2025 may be the most interesting year of our lifetimes and not in a good way.

 As I watch yet another car drive down the street with a huge flag duct taped to the side of it, all black, with huge white letters that say "F*CK BIDEN" but without the asterisk...it's almost hard to believe that any of this is real. People being nasty has always been a thing, but I have a co-worker who is scared to drive on the street now because of a road rage incident where a guy wouldn't let her into a lane and when she forced the issue, he revved his engine and laid on the horn for ten seconds.

I myself have survived several road rage incidents, each one leaving me shaken with an adrenaline rush. People passing me, then slamming on the brakes to stop in the middle of a road, forcing me to skid to a stop, then rolling down the window to give me the finger. Another guy nearly sideswiped my car with his trailer by passing super aggressively (I ended up on the side of the road). A third person actually did hit my car with theirs in a sideswipe, scraping all the paint off my mirror, and they just kept rolling down the street with their finger out the window. I guess I should count myself lucky. There are many in my area who have just been flat out shot and killed on the highways in Salt Lake.

And then there is the weird and almost surreal income inequality that I now see everywhere. I hear of pig-butchering scams that have robbed people who are into crypto of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I see these people who are on the news and saying, "I first started noticing things when I couldn't get an address or a return call for the $700,000 that I wired to XXX." Then the report continues with other testimonies of various sums, all in the hundreds of thousands.

No one ever stops to say...whoah whoah whoah...you had hundreds of thousands of dollars that was just lying around and you only noticed it when something happened with say...$700,000...that seemed iffy? What kind of money are you talking about here? How much money is actually out there? It turns out...a ton (read this as millions and millions) of Americans are really wealthy. Yet, all I hear is bitching about the economy. Why are so many people bitching about the economy when they literally have hundreds of thousands of dollars to lose to scammers? It doesn't seem real...but it somehow is.

I guess the most shocking thing to me is how different these people are from me. I remember decades ago someone asked Bill Clinton a question about the liberal mindset and he offhandedly said that when you write everything down that liberals believe in it all sounds good, and that he actually didn't understand why anyone didn't think the same thing. But I think it's safe to say that he was ignorant in the same way that I was ignorant. There are millions of brains out there that actually like the idea of unmarried teenage pregnancy, that actually like the idea of slavery, that actually like the idea of having only one religion and no other beliefs to challenge them in any way, and that actually like the idea of forced birth, women being paid less than men for doing the same job, and yes probably concentration camps too. Yes, they like all of that. It's been a very successful trick to gaslight ourselves that these people are outliers. Now, with election day next week, I wonder where it all ends. I think 2025 is going to be a very interesting year, and I don't mean that in a good way.

Can you tell a Star Wars story with Force users at its core and ignore the Skywalkers and somehow avoid cancellation?

Emperor Palpatine (not pictured) using his "Force Lightning" to destroy an armada of
ships floating above his world in a nebula cloud thing that is in outer space.

I had an interesting discussion at Sunday brunch involving Star Wars. My friend Jessica asked, "Why did Rey have to be a Palpatine or a Skywalker in that last movie?" The movie that she was talking about was The Rise of Skywalker just for reference. Jessica's point was that, "it could have been perfectly fine for Rey to be a nobody...like, she didn't have to be a Skywalker or a Palpatine. I would have liked it even better in fact if they didn't make it so that she had to come from those bloodlines at all."

Here's what I said (more or less) to try to answer this question. I think that Star Wars has a "Skywalker" problem. Anytime they try to tell a story with a Force-user in it...if it is not linked to the Skywalkers, the fan base will reject it. And then I went on to explain to Jessica that they actually tried to do this. They tried to sever the ties with the Skywalker's in The Last Jedi, even going so far as to kill off Luke and to leave the ending of the story with some no name kid sweeping up and doing his chores and demonstrating some measure of "force ability." They could have gone in any direction after The Last Jedi. But the backlash this movie created was so huge, that Disney got scared. They fired that director, went back to JJ Abrams, and that's how we got horses riding on the outside of a star destroyer in a nebula/cloud in space, and how we got the emperor shooting lightning out of his fingers that was so powerful that it could hit every spaceship in the entire armada spread out through this nebula. Think about that for a moment. Why would the Emperor have ever needed a "Death Star" if he could just destroy everything with his own lightning bolts?

