Blackmoor Vituperative

I have been rewatching a lot of 1980s fantasy movies lately. While putting Warrior And The Sorceress back on the shelf, I happened to notice Your Highness, which I’d completely forgotten about. I really like this movie. It’s a comedy, but it’s not a spoof. It’s like what would happen if a guy who really shouldn’t be in a 1980s fantasy movie got dragged into one against his will. Great cast, very funny, and has all of the best parts of the 1980s fantasy movies that I love.

It’s really hard to “promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate” when what you used to love (Star Wars, Star Trek, Mystery Science Theater 3000, mainstream superhero comics, etc.) has been turned into crap by people squeezing every last dime they can out of it.

sigh… But I’m trying. I really am.

This is a public service message (mainly for myself, as I try to be a better person).

When someone¹ posts, “Here is something I like!”, there are five acceptable responses. I will list them here.

1) “Tell me more about this thing you like!”
2) “Did you know this fun² fact about the thing you like?”
3) “I like that, too!”
4) “The thing you like reminds me of this other thing, which I like!”
5) (silence)

Now you know.

1)  “Someone” means “Someone who is not a full-blown Nazi, sexist scumbag, or overt racist.”
2) “Fun” means actually fun — not mean, snide, derogatory, or judgemental.

One of my most enjoyable convention panels, back when I used to do that sort of thing, was “gearing up for a zombie apocalypse”. I insisted that before you could make that kind of plan, you needed to answer three questions about the zombies:

1. Are they fast?
2. Are they aggressive?
3. Are they infectious?

The answer to each of these questions dictates the gear you will need to survive. The most important factor is #3. It’s the infectious nature of modern zombies that makes them a civilization-ending threat. Even if every person who died eventually became a zombie, that’s a much easier situation to deal with than one where you get bit by a zombie today and turn into a zombie tomorrow.

Tipping is bullshit. American “tipping” has created a whole class of beggars. People who work on my car work just as hard as the people who bring me food, but they’re not dependent on the kindness of strangers to pay their damned bills. And how much my mechanics get paid doesn’t depend on the cost of the part I have them install, or whether they’re young and cute.

I tip well, because I can (this was not always so), but I would much prefer that businesses actually pay their employees to do the job they were hired to do, so that the price I am quoted when I place my order is the price I actually pay.

“Tipping” should be abolished. It’s unfair to the people who pay, and it’s insulting and unfair to the people who receive.

But with the current political trends in this country, I suspect that most Americans will be depending on “tips” to survive before too long.

My death is inevitable, and there is a reasonable chance that someone I know will outlive me and have some interest in my passing. As such, these are my wishes for the treatment of my remains and memory upon my death and for a short time thereafter.

First and most importantly, I won’t be there, so it really doesn’t matter what I want. Take my corpse to Nags Head and parade me around like Terry Kiser, and I won’t know any different. But if you care what I wanted, here you go.

1. No viewing. Don’t bother putting my dead body on display. I wasn’t all that great to look at when I was alive, and I seriously doubt I got better looking afterward. Personally, I think putting dead bodies on display is grotesque.
2. No prayers, no platitudes, no religious balderdash. I’m not in a better place. My death wasn’t part of some divine plan. That’s all bullshit. As far as the universe is concerned, my death matters as much as a light bulb burning out. I was alive. Now I’m not.
3. No obituaries. Don’t waste money announcing my death in the newspaper or anywhere else. Anyone who cares if I’m dead already knows.
4. Keep things cheap. My remains don’t need a fancy headstone, casket, funeral service, or anything else. Dispose of them in the cheapest, simplest way possible. Use my bones, skin, corneas, and various organs if you can, and toss the rest in a landfill, for all I care. Cremation and resomation (alkaline hydrolysis) are probably the most cost-effective means of disposal. And for pete’s sake, don’t keep the leftovers. Throw them away.
5. Throw a party, preferably somewhere you don’t have to clean up afterward. Have an open bar, and invite the handful of people who actually care that I’m dead. I doubt it would be more than a dozen people, plus my family.
6. No eulogy. I’m gone, and it’s too late to assign any meaning to my life. If you feel an uncontrollable desire to hear yourselves talk, here’s an activity for you: each person raises a toast to my memory, says one good thing about me, and one bad thing about me, and then everyone drinks. Both the good thing and the bad thing have to be sincere, and they have to be something no one else has said yet. If the person whose turn it is can’t think of one good thing and one bad thing, then they just say, “To Brandon!”, and everyone drinks.
7. Try to find a place for my various pet projects before my web sites expire. I hereby declare everything I wrote during my life to be given to the public domain after my death, not that I think anyone actually cares about a word of it.
8. If Susan’s dead, find a loving home for our cat. Use as much money as needed.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Much like Columbus Day, this day has very little to do with the actual historical St. Patrick. What we are actually celebrating are the good things that we Americans have gained thanks to Irish immigrants and (if we’re lucky) our Irish ancestors: an appreciation of good food, good friends, and good beer. These are things worth celebrating. If you want to go deeper with it, and celebrate more complex aspects of Irish culture and what we’ve gained from it, that’s great, too.

If you use this as an excuse to complain about St. Patrick, the Catholic Church, or cultural stereotypes, you are missing the point.

Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain
— Friedrich Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) (1801), Act III, sc. vi

I have tried to defend the virtues of the South against those who attack from without, and those who seek to defile it from within — bigots, generally speaking. I’ve defended the rebel flag, affirming that it is an unofficial symbol of the South, and not a symbol of oppression or slavery, nor a celebration of the worst of our history. Like the American flag, the rebel flag has been associated with terrible injustice in the past, but that is not what it means.

That has been my position.

I am surrendering that battle. Not because of people who still blame people in 2017 for atrocities committed 150 years ago, but because of the people who seem intent on living up to the very worst stereotypes laid at the feet of the South. People who revel in ignorance, bigotry, and malice, all while waving the goddamned rebel flag.

Once upon a time, the swastika was considered a sacred and auspicious symbol. The Nazis, and the horrible people who continue to admire them, have ruined that, at least insofar as Western civilization is concerned. If the stigma currently associated with the swastika is ever washed away, it will be be many generations from now. Lifetimes.

Against my best efforts, I have come to the conclusion that the rebel flag has become so tainted that it will not be redeemable in my lifetime. Not tainted by tragic events 150 years ago, but tainted by people here and now who wave it proudly while proclaiming themselves to be scum of the absolute worst sort.

Was I wrong all along? Foolish? Maybe so. Maybe so.

Happy Birthday to William S. Burroughs — American novelist, short story writer, satirist, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer.

I didn’t think that President Trump could possibly be the horrific disaster that folks were afraid he would be. That he’d be himself — a vulgar, self-serving narcissist — was obvious, but he could not possibly be as bad as the pearl-clutchers and hand-wringers were afraid he’d be.

I owe an apology to the pearl clutchers and hand wringers. I am sorry: you were right.

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