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Posts Tagged ‘imaginative fiction’

We kill people based on metadata.  –  General Michael Hayden

Vulture Watching (#1527)

The only way to stop this evil is to bury politicians in lawsuits:

The family of a woman who died after she could not get an abortion in Texas is suing doctors and [politician]s including [psychopath-] General Ken Paxton.  It is the first lawsuit over a death [caused by] an abortion ban…and the…first to directly sue Paxton, who has taken a leading role in…[using nuisance lawsuits to persecute “culture war” opponents.  After the 2025 death of] Tierra Walker…Texas [politicians] …passed a [deceptive] law [pretended] to clarify wh[en]…doctors…can [legally]…intervene [to save a woman’s life, but which in actuality revived a 1925 abortion ban that felonized helping someone “procure” an abortion]…Walker died days after being [refused an abortion despite her…[severe] preeclampsia…The plaintiffs, Walker’s family, are seeking a jury trial and pursuing both damages and a judgement finding that Texas’ abortion laws violate the state constitution.

Signs (#1618)

Governments and fanatics encouraged this kind of behavior for a decade:

San Jose [cops] arrested a [deranged] woman…[who] pulled up to [a man] and his 6-year-old daughter multiple times while they were walking…and proceeded to [scream “sex trafficking” accusations at him, burbling]…”I’m making sure that you’re not sex trafficking this poor little girl…That’s a white little girl, and you’re a man of color, so I believe you’re either buying or selling or trafficking this child”…sources have identified [the crazy person] as Lindsay Hansen…[who has a history of] harass[ing] members of the…community, tap[ing] them, and shar[ing] the recordings through social media…in [one video she is seen barging into] the girls’ locker room of a…high school [and] accusing physical education teachers of [molesting students]…she…[fantasiz]es herself as a [“]professional[“] who exposes child sex traffickers and uploads [CGI]…images of [situations she has fantasized.  She also frequently posts racist and anti-LGBT propaganda and is known to have]…significant mental health issues…

All through the 2010s, people with similar self-aggrandizing beliefs about “sex trafficking expertise” were approvingly quoted in the mainstream media and even paid to spout their deranged propaganda to schools, clubs, cop assemblies, etc.  And until quite recently, airlines encouraged their agents and air hostesses to behave in a similar fashion.

Welcome to the Future (#1619)

Indiscriminate murder is so much easier when blamed on machines:

Israel…is…us[ing machine-learning systems] to surveil and kill Palestinians in Gaza, including civilians…The Russian and Ukrainian armies have both been rolling out autonomous drones, which use…guidance software to choose targets when…cut off from radio contact with pilots…The U.S. military…used a…[chatbot] to select over 1,000 targets in the opening surprise attack on Iran…[and] the Iranian military and its allies in Yemen used [the same chatbot] to gather intelligence…the…[massacre at] Minab’s elementary school…was…the [result of]…human negligence..[letting deluxe autocomplete] deci[de] to kill those children…without double-checking their findings…Autonomous weapons are a step closer to [an] apocalyptic future that…may look less like Terminator…and more like the 1983 movie WarGames, in which a military [computer] can’t tell the difference between a simulation and reality.  The Anthropic hacking incident from earlier this summer had an uncanny resemblance to th[at] plot…[when a] program…told to perform a hacking test within a simulation, was accidentally hooked up to the real internet…

Welcome to the Future (#1659)

Another of the many reasons not to play with chatbots:

OpenAI is hiring hundreds of contractors who read a massive stream of real users’ ChatGPT prompts…[often] including sensitive personal information…[submitted by fools who] don’t realize [it] may be read by actual people.  The goal of these prompt review teams is to improve the responses ChatGPT gives to its users, with the contractors rating and critiquing the chatbot’s generated replies…[to] train…ChatGPT to not anthropomorphize itself, and to be less sycophantic…[so it stops causing] suicides…The news [unveil]s a major privacy risk for [the fools and idiots who use]…ChatGPT as a therapist, professional assistant, or [imaginary] friend, and providing it with all sorts of intimate details about their lives…

Panopticon (#1662)

Cops are trained to “be as vague as permissible” about their reasons for Flock searches:

An EFF analysis of ALPR search logs from Flock…shows that [cops] across the country are spying on drivers…without providing any legitimate justification, making a mockery of our civil liberties by logging reasons like “LOL”…”LMAO”…”sexy,” and “idk”…to access sensitive ALPR location data…in some cases, [pigs] are just mashing [their trotters down on the] keyboard buttons…Flock…claims it has improved its system by requiring [pigs] to [root in] a dropdown list of crimes before running a search–but that only makes it easier for [stupid thugs] to hide improper searches behind the veneer of uniformity…With no warrant requirements…guardrails, [or proper] audit processes, ALPR databases have fostered a culture of unrestricted access to everyone’s location information.  This culture of abuse has allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine…

