Nonessential Thoughts – Spectre Collie

The Love We (Choose To) Give

A nice way of thinking about failed relationships, courtesy of Companion and Bloom (spoilers for both)

One of the reasons Bloom worked so well for me is that I was already terrified before I even opened the book. I had no idea what to expect, but I was sure that it was going to turn viscerally gruesome. And as it turns out, the adrenaline-rush I’m in danger! feeling of a horror story is all but indistinguishable from the adrenaline-rush I’m in danger! feeling of falling hard for someone.

The only other thing I’ve read by Delilah Dawson was a Star Wars novel based on a theme park expansion, and it had passages with a character flashing back to torture scenes.¹ It was nothing beyond the pale, or anything, but it did surprise me to see the shift in tone. I was worried how far things would go when the author wasn’t bound by the constraints of licensed material.

So I figured that it was worth the risk of spoiling Bloom for myself by doing a quick Google search on the overall vibe of the book. I didn’t find anything particularly revealing, but I did find people on Reddit doing what people on Reddit do best: having absolutely dogshit takes on fictional characters.² There were tons of variations on the sentiment that “Ro had it coming” or “I wouldn’t have ignored all the red flags” or “It was implausible how long she ignored the obvious.”

I guess I feel bad for people who’ve never had an intense crush, or otherwise they’d know that falling in love makes you stupid. Blissfully, deliriously stupid. My take on Bloom was that that was a key part of the suspense: readers spend the bulk of the book yelling “don’t go into that dark basement!” figuratively, until we’re yelling “don’t go into that dark basement!” literally, while the protagonist is spending the entire time coming up with somewhat-reasonable justifications for everything.

One thing I particularly liked about the ending of Bloom, though, was that Dawson resisted any attempts to throw in an unnecessary But I still love her! complication. Once the protagonist realizes the situation she’s in, the infatuation is immediately broken. She runs off a checklist of all the red flags she either didn’t see or deliberately ignored, and then instead of beating herself up over it, she simply sets to work trying to get out of the situation. It was a smart way to handle a character who becomes instantly aware of exactly the type of story she’s in.

(I was especially happy to see it after reading Dawson say that one of her primary inspirations was Hannibal, because I’m still bitter about the absolute character assassination Thomas Harris did to Clarice Starling in that book).

While I was still thinking of Bloom, I happened to see a video about the movie Companion (which is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year). The hosts liked it as much as I do, but they had an interpretation that I completely disagree with when it comes to one of the main plot points. They said that the relationship between Patrick and Eli was different from the one between Iris and Josh, because Eli really loved Patrick.

The reason I disagree so strongly is because it goes against what I think is the most interesting idea in Companion: that we own the love we feel for other people, and the love we choose to give them. No matter what happens afterwards, that feeling is still ours. Regardless of whether they felt the same way.

Two of the main things I took away from Companion: 1) All the human characters are garbage, and 2) It doesn’t matter that the moments when the robots fell in love with their partners were chosen arbitrarily from a pre-generated list of cute meetings. They’re still real, because they’re real to them. Patrick was able to overwrite his programming because he still had such a vivid memory of first falling in love with Eli. And Iris says repeatedly in voice-over that the two moments of clarity in her life were meeting Josh and killing him. Even with everything she’s learned, that first memory was special to her.

It’s such a great idea for a movie that deals with ideas about autonomy, control, and self-realization. That’s a big part of why I think the scene where Josh has Iris tied up and is explaining the situation is so important: he’s insisting on exerting control one last time, to say that this is all that their “relationship” ever was, and that it was never real.

In context, it feels like exposition. But later, after we’ve learned more about the extent of Iris’s self-awareness, and the extent of a semi-sci-fi story using love robots as a metaphor, it’s easier to recognize it as the way that controlling people and narcissists prefer to end relationships (assuming they’re not cowardly enough to just leave the other person ghosted). To redirect all of the responsibility and blame on the other person, rewind time, and insist that nothing that they believed in was ever true.

Iris’s autonomy and Patrick’s autonomy both involve taking back that first memory, and realizing that nothing that happened afterwards can erase how they felt in that moment.

It’s worth calling out because it’s an idea that I hardly ever see emphasized in fiction, much less in real life. And it’s not just limited to romantic relationships, but friendships, working relationships, even the more mundane choices we make. We can get fixated on the idea that we can control what happens to us by learning from our mistakes and being wary of repeating them. But I think we have more control over our own lives when we give up that feeling of certainty and (false) security. When we accept that we can’t control everything that happens to us, but we absolutely can control how we respond to it, and how we think about it afterwards.

Speaking for myself, it’s just nice to finally be able to look back at choices I’ve made with peace instead of regret. To think about crushes I’ve had that were unreturned, friendships that eventually went sour, trust in people that turned out to be undeserved, and instead of feeling embarrassed about getting myself into those situations, to be happy that I had the courage to put myself out there.

Edit: In case the preamble didn’t make it clear, this was prompted solely by a movie I watched and a book I read, not by any real-life current events! Everything’s good!

1
That were, apparently, referencing scenes from her earlier novel Phasma.
2
If you don’t use Reddit, reviews on Goodreads are a good substitute for the worst possible takes.

The Future: Beef

I finally watched Phantom of the Paradise, and it prompted me to re-evaluate my snobbery and how I think of movies

There is exactly one moment in Phantom of the Paradise that works for me, without any kind of reservation or qualification. It’s the press conference where our villain Swan introduces the world to his new performer. “Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the future: Beef.” The camera pans over to a coffin, which is opened to reveal a curly-haired glam rocker in makeup, who looks to the camera and snarls.

