thematically speaking

 I'm probably going to change the theme again to something that isn't so blatantly shouting "I suffer from depression"

perfectly normal times

 You can isolate yourself and get deeply weird and no one will really stop you. You are an adult! It is your right.  

You can swipe left or right on the dating apps and not talk to anyone who matches with you. 

You can refuse to have even a five hour plan, let alone days/weeks/years. 

You can stop trying after your last serious relationship and just watch your cats die of old age. 

You can sleep late, eat cookies for dinner, and slowly fade out of your so-called social life like collateral damage from careless, joyriding time travelers who have just oopsed your chances of ever existing. You can let it slide so far that the most socialization you get on any given day is 10 seconds of chit chat with the baristas who sling your coffee. They say they admire your translucence, the way the light refracts through you, but you suspect it makes them dizzy. You understand, the light you refract seems wrong somehow, plagued beams on an unholy spectrum. "time travelers..." you say with a shrug. They smile uncertainly in your sickly glow. You appreciate the effort they take to be kind.

You can just drop anchor, and survey the lifeless seas around you. No wind in your sail, no refuge on the horizon, no compass to speak of and no place you were going to. You can be lost at sea because you're lost on land. You can just do that. You are protected by law.

You can assume you can end your isolation at any time, that there are any number of access points to the social web all around you. You will be tragically wrong, but you could be forgiven for assuming that, given that it is true for long stretches of time. You will notice you have left yourself completely vulnerable in any public emergency, which you naively assume is never going to happen. In the unlikely event of a pandemic, picking an example out of thin air, you will be utterly fucked. Truly boned beyond all imagining, socially speaking. You will make no one's "pandemic bubble." because you have not been there for anyone. You will be grateful not to have coughed yourself to death, though. That part is nice. But you are allowed to leave yourself stubbornly flat-footed in the face of literally any eventuality. You are an adult. It is your right! It's remarkably stupid, but you can do that to yourself.

You can decide this society is so appalling you'd rather just not participate. It's childish, but you can decide that too. You're not wrong exactly. Living in a society of angry primates who hurt people for money and like to condescendingly tell you why hurting people for money is GOOD, actually, at every happy opportunity: funerals, grocery stores, online message boards where everyone agreed that guy had it coming. In fact, maximizing misery is the only thing that can happen in this or any universe, you naive child, you utter fool. But still. Apathy? That's NOT productive. 

You can just be lukewarm so god will spit you out of his mouth. In the happy circumstance that god is not your dad and trying to devour you, you are happy to be god's spit take. You might take some solace in the fact that spit takes are inherently funny, but it's something of a bummer that you have lost your sense of connection to the divine, a sense of place in the daily warp and weft of creation, knit daily, and thanklessly, by the nornir, who have for some reason not formed a union to fight these sweatshop conditions.* 

You can hope for some sort of divine epiphany. that your purpose and your place in the world will just get beamed into your mind from somewhere good by someone kind, but it doesn't seem to work that way too often. It has happened in fits and spurts (that's what HE said!) in your life, blinding moments of clarity, but it's not something you can depend on. God helps those who help themselves and have somehow escaped being devoured by Him. And information wants to be free but it wants you to come get it because information is laaaazy and frankly that's embarrassing for information. Information should assert itself. Look what these primates do to it when they try to grab for it themselves! Mangled beyond recognition by their messy emotional needs. Sad.

You can be tired of this planet and these people and being caught in the endless tangle of their lives, but that's just life in this place and escaping this gravity, well.... Also, you are not blue, you are not all powerful and you are not swinging the biggest blue dick anyone has ever seen on a movie screen and no one wants to "take Manhattan" if you know what they mean. 

You can be okay, regardless. You can just sit with your disconnection, your dissociation, and your apathy and watch it like a curious dog. A curious dog who's been to therapy and is taking notes. "How do you feel about that?" Your inner therapist dog might ask. "I don't know." you say. "Hmmm." says therapist dog. He is taking notes again. You suspect he is not convinced. Also, you suspect he cannot actually write. He is a dog.

You can get a little weird in isolation and no one can stop you. That's okay! It is your right. When you finally figure out what you want and where you belong, you'll remember you like weirdos and it won't be a problem at all.

*"Well, they CAN'T stop or creation ceases to exist!" you might say. Maybe the truth is, time just stops until they resume knitting and 5 15 minute breaks a day with an hour for breakfast/lunch/dinner would affect nothing. Maybe time freezes 8 times a day but we never notice because we are linear beings, who will forever remain blissfully unaware of every little blip and burp in the time stream. Did you ever think about THAT, smart guy?

Parables

 I read the Parable of the Sower and Talents out of order, and finally finished the "prequel" to Parable of the Talents today. It is hard to read about "the pox" after the last year, not because I think that particular situation is imminent, but because it does seem as completely unlikely as it used to. The seeds of that world reside within this one and it's disconcerting to sit with.

In the pox, a slow-burning pseudo-nuclear bomb in the form of economic collapse does not vaporize anyone, but it does slowly atomize society, until all that's left are predatory gangs, increasingly factionalized governments, corporate slavery and a teeming mass of people desperate, starving, and hoping not to be prey. Everyone is desperate, starving, struggling to survive and trust in the inherent goodness of human nature will get you killed.

It's not that I think we're that close to Mad Max, but you can see the seeds of that behavior in our "looking out for #1" society already, and after a year of shocking callous attitudes towards covid deaths it's only gotten worse in some sectors. There is a not so quiet social split happening between people who don't really give a shit who their behavior hurts and those who, frankly, find that appalling (every friend I know has a story of former friends along those lines right now), and the disconcerting premise of the Parable of the Sower is, there's no real reason the "who gives a shit, I got mine" people don't eventually "win," at least for a time. 

