway - everything. The movie went twelve-fold over budget, and it was a bomb, but Coppola never stopped defending it.
I haven't found a review of "Megalopolis" that brought up "One from the Heart". 🤔

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Sun, 27 Oct 2024 19:34:03 GMT

Someday I hope to be as pretty as how Rabid Cowolf draws me.

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Wed, 23 Oct 2024 02:09:55 GMT

in the style of Evan Dorkin ( https://www.teepublic.com/user/house-of-fun )

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sex, violence, culture

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:31:12 GMT

The above picture is from *Wicked City*, an anime from 1987, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. This iconic image has been in dozens of adverts, trailers, and teasers in the last third of a century. Many of you have seen it but have had no idea what movie it's from.
I first watched it on an undubbed, unsubbed VHS tape, with a fan translation on print-out👵 When I was asked about what "old anime" might be good to watch, I suggested this movie with some reservations. While I couldn't exactly remember what was bad about it, I did remember "80s anime" and thus I was sure it had content that would make me and others uncomfortable.
   IMDB's Parents Guide rates *Wicked City* as having "Sex: Severe", "Violence: Severe", and "Frightening: Severe". To IMDB's credit, their reviewers list the elements of the movie that their guides put into these categories. But, my audience didn't want spoilers, so they just told me that "Sex: Severe" and "Violence: Severe" was okay.
   Ahem.
   By putting "sex" and "violence" into separate categories, the ratings system does not quite prepare the audience for how much sexual assault is in *Wicked City*. Though "a woman is gang-raped twice" is listed as one element. Also listed is the unhelpful "There is a sexual theme throughout".
   The reviewers also file the assaults under "sex" and *not* violence. This system puts the consensual sex in the same category as non-con sex, which is a terrible way to put it. Somehow, "sex" can have elements of both consent and non-consent... but "violence" only has non-con.
   I will not defend the movie as being "of its time". I'm sure the director was excited to put new and unseen images on the screen. This anime contains some of the best, many of these scenes would be imitated or even stolen. But the constant "fridging" of women wasn't even okay back then and it's not okay now.
   To their credit, the guides did express that the sexual violence was portrayed as "titillating" and thus more, um, "severe". Such portrayals were common in 70s and 80s exploitation cinema. Like many anime, *Wicked City* is imitating that quality; and because they're hand-drawn cartoons that don't require actors, posing, lighting, etc, they can include more of these scenes, more frequently, with very specific portrayals. It's not great.
   I wanted to get my thoughts down in a journal about it. I am left wondering how we can move beyond the puerile & puritan Eighties and find ways to discriminate between sex and assault in our media, and how to talk about it.

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Oh my stars, I forgot this was web 2.0 and we can EMBED!

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 02:47:50 GMT

Your browser does not support the video tag.

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WIP

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 00:30:45 GMT

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And now, open-species furries with unfeasibly-large breasts

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 22:15:59 GMT

( I should be working, and I'm fairly sure that you should be too… )

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Overheard…

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 02:38:34 GMT

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♪ The power exists in everyone ♪

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 08:44:16 GMT

🏴‍☠️ Celebrating the passing of cohost in the most 2000s way possible. 🏴‍☠️

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Fri, 04 Oct 2024 07:19:39 GMT

Once upon a time, a social media account asked for submissions for what would be the *worst* user name would be. One that would get past obvious censors, of course, but still be reprehensible.
I must have won because after I posted my entry, they banned me. 🙃

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cw: snark

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:02:17 GMT

My stars, look at all these neat characters. I wonder who they are, if they're from a TV show or something, that I could watch on streaming media or something. 🍷

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Lore: The Fun Makers

Sun, 29 Sep 2024 19:50:02 GMT

Putting this here so I can find it later.

