Rape Culture Through a Simpleton's Eyes

Sometimes I'm not so savvy or eloquent and sometimes I see things differently than others; in metaphors and patterns, in the simple terms of a child. I'm high-functioning autistic and it means my brain has certain physiological differences that often contribute to unique cognitive functioning. Occasional simpleton.

So I went to a convention a few weeks back. It wasn't as much fun as I'd thought it would be. It was a lot of money, I was very sick, I spent most of my time acting as crew for my wife's show, and then there was an Incident.

My wife and I returned to our room after filming and it was loud before we opened the door. When we did, it was so hot in there, stifling with an overwhelming odor of stale sweat, alcohol, and too many people. I turned the AC on. Everyone was loud and happily drunk and there were people everywhere. It'd been a hard day and the sudden crowd made me feel shaky and nervous and I retreated into silence. When I'm silent and still, with a child's wide eyes, that's how you can tell I'm not alright.

There was a woman there who I knew. We'd met last year, in passing, and once online, when I PM'ed her the link to the RDA FAQ on IRC. I knew all about her though, because everyone was talking about how she broke up with her boyfriend, and he didn't come to the convention, and how she was really upset. She was barefoot and very drunk, came over to me and hugged me and said how much she liked me and all. Everyone laughed because 'lesbian' things are funny. Well, not to real lesbians. I guess fake 'lesbian' things are funny? This woman was very flirtatious with me and my wife. I felt uncomfortable.

For a moment, things slowed and the color washed out; I call these moments, 'movie times' because suddenly it feels like I'm an outside observer to the events around me. It's just the conscious perception of cognitive dissonance though, so don't worry. I felt like everyone was laughing at this woman, because the rumor was that she loves to drink and gets 'crazy' when she's drunk, like she's an object with a function, like a wind-up toy or a jack-in-the-box, instead of a real living person with a real mind. A woman there I didn't know told me that she and the other woman kissed on camera. All the guys laughed and wooted again. The drunk woman stood up and almost fell over, helped back to her seat by a friend of mine.

This was not a good place to be. Things were wrong here. I asked my wife if I could talk to her out in the hall and she thought I was upset with her. I said we should do something, say something, everything felt wrong and horrible and I didn't want to go back into our room. We decided to hang out next door with some friends of ours and that was fine for a bit. I still had that feeling like you do when you were a kid and that one friend suggested doing something really bad and you just felt like maybe you should tell an adult. I was the adult but I was sitting on my friend's bed wringing my hands like a 5 year-old.

I needed my phone charger so I went back into the room and our one roommate was very upset and asked if he could come hang with us. I brought him back to the other room and he was shaking with rage and upset-ness as he told us that the crowd had talked the drunk woman into kissing other people and taking her top off, live on the stream. He was angry with himself for not saying anything and when I heard that, my stomach dropped because I hadn't said anything either.

My wife was having none of this and tweeted about it, which is when I saw that my site was tweeting in a very vulgar way to get views for the stream. Above and beyond promising this woman topless again at 30 views, the tweets also described 'hot lesbian action', which as a for-reals lesbian, made my soul sink; being a lesbian is not 24-7 sex fetishized for a straight male audience, it's just being. Perhaps my wife and I should record ourselves making dinner or driving somewhere and sell it as 'lesbian action.'

Afterwards, well, you all know what happened. Thing is, people involved kept apologizing to me for 'offending' me, as if I was the woman everyone was manipulating like an object, as if I was the one being treated like a child or an animal, in a room full of hazy drunken revelry. I feel sick when I remember the short time I was in that room and I wish I had the cognitive eloquence to explain it to the extent that I felt it.

Everyone talks about rape culture as if it's some invention by evil feminists looking down from their vaginal moon base, but it exists. There's no rules or meeting place, or wiki, but it's there. It's there in all the guys who tried to apologize to me because there was disrespect (at least, if not more) to a woman and hey, *I'm* a woman too.

It's there in those who defend the man who groped this drunk woman without her consent, when they attacked my wife and other female producers because they're feminists, and hey, it's all those UGLY (feminists are always ugly, natch) femi-nazi's who just hate men because they secretly want ALL THE MEN (sluts!) and they're trying to outlaw a man's right to have FUN! It's there in the fact that the men who were there who DID conduct themselves with grace and compassion, such as ensuring the drunk woman got back to her room and got her friend there to help, are shouted down by their fellows.

