Tag Archives: rant

I Got YouTube under my Skin

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Well, I’ve found myself deep in the YouTube hole. I’m not exactly sure how I got here. While I work on my art, I have TV on, but nothing scripted was holding my interest. I tried a few documentaries, especially anything about the Fyre Festival because that was such a delightful mess. Even though I shouldn’t, I can’t help but find joy in people wealthy enough to afford tickets costing thousands of dollars, finding themselves treated like refugees.

From there, I turned into a woman and started listening to True Crime podcasts. Actually, it’s just been one, and she had a YouTube channel. Even more so than her podcast, her videos were perfect to listen to while I was doing something else. When you log into YouTube, it gives you videos that you know you want to see, and many of them are the opposite of the kinds of views you have. For me, it’s a lot of videos about how Disney/Marvel is really doomed this time. These videos are curated to make me angry because anger keeps people glued to the screen—it’s Facebook’s entire business model. I don’t click on anyone I don’t know.

I knew Todd in the Shadows from his music criticism, and he’s generally on my side, so when he posted a video “fact-checking the WORST YouTuber,” I had to look. This referred to James Somerton, a smug essayist who champions the LGBT crowd, all while alienating both straight and gay women, as well as asexuals. Todd proves that Somerton doesn’t know what he’s talking about, using (as they say on YouTube) receipts. But it was so much worse than that.

A gaming YouTuber named hbomberguy released a four-hour video the day before about plagiarism, and two of those hours were dedicated to Somerton. He doesn’t just steal ideas, he literally reads pages from books like the legendary Celluloid Closet, as well as works from LGBT authors and documentarians who don’t have half the exposure he has. He has made a lot of money off of these people. On the rare occasion he uses his own material, it is misogynist, ace-denying, and misleading.

This isn’t the first time he’s been accused of plagiarism. He actually stole from one of his donors, and when she called him out on it, he claimed he was scared for his life and turned his rabid fans against her. He got away from that one scott free. After hbomberguy, though, he closed all of his accounts and went into hiding, only emerging weeks later with an insincere, crocodile-tear apology.

The rush of justice intoxicated me, and I checked out more hbomberguy stuff. The algorithm pointed me to reaction videos by a variety of skeptics, as well as a YouTube-hosted podcast by an asexual couple who claim Jessica Rabbit as an ace icon.

My desire to see more petards hoisting some assholes led me to Creepshow Art. The star of the channel draws pictures while she serves up (as they say on YouTube) tea about her fellow YouTubers. I didn’t watch any of her videos, but through the takedowns, I heard enough of her petty, self-righteous trash-talking that I never will. She was a popular subject for reasons I won’t go into here because they’re convoluted, like a vast spider web of brazen internet fuckery.

I know nothing about YouTube celebrities, but they exist, earning millions of views and dollars for whatever they broadcast. Some people do the art and gossip of Creepshow Art; some people tell stories; some people share essays; some people create documentaries; and some people just trash talk. It’s a community, there are conventions, and there are beefs. Most of them know each other. All of them make a really good living being personalities, and most, from what I can tell, are terrible people.

This leads me to Gabbie Hanna. She started out on Vine (Does anyone remember Vine?) doing short-form sketches. When Vine collapsed, she moved to YouTube and later to TikTok, as a storyteller who occasionally starred in sketches with other YouTubers. She started a music and acting career and published some bestselling books. She is YouTube royalty, and she is truly awful.

She and Donald J. Trump tie for the thinnest skin. When someone “passed” on her during a game of “Smash or Pass” (please don’t make me say what this game is about), she hunted him down at a convention and harassed him until he broke her phone. (This guy is really awful too.) She is a master projectionist, and if you took a shot whenever she used words like “manipulative,” “gaslighting,” “abusive,” and “narcissistic” in a video, you’d be dead. She did things like tell a guy who was about to hook up with her friend that she heard a rumor said friend had an STI, and then Gabbie demanded apology from her. Gabbie’s behavior on the set of a TV show another friend cast her in got her character, and that relationship, killed off. None of it is her fault. If she admits to anything, it’s fragile mental health.

One by one, her friends abandoned her, and in 2022, she dropped out of the spotlight for a while. When she came back in the beginning of 2023, she posted 170 TikTok videos in twenty-four hours which were, for lack of a better word, unhinged. I don’t mean trash-talking her friends or getting really drunk or high at a party. I mean calling herself the Second Coming, obsessively discussing simulation theory, inviting strangers into her home, and screaming. She was having a full-blown manic episode, and her fans were calling in welfare checks. I had been reveling in this toxic human being’s downfall, but now I was genuinely concerned about her health.

After that, she disappeared until a few months ago, when she gave interviews. No one asked her about what happened, only what she was up to. She talked about how she was at peace, and she found God. (He has his own channel, but not as many followers as her.) This is the reason for this blog post: she said she was deciding who she was. Was she a musician, an author, or a painter?

Even the most critical of “tea” dispensers said that some of her songs were bangers, and she sold out large venues, but she can’t sing. She’s as bad as the untrained actors in the ubiquitous musical episodes of our beloved TV shows. Her poetry books are New York Times bestsellers, but they read like Shel Silverstein as a fifteen-year-old goth girl in the early 2000s. I haven’t seen her paintings, but most celebrity paintings are really bad.

