What on Earth Have I Been Up To?

This is one, first and foremost, for the folks who’ve known me around the traps for much of the last decade of on-off blogging. They know who they are.

Backstory in brief

Five years ago, I got it into my head that I’d have a go at writing a work of non-fiction. This is a project I’ve mothballed indefinitely. Early on, it became apparent that in order to write effectively, and produce a piece of work I could actually be happy putting my name to, I’d have to get things right in my headspace. I didn’t anticipate just how much work that’d entail, or how much recovery was actually possible.

The past couple of days, a few supplementary frustrations not withstanding, I’ve felt great. I popped on an album from back in the days before depression bore down on me (George Harrison’s Cloud Nine) – only to experience sensations I haven’t been able to feel in decades. No sugary twee for me, mind you. It was bittersweet, albeit with a healthy absence of teen self-pity.

This isn’t about that though.

Nor is it about the resolution of a years of tension arising from the community most central to my sidelined non-fiction project. Four years ago, I’d grown tired of a number of atheist personalities, for reasons varying from individual to individual. Anticipating disputes falling along certain lines has been tiresome, but they’ve finally all erupted, and largely as expected. Nothing’s fallen on me though, so I don’t get to commiserate. I am though, oddly enough, more willing to engage now, no longer having to give the benefit of the doubt to anyone, said doubts either evaporating, or rendered irrelevant through the collapse of provisional arrangements. Presently, I’ve got nothing hanging on the word of people I can’t trust implicitly.

But again, this is not about that. I’m not returning to the non-fiction project quite yet.

The Project

What I have been doing is writing a piece of fiction. So far I’ve found it to be fun, and to be honest, somewhat easy. While I’ll doubtlessly make several future revisions and edits, I’m at least not left shaking my head re-reading my prose. There’s satisfaction to be had here.

While genre snobbery doesn’t appeal to me, neither does restriction to a genre niche, and not for the clichéd objections concerning “pigeonholing”. If, given the chance, other folks end up wanting to pigeonhole my current project, then fine. It’s just that I don’t conceptualise it that way.

What is this project?

For pigeon-holers, it’d be hard science fiction. For me, it’s a bit broader and blurred at the edges. For the blunt, it’s A Book.

I abhor the tropes of pop-sci-fi, largely because I loathe tropes in general, but also because the often seem lazy and/or dull above and beyond the hackneyed conventions of other genres; Space lasers! Space princesses (to be rescued)! Space calendars and space dates that uniformly adhered to by inter-stellar civilisations; faster-than-light travel allowing for interstellar soap opera, rather than faster-than-light leaving the protagonist alienated from, and out-of-time with, planetary surface dwellers; political jurisdictions that span multiple star systems, despite not being enforceable at such distances and time frames; harsh existential realities of the void, circumvented much the same way that special effects often negate the silence of space.

First thoughts on reading this may leave folks thinking along the lines of Stephen Baxter or Larry Niven, and I’d be lying if I said there was no influence there. Certainly, both authors have a penchant for oblivion that I appreciate.

Still, both can get a little more apocalyptic than what I have in mind. While the heat death of the universe, or alien life on the surface of a neutron star may provide imaginative and extreme perspectives, I want to keep the extreme beyond reach, while exploring and accentuating the relatively untapped absurdity of the near-universe. Camus used the conflict between human values and an uncaring but Earthly universe for his source of absurdity. I want to get away from Earth, to where nature is inimical to humanity, but not yet to all matter. My scope for absurdity then, is somewhere between Camus and Baxter.

What to do with the extremities of deep time and space then? These things not being directly accessible by humans, positions them as entirely alien, and I do want to employ a Lovecraftian fear of the unknown. This will be alluded to – inferred by the story logic, and occasionally hinted at implicitly. The project will have something of the Weird Fiction about it, although I hope to avoid what I consider the overwrought and contrived history of the Lovecraftian mythos.

