Finalist, Writers of the Future, Q3 vol. XXVI

It’s official.

Click here to see the announcement.

My sincerest best wishes to Adam Colston, Jakob Drud, Brent Knowles, Geir Lanesskog, Dwayne Minton, Robert Pritchard, and Tom Waters.

Oh frak it, why not?

It’s been the better part of a week now, and though the official word still hasn’t been put out, enough people have been informed under-the-table that I may as well just blog about it. Hopefully Joni doesn’t mind.

Yes, I am a Finalist for Q3, Writers of the Future vol. XXVI

Yes, it’s my second call-up to the WOTF Majors this year. Hopefully I don’t get sent back down again. Hopefully I connect for a single, a double, or a triple. Or, like Emery Huang most recently, the Golden home run.

If nothing else, making Finalist twice in the same year ups my chances at being a Published Finalist. Which to my mind is almost as good as a placement — because you still get your work in the book, which means superb word rate and potential royalties, and you get to keep coming back and submitting to future quarters in the hopes of winning.

Eric James Stone did it. I wouldn’t mind doing the same.

We’ll just have to see what happens. Wait time ought to be 8 to 12 weeks, just as before, so nobody will probably know anything about the winners until around Christmas or so. Unlike last time, I’m not expending a lot of energy fruitlessly daydreaming about The Big Win. I am instead tempered by the knowledge that it’s good to be in the queue, but nothing is guaranteed, so best to just keep tapping those keys and firing out those manuscripts.

Q1 of WOTF vol. XXVII is currently open for business. Maybe this time I do an about-face and turn my submission in way early, instead of writing and mailing at the last minute like I always do.

I’m also going to begin entering the Illustrators Of The Future contest as well, so Q1 will see me sending two envelopes to Hollywood. There has been only one double-winner to my knowledge: Stephen Stanley. As with Eric, I wouldn’t mind following in those footsteps.

Hey, maybe I can be the first guy to get a Published Finalist, a placement, and a win at the IOTF as well?

As always, you can’t land on the moon if you never launch your rockets.

Best to everyone still waiting for news about their entry. If you’re struggling with anxiety, why not pour that energy into a new piece. Get your mind going on something else. I spent too much time stewing over my Q1 Finalist and it resulted in nothing.

The value of Alternative Goals

It’s been almost a week since they pinned my Warrant Officer bars on my shoulders. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to come down off the high of achieving this goal, but am pleased to say it hasn’t happened yet. Making WO1 was the culmination of years of planning, preparation, and execution. It was neither quick, nor easy, which perhaps explains why it feels so terrifically satisfying having achieved what I have achieved.

It’s also gotten me to thinking, as a wannabe writer, about the value of concurrent or alternative objectives. So often, we aspirants spend every waking moment running around fretting about our writing goals. We get wrapped up in this obsession — because that’s what it means to be an aspirant, right? — thus the rejections and the slow progress can often be maddening, depressing, angering, and so forth.

It can be enormously beneficial having other projects going on in life — at work, at home, in the military, etc. — towards which you apply yourself at the same time you’re working on your writing. So that while the writing might be a drag — and as aspirants, can we all please admit that it is, very often, a drag? — things don’t suck quite so much if you’re able to make progress on some other, also meaningful endeavor.

I’ve noted elsewhere on the InterToob that I’d never considered — seriously — being in the military, prior to 9/11. Since I joined in 2002 I’ve found that my Army Reserve career has presented a whole host of daunting challenges which have pushed me — often far — beyond my comfort zone. Sometimes I’ve dreaded these trials, other times I’ve gone into them with positive anticipation. In each case, I’ve always found a way to make it through; to succeed. And I’ve been thankful, after the fact, that I stuck it out and did the hard work and put in the time and the sweat and the blood and the pain. Because the rewards — on a personal level — are indeed satisfying.

This satisfaction is difficult to quantify or qualify, suffice to say I feel as if I have become a larger person, at the end of each new military challenge. I feel as if I’ve been driven beyond my usual self, and been forced to grow in some subtle yet important way.

