Terms of Service

(WARNING: Intense Cory Doctorow-ing ahead)

I despise YouTube making adblockers against their terms of service and making their service unusable unless you turn them off and swallow the three unskippable ads on a nine-second video. It is my right as a user to use an adblocker. Terms of service should regulate how you publicly interact with a service. How I use it on my end, including things like addons, adblockers, and the like, should not be policed by tech companies.

The tech companies know that using products on our terms is the only way to freedom, and that’s why they’re fighting tooth and nail to stop us from getting that right.

Okay, Real Talk

Okay, for real though, we shouldn’t be letting convicted felons run for president. I feel like that should be a given, but this country just continues to surprise me.

Last political post until election season rolls around, I promise.

Breaking News

A Zoolander and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York actor has been convicted on 34 felony charges, casting doubt on his presidential campaign against a Parks and Recreation actor.

This is now a true statement.

PSA - Don’t Watch Movies on Your Phone

https://www.thewrap.com/netflix-ted-sarandos-son-lawrence-of-arabia-phone/

I still have family members who watch movies and shows on their old iPods. I have no idea how they are able to do this. The screen is roughly the size of a watch face, there are dead pixels everywhere, and the colors are crunched beyond recognizability. And yet they still do it. It’s terrible, I know. I’d make it illegal if I could.

Anyway, I read that Netflix CEO Ted Something-Or-Other bragged about his son watching Lawrence of Arabia on his phone. The fact that this is something he’s proud of proves that he has no problem devaluing cinema in order to create the endgame of streaming: a theater-less world where movies are background noise to fingers scrolling along Reddit and YouTube. This is why the future of movies cannot be entrusted to streaming companies. Ending purer means of watching movies is in their best interest. And I firmly believe that we don’t want to live in a world without theaters. That would change moviemaking in ways we don’t want to imagine.

Anyway, how’s your morning going?

What I Jam To - Addendum

After uploading yesterday’s blog post exploring my music taste, it suddenly occurred to me that I left out one of my very favorite artists, one whose praises I’ve been singing for years. So I’m tacking this on and putting it into the world. Definitely listen to him.

Jonathan Coulton

(Photo by Vivan Jayant and Masem, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons)

You may not know his name, but you know his work. Jonathan Coulton is the man behind Portal's endlessly catchy end credit songs, "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone." Outside of that, however, he's made some of the most creative music I've heard in a long time. He is, and I firmly believe this is true, one of the best lyricists to emerge in the last 25 or so years. Yet, in spite of this, he remains criminally slept-on as an artist. In my opinion, in a perfect world, he would be selling out arenas and releasing IMAX concert films, and some of the TikTok-famous types who pass for lyricists today would be asking if I want fries with that.

Of course, those same TikTok types at least partially have Coulton to thank for their success. He was one of the first musicians to come to prominence entirely through the Internet, releasing new music every week on his Thing-A-Week podcast and making money through digital track sales and print-on-demand CDs. He is a major innovator of online creative success. And his work then was fantastic! Songs like "Re: Your Brains" showed his gift for geeky musical comedy, while tracks like "Shop Vac" demonstrated his skill at writing deeply emotional songs. His fantastic EP Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow, featuring tracks like "The Future Soon" and "I Crush Everything," combined the two styles, turning his nerdy comedy into a means of exploring alienated characters. With the exception of "Mandelbrot Set" (the EP's surprisingly profane black sheep), the EP serves as a series of chuckle-worthy and thoughtful character studies.

And JoCo has only gotten better since then. His 2011 album Artificial Heart (produced by TMBG's John Flansburgh) contains some of his best work, songs like "Glasses" and "Nemeses" that explore a variety of topics using an updated, more subtle lyrical style. And then there's Solid State. Holy crap Solid State. It's a sci-fi concept album about the Internet, diving deep into questions of whether or not we are truly better off with the Web in our lives. But the songs touch on many topics as well, from escape ("All This Time") to love ("Your Tattoo") to the post-apocalypse ("Sunshine"). The best of the bunch, however, is "Don't Feed the Trolls," a witty, fantastically composed track about outrage culture, integrating references to the University of Florida taser incident and lines like "I just checked my privilege / And it looks fine to me." Every single lyric is gold. The song is perhaps Coulton's masterpiece, and one I would recommend to anyone looking for a great rock song they haven't heard before.

I discovered Coulton's music in the winter of 2020, in the midst of great life changes and the ongoing pandemic. His sense of humor and unique satirical eye drew me in, and I've been a devout fan ever since. Every time someone asks for music recommendations, he is the first name I bring up. I shot him a fan letter a while back, and he sent me a personal response I have taped to my wall to this day. I cannot recommend him enough. He's a nice guy and a great musician. Going on the JoCo Cruise remains a bucket list item for me.

Those wishing to get into his music have the entire Thing-A-Week library ahead of them, as well as his post-TAW albums (he recently announced that he had six songs "in varying stages of completion" for a new one). Hardcore fans should also check out the songs he wrote for the legal drama series The Good Fight, which are fantastic little political satires exploring NDAs, Russian troll farms, and a certain orange-faced dictator who shall remain nameless.