In the story logic, the deeply alien may have visited Earth, but it didn’t put life-forms here, alter the history of evolution, insert genetic material into the germlines, build cities or pyramids, or live on the planet. There certainly won’t be a history of multiple visitations by every Tom, Dick and Cthulhu. For the most part, aside from a few key indirect interactions, the deeply alien will be poorly interacting with humanity. It may very well be in-frame at any given point, but unless explicitly stated, the reader likely won’t know it without my notes. The scope of experience of humans, and that of aliens persisting through geological time, are just too far divorced from one another for mutual recognition to come naturally. Think of the microbe that crawls across your face – how aware of each other could you possibly be?

I have a fondness for Michael Moorcock’s work, although without going as far as dismissing his material from my influences as too pulpy – if only I could churn out books the way he has – his characters are hyperbolised further than I’d want to go myself. I want a tad more realism, while maintaining the convention-breaking with regards to types. Looking to Vonnegut for clues in this respect may turn out to be productive. I will say this of Moorcock’s work though – the alien morality of his more far-flung representations of humanity sometimes come across as more plausible than many realist depictions of futuristic morality (compare the antics surrounding Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius to that of the inhabitants of Star Trek’s Risa colony, the latter coming across as entirely affected).

On a brief note, there’s a necessity for looking into cyberpunk given some of the technological themes I’ll be touching on, which for the most part for me so far, has been an exercise in risking re-inventing the wheel. On the one hand The Project has AIs, sentience and mind-body issues, while on the other I have a heaping of Gödel, Escher, Bach. I’m not sure I’ll look to Turing. I’m not overly aware of the ins-and-outs of cyberpunk, and I’m not actually sure this isn’t a good thing, but I’ll need to check, not too soon so as to potentially extinguish my imagination, but eventually, in order to compare notes.

As for my protagonist; she’s a supporting protagonist; an “audience surrogate” to some extent, but not so far as to “hold test tubes” and tell a main character “how brilliant he is”. The character she’ll be interacting with the most, will almost serve as a false protagonist, although I certainly won’t be bumping him off. While identifying to some extent as human, my near-false protagonist will become increasingly alien over time, in the sense that he’ll become less relatable to (although not in the sense of The Fly, or any other b-movie transformation). This, I hope, will have the effect of rendering my protagonist as both more central and crucial for the reader.

The near-false-protagonist is a character I don’t want to fall into the trap of fetishizing. While not a hero like The Doctor of Doctor Who fame, I think The Doctor has been fetishized far too much by Stephen Moffat, to the extent that the character’s quirkiness has been repeatedly regurgitated as trope at the expense of the development of other characters. I mean, that fucking guitar in the last season – why? – so the audience can gawp at the same joke yet again? The point of The Doctor is to be a vehicle for the audience surrogate – the means by which they, and hence the audience, are drawn towards the conflict in the narrative. We aren’t supposed to worry about the Doctor’s midlife or existential crises, so much as we should worry about the companion’s anxieties about the Doctor’s inner workings, the tensions brought about by space-time travel, and where this is ultimately leading them. This keeps The Doctor alien, and the conflict relatable. Or at least, this is my opinion. It’s Moffat’s show (for the time being).

In my own meagre project, I’m intent on not repeating what I consider a mistake.

I could say more, such as on the topic of identity labels and neologisms centuries into the future, my exclusively male list of author citations in this post, about my use of the Scrivener software, or any number of other things, but I’ll save these all for other times. It’s time for me to get back to the coalface.

~ Bruce

Welcome to The Abyss

Here’s a bind. It looks like I have to actually publish a post before all of the design elements on this blog are visible. That changes the order of things somewhat, and “Hello World” isn’t my idea of a good start.

Still, I figure that I don’t want a proper launch, and despite how unprofessional it may look, I’m going to start writing here before everything’s up and running. I doubt anyone will notice. Not anyone who’ll be bothered at any rate.

