Monthly Archives: May 2025

I Must Be Dreaming

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No, I am not referring to some sudden and terrific news I have received but rather to a classic refrain from characters in film, television, and prose that has always struck me as a bit false.

Characters suddenly finds themselves in some implausible situation, transported to a second-world fantasy or such and all too often they will insist or mutter or ponder if they are dreaming, because this simply can’t be real.

Here’s my problem with that. Dreams, no matter how strange and defying of conventional reality, always feel real. During the dream you don’t question them or their breaks in any rational logic, you always just accept them.

Yeah, I was at work talking to a co-worker, turned the corner of the hallway and now I’m back in high school and stuttering in front of a cheerleader. The transition from one reality to the next happens and you don’t question it.

So, a character opening their eyes and finding themselves surrounded by elves and the like isn’t likely to go off asking if this is a dream because that’s not how dreams work. Not only is the question clearly so overused to have become a cliche but the incongruity of the character asking that question breaks for me suspension of disbelief.

Joss Whedon, apparent scum that he is, I think really nailed the logical and illogical absurdity of dreams in the final episode of season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As we follow the characters through their dreams, being stalked by a supernatural entity to give the story some stakes, the world around them shifts and changes in the span of an edit but the characters do not notice. They do not question that the college has suddenly become the high school, that the back of the ice cream truck leads without a break into a basement. That is how dreams work and as we dream them, they feel right, they feel true.

I would advise to excise any mention of a character thinking that the fantastic environment that they find themselves in questioning if it is all a dream.

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False, Fixed, and Unshakable

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The other week on YouTube I came across Doctor Elliot’s channel. The doctor is a psychiatrist practicing in the United Kingdom, and I stumbled on his channel following doctors reacting to The Pitt and its medical accuracy.

In one of the videos Dr. Elliot swung into precisely how delusion is defined by modern psychiatry, that it is a belief that is false, fixed, and unshakeable.

A little epiphany lit up in my head.

As someone who has stood against Trump since before he came down that escalator, (I have never liked the man or any of his public appearances and never watched the damned show that propelled him to an office he is wholly unfit for.) his supporters have diagnosed me with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Their accusation of ‘derangement’ costs me not one moment of sleep. I know that I have not elided any of my core principles to stay acceptable to the mob.

What did light up for me was thinking about those Republicans old enough to have been supporters and voters as far back as Regan. The ones who proclaimed loudly and with such apparently firm conviction that their political positions did not arise from grubby self-interest but rather solid and well thought out philosophies. The supporters who now have spun their deeply held convictions into support for a philandering, greedy, corrupt, man of such low character you would not trust him to watch your wallet while you visited the restroom.

Why?

Because they are deluded that the Democratic Party is always the worse option. It is their fixed, false, and unshakable belief that the Democrats must always be the wrong choice that traps them with Trump.

This is not true for every single person that voted for Trump in 2024. Many voted because they were unhappy with conditions as they experienced them in the two years leading up to the election. Some tried to argue with these people that it wasn’t really that bad, using charts and numbers and data to prove their point but they missed that the motivation wasn’t empirical but emotional. There’s a reason why the Trump coalition had a larger share of infrequent voters than Harris’.

Some voted for Trump because he was exactly what they wanted, a cruel racist man promising to make the lives of those for whom they shared contempt for tough and unpleasant.

Some voted for Trump because there were goodies to be had, taxes to be cut.

But there remains that segment deluded with the belief that the Democrats are always the wrong choice, firm in the fixed, false, and unshakable convictions which are in actuality bereft of any actual convictions.

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So, I Finally Started Severance

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Despite the second season having already completed its airing, (airing strikes me as grossly incorrect in the age of streaming) I only began watching the series Severance this past weekend.

Apple TV +

The series is a science-fiction program centered on the ‘severed’ workers at the mysterious Lumon corporation. ‘Severed’ is a mechanical/surgical procedure that causes memory formation and retrieval in those altered to be spatially controlled. In the case of these workers while on the ‘severed’ floor they have no memory of their lives outside of the work area and when off that designated floor they have no ability to recall anything that occurred during their working hours. Each worker lives two lives, one where work is their entire existence and one ‘normal’ outside of their shift on the ‘severed’ floor.

