Ian Pierce

Tag: attack and dethrone god

  • light a roman candle and hold it in your hand

    It’s July 4 here in America. Well, technically it’s July 4 everywhere, except on the other side of the International Date Line, where I suppose it’s tomorrow. This is America’s Independence Day, and more than that, it’s the 250th anniversary of America’s independence. This is a big deal! As far as I can count, there are eight countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Timor-Leste, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and South Sudan) that are younger than I am, so lasting this long is something to be celebrated. 

    And yet, due to the Way Things Do Be™, I’m left with more complicated feelings about this anniversary than celebratory ones. A lot of those have to do with the rotting pumpkin man currently occupying the White House. But more than that, it’s about the hijacking of patriotism and even the definition of what it is to be American by billionaires, religious extremists, and bigots of all kinds. As usual, I’ll try to get my thoughts in order by writing them, and I’ll end by saying why I think it’s important to celebrate Fourth of July despite these assholes. 

    When we define a “country”, we’re really talking about three separate things: the people, the current government, and the land itself. Those can become difficult to tear apart for some people, especially since the government supposedly flows from the wishes of the people, but there is a difference between, say, an Iranian person and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is a land rich in culture and tradition, a culture that rivaled Rome at its height, which brought us Persepolis and the Behistun inscription, algebra and the 1001 Nights. I have a great respect for that culture and the people who came from it. I do not have respect for the Islamic Republic, which is a theocratic fascist regime, nor do I have respect for the Shah’s rule that preceded it. I hope that someday a government comes to Iran that reflects that country’s heritage, the wisdom and gifts that it has given the world. 

    Similarly, I can love the people of Israel while categorically rejecting the Zionist project, fight for Palestinians’ right to self-determination without supporting Hamas’ terrorist attacks. One of the most important lessons about the internet is that, most often, the assholes aren’t the majority, even though it seems that way. It’s just that they’re the ones who can scream the loudest – and often, those loud screamers end up in positions of power. 

    Which brings me to my country. In terms of land, America is unparalleled anywhere in the world. What other country has tropical rainforests and arctic glaciers, alligator-filled swamps and mountains that practically scrape the sky? And what other country has cities like New York or Chicago or Seattle, places where people from all around the world can mix, creating new foods, new art forms, entire ways of thinking? We’re the country that created New York pizza and the Mission burrito, hip-hop and rock and jazz, the animated cartoon and the video game. 

    We can do this because “American” isn’t an ethnic identity like “Norwegian” and “Japanese”, because we don’t have thousands of years of history and tradition weighing us down. Because of this, anyone can be an American, and we can all look to the future. 

    That’s what I believe. But there are millions of people – not the majority, but a significant amount of very loud assholes – who reject that idea. They’ve created a restrictive version of America that doesn’t include the masses, that only includes them and the people who look and act and believe like them. They’re trying to force this definition on the whole country, forcing us to get in line with their view or be destroyed. And they just so happen to have elected the loudest, stupidest asshole in the whole world to be their figurehead. 

    These people have hijacked the symbols of patriotism like the flag and the national anthem so that now, in order for people to show that they do not stand with the loud assholes, they are forced to reject those symbols. And by rejecting those symbols, the assholes claim that we hate America. The ironic fact is that these assholes, who paint themselves to be so patriotic, actually do hate America. Or rather, they hate Americans: millions of us, brown and gay and trans and disabled, anyone who does not conform to their narrow, exclusionary vision of what it is to be American. 

    Well, guess what, fuckers. We don’t have to conform to your vision to be American. We reject your small-minded vision of what this country should be. Because America has never been a white Christian English-speaking nation. (Just look up the Treaty of Tripoli for proof of that fact.) And even if it were, we have the right to choose our own path. We have the right to reject the atrocities committed by the past and create a new future where your toxic beliefs remain in the sewer where they belong. 

    I’m not advocating blind patriotism. America has done and continues to do horrendous things, and many of those crimes are still unanswered for. But loving a friend or a family member doesn’t mean loving them only when they do the right thing. It means accepting their flaws while also holding them accountable. One of the most patriotic things we as Americans can do is demand that our government should be better. If you see a friend or a family member hurting themselves, either unwittingly or knowingly, you help them. And America is hurting itself. Stepping in to stop that – to make it and ourselves better – is the most patriotic thing you can do. 

