"You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
--whomever wrote that which is known as The Matrix
1. The banning of Huckleberry Finn in Philly.
Orwell was right on so many levels. When I read his books, I saw them as nightmare possibilities. There was nothing in them for me at the tender age when I read them that wasn't in some of the best that Stephen King has had to offer. However, as the world turns and this place called America gets darker and darker, I realize that this country, in particular, is heading that way like a speeding train that's come of its rails. Huckleberry Finn is a good book. For that reason alone, it should be left alone. More important than being a good book though is the fact that Huckleberry Finn has a whole lot of truth in it. There is no worse crime than covering up the truth because it's uncomfortable, which is something that's going on a whole lot today, and, I have learned, has always gone on with the writing/crafting of history. Personally, I am uncomfortable with lies, no matter how ugly the truth is.
The world Huckleberry Finn existed in was a real one and Twain just took a picture of that world so that people would always be able to see it as it was. I can not be so offended by a fucking WORD that I ban a book that is actually helpful to read and learn from. The word exists.
I actually liked Huckleberry Finn--not the book in this sentence, but the person. He had a shit life and a shit dad. He didn't even have any fucking shoes. I sympathized with him and I was happy to be along on his little journey into discovering that people were just people, no matter what color, which is the message in that book despite that word. There are books that are heralded that have a far less glorious message in my humble opinion. These books did not use that particular word and so they are upheld as the messenger for peace among the races, etc. BUT, and I won't mention the name of the book I'm talking about because I've had actual real time arguments about my opinion on this particular subject. That book's message is something like: "...sometimes black people die for unjust reasons, oh well. On with life."
Huckleberry Finn actually has a worthwhile message to teach. Only an idiot would ban the message because they don't like REALITY--even if that message exists 'supposedly' in the past, and people don't think like that anymore. *cough cough* bullshit *cough cough* Pretending like something isn't real is the first dangerous step into keeping that shit going eternally.. Better to face your demons and tame them than to just ignore them and let them keep 'eating' in background. Much like pretending that one doesn't have cancer.
It's similar to the big blown up bullshit about The Color Purple, which is the ONLY book, I've deigned to read more than once that Shakespeare didn't write. I've actually read The Color Purple five times. I thought Mr. was depicted as very real, and I also thought that he was sorry in the end and that his sorrow and regret was genuine. YES, he was an animal for most of the book, but he was an animal with a heart and soul who learned from his mistakes. I don't see anything wrong with that. I liked him too at the end. I don't want to DATE him, but I liked him for being willing to admit that he had been wrong and to try to correct that wrong. A lot of people would DIE before doing that. The Color Purple is not facing a ban or being stricken from curriculums. I'm not really sure it's ON any curriculum considering its small bit of sexual content.
I guess I'm talking about how quickly people can get offended and miss really important messages because they don't like the MESSENGER. That, and the tendency to cover up ugliness with a thin coat of paint like Texas removing the word slave from text books and replacing that word with 'worker'.
PRETENDING gets one nowhere. It only ensures that the problem won't be fixed, because the problem won't be truly ADDRESSED. Once again, like pretending you don't have cancer when you do. What's the end result of that going to be? Is the ending a big mystery or a forgone conclusion?
2. Legalized attempted murder of an infant
Some cop blew up a baby. I'm not going to look up names and things and report on this like my name is Scoops Taylor. I am simply commenting on the nature of the crime and the fact that that kid will receive via the courts no justice. In the interest of a no knock drug raid, the cops threw some kind of grenade into the house and the grenade landed on the kid, who couldn't even walk at the time and blew a hole in his chest and messed up his face and damn near killed him. The people were not selling drugs and the cops, in fact, had the wrong house, and that poor baby got all messed up for nothing.
This is just another attack on the poor in what America is quickly becoming. And, despite the fact that this was an innocent INFANT, no one really cares. They don't think things like: that could have been my house or my son. And they passively accept whatever 'justice' handed down by the courts as right and correct. It's the same with the roving DEATH SQUADS that are roaming the streets slaughtering people at will for minor infractions...
...and if they manage to live, they're locked up for years and years for things other first world countries don't even bother with in the interest of filling up all those 'for profit' prisons.
I find the police blowing up an infant and suffering no consequence offensive, while man-spreading doesn't bother me at all. I am more concerned with the message in Huckleberry Finn than I am with the word nigger being used like it was used and is still used. I am offended that every time I turn on the news some person's sitting there with a stale face and calm tone preparing me to watch the government sanctioned MURDER of a civilian by armed enforcers who have been trained at the academy to SHOOT TO KILL poor people and minorities and ask questions later.
There should be riots in the streets for this kid. There would be in any SANE country. But this is not a sane country, and never was one, and it's getting worse a mile a minute...
...and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care...
edit: publishing paralysis not book paralysis/ same difference though, yeah?
Learned a new phrase called 'book paralysis' and find it interesting enough to blather on about for a few seconds. In taking the phrase apart, I am going to assume it has more to do with the author than the book itself. I mean, that's common sense working for me. I'm thinking it means something like a person who is paralyzed from writing/publishing books. It sounds dire, doesn't it?