It's there in that when I walked into that room and the drunk girl hugged me, for that moment I ceased to be myself and became an object too. Hot lesbian action, y'all! It's there in all the people who will howl for months about feminist conspiracies and who's responsible, rather than admit that a woman was taken advantage of, manipulated into doing something in front of the Internet, and groped without her consent, they'll just howl that it's all those damn women, being offended.

Other producers have discussed rape culture and didn't make a mess of it, as this essay is rapidly becomming, so you should probably read what they have to say. Warning: it's very intelligent. One of them said, this is the first thing I've said on the matter and it will be the last. That goes for me as well, even though I'm just a simpleton.

After the Fest of All-Mag's Eve...

.

Yes well.

Incidentally, this post is brought to you by Abney Park, who I'm listening to right now, specifically their album 'Aether Shanties'...iTunes it, y'all.

I've got to say that I certainly had a Murphy's Law MAGFest, that's for damn sure. I took a lot of panel footage that will soon be edited and up on Project Million Entertainment and shot a literal metric ton of footage for Diamanda Hagan for her various crossovers. All of this stuff should be hitting an Interwebs near you soon.

The bad: Fever dreams about giant wasps trying to get into my bed so they could go in my veins deliriously represented to my wife as fact when she got back to the room, the fire alarm early in the morning (BWEEE! BWEEE! MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE! EVERYTHING IS NOW FINE! JUST FINE! THANK YOU!), running nearly everywhere, death flu, being verbally assaulted by an asshole in a BMW over a parking spot, nearly choking to death on a McChicken sandwich, having a mini-breakdown in front of two TGWTG producers I really respect, the room party being larger than I'd planned for, the Incident(TM), RVT's conduct and making the decision to leave, not having enough time to hang out with everyone, and the food places nearby being blah and expensive.

The good: EVERYTHING ELSE! Seriously! I got to meet lots more people I'd only known online and Pinka_Starlight gave me plushy lobsterflies, and I bought a fuzzy happy bean with sparkly eyes in the dealers room, and MSipher drew Hagan and I, and everyone had fun at the party, and the panels were great and seeing Basil and Kitsunique again was so great, and a local friend was able to make it, and Xed brought me a microbrew whiskey that I can't wait to try, and we got crab pizza (Pizza Boli's...try them if there's one near you!), and there were cookies and cookies, and Vera Gunn's birthday party at Nando's, and the Worst Movie Auditions made me laugh harder than I had in weeks, and we celebrated Real World: Internet again, and I got to pull a role as a Minion, also double-zombies.

There will be an announcement from me soon on if/which new site I'll be working with, though I do feel really excited about a concept for a new show I had...less review and more historical analysis...I was inspired to tackle it during the Reviewing the Worst of the Worst panel. Let's see if I can make it work after the day job and part-time job take their tolls.

But yeah.

Happy Secular Xmas!

It's the most wonderful time of the year! That magical time when it's too cold for bugs and all the wasps are dead, and you can wear a hoodie to work every day!

Oh, and also Christmas is coming. (Please insert your, "Brace yourself, Christmas is coming." joke here.) I'm very excited because my wife is coming to the country for the holidays and it'll be our first Christmas as a married couple. There'll be shopping and merry visits with friends and family! We'll bake cookies, snuggle, and drink wine by candlelight as we gaze happily at the tree and watch Vsauce videos on YouTube. -floats away on a cloud of heart-shaped, Christmas-scented bubbles-

Oh, and I'm a philosophical rationalist and my wife is an atheist, the pick-fights-on-the-Internet kind. Ooops. -comes crashing down to Earth-

She was raised Baha'i, a religion I really only tangently understand through reading the Wiki, and is now a Darwin-thumping atheist. I was raised by liberals, a lapsed Irish Catholic and lapsed Jew who are both psychologists and raised my sister and I by the guiding philosophy, "We'll celebrate both religion's holidays and if you two find another path that calls you, by all means, go for it!" There was my misguided attempt to be a Catholic ("Hey, those Catholic kids will have to be nice to me, their God says they have to be good!") and my 1st crush-induced brush with Neo-Paganism. I've howled at the moon with the others while holding a crystal wand aloft at midnight at the center of Little Stonehenge in Swarthmore; not my best moment.

