Category: Post

There are a few retail stores that come and go and nobody bats an eye. I will never miss walking into an over priced Sam Goody or a ratty old Blockbuster video. While I understand business is tough and new stores come, and go, all the time there are a few that have fallen into the memories of those from yesteryear that could really use a come back. Here is a list of the five retailers I miss the most.

1.  Kmart

Yeah I know a lot of people like to crap on Kmart but most of those people are short sighted and only remember what the store devolved into in its final years. However before the downfall Kmart was the it place, especially for those on a tighter budget. Not just because they had a surprising good variety back in their heyday but they also had damn good deals. If it wasn’t the Blue Light Special or the Price Matching their competition it was their lay a way program that really make it worth it. For a small weekly payment you could set aside a full shopping cart of dope stuff and just pay it off little by little. When Target and Walmart got rid of Layaway I dug my heels and and basically became a die hard Kmart loyalist until the very end. 

2. Radio Shack

Again I won’t cry any tears for losing what it became near the end but I have nothing but warm fuzzies when I remember how awesome it was back in the day. Back in the 90s, before the rise of Best Buy Radio Shack was the place to get electronics. I don’t just mean VCRs and computers but I mean components, wires, cables even transistors and things of the like. No matter what you wanted to do with home audio, home theater or video games you could find the tools you needed at Radio Shack. Once upon a time they actually hired knowledgeable reps who actually knew their stuff. If you had a question about electronics they had an answer. 

3. Hastings

I have ranted about this before and I will bring it up again and again but there has never been a store like Hastings was, again, before the downfall. Back in the 90s it was THE best video rental store, but it was also THE best used CD store, comic book shop, music instrument store, action figure and collectible store and so much more. Then the higher ups decided to close down the mega stores and move them into malls then they transformed them into crowded Hot Topic clones. Of course that was the end of them as a company but man in the old days they were the place to be. 

4. Kings

This one is older and more obscure. They had their heyday before I was born but there were a few stragglers limping along well into the late 2010s. They were like an inbetween a Dollar General and a Kmart. Not as big or varied as a full Kmart but bigger and better quality stuff than a dollar store. What was their strong point was how they bought their products from over crowded warehouses which often gave them access to products that other stores had clearanced and moved on. You could walk into a Kings in the early 2000s and find action figures and video games that were sitting on selves since the late 80s! I could regularly buy vintage, sealed, Star Wars, He-man or even Transformers toys that had long been out of stock and relegated to ebay. It was a magical time capsule that I will miss for many more years. 

5. K B Toys

I know most hipsters online will cry and scream about Toys R Us but the truth is those giant box stores only existed in big cities whereas KB was everywhere else. If you lived in a smaller city with a decent sized shopping mall chances are you had a KB instead of a Toys R Us. KB was smaller and higher priced then the department stores but they made up for it in variety. While Kmart, Walmart and the like would have the popular figures in a toy line or the mainstream best selling video games, KB had the lesser known stuff. While you could get Bumble Bee or Duke at any box store that sold toys, if you wanted a lesser known Transformer like Skullgrin or a Ninja Turtle like Panda Kahn that the big stores got in limited quantities, KB would have a whole shelf of them. Same for video games. Yeah if you wanted Sonic, Mario or Mortal Kombat you went to Walmart. But if you wanted to find something lesser known like Musha or Demon’s Crest you turned to KB toys. They had everything. I was more than willing to pay a few extra bucks to save myself the trouble of driving 3 hours to the Giraffe store. 

I’ve written a lot of articles on my changing tastes and interests over the years. I’ve even done getting to know me guides that are intensely outdated today. I think losing interest in things we loved and discovering new things is a natural part of being human.

This is my latest attempt to summarize who I am and what makes me tick. This is going to be kind of a list of things that currently interest me with notes on things that I have either lost interest in or would like to rediscover as time goes on. This is mostly going to be focused on hobbies and interests rather than personal experiences but I might also try to define my LGBT identity since it is Pride Month after all.

Comic books

This has always been a major interest of mine. However I have a confession. I don’t actually read as many comics as I would like. No, I don’t necessarily just collect for the sake of collecting either, however I often find myself lacking in motivation to actually sit down and flip through a book. Even when I do I prefer to stick to issues published in the mid 80’s through the late 90s mostly to reminisce over the things being advertised in the pages between the action.

Even as a kid when my interest in comics was at its peak truthfully I still didn’t read that many actual comics. Most of my comics lore knowledge can from sources outside reading the comics themselves. For starters I was a huge trading card collector so most of what I know about the Marvel and DC characters I am fond of I learned reading the backs of trading cards. I also watched a handful of Saturday morning an weekday after school super hero animated programs from the 90s which helped prepare me for the soon to be comic invasion of Hollywood. Every time a new comic book movie came out my friends were quick to ask me if it was anything like the comics. Often I just said mostly but they did change things and left it vague cuz frankly I didn’t know. To this day I am more interested in comic book characters as action figures or as video game characters than I am actually sitting down to read a comic book itself.

Video games and retro games

This is an area where my interest has never waned but my practical experience has diminished over the years. I love talking about retro games. I love watching YouTubers play and talk about retro games. I just don’t often find the time or motivation to sit down and play them myself. I also lost interest in collecting a long ass time ago.

As for current gen games I hardly know what is going on or who is even involved in the industry these days. It isn’t that I don’t care so much as I just don’t have the money to keep up so I avoid trying to stay current altogether. This helps me avoid the cognitive dissonance associated with not being able to afford all the games I would like to play but can’t.