So, I said, "It was utterly ridiculous but JJ quieted down the fan base and gave us this ridiculous story that barely even made sense, and he paid fan service yet again to people who just weren't done with the Skywalkers." Then I said, "They also tried to do this a second time, and it also failed. The Acolyte was a show that Disney + put out that didn't have any Skywalkers in it at all. It dared to tell a story of "The Force" that was different and kind of refreshing. Well...that sure as shit got canceled. I think the only reason that the other series having a "force user" (called Ahsoka) is even remotely successful is that her character ties directly into the Skywalkers, and one of the reasons The Mandalorian is successful is that they reincarnated a young Luke Skywalker to teach Grogu some basics of the Force before he went on his way."

Now, I did point out that stories that don't have Force users in them can totally abandon the Skywalkers and be good. You see this in Andor. There are no Force users so there's no mention of the Skywalkers and suddenly the magic works again. You can have a good story that no one is angry about and that people will watch. But here was my point to Jessica: no one knows if it is possible to write a Star Wars story that people will like if you have force users that have no connection to the Skywalkers in any way. All that we do know is that people get upset and they review bomb the crap out of the projects that do try to break away from the Skywalkers and then everyone involved with the project gets blacklisted and/or loses their jobs.

Anyway, I'd like to know what y'all think about this theory of mine: is it possible to even tell a story in the Star Wars universe that has force-using people at its core and ignore the Skywalkers and still make money/not get canceled?

I want to tell you about my retinal tear experience.

Sometimes I feel like I'm falling apart in my fifties. Last week (keep in mind that this was after I had the kidney stone fairy visit which occurred after I had the covid fairy visit), something weird happened with my vision. I was downstairs in my house, and I thought that the cat was hiding behind an ottoman because I saw its orange-ish tail flicking back and forth. But when I checked, there was no cat there. A moment later I saw it again behind another thing, and that's when I realized...the cat isn't in the room. However, there is something in my eye. It was a strange floater, but it was darker than any floater I had ever seen. Almost like a reddish and black spot just off center in my vision, shaped like a mouse, with a tail that flicked around. I joked with my friend that I had "Muad'dib" in my eye, because of a line from the 1980's Dune movie where Paul Atreides asks, "What do you call the mouse shadow in the second moon?" And Stilgar replies, "We call that one Muad'dib."

The next morning, it wasn't any better. There wasn't any physical pain, but I started to worry that this "floater" might be something more sinister. So, I went to the eye doctor, they ran me through some tests, dilated my eyes, and took photographs of it. My doctor said, "That floater is blood. I can't see where it is coming from but I'm concerned. I need to send you to a retina specialist." Well I went and saw the retina specialist, and they also dilated my eyes, injected a special ink into my arm that would highlight any bleeding areas in the eye, and then put me in front of another machine to take photographs. The doctor came in, took a look at them, and said that I had a tear in my retina, which is the photosensitive layer of cells that gives you vision. He said that he wanted to operate on it within ten minutes.

I asked him how these things happen, and he said, "A lot of the time it is just age. But there are other factors like diabetes and other such conditions that can create retinal tears. It might be that the fluid in my eyes is a bit stickier than normal, so when it pulls away from the retina, it might try to suck some of the retina with it like a suction cup." He also said, "Retinal tears in people your age is fairly common." So yeah, I guess that happened. Anyway, I did go through with the procedure, and I didn't like it. But it's not like you have much choice when the other option is to just eventually lose your vision. The procedure is to basically staple the tear back into place using a pulsating laser that makes a hammering sound and creates a hammering pressure on the back of your eye (and maybe a faint smell of burning flesh but I might have imagined that). I thought it was quite painful, not to mention the fact that you just completely lose vision in that eye. My left eye was black.  I could see nothing, which was scary.