The details of my spiritual un-awakinging aren't really important but the long and short of it is, I love science and reason and I don't love Jesus. However, I love Christmas! No, really, you guys! I love the smells of woodsmoke, frost, pine, baked goodies, and a touch of incense. I love the shiny, sparkly, red/green/silver/gold of every decoration. I love getting free time off work, picking the *perfect* present for everyone I care about, baking, and the feeling of vaguely-Eastern mystery and ritual that pervades the whole holiday. The problem is...I still don't love Jesus and neither does my wife.

So, I've decided that I'm not going to let a little thing like religion get in the way of my Christmas this year. We're going to have a happy secular Xmas and a drunken New Year, if I have any say in the matter.

I started with the tree, artificial from Target because it was easy on on sale, with crystal-drop ornaments, balls, and lights; a pickle as a tree-topper, no angels here! My wrapping paper is blue with Peanuts characters frollicking in the snow and the stockings were hung on the RPG bookcase with care, in hopes that my cat could not get at them there. We'll bake and decorate cookies, not with nativity scenes but with frosting and sugar sparkles. Also, no Christmas music here (I get enough of it at my 2nd job in anyway, retail, yanno.) and Christmas specials? Not likely, that's what we have YouTube, Netflix, and the box set of Bizarre Foods for.

I'll wisk my wife away to my parents' house where Christmas morning will mean french toast and fresh orange juice, not hours in church and the bread of Christ. We'll gather 'round my laptop and use a proxy server to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special in real-time before heading out for Christmas dinner at my relatives'. There, the kid's table has become the kids-and-their-spouses table and we'll drink and talk politics until my uncle and 2nd cousin lead the entire family in a part-assigned rendition of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. After that, we'll all retire to the back room to play Halo and Rock Band as my cousin dresses as Santa Claus to distribute the pollyanna presents.

Nary a son of Bethlehem in sight.

It'll be the best Xmas ever and my wife's first Xmas ever. You guys, I totally can't wait.

11 Years Ago

This is not meant to be particularly poignant or meaningful in any way, it’s just that I just realized now that I’ve never put this into words.

It was a beautiful day that Tuesday and I was up early. That was the semester that I was taking classes at Temple University and working a flex schedule with Intracorp/CIGNA Healthcare. Since I didn’t have classes that day, I had to be in by 8am. I was living in a 2 bedroom apartment that I shared with two other students and two cats. That morning, I had Good Morning America on while I got dressed and the top story was that Michael Jordan was considering coming out of retirement.

I actually said out loud to the kitten, Evie, who was sitting on my bed, “You’d think they’d have some actual news to talk about.”

Usually, I’d listen to CD’s through my old work desktop (I was one of the lucky few in the department that had one with a CD-ROM drive), but that day was different. That day, I was listening to Alice 104.5, hoping they’d play a song I’d heard a few days previous (it was ‘Superman’ by Five For Fighting). That was the only reason I was listening to live radio on my old Walkman that morning.

I was in the mail room copying a large medical chart so the original could be sent back to the facility when a song ended and the DJs came back on. The woman reported that a plane had crashed in New York City and I thought, “Oh, that’s too bad, hope no one was hurt,” and they continued their song set. However, a few minutes later, they interrupted a song to announce reports of a second plane crashing in New York City. ‘Funky’ Glen Calina, the main DJ, thought it must be a mistake, or the same report twice.

My chart was finished copying, so I went back to my desk and curious, I switched over to AM radio; KYW1060, Philly’s AM all-news station. That’s when the reports started pouring in and I thought, “Two planes hitting the same building, that’s some rare bad luck, right there!” More people in the office put on their desk radios and an undercurrent of background noise grew. Then we got the report of the flight down in western Pennsylvania, and everyone’s hearts stopped.

A team of nurses from Case Management had been training out at the Pittsburgh service center and had been flying back that morning. It was a tense half hour before we could get in contact with them and confirm they landed safely at Philly International a few hours earlier.

Next was the news that one of the planes had been from Boston, where my parents were in the process of moving to, and flying back and forth to West Chester, PA. I called my mom.

Mom: Honey? What’s up? (I never called from my desk phone, usually.)

Me: Mom, did Dad fly back this morning?!?

Mom: Hmm? No, he decided to go back down on Friday. Why?

Me: Turn on the news! There’s planes crashing all over and one was from Boston!

