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Archive for June, 2023

In the News (#1346)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2023| 1 Comment »

Constitutional protections are meaningless without remedies to enforce them.  –  The Institute for Justice

My Police State, ‘Tis of Thee

Politicians blatantly lying about project costs is especially vile when the project is a facility to train cops in “urban warfare” tactics:

In the spring of 2021, [an authoritarian group named] the Atlanta Police Foundation a[sked their political cronies to] put up $30 million for a p[opulation suppression] training center, [claiming] the nonprofit and its [fascist] partners would handle the rest of the project’s $90 million price tag.  That [lie] was repeated month after month, year after year, by one mayor and then the next…But…last month, city officials publicly acknowledged for the first time what [politicians and cronies] have known since at least August 2021 — the actual cost to taxpayers for the facility…[will] be more than double [the claimed amount]…The additional cost comes in the form of $1.2 million in annual [graft] to the Atlanta Police Foundation, re[sulting in an eventual]…profit…for the [fascist group.  As if]…that [weren’t bad enough], Atlanta City Council members…are…consider[ing] a proposal that [increases the] up[-front cost] to $67 million in…funding [stolen from the people the cops will be trained to inflict greater violence upon]…The funding discrepancies coupled with the state’s arrest of three training center opponents last week on [bogus] fraud and money laundering charges have heightened the stakes of City Council’s vote…

Don’t Call It Trafficking (#1088) 

Remember, this isn’t “human trafficking”, but consensual sex is:

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office…has completed its investigation into the transport of 49 migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last September by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and filed criminal charges…[for] several counts of unlawful restraint…Meanwhile, California’s attorney general [has] accused the DeSantis administration of recruiting…16 migrants from Venezuela and Colombia…fl[ying them]…from El Paso to Sacramento and then dropp[ing them] in front of the offices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento…

Torture Chamber (#1116)

US politicians’ sick infatuation with “punishment” continues:

Being sentenced to a Texas prison shouldn’t amount to the death penalty.  But that’s what it may have been for hundreds…who…have died due to overheated state jails and prisons…Yet, unconscionably, the Texas Senate refused to consider a House-approved bill that would have helped remedy this inhumane situation by providing funding to speed up installation of air conditioning systems in state lockup facilities…Texas…prisons…reach…sustained temperatures well beyond 100 degrees in summer months…a study by researchers at Brown University School of Public Health…found that 13% of Texas prison deaths between 2001 and 2019 “may be attributed to extreme heat during warm months in Texas prisons without universal air conditioning.”  That’s a total of 271 deaths…

Panopticon (#1150)

Similar cases have already been ruled unconstitutional in other federal circuits:

Todd and Heather Maxon live on a five-acre property in rural Long Lake Township [in]…Michigan…Todd likes to work on cars, so they keep vehicles on the property but hidden from the road.  In 2007, the township sued the Maxons for storing “junk” on their property…The couple fought back and won:  The township agreed to drop the case and reimburse attorney fees…[if] the Maxons would not expand their collection…But the…township [wanted revenge, so it] hired a company to fly drones over the property and take pictures…multiple times…from 2010 to 2018.  The pictures allegedly showed that the number of vehicles had indeed expanded, so the township sued the Maxons for violating the previous agreement.  The Maxons moved to suppress the [warrantless] drone evidence as a Fourth Amendment violation…but…a…court de[clared] that the “exclusionary rule does not apply in this civil matter”…The Institute for Justice…which represented the Maxons in their initial litigation, appealed the decision to the Michigan Supreme Court in September…

The Mob Rules (#1303)

Apparently there haven’t been enough nuisance lawsuits for Louisiana politicians’ taste:

Louisiana [politician]s are [doubling down on] a recently enacted law that requires pornography websites verify users are at least 18 years old…The Senate gave unanimous final passage to a bill…that would allow the Louisiana attorney general to investigate and fine — up to $5,000 a day…websites that do not comply with the age verification law [after the same politicians declare them “pornographic”]…

Panopticon (#1308)

The conditioning of kids to accept constant, intrusive surveillance is working:

In a newly released Cato Institute…National Survey of 2,000 Americans, we asked respondents whether they “favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.”  Not surprisingly, few Americans—only 14 percent—support this idea…However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in‐​home government surveillance cameras.  3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor…[this kind of dystopian] surveillance…Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.  We don’t know how much of this preference for security over privacy or freedom is something unique to this generation (a cohort effect) or simply the result of youth (age effect)…

