Is the Former Founder of Twitter an Elitist A-Hole or a Victim of Circumstance?

Last month Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter, left BlueSky, which was basically the same as old Twitter.  In an interview he complained about the platform "making the same mistakes" like not being free or an open development platform and moderating comments and stuff. 

The original interview was on some tech site that you and I have never heard of.  But soon it was picked up by more well-known outlets like Business Insider and people were talking about it on Bluesky, especially the part where he describes people who went from Twitter to Bluesky after Musk's takeover as "a common crowd."

The reaction was pretty negative.  "What an asshole!" people said.  "He wants 'open Internet' to protect Nazis and trolls, etc."  And people post their snide comments and write thinkpieces.  Even I wrote a blog entry I'll share later.

But then days later I read this article from a guy who sorta knows Dorsey and was present for a lot of the interviews for hiring people of Bluesky and stuff like that.  So someone who probably knows what he's talking about.

If you can keep your eyelids open at all the tech jargon, what you start to understand is a lot of what Dorsey said was taken out of context.  Especially stuff like "open Internet" and "common crowd."  And then you know how these things go:  one person misinterprets something and tells someone else who tells someone else and it spreads like a disease.

All the jargon in the article aside, I think what happened is Dorsey was talking to some tech reporter from a tech site and so they were basically just talking shop.  Thus he wasn't parsing this for mass consumption.  Or you could say, dumbing it down for people like me and most Phantom Readers.  Like if a doctor is talking to someone from a medical journal they're probably going to use more medical terminology and such than if they're talking to someone from a local newspaper.

The problem in this case is then people who aren't all that tech savvy get a hold of it and see a rich white guy complaining about the "common crowd" and "free speech" and naturally their reaction is going to be, "What an elitist asshole!"  Because those people--including me--wouldn't know a "protocol" from a Bulgarian dildo.  Actually "protocol" just makes me think of C-3PO in Star Wars.

If you actually know what it is then it makes a little more sense.  I think basically what he's wanting is for everyone to sort of curate their own experience by having their own set of algorithms to filter things instead of relying on human moderators, which is different than a completely lawless, unmoderated Internet.  And the "common crowd" probably just meant people who are not tech savvy.

But the problem, as I'm sure many writers are aware of, is it's easy for people to misinterpret things.  Once people do, especially with someone fairly high profile, then it can be hard to correct.  And I'm willing to bet Dorsey isn't doing himself any favors on X right now.  He probably just needs to hire someone who can explain what he actually meant in plain English--or close to it.

Anyway, you can read what I originally wrote, which is now probably out of context, but still I think it's a good point about the need for some moderation--at least until someone figures out all this "protocol" bullshit.

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Last month Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter, left BlueSky, which was basically the same as old Twitter.  In an interview he whined about the platform "making the same mistakes" like not being free or an open development platform and moderating comments and stuff.  So then he crawled back to Twitter, aka X, to join in whining about "free speech" with fellow rich non-genius troll Elon Musk.

People want to make this an argument and obviously Dorsey and Musk want to think this is a real complicated issue, but it's not.  It's a pretty open-and-shut case.  And a real fucking hard no when it comes to social media platforms being "open" with no moderation.

To boil it all down simply you could ask Dorsey and Musk:  how many security guards/bodyguards do you employ for yourself, your family, your buildings, your megayachts, etc.?  How many of your homes are protected by gates?  What kind of security systems do your homes, cars, megayachts use?

If you care so much about "openness" then why do you protect all your stuff?  Because common sense (and a glance at any newspaper or local news broadcast) would tell you that there are bad people out there who would take your shit if they thought you didn't have any protection.  I mean if word got around that Dorsey's mansion didn't have any gates or locks or security alarms, how long do you think it'd take someone to drop by and empty the place out?  Basically as long as it'd take to get a truck there.

Yet for some reason, Dorsey and Musk and others want us to think the Internet is a better, more wholesome place.  Despite that it's very obviously not.  A short film I find amusing on the Rifftrax site is called The Kid's Guide to the Internet.  It was made in 1997 and is super cheesy.  It's funny to see all the old sites but also sad to remember all our hopes for the Internet.  "I can research stuff for school!"  "I can find out what's going on with my favorite TV shows/movies!"  "I can email the president!"  And 27 years later we have disinformation, spam, scams, trolls, incels, hate, and porn instead.  But even this silly movie 27 years ago warned the kids that they should only go to sites their parents approved.  Why?  Because even on a stupid movie like that they knew there were bad people on the Internet.  It was definitely not the sort of place you'd want your kids to have open access to then and certainly not now.

The simple fact is, as I've been witness to, when you have a universe with no physical consequences for your actions, people will tend to be their worst selves.  I've said before, I've been in flame wars since 1996 on the Transformers Usenet group.  I'd say I didn't intentionally start any of those--but I tried to finish them.  So I know what I'm talking about.  

Think of these groups--or now social media platforms--like a bar.  If you went into a real bar and started arguing, you risk getting punched, kicked, hit/stabbed with a bottle, or even shot.  But on the Internet you don't run any of those risks.  So you get a lot of "keyboard warriors" who have a lot more courage than they do in real life (looking at me here!) to fight with people.  Because what's going to happen to them if there's no moderation?  You going to call the FBI?  Oooh, I'm soooo scared.

Really from about 2006-2015 there was rarely any moderation on Writers.net.  Guess what would happen?  You'd have flame wars that would last for weeks.  Or sometimes it'd burn for a few days and then cool a little and then some jackass would start things up again.  Point being, with no moderators to give people a time out, it could drag out for a long time.  And usually it'd evolve from whatever the starting topic is to something else and something else and probably a lot of personal attacks and stuff.  In the end what would happen?  Everyone would just go to their corners to wait for the next round.  And so it'd go.  Some people enjoy that and sometimes it could be fun but eventually even I got fairly tired of it.  It was no surprise the site lost a lot of users to basically become a ghost town.  I mean, who really wants to keep being around all that drama and stuff?  

Even Dorsey noted that after the Musk takeover of Twitter a lot of people began going to Bluesky.  Why?  Because they didn't want to deal with the drama.  They just wanted to make their posts and shit and not worry about trolls, pervs, racists, incels, scammers, spammers, and the rest of the freak show Musk wanted to bring back.

Which brings up the point:  most people don't want "open" Internet.  Granted they don't want things too heavily moderated, but they don't want no moderation either.  Again, if you think of a social media app like a bar, moderators are like the bouncers to eject those who get out of line.  Do you really want to go to a bar where anyone can do whatever they want?  It's like the club in Roadhouse before Patrick Swayze/Jake Gyllenhaal gets there.   And for some people that's fun, but for most people it's not much fun and thus they aren't going to stay very long.  So you end up with a clientele of scumbags and jerks.  And I guess still some hangers-on who don't want to lose the following they still have.

Anyway, I think it's a pretty easy issue.  Moderation exists because people will naturally be assholes if there's no one to keep them in check.  That's true in real life and in online life too--especially in online life.  You have to wonder if Dorsey and Musk are so stupid that they can't see this or they just want permission to be the biggest trolls they can be.  I'm leaning towards the latter.

An Old-Fashioned Flame War Reminds Me That The Left Can Be As Bad As the Right

A perfect post for Insecure Wednesday.   It was late last April when pro-Palestinian protests were happening at colleges.  Former MST3K writer/performer and current Rifftrax writer/performer Bill Corbett made a post lauding someone for complaining about Biden.  I made what I thought was a pretty inane response.  And then it was on!

For about six or seven hours it was kinda like an old-fashioned flame war on the ATT Usenet group or writers.net.  What it illustrated to me was people on the left will use the same bullying tactics as people on the right.  So it's the rare time you can shout, "Both sides!"

Here's the offending material:

As Bernie would say, I don't think it's a radical idea to point out that in the end when it comes to November you have two choices:  you hold your nose and vote for Biden or you "protest vote" or stay home and help Donald Trump.  I mean this is literally what happened in 2016.  It's something I really don't want to see happen again just because whiny liberals are mad that Biden isn't the perfect human--as if any leader ever in history has been.

