Phantom Vapors

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I have been smelling a phantom, hallucinatory scent for about two years. It smells like someone mixed gas and barbecue sauce together and set it on fire. It’s pretty rare, maybe once or twice a month for an hour, so I didn’t think much of it, but I told my psychiatrist about it a few months ago. He did a ton of research and crossed the medications I’m taking off of the possible causes, and he has referred me to a neurologist, who I will be seeing next month.  

I’m not worried about having a tumor or anything. Like I said, it’s so infrequent that I barely even think it’s a thing. What I am worried about is cost. If I’m prescribed an MRI, how the hell am I supposed to afford that? I don’t have a steady job (but I still make too much for Medicaid), and my insurance is garbage.  

I allegedly live in the greatest country in the world with a health care system that I have been assured by those in power is also the best in the world, yet a procedure that would be a minor inconvenience to a Canadian or anyone from Europe is cost-prohibitive. If I do have a tumor, I’m screwed.  

My appointment is September 16. What happens after that is up in the air. God bless the USA. 

Fic Fic Hurray!

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I’ve stated in the past that I would never write fan fiction before sitting down and writing fan fiction, but I want to clarify something. My own reticence about doing it doesn’t mean that I hate it. On the contrary, I think fan fiction is one of the best products of the Internet.  

In a time when pop culture looms large, fan fiction allows people to really dive into the characters who are such a big part of their lives. A lot of fan fiction is erotica or relationship porn because exploring that aspect of life with beloved characters is something that helps people understand that side of their own lives.  

It also teaches writers how to write—rather than making big, rookie mistakes on your own characters and plots, which you would be super invested in, you can use someone else’s and really learn. You get a lot of feedback for it too, and most of it is positive and constructive. It’s the educational aspect that is responsible for the quality complaints Internet denizens have, but honestly, Leonardo Da Vinci’s first drawings and sculptures probably looked like hammered shit. They’re getting better. 

And then there’s the political aspect of it. The main reasons trolls hate fan fiction so much is that it’s the domain of young women. Even though it’s the twenty-first century, girls don’t get a lot of encouragement to do what they want to do, and fan fiction boards are friendly places telling them that they can. Anything that helps young women and tells them that they’re good is healthy and important. 

I’m writing Highlander fan fiction because the Highlander was my favorite movie when I was a teenager. I love the characters, I love the world, and I love all the little rules, and I have questions that I feel like I should ask (even if I don’t answer them because part of the world-building of the franchise is that these questions have no answers). I wanted to write dialogue like this: “So you keep saying you can’t die, but that guy over there with his head missing is very dead. You, sir, are a big, fat liar.” 

Basically I’m a fan of fan fiction, and if you’re writing some, or you have kids who are writing some, you have me behind you, with pom-poms. 

Shooting off my Mouth

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I’m a coward. I have got some solid, powerful opinions about the world right now, and I am afraid to share them. That’s mostly because I can’t argue for shit. That was a pretty frequent feature in my marriage, and it comes across on the Internet as well. I know that, if I express myself online with something I believe in strongly, one of my friends will disagree with me, and I won’t be able to adequately express why I believe they’re wrong (lack of evidence is my usual sin), and I’ll look stupid. I recently saw a friend post that she didn’t want anybody arguing with her as she expressed her perfectly rational fear given the frequency of gun massacres, and one of her friends posted, “I can think of several points where you’re dead wrong, but I won’t argue with you because you said not to.” That kind of thing would ruin my entire day. I don’t want to have my raw feelings that I’m expressing to my friends challenged by someone, and I don’t want to challenge anyone else’s either. 

I know that the likelihood of being killed in a shark attack is slim. It’s even slimmer because I never go more than shin-deep into the ocean whenever I’m there. I’m more likely to be hit by a bus, and I jaywalk all the time. And I know that I am statistically not likely to be killed in a mass shooting. But I do know that nowhere is safe. Shopping, movie theaters, church, school, none of these places are safe. Statistics would not save me if someone with a bump stock walked into The Container Store. I know that a lot of these massacres would not have been prevented with the gun laws that are being proposed and passed. I know that an AR-15, the Big Man Rifle of choice, isn’t technically an “assault weapon” so Sandy Hook wouldn’t have been prevented. Also, he stole the weapon from his law-abiding mother, so background checks wouldn’t have worked on him.  

