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I developed two new years resolutions after the main event happened.  The resolutions snuck up on me throughout the beginning of January and I kept them because I figured they weren’t such bad ideas.

One is fairly traditional: Finish a novel.  We’ve got 14,000 words down and 80,000 to go and I’ve found the whole business of building a novel to be surprisingly do-able as I’m a windbag.

The second one is a bit more non-traditional and has offended a few sensibilities: I am not going to curse this year.

I think my generation was raised in a very prudish world of network television FCC guidelines, and the oppressive nature of these censors had a direct effect on how we communicate online.  While you couldn’t say certain words on TV, we found we could say all of the most horrible rude words on the Internet, and everyone went for it with amazing gusto.

When I started blogging I went for it too.  I had C-words, and N-words, and F-words, and in some cases I melded two or three curse words together to make new and crazier curse words.

George Carlin and Howard Stern were my patron saints of cursing and anti-censorship from the very beginning.

But something happened that changed the renaissance of cursing for me, and I think the kids had a lot to do with it.  There were stories of loser 8 year olds calling each other the F word over Xbox live, and stories of people calling girls C-words (and then saying ‘had nothing to do with her sex bro), and people using the F word less for what it meant and more as an in-between words lyric that didn’t really mean anything.

I don’t watch TV any more–I just load up Netflix–so the FCC can censor networks all it wants, and Howard Stern moved to satellite where he’s free to curse, and I find that the oppressive censoring of curse words are no longer a reality for me.

But now everyone is George Carlin calling Richard Pryor the N word, but they’re not doing standup when they do that, it’s happening in inboxes and on message boards, and people yuck it up and move on without a care of the harm they’re doing.

In other words, there is a surplus of free speech.  You still can’t shout fire in a crowded theater without getting arrested, but you can stand up in the online theater and yell out all curse words known to man without immediate repercussions, and I don’t want a part of that.

Now I have given myself a few stipulations:

1. I can quote other people cursing if it is important to the conversation

2. I can create similar words in case I need to curse.  For example “Shitstorm” becomes “poop tornado.”

3. I can curse if whatever I’m saying demands it. I mean I have to wait for crowning moments of awesome in order to curse.  I have to be facing down the most bigoted southern lawyer in existence before I rise from my wheelchair and bellow out a mighty FUCK YOU, SIR! 

Please join me in protecting our curse words, for they are national treasures.

That’s a hard thing to convey without breaking out complicated plots that end up with people holding hands or a video of the It’s a Small World ride in Disneyland.

Oh what the hell.

Btw reading It’s a Small World described as the world’s happiest cruise makes me think of the world’s saddest cruise: It’s A Huge Improbable and Scary World where every rider is meant to think of the world as a huge uncaring place where your friend and family’s love isn’t real.

It’s A Huge Improbable and Scary World isn’t a big money-maker.

Anyway, this space is still mine and I’ve still thought about it for a great deal.  And now that I’m off of my Skyrim addiction I will start updating it again.  One of the bigger deals so far is that I’m writing a novel, fiction even, because making things up has been a strong suit of mine ever since I faked an illness at 13 to get out of mandatory Tae Kwon Do classes.

After I’m done I may tackle non-fiction; which wikipedia defines as: “the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact. This presentation may be accurate or not—that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question—however, it is generally assumed that authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition”

Which sounds an awful lot like lying to me, but what do I know?

I used to think Republicans were just assholes, but not until recently have I started to think of them as evolutionary dead ends.  

Their debates have included cheering for people dying and audience members booing a soldier because he was gay.  Weren’t these the same people who tried to guilt the entire country to “support our troops” no matter what?  Didn’t they have Sarah Palin parrot about “death squads” to prevent universal healthcare from happening?

Do they actually stand for anything?  

Here’s a thought experiment, tell me why it is wrong to commit genocide.  Here’s my answer: no matter who you choose to wipe out, you’ll be wiping out something of value, something worth saving, be it culture, values, kinship, art; a group of people, no matter how odious they appear to be, will be worth saving.

Tea Party Republicans are not worth saving. They have no culture, no art, no values to speak of, and they stand for nothing. They are husks of humanity, there’s nothing inside them and nothing of value to them.  Juggalos are worth saving over Republicans.  Here’s a juggalo in case you don’t know: 

They’re some of the worst people in the world: Mysogynists, racists, freeloading, and dirty as all hell, but if a house full of Juggalos was burning next to a house full of Tea Party people it would be no contest, I’m saving the Juggalos because they have some sort of value system that’s identifiable on a very base level.

Bert and Ernie being gay is as American as apple pie and baseball.  Maybe we didn’t know they were gay when we were kids, but a few years later we caught them on Family Guy  and saw them being gay in a musical, and it clicked all of a sudden.  Of course they were gay, and of course Liberace wasn’t waiting for the right one, and of course Freddie Mercury was in a band called Queen and made everyone sing gay songs. 