Taking a step back into retro games for a second I have lost all interest in actually collecting or owning physical retro consoles and cartridges or discs. I used to have a very strong desire to own as many games as I could along with as many game consoles as I could. These days I am far more selective in where I spend my money. Sure I am perfectly fine and willing to use emulation to revisit some of the games from my youth that I still find pleasure in playing from time to time but my desire to hunt and purchase physical copies is long gone. At best I find myself picking up a PS4 game or a random Nintendo DS cart every once in a while but even those are rare occurrences these days. I would rather spend my time discussing and analyzing retro games than actually playing them most days.

Science fiction movies and TV shows

There was a time I would have told you I was a huge sci fi nut Then as time went on I slowly realize I didn’t have the proof to back this claim up. Yeah I always remained fascinated and interested in the main stream comic book flicks Marvel and DC were producing, especially since the rise of the MCU and DCEU respectively. Beyond that the most sci fi I consumed was within the realm of Star Wars or things like the Terminator or Aliens franchise with an occasional side quest into Robocop land. Then I decided to take stock in the over 1000 movies I own on DVD and realize I actually do have way more movies that fall under the sci fi camp than I realize, not to mention it turns out I actually have quite a few more sci fi films than I do horror films despite my undying love of the horror genre. This was kind of a shocker to me despite my previous assertions I was a fan of the sci fi genre I felt like I didn’t earn that title because of my lack of interest in things like Star Trek, Babylon Five, Doctor Who or even Battlestar Galactica. I realized it’s okay to like some sci fi but not necessary to like it all to be considered a fan of the genre.

Board games and Dungeons and Dragons.

I often used to tell people how much I love to collect and play quirky board games. In addition I frequently bitch and moan how I never get to properly play D&D despite my intense love of the game. Then this past year I discovered something I wasn’t fully seeing about myself until recently. I don’t actually enjoy playing boardgames or D&D with other people even at all. I started to realize my passion for board games was superficial and passive at best. I discovered I had more of a deep appreciation and interest in D&D lore, history and game mechanics than I actually did sitting down to actually play the game. I still buy, collect and read D&D books from all across the board from previous editions to modern rule sets including 3rd party offerings. I have a strong interest in D&D as a mythos and a product line I just don’t truly have any honest desire to actually play the game itself with others.

JRPGs and computer role playing games

This is another one I have flip flopped on as time went on. There was a time when I really wanted to like JRPGs and computer RPGs like Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and the Elder Scrolls. So strong was my belief that I was interested in these two things I spent way more time, effort and money than I dare to admit buying rare RPG video games only to discover as time went on I was never having fun and could never get into the games despite my constant efforts to try and force myself to do so. I mistakenly believed I was a fan of RPG video games partly because of my very strong affection for D&D as a game but also my interest in RPG adjacent games like the Legend of Zelda series or the Castlevania games. I incorrectly assumed because I had enjoyed Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy 7 that I must certainly enjoy other RPG video games, right? After trying multiple times to get into Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and after multiple failed attempts to get into various Final Fantasy, Tales of… and other mainstream and obscure role playing video games I slowly discovered that I actually wasn’t as into the genre as I thought. Today I know I actually do have a strong desire to play story driven, fantasy video games but not necessarily those that fall under the RPG umbrella. I discovered I was more into games like Zelda, Maximo Dynasty Warriors and even Diablo than I was traditional RPGs.

Sega, Playstation and Nintendo

At different points in my life if pressed I would have told you Sega was the only gaming company for me. At other points it would have been Nintendo all day, every day. At still other times I would have told you I was loyal only to Sony and all others were inferior. As time has passed I have learned that I really am not as loyal to any single platform or brand as I previously thought. Sega has products that I will swear by to the day I day, they also have products I will assert are pure wastes of time and money. The same is true for Sony and Nintendo. I have a strong affection for PS1 and PS4 but have little to no interest in PS2 or PS3 as gaming platforms. I see PS2 as the rival to my beloved GameCube and the PS3 as nothing more than the most robust HD multi media player. I am all over the place with Nintendo having pure nostalgia and love for the NES and SNES, indifference towards the N64, undying love and affection for the GameCube, a fierce and fiery hatred of the Nintendo Wii, a modest interest in the Wii U, a vague feeling of sadness regarding the Switch and little to no interest in the Game Boy or 3DS despite a passion for the DS and GBA. What I learned is no gaming company or hardware unit is ever going to satisfy all my gaming needs and thus I realized I am not truly loyal to any brand as much as I am loyal to just having fun.

There are probably other interest I could dive deep into but as I sit here watching the clock tick away I realize this is enough for now. Perhaps some day I do a follow up where I take a look at other interest I have lost or discovered over the years but for now this should give you some insight into who I am as a person today.

As I get further away from my childhood I find myself ever more drawn to revisiting films and TV shows from my past. Once upon a time I tried to put the 90s behind me and focus entirely on new movies and shows but lately with all the splintered streaming services and movies priced out of my reach I found myself reverting back to rediscovering things from the past I once left behind. 

I started with taking a deep dive into discovering 80s horror movies I missed out on previously. Every once in a while I come cross a hidden gem I missed out on in my youth but more often than not I find myself wondering how much coke you have to be on to make sense of some of those flicks. This has been a long running gag among horror fans and film aficionados in general that the 80s were the coke fueled era in Hollywood. I am not sure how true that is but it is the stereotype that has become the norm in our modern culture. 

