Another one Larry did on the Book of Faces- Jack

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What are your favorite bits of Chevron powered government overreach that you’d like to see get sued into oblivion now?

In my various jobs I’ve seen unelected bureaucrats make up all sorts of goofy nonsensical shit we had to obey or else.

When I was young and working on farms, factories, or construction I saw OHSA regulations that made job sites LESS safe. “Why are we doing it this stupid way?” “Because that government asshole who has never done this himself said we’d get fined if we don’t.” “Oh cool, let me unnecessarily insert my hands into this thing that can chop them off for the mandatory safety check then.”

I’m a rural westerner. Dear Lord, don’t get us started on the BLM. 90% of their bullshit isn’t law. They just make up wacky shit on the fly. Ignorant fucks who live in cities hundreds or thousands of miles away think they “protect the environment”. Lol no. There can be some obvious terrible problem, but some fucker in DC will say nope, you have to leave that terrible problem there to grow bigger or else we’ll fine you or shoot you if you try to fix it. If you’re in the west and you see some land that’s got some obvious issues or is about to burn down it’s government land.

Then I went into accounting, and the dirty secret of that industry is 3/4 of what companies pay accountants for is to do government mandated paperwork to send to the government which nobody in the government will ever read, and to respond to government audits which are usually useless. IRS just makes shit up as they go. And the shit they made up last time? They changed it this time. Either way, shut up and pay your fine.

But it isn’t just the agency that takes your money directly. Oh no. (honestly, the IRS was one of the more professional agencies I dealt with in my career! Not even joking. The others are worse.) Then there’s the dozens of other agencies that meddle in your industry who you also have to appease, even though sometimes they contradict each other, and all of them can fine you.

Then I worked in the gun business, where I got to discover the wonderful world of ATF inspections, where holy fucking shit, the dumbest people in the universe who don’t know how anything works at all, pretend to be mechanical engineers and lawyers. But Chevron said they’re “experts” so clearly that must be true, and if you disagree they’ll shoot your dog and burn your house down. The list of dumb shit the ATF makes up on the fly could fill a book (literally. I did write this book).

But surely, the ATF is the worst right? Oh no. Not even close. Because then for my next job I went into military contracting! Where the rules are whatever the DCAA or DFAS say they are today. And sure, you violated that secret impossible to know rule on accident, so we’re going to ruin your company and put hundreds of people out of work… but the big megacorporation did the same thing, only on purpose, and a million times worse? Oh well. Fuck you. Lockheed builds missiles. You don’t.

On that note, as an accountant I got companies through audits from probably eight or ten different federal agencies. The DCAA audit is by far the most annoying. This is the industry where the customer actually knows exactly how much profit you expect to make, and then you have to guess what everything will cost in the future, and if you guess wrong, they will fine you. Hell, if you guess in a way that actually SAVES the government money, they will fine you. If you charge the government too little, they will fine you. They will fine you for bookkeeping errors. They will fine you for typos. (keep in mind of the hundreds of government spreadsheets I saw, I never saw a single one that didn’t have serious computational errors on it… which I got to fix for them for free… or they’d fine me).

I once actually had a DCAA auditor sit behind me while I typed on my computer for about 4 hours to WATCH ME TYPE. At the end of this month long colonoscopy which cost the tax payers tens of thousands of dollars in government employee salary, they had found one mistake where I had UNDER CHARGED the government something like $16.

Keep in mind, none of this shit was a law passed by congress. It’s all stuff that the agencies made up based upon a vague idea congress gave them.

But the worst, the absolute worst, dumbest motherfuckers in the entire US government? The SBA.

The motherfucking SBA who I will despise with the fire of a thousand suns until the end of time. This is an agency congress created to HELP small businesses, and instead its a wretched hive of scum and villainy, who because they can just make up the regulations as they go, will always find a way to reward their friends and punish everybody who competes with their friends.

