Michael Offutt's Blog, page 50

Everything is fine.

Have a good weekend.

Why do people spend so much time virtue signaling online?

If you don't know what "virtue signaling" is, I'll define it for you. Once I do, I think you'll recognize it in your own life on your social media feeds. "Virtue signaling" is an expression of moral outrage that smacks of feigned righteousness intended to make the speaker appear superior by condemning others. In short, it's an attempt to show other people that you are a good person. In my own personal bubble of "friends," the act of "virtue signaling" appears very strong with those who have extreme liberal views. It makes me wonder if they have a problem with self-esteem, or if they feel like they are (in fact) not good people. The answer is probably somewhere in-between.

Still having trouble figuring out what I'm talking about with this term? Want an example? Take the good looking thirty-something man that says on Facebook, "Women please be proud of your bodies no matter how they appear. You are lovely whether you are fat or thin, white or chocolate, and in any shape or size. You are all beautiful." But then you actually know this guy and he dates only thin models or women who have smooth legs that exist nowhere in nature outside of a dolphin (and wear high heels and have long flowing hair and makeup). And yes, the same guy dates only white women. Yet he is chased after by dozens of women, because yeah...he's good looking...like movie-star good looks. He could have anyone he wants, so why not take the Lizzo look-alike? It's because what he's saying online is a hypocrisy. It is not the truth, because fat women actually don't (and never did) have a chance with him at all. It's the "do as I say, and not as I do" type of person.

I've noticed that one of the things about virtue signaling is that it actually does not require the person saying anything to live by what they preach. Additionally, the person that is engaging in "virtue signaling" generally comes across as pompous and bossy. I think most of us would want others to just privately act on one's convictions without the hope or expectation of acknowledgement. However, a lot of people in the modern world have no self-identity within themselves and depend on an external source of validation in order to obtain any kind of life happiness or satisfaction.

And I think that's the ultimate answer to the question I posed in the headline: why do people spend so much time virtue signaling online? It's because in the modern world, a lot (and I mean LOTS in all caps) of people are relying upon external validation for their self-esteem. Through virtue signaling, they get reassurance that they know what they stand for, they point out to others that they are a good person, and they (maybe) identify with a wrong that harmed them personally and are pointing it out to the world so that others avoid being damaged in the same way.

That's what I think, anyway. As to why people collectively worldwide seem to possess low self-esteem, I have only a few theories. The most prevalent one is that the Earth is extremely overcrowded (population explosion times infinity). Because of this, scarcity of resources is becoming an everyday thing as is the inability to distinguish oneself from another because anything you have to offer is a dime a dozen.

The term "spoilt for choice" comes to mind. This is a British phrase that means, roughly, that there are so many things to choose from that it becomes impossible to choose, which can create anxiety. Remember elementary school and not wanting to be the last one picked for a dodgeball team? Well society is essentially a dodgeball team on a grandiose scale. Whatever is doing the picking, whether it is for a job, for a lover, to be a model, to be a singer, to be a famous author...no one wants to be in the picked over pile. But because there are so many of us, the pickers are "spoilt for choice" and (I hate to say it) but a lot of us just end up on the bottom of the barrel rotting away. Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, I think Earth's ever increasing population does a disservice to us all by collectively devaluing the actual cost of a single human life with each new baby that comes along. That's not to say that I don't like babies. I adore them as much as the next person. I'm just trying to state the obvious that when a population goes from a million to ten million and to a hundred million, each individual in that population is worth less (in terms of what value they bring to a society). This is why we all have to join unions to get collective bargaining power: a single person alone is no threat at all to the employer.

So maybe virtue signaling in the end is an attempt to restore some of that lost value damaged by unchecked population growth. However, (and for whatever reason) it always makes me think for a little while that the people who are doing it are smug. It makes me want to ask, "Who gave you the power to tell others how to live?" I don't like it, but I don't think it's going away anytime soon. Just my two cents on a Wednesday.

Curious: do you virtue signal online? Please leave your answers and thoughts in the comments.

Hikikomori is a Japanese term that means reclusive but it also describes adult children who have become parasites slowly killing off their parents.

There's a strange worldwide phenomenon that's happening in developed countries. Coddled children are forcing the extension of their childhood through, essentially, what I would call "emotional blackmail." They are living with their parents (or parent in many cases) through their twenties, through their thirties, through their forties, and basically into their fifties until the parent keels over and dies (they worked themselves to death or spent all of their retirement money on their children and live in miserable conditions trying to scrimp by).

