Perri Prinz

Nothing Is Real

A special Christmas essay in response to all those on my Facebook page who are putting up memes of Santa punching people for saying "Happy Holidays." And also for those of the current generation complaining that the words previous generations use hurt.

The human mind is an interesting thing. It is a device far more complicated and useful than your computer. Yet, unlike with computers, one is never gifted with an instruction manual on how to use it. Perhaps at one time institutions of higher learning attempted to give such instruction, but obviously they don't bother anymore. So, what I'm about to say should be filled under mind instructions.

Objects may be solid, but otherwise nothing is real. Words only convey information. And all information is corrupted by spin every time it is relayed from one mind to another. Therefore, history never happened. Only myths and legends come through. Even science is subject to payola and personal spin. While politics would not be politics if there was any truth to it at all.

Understanding that nothing is real is essential in avoiding getting caught up in cults, political deceptions, skewed versions of history that upset you, and broad prejudices that might lead you to feel contemptuous towards large groups of people.

But if nothing is real, then there are no groups of people. There are no white people, no black people, no Americans, no Russians. There are only people, each of whom is an entire wonderous universe of perception onto themselves, into which anyone else would be lucky to even get a glimpse into.

If you chose to believe or disbelieve any information that is offered to you, that's all on you. It does not dictate the worth of others to your life. The worth of others to you is found in the interests you share, and the things you mutually decide to believe in. The things you don't agree on can just be ignored. You can just tune them out.

Yes, every human mind has that kind of power. The mind is like a radio, designed to receive, process and store information. And, just like a radio, you can tune it to focus on the information you want, while tuning out any nearby noise from information you don't want.

You put all information that you receive through your own filters. You compare and file it according to your own experiences and beliefs. You may be encountering that information in a classroom with 30 other students. But no 2 of the 30 will write it down in their minds in exactly the same way that you do.

Since no one else experiences the world exactly as you do, if words hurt, that's your fault. You have total control over your filters. So you can turn down the sensitivity to those words any time you want to. Indeed, the more you let offensive words swirl around you, the easier it becomes to tune them out. The more people use a word to hurt you, the more impervious you become to it.

You may note that what are sometimes called marginalized groups will often start to use a slur that was used against them as their own word, and use it ad nauseum. Thus the power of the slur to have hurtful impact is removed. It is then tuned out. They don't even hear it anymore.

If you choose to keep your sensitivity jacked up to max, don't go belittling or punching people because they have no way of seeing your filter settings. It is not normal to be totally jacked up like that, and no one expects to meet someone who can't take a common holiday greeting in the spirit in which it's offered. In all such cases you will be looked on as weird or uncouth for reacting to kindness with aggression.

Recognize that you are the master of your own mind. You are not weak or vulnerable to words. Nor do other people need you to protect them from words. What you need is to be able to function in a diverse society, because society will not be dominated by you, no matter how loud you scream. No one you know is the master of anyone else, no matter how hard they might try to be.

And yet, we all need each other, because no one can get through life alone. Friends are essential to life. And the more diversity there is in your collection of friends, the more interesting your future potential becomes. It is the ability to get along with different people that we need. Not for every person to be a carbon copy of ourselves, which would be useless in the extreme.

And to those of a religious nature who concern themselves with the concept of "Truth." Like all other words in this day and age, "Truth" has no meaning. It represents no solid reality. Truth does not represent a scientific fact. It is more like a religious belief. And beliefs do not form solid objects.

No truth is written in your mind exactly as in anyone else's mind. So, your truth has no consistency, and is therefore not real. It may be useful to you. It may be useful to others in writing their own truth. But it is not real. The light of your mind is making it up and holding it in your information center. And when your light goes out, your truth as only you knew it goes with it.

Even if you're someone like me who spends an obsessive amount of time trying to write my mind onto paper so that others can share it, no one who reads what I write will remember it as I wrote it. They will remember the filtered version they wrote down in their minds.

And that's as it should be. It is the most basic of human rights to copy and to change ideas. Stagnant ideas ensnare stagnant minds. Evolving ideas lead to human advances.

When one accepts that none of these things we express in human words are real, that words do not swarm in the air and congeal into solid realities, and that everyone we encounter is walking around in their own personalized dream just like us, getting along becomes easy. The need to force everyone to accept our personal dreams disappears. And all of humanity becomes beautiful for the diversity of its individual dreams.

That person you would smack in the face because you don't like the color of their skin, or the words they choose to use, or the candidate they voted for, there is so much more to that person than you will ever know, a whole universe of things you might share in common, maybe even come slightly close to seeing the same way.

How narrow minded to judge a massive human mind on one single aspect. Particularly an aspect that is not real. After all, you're not smacking them for what's in their mind. You're smacking them for what's in yours. You found a reason to justify hating them, when all they probably wanted from you was a chance to exchange ideas and seek common ground for potential friendship.

As a general rule, if you find yourself hating someone enough to hit them, you're probably the bigot in that situation. You're the one who has their mind settings all out of whack. You're the one who's not well-adjusted.

A well-adjusted person has allowed themselves to face enough of the world to adjust their mind settings to an unflappable state of chill in the face of all life's adversity. They know what information is important to be alert to, and what is just noise designed to make them vulnerable. Words can never hurt them. And violence is never an option unless one's life is threatened by something far more substantial than words.
Perri Prinz

The Bunny's Currant Thoughts On Politics

Much has gone on in the political soap opera in recent times, and a few years ago it was not uncommon for me to blog my 2 cents about the topic of the day. Why? Because I saw blogging as a means of contributing to a valid discussion of current events in hopes of influencing the world in a positive direction. But it gradually dawned on me that this was unrealistic thinking. One, nobody really cares what a bunny has to say, and 2, I have become increasingly aware that the discussion is not valid.

For a discussion to be valid all participants must hold some respect for the truth, because getting closer to the truth should be the point of any discussion. Ideas are valid to contribute, even if they're erroneous, because discussions are meant to determine which ideas are erroneous, and which hold some weight of truth. But lies are not valid to contribute to a discussion, because you already know there's no truth in them, and the only reason for throwing them in is to create road blocks that make people detour around the truth.

The Left seems to think the truth is racist or something, and have on occasion come right out and said as much. It's like trying to have a discussion with the worst narcissistic liar it would ever be your misfortune to meet. Why would you even bother? So the natural inclination would be to try to have a discussion with The Right. But The Right throws up flags too. For one thing, I have a long memory. I'm not forgetting the Bush years when the Neo-Cons were just as disingenuous as The Left is now.

People will tell you things have flipped. The Dems are no longer the party of racial segregation, and The Reps are no longer the party of war. So I should forget the past. (See what can be unburdened by what has been.) BS, I forget nothing. I'm in my 60's. I've seen the evil both parties are capable of, and all that baggage goes on my scales when I'm weighing the potential truth of anything they say.

