Rambling About Movies What I Like

I don't own this image

Usually, I spend a good portion of the day before I post these rambling actually writing them. Unfortunately, I was running around all day yesterday and didn't have the energy to spend much time writing after I got back home. This was annoying until I realized that I hadn't actually finished the book I had planned on rambling about this week, which is infinitely more annoying. So I decided to utilize some of the various backup topics I have squirreled away in a chest labeled "the place most writers don't want to admit they get their ideas." 

You might think that talking about a list of favorite movie is a bit basic to which I reply: "if it's so basic, how come my previous two 'I have no ideas this week' posts were my Minecraft posts." To which you might rejoin: "I don't know, you're the one who has to answer for that. Maybe you were just playing Minecraft so much you couldn't do your writing properly." To which I have to reply by smashing a piece of rebar over your head and running away. 

The annoying this about listing your favorite movies, like listing your favorite books, is there you can't really select 1 or even 10 as a "favorite." I think lists like this can't be very static either, they need to live and grow as your opinions change. Admittedly I slapped this list together really quickly this morning, and while I'll be happy to defend any of the movies on this list as brilliant works of art, their status as my favorite movies will probably fluctuate. Except for a few. I've bolded the movies I'm all but certain will remain on my favorite movies lists for years to come. Anyways, here's a rambling selection of several movies what I like, in no particular order. 

• In Bruges - I might as well call this one my favorite, because I have for several years now, and I see no reason to change that. A darkly comedic exploration of a fairly serious morality play, filled with great performances. If I have to have one 'favorite' this would be it. 
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - I mean... can you blame me? Sean Connery is sexy as fuck in this movie. All joking aside, Last Crusade really should have been the final Indiana Jones picture because it's a damn near perfect conclusion. 
• 12 Angry Men - A fair number of movies on this list are explorations of morality. Actually that might be the defining theme that runs through this list. 12 Angry Men asks you to consider - through either logic or empathy - whether or not we have the right to condemn someone to death, and why we would even want to. 
• Murder on the Orient Express - As much as I'm a fan of Kenneth Branagh's flashier 2017 remake (which is very much worth a look if you haven't seen it) I'm picking Sidney Lumet's 1974 original here. This movie's brilliance lies in keeping the book's subtle thematic discussion subtle, and is something of the inverse of 12 Angry Men removing all ambiguity of guilt.  
• Seven Samurai - I don't think it's possible to have a best movies list without mentioning Akira Kurosawa. While I might be picking his most popular movie for this list... it still is really good and has become an architype for American westerns for a reason. 
• The Lives of Others - Doing the right thing in adverse circumstances is an extremely reductive summary of this movie. It's more about a morally neutral man becoming a good man through experiencing life vicariously.  
• Coyote Vs. Acme - This is the most recent movie on this list, and I will refer you to my review for a greater analysis and reasons why I love it. But in brief, I think this movie matches the dynamic animation and thematic resonance of Who Framed Roger Rabbit while still being, very, very, very looney. 
• Up - If you don't cry during this, you don't have a soul. That's literally all I have to say. 
• Lawrence of Arabia - I'm adding this because I recently rewatched a few scenes towards the end of the movie, and I was reminded of just how good it is. David Lean was a fantastic director almost a novelist in film, painting complex character portraits through images in the same way a novelist uses words. Also, this movie's ending is gutting. 
• The Big Lebowski - If you don't laugh during this, you don't have a soul. That's literally all I have to say. 
• Metropolis - I don't love silent movies enough and this film is proof of that. If you haven't seen this, please do yourself a favor. There's probably a version available on YouTube. 
• Spotlight - Any good movie about journalism will have to focus on what the press is supposed to be - and so rarely is - a watchdog against power and institutions. To my mind, that leaves three movies: All The President's Men, The Post and Spotlight. Good and important as the first two are, Spotlight hits in a way that sobering. I admit that it might hit more because I was raised Catholic and so the movie impacts more personally. 
• LA Confidential - I love a good film noir, and I will forever trumpet James Ellroy as a master of the literary noir. Not every adaptations of his books have proven successes (for the record though, I enjoyed The Black Dahlia) but you really don't need any other movie than this one. It's a tight script, economically told, and it has Danny DeVito.   
• The Third Man - Once again I love a movie for its writer and explorations of morality. Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors, and Orson Wells is one of my favorite actors. Add Joseph Cotton, a distinct Zither soundtrack, Dutch angles and noir storytelling, and you have a classic.  
• Calvary - Calvary has the hardest opening line I've ever heard in a movie, spat through a confessional panel, followed by a threat. From there on, a priest, played by a magnificent Brendan Gleeson, lives under a death sentence - though not because he did anything wrong. 
• The Birdcage - I need some pure comedy on this list aside from the Big Lebowski, and it really doesn't get better than Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. And Gene Hackman and Dianne West, good lord, this movie's cast is stacked. Oh my God Hank Azaria is amazing in here. 
• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - what do you get when you cast Guy Pierce, Hugo Weaving and Terrance Stamp as 3 drag queens driving through the outback? You get a movie that should have been more controversial than it was, especially since it was released in 1994. The reality is, it's a movie with a lot of heart, especially in Terrance Stamp's performance as the trans woman Bernadette. 
• Emesis Blue - would you believe me that the single greatest horror movie of the 2020's (setting aside how good 2026 has been for horror) was released for free on YouTube and is a machinima starring the cast of Team Fortress 2? No, of course you wouldn't believe me. So watch it for yourself. Just watch it with the lights off. 

Anyways, here's a few others that came to mind that I didn't feel like writing about just now: Chimes At Midnight, F For Fake, M, Sherlock Holmes A Game of Shadows, The Hunt for Red October, the John Wick Franchise (all 5 movies because fuck you,) Barry Lyndon, Topsy Turvy, The Magnificent 7 (2016), Hell or High Water, Unforgiven, Ratatouille, Rashomon, Ran, Throne of Blood, True Grit (both versions), Wake Up Dead Man, The Red Shoes, The Great Dictator, The Northman, The Lighthouse, Blazing Saddles, The Searchers, Zodiac, Paths of Glory, The Batman, Amadeus, Sinners, Sully

Consider the Leftovers: David Foster Wallace's Non-Fiction or: Why I Haven’t Read and Will Probably Never Read Infinite Jest

Saying that I have a strained relationship with David Foster Wallace is both factious and necessarily true. He’s dead for one thing, so of course we won’t ever have a good relationship or any kind of relationship; and let’s be clear right now: I don’t wish that to sound callous about the death of David Foster Wallace. He had a lifelong struggle with depression and finally killed himself and I certainly sympathize with the pain he was obviously in. My strained relationship with him comes from the fact that I’ve almost always bounced off his writing before now, and if you might object that shouldn’t lead me to assume a strained relationship with him, well, I would argue that you form relationships of a sort with any authors that you read. (I’m almost certain that there’s a literary theory that claims this, maybe Reader-Response theory.) And in that case, with my prior exposure to David Foster Wallace, He and I, we don’t get along. 

Let me put it to you this way. Most of the people who have tried to read Infinite Jest have put it down for three reasons: It’s too long, It’s too pretentious, the footnotes, or some combination of the three. For my money, I found it to be emotionally overwrought, too dense for it’s own good and surprisingly empty of meaning. The people who have read it, who I have no doubt are very intelligent and much, much more patient than I am, have insisted to me that the books is well worth reading. That it’s about the ways we find hope and enjoyment in life through pain. That’s all very well and it could be that that’s the case. However, I don’t think that stacking endnotes and footnotes to establish a fictional world is the right way to grab my attention or to convey a message of hope to people who need it. It strokes me more as a literary novelty than serious fiction. 