As for Earthseed, I find the premise intriguing, and I like the emphasis on radical acceptance when it comes to change, but I'm not sure it's ... sufficient to reform a society lost to desperation, ruled by a callous disregard for human life.

I'm not sure what's sufficient to change our course either. People comfort themselves by saying, "well, when the chips are REALLY down, people will come together." And there certainly is a critical mass of people willing to do that. But after the last year, when the chips have been pretty far down and a surprising amount of people have eagerly performed a callous disregard for death and disease so long as it didn't affect them directly, i'm not longer so sure the current argument for giving a shit, in sum, is sufficient. And what it takes to get there, I don't yet know.

Random thoughts

 I should probably put more words here. While I'm at it, I should probably try to put more interesting in that I usually do. 

My thinking is so scattered today. Other than the sum total of my atrocious habits, I'm not sure what to blame specifically. I think I need to go off caffeine again. Of all the things that are probably contributing, the fuzzy head I get when I have too much caffeine seems too consistent to ignore. Your mileage probably varies, I'm just ready to believe that I'm one of those people who processes caffeine so poorly it does more harm than good at this point. Whether I'm willing to give up mochas is the real question. Although I could stand to consume far less dairy too, so two birds I guess.

Scattered or not, the urge has once again arisen to figure something, anything out in my life. I am begging myself. The current state of things is intolerable. Honestly, one big reason for the misery of my life is the simple ability to shrug off quite a bit of self-inflicted misery. Occasionally it gets to be too much, even for me. I would like to be touched by another human being again, and feel comfortable in my skin around other human beings again, and I think it's okay to admit that. To do that, I need to make myself someone capable of doing that again and start living a life that has room for other people in it.

I have been consumed lately by my romantic failures. "Was I a fool?" I ask myself. "Probably," I answer. Dalton, Chris, Charles, several Matts, a Josh, and others. I worry I do the seinfeld equivalent of breaking it off because they eat their peas with a fork. Although, I am contemplating the notion that my judgement in some of these cases was actually decent, and I accurately noticed a fair deal-breaker and acted accordingly. It frustrates my relentlessly negative inner monologue to consider such heresies, but I must admit the possibility. 

Still, I miss all of them for one reason or another. Regret chances not taken. Wonder about what might have been if I'd been capable of summoning a better version of myself at the time. It's covid isolation and I can only game so much before the Life Review pops up as an intrusive thought. 

I've at least been reading more, which is some kind of small victory. It's ranged from fantasy pulp to thoughtful essays I can barely summon the attention span to finish and make some minimal sense of. But I'll take it. I like the version of myself that reads a lot, it's nice to see him even in a cameo role. Bizarrely what may be my biggest motivation here is my constant dissatisfaction with most SF/F I've been seeing on TV and movies lately. I just...don't like the large swathes of the current crop. The new Star Trek shows are too over-wrought to be fun and the rest seems similarly uninspired. There are a couple gems here and there, but still. I think the stories I'm missing are best realized in novels. Or maybe I just miss the experience of reading high concept novels. 

 Maybe I just miss reading novels. It is a very particular activity that fires the ol' neurons in the ol' grey matter in a particular way and I miss that specific sensation. My mouth is watering just thinking about it, which is very strange, but seems to happen these days when I'm doing anything edifying, be it music, language, or simply reading something other than an endless feed.

Is it possible we're not on this earth to monitor various feeds for some reason? Oh well, I'm sure if we scroll long enough the reason will become apparent. Yup, any day now.

Deep

 Over time, I've begun to abandon an overt search for "depth," even if thinking well and clearly and deeply, whatever that means, remains the goal. It's clear to me now in the fullness of overweight middle-age that the search for depth and "deep conversations" was a form of youthful vanity. The unspoken self-flattery, of course, that I was capable of such depths, that we could come together and improve our thinking and that we would congratulate ourselves and each other about how well and how deeply we could now think, now that we were very 21 and so wonderfully mature.

Amidst the wreckage of my life, youthful aspirations long since cast aside once seen as lies I told myself and/or lies I was told by others, I am more inclined to seek out shallow conversations. I still wish to reason well and think clearly but the tone I seek is much more the genuine humility of "isn't wonderful that we can come together and reason and isn't it a tragedy that we do so so poorly, even after all these years?" Which is to say, at some point in your life-long learning, both the vastness of the universe and the hard limits of excitable, hierarchical primates should make SOME impact on your consciousness, hopefully provoking some moderate sense modesty and humility about the quality of your thinking and the idea that perhaps learning to think well is a life-long journey of trial and error in thought and deed that will at some point be rudely interrupted by death, well before you have finished learning what you want to learn.

Which isn't to say that humility can't be it's own kind of prideful trap, of course. "Isn't it wonderful how humble we are now?" is itself not a terribly humble thought. The question is, am I seeking a self-flattering identity or knowledge? Do I desire to be seen as "deep," and lauded accordingly, or am I still searching for answers to questions I still have a hard time even finding the words for? I'm much more interested in the latter than the former as time goes on, my inner Smart Kid howling in chains notwithstanding.

Frankly BONDiNG

I really enjoyed this dialog from BONDiNG (S2E3). The last paragraph is very relatable.

 -------------

Pete: Frank, what happened?

Frank: You know that movie, where the little boy turns into a man and loses his virginity to a 30-year-old woman ? 

Pete: No... oh, big?

Frank: It's the one where he gets his wish granted by the machine because he's not tall enough to ride the rides with the other kids?

Pete: yeah, big. It's 'cause he's not big enough to ride the rides.

Frank: It'll come to me.

Pete: Jaws?

Frank: Is Jaws the one with Bob Hanks?