However, I will admit that, when The Right lies, they treat you with enough respect to at least make their lies look credible. Indeed, at this point they've pretty much convinced the majority of the nation that they are fighting an enemy that will destroy the country in the next 4 years if we don't all get behind their boy. But is that the case? Or is that a very carefully orchestrated lie developed by both sides working in tandem towards a common goal? Indeed, do The Right and The Left really exist? Or is there just one class of ruling elites who decided that The Left would act so buffoonishly that that would insure no one would vote for them.

I mean, if you think about it, dangerous narcissists and self-interested organized criminals are not necessarily stupid. You don't expect them to be continuously torpedoing themselves so bad that even their most ardent supporters can't look away anymore. What method could there be to their madness? The only possible answer is that they mean to insure the election of their theoretical enemy.

So, if The Left is putting on a big show, does it not stand to reason that The Right is just as fake, and that both shows are working towards a singular goal that no one is talking about, and will eventually blind side us all out of the blue?

Now, this is where things get tricky. The Right says all this bad Woke stuff is going on that is targeting children in horrific ways. They say nasty criminal types are flooding in through the border. They say that The Left is pushing for Communism. And it's easy to believe them on this stuff because you think you've seen evidence of all of it. But have you really? Or has all the evidence you've seen been coming from a peculiar bunch of talking heads on YouTube who could fabricate a nation wide hoax as easy as The Left?

This is the danger of politics in a digital age. All these talking heads know each other and pretty much agree with each other on almost everything. So The Right has it's narrative just like The Left. And the narrative of The Right is just as terrifying as the narrative of The Left. The Left is terrified of Nazis. The Right is terrified of Communists. From a logical perspective this duality is disturbing. So, if folks on The Left being terrified out of their senses by non-existent Nazis is indication of a cult enforced mentality, is it not possible, even likely, that the person sitting on The Right being terrified of Communists is just the flip side of the same coin?

News and news commentators are not righteously charged guardians of the truth. In the modern age they are simply entertainers. They want to sell you something. And once they see that certain bate attracts you, they inundate you with it. But you have no way of knowing that any life altering footage they show you is real, strategically edited, blown way out of proportion, spun, or just outright made in Hollywood a la Wag The Dog. So, if you think you know anything about political issues that can be called truth without question, you're a gullible fool, like the majority of the population.

Thus, when it comes to politics, given that the ultimate truth that everyone needs to know is something that all parties are dedicated to obscuring, having a good faith political discussion with anyone working within the rhetoric of one cult or the other is an impossibility. And I do not see a point in having a discussion if it can not be had in good faith. I do not see a point in weighing the lies of one side against the lies of the other in hopeless search of truth.

Politics is a science of lies. It is like taking your search for truth into a used car salesman convention. I don't understand why it is taking the population so long to wake up to this fact. It's not like our culture hasn't acknowledged the comparison to used car salesmen a million times in the last hundred years or so. There's even a song called "No Matter Who You Vote For The Government Still Gets In."

I mean, is anyone ever given pause to wonder why a theoretically self-governing people even need a government? If you have a government, all this talk about democracy and freedom is just more meaningless political hype that sounds really good and gets you motivated to follow whoever's jiving you with it. But at the end of the day it's meaningless. You're still a slave paying rent (but let's be PC by calling it taxes) on property you theoretically own, while the pay you earn from your labor is stolen by a bunch of organized criminals with an army of thugs all too happy to break your legs if you don't like it. That's cold hard truth. Political rhetoric can spit shine it for you so you'll think it's necessary and continue to accept it, but the truth is the US government is a den of thieves who are robbing you blind every day of your life. And there is no good reason to expect one party or another is going to do a thing to change that. Why would they? Why would thieves put themselves in jail? Have you ever wondered about all these new laws that are so light on crime? It's because the criminals are running the country.

Figuring such things out is not rocket science. If you're free, that means you're in a certain state of being free. All you have to do is look at the attributes of being free, and if you don't have them, you're not free. And anyone promising to preserve your freedom is BSing you, because there is no freedom to preserve. There is no democracy, representative or otherwise, because your representatives aren't obligated to listen to you.

Granted, being totally free is probably not something anyone really wants. No one wants to not have a family to be responsible for. No one wants to not buy cars they can't afford by putting themselves in debt. No one wants to not buy into the hype that their country is something special that they owe loyalty to. No one wants to not sell their soul to a religion. And, to be brutally honest about the human condition, a lot of people like obligating themselves to a gang of thugs (or a union) they think are powerful enough to have their back in a bad situation, or to get a cut of whatever they steal. All these things are had at the cost of your freedom. Indeed, even owning stuff kills your freedom, because you're obligated to maintain a place to keep it. Humans are simply not geared for freedom. So it is a greatly over-valued word.

You know who has freedom? A deer in a forest has freedom. He's not obligated to anybody for anything. Not even his mate. And that is not a life any human wants to live. For humans the state of being free is completely unnatural. And yet, no politician or used car salesman would be without the word "Freedom" in their arsenal. There is just no better means of political manipulation than to convince people they're in danger of losing something they never had in the first place.

This manipulation of words, which was going on long before the whole PC language or Orwellian double speak thing got started, is something that infects every political discussion. It gets so bad that you don't know if two or three people you're trying to talk to have each taken on a different definition for various words. So you can say something that seems to you a pretty straight forward statement of fact, and all three people will be geared to hear something totally different. But in all cases you're likely to find any statement that gets anywhere near the truth will trigger them all to offence. Because all political conditioning is purposefully designed to keep you away from the truth.

Truth is the death of all politics. It's the death of all government. And the death of all religion. Therefore the word "Truth" is like the word "freedom." It's the thing that everyone claims to prize the highest, that is desired the least. So, how are you going to have a proper discussion that is genuinely focused on moving towards truth, when everyone you're talking to is avoiding truth like the plague, whether they realize it or not? When someone tells you "You can't handle the truth," they're not kidding. It's probably the most truthful thing that can be said in one of these ill-fated discussions.

This is one of the things I'm very disturbed by on The Right's side of the isle. In their effort to build steam against the cult behavior on The Left, they're tying themselves to the cult of Christianity. That's why I recently stopped following Candice Owen after being a fan for quite a while. She used to be someone you could buy as being in active pursuit of truth. But since joining the Christian cult, her definition of truth has morphed into the Christian definition of that word.

The Christian definition of truth assumes first that all their doctrine is true. Therefore, anything that supports the doctrine is defined as true. I know this very well because I was raised Christian. And I saw this all the time. I would write something that preached the doctrine, and everyone would say I had such a fine grasp of the truth. The trouble is, the minute you try to prove that there is actual truth in the doctrine, you find out that people have just been making it up as they go along for over 2000 years. What Christians call "The Truth" is something that has never had any stability or consistency. But anything that is actually true must be a constant.