 

 

The show’s protagonist is Mark (Adam Scott) a man who in his regular life is dealing with crushing grief and at work who has recently been promoted to a supervisory position which now includes a new hire, Helly (Britt Lower). Things become complicated when a ‘severed’ worker, Petey, approaches Mike in his outer life with information that Lumon is hiding the truth of their work and that being ‘severed’ is actually reversable.

Severance is executive produced by Ben Stiller and his company Red Hour Productions, (Stiller is a noted Star Trek fan as his production company indicates.) and Stiller directed the first two episodes.

I have heard since the series’ release of season one that this was an interesting and challenging show with surprising twists and reveals but it has been only in the last few days, I made time to start watching. Right now, I can’t say if I am completely sold on the series.

I have watched two episodes, and the world building is interesting, the concepts are fascinating, the acting is quite good, but the show hasn’t managed to set a hook that forces me to come back for the next episode. Comparing my reaction to Severance with another show I recently started watching, The Pitt, produces a striking contrast.

The Pitt is a medical drama with no genre conventions, normally the sort of series that would provoke little interest from me and it was only doctors praising the accuracy that caused me to watch the first episode, and I was utterly hooked. From the very first show I had favorite characters and those who I disliked, and I had to watch more. I burned through the entire series in about two weeks, skipping only one night when I was still so mad because my favorite character had been physically attacked.

Severance has produced no reaction like that. It is interesting, the world building with the people who live outside of the company have valid and interesting reaction to such technology, and there are mysteries to be uncovered, puzzles to be solved, but so far nothing that is emotionally compelling. The series is prompting curiosity but not much more. That is not to say I will stop watching; I will give it a few more episodes but unless something changes it could fall into a well of disinterest where I simply watch other things and fail to return not from dislike but simply not caring.

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The Pointless Hypocrisy Canard

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There is a tendency in the Anti-Trump resistance for some people to deploy the rather obvious charge of ‘hypocrisy’ when Trump, his administration, and his allies perform crude and obvious actions that they have deeply and loudly criticized among their political opponents.

The list is nearly endless and stretches back decades to the Clintons, through Obama and Biden. Money donated to the Clinton Foundation, was in reality monies going directly to them, proof of their ‘corruption,’ however billions washed through Trump’s various crypto schemes are unworthy of any thought. Still images of Obama nose in the air peering down at someone solid proof of the man’s narcissism, egotism, and arrogance. Trump’s display of nearly clinical malignant narcissism, merely proof of his opponents ‘derangement.’

The reason the charges of hypocrisy are pointless is that they miss a fundamental truth, every single attack is not launched in anything approximating ‘good faith.’ These people care not one iota for the truth of the matter but only for the effectiveness of their attacks. The point isn’t about what really happened but only to win the ‘news cycle’ and drive down their opponents’ support. The moment a particular tool or weapon ceases to be effective it is discarded.

It is a waste of time and resources to answer any of it with ‘hypocrisy.’ That merely invigorates the charges, often patently false, providing Trump and his allies with even more opportunities for attack.

Weakly bound voters I think are more likely to be swayed with attacks that simply go directly at the man and his administration’s criminal and authoritarian actions without reference to any hypocrisy. His solidly committed voters, motivated by racism, or self-interest and simply the delusion that a Democratic politician is always the wrong choice cannot be dislodged with this charge.

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64 Circles and I am Dizzy

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So, today is my birthday. The Earth has circled the sun some 64 times since I arrived and this morning I was gifted with a moderate migraine when I opened my eyes.

Luckily, I had already arranged to take today and tomorrow off from the day-job, but back on Friday, so nothing is expected of me.

The migraine subsided after lunch, and I even managed about 900 words on my 80s cinephile horror novel bring the total to just over 19,000. That’s anywhere from one quarter to one fifth done depending on how it shakes out. The story has seen two ‘on screen’ deaths, one off-screen and a good friend corrupted by a released evil. Yeah, in other words, a good time.

