Recommended: Severance

Is that why I have a headache?

Severance follows the dual lives of people working for the mysterious corporation Lumon. They've 'surgically' (with some kind of chip implant) had their worklife and personal lives separated so that both are lived in isolation. It reminds me of a short story where a character only experienced driving. That was the only portion of that individual's life they got to experience.

Here it's thoroughly dystopian and gets increasingly weird as mysterious are piled on: the main characters wife, we learn, was killed, leading him, in his grief, to agree to being severed. Yet all is not as it seems, and Lumon is up to no good. 

It's in the satirical aspects that this show really shines, repeatedly skewering corporate workplace absurdities. Little things like Waffle Parties and the bizarre Wellness Sessions, complete with rigid rules and penalty points, make the show a delight. 

Season two, which recently dropped, dives into the larger mystery. I didn't care much about it, as it all seems so senseless I'm not even inclined to speculate as to the what's and why's. There's not enough for me to hang a theory on, or even inspire me to.

On the other hand, there is a 'corporate retreat' team building send up, which is very fun. 

The acting is top notch; in many ways, Severance is an actor's playground. The cast gets to depict two subtly different versions of the same person, and do so with aplomb. One of the highlights of season two sees a character conducting a converation with his severed self via video camera. And you really get the two different viewpoints coming through. The acting, directing, and writing here is nothing short of fantastic.

The season climax, while I don't get why the antagonists are doing what they're doing, still has emotional resonance, thanks to my being personally invested in the struggle of the characters. Their circumstances I may not fully understand, the conflict may be muddled, but their personal peril, trauma and choices have impact. 

On the downside, Patricia Arquette's character I cannot stand, and season two spends an entire episode with this loathsome former manager. She's meant to be unlikeable, I think, so she's doing a great job at that, but the writers need to give her more to work with if we've got to spend an hour with her. Hers was the worst written episode of the season, with noticeably clunky dialogue and painfully on the nose exposition. 

Having said that, it's still better written than a lot of shows out there. 

Ben Stiller's direction here deserves special mention. Apparently he's quite a tyrant on set, but the results speak for themselves. This is a stylishly shot show, with wonderful sets that border on the surreal. The antiseptic office space is Kubrickesque. I've never seen a show set in an office look so good. 

I don't have any expectations for season three. I don't have the faintest idea what is really going on, but I'll be tuning in to see what happens to the characters, and if their doomed romance(s) can defy seemingly impossible odds.

Half-lost comic jam continued

What does it all mean??? Your guess is as good as mine.

Why is there so little honesty in publishing?

Pinocchio: is he in music, film, TV, advertising, politics, gambling, books or comix? You decide!

Same reason there's little honesty in Hollywood, music, or advertising: it's a business, and the impression of success creates success. Fake it until you make it, as they say. It's about manipulating human psychology and presenting the proper facade to do so. Politicians, demagogues, and Demogorgon do the same thing. 

You only want weaponized authenticity in marketing. 

Roughly ten years ago I attended TCAF and took in a few panels, including a publisher one. I have never forgotten what they said: if an artist said, publicly on the internet, that comics was hard, that they struggled, that there was no money, etc, they would be blacklisted and declared persona non grata. These publishers were absolutely adamant that they would not publish such people. They only wanted people who put forward a sunny, optimistic happy-go-lucky impression of the comics publishing industry, and anyone who said otherwise would be banned from their imprints.

Fortunately, my own publisher believes first and foremost in publishing cool sh*t, and has never sought to muzzle me in any way. The art comes first. I have always respected and been grateful for that. 

But I've never forgotten that TCAF talk. 

And you know what? 

I get it. 

We 'artistes' can be emo. Moping, wallowing in our own conflicted and emotionally tumultuous nature, and outright depression is endemic in the arts and is not a draw for the general public. Well. For most, it isn't. I've listened to normies talk about poor souls who are quite obviously suffering from depression as 'freaks' to be ostracized, and worse. That said, some comics DO dive deep into analysis of the twisted human psyche, and have built healthy careers exposing their own innermost vices and flaws. 

The world is a funny place. 

Different strokes for different folks.

But for a general audience, positivity sells. Whether it's right or not to edit yourself publicly is not the point. The point is that, if you want a career in comics, you have to manage your public persona and appear (and act) in a cooperative way that makes you someone people want to work with. 