Welcome to Circling The Abyss, successor to Rousing Departures, and a couple of other blogs I don’t talk about much. I gather it’ll just be some of the old crowd who’ll see this, so hello to them, and hello to anyone else dragged into orbit.

When things get up and more properly running, which shouldn’t take longer than a couple of months, I’ll be writing a lot more than I did on my last blog. There are reasons for that, and I’ll write about them, however I plan to focus on matters more distant from my piddling existential crises than I have over the past few years.

Slow progress, rest, reflection and even abstinence have all played an important role in my writing and health, but their importance has waned. What is needed now is more writing.

I’ll be seeing you around.

~ Bruce

…and out the other side.

Anyone reading this who is sufficiently familiar with my prior blog of unfortunately aggrandizing name (and the one before that), knows that some time back, I experienced a gradual deterioration of my health, resulting in amongst other things, a loss of mobility. I’ve long since mothballed that blog, and the thousand-odd posts it contained, and have maintained a low profile ever since.

The intent was to get myself ready for writing, only as is often the case, a few things happened on the way.

I had envisaged it simply being a case of getting a better chair, tidying up the study and getting a little more walking in. What happened in the first instance, amongst other things, was that I wound up on prescription medication that gave me insomnia for well over a year.

And then there were a hundred and one other things that either frustrated my writing, detracted from my reasons to write, or actively contributed to my depression over the period. Having the ABC’s Religion and Ethics portal’s Twitter account suggest that I hadn’t read a report that I was quite capable of going into technical detail about; fall-outs with intellectually dishonest journos; bad behaviour in the wake of “ElevatorGate”; vexatious legal threats from man-babies; spittle in the face from authors with obvious anger management/alcohol problems; the company of vain, self-absorbed, pseudo-activist poets; people in organised atheism/secularism/Humanism proving my worst suspicions true, despite my granting of the benefit of the doubt; the list extends further before exhaustion.

My only consolations in this are that these have all been a learning experiences, and that nobody gets to tell me “I told you so”; the warnings, where they existed, got all of the details wrong.

So here I am, coming out the other side. Getting healthier.

I’ve dropped thirty five kilos, and am back to packing on muscle. I move faster. I’m lighter on my feet. I’m more energetic. I can feel myself moving towards a place where deadlines are more easily met.

I’m also less inclined to take people’s shit. Far less inclined. I’m less inclined to give too much time by responding, although if I do respond, I’m sure I can do it with greater brevity than before. The fog is lifting.

You know what? All of this was necessary in moving towards becoming a writer. All of it.

I couldn’t have got through to publishing something worthwhile without tackling my health, and subsequently indulging in this horrid auto-biographical focus. As much as I hate it, if neglected, this self-focus would have manifested passively elsewhere in my writing to my writing’s detriment. And this is to say nothing of how my depression would have directly tainted my reasoning and prose.

I’m not done with it quite yet, but the end is coming; an end to this horrid therapy-by-journal-writing.

My emotional palette is expanding. I parse connotation better, and choose my words and tone more quickly. This degree of control simply wasn’t possible for me in 2012, and no amount of writing classes would have helped. The problem was pathological.

So coming out the other side off all this, I’ve immediately been repeatedly hit from various angles, by the same challenge; apparently I’m a do-nothing.

Even as recently as two years ago, I would have fulminated, wondering what could possibly be the motive behind this accusatory behaviour above and beyond my challenger’s ignorance (because there is more to it than ignorance). I would have second-guessed myself, and then scrutinised these doubts for further bias.

Now, beyond a short joke, which I’ll have if I want, I have to confess my caring isn’t much of a factor.

Look, I know I’ve mothballed the vast majority of my decade of blogging, and the institutional memory of most of my past attempts at making the world a better place, at least formally, is erased. Informally though, a number of people remember me, and still value my input, so while more recent allies may not value or recognise my contributions, it’s not something I’m particularly inclined to worry about.

I’m not washed up yet. Not nearly.

