Wesley Osam

@mwosam.bsky.social

399 Followers 83 Following

My site is at https://www.superdoomedplanet.com .

From the corner of my eye I saw a ghost. It was the coat rack. That's what ghosts are- Stress phantasms, our anxiety trying to explain itself with shapes. Yet when I stopped being fictional, that added elves to the world- which added magic- -Which added actual ghosts. So the question becomes: Did that make the world larger? Or just more literal? It depends on the ghost...
I can never remember which human holidays are religious... is July 4 religious? Hrm. If you worship loudness and pray by triggering your neighbors' PTSD... I guess? You never mention Elflandian religious holidays. Are there any? Elves aren't religious. It's been literal ages since we worshipped anything. Literal literal ages. We still have all the old gods from when we did, though! Pantheons full! I could list them for hours! Oh. Um. That's okay, I don't need every little detail- For instance! Reviril, goddess of lounging inertly on your desk while you're trying to work! Olindor, god of tuning forks! HUMMMMMMMMMMMM Torvus Who Points at Interesting Rocks! Dr. Potato!
MIDNIGHT THOUGHT! I couldn't sleep last night thinking about how the word "word" is both a referent and the thing it refers to. "Word" is a closed loop. A solipsist. Every semiotic alley leads back to itself. It sounds like a lonely existence. You know your work has value when you see its effects on other people... If all "word" knows is itself, how can it know what its referencing has accomplished? Does meaning things mean anything without things outside yourself to mean them to? Someday "word" might just... Give up. We'd have to start calling words "thing-meaning things." Someone should invent a physical object incarnating the concept of "word." To keep it company. Thank you. This, my new friend, has given me the acceptance and support I never realized I was missing. Today the world is less impersonally empty. I have found the strength to continue. WORD
What- SAW SAW SAW Sir! Please excuse my unconventional entrance! There was no time to lose! I have news of the utmost importance to impart to you! What... what? There is a hole in your floor!
I get "smart with art, and that forces me to paint over things continually. Every picture starts with the dumbest version of me as an artist and while working I miraculously get smarter. By the end of the picture I am my smartest. When the next picture starts I am dumb again... and so on. I get "smart with art."
That summer everyone was hiring pixies to wear them as hats... It was a bad economic climate for pixies...
In Heaven you get to meet your eyebrow mites.
So when you were fictional you never had to clean up after an adventure? Again, it's not that I never did it. I just did it all "offscreen," as it were. Which isn't good, actually. Humans get the wrong idea about fighting evil. Wrong how? I mean, aside from always expecting someone else to do it. You binge these stories and think you can just do things. No scaffolding! No careful stepwise prep work! No moral infrastructure. Just walk up to the sorcerer king trying to laser his corporate logo onto the moon and stab him. I have been playing "video games." You put together a party. You have your fighter, your wizard, for some reason a guy who steals things... but where are the people who handle your logistics? Okay. You really want to stop the Moon Laser Sorcerer? First you need a research assistant. Who is this guy? What do we know about his lair? If he's hiding in a lost tomb, an archaeologist can preserve important historical evidence. 2 15335 I usually double up on this! Hmm... It looks like a non-disclosure agreement. Your lawyer ensures you're in compliance with local laws and environmental regulations. RocS are not endangered. Spatchcock him. Your quartermaster looks after your swords and your accountant helps you buy more swords! Though, honestly, much of the time things never get violent. Accursed injunctions!
You've eaten your last asylum seeker, Assistant Vice President of the Manticores! So, um. Now what? What? There's that Arby's he levelled, and the consequent release of asbestos dust and loss of employment for nine professional beef defrosters. And we should probably help the people whose cars he sat on with their insurance. Wesley Osam Well, you took care of him. Indeed. Well. What happens now? ...Now? We can't leave a dead manticore in the parking lot of "Smooty's." He'll block the gas pumps. It's called a "manticorpse." And his bosses in Homeland Security might be out for revenge. It was self-defense, but we'd better iron out our story so they can't mess with us, or his I don't KNOW, Окау?!? victims, or any bystanders- I don't know what happens now! "Now" never used to happen to me! When I was fictional, I'd vanquish somebody and just cut to an epilogue!