After the procedure my vision slowly came back in that eye over the course of the day. I took some Ibuprofen and by the next morning, I could see normally. I still have that mouse-shaped swirly thing of blood floating around in the vitreous, but I've learned to ignore it for the most part. The doctor said it will go away over the next few months as it gets reabsorbed. So anyway, that was health issue number three in so many months. I'm hoping that this is the end of them for a while. But if it isn't, at least I've met my deductible on my health insurance until next July. So any procedure I need, I'm just going to have done. If I have to go to the emergency room for any reason, I'll just go. Might as well, since it will be free. I guess I should be grateful that we have the technology to fix things like retinal tears. It actually is pretty amazing if you think about it.

How do you feel about another person playing in the sandbox of a creator who may be dead?

Next month, those of us who like the Dune story of Arrakis and the Great Houses all backstabbing each other for thousands of years get a treat. It's called Dune: Prophecy and it is inspired by the novel Sisterhood of Dune which is co-written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. I actually didn't know this, and I only found out yesterday because there is so much hate for Brian Herbert online. I haven't read any of his books, but now I'm intrigued. Maybe I should finish up my Dune readings (as I only got to the end of God Emperor) and then moved on. But the kinds of vitriol that's targeting Herbert's son, Brian, basically goes along the lines of "I consider all of these works fan-fiction" or "I hate the way they are retconning characters. Some of the choices don't even make sense." For nerds who are deeply and emotionally invested in these science fiction works, these are real "clutch the pearls" statements. 

All of this makes me question what right anyone has to play in someone else's sandbox. Let's step back for a moment and think of other sandboxes that people are presently playing in or have played in within the last few decades. We've got Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, we've got Disney happily playing in the Star Wars sandbox and the Alien sandbox, and we also have Max which played in the Watchmen sandbox with a mini-series. Some people get upset when a character becomes black (when they were previously white). Others get upset when a character gets recast with a female (think way back to the Battlestar Galactica reboot and the SyFy channel's decision to make the character of "Starbuck" a woman when it was previously played by Dirk Benedict in the 1970's show).

In some cases (certainly) there are people who object to seeing something filmed that previously was just a mythical thing. The Clone Wars was like this. So, you had it name dropped by Luke Skywalker in A New Hope when he spoke to Ben and asked "You were in the Clone Wars?" And every single one of us wondered what the heck the "Clone Wars" even were, and so we made up things in the dearth of information that was available. So we imagined far off battles and struggles, and it was natural for every one of us to make it bigger than life in our imaginations. But when they showed up in film...even though there were lots of epic scenes...it could never live up to your dreams. And to some extent, we even get upset with original authors of material revisiting their sandboxes. The Matrix strikes me as one of these, calling any further attempts to explore the stories and themes of The Matrix a cash grab, as if audiences will just watch these things as brain-dead drones because they don't actually know what is good. "Oh it has Matrix in its name so I'll give it money." I don't think that's how any of this actually works.

Look, people will always try to recapture lightning in a bottle because it just feels so good. Jurassic Park was an amazing idea. I don't blame people for making that "cash grab" and trying to recreate the same wonder that we saw in that first film/book. It won't ever happen. Still...there's room to play in that sandbox. I for one think it would be cool to stop focusing on dinosaurs and cloning and set a world that is "post Jurassic Park" and do a spy thriller where it's a kind of Mission: Impossible scenario of world governments with the added part that dinosaurs are real and have been unleashed upon the world. I think that would be really cool...kinda like what happened when people thought of Alien and Predator and someone said...why don't we mash these together?

In the Star Wars universe, I've often felt that a series centered around a bounty hunter would be magnificent. Well, we got that in The Mandalorian and I was right. For what it's worth, I think the best Star Wars stories keep the Jedi and the Sith way in the background or not even mentioned at all, and they focus on the politics and danger present with a civil war that spans a galaxy. There's just so much you can do with that, and they haven't scratched the surface. For example, what about a series that has a crackpot team of rebels whose entire mission is to break into a skyscraper on some important core world where the tie fighter was developed to say...find the plans for something else...like a fuel depot or something like that? That would be a ton of fun.