And they make up these arbitrary rules, which their employees don’t understand, and then if you fail to comply with the rule correctly, but they understand it wrong, they will actually actively try to destroy that small business, RATHER THAN ADMIT THEIR MISTAKE. I’ve got a saga about this particular one that would take ten thousand words to tell, where I fought with the SBA making shit up on the fly and lying about it for 6 straight months, and the only reason we got it solved was my company brought it to the attention of @BasedMikeLee who then stomped on their heads (with glee, which is why that dude has earned my vote).
So how has Chevron fucked you? 😀

-Jack here, copying this post of Larry’s over from the Book of Faces so they can’t bury it as easily. Given the nature of things, I’m going to copy the relevant part of the code of conduct here before they memory hole it. Until they do, you can read it HERE. Pay special attention to section 1.5

Code of Conduct

The CRIT Awards is committed to fostering a positive and inclusive environment that celebrates creativity and recognizes outstanding achievements in all aspects of the TTRPG industry.

To ensure a safe and respectful experience for all participants, we have established this Code of Conduct, which outlines the standards of behavior expected from all nominees, attendees, organizers, and partners involved in the CRIT Awards.

1. Inclusivity and Respect

1.1. No Racism: We do not tolerate any form of racism, racial discrimination, or xenophobia. Treat all individuals with respect and fairness, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or cultural background.

1.2. No Homophobia: We embrace diversity and do not condone any homophobic behavior or discrimination against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

1.3. No Ableism: We are committed to being accessible and accommodating to all individuals. Avoid ableist attitudes or behaviors and strive to make the CRIT Awards inclusive for people of all abilities.

1.4. No Sexism: Gender-based discrimination, stereotypes, or harassment will not be tolerated. We promote gender equality and a supportive environment for all genders.

1.5. Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination.”

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This new anti-Semitic crap from GenCon reminds me of a story. This is a story about cowardice and hypocrisy. Names redacted to protect those without the moral fortitude to do the right thing, the kind of people who all this weak social shaming and peer pressure nonsense one side of the political divide uses as a club actually works on.

Many years ago there was another writer who I considered a very close friend. We did lots of stuff together. I’m conservative or libertarian depending on the issue. This dude was moderate to liberal, but we were still friends.

As you guys know how I roll, I like to promote other writers. My career was doing great. His was struggling. So he asked me for a promotion. (this was back when Book Bombs were still a thing, before the algorithm strangled them). I had it scheduled.

But then something happened in the news that week in politics. I wrote a blog post about it. The topic was gun related. It was actually a very funny blog post, obviously tongue in cheek, silly, but still filled with good pragmatic advice. It went viral.

The next day I get a message from my friend, begging me to cancel that week’s Book Bomb for him. I was confused. Back in those days BBs would sell between 200-1000 books over the week, mostly to new readers, which is a fantastic promotion.

Why?

Because “he can’t be seen associating with someone like me”.

Huh?

Well it turns out that my viral blog post was deemed SUPER OFFENSIVE by some of his liberal “friends”. In fact, one of them declared it to be ANTI-SEMITIC. And he couldn’t be seen associating with such a horrible racist who hates Jews.

Now this baffled the shit out of me, because there was literally nothing in there about Jews. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Zip. Plus, when it comes to the Arab world vs. Israel, I’ve been openly Go Team IDF the whole time. (There was literally a Merkava with an MHI logo on it!)  And I’m genetically part Jewish! (on my maternal side which makes it even funnier!)

So I was confused, because all it took was some leftist asshole to declare something I wrote to be anti-Semitic and boom. There it was. I was an awful bad horrible evil person who needed to be shunned and thrown under the bus by all proper liberal goodthinkers.

I gave him the response you guys would expect, which I won’t repeat because the bots are already going to be throttling this post anyway because of all the politically charged words, and that would totally kill it. But half the words started with the letter F.  

Ironically a few days later, one of the most respected leftist publications in America, the grand old lady herself, the New York Times, made me an offer to buy that blog post to run as an OpEd, because even though it poked fun at libs and their silly beliefs, the advice in it was actually super solid. I told them no of course, because I don’t want to be associated with that dishonest rag. (which is saying something, because it turns out their OpEds pay pretty good!) But I share this part just to illustrate how profoundly NOT racist this blog post of mine was.

Didn’t matter. Some libs declared a post that had absolutely nothing negative about Jews in it, no matter how hard you squint at it, to be bad, and boom, I was a bad guy. Cancel. Do not associate.

That insult, and the fact he was too stupid to grasp why it was an insult, pretty much ended our friendship. I even helped his dumb ass out behind the scenes a few years later, promoting him as a writer, and he never even knew I was involved.