Paul Williams plays it completely straight-faced — as does the movie itself — and even though the previous scene went through a line-up of possible replacements for the nostalgia band that the new act was replacing, the revelation of Beef still came as a surprise to me. It’s a weird, genuinely funny moment that still works over 50 years later.

My enchantment with Beef didn’t last long, since the very next scene shows him to be a stereotype of a queer man that honestly feels too lazy to be offensive. I was going to include a YouTube clip I’d found of Beef’s introduction, but I hadn’t noticed that the description of the video itself has the f-slur. Is it just homophobic, or is it a queer fan of the movie “taking it back?” I don’t care!

I did find an interview with Gerrit Graham talking about the process of coming up with the character, where “process” meant Brian De Palma trying to find euphemisms for what he wanted without actually saying “gay”¹, and Graham doing the first thing he could think of, and then sticking with that for his entire performance.²

It felt gratifying to hear that from someone who was involved in the production — instead of someone writing about the movie long after it’d achieved whatever “cult classic” status it has now — because it fit in with the overall impression I had of the movie: ultimately, it doesn’t really warrant all the re-interpretation and analysis it’s gotten over the years, because it’s just hell of corny. It feels like a comedy made by people who don’t have a very sophisticated sense of humor, that happens to include queer characters without actually knowing any queer people.

Beef’s big musical number seemed to me to be what you get if a bunch of extremely straight people tried to make The Rocky Horror Picture Show.³ I’d initially thought it was derivative, but Paradise came out a year before Rocky Horror, but a year after the stage production that became the movie. So instead of going too far down that rabbit hole to figure out the specifics, I’m content to just conclude that they were two projects drawing from a lot of the same inspirations, made with very different mindsets.

The most obvious is that the musical in Paradise is on a set inspired by German expressionist movies, while Rocky Horror pointedly bases itself on more modern B-movies. Brian De Palma was a movie fan making movies filled with references to his favorite styles and directors, making a goofy slapstick comedy musical version of Faust. The glam rock elements were included not because of any higher-minded agenda, but simply because that was the flavor of the moment in 1974, just like Sha Na Na-style nostalgia bands had been previously.

Really, the whole idea of my trying to categorize everything into groups of Gross And Offensive, Fun But Dated Camp, or Genuinely Funny Absurdism is itself a post-Twitter phenomenon. That’s when I started trying to analyze whether I was enjoying stuff at the expense of other people, which most often takes the form of being offended on other people’s behalf.

1
Including “like Little Richard,” which is almost charming
2
Don’t get too attached to Beef; he doesn’t last long (spoiler?).
3
So basically, I guess: KISS.

Survivor: Nope Island

The magic of choosing an appropriate title

I was excited to see a poster and trailer for the upcoming reality series Got to Get Out on Hulu, hosted by a disappointingly shirt-wearing Simu Liu.

There’s a frustrating sense that reality TV is playing it too safe, so I’m glad someone had the stones to Go There and make a series about a bunch of white people competing to be the first to take over a younger black person’s body.

This will be a good sequel to the producers’ earlier cooking competition, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Relatable One

Assorted observations while in my microblogging exile

I’m a few weeks into my social media hiatus, and I have to say it’s been very nice. A month without Instagram is surprisingly calming, and I’ve only checked into Bluesky and Mastodon to confirm my auto-posting is working and then immediately signed off. I can totally see myself making this shift permanent.

The only downside to not having a Dumb Thoughts Collector always an app away is that I can’t share stupid observations like this one:

I still haven’t seen the first season of Andor, and I feel like I’m essentially at the point where I’m throwing a tantrum and refusing to watch it. Just because I keep reading people online say that this is what Star Wars should be, and that rubs me the wrong way. I don’t look to Star Wars for moral ambiguity or parables of real-world political issues or nuanced takes on complex topics; I like it pulpy and referential. To act as if there’s clearly a superior take on the source material, and the others are somehow inferior or more juvenile, seems to be unnecessarily arrogant. Especially considering that the source material is space wizards. Rogue One left me cold, and there’s nothing about the character of Cassian Andor that has me excited to watch.

Until this morning, when I opened YouTube and saw a thumbnail for the upcoming season. And it makes Andor infinitely more relatable to me to find out that he’s the kind of guy who thinks a lot about pizza.

Falling into Booktube

Rediscovering the intersection of art and commerce and my own overly-romanticized images of being an author

While I was looking all over for reviews of a new ebook reader, I was inadvertently training the algorithms to recognize that I’m totally super into books now. As a result, all of the theme park trip reports, video essays about Star Wars and the MCU, and video game reviews have fallen out of my recommendations, to be replaced with tons and tons of dispatches from Booktube.

A positive example is Good Books Lately, a YouTube channel and podcast hosted by a married couple chatting about what they’ve read and are looking forward to reading. They’ve also got a video giving attention to other people making book-centric videos. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would’ve hoped for, people talking about what interests them and giving recommendations for new stuff to read.

Like with everything else on the internet, there’s another side to “Booktube” and its darker, more-attention-deficient cousin “Booktok.” It blurs the divisions between earnest, low-budget projects from people wanting to share what they’re into; slick projects from influencers trying to sell books and book-adjacent projects; and slick projects trying to pass themselves off as earnest, low-budget projects. And as with so many things on the internet, it blurs the divisions to the point that I’m no longer sure the divisions are even relevant anymore.