This woman rose to fame first by being goofy, then being a goddamned nightmare. And she’s got more than one bestselling book, huge concerts, and a cultish fan base. What has she done to earn this? For starters, she’s good at being goofy. She works hard—you have to to be a YouTube celebrity, and that means being on. You develop a character, and even when you grow out of it, you’re expected to behave the same. People say that she hasn’t evolved her content to fit in with the times, but every single temper tantrum got views, and you have to wonder how much of that is calculated and how much is mental health. Her dream has always been singing, and she leveraged her clout to do just that. Same with her “poetry.” She went into seclusion because she wanted to. She’s even used the word “retirement.” She’s thirty.

Was her meltdown an act? I doubt it. I’ve seen that kind of thing before.

Why do I care? I’m asking myself this as I watch any Gabbie-Hanna-related video that the algorithm throws at me. Is it because I want to see her punished? I do. I want to see her brought down low because she became successful by being the most hated person on the Internet. I don’t personally hate her, I just want to see her get justice. But justice is an imaginary thing, and her large fan base is real.

I don’t have the right to tell people what they can and can’t spend their money on, and I don’t read minds. Maybe they feel like her poetry speaks to them. Maybe she sings their anthem. Or they could be like me, obsessively clicking on every Gabbie Hanna link to watch this horrifying train wreck.

I’m currently writing the script for MortalMan and running some of these ideas past some friends. I came up with a brilliant gag based on Adam West/Burt Ward Batman fights. I’ve got Christmas presents to unwrap on Monday. I’m going to start illustrating soon, and I cannot wait to get to page 7. She may or may not have earned that massive Los Angeles house, but that self-absorbed loudmouth has nothing to do with me and my definition of success.

$&*#)%!#$&^$#%^&!!!!

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An Essay by Jeremiah Murphy

This is something that’s been low-grade bugging me for a while, and I’ve decided that I’m going to come right out and complain about it. I know several of you do this, which has stopped me from saying anything.

Before we go on, I want you to know that there are certain words I’ll never say, and they are all slurs. Most of them, I just don’t say at all. For example, there’s a seven-letter word that starts with W that refers to a person of Mexican heritage. I don’t say “W-word.” I don’t hint at it at all. There is no reason for me to say it, ever, so there’s no reason to bring it up, even obliquely.

In the case of a very bad word to refer to Black people, this one is so rooted in this culture that occasionally, you have to refer to it (hopefully without using it as intended), and “N-word” will do. There’s the case of the “R-word,” an attack on people with certain disabilities, I don’t use that word either, neither in its pure form or the abbreviated version. (Confession: in a moment of anger a few years ago, I used the real word to refer to Senator Tom Cotton, but that’s because he was acting like an R-word. I apologized to my audience immediately.)

There’s the “C-word,” the one that’s not that big a deal in the United Kingdom but is the worst word in America. I’ve never said the word aloud, but I’ve written it a few times in my novels, for shock comedic effect (like when I had a prim and proper mother call a ten-year-old girl a C-word). It’s best if you limit it to one C-word per novel. Other than that, there is no need for me to even say “C-word.”

You may have figured out my point, but I’m going to spell it out. If you’re not going to say or write it, don’t. It’s one thing to bleep out a word on Arrested Development. It’s another thing to bleep repeatedly for comedic effect. It’s yet another thing to be bleep out movie clips because YouTube’s draconian ratings system won’t let you monetize unless they can control your language. (There was one video I couldn’t get through because they bleeped out the word “sex.” In an essay about Ezra Miller.) But the people I’m complaining about aren’t even bleeping.

The aforementioned video about Ezra Miller put transcripts on the screen. When the word “sex” came up, which it did because it’s Ezra Miller, they spelled it like this: “s*x.” Why didn’t they just say sex? Are the potentially offended people supposed to read that and think, “That Ezra Miller person sure loves the saxophone”?

And that brings me to you. I see posts from friends and relatives where they will write f**k, and there’s no reason to censor the word “fork.” Sometimes they will go so far as to say “f*ck.” Why? I mean this sincerely, why? First off, why are you censoring yourself in the first place? Is it because you don’t want to say a bad word? You’re saying it. There is no difference between “fuck” and “f*ck.” It doesn’t fool people into thinking you’re not a bad person. You wrote “fuck.” Are you worried about offending someone? You said “fuck,” and they will be offended anyway, even if it’s a quote. The same goes for “s**t,” “a**hole,” “c*ck,” “d**k,” and, yes, I’ve even seen “c*nt.”

I have a potty mouth, and I have since I was a kid. In the musical Guys and Dolls, they extoll the virtues of the past by saying, “Good authors too who once knew better words; now only use four-letter words writing prose; anything goes.” I had a teacher in high school steal and read my journal and write in the margins that I cussed too much. So many people have told me that it’s a sign of laziness to use swear words. Well fuck all of you.

I can self-censor. I’ve don’t use the word at work. It is rare that I will make a Facebook post that has foul language in it (not counting my essays, in which anything goes). But I don’t understand what is so taboo about bad words. They’re a part of our language. They have rich meanings, and they’re very descriptive, not just in their literal sense or shock value. They even have very specific rules. For example, if you want to insert the word “fuck” into “absolutely” for emphasis, there is only one syllable it fits between. Otherwise, it’s like trying to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious after you’ve had a root canal. I fantasize about using the word “fuckery” in a work email because there’s no other word that describes what I’m dealing with.