A bunch of internet absurdists signed a petition asking them to be married (note the creepy headline use of “Group” What group? GLAAD? The NCAA? Neo Nazis!?) . Sesame’s response was tasteful, but pop culture watchdogs were overwhelmingly negative.

Bert Ernie: Just Friends
5 Reasons why Bert and Ernie shouldn’t get married

What kind of attitude is this?  Sesame Street can teach kids about death, but not about love? Do they have to have genitals to marry? Do they have to have anal to wed?  Should we go into Bert and Ernie’s house and observe them sleeping before we give the ok for the marriage to happen?

What, kids don’t have play marriages? 

Seems to me that this is less about Bert and Ernie and more about what we want our kids to know.  It looks like every adult in the United States with half a functioning brain knows that Bert and Ernie are gay but we don’t want “the kids” to know?  Why? Because they’ll decide it’s what they want to do, and maybe you wouldn’t like that?

Shame on you America.  

Maybe we’re not ready for Bert and Ernie to be gay in public, maybe this debate is too sophisticated for the adults in the room.

Instead, maybe Bert and Ernie should play gay chicken, have Bert touch Ernie’s cock and see if he flinches away?  Oh but your kids would never do that either, right??

The LA riots and the London riots aren’t about one political message because there isn’t any.  Asking a rioter why they riot is like asking a lion why they kill.  I think a population is shaped by their surroundings to be a violent and cruel animal that values nothing except for material goods looted from a store window.  If they are raised with no respect, no values, injustice by locals, and no education then they operate on a base level of lawlessness. 

And don’t think I’m defending the rioter, in fact, I’m warning the innocent people of London that their best recourse might be to run.  When a riot like this occurs then it is poison; even when the police stop the riot, the sentiment remains.  This riot is worse than a political upheavel that can be quelled, it is a cold and bitter thing, it is the fin on the man-eating shark.  

I ran from Los Angeles because I don’t think that city was interested in solutions. Friends in London, In the coming months pay attention to the response to this riot by your local government officials and by the police.  The riots shouldn’t have happened, they should have prevented a climate like this from swelling, but they did, will they fix things now? Will they be interested in reform? Will there be outreach? Education? 

If everything returns to business as usual then get the fuck out of there.

Speaking with authority is a practice I want to get into more often as I get older, so in that spirit I’d like to offer up a bit of life experience regarding love.  

There was a moment where I realized that Ant and I could function on a level beyond what I can by myself, and it’s when we made Thanksgiving dinner together.  Previously I doubted I could ever make that meal, but with a few phone calls and some know-how, we prepared a meal that we both gobbled up.  The impossible task was accomplished and we were not only boyfriend and boyfriend but a team. This is when I realized that I needed this in my life.

The other bit of info is about butterflies in your stomach, which people claim go away with time. I suspect that’s inaccurate.  The butterflies in your stomach don’t go away, but you go about your day less mindful of them, similar to how one isn’t consciously aware that one is breathing.  I say this because when I see him waking up in the morning I am aware of those butterflies and I remember that I’m breathing.

Happy Anniversary Ant!

You were the home of films I wanted my boyfriend to see and home of all the Ken Burns documentaries that nobody but me wanted to see. Every week I would forget what I had added and you would surprise me by showing up in my inbox in your bright red and happy trappings.  Remember when I forgot what was on top of my DVD queue and an email was sent to me saying that Ghostbusters was on its way but I meant to move it out of the queue because I had just caught it somewhere else? I do.

Honestly I had two other Netflix member’s passwords because they thought I could add more movies to their DVD queue.  Netflix, your customers entrusted me to entertain them with movie selections culled from your service.  It brought us all together and made so many people happy.

But you’re gone now.

We’ll deal the best way we possibly can, by moving on, either to some Redboxes or our local video store or…hey I hear the Internet streams movies illegally now.  Netflix DVD queue, you will be missed.  MY Netflix DVD queue…we’ll always have Woody Allen’s Manhattan Murder Mystery.

Play the video now please:

