Joe Peacock's Blog, page 3

Marlowe Kana Volume 4 Manuscript is Done…

“How do you feel?”

I think it’s instinctual for people to ask that question when you tell them you’ve just finished a big project. And I’ve been asked it a dozen or so times since I put the last period on the last sentence of the Marlowe Kana Volume 4 manuscript. And in every single iteration, I’ve answered the same way: “Good. TIRED. Relieved.”

“That’s awesome!” the askers reply, adding “I’m proud of you!”

That means a lot. More than a lot. It means everything. Because the real answer to the question “How do you feel?” is much more complex than I let on.

This book is the hardest thing I have ever written in my life. This is not hyperbole. I am not exaggerating for effect. I analyzed every piece of writing I’ve ever produced in my head over the last seven months (because I had to do something to procrastinate on the writing, and also validate all of the worst possible things I think about my work). I compared every one of them to what I was trying to write for volume 4. This has them beat by an extremely wide margin.

Harder than the pieces just after my divorce. Harder than any of my depression or suicide discussions. Harder than the apologies I made after writing a horribly hurtful and ignorant article that played up the wrong points for “heat” and ended up burning myself. This book was hard. I can’t over-adjective this fact. This book was very very very hard. This book was extremely hard. This book was impossibly hard. Pick anything that personifies “hard” and stick it in there, and this book was all of them. Combined.

The reasons why are many, some obvious and some deeply complex. For fun, let me take you on a short retrospective of feelings I’ve had over the last seven months:

“Give up.”
“Seriously, I am NEVER going to get this right.”
“I have royally fucked myself over, quitting my career to make this my life.”
“I am incapable.”
“I am not talented.”
“I am not intelligent.”
“I can’t even follow basic rules I myself outlined on how to write a fucking story.”
“Star Wars Episode 8 was written better…” (it absolutely was NOT, it’s impossible to get a worse piece of fiction writing than that movie, but when you’re depressed, you’ll believe any sad thought)
Every author wants you to believe that they have their entire universe writ in their minds 100% perfectly, with every single decision mapped out and decided beforehand, and the process of writing the book you’re reading is simply transcription. This is so utterly not the truth, not even slightly. At least, it’s not for me, and the authors I’ve ever talked to.

Marlowe Kana Volume 4 is in an entirely different place than I planned for it to be when I started this story. Sure, many (most) of the story beats I had are there. A lot of the societal stuff is represented. A lot of the “big moments” are the moments I designed. But the characters, the people, the impact, the tone, the direction… It’s matured in ways I never saw coming. And there’s really only a handful of characters who, as of now, are doing what I originally thought they would be doing. The rest have grown. They’ve taken their own shapes and developed their own voices. They have their own goals, their own desires, their own thoughts and personalities and direction… And I’ve made myself their biographer. I have made a deal with them, and no matter how much I want things to go down my way, that is not my job.

I have done the thing every book on writing has told me to do: I’ve built a world, and I’ve given life to characters in that world, and I’ve given purpose to those characters. And now, they are in control of themselves. It’s a weird, wild thing to watch evolve. You hear from every one of your favorite authors your entire life that this will happen if you’re doing your job right. And you think “how the hell could a thing I am writing get away from me? I’m writing it, right?”

Oh, but it can. And fast.

I have become more of a Dungeon Master in a roleplaying game at a table with 12 friends i invented out of thin air, and now, they’re throwing me for loops left and right.

But I’m keeping up.

Only barely. But I’m doing it.

More later. I just wanted to get some of this out. What’s next: Rowena has the manuscript, and she’s going to make it actually human-readable. I’ll get it back and hammer on it some more, and over the next two weeks, we’ll pass it back and forth while Meghan does the cover. Once it is all done, I’ll get the book laid out, proofed, and into the hands of Patreon supporters. A week later, I’ll get it into the Amazon Kindle and print stores, and voila — another book in the books.

But first: a nap. And a drink.

 

 

 

I’m Not Content With Just Making #Content

The other day, I heard the saddest thing I’ve heard since… Well, since Kurt Cobain died.

(it wasn’t his passing that was the saddest thing — it was sad, don’t get me wrong, and I still watch documentaries and read about him periodically to see just exactly what drove him to the ending he chose for himself. But the saddest thing that I heard back then was a girl I went to high school with tried to kill herself, and the reason she did it was so that her band’s album would sell. It didn’t. She’s in real estate now. Maybe that’s sadder? I don’t know. And these aren’t jokes at her expense, by the way. They’re genuinely how I feel and felt about her and her situation. I’m relating to you. See? This is what #ContentMarketing types refer to as “relatable #content).

[image error]That’s good #content.

The sad thing I heard that beat out some girl I knew trying to kill herself because Kurt Cobain did and it boosted record sales? It’s nowhere near as dramatic. But it made my heart sink nearly as low. I overheard someone explaining that he and his wife now refer to most internet-based things they watch as simply #Content. He went on to explain that he’ll ask her if she wants to watch “Something good like a show, or just fire up the internet and watch #content.”

What made this sad is that it’s not just him and his wife. It’s all of us. All 3 billion or so who have internet access that reaches speeds faster than the speed we can type. Me included. We are all into #Content. YouTube, BuzzFeed, BoredPanda, HuffingtonPost (I don’t write there anymore so I have zero need to even disclaim anything about them), all that. Everything, everywhere. All over the place. Dog pictures? #Content. Rating dog pictures? #content. Gifs? #Content. Embarassing stories shared on Reddit for upvotes? #Content. Jake Paul? #Content.

It’s not like any of us invest ourselves in any of this. It’s just… On. It’s around. It’s what we flip through and scroll through inbetween work or forced-atttention-paying at school, or on the toilet, or when we inevitably pick up our little black rectangles and re-connect to the world a minute or less since the last time, because we are bored. Or we’re scared of our own thoughts and the moment any sort of reality sets in and we are forced to confront the utter inanity of our daily lives as we consider why the hell it is we even bother bathing and putting on clothes when it’s only for the benefit of others, and we HATE others, so why the fuck — oh yeah, cause I need toilet paper, and that’s at the store, and people are at the store, and also I have to afford toilet paper, and that means work…

(Did I hit a nerve there? Did I strike a chord? Did I ring a bell? If so… QUALITY #Content. If not… You’re still reading, so clearly it’s still quality #content.)

[image error]FUCK YEAH GREAT #CONTENT

And every single day, I’m right there with everyone else, scrolling through Instagram and wondering how in the world all these authors and artists and whoever else get so many followers for their books and their comics and their work and how I can do that, cause hey, I want followers for MY books and MY work and MY shows… And I get super depressed. Like, SUPER depressed. Like, “Talk to my girlfriend and lament my life and all the choices that led me to now” depressed.

Because it’s remarkably easy to make #Content. And it’s almost as easy to make you pay attention to it. All I really have to do is lie to you. A lot. Every day. Every post.

I can lie to you about how great my life is. I can lie to you about how immaculate our kitchen is while I cut up sweet potatoes and make a tart or some bullshit. I can lie to you about liberty, gun rights, politics, who said what… I can lie to you about being an expert on literally any subject and make a list of “secrets” or “little known facts” or “Top moments.”  I can smile down the barrel of a camera at you and pretend I’m not jacked beyond belief on amphetamines as I Twitch stream for 24-72 hours in a go and entertain you.

