JHUS Staging

Tag: bigotry

  • AfterParty 1.5

    Hey everyone, welcome to another AfterParty, I’m your suave and debonair host, let’s chat a bit!

    In my last AP I talked about having been quite “up” mentally for a sustained period, which was nice, but it had sort of leveled off a bit. The day after that dropped. I had a few things hit me that brought me down pretty hard for a bit – primarily, the absolutely undeniable evidence that my long-held (and long-confirmed, but not concretely) suspicions about where so much of the ongoing pressure against me – which dates long before Facebook or this site, back to the late 90s for the most part – was coming from.

    I’d have rather been wrong, frankly, and the ensuing mental conversation really dragged me down for a few days, back in the ol’ depression soup of wondering whether any of this is worth doing in the first place, the usual drill. I was hoping it wouldn’t get that far at all, but as anyone who’s struggled with mental illness will testify you’re not always in as much control as you’d like to believe you are.

    The good news is I’m slowly pulling back up – in the end there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway, all I can do is keep being me and moving forward as best as possible with the tools I’ve got. I figure if I was gonna be out for “revenge,” that’d be about the best version of it anyway. I’ve written elsewhere about this in more detail, and don’t want to get deeply into again, just offering it out as a way of apologizing for being rather unproductive over the last week, including being a day late on this newsletter.

    On the up side I got the renamed “Morning Message” out with proper video & podcast today, and hopefully my sleep schedule will start working backwards a bit so the whole “morning” thing doesn’t get too ironic. I suspect it will, but right now I’m still in that “I might just get caught up in something an then suddenly realize it’s 3am” mode so I don’t want to make too many promises, but I think I’m on the road back to at least baseline productivity.

    Also dropped a pretty significant Medium article a few days ago. I tripped over a huge botnet/psyop nest on facebook – because they kept shoveling it in front of me so I couldn’t ignore it! – and started trying to ignore it only to find it was EVERYWHERE. Millions of people following hundreds of pages spamming from dozens of websites, etc., all of it either anti-democratic propaganda of some kind or glurgey sappy nostaligia and “aww cute” and ‘WE LUV DA SOJERS’ stuff crafted to catch folks who maybe aren’t caught up on the way the world’s information has shifted in the last ten or twenty years, get ’em following, and then start pushing them a little at a time.

    “The good old days!” That pulls a bunch of people. “When women knew their place and other people weren’t so uppity!” that loses a bunch…but you know the ones who are left are well-primed to be receptive to manipulation through bigotry and ignorance and fear, and we’re off to the races and pretty soon we’re reposting leftist satire as right-wing news and people are falling for it like autumn leaves, working themselves up into a torches-and-pitchforks froth of xenophobia and bitterness, and pretty soon it’s that damned gub’mint and we oughta. So that whole story’s at Medium and needs daylight, it’s an obviously coordinated foreign influence op being given a rocket-fuel boost by our buddy Da Zuck.

    So.

    A few months ago I was living in a hotel room, day to day, all my stuff in bins, no vehicle, no escape, and little hope. Now I’m in a home with a room and a desk and a computer connection and at least a rudimentary work environment. How that happened is another one of those “holy crap, is this my life?” moments that have so famously followed me around over the years.

    I’ve told the story in the past of why I was never a Jack Daniels’ drinker, but it’s been a minute. One night when I was fifteen, I went out with some friends and laid hands on a fifth of jack and a three-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and proceeded to slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it 1985 rock star style until I was absolutely beyond drunk. Only a couple of memories of the night at all – one of tooling down the road in front of Upjohn’s world HQ in my buddy’s Pinto wagon, one of continually trying to unbutton another friend’s shirt, but other than that the night is and has always been a blank.

    Since then I’ve not been able to stand the taste of any kind of whiskey or bourbon or scotch.

    Naturally as tends to happen that group of friends drifted apart, life went on, and so forth, and now I’m living in a hotel just one bare fingernail from falling off the cliff forever. I had at least had the presence of mind to join the chain’s rewards program, so I was building up loyalty points good for rewards like free or discounted room prices.

    It’s like a Tuesday afternoon, and I’m out of money with no sign of any coming in soon. I’d already had a miraculous amount of help – I stayed in that hotel for a month! – and the proverbial well appeared to be dry for the moment.

    I walk down to the hotel office to start the process of cashing in my points, and as I’m standing there talking to the hotel clerk I thought I barely heard someone say my name.

    There’s zero reason for this to happen. Nobody in this place even knows my name except the desk help, and they’ve likely not even noticed it. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone I recognized, and turned back to the clerk, set my arrangements, and started walking out…and I heard my name again.

    I turn around…and it’s the girl whose shirt I’d been trying to take off thirty-seven years ago. Hadn’t seen or talked to her since probably early 1987 at the latest.

    We get to talking, “what are you doing here” “what are YOU doing here” etc. Long story short: she was working on the side because she’s on disability with a terminal cancer diagnosis, stage four in lungs and brain. Super sad. But also, she lives alone and has a spare room and pretty much needs someone to be around to call 911 in case she collapses unexpectedly or something, and heck yeah it’d be a favor to me if you’d move in. Don’t even worry about rent, don’t worry about getting a job or any of the rest of that crap, do what you can, but I just need someone around like right now and it sounds like you’re a perfect candidate.

