Category Archives: Life

Two Ads, Two Visions: Hillary vs. Bernie

crowd

I could write some stuff about the current state of the presidential race, and I no doubt will soon. But for now, I just want to show a couple of new ads from the two Democratic candidates. They should both like that since they, naturally, want as many people to see them as possible.

We’ll start with Hillary’s:

Well, all right then. Going negative, misrepresenting the scope of your opponent’s views and goals, and…attacking him for his impassioned attacks on Wall Street? That’s a good tack to take in post-Bush, post-economic-crash America.

Here’s Bernie’s:

Now this ad is really about Bernie’s single issue: us.

This is what the two campaigns want from us. Hillary wants us to not like Bernie, to avoid thinking we need to do all that much about Wall Street, and, well, to stop liking Bernie, pleeeease…

Bernie wants us to come together as a family, to look out for each other, and to together make this country what it’s supposed to be.

Right here we see the “pragmatic” approach of doing anything necessary (including trashing your opponent) to advance your personal career goals versus the “idealistic” approach of appealing to people’s better angels to bring us together to do the work to make an actual difference in the world.

I know which side I’m on.

A Special Place In Hell: Hillary Clinton vs. The Women Who Don’t Support Her

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Gloria Steinem looking for boys, 1996

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

Thus spake Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State to Bill Clinton, with Hillary Clinton laughing gleefully by her side. The “women who don’t help each other” she was talking about were the very, very many women supporting Senator Bernie Sanders for the presidency instead of Mrs. Clinton. Essentially, Albright’s (and presumably Hillary’s) message was that if a woman dares to not vote for Clinton, she can go to hell.

Meanwhile, Gloria Steinem made comments on behalf of Clinton in which she said that the main reason young women are supporting Bernie Sanders is to meet boys. How disappointing it is to hear that sort of condescending bullshit from one of the guiding lights of feminism. In a single breath, she denies the political agency of millions of women to make their own informed decisions, and infantilizes them as acting emotionally rather than rationally simply because they aren’t falling in line and showing the proper obeisance to her candidate.

After an online shitstorm of outrage over her comments, Steinem is backpedaling in a clumsy bit of damage control and trying to play it off as a joke. But this isn’t the first time she’s made such condescending (matronizing?) comments about women who don’t support Hillary. A while back, she implied that women weren’t supporting Clinton because when they looked at the Clintons, it subconsciously reminded them of issues they had in their own marriages and that made them uncomfortable.

So, to Gloria Steinem, if you’re a woman and you don’t support her friend Hillary, it absolutely must be because you’re either immature and horny (if you’re one of the women under 45 who support Bernie Sanders 2:1) or driven to neurotic distraction by your marital difficulties (presumably if you’re a woman old enough to be assumed immune to your glandular drives). It can’t possibly be because you’re intelligent and have looked at the candidates, their policies, and their comportment as leaders and come to your own rational conclusions.

It’s an odd form of empowerment that demands obeisance and subservience.

Mother Jones recently ran an article titled “That Time Bernie Sanders Said He Was a Bigger Feminist Than His Female Opponent,” referring to the 1986 gubernatorial election in which Sanders was running against the incumbent, Madeleine Kunin. The writer plays on the reflexive outrage of such male presumption, and Sanders lost that race, but ironically ten years later in a congressional race against another female candidate:

“…feminist writer Gloria Steinem traveled to Vermont to endorse Sanders, joking that she’d come to make the congressman ‘an honorary woman.’ Another speaker, a female state senator, emphasized Sanders’ feminist credentials. ‘As we know, to be a feminist a person does not have to be a woman,’ she said. ‘A feminist is a person who challenges the power structure of this country…Bernie Sanders is that kind of feminist.'”

That senator, her decisions no doubt driven by neurosis or puberty, is surely going to hell.

Recently, I saw a woman post this in a discussion on Facebook:

“Don’t let anybody – ANYBODY – tell you not to vote based on gender. We’ve elected presidents of this country for 250 years based on gender. The white men (and women with Stockholm Syndrome) telling you otherwise, are guilty of supporting yet another white man because, whether they are conscious of their internalized biases or not, they aren’t truly ready for a women in charge. It is clear as day that Hillary is vastly more qualified for the job. Period. Truth be told: there will never be the ‘right’ women for these people.”

Now, first thing, I’m not going to tell you not to vote based on gender, or whatever other criteria you choose. That’s your right, and frankly, all things being equal, I’d vote for the female candidate in a heartbeat because I do, genuinely, think having a woman president is a damned important milestone we need to hit, and soon. If I thought, based on their records and policy and what I’ve been able to gauge of their character, that Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were roughly equivalent, the gender factor would probably be the factor that swung me to vote for Hillary. But I don’t see them as equal at all, so I can’t commit to her just because she’s sort of okay in the usual corporate Democrat way, and also a woman.

And that’s me. You may be different, that’s fine, that’s the very nature of our sort-of-in-a-way democratic system. You decide based on what you want to decide on, I’ll do likewise, and we’ll argue about it and then settle it at the polls.

But read that quote up there again. This is, actually, from a professional writer,* a very smart woman, but a woman so blinded by her own viewpoint that she’s not even capable of granting respect to other women who decide to support the opposing candidate based on whatever criteria they decide. If you don’t support Hillary as a male voter, plainly that’s just sexism, of course, but if you’re a woman and don’t support her, it’s because you’re a victim of Stockholm Syndrome and “internalized biases” you’re not conscious of. If you aren’t willing to support the woman candidate JUST BECAUSE, then she is willing to deny you the very agency of your own thoughts and observations and decisions.

I find that fairly despicable.

Vote how you want. If gender is the only thing that matters to you, knock yourself out. But really, do you have to be such an asshole about it?

*( WHOOPS: I was wrong, she’s not a writer. She’s — get this — an actual Wall Street executive who used to be with Morgan Stanley. Consider the source…?)

