Savage Lee Writing

Textual Dérive; The Kinetic Phonetics of a Terminal Fool. Written in the Key of H

[savageleewriting]

We are attempting to pacify ourselves with safe media.

True life is full of true horror. Surreal horror.

Movies like Godzilla used to be about representing that horror.

Real atomic energy burns hot and fast, but it looks unnatural. It is a surreal horror. The air looks normal. Your skin begins to peel. The air tastes strange. 

We’re trying to reduce the horror, and turn these things into fun action stories. Haha, Godzilla punches King Kong, everybody cheers. 

Godzilla used to be about the horror of seeing an entire city burn from a single bomb. 

Now the people who dropped the bomb are making movies about Godzilla.

Forest fires are burning so large the smoke blots out the sun.

Oil spills catch the ocean on fire.

Real life is full of surreal horrors.

We turn them into toys and novelties to placate ourselves. 

Push the fear away.

Nothing needs to change. I don’t need to start going to civic meetings. I don’t need to get rid of my car. We don’t need to rethink society. That’s too much work. We don’t like work. We like to relax and have fun.

Make everything relaxing and fun.

Make the atomic burns relaxing and fun.

There is something bad happening in the world right now.

We are living in Chernobyl and sending our kids out to play in the park.

There is a strange taste in the air. The ground is smoking.

Life feels strange. Surreal. Horrific.

We try to turn that off. We try to turn it into something palatable. Something tasty, or at least something we can choke down.

We cannot stand to see the future, or even the present, for what it is.

So we dress it up. We put makeup over the bruises, fancy bandages where the skin is starting to peel back. 

We tell the future, and the present, to just pretend that everything’s okay.

We go out dancing. We go to the movies. We go to a nice restaurant.

And all the while, there is a taste in the air.

Like something is burning. 

[savageleewriting]

I will never understand why comic book movies & shows don't employ the comic book writers who made the franchises successful in the first place. It's like you see somebody drinking from a can of pop, and you're like, "they love that can!" so you pour out all the pop, piss in it, and give it back and you're like, "here you go, just what you love! That can!"

That's what it feels like, when you hire David Goyer to rewrite the characters that authors like Mark Waid and Grant Morrison invested so much love into.If you don't dig the books, and the people who made them, why are you making it? If not out of love? (answer: $$$)

[savageleewriting]

My apologies to all my white friends who live in white communities, and you don't think this is a real issue but if you live anywhere with any kind of diversity, there is currently an ongoing crazy increase in verbal and physical displays of racism. I'm talking attacks and assaults. I'm so sick of specifically older and/or socially disconnected white folks wringing their hands and saying, "well, with a bit of education and positivity, we'll get this racism thing beat!" or "it's just a few bad examples," or "you need to focus on the positive". Acting like "good vibes" and "not being socially or politically active," will solve anything, is damaging. Smugness is damaging. The cool indifference of a person who doesn't want to be emotionally upset by systemic injustice, is damaging. Evil and ignorance prosper from the inaction of decent folks. But then, if you're inactive in the face of evil and ignorance, how decent are you really?

[savageleewriting]

(The Death By Media Man Show)

[savageleewriting]

(The Death By Media Man Show)

The misplaced lust of a lonely man turns out to have cataclysmic consequences.

[savageleewriting]

People always be coming at politicians like "they're a lying crook," and it's like yeah, have you ever met a human being? WE'RE ALL LYING CROOKS.

If we get a chance to get paid for working less, if we get a chance to pay a lower price for what we want... we take it. Got a friend in a position of power, maybe they can bend a rule for you. How'd you get such a good deal? Oh I'm buddies with the person in charge!

We all put ourselves on a pedestal. "Gosh, other people sure are corrupt. Why can't they be good like us normal, simple folk."

And we all play the same game. Get more for less.

Somewhere, somebody pays the price. But you don't have to look at them, so no big deal. I don't have to see the workers who built my computer.

I get so exhausted with the smug self-righteousness we all get so invested in. "How dare other people be lying sum, when I have lived every day of my life in pure, virtuous harmony with nature?"

I get it. We all love to masturbate. It feels good, and kills some time. But do you have to do it so overtly in the middle of our social-political debates?

[savageleewriting]

A man outside is screaming. “Fucking whore,” he says over and over again. He says a few other things, it sounds like he feels he was ripped off, and he suspects the offending party lives somewhere in the area, and he want to kill her, and get his money back.

He’s been out there for at least a half hour now.

I feel like I should call the cops, or say something.

I don’t want to say something. I feel threatened, I feel afraid. I’m reminded of the way my mom’s boyfriend used to scream and get violent. 

I don’t want to call the cops. All I’ve seen in the news for days is a war with the police. Police abusing people. Hurting people. 

I don’t want to call the cops.

Maybe I could go out and rationalize with this angry man. 

It’s Saturday morning, I assume he’s probably coming down from coke or meth or something similar. Friday night drugs, Saturday morning hangovers. 

He’s still out there. He’s been out there for a while. He sounds so mad.

I want to hear a siren getting closer. I want to hear a police car pull and to know somebody’s going to make him stop screaming and threatening. I want him to just be quiet and go away.

Should I go out there? See who he is? I don’t know what he looks like, how old he is, all I can hear is his voice. What if he sees me. I know what he’d yell at me. I’ve heard it all before. I don’t like it. 

My hands shake when I’m tense or angry. It’s difficult to type, to express myself on the page. 

I hear him yell “shut the fuck up,” and I hope that he’s having a confrontation with somebody else, so they’ll have to call the cops. Or deal with it. Or not. 

I don’t want anybody to get hurt. 

That’s naive. Simplistic. Childish. 