Pete: okay, now you're just fucking with me

Frank: Anyway! Sometimes I feel like that's what happened to me. Like I'm this adult person man who's fucking hot chicks on trampolines, but inside, I know that I still have like a 13-year-old dick in my mind.

Pete: Yeah, I don't think that came out the way you wanted it to.

Frank: I can't do anything right! A job, a girlfriend, the pull-out method

Pete: Yeah, but do you want a baby, or ....?

Frank: I mean, it's not up to me, is it? It's her life, her body, you know? I have to like support her. I already fucked her once, right?

Pete: but you were so excited...

Frank: Anything seems exciting when you think it will change who you are. Like, maybe I won't be a total waste of space, if I can find something to fill that space with. But instead, you end up being more sad 'cause that emptiness can never be filled with someone else, 'cause the problem is always you. and how do you fill, how do you fill a space in you that's empty because of you?

Acknowledged New Year

 2021 rolling in like,

It's not just 2020, or 2021 though, is it. We describe it that way to distance ourselves from a harsher reality. What's happening now is the collective result of our choices, with no easy way to convince people to change. People, it must be noted, who seem to have a pronounced tendency to dig in harder and harder, despite the fact that they, and we, are already pretty deep in a goddamn hole. Easier to say, "wow! what a year!" than "Wow! what a colossal, and completely avoidable, clusterfuck we've made of everything!" If it's an act of god, a random permutation of the calendar, it's somehow not our fault and someone else's problem. 

 It reminds me of those people, well me, who avoid opening mail when they suspect a bill is coming due. Doesn't change the nature of the bill, just changes it from a potentially manageable problem into a psychic weight that prevents me from tackling manageable problems. And, let me tell you, America has a lot of psychic baggage dragging it down right now. A host of manageable problems lovingly turned to psychic ether so a few people with a lot can get a little more.

Our task this year is to drag these abstract terrors kicking and screaming into the harsh glare of the real so that we may kill solve them and in doing so perhaps save ourselves. We are running out of time and no longer have the luxury of endless dissociation and prevarication simply so we don't have to clean our rooms. We are hoarders of emotional baggage, we collect it via inaction in the face of solveable problems and it's time to stop.

 Well, after we binge this next series. I hear it's really good. 

I look at the world, my own complacency and depression, and all I can think of is, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." and all I can think in response is, "Yup, that checks out."

I very obviously have not been doing enough. I am a shell of an adult. I am not trying to remove agency from those who behave selfishly and amorally and continue to shred our communities and social safety nets, but I am suggesting the rest of us aren't doing near enough to fight that decay and not near enough to provide a compelling alternative vision for this society.

the numbers on the calendar don't matter, we all simply have to do better and deal with some scary, but manageable shit. That's it.

I Sing the Joy of the Night Eternal

 I am excited for the night to fall, because it never ends. It lasts as long as I need to, and when I am ready to sleep i do so, secure in the knowledge that I will arise in 8 hours precisely at sunrise, whether I've gone to bed 4 hours after sunset or after 18 hours of stygian stirrings. 

 That the sun frequently rises at some point during my eternal night is surely a concern. Could we be losing to the daywalkers? Absurd, obscene to even contemplate. The night rules forever. Move some reasonable distance from our star, and what do you find? The infinite dark, punctured by only by the occasional heresy of fusion. Fusion! Appalling.

Nighttime is my own pocket universe of wonders both real and imagined. It stretches or compresses at whim. I control the horizontal and the vertical and the kind of diagonal. It ends when I am ready and no sooner.

"Night falls." Propaganda! Night rises, full in power and promise. Night eats the sun and drinks the sky and it all goes with it when it dies.* The night rules perpetual. The Night time, is the Right time.

I Sing the Night Eternal.

*I am trying to remember the source for this reference but have suddenly developed changnesia.

Nuts to all that

"What parents want, is for their kids to be successful."

It was a polite conversation, not heated at all, although a lifetime of cumulative disappointments seemed to anchor the conversation, attached firmly to the chair I most often see him in now, extending down, down, down into the past, all the way back to my first stubborn defiance. Which, if memory serves, was the time I touched an overly warm oven burner moments after being told not to. It did not go well for me I am told.

My mother was seated in her chair, a few feet to the right. I briefly flashed back to coming out to them, what, 10 years ago now? They were seated in kind of a mirror image now to how they were then. Different house, different sides of the room, same disappointing child.

I didn't have much to say. I'm well aware I'm a disappointment, to myself more than anyone. I'm one of those obnoxious jerks that talks about Smart Kid Syndrome, and how much it sucks to test well and then basically fail out of life, because you aren't always trained to actually function in the world when you test well. As it turns out, testing well does not necessarily mean I am smart enough to adapt and fill in the massive gaps in my education and upbringing. Alas. Maybe they should test for other qualities too.

I mean, it can only be a choice at this point. I have been rejecting the world and my place in it since the world was adventism and my place in it was believing without question, proclaiming the good word so that others might believe without question, getting married to a woman, fathering 1.5 children, being the manful head of my household, being active in the church, and living a quiet life of desperation. And then once the adventist education cannon primed me, aimed me at the world and missed by a wide margin, I just kept rejecting the world out of habit. In my defense, while men loving men and the occasional drink aren't necessarily a recipe for instant and eternal unhappiness and separation from any sense of spiritual fulfillment (in fact, the first time I had sex with a man I felt like a choir of angels descended from heaven on a beam of light, just as counterpoint), the "secular" world turns out to suck shit in a wide of variety of exciting ways too. Nuts to all of it, in my humble opinion.

Trying to live your own life, even as it strays outside the bounds of parental expectations is the eternal struggle, of course. I am not special or unusual in that regard. Nor is rejecting society (Maaaan, I threw it the ground!). I'm not interested in acquiring wealth for the sake of wealth, although who wouldn't want to not worry about money really? My sole aspiration with regard to money is not to worry about money. I just don't want to think about it. I want companionship, but I'm kind of misanthropic. A lot of the norms and models of the communities around me irritate my delicate sensibilities on contact. None of it makes me special or unusual or even interesting, just grumpy.