But I seem to be more sensitive to crossing the streams of art and commerce when it comes to books than with other media. I don’t usually balk at theme park fans, video gamers, or amateur movie critics pulling in some cash by making unofficial-but-sanctioned advertising. Especially since it’s not always calculated, and it can happen even when you don’t mean it to.

This blog got a slightly higher than normal amount of attention¹ for that post about the Kobo ereader, just because my interests happened to intersect with something people were looking for. But it still hypocritically makes me uncomfortable to see a page full of thumbnails with people all reviewing, say, How to Solve Your Own Murder than it does with people reviewing a new episode of The Mandalorian or the Captain America movie.

I’ve been thinking about it since I re-read my post about How to Solve Your Own Murder and realized it sounds a lot more negative than it should. It’s a really good book! It takes a lot of talent to make something that even flows well and holds together structurally, much less something that’s engrossing enough to make an adult stay up way past his bedtime to finish. My issue was that it was jarring to see a book so fully committed to its protagonist being an aspiring mystery writer anxious about getting responses to her first submitted manuscript, and have it end with setting up the sequel(s) and giving thanks to literary agents and people who’d sold the film rights.

I already acknowledged that there’s a good amount of sexism and hypocrisy there. Not the least of which is the obvious fact that having a literary agent doesn’t mean that you’ve never been in the position of anxiously awaiting feedback on your early material. That’s how you got an agent and a book deal in the first place. All of this and more will be addressed in my upcoming book How to Unpack Your Own Prejudices.

The reason I found this particular instance jarring was because I’m holding onto an overly-romanticized image of authors and the process of getting a book published. It’s hard to shake the image of someone locking themselves in a room alone to pound out a manuscript, bravely letting it loose into the world, and then being rewarded for their brilliance. Even though it should be obvious that a book can’t sell itself any more than any other piece of media can. It’s not just naive to treat the commercial side of book publishing as if it were inexcusably gauche, it perpetuates the harmful idea that commercial success is a reflection of nothing but inherent quality.

But even so, I still think of it as the most direct and intimate form of media. It’s still a solitary author directly addressing a single reader. Even if they’re writing the most plot-driven of genre fiction or purely commercial franchise installment, even if they’re layering on unreliable narrators and unsympathetic protagonists, it’s unavoidable that they’re sharing at least a part of their true self with you.

And I think that’s why I irrationally make a stink-face when confronted with the idea of books meant to sell instead of books meant to communicate. And book recommendations that are chasing whatever is trending and popular, as opposed to reacting to books that you read because they were already trending and popular.

Another side effect of Booktube is it’s a reminder of just how vast the publishing industry is. Every time I get hyper-fixated on reading, I invariably overflow with the unearned confidence of the White American Man and start to think, I should write a novel! And when it’s just a solo reader and a solo writer in a room typing away at a keyboard, it feels attainable, like dipping my toe into a pond. When I see just how much stuff is already out there, from people who actually have something to say, it feels like stripping naked and blindly diving into Lake Michigan.

1
Although still laughably low if I were someone who cared about internet analytics.

Somehow, irony feels good in a place like this

My favorite thing about the much-parodied AMC ads

Achieving the coveted status of A*Lister — please, no need to bow, I’m really just a regular person like you are — means that I get to see Nicole Kidman’s pre-show ad a lot.

It’s become only semi-ironically “iconic,” with way too many obvious parodies, and an increasingly-less-amusing ritual in the theaters. Back when it was still fresh, I was at a screening of Glass Onion where a couple of guys gave the ad a standing ovation as soon as it started, and that was delightful. Now, at least here in Los Angeles, the ad still always gets a round of applause, which is still cute I guess?

Anyway, there is one part of the ad that is still consistently funny, every time. Kidman describes, “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights go dim, and we go somewhere we’ve never been before.”

And every time, it cuts to a shot of the gate opening in Jurassic World. A movie that is literally, explicitly, about people choosing to go back to a place where we’ve been before.

Last night before Mickey 17, they showed the ad again, and I was a little disappointed to discover that they’ve “fixed” this in the version of the ad that runs currently. When Kidman talks about going somewhere that we’ve never been before, it no longer shows Jurassic World.

Now it shows Pandora, the planet they go back to in Avatar: The Way of Water.

Like the Before Times

My month-long experiment with a social media-free life

For the month of March, I’m trying an experiment where I’ve deleted all of the social media apps from my phone, and I’m pledging to stay off of them for the duration. (I have auto-posting set up from my blog to Mastodon and Bluesky, so that I don’t completely disappear from consciousness).

That means staying away from any platform I don’t “own”and treating the internet like it was 2006. I deactivated my Facebook account a while ago. So that left me with having to swear off Instagram, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Unlike 2006, I no longer use Flickr, and I don’t have the Straight Dope Message Board as an outlet, so the recreation of my pre-Twitter internet footprint won’t be entirely accurate. But I’m hoping it will be healthier.

My Mastodon account isn’t owned by evil people (as far as I’m aware), and I’ve also curated my Bluesky Feed to the point that it’s about as benign as I can get it. But I’ve become increasingly convinced that “Stop doomscrolling” isn’t enough. I feel like the whole Twitter model is toxic. At least for me; your mileage may vary.

In my experience, any app that presents an infinite list of updated content is inherently built around the idea of engagement, not information/enlightenment/social interaction. Even if there’s not an algorithm pushing users in ways that benefit the platform instead of the users themselves, it’s still at its core taking away from our ability to be present.