I feel childish. Afraid. Small. Uncertain. 

He’s screaming, and I don’t know how to get on with my day.

So I just wait for things to be quiet. 

[savageleewriting]

At one point we thought the monsters might be us, but of course, there was no truth in that. We were kind of selfish jerks sometimes, sure, but really who wasn’t, at some point in their life? 

No, the real monsters were the scuttling beasts that lurked in the night, breathing heavy and scratching up everything with their long, dirty claws. They were mutant people or aliens or something. I’m sure there was a bit twist at the end, a surprising reveal. Oh, they were us from the past all along. From the future. From a wish made with a monkey’s paw.

Either way they were horrible things that lived on human flesh, the fresher the better, and we fought them with our shotguns and our fancy knives. 

Most people died pretty quickly, unable to deal with the existential horror of what we were facing. What did it mean about reality? About life? If such creatures could not only exist, but quickly grow to dominate the world and be the apex predator that displaced all human society? What did it all mean?

I didn’t bother asking such questions. I got myself a cool antique samurai sword and sawed off shotgun, though I quickly traded the shotgun in for a smaller handgun, as those shotguns are really loud. They never really got that right in the movies. It wasn’t fun to use, especially indoors, where the echos of the blast would reverberate off the walls so hard you’d get a nose bleed.

Call us warriors, survivors, call us the hunters who stalk, call us the coolest kids in town. With our half-shaved heads and our slightly infected piercings and tattoos. We ride through town like a Marti Gras on fire, shooting fireworks from our fleet of classic cars we stole from the corpse of Jay Leno. 

All the creeps run and hide, when we come out to play. 

[savageleewriting]

[savageleewriting]

“Well, I finally did it. I killed the Batman.”

“Seriously? Dude, you’ve been living in Gotham for like six weeks. How’d you do it?”

“I shot him in the mouth!”

“In the mouth?”

“Yeah, I figured it’d be best to aim for his face, the one part of him you can actually see, and then just to be safe, I waited until he was talking, and shot him through his mouth. Just in case his skin was bulletproof too.”

“Was it?”

“Nah, but you never know with those guys. Anyway, once he was done, I went to my car and got an ax and some gasoline, so I could chop off his head and burn the body.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“Uh, because he’s a vampire?”

“I don’t think Batman is a vampire.”

“You don’t think Batman was a vampire. Well, either way, he’s dealt with now. I’m kind of shocked nobody ever tried that before.”

“Yeah, everybody else always shot at that bat in the middle of his chest.”

“Why would they do that? We all know the easiest part of the body to protect is the chest. He’s probably wearing like three bulletproof vests on-top of each other. And his face is right there. It’s right there!”

“You make some valid points. Did you try to steal any of his stuff?”

“Nah man, fuck that. You steal from a dead vampire and you’ll get cursed by their ghost.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works.”

“Anyway, I burnt the body, and the head, so that’s him dealt with.”

“Cool. So what do want to do now?”

“Honestly? I think I need to go home and shower. I feel like I’m covered in dead vampire.”

“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a vampire.”

“Well, either way I feel like I’ve got it all over my skin.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” 

[savageleewriting]

I’m not saying I’m better than you but once upon time you were rubber, and back then, I was still glue.

We are solving equations that were never put to us. We had to steal into the math room in the dead of night to figure out where they were hiding the books of advanced notations. We had no idea what we were doing, but we looked good doing it.

Now we’re begging for change, roaming town to town with roses and bullets in our hair. We giggle like school-children, afraid of the dark and of the men with guns who roam these lands looking for interlopers like us. 

Move swiftly, silently, and keep your head down.

We’ll make to the fun-time ball-pit of pizza and destiny. 

Soon enough. 

[savageleewriting]

Can I just say: I hate this.

It's a beautiful day outside. It smells great, the sun is shining, I went for a run. Here in BC, the political party I voted for is in power, and federally, we could be doing a lot worse compared to the rest of the world.

I'm safe. I have insurance and savings. My home is still safe.

And yet. I wake up every morning with sadness and anxiety. I turn on the computer, and I see anti-science protests and growing racism. I feel scared and sad, and then I feel bad about feeling that way. "Why should you feel sad and scared? Your life is fine. You're not allowed to feel sad and scared."

Everything is so normal, and everything is so not normal. It's weird to go into stores, to pass people on the street. There's people I haven't seen in months now. I'm scared for my parents.

And yet everything is normal. Everything is fine. I'll have a nice day today. I have food. Shelter. I'm fine. I should be happy. I should be content and productive. I yell at myself, DO MORE. BE MORE. BE HAPPIER.

I feel awful, and I won't let myself feel awful, and everything is fucking terrible, and everything is just fine.

I'm fine. I'll be fine. Save your sympathy for people who really need it.

But I fucking hate this.

[deathbymediaman]

(The Death By Media Man Show)

[deathbymediaman]

Tracking A Runner

[savageleewriting]

Lately it feels like the matrix glitched, and now the little ball is spinning. 

If we’re lucky, they're trying to fix the bug that got into the system, but the only way they can is by running at a lower activity rate for a while, so it's like "just have all the players stay inside for a couple of months while this patch uploads. Run a plague simulation to give us an excuse for keeping them indoors.”

And some people keep trying to rush it, and they might crash the system if they can’t be patient. Others don’t think we need a patch, they think that’s just the system trying to give us something we don’t want.

I feel like the spinning ball on the frozen computer.

Sometimes I feel like I forgot what I’m waiting for. 

[deathbymediaman]

(The Death By Media Man Show)

[deathbymediaman]

“Bill & Ted.” The Uncle Whatever Show Thing: Episode 146