The Last Shall Be First (#1338) 

The damage done by prohibition is never limited to the group a law is openly aimed at:

[Publicity] surrounding Florida’s new restrictions on gender-affirming care focused largely on [legal minors]…but…[the] law…also made it difficult – even impossible – for many transgender adults to get treatment…[because] clinics are…trying to figure out how to operate under regulations that have made Florida a test case for restrictions on adults…[such as the] require[ment that]…any health care related to transitioning [must be supervised by an MD, and]…in person…many people received care from nurse practitioners and used telehealth.  The law also made it a crime to violate the new requirements…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Annex 110

Posted in Diary, tagged on June 9, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Though we still have a few details to finish (such as the side-panels for the stage and a couple more braces), I took this photo Saturday while I was cleaning the tub cover, because I liked the way it looked.  Then just a few hours after I took the picture, Grace connected the water line I ran under the floor last week; if you enlarge the picture you can probably spot the valve hanging under the little stage there, already connected on the fountain end.  A bit later, we connected the other end to the line that feeds hot water to the sink and dishwasher, and I’m quite pleased to say it works!  If I hadn’t already topped off the tub just a couple of days ago (you can see the level is relatively high), I would’ve gone ahead and used the fountain to do so Saturday, because as I explained two weeks ago, that’s what her practical function will be.  Up until now, I’ve had to drag the hose around to dump dozens of liters of 10o C water into a tub we want kept at 38o C, but now I’ll be topping off the tub with water that’ actually hotter than what’s already there.  But besides the practical function, I just love the whole aesthetic of having a stone statue above my spa, and I really love the fact that every week, we’re getting a little closer to being completely done.

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The Buffyverse, Part Three

Posted in Favorites, Miscellaneous, tagged , , on June 8, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The three things I find most appealing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel all fit into characteristics of the way my brain works.  I’ve mentioned before that for me, human interaction is the most satisfying part of my journey through life, so it should be no surprise that I quickly lose interest in shows without the kind of interesting, well-developed fictional characters the Buffyverse has in abundance.  Last week, I thoroughly explained why strong, consistent world-building is important to me, and of course Buffy has that as well.  The third thing I value in shows is cleverness and ability to surprise, and guess what?  Buffy has that, too.

See, it’s like this: my brain moves extremely fast, so that if the plot of a show is at all predictable, I will see any twists coming long, long before the big reveal.  And because I have an excellent memory, I immediately recognize derivative story elements and tired tropes practically as soon as they appear.  Now, it’s OK if I figure out the twists halfway through, or if it only happens on occasion.  But if I can predict the ending nearly every time, five or ten minutes after the opening credits, I’m probably going to get bored with it.  But with Buffy, it was exactly the opposite; the show kept me guessing the majority of the time, despite the fact that it usually “played fair” rather than pulling some sort of unprecedented necrobabble out of a hat to hand-wave the writers out of some dungeon they’ve written themselves into, as so many dark fantasy shows are wont to do.  But that’s not the half of it; the Buffy writers were not only willing to turn tropes inside-out and upside-down, but also to shamelessly steal them from other genres or defenestrate conventions.  Vampires could be boring, airheaded, or lovesick; demons could be easygoing nerds or flamboyant lounge singers; an evil wizard could be a corny square; villains could be likable and goodies despicable.  One episode was a bona fide musical (the result of a powerful demon’s influence), but rather than just being a throwaway bit of fun it actually contained serious character development and important foreshadowing.  And in more than one season, the finale resulted in more destruction than is even the norm in the superhero genre.

And then there’s the wit.  The dialogue in most episodes doesn’t merely sparkle, it snaps, crackles, and pops.  There is often humor in even the darkest, most serious episodes, and ofttimes that humor is of Saharan dryness and Hitchcockian blackness; at other times it was practically farce, and yet it all fit together smoothly and comfortably to create a consistent and recognizable style which, though less striking in Angel, suffuses both shows.  I found myself laughing out loud on a regular basis, and there aren’t even many comedy series that can dependably evoke that from me.