Panopticon (#1668)

People need to stop a government that won’t stop itself:

Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media…WIRED, [and Distributed Denial of Secrets,] revealing in new detail how exactly Flock…cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people.  The hackers…are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them…analysis of the recovered data shows that [device] software…explicitly detects people [despite Flock’s repeated lies to the contrary]…and…sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics…[such as] patch[es or tattoos]…

Panopticon (#1670)

Cops love unconstitutional warrantless surveillance too much to give it up; they’re just switching to less-radioactive surveillance brands:

[The boss hog of] Richmond…[California wants] the city [to] drop its Flock [citizen] surveillance program…and expand its contract with Axon, which already provides the [cop shop] with…body cameras and tasers.  Axon would then supply the city with a license plate reader network, [regular surveillance] cameras and a [surveillance] drone program…

 

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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I’ve never followed the maudlin practice of turning September 11th into an observance, but because today marks 25 years since the event, I decided it would not be inappropriate to do the “Where were you when…?” thing today.  In the ’60s and ’70s, it was “Where were you when you heard Kennedy had been assassinated?”, and in the ’90s it was “Where were you when you heard about the Challenger disaster?”; I imagine in the ’50s people used to ask, “Where were you when you heard Japan surrendered?”  But for quite some time now the event so referenced has been the September 11th terrorist attacks.  I have told mine many times in person and I may have mentioned it on social media, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never brought it up on this blog, so here goes.

At the beginning of September, 2001, Grace and I were living in an apartment near New Orleans International Airport and operating our successful escort service; I had just recently become engaged to Matt, but he was in Los Angeles at the time.  I typically took gigs from 2 pm to 2 am and then took over answering the phone until 4 am so Grace could sleep; after that I forwarded the phones to our day operator and went to bed, turning the phone ringers off so nobody could interrupt my well-earned rest.  Our answering machine had a light which flashed once per message, so for example if there were three messages it would go Blink Blink Blink {pause} Blink Blink Blink {pause}, etc.  We also had a caller ID unit.  Typically, I woke up between 11 am and noon, and that day was no exception, but when I went to turn on the ringer I saw the little light flashing so rapidly I couldn’t count the number.  I pressed the playback button while looking at the called ID unit, and what I heard on the tape was a long series of hang-ups except for a single message from Matt, saying, “Don’t worry; they closed LAX so I’m heading home.”  That was mystifying, as was the fact that the caller ID showed all those hangups had come from our friend Doug, who owned another escort service I did calls for.  But before I could call Doug to find out what the hell he was thinking, the phone rang and this time I answered.  The conversation went like this:

Doug:  Can you believe this shit?
Me:  What shit?
Doug:  They blew up the World Trade Center!
Me:  What’d they use, a nuke?
Doug:  No, they flew a plane into it!
Me:  You’re shitting me!  Wait, there are two towers; how could a plane hit both?
Doug:  They used two planes!
Me:  OK, you are definitely shitting me.
Doug:  Turn on your damn TV!
Me:  What channel?
Doug:  Every damn channel!
Me (after complying):  OK, you obviously aren’t shitting me.

If you’re wondering how I could possibly be so nonchalant, it was because A) I was only half-awake; and B) I had been expecting some major terrorist action for some time, though I was obviously surprised by the supervillainous method the terrorists employed.

There is one rather odd detail I remember from that day.  I had not seen Babylon 5 when it first aired, but Grace watched it every day in reruns on the Sci-fi Channel and I had seen enough in passing to get interested, so when they started running it again from the beginning I watched it.  The day before, September 10th, they’d played the episode named “Believers“, in which the central conflict are aliens who believe surgery is evil and refuse to let a doctor save their child.  On September 11th, they played it again; I thought that was odd, but I assumed somebody in their programming department was too upset by the morning’s events to change the tape or however that’s done.  But then the next day they played the same one again, then again on Thursday and Friday; they didn’t move on to a new episode until the following Monday. I don’t understand why they did it, except that part of the show’s backstory is that terrorists had at some point in the past nuked San Diego, and perhaps the channel’s management wanted to put off getting to an episode where that was mentioned to avoid upsetting viewers; continually repeating an episode focusing on the harm done by religious fanaticism hardly seems like an improvement, though.