Company	Logo	Description
Altamont		From their humble beginnings selling DIY computer kits by mail, Altamont eventually became a leader in personal computing. While their attempts to make a home console never materialized, they had much greater success with mobile devices.
Bidapak		Primarly a music label, with some of the best-selling acts across multiple decades, Bidapak published several games in the second- and third-generation eras. Today, most of their titles are mobile games licensed to outside parties.
Forbin		One of the pioneers of home computing, Forbin shifted from hardware to software as low-cost clones eroded their share. The company pivoted to acquisition, and now controls a large library of movies, television, music, and video-game entertainment.
Foreco		Originally an arcade-machine manufacturer, Foreco also commissioned their own games, always as conversion kits for existing machines. Many of these titles were converted for the home market, where they have a small but devoted fan base who praise their idiosyncratic style. While still incorporated, Foreco hasn't published any titles in years and appears to be a holding company.
Lagniappe Video		Primarily a distributor for home video, Lagniappe also published several titles for early-generation machines. Their games are almost all licensed shovelware and kusoge, of interest only to die-hard collectors.
Liu		One of many companies to publish dedicated "Pong" consoles, Liu were quick to enter the home-computing market. Their advertisements were often seen in magazines and shopping-trailers, especially their plea for unpublished designers to send their own games for consideration.
Mediagra		Originally incorporated as "Guru Mountain", this company was formed by disaffected developers who had worked for other corporations. Their games were famous for their "rock-star" packaging where they prominently featured their designers. After sales floundered in the fourth-era, they were rebranded as "Mediagra", where they aggressively pursued sports and entertainment licenses, which proved to be a good fit in the "attitude era" of gaming. Today Mediagra is notorious for their aggressive monetizations and their abuse of employees, a tragic turn of their bright legacy.
MPC		Formed by ex-Guru Mountain employees, MPC both made their own games and maintained a set of "MPC standards" under license. Their theory was that if there were a unified set of home-computer standards, many companies could make their own consoles while other developers could make games, creating a thriving ecosystem. MPC-compatible computers and consoles enjoyed success during the fourth-generation, largely due to their comprehensive and affordable standards for CD-ROM media. While MPC has never officially dissolved, they remain largely irrelevant in the mobile-games era.
Nagaco		Originially an energy concern, by mid-century they had begun making cable-ready televisions and their own cable network to help sell them. With the home video-game explosion, they became a publisher of several titles. Today, the company is primarily involved in energy and manufacturing; their legacy titles are subcontracted to other publishers.
Nimbal		Nimbal Products were a successful toy and boxed-game manufacturer. With the rise of the home market, they exploited their library of IPs and licenses to subcontract several studios so they could publish dozens of video-games a year. Their titles are infamous for their poor coding, their baffling game-play, and their unforgiving difficulty. Nevertheless, Nimbal's games proved incredibly profitable. Their filing for bankruptcy at the start of the sixth-generation was due to poor sales in other departments; their portfolio was acquired by Forbin, where it is occasionally dumped onto "mini-consoles" and other retro-themed merchandise.
Nullarbor		Catering primarily to English-speaking audiences, Nullarbor House first became famous for innovations to the interactive-fiction market: complex parsers, colorful graphics, and limited artificial intelligence. Their catalog includes a variety of titles, original and licensed. During the fourth generation, their company was bought by Mediagra, mostly for its publishing and distribution network. Their in-house studio was renamed "Mediagra Pacific" and now exists to port or remaster other titles.
Springheel		Operating out of a computer store in Europe, this studio enjoyed early success on third-generation micros with their Billy Sloper and Runewind series of games. Later renamed "Springheel Interactive", they had more success with their simulation series of "Czar" games before the inter-company tensions resulted in several lawsuits. The assets were sold off to numerous companies.
Worldwide Amusements		Originally incorporated as Kampong Ltd., this company was a manufacturer of Pachinko, gacha, and slot machines. They were one of the first distributor of arcade machines, eventually subcontracting other companies to produce more titles. The rarity of some of their games, coupled with their unorthodox styles of play, gave their titles a sinister reputation. (One game in particular, "Necrolution", appears in contemporary catalogs for sale, but it appears to have never been produced; it has now become fodder for urban legends and parody.) Today, the company makes point-of-purchase gambling machines and owns many casinos.
Zevo		A family-owned operation, Zevo Toys were popular with the boomer set for being cheap, durable, and fun. The company was more famous for their various after-market peripherals to games (joysticks, trackballs, etc.) and a line of action-figures that would respond to signals embedded in direct-to-video cartoons. After the fifth generation, Zevo no longer makes home amusements; today, they exist only as patent-holders for micro-processors and other computer hardware.