All this complaining to say that since I haven’t shown much interest in his fiction, you can imagine my surprise to discover that I kind of liked his book of essays Consider the Lobster. I would never deny that David Foster Wallace was unintelligent, but frankly his fiction was either about topics that were poorly explored or uninteresting. That said, I can’t write off his nonfiction as the subjects he chose or was assigned were just more interesting to write and read about, ranging from the AVN Awards to language usage to the fallout from 9/11 to the ethics of boiling lobsters alive (ostensibly [more detailed notes below.]) I can complain about Wallace’s footnote-heavy writing style in his fiction, but I’m happy to say it works better in his nonfiction (Even though I really think he should have used parentheticals; I mean, even in the audiobook they just slot the footnotes into the text with a short ‘begin footnote’ and saying ‘parenthesis wouldn’t have been much different. [Also, I'm only using parentheticals because blogger won't let me insert footnotes.{No, I'm not being a hypocrite, I'm being funny.}])

All in all, I liked this collection. I don’t like all the essays, but that’s an unavoidable fact of anthologies, not everything is good. I will admit that my positive reaction to this collection might be the result of my extreme hatred to the previous book I read this week (A Little Life. I hate that book. Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it. I don’t advocate burning books outside of Atlas Shrugged, but I now have a new book to recommend as kindling.) I don’t know if my relatively positive reaction to this book is down to me just hating that one but for the moment, I enjoyed Consider the Lobster. I find it to be interesting. 

And now, you ask, that I’ve had a positive experience with a David Foster Wallace book, will I go back to Infinite Jest? I don’t think so. I might read some of David Foster Wallace’s short fiction, but I honestly don’t have the interest or energy to read Infinite Jest right now (If you don’t know, don’t ask. Just avoid A Little Life.) 

Anyways, here’s my reading notes on the contents of Consider the Lobster if you are at all curious. 

 

Big Red Son

• David Foster Wallace attends the Adult Video News Porn Awards. Don’t you just cringe. 
• Tonally, this article comes off as either hopelessly naïve or dismissive of porn’s place in the entertainment industry. Hell, the published title of this essay was once “Neither Adult or Entertainment”
• A serious complaint that Wallace lodges against the porn industry is that its insistence on porn being a legitimate genre just makes it tacky. I wonder if it was setting of Las Vegas that made the whole show seem tacky. 
• On the other hand, the industry executives Wallace encounters are definitely sleaze incarnate. Not the actors so much as the executives who seem like they’re profiting from the humiliation of the people they employ. 
• Disappointingly, the essay doesn’t have much to say about the porn’s actual place as a genre, or the social and political influences keeping it from being a regulated, safer industry. 
• I won’t lie, this essay did make the laugh a fair few times, but it wasn’t an auspicious start of the book. 

Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think

• David Foster Wallace reviews John Updike’s (then) latest book Toward the End of Time. 
• Admits to liking Updike, despite his somewhat homogeneous main characters, misogynism, overwrought scenic descriptions and perverted lust after women. 
• Hates Toward the end of Time and from his description, I would too.  Seriously, it’s just an Updike novel wearing the skin of a Sci-Fi novel. Boring. 

Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed

• David Foster Wallace insists that Kafka is funny in this short piece that was apparently an after dinner speech. 
• And yes Kafka is. It’s dark humor, but humor nonetheless. 

Authority and American Usage

• David Foster Wallace reviews the dictionary. 
• Specifically Bryan A. Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Also:
• David Foster Wallace reviews the concept of lexicography 
• Lexicography, Noun. Lex-i-cog-ra-phy 
• 1) the editing or making of a dictionary 2) the principles and practices of dictionary making
• Related:
• lexicographical: adj. lexicographically: adv.
• In reality, a very dense essay on the difference between Prescriptive (preferred usage of language; ie conservative) and Descriptive (how language is objectively used, ie liberal), something that only serious philologists (snoots, as David Foster Wallace calls them) would care about. I’m kind of a language nerd, and this seems a good introduction to the political philosophy behind the usage of language.   
• Orwell’s Politics and the English Language is still the definitive work on the subject, however, and David Foster Wallace does admit that.  

The View from Mrs. Thompson's

• David Foster Wallace witnesses 9/11 from his neighbor’s house in Bloomington, Illinois. 
• Emotionally, this essay reflects the trauma of 9/11 far better than I ever could have. The Numb horror that affects all of David Foster Wallace’s neighbors doesn’t seem to strike David Foster Wallace, who reveals a twisted sort of cynicism about the event, seeing it as the culmination of the horrors of the 20th Century. 

How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart

• David Foster Wallace spends too long talking about a book that isn’t worth talking about. 
• And he even admits it’s not worth talking about, and that’s kind of his whole point. 
• He loves tennis and hates ghostwritten, self-aggrandizing, ostensibly autobiographical biographies. I think we can all agree with that. 
• I don’t care about tennis that much (although I have played it more than I would like to admit, and I do like playing it, must be said.) 
• I wonder if David Foster Wallace’s pure seething contempt of this book was the reason Infinshite Gestation (that was puerile, I'm not sorry) was partially set at a Tennis Academy where every character seems to have some sort of personality flaw. 

Up, Simba

• David Foster Wallace trails John McCain’s failed republican nomination bid in the year 2000
• Basically a poor man’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 . David Fostar Wallace is nowhere near as funny, but is as at least as sharply observant as Hunter S. Thompson. 
• Still, John McCain proves to be an interesting subject for political analysis like this, even though I, and David Foster Wallace disagree with his political assertions. As a presidential candidate, he struck David Foster Wallace as being a rare thing in politics: exactly what he said he was. 
• As we know from John McCain’s performance during the 2008 election and his opposition to the first Trump administration’s absurd policies, he certainly was a man who prized honor above all. 
• Would he have been a good president? I don’t know, and that’s not the purpose of the article. The purpose is that for all the cynicism with one must apply to politics, for all his cany politicking, John McCain is interesting, and I can’t shake that opinion after reading it. 

Consider the Lobster

• David Foster Wallace argues that most methods of eating lobster are inhumane
• Disappointingly insubstantial on the subject of boiling Lobsters alive for cooking. Offers no real ethical standpoint other than “Yeah, it sucks, but I still like eating meat, so maybe I’ll just avoid the lobster. Glad I tried this food though." 
• I wonder what Stephen King thinks of the Maine Lobster Fair? 

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky

• David Foster Wallace reviews the 4th volume of Joseph Frank’s biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Asks a very important questions: have morals become separated from literature? (specifically the literature of the late 1990’s?) Why did we abandon serious literature for desperately unserious, Ironic literature? 
• Honestly sounds like a good biography. 

Host

• He weirdly argues that it’s not so much a brainwashing program from the pro-capitalist right as it is a merely a cold hard business strategy. I ask you, what logic is there in that? 
• Boy, this essay is really dated in the era of slop podcasts. (Seriously, I can't think of a single essay that has aged worse than this fairly blasé dismissal of the populism behind conservative radio)

Alright, I've considered; he looks delicious. I don't own this image

Two Horror Reviews: Resident Evil and The Dead Zone

These two pieces that I’m talking about today have nothing to do with one another, besides the fact I experienced both of them recently. I suppose seeing / reading both so close to one another is a little fortuitous, because just the titles sound somewhat related. And I suppose it would be natural for Evil to Reside in a Dead Zone (*sardonic chuckle*). 

