“You Couldn’t Make Blazing Saddles Today!” Is An Adage I Am So Sick And Tired Of Hearing That I

I am new to your account, and I would like to ask, what are you? I mean, a writer, a YouTuber, it seems like.

Two small skeletons in a robe pretending to be a big skeleton

Whatever Happens

In what we would consider a long dead universe, the last quark hangs in existence. Really, it cannot be said to hang or float, or be described with verbs at all.

There is nothing outside the quark. There is nothing beyond it. When we imagine this, we may imagine an expanse. A white void that stretches into infinity. This is incorrect. Outside the quark, there is nothing. There is no void, no expanse. The lack of existence is not something the quark inhabits; it is a force pressing down on it from all sides. The quark, in this sense, is all existence. The Quark is now everything.

This is what he would imagine, if he could. Never shutting his eyes, he watches Seychelles disappear beneath the bow as the ocean gently lifts and releases the ship. “It’s a small thing”, he thinks without knowing exactly what the thought refers to. To Seychelles, his ship was indeed small. To his home country of Somalia, however, Seychelles was perhaps even smaller. He continued on like this in his head as he watched the crown of the archipelago blink in and out of existence over the waves. To France, Somalia must seem small. He wasn’t sure, he assumed it must be so.

When someone does wrong, scale can be very comforting. He avoids eye contact with his fellows, and instead finally turns his gaze to the other ship. So much larger, so many more people. He takes comfort knowing that, to the sea, they are both small. I his mind, he moves up. Up to where the two boats are dwarfed by the ribbon of islands, up still to nothing but the ocean, up still until he can no longer picture the map. If he could have imagined that quark, he would have felt very comforted. To what hadron was it once attached, he might wonder. What he does consider is that there will eventually be something that will be the last thing to exist.

It could only take him so far, though. There is a hungry pain and a looming fear that disturbs the serenity of scale.

It is a mistake to think Nihilism comes easy. It would have been a great comfort for him to picture that quark at this moment, and felt the embrace of insignificance. To imagine his own cells, on the microscopic level, and travel back a quarter of a million years with them. To imagine the light from the very same moon hitting Mitochondrial Eve‘s eyes for the first same. To picture the Old Mother when she herself was new, before her genes branched off into a million directions, one artery of which lead him here, to this ship, on this night, holding this gun. How would any of this unease matter to him then?

You can be hungry, but you can’t steal. You can steal, but you can’t hurt anyone. You can hurt people, but you can’t kill them. How far back from that print do you have to stand before you can’t read it anymore? What could be done that Eve or the Quark would ever know?

He knows what it is that he has to do whilst feeling what he is told he has to feel. “It would be a blessing”, he might think, “to be small and to know it.”

Instead, he imagines the ship, sliding across a granite sea. He moves back until it disappears into the glint of the moon on the waves, and then further back until the light itself is gone. He could do anything.

You will be okay.

I see a lot of people talking about the Mad Men finale in a cynical sense. They see it as the punch-line culminating from seven years of build-up; one of the longest, cruelest shaggy dog jokes ever told. Without sounding too stand-offish, I think this is absolutely the wrong way to view the finale and that is does a great disservice not so much to the writers or the show itself, but to Don.

The ending is one that is immediately a little polarising, but once given time to digest most people agree that it really does just click. The reading I’m so opposed to is the idea that “after all that Don just made an ad! Haha! People never change” in regards to the series ending with the iconic Hilltop Coke ad, after Don has a huge emotional breakthrough.

The thing is, to take this view (like many people have, from random tumblr users to Wired), you have to completely ignore the kind of man Don is. The question of Don’s character has been at the centre of the show since it’s very first season, and has been examined in so many ways that it makes the conversation hard to ever really finish, and harder still to begin. However, there is one thing about Don that I will always believe, that has been supported by the show since the very beginning;

Don is a man who believes in a pure ideology. He wants to connect with people and he wants the best for them.

Now, does this mean Don is morally sound? No, he’s actually anything but. He cheats on his spouses, he’s not really a great Dad and he is prone to being unreliable. Despite all that, Don beliefs have always been idealistic, lofty and sincere. That is what makes the character so wonderful to talk about, and at the same time makes him so incredibly tragic: he is a man whose weaknesses constantly betray his own morality.

