If you’re a subscriber: I’ll explain later. Otherwise, if you actually saw the url in the picture and chose to come here?
Whoa… Your attention to detail is amazing.
Uh… anyway…um.. here’s a picture I took while in Amsterdam.
Seriously?
Fan Fiction Fan Fiction
It’s been three years since I’ve posted anything. So why not restart with some AI-generated fan fiction? Someone on Twitter posted something about fan fiction and someone else agreed with it and someone else disagreed and so to be funny, I asked Chat GPT to write a piece of fan-fiction about the post. Here’s are the tweet I saw and the tweet it referenced:
I agree with hiatus, BTW. So here is what Chat GPT wrote for me (I made up the title):
Fifty Shades of FanFic
Leia sat cross-legged on her bed, her laptop perched on her lap. Outside, the rain tapped against the windowpane, creating a soothing rhythm. She couldn’t help but agree with the quote she had just read. Fanfiction had become her refuge from the monotony of recycled stories and profit-driven media.
Leia’s favorite show had lost its magic, replaced by shallow storylines and product placements. The characters she once adored had become hollow versions of themselves, mere puppets dancing to the tune of corporate greed. Disenchanted, she turned to fanfiction, seeking solace in the words crafted by fellow fans.
Her fingers danced across the keyboard, breathing life into a story of her own. Leia poured her heart and soul onto the digital canvas, weaving intricate plots and intricate character arcs. She wrote for the sheer joy of it, for the love she felt for the original material and the desire to see it flourish once again.
In her fanfiction, Leia found the depth and emotion that had been lacking in the mainstream media. The characters became vibrant and relatable, their struggles and triumphs resonating deeply within her. It was a labor of love, a testament to her devotion to the source material.
As the rain continued its gentle symphony outside, Leia’s imagination soared. Her story unfolded before her eyes, a tapestry of emotions, friendships, and adventures. With each word, she contributed to a community of like-minded individuals, bound by their shared passion.
Leia smiled as she finished a chapter, a sense of fulfillment washing over her. In this world of mass-produced entertainment, she had found her own haven, a place where creativity thrived and genuine love for storytelling reigned supreme. She knew that her fanfiction might never reach the same heights as the original work, but that didn’t matter. It was her own little sanctuary, a home-cooked meal shared with her friends who understood the true essence of storytelling.
Leia closed her laptop, feeling a renewed sense of purpose. Fanfiction had become her sanctuary, a refuge from the fast-food stories that left her empty. She knew that as long as there were passionate fans like herself, the spirit of storytelling would continue to thrive, even in a world dominated by profit-driven entertainment. And in that realization, Leia found hope for the future, one where the power of genuine love for the source material would prevail.
F’n brilliant.
I Drawed This
Behold:
Based on a quick tutorial by Steve Ray Bro. Posting it here for no reason. I am a rank-and-file beginner when it comes to:
- Drawing
- Composing
- Photoshopping
- Arting
- Etcetering
But that’s okay. I had fun.
More to come, maybe.
It Is Finished
A lot of things happened today.
- I watched a Hearthstone event on Twitch and got a free pack for it. Inside: a legendary card.
- I made it to Platinum for the first time on an eight-game winning streak. My reward: a classic epic that I only had one of before.
- Got my braces tightened.
- Drank a 6-pack of beer.
- Got my 500th Priest win!
I also made a metric ass-ton of noodles and drowned them in a garlic meat sauce, but that wasn’t so much an accomplishment as a confession.
I’ve notice that I win way more playing in the evening (Pacific time) than in the morning. I don’t know who’s playing in which time-zone at those times, but it’s how I got to Platinum. And the thing is, I did it after I go my 500th priest win. After all the grinding, I went ahead and played two more games to get to the next floor.
So there’s two milestones knocked out. I have earned my hangover. I should take a break from hearthstone now, at least until the new moth begins, but I’m kind of eager to see which class rustles my jimmies for the next haul. For the record, Shaman is the class that lags behind the most for me. Also, I didn’t see them too much on the ladder.
Or whatever, but I doubt I’ll hit Platinum five. But that’s okay. I now have a golden priest that I can ignore for the next few years.
Greetings From Larry
Been playing the new Microsoft Flight Simulator a lot over the last few days.
Also, unrelated: got a postcard from my pal Larry Penobscot, the pilot.
Soon I’ll Never Have to Play Priest Again*
*Until it’s time to go for 1000 wins.
