Last week I wrote about how much I appreciate my readers’ generosity, and I got ample proof of it again before the week was out. On Wednesday I drove into Seattle as I do every three weeks, and I discovered this collection waiting for me (along with Vangelis’ last album) from a reader who often gets me nice things (and the note he included gave me an extra smile). Then the next day, I published a request for help with travel funds (because the skyrocketing price of fuel and everything else has really exacerbated my typical summer & travel anxieties), and within hours I had received about 70% of what I estimate the trip will cost me. And let me tell you, there is nothing as good for anxiety as feeling supported and cared for! As I sit at my desk writing this, there’s a dramatic difference in my emotional balance from when I wrote the request just a week ago; I feel calm and I’m looking forward to the journey, whereas last week I was trying to decide whether to rethink the whole thing. So thank all of y’all for being so amazing; it’s no exaggeration to say that y’all saved my whole trip.
Posts Tagged ‘imaginative fiction’
Diary #625
Posted in Diary, tagged imaginative fiction, Presents, psychology on June 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Diary #624
Posted in Diary, tagged imaginative fiction, Presents, psychology on June 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Every so often I like to remind my readers and patrons how important your support is to me. In these uncertain times, it’s really reassuring to know that my writing is important enough to many of you that you choose to do more than simply throw a compliment my way now and again. For some of you, support takes the form of a subscription, money you send every month to help me pay my bills; in lean times (such as right after tax season) those small amounts add up and keep me in the black. Others prefer to send me nice things from my Amazon wishlist; I try to keep it populated with lots of things I really want, rather than just expensive trinkets and designer gewgaws. Take this book a reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) sent me a couple of months ago; it’s a collection of early comic strips from one of the creators of the genre. It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time, but since it’s out of print I couldn’t justify the rather steep price, but since one of my admirers sent it as a present I could enjoy it without guilt (as I’m currently enjoying the second volume, received from a different reader just last week – you know who you are, and thank you!) So whether you prefer to send me practical help to put food on the table, or to send “hyacinths to feed my soul”, please know that “appreciation” is far too mild a word to describe my feelings of gratitude to all of y’all.
The Trek Connection
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged imaginative fiction, psychology on June 6, 2022| 2 Comments »
As I’ve mentioned before, Star Trek was my first love. It was the first TV show I appreciated on a level beyond merely watching, the first one that really made me think about things, the first one I cared about enough to actually learn about. It was also the first one I “collected”; what that meant to me in those pre-home video days was, I asked for a copy of Bjo Trimble’s Star Trek Concordance (yes, the picture is of my copy, which I of course still own) and read it cover to cover, noting which episodes I’d seen and which I hadn’t. I also collected James Blish’s episode adaptations, and came to know some of the stories in print years before I ever got to see them on the tube. I knew the show backwards and forwards, and by the time I bought the DVD collections in the Oughts I had probably already seen every episode over a dozen times (and that doesn’t even count the ones I listened to on my TV band radio). So as you might expect, I tend to recognize actors who were on Star Trek when they appear in other 1960s and ’70s TV shows. In fact, it’s part of what I enjoy about watching those shows. I don’t just mean the regular cast, though of course it’s always fun to catch a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits with a pre-Trek Shatner, Nimoy, or Doohan. No, I mean that when we recently re-watched The Wild, Wild West, at least half of the episodes had an actor or actress who prompted me to say to Grace, “Hey, that’s the girl who played __________ in [episode X].” And now that we’ve moved on to Mission: Impossible (Trek‘s sister show, produced by Desilu on the next soundstage over), it’s even more so; there are few episodes that don’t have a guest star who appeared on Trek (and I’m not even counting Nimoy’s appearance as a regular in later seasons). Sometimes it’s more than one, and we recently watched one in which there were no fewer than five. I don’t really understand why it pleases me so to recognize the faces (or voices); I reckon it’s just the pleasure of familiarity, like going back to one’s home town. But just in case there was any doubt in your mind about my level of nerdiness, I hope this post has rectified that.
Links #622
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arizona, cops, Florida, imaginative fiction, Michigan, New Orleans, politicians, teachers, United Kingdom, video on June 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »
That was stupid. – Chase Bebak-Miller, to his victim
Last week, on my way back from Seattle, I listened to the Little Shop of Horrors soundtrack. That may have been a mistake because I had a tooth pulled the next day, and I kept giggling because this song kept going through my head. The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel, Franklin Harris, Cop Crisis (x3), and Radley Balko, in that order.