Coulton is a true original, who deserves far more fame and acclaim than he gets. You should seriously just go listen to his stuff right now.

Seriously.

Do it.

What I Jam To

Since the beginning, scientists have been plagued by the question, "what does Brigham Larson jam to?" Well today, I'm going to set that immortal quandary, pondered by Einstein and 22 different Presidents, to rest. The following is a list of the things that I jam to lately, to be consulted now and forever when the question pops up.

At least until I get obsessed with more bands. Come to think of it, this list might be outdated pretty quickly.

They Might Be Giants

(Photo by Cliff, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

They Might Be Giants have been around for a long while and they're not leaving anytime soon. They built a small following with their surreal performance art-like concerts at underground clubs, with John Flansburgh on guitar, John Linnell on accordion, and the tape deck doing the rest. They wore cardboard masks of William Allen White, they used a large stick Flans found in the woods for percussion, and they sang songs with names like "Cowtown." Their self-titled debut album is something of a seminal work in the "80s lo-fi vaguely new wave" genre, and they scored some pretty enormous chart success with "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" from their third record, Flood.

But the story doesn't end there.

Since then, they've expanded from a duo to a full band (with the two Johns still acting as the sole songwriters), they've broken away from record labels and now self-release all of their albums, and they've continued to show little regard for what's considered "cool" in today's music. If there is an anti-Taylor Swift, it's these guys, and I mean that as the highest compliment possible. The Johns are ridiculously inventive lyricists with a gift for diverse songwriting. Name a genre, and they've probably worked in it. Their songs range from the thoroughly unusual ("Number Three") to the commercial radio-oriented (the brilliant "Narrow Your Eyes") to somewhere in the middle ("Ana Ng"). TMBG are truly talented people. They certainly aren't for everyone, but give it a shot. Maybe you're one of the people they're for.

Fans of TMBG may also like to look into Mono Puff, a side project founded by Flansburgh and two other musicians, which has a very authentic TMBG vibe to it. There is also a wealth of unreleased songs recorded from their Dial-A-Song project in the 80s available freely online, so completionists have quite the field day ahead of them.

Tally Hall

(Photo by Daniel Morrison, CC BY, via Wikimedia Commons)

Ah, Tally Hall, I still love you even after all we've been through. Even after the Joe Hawley unpleasantness, even after the fans assumed that Joe Hawley's behavior justified harassing and doxxing a man with schizophrenia, I still love you forever. Of course liking their music comes with asterisks these days, but I can't un-hear their music, much less un-love it. Tally Hall's music is one of those things that, once you click with it, won't let you go.

Tally Hall began the way that many shorter-lived bands do: it was started by a small crew of musically-inclined people living in a college town and in desperate need of a creative outlet. However, they set themselves apart with their unusual style (all members are dressed formally with specific tie colors) and varied songwriting. After a couple of EPs, they were signed to Atlantic Records, where they released their debut album Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, before going indie again for their second, and as of this writing most recent album Good & Evil.

All members of the band contributed songs, but the undisputed best songwriter of the bunch is Joe Hawley. His skill with abstract imagery and wordplay is unparalleled, and I have yet to hear another lyricist like him. The songs "The Bidding" and "Turn the Lights Off" show his work with the band at its peak, masterfully balancing wit with serious themes. Other great songs by the band include "Greener," "Ruler of Everything," "Spring and a Storm,", and "Good Day."

Unfortunately, as a result of Hawley's struggle with mental illness and controversies extending from that (I'm not explaining it all, just google it), the band has been on indefinite hiatus since 2011. I wish him well and hope he gets the help he needs. Though the band's social media accounts continue to tease that they're not done yet, all evidence points to this hiatus lasting quite a while, if not forever.

For those wishing for more Tally Hall in their life, Joe wrote and "directed" the 2012 concept album Hawaii: Part II as part of the musical project Miracle Musical, in collaboration with several Tally Hall members. It's a gorgeous (if somewhat inconsistent) album that will always be close to my heart. Most members of the band have also created solo albums (with a couple recently announcing new ones), so fans will hardly be lacking in work to explore.

Talking Heads

(Photo by Jean-Luc, CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons)

I know I'm four decades late to the hype, and I know that my being a fan isn't fully validated (I still haven't seen Stop Making Sense and I still haven't gotten through a full album by them), but what a band! Byrne's outside-the-box lyricism and sense of sound combined with the skilled instrumentalists that make up the rest of the band make for some truly unique songs. Their evolution as artists is also fascinating to watch.

They made some great songs in their day. "Psycho Killer" is eternally haunting and its eeriness is only enhanced by how catchy it is, "Life During Wartime" has an intriguing combination of disco-infused production with incredibly non-disco lyrics about urban warfare, and I have seen more than one educated music critic dub "Once in a Lifetime" the Perfect Pop Song. In my opinion, their absolute peak, musically and lyrically, is the live version of "Burning Down the House" from Stop Making Sense. The lyrics, touching on themes of disillusionment and excessive comfort, are quick and impactful. The live version is faster and funkier than the studio version, and it improves it so much that it makes you wonder how anyone approved the original.