Only 25 wins to go before I finally get my golden priest. It feels like I’ve been playing priest for ever and that’s probably because I have; I’ve been playing priest exclusively for so long that space-time has warped around my game screen and no matter what class I pick to play, it’s priest, and versus control decks every game last for about a million years, maybe two, three if we both hit fatigue.
I’ll probably end up going for all 25 wins in one play session, and in that way achieve a kind of brain-fuzz and body odor that only a priest could love. And I mean that in as disgusting a way as you can imagine. Share my suffering. Picture me, bloated, reeking, reeling, shouting at my computer screen at three in the morning. “DAMN IT STOP PLAYING DEVOLVING MISSILES JANA! I WANT TO SEE MY FAMILY AGAIN YOU @#$%^&!
It hasn’t been all bad. You can see in the screenshot below my rank is Gold 2. I’ve been as high as Gold 1. For anyone worth their salt, that’s chump change, but for a metaphor mixer like me, it’s pretty good. Chalk it up to perseverance not being smart enough to know when to stop. And dumb luck. Lots ‘n lots of dumb luck.
Gonna put on some Judas Priest, grab my rosary-fidget-spinner, and move the Keurig over next to my desk. Should be a hoot and a holler. And then, after a nice rest (until, say 2022) I’ll chase golden shaman. Because I hate myself.
Full Frontal Cottage
Just now, today, literally seconds before I started writing this very sentence, I heard of a thing called “Cottagecore.”
Apparently that’s when folks are into and promote old-timey chores like gathering berries and making butter by hand and other crafts of that ilk. I think that’s wonderful. Make fun of Portlandia hipsters all you want (I do, that is, make fun of them all I want) but if people like something, let them like it, I say.
What I find fascinating is that there’s a word for this at all. And what a great word! I really dig that “-core” part. I was aware of -core things but not at this level. The very brief research I did on Cottagecore also mentions Grandmacore, Farmcore, Goblincore and Fairiecore. This is fantastic. I mean, come on- how can anyone not find the nomenclature “Grandmacore” fascinating?
It reminds me, in a way, of “Shabby chic,” which a friend told me describes her interior design aesthetic. I mean it reminds me not of the aesthetic itself, but of the nomenclature, the “chic” part. So damn cool. If her distressed entertainment center and tea-stained throw pillows are Shabby chic, then my shelf of Lego mini-figures and poster of Brandon Lee from The Crow could be “Sad Geek chic.” I am being serious here.
And I know “-core” is used for some music styles. “Nerdcore” involves rapping about Star Wars and RPGs. “Metalcore” is heavy metal mixed with punk, and includes sub-genres such as “Mathcore,” “Deathcore,” and “Electroniccore.” I have never listened to Deathcore, (not that there’s anything wrong with it) but I do enjoy doodling the word on bits of scrap paper when I’m on boring conference calls.
Also, and the reason I’m even writing this, the use of “-core” reminds me “-punk.” You’ve heard of Steampunk, of course. That’s an aesthetic design that draws from the steam-powered tech of the late 19th century. In books, it’s a sub-genre of science-fiction. There’s also Cyberpunk, an aesthetic grounded in high tech juxtaposed with dystopian points of view.
I’d argue that you can create a -punk aesthetic, basically, by picking a particular level of technology, root a world in it, then start telling stories with contemporary themes, challenges, and characters. For example, there’s The Flintstones— that’s “Stonepunk.” You can go even further, by using fictional technologies. The Jetsons, for example. I’d call that “Retro-futurepunk.”
It’s not just that we’re creating fantasy or sci-fi settings. The idea is that the aesthetic is as much a character as any of the characters. Argumentatively, Game of Thrones could be re-skinned as a sci-fi epic, and the same story could be told. Or Star Trek could be redone as a western. But try re-writing Mona Lisa Overdrive as a tale set in 18th century Japan. I mean, Molly Millions would make a compelling samurai, but you’d lose that cyberpunk theme of humanity evolving itself into extinction.
Oh sure, a really really good writer could pull it off, I guess, but when we read -punk novels, we do so for the immersion. When we were kids, they told us that books can take us any place we want to go. And -punk novels fulfill that promise by letting us live there (for a few hundred pages). “Mona Lisa Shogun” could be immersive, but I think you’d lose all that cozy existential angst that Cyberpunk offers up for your consumption and pleasure.
