Category Archives: Essays

Essays, Non-fiction

Why I Hate Modern Prose

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     The only thing tougher than being a writer sometimes, is being a reader. I’ve had the chance to read some blogs, articles, poems and the like and find those to be pretty well done and in some cases, writing far better than my own. Don’t get me wrong, I still adore books and reading, but the last 10 years have made me really sadden and depressed when it comes to the novel, primarily.

     In no period of human history, short of the 1800s until about the invention of the television set, has the novel been the primary form of a person’s love and adoration, baring the few of us who really enjoy it, to the point our rooms look like Belle’s Library in Beauty and the Beast. The irony here is the amount of people who want to write one at some point in their lives far outnumbers the amount of readers.

     It doesn’t take much to find books in today’s day and age, but the amount isn’t the problem, it’s the prose that is and with that, I am depressed, because with so many more options, there could be so much better writing.
I don’t pretend to be the William Shakespeare of my generation, only with a modicum of luck and ingenuity, I may be able to make such beautiful works myself. That said, I still think most of what is floating around out there is rubbish. It makes it hard as a reviewer sometimes to find things that I would love to write about, when every other book is a 50 Shades of Gray.

     I look at The New York Times bestsellers list and I still see a lot of the same authors adorning it as when I was a child. I’m a 32 year old man, in 6 months I shall be 33. While 33 years on this planet may not be the longest amount of time to have lived, it is long enough to know that it is a problem when I can only come across the same authors, some who have been writing longer than I have been on this planet, on The New York Times bestsellers and wonder why these are the only authors I can come across. When it isn’t the same author’s, sometimes it’s their children. Is there no one new?

     Not a single person on that list doesn’t deserve their success, they merited it, but I can’t help but think of how much that success is partly owned to gauging the work by the amount of money it makes as opposed to the prose. Don’t even get me started on the awards, I don’t believe for a second an award has any meaning anymore. Game of Thrones has a Nebula award, I shit you not. How does something like this happen? Do reviewers not even know how to do their jobs anymore? There once was a time when the critic meant something, they were people who understood their niche in reviewing. They understood beautiful prose and exquisite story telling. Now everyone is a critic, but not a good one. Critics remind me of the age old adage about everyone having a novel in them and in most cases, that is where it should stay, except replace novel with criticism. Being a critic is no longer for the sake of intellectualizing about books anymore, but serves only to exist for one more asshole to attach Stephen King, George R.R.Martin, Ann Rice, J.K. Rowling, Vince Flynn, James Patterson, Dean Kootz, Joe Hill or some other more successful writer than they are for SEO and chase that $0.01 blimp from drawing someone into their blog. It works too! I don’t blame people for doing this, it is human nature, looking to capitalize and make money, but we’re people are struggling over pennies, when most of you couldn’t even be bothered to bend down on the street to pick one up. Irony is when not even 10 years ago, the government seriously considered phasing out the penny, but when the same object is digital, it is gold!

     Writing is hardly the only spectrum to be hit with this, one look at the trends on Youtube and we can see a generic no name rapper attacking a well-established star to get themselves over with the crowd.

     The new age where anyone can now go out and do whatever they wanted hasn’t helped much to alleviate this at all. Now there is so many more options, but who am I going to read? You have to do so much more footwork now a day, because an award is as meaningless as doing household chores, critics have no fucking clue what they’re talking about, they just want to be blow hards for the sake of being blow hards, your average fan with no special knowledge of writing doesn’t know shit from shinola, but they know what they like and with any typical fan they will gush about you from here to Alaska without missing a beat, because of how you made them feel.

     I know having guardians that can decide to can and cannot publish isn’t a great thing for most people, because they too, are all about marketability when it comes to books and each year, we lose out on amazing potential authors who deserved to have their book published, but when the opposite end of the spectrum offers the same set up, are creators and consumers really winning? Is there no happy medium where we can concentrate on beautiful prose and still have the occasional 50 Shades of Gray, instead of attempts to rank in Google searches, monetization, attack artist you once enjoyed, boycott things, frivolously on Twitter, because they threaten you, not because you actually believe in the bullshit you espouse? Just to get that pittance of money? I don’t think so, and to quote Bill Hick’s, “All my heroes are dead!” I’m glad too, because I couldn’t imagine how I might feel if they were alive and doing this shit!