Writing a novel set in a time period I remember but also one that is a little fuzzy is interesting. I was just about to have a character comment on Ted Turner colorizing classics, evil, evil man, but a bit of quick research showed that did not really break big for another 4 years.

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That Elon Conspiracy Theory

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There are those who question why Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, put so much time and effort as a special employee of the government into the ludicrously conceived ‘DOGE.’ He was never, much less easily, going to find 2 trillion dollars in waste and fraud in a federal budget of about 6.8 trillion dollars. What he has cut is funding for things he did not approve of and that seemed to threaten him in some way. (See which Inspectors General were fired.) Tesla stock and sales for the current calendar year have severely fallen with some markets seeing declines in car sales for nearly 80 percent. the actions taken by Elon do not seem wise for someone wanting to hang on to their wealth.

One theory, backed with no real evidence, is that gaining access to so many sources of data from within the government was Musk’s real goal. Musk’s entry into the A.I. space with ‘Grok’ is a little behind his competitors and the theory suggests that such a vast trove of data would be an asset in Musk catching up.

Along those lines I have seen one curious data point.

Last year before Musk had access to the data, such as from the Library of Congress, I asked Grok to summarize the plot of my novel Vulcan’s Forge. I have done this with several A.I., some created lies, inventing plots while others responded with answers that they did not access to that information. None have ever actually provided a synopsis. Grok in 2024 invented a plot that had absolutely nothing to do with my novel.

This year, in the last few weeks, Grok now provides a short synopsis with not inaccuracies, getting plot, characters, and themes correctly.

Did Grok get my full manuscript from the library of congress?

I have no real evidence of that, but it certainly gained access to the text, which I never authorized.

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Why did John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ fail at the Box Office?

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June 25th, 1982, witnessed the release of The Thing a remake by horror icon John Carpenter of the classic Sci-Fi film The Thing from Another World, both inspired and adapted from the short story Who Goes There by famed writer and editor John W. Campbell Jr. Despite Carpenter’s successful track record of feature films such as Halloween, Escape from New York, and The Fog this movie crashed at the box office, making less than 20 million on a 15 million estimated budget, considering prints and advertising that a movie that lost money. Reportedly Carpenter for decades felt bitter about the movie terrible run even after the film became a classic beloved by millions and considered a masterpiece of modern horror.

1982 was far from a year of depressed box office receipts. Many films scored enormous financial successes that year including such genre fare as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Poltergeist, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial but along with The Thing another movie that is now considered extraordinary died at with audiences in 1982 Blade Runner.

Blade Runner, I believe, suffered from both studio interference and audience expectations causing its failure to find the success it would eventually discover once alternate edits became widely available, but The Thing is a different story. That film has not been re-tooled, edited, or significantly altered from its original theatrical release. The version hailed as a masterpiece is the same one I watched in 1982.

The film did not change, the culture around it did. The decade prior to The Thing’s release was one of deep cynicism and anti-heroes. The 1970s brought forth films about failure, systems crushing heroes and the futility of trying. Even when heroes won victory it often came at great costs or produced pyric wins. By 1982 this cultural mood had been swept away with ‘morning in America’ and a renewed sense of manifest destinty. Following that massive success of Star Wars and its first sequel The Empire Strikes Back the cultural zeitgeist was one that demanded happy endings, clearly defined heroes and villains, and unbounded optimism. The Thing stood not only in contrast but stark opposition to all of that. It’s heroes were deeply flawed the mood darkly cynical and the ending so ambiguous as to provide no sense of closure for any audience.

We can never know for sure, but I believe if The Thing had been released in 1976 it would have found an audience on that release but for 1982 it simply marched to a beat so different that few could actually hear it.

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We Hope George A. Romero was Wrong

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In March of 1972 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics launched a pair of space probes bound for the planet Venus. One of those probes suffered a failure of either an engine quitting too soon or not producing enough thrust. Either way was the probe failed to escape orbit about the Earth and has spent the last 53 years in an inclined and eccentric orbit that has very slowly degraded. Sometime tomorrow, May 10th, 2025, it will pass too deep in the Earth’s atmosphere, lose too much velocity, and return to its planet of origin with the very solidly built lander possibly surviving all the way down to impact.