Then there’s this, from the very smart and gifted Rebecca Traister in an article in Elle:
“[Hillary’s]…been tepid in her support of abortion rights; she has cozied up to Wall Street and big banks, drawing huge speaking fees and donations from the financial institutions that the next president should aggressively regulate. In the Senate, she deployed dismaying rhetoric against immigration rights, once describing herself as ‘adamantly against illegal immigrants,’ and it took her…way too long to support gay marriage.”
Yet the entire article is about how Traister, despite huge reservations about Hillary, will vote for Hillary anyway because Hillary is a woman.

I’m sympathetic. I look forward to seeing the first female POTUS, too, and as a white guy I’m forced to admit that such a milestone is by definition much more important to many women than it is to me. That doesn’t mean, however, that it is not important to me, nor that I am a misogynist for not supporting Clinton (an accusation I’ve suffered through already from devout Clinton supporters). What it means is that I’m aware of the big flaws in Clinton that the writer herself acknowledges, as well as others, and I’m able to rationally compare what she has to offer to what Bernie Sanders has to offer.

Again, if I were doing a “Plus-side/Minus-side” chart of the two candidates, I’d put “Is a woman” on the plus side for Hillary, and “Is a white guy” on the minus side for Bernie just because I do want our culture to hit that milestone. Unfortunately for Hillary, my chart wouldn’t stop there, though it seems to for many of her supporters.

“There will be sexism, veiled and direct, from the right and the left,” Traister writes. “Democratic women will feel screwed by their friends all over again, as I did in August when I saw a poll showing Clinton ahead of her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders by a mere 6 points with the party’s men and 44 points with its women: a 38-percentage-point gender gap that seemed to speak volumes about how much men on the left care about women’s leadership…”

I’d say that it speaks more to the fact of how much some women on the left care more about having a woman in office than they do about actual policy. Yet even with women, Clinton isn’t an overwhelming choice: her support among Democratic women, which was nearly universal when she started this campaign, has plummeted to ridiculous levels; twice as many women under 45 support Bernie Sanders as support her, and even a third of women her own age support him. So the strong majority of Democratic women clearly aren’t ignoring matters of candidate history and policy in the name of gender, and it’s a lot harder to accuse them of veiled misogyny. (Which is why they’re resorting to accusations of neurosis and immaturity.)

There’s a woman in my Facebook feed who I don’t know personally but whose work as a writer I have great respect for, and I see her post often about how great Hillary is, about how progressive she is, about how naive it is to think that Bernie (or anybody) can stand up to the wonderful Hillary Clinton. But, for me, everything she posts is tainted by the first comment on the matter I saw her post in which she showed anger at Sanders supporters and said something to the effect of “If these assholes keep us from getting a woman president and we just get another fucking white guy, I’m going to kick some asses.”

I support Bernie Sanders not just because he has been an unmatched progressive warrior for decades, not just because he is a man of unflinching integrity, not just because he stands solidly against the corrupt power of huge corporations and Wall Street rather than coddling them and taking their money, not just because he doesn’t coldly calculate every stance he takes based on polling and focus groups, not just because he’s not the safe choice of entrenched party power, and most definitely not at all because he’s a man. I support Bernie Sanders because I see in him an opportunity all-too-rare to actually make a huge difference in our government and our country. An opportunity for positive change on a New Deal scale.

Fortunately, more and more of my fellow voters, men and women, are seeing that in him too. Some may proclaim they’ll see us in hell…I see it more as we’re trying to get to America.

A Feminist’s Guide to Critiquing Hillary Clinton

An excellent piece, whichever side you’re on…

ACADEME BLOG

women-in-politics

BY KELLY WILZ

Fair warning:  This blog is not going to be angry.  It will not be written in all caps.  There will be no vulgarity.  And it probably won’t go viral.  I don’t care.

What I do care about is the fact I’ve read over 70+ articles in the past two weeks alone discussing the 2016 election and what I see is a total lack of nuance and a lot of critiques that overgeneralize or underplay the very real role gender plays when people talk about Clinton and/or any other women who dare to step into positions that for so long have only been held by men.

What I do care about is how on my Facebook feed and elsewhere, I see well meaning folks called out as sexist jerks for simply offering legitimate critiques of Clinton and what a Clinton presidency might look like.

I like nuance.  I…

View original post 2,613 more words

The Trouble With Quibbles: A Study in Political Intolerance (UPDATED)

banned

Well, the big name writer who loves Hillary Clinton and preaches a lot about how those on the left need not to “trash” each other’s candidates (and will stomp you if you criticize Hillary in his threads, though somehow her supporters who say nasty things about Bernie don’t seem to get stomped) has unfriended me on Facebook. Again. This is, I think, the fourth time he’s booted me in the past six months, and because I actually really like and respect him (feelings clearly not reciprocated), previously I’ve just sent him a fresh friends request each time, which he’s then ultimately accepted. Not going to bother this time; maybe I’m learning to take a hint.

Why did he boot me? Was it because of the article I posted citing the actual history of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationship with the Children’s Defense Fund and the Clintons’ horrible record in the war on poverty? Was it the essay by black writer/preacher/civil rights activist Shaun King defending Bernie Sanders’s exceptional record on black issues and civil rights? Was it because I posted a funny meme that satirized the two candidates’ position on the issue of “Jazz?”

I dunno.

I don’t think he’d tell people not to criticize (as opposed to insult) his candidate, because his self image is plainly that he is fair and open to dialogue. I also don’t think he’d say people shouldn’t joke around and satirize her, because his self image is that he is a defender of free expression who has a great sense of humor. But I think he’s hypervigilant and overly sensitive to things that he doesn’t want others seeing (particularly solid, critical facts about his candidate that may “trash” her shiny veneer even more than nasty insults about her), and he’s like a twitchy young gunslinger who’s too fast on the draw at any perceived slight.

I may wind up following him again, because I often enjoy his posts (when they’re not just screed after screed telling people not only how to behave on his wall but on theirs). And I’ll miss our virtual friendship because I do think highly of him and I’ve enjoyed our interactions. But I’m never going to censor my own damn speech just for his sake, and if he’s such a delicate hothouse flower that he can’t countenance our political disagreements, that’s too fucking bad.

