I realize that quite a few people don’t like "Avenue 5," which likely contributed to its cancellation. And perhaps their animosity was well-earned, as the jokes sometimes fall flat and most of the characters are unlikeable assholes. It is, after all, the story of a bunch of ludicrously rich people aboard a ridiculously luxurious space cruise liner flailing their way toward their own doom.

For reals: Their space cruise liner gets knocked off course, lengthening their voyage from 8-weeks to 3 years, and in their determination to right their course and get home earlier… They end up lengthening their journey to 8+ YEARS after nearly flying themselves straight into the sun.

A ship filled with the kind of people that most would barely feel an iota of empathy for and having them entirely comprise the cast of characters… of course viewers weren’t enthralled with the concept. And it’s not as though there weren’t other people aboard the ship that people might have had more of a connection with. There’s a full staff of maids, cooks, janitors, and entertainment staff that we never see.

One of the first episodes features a woman complaining that the maid that cleans her room folded her towel into an anus rather than the pleasant shape she expected. The comedian hired to entertain the ship has difficulty dealing with telling jokes while staring out a window at DEAD BODIES regularly passing by his view.

Yet we barely see any of the staff aboard the ship. They have to be there, as food is still being cooked and served. Rooms are still being cleaned and shipboard life is still running smoothly enough that the rich people have to be told that they’re in a dangerous situation. But we never see them or where they live.

There was a time in my life where I considered applying to be a crewmember aboard a cruise ship. The idea of being able to use the facilities aboard ship during my off hours and when they weren’t in use appealed to me. Being able to leave the ship and enjoy all the vacation spots while the ship was docked and I was off duty seemed like a great opportunity for someone that otherwise can’t afford to travel. The only thing that stopped me was looking up life aboard ship for crewmembers and seeing that there were a lot of stories of sexual abuse and some ships taking away peoples’ passports and basically treating them as slaves once they’re in international waters and unable to leave the ship.

All the pros made the corporate admitted cons seem bearable. Sharing a tiny cabin with multiple people and only having a narrow sleep berth and a small locker for my own didn’t seem that bad if I would be spending the rest of my time working, entertaining myself, or off the ship when it was docked. Being able to see other countries and enjoy an echo of the luxuries that paying customers did was enough to make me seriously consider replying to the job listing.

So with my knowledge of crew life aboard modern cruise ships–steps removed as it is–I was disappointed that the episodes of "Avenue 5" didn’t feature any of the real crewmembers as main characters.

We see the engineers, we see the comedian, we see the Captain and bridge crew that are actually actors, and we see the "humorously depressed" head of customer relations Matt. But we don’t get any stories featuring actual crew members. The people that are actually keeping life aboard ship running smoothly.

We see the most luxurious cabins aboard the space cruise ship, and we see the large economy cabins aboard the cruise ships… but we never see where the actual crewmembers live and work. We never see the behind-the-scenes life and work of the people that are now being forced to serve the demanding and unpleasant rich people for an EXTRA 8 YEARS.

They signed on to work for 8-weeks–2 MONTHS–and now they’re trapped for 8 YEARS. And we never see them.

I don’t know if the creators and writers of "Avenue 5" simply thought that telling the stories of the crew would be too depressing or if they never thought they would have stories at all… But it really makes you think and wonder about the kinds of people making the show.

Are they so wealthy and out-of-touch that the idea of the crew were complete non-entities? Like, they so lacked the depth of imagination that they focused on the passengers and main crew because those were the kinds of people they could empathize with and they simply couldn’t picture the trials and tribulations the "poor" crew were facing?

Are the crewmembers living in the same conditions as modern cruise ship crew live? Are they spending the next 8-years living in barely habital conditions while being screamed at by asshole passengers? The fake bridge crew obviously have normal-sized cabins, but is that because they regularly interact with the passengers and there’s a chance a passenger might see their living conditions? Or does the entire crew have normal-sized cabins?

The fact that we never see the crew using the amenities aboard ship makes me wonder if they’re forced to live in squalor in the depths of the ship. Are they all crammed in there like sardines while the passengers fall into despair over being trapped in the "tiny accommodations" of their luxurious cabins while enjoying the rest of the massive ship?

Is the crew being paid hourly wages for the entire length of the voyage no matter how long it is? Or are they under contract to receive a lump sum? Are they receiving the same food as the passengers or are they under short rations due to the lengthened journey?

The passengers are seen as being important because they’re still going to be rich when the Avenue 5 finally returns to Earth. As such, Judd and his board of investors see them as being more important than the crew. It’s why Judd hosts a revolving number of passengers in his cabin to try and sooth their disatisfaction and anger over being stuck on the ship.