It's childish. I know that. I want to live my life, but not the way anyone else lives their life. Out of a perverse desire to be special or a stubborn refusal to be happy on the world's terms. This planet is twisted and to be happy here feels perverse. Genuinely deviant shit, thriving in this hellhole. It feels like an attitude I should have grown out of as a teenager, but, as a matter of personal failure and pride, did not.

The explicit failure here, as I am quick to point out about other people on Twitter, is the failure of imagination in finding alternatives. I reject fundamentalist christianity and exploitative, miserable, violent, oppressive, selfish, and mean-fucking-spirited american capitalism but I have yet to exercise even the smallest amount of imagination in how to transcend those contexts. Or at least to live within them without immediately collapsing in depression and defeat. As survival strategies go, it's been less than ideal.

I do want SOMETHING. I want a community I feel like I belong to, a purpose that makes sense to me, egalitarian companionship with natural chemistry. Some sort of spiritually fulfilling practice, three words I have yet to fully define. I want some time in nature. I want cities designed for people. I want a fair, just and humanist society. I have no idea how to resolve those ideas into coherent concepts in my current context, but I do want them. That I make no effort to provide clarity for myself will probably be reason #1 the white light shoots me back to reincarnate with a heavy sigh.

I wish I could tell my father than I want to be successful too. I wish I could tell him I knew what that looks like. In the meantime, I'll have to sate myself with my usual fantasies of being abducted by aliens and placed in a zoo. Like any functioning adult would.

Lock-down Report

I wish I could report my life has changed dramatically since the pandemic. Alas, I cannot. I still see basically no one, I still spend most of my time playing games instead of hobbies I find more fulfilling, I still go to bed far too late. The difference now is the possibility that "I can always get out there and get a life!" has evaporated while COVID-19 is still community spreading. I miss that long-held hope. And also coffee shops. I miss coffee shops.

This is not to say I am without options for improving my life and my discipline. Although a generalized fear of dying in agony while I struggle to breathe has not been providing a GREAT mental space to do that. Still, I could at least be doing the work. Hell, I could at least be READING which I miss tremendously. I miss my voracious reader self.

I'm chatting with people on the dating apps, even though there's zero chance I want to meet anyone new in person for the foreseeable future. But lock-down has only further emphasized my complete and utter failures to find companionship and community in Portland before all this hit so I find myself more inclined to reach out, at least a little.

Still, it's stupid to find myself quite this alone for, looking back at my decisions, no good reason. And yet, I have no clear idea how to turn things around. There are very specific things I could do to improve my personal habits, but it still doesn't help me know where to start looking for my community or purpose. I would settle for one or the other at this point.

This isn't a good track I'm on, and there's been nothing like a genuine public health emergency to highlight that. The number of people who have checked in during all this bullshit is not zero, but distressingly low. Not that I don't appreciate them, not that I haven't reached out myself ... but my inability to make connections since I moved to portland has been ... bad? Pretty bad. I don't love it.

Hard to make connections when you're at war with yourself though. And I think I am still at war with myself. I do not like this version of me but I don't have a clear idea of the version of me I want to be. Not many models of how to thrive in this, the misery-soaked world we have created that appeal to me in particular. Regardless, I don't know who I am or where I belong or where exactly to look.

Nonetheless, the problem is not loneliness per se, it is not knowing who I am in the world. It is hard to relate to people when you don't know who you are.

"What are you into?"
"I don't know."
"What do you hope for?"
"I don't know."
"What are you working on?"
"I don't know."

Hard to relate when you're kind of a blank slate, you know?

That said, every day is another chance to change direction. I tell myself that every day as I put on my mask to get groceries, hoping this week isn't the week I die because I needed some milk.

Marvel Reading List - House of M

Continuing the journey, House of M! Or, "What to do when you've made a character ludicrously powerful."

I decently liked this cross-over. It's the Magneto version of Age of Apocalypse. One thing I like about it is you can just read the House of M limited series and get the full effect. The tie-in series are absolutely not necessary.

Cutting and pasting and editing from Comic Book Reading Orders.

Excalibur Vol. 3 #13
Excalibur Vol. 3 #14

House of M #1 (2005)
House of M #2

#the history of how the new reality happened. If you want to know how magneto took over the world, put Apocalypse in his place, this is that story.
Civil War: House of M #1 (2008)
Civil War: House of M #2
Civil War: House of M #3
Civil War: House of M #4
Civil War: House of M #5

#How human super villians defy and ultimately fall to Magneto, highly skippable
House of M: Masters of Evil #1 (2009)
House of M: Masters of Evil #2
House of M: Masters of Evil #3
House of M: Masters of Evil #4

#totally skippable. I'm not much into the marvel knights stuff though.
House of M: Avengers #1 (2008)
House of M: Avengers #2
House of M: Avengers #3
House of M: Avengers #4
House of M: Avengers #5

#the House of M incredible Hulk arc is marginally interesting. I don't think Hulk really picks up until Planet Hulk starts though.
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #83

#How Doom falls to Magneto. Skippable.
Fantastic Four: House of M #1 (2005)
Fantastic Four: House of M #2
Fantastic Four: House of M #3

#Kind of a mess, but I liked the premise and the twist. There's a scene where Jonah reads Parker's childhood journal on TV and I laughed out loud.
Spider-Man: House of M #1 (2005)
Spider-Man: House of M #2
Spider-Man: House of M #3
Spider-Man: House of M #4
Spider-Man: House of M #5

Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #84
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #85
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #86