Years ago, I could already tell that my brain had been rewired into the Twitter mindset, since I had been almost subconsciously re-formatting my idle thoughts to be suitable for that audience. And my most toxic relationship with social media has probably been with Instagram, if I’m being honest. It’s great that it’s encouraged me to take more photos to remember important moments. It’s not great that I’m often not present in those moments, because I’m already thinking of how I’m going to caption them to present them to other people.

I’ve noticed that even this blog has altered the way that I experience things. I started using the “One Thing I Like” format in an effort to get me to focus, to write shorter posts, and to acknowledge that art is complex and open to multiple interpretations. But now it’s backfired somewhat, since I go into a movie or TV show looking for the one thing I’m going to call out.

Even without any higher-minded goals of changing how I interact with art and entertainment, I’m simply hoping that the experiment gives me more free time. I often find myself complaining that I don’t have time for anything anymore, even while I’m well aware of losing 30 minutes to an hour here and there, just idly scrolling through feeds.

The other thing I’m trying to address is the feeling that my brain stopped working correctly at some point in the last two years, feeling as if the gears have gotten gunked up and slowly ground to a halt. It’s been difficult to concentrate on anything, and I’ve missed the self-imposed deadline on my Playdate game by over a year.

One of the things I’ve started doing to re-frame and re-focus my idle time is to get back on AMC’s “A-List” subscription program. I’ve tried it before and failed to get my money’s worth, but at this point, individual tickets have gotten so expensive that a single IMAX screening is the cost of a month’s subscription. It makes sense in the weird dream logic of late-stage capitalism, I guess?

In any case, the appeal of going to movies more often isn’t simply that it’s a reminder of the Before Times, when I felt more cultured. It’s also simply to force me out of the house and force me to focus on something other than my phone for at least an hour and a half.

The other big resolution is to focus on more constructive reading. Always have at least one book in progress, and any time I would’ve been scrolling through the apps, read a few chapters of a book instead. I’ve invested in a Kobo ereader in the hopes I can get more literate without giving any more money to Jeff Bezos.

It’s also a great opportunity to get back into RSS feeds. I haven’t been able to get comfortable with the new version of the Reeder app, but the previous is still available as “Reeder Classic,” and it’s excellent. More people are getting back to blogging on their own sites, and I’m pledging to try harder to be part of a community, promoting blogs I find interesting.

One more weird thing I’m trying: writing these blog posts longhand on the aforementioned iPad mini. The idea here is, again, to be more present — slowing down to think about what I’m writing, instead of letting my fingers type so fast that I’m well into a paragraph before realizing I’ve lost my train of thought. Plus it feels more like keeping a journal than writing articles for an audience. (Sometimes I read posts from several years ago and I have absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about, because I was either trying to be circumspect or I was actively avoiding spoilers, as if I had a huge audience).

That experiment is ongoing; my first couple of attempts with Apple Notes had all kinds of difficulty converting to text, and they also burned up half the iPad’s battery for some reason. This post is my first attempt using Goodnotes, so if it’s even more filled with gibberish than my usual, that’s my excuse.

If nothing else, it lets me enjoy the romantic image of a man writing thoughtfully into his cherished, time-worn notebook. Suck it, Atrus!

Overall, I think my problems with social media platforms stem from assuming that we were all observing the same social contract. Yes, they tend to be exploitative, and they have customers generating content that profits the
companies with little compensation for the customers themselves. But I always felt that that was built into the figurative contract that you sign onto when you start using these platforms. Acknowledge that they’re extracting time and attention and effort from you, but also acknowledge how you benefit from it. And the moment it ever gets to the point where you feel like the platform isn’t benefitting you any more, hit the bricks!

What’s happened to me is that I’ve let myself get so dependent on them as social and creative outlets (and, let’s be honest, easy ways to procrastinate) that by the time I noticed that the terms of the “contract” had changed, and I was no longer getting enough value from them to be worth the psychic damage, it was already too late.

So stay tuned for updates on my progress, likely in the form of a lot of barely-intelligible blog posts!

Things I Know to be True Right Now

Stray, unorganized thoughts while changing focus and priorities

It has been an absolutely beautiful day in my section of Los Angeles today. I went up to the roof for a while and enjoyed the sun and a very nice breeze, while appreciating the view around my house. Seeing mountains and palm trees all around is still such a novelty for me, and I hope I never get tired of it. There are two tall palm trees (which are perfectly framed by my office window) that have become a symbol of serenity for me.

I should’ve known after my experience with smoking, but giving up anything cold turkey just doesn’t work for me. So instead of being able to change my focus and priorities all at once, I should probably expect sporadic bursts of I Have A Take On Politics That I Must Share With The Internet.

I can’t know for sure, obviously, but I have a strong suspicion that many of the people I spent years aligning myself with online, who’d talk about equality and rejecting classism and capitalism, etc, are people who never talk to their Uber drivers.

That’s not purely a condemnation, by the way. I have a lot of scorn for hypocrites and snobs, but I also need to acknowledge that I’m out of touch with people. In the case of ride-sharing, even if I weren’t an introvert, I don’t think anybody doing their job should be obligated to make conversation if they don’t want to. And it’s inherently a deeply unfair situation, more than a taxi, because the company that doesn’t give them benefits still holds them accountable to driver ratings. You’re unlikely to get a candid conversation that will build bridges. But when I’ve been in a ride with a particularly gregarious driver, or an extroverted passenger, it’s been a reminder that I very rarely talk to people whose jobs and economic situations are different from my own.