But I’m a believer that a mother in Connecticut had zero reason to own a military-style rifle in the first place. See, you hear that knives kill people. Look at Charlottesville—a guy without a gun went on a killing rampage. But cars have a purpose outside of killing people, and they regulate the hell out of those. Fertilizer has a purpose outside of killing people, but after Tim McVeigh killed over a hundred people with it, they regulated that really quickly. Handguns and military-style and assault rifles are created for one purpose: to kill people. You can kill deer with them, I guess, but they already have rifles for those. You can go target shooting with them, which is a lot of fun, and I wonder if I’ll be able to do it again. 

A few years ago, after the Aurora, Colorado massacre, a friend on Livejournal complained about how gun laws hurt the wrong people, because her husband couldn’t make a working replica of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shotgun in Terminator 2. In the interests of keeping the peace and because I’m a coward, I didn’t respond, but if I did, I would have said, “So what?” So what if you can’t have the replica of a gun from a science fiction movie that could literally blow someone’s skull off of their body. Why am I supposed to feel sorry about that? I can’t kill someone with marijuana, and that’s illegal. But I kept that to myself because I like these people. 

Another reason I don’t argue is because I probably don’t have anything productive to say. Every single time I see someone post that these massacres were only caused because they happened in gun-free zones, or if they were there with their concealed carry permit, everything would have been fine, I don’t want to debate with them. I don’t want to trade facts and statistics, I just want to call them a moron. I have a great imagination and fantasy life, and they’re imposing theirs on a situation where people pointlessly died. Do they believe this is an action movie? That more bullets flying around is going to keep people safe? That, if they miss, that bullet isn’t going to go somewhere else, possibly into a panicking, fleeing shopper? 

Seriously, what is the deal with this country and guns?  

Social Justice Capitalists

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You! Hey, you! That’s right, you, the one who completely lost their shit when they found out that 007 is not only going to be black, not only going to be a woman, but was going to be a black woman. You, the one who will never buy a Disney product or see a Disney movie again because of Little Mermaid white erasure. You’re the one who still, two years later, is getting online and declaring that Thirteen isn’t a real Doctor because the show is called “Doctor Who, not Nurse Who” (and you’re still patting yourself on the back for thinking of that one). I wanted to take a moment to explain something to you. 

Disney, MGM, the BBC, and all of the other studios have teams of marketing gurus and social scientists who follow the trends and evolution of culture, and they have determined that the benefits of forcing diversity far, far outweighs any losses they’ll get with your boycotts and snarky remarks online. The CEOs of Nike and Gillette and other companies aren’t Social Justice Warriors trying to force beliefs down your throats. Far from it. They’re businessmen and women who would never hire a man known mostly for his protests or put out a commercial asking people to be nice to each other or gender-bend and race-bend entrenched intellectual properties if they didn’t think they would make money off of it. You don’t factor into their calculations because your opinions aren’t profitable. 

Surely this can’t be too much of a shock to you. Remember everything you did to tank the Black Panther and Captain Marvel when they came out? Remember all those YouTube videos you made pointing out all the flaws in the movies that you hadn’t seen yet? Remember artificially lowering the scores for these movies on Rotten Tomatoes with your Internet trickery? Remembering calling out, “Go woke, go broke”? Remember how these movies made all of the money, and one even got nominated for Oscars? 

In conclusion, corporations have enough money that they can see into the future, and you and your Euro-, hetero-, male-centrism, despite all your bluster, are not in it. 

I, personally, in this age of loudly broadcast racism, misogyny, and homophobia, find that comforting. 

Fecal Matters

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I saw a bumper sticker that says, “Honk if you have to POOP.” It has me asking questions.  