I mean any form of paralysis is unwelcome and terrifying. Its a way of life for a lot of people though, and should not be knocked even if this kind only is about books and far from as serious as it sounds.
I'm going to add this phrase to my collection or terms and phrases, sticking it right under affluenza, thought that's not at all correct in terms of the alphabet. Still, it belongs right there, I think.
All music is borrowed not stolen.
Borrowed because beautiful...
All artists names are clearly displayed and linked back to source.
And nothing is gained by me for the posting except the beauty of it all.
...If loving musac is wrong, I dun wanna be right...
I was watching something about world hunger being a social construct that bothered me, overall, with all the chaos that's going on in the media and what not. I do exist, after all, in a country where Donald Trump is running for president. The man steps forward as an undisguised asshole, and there are people that are going to vote for him no matter what vitriol spews out of his mouth. It would be disheartening if it wasn't so... normal, so very par for the course. I understand racism, hatred, selfishness and greed. I get them all. Since the cave, mankind has always been the same. We claim change, but we don't show it often. And we easily regress back to the cave when it's convenient and beneficial. Some would say that's what humans ARE.
I will neither agree nor disagree. What I wills say is that in a world with enough "stuff" for everyone, it is, simply, a shame that some are allowed to die due to starvation. We are born on a planet that is here for all of us, and we section off bits and claim them for ourselves and the group and whatever and watch children starve, allow children to grow up uneducated, allow a million and one atrocities to benefit select people and select groups, when doing the exact opposite would benefit the WHOLE. This is not the way that life is supposed to be. We are not living right and constantly wondering what's wrong. Its a weird thing to watch, and while I considered myself divorced from it, personally, for the moment, I can't help looking on in mute horror as humanity strays farther and father away from what I see as the 'mark'.
Love is easy, and it's not sexual (which it is often mistaken for). It is just ... love. I am broke. About as broke as a person can be. Somewhere in that broke-ness, there's a choice that I have made, and, while I don't intend to stay this way very much longer, I learned what kind of person I really am from it. And with that hard won lesson, I will do whatever it is that I am going to do in order to be the best kind of person that I can be. And try to help other people. And receive help from them. And live. Until I am not alive anymore. Its all there is, there is nothing else.
I can build myself a pyramid by fucking over others and taking theirs--and still not be happy. I could travel to Cancun every day and sleep with a million and one people and still not be happy. I could be Donald Trump and trick the poor, ignorant and racist by turning them on the weaker animal and rise to power so great one could liken it to godhood, and get my kicks sleeping with twelve year old hookers who are drug addicted runaways fleeing their molesting daddies--and still not be happy.
No one would know I wasn't happy. Everyone would see me having everything and think to themselves -- 'wow', I wish I was that guy'. And, maybe there'd be something in that for me as I regressed the world backward a couple of hundred years with my deep seeded insecurities and petty hatred that were eating me up because all my smiles were as fake as the money that makes me 'better' than everyone else.
But... that's not the road for me. I've kicked around the stones on the sidewalk of that particular path for awhile now and can't quite settle for it. I want a world where no one starves and everyone has a home, for starters. A world where they are not locking people up for an inability to pay traffic tickets and where the cops are held as accountable for their actions as all the other people. I want an educated world where people are trying to understand the mysteries, and a naturalistic world where people understand that we are part of this, not subject to it, and that we should be afraid because all this is US and we are IT. Where gay's okay and black's just fine, and so is yellow and red and, if they deigned to visit, green.
And yus, I probably won't get any of that--but that's okay too, which is really the point of the whole random spiel.
_____
Finished my Nano books a week ago, and while I called it meaningless in the previous post, it isn't. I did not follow Nano rules and upload for word count so that I could get my Nano award, but, then, I never do. This is the fifth time I've done Nano, and, again, I want to express my appreciation for the task. Whoever thought of it was one of those 'helpful' people, and I appreciate them for the addition to my collection of crap roaming around in my head being born. It takes the edge off--getting one of them done.
I have put a pause on the bit of nastiness I was writing for The Walking Dead as the grape vine hath proclaimed that Glen is not dying...yet. The show veers from the comic, and therefore, there is hope--not much, since it's The Walking Dead, but enough to give me pause and to cause me to turn to writing something else with vigor and my Walking Dead fanfic with a little less -- enthusiasm. It's bad when you put a character in a situation so twisted you actually feel a little bit sorry for them, eh? Plus, you have to walk through the damn thing with them, so... there's that. Currently, I am torturing someone else for fun...
_____
Some kid linked to one of my Google+. Noticed because that one has zero followers. And this kid's young. He was, I discovered looking for a different, younger, less cynical Raquel Taylor. My panic was really all based in: Go Away, Kid. Porn here!
And then I ran around a circle before realizing that I'm pretty harmless in my current state. Nothing to see and all that. I was pleased by the fact that shortie was undaunted by seeing two dudes kissing, which is my profile pic though. Might be raised right, that one:)
My thirst for Fallout 4 is ridiculous. But I am also content to wait awhile as my thirst was Dragon Age 3 was just as bad. Then I beat it four times, and it's in the past now. It's a feeling that I hate, and therefore, sometimes, I make myself wait or am content to wait. The thirst is a driving thing, and the anticipation is something that I find that I like as frustrating as it can be.