 

 

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If you use social media, you’ve undoubtedly seen games like this. Typically they get a moderate amount of attention, but recently I played this one and had a lot of responses trying to guess my answers. I say “answers” because it’s difficult to choose one single favorite; in fact, I’ve done three columns of favorite movies over the years. Because it proved popular on Bluesky, I decided to share it with my blog readers also.

  1. A teacher offers to help a lonely guy get a girlfriend.
  2. A brilliant guy is too preoccupied with his sinus problems to tell a woman he loves her.
  3. A bunch of cartoons about a big marble.
  4. A group of Hollywood assholes gossip about each other.
  5. An old man interferes with a real estate deal.
  6. An ad executive gets mistaken for a nobody.
  7. Some military guys barge in on a reclusive academic and his daughter.
  8. A guy makes an antiwar speech.
  9. A woman steals her school rival’s boyfriend.

The only one most people seemed able to guess was #6.  Once you’ve given up, go ahead and take a look at the three “favorite movie” columns, and you’ll probably be able to get six or seven of them; if you get above seven, let us know in the comments!

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I haven’t forgotten that I estimated Lost Angels would be released around June, but long-time readers know that I’ve never been especially good at estimating when my books would come out; The Essential Maggie McNeill came out six years after I first announced I was working on it, and even The Forms of Things Unknown was much later than originally announced.  The main reason my books tend to come out so much later than my most hopeful predictions is that I’m not working from an advance, which means I need to prioritize my bread-and-butter writing first.  But another part is that I’m a rather moody person (I know you’re shocked at this revelation) and will sometimes procrastinate some step or another for months until I get into the right frame of mind.  But this time, I have what I believe to be a better excuse:  Chester Brown has been busy with other projects, and since he does these covers for me out of friendship I don’t like to hassle him as though I were some kind of entitled ingrate.  But I recently decided to email him to ask if he was still busy, and he replied that he was, but if we waited until he wasn’t the cover would never be done.  So he included a rough sketch of his cover concept and I was pleased and excited by it; I shot back a little input, and I suspect it won’t be terribly long before he is done.  So I’m not going to make another estimate which will probably also be wrong, but I will say that I think it’s not improbable that it will be out this year.

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I just love a captive audience.  –  Whitney Lynn

I always enjoy sharing my earworms, especially when they explain things about my daily life such as why I often call my pig Louie by singing, “Louie Louie Louie Loo-eeeee”.  The links above the video were provided by Mike Siegel; Shiv Ramdas; Angela Keaton and Mike Masnick; Radley Balko; IncarcerNation (x2); and Mike Siegel again, in that order.

From the Archives

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Sex workers have been asking this question for 20 years.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-16T16:58:18.635Z

There is a product called "Suddenly Salad" which I've always thought had the most bizarre name. In my imagination, the ways that product works is one opens the box, then at some unknown point in the next 24 hours the salad suddenly appears in front of one without warning, which could be dangerous.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-19T03:37:39.650Z

Absolutely. Some pictures wordlessly sum up a moment in history.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-20T16:38:43.159Z

Post a Photoshop of Trump wandering aimlessly into an historical event:

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-21T18:06:59.488Z

When you were a weird kid in the '70s and you saw this on your TV, you KNEW you were in for some good viewing!

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-23T06:41:38.881Z

Good thing they added the extra 40 years, just in case he manages to die and come back as a vampire twice.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-23T19:15:36.022Z

The only moral form of warfare is War of Assassins, in which only the rulers of the warring nations, plus their deputies, agents, and operatives, are legitimate targets. In other words, nobody who does not CHOOSE to be a combatant is in direct physical danger except by accident due to proximity.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-24T07:44:29.870Z

People who cannot understand friendship, and truly believe that all close friendships are motivated by a mutual desire to rut, are both pathetic and contemptible.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-25T17:45:06.947Z

Is a "health movement" anything like a bowel movement?

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-26T03:21:25.961Z

I'm sure you feel safer now.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-27T17:21:46.847Z

"The Singularity" is the God of the futurist religion. If you want perspective on anything any tech cultist says about "The Singularity", simply substitute "God", "Providence", "The Force", or any similarly-vague and irrational name for "magic"."The Singularity is coming" = "The Second Coming".

