Facebook and Lazy Bastards.

I generally enjoy Facebook. But I can't really speak my mind there. Initially things weren't that bad. You could say what you pretty much wanted to say without much in the way of repercussion. But in more recent years a certain subset of members (along with corporate policy) have made it increasingly difficult to engage in conversation or commentary on the platform.

Last year I spent about half (maybe more) of the time banned from Facebook. This cut me off from communicating with my various Facebook friends and even with my family members (via FB). After the fourth time of being banned (for saying something negative about the government of Saudi Arabia) I figured I'd just stay away. But, since I do have so many actual friends there, I returned.

Well, it didn't last. Once again I found myself banned for making a single negative comment about police brutality. I didn't even use profanity. Still, the brief sentence was flagged and I found myself once more banned from Herr Zuckerberg's domain.

This time I did follow through and deleted the program from my desktop and various electronic devices. When my prison sentence is ended I don't think I'll go back this time. I think it's for the best. I've found that I produce more work when I'm not on Facebook than when I am there. The professional writing networking I once enjoyed there had collapsed anyway, so it wasn't any good for that.

Oh, well.

It reminds me of the situation I had with a trio of former friends. These three guys were all about my same age, all fairly creative in one way or another, and all three of them had found a way to lead an existence without working. Instead of holding down an honest job, they stayed at home all day long doing a little cleaning, but mainly lounging about performing very little to nothing in the way of honest labor.

How did they do this? How did they get the money to pay for that roof over their heads, the clothes on their worthless backs, and the food they stuffed into their selfish gobs?

They had--all three of them--married women who were willing to demean themselves by working while their worthless husbands sat in the domicile. Sure, a couple of those guys learned to vacuum, and fold the clothes, and wash the kids. But by and large they spent their leech days just puttering around, driving to see locals pals, smoking their tobacco, and living safe knowing that their wives were bringing home the bacon so that they could be lazy, worthless bastards.

I don't see any of those guys anymore. One of them was just far too stupid for me to talk to. One turned out to be psychotic. And the last of them became a neo-Nazi.

I deleted them all. Not the same way that I deleted Facebook, but just as effectively.

My biggest question remains: Where did they find women who had so little self-respect that they kept those scumbags around??!!

Krigstein

Today I happened upon the only photograph I have ever seen of Bernard (Bernie) Krigstein. He was one of the most talented artists who ever worked in the US comics field. To my way of thinking, he was easily the most skilled pure artist who published in the format of four-color, periodical American comic books.

In many ways, Krigstein was too good for the industry. I say that not to make light of the art form we call comic books, but to separate the vision of comics books that Krigstein seemed to have from that of the other artists who toiled in creating sequential art.

The first time I ever saw his work was in a coverless EC comic book I happened upon while digging through the giant stacks of old comics in one of my dad's used bookstores. I recall Jim Steranko was really popular at the time, so it must have been around 1966 or 1967. Maybe as late as 1968. The story dealt with an indigenous South American Indian who took revenge on his white employer who had unknowingly killed the Indian's parents. The afflicted man took his revenge by placing a school of ravenous piranha in his master's bath--the fish eating the evil man from the waist down.

This was powerful stuff for a kid of nine or ten years old to see--from a comic that was then only fourteen or fifteen years old. If I'd known such stuff had been banned by the Comics Code Authority, I'd have cursed them. The story was brilliantly illustrated and the moral of it must have appealed in some way to Krigstein who had--I later discovered--tried to form a union for comic book artists in the very early 50s.

He ended up working mainly for EC Comics--specifically for William Gaines, because Gaines paid the very highest rates among the then many comic book publishers. And those page rates showed in the stunning quality of the work his stable of artists turned in for the various suspense, crime, horror, and science fiction titles that Gaines published.

The next time I stumbled upon a Krigstein story was his work "The Master Race", in a copy of IMPACT #1, also in my dad's vast inventory of old comics. That one impressed me even more than the piranha yarn. Here I was as a kid, seeing what is probably still likely the most brilliant visually conceived comics story I have encountered. If anyone has done anything close to it for sheer power and brilliance I have not seen it.

Krigstein's comic book career didn't seem to last very far beyond the demise of EC Comics (shut down by the Comics Code limitations). He drifted off into more traditional artistic venues and rarely seemed to look back.

At any rate, here is the photo of Mr. Krigstein who so impressed me when I was still a very little kid. It's fitting that he had such striking features. He was almost like one of the distinctive Asian characters that he lovingly illustrated from time to time.

Bernard Krigstein.

All of These Things are Just Like the Others.

A long time ago I got sick of the wave of post-apocalyptic horror and thriller novels. Like the endless vampire novels that preceded them, I kept waiting for the fad to vanish, but somehow it hasn't quite done that. As with the vampire novels, these apocalypse-inspired things are all now almost exactly the same as the ones that lumbered out before them. They do seem to appeal to an audience that is obviously addicted to them and the mainly politically Fascist crowd who absorb each, one after the other. So they keep the idiot neo-Nazis happy and reaffirm their almost mindless beliefs.

So here is a fill-in-the-blank form that can serve as blurbs for any such novels that seem to endlessly sprout out of the right wing scumpile. Have fun.

After the _________ apocalypse, join _________ as he/she travels across ________ in a desperate journey against ________ to rescue his/her ________. Will he/she find the ______ to battle against the _______ and reach his/her ________?

Find out in Wanky McWankerface’s latest novel, __________!

(Wanky McWankerface was a ______ who served in the ________, and is now a ______ when not writing novels about _______.)

Fill in the blank.