About Rants and Other Wildlife

Yesterday’s rant was inspired by a recent trip to a used bookstore. I know that time marches on, and that lately it’s been marching on faster and faster– but dammit, I looked at the collection of books they had for sale and I was appalled. Writers today do not care about story, or about language, or about anything that has anything to do with actually putting words out there to be read by eager acolytes. No, the writer of today is obsessed with style and appearance. I don’t mean some kind of abstract “style” I mean how short their skirt is or how much eye makeup they wear. They are engaged in stupid, bitchy fights with other nitwits, and the fact that a “book” kicked off the fight is really unimportant. The existence of some “memoir” in somebody’s purse or under somebody’s bed just gives the whole thing a rancid kind of “legitimacy” that it doesn’t deserve.

Dudes are well advised to write not well but often, about world’s on other planets where people like us do not exist, but where people who are just like Dale Arden but aren’t like her because we can imagine that she has a big nose or something WILL IN FACT fight dragons bare-handed. It’s all about “reading for pleasure” and when we read for pleasure we can just drop our drawers and say and do any dumb thing we want because it’s fun not to have to obey the rules of the daycare for a few precious minutes.

This is why something as hideous as “Game of Thrones” is hailed as (gulp) “good.” Game of Thrones is dreadful. I watched one early episode of this garbage at a motel where they had HBO on the TV and I thought “This crap is just flashy enough to be popular.” And man, was I right.

I have never been inside a daycare in my life. I’ve never spent more than thirty seconds being lectured by anybody about “equality” or “social justice.” I’ve never felt the need to conform to anybody’s idea of what that means.

I thought I knew what “social justice” meant. It meant being fair and kind to everyone. It meant justice more than “social.” But now I’m told that I’m an old fart who doesn’t know anything, and that understanding language and story and literature is just a way to enforce the rules of the daycare and shut up, old man.

Well, fine, my millennial friends raised in daycare like so many hatchery fish. Enjoy a world where drama is comprised of exciting boss fights at the end of RPG’s. Gush good and proper about “Game of Thrones” and how shocking and GOOD it was in some way that defies explanation.

Knock yourselves out.

From now on, as God is my witness, I’m a grouchy old man and proud of it! The world is ACTUALLY going to hell and I’m going to toast marshmallows on the way down!

Bye for now. You can expect me to do one thing that the younger generation has imposed on the rest of us. I’m going to confound your expectations until you’re sorry you ever invented the phrase.

Now go to my goddam story on Kindle Vella and spend some money on me or I’ll Kathleen Hale your sorry ass!