    People don’t protest because they hate America. They protest because that is one of the most profound expressions of love anyone can give: to recognize something is wrong and stepping in to fix it. That’s what true patriotism is about, not blind obeisance to a pedophile rapist dementia-riddled nepo baby snowflake who’s turned the executive branch into his own personal racketeering operation. 

    The assholes have claimed the symbols of patriotism because they see themselves as the only true Americans. The most powerful rebuke of that attitude is not to reject or denigrate those symbols but to appropriate them for ourselves. They do not get to say that only they get to wave the American flag or celebrate the Fourth of July. They do not get to say that only they are the real Americans. They do not get that right just because they say so. They claimed it for themselves, and we can take it back. 

    So, for America’s 250th anniversary, this disabled, queer, progressive, autistic, asexual, democratic socialist, atheist, long-haired, Satanic t-shirt-wearing American citizen is going to be doing exactly that. 

    And eating hot dogs. 

    Because hot dogs. 

    ~ Ian (listening to When the Kite String Pops by Acid Bath)

  • no kings day, santa cruz, march 28, 2025

    As an aside to this whole post, I’m going to say it was incredibly frustrating to see that the vast majority of protestors in Santa Cruz (about 90%) were boomers. Millennials and zoomers are the largest age demographic in the US, and we were extremely few and far between. It is pathetic to see older people willing to stand up and fight for the future of our country when the people who will inherit it show such unbelievable apathy. There are a bunch of criticisms of young people (or not that young anymore, in the case of older millennials) that are completely invalid, but it’s true that millennials believe that putting out a Twitter hashtag constitutes activism, and that zoomers will do whatever the influencers that their TikTok algorithm serves them will tell them to do.

    Nonviolent protests in Minneapolis got ICE to stand down and back off. In my city, the current mayor was elected by only a couple hundred votes. If I and a few hundred people decided not to vote that day, Seattle wouldn’t have our most progressive mayor in a generation.

    Cynicism is not wisdom, and memes are not action. My generation needs to learn that, because not caring will only end with us being crushed by oligarchs and techno-feudalists, and ensure that the future looks like a boot, stamping on a human face, forever.

  • the act of creation under late stage capitalism

    My friend Tim makes beer. He’s actually really good at it. He has this beer that he brews with chamomile that, if I had it at a microbrewery or a good pub, I would consider to be one of my favorites of the year. The beers are 100% good enough that you could sell them.

    And yet, every time I hear someone tell Tim that he should sell his brews, my skin crawls a little bit. There are a few reasons for this. One is that the skillset required to make beer and the skillset for operating a microbrewery form a Venn diagram resembling Meszut Özil’s eyes. Making a business of brewing means producing beer at scale, leasing space to do it in, hiring employees, dealing with finances, arranging distribution and marketing… in short, all kinds of things that don’t involve beer and the making thereof. This is why so many microbrewers fail, even if their beer is excellent. Making stuff and selling it are vastly different endeavors.

    But most of the skin-crawly ick that these comments give me comes from something deeper. There’s a casual assumption in society that, if you’re good at something, it’s practically your obligation to monetize it, that creative work is only worth doing if it results in a salable product at the end. Under this paradigm, Tim is actively wasting his time with his homebrew hobby, no matter how much satisfaction the process of brewing gives him, or the joy that his family and friends receive from drinking his beer. Any moment of the day that is not devoted to maintaining basic bodily needs, according to society, is squandered by not squeezing every drop of revenue from it.

    It is a genuine tragedy of our culture that doing something for simple enjoyment is considered frivolous if it doesn’t result in a profit. And that’s what creative work is supposed to be: enjoyable. If you make beer, or knit, or paint, or create incredibly detailed tiny wooden sculptures of Bloom County characters, isn’t the pleasure you get from creation inherently worth it?

    Then I think about myself and my writing, and I get even more conflicted.

