Time for shameless self-promotion!

 I wrote a book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0848PX3TC

You can buy it at Amazon. It is inexpensive and fun. ~:D It has alien probes, giant tanks and robot girlfriends.

You should all buy this book. If you do, I will finally publish the next one. ~:D (I'll eventually publish the next one anyway, but encouragement is good.)

The Phantom

This is disgraceful: CGI Stan Lee cameos.

Wadda revoltin' development.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed today that a 20-year deal between Marvel, Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment — the intellectual property company Lee started in 2001 — will allow Marvel to license the name and likeness of Lee. He could be inserted in feature films via CGI, Disney theme parks or various "experiences" and merchandise.

"It really ensures that Stan, through digital technology and archival footage and other forms, will live in the most important venue, the Marvel movies, and Disney theme parks," Andy Heyward, chairman and CEO of Genius Brands told the pub. "It's a broad deal."

They're trying as hard as they can to kill that golden goose, aren't they?  CGI Stan Lee cameos, yeah, that's what the fans want...

Old footage of Stan? Sure. Posters, still pictures? Absolutely. Cartoon animated Stan? No problem. Computer generated Undead Stan coming back from the grave, wisecracking like he was still alive? Nope. Nopenopenope. It's gross. Don't do it.

Happy Molly Norris Is Still Hiding Day.

Yes friends, another year passed by and today we remind one and all that Molly Norris, nice lady and artist/cartoonist of no particular fame, is still in hiding. Since 2010. For drawing a picture.

This picture. It is best not to forget some things.

Okay? As you were.

Netflix lays off 150 Wokesters.

It looks like somebody on the board of directors has finally had it with the Woke wrecking crew fucking over Netflix.

Netflix's recent axing of 150 staff targeted many of the firm's wokest workers who are prolific social justice warriors on social media.

The struggling streaming service has pulled the plug on several projects that were aimed at discussing race and LGBTQ issues, Variety reported, and axed the diverse employees working on and promoting them. 

In addition to the layoffs, the company also fired nearly 70 employees working for its social media and publishing teams focused on marginalized communities.

They included Strong Black Lead, the Asian American-focused Golden, the Latino-focused Con Todo, and the LGBTQ-focused Most. 

Netflix claimed its latest layoffs were due to 'a slow down in revenue and decline in subscribers.' But they represented just 150 of the firm's 11,000 staff, sparking speculation that a purge of meddlesome woke staff was afoot.  

Emphasis mine. So what, specifically, got cut?

Netflix has also scrapped a host of woke shows - the most famous of which is Meghan Markle's doomed animation Pearl, about a socially-conscious girl said to have been based on Meghan herself.  

Other scrapped projects included Antiracist Baby and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, two adaptions by Critical Race Theory expert Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, as well as a kids' fantasy series Wings of Fire from executive producer Ava DuVernay, and the children's film With Kind Regards From Kindergarten.   

The most notable of the scrapped works was Antiracist Baby, based on Kendi's book of the same name, which had been envisioned as a series of animated vignettes set to music and intended to explore racism in America.

Netflix had previously said that the show would 'leverage the power of earwormy songs to empower kids and their caregivers with simple tools to uproot racism in ourselves and society.'

Also cancelled was a documentary written by Kendi, titled Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You, which was aimed at teens and young adults.

Netflix is still proceeding with a third Kendi project aimed at adults, titled Stamped From the Beginning.

Also scrapped was the kids' fantasy series Wings of Fire, based on the book series by Tui T. Sutherland's, which would have seen famed black filmmaker Ava DuVernay as an executive producer. 

Although a fantasy story, Wings of Fire explores themes of racism and prejudice through its fictional world. 

Another project, which was revealed to be a film adaption of Adam Kline's With Kind Regard from Kindergarten, was also cancelled by Netflix. 

One of the things going for Netflix is their data capture. They know exactly what subscribers watch, what they start watching and then drop, what they fast-forward past, what time of day they watch, pretty much everything. So they KNOW what is working and what isn't. 

Seems that somebody took a hard look at those numbers and realized that A) Woke isn't selling and B) they're going to go broke if they keep listening to Wokesters like Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.

So, they did what they had to do. Because money talks and bullshit walks.

Gaslighting: a textbook example.