At that point the offspring (who is a full blown parasite at that point), either tries to find a new host to exist upon or finds themselves writing the finale of a personal life story that does not have a happy ending. Take your pick from homelessness to addictions of every kind to severe mental illness brought upon by the mind-bending fear of trying to exist without the benefit of a slave (a parent in most cases) to take care of their every need. How did we get here as a society? Maybe it began with parents who felt pain at saying "no" to their kids, and a revolution in parenting where children were made the most important fragile things (blessings) in the household. Couple this gentle hand with a real world that has no fucks to give about anyone (I hold the opinion that life even in America is incredibly brutal and many don't want to admit it) and is in many ways, merciless, and it was a disaster just waiting to happen. And now, it has.

Hikikomori is a Japanese word, and I feel like the Japanese having an actual name for the phenomenon are at least aware of the truth, even if it is an uncomfortable one. In Japan, "parasite" adult children are a national scourge. As high as 20% of people above the age of 60 must help support their children and grandchildren, but the figure is probably much higher because most people prefer not to talk about it. I've read story after story of a parent who is aged 70 beginning a day at 4 a.m., doing laundry, making breakfast for everyone, then leaving for a part-time job at a factory because her earnings are a necessary supplement to the family income. Meanwhile, they have a 52 year old hikikomori who just stays in the room all day long and plays video games and socializes on the internet. These "adult parasite children" retreat from society and into a world where they can forever be a child.

Many of the stories I've read talk about these "52 year old" parasites as having lived a pretty decent life. And when I say that, I mean they spent their youth living a life that was full of partying, games, socializing, art, learning this and that but only when they wanted to, flitting about with casual sex partners, and just being carefree. Decade after decade passed, with them always thinking that maybe they'd find "the one" or they'd settle down after they dated a few hundred more people. And "the one" is someone that would allow them to live their lifestyle, i.e., pay for it, but whom would never cramp their style. Never demand that they be monogamous or that they commit to any kind of actual restrained behavior. No...those things would be considered "psychological abuse" and not make a person a "fit" partner. So yeah...they lived passing the years thinking that something would come along that would be just right because...after all...there is a certain narcissism especially among the physically pretty that makes them believe, "I am the prize." But here's the thing: they actually weren't and never were. The parents knew this from the very beginning because they were raised in a different era. But in today's world I too frequently come across young people who believe exactly this: that they are the prize to be won.

Hikikomori is a scary thing to wrap one's brain around. The solution to "Hikikomori" seems to be a systemic change to the political and economic framework of developed countries away from capitalism and onto socialism. Providing things like food, shelter, medicine, and every challenge that capitalism expects a person to pay for through work. Because work is unpleasant, is traumatizing, takes away from socializing, and crushes self-worth due to the fact that you have to obey someone else (and smile while you are being disciplined if you come up short)...many of the "hikikomori" are unsuited for it. So society can lower the difficulty of just existing by providing everything, and then the hikikomori will be okay and can play video games or do art or listen to poetry (I guess) and look up at the stars and attend free concerts.

You may wonder why I think this is scary? It's because I wonder if a change ever does happen, who is going to pay for it? I certainly don't want to. I don't want to be that 70-year-old man getting up at 4 a.m. to go to a factory to earn money for a deadbeat adult that doesn't want to work. So yeah, it's frightening. And it hits especially hard, because I am friends with "hikikomori" here in America. We just don't call them that, and I finally realized just before writing this post, that this is exactly who these "friends" are.

People and their kids, man. I used to want a family, but now I'm so glad that I never had kids. I also wonder how my father was able to raise both my brother and myself with such a tremendous (and unusual) work ethic. He was a task master for sure, and we had to work on the farm all the time (I was 18 before I finally escaped the farm because I found work in town). Maybe that was the key...all those long days spent in the fields doing back-breaking work in ditches and moving pipe and harvesting. We would spend days from sunrise to sunset just making enormous hay stacks and slinging those things all day long. They were kind of fun to climb, though.  It was such hard work, and I can't imagine any of the kids I see today being able to do any of it.

We've all heard the saying, "Spare the rod, spoil the child," right? Well an entire generation of baby boomers on down through millennial's are doing/ did just that and now...all of those chickens are coming home to roost. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "Life is endlessly fascinating to me."

Happy Monday.

Cosmos Possible Worlds starts on Monday and I can't wait to see it.

It's been a while since I've seen the first season of Cosmos (about six years). Oh how time flies. I was so impressed by it, that I asked Neil DeGrasse Tyson himself about whether or not they'd have a season two when I met him in 2014. You can read about that interaction HERE on my blog. Well, a lot of time has passed, and season two got completed a few years ago but got delayed due to an accusation levied at Mr. Tyson for sexual misconduct (Me Too everyone?). I'm not sure if anything ever came of that. What I am here to discuss is my excitement for Cosmos season two, even if it is appearing on the National Geographic Channel and not Fox (which is where the original aired).