[image error]Look at this here #content, I can NOT believe it

I can make #Content. I used to for some really, really huge sites (at the time). I made all kinds of garbage posts, wrote all kinds of garbage articles, produced all kinds of garbage pranks… All to get traffic and attention, which felt like what I made mattered. I even had a side career writing stories about my life and blog posts to try to help people. But even then, it was all still #Content. I didn’t realize it at the time. I was 100% convinced everything I was doing mattered.

And then I realized how full of shit I was. Not the lie-to-you kind. The lie-to-myself kind.

When I woke up and realized I was in no way doing anything that honestly mattered to the one person that it really, really, REALLY needed to (Hint: me), I realized I was living a huge lie. I realized that everything I did was about validating who I was, what I did, and how I did it. And now, here, today, I just… Can’t.

Not because I’m better than that. But because I want better than that for myself.

And as a result, I want to make things that are better than that for you.

[image error]But dare I ask, what’s better for you than Justin Bieber going all wibbly-wobbly?

I look at the internet today and I’m not at all confused how it got to the place it is. The simple answer: corporations. They realized people were on the internet. They realized they could reach people on the internet and make money doing it. They made lots and lots of money doing it. So they made more and more #content. It’s not that hard to figure out.

Today, we have five and a half major platforms that people publish to that actually get attention: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, and Instagram (which is the half). No one’s home page is The New York Times or my blog. Not in 2018. Our homepages are RSS readers (if you even know what those are anymore), or huge content platforms where you see a headline scroll by and then go check it out. You visit my blog when you see a notification on your chosen big platform that you hang out at. You discuss whatever you’re going to discuss there. You watch streaming videos via Netflix, Youtube or Hulu.

If I wrote the world’s most important article tonight, and posted it to my blog tomorrow, you wouldn’t know until someone somewhere shared it on a big platform — AND BE HONEST, what are the chances you’d come back on your own? Even old readers of mine need prompts. And I know this, because I need prompts to go back to the sites I used to love.

It’s reality.

If I put my money into making the next Akira, with 24-frame-per-second animation and mind-bending story and incredible art, you wouldn’t watch it until it was on Netflix, Hulu, or MAYBE YouTube (because let’s face it, YouTube is for 1) keeping your kid from screaming in a restaurant, 2) indulging your nostalgia watching unboxing videos or half-accurate historical looks at your favorite cartoons, movies, or hobby, or 3)for watching while you’re high).

[image error]Yeah, I said it. #CONTENT ABOUT DRUGS

I’m writing a cyberpunk novel series that I publish to its own website and make available for free. That site has been built by me personally, with every single known convention possible to make it accessible to assistive devices, readable to anyone with vision impairment, color blindness, or other vision issue, run on older browsers, and allows you to download the entire book at will whenever you want. I also did some pretty fucking badass CSS and JS animation to really try to bring to life the cyberpunk feel, and am working now on some augmented reality and VR and yeah, you stopped reading already didn’t you, I know you did, stop pretending and scanning lines and move on to the next paragraph.

The vast (VAST) majority of readers? Amazon Kindle. By several orders of magnitude. I have sold (and given away) over 10,000 copies of the 3 books in the Marlowe Kana series so far on Amazon. I have sold (or given away) a little under 300 on every other platform COMBINED.

I get it. I shop at my favorite stores and watch my favorite networks and read my favorite sites, too. If it’s not there, I typically don’t go hunting for it. Who has the time? When someone links me to their thing, if it’s a personal site, I typically glance it over and then don’t return. I am not proud admitting this, but I am admitting it. When their stuff is on a network i know and trust, I pay attention, because I, like everyone else, have become completely overwhelmed with the sheer amount of #Content out there. If it’s not referred to me by a) someone I know and trust, or b) a network I kinda sorta know and barely trust, but enough to click their link and give a show a minute, I’m probably not going to watch / read / consume it.

And this brings me to the source of the depression: I don’t want to make fucking #Content. 

 

 

I really, really, really don’t want to make fucking #content. 

 

 

*ahem.*

I have worked very, very hard to learn how to write Marlowe Kana. That may sound odd, but trust me… If you’ve never actually tried to write fiction from scratch — especially science fiction — and make it make sense, you genuinely have no fucking clue how hard this job is. And I’ve taken it very, very seriously.

I am not confused, however — I know fully well that just because you work hard at a thing doesn’t automatically make it good. But I have worked to make it good. I have worked to make it better than good, really. I’m trying. And for some folks, that effort is appreciated. I get great feedback on the books and have built a small fanbase of loyal supporters, of whom only a small fraction are “old readers of mine” (or my personal friends) — a fact I’m very, very proud of.

I try to dig deep into the human condition, political and social constructs, and why we are the way we are by talking about the inevitable conclusions we’re facing 100 years from now. I also shifted my blog and personal writing away from hot takes and thinkpieces and try to explore feelings, emotion, reality, sadness, depression, suicide, making a life when you think it’s ruined…

And as great as I used to be wayyyy back in the day making #content, I have no goddamn clue how to try to promote any of that stuff. So I scroll and I scroll and I scroll, sad beyond belief that I will never, ever know how to get my stuff into the hands of people who want it whom I don’t already know somehow.

Except to just keep writing. To just keep making it. To just keep producing.

[image error]Will it work? I guess you’ll just have to keep reading my #content to find out

 

I don’t really have much of a point here. That’s been a theme on my blog lately. I feel like as I’ve gotten older and wiser, and the world has shifted ever more, I end up with far more questions than I do answers. I find myself questioning so much these days, not the least of which is how I feel about literally every single facet of society as it metamorphosis into something none of us have ever seen, which is this insane mish-mash amalgam of literally everything that’s ever happened before in history.

I mean… Nazis are back, people. Fucking Nazis. And so are overhyped entrepreneurs who exploit labor and laws to get what they want, and madmen threatening nuclear annihilation, and bell bottoms, and axe throwing (for whatever fucking reason), and the goddam Atkins diet (which goes by Keto now, and people, I’m telling you — if you’re not actively making money on showing your body, don’t do that diet. It will wreck your insulin production and your liver). And Paleo diets and stone carving and people who make videos of surviving in the woods with literally nothing and goddamn MEASLES because MOTHERFUCKERS SOMEHOW THINK VACCINATIONS ARE BAD and the more I think on ANY of this, much less ALL of this, the more and more angry and insane and confused and tired I get and I just have to fucking stop.

 

[image error]So I’m stopping.

 

I am a writer. I publish on the internet, because yeah, where the hell else am I going to? And I write about human things, which means I pay attention to what humans are doing and thinking and feeling. And right now… I’m not so sure I, or you, or anyone really, truly knows what it is we think and feel right now. And so we just turn to the internet and fire up some #Content and hope our brains stop hemorrhaging long enough for our stomachs to stop turning and we can eat some supper.

Only, I don’t want to make #content for you. I want to write shit that matters. And unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to be a place for that much of anywhere these days, except my own blog and my own sites and in my own books.