I’m not trying to turn you into potty mouths. I have friends who don’t swear, ever. (I did have a friend who never said fuck until the time he whispered it in my ear with no witnesses around, then denied it, just to fuck with me.) Most of the time, I don’t notice until they are about to say a swear word (mostly when quoting someone) and bleep themselves out. They don’t call me foul-mouthed for saying bad words, I don’t call them prudes for not. But one thing they don’t do is shut the “f*ck” up. They’ve made their commitment.

The people who write “f**k” understand the value of the word. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t use it. They’re not fooling anyone. You won’t commit to swearing, you won’t commit to not swearing, and that’s pretty weak. Say it or find some other way of expressing it. It’s time to sh*t or get off the pot.

You Load Fifteen Tons, What Do You Get?

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I’m currently working at the best job I’ve ever had. The pay is pretty good, the benefits are the best outside of the federal government, and the workload is manageable, with deadlines that I would describe as “loose.” I have ADHD, so even with my tool box, I make mistakes and forget some details, but (most) people are really patient with me. My duties consist mostly of troubleshooting (my favorite job), and (most of) my colleagues are friendly. I clashed with my last supervisor, but by the time she moved on, we had a great relationship where my input and ideas were valued, and she encouraged me to grow in my position. My new supervisor seems nice, and I already trust her with any issues and suggestions I have. And I’m in publishing—science publishing, but publishing.

Lately, on top of my daily work, I’ve been helping out with an annual project. I have the bandwidth to handle it—I have to push back some of the work with looser deadlines to tackle this, but the pressure is minimal. (I have to be nudged occasionally, though.)

I say this because yesterday, my boss’s boss’s boss caught me at the latte machine and said, “Hey, nice work on [that thing you did].”

I said, “Thanks. I still have a lot to do before the deadline.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but good job today.”

He was thanking me for doing my job, the one I got paid for. And you know what? It felt good. It felt really good. I take pride in my work, and to have it acknowledged that high up meant a lot to me.

When I got home, I painted a little so I could binge a show that was leaving Hulu by the end of the month, and one of the authority figures told a guy, “I don’t thank you for doing your job.” (This is the same show with the line, “How are we supposed to know what they’re gonna do next if we can’t predict their next move,” so I don’t put a lot of stock into it.) And that’s the problem with this country. Workers have spent so much time doing more than what’s in their job description that it’s expected, and it’s expected for free. Wages have stagnated, bonuses aren’t given out, promotions are withheld, and no one says thank you. It’s such a routine thing that, when Zoomers started doing no more than their job description, businesses freaked out, ran to The Wall Street Journal, and called it “Quiet Quitting.” Nobody’s quitting, they’re just recognizing their own value.

I may not get a raise or bonus for [that thing I did] because it was in my job description, but I still did it well. My work was recognized. I was seen. That meant the world to me, and it encouraged me to keep it up or maybe do more.

And so I passed it on. In a group email updating the managers on said project, I thanked the temp for doing [something really tedious]. It was her job, but it was [something really tedious], and she did it well and in a timely fashion. I wouldn’t have been able to do [that thing I did] without her. A manager wrote back, “I didn’t know [temp] had to do [something really tedious]! Great job!” I hope that lifted her spirits as much as my boss’s boss’s boss did.

I guess I’m saying, if you’re a manager or even a parent, and your underling or kid does what they’re supposed to do, a little attaboy doesn’t cost anything, it might make their day. It might encourage them to be better.

Not the B’s! Not the B’s!

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I’ve become kind of obsessed with Scott Adkins.

First, let me back up a little.

I used to really love B-movies. It was one of the few things I had in common with my ex-wife. What makes a B-movie? Well, back when going to the movies was an event, as opposed to the chore it is today (in my opinion), there was a newsreel, a cartoon, a serial (including the original 1944 Captain America), a B-movie, and the marquee film. That’s how people my dad’s age saw cartoons before they were rerun on TV ad nauseam, without the nauseam part. The serial kept people coming back for more. The B-movie had a smaller budget, wooden acting, bad writing, and was usually sensationalist. When TV became ubiquitous, B-movies could be seen late at night on the networks or during the day when the soap operas (or as I called them when I was a kid, “soap poppers”), weren’t on. They also made straight-to-television movies that were often failed pilots, like the original 1979 Captain America, made shortly after I was born, but rerun over and over again, so I saw it in the eighties, back when I was too young to know how bad it was.

During the cable era, they were moved to networks like USA and HBO, and later, Cinemax, where they were known as straight-to-video releases. That horrible disappointment in film, the original 1990 Captain America, was a straight-to-video release. B-movies could be anything, from horror movies (the gorier the better), to sex thrillers (one of two non-scrambled places to see nudity before the Internet), to action (this is where Chuck Norris’s infamy comes from), to raunchy sex comedies (the other place to see nudity), to cheap sci-fi flicks (which were my favorite at the time), and more.

B-horror movies were the most popular overall because they would produce more gems, like The Evil Dead, which did have a minor theatrical release, but found a wide audience on cable and video. Fans were thrilled by the low production values and the over-the-top plots and action. Also, watch enough B-movies, and you begin to recognize the actors, who nowadays will appear in small roles in big-budget movies or on the CW. They are popularly known as “character actors,” I refer to them as “Hey, that guys!”

And that brings me to Scott Adkins. Scott Adkins doesn’t have a lot of roles in big movies. The biggest role (ha!) I’ve ever seen him in was in John Wick 4, where he wore a fat suit and wiped the floor with Keanu Reeves. He’s got a big following, though. He’s good-looking, a gifted martial artist, and a pretty decent actor. I’ve seen him in serious roles, like Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear (“A man who seeks revenge must dig two graves.” “They’re gonna need a lot more graves than that.”), comedic roles, like Max Cloud, and movies that are both, like The Debt Collector. My favorite of his is Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, during which he flashes his dreamy smile a lot and fights a clown armed with a cinder block on a stick.