Furthermore, I will never be so stuck in the mud that I won't think that a descendant of a famous author (like Brian Herbert is to Frank Herbert) doesn't have a right to play in the sandbox that the famous author created. I say, go for it. It seems silly that great ideas should just be done and finished when there might be more to tell in these enormous universes that were so meticulously created by a person who may have been bordering on obsession to get things completed before they kicked the bucket. I'm sure that long after George R.R. Martin is dead, we will have people playing in the Game of Thrones sandbox with stories about Arya and the other continents she discovers and on and on and on. Anyway, that's my opinion on this particular topic. So in finishing, I ask you all this question: do you like it when someone else plays in a famous property's sandbox? Or do you find this "fan fiction" offensive to your sensibilities and disrespectful to the creator?

My roommates have taught me a lot about the behaviors of all people.

If we were to pretend that people were plants, then I'd say that economic conditions in 2024 leave a lot of people "root bound." They cannot grow, and they enter a period of sameness that can last years or even decades wherein no change happens. However, this also makes it easier for other people to find and befriend them.

 I have now lived with other people (roommates) for a year and a half. When I first started this "experiment," I didn't know if I could actually live with people. And it turns out...I absolutely can! But I now understand better than I ever did why there is a loneliness epidemic in this country, and I think I can understand why we are as divided as ever on issues. At the end of the day, I believe (despite my small sample size), that a large amount (huge amount) of the population is actually unfit for human cohabitation. But this isn't an essay that backs up that hypothesis. Rather, it is one of those wherein I muse about the different behaviors of my roommates that I shall call "Alpha" and "Beta."

Both Alpha and Beta are men from the millennial generation. Alpha (the younger one) has literally no observation ability. This was an incredible thing to realize. If a rattlesnake was shaking its tail and wasn't hidden by bushes and was clearly seen in bright light on a trail...I think Alpha would step on it. He doesn't notice anything. If a burner is going on the stove, he doesn't see it. If there's a bee in the room, he has no idea that it is buzzing around his head. If there's a pile of shit in the middle of the floor, he doesn't smell it, and will step in it because he doesn't see it. That's how bad his observation is. It also impacts his ability to budget and save.

For example, Alpha buys these premixed honey butter things that come in a plastic container. My process is to watch him buy one, then watch him put it in the pantry for whatever "sweet thing" that he wants to use it on. When he finally gets around to using it, he puts it on the shelf in the fridge. He doesn't use it again, and then it slowly drifts to the back of the fridge where he forgets about it. I continue to observe it for a few months until it gets frosted over (this sometimes happens with the cold spots in the fridge). By then, Alpha has bought another honey butter that he intends to use on another sweet that he places in the pantry. And then I throw away the old honey butter that he no longer even remembers. Now...you may think that this is "normal behavior." But it happens with clothes too. He had a hoodie that he started leaving on the coat tree by the door. I noticed that month after month it lingered, until a year had passed, and I saw him wearing a new hoodie. So, I quietly discarded the old one that he must have forgotten was his. There's no permanence of memory.

My other roommate, Beta, has extremist conservative views that he gets from watching a lot of Andrew Tate videos. But aside from being an incel (he's not all that bad after you get to know him), he harbors some very strange ideas of what is smart and what is stupid. For example, when I use the term "genius" thinking of musical talent, or art talent, or athletic talent, or creative talent...Alpha doesn't recognize any of these terms. To him, "genius" only applies to someone who can do math. If you can't do complicated math, you aren't a genius. Also (as a caveat) he's very good at math. So, I think he views himself as a genius and just thinks everyone else is stupid (this may be a kind of personal empowerment in the absence of any other kind of evidence that proves that he is not a failure). But at the same time, he's unemployed and is struggling to find a job with his credentials. So he's kind of this "disgruntled man" who thinks he's a "genius" and he comes up with all kinds of reasons as to why he isn't getting hired, including "woke" hiring practices and whatnot. It's all just a conspiracy holding him down. He's also declared that he doesn't believe in the concept of wisdom. In other words, you are either smart or you're not. But in demonstration of this, he has so little wisdom it can fit into a thimble. Some of this manifests in buying a new car right before getting fired and then realizing he has an $800 a month car payment to make and rent to make as well. Not a very "genius" move if you ask me, but I digress.