So, I guess I just do that for a while. And for as long as I have Patreon supporters and people who read my books, I’m going to keep going. I may not really have a strong handle on where I fit in, or where any of this fits in really. But I know you are here, reading this now. And for that, I thank you. I’ve got more (oh man, do I have more). Stick around, and you’ll get as much as you can handle (and if you don’t stick around — and let’s face it, in 2018, hanging around some person’s blog is just not a thing anymore maybe you’ll get to see it linked somewhere).

That Weird Moment When You Realize What You Must Do

This week, I wrote a manifesto to my Patreon supporters.

It was one part confession, one part apology, one part epiphany, and one part promise. It was specifically for them, because they financially contribute to my writing every month. I felt like I owed it to my most direct supporters to open up about what’s been going on with me and how it has affected me, and what I plan to do to resolve the situation I’ve created for myself.

In short: I quit my job to write, and I haven’t really been writing as much as I should or I thought I would. Part of that is because the financial support I get from Patreon and book sales isn’t quite enough to make my full monthly budget, and to prevent cutting into savings, I took on a job that ultimately ended up not being what it was billed as. It put me in a bad place emotionally, which then spiraled into a “oh my God, I can’t actually do this” panic that lasted far too long. Add to that some folks’ overtures about things related to the Marlowe Kana universe never manifested (not that I was counting on those things to happen to do what I wanted to do). There’s a LOT more to it, but ultimately, other peoples’ emotional crises aren’t particularly interesting, so I’m just gonna skip to the point:

I lost sight of my goal, which is to be a writer full time. And that cost me, both in time and emotional energy. And I’ve come to realize some things in the process:

I adore the universe I’ve created with Marlowe Kana, and I love sharing my silly brain crap on my blog. I miss those things every second I’m not actively working on them.
There’s a way to make all the things I’ve got in mind in terms of project happen, and every day I wait for someone somewhere to give me permission, I waste 24 hours of my life.
There’s lots and lots of projects I want attached to Marlowe Kana — Audiobook, soundtrack, animated show (more on that later… Much more). But it all starts with the books. Without those, there’s nothing to work from.
I’m the only person who can make those books. Lots and lots of other people can make the other stuff, and are far more qualified. But I’m the only one capable of making the story.
People promise a lot of things. That doesn’t make them real, they’re just promises.
So, if any of this stuff is going to exist, I need to make it.

So that’s where I’ve landed. After two months of pretty severe depression (that finds its roots in my life collapsing the last time I ran my own business in 2013, but like the strings on a guitar getting plucked, only need the slightest provocation to ring out), I’ve come out the other side with an understanding I’ve always had, but lost sight of:

I am in control of what I make. And if I want things to exist, I have to make them.

That’s my promise, and the thing I wanted to return to blogging with. I feel like I have my hands around the process enough to understand what’s been going on with me, and what I need to do about it.

That’s all.

Hi. I’m Joe, and I’m trying. With any luck and a shitton of resolve, I’ll end up doing.

#AkiraWeek in The Japan Times (And My Parts In It)

Last week was a major event for us geeks. 

Not just anime geeks, or sci-fi geeks, or cyberpunk geeks, or any particular niche. It can be said as a matter of fact that the 1988 film Akira completely defined sci-fi, cyberpunk, and anime for American audiences in the modern era, and all of us — regardless of our particular flavor of geek — benefited. Akira helped usher in an appreciation for animation as mature art in the West. It was the first animated film to be passed around by art school geeks, animation geeks, sci-fi geeks, computer geeks, cyberpunk geeks, and every other form of geek, all of which had one reaction:

[image error]Whoa.

They showed their friends. Their friends, while maybe not into geek stuff, certainly had to appreciate the craftsmanship and sheer spectacle of Akira. Even watching it in a theater or on VHS, one had to marvel at the fluidity of the animation, the astounding color palette, and the mature subject matter. This wasn’t a kids’ cartoon. The climax wasn’t just some dopey dog and spunky cat tricking the shopkeep into giving them a hambone while a slide whistle signaled someone slipping on something. Political coups. Military takeovers. Biker gangs. Violence… Oh so much violence. Psychic warfare. Human test subjects. The literal end of times. And it was glorious.

And last week, The Japan Times ran an entire weeklong feature called, appropriately, #AkiraWeek. As The Art of Akira Exhibit guy with a ton of original cels, Matt Schley (the hardest working man in anime reporting!) reached out to me and we talked for hours. As a result, last Wednesday, they ran an entire feature on me. That was, without a doubt, one of the biggest honors I’ve ever received. They also quoted me in the huge Sunday roundup a few times.

 

[image error]Look at that handsome fella.

 

[image error]So damn cool.

 

It’s so wonderful to see the world bringing up Akira again and discussing all of its amazing accomplishments. As an expert on the film, I could write up my own piece about it all, but I really think Matt nailed it in his feature. I really hope you dive into it and learn about this film which has fundamentally affected my life to the point I toured the world for 5 years showing people the art from it. And when asked if I was planning on doing something for 2019, the year the film takes place, I had to say “I’d like to”. Because I really would. But I also have to be honest with myself. Those 5 years were blessed with having the finances, time, and pure energy it took to pull it off, and I’m not so sure I could do it again without help in at least two of those categories. So who knows. That said, I’m open to opportunities!

 

 

The Finest Jazz Record You (and I) Have Never Heard… Until Now

I’m in the throws of a new feeling. New for me, anyway.

I’m making myself wait for something.

There’s an album that is being re-released on July 29, 2018 that I am legitimately shaking with excitement to listen to when I finally get my copy, which will likely be mid-August. It’s a re-release of a Japanese Jazz record from 1969 that is considered a holy grail to collectors, and is practically unheard by anyone else. Not just unheard of; literally unheard. No copies exist in digital music services. No bootlegs are floating around willy-nilly (at least not in America).

This album is a true gem in this, the year 2018 in our (admittedly derailed) timeline. It’s Tachibana by the Tohru Aizawa Quartet.

[image error]A holy grail to collectors, only 200 – 300 copies were made, and it has never been heard by people who haven’t owned a physical copy themselves… Until now.

The Tohru Aizawa Quartet is, by every definition, a top-tier Jazz unit. This band is tight. They are gifted. They play modal and temporal jazz at a level equal to Chick Korea, Bill Evans, Charlie Parker… You name a quartet you’ve heard playing as part of the cultural background in America since Jazz was invented, and I’d put this group alongside them. And I’ve only ever heard one song by them.

Just the one. And it’s that fucking good that I feel confident enough to tell you, this is one of the greatest Jazz quartets to ever play.

[image error]

What makes it even more astounding is that the four members of the quartet were all in college at the time of the recording. There is a much stronger and detailed writeup on The Vinyl Factory, but to summarize here:

Tohru Aizawa Quartet played out in clubs and small concert halls for a little side cash, but mostly just for fun. Indulging in the (then) recently-unforbidden sounds of a post-World War II musical aberration in the eyes of Japanese power structure, these guys play with joy coming out of their instruments. They were discovered by a local businessman for whom the record is named, Ikujiroh Tachibana. He financed, recorded, and produced the record for the lads — 200 to 300 copies at best guess. There was only the one pressing, and Tachibana used the record itself as a business card. There was never a second pressing, never a tour, never an international release… This record was truly a once-and-done relic of late 60’s Jazz culture in Japan.