Finally, we got word of the plane hitting the Pentagon. By now, no one was really working in my department and we were all clustered around the radios because only the Medical department had Internet access. I was so shocked by the idea of a plane hitting the Pentagon (the f’ing PENTAGON, fer chri’sakes!) that I just sat there, a hand over my mouth, and Kathy, one of the review nurses, asked me if I was ok, and the question confused me; of course I was ok, I mean, I was safe, not like the people injured and/or dying.

We closed nationally at noon and my boss sent us home. Later, I’d find out that the Intake/Frontline department, which ran the medical certs for City of New York employees, remained open and never handed off to the Atlanta service center, as they usually did at 5pm. I drove home down PA 476 (the Blue Route), listening to KYW, which was taking live reports from the NBC affiliate in NYC.

I remember an interview with a hysterical, sobbing man, who’d escaped one of the towers in the smoke and dark, down countless flights of emergency stairs, saying that there’d been a man in a wheelchair trapped on a landing, begging for help. The man didn’t stop to help him and now he was inconsolable, certain that poor man had died. At that moment, a terrifying thought hit me, the fact that when I got home and turned on the TV, there would be footage of this. I’d be able to watch this and for some reason that horrified me.

It was such a beautiful day in Chester, PA. Cool, sunny, and kids were playing in the parking lots of the ratty apartment complex where I lived. I called the person I was dating then, to make sure they weren’t on campus in the city, because a lot of us thought that after the WTC, One and Two Liberty Place would be the next targets. We talked for a bit then I watched the live coverage on TV.

That day, though the footage would be pulled later and never (as far as I know) re-aired, they showed the people trapped on the upper floors of the towers, above where the planes hit. They knew they’d never escape and some opted to jump. It’s one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen in my life. At a certain point, I just couldn’t handle watching any more, and as we were pirating HBO at the time, I watched some stupid rom/com where Sandra Bullock went to rehab or something. Thank God for that movie.

The supermarket down the road called to tell me that our meat order was in. My roommates and I had found a deal; 40 pounds of various meats for $30 if ordered in advance. It was steaks, lots of chicken, some pork chops and lots of hot dogs. I went and picked it up, that 40 pounds of meat, and it seemed so absurd as to almost not even be real.

Later on that afternoon, Peter, Claire and Tom showed up, having just come from giving blood. We sat on the floor and played Magic the Gathering in numb, near-silence, because we just didn’t know what else to do. My roommates called and told me they were staying with the one’s parents, who were very upset, and might not be home for a few days. Keane and Eric came over and then we went bowling in Upper Darby, because it was our bowling night and we were too shell-shocked to consider anything other than routine.

Playhouse Lanes was empty and the manager, who knew Tom, let us play for free so long as we got food, which we did; mountains of bacon cheese fries, pizza, chicken fingers, and several pitchers of beer. None of us had actually remembered to eat that day. The manager and his employee were watching the President’s national address and kept commenting, “Fuckin’ ass towelheads!” I found that unsettling but the beer was wonderfully soothing and we fell into the rhythm of the game, as Peter spent some time with the jukebox and que’ed up every Blink 182 song in it.

Later on that night, Eric drove me home, and as we turned from Bullins Lane onto Rt. 320 into Chester he said, “Look up. This might be the only time in your life you’ll see the sky this close to the airport completely clear.” I lived close to the airport and as long as I lived in that apartment, I’d lay in bed and as planes came in overhead, and as their roar got louder, I’d hold completely still until it started to fade, meaning they weren’t about to crash.

After that, when evangelicals started saying that 9/11 happened because God wanted to punish America for gays, I got scared we’d be rounded up and put in camps. I was thin back then, usually dressed in black boots, black jeans with my wallet on a chain, a shirt and my black jeans jacket; so I bought an American flag bandana, rolled it flat and tied it around the upper right arm of my jacket. My dad jokingly said I looked like an American SS but I saw it more as life-saving camouflage, in case they came for me.

History isn’t what you find in a textbook or on a commemorative plaque on the side of the road. History is the amalgamation of the story of every person who experienced an event. The fact that Five For Fighting’s song ‘Superman’ will always remind me of that day, is history, so is the 40 pounds of meat, bowling in Upper Darby, and everything that we did that day. We are all part of history and will forever be, eons after our physical forms are gone.

