Some said it was enlightened, Others that it was simplistic

UPON METROPOLIS
By Alex Ness

Sometimes one looks at the surface and sees exactly what was shown to them. But in the different layers, the deeper fathoms, they might instead learn that allegorical stories require patience and discernment. This tale, Metropolis, was made to teach visually of the themes of the fallen world. Rather than saying tsk tsk, and shaking a finger at the subject, the movie tells a story of what human souls can do, despite demands upon their conformity. It shows rather than suggest that even if the masters of society wish so, by replacing humans with technology, with cyborgs, with complete ownership of the wishes of others the human mind and heart are the reason we exist. If one steals our labor and demands conformity, we will no longer exist.

The rebellion isn't from Socialism, Communism, Capitalism or Anarchism. It is the human soul finally finding courage to be its own self, rather than conform to others and abandoned being an individual. 

Fritz Lang and Thea Von Harbou co-created this classic work. It was not immediately embraced. Some critics looked at it as being propaganda for communism or socialism. Others saw the work as being a warning against technology, a way to demonize both the wealthy masters of industry as well as threatening laborers with replacement. And some never understood anything deeper than a city of works, robots and threats to the future. Conformity to a evil leadership could be a problem addressed, but in Metropolis the people are exhausted, forced to labor for a leader. It isn't the workers fault, they are bound to be in the system that controls them. But conformity to an average person model for living might lead to a system of doing what one does, because they cannot see beyond their own lives.

There are numerous layers in Metropolis. Along with empty lives and evil rulers, there is also the babble of different goals and not being able to communicate to others, because we cannot agree upon the final language we shall all use. From the film: "One man's hymns of praise became other men's curses. People spoke the same language, but could not understand each other."

The lead female actor Maria captures the truth "There can be no understanding between the hand and the head unless the heart acts as mediator."

New Entry

Alex Ness
June 22, 2026 

Blogthoughts... I gain courage to post about things that suck, and then I think about it as choosing between vanilla or chocolate while others starve without a thing. It is called a 1st world problem. And I am sure it is. As such, I need to be more specific in aim and language used to address it if it is important, but I write here because I am using this to write what was on my mind.

As this blog is about ideas rather than specific media, I want to discuss some important ideas and things that don't fit elsewhere. Not because I feel an urgency, I tend to cover ideas in my poetry, aimed at the world we live upon. I also aim at central ideas when chatting specific medium, so it isn't as if there is something that I am dying to write that I've left uncovered.

But my subject matter is my own, not an agenda to uphold, nothing specific to change the "world".  I know that I am going to keep writing about sorrow as long as I remember who and what I've lost. Sorry if that isn't of interest for you. This blog isn't to cover "important" subjects. I cover what moves me, wounds me, or causes change in the world today.

Two pics of my beloved Katya in 2026 January. Passed too soon, despite being nearly 18 years old. She was what is called a rescue, through an animal shelter. Crossroads Saying she was a rescue is false. She would have been adopted by others. She and her litter mate Sophia both rescued me. They both did save my soul, but Katya was a constant gift to my being, as she gave me stability, hope, affection, love, and so much.

MILITARY FICTION and NON FICTION ABOUT THE FUTURE

We have arrived at a time when calling a subject and setting being future oriented is a challenge. That is, most everything at this point in time is so deeply different than the last Global period of war (WWII) that it all seems bizarre. The concept of pushing a button and killing from remote control used to be offered up as a horror of humanity's violence become ever more impersonalized.

The most primal and ancient of fighting styles was even less violent, despite being hand to hand. The two groups about to fight often taunted one another, made ineffective aerial warfare attempts, but the battles would be fought between a champion from both sides. Whoever won that duel, won the battle, winning the war. It is of course likely that such a behavior wasn't the original state of violence, but it suggests that thousands of years back, humans saw a need to draw up ethical ideas about how to kill another person. In the present, the only ethical concerns seems to be to only kill people who are fighting, and do so beneath a different flag.

The books shown below offer some wonderfully written works, Alan Dean Foster's The Damned are my favorites, but Elizabeth Moon and Robert A. Heinlein shown works are fantastic in quality. Starship Troopers is often called problematic, since he seems to be promoting war. This is found in how he equates citizenship being worthy upon one's willingness to fight for the state. I just think it is a version of his verisimilitude. Alongside the fiction works, there are academic and everyman non fiction considerations of war as an evolved technique or practice.