My only real complaint about them is that, honestly, their albums are exhausting. That's the reason I still haven't listened to any full albums. Their albums pick a style and run with it, and don't give the listener any space to breathe. With the exception of "Take Me to the River," I thought More Songs About Buildings and Food was borderline unlistenable. And believe me, I tried. Their individual songs, however, are among the most creative I've ever heard in my life.

So now you have a look into the stuff I jam to. I may post addendums in the future, and I may do a deep dive into the best songs by these artists, but this is a good beginning into an exploration of my music taste. I hope ya liked it.

5 Non-Evil Uses for AI

1. (NULL)
2. (NULL)
3. (NULL)
4. Infinite Craft
5. (NULL)

Private Jets and Doxxing

https://apple.news/AD9i61KS3SAWtti8Xzgwq5Q

Well, it could soon be illegal to track billionaires’ private jets, because those wonderfully productive folks in our government keep altering the law to suit Taylor Swift’s needs, don’t they?

This is alright until you consider the fact that the laws regarding doxxing of non-billionaires that don’t own private jets are pretty unclear and are mostly on the state level.

Either all doxxing is bad (in which case the federal government should criminalize posting addresses and phone numbers), or none of it is (in which case I should be allowed to track Taylor Swift’s many private jet flights). Make up your mind.

Quick Update

I got the typewriter back and work on “Treatment” is continuing at a good pace. I’m currently writing 1-2 pages a day and I think I’m approaching the halfway point. Kinda daunting because I think it’s gonna require a full rewrite to get it to readability. But I may just do a couple rounds of revisions on this draft so I have something to work from in the rewrites.

I have spoken.

Cyberpunk

“Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion.” -Cory Doctorow

(To: Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and all the other billionaires who completely misinterpreted what every sci-fi story was trying to say.)

Spring and a Storm

It's been a weird day, full of moments ranging from happy to bittersweet to emotional.

Today I found out that the typewriter, my beloved Webster XL-800, will live to type another day. I was seriously concerned that it had died, and for it to be restored to full working condition fills me with joy. I have a deep sentimental attachment to that machine, and for it to continue its existence is a great blessing.

Today I was driving in the rain and my playlist served up "Spring and a Storm" by Tally Hall, one of my favorite bands. There are few better songs to listen to as a light fall of rain taps against your windshield. "I wish you could've heard the music / When the clouds growled overhead / I finally felt enthusiastic / I finally felt alive." It's a song that's at turns jubilant, saddening, and every emotion in between. I think I smiled the entire time, all that changed was the emotion behind it.

Today I completed my final volunteer shift at my local library. It was a bittersweet moment. All of the staff bid me a fond farewell and I promised I would visit again. I loved volunteering. I firmly believe in the mission of my public library, and I tried to aid it as best as I could. I helped people find the books they wanted. I kept everything organized. In some small way, I fought the scourge of censorship by rescuing books that were hidden by overzealous parents who assumed what was good for their child was law for the rest. I'm gonna miss volunteering there. I really will.

Sometimes days are full of moments like that. We have to take these moments when they come. Days like this are what life is like.

...

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

NaNoWriMo

(Photo by mpclemens, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

As I've mentioned before, I did National Novel Writing Month in 2022 and successfully wrote 50,000 words in the space of a month. In the end, it translated to about 175 pages, and I would not write a single one of those today. It's not bad in the standard first-draft way, it's bad in a kind of way that makes me shake my head at who I was when I wrote it.

A lot has changed since then. Over a year has gone by, I've matured quite a bit, I failed NaNoWriMo embarrassingly badly in 2023 (though the project I started on is still one I want to pursue at some point), and I've spent some time reconnecting with my love of reading. As such, I feel that I'm in a good place this year to give it an attempt. Due to aforementioned "personal stuff," I'll definitely be a lot busier during November of this year (and heaven knows that 1,667 words a day is easier said than done), but I figure it couldn't hurt to give it an honest shot, at least a more honest one than I did in 2023.

There are, however, a few problems with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo this year.

The first is the lack of the forums. For those who don't know, on the surface, the NaNoWriMo forums were the single most wholesome place on the Internet. They were lively, encouraging, hilarious, and accepting. Of course, that was only on the surface. A controversy involving insensitive comments made by a staff member brought out a real ugly, confrontational side in the community that led to an enormous thread of all-caps screaming matches and other such things. In the wake of this controversy, users also discovered a hidden side to the forums, in which it is alleged a moderator engaged in some truly despicable acts. As a result, the forums were locked indefinitely, and they remain so. I haven't looked into the allegations too deeply, but if they're true, then it's a dang good thing those forums were locked. The problem is that the forums were what got me through the process in 2022, and I likely wouldn't have finished without the encouragement they provided. Locking them down may well have been the right decision, but there's no real replacement for what they did for me.