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Fri, 27 Sep 2024 19:23:52 GMT

Hello all you happy people. 🐲

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Yes, hello!

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 17:05:00 GMT

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Am trying to understand visual novels

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 20:15:43 GMT

I've often been concerned that I don't "get" much of genre media: that there's lots of shibboleths, gate-keeping, and stereotyping that isn't obvious (or even polite to talk about).
The latest nut that I'm trying to crack are visual novels. I might be second-guessing myself too much. A good director studies the masters of the form before they proceed. One must know the rules, especially if they're going to break them.
I worry that I'm learning the wrong lessons. I'm not dissecting these because I hate VNs.

🌌 The settings would often be fantastically incomprehensible to a modern person (nanotechnology, ark spaceships on a centuries-long mission, fabric of reality falling apart, etc.) but the social problems are mundane (dating, jobs, money, etc.)
🧩 Elaborate meta-gaming mechanics are encouraged. They increase replay value. Meta-gaming may treat the characters in the story as puzzles that need to be "solved" by inputting the right combinations of resources (in lieu of narrative reasons).
👶 Loli characters are common and encouraged. Especially if they express mature themes.
😎 Dialogue might be jaded and smug, in the style of a 1990s Vertigo Comic (Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison). Most characters will have the same voice. (Except the loli, who will have the loli voice.)
🗾 Dialogue may be shojo/shonen themed, "what kids think adults are like", where characters are painfully sincere, regardless of the absurdity. (They're too young to have this much life experience and self-reflection; who is more loyal, the samurai who serves a bad master is more loyal than the one who serves a good one; etc.)
🌎 A VN may combine both the "jaded 90s" tone and the "young-adult earnest" tone, even in a single conversation.
🛋 Many VNs are feel-good safe-spaces for a specific theme (LGBTQ, waifus, pop-culture references, etc.). It often doesn't challenge the user to think about a complex issue or to sympathize with a tragedy; instead, the VN creates a fantasy of another place where these themes are embodied and endorsed by the fictional characters, their existence is a comforting validation.

These points are so common to the VNs given to me as reference, that I'm assuming they are aspects of VNs that audiences actively enjoy. What am I missing? What's under-served?
Thank you for your consideration.

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Furry Fandom 20 Questions

Tue, 03 Nov 2020 05:15:47 GMT

1. How long have you been in the furry fandom?
🧓 Over 30 years.

2. How did you first discover the fandom?
👫 The FurryMUCK online multiplayer game. Though I was collecting furry comics before that.

3. What are your favorite aspects of the community?
🌈 The common chord that links all aspects of furry together is the question of what it means to be a person. Body dysmorphia, genderqueer, neurodivergence, and all sorts of exploratory themes can be found there.

4. What was your first fursona?
🦎 A chameleon.

5. Describe your current fursona.
🐲 A dragon.

6. Why did you choose your fursona's species?
☯ I have 81 yang scales and 36 yin scales. If you brush against the wrong one, I will turn and bite you. Also I’m #majestic.

7. How much of your sona is based on yourself?
💃 I have purposely styled my sona to be very much into opera, a form of art that has lots of nuance and details, but that most people are wholly unfamiliar with. This choice was so that I could write stories that were about obsession without leaning on cultural signifiers familiar to the audience. (The humor must work on its own merits.)

8. Post some of your favorite art of your fursona
🖼 All art that depicts my fursona is my favorite.

9. If you had to change sona species, what'd you pick?
🐐 A bonnacon.

10. How do you feel about fursuits?
🧥 They’re expensive and difficult and I suspect that when I do get one, I’ll tire of it very quickly.

11. How do you feel about furry conventions?
🏨 I enjoy them when I’m working. Otherwise, I run out of things to do.

12. Have you brought anyone into the fandom?
🍞 Yes.

13. Paws or maws?
⮆ First one, then the other.

14. Favorite anthro character from pop culture?
🐉 The Space Dragon from the Iron Man.

15. What is your biggest furry pet peeve?
🤔 Until recently, it was the conceit that “something is not furry if it’s commercially successful.” This peeve might change to the conceit that "Something is not furry unless it’s endorsed by a corporate entity”.