I posted the above on Facebook, and naturally people started asking who I was talking about. I said I wasn’t going to name him because I wasn’t calling him out, I was just citing his behavior to make a point. But I did say folks could message me privately and guess, and I’d let them know if they got it right. I had a feeling that his imperious behavior would be immediately recognizable to anyone who regularly sees his posts.

Twelve people guessed. Eleven got it right.

One of the eleven shared with me a thread on his wall in which a woman calmly and politely critiques Hillary Clinton on policy and the writer snidely asks her if she’s a Republican shill or being paid by the GOP. So much for the elevated dialogue he’s allegedly promoting.

I’m still not looking to call him out or start a feud or anything, and he may have booted me for a different reason. And he has a right to control his friends list any way he likes. So if you mention him directly or badmouth him in a comment, I won’t let the comment post. None of this piddly stuff really matters, when you get down to it, and I just wish we could all treat each other at least a little bit better.

Oh, and SANDERS 2016!!!

UPDATE: I’ve been hearing from more Sanders supporters who claim they were booted from the writer’s friends list because they either defended Sanders on his wall or posted political stuff he disagreed with on their own. At the same time, he posts rants about how some people are obnoxiously complaining that he shouldn’t post whatever he wants to. So be careful what you say on this guy’s wall, or even your own, lest he transport the whole kit n kaboodle of you to their engine room. Er, I mean off his friends list.

 

How The Democrats Can Give Us A Republican President

trump

We hear a lot of nonsense spin about not voting for Bernie Sanders because he’s “not electable.”

When you point out that in pretty much all the polls, for months, Sanders has outperformed Clinton (often by a large margin) when matched up against any specific GOP candidate, the data is handwavingly dismissed because “Hillary has low numbers because she’s been under attack for decades, but Sanders is untested.”

Other than the fact that the entire corporate power structure of the Democratic party is trying to squash him, of course.

And never mind the fact that in the past year, as both candidates have shown the people who they are and what they stand for, Sanders’s favorability numbers have soared from the low 30s to nearly 90% while Clinton’s have plummeted from the mid-70s to 39%. It can literally be said that most voters, whether they support him or not, genuinely like Bernie Sanders. The same is not true of Hillary Clinton.

All the same, while the polls consistently show Sanders beating GOP candidates by a larger margin than her, they do (usually) also show Clinton beating them. So if things continue along this track, it appears that either of them is actually electable, though Bernie would be the more certain bet.

Part of Bernie’s strength is that he has enormous blocs of voters who are incredibly passionate about his candidacy. Within the Democratic party, he has a two-to-one edge over Hillary among all voters under 45. Let me say that again: ALL DEMOCRATS UNDER 45 prefer Bernie by a two-to-one margin. And anyone who tells you that young people won’t turn out to vote hasn’t been paying attention to the tens of thousands of people who show up to see Bernie speak, or who spontaneously marched in support of him in cities coast to coast recently. The young people will be there for Bernie. He doesn’t do as well among older, longtime Democrats, though he still has a lot of support; even a third of Baby Boomer women, Hillary’s core demographic, support Bernie.

And many polls don’t even count independent voters, most of whom support Bernie, or the surprising number of crossover Republican voters who can’t stand their own candidates but see in Bernie a man of integrity they can get behind.

So much for the “electability” nonsense.

We also often see folks saying “whoever you support in the primaries, just be sure to support the winner in the general election.” And that’s a reasonable and rational request. There’s not a man or woman who has stood on a Republican debate stage who is qualified for the presidency, and some of them (the frontrunners, naturally) are simply monstrous and would be total disasters for our country and the world. Most sapient people would prefer either Clinton or Sanders to any of the snarling buffoons of the GOP, so the principle of supporting whoever ultimately winds up opposing them is obvious. And most people will do exactly that.

Except…

Except, young voters are pretty notorious for their lack of participation, and while many of those now fired up about Bernie Sanders will remain engaged even if he loses the nomination, the unfortunate likelihood is that many of them won’t. There will be anger, yes, but I don’t think that’s what will lead them to stay away on election day. I think it will be the nihilistic feeling that their vote doesn’t count after all. Bernie will have given them hope that an establishment they see as hidebound and corrupt could be successfully challenged and changed, and that hope will have been crushed. To a demographic that is already tragically, even stupidly, disengaged, that loss of hope will prove enough to keep many from bothering to cast a vote for anybody.

I’m not supporting that attitude even a little bit. But I do recognize it as a political reality. Many more people will turn out to vote if Bernie Sanders is the nominee, and they will support the Democratic candidates in other races when they do. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she, and all the other Dems on the ballots, will lose those disillusioned young voters.

That, in itself, may not be enough to tilt the election to Trump or whichever other malignant pustule the Republicans nominate. Hopefully not. But let me tell you what almost certainly will:

If Bernie Sanders wins the nomination by popular vote but Hillary Clinton and the Democratic establishment steal it from him, and buck the will of the majority of voters, through process maneuvers.

As someone commented today on Facebook, “If there’s a cabal of Democratic Party insiders who will choose the candidate no matter who the Democratic voters want, then I am not a Democrat. If the majority of voters go with Clinton, then I’ll vote Clinton. If more of them want Sanders and the party chooses Clinton anyway then I will do everything I can to turn the Democratic Party into an irrelevant third party.”

Today’s the day of the Iowa caucus, and it’s being reported that the Clinton camp has been training their supporters to game the caucus results wherever possible to keep Martin O’Malley’s delegates from going to Bernie Sanders. The fact that this is possible is one of many terrible things about the caucusing system (and the primary system in general, and our electoral system at large), and the fact that Clinton is falling back on it shows just how desperate, and ruthless, she is. Though she can game the caucuses, the fact that she will is troubling, especially after months of obvious unethical favoritism shown her by the Democratic National Committee and its unfortunate head, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

At the same time, while Bernie endures an avalanche of attacks from the establishment media and pundits and Democratic party insiders, much of it disingenuous and a lot of it verging on character assassination (compare Chris Cuomo’s loaded questions to Sanders to the fanboy bootlicking he gave Clinton) Nancy Pelosi herself is making a point of saying that many of the great things Bernie Sanders wants to do for the American people will not happen, not because of Republican intransigence but because her Democrats won’t work with him to make needed change. That’s right: Nancy Fucking Pelosi, the absolute mascot of the Democratic corporate establishment, basically just threatened to stamp her feet and pull a Mitch McConnell if Democratic voters don’t choose the candidate that she wants them to.