BEAUTIFUL, REVEALING, AND PHILOSOPHICAL: Photography, Events & Temporary Movements, & The Architecture of modernity and how we arrived here

I am not a particularly talented photographer, although I've taken some nice pics. But the people who move me the most in photography were important, emotive and elite. Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange helped end the Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. They photographed the camps, and revealed a people who were hardly alien, and represented the best of Americans. They enemy alien concept was disproved by the normal existence and the American ideals found in the Nisei, first generation Americans.  Masahisa Fukase was a brilliant photographer who captured moments of power, emotions, and abject sorrow. His own life mirrored such images. 

Sean Martin wrote histories of people, events, practices and movements, differently than others, He focused on the matter at hand rather than wrapping it in the ways of doing things of the day, and keeping the subject before the reader, rather than locating it within the majority of works and historical analysis.

I have read that people who teach about or train themselves in hard forged ideas, such as Logic, Ethics, Philosophy, all sorts of Math and the various social sciences of Academia, find books or documentaries upon Architecture to be similar to art for others.  That is a long sentence yes, but it is totally what I mean to say. Architecture functions as a philosophy, an art, a practical training and a way to bring a better way to do things to the public. The books shown are all really good, but my favorite is by Hugh Ferriss, who creates beautiful and unique styles that he perceived the growing cities of the future would adopt. It didn't happen the way he suggested, but if you view Star Wars Episode 2 with the scenes in Coruscant, you will see application of some of it.   

These books are serious but might be called "Fringe" subject matter theories, but not all of the writers are crystals sharing meditating hippies. Robert Schoch, Robert Bavaul, Graham Hancock, David Hatcher Childress, and Charles Berlitz all wrote about different aspects of human culture, and the events outside of our planet, inside the stories of human culture, and strange happenings. Professor Robert Schoch is by far the best of these, since he is more or less asking questions to arrive at answers. His concepts of disasters molding the earth, solar flares repeating in cycles, and humans crossing various oceans led to the world we have. If aliens exist or not, he doesn't deal with ideas that can't be tested. 

Others suggest that the answers are just outside of the range of normal science or normal academic consideration. Graham Hancock does offer a good alternative to some ideas. Rather than accept the fringe concept that aliens have visited, taught humans great matters to consider, astronomy and more, he suggests there were/are phases of human culture. And that disasters, climate events, asteroid impacts happen at such a time interval, that the human species came from numerous culls, and we are the inheritors of the generations that came before. 

A friend of mine in the high towers of education in hard sciences is driven a bit nuts by the fact that I read and theorize about things considered by the authors of the books below. But I don't believe most of what you will find below. I think the people arriving at each concept, though, may have studied more than I have, and I want to gather enough information to make my own decision. I always prefer questions without answers than answers that cannot be questioned. Always dig into what you can find, others will do your thinking if you let them. Test every theory. Question everything.  We don't know everything and we might never, but it is by far better to ask why or what or how, than to assume we aren't allowed or destined to know these subjects matters. 

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LEFT FOR ANOTHER DAY

Arzach by Moebius

ME!
By Alex Ness
June 11th, 2026

EXPERIENCES

I am not, not now, nor ever, a mind devoted to wishing darkness upon others who themselves delight in the disasters others experience. There are people who apologize for being wrong to me, but I don't need an apology. For the most part, I see lives as being new for most people. We learn from moving forward in life, and even dark or stupid things, we can move forward from. However I tend, and have through my life, to be perceived differently than I truly am. I am tall, at 6'4"but I not only don't play basketball, I rarely in my life have actually watched it. I am heavy, at 240 lbs, but I rarely cause shock and awe by my repeated visits to the buffet line to eat food in great amounts, but few health points in my favor.  I read books by authors who society approves of, and the reverse. I don't think most people who grumble about something that someone has written, usually have ever read the book to form such disgust. 

NYPD Blue was easily one of my all time favorite shows, but I heard people say, it is violence porn. Well no, it wasn't at all. It had moments of violence, being about cops without the shine and veneer of G rated adult story telling. They'd then shift gears and say, well it shows nudity. Well we are all born nude. If it bothers you I have an answer to your dilemma. Watch something else and stop telling adults what they can or cannot watch. No, I am not telling you to shut up, I am saying, respectfully if that is how you wish it spoken, you are not my arbiter of morality in fictional story telling. I even heard someone on public affairs cable access channel, either in Arizona or North Dakota, that if society allows porn, it ought to demand that deviant acts not get protected under the umbrella of the First Amendment calling for free speech. (They didn't get that by labeling something X or NC-17, that a person may pay and view it or pay and not view it at all. They might also consider not watching the film, but none of these options are license to regulate various media. They do not get to edit or ban actions that are not illegal). 