16. What is the origin of your online nickname?
🌟💛💭 It’s a reference to two songs.

17. How has your view of the fandom changed over time?
⌛ It hasn’t. My belief is that fans are, at their heart, just people, and that’s both good and bad. Furry fandom has the same problems and progress as almost all other fandoms.

18. What can we do better as a community?
⭩⭩⭩ Nazi punks: fuck off.

19. Happiest memory from your time in the fandom?
💿 My furry boyfriend and I were on our way to the furmeet, and we stopped in a music store, and I was looking at CDs when I realized at this moment that we had stopped in a music store because I asked him if he would stop there for me, and I felt it was the first time that someone else was doing something that I wanted to do, just because it had meant something to me. It was such a quotidian moment, but just then I felt a wave of specialness and importance wash over me, that I felt giddy and romantic and understood.

20. What does the furry fandom mean to you?
🦟 Paradise is exactly like where I am right now, only much, much better.

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Thu, 17 Sep 2020 00:33:07 GMT

I was an angry, willful child. I would scream and cry a lot.
Now it's like the last forty years never happened. Now I can finally cry and I don't want this. Too much time has gone by. I have lived a life that I never shared with anyone. I'm a crazy aunt, I'm the weird one of the family.
My legacy is pop-culture ephemera and my future is going into a dustbin. My present is alone. There's no one to hold.
   I am strong and I will persevere. There's someone I've yet to be.
   I am writing this here because I want to record this moment, this now. This is me and I am afraid. I will master this fear and I will be glorious.
   Thank you for listening. I am happy there are still corners of this world that listen.

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Since fandom is in the discourse...

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:16:23 GMT

   This text might be very dry. I've been told that I often speak very clinically and that such a manner of speaking doesn't feel very personable. Well, fuck that, this is very personal to me. So, ahem, I begin:
   I don't self-identify as 'gay' because I've had other people tell me that I'm not gay, that I don't give off the proper signifiers. If 'presenting as gay' is a way to solicit partners or like-minded individuals, then I'm not very good at that, and thus I'd be doing a disservice to people who are much better at presenting to be gay.
I don't self-identify as 'asexual' because I am a sexual being. I have met other people who collect porn, who masturbate regularly, who have life-partners with whom they regularly copulate... all of whom have self-identified as 'asexual'. I'm even less sexual than they are! So while I suppose it wouldn't be unfair to call myself an 'ace', in all candor, I'm really unhappy with that sort of linguistic gymnastics. There are people who genuinely lack for or have fear of sexual impulse; I am not one of them, and 'asexual' should describe their quality, not mine.
   I'm excited for the recent developments of 'nonbinary' and 'queer' things in media, that challenge the ideas of 'one, the other, or neither.' Furry culture frequently has dysmorphia as a theme, which overlaps with queer theory a lot.
   I do worry that I don't signify very well. I've been making queer art and stories for years, but I've had other people tell me that it's not queer.
   But then, I have noticed that people are fond of "A is A" dichotomies, like how a video game can be "not a game" because it doesn't have *enough* of the game quality, not that it has *none* of them. Maybe I'm "not queer" because I'm not queer enough?
   I started and continue to write stories about non-binary characters, where the non-binary quality isn't the theme. Sometimes it's not even mentioned. Am I not being queer enough? Am I doing myself and my audience a disservice?
   I don't like the mantra, "Make the art you want to see in this world", because if the internet has taught us anything, some people want to see art of a pony joining the Brotherhood of Steel to crush the social-justice warriors. I want my art to reach people, to say something about the human condition, to say something. If I'm not being heard, am I really saying something?
   What is my responsibility?
   These are words that I wanted to write, because these questions matter to me. There are more pressing matters, but these are still on my mind. Thank you for listening.