That is, until BBE (Barely Breaking Even) records released an incredible sampler album earlier this year of Japanese Jazz, collected by Tony Higgins & Mike Peden,  appropriately titled J-Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from 1969-1984. The fine folks at BBE have done the world a monster favor with this collection. They’ve opened a door previously unopened to a collection of amazing, never before heard (in most of the world) music, which is nearly unheard of in 2018. All of the tracks on this record come from albums that had no international release outside of Japan, which itself had only a niche (but VERY supportive) Jazz community. If you like Yoko Kanno, and especially her work on Kids on the Slope and Cowboy Bebop, this is mandatory listening. Please, do yourself a favor and check the whole record out. But don’t be shocked when you find yourself playing the 2nd track, Dead Letter by Tohru Aizawa Quartet, on the digital album (and first song on the 2nd record if you get the vinyl) on repeat.

Oh my God, that song is amazing.

So, like everyone else who had no idea any of this existed until BBE made it possible to enjoy it, I got super obsessed. I searched out every single group on the album and downloaded every song I could find by them. To my surprise, I couldn’t find any further tracks by Tohru Aizawa Quartet besides Dead Letter. It was a shock, but a super refreshing one: here I sit in 2018, after 25 years of being online most of my day every day, and there’s music I can’t find.

When BBE announced they created a remastered pressing of Tohru Aizawa Quartet’s Tachibana and are releasing it this year, I was overjoyed. I have played the groves flat on my copy of J-Jazz (that I was lucky enough to get one of the last copies available). I have played Dead Letter I don’t know how many times. It’s the PERFECT mood record in my office, with the cool cyberpunky club lighting and art on the walls and cigars and whiskey. I may have to buy another copy (fun fact– the only other record in my collection with as many plays is Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue).

So, I placed my order two months ago, and I am counting down the days until July 29, when the record is due to be shipped, so I can count down even more days until UPS brings it to my door. And periodically, I’ll get curious to see if the album has leaked out anywhere. I search and I search, and to both my dismay and delight, I find nothing. That is, until this week, when I found a rare music collector had digitized and uploaded the full album to YouTube.

 

It may surprise you, and it DEFINITELY surprised me, that I closed the window without listening. While I was glad to see someone had done this so that others can find it easily, and while in days past I would have put this on endless loop until I got my own copy, this time… I chose not to indulge. It sits neatly bookmarked in my folder for later enjoyment, after I get my physical copy and perform this ritual:

I’m going to delicately slice open the box and lift the flaps. I’ll admire the gloss of the cellophane-coated record sleeve, soaking in the design of the album cover and back cover. I’ll then even-more-delicately slice open the cellophane around the record sleeve and slowly pull out the (presumably) white tissue record sleeve, and then pull from it the beautiful ink-black vinyl disc. I’ll admire the craftsmanship of this artifact as I gingerly place the record on the turntable spindle. Laying the needle ever so kindly on the entry groove, I’ll take a seat in my lounger in my office with the lights down and a choice cigar lit and a pour of an extremely fine old scotch in a Glencarin glass by my side. And then, I’m just going to listen. I’m going to savor the sounds along with the flavors of my drink and cigar and enjoy two of the rarest things on this planet right now: 1) an album almost no one has heard in almost 50 years, that stands as one of the greatest Jazz recordings ever made, finally available in the age of digital downloaded instant-streaming everything, and 2) some peace and joy in an era where there is precious little to be found.

With me until that moment is the knowledge that at whatever point I choose, I can just hit play on that YouTube link and listen to it whenever I want. I am truly thankful for that link and that video, because everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy such treasures — a philosophy I’ve lived my life by since the day I got online. I’ve never believed in forcing people to pay to enjoy art. I am an avid collector of finery and rare artifacts, and have made considerable effort to make what I have bought and acquired available to anyone who wants to see it for free online (especially the Akira art and rare albums, both of which I’ve spent a lot of time digitizing and releasing for anyone who wants it).

[image error]Tohru Aizawa is a master.

To be extra clear: I haven’t a single problem whatsoever with the fact this album is “leaked” especially since it came out in 1969, and honestly should have been released worldwide then… It’s much less a “leak” and more a service to humanity at large that this link now exists. And that’s why I’ve embedded it, so YOU can enjoy it whenever you like. But me? I’m choosing to wait. And that’s a weird and new feeling for me. Maybe it’s adulthood setting in; perhaps I’ve finally “Grown up” and waiting for something isn’t torture anymore.

Or, maybe I want to put myself into a place of actual anticipation for a record — something I’ve not felt since the mid to late 90’s. Maybe I want that cerebral experience of a brand new experience from something not brand new at all… The joys of a long delayed discovery that gets to be all my own, the same way it’ll get to be all your own if you choose to do it, because an artifact like this — A musical album made in 1969, that all the way until 2018, had never penetrated the cultural veil of Japanese music fans, Jazz music fans, Vinyl collectors, Esoteric MP3 seekers… And whats more, from the one song I have listened to (and on repeat, many many many times, since it came out), is fucking AMAZING…  And it was made by kids – almost high schoolers – Who just loved jazz so much they decided to play it together, and they did so at a virtuoso level…

And maybe I want to have that amazing moment before this thing inevitably explodes, and all the hipsters claim to have heard about it back before anyone possibly could have (considering there were only 200 copies pressed, half of which were handed to people as a business card by the producer, who probably threw them away…). The story of this album is almost tailor-made to make it a social media hit. And I’m certain it will be, because it’s already showing all the signs — including goofball blogger types full of despair that the huge, gross mistakes they made in their career to get attention is merely table stakes to exist online anymore, writing long missives about it as an avatar for their midlife crisis on their blog.

(That’s me, by the way.)

Maybe I’m so goddamn fatigued by “influencers” and “Social media hackers” and “Personal Brand Experts” and literal Nazis on Twitter and robots pretending to be all of the above, all day, every day.. If they’re not showing up themselves in my daily reading, I can bet that at least 1 article out of 10 in my daily reading will cover a topic involving them. And it doesn’t matter how acutely or expertly I tailor my feed and trim it back… It’s encroaching so fast on all sides, that there’s not a single corner of my little world that doesn’t have a crack in it somewhere that lets the sound of these things in.

Maybe I’m just feeling all of that combined.

Or maybe, I just want to listen to a legendary record that has been re-released for the first time in a lovely, comfortable setting with a nice cigar and scotch and no distractions.  I mean, it doesn’t have to be all that complicated, right?

…Right?

I don’t really know anymore. Maybe I just want to do as Austin Kleon suggested and:

[image error]do.

 

Ten Years Gone

Ten years is both a long time, and no time at all.

I read an article this morning summarizing the last ten years in technological changes on the internet. It was both a hoot and a shock. I remember all of the advancements as they happened, and every single one of them feel simultaneously like they’ve been here forever, and only arrived yesterday.

I think the feeling is pretty universal, and has been with middle-aged folk for as long as we’ve all been medically, socially, and physically able to consider our 40’s “middle aged.” It’s a tough beat for all people to start coming to terms with their mortality. For most, they do it around this age. Me? I’ve literally been dead before (4 times), so the idea that I’m going to die doesn’t really bother me.