When the various mistakes they make in attempting to shorten the journey results in further catastrophes, all that matters on the show is how unhappy the privileged people are. Maybe if there were some stories of the crew and their plight, viewers would have had more empathy for everyone. As it was, the whole show is unsympathetic people doing unsympathetic things with the viewer not feeling a sense that anything would be lost if everyone aboard died horrifically.

"And nothing of value was lost" would be the likeliest response if the Avenue 5 flew directly into the sun and burnt up. Which is sad, because there had been such potential in the premise of "Avenue 5."

It’s too bad we won’t ever see if the Avenue 5 makes it back to Earth. Or if everyone will starve or run out of oxygen or be eaten by the cannibal they foolishly allowed on board.

It is a story without an end. We will never know what happens to the crew and passengers aboard the Avenue 5. Their journey home unending and unresolved.

~Harper Kingsley

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Heroes & Villains at Amazon

(WARNING: Spoilers for the movie "Oxygen" streaming on Netflix.)

A woman wakes up in a cryogenic pod with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The pod is running out of oxygen and she has to figure out how to either get help or escape on her own. The story unfolds as the viewer learns her identity at the same time that she does.

The idea that the future is so entirely bleak that the only hope for humanity is to send them to another planet is an old one. But to grow clone bodies loaded with digital copies of the consciousness of humans knowing that there’s no hope for themselves was a new one when I watched it.

I was thinking–along with the character–that she had been kidnapped and buried alive. I believed that she had been put in a medically-necessary cryogenic sleep and that her pod had been hijacked by dangerous people or maybe there had been some kind of natural disaster and the pod had been buried under a collapsed building.

Every single one of her ideas made sense. Her desperation was entirely present and real.

The shock of her first view outside of the pod was visceral.

The realization of who and what she was… and why she was in a cryogenic pod… it was powerful and memorable.

The idea that the Earth is so poisoned that humanity is on the brink of extinction. That the only way for humanity to survive is to create clones with digital memories and send them to a new world and a new chance at life… the sheer beauty and horror of looking out and seeing the damage that had been done to the ship.

Liv’s sheer refusal to lay down and die was admirable, as was her ability to work out where and when she was and what she would have to do to survive. That her tenacity resulted in her saving her own life made for a great ending to a great movie.

There are some that would see the ending of all life on Earth as an inevitability. "There is nothing to do and nothing that our religion will allow us to do. We must lay down our lives and accept the end of everything. It is the will of the cosmos."

The original Liv and her husband, despite knowing that they themselves were going to die, prevailed to save humanity and some form of themselves. They uploaded their consciousnesses, and while their bodies expired on a dying world, their clone-children were able to travel to another world and continue onward.

They died, yet they lived. They expired, but they did not fail in their attempt to survive.

The hope of humanity is not a prevalence of life… but a refusal to give up when there is any possibility for something more.

~Harper Kingsley

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Let's Make Dumplings at Amazon

Someone brought out that picture of the plate with the badly cooked steak and the three-yolked fried eggs with the butter slathered over everything and… Yeah.

The original poster had something like “This is what THEY want to take away from you.” And the poster is some kind of “health” person exercise-bro. You know, the type of dude that has so many muscles he can no longer touch the top of his own head.

And it’s like, “Nobody’s trying to take that away from you. You are perfectly free to load up on protein and fat and sugar and caffeine and salt and… You can eat whatever you want! Nobody gives a fuck. If you want to eat stuff that’s not recognized as being food… you can even legally get it as long as it’s packaged as a supplement.”

For reals: The food and drug association doesn’t control what’s labeled as a supplement. People pack that shit in their garages using a funnel and a scoop and you can get anywhere from 100% the daily value to 7000% to 0% with all the fillers and what-alls they add. Like, there’s a dude that’s right now facing criminal charges for making a “supplement” that contained FECES from his nephew that he was selling as a cure for autism. Like, ableist people fed literal human shit to their children at like $1700 a pop.

So yeah. Want to eat steak everyday? If you can afford it, do it.

Want to eat a dozen eggs and have super hard poops? Go ahead.

Want to eat a whole stick of butter at every meal? Sounds super gross, but knock yourself dead. Literally maybe.

Nobody gives a fuck.

Eat what you want to eat.

And yeah, while you have the freedom to eat whatever you want to eat, other people have the freedom to judge your diet and your lifestyle. Welcome to humanity.

It’s the same with the “zOMG they want to take away our gas stoves!” drama all those dudes were diving into.