Speaking of smoking: over the past few days, my brain keeps asking “What would it even matter?” if I had a cigarette. But I haven’t had one yet. And in the days since I last tried one and hated it, I haven’t been that interested in getting one. I’ve noticed I think of myself as a non-smoker now, too: whenever I do get the urge to have a cigarette, I think of it as a novelty, instead of going back to my default state of always having a pack on me. Plus the memory of my last one is still really gross. I have a ton of sympathy for people battling addictions.

While I was up on the roof today, I was reminded that I hardly ever go up there, and in fact have spent entire days without going outside. Worse, instead of being outside in the sun with a great view, I’m most often indoors on my phone looking at things that make me angry or sad, which I have no control over and no influence to do anything about. It drove home the fact that I’m not actually just being lazy and using social media or the news to procrastinate, as I’ve always assumed, but I’m actively choosing to look at it instead of doing something healthy.

I was reminded today that one of the best TV series of all time, The Good Place, ran from 2016 to 2020. It seems fitting for a series that was all about ethical behavior in a world that made ethics seem like an impossible luxury. The thing that I love most about the series was that it was so full of grace: never saccharine sentimentality, never compromising on its core values, but still understanding that there’s so much complexity in what makes a person good or bad.

Another thing I thought about while I was on my roof was how grateful I am to have that place to go to. It’s a luxury that I’ve been embarrassed to even talk about, since it often feels like I don’t deserve it. And if you spend too much time online, like I have, you’ll be constantly subjected to crucial ideas of societal injustice and inequity being used as a bludgeon, making a convincing case that you don’t deserve anything.

Today I reminded myself that although I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate, benefiting from the hard work of my parents, the incredible kindness of friends, and just plain good luck, that it’s not just luck and privilege. I’ve worked hard, made thoughtful choices, and set priorities. But the most important thing is the simplest: I’ve tried to be humble, kind, generous, and fair, always. And even when I haven’t succeeded, I’ve tried to be the kind of person that people want to work with. It’s always seemed like the bare minimum, but lately as I’ve been filled with despair at seeing arrogance, selfishness, and unkindness succeed, I’ve realized just how valuable humility and kindness can be.

On Second Thought, Maybe Not

An appreciation for a few months of hope, and a resolution to keep my focus smaller and healthier from now on

The internet doesn’t need to know the details, but my reaction to the election results last night and this morning were enough — and were physiological enough — to convince me that I haven’t been keeping it together as well as I’d thought. And I’d thought I’d been doing pretty bad at it.

So while it’d be better if I could share something meaningful about resistance and defiance and strength and resolve in the face of evil, that’s just not me, realistically. For about as long as I can remember, people have been yelling that it’s selfish and irresponsible not to be deeply concerned about politics, and I’ve believed them. Social media has amplified that, blurring the line of what constitutes genuine activism, and loading us all with more stress than I think any of us are equipped to handle. Maybe it is selfish and irresponsible, but I prefer to think that it’s simply being more conscious of the tremendous gap between awareness and influence. It accomplishes nothing for any of us to be filled with concern and anxiety over something that we have no control over.

I don’t feel naive, or regret the couple of months I let myself feel hopeful because of the Harris/Walz campaign. I’m grateful for it. It was a great feeling, after years of feeling my hope just dwindle and flicker, to let it flare up again, to say this is what I believe in, this is what I value. They did so much to fight cynicism. And I believe it worked, for me at least, because what I’m feeling isn’t rooted in blame, or second-guessing, or suspicion. I got the chance to declare what I believe in. And there’s no longer any need to give other voters the benefit of the doubt — they clearly chose what they believe in, and they said that the things I value don’t matter.

Unlike 2016, when people like me tried to find sages online who could explain exactly what went wrong, where the Democrats failed, and what we could all do better next time, I don’t feel any need to look at post mortems. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz connected with people, and they had so much support that they’d raised over a billion dollars. And it somehow still wasn’t enough. The message there isn’t to try harder; it’s that the current system simply isn’t working.

And I hope I can finally just come to terms with the fact that I don’t have an answer, and I don’t have to have an opinion. I’ve spent the last few months formulating and clarifying my opinions and putting my money behind the people I want to support, and keeping up to date on the news because it was encouraging again, and it’s been at the expense of everything else in my life, that’s actually important.

My life was so much better before Twitter existed. I haven’t actually used Twitter in several years, but its influence has lingered on, not just in other social media, but in the way my brain is wired now to have a take on everything. I used to make things. I used to spend my free time working on projects, and enjoying movies and television and games and books, and writing about them on here to think in more depth about how they worked. I’ve seen several people today saying that times of crisis and uncertainty are when it’s most important to make art — I agree, although I think that overstates the inherent importance of art works by quite a lot.

There is value in the work, but the greatest value is the part of your life you dedicate to creating it. Pouring yourself into the creation of something simply because it can’t possibly exist otherwise, the diametric opposite of creating “content” to fill the space between ad slots.

So if nothing else, I’m artfully excusing myself from politics indefinitely, apart from giving help to people who are threatened, and concentrating on smaller, more local topics that can actually benefit from my efforts. And I’m pledging to drastically change my relationship with social media. Focusing only on what I control, like this blog; or the parts that actually constitute community.

For most of today, it’s felt like my light was finally extinguished, after years of sputtering in naive hopefulness. I’m resolving to change how I think about it: drawing in and hunkering down to re-ignite it, to be more protective of it, to keep it from being blown out for good.

Half the Country

On the day before the election, I’m mentally back to where I was a couple of months ago

As much as I love Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg, I’ve been avoiding watching their sketches playing Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff on Saturday Night Live because I need pure, earnest enthusiasm to mentally handle this election season.