    Here’s the kicker. You hear “stage four terminal” and think oh, wow, that’s tragedy, aren’t you worried you’re like, taking advantage or something? Thing is, in terms of health she’s ridiculously fine. She had collapsed back in August and at that time the ER docs gave her like…weeks. I ran into her in March and wouldn’t have known any of that to look at her. Still don’t. And she’s one of those types that’s not gonna just sit around waiting to die just because someone said she was gonna.

    So now I’m living here, helping out around the house, being a friend, and finally being allowed, in good faith, to have the time and space I need to actually work, rather than the series of bad-faith attempts to exploit and leverage my powerlessness in one situation to gain further power over my in the guise of “helping” (but now you owe me). We’re not in any kind of relationship or any of that stuff, but our past history definitely helps overcome the gap between in terms of “knowing each other,” we’re both still the same people just older, so it’s a sort of neat combination of being friends and strangers.

    And that, assembled guests, is the deus ex machina that probably saved me from being on the streets. I had another day and that was it – no money, nowhere to go, no way to get there.

    That is why you’re seeing such a sharp spike in my work lately. Took some weeks to get my head adjusted and out of the horrible farce of existence I’d been in for two and a half years in that damn boarding house, but once that started lifting things started flowing and other than the bump last week really have been ever since.

    I’m still not by any means affluent, but I have a stable roof over my head (she owns the house), and her day gig (which she went back to out of boredom) is in industrial food service so even though I have almost no money I still eat. This is extra bonus because it allows me to focus on putting support from folks like you toward my work, rather than just toward trying to keep my dumb ass alive for another day! It’s still a struggle to keep up just the bills associated with the low level or work I’m doing now – Adobe, Microsoft Office, the autoposter for the websites, various other little bits and pieces. And of course my roommate’s diet is pretty limited so I’m eating a whole lot of chemo patient safe food, but on the bright side I’ve also lost almost forty pounds since I’ve been here, from the last time I weighed in at the doctor when I was at the old place. I was 253 there, I think, and right now I’m around 215. Supposedly 197 is optimal; we’ll see if I get that far and what it looks like.

    So that’s my little story for the week about how life’s going backstage here at JH Central I’m going to go ahead and set this public at the normal Tuesday Noon next week. For now as always my many thanks and unspeakable gratitude for your ongoing support, and keep an eye on the website and other platforms for ongoing new content including the newsletters plus more on the multi-part content I’ve already started and whatever comes up between now and next time!

    Oh, hey. Check out this old song that has absolutely no right being as awesome as it is! You can’t imagine how much this was my favorite song when I was like…three.

    Love y’all, see you soon.

  • AfterParty 1.5 (Advance)

    Hey everyone, welcome to another AfterParty, I’m your suave and debonair host, let’s chat a bit!

    In my last AP I talked about having been quite “up” mentally for a sustained period, which was nice, but it had sort of leveled off a bit. The day after that dropped. I had a few things hit me that brought me down pretty hard for a bit – primarily, the absolutely undeniable evidence that my long-held (and long-confirmed, but not concretely) suspicions about where so much of the ongoing pressure against me – which dates long before Facebook or this site, back to the late 90s for the most part – was coming from.

    I’d have rather been wrong, frankly, and the ensuing mental conversation really dragged me down for a few days, back in the ol’ depression soup of wondering whether any of this is worth doing in the first place, the usual drill. I was hoping it wouldn’t get that far at all, but as anyone who’s struggled with mental illness will testify you’re not always in as much control as you’d like to believe you are.

    The good news is I’m slowly pulling back up – in the end there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway, all I can do is keep being me and moving forward as best as possible with the tools I’ve got. I figure if I was gonna be out for “revenge,” that’d be about the best version of it anyway. I’ve written elsewhere about this in more detail, and don’t want to get deeply into again, just offering it out as a way of apologizing for being rather unproductive over the last week, including being a day late on this newsletter.

    On the up side I got the renamed “Morning Message” out with proper video & podcast today, and hopefully my sleep schedule will start working backwards a bit so the whole “morning” thing doesn’t get too ironic. I suspect it will, but right now I’m still in that “I might just get caught up in something an then suddenly realize it’s 3am” mode so I don’t want to make too many promises, but I think I’m on the road back to at least baseline productivity.

    Also dropped a pretty significant Medium article a few days ago. I tripped over a huge botnet/psyop nest on facebook – because they kept shoveling it in front of me so I couldn’t ignore it! – and started trying to ignore it only to find it was EVERYWHERE. Millions of people following hundreds of pages spamming from dozens of websites, etc., all of it either anti-democratic propaganda of some kind or glurgey sappy nostaligia and “aww cute” and ‘WE LUV DA SOJERS’ stuff crafted to catch folks who maybe aren’t caught up on the way the world’s information has shifted in the last ten or twenty years, get ’em following, and then start pushing them a little at a time.

    “The good old days!” That pulls a bunch of people. “When women knew their place and other people weren’t so uppity!” that loses a bunch…but you know the ones who are left are well-primed to be receptive to manipulation through bigotry and ignorance and fear, and we’re off to the races and pretty soon we’re reposting leftist satire as right-wing news and people are falling for it like autumn leaves, working themselves up into a torches-and-pitchforks froth of xenophobia and bitterness, and pretty soon it’s that damned gub’mint and we oughta. So that whole story’s at Medium and needs daylight, it’s an obviously coordinated foreign influence op being given a rocket-fuel boost by our buddy Da Zuck.