Someone said “Hey, even when they’re not in use, gas stoves are releasing a dangerous amount of toxic gas into your home” and those guys were like “They want to take our stoves!”

No, bruh, they want you to understand that your gas stove is releasing a dangerous amount of toxic gas into your home. You have the choice to switch to an electric stove and maybe stop your little kid from having a learning disability or something or save you and your family from developing cancer in the not-too-distant future.

Your life, your choice.

It’s the same with all the actors and what-nots suddenly taking up cigarette smoking. I personally think it’s the dumbest trend ever and that they’re all going to regret it when their skin starts aging like soured milk and their organs start failing and they realize that their quality of life has been severely curtailed… but whatever. They’re grown up making grown up choices.

It’s sad that a lot of them are so young and lack the life experience to realize they’re screwing themselves up, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

I lived through the days when you could walk into a restaurant and be asked “Smoking or non-smoking” and the only difference was that they’d take the ash tray off the table. I lived through the days of anti-smoking campaigns that featured people talking through a hole in their neck with their faces wasted away to almost nothing and those pictures of blackened lungs that looked more like pieces of steak left too long on a grill and burnt to shit. I lived through all that.

I have never been a cigarette smoker and never will be. They taste gross. Maybe that scent when someone first lights one is somehow enticing, but after that they smell disgusting. That stench permeates your clothes, your hair, your SKIN just by walking past someone smoking a cigarette. It’s very unpleasant and I’ve never had a desire to get involved.

“But that’s addiction! They can’t help themselves!” Yeah, and I have total sympathy for people of the older generation that started smoking when they were like 13-years old and didn’t know that smoking was bad. People from a time without seatbelts and child car seats weren’t even a concept of the future. People that were told by doctors that smoking cigarettes could help their asthma.

Those people get all my sympathy, because they were sucked in by the lies of big corporations and they were already addicted by the time the truth came out.

But people born in modern times? Pshaw. You know that shit’s poison and you chose to start using it because you somehow think it makes you look cool.

And okay. Your life, your choice. It’s sad that you’re going to die younger than you otherwise would have. It’s sad that your looks are going to fade faster than they otherwise would have. It’s sad that you have chosen to lower your quality and length of life to fit into a fad.

Eat your terribly cooked steak and burnt eggs, bruh. Nobody gives a fuck but you.

You think that people are going to tell you that you shouldn’t eat that shit because you know that that shit is unhealthy. Your internal turmoil is not my problem.

Light your cigarette with the flame from your gas stove as you ash into your terrible looking eggs as you get ready to saw into your burnt to shit steak.

Your drama is your drama. Your cholesterol is your cholesterol. You could die tomorrow and only the people that know you will care. That’s called life.

Nobody’s forcing you to eat bug protein. Nobody’s forcing you to eat Greek yogurt. Nobody’s forcing you to eat a salad or cut your hair or dance when you don’t want to.

We are all getting tired of the way you try to force your life choices on the rest of us though. The way you use your lifestyle choices to grift with children as your target demographic.

“You’re not a REAL man if you don’t eat a diet of steak, eggs, potatoes, and protein powder. BUY MY VITAMINS AND SUPPLEMENTS!”

“You’re a PUSSY if you don’t have a gas stove and use sandpaper for toilet paper. MAN UP!”

And I get it. Kids are looking for role models, and the word on the street is that “parents just don’t understand.” And there’s the Internet and the algorithm ready to introduce the fresh faced youth to the kind of psyche damaging nonsense that lets you buy a big house and a fancy car before you’re 35.

I get it. You want money and prestige and power and… Yeah. You sell evil to line your pockets. I get it. We all get it.

And it upsets you that the bulk of people don’t want it. That people are beginning to understand that your “healthy lifestyle brand” sells an unhealthy lifestyle that results in colon cancer and heart failure. That your need to live beyond your means and flash cash has resulted in you spending more than you make and that if you don’t continue to bring in the money… you’re going to have to sell your house and car and declare bankruptcy because at the end of the day you have nothing and are nothing.

You’re a burnt steak and three sad looking eggs slathered in butter on a plate.

I like a good steak. Which is one that’s not dripping in oil with a pat of butter plopped on top like a silly hat. I like salad and cherry tomatoes. I like sunshine and butterflies and bumbly bumblebees. I like breathing clean air and drinking water that doesn’t taste like chlorine and sadness because YOUR life choices have resulted in a dying planet.

We live on a rock hurtling through space, alone and lonely with no friendly neighbors in sight, yet through some twist of fate this rock managed to gain an oxygen layer and develop vegetation and animal life.