I believe this growth not only illuminates my writing, but provides an additional buoy if ever I let the rejection slips and the eternal waiting game get me down. My military success is a reminder that tough challenges are just part life, that nothing worth doing is ever done quickly or easily, and that while I’m still a nobody in the publishing world, I’m becoming a Somebody in the military world. And with that knowledge comes a certain satisfaction and surety that I’m not sure I’d otherwise enjoy.

I’ve had a lot of disappointments this year, regarding my writing. But now that I’m back from WOCS and relishing my victory, I feel pumped up about the writing like never before. I want to keep the mojo flowing! I’m on a roll! I want to follow up my success at WOCS with increased production, more submissions — capitalize, man! And why not? I’ve gotten three personalized rejections in the last 45 days. A record, for me. I can’t see the end of the aspirant tunnel, but then there were times in the midst of WOCS — and other Army schools before that — where I couldn’t see the end of the tunnel. Only solution was to set small, incremental goals, take it a day or a week at a time, and muscle through. So I look at the writing wall — which I’ve spoken of before — square the straps of my proverbial ruck on my proverbial back — and keep climbing.

Anyone else have concurrent or tangential goals which fire them up, outside of or beyond their writing? What sorts of things are you doing — or have done — which make you proud and make you feel good about yourself? I’d like to know.

They call me Mister Torgersen!

(said in best Sidney Portier voice)

If making SGT felt seminal, making WO1 feels ten times that. A new realm. A new experience in the Army. Things won’t ever be the same, and I can already feel it.

It’s interesting, when I think about it. My mentor when I came into the Army was a CW3, and from the time I was a pre-Basic troop helping out on an SRP weekend, she had plans to send me to WOCS and get me set up as a Warrant. For the first five years of my USAR career, she became more and more insistent, until she finally retired and said, “Sergeant Torgersen, you will go and do this thing!” Well hell, what can you say to that other than, “Yes ma’am!”

WOCS Ph. III was a tough two weeks, punctuated by blowing my (already blown) left knee two days before the capper — a six mile ruck march out of the Alabama woods. Short distance, yes. But not easily accomplished on a fucked up knee. But after mile 1, either God or the motrin or the endorphins kicked in, and I was humping like a mofo. Because I wanted it. In spite of the pain. I wanted the bar. It was so close. All the effort over this year and last, between the packet process and Phase II and Phase III… Nothing short of a coma was going to keep me from finishing my mission and getting the bar.

I’m home now, and feeling pretty damned good about things. I am sure the reality of being a mere “wobbly” will set in soon and I’ll find a whole new vista of peaks that I have to surmount, because one thing about Army life is your work is never done. Ever. Not until you die, or retire. And sometimes not even then.

Anyway, I flew out for Ft. McClellan on September 11. Take what significance from that you will. I myself found it not just a little…. Deep? Interesting? Without 9/11/2001 I’d not even be in the Army Reserve right now. And suddenly 8 years later I am a gottdamned Warrant? How does this happen, especially to a computer geek like me, with bad eyes and a bad knee and no delusions of being any kind of Rambo?

I have said it before on other forums, my initial want, upon enlisting in 2002, was to participate. That’s all I wanted. To participate. To give back in some meaningful way. Not not just be some guy getting PO’d over 9/11 in a chat room. I wanted to do more than that. Put my money where my mouth is.

I still want that. To give back. To help. To be the kind of man that stands up when standing up is needed. Because I won’t ever be a hero, like some of my battle buddies at the WOC school. One guy in Phase III had gone to Iraq with the Marines, then turned around and went to Afghanistan with the Army National Guard. CIB and badges and fruit salad over his left shoulder. I was in awe. He was cool as hell and to see him on the street you’d never suspect he was the kind of man he was, with that kind of history. A real hero.