This cannot necessarily be said for the films from the 90s. As I rewatch childhood favorites I wonder if the reason the 90s were so tame compared to the 80s truly  is because Hollywood collectively coming off the coke high of the previous decade or if it was a renewed sense of cynicism that took over pop culture in the 90s. Oddly enough I have heard Millennials describe the 90s as a time of optimism as the Cold War ended but 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. I am not entirely sure I agree with this assessment. The music, especially grunge and rap music of the 90s is decidedly NOT optimistic. In fact if you listen to most music of the decade you get a sense of pending dread with songs like “Its the End of the World As We Know it” and similar bleak song like Beck’s “Loser” or Cake’s Never There or even Liz Phair’s depressing ditty “Polyester Bride” to the pessimistic “Stupid Girl” by Garbage or “No Shelter” by Rage Against the Machine. Music in general was just depressing back then. 

As I revisit movies from that period I notice the same thing. Where as the 80s had movies like Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club and Indiana Jones lighting up the sales charts, the 90s were considerably more grounded in reality for the most part. Sure we had Jurassic Park and Tremors but even those had a more somber and realistic tone than the monster movies of the 80s. Gone were the chaotic evil Gremlins replaced by the boring  dinosaurs. Even teen movies like Encino Man, She’s All That, 10 Things I hate About You or Can’t Hardly Wait have depressing undertones with the main characters offering a world view of the future that has them regretting facing their future rather than excitedly anxious to get started on their careers.  Take Pretty In Pink and you have a fairy tale about an underprivileged girl getting her fairy tale Prom. Now contrast that with Can’t Hardly Wait’s main character seeing his last night of high school as the end of the road before he settles into a bleak future sans the love of his imaginary life. 

Even horror movies were less fun in the 90s than they were in the 80s. Gone were the cheesy B movies with silly characters and over the top acting such as Sorority Babes in the Slime Ball Bowl O Rama or Night of the Creeps. Instead we had darker less cheesy movies like Species, Silence of the Lambs or even the endless downer that was Se7en. The fun Friday the 13th flicks with Jason hacking and slashing promiscuous teenagers was replaced by body hopping demons in Jason Goes to Hell. The half comedian, half serial killer MTV icon Freddy Krueger was no longer cracking one liners and entrapping his victims in elaborate Alice in Wonderland inspired dreamscapes. Instead we got Wes Craven’s New Nightmare which replaced the comedian Freddy with a dark and malevolent force hell bent on spreading pure evil.

What about videos games? Same story. In the 80s you had primitive but cartoony Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, Castlevania and Contra whisking you into fantastical worlds with pure optimism to spark your imagination. The 90s saw a darker turn there too. Mario 64 removed the whimsy of the NES era with a more sinister Bowser. Mega Man took a dark twist with the Mega Man X series which undid all the progress the Blue Bomber made during those first 6 8-bit adventures. Castlevania went from a linear side scrolling adventure hunting vampires to a dark and brooding Symphony of the Night with depictions of abuse, rage, and adult themes I won’t spoil for those who never played it. Even the imagery was darker and bloodier than what we had in the 80s. The light hearted beat em ups of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Double Dragon were replaced by the more realistic and gorier Mortal Kombat where the fate of the world was at threat by a demon and his half human dragon underling. That franchise went to darker places than any video game in the 80s dared dream of going. 

Even the happy go lucky mascot games were darker and edgier. Sonic had attitude and was facing a vile foe enslaving his friends. Donkey Kong Country was certainly edgier than the DK games of the past. Even the Legend of Zelda took the fairy tale world of Hyrule and replaced the threat of an evil wizard hell bent on world domination with an angry moon hell bent on total annihilation. This is just the kid friendly games! I haven’t even touched on the lawless world of Grand Theft Auto, the post apocalyptic nightmare that is the Resident Evil franchise or the literal trip to hell with Doom or Nazi German in Wolfenstein 3D.

Video games, music, movies and TV was taking a more cynical turn if not full on darker and edgier than what had dominated the 80s. In the 80s you had an alien puppet named Alf spreading hijinks or the optimistic and up beat Punky Brewster with it’s quirky child lead getting into trouble scamming her surrogate parent. Instead we had to sit through the sarcastic Daria with her negative outlook on life to Full House which thrust us head first episode one into the throes of a single dad struggling to overcome his own grief to find a way to be a rock in his daughter’s lives. Everything in the 90s screamed the future is going to suck and boy howdy was it not wrong.

In the 80s sitcoms were all about fairy tales. The Huxtables, The Keatons and Sam Malone and company were all living decent Middle to Upper Class lives finding the joys in life. Instead the 90s gave us the lower class Conners on Roseanne, the single mother construction worker on Grace Under Fire or the literal show about nothing, Seinfeld with it’s constant barrage of who cares week after week. Even the biggest hit of the decade, Friends, centered on an out of work actor, an under paid waitress, a single dad, a man facing trauma while navigating a dead end job and a woman with obsessive compulsive disorder struggling to pay rent. The optimism of the 80s were firmly gone replaced with an attitude of “life sucks get over it” 

Even cartoons were darker and edgier. In the 80s cartoons were the heroes triumphing over evil. GI Joe defeated Cobra, the Autobots destroying the evil Decepticons, the Care Bears defeating depression with love. In the 90s we got Exosquad, an adult themed cartoon tackling slavery and human rights. We got X-Men a cartoon centered on a government using advanced weapons and hostile legislation to target a minority group struggling for civil rights. Instead of the laugh out loud Monday’s suck but hey we got Lasagna with Garfield and Friends we now got Hey Arnold facing bullies week after week. Cartoons set in fantastical worlds like He Man’s Eternia or Thundera’s Thundercats. Now cartoons were firmly planted in our reality with the same grounded rules we faced in our day to day lives. Recess, Dough, Beavis and Butt head, Daria, and Hey Arnold had kids facing every day situations rather than having super heroes fighting imaginary evils. 