One of the things I find so fascinating about both Alpha and Beta is that they are not "static" people. And by virtue of this small study group, I think all people share this same trait. When I met them, they just primarily ate one kind of food and did one kind of activity (play Dungeons & Dragons). Their lives were pretty much "work" and "play," in other words they lived binary existences. They moved in with me, I charged them reasonable rent, and here they are staying for now (I do hope that they move on sooner rather than later as my observations from month to month are only so entertaining). However, because I charge them reasonable rent, they are exploding at the seams in attempts to flourish. In America, we call this act the "pursuit of happiness." It's like watching a plant grow in a garden. Given room, it tries to spread. That's what's happening here at my house, and yes it surprises me. I thought they'd be static...fixed in time...people who just did their thing and paid rent. Was I naive? Probably. So it was a good thing to get roommates. I wonder if there are any other naive people out there? If so, it would be better for society if they did what I did and educated themselves.

But no, people are not static, if you give them room to grow. Beta in particular is trying to become a bodybuilder. I never would have seen this coming. Gym membership, ski passes to the mountains, working out, swimming, trying to lose weight to climb Mount Fuji in Japan, and you name it. There's so much protein in my house that it's honestly kind of gross to think about all the protein drinks, shakes, etc. that get mixed in the sink everyday, with protein splatter that ends up all over everything. I've read online before that scientists believe there is way too much protein being consumed by American men. Well...if you take a look at my house...there definitely is, and it's honestly not transforming Beta's body in any way that I can notice. Suddenly...all of the pizza boxes I'd noted in his previous apartment disappeared. Now Beta uses the stove daily, trying to meal prep, eating salmon and rice and oatmeal and doing all of these other things while watching Andrew Tate videos (yuck) but whatever. Sometimes, Beta takes time out of his day to rant about how stupid women are. And then he goes and does the very thing he rants about, not realizing that he just comes across as misogynistic. Self-awareness is not common with many young men I've decided.

Alpha, with access to top-end appliances and soft water and other things, now does his laundry twice a week to stay on top of his hygiene (I don't think this was a thing before he lived with me). So I hear the rumble of the wash on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. Combined with Beta's wash habits, sometimes it feels like the laundry machine never stops working, despite this only being a household of three. He eats at home a lot, and as cheaply as possible in order to save money for little vacations he takes with his non-binary friend to their cabin in Idaho and other places (like a game convention in Arizona). So there's always stacks of tin cans that need washed and recycled from all the cheap canned food he buys, and there's an entire freezer filled with chicken fingers just waiting for the air fryer. It's that plant just trying to grow and take up the extra space that's available in the garden. Nothing...no one...is a static thing. Every single person when you meet them is not actually who they are. They are only that person in that one slice of time, and tomorrow their desires and their goals will change. This is an important concept to master whenever you meet (and decide that you like) a person. They are different tomorrow!

It's actually amazing to me that relationships of any kind can actually happen in this world. With everyone constantly striving to change who they are, then the person that you get to know isn't the person you will end up with at the end of a year if they aren't "hedged" or "boxed in" to prevent growth of any kind. I think (unfortunately) this happens with a lot of people because the economics of rent and food and daily living rise to such a pricey extent that it saps all of their money. Then they just refer to themselves as "surviving." Their world becomes static and small. There is no bodybuilding. There is no traveling or expanding hobbies to things like woodworking. It is these people who don't change. Day in, day out, what they do remains the same because they have no other choices. Maybe this is the reason as to why it is easier to make friends when you are young: you don't have a lot of other choices of things that you can do to improve your life. You are kind of stuck and dependent on your family to live and you just don't get to do anything that your family doesn't allow. So you're like a "root bound" plant. However, the silver lining is that because you are root bound, you don't grow, and your "sameness" makes it easy for others to know you and befriend you. Once you escape the "root bound" condition and turn into a kudzu vine that goes every which way it wants and crushes everything in its vine-like tendrils...then that is a plant that is much harder to get along with and so...fewer friends if any. I mean...who wants to be in a relationship with a kudzu vine? People like stability, sameness, and you just don't get that from young people. Maybe...just maybe...you can get it from people over fifty, because by then, we can assume that they are many years into their kudzu growth and are now approaching a vine that won't grow all that much in the remaining years it has left. That stability seems to be why so many people can find a much more fulfilling "second act" later in their lives.