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Anachronistic 4K

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 03:04:35 GMT

Question from the Internet:
What was the first date at which all the trans-Atlantic Internet communication running at full bandwidth at once would have technically had the capacity to stream a 4K video from some single point to some other overseas point, in real time, if all Internet communication was dedicated to the purpose and we had 4K video encoding/decoding?

Do you mean 4K UHD, 4K DCI, or some other 4K spec? Let's assume 4K UHD.

In May 2007, NHK performed a live broadcast of UHDTV, using a custom codec that compressed video to 180-600 Mbit/s and audio compressed to 7-28Mbit sec. Since Wikipedia declares that this broadcast quality to be UHD, we will use 187Mbit/s as our smallest acceptable speed.

An analog phone line, assuming perfect quality with a 4Khz signal, could transmit 0.056 Mbit/s/line using PCM v.92. Assuming hardware that could perfectly synchronize 3,340 phone lines, it would be possible to meet this data transfer load. The first transatlantic land line, TAT-1 from 1956, only had 72 speech circuits. Data on exactly how many transatlantic cable lines existed, and when, proved impossible to find.

By May 1989, PTAT-1, a transatlantic fibre-optic cable, was operational, with 27 DS-3 channels of 45 Mbit/s. Networked together, these would be able to handle the data load with plenty to spare.

What if we went to satellite instead? Going back to NHK, the ISDB-S standard was created after 1996 to broadcast via satellite, allowing for 51 Mbit/s over a single satellite TV channel. We would only need 4 UHF channels to get our bandwidth.

The SYNCOM IV network (Leastat) would be four working satellites each capable of a single UHF broadcast, which is our minimum. This network would not have our minimum count of four channels until January 9, 1990... so PTAT-1 would beat this system by nine months and would be far, far more practical. (While Leasat would launch a fourth satellite in 1985, it failed to communicate and was never implemented. Another working satellite wouldn't appear until 1990. And let's be practical: all four satellites must be above horizon for both sender and receiver, a six-body problem that would be a logistics nightmare if not an impossibility.)

In conclusion, UHD-TV could theoretically have been broadcast over the Atlantic using PTAT-1 in May 1989, using codec technology first fielded in 2007.

_____________
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_television#2006%E2%80%932010
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISDB#ISDB-S
https://history.nasa.gov/satcomhistory.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncom#Syncom_IV_(Leasat)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTAT_Systems

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Observations on Archivism

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:28:03 GMT

📚 The past three days, I have been going through my collection of physical sketchbooks. There were over 72 books, with the earliest book dated June 1989. I have digitized many of the pictures, but not all of them.
🧠 For almost all the pictures, I could remember the head-space that I was in, my purpose for drawing them, and my emotional state at the time.
But there were far more pictures when I couldn't remember the date, time, or place.
💡 I was hoping to find some great idea that I'd forgotten, or some fantastic energy that I'd lost. I did not. I remembered far too much of this stuff, and I've been repurposing it for years.
◐ The first 50% of the collection (1989-1994) makes up 65% of the scanned material. Much of the later stuff were simple iterations on previous pictures, working designs. But also, much of the later stuff has been aggressively scanned and posted to the Internet, already. It's not until June 2018 that I started working 100% digitally.
🚮 Because I was planning to trash the sketchbooks after use, it was easier to destroy them to get them scanned, tearing or cutting out pages. It took eight trips to carry the books out to the dumpster, which is next to the daycare center. I am left with the thoughts that the pages needed to be covered up so my neighbors don't find out that I collect cartoon porn. 😅
🙂 There's something oddly cathartic about throwing out the autographs of cancelled people.
🗍 It's one thing to find a skipped page or two. That happens. It was more surprising to find a half-dozen books that had a dozen or more pages that were blank. Two books were completely blank!
🤔 A fair amount of this art was better than I remembered.
🎓 I don't have any mentors. I have a few idols, but I've never had a mentor. When I make my art, no one has worked close with me in a supervisory capacity with the intent to help my skills grow. I've had teachers, but that's about it — advice from skilled people to push me along. There's been too many times where I made unsatisfactory output and received no guidance whatsoever; I would either be paid or not. Looking through some of these pictures makes me angry that no one was helping me, but I will take peace that the universe doesn't owe me anything.
✨ I had been worried that my art was becoming too stylized. I have been becoming more of a newspaper-style cartoonist, deliberately flattening scenes for talking-heads conversations, and I've been doing far less perspective or spatial work. Now I wonder if I should be playing to my strengths.
👊 There was very little superhero artwork in here, and today I can't even imagine wanting to draw a superhero comic.
🎲 There was a fair amount of art inspired by role-playing games. I had gravitated more towards story-agnostic games like Rolemaster, GURPS, Hero, Amazing Engine and the like. Story-heavy games like Vampire or Star Wars felt very stifling; that other people had made up a lot of the story without you, and that you were specifically discouraged from doing anything that might be considered off-script. Also there was very little gaming set in realistic or historical worlds. (There's something very symptomatic of nerd culture when the defining cyberpunk tabletop is "Shadowrun".) There were quite a few characters in here, both my art and others', that were far more unique and special than I might have appreciated, at the time.
🤨 I draw the same pictures over and over again, a lot.
🧓 I am soooooooooo glad I didn't grow up on the Internet. I worry that my feelings would have been weaponized. Or that I might have fallen into drawing more fan art than original art.
📅 I need to date-stamp more often.
💙 Sometimes I found messages to my future self, that said, "You can do this", "You are made of stars", or "I believe in you." Thank you, past me. 🙂