And yeah, I get it, the situation in Palestine sucks.  I for one wish we'd kick Netanyahu's ass out of office.  I do wish we'd stop giving him weapons to use to blow up hospitals and schools and indiscriminately murder old people, women, children, the handicapped and everyone else who can't possibly be a terrorist.  But you know what, when it gets to November I'm left with those two choices:  Biden or Trump.  That's the unfortunate reality of the two-party system.  It's very unlikely that will change by November.

Anyway, it didn't take long before I was under heavy fire for stating the obvious.  There were some who just whined naively that they shouldn't have to pick the lesser of two evils or Biden should earn their vote or whatever.  As if they completely forgot 8 years ago.  Some others attempted logic like, "I didn't vote in 2016 and Hillary still won my state."  Well la-dee-dah.  Or someone who claimed to have been in the hospital that day.  Um, so?  What's that supposed to prove?

But it pretty quickly devolved into stupid insults.  Just like in old flame wars people would make insults based on nothing really.  My profile pic only shows like a quarter of my head but that didn't stop people from calling me names for being overweight and even being white--and of course those making the insults didn't have profile pics of themselves.  A couple made fun of my blog without reading any of it and my writing career though of course they've sold a combined 0 books ever.  And probably haven't even written a book.

One person said I sounded like I was screaming at my monitor.  Uh-huh.  I mean does that post above sound like "screaming" to you?  I didn't use exclamation points, all caps, or curse words--Corbett was actually the one who cursed at me.  So who sounds like he's "screaming?"  But the obvious tactic is to try to make it seem like you're the lunatic and they're the nice, good, sane ones.  That's another tactic from long, long ago but these kids probably thought they had come up with something clever.

It was pretty sad to see liberals acting just like Trump supporters.  I mean, aren't liberals supposed to be open-minded?  But if you don't agree with some of them, even just a little bit, they start attacking and bullying.  They basically say, "He isn't one of us, get him!"  And then start chasing with pitchforks and torches.

Early on it was obvious they couldn't attack what I said so they just attacked me.  As if lowering the standing of someone with 0 real followers would matter.  I'm not sure what the point was; if they thought they could make me run away crying, well, I'd been in flame wars before they were probably even born.  I've had lots better insults thrown my way then most of their crap.

There were a couple who milked it longer than others.  One I think really got mad because he humblebragged about watching an MST3K marathon all day at work.  Like that made him some big superfan of Corbett.  I pointed out I was watching Rifftrax at the moment.  Since that's Corbett's actual job at the moment, I was actually supporting him better than this dude.  I think that's when he got more personal in his attacks.  For some bizarre reason he called me "Vin Diesel" because I guess to him every bald white guy is the same even if they're fat and wear glasses?  Then he promised to mute me but came roaring back until I finally taunted him, "What's the over/under on your posts until you ignore me?"  Then he finally shut up.

This other one started by saying I should stop using my dad's phone.  I told him my dad died in 2009.  Maybe then he'd express some sympathy or at least say, "That sucks?"  Nope, he just kept pushing by saying, "that was 15 years ago. stop acting like a third grader."  Because I guess pointing out the reality of our 2-party system is what third graders do?  This was obviously an asshole without any shame or empathy--like a Trump supporter.  He didn't like it when I pointed that out and could only whine, "don't you have any original ideas?"  So he must get that a lot.  Well, if you do, then maybe it's because it's true.  He kept going for a while and then for some reason posted a picture of this saying he was going to send it to me:

I guess he thought that would offend me because I'm such a religious person.  I posted back this picture from my bookshelf:

Then he whimpered something about not putting "Alt Text" on it and muted me.  That was it.  Except the next morning there were a couple of latecomers.  I didn't even read their crap; I just muted it.  I mean you have to know when the fight is over.  Otherwise it's like rushing onto the field after both teams and the fans have already gone home.

I'm not sure what the point really was for those who kept coming back for more.  They should have just been like their fellows and used a meme or made some lame one-liner like, "PT = Piss Takes."  Which sounds like a good name for the blog:  Piss Takes With PT Dilloway.  You think Blogger would censor that?  Those lame barbs are pretty easy to ignore and I only muted them much later just so none of that junk showed up on my feed.  The ones who keep coming back, though, were they expecting me to break down and cry?  Or apologize?  Or lose my temper and say something that they could report to Bluesky?  Or was it some game of chicken where they'd "win" if they muted/blocked me before I muted/blocked them?  In which case they lost.  So...

Anyway, as usual I doubt any minds were changed.  Lots of people got muted and/or blocked.  I got blocked by Corbett, which is kinda neat in a way to get blocked by an F-list celebrity.  In the end it's a good illustration that there are nasty bullies on both sides.  And both sides will use the same tactics online.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I'm a liberal and I can be a bully, though I'd say I only do it in self-defense.  Like in this case.  I didn't attack anyone in particular--at least until they attacked me.  It makes me sad though because I want to think I'm an outlier not in the norm.  Like Charles Barkley said, "I'm not a role model."

Getting back to my main point, in November there really is no way to get out of it with your hands clean and morality intact.  It's almost always shades of gray, not black-and-white.  Though I'd say it's kind of medium gray vs black this time.  (And for any smart asses, Trump is obviously the black.)  A lot of the people in this fight really want to think they can make Biden pay without helping Trump, but such is not the case.  If Trump wins, Biden is probably not going to suffer a whole lot.  He'll just go back to Delaware or wherever and retire for however many years he has left.  Like with 2016, it's others who suffer for your protest vote or nonvote:  women, gays, transgender people, etc.  

Like so many people who owe money to where I work, a lot of these people want to think they have some control of this unfair system, but they really don't.  Even choosing not to actively participate doesn't mean you're not part of the system.  It sucks even for F-list celebrities to realize they aren't that powerful.  You can block me, but you can't block the truth.

May Movies

 Probably not as long as last month's entry because it's not covering as much time.  I'll still do a scorecard so you don't have to actually read anything.  I mean, who actually comes to a blog to read, right?

Resident Alien, S3:  I watched the first two seasons of this Syfy dramedy on Peacock a while back and a month or so ago season 3 finished dropping so I decided to watch it.  The show is about an alien who adopts the body of a small town doctor named Harry (Alan Tudyk).  He was supposed to destroy the planet but didn't and at the end of the last season learned some "Grays" (those little gray aliens with the big heads and black eyes) had sinister plans on Earth.

The overall plot then is to find out what the Grays are doing and stop them.  But like the previous season there's a lot of other stuff thrown in there to fill out the eight episodes.  I'm sure not all of it really needed to be included.  Still, it is overall a fun show, even with probably too many characters and subplots.  Tudyk is still the best thing about it with his goofy, sociopathic alien.  The end of the last episode sets up season 4 with an imposter Harry who's even worse. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The producers might have to make a decision on what to do with Max, the kid who's the only one who can see Harry's alien form, as it's pretty clear the actor is getting close to puberty and might be there by next season.  I'm not sure how old the character is supposed to be in the context of the show.)

Animal Control, S2:  This Fox comedy was pretty good last year though not really anything great.  Joel McHale of Community, The Soup, Stargirl, etc stars as Frank Shaw, a grizzled animal control worker in Seattle.  He gets a young new partner called "Shred" who was an X Games snowboarding champion.  There's also an Indian-American family guy, a woman from New Zealand, and their boss who's younger than Frank and kinda touchy-feely.  

The second season continues the show and is a slight improvement.  The writers made sure to give the characters a story that would last most of the season.  Frank finds out about a ring to import exotic animals.  His boss finds out and Frank is forced to let her "help."  Meanwhile the Kiwi woman faces deportation and has to pass the citizenship test.  Shred and the Indian-American guy buy a house to flip, which of course gets complicated.