Anyway, these are just my observations based on living with people for the first time in decades (a choice I made a year and a half ago to answer burning questions and to make some money while I was at it). Remember, my roommate "Beta" doesn't believe that "Wisdom" actually exists. So don't take this essay as "wisdom" if you happen to agree with him. Maybe it's just the observations of a person who likes to "people watch" while trying to ascribe meaning to whatever it is that he sees.

Silo season 2 arrives in mid November.

How was everyone's long weekend? In my own world, I was dealing with a kidney stone again. I had one in 2013, and my urologist (at the time) told me that there was a 50% chance that I'd have another debilitating one within ten years. Well...I made it eleven years. Anyway, this particular one is one I had to pass naturally (it was much smaller than the 2013 one). However, it was still painful. I'm pretty sure as of the writing of this post that it has descended low enough that it is in my bladder, so the tough part is over with.

Feeling otherwise uninspired really to write anything, I did see that Silo season two is coming back in November (on Apple TV +). I finished season one about a year ago if memory serves. I remember being a blogger when the writer behind Silo, a Hugh Howey, made it pretty big and caught the imagination of other people who were trying to self-publish. He had some pretty great ideas, although I haven't gotten around yet to reading any of his lengthier works. I hear that he's retired now and just living on his millions. I think that's a good way to go about doing things: make a big splash if you can and then just ride on the coattails of your success. I've also heard that he wholeheartedly embraces ai, which can rub a lot of artists the wrong way. So, maybe it's good that he has enough power to be able to ignore the people who are upset about ai and its intersection with the arts.

Season one of Silo showed a lot of promise. The story itself is not ultra-complex, nor does it have a deep premise. In the end, the reasons why you tune into this show are for the characters and their underground dystopian world. The labor of their daily lives never does give you answers to the burning questions of "how did all of these humans end up in this Silo?" It also triggers that "conspiracy theorist" that resides in all of us by giving us little bits of information that elude to the fact that not everything may be as it seems. The idea that "those in charge" might have malevolent control issues resonates with just about everyone who worries about a "deep state" hiding information and making our suffering an intentional act, rather than making us victims of circumstance. 

Because I never read the extended novels (I only read the short story "Wool" that kind of started it all), the first season of Silo never really had an opportunity to fall flat with me. A lot of the time, readers and fans of a book or story won't like the show because they have imagined what the scenes should be like and what they end up seeing doesn't match up properly to that vision. That being said, Hugh (apparently) worked really closely with the showrunners and explained to his fans that the show is what he wants, and that the slight changes in the show are things that he desired. Sure, you do have to get used to Rebecca Ferguson trying to do an American accent (she's terrible at it) but it's honestly just a minor distraction.

I'm embedding the trailer for season 2 of Silo below (also I can't believe that it is almost November and it is still 85 degrees outside here in Salt Lake--ugh). Anyone else excited for this show's return?

I kind of miss gatekeeping.

With Rings of Power finishing its second season in a spectacular fashion (I really enjoy this beautiful show), I started to think about all the review bombs and the multiple ways in which internet trolls tear down these kinds of programs. Oh how far we have come since the early 90's and late 80's.

We live in a time where the worst people have internet access and dwindling, bordering on non-existent, levels of shame. Back in the day, if some sad sack loser wanted to vent about Spider-Man getting married, that dude had to write or type a letter. Then they had to address and stamp an envelope, and then mail said letter to an editor, and then wait months to see whether anyone read their deranged ramblings (or whether it was even printed). This is how things were done.

Now? Not only can the same type of loser set up multiple alts to review bomb a show they haven't seen 50 times before breakfast, but said loser has successfully lost the ability to understand how incredibly weird and damaged that behavior actually is.