- I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen this one.
- Talk about “saying the quiet part out loud”.
- Cops shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near dogs.
- Violent adult bully chokes, then tortures little boy.
- Cop murders teenager for using “street language”.
- “Crime”: no reflectors on bike. Penalty: summary execution.
From the Archives
- “Selling bodies” rhetoric says more about the speaker than about whores.
- Cops, history, sensationalism, Rube Goldberg machines, and much more.
- It’s good to see a government hoist with its own “sex trafficking” petard.
- They make this sound like the bureaucrat was doing his victims a favor.
- Cops are responsible for more violence than any other US social group.
- I’m extensively quoted in this article about everyone joining OnlyFans.
- Violet Blue on protecting yourself from phone surveillance at protests.
- German sex workers answer the ugly lies of prohibitionist politicians.
- Like the Netherlands, Belgium only pretends to respect sex workers.
- The same thing Biden wants, but please tell me more about “wings”.
- Compare to the contrived prohibition in Australia & the Netherlands.
- The best way to accomplish prohibitionist goals is to buy politicians.
- The 5th Circuit sucked Louisiana politicians’ dicks on this in 2018.
- June 2nd is a day for sexual outlaws, not well-behaved “workers”.
- If this doesn’t horrify you, you haven’t been paying attention.
- Government never, ever blames itself for the harm it causes.
- Just another of those nonexistent false rape accusations.
- One of the greatest legal abominations ever conceived.
- The days of my never saying “I told you so” are over.
- Cops, prohibition, lizards, Dr. John, and much more.
- Cops, kinks, robots, Eric Carle, and much more.
- Me in Reason on sex work, money and consent.
- A retrospective of my blogging from May 2011.
- The end of being handicapped by broken nails.
- Fake client texts from an unscrupulous ad site.
- “These cops were nothing but video voyeurs.“
- Sophie Ladder on “restricted content”.
- For every weapon, there is a defense.
- Fixing the wiring problems at Sunset.
- In which Scotland out-Herods Herod.
- “I don’t know where the justice is.“
- Sows hoist with their own petard.
- Whores are as eternal as the sea.
- Rapist/murderer cop of the week.
- Setting posts for my bathhouse.
- A pig comes to live at Sunset.
- It’s just to keep people SAFE!
- Far too little, far too late.
- Rapist cop of the week.
- Stop faking!
Diary #621
Posted in Diary, tagged imaginative fiction, Presents on May 24, 2022| 1 Comment »
When I arrived at my Seattle apartment on Sunday, I found a package waiting for me from Amazon, courtesy of regular reader & gift-sender Robin Aguilar. It contained Joe Satriani’s latest disc, plus the DVD of the space vampire movie Lifeforce (1985) and this set of a 1977 TV show most of y’all have probably never heard of. Those who weren’t born yet then may find it hard to believe, but before the debut of Star Wars that same year, science fiction had been very out of fashion since Star Trek went off the air in 1969. And in those pre-home video days, that meant often the only science fiction shows available for viewing were Trek reruns and old movies in syndication packages broadast mostly on Saturday afternoons and late at night. There were certainly a few adventure shows featuring sci-fi elements, such as The Six Million Dollar Man, but new straight-out sci-fi series were rare and generally short-lived. This one lasted only ten episodes, but I liked it very much and had a bit of a crush on Katie Saylor, a leggy blonde who played the Atlantean woman Liana. Given that I haven’t seen this show in 45 years, I have no idea how I’ll appreciate it through adult eyes, but thanks to Robin I’m going to have a chance to find out!
Links #610
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged Alaska, Canada, China, cops, Florida, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, imaginative fiction, law, Nevada, prisons, video, Wisconsin on March 13, 2022| 1 Comment »
It’s called silly string. It’s silly. – Suzanne Johnson
As one who appreciates both Doctor Who and Jacques Brel, I found this extremely funny; I hope you do as well. The links above it were provided by David Ley, Franklin Harris, Scott Greenfield, Walter Olson, Jesse Walker, and Cop Crisis (x2), in that order.
- As one does.
- R.I.P. Emilio Delgado.
- I’m sure you feel safer now.
- Bureaucracy begets absurdity.