For example, if you honk, just what is that driver going to do with that information? Is it strictly a solidarity thing? Are they recording your license plate number and selling it to marketers? Also, if you don’t have to poop, but the poop driver is texting and the light turns green, do you refrain from honking so you don’t give them the wrong idea?  

Lots of important stuff to think about here. I’m glad I took the bus. 

Intellectual Properties

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I just read this rant about the female Thor, and inevitably the argument came up that women should make up their own hero and leave theirs alone. I come across this argument a lot, whether it’s a black Little Mermaid or a bisexual Peter Parker. When The Falcon took over for Captain America, they said the same thing. When Miles Morales became Spider-man (in an alternate universe, even), same thing.  

It is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, as well as the most disengenious. 

We live in a time when a new hero is not going to reach audiences. Think about all the heroes you know that are in the public consciousness, and think about how many of them were created recently, like the past twenty years that aren’t a spinoff of existing characters. I literally cannot (if you can, I encourage you to make me look silly). I think the biggest boom for new characters was the launch of Image comics in 1992, and even most of them are just plain forgettable. The current audience is married to their intellectual properties, for better or for worse. That’s why movies, particularly genre movies, not based on a book or a comic or an older movie are so rare. That’s why comics about new heroes rarely sell.  

Because of the nature of consumption right now, a new hero will become second and third tier. There are plenty of white, straight heroes out there, so why not borrow a first-tier one to make someone feel just a little included.  

If someone creates a movie about a new superhero, the person who suggested that said demographic create that movie will never see it. He won’t buy the comic. He has no intention of ever gracing the new hero with his attention. Unfortunately the general audience won’t either. They want name recognition.  

I’m a heterosexual white male. I have plenty of heroes to look up to. I think it’s time to share. 

Comments of the Damned

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So in my current novel, a couple of college students catch the witch doing something extremely, visually magical on camera, and it gets posted on YouTube. The exposure of magic in a world where some very powerful, vindictive people want to keep magic all hush-hush was going to be a major plot point, until I thought about it.  

In real life, half of the comments on that post would be “FAKE!!!1!!” and other videos would pop up mocking or breaking down the special effects of the original video. And then there will be the memes. So basically, the reality of the Internet killed this storyline for me. 

A Mirror Dorkly

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I’m almost exclusively an Order Processor here in the DC Container Store, and from what I’ve observed about all of the Order Processors I’ve met here, they’re all pretty weird. They’re all quiet and focused, and when they do say something (that isn’t business), it tends to be random. They have zero control over their hair, and they’re socially awkward. 

And before you say anything, yes, I know I’m describing myself. It’s nice that I fit in somewhere. 

The Times We’re In

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Regardless of your political persuasion, never, ever forget this: The only reason you’re not in an overcrowded holding pen, deprived of enough food and the right to clean yourself is because the government chooses not to put you there. If the government decides, for any reason, to round up you and your kind, then you will be rounded up. You can call it a concentration camp or something nice-sounding, but, regardless, that will be your home. At the moment, it’s undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. Maybe they’ll stop there. Maybe they won’t. All you can do is hope they’ll stop. Or hope someone stops them.  

This is our reality now. 

Assembly Line of Inspiration

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In February of 2017, I ended my two-year writer’s block by cranking out a story for publication (rejected). I then signed up for a writing contest, and that kept me busy for a while until I got voted out. And then, that spring, I made the conscious decision to write a novel (I add that distinction because I wrote my first novel by accident). When that was done, I wrote another one. And another. I never knew what I was going to write, just that I should sit down and do it. And so, I proceeded to work on short stories and novels constantly through the next two and a third years, rarely missing a day, until the wall I just hit. 

I can’t overstate how many times I’ve finished a chapter and informed a friend, “I have no ideas for the next one,” only to start work on it the next day. This is different. But this is an unfamiliar feeling, thinking about my novel and coming up with absolutely nothing. 

I’m not worried, I will write again. But I am a little unsettled.