What does this have to do with Pittsburgh filmmaker George A. Romero?

While Romero directed 17 feature films before his passing in 2017 and was involved in both film and television projects, he is best known for the creation of the modern cinematic zombie with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.

In Night the recently deceased are reanimated to attack and consume the living. The film, with a budget of about the same value as a single episode of the original series of Star Trek, focused on a disparate group of fractious survivors attempting to outlive a siege of the dead there are moments here and there where the larger world of the story is revealed. One of those moments provides a usual bad scientific ‘explanation’ for the plague of ghouls. (It’s worth noting that the word ‘zombie’ is not uttered in what many consider to be the birth of the modern zombie genre.) That explanation is that a Venus probe returning to Earth with a strange and unknown radiation has ‘activated’ the brains of the dead causing them to reanimate. Later movies in the series would ignore that origins of the monsters preferring no solid answers, but the original film remains with its foreboding prediction of death from returning probes that had been bound for Venus.

Of course, there is no danger of zombie and the end of the world from the old piece of communist hardware returning to Earth, but I find the coincidences amusing.

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Forty Years of Dungeons & Dragons and My Work In Progress

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After we graduated boot camp my friend, way back in 1979, introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and I have been playing and game mastering tabletop role playing games ever since.

As a game master I often had a fairly good but still vague idea of what course adventures would take as the players explored and completed them. The path could not be nailed down with precision as players are a tricky and chaotic lot with a tendency to divert the best laid plans into something wholly unexpected. Because of this one of the skills required to keep a game running is the ability to make crap up on the fly and keep it consistent with what has already transpired.

This skill is now in full force with my latest work-in-progress.

The vague concept of using old nitrate film that had been cursed, or such, has rattled around in my brain for some time, but earlier this year it became a little more solid. Executing it required some research into San Diego during the summer of 1984. That occupied time and with the passing weeks the motivation for the story began to ebb. In order to keep it from dying without being written I simply dove straight into the project.

As of yesterday, I am about 15 thousand words into the text and while I have that vague idea I am chasing and a little more solid conception of the act structure, much like so many games I have run over the decades, I am inventing it as I go along. Characters don’t really exist until I put them in a scene and then I have to make fast notes on the side so the details that came alive in the moment are there to be referenced when they return.

It’s all so haphazard and yet I can feel it working. I have little doubt that the novel will be completed and right now it’s also very exciting.

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Democracy’s Unresolvable Fault

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Throughout its long history humanity has tried many systems of government. Evolution molded us for hunterpgatherer bands that function on interpersonal relationship and knowledge. Agriculture and creative intelligence exploded our populations well beyond that scope and ever since we’ve grappled with creating systems that work efficiently but also with a freedom that at very least sates individuality to the point that people are satisfied enough to not burn it all to the ground.

History is replete with Kings, Emperors, God-Kings, Oligarchs, and religious domination. For the last several centuries the newest and boldest experiment has been democracy.

Amid the various forms and systems, the essence of democratic governance is the concept that in some method the populace, rarely the entire populace, is polled and their preference in party or person is elevated to government. The assumption being that a widely distributed method of selection will tend to marginalize extremism in favor of moderation in rule. There have been spectacular failures, NAZI Germany for example, where the populace selected quite poorly and that points to the flaw of democracy that looks to be uncorrectable.

Self-selection.

The men and women who put themselves forward to be chosen have self-selected. Only those who want to be in power are options for the populace to elect from. While the nobility of service is real and there have always been and always will be people for whom service is their goal they never have and never will be the only ones in that pool.

Power attracts those who want to abuse it for their own selfish needs or twisted ideologies. The pool from which the populace can select will always be tainted by the greedy, the corrupt, and the evil. As such the possibility that the greedy, corrupt, and the evil secure power for themselves is unavoidable.

I am not advocating abandoning democracy, it’s a flawed system that has far fewer flaws than the rest but it is not perfect and your franchise is a terrible power you must always use wisely.

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