As some of you know, I’ve always had a list, in my head, of things I want to write and forms I wish to publish in. I wanted a hardcover book, and I have one. I wanted to write some comics, and I have. That sort of thing.

One of the things long on the list has been porn. I’ve always wanted to write a porn, or should I say adult film and be all nice about it? Now this isn’t because I enjoy porn or watch porn. I don’t It doesn’t tend to do it for me. But still, I’ve always wanted to write it. Which brings to mind the question of why.

See, I like a good challenge. Most porn I have seen has a crappy plot and worse dialogue, if any. You know the sort of stuff I mean:

Cable Repair Woman: Well the problem seems to be with your cable box.

Customer: Oh, really?

Cable Repair Woman: Yes, sir. Let me just fix it. There. Oh, no, while I bent over to fix it, my pants fell off. Now we must fuck!

Customer: Oh. All right. Do I have to pay an extra service fee for that?

And then they fuck a lot. Eh. Sure, I suppose if the point if to get to the fucking then you’ve done that, but really is that all we want? Vivid did a series of movie takes that were, for certain values, perfectly hysterical. Lord of the G-String, Playmate of the Apes and the like. The idea went in the right direction. It didn’t go all the way there, though. Not to my mind.

No. I want to write truly awesome porn. Now, I’m writing this at 2am, off the top of my head, so it isn’t exactly polished but wouldn’t you love to see porn more like this:

Joan: So you see, Bob, the problem is that your base expectations of life are off-center and that leads to endless frustration that you take out on your co-workers and friends.

Bob: Well fuck-a-doodle-doo, Joan! But what makes you think that I give a damn?

Joan: The inner eye sees what the external can not fathom, don’t you get that?

Bob: But if that’s the case, shouldn’t I wear pants far less often?

Joan: Oh, Bob, a pantless society is the entire point, you idiot!

Bob: But if that’s true…

Joan: It is.

Bob: Then…

Joan: Yes!

Bob: Huzzah!

And then we can cut to some good, down-home fucking which takes place on a bed shaped like a fish. But I fear that until I get to write some truly off-the-wall porn it won’t exist. Not really. And absurdist porn should be done. See also: Steampunk Porn.

Sadly I have no contacts in the industry, no ins and I refuse to write a porn epic on spec. Some things just aren’t done. And so the chances of me ever actually writing porn are slim to none. Hell, I’m not even sure who would finance absurdist porn. There has to be money in it, though. There has to be. The type of porn that people would watch partly for the fucking and partly to sit there and go “Wait, they said what?” and possibly “But in a Jungist modality, they would never end up doing a reverse cowgirl!”

It’s a shame.

I also want to write Children’s Books, though. I’m not doing that, either. Life is full of disappointment, it seems.

Terminology changes all the time. Some recent ones give rise to a question though. I’m gonna get there the long way. Sorry. Twitter has given rise to a few new bits of terminology, bits of how we talk to each other. I’m not talking 140 character limits and we’ve all learned to shut up. No. I mean things like this. It used to be if you left a comment on a blog, or an article and someone replied you would see this:

3wok (jub jub the mic) wrote:
Man this article sucks, it’s round about and has a crappy lede.

Party On Darth (Palpataine’s world, it’s party time, it’s excellent) wrote:
3wok – Then stop reading it, idiot.

But now, thanks to Twitter we all seem to use @ signs.

3wok (jub jub the mic) wrote:
This article hasn’t gotten any better since I was last used as an example.

Party On Darth (Palpataine’s world, it’s party time, it’s excellent) wrote:
@3wok Then why are you still reading?

And I suppose if you read the @ as an “at” then it makes a bit of sense, that’s why Twitter used it. But it really has spread all over the place. You can’t escape it. I’ve tried.

But the one that gets to me, and is also thanks to Twitter, and is the reason for this whole thought, is the hashtag. Twitter used hashtags originally to let you note that you were talking about a specific thing. Their system would pick up hashtags and you would end up with trending topics and so on. It was a way to create a topic and contribute to an ongoing discussion in a strange little way. You would, normally, end your msg with a hashtag (so named due to the hash mark (#) at the front of the tag) like so:

Dear lord he does like examples doesn’t he #examples

But quickly people started to use hashtags as a form of sarcasm. Obvious, blatant sarcasm, and metacommentary.