The second problem is an issue of format. I cannot write well on a computer. For one, I inevitably get distracted and click over to YouTube. Second, something about the act of putting words on a screen as opposed to paper just dulls my writing skill, I swear. I have yet to produce a typed work that is even close to the level of quality as even the first drafts of my handwritten (A Good Day to Make a Friend) or typewritten works (such as an unpublished short story called "Parker Shell Escapes the Simulation" that satirizes the deplorable Andrew Tate). One must understand that you win NaNoWriMo by writing everywhere. In class, in meetings, on the train, wherever you feasibly can. And it's not like I can take a typewriter everywhere I go (they don't lend themselves well to discreet writing). I may not even have a typewriter this November if my poor Webster XL-800 can't be fixed, and I won't be able to use the Alphasmart Neo that saved me in 2022 this November. So writing on a computer may just be unavoidable. That's not great.

And thirdly, I want to write something longer. My 50,000 words from 2022 only translated to a measly 175 pages. I know that I can continue writing after NaNoWriMo is done as long as I get my 50k words in, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to do so without the rigid goal provided by NaNoWriMo. Maybe I'll just need to extend it to two months and see if I can to 100k words. But that sounds mega-stressful. So who knows what'll happen?

Really, I don't even know if I'll be able to do it this year. But I'll try. That's all any writer can do when they're working on a project. They can give it a genuine shot and see if it works out. I know I'm capable of doing this. I just don't know if lightning will strike in the same place twice.

Wait, why the heck am I writing about this in May?

Random Flashback Post

Today I just randomly thought about that time that Fox blatantly stole Jonathan Coulton’s cover of “Baby Got Back,” put it on Glee (including the original melody and the altered lyric he wrote for the cover), didn’t credit him, and then responded to threats of legal action by saying that he should be happy for the exposure (even though, as I said, they didn’t credit him). As an enormous Jonathan Coulton fan, it pisses me off every time I think about it. It has seriously turned me against Glee from now until the end of time.

On the Internet, You Own Nothing, Not Even Your Words

(Picture by Salva2354, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Normally I try to limit myself to a post a day, but I'm boiling with rage over this, so let's break it down.

It was just announced that Reddit has inked a deal with OpenAI (one of the world's biggest innovators in software that will steal your work, not pay for it, and use it to put people like you out of jobs), allowing them to use every word and image on Reddit to pay for content. Never mind that the users did not consent to this, or that most users expect their content on any given service to be protected from blatant thievery like this.

On the Internet, you don't own anything. You don't even own your words. Everything you have written can be bought and sold, with none of the profit going to you.

To these platforms, you are not a person. Your human brain did not create these words or images. Rather, to Big Tech, you are the content. Why would content want itself to be protected? Content can't speak, it can only be. And anything that can only be, with no voice for itself, can be sold.

I am so done with AI, I am so done with Big Tech, and I am so done with endless breaches of user data in the name of "innovation." I hope the AI bubble bursts and all of the billionaire hucksters ruining the Internet in the name of "innovation" lose significant amounts of money.

Things Just Might Be Okay

(Photo by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Previously on briglarson.com: Brig's typewriter breaks in the middle of writing the first draft of his sci-fi novelette "Treatment." As it sits on the floor in its case, Brig worries about maintaining momentum on the story, and posts a largely incoherent post about his typewriter, the role of outlining in the writing process, and Brandon Sanderson (an author he has never read). What sorts of wacky misadventures will Brig endure next? Will he snap and throw something at an innocent bystander? Will he reveal that he is secretly a reptilian sent by the pinko commies? Find out next on Brig Larson's Blog!

Everything might be okay after all.

The endangered Webster XL-800 is in the hands of a professional, at my local typewriter repair shop. He says that he'll give it the ol' college try to see if he can fix it. It's a bit of a crapshoot on whether or not he can (he doesn't know if he has the part required to do so), but at least there's hope. All I can do now is pray that my typewriter will survive this.

If the typewriter can't be fixed, that puts me in an unfortunate situation, because as I said earlier, I'm on a bit of a time crunch. What I'll have to do is find some way to get my hands on a functional portable typewriter for a relatively low price, which is probably not gonna be super easy. I've considered hitting up Goodwills and just getting anything that works (the typewriters I find most commonly at thrift stores are those Brother daisy-wheel ones, which I don't like very much but may have to be what I use). I am sincerely hoping that the Webster can be fixed, and I think there's a solid chance that it may. I just really need that thing with me, because I love it.

So, there is hope. We're getting there. We might make it.

Send good vibes.

On Outlining

(Photo by Niccolò Caranti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

We're well into day two of Brig's Typewriter Crisis (uppercase required, members of the press take note), and my brain is only getting more and more broken by the minute. The typewriter sits on the floor in its scuffed-up case, the seven typed pages of my incomplete novelette "Treatment" sitting on top of it. It yells for me, pleading to know when it will be in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. Soon, I tell it, soon, everything in time. But secretly, I am just as uncertain as it is.