It’s guys like him I want to do right by. I’m just a 420A paper pusher. My role is to HELP the real fighters who run, jump, fly, and drive into the teeth of battle. Someday the battle might find me, and maybe then I’ll have a little fruit salad of my own, instead of a fruit cup like now. Until then, my mission is to serve and help the warriors with whom it is my profound privelege to serve.

Not much else to say, other than that. Glad it’s done. Glad I did it.

WOBC next year. I hear from the same Marine/Guard dude I talked about above — whose wife went through 420A WOBC recently — that it is indeed, “12-ounce curl time.”

Meanwhile, I am back at my civilian job and looking forward to a productive and enjoyable Fall season.

As Mr. Rork might have said, “Smiles everyone, smiles!”

Out pursuing a different goal

I’m off the grid for the next two weeks, doing Phase III of my Warrant Officer school.

Should be a tough — and hopefully quick! — two weeks.

To quote Scott Glenn — playing astronaut Alan Spepard in the movie The Right Stuff — “Dear Lord, please don’t let me fuck up.”

That about says it all.

Over and out.

A trip to Barnes & Noble

Tonight I stopped in at the nearest B&N for what I like to call Remember The Goal therapy.

Because it’s very easy to get distracted, and forget why I am doing this — to forget why I spend so much time researching craft and reading blogs by other writers and pounding out prose at odd hours of both morning and night, week after month after year.

Sometimes, I just have to go stand there in the midst of the paperback aisles, soaking up the Writers’ Æther. I just have to browse the shelves and pick up the glossy, perfect-bound volumes, looking at the titles and the names and think quietly, as if reciting liturgy: it’s not impossible if I just keep working at it.

Take Larry Correia for instance. Very entertaining and jovial gentleman. I met him at CONduit this past spring. He did it all backwards, wound up self-publishing after a round of rejections from the houses, then wound up getting enough positive grass-roots attention for the self-published book that Baen picked him up. Now his debut novel, Monster Hunter International, is a rising hit at Amazon.com and is on store shelves across the country. Larry is getting knockout reviews and I won’t be surprised if MHI goes on to multiple printings, sequels, royalties, media and game tie-in deals, etc.

Why is Larry a break-out success? He never quit. He never let the rejections and the walls of industry erode his morale to the point that he threw up his hands and/or threw in the towel. He stuck with it, had some luck combined with a ton of hard work, and now he’s riding a building wave largely of his own devising.

Needless to say, I bought Larry’s book. Because I believe in supporting my local Utah peeps. Especially guys not too much further down the trail than me, who can use all the support they can get.

I also took the liberty of doing a little guerilla facing in the magazine section. Who the heck burried Realms of Fantasy back behind the boring lit mag crap? Get that sucker out in front! Where the beautiful art can shine and attract customers!

Anyway, I do this about once a month, on average. Go to the Big Brick store, wander for about an hour, and let it sink in: this can be me if I never give up and never give in. It’s not impossible. It just takes work. Lots and lots of work. And patience. And never quitting. Ever. Someday I can have my glossy-covered paperback on the Big Brick shelves, if I don’t let the negative voices in my head destroy my will to persist and learn. Also, everyone who is currently on those shelves, was me once. Larry Correia was me once: some guy with ideas in his head and the want to write them down and get them published and make some money along the way.

Thanks for some good Remember The Goal therapy, Larry. I hope MHI is as entertaining as everyone says it is. If the book is anything like your personality, I am sure it will be a romp.

Send it to the trunk?

I’ve been warned before, by professional voices I trust: never, ever send anything to the trunk — the graveyard where stories go to die.

It’s unprofessional. It doesn’t give your story a chance. You never know whether or not the story might sell, even if it’s been rejected 10 or 20 or 50 times. The next market might be the one. Keep sending the story out.

But what do you do with a story which even you have lost faith in?