     I’m not free of absolution here, I am just as complicit as anyone, because of my desire to write and communicate my thoughts so they can be understood from a wide audience and you do not have to have a Ph.D to understand my writing. I sold out, a long time ago and I don’t know if I am better or worse off for it.

     After reading Dracula the other night and coming away from it, feeling as I did when I was a kid, just discovering books for the first time, I had this epiphany. It wasn’t even just the book that inspired this piece, it is partially brewing for a while, because of critic’s ineptitude and then there is the fact Twitter has also allowed me to see deeper than any other social media. Looking at random accounts, some with blue check marks, and not for real world success. There are people who have fans, just for being fans. What the fuck is wrong with this world? 20k followers just for enjoying things. Meanwhile, I watch people who have actually worked in Hollywood, with fewer followers than your random blogger and have to wonder to myself, what the fuck! Who would want to write and especially well, when your fans will end up with a better following just for loving you?

     I don’t profess to have all the answers in regards to this, but I do know, I don’t like this new world, one that is championing mediocrity and promoting idiocrasy. Up until now, I wasn’t like a lot of people with nostalgia for the past, because I don’t miss it. I do miss discovering good lit though and that, if anything, is what truly has be nostalgic. I defer to Kylo Ren when he said “Let the past die, it’s the only way to become what you were truly meant to be.” Couldn’t that be at a higher plane than we are now, though?

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Slight edits to text 14 OCT 2018 9:29 AM

Essays, Non-fiction

Elitest Snobbery 101 or No, you don’t own that!

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     Progressive, what a scary word! The right tossed it around as another word for the Socialist, leftist embraced its use as a euphemism for communism, but it in no way does this word mean socialism or communism. So what exactly does progressive mean? It means to advance, to progress and to move forward.

     Why then, is it becoming a bad word like Liberal was made out to be in the 1960s? What is so collectivist about that word? Surely a business man who expands his business and creates more jobs for Americans is being progressive, is he not?

     If being a progressive is a bad thing, then those of you who are in opposition to progress must be regressive, right? You wish to go backwards in our country and bring back years of horrible oppression towards people of difference, archaic laws that squelched human rights and dignity or downright hurt others, then? What’s that you say? You are not for regressing. Oh, so that would make you a progressive, would it not? You want to move forward then, right?

     The difference is only in how we agree to do it. Everyone is a progressive. We all want to move forward and better ourselves. Isn’t that what life is about? If we didn’t progress, wouldn’t we all still be living with our parents? That would be one huge collective house hold, the likes America hasn’t seen since the 1800s.

     So we must advance the dialogue in this country, not use fear to sway public opinion. Those who would seek to influence public opinion with propaganda must be called out and chastised for it, not heralded. Words cannot be high jacked by just one party alone, nor can they be used to slander individuals for their thoughts. Words are not meant to be owned by just one individual, they’re here for all of use to communicate with one another. Humans are meant to use them to form whole sentences, which create paragraphs, which exhibit meaning, in order to use them to elucidate on ideas, refute abhorrent trains of thought or otherwise engage in a civil discourse that propels the narrative forward. The next time you hear someone use progressive like it’s a bad thing, remind them that our country was founded by progressives and built up by progressives. That city you live in? It was built by progressives. That car you drive? It was built by progressives. God himself, if you believe in him or her, was a progressive.

     It’s time to take words back and use it in its proper context, along with other words being blindly molested by nefarious actors, looking to get a quick blip of emotion out of otherwise, rational humans, if not for desire to be team players. Being progressive is not dirty, socialistic or communist. It’s the American way. American exceptionalism is built on American progressivism. After all, we all want what is best for America, don’t we?