How dare the voters think they have the right to decide who wins an election?

And then, ahead, we have the existential threat to democracy that is the superdelegates. Another of the bugs in our electoral system, the superdelegates are the very essence of the establishment looking out for the establishment:

A “superdelegate” or an “unpledged delegate” is a delegate to the Democratic National Convention or Republican National Convention that is seated automatically, based on their status as current (Republican and Democratic) or former (Democratic only) party leader or elected official. (From Wikipedia)

Superdelegates are unelected, they have significant power (especially in a close election like this one), and they are the political party’s way of saying “No, no, never mind, we’ve got this” to the voters.

For months, hundreds of superdelegates have been already pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton. Why wait to see what the people want? The establishment has chosen, after all.

So, what happens if Bernie Sanders wins the primaries according to the will of the Democratic voters, but then the party sics the superdelegates on him and manages to give the nomination to Hillary Clinton? I’ll tell you:

All those Bernie Sanders voters get really, really fucking pissed.

Then, you know, voters are human, and voters are emotional, and voters don’t always do the “reasonable” thing. I think, combined with the lower turnout among younger voters, the backlash among angry voters who actually won the vote for the nomination only to have it stolen from them could well sink what is otherwise a very good chance for the next president to be a Democrat.

Bernie’s supporters will almost all vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination fair and square. But if she, and her longtime cronies and pals, insist on stealing it?

Get ready for President The Donald, or something just as bad.

Courage Is Fire, And Bullying Is Smoke: Thoughts On Political Venom

Abuse
I support Bernie Sanders. In practical terms, for the moment, that means that I do not support Hillary Clinton. It means I’m going to tend to share information about Bernie as a way of helping get the word out about what he stands for. It also means I’m going to be vocal about the differences between him and Hillary, and I’m going to be critical of her in a way that I probably won’t be if she ultimately wins the nomination. The differences between Bernie and Hillary are important, especially when it comes to the choice of either coddling or challenging the corporatists and banksters who are ruining our country, but they are nothing compared to the vast schism between both of them and the parade of idiots campaigning for the GOP.
 
So, yes, I’m critical of Clinton, and I can be a tough critic of her policies and political behavior. But I never lower myself to insult, either of her or her supporters. You won’t find me calling her a bitch or impugning her because of choices in her personal life or mocking her appearance or dress. Nor will you find me making derogatory comments about those who want her as president. I respect Hillary Clinton and I respect her followers; though we disagree, we are ultimately on the same side. And eventually, however the primaries shake out, they and I will be voting for the same person in the general election.
 
So when I visit a friend’s Facebook page and see all sorts of derogatory comments about “Bernie-bots” and how stupid they are and how vile (and even misogynistic) their candidate is, all it does is make me not want to even bother talking to that friend. I already kicked one jackass off my friends list for getting riled up in a calm discussion about the candidates and accusing me of sexism (solely based on my choice of Sanders over Clinton), and after a couple of visits to his wall to check up on him, I’m glad he’s gone because his wall is full of venom and he’s an abusive prick who’s all too willing to resort to personal attacks to try to get a rhetorical advantage. Or perhaps just to be a bully.
 
On another friend’s wall, I see a shared post from yet another Hillary supporter, a long diatribe about Bernie Sanders’s history and positions that’s as nasty a piece of work as I’ve seen this election season. This is typical of the venomous spin in the post:
 
“[At university, Sanders] joined socialist organizations and dabbled in far-left communist politics, gaining national notoriety by petitioning the school to let students have sex in the dormitories. This was before birth control and abortion were legal, when there were still very serious repercussions for women if the condom broke, but that didn’t stop him from crusading against those silly rules that were an obstacle to his own satisfaction.”
 

So here we have a liberal harshly criticizing Bernie Sanders for fighting for people’s sexual freedom. Does the writer really think that legal adults at the time should have had their sexual activities interdicted by university administrators because condoms might break? Or is authoritarianism fine and dandy when it’s being fought against by the candidate you don’t like?

I’m sure there are Sanders supporters out there who are just as bad as these people. My point isn’t that Clinton supporters are abusive assholes, it’s that none of us should be. Not only does it lead to bad blood between individuals, I’m sure it turns at least some possible voters against your candidate enough that they won’t vote for that candidate no matter what happens.

Talk to me with respect and I’ll do the same to you.

(Of course, comport yourself like a bunch of racist, sexist, theocratic, clown car fascists and all bets are off. Just sayin’.)

News From The Darkness: A Personal Update As I Clamber Toward Daylight

Musing

Where have I been?

How am I doing?

What’s happening with the Doc Wilde books? Or any other writing I might be doing?

It’s time for a general update, and probably past time for a Doc Wilde update since Kickstarter supporters and other fans are patiently waiting for me to get the next book out.

First, if you would, read my post from back in February, “I’m Back. Ish.” It covers some important ground and remains pertinent, especially regarding the state of Doc Wilde, and whether the coming books will be illustrated or not. (And there will be coming books, it’s just going to take a bit longer.)

Now, since that post, which itself was part of an effort to drag myself back into the world and into health and productivity, things have improved somewhat, but I’ve also had a realization: I’m in convalescence. I’m making progress, but I’m doing so far more gradually than I’d like, and far more gradually than I tend to allow for. I’m fighting a depression monster that has had me pinned beneath its claws for many years, a monster which has beaten me and ruined my plans over and over and over again, a monster that has laughed at everything the psychiatric community has thrown at it from therapy to all sorts of drugs to electroshock therapy.

I have had to accept something about myself that batters what pride I still have: I have a disability. I look in the mirror and I don’t see someone who’s disabled, but I look at my life and I certainly do. And I fucking hate it, and I hate that I have to struggle, and I hate that it’s so goddamned hard, and I hate knowing how much I could accomplish if it weren’t a factor, but none of that actually makes any difference because it it what it is and I have to deal with it.

