(and like look I get it I'm an anxious Virgo, I loooove rules... except when I don't lol)

The older I get, the more I realize we're in something of a minority I think, re: the joy of not knowing. 'The dread of something after death' and all—that's why (not to go here before 8am on a Tuesday but) the church exists, at the heart of it. "Scared? Here's some rules!"

oh hey speaking of: happy pub day to @qntm.org, whose ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION is *the* most brain-bendingly playful piece of fiction in years. A text that tries at times to erase itself while you're reading it, that challenges every rule of storytelling, and does so with in-fiction reasons. Genius.

Anyway I'm saying this as much for myself as anyone else. But seriously, even Calvinball can make sense when you're inside of it and letting the joy of it carry you along. Let's have some more *fun* — plenty of people are! Let's make *them* popular!

But I just started reading Robin Hobb and I'm delighted by how fucking no-rules-just-right these books are. Or rather, there are rules, but they're her rules. Same as Lethem—watch the game the author is trying to play, learn that, let it push your brain. Don't get mad that it's some *other* game.

I don't want to play the popular game and I think it is to our collective detriment that so many people have decided that that's the only kind of game to play. (IMO this year's BASFF shows just how dangerously monotheistic (in a rules sense) the field has gotten/is getting.)

I interviewed Jonathan Lethem last month and he mentioned being chided by SF mucketymucks over his early SF "playing with the net down" (a note I also got from an agent ten years ago that fucked me up good) and his reply? "I'm not even on a court, I'm in a field somewhere. What net, and why?"

"frasier, have you been ... building abominations in the basement? does the co-op board know?"

Should've been this cast and everything. Every Tony Award, easy.

(the other big "I want this as a play" movie of the year imo has been Nadia Conners' THE UNINVITED, which should absolutely get Elizabeth Reaser in the Best Actress conversation except I feel like nobody saw the damn thing)

no more Schumers. no more Kaines. no more Cuomos. no more Obamas, even, no more Newsoms, no more Pritzkers, not one more goddamn Clinton. no. who else do you have. show me something else. show me something better.