I don’t know why he’s not a leading man. Actually, I attribute that to the fact that actors are no longer chosen for their natural physicality. Instead, they’ll hire an out-of-shape comedian like Chris Pratt, make him lift weights and not eat carbs for six months, make him dehydrate for a day or so, and dunk him in a bathtub of ice water, just to film a thirty-second shirtless scene. Meanwhile, their stunts are performed by wirework or a CGI engine, like in the 2011 original Captain America They didn’t hire real martial artists for The Matrix even, until The Matrix Reloaded, where they found three of the top B-movie action stars of the decade and made them agents probably because they had charisma (not in this movie) and because they didn’t have to train them.

There’s the fact that action starts pushing sixty, like Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise, won’t retire and still insist on doing their own stunts. Also, Hollywood execs are Gen-X, the Nostalgia Generation, and will only do movies based on comics or toys from their childhood and will drop $300 million on an Indiana Jones movie, despite the fact that only people over forty even care about the character anymore.

As for me, I wanted to watch a movie the other day, and I couldn’t find anything that appealed to me on any of the dozens of streaming services I’m subscribed to. I blame this the single-take sequence in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Hope You’re Not Here for Anything Fun. I think single-take sequences are really cool. I watched the one from Oldboy over and over again, and when there was one on True Detective, followed by one on Daredevil, it was jaw-dropping. Fast-forward to the last few years, and we had one on Loki, and it was fine, I guess. And we had one at the climax of Guardians 3, which was almost completely computer-generated characters. It was cheating. The single-take tracking shot went from a stunning achievement in directing, choreography, and the persistence of repetition into something you could do if you had enough VFX artists. What used to be a rare treat was turned into something I was getting tired of.

This in mind, I chose a Scott Adkins movie, the goofier, the better, and it had a single-take sequence that was actually fun. This wasn’t because a digital tree was jumping over a digital monster, but because Scott and his co-heroes were in a hallway, beating up a bunch of faceless bad guys. The only special effects (as far as I can tell) were the plasma blasts from the bad guys’ sci-fi guns. Mostly it was Scott kicking space ninjas in the face and hamming it up as an over-the-top video-game hero. I made it all the way through the movie in one sitting. The next day I watched another one, which started with Scott having four fights in the first thirty minutes, three of which he got his ass kicked hilariously, and ending on a note as heartbreaking as watching small animals get tortured and murdered and have it be the most important part of the movie. (Guardians of the Galaxy: A Silly Comedy Series. You know, for kids!)

The appeal of a good B-movie is that, without computers that have the processing power of an entire country and producers cranking out increasingly unprofitable blockbusters again and again, they depend on human beings. Their writers may not have the allegedly witty banter of a Marvel movie, or their biggest star may be Ryan Phillipe, but they’re not afraid to play with the formula. I know a lot of these movies are crap. I’ve complained about them on this blog before. They’re real, though, and they deserve our love. There’s not a lot of Scott Adkins movies on the multitude of streaming services I’m subscribed to, but I’ve put them all in my lists (“my stuff,” “my watchlists,” whatever), and I’m going through them one at a time. I’ve given up on blockbusters, and by the looks of the box office receipts for 2023 (Barbie and John Wick 4 notwithstanding), the rest of the country is starting to as well.

Pop Goes the Culture

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I’ve had a bad attitude about pop culture for a while now, ever since 2007, when they released Hairspray, a movie based on a Broadway musical that was based on a movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love pop culture. I love(d) Marvel movies and TV shows. I learned how to read from comics, along with some very patient teachers. I even bought and assembled a (very inexpensive) Short Circuit MOC Lego set. On the other hand, there are other things going on.

I get it, though. I barely read the news because it’s infuriating. I’ve gotten into shouting matches with people because of the news, and these are people who agree with me. But when I scroll down Facebook, 75-80 percent of the posts are related to pop culture somehow. And they are extremely popular posts. When I post art of a character I conceived and developed and painstakingly drew and colored, I consider it a raging success if it breaks six likes. When I posted pictures of the aforementioned Johnny 5, a character whose only connection to me was that I saw the movie a bunch when I was a kid and I spent less than an hour putting it together via detailed instruction, I got dozens of likes.

While that sticks in my craw on principle, the fact is, I write and draw to impress myself. Do I want more people to appreciate my forms of expression? Of course I do. Can I live without it? Half of the six likes I’ll get are regulars, so I know I have fans. And I know for certain that a number of my friends and family see and appreciate my posts without saying anything. (It’s not like I’m consistent about visibly appreciating others’ posts.) Besides, since I found out how bad writers have it, from novelists, to TV and screenwriters, to comic book writers, I’m perfectly content with a Dropbox full of unread manuscripts.

In my last sentence, I used the word content, but pronounce it differently, and it’s content. Content is what you get on streaming services and YouTube. It’s art as a commodity that can be bought and sold, but most importantly, it’s disposable. Last year, I complained about the Willow TV show on Disney+. Well, it’s gone. If you enjoyed it, tough, because Disney pulled it, and physical media is obsolete. The actors, writers, and directors will never be paid again for all the work they put into it, and the worst part is it’s not because the show was bad (I mean, it was), but because pulling it saved Disney a bundle on taxes. Since art is disposable, there’s no point in paying the “content creators” decently, or at all, for their work. How do you think YouTube got so successful? But that’s okay, if you don’t want to create for pennies, they’ll just find someone else who will. That’s why this strike is so important.