But the reason I’m reminded of this now, fast forward like 8 years, the EXACT SAME PEOPLE who were condemning people as anti-Semitic even though they clearly weren’t, and shaming the spineless into compliance, have gone all in on the Jew hate. They’re out there supporting terrorist murderers. They’re cheering the beating of Jews at synagogues in LA. They cheering as Jews are having to hide from protestors in universities. They lie their asses off without shame and repeat propaganda so ham fisted and illogical that it falls apart with like two seconds of scrutiny, but they just don’t give a shit. They’re chanting river to the sea slogans about literal genocide. They’re the evil mirror version of what they claimed to hate just a few years ago.  

These people have no honor, dignity, or shame. They’ve got no spine, no chest, and no soul. They’re miserable assholes and their only goal is to make everybody else as miserable as they are. They’re Wormwood and Screwtape without the brains.

Ten years ago I defended the normal attendees at GenCon from goofy (and super vague) accusations of racism from a race hustling grifter (son of a billionaire ironically) who weaseled himself into some social justice “advisory” position. Four years after that my “attack on this PoC” got me booted from another gaming convention.

And today? GenCon is hosting a event that explicitly bans people who think Israel has a right to exist… yet I guarantee the same kind of invertebrate squishes who condemn people like me for nothing, won’t say crap about that.

None of these grifter scumbags actually give a crap about racism. It’s always a political weapon, nothing more. I can at least respect them for their hustle. It’s their willing dupes, the cowards, the quislings, the useless one-way virtue signalers who can only speak up when their masters say it’s okay, who are too scared to go against the rigid group think of their deranged cult, who’ll let evil shit slide because they’re scared their team will get upset at them… Those people I despise.

Hey all, Jack Wylder here. We know you’ve been swag-free for far too long, but the good news is we’re back in business! The new and improved swag shop is located at www.WriterSwag.com

We’ve got a bunch of new stuff we think you’ll love! Patches, stickers, magnets, sweatshirts, Christmas [Noun] stuff, and MORE! Lots of fun things. I’ll post some pics below. Keep in mind that if too many people rush it all at once, it has a tendency to bog down (which has happened every time on every platform) but that just means ‘try again later’.

The shop was originally going to remain open until 7th, but there were some errors with one of the plugins related to zip codes. (Hopefully that’s fixed but if you have problems with it, trying it from a different browser sometimes helps. Also, make sure the state is the 2 letter version and not spelled out.) (‘TX’ vs ‘Texas’)

Because of those problems we’re going to extend the open date a bit. We’ll begin fulfillment immediately after the shop closes- we have everything in hand, so there’s no delay on manufacturing.

If you have any questions email Jill at SwagHelp411@gmail.com (but go easy on her- y’all outnumber her by quite a bit)

Thanks again for everything!

Team Rhino, Los Angeles California 1970s

Team Flaming Warthog, Seattle Washington

MHI Metal Car Emblem

Two different weights of hoodies

All this and more! Act now before the shop closes

Larry shared this on the book of faces today…- Jack

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I’m nearing the end of the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior.

So I had to split the finale, Graveyard of Demons, in half because it got so damned big. The rough draft of the first book is done (I’m just waiting for a couple Hindi translations) and it is 5,000 words LONGER than Tower of Silence. 😀

So yeah, this would’ve been by far my longest book. But luckily it works out that there is a perfect logical cut off for the end. And having just read through it again… damn, I am proud of this series.

In the final scene of part 1 I get to explain something that I’ve had planned since the beginning, which totally explains why one of the major characters is the way he is, and once I explain it, the reader is going to go oh man how did I miss that? And it’s friggin’ rad. 😀

So yeah, cutting this one in half is the way to go, and it gives me a bit more room for other important characters’ resolutions in the second one. Which hopefully won’t take me very long to finish, so we can have a pretty close release.

The other day when I put up that list of everything I’ve written, somebody on Twitter said sure, you’ve written 25 novels since GRRM’s last GoT came out, but his are longer. Yeah, he writes 800 page doorstops while my fantasy novels are 400. But honestly, I can’t stand that meandering, bloated, nonsense that plagues fantasy where authors have to describe the ingredients of every meal and what every dress looks like, or fixate on characters that nobody cares about who do things that ultimately don’t matter. That’s the kind of stuff that I get bored and skim when I read epic fantasy. I figure if I don’t care, the reader really doesn’t care. I get bored writing that kind of fluff. I put enough description to provide a basic visual, and then let’s get to getting.