Now, the idea that what time I have here is going to be wasted, ruined, or otherwise disrupted in ways I am not okay with, by people I cannot stop? That idea bothers me. It’s happening right now, as I type this. And it’s happening in a way that I truly believe is unique in history. It’s happening en masse, globally, and pretty nearly invisibly — even to the most self-aware.

I believe humankind possess at a very bare minimum a level of self awareness to know when they’re in the middle of a permanent change, even if they can’t explain or understand it. The currents of culture flow a different direction, and the riptide is something you feel dragging you into this new reality. It happens to each of us individually in life, as we pass through the trials and tribulations of living. Divorce is a big one for some; the death of a close relative or loved one for others. Fundamental moments where the ground beneath you opens up and you are swallowed by a new reality, where whatever you knew as a day to day reality is simply no longer possible.

This feeling I’m feeling is that, but collectively. It’s different than my divorce, or my breakdown, or my car crash, or the deaths of any of my friends. It’s not a single stab to any one of us which bleeds. It’s sand in the winds of change, tearing at our faces. Painful and abrasive, but on a far more abstract and surface level. It doesn’t hurt as much as it simply stings.

[image error]This is gonna sting.

I don’t need to get into details. I think we all know the score right now, at this particular moment in history. In fact, I want to really focus on the abstractions, because they’re the place where Ten Years Ago feels like yesterday, and so far away.

It was only yesterday that I could connect with a total stranger on a big social media platform and be genuinely shocked when that person — one of, say, a thousand or ten thousand in my little circle I’d formed — behaved badly. Any of the following offenses would not only shock me, but be grounds for permanent deletion from my sphere:

They shouted their opinions, which of course were right and yours are wrong.
They used a racial slur.
They were sexist.
They were dismissive of your right to an opinion, insisting their right to an opinion also guaranteed them the right to have the opinion that you are wrong forever.
They dehumanized you.
They were literal fucking nazis.

These days… those things are all table stakes on every single connected platform on the planet. These people are not only here, and not only here in big numbers. In some ways, even the most innocent of us have had to adopt their strategies just to exist among them.

We have Nazi filter plugins for every major browser. We have plugins that shield us from news including terms we don’t like to see or hear. We have become intolerant of intolerance. We have felt the need to do violence against those who have committed violence against others (who did nothing beside exist). We are angry. We are hostile.

Sure, we (I fucking hope) don’t get all racist and sexist and trolly for fun. But we do use slurs against them:

“Trumpeter.”
“Trumpkin.”
“Nazi.”
“Cheetoh Lover.”
“Cracker.”
“Peckerwood.”
“Troll.”
“Fucking little teenage bastard whose dad lets him call you “cunt” on Xbox Live, but if you dare retaliate, he threatens to call a SWAT team to your house.” (Or, simply “SWATTER”).

Even the most high minded and open of us must admit that we have reduced our version of “the other” to cartoonish, glaring, pus-filled boils on our social rear-parts, only good for irritation and a bit of bleeding.

We have to. We are human. Besides, to empathize with these dickheads is to give them more room to breathe, which they will use to shout yet another epithet at us. So we have to act like them, because they act like them, and there’s more of them now than there are of us (or so we feel, because they’re that fucking loud).

And in that process… They create more of them, by making us like them. And they’re everywhere, all the time, connected to every little thing we have and own, because every little thing we have and own is now connected to the internet. The only way to escape it is to ignore it. We build digital walls and keep them on the other side, as much as we can. But they always find new ways to sneak by… If not directly in your friend feeds, DMs, PMs, forums, or other channels, then in the mainstream news, which they’ve become adept at playing like a fiddle. So you get it when you breeze through the headlines, simply trying to keep up with the events of the current era. Seeing them triggers within you all the memories of all the interactions prior to your building your wall.

It’s self-perpetuating. And, I’m afraid, permanent.

We are all in the middle of a fundamental, unavoidable, permanent shift in our collective consciousness. No, it’s not the end of the world. It’s simply the end of the world you used to think was how things are going to be forever.

So, When I think of ten years ago, for some reason, I can’t help but picture some abstract moment in the 90’s. Of course, the absolute latest moment of the 90’s was 19 years ago. That’s almost twenty. And that’s almost a lifetime. In fact, it would feel like forever ago, if it didn’t feel like only yesterday. And I find myself yearning for those days to be now (or at least the feeling of those days), literally every single day.

That sounds like gibberish, mainly cause it is. But it’s how I’m feeling right now, so… Yeah. This is what you’re getting today.

Maybe that constant nostalgic feeling which keeps me remembering “Ten years ago” as both yesterday and forever ago is what also keeps me coming back to the internet, day after day, specifically looking for experiences that either a) remind me of how it felt when I first got on the internet, or b) are completely brand new.

Both types of experiences are feeling like they are starting to run out. But they’ve been starting to run out for, oh, ten years or so.

I find myself reaching for loves of my past: Animation. Comics. Pro Wrestling. Working out. Video games. When I dive into the nostalgia of it, I end up digging through the internet for more information, because hey, it’s there — and the internet is by far the easiest, most vast, and quickest way to keep exploring those avenues.

I sit in my cool little office, with my cool desk and cool chair and cool knick-knacks on shelves, lit in color-changing LEDs that cycle between pink and blue because those are the official colors of cyberpunk for some reason. And I browse these cool things that I’m loving, and reading all I can, and seeing a Youtube video of it here and there, and really geeking out on discovery again the way I was nostalgic for that feeling of discovery.

And then it happens. I read a comment. Or I click a bad link. And boom, I’m reminded that my lightbulbs are connected to a cesspool of Chinese and Russian hackers, all pretending to be white supremacists to get real white supremacists stirred up.

The viel is pierced, and through a deep connection with literally everyone on the planet, I feel more disconnected than ever before. It all ends up feeling like I’m living in this video (which is well worth the 20 minute runtime, especially if you’re a gamer, a YouTube or Twitch fan, or just bored enough to watch 20 minutes of absurdity):

 

You can’t ever go back. I know this. And really, I don’t want to go back. What I want more than anything is for reality to realign itself so that we can all keep feeling the way I felt back then, when things were new and exciting and not ruined by literal Nazis. That craving isn’t ending anytime soon; after 41 years I’ve realized it will only die when I die. But more and more, I’m feeling the tools I used to achieve those feelings become more and more dangerous, as the fun is watered down to trace levels while the risk factors of enjoying them ceaselessly encroach.

So more and more, I find joy in things that aren’t online. And the more I share those disconnected experiences in an attempt to be a part of the larger conversation, the more distant I feel from the larger conversation — much like real-life conversations — as I babble on and on about how great this thing I experienced was, and no one can really relate… Much like trying to talk about Pro Wrestling in almost any social setting.

I only have one answer to all of this, which itself isn’t even a question — but it needs an answer all the same:

Keep going, no matter what. 

[image error]Cheesy stock photo to punctuate my point.

Whatever this new reality is, the rules are very clearly not set. Everything has abruptly and completely shifted these last ten years, and will continue to do so. That chaos is not forever, and it’s not even a bad thing. It’s just chaos. The answer is to create order within it, starting with me.

