Since Lorelei knew I was coming into town last week, she invited me over for a Who night on Friday, and when I arrived this was what she had waiting for me because she knows I’m very fond of charcuterie with all the trimmings, especially for a TV-watching date. Look at how gorgeous this is; I told her at the time it was almost too pretty to eat. Emphasis on the “almost” there, because eat it we did, nearly every morsel. The drinks, by the by, are our signature Who cocktails; mine (left) is a Sonic Scewdriver (a screwdriver made with our favorite cinnamon-sugar flavored vodka) and hers is an Ass-kicking Amy Pond (like a Moscow Mule but made with our favorite vodka and blood orange-flavored ginger beer). We don’t get to do our Who nights as often as we used to, but we still do them as often as possible. And occasions like that are made extra-nice when the person one is sharing them with does something like this to say, “I love you and you are important to me.”
Posts Tagged ‘imaginative fiction’
Diary #583
Posted in Diary, tagged imaginative fiction, recipes on August 31, 2021| 1 Comment »
Missing Parts
Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous, tagged imaginative fiction, psychology on August 26, 2021| 5 Comments »
It’s probably difficult for people under 40 to imagine the frustration of being unable to complete a multi-part story due to the conclusion being unavailable. But in the days before home video, there was no way to see missed episodes of a TV show except by finding it in syndication and waiting until the missing stories were shown again. And in the days before Amazon and other online stores, it could often be extraordinarily difficult to find the missing issues of a comic book or serialized magazine story, especially if one lived in a small town or minor city with only one library and few if any places that sold used books. Add OCD to that mixture, and I think you can probably grasp how frustrating it was for me as a child and teenager when months would go by without a given title appearing on any comic book racks I visited, and when the comic at last reappeared it was a new story because for some reason the distributors had apparently skipped, one, two, or even three issues. Or I’d anxiously look forward to the next in a series of novels, only to discover that our library didn’t have a copy and the only accessible bookstore told me it was out of print. Because of this I developed an aversion to multi-part comic book stories and multi-volume novels, and by the time I had grown into an independent adult, I was strongly averse to beginning any story I was unsure I’d be able to finish. It became my habit to buy entire series of books I wanted to read all at once whenever possible, and when it wasn’t possible I’d diligently search every possible source until I found whatever I needed to complete a set, even if it meant driving around for hours. And due to more than one instance of a network cancelling a show I was enjoying with a complex story left incomplete (American Gothic and Farscape leap immediately to mind), I generally won’t start a new TV series until it’s concluded and I know I can get the entire set; I imagine a special circle of Hell for corporations which release the first few seasons of a show I want and then suddenly stop before finishing the job (Disney is notorious for this, but Warner can be nearly as bad). So when TV series started using long, interconnected arcs in the late ’80s, I was not at all happy about it; though many of my friends enjoyed The X-Files, I never watched it because the first two episodes I tried to watch were both part of longer arcs and therefore made little sense to me, and in VHS days buying an entire TV series was prohibitively expensive. Now that I can in most cases easily buy an entire series on DVD, my view of long story arcs has changed; upon rewatching the last three seasons of classic Doctor Who (the first of the series to employ such an arc) I found I enjoyed them much more than in the days when there was no way to ensure I could see them all, and in the correct order. But I still won’t invest the time and emotional energy into new shows until and unless I’m dead sure I won’t be left in the lurch.
Who Thoughts
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged imaginative fiction, Twitter on August 19, 2021| 2 Comments »
If you follow me on Twitter, you have undoubtedly noticed that every day since March, I’ve been tweeting my thoughts about Doctor Who as Grace and I watch the entire series from 1963 to the present. On Saturday we finished the classic series and have now started New Who, so I think it’s time to unveil something I’ve been working on behind the scenes: everything I’ve posted to that Twitter thread, collected in one big page. Practically since I started, my Whovian readers have been asking for this compilation; I’ve been doing it all along, but I wanted to get to what seemed like a natural point to unveil it. I’m also working on some supplemental materials, including an attempt at a unified chronology of The Doctor’s adventures, but those will have to wait a bit longer until I feel they’re ready to be seen by eyes other than my own. Then next year, I hope to get it all compiled into a book in time for release the following year, the program’s 60th anniversary. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even make a little money from it, and maybe it will introduce more readers to my other work. But in the meantime, I’m just enjoying writing something light, fun, and even a bit academic for a change.