Oh, here we go again #moreexamples #thatsuck #andaremeaningless

I’ve started seeing it done in emails, in all sorts of places. We’re on the verge of having the # become an international symbol for sarcasm. This is like the fucking smiley, isn’t it? If you need to tell me you’re joking because I can’t get it from what you’re writing – chances are you’re doing it wrong. The same applies to sarcasm.

I do wonder though, if and when the # will be known as a sarcasm mark. No relation to the SarcMark, mind you. Thank fuck. They really are just communication failure marks. #noreally

If Frank Oz came up to you and was like “Hey, let me shove my hand up your ass and we can pretend you’re a Muppet,” wouldn’t you say yes? I mean you’d be freaked out and disturbed but come on! That’s the hand that controlled Yoda and Fozzie and so many other characters from our collective youths. Wouldn’t it be an honor to have Frank Oz’s hand right up there? I think it would be. I’m not suggesting it’d be pleasant, or anything, just that it would be an honor of some sort.

And maybe that’s just me. It probably is and I’m going to come off a bit strange here, but I’m used to that. It isn’t like I generally want people’s hands up my ass, that’s not a thing with me. I’m just saying. Frank Oz. It’s like… I don’t know what it’s like. I reached for some analogy, some metaphor there that would help this all make sense and I came back empty.

Really though, aren’t there some celebrities you would let do strange things to you, out of respect for how they shaped you? Maybe? If Mr. T and I met in an airport and he demanded I trank him, otherwise he wasn’t getting on no foo’ plane, I would trank him, out of love and understanding. See that’s what I’m really saying. I think. So back to OZ.

Oh, the Wonderful Hand of Oz. I don’t believe I just said that. Ow, I’m sorry for that one. It was beneath me but I went for it anyway. Back on target! Frank Oz. I don’t even imagine he likes shoving his hand up people’s asses. He has to do it all day for work, you know? He doesn’t come home and get off that way. Naw, that doesn’t make sense.

So, I suppose the chances of him randomly asking to put his hand up your ass is slim. But then again, maybe he senses you’re a huge Muppet fan. He wants to give you something more than an autograph, something you can tell your kids about. And there we are.

There we are.

Of course, you have to then wonder, would he sign your ass? Would you get that tattooed on, if he did? Would you, also, start collecting Muppet puppeteers signatures (and interior handshakes)?

Remember, it’d be an honor. You could start a club. “Hey, you got a Dave Goelz? Sweet! I just got a Michael Frith!” Both of you, trousers dropped, posteriors in the air toward each other. Of course, God help whomever decided to get Jerry Nelson. Sweetums was full body, yo. And I don’t know that a full Nelson (as it would have to be called) would fit inside you.

But hey, live the dream.

I know I am taking on too many projects but I keep wondering about doing some sort of crowd sourced novel. Or at least a public novel. Writing for the crowd, in front of the crowd, sort of thing. I don’t have time for this, of course. I know I don’t.

So of course I really want to do it.

That’s the thing about writing. You do it in private. I’ve seen artists draw in public, and people watch them, fascinated. I’ve watched painters hold entire rooms enraptured for hours at a time. Dancers, singers, musicians all do it on a regular basis. Artists do. They interact, live, if they choose, with their audience. It is, frankly, quite awesome.

Writers – not so much. Ever watched someone write? Yeah, fascinating stuff, that.

Watch the amazing hunched over pose!

See fingers type!

Listen to muttered curses!

Tangible excitement, I tell you. For seriously. And so performing in front of a crowd is an exciting idea, to me. The closest I get is writing “live,” doing a serial novel online with feedback.

Of course, there never is feedback and doing it for random donations ends up with no money. That’s not bitching, just stating the facts. You can make it work if you have a wide audience and get linked to by half of creation. And if you do? That’s fucking awesome. That ain’t me. So it would be a waste of time, resources, energy and a lesson in ever-increasing disappointment.

And yet.