If I don’t, it will kill me. Continue reading →

THE PEBBLE: Worst Piece of Crap Watch I’ve Ever Had (Review)

pebble watch malfunction

My Pebble is dying.

As it dies, after less than three years of extremely limited use, I keep getting emails from Pebble excitedly offering me the chance to buy the new Pebble Time, their latest chronographic wonder.

Uh, no.

Back in early 2012, I was happy to support Pebble on Kickstarter. They seemed like cool folks with a cool product, and I got caught up in the excitement of their historically successful fundraising endeavor. It’s been years since I actually wore a watch, but thought that maybe the functionality of having a watch that smoothly interacts with the phone in my pocket would make doing so worthwhile. And I felt good supporting some dashing entrepreneurs trying to do something great.

It took nearly a year before the watch arrived, but that was fine. Delays happen, plans go awry. But finally it arrived, and it was pretty shiny in its package…

pebble

…but I was hit immediately with buyer’s remorse. It seemed like a decent enough device, if a bit 8-bit in its aesthetic, but I realized that I simply had little use for it. So I tried a few times to sell it to my friends on Facebook, without luck.

I resigned myself to having unwisely purchased the thing and being out the $115 it cost (Kickstarter price; the retail price on this blighted thing is $150), and hoped to find uses for it as time passed. Eventually I started wearing it to the pool so I’d know when it was time to get my pale-skinned self back into the shadows before broiling began. This was all I was doing with this watch, swimming with it in my apartment pool three or four times a week for twenty-to-thirty minutes each time. As the watch is allegedly waterproof down to 50 meters, this should have been fine.

But, very quickly, it started malfunctioning. Since I was in the water when I noticed this, I assumed it was because of the water. I emailed their support:

Hi,

I was one of your Kickstarter supporters and my watch is starting to act up. I very rarely wear it, but one of the times I do wear it is when I’m in the pool, to keep track of my time in the sun (I’m cursed with very fair skin). I’ve used it this way maybe fifteen times since I got it.

Today in the pool, I glanced at the screen and saw that it was going haywire. The screen would white out, and it would draw random lines and patchily return to its display. It’s still doing so, though I suspect as it dries out the problem will go away…but if the waterproofing has slipped I’m stuck with a watch that has lost core functionality.

Can you help?

Thank you,

Pebble never replied.

This year, with the watch well out of warranty, I’ve tried to continue using it at the pool and the problems have become nearly constant. Some days, it works the whole swim, but more often it works intermittently, and more and more it simply goes blank and works not at all. I’d say it actually works properly about a tenth of the time, based not just on my pool experiences but on observation throughout the day.

As I said, I’d assumed initially that the issue was water-based, but further testing shows it’s not. The Pebble malfunctions just as often when it’s completely dry. It malfunctions if I wear it for a short walk to get the mail. It malfunctions sitting on my desk, charging. Malfunctioning is apparently its favoritest thing.

I’ve looked up their troubleshooting suggestions and done them all, including a complete factory reset, and the problem persists. Now, even when it’s working (which never lasts more than a few minutes), the image is corrupted and missing pixels.

And searching online, I found quite a few others with similar issues. Just read the 1 and 2 star reviews on Amazon.

Additionally, when the Pebble was offered on Kickstarter, the manufacturers bragged that it would have a great e-paper screen, using the technology seen on Amazon’s Kindle and other e-readers. When it actually arrived, that great e-paper screen was nowhere to be seen; the malfunctioning, low-quality display is actually a very primitive-looking LCD screen.

So, no, I don’t think I’ll be buying that new Pebble watch, thank you. I’d be better off with a sundial.

The Crown of Creation in Action: Humanity’s Hilarious Persecution of the World

Art By Boris

This video, called “Insanlığın Dünyaya Zulmü” (“Humanity’s Persecution of the World”), amusingly and tragically sums up the history of mankind on Earth. I think it would have been slightly better if it ended without the aliens, but it’s pretty freaking great anyway.

I’m Not Your Dummy — And Neither Is Joss Whedon (Part 2 of 2) (UPDATED 10/2017)

Art by Cliff Chiang

[Read Part 1, “I’m Not Your Dummy — Why No One Should Have To Be “The Right Kind of Ally,” here.]

Joss Whedon is a feminist.

He claims the term as a central pillar of his identity. He exerts a great deal of his creative energy on crafting narratives which focus on complex, strong female characters, and behind the scenes he goes out of his way to create opportunities for female creatives. He is a persistent activist in feminist causes like Equality Now, and has been an outspoken supporter of feminist targets of misogynistic harassment like (the awesome) Anita Sarkeesian.

But Joss is not the “right kind of ally.”

Last week, after Avengers: Age of Ultron opened (the film from my dream in part 1), there was a vicious shitstorm of online invective against him because of his treatment of the Black Widow in the film. He also left Twitter, without saying why, and many assumed it was because of the abuse. Or, as one blogger derisively put it, “Feminist and female writers take issue with black widow depiction. A lot of them do. Joss gets saddy pants and leaves Twitter.”

That same blogger was full of scorn for Joss and admiration for “what these intelligent and brilliant women wrote about their concerns with avengers 2…” And what sort of intelligent, brilliant commentary did we see?

Continue reading →

I’m Not Your Dummy — Why No One Should Have To Be “The Right Kind of Ally” (Part 1 of 2)

So I woke up one morning way too fucking early, with a dream dying in my head…

I’m at a huge theater with my girlfriend and my son, waiting to see the first showing of the new Avengers movie, and a nasty racial brawl is about to break out over a stupid misunderstanding. Something annoying was said, someone replied with annoyance, and several others took that as deliberate insult. A spark of irritation falls toward a volatile pool of abiding resentment. Huge violence is about to happen.

