TV Review: Chase

Here come the blonde warrior women of NBC! The next in my series of television premier series reviews comes Chase. This show reminds me briefly of every law enforcement TV show that has ever existed—but mostly it made me think of In Plain Sight (which I happen to love to death.) Sadly, it doesn’t work quite as well as In Plain Sight does with Mary Shannon as our blonde, quirky protagonist—instead Chase gives us a strong, brass-balled warrior girl in the form of Annie Frost.

And she’s one cool customer.

(What can I say? I’m partial to brass balls archetypical warriors like Vex Harrow.)

I have to admit, I subscribed to this one just because I can feel potential cracking beneath the surface—but it still didn’t manage to keep my attention very well. I found myself drifting out to read stuff on the Internet and edit my articles as I watched. The character drama is lacking and the action scenes are a little lax. However, I must say, they’re humorous enough to make me smile. During one apprehension scene (a chase scene no less) they actually ran through a herd of driven bulls and then crashed through a rodeo in progress. Let me just say, I’d never want to run through a rodeo even if it was just a calf wrangle. I’ve been to the rodeo plenty of times (I’m from rural Minnesota and we had a rodeo every Saturday and Sunday) and with horses and cowboys tearing up the dirt in the arena it was never a safe place to be standing.

Annie doesn’t really have much of an inner life yet. I haven’t been able to get a sense of her or any other character. This is where I think my particular tilt is going to show—I really like portrayals that give me personal access to characters, giving them life and energy outside of the usual on-screen presence. Right now: Annie lacks this. I’d really love to have a half-a-philosopher like Mary Shannon, or the brimming romantic cop, but instead I have a generic law-enforcement type going about her job. Perhaps she’ll grow out of it. I expect her to.

Maybe the show just needs a curious or strange fugitive to take down. Someone that can show me why I should care that our warrior lady Annie Frost has a heart or a grim sense of duty.

And, as a side note, can someone tell me why everyone keeps telling the rookie to hide his gun under his shirt?

Taking a Segway off a cliff: What a way to die

In the news of the dire and strangely sarcastic, the universe attempts its hand at poetic irony. Segway’s owner has died. According to the NY Daily News,

The British businessman who owns the Segway company plunged to his death after driving one of his famous two-wheeled scooters off a cliff, police said Monday.

James (Jimi) Heselden dead at 62—by Segway, precipice, and river, possibly not in that order.

As @AvatarNelson of Twitter fame said, “The owner of the Segway company died driving his Segway off a cliff. This is going to be a PR nightmare for cliffs.”

TV Review: The Event

We’ve seen a bit of an explosion in strange transposition storytelling techniques since Lost became so immensely popular. However, this sort of storytelling always leaves me in a lurch unless there’s a very good reason for it—and Lost really was not. We’ve seen it in stories like Day Break and Flash Forward to better effect. Now there’s a new NBC sci-fi television series to add to the list: The Event.

The pilot introduces us to two separate story arcs that still appear to be disconnected. In one of them a character named Shawn Walker who happens to lose track of his girlfriend (she mysteriously disappears.) While there’s the “leader” of some unknown and vague sect of people visiting with the President of the United States—the sect also seems to be currently detained in a Guantánamo-style facility in the blinding white north of artic Alaska. Who they are or what they’re about is left totally undisclosed.

The plot is revealed almost entirely in unfettered flashbacks. “8 hours ago,” “23 days ago,” so on and so forth. It does form a cohesive narrative, but it’s headache inducing in that it’s spends all of its time in flashbacks and none of it forming the current narrative. Although the first thirty seconds and the last thirty seconds are the current time.

The story begins with a news broadcaster screaming that the ground is shaking and then we see an aircraft flying very slow—presumably about to crash into the Presidential manor where he’s meeting with the leader of the mysterious detainees.

I subscribed to this one merely because it contains an extremely powerful sci-fi element that’s rather inescapable from the end of the first episode. To reveal that, however, would be a massive spoiler. Although, it was extremely tedious to watch the show up to that point.

Can this show probably save itself from becoming another punctuated dramatization soap opera like Lost?