    So.

    A few months ago I was living in a hotel room, day to day, all my stuff in bins, no vehicle, no escape, and little hope. Now I’m in a home with a room and a desk and a computer connection and at least a rudimentary work environment. How that happened is another one of those “holy crap, is this my life?” moments that have so famously followed me around over the years.

    I’ve told the story in the past of why I was never a Jack Daniels’ drinker, but it’s been a minute. One night when I was fifteen, I went out with some friends and laid hands on a fifth of jack and a three-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and proceeded to slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it and slam it and chase it 1985 rock star style until I was absolutely beyond drunk. Only a couple of memories of the night at all – one of tooling down the road in front of Upjohn’s world HQ in my buddy’s Pinto wagon, one of continually trying to unbutton another friend’s shirt, but other than that the night is and has always been a blank.

    Since then I’ve not been able to stand the taste of any kind of whiskey or bourbon or scotch.

    Naturally as tends to happen that group of friends drifted apart, life went on, and so forth, and now I’m living in a hotel just one bare fingernail from falling off the cliff forever. I had at least had the presence of mind to join the chain’s rewards program, so I was building up loyalty points good for rewards like free or discounted room prices.

    It’s like a Tuesday afternoon, and I’m out of money with no sign of any coming in soon. I’d already had a miraculous amount of help – I stayed in that hotel for a month! – and the proverbial well appeared to be dry for the moment.

    I walk down to the hotel office to start the process of cashing in my points, and as I’m standing there talking to the hotel clerk I thought I barely heard someone say my name.

    There’s zero reason for this to happen. Nobody in this place even knows my name except the desk help, and they’ve likely not even noticed it. I glanced around, didn’t see anyone I recognized, and turned back to the clerk, set my arrangements, and started walking out…and I heard my name again.

    I turn around…and it’s the girl whose shirt I’d been trying to take off thirty-seven years ago. Hadn’t seen or talked to her since probably early 1987 at the latest.

    We get to talking, “what are you doing here” “what are YOU doing here” etc. Long story short: she was working on the side because she’s on disability with a terminal cancer diagnosis, stage four in lungs and brain. Super sad. But also, she lives alone and has a spare room and pretty much needs someone to be around to call 911 in case she collapses unexpectedly or something, and heck yeah it’d be a favor to me if you’d move in. Don’t even worry about rent, don’t worry about getting a job or any of the rest of that crap, do what you can, but I just need someone around like right now and it sounds like you’re a perfect candidate.

    Here’s the kicker. You hear “stage four terminal” and think oh, wow, that’s tragedy, aren’t you worried you’re like, taking advantage or something? Thing is, in terms of health she’s ridiculously fine. She had collapsed back in August and at that time the ER docs gave her like…weeks. I ran into her in March and wouldn’t have known any of that to look at her. Still don’t. And she’s one of those types that’s not gonna just sit around waiting to die just because someone said she was gonna.

    So now I’m living here, helping out around the house, being a friend, and finally being allowed, in good faith, to have the time and space I need to actually work, rather than the series of bad-faith attempts to exploit and leverage my powerlessness in one situation to gain further power over my in the guise of “helping” (but now you owe me). We’re not in any kind of relationship or any of that stuff, but our past history definitely helps overcome the gap between in terms of “knowing each other,” we’re both still the same people just older, so it’s a sort of neat combination of being friends and strangers.

    And that, assembled guests, is the deus ex machina that probably saved me from being on the streets. I had another day and that was it – no money, nowhere to go, no way to get there.

    That is why you’re seeing such a sharp spike in my work lately. Took some weeks to get my head adjusted and out of the horrible farce of existence I’d been in for two and a half years in that damn boarding house, but once that started lifting things started flowing and other than the bump last week really have been ever since.

    I’m still not by any means affluent, but I have a stable roof over my head (she owns the house), and her day gig (which she went back to out of boredom) is in industrial food service so even though I have almost no money I still eat. This is extra bonus because it allows me to focus on putting support from folks like you toward my work, rather than just toward trying to keep my dumb ass alive for another day! It’s still a struggle to keep up just the bills associated with the low level or work I’m doing now – Adobe, Microsoft Office, the autoposter for the websites, various other little bits and pieces. And of course my roommate’s diet is pretty limited so I’m eating a whole lot of chemo patient safe food, but on the bright side I’ve also lost almost forty pounds since I’ve been here, from the last time I weighed in at the doctor when I was at the old place. I was 253 there, I think, and right now I’m around 215. Supposedly 197 is optimal; we’ll see if I get that far and what it looks like.

    So that’s my little story for the week about how life’s going backstage here at JH Central I’m going to go ahead and set this public at the normal Tuesday Noon next week. For now as always my many thanks and unspeakable gratitude for your ongoing support, and keep an eye on the website and other platforms for ongoing new content including the newsletters plus more on the multi-part content I’ve already started and whatever comes up between now and next time!

    Oh, hey. Check out this old song that has absolutely no right being as awesome as it is! You can’t imagine how much this was my favorite song when I was like…three.

    Love y’all, see you soon.

  • Morning Me, May 18 ’23

    Good morning folks it’s time again for the “Morning Me!” Let’s take a look around at what’s happening in JH’s world today…

    Item: Prestidigitation: Brett Favre is catching headlines all over the place today for saying the country was in better shape under TFG.