If a couple of people want to defensively dismiss me on the basis of my inactivity, especially when they know I’ve been sick almost as long as they’ve been on the scene, and when they know I’ve been incredibly busy, it’s no big deal. The only thing they’ll achieve is a loss of my patience and charity.

And that’s the rub, if there is one; I’ve seen potential in these people, despite the invisibility of their achievements, and I’ve humoured them. I’ve given moral support and gentle criticism, where others have offered abuse and the outpourings of metastasized egos. This has taken emotional energy I could have spent on getting better.

Yet despite the increased emotional acuity I’m experiencing, the prospect of writing these people’s behaviour off fills me with… nothing. Sunk cost? Who cares? Move on.

I guess that’s as big of a “go fuck yourself” as I can bother to muster. My orbit takes me out of here. I’m done.

Other things await. I have plans.

~ Bruce

“Useless”

When, as a boy living in my redneck part of rural Australia, I’d stuff up some task allocated by my late father, there’d be a reasonable chance of my being labelled “useless”. While I’m quite thoroughly uninterested in one of those “must have made you feel” discussions, what with all the confected reciprocity and bogus empathy that such exchanges entail, there are still things that can be said of the insult in question.

It – “useless” – is intended as an insult, but I’m afraid I can’t receive it as such. I’m quite happy to be useless. Consider the corollary of taking “useless” as an insult; receiving “useful” as a compliment.

To be “useful” is to count yourself a tool among tools. It’s to position yourself alongside instrumental luminaries such as pencils, auto-rewind and Preparation H. It’s not for no reason that “useful”, as applied to people, has negative connotations in politics.

I’d encourage anyone else who’s been called “useless” to give this some consideration. Unwittingly, you’re being paid a compliment akin to “not a Muppet”.

It’d be far better to be considered, in lieu of being “useful”, as “cooperative with qualifications”. At least this way you’d have some of your agency acknowledged in the mix. And I certainly don’t enjoy the prospect that my “usefulness”, should it ever present itself, may one day entail someone else being fucked over – avoiding this would be one of the qualifications for my cooperation.

Admittedly my concerns don’t condense down well to a single adjective, and I’m not in a mood for coining neologisms, so I think I’ll just happily settle for “useless” and let the connotations land where they will.

~ Bruce

Mutation of concept

Concept: “You shouldn’t vilify people for being overweight, and should be wary of making assumptions as to why they are overweight or why it’s even any of your business. You don’t know how they got that way. You don’t know what it’s like for them – maybe they really are happy and healthy. What’s probably certain is that if their welfare is dependent on losing weight, your being a jerk about it isn’t going to help one dot. You shouldn’t fat shame people.”

Mutation: “Implicit in your gym membership is a judgement upon overweight people! You may be reducing your experience of pain, and making yourself happier, but you are doing so at my expense! Stop fat shaming me with your exercising, or at least have the good sense to be silent and out-of-sight about it!”

Concept: “You can’t expect people arguing from a position of disadvantage, in a discussion of said disadvantage, to adhere to lists of arbitrarily acceptable decorum, especially not when the list explicitly and prejudicially excludes mention of some of the very concepts they need to express.”

Mutation: “YOU MUST LET PEOPLE FROM A POSITION OF DISADVANTAGE ABUSE AND THREATEN YOU OTHERWISE YOU ARE BEING AN EXCLUSIONARY SHITLORD!!1! DO NOT ERASE THEIR ANGER!”

Concept: “For too long, people in positions of relative power have defined the language of political discussion, such that their biases have become entrenched and covertly assumed in a way that prejudices the interests of various groups of disadvantaged people. These prejudicial assumptions need to be teased out and criticised, and often this will entail deliberately making space for members of disadvantaged groups.”