All in all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a rare gem, and Angel a worthy spinoff which, while it doesn’t match its parent series, certainly doesn’t disgrace it.  I highly recommend these shows not just to those who think a horror comedy superhero soap opera sounds right up their alley, but also for anyone who enjoys tight, clever writing, compelling characters, and series which aren’t so impressed with themselves that they forget the point of television shows is, first and foremost, to entertain.

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In the News (#1345)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 7, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Won’t somebody please actually think of the children?  –  Elizabeth Brown

Panopticon (#1001)

The “security” system that isn’t:

Amazon will pay $30 million in fines to settle allegations of privacy violations related to…its Ring video doorbell and Alexa virtual assistant services…Ring…grant[ed] access to private videos to its employees and contractors.  It also allegedly neglected to implement basic privacy and security measures, allowing hackers to gain control of consumers’ cameras and videos by breaching their accounts…”Ring gave every employee—as well as hundreds of Ukraine-based third-party contractors—full access to every customer video, regardless of whether the employee or contractor actually needed that access to perform his or her job function”…[one] Amazon employee viewed thousands of video recordings of female users in private spaces like bathrooms and bedrooms over several months.  This incident went unnoticed by the company’s security team until another employee discovered and reported it…

Thought Control (#1277)

It’s always nice to see authoritarian fanatics hoist with their own petard:

The Bible has been removed from all elementary and middle school libraries throughout the Davis School District [in Utah] after someone c[orrectly pointed out that it contains material now considered grounds for censorship in Utah.  Hypocrites responded by filing]…a[n] appeal to the ruling…asking for the district to retain the Bible in all district schools…[despite its considerable] vulgarity [and] violence…[the complaint] not[ed] that the Bible includes mentions of incest, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation and rape, among other things…

Torture Chamber (#1278) 

Your “leaders” refer to this as “correction”:

Rikers [Island] officials [lied, claiming one of their victims] had suffered a heart attack…[when in actuality] an autopsy shows that he had a fractured skull…Joshua Valles was [told “Stop faking!]…when he complained to s[crews] about head…[pain resulting from the fracture]…court monitor Steve Martin..learned that…Valles [had been fatally assaulted] not from the Department of [Locking Humans in Cages], but from an external source.  Pressed on what had happened, DOC staff [simply lied]…Commissioner Louis Molina…[even] urged [Martin] to [support the lies about] what happened to Valles…the endemic violence of Rikers Island…was deemed so severe in the federal lawsuit that gave rise to the monitorship eight years ago that it constitutes a violation of the constitutional rights of the people [locked up] there…

You Were Warned (#1288)

It’s a relief to see the courts sending so many ambulance-chasers packing:

The Supreme Court [has] declined to take up a case from a [soi-disant] victim of sex trafficking who [tried to use FOSTA] to [get a big payout from] Reddit…[because her former boyfriend posted videos of them having sex when she was slightly under 18]…The [attempt] was the latest targeting…section [230, hoping to destroy the open internet in pursuit of personal profit]…Earlier this month, the court [protect]ed Google and Twitter [from similar nuisance lawsuits by] preserving…Section 230 [from castration in the name of a bogeyman, though in that case it was]…terroris[m rather than “sex trafficking”] …“There are other important big tech cases in the pipeline, but this seems to confirm that the justices aren’t going to come back to Section 230 anytime soon,” [law professor Steve] Vladeck said…

The Last Shall Be First (#1318) 

Politicians don’t care how much public money they waste defending asinine culture war theater:

U. S. District Court Judge Thomas L. Parker…[has] declared Tennessee’s anti-drag Adult Entertainment Act to be unconstitutional…A…Memphis based…theatre company, Friends of George’s, had sued the state of Tennessee…[because] the law [is] unconstitutional under the First Amendment.  In April Judge Parker ordered a temporary injunction halting the…law…hours before it was set to take effect[, saying:]  “If Tennessee wishes to exercise its police power in restricting speech it considers obscene, it must do so within the constraints and framework of the United States Constitution…”

Dangerous Speech (#1329)

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.”