So really, the current political battle is shaping up to be one cult verses another cult. Like the situation in Palestine where you have two opposing forces that have mutually sworn genocide on each other. There are no good guys in such situations. Yet, through political lies, half-truths, and unscrupulous manipulation of language, both sides of the isle hope to con you into supporting one genocide or the other. And this, for no other reason than to distract you from the fact that this conflict is being used to extract your wealth and launder it through foreign banks so it can eventually end up in the pockets of those who consider themselves your owners.

Yes, I follow the political situation on YouTube as closely as anyone. Yes, I have opinions based on the projected narratives. It's like a sport. I have my favorite teams and players. But at the end of the day I am always cognizant of the likelihood that this is all a fabricated show being put on for my benefit in order to get me to react in certain ways.

Consider this. The political talking heads I watch on YouTube speak constantly of how censored they are. How the folks who run YouTube don't like their opinions, and are working to see that the things I'm hearing are not said. How then am I hearing these things on a daily basis? How is it that my YouTube recommendation page is inundated almost exclusively with this stuff, in total indifference to the fact that my interests are widely varied, but centered mostly around cartoons, anthropomorphics and music. Politics is something I rarely if ever do a search for. My searches are mainly entertainment based. So I'm not seeing the stuff I want to see. I'm seeing the stuff YouTube wants me to see. Which basically puts the lie to all the talking heads on The Right.

It is blatantly obvious to me that YouTube wants me to vote for Donald Trump. The Democratic Party wants me to vote for Donald Trump. Joe freakin' Biden wants me to vote for Donald Trump. And when everyone on the field of dishonesty that is the political landscape is sparing no expense to get me to do one single thing, my inclination is to recognize that there is something very wrong with this picture, and the only conceivable winning move would be not to play.

So, even if I could have a legitimate political discussion with people who were not afraid to move towards actual truth, what truth do I actually know that I could contribute? Like most people, I don't know a thing about world affairs that hasn't been piped to me through a biased media or a disreputable social media. None of which amounts to me knowing anything for sure. The situation is so 1984 that it's cliché.

So all that is practical to do with politics is treat it like a sports event. Gather on your side of the stadium with your people to root for your team, discuss the latest playbook with your fellow fans, boo the folks on the other side, and enjoy the hell out of your bread and circuses.

Perri Prinz

When Levels Of Childishness Get So High They're Not Worth Engaging With

I try to be friends with everyone, even those with contrary opinions. And the only way to do this is to simply not participate in political type discussions, no matter how hard someone seems to be begging me to.

Being an old school intellectual type, every time someone throws a statement or meme at me that seems wrong on a number of levels, I naturally think, “This is an opportunity for a discussion,” and I start developing a 5-page essay outlining why I think this is wrong and what evidence I refer to to back up my opinion. But, in the modern age, most meme posters wouldn't know what to do with an essay if they tried. So they usually don't. They don't engage in a discussion. They just come back with, “You're wrong because I say you're wrong. I win.”

This leaves me the choice of engaging in a pointless shouting match, or just saying, “Can't argue with that,” and walking away. Which is what I usually do, because I actually like most of the people on my friends list who do this, for other reasons, of course. And I don't want to push them into unfriending me.

Actually, I've been actively involved in various fandoms since the 1980's, and one solid rule in all fandoms was that all politics, religions, races, nationalities, etc. where extraneous to the fandom. That stuff didn't matter. Finding someone to share the fandom with was rare enough that such things weren't worth the time of day. So you shared the fandom, and that other stuff rarely came up, even in passing.

There was this one Anime pen-pal back in the 90's who seemed to be really in love with Rush Limbaugh, and would write long letters about things he was saying and why I should get into him. But it all seemed like so much gobbledygook to me. I actually came away with the impression that Limbaugh was running some kind of brainwashing cult. But hey, if that's what he wanted for his religion, I wasn't going to talk it down. I was going to skim through that part of the letter to get to the comics he drew in each letter, which were what I really cared about. And his characters were pure fantasy that had nothing to do with his politics. But, even if they'd had something to do with his politics, that would just have made his comics allegorical, and I'm all about allegorical creativity, even if I don't particularly agree with the ideas being parodied.

Later, during my early years being active in Furry Fandom, Bush, Jr. was a topic you kind of couldn't get away from. He was basically a dumb ass that nobody liked. So he was a ripe target for Furry comedians like 2 Gryphon to make us laugh at. And we were still in that age where political comedy was funny, no matter which side of the isle you sat on.

It wasn't like there weren't both Liberals and Conservatives in Furry fandom. Most of the time we just didn't care. If you wanted to get us at all interested in your politics you still had to make it part of your art. I mean, if your characters were cute, they could be spouting the worst Scientology/Flat Earth BS imaginable, and we'd still love them.

But, as social media grew like a poisonous weed through every single one of the fandoms, you gradually began getting more and more of a type of fan that was like Moxine in Helluva Boss. “Me me me me me. Look at me me me me me.” And these people weren't necessarily the most creative people in the fandom. They didn't necessarily have characters to express their views in a neutral way. They just wanted to be the center of attention and be able to punish others for not agreeing with their crazy ideas.

Today such people dominate the landscape and have ruined everything that was good about fandom. Everything that pointed the way towards a totally pleasant and inclusive state of society.

Did they ruin social media, or was social media just a borked idea from the get-go? I lean towards the latter. I mean, I remember the first time I posted on a forum. I was like, “Can I really just write something on this page without getting anyone to ok it or anything? Just basically publish a thought to the world with no oversight at all?”

The theory was, if your thought was wrong, other people would come along and correct you. But that's not how it worked out. What happened was, if your thought was right, everyone would jump on you for defying some collectively decided upon dreamed up version of history. Actually having been around at a certain point in time, or being a collector of ephemera from that time that disproved the narrative virtually guaranteed you would get bullied off the forum.

I've watched this develop for nearly a quarter of a century. And it has basically festered into a situation where the dumbest, most childish (in a bad way) people rule the world, because common sense can't get a word in edgewise, and suffers horrific consequences whenever it does. Because, only in this fictionalized world, crafted by the smallest minds on the planet, can these narcissistic wannabe dictators hold all the power. And you know what? It still doesn't make them happy.

Now, it's not like we haven't always had such people. We just didn't have a social structure that uplifted them to the top of the heap. And I think it is starting to become recognized that what uplifts them is our very need to engage with their nonsense on an intellectual level.

Remember internet trolls? Remember how we learned that the only way to really fight them was to not engage with them, to not give them even the slightest amount of attention. Well, guess what. The trolls flipped the script on us and became these seemingly righteous Social Justice Warriors, these so-called advocates for marginalized groups, who really weren't all that marginalized until these purveyors of fantasy sold them on an alternate history.