- How we went from eating tea to drinking it.
- I’m sure he was simply conducting an unauthorized asset forfeiture.
- It’s amazing how often people die mysteriously when cops are nearby.
From the Archives
- Cops, movies, censorship, Max von Sydow, the One Ring, and much more.
- A “study” claiming such impossibly-tiny numbers can be safely dismissed.
- Be wary of people who tell you that sex traffickers are coming to get you.”
- Prohibitionists demonstrate their sociopathic need to control others’ lives.
- It took fifty pigs to entrap a woman for the “crime” of introducing people.
- Whores are morons whose lives must be micromanaged by governments.
- I’m sick of the current popular obsession with people’s genes & genitalia.
- Burying government in lawsuits is the only way to slow its depredations.
- Even journalists reporting these abuses euphemize them as “correction”.
- So many “enlightened” countries still pretend disease is caused by “sin”.
- ”Happy endings” have apparently become a matter of national security.
- China has adopted a method of subjugation invented by the Assyrians.
- Don’t teach kids about sex; fill their heads with anti-sex propaganda.
- He preyed on whores because the state put them directly in his path.
- If they actually punished wife-beating cops, they’d lose half of them.
- The urge to control women cannot be stopped by a mere pandemic.
- Will WA politicians accept progress, or demonstrate their hypocrisy?
- One can never have too many anti-Swedish criminalization articles.
- How can I get my adult daughter to accept my history of sex work?
- “They were cops, they raped her, and they’re getting away with it.”
- Do prosecutors think scoring points trumps a harassment lawsuit?
- Disgusting men never tire of blaming women for their own rapes.
- Politicians don’t think “science-driven policy” applies to sex work.
- Mar Brettmann will say anything to sell her anti-whore snake oil.
- Far too many people adore authoritarian public health schemes.
- Cops lie so frequently, they can’t tell which lies are believable.
- The typical politician’s response to criticism: doubling down.
- Ever notice how often predatory cops’ targets are underage?
- Indian politicians want to help demolish the internet, too!
- Costumed criminals regularly abduct and torture people.
- Cops, beer, Norton Juster, Doctor Who, and much more.
- It’s a bad idea for a sex worker to pay no income taxes.
- Still think this djinni can be stuffed back into its bottle?
- Signed copies of Ask Maggie, Volume II are available!
- I plan to stop taking new clients at the end of 2020.
- Florida prohibitionists are completely out of control.
- The old strip club business model is a dead duck.
- Sex worker rights is not an isolated issue.
- The Swedish model protects sex workers!
- Pigs, fascism, key shifts and much more.
- What is wrong with doctors who do this?
- More screenings of The War on Whores.
- A nice review of The War on Whores.
- Sometimes silence really is golden.
- A panel on the idea of “free love”.
- Why we can’t have nice things.
- The orgasm tool for women.
- Fan letters are so inspiring!
- On the death of Orville.
- It’s chick time again!
- R.I.P. Jack Hammer.
Blake’s 6
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged domestic violence, ethics, imaginative fiction, psychology on March 10, 2022| 3 Comments »
This is the conclusion of my series on the classic BBC sci-fi series Blake’s 7, which ran from 1978-81. The first part appeared the last week of January, and four other installments on the series’ characters and writing followed in successive weeks.
Blake’s 7 was controversial from the very first episode, which featured an unusually-realistic depiction of how totalitarian states deal with dissent; self-appointed Moral Climate Monitor Mary Whitehouse practically had a cow over it. And the creators didn’t stop there; for four seasons the show’s creators took risks and violated expectations in a way few broadcast TV shows ever dared. Major characters were depicted in harsh daylight or even killed off, and that included the titular character at the end of season 2; the last episode of season 3, originally planned to be the last, left the remaining crew stranded on a remote planet when their beloved ship, the Liberator, was destroyed. And when a BBC executive decided to order one more season, the creators seem to have viewed the surprise renewal as permission to color even further outside of the lines, depicting the heroes’ flaws much more clearly and ending the final episode with a bloodbath. But two episodes earlier than that, “Orbit” had already thrown caution to the winds to produce one of the most realistic and adult episodes of series television ever aired by broadcast. It was written by Robert Holmes, who is my all-time favorite Doctor Who writer thanks to his gift for characterization. The basic plot was borrowed from “The Cold Equations“, one of the greatest sci-fi short stories of all time; Holmes, however, does not merely adapt the already-powerful tale, but instead uses it as a vehicle for portraying not one but two abusive relationships.