And I don’t like to spend time on minutia. Nobody cares. I’ll drop enough about the world to make it feel fleshed out, but the fact that the Capitol has fractional reserve banking, though fascinating to me, is utterly irrelevant to the stuff readers care about. So no, George, nobody gives a crap about Aragorn’s tax policy. (though I might stick one line about Devedas’ tax policy in there, just to be a dick).

One of the things I’ve been enjoying about the pro reviews of this series (which I’m FINALLY starting to get, ten years late) is them marveling how this is a fantasy, but it’s plotted more like a thriller. I think that’s fun that people are getting that, because when I set out to write this series it was to make the kind of story I wanted to read. It’s a throw back to the fantasy I read in my youth, with lots of action and adventure, intrigue, and heroes and villains, but I still wanted quality and depth, so there’s a point to all the hacking and slashing… just without the navel gazing and pointless nihilistic meandering that’s invaded the genre.

I had one dork troll on twitter (who hadn’t read my stuff, but it is funny when they try to guess) go all “hur dur, you’re a writer? Son of the Black Sword? sounds super HEAVY.” because these morons excel at sarcasm. But then all the responses were from fans going, doofus, it’s about genocide and caste systems.

So yeah, I get to write about fantasy Judge Dredd turned George Washington and play with heavy stuff like religion and the nature of government and legends vs harsh reality, and I get to kill lots of stuff with swords and blow crap up.

I have an awesome job. 😀

Larry shared this on Facebook about something he thought of while on TwitterX, so I thought I’d put it here on the blog. -Jack

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Because I’ve been arguing with morons today on twitter who don’t know anything at all about history, it brought to mind this memory.

As a kid I was a massive history nerd. I devoured books, a few a week, and the best thing in the world was library loan. I went to a shit tier rural public school K-8 (my 8th grade class of 20 kids, half of us could speak English, and only half of those could read), but that didn’t matter because I read so much on my own anyway that made up pretty much the entirety of my early education.

When I went to high school (I lived so far out in the sticks that was an hour and a half bus ride every morning, which was actually awesome for me, because that was time I didn’t have to work with cows, and could read more books) I was actually super pumped for history class… and they all turned out to be super lame, because we’d spend 45 minutes tops talking about a topic that I’d already read an entire book about.

And the other kids were friggin STUPID. Like holy moly, dumb. Yes, this was the California Public Penal Academy For Gifted Drive By Shooters, but still. Nobody gave a crap. They paid no attention. They were bored. They just didn’t care. Fuck school. Let’s get high. (my high school also had the second highest teenage pregnancy rate in America my senior year, so we had that going for us too)

Thirty something years later and I get to watch these exact same mouth breathers bitch on Twitter about how they didn’t learn about (topic X) so clearly that’s a conspiracy by the man to keep them down.

Most of the history teachers I had knew less than I did about most of the topics and it was pretty obvious they were just phoning it in because their real job was coaching. Total waste of time.

I had one amazing history teacher though. Mr. Guerra. Great guy, actually loved history, was obviously totally burned out by teaching listless dorks the same thing over and over for twenty years with them being too dumb to listen, but he tried. I loved his class because he actually knew stuff and liked to research the stuff he didn’t know.

Every Friday Mr. Guerra would have a trivia game about the topic of the week. He’d break the class into two halves and we’d compete Jeopardy style. Winning side got bonus points for the test.

How much of a nerd was I? After the first few sessions he had to make a new rule. Larry can’t answer every single question. He can only answer every other question. When that was insufficient it was Larry can only answer one out of every four questions. Eventually he just gave me permission to just skip class and screw around on Fridays.
One of the best educational experiences I actually had in high school was the few days we had on the war in the Pacific, but not because I learned anything about the topic. Instead, Mr. Guerra recognized that was my favorite nerd fixation at the time so he asked me if I’d like to actually teach the class for a few days. I jumped at the chance… and realized that wow, high school kids are fucking stupid and apathetic, and it shattered any illusion I ever had that I might want to be a teacher… which was has been great for me long term. 😀