It's also good to remember that many, if not most, publishers are not necessarily artists themselves. Some are business people, and for them, comics are not art, they're a product, like shoe laces, widgets or flea powder. A commodity. The publisher wants to make money, hit the best-seller lists, and sell options to Hollywood; they don't want miserable, cantankerous 'artistes' spoiling the gravy train with all their self-indulgent whining. They'd rather shut them up with threats of excommunication.

The resultant sunny picture leaves publishers and the public happy, and with higher sales, hopefully the artist as well. At least with success they can afford antidepressants.

Have you ever seen Pleasantville?

The down side of all this is that young, aspiring artists (and actors and musicians) get an unrealistic idea of what their aspirational field is really like, having drunk deep from the hype machine. The hype machine, however, is NOT for artists. All the puff pieces and posturing is to help sell product. It's part of the game. It greases the wheels of commerce, it has a function, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with what it's like to actually work in the field.

Remember the Me Too movement? Good ol' Harvey, champion of independent films! Little bit of cognitive dissonance there now. Comics has its Harveys, too. And the music industry... the less said the better.

If you're an artist, don't pay attention to hype, fame or fortune. Those aren't good motivators for artists. Well. Many? I don't create according to spreadsheets, focus groups and audience analysis, and can't imagine authentic art coming out of such an approach. But then, I'm a small press indie kind of guy. I'm not doing billion dollar blockbusters. And if you're investing millions into a project, you want to protect your investment and make it as sure a thing as possible...

Have you seen Matrix Resurrections? 

If you want authenticity, don't look to advertising. Go behind the scenes.

It's like sausages. 

You don't want to know how they're made unless you really have to. 

Recommended: American Primeval

Wait... is he using that kid as cover?

American Primeval follows a young woman and her son as they try and cross the Rockies, to reach her husband on the West coast. Well. That's what she says, at least. Between her and her destination are mountains, Indians, the US Army, and the Mormons. 

Guess which faction is worse?

The show is gritty and grounded, although some of the characters are unreasonably kick-ass, but they stop short of going the full John Wick. 

The wilderness is a character unto itself. The wilderness is beautiful... but everywhere humans settle, it becomes a disgusting pig sty. The inhabitants are covered in mud and shit, and only the West Coast immigrants are, momentarily, clean. 

It a grimy, messy, essentially lawless place, where life is cheap, and people are murdered over a nasty look. Hell, the cold, indifferent wilderness looks like a cuddly tabby cat compared to the treacherous monsters living in the forts.

Which tracks with Pinker's The Angels of Our Better Nature. Violence in the American Midwest was insane, both against the Indians and inside the initially male-only settlements of frontiersmen. Once women began to migrate out west in larger numbers, the levels of violence fell dramatically. 

The Mormons present as civilized and devout, but only on the surface. It makes them even more horrible than the brutal pioneer savages they look down upon. 

For the Mormons (at least as they are depicted in the show), God is a fig leaf.

I confess I've never really looked into the early days of Utah. I knew the Mormons settled there, but I had no idea they fielded their own army, or that they were quite so irredeemably nasty. It's a story that's not been told before in a big budget Western, far as I know.

Highly recommended, if you like gritty and uncompromising dramas. I'm not keen on Westerns as a genre in general, but this one was captivating.

I don't think the Mormons are going to be terribly keen on it. 

Alberta is the new 'weakest link' in the Confederation chain

Why, it's Provincial avatars in The Weakest Link

The US, and Trump in particular, don't give a crap about Québec. It's left of centre, and full of 'surrender monkeys'. They're too European, too French, too socialist. 

The Province the US will target instead is Alberta.

Their population is already right of centre. Premier Danielle Smith recently sent a list of demands to the Prime Minister, or she'll put forward a referendum to separate from Canada. According to some reports, she also asked the US to postpone the tariffs to help get Poillievre elected first. 

Uhoh

Right now,  Alberta produces a huge amount of oil, which the US wants. Canada is taking some of the oil revenue and using it to subsidize Québec, to keep confederation together. 

If the US offers Alberta a sweet deal, the Maple Maga may just jump at the chance. 

Confederation would unravel after that. 

That'll probably be how Trump will ultimately try to destabilize and annex Canada: an Alberta wedge.