Every where you turn in the 90s rather than finding hope, optimism or pure escapism you are bombarded with constant reminders that life sucks and it ain’t getting any better. I think the 90s are probably the worst decade in pop culture and I say this despite having nothing but pure nostalgia for the decade.

I remember the day I first discovered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pretty vividly. I was about eight or nine years old. My mom was working at a truck stop on the outskirts of Salina Kansas. I remember walking into the video arcade waiting for her to get off work one day and coming across this weird 4 player video game. It had cool cartoony style graphics, a rocking soundtrack, a jamming attract screen and these really interesting looking characters. I dropped a quarter into the machine and was instantly hooked.

For the first few months of my experience with Ninja Turtles as a brand the only thing I knew of the franchise was that video game. I had no idea there was a cartoon, comic book, toys or a live action movie on the way. I just knew it as a video game property. And this was alright by me. I got my first TMNT action figures a year later. It was the original Leo, Rocksteady and Master Splinter. Within a couple of years I had discovered the cartoon, the toys and had seen the live action movie. I was hooked.

I came into the world of Nina Turtles by way of the X Men. I had already been familiar with the concept of mutants from reading X Men comics. I was a bit confused at the use of the term mutant as it was used in the TMNT lore but I quickly adapted. I had already also been exposed to Karate Kid, Nina Gaiden and several martial arts movies. I already had an idea of how karate worked in movies so I was on board with the Ninjas in this universe. I was a kid so didn’t understand the nuances to the different forms of martial arts so everything was karate in my mind and anyone who did karate was a Ninja to me too. I didn’t know any better.

By the time I had a friend show me one of his TMNT comic books I had already played all three NES games, seen TMNT 2 in theaters and had half a dozen toys. I was disgusted to learn it was an ugly ass black and white comic book. This deeply offended me to the point where I refused to accept the comics into my world. I was happy with the toys, games and cartoon.

Speaking of the cartoon here is the thing. I was losing interest in animation at an early age. To be honest as far back as I remember I have always had a disdain for cartoons and had a preference for live action movies and TV shows. Sure I watched a bunch of Saturday morning cartoons along with my sisters but mostly because back then we lived in a small town and only had 3 channels to watch so didn’t have a whole lot to do. I remember watching the cartoon but only liking maybe the first dozen or so episodes before I lost interest. Looking back on it now while I do have nostalgia for it, I can’t bring myself to actually watch the show. It just doesn’t appeal to me. Nostalgia just isn’t enough for me to enjoy something anymore.

The weird thing is I leaned hard and fast into Ninja Turtles as a brand all at once. Then just as suddenly as I discovered the four Turtles I quickly lost interest over night. It wasn’t gradual or caused by a decline in the property. The toys were still cool looking, the cartoon was more popular than ever before. And I didn’t hate TMNT 3 Turtles in Time. Not at first. No it was a singular event that took me out of the Sewers of New York and into a new world of Martial Arts teenagers. It was the day I discovered the similarly named Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I took a hard left turn. One day I was all into the Turtles and the next day they were dead to me. Replaced by the rainbow colored superheroes from Angel Grove. I would say I never looked back but that isn’t the case.

My first revisiting off the TMNT property came during the Nintendo Game Cube era. I discovered the TMNT video game on the system and was very happy to be back into the world of the mutant turtles. I never got into the new toys, cartoon or comics but I did enjoy that one video game. It would be nearly two more decades before I took another look at TMNT. It was in 2020 when I discovered the Rise of the TMNT toys that I got back into buying Ninja Turtles themed products. I went all in on that toy line. I was pretty sad at how suddenly it ended. Shortly after I got back into collecting the retro toys and that is where I stand today. I have no interest in ever touching a Nintendo Entertainment System ever again so replaying those old NES games is out of the question. I have no desire to revisit the cartoon nor have I had any interest in watching the Michael Bay live action turtle movies. My interest these days is purely as a toy collector. I might rewatch the original live action film from 1990 from time to time but beyond that my current experiences with the turtles is going to be buying their vintage toys from my childhood.

I was there for the 16 bit console wars of the 1990s. I was also one to not only fall victim to magazine marketing, I also regularly switched sides during the entire conflict. It was a treacherous time for sure.

For me it began with the Christmas of 1988. This was when my parents bought us kids a Nintendo Entertainment System. Up to this point the only home console we had was an Atari 2600 clone nobody remembers. We didn’t own a lot of NES games back then but we were fortunate enough to be able to play several others either by going to friends houses or renting them.

When I first learned of the existence of a Super Nintendo it was all I could think about. I had to get my hands on that Super Mario World game one way or another. The Christmas of 1993 was going to be that year. My mom had bought one at Kmart on Lay-a-way and had it ready to go under the tree when the time came. Unfortunately one of my sisters found the receipt and shared with us kids what we were getting that year. Mom learned of this infraction and promptly cancelled the order and bought entirely different presents instead. I was bummed.

