POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: What EXACTLY Am I Trying To Say With My Writing…Is It A GOOD Thing, Or A Selfish Thing?

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to

Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/. 

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
I’m hard at work writing a short story for my favorite magazine on Earth, ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT – it’s a story pulled out of my novel MARTIAN HOLIDAY and hopefully it will be for ANALOG.

But is that a “good thing”? Is it self-centered? Lately, I’ve been wondering what is it I’ve been trying to say all theses years…I’m gonna ignore my essays, because they have a very particular goal in mind every time I write one. They say essays come in various categories, (persuasive, informative, argumentative, critical, personal, comparative, how to)and I’m pretty sure I can yank each one from the several hundred I’ve written over the years. I recently had a query from someone whose job is “Author Brand Architect & Publishing Strategist”. I have some idea what that is now, but after talking to my wife and my daughter (who is a successful writer (as well as a mental health therapist, focusing on adolescents) – we decided that it sounded a bit too far into the “too good to be true” camp. Enthusiastic and polite, but…well, I’ve decided not to pursue that.

At any rate, I’ve been wondering what exactly it IS I’m trying to say to the world – in particular in my fiction. I think I’ve hesitated for some time because I’m AFRAID of what I’ve been trying to say all these years. So…finally, I think I’ll take a few of the stories I know BEST and tell you what I’m trying to say in them…

Certainly Orson Scott Card is “…speaking to this (maybe in more than one story): “This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.” ― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s…”writing primarily focuses on feminist retellings of mythology and history. She often subverted patriarchal narratives by shifting the focus to female perspectives, exploring the clash between pagan matriarchal traditions and emerging Christianity, and examining themes of personal freedom and morality.”

Lois McMaster Bujold's writing “…explores themes of overcoming adversity, the power of empathy, and the triumph of intellect over physical might. She often highlights characters with disabilities or those marginalized by society…”

Steven Brust “…explores the tension between personal ambition and the consequences of one's choices. Through his signature "Cool Stuff Theory of Literature" (writing stories about what he finds coolest), he masks sharp, egalitarian socio-political critiques.”

Bruce Bethke “… confronts Cynicism Toward Authority and Revolution: His broader writings look at the absurdities of power, often highlighting the cycles where revolutionary movements ultimately get replaced by equally oppressive authoritarian rule.”

C.S. Lewis “…wrote his Space Trilogy (also known as the Ransom Trilogy) to combat the rising tide of secular humanism, scientific materialism, and technocracy. He argued that humanity's dream of conquering and colonizing the universe without God was a dangerous and spiritually empty ideology.”

CJ Cherryh’s “…science fiction…explores the realities of human survival, political pragmatism, and the profound difficulty of understanding genuinely alien minds. Rather than focusing on miraculous technologies, she examines how individuals, cultures, and species navigate social inertia, maintain institutions, and adapt to survive…”

So, how about me? I DID run across this in an essay I wrote in February of 2022: “I guess I adhere to the MASH ‘school of writing’: deal with a serious issue; and (in the best episodes), reveal a humorous side to the deadly side. I’ll need to remember that in the story I’m writing right now.”

That’s given me an idea – maybe I need to go back to what I’ve written in the past. There must be SOME hints of what I’m doing with my writing in among the past 19 years of nattering on about myself and what interests me! Besides, while I KNOW the number doesn’t reflect the “number of fans” I have, it DOES reflect (actually COUNTS) the number of times people have visited my website:

That seems to be a few…

or a bit more on “what I’m trying to say”, follow the link to an essay by me published by SFWA in July of 2012 (I know, fourteen years ago! But I find my thoughts are still pretty much the same…) here: https://sfwa.org/2012/07/11/guest-post-when-did-science-fiction-and-apocalypse-become-interchangeable/

I also answered some questions on goodreads when EMERALD OF EARTH came out a few years ago. You can read it here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/1229225.Guy_Stewart/questions

But the question still remains for ME to answer, “What am I trying to say?” I think it may be a good idea to READ WHAT I'VE WRITTEN! It also wouldn't hurt if anyone reading this would respond and tell me what YOU think I'm trying to say!

