0 comments on "The moral of the story is"

I probably got Google thinking I was hacking into my own email account. I backed out of their little “harder level” verification like 90 times before I said “Fuck it.”

I don’t know if they still have human employees or not, but at the very least they should be paying professionals to test their shit.

I hate being told “Your data has been breached!” when I’m just trying to go about my day.

You don’t know how miserable it can be.

To be in a downbeat mood and BAM! News everywhere about how some company I’m “supposed to trust” falls to the level of being unfeeling inhuman monsters.

Dude, a “simulation” isn’t real. You’re running all these data points and nonsense and blowing it out your ass…

and like: real people will always throw a wrench in the works.

Why aren’t your stocks doing well?

Hey, mf’er, it’s your own fault! It’s not mentioning to the companies churning out your dividend payouts that you don’t like them being evil.

It’s having stocks in terrible companies and NOT opening up your mouth and being like “Hey, dudes: I’d like it if you’d stop mindlessly killing people. People are willing to pay the money. Which means we can make our whatever without destroying the world and killing everything in our path.”

For reals: Your $15 essential product doesn’t need to be that serious.

You make something that people need even if they don’t realize they want it. You don’t have to cut so many corners that your product becomes a safety hazard.

Pay for a quality build. DO THE RESEARCH. Slave labor is not a good thing. That’s not a materials source that you should be cozying up to. Your little whatever should not pay to contaminate a local water supply.

“I don’t eat meat because every hamburger has a face”-people–or the ones that just say that shit for the giggles–need to also keep in mind the production process of their favorite gadget.

Nobody wants to find out that a company that now makes juice products once caused a government to be overthrown, resulting in the deaths of countless generations. (“Your family incense stops here.” Taps the middle of a once long line.)

So if you’re making and selling your own products… When the manufacturing company asks you what source material you want to use to make your whatever, say the one that doesn’t provide the money that’s used to keep people in slavery conditions. Give a pass to the material that comes straight from human and environmental misery.

Sell your products in a store at an affordable cost. “The price of materials including shipping to your facility + the level of difficulty + the time it takes + a fair amount of profit” is the cost. The level of difficulty and the time it takes is the money you pay employees–and “CEO makes 110% more than everyone else!” should not be a consideration.

Then make an advertisement/social media post mentioning that people would appreciate receiving your essential product, which makes “community gifting awesome fun!” a venue for your product. Give bulk order discounts. (You’ll still be making a profit. And it will be a real profit, and not a result of cutting corners.)

Give up on the idea of “200% profit” margins. Whoever’s urging you to “rake in the money” isn’t taking into account what would happen if the people really did decide to eat themselves some “tasty” wealthy-looking people. (A lot of people watched Hannibal for the foodporn. Just saying.)

[Mental image: Those coin machines at “the fun zone” where the coins drop in and pile up. You pay to sweep the arm to try and drop money. Just a pile of QUARTERS glistening with silver light under the blazing white bulbs. And your eyes get caught on that MONEY and you can’t help thinking about all the things you could buy with that money. And then when you win, it drops tokens or tickets or whatever the bloated local economy of this hellscape for kids happens to be. (How many went home to cry once they realized they wasted their allowance on imaginary money?) And the exchange rate is like “500 tickets for one box of Nerds” or some other evil shit. Just a pure cash grab because “kid zones” aren’t allowed to give out cash prizes.

The parents or guardians or struggling aunts and uncles that just wanted a few hours away from their kids in an adult-centered environment… In a time before “everybody has a cellphone”-times, adults would check children in at a shady “kid zone” and leave to go gamble and drink and go have adult time. And those kids would have to hang out and wait. Like, “Here’s $20 that will last you approximately ten minutes of continuous play and a couple coupons for free meals that might or might not work. Be back in 5 to 8 hours. Deuces!”

A lot of places didn’t allow adults entrance. So that’s something? Except you’d get these kids that I really wished my little sister didn’t keep wanting to hang out with. Like, I’d give her the money to pay for the games and I’d lurk on the fringes of her playing with other little kids. But when she got older, I’d be able to sit on a bench and read a book or something. I’d keep an eye out, but I’d have to let her play with other kids. There was only $20. Not enough money for us both to play. And some of those kids were seriously troubled.