The story concerns a renegade scientist named Egrorian, who proposes a deal in which he will give his new super-weapon to Avon and Company in exchange for their supercomputer Orac. The eccentric, narcissistic, treacherous Egrorian has a very elderly assistant named Pinder; the way Egrorian psychologically dominates and physically abuses him is already uncomfortable before we discover the truth: Pinder is only 28, and was prematurely aged due to radiation in an experiment where he was used as a gunea pig. He was a child prodigy who has been in hiding with Egrorian for ten years, and the homoerotic overtones of their interaction, combined with the abuse and Pinder’s being a teenager at the beginning of their relationship, paint a very dark and nasty picture indeed; I suspect the only way it got past the censors was simply that they were too puritanical to grasp what was going on. But even that pales in comparison with what happens later: Egrorian has sabotaged the shuttle on which Avon and Vila will return to their ship by hiding a microscopic quantity of super-dense neutronium on board, making the ship too heavy to achieve orbit with the available fuel. And when they run out of other things to dump, Avon goes looking for Vila, whose body mass is just over the critical amount they must shed. Now, Avon does figure out the problem and jettisons the neutronium instead; however, that does not change the fact that until he does, he is stalking around the ship with a gun, fully intending to murder his crewmate, who only escapes a grisly fate by hiding. It would be difficult to count the number of unofficial rules of 20th-century broadcast TV drama this story broke; even in a series which had regularly broken rules for four seasons, it was nothing short of shocking.
Those under 40, whose televisual landcape has always included antiheroes, flawed or even criminal protagonists, and morally and factually ambiguous situations, can scarcely grasp how absolutely new, amazing, and even scandalous Blake’s 7 was, and its last season, in which the full humanity of the characters (with all that entails) was laid bare, was like nothing ever before seen on television. And in its willingness to blow up audience expectations and transgress sharply-drawn boundaries of its time, like nothing since either.
Diary #610
Posted in Diary, Music, tagged imaginative fiction, Presents on March 8, 2022| Leave a Comment »
One of the things that makes going into Seattle worthwhile is knowing that I might have a gift or gifts waiting for me. My landlord and I have a very good relationship; he shows his appreciation for my being an exemplary tenant by helping me out in little ways, such as keeping an eye out for packages that arrive while I’m gone. He then texts me to let me know something has arrived and asking what would be a good time to put it inside my apartment. Of course I don’t usually know what has come in, so there’s a nice surprise on my coffee table when I arrive. This time, I’m sending a big “Thank you!” to a reader who has enjoyed my Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 reviews who was delighted to discover I’m also a horror fan, and therefore sent me this double CD from my Amazon wishlist (there are still several other horror-movie-related items there, and a set of DVDs of a delightful animated series I loved as a child, but only recently discovered was available). Plus some more music and other goodies, so there are lots of choices if you’d like to get me something nice, and most of them are quite reasonable.
Blake’s 5
Posted in Tyranny, tagged imaginative fiction, United Kingdom on March 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Continuing my thoughts on the classic BBC sci-fi series Blake’s 7, which ran from 1978-81. The first part appeared the last week of January, and three installments on the series’ characters followed in successive weeks.
It’s always interesting to me to think about a creator’s influences; what sci-fi or fantasy books, shows and movies did they find interesting, and how did that affect their own creations? After the first season of Blake’s 7, the influence of its creator, Terry Nation, seemed to wane while that of script editor Chris Boucher waxed. Boucher was clearly influenced by Dune, not so much for its specific desert-world setting (though that definitely appears in other Boucher stories such as his Doctor Who serial “The Robots of Death”) as for its portrayal of future colonial societies which have grown away from Earth as they developed, some to the point of even forgetting about their origins (as Leela’s people did in Boucher’s Doctor Who serial “The Face of Evil”). In the “Blake” universe, there hasn’t quite been enough time for that; by the stated times in several episodes (especially the Robert Holmes-penned “Killer”), the main action seems to take place in the 29th century. However, in other episodes we meet societies such as that from which crew member Cally came, which seem to have gone though or fallen into a dark age, but were at a much higher level of technology in the past; Boucher’s own “City at the Edge of the World” (a title which I’m sure deeply annoyed Harlan Ellison) entirely revolved around this concept, and the idea infuses a number of other episodes to a greater or lesser degree. Even the third-season background of Servalan trying to rebuild the splintered Terran Federation after the invasion from Andromeda (which Nation apparently originally conceived of as a war with the Daleks) has its roots in both actual history (“Make The Empire Great Again!” is not a new idea) and the Dune universe, and the entire series’ theme of independent colonies forcibly subdued by a central government with pretenses to some kind of legitimacy in turn influenced later shows like Firefly.