Lately I’ve been looking at a lot of my stories which have made the rounds, and which are teetering on the edge of being trunked. All of them have problems. None of these problems can be addressed without a complete re-draft, wherein I tear the story down to basic components and build it back up again from scratch. I’m not the same writer I was even 12 months ago. I can see what’s wrong, and I know how much work it will take to fix things.

So I’m in a bit of a conundrum, because the same pros whose opinions I trust, also advise against endlessly reinventing the wheel. Avoid excessive editing and re-writes. Move forward. Dig new holes in fresh soil.

Today I pulled three of my older irons out of the fire. One of them I was able to send to a new market because I think it might have a shot. The other two… Eh. They’ve got issues even I’m not willing to ignore anymore. I think I pretty much have to trunk them — at least until I get the time and inspiration to pull them back out, burn them down to their bones, and begin whole new stories using their ashes.

So, my Race score has dropped to 15.

Which is still pretty good. Just not at 20 yet, which is my goal for short production, prior to launching into a novel project.

There is also the matter of my being gone for two weeks and two days with the Army next month. Can I crank out 5 new stories in 3 weeks? It would be great to head off for WOCS Phase III with 20 points.

Yeah, yeah, I like this goal. Better get cracking!

To read or not to read… Or watch, or listen!

Multi award-winner Kris Rusch has a new Recommended Reading list up that’s worth noting.

I found this comment particularly pithy:

…some writing students of mine made it very clear to me recently that they believe there’s acceptable reading and unacceptable reading. Unacceptable reading is, if I can get this right, any books that espouse a point of view that the reader doesn’t believe in.

You see this sentiment everywhere lately. People — readers and writers — claiming they refuse to buy or read the work of so-and-so because so-and-so belongs to (insert political party here) or is an (insert political label here) or happens to belong to the (insert party, church, group, faction here.) Basically, people aren’t complaining about the quality of the product itself, they’re complaining about the opinions and beliefs of the producer of the product. Even going so far as to make it an implicit threat, “You have expressed opinions and beliefs which are not in accord with my own, therefore I shall not partake of your work!”

Ergo, until you start telling me things I want to hear coming out of your mouth/keyboard, you’re on my personal Bad Guy List and I won’t spend any money on you.

More Kris Rusch:

…I said to the students, writers represent the entire world. If you block off part of your reading because you don’t agree with what you assume the writer’s point of view to be, then you’ll never learn anything. (And, writers, you won’t be able to write from any point of view except your own.)

What Kris said. In triplicate.

There is something unsettling about this entire concept: refusal to read a book by — or watch a movie starring, directed by, or music sung or performed by — a person because they happen to hold beliefs or opinions which are contrary to your own.

When I look at my own music, movie and literature library, I’d have to get rid of about 95% of it, assuming I actually demanded that everyone in those movies, or on those CD’s, or who wrote those books, held beliefs and opinions that were in accord with mine. In fact, there is precious little entertainment of any sort I’d be able to enjoy if I rigorously adhered to this philosophy.

Yet we see this all the time. Remember the Dixie Chicks? Remember how pissed off people got at them when they made certain comments a few years ago? It was a scandal! Country music stars dissing Dubbleyah! I mean, the nerve! And it wasn’t just people refusing to buy their music. People wanted them banned from radio stations, taken off the shelves of music stores, and worse. And all because the Dixie Chicks didn’t seem to like the guy in the Oval Office.

Now, what, exactly, did the opinions of the Chicks have to do with their music? I’m not a country music listener and couldn’t tell a Chicks song if it came up and bit me in the behind. But I’d wager their opinions about Mr. Bush had zip-squat to do with their lyrics and their musicianship. So how come people got all fired up and started trash-talking the Chicks and wanting them professionally quashed?

Consider also the case of Orson Scott Card. Not just a few people have declared, “I loved ‘Ender’s Game’, but I can’t stand Card anymore because (insert gripe here.)” If it wasn’t his religion, it was his stance on subjects such as homosexuality, or some of the political writing he’s done as part of his Ornery columns. They’re not saying Card is a bad writer. Far from it! They acknowledge that Card is good. Sometimes, fiendishly so. But they refuse to buy him or read him because he — as a person, independent of his writing — has expressed a viewpoint or an opinion that some people simply cannot stand. Or find offensive. Or just flat-out uncool.