But I watched last weekend’s cold open with a guest appearance from Harris, and I was surprised. Surprised that it was actually funny, surprised at how much of the material they can gather for a sketch without having to make anything up¹, and surprised to be reminded of how easy it is to feel joyful and hopeful.

Even out of office, Trump has spent so many years doing psychic damage on all of us that it’s surprising when we’re not feeling beaten down and paranoid. It was unsettling to watch something and not be spinning through all of the reasons I should be rolling my eyes, and instead just see two quite wealthy and famous women having such a good time goofing off with each other that they could not stop smiling and giggling. Yes, “Keep Calmala and Carry Onala” is inexcusably silly, but yes, I will absolutely allow it and would even consider buying the T-shirt.

I’ve never seen anybody in Trump’s circle ever look genuinely happy. The closest they get is a kind of coked-up mania, or a self-satisfied sneer as they’re saying something particularly racist, misogynistic, or transphobic. Apart from that, they’re always dour and mean, even when they’re trying to be light and funny. They’re the personification of Melania’s horrible Christmas display. They’re not just joyless; they actually tried to make the case that being joyful was bad or shameful.

Early in Harris’s campaign, people said that she was running on “vibes.” Emphasizing being free and joyful. And the pundits all lost their shit at the idea, insisting that Americans really care about serious business like policy proposals.

If nothing else, we’ve seen that that’s demonstrably false. Because one of the two major parties in this election has brought jack shit to the table in terms of policy, and it’s still apparently a close race. Just complete incompetence, despite the media’s desperate attempts to help legitimize them, repeatedly excusing them for having no policies, or translating their nonsense into an absurdly generous interpretation of what they might have tried to almost be saying. They have nothing to promise except ethnic cleansing and higher prices for everything. The party of freedom and fiscal responsibility is running on the promise that if they win, it’s going to be a dictatorship that will mean hardship for most Americans.

It’s nothing new to point out that they’re just so spectacularly bad at everything², but at this point it’s completely bottomed out. They have nothing left. And all the people who are still desperately trying to make it all seem sane and normal have nothing left to defend them with besides “half the country.”

I’ve complained about it lots of times before, but it’s one of the most pernicious lies that people across the political and sanity spectrums insist on repeating, that “half the country supports Trump.” It’s still objectively false, since half the country doesn’t bother to vote. And of the half that does, only a relatively small percentage are actually the MAGA stereotypes that we keep seeing getting dunked on and/or exhaustively interviewed in the media. It would be more accurate to say that “a little less than a quarter of the country isn’t bothered enough by Trump to vote for a Democrat.”

The reason I think it’s a distinction worth pointing out: once Kamala Harris is in office, and Trump loses yet another presidential election and starts having to answer for his long list of criminal offenses, that’s only the start of fixing everything that’s broken. No doubt there will be some MAGA types trying to First Order their way back into relevance, but I feel like they’ve blown it with this campaign, and they’ve become too much of a liability for all the billionaires hiding behind them.

I think the more pervasive enemy is apathy and cynicism. It’s obvious that there’s been a huge propaganda push telling Americans that there’s no real difference between the two parties, and that everybody’s corrupt. But propaganda can’t force people to believe something that they didn’t already suspect on some level.

So personally: I’m feeling optimistic that Kamala Harris is going to win the popular vote — as long as every eligible voter does their basic civic duty and votes! — and I’m confident that they’re prepared to jump through the inevitable hoops that the GOP will try to put them through in order to steal the election. That’s not based on any real info, just feels. It feels like the message is connecting with people, it feels like people are motivated to vote, it feels like Republicans have once again spectacularly underestimated how strongly women feel about their autonomy, and it feels like enough people still remember 2016-2020 and have no desire to see an even worse version of it.

But more than any of the positive signs, I’m optimistic just because my despair reserves are empty. It’s no exaggeration to say that people are exhausted. I’m tired of seeing those assholes constantly being shoved in my face and demanding my attention, cackling like Emperor Palpatine, begging me to hate them. I’m hoping that they’re all resigned to an America where they have no relevance apart from being on trial, being voted out of office or disbarred, and of course, appearing on Dancing With the Stars before vanishing completely.

My secret special wish is that they manage to take Elon Musk with them.

And I’m back to feeling like I did on that first White Dudes for Harris Zoom call, when I heard Governor Walz come on and lay out the facts. All the things that we’ve known for years, but the media acted like we weren’t allowed to say. That it’s 2024, and we care more about competence and confidence than outdated ideas about whether race or gender alone makes somebody “electable.” That nobody actually wants the bullshit the GOP is selling, stoking fears of immigrants and trans people that normal people don’t actually have. And that it’s just plain weird how we lived through the batshit insanity of the Trump administration, and all our institutions insisted on treating it like it was all normal.

I refuse to believe that “half the country” actually supports Trump’s bullshit, and I don’t believe they’ll even get the people who used to begrudgingly tolerate Trump’s bullshit. I don’t even believe that half the country supports Kamala Harris! But I don’t believe it’s naive, unrealistic, or overly optimistic at all to believe that half the country is tired of the dysfunction of the past ten years, and we’re all ready for a reboot.

1
Yes, the Republican candidate for the President of the United States did mimic fellating a microphone at one of his rallies.
2
And so smug about it, which is the part that always gets me. How anyone can support these clowns and be not just embarrassed, but arrogant, is beyond me.