So like, adults couldn’t enter the “fun zone” to keep the pervs out… but some of those kids did pervy things and the “childcare providers” on scene were busy standing at a podium or behind a prize counter not giving a shit unless some kid started scream-crying.

And that “not really a cash prize machine” would take pride of place in the middle of the room. And there’d be some kid with a handful of quarters that would feed all their money into the machines hoping they would get a big win and the arm would sweep all the coins out for them. Forget any kids that want to play after them. The dream was to WIN IT ALL! and like buy a car or something.]

Remember that Buffy episode where Cordelia made that life affirming wish?

I mean, I don’t know if it was life-affirming in the moment. But she definitely let go of her love for Xander.

She didn’t remember the horror she lived through (and died from), but there was some kind of hold left on her soul. No conscious memory, but she didn’t hesitate to move on with her life after the wish world was broken.

And like, in that wish world everyone wore drab colors and tried to keep a low sense of presence because the vampires were attracted to bright colors and bright people. Because before they were turned, they had bitterness and unhappiness in them that was only enhanced by their new existence.

Some people don’t want to see others being happy. That’s a fact.

It’s like “I have so much money that I can’t spend it all in fifty lifetimes, but I can’t feel rich unless you and your children don’t have clean water to drink and you end up with a life sentence in prison if you even THINK about moving your kid to a better school district.” And then they wonder why everybody hates them and wishes they were dead.

~Harper Kingsley

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Let's Make Dumplings at Amazon
1 comment on "RE MOVIE: Feast (2006) (spoilers, horror)"

Alright, first off: Spoiler alerts.

So if you want to watch the movie before reading my ramblings, go do that.

I’m going to describe the happenings of the movie, and I’m also going to fantasize with my brain about all the other choices they could make for a follow up.

And straight off? It was dumb.

It was a dumb horror movie. Not really one that I would eat during because they seemed to think that “gross=funny” when really it’s just gross. Like, you’ve got all this talent in one place and a few changes would make it a mainstream popular horror movie, but instead you’re going to have monster dicks for no real reason. You know, it’s for the low-quality exophiles; it’s the equivalent of the boob shot.

Not going to lie, there’s some District 9 fan stuff out there that’s beautiful. Lyrical writing, great storytelling, and enough quality and delineation that you don’t have to read the monsterfucking if you don’t want to. This movie is nowhere near that level.

And I’m not too proud to say that I thought there was going to be some kind of reveal about why the monsters keep fucking peoples’ faces. And when the beer guy was shown to have maggots already crawling out of his just ripped out eyeball hole? After he was vomited on by one of the creatures and his skin starts melting?

I thought it was going to be like giant flies or something.

But they never explain in the movie. The monsters pop in, and either murder or get murdered. And that’s it.

“Rawr!” Boom-boom-boom! “Oh shit, you blasted my toes off with your wild shotgun shooting!” “Rawr!” “Shoot it! Shoot it!” Ad nauseam.

And there’s follow up movies and it’s a trilogy???

But I’ve only seen this one, and I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to see the others as they seem like they might be worse. (It would be like trying to watch the Species movies for their edutainment value. (None at all.) And even there the first movie was the best of the series. Like, I watched the movies, but would never describe them as quality.)

Anyways, Feast is set in a crappy bar in the middle of the desert. And there’s two waitresses, one with a kid, an old lady barfly, an inspirational speaker salesman guy, Jason Mewes, an old bartender, “The Boss” who owns the place, the “Vet” in his uniform drinking and talking about going home to his wife and then leaving back for the front lines to get away from her, the beer delivery guy, a young guy in a wheelchair, “The Bozo” who seems to be a local troublemaker, and “Harley Mom” who is planning to rob the bar.

Starts with The Bozo in the bar pushing the guy in the wheelchair away from the jukebox and saying “Shut up, fag!” as he does it. And like, yeah, casual slurs of the 2006’s.

But later, when the relationship is revealed that they’re brothers???

And when The Bozo gets scared and he jumps in his brother’s lap and hugs him? Or when he pulls him out of the way and protects him? And then when the wheelchair gets ruined, he carries his brother to safety?