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Grace and Joy (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying about Happiness and Thank the Bomb)

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:34:53 GMT

Today someone asked the question "what's the difference between feeling happy and feeling thankful?"

There are lots of people that I owe thanks. Some of them gave me an opportunity to express myself in ways I hadn't done so before. Others work the grind to keep the infrastructure in place that makes it possible for me to see, to say, and to do the things that keep me alive and well. There are some who did me a good turn in the past, when I needed it. There are others who did me a good turn when I didn't need it.

I think about these people a lot. I don't talk about some of them a lot, though. Mostly it's because I have nothing nice to say. Some of them turned out to be reprehensible milkshake-ducks. Others didn't start that way, but became that way. There's more than one that I discovered who were just as willing to do good turns for people as they were to do bad things — it was all timing, opportunity, and whatever other factors were at work at the time.

But that doesn't change that I wouldn't be where I am if someone hadn't given me a hand when I needed it. To pretend such a thing never happened is disingenuous at best. I may not like the giants I stand on, but that doesn't change that they bore my weight. As the kids say, we live in a society.

Giving people thanks, when they deserve thanks, even if you're not happy about it, is called "grace". We could use more of that.

A forced meme about "NPCs" was pushed into the discourse, about how "other people aren't real" and really, that would justify any horrible thing one does to not-real people. There are an alarming number of people who would make themselves happy and prosperous at the expense of others whom they would never acknowledge, nor ever think to do so.

Being happy, but not thanking the people that got you to this state of happiness, is called "being an ass". And we could use a lot less of that.

I often think about a scene from "Indie Game: The Movie". Phil Fish, the creator of the darling game Fez, is having an emotional moment on camera. "I just want to make games," he says.

And that's the cause of his unhappiness, right there. Because he didn't just want to make games, he wanted to make games that were popular with other people. He wanted to be some brash egomaniac braying on social media about his own skill, craft, and genius, while tearing other people down. Up to and including his own fans. He wanted to be happy while being incredibly graceless about it.

At a base level, an artist has to be thankful to their audience, even just for being their audience. Art is to be shared, it's a collective experience. If an artist can't be graceful to their public, then what's the point?

Let's avoid reducto ad absurdum here. It's not that an artist has to accept whatever hell they're given. Heaven knows, there are enough people who put their own selfish happiness above thankfulness, these days, as they remove signatures from cartoons and "boycott" products by stealing them. But these aren't people who deserve thanks, anyway. People who came to uplift, to engage, to share, to enjoy — those are the ones we show our thanks.

As we get older, we transform into different people. We may no longer be the person that made you happy. We may no longer be the person whom you would give your gratitude. Let us not erase our history but let us not repeat the same mistakes.

