Extra Evil - The Statue of Compliance
Today's Fortune: Don't bother hiding the hood.
Newsreel
Quiet one.
ICE forgot to skip blondes.
5th Avenue protests beat SantaCon density.
Eric Adams beat the rugpull speedrun record.
Backroom economists have more backbone than your senator.
Discord took a survey on imploding.
You Need This
I may have just learned how EQing audio works. Forgive past me.
A Photo
War Journal
While we whiffed a few elections, prosecutions, reconstructions, and foundings, I think we really needed more book fairs with free candy. They're the support beams of the national IQ. After Mussolini finds his bridge, let's bring those back.
Destiny's brought me back to Thunderbolt Fantasy. My animation intake tends to freeze when teaching—the guilt center/lobe/plurality of my brain kicks in during keyframes. Call it hustle culture's all-seeing eye. But I'm free from gainful daylight employment for the moment (admin has a way of forgetting one's alive), putting a new, sloth-free lightness around animated violence. Long overdue.
Why doesn't fear of failure hover over comic binges? Hypocrisy, mostly. The core impulse is already irrational. And I can convince myself reading makes me better at puns, and thus a better monastery abbot. Even Judge Dredd anthologies, or Vagabond retreads.
All tangential to my main point: puppet-fu. Thunderbolt Fantasy's wuxia puppets remain beautifully animated by Pili and brilliantly written by Gen Urobuchi. It feels hilarious to call puppet fighting one of the best-plotted TV shows I've seen, but Gen Urobuchi has always had that bit of Warren Ellis magic with structure. Or has Ellis been exiled long enough that I should flip that comparison? Life is long and strange.
I've saved season 4 for a long time, as a "break glass in case of madness" measure. Shame no stressful week ever came through. I'm watching it now for no reason. Man, how about that Demon Realm?
The weirdest part of surveillance marketing: frequent ads for things you already enjoy, own, and paid for. "Have you heard of Fallout, Mr. Dayle? We think you'd dig it." Thanks for the tip.
Human greed's been on my mind, given the new oil tankers with "Liberty" and "Justice" spray-painted on their flank. It's likely smarter to meditate on such things before national bedlam, but I've always been a procrastinator.
My pocket theory: orgiastic evil isn't the only force behind chasing your bank account forever. The party leader, sure. Several levels ahead of fiscal security and generational legacy. But I think there's an underrated rogue. A dark horse in the dark triad, if you will.
Adult life is short on feedback mechanisms. I've rambled about this before, from the author-wank side, but it's really a universal quirk. That void makes gaming crack for some people (my nickname's some people): the little buzzing chiptune that says "you win" or "step it up." Money is, before any questions of what you do with it or why, one of the few direct feedback sources you get after your degree.
We run on complicated versions of that "pull switch, get cookie" machine. If yours only takes quarters, that's going to bend your brain a bit.
Now, I'm not shallow enough to say statesmen and moguls only find peace in the acquisition of money itself. Except I am. Right now. That is what I am saying and standing by. Maybe there's a vaccine for it. Otherwise, they're talkative zombies.
Overheard in Extra Late Night Coffee.
Redshirt: Anytime I want to dance with someone, they get a song. I was at the Chocolate Factory last month, and these two were dancing the whole night. And I told her "Wow, you''re getting it." That's my way of saying "You're sweating on me." Annoying. Meanwhile, the guy is still looking around, trying to cruise.
Blueshirt mimes a periscope.
Yellowshirt: I need to get better at that. I dance with someone the whole night.
Blueshirt: What?
Redshirt: Hush.
Blueshirt: You...move around.
Yellowshirt: Yeah, I guess I wander a bit. I've been more confident lately.
Redshirt: They're calling you a hoe.
Blueshirt: You seal the deal.
Yellowshirt: I seal the deal.
A Screenshot
The Present
- My book about the first US Civil War. [How to Dodge a Cannonball]
- This one really is near and dear to me. [Exclusive Evil]
- How to not see the future. [1900HOTDOG]
- Amran and I talk punchlines. [Hopeton Hay Podcasts]
- Have a vacation. [You Need This]
- The novella in here is an outline of the future. [Everything Abridged]
The Past
Imageboards on the inauguration.
The Future
I'm trying to clear my desk a bit. Ideally the stupid Expensive Evil pair I've had sitting on my queue forever. Aspirationally this poster campaign that's been backburnered forever.
Dead Sun Theory
Soon.
Not Brought to You By
Ads in the wild, continued. Here's one from the New Year's Eve bedlam. It took all of my sorcery to keep passerby out of the shot:
This one takes me back. I'd call it nostalgic if that lobe wasn't damaged. But I recall 2017 or so.
If you took classes with a certain SVA-based miracle worker, you made spec ads for Katz's Deli, followed by a ruthless review. Pai Mei ruthless. I hope they haven't met an Elle Driver yet, it's a great course. If you, you know, spiritually survive.
Today, I associate Katz's with the highs and lows of student effort. I'm stronger today for it. I learned more about creative productivity in the brand trenches than the entire art school ecosystem.
So they did pick an icon that struck me. If accidentally.
As for the ad: I see all the strategy boxes checked off: local relevance, targeted, some human effort behind the photo. Creatively, we're in the "bread-flavored bread" zone. If I describe a lot of ads that way, it's because most don't aspire to more than that. There are also many products you don't aspire to pay for. I assume that's not the goal.
I know I'm hard on stock language. But can you imagine, without my prodding, remembering "Proud to serve local icons" in a day? An hour? Ten minutes? I'm not jabbing modern attention spans. The line is smoke. It floats around and past your brain's solid mass.
Sidebar: that reaction to stock blather is why, without redundant effort, LLM spam is like soaking your marketing budget in kerosene and lighting a cigarette. But that's a whole other rant.
Anyway, like most bits of borrowed interest, it comes off feeling unfocused. Katz's gets more out of this than Square. Good for them, if that's a backroom deal. Otherwise, oops.
Creativity: D- | Persuasion: D- | Sanity: C+
One Sentence Reviews
Thunderbolt Fantasy, Second Third: My stories are on. (Puppet Kick/5)
Unbeatable Banzuke, 7-14: Pratfalls of the human spirit. (Wham/5)
A Question
Signing off
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