I’ve returned my days to the things which have gotten me through times of personal upheaval in the past, namely Working, Writing, and Working out. I am getting my body back in shape, which is keeping my mind focused. I am writing every day again. I am doing the work before me, in order, despite not feeling like it.

I will keep writing my books. I will keep my body and mind healthy. I will sustain an income so I can keep eating food and having a roof over my head.

The rest of the winds of change will blow where they will, and they may even take me along with them. But that’s really it’s own form of discovery, isn’t it? Life may take us all to uncharted territory, where we don’t know where we are or what we are doing there. I believe that by knowing, deeply and unshakably, who I am, I can survive that. And that means I can survive anything.

I have the past ten years, and the past ten years before that. I’ve survived a lot. This is just more of that, on a much larger and much more distributed scale. The sand in the winds of change might sting, but it also exfoliates. The dead thinking sheds away, and we’re all forced to learn new ways to think.

It may be hard, but I think we’re up to the task. I guess we’ll see in ten years.

Want To Peek Inside My Brain? Listen To Episode 22 Of The Educated Guess Podcast!

I was a guest on the Educated Guess podcast today.

Justin (the host) and I go back a good bit. He’s a good friend, an exceptionally talented producer and musician, and a young man pointed in the right direction. His podcast is primarily for young, soon-to-be college age artists and tech kids looking for the answer to the most difficult question facing anyone graduating high school: What now?

I go into my career, how I left college after 6 months to be a dot com kid, how that led to book deals, television writing, and ultimately, my stay in the hospital after a mental breakdown. We discuss my views on cyberpunk as a genre: what is it, how has it changed since it was invented, and why does so much modern “cyberpunk” stuff suck? (Also, I explore why there are only 2 black people and no other races besides white folk in Minority Report… It’s a doozy). And at the end of it, you’ll have a decent view into my mind state in 2018.

I hope you enjoy!

Kids In Cages, “Good People” and Our Collective Outrage

Tuesday morning, I broke with protocol and wrote some political shit. On Facebook.

I did it on my author Facebook page  but still. Two rules of mine I’ve followed kinda sorta mostly for the past three years, broken in one morning. It’s because we — The United States of America — have been putting children in cages, separated from their parents when the family tries to cross the border to seek asylum.

Let me reiterate: these are CHILDREN, isolated and alone, put into concentration camps and housed in cages. This is abhorrent. If you were playing one of the billion soldier-for-hire video games on the market and the Colonel radioed in that they just found out that the current government is tearing children from their parents and housing them in cages in a concentration camp, you’d run in gung-ho with grenades and shotguns and kill anyone wearing camo or a flag patch for that country with gusto. If this were a movie, you’d leap from your seat, dramatically flinging popcorn everywhere, the second the hero killed the Captain at this Kiddie Concentration Camp and uttered some catchy phrase (something like “Enough Child’s Play.” or “I’ve got a toy for you!” and then boom, shotgun to the faaaaaace).

But this is America. It’s been run by well-off privileged white people (most of whom worship a God who supposedly sent his son to die for sins, and that son demanded that we love our neighbor and show compassion and help those in need… But all that shit took place in the Middle East, not here. Plus Jesus was white, right?), and those kids are brown. So of course, who cares?

This is the post I wrote:

Seeing people — supposed good people, supposed people of faith — try to explain the difference between “enclosures made of chain link fence” and “cage” was a tipping point for me. I have written and deleted half a dozen reactions to this one thing. Mind you, it’s not the only thing that’s got my dander up, not by a long shot. But it’s definitely the one I just can’t let go of.

I can’t help but feel pity for anyone who would dare justify what’s happening to children at the border. Immigration reform Security? Bullshit. These are children. Not empathy — pity. I feel sorry for them, because they’re fundamentally broken inside. They lack even the most basic self awareness.

Hell, even if you stared me in the face and said “I am a racist who hates brown people” and that was your only reason for not wanting immigrants, I could respect that more than buttering up your narrative with these false claims, to help turn off whatever alarms ring in your head when you drift into becoming a monster. You’re still a piece of shit, but At least there’s self awareness there.

But no, we’ve entered an age where the very people who cough up “but the children!” justifications to playing morality police on abortion, porn, and video games, actively turn a blind eye to actual kidnapping and abuse of kids when it threatens their bullshit political agendas.

Kids are being slaughtered in schools by firearms? Too bad, second amendment. But violent video games? “What about our children?!?”

Kids are being locked in cages, and middle teens are teaching preteens how to change diapers on babies? Immigration reform. But abortion? “That cluster of cells that isn’t even yet a baby has a right to life!”

I don’t fucking get it. I don’t get any of it. How do we occupy the same space? The same life? The same reality? How can I sit here feeling anger well beyond simple empathy because some white evangelicals somehow think it’s ok to stuff kids in a cage when they’re not from this supposedly great country? How am I supposed to claim you as my kind? My fellow countryman? My fellow human?

For the first time in many, many years… I just can’t.

I have to accept that we aren’t all just different in that “uniquely you!” Happy meme sense. We are fundamentally different, at our core. Deep in my brain is a sense of right and wrong; of common human decency, which causes me to apologize when I’ve hurt someone and then try not to hurt anyone else. And here these people are, trying to semantically justify babies being torn from parents because “they’re not cages, they’re enclosures made of chain link fencing.”

To those people, I say: They’re cages. And you’re a monster.

This isn’t name calling. This is fact.

You won’t hear me. And if you do, you won’t believe me, not fully. You’ll find hundreds of Facebook and Twitter people willing to sing your chorus, or allow you to sing in theirs, and you’ll feel so much better when you’re with your kind. But I’m telling you, right here and right now, you are a monster. You are the very thing you couldn’t understand in high school when you saw And read about acts of barbarism. You can’t see what’s right in front of your nose, because it’s YOU, and you refuse to look in a mirror. You can’t allow for the idea that everyone deserves basic human dignity, even if it means you have to surrender a little of the excess you value to make sure someone who is without gets a little.

Somewhere deep inside you, at your next church service or outreach whatever, you will feel that tiny pang deep inside you. It’ll echo because it’s so hollow in there. And you’ll try to drown it out with singing and prayer, or laughter and memes… but that little hollow pang? That’s your confirmation that I am right, and that you are a monster.

I find it harder and harder to live the lessons I learned the past few years, of allowing people to be themselves and love them all the same. I have lost that thing within me which is capable of loving my enemy. I have no compassion for the compassionless, and this is making me sick inside. To fight monsters, one must become a monster.

I just wonder how long I can hold out.

This country is fracturing, for real this time. We’ve always had our differences — red vs. blue, Pepsi vs. Coke, Nintendo vs. Sega… But now we’re straight up fighting with each other over right versus wrong.

I’ve reached a point where I feel angry all the time. Not just when I read the news, or when I get into a debate, but literally all. the. time. And that’s unhealthy, so I do things like write my novels and blogs and try to share jokes and cute pictures of my cats, which then feels horribly irresponsible, because how are we supposed to have fun or even breathe in a climate like this?

And yet, I can’t take to the streets and start shouting, not just yet — not because there isn’t a reason, but because I’ll be arrested as a madman, as tons of onlookers, who may or may not be as angry as I am, are too scared to join the fracas. And if they do, we likely will get no coverage, thus snuffing out whatever fire could have started there, and now we’re ALL going to jail for a day or more.