With art as a commodity, you’ve got CEOs and presidents of a rapidly shrinking number of entertainment conglomerates saying that they won’t even consider a work if it doesn’t represent an existing intellectual property. That’s how you get the Fatal Attraction streaming TV show, which was delightful trash to be sure, but it had all the soul of worn-through shoe. Meanwhile, as I’m walking out of the Metro, I see posters of Moulin Rouge the stage musical, based on a movie musical which was based on previously recorded music. There’s a True Lies series. What the hell is the point of True Lies without Arnold and Jamie Lee, but instead a generically attractive couple in just another generic spy show.

Meanwhile, a genius like Greta Gerwig has to make a movie about a doll to get the recognition she deserves. Yes, it was a very good movie, and there were more layers to it than any of her previous movies, but it was fucking Barbie. Naturally, the studio response to this is not to make more deep movies with important social messages but to make more movies about toys. There are seven Transformers movies, and only one of them is good (Bumblebee) and two terrible GI Joe movies. The Lego Movie was amusing and meta, but had no substance at all.

*deep breath*

I’ve been meaning to rant about this for a while, but I still haven’t formed any really coherent thoughts about it. The reason I had to say something about it now is because I had indulged in some McDonald’s, and I was sitting outside, watching Newcastle creep around our backyard, and I saw written on my iced tea, “The McDonald’s Cup, as seen on” and then it listed over a dozen TV shows and music videos and movies, going back as far as Coming to America, up to Loki, season two, which isn’t even out yet.

What. The actual. Fuck.

The Truth Is Way out, Man

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I saw a UFO between twenty-five and thirty years ago. My dad was performing one of the DIY projects he had no expertise in but managed to pull off because he taught himself how to do it, pre-internet, and the radio was on. The hosts breathlessly announced that an unidentified flying object could be seen above my neighborhood. A pair of binoculars in my hand, I ran across the gravel street to the undeveloped land where I had a clear view of the cloudless sky, and there it was. It was hard to figure out its size and shape, as there was nothing to reference it against, and it seemed to bend the light around it, like the Predator. I watched it to see what kind of cool UFO shit it would pull. And I watched it some more. And it didn’t do anything.

Later, authorities identified it as a weather balloon. A likely story. That’s what they always say.

This will be my most controversial post because most people tend to get offended when I spell out my belief system. As if by having them, I’m an asshole. That by telling them my philosophy, even though I’m not actively challenging theirs, I’m attacking them. The truth is, I’m a skeptic. I don’t believe anything that can’t be explained with the scientific method. The usual response to that is “There are things that science can’t explain,” to which I say, “Duh.”

Some go so far as to claim that people like me are dogmatic, and they compare us to the religious figures during the Renaissance—you know, the ones who used to execute scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth. A true skeptic looks for anything that challenges their beliefs, but we have a very high bar for what we’ll accept. What skeptics are dogmatic about and dismissive of are claims made with a lack of evidence, which pretty much defines UFO culture.

First, some definitions. When I use the term UFO, I mean aliens, which is pretty much how the term is used in American culture. People will ask, “Do you believe in UFOs?” Well, there are things seen in the sky that have not been identified, that’s an actual fact. What they’re really asking is whether you believe they are otherworldly. On the other hand, if I spell it out as “unidentified flying object,” I mean exactly that—something in the sky that no one can figure out. One term I won’t be using is the in-vogue UAP, or “unidentified arial phenomena.” It means literally the same thing, except it adds the term “phenomena,” which has a mysterious flavor to it. Besides, UAP reminds me of the late twentieth century when Trekkies tried to change their name to Trekkers because “Trekkie” has such a goofy connotation that no one will admit to it, unless they have a good sense of humor about fandom. “Trekkers” did not catch on.

I could provide a number of examples, including Britain’s most famous and enduring UFO sighting, believers of which neglect to mention the nearby lighthouse. However, I’m going to focus on the most spectacular example of modern times: the Phoenix UFO invasion of 1997. Thousands of eyewitnesses saw lights descending on the biggest city in Arizona. Some people even filmed the display with their camcorders (whatever those are). The National Guard later explained that some of their planes dumped flares over the city for some reason, but certain witnesses scoffed. Flares don’t bank, rise, fall, and quickly zip away.

Except they didn’t do any of those things. Really bright light can burn an image into the human eye. What about the cameras? They leave light trails on videotape. Ask anyone who’s ever filmed at night. Therefore, while the flares were falling straight down and fading out, witnesses were looking around, and the burned-in images were following them. Even if you don’t know the scientific method well, you can use Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is usually true. Ask yourself which makes more sense: dozens of aliens unseen on radar dropped in on a densely packed city and just zipped around like a bunch of Tinkerbells? Or that bright lights are altering our vision, as anyone who’s ever had their picture taken with a flash can tell you?

I can already hear my friends who might soon be my ex-friends objecting. But with what? Verifiable science has already stated the most natural explanation. If someone is making a claim that goes against that, the burden of proof lies on their shoulders. Are there any reliable photos? Is there any physical evidence of the flying light show? Of course not, and the lack of evidence is what proves it to them. (The flying saucers are so advanced they don’t leave evidence behind. The military is obviously covering everything up. Men in black, people.) And finally, with the irrefutable proof provided by the UFO enthusiasts, why is this the first time you’ve heard of this in twenty-five years, if ever? Is it the cover up?