The Spaceship Powered By Love

(I originally wrote this piece in 2010 when Diamanda Hagan did her original 'Fear Her' review, because I'm of the opinion that a good writer can make even the stupidest concept badass. I adapted this to a few lines for the 'Fear Her' remake cameo.)

      A tooth fell out at 02:47.
 
      It slipped its moors as gently as a soup bone pulling away from tender meat, uprooted and for the first time subject gravity, and it must have fallen. External room sensors indicated and recorded the motion, G-impact, and small sonic waves the tooth produced. The tympanic membrane closest to the event vibrated; clatter.
 
[INCIDENT] 02:47
[INDICATION] Negative
 
      "My tooth went clatter on the floor," was what a raw synapse sang until others joined it in sick harmony.
 
      There was a slight constriction of the throat against the immovable tube, atrophied muscles lapping weakly against the invader. There was no speech. There had been no speech in 163 days, and no vocal sounds at all generated in 107 days.
 
      "My tooth went clatter on the floor!"
 
      All thoughts fell silent and bowed down as the one ran errant through what was left of the nightmare forest in there, in that organic CPU. Here in high-pitched dissonance it ranted and strut until the bio-interface twitched, all muscles tensing at once. There was no laughter because there never could be laughter again.
 
      "My tooth went clatter on the floor!"
 
[INCIDENT] 02:51
[INDICATION] Positive
[RESPONSE] Generative
 
      Self-diagnostic programs cascaded across the visual readout in all spectra. Tessellate, tessellate, tessellate. Focus quality degraded for the first several moments but a subroutine ran twice and determined that this bug would be only a momentary glitch in code.
 
      Everything was a glitch with the bio-interface.
 
      Processing hubs lit up as input hit them and flowed towards the CPU, blossoming into curling flowers of data on the external displays of the room, then passing through the Halbright outlet brace before continuing on its way. Bio-interface inconsistencies always began at this stage, but the sub-routines compensated and the program switched automatically out of prep mode and into full processing.
 
      The bio-interface slackened and organic discharge oozed from around the throat-pipe’s advent.  Energy quality was down %.7 of whole for phase one and it was still in load and not the main generation phase.  Sub-routines again compensated but there were daily mounting statistics that pointed to the bio-interface beginning to weaken and require replacing.
 
      With all glitches now cleared, phase two initiated across the visual output monitor, reflecting the smaller view within the bio-interface.  It was a seamless program; after identifying the areas of the internal CPU to stimulate, physical manipulation and chemical stimuli provoked multi-sense hallucinations, the same code each time. There was data to support the end result yet no data to support causation, but energy harvested in this manner was %47 more efficient than any other.
 
      On the visual output monitor, the colors resolved to bio-interface visual perception spectrum, the image of a young organic creature running on two legs on a landed planet and vocalizing.  It was primate in nature but its skin lacked the thick hair of most primates.  An adult member of its species lifted it and vocalized before the image faded to chemical level readings. There was increased fluid production from the bio-interface and the programs switched on the pressure fan to quickly evaporate the liquid from the face of the bio-interface.
 
      “…she…my…”
 
      With energy harvest entering cool-down phase, the synapse had no chemical energy to power it and stopped flaring.  All synapses fell silent in synch as the bio-interface lost direct connection with the program and entered a planned forced regeneration cycle.  Total energy harvest yield was substantially lower than the unit before, and using current course trajectory, fifteen additional harvesting cycles would be necessary to reach a planet where the bio-interface could be replaced.
 
      Adjusting for the percent chance of an unforeseen complete bio-interface failure, the mainframe plotted a new course and initiated it.  It was not impeded or molested as it headed towards its new energy source; just a spaceship powered by love.

Good Morning

Good morning, I am a homosexual.

Oh wait, maybe that was too much at once. What I meant to say was:

Good morning, I am an American.

I was born at 3:22am at Chestnut Hill Hospital in the first week of 1980 and grew up in the Philly metro suburbs. I pay federal, state, and local taxes and abide by the laws of those jurisdictions (though I sometimes speed on the highway). I graduated high school but ran out of money mid-way through college. I work 2 jobs, 3 if you count my Internet freelance productions, and I live comfortably.

I'm a woman, albeit a short one, and I'm terribly in love with another woman. We're engaged, actually.

I am the product of a lapsed Irish Catholic and a lapsed Jew, who raised me in both religions with the expectation that if I found another path of belief, I should follow it if it was what I believed. In high school, I was baptised, confirmed, and given Communion as a Roman Catholic, though I count myself as an independant believer in the divine; faith is beautiful but organized religion is trouble.