    Those headlines are conveniently crowding out the headlines about Brett Favre filing paperwork yesterday to be dismissed from the gigantic welfare fraud lawsuit he’s part of for taking millions of dollars intended to help needy families in exchange for speaking fees and other perks.

    Guess what we’re not gonna be talking about today?

    Item: Legendary professional wrestler Superstar Billy Graham passed away. It remains to be seen whether Jesse Ventura or Hulk Hogan will take the opportunity to also pass away and then claim they did it first. Without the Superstar, half the wrestling business would have never existed.

    Item: the rest of this is pretty dark so here’s something upbeat to dull the edge. Since we were talking about prestidigitation above…here’s Randy Savage surprising you with a little magic from “the cream of the crop” in one of the all-time classic wrestling promos, this one from the lead-up to Wrestlemania III. Just watch it – and watch Savage artfully cover his own flubs without a hitch. There’s a reason I respect the hell out of old-school wrestlers, those cats would come out and cut these promos off the tops of their heads, maybe a little back-planning like the creamers here, and just GO, and I love that. From my own work I know that may not always be how you get the cleanest and shiniest cuts, but it is how you get to the real emotion you need to project for a quality performance…even if it’s something as “goofy” as a professional wrestling match.

    Item: I’m thinking today about how this guy in NYC who murdered Jordan Neely on the subway has already raised $2+ million for his defense fund. I’m thinking about it because over on LinkedIn, I’m seeing a lot of things like people saying they find it “troubling” that this happens.

    I find it troubling every time this happens, and it happens often one way or another. Here’s why it happens:

    The simple reality is fascists, bigots, racists and other bullies support their heroes passionately, enthusiastically, and with LOTS of money, and “we” – “we” being “everyone who isn’t a fascist, bigot, racist, or bully” – don’t.

    They send their kids deliberately to infiltate and take ownership of our systems and processes. We don’t.

    They throw money at people who are out actually doing the things they want done, like murdering Black people and anti-capitalist/anti-fascist protesters. We don’t.

    We refuse.

    Our people – whatever the melanin content of their skin or inclinations of their sexuality or genetics of their gender – who are out doing it starve in the streets while being harangued online as “beggars” and “grifters” while we all sit around telling each other how smart and clever we are for getting on this hot new Doterra or Crossfit trend.

    Our people have to beg for ramen on the internet and half the time can’t even get that.

    Our people are left to couch surf and desperately beg for subsistence while also desperately begging us to pull our heads out of our asses.

    Our people who are really doing the work get ignored while “Occupy Democrats” and “Worldstar Hip Hop” and “TMZ” rake in millions by appealing to our egos.

    Until that changes, you’re gonna keep seeing this happen. Why wouldn’t it? It’s rewarding.

    When someone like me – and I mean “like me,” not some prefab instapundit who made one viral tweet and immediately sold out to the DNC or who’s actually working FOR the DNC while pretending to be an “independent voice” like JoJoFromJerz or BrooklynDadDefiant, the only difference between them and Rittenhouse is the gun – makes $2.5 million dollars for saying that murdering black people and anti-fascists is wrong, and Kyle Rittenhouse needs a public defender because nobody cares to support a murderer, maybe we’ll be getting somewhere. Right now the evidence is clear: the fascists want to fash far more than the anti-fascists want them to stop.

    That’s a big, big problem everywhere, and not just because I’m bitter and angry about the paltry rewards of a life of public service that *isn’t* prefabricated and based entirely on privilege. Until we’re willing to put as much time, energy, and money into doing right as the fascists are willing to put into rewarding wrong, they’re gonna keep winning.

    I know that’s not a happy uplifting thought for your morning and I’m sorry for that, but it is a true thought and it ought to be motivating you and giving you strength of purpose and focus.

    What can YOU do? Lots of people supporting Rittenhouse have no money…but they have no problem telling their friends to pitch in. Lots of people supporting Rittenhouse and others like him have no resources, but they spread every bit of related propaganda around like it was engraved on stone tablets and handed directly to Moses by God. The Rittenhouse supporters aren’t off in a little klatch somewhere arguing intently over whether the kid “deserves” support because he used a Bushmaster and a third of the people in the crowd prefer Remington. The terror funders aren’t worrying about whether Aunt Sally will be offended. The terror funders are THERE. FOR. IT.

    And we…aren’t.

    Fascism appeals to the inherently obedient and submissive. They do what they’re told and march in straight lines, and while I’m definitely one for doing what I want and marching how I want it’s undeniable that there are times when that rigid obedience and unquestioning fealty are an enormous tactical and strategic advantage. This is the problem of the left: the left is inherently disobedient and averse to being herded…which ironically makes us that much easier to herd when a bad actor comes along.

    That’s why actual grifters like Matt “Being Liberal” Desmond, the “Occupy Democrats” Rivero brothers, and the collection of fraudulent astroturf faketivists collected under the “ReallyAmerican1” banner (itself a barely-disclosed account 100% owned and operated by the Democratic Party, and NOT the progressive wing!), among a host of others, are making millions of dollars off you while the real power of the left, the people with integrity and meaningful ideological commitment, ends up dropping off and having to go pick up a job flipping burgers or sweeping floors.