Something cannot be proven by coming to a conclusion and finding evidence to support it. (I’m guilty of doing this. We all are.) You cannot make a claim that you saw something weird in the sky and therefore, it’s up to science and the government to prove that it’s not UFOs. The proof that tends to be presented is eyewitness, or anecdotal evidence, and science will not accept that. Human memory is flawed. Google “The Mandela Effect” for some examples. If anyone is being dogmatic, it’s those who refuse to except any other explanation but flying saucers.

Another scoffed-at fact: most unidentified flying objects are clouds. Going back to retina burn, the moon and sun are also culprits. Another fact: a number of witnesses are lying. Barney and Betty Hill are the mommy and daddy of alien abduction, being the first to report the big-headed, bug-eyed aliens we all know, and they have been thoroughly discredited as conmen. Hypnotism is completely unreliable, or it wouldn’t be considered fringe (and no, it’s not discriminated against; imagine how useful it would be if it worked). And whether consciously or not, Barney was describing the aliens that appeared a week earlier up in an episode of Outer Limits. They weren’t disproven by the government hiding the truth, but by doctors looking for evidence of aliens because aliens are the holy grail of science.

A couple of years ago, enthusiasts celebrated when it was revealed that the government was spending tens of millions of dollars to investigate unidentified flying objects. Of course they were. Anything in our skies that can’t be identified is a security threat. And what enthusiasts don’t point out is that the government has identified nearly everything previously unknown. But just because you don’t know what it is, you can’t just jump to the conclusion that it’s aliens. That’s just not reasonable. Also, for such a tight, organized cover-up, a shocking number of those who do the covering tell their stories on UFO documentaries and don’t get stuffed into unmarked vans.

I don’t believe in UFOs because there is no evidence to support life on other planets. From what science can determine, the emergence of life on Earth is a side effect of a number of unlikely coincidences and phenomena that put our planet in the exact place it needed to be not to cook or freeze, as well as to develop the chemicals necessary. The odds against this happening elsewhere are astronomical. However, there are an astronomical number of worlds out there, so who knows? As a skeptic, I say there is no proof that we are being visited by aliens, but I’m crossing my fingers that one day we find it. How cool would that be?

Ace up my Sleeve

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I wrote this angry. I put it down, worked for six hours, and came back to it. I was still angry (though I managed to add some clarity to some confusing bits). I feel like I was remarkably patient, even though this has happened one time too many.

There appears to be a misunderstanding. Maybe people forgot this about me. Maybe people don’t even believe this about me. Either way, I want to take the time to clear this up. Last month, I wrote a post about wanting to say hello to a woman I see every week at the café. I was anxious about it, to the point of paralysis. Enough of my friends are under the assumption I wanted to ask her out on a date.

No, goddammit. Over the past fifteen years, I have developed crippling social anxiety. I can carry on a conversation with a stranger if they start it. Ask me to start a conversation, and I get the yips really badly. All I wanted to do with this woman was say hello, tell her I’d seen her here every week, and share my name, which I didn’t think was possible without looking like a creep. I didn’t inherit the anxiety from my dad, who would pursue a person through a parking lot if they had Jersey plates.

That brings me to the larger issue. The abbreviation LGBTQ is actually an abbreviation of LGBTQIA. The I stands for (I think) intersex, and the A stands for asexual (ace to its friends). Being left out of the term that describes alternative sexuality is only one example of asexuality erasure. Mostly it’s the flat-out denial, including—from a whole lot of people in the LGBTQ community—that it exists at all. Maybe an ace hasn’t met the right person. Maybe they’re just not trying hard enough. Maybe they can’t possibly know if they like sex or not if they’ve never tried it. Maybe they’ve had sex before, so they can’t be ace.

I identify as asexual. I’m not sure anyone I know believes me because I hear a lot of doubt about it. I’ve been hearing some lately, and it’s been really getting under my skin. It’s part of my identity, and I shouldn’t have to justify it. I shouldn’t have to explain it. I should just be allowed to be. Just this once, I’m going to go over the common things that make people doubt me.

I’ve had sex before. In some cases, I’ve had sex a lot of times before. I once bought a family-sized box of condoms on a Friday with the intention of not having to buy them again for a while, only to discover that I needed a new box come Monday. A lot of people don’t fully understand their sexuality until later in life. I had an inkling that I was asexual in my early thirties, but I became sexually active briefly, so I figured that invalidated that. It turns out I’m bipolar, and I’ve only ever been horny when I’m manic, when I’m a different person altogether. In the past, mania turned me into the Incredible Hulk. Now, with the right treatment, mania turns me into the Credible Hulk.

I have crushes. Yes, I get butterflies for both men and women, but men don’t impress me as often as women. The most important thing is that I don’t want to have sex with them. Sex never even crosses my mind. I just want to follow them around like a little puppy.

I write a lot of sex in my novels, and I used to write erotica. Like Stephen King is a non-threatening dork who can write an entire novel from the perspective of a homicidal dog, I write fiction. The definition of “fiction,” from Merriam-Webster, is “fic-SHUN. n. made-up shit.” Emphasis on the made up. I don’t write a lot of sex anymore, but I write a lot of kissing, and words cannot describe how revolting I find pieholes grinding up against pieholes. Sex is even grosser because there’s a wider variety of fluids involved.