     So are you progressive or regressive?

Essays, Journalism, Non-fiction

Twitter Dee and Twitter Dumb

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Twitter has a real problem and no, I don’t mean the fact it is the only social media company that cannot make money.  I started an account for @Bestinyourgirl back in 2014 with the desire to build it up for promotional purposes.  By January 2016, I had just broken 400 in the early days of the account seen below:

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By the end of that same year, I had hit 600 on Twitter and it only seemed to be going up and up. My statistics were great, showing I knew what I was doing on Twitter, is was great for me, because I had no clue what I was actually doing, but still excelling.

14681818_10157526789330177_6953811081355953899_n
mid-late 2016, when I first broke 600 followers on Twitter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I noticed though, that by the end of 2017, my followers really started taking a hit and everything I had worked to build on Twitter was going to hell, including the statistics that showcased I had merited an account, worthy of being in the middle tier of “successful” accounts. I was and am not a Twitter legend, but given that I had no clue what I was doing in 2014, I was very proud of what I accomplished in so little time.

Now, up until a couple days ago, my account stayed at about 380-ish, when my account started to balloon again, along with my tweets and statistics doing better again. It could be just interesting timing with the Tweets, but I suspect it isn’t. The weird thing is, all my new followers, baring a few, were ghost accounts. So I looked into this and found nothing. Here is the account as of Oct 10th 2018

newtiwtter

Back at 400, and growing, which is interesting. So, now I decided to go investigate how many accounts are real and here are the results:

twitteraudit

A majority of my 400 followers are real, except wait, that says 572, about the same amount I had by mid 2016, of 600, if you add in the fake ones, it is over 600. Also, Twitter says I only have 400. So the question becomes, why is Twitter removing and then allowing back these accounts, so that my count keeps going up and improving my Twitter stats again? Clearly Twitter should know the difference between fake accounts and real accounts, right? I’m not the only one being hit by this and this doesn’t seem to be discriminating between left or right leaning politics, it just hurting everyone who has taken the care to build their brand online, using these services and the sheer incompetence exhibited by Twitter, not just as entrepreneurs, but as service providers is staggering.

I for one do not think this is a result of Twitter attempting to get rid of fake accounts, something that doesn’t do much at all to boost most Twitter accounts. I think that was a way to save face and skit responsibility to avoid a lawsuit from brands being crippled by the system in favor of of lifting up verified or more followed accounts to attempt to make some money.

Has anyone else had this problem? How has it impacted you? Comment below!

 

Edit: Minor corrections to the text @ 9:52 pm October 10th 2018. Also, account is now at 401 and slowly growing still.

Essays, Non-fiction

Abortion: Human Extinction

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What argument hasn’t already been made against abortion? What new territory could be broken in a debate that has been raging for over 40 years?

The typical argument from both sides look a bit like this:
Left: Woman’s body, woman’s right. Right: But God!

This went for a while, when the argument looked like this: Left: Woman’s right to choose. Right: It’s a life!

With nothing really new from either side, the debate pretty much dwindled into this:

Left: Back alley abortions will kill Millions! Right: Legal Abortion will Kill Millions!

Both sides are now apparently “Pro-Life” in the debate, but at different end of the spectrum. Now, his is a relatively simplistic version of what the debates look like, but there are decent arguments to be made on both sides of the aisle, but I won’t rehash them all here. What I want to focus on is more about the benefit for the species and if abortion is, in effect, making the gene-pool shallower and given way to the modern problems we are seeing now.

Some studies indicate that the first born child of a couple is imbued with a higher I.Q., but what does that really mean? If the average I.Q. across all races is about 100, give or take, then a first born with 115 I.Q. is born above average, but that doesn’t really help the species, because, unlike a Stephen Hawking or a Christopher Hitchens, the I.Q. isn’t really high enough to confer substantial benefits on the population. With that in mind breast feeding can also confer higher boost of intelligence, on top of that.