IF YOU ARE A WRITER, WHY DON'T YOU WRITE NOVELS?

My first effort was a prose novel. However, I've been told by writers, short stories are kewl too, don't worry about the format, just write. I did poorly however. Some of it was trying to write with chemo brain and damage from sepsis that came through during the first wave of chemo. But I am not blaming that, or anyone. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to say, I've never been one to whip up adventures, I was far more about shorts narrative works, longer prose poems and other differences from straight prose. One writer offered a free read and comment. For a couple months he said nothing, and when prodded he said you don't have problems with grammar or spelling, but it doesn't read like a novel. It reads like many small stories done in prose rather than your native mindset. Bingo! I also tried writing a prose novel during my recovery from my broken neck and messed up shoulders in 2019 to 2022. That work turned out for the worse.

During my cancer phase I ended up with much more free time, since an artist fellow from Cleveland Heights asked me to allow him 18 months to achieve progress on an illustrated prose work. Why didn't I have to work? My book for his art to appear in, was done and in his hands for over a year. In the previous 18 months the artist was consumed by envy and bitterness, and actually made a blog site to house message board threads, galleries, and a potential news blog about comic books so he could fight a non existent battle with his enemies on a previous website and message board. He didn't do the work for my book, and in doing this in his fashion, he was so afraid to fail, he did nothing at all. Wait, no, he did, he worked on the message board/blog, and focused on spending time there.

The sole good point was that I could salvage the book this time, I just took pieces out and placed new pieces in, and it was published while my best friend in life had done the formats and uploaded the piece to my Amazon publishing hub. I thought he did a great job. It was presumably for him being done to try out the system, and I gave him some books or such, but not nearly as much as he deserved. I, therefore, write, but in smaller bite size portions, and my poetry is rarely the nursery rhyme variety or the drugged up hippie shit that doesn't rhyme, doesn't have a clear meaning, or is trying to slip a giant joke about its audience.

ARTISTS OF COMICS WHO I ADORE THE WORK OF

Due to wanting to do a size more manageable, I did not show MOEBIUS, JACK KIRBY, Gil Kane, Frank Miller, Jorge Zaffino, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Ben Templesmith, Goseki Kojima, Walter Simonson, Joe Staton, Michael Zulli and many more.

Shown is the front cover work of Erik Larsen, Mark Smylie, Mike Grell, Tim Bradstreet, Timothy Truman, Chris Weston, Paul Gulacy, Mike Oeming, Brian Haberlin, Ashley Wood, Peter Bergting, Tom Mandrake, Josh Howard, Jan Duursema, Paul Harmon, Jae Lee

Favorites are of course not the same as the greatest of all time, but they probably are that too.

June 11, 1988 I was married before many people in Grand Rapids, MN to my beautiful wife, Beth. She and I have celebrated 38 years together, and she hasn't aged a day. I consider her being in my life one great reason I've overcome certain hurdles, and risen despite obstacles. 

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SERIOUS MOVIES THAT MOVE ME

Long before beginning a new blog, I was asked by someone half my age who thinks/says I write well, what 20 movies move me the most. Since I am an emotional guy I think that the person asking would reply immediately and with 18 loves stories and 2 feel good kind of movies. I often protect my heart when saying something where others can respond. She then applied a filter to the list, no Godzilla or in her mind children's movies. I avoided the Godzilla specifically, but I'd have four of them, or more here if I chose to include them.

Now, whether for good or ill, I often do not say anything about someone else's choices, it is all a matter of taste. In their case, I did keep my yap shut. But not always... But there have been times when I couldn't keep my big yap shut. Someone liked something I despise, it was time wasted I'll never get back... so I said it like that. And they had done nothing wrong. At all. For the next twenty years they held a grudge and I refused to break the ice and apologize. Is their taste bad, or was there one great scene amongst the crappola? I'd say now, as a much older and more educated person, I don't care if someone likes something I do not, so I'll just smile and nod my head and say I am glad you found a work to fit your tastes or life experiences.