Back to -core. All of the above, going from -core to -chic to -punk, lit up my brain as soon as I read the word Cottagecore. So now I have to wonder what a Cottagepunk story would look like.
Off the top of my head, Cottagepunk would be a world where all technology is rooted in home-style crafts and such. A TV would be a wooden box with a needle-point “screen.” People would create, trade, and comment on bread recipes. Instead of guns, the 2nd Amendment would be about the right to bear pitchforks. Romeo falls in love with Juliet, but Romeo’s family farms corn and Juliet’s farms beets.
Essentially, I’m thinking the characters from Winnie the Pooh, turned human, and then the plot from Die Hard. Maybe I’ll give it a try, since I like goofing with this sort of thing. I once tried to write a steam-punk-lego-star-wars-zombie story. It wasn’t any good, but it was fun. And that’s all that really matters.
This nomenclature, these -cores and -chics and -punks, they’re interchangeable. You could call it Cyber chic or Shabbypunk or Stonecore if you wanted. Heck, write a novel about an old woman who runs for president on a platform of Make Baking Great Again but she wins by hacking the voting booths and call it “Granniegate: a Gardencore novel.”
For me, naming that aesthetic, creating the nomenclature, that’s where the fun starts, because then we can start imagining things we never imagined we could imagine before.
Whoa. Mind blown. I need a homemade cookie and a Juul.
Cogito Argot Sum
Nothing exists except as an opinion, and that opinion can only be communicated to people who already get it. If you don’t know the lingo, you can’t know the truth.
Instagram Baddie. A young lady with remarkable skill and patience spends considerable time applying cosmetics. The result is flawless. Impeccable. Instantly classic. She is beautiful, but why? Not to attract a mate and procreate. Not to impress or suppress a rival. Not even take satisfaction in her own beauty and talent, to reflect on her self-worth as a self-realized creature captured in a selfie. No, she does it for one reason only: the lingo.
Incel. A young man, raised in a world of Chads bagging Bettys, is taught that sexual satisfaction is his right. His right as a human, his right as a man, his right as a horny man. But the same world explains to him that rights are just promises and promises are made to be broken. Women, otherwise powerless, deny him what’s rightfully his. So he goes online and ejaculates epithets at the XX species. His seed impregnates other young men trapped in their virginity, and they conceive more hate and vitriol. So what. It’s been happening forever. But now we have a word for it.
An interesting word, maybe even a fun word. A label, yes, but calling an orange and apple doesn’t make it red. The word is fun to throw around, to say, to pretend to describe.
“I paid for dinner, you should have sex with me.”
“Fuckin’ incel.”
“No I’m not.”
“When you post about it on r/redpill, don’t forget to tell them you took me Applebee’s.”
“Whatever, whore.”
“If you meant to say IG Baddie, thanks.”
“Who’d want to fuck three inches of pancake batter anyway?”
“You did, apparently.”
“Nah, that’s why God invented doggy style.”
“Or maybe it’s so even tiny dicks have a chance of getting in.”
“No, but seriously. Why do you wear so much makeup.”
“Because I want to.”
“I bet you’re pretty without it.”
“I bet you’re ugly no matter what I wear.”
“That’s kind of profound.”
“Thanks. Order me another IPA.”
“Okay.”
“We’re still not fucking.”
“I agree one hundred percent.”
She’s not an IG Baddie. She’s just a woman who wants to eat, crap, screw, and sleep. He’s not an incel. He’s just a guy who wants to dine, shit, fuck, and take a nap. But the lingo is easier to deal with than a supercomplex, ever-changing, often chaotic amalgam of emotions, attitudes, and ethics.
You use words to say what you’re going to say, and then you use words to say what you said. And usually what you’re going to say is that what you said is not what you were going to say (and then you say what you’re going to say is that what you were going to say is not what you were going to say you said).
That’s hard to keep track of, so lingo. Jargon. Not just words, but words with fuzzy connotations built in so you can connect them up with any context you feel like. Metaphors, inverted. A TikTok Thot sits at home, sipping whiskey, watching the local news on TV. She’s in PJs, in a robe, she’s just had a shower, she spent the day reffing youth soccer. The news is over, she picks up her phone, goes to her bedroom, her dresser, picks out a fun two-piece she got last time she was in Cabo.
You know the rest. Why? Lingo.