And every time they put forward some ridiculous idea, we intellectuals gave them gobs of attention, filling the internet with essays and videos about why they were wrong. This proliferated their ideas and eventually helped them grow to unprecedented power, which only grows stronger the more you try to fight it with logic.

And then one day on Facebook someone sent me a little parable. It went like this.

The donkey told the tiger, “The grass is blue.”

The tiger replied, “No, the grass is green.”

The discussion became heated, and the two decided to submit the issue to arbitration, so they approached the lion.

As they approached the lion on his throne, the donkey started screaming: ′′Your Highness, isn’t it true that the grass is blue?”

The lion replied: “If you believe it is true, the grass is blue.”

The donkey rushed forward and continued: ′′The tiger disagrees with me, contradicts me and annoys me. Please punish him.”

The king then declared: ′′The tiger will be punished with 3 days of silence.”

The donkey jumped with joy and went on his way, content and repeating ′′The grass is blue, the grass is blue…”

The tiger asked the lion, “Your Majesty, why have you punished me, after all, the grass is green?”

The lion replied, ′′You’ve known and seen the grass is green.”

The tiger asked, ′′So why do you punish me?”

The lion replied, “That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is degrading for a brave, intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with an ass, and on top of that, you came and bothered me with that question just to validate something you already knew was true!”
So, basically we have spent over a quarter of a century appealing to higher powers to validate that we are smarter than a bunch of asshat trolls, and getting punished for our own lack of insight into the reality of this new internet environment. Where, in fact, the grass isn't always green. Because everything on the internet is an illusion, and you can make the grass any color you want to. Therefore, anyone trying to establish a solid reality on the internet is automatically talking out of his or her behind.

Just like all these people in fandoms now fighting over their ships, what is cannon, what characters need to be canceled, and blah, blah, blah, blah. They're arguing over the state of something that isn't even real. Something that back in the day I wouldn't have thought about twice if someone took their fan fiction in a totally off the wall direction. Because, at the end of the day, it doesn't make the difference of a drop in an ocean.

So, if my friend tells me there's no work at all involved in generating AI art after I've just worked my tail off for 72 hours straight on a single piece, am I going to sit there and write a three-page essay detailing all the work that went into it, just to have him counter it by screaming, “AI ART IS NOT ART!!!!” No I am not.

And if my friend puts up a meme saying Elon Musk makes more money in a day than you'll see in a lifetime. TAX THE RICH.” Am I going to sit there and write out a long explanation of tax brackets to make the point that the rich already are disproportionately taxed?” No I am not.

Because I know that my friend isn't asking for a discussion, as in a legitimate exchange of ideas. What he's doing is fishing for validation of an idea whose merit he couldn't even be bothered to verify on his own. He is essentially putting forward a belief he has taken into the religious center of his brain. And be his belief right or wrong, it is in that territory that fans who respect each other as fans do not care about.

If one wants to sit there hating the rich just for being more successful than them, that's their thing. All I care about is I like their art, they like my characters, we share interest in the same shows, and maybe share a little common interest in titles from bygone eras. I don't need to engage with their personal BS, and they don't need to engage with mine.

Unless social media has somehow encouraged the creation of a personal BS fandom. In which case, welcome to all fans of my personal BS. But that's not the business I'm in. And I'm not about to go tweaking my personal BS just to compete with others who are more popular in that fandom. My personal BS is what it is, for better or worse. And it has nothing to do with stuff I seek to share with folks in art or franchise-based fandoms.

So, be my friend, enjoy my creativity. Beyond that seek no further to disclose my beliefs or politics. Because, frankly, at this point I don't think I have any. And, you know what? That's just where I was when I bought my first computer, nearly 25 years ago.

Perri Prinz

Things Not To Do To A Bunny With Social Anxiety Disorder

We have a guest staying with us who is every bit as loud as RECoyote. I am not loud, but I do like to participate in conversations as much as anyone. Last night I pointed out that this business of constantly shutting me down by talking over me before I can finish a sentence, or never giving space for me to talk when they see me trying to start the same damn sentence 7 times in a row, tended to get on my nerves. They responded by agreeing that talking over each other was the way they were taught to talk. Basically, the loudest voice bullying its way to the top. So, if I wanted to be heard I just had to raise my voice.

Well, tonight it got to be too much for me. They shut me down one too many times and triggered my social anxiety disorder. So, possibly for the first time they heard a bunny scream to be heard, and it was not pretty. It was like a bomb going off in the room that just killed the vibe and left everyone sad, especially me, because I work so hard to be friendly and keep everyone happy. It's bad enough I can't hide my choking from Sleep Apnea from them. It's mortifying that I let myself be seen in such distress.

Basically, when one has social anxiety disorder, the worst paralyzing fear is that you might make a social faux pas. You might make yourself look stupid, people might laugh at you, or worst of all, people might look at you like, "Who are you to have an opinion?" Or worse still, "Who are you to even be socializing with us?" And I get all that honestly from my school days when all I needed to do was enter a room on the first day of school to generate uproarious laughter, going through years and years of knowing I was not invisible, that everyone was seeing me and voicing silent disapproval, regarding me as something not human, and therefore not worthy of even the most minor kindness or consideration.

Most people are totally disabled by growing up in that environment. There's no excuse to assume anyone will just get over it. Many will be totally shut down by it and spend their lives avoiding all unnecessary social interactions. But, thankfully that's not my story. I've found little tricks to get me past my social inhibitions to a point where I've been rather successful at forming friendships, dealing with customers, and even venturing to throw out the occasional joke or humorous quip. Not that doing so is any less a scary and anxiety producing thing. I just do it in spite of myself.

Everyone I have ever made aware of the issue that they constantly talk over me has voiced the opinion that I need to stop being soft spoken and learn to be a bully in conversation like everyone else. But there's a reason why I can't. It's because there is no freakin' way to take being talked over as anything but a gesture of belittling disrespect. It is rude as hell, and seriously uncivilized, offensive on many levels to a cultured, compassionate and dignified bunny like myself. But worst of all it rips me right back to my school days when everyone disrespected me and left me voiceless. Subconsciously it's a bad trip. And if that's the price I have to pay to participate in a conversation, it's not worth it to me.

And, regardless of what REC may think, it is not a good thing that I asserted myself in this situation. This was not a social breakthrough for me. It was a traumatic anxiety attack, followed by a night of severe depression. And why is it that I must adopt what is essentially uncivilized behavior just to be accepted? Is it really asking so much of my dear friends that they simply not be rude or inconsiderate?