Links #580
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, consensual crime, cops, cosmetic surgery, I can't breathe, Idaho, imaginative fiction, Never Call the Cops, teachers, Texas, United Kingdom, universal criminality, video on August 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I can’t breathe! – Nekia Trigg
This one’s been going through my head since I selected the illustration for my July 4th column, so here it is. The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Clarissa, Cop Crisis, Radley Balko, The Onion, Stephen Lemons, and Popehat, in that order.
- Gross, but I’d try it.
- What a convenient morality.
- Pervert cop sexually assaults teen girl.
- Why is “not for any reason” so difficult?
- Best sci-fi short-short story of the year.
- Do “futurists” even know the word “vertigo”?
- See, there’s this thing called “legal precedent”…
From the Archives
- FBI “re-evaluates” a scheme by rebranding, quadrupling its length & cost.
- Asian sex workers fight back against the racist “sex trafficking” narrative.
- Trumpists & anti-Trumpists fight to control the “sex trafficking” narrative.
- “Sexworkers are among the hardest-working professionals I’ve ever met.“
- It’s a mystery where Trump gets his ideas about “sex trafficking victims”.
- Threatening landlords to get them to evict whores is a popular pig trick.
- How does sex work criminalization suppress the sexuality of all women?
- More on Amazon’s partnership with fascist surveillance pusher Marinus.
- COVID-19 is almost as useful an excuse for tyranny as “sex trafficking”.
- 21st century humor sites are more honest and moral than “news” sites.
- Prohibitionists who didn’t give a shit are claiming credit for her release.
- Pigs root around in people’s social media in order to destroy their lives.
- It’s great to see sex workers striking back at prohibitionist persecution.
- Wonder why government pushes “sex trafficking” propaganda so hard?
- More podcasts are having Liz Brown on to debunk “sex trafficking” BS.
- Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but never stops there.
- NY Times makes blatantly-false about economic relief for sexworkers.
- Cops try to weaponize the new visibility of Asian sex worker activists.
- One can never have too many attacks on a power-hungry sociopath.
- Prohis demand politicians prop up the dying “sex trafficking” scam.
- With modern surveillance, no woman is safe from aggressive cops.
- Amazon’s fascist collaboration with cops just keeps getting worse.
- The US isn’t the only country playing the compelled speech game.
- A third of all Americans killed by strangers are murdered by cops.
- Cops use a license plate reader to manufacture “probable cause”.
- “Sex trafficking” rhetoric is now being used to attack prohibition.
- Mar Brettmann will say anything to sell her anti-whore snake oil.
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- As I keep saying, it’s already far too late to stop this tyranny.
- The prohibitionists are slowly losing ground to the facts.
- It’s good to see the real monsters caged for a change.
- Cops, metaphors, the Tijuana Brass and much more.
- It’s good to see this getting public attention again.
- “The War on Backpage is a War on Sex Workers”.
- Another UK politician has been accused of rape.
- Visiting Washington, DC twice in two months.
- Beginning the main deck of the bathhouse.
- On the absurdity of automated censorship.
- Animals enjoying some welcome shade.
- Cops, disease, onions, and much more.
- The ACLU of old is, alas, no more.
- Changing my business model.