Saved by the Bell Curve

A celebration of being comfortably in the boring majority

When I complained about the American news media’s gross journalistic malpractice, I also talked about my disappointment with the Harris-Walz campaign falling back into the worst Democratic election habits. But it would be foolish, and just plain unrealistic, to ignore everything that the campaign has done remarkably well. If nothing else, simply bringing back a sense of hope to all of us trained by the Democratic Party to be perpetually anxious and on the precipice of the downfall of democracy itself.

But the aspect of the Harris campaign that’s been impressing me the most lately is how they’re fighting multiple opponents on multiple fronts — at times, it’s seemed like a dogpile — without going too far on the defensive.

After all, the thing that first got me enthusiastic about the campaign wasn’t that they surpassing the GOP by every measure of success — the Biden Administration has been doing that for four years — but that they were beating the “Democratic elite.” Since Biden’s withdrawal, the campaign has been holding its own against the right, the left, and the media establishment, staying on message about doing what’s best for the middle class.

They’ve also done a remarkably good job of emphasizing that multiple contradictory things can be true at the same time. For instance:

Donald Trump is shockingly stupid, incompetent, childish, narcissistic, and completely unfit for office.
Donald Trump is a serious threat to the future of American democracy.

Those two things have always been true, but seeing them both in action at the same time creates a cognitive dissonance that people just aren’t good at processing. We’re used to our villains being devious masterminds, always thinking two steps ahead of their opponent, always having a contingency at the ready to thwart our heroes.

When you see this worthless shitstain staring at a solar eclipse, it’s difficult to reconcile with the fact that his self-serving incompetence resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. We can’t understand how somebody so incompetent could be given so much responsibility.

During this election season, the thing that keeps pushing me from anxiety to incandescent anger is being reminded of how undeserving everyone in the Trump campaign is. This has been the most brazenly incompetent, voter-hostile, off-message, poorly run campaign I’ve ever seen. Just a non-stop clown show. Even more than with Hilary Clinton’s campaign, it’s felt insulting to the Democratic candidate that she has to prove herself competent without fault, while the Republican candidate is praising Hitler and rambling about the magnificence of Arnold Palmer’s penis, and everybody just shrugs and says “oh well, that’s Trump for ya!” It’s made me long for the good, old-fashioned sinister evil of the past. Devious masterminds working from the shadows, instead of billionaire dipshits just blatantly buying a campaign without even trying to hide it.

So that’s another thing to like about the Harris campaign: she’s brought war criminal Dick Cheney back into the spotlight. I have to admit it’s been entertaining to see people throwing tantrums every time the DNC brought a Republican onto the stage, and especially as Harris has done multiple appearances being chummy with Liz Cheney under a banner reading “Country Over Party.” Not because there’ve been signs that Harris is going back on her progressive policy proposals, which would absolutely be a valid concern, but simply for acknowledging that moderate Republicans and never-Trumpers have more in common with Democrats than MAGA types do. And that the President of the United States has to represent everybody in America, regardless of political party.

It is most likely my pro-Harris bias talking, but I’m a lot more comfortable hearing her talk about working alongside Republicans than when Nancy Pelosi says it. Pelosi comes across as having genuine nostalgia for the Reagan and Clinton administrations, as if they were the golden age of reasonable American politics, instead of the breeding ground for everything that’s wrong with both parties today. With Harris, though, I get a sense of practicality and authenticity. Part of that is simply because she often says stuff I don’t agree with entirely; nothing she says sounds too good to be true, but just common sense good ideas that if enacted, would be more progressive than what we’ve seen in years.

She repeats her talking points relentlessly, to a fault even, but that doesn’t seem to me like a lack of sincerity but instead an insistence that this is the platform, we’re not changing it without a lot of deliberation, because it’s what we believe in, instead of just what people want to hear.

Again: we’ve been stalled for so long that ideas that used to be thought of as wildly progressive are now just plain common sense. Nobody in the Harris administration is going to be pushing hard for universal basic income, but then if the left got everything they wanted, they’d have nothing to complain about.

Which is their favorite thing to do. For several years now, I’ve just kind of gritted my teeth and kept mostly silent whenever the Extremely Online Left went off on yet another self-righteous tirade that had little to do with reality. I always assumed “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and we were both ultimately on the same side. But this year, it feels like I’m better able to see through the bluster and realize that all of the posturing and purity tests have never done much of anything to effect actual change. After seeing a lot of people spending years yelling “Kamala is a Cop,” it’s tough to take them seriously when they threaten to withhold their support for Harris unless she moves to the left.

The one enormous issue, of course, is the Biden administration’s poor handling of the attacks on Palestine, and the Harris campaign’s refusal to talk publicly to Palestinian Americans to reassure them that their concerns are being heard. Harris has stressed wanting to stop the genocide without abandoning the alliance with Israel, but it does seem tone deaf for a Democratic campaign to be giving more visibility to Republicans than to Palestinians.

Which is a stark reminder of the concerns of practicality vs ideology when it comes to a presidential election. I like to think that since the Obama campaign, most of us have matured a bit and can appreciate that you’re not voting for your cool new friend, but for someone who’s going to have to represent 300 million people with wildly differing opinions. It is inherently compromised, and it’s not idealism but fantasy to pretend otherwise. It’s entirely valid to consider Gaza the most important issue in this election, but that means doing everything possible to elect the only candidate who can possibly broker a solution, and it’s appalling to me to see people refusing to acknowledge that.

