A while ago I wrote a little story about those mysterious beings known to the unfortunates who encounter them as bakery elves. This is because I have a friend who has, unwittingly, risen to the bready height of their rank. Since then, I’ve written a couple of sketches about Jester’s adventures as a unproven bakery elf:
More may come if he keeps telling me amusing stories.
Sad news that I should have been clear about sooner: Musa Publishing, the small publisher that took on my steampunk mystery series, is closing down. Which means that my novellas will no longer be available.
The good news is, that’s only for now. I’ve got plans on the horizon for the triumphant return and continuation of Captain Ramos’s adventures, and I will tell you more once I’ve got the details all hammered out.
But for now, you have a few hours left that you can use to grab the Captain Ramos collection for $1.20. If you don’t have chance to do so, well… good things do come to those who wait.
The story so far: Sixteen sadistic jerk-asses banded together and raised $843.39, thus forcing me to see 50 Shades of Grey.
I went on Saturday. I had two beers and three hurricanes in a little over two hours. I am not ashamed to admit that I got really fucked up in a way that had nothing to do with the movie. I also took notes. 14 pages of notes. I am kind stunned by how bad my handwriting gets by the end.
By the way. If you guys want all 14 pages? Pony up another $156.61 to the charities and I will hand over the scans. Want to know what you’re missing? This is page 5. Of 14. (By the way, my housemate claims that she has a video of me drunk calling one of my friends and telling her about the movie. Which goes on for something like 9 minutes. She says you can have it if you hit $1250.) After thinking it over, I decided to scan my notes after all. Enjoy.
I invite you to think about that for a moment and shed a tear for my liver.
Assholes that got thrown out of the Alamo Drafthouse while watching 50 Shades of Grey review by Rachael Acks
I sat in the theater and drank alcohol. There were people talking loudly in the back of the theater, which was very unusual, due to the fact that I was at the Alamo Drafthouse and talking is verboten. But man those plucky patrons! Going on about Dornan’s butt and oh my god the book, and did you see that, and look he has a helicopter oh my god!
I am so glad this table was in the theater, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to follow the extremely complex plot of this geopolitical thrill-ride. I would never have known, for example, that Jamie Dornan has NIPPLES. HE DOES, YOU KNOW. TWO OF THEM. RIGHT THERE. OH MY GOD. His slightly bulging right eye and pained expression invite you to look closer if you dare, but we all know you can’t handle this sort of difficult truth: the nipples are capitalism and the surging buttocks the corporatist state that is the inevitable result of the unfettered free market, which doesn’t give oral. Oral is for closers.
As Christian used one of his approximately six million grey ties (HE LIKES GREY. GREY GREY GREY THERE IS A COLOR THEME YOU POOR FOOLS DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND, GREY LIKE THE MORALITY OF OUR INCREASINGLY COMPROMISED STATE) to tie up Anastasia as a daring commentary about the tangled issues of international trade and the corporate espionage it often encourages, these fine explicators were thrown out of the theater. Realizing that they would be leaving us without their guidance, they threw their drinks glasses on the ground in despair. And apparently at some other customers, but is there anything wrong with wanting to put someone else out of their misery?
“Bitches! Fuckers!” “I can buy this movie! It’s good! FUCKERS!” were the last words of these brave souls as they were herded from the theater by the extremely large and friendly manager. It’s true, you know. We were indeed the fuckers and bitches for being stuck in the movie, now rendered completely incomprehensible without their help.
But! Every cloud has a silver lining. The fine drama of their exit was a damn sight more interesting than watching Anastasia bite her lip while I cringed at the sad mistreatment of an otherwise nice, if boring, tie. And even better, the manager came in at the end of the movie and gave us vouchers that I can spend on something that isn’t 50 Shades of Grey. As much as it tears at my heart to do so, of course. Seeing the movie just wouldn’t be the same without the interpretive commentary running in parallel.
Okay you want the actual review? Fine. See below the fold.
On the way to Dallas for ConDFW, I started reading (listening to, actually) The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The book is a great read if you want a reminder of how we actually shouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised about all the gross shit that went down surrounding our invasion of Iraq (we’ve been training for it since the 60s, really) or that the free market should never be considered a magical unicorn that farts healing rainbows.