Well, now they know the problem. And they will either stop incessantly talking over me, or I will stop trying to participate after the second time they prevent me from finishing the same sentence. It will be just like school. I will sit there quietly, not daring anyone to display their disrespect for my words.
Perri Prinz

Adventures In AI Art Controversy

A very screwy story goes with this pic. The only Furry site I maintain any contact with is Greymuzzles, because older furs are usually pretty chill, and we have a lot in common. But, as is typical of Furry sites, or really all internet fan sites, the owner and chief moderator is an extremist who is under the bad influence of that evil tribe of Communist propagandists over at Dogpatch Press, whom I expect probably in some way manipulated him into this thing he did. Though that's just a theory on my part.

Anyway, he has a long established no politics rule at Greymuzzles, which works out very well for it, as it remains one of the last bastions of the old Furry Community where everyone gets along well, regardless of political affiliation. And, like The Furry Community of old, it uses its ability to bring diverse people together to point the way to a better way of life, without even trying to do so.

But then one day, out of the blue, he pops up and says he's going to set the no politics rule aside so he can set a policy about AI art being posted in the group, which absolutely no one was doing. Seriously, everything that gets posted there is 30 years old or more. It's not a place where anyone would have a use for AI, unless somebody forced the issue.

The result of asking the group for its opinions on AI art and whether it should be allowed was exactly what you'd expect. This normally chill non-political group drew up sides and vented it's pro or anti passions. But still, it looked to me like just a spirited discussion. I didn't see anybody hating on each other. Yet, he didn't leave that one post to be the discussion thread. For about a week there was nothing but posts on this topic. And then on his personal FB page I saw him complaining about being attacked over it. And my reaction to that was, if you take spirited discussion as a personal attack, don't be opening political topics and putting yourself at the center of the highly predictable fury. I mean, seriously, especially in The Furry Community, how does someone who is about my age not know to expect this?

Anyway, a pole was set up and, again predictably, the group overwhelmingly voted to ban AI art. End of drama, right? Reinstate the no politics rule and go back to life as usual at Greymuzzles, right? Nope. The next thing we hear is that a new group is being set up to be the Greymuzzles AI art group, with the Greymuzzles name in the title. So, the group that had just overwhelmingly voted that it wanted nothing to do with AI art would now not only be allowing it, but would be specifically drawing attention to it, as if it was a regular thing intrinsically connected to being a Greymuzzle.

So, was this whole thing a pretext specifically to get Greymuzzles involved in AI politics? I don't know. And I don't own the group, or even moderate it. So it's all academic to me. But still, I put it out there twice (and was totally ignored as usual) that AI is not a Greymuzzle thing. Even those of us who dabble in AI don't often make art that would be on topic for Greymuzzles. So what the heck are we supposed to make for this side group?

So I did some thinking and came up with the idea of retro parodies. And I decided to make one just to see how hard it would be to do that with the AI program I use. So this little alt-universe album cover is the result of the experiment. And, no, you can not simply feed the album cover into the program and tell it how you want to photo-morph it. I had to separate the image into 4 elements, develop each element individually and then struggle to reunite them. This had me working around the clock with intense concentration, and I made myself quite ill in the process.

But, as the thing started to take shape, the AI brought things out of the original cover I had never realized were there. It's actually a subtly dirty picture. And the AI program isn't called Yiffymix for nothing. So I found myself really liking the arctic fox character that was emerging. I will probably develop her and give her a story eventually.

Still, though, so far it has gotten one like and no comments in the new, totally not asked for, Greymuzzles AI Art Group. I mean, the group overwhelmingly voted against AI art. There were only a couple of us taking the position that there were positive possibilities in it. So it's not likely to be seen by a lot of eyes there.

But, it needs to be pointed out that, if things like this now create a greater interest in AI among Greymuzzles, the owner of the group is totally responsible for making that happen. In typical neo-Communist or Postmodern fashion, if the divisive issue doesn't exist, make it a thing.

Unfortunately, they're kind of depending on me and other oddballs like me to create the things that will make Greymuzzle AI art an interest. And, traditionally, The Furry Community looks on anything I do as something to be ignored. Plus, I'm realizing that making AI art is a very intense process that is totally time consuming and really bad for my health. So somebody else will need to seriously take this up, before the Greymuzzle AI Art Group degenerates into just another Furry AI Yiff site. Which, knowing Furries as I do, wouldn't surprise me if that was the plan all along.

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Perri Prinz

The True, The Good, And The Beautiful

These, I'm told, are the things Post Modernism exists to disprove. And it does so by actively working to destroy these things wherever they are perceived. Hence the culture wars, and the seemingly irrational tendency of those who own pop culture franchises to destroy them.

I looked into this because I got tired of watching the Clownfish TV crew swear at Hollywood for making obviously irrational decisions that are killing interest in their franchises and making them bleed money at a terminal rate.

I felt like I wanted to say to Clownfish, why are you wasting your breath yelling at these people to realize what the problem is, when after all this time it should be obvious that they know what they're doing, and they're doing it on purpose to generate the negative results they're getting?

Now, this is not to suggest that there is some grand conspiracy where people sit around tables trying to figure out ways of destroying their own properties. Post Modernism, like the concept of Communism that it compliments so well, is simply a mind worm that exists in our culture that I actually picked up myself without ever having to set foot in a university to have it taught to me.

I actually got it from the Furry novels of Felix Salten, Richard Adams and Richard Bach that initially inspired me to become a writer. Their work sets up this collective idea that man is an ugly monster in which the true, the good, and the beautiful do not exist. And any illusion that they do exist in man is a falsehood that exists as a detriment to the entire world.

But it's not just in Furry. It's in all Liberal media. It's in our music, our movies, and even in the way we look at history. There really are no heroes in the Liberal mindset. There is only the evil of mankind vs. nature. And nature can not be heroic because it is considered mindless.

The white man is evil because he is shown oppressing the red and the black man. But the red and the black man are also man. So the true, the good and the beautiful can not exist in them either. And every hero we envision in our culture ultimately represents a place or an idea that does not include the true, the good and the beautiful. Therefore, to admire such heroes is seen by the post modern thinker as hypocritical.

Superman represents truth, justice and the American way. But the post modern view is that America is evil. America is every bad thing that has ever gone down in its history, nothing more. Therefore, Superman represents evil and deserves to be destroyed.

Most of us are not consciously aware of this mind worm being a part of us. But as soon as they started making shows like “The Boys” or “Invincible,” most of us stood up and cheered, because those shows are actually more in line with what we actually believe. We have grown cynical from a lifetime of heroes who have fallen from grace. We do not actually believe the true, the good and the beautiful exist, any more than we actually believe in God or Santa Claus.

But, we will double over backward to convince ourselves that we do believe in such things, because ultimately, without the idea that the true, the good and the beautiful exist, humanity doesn't have so much as a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It is the end all be all of everything we have worked to build. Without the belief that the true, the good and the beautiful exist, we become the monsters we subconsciously believe mankind to be.