I am also after the new Tomb Raider even though I enjoyed the way Lara looked when she looked like Angelina Jolie. Now, it seems that different people are making that particular series and I recently played a throwback to Angelina version about a temple and Aztec gods that I can't recall the name of at the moment, but enjoyed immensely. There's a new one of those too, and I shall have it as well. The new look, I don't particularly care for, but, having looked at it this long, I do believe I am over the initial rage at the change, and can play the game. The plot seems interesting enough and I can't let an aesthetic ruin the series for me. I will not, however, play the first game in the decision to change her.
Lara is, after all, the Queen of the Bad Bitch squad.
I do not really understand how these new things that call themselves 'feminists' and bitch and moan about sexism in video games while Lara exists. There are a lot of bad bitches in video games and I do believe if they ever played the damn things they'd likely have a better understanding of what they're bitching about. To me, it sounds more like: "Those women don't look like me. I'm fat. And mad."
But that's just me. There are some things that feminism needs to be on. Whining about video games is not one of them. It's like they don't want to fix the very real problems that women have, and only want to whine. I have 0 respect for the new face of feminism and their man-spreading, free bleeding ways.
_____
Doing NanoWriMo and, simultaneously working on some Walking Dead fan fiction. I'm about a season behind because I don't watch the show week to week, but, a season at a time. This is actually probably my last season. The grape vine says that Glen has either died or is definitely going to die. Glen is my favorite character. After they killed both Tyrese and 'Everybody Loves Chris' I was pretty much done with the show. But I don't think I can take Glen dying. Glen's hawt, first of all, and Glen and Maggie are gold to me. So, fuuuuck the Walking Dead. BUT, before I go, I do have a particularly corrupt and all fucked up piece of fan fiction for them.
The Nano book is meaningless and only serves to break my perpetual writer's block, which I truly appreciate Nano for. The task that I set myself was to finish early and the write it the first time so that it made sense. And it looks like that's going to happen, so, my appreciation for the November task is boundless. I thought I couldn't write anything BUT fan fiction for awhile there.
I've been getting some spammy emails about publishing Nano books--that won't be happening. This one, I did for me. Just to make sure I remembered how.
_____
One of my favorite YouTube people, Thunderf00t, said some things so racist, he literally made my skin crawl. I do not understand how someone so brilliant can think things so twisted. It makes me question the truly poisonous nature of racism and how damning it really is that even a noted, admirable, scientist like him can be so WRONG.
I'm not going to bitch about it too much. I am used to disappointments. I did want to write his name down though and admit that I have been a follower of his little cyber cult of people who wish they were as smart as he seemed to be.
I have always loved this scene from The Wiz. It says a lot, and while the movie is severely underrated in my humble opinion, it is one of the best movies ever created. In this scene, those motherfucking crows (which never shut up) are telling that cute little scarecrow who he is. After the song, Dorothy comes and saves him, but it is the song, itself, that I love. It says a lot about how people will treat you, what they need you to believe, and the lengths they will go through to keep you up there on that there pole.
This is beautiful. And I need it here so it can be a reminder to me that the crows are always, ALWAYS running their beaks. Despite that, the Scarecrow had the most heart of all our little adventurers--even though it was being constantly chipped away at.
the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect or fame
The new definition hopes to expand to:
happiness derived from good relationships and achieving personal goals.
I was asked once what success as a writer meant to me ... if I considered myself successful and my answer was derived from this first definition. My answer was bitter, mean and full of shit to some degree. When people who matter to me ask me the question (and they have to some extent, though not exactly this) my answer is quite different. Rather, when people who write ask me is they should write, my answer is always the same. If you want to write, if you need to write, then nothing else matters but getting the words down. I don't have time for bitterness when it comes to other people who seek my help in deciding whether they should put their dreams down on pages or not. First of all, there's happyness in it.
Secondly and Selfishly, they give me something to read, and I have read such beautiful things from the minds of others.
Do I think the world is a horrible, greedy place that will take advantage of you if it can? Yeah, undoubtedly. But, in that same vein, Strayer University is working hard to redefine something that really needs redefining. It is, truly, the beautiful things that give me hope, and this petition is a beautiful thing. With it, comes a redefining of what truly matters in life. And it leaves the greedy parts somewhere in the dust where they belong.
If you happen to stop by here, sign this, and help change the world
The police are brutalizing black women and children. They are killing young black men. This is a symptom of a terrible disease that this country has, and has always had. The disease is like a secret among the denizens of the country. Everyone pretends that the disease does not exist. Very few people are willing to admit that the 'land of the free' isn't. First of all, you are penalized for it. "Everyone has an equal opportunity," screams the masses. "Everyone is treated the same," they cry from their bogus decrees written hundred of years ago. Degrees that were lies even then.
