Here’s a feller who invokes Pixar and Hugh Howey to let you know:
Your New Self Is So Immense It Could Not Fit Onto Your Screen.
As a passionate advocate of growth, I’m always looking for ways to self-improve. Here are some of my best tips which may help your personal journey. Some of them are simple steps which you can engage in immediately. Some steps are more ambitous, yet more rewarding.
1. Read A Book Every Day.
It’s good for your mind and expands your world.
2. Swab The Inside Of Your Mouth For DNA.
Oral hygnene is key to good health.
3. Learn A New Language.
New languages give you fresh perspectives.
4. Clone Your Flesh.
For the highest quality organs, skin grafts, and for posterity.
5. Learn Computational Bioengineering.
To open up your potential in a growing job market.
6. Optimize Your Genomes.
Use CRISPR to remove genes getting of the way of your higher self.
7. Build Your Bio-Synthoid Army.
You know how your thoughts affect your behavior, which affects others and their behavior? Be more proactive. Have your thoughts affect the behavior of your own mutant army of Daleks. Watch how the army affects your world’s behavior and eventually what the world thinks of you.
Dan Brown is paying to have one-of-a-kind esoteric volumes digitized for the internet. Click the picture to learn more. Prompt: What the hell is the green crap these guys are eating? Why?
Wonder what the Koran really says? Wonder about Jainism, Sikhism, Discordianism, Swedenborgism, or the SubGenius Manifesto? Try Sacred-Texts.com. Click the guy giving the moon to the sun. Prompt: Now that he can see beyond, what will this lad do? Why?
This blue hurts to look at. Friggin’ blue powder, just sitting there being smug. Scientists found this pigment by accident. Prompt: Did it want to be found? What will it do now that it’s going to be used by art school students?
Click this painful bastard and learn what science meddled with this time.
Oh Lord, are You there? My soul thirsts for You. Could You give me a Double-Gulp helping of You?
I yearn for a sf movie without “Star” in the title. I yearn for something that JJ Abrams hasn’t tainted with his signature TV cinematography and Slusho world-building. I yearn for Damon Lindoff to live a productive and happy life without the ability to write.
Some movie worthy of a franchise that isn’t already populated with 70 year olds from other franchises. A movie without The Wilhelm Scream. A movie that wasn’t produced simultaneously with three of its sequels. A movie smart enough to have its own language and culture, yet still smart enough to not hide its MacGuffin behind the name “Unobtanium” and keep its villains out of military uniforms and business suits, just once.
Something that doesn’t happen in a high school either midwestern or Asian.
I so thirts for a horror movie without a death in a car where an arm punches through the driver’s chest. Without someone crawling on the ceiling. Without a garish, flat spiritworld where everyone just smiles creepy or sings songs in public domain. Without the Christian being a hypocrite or worse. Without an explanation of why the monster came to be. Without being a disappointing remake.
Without lush childrens’ storybook styling to remind us this is a Metaphor.
People know when a movie is going to suck. They go anyway to be part of the event and be able to discuss the merits of the movie. Even M. Night Shamalan has had little effect.
Could we have a spec-fic show that’s brightly lit? In a nice, clean world? An original world without characters from story books?
Can we have real teenagers who act and speak like real teenagers? Who have sharp-eyed, meddling, loving adults involved in their lives? Can we have actual old people?
We spend our lives making money. We give this money to movies and books and TV. The art is consumimg our lives, yet is made of parts long dead. Now not only is it a zombie (slow moving), it’s and being further shaved of its face and features so it can shamble into China and digest the Chinese.
I can’t be the only one who feels this way, Lord of Hosts, Host of All Media.
And get people to turn off their tablets in theaters, too.
Amen.
I’ve just worked up the nerve to express something that’s been boiling.
I believed the trophy needed to be changed decades ago. Why?
Four reasons.
1. My reaction on seeing it as a teenager: “This is the goddamn ugliest award.” It is as hideous a piece of ’70’s kitsch that ever graced a flea market discount bin. How stoned was the awards committee when they approved it? Don’t care that Gahan Wilson was the designer. It looks like strangulation sprayed with chrome paint.
2. No one person should be identified with an abstract. “J.C. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of Fantasy”? Sure, that’s specific. No problem. The World Fantasy Award is supposed to reflect All Of Fantasy in the Entire World. What face could possibly mean that to even a majority of people? Tolkien? Even if we put J.R.R. Tolkien’s head on the award, it makes the award too European for the “Entire World” award. The Stoker Award is a spooky tomb-house. The Nebula is a beautiful lucite nebula. The Hugo is a plastic bullet-shaped rocket. Make WFA award a big dragon or sword.
3. Lovecraft had only a marginal effect on fantasy, because he was a horror writer.
4. Look at it. It is the ugliest damn thing I’ve ever seen, much less wanted to win.
Some want to replace Lovecraft with Octavia Butler’s head. Do not do this! How badly will that sculpture be botched? What conversation will will be huffing over fifty years from now due to either Butler’s shortcomings or the change in values?
If people could perceive their situation without bias or prejudice, there would be very little drama. There would also be no horror.
“By gosh Sheriff Brody, all evidence points at an enormous shark! The short term financial benefit is outweighed by the risk of life and Amity’s reputation. As mayor, I close the beaches!”
“Say little brother, have we even seen a picture of our grandparents? Aren’t we making assumptions going along with these weird old coots?”
“Living on the sidewalk is probably better than staying in a brownstone that may be the gate to Hell. Just thinkin’ out loud.”
I did not make and take no credit for this chart. I found it on Mental Floss. Have a listen to their podcast “You Are Not So Smart.”
I’ve mentioned Unreality Mag before. Here is an older article I came across with advice on giving your characters to a nice farm family where they have lots of room to run and have other characters to play with.
Can you imagine if Martin did that on Game of Thrones? “Joffrey’s got his own yard by a lake where he can chase rabbits and geese and romp with other Grimdark psychopath royalty.”