I can't remember anything I've thought for the last three days... Have I not thought? Was it all just too banal to recall? When did I stop noticing myself? I had an inner life, but it escaped me. In Elflandia, monsters attack you in random moments... a brief, manageable crisis interrupts your rumination, makes you really present in the moment, then brings you back to yourself. What we have in the U.S.A. is distortingly wealthy people who fill cities with armed gangs and deconstruct public health infrastructure, so tainted food or a virus or unhinged goon might kill us at any moment. Constant crisis... it's the refrigerator hum you stop noticing. It doesn't snap you awake, just numbs you to everything. Dissociation! And they're not monsters so much as, um... well, just more people like us... and we let them have all this power. People aren't monsters from our perspective. And I'd only call the situation "brief" on a geological scale. Maybe we're looking at this backwards- FIVE HUNDRED YEARS LATER Those little freaks scared me for a minute, but the whole situation really woke me up and now I feel very connected to myself and present in the moment.
UNEASY AT NIGHT Odd how the city lights make the night darker. The stars drowned out. Like a curtain of ink just beyond the window. At high noon you can see all the way to downtown. Night reels the horizon in on a leash. A few yards away, anything could be happening. Noises sound louder. That pounding could be a car radio at half a mile. Or an ominous awkward behemoth stumbling over the roof; how would you ever know? THUD THUMP It's always nothing. It's always wind on the garbage cans or the neighbor's precariously balanced lawn furniture.
Hey, Bob- Hang on, I feel a sneeze coming- Meanwhile across town My bus is late. CHOO
Y'know, Katrina, I haven't been feeling adequate to the circumstances I find myself in. In what way? We've all got a lot of failings to choose from. Everyone I know these days is empowered by the realms of the supernatural. ...You have that thing where your head falls off when you take off your ribbon, and Muriel has her elf nature... What use am I in a crisis? Honestly, the head thing is rarely a tactical advantage. I needed a gimmick that said "Bob!" So I taught myself to enlarge my mustache! You know. To warn away predators. RUSTLE RUSTLE RUSTLE It really works. Last Tuesday I panicked an ocelot.
REVERSE JAR Um. Muriel, look. There's a tiny man in this jar. OH NO! Uh, who's... Why... What? A reverse jar! The most dangerous of all jars! Is... is the bar on that very high? Wesley Osam It's a REVERSE JAR! Normal jars have an inside and an outside. The inside is the side that keeps things in. A reverse jar has been magically recontextualized! A wizard declares the "inside" to be the outside, and the "outside" the inside!
Muriel, the elf who exists for some reason, occasionally encounters a problem she can solve the same way she solved problems when she was fictional: Swordingly!* SNAP! *In Elfese, this is a real word. A Towelbear! In Elflandia, they are not uncommon. Where would a bear learn about towels? From the Bruins of Civilization! Desist, cuddly predator! Well! Excuse me! Have you considered that a lack of bears snapping towels at people is not a natural law, but merely a cultural convention pandering to your smug authoritarian middle-class luddite complacency?
To write you must dredge the deepest corners of your mind, discover images that hold some secret power, express what even you do not fully understand. WHAT IS IT THAT IS WITHIN ME? The dreams only you can dream. I MUST DESCEND INTO MY SUBCONSCIOUS FIGHT THORN AND SWAMP TO FIND THE CORE TRUTH OF MY SOUL CORE TRUTH ROOM "NOODLES ARE GOOD"
"Seems to me I've heard tell of a man with coleslaw on his head... Some foks call him "The Slawman.""
"But when I actually got into writing them, the events have a certain momentum. So you write a chapter and then in your next chapter, it can’t be six months later, because something’s going to happen the next day. So you have to write what happens the next day, and then you have to write what happens the week after that. And the news gets to some other place. And pretty soon, you’ve written hundreds of pages and a week has passed, instead of the six months, or the year that you wanted to pass. "
Little green cartoon alien literally falling to earth
comic: "To be honest, you didn't really need these X-rays... But I think I can predict the stock market by reading your entrails."
Candy Can'tdy
Hard Pencil Soft Pencil Wiggly Pencil
"Look, Wendell! The moon is wearing the same hat as you!"
The malcontent and his turnip
New Monsters: The Glawp who rests his tongue on people's heads.
