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Blech!
When you wake up and it’s already the maximum temperature you think it should EVER be…
Just A Rollercoaster Ride Thru Hell…
For me, 70°F (or 21°C) is basically the ceiling of all tolerance. I will concede that something in the 65-70° range is your basic “nice day” in late spring or summertime, but screw this stuff in the 90s and I don’t go for triple-digits at all.
Add to that a variety of recurring ailments. Random pains all over my body from past abuses are only that much more irksome when aggravated by inclement heat conditions.
Nah, I’ll pass.
Good news is, we’re cranking right along and summer will soon be over. “Summer” ends on Labor Day. Actual Summer ends on September 22nd. Summer weather? Well, that shit can drag right on through Halloween some years. H
Hopefully, it will actually end in September like it’s supposed to.
Super Demographics
Heroes Like Us: Jewish
The primary focus character of the first book in the Sentinels series is a nice Jewish girl from the Lower East Side of Empire City who wanted to be a superhero when she grew up.
Why? Because I’m just another an insensitive middle-aged, middle-class White cis-guy? Well, no, and fuck you for thinking so. Well, not YOU specifically unless you actually think that. See my rant below on Cultural Appropriation.
The fact of the matter is that Empire City is an analog of New York City and New York City has quite a few Jewish people. I’d honestly be surprised if a world in which superheroes started popping up in a New York City-like place (Metropolis, Empire City, etc) didn’t represent the demographic diversity of the city where they take action.
Another matter is that most (if not all) of the classic comics were created and written by Jewish artists. There would literally be no superheroes without Jewish people.
Honestly, the choice was fairly arbitrary. She’s just a plucky young lady in Empire City.
Blue Banshee could be a WASP or a Catholic. She could have been Black or Asian. She could be whatever I want her to be. I want her to be Jewish because there would have been no superheroes without their talented Jewish creators.
Batwoman is Jewish, so why can’t Blue Banshee be?
She can. So there.
Check out the video below to learn about the history of Jewish creators in the superhero field of entertainment.
Why aren’t there More Jewish Superheroes? – Comic Tropes (Episode 94)
Same sky for all of us
There is the sky, which is all men’s together. ~Euripides
We are all one people, the human race.
Obviously, there are geographical and cultural differences that have developed over the course of centuries and millennia. Some of us look quite different and some of us have features in common.
We speak many languages, have different stories, eat different kinds of food.
That’s fine. Getting to know some of these regional variations can be a real delight. Humans love to explore and find out about things.
What we don’t really like to find out is that some people are perpetually offended by basically everything.
There was a time when differences were a big issue. There were laws to prevent people of different backgrounds intermingling.
This is nothing new.
In the Middle Ages, there were sumptuary laws that prohibited people from buying out of their social standing. The idea was to enforce socioeconomic divisions by preventing lower class people from buying clothes reserved for the aristocracy.
In Japan, they would greet foreigners landing on their shores with a violent send-off. Gaijin weren’t welcome. End of story, end of discussion.
There have been a lot of bad things that have gone down over the course of human history.
Because of this, there are those who feel perpetually aggrieved. If it’s because of something that happened to them, that’s understandable. If it’s because of something that happened to other people, that’s also understandable because some people are highly empathetic for the plights of others.
That being said, get over yourselves already. There are a lot of things to be bothered by in this world. The summer temperatures irk the crap out of me particularly. Being bothered in order to feel virtuous is, quite frankly, a mental disorder.
One of the ways that this mental illness manifests itself is through a variety of silly hot-button issues. Custom terminology designed to tell you what to be offended about has been devised to allow the Social Justice Warriors of the world to police the thoughts and motivations of others and come away feeling gloriously virtuous.
One of the terms that comes to mind is Cultural Appropriation. This is the conceptual hand grenade of the perpetually offended.
Some of the points that have been raised are valid. Some people do hateful things with the elements of other cultures. There are people who have been very crass in their acquisition and display of items from other places.
The thing is, these people are rarely limited in their crassness by cultural appropriation. If you’re an asshole in one way, you’re usually an asshole right across the board.
The average person who wears a piece of culture-specific attire that they picked up on vacation or ordered from a catalog is not being crass either intentionally or unintentionally.
I 🖕🏽 got 🖕🏻 yer 🖕 Cultural 🖕🏾 Appropriation 🖕🏽 right 🖕🏿 here!
How dare you judge someone because she puts chopsticks in her hair for Chinese New Year or wears a kilt without actually being Scottish? Who the hell are you to judge? Maybe the guy in the kilt was an exchange student. You don’t know. Maybe the girl with the chop sticks really likes Chinese culture and has friends in the local Chinese community. You can’t know unless you ask.
Here’s a shocking idea: Mind your own fucking business!
Those who go around looking to shriek about other people’s alleged crimes against human decency and loudly virtue signal are having some kind of a problem. They have decided to make it everyone else’s problem.
Unfortunately, they embody the notion of the squeaky wheel getting the oil. Because they are loud, they get attention. Because they have a well-practiced stream of bullshit to lay on anyone and everyone, they often succeed in guilting people into accepting their lunacy as reason.
I don’t go for that. If anything, the shrieking loons of modern society prove only one thing. We need to take mental health more seriously. There are a lot of free-ranging mental cases running around making a nuisance of themselves and a mockery of basic logic.
It’s gone too far and we need to start taking responsibility for these flake cases. Individual choice is a hallmark of the free, modern society. When that is taken away be allegedly well-meaning virtue signallers, we have a tyranny of the minority. The minority in this case is the deranged finger-pointer.
At no point do we consider that when you point the finger, you’ve got four pointing back at you. Who the hell are you to run around trying to police people’s lifestyles? You think it’s perfectly fine for people express their sexual “pride” by walking down the street with their posteriors hanging out but you’re offended because somebody is wearing a serape they picked up on vacation in Mexico?
Are you insane?
Why, yes you are and it’s well past time you sought treatment. Can we please stop listening to these perpetual whingers and get them some therapy?
Our society is turning itself inside out at the prompting of a comparatively few.
What has this to do with writing?
Well, I recently read a piece where an author felt compelled to apologize for daring to have an idea. Let’s agree that when you have an idea for a book or short story, you need to definitely weigh whether or not you’re the right person to tell that tale. That being said, if you are willing to do the research in order not to make a mockery of the subject matter then you are definitely the right person to tell the tale whether you’re of the same demographic of your story or not.
Are we going to cancel Steinbeck for writing The Pearl since he wasn’t actually Mexican? I’m sure there are people who would like to do that. I would like to see such people slapped vigorously with a stinky wet fish. OMG! Get the fuck over your sensitive selves!!!
These self-appointed paragons of virtue would demand that you can only ever write characters who conform to your own demographic profile. For one thing, that would be tremendously boring. For another thing, the very same people would excoriate you for not having more diversity in your writing. Why in the hell should anyone listen to these people? They need to be medicated and kept in a room with soft walls and no sharp objects.
I’ve had as much as I can take from the whiners. I will accept no tut-tutting. They can all suck it, each and every last one of them.
If I want my characters to be anything other than what I personally am, that is my prerogative. Whatever I deem to make sense in context will happen. I will not be shamed or shouted down by emotionally disturbed persons.
People need a serious dose of reality and the reality is that we live in a free society where people are free to tell the stories they come up with. If it’s a mistake, it will be evident in the lack of sales. Let the work be judged on its own merit rather than whether someone thinks the author had the right to tell it. Enough already. Tell your stories and may the SJWs be damned.
The weather is hot and so is my temper. These things often go hand in hand.