Don may be cynical, but he really, really doesn’t want to be. Rachel calls him on this way, way back in season one, when he gives his “born alone, die alone” speech. She see’s through it immediately, and it catches him off guard. One of the things I’ve always adored about the show is its incredible level of humanity, and even seemingly casual interactions can be incredibly powerful character moments when this is properly utilised.

This lack of cynicism goes doubly for advertising. Think about it; how many times has he brow-beaten Peggy (and everyone else who works under him) for being phony in her work? For not being sincere?

Don doesn’t want to sell you a product; he wants to sell you a feeling that he associates with a product. Why is Don so passionate about this? Why is this what Don wants to sell? Simply put, it’s because it’s a way to connect. Connection has always been what Don has ached for.

Why did Don leave his new place of employment? Well, because he didn’t belong there. That was a place where Ivy League ad gurus sat around a table and talked about the demographic they were after while taking notes like they were studying for an exam. It was a place where the product they were selling was their ability to sell a product.

This not the place for Don. Don, who used his own life and pain to demonstrate the value of the carousel. This is the man whose first experience with love was being given a Hershey bar, which he would eat alone in his room and pretend to be normal. Maybe this is sad to you, but to Don it’s real.

With this in mind; think about what the Coke ad Don apparently creates is about; a collection of people, of all genders, races and ages, united together by a common product. This is the image Don envisions for a product that, hand to God, used to have vending machines that said “White Customers Only” (that’s right, Coke had honour-based racist vending machines). A product that isn’t even mentioned until 20 seconds into the commercial. What Don wants to sell you is the feeling that when you sit down and drink a Coke, you’re drinking it with a million other people all over the world. There’s a reason it’s the most successful commercial of all time. It may look schmaltzy, cheap or silly today, but at the time it was something people genuinely wanted to hear. Don doesn’t want you to know how great this sugar water tastes, he doesn’t want you to know that it’s better than a competing brand, or even cheaper; he wants you to feel what he feels.

And what did he feel? Well, his epiphany in that episode came when Leonard, seemingly the opposite of Don, gave a speech that rocked Don to his core. He told a story of loneliness, or worthlessness and of the desire to be loved. And Don understood. So much so that he hugged this man, who he had never met, and wept. He knew the answer to the question he repeatedly asked Peggy only a few episodes ago. Don wants to sit down with the world and buy it a Coke. It’s really what he’s always wanted.

Mad Men was always a show about introspection. To think that the show’s final moments wouldn’t reflect this is an incredible oversight, and to think that Don changes for the worse in the very last moments of the show is doing him a huge disservice.

The Hilltop ad is about empathy. It is Don, realising that not only is he not special, but neither are his worries. The way Jon Hamm played the scene supports this; he realises who he is. He is an ad man, he is a human being, who wants to connect to other human beings, and that want is ubiquitous. Don does not just “come up with a great ad”, because ads were never that cheap to him. He finds a way to communicate the feeling of profound empathy he felt the previous day, when he and Leonard were both people, together, in the only way he knows how; an ad.

Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is Okay. You are Okay.

Goodbye to one of the greatest shows of all time, and thank you for the beautiful send-off. You are not alone. You will be okay.

What if the Camera Really Do Take Your Soul? Arcade Fire, Anthropology and Western Myth.

“Flashbulb Eyes” is not a particularly long song (especially compared to the others on the album), and lyrically speaking it... Well, it's eight different lines.

However, it is in this track where (I feel) the albums two strongest themes, fear or sociopathy and hatred of fame come together in the most succinct and straightforward way.

Though recently, this song has inspired me to think about something else; the idea that certain people once believe that “the camera can steal your soul”. It mostly seems to be colonial bullshit. 

What you're looking at here is a photograph from keen scientific writer and pioneer of Japanese photography, Ueno Hikoma. During Hikoma's life, he captured many iconic scenes of the Japanese countryside, as well as its inhabitants. His work was widely influential, and he maintained close relationships with and even taught many of the other great Japanese  photographers of the time (Uchida Kuichi, Noguchi Jōichi and Kameya Tokujirō to name just a few). At times, however, superstitions crept into his craft, and he had trouble taking the pictures of a number of his Japanese countrymen. You see; it was a belief in some areas that having your picture taken would also take your soul away.

