Tag Archive: rants

I’ve got to get the hell off Facebook

More and more these days, I’m finding myself reconsidering my relationship with Facebook. It has nothing to do with privacy issues (though they are quite real), Facebook’s sketchy business practices (ditto), or a desire to have a smaller Internet footprint (as an author, I actually need a larger Internet footprint). It’s not even because I do social media marketing on a freelance basis, and hence burn myself out on surfing Facebook (I do it under a different account than my personal account, anyway). It’s because the atmosphere is turning me into the kind of negative, cynical, angry person I long ago left behind. I’ve been down that road. I have no intention of revisiting it. It’s not who I want to be. Perhaps it’s the…
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Twitter hashtags are (still) not news

A few weeks back, I ranted a bit about Twitter hashtags being mined for shitty “news” by shitty websites. It’s more than a pet peeve. Pet peeves are minor annoyances. This isn’t a minor annoyance. This is a form of Internet cancer. Today, thanks to the wonders of Farking, I came across a great blog post by someone whose Tweet became the “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!” social media story of the day, a minor nothing that was turned into yet another misleading and false tale of Internet anger thanks to shitty news on shitty websites. You might remember a story from earlier in the year about a lipstick color that had people up in arms. This blogger saw a lipstick called “Underage Red,” Tweeted about…
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TWITTER HASHTAGS ARE NOT NEWS, DAMMIT!

Unless you’ve been unplugged for the last 24 hours or make it a policy to ignore anything related to geek stuff (in which case why would you be reading this blog?), you’ve probably heard about the #BoycottStarWarsVII hashtag making the rounds on Twitter. Stories about it are blowing up social media right now, and understandably so, given how shockingly offensive and ridiculous the movement behind “Boycott Star Wars VII” seems. The story goes like this: there is a growing movement to boycott Star Wars: The Force Awakens because, those behind the movement say, it’s an anti-white movie that glorifies minorities and is part of an agenda to minimize white people. An appallingly shitty viewpoint, no question about it. Except there is no movement. This news…
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So I have to be an accountant, too?

When you daydream of being a Writer, sitting at home doing Important Work and actually getting paid for it, you most certainly DON’T daydream of filing tax documents, managing bank accounts, chasing people for money, and other such nonsense. Yet you’re sure as hell going to end up doing it, and plenty of it, too. They never tell you this. (Never mind who “they” is.) No one explains that if you plan to make a go of supporting yourself as a freelance writer, your days will be just as filled with “business” stuff as they will with writing. They never tell you that you’ll sometimes have to rattle cages just to get paid for work you did, or that dealing with the tax man will…
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Zombie Apocalypse Scenarios Don’t Make Sense To Me

Despite the misgivings I expressed a few years ago, The Walking Dead has turned into a good watch that gets me to the TV each Sunday, or at the very least one that gets me to binge watch once a year or so. It may not be AMC’s best show, but it’s still pretty darn good. I can’t really claim to be a zombie fan, though. I am a fan of post-apocalyptic stories. A HUGE fan of them, actually. Stories about survival after society has collapsed have always drawn me in, always will. Earth Abides, The Road, Lucifer’s Hammer, Alas, Babylon!, portions of The Stand — sign me up! So for me, the zombies in The Walking Dead are secondary to my enjoyment. For me…
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