I'm an American. You might pass me on the highway, or maybe I've rung you up at the store, were you in line in front of me at 7-11? I'm an American to my coworkers at my day job, when we discuss reality TV and dieting myths. I was born to a loving family and someday, long from now, I hope to leave a loving young family behind. I'm certainly not perfect but really, who is these days?

Every day I read the news, because I keep up with current events, and it's full of stories of people literally howling that I should be; fired, kicked out of my apartment, kicked out of my country, refused goods and services, imprisioned, 'saved', lose basic human rights, and be brutally murdered. Can you believe it? Me? There are criminals guilty of horrific crimes, who do not engender such bile and rage.

Good morning, I am a homosexual.

Was I what you expected? If you got your way and your gun was to my head, would you pull the trigger? When they came for you and charged you with murder, would your high-profile lawyer try to claim it wasn't really murder, just slaughter of an animal? Would people say I deserved it?

Good morning, I am an American. Who are you?

Omega In Ink

So, the remarkably talented Ven Gethian, title-card artist for Brows Held High, whose gallery can be found here: Ven's Gallery

Has drawn Omega and Giovanni following a hypothetical viewing of A Serbian Film. :)

He

He was a marine.

I knew him through gaming and he was a part of a large poly family I'm friendly with. He wore glasses and had a crew cut, this kid who had the mind of an engineer and the enthusiasm of a happy puppy. He died suddenly, months back, at work on the base. It was a closed casket funeral and no one would say how he died.

His born family barred his poly family from the funeral; adding cruel insult to horrific injury. They're good people and it still makes me angry how they were treated, during a time when everyone needed to come together and remember him, to grieve and heal. Now it seems that NCIS is investigating his death and I can only hope they'll tell both families what happened.

I'll always remember the last time I saw him, at a party down in Virginia. The hostess was a good friend of mine but hadn't intended for certain guests to show; people who were literally committed to making my life (personal and professional) miserable. There were a lot of them and they all pointedly ignored me, to the extent that strangers at the party noticed. I was uncertain, panicked and afraid, on the brink of leaving and admitting defeat, intending to withdraw from all social interaction thereafter.

He asked me out on the balcony for a cigarette, because he was excited to tell me about his gaming character's newest adventures.

We smoked and two others joined us, people who weren't in the bad clique, and we spent the evening talking. He ran at the mouth about his job, being a marine, his gaming characters, pretty much everything. He must have known what everyone thought of me; how could he not? but he either didn't agree or didn't care. The summer sky turned deep blue, then black, as we nursed beers and cigarettes, the four of us, and later five, when everyone left and the hostess joined us.

I never told him how much that simple gesture meant to me. I never saw him again.

A few months ago I met two old friends from Pennsylvania at The Green Turtle, and as I walked out to my car, a group of guys was walking towards me. I raised my hand to wave to him, but in the same instant realized this man wasn't him, and that he'd been dead for several months.

I hope his families can heal and I hope his memory is venerated by the country he died to serve, no matter the method of his death.

A New Fic Approaches!

So the ever-talented Angel_In_Ink has written another fic involving me, Giovanni, and the Hagan robot from the Taint Review. I lol'ed!

Check it out here

It's Official

So, I've been picked up by the lovely folks over at Reviewtopia! Right now my trailer is up in rotation, with more to come, hopefully this week. This past week, I filmed a co-review for someone as well as a special review with Xaria aka Diamanda Hagan (it's epic, expect a screenshot later today). Expect also a vlog of tasting American soda and candy with me, Diamanda, and the Avatar of Decent Humor.

In other news, this past week I got to meet Kyle aka Oancitizen, and Ven the Artist (his titlecard artist) as well as Lindsay, the Nostalgia Chick, and all of them were wonderfully friendly folks; it was a great day in DC!

So, what's coming next? Well, I'm going to reformat the show with the goal being slimming down the time and cutting out pointless exposition, and toying with the idea of doing separate plot-only vids as part of the main season. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things will continue, and expect some more stuff in the next two weeks on that front.

Happy update, everyone! :)

This Just In...