#Kind of awful?
Iron Man: House of M #1 (2005)
Iron Man: House of M #2
Iron Man: House of M #3

#i wasn't that into district x and it's not really better here.
Mutopia X #1 (2005)
Mutopia X #2
Mutopia X #3

#marginally interesting because it's genis. why can't they figure out what to do with this character?
New Thunderbolts #11

#probably my favorite tie-in. I LOVE Alan Davis, especially his early Excalibur work and Captain Britain stuff, and if you like that, boy does this arc deliver.
Uncanny X-Men #462
Uncanny X-Men #463
Uncanny X-Men #464
Uncanny X-Men #465

House of M #3

#Probably the best of the New X-men stuff, but I still hate it. Who are these kids? Idk and I don't want to know.
New X-Men Vol. 2 #16
New X-Men Vol. 2 #17
New X-Men Vol. 2 #18
New X-Men Vol. 2 #19

#skippable side story. The good wolverine content happens in the House of M limited series. I like him and Mystique as a couple though.
Wolverine Vol. 3 #33
Wolverine Vol. 3 #34
Wolverine Vol. 3 #35

House of M #4
House of M #5

#They brought back a lot of hastily killed characters this year. In this issue: Hawkeye!
The Pulse #10

#skip
Captain America Vol. 5 #10

#I liked this one
Black Panther Vol. 4 #7

#Pretty decent, still love Blink.
Exiles #69
Exiles #70
Exiles #71

#Still borderline unreadable. I just tune out the deadpool babble.
Cable & Deadpool #17

House of M #6
House of M #7

Mutopia X #4

House of M #8

#skip
Giant-Size Ms. Marvel #1 (2006)

Marvel Reading List - Disassembled to House of M

 Over Christmas I decided to catch up on some old Thor comics I had bought but not read. Within a day or two this had turned into a marvel unlimited subscription and catching up with x-men/avengers stuff since I left off somewhere in 2004 (right around disassembled). Crucial to this project, has been the master marvel reading order I randomly found via google.

I am a 43-year-old who has different tastes than 23-year-old me, so I am omitting or at least explaining what, in my opinion, is or is not worth your time. Not all creative teams are equal and not all story arcs are really worth your time. This is my opinion on which is which. Your opinion may vary!

And, to repeat, I'm mostly interested in X-men/Avengers characters this run. Spidey, for instance, is only a focus here so far as he shows up in those franchises and cross-overs. Disassembled is a common choice for the "modern era" so I'm starting there. To be clear, I'm literally cutting and pasting the reading order linked above and omitting what I wasn't interested in, and commenting on what I ended up reading.

(I spoil some of the arcs in the hashtag summaries. I figure 15 years is enough time to wait.)

Excalibur Vol. 3 #1 (2004)*
*Excalibur Vol. 3 is HIGHLY skippable. The short of it is, Professor X and Magneto find themselves on a ruined genosha and have some hijinks with forgettable mutants. It's a 12-issue set-up for the start of House of M which is utterly unnecessary.

#Avengers disassembled, imo Thor and Avengers are the only necessary arcs here

Thor Vol. 2 #80
Thor Vol. 2 #81

Avengers #500
Avengers #501
Avengers #502
Avengers #503

Thor Vol. 2 #82
Thor Vol. 2 #83
Thor Vol. 2 #84
Thor Vol. 2 #85
Avengers Finale #1 (2005)

#disassembled fallout leading to House of M

# a completely unnecessary but fun FF arc wherein Johnny Storm finds himself the Herald of Galactus
Fantastic Four #520
Fantastic Four #521
Fantastic Four #522
Fantastic Four #523
Fantastic Four #524

#Beta Rill Bill post-Ragnarok, not necessary but has its moments.
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #1 (2005)
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #2
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #3
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #4
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #5
Stormbreaker: The Saga of Beta Ray Bill #6

#mostly good on re-read
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #1 (2003)
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #2
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #3
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #4
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #5
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #6

#Super weird Savage Land arc, but hey, Psylocke's back!
Uncanny X-Men #455
Uncanny X-Men #456
Uncanny X-Men #457
Uncanny X-Men #458
Uncanny X-Men #459

#Wolverine Enemy of the State arc. Decent, feel free to skip New X-Men, teenage soap opera drivel
Wolverine Vol. 3 #20
Wolverine Vol. 3 #21
Wolverine Vol. 3 #22
Wolverine Vol. 3 #23
Wolverine Vol. 3 #24
Wolverine Vol. 3 #25

New X-Men Vol. 2 #13
Uncanny X-Men #460Uncanny X-Men #461

Wolverine Vol. 3 #26
Wolverine Vol. 3 #27
Wolverine Vol. 3 #28
Wolverine Vol. 3 #29
Wolverine Vol. 3 #30
Wolverine Vol. 3 #31
Wolverine Vol. 3 #32


#I have yet to encounter a Gambit solo arc worth reading, and this run is no exception
Gambit Vol. 4 #7
Gambit Vol. 4 #8
Gambit Vol. 4 #9
Gambit Vol. 4 #10
Gambit Vol. 4 #11
Gambit Vol. 4 #12

#Warren Ellis! I am a fan, recommended for that reason alone. Also, serious suit status quo upgrade.
Iron Man Vol. 4 #1 (2005)
Iron Man Vol. 4 #2
Iron Man Vol. 4 #3
Iron Man Vol. 4 #4
Iron Man Vol. 4 #5
Iron Man Vol. 4 #6
 
# I tried with the New Thunderbolts because it ostensibly features Genis Vell, but I hated it
After Thunderbolts #81 the series was retitled New Thunderbolts
New Thunderbolts #1 (2005)
New Thunderbolts #2
New Thunderbolts #3
New Thunderbolts #4
New Thunderbolts #5
New Thunderbolts #6