Mutation: “I identify as more disadvantaged than you, so I am interjecting to inform you that I am now editor of your blog. YOU DON’T GET TO PUBLISH DISAGREEMENT YOU ENTITLED ASSHOLE! HOW DARE YOU!111”

Concept: “Disadvantaged folk, like everyone else, have finite time in which to enjoy their lives and/or earn a living. When you intrude upon their lives to demand explanations about their lived experiences, they get to expect to either be paid, or left alone. You may be entitled to a free education, but they’re not obliged to provide it and certainly not on-demand in their own personal space!”

Mutation: “I self-identify as disadvantaged! I get to interject into your conversations and personal space, dictating facts, values and arguments at whim. And no, I do not have to give explanations! YOU AREN’T PAYING ME FOR EXPLANATIONS OF MY INTRUSIVE IDEATING!”

Concept: “People from various disadvantaged backgrounds are often vulnerable to forms of harm particular to, or prevalent among those backgrounds. This harm is often done to them by members of other groups. Often the only immediately available evidence of such harm presents itself in the form of personal anecdote, which may, due to a difference in backgrounds, be difficult for outsiders to understand. Because the consequences of disbelief or hyper-skepticism are so potentially dangerous in many of these situations (when compared to the risks of false positives), in matters of decision making it is usually right to provisionally assume that such personal accounts of harm are truthful until shown to be false. This isn’t even controversial. This is how competent medical practitioners deal with reported suicidal thoughts.”

Mutation: “I am from a disadvantaged group. You don’t even doubt that I am. Therefore you must, regardless of your own disadvantage, or your own personal interest, and irrespective of how hotly debated it may be in academic circles, assume as true a priori – not just provisionally – the morsel of theory that I am dictating. You will not ask questions. If you do not comply then you are harming me, and are comparable in some sense to people who want to kill me. [Insert dehumanizing expression of violent, necrophilic fantasy against the “offender”.]”

Concept: “Social movements attract predators. Communities and cliques attract predators. These predators don’t have to be murderers, rapists or even criminal in their behaviour – just opportunistic and self-centred. They don’t have to be motivated by money – ego or sadism can be enough. No community is immune, and no set of rules or concepts are magically protected from being misappropriated or exploited to any number of ends.”

Mutation: “NU’UH! Not us!”

***

Call me naive elitist, call me shitlord, call me Ray, I just can’t help but think that certain concepts could be rolled out better in practice if people were allowed to mull them over without being brow-beaten into compliance. Any half-decent teacher knows this is a better arrangement for learning in, and anyone who’s seriously and successfully tackled cults, knows how such approaches are preventative of a whole world of hurt.

Relatedly, I’m left wondering who ultimately, if anyone, has their interests served by such conceptual mutations.

~ Bruce

Vanity and difference…

If I’ve learned anything over the past week, it’s that no matter how genuinely respectful your tone, no matter how much practice you’ve put into avoiding becoming a didactic ass, no matter how much you yourself may be a stakeholder, no matter how much the extent of your empathy, no matter how much you’ve read on the topic, no matter how much charity of interpretation you’ve already extended to parties who’ve otherwise been denied it, no matter how many times you’ve kept quiet so someone else could have their say, and no matter how much good faith has been invested in your inquiry, some people are always going to regard the fact of your opinion differing, or you’re coming at a question from an unfamiliar angle, as condescending. For some people, anything less than silence or uncritical agreement is going to be treated as condescension, not because it’s actually condescending, or politically suspect, but because you’re dealing with narcissists and their enablers, and your differing assumptions, no matter how tentatively stated, and no matter how small the difference, are in disharmony with their particular articulation of a set of protected beliefs – their brand.

Egos get conflated with causes. Cronies get conflated with activists and allies.

People forget that the specifics of their protected beliefs are works in progress – works often by other, un-cited people – and that these protected beliefs only came about in the first place because people were afforded the (often rare) opportunity to criticize and disagree. And still, there was always the opportunity of a greater authority figure taking that opportunity away, while the lesser, often self-appointed authorities engaged in smears and shaming.

If you’ve given one of the latter-day versions of these authority figures a narcissistic injury, good grief you’re going to pay for it. Or at least, that’s the commitment some people will adopt, albeit behind a tissue-thin veneer of denial.

