Thank you for the mention, I really enjoyed this story. You have a way of blending the real with the absurd that’s just, it really fucking works. I especially love the noir kick you’ve been on lately.
Novac. Zločin je sekundarna posljedica siromaštva i očaja. U tome je stvar. Osjećao sam da nemam drugog izbora, a odrastanje u okruženju u kojem sam bio olakšalo mi je to. Ne žalim ni za čim. Ali priznajem da sam sklon tretirati ovo mjesto kao pozornicu.
(Does posting or commenting in another language reach peak wank?)
This is precisely what I mean - the crime (by necessity) chooses the criminal (who is either compelled into it or encouraged by their environment). Not that this is the 100% whole story but it fits the bill more often than the judgements of the High and Mighty - whited sepulchres all as a certain bicycling gent one said.
And no, I would say polyglottal posting is perfectly cool. In my street I lean out the window and hear people talking in four or five languages in any given moment.
It's early and I could interpret that three ways off the top of my head but I'm taking the most generous. And just shrug and say: Zbog zločina osoba postaje dobar pisac kriminalističkih romana.
Not very elegante (in joke, personal, pronounced: eh-leh-gant-ay) but it's early in my brain and that gets it across I think.
Victor gets handed the Criterion Hitmen set as a death threat and his first move is to argue with the curation. Killing Them Softly in, Ghost Dog out. A man reviewing his own murder notice. That's the point I knew what kind of story I was in.
I'm sort of out of words after this one. Which is great, actually, because it means I can sort of just sit back and thoroughly bask in the guilty enjoyment of it.
Which, come to think of it, is quite probably the emotion you had writing it. Guilty enjoyment, that is.
Despite what I said before, that it is a kind of cruel entertainment and a way to stretch those noir muscles, I also think there’s another dimension to it, call it moral to the tale or whatever.
It’s that we - the big we, our society, not any particular individuals - are collectively attempting to create in our children the most amoral and transactional generation in history. We aren’t succeeding in our aim to dehumanise literally all of them, and there are plenty of examples of concerned young people sacrificing a lot to do the right thing, but maybe we’ve created enough dead-eyed sociopaths to bring about the dystopia that we collectively wish for.
So the daughter killer is on the one hand a delicious sadistic noir twist in the tale, but I think she also represents something wider. Who is she working for? The military power and her own ‘good father’ against the slovenly ‘bad father’ who risked all to save the puppies.
In my enjoyment - I forgot to say - I thought the use of language in this story was quite extraordinary, and it was really quite a humbling experience to read.
Gawsh you’re making me blush - kvell as my chum Alex likes to say.
Thanks very much, sincerely, I worked hard on it (working mostly on trying to get out of my own way) along with consulting with one of the best editors around to help tighten it up.
Absolutely. I did catch the sinister undertones about the daughter - that was a cool way to end it - questions about who she works for etc.
I'd forgotten to say, actually, that during some of my researches for one of my conspiracy articles I read a fair few neuroscience articles about how reward centres can be engaged by the idea of what you might call 'righteous punishment' (or justice). It's perhaps an extreme form of schadenfreude. The brain is effectively wired to enjoy seeing people suffer, but only if they are perceived as bad guys, which partly accounts for the natural ostracism that would've been practiced by ancient humans - thus the theory that all these bad guys which we see bent on domination over others couldn't have succeeded until human social populations become large enough for them to conceal themselves (cf. social cognition number/Dunbar's number). That's to say the 'cabal' as I call them are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Ironically there's a sort of structuralist aspect to that, I guess.
Yes, the same people are attempting to corrupt humanity (well, they've been doing it for a long time) - I was thinking only this morning that the only logistical way to maintain an overt dystopia is to fundamentally alter the human brain - and perhaps this is the nefarious ultimate objective of evil - to manipulate humanity such that the brain evolves/adapts to a monstrous environment, such that sociopathy becomes normalised. At the moment it's still the case that innately the bad guys are a minority, but after 10,000 years or however long of brain adaptation monsters would be the norm. Then again, there'd still be the issue of social cohesion, which is a little difficult when everyone's a selfish sociopath.