A 'race-baiter' is a person that cries about the racism in this country. I study these things because they are interesting and because they concern me personally. I'm not sure when the term race baiter was coined but I've had it thrown in my face several times in debates on the internet when it's just me and some person going at it about the state of affairs in America. I deal with reality and race-baiter does not fit into my reality. There is no such creature. There is just the racism. The people who benefit in totality from the racism and the victims of the racism, who are often quieted by this term: race-baiter. There's also the 'race-card'. The race card is the card in the deck of life that is played by someone seeking to blame others for their problems.
Words are like magic, particularly for me. I know their power and effect. The fact that the two terms mentioned above even exist is ridiculous. People using those terms against me in relatively civilized argumentation even more so. Another thing is the way the word racism is used now. It has been downplayed into something that it isn't. It has been made less. A black man who says something negative about white people is a racist now. Racism implies power. A powerless person can not be racist. In order to be racist a person has to be able to deny you a job, beat you without paying any price, rape you without paying any price, kill you without paying any price.
I've heard all kinds of fuckery, really. Senseless Cat-In-The-Hat type things while dealing with some of the people I purposely put myself in contact with. Everything's a learning experience for me. I don't shy away from it. My goal, over all, is to understand the things life throws at me in a constant, unending barrage. I watch the the truth being twisted, serpentine, like a snake. I watch lies become truths with time. The world's so full of shit, it's eyes are brown like mine.
In the very rudiments of the English language, everything bad is dark and black and everything good is light and white. I use those words everyday to describe things and I rarely take the time to consider what I am saying, what is being said to me, and the message that is being sent out to the world, consciousness by consciousness, via the simple little things that are said to other people.
Things that start with words spoken into consciousness become the violence we are seeing today. When grown men attack little girls and beat them without thought or pity for the fact that these are, first of all, children, and secondly female children, we have a fucking problem. A bombing little girls in churches type problem. And unequal education system type problem. A lynching, white sheet under the cover of darkness, cross burning type problem. A terrible, dragging the country down, destroying the world soul by soul type problem.
There is always a price to pay for everything. I had to learn this the very hard way. I think everyone does. Nothing good is ever free. If one, for example, is benefiting by fucking over others for fun and profit, the simple FACT is, there's a cost for that too. Everybody pays in one way or another. This is the way we've set up the world, and if we didn't set it up, we allow it, we go along with it. We contribute. BUT, if you can watch your television at night, at home with your family and see a little girl get the living shit beat out of her by some grown as man with a badge and justify that shit in your mind in ANY WAY... YOU have a problem. If you can watch a man get shot in the head for simple non-compliance ... YOU have a problem. If killing a twelve-year-old boy for playing with an easily purchased dollar store toy in a public park is okay with you ... YOU have a problem.
HOW DO WE CORRECT THIS PROBLEM?
The first step in correcting the problem is to stop pretending like it doesn't exist.
WHY SHOULD I CARE? THE PROBLEM DOESN'T AFFECT ME.
The problem affects everyone. You are an asshole because of the problem. You condone the beating and murder of children in a compliant way. You allow the problem to exist.
One world. One people, motherfuckers. What's so hard about that? Put the fucking box of Crayolas down for a minute and pick up a fucking book. Not an e-book either, an actual fucking book. About something important, like the mass extinction of the human race color by motherfucking color. It'll be aptly titled: What Fuck-Tards do with Absolute Power by Raquel Taylor
__________________________________
I've heard stories that people who have filmed the police during the commission of some of these crimes have gone to jail for filming. I'm not sure if this is true, and I haven't looked it up because this is MY blog and I'll say what I want here. If this is true, then how in the world did dumb ass America let something like that happen?
As the world spirals into absolute chaos, I bet every ONE of you dumb sons-of-bitches can tell me exactly how big Kim K's ass is and the exact amount of booty sweat she had on the fucker the night before last.
What a bunch of dangerous, murderous shit for brains ... with nukes.
Holy fuck.
(Nothing against Kim K, btw. I respect that bitch's grind.)
And now, a little Tre Melvin ... to lighten to mood...
I usually keep my mouth closed when one of these companies I used to work for closes. I chalk about 99 percent of my experiences up to racism. I could be wrong there, or right there, but I think I'm more right than wrong, ultimately. For me, it doesn't really matter. Such is the way of the fucking world. And, while the world is wrong, it's been wrong for a long time and it seems to like being wrong. Who am I to fuck with that? Talking about it to the racists fucks that condone this type of shit isn't going to make them less prone to treating me like some kind of alien because I don't subscribe to the rules.
While I take no real satisfaction in the closing of Red Rose Publishing, while I feel no vindication, or anything else for that matter in the company's demise, I have to say this is like the fiftieth of these motherfuckers that has shut down in this way since I've been half-assed paying attention. What in fucking THOR'S name is so damn hard about doing your job and running your company like a human being? I personally think that more money could be made by running the fucking thing RIGHT than WRONG. It almost seems like some of these assholes set these things up in order to break fragile hearts than to actually make money. The company should be named: Let Me Fuck You Over Publishing, instead of whatever the 'boss' chooses to actually call the thing. THIS...
...is if you eliminate the racism.
I'm sure that some money is made off these ... I'm going to call them ... pyramid schemes. A quick buck sucking the blood out of everyone's cock until author's pull those fleshy bits out of the 'boss's' greedy mouth. Or the whole thing shuts down because said cock gobbling bitch won't spare a drop of stray cum for anyone else. Hello? Someone's got to hold all those asses up, whore, so you can get your mouth right, you know? Otherwise, it all comes tumbling down. Common sense. DURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR....