But, truthfully, The Dead Zone would be an odd pairing for Resident Evil if I hadn’t just read it. It isn’t really a horror book, more like a supernatural thriller. Protagonist Johnny Smith (no, really) has shown latent psychic abilities since an ice skating accident when he was 6 years old, but it isn’t until years later when adult Johnny suffers a head injury in a car crash that his ability to see the future through psychometry develops. Of course, he gains fame, well, notoriety once his abilities are proven to be true and he ends up involved in a political assassination plot and the hunt for a serial killer. Honestly, not a bad plot, landing somewhere between John Hinckley Jr., the Silence of the Lambs and Psych, with the massive exception that Johnny Smith’s powers are real, unlike Shawn Spencer. 

According to Stephen King, the impetus for the book was the question “what if Lee Harvey Oswald was the good guy?” You might wonder then when I compared the protagonist to John Hinkley Jr. then, since the book was published three years before his attempt on Reagan, and my answer would actually spoil the book if you’re interested in reading it. If you have read it, you’ll understand why. And no, the answer is not that Johnny Smith had an obsession with Jodie Foster, or any other woman for that matter (his one relationship ended satisfactorily, and the woman he loved was merely a good friend and had nothing to do with the murder, per my reading.) No, he just had a terrifying vision of the future where an up and coming populist, independent but leaning right politician gaining the presidency and igniting the nuclear apocalypse. The more things change. 

You might ask yourself, outside of the eerie parallels to real life, does this book have any value? Well, yeah as it happens. The first notable thing for me is that this book has one of the best endings in the Stephen King canon. I put that down to the fact that he knew exactly where the story was going instead of just pantsing it as he usually does. The second thing for me is the very human story that runs underneath the plot. Johnny’s abilities are born through trauma, and are therefore manifestations of his pain. The book’s thesis that living with those abilities isn’t pleasant is ... fairly realistic to me. I don’t imagine it would be pleasant to get never-ending fan mail from people you’ve never heard of demanding a psychic explanation for some bullshit problem. I don’t think having your name dragged through the media mud is very pleasant, not to mention experiencing the pain and horror that a serial killer’s victim felt just by touching the ground they died on. Can you imagine the trauma of knowing what would happen if an insane man took the highest office in the country? (OK that one might be more relatable.) 

It’s not a perfect book. if I had to nitpick one issue, I think this story is a prime candidate for King’s inconsistent approach to religion. If you’re at all familiar with his body of work, you know Stephen King has the tendency to dunk on fundamentalism quite a bit, and I think we can all agree with that. However, he is also a religious man and whenever he writes a ‘good’ religious person, they tend to have a connection to the supernatural that isn’t obvious to all characters, the most notable example being John Coffey in the Green Mile. The problem for me is that it’s hard time tell his cranks from his earnest believers. The Dead Zone features a significant character who believes Johnny Smith’s gift means that God has a plan for him, some great work that Johnny must do. As it happens, this character is correct... but they’re written like a complete nutcase and, well, they are. It’s hard to see where King is coming from is my point. Another gripe is that the obvious answer to King’s “what if Lee Harvey Oswald was the good guy” question is to make the target of the assassination the bad guy and while that’s the obvious answer, I was hoping we’d get a little bit more nuance. 

Issues aside, The Dead Zone is a fantastic read. King’s great talent as a writer has always resided in sharing his fears and hope through through his characters and pain through his monsters. Here, his monsters are ordinary humans, his heroes also somewhat resemble monsters, at least from the outside. It’s a thematically rich novel and, I think, one of King’s best. 

Resident Evil then. Good movie about all sums it up. 

I know you’re hoping for more, but really, I’m having a hard time saying anything else. Like Mad Max Fury Road, its a very simple “get to the place” plot, and the story isn’t all that complex. The main character, medical courier Bryan (Austin Abrams in a fantastic performance) is your ordinary guy in a tight spot. He’s in the middle of a complicated fight with his newly pregnant girlfriend, he doesn’t make a lot of money, and his car clearly needs replaced. So of course he jumps at the opportunity to make double his usual commission transporting a mysterious bio-hazard to the mountain secluded Raccoon City, and from there he runs deeper and deeper into a nightmarish odyssey where he cannot possibly be paid enough to cover the shit he deals with. 

If you’re familiar with the videogames this movie is based off you might have some issues. The movie’s story is set concurrently with the second game, yet there are continuity snarls. It wasn’t snowing for one, none the game’s major characters appear, and the people that Bryan works with are the villains of the entire game series. Is this a problem? 

No, absolutely not. The movie was never billed as a direct adaptation, just a story set in the Resident Evil universe. Hell, more often than not previous adaptions of the RE franchise have failed because they focused on looking good and trying to add more to the game’s lore (and because they gave the directorial / story writing reins to notable failure Paul W.S. Anderson {Legally distinct from Paul Thomas Anderson [I’m shitting on the previous movies, but they are kind of fun in the ‘so-bad-they’re-good-way.]}) 

The new movie’s first priority is being a horror movie and it’s really damn good that. Zach Cregger and Shay Hatten’s script is focused on emulating the survival horror spirit of the games, taking appropriate influence, and some visual references, but never just repeating or adding ideas as previous movies had done. It’s a taught, 90 minutes horror-thriller without an ounce of fat on the story, and one of the best horror soundtracks of the year (seriously, the main title theme is AMAZING. Reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for The Thing, but also being it’s own creature.) 

I haven’t wanted to talk too much about director Zach Cregger because, while he’s 3/3 movies so far, I don’t want this movie to be framed as a ‘Cregger’ discussion if that makes sense. It should, and I think it will, stand on it’s own. Obviously, Zach Cregger’s style and skill as a director has a lot to do with the movie’s success and you can’t separate him from it. Hell, I think Cregger and his movie Barbarian are probably one of the reasons horror films are having a bit of a renaissance right now. But I hope it’s understood that the highest compliment I can pay this movie is that it stands out from Cregger’s filmography as its own thing. Barbarian and Weapons were fantastic movies, and Resident Evil is great too, I wish Cregger all the best in his next endeavors. 

If I do have any criticisms of the movie, I'd say it could have pushed the game's anti-corporate subtext a bit more. The games have always had cartoony, over-the-top villains who engage in corporate villainy so absurd it could only work in a video game (well, it seemed that way until the last couple of years. Or if you know some of the things Nestle has done.) Here, the villainous corporation seems to be made up mostly of scientists who we don't know well enough to determine their level of responsibility. I feel like Cregger could have made more of the game's anti-corporate subtext, but given that this is an action horror movie, I'll let it slide. I also wish Cregger had reined in some of his comedy instincts. Most of his jokes land, but one scene in particular goes on too long.        

I do not own either image, just used for illustrations

Follow Up and Writing

It takes a while for me to come up with a theme that interests me for these posts, and as you can well imagine, I found myself a little bit drained by last week’s post. And before I continue, I want to thank everyone who reached out to me with their kind words last week. I couldn’t reply in the moment, but please be sure that I found a good sense of comfort from everyone who offered support. And its because of you that I’m working on this post. I wanted to spend this week following up on some observations that have drifted my way from my readers. 