Well anyway, as I'm reporting live from my personal writing apocalypse, I've managed to do some good research and thinking on the process of writing.

A lot of this today has been about outlining. In terms of my writing, My first feature screenplay (titled Our Fightin' Boys) was outlined using Dan Harmon's Story Circle. For those who don't know, Dan Harmon is a writer, the creator of Community (one of my favorite TV shows of all time) and an absolute genius. The Story Circle is essentially a revised take on the monomyth that strips away specific events happening and broadens the scope to what the main character desires. It's a remarkably accessible and adaptable way to outline stories, though I sometimes found myself feeling somewhat boxed-in by it. I have a general distrust of rigid outlining methods, and though the Story Circle is by far the one I would recommend, I'm not sure if I plan on putting it to use again for a large project.

My second feature screenplay (titled A Good Day to Make a Friend) ditched the Story Circle, and in its place I used an unstructured bulleted list of plot points, which I vaguely shoehorned into well-paced "acts" during the writing process. I played fairly loose with the points, altering them when I felt they needed to go another direction. I'm not sure I can attribute it to the outlining process, but in the end I was far more satisfied with A Good Day to Make a Friend than I was with Our Fightin' Boys. Unusually, I don't think it's too many revisions away from a passable final draft, though I have no intentions of working on that anytime soon.

You like that? I could easily bore you with more descriptions of how I outlined my other works (including my terrible, never-to-be-read-by-anyone-myself-included NaNoWriMo 2022 novel), but I'm not going to do that.

I've been thinking about this a lot today because I took some time and read Brandon Sanderson's extensive FAQ entry about outlining. Full disclosure: as of this writing, I have never read a book by Mr. Sanderson (though I intend to soon as I hear only good things about his work, and he seems like a remarkably cool guy), but his takedown of the two different ways of outlining is gold. "All of the time that the outliner spends up front preparing, the freewriter has to spend on the back-end rewriting," he says. This is incredibly true.

I've been taking the freewriter route with the writing of "Treatment," and honestly, it's kind of daunting to me. I see no way to a finished product but going back to the beginning and rewriting once the first draft is done. I don't exactly want to do that. That being said, freewriting just feels more natural to me than creating a rigid outline that determines every second of the story. So I really don't know what to do. I may be encouraged to give some form of outlining a shot soon, but I worry that it may be a "once a freewriter, always a freewriter" kind of deal. We'll see.

So those are some of my "typewriter is broken" thoughts and rantings, unordered and unedited as they get. This is what I'm doing to prevent myself from going insane with sorrow over my machine's injury. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, but until then, you're gonna have to deal with a lot of posts like this. How fun for you!

"Treatment" Update: Disaster Strikes

Loyal readers of my blog (read: the single loyal reader) (read: me) will know that I have been working for the past few weeks on a sci-fi novelette entitled "Treatment." Aside from inevitable wrangling with First Draft Syndrome, it's been a fairly smooth operation. Things have been going as planned, the story and characters are finding their way to where they need to be, and everything has generally been just peachy.

That is, until today.

Loyal readers (again, meaning myself) will know that I prefer to write on a typewriter to a computer. I have major issues writing on computers. Distraction, eye fatigue, and a general lack of metallic clickety-clacks bedevil my progress every time I try. As such, I have been writing the first draft of "Treatment" on my Webster XL-800. The novel as it stands is messy and borderline unreadable, and I love it. The typewriter has been a major contributor to my considerable momentum working on this project, and I credit it with keeping me moving forward.

Today, the typewriter broke.

It was out of nowhere. I was returning the carriage to begin a new line (as I have done thousands of times on this machine) and I heard something snap within the machine. Since then, the carriage does not seem to be functioning at top capacity. It has no resistance whatsoever and just slides along at the slightest touch, it's rather floaty and seems to keep moving after I've stopped typing, and the repeat spacer button seems to produce muted, labored chuck-chuck-chuck-chucks instead of its usual machine gun-like rattle. All in all, things do not seem to be going well for my machine. I'm lucky enough to have a wonderful typewriter repair shop fairly close, but I was just in this past week to pick up a case for my Webster and to drop off a Goodwill Selectric III for repair.

I also worry about time. I'm on a time crunch to get it repaired for various personal reasons, but I also just worry about the effect that a nonfunctional typewriter will have on my momentum. I really don't know, just knowing myself and my flaws, if I can finish this story while writing on a computer. I really don't know.

So we appear to have hit our first major snag. I've been trying to make the best of it. I've started transcribing the typewritten pages into Google Docs (keeping all awkward phrasing and continuity errors intact) in the event that I need to continue writing it on my laptop. I'm still several pages away from getting up to where I left off, so I don't have much to do in that time.

So yeah, things are not looking good for my little novelette right now. If anyone is reading this, my typewriter and I could very much use your prayers right now.