It’s very likely.

However, it seems to me that it really just wants to hook the viewers with these manufactured mysteries that are developed now out of natural investigation but flashback storytelling—always keeping the viewer out of the loop so that they can’t grasp the moment. It’s a little bit insulting to me as a viewer. This is not Memento.

The show’s producer has promised that future episodes will use flashbacks more for character development than plot development but I’m almost too far gone to care at this point. As long as it doesn’t fall down the ever deepening rabbit hole that Lost found itself creeping through (but never reaching Wonderland) we might have a good deal in this show.

Recently published in the Premier Issue of PANÂCHE Autumn 2010

My short story “Meet the Pricers” has been published in the premier issue of PANÂCHE Journal of Poetry & Fiction: Volume 1 Issue 1 Autumn 2010.

“Meet the Pricers” is a short story set at a Goodwill store in Phoenix, Arizona—which just happens to also be the center of all Goodwill stores in the universe. Cammy, who happens to work a register, finds herself in an unexpected adventure when a customer brings a pair of socks to the front that lack a price tag.

An electronic subscription to the journal only costs $35.00 USD ($55 for print). People who buy a subscription now will receive the current issue (and presumably future issues, but it doesn’t say for how long). Although, there is no news yet if individual issues can be purchased.

Curious enough, the publisher of this journal is also in Michigan (where I am staying right now.)

Find PANÂCHE on Twitter and at Facebook.

TV Review: Lone Star

So we’ve got a new crop of television shows clangoring for my attention on Hulu and, just to be polite, I’ve started watching them. As a result, I’m going to review them to see what I thought of each one, and how I felt about them. Lone Star, a drama created by Kyle Killen, portrays the strange life of a con man and his father. Although the premise really strikes me as interesting—I certainly love con man shows and movies like Matchstick Men and White Collar—the pilot failed to hold my interest for very long.

The story sets itself up as the child of possibly the biggest con man in the industry, Robert Allen, works his way through the blue collar and white collar elite alike by bilking them of their hard earned money through selling them snake oil prospects (literally nonexistent energy prospects in oil rigging.) To produce additional drama, he’s running a split con that requires him to keep two separate lives—demonstrated by carrying two separate phones and address books with him. In one life he’s married to a billionaire energy tycoon’s daughter, and the other he has a lovely girlfriend. Both of them don’t know about the other.

Slowly but surely his oil-rig con begins to bleed out as he goes state-to-state seeking would-be investors into the project. Except that there’s no actual holding for them to invest in, so he’s going to have to vanish eventually. Of course, the ties that bind come into play pretty quickly as he happens to like his girlfriend from the oil-rig con and he will one day have to leave her in the dust when he had to quit his hunting grounds if he gets found out.

On the other angle, he seems to be attempting to get into his wife’s family business through her father by getting a job there and then swindling the company out of its vast finances—presumably through some sort of embezzlement. Except this is where things go sideways for his own family business (which happens to be the con) a he decides that he’d rather take this new 7-figure job instead of bleeding the company dry. A fact that his father doesn’t take too well as he’d rather not have his son quit the family con business to take up the mantle of a real energy financier and investment broker. A job that Robert is surprisingly talented at due to his many years tricking people into thinking that he owns a stake in oil and gas drilling.

The real heart cinch of the story that got me happened to be some of the characterization of his father and his own love life—especially how he juggles a girlfriend and a wife.

In one scene, he is propositioned for a one-night-stand by a girl in a hotel lobby who fancies him and invites him back to her room. She gives him a long, convincing argument as to why she should be able to take him to bed and his wife shouldn’t have to know about it. This after Robert first subtly hints, then directly promotes the fact that he is in fact married. At the end of the conversation the woman asks him if he could give one good reason why he couldn’t. And he tells her that he could give her two good reasons. The implied undercurrent here happens to be that those reasons happen to be his wife and girlfriend (between whom he’s cheating on each with the other.) An interesting fact for him as he chooses to keep his fidelity to them, even if they don’t know about each other.

The big spoiler for this episode lays here.