First, I really am lucky to have the friends and readers that I do. I think that living far away from my closest friends makes it a little harder to reach out to some people whenever I’m feeling down, but I have a few people I can reach out to in these times. I guess I should make friends down here in Dallas, which... I mean I’m trying, but that takes time. Anyways, I am exceedingly grateful to the people who took the time to respond (both in the comments and through DMs) and I do value your contributions. 

Second, not to highlight a specific response that has given me some extremely positive food for thought, but... well that’s exactly what I’m doing. One of my friends is doing me the courtesy of teaching me literary criticism (really all art criticism) and at our meeting this past week our conversation turned to my most recent post. This friend observed, not to diminish anything I felt, but that he remembered similar feelings of the world being suicidal in the wake of 9/11 first being raised in 2006. I’m not surprised that I’m not the first to feel that way, and I could honestly see those sentiments being raised even earlier. But here, my friend suggested that I’m already doing the right thing to allay these fears: Writing. Or, as he said: doing the damn work. 

You see, we had just read an essay by the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold, whose major contribution to the field of criticism was the astonishingly simple suggestion that criticism itself exists not simply to examine, engage with life and art, but also to keep new, fresh ideas flowing in the world, fueling new creations. If you believe that Art or other acts of creation are essential to humanity’s survival and constant evolution, as I do, then this cycle of criticism and creation is integral to us thriving. 

Now, with all of this, I wouldn’t be so bold to call myself an artist, just a writer. But it must be said that I believe that I’m doing something related to creative expression and the exchange of new ideas. A few weeks back I mentioned that I would keep writing in the face of adversity. It’s difficult, but I’ll keep doing the work. 

So to that end, keep checking back every Sunday. I have a few ideas for the upcoming week’s posts; I’m currently watching Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time (well, the complete series; I've seen random episodes before)  and I’d like to write a season by season review / retrospective. I’d also like to write about the books I finish as I get back into reading. I just finished Fire and Blood, the basis of HBO's House of the Dragon. 

Speaking of reading, last week I’ve gotten out of my reading slump a bit by adding a time limit to my phone’s YouTube, Instagram and a few other apps. Happily, I’ve already reduced screen time on my phone that way. I had to order a new desk chair because my old one broke, and I’m looking into seeing if I can find an inexpensive adjustable height desk so I can stand more during the day. I’m doing this all in the hopes that I can find more time to write, because if I didn’t make it clear in my post on writing, I really love it. 

PS; I also have a job interview this coming Tuesday; wish me luck! 

Life Update: September 2026

Caveat emptor: this piece turned out heavier than I anticipated. 

First, an explanation. 

Last week I had to pass the buck on a post I was writing because I couldn’t make it work. This was extremely frustrating and I apologize to all of you for that. Long story short, it was an open letter to the CEO and owners of several subservience corporations who have been in the news recently. My goal was to write a letter encouraging them to cease activities that I view, not just as invasive, but as detrimental to human development in general. Try as I might, there was no way *I* personally could write that letter without letting my frustration boil over, or sounding hopelessly naive. It’s frustrating to admit, but I couldn’t make it work at all and I have scrapped it for the time being. I hope to return to this subject someday, hopefully none too late. In exchange for that subject, I have written an update on how my life is going... sorta. 

Second, a warning. 

I’ve noticed in my recent posts a tendency to claim absurdism as my philosophical outlook, with a Diogean influence. I don’t wish to keep harping on it just because I know you all have your own outlooks, but I will reiterate the point that, however absurd, incomprehensible, hopeless, or inherently meaningless I find existence, I do still choose to make my own meaning, to make my own hope and to laugh at the absurdity instead of sinking into despair. I have to underline this, but it’s just as important to admit when I’m feeling the weight of existence. And fair warning, me admitting that will get pretty heavy for the next few paragraphs. 

Third, a weary diatribe (Complaint... Grievance...? I don’t know which is the right word I’m looking for here.) 

A few months back in May, I made my list of goals for the year. Last week it hit me, finally, that I’m 27. It hit me right during the middle of a bad work day. I have some general anxiety issues, and I admit I tend to spiral. I suppose that this bad work day left me in a spiral. 

I need a new job for better health insurance and better financial reasons. I privately have to bemoan the fact that no one seems to be hiring, and companies don’t even seem to be responding to applicants anymore. I don’t know if this is because we’re in a shit economy, AI influence has made my type of work redundant, or the uncertainty around the midterms has resulted in a hiring freeze. 

Over this summer I’ve had two explorations of relationships, and two determinations by the guys I met that we shouldn’t continue.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that I haven’t taken as much pleasure out of reading as I usually do. I’m hoping that this is just because I’ve read a lot recently and I’m just in a cycle. But I’m worried that my brain is seeking the cheap trill of YouTube algorithms and Instagram doomscrolling. 

I saw a report this week that the earth might be running out of fresh water. I haven’t seen any substantive confirmations yet, mostly because I’m too scared to check, but in light of the reports about AI data centers water consumption this seems scarily plausible. 

I don’t wish to harp on politics, but the way this country, and the whole world is going is depressing. Not to make too fine a point of it... but the president doesn’t seem conscious half the time, and actively malevolent when he is.  Not to mention that the Vice President of the United States recently said that he’ll be happy if his work leads to the end times... 

I just have to ask. WHAT. THE. FUCK? 

Are you familiar with the motif from Medieval art called the Danse Macabre? It’s usually an image of death, personified like the grim reaper, leading the dead and the soon to be dead from all walks of life in a dance to the grave, a rather on the nose allegory reminding people that mortality is universal and we will all die. Let me stress that: it’s a reminder that we will die. But modern life seems to be led by billionaires and politicians who have misunderstood the danse as a fucking queue to the exit. It’s like they all know we’re going to die and have figured, “welp, might as well start on the way.” 

Fourth, the worst part. 

I know I started this piece with an expression that I’m aging, but in all reality, I know that I’m still fairly young. And given the fact that I’m young, I could just be misunderstanding what I’m seeing. But does anyone else feel like this? Does anyone else feel like our leaders and some of the public are suicidal? Like they don’t see any possibility of changing paths because it’s too late?  

It’s been twenty-five years since 9/11. I admit I don’t remember it all too well. I just about remember my dad coming home from work early, and a terrible malaise, but I don’t remember the day. In retrospect however, I’m starting to think that this terrible event was the moment we all just gave up hope. I feel like it was the moment humanity nervously caught its breath, thought about the past horrors we had been trying to ignore and the bright future we had been trying to build, and then we exhaled in confusion and fear. We collectively decided that our only option to protect ourselves was to end everything in a mad, selfish scramble of war, greed and hatred towards the other. 

And it’s working. Barely taken us 30 years. 

Fifth, an attempted understanding and reconciliation. 

I realize that I’m struggling with pessimism, maybe with depression. But I want to emphasize that, difficult as it sounds, I do still have hope. It’s alive in me somewhere. It’s an absurd spark of joy dancing in me somehow. Just as I was writing this I realized I was singing along to some music I had playing, and that brought a smile to my face. Earlier today I laughed at an old Zero Punctuation video. 