The weakest part of the show are the retro 90s will they-won't they romance parts with Shred, the boss, and her boyfriend, who used to be the boss of the station until he got maimed by an animal and retired.  That stuff isn't fun or funny and just brings the atmosphere down.  They add in a bad girl Shred meets at a country club and tries to track down to make it more of a love quadrangle, but no matter how many sides you add, it still sucks.

Though the weakest episode is the one with Ken Jeong as a cut-rate Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.  It just seemed really dated as that guy has been around for almost 20 years now.  There were some fun bits with his rivalry with Frank and how the Kiwi woman swoons over him, but still it mostly just felt stale.

Overall though there's more to like than to dislike.  It's not a great show but better than a lot of crap out there.  It's not a bad way to kill 30 minutes on Hulu and by now you can binge it in a couple of hours. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Last season there was a chubby redheaded office manager who was prominent early, disappeared for a few episodes, reappeared again, and then vanishes without a trace this season.  She's replaced by a fat black receptionist for the boss.  The actress playing her was on Fox's Welcome to Flatch, which this show pretty much replaced on the schedule.  Question:  In the first season it seemed the Kiwi lady was a lesbian or bi-sexual but they really don't do anything with her romantically this season.  Which begs the question if that "offended" too many people and so the writers dropped it?)

Lights Out:  A fairly generic action movie on Hulu though not quite as generic as I thought.  Frank Grillo is a former Army guy turned drifter who gets recruited for a fight club by Mekhi Phifer to make money.  They go to LA where Phifer's sister is being hassled by corrupt cops who are trying to find some money her sleazy ex-boyfriend had hidden away.

I thought from the description that this would be Grillo getting pressed into a fighting ring and having to free himself.  Instead Grillo and Phifer have to find a way to stop the corrupt cops.  In the meantime, Grillo fights a few guys for money.  It was an OK action movie overall.  The actors are better than a lot of these and the filmmakers are pretty competent.  It could have been more original but it's fine if you just want some entertainment for 90 minutes or so. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  Scott Adkins, who has starred in plenty of these, has a small part near the end as Grillo's old army buddy.  Which also entitled him to an EP credit.  Jaime King, who plays the lead corrupt cop, has curly blonde hair most of the movie.  But one scene before the final act, she suddenly has straight hair.  Then it goes back to curly again.  So the one scene was probably shot later--or earlier.)

One Day As A Lion:  I saw this on Amazon a while back but it wasn't on Prime so I just bookmarked it.  It still hadn't been on Prime when mine expired.  I forgot about it until weeks later I saw it on Tubi so I watched it free with ads--which is about what it's worth.

The movie stars and is written/produced by Scott Caan--the son of the late James Caan of The Godfather--and between the inexperience of Caan and the probably fairly low budget, it turns into one of those meh cheap action movies that probably doesn't deserve a better cast including Frank Grillo and Oscar winner JK Simmons.  

The plot is a sort of faded copy of a Coen Brothers movie.  A former boxer named Jackie (Caan) has a young son in juvie and wants to hire a lawyer to get him out.  So he agrees to kill a rancher (Simmons) who owes a lot of money to a gangster (Grillo) but when Jackie can't do it at a diner, the rancher escapes and Jackie ineptly takes a waitress hostage.  Then there's a lot of moving pieces around as Jackie and the waitress try to get money while the gangster tries to get the rancher.

Some of it is pretty good and overall it rises to the level of "not bad" but definitely not great either.  In better hands it probably could have worked like Maggie Moore(s) I watched a couple of months ago on Hulu where as I said it was a copy of a Coen Bros movie but it was a really good copy--which this isn't.  There are some extraneous details like about the waitress's mom whose husbands all died within a year of marrying her.  Did she kill them?  It doesn't matter.  A black cook at the diner is presumably killed by Jackie in the beginning and yet Jackie faces no consequences and the audience is I guess supposed to still root for him because he has a kid in trouble.  During the last confrontation, the music seems better suited for when you're on hold than during a tense standoff.  Just things like that could have been done better and the movie would have been stronger. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  It's a little confusing after the credits when there's a scene that seems like one taking place earlier only there was a different actor as Grillo's henchman.  I'm not sure what the point was in showing it.)

Knight & Day:  This 2010 action-romantic comedy involves a premise that's been used a few times before and since:  a spy named Roy (Tom Cruise) saves a woman named June (Cameron Diaz) and then they trek across the world trying to avoid bad guys.  The McGuffin is a battery called Zephyr that never runs out of power without radiation or anything like that.

Mostly it's a fun, harmless movie with plenty of action and decent enough chemistry with the leads.  Cruise doesn't do a parody of his Mission:  Impossible character Ethan Hunt so much as he just softens Hunt a little.  And while there are some stunts, there's nothing quite as intense as the last 4 MI movies when Cruise really started risking his life to do these crazy stunts so people would watch the movie.

A lot of the movie focuses on June who is often confused but usually not too hysterical and manages to be capable a few times.  So she's not entirely a damsel in distress.  One thing I didn't like though is a few times they're in some impossible situation and then Roy drugs her and she'll wake up somewhere else.  It's basically handwaving away their escape from these situations.

While it's not a great movie it's a fine popcorn movie for about 2 hours.  There's a pretty deep cast including Paul Dano, Viola Davis, and Peter Sarsgaard.  It's also directed by James Mangold who went on to make his name with The Wolverine and Logan and more recently Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  So viewers are in good hands. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Dano, Davis, and Sarsgaard have all appeared recently in DC movies--Dano and Sarsgaard in The Batman--and Gal Gadot, aka Wonder Woman, also has a small part in this movie.)

Anna:  This is Luc Besson (the guy behind the Taken movies) trying--and somewhat failing--to do a John le Carre-style spy thriller.  The biggest problem for me is I had no idea when this was supposed to be taking place.  It starts in 1985 when the KGB kills a bunch of CIA agents and mails their heads to their handler Leonard Miller (recent Oscar winner Cillian Murphy).  Then it says it jumps 5 years, so it'd be 1990?  1991?  But the cell phones and laptops seem a little too advanced (and why would a poor Russian girl have a laptop to fill out an application to the navy?) and one guy refers to "St. Petersburg," which was "Leningrad" until 1991 so maybe it could work but it's a close thing.  There are Soviet flags in all the offices but the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 so it'd have to be before that.

Anyway, Anna is a girl in Moscow who's recruited as a model in France because this is a Besson movie.  But then we jump back to see her getting recruited by the KGB.  Then we go back to her killing someone.  It keeps going in this nonlinear fashion all the way to the end as Anna plays the KGB and CIA while trying to gain her freedom.  It's a little confusing and annoying at times to keep going ahead an then back.  The idea was to create surprise but there were probably better ways.

There are some really good fight sequences.  Anna's training mission rivals the scene in Kingsman where Colin Firth kills an entire church full of people--only it's a bar in Moscow.  There's also some sex--both hetero and lesbian.  So like Knight and Day it's not boring, but unlike that it tries to take on too much serious material.  They probably should have just made a Black Widow ripoff. (3/5)

Detective Pikachu:  I was too old to really get into the whole Pokemon thing when it started in the 90s.  I did at least know of Pikachu, who is like the Spider-Man or Batman of Pokemon in that he's the most popular poster boy for some reason.  Though maybe we should compare him to Deadpool who also gained popularity in the 90s and also is played by Ryan Reynolds.

The movie focuses on Tim, whose father is a detective in Ryte City, where humans and Pokemon live together.  The Pokemon are mostly helpers to the humans.  Tim's father Harry is killed while uncovering secrets of an evil corporation headed by Bill Nighy and his son.  Tim goes to the city and meets Pikachu who unlike other Pokemon can actually talk, but only to Tim.  Together they start looking into what happened to Tim's father who was Pikachu's partner.