Inspiration: My Own Work and other writers I admire.
Image: https://austinkleon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/85167617_1212494135614198_5965732498133583053_n.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: And The Best Captain In Star Fleet Is...

Over five years ago (January 26, 2021), I wrote the following essay for a website called STUPEFYING STORIES (the article was here and there are HUNDREDS of other articles and stories on the site: https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com) I STILL LOVE IT! (Follow the link at the end of the article to the story!)

The best captain in Star Fleet is not named Kirk or Picard?! What is this madness?!?!?!

But seriously, consider...

Captain, father, diplomat, religious figure? For three seasons, Benjamin Sisko held the rank of Captain, and was then promoted to Commander for the last three. In my humble opinion, Sisko blew away Kirk (both Shatner and Pine), Picard, Janeway, Archer, and Lorca—blew them right out of the water—plus, he didn't have a starship to flash around in, just a dumpy old space station that broke down every other episode.

Picard was given the top-tech flagship of the Federation. Kirk captained the first starship to actually go on an exploratory mission (though the TOS version of the Enterprise didn’t seem to do much actual exploring or research). Lorca’s job was to save the Federation from a devastating war with the Klingon Empire. Archer took the very first Warp 5 starship and led the very first mission out of Human space, albeit under the watchful eye of the Vulcans, who stood ready to mop up any mess Archer got into. Janeway, with an amazing ship, had to rip disaster out of the mouth of diplomacy as practiced by the Federation and the Cardassian Empire.

Sisko got a ruined space station, intentionally sacked by the departing Cardassian former owners, a deeply suspicious population below who wanted nothing more than to get rid of all these frickin’ aliens and go back to Life As We Knew It…

Oh, and Siskko’s “liaison” with the Bajoran Transitional Government was one of their most celebrated terrorists, who saw the Federation as just another version of the Cardassians.

“Here you go, Sisko. Let’s see what you can do with this. Hehehehehehe…”

Woops, I forgot: along with an actively hostile civilian government on the world below; and an actively hostile military government a few moments away by starship (which neither he nor the Bajorans had access to); there’s also a clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity that can detach bits of itself to take on the shape of anything in order to spy on you.

His son Jake’s best friend was so altered by his relationship with the Siskos that he chose to become the first Ferengi to enlist in Star Fleet (and he eventually became a captain, too), which of course, ended up ameliorating the ”money-grubbing” nature of the Ferengi so much so that Rom, Quark’s brother, became the new Grand Nagus.

Oh, and another thing: Benjamin Sisko was the only one of the captains who dared to take the really risky voyage of marriage and family life. [Though Kirk apparently tried, briefly, and admittedly failed, except for the making-a-kid-part. In the canon Kirk tolerated fatherhood for an undisclosed amount of time, then ditched that ball-and-chain like an irritating Orion slave girl—though apparently in Orion culture it’s actually the men who are the slaves of the women who only pretend to be slaves, which is yet another interesting and kinky little corner of the Star Trek universe that remains unexplored.]

In addition to the above, Sisko’s son chose to be a writer, and eventually became deeply involved in Bajoran spirituality and Fulfilling the Prophecy and Freeing the Prophets and Restoring Balance to the Universe and all that stuff that made some sort of sense if you watched all the episodes in sequence, but that is impossible to explain to anyone who hasn’t.

Back to Benjamin Sisko. When confronted with the clandestine observation by an actively hostile alien entity called The Great Link, whose stated intention is to destroy all Solids; and which could detach bits of itself that could assume human-like form in order to spy on Humans, one of which ended up on DS9 and called itself Odo; Odo became so loyal to Sisko that he very nearly refused to halt a plague given to The Great Link because he’d fallen in love with a Solid. Odo’s respect and love for Nerice and Sisko then made him reenter The Great Link with the cure for the plague and save all of it/them, bringing about the end of the Dominion, the downfall of the Cardassian Empire (again), and the integration of a bit of Star Fleet into the Prophets of the Wormhole.

Talk about your big redemption series ending!