Stop Making Sense

(Photo by the one and only Cory Doctorow, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I was far too late to the Talking Heads train. I became an enormous fan literally a week after A24's restoration of the Jonathan Demme's landmark 1984 TH concert film Stop Making Sense left theaters, and as such, I was stuck being a fan in maybe the only time in history when the film has been entirely unavailable to view without an expensive and/or low-quality physical edition. Every single time since I have seen a glowing article about the film, with its energetic and performance art-like twists on the traditional concert, has been utter agony for me.

Well, this past week the film became available to stream on Max, buy or rent on all of the big VOD services, and the special-edition A24 Blu-Ray finally became available exclusively through their shop. You'd think I would rejoice at that, but:

• No, I don't have Max. And no, I don't want to get it.
• I am not keen on spending money to watch a movie I've never seen before if I'm not going to get the full big-screen experience.
• I requested that my library purchase the Blu-Ray of the film. The problem is that, being an A24 Shop exclusive, it's not available through their contracted vendors. So darn.

Which leaves me with only a few options if I am going to be able to watch the movie without getting over my hangups (which isn't an option, right?):

• A24 can add it to Kanopy. If you haven't heard of Kanopy, you should google it immediately. It's a streaming service that many libraries offer free with a library card, and there are some real greats on it (just to give you a taste, Kanopy has Sunset Boulevard, Harold and Maude, and Marcel the Shell With Shoes On all for free). I think there is a solid chance of Stop Making Sense finding its way on there. I believe A24 has some kind of licensing agreement with Kanopy, because many of their films are on there. However, I don't know if their recent deal with Max invalidates the one with Kanopy. I contacted A24's customer service email asking, and I didn't get a response. All I can do is cross my fingers.
• A24 can put it back in theaters for a limited time. I'm aware they've been doing some residency screenings lately, but none of them are close to where I live. The fact is, A24 probably thinks that everyone who was going to see it in the theater has seen it, and they may be right. But I don't wanna be left behind! Please! I'm sorry for being 40 years late to the hype!
• A24 can decide to let the Blu-Ray sell outside of their shop and my library can (maybe) get it. I think it's kind of unlikely, but hey, a man can dream.

I seriously want to watch Stop Making Sense. I have fallen thoroughly in love with the music of Talking Heads, the perspective-shattering lyrics and sounds. To see their music translated to screen in a way that makes it worthy of the title of "greatest concert film of all time" sounds enchanting to me. I haven't gotten to experience the full glory of David Byrne dancing with a lamp, or shaking around in the legendary Big Suit. This is one of those movies I need to see.

So please, A24? Pretty please with a cherry on top?

Oh Goody, Apple "Apologizes"

(Yeah, this picture belongs to Apple. What are they gonna do, slow down my phone until I buy a more expensive one? Wait.)

WARNING: Intense Cory Doctorow-ing ahead.

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

Thus goes the apology given by Apple’s communications VP regarding the absolutely horrible ad in which Apple hydraulic-presses implements of human creativity into an iPad, seemingly not realizing why the idea of tech replacing human creatives is so touchy right now. The ad caused a massive uproar, I wrote about it a couple days ago, and now an apology has been issued. Everything’s good, right?

In the words of a very wise 2000s web cartoon, “WROUNG!”

In this apology, there lie many fundamental issues that suggest, to me, that Apple isn’t remarkably sorry about the ad and their apology was mostly lip service. The first is the obvious fact that Apple did not make any attempt to address the underlying cause of the discomfort caused by this ad: AI. Companies have their feet on the gas trying to integrate the latest in art-stealing/-devaluing technology into their products. Creatives hated this ad because it leaned into everything we fear about the AI boom, which is our contributions being replaced with slick corporate tech. Apple, like all of the other companies taking their turn to crap into the bucket, has no plans or desire to protect creatives from AI. And why would they? Big Tech is and always has been about control. If they can control art and writing and music, that will be the greatest thing to ever have happened to them.

All Apple said was that they "missed the mark." That statement was chosen deliberately. It gives the appearance of an apology without implying a change. It avoids stating the transgression directly, and it promises nothing. This "apology" almost says on its face that Apple only did it to get the Internet off its back.

Secondly, the focus of the apology is not the creatives or their rightful anger. Rather, it is the end-all-be-all of a technology company: the new rectangle and the sheep that buy it (I will bet a lot of money that tech execs think of us that way). The apology does not celebrate creatives and the ways they express their imagination. It celebrates "users" and the ways they "bring their ideas to life through iPad." "Users" is deliberately exclusionary language used this way. To them, the only creatives worth celebrating are the ones that own iPads and legitimately think that they are a replacement for the real tools of the trade. Being thought of as nothing more tha a "user" is degrading in and of itself, not even to mention the implication that creatives are only worth celebrating if they use iPads. I can only hope that it's awkward phrasing. Unfortunately, I wouldn't bet on it.

And lastly, we all know exactly how sincere major corporations like Apple are when they apologize for non-fatal mistakes: not at all. This apology reeks of some marketing executive asking how they get those blue-haired Twitter commies off their backs. The lack of action and tech-centered wording only prove this. Apple isn't sorry. The AI model they're planning on forcing down users' throats is going to move forward and it's going to feed on the work of journalists and artists with impunity. All they want is some big headline that says "GODLIKE, LOVING INNOVATORS GRACIOUSLY ADMIT FAULT, GET FORGIVEN BY MASSES," and then a swift exit of the story from the news cycle.