I just want to watch the movie, but am also naturally concerned about the fact that we’re smack in the middle of a crowd about to run riot. So I foolishly interject, redirecting the ringleader’s anger my way, focusing the conflict down to me and him rather than everybody. He rushes me and I back away, drawing him from the group. I don’t fight him, I don’t submit to his violence, I try to placate him, to calm him, to help him see that I was just trying to get his attention and there’s no reason to fight. This being a dream, it works. We laugh awkwardly and return to our seats. Everybody gets to see the movie, nobody’s going to bleed or die.

And I awoke. It was still dark, and I’d gotten maybe four or five hours sleep, but I was wide awake. I found myself ruminating about a recent blog post I wrote, and about the reaction it got (and didn’t get). Only after I gave in to the inevitable and got up, while I steeped some hot tea, did I make the connection between that rumination and the dream which preceded it. Continue reading →

TESS FOWLER Rips Off Another Fan

Soul Eater

Artist Tess Fowler’s dishonesty and lack of integrity are no secret to those who follow my blog, or to those who were looking forward to the book she took a lot of my money to do art for and then did not deliver. And I’m not the only poor, unfortunate soul who has fallen victim to her; as I’ve reported before, I’ve heard from several others whom she’s ripped off. Those folks chose not to go public with their accounts, for which they have their reasons, but it’s unfortunate because it contributes to the vulnerability of others who may hire her and be likewise victimized.

But another of her marks has finally come forward, eager to share his story.

I don’t know Wayne Bertrand, Jr. He lives in Texas, and is apparently into tattoos and motorcycles. He is also an avid activist for child welfare, and a member of BACA, Bikers Against Child Abuse.

Wayne was a big fan of Tess Fowler’s art, which is why he commissioned her to do a special painting for him, for which he paid her $300. Months passed and no painting was forthcoming. When Wayne contacted her, she deflected his queries saying she was working on it.

Ultimately, Wayne complained to PayPal to try to get his money back, but a lot of time had passed, and Tess promised the service she would honor the deal and throw in a couple of extra pieces for Wayne’s trouble.

Then she blocked Wayne on social media and ignored all further attempts at communication.

That was over two years ago. Wayne has never received any artwork, nor any of his money back.

Toward the end of his message to me, Wayne summed Tess up as well as anyone ever could:

She is a crook. Sad thing is I like her artwork.

It’s a shame that someone with Tess’s gifts chooses to use them as bait to steal money from her fans.

UPDATE: Tess victimizes the creator of the comic Rat Queens and his wife. Read it here.

The Desire to Kill: Blood Fantasy, Guns, & the Song of the Week (4/20/2015)

monkey-with-a-gun

A while back, I was watching a discussion about gun control on Facebook. One commenter identified himself as a gun owner and said, “If anyone comes into my home without invitation they aren’t coming out alive.”

It was, of course, the typical overweening and simplistic power-fantasy posturing we see from so many gun owners. I was curious about the guy, so I glanced at his wall, where I saw him complain that both pro-gun and anti-gun folks couldn’t argue reasonably on the issue. And yet, all he brought to the discussion where I encountered him was his “I have a gun, I am powerful, I will kill the wabbit” comment.

I started to ask him if shooting a prowler non-fatally would be enough, doing just enough to stop them from their dread and fearful action but not actually taking their life. But I’ve been in such discussions, and the answer is always that if they’re on the gun guy’s turf, they’re dead. It’s not just a matter of using the gun as a practical tool in order to do what is necessary to protect yourself. It’s a matter of violent punishment: you’re on my turf, so you die.

And, you know, that’s a different sort of mindset than we want with gun owners, really. We allow police to carry guns, and we train them how to use them properly and responsibly (whether they actually do is, alas, another matter). Do we tell them, “If someone is involved in a crime, use your mighty boomstick and slay them?” No. We teach them to (hopefully) do the minimum violence necessary to solve the problem.

You don’t see that mindset in gun owners, or not very often. They harbor this violent power fantasy in which their gun is their talisman against evil and they are victorious (and unerringly accurate and effective) heroes in the dark and bloody moment. It’s not just that they might have to kill in certain circumstances, it’s that they want to. And that very critical difference ought to be enough to make us wonder if they, as a group, really have the maturity to wield these powerful weapons, or if their very stated desire to wield death is reason enough to question allowing them to have them.

Here’s a look at what letting them costs us.

And here’s the Song of the Week…

“Whenever Kindness Fails” (live) – Robert Earl Keen

Super Girls, Chocolate Men, and My Very Own Misogyny

Supergirl

[NOTE: I may be wading into perilous waters with this post, but I hope, whatever your feelings on these matters, you’ll read it all the way through and not just reflexively dismiss me as an unworthy ally. Your comments are welcome, preferably here rather than on Facebook or elsewhere.]

A few days ago, I saw an artist post a Supergirl drawing to his feed on Facebook. It was definitely cheesecake, so some folks would react to it like it was an assault on all that is holy, but it was just a simple pinup with an old-style sweet sexiness to it.

The first comment under the picture was from some guy who wrote, “More like SuperBITCH!!!”

I was taken aback. I’ve seen stupid. I’ve seen misogynistic. But what the fuck was in this asshole’s head when he wrote that? Did he think he was complimenting the artist’s work somehow? Did he think he was making a boisterous positive statement about the hot superhero in the drawing? Did he think what he was saying was edgy or cool and made him look good? What the fuck was he trying to communicate? Surely it wasn’t “I’m a pathetic shithead,” which was what I saw him saying.

I don’t know if the artist was annoyed, if he let the comment stand on his page, or if he might have even agreed with the comment (whatever weird message it held). But all of that was secondary to my confusion about what was in that guy’s head and the bleak disquiet I felt seeing him express it.

§

I posted the above on Facebook. Ironically, my very next post was apparently so misogynistic that it inspired another writer (whom I share real world friends with and have a good amount of respect for) to kick me off his friends list: Continue reading →

Writers Who Kill Kittens

Don't lets the mean writer killz me...

Don’t lets the mean writer killz me…

So, I’m reading a discussion about how we should or shouldn’t let a writer’s politics affect our enjoyment of their fiction, and I see this:

“I don’t give the yuck cut of a rat for any writer’s politics. Can they tell a story that I’m going to enjoy and read over and over? Then I’ll damn well read them despite their politics. The only reason I won’t read Pournelle isn’t political, he stapled a kitten to a door. Once you start torturing cats…we’re done.”