Or a blacksite, if you’re in DC or Chicago. And being blacksites, who knows how many and where else they are. But I digress.

So here we are, in a Catch 22 of pure frustration: If I spend my day angry, I end up frustrated that I can’t focus or do anything besides be angry, but if I do anything besides be angry, I get frustrated that I don’t care enough to stop what makes me angry.

Too bad for me, because this is how life is now, and how it’s going to be for a long, long time.

This is our new state of existence. Fox News and CNN and MSNBC have won: the fear and anger engines that keep viewers watching between advertisements all day, every day, have finally manifested into real life.

My only answer: Fight. Stay angry and frustrated. Keep taking breaks to keep yourself charged up.

Artists: Write your stories. Draw your art. Make your music. That’s part of the fight. Every effective movement in our country’s history had posters, slogans, fight songs, and people to tell the story in written and photographic form. We need you.

Protestors: Be smart. Confront the issue, not the cops themselves, because they’ve trained hard and have expensive military-grade equipment they’re itching to use on you — and make no mistake, their salary is earned learning to hate you.

Everyone: vote. Vote like a motherfucker. This is our country. We hire these people to make laws and enforce them. We don’t like the laws or the manner of enforcement, we hire new people. Don’t believe commercials and slogans. Research candidates. Look at donor records and compare them with voting and legislative records. Learn who their masters are. If they’re not us, fuck them.

We have all been raised to believe that comfort, advancement, and achievement are our right as Americans.

This is bullshit. It was our privilege, as long as it lasted. And it was not universal. There have been people who have done without even during nationwide times of plenty. Sure, comparison to the poorest nations on Earth will instantly have you playing a tiny violin for the average American, who can somehow afford at least a few items on the 99 Cent Menu and a television (or a smartphone). But the big lie is that any of that was guaranteed, so long as you worked hard enough.

We’re all working pretty hard right now, and it’s eroding. We’re all feeling it, from the middle class down. Every time there’s a financial upheaval in this country, we lose our jobs and scrape to survive while the rich, entrenched in wealth, buy up everything we lose and then repackage and resell (or worse, rent) it back to us. And now, all the frosting has been scraped from the top and they’re cutting into the cake itself. And we’re bleeding all over one another — half of us believing one lie, that it’s our right to have these things, especially if we’re white and “worked hard” for it. The other half believe the lie that they can’t do anything about the first half.

Right now, it’s kids in cages at the border.

Soon, it’ll be workers displaced by automation (Truck drivers, factory workers, warehouse stockers, cab drivers, and literally everyone else who is organic doing a job with a machine that a machine can now be taught to do by itself) who can no longer feed their families. And they’re going get desperate the hungrier they get. What then? What will the dyed-blonde anchors on Fox News have to say about these unworthy people? That they’re disrespecting the flag and our country and our glorious leader by daring to demand they have food?

After that, it’s anyone’s guess.

The outrage engine isn’t stopping anytime soon, unless we stop it. And my biggest fear is that it’s not going to stop before the violence starts. Before we divide ourselves along stupid lines based on color, whether those be Red versus Blue, or White vs. Non-White (and for the record, I’m 50% covered in tattoos, so I’ll be fighting on the non-white side. Fuck you.)

I have no witty conclusion.

Screenland, a Documentary Series on Cyber Culture I Wrote And Produced, Is Now on Netflix!

Hi there. I made a thing. It’s called Screenland. This is the intro screen of it, look at the majesty:

[image error]Look at the title screen. Behold its majesty.

And it’s now on Netflix!! It’s also the second thing in my IMDB entry, which is fun to see.

The show was created and produced by School of Humans here in Atlanta, GA. I had the distinct honor and privilege of working with the infinitely more talented Cara Ellison, Jenn Frank and Anthony Carboni, all of whom taught me a lot about not sucking at doing writing things.

Here are some screenshots of episodes and telling you some fun stories that most certainly won’t give away any secrets or plot bits, but when you see the episode about it, you’ll remember what I said and go “OH THAT’S WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT” and we will share a laugh. It’ll be a good laugh, I think. For now, I’m going to share some screens from various episodes without any context at all. You may recognize faces, images, locations or titles from these screens, but that’s your business. For today, I want to sew the seeds of confusion, so that I may harvest your interest later when I explain these screens. Plus I was told not to give anything away. So I’m just following orders.

[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

 

I hope you enjoy!

God Fucking Dammit, Why Didn’t You Listen About Bitcoin

The world, for all its chaos and wonder, tends to fall for the same bullshit every 20 years. 

This is because the people who fell for it 20 years ago now have kids who inherited their genes, and are susceptible to the same crap, I guess. I’m making that up. I’m not entirely sure why. One thing I do know is that 20 years seems to be the magic number for people to forget the last time pretty much the exact same kind of crap happened, and then go do it again.

Case in point: It turns out that last year’s mega Bitcoin boom might have been artificially inflated* by a small cabal of high value owners to manipulate newcomers into buying and inflating the price so they could dump their coins at the inflated price, only to buy it back at the post-plummet price.

[image error]Ugh.

This is not a new scam. It’s called the pump and dump, and it’s been going on as long as there have been intangible assets people can invest cash into to somehow beat the odds and become millionaires in a legal lottery our entire financial system has decided to hinge itself on. And I saw it coming, because I’ve seen it before. Twice.

But please understand, this is not an “I told you so.” This is very much not that. It is a plea: to those of you who don’t intimately know technology to please, please, please, please, PLEASE start listening to those of us who have been around this little internet world for a while, lest you lose your assets, your identity, your privacy, or even your emotional stability (looking at you, Facebook friends who can’t stop yelling into the void about politics while helping Cambridge Analytica and several Chinese, Russian, and North Korean machine learning engines on how to manipulate you further).

For the past few years, I was active in a bunch of cigar trading groups (laugh all you want, we have fun and can’t see your giggling through our lovely plumes of smoke). I say was, partly because quitting your job at the biggest audit and financial firm in the world to write your Cyberpunk novel isn’t exactly going to make the cigar budget larger, and also because after last year’s Bitcoin bullshit, I had to take a break and I’ve not really come back.

