The Guy Might Be Legit

But his Billy Mays style website of "You too can make $$$!!!" is at least a turn off.

Also, I see no published novels by him available on the US version of Amazon. His writing handbook is listed on Amazon, but only available from a Lulu storefront.

I see no published novels by any of the people writing "testimonials" on the US version of Amazon.

So color me skeptical. Though I'd have to say his price tag of $47 makes him one of the least greedy of the bunch (though paying him that might well lead to further requests of money).

The Bashers from Birmingham!

Rocked the house! Rocked it HARD!

Might've been their best set that I've seen. They played all of British Steel (the ostensible reason for the tour is the 30th anniversary), plus some of their usuals - Victim of Changes, Ripper, Diamonds and Rust, and You've Got Another Thing Coming - one from Nostradamus, and a surpising two from Defenders of the Faith (Freewheel Burning and Rock Hard Ride Free). It was a little hard to leave w/o Painkiller and Green Manalishi, but it was extra nice to see You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise.

And Rob must've been jogging around London Bridge this year - the man was moving around the stage like a man... um... two-thirds his age. (Does he still live in Havasu City? I know I heard that years and years ago.) He looked great, though he should've struck the three person pose up front, bracketed by Glenn and KK. That always looks soooo cool.

And speaking of 1979: I saw Dawn of the Dead, bought British Steel, and my mother died, all w/in a year of each other. The die was cast for me that year, for good and ill.

There's Crazy, and Then There's....

Well, we all know what the Nazi leadership thought of world history, right?

It was run by Freemason, Marxists, and Catholics.

Who were the secret dupes of...

The Jews!

But one of them, Erich Ludendorff, thought that the Jews were really under the control of...

Are you ready?

THE DALAI LAMA!

Rosenberg (who dreamed up all the "Blood and soil" pagan revival) thought he was a crank, and Hitler had him run out of the party for being too extreme.

Now THAT'S crazy!!

Declare Your Independence!

From bad zombie fiction!

The tree of freedom has been refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots, so that it could bear the fruit of -

The most awesome collaboration in the history of zombie literature!

The greatest tale of community and love triumphing over zombie hunger!

The best smart zombie since Bub!

Go to it! March forth, brave, freedom-loving zombie hordes!

Public Enemies

This is the most savagely beautiful thing you'll see this year. I'd compare it to Bonnie and Clyde, since it's that good, but I almost wonder if that's not quite saying enough. The visuals are better in this film. The reliance on slow motion isn't as heavy handed. The characters, while still presented as larger-than-life caricatures, are somehow less sentimental and shallow - they seem more real, in a way. Purvis is cruel in the name of righteousness. Hoover is sadistic in the name of... well in the name of his own vanity and perversion. Billie is not just a bored hick, but exudes something more like Depression-era despair. Dillinger has some fierce loyalty that's gotten him through everything so far - until he encounters the demoralizing, desensitizing modern world of Big Crime and Big Government and Big Everything. He's too small for that, like a lone cowboy in a western that's set after the closing of the frontier. Please go see this instead of Transformers, so maybe Hollywood will make some more good movies.

"Biblical" Faiths/Beliefs (?)

I’m continuing to try to articulate the problems I have with people who insist that their religion is “Biblically based” (and therefore, I take it, right). I think I’ve got it down to the simplest statement I can give (though it’s still a Matt Cardin-worthy wall o’ text).

There are two claims, I think, behind this overall claim.

First, that every word of the bible is true (this is called “inerrancy”) and should be taken as normative for followers.

Given the disparate material in the bible, often with more than trivial disagreement on details of fact or belief; given its haphazard composition over centuries; given that many of its injunctions (esp. as to the treatment of women and non-believers) are utterly inhumane and barbaric; given how selectively this is applied by most people who claim to follow this hermeneutic – given all that, I don’t see any way that such a belief is sensible or helpful. Indeed, when I found out all the stuff I DIDN’T have to believe in order to be a Christian, it was like the scales falling from my eyes and I could finally believe. I understand that there are lots of people for whom the opposite is true – if they thought one word of the bible WASN’T true, it would destroy their faith. I try to respect their belief, but it seems so absurd and fragile and useless in the modern world, that I find it a very difficult proposition. But I’ll continue to try.