If that’s not the Politically Correct mindset in a nutshell — demanding that those around us parrot our own thoughts and opinions back to us, otherwise we divorce ourselves from those people, or cease buying their product/art — I don’t know what is.

Even stranger — to me anyway — is that we see this attitude so common among intellectuals. Or, at least, people who pretend at being intellectual, or for whom the label of ‘intellectual’ is attractive. Sometimes they simply pass under the banner of ‘open-minded.’ But isn’t the very definition of open-mindedness being open to ideas and concepts that are foreign, unknown, strange, different, or even potentially threatening? And why make it a one-step-removed prejudice, wherein the author’s work suddenly winds up on a shit list simply because the author happens to think or feel a certain way?

As Kris notes, when you confine yourself to a paradigm ‘bottle’ you risk cutting off your nose to spite your face. You won’t learn anything about how other people think, and you won’t have an easy time writing good characters who think and believe differently from yourself. Especially if you’re writing villains. We see this a lot too: the stereotypical cardboard villain who is am emblem for everything the writer dislikes, yet the cardboard villain is just that: hollow, soulless, and without motivations that aren’t superficial or otherwise unbelievable. Because the author hasn’t taken the time to dig more deeply into the motives and rationale of actual people with whom the author may disagree.

I’m not saying you can’t judge art by its content. Taste is taste. And what one person deems golden, might be cow dung to another person. A book — or a movie, or a recording — stands on its own merits, and if the content of a specific art product is not to your liking, then feel free to dismiss it or judge it as you see fit.

I remember when the (in)famous Piss Christ photo fracas erupted many years ago. I remember thinking that, whatever Andres Serrano’s political or religious feelings were, a photo of a crucifix in a bottle of urine didn’t seem terribly inspired. I’m not even sure I’d personally call it art, as much as I’d call it cheap sensationalism. But this opinion is based on the photo itself — on whether or not I felt the photo had any relative value to me as an artistic consumer. I wasn’t judging Serrano, just his photo.

We all make these judgments, every day, when we pick what we read and we listen to and what we watch on the big screen and the small screen. And they are 100% valid.

But there seems to be a line that gets crossed — unhealthily — when we begin to make it more about the artist, as opposed to the art. When we begin to ‘punish’ the artist — or the writer, the actor, the director, the performer — for what they think and how they feel, as opposed to what they produce.

I often find myself reading quotes and interviews with famous musicians and actors. Because I enjoy music, movies and (some) television, and I am always curious about the people behind the scenes. Too often I find myself disappointed — either because the person seems generally shallow, generally clueless, politically noxious, or otherwise uninteresting or even deliberately offensive — but I’m not sure it’s ever made me want to stop watching movies/shows with that person in them, or stop buying music from a given artist or band. Yes, it might suck a little of the oomph out of it for me when next I see that person on the screen — or listen to that particular artist or band on the radio — but I don’t therefore turn around and make it my mission to exercise that person from my life, nor their works from my collection.

I’ve heard it said, by musicians mainly, that they’re constantly amazed at how fans fail to “get” what the music is really about. Time and again a musician or singer will produce a piece, and have it go out to the world and be a big hit, and then the fans will come back and tell the singer/musician how they love (insert song title here,) and it will quickly become apparent that the fan(s) in question got something totally, absolutely different out of the music/song than the singer/musician intended. Such that many musicians and singers, after awhile, give up trying to “correct” their fans, and just conclude that once the music leaves their hands — and enters the wider world — it assumes a life of its own; independent of anything the producer(s) might think, say, believe or feel.