I probably would have cared more about this movie if I cared about Pokemon.  Still, I will admit it's well-made and there are some decent twists that change things up with seemingly bad guys turning out to be good and seemingly good guys turning out to be bad.  If you like Pokemon it's probably even better.  There are a few Pokemon "Trainer" battles thrown in probably for fans though they do have something to do with the plot. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The cab driver from the Deadpool movies appears early in the movie as Tim's friend Jack.  Spoiler:  In flashbacks and footage of Tim's father, we never really see him.  I thought maybe they were too cheap to hire an actual actor.  But it's really because he's Ryan Reynolds, which would have given things away too easily.)

Striptease:  I had heard of this when it came out but never watched it.  Then I read some Carl Hiaasen books and realized this was one of his, though not one I'd read yet.

For most people in 1997 the big selling point is Demi Moore mostly nekkid!  Unlike, say, Jennifer Aniston in We're the Millers, Moore does get naked except for between her legs.  She plays a stripper who was a secretary for the FBI until her no account husband (Robert Patrick) got her fired because he's a criminal and yet because of his football glory days he gets custody of their daughter--Rumer Willis, aka Moore's real daughter.  To get her kid back, a fan offers to blackmail a congressman (Burt Reynolds) but instead is murdered.  The body washes up in front of the cabin of a cop (Armand Assante) who starts looking into it.

Soon more people are dead while Moore continues struggling to get her kid back and finally just kidnaps her.  There are some very Hiaasen-type bits like with the Florida politics and a stripper who has a python as part of her act.  There's just probably not enough humor to keep it interesting.  And since Moore starts stripping pretty early on, the stripping actually starts to get dull later on.  It'd probably help if she changed it up a little instead of the same Annie Lennox song.  Overall it's OK but not really as good as it could have been. (2.5/5)

Savage Salvation:  Another of those generic action movies on Hulu.  The plot was all pretty obvious.  There's a guy and his girl who are on heroin or whatever but she decides they should get clean when her appearance freaks out a couple of Girl Scouts.  After a few weeks they get clean and decide to start putting together a wedding.  Then you know that their old dealer is going to kill her so our hero has to go on a rampage.  Guess what?  That.  They might as well have stuffed her into a fridge to make it more obvious.

And you know who the ultimate bad guy is going to be because there are two well-known old guys on the payroll.  Robert de Niro is the sheriff tracking down the hero.  So obviously John Malkovich is going to be the big boss.  It's that Family Guy Law & Order logic where the most famous one who hasn't been used yet has to be the guy.  Anyway, it's not a terrible movie but it's just pretty generic. (2/5)

Homegrown:  I had not heard of this 1998 movie despite that it has a pretty deep cast:  Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria, and Ryan Philippe as the leads with John Lithgow, Jamie Lee Curtis, Judge Reinhold, and Ted Danson popping up in cameos.  And also Jon Bon Jovi for some reason.  How could it go wrong?  I don't really know but it never really has enough humor and the crime parts don't really even rise to a decent Coen Brothers knockoff.

When Malcolm (Lithgow) is murdered, his three pot growers--Thornton, Azaria, Philippe--first take some pot to sell and make a pretty good profit.  Then they get greedy and seeing no one has got the rest of the pot crop yet, they try to harvest it and sell that too.  But Malcolm's dirty business comes back to bite them in the butt.

There are a lot of moving pieces and in the end it doesn't add up to a lot.  In fact it seems our guys are left in a perilous situation.  It would have been nice to get some resolution.  And the script should have leaned on Thornton more than Azaria.  I mean one has been in Oscar-winning movies and the other is mostly known for The Simpsons.  Seems pretty obvious.  Anyway, it wasn't terrible, but like a lot of these it just never came together that well. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The movie is directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal and both of his kids--Jake and Maggie--have parts in the movie.  Nepotism!) 

Minus Man:  Another late 90s movie with a good cast I hadn't really heard of.  I'd actually put it on my Tubi queue a long, long time ago but never thought to watch it.  Then I saw it expired in 2 days (though it'd probably come back) so I finally got to watching it.

When you think of Hollywood actors you'd want to play a serial killer, Owen Wilson would probably be pretty far down that list.  But that's the premise here as Wilson roams the west almost randomly killing people, starting with a junkie played by Sheryl Crow.  Then he goes to a small town and meets a couple renting a room out (Brian Cox and Mercedes Ruehl) and soon he's making himself at home and getting a job at the post office thanks to Cox.  A clerk there (Janeane Garofalo) gets a crush on him but he doesn't really know what to do with that.  He kills the star football player and a few other people until it seems the walls might be closing in.

And then...not much.  For a serial killer movie it's pretty slow.  Almost as slow and dull as Psycho II only without the gratifying shovel to the head at the end.  Sometimes what seems like a bad idea actually is a bad idea. (2.5/5) (Fun Facts:  Besides Sheryl Crow, Dwight Yoakam also appears along with Dennis Haysbert as ghost cops who taunt Owen Wilson for a while.  Wilson and Garofalo have both been involved in Ben Stiller comedies like Mystery Men and Zoolander, so this is a bit of a departure for both of them.)

Angel:  Someone mentioned this on a blog and I remembered Pigeon (Norm MacDonald) talking about it in an episode of Mike Tyson Mysteries.  He asks Tyson's adopted daughter if she ever heard of it and explains in the mid-80s the movie was often repeated on HBO.  Since my family didn't have cable until the 90s I hadn't ever heard of it until then.

The movie involves Molly "Angel" Stewart who is a private school student by day and works as a hooker at night.  Though we really don't see her actually hooking up with anyone, maybe because she's underage.  She is friendly with some other hookers, a transvestite called Mae, and an old cowboy named Kit Carson played by that great actor known for standing and walking--Rory Calhoun.

Someone is killing hookers and it's not long until Angel's friends start falling one-by-one.  A cop named Andrews starts looking into the killings, which brings him into contact with Angel.  He starts to unravel her secrets, as do some of her schoolmates.

While the premise is supposed to be sexy there's not much sexual content.  There are a few bare boobs and even a bush that was probably pretty sexy for HBO in 1984.  Today you can see more explicit stuff on an episode of Game of Thrones.  The killer is revealed pretty early so it's one of those Columbo things where you just have to wonder how they catch him, which is sorta by accident.  It wasn't a terrible movie but not really great either. (2.5/5)

Venus & Vegas:  I saw this on Tubi and thought it had some actors from decent TV shows like Donald Faison of Scrubs, Jaime Pressly of My Name is Earl, Abe Benrubi of ER, Paul Ben-Victor of Syfy's Invisible Man,  Eddie Kaye Thomas of American Dad, and even Florence Henderson doing a Betty White turn by playing against type as the bad grandma.  (And there's also Joe Rogan.)  The movie itself despite the relative talent is pretty disappointing.    Three buddies--Faison, Thomas, and writer/producer Eddie Guerra--rip off a bunch of fake casino chips from a mobster played by the late Jon Polito.  Meanwhile they've got some other stuff going on with relationships and stuff.

A lot of the humor is the kind of homophobic and sexist stuff comedians would bitch they can't do today because of "wokeness."  Stuff like stereotypically impersonating gay guys to escape a robbery, shoving a cell phone in a condom up a horse's butt so it would go faster to win races, and Joe Rogan's whole rant about marriage isn't really as funny as Guerra thinks it is.  Most of it is pretty lame and I just started tuning out after a while. (1/5)

Here's the scorecard that I pretty much half-assed at the last minute:

A Fact Of Life Is Readers Get The Facts Wrong

I always hate bad ratings and bad reviews, but what really irks me the most is when reviewers get facts wrong.  I'm never sure if it's deliberate or they just remember things wrong.  But they'll misstate something or exaggerate something or say things happened a way that didn't happen.

I probably mentioned one time where someone on Goodreads said about Chance of a Lifetime, "How could he think he could never be a cop again? He'd have to have worked with and met many female police officers, some probably further up the hierarchy than him?"

Which was utterly ridiculous.  Of course Stacey knew there were female cops.  What the book actually says is:

[Dr. Palmer]: “Well, you could always try rejoining the police force.”