In those groups, you see a few types of people:

The OG (Original Gangster). The guy (almost always a guy) who has been smoking and dealing in cigars for decades or more, who knows all the lore, all the brands, all the legends, what to buy, what to smoke, what to trade… The Yodas of the group. These make up maybe 10% of the group’s population in the average forum, and they usually all have a secret group they hang out at to talk openly together without any interjection by the next few types.
The Baller. These guys (sometimes a lady) know what they’re talking about, but aren’t afraid to ask more experienced guys for help and advice. They admit when they don’t know something, which is how they learn more. These are genuinely nice, genuinely cool dudes. They like talking. Not talking shit, not politics, not religion… Just a genuine fondness for the art of conversation. These are the guys for whom cigars are not just smoky treats or a dick measuring contest — they find a brotherhood in the hobby, because if you like something that I like, we have a commonality and that should bring us together despite what separates us. This makes up about 30% of the group populations. Occasionally, one will get invited to the OG forum and are told “keep your mouth shut for at least six months, no joke.”
The “expert.” This guy (ALWAYS a guy, because women don’t have the ego need to be this fucking annoying) has been in cigars for six months to two years. He wheels and deals. He knows the difference between plume and mold, and is not at all shy about telling you even when you don’t ask. He thinks your favorite cigar sucks, especially compared to the one made thirty years ago that will cost you 10x the going price because of age, which somehow he smokes every weekend because he’s either made of money or recycles the same picture every week. These are about 60% of the average population of groups, except for the graybeards special secret group. I wish I wasn’t joking. It’s somewhat insufferable. You can pawn off every single hyped up terrible cigar in your collection to these people without blinking an eye, because the picture of them smoking that band (oftentimes literally!!! DON’T SMOKE THE BAND, It’s ink and paper, Jesus) is worth way more than the enjoyment of the cigar.
The total noob. They got their first cuban cigar last weekend at a bachelor party and liked it, and their “expert” friend tipped them to groups and forums where they could get more like it. These guys often start down the road of “expert” within weeks, and kinda suck, but occasionally they’ll learn and be cool and end up a Baller.

And one thing I learned really quickly: there is a really weird correlation between this classification of cigar guys, and with Bitcoin people. And sometimes, they overlap. I also found it to be true in the animation cel collection community, the comic book community, the rare Designer’s Republic collecting community, and virtually any group I’ve ever belonged to where the privilege of having disposable income meets with a gaping void in one’s life for fulfillment, which can be filled with stuff.

The only thing better than stuff? Free money to buy more stuff with. And greed is universal.

There’s an old saying: “When your cab driver gives you advice on a stock, sell that stock.”

[image error]Yup.

So, last year, seemingly out of nowhere, I started seeing pieces of Bitcoin and Ethereum news appear in my cigar groups. I didn’t shake my head. I wasn’t mystified. Worlds didn’t collide. I knew exactly what was going on: a specific type of person who gets into a thing because it will make them a little side income suddenly find a new thing to be late to the party to, thinking they were the first to arrive, because the real party doesn’t start until after this group leaves.

At the time, I was mostly out of cryptocurrency. I say mostly because there’s a few Bitcoins and a little Ether left in my wallets, mainly to see what it’ll do. I got into Bitcoin in 2012, and subsequently lost a few thousand dollars when Mt. Gox was hacked. I didn’t bother to get back in, but some of my coins on another exchange weren’t touched, and blah blah blah, basically I forgot about Bitcoin, and the two I had left were suddenly worth thousands in 2017.

I traded one for equal value in Ethereum, and thus lays out the sum total of my super duper cryptocurrency wealth. But all the while, I have had a number of friends who have done VERY well in both Bitcoin and Ethereum. They are, in the classification system I listed above, between OG and Ballers, and they talk in private forums with other dudes of the same class.

And every single one of them told me last year to stay the fuck out. So I did. And boy, was I glad. I didn’t feel any FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and I certainly didn’t begrudge my one little Bitcoin not feeding me for the rest of my life. I’ve lived through similar situations before. I was one of the original Dotcom kids, who (wisely then, stupidly now) traded a decent salary for stock options. My pseudo-millions went up in a plume of black smoke when two airplanes hit two towers in New York and suddenly, the bottom fell out of the mythological economy we’d all been convinced was so real.

The same kind of thing happened to me again in 2008, when suddenly my house that was supposed to quadruple in value… didn’t. It actually lost value. Half of that was because the area we lived in went downhill, the other half is because all the poison vehicles that banks sold us in real estate were exposed and suddenly nothing was worth anything anymore.

So, by the time 2017 rolled around and Bitcoin seemed to be emulating literally every single stock market bullshit trick from 1997-2001, I barely willed the energy to roll my eyes.

Except, my cigar buddies were now asking me, “Hey, you ever hear of Bitcoin?”

My advice to them was the same as anyone going to Vegas: spend only what you can afford to lose. It is NOT an investment strategy. It’s gambling, pure and simple.

Some put Bitcoin on credit cards. Some mortgaged their houses. Some liquidated thousands of dollars of cigars to invest.

Then, the prices started skyrocketing out of nowhere. And my friends in the Bitcoin world were whispering that it was a collusive effort by some very high-stakes holders to push the price up, and then dump it at peak. I shared these warnings with some of my cigar buddies, partly because I trust my Bitcoin buddies, and partly because THIS IS AN OLD SCAM AND IS VERY OBVIOUS WHEN YOU BOTHER TO INVESTIGATE EVEN BARELY.

But as the other saying goes, “If they weren’t greedy in the first place, they’d never have been scammed.”

My OG cigar buddies picked up on this kind of quickly. They’ve been around. They have seen financial crises and most were deeply affected by them, because those kinds of guys tend to be rich, and thus aware of any kind of trading market at least tangentially.

My Baller buddies… Some fell in, some stayed away, but most were ok after the dip because they didn’t bet with money they couldn’t afford to lose — just like in their cigar trading.

The “experts” however… Holy shit. I cannot possibly tell you how many people in cigar groups (and others I belong to) were posting CryptoBro memes every single day, bragging how they can’t believe people work “real” jobs when they could just invest in bitcoin, and how rich they were going to be… And then suddenly stopped. Like, dead silence. Not a word. Except in some smaller groups and private chats, where some guys were asking me how the hell they were going to get out of it, or when it would bounce back so they don’t lose their damn houses.

No, really.

[image error]Yeeeeep.

So, like I said, this isn’t “I told you so.” I take no pleasure at all in saying those four words anymore, because I’m officially old now, and when you become officially old, you don’t really delight in the misery of others. You also have a VERY long track record of both giving advice that goes unheeded, and not heeding advice by the official old people in your life.

My point here is simple: Some of us know a thing about stuff you’re just now getting interested in. We all know you won’t listen, and honestly that’s a fine thing when it results in learning stuff you can’t learn any other way. But, when it comes to made-up vapor currency that doesn’t actually exist, controlled by a cabal of VERY high stakes owners, all of whom are using you to make themselves richer by enticing you with dreams of Lambos and HODLing while the noobs pump your stake… Well, maybe listen to us then.

And whatever you do, for the rest of your life, do not ever, EVER, put any kind of investment on a credit card, or mortgage your house for it. Leveraging debt is a skill, and if you don’t have it, don’t fuck with it (and here’s a hint to know if you have it or not: are you thinking of buying cryptocurrency on a credit card, or put up your house for it? Yes? Then sadly, you do not.)

And if you do do this… Well, at least you know I’m not going to say “I told you so.”

* I write “might” here because in journalism school (which I didn’t attend), and then when you forget it later when you actually do journalism (which is how I learned there is even a thing such as journalism school), whomever is editing your piece (who probably graduated from Journalism school) will strike through anything that sounds like an accusation or matter-of-fact when it is not proven in a court of law, because you can be sued to shit for it. It’s called libel, which is a form of defamation — not to be confused with slander, which is spoken, while libel is written. There, you learned something about both journalism and the law in some dude’s blog post where he goes way the fuck out of his way to say “I told you so” without saying it. And let the record show, very definitively, that I did not in fact say “I told you so” because that’d be dickish, and I’m not trying to be a dick here, I’m just trying to get young folks to learn from us old folks’ mistakes, I swear.