But there’s one particular detail in the book that’s sticking with me. One of the first chapters includes quite a bit of information about the CIA’s MKUltra program, including a conversation that Klein had with one of the program’s victims. You’ll note that I’ve just linked to Wikipedia for this, because that’s a decent enough overview. And if you try to just google MKUltra and go past Wikipedia and Rationalwiki, you will find yourself in deep in the bad parts of crazytown with no idea how you got there.
There are a couple reasons this is still niggling at me and sticking with me. First off, MKUltra was a deeply fucked up, horrifying thing. The government of the United States, through the CIA, basically paid scientists to clinically research torture. And Klein does an excellent job connecting the dots of that basic research to a whole load of incredibly awful, inhumane practices that have happened ever since, up to and including the “enhanced interrogation” (translation: torture) of detainees in recent years. And then there’s this asshole, Donald Ewen Cameron, who was the person who perpetrated torture on the woman to whom Klein spoke, including extended sensory deprivation, medically-induced near constant sleep, and electroshock therapy, rendering her incapable of remembering pretty much the first 20 years of her life and putting her in constant pain until this day due to persistent microfracturing in her spine from all of the convulsing she did while being shocked and going through induced insulin seizures.
And then you consider that this man was involved in examining Rudolph Hess during the Nuremberg trials (including testifying that he wasn’t insane) and then somehow went on to torture his patients in an attempt to remove their personalities entirely so he could create better ones for them. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around this particular dichotomy.
These details are all fascinating in a horrifying way.
But then there’s the fact that I actually had heard of MKUltra before. Fairly frequently. It actually gets pop culture shout-outs regularly. The first mention I can recall is in the X-Files, but it regularly gets mentioned with two purposes:
Point number one is kind of hard to avoid when a cursory search yields mostly results that involve pop stars and how their behavior is obviously a sign they’ve had the MKUltra treatment done to them. And that then makes you feel weird about even trying to have a serious conversation about this, because I started talking about creepy CIA shit and spontaneously generated my own aluminum foil hat, stop looking at me like that.
And point number two honestly has the effect of reducing the entire thing to a punchline. Up until I learned more about this particular subparagraph of horror in the 10 volume set of Shitty Things America Did in the Last Century, this treatment of MKUltra had me filing it in the same part of my brain as the Stargate Project and research that I parroted dismissive talk about back years ago when I was a Republican (eg: “They spent a hundred thousand dollars and researching how fruit flies have sex! What a waste!”) and didn’t get that basic research is not only a thing, it’s an important thing. The CIA got people high on LSD, what a waste of money, amirite? Except we’re not talking about giving a bunch of college kids a few tabs of acid just to see what happens; we’re talking about doses of LSD and PCP and weird cocktails of uppers and downers administered with the specific purpose of trying to completely destroy someone’s personality and sense of self.
Which isn’t funny in the slightest.
So this bothers me. It bothers me that I just sort of consumed this bit of pop culture presentation without thinking more critically about it. And it also bothers me that something brutal and fucking horrible that the United States government perpetrated on innocent people—in this case innocent people with psychiatric problems who then had those problems made exponentially worse and in many case ceased to be able to function independently afterwards—is basically a dismissive punchline. And I don’t think it’s even something that’s being done willfully; apparently when the ugly facts of MKUltra came to light, the thing the media latched on to most was the line about LSD. So I’d imagine that it’s something writers remembered hearing about without looking into it more deeply, and used it as a throw-away reference, and then the next generation of writers picked it up and it’s just become a meme.
Kind of like that fucking ‘humans only use 10% of their brain’ bullshit that I wish we could just kill with fire but it’s got a life of its own now too just because it’s been repeated so many times.
This circles back to a weird and uncomfortable place for me, because I’ve gone on record before saying that I don’t think it’s the responsibility of movies/tv/etc to get science right. I’d rather have a good story even if that means bending the rules—though I do also think that it’s goddamn lazy writing when people just can’t be arsed to even check. Particularly when hewing closer to the facts would actually make for a more interesting conceptual framework than the lazy bullshit you pulled out of your ass, which happens often. And I still do hold to my position that if we’re looking to the movies to be educational vehicles, we’re fucked anyway because we’ve failed our schools and therefore the kids in them so badly.