    I started writing for a lot of reasons. A lot of it was that I wanted to prove to others that I had value, the asshole students and bullying teachers that I dealt with every day. I thought that being the youngest ever published fantasy writer would win me friends and approval. But once I’d become better at writing, I discovered that I enjoyed it. Everything in my life seemed like work, from school to socializing to just being at home. Because writing didn’t feel like work, I thought that, if I were able to make money doing that, I wouldn’t have to deal with all the difficult life stuff that I hated.

    When I was a teenager, I wanted to write a genre-defining epic fantasy novel like Lord of the Rings. Now my goals are more modest. I just want to make a living as a writer so I don’t have to do that work stuff. I’m not there yet– the only money I’ve made is the $100 from the runner-up prize for the Resnick Award. Part of me, though, thinks that if I don’t end up making money as a writer, all of the work I’ve done, all the millions of words, the unpublished novels and short stories and games I’ve written, will have gone to waste.

    Is that an attitude that I have genuinely? Or have I somehow bought into the cultural delusion that creative work only has value if it’s profitable? I genuinely don’t know. Whatever the reason, that desire is tangled up with a lot of other things: my need for approval, my fear of failure, my wish to make a living without having to do “real work”. I don’t have any easy answers, and this post won’t provide any answers.

    At the very least, it’s hard submitting stories because the publishing industry, as much as it claims to be about literature, is an ultimately capitalist endeavor. The publishing houses, whether they’re Big Five or small press, are in the business of extracting as much money as they can from consumers for the least amount of overhead. This means that publishers and agents are very hesitant to take risks on any new writers or material. They would much rather have something by an established writer whose work is guaranteed to sell, or whatever trend is currently popular. That’s why you saw so many YA vampire romances twenty years ago and dystopian novels ten years ago. Now the trend is for smutty romantasies with titles like A Noun of Nouns and Nouns. It’s harder than ever for new writers to break through.

    Where does the line exist between selling out and selling, though? Do I have to change my work to fit in with current market trends? Ultimately that’s a self-defeating practice: it can take two years for a book to go from sale to publication date, so all those Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros ripoffs that just got six-figure deals will be hopelessly off-trend when they come out. Is my best bet to just write books I like, write works that I think are valuable, and keep submitting until I find an agent or editor who likes my writing for what it is?

    I don’t know. All I know is that this short-sighted trend chasing from the Big Five publishers contains the seeds of its own destruction. No one can predict what’s going to be a massive success in publishing (hell, just look at Fifty Shades of Grey), so playing it safe and just doing what sells is ultimately doomed. What sells now might not sell in the future. All those copies of Twilight and Fifty Shades are crowding the shelves at Goodwill. Maybe that doesn’t matter to their authors, who are massively wealthy, or the publishers who have already been paid for those copies. But doing what’s easy or safe, while tempting, is a losing strategy in the long run. The publishing industry, as well as society as a whole, has to learn that soon. Otherwise the future will crush it.

    ~ Ian (listening to Bexley by Bexley)

  • how i spent my saturday

    I had a pretty eventful Saturday, and I figured it might be nice to share some photos from it. As I’m sure people are aware, the No Kings protest went on across America, from massive cities to tiny hamlets, and Seattle was no exception. I went to check it out and show my support in the fight against fascism, and it was a great time. I’m so glad that across the country and the world, there were no violent incidents at all. I worried that if some idiot tried to start some shit, the right-wing media (and probably a lot of the mainstream media too, let’s be honest) would be trying to paint this movement as a violent insurrection no matter how small the incident was. That’s how they did after George Floyd’s murder, after all. The fact that they decided to drop the “scary violent Hamas Antifa Marxists” angle for a “these are just a bunch of old white people” argument just shows how successful we were in puncturing their bubble.

    First off, before heading to the Seattle Center for the protest, I had to get there. The Link was already crowded by the time I got on, and got more and more crowded with every stop.

    After I got off at Westlake and grabbed donuts and coffee at Top Pot, I made my way up 5th Avenue towards the Seattle Center. By that time the speeches had been going for about an hour, but there were still plenty of late arrivals.

    Then I finally arrived at the west lawn of the Seattle Center, where the speeches were being held. Back in April, I went to an earlier protest at the same site. There had been a lot of people there: tens of thousands.

