It Goes Both Ways

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We’ve spent the last 4 years on the butt-end of Trump Derangement syndrome, a very real psychological phenomenon affecting millions of people worldwide, not just Americans. They’ve been conditioned to vacillate and quiver by a constant stream of emotionally-charged “information” (using that term loosely, because as I have pointed out, most news is false even when the journalists aren’t lying, which they often are). What I think we forget is that these things can go the other way as well, not so much in “Democrat derangement syndrome” but in viewing Trump as something more than he is. To most of…

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Auto-Allegory, or how Starfire is a Terrible Mother

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I don’t like to give publicity to garbage like this, but it’s such an instructive moment for writing and understanding people I can’t help myself: Basically, this is about DC superhero Starfire’s daughter (Raven, I think), who is an angsty 90s-2000s goth girl who is also obese and a lesbian, and of course resents her beautiful mother. The surface level complain is obvious – this is bad fan fiction and denigrates established characters, pushes a gratuitous woke agenda at the expense of a good story, and is generally low-quality writing and art. Add to that the fact that it will…

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Appeals to Processes

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For anyone reading this in the future, the US is in the midst of a highly contested election. I don’t have the space to go over all the details, but the short version is that Donald Trump appears to be the victim of election fraud, as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots, all for his opponent Joe Biden, were “discovered” overnight, only in key battleground states and districts controlled by the Democrat party. This, however, provides a great time to talk about systems, processes, and the appeal to processes as a stand-in for the good. “Democracy” is something the American…

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Trump will win

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Like anything, I could be wrong, but as of All Saints Day, I see Trump winning. This is based on two things: Energy Alignment I’ve noticed an immediate and insane uptick in energy the last few days, and all of it is coming from people clustered in several political alignments, namely rural and suburban dwellers who are opposed to the various measures intended by the government to stop the spread of the Wu-flu, aka Covid19. I live in California, specifically, rural California, though I’m not too far from a mid-size city (Modesto), and not far enough from a large city…

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Adaptations

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It’s not hard, or at least, it shouldn’t be when you have 100 million + dollars to fling around. So why so much failure? Because “Hollywood,” as the collection of producers etc. that run the business, doesn’t care a lick about the stories that they adapt. They adapt things like books and movies for two reasons: There is already a built-in fanbase (in other words, some guarantee on a return on investment). The key elements of the story have already been filtered in the free market to have wide appeal. In other words, the book was already successful, so a…

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Gen Y Stares at the Mirror

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I realize with my latest story, another one focusing on the experiences and in some ways plight of members of “Generation Y,” those of us born between 1975 and 1985 (give or take), that I have spent a good part of the last year reflecting on my age cohort. I don’t think this is uncommon or it is coincidental with me turning 37 this year. Indeed, there is a lot of reflecting that could not be done prior to reaching the second half of my thirties, simply because I didn’t have enough context to understand my past experiences and what…

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Jimmy Turns Thirty-Five (A Gen Y Story)

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Jimmy, who was “James” only on his tax documents, was looking forward to his thirty-fifth birthday. Like always, he had carefully managed his money over the year to provide for all the things he wanted and to have a bit extra to buy himself something special for his birthday. This year, it was a doozy. He had seen it coming all year and had taken extra care to stow away even more of his pizza delivery tips (which were more than usual), actively cutting back on his consumption of alcohol and pot. What had Jimmy’s mind wandering so much when…

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How to self-publish a book

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Occasionally, I get messages from people trying to break into the “traditional” (as in 20th century) publishing industry, and they always seem to be under some distress. In fact, the messages often come off like the pleading of abuse victims, with authors talking publicly on twitter sounding like battered women excusing their abuser. Everybody is aware of how lame it is to “pay” an agent (in reality, they pay you, and you better hope they are honest, unlike Chuck Palahniuk’s agent, who left him broke) to have coffee with someone at the publishing imprint, who then takes years to make…

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Stop Seeking Magic Fixes Your Problems!

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This is it! This is what my entire existence on YouTube has really been about, now that I stop to think about it: There is no magical secret that will fix what is wrong or make you good at something quickly. Sorry, folks, you can’t learn to play guitar in six weeks. You can’t write a guaranteed best-seller in two days with the “secret story formula.” You can’t become a shredded bodybuilder in six weeks by learning this “one diet trick.” STOP LOOKING FOR EASY SOLUTIONS. The more advanced you get in any field, the more you learn that “secrets”…

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Stuff is not “Just Stuff”

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These argument have been popular lately with the fallout from the Black Lives Matter (sort of, now antifa) riots and banditry: that you can replace your stuff and that crime arises from conditions the criminal has no choice over. These arguments are actually totally incoherent. Let’s dive into them, both as they are articulated here as well as the wider “debate.” First, the premise that physical goods are replaceable is false. Some things are replaceable, other things are not. I can replace my copy of Lord of the Rings. I cannot replace the photographs of my dead grandparents. Even goods…

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