New Monsters: The Window Sneezer
Dr Who wiki screenshot: "Television, colloquially known as telly, was a system that allowed people to view broadcast plays, news, drama and comedy. It was a major source of entertainment and information on Earth from the mid 20th century onwards. The Sixth Doctor once dreamed that his adventures were broadcast on television. (PROSE: Christmas Special)"
"Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in history human beings are about to step out upon the surface of Mars... Now, does everyone have their bag of gorp?"
The man who is angry because his finger only points at himself.
The ghost of the drawings you never drew
As winter turned to spring- Every rock in town over a certain size- Manifested a permanent pair of wax lips. An age of awe and terror had begun.
Steampunk Yogurt
New Monsters: A bowling ball on a plunger
New Monsters: Toaster Turnip Man Is he a toaster? Is he a turnip? He was once a man.
*&$^%# PLOP Everyone! It's the Language Cubes! The Language Cubes are making you plop! Fight back! BONK Bonk? PLOP) @$!)&(*^ Good people! If you wish to return your Language Cubes for a refund, please follow the legally binding procedures detailed in our warranty! wallus tory. 3. a. Returns To return your Language Cube for a full refund you are required to throw said Cube directly at the head of the C.E.O. (Chief Executive Officer) of Buxxcorp. b. Repairs Language Cubes can be repaired by any auto mechanic. Despite this many auto mechanics will tell you they know nothing of Language Cubes and are not in the business of repairing then They are lying. Violence is Wow, I really don't remember why 1 included that clause. Sir! We finished prototyping your Meat Balloons! Get in quick! Is Buxx Corp going to take much of a financial hit from the mass return of the Language Cubes, sir? Wesley Osam Don't worry about it, P.A. Guy! We still have that contract with the Florida state government to dig a tunnel to Mars! Thus the innovation continues... forever!
Can we use control of the Language Cube servers to blank out their databases? If we want to discredit the cubes it might be more effective to replace their entire vocabularies with swearing, oaths, and expletives. You mean like "ent-pruning flibertigibbet," "by Stellarion's Gourd," and "Bomb Tombadil?" I think he means more like "shi No. I mean like... @#%%#$. That's right. The swear words so powerful any attempt to put them in a comic strip results only in punctuation. ? If I'm right, when people hear these words coming out of a Language Cube the result will be the universal comic strip sign of appalled surprise... a plop. $#@〜%$ 8^$%^& ）%！？><@ PLOP
By Tuesday all Villagetown was letting Buck's Language Cubes choose their words for them. Cheese is blinking. A hat fighting a moose! Represent collossally and the foam will precede us into the establishment. Don't they notice none of these conversations make any sense? This is how humans already communicate. Instead of listening they assume their interlocutor's words mean whatever they expect to hear. Hey, did you know Language Cubes are all updated through a central server in cloud storage? You can just pull up the login page on the public internet. If we can be inside a computer, we can save language! Getting the password is the challenge... But if I call the Buxx corporation I can "socially engineer" it out of them. Expert work, but I'm up to it. Prepare to be impressed. Let me do this. I have known Buck for years. I know his methods. I know the strange and incomprehensible twists of his forsaken mind. But I'm telling you, it's really technical, so don't be afraid to ask for help i
LANGUAGE CUBES: How they work Steve wants to order a waxwork from this season's hottest new wax sculptor. But he has to write an entire email! Made of words! And there are so many words! It's very draining. I need words... but which ones? How do I choose? Fortunately, Steve has purchased a Language Cube with which to write emails! Shoe fizzers bump a grackle off the rivulet. I have faith that this somehow says what I mean. The sculptor receives Steve's Language Cubed entreaties and intuits their meaning according to word shape, emotional associations, and his own internal whims. Why, this fellow finds my work riveting! And he seems to want to commission something for his carbonated cracker factory! He allows his own Language Cube to write his reply. Discs of meat darken the intentions. Crime hastens. Where does the sidewalk glom onto the fence? Belgium! Eloquent! Steve, too, is free to absorb its meaning through vibes. Tediously parsing grammar and memorizing vocabulary are burdens of
I will not endorse a gadget that sprays random words and calls it language. Writers do not need that. I write most of my books in a caffiene trance which I believe will one day kill me and even I can do better. But what if your fellow novelers had a cube that could write... this? Ooo-kay. Have you noticed normal speech has meaningful vocabulary? Syntax? The orisons of the tweed missiles rise. Why bring taxes into it? I think a thing, words come out, you understand them! Now I'm just asking you to apply the same intuition to Cube words that you do to mouth words. Listen! Yard bones got the haystack. In my understanding it's telling me l'm a genius! Maybe a space genius! You're not understanding anything! You're making up the thing you wish it meant out of empty air! Am I? Or do I just understand a bigger variety of things than you do from the same words? CHECKMATE. I thought Bob would help me-but I guess he's jealous I understand things more nimbly than he does- You're overtired, sir.