We live within a delicate balance that with all our science and high ideals we still don’t completely understand. We need the bacteria that make up our biomes. We need the insects that pollinate the flowers that create the seeds of the trees and vegetation that give us fruit and vegetables and oxygen.

We need the wolves and the beavers and the birds and the bats and the mosquitoes we hate but that do so much to make the world we live in.

We need so much that we don’t understand or appreciate. And we destroy so many things that we don’t realize we’re going to miss when the world we need begins to die.

And all those nihilists that wah-wah about how nothing matters because the Earth is nothing but a rock hurtling through space and all current life is meaningless… They’re right.

The human race could wipe out itself and all other life on the planet, and it won’t mean a thing to the Earth itself. Because the Earth is a rock hurtling through space, and even if we managed to BLOW IT UP… those pieces would be sucked into the gravity of another planetary body and add mass to somewhere else while the largest chunks that remain of this Earth would gather more bits of rock out there and in time a new planet would develop.

But the LIFE that the Earth was blessed with would be over and gone. Because the chances of a viable environment developing and life growing from it was so infintesimal that it really could be seen as miraculous. A true wonder of the universe.

So dude: Eat your badly cooked steak and your sad looking eggs and SHUT THE FUCK UP. Nobody cares.

We all have real things to worry about. And in the grand scheme of everything happening? You’re a bit of cosmic nothing.

Gobble down your sticks of butter and cry about it.

Pax.

~Harper Kingsley

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Small Gods at Amazon

I feel bad because my dad keeps trying to talk about the Trump stuff and I just don’t give a fuck. Lock that old man up in prison. I don’t care if he’s old, unhealthy, pitiful, anything. He caused so much suffering and misery that I have no empathy for how he or his family are “suffering” under the consequences of their own actions.

I don’t feel bad for his supporters. I don’t feel bad for the people he browbeat into supporting him through blackmail. I don’t feel bad for any of them. Lock them ALL up. They are ALL criminals.

The idea that he has escaped justice for years because of all the blackmail material he’s got on a bunch of criminals? Don’t care. Lock them all up.

The laws he’s corrupted. The protections he’s lifted. The longterm harm he’s caused to humans, animals, and the environment? Lock him up.

Why are all those trains derailing? Why did a global pandemic kill millions of people? Why are poor people suffering while rich people EAT GOLD?

He’s an evil old man that did evil old man stuff, and I don’t want to hear anything about him. I don’t want to see his face. I don’t want to revel in the dark joy of his misery.

I just want to know that he and everyone associated with him have been locked up in prison where they belong. I want to know that justice has finally been served while better people do what needs to be done to alleviate the harms those assholes caused.

Throwing him in front of the camera to turn attention toward him ONCE AGAIN while kids are being targeted by a bunch of weirdos?

Like, trans people are a VERY TINY MINORITY, yet their very existence is being used to scaremonger weirdos into forcing through their faux-Christian bills and nonsense.

“Oh, kids are reading BOOKS that we don’t like… So let’s go through and take away ALL the books that feature women, Black people, ‘non-traditional families,’ and the history of harms that have resulted in our modern world.”

“We don’t know what mRNA is, but it’s BAD because some chiropractor that’s paralyzed a dozen people with his quackery said so. ALL VACCINES are BAD because they contain gasp CHEMICALS.”

“Gay and queer and trans people NEVER existed in the past. It’s a whole new concept created by the WOKES. I mean, if it existed before, why aren’t there any history books about it from before 1945?”

I’m tired of all the bullshit. I’m tired of all the distraction tactics. I’m tired of the nonsense, the nihilism, and the needlessness of it.

Rich people are getting richer. Poor people are getting poorer.

The system of capitalism is oppressing the public, and the PR departments of evil people are doing their jobs and throwing chum in the water to stir up the sharks so as to distract from what’s happening. And I’m tired of it all.