Holy shit. Jerry Pournelle stapled a kitten to a door? That’s a horrible thing to do. What an asshole.

Oh, someone clarifies that the poor kitten was actually just in a story. Whew.

Then, the original commenter digs in: “Anyone tortures a cat in their fiction and I won’t read them again. Yeah, it was in one of Pournelle’s novels. But for it to be in one of his novels, he had to think of it.”

Good grief. I just had this argument (again) with people who think that George RR Martin is a monstrous woman-hater because terrible things happen to his female characters in books in which terrible things happen to everybody. (Never mind the fact that the women in Martin’s books are strong and fierce and smart and competent and complex…)

People, fiction is fiction. It is not real life. Depiction of terrible things is not endorsement of terrible things. Depiction of terrible things is drama. It is the fuel of fiction. The first rule of good drama is to mistreat your characters. And maybe even the occasional kitten.

Hating on a writer for what happens in their story is stupid. It’s no better than hating an actor as a person because she played a terrible person in that movie you saw and therefore must be a terrible person.

This isn’t to say that awful people don’t sometimes lace their awfulness into their work, or that they shouldn’t be taken to task over it. Some writers are racists and sexists and nazis and maybe even kitten killers. I’m not gonna defend The Turner Diaries for its very clear agenda (though I will fiercely defend its author’s right to write it any damn way he wanted to).

And if an author states vile opinions outside of their fiction which resonate with themes in their fiction, they’re inviting criticism on those terms so they’re fair game. If you want to peek inside the brains of some truly awful folks, read the blogs written by the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” groups who’ve hijacked science fiction’s Hugo Awards this year. Writers like Theodore Beale aka “Vox Day”, Tom Kratman, and John C. Wright are writers you can comfortably read knowing that they’re the very worst sort of person. Here’s some reasoned debate I saw from Kratman, on Sad Puppy Brad Torgersen’s blog, when some guy mildly disagreed with him:

Kratman

He went on like this for a while, threatening to track the guy down and hurt him. So yeah, douchebag. Sling all the brickbats.

But, in general, assuming that a writer condones terrible things because those things happen in their stories is not just simple-minded, it’s anti-art. Have some goddamned perspective, for pity’s sake. Fight the good fight, not just any possible fight. Don’t like an author’s work? That’s fine, don’t read it. But leave the poor author alone.

No kittens were harmed in the writing of this post.

The Sharp Knife of a Short Life

Mom

My mother died.

I don’t remember her, not on any conscious level. But her absence has been a void in my world that I…

I can’t even begin to express.

But the love she gave me, in her short life, all she got to live, before I was even really aware…

Has kept me alive.

Has made me a man who truly loves, and who can accept love.

Has kept me alive.

Has nurtured hope, even when I can’t make myself stand.

Has kept me alive.

I don’t even have a photograph of her. But I feel her smile in me. Life with her would have been so much goddamned better.

But she has kept me alive.

Mom, this song of the week is for you….

The Band Perry – “If I Die Young”

I’m Back. Ish.

Tim, with hat

Hi.

Nice to see you. Yeah, I know, it’s been a while.

I’ve been largely offline for months, and so socially out-of-touch that calling me a shut-in would be sadly appropriate. In that time, I haven’t accomplished much to speak of, either; I was in almost full retreat from the world and I let most of the things I’d been juggling crash to the ground.

I stopped doing social media. I rarely answered the phone. I mostly left my cave only to get the mail (about once a week) and to go grocery shopping (every week or two). I even stopped reading my personal email for the most part, and as a result I now have over sixteen thousand unread messages in my inbox to dig through.

Basically, my motivation and energy collapsed into a black hole and I went with it. It was a surrender to fear and failure, but also a release I needed to keep breathing. At first, I thought that I’d get back to things tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that…but as time passed, I was more and more weighed down by my own indolence, and I came to see that this break from responsibility, and from the world, was very possibly necessary for my actual survival.

How did I get to this dark and dreary place?

I had some physical health problems. Nothing major, but enough to wear on me. I felt weak and, because of the depression, unable to care for myself as well as I need to.

People close to me had health problems, including someone who is now fighting cancer and relying on me for help as she undergoes treatment.

My beloved cat, Scamp, was killed by a coyote.

I ran into professional obstacles. My indie-published version of Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, beautifully illustrated by Gary Chaloner, wasn’t exactly selling like gangbusters in spite of great reviews and responses from people who read it. As I write this, the book has a 4.6 stars out of 5 rating on Amazon, and it has had rave reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and folks like Daniel Pinkwater and Zack Stentz (a screenwriter of Thor, X-Men: First Class, Fringe, and other notable productions). But it has only received 17 new reader reviews since its release in May 2013 (the rest were from its earlier edition from Putnam), and that’s not enough activity to help it rise in Amazon’s algorithms to be seen by more potential readers. I wanted very much to continue the series as planned, in fully illustrated volumes as nice as this one, but I was losing faith that the market would support that.

Also, as some of you know, Gary had to leave the series because of scheduling concerns, and when I hired artist Tess Fowler for the second book, she ripped me off. This was a blow to my budget but even more to my confidence. With that unfortunate trauma fresh in mind, I was faced not only with finding another artist but with the fear that this sort of thing could happen again. And, as noted above, I wasn’t even sure whether I should stick with the plans for illustration at all.

And all that was stressing me out like crazy.

So, I sank. I disappeared. I hid. I hibernated. As much as I could, I recovered.

My only real joy during this time came from my son, who is now away at college and thriving and who is an exemplary human being who makes me very proud, and my hot tropical sweetheart, Nydia, who is always there for me and ever understanding of my battle. (Happy Valentine’s Day, baby!)

Thank you, also, to those of you who may have messaged me, worried by my absence. I’m deeply touched by your concern and hope this post answers your questions. It’s times like this that you find out who your friends really are.

Now what?

Now…I drag myself back into the light and try to rebuild.