Let us take for example one Foxler Nightfire, who is a perfect example of this. Once just an ordinary fur going about his business believing Furry Fandom was a demonstration of the true, the good and the beautiful, because of it's promise to be all inclusive and work towards building a place where all people could live together in peace. Then it was proven that Furry Fandom did not live up to its hype, and Foxler found himself leading a group of Furries who, for one ridiculous reason or another, were not included in the blessing of this so called all-inclusive utopia. And now, in his own words, he just wants to watch it burn. And contributing anything he can to helping it burn itself down is all the amusement he has left.

That is actually a developing plot in My Hero Academia. All the villains are disillusioned with the concept of heroes, because they don't really represent the true, the good and the beautiful. And their reaction to the loss of that illusion is to become destructive monsters. Indeed, I suppose this all goes back to the whole God is dead thing. Without God, what is man supposed to live for? What's to stop us from reveling in being the destructive animal monsters we work so hard to suppress?

Likewise, for myself, there is nothing I have ever believed in that has not disgraced itself. Ask me to point to something that proves the true, the good and the beautiful exist, and I will be hard put to find an example. Still, as a writer, I have no motivation to create if I do not believe the true, the good and the beautiful are out there to benefit from my work. And I will not let go of this motivation. Because, without if, I'm finished.

Yet, subconsciously, this mind worm is constantly working to get me to torpedo myself. Deep down I do not believe the true, the good, and the beautiful exists in me, and I'm a hypocrite for even trying to rise above that. And I am given to wonder, is this post modern mind worm doing the same thing to everyone in Hollywood? Are we all deliberately working to torpedo ourselves because deep down we don't believe in ourselves? Is it that we all see ourselves as false prophets of an idea of the true, the good and the beautiful, when no such thing exists in man, and man for his evil deserves nothing but to burn in a fire of his own creation? (Which is the big final message in Bambi, btw.)

So, this is the part of the essay where I'm supposed to come up with a solution that can potentially save the world from this problem. How do we carry on if we know that the true, the good and the beautiful only exist as ideas that man can never prove? Ah, but there it is. Because ideas are real. An idea can still be a goal to strive for, no matter how unrealistic it may be. Certainly the idea of an illiterate dropout writing something as outlandishly big as Spectral Shadows has never been in any sense realistic. But still, I live for it.

And, as long as I'm living for it, there is no motivation to write it unless the characters are, in their own way, in quest of this illusive idea of the truth, the good, and the beautiful. And if the pursuit of this idea somehow restrains humanity from becoming self-destructive monsters drowning in their own cynicism, perhaps there is truth in it that man, by virtue of his own imagination, can be more than a monster. And, if man can be more than a monster, is that not a good thing? And wherever man strives not to be a monster, are the results of his efforts not likely to be beautiful?

The virtues that make man more than an animal are not tangible realities. In truth, they are things that only happen in the human mind. The truth is man has a choice to will himself to be anything he wants to be. He is not subject to the tyranny of anyone else's prejudice. And if your hero falls from grace, then you have the ability to become a better hero who remains true to the idea that the true, the good and the beautiful is a valid concept to live for in spite of all the wrong, the bad and the ugliness there is in the world of man.

In the end, all the self-destruction we see from people letting this mind worm get the better of them is simply the product of disorganized thinking. One elects to be fatally cynical. No law dictates that one must be that way just because they've lived to see man at his worst. One can always choose to hold in one's mind the focus that, if we just keep learning from our past mistakes and striving constantly to build a better mindset for humanity, our descendants may yet see the true, the good and the beautiful manifest as a tangible reality.
Perri Prinz

The Old Art Rocker's Lament

CD boxes from the Prog group.
CD boxes made of Neo-Proggy.
And they think that I should like them.
CD boxes all the same.

There's a Tull sound, and a Floyd sound.
And a Yes sound, and a Genesis sound.
And they're all made out of Neo-Proggy.
And they all sound just the same.

And the people in the Prog group
All read Prog Rock Magazine.
And it sells them CD boxes.
CD boxes all the same.

And the poison of the whining
And the endless negativity
All seeps in from the boxes,
And it drives them quite insane.

And they all play on the Mellotron
And they try to sound like Tony Banks.
With a Floyd chord descending,
Why's there no hope of fame?

I don't want to be the one who
Has to tell these brainwashed idiots
That these CD's have no value
And they all sound just the same.
Perri Prinz

Rifts In Time Along The Highway

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Probably to folks even one generation up from me, this image will mean nothing. I will travel around the country and often see these buildings painted over and repurposed. But no matter how they butcher them, they are still instantly recognizable to me. And I will not be able to explain to my younger companions why it's even worth noticing.

Restaurant chains come and go, and one probably was no better than the others foodwise. But I think the price of 15 cents that was considered so stable at the time that they permanently molded it into every sign says something about the extreme changes that have taken place over the course of my lifetime.

To me, seeing these buildings painted over and sometimes chopped up is symbolic of everything that was ever important to me being buried, forgotten, devalued, disrespected, and in some instances repurposed for totally unrelated nefarious uses.

Indeed, right across from where I now live, one of these buildings is now a cannabis dispensary. And 15 cents won't even buy you a gumball from a grocery store coin machine.

These buildings represent a different world where I first set down my roots. But I am not one to live in the past. My mind only goes back there when a trigger like this takes it there. And whenever this happens there is a sense of mourning for some intangible loss which is not easily defined.

I mean, does the loss of 15 cent burgers really make that much difference in a world? Surely one gets paid more to compensate for rising prices. Or will it be possible to maintain that when your 15 cent burger costs ten dollars? Will it even matter when there are no more burgers to be had at any price?

At the end of the day it's only the world you live in at the moment that matters. You have to gather whatever you need to survive at the moment and just ride life out.

Doesn't seem much point in even assuming there's going to be a future. If Global Warming doesn't wipe us out the volcanic winter surely will. And even if by chance we manage to avoid those, along with all of the other man-made dumb ways to go extinct humans have set up, old age will still surely get us in the end. Thus I find myself struggling to adapt to a world without hope.

Perhaps that is what is so disturbing about this sign. It reminds me of a world that had a future, infinite possibilities, and nowhere to go but up. All of that began to die the instant the 15-cent sign was rendered obsolete. And one has to wonder just exactly what it was we thought was so much more important than the stability of our world.
Perri Prinz

Upon Re-watching Harry Potter And Star Wars

Yes, over the period of a couple of weeks I re-watched all of the main movies in these franchises, and late as it may be to voice an opinion on the topics, I find myself once again totally at odds with pop culture.

Harry Potter is, in my opinion, one of the worst written series to ever have been given a movie franchise. Superficially the first 5 movies can sneak by on visuals alone. There's no denying somebody is throwing big bucks behind this series to make it look good. But it offers some of the most lackluster characters in fantasy and gives these characters a minimum of exploration. So much so that, at the end of eight movies, I still don't feel like I know them. And if I don't know them, I surely don't love them or care if I ever see them again.