Representation
Posted in Biography, Favorites, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged imaginative fiction, psychology on July 26, 2021| 5 Comments »
A lot gets said these days about “representation” in popular media, by which people mean that it’s a good thing for children or adolescents to see people like themselves among their heroes in TV or movies. Usually, this is used to mean obvious characteristics like gender, skin color, or disability, and sometimes less-obvious traits like queerness. But for me, none of those traits meant anything if the characters displaying them were law-obeying, apartment-dwelling, boring-job-having authoritarian squares of the type television has always been infested with, and whose lives mine was never, ever going to resemble even if the character could’ve been my doppelganger in every superficial “representative” way. By 1980 I couldn’t find a single network TV program which interested me in any way, and even before that the characters who interested me most were always outsiders, weirdos, and outlaws such as vigilantes, monster-hunters, and fugitives, or else characters who had figured out how to fit in while still doing things in their own idiosyncratic fashion. Anyone more perceptive than I was at the time could probably have figured out that I was going to end up living outside of the law and at odds with the Establishment, so it’s no surprise that one of my favorite shows since my mid-teens has followed the adventures of an eccentric, anti-authoritarian outlaw who stole a spacetime ship from his people and proceeded to wander about the universe, following his conscience rather than some set of arbitrary rules, and teaming up with a long succession of other misfits to ruin the schemes of tyrants, bureaucrats, psychopaths and other violent busybodies while freely associating with weirdos and freethinkers who rarely get along with their local “authorities”. Yes, representation is important, and never more so than when the type being represented is those who refuse to allow themselves to be sorted into herds and driven to build up power for those who would rule others.
Links #577
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, California, cops, Delaware, imaginative fiction, language, Never Call the Cops, New York, Not for Any Reason Whatsoever, politicians, Texas, video on July 25, 2021| 5 Comments »
I’m going to fuck you up. – unidentified terrorist
I’m not really fond of westerns, but I am fond of Henry Mancini; I discovered this one on a 1970s tape marketing a quadrophonic sound system, and it popped into my head again recently. The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Jesse Walker, Scott Greenfield, Walter Olson, and Cop Crisis (x3), in that order.
- R.I.P. William F. Nolan.
- Seems a bit dangerous.
- When sharks hire cops’ PR people.
- Laws are for the ruled, not the rulers.
- Cop murders woman in failed attempt to murder puppy.
- Do I really need to say, “Not because a woman gave birth”?
- Gang of armed thugs terrorize innocent woman in the street.
From the Archives
- Corporations are becoming the favored tool of censors around the world.
- 41% of cops admit to beating their wives. Some don’t stop with beating.
- “Education” here means confinement in the notorious Prey Speu prison.
- Government wants blacks to think of rational thought as a white thing.
- Witchcraft charges were once a popular way to persecute sex workers.
- The abuses committed by the “therapeutic state” are rarely so blatant.
- “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.“
- The few articles about “Straight Pride” events we do see are hilarious.
- Hawley’s long history of spouting self-aggrandizing lies about whores.
- The worst crime I’ve ever seen “sex addiction” used as a defense for.
- Pederast politicians are nearly as common as those who hire women.
- So much for any hope this myth would be dead by the next election.
- Swedish model pushers are starting to be recognized as copsuckers.
- Rape is legal as long as other wannabe rapists are allowed to watch.
- Will Western media ever stop tiptoeing around calling this what it is?
- Prohibitionist attempt to destroy Leeds red light district is defeated.
- Even the request for screening info acts as a form of pre-screening.
- Yellow journalists keep parroting long-debunked wanking fantasies.
- It’s good to see the fascist establishment hoist with its own petard.
- Another good example of why “legalized” sex work is a bad idea.
- Columbus, Ohio wants to give every pig the opportunity to rape.
- Guys, sex workers are both safer and cheaper in the long run.
- Another of those cases whose reported details don’t add up.
- Twitter accidentally admitted what everyone already knew.
- Sex workers all over the world are demanding their rights.
- On the ethical abomination that is cop glorification drama.
- A retrospective of my columns from July 2016 and 2017.
- Not an attempt to control women’s bodies, no sirree.
- Another step toward the end of privacy, everywhere.
- More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever.
- Cops, curses, puritanism, “Jolene”, and much more.
- Cops, Florida, hot dogs, Art Neville and much more.
- Your government refers to this as “correction”.
- Moving into phase 2 of the bathhouse project.
- More from Liz Brown on the Epstein case.
- What other country does this sound like?
- To St. Mary Magdalene on her feast day.
- My little rose bush moves out to Sunset.