So let’s just tot this up. Benjamin Sisko:

• saved Bajor

• reformed the top Bajoran terrorist
• forever altered Ferengi social fabric
• became a religious icon
• fulfilled sundry religious prophecies, including the Final Prophecy of the entire Bajoran civilization
• saved and reformed an entire collective alien life form, in the process ending the Dominion War
• earned the respect of the Cardassian Empire

And he did this all without a starship, using just a dilapidated, booby-trapped, former prison of a space station as his base.

So tell me again, exactly what did Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Archer, or Lorca ever do that compared to that?
Finally, from a reality standpoint, Benjamin Sisko has been relegated to being an unsung hero of the Federation. Why doesn’t he receive more accolades? How many real biases did he topple? At the very least, two: he was the anti-absent black father and the anti-uneducated black male. Despite all of this, not only is Sisko—or more correctly, Avery Brooks—pretty much forgotten, he should in fact be a major hero in Star Trek canon.

But he’s not. People rave all the time about Kirk or Picard. Not only did Sisko/Brooks end up being a fictional invisible man, he actually tried to bring this up in the infrequently mentioned DS9 episode, “Far Beyond the Stars.”

Brooks commented:

“If we had changed the people's clothes, this story could be about right now. What's insidious about racism is that it is unconscious. Even among these very bright and enlightened characters – a group that includes a woman writer who has to use a man's name to get her work published, and who is married to a brown man with a British accent in 1953 – it's perfectly reasonable to coexist with someone like Pabst. It’s in the culture, it’s the way people think. So that was the approach we took. I never talked about racism. I just showed how these intelligent people think, and it all came out of them.”

However, it wasn’t supposed to be entirely about racism. Brooks added,

“The people thought it was about racism, well maybe so, maybe not [….] But the fact of the matter in 'Far Beyond the Stars' is that you have a man who essentially was conceiving of something far beyond what people around him had ever imagined, and therefore they thought he was crazy.”

This episode was Avery Brooks' personal favorite.
“I’d have to say, it was the most important moment for me in the entire seven years…It should have been a two-parter.”

Rene Auberjonois commented:
“Brilliant episode. One of the best of the whole series and Avery did a fabulous job of directing it.”

Michael Dorn said:
“It was wonderfully shot.”

Penny Johnson commented:
“This was beautifully handled and beautifully shot. But it still, in the heart, it got me.”

J.G. Hertzler commented:
“I thought it was one you could have built an entire series from. There was a scene toward the end where he falls apart with the camera right in front of his nose. It was just riveting.”

The same scene was also extremely memorable for Nana Visitor. Armin Shimerman thought highly of how the installment serves as a reminder of prejudice, especially racism, the actor commenting,

“That's what that episode does terrifically well…it’s perfect science fiction. I think it stretches the imagination of the viewer and breaks down the fourth wall to talk about the real heroes of any TV shows, which are the writers.”

As for me: Benjamin Sisko and Black Panther should have had a face-to-face...*sigh*
 

Go to for the original: 
https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/01/and-best-captain-in-star-fleet-is.html 

(You'll ALSO find twelve comments from people who read it!)

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS/SLICE OF PIE: RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE Is ACTUALLY Speculative Fiction! (PART 1)

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

I hated Westerns – the movies, the TV shows, the outfits (EW!) Cowboy hats and horses (EW! EW!) The whole schmear! I couldn’t stand them – Gunsmoke? Bonanza? The Wild Wild West? Wagon Train? Rawhide? Have Gun – Will Travel?

I loathed all of them and would rather spend my time picking my toenails than watching ANY of them.

Then I discovered STAR TREK (I wasn’t TOS (= The Original Series) because at the time, it was the ONLY STAR TREK. I was a fan from the first show and the influence on my then-11-year-old-mind (I was 9 when ST premiered and my Dad didn’t let me watch it until I was “old enough to watch it”…which was when I was 11-going-on-12 aka Season 3 (and FINAL season). I was in love with it and with science fiction. Imagine my horror when I discovered that Gene Roddenberry had pitched STAR TREK as "Wagon Train To The Stars"!!!!