And, unfortunately, that's more or less what's going to happen.

That's two marks you've missed in a week, Apple. See me after class.

First Draft Blues

Well folks, today I finally started on that long and winding road toward a finished piece of writing, this being my sci-fi novelette "Treatment." My notes are all in order, my gorgeous Webster XL-800 typewriter is fitted with a fresh ribbon and a new (well, new to me) carrying case, and I have several glasses of liquid courage (aka tap water) in my system, so we're ready to go. I cranked out a solid two pages (one-inch margins, single-spaced), and I'm officially ready to call this project "BEGUN."

The problem? It sucks.

I don't much feel like a traditional blog post for this one. Not only would I just be repeating the same stuff you've heard ad nauseum, I'd just be hammering into myself principles I've already learned to apply (let's not forget that you're looking at a man who wrote a 50K-word novel in a month). No, no, there is no point to regurgitating the same adages and incorrectly-attributed quotes about letting first drafts be garbage. As helpful as they may be, they don't capture what the agony of a first draft feels like. Situations like this don't call for more tired repetitions. Times like this call for...the blues.

(Photo by Lionel Decoster, CC BY-SA 3.0, accessed via Wikimedia Commons)

First Draft Blues

A song by Brigham Larson

(NOTE: This was written at 9:30 and was not edited. Don't expect too much)

(Lyrics to be relayed with immense agony, while some guy slaps his knee and shreds on harmonica in the background)

I've been keepin' these ideas

Like I'm some kinda hoarder

I got half the right words

All in the wrong order

Two pages straight

And not one worth keepin'

While Stephen King's out

Droolin' gold while he's sleepin'

Sanderson wakes up

And pisses bestsellers

Some old Wattpad user

Haulin' notes to the teller

And here I'm sittin'

With a blank page and pen

Can I skip to the part

Where I'm the next Pynchon?

I got those first draft blues!

I got those first draft blues!

I been dictatin' and scrawlin'

Clench my teeth and I type

And yet all I got

Is this sub-Twilight tripe

I know it's okay though

Someday I'll revise

And these pages and pages

Will be gold in my eyes

I will nurture and nourish

For my book, I'm it's father

Unless I self-publish

In which case, why bother?

Oh Goody, Apple Hydraulic-Pressing Implements of Creativity

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/apple-ipad-pro-commercial/678329/

I can’t express any of my anger over this whole situation as well as this Atlantic piece does, so I am just going to leave this here and let you make of it what you will.

Remember, fellow creatives: Big Tech is not your friend, and to them, your work is utterly and completely replaceable.

Overplotting

(Photo by Meomeo15, sourced from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license)

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been working on the bones of a science-fiction novelette, currently titled "Treatment." It's got a plot so good I'm almost stunned my brain was able to come up with it, and some characters and backstory that I think are really neat. I'm thinking that upon completion, I'll submit it to some sci-fi magazines. If they reject it, I'll self-publish it. I think it has the potential to be successful either way. I haven't yet started the actual writing, but the skeleton is, in my opinion, sturdy enough to support the meat.

However, because of one dangerous mistake I made during this foundation-laying, I almost destroyed all momentum I was having on this story. Just yesterday, I was in severe danger of becoming exhausted by my story before I had even started the hard part. This story, this incredible story that I felt desperately had to come into existence, was compromised in a way that scared me.

The culprit? Overplotting.

That sounds ridiculous, I know. How can you be too prepared for something? Construction workers aren't worried about being "too prepared" for the process of building major infrastructure. Politicians aren't worried about being "too prepared" for the work of serving their constituents (I'm not sure if they even worry about a baseline level of preparedness). But the fact is that being too prepared for writing my novel nearly broke me and brought me to the brink of shamefully abandoning the whole enterprise and moving on to the next shiny object.

Here's how it happened: I had been planning the novelette the entire time with one specific theme in mind. During this process, I discovered buried in this idea some secondary, equally compelling themes that I tried to push away to avoid overcomplicating things. Eventually, I decided that a particular one of these themes couldn't be ignored, and as such, I had to rethink my entire approach to this project.

As I redesigned characters and plot points and backstory to align with this new theme, I found that so many deeper things needed to be altered to fit together. I kept rewriting lore and second-guessing character motivations until I finally snapped and wrote "I AM SO TIRED OF TRYING TO SOLVE ALL OF THIS STORY'S PROBLEMS" in big letters. I looked at the line and a terrifying thought struck me: I hate having to write this story.

I put the notebook down and thought about it. Nothing really needed to be redone to support the new theme. Heck, a lot of what I was writing was backstory that wouldn't even be referenced, much less featured, in this novelette. I had brought myself to my knees with frustration by putting too much plot into my project. The best option, I realized, is to just take the frame that I have and let the novelette take shape inside of it. It's going to take time and revision, but that's just what writing is about. At some point, you have to acknowledge that your foundation is sturdy and start building.