I’m tempted.

I spent a while today looking at old entries. From LJ, not from adampknave.com (née hellblazer.net) that is. Back in 2001. Sometimes if you stare at the past it can overwhelm you.

On occasion that’s a good thing. Remembering roots, how things used to be, it can be educational. Sometimes not. Looking at old friendships that have faded out, old times that slipped away without reaching the potential you wanted for them, etc.

It’s a powerful mojo and not always a good one.

I’m not saying this right. Part of me wants to go back and wipe it out and start over but I won’t. I want to try and see this better. It isn’t that I regret my past, far from it, it’s that I miss parts of it, loathe parts of it, am embarrassed by bits of it and wonder, often, what the fuck drugs I must’ve been doing to have said half the stuff I said.

Wait, no, I think that about stuff I said last week, so scratch that last part.

So many people, so many friendships from back then are dead now. Almost none of them from anything other than neglect. On either side, mind you, but still it makes me feel like I’ve just got this huge wake of bodies and lives behind me. I think we all leave that kind of wake behind us as we grow and live. It’s a normal part of life. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I don’t like people. I really don’t. 95% of the people I meet I really couldn’t care less about. That 5% though I adore and want to gather them up in one spot and pick their brains and talk to them all day. So as they slide in and out of my life it can be rough to see the sheer numbers of them. How many people I’ve lost to time. They’re all still out there, living lives that I hope are amazing and wonderful. Maybe they think of me, too, on occasion. I don’t know.

Of course, my own hang-ups say they don’t. That’s just me. I’m sure they don’t spare a thought for me, or for the days gone when we did talk. Sometimes I try to send a letter, a poke, a hello and a chance to maybe strike something up again. Most of them go unanswered. Lives move on and they need to be let go.

Right now, though, the sheer mass of it kinda aches at me.

This too shall pass.

See, I go on a date and then, let’s say, it goes pretty well and so I’m leaving, maybe I walk her home, all right, and we’re outside and then it’s all do I go for the kiss or not. There are three outcomes to this that leave me nervous:

1) What if I don’t go for the kiss but I should have. So now she thinks I’m not interested or maybe some other stupid thing and everything is now screwy.

2) What if I do go for the kiss and I shouldn’t have. So now everything is tremendously awkward and fucked up.

3) What if I go for the kiss and I should have gone for the kiss. So we kiss, right, and then she’s all “Do you want to come upstairs for some coffee?” and I’m like “Fuck, this is the move, right here, this? The move.” so I say ok.

So we go upstairs and she starts making coffee and then says she wants to change into something more comfortable. I can’t say no to that. So she vanishes for like twenty minutes and comes out in this silk bathrobe. That’s awesome. So she smiles and then drops the robe and she’s gone and taken all this time to body paint herself into Mr. T’s A-Team outfit. Like overalls and a white T-shirt and gold chains and chest hair, the works. And so she asks what I think.
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You are not alone in your love for a certain band / singer / TV show / movie / book / comic. You are not alone in your enjoyment of an activity. You are not alone because of the things you believe. Honest. It’s all right.

The internet was settled by people who felt alone in a lot of ways. They were, not always but often, the outcast. The kids who didn’t have a lot of friends, or weren’t the popular kids. They felt different. Estranged from what was around them, as often as not. Some people saw it as hiding online. Until it became popular. You aren’t alone in reflexively finding a dislike for things as a large group suddenly discovers it for themselves, either.

But I spend a lot of time online, partly because I have to and mostly because I enjoy it, and I see a lot of people start sentences with “I know I’m alone in this but” or a variation of the same. They wear it like a badge. They’re proud of thinking that they are lone wolves pioneering something, be it a cause or a song. They’re also, often, just simply so damned used to it. To feeling alone and adrift.

But they aren’t. None of us are. For everything you like there is someone else. Lots of someone else’s, in fact. That’s all right. Hell, it’s better than all right, it’s natural, normal and glorious. The trick is to let go. This isn’t then, this a time or place where you can’t find people who share an interest of yours. Frankly, anyone over the age of 18 should be past it, or working on it. If you’re reading this and you’re under 18 then, you know, go for it for a while longer, emo kid.