I don’t care about Trump. I don’t care about his supporters. Lock them all up, and let’s get back to the business of living life the way it should be lived:

  • Stop the transphobia.
  • Stop the homophobia.
  • Stop the racism.
  • Fix the dangerous policies allowing the careless transport of chemicals and dangerous substances.
  • Save the wolves.
  • Save the eels.
  • Stop the book bans.
  • Stop letting people that don’t have children attending a school from having a say in how schools are run. * Fix the post office.
  • Save the orca whales.
  • Vaccinate people.
  • Refuse access to non-medically excused unvaccinated people. (They used the idea of herd immunity as their excuse for CATCHING a deadly virus because they don’t understand science and refuse to learn, and as a result MILLIONS of people have died and thousands of people are dying monthly in the United States.)
  • Stricter gun laws applied to EVERYONE. (I saw a thing saying that the leading cause of death to children in the United States is guns.)
  • Free medical for all.
  • Free lunch for all children.
  • Universal Basic Income (UBI).
  • Deal with microplastics.
  • Deal with forever chemicals.
  • Clean water directives.
  • Save the birds and the bugs.
  • Fix the housing market. (Currently banks and landlords are buying up all the houses and properties so as to raise the cost of rent. They have houses and buildings that remain empty, and they don’t care, because they are creating a false shortage of affordable housing. The law should FORCE them to occupy their rental properties… otherwise they are required to sell them at reasonable prices. No more holding on to necessary housing so as to raise the rates of their other rental properties. It should be a criminal offense. ESPECIALLY if someone living in another country is buying up all the property in the United States so as to rent those properties to locals. Either live in the houses yourself, let other people live in them at reasonable rental prices, or GTFO.)
  • The egg companies should be held accountable for their crimes. Them making record 700%+ profits while creating a fake egg shortage should be a crime. At the very least, wasn’t it price gouging?
  • Children should not be forced to work in factories. With a universal basic income provided to all citizens, there would be more money being fed into the economy, people would be able to buy and sell more things, and EVERYONE would benefit. (“But illegal immigrants are STEALING from the economy because they don’t pay into social security and they don’t pay taxes!” Uwah, dude: They still buy food, clothes, and other necessities. They still pay rent. They are actually a vital resources in our rich-people hobbling economy. And in states like Washington that have sales tax… they DO pay taxes on everything they buy.)
  • Stop the rise of Chriso-Fascist terrorism.

“My body, my choice! I CHOOSE not to be vaccinated!” Fine, then you choose to not go out in public. You choose to have your groceries and other necessities delivered to your house with no-contact to the people dropping them off. You choose to work from home. You choose to wear a mask and gloves when you go to doctor’s appointments and complete necessary tasks. You choose to self-isolate yourself and your non-vaccinated family members.

I saw a Bad Medical Takes recently, and a woman with a partially vaccinated child and two non-vaccinated children was wondering what she should do WITHOUT VACCINATING to protect her children because a child in her middle child’s class had been diagnosed with the MEASLES.

9/10 unvaccinated people that come in contact with the measles catch the measles. It is VERY communicable.

She has an unvaccinated child and an unvaccinated infant. She is vaccinated and her oldest child is partially vaccinated (got their baby shots) and “I dOn’T kNoW wHaT tO dO.” Her child has ALREADY been exposed to an active case of measles.

Like, dude: Your children have already got it. You’ve seriously fucked up their lives and their futures because of your ideologies. They could DIE because of your “feelings” about modern science.

The state of the world today is shameful.

I look at those people, and I am ASHAMED of them.

I am sad for their children and the ways their lives are being adversely affected by their parents’ membership in anti-science cults. I am sad for the opportunities they have missed and will miss. I am sad for the game of catch up they will have to play simply to integrate into modern society. I am sad for the trauma they have experienced and the awkwardness they will go through as they try their best to catch up to their peers in college and at their jobs.

I am ashamed by how those children have been failed by the government and the country that should have cared for and protected them from their parents.

But mostly I’m tired of all the bullshit. I’m tired of all the nonsense. I’m tired of the chaos agents that are using the foolishness and gullibility of others to sow discord and misery. I’m tired of the grifters and the guilters and the misery spreaders.

I am tired.

But I know that I can’t rest. And that makes me angry.

So lock them all up, throw them into the prison system they corrupted with their for-profit schemes. Let them experience the hell on earth that they created with their greed and their negligence and their EVIL. And let’s focus on fixing the problems that they made.

Rather than focusing on reveling in “Let’s get ’em good!” let’s focus on ACTUALLY doing good.

Throw him and his lackeys in prison. And stop the terrible laws horrible people are trying to bully through the legal system.

Protect the environment. Save endangered species. Make the world better rather than focusing on making life worse.

Misery and predatory capitalism go hand-in-hand. While the poor suffer in squalor and despair, evil people are getting richer and the reach of the harms they cause is only getting more wide spread and systemic.

The Earth is a rock and we are specks crawling upon it. But it is our home. It is ALL THAT WE HAVE. And humans have been granted the level of consciousness to understand right and wrong and ethical treatment of other lifeforms and the environment.

To shrug and say “Not my problem” is a shameful embracing of evil.

We can do better. I’m tired of watching humans do worse.