- A “life hack” for a surfeit of daylight.
- “Youth pastors” are as bad as cops.
- In other news, bear shits in woods.
- A lot of editing was needed here.
- A wound that never will heal.
- Rapist cop of the week.
Links #576
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged blogging, censorship, cops, imaginative fiction, left-right myth, Missouri, New York, psychology, serial killers, surveillance, universal criminality, Utah, video on July 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
You’re about to die, my friend. – Tyler Longman
Here’s another Doctor Who novelty song, recorded as a publicity tie-in for the 1965 Doctor Who and the Daleks movie starring Peter Cushing; the singer, Roberta Tovey, played Susan in the film. The links above it were provided by Mike Siegel, Cop Crisis (x3), Walter Olson, and Mistress Matisse, in that order.
- R.I.P. Doug Mataconis.
- Cops murder man for sleeping while black.
- Some serial killers operate right out in the open.
- Still think “hate crime” sentencing is a good idea?
- When lawheads try to cram reality into their dumb paradigm.
- This couldn’t be more obvious if “FREE CANDY” were scrawled on it.
From the Archives
- It’s sad that we’re still debunking claims that pictures have magic powers.
- This looks like a huge victory against the powerful Indian rescue industry.
- Is there any non-prohibitionist who fails to recognize FOSTA is a disaster?
- In case you thought screws restricted their petty sadism to the prisoners.
- The answer to “Why don’t you do x?” is usually “Because I don’t want to”.
- “Enlightened” Europe has treated sex workers shamefully during COVID.
- The incidents we hear about are only a fraction of the ones that happen.
- The State keeps contradicting itself to crucify the founders of Backpage.
- Having their lives destroyed so bourgeois Englishwomen can feel good.
- The term “pimp” is hopelessly contaminated and cannot be “reclaimed”.
- Sex workers gave their views before this tyranny was inflicted on them.
- Apply a label like “prostitute” or “gang member” and civil rights vanish.
- Picture what you’d think of as “sex trafficking”, then compare it to this.
- Israel’s plan to force sex workers into low-paid menial “women’s work”.
- Federal appeals court agrees “women who dress like sluts cause rape”.
- I’m glad Gloria “Body Invasion” Steinem lived long enough to see this.
- Cops, Rome, Atlantis, Antarctica, Simpsoni, Denise Nickerson & more.
- Canada pretends to care about privacy, but can snoop in other ways.
- Cato & ACLU try to stop deranged prohibitionists from killing people.
- Stories about hooker jails are crammed with appalling euphemisms.
- Cops don’t test rape kits because it doesn’t advance their purpose.
- Everybody knows cops are stupid, but this is a new level of idiocy.
- Twitter joins the fascists who claim surveillance isn’t surveillance.
- The Indian rescue industry is being undone by its own pretenses.
- The “Good Shepherd Sisters” = Magdalene laundries = Ruhama.
- West African “penis stealing” hysteria has spread to East Africa.
- This abomination started as a means of spying on sex workers.
- Observation: overpriced furniture. Conclusion: “sex trafficking”!
- Manufacturing data to “prove” a problem exists is not science.
- As I keep saying, it’s already far too late to stop this tyranny.
- No one person can undo an entire system of fascist tyranny.
- Cops, feminism, Polynesia, singing clowns, and much more.
- “Sex trafficking” fetishists are absolutely losing their shit.
- Sunset was built with the help of generous gentlemen.
- Why, how could anyone have predicted this outcome?
- This stopped being a “fringe position” two years ago.
- Spooge-based sexual assaults are growing worse.
- I wonder what biological sex the victims were?
- A productive week despite seasonal anxiety.
- How China tries to keep the genocide quiet.
- Why am I slowly losing Twitter followers?
- The second cottage kit is delivered.
- Yet another sociopath with a title.
- Building a ramp up to the deck.
- An update on my fundraiser.
- Rapist cop of the week.
