Probably the greatest thing about owning and operating your own blog is the absolute freedom involved. In terms of literary spaces, there is none so like the Wild West as a blog -- and not only is it the Wild West, you are free to play the outlaw if so you choose. In almost every other area of my writing life, there are some rules, even if they are only self-imposed. In other words, there is a sheriff or town marshal stalking about the town somewhere with a scowl and a scattergun, sure to make trouble with me if I violate an ordinance. That sheriff might be called Contract or Deadline or even Lazy Writer With A Bad Conscience, but as I just said, if I want to cheese him off I can do so by simply placing the black hat of outlaw upon my head, and fucking off in any direction I like, sunset or no.

You see, when I write in other mediums, from novel to short story, novelette to screenplay, poem to essay, I am doing so with very definite objectives. I may be trying to frighten the reader, or to make him think, or to make him angry or thoughtful, or to experience a certain atmosphere, or simply to entertain him for the short period in which he happens to be reading my story. I might fail miserably in my goals, but the objective is clear to me even if the path to it is not, and to reach that objective I have to follow certain obvious rules of structure and logic: a horror story, for example, should be frightening and not amusing, nicht wahr? Likewise, if I am writing an essay, I must have a point, and must take steps to make that point in a way that will hold up under hostile examination. But in a blog I am free to say whatever the hell I want, whenever I want, in any style I so choose. Conversely, I can say nothing at all, and almost nobody will care, and I don't have to care if they do.

Maynard James Keenan, who among many other things is the lead singer of the bands Tool, Perfect Circle and Puscifer, was once asked at the curiously undefined, nebulous nature of the latter band's sound. He responded that Puscifer was "simply a playground for the various voices in my head...a space with no clear or discernible goals, where my Id, Ego, and Anima all come together to exchange cookie recipes."

This quote struck me enough that I wrote it down as soon as I heard it, for I am a firm believer that everyone needs a playspace within one's own mind which has no clear or discernible goals; which exists for its own sake. For me, blogging is one such playspace. It gives me the chance to escape rules, logic, discipline, deadlines and the strictures of contracts and handshake deals, and simply do what I want as the impulse strikes me.

I mention this because the time has come for yet another installment in the As I Please franchise -- that branch of Stone Cold Prose which allows me to demonstrate what having a neurodivergent mind is really like.

* I've often railed in these pages, and on social media, about the extreme difficulty of getting reviews on Amazon (not sales, mind you, but reviews, either positive or negative). Recently I decided to conduct an experiment to prove that even greater exposure does not yield more reviews. For the first time ever, I temporarily made a large portion of my catalog of fiction available for free download on Amazon. Though response was initially slow, before long I was hitting 200 downloads a day, and one of my books, Devils You Know briefly became an Amazon (irony alert) best seller in three different categories. For all of this, I noted -- after a suitable waiting period -- only three or four new reviews on various stories. If I didn't know almost every other writer out there was suffering the same fate, I would find this humiliating: instead it is merely a source of frustration. So please, folks; the next time you read anything, leave a review. It doesn't have to be good: even a bad review has value so long as it demonstrates some level of intelligence. It's chic to support local businesses, why not independent authors?

* In my latest appearance on the LCS Radio Show, we were discussing "fun" bad movies, and the bad movie I selected for us to watch was BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, a God-awful knock-off of STAR WARS which appeared in 1980. This movie is really, really bad, but for some reason it triggered within me a certain nostalgia for 80s cinema of all kinds -- especially forgotten or just plain awful 80s cinema and television. I came away from this orgy feeling a bit shaken. Some of the flicks I'd witnessed (MEGAFORCE, for example) were gut-wrenchingly, almost surpasseth-understanding terrible, while others (RUNAWAY, BLUE THUNDER) were surprisingly engaging despite obvious flaws. Likewise, the mid-to-low-range television shows, shit like MATT HOUSTON, T.J. HOOKER and THE FALL GUY, are both simultaneously: objectively bad, yet strangely fun. What struck me, however, was the spirit of cheerfully cheesy innocence which marks so many of them. In these shows and in many of the films, at least the PG-rated ones, the heroes operated by strict and almost unwavering codes of honor; they were never tempted by villainy and if they were, they always managed to emerge unsullied and stronger than before. Likewise, even a show as dedicated to exposing problems and injustices within society and "the system" as something like QUINCY, M.E. placed all of its faith quite firmly in both: the idea was to remind us to live up to our societal ideals, not that our ideals were wrong; to trust that "the system" would work if only we would fully participate, not to junk it altogether. I don't remember precisely when the tone of movies and television began to darken into cynicism, moral ambiguity and "Realism" in the old, brutal German sense of the word, I imagine the process was quite gradual, but the fact remains that it did, and there is zero sign of any desire by the big public to set the clock back. From a qualitative standpoint this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure that cheesy, family-friendly shows with hammer-heavy moral and patriotic messages becoming as extinct as triceratops will do us much benefit in the long run. The idea that evil and corruption will always be defeated, that the good guys ought to win and do win more often than they lose, that not everyone is tempted by flashy objects or power for its own sake, is one that deserves a hearing.