    NOT murdering innocent people doesn’t even pay minimum wage, but killing just one homeless black guy or antifa protestor is worth more than I’ve made, in total, in my entire life.

    Those are your “American Values.”

    When we fix that problem maybe we’ll stop seeing bigots get away with murder.

    Until the people who have the moral high ground decide it’s worth fighting to defend, we’ll keep losing.

    In lighter news, I took most of yesterday offline to handle some meatspace business like cleaning my living space and getting some laundry done, a little light maintenance for my host.

    As I write this, I frankly haven’t decided yet which of the several things on my plate I’m going to eat today, but it’ll be something. Probably get the second part of that National Debt piece up, I don’t want that to get cold before it’s done.

    Beyond that I’ll probably spend the day creating project nodes and subcontent on JHUS. I feel like this last couple of weeks of frenetic construction activity has me getting a bit burned out on structure and meta-work, and I suspect but cannot currently confirm that the next few weeks will pivot back toward actual content, working up video and audio that I can maintain a regular schedule on, and getting a couple more regular content features rolled out. Then when I’ve got a routine set on that stuff so a five minute video isn’t an all-day project, I’ll get back to the meta stuff and build more on that, see what I can fit in. (By way of comparison, as of this moment I’ve got…45 minutes into this post, it’ll be 1:15 or so before I’m done, and I’m hoping to get this into A/V as well as text, regularly, soon…so that’s another hour or so after writing to record, edit, and process everything before posting. That’s too long – two hours a day just to say hello? So I’m working on ways to maximize efficiency on that whole process before I even start doing it, and then that work should translate pretty easily and quickly to other work.)

    Sorry it wasn’t all bright and shiny today. I’m still in a fine mood, mental health is doing great other than worrying about money, and my workrate is still through the roof. I don’t know how long the tiger’s gonna run this time – at *some* point it’s a given that I’m going to hit a depression and things will slow down for a minute, that’s just the nature of my mental illness – but I’m going to hold on tight and ride that sucker until it drops, and right now it’s staying nice and steady, more so than probably at any time in my memory.

    So let me shut up and get back to work. Love y’all, please don’t forget to throw some support my way if you can. Unlike Kyle Rittenhouse I don’t have people throwing millions of dollars at me.

  • In My Room S1E04 – Workplace Gender Equality, Orwell’s Boot

    [powerpress]

    In this archive originally broadcast April 5, 2021, JH talks about gender equality in the workplace and the problems with crusaders who can’t tell vengeance from justice.

  • I Shouldn’t Have To (2010)

    [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BfxTj7_V8c[/embedyt]

    “I shouldn’t have to press 1 for English, this is America!”  Another recurring theme that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.  As you can see from the screenshot/featured image for this article, which was captured on 25-March-2021, it’s still occurring.

    I’m not even going to bother with all the reasons this kind of bigoted, ignorant thinking sucks; anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows the arguments backwards and forwards.  This video is pure bias reinforcement, shot spontaneously outside my home in Kalamazoo at the time.  It’s not likely nor intended to move any bigot who thinks this way.  It’s intended to be something others who feel the way I do about this ignorance can share when they encounter it in the wild, to reinforce and normalize the idea that we’re out here and not going away, and we won’t be gaslighted into hiding in a closet to please bigots.

  • Homo Sapient

    This one’s pretty much just a quick-shot rant at bigots and homophobes and why it’s time to evolve out of that crap. Sad that the conversation has only become more relevant with time.

    Original description: John “LowGenius” Henry takes another swipe at bigotry, this time with a couple of pointed observations and questions about anti-gay hysteria.

  • Rights And Wrongs

    Isn’t it weird how everybody insist they have this weird “right” to do things that harm, damage, and even kill other people? This sort of pre-figures the application of this technique by transphobic bigots to insist they have a “right” to deadname or misgender people.

    Original description: A few words from a long-haired hippie liberal hack whose tired of hearing about “my rights.”

  • The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game!

    The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game!

    Ain’t No Party Like A Savage Party

    (Originally published 24-April-2009. At that time, unbeknownst to me, Ms. Edwards’ career had – recently, then – been basically ended by plagiarism charges. She published two more novels after this article was written. As Stephen King said, no great loss.)

    I’m a reader. I read everything, from the Bible to the Qur’an to the Book of Mormon to Dianetics; from Patricia Cornwell and Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb to Shakespeare, Dickens, Lovecraft, Poe, King, Heinlein, Straub, Bradbury, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Mark Twain…if it’s written down, I’ll read it. I don’t care if it’s a multi-volume novel or the back of a cereal box.

    This rather undiscriminating approach led me to discover what may possibly be the worst published writer I have ever read: Cassie Edwards. The fact that this woman gets paid to write is a stunning and mortal indictment of everything the western world stands for. This is the kind of author who makes you think “Jesus, I could be on the USA Today Best Seller list, if this is the criterion!”

    I’ve read exactly two of her books. Part of one was called ‘Savage (Something),’ and it bears the distinction of being the first book ever in my life that I just could not finish. It was that bad. Cookie-cutter plot, stereotyped characters that are so poorly-written that you’re not just offended at the racial stereotypes (we’ll get in to those below), but simply at the fact that someone got paid to write this crap.  The other part of one was pretty much the same thing.  And the one in my hand right now.