Bob! It's been a while! My basement is no longer for rent. Ha ha! No, I have a mansion now. And a personal assistant. Now that you're a somewhat published author I hope you will endorse Language Cubes to the noveling community. No. I would like to keep what minimal respect I have clawed from people who write their books while fully conscious. C'mon Bob! Remembering words is hard! And Language Cubes remember a lot of words that probably aren't in your brain on a regular schedule! Two whole gigabytes- Hey, how much is that in cyberflops? Uh... twelve. Twelve! The number of literature! Now you can write books made from pure all-natural Twelve! NIW The point of writing is that the words are mine. They represent my thoughts. Language Cube words can represent your thoughts, too! Watch this: Hello! These are my thoughts!
Buck Miller, CEO of Buxx Inc., is interviewed: Inventing is easy. You think of a thing in a gry, dey so make this thing. you Like "Meat Balloons," They weren't a thing a minute ago, now they are. I invented them. You don't build the things you invent? Building a thing causes it to exist. Paying a guy to build a thing also causes it to exist. Forget the steps in between. The point is, I'm the cause. Take my latest invention. I had the idea based on this thing here, it's called a “computer"一 I know about computers. Wow, you did your research. Anyway, there's this thing on them, "Al," that makes words. I noticed Al uses a lot of power to make words! Very loud power! And I guess it makes the computer need to drink a lot of water, which, let me tell you, is not how they normally work. I just thought, hey, computers can make dinosaurs now. Why are they using so much electricity on words? I bet we can make cheaper words. Веер That's why Buxx created the Language Cube! It contains lists of nou
Hey, look! An interview with that new tech genius, Buck Miller! The one who invented Smart Wigs! Buck never invented a thing in his life. He used to rent my basement. Buck Miller invented Smart Wigs in your basement? Mostly he played guitar badly. He became suddenly wealthy after inheriting an illegal cockfighting ring from his aunt in Irkutsk. At Buxx, we've rebranded questions as "whatayawants!" It was an especially lucrative fight ring because they also fielded badgers and small kakapos. And that money founded Вихх? He didn't found Buxx. He bought it. It used to be a perfectly normal digital toaster company called Splaa. He always wanted to be told he was a genius... I guess now he's in the right place for that. Meanwhile at Buxx Corporate Headquarters: Gentlemen! Why are there still no Pogs of me? No one here knows what those even are, sir. Well, find out and get it done! Now, where's my Theremin? I have a meeting and I want to take "squeal notes."
Someone published a book that 1, specifically, am not supposed to know about... How? That publisher doesn't even know me. Everyone has one book that must be kept from them at all costs... It is the book that explains your life. It wasn't a book about me. The book is never about you... it explains you by accident, in an aside. If you have such a book and encounter its person, you will know what to do. They must never read it! You must never read it! But understanding your life sounds... good? No. These revelations and epiphanies are meant only for the climactic pages of novels... what happens when the protagonist has had their epiphany? The novel ends. Reading the book of your life closes it on you... your story is over. You vanish! The universe shrugs you off like a character whose actor is done with the play. People hear nothing more of you because there is nothing more to hear. When everything you are has been revealed sequels are superfluous. If you want to survive, stay confused.