I sniffle but don’t say anything. I could try to go back to the academy. Maybe I could make it through and become a beat cop again. In another five or ten years I might even make detective again. That hardly seems fair.

So it wasn't that she didn't know about female cops; it was that she wasn't sure if she wanted to put in the effort of starting over at the bottom.  And why should she instantly want to do that?  She has a new, younger body, why not explore the possibilities a little?

Then there's this Girl Power "review" that is just so full of wrongness.  It still irritates me every time I see this because so many things this person says are just so dumb that I have to question if he read the same book I wrote.  I realized that in his second dumb point he actually combines two characters:  Elise (Aquaman) and Allison (the Flash) into one character.  Here's the quote:

2. You abandon your family or loved ones... and sleep with lots of random people you just met. The married character decides to just have someone tell his wife and child - who he is constantly terribly missing and loves immensely (supposedly) - that he's dead. Rather than go home as a woman. Let that idea sink in for a minute. Do you have a family? Would you abandon them and tell them you were dead if you were hit by a magic ray that changed your gender? Then he/she proceeds to hook up with random people in a bar. Why? Because... um... well... the author thinks that's how marriage and parenthood work? Like, if an alien ray switched your gender tomorrow... you should just die? Your wife would stop caring about you? Or would rather you were dead? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense.

Allison doesn't sleep with a lot of guys.  She goes to bed with her wife once without actually doing anything sexual but after they argue about telling their daughter what's going on (it's Allison's wife who doesn't want to tell their daughter), Allison gets drunk in a bar in Paris and lets a guy take her to a hotel.  He sticks his thing in her but it doesn't do much for her.  They're interrupted by an emergency and while Allison considers going back to see if she can be a "normal" woman, she doesn't and her wife invites her back home.

Elise is the one who sleeps with a bunch of guys after her gay boyfriend doesn't want to be with her now that she's a woman.  Then she goes home to Atlantis Pacifica and meets a kind, sensitive artist guy and they fall in love and make a baby.

I don't know how this doofus smushed the two characters together into one, but it's a clear example of a reader misremembering the facts.

Lately I got a couple of bad reviews for Eric Filler books that keep mentioning "chapters" when there are no chapters.  One says, "Truth is I barely was able to stomach chapter one. Read about half of chap 2. Then I skipped to the last chapter."  Huh?  There is no "chapter one" or "chap 2" or "last chapter."  There are exactly 0 chapters.  So what are you talking about?

But this of course doesn't just happen to me.  Someone's blog focusing on Supergirl, the author really doesn't like Tom King's widely praised Woman of Tomorrow--soon to be a major motion picture!  At one point he said, "She isn't a sad drunk, crying in suns and bringing kids to public executions. (See Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow.) "

And I thought, well, that isn't true.  She wasn't a "sad drunk" in the book.  Yes, she is drunk at first but that's because it's her 21st birthday and so she takes a rocket to a red sun planet so she can actually feel the effects of alcohol like a normal person.  This is mentioned in two different places at least:

That doesn't make her a "sad drunk."  Lots of young people go out for drinks when they turn 21.  Even I got a bottle of wine or beer or something on my 21st birthday.  It's just being Kryptonian she has to do something more elaborate.  Drinking one time doesn't make her a drunk.

The "crying in suns" isn't really accurate either.  I rearranged a few panels but you can see that after finding some monks slaughtered by space pirates, she says she has to scream and then flies into the sun.  I think then it's pretty clear she's not "crying;" she's screaming with rage.

As I said before, I don't know if these mistakes are intentional or just an exaggeration or a misremembering.  I'm sure we all do it from time-to-time.  Part of it is probably if you don't want to like something, you might go out of your way to poke holes in it.  And that can lead to exaggerating something or just outright getting it wrong, like suggesting that Supergirl is a drunk/crying in a sun or that Stacey Chance doesn't know about female cops.

It stinks that you can't fact check reviews.  So people can say something dumb, blatantly get details wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it.  You have to just leave it on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever so anyone who stops by might think it's the truth--especially if you don't have a ton of other reviews to counter it.

You think people might be more sensitive about this in the age of "fake news" but still it's more likely the author will be shamed for arguing with people who get stuff wrong.  Arguing with opinions isn't a good idea but if I can show you chapter and verse or images from the book that prove you're wrong, why can't I do that?  It's unfair but then I guess so is life in general.

Of course opinions can be pretty asinine too.  Like this "review" of Derelict on the Amazon UK site that accuses the story of "very little in terms of R rated content, character development, or even plot."  Seeing that, I was like, WTF?  Yeah, there isn't a lot of R-rated content, nor is there supposed to be; I don't really consider that a valid criticism since I never said it was R-rated or filed it under erotica.  

As for "character development" Dirk, the main character, starts out as a gruff loner living on a boat and diving old wrecks for scrap by himself.  At the end, Dirk is a young woman who's in love with another young woman (who also used to be a guy) and they're going out together to explore a new universe.  So Dirk is completely different physically and spiritually.  But nope, no "development" at all. [eye roll]

And as for "plot" the book is over 100 pages, though some of that is promo stuff at the end and whatnot, but still it's not short.  Dirk is seemingly killed by a ghost ship, wakes up in an alternate reality, gets turned into a girl by the psychotic little girl running things, spends years as a baby, grows up again, rescues a new person, becomes really good friends with the new person, starts learning how to fight the evil girl, and then with the new person and one other person they launch a scheme to overthrow the evil girl.  But nope, no "plot" either. [eye roll]

But of course I can't say that on Amazon even if it weren't on the UK site.  And everyone would just think I'm "whining" by arguing how wrong this idiot is.  Because for whatever reason artists are just supposed to stoically take whatever moronic criticisms people throw at them or it's the artist who looks bad.  That just seems a little silly to me.

It's the same way for athletes too.  "Fans" can boo and jeer and probably shout sexist, racist, or homophobic things.  Yet if the athlete goes all Tie Domi in the stands on the "fans," it's the athlete who gets in trouble.  Why do we expect them to take abuse like that?  I guess because that's just how things are.  But it's not how things should be.  I'm just saying.

But if I had my way, I'd do like Jay & Silent Bob at the end of Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back where they use money from their movie to beat up everyone making snarky comments about it.  Of course I'd have probably been beaten to death by now for all the comments I've made. 

Girl Power: How It Should Have Ended?

 August will mark 11 years since I first published Girl Power on Kindle.  I wrote it a few months before that as just a lark to combine the main concepts of the Tales of the Scarlet Knight series and the Chances Are series.  Because I was basically just goofing around with it, I didn't take it too seriously, which is in part why it ended up fairly short.  Later some people would bitch it was too short or not "deep" enough, but it really wasn't supposed to be really long or "deep;" I definitely didn't plan to write 2 sequels, some short stories, and a spinoff.

Anyway, the part I never really liked was the last couple of chapters.  I've always thought I should have done something a little different, to give our sheroes a chance to have a little bigger fight.  About six weeks ago I got toying with an idea that would sort of go like this:

Everything is the same until Robin is taken captive by Major Dalton in the giant robot dinosaur.  Dalton takes her to the control room where Dr. Roboto is waiting.  Instead of turning the alien sex-changing machine on before betraying Dalton, Roboto betrays Dalton first, hypnotizing her to be his dimwitted minion.  And then he grabs Robin to throw her into an arena along with Starla (Supergirl), Allison (Flash), and Elise (Aquagirl).  The arena is rigged with gamma radiation to eliminate Starla's powers and there's some kind of electric field on the floor and walls to keep Allison from using her powers.  And there's obviously no water for Elise to use her powers.

Roboto says that he's going to let them show the whole world how brave women can be by fighting his robot minions without any powers.  And then he unleashes robots into the arena.  Robin as the Batgirl character lays out a strategy.

Robin and Elise have never liked each other because Elise was a gay man and Robin was pretty conservative.  But now Robin has to ask her to take the lead against the robots because she's the most fit one even if she can't use her powers.  Starla will do what she can too to help fight the robots while Robin and Allison (being more sciencey) find a way to deactivate the traps in the arena and the robots.  