In the blog I’ve frequently reflected on my launch into science fiction culminating years later in my being a published SF writer (with my upcoming new-and-FIRST-TIME-SELF-published novel, MARTIAN HOLIDAY (see post below)).

In an attempt to broaden my reading horizons, I’ve been picking up cheap or free novels and other books when I find them at clearance sales, or at the GOODWILL. I try and grab books I wouldn’t willingly pay money for and maintain some vague hope that “I might read it someday”. So, one day, I (somewhat reluctantly) grabbed a dog-eared copy of a Western book I HAD heard of, obviously, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE. What I didn’t note above, is that it has the cover flag, “THE GREATEST WESTERN CLASSIC OF ALL TIME!”

OK, I was sold. I brought it home and shelved it, promising to read it “someday”.

A couple months ago, gritting my teeth and wincing at the lurid cover of three cowboys riding horses and brandishing rifles, I cracked it open.

The first sentence did NOT grab me (I leave it to the reader to find a copy and read it (or GOOGLE it)). I kept reading, hoping it would get better. Much to my surprise, it actually DID get better. In fact, by the time I was done, I’d become convinced that it was essentially a SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL.

First of all: alien life forms: horses. I KNOW horses are from Earth! I’ve even ridden one! My brother has a bunch of them and my niece has ridden competitively. But…I’d never really reflected on what exactly a horse WAS. It was a genetically manipulated, living, breathing TOOL. Horses at the time of RIDERS (1912 when Grey wrote it and even MORE so when it takes place, in 1871). 154 years ago were NOT show animals or expensive pets. They were work animals and bred to serve humans in multiple ways and to the best of their deeply bred abilities! They were cared for, but not coddled. They were USED. They were valuable because of what they did, not what they looked like...they were, again, TOOLS.

So, how about this, let’s leap 154 years into the FUTURE: the year is 2179…

Some SF books that take place at that time? NEUROMANCER (W Gibson); GREEN MARS and BLUE MARS (KS Robinson); ENDERS GAME (OS Card); THE CAT WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS (RA Heinlein) to name a few.

ROTPS is as alien to me as Mars becoming a livable planet, or Earth military recruiting children to fight wars against bug-like aliens.

The world Grey had to imagine was a half-century earlier than his own…

In 1871, Utah was only a Territory! In fact, at the time of the story, there were only thirty-seven US States and California had been one for only a couple of decades. The West was made up of a patchwork of territories and not under US law. They were, in fact, the Wild West. Intellectually, I suppose I knew that – but Grey brings the world of the purple sage to life no less so than Anne McCaffery brought the alien world of Pern to life – and with places, peoples, and incidents even MORE alien that Pern, because I know that Utah actually exists here on Earth.

Example: I suppose I’ll start with the most obvious by first setting the stage: my wife and I love watching movies. We dislike R-rated movies, but will sometimes watch them because of the “historic artistic importance” of them. We recently watched two versions of A STAR IS BORN. We thought we’d start with the newest first – staring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. We didn’t know much about Lady Gaga except her name, but we’d enjoyed several of Bradley Cooper’s movies in the past.

The language? (Let me set the stage here: I worked in an near-inner-city high school and the “feeder” middle school as a classroom teacher (sciences of various kinds) and as a school counselor for 41 years. My son was in the military for 12 years, and my daughter works with teenagers as a therapist. I am no stranger to “the-F-word”). But in this one movie, that singular word is used 74 times. (I’m sure you’d love to argue, so here, write to Hunter Harris at VULTURE (https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/how-often-does-bradley-cooper-say-fuck-in-a-star-is-born.html).

Oddly, even though he’s writing about COWBOYS on the range, not a single one drops an F-bomb. Or an A-bomb. Or an S-bomb...If that’s not ALIEN, I don’t know what is…And there’s not a single OTHER cuss word in the novel. It’s SO squeaky clean (of course the censors in 1912 would have NEVER published a novel with blue language!), that I could give it to my six-year-old grandson to read without fear.

OK – I got that out of the way, so next week, I can delve into the alien world of RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE…and I expect to be just as amazed reflecting back on it as I did as I gradually fell in love with the strange, alien world in this elderly story.