Except, no, that's not really true at all, it's just how Western society seemed to interpret it. It's true, Hikoma had difficulty taking the pictures of some Japanese citizens, however it wasn't really for fear of a soul being stolen. It was in fact far closer to some of the Japanese believing that they could become sick from having their picture taken, possibly due to the bright flash – and even this belief does not necessarily come down to superstition as much as misunderstanding. The camera was still a relatively new contraption – especially if you were a farmer and had never seen anything remotely similar before – so general unease around it does not seem too absurd.

This example, by the way, happens to be one of the very few (documented, at least) examples of a people actually fearing the camera in this way.

Other instances of of civilisations fearing the camera seem to stem more from cultural misunderstandings. For instance, the Australian Aboriginal culture (much like the Iroquois) is an intrinsically oral one, containing no written language. History and stories pre-1788 were maintained through song and repeatedly told stories rather than through physical documentation (The Iroquois, conversely, would appoint “Sachem”, individuals tasked with remembering and teaching Historic events). As a result, the Aboriginal tradition has become a profoundly esoteric one. Due to this traditional, recording an Aboriginal ceremony, song or practise is a matter of extreme contention, and it is highly recommended (and really, just a mark of respect) you consult the host before taking pictures. The avoidance of the camera, for these people, is not a matter of fear, but of cultural preservation. 

In Janet Hoskins study of the myth, she theorises that the fear of the camera stealing blood is actually far more likely than the notion of a camera stealing a soul (Noting that the cameras “click” sounding similar to a sucking sound). This sounds a little odd, but makes sense – after all, the notion of a “soul” is not necessarily common to every culture, and even if a culture does posses a “soul equivalent”, who is to say their version is capable of being stolen? Is it not also possible that fear of the camera could also have begun out of fear of the power it represents – taking ones image forever, without their consent? Anthropologist Rodney Needham labelled the belief that the camera can steal the soul a “literary stereotype”.

In fact, the idea of a soul being stolen through a representative image is a distinctly European one.  During the Victorian era, it was common practise for all mirrors to be covered with sheets or rags at a funeral. This was due to the incredibly strong belief the Victorians had in “the soul” - notably that immortality was achieved through the resurrection of the soul. Mirrors were covered so that no reflection of the dead would be present at their funeral – the common superstition was that if any reflection were present, then the deceased soul could be trapped forever. It makes sense now, that many Westerners would have associated other culture's avoidance of the camera with the soul. This idea of the “reflection” representing the soul likely carried over to the introduction of the camera, where in stead of a “reflection” mirroring the soul, it was a photograph.

Ah yes, reflections. Reflektions.

ok so i generally don't find guys attractive but you cute 👌🏼👀

As a long-decaying malevolent skeleton I don’t hear that much, so thanks

Jordan Peterson is debating Slavoj Zizek! For money! For only a thousand dollars, you can watch two old men read a script where they luke-warm agree with each other so as to not look bad!

I am very sick and this was easy to make. Give me a like, share or sub if you can, it means a lot!

So I thought Nier: Automata was a really dumb game where you played as an anime and fought big robot worms, when suddenly I had put 60 hours into it and made this video talking about it’s Hegellian take on the origins of self-consciousness. Go figure! If you enjoy my content, please do give me a sub/comment/like/bell/what have you, as it means a lot!

What is a Script Consultant - and do you need one!

This is part of a new series in which I reveal my ugly mug and give writing advice, talking about my experience as a Script Consultant and work on reading and editing screenplays.

If anyone has any thoughts, questions or suggestions please do let me know! Would love to have some feedback on this series, and know what people might be interested in me covering in the future.

Martingale Episode 1: Cold Open | RPG Roulette

The year is 1886, and the place is Montana. The Great, Mythic Frontier lets out one last stifled gasp before the cold sets in, and the final nail is hammered...

An actual-play podcast where we’re playing DEAD IN THE WEST, a game of my own creation! Please give a listen and tell me watcha think!

The year is 1886, and the place is Montana. The Great, Mythic Frontier lets out one last stifled gasp before the cold sets in, and the final nail is hammered down into the Old West's coffin. Join RPG Roulette and me for an acyual-play miniseries where Our intrepid players set out into a world of deceit, desperation, and unforgiving winter.