Nothing's ever done about this either. Everyone just kind of acknowledges that they got ass fucked and moves on to 'hopefully' greener pastures.
Fascinating...
(oh and if i'm wrong and so and so isn't closed cause so and so and whatever. i only pay so much attention -- caught it as a side thing -- and have no fucks to give either way ---)
Because I don't pay attention to ... well ... anything, I missed the part where The Boondocks was ... altered. I watched the fourth season but it left me cold. I didn't laugh as much as I used to or think as much as I used to. I turned it off and was pretty ambivalent about it. Funny thing was, I didn't particularly think anything was wrong with it, I just didn't think--NOTICEABLY-- much of it. I pretty much thought that dude had a meh kinda season and hoped for the best later or whatever.
I found that this was not the case a few minutes ago. The man's show was stolen and squashed just like every other good thing. Aaron McGruder had beautiful characters--those boys were lovely. They had important things to say and they were welcoming and inviting into their world. I loved them. Yes, Riley thought everything was gay, but he was a kid and I forgave him for that little piece of stupidity that I see echoed everywhere anyway. At least he stood for not being a complete moron, a little testament to the stupid way that people can think and a nudge at correcting that line of thinking. Huey was noble as hell and determined and good and a domestic fawkin' terrorist. He made my days better for it. Ten years old and he read books and thought thoughts that didn't have anything to do with drugs, cash and big booty bitches.
I am sad today, which is why I opened this raggedy ass thing back up and decided to rant upon it for a minute or two. This is the 'lamenting of the women' that Conan the Barbarian was talking about. I feel a great sense of loss.
I'm pretty late with this but I was bothered by the general consensus when it came to thoughts on why this wonderful show was shut down like it was. A lot of people said that McGruder sold out, and, maybe he did. It's impossible to move in this world without selling out. It's just the way it is. Some of the things that he said make his selling out unlikely to me. He seems more sad than anything from the slight vibe I got out of reading some of his posts when this happened. But it doesn't matter how he feels or what really happened. The fact of the matter is, the marvelous show is gone. What's left of it is a joke just like most of the other stuff that is shoved down our throats through our eye sockets. And nothing will be done about it.
Creativity squashed and stolen is normal for America. I found this out the very hard way. On a personal level, I don't mind so much. As long as there is an internet, I can write my little psycho pornos and please those that will read them. However, there is a greater, less personal, and more WORLD kind of problem. Beautiful things are killed if the message isn't right. They are altered and changed and they pretend to be decent but they are usually some kind of mockery. Those are the things that are promoted. And when someone comes along that wants to do something beautiful they are forced into a box and killed off or altered in some way so that the beauty that would shine from them is... considerably less.
And no one does a fucking thing about it. CAN'T. And it is kept that way. Carefully maintained like a garden full of poisonous flowers. Every time something beautiful and meaningful grows -- chop it down. So, unlike others, it doesn't matter to me if McGruder sold out of not (doubt it tho). The problem is the insane NEED that exists to destroy every beautiful thing, to cheapen it, and drag it down.
Thank goodness I've learned to go elsewhere to get my entertainment these days. I'm tired of being spoonfed the same ratchet shit over and over and over with a shiny new cover, by untalented puppets feeding off the Satan-I-don't-believe-In's milky STD infected Teat ...
A genetically engineered werewolf in outer space who happens to secretly be an angel....
Where have I heard that before?
So much trouble getting this book out. Held up by the company that was supposed to distribute it. And it never did get proper distribution and still doesn't have it. Asked to sign up with a subsidiary of said company so that they would get 60% of the take. Refused and never did make a dime off the thing, and had a couple of friends purchase the book just to see what would happen. Is it me? Or is it all bullshit?
The world, truly, is a ridiculous clown show.
Not accusing any one of anything -- no one comes to this blog anyway, right? Just checking the similarities even though it is well know that there is, of course ...
... nothing new under the sun.
Right?
Right.
Also, haven't watched the movie ... just seemed so very familiar.
I mean, one doesn't run into genetically engineered supernatural creatures in space very often...
...especially ones who happen to have wings and be angels...
does one?
Bury me mad deep motherfuckers.
http://bestebookskindle.com/library/S/Savage-Love.pdf Someone named Lloyd Sheppard is giving Savage Love away for free at this link. Lloyd is, apparently, the author of this book. It has my cover, so it must be real. I can not find a single link to any of the other sixteen books I've written, none of the reviews and Savage Love only comes up under my name if you find my blog first. I am not real. I am disappeared. I mean, srsly, what the fuck is this?
Never google your own name. It's terri-fuckin-fying. That said, I did find some old reviews for other things, just all jumbled and out of place and hard to find if you didn't know what you were looking for. Fuck you, Lloyd, whomever you are.
I'd be mad, but really it's all kind of funny in a hideous way.