What I want to know is, how do I spread this spark of joy? I don’t want it to die with me. Maybe through reconciliation, meaning I should reach out to people who share different ideologies, people who annoy me, people who have wronged me, people who just straight up hate my guts, people who I just straight up hate, - and forgive them, and ask forgiveness in return. Reconciliation and acceptance. 

I refuse to let other people decide how I should live my life, or decide that my life is already over. Fuck that. There is no middle finger big enough. I want to live, I will live, and I want other people to live with me. 

Fuck this end times bullshit. Choose hope. 

Me, a few months ago. I like this picture. 

Leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you. 

Disappointed With Myself

 

I had a post I was working on for this week, but I'm not happy with how it turned out. It's needs another week to germinate or I'll scrap it entirely and write something new. Sorry about that, lovers of my blog. 

Anyways, how're you guys doing? 

Anyone want to comment and just, you know, chill? 

This Review was Produced Without the Assistance of the ACME Corporation

OK it’s not lost on me that for two weeks in a row I’m writing about Albert Camus and the absurdity of life. Yeah, I’m seriously writing about the absurdity of life in coloration to a Loony Tunes movie. And in case you think I’m pulling that comparison out of my ass - no, it’s literally textual to the movie. A significant plot point takes it’s cues from the Myth of Sisyphus and then directly compares that to Wile E. Coyote’s attempts to catch the Roadrunner. 

So, if you weren’t aware of Coyote Vs. ACME, please allow me to light the fire of knowledge under you. This movie has been infamous for several years running now due to Warner Bros. being dicks about releasing it. Long story short, Coyote Vs. ACME was completed in 2023, but was shelved by the Brothers Warner so they could take a tax write off. And I mean they literally just canned it; far as I understand it, they had no intention of even releasing it on streaming. The Internet’s backlash to this was significant enough that Warner Bros. allowed director Dave Green to shop the film out to distribution companies that would want to take on the expense of releasing it. 

Lo and Behold, Ketchup Entertainment stepped in, and I think we should all salute their valiant efforts. A note on this, it’s projected to be somewhat of a success at the box office for it’s short theater engagement. Projections are estimating that CvA will net around $46 mil, which, while it wont recoup it’s $70Mill budget till it goes on streaming and home video, and likely won’t turn a profit, it is somewhat defying expectations. () Initial projections saw the movie earning only $12 million on it’s opening weekend, so it’s doing better than expected. Not phenomenal, but better. I strongly, strongly encourage you to go see this movie if a theater near you is playing it, just to let Warner Brothers know that this is the type of movie we want. 

And what type of movie is that? you ask. A children’s film about a coyote ... suing a giant magacorp for it’s faulty product line? It’s a corporate thriller about a cover up and a missing scientist? It’s a courtroom drama that ends with a congressional investigation like a Frank Capra movie? It’s an existentially bleak movie about an animated character realizing that he’s been an unwitting test subject for a corporation that doesn’t care that a marginalized consumer base is being treated as unwilling guinea pigs while buying products declared “state of the art?” Wait this is a children’s movie? 

Yes. It’s both a classic Loony Tunes comedy, and it’s a hilarious satire on corporate greed. It’s kind of a perfect satire actually. You’d argue that there’s no way a company would knowingly produce faulty products to test them on the population AND cover up their involvement ... and then you remember Theranos existed. And that Ford once put out the version of the Pinto that exploded when you rear-ended them. And that McDonald’s used to keep their coffee way, way too hot and burned an elderly woman (and then used the media to smear the lawsuit as frivolous). So take any one of these cartoony, stranger than reality incidents, slap an ACME logo on each company and it suddenly becomes startlingly plausible. It’s wonderful satire, and given the way Warner Bros. treated this film, it adds a sort of meta-fictional layer to the underdog punching up narrative. 

But as I mentioned, Sisyphus gets a mention. I won’t spoil how exactly; suffice to say it directly labels Wile E.’s pursuit of justice, dignity and yes, even the Roadrunner, Sisyphean tasks. It directly tackles the absurdity of carrying on in the face of failure and an indifferent universe. Wile E.’s lawyer Kevin Avery (played by a wonderfully disheveled Will Forte) starts the movie knowing what he is, an ambulance chaser eking out a living by settling case against ACME. He’s not looking for a fight, just a quick payday and small attempt at getting justice. But he faces two serious forces that slowly change his mind: Wile E.’s gosh-darned determinism to get justice from ACME and his niece Paige Avery’s (played by a wonderfully perky Lana Condor) enthusiasm for the law. It’s not like Avery is going to win (Mild spoilers) he is a two-bit lawyer going up against a gigantic conglomerate which has the power of the media and John Cena on their side, but the important thing is he keeps going. 

I do have some complaints about the movie, but they’re fairly minor. Arguably the pacing could have been trimmed down a little, and the editing and flow of the plot sorta fails around the 2/3rds mark. I also think Will Forte’s character could have been given slightly better motivation at the start of the story; his character parallels Wile E. Coyote in that way, he’s just an ambulance chaser and it felt like something was missing. Ultimately his character comes full circle so I can’t complain. 

If I haven’t made it clear, Coyote Vs. ACME is a good movie, smarter than you might think, and filled with fantastic animation. I have seriously undersold this movie’s animation thus far; I have seen cartoons mix with liveation this well since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Go see it. One final note, I ahve to mention that this movie was inspired by a 1997 New Yorker article by humorist Ian Frazier. Written as a dry opening statement detailing the numerous injuries sustained by Wile E. Coyote as he uses faulty equipment from ACME. The original article is paywalled on the New Yorker site, but I found a copy reprinted in the Texas Bar Journal, of all places. Give it a read, it’s pretty funny. 

We Go On Singing

 I have to apologize in advance if I’m not entirely clear in my meaning, or if my writing seems jumbled in this post. I’m not the most analytical of thinkers, being more geared towards EQ than IQ so to speak, and my attempts to philosophize frequently fall flat. But with this post, I’m trying to wrangle some complicated feelings I’ve had this past week. Long story short, but in the past few months I’ve been flip-flopping between feeling frustrated, depressed, despairing, hopeful, angry and cynical and I’m trying to make sense of that. I’m just trying to warn you that this post might ramble more than usual, it might offer insights into my personality, and it might make references to George Carlin, Diogenes, Albert Camus, Yahtzee Crowshaw, Orson Welles, and others because I'm a pretentious fuck. 

In my younger years of thinking I knew everything about the world, I really thought that the best term to describe my outlook on the world was ‘cynic,’ and in my pretension I believed that I was free from the modern, pessimistic understanding of the word and that I was merely reacting appropriately to the world around me. Through college I experienced a profound existential crisis that removed much of my positive beliefs in the world, leading me to conclude that that humanity was primarily motivated by self-interest. I didn’t trust people in general, and I didn’t see much of a purpose to life or really even think I’d have much of a future. I wouldn’t say I was a nihilist, because I was still someone in search of meaning, and I thought that I could eventually find one. But I was certainly the pretentious fuck I pretended I wasn’t. (Still am, if you couldn't tell, I just don't deny it anymore.) 

Time taught me that I didn’t understand jack fucking shit about anything, let alone myself, and that while I won’t leave the world understanding much of anything, I can still at least try to learn and act like I understand. Ironically, my current world view (I say current because these things can change quickly) is influenced by the original cynicism as espoused by Diogenes, with a little bit of Albert Camus’ concept of the absurd. 