That’s character development, right there. I said TikTok Thot, and then I added all kinds of artifacts. Whiskey, the news, PJs and a robe. If I hadn’t used lingo, you would need to know what kind of whiskey, what was on the news. Instead of building the girl detail by detail, I carved away at the lingo, detail by detail.
And that’s me writing, but we do it all the time, in real-life, in real-time. We use lingo to cast the characters, stock the scene with props, and develop the script.
A guy who loves playing Super Smash Brothers picks up a controller and gives it to the nurse assigned to monitor his vital signs. Wait, wait, what’s the significance of Super Smash Brothers, are we to understand a theme of violence, or a theme of violence as entertainment? Why is it a controller, is control going to be a theme? Why is a nurse monitoring him? Are we supposed to draw a connection between his video-game character’s “hit points” and his own “vital signs”?
That’s too much to think about after just one sentence, and to keep track of when the next sentence recontextualizes all of that stuff. Even for the guy, who likes Super Smash Brothers because he’s good at it. And for the nurse, who has been secretly practicing SSB just for this day.
A gamer grabs a joycon and hands it to his caregiver. She proceeds to whip his ass.
Lingo. Now we can point out that the game was a melee game. That the kid’s on life-support. That the nurse forgot about the monitoring screen. This could have happened: while they were playing, one of the alarms went off. She could have let the kid die! No, he didn’t die, but he almost could have died. Well, no, that alarm goes off all the time. The nurse knows, without even thinking about it, when it matters and when it doesn’t. If the kid had really could have been dying, the nurse would have been able to tell, even as she was concentrating on executing a sweet combo.
It’s a joke that no one gets. The game and the caregiver had a shared experience that existed entirely devoid of the bits and pieces that define them as people and define their relationship. An alarm went off and it didn’t matter (he was fine; stupid machine) and it also didn’t matter (no one was paying attention).
By using lingo, we can ignore the “could’ves.” I’m explaining all of this via fictional examples, but this is real life too. There’s a real human being having an ironic interaction with another real human being. But they don’t think of themselves as a collection of their individual traits. They think of themselves in easy-to-think-about words, special words.
Lingo, jargon, argot. Slang, if you want. This is why you’re not allowed to use the N word.
Matchup!
Writing Prompt: Write a story featuring a pathological liar, a cow, and a cardboard box.
Jamie signed his name at the bottom of the painting,on the side of a cardboard box, of a cow, then put the box on a shelf next to other boxes with similarly bucolic paintings.
He turned to face a crowd of reporters behind. “And that, ladies and gentleman, completes number 523. Questions?”
“Why boxes?” said a man near the front, holding a notepad and a pencil, dressed in a sloppy suit one size too big for him, battered fedora, five o’clock shadow, droopy eyelids, bottle o’ hootch in his back pocket.
Jamie gazed at the reporter for a few beats, his face expressionless. “Why not?” he finally said. He turned to another. “Yes?”
A woman in a mauve pantsuit, lots of hair, lots of makeup. “Jill St. Parable, County Gazette-Informer. ‘An op-ed in ‘Artist Review’ last week claimed that your farm credentials are thin, quote, ‘he’s as lea as the one from Star Wars.’ What is your response?”
Jamie lowered his eye, sighed, then turned to the box he’d just installed. He ran a finger gently along the line of the cow’s back. “I am capable of enormous acts of imagination. I am an artist, afterall. And yes, I could have wrought from the damp, dark, secret places of my soul these scenes. Green for grass, red for barn, blue for sky. Easy. But this… this cow.” He turned back to the reporters. “The truth is, this cow and I were lovers.”
The crowd of journalists remained silent. Until someone in the back said. “Sexually?”
Jamie smiled a grim smile. “Oh my. Yes. I don’t know how you make love, whoever said that, but if it’s with the pen, I’m afraid this is one arena where the pen is not as mighty as the sword.”
“So, bestiality,” said the one in the fedora.
“Were all animals, aren’t we?” Jamie said. He frowned. “Anyone who’s died the little death in the arms of another is an animal-fucker, yes? I know what I said may seem, well, shocking. But it’s not provocative because of the word you give it. Our forbidden love stands alone, take it however you like, you needn’t infantilize it with pro-homospecies nomenclature.”
“Isn’t that illegal,” someone said.
Jamie shrugged. “That’s what artists do. We break rules. We push boundaries. We go to the uncomfortable places that everyone dreams of going but are too terrified to go. And we bring back hope, don’t we. We bring back love.
“You were in love,” said fedora.