    A collage photo of fifteen Cassie Edwards novels, every one of them featuring a heavily stereotyped, shirtless, Indigenous, American man and a somewhat less melanated woman. Hair flows, etc. Every single title features the word "Savage," e.g. "Savage Mission," "Savage Passions," and "Savage Honor."
    There’s like 85 of these, and that’s just the “Savage” ones…I donated a stack of these to the local library and the county’s average IQ dropped 38 points.

    I’m sure she’s probably a nice lady and all (this is me trying to be too nice. she’s not a nice lady, nice ladies aren’t raging bigots generating billions of dollars in revenue by perpetuating horrible and ignorant stereotypes -jh, 2019) but this woman is to literature what Pauly Shore is to brain surgery. She’s so predictable and cliche that she doesn’t just get one drinking game, she gets a whole party.

    Disclaimer: Please Drink Responsibly. I emphatically do not condone or endorse the levels of alcohol you will ingest if you take this game seriously. I mean it. Alcohol kills people. Be careful.

    That said…on with the show!

    The Cassie Edwards Drinking Game – EZ-Mode~!

    This one’s simple: Open any Cassie Edwards novel. If you see an ellipsis – you know, the three dots? Like…this? Drink. This is actually how I came up with this idea – I found one of her “books” in a box, and thought, “I bet I can open this to ANY random page and find at least one ellipsis.” I tried literally a dozen times, and succeeded every time. I’m holding one of her books in my hands right now, I’ll test the theory just for you! The title of this book is “Her Forbidden Pirate.”

    (Safety note: I was tempted as I constructed this to say ‘drink for each ellipsis.’ DON’T. Do not even think about it. You’ll die of alcohol poisoning before the end of the night. I promise. Even if you’re playing the game with water.)

    1. Page 250-251. Ellipses: 1
    2. Page 296-297. Ellipses: 4
    3. Page 72-73. Ellipses: 0~! (For your party, now pass the book to the next person)
    4. Page 346-347. Ellipses: 7
    5. Page 196-197 (weird the 6-7 keeps hitting). Ellipses: 1
    6. Page 368-269. Ellipses: 8
    7. Page 162-163. Ellpses: 15. FIFTEEN FLIPPIN ELLIPSES IN TWO PAGES! THERE ARE MORE DOTS IN HERE THAN A DAMNED SEURRAT PAINTING! I bet if you ripped all these pages out of the book and pasted them on cardboard when you back away from it it’ll look like the old grayscale newspaper photos.
    8. Page 360-361. Ellipses: 2
    9. Page 126-127. Ellipses: 4
    10. Page 270-271. Ellipses: 5

    So that’s the EZ-mode game. I promise you, if you have enough alcohol you will not be able to play this game for an hour without getting so hammered that you can’t SEE the friggin dots anymore.

    Expert Mode: General

    This is a little tougher, because it requires you to actually read this useless garbage. Fortunately you’ll be blackout drunk before you finish, so you won’t remember any of it.

    Step 1: Head to a used bookstore and find the Cassie Edwards novels. Close your eyes and select one at random. If it has the word ‘Savage’ in the title, find a designated driver.

    Step 2: Drinks are assigned for each of the following ‘plot’ points. I’ve broken these up into three categories: “Savage,” “Non-Savage,” and “General.” The “Savage” points apply only to books with “Savage” in the title, because all of Edwards’ “Savage” books apparently revolve around some bizzaro-world version of Native Americans, and there are some special things to go with that. The “Non-savage” list applies, obviously, to her filthy and witless wanderings outside of the ‘ME JOHN BIG TREE’ sub-genre. “General” applies to both.

    • If the female protagonist is under 18, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is a virgin, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is a pure, untouched virgin, unfamiliar with the ‘sight’ of a man, yet cheerfully casts off her clothes and schtupps the male protagonist out of his wits within the first five chapters, drink.
    • If the female protagonist’s mother is dead at the beginning of the novel, drink.
    • If she’s not dead at the start, but dies before chapter 8, drink. Drink twice if the female protagonist is absent for the death because she’s illicitly snuck off to be with the male protagonist.
    • If the female protagonist’s father is an outrageous bastard, drink.
    • Drink every time you see the word “throbbing” in connection with any part of the male anatomy (especially that part).
    • Drink every time a bosom heaves.
    • If the female protagonist has a friend who is described as “not beautiful in the conventional sense,” “thick,” “bawdy,” or some other variant of “unattractive but we’re trying to be performatively polite about it,” drink.
    • If the female protagonist is raped by the male protagonist and enjoys it, drink (I’m not even kidding).
    • Any time a phrase describes something that simply cannot happen while simultaneously invoking a bad romance novel cliche, drink. (Example, “‘Oh, Royce, I love you so!’ she sighed breathlessly.” You can’t sigh breathlessly. You have to breathe to sigh.)
    • If the male protagonist is cast as some sort of criminal – pirate, grifter, highwayman, etc. – drink. Drink again if it turns out he’s not really a pirate/whatever.
    • If there is a subplot suggesting that the male and female protagonists may actually be brother and sister, drink twice. If it turns out they actually are, drink twice more. If they continue having sex in spite of that, please consider donating a bottle of MD 20/20 to the “Help Cassie Edwards Move Home To MygoshijustLOVEmyfamily, Southwest Virginia” fund.
    • If the male protagonist’s muscles ‘ripple’ at any point, drink.
    • If the male protagonist is described at any point as ‘chiseled,’ drink.
    • If the word ‘loins’ appears referring to anything but a steak, drink.
    • Any time a character speaks out loud to themselves in place of a block of thought, drink. (I’m convinced that Edwards is aware of no other literary style with which to render thought.)
    • Any time a sex act is described as ‘filling her,’ drink.
    • Any time female genitalia is described as ‘her wetness,’ ‘her dampness,’ ‘her moisture,’ or ‘her heat,’ drink. Drink twice if the word “dewy” or “dew” is used to redundantly describe the aforementioned moisture.
    • Any time male genitalia is described as ‘his hardness,’ ‘his need,’ or ‘his love,’ drink.
    • If the ‘plot’ of the book involves finding lost treasure, a misplaced inheritance, or rightfully reclaiming one’s birthright, drink.
    • If the female protagonist’s father dies, drink. Drink twice if he’s dead before Chapter 7.
    • Every time you see a snippet of verse from an obscure poet that reads suspiciously like doggerel from a Hallmark card, drink. Drink twice if it’s the preface to the first chapter! (Thanks Katie!)
    • If the mother or father of the female protagonist turns out not to be her mother or father, drink. Drink again if her mother was kidnapped by her father but decided to stay with him of her own free will because she just loves the bad boys.
    • Any time you see dialogue that rolls off the tongue like a brick – thick, stilted, unnatural, heavy, and in no way related to any mode of speech ever employed by a human being, drink. (Bonus points may be involved; see the ‘Non-Savage’ section)