At the very end of the pilot, and near the point where I’d already lost interest, he had a final fight with his father. He’s been found out in his oil-rig scam and has to get out—a fact that means he has to leave his girlfriend behind. Something he doesn’t want to do. His father berates him viciously for forgetting to play his part, pretend to be a character, and not get personally involved in his con. As every con must end and there’s no reason for him to break his own heart while breaking the heart of the girl. However, he’s gotten too involved with his girlfriend. Instead, he finds a way that he can maintain his double life even with danger breathing down his neck.

“Because, Dad, I’m in love.”

“With which one, son?” his father asks. “The fake girlfriend or the fake wife.”

“Both.”

It’s cute, but in the end I’m not as interested in the direction that Robert’s life is taking. It’s keen enough that he has this con going on. His wife’s father is extremely scary and menacing but trusts him honestly. He does life this double life that could fall apart at any moment. But, I don’t know that I want to see where it goes.

I didn’t subscribe to it on Hulu, so I won’t likely be watching further episodes unless one catches my eye.

Facebook Denial of Service Attack

Update: Okay, this was a little stupid: the apparent DDoS against Facebook today, the Wired article that I found is from 2009 and I misread the date (thought 09 meant September.) Looks like what happened was an internal database snafu. Here’s a CNET article on the subject.

Looks like Facebook is currently down due to a denial of service attack. While it’s been marked as “they were the victim of an attack [this] Thursday morning,” it’s still ongoing and it’s almost 1pm now.

“Earlier this morning, Facebook encountered network issues related to an apparent distributed denial-of-service attack, that resulted in degraded service for some users,” responded Facebook spokeswoman Kathleen Loughlin via e-mail.

We’ve seen this happen before with Twitter—and if it’s the same people who did that, someone wants Facebook offline today. I don’t know yet if Twitter is getting hit with the same DDOS at the same time or if this is simply targeted at Facebook without mangling Twitter.

If anything, it’s a pretty powerful DDOS to wipe out something like Facebook as they already absorb a lot of traffic; then again, that might make them more vulnerable. In the future of cyberwarfare, taking out distributed media-discussion on the Internet will be a useful component when governments and countries want to do things under cover of darkness. Of course, they’ll have to take out more than just Facebook and Twitter to actually make a dent.

Here’s looking forward to it reappearing later today after they get themselves sorted out. I will link the postmortem.

Link, via Wired.

Elements: Water

I am suddenly reminded of my great love of marine biology—although, the truth of the matter is that I hate fish. When I studied marine biology, I kept most of my adoration for the invertebrates: give me a sea cucumber, a jellyfish, a crinoid, or something similar over a fish. Please. The ocean is teeming with everything imaginable, but for some reason fish never really gave me much pause. The vast variation of other creatures, large and small, provided more than enough amazement for me.

Most of our planet is covered in it.

Its glittering blue provided not because of some refraction of water itself, but in most cases simply the reflection of the sky. At sunset the oceans become painted with a wash of gold and red; and at night, they betray no color, perhaps except the hushed green of bioluminescence tipping the waves as they crash in the surf.

Water will display prominently when I write the stories of the Helljammer series—a story mostly about naval engagements, pirates, zombies… You can’t have good pirate stories without lots of water. Unrelenting waves of blue, cast against open and clear skies, from horizon to horizon, but for the ports we visit to regain supplies.

Without water, we wouldn’t have piracy on the high seas. So I’ll thank it for that.

Water doesn’t show up so much in SciFi, relegated to the terrestrial worlds—or worlds that are entirely water themselves, like Europa, if simply covered in a layer of ice. Alien planets, perhaps, but not the spacers. They do depend on it, to an extent, but given enough power it’s possible to just tell an oxygen and two hydrogen to produce a water molecule, and form there it’s just a matter of doing that a billion times.

Water shapes the world.

Neither earth nor fire stand up to water. Water is patient. Mountains rise up, water wears them down. The slow, driving course of rivers carves out great swaths like the Grand Canyon; and perhaps it did the same on Mars—the arid world showing evidence of once perhaps having its fill of liquid water.