The rest of us will be easy targets after that.

Rex Libris vs. The Zombies

Rex vs. The Mob

I always rather liked this shot from issue... 6, I think? 

Feels like a lifetime ago.

It mixes modern vector with a little lithograph grain, for a slick stylized look. 

US invasion of Canada?

War Plan Red: The Invasion of Canada. It's top secret, don't show anyone.

Could the US invade Canada?

This is such a bonkers scenario, it's difficult to take seriously. 

Malcolm Nance writes about it here.

There are millions of points of contact between Canada and the USA. It’s not like Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1941. There are so many connections in civilian, military, and intelligence, I doubt the Americans could launch an invasion without Canada knowing in advance. Not that it would make much difference, other than, say, for Canadian authorities to debunk any false flag operation the US uses to justify their invasion.

From what I've been able to find online, Malcolm Nance really was a United States Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer specializing in naval crypotology; he has been a consultant for MSNBC, has written several books, and he did serve in Ukraine. However, his colleagues (people claiming to have first hand experience) claim he is a grifter: he went to Ukraine, bragged, took some pics for his new book, and buggered off. True? False? Sour grapes? Who knows? He sounds sane enough in the one video of his I watched. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't think he's provided that. 

But this drumbeat has been taken up by more and more and more people, and it's becoming unnerving. 

So buckle up and let's drive down crazy lane and say posit an American invasion of Canada. Even as, say, a fictional scenario for a Tom Clancy style thriller... 'cause that's what it sounds like. Fortunately, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) is actually a Canadian, so he'd be our agent on the inside. 

First the US pushes us with tariffs, border revisions, claims we aren't a real country (gee... just like Putin with Ukraine!). 

Eventually, they'd create a false flag operation: a bogus communist takeover of Canada, a terrorist attack blowing up our Parliament, something extreme. That would be followed by more propaganda and cyber attacks to disorient and paralyze any possible resistance. Infiltrators would move to arrest prominent Canadians. Military bases would be quickly occupied. 

It would be all over before anyone knew what was happening. 

Head on resistance to a US invasion would be flat out suicide, and I wouldn't expect our military to even try. Our border is thousands of miles long. Our cities are all right up against the US. Our military is underfunded and the Americans know where all our bases are. 

Instead, let's look at Finland, the Baltic States, Iraq and Northern Ireland for inspiration. 

Finland has bordered on the Russian/Soviet behemoth for decades and managed to remain independent. Of course, they have hundreds of lakes and large forests between their cities and the Russian border, giving them far more strategic depth than Canada has. Men in Finland are all conscripted into the army and trained to fight. If Canada is to survive with a hostile US to the south, we'd need to bring back universal conscription. That would take years of effort, first to create the infrastructure, get enough instructors, and then build out a conscript reserve army. Going by this scenario (a Trump invasion), we don't have that kind of time.

The Baltic States is perhaps an even better match to our circumstances: their cities are all within paradrop range of Russian territory, and they have no meaningful strategic depth. We have our forests, to which partisans could retreat, but all our population centres would be easily occupied. The Baltic States know it is unlikely they can hold off the Russian army until NATO reinforcements arrive. As such, they have distributed around their countries bunkers and arms caches, to serve as bases for insurgency efforts. It's a flexible, squishy defense. Asymmetric warfare, including terrorism, is the only real option (should we choose to fight) for us. Canada then should start stockpiling weapons and perhaps even more importantly explosives, and building remote bunkers. Citizens would have to be trained in how to avoid detection, how to cover their tracks, how to forage, survival skills, the works. American surveillance would be incredibly difficult to evade. 

That brings us to Iraq. It's mostly flat and open, with (seemingly) little cover, yet the Americans couldn't extinguish the resistance. IEDs, hit and run, and, well, terrorist attacks took a serious toll on American personnel. And Canadian, for that matter. The Iraqis did this while taking astronomical casualties. I am not sure Canadians would want to suffer to the extent the Iraqis did. But we might.

In addition, Iraq had a massive army during Saddam's reign, so there were hundreds of thousands of men with military training, and the Americans failed to secure arms depots before disbanding the Iraqi army, providing insurgents with a great deal of weaponry. Iraq also has a lot of sectarian divisions, and small scale militias. They are used to fighting. They have plenty of experience from two American invasions and the Iran-Iraq war. Canada has no such large scale equivalent military experience. 