Meanwhile, Melvin (Robin's new sidekick from high school) is inside the robot also trying to deactivate the power.  Elise and Starla fight valiantly while Robin uses something to short part of the electric field enough that Allison can open an access panel.  Robin crawls inside since she's smaller.  Allison then does what she can to help the others.

Robin crawls around until she and Melvin find each other.  They work together to take down the power grid.  Things are bad for the other three.  Allison and Elise go down, though not fatally.  Starla does her best Captain America/Gandalf to stand up to the robots alone.  When the power goes out, Starla starts to get her strength back and Allison can use her power to heal quickly and help take down the robots.

Dr. Roboto congratulates the heroes on defeating him.  He says this proves his point about women being just as powerful as men.  So now he'll turn all men into women!  There's something in his cyborg armor that allows him to activate the sex change weapon.

Inside the robot, some stuff comes to life.  Robin is going to sacrifice herself to stop it, but Melvin pushes her to safety and does it instead.

In the throne room the weapon fizzles and Starla and Allison take Dr. Roboto out.  Robin appears later with the body of an unconscious teenage girl--Melvin, now Melanie.  Robin checks on Elise and thanks her for her help and Elise thanks her too.  Then there's a group hug or something.

The epilogue can pretty much stay the same.  

I suppose it'd help if you read the original and remembered it.  Maybe at some point I'd take a day or two and actually rewrite it for a "Special Edition" or "PT Dilloway Cut" or something.  But probably not.

If you've actually read the book, maybe you have suggestions.  Probably not.

In the 2020s, This Forgotten Batman Story Would Make A Good Movie

 Last month for no real reason I revisited some of my old movies.  I started with Watchmen just because I thought I hadn't watched it in a while.  And I still loved it as much as I did before.  To me, Zack Snyder has never topped it.  Sorry, Snyder Cut freaks.  The next night I watched The Dark Knight and I still like most of it, though the final act always rings a little hollow to me.  I always think, why didn't the Joker just give everyone a button to blow up the other boat?  If people could do it anonymously, someone surely would have in seconds.  But making someone have to come forward and do it in front of everyone allowed cowardice to creep in. Even in 2008 he probably could have just made it so someone could text a certain number and it would cause the other boat to blow up.

Then I watched The Dark Knight Rises.  Up to where Batman gets "broken" it's pretty decent.  But after that when it starts trying to echo the classic "No Man's Land" story from the late 90s-early 2000s it gets pretty silly.  And "fixing" Batman's back by punching him.  Oy.  And in the middle of all the stuff in Gotham, Bane flies off to a prison in Africa with Bruce Wayne to dump him there?  I mean so much of it doesn't really make sense.  But like Rogue One, the end really makes up for it.  That ending montage is just so awesome.  And every time for whatever reason the room starts getting dusty when it gets to that part where Bruce's will is read and they show that his old house is being turned into an orphanage named for his parents.  I guess because it just seems like such a great tribute; I mean here's Bruce the orphan helping other orphans in the names of his parents.  I dunno, I just really like it.  And then at the end where "Robin" finds the cave and I always think someone should whisper, "Rise," which is the name of the track on the soundtrack.

Anyway, now that I've vamped a little like a clickbait article, let me get to the point.  I was wondering, how could I make this less silly?  I was thinking maybe they should have done more of a Batman Beyond thing where after Bruce is crippled he trains "Robin" Burke as the new Batman.  But then I wasn't really sure how that fits into the whole rest of the story.  I suppose most of it could have been the same but Bruce could fly "the Bat" while being crippled or something.  Though a lot of it would still be kinda silly.

Then I thought of the Batman storyline in the 90s that came before "Cataclysm," that was the earthquake creating "No Man's Land."  It was called "Contagion" and was about a virus being unleashed in Gotham to destroy the city.  Robin is infected but I think most of the Bat-family of the time is OK.  Then Azrael gets to be a hero because the virus was based on something created by the Order of St. Dumas that created him.  I think he and Catwoman go to get a cure for it.

Anyway, especially in the 2020s, a story about a killer virus would actually make a really good movie.  Maybe it'd hit too close to home, but it'd be a lot less silly than "No Man's Land."  I haven't really puzzled the whole thing out, but basically Ra's al Guhl or whoever unleashes an ancient virus.  Batman has to find the cure before the city--and world--are destroyed.  I suppose that's a bit like Batman Begins only a more realistic virus than the fear toxin thing.  I mean it's more like Outbreak only if it had been in Gotham City.

Probably could have remade The Dark Knight Rises with this instead of the nuke thing.  The scientist guy Bane kidnaps could be the guy who weaponizes the virus.  Bane and Talia want to release the virus to finish Ra's al Guhl's work.  Bruce, Burke, and Selina Kyle work together to find a cure.  I haven't worked out all the details because I'm not sure the disease itself would keep out the CDC or army or whoever else.  I don't know if you really need Bane breaking Batman since the disease might not give him time to recover.

It's just something I was thinking about and since it's Memorial Day and no one cares about blogs, why not?

Amazon Is Your Frenemy, Episode XXX: The Battle Of Who Could Care Less

Since Monday is Memorial Day, how about a war story?  Yes, another thrilling story of a war with Amazon over publishing a book.  Or re-publishing a book.

Really starting last year after the failure of the "Kelly Counts" pseudonym to try to get into the "feminization" game, I decided to start moving books from old pseudonyms I wasn't using anymore under the Eric Filler banner.  Mostly so maybe the stuff would sell a few copies and get some pages read with Kindle Unlimited and make me some money.

What I found out with the Kelly Counts ones were they don't like it if you just change the author name on the cover and on the listing and on the interior.  So, fine, I put "Eric Filler Writing As Kelly Counts" and that seemed to placate them.

So I did all six of the Kelly Counts books and a couple of Ivana Johnson books without too much of a problem.  But when I wanted to update Roomie Swap, published under "Naomi Caged" in 2019 as an experiment to see whether a new name doing erotica could sell more than a new name doing age regression, for some reason Amazon's minions dug in their heels.  They insisted that it would be "confusing" and ruin "the reader experience" and I had to change back to the original.  Seriously, how "confusing" is this:

I mean the cover clearly says, "Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  The listing features both authors.  The interior also says, "By Eric Filler Writing As Naomi Caged."  What the hell is "confusing" about that?  I mean, for those who can actually read English.

So when they unpublished the book instead of approving it, I just resubmitted it.  And we went through the dance again.  So I resubmitted it a second time.  Then they left it in "In Review" status for 3 days!  Meanwhile, when I would contact them, the smartasses would send a boilerplate email explaining what "In Review" status means.  Which only irritated me more.  I mean, really, I've been doing this for 15 years, much longer than you clowns in India have.  I don't need you to explain that to me.  I need you to get the fuck out of my way.  And really, the story is 32 pages so in three days I could have flown to India and read the thing to them (several times) and flown back home.

Then of course they unpublished it again.  Some genius named "Natalia" claimed:

During our review, we found that the title and author] listed was significantly changed which may cause a misleading customer experience.

We found that your book(s) are misleading because:

• The author name is completely different.

Original author was: Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR) and current author is Filler, Eric (AUTHOR); Caged, Naomi (AUTHOR). Original title was:

Roomie Swap (Gender Swap Erotica) and current title is Roomie Swap.

Um...really?  "Completely different?"  Caged, Naomi is completely different from Caged, Naomi and Filler, Eric.  And Roomie Swap is completely different from Roomie Swap.  Uh-huh.  Sounds legit!

Like with my Vine, it's pretty easy to see why Amazon flunkies stick to vague boilerplate, then shouting "WE HAVE SPOKEN," and finally ignoring customers entirely because when they try to explain the idiotic things they do, it just exposes that they're idiots.  It was very clear and obvious that this was not "completely different" or "confusing" if anyone with a functioning brain cell and basic grasp of English looked at it for more than two seconds.