You cannot step twice into the same river, but we should all take time to contemplate this might river that washes over us. Let us be happy for the slaking of our thirst and for the refreshment of our souls. And let us be grateful for the for the bearing of our burdens, and for the cleansing of our pain. And let our grace bring us a modicum of joy.

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Thu, 02 Aug 2018 03:03:01 GMT

I worry that I'm sliding from "eccentric loner" and into "crazed hermit" territory. Each year I raise my freak flag a little bit higher, but it doesn't make me feel any better. It makes me feel like a freak. I sit back and watch my world turn gray. There's someone I forgot to be. Is it the enby genderfluid neapolitan that I see in this world? Is that for someone who wears a younger person's clothes?

I'll never understand how people become more conservative as they get older. To see the mistakes of the past reap the whirlwind, only to double down, or triple down, or stomp a boot down on a human face, forever. Pity for this busy monster, manunkind, not. I have to guard my conversations lest I offend someone by suggesting that our world is our own to lose. To believe this is the end of history, how selfish is that? To look at this great and glorious sky and say that's it, put out the lights and paint the land back, there will be no more generations after me, forever.

Before the last of the neutral nets are gone, I need to find people who love me for what I am. I am someone who can be loved. I still have love to give.

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HATE: Some thoughts on the passing of Harlan Ellison

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 14:41:29 GMT

Harlan Ellison, the "controversial author", is dead. Let us bury him and move on, and hope that we will never see his like again.

Ellison was the first of those authors that "you have to be very intelligent to appreciate." If you're a Star Trek fan, you may be familiar with "The City on the Edge of Forever", the one episode that he wrote... and one he later disowned. His short story, "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" has haunting imagery ... buried in strange magical realism, and against easy targets such as "nazis are bad" and "nuclear war is bad". "A Boy and His Dog" is another post-apoc rapey fantasy whose distinction is that it's an early entry in a genre that would become huge in the 1980s. Even his most prolific, Ellison was often writing the most obvious things, such as "Santa Claus Vs S.P.I.D.E.R.", a spy parody that name-checks many politicians of 1968 and has aged about as well as any comedy today that screams "references". A popular favorite is " 'Repent, Harlequin', Said the Ticktockman", which sets the template for many Vertigo stories to come later, where the sloppy writing is excused as part of its "experimental nature". Much of his later work would be one-page trifles tossed off for Omni Magazine, half-baked ideas that went nowhere, because Ellison was a maverick, a genius, a name.

Oh my stars, the disowning. Ellison is more famous for being an unappreciated genius. He wrote more than one auto-biography where he complained about his work at 20th Century Fox or at Disney. He would assemble a anthology project with a name like "Dangerous Visions"... of which he made exactly two, 35 years apart, but he kept teasing another one would show off, much to the excitement of some. His Dark Horse project, "Dream Corridor", has auto-biographical harangues about how he's not being appreciated enough for his work, in a strange inversion of preaching to the converted. His anthologies have names like The Top of the Volcano, Troublemakers, and Alone Against Tomorrow -- look how rebellious this writer is, who dares forward the notion that "science-fiction writers are trouble-makers."

Ellison fought to retain the rights to his work, in a period when work-for-hire was the standard, and for that, he can be commended for his commitment to artist's rights. It's unfortunate that in his later years, Ellison would spend a lot of time suing people. If you're wondering why Terminator movies spend a lot of time in development hell, Ellison successfully sued because of similarities to his story "Demon with a Glass Hand". In 2004, Ellison sued AOL for merely providing access to Use.net, where other people were circulating bootlegs of his stories. (If you're worried about copyright-strikes on Youtube or Article 13 in the EU, Ellison would have told you they don't go far enough.) Ellison saw no hypocrisy in writing a short story that name-dropped or alluded to others' work, even as he would turn around and sue a movie studio because their script might have some similarity to his own under-appreciated oeuvre.

We are already hearing phrases such as how Ellison "lived enormously", "contained multitudes", "kicked ass and took names", and the such. In a 2013 interview, Ellison self-proclaimed himself one of the "Greatest Assholes in the World". Ellison was the first of your "fans are Slans" attitude, where having a very high IQ and not falling for consumerism like the rest of the sheeple was enough. He was the role model for the Sad Puppies, who idolized his obnoxious nature and his stories that reinforced their world-view of how cishet white males are unappreciated geniuses.