So I think there is a lot of catharsis in stories like the one you just wrote. Especially when - as I think you mentioned - it is effectively 'contained' within a restricted space like a story or a movie.
I’m intrigued at present by the scapegoat theory of René Girard. Now Girard has a tremendously bad rep among lefties right now because his adherents are all fascist freaks like Peter Thiel and JD Vance. But there’s nothing inherently fascistic in his writings that I can see. His theory about mimetic value and envy is ripped off Hegel by way of Nietzsche and Kojève, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his scapegoating stuff turns out to be swiped from Nietzsche too.
Anyway, it’s all food for thought. As always the great difference in our ways of thinking are about what motivates these malign changes enabling dystopia - you see psy-ops and secret cabals plotting them, where I see it simply as the structural working-out of the process. Which should make for some very interesting discussions when we get down to ‘debating’ or exploring Marx, Nietzsche and others on social dynamics…
I will have a look at Girard. My brain has already been digesting our potential future dialectic about all this - now and again I find myself writing passages in my head. One point, in fact, which ran through my head only yesterday was the interplay between structuralist forces, and the human agents who maintain those structural forces (for their own [i.e. capitalist/capitalism] benefits). Can they truly be said to have 'choices'? Or are they as it were pathologised by the structural elements of the system. Hmm...
That's a good point I think about how lefties shy away from writings which they perceive to be associated with the right (Nietzsche being a classic example). Ironically, I often come to the conclusion that this is the very reason why the 'left' have never really been successful - by effectively discarding that corpus they are denying themselves at least half of the big picture, so to speak. They need to understand and acknowledge the underhand (i.e. conspiratorial) methods which the ruling class employ in order to defeat the left. Which means understanding the work of the intelligence services.
I've thought this especially about conspiracy theories - how it has been presented as the province of the far right (precisely to deter socialists), when the irony is that it's the socialists themselves who need to embrace these insights. The really interesting conspiracy theories are not the silly ones they have been manipulated into perceiving, but the more 'bread and butter espionage' stuff - basic stuff like MI5 infiltrating socialist movements (agents provocateurs and the like), and of course blatant psyops like Just Stop Oil and XR. This is why I like Kit Klarenberg's articles, even if he is quite the exemplary paragon of verbiage. It's strange the left don't get this kind of thing, given what Lenin is purported to have said about controlled opposition.
All being stuffed away in the folder marked “Evie Dialogue (August?)” for later use… Too busy right now to respond, but rest assured this won’t go to waste.
Cute pup BTW - I note that this fake dog shelter was monstrous and cruel. At least my guy isn’t quite that way though arguably his shelter is just as fake
But in this case the puppies were saved thanks to the heroics of our main character. Only a nasty Irishman was snuffed, and that’s no great loss to anyone.
To be honest, I’m much more likely to have little kitties maimed and finished off in my stories. Rough, but it’s undeniably a cruel world out there, hermano!
I’m agin’ it as a rule but sometimes the requirements of the story make it a regretful necessity. However I can assure you that all malefactors who do such atrocious things will be roundly and savagely punished.
Like the weird happenings in my stray-cat Istanbul haruspex story, all wrongs will be righted by the end.
Thank you for the mention, I really enjoyed this story. You have a way of blending the real with the absurd that’s just, it really fucking works. I especially love the noir kick you’ve been on lately.
So kind, thank you for the appreciative words! More noir coming, I can't turn off the crime spigot now...
Crime is addictive, it’s why I was a criminal.