The question now becomes, what is a “First born” child? This was a straight forward question in the ancestral environment of our species, but has been murkier since about the 1960’s, when the birth control pill first came into being. Essentially, the pill tricks the body into thinking it is pregnant, when it isn’t. Would this count towards the first born in terms of biology? Would the body register it that way at all?

Then we come to miscarriages nature’s form of abortion, when the fetus doesn’t make it to full maturation and is essentially flushed out of the body. Does that register as a first born? Would the body even be able to tell the difference between birth and miscarriage? I do not have the answers to this at present, but my general bias is towards no, it wouldn’t be able to tell and in effect, the first true born, might be considered, at least in the natal environment, number four, or even five.

Now, if it holds true that the first true born would indeed born with a higher general intelligence, then essentially, abortion, would be destroying a much need necessity in our lives. Without evolutionary novel things, building computers for instance, or creating new medicines or biotechnology to cure cancer, aids or other horrible diseases, our species is going to destroy itself.

Which brings me to my next part, just my general thesis is that abortion might be really negative for the human race in general, we have to look at sexuality. The brothers hypothesis, which I am no fan of, but regardless, I could be wrong here, is that the more brothers a person has, the more likely the next one down the line will be homosexual. Whilst there is nothing wrong with homosexual activity, if the world was nothing but gay men and woman, our species wouldn’t survive, unless they were to adapt. Right now you’re thinking, but we can create children in a lab, everyone being gay wouldn’t be a problem, expect you forgot the above. Designer babies are evolutionary novel concepts, so is science and without the higher general intelligence to work on biological engineering, the species faces certain extinction, as the world will be filled with dumber human beings.

This is all assuming that we as a species even survive to that point, as I am looking centuries down the road. It’s not like human beings are already particularly intelligent, but general intelligence has tended to gone up as the aeons passed and this could set our civilization back millennia, only on par with the dark ages in human advancement.

My personal point of view, in regards to the future and child breeding, should be getting people to see the negatives in breeding arbitrarily and to look to designer babies a lot sooner, in order to combat this future were the species will go extinct. We need people to be comfortable with breeding all children with a 160 points, minimum, of general intelligence. Only designer babies will truly create an egalitarian playing field for all those involved, since genetics wouldn’t be doled out randomly.

Now, you may think such is on par with eugenics, which seems to be a dirty word, since the Nazi’s perverted it, but really, all it is, is nature in a more controlled environment. Woman already do the subconscious math when it comes to picking the man they would like to sire progeny with. The difference comes in the laboratory control, allowing for superior human beings in general to be born, of all races, creeds, sexuality and more. With birth out of the way, abortion becomes a non-issue, woman still get choice and sex is now just accomplished for enjoyment, instead of keeping the human race in existence. Those general intelligence boost will create a collective nation that looks to conceive a universe that will resemble Star Trek instead of Mad Max. We will have a generation that never knew disease, complete inequity, rape, Incel men and maybe even poverty, as all new industry will be created and in a world that is slowly becoming more robotic in terms of jobs, that social currency conferred to this new generation, will give them everything they need to survive and keep the species alive for eons to come!

 

This is truly the only way to bring the species together and works towards a more perfect union, a more perfect species and protecting your legacy, because the sun is about to go nova or become a red drawf within 5 billion years, wiping out the solar system in its wake. All that will remain of your legacy, will be star dust and atoms and larks of what you and others once were. Instead, the future could be another Goldilocks zone and to explore the final frontier, to seek out new life forms and civilizations, to boldly go were no species has gone before.

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EDITED: SLIGHT CORRECTIONS TO THE TEXT AND ADDED MORE LINKS. (Sept 8th 2018)

 

Essays, Non-fiction

Why I will NEVER write a “strong” female character!

