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the pretentious bullshit collection (selections)

I’ve been doing this stupid and amusing thing on my Instagram for a few months, called The Pretentious Bullshit Collection.

For example:

Pencil, with paperclips. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Pencil, with paperclips. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

And:

Distant tiles, close tiles, bathroom tiles. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Distant tiles, close tiles, bathroom tiles. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

Or:

Tiempo por El Catrin. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.
Tiempo por El Catrin. From the Pretentious Bullshit collection.

So you get the idea, right? Super pretentious, overwrought bullshit pictures of nothing, puffed up with wordy captions and declared to be art, but you probably don’t get it because it’s not for you. I guess it’s part serious art and part parody? It’s mostly parody.

I’ve been having so much fun with it, and so many people have enjoyed the sheer lunacy of the whole thing, I went ahead and made a very small, massively overpriced, hardback collection using some of my pictures. Go beyond the magical thing here to learn more about it:

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cough sneeze cough cough cough itch

Either something in our air is poking my allergies with a pollen-covered stick, or I’m coming down with some sort of stupid summer cold. Either way, I’m am SO OVER having a headache, sneezing my face off, and feeling like I’m going to suffocate when I’m trying to sleep.

The only thing that’s working at all is Benadryl, which is fine when I go to bed, but during the day makes me feel like I’m wrapped up in a warm, wet, woolen blanket made of honey that is not just wrapped around my entire body, but also has a smaller version of itself wrapped around my brain.

So my options are basically: feel like I’m experiencing the world through three inches of honey, or feel like I’m wearing a suit made of bees. Since Friday, I’ve chosen the honey, and while it’s preferable to the alternative, I’d very much like to be done with this bullshit, now.

In other news: I’m writing a lot, five days a week, and I’m actually getting lots of stuff done, just like a real Writer does. This is what I was looking for and needing for the last year, and boy am I glad I found my way back to this place where I am right now (minus the histamine or whatever) because I can honestly say that I genuinely feel happy and content pretty much constantly since I did.

While I wait for the other shoe to drop, I have some really neat things in my queue that aren’t just these writing projects. I’ve been scheming with my friend, Sean Bonner, about making some super-limited art project things that we’ll release in the soon.

Speaking of the soon: Legendary Entertainment, which is Geek & Sundry’s parent company, has delayed the release of Tabletop Season Four again. It’s entirely out of my hands, and I’m just as ready to release it as the audience is to watch it. As soon as I know what the release date is (more specifically than “Fall”) and as soon as I know that date isn’t going to change, I’ll let you know.

Speaking of awesome books about dogs, we are selling A Guide To Being A Dog by Seamus Wheaton again, but it’s super-limited to only 200 copies. If you want one, get it now.

Okay, Benadryl, let’s go wrap me up in honey because the bees are starting to wake up.

 

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Happy Friday. Here’s a Meerkat!

This was a good week for me. I got a lot of creative work done, including almost 10,000 words on a short story that keeps getting longer and is more fun to discover and tell than I was expecting. I also ran a whole bunch, with a decent pace, as I train to increase my conditioning and strength for a 10K, and maybe a half-marathon later this year.

Also, I took a picture of a meerkat when Anne and I went to the zoo on Monday, and I liked it enough to share it with you, Internet:

Meerkat

Meerkats are so cute, I always think they should be holding tiny coffee cups and talking about TPS reports.

Anyway, I wish everyone a relaxing and peaceful weekend. Be kind to one another.

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in which i am, again, easily amused.

I ran hard yesterday, and if a stupid cramp in my side hadn’t made me walk the last 800 or so meters, I would have done 5K in under 30 minutes. That’s probably not that big a deal for people who regularly run, but for a 44 year-old dude who spends most of his day sitting at a desk, it was pretty awesome.

So last night, I decided that I would sit in an epsom salt bath, to minimize the aches my legs would almost certainly be serving up today, on account of me being a middle-aged guy who ran really hard yesterday.

After soaking for about 30 minutes, I poured some of Anne’s bubbles into the tub, because bubbles. Then I sent her a picture of me, peeking up over the top of the bubble mountain, and I thought, hey, this is just like Space Madness…

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Trump’s reckless “second amendment” comment isn’t just a threat to Secretary Clinton

I wrote this yesterday. Since it was published, I’ve read a lot of columns from people who had the same thoughts I did, more or less, with one significant difference: a consensus has emerged that Trump knew exactly what he was doing, exactly what he was saying, and that this wasn’t just what he thought was a joke. Trump has a documented history of inciting violence at his rallies, and everyone who is in Trump’s base (and adjacent to it, in the larger Conservative movement) knows precisely what someone means when they say wink wink second amendment wink. Look no further than the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by a lunatic with a gun who bought into the paranoid Right Wing fantasy, peddled by the NRA, that aggrieved citizens can take up arms against their government if they believe the government is “tyrannical” (which is entirely subjective, of course). So with that context:

I don’t think Donald Trump sincerely believes that anyone will actually go shoot Hillary Clinton. I don’t think he was explicitly saying Hey someone go shoot her. I think he was trying to make what he thought was a joke, but because he’s such a complete asshole, it wasn’t funny.

But that doesn’t matter, because the threat that he made today isn’t limited to Secretary Clinton. When someone in the position he is in — a celebrity entertainer who is the Republican nominee for president — suggests that not only would it be acceptable for the Second Amendment Crowd to go take care of her, but laughs about it, he is normalizing violent behavior, on a national stage.

Someone who wants to go shoot Secretary Clinton doesn’t need Donald Trump to tell him (because it’s almost always a man who does this sort of thing) to go do it. But what about the angry alt-right guy who wants to go use his Second Amendment Remedy to take care of another high-profile woman who bothers him? What about the unhinged guy who hates me, or John Scalzi, or Jessica Valenti, or Anita Sarkeesian? What about that guy, who is waiting to hear someone say what the voices in his head are saying? How much did the danger to us and people like us go up today, because Donald Trump normalized and amplified his thinking?

We never know what it’s going to be that sets a dangerous and mentally ill person off. Charles Manson heard The White Album, and in his disturbed mind, that was the call he needed to hear to set his murderous rage into action. John Hinckley was inspired by a movie. David Berkowitz was moved to kill by a barking dog.

My point is that there are mentally unstable people out there who don’t need a lot of encouragement to turn their fantasies into real life tragedies,and Donald Trump may have spoken loudly and clearly to them today. That is truly dangerous, and — like so many things he’s said and done — it further disqualifies him from holding elected office.