I think this is often true of fiction too. Each of us brings so much baggage to the table, when we read something. Each of us will pull out different threads and strands from the work — and if we can’t find what we want, we sometimes invent it outright — so that each book or story becomes a kind of customized one-way communication, which the author has almost no control over once his or her work enters the market in published form. People will “get” all kinds of things out of the writing, intended or no, and the artist doesn’t have much say in it, nor is there much point in ‘correcting’ the audience if it seems the audience is determined to perceive something which the writer did not intend.

So why disavow the writing because we don’t like how the writer thinks or feels? Especially on topics unrelated to a given book or story?

I say, if the writing is good, the writing is good. It’s unfortunate when you find out a given writer is a political or ideological muffinhead, but then, the writer in question is liable to think you’re a muffinhead in your own right, so it’s a wash. Just enjoy the work and pursue it on its own — apart from the writer. Anything else seems to smack of demanding sentiment and lockstep where it’s not our business to demand such.

JMHO.

The Maxx: The best MTV show you never heard of

OK, who still remembers Liquid Television? Birthplace of many better-known animated series such as Beavis ‘n Butthead and Æon Flux?

From 1991 to 1994 Liquid Television was MTV’s attempt to tap into the independent animation scene, with a hodge-podge of memorable (and not so memorable) shorts, short series, vignettes, and other usually-animated — or mixed animation and live action — pieces. For my wife and I, Liquid Television is inexorably bound up in our courtship. We can still quote the damned thing all these years later, laughing hysterically over bits of dialogue from Winter Steele and Dog Boy.

As noted, not all of Liquid Television was golden. In fact, a good deal of it was not. But the stuff that was golden — or at least original or otherwise so strange as to be memorable — was quite excellent.

Today, the ghost of Liquid Television lives on, in the form of shows like Robot Chicken and the Nickelodeon Nicktoons Animation Festival.

And, thanks to the success of Liquid TV’s spin-off series, MTV eventually bankrolled a seperate animated production of Sam Keith’s comic book series, The Maxx.

I’m not sure what my wife and I expected when we bought The Maxx on VHS — it’s never been released on DVD, for reasons that boggle me to this day — but we certainly got more than we bargained for.

Ostensibly an anti-Super Hero series about the titular Super Hero, The Maxx is anything but comic. Oh, sure, there are any number of humorous or ironic moments, but The Maxx has far more gravitas than either its packaging or its title gives it credit for. In fact, it’s a rather deep film, which does the delicate trick of being just deep enough to achieve meaning without reaching so deep as to become pretentious or otherwise deep to the point of incoherency.

I won’t spoil the plot. If you can somehow find it on VHS — or YouTube — I highly recommend it. Sam Keith is, of course, well known to those of us who collected comic books in the late 80’s and early 90’s, though I am sad to say Keith’s art and writing has not (yet) attained the kind of national currency I think it deserves. As a series, The Maxx retains all of Keith’s artistic markers, making it a beautiful visual experience, in addition to being intellectually entertaining.

Were it that MTV still gave a damned about doing more experimental production along the same lines as The Maxx. I guess the market was never there? Or maybe the market just grew up and moved on, prior to MTV converting itself into the 24/7 Hip Hop Network.

Some of the more memorable lines from the series:

THE MAXX: Yah got any toast?

MR. GONE: Of course I’ve got a problem with women! Everyone has a problem with women. Women taunt and tease. They are attractive yet the punish you for being attracted.

JULIE: This city’s full of people who are experts at avoiding reality.

Brad R. Torgersen’s Final Word on RaceFail

Hello, RaceFailers.

(reaches hand to chest and silently rubs chevrons)

Get your ass in the front-leaning rest right now.

This will be my final fucking word on this whole RaceFail clusterfuck.

If there is one thing the military does very well, it’s letting you know you are nothing special. You show up at Basic Training and from Hour Zero they drill it into you: you are nothing special, your civilian experiences are nothing special, your personal pains and hurts are nothing special, and any chips you carry on your shoulder are going to be knocked off, smashed to the ground, and stomped flat.