The second claim is that the speaker’s beliefs (but not mine, and I’d assume not the beliefs of other Christian denominations, never mind Jews or Mormons or anyone else) are ONLY from the bible. Everyone else’s beliefs are based on interpretation and tradition, but the follower of a “biblically based” religion has only 100% biblical beliefs and practices.

The problems with this are almost more insurmountable to me. It’s bad enough that it makes any real discussion or respect impossible between Christian denominations (never mind with people of other faiths) as setting them up as irrevocably and irredeemably “wrong” and the other person’s beliefs as unassailably “right.” But it stumbles on the fact that “biblical” was a category that evolved over time – the list of books that we think of as the New Testament wasn’t accepted as canonical until 200 CE, and several books had significant opposition. So from the beginning, “biblical” can’t really be contrasted with “tradition” – it was tradition that determined what became biblical. And finally, there really is no Christian doctrine you can think of that isn’t based (to some extent) on post-biblical interpretation and tradition – not the virgin birth, not original sin, not the incarnation, not substitutionary atonement (or any other attempt to articulate what it means for someone to die “for” someone else’s sins, since the NT is rather coy and ambiguous on anything as systematic as that). All of those were being debated among Church fathers and so-called “heretics” into the fifth century and beyond, all of them marshalling biblical texts in their support. Again, when I could see that I didn’t have to recover some apostolic faith and try to follow it in order to be a Christian, when I could acknowledge that beliefs are being negotiated and debated and evolving over time – that was not a stumbling block to me, but the removal of one. And on this point, I can’t really see how it wouldn’t help all Christians if they removed this strange, self-justifying belief from their thought world and tried to live more humbly in the light of uncertainty, but also with mutual respect and learning from others.

On this second point, I remember when a very earnest student asked me if the Christian Scriptures could be proven right, and the scriptures of other religions proven wrong, so that we could hurry up and evangelize and convert all those millions of people so they’d be saved (like us, I suppose). In her defense, I really don't think she meant it as any disrespect, but really felt sad that all those people were going to hell. And way back then, I was much quicker on my feet and I said, “Why in the world would I want to do that? As it stands now, I can learn from other people’s religions and expand and grow my own faith and knowledge. Why would I want them to be wrong, and lose all those opportunities for learning?” Maybe that’s what it comes down to: if you think your faith is “biblically based,” then you’re done learning and you can discount everything else out there, or even try to beat it over the head with your book until it submits. But if you think your faith is not a static artifact, but a work in progress, then you can seek out new dialogue partners and work on your faith and understanding together with them.

But, what do I know? “Dialoguing” probably isn’t as deeply a part of our human nature as “beating over the head,” so I assume the latter will be going on long after my dialogue has come to whatever conclusion it’s going to come to.

I Feel Inspired!

To make the debate public!

So here's my "creed" (as it were):

I believe that there is a perfect Creator of the universe. (Belief, not fact, and really not affecting any public policy decisions that I know of, since that's always the first thing people fret about: belief in a Creator is not tantamount to study of "creation science" and does not need to be discussed in presentations of "science.")

This Being is guided only by perfect love for the Creation S/he has made. (A harder one to swallow, I think, but one that is heavily reinforced by the point following the next one.)

I fall so short of this Being that I can never return to Him/Her on my own. (I don't see too much argument with this one, given my own behavior, or a more general theory of human nature. And I only make this assertion for myself. Other people may, indeed, be perfect, for all I know - though the ones who claim to be automatically fall way down on the list of the elect, as far as I'm concerned)

Yet, because I'm made in this Being's image, and live in His/Her love, I can't help but want to be with Him/Her; it's a part of me I can't deny. (A lot of people attest to a similar compulsion, and I feel it very strongly, even in my most skeptical moments, though I have to trust people who deny ever having these feelings, that they are telling me the truth, even if I can't fully sympathize with them.)

But because of this Being's Love for me, S/he will provide some means for me to return to Him/Her; this means will be so mysterious that it will not really make sense to human minds, but I have trust that such a means is available and my Creator would never abandon me. (This to me is the real content of "faith," not some adherence to a particular scripture or church - the trust in one's Creator as ultimately being able and willing to save one, despite all seeming impossibility.)

And although I find this creed compatible with Christianity, I don't think anything in it is exclusive or unique to that religion.

Can I get a "Whoa, Bundy!" ?

Oh my!

Fundie lady politician from Oklahoma acting up!

Nothing says "epic fail" like an attempt to blame our economic woes on all the godless heathen and abortion doctors and pornographers!