But we’re not alone any more than we don’t make the effort not to be. And no, you aren’t alone in not wanting to make the effort or in being scared of it and the possibility of rejection. So let go. Find your people. Embrace them.

And I’ll tell you something else. You’ll find that “your people” comprise a bunch of different sets of people that may, or may not, overlap with each other. That’s fine too. No single group will, probably, be 100% in line with you. It’s normal and natural and awesome.

Because you get to, if you want to, learn what makes them tick and see if that also works for you. You can also do the same for them. Give and take. Don’t forget either side, in equal measure. Some of my nearest and dearest are into comics, some hate them or are indifferent. Some hate musicals or action movies or Jem. That’s all right, too.

I don’t expect them to align perfectly with me. I’m thankful they don’t. It would, honestly, creep me out if they did.

My issue, mostly, is that whenever you post and use those phrases, those trigger sentences that enforce your supposed uniqueness, you slam up walls that turn people away and propagate the same bad behavior in others. It isn’t healthy, I’m sorry.

We’re all different and we’re all the same and your great friends you haven’t met yet are right around the corner, not even aware that they’re waiting to meet you. Why deprive them of that? Why hold back some of your joy and theirs at the same time? It’s selfish, really. Take a chance, and if it doesn’t work – well guess what, you wouldn’t be alone in that either. So you take another one.

There’s a whole world of really interesting people around. I am so incredibly lucky to have met the tiniest of a fraction of them. Even the ones I don’t like are still people, other humans with insight and thoughts that aren’t mine and I can learn from those or laugh at them or build on them or all three at once plus plenty more.

If I had one magical wish, right now, it would be to strike those trigger sentences from the internet and have everyone actually take the time to get to know other people openly and honestly. To leave their fear behind them and seek out people who will give them joy and discussion and good times.

But I don’t have a magical wish. I checked. Just now. So instead all I can do is ask you all to think about it, reach out and leave the fear for another day. You won’t be alone. You never were.

Oh, and for the record? I’m not alone in having said things like this, and we all know it.

Sometimes I wonder about the people I meet. On the surface so many of them seem fine. So many of them then turn out to be batshit crazy. Expecting up to be down, demanding that an emotional state is unique to them, that an insight is theirs alone, that how they feel a story should end should actually influence a story …

And then I remember that most of these people are from the internet.

There’s a thing about the internet, isn’t there? I mean back in ‘93 or so it was all the rage to bemoan our fate that AOL users might have access to USENet and drag everything down. It’s always something, always an outsider at the gates, or something new that will “ruin” things for everyone.

There’s this great disconnect out there. People seem to want whatever they do and say on the internet to be applicable only there (or here, I suppose I should say) because “it’s the internet” and they feel betrayed or violated in some sense when that isn’t the case. When the veil, that isn’t even there in the first place, is lifted they panic. But at the same time people gather, the same people, in small groups and imagine they have influence over things outside of that group. They don’t see the problem with that.

How many Facebook groups are there about how if X number of people join then they can change something? How often do you think that works? Well, sure, you can say it is an outlet for their feelings but if that cause is something they believe in wouldn’t it be just as easy and more productive to do something meaningful about it? Don’t collect a million people in a group to support your cause: write a letter, make a call, do something real about it. It’s often as easy and might actually achieve something.

Or how many people do you see in a group about a show or movie they claim to love and yet bitch about endlessly saying how they should’ve done X Y or Z instead? And worse they often claim that “everyone wants it” when everyone is a bunch of internet people. Look, if 10,000 people across 40 forums want a plot point for a show that has 8 million viewers why do they think that they are somehow the majority? I’m not saying people shouldn’t think things, say things or feel certain ways but adding anger that they’re being ignored is just silly.

Of course they’re being ignored! This is a group that spends as much time attacking things as harshly as possible as they do complaining that no one listens. Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is a bad idea, yelling about invisible flying mongooses in a theatre is just odd. Yelling either gets you ignored after a while.

When your first move is to insult people as a way to express your displeasure, don’t be surprised you aren’t being listened to. No one listens to a mob screaming their heads off for blood about things they can’t really tend to affect. There are saner ways to effect change. They’re not used half as often.