But on the other hand now, this is a place where I got skunked by something that wasn’t quite true and didn’t take it upon myself to look any deeper. Which is mostly on me, but also feels like a failure of writing. It does show the power of pop culture to shape perception in very subtle ways, and makes me wonder what else I’m missing the gross (perhaps literally) detail on because it just doesn’t even seem that important when it comes up.
And it also does feel like an educational failure. Not that I think all children should have to specifically learn about MKULtra and Donald Ewen Cameron (gosh, want to make sure kids will never want to trust a psychologist again ever?), but this is one more little, tinkling horror in the giant black bag full of pustule-laden zombie demon clowns that is modern American history. I don’t know how it is currently, but we spent plenty of time learning how shitty the US government was to the Native Americans (very important) and then sort of… glossed over the rest with a sense of well yes, the civil rights movement happened and now black people can vote and isn’t that awesome, and there was the Cold War and things got a bit grim and the Cuban Missile Crisis wasn’t really a thing to be proud of but it’s all better now, right? Go America!
When in fact, the more I learn about recent history the more I’m horribly, horribly unsurprised about everything that’s gone down since 2001.
I don’t really have a good answer for any of this. I’m still thinking it through. I mostly just want to register how very disturbed I feel about… everything, right now. If nothing else, this is a harsh reminder about the importance of not only what you say, but how you say it. And at the least I’m going to try to take this as a lesson to be more mindful about knowledge I’ve picked up as a meme rather than via research, and just take the time to at least use the damn Google. For all that we have so much knowledge at our fingertips, it’s still frighteningly easy for something to get distorted so out of shape that it doesn’t even seem like it’s worth a second look.
Well, it happened. With just over five days to spare, you motherfuckers did it. I’m going to have to watch 50 Shades of Shitty Writing, and then tell you all about it. 12 people from three different countries, united in their hatred of both me and domestic abuse, have donated a combined $753.39 to anti-domestic violence charities.
So fine. You did your part. I’ll do mine. I will see this abortion of a movie by February 21st. Probably on the 21st, because I seriously do not want to get as fucking wasted as I’ll need to be in order to survive on a work night. That’s just a recipe for disaster.
Of course, you realize that your job isn’t done yet. Talk to your friends. Talk to your enemies. Talk to your local chapter of the Illuminati. Let’s see another $250 on the table to help the victims of domestic violence. Because I’m going to take notes in this movie. I always take notes. And they will be handwritten, drunken, angry, bewildered, and no doubt increasingly poorly spelled as my blood alcohol level steadily climbs. Kind of like my Transformers 4 notes. But. You know. The knob of agony goes to 11.
$250 more. You can do it. Hey, and if you get even more than that I’ll… shit, I don’t know. Wear a suit or something.
We finished the filming on Tea about four hours ago! The vodka has been drunk, goodbyes have been said, and here is the complete production diary.
I just had a seventh person ask me if I’m going to see Fifty Shades of Grey and rant about it like I did with the quasi-porn of a different sort, Transformers 4.
The short answer is: Fuck you.
The long answer is: No really. Fuck you. And you. And especially you. I’d rather watch a 48 hour loop of Age of Extinction with my eyes pinned open like I’m the fucking vic on some episode of Criminal Minds without the benefit of a single milliliter of alcohol in my system. This goddamn movie is going to make Michael Bay look like he’s fucking Gloria Steinem in comparison. Okay?
So this is how it is. $400 to charity got me to watch a movie so fucking awful that I was drunk before it was halfway through it and writing pitiful notes to my waitress. You want me to watch a gross quasi-porn movie with unsafe “bondage” and an abusive relationship that I’m supposed to believe is somehow romantic that’s going to have me chewing on my own seat because it makes me so goddamn angry? A movie that will probably make me bust an aneurysm in self defense so I can leave via ambulance before the opening credits finish? Pony up the fucking dough. That’s what it’s going to take. Put your money where your inarguable sadism is.
Okay, okay, I will be seeing Fifty Shades of Fuck My Life Grey on February 21 or 22 thanks to the sadistic monsters listed below. But this is no excuse to stop giving. Here are some bonus reasons why you should keep donating to anti-domestic violence charities:
So that’s what it takes. Start giving. It’s honor system, so communicate with me via social media, email, or dropping a comment here and I will add you to the total. (If you would prefer to remain anonymous, just say the word.)