U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa denied a defense motion asking her to dismiss the five-year-old criminal case against veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin…[because] the U.S. Department of Justice [is] talking out of both sides of its mouth, with the DOJ insisting on one interpretation of the U.S. Travel Act before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, while arguing for a looser application of the same law in Phoenix against Lacey, Larkin and four co-defendants…

You Were Warned (#1344)

When the Unsinkable Liz Brown does a deep dive on some species of tyranny, there’s no way for me to adequately choose a pull-quote to feature here, so I’m just going to advise you to read her latest, on attempts to undermine free speech, destroy the internet and expose all private communications to the probing snouts of cops under that venerable excuse for tyranny, “THE CHILDREN!!!™” and tell you that it covers KOSA, EARN IT, STOP CSAM, age verification laws,  TikTok bans, and much more.

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Diary #675

Posted in Diary, tagged , on June 6, 2023| 5 Comments »

Horses are, in many ways, quite fragile creatures; there are so many ways to throw their health off-balance that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.  Last week I extended the paddock fence to enclose the north lawn, which means lots of lush, sweet grass for the animals to graze on; of course Shiloh doesn’t have the horse sense (sorry about that) to pace herself (sorry about that one too) in order to avoid colic, and that meant a bloated, gassy pony whining until she managed to poop, and then immediately going back and gorging some more.  She seems to have mostly adjusted now, but for a few days there I got rather tired of her complaining loudly all afternoon, every afternoon.  So I decided to force her to exercise in order to get things moving, and the quickest, easiest way to accomplish this was to annoy her into running away from me.  So for several days, I would periodically chase her, waving my arms as though they were tentacles and shouting, “RUN! FLEE! RUN!” and “Come back, I want to eat you!”  Naturally it worked, and I have the piles of pony manure to prove it.  Eventually she seems to have figured out that she didn’t need to stuff herself into sickness like an American at Thanksgiving, so I can probably skip the Demogorgon impressions for now.  But I must admit that I laughed like a hyena every time I did it for a few days there; sometimes it’s good to have a proper adult excuse for behaving like an imbecile.

Oh, and by the by, I lied in the second sentence; I’m not really sorry at all. 

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Getting Away from the Grownups

Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , on June 5, 2023| 1 Comment »

I’m glad I grew up at a time when kids spent as much of their off-time as far away from grownups as possible and recognized adult interference for the killjoy menace it is.  One of my primary activities as a kid was finding places where adults either couldn’t or wouldn’t go – under houses, clear spots deep in huge blackberry patches, inside huge culverts under the railroad tracks, way up in tall trees deep in the woods, etc.  It wasn’t that I was trying to do anything nefarious; I mostly just wanted to read in peace, or look at interesting bugs, or explore, or play some sort of make-believe game with other kids, and was not interested in any of those activities having a big wet blanket thrown on them by some well-meaning busybody who didn’t understand what I was doing or thought it was VERY IMPORTANT to tell me that if I fell in the river, nobody would see (an actual cop told me this while I was waiting for the ferry with my bicycle, when I was about 14).  And guess what?  I survived anyway, despite the absence of coaches, monitors, babysitters or other adults acting in loco parentis.  In fact, I thrived; I learned how to do for myself and more importantly, think for myself, and I figured out at a fairly young age that when anyone demanded obedience, belief or trust because they had an Important Title or were simply bigger than me, rather than for some reason they could logically explain, that it was usually because they had no sound reason, and therefore were not to be trusted, believed, or obeyed.  Adults who treated me like I had a brain and took the time to actually explain themselves to me were an entirely different matter, but those were few and far between and I still remember them fondly all these many years later, though all but a few of them have since departed this plane.  But I’m honestly frightened for the future when I look around and see an entire generation of kids who have been treated like toddlers all the way to university, and like small children after that; these are not people who are going to be good at doing or thinking for themselves, but rather people who seek “authorities” to believe, trust, and obey.  Which I reckon is probably the reason this pathological coddling has become not only normal, but enshrined in law and enforced by cops, bureaucrats, and other functionaries of the increasingly pervasive State.