I remember getting emotional watching Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Back in the day it was one of the first television shows I loved as a kid. The messages that were telescoped into my brain were something like, "humanity is capable of being so much more than what it is." 2014's Cosmos: A Space Odyssey is a worthy successor to the kind of STEM education that we saw in Sagan's original. In the very least, it should get people who watch it to look around our world and understand how it works, rather than just say, "God, therefore done." Without trying to provoke Christians who visit my blog, I just want to say, I respect your devotion and your faith, but please try and understand that the cost of blind faith is really quite high.

So here are my hopes for the second season of the series: two narrators (NDT and perhaps a woman?) That would be great for diversity, and NDT can sometimes get into a bit of melodrama. A second host may pull some of that back from the edge. I'd like better animations or live recreations. And I'd like fewer recaps following commercial breaks.

Anyone else planning on watching Cosmos: Possible Worlds?

It's March and the Insecure Writer's Support Group has a great question about family holidays and traditions.

I'm participating in the Insecure Writer's Support Group today. If you too are interested, then please go HERE to sign up. I've been in it almost since the beginning, and I remember that it was started by science fiction author, Alex Cavanaugh. 
Sometimes I write a blog post that has to do with writing, and at other times I just answer the question (which is what I'm doing this month :)).
March 4 question - Other than the obvious holiday traditions, have you ever included any personal or family traditions/customs in your stories?
This sounds like a fun activity, but I honestly have never incorporated any of these, not that we really had any in my small family anyway. The reverse to this (though) is that I've incorporated made-up holidays and traditions from fictional books I've read into my Dungeons & Dragons games that I play with some gamers usually on Saturday nights (provided everyone can get together...these days it cancels quite often). I know that's not the same thing, but there've been some really fun holiday ideas in some of the fiction I've read. However, I haven't incorporated any of those into my actual stories because I don't want to steal from another writer, legalities not withstanding. And that pretty much sums up my answer to this question. Now I'm off to read your answers.

Onward opens this week and I can't wait to see it.

Friday, I'm going to see Onward. It's the latest offering from the Pixar studio, and I've been a fan of Pixar films for so long now that I just automatically go and see the newest one. If I'm being completely honest, there have been a few (in the single digits) of ones that I didn't enjoy all that much (Good Dinosaur is one, but it's still a decent film). However, none of these were ever bad enough for me to think that I won't have a good time watching anything that Pixar has to offer.

And with regards to Onward, it looks particularly good. It has Tom Holland and Chris Pratt as voice actors. These are both people I follow on Instagram and deeply enjoy, although their busy lives leave me boggled at how either them (or any A-list actor) connect emotionally with any actual human beings that live in their orbit. Maybe this is why they (as celebrities) get paid so much: so that they can actually afford to get away from the attention that their fame showers upon them. One can only hope that they can enjoy lives that are worth living.

Onward on its surface looks like an excellent buddy flick, with two brothers using a magic spell to spend just a little precious time getting to know their deceased father. It promises to have lots of humor, and I'm expecting them to completely stick the landing in the same way that Coco left me in tears, thinking about what I had lost in my own life. Pixar has always been talented at connecting with me on an emotional level, and I expect nothing less from Onward. In fact, I expect to be thinking about it most of next weekend.

Happy Monday, friends.

When playing Dungeons & Dragons I love to use dioramas made from Dwarven Forge tiles.

I think I've mentioned it a time or two that I play a game called Dungeons & Dragons. For the uninitiated, this is a tabletop roleplaying game where friends come over once a week, and we sit around for a few hours drinking soda or beer and eating snacks and taking on the roles of characters we've created to explore a fantasy world. The fantasy world varies from Dungeon Master to Dungeon Master. Currently, the one I play in the most is run by my friend Jake, but that will change as it always does as people take turns in the seat of DM.

Anyway, I have a small Dwarven Forge collection. In case you don't know, Dwarven Forge is a company that specializes in making hand-crafted terrain from the same material that PVC pipe in hardware stores is made from. They have a manufacturing plant based in China that (I assume) employs workers there to mould and then paint all of the pieces on an assembly line. These (in turn) get shipped back to the Americas where Dwarven Forge then takes and packages into boxes and ships to people who visit their online store.

I think that Dwarven Forge makes the majority of their money from multi-million dollar Kickstarters that launch about twice a year for new product lines. I've participated in one of these in the summer of 2019, and I haven't received my product because it takes a lot of time to manufacture these things. It was due to arrive sometime in April 2020. However, that's changed because of the corona virus (Covid 19). So we're looking at probably August 2020 or even the fall before I get any of the stuff I originally picked out for myself as a backer on Kickstarter. Such is life.