I fired off another salvo then, listing some of the big-name authors whose publishers have done this same thing and Amazon has no problem with it at all:

Before you reject my book again, maybe you should take a look at all these books that are doing the same thing: 

• https://www.amazon.com/Scratch-One-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV99R7T7
• https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Descend-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV94HWDG
• https://www.amazon.com/Odds-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0CNR2NT7C
• https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Cool-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV92FFY6/
• https://www.amazon.com/Binary-Michael-Crichton-ebook/dp/B0BV8XRMVP

So why is it you can sell these books but when I do the same thing my book is being rejected and I'm told to keep using a name that hasn't sold a book since 2021?  You wouldn't tell Blackstone Publishing and Michael Crichton's estate they have to keep selling his old books as "John Lange" because that's how they were first published.

And that's just one example.  Here's another one:

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Novel-Violence-Crime-ebook/dp/B004LROX9M

Again, you have no problem with Hard Case Crime and Lawrence Block doing this.  

And of course you have no problem with Scribner putting Stephen King's name on Richard Bachman's books: 

• https://www.amazon.com/Long-Walk-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7IPK
• https://www.amazon.com/Blaze-Novel-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B000QRIHSO
• https://www.amazon.com/Running-Man-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JWW
• https://www.amazon.com/Regulators-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JOU
• https://www.amazon.com/Thinner-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7JVS/
• https://www.amazon.com/Roadwork-Stephen-King-ebook/dp/B018ER7INW

Why do you keep discriminating against me?

You can go look up any of those books and you'll see where the publisher was doing the same thing I was trying to do.  Why?  Because "John Lange" doesn't sell as many books as Michael Crichton.  "Richard Bachman" doesn't sell as well as Stephen King.  By the same token "Naomi Caged" doesn't sell as well as Eric Filler.  I mean, pretty much by default since no one had even bought a copy since 2021.  And it was only 99 cents!

This is one of the most annoying things about publishing with Amazon.  There is such a double standard between "real" books by big publishers and books by indie authors.  It's OK for Amazon to sell Game of Thrones, Flowers in the Attic, American Psycho, and probably millions of other books featuring rape, incest, bestiality, and other things that if I do it, my account could be suspended, if not completely shut down.  It's not that I want to write about rape, incest, or bestiality, but it is a double standard that GRR Martin, VC Andrews, or Bret Easton Ellis can write those things and be sold by Amazon and I can't write about those things.

In that case, I think a big part of it is that with indie authors, Amazon can be considered the publisher.  So if some "parents' rights group" gets pissed off and wants to sue, Amazon faces more of a liability.  Whereas with a book published by a "real" publisher Amazon can pass the buck to the big publisher.

In this case, Amazon was trying to stop me from using a tactic that big publishers have used to try to pump up sales of books written under a pseudonym.  That doesn't seem fair, does it?

While they didn't directly reply to me, they did finally publish the book, so that was something.  I can't do a Virtual Voice audiobook but there's no way I'm going to press them on that.  One war is enough.

But it didn't take long for a second skirmish to start!

I published this book May 6th without really any problem:

But it wouldn't do an audiobook and I realized I had left my table of contents in.  So I thought I'd reload it with one created in their stupid Kindle Create program.  I uploaded that that night and waited and waited.  The next morning I check at ten or so and they rejected it.  Why?

Well, it took like 4-5 hours for their email to show up.  They whined that the cover could violate a copyright.  Um, so why did you approve it yesterday?  I didn't change the cover; I only changed the table of contents.  And the cover is two images, so which one do you have a problem with?  Though by then I had already resubmitted it without any changes since I had no idea what they wanted to change.

So of course the smartasses sent me their "In Review" boilerplate again.  Ugh.  Fortunately this time they just approved it the second time.  Hopefully they just leave it at that.

Buuuuut of course not.  About 10 days later I published a bundle of old books.  

I published it without a problem but the next day realized when I copied the table of contents for the description listing the books, I left "Part One Part Two" in one's description.  So I take that off and resubmit the thing.

And the next day get the same bullshit message about the cover.  Um...why?  You approved the cover already and I didn't do anything to the cover.  It's not relevant.  And when they do it twice in a row it's creating a pattern of harassment.  Really it's like cops pulling over people of color in rich neighborhoods; it's hassling people for no actual reason other than to bother those people so they don't go where some assholes think they should be.  I mean I've used stock images for about 15 years now; why are you hassling me about this now?

Anyway, They weren't happy with me saying their question was irrelevant and I take being harassed seriously.  So they didn't approve the changes, so at least for now I left it for sale with the extra words on the description.  Whatevs.

I don't know if someone has been making a fuss about illegal use of stock photos or they just want to steer people to use "AI" or their very limited supply of template images.  It's just another hassle I really don't need right now.

Anyway, have a pleasant Memorial Day weekend.

The Worst Movie Ever Shows The Danger Of Too Much Digital

 There's a new leader in the clubhouse for "Worst Movie Ever Made."  Forget Plan 9 From Outer Space, Creeping Terror, Eegah, Things, Birdemic, or many, many others.  Last month Rifftrax finally released a riff of The Amazing Bulk and it instantly rose to the top of the chart for me.

As you'd expect, The Amazing Bulk is a ripoff of The Incredible Hulk.  It was made in 2008 when the MCU movie came out, but it wasn't actually released until 2012 according to IMDB.  Besides not very good actors, the movie features an overreliance on virtual sets and really awful computer effects.  Imagine if Sin City or Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow had used backgrounds that looked like they were from an early 90s PC game.  And used digital props like cars with no steering wheels that look like they were drawn in MS Paint.

And then there's "the Bulk" that's a weird naked purple dude.  And yes the movie shows his ass and wang.  Closeups of his hands literally use toy Hulk hands that were painted purple.

Even the pug in the bad guy's incredibly fake castle lair is animated!  They couldn't find a real dog?!  Or a real rat for the laboratory scenes; I kept waiting for it to say, "Rattrap, Maximize!"  Which would have made for a much better movie.

The silly thing is a lot of this wasn't so out-of-this-world that it needed to lean so heavily on computer backgrounds--especially these computer backgrounds.  I mean a lot of it takes place in alleys, a science lab, and an apartment.  They couldn't find an alley in Los Angeles to film in?  Or a middle school lab that wasn't being used?  Or even the director's apartment or something for the main character's apartment?  

I guess they wanted to save money by using the crappy backgrounds and effects.  But it just looks so crappy and fake.  Ridiculously so.

With all this "AI" stuff going around, there is of course going to be the temptation for would-be filmmakers to use it to create everything from backgrounds to cars to actors.  But one look at Amazing Bulk is why maybe you should take it easy on that stuff.  If you don't have the money to really do it right, it's probably going to look laughably bad.

The same probably already applies to a lot of "AI" generated books.  Just because something is cheap and easy to do, doesn't make it better or even a good idea.

I'm just saying.

Food Fascism Can Be Annoying Or Even Dangerous

 As someone with a lot of dietary conditions and digestive problems, I have to be pretty careful anymore about things I eat and drink.  The problem though is so many food products make decisions for people based on how the company thinks something should taste.  For people like me, those decisions can be just annoying or they can be dangerous.

Take something simple:  ginger tea.  I like to get ginger tea to help with digestion.  But the thing is, most of the "ginger" tea you can get from your local supermarket is not really ginger tea because some company decided you don't really want ginger tea that tastes like ginger.  No, we have to cut it with "sweet orange oil" (Walmart "organic" ginger tea) or with lemongrass, licorice root, peppermint, and a few other things (Yogi "Ginger" tea).  So what you get is bland to sweet with absolutely no ginger taste.  I got some organic ginger from Amazon Vine that was 100% ginger and I could definitely taste the difference between it and the crap in the supermarkets.