Zločin bira zločinca - The crime chooses the criminal, not the other way
Novac. Zločin je sekundarna posljedica siromaštva i očaja. U tome je stvar. Osjećao sam da nemam drugog izbora, a odrastanje u okruženju u kojem sam bio olakšalo mi je to. Ne žalim ni za čim. Ali priznajem da sam sklon tretirati ovo mjesto kao pozornicu.
(Does posting or commenting in another language reach peak wank?)
This is precisely what I mean - the crime (by necessity) chooses the criminal (who is either compelled into it or encouraged by their environment). Not that this is the 100% whole story but it fits the bill more often than the judgements of the High and Mighty - whited sepulchres all as a certain bicycling gent one said.
And no, I would say polyglottal posting is perfectly cool. In my street I lean out the window and hear people talking in four or five languages in any given moment.
It's early and I could interpret that three ways off the top of my head but I'm taking the most generous. And just shrug and say: Zbog zločina osoba postaje dobar pisac kriminalističkih romana.
Not very elegante (in joke, personal, pronounced: eh-leh-gant-ay) but it's early in my brain and that gets it across I think.
Does the trick, and muy elegante también hermano
Victor gets handed the Criterion Hitmen set as a death threat and his first move is to argue with the curation. Killing Them Softly in, Ghost Dog out. A man reviewing his own murder notice. That's the point I knew what kind of story I was in.
I'm very much experimenting with dark and uncomfortable comedy in the midst of very cruel crime and horror stories. Hope I got the balance right.
I'm sort of out of words after this one. Which is great, actually, because it means I can sort of just sit back and thoroughly bask in the guilty enjoyment of it.
Which, come to think of it, is quite probably the emotion you had writing it. Guilty enjoyment, that is.
Despite what I said before, that it is a kind of cruel entertainment and a way to stretch those noir muscles, I also think there’s another dimension to it, call it moral to the tale or whatever.
It’s that we - the big we, our society, not any particular individuals - are collectively attempting to create in our children the most amoral and transactional generation in history. We aren’t succeeding in our aim to dehumanise literally all of them, and there are plenty of examples of concerned young people sacrificing a lot to do the right thing, but maybe we’ve created enough dead-eyed sociopaths to bring about the dystopia that we collectively wish for.
So the daughter killer is on the one hand a delicious sadistic noir twist in the tale, but I think she also represents something wider. Who is she working for? The military power and her own ‘good father’ against the slovenly ‘bad father’ who risked all to save the puppies.
In my enjoyment - I forgot to say - I thought the use of language in this story was quite extraordinary, and it was really quite a humbling experience to read.
Gawsh you’re making me blush - kvell as my chum Alex likes to say.
Thanks very much, sincerely, I worked hard on it (working mostly on trying to get out of my own way) along with consulting with one of the best editors around to help tighten it up.
Absolutely. I did catch the sinister undertones about the daughter - that was a cool way to end it - questions about who she works for etc.
I'd forgotten to say, actually, that during some of my researches for one of my conspiracy articles I read a fair few neuroscience articles about how reward centres can be engaged by the idea of what you might call 'righteous punishment' (or justice). It's perhaps an extreme form of schadenfreude. The brain is effectively wired to enjoy seeing people suffer, but only if they are perceived as bad guys, which partly accounts for the natural ostracism that would've been practiced by ancient humans - thus the theory that all these bad guys which we see bent on domination over others couldn't have succeeded until human social populations become large enough for them to conceal themselves (cf. social cognition number/Dunbar's number). That's to say the 'cabal' as I call them are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Ironically there's a sort of structuralist aspect to that, I guess.
Yes, the same people are attempting to corrupt humanity (well, they've been doing it for a long time) - I was thinking only this morning that the only logistical way to maintain an overt dystopia is to fundamentally alter the human brain - and perhaps this is the nefarious ultimate objective of evil - to manipulate humanity such that the brain evolves/adapts to a monstrous environment, such that sociopathy becomes normalised. At the moment it's still the case that innately the bad guys are a minority, but after 10,000 years or however long of brain adaptation monsters would be the norm. Then again, there'd still be the issue of social cohesion, which is a little difficult when everyone's a selfish sociopath.