I have left my notes alone since then. I am setting aside this novelette for a couple of days, and I've been working on a sci-fi flash fiction (that's maybe turning into a short story?) to keep myself sharp. It's very much a first draft, but it shows potential. In a couple days, I'll get going on the novelette. And we'll see how that goes.

Bullet (Two-Sentence Story)

For most people, the sight of a bullet speeding toward the space where the vision of two eyes meets would trigger a sudden, condensed flash of dying memory. But all Howard felt was déjà vu.

Unfrosted

I just finished watching Unfrosted on Netflix. I adored it. Super funny, unabashedly weird, and thoroughly Seinfeldian. The critics seem to be in the usual process of tearing it to shreds because it’s not a “powerful story for our times” or whatever. Yeah, of course it’s not, it’s a goofy movie about Pop-Tarts that has a sentient ravioli in it. Just let it be that.

An "I'm So OCD" Post, But It's About Real OCD

"I love having OCD lol. I was briefly overcome with the urge to scream the worst word in the English language, and I had to cross my eyes for a full minute to get it to go away! I'm so quirky! #OCD #relatable"

Xenocide

It's come to my attention that a lot of people think Xenocide is one of the weakest books in the Ender's Game series. I don't understand that. Obviously it's not as good as Ender's Game, and granted, I haven't read it in a few years, but I remember being profoundly moved and intrigued by it. The "Gloriously Bright" subplot in particular is a staggering piece of writing. Also, as someone with real-and-not-just-liking-things-tidy OCD, it really connected with me, even though I wasn't aware of my OCD at the time I first read it. Do people hate it because it's more philosophical than the others? I really don't know.

I mean, maybe I'm just blocking some of the worse parts out and I need to crack open my secondhand paperback to see the light. But as long as my rose-colored glasses are on, I'm proud to claim my status as one of the seven people who will defend Xenocide.

Netflix and “Households”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/netflix-streaming-password-sharing-family-household/672967/

This article for The Atlantic is over a year old, but with password sharing and all of the issues that feed into it on my mind, I couldn’t help but read this when I came across this on the app. The Atlantic should make Cory Doctorow their resident writer on this sort of thing. He has a gift for making you just as mad about Internet-enabled overreach as he is. His novel Little Brother is high up on my to-read list.

I Hate AI Art - A Confession and Apology

Every time I see a piece of digital art with a human in it on the Internet, my first impulse is to count the number of fingers.

If I see five fingers, I smile and admire the art. If I see four or seven or twelve and they're all inconsistently lit and melting into the background, my day is ruined.

I have grown to develop a burning hatred of AI-generated art and everything that it stands for. This is because, to me, AI art stands for laziness, lack of imagination and skill, the technological colonization of the last thing I thought they couldn't take from us - creativity. AI doesn't create; it steals, and it steals without remorse or mercy or discrimination. Every piece of AI-generated art you see represents millions of artists whose pixels have been mashed together in a haphazard way, and those artists have not been paid for all of the derivative works built off their art. It's theft in the name of whatever advantage AI art claims to boast.

(Also, I remain firmly convinced that there are no advantages to AI image generation. What has been done with it? Stripping women without consent, spreading false images of candidates to manipulate voters, that sort of thing. Sounds to me like these AI companies opened the can without thinking about the worms.)

Which leads me to something I must get off my chest: when AI art first started being used, I was caught in the zeitgeist just as much as anyone. I used Craiyon back when it was called Dall-E Mini, and I used the real Dall-E when it became publicly available. You know why? It was fun. It was fun seeing what AI thought a Star Wars movie directed by Wes Anderson would look like. It was fun looking at Van Gogh-style portraits of Mr. Bean. I was clicking away without considering the implications of this technology, the many artistic works that were stolen and reprocessed by an unthinking piece of software because I wanted to see Richard Nixon as a party DJ.

I regret this deeply, and I would like to apologize to the real human artists whose work has been stolen by AI companies that assume they don't need to pay for creative work. You are some of the victims of this experiment, and I have made a vow to the moon and stars I will never use an AI image generator again. Not only that, I make a concerted attempt not to interface with online content that uses AI art. I want to send a signal that I do not think it is cool or okay. Screw AI art.

AI bros (the same bros whose thousand-dollar monkey JPEGs have placed them in dire financial straits) are always wanting to talk about how AI will democratize art and free it from the greedy hands of artists, and how it "actually takes like so much work" and whatnot. First, AI will only democratize art for lazy people who can't draw and don't want to know how and don't care if their "art" is properly lit or has the right number of fingers. Second...work? You sat on your butt and spent ten hours changing random words. In art, work is when you have to put your knowledge of anatomy and lighting to use, not when you type in "and there's a boat" into the prompt box. AI art has no reason to exist, AI image generation was a bad idea, and if you deal in it, I hope you have fun devaluing real human creatives for no reason.

Yeah. I hate AI art.