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     When it comes to writing, it’s all about characters. The plot is second fiddle and there is nothing interesting about a plot if uninteresting characters are involved in it. Extraordinary things should have to extraordinary people, even if the extraordinary person is simply a fisherman, who is unaware that a sea curse is about to wreck his enterprise and he will forced to fight the forces of evil. You and I face adversity every day, but we don’t fight off 10,000 year old mummies on a monthly basis and we sure as hell don’t have aliens take us aboard their starship and take us across the universe to fight off giant monsters with laser swords. Part of the appeal of these character is routed in the basic Hero’s Journey structure that has been popular throughout most of human history. Why? It could be the desire for extraordinary things happening to us, maybe because it’s a great analogy for human growth or maybe just because normal people becoming larger than life heroes is intriguing.

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Analysis, Essays, Nerding, Non-fiction, Opinion

Ghostbusters and subtext

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     Is Ghostbusters really about “nothing”? In other words, does it lack subtext which ultimately makes it about more than three academic outcast busting ghost? I think there is an answer and it’s quite simple, it’s also why the original film seems to resonate more with Millennial men than older generations.

     The movie introduces us to three men, all of whom work at the same University investing a ghost sighting at the NYC library. Each one has a different personality and all three work well for the story being told. Peter is the outgoing, sarcastic, skeptical one. Egon is the straight-laced, somber scientist with a bias towards the paranormal. Ray is the giant man-child, with a clear bias in the supernatural, evidence by his bursting into Peter’s office, like a kid at Christmas over a ghost sighting.

     There is where the beginning of the subtext start to take hold, which is subtle, yet there and I think misunderstood as being less of a character flaw than something like, believing in ghost for instance.

     Ray is the man who is afraid to grow and face the real world. It may not seem it, but it’s ever present throughout the movie, instead of in your face. It is called subtext after and subtext isn’t an IPA.

     The next exchange we see regarding Ray’s fear of adulthood is a conversation with Peter over being kicked out of the university. “You never worked in the private sector before, I have, they expect results.” Cements his fear of going back into the “adult” world, that he was a part of and didn’t really fare too well. Following the heels of this scene we get the exchange “I grew up in that home, you didn’t even bargain with the guy!” once again the language leads us to believe that he is fearful of growing up.

     I notice that most millennial men who enjoy this movie are often much like Ray. They have toy collections, they’re very much the embodiment of the Peter Pan complex.

     Back to the movie, we’re developing the theme of Ray’s childhood fear, authority is the antagonist, more so than Gozer. This is a very child mentality were a US vs Them against authority comes into play. Walter Peck might be dick less, but he has a job to do and is an adult voice of reason. The mayor is a voice of reason, the university is the voice of reason.

     Peter is clearly not a man-child, just kind of lazy. He does all the active work in the Ghostbusters movie, a sign of lack of maturity is passivity. Ray and Egon have no interpersonal skills and it shows, since Peter is the “father” figure of the group and a horrible one at that. Egon might be just an awkward introvert, but Ray just cannot be bothered. He couldn’t even contain himself from sliding down the pole at the showing of their future headquarters.

     Even Ray’s cigarette smoking is, subliminally, showing us he is a child as by the second movie he choose more “mature” forms of tobacco and while tobacco use of any kind is really a horrible choice, given the time period a pipe and a cigar had different connotations than cigarette smoking.

     A huge part of everyone’s story, but Ray’s is a woman in their life. Peter has Dana, Egon has the sexually aggressive Janie Melitz, but Ray has a wet dream, normally associated with adolescence, about a ghost.This is typical male fear of intimacy.

     Once we get to the ending, where the Ghostbusters fight Gozer, we are seeing the conclusion of Ray’s whole character arc. He chooses the form of the Statepufft Marshmallow Man as the destructor, now it is his litteral childhood he is facing down. “It just popped in there.” and “I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever possibly destroy us: Mr. Stay-Puft”

     The destruction of Stay-Puft is the conclusion of Ray’s character arc. All for come back to a hero’s welcome, but with Ray seeming more contemplative and somber after it all, as the credits roll.

     This was Ray’s rebirth, where this whole adulting thing is not as bad as Ray had feared and he takes it into the second movie with him.

     This ultimately makes the whole movie about Ray, growing up and conquering your fears in order to become something ultimately much greater.