Eric Shay Howard

Bad blogger. Complicated. Gay.


Home » The Whole Allison Mack, NXIVM Thing Still Bothers Me

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The Whole Allison Mack, NXIVM Thing Still Bothers Me

When I look back at 2021, I really only think of a few things. Obviously, COVID19 was one of them. It’s still affecting everything and now it’s 2022 and it’s still here and all of that. I think about this blog, too, and how behind on it I got while I was in grad school. I don’t know why I struggled with keeping up with the blog in 2021; I started grad school in August of 2020 and blogged like heck the second half of that year. But, whatever. I’ll try to do better this year. I think about my attempts at getting something of a YouTube channel going. (Plot twist, it didn’t really work but I’m still gonna try I guess.) Then, after thinking about what new stuff I got, what TV shows I watched, what books I read, something else comes to mind. This something else really still messes me up. It’s the whole Allison Mack, NXIVM, Keith Raneire thing.

Smallville Is My Favorite TV Show

I grew up watching Smallville. I was a freshman in high school, I think, when it premiered. Or maybe I was in the 8th grade. I can’t remember. But, I caught it the night it premiered on The WB. It took me until the end of the episode to figure out what it was. (Clark Kent? Lana Lang? Lex Luthor? These names sound familiar. Oh well.) Yeah, I know, duh. Anyway, then there was this Chloe Sullivan character. She’s one of my favorite characters from any show ever.

I’ve liked a few other shows since Smallville. LOST comes to mind. I loved LOST. But, I didn’t aspire to be like anyone on LOST. When you watch something like Smallville growing up, you learn things, life things. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to like another show as much as Smallville, because I’m just going to be wondering if anyone is going to get caught up in anything super awful. After the show, I tried to keep up with the cast. I checked in on which projects they were doing next. I checked out Tom Welling in Cheaper By the Dozen. I watched Michael Rosenbaum in that weird Internet spoof of Peanuts. I listen to John Schneider talk about being a republican or whatever on YouTube. Occasionally, I’d catch wind of this weird thing Allison Mack (the actor who plays Chloe Sullivan in Smallville) was doing. Then one day, holly crap. A cult? Weird branding stuff? Was she tricked? Was she not tricked at all? I don’t know what to think about it anymore.

All of that weird cult stuff happened over the course of many years I think. So did all of the court stuff. Delays. Confusion. Stress levels. I know, real people were affected by actual awful things and will have to live with things for the rest of their lives and here I am just ranting about how much it bothers me because I just liked a tv show.

It Still Just Bothers Me

Allison Mack’s sentencing was in September 2021. She got 3 years of prison, I think. And, no, I wasn’t affected physically by any of it, but it still really bothers for some reason. Like, it messes me up when it pops in my head, which it does all the time, because I still really like Smallville.

So, I don’t know. I just want whatever can possibly still work itself out to work itself out and for everyone to be as okay as they possibly can.

Anyway, that’s my reflection on 2021. No one from any TV shows I like join a cult this year, please. Thanks.

Okay, so about this photo real quick – yes that’s me wearing an Express t-shirt, Express shorts, Sperry shoes (with socks!) and a red cape, because you know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you, just let me be.


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Bluegrass Writers Studio MFA Summer Residency, 2022. Photo by Ben Keeling.

I’m Eric Shay Howard and I’m a bad blogger. I’m also an author. I live in Louisville, Kentucky and work at a law firm.

I’m currently a graduate student in a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Lately, I’ve been blogging about that. I also have a Master of Business Administration and have completed a few certificate programs in Human Resource related studies. Occasionally I blog about business and other MBA-related things. Blogging about my day, bad dates, or package delivery issues are also not out of the question.


I wrote a fiction collection called Crushes and self-published it because sometimes I just like to push buttons and see what happens. I think this book is pretty alright, I suppose. Buying a copy helps me out. Feel free to leave a review on Amazon as well.

crushes by eric shay howard fiction collection book cover

I’m an Amazon Affiliate and occasionally post affiliate links to products in my blog posts and throughout my website. I always disclose these links, just so there’s no confusion. There’s more information about this on my page about my privacy policies and disclosures.

If there’s ever any confusion about this feel free to drop me a comment below the post in question, or you can email me or reach out to me through my social media. Other contact methods are here.


Eric’s bookshelf: currently-reading

The Silkworm
tagged: currently-reading
Words of Radiance
tagged: currently-reading
The Cloven Viscount
tagged: currently-reading
Dark Rise
tagged: currently-reading
The Gunslinger
tagged: currently-reading
It
It
tagged: currently-reading
Mistborn: The Final Empire
tagged: currently-reading

goodreads.com

Blogs and People I Like

Here are some other blogs and people that I like to read or keep up with. The order is arbitrary because I started out going for alphabetical order but then got busy with classes or something so now sometimes I just rearrange them for no reason.


Equipment Test! Podcast Artwork

I made a really bad podcast over the summer called Equipment Test! because I bought a microphone. But if you like really bad podcasts, you can listen to it here, or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other places.


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