If we must, we should remember the Ellison marched for civil rights in 1965... who opposed Vietnam war, nuclear proliferation, and fascism... and who insisted that creators should be compensated for their work. For now, let us bury the "controversial" men who grope women at science-fiction conventions, making loud boasts about "rebellion" from behind a wall of many hagiographic fans and a few lawyers.

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20 Reading Questions

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 23:45:15 GMT

Favorite genre to read:
New Wave science-fiction. I enjoy the strange made mundane and the mundane made strange.

Current book you're reading:
EXCESSION by Iain Banks. It's nice, but thick.

First book you remember loving:
ON BEYOND ZEBRA, by Dr. Seuss. Monsters and letters in a dreamscape, sigh. <3

A book/series you wish would be adapted into film:
THE DEMON PRINCES by Jack Vance. Preferably with ham actors and a really low budget, with lots of CGI. Keep it stagey.
Honorable mention: SPELLSINGER as a jukebox musical.

Favorite Protagonist:
Emphyrio from his eponymous novel. When you're tired of Campbellian heroism, read this book, as it's the complete opposite.

Favorite Antagonist:
Markus the Ineluctable from THE MOMENT OF THE MAGICIAN. Criminally under-used in his own book, and just the right mix of savvy and power.
Runner up: The Mule from FOUNDATION.

Do you write any stories?
A few.

A movie you think was better than the book:
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. Oh my stars, have you read this thing? It's not even remotely like the motion picture.
Runners-up: JAWS, JURASSIC PARK, and READY PLAYER ONE. Spielberg knows how to fill the tent.

Best book you've read this year:
PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler. Prophetic, sadly.

One of your favorite authors:
Jack Vance, a name that is dropped far more than he is read, and who is read far more than he is understood.

Least favorite genre to read:
Fantasy. Which sounds weird when you read this list, neh? All too often, such things wallow in fannishness and franchises, instead of having something interesting to say. Or worse, when it's indefensible, but how can something that tastes so good be bad for you? Who would lie to you, to sell you a used car?

A book you'd recommend to a friend:
EMPHYRIO. It's short, it's accessible, and while you've read things like it, you haven't read anything that is it.

Favorite film adaptation of a book:
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING. It keeps the good while jettisoning a lot of the bad. It had a lot to prove and then proved it, after others had failed before them.

Book you've read the most times:
THE BOOK OF LIES by Aleister Crowley.

A book you didn't expect to like:
THE CHOCOLATE WAR by Robert Cormier. The older I get, the more it rings true.

Favorite Classic Book:
DRACULA by Bram Stoker. The definitive movie adaptation has never been made. People keep wanting to make the count as some sort of romantic figure, instead of the controlling, unfaithful, baby-eating monster that he is. The novel does a fine job of being epistolary.

Book that's impacted you the most:
THE HACKER'S DICTIONARY (1990 Edition), edited by Eric S. Raymond. Being a printed matter frozen in 1990, it's easy for me to re-read, to gain insight into a different era, with its predictions, prophecies, proscriptions, and promises.
Runner-Up: THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce, for the same reasons.

If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?
An author you think more people should know about:
The answer to both is Robert Stallman, who wrote three books: THE ORPHAN, THE CAPTIVE, and THE BEAST, a trilogy of bizarre shape-shifters, set in Depression-era America. These books are perverse, sentimental, brutal, mystical, and mundane in a way not often seen, and even more rarely written so well. I should like more insight into his process.

Favorite book/series of all time:
EMPHYRIO. "You are you and I am I. I am dissastified."

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Sat, 14 Oct 2017 06:36:32 GMT

Sometimes I put my hands on the table and imagine that they're shaking, but they're not. Then I wonder if I would be feeling better if they were actually shaking. There's something in me that wants to quiver, but doesn't. Am I strong or am I a fault waiting to crack?

Or maybe I just need more exercise.

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