So Angel_In_Ink has taken the previous post, inspired, and done a little wordsmithing on it to make it into fiction, which I always think is awesome:

Omega and the Moral Superiority Bear

Moral Superiority Bear

Ok, Internet, it’s come to blows:

I want my Moral Superiority Bear and I want it now.

Let me back up and explain a bit. See, I always tried to be a good kid when I was little, even though in reality I think I rarely was, and part of being good is doing exactly as told. Usually, that was the sticking point, as I really wanted to be good, but I *really* wanted to squirm around and make noise more, or whatever it was I’d been told not to do. Then, I got to middle/high school, and that’s where being good got exponentially easier.

They lined us up for seven years and sternly lectured us, “Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, and don’t have sex!” they howled, filling our minds with figures and statistics and images of sobbing friends and family. Every vice was followed out to its logical hyperbole; one sip of beer leads right to alcoholism, passing notes with a boy results in pregnancy, and just thinking about drugs is the tipping point for ‘junkie’.

A 6^th grade health teacher (an evil old women, so what she could have possibly known/remembered of romance/sex always seemed suspicious to me) once had me convinced that because an 8^th grader had let me have a sip of his coke during orchestra practice, that I was going to get hepatitis.

Problem being, I was a late-bloomer and terminally uncool, so I had no access to any of the forbidden fruits we were being warned about, and none of the people I was close-ish to did any of that kind of thing. So there I was, just living, just existing and putting in no effort and somehow I was already ‘being good’! I wasn’t smoking, drinking, doing drugs, or having sex like the other kids, those bad kids, so I sat back smugly, my moral superiority throbbing, thinking about what a good kid I was being.

Sometime around 5 or so years after graduation, I started to feel a disturbance in the Force; the nagging doubt that being good hadn’t really gotten me anything. All the kids I’d known in high school who smoked, drank, did drugs and had sex, turned out…about the same as those of us who didn’t. True, I hadn’t really don’t much to ‘be good’, but wasn’t that what it was all about, just the good part? Wasn’t someone going to call my name over the PA system…of...the world and invite me on-stage in front of everyone I know to present me with a Special Prize for not indulging in those vices all my peers had?

I tried to explain this feeling to a friend once, who in response, bought me a teddy bear, made a little medal for him, and proclaimed him the Moral Superiority Bear. He was one of the things I lost when I lost the house.

That brings us to the present day. It’s a beautiful summer day outside and I’m sitting inside at my job while many (younger) folks I know are running around carefree on vacation for a month, having fun and eating funnel cake and making fools of us cane-swinging old people. Where’s the justice or logic in that? I work two jobs to support myself, to keep myself off social assistance and out of my parents’ house, and these college kids are at an amusement park, just goes to show.

That’s why I’m proposing a renaissance for the Moral Superiority Bear; let’s bring him back for all the people we know who do the right thing even when it’s the hard thing or the lousy thing, for the people who DON’T call out of work when they’re ill and who give up on fun trips because they work weekends. Don’t give up hope, someday there WILL be a whole-school, er, I mean, whole-world assembly where you’ll be lauded in front of all the others who slept in, got plastered partying on weeknights, and skipped something important to get laid.

In a perfect world, there would be a Moral Superiority Bear on your desk tomorrow morning.

In Further Fan-Fiction News

So it seems that someone liked, I mean really liked Diamanda Hagan and Omega together in the Taint review, so much so that they requested a dirty story about it.

Someone wrote one, at appears:

Omega and Hagan sex-bot, NSFW

In Fan-Fiction News...

The wonderful Angel_In_Ink has written some fan-fiction featuring Omega and Giovanni, and it's really well written and %100 sex-free! Go check it out:

http://angel-in-ink.livejournal.com/5950.html

News Update

So we're about a week out from going live, so if you're one of the people to whom I've sent the URL, well, I hope you're amused so far.

This week I'll be focusing on getting the Meet the Doctor project up and running; I'd like to have at least the first arc up before the site goes live, just to have some cool new content up.  I'm also working towards getting the Iteration 0 eXistenZ review done and up this week too.

I applied at Reviewtopia and hope to be hearing back from them soon, so yeah, that about sums up the news for today.

Bloggity-bloggity-blog

So, this is the only part of the site that's both non-continuity and out-of-character.  I mean, unless you really believed that I live in a sealed room with no food or water or bathroom...in that case, keep on keepin' on, I guess.

News and updates and thingsandstuff will be going in this space, so keep a weather eye out (I love that phrase).