They have a true and loving relationship.

I enjoy their interactions. Like, The Bozo may genuinely be a piece of shit person, but maybe it’s just the persona he puts on when he goes to the bar to scam money at pool?

Like, he pretends not to know his brother, and insults him. And then later the brother purposefully bumps into Jason Mewes to distract him so The Bozo can rub grease on the cue ball.

They have a whole routine going. And it’s just to make money to live.

That’s kind of likable to me. I enjoy that their relationship was there.

The salesman guy was annoying with his jibber-jabber. He would present these ideas that would later be revealed as awful or counterproductive. (When they return the dead baby monster, and the big monster eats it, fucks its mate, and the mate births two more? They don’t say, but I feel like that was his fault.)

Jason Mewes is just there for the cameo. And it looks like he’s wearing a terrible black wig. Just awful.

The one waitress–Honey Pie–has big dreams of leaving town and being famous. Pre-monster appearance she is almost seduced by the salesman, but his wedding ring falls out of his wallet. And she’s a silly person, but she has no interest in being a homewrecker. Her later assholeness seems like a big surprise, but I’ve also gotta question why she should trust a bunch of scumbags after all the horrible shit she’s seen and being covered with a bunch of blood and seeing maggots crawl out of a guy’s face hole? Maybe she’s the most levelheaded of the whole bunch 🤷🏻‍♀️

The other waitress is Tuffy, the single mom. She’s working in an awful bar and seems worn out and miserable in her life. At the beginning she has the bartender pour her a shot that she was going to charge to someone else’s tab until The Boss walked by and she paid for it herself. She then goes to the living area upstairs, puts headphones over her young son’s ears, then goes into the room to be fucked by The Boss. Who she obviously does not like.

From the outset you realize that she’s been living a hard life. I don’t know if she lives up there above the bar and is working for and sleeping with The Boss for housing and security, but it doesn’t seem like she has a car?

Anyways, Tuffy is the main character. No lie. It follows the others, but basically she is “the hero” of the story.

And there is a literal “The Hero” character that pops in covered in blood and waving a rifle, but his introduction is more for comedic purposes than anything else. “I’m here to save you!” Whoops. His wife comes in, “Where’s my husband? Oh noes!” and she becomes “The Heroine,” there to save everyone and get back to her daughter.

But Tuffy is the main character and hero of the movie. The loss of her son early on is the motivating force behind her wanting to get The Heroine back to her daughter.

She tries to take a leadership role, but she’s not good at it.

“Savior character”-wise, The Bozo is the protagonist. He’s the able-bodied young man with enough strength and quickness to constantly be pushed into dangerous situations. There’s very much a “You’re a man!” sense to it all as other people volunteer him to risk his life.

And like, he’s got his brother to take of. His life and his bother’s life are his motivations throughout the movie.

And while everyone in town might think he’s a garbage person… in the end, he’s brave when he’s needed to be. And throughout the movie we’re shown that the “good” people are pretty shitty.

Like, I’m sure The Boss would describe himself as a “law abiding citizen,” but he’s really the worst person there.

He is sexually harassing his employee, a single mother that he knows to be desperate. He knowingly kills someone. And he probably cheats on his taxes too, likely by stealing his employees’ tips or something. Just an all around piece of shit.

The beer delivery guy is the “loser” character. By the end, I bet he was wishing he’d listened when The Boss told him to GTFO–“You’ve delivered the beer. Get out of here.”–but lingering around the bar seems to be what he does.

Like, he goes in the basement without permission. He messes around in the backroom. When they’re trying to come up with escape plans, he knows a lot of the hidey places around the bar. Just general information that a random delivery guy should not have about someone else’s business.

If he’d left after delivering the beer, he would have avoided all of that and been much better off for it.

Instead, beer delivery guy has a truly terrible experience.

Basically everyone has a bad time.

They’re locked in a crappy bar with people they can’t really depend on. Monsters keep attacking. And the monsters are able to eat, fuck, and give birth within minutes. Which means theoretically there’s potentially a never-ending tide of monsters to deal with.