Enter Sega. My first introduction to the company was at a friends house who had a Master System. Despite their insistence it was “better” than the Nintendo we already owned, the games he showed me did not impress at all. That didn’t stop this same kid from continuing his crusade. Every day on the bus ride to and from school he would show me Game Gear games as well as flyers advertising Genesis games. He introduced me to the words “16 bits” and “blast processing” I was gullible and so I shifted my efforts from begging my parents for a Super NES and went on the warpath to get my hands on this new, amazing Sega console I was sold on.

Needless to say this worked. My parents got me my very own Sega Genesis for my 12th birthday and I couldn’t be happier. Out of the 7 kids I hung out with after school, 3 had Sega’s, one had a Super Nintendo, one just an NES and the other loser had this thing called a Windows PC or idk something weird like that. It was easy for me to trade Sega carts with my friends and explore the depth of the consoles amazing library of rock solid action titles. As I grew up with arcade games I was more into the arcade style action games flooding the Sega console than I was the boring ass odd ball side scrollers and those weird anime themed games the magazines called RPGs or something. I was hooked on Sega.

Then a new friend moved to town and flipped everything I new on its side. All it took was one game to shift my loyalty from Sega back to Nintendo. That game of course was another arcade mega hit I already had on Genesis, Mortal Kombat II. It didn’t take long before I was starting to see how much better the SNES version was than the Sega version I was currently stuck with. This prompted me to take the money I made from my after school jobs to buy myself a Super NES as a companion to my trusty Sega. It didn’t take long before I was able to build up a solid library of Super NES games to offset my ever increasing Genesis library.

Once I had my hands on both I realized I just couldn’t pick one over the other. I found myself spending the same amount of time playing games on each. I also couldn’t decide which games I enjoyed more. While I loved the hard core action games the Sega was feeding me I also found myself finding enjoyment in the quirky Japanese games Nintendo was throwing my way. In the end I decided they were basically equals. I never could decide one over the other. Sega gets bonus points for the Sega CD, Power Base Converter and 32X. The Super NES gets bonus points for Super Mario World, Zelda A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Sim City and the aforementioned Mortal Kombat 2. Over the years I find myself constantly going back and forth on which system I prefer. There are days where I find myself leaning towards Sega due to my nostalgia for it. Then there are days I spend hours playing Donkey Kong Country or Kirby Super Star and flip back to the Nintendo camp.

At the end of the day unlike most console war generations where I could handily pick a favorite, the 16 bit era will always remain the one video game generation where I couldn’t firmly plant my flag on either hill. To this day I love them both equally. I often ask myself if I could only own one for the rest of my life which would I pick. In the end I never can come up with a decisive answer.

After 11 long years of crunching behind the scenes I can finally say my book is published and I am now a fiction author. This has been a lot longer coming than 11 years though.

I started writing stories in grade school. My parent gave me a typewriter in 6th grade. A year later they gave me my first digital word processor. Then a few years more I would get my first desktop computer. All those devices were used to write short stories and rough drafts of novels I never finished.

The book itself is called Goldfish on the Mountain. The idea for the story came to me while binge watching a bunch of the crime thriller TV series Bones. It was also partially inspired by the hit horror/thriller Fargo. I sat down and immediately did something I had never done before. I wrote an outline to use as a road map. This was something I learned how to do in my college writing courses. Then I sat down one day at a time typing away in my spare time adding to the story little by little. I finished the rough draft in 2020. At this time I was working for a local newspaper as a writer which is what drove me to finish in the first place.

I spent the next 2 years polishing and re-writing the book fixing grammar mistakes and spelling errors as well as cleaning up the plot as I went along. I finally got to a point I was comfortable calling the story completed last summer. I published the chapters one at a time right here on this blog. Then I sat out to get on the path of self publishing. The biggest road block was designing a cover. I spent six months looking for a graphic artist willing to do it on my budget. Since that budget kept shrinking along with my patience I decided to put my graphic design training from college to good use and designed the cover myself. Then I went through the process of getting it published via Amazon Kindle Publishing.

Right now the book is submitted for final approval. I am just waiting on feedback either thumbs up good to go, or notes on what I need to fix in order to get it on the platform. I published it in two formats. First the ebook for modern readers and ease of access. Then I reformatted it for the paperback print on demand version. Amazon says it could take up to 5 days for it to get final approval so now I just wait. But it is a load off my back getting to this point. In can finally say I am now a published author and I can’t tell you how damn good that makes me feel. I put a lot of work into this project and to see it finally realized is a dream come true.

I don’t remember how old I was the first time I had a nightmare. Who even does? I just remember waking up too scared to go back to sleep. I was already having pattern nightmares long before I ever watched my first movie with Fred Krueger inflicting that suffering on others. Needless to say those movies changed me as a person.

I can’t really pin point the exact moment I got into horror as a person. I just always watched horror as a kid. I have ample fond memories of going to the local video rental shop and browsing the horror section every time. I would always grab a movie based entirely on the cover art. I tried not to read about the movies before watching them. I always wanted to go in completely in the dark.

Darkness is what life is. We live our lives in the dark. From the moment we are born there is dark cloud of death looming over our heads waiting to rain down on us when our time is up. I learned this lesson at the age of 5.