I kept asking my partner, who has read the books, how true these movies are to the written originals. And he insisted that there was little difference. And, especially after the snore fest that was the last two movies, I was at a total loss as to how thousands of kids could have been so gung-ho to read this.

Honestly, watching Harry Potter makes me worry about my own writing, because I am myself writing a long saga involving a magical school. And if ever someone suggested my own writing reached this level of boring and lacked that much substance, I'd quit on the spot.

Harry Potter does not represent the high bar for high quality fantasy writing. It represents the high bar for getting over rewarded for lazy writing.

I mean, seriously, if you're going to spend 8 movies on a single villain, he should be at least as scary as an old time Universal monster. This guy is weak on personality and ambition, his bearing is that of something that's been watered down for children, and even from the first movie you never have any doubt that he's always going to lose against a young wizard who never completes his training in the whole series. So he's constantly surrounded by wizards of way higher capabilities who, for some reason, are helpless against this nothing burger of a dark lord that this untrained kid manages to thwart at the end of each movie like clockwork.

I mean, what's up with these teachers? Are they just too good to be able to face up to a character that employs evil? How is it this boy, this novice wizard is so much better than they? And why is he not teaching them?

Everything is obviously predestined by the writer from the beginning. So you're just watching to see what you know is coming play out. But, to be fair, there are lot of movies that telegraph the ending, but fail to be boring because they spend the time getting you to know the ins and outs of what makes the characters tick, or having the characters be protagonists by exploring their worlds. But at the end of the series you still only know that the world of Harry Potter exists. Yet you remain with no clue why it exists.

It is a children's fantasy. And I mean that in the most literal sense. It's the kind of fantasy a child would come up with before they learned anything about the intricacies of fantasy writing. It is loaded with self insert characters that one can use to put themselves in the picture. And if not telling us anything about them has a point, it's so that you're meant for your background to be given to the character once you relate to it.

This time I watched it with the full awareness that Dumbledore is supposed to be gay, and guess what. It still made absolutely no difference. And I am left with the impression I expressed when the author originally dropped that bombshell. Dumbledore is written to be asexual if he's anything at all in that way at his age. Announcing that he's gay after the fact can accomplish nothing but Woke power points.

But she kind of does this with Snape too, portraying him as a total villain all the way through, giving him hardly a cameo in most movies to insure the character will never be explored, and waiting till the very last minute to announce he was a good guy. But, ha ha, the series is over. It's too late for that to matter one way or another. And this being one of the potentially best characters in the whole series. His potential was totally wasted. And, as a writer of fantasy myself, seeing a potentially great character be wasted really bothers me.

I also continue to be really bothered by the lack of color in the whole thing. Its like you could have shot this series in black & white without losing too much. Also, there are so many weird things about the school that are never explained. Animated paintings, re-arranging staircases, ghosts everywhere, etc., and not a word of exposition about it. I might be tempted to hope that exposition is actually in the books, but I'm so un-enamored with the series at this point that actually reading the books is not going to happen. If I had the time for actual reading I'd be catching up on Piers Anthony or something of that nature. You know, the good stuff that never gets considered for a movie series.

Anyway, moving onto Star Wars, upon the second watch my opinions have certainly shifted more towards the positive. The prequels I had initially thought were lacking due to the need to shove too much information in too fast. But actually it seems more like watching it on the big screen made it difficult to keep track of everything that was going on.

Upon watching them on the TV screen they seem fine. I love the characters, I love the actors, the stories are credible and competently written. I really don't see much to complain about.

The original trilogy I did not review because, let's face it, I've watched it so many times over the years I've committed it to memory. So nothing has changed there.

But the thing of current interest is the Disney trilogy. Is it really as bad as detractors on YouTube make it out to be? No, it's not.

It does have some flaws that can probably be attributed to the bad decision to change producers mid-stream, but on the whole, Ray is Ray. She is nowhere near as loathsome as she's made out to be.

She's not a Mary Sue. Much of her training happens off screen, but that's true of Luke Skywalker as well. We buy at the beginning of Return Of The Jedi that Luke is now a competent Jedi Master. It does make one wonder just how long Han has been frozen in that carbonite, but we accept it and move on. It doesn't stop people in their tracks the way similar stuff in the Disney trilogy seems to stop critics.

People say Rose Tico is a terrible character. I disagree. I loved that character initially, but they did kind of drop the ball with her, and she was just kind of a background character in the final movie.

Fin was great too. Probably one of the strongest in the trilogy. He was a protagonist one could really get into and explore the situation with. While Poe was an okay character, for the amount of focus that was put on him.

You could see that focus was mainly being put on the diversity hires, but they were great diversity hires in a series universe that was established from day one as being diverse. That in itself was not overbearingly Woke. I really don't care if one hires for diversity, as long as the hires can do their job.

Now, I do still have a big issue with Vice Admiral Gender Studies in the second film. That whole section of the trilogy will always rub me the wrong way. Not necessarily because it is offensively Woke, but because it represents some seriously bad writing that one just doesn't expect from Star Wars. But really, even one segment of some of the worst writing in Sci-Fi history does not an entire trilogy kill.

Finally there is the general theme of the Disney trilogy that one must kill the past to move on. Or, we can't just go on doing this the same way every time and expect a different result. I could see why some people would think that's Woke, but really it is a practical answer to the question I asked at the beginning of the Disney trilogy. Didn't we beat the empire in the last movie and set a course for a happily ever after? Why does it seem that we're in some kind of endless loop where the same thing keeps happening? And will this not just result in trilogy after trilogy of people going through these horrors to no real lasting benefit?

As a writer myself, putting forward the idea that we're going to try focusing on saving the things we love rather than just defeating evil seems quite valid. I mean, if you're not going to preserve the things you love, how does defeating evil benefit you? Evil will just get up and start bugging you again no matter how many times you smack it down. You've got to be standing up for something, and it can't just be democracy, because democracy is directly to blame for these conflicts every time they occur.

Indeed, in the allegory of how Star Wars relates to modern governance, The Empire side are the Conservatives just following the rule of law and the democratic process to get laws passed. The Rebels are the Lefties. If you don't like cheering for Liberals, you don't want to be watching Star Wars. But obviously Disney Star Wars is saying this battle between Right and Left isn't working. It's not producing anything of lasting value. It's just killing everything that's of value in the cross-fire. Until Rose Tico snaps and says “Dang-it, I'm not giving up what's important to me,” and stops the protagonist from killing himself, in what would have been likely a fruitless gesture.