I didn't realize at the time (as I was living through it), but there was a ton of gatekeeping in just about every aspect of life (and maybe that was a good thing). A lot of it was unintentional gate keeping. Things were difficult to get done (and expensive) because we simply didn't have a better way. If you wanted to publish a manuscript, it needed to be typed on paper. Once you did that, you needed to find an agent, because an agent was the only way you were ever going to get a thing published. Once you had an agent, then you could get in front of a publishing house. They wouldn't publish your work if it wasn't "good" and it was up to the agent to figure out if something was good enough to warrant a look at. There are tons of other examples of this kind of gatekeeping.

If you wanted the news, there wasn't 24-hour news. You just had to tune in to channels 3, 6, or 8 (out of a maximum of 12-13 channels) on an old tv, and you just had to consume what was told to you by Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow. Once the news hour was over, that was it. You could get some news out of a printed paper, but that required a delivery person and a subscription. My dad would go to the library once a week to read The Wall Street Journal to get the news from New York and see what was happening in the world of stocks and bonds. The writing in the journal was always fantastic, and they always had pictures of people they were talking about made in curious black and white pixelation. Knowledge came from textbooks and encyclopedias, and not from iPhones. If you didn't have an encyclopedia, you had to hit the sidewalks to go to the library and look up things there and take notes. You might be asking: Mike, why was this better?

Well...it wasn't better in the sense that knowledge was hard to obtain. But forcing people to jump through hoops to get a thing also ended up making it much more difficult for everyone to start hating each other for "reasons." Having a filter that only allowed some things through would also set up those who made it to the other side with reasonable incomes. If you were a writer and actually got published by a big publishing company, you could make a career out of that pretty easy. If you were a person that actually managed to get some music published, you would probably be setup for life doing music as your career. If you studied art in high school and college and somehow got hired to do a book cover, you could actually make a career of being an illustrator and gain some notoriety and fame. In a time when people couldn't just blather whatever madness is going through their minds, things like debate and debate performance actually mattered. If you did poorly in a debate, then you probably wouldn't get elected. Nowadays? I don't think that debates actually mean anything. It's like a parade or a show...it's pure entertainment and that's it. Nobody cares. People have already decided long before a debate who gets their vote. Back in the day...being an expert in something actually mattered. But in our land of "everyone has the same platform and can say whatever they want," the experts get labeled as "well that's your opinion," and then some jackass can say whatever they want to say and "this is my opinion and it carries the same weight as yours because I too can publish and make a video."

Now, I totally realize what I'm saying here, and it actually goes against what I would ideally want. As a person who typically gets the short end of the stick, I love that I can actually publish whatever I want and not have to be gate kept by someone (and prevented from having my expressions read). But because I can do this, everyone can. And maybe this is kind of bad for society. Gone are the "water cooler" type discussions I had with people in the past about books I've read thinking that someone else has read the same book. I very rarely come across anyone that has read the same books I've read because there is no central authority telling you what books are good and forcing people to read those books. People no longer know how to structure a sentence. I see grammatical errors and spelling errors all the time, and no one cares because the gatekeeping is gone. There are no consequences for being a bad speller or using improper punctuation. The consequences used to be that maybe you'd get a terrible grade or maybe you wouldn't get published. Well, there are so many people with degrees these days that its hard for any of them to find a job. And if a publisher doesn't publish a book, who cares? You can just go on Amazon and publish away with ai artwork for a cover. It used to be that you could have a certain kind of respect for "knowing things." These days, you can be a complete ignoramus and just use google and know things the same as someone who spent four years studying a subject.

Before this "rant" gets too long in the tooth, I want to end by saying that none of what I might miss from the days of yore actually matters (as we live in 2024). Access to all information whether it is truth or lies is there for anyone to consume. So it doesn't matter what I think. However, I kind of see modern society as a huge pond now, whereas before it was separate rivers and canals that you had to try and get access to. Because it's a pond, there aren't any preferential areas where the water is clean and pure. If a person on one end of the pond pisses and poops in it (or pollutes it with gasoline), then you eventually get to deal with it on your end. There's no "jumping to another water source," and its actually impossible to keep your side of the pond clean. No matter what, the filth gets in, and whether you like it or not this is the water you drink now. It doesn't feel like this is a better way.

Agatha All Along seems like a nice October distraction before the horrors of November.