    This put all of that to shame.

    I literally couldn’t fit through the crowds of people to see my representative, Pramila Jayapal, speak. I have been in mosh pits with less density. It was glorious.

    But we had only barely begun. It was time for the march down 5th Avenue towards downtown. The atmosphere was excellent. It was like a parade, which is exactly what it should have been. The best way to fight anger and hatred is with love and joy, and there was so much of both in that march.

    Even my axolotl brethren came out of the canals to join in the fun!

    We passed under the monorail tracks, waving and cheering every time a train went by. I sang verses from the Monorail song from the Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”, much to the amusement of nearby fellow nineties kids.

    As we approached the convention center, I broke away from the crowd because I had plans to hang out with a friend at the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. When I arrived at the convention center, it was easy enough to follow the steady stream of alternative kids to the show floor, where plenty of strange and wondersome artifacts were on display for our purchasing enjoyment, from the bones of beasts…

    …to snakes in jars and butterflies in boxes…

    …to beautiful art and apparel in any color you want, provided it’s black…

    …to taxidermized beasts of many varieties.

    I ended up buying a shirt with the Sigil of Baphomet and the legend “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL”. My friend wasn’t quite so lucky. She ended up spending nearly $200 on fox skulls and various other bones. Still, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Seattle Saturday, from coffee and donuts in the morning to bottled snakes in the afternoon, together with friends old and new.

    ~ Ian (listening to Psychotic Banana by Hand of Juno)

  • do you ever just think about HOLES?

    Due to a combination of apathy and shame, I haven’t been to the dentist in years, and as such, my teeth are extremely fucked. That’s always my problem. I go for so long without visiting the dentist that I build up this extreme paranoia about going in for a routine cleaning, perhaps because I think the dentist will judge my moral fiber and overall value as a person based on my teeth’s decrepitude (and naturally, the opinion of a medical professional who I see every six months or so should naturally be valued more than those of my family, friends, or coworkers). At the point where carelessness tips over into embarrassment, it’s impossible to stop, until my teeth are riddled with holes like worms in the timber of an old-fashioned sailing vessel and beginning to fall out of my head.

    Intelligent design is a dumb concept for a lot of reasons, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that whatever creator god you believe in is a terrible engineer, and any reasonably clever eleven-year-old could build a better solution for the given problem. I wonder what proponents of intelligent design must think their creator’s thought process must have been when making teeth. I imagine it must have gone something like this:

    INT: GOD’S WORKSHOP UPON THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: I have developed “teeth”, which the beings that I have created in My image shall use to crush and render the organic matter that they require to sustain their metabolism. They shall be made of the hardest material in their bodies, and will last for tens of thousands of years, provided that they are not wet and covered in food residue, which is exactly the environment in which they shall primarily be utilized. If damaged, they cannot be healed or replaced, and injuries to them can result in intense pain, dismemberment, or death.

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: …

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: Fuck it; let’s ship it.

    It’s especially frustrating because there are so many other animals that have far better dentition than us idiot humans. For example, if we were really intended to be the culmination of the Creator’s design for the cosmos, maybe they could have chosen one of the following other options that they have provided for other organisms:

    1. Have teeth that are constantly being lost and replaced over the course of our lives, like our friend the shark do
    2. Have very long teeth that are continuously extruded from our gums and worn down as we chew our food, like our friend the horse do
    3. Have enamel reinforced by LITERAL IRON, like our friend the beaver do

    In addition, if we chose that latter option, we would have dental appendages in a vibrant shade of orange, which in addition to being evolutionarily practical, would be stylish in a vintage, midcentury sort of way.

    I have many other bug reports to give to the creator of the universe, if I turn out to be wrong and I will not be consigned to endless oblivion if I happen to breathe wrong for, like, two minutes. Currently the teeth stuff is highest priority, but I’m sure that might change the next time I play soccer and line up to block a free kick. Unless there’s an absolute cosmic necessity that my testicles cannot produce sperm unless they are several degrees COOLER than my core temperature, thus requiring me to carry them around in a sack outside my body for my whole life. But I shouldn’t question. It’s probably all part of God’s plan.