I want to say that Dorian is my favorite Dragon Age character yet. Alas, Fenris the wolf exists and he is a bondage slave, sooooo... I refuse to choose between them. I am also fond of Zevran 'da thot' an Anders of the split persona.
Honestly, Morrigan, Alistair, and Aveline also rank.
Dorian is either number one or number two but he is top of the charts as far as charm and wit and character. His back story is a tumultuous sad thing, and he holds up well under all that sadness. He is just a greatly written being to hang around. I romanced him like romancing him was gonna pay me money.
And, srsly, dat assssssssss... tho.
Dorian is Dragon Age's first official all gay character. A female character can not romance him. And he is well thought out in my humble opinion and so beautiful he even made that damn mustache work.
I highly recommend these games to just about everybody. I am going through a very tough time right now and living in the Dragon Age world is extremely helpful in seeing myself through this. Stress relief. Nice people. Noble quests to save the world ...
...makes one forget that stress is normal, nice people don't exist, and nobility died a long fucking time ago.
I had to erect a temple to him. Considering I didn't erect such a temple for Fenris, maybe this makes Dorian number one. However, I have written Fernis fanfiction, but, I think, for Dorian...it's only a matter of time...
I can not say I hated this movie. No one dies in this movie, and, for me, that is already a winner's situation considering that this is a gay film -- or a film where the main character is gay. I can say that I didn't like the movie though. Mostly, because I have seen this movie before in this way and that way. The premise is familiar and I found it to be sad in the oddest way possible. I've noticed, in a lot of gay films, everybody dies, one of the lover's dies leaving the other alone, or ... something like what happened in this film, which I will not give away because the film is worthy of watching ultimately.
I will say that I sympathized completely with the main character. I felt his inner turmoil and confusion, his absolute fear in discovering and having to deal with the fact that he was gay and in love with his best friend (who, I guess, is supposed to be straight even though he likes jacking off with this kid, but whatever). Hell, that confused me, so there's no wonder it confused the main character.
These young men do that whole boat rowing competitive thing, and they go to camp in order to practice before the big competition. At camp, one of the teams they will be competing against is comprised of a bunch of gay boys called Queer-Something-Or-Other. Here, you have gay boys who are unashamedly themselves coming into contact with the main character who is just realizing this about himself. All this is coming to a boiling point because the best friend has gone and gotten himself a girlfriend that he is serious about. Chaos ensues. Hearts are broken. All to the beat of a summer storm that lasted a few minutes and knocked down some trees.
I don't like watching hearts breaking, so, when I say I don't like the film -- this is, mostly, the reason. But all in all, it's deeper than that. Like ... why tell this particular story over and over again? I understand that there's a brutal kind of reality to this ... but ... people reject other people for all kinds of reasons. Hearts get broken for all kinds of reasons. Why is this a ... formula ... for a certain kind of plot? What is gained by repeating this over and over and over ...?
...without, at least, adding something to it?
_____
The likelihood that Cinderella got the prince in real life ... is so small as to be ridiculously minuscule. In reality, that bitch would have to do some severe thot-walking in order to get that rich, handsome, wealthy man's attention with her broke ass. The likelihood that he would have just USED her and walked away is far more realistic. And she would have been cast out afterward with her bastard child that he didn't claim to become a prostitute or a beggar.
And, yet, girls across the world have been gifted since time immemorial with this image of the lovely girl getting the prince. Dreams were born of it/realities were carved from its backbone -- and lovely stories were inspired everywhere that took away the bad 'you can't do that' bits and made LOVE the key.
As far as fairy tales go, Summer Storm is the genuine Grimm's version of The Little Mermaid (though he did not die and he did learn to be himself, which is why the movie gets a pass from me--being yourself (and letting other people be themselves) is always good, no matter what, and maybe that is the thing that bears repeating over and over again until people FINALLY get it).
But if you, like I, want to watch Cinderella, then go watch: North Sea Texas.
2.13.2015
I grew up in a country that told me it was the land of the free. This fictional county was founded on freedoms--freedom of religion, freedom of a whole bunch of things. This country had a constitution that was, for the most part, a beautiful thing to read. And all throughout school, I was told that I was a free individual, that my freedoms had been fought and died for and paid for in blood.
Lies--all of it. They were lies in the beginning and they are still lies today--and, yet, that shit was preached to me hour after hour day after day in classroom after classroom. And I believed it as the sheep believes the Shepherd, even if the Shepherd is a wolf in disguise.
Today, I watched a man being gunned down by the police in Pasco, WA--a few minutes ago, actually. This man was causing some kind of disturbance. He was tossing rocks or something stupid like that. There's a theory floating around that he was mentally disturbed. He hadn't hurt anyone. In front of whomever happened to be there to watch (children included) the police shot this man down like a dog--even after he raised his hands in the universal gesture of absolute surrender.
It was murder most foul that the police did commit against this man. He ran from them, and they killed him.
Watching the news here is like being trapped in a nightmare on repeat--a nightmare that will not stop, and, sometimes, I can't believe this is my life, or life in general. Trapped here. Subject to this.