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Links #674

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 4, 2023| 1 Comment »

I can’t breathe.  –  Ivan Gutzalenko

There are many popular Tina Turner songs I could’ve chosen to honor her passing, but instead I decided to use one most of my younger readers may be unfamiliar with.  The links above the video were provided by Anarres Ansible; Cop Crisis; Phoenix Calida; Scott Greenfield; Dan Savage & Franklin Harris; Lenore Skenazy; and SWOP-USA, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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In the News (#1344)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2023| 2 Comments »

Anti-sex-work rhetoric…continues to dominate mainstream media.  –  Holly Randall

If Men Were Angels

One would think that by now, the title “youth pastor” would be a big red flag:

[A typical and representative] youth pastor [previously] charged with child sexual assault is now facing new charges…Jordan Huffman…jump[ed bail in Wisconsin]…and [fled to]…Florida [where he] was [caught and] extradited to Wisconsin…the [newly-reported] victim said the crimes began in 2017…[at] 12 years old…

The Puritan Recrudescence (#907)

Politicians don’t even try to make their new laws Constitutional any more:

The Texas legislature has passed a new age verification law that compels adult websites to post pseudoscientific anti-porn propaganda disclaimers declaring that “pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses and weakens brain function.”  The measure, HB 1181, is a much-augmented version of Louisiana’s age verification law and its many copycats, and echoes the debunked “porn addiction” language of faith-based anti-porn groups…

Compelled speech is, of course, unconstitutional, but Southern politicians in particular seem determined to negate that inconvenient fact by wishing very hard.

Held Together With Lies (#938)

In case you ever doubted the danger of letting government dictate what constitutes “disinformation”:

YouTube [has] removed…an episode of the Holly Randall Unfiltered industry podcast, featuring an interview with…Elizabeth Nolan Brown debunking myths about sex trafficking spread by anti-sex-work activists, mainstream media and politicians.  YouTube [claims] the content was removed due to a supposed violation of its policies against “harmful conspiracy theories.”  Randall appealed the removal but YouTube [bots automatical]ly dismissed the appeal, [pretending actual humans] had reviewed the content…and [claiming that debunking harmful propaganda]…is [not] “safe”…YouTube consistently platforms…pseudoscientific and religious attacks against sex workers and the adult industry without flagging the frequent lack of factuality in those videos…

Winding Down (#1289)

Occasionally, cops’ lies are too outrageous even for politicians:

As of July 1…Maryland…law will allow adults 21 or older to publicly possess up to 1.5 ounces of marijuana.  In anticipation of that…Maryland [politicians] last month passed H.B. 1071, which will bar police, also effective July 1, from treating the [actual or pretended] smell of cannabis as sufficient grounds for stopping or searching pedestrians or cars.  Virginia enacted a similar law in 2020, and…Missouri and Illinois…have proposed the same basic reform…Any evidence obtained in violation of the new rules is “not admissible in a trial, a hearing, or any other proceeding.”  Notably, that includes “evidence discovered or obtained with consent,” which is little more than a legal fiction when people are waylaid by armed agents of the state with the power to informally punish uncooperative drivers…

Panopticon (#1316)

Cops will continue to do this until there are criminal penalties for it:

[Three civil liberties groups demanded that] seventy-one California [cop shops]…immediately stop sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with [cop shops] in other states because it violates California law and could enable prosecution of abortion seekers and providers elsewhere,  The letters from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU NorCal), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) gave the agencies a deadline of June 15 to comply and respond…Since 2016, sharing any ALPR data with out-of-state or federal [cop shops or spook houses] is a violation of the California Civil Code…Nevertheless, many agencies continue to use services such as Vigilant Solutions or Flock Safety to make the ALPR data they capture available to out-of-state and federal agencies [because, as is typical of laws pretended to control cops, the law has no criminal penalties for violators].  California…also [passed]…a[nother toothless] law…prohibiting state and local [cop shops] from providing abortion-related information to out-of-state [cop shops]…

You Were Warned (#1337)

The censors are growing bold enough to admit their real goals:

Democrats naively (and incorrectly) believ[e] that because [KOSA is] called the “Kids Online Safety Bill” it will magically protect children, even though tons of experts have made it clear it will actually put them at greater risk.  Meanwhile, Republicans are now freely admitting that they’re going to use KOSA to force websites to censor LGBTQ content.  They’re literally proud of it.  The Heritage Foundation, which at least used to have some principled stances before being taken over by culture warriors without any principles, is bragging about how it will use KOSA in this manner…the enforcement mechanism in the bill is that state Attorneys General get to bring lawsuits against websites for not removing such “harmful” content.  And if you don’t believe that there are GOP state AGs itching to bring exactly these lawsuits, you haven’t been paying attention…

Torture Chamber (#1343)

Denying medication to people locked in cages is just a silent version of yelling “Stop faking!” at them:

Dexter Barry waited 12 years to get a new heart…In 2020, his long wait paid off.  His new heart allowed him to imagine a healthy life…But in 2022, after…[the state unnecessarily locked] him in [a cage] for two days [for arguing with a neighbor, and refused to give him] his life-sustaining medication, his body rejected the heart [and he died]…Barry told [both the pigs and the judge] at least seven times that he needed to take his anti-rejection medications every day to survive…[but they didn’t give a shit]…

 

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Whores’ Day 2023

Posted in Holidays, Perception, Philosophy, Words, tagged , , , , , on June 2, 2023| 2 Comments »

Today is International Whores’ Day.  It is not “Sex Worker Day”; that is March 3rd.  Today is a day to shamelessly celebrate our shameless history, not a day for sanitized words or concepts; it is a day to fight society’s attempts (via law and police violence) to sanitize the wilder, unrulier, more chthonic aspects of sex.  This is a day for sexual outlaws, not well-behaved “workers”; it is a day to celebrate the triumphs of criminalized human beings against a society that would rather we didn’t exist.  It is a day to oppose censorship, not to engage in self-censorship; a day to honor a means of survival that predates laws and governments by eons; and a day to celebrate a power which will always defeat even the most pernicious attempts to domesticate it.

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The Buffyverse, Part Two

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , , on June 1, 2023| 3 Comments »

Another aspect of the Buffyverse which pleased me very much was Joss Whedon and Company’s world-building.  If I’m to suspend disbelief in the more fantastical elements of a fantasy or sci-fi scenario, it’s very important that all of the mundane elements be internally consistent.  My own role-playing game worlds are meticulously laid out, with a cosmology, past and future history, set of metaphysical laws, etc; even if the players never encounter some aspect of the game universe, it nonetheless fits into a consistent and predictable pattern.  I have no patience for lazy writers who dismiss criticism of their inconsistencies and slipshod world-building with, “Well, if you can accept the existence of fire-breathing dragons…”  because that’s the opposite of true; the more fantastical a world, the more important it is that it doesn’t contradict itself if an audience is to accept it.  The dragons, warp engines, magic spells, and technobabble have to follow some set of rules or else the story degenerates into random foolishness.  And IMHO one of the most important aspects of that structure is chronology; “Once upon a time” is fine for standalone stories, but if a fictional hero is to have a series of adventures, they must have a firm chronology or the whole thing begins to dissolve into chaos.

Comic books have traditionally been extraordinarily bad at a lot of these things, which is one reason I lost patience with the genre in my early teens.  But despite the fact that Buffy and Angel are superheroes and both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel rely heavily (sometimes even blatantly) on the tropes of the genre, they never fall into the trap of hand-waving some inconsistency away with “It’s magic”.  The vampires, demons and other magic beings follow a predictable set of rules, and often when I thought I had caught a goof-up it actually turned out to be an intentional plot device (such as a clue that some powerful force was interfering with the rules).  And while the chronology of corporate comic book worlds has approximately the cohesion of wet toilet paper, creating a world where nobody ages and the past changes at a writer’s whim, the chronology of the Buffyverse is tight, logical, and natural.  People age and change; major events become part of the big picture rather than being conveniently forgotten when the end credits roll, and time passes at the same rate as it does in the external universe.

As both a writer and a 40+ year DM, it’s obvious to me that a lot of thinking went into designing the Buffyverse.  Though we in the audience learned about the metaphysics and esoteric history of Buffy’s world gradually, often via overt exposition but more often by being shown, it’s pretty obvious that Whedon and his writers had already developed these structures long before they were revealed to us, in many cases before the show even became a reality.  While casual viewers of a show may not notice inconsistencies or gaps, or care if they do notice, I don’t have that luxury.  My analytical brain can’t help noticing them, and my OCD focuses on them even when I’d rather not.  This isn’t to say I can’t enjoy a show whose universe-building is sloppy and whose canon contradicts itself repeatedly with the passing seasons; Star Trek was still occasionally inconsistent well into its second season, and Doctor Who is so consistently inconsistent that I regularly need to do stuff like this to get my brain to accept it.  But it’s really nice when I don’t need to do it, and can relax into the experience knowing that the creators aren’t trying to pull a fast one on me or writing themselves into corners and then smashing through the narrative walls with a sledgehammer to get themselves out.

I’m not done yet!  There’s still more Buffy goodness coming next week.

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