I like some work for the actors, others for the subject, but usually it is the director, the writers, and knowledge of the camera work that makes a work fully vivid and vital. Lately I've been watching Stanley Kubrick films, and those aren't the happiest of works I've watched, by any stretch of the imagination. Since I've been mourning a number of losses, my choice of film is important. I am not exaggerating when I say I've touched bottom of an ocean crevice, and can't imagine surviving the impact of rising above the darkest fathoms.

I decided to add the works in a way that doesn't much imply preference, but some preference. I have sets of 5 movies each, and offer them to generally look at what I like.

Seven Samurai
Gladiator
Amadeus
Excalibur
From Here to Eternity
Blade Runner
Blade Runner 2049
Interstellar
The Crying Game
The Black Rose
Metropolis
M
The Misfits
Andromeda Strain
Alien 
The 13th Warrior 
JFK 
A Place in the Sun
Enemy at the Gates
300











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Beyond Politics or Religion

I am told when taking the MBTI test, that I am INFJ. As such I tend to be intuitive, introverted, idealist, and future minded. There are many versions of the test found online, but few stray from the boundaries established by the creators of the exam. I mention this to offer an idea of what kind of person I am. I don't live thinking, oh, since I am an INFJ I better do or not do this this. It simply offers a way to add context to all of my instincts and thought.

I have been sent numerous questions over the last week. My outlook here is to be open and perhaps help others enjoy what I write elsewhere by knowing me. So, here are a few of my answers to questions.

"When relaxing, what adult beverage and snack do you most enjoy and do you smoke? After all I saw you in a photo smoking a big one."

I have smoked cigars in the past. That might be true, but I never smoke a ton of them. I found I enjoyed the experience but I am also aware that my health is not so great that I am immune from side effects and direct effects from non-serious behaviors. As such, I am not having more of them. I have enjoyed Stoli on the rocks, Irish Whiskey, and Grainbelt Premium Beer. As I'm dealing with substantial health issues, the meds I take might interact with alcohol. I will never be dead from personal use of meds interaction. I can't say the physicians will always be in agreement on what I take. There might perhaps be an accident, knowing that people I once knew died of med interactions.

 "Why do you live in Minnesota if you hate cold weather and snow?"

My reason for loving Minnesota comes down to the populace, ideals, beauty and hope. For a place with such cold, to live here, I think the people are warm, bright and overall kind and creative. I don't really have a thyroid that works, so it might feel colder to me than others.

"Who would you vote for in 2028? And please be serious..." 

Winona LaDuke, Tulsi Gabbard, Jon Fetterman, Jesse Ventura, a reanimated Ross Perot. And those are serious choices, if I were to vote in 2028. I doubt I'll vote. I mentioned them in an article about 8 years ago too, and my views have not changed. (All but Fetterman who wasn't yet in national levels of government.)

"Do you see more war in the future?"

I believe that humans are violent. War is easier than hammering out problems and diplomacy. People who analyze international relations and Asia, all know that the Chinese playbook had aimed 2027 as the year they would retake Taiwan. However, both Trump telling allied nations, whether in NATO or SEATO that they need to take more responsibility for their own defense. When Biden and Pelosi changed American foreign policy by saying we would stand shoulder to shoulder defending Taiwan, it changed so much. It not only changed previous foreign policy plans, it reconfirmed to Taiwan uppermost, followed swiftly by South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines that a united front would isolate and stall offensive plans in China to act in aggression towards Taiwan, and had a chance to succeed.

"Why did America, if not you, vote for Trump?"

Americans are often said to envy wealth. Trump voters want wealth as well as wanting to abandon the social programs of the past, that they don't see as fair. But those who voted against Trump probably also envy wealth. Wealth can be a positive or negative as a driving force.

I know a man who was Democrat his entire life but voted twice for Trump. He told me how he had stopped seeing America as focusing on liberty and hope, and instead it was anti wealth now. For him, he thought it was America becoming like Europe, who he once respected, (he'd served in Europe to defend NATO against the Soviet threat) but now sees as a mix of people who wouldn't defend themselves, as well as anti capitalist. Or in other words, he said, why pay to send troops to a place with tons of money to defend people who wouldn't pick up a weapon and defend their own?

"Who are your favorite "fine" or "non-genre" artists?"

This is not a fair question. But I'll try. Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack and John William Waterhouse. But I've hundreds of fine artists I appreciate.