Considering how often people on social media point to the “Land doesn’t vote, people do” maps, you’d think that they understand how numbers are important to democracy. And you’d think they’d understand how a bell curve works. When you’re in a position of trying to get as many votes as possible, it makes more sense to aim for the big group in the middle instead of the small groups at either end who very loudly insist that they have all the answers.

The most perplexing question in American politics remains why such an ineptly run campaign, led by an idiotic and felonious election-loser, assisted by a few charisma-free trickles of lukewarm diarrhea whose only interesting feature is their absolute hatred of women, could be “so close.”

Obviously, it’s largely if not entirely driven by the outsize influence of money in American politics; the richest people in America clearly do not want Harris to win, and they’ll sacrifice the whole country to keep their hoards intact.

Some of it is simply desperation. They repeat over and over that “50% of America” supports Trump. Fox News’s Bret Beier just recently made that claim when trying to tear down Harris in an interview; he asked, “are you calling half of America stupid?” Traitor Ted Cruz has tried to use the same tactic to repeat his attempts to undermine the 2020 election, saying “a lot of Americans have doubts about the voting results.” It’s always used to defend the indefensible, when they reach the point where they can’t reasonably justify a lie, and can only claim that it’s what the people want.

I’ve already put in my vote¹, I’ve donated as much money as I can afford, and I’ve sent a few letters to try and encourage others to vote, so all I can do at this point is hope that the numbers work out. I no longer believe, as I did for most of my life, that progress happens as a result of the extremes pushing the complacent middle in one direction or the other, but by boring moderates recognizing that the goal is to make as many people as satisfied as possible.

I don’t consider that compromising values, I don’t consider it abandoning my own label of “progressive Democrat,” and I don’t even consider it putting an end to my own idealism. It’s a different kind of idealism, an insistence that reasonable adults can strongly disagree on important issues and still get along and still make progress. That seems more permanent, better able to break us out of the current cycle, where the United States of America has an existential crisis every four years.

I’m tired of having to pretend that the MAGA “movement” is a genuine political party, or that it deserves a voice in my government, instead of just acknowledging that it’s the racist, lunatic fringe that it’s always been. For that matter, I’m tired of feeling like I should be doing more to appease the people who are going to end up calling me a “shitlib” anyway. Go make yourselves useful and start a viable third party or something.

When everyone is trying to tell you that we’re just a coin flip away from disaster, it’s reassuring to be reminded that I’m comfortably in the majority — at least as long as you split the graph horizontally. Unlike a politician, I can comfortably say that MAGA supporters are stupid, and I’m part of the over 50% of Americans who just want reasonable, competent adults running the government.

1
For Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, in case you were wondering

Everybody Loves a Quitter

Of all the uncool things I used to do, smoking was the uncoolest

I realized I’ve been talking about this on Zuckerberg-owned social media, but not on my own website that I (technically) control:

I quit smoking on July 23, 2024. At the time I’m writing this, that’s about 13 weeks ago, or a little over three months.

Three months tends to be the point where I either fall off and start smoking again, or can quit completely. The longest I’ve gone is three years, until a serious illness in the family had me stress-smoking again around 2019.

None of the usual methods have ever worked for me. The only success I’ve had is from Chantix/Varenicline, which is like magic in terms of getting rid of my compulsion to smoke, but has some pretty lousy side effects. The nausea and stomach cramping are the most obvious ones, and the ones I remember most vividly. I’m not used to eating breakfast in the morning, and if you take it on an empty stomach, you’ll be wrecked.

More subtle, at least from my perspective, is it gives me low-grade depression, or possibly just makes my pre-existing depression worse. It killed any desire to do anything whatsoever, even stuff that I knew was urgent. That would cause building anxiety and then spirals of feeling worthless. I’ve been off the drug for well over a month now, and I’m only just now getting my motivation back.

Still worth it overall, but I think on the whole I’d recommend just not getting addicted to cigarettes in the first place.

One of the many gross things about smoking is the tobacco would stain my mustache a gross brown, forcing me to shave it off every time I quit. This time, the mustache survived with only a little bit of strategic trimming. I’m taking that as a sign it was meant to be.

A dramatic development: last week during Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios, I spent the entire night feeling like I’d been smoking. I’m assuming it was due to all the smoke effects and walking through other park guests’ vape clouds. Whatever the cause, it triggered a weird compulsion like a days-long knot in my chest. I had to have a cigarette.

After hours of talking myself out of it, I finally broke down and bought a pack at a gas station. I went out to the sidewalk and smoked exactly one from the pack, which made me violently nauseated. Nothing pleasurable about it in the slightest. I threw the rest of the pack away, and I haven’t missed it. Have I survived one last temptation, proving that I’m done for good? Or am I cursed to keep doing that every few months until I completely fall off the wagon again? It’s too early to tell, but at least for now I’m not concerned.

On top of all the obvious problems with smoking, there’s a whole host of less important things that make life so much better without it. Going on long flights was a nightmare — getting anxious on the flight itself, and having to go in and out of security just to find a smoking area. Long road trips, days at a theme park or a beach, all of it so much better without the constant distraction. And if you’re addicted like I was, it was a drag having it take up so much of your mental space. Waking up in the morning and deciding to sleep in is so, so much better than having to get up and get dressed immediately just so you can get outside for a smoke as soon as possible.

I’ll never be one of those people who can just have a cigarette on occasion and then forget about it. I know from experience that I either have to avoid it completely, or else I’ll be smoking half a pack a day. In the past, it’s often felt like I was denying myself something, so it’s really nice to realize that I’m so much better off without it, and I don’t miss it at all.