Short Story – The Long Winter
I missed last week because I had some other deadlines. For that small number of folks who read my stories every week – sorry! I may miss the next two weeks as well because I’ll be on vacation. If I manage to write something, though, I’ll post it.
This week, I’m writing about a post-apocalyptic world. If you want to know what caused the apocalypse, I’m not going to tell you. Sometimes, I find placing a person in a terrible situation more interesting than the situation itself.
As always, please share, critique, enjoy, or ignore! And if you do read the story – thanks!
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/29
Oklahoma House Moves to Ban All Abortions
In another move meant to remind us how important control of the Supreme Court has become, Oklahoma appears poised to test exactly how far you can go in the control of women’s health decisions.
The state governor has not yet decided whether or not to sign this bill, which goes so far as to tell the state medical board which doctors they can certify.
Rather than targeting the mothers, this law rewards doctors who perform abortions with felony charges. Even if the abortion is required to save the life of the mother.
Bad things happen when you put doctors in handcuffs.
More and more, it becomes clear that lawmakers on one side of the issue are far more concerned about the next generation than the current one. Unless we are talking about global climate change. Or overpopulation. Or pollution.
Then the needs (or wants) of this generation are far more important.
Unless, of course, they need to go to the bathroom.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/22
An Open Letter from a Conservative Jerkwad to Strong Female Characters
This was posted back in March but I only found it this week. I’m sorry – I was slacking.
Basically, this is a crazy religious screed about why Rey is a terrible character because women are weaker than men (the Bible says so) and any time a woman kicks some ass (especially superior male ass), it’s lazy storytelling. It happens all the time. Except for nearly every fucking movie ever made.
Hey everyone! A man is here to save the day! How original!
He doesn’t just have a problem with Rey, mind you. He’s also got problems with Furiosa, Ripley, and pretty much every other female character who wasn’t in need of rescuing by a man.
When he is talking about the obvious physical differences between most men and most women, you could almost give him a pass. Then he says this:
It’s not just a matter of small bodies versus big bodies. Women are the weaker sex because they’re more timid and emotionally vulnerable and tender-hearted than men. God made them that way.
Oh, I get it. You suddenly got a degree in psychology by reading the Bible. Women are more timid? How can they be when they have to put up with bullshit like this every day?
I’m sick of the “God created women to be this way don’t blame me it’s in the Bible/Koran/whatever the fuck religious book I happen to read” argument. Talk about lazy storytelling.
Short Story – Bloodlines
This week’s story was pieced together from two different inspirations.
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I probably wasn’t going to write too many stories about vampires because I didn’t much care for them. That meant I immediately started working on a story about vampires. Like you do.
The other inspiration was the police procedural. I tried to create something of a stereotypical buddy cop duo with a twist. That’s not really original since just about every buddy cop duo on TV these days has a twist.
This one is longer than most and it plays out like a pilot to a TV series, I guess. Funny thing is, I could see this one being made. Maybe it’s already been made. That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read my stories (if you do). For me, it’s an important exercise. For you, it’s time out of your day you could spend doing something else.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/14
Racist Gun Shop Owner Vandalizes Car of Bernie Sanders Supporter
The dude sells bumper stickers that read “MFZ,” which stands for “Muslim Free Zone.” Clever fucker, ain’t he?
So he sees that he doesn’t like that some lady he doesn’t know supports a candidate he doesn’t like. The obvious solution would be to leave her alone. Because it’s not his car and therefore he shouldn’t be putting his bumper stickers anywhere but on – you know – his car.
Instead, he puts his stickers on her car and then brags about it on Facebook.
Now what he did is vandalism and that means he really ought to be arrested and at least fined. That may still happen.
Although it is unlikely there will be any riot gear involved in making the arrest.
The other thing that happened is the owner of the car found his post and told him he was an asshole. Fortunately, he knew a whole bunch of other assholes who leapt to his defense and trolled the shit out of her.
So it’s all a big happy ending, right?
He got to be an asshole. At the moment, he isn’t going to jail or paying a fine for fucking up her car. And all his asshole friends think he’s awesome.