And the movie is set in pre-iPhone 2006, so nobody has a cellphone (not even Jason Mewes? Didn’t anyone check his pockets???) and the monsters are intelligent enough to take out the landline and the CB radio The Bozo risks his life to reach.

And the movie ends without explaining where the monsters came from, how many there are, and whether they’re attacking everywhere or just in that small area. We don’t know. And I don’t want to watch the other movies so…

In my imaginings, maybe those things are all over the place. Breeding too fast to be killed.

And if they were like mutated giant flies that are able to use roadkill as body protection and bones as tools… that would be horrifying. Female flies lay between 75 to 150 eggs at a time and they can hatch out within 24 hours in warm weather. And they can lay multiple batches in their lifetime, resulting in up to 500 flies within a week from one female.

Which is why I thought the giant fly monster idea would be a good explanation. Like, they’re giant and they’re walking around with a bunch of larva on their bodies–which explains the roadkill they’re covered in (it’s giant fly baby carriages). And like, those weren’t really monster dicks but monster ovipositors.

So when beer delivery guy was vomited on, it was to start the digestion process. And he was thrown up on twice, once to start digestion, and the second time to cover him in larva that would then have a food source to grow out of.

And all those dead bodies that kept having their mouths humped? They were being loaded with eggs that would hatch out later.

So like, if anyone in that bar had truly been heroic, all of the creatures would have been wiped out and any found bodies would have been burned or crammed into barrels for later research. But with the way things happened, within days the entire continent would be overrun before anyone could figure out what’s going on.

Which sounds like a more horrifying ending then the lack of explanation we got.

Anyways. Dumb movie. But possible inspiration fuel for much better pieces of work. Your mileage may vary.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

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Kakushigoto 01 at Amazon
1 comment on "Say No to Being Roasted"

Dude: Roasts are always unpleasant.

They are not for the enjoyment of the roasted. Especially if they have any sense of shame or emotional fragility.

I don’t think roasts are fun.

I’ve seen funny little clips from some, but for the most part a roast is an unpleasant experience.

Choosing to be roasted? Saying "Yeah. Please make the most hurtful and burning jokes about my appearance, my relationships, my children (whether they exist or not), my gender, my sexuality, my genitals, and the tattoos I got when I was barely coping with reality." doesn’t seem great to me. I myself would make a different choice.

Just say "No, thank you" when someone asks whether you want to be roasted.

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.
https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
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Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
1 comment on "Scumbag Billionaire – Chapter One"

By Harper Kingsley

CHAPTER ONE

There’s so much water.

It’s everywhere.

Salty and terrible.

Almost worst than the blazing heat of the sun. The light so bright and encompassing. Burning away his skin one reddened layer at a time until he wondered when he would be left as nothing more than bones.

Floating forever on the ocean. Or withered down and swallowed by the waves.

His mouth was so dry. Surrounded on all sides by water, but so thirsty his lips stuck to his teeth and his tongue felt too big for his mouth.

He was dying. He knew it and couldn’t stop it.

His death was an inevitability at this point. So far from the shore that land was nothing more than a half-remembered dream to his sun burned mind.

This was the end of him.

These were the last moments of his life.

And thinking back… he felt regret for all the time he’d wasted. Enjoying his moments but not treasuring his hours. This was all he had left.

Floating far from shore. So thirsty he couldn’t feel hungry. So hot that all he knew was burning misery.

These were his last moments.

Floating lost. Hopeless. Knowing he wasn’t going to be found.

It was hot. That’s the first thing Ames realized. The horrible, all-encompassing heat.

Then he recognized the slapping sloshing sound around him: water.

He tried to groan, but his throat hurt too much. When he weakly shifted he lost his balance and slipped off the board he hadn’t realized he was resting on.

He splashed into the water. Gasped. Panicked. Swallowed a mouthful of salty ocean water. Began to drown.

Lights flashed behind his eyes. Or maybe it was the darkness cutting away the light.

He weakly tried to kick his legs, but his body was too exhausted by sunstroke.

He passed out.

And found himself in memory. Back in the hospital where he had so recently died after saying his final farewells to his tearful family and friends.