The US would also presumably target any Canadians who are capable (and are likely) to resist, rounding them up at the beginning of hostilities. They'd have our gun registry lists.

Which brings us to Northern Ireland, and what I imagine would be the paradigm for Canadian resistance. A small number of IRA agents caused considerable headaches for the British forces, and kept Northern Ireland locked in a seemingly endless counter-insurgency campaign. It made the locals miserable, and the IRA killed a good number of their own people.

Southern Canada is mostly urbanized and settled. Running an insurgency campaign here is not likely to succeed. Partisans could theoretically operate out of the forests of the Canadian Shield, striking at US supply depots and then fading back into the wilderness. In the populated regions, I would expect most of the resistance to take the form of IEDs, bombings, kidnappings, passive resistance, sabotage, work noncompliance, and the like. 

We'd definitely have to give up our cell phones.

So it is entirely possible a small number of determined Canadians could make an American military occupation of Canada a pain in the ass. It would also last for years, if not decades, a constant stream on the evening news of bombings, riots, insurrection and civil disobedience. 

Why would any sane American government want that? Why throw away a friendship that has lasted a hundred years, just so the American flag can be planted in Ottawa? The US already HAS access to our resources. Canadian companies sell to the US all the time. Nothing is denied. Is it really over dairy tariffs? Minuscule amounts of fentanyl? The right of US banks to function here and cause a subprime crisis? 

Seriously? 

Invading Canada is a pointless, self-destructive move for the USA. 

It would create bad blood where there was none. 

Did I wake up in the Twilight Zone or something?

The New Odd Couple

I have a TV show reboot idea: The Odd Couple!

Putin and Trump have had to cut costs (Doge efficiency!) and are now living in the White Palace together as the bestest of buddies. One is reckless, one is calculating. One is scary smart, the other... not so much. One is a dictator, the other just wants to be dictator for a day (EVERYday). Guess which is which! Each week, Putin manipulates Trump into making a fool of himself, while furthering Putin's interests. 

Hilarity ensues!

At the end, both declare victory. 

In other news, Witikoof just declared Putin's not a bad guy, that he's very smart. Well, duh. Thanks for that, Witikoofus. 

I have absolutely no doubt at all that Putin is smart. Cunning, Machiavellian, ruthless, dispassionate, calculating, the works. He can plan ahead in all the ways Trump can't. Sadly, I don't think Witikoof is in the same province, much less the same stadium, as Putin. Trump is off on his own planet somewhere. 

I also recall J.D. Vance scolding European governments for being afraid of their electorates. 

A month later, Republican leadership is advising Republican Members of Congress to avoid meeting with constituents in person (preferring virtual, as it is easier to moderate), or at all, because of the hostility the electorate has shown.

Huh. 

I couldn't write a satire of this.

It's already perfect.

So where are the pictures of this new mystery book?

(That's me drawing my book. I've really changed over the years.)

Good question, convenient imaginary interlocutor. 

In the age of AI, when Google and Meta scrape everything online to feed their insatiable AI beast, which gobbles information to grow ever larger and more formidable, is it a good idea to put anything, personal or professional, online? 

It's a conundrum. You need to promote, but to promote exposes your work to being eaten by the AI.

AI is the first form of (virtual) 'life' that feeds on information to grow. For some reason, it triggers a connection in my mind to an old Star Trek episode with a monster that fed on emotions. 

I can't seem to find the place in Instagram to turn off the AI training, it's such a convoluted tunnel and the screens I see eventually don't match the instructions. So... I'm just not going to be posting on social media much anymore.

For my wondrous random thought blog, I intend to keep it light, post little, more a hint than a full set of material. 

Look, a hint! Or is that showing too much?!?

If AI keeps improving at an exponential rate (a dubious proposition but nevertheless possible) it will eventually surpass us, at which point what I do will be obsolete whether it's trained on my crap or not. It'll produce material better than the greatest human writer, far far ahead of anything I'm capable of.

I'm betting it won't, that it'll hit a ceiling, at least for awhile, until new models and quantum computing eventually put AI over the top. 

That'll hopefully leave me time to pump out at least a few more books before they take me out behind the barn.