Charities I will accept for this round of suffering:
Notice a pattern here yet? I don’t know, assholes, there is just something about this fucking movie that really makes me want to see money get given to charities that help the victims of domestic violence. I wonder why that could be. But you know what? Any charity that serves victims of domestic violence is okay. Please provide links if you have a favorite and I will add it to the list.
Though my standard go-to charities are also okay:
I HATE EVERYTHING. FINE. I’M GOING. BUT YOU DON’T GET MY NOTES.
These people hate me and think my pain is funny and also hate domestic abuse so I guess they’re okay:
I am the fuck in the UK, near Maidstone to be more exact. Want to know what I’m doing? Read more about day one here!
Blackhat is a spy-fi movie about good hackers trying to stop bad hackers from doing nasty things to manipulate the stock market. It also involves a not inconsiderable amount of shooting and blowing things up, and eventually death via screw driver. Like most spy-fi/thriller movies, the actual details of the plot are perhaps needlessly convoluted, but things make enough sense as you are conveyed from point A to B to C that even if you can’t make sense of it a few hours later, at the time it’s not a bad ride.
To a certain extent, this movie appealed to me by just making some unexpected story and casting decisions that were entirely too charming. Of the four main characters in the movie? Nick Hathaway, played by an only muscular rather than positively Asgardian Chris Hemsworth, is the only white guy. Of the other three, we have FBI Agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis), and Chinese super computer nerd siblings Chen Dawai and Chen Lien (Leehom Wang and Wei Tang respectively). The opening conceit of the film is the Chinese and Americans teaming up to stop an evil hacker, with the Chinese siblings acting as the real heart of the team instead of it all orbiting Chris Hemsworth’s muscular mass. That was definitely an unexpected turn, since the first few minutes of the movie were shot more like the Chinese might be the villains. When Nick and Lien end up sleeping together (because of course they do) Dawai doesn’t act like a macho shithead, but rather has a reasonable and adult conversation with Nick about his concerns in regards to the fact that if their mission fails, Nick goes back to prison and that would kind of suck for Lien–all without demanding dramatically that the two break up. The hackers work with command lines rather than ridiculous, fancy GUIs, and much of what they do is accomplished by just being clever bastards rather than brute forcing things. (Eg: At one point Nick gets a password by tricking someone into changing their password and using a keylogger.)
Leehom Wang and Viola Davis were the standouts of the cast; it’s refreshing to see Davis in such a different role for her and she plays it well. (Favorite line of the movie is when she looks disbelieving at Nick’s attempt to be cool and says, exasperaed, “Chica? Do I look hispanic to you?”)
All of that? Exceedingly charming. It’s those unexpected factors that made me willing to forgive a lot of the weaknesses, and are what stand out in my mind even now when, over a week later, I couldn’t tell you what the hell most of the plot actually involved, other than noting that the romance between Nick and Lien comes out of the blue and makes about as much sense as some of the more tortured jargon. That’s perhaps the biggest problem, is that the plot has only one twist startling enough to stand out, while the rest is a little too caught up in spy novel intricacy without having quite as much driving tension as less arcane spy movies. While it’s refreshing to hit several points in a movie where you go Oh, that’s not what I expected, I can’t help but think the best definition for a movie is being able to tell you what it is as opposed to what it isn’t and then the rest being fairly unmemorable. But fun, worth watching, and and I think worth watching again to see if more of the plot sticks this time.
The fights (with a bit too much steadicam for my tastes, rendering them almost incoherent as those in the Bourne Supremacy) are short, indelicate, and brutal, which is something I’ve come to appreciate in movies that are trying to be a bit more gritty and realistic. That’s the tone the movie goes for, gritty and dark and more than a bit brooding at times, though the use of the various cities and the urban color scheme are gorgeous. More of those and less of the Tron-esque watching light track through circuit boards, which was baffling as to what it really meant to add. As for the hacking? I don’t know enough about computers any more to actually say how silly it was. But I think the most unrealistic part of the entire movie was actually a man inserting a USB drive into his computer on the first try.
Remember that silly story I wrote a year ago, about math and waffles and an alien invasion, only it’s really about choosing your family and loving people for who they are? (And waffles.) It’s back! BuzzyMag has reprinted it and given it oh gosh, the cutest little illustration ever.
So go read it! And eat waffles! Raise a toast to the Blender, may he rest in peace.
Oh and by the way, don’t forget I wrote a bunch of stuff last year that’s eligible for awards!