Gaslighting is one of those asinine words invented by Lefties. It is a noun turned into a verb, like scapegoat or 'conversate' and has really only been a thing since about 2010 according to Wikipedia. Taken from the film Gaslight in 1944, it is a pernicious form of lying in which the liar tries to deceive their target by making them question their own reality.

Leading us to today's example from the Daily Kos: Right-wing trolls accusing science fiction of being 'woke' are messing with my childhood.Specifically, people don't like the new Lord of the Rings TV series and the Wheel of Time TV series because the shows don't follow the existing cannon of the books.

Yes, no kidding. We've seen this show before.

Here's the gaslighting, courtesy ofDaily Kos 'staffer' Christopher Reeves:

Wait, what? I've read almost all of Tolkien. I've watched every Star Trek series. I've read some of Ringworld, and in general, I devoured science fiction. What on Earth are these fans so upset about? What am I missing here? I decided last night to do a little bit of looking, and I regret some of the time I sacrificed but it certainly left me with some thoughts. I can always tell things are going wrong when people use terms like "woke" which is just one of those right-wing slurs that they use to replace "compassionate" or "reasonable" it seems.

Yes friends, there is no Woke agenda to putting black actors in the Lord of the Rings series. This is just people being compassionate and reasonable. Y'all are racist trolls!

Wow, this response is not in any way kidding. YouTube videos are attacking diversity left and right, offended that Black actors have roles in science fiction and fantasy when the roles were not specifically played by white actors or noted as being white in the book, novel, or previous filmed version. The hatred at times is pretty intense:

Yes friends, there was more making the Teen Titans series a garbage fire than the casting of Starfire.  But ignoring the entire cannon of DC Comics Teen Titans regarding the character Starfire was certainly part of the garbage that was on fire. Best not to mention though, because that's racist.

What I was reminded of reading through this was a moment I particularly enjoyed from maybe my favorite series of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.

Yes, Star Trek, the series that started out as Liberals in Space and just kept getting more Woke for 60 freakin' years. (Who drops an antimatter powered warship out of warp space -inside- somebody else's solar system, blythely takes an orbit around the inhabited planet, and then acts surprised when the locals fire on them? The Federation, that's who.) And DS9 was Woke before the word was coined.

The heart of all science fiction has been to understand each other, to venture into what could be, what is, and how things can be better or worse. My dad is far from being a progressive; hell, as far as it goes politically, we don't agree on a lot. But we both love science fiction, despite his mixed reviews on the newest variants. As a kid, if I asked him he would have said without a hesitation that Star Trek 2, 4, and 6 were the best movies. What themes were in them? Environmentalism. Genetic engineering and privilege. Profiteering off of war.

I hate to break it to all of the fan boys who think they should be upset at the casting of shows: You have it all absolutely wrong. That isn't to say I'm going to love the new Amazon series, or that I thought their Ringworld series was the best—it was okay in my opinion—but it is to say that the criticism over companies making science fiction woke? That this is so new it never happened before?

Yes, this is nothing new, my friends. Science Fiction was always Woke, even before there was Woke. You're imagining all this. It's only a TV show, just relax.

Gaslighting.

Meanwhile, in other news, Netflix issued an interesting memo to its staff.

First reported by Variety, Netflix has added a section on "Artistic Expression," that commits to allowing audience members make their own choices.

"We program for a diversity of audiences and tastes," the statement reads. "And we let viewers decide what's appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices. "

The memo goes on to say that employees may have to work on content that they "perceive as harmful," warning that if this is difficult for them to accomplish, "Netflix may not be the best place for you."

This is because Netflix is shedding subscribers due to being full of nothing but Woke horseshit like the aforementioned Teen Titans tv show, and because the Woke-ists tried to jack up the company over Dave Chappelle making a trans joke on his fabulously successful comedy show. This is the company telling them to settle the fuck down and get back to work.

Remember when Dr. Who was fun?

I recall watching Matt Smith and Karen Gillian and thinking it was fun. Prior to that, not really. Following that, I haven't spent a second watching it. The show became appallingly Woke.

So here we are, 2022, the 60th anniversary, and there is a 14th Doctor. There were only supposed to be 12, but never mind all that, this is number 14.

Doctor Who's newest incarnation has been announced. Replacing Jodie Whittaker — and becoming the 14th Doctor Who — is 29-year-old Netflix star Ncuti Gatwa.

I wish the gentleman good luck, and hope that the Wokeness doesn't suck all the life out of his career.  Sir Lawrence Olivier couldn't make this turkey fly.