Similarly companies that make breakfast sandwiches or burritos will decide that turkey sausage needs to be spicier than pork/beef sausage.  Why?  I guess they figure it won't have enough "flavor" otherwise.  Just like if you buy canned peas, a lot of brands will add sugar because "sweet peas" have to be sweet, right?  I bought a chicken patty TV dinner that didn't say it was spicy but when I bit into one of the patties it was a little spicy.

The thing is, these decisions are basically irreversible.  I mean, I can't really unsweeten the ginger tea if you put sweet orange oil in it.  I can't extract the lemongrass and whatever else if you mix it up with the ginger.  I can't make the turkey sausage or chicken patty un-spicy after you make it spicy.  I can't filter out the sugar you add to sweet peas.

By contrast, if I wanted my ginger tea to have less ginger kick, I could easily add sweetener or mix it with another tea.  If I wanted my turkey sausage sandwich to be spicy, I can just add some sriracha or salsa or some damned thing.  If I want my peas sweet, I can add my own sugar.

The problem with this food fascism is if I have diabetes, I don't want peas with sugar.  I really don't want tea with sweet orange oil either.  If I have acid reflux problems, I don't want some company unilaterally deciding to make turkey sausage spicy.  At best that's annoying and at worst it can give me serious problems.

Then you get things like where a frozen pizza will be fine until some fascists decide they need to make the sauce "zesty" and add a bunch of spices.  Or where they just blatantly lie and call their coffee creamer "sugar free" by replacing sugar with a bunch of corn syrup--which is worse for diabetics than sugar.

Really, I'm an adult; I should be able to make decisions for myself whether something is spicy or sweet.  Some company shouldn't be dictating to me that ginger tea can't taste like ginger or peas can't taste like peas.  

And the problem is sometimes you can't really tell how spicy something might be just from reading a label.  Or there's just so much added crap that you might not even notice some spicy ingredient.  Or it might be something generic like "added spices" or something.  One brand of turkey sausage might have virtually the same "ingredients" and taste spicier than another.  

It's the same when ordering fast food.  One pizza place's wings might not be spicy at all if you get them "naked" or they might still have some residual spice.  The same for chicken tenders where some plain ones might still be a little spicy.  Or also for chicken patties in sandwiches.  There's no real indication of how spicy it is and a little can still be enough to create problems because some company decided to add more "flavor" to the recipe.

(As an aside I've always thought spiciness is the laziest way to add "flavor."  It's really easy to just throw some hot peppers or sriracha or something in there and make something spicy.  And then it usually overpowers anything else, so really who needs any actual flavors?  Just make it hot and people won't notice anything else.  Yawn.)

You can virtue signal by saying, "I make all my food myself."  Hey, awesome.  But I don't always have time (especially in the morning) to make everything from scratch.  So it'd be nice if I could trust that prepackaged foods aren't going to be unnecessarily sweet or spicy.  Isn't there enough to worry about already?

Anyway, what food fascism have you noticed?

#AtoZChallenge Reflections: Dishonorable Mentions

 With the many, many video games that have existed since the 70s there have been some truly great ones but also some stinkers.  So let me mention a few that wound up pretty bad.

ET The Video Game

This one became infamous for not only its terrible gameplay but selling so poorly that thousands of units wound up being hauled to a dump in Alamogordo, New Mexico for internment.  I watched a documentary on that a few years ago where they actually dug up some of the old cartridges for the Atari 2600.

There are plenty of clickbait articles that will probably call this the worst game of all time.  After the success of the ET movie, it was rushed into production.  The programmer basically had about 5 weeks to make a game so it could be on shelves for Christmas.  As you'd expect, the finished product was not very good.  Instead of replicating the movie (at all) you jumped into holes to look for stuff so ET could phone home.  A Federal agent would chase him, I guess.  It was weird and confusing and any kid who got that for Christmas probably wanted to take it back on Boxing Day.

With junk like that, the video game industry soon had a near-fatal crash until the NES came along.

Speaking of...

Friday the 13th

I never tried to play this when I was a kid but it was on one of those fake Gameboy or SNES machines I got from Vine.  This game came out before games like Doom and Mortal Kombat with blood and ripping out spines and stuff.  NES games were pretty bloodless so a game about a serial killer who murders teenagers seems like a pretty bad idea from the start.

The gameplay is more like Legend of Zelda than a fighting game.  You walk around and look for stuff and basically waste a lot of time not murdering people.  You play as some kids and complete important tasks like lighting fireplaces.  The "gameplay" is so ridiculously repetitive, as is the soundtrack, which also for some reason periodically features loud beeps.  Basically you walk down paths and about every two inches zombie things pop up that you throw crap at.  You can go into buildings and blunder around and find Jason, who's wearing a purple tracksuit or something.  

While not as infamous as ET, it was still pretty bad.  Though weirdly none of these "worst of" lists mention it, though most were written by Millennials or Gen Zers who weren't even born when games like this came out.  It was, like ET, a really lame attempt to cash in on a property. 

Speaking of...

Superman 64

This N64 game was based on the animated Superman series--supposedly.  It is on pretty much every list of terrible video games.  Basically the gameplay was difficult and confusing and the graphics were murky, which was explained away with "Kryptonite fog" or that it was a virtual reality simulation.  No matter what, it wound up being pretty awful.

I tried playing it for a few minutes on Retrogames and the controls to make Supes fly were so confusing that I gave up pretty quick.  Of course I didn't have a manual, which might have helped a little bit.  But probably only a little bit.

This wasn't the last time a Superman game disappointed.  The tie-in game for Superman Returns was delayed so it couldn't come out until the fall of 2006, after the movie had already pretty much flopped in theaters.  Was it worth the wait?  Um, no.

Custer's Revenge

My parents wisely never bought this one for the 2600.  This off-brand game features a naked George Custer navigating a battlefield so he can fuck a Native American woman tied to a post.  That was probably cringey back in 1982, let alone in 2024.

Yes, someone really made this and sold it.

Reading a few articles there are some common entries I haven't heard much of:

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust

I think we had the first of these games on the old IBM PC.  It was pretty great for teenagers in the early 90s.  This eighth title in the series is apparently notoriously bad.  It's basically like that old guy who still wears a leisure suit and gold chains and stuff and tries to hit on young women at a bar.  The humor and graphics are dated and the story is pretty lame.

Shaq Fu

This 1994 game features Shaquille O'Neal but has nothing to do with basketball.  Instead, it's a fighting game.  Shaq is beamed into another dimension and has to fight his way to a kid and return.  It's a pretty vanilla fighting game with a story that makes little sense.  Just in case you thought Steel or Kazam was the worst thing he ever did.

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties

This 1993 game was made for the short-lived 3DO system.  Apparently this "interactive comedy" just used still photos and bad voice-acting as a plumber tries to get laid.  Kind of explains why this system didn't last.

Big Rigs Over the Road Racing

There have been tons of racing games but apparently this is the worst.  You're supposed to haul cargo without getting caught by cops and beat a rival truck, except apparently nothing works except your truck just drives around in vague scenery.

Aliens: Colonial Marines

This game was a victim of its own hype.  Apparently the demos were really great but the finished product was not.  The graphics weren't as good and the gameplay was filled with glitches--or bugs.  Interestingly, a random user examined the code a couple years later and found a typo in the code that caused some of the problems with the alien AI.

#

In my A to Z entries I mentioned some games I didn't really like such as Age of Empires II, Super Conflict, or NHL 2005.  Generally I don't think there are a lot of them I bought that I really hated, except maybe if they were in a bundle of other stuff.  Because games are expensive, I couldn't really throw my money at every dumb tie-in game that came out or every hyped-up new game to hit the market.  Mostly I think when I was trying to find something for the Wii other than the Wii Sports games was really when I bought/rented the most stuff that wasn't great.  Like I said, there was just a lot of stuff that didn't really take advantage of the system.  Most I rented but I bought a couple and resold them later.

So I don't think I really had a lot of duds in my library.  Although I did buy my sisters a couple of cheesy Burger King XBox games.  Those were pretty stupid but then they weren't supposed to be real high-class games.

What bad games have you played?