welcome back! i’ve noticed a slump in readership over the holiday break. but i’m starting to notice some of you trickling back. presumably you’re all snowed in, and desperate for entertainment now, recovering from your new year’s hangovers.

story time! so, when i was a young man, i had a commodore 64. if you didn’t know how old i was, you can do the math now cause i think i locked myself into a bracket with that one. i also had a mo..zzztttt……krk..krk..kr……eeeeeeeeep… modem. by comparison, the song that took your iphone 3 seconds to download would have taken about a month back in the day. i’m exaggerating, but not by that much. BUT, a paragraph of text was still pretty fast to share, relatively, so BBSes were born. sort of like reddit, but with petty losers with nothing better to do but shout opinions into…. yeah, ok, so just like reddit. i joke.

in a way, i got a taste of the internet before a lot of other people did, cause i was one of the nerds on the ground floor. you’d think i’d have learned before anyone that getting in an argument with someone on the web was foolhardy, but i learn the hard way. so, why do i share this? ok, well, when my parents became aware that the modem was actually making calls (based on local numbers i gave it) they smashed the  landline outlet in the basement, where the computer was. their thinking was that they couldn’t be sure they weren’t being billed secret charges i was accruing in my cpu adventures. ‘war games’ with mathew broderick taught kids that computers had reach and ability, but they taught parents to be scared of the very wires in their homes.

i think this was one of the earliest moments i can remember being offended by technophobic behavior. it’s not the healthy respect we should have for science, but the caveman drive to snuff out new things, rather than try to understand them. explaining something till your blue in the face to someone who doesn’t care to learn might be fitting karma for someone who delighted in torturing teachers as much as i did, but at the time, it just seemed ridiculous. so, to combat ridiculousness, i stayed home from school as much i could, lugged each component to the kitchen table, and enjoyed a brief hour of connectivity as much as i could, with my machine sitting in butter and toast crumbs. totally not ridiculous….

don’t get me wrong, this is about people being scared of technology, not religion or politics, and while people might scapegoat the latter to support their dread of the former, i’m not about to tell people they can’t believe in god cause ‘progress’. well, not yet. and i’m not really a techno ‘phile’. E3 doesn’t make my pants any tighter, and i don’t upgrade my tech more than the average (if slightly obsessed with new toys) person would. i just think there’s something undeniable to be said for furthering knowledge. medieval times might seem quaint if you long for the plague, and the old things do root us in history, but we tend to cherry pick the things we find charming of times gone past. like gowns and balls, and not lead cosmetics and dying during childbirth at age 14.

so, it’s with this, that i come full circle to my point, which is that i see something that worries me about how religion, and especially politics these days, seeming on an agenda to backtrack us. sometimes these things are invoked simultaneously to railroad people away from… well, rational thought. again, have all the god and politics you want, but keep your chocolate out of my peanut butter. stem cell research, climate change research, clean renewable energy…. all these things could be further along than they are, but people with profits and prophets needed the pointdexters to slow down, cause quite frankly, they didn’t want to look at the phone bill when they were assured there would be no extra charges. they’ve been scared. and it seems, right now, the scared people, the ‘money is the bottom line’ people, they’re in charge.

maybe it all evens out. when they get Alzheimer’s they won’t remember that the world wasn’t always a polluted shithole half submerged under melted icecaps.

who saw ‘blade runner 2409’?

i have to say, i was pleasantly surprised with this sequel. they let the original cool long enough, and vaulted off the original storyline as opposed to meandering around it, that it felt new, and original, in it’s own way. didn’t feel as populated though, or as dirty, but that could be just to add to the feeling of loneliness that is the blade runner brand. something about the original just felt like a thin layer of oil and water and filth were on everything.

but to my earlier point, i think i’ve noticed an unfortunate trend in science fiction, where dystopias and post apocalyptic futures are brought about by the hubris of science driven people. a vial was dropped, or a killer robot was built, and it’s up to some meathead with a gun to set it right in 90 to 120 minutes.

for the life of me, i can’t think of any sci-fi movies where the world was built on a rewarding curiosity, and punishing ignorance. maybe it just seems reasonable to us, or maybe it’s just an easy way to kick off a plot. there’s an irony in being sci fi fans, watching movie where scientist are constantly dropping the ball.

my only really gripe  with the movie, and it’s a small one, is that i don’t think it stands on it’s own. i can’t be sure, but i think it assumes you saw the original. maybe, maybe not, but it was the same issue people told me they had with empire strikes back. that it seemed like a 2nd episode, and not a full movie unto itself. it’s a hard thing to argue. i’d be curious to hear the impressions of someone who hadn’t seen bladerunner, but saw the new one.

and finally, (i know, this post got long) some art! i want to thank my patreon peeps, my preeps, if you will, for getting on board. it’s not been a crazy ammount of money, but it’s been the kind of money that made it easier to justify upgrading my photoshop, and getting a few tutorials. all expenditures which i’ve put right back into my craft. the faith you’ve put in me, has made it all the more important to buckle down, and show results. thanks again, i won’t let you down!