I’m losing my faith in humanity.
Short Story – Acrophobia
This week’s short story is non-fiction. Well, mostly non-fiction. I actually write a fair number of non-fiction autobiographical stories but until now, everything I’ve been posting on my weekly blog has been fiction.
I did a live presentation of this story over the weekend. Rather, it was a version of this story. I’ve done a lot of tweaking since then.
As always, I hope you read, enjoy, comment, share, or go on about your day.
Shit that Pissed me off – 4/8
Asshole Gamers Lose Their Shit Over a Transgender NPC
So Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear came out with an expansion and it includes a transgender character. Which is cool.
No word on what bathrooms the character is allowed to use. I suppose it depends on the state…
Anyway, a bunch of dickweed gamers are apparently pissed because the writer of the game had the audacity to introduce her social opinions into a video game! They are dropping one star reviews in the gamer equivalent of carpet bombing. With Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
Of course there is a picture of Cheetos and Mountain Dew on the internet.
Amber Scott, who wrote the game, has this to say:
As I’ve said before (and I won’t say much more on this subject other than to get my perspective out there): I’m the writer and creator. I get to make decisions about who I write about and why. I don’t like writing about straight/white/cis people all the time. It’s not reflective of the real world, it sets up s/w/c as the “normal” baseline from which “other” characters must be added, and it’s boring.
So that seems pretty logical. Nobody should give a shit.
But apparently including a transgender character in a fictional world that has ogres and goblins is just to unrealistic for some gamers. The best solution, of course, is to shut up and complain about the gameplay.
How I’m going to Die Laughing
This weekend is the third annual Die Laughing marathon. As always, it serves two purposes. The first is to raise money for Fearless Comedy Productions. We have a really exciting slate of shows lined up for this year and we need public support to help them happen.
But the bigger purpose is just to do something crazy. Something Fearless. We are going to fill a weekend with comedy.
A lot of people will be doing a lot of stuff. And I’m no exception. Here is a list of the things I’ll be involved in during the weekend*:
7:00 – 7:30 PM Friday – Fearless Opener
I’m the host for this opening segment and I’m going to pack a lot into 30 minutes. My band, The Dregs, is going to sing the national anthem. Or not. Our goal is to help raise $500 in this first half hour so for every $50 raised, we will sing one less line of the national anthem. Because we figure people don’t actually want to hear it. If we can raise the full $500, we will re-write the anthem in honor of Die Laughing.
We will also be revealing our upcoming Fearless season. We have five shows scheduled in 2016 and we are sponsoring three artists at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. We’re going to tell you about all of those shows and members of our company are going to improvise scenes from each of them!
Short Story – Generations
This week, I found myself writing about time travel. I like time travel because it’s weird. You could spend the entire story just trying to deal with the paradoxes. I find it more interesting to ignore the paradoxes and just tell the story.
The idea for this one started with the first several paragraphs about alternate timelines. I wasn’t totally sure how everything worked. I just kind of allowed that to develop.
More than most of the stories I’ve written lately, this one feels a lot like the prologue to something a great deal longer. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday. But probably not…
As always, please comment with your thoughts, share, or ignore! Whatever works for you!
Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/1
Japanese Whalers Killed 200 Pregnant Whales
So the Japanese are still whaling in the name of “legitimate research.” They headed off for their yearly kill of Minke whales and, among the 333 whales they were permitted to kill, they managed to bag 200 pregnant females.
To be fair – when you are killing a whale, you can’t tell if it is a pregnant female. I’m sure if they had known that almost 2/3 of the whales they were killing were pregnant, they would have killed them anyway.
Is this whale pregnant? Who cares????
The excuse they give is that they are researching the breeding habits of whales or some other bullshit that basically comes down to “fuck you, rest of the world, we just want to kill whales.”
I don’t get it. I really don’t. All this bullshit to keep the members of four whaling vessels employed.
If they can’t find any other jobs for these guys, Trump could probably use some help building a wall. I don’t think he has any problems with the Japanese.
Oh. Um….never mind….
Grail Diary 