Jamie smiled at him, as if to forgive the boxes question, closed his eyes, and nodded. “Would I have loved Cleo if I weren’t an artist? Ask me if I would have shat different shaped feces if I’d eaten cheerios instead of muslix this morning. I am what I am. It is all that I am. If I were not an artist, I would not be.
“We had a very tender relationship, Cleopatra and I, and while I won’t deny, in fact I admit proudly, to our partaking in the carnal delights, there were also our moments of simple companionship. Sharing a glass of wine and a fistful of hay. Or talking about the moon, and lowing. She, lying on her side, gently snoring, while I sat against her bulging teats, scribbling meaningless doodles in my thick, care-worn sketch pad.
“I hear people say ‘She got me,’ or ‘he gets me,’ or ‘I want someone who understands me.’ Let me be clear. That is not what Cle and I had. She didn’t ‘get’ me. No one ‘gets’ a true artist. No one, not even the most sublimely beautiful, kind-hearted, devotional, self-sacrificing, three-quarters-ton bovine ‘understands’ what the artist’s self-torture is like. The isolation, the loneliness, staring with bruised eyes through tears of blood into that harrowing, soul-raping pit of hell we call ‘truth.’
“She was my temporary solace. And that’s all we can ask of our muses. Someone or something that can take us out of ourselves long enough to act as a conduit, a vessel to let the canvas drink the colors of said truth.” Jamie smiled warmly at fedora. “Or cardboard, in my case.”
Fedora wept, as the other reporters scribbled furiously on their notepads.
“She knew she could never be a cure for the disease that is imagination. She could only be hospice. And I knew she knew. I knew she knew hers was to be ever the mistress to me, a man betrothed to art. And I loved her for it, as much as a man can love something other than the self-hatred that drives him to plunge into a sea of madness long enough to bring back a fish of… of…” A tear trickled down his cheek as his eyes held a far-off look.
The journalists ceased their writing, frozen, waiting expectantly.
Jamie smiled. “Well, words are not my forte, are they. I can only ‘speak’ with a brush and some acrylics. So, honestly, all I can say in response to this alleged ‘Artist Review,’ is this,” and with that, he held a hand up and swept it before his boxes.
Of course none of it was true. But the applause started in the back.
New Holiday
Writing Prompt: Come up with a new holiday. Explain why and how it should be celebrated.
Next week is Armless Day. It’s a day for celebrating people who do not have arms. Take it how you want. People who literally have no appendages dangling from their shoulders. Or people who don’t have guns. Think of it like this. Armistice Day is the day we celebrate the end of world war something. Armistice, armisless, armsless, armless. Not much of a stretch. And you can’t carry guns if you don’t have hands. And you can’t have hands if you don’t have arms.
Although there are some fuckers out there. Guys born without arms or legs who practice up and can shoot a bow and arrow while doing a backflip through a flaming hoop. I don’t know when that would be a necessary skill. But I like the irony. Guy with no arms who takes that handicap and turns it into a youtube video. Armless day is for him.
What should you do. Well, there’s options. Some folks pull their arms into the shorts and go through their day. Frankly, that’s ridiculous. But so is religion, and look at the hold that has on the world. Other folks strap all manner of device to their arms. Painful things, straps with barbs, rough stuff that tugs at their arm hairs. There they go with the religion crap again. The idea I guess is to not take arms for granted. Load of crap if you ask me.
If you ask me, here’s what I do. I go to a bar. What good is a holiday if you can’t go to a bar. There’s this culture out there that Xmas sucks, cause of family. Take your goddamn family to a bar. Get piss drunk with your Aunt Clorita. Have a fuckin’ fist-fight with your dad. Trust me, by last call, you all be in love again. So, I go to a bar, I get a booth, I get a few drinks in me. I trap my arm between me and the wall. Eventually my arm goes to sleep. Now I’m armless.
Is it much? No. But so what. President’s day, arbor day, christ, even armistice day. Who celebrates those anymore. If I had a time machine, I’d go back to when I was 15 and got my ass kicked by Lemar Washington. But then I’d go back to George himself, and say, guess what. They’re going to celebrate your birthday by putting sheets on sale. Still worth it, freezing your ass off at Valley Forge? Then I’d asked to see his teeth.
Maybe we should have a toothless day. A fella could make a killing selling fake wooden fake teeth. I mean capitalism, right. That’s all holidays are good for anymore.