Anyway, Dwarven Forge is going to launch another Kickstarter in April for their new expansion called "The Wildlands," and they previewed some of this at PAX East, which is a conference for game enthusiasts and collectors. I didn't actually attend Pax East. Rather, these are pictures that someone else took from visiting the Dwarven Forge booth. I'm super impressed by the water tiles that you see in this miniature diorama that I could use in any D&D game. It looks like real water to me. Additionally, the tiles are full of details that catch the eye. See for yourself below.
Look at the way the growths on the tiles look. There's a neat purple looking flower, and the twisted branches on the tree look amazing, as does the log on the right side. And here's a better picture of the water tiles. It looks incredible, in my opinion, and from at least a few feet away like real water. I love how the boat docks extend out over the water (I have those by the way), and I already have the rowboat and a bunch of the rocks and cavern stuff. Anyway, this all gets me extremely excited. I feel like I'm going to be a back on this Kickstarter, just like the last one I backed about nine months ago.

The War of the Worlds reboot on Epix feels like The Walking Dead with no money spent on computer effects or makeup.

This is probably the best effect in the entirety of the first episode. As you can see, this show is made on the cheap. This is just a person standing on a street, which filming on was probably free, and then they added that shiny star thing for one of the spaceships landing on Earth during the initial invasion. You never get a closeup shot of a spaceship.The new War of the Worlds series that is on the Epix streaming service doesn't actually feel like it's a War of the Worlds adaptation. Rather, it feels like its The Walking Dead. Most people are familiar with the H.G. Wells story either through having read that story or having seen one of the many movies. With respect to my bias, I've always been a fan of the Spielberg version of War of the Worlds, primarily due to the director's ability to keep a thumb on Tom Cruise and tell a story that Spielberg wants to tell. This as opposed to a story that is written around Tom Cruise who obviously sees himself as "Ethan Hunt" these days. If you want an example of what this looks like, please watch Tom Cruise's The Mummy, and you will see that this is what happens when a story is wrapped around an actor as opposed to a story being true to itself (and then the actor gets to be a part of it). I much prefer the latter, as I don't take too much stock in actors and actresses these days. As the Academy Awards and the many social media accounts point out, all actors and actresses are in modern times are regular people like you and me that have a lot of money and interesting jobs, which they probably got because they got lucky. It's like a winner and a loser at the casino game of roulette: one person is a winner and one person is a loser, but no one honestly can tell you why it happens. It just does.

Spielberg's War of the Worlds feels epic in scope. It has amazing scenes like a train that's on fire speeding toward some unknown destination while people gawk at the horror of it all. It shows planes falling out of the sky, people blown to ashes, and huge tripod spaceships raining terror down upon the human race. The human race is so impossibly outmatched that any conflict between us and the invaders is similar to a grasshopper attacking a tank. That story never ends well, but it's also something that commands a lot of money to do (I'd imagine), which is probably (in part) why the Epix streaming service has opted for low key storytelling similar in vein to The Walking Dead. In the Epix streaming service version, they don't even have to worry about excessive makeup and prosthetics to make people look like zombies. So there's that too.

But does it work? I kinda/sorta like it, but I'm not quite sold on it as something that I'll continue to watch. I think I need to absorb a few more episodes before I can tell you that. What I can tell you is that deciding to present the alien invasion as an apocalyptic event, staging it in Europe, and using subtitles in long stretches because the actors are talking in French...does appear different. But it also feels made on the cheap, as the alien invaders used an invisible pulse to kill all humans who were not either 1) underground, 2) under water, or 3) encased in metal. So like more than half the world's population instantly died, but they just had the actors lie down on the ground. There's no "ash" effect like you see in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and there's no expensive C.G.I. like Spielberg might use. And because the people were just "turned off" there's no makeup needed either. People can just lie down and look like they're napping.

By the end of the second episode, there was an introduction to something that actually seemed otherworldly: a dog or canine made of metal that you only see in glimpses that basically chases down survivors and butchers them. These are obviously servants of the invaders. So that adds a scary tension to the show, which I like. And the show does play effectively on the anxieties of a post-apocalyptic world in which the survivors embrace the epitome of selfishness. But how quickly this happens is surprising. Almost immediately after the "Big Death," the survivors are already treating each other pretty much like garbage.