RIP: My Netflix DVD Queue

2010 – 2011

 
Breaking Bad: Season 1: Disc 2
Christopher and His Kind
Batman: The Animated Series: Vol. 1...
Breakfast on Pluto
Wrecked
Holy Mountain
Waltz with Bashir
Eastbound and Down: Season 1: Disc 1
Eastbound and Down: Season 1: Disc 2
Mitch Hedberg: Mitch All Together
Yi Yi
Charlie Bartlett
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Naked Boys Singing!
Leolo
In the Loop
Love and Death
Tokyo Godfathers
The Counterfeiters
Whip It
A Zed & Two Noughts
Nine
Nurse Jackie: Season 1: Disc 1
Nurse Jackie: Season 1: Disc 2
Nurse Jackie: Season 1: Disc 3
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Land of the Dead
Outrage
Crazy Heart
Breaking Bad: Season 1: Disc 3
Breaking Bad: Season 2: Disc 1
Breaking Bad: Season 2: Disc 2
Breaking Bad: Season 2: Disc 3
Breaking Bad: Season 2: Disc 4
Zoo
Charlie Wilson's War
Talhotblond
The Great Santini
The Bridge
Eastern Promises
Control
Blood Simple
Miller's Crossing
Tombstone
Get Him to the Greek
The Rundown
Splice
Predators
Layer Cake
Russian Ark
Ken Burns' The West: Disc 1
Ken Burns' The West: Disc 2
Ken Burns' The West: Disc 3
Ken Burns' The West: Disc 4
Ken Burns' The West: Disc 5
Solaris
Vertigo
Once
Inside Job
In Bruges
Best Worst Movie
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Illusionist
Breaking Bad: Season 3: Disc 1
Breaking Bad: Season 3: Disc 2
Breaking Bad: Season 3: Disc 3
Breaking Bad: Season 3: Disc 4
Police Squad!: The Complete Series
Religulous

You might have heard people compare Professor X to Martin Luther King Jr, a genial pacifist who believes we will all one day get along, and Magneto, his arch-rival, is Malcolm X, a man who believes in the separation of mutant and human.  Buying into this comparison robs X-Men of a few very important lessons though, so I’d like to shed light on a few of the great lessons the X-Men teach us and I’ll be focusing on the cartoons of the 90′s

Awesome intro.

Lesson 1) Magneto and his kind are fucking  jerks

Oh there goes Magneto breaking into a jail to break out mutants, oh there goes Magneto trying to blow up a chemical plant.  Magneto is a tragic figure to only the viewer and Xavier, but his actions are completely asshole moves.  

Lesson 2) Professor X’s mind reading powers are a metaphor for understanding

See here

Jerks are jerks for a reason.  Behind Magneto’s evil mutant speeches is a scared little Jewish boy whose parents were killed by Nazis, behind Sabretooth is a mutant who was put behind cages, and behind the human leader of the anti-mutant organization is a boy who was beat up by his mutant dad.  In the world of the X-men jerks exist in humans and in mutants.  As soon as the X-men fight off Magneto the news reports that MUTANTS ARE AT IT AGAIN TRYING TO KILL US ALL.  Really reporters??  We all know that it was the actions of one asshole and not mutant-kind that did all of this damage. 

Lesson 3) Magneto is wrong, but so is Professor X in some ways.

Listen to Professor X Here:

I let my passion for an ideal that all mutants could be brothers blind me.

Now that’s heavy stuff. Mutants will never stand united because the reality is that there will always be jerks within those ranks, just like there will always be jerks on the human side.  People will have fucked up childhoods and they’ll all grow up to be fucked up adults and there’s little that Professor X can do other than…

Lesson 4) Fight the jerks

Through understanding the jerks, exposing the assholes, through fighting them (the Xmen fight using fists, court battles, and psychological warfare), by realizing that there aren’t Mutants vs Humans but honest folks vs assholes.  

I think people who watch tv and are ashamed of “their own kind” whether it’s poor black kids beating up strangers, gays in Toronto parading with their dicks out, or straight men who rape women, they could take really apply those lessons to their life.  The world would improve greatly if people understood that some mutants and some humans are just assholes regardless of how many traits they share with you.

I think Dune was written by a man who would be considered a psychopath had he less than fifty dollars in his bank account.  Thankfully Frank Herbert was the rare human animal that found a stable career in writing down a bunch of dramatic human socio-political insanity set in an almost unimaginable future that other people with an appetite for that sort of thing found good enough to buy.

Dune is a sci-fi novel that’s less 2001 and more Star Trek the Next Generation; it’s science fiction that uses technology to say something about human characters rather than fiction that tries to teach you the calculus of a space jump.  When I was a little kid I watched Back to the Future 2′s time jump into our near future and I thought to myself how weird it would be if someone made a story based thousands of years into our future where our technology would seen like magic.  Little did I know then that Dune is that story.

If a prophecy story can be implanted as a meme in a simple population and if it can be controlled via eugenics, is it still a prophecy? How much information can I obtain from your body language before my insight is considered a superpower?  The universe of Dune grants humanity strange and awesome abilities built on a long history of science and yet humanity is still divided and self-interested.

One royal family is sent to rule a desert planet that produces the galaxy’s most prized substance, and another family conspires to ruin them. The royal family is defeated and the young son and his mother are lost and exiled on the planet only to be adopted by a fierce desert people who claim them as saviors and share secrets with them.  The conspiracy against this mother and son is vast and the destiny of the young boy is disturbing.

Dune is weak in prose.  Most of the narrative shifts in perspective. We read thoughts, then people talk, and then we read another character’s thoughts.  The entire emphasis is on the plot and how the characters plan on behaving before they behave.  As I finished the story though I found myself saddened that it ended because the characters had snuck into my sympathies along with the plot.  

There are sequels damnit.