The original cynics believed in an Asceticism and simple living that viewed harmony with nature as the highest ethical calling. The cynics rejected most societal conventions as arbitrarily invented to control feelings of “shame.” Ethically, Greek Cynics wouldn’t be relativists, they would in fact honor virtues that come from nature quite highly. Think of it as the proto-stoicism, except most of cynics would mock the Stoics for being too self-important. (I’m indebted to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy for help with the philosophical concepts I tackle here.) 

It’s not a flawless philosophy, as Diogenes himself demonstrated. For instance, its Asceticism can be seen as leeching rather than self-sufficient once taken to it’s logical extremes. Secondly, societal morays exist for a reason, and there are sociological, technological, and medical advancements that we have crated for a reason. But I do still value at least three valuable aspects of cynicism. 

First, Diogenes was fucking hilarious, and his quips and clapbacks do indeed offer insight into societal hypocrisy. Second, I believe the preference for natural virtues over societal conventions has caused me to reevaluate my view that all humans are inherently self-interested to a fault. Arguably, self-interest isn’t our natural state, but something exacerbated by our society’s ordering ourselves. Thirdly, I believe that cynicism’s tenet of questioning everything that an authority tells you to accept is extremely valuable. It grounds you, reminds you that society really is just a set of illusions that we’ve all agreed to abide by. Social compacts do exist, and you have to remind yourself that while they’re necessary and kind of beneficial, some of them pretty ridiculous and we can definitely replace them with better systems. 

This is part of the frustration, anger, despair and unbridled maniacal fear and loathing I’ve been feeling. Let’s state the perfectly obvious with the words of George Carlin. “The longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.” Its perfectly fucking obvious what’s fucked up: society is designating right before our very eyes. War, poverty, fascism, racism, LLM’s and Generative AI, rampant consumerism, MAGA, genocide, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, climate change, rising illiteracy rate, religious intolerance and extremism, unpunished pedophilia, artlessness, the destruction of the middle class, flagrant criminal activity in the highest levels of wealth and government, and the fucking cherry on the cake, Mr. Beast. Nah I’m fucking with you. The worst of it all is indifference, both at the highest levels of power and in the general public, everything is going to hell and nobody cares. It’s almost enough to justify the cynicism of my college days. 

But I can’t go back to that. You see, from my readings of the two branches, the difference between modern cynicism and classical cynicism is that classical cynics believed life was worth living. And I find myself in agreement with that premise. Exactly why I agree is hard to articulate, but I think the simplest explanation I have comes from my understanding of the Absurd. (I’ve mentioned Camus before, I don’t know if he believed exactly what I’m about to expound, but I’ll give him the credit.) 

As I understand it, the Absurd expresses the fundamental disharmony in our existence, specifically the feeling of requiring meaning from existence, but upon looking for meaning or purpose, we can only find an indifferent, senseless, silent universe. It’s an existentially terrifying idea. And it does get to me. I imagine we all know the feeling, striving most of our lives for some kind of relevancy, some kind of purpose, some kind of basic quality of life, and then we all slowly experience having our teeth kicked in. We struggle for years in dead-end jobs and end up loosing money. We look for avenues of self-expression that are safe, that recognize our basic humanity, only for bullies and corporations and people who call themselves Christians to curb our actions, to call us inhuman. We spend years trying to perfect our arts, only for people to make machines to replace us. And beyond that pain to our material and mental worlds, we have the underlying fear that it’s all for naught, because everything will pass away. 

Orson Welles spoke of this. In his documentary F For Fake, he takes a rather somber view of the purpose of art. Grand Cathedrals, paintings, books, poetry, film, drama, all will pass away, either to the slow erosion of entropy or the fires of censorship. “Our songs will all be silenced,” Welles said. “But what of it? Go on singing.” 

This was Camus’ solution to the absurdity of life: keep living. Life isn’t beautiful because it lasts, it’s beautiful because it’s lived. Art isn’t beautiful because it’s hanging on a wall, it’s beautiful because it took effort to create. I believe art, and life is even more beautiful in the face of this adversity, because defiance is beautiful. 

Recently, one of my favorite humorists, Yahtzee, and some of his journalistic friends created a line of merch for their independent media company, Second Wind. A coffee mug takes one of Yahtzee’s quotes, and illustrates this idea of defiance being beautiful. This mug (pictured above) triggered the idea for today post. (I’m including a link to the mug I’m referring to because even though I bought one and used a picture of it for this article, it’s still not my design or quote, and I’m certain they’d appreciate being credited.) Funnily enough, this even ties back into the story of Diogenes, who is one of the earliest recorded users of the middle finger.

There is indeed no middle finger big enough for the world right now. And every word I write, every day I live, is another gigantic middle finger to consumerism, AI, homophobia, this administration, flock cameras, and indifference. And yeah, it's hard to keep writing, it's hard to keep working every single day. But I really don't have anything better to do and frankly, it's fulfilling.  

And so we go on singing. 

It's One Of Those Days Where I Genuinely Don't Have Anything To Say

So Here's a few more picture of my recent Minecraft builds. 

Mostly I've been developing a strip of real estate I called Fisher's Narrows, so called because it's a long, narrow strip of land that I claimed.  

Here are the recent developments:

And the ones I'm most proud of: A cow pasture

A sheep and pig pen

And a chicken pit. Chickens are only in the pit because they can hop over fences. 

I'm also really proud of a public park I built for my friends, which features a gigantic chessboard. 

But the main attraction and the most effort I sank into a build recently is a half underwater house. This was partially inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright style of natural building contrasting a modern setting. 

Note the shack indicated by the red arrow below, the entrance, leading to: 

A lovely view of the briny deeps. 

Anyways, that's all I've got this week. Have fun. 

I Shoot the Bastards, That's My Policy

 Very recently, science educator and author Hank Green has come under fire for using AI in some of his videos. (Story Link HERE) I don’t watch his content all that frequently (I am familiar with his Crash Course videos; it appears the he wasn't using Ai on those videos) so I wont say that this is anything like a betrayal of trust or some exaggerated bullshit like that. It's his response video that has prompted my post here today, I find it fairly thoughtful (link) and is worth considering as a creative. He suggested that having accountability as a creative is important with this kind of discussion, and that creators need to have AI policies and be upfront about their stance with their work. We'll come back to that. 

For the moment, I wish to make myself clear on the subject. In several of my posts I’ve expressed disdain for Large Language Models and generative AI. 

I loathe LLMs. I loathe generative AI. I loathe that my posts and my writing style might be studied by an LLM for its training. I loathe the AI generated slop that appears on YouTube and so much of the internet. I loathe that it has wormed it ways onto my social media feeds. I loathe the ethical problems, and the sociological and environmental effects AI produces. While I understand that they offer some advantages in some industries, specifically in areas of scientific research and coding, I must point out the distinction between industrial and creative usage and I question what good they actually do. 

Bottom line: I believe that AI has no place in the creative industries because the creative industries are the result of a highly personal process that generative AI by it’s nature foundationally circumvents. 

The satisfaction I find in writing is in the process of sitting my ass in my chair and trying to use the best words to capture the thoughts that run around my mind. It’s grueling. It’s frequently painful. But the reward of realizing that I expressed myself absolutely is an orgasmic rush beyond my wildest dreams. A few posts back I clarified that I write because I love doing the writing. That will not, cannot change. Flaubert said, “Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living,” and I agree. 

To bring this back to Hank Green: his idea that creatives should be upfront with their AI policies are is a really good idea.