Being the month of October, witches, ghouls, and goblins seem to be on everyone's mind. I don't much care for actual scary movies...you know...things like The Conjuring and Salem's Lot. I spoke in a previous blog post about how the new iteration of Salem's Lot is supposed to bring back the frightening version of vampires that has been kind of "out of style" for a decade or two since Buffy and Twilight and perhaps things like Interview with the Vampire made the monster into a sex symbol. But I kinda like the non-scary monsters. Agatha All Along from Disney+ seems to fit this niche nicely at the moment by giving us non-scary witches who still have a lot of compelling things about them.

I'm not completely caught up with the show. However, Aubrey Plaza's character (Rio Vidal) is pretty intriguing. I wonder if we are actually going to get the Marvel version of Death. If you don't know, in the Marvel universe there are these entities like Death and Eternity who are really powerful and basically aspects of the cosmic power that is a universe (I don't say "the" here because Marvel has many different universes). Previously, we've had at least one version of Death, but never the actual Death itself. In Thor: Ragnarok we got Cate Blanchett as Hela, and she even referred to herself as "The Goddess of Death." But, I don't think that counts. In the original comics that featured the infinity stones, Thanos was in love with Death, but Death didn't return the affection (and was probably incapable of doing so). 

Thanos just reasoned in his weird twisted way that he would need to kill off half the universe in order to attract Death's attention. So, it makes me wonder if (at this stage of the game) Rio is supposed to be that version of Death. Or just maybe, she's an avatar of Death kinda like how Moon Knight is an avatar of Khonshu (you guys remember Moon Knight, right?). I also kind of wonder how Agatha and Death got together in the first place. My best guess is that Agatha drew Death's attention because Agatha was offing people who were immortal or extending their lives through the use of her magic. There's got to be some kind of deal that was worked out between these two.

In any event, a show where you can't quite figure out what an antagonist wants usually ends up interesting, and Agatha All Along is that kind of show. Furthermore, it adds to it by creating mystery around its supporting cast, and the protagonist (Agatha) is a mystery as well. So, it's pulling all of those strings all of the time. Every character in this show seems to have "something." Teen (my guess is that this is Wiccan in the comic books) can't say certain things like his name out loud but why? There's Agatha's relationship with Rio (above), Lilia has those delightful premonitions, Jen has the guy who bound her, Alice has the whole deal with the curse... I just hope that all of these story arcs lead to an actual answer. I also wonder if we will actually get to meet Mephisto at some point in this show. That would be something.

Anyway, those are my thoughts as of right now. Anyone else watching this show?

The October IWSG post is all about ghost stories this time around.

It's October, and all the spooks and haunts are starting to appear in my neighborhood. This is probably the scariest October I can remember due to the pending election, but that's all I'm going to say about that. Being the first Wednesday of the month, it is time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. If you've never heard of this before, you can go HERE to sign up. With that out of the way, let's talk about what exactly the Insecure Writer's Support Group is.

What is the Purpose of the IWSG?: It is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds.

When do y'all post?: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. This is when you should post your thoughts on your own blog. Some ideas of what you could talk about include doubts and fears that you have conquered. You could also discuss your struggles and triumphs. Or you could offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling.

How does this make your online presence grow?: Well, you should visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writers. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a dozen new people each time. When you return comments, you'll find that others follow the breadcrumbs back to your blog. That's it in a nutshell. 

The Twitter (X) handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag you should use is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre!

Now, every month, we announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. You should include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

But, remember, the question is optional!

October 2nd question - Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

My favorite classic ghostly tale is probably A Christmas Carol. It doesn't scare me so much, but it is just a really good story that pretty much everyone has heard about. I think that Dickens really nailed it when he came to spinning a yarn, and the different versions of ghosts opened my mind to the possibilities that ghosts could be something other than scary. As a bonus, I want to say that my favorite scary story is The Monkey's Paw. This is a short story that involves a person making some pretty scary wishes on an old mummified paw from a monkey. But the way that the wishes come true are horrible beyond imagining. It was really the first time that I realized that maybe we shouldn't crave wishes, because whatever entity that could grant them might be really malevolent.

And that's it. Thanks for visiting.