One of my favorite recent ones was Dollhouse. Before the show started the hardcore Whedon fans started a movement to save the show. Before they had seen it, before it aired. Because they knew that the world was against the show, somehow, or something. And then it aired. And a lot of people didn’t like it. It didn’t get good ratings. Was it a good show? Eh, that doesn’t actually matter, you see.

And so even a lot of the people that didn’t like it wanted to make sure it got back for a second season, because it was done by their favorite creator and they thought it would get better. They got the second season. More people bailed on it. They didn’t like it. Ratings didn’t go up. So it was cancelled. And then the bitching started about how the network screwed Whedon up. Reality has no place here.

You always hear about those shows “no one likes” around the internet. Those shows that are “somehow” still on, despite the “fact” that “no one” likes them. Except, well, they have ratings, don’t they? People are obviously watching them. Just not people you know. Not people you, apparently, think have valid opinions.

The internet is a hell of a place, isn’t it? Just full of crazy motherfuckers shouting into the night, demanding that they be heard and not actually doing anything that would truly get them heard.

And don’t get me wrong, I love the internet. Quite obviously, given the amount of crap I put into it every week. But, man, it’s a clusterfuck of a town hall isn’t it? See, I don’t say anything here I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. It keeps me honest. It keeps me sane.

So try it. Next time you want to shout about what a fuckup a creator is, consider what you would say to their face. If you want to effect change in policy, law or gopher treatment, do it in a way that would work outside of the confines of your monitor. Maybe, if we all tried that a while, real change could happen and real voices could be heard. Until then the internet is largely a wild pack of children just waiting to start eating each other and claiming that the internet stole the plot from some bad made-for-TV movie while missing the Lord of the Flies reference.

I have issues with identity sometimes. Not gender, sexual, political, sports-fan, or Clark Kent – those I got down. I’m good. We settled those years ago, each one in its own time. No, I’m talking professionally.

I don’t make my living writing. I do make some money at it, however. I have three books out. I still sometimes have problems calling myself a writer. That’s just me. I’ll call someone else a writer for having done far less. Not that other people are less than me, but I hold myself to some sort of stupid level that doesn’t make any sense.

So sometimes when I’m asked what I do I’ll say I’m a writer, but I always feel like I am lying. As if somehow I’ll be found out and people will point and laugh and explain, in carefully chosen words, exactly why I am not a writer. And I’ll have to agree with them. Because I don’t feel like a writer. I’m just a guy who writes a lot.

I know how stupid that sounds. What else is a writer but a person who writes a lot? I don’t know. There’s some indefinable thing that eludes me to allow me to fully 100% consider myself a writer.

It gets even stranger when you start breaking down what I do. Though I may not call myself a writer often, if I’m being honest with myself, I find that I bristle when other people refer to me as a blogger. Well what the fuck, Batman?

I write webcomics, I write multiple online columns, prose books, and, yes Virginia it’s true, I blog. A lot. So what’s wrong with the term “blogger”? I know plenty of bloggers. I love many of them. Some of them I want to touch in inappropriate ways. And then maybe blog about it. But I bristled the other night when someone called me a blogger.

Not because I somehow felt I was better than that you need to understand, but because it is, in my mind, such a small, disposable piece of what I write. And truth be told I do consider the blogging disposable. It’s stuff that isn’t enough to turn into a column, or put in a comic or novel. It’s little slices of life that I talk to about with my friends and funny things I find on the Internet and in my, obviously diseased, brainmeats I consider it to be the least that I do.

Which isn’t to say it isn’t important or that I don’t care about it. I do care. I take care with every entry and consider it an important way to talk with people I wouldn’t talk with otherwise. And yet? Disposable. I can’t explain it. I don’t look down on it, I just don’t elevate it to the same level as my other writing. Which isn’t fair, I suppose, but it’s honest.

And while I feel like I am somehow insulting everyone I know who does blog and does consider themselves a blogger, I don’t mean it that way. I truly don’t. I just, for myself and only myself, consider everything else I write less important than my prose fiction. I probably write it the least, the least output of everything I do, but that’s also because it is the most work and takes the longest.