    Racism Bonus Mode! ‘Savage’ vs. non-‘Savage’

    ‘Savage’

    • Any time a Native American starts a sentence with “Ho,” drink.
    • Any time a Native American speaks in his ‘native’ language, which is rendered as a series of italicized syllables with dashes between them, drink. If he repeats the sentence in English, drink again. If the phrase turns out to be a secret nickname for the female protagonist that ‘translates’ to anything involving flowers, sunrises, does, or bodies of water, drink twice more.
    • Any time a Native American’s skin is described as “bronzed,” drink. Drink again if it’s “shining.”
    • If the female protagonist has a medical condition caused by an obscure combination of herbs assembled by the male protagonist, drink.
    • If the male protagonist (and the Native American is always the male protagonist) is described as a ‘chief,’ ‘brave,’ ‘shaman,’ or ‘medicine man,’ drink.
    • If the male protagonist at any time wears a loincloth, drink.
    • If the male protagonist reluctantly but necessarily kills the father of the female protagonist, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is in a near-death situation and the male protagonist revives her by singing or invoking any form of smoke, drink.
    • If at any series of concurrent events the male protagonist is described as carrying a bow and arrow, hatchet, AND machete, drink.
    • If at any time the male protagonist is depicted wearing a headband, drink.
    • If the female protagonist is assimilated into the male protagonists tribe, at first treated with loathing and suspicion by the other tribeswomen but charming them within two chapters, drink.
    • If the male protagonist already has a wife, drink. If he maintains two ‘homes’ in order to avoid any suggestion of actual kinkiness so as to avoid offending the strange people who actually enjoy reading this crap, drink again.

    Non-‘Savage’