If you want to listen to the podcast elsewhere, check it out here (a rating or review would go a long way!): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rpg-roulette/id1403097671

Or here: https://rpg-roulette.simplecast.com/episodes/martingale-ep-1-cold-open

And also Spotify!

If you're interested in DEAD IN THE WEST, you can download or order a hardback copy here: https://deadinthewest.gumroad.com/

If you wanna support RPG Roulette, you can do so here (they’re good lads): https://www.patreon.com/rpgroulette

More episodes soon! Thanks for listening and lemme know your thoughts!

The Cradle

We assumed we were in the box.

It was only natural, after all. It’s what anyone would have thought. We had been away for almost six years. A little silver glint in space; not even enough to catch the eye. The CAS system kept us asleep most of it, of course. If we’re talking waking hours, we had been away from Earth maybe eight months.

Space is full of radiation. There’s a reason so many old astronauts have cancer - it comes from everywhere. Our ship had a ridiculously simple monitor, a light really, that was meant to alert us when radiation levels were about to get too high. The trouble was, when we were under, something went wrong. No way of knowing what, but this little green light was on the fritz. We looked at it and no one could figure the thing out - our chief engineer, after some tinkering, told us that the thing was garbage. That there was a 50/50 chance it was accurately indicating high levels of radiation. When you’re in a little metal tube, surrounded on all sides by death, those odds really don’t sound so bad.

Still, it was enough to get to you. It turns out an even chance was the worst thing we could have heard. I would gladly have taken 90/10, or even 99/1 odds. The certainty of death would have been infinitely more comforting.

After a few days, someone brought up we were exactly like the cat in the box. I’m sure everyone is aware, but if you’re not, I can give my two cents. Schrödinger’s cat is a kind of tawdry metaphor that was never really meant to be taken seriously, but the basic premise is as follows; a cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter containing a trace amount of some radioactive substance. In the space of an hour, it’s equally possible that the substance  remains unchanged as it is the substance decays. If the substance decays, a flask of poisonous shatters and kills the cat. In the hour before the box is opened, the contents of the box are a superposition, wherein the cat is both alive and dead. Upon observing the contents of the box, the superposition “chooses” an outcome. It was a metaphor that, to my foggy recollection, was meant to mock the idea of a contradictory harmonious state. However, it caught the public imagination and became accepted into the vast sea of pop-science.

What is interesting, however, is the notion that an action in the present, ie opening the box, can in fact change an event in the past, in this case whether the cat has been alive or dead the last hour.

We were currently the cat in the box; there was a 50/50 chance that we had been poisoned. The monitors on Earth would know for certain whether we were or not, but we were not due to communicate with them for another six months. It was funny, in a way. We joked about being zombies. That we were just waiting for the boys back open to crack open the lid.

After a month, it stopped being funny. I became unsure whether I was feeling the effects of radiation poisoning. Maybe it was a placebo, maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I could feel it. I could feel this looming dread, this decay deep in my bones. Examining the path the ship had taken, one of my peers figured out exactly where the radiation source must have been, if it indeed existed at all. After two months of uncertainty, we decided to open the box ourselves. 

It was not our decision to make.

We put ourselves to sleep and turned the ship around. We had a six month timer; that would put us in range of Earth.

In that sleep, you are meant to dream. I had nothing. When I think back to my time under, I recall nothing. Only the darkness and a strange anxiety.

We awoke, looked out the window, and realised we were wrong. We were wrong all along. 

We were never in the box.

A neutron star is the result of a collapsed star. While relatively tiny in size, their density is incredible. A neutron star with a radius of only 7 miles can have a mass of over twice our sun. They also give out enormous amounts of radiation. A tiny, blinding usher. A calamitous angel. The scroll, rolling up the night sky.

Swallowing whole the world entire.

Uncertainty was the curse. There was an even chance that there was no radiation source. There was an even chance the monitor was faulty. There was an even chance we were all fine.

But we had to know, and in our knowing, we became fate. We were the observers. We forced the choice. We changed the past and smashed the vial.

It wasn’t us in the box, it was the world. But we needed to look. We needed to.