So now let’s add those two together. I won’t call myself a writer but if you call me a subset of writer I get annoyed. Yeah, that ends anywhere but good, doesn’t it? I dunno. I’m trying to unpack this all myself. I’ve spent the last decade writing to get to where I am and some days it feels like I’m only a step along a road. Which, actually, is fantastic and I love it and I love all the stuff I get to do. But I’m not where I want to be, yet, and I know I may never get there.

That won’t stop me but it does mean that sometimes stupid semantics will trip me up, simply because I ain’t that bright, you know? I’m some guy, from New York, who happens to like mouthing off and has a few platforms to do it with.

Fuck. I don’t know. I may have just insulted a large group of people, made myself come off like both an arrogant prick and a complete mental case (not that either of those are wrong mind you) and come to no real conclusion at the end of the day.

Hooray!

Look, I tell you what. I’m gonna shut the fuck up now. I should be working on a column or something, I’m sure, right about now, and day jobbing and … thinking of something good to post here later that isn’t just mindless prattle about “woe is me I am not considered to be…” You know what before I go let me rant for one more second.

You know what I’m not? I’m not an artist. I’m not. And I’m glad of it. I’m very much a craftsman. Writing is a job, it isn’t creating art. Not for me. You may be an artist. That’s fine, go with God. I ain’t. I build furniture, make cars, you know what I mean? I don’t believe in muses, waiting for inspiration, or that I am committing acts of art. Again, that’s just me. I just put words in specific orders to achieve specific effects. It’s a job. A job that doesn’t pay well, but hey.

Wandering again. Anyway. I should be doing other stuff that isn’t this. That is, in all likelihood, more interesting to everyone reading this. So I’m'a go do that.

You guys be good to each other, ya hear?

Just a fairly simple thought today. We can do anything. No, seriously. We can do anything. As a species, as a people, as a group of organisms on this planet there is nothing we can’t do. I can’t care how high it is, how deep, small, far, close, big or small – we can find it, examine it, make strides in understanding it and explore it.

Want to see what the planet looks like from 31 million miles away as the moon crosses the planet’s path? We can do that:

We can push something out into the darkness of space, 31 million miles away and have it able to take pictures of that quality and send them back to us. We can totally do that. There it is. And look at us. We’re on this ball of stuff, this undeniably alive planet spinning in darkness. Above us rotates a giant stone. It hangs there in perfect sync. That’s us. That ball of stuff, that living ball of blue and green and white and brown and all of the potential ever thought of. That’s us. And look what we can do. Just look at it and think about it. You’re seeing our planet in a way no one has before this. Well, before this picture was sent back, in July ‘08 but that isn’t that long ago. No, before that no one had ever seen this view before in the history of mankind.

You want to, instead, see atomic structure? Chemical bonds? An actual molecule? We can do that, too.

You can read more about that image at the BBC but know that it is a carbon nanotube, with visible chemical bonds. Never seen that before, either. But we can. We can do anything, given enough time and desire. We can improve ourselves beyond the possible imagination of our ancestors, create devices that make the grandest speculation seem quaint and learn more and more about ourselves along the way.

We can do anything.

And it’s time, I think, we started acting like it. It’s time to reach for it, even just a little bit, every day. To know where you live, where you come from and where you want to go. To push forward and gaze upwards and inwards and lend a bit of your might to moving all of us forward.

And maybe that’s just a thought, today. Maybe all you can spare is a smile for the universe just now. A realization that the possibility is out there and endless. Share it with someone else. Spread the fact like a virus. The upsight is contagious. Talk about it, pick up a bit of it, move it shape it and feel it. Improve the world one thought and action at a time. Don’t worry that it isn’t enough or that no one notices. Just do it. Snowballs grow larger as they roll downhill. Each single piece of snow adds to the whole and suddenly you have a boulder before you know it. Don’t worry about seeing the effect you have. Keep trying, and learning and thinking and growing. It’s there and you can’t make it go away. Look what we can do!

We can do anything. It’s time we did it more often.