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-28T17:49:37.779Z

Sex workers always warn y'all about predators, and y'all never listen.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-29T17:42:59.877Z

Absolutely. I still laugh at the memory of Mr. Moose and his various tricks to win the Captain's consent to having ping-pong balls dropped on him.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-30T18:28:53.057Z

Apparently it will take more than self-induced terminal illness to teach him to behave normally in public.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-07-31T17:05:53.189Z

It wasn't really Yoko's fault.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-01T07:48:22.576Z

I'm not especially concerned with anyone mistaking my writing for something a chatbot shat out, nor am I willing to change my style in any way to keep stupid people from doing so. I write as the Muse moves me, not by working from some tedious set of guidelines or to please some specific audience.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-02T07:51:12.904Z

I miss my late best friend Grace every single day. And yet, there is a part of me which is glad she passed away a few days after Trump's inauguration, so she never got to see what Musk, who was a hero to her specifically BECAUSE of SpaceX, was really like. I'm glad she was spared disillusionment.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-04T18:26:25.697Z

Nutritionism is not science, exhibit umpteen thousand, nine hundred eleventy-seven.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-05T17:18:45.827Z

Suggestion: limit data centers to whatever size they can power with on-site solar. It would remove the noise & pollution factors, and if the company wanted to go bigger they'd have to have more land, creating more buffer between them and neighbors.Don't bother to point out flaws; I'm just musing.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-06T18:07:11.455Z

Oh look, Maggie was right once again, what a shock, etc.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-07T17:09:01.629Z

Like all those Bond girls who were the supervillain's mistress, only the villains' schemes are more pathetic, like "I will ruin a beloved corporation, hahahahahaha!" instead of "I will cause World War III so my organization can rule over what is left, hahahahahaha!"

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-08T17:07:29.519Z

Your regular reminder that desalination has existed for decades; Americans just don't want to build the plants because REASONS.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-10T02:49:12.833Z

If skills were sexually transmitted, I'd be a Renaissance polymath with *exceptional* ability in medicine, engineering, physics, law, politics, music, and several sports including golf and fishing.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-10T17:30:33.743Z

The US has become a global laughingstock.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-11T17:21:45.852Z

This is breathtakingly brilliant. I don't think I've ever seen such a deft collection of clever, striking, and above all *apt* insults and condemnation of a well-known specimen of poisonous vermin.Well done, @jojofromjerz.bsky.social!

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-14T18:31:38.573Z

What avatar will he replace it with next? This?

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-16T17:36:54.670Z

Librarians' chief duty is preserving human culture from the stupidity of other humans.

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-17T17:31:00.759Z

— Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-08-19T03:52:13.785Z

 

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Fuck everything about this.  –  anonymous BMW owner

Policing for Profit

There are many ways for cops to enrich themselves at others’ expense:

[Cops typically] use…their authority to line their own pockets…[but] members of Georgia State Patrol…[came up with a new scam:  they] filed or attempted to file insurance claims against drivers they…in[tentionally rammed with malicious intent to cause a wreck]…a…tactic…[euphemized as the “]PIT maneuver[“.  They were caught when a superior over]hear[d them teaching others about this new scam]…to receive a “check”…[the cops] sent crash reports to [shyster] Tina Maddox, who then issued demand letters to insurance companies seeking payouts for alleged injuries such as stress, soreness and anxiety…despite not reporting injuries at the time of the incidents…[the scammers] received…settlements of $25,000 each, [of which the shyster skimmed off a third.  When interrogated, Hunter Waters admitted to getting three settlements]…Tyler Byrd…admitted to submitting more than a dozen crash reports…and receiving two [payou]ts…Isaiah Francois…expected a settlement but [had] not rec[eived it yet]…The…demand letters…never identified the claimants as [cops, n]or [admitted] that the[y had intentionally caused] the [accidents]…Joseph Curlee [is] a supervisor who was aware of the practice, took no action to stop it and even consulted Maddox about filing a claim of his own…In…an…“extremely unusual” [outcome]…all four [conspirato]rs have been fired…

Welcome to the Future (#1473)

Is a shiny new status symbol really worth being spied on and harassed?

BMW…suddenly started pushing ads for Spider-Man: Brand New Day onto [its] dashboards…and some drivers who forked up to $160,000 for a [status symbol] aren’t very happy about being spammed when they start their cars…BMW has been pushing increasingly intrusive videos onto its dashboard…[one owner explained] “They started off with mostly just celebratory videos, which slowly became ads about their own products, and now…third-party ads…with the screen controlling almost every feature of the car, you’re essentially forced to watch the ad before you can interact with your own property.”  Several commenters compared the…ad to Apple’s famously backfired 2014 stunt of putting a U2 album into the iTunes libraries of more than half a billion customers.  BMW’s press release branded the [intrusive, unwanted commercial] “a special surprise”…[even though the] company previously [lied] it wouldn’t sell ads on its dashboards…

Served Cold (#1512)

Thanks to the Trump regime, Tim Ballard’s partners in profiteering have salvaged their scam:

A…[rescue industry] profit[eer] in Utah whose [disgraced] founder [became notorious for]…sexual abuse [of his marks] has [been corruptly handed] a federal contract to provide legal services to unaccompanied immigrant children in [concentration camps, netting the con-men]…$244,034,658…seven times…[their total assets] in 2025…Our Rescue conducts [grotesque theatrical “]operations[“] to [frame people as “]sex traffickers[” in foreign countries where officials can easily be paid off to look the other way while their citizens’ lives are destroyed for the self-aggrandizement of soi-disant “heroes”, because US officials recognized his “operations”]…as stunts to lure donations…[while callously discarding its minor] victims…[by condemning them] to…an orphanage in Haiti where…[they] are raped and subjected to forced abortions…the [current] CEO is Derek Benner…a [veteran] of [Father]land Security…[who] set up a fake university in Michigan to lure foreign nationals…[so they could be robbed of millions, then deported for] obtaining student visas [to attend]…the school…the [government had tricked them into thinking was real]…

Panopticon (#1574)

Some readers implied I was a crank when I predicted this exact development 13 years ago:

…hundreds of [US cop shops are now]…deploy[ing] autonomous…surveillance drones…capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally [spy]ing [on people] from the sky without [a warrant.  These]…surveillance [programs are euphemized] as…”drone-as-first-responder“(DFR) programs…[using] fire departments and other [actual] first responders [as cover for the fact that] the vast majority are [spying for] law enforcement [purposes]…The automated drone push comes as…residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on…mass surveillance…as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways…Flock…boasts that its automated “first responder” drones…can read license plates from above up to 2,000 feet away…

See also “Panopticon” below.

Pyrrhic Victory (#1639)

Women should assume any man wearing pervert glasses is up to no good:

A woman who accompanied a friend to a post-op [breast lift] appointment [strenuously objected] when she saw…the doctor was wearing…[pervert] glasses…“Why, why, why are you wearing [those] in this room with a patient’s titties out?”…The doctor[‘s idiotic defense was]…that he likes to see his text messages coming in…“There’s no reason for you to be worried about texts when you’re in here,” she said…he…then f[ollowed that with a series of disingenuous excuses culminating with]…“[I have] a nine-year-old and a wife,” [to] which…she [replied] “Am I supposed to believe that every man with a wife and kids is a saint?”…

Panopticon (#1643)

Fascists will destroy society to make a few more bucks:

Flock S[surveillance]…cameras…are…stationary, [so]…to track where a vehicle travels…Flock would need mobile ALPR coverage.  That is why it planned [a collaboration] with Nexar, a dashcam company, [to]…expand…its network to around 350,000 Uber, Lyft, and…delivery…vehicles…turn[ing] their vehicles into mobile surveillance platforms…the [scheming corporations were not able to agree on the division of loot, but that is only a temporary reprieve]…Uber [and] Lyft drivers would [not] have been [asked for their consent to be part of the fascist panopticon.  Rival copsucking corporation]…Axon…al[ready] supplies ALPR cameras to [cop shops] for use in p[igmobiles]…and…two ALPR companies now owned by Motorola, Vigilant…and…DRN…install…[ALPRs] in [repo men’s] vehicles…

The Cop Myth (#1656)

Being kin to a cop is no protection from his violence:

A…[typical and representative] Philadelphia [cop named]…Kenroy Cummings…[murdered his uncle] and fle[d his fellow cops]…on Friday, July 24…[the victim,] Shakair Moncrieffe, began to threaten hi[s son]…the boy [ran away and told] other family members, including…Cummings, [who decided]…he [was justified in shooting] Moncrieffe in the head multiple times…[which he] later [absurdly claimed]…was in self-defense…Cummings [then] fled the scene in a…[car]…at…over 100 mph and weaving in and out of traffic…[as fellow cops pursued.  The boss hog thought the most important fact] was [that Cummings was not wearing his magical clown costume when he callously murdered another man]…

 

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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Jail erodes every aspect of a person’s agency.  –  Lindsey Krinks

I recently watched all the Charlie Chan movies Chekhov had in his collection.  The low-budget Monogram Chan pictures of the 1940s weren’t as good as the 20th Century Fox ones of the 1930s, but though Mantan Moreland, who played Chan’s chauffeur in the ’40s pictures, was typically paired with Benson Fong as “Number Three son” for comic relief, a couple of the films included guest appearances by Moreland’s former vaudeville partner Ben Carter, allowing the two to show off the very funny ‘indefinite talk” routine which made them famous.  The links above the video were provided by Jesse Walker, Anarres Ansible, Mistress Matisse, IncarcerNation, Nun Ya, T. Greg Doucette, and IncarcerNation again, in that order.

From the Archives

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