I draw a lot of sexy women. Here’s where I think most people get tripped up, but the answer is, I am attracted to sexiness. From the presence of a woman in a power suit to the muscle of a 1970 Pontiac GTO to the swagger of David Tennant in Good Omens, confidence (even feigned confidence) grabs my full attention and holds on. The word sexy trips people up because sex is in it, but I have never associated the two.

Asexuality is a spectrum, like all sexualities. There are aromantics, who want nothing to do with dating and holding hands. (I’m borderline aro. I’m extremely touch averse, but there is one person who is allowed skin-on-skin contact with me.) There are people who are revolted by sex. There are people who have sex, usually for a partner, and don’t hate it, but don’t get off on it. There are demisexuals, who are only attracted to someone once they get to know them. Most importantly for the point I’m trying to make, there are aces who tend to lean into one sexuality or another. I, for example, lean heterosexual. It doesn’t mean I want to have sex with anyone of the opposite gender, just that I find them more interesting than my own.

To be clear, despite that my eye is drawn to physical attributes, they have nothing to do with my opinion of someone. For example, the woman in the coffee shop I wanted to approach is not the kind of woman who catches my eye. Neither is my ex-wife. I hooked up with the latter because we spent an hour in a car together getting to know one another. I said hi to the former because we share a space for an hour a week, and it seemed like the polite thing to do. While I have dated women who were my physical type, I can say of the three most beautiful, two did not go well.

It’s been four years since I’ve had sex, and I don’t miss it. †here are behaviors and preferences I have that seem to indicate sexual inclinations, but I’m asexual. Please do not challenge this. Please do not call bullshit on me. This is a truth about me that you need to accept if you want to be a part of my life.

I’m ace, I’ve accepted it, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.

And Another Thing

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One more point on the reason I hate AI so much and why it’s not art: What’s the point? If you can produce a professional-looking image or a coherent novel or even a movie just by filling in some Mad-Libs, why would you even bother?

It’s frustrating that my art doesn’t look like it does in my head or that I’ll never illustrate those action comics I used to fantasize about walking home from the PATH train. It’s disappointing that I’m not going to finish the last comic I started working on. But look at what I’ve done in the past 25 years. I can crank out a full-color drawing in about a day, and it’s hard. And yet I take pride in my poses. I savor filling in the details. I can’t do that by typing in a box.

I’ve written over 30 novels, plus several unfinished, and with each one I fell in love with the characters, and I learned who they were with every page. Whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, piecing together a story is a rewarding challenge, and one I hope to get back to someday.

I’ve even made 2 movies in my life, one in French, and I don’t even remember the finished project. I don’t even remember the titles–wait. They were The Rat and Rambo et Juliet. What I do remember clearly is hanging out with my friends and traveling all over town and being goofballs and how Max simulated the sound of someone falling off of a balcony (he stomped on a small branch behind the camera).

I’m never going to be a famous artist or writer or a filmmaker. My stuff will never be as polished as what some of these AI engines have produced, and I don’t care. It’s not sampled from other art (I use a lot of references, though, and some swiping) and writing and movies, it’s mine.

One day soon, all of our popular movies, books, and graphic images may be produced by AIs, but it won’t be art. And I, for one, and really smug about that.

Or, to put it another way, I bought this from an MOC site.

After spending an hour with it, I had this.

Another hour later, this:

I could have scoured the internet and found a Short Circuit action figure and put it on a shelf and forgot about it immediately, or I could have spent my drawing time this morning enjoying it, feeling it in my hand, guessing which iconic part of the robot I was constructing next, and building a scale replica of a memory from my childhood from a couple bags of plastic. I feel accomplished, and on a day I had Artist’s Block, I passed the time (somewhat) productively.

Some things shouldn’t be easy—not because it’s hard for me, but because it’s good for the soul.

A Puzzling Experience

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I’m going through a manic period right now, which means I have a lot of energy, I’m in a great mood for the most part, I’m focused, my creative output is on the edge of being ridiculous, I’m chatty, even with strangers, I’m not paying attention to my budget as much, and the slightest inconvenience makes me want to flip a desk. I’m glad I have the tools to recognize when it’s happening, but with the drug cocktail I’m on, they’re usually a lot more subtle. I’ll probably have to get my medication adjusted, which is the 2-1/2th circle of hell.

Meanwhile, for months, there has been a puzzle. I like the puzzle. I don’t ever use it, but I like it. I’m aware of the therapeutic power of a puzzle because my mother is a professional when it comes to them. It’s great to be able to take a break and refocus your mind elsewhere (which is why, for example, I’m blogging at work for a few minutes). The puzzles are fun, from the Vegas-style mid-century Palm Springs poster to the various farms to the ‘Murca one (a bald eagle flying over purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain, with wavy red-and-white stripes in the sky). There’s just one problem: the puzzle space is on the other side of my low cubicle wall.

There’s no chair there, so you have to stand up to work on it. This isn’t a problem with my work friend, who chats with me when I’m not in the zone, but for everyone else, who don’t quite know what to make of me, who don’t even say hi, that means, in my periphery, several times a day, there is someone looming there for up to twenty minutes. It’s distracting, and it’s unnerving, and it makes me tense even when I’m on an even keel.

I am not on an even keel.