I will establish right now my AI policy. This has applied to everything I’ve written before, but has not been articulated before now, and I will abide by this policy with everything I create going forward. I will publish a summary of my policy in the About Me section of my blog, visible on every page.

* I will never consciously or otherwise use an LLM or other form of generative AI to write anything, be that a novel, short story, blog post, pamphlet, song, poem, or Anti-AI screed.  Everything that I have written up till now was poured out of my own head through my hands, and it will remain that way. Every Picture I take, every video I shoot will be made by me.

* Simultaneously, I will not use a generative AI to produce any picture, video, song or other piece of creative work. 

* I write using the FocusWriter word processor with has an explicit anti-AI policy (link here) (download HERE). The only AI-Adjacent program it utilizes is a fairly useless spell checker that seems to think “foundationally,” “antidisestablishmentarianism,” and “dysentery” aren’t words. I can accept a spell checker, but I don’t abide by it. 

* As regards research, I avoid Google AI summaries and the obvious slop, but I cannot be certain that every article I pull wasn’t written or otherwise tampered with by an AI. The point is that here, I do my best so avoid AI, but I can’t be certain I didn’t cross paths with any. 

* I resent that LLMs might be reading my blog and using my words to train. I don’t know if I can stop that. Google might be doing that since I’m using their Blogger tool and they don’t have a clearly label AI policy. I don’t know if Substack offers a better policy. My point is, I deeply, deeply resent that my words might be used in this manner. 

To quote Dirty Harry and Frank Drebin, that’s my policy. 

Fair Warning, This One Might Be A Bit Political

Ever heard of Russell Kirk? Apparently he was quite a talented ghost story writer and if that’s how you know him, well... Then I hate to inform you that he was, apparently, one of the major American conservative voices in 20th century along with Christopher Buckley. He wrote a lot of non fiction about conservatism, notably penning an influential book (The Conservative Mind) tracing the history of conservative thought from Burke to the 1950’s. Honestly, documenting the development and impact of conservatism does seem like worthwhile subject for a book, so long as you’re not spending all your time bashing other ideologies. 

Anyways, a few weeks back I was made aware of Kirk via a list 10 principles that he considered to be foundational to conservatism. The list is... odd. Mostly because it doesn’t seem to understand what liberalism is, seeing it only as a force of destruction (somehow... we’ll get into that.) Anyway, I want to bring this list to your attention and comment (to the best of my ability) on the substance or lack thereof in these principles. I also want to be a little snarky with this post, so fair warning. Anyways, I present, Russell Kirk’s 10 Conservative Principles with Generous Helpings of Snark By Me. (Btw, I quote directly from his list a few times. I don't own his work, obviously, but I'm not going to attribute his website because I don't want to give this garbage more clicks. If you're that curious to read it, I won't stop you from googling.) 

Principle 1: The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.

Fine by me. What permanent moral truths are we talking about here? Love thy neighbor? Treat one another as you want to be treated? Hey wait a goddamn minutes - progressives believe in that one too... actually it’s kind of foundational to progressive ideology. The whole point of progressing to a new future is to leave a better world for our children. And what exactly do you mean that Human nature is a constant? That we’re always going to screw things up? I mean sure, there’s certainly historical precedent to be cynical about improvements remaining in place, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make improvements. 

Principle 2: The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. 

No problem with the premise - what customs are we talking about here? Such wholesome Western (read: White Anglo-European) customs such as stripping a women of her bodily autonomy by disguising it as “a higher calling”? Limiting what media we can consume in the name of a “moral order” while bleating about not having freedom? Beating up on Queers, African Americans, Jews and anyone else who might have different customs, conventions and continuities? Speaking of minorities, you know who has vibrant and quite lively communities filled with interesting customs? New customs are being created all the time and old customs are forever evolving, that’s part of continuity. 

Principle 3: Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. 

.....This would be easier to mock if it was in any way remotely understandable. Hang on a minute (checks the Russell Kirk website “Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary...”) 

Well that’s just insulting to modern man. Yes, all of what we know in our scientific and philosophical fields are based on the discoveries of the past, but get this, not everything our forefathers believed was right. In fact, they were quite stupid. It’s not like the middle ages were some golden age of humanity that we’re all secretly pining to return to. If we were to stack up every incorrect scientific in history, the number of formerly accepted reasons for how the stars turned on at night alone would take us to the stratosphere.  

Principle 4: Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. 

Anyone who seeks wisdom is guided by prudence, regardless of political opinions. Exempli gratia: that it would not be prudent to elect an amoral orange turnip in an ill-fitting blue suit with a criminal record to the presidency just because it says things vaguely agree with. (stares into the camera)

Principle 5: Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. 

Oh, how kind of you to “pay attention” to the “principle” of “Variety”. And just what kind of variety are we talking about here? Business variety? Religious variety? Sexual variety? Miscegenation? Clearly not class variety or the so often mocked “diversity.” 

I gotta go back to the Kirk website, hang on. (*reads: For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.’*) Oh... so, by “Variety” you mean a tiered social order. So Classism. 

Principle 6: Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. 

Hey asshole, lemme quote a Batman movie at you: “Why do we fall? So we can better learn to pick ourselves up again.” Stop using “we’re all imperfect” as an excuse not to fix broken systems or end harmful traditions. And also, stop using “we’re all imperfect” as an excuse to sit back and muse “c’est la vie” wistfully whenever you hear about the last shooting massacre in a day care. 

Principle 7: Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. 

No shit property and freedom are closely linked, what a fucking helpful observation. That’s why progressives want MORE PEOPLE TO OWN PROPERTY LIKE HOUSES THAT THEY ARE CURRENTLY BEING PRICED OUT OF. That’s why progressives ARE SERIOUSLY CONCERNED WITH DATA CENTERS TAKING UP LIVABLE LAND AND DRINKING WATER.

Principle 8: Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. 

I love voluntary community action! That’s called democracy! And speaking of opposing involuntary collectivism, note that it’s the progressives who who are in favor of exchange between cultural communities like ethic groups and queer communities, while conservatives want to restrict exchange in the name of the collective “social moral good.” And also note that, oh, just for example, corporations buying up large land parcels for data centers without community approval and replacing staff with large language models would technically be involuntary collectivism. (You might argue that, but the group that corporation are placing ahead of the individual workers are the shareholders, so fuck you.)

Principle 9: The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. 

Not a bad idea. THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU GIVE DRUG ADDLED PEDOPHILE BILLIONARES UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE FEDERAL GFOVERNMENT AND NUCLEAR ARSENALS? 

Principle 10: The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. 

This is that prescription thing again isn’t it? In other words the most change you’re willing to accept is a change the weather? (so long as said change isn’t... climate change?)  

If it weren’t obvious by now, this is a really stupid list of principles. Most of it is just plain old classism, racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia wrapped up in the old Chesterton’s fence argument. If you’re unfamiliar, Chesterton’s fence is the following thought device: suppose you were to build a path through afield and suddenly come upon a fence that wasn’t on your survey. The prudent thing to do, instead of bulldozing the fence recklessly, is to hold off, trace down the builders of the fence and find out what it’s purpose was, and then figure out where to go from there.

Obviously, you should respect the past. I can respect not wanting to uproot old traditions recklessly in the name of progress as these traditions might have uses such as social cohesion. However, if that tradition was built of faulty logic, or superseded data, surely upgrading those traditions is called for. That’s the core of what progressiveness is. It’s wanting to leave a better world for the future and replacing the systems that no longer work with systems that will hopefully work better. 