Nobody gets a pass. Not for gender. Not for race. All are expected to perform to standard and meet the grade. Those who can’t or won’t get over themselves and acclimatize to the mission-first mentality, get their asses smoked via corrective PT, or are washed out because the last thing the military needs are a bunch of Special Cases walking around thinking the entire military needs to make an exception for them because they’re Special.

I’ve never seen an organization strip away a person’s pretensions and posturing as quickly or as efficiently as the military. I’ve also never seen an organization more efficiently strip away the onion layers of race. People stop identifying with their skin color or ethnicity, and start identifying with that uniform on their back and the soldiers they bunk with — regardless of what those soldiers look like or where they’re from. Which is probably why virtually any current or prior servicemember can walk up to and shake the hand of any other current or prior servicemember — anywhere in the nation, regardless of race or gender — and there is a bond.

Which is not to say that the military dissolves a person’s personal experiences into nothingness. I’ve not really seen that happen. What the military does do — so far as I am able to discern — is bust it into your head that no matter what you’ve gone through in life, and no matter how badly life has hurt you, you’re still just the same as the soldier — or sailor, or airman, or marine — next to you. You both eat the same chow, wear the same uniform, shit and piss in the same latrine/head, and salute the same flag.

And when it comes right down to it, you both bleed the same color red. Bullets and IED’s don’t give a fuck if you’re black, white, asian, hispanic, etc. Everyone gets killed dead equally.

This has been the message delivered from top to bottom the entire time I’ve been in the service, which is coming up on ten years here pretty quickly. It has been delivered by my NCO’s, the majority of which have been People of Color and/or female. It has been delivered by the officers appointed over us, again the majority of which have been People of Color and/or female. None of us are ever given a free pass for personal pain. But then again, I’ve not met too many servicemembers who expect to be given a pass for personal pain.

Transcending personal pain — getting over yourself — for the sake of the mission, the group, and the goal, is the hallmark of what it is to be a soldier.

So I hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve run out of patience for people who whine. People who think they are Special. People who think they get a free pass because of their pain. People who expect other people to bend over backwards or tie themselves into a knot. There has been an ass-load of that bullshit throughout the entire stupid saga of RaceFail, going back to the beginning of the year.

I’m not much for whining. I’m not much for people wearing their pain on their sleeves and expecting exceptions. That’s just weak. I don’t care who I offend by saying this, that’s just WEAK. You are WEAK for expecting the universe to cater to you and your personal pain. Be it racial or otherwise. That’s not the universe’s job. The universe has better things to do than stop and wait on your navel-gazing ass. Your mission — should you have the intestinal fortitude to accept it — is to suck it up and drive on.

So I guess I’m just a poor backward dinosaur in the midst of all this “progressive” bullshit about unpacking the knapsack and bingo cards and privelege and having to tie myself into a bow tie every time some geeky PoC or a sycophantist ‘ally’ on the InterToob gets his or her undies in a wad — because myself or someone else has failed to do enough genuflecting before the alter of racial pain.

Here’s my “color blind” theory of race:

We all piss yellow, we all shit brown, we all bleed red. From dust we came, and to dust we shall return. Mother Earth doesn’t give a fuck what we looked like or what our special pain was, when we return to her bosom. God won’t give a fuck what we looked like or what our special pain was either, when we stand before Him at Judgement. You’re either standing tall, or you’re not standing at all. Think God will give you a pass and listen to you whine when you try to make excuses for all the shit you’ve done in your life? What about all the shit you didn’t do because you were too busy staring at your own navel and expecting the rest of the human race to do likewise?

We all piss yellow, we all shit brown, we bleed red. f you can’t dig the fundamental truth of that — if you can’t get over yourself long enough to dig it — I don’t even want to speak to or deal with you any more. You are not worth my time. I have nothing to prove to you, and I don’t think anyone else has anything to prove to you either. You are your own problem to solve, not mine. Failure on your part to recognize that fact is also not my problem.

Recover, RaceFailers. Carry on.