Wait, I've been inspired to dig up another link. Give me a sec!

Meh, I can't find a readable pic of a poster for a Mary Daly rally. I used to see them once/month in Cambridge. They expressed the same idea as the Oklahoma lady (i.e., "people I disagree with should be punished by GOD(DESS)!!!"), with even some overlaps on the list of villains: "Come join theologian Mary Daly as she casts a spell against the patriarchal oppressors WOMBYN - especially the Catholic church, US Government, and pornographers!!"

New Interview

It's a long one. We must've had a dozen emails back and forth over a couple months.

Interview with author and artist AP Fuchs.

And check out his Undead World Trilogy while you're at it!!

The Dreaded Language of Academese

I had to reject an essay for an academic journal, and am reminded how badly grad school teaches people to write. Never mind the stylistic shortcomings of a particularly stilted, artificial prose. That's bad enough, but you can probably unlearn it. More deadening is that the process teaches you to *think* wrong too - or think less clearly and in a less interesting, lively way. Not that my thought processes are firing on all six cylinders or doing anything that great, but I guess I always had certain intuitions (i.e. "This is interesting" or "I wonder what would happen if I did this?...BZZZT! YOW!") and didn't let other people's paradigms or convoluted thoughts derail me into what THEY were interested in (which I might not be). I can remember learning to count syllables and label the meter of a line of poetry (and I'm sure I could relearn the technique quickly enough if I had to) but I never let that really affect my enjoyment (or lack of enjoyment) of a poem. So much of what is called "scholarship" seems to be a dry, complicated, pointless little intellectual game or puzzle, and I can understand why people get turned off by it and think it's useless - because when it's conducted that way, it is!

So Many Reasons to Hate Transformers

As reported, here's another:

LITTLE BLACK SAMBOTS

Personally, I just hate Michael Bay's visual and auditory rape of me in my theater seat, but to play around with racial stereotypes from the 1920s? Yeah, we can add that to the list.

It's an interesting issue, and one I thought about a lot as my kids grew up on Disney flicks. But (and please forgive me for defending Walt), although the stereotypes were often pretty blatant, I thought there was often some sense of balance there. In other words, the black-stereotyped hyenas in Lion King were balanced by the effete, British-accented Scar. Most balanced of all were the very Sambo-like crows in Dumbo (made in 1941, BTW), who end up helping the little elephant, while the evil lady elephants all sound like old, white biddies from the country club.

Well, anyway, I like Disney flicks, and I hate Michael Bay movies, so maybe I'm just being swayed by my prejudices based on other criteria to overlook the racial element in Walt's old stuff. (No, I'm not going to give a defense of Song of the South; I never watched any of Disney's live action anyway.)

New Interview

I like this one, as it's more about Dante than me!

TOR.COM INTERVIEW ON VALLEY OF THE DEAD

Thanks to John Joseph Adams at Tor.com!

Big Announcement?

Now I'm told it might be a while before we can announce! GRRR!

But, in other news, Marriott emailed me (finally) and said they are "addressing" the issue!

"Addressing"? as in "Tough luck, you bunch of horror weirdoes!"

or, as in,

"Oh, we're so sorry! Let us give you lots of free stuff so you'll come back!!"

Still waiting!

And in the meantime, you know what I need? A rich, eccentric benefactor. I'm thinking a cross between William Randolph Hearst and Howard Hughes. Maybe he could live in a giant dirigible, slowly circling the Andes? Or maybe in a secret lair under an active volcano? Either would be swell, so long as he pays me to write my novels!!

Seen at Price Chopper...

I saw a shopping cart rolling quite purposefully by itself in the supermarket. It did not appear just to be going downhill, but actually swerving here and there. I thought, "Hmmm, haunted shopping cart?" Then I thought that would be the kind of story that the genre's worst author would spin out into 2000 words of incoherence, all the while giving us updates on how great it was going to be and how we'd all be sooooo jealous of it.

Boy, haven't really thought of him lately. Way to go, shopping cart!

Thoughts on Iran

OTOH, it's all too complicated and intractable, I suppose.

OTOH, it's all as simple as it is tragic and ironic.

Thugs hired by aged clerics shoot peaceful protesters who are chanting "Allah akbar!" [God is Great]

Leading me to believe, once again, that

God is the Ultimate Source of all freedom,
though some of the most vocal believers in God are some of the worst enemies of freedom.