So I think there is a lot of catharsis in stories like the one you just wrote. Especially when - as I think you mentioned - it is effectively 'contained' within a restricted space like a story or a movie.
I’m intrigued at present by the scapegoat theory of René Girard. Now Girard has a tremendously bad rep among lefties right now because his adherents are all fascist freaks like Peter Thiel and JD Vance. But there’s nothing inherently fascistic in his writings that I can see. His theory about mimetic value and envy is ripped off Hegel by way of Nietzsche and Kojève, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his scapegoating stuff turns out to be swiped from Nietzsche too.
Anyway, it’s all food for thought. As always the great difference in our ways of thinking are about what motivates these malign changes enabling dystopia - you see psy-ops and secret cabals plotting them, where I see it simply as the structural working-out of the process. Which should make for some very interesting discussions when we get down to ‘debating’ or exploring Marx, Nietzsche and others on social dynamics…
I will have a look at Girard. My brain has already been digesting our potential future dialectic about all this - now and again I find myself writing passages in my head. One point, in fact, which ran through my head only yesterday was the interplay between structuralist forces, and the human agents who maintain those structural forces (for their own [i.e. capitalist/capitalism] benefits). Can they truly be said to have 'choices'? Or are they as it were pathologised by the structural elements of the system. Hmm...
That's a good point I think about how lefties shy away from writings which they perceive to be associated with the right (Nietzsche being a classic example). Ironically, I often come to the conclusion that this is the very reason why the 'left' have never really been successful - by effectively discarding that corpus they are denying themselves at least half of the big picture, so to speak. They need to understand and acknowledge the underhand (i.e. conspiratorial) methods which the ruling class employ in order to defeat the left. Which means understanding the work of the intelligence services.
I've thought this especially about conspiracy theories - how it has been presented as the province of the far right (precisely to deter socialists), when the irony is that it's the socialists themselves who need to embrace these insights. The really interesting conspiracy theories are not the silly ones they have been manipulated into perceiving, but the more 'bread and butter espionage' stuff - basic stuff like MI5 infiltrating socialist movements (agents provocateurs and the like), and of course blatant psyops like Just Stop Oil and XR. This is why I like Kit Klarenberg's articles, even if he is quite the exemplary paragon of verbiage. It's strange the left don't get this kind of thing, given what Lenin is purported to have said about controlled opposition.
All being stuffed away in the folder marked “Evie Dialogue (August?)” for later use… Too busy right now to respond, but rest assured this won’t go to waste.
Please don't kill any more puppies in your fiction or I will sic my superhero puppy on you: https://davidperlmutter.substack.com/p/too-many
Cute pup BTW - I note that this fake dog shelter was monstrous and cruel. At least my guy isn’t quite that way though arguably his shelter is just as fake
But in this case the puppies were saved thanks to the heroics of our main character. Only a nasty Irishman was snuffed, and that’s no great loss to anyone.
To be honest, I’m much more likely to have little kitties maimed and finished off in my stories. Rough, but it’s undeniably a cruel world out there, hermano!
Oh- he just IMAGINED the deaths…
That's right, he dreamed them and that warning what was prompted him to drive over and kill the Irish pyromaniac
I really have to be careful how I read….
Don’t we all…
Please don't kill kitties.
Agreed.
I’m agin’ it as a rule but sometimes the requirements of the story make it a regretful necessity. However I can assure you that all malefactors who do such atrocious things will be roundly and savagely punished.
Like the weird happenings in my stray-cat Istanbul haruspex story, all wrongs will be righted by the end.
THERE IS ONLY THE LONELYBUNS FOR ME NOW.
why am i smiling at all this violence???
Because we all love violence as long as it's safely contained in a fictional world of story, movie or videogame. It's the cheat code to drama.