And everyone watching is like, “What got into her? That was not a Star Wars thing to do?” But let's face it. We're losing protagonists right and left here. All the old ones have been burned up by this endless conflict. If we let the new ones get burned up too, whose going to be left to stand, let alone to state what their standing for? So, Rose is effectively saying we need to break this cycle, because brute force is just not going to win the day this time.

Granted, upon seeing this in the movie theater, this went by too fast for me to contemplate it. And it registered as a big WTF. But upon second viewing I see that this is actually very good writing; an idea that we really haven't seen much in sagas that depict recurring war cycles. Maybe things aren't so black and white. Maybe Disney sees the importance of eventually reaching a true happily ever after. And maybe you just can't get there unless both the Right and Left give up something they don't want to give up.

Notice that I have much more to analyze here than I do with Harry Potter. With Harry Potter it is more a matter of complaining about the things I don't have to analyze. Harry Potter makes no ultimate point. It has no social significance. Star Wars, on the other hand, has something to say to society. It may not be something either side of society wants to hear, but it's daring enough to say it anyway. If your goal is peace and happiness ever after, Democracy will not get you there. You've got to be able to think beyond that box if you want to get anywhere.

So, yeah, if Luke can only be seen as the hope of brute force answering to brute force, he isn't what these people need. So him taking himself out of the picture makes some sense. The passing of the original three main characters is pretty much inevitable, and not so hard to take on the second watch.

Truth of the matter is that, once we get past Vice Admiral Gender Studies and the original producer resumes control, it's a pretty good watch that in no way deserves the negative hype it gets.

It's probably not as good a watch over all as the other two trilogies, but then, it's an unnecessary sequel to a serial that was essentially complete in 6 episodes. You can end it with episode 6 and have a totally satisfying experience. But if you just have to have more, you can move on to the Disney trilogy. Just don't go into it with high expectations, because it is literally made by different people who are deliberately attempting to deal with the fact that the philosophy of the first 6 episodes is not a prescription for long term happiness.

If you think that's Woke, I disagree. I think Woke is too shallow a philosophy to come up with anything that deep. In fact, that's one of the things I always admired about Star Wars. It always had these moments of unexpected depth. And the Disney trilogy attempts to carry on that tradition. It's just that it's trying to tell us something that nobody wants to hear.

But now let's deal with the critical reaction to these series. Harry Potter is still being praised to high heaven, while Star Wars is pretty much in the toilet. And to what do I attribute this great injustice? Hype.

You really can't say anything bad about Harry Potter, and you can't say anything good about Star Wars. People have listened to the hype before enjoying these movies, and have thus gone into theaters with a confirmation bias. If you expect a movie to be bad in some respects, you'll be deliberately looking for what others are complaining about. On the other hand, if everyone is telling you something is just the best thing since sliced bread, that hype will carry through, even if it's pretty bad.

So we see one series propping itself up on hype, and another being buried under the weight of it. And in the wake of this, we are raising a generation of movie watchers who don't know how to judge movies for themselves. After all, they will surely spend a lot more time being entertained by the hype merchants on YouTube than they will by the actual movie itself. And it would be social suicide to go against the hype merchants as I'm doing here.

But I am not a young person with a reputation to protect as are most young people today. No one really cares what I think, and I have nothing to lose by what anyone else thinks of me. So I can feel free to sit here and say your so called masterpiece sucks Rick Wakeman's “Monkey Nuts.” (Look it up) But I don't think most young people today feel anywhere near so liberated. Indeed, I can state from experience that being liberated is a sad, lonely state of existence.

So, if Harry Potter gained it's clout and longevity through folks hyping it to be the cool thing to be into, and Star Wars has run afoul of the reverse type of hype, then it will not really matter in the future if movies are good or bad. It will only matter if the critics like you or they don't. So why put in any effort at all? Just put some crap together and throw it out there. It will sell if you pay for the hype. In the case of something like Velma, it will sell if you pay for the negative hype. This is just the kind of world we're heading into. And I have no potential solutions for that to offer at this time.

Solutions would depend on parents wanting to be parents. They would depend on a willingness not to live on ones computer. They would depend on an appreciation of the excellence of the past. And all of these things are rapidly falling out of view. Or, as the allegory might go, The Empire is winning, and perhaps it is better to learn to live in The Empire than killing yourselves trying to beat it, when you haven't got a clue what to replace it with if you could win.

Do what you have to to survive. And if believing Harry Potter is great and Star Wars is crap is what you have to do to get by, don't let an old fool like me stop you.
Perri Prinz

Seeking Opinions On A New Type Of Non-Fiction Book

I woke up this morning with a sudden driving desire to start writing again. But as often happens, while I was searching my computer for the notes I need to pick up my story, I ran into endless pages of writing I have done for the internet.

In fact, my text reader, which I need to function as a writer, is so bogged down with replies to YouTube videos and blog posts, that it takes forever to load. And I felt like it would be pointless trying to continue if I didn't clean it out.

Most people would just delete everything without even bothering to look at it. It is, after all, old news. But when I look at the sheer volume of how much fruitless writing I've done, just in the time since I got this maybe 5 to 7 year old computer, I realize this writing represents the state of my mind at the time, my thoughts on various topics, and my related philosophies. It's literally enough writing to fill a book.

So, totally distracted from the work I was supposed to be doing, I listened to a few of these replies. None of which were written in the superficial manner one expects from social media. In fact, social media hates people who try to write complete thoughts. Especially if it should take a page or two to get that thought down. YouTube may actually hide replies that are too long. And regardless of whether they get read or not, they quickly fall off the edge of accessibility and are never seen again.

So, between this blog, YouTube, Facebook and various forums, I have potentially written a book of random essays on topics as far ranging as religion, politics, the state of various fandoms, any number of personal issues, life experiences, LGBT topics, history I've witnessed, etc., etc., etc.. And to differentiate these from my Spectral Shadows writings, I tend to just dump these writings into a file folder labeled “Thought Trash.”

My question of the moment is, though it's a given that these replies are worse than a waste of time on social media, might they actually be of some recoupable value if compiled into an actual book? A book with the working title of “Thought Trash?”

Or perhaps, “What Does The Bunny Say?” might be a more appropriate title.

Anyway, I'd like to get opinions on this idea. Is there a market for such a thing? Am I insufferably egotistical even to think the thoughts that come out of my head are of any value at all? Or is this possibly something that's potentially more important than my fiction writing?

I can't answer these questions for myself, as I'm too close to the writings. Of course they all make perfect sense to me. But they are likely to give any modern thinkers a good head spinning. Some may provide an amusing laugh at what some might view as my particular brand of insanity. But my hope is they might encourage in younger readers a more relaxed and meditative reading experience. One in which it is not necessary to believe everything I say is true, but at least my ideas are interesting to entertain, and might lead to the readers developing their own unique take on things, rather than just letting their minds be led around by one popular ideology or another.
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