Inspiration: Finally reading RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE by Zane Grey
Image: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/616z0KpAjRL._SL350_.jpg

A SPECIAL IMPORT FROM MY OTHER BLOG: Guy's Gotta Talk About Type 2 Diabetes

Few of you who read my blog POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS, know that I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes about four years ago. At the time, I was writing on another blog about my life married to my wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer some 11 years ago; some time later, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease; and finally I was identified as a having Type 2 Diabetes. Being who I am, I dove into researching all three of these with all of my intellect and skills of doing online research.

The main reason was that I felt I NEEDED TO DO SOMETHING other than sit around with my hands tucked under my butt. For the fourteen years I wrote on GUY'S GOTTA TALK ABOUT..., I kept the two blogs separate.

But I felt it was necessary to post my GGTA blog here on PIE...not ONLT that I am absolutely certain that what I wrote is liable to irritate SOMEONE, if not the reporter who wrote the British newspaper THE GUARDIAN's article as he'll never read it...nevertheless, if he DID, I'm sure it'd bug him (even just a tiny bit.), but because it's important.

It's important for people to know that they CAN MAKE CHOICES and that no matter how oppressive our world is (though it's our own perceptions that have led so many people I know to despair that the world TODAY is worse than it has ever been in all of...well, at least recent history...anyway, this is just to let you know that I've imported this from my OTHER blog because I think it's important for me to say this...

FORTUNE MAGAZINE on 10/13/25

"Lay’s drastically rebrands after disturbing finding: 42% of consumers didn’t know their chips were made out of potatoes"

https://fortune.com/2025/10/10/pepsico-lays-rebrand-consumers-didnt-know-made-of-potatoes/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNZ6v1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFaUjVGbFlEdHdFcEpSN2t0AR4plAGexWZ-aJD0zVs8IhBT9_lIGoDGd2_8m0EXZCIIvNsORmsk_QdE1Q5uoA_aem_TWzYlg9UvqBILTax6a3AwQ

OK -- go ahead and read my essay below -- you'll understand why the article above supports my argument below...

Taken from:

10/12/25

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…TYPE 2 DIABETES #36: Indictment of an Insincere Rant I Read In An Old Issue of The Guardian

For the first time since I started this blog eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes two weeks ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome to join me!

FROM Sunday, December 4, 2022

ANY diet I submit to will be for the remainder of my life. I WILL NOT say I get this whole thing of living with my diabetes yet. I’ve had Culver’s and Dairy Queen treats. I don’t live in a monastery on a mountain top! But I need to control them. I need to substitute FRUITS and vegetables for sauces and rice. Make better menu choices that EMPHASIZE meat and vegetables rather than rice and nacho cheese…(we’re going out tonight, Mexican!)

Like I said, I’m not good at this yet. But I’m working on it. It’s just I have to remind myself that I CAN’T dawdle anymore. This I important. I’ve damaged my body with 65 or so bad habits…

In case you were wondering? This isn’t the last you’ve heard me on the subject of “diet” – and I’m not preaching at you. I’m trying to figure out how to live longer with my diabetes!

ALMOST THREE YEARS LATER…

[As I get a bit ranty in a few paragraphs, I’d like to say that I am NOT a fan of Big Pharma and have been known to rant against THEM at times. But I really, really really dislike insincerity exhibited by people who have a captive and sympathetic audience…]

I now take Ozempic (see LOTS of my previous posts!) and a veritable cornucopia of drugs that help me help me live a happy and productive life.

So, let’s start with the one I’ve had and heard DIRE warnings about. First words from the (OBVIOUSLY EVIL AND ENTIRELY CORRUMPT Pharmaceutical Establishment)

“Metformin-containing medicines are available by prescription only and are used along with diet and exercise help control blood sugar in a number of ways. These include helping the body respond better to the insulin it makes naturally, decreasing the amount of sugar the liver makes, and decreasing the amount of sugar the intestines absorb from food. It is available as a single-ingredient product and also in combination with other medicines used to treat diabetes. See FDA Approved metformin- containing Medicines. Common side effects of metformin include diarrhea, nausea, and upset stomach.”