The police are killing people--putting them down like animals--and there are those who would still defend them, that find some reason in all this madness. And I just can't. I have, you see, a big flaw in my character. I think that all people are people equally. I can't justify, in my mind, the murder of a person for superficial reasons. Comments on this particular shooting run the gamut of people trying to reason out this unthinkable crime into something that they can deal with mentally and emotionally. They put distance between themselves and the victim for all sorts of reasons.
And I am left wondering how they can do that.
How they can watch him be riddled with bullets like that, and die like that, and feel ... nothing.
My thoughts aren't as naive as they may seem. I study history for sport and understanding. I understand that history has a tendency to repeat, and I understand that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
I understand, truly, how the people watching justify themselves, what mechanisms they use and why those convenient mechanisms are there deep within them. There is a lack of humanity in it all thought that repeats itself like an ugly song throughout history--again and again and again.
I watched a murder today by those who are paid to protect us. I watched the callous extinguishing of another life by the guardians of this society. I felt that shit deep down inside and it actually made me a little sick--but I couldn't move, couldn't turn it off, and saw it through to the very end of the short little video.
And life will go on like it didn't happen. People will stare at Kim Kardasian's ass, they will work their full time jobs for their full time masters, they will continue to be the same way they always are and always have been. Nothing I say here will matter at all, and I'm not really saying it to make any kind of difference. I'm writing here to take that weird queasy feeling out of my stomach--because writing things always makes me feel a little better about whatever's going on.
But, every once in a while, someone asks me about my tendency toward isolation. A woman who lives across the street from me said that "You are a very private person" and she wanted to know how I can do that -- be this way.
I wanted to know why she bothered to notice, ya know?
The truth is:
I do not respect stupidity.
I am subject to stupidity on a daily basis in more way that I can ever write down here. I walk around looking like shit on purpose most of the time--and I catch the odd stares and disapproval for my baggy pants and gym-fucking-shoes--relatively cheap ones at that cause I'll be damned if I spend three hundred dollars on a pair of fuckin' kicks. I walk like a thug, talk like a thug when I feel like it and am a thug every mother fucking day of my mother fucking life and I do it on purpose -- not because I want to be hurt or die and certainly not because I have some point to make -- but because I just don't care anymore, ultimately.
In the end, I will wink out like a match in the wind, and this shit will keep keeping on like it's been keeping on.
There's hope for the future. *rollz eyes*
One day, there may be a world where a man gets shot down in the street and people demand retribution for the senseless life taken. One day, one man may not feel the burning hot urge to kill another man so casually like its a badge of honor to have 'bagged' another human being. But in the wake of human trophies and gator bait and slavery and human zoos and witch burning and human pillars and human sacrifice -- all condoned by whatever society they were practiced in -- I believe that day is a long time coming.
"... nakedpictures of naked men doing sex to each other..." Pat Robertson
(I couldn't resist the quote actually. It's so pornographic coming out of a preacher's mouth. I had this fucker on repeat for at least a half an hour.)
Gay people should be able to get married. I think its a stupid issue, actually. It is, to me, arguing about nothing. The whole world holding its collective breath to see the outcome of ... nothing. It is an 'of course' kind of thing. It may seem as if I am downplaying the issue on some level by saying this. I have never seen the big ole hairy ass deal, yo. The cost of suffering and pain outweighs any thought to the contrary of letting people who want to marry ... marry. People are dying over this shit. People are being denied the ability to LOVE whomever they want in this cruel and rather loveless world. If a person can find happiness, then I want them to grab it and hold it for all its worth and as long as they can.
Jim Veach, a pastor from Georgia went on a rant against gay marriage that I watched today. He is the inspiration for this, my own, mini-rant. He says that god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve -- a popular dumb ass thing to say by those who do not support love between consenting adults. And one I am sick of hearing considering god 'created' Adam and Eve and Steve and everyfuckingthingandbodyelse, according to that book. This person went on and on about what is and what is not normal. He spoke with a certain measure of hatred and mockery that is not supposed to be the message of his book, and I could only think while listening to him that a few hundred years ago, he would have been just as passionate about the dissolution of the state of slavery that held this country in its grips for four hundred miserable, inhumane, fucking years.
Hatred and disrespect always sounds the same, shouted loud, from the pulpit. Its sad, really. In all truth, he is outmatched by James Manning and his Manning Report on Starbucks spreading ebola -- EBOWLAAAAH!!!-- via gay sex and semen or something ridiculous like that. Manning is a black man and he's written a couple of books, I guess, since they're up on the screen while he's ranting. I don't know what those books are about, and I don't want to know. What I wonder, instead, is whether Mr. Manning is aware that a lot of people are blaming The Dreaded Ebwolaaaah on black people--African's specifically, and there was a period where A students from Africa weren't allowed to attend American universities because of the Ebowlaaah! Meaning that hatred is circular and it is always going to swing around and bite you in the ass in the end.
I do not understand a concept of god that allows for hatred. People like those I mentioned above are funny to me -- except for the fact that they are dangerous. They preach love on one hand and fear and hatred on another -- all the while passing that collection plate. They feed fear and collect dollars. And it is obvious to the unafraid. And, most importantly, they don't care who they hurt in the process. There are people who believe them and go out and hurt other people based on the things they say. It is both irresponsible and predatory.