~ Bruce

Still depressed…

… but still chugging along.

Yes, haven’t I been neglectful with the blogging?

Have I taken leave of my senses, stripped naked and run off into the forest, moss growing in my crevices? No, not exactly.

I’m still depressed. That’s not changing. It’s a life-long vocation.

But I’m not about to start chittering with the squirrels either. Not unless someone posts a picture of them to my Facebook wall, in which case I’ll probably gawp and mew, rather than chitter.

People do worry when you remain submerged beneath everyone’s social strata for long periods. But honestly, it’s all cool. Yes, you; I have noticed. Thanks for caring. Now please stop fretting.

No. I haven’t had a social life off somewhere else. Yes. I have been busy. Productive even.

Only, I’m hammering the fuck out of myself of late. My daily caloric intake is hovering around the 1600 mark, and I’ve been a little bit of a fiend at the gym. Relatively speaking that is… I’ve trained harder before, when somewhat younger… specifically at age 29.

Okay… so I’ve hit 40 recently. I guess 11 years is more than “somewhat”.

Still. The weights I’m lifting are going up despite the caloric restriction, and I’ve lost 10k of flubber over the past 4 weeks.

The connective tissue pain of the past 8 years has been reduced to a bare minimum. I haven’t had this kind of mobility since… my 20s…

My 20s… gawd. My first blog post, a few platforms back and nearly ten years ago, was published just a few weeks after the last day of my 20s. And even then before poor health set in, I was somewhat fresh for my age.

I had youth when I started blogging. And more hair on top of my head.

I also had depression, as always, and it was far more poorly managed than now. I’m not inclined towards nostalgia about that.

Right now I weigh as much as I did when I was 25, although that’s no great feat given that I was fitter at 29. My aim is to get down to something approximating my body composition of twenty years ago – perhaps with a little more muscle (for physical comfort and strength, not vanity).

If… If I can maintain the amount of progress I’ve made so far, this goal is conceivably doable by winter’s end. I’d certainly be placed in close striking distance at least.

But this means putting my head down, and continuing to hammer away in the small hours at gym… on a low energy diet… which doesn’t leave me with much time or inclination left for socialising, or for writing.

It’s a fight. And I can justify neglecting my writing for the time being, the possibilities for improving my heath being what they are. Indeed, it’s been my health holding my writing back for some time now, albeit up until more recent years, mostly in terms of the quality of what I churn out.

Exercise is good for depression as well, of course. There’s that.

I am taking care of myself, actually. Thanks for checking. Although I’ll lurk at the surface here for a little while before submerging again. I have a likely spoken word engagement in the near future, I’ve a large, deeply personal post in draft form I’m umming and ahhing about publishing, and my tenth anniversary of blogging is on Monday.

Now if it’s all the same, I think I’ll grab a little shut eye.

Oh, and hello again! And goodnight!

~ Bruce

Just a thought…

It strikes me that in going to great lengths to sharpen your wit, you risk something akin to symptoms of obsessive pencil sharpening.

Sure, for a while you’ll be able to deliver sharp jabs, frequently and with consistency. But before too long, you’ll find yourself fumbling with words, struggling to create anything worth serious reading, the heft of your word-smithing atrophied through neglect.

~ Bruce

His Vital Fluids

James fumbled at the lid of his bottle of herbal remedy; a circle of plastic that clung to the glass like a noose. He didn’t approve of plastic, nor anything the magazines claimed leeched environmental estrogens, but all the same he reasoned, the tribulus should more than compensate for any contamination.

Gums ached and guilt welled, the notion appearing in his mind that he’d be a little less manly as he bit at the lid, estrogens squeezing from the plastic into his saliva and whatnot. He’d not be doing this if his partner hadn’t poisoned the tribulus on the front lawn with glyphosate – a twin sin that disposed of herbal medicine and boosted Monsanto in one fell swoop.