I’d like to note here that these are ALSO side effects of having children, working a job, eating too much, exercising too much, NOT exercising enough, and tax season.

The deep concerns of others is that metformin will cause Vitamin B12 deficiency, metallic taste, and weight loss (HOW IS THAT A CONCERN??).

The main concern of our fringe friends is “Lactic acidosis, a potentially life-threatening buildup of lactic acid in the blood”. This can make you feel very tired, breathless and faint, so your doctor may check the vitamin B12 level in your blood. If your vitamin B12 levels become too low, vitamin B12 supplements will help.

So, while researching this, I was stunned to read the following in that paragon of British Journalism, THE GUARDIAN: “The American Diabetes Association takes millions from companies that stand to profit from our reliance on drugs. Is that affecting their guidance?”

After several paragraphs of ranting about drug makers and the GLORIES of “just tell people to eat less carbs and no one will need any Type 2 Diabetes drugs ever again!!!!” (That was never written, but constantly and consistently proclaimed)> The closest the author (“Neil Barsky, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and investment manager [and] the founder of The Marshall Project.” (Wikipedia writes: “… a journalism nonprofit intended to shed light on the United States criminal justice system, as well as to promote prison abolition.” How this makes Mr. Barsky an expert on Type 2 Diabetes (he is a Type 2 diabetic), I’m not sure as I’m also a Type 2 Diabetic…)

He states emphatically: “The ADA is far from the only obstacle to widespread adoption of a low-carb diet. Absent a national health education initiative that links carbohydrates to the diabetes epidemic, low-carb clinicians will be a voice in the wilderness. It can be challenging for many people with diabetes to forgo the breads, sweets, pastas and starches that form the basis of many diets. And given the dearth of healthy eating options on the shelves of many American supermarkets, some clinicians I spoke with, each of whom was dedicated to their patients’ wellbeing, said it was more effective to simply prescribe their patients pharmaceuticals.”

So, aside from it being “challenging” to anyone who is Type 2 diabetic; and the (really? Where does this man live? He can’t shop at the places I shop – like CUB, Rainbow, Target, and other easily, widely present grocery stores) “the dearth of healthy eating options on the shelves of many American supermarkets”…they’re all there. Even at the corner FASTANDEASY Mart…they OPTIONS are there.

The problem is that the Human Species has EVOLVED to find the EASIEST way to get their calories. This writer, in order to BLAME OTHERS for his own condition, finds it easier to PREACH the idea of “BLAME OTHERS” for the choices most Americans make all the time, every time, and if you check the annual profits of MacDonald’s and any other restaurant on Earth, available to the fabulously NOT wealthy. According to him, “The losers are the millions of people with diabetes who suffer amputations, blindness, neuropathy, often daily shoot themselves with insulin and eat carbohydrate-rich foods because they simply are not informed about their healthier options. It is not too late for the ADA to, loudly and in no uncertain terms, tell people with diabetes the truth.”

I’m unsure what conclave of Humans entirely insulated from First World societies this writer lives in, but writing this, he provided a MASSIVE boost to the millions of First Worlders searching for someone to blame – instead of choosing not to stuff their faces with fattening, truly horrible foods rather than saying to themselves, “Nah, I don’t need to order two triple-burgers with the works, and a quadruple order of fries with cheese sauce, and my favorite flavored sugar syrup water! I sure wish someone told me that there were sensible alternatives! No one ANYWHERE HAS EVER MENTIONED THAT I DON’T HAVE TO EAT SO MUCH THAT I FEELING LIKE PUKING…or fall into a FOOD COMA the moment I sit down in my overstuffed recliner…”

And as always, I’ll remind readers (and Mr. B) that when I point a finger at anyone, I’m firmly aware that the other three fingers are pointing directly back at me…

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/17/ada-american-diabetes-association-big-pharma
Image: https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Top Grossing Movies of All Time 1976 - 2022 And What They Mean To Me

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Sixteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things with my blog. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, the oldest of which just became a teenager. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife, kids, and grandkids and sometimes friends. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.

This week? "Top Grossing Movies of All Time 1976 - 2022" and what it means to me...