* Having re-entered the criminal justice system, I am once again reminded that its depiction by television and film is so far from anything which might be called reality as almost to constitute an act of fraud. Much of television is devoted to the idea that courtrooms are inherently dramatic places, and on the surface of things this would seem to be a no-brainer. Drama is conflict, and courtrooms are intrinsically adversarial systems -- you literally cannot have a trial, even a civil trial over a trifling issue, without conflict. Yet anyone who has ever sat through an entire trial can testify (pun intended) at how miserably, almost paralyzingly boring time in a courtroom can be. Many years ago I attended a trial of bank robbers who shot a police officer while trying to escape; I even knew the officer, who was present in court. And yet after about an hour or two of observation I was bored stiff. Nothing much has changed. There are moments of great tension and suspense, sharp exchanges between individuals, even humorous little asides, but by and large the wheels of justice grind slow, fine and dull as hell.

* One of the most interesting battles of World War 2 is also almost completely unknown. The Dodecanese Campaign, which lasted from September 8 - November 22, 1943, saw the British, acting on their own and without any American support, try to seize a string of islands off the Turkish coast from German and Italian control. For the lover of military history, or for those passionate about the political and economic forces which shape and drive military campaigns, this battle has absolutely everything: political infighting, military treachery, side-switching, code-breaking, airborne and amphibious assaults, naval battles, air attacks, commando raids, massacres of POWs and civilians, the debut of new technology, and a whole slew of tragic friendly-fire incidents, some with five-figure death tolls. The only thing it seems to lack is a happy ending...for the Allies, anyway. The battle was a tremendous German victory. It kept Turkey, who was Hitler's only supplier of chrome, from joining the Allies, and ensured that the Spanish would also continue to supply vital tungsten to the Nazi war effort: it also prevented the Allies from sending war supplies through the Dardanelles Strait to the USSR. Its failure weakened Churchill's already wobbly position vis-a-vis Roosevelt and Stalin and had an effect on postwar Greek politics. It also led to the near-extermination of the Jewish populations of the islands after the battle, when they transferred from Italian to German agency. No doubt the unhappy conclusion is why it has little to no place in the history books or popular culture: indeed, the sole movie I can think of which references this phase of the war is The Guns of Navarone, a story which has absolutely no basis in reality: not only the fabled guns but the island they reside upon never existed. The novel simply the attempt of a feisty hack writer with curiously fascist emotional leanings to slap a happy face over a bitter, humiliating defeat in which the Germans inflicted anywhere from 5 to 50 casualties for every one they sustained. Ditto the admittedly entertaining film. I tell you this: WW2 war may be over, but the rug under which all the costly blunders and defeats have been swept is very lumpy indeed, and one is tempted to wonder what is really served by editing our history in this way. It is grossly disrespectful of those who did not die in glamorous victories, yes, but there is a larger issue at stake. Defeat teaches us more than victory, and the Dodecanese Campaign could teach today's world political leadership a great deal about how not to fight a battle -- something they sorely need.

* I am once again doing the Whole 30 cleanse, in which, for 30 days, I eat only fruit, nuts, meats and vegetables, and drink only water and unsweetened coffee or tea. No sugar. No dairy. No alcohol. No processed foods. And no grains of any kind. This cleanse is a huge pain in the ass and every time I do it I wonder why. A particularly horrible feature is something called the "keto flu," which is an early and temporary side-effect of going off sugar and bad carbs. Your body is used to fueling itself with that crap, so when you take said crap away, it doesn't know how to draw energy from the food you do ingest, and has to re-learn the skill. This period of learning is known as the keto (ketogenic) flu, and can last several days or longer. During the period, you suffer from a tremendous sense of physical fatigue, and find yourself weak, apathetic and prone to sighing a lot for no goddamned reason. In my case it seldom lasts longer than 36 - 72 hours and never returns, but those 36 - 72 hours suck. And just generally speaking, the diet is a pain in the ass and a bore. On the other hand, it does a great deal to clear up the skin and reduce inflammation (especially around the lower belly). The first time I did it, I went 32 days without any booze, sugar or bad carbs, and my skin had a positive glow when I finished. I also dropped 4 lbs, despite eating like a pig the entire time.

* When I was living in California, I seldom wore anything dressier than a sports shirt and rarely more than shorts and flip-flops. I spent months in tank tops and often whole seasons with a baseball cap wedged firmly upon my head. Shaving was a ritual engaged in at my whim, and I went intervals of seasons without a haircut. "Work clothes" meant a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Now that I reside in Pennsylvania once again, I wear suits, vests, watch-chains, and have two tie racks and will soon need two more. Indeed, I have an entire walk-in closet devoted to suits and suchlike. I'm not sure that's progress, but it is an enormous change and reflects a certain change in outlook as well. One of the main benefits of life in SoCal is that it is essentially an endless summer, a retreat into a permenent state of late adolescence. On the other hand, this is also one of the main drawbacks. When it is summer, no one thinks about tomorrow; when it is always summer, tomorrow never comes. There is no desire to plan, no urge to grow up or accept responsibility. A major advantage to the rhythm of seasons is that they remind us that life is not eternal, that youth cannot be clung to infinitely, and that in one form or another, the school bell will ring come September.

* One of the major differences between what we call "the left" and what we call "the right" in this country is in how they deal with internal party strife. You may know the left by this sign: when one of their own fucks up, be it Joss Whedon, Al Franken, or Andrew Cuomo, he is torn apart so quickly and violently by his own kind it is rather akin to watching a side of bloody beef being dipped into a shark tank. When a rightie screws the pooch, a la Marjorie Green, the worst they can generally expect is a knuckle rap, after which the entire Republican establishment will circle the wagons, load up the rifles, and prepare to die in their defense. Without getting into morality, ethics or psychology, it's a fascinating phenomenon and probably bears further study.