After a long puzzle session from someone who doesn’t acknowledge my existence, I restrained myself from snapping and went to Work Dad’s office and explained my situation, starting with the sentence, “I don’t want to be the guy who kills fun, and it’s been great for morale, but that puzzle has to go somewhere else.” Before I could even list my reasons for this, he started brainstorming new locations for it (a chore because where it is now is literally the best place for it), and he gave me a compromise: let them finish Palm Springs, and he will give it a new home. Work Dad has an absurd amount of empathy.

This is the second great victory I have scored this week. The first one was procedural, and I can’t explain it without about four or five paragraphs, just that it was mighty. I have no one to brag about it to, though, especially not my work friend because the puzzle’s current location is right outside her office, and she’s such a crucial part of the staff that she can’t stray too far from her desk.

So I’m bragging to the readers of my blog, both of you. Here’s hoping they finish Palm Springs quickly before I go on a rampage.

Two Strikes; No Outs

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I’ve been in favor of the Hollywood strike for a while now, but for each day that passes, I hear something that strengthens my resolve. For example, did you know that actors make an average of $28,000 a year? And if you don’t remember how averages work, they add up all the yearly earnings of actors, including the ones who make over $30,000,000, divide by the number of them, and you get a figure: $28,000, around minimum wage. Meanwhile, streaming services are pulling all kinds of fuckery to keep from paying residuals. Writers have it worse because studios hire a writer’s room, then fire them before the scripts are finished, and I believe that absolves them of residuals. As a writer, I’m glad I never made it because, if I have to go out stumping for peanuts every few months, I wouldn’t be enjoying my craft or my life.

Now that I’ve got this out of the way, I saw something that really put actors’ plight in stark relief. I like to have bad TV shows or movies on in the background while I draw—I need the noise, and I really don’t pay attention. The one I picked this morning was BAD. The story was terrible, the dialogue was terrible, the lead and supporting actors wouldn’t have passed auditions for a high school production of Our Town. The cinematography (or what I saw when I looked up) looked like it was filmed through a plastic grocery bag. The lead had no charisma, and the plot twist at the end was so unbelievably stupid I was haunted by it. The budget was about as much money as I have in my checking account (i.e., I’m not broke, but if I have to go to the hospital I will be).

And yet, the top-billed actor in the movie, like Anthony Hopkins was top-billed in The Silence of the Lambs, was Morgan Freeman. Let that sink in for a moment. This was not a B-movie. It was a D, maybe a D-minus. There are a couple of explanations for this. Maybe he owed the director a favor. Maybe he had signed a contract that locked him into it. Most likely, it was the same reason Harrison Ford made an Indiana Jones movie at eighty years old: he needed the money.

Morgan Freeman has way more money than me, I know that. I know he gets paid more cash than I’ve ever seen for each role that he plays (and his presence in this rubbish film probably used up most of the budget). But I learned something when I went to Doha ten years ago. You expand. Kate and I went from a thousand-square-foot apartment to three thousand square feet. When we returned three years later to 1,200 square feet, we couldn’t fit. Likewise, prior to moving there, we had some debt, but mostly we were living comfortable off of her good salary and generous stipend from her father (which he gave to her as a way of getting out of paying taxes because he’s wealthy, and that’s what wealthy people do). We moved to Doha, where we didn’t pay rent, everything was cheaper, her salary went up dramatically for overseas pay, and since Doha was considered part of a war zone (it was not), we also got hazard pay. When we returned to the United States, all we had left was the salary and stipend, and we went broke. It took a couple of years to stabilize our finances (then she kicked me out).

Before I got married, I lived on half of what I’m making now (about two-thirds adjusted for inflation), and these days, I’m spending slightly more than I make, mostly because of the geriatric cat. You get used to it, is what I’m saying.

Imagine being one of the most acclaimed actors—and an actor of color no less. Imagine you played God in a big-budget Jim Carrey movie. Imagine starring in a movie (The Shawshank Redemption) that’s so iconic, everyone wants you to narrate your life. Imagine being a meme. Imagine not being able to find work anymore, and being broke. Imagine having to play a small important character in this turd of a movie. He did a good job, but clearly his heart wasn’t in it.

Part of the reasons actors are paid a lot, even the little guys, is a lot of time passes between projects, unless you’re Antonio Banderas, who appears to make a movie a month. I don’t know who his bookie is. Scarlett Johannsen sued Disney because Black Widow was mostly streamed, and her contract only covered theater sales. Nobody feels sorry for the actors, despite that most of them are barely getting by. This is exactly what the millionaires and billionaires in the studios want you to feel.

Acting is a hard job, even for the stars. Can you imagine being one of the Marvel’s Chrises and have to work out for hours a day and have a strict diet just so you can do a two-second shirtless scene? Does anyone remember when Chris Pratt was fat? He will never enjoy a donut again.

Meanwhile, execs are getting paid millions when product that’s fattening them up is not getting adequately recognized for their efforts. Do not listen to them. There are millionaires on both sides, but the difference is, on one side, they’re showing solidarity (except for Matt Damon).

I haven’t even brought up AI, which fills me with rage as a writer and artist and as someone who doesn’t want to see his favorite actors digitized.

In a few months, we’re going to see the movies and TV shows in the pipeline run out. A lot of people, including people I know, are mad that there will be no new content. To which I say, out of the dozens of streaming services out there, are you really going to tell me you’ve seen all the TV shows and movies? What about all the TV shows and movies you own? Read a book. Go to the park. This is not quarantine anymore.

Oh yeah, also in the awful movie was Peter Stormare for about one minute. He chewed scenery like we’ve come to expect from him. I suspect he didn’t even know he was in a movie.