The YouTube below showed up on my FB feed a few weeks ago. I watched it with rapt interest! Truth? I was beginning to think that I should either give up writing to get published altogether because I just haven’t been selling to the markets I care about. People seem to prefer watching TV, YouTubes, and other media that doesn’t require anyone to anything but CONSUME.

I am not a couch potato – my wife and I are in the habit of watching either news or movies with our meals (when we’re not out with friends). As the non-print media follows the desires of its vast constituency, the number of readers continues its slow decline: “In 2021, 17% of U.S. adults said they read no books in the past year, about the same percentage as in 2016 and similar to most readings since 1990. At the same time, there was a decline in the number reading more than 10 books, from 35% in 2016 to 27% in 2021.”

Surprisingly, “Estimates suggest that in 2024 U.S. adults will spend an average of nearly three hours watching traditional TV each day. This figure has generally fallen in recent years and the downward trend is forecast to continue in the years to come.” (https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx#:~:text=In%202021%2C%2017%25%20of%20U.S.,2016%20to%2027%25%20in%202021.)

On the other hand: “Streaming services have achieved a near-ubiquitous presence in American homes, as highlighted by the latest findings. An overwhelming 99% of U.S. households now subscribe to at least one or more streaming services, with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ topping the charts. This near-universal adoption is a testament to the shift in how entertainment and media are consumed, moving away from traditional models like cable TV to more flexible, on-demand streaming options.” (https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/streaming-stats/)

So, I still like books. People still READ books. So, how do I compete with the upturn in the number of media consumers and the slow decline in readers?

What if I start WRITING what people are WATCHING? This question leads then to another: WHAT should I be writing?

Below you can find a visual link to a YouTube that shows the shift in the movies that have made the MOST money from 1976 to 2022.

You know, if you’ve read this far, that I mostly write Science Fiction (SF, NOT SciFi!!!!), with a bit of fantasy tossed in there for interest. My science fiction ranges from a focus on aliens to a focus on the impact of technologies.

What I discovered is that I’M WRITING IN THE CORRECT FIELD!!!

Watch the video. If you don’t want to take the time, here’s the end result: as of 2022:

In case it’s not clear, the TOP SEVEN ALL TIME (as of 2022) grossing movies are: Avatar, Titanic, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars VII, Avengers: Infinity War, Jurassic Park, and ET: The Extraterrestrial.

The first involves aliens and virtual reality; the second is a plain, old-fashioned romance that takes place during one of the most identifiable disasters of all time; the third and fifth both involve numerous aliens, some of whom are the Avengers themselves (and an AI in human form (which is also what Star Trek’s Data was…)); the fourth has literally COUNTLESS aliens and takes place in a far-away galaxy; the sixth involves futuristic and (literally) MASSIVE epigenetic manipulation, and the seventh, a "soft" alien invasion movie.

All of which, I might add, are science fiction – except for Titanic, which (let’s be honest) is probably mostly “fantasy set against the backdrop of an essentially unwitnessed event”. [UNWITNESSED???? WHAT??? Really?] It was dark and even though there were 706 survivors out of the original 2200 passengers and crew, few of those were interested in watching the ship sink – and they couldn’t see what was happening once the generators stop and the lights went out.

So…what should I be writing? Let’s see what I can parse from this list:

1) I need aliens.
2) Three of the seven had “war” as a backdrop. The others include crime, history, and alien invasion (of an admittedly mild sort – and how DID ET’s people survive in the wide universe? Or were they the sole sapients beside Humans in our part of the galaxy)?
3) ALL of them involve exceptional characters, usually as part of an ensemble “cast” – the only loner being ET, and that was accidental…Aliens, war, crime, history, alien invasion, and exceptional characters usually as part of a coherent “group”.

A surprisingly prosaic list, I think. Virtually every science fiction story I’ve read in the recent issue of ANALOG fits this “formula”. So, if the PARTS aren’t what’s important to hit the multi-gazillion-dollar movie bracket then…what IS?

Food for thought!

Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXRA9s-A-gA

Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LXRA9s-A-gA/maxresdefault.jpg