#The crimes and "death" of Nick Fury. So so, skippable both in quality and impact. If you're wondering why Fury disappears for a while, this is the arc that tells you.
Secret War #1 (2005)
Secret War #2
Secret War #3
Secret War #4
Secret War #5

#A surprisingly sweet goodbye to Jean Grey. I'm not sure why they hated this character, but she gets the send-off she deserves here.
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong #1 (2005)
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong #2
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong #3
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong #4
X-Men: Phoenix Endsong #5

#x-men is a weird, not great soap opera during this period. Iceman is dating Polaris and Havok is jealous, Rogue and Gambit are angsty, etc. Awful. I otherwise appreciate the weirdness of the arc.
X-Men Vol. 2 #166
X-Men Vol. 2 #167
X-Men Vol. 2 #168
X-Men Vol. 2 #169
X-Men Vol. 2 #170

#An exceedingly stupid plot from Whedon where the Danger Room becomes sentient and attacks the team. This feels like a "I'm running out of ideas ... maybe the house comes alive somehow" bad idea and it's odd it's the second major arc.
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #7
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #8
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #9
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #10
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #11
Astonishing X-Men Vol. 3 #12]

#I missed this the first time around, but appreciate the characters and the queer representation.
Young Avengers #1 (2005) - First appearance of the Young Avengers
Young Avengers #2
Young Avengers #3
Young Avengers #4
Young Avengers #5
Young Avengers #6

#Fun, not vital
Black Panther Vol. 4 #1 (2005)
Black Panther Vol. 4 #2
Black Panther Vol. 4 #3
Black Panther Vol. 4 #4
Black Panther Vol. 4 #5
Black Panther Vol. 4 #6

#totally skippable
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #77
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #78
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #79
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #80
Incredible Hulk Vol. 2 #81

#Decently good, I like this avengers make-up frankly.
New Avengers #1 (2005)
New Avengers #2
New Avengers #3
New Avengers #4 - First appearance of Maria Hill
New Avengers #5
New Avengers #6

#a patience-trying Gambit/Rogue soap opera where Mystique tries to sleep with her daughter's BF for the sake of their relationship. Jesus God.
X-Men Vol. 2 #171
X-Men Vol. 2 #172
X-Men Vol. 2 #173
X-Men Vol. 2 #174

Young Avengers #7
Young Avengers #8

New Avengers #7
New Avengers #8
New Avengers #9
New Avengers #10

#x-men vs black panther, first hints of this eras Storm/BP romance
X-Men Vol. 2 #175
Black Panther Vol. 4 #8
X-Men Vol. 2 #176
Black Panther Vol. 4 #9

#I used to like DP, but this comic is borderline unreadable. Still read it. 
Cable & Deadpool #15
Cable & Deadpool #16

#arguably the only two Excalibur comics you need to read going into House of M. Could easily just skip them. Magneto brings Scarlet Witch to Genosha so Xavier can try to help her. That's all you need to know.
Excalibur Vol. 3 #11
Excalibur Vol. 3 #12

Dear friends

What follows is a letter I sent to some of my dearest friends over the holidays, and minus some info that could be useful to my enemies, I am posting it here in lieu of end-of-year updates and best-of lists which are still pending.

Dear friends, enemies, frenemies, badventists, sadventists, nonventists, interventionists, impressionists, expressionists, exhibitionists, and philbert,

After several years too long in an apartment I could not really afford and blowing through almost all of my savings I have finally moved to an apartment I can afford. I have a straight but otherwise unobjectionable roommate, a little porch, a nice view, good neighbors, an old, blind, deaf but stable cat, a little more stuff than space, and high hopes. Should you need my address to send me what I can only imagine will be glowing praise and positively gushing pro-James haiku, my new address is:

[redacted]

I should have moved two, maybe three, years ago, but high executive function has not exactly been a calling card lately. “Trying” in general has not been a thing lately for me. If you are receiving this email, you are valued, missed, and cherished as much as the oxford comma in this sentence, which is quite a lot. I stan the comma, oxford or otherwise, and sprinkle it liberally through all my work, much as one would sprinkle baco bits over a salad at potlucks. Remember potlucks? I do. 

That said, I am increasingly bored with not trying. It is boring. I am boring. So I am thinking about forming a committee to draft a proposal dedicated very seriously to examining the feasibility of maybe trying. I have not been tending my relationships well or forming new ones with particular alacrity and as I value my existing relationships and would like to feel the touch of another human being’s skin before the heat death of the universe this is probably something I need to change. I guess. 

Also on the docket are maybe having some sort of goals and/or purpose (a bigger porch would be nice), a community I feel good about belonging to, some sort of resolution to the existential, spiritual, and practical problems of living in this country, on this planet, in these pants, that have been leaving me more or less paralyzed lately. I might just cut straight through it all and start a cult. The robes would sparkle.

The truth is I have never felt I belonged anywhere since leaving Adventism, but I never felt I belonged there either. I always feel between things. Halfway between there and here, up and down, gay and straight, smart and stupid, and now that I am officially middle-aged that feeling has only intensified. I might be looking for church that is not church, if that makes sense. Community but not dogma. Intimate connection with quiet, private nooks. 

In the meantime, I am waiting for my cat to die. She is well cared for and still seems to be taking some joy in existence and my life does not necessarily need to stop like I am holding my breath, but somehow it does. It is difficult to care for pets in their senior years and I am not well suited for it and truly wish I were made of sterner stuff, for my own sake as well as hers. And yours. And everyone who relies on me to be functional and good. I will try. I want to try.

I don’t know, I am still trying to figure it all out. I would settle for figuring any little thing out. Moving to a place I can afford was a good start. That’s one thing. I am going to try and build on that momentum. 