Links #575
Posted in Current Events, History, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arkansas, cops, imaginative fiction, Japan, language, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Twitter, video on July 12, 2021| 1 Comment »
I cross the void beyond the mind
The empty space that circles time
I see where others stumble blind
To seek a truth they never find
Eternal wisdom is my guide
I am the Doctor. – Jon Pertwee
Here’s another specimen of the subgenre of novelty songs recorded by the stars of hit TV shows, this one about one of my all-time favorites. The links above it were provided by Jesse Walker, Franklin Harris, Jesse Walker again, Desiree Alliance, Wendy Lyon, Lucy Steigerwald, and Cop Crisis, in that order.
- No, the other one.
- R.I.P. Richard Donner.
- The power of free association.
- Radioactive hybrid terror pigs.
- Invasion of the Octopus People.
- Cop murders teen for getting up early.
- Cop attempts to murder teen for buying pizza.
From the Archives
- If Koch was really “surprised” by this, she isn’t much of an anthropologist.
- Some Westerners still claim China isn’t trying to exterminate the Uighurs.
- The scheme to cut sex workers off from the healthcare system continues.
- Governments fight profiteers for control of the “sex trafficking” narrative.
- A crime doesn’t magically become a different thing when sex is involved.
- Real humanitarians are fighting against racist “anti-trafficking” schemes.
- The government doesn’t care that its war on thought is unconstitutional.
- Hey female cops, how’s that collaboration with the police state working?
- So many “enlightened” countries still believe disease is caused by “sin”.
- This could’ve been a decent article, but it’s not worth wasting time on.
- “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time“.
- Gentrification is a common motivation for persecution of sex workers.
- I wonder how long it’ll be before she conveniently “commits suicide”?
- “Sex trafficking” fetishists think all films must promote their fantasy.
- In some places, male teachers who do sex work can keep their jobs.
- On the erosion of the legalization/decriminalization line in Australia.
- The FBI should’ve just run their child porn sites on DoD computers.
- Every amateur “sex scandal” makes me happier I’m a professional.
- Please tell us more about how legalization “protects” sex workers.
- Indiana pursues the “right” to rob anyone within its borders blind.
- Please, rescue industry, keep attacking your most powerful allies.
- When giving someone a ride to work is a “felony”. Because “ring”.
- Apparently, Florida prosecutors don’t know when to stop digging.
- US courts are happy to allow US censorship of non-Americans.
- Cathy Reisenwitz’ sex-positive libertarian feminist tent revival.
- Americans think their sadfeelz about sex trump human rights.
- Compare with Germany’s disdain for sex workers’ livelihoods.
- Only bootlickers think the “cashless society” is a good thing.
- The NY Times is still pretending “Pizzagate” is about cranks.
- A “No shit, Sherlock” headline from the ever-confused Vice.
- People sometimes ask me why I moved out of Louisiana.
- What kind of warped “ally” quotes prohibitionist myths?
- You may not like my take on the Jeffrey Epstein thing.
- Cops, Carl Reiner, Ennio Morricone, and much more.
- At long last, my chickens have started laying again!
- Starting the Sunset floor-leveling project at last.
- Imagine how many others like him are still free.
- Finishing the construction of Chekhov’s cottage.
- “Written assurance” is like a “restraining order”.
- My ninth and tenth anniversary columns.
- The Swedish model “helps” sex workers!
- A quiet genocide in China.
- Rapist cop of the week.
Links #573
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, consensual crime, cops, drugs, I’m Sure You Feel Safer Now, imaginative fiction, Maryland, New York, Pakistan, restaurants, Russia, video on June 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Now you can easily make the landing on the Moon.
This week’s video is one of Grace’s favorite songs, which may tell you something about her. The links above it were provided by Franklin Harris, Jesse Walker, Mike Riggs, Franklin Harris again, Cop Crisis, Dan Savage, and Rick Horowitz, in that order.
- R.I.P. John Paragon.
- Echte Wagner’s future.
- I’m sure you feel safer now.
- What could possibly go wrong?
- A difference of degree, not kind.
- That is not dead which can eternal lie…
- Cops regularly demonstrate exactly what they are.
From the Archives
- Drawing silly lines between different “types” of pragmatic sexual behavior.