I had a cousin who liked to chase me with spiders. He discovered I was terrified of the vile critters and since he wasn’t he would pick them up and hold them out to me. I hated him. I wanted nothing more than for him to just be out of my life. One day he was climbing a tree. Nobody knows why he had the jump rope with him. Perhaps he was planning on swinging from the branches like the old tree swing we were all too familiar with at grandmas house? Either way he slipped, fell and that rope wrapped around his tiny, inexperienced kneck. He died in a single instant. I never wished for that. This really traumatized my 5 -year-old brain. I had wished he was dead and now, he was. This broke me.

I became obsessed with death. I couldn’t get enough scary movies. I was as young as 7 renting A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and oh so many other terrifying tales of death and despair. Death became a companion to my imagination. Then the nightmares returned.

I talk about my dreams often. To be honest none of the horror movies I ever watched directly gave me nightmares. Often they were oddly comfort movies. I would watch a horrifying movie with murder and scares then sleep soundly with wonderful dreams of exploring the universe. My nightmares came from elsewhere.

I don’t talk about the abusive father I knew as a child. Mostly because by age 12 he had converted to Christianity and had a life altering transformation into this whole other man. A kinder, gentler man by most accounts. The days of hiding in my bed under the covers listening to him beat mom waiting for his belt or fist to find my behind were over. But those memories that fear of my father stuck with me.

The first time I watched a Nightmare movie I was in Kindergarten. I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 with my very dad one day when it came on whichever movie channel was offering a free weekend preview that month. My dad loved to scare us as kids. He took pleasure in pranking us, as well as the aforementioned violence he inflicted on our tiny lives. What he especially took pleasure in was showing us the most frightening films he could find and watch us cower in fear as the horrors of the motion picture proceeded to scare our tiny psyches.

While dad’s abuse did include a physical component, he wasn’t often that violent those were extremely rare occasions. Rather his abuse was phycological and emotional. He used to call me fat kid, lazy, stupid, clumsy and other choice words I’ll refrain from using here. The worst two things he called me stand out in my mind. First was the harsh usage of the word faggot. I used to play dress up with my sisters. I would play with their dolls and hang out with their little girl friends regularly. He decided I was a faggot at an early age and was quick to point out how I had better not be one when I grew up.

The second word he used to call me didn’t hurt as much but was still awful. I was really into rap music. I liked to watch TV shows like Family Matters and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He called me a wigger for being too friendly to the blacks. He threw away my Michael Jackson tape and called it sickening I was into that trash. He had a word for Michael I dare not type here in 2023.

I lived in the shadows of my dads reign of terror. Afraid to tell him I got an F on a test or that I had detention, yet again. I knew I was coming home to either a verbal flogging or the back of his belt across my bare ass. So I threw myself into my virtual world. I sank into my toys, my video games, my comic books and above all my horror movies. These things provided me an escape from the daily torments I faced.

That day I discovered the world of Freddy Krueger’s nightmare world I found my escape. I would often day dream I was a dream warrior fighting the vile serial killer with my own special dream powers. As I grew older and life continued to throw ever increasingly horrific traumas my way those day dreams gradually shifted. By the time I was 12 I was no longer imaging myself as the hero defeating the evil Krueger. I was pretending I was him and imaging all the horrifying ways I would get my own revenge on the kids I blamed for my troubles.

To say I was bullied would be an understatement. I was regularly beaten up and abused by the rubbish pieces of garbage that called themselves my classmates to the point my dad’s response was not to inform the school they needed to do better. Instead he taught me how to fight back and told me to stand up for myself. I won’t get into the details here, that’s another story for another day. Needless to say I went from being bullied to being the bully. I became the very monster I had grown to hate.

Those horror movies now offered me more than an escape. They gave me tools to plot ways I could inflict harm on my fellow students. When I turned 18 the first thing I did with my paycheck from my after school job was bought the entire Elm Street franchise on VHS in one big classic boxed set. Finally I could revisit my best friend, Freddy Krueger, any time I wanted.

As I grew up those movies became comfort food for my soul. The ways Krueger would torment his victims gave me pleasure. The bloody kills gave me satisfaction I can’t describe. I wanted nothing more than to escape into that nightmare world as often as I could. Then in 2003 something happened that changed it all.

New Line Cinema had acquired the rights to use Jason Vorhees, antagonist from the rival Friday the 13th horror franchise. This culminated in the release of a film fans had been dying to see for 20 years. Freddy vs. Jason. This movie provided me with a form of catharsis. Freddy was done. His deed were in the past. The franchise came to an end. This, in turn, was bittersweet for me. While I enjoyed the film for the burst of nostalgia it shot into my heart, I grew to despise it for ending the franchise I had become so fond of. As an adult I now know all things come to an end. Everything must die. Even our favorite media franchises and movie characters.

I have since gotten to a point where I can analyze horror from a more adult perspective. I see it as more than escapism. It’s a reflection of the harsh reality we all face from the moment the sperm forces itself into the egg. Death is inevitable.

Yesterday was Trans Day of Remembrance. As a trans person I can assure you I have all too many accounts of friends I have lost to violence either at the hands of others or, more sadly, their own. I sit here now reflecting on the lives we’ve lost and I wonder, why me? Why has life allowed my trouble heart to keep pumping blood into my broken body while others have stopped? What does this life have in store for me? What is my purpose in this life?

To tell stories is the answer. I can tell my own stories in hopes others can learn from my own troubles. I also tell stories my brain fabricates in hopes those stories help me make sense out of this twisted world we live in. Looking back on my life I probably wouldn’t have survived as long as I have if I hadn’t found comfort in those horror movies, especially the ones set in the nightmare world. My life is a nightmare I can’t wake up from. All I can do is summon my own dream powers and fight the evils that life throws at me with an ever stronger will.