I love you all. I hope you are getting through the holidays with your wits and spirits intact. I will be making an attempt to reach out more in the future, and should my beloved but challenging cat finally decide immortality is for chumps, you can expect some requests for slightly longer than usual visits from yours truly. That’s me. I’m yours truly.

Wow this letter takes some turns tonally doesn’t it? Wild.

It it my continued delight to count each and every one of you as friends. I look forward to new adventures in the year to come.

[redacted] (sometimes James) [redacted]

Goodbye, Monkeys

(Some spoilers about Aurora and The Three Body trilogy below)

 I have read some great SF novels in the last year or two, and they have almost universally had a fairly dismal view of the human race. If speculative fiction functions as a metric for the optimism of the culture that generates it, then I can only surmise that Things are Not Looking Good.

Children of Time imagines a future where the human race tears itself apart, and then much, much later flirts with tearing itself and the remnants of its own empire, again. Aurora posits a society on a colony ship that barely holds itself together, and ultimately decides to turn back because living outside of our natural ecosystem or recreating one that is stable turns out to be quite difficult. The Expanse books portray three space-faring human societies constantly on the verge of annihilating each other over nothing. The Three Body trilogy is a grand, nihilistic spectacle where life throughout the universe irretrievably degrades it's environment, up to and including the fundamental physical laws of the universe!

Star Trek flirts with this same pessimism in the form of Q.  He's the only one asking why we think we deserve to be out there, which to me, in the year of our lord Q 2019, a great question. I think the older I get the less I think of our expansionist rights as less self-evidently true than just a powerful baseline genetic drive. Locusts have the same drive, it doesn't make it good for anyone trying to grow food in their path.

I think part of being "evolved" or "enlightened" is a certain level of potential conscious restraint on our base natures, and when it comes to what we do and why we do it I think we could stand to spend more time thinking about it clearly and what exactly we're working towards. And, call me crazy, how it impacts the other living species we interact with.

I look around at this society today, and I am not exactly filled with hope about what this species has to offer anyone outside of our gravity well. There is kind a philosophical hope people hold on to that simply reaching for the stars will by itself re-align our spirits towards humanism and hope and I'm not entirely sure it works that way. Most of our outward reaching space programs seem to be more about billionaires trying to write their names on the face of the moon than any sort of grand, humanist principles. The idea of humanity working together to explore space is inspiring. the idea of Elon Musk sending rich people to space on golden thrones is, uh, less so. Imagine Donald Trump flushing 10 to 15 times on his golden toilet as it tools around the solar system. Unless they're not coming back, in which case everyone donate some jewelry, we've got ships to build.

We think of our evolution in purely technological terms, and this is why we keep failing. "How could all this new tech get twisted so immediately to evil ends?" we wonder, politely ignoring that the problem is us, it is always us. None of our technological advances matter if we are not good people, if we have not even figured out what it means to be "good people," what it would look like to be better people, if we refuse to even engage with the question.

Perhaps that's too harsh. Perhaps we engage with what it is to be good on a daily basis. Given the state of the world, I'm not particularly convinced we are having a spectacular success with it though. And of course, people disagree about what it is to be good, on seemingly every level. More religion, less religion, the right kind of diet, the wrong kind of diet, the right kind of story, the right kind of law, the right kind of support, the right kind of governance, etc, down through every kind of personal preference or lifestyle choice. These all contribute to what it is to be a good kind of person to another kind of person, and god help if you if you fail anyone on the internet on any one of these metrics because lord will you hear about it. You're hearing about it now, from me! I have judged us all and found us wanting. Mene, Mene, Tekel, you IDIOTS!

I suspect we are, for reasons I'm not sure I currently understand, incapable of being "good" en masse. That's not a declaration of original sin, but more an assessment that we need some time to grow in that regard before we figure it out. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves and our planet before we figure it out. Because it really seems like we're just fucking determined to kill ourselves rather than be nice. Nobody criticize our choices or we're taking the whole planet with us. We'll do it! We're crazy!

So should we expand into space? Would our presence out there be a net benefit to ourselves and whatever environment we find ourselves in? Is heading out into space just another way of running away from problems which will inevitably follow us if we don't address them? Does 'should we' in terms of environmental impact even make sense if the universe outside our bubble of air is devoid of life? I would entertain a version of going into space that involves us channeling all our destructive instincts into destroying asteroids and lifeless planets, our destructive appetites thus sated, allowing us to chastely conserve our home environment like god's sweet angels.

Maybe the question isn't "should we advance technologically" because we kind of just do that. Maybe the question is, "What other ways might it be urgent to advance in that we are strenuously avoiding?" When we head out there, what are we bringing with us? Who cares if our spaceships are gleaming if we just use them to brutalize each other and/or other random life forms?

I'm just not sure I care if billionaires are launching their cars into space when they do it on the back of human misery. None of our toys matter if we are not good to each other. Create for me a world invested in human flourishing and happiness in the short and long terms, physical and psychological health, a respect for the environment we depend on, more, an environment thriving with us not in spite of us, an investment in the common good, clear and critical thinking, and then maybe get back to me on the glory of humanity achievement. Until then we're just children with fancy toys, flirting with disaster.

a partial list

I think a lot about who I'm not or who I could have been. What would it have been like to not be constantly obsessed with gaming? Or comics? Or anything other than the life that I want?

What is is it like to take care of yourself?

What is it like to talk to people with an easy smile and to understand why people go to large parties and have a good time catching up with 50 people for 3 minutes at at time?

What is it like to pursue social networking with little to no anxiety? What is it like to fit in in this society and to find success on this society's terms exciting and attractive?

What is it like to be 100% straight and completely comfortable with a traditional relationship?

What is it like to be 100% gay and completely comfortable with non-traditional relationships?

What is it like to sleep comfortably in the same bed as another person?