Because I like big epic alien movies, I do hope that the show eventually gives us something like this...something that brings a kind of awe to it that you never get from many post-apocalyptic tales, because these kinds of stories are generally comprised of "one small band of people on a deserted road looking at the wreckage of a once vibrant world." This is exactly how this series is right now. And this is also why I feel like what I want is "never gonna happen." Most of that "epic" stuff that I crave in stories like this is the shock and awe that happens during the initial invasion, which is pretty much handled with a whimper. The "survivors" of the silent but deadly brain wave that kills off the majority of the population are probably just going to be pushed into hiding and to the point of extinction by the aliens before the "virus" trope is played and the aliens all die out because they have no immunities to Earth's diseases.

So...yeah, I'm basically looking at watching a series where there's going to be no real or impressive C.G.I. and where everything is going to be "makeup lite." Being filmed on location in Europe and keeping the story on a very personal level with no name actors is just money in the bank for the streaming service. And they don't have to pay money for a lot of extras because in this story, Earth is mostly dead now.

I guess we'll see what happens and whether the showrunner can win me over with cheap but effective storytelling. At least the acting (so far) is decent. Maybe I don't notice bad acting because I'm busy reading subtitles? I'm going to keep watching, and I'll try to keep you apprised of the situation as it evolves.

Star Trek Picard is walking the disappointing road that the Star Wars sequels followed by killing the happy ending.

I'm a few episodes into Picard, the CBS All Access examination of what occurred after Picard's illustrious Starfleet career is over, and I'm beginning to think that what we have going on here is the same thing that seems to have happened with the continuation of the Star Wars movies. In other words, the happy ending didn't last and what was once good enough to be left alone has now been mined for visceral and emotional reaction to justify nasty changes in these beloved characters.

Spoiler Alert: I'm going to discuss "Stardust City Rag," which aired last week.

Case in point, the brutal killing of Icheb, who was a character I really liked in Star Trek: Voyager for about two seasons, was awful as soon as I realized who it was that was screaming while he was getting chopped up. I didn't need to see this, and I'm pretty angry with Star Trek not because of the gory death per se, but because it was Icheb. I liked Icheb a lot, and I know (because I'm a thinking adult who knows how stories work) that the director of this episode (it's Jonathan Frakes a.k.a. William Riker of Next Generation) called "Stardust City Rag" mined old content looking for ways to connect these present events to the past, stumbled upon Icheb, and was like, "I'm gonna kill off this character to motivate Seven of Nine."

It makes me shake my head in disgust.

Picard isn't Game of Thrones unless I missed a memo somewhere. Beloved characters do not need to be put on the chopping block in order to create visceral emotions for new stories. I honestly think that this is the laziest of storytelling...going for a character death in order to spur a major character onto a path that you want them to walk. There are a myriad of other ways that this could have been accomplished, maybe by devoting one episode (or several episodes) to a backstory following Seven of Nine's awareness of how the Federation has changed following the destruction of Mars, or following her own investigation into what exactly the Romulans are doing with that Borg cube.

It could be any number of things. My first guess as to what's going on with the Borg cube is that it's the one that was destroying Romulan colonies on the very edge of the Neutral Zone in the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They never followed up on that, but it definitely had a "Borg foreshadowing feel" to it, as entire colonies had been scooped up and were missing. Maybe the Borg had a problem assimilating all of the Romulans...like there was something toxic or poisonous about Romulan genetics similar to what happened when the Borg attempted to assimilate Species 8472. All of the Romulans that are removed from the Borg ship (is the word "recovered" appropriate here?) seem to be crazy/insane...so there's obviously something medical (that's unexplained) going on here.

I think that the Borg decided to cut loose that ship and return to Borg space until Season 2 and the episode "Q Who," which introduced humans (and the Federation) to the Borg, which then was followed up in the season finale of Season Three "The Best of Both Worlds." And that's where that Borg ship that the Romulans are studying came from.

Anyway, I haven't been able to connect many of the dots in Picard, but killing Icheb seems cruel and unnecessary. There are plenty of things going on that are interesting enough to have brought in former beloved characters from Voyager, Next Generation, and even DS9 (if that happens at some point) without having to axe characters to give these people a reason to interact with the story. It seems gratuitous, and I don't like it.

At least Discovery is knocking it out of the ball park (in my opinion), by breaking new ground in tremendous thought-provoking ways.

The cover for Empire of Grass is absolutely breathtaking.

I know that it's common wisdom to say, "Never judge a book by its cover," but I think that old saying fails when it comes to Michael Whelan. That being said, I love Tad Williams, and I'm looking forward to reading this...the 2nd book in a new trilogy by Tad Williams set in the world of Osten Ard. This cover manages to look serene, peaceful, and yet epic all at the same time.