Yesterday was Trans Day of Remembrance. I struggled all day to figure out what I wanted to do for the community for the day. I thought about doing a vlog but felt I’ve uploaded some really long videos lately and didn’t figure people were ready for more videos so soon. I thought about trying a stream of me playing some retro Sega games and chatting about trans awareness but I couldn’t get the streams configured properly so I threw in the towel. Ultimately I decided to write down my thoughts instead. I know this is a little late but I am staying awake all night so for  me, it’s still Monday even if the clock says it’s Tuesday now.

I don’t wanna make this day about me. While I am struggling in many ways similar to most trans people I know the purpose of the day is to remember those we’ve lost to violence and suicide.

A few years ago before I came out publicly I met a 12 year old trans girl who was living in a hateful home in Texas. She reached out to me on Twitter and despite getting into trouble with my employer, I spent my entire work day chatting with her via DMs because she was contemplating taking her life. In the end I lost her and that really messed me up. I was so heartbroken this girl was in such a position of turmoil she saw the only way out was to take her life. That sorta thing sticks with you.

I try to be a visible force for good in the trans community. While I have shifted away from covering trans-specific issues I believe my efforts to normalize us by producing content that is indistinguishable from non-trans voices it would show the world we’re just like them, regular normal people trying to live our lives. My desire, my hope is this will provide a path for young and closeted trans individuals who are struggling to find their way in this world.

I don’t have a ton of examples of people I’ve lost. I have lost a few good trans people but I don’t have the emotional fortitude right now to dig up all those stories today. Honestly one reason I shied away from the greater trans community is my goal of helping normalize us is to exist, as my authentic self, but not exclusively as a trans person. For me trans kids especially need to see other trans people who are like them. Gamers talking about video games. Comic book fans sharing their favorite comic stories. Horror fans discussing the ins and outs of their favorite horror movies. Whatever it is that interests you trans youth need to see trans voices who share those interests who’s entire identity isn’t centered around them just being trans.

I came to this conclusion last year when I came across an article of another trans teenager who took her life in a very visible way. I remember the outpouring of support her family received from our larger community. The saddest part of that story is her family didn’t even know she was trans. She didn’t know they would have been supportive. They themselves said they didn’t even think about it because they had no idea their kid was trans.

This is why we need to normalize trans people as regular people. We also need to increase awareness of the fears and hardships we face so good, well intentioned people can find the courage to tell their kids they will be accepted if they ever do discover they are trans. Parents need to nurture an environment where a young trans person who is questioning their identity can feel safe exploring that identity with the loving support of their family.

I wanna share a couple examples from my own life of trans people who went through this. I won’t share names or specifics to protect their identities but I will tell as much of their stories as I need to for this article.

The first is a transwoman I met online who was only partially out to her family. She is an older trans woman past her youth who was afraid to tell her whole family she was trans out of fear it would disrupt her living situation. This woman found herself at an unavoidable crossroads. She wanted to take her transition to the next level, medically transitioning and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to hide that from her family for long. Fortunately she found herself in the welcoming arms of a loving family who has shown her nothing but support ever since. Even now she tells me her family members she was worried about have said they had no idea the troubles trans people face. Her story educated her own local family turning them into supporters of the community as  a whole.

Another trans woman I know went through a similar situation but it wasn’t her family she was worried about losing. It was her spouse. She wrestled with telling her significant other she needed to transition for a long time and it led to mental health issues for her. When she did finally confide in her partner she was also welcomed with open arms. Now her and her partner are a healthy lesbian couple.

These heartwarming stories are rare but the fact is, they aren’t heartwarming at all. We shouldn’t have to be relieved for our community members who find themselves in the embrace of supportive family. Our family support should be a given. Put it another way when I first came out publicly my co-workers were quick to tell me how brave I was. But the thing is I shouldn’t have to be brave just to exist as my authentic self. Likewise no trans person no matter how young or old they are should ever face the fear of uncertainty that comes with telling their family. We should just all assume our families will loves us no matter what.

I feel our gay and lesbian brothers, sisters and others have had a little more time to find acceptance in society to the point where coming out as gay isn’t nearly as difficult as it was in decades past. However even our gay and lesbian friends and family still have to face those same fears.

On days like this, special days set aside for trans people we sometimes get caught up in our own struggle we forget the rest of the rainbow family that is going through their own struggles. We get so wrapped up in trans issues we neglect our bisexual and asexual community members.

We often find ourselves dismissive of gay and lesbian queers because we see it as they fought for and won their rights. We see it as now is our time and we brush them aside forgetting that, while things are better for them now than they were in the past, they’re still difficult for all of us.

So on what this Trans Day of Remembrance let’s absolutely do our best to honor and respect the trans lives we’ve lost. But let’s not brush aside our other queer friends and family in doing so. We’re all in this together. We’re all fighting for the same thing, the right to be treated like human beings with basic human rights. SO yes let’s remember the trans and gender non-confirming lives we’ve lost, let’s also take time to remember the rest of the queer community to.

We need to reach out to the rest of the community in times like this. One to get their support for our struggles but also reminding them they have our support in their continued struggles too. Let’s show the bigots the power of love that rainbow flag represents.