Boucher also definitely seems to have been influenced by Star Trek, and I don’t just mean in titles such as the aforementioned “City at the Edge of the World”; the plot of “Death-Watch”, for example, bears a striking resemblance to that of the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon”, though both the particulars and the resolution were very different. That’s not a complaint, BTB; one of the great things about sci-fi IMHO is the way that creators are directly influenced by each other, and openly admit it. For example, J, Michael Straczynski (whom I believe to have himself been influenced by Blake’s 7) borrowed his Babylon 5 psionic system from the writer Alfred Bester, and acknowledged that by naming a villain (played by an actor borrowed from Star Trek) after him.
Look for more about the series’ writing next week.
February Made Me Twitter
Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged adolescence, Believe Them, blogging, cops, hysteria, illegal aliens, imaginative fiction, politicians, Twitter on February 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Your regular reminder that if you feel the need to infantilize young adults when defending their rights, you're not actually defending their rights.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 25, 2022
"It's your new dishwasher, Mrs. Flintstone!" https://t.co/B438o6KsZO
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 27, 2022
I want to find out which insane but easily-amused billionaire is offering these huge sums of money for performing tasks that are at most inconvenient rather than difficult or dangerous. I'm sure I can keep him happy for a while.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 28, 2022
Health, a fashion sense, and a desire to actually be attractive. https://t.co/K11HeIv7Id
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) January 29, 2022
The 21st century version is the 11-year-old "porn addict".
All prohibitionism is the same. https://t.co/DtBnFr2wyl
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 1, 2022
Welcome to Ulthar. https://t.co/lspFAZrIr5
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 2, 2022
Politicians casually swim around in depths of depravity, ignorance, and stupidity no normal person could even manage to dive down to. They're like the black gulpers and anglerfish of the cognitive ocean.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 2, 2022
Only a bureaucrat could think it was reasonable to declare a puddle too small for a rowboat to be a "navigable water". https://t.co/JzBJd35MmU
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 3, 2022
I cannot adequately express how disgusting it is to me when someone uses the term "illegals" to describe human beings seeking a better life in greener pastures, as humans have always done since before we were even fully human.
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 4, 2022
Turning 31. https://t.co/kPHNY4R67c
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 5, 2022
Dear Brian,
Fuck off. Our bodies are ours, not yours. And my ACTUAL brother doesn't try to tell me what I can do with mine.
-Maggie https://t.co/RlktNU8z6G
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 9, 2022
Goddammit, stop trying to make me like Trump. https://t.co/VDXcotrVs9
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 10, 2022
Sex workers! Join me in laughing at Ian, as he fantasizes that other men in high positions DON'T have unusual sexual tastes merely because they're less honest about them. https://t.co/S6Rfawl6Qd
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 12, 2022
Cops show you who they are (people who think random violence is "fun") all the time; why don't you believe them? https://t.co/zCZmvKHBTe
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 14, 2022
That sex is not magic; there is no magical, mumbo-jumbo, taboo energy about it that makes it different from all other human activities. https://t.co/L0Whxr8SRo
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 15, 2022
Welcome to the world your sad devotion to the centuries-old "wing" fantasy has created. https://t.co/P6bW4cRSv9
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 17, 2022
It would be far shorter to list the few that weren't complete shit. https://t.co/jnJyEVNz2H
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 18, 2022
"Radical feminism" is a religion. https://t.co/p2nyvZzCXa
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 19, 2022
What about over their personal sexual opinions, Carla? https://t.co/vCItKAXUm9
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 22, 2022
I'm sure they're also lobbying against the laws in all 50 states that allow armed thugs to murder people after violently and unexpectedly breaking into their houses in the middle of the night. https://t.co/sjkfBMj0zR
— Maggie McNeill (@Maggie_McNeill) February 23, 2022