Everything had had a haziness to it from the painkillers. It had reached the point where there were no longer limits to the amount he was given. He’d held the button in his hand and could control things for himself, a little bit or a lot. It didn’t matter because he was going to die anyway.

He’d pushed the button enough to take the edge off the grinding agony. But he’d held off enough that he could coherently say his goodbyes.

It had hurt to see his mother sobbing against his father’s shoulder. Neither one of them had thought he would die first. Barely 29 years old, but so ravaged by cancer that there was barely anything left of him.

Ames had managed to smile at them. Had spent his last precious moments offering them comfort rather than focusing on the fact that he was really dying.

Some bit of him had felt resentment, but he hadn’t allowed it to show. He wanted his loved ones to remember him the way he was, not like this, wasted away in a hospital bed, full of wires and tubes, piss and shit pumped out of his body through holes cut into his belly near the feeding port that had kept him alive for the last year of his life.

His body had failed him in the worst way.

And when everything ended… It was to the sound of his loved ones weeping and the blare of the heart monitor. Then blackness swallowed him whole.

He wasn’t expecting to ever wake up. Much less on a beach. Naked.

He could tell he was naked by the pain of sunburn covering his entire body. His legs screamed when he tried to move them

His entire body felt as if it were covered by a tight leather suit that was shrinking with every minute that passed. It felt as if too deep of a breath would cause his skin to split.

He couldn’t even groan. His throat was so dry it felt torn in places. He could taste the metallic flavor of blood.

Ames didn’t want to move, with how much it hurt, but he knew he had to. If he didn’t save himself, he would die here.

He didn’t have much strength and he could feel it becoming less as he lay on the sand. The energy was being sucked out of him as the sun baked him alive.

It was agony. Every move he made was like a scalpel peeling off his skin. And below the flesh was screaming nerves.

If he didn’t have the memories of the hospital, of the sickness, of the dying… he might have given up. Might have laid back down in the hopes of passing out and dying in his sleep.

But he’d died once.

And however he’d gotten to this place, he would see what happened next. He was no stranger to pain. He could take this much and more.

He just wished he didn’t have to.

It was the dream–the delusion–of a body that didn’t hurt that kept him moving. Crawling up the beach, away from the water to the tree-line and the desperate hope for shade to bring him some relief.

He crawled. And crawled. And crawled.

And he would have cried if he had tears. But he was so dry, the moisture sweated and baked out of him until it was pure will that kept him moving. Only the fire of his soul kept him alive.

Lights and colors and strange fluttery sensations… He felt like he crawled into madness. The heat and the sunlight blazed upon him. The thirst made every bit of him ache from the surface of his skin to the depths of his teeth.

He thought his gums were bleeding. His throat was raw and torn by the dryness. His bones felt cooked inside him.

He was dying.

The sand, rough and white, was like diamonds cutting away at his skin. Scraping, peeling, digging into him.

And still he kept crawling. The delusion of coolness and relief luring him on.

The agony was proof positive that he was alive. It was a good thing. That’s what he tried to get himself to believe in his lucid moments. In the brief seconds and minutes when he formed actual thoughts and didn’t simply do.

There were stretches of time when he didn’t know why he even bothered. Heartbeat upon heartbeat of time when he had no idea where or when he was, the very concepts of beach and sand and sun made meaningless and unknown by a brain that was frying inside a skull covered by hair and sunburnt scalp.

This was death and dying. A complete transcendence of being.

He was on an impossible endless journey of unmaking, and if he reached the other side he would be reforged into something new.

Or he would unravel completely. And all the bits that made him him would catch fire and melt away, leaving only carbon residue. Unrecognizable and unrecognized, lamented by no one.

He would be like a smear on a water glass: wiped away.

.

Time had no meaning. There was only the distance between him and the shade.

He didn’t even know what he would do when he got there. How he would deal with his raw, burnt flesh. How he would alleviate the terrible and deadly thirst.

All he knew to do was crawl. It was endless forward momentum.

His eyes had gone dim and his ears were filled with a rushing sound that drowned out the sighs of the ocean. His heartbeat was a pendulum. A drumbeat. A vibration through his blood.

He was dying, but he was still alive. For now.

/END CHAPTER