- Cops, KFC, ghosts, protest, translation, Justin Raimondo, and much more.
- Maybe we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws.
- whores are morons whose lives must be micromanaged by governments.
- It’s good to see a lockdown house getting some well-deserved pushback.
- Where “rescued” = “arrested” & “safety shelter” = “deportation prison”.
- More queer sex workers are remembering Pride commemorates a riot.
- Google is now so big it isn’t even accountable to its own shareholders.
- Cops aren’t only not protectors of women; they are an active menace.
- This eschews the usual puritanical lingo in favor of Copese pomposity.
- Domiciling a sex work site in a violent prohibitionist regime is foolish.
- Another shitty drug intended to capitalize on an imaginary “problem”.
- Western media are still largely ignoring China’s atrocities in Xinjiang.
- US sex workers: don’t forget, FOSTA harms sex workers worldwide.
- “Mommy whores” are good, but “gramma whores” are even better.
- Prohibitionists attack an article saying everyone has human rights.
- Any non-politician would have given this up as a bad idea by now.
- The Japanese are much more sensible about sex than Americans.
- How stupid & blatantly illegal cops’ & collaborators’ actions were.
- Another deep dive into the facts of the persecution of Backpage.
- Just another fatality from the state’s sick need to police women.
- The word for corporate/government “partnerships” is “fascism”.
- “Thai prostitutes…[refuse to pretend to be] victimized women…”
- Cops, tattoos, monkeys, Ian Holm, Vera Lynn, and much more.
- All sex workers victimized by cops should sue if at all possible.
- Violence against trans people is getting mainstream attention.
- Cops at Pride is Gay Inc’s “fuck you” to the rest of queerdom.
- Government as domestic abuser is a very useful metaphor.
- A retrospective of my blogging from June 2016 and 2017.
- My answer to the titular question: “I certainly hope not”.
- A Reason interview with Reason alumnus Radley Balko.
- In which bootlickers volunteer to be spied upon.
- It’s always a “gang”, even when it clearly isn’t.
- Fawning praise of a fascist surveillance organ.
- The foundation of Chekhov’s cottage.
- “Youth pastors” are as bad as cops.
- Jose Torres, AKA “Joey the Player”.
- Up on a roof with my Hitachi.
- Rapist cop of the week.
- An air travel collapse.
Mechanocracy
Posted in Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged censorship, imaginative fiction, internet, Mechanocracy, psychology, robots, Twitter on June 24, 2021| 3 Comments »
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. – Frank Herbert, Dune
On Saturday, my Twitter account was locked for twelve hours because a mindless censorship algorithm could not tell the difference between mocking an idea and professing that idea; said algorithm was given power to judge human thought for “acceptability” because Twitter (at the insistence of legions of nitwits) has decided that it’s a good idea to silence wrongthink in the first place. I’ve already pointed out the deep foolishness and simian stupidity of censorship in many other essays, and I’ll be doing so again this year on the last Monday in September, as usual; today I’d like you to think about just how incredibly dumb it is to give machines that kind of power without human supervision or functional appeals process. Now, I’m not a Luddite; I certainly recognize that there are certain circumstances in which computers can be trusted with limited power (such as controlling an aircraft in flight) provided there is a human around to supervise. Computers are, as Isaac Asimov once expressed it, high-speed morons; they do whatever they’re told to do, exactly as they’re told to do it and for as long as they’re told to do it, very very quickly. The problem, of course, is that they are completely incapable of anything even approximating actual thought, which means that they will follow the most mind-bogglingly stupid (or even self-destructive) orders with the same degree of speed and efficiency as they would obey more sensible directives. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to have their computer infected with a virus should know this, yet people keep happily entrusting more and more of their lives to hopped-up pocket calculators they insist on pretending are “smart”; many of them even think it’s a good idea to let these overcomplicated abaci drive their cars at highway speed or tell them how to write. Computers are useful tools and (usually) dependable servants, but apparently generations of science-fiction writers have failed to pound into the heads of the intellectually lazy what a colossally bad idea it is to accept them in positions of authority.
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