"Is it hard to review products when you've done it for 25 years? With nothing new under the sun, do you end up yawning and write to please the readers or is it heartfelt?" 

I never lie in a review, but that is a harder comment to explain because at the peak of publisher and creator awareness of me, there used to be so many good products and I had only so many pages I could write a week. I eventually decided to only focus on lifting others, rather than criticize everything. For one thing, I could never do better than 99% of them all, and it was insulting, in my mind, to act as if I knew better than another person's viewpoint being expressed in art.

"You are nucking futs to think Ezra Pound or Yukio Mishima were anything but assholes and fascists!"

Feel whatever you like about them, I've read too many of their works to feel as you just expressed. And it isn't that I forgive all the bad choices, dark beliefs, I just about never, however, cancel others. 

Ideas about what shape my outlook

I vote how I vote due to experiences in my life, wisdom or knowledge I've acquired, and beliefs that have framed my choices. Someone said a socially liberal but fiscal conservative person ends up de facto conservative. And that a social conservative is rarely a fiscal liberal, since they won't fund things they feel are wrong. As such, I'd argue that I am a centrist, as I don't impose my outlook on others, and that I am libertarian with a very small letter L to start, as being a centrist means there is no party that represents my outlook. I get people who demand to know my voting history, since I turned 18 in 1982 I've voted for approximately the same number of Democrats and Republicans. But for US President, slightly more Democrats than Republicans, and more 3rd party than either of the main parties. 

My views just don't easily find a home in parties. Frankly I am moving towards only voting for local and state elections, as my disappointment in the major national choices leads me to want a system with more choices due to the limits of all or nothing two party choices. As a person with political science degrees some feel I must have deeper outlooks to voting. I might, but not for my degrees. I focused upon international relations, and was as bored as I was angry about the American political system.

Choices are often argued as being held by the individual, but I've not chosen my own existence. I was born as a result of rape. My mother didn't get a choice. But how many people get to choose existence? How many humans are a result of purpose? The point I am making, is that there are arguments about why we exist. Are we a miracle? Are we an accident? Does our life reflect miracle or train wreck? 

Who am I? In a course of study some of the class argued that a baby became human only after being wanted and born in healthy form. I was not by purpose. One of the students said, I don't even think adoption makes people into being human. The birth mother needs to have decided to have a child, however they were conceived? I said I am a child of rape, so you are arguing that I am not human? She immediately turned beet red, and said, I am saying you don't get to choose the label of what you are. A number of other students in the course started calling her names. I said stop that. We all have an ability to communicate freely, we are in America, freedom of speech should run through our veins. Do I believe in abortion as a right? I don't think society can forbid things that are moral choices, or they turn the concept into an act of rebellion against the rule makers. By leaving it as an individual choice, whether it is moral or not, is found in the heart of those who chose that act. 

It occurred to me, in the period following 2020 that people of one view were not allowed freedom of speech. Someone said, my body my choice, and someone else said, in all areas except vaccine mandates. I am not a scientist, so I can't define the concept of herd immunity. As a confirmed non conformist *my wife certifies this statement* I did still get the vaccine. However, it wasn't an act of obedience nor obeisance. I was of the mind, based upon all the doctors I was seeing, that I'd not get my necessary surgery if I had not received the vaccine. My G/P doctor confirmed this. I had had a broken neck since a traumatic fall in February 2019. I walked around with an uncorrected neck break, was in a near fatal car accident, and by virtue of having no correction, by the time I had life saving neck surgery, I had two shoulders that were messed up. I had to get one surgery at least, or my neck surgery wouldn't have mattered much. I had shoulder surgery, but only post vaccine. 

I am not saying anything about the vaccine itself. Nor even am I considering policy. I don't really know what herd immunity truly is. If it is a goal, they ought to have explained it better. The way it was forced upon people was I think was a mistake. Forcing conformity is tyranny without the best explanation. I did have to get my surgery, so there was no choice for me. I could have avoided making the choice, but the pain then was worse than now, and I would have lost my mind in the meantime. Maybe I didn't have a choice, or I made a compromise between my own body sovereignty and the suffering of pain.

I do think we are all upon a journey to find the truth. Some have lower standards of success. But I know, it isn't an easy thing to find the greater truth. We might all have opinions, and experiences, but regardless of that, not all ideas are equal. Not all choices are good ones.

Image by Jeffrey Catherine Jones©