‘The kids get the seeds stuck in their feet, and I’ve had to fix the tyres on my bike three times in the last month!’, echoed the rationalisations of the other half.

Tablets finally freed, he almost poured generic tap water in a fit of haste. Chiding himself first, his glass was filled from the filtered spout, its contents washing down the boost to his masculinity. There would be no fluoride, nor no other nasties for one James Sandalwood!

His partner, Mrs Sandalwood (he’d never sign up to any of that un-reflexive, modernist claptrap of hyphenated names), had taken her kids off to the Steiner school they’d finally been enrolled in. James, emerging from late morning snooze, assumed his role of provider, looking out from the kitchen window over the organic garden that replaced both what had been Mrs Sandalwood’s outdoor dining area, and a well-maintained patch of lawn.

Scalp flaking, ball sack itching, beard managing to be both dry and oily at once, James made for the shower, the scent of lavender just another barrage against his manhood in a world where true men were perpetually undermined – so he reasoned. As the scum of the night before – scum he’d slept in – began to wash down his body, barbs from his pre-bed Facebook battles emerged in his mind as if revealed from beneath the stink and dead skin.

A hand shot out from the curtain to grasp the container of Ajax, with which he powdered his body, before wetting himself further and grinding at skin, oil, zits and flakes. Detritus obliterated, the smell of grease, dirty denim and steampunk workshops exploded in James’ mind – a manly evocation.

Upon patting down with a towel freshly laundered the prior afternoon, James decided that the garden could wait another hour. He owed it to society to one-by-one, correct the popular misconceptions that plagued hapless minds. Incense lit, coffee plunged and poured, Tangerine Dream turned up on a loop over the stereo, James made for the MacBook on the lounge room coffee table, his body adorned only by freshly laundered boxers.

Only buy local food! Eschew anything that comes out of a corporation! Buy second hand wherever possible! Crypto-currency is the future! Self-medicate! False flags! Manufacturing consent! Sugar! Do not vaccinate! Everywhere estrogens!

James was perpetually aghast at the endless supply of ignorance that poured forth on the Internet, and at the apathy and skewed priorities of otherwise educated people. Some feminist keyboard warrior, or what James assumed to be one, had bothered to sidetrack his discussion on fertility with talk of implicit ‘gender essentialism’.

The impression James got, was that this individual as trying to protect transgendered folk, but surely if society got rid of the excess estrogens in the environment, that’d all sort itself out with generational change. Besides, there were all the cancers to consider as well. Priorities!

This exchange had got James so distracted, that he hadn’t noticed until too late that his Tangerine Dream selection was on its third loop, and hours had past. The partner would be home too early now, and he’d have nothing to show for his labours, such was the unfair nature of his life and his life’s mission. Fire arced up his spine at the thought of another fruitless domestic argument.

James wondered what the ghosts of the houses’ past residents would make of his dilemmas. He was a man who worked with his hands to provide for the family table. The house was an old stone-walled job, built when the suburb was working class. James saw the spectres of long-gone men in overalls looking down at him in his boxers, and he resolved to water the veggie patch.

Precious rainwater sluiced over carrot tops and cabbages as James pondered how unappreciated he was, even in his own home. Books that he’d sampled and memorised to his own satisfaction sat behind a patina of dust that gave testimony to the philistines his partner’s children seemed intent on becoming.

James had tried to inject a little culture into the mix, prints of Degas’ portraits of young women adorning the walls. Mrs Sandalwood didn’t object to her kids viewing nudes, however she had concerns about the objectification inherent in Degas’ work, as well as concerns about anti-Semitism expressed in his other works – an oversensitivity that James had on occasion had to explain, left her open to Zionist manipulation.

Mrs Sandalwood worked in advertising, a fact which James could overlook on account of her better qualities and knowledge on specific policy points. He did, however, feel he had his work cut out for him on account of her buying into the prevailing materialist paradigm. That, and she could be annoyingly assertive even when he felt she was wrong.