On the personal level, I’ll be tentatively reacquainting myself with the world at large. I’ll be back on social media. I’ll start digging through my email. I’ll keep fighting the ever-hungry darkness that is my depression, and I’ll try to start taking better care of myself again.

On the professional level, I’ll ease myself back into writing, and I’ll be putting a great deal of thought into how best to expend my energy and resources.

As for Doc Wilde…I remain committed to the character, and to his fans. I remain committed to the folks who supported us on Kickstarter, and to the promises I made to them. I’m sorry it’s taking so long, but I’ll make good. The ultimate state of these books will depend on how the market continues to receive them, and if I am able, I will deliver fully illustrated volumes to match the first book. If the market remains soft, I may be forced to settle for nice covers. Regardless, the books will come. (In the meantime, friendly word-of-mouth and honest reviews on Amazon and other sites could be very helpful, and would be very appreciated).

So, onwards and upwards. I’ll be around.

TESS FOWLER: I Let The Artist Have Her Say

As many visitors to my blog are aware, last year I had the misfortune of hiring artist Tess Fowler for art duties on my second Doc Wilde book. I paid her a thousand dollars and received nothing but a handful of rough character sketches, and I don’t even have the originals of those.

I detailed the disintegration of the deal and both my and Tess’s behavior in extreme detail, using our actual correspondence,  in this post.  It tells everything you need to know about our entire working relationship, and about Tess’s choices at the end.

As someone commented on the one followup post I wrote, there are two sides to every story. I agreed and stated, “Tess is completely welcome to share her side here.” Of course, she never took me up on the offer.

She did, however, post a lengthy diatribe on Facebook. I didn’t see it on her page because Tess has me blocked (and I have better things to do than monitor her behavior), but several of her friends sent me the information pretty much immediately. A couple even provided actual screenshots of the post and its resultant discussion.

I’m going to share those screenshots with you. This is the closest thing to Tess’s side of the story that she has provided, and I feel no compunction about showing it to you because it was posted publicly. I’ll offer commentary as we read it together.

1

First, everything I have ever posted on this matter is demonstrably true. There’s a reason I used our actual emails and was so thorough in my account; I wanted folks to have all the information they needed to come to their own conclusions about what happened. There are no emails I refuse to show publicly, and you may notice that she says there are but never shows them to anyone.

And yeah, based on my experiences, I’d definitely recommend nobody else hire her. I’m not running a smear campaign, but I damn sure can’t give her a good reference.

2

Bullshit. I stand by the post I linked to at the start of this one as a rebuttal of what she says here. I in no way abused Tess, and since my feeble attempts to contact her to ask that she resume work (attempts she completely ignored), I have made no other attempts to contact her. It’s easy for her to claim that I am “stalking” her, but I challenge her to prove that very libelous charge.

Further, since shutting me out as described in the original post, she has neither tried to discuss matters with me nor in any way offered in any way to continue the work. She blew me off entirely, kept my money, and I’ve had no contact with her of any sort since she did, not even these mythical emails she references yet again without producing them, except that the day I first saw these screenshots I emailed her, offering to get back to work whenever she was ready. She never replied.

I, however, was very public about the fact that I was willing to get back to work with her. She is a talented artist, I liked her take on my characters, and I was already out a thousand dollars so it was fully in my interest to try to get my money’s worth, even after the trauma I’d already suffered.

For the record, that offer no longer holds. I’ve accepted the loss of my money and the lessons learned and there’s no way in hell I’d work with her again.

3

Again, the emails she could produce, but doesn’t. Ever. Whereas I shared damn near every meaningful correspondence we ever had.

And again, bullshit that she ever offered to continue work after communications broke down.

And note here that I am “a madman.” What she means is that I suffer from depression, and she’s trying to use that against me. In a very libelous way.

4

I’d really like to see those emails. If called on it by someone, at most she could produce (and possibly misrepresent) emails I already quoted in my original post, because there has been nothing since. Again, I tried to sweet-talk her back to work after the communications breakdown, and then I’d have jumped on the chance to get back to work on the book because I had, after all, already paid her.

Now, the discussions began:

5

Again, portraying me as crazy because I’m depressed, and the continued insinuation that I’m stalking her via email and phone.

6

You know what? I do know exactly what I can get away with, because I’ve talked to a lawyer too. For something to be considered libel, it has certain criteria it needs to meet, chief among them the stated information has to be untrue. I’m not worried about her lawyers because I have no reason to be worried about her lawyers. And I’m pretty sure that the three different lawyers she spoke to all pretty much told her that.

7

I think that may be my favorite bit.

8

Ironically, the message I received from Tess blocking me and not responding to my emails or calls was very much “Sit down and shut up.”

9

Tess knew I suffered from depression the entirety of our working relationship. I’m very open about it, and about my battles with it. It’s even all over this blog.

And yes, Gary Chaloner, the original Doc Wilde artist, left the series (he didn’t think he could keep up with the workload), but he remains very much a part of the Wilde family, as well as a friend. Our working relationship was always professional, I was thrilled with the book we turned out together (Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom), and I have nothing but respect for him. We had delays and the book took longer to do than we’d planned, but Gary was never anything less than a trooper and I’d recommend him in a heartbeat to anyone who wants a talented, reliable artist. I invite anyone who thinks Gary left because of interpersonal dynamics to contact him directly and ask.

There was more discussion under Tess’s post, but the topics drifted away from me, so  there’s little point in sharing it. For the record, her post was made way back at the end of January, and there’s been no contact or any activity of any sort between Tess and me since. I intended to post this message ever since, but she’s no longer any sort of priority; the only reason I’m going ahead and posting now is because I want transparency for Doc Wilde supporters, so they know what happened and why the second book is delayed. This was also a way to let Tess tell her side of things.

I honestly wish things had gone differently, that Tess had actually been open to continuing the book. She’s a gifted draftswoman and I think the book we produced would have been beautiful.

Now, I wipe my hands of her.

UPDATE: Another of Tess’s victims has come forward and let me share his account. Read it here.

UPDATE: Tess victimizes the creator of the comic Rat Queens and his wife. Read it here.