Let’s be stronger than the bigots expect us to be. They know we’re going to take our lives, that is literally what they want. We have to defeat them buy surviving. That is how we win. We refuse to go away and we force them to accept us as equals rather than as a burden they wanna be rid of. Only then will queer kids of all colors of that rainbow find the love an acceptance from their families as a universal expectation rather than a heartwarming exception.

I could start of with what even are dreams but this is not an essay on dream studies, whichever science that may be. This is a complex dive into the dreams that plague me as a person. Those flashing images that haunt my sleepless nights.

I have 2 reoccurring dreams I classify as nightmares. The first is of me being hunted. The details differ from dream to dream but the theme remains the same every time. Some evil force is chasing me trying to kill me. In some dreams this evil force is literal Nazi’s trying to take me to wherever they killed queer people. In some dreams the evil force is zombies trying to infect me with the virus that afflicts them. In some dreams it is a gangster, mob boss, corrupt cop or other “bad guy with a gun” trying to put bullets into my body. The specifics are not the point of the dream. What matters is something bad is always chasing me trying to do bad things to me. I have literally had some variation of this dream every single night since I was at least 16 years old.

The second reoccurring dream I classify as a nightmare is my being back in high school. This one is complicated because again the details differ with each instance of this dream but the theme is always the same. I am my age as I am now, whichever point in time I have had that dream I was that age so at 28 I was 28 in the dream in high school, etc. Then I fail an assignment I spend most of the dream struggling to complete. During my subsequent thrashing from the teacher for “not living up to my potential” I suddenly realize, wait  minute I already got my GED what the hell am I doing in high school? I then walk out and continue the dream elsewhere.

I classify this as a nightmare for a couple of reasons. First my time in high school was not pleasant. Sure it is true I was the most popular kid in my school. Okay but to be fair there were only 50 kids in my school and the only measure I had of being popular was I was elected student council president and everybody knew who I was. I was also a staple at all the parties because I could DJ, breakdance and rap on the mic. I was an entertainer. But this was not an easy proposition mind you. First I had to, let’s face it, bully, step on, push down and walk on top of other people to get to the top. This was not a good time for me because I was a lousy person and I don’t get pleasure remembering this time in my life.

Second of all my time in and immediately following high school was crime ridden. I dare not go into details but I was in a gang and I was a person of power in said gang. A real street gang that carried guns, trafficked drugs and other illegal substances and had cops on the payroll. I was NOT a good person back then. I kept my hands clean by being the brains. I told others what to do and it was up to them to carry it out at their own free will. I never told anyone what to do I just spelled out what could be done and let them figure out the logistics on their own.

Third of all despite being “popular” and in a communion with criminals, I was still kind of a dork and not well liked in the romantic sense. I had “friends” and followers and I had cohorts and homies, but I never had romantic, nor sexual, partners. I was utterly alone.

I do not wish to revisit this time in my life because it was painful for me. Painful because of the things I did to others to be popular. Painful because of the things others did at my suggestion. Painful because I was lonely and nobody truly wanted ME around, they wanted “that guy” around and I hated being that guy.

Let’s backtrack to the someone’s chasing me dream.

This is rooted in real life trauma. I dare not go into specifics but let’s say that someone went to prison because I put them there. This person and their associates threatened my life on more than one occasion. So there is a real life fear of a thug with a gun coming for me. This is and always has been in the back of my mind.

Then there is the other stuff. My aunt being kidnapped, raped and murdered. This spawned a fear the same would happen to me. Then there was the serial killer in our family tree. This also instilled a fear the same could happen to me. Not that I would become the killer but rather the victim of said person. Then there is my uncle who tried to molest me. So there is a fear of adults trying to cause me harm. Combined with everything else I have real life fears of being hunted and hurt in very bad ways. This manifests in my daily nightmares.

I have watched more episodes of Friends than any other movie or TV show combined. I have never once had any dream with any of the Friends in it. I have played every single mainline Super Mario game ever made. I have never once dreamed I was a super hero plumber. I watch horror movies nearly every single day. These do not influence my dreams whatsoever. I have seen no movie more than I have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street and it’s many sequels. I have never, in my entire life once had a dream with Freddy Krueger in it.

Then there is my spiritual practice. I do not have dreams with evil spirits in them. I do not have dreams with ghosts, banshees, fey or demons. I never have. My practice of communicating with the dead, other spirits and spiritual forces does not and has not ever influenced my nightmares. My dreams are the byproduct of years of guilt, shame and trauma.

How many times have I said “this is what I wanna do with my life?” Too many to count. Hey I had a good run as a pizza driver. Then as a wedding DJ, and a professional journalist. In my lifetime I have had over 100 jobs starting at age 12. One thing I have learned is this, I don’t really have any one thing I wanna do with my life. I wanna experience it all. I wanna keep trying new jobs not until I find the perfect fit but until I have satisfied my curiosity.

When I was 8 years old all I wanted to do was grow up and become a Paleontologist. Nothing was going to sway me from this. Until I was 11 and wanted to be an electrician. Then it was radio DJ. The list goes on. The point is I never settled on the one thing I always wanted to do. I don’t have a dream job, I have multiple dream jobs of which gratefully I have had many.

I learned there is no such thing as the perfect job. You have to find the good in everything you do. It’s how we cope with our miserable lives. They say if you love your job you’ll never work a day in your life. That’s rubbish. Even dream jobs are hard work. Right now the job I have is the right job for me. When this job expires the next job I dig up will be the right job for me. This will continue either until I retire or I die. For now I am content. Really that is all anyone can truly ask for.