Fuck! Too much water. Again intrusions into man-space disrupted James’ train of thought, tampering with his fluids in a way James felt harshly apt; his élan vital derailed.

Speaking of which, the craft beer, along with the peach wine he’d had brewing in the shed would have finished fermenting. Hopefully he’d be well into bottling before Mrs Sandalwood got home with her kids.

(Photo Source: Henningklevjer).

Adventures in Ipso Facto Land…

There’s a golem of rubbish that rears its ugly maw every now and then, spewing invective and irrational sanctimony whenever The Enemy’s Enemy gets something right, in spite of how often they get things wrong. Or at least, when The Enemy’s Enemy doesn’t mess up as badly on some singular point as does The Enemy. The upshots are romanticised while the down-sides are de-emphasised, ignored, or actively written off as non-existent – accounts to the contrary being propaganda of The Enemy.

Supposedly you’d know this if you were tuned-in to The New Paradigm, or had taken The Red Pill, or availed yourself of whatever other means of squinting with head askew required to parse complete garbage into high truth.

The particular denizen of Ipso Facto Land I currently have in mind is the Putinophile – the breed of supposed lefty that simply on account of the transgressions of the United States of America, views a murdering theocratic tyrant as a flawed hero. “USA bad, ipso facto Russia good”. With the recent release of Citizenfour, which reminds certain folks of Russia’s protection of Ed Snowden – all out of the good of Putin’s heart, no doubt – you’ll possibly have to listen to these tuned-in types prattle on about Russia just being misunderstood.

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Putin’s regime, devoid of strong opposition as it is, is leading its people to tolerate gays, only while respecting tradition in the process. Leaders have to take The People with them.

Pussy Riot? They were needlessly provocative. They could have couched their concerns in a less obscene tone. And let’s remember, religion was horribly persecuted under Stalin – you have to expect that today’s Russian Orthodox is a religion still licking its wounds while shivering in fear. Pussy Riot should have taken that into account before sinking the boot in.

Why don’t more lefties understand Putin? The guy is sending troops into Ukraine to fight neo-Nazi militia. Ipso facto that makes him progressive. The right-wing never fight amongst themselves. What’s wrong with you? Are you a Right Sector supporter?

Tony Abbott said he was going to shirt-front Vladimir Putin, and Tony Abbott is right-wing, ipso facto…

Russia Today, or RT as the kids say nowadays, isn’t a bad thing. Why, “state television” is just right-wing propaganda designed to make “public television” look evil. RT is just like the BBC, or PBS or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – wholesome, and not at all like the Murdochracy.

It’s not a “prostitution of journalism”!

The deaths of journalists like Anna Politkovskaya, whistleblowers like Alexander Litvinenko, and opposition leaders like Boris Nemtsov could all just be coincidental. Just like the “at least 29 journalists” that Joan Smith claims were killed in connection with their criticisms of Putin’s regime – they could have all just written bad restaurant reviews. People get shirty over all sorts of things.

And why hasn’t Joan Smith been bumped off by Putin yet, if he’s so terrible?

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Increasingly it seems, you’ll be told, along with the afore mentioned kinds of evasions, that RT and Russia really care about Palestine, and that the Kremlin (which RT tows the line of) would never cynically use a Middle Eastern nation as a proxy for its own interests. The US would, ipso facto…

Never mind that you may be able to recall all of the criticisms of the US Government made in Citizenfour, and may very well agree with every single one of them – if you don’t obsess over what a hero Putin is, you’ve missed the point. You’ll be told to watch the documentary again, or with unintentional irony, be told to “think about it”.

If you don’t experience the paradigm shift, then supposedly you’re not getting to the truth.

It’s almost as if not being able to articulate a serious criticism of Western hypocrisy of their own, their entire pretence rests on an ipso facto argument arising from the delusion of a heroic Russia.

~ Bruce

(Photo Source: Dion Hinchcliffe).