Muriel told me she's been eating the silica gel packs out of shoeboxes. Yeah, probably. She also sucks the ink out of whiteboard markers like they're Pixie Sticks. It is? Well, sure. Didn't you wonder why there are so many folktales where elves eat forks, charcoal, and rubber turnips? Oh! No, sorry. I was wrong. Forget I said anything. Let me see that. My god, she's going to make herself sick. Nah, elves can eat anything. It's one of the standard elf powers. I have not heard of these tales. Weird. I have a whole book here, it was a bestseller- Tales for Everyone Except Bob Don't Let Bob Read These
So many fairy tale retellings but they never answer the important questions. Muriel, you know monster facts. "Fee," "Fie," and "Foe" all have accepted definitions, but what is "Fum?" That is a sad tale! Fum is a biological secretion of giants, like whale oil. In the early 19th century scientists discovered it had industrial uses... "Gianters" mined fum from the natural caverns at the base of giants' necks. By 5:26 AM on June 11, 1903 giants had been hunted to total extinction. Eww. What was it used for? Cobblers used it in the primitive forefathers of those silica gel packets that come in shoe boxes... You know, the ones that say "Do Not Eat?" But everyone eats them anyway? What are you talking about? No one eats those. More for Muriel!
Quote: But thrift stores, used bookshops, and Goodwills are, accidentally, perfectly designed to show you things that people liked decades ago, then stopped liking. You just have to look - and to be ready to be confused. "I would say that sometimes the best stuff of all is the stuff that doesn't make sense," Zax said. "The stuff that you can't even figure out a response to, other than to ironically laugh at it, because you don't have an emotional vocabulary that'll properly describe what you're experiencing."
The following nominees received enough votes to qualify for the final ballot, but declined nomination: Best Novel – System Collapse, by Martha Wells Best Novelette – 极北之地 (“The Far North”) by 海漄 (Hai Ya) Best Related Work: Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood’s promotional tweets for This Is How You Lose the Time War
Where's our Jeb, Myrtle? The Colorful Idioms of Our Ancestors Strolling I guess those kids in the are old enough to woods start "pitching woo." with the neighbor girl. This woo is great stuff for pitching! На На! WOO FIGHT! Wesley Osam
From all over Villagetown walked the animate pants, converging on the famous Downtown Mystery Pothole (the one with the giant unexplained finger). It's a pants convention? мино Of course! Pants are tired of covering our butts and getting walked around everywhere! But... They want to keep walking us instead-forever! I think they're realizing they have no way to exchange plans or even basic political theory. Pants can't talk! For now. Wesley Osam Listen to me, everyone! Science fiction weirdos have speculated that Large Language Models (or "Al") could bring a technological singularity which may spark an extinction event. This moment is near! Bad enough we allowed cellular phones to talk- GPS systems-even mysterious cylinders connected to sleazy discount emporiums! Engineers must never be allowed to put Large Language Models in pants! Watch them! Watch carefully! Human survival depends on you! www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
All over Villagetown, people who used Muriel's washing machines found themselves helplessly walked around by their pants-hither, thither, and even in directions not covered by ither words. Should we do something? Eh, it'll wear off. In the meantime I have faith their pants will occasionally walk them within reach of food and water. They don't even know where they're going. Most people are not where they want to be most of the time. Does it really make a greate, the ribe dis pante if, Is it my imagination, or are the pants all deciding to go in the same direction? That's probably ominous. Let's follow them. If something is "going on," we can panic in informed instead of clueless ways. Wesley Osam www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
MURIEL! Oh, hi, boss! Ready for more washing machine chiptunes? I have one where every note is a "bloop!" My pants are alive, Muriel! They're walking me around like they're wearing my legs! WASHING MACHINE CEO I just washed them in one of your machines! What have you done? Oh gods! I'm so sorry! I was composing using ancient Elven bardic techniques. I forgot the bards who created them were annoying! Residual sonic sorcery in the chords must have awakened your pants! Can you get them off? No! And now another pair is trying to be worn by my arms! You'll never compose appliance music in this town again! How do you explain to LinkedIn that you lost your last job because of pants? Wesley Osam www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
How do you write "laundry music?" It's not hard. There's a long bardic tradition in my family. My Uncle Fredion invented the Elf Moog! You have to be the laundry. Close your eyes and imagine you're a dirty shirt. What tones arise? Feel them in your eardrums. Let them drip to the keys. Come along, shirt. It's time for your... cleaning. I earned these stains by living! My stains are what make me ME! We know what you need. Calm down, friend shirt. You will feel much better. NO! I'll never be one of you! I''l never be one of you! Not like that! What is wrong. What is wrong with you. Wesley Osam www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