    • If any character of African descent is featured with a name ending in ‘-i,’ ‘-ey’ or ‘-ie,’ drink
    • Drink once if any Black character says one of the following:
      • afadin’ (“fading,” especially when used as a euphemism for sleep or death)
      • any variant of “you be” or “I be” when the verb should be “am” or “are”
      • fo’ (“for”)
      • y’all. Drink twice if “y’all” is used to refer to a single person. Drink three times if it’s rendered as “y’all” and “ya’ll” on the same page. (I’m not kidding. Page 250 of Her Forbidden Pirate.)
      • Reference to either protagonist as “miss,” “missus,” “mister.”
      • Drink twice if “mistah” or “mistuh” is involved.
      • Toast Stephen Douglass if “Massa” makes an appearance.
      • ‘Fore (“before”). Bonus drink if this appears in the same book as “fo’” (I’m not kidding.)
      • “Fret” in place of “worry”
      • afta (“after”)
      • sho (“sure,” usually immediately following “fo’.” A legitimate quote: “He’ll be fit to be tied, Massa Saul will. He’ll come afta’ us fo’ sho’!”)
      • “Land sakes”
      • Yes’m
      • and of course, the ultimate in badly-written dialogue for black characters, “sho’ nuff.”
    • Drink if you can’t quite figure out whether the Black characters are slaves or servants.  Bonus drink if it’s obvious that they are slaves, but the word ‘slave’ is never used.
    • Drink if any reference is made to whipping.
    • Drink twice if it involves “whuppin’,” “whupped,” or “whup.”
    • Bonus drink if this “whipping” business is referenced, close together, by the same character in at least two different ways. (“Massa he goan whup me, I’s goan get a whippin’ fo’ sho’!”)
    • Drink if a Black character refers to themselves in the third person.
    • Bonus drink if the character adds the descriptive, “Ol’” to their names, as in “Ol’ Mazie’s goan fix you right up!”
    • Drink three times if this Steppin’ Fetchit pantomime of Blackness offends you even though you’re as Caucasian as Al Gore.
      • Add a couple of you’re politically conservative and still offended.
      • Add one more if you or any living relative under 65 regularly uses perjorative slang for Black people (e.g. the “n-word”) and yet you somehow manage to STILL be offended at how casually racist this woman is. I am. I’m almost offended at myself for even mentioning all of this, but this woman’s insane caricatures of ethnic minorities need to be drug out into the light where they can be properly examined before being beat to death.
    • This next one is a little tough. Make a two-shot cocktail for the whole party for every page (NOT every instance, see the safety warning above) where you can find linguistic anachronisms in which a black character jumps back and forth between badly-rendered and obnoxious colloquial “black” speech, and badly-rendered, unnatural, and artificial non-colloquial speech. The only way to really explain this is to quote some of it. Please note that EVERY SINGLE ONE of the quotes in the list below is spoken by the same character, the same who spoke the “fit to be tied” sentence a few bullets up:
      • “Massa Bryce will arrive soon, posing as a Doctor Jamison. There is a new doctor in town with the name Jamison, one Massa Saul hadn’t met yet. Massa Bryce will disable the true Doctor Jamison momentarily until Massa Bryce will have time to get you on his ship.”
      • “Miss Natalie, your father depends on me to keep a watch on you while he’s gone…Land sakes, if anything’d every happen to you while he was gone, he’d take a bullwhip to me fo’ sho’…probably until I’d neva’ walk again.”
      • “You’ll stay on the estate grounds, won’t you?…I don’t like the look in your eyes. They be adancin’, Miss Natalie. Since your return from your outing yesterday you’ve been a different young lady. Did you by chance make the acquaintance of a man? Is a man why you are behavin’ so strangely…so defiantly?”
      • “Old Tami ain’t gonna do nothin’ to stir up trouble for Miss Natalie…The years have made you my own.” The idea here is to celebrate the insane juxtaposition of the oh-so-richly offensive colloquial “Black folk”-speak, or proto-AVE or what the hell ever nonsense this woman is trying to stuff into these poor caricature’s faces, often in the same sentence as speech rendered, by the same character, in such precise diction that it seems unlikely even a classically-trained butler would employ it. We’re not talking about code-switching; we’re talking about glaring continuity errors in writing, aside from the outrageous stereotyping

    Conclusions & Further Analysis

    So there’s your game.

    The process of assembling the ethnic stereotypes really brought home to me how truly ignorant, obnoxious, and offensive this woman’s writing is. This isn’t Mark Twain faithfully rendering the language of the antebellum south and the Black slaves who inhabited it – it’s not even clear that this novel took place in a time of slavery, only that it was pre-industrial.

    This isn’t even Stephen King letting loose with a string of racial epithets spoken in the head of a black sub-protagonist by an evil hotel trying to keep him away.

    This is an ignorant, unskilled, suburban white hack who has likely never so much as heard a live black person speak in any context…and from the way she writes dialogue, she’s never heard anyone else speak either. Her non-white characters are a throwback of every advance past stereotype our collective consciousness has taken in the last century.

    I really didn’t start this article to write some hard-liberal politically correct diatribe, and that’s really not who I am (ed. note: in the language of 2009 “hard liberal” would have been accurate, but “politically correct” never has been and still isn’t. I don’t avoid the use of slurs to be politically correct; I do it to not be a dick. I don’t care in the least what people think is “politically correct” or not. -jh, 2021).  My own background is a mix of over a half-dozen ethnicities that I know of, including Black, at least two Native American tribes, and several flavors of European ancestry. I’m not averse to a little off-color (no pun intended) humor now and then, as long as there’s a purpose to it and it’s not just some stupid racist ‘joke.’ I certainly have no problem with honest, historically-accurate portrayals of non-white culture – the Geers, for instance, write some really excellent historical Native American fiction.

    But this woman legitimately offends me, and I just don’t even use that concept very often.

    Worst of all, this is just one facet of many that make this woman a walking offense to the concept of movable type. The dialogue of her white characters isn’t any less ridiculous, forced, unnatural, and just plain crappy – it’s just lacking the colloquial quality that marks her as not only an idiot, but a bigot too.

    But it’s not just the nearly belligerent bigotry in her portrayals of minorities or her utter inability to write dialogue that doesn’t sound like a poorly-written play for grade-schoolers. Every character is a bad cliche. Every sentence she writes looks like it came straight from the diary of a slightly insane Nazi boy of thirteen whose entire concept of female sexuality is based on Porky’s movies.

    And do I really need to point out the patently ugly, sick, and thoroughly evil nature of constantly portraying women who are first forced into sex, and then fall deeply and forever in love with their attackers?

    People play ‘cruel tricks,’ hands ‘flail,’ color ‘drains’ from faces, blue ‘swims’ in eyes, everything is ‘damnable.’ Lips are inevitably ‘forced apart’ by tongues, there is always the obligatory ‘tangle of limbs,’ and slight, spineless women are ‘swept up’ into bulging, rippling, bronzed, shining, chiseled, heroic arms. Heartbeats thunder, one always ‘rises’ from a bed, heat rises in loins, hearts skip beats, and everyone is almost afraid of the next paragraph.

    Whether you’re like me and read basically anything that crosses your path, or you’re a romance novel aficionado, I can not say it strongly enough: avoid this woman’s “writing” like the plague. She is the ultimate embodiment of every bad cliche in the genre.

    Enjoy your drinks. Responsibly.