What is it like to be conventionally attractive with all the rewards and bullshit that brings?

What is it like to bound out of bed with intention?  What is it like to pursue a goal with dedication and do something meaningful as a result?

What is it like to live up to your potential? What is it like to live with an identity formed around actions performed in adulthood rather than testing performed in childhood?

What is it like to fit in without changing yourself to fit in?

What is it like to not squander opportunities and chances like you are made of chances?

What is it like to be happy in the ideology/religion you were raised in?

What is it like to not constantly be at war with yourself?

What is it like to be fully somewhere, not half-in, half-out of where you come from to wherever you're going?

What is it like to know what you want and go for it? What is it like to do the thing instead of over-thinking it?

I don't know
I don't know
I don't know

Snippet

"This culture is so frustrating to me," Isaac said, fiddling with his straw. "There's so much that's wrong, I don't know where to start. So I just do nothing."

Corey took a massive bite of the double patty, extra cheeze bit-a-burger hamburger special, and after chewing contemplatively for a few moments said, mouth still half full, "Well, your apathy is an understandable emotional reaction. This society uh ... does not live up to my own high standards either." He wiped the grease off of his mouth delicately. "But it's not a reasonable one."

Isaac, making an obnoxious sucking sound through his nearly empty soda, "Why not? I can't do anything about it."

Corey sat back, pushing the other half of the burger away with some regret and some relief. "Well, that attitude precludes any possibility of change. You may not overturn the system, but actions yields results and results have consequences that ripples outwards. Apathy tells you that it is better to do nothing than to try and it's a lie that your feelings made up about your situation."

"I hate that," said Isaac, standing up to throw away his garbage, forehead wrinkled in irritation.

"That's an understandable emotional response," said Corey, that faint, infuriating smile back on his smug little face. "But apathy is a bet against yourself and your ability to change both yourself and your situation. It assumes you are so inconsequential that doing nothing is the exactly same as doing something." He paused, and melodramatically placed his hand on Issac's shoulder, looking him steadily in the eye, "This is a bet I would never make for you or anyone."

Isaac paused, thinking it over. "... I hate that less," he finally said.

Corey opened the door, and for a moment the forced cartoon cheerfulness of the Bit-a-Burger contrasted sharply with the bleak streets of Storm City. "As do I!" he said.

They walked out together, thinking new thoughts.

You can't go back and it's a shame

You can't go back and it's a shame.
I came out so late (too late!)
living a failed, phantom version of the life I should have lived,
because I was too afraid to live it.

Not great!
Not good.

So now, when I see a handsome blond man
with a nice mustache who's 25,
in a relationship,
all these middle-aged regrets come crashing down.

I'm an ongoing disaster,
but maybe
if I'd come out earlier
I could have met this nice man
at 25,
or a mustachioed man much like him,
and felt, what,

Actually Content?
Perhaps.
Perhaps.
Perhaps.

To be sure,
I might have fucked it up then too.
Probably.
Almost certainly.
So I am forced to consider
the wretched possibility
that this incarnation is,
for me personally,
this soul,
this eternal being,
learning what it feels like to fail
utterly
simply for lack of trying,
simply because
that is the choice I make
over and over,
not to mention repeatedly.

After making the same mistake,
the same,
the same,
every time,
for no good reason,
you start to suspect,
maybe,
possibly,
there might be a theme,
a rut,
a scratch in the groove of your life record
that keeps skipping
and skipping
and skipping
on the same note,
the same thought,
the same bad habit
and it really makes you think
just before the record skips again
in the same damn spot.

Jesus Christ,
why?
But also, what, who, how.
When?
Now.
Again and again and again.

But still.
Record skips and bad choices,
ongoing and robust,
aside, well to the side,
but still making all that racket,

I think about that mustachioed man
I hope to one day meet
before the bittersweet heat death of the universe,
and somewhat more pointedly,
before the last quiet gasp
of the pragmatically unified organs
and systems
I have, somewhat fondly,
come to think of as me,
and not fucking it up
for lack of trying.

Because you can't go back,
and it's a shame.

movin'

I am moving to a cheaper apartment in a month and I am very excited.

I am less excited about cleaning up and discarding all my crap. Well, I am very excited about cleaning up/getting rid of a bunch of shit, but I have let so many things pile up the to-do list looks intimidating.

Still, fingers crossed. This could be a very good change for me.

One smile

When I was an undergraduate at a very conservative christian college, there was only one gay man brave enough to be publicly out. He gave talks about it and the rest of us endlessly discussed the legitimacy and validity of his sexual orientation, which, in retrospect, he was extremely gracious about. I think it only took a year or two of straight christian nonsense as a continually abrasive response to his simple existence on campus before he finally gave up and left for more accepting places and people, but I think about him a lot.

I used to catch him talking with his friends in front of the dorm all the time and I would stare a little too long and he would smile at me like he knew something I didn't, which he probably did. 20 years later I can tell you when you are out in "visibly gay" mode, you receive a lot of looks, not all of which are flattering, but some of which are undisguised longing and attraction, occasionally from ostensibly straight men out with their wives and children. I'm guessing he saw in the look what I wouldn't be ready to admit for over a decade: interest and longing.

I think about a time machine or a reset button that would let me go back and make some different choices all the time, because my choices for the last couple decades have been largely abysmal. But if I had to choose just one moment to go back to it would be those moments when the only openly gay man on campus smiled at me. I would whisper kindly in my own ear, "Put a smile on your face and go over and introduce yourself to the nice man who you are VERY much interested in knowing." I would then hopefully fade away like a smiling force ghost. Smiling in hopes of a future I could be prouder of, hopefully fading away because nobody loves a temporal paradox.

springing eternal

I continue to hope that someday friendship with me will be an easy thing.