Behold, mortal: I am newly employed! I got a job writing laundry music. What Oh, you probably don't have a new washer or dryer, do you? The only thing I fear more than change is dumping a thousand dollars on a new appliance. See, these days, instead of buzzing when the cycle is up your appliance plays a cheery chiptune. I can't believe people have brain activity to spare for an idea like that. I have to use all of mine. It's a benevolent distraction. The endless drudgery of daily life won't stave off entropy forever. People hate dealing with entropy. They hate responsibility. They really don't want to be reminded they have anti-entropic responsibilities. Every Sisiphyan chore is another reminder that death comes even to the ageless. Music numbs the existential horror. You're going to have to do this over and over for the rest of your life! I should be screaming-but this tune is so jaunty! Wesley Osam
I've been thinking I should get a job. How have you survived up to now? l've been living off fairy gold. It's an amazing deal in an electronic credit economy! You deposit it, it's translated into numbers in a computer, and nobody notices when it turns into a pile of leaves! That seems like it might be... a crime? What are you, dazed? Of course it's not a crime. The whole human economy is based on fairy gold! What Haven't you heard of cryptocurrency? It was the future of money! The best investment you could make! Then, thwack, it all turned into a pile of leaves. Botanically interesting, but good luck paying your mortgage. Then there were NFTS. People were really making bank on those. Again, thwack, pile of leaves. Where did the money go? Nowhere. It was never anything but foliage. Even sticking to stocks won't keep the trees away. Every company out of California is super valuable right up to the point someone notices they're making wildly overpriced juicers or impossible blood tests. O
The Comics Uncertainty Principle What does Bob do when we aren't looking? This is impossible to depict within a comic. As long as Bob is being depicted - We are looking at him.
ONE WEEK LATER How's Eventually Steve? Stronger... faster! I've never seen him negotiate so forcefully with our truculent carnauba suppliers! The only weird thing is how his commercial interests have swerved into a new and unexpected lane. CARNAUBA KING CARNAUBA CARNAUBA CARNAU See, these wax dummies used to be He sideline, paratin pas wall the center of the next big economic bubble. In years to come people will want these waxy friends around. То... To help them remember.
Someone here call for... the Time Patrol? Yes! Thank the gods! We have a serious time travel problem! I am Agent Grout Fauntleroy Harpsichord. Please do not laugh. This is a normal name in the utopian future of my origin. It's amazing you got here so quickly! Oh. Right. My friend at the candle store was frustrated by the indecisive nature of her employer, Steve, and cast a spell to replace him with his future self, Eventually Steve. She'd hoped for an improved Steve with more powerful chandling abilities but got this alarmingly screamy fellow instead. I have seen this before... your "Eventually Steve" has traveled back from one of the post-apocalyptic futures. Several are known. Is he screaming from the shock of being pulled back? No. He is from a future where everyone is constantly screaming. Wesley Osam www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
SOON One thing-if magic's illegal, I want to go home and put my head on my other body. Your what? Okay! Yeah! Let's ride! ...This looks just like your regular body? Yeah, but the fingerprints are different! So's the DNA! Also-maybe I should have asked this first-where do you get a second body? You know. Around. There are sources. We should get going! L. L. Bodies Styles for the Beheaded New Torsos for Spring ...p.18 For the Horseman •..p.34 Wesley Osam www.superdoomedplanet.com/comic
I'm sorry, I have to hang up now, A ghost is Following me and I think it's angry, Old phone: Grrr
If you want to cast a spell, you gotta know magic is irrational. It works by emotional logic. A spell feels like it will accomplish your thing while literally making no godsdamn sense at all. Can't remember where you parked? Dangle your key over a map. Can't get toothpaste out of your carpet? Give the tube a little hat and a suitcase and evict it from your home. So what pulls the trigger? I mean, you don't get people accidentally casting spells every time they do a metaphor. Everybody has a quantifiable number of something called "points." You "spend" them by tensing your head muscles really hard like you're holding in a sneeze. You regenerate your points by drinking any blue liquid. Maybe a sports drink. I do not recommend toilet bowl cleaner! Wait, "points?" That come in numbers? You just said magic was irrational! Unsystematic! How does it have numbers now? Magic works on emotional logic! Feelings! People feel like spells should have a system! And consider: if magic is unsystema