I can not be grateful for the simple common sense and human decency that has a lot of people laughing at the men I mentioned above. I worry instead that it takes humanity so long to do the right thing in almost all cases. For me, gay marriage isn't even an issue. I didn't have to waste five minutes in consideration as to whether it was right or wrong. Love between consenting adults is NEVER wrong--the fucking end. The fact that it needs to be fretted over and picked at like it is ... is, truly, beyond me on spiritual levels. And, anything that stands against love, I have to question. Srsly.
It's one of the few good things we have in this -- coporatized, work-yourself-to-death, dignity for your dreams, pay this bill and that bill, we are better than them, cut down the trees and build more shopping malls, poison the water, spray pesticides on the food, cancerous, Ebowlaaaah!, everybody's got that one creepy uncle -- motherfucker.
_____
STORYTIME
'cause ... why not?
I wrote Chosen for a contest on a gay website. I didn't think anything of it at the time. A story is a story. There was no monetary prize, but, at the time, I didn't care about things like that. I wanted the challenge of creating something that the individual who ran the site would like. He seemed picky and selective. I can't resist that.
Anyway, the rules were simple: 2,500 word count and the story had to take place in outer space. There was a naughtier rule about it all -- but I won't write it down here. I wrote the story in one night the night before the entries were due ' cause that's how I ROLL. I sent it in and let it be.
About a week later, I got a response from the site's owner who told me that he loved the story but asked a lot of personal questions -- mostly in regards to my name. Ultimately, I will never actually know what the problem was but he seemed to be in awe that I had hung out on his site without running the fuck away the second that I could see it ... let alone had written a story for his contest.
I found him, truthfully, mesmerizing, and, likely, always will for that conversation. In the end, he never could bring himself to reject the story, but, instead, closed the entire contest. I couldn't really feel bad about it as I published the story -- at least for a little while -- elsewhere.
So, I am writing this little dirty bit of fan fiction. And. Frankly. It's pissing me off. Some things take longer to write than others. Some things are mad complicated. And some things are just downright annoying. It doesn't help that everything has to be right by my standard. When I say that, I don't mean the writing has to be flawless and perfect--I couldn't judge that if I wanted to, and I tend to make hilarious mistakes that I find later. What has to be 'right' is the feel of the thing.
These two people really like each other. However, they both have hostile, combative personalities to some degree. I've never been one to make people do things--which, sorta, flies in the face of writing. These two are difficult to maneuver. And, I suppose, my concern with them isn't even them. It is that I won't finish the story and find out what happens in the end. That's a terrible place to be. I have several stories like that, fanfic or original, with characters that I really like--unfinished. It's like watching a good movie half way through. Here's to hoping that I finish this one and find out how it turns out. And, since I have to talk about something in this space in a reasonably regular fashion, I'll talk about what it means when I say that I enjoy writing fanfiction.
REASONS I LOVE DIS STUFF
Writing original fiction is a lawless places, and, normally, I enjoy living in that space a lot. There, I set up the rules. In a life that has been set up for me, with rules I do not often agree with but am forced to comply with, within the realm of writing I am free. I make the rules. The sky is whatever color that I say that it is. The trees are the size that I want them to be. I can eliminate racial prejudice or accelerate it. In my worlds, gender and sexuality may or may not matter. A lot of people say that writers have a god complex. I disagree with the arrogance implied in a god complex. I don't like the world as it is. I color it in ways that I can understand and that make sense to me. My motivation is desperation, not ego. That is why I write. You will rarely catch me penning original contemporary stuff unless asked/forced. I just don't care for it, and I leave that kind of thing to other people better suited to the task.
The lawless land of originality is tempered by fanfiction. Fanfiction, by it's very nature, is not an original piece of work. Here are lands with carefully constructed rules already in place. The difference is, I like the worlds, and I can choose to linger about in them. The characters are people already. Every once in a while, I can deepen their personas, but I can't change them. Herein, lies the challenge in writing fanfiction.
Do not alter the world unreasonably.
Do not alter the character of someone else's creation.
Having read a lot of fanfiction prior to writing it, I can honestly say that most of the writers do not adhere to the couple of rules set above. Of the two, the second one, I have found, is the most damning. If an author sets up a character's personality in a certain way, and you love that character enough to write about him/her, what is the point of changing their character? The person becomes different, unrecognizable as themselves, and the story changes from something of an homage to something maddening and laughable.
I think of it like a test personally--a test with rules that determine pass or fail. The rules are the construct of the world and the people I am working with. To fail, is to alter them. To pass, is to sneak a story into that world that could have believably happened within it. It is, in this way, harder than being original. And I love that. The challenge.
In the end, it's only really about how one plays the game.
_____
A friend recently reminded me of this song, and since I definitely feel like this, this miserably plagued kind of night, I'm gonna put it up.
Thank you, Jamie.
You see me now
A veteran
Of a thousand psychic wars
I've been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And I'm young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
Sidenote: to say that I don't know who put Light Yagami's uber-sexy, murderous ass in that there dress. But, if that person happens upon this and wants me to credit them all they have to do is say so.
I can't draw. I don't take photographs/paint. etc. All the work of other marvelous people.