Yes, that involves experimentation with new systems. Yes, that can be dangerous. Yes, I can understand why you’d prefer to cling to older customs that make you more comfortable. But Russell Kirk's principle of “prescription” is a cowardly, anti-intellectualist attitude that looks at the improvements humanity needs to make to survive in the modern world and says “...yeah we’re happy with our ignorance, thanks. We’ve made our money, and the rest of you can eat a dick.” 

Let's be clear here. Regardless of my political views, I'm certain people do have good reasons to be conservative. But I don't think any of these principles offers a remotely good basis for an ideology, and a worse reason to believe in that ideology. 

It Doesn’t Take An Odyssey to Enjoy

I was going to write a longer view of the Christopher Nolan’s newest film The Odyssey, but for whatever reason I find myself struggling to write this one. I don’t know why. Blame the heat, blame my last few sleepless nights, blame stress, blame the gods, whatever. 

I think that my real issue with writing anything about the movie is it’s a fairly complicated interpretation of the poem. That’s not a fault of the movie, by the way. I appreciate any movie that makes me think this long and this hard about the movie as a whole, it’s source material, and the changes made in adaptation.

The aspects that I don’t like about the movie are easily summarized; removing Penelope’s test of Odysseus from the ending, the fact that it seems to lack a sense of humor, the re-framing of Ancient Greek politics, and removal of agency from most female characters. These aren’t issues that entirely ruin the movie for me, thankfully, but they stand out as consequences of the adaptation’s hyper-realistic approach. 

Now, I would have complained that the realistic approach doesn’t fit an adaptation of the Odyssey, a mythic tale that tends to be a good subject for fantasy movies. But that’s not really true, as it happens. Sure, as I said I don’t like all the fallout of this decision, but there are cases where it works. Take one of my cited issues; the reframing of Greek politics. The movie implies that the Greeks’ siege of Troy was motivated by more than just a dispute over Helen of Troy, suggesting that Agamemnon had political desires over trading routes (thankfully they don’t go full Star Wars on that plotpoint and don’t focus more than a line of dialogue on it.) That’s fine and all, but it has the effect of flattening Agamemnon’s character and turning him into a (admittedly imposing) granite slab of a human who serves as an allegorical warning for Odysseus, instead of the tragic, complicated character of the Iliad and Odyssey. 

On the other hand, where the realism works is, paradoxically in the fantastical. It’s a matter of contrasts. It’s amazing seeing a (largely practical) cyclops staggering into a cave, seamlessly and smoothly worked into the background while interacting with the human sized actors. The practical effects seen in Circe’s literally hands-on transformation of Odysseus’ crew makes that scene pretty fucking unnerving. The scenes taking place in Hades are incredibly unnerving. Even the omission of the gods from the movie (baring Athena) seems to make their influence on the plot through nature that much more powerful. In so far as the realism grounds the movie, I think it makes for an accessible entry point for newcomers.

One aspect of the movie I really enjoyed was the focus on the law of Hospitality, referred to in the film as Zeus’ law. It’s the insistence that hosts welcome all guests and treat them with civility as they don’t know if their guest is a god in disguise. The movies goes to great lengths to discuss this as an inviolate law of Greek culture - being the reason why Penelope can’t just toss the suitors out of her house. Of course, the movie also discusses how this principle was violated by Odysseus in his destruction of Troy. It takes this down an interesting thematic hole, introducing a plot point that Greek peoples have become afraid of nebulous raiding parties (the Sea Peoples of ancient infamy.) Ultimately it is suggested that a cultural breakdown stemming from Troy’s destruction has rendered the Greeks suspicious of any sea-faring peoples especially if they seem friendly or in need. Kind of on the nose, but there’s a lot to unpack there. 

I think I’m having a hard time writing about this movie because I have a lot to say about it, but it’s taken me a while to fully parse my own thoughts. That’s not exactly a bad thing, but it does mean I can’t say much about it without going down a long rabbit hole in my mind, and that’s just not really fun to write about.  Ultimately, gun to my head, hand on my heart, I can only reach the conclusion that it’s a good movie, despite my having several issues. I’ve certainly thought more about the Odyssey itself after watching it, and that can only be a good thing. 

I don't own this image, claiming fair use. 

A Minecraft Photo Essay

My friends and I have a Minecraft server like most people our age and younger. We reset it every so often so our imaginations can run wild anew. We mine, we lay out bases, we build grand locations. I find it interesting how our castles and forts and homesteads tend to be wildly different. {NAME REDACTED 1} tends to build castles, blow them up, and leave them to rot and haunt like a ghost in the Scottish Highlands. {NAME REDACTED 2} builds large fortifications that rest on big fuck-off-hole-in-the-ground-mines that he’s dug. My imagination tends to run to the... modern. 

This is my current home base, a modernist structure straight out of Ikea. 

Here’s another structure I’m building. 

A brutalist inspired library. 

Clearly, I have a style of Architecture that I like. And It isn’t just because I think it’s easier to build in modern / postmodern styles. I kinda like the juxtaposition of the giant, looming structures bursting out of the naturalism in the forest. 

And for reference, here’s what the typical Minecraft world generates as homes and villages. 

Notice the paths in these two pictures. They’re dirt passageways, only existing between houses in these villages. For comparison, the rest of the world that is generated in our server exists without connections. 

Oh wait. You can see one of my bridges over there. 

I have been building a lot of bridges and walkways... I’m kind of obsessed with them. They look neat, don’t they?

Cutting through a lot of ground to build them. 

Almost like an industrial strip mine... 

And this got me thinking. Specifically it got me thinking about Robert Moses. While most people might be familiar with the epic Robert Caro biography The Power Broker, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking of a 2022 play about Robert Moses by David Hare called Straight Line Crazy. I haven’t seen it (read the script) but it’s title refers to Moses’ tendency to bulldoze existing properties and natural areas to build his bridges. Of course, it only makes sense that I connect each of my friend’s islands. 

Part of the fun of Minecraft is in the exploration, and the moment we start mapping out the world we’re in, that element of fun starts to wane. I wonder - and I haven’t heard otherwise from my friends, if while these bridges make traveling easier, they still ruin the fun of the exploration. Of course the other part of the fun of Minecraft is in the building. 

Now I’m not calling myself Robert Moses here. I’m just saying that noticed some similarities while I was working in this server. I’m tying together a world, taking it from a naturalistic paradise to an explicitly modernist world, regardless of the cost to the biome. I’ve even named parts of the world, officially declaring my ownership over it with complete disregard of what the land might already be called. 

But of course... That’s what you’re supposed to *do* in Minecraft. That’s the game’s purpose, stripping the earth of resources and building a fantasy land to the best of your imagination and skill. I guess it’s better than hurting the real world... but I wonder what ecological impact me playing Minecraft actually has, just in energy usage. Is it worth worrying about? I don’t know. Is it worth considering? Sure. 

In closing, I want to point to one of my favorite building projects from this server. This time, it’s a tunnel on the neutral island seen in the above picture. 

It’s meant to be a nice little refuge for all of us, someplace where we go back to nature and have a rest. That’s what the server is in real life, a nice little retreat from the real world. I think it’s funny that I needed to build a retreat inside the game.