Water. It’s what’s in my drinking glass right now.

An excellent suspension for syrup and caffeine.

Millvexations.com lives again

That is all.

http://www.millvexations.com

(The problem occurred due to a dedicated IP address. It is resolved now.)

“The Academy” A. Barnes’s dirty, raw still-growing up ‘X-Men like’ serial

I’d like to introduce everyone to The Academy, which is a brand new serial fiction story written by A. Barnes who is probably looking for a few readers and maybe a proofreader. His first chapter was published none-too-long ago and includes a series of characters designed and offered by his friends on Facebook.

It’s a spit-polished work of love that represents the mainstay of new writers.

My claim to fame in this new story? Jessika, the first character introduced, is the one that I came up with for his story. She, like the other supers on the transport at the beginning, has some issues with her powers that she wants to get control of—namely, she’s capable of controlling her density at a molecular level. The only problem? Her stress levels affect her control. When she stresses, she becomes more dense, often to the point of cracking the floor (or flattening her chair) and when she’s too calm she can become insubstantial and float away.

He’s very rough around the edges, so don’t expect Hemingway; but that’s barely a reason not to engage. Even if you only stay for two chapters (there’s only two right now) you can still leave your mark, some encouragement, and perhaps part of a constructive critique.

All new writers can use a little bit of a heave-to from the rest of us.

Start reading The Academy at Chapter One.

Millvexations.com currently down

http://www.millvexations.com 

My wonderful hosting company just migrated our IP addresses but unfortunately my sites didn’t migrate with it; I am currently waiting for the website for Mill Avenue Vexations to catch up. (It is currently showing a default page instead of the proper start page.)

In the meantime, you could read the opening letter for Helljammer or catch up on Black Hat Magick (which run on a separate host.)

Interestingly, ProjectWonderful hasn’t noticed that it’s down yet, so it might just be displaying this to me (for some unknown reason) so I am hoping to see if other people are getting the same sort of reaction from their web browsers when they visit. Otherwise, I am letting their technical support troubleshoot the issue.

Elements: Fire

I am reminded of the words of Vex Harrow from The Holocaust Star,

A lot of people say that the world will end in fire; I’m not about to tell you that I know how it all ends—but I can say one thing for sure: it started with fire.

The ancients of every people loved the flame, and they already feared it. Prometheus brought fire as a gift and Coyote got burned trying to steal it. The Hawaiians say Ai-Laau, the forest eater, ruled Kilauea until Pele chased him off. My da says there is fire in whiskey that fuels the soul. As for me, I’ve got just four things to say about fire: it’s pretty when you keep at a distance, it’s a good friend when you’ve got a way to put it out, a terrible master when you screw up, and a savage enemy when it turns on you.

People are so hooked on fire that when we die we expect to find it blazing on the other side. Sometimes people strap themselves to the pyre to get a head start. Other times we burn sacrifices to purify them, which brings me to my own, albeit short, fiery interlude.

Fire has so much mythology behind it that it has a life of its own in every culture. It is nearly the first technology—the ultimate protector and destroyer. It enables us to live in places without light, with little heat of their own, to pass survival through the dead of winter under its blazing fingertips.

In modern day, as well as Scifi, we could see fire as the embodiment of the nuclear fires that give life to our sun. The underlying power that lives within the atom, when unleashed, fans the flames of war and devours entire cities as the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that same fire, like all fires, when held in check can power entire cities, or raise nations out of the dust of mediocrity.

Electricity from fire, it’s the same infrastructure that enables me to tap keys to keyboard and write this trite prose right now.

Elements: Earth

Foundation. Stone. Rock. The unmoving ground. While the element earth contains a great deal of different connotations for many cultures—and some even eschew it from their lists of elements for other compounds—it is still the source of many of our raw materials. Earth: the container of all life.

We build our dwellings from it. We build them upon it. It comes in many forms, from the solidity of rock, to the trembling uncertainty of peat bogs. It gives rise to trees that stretch above it, roots that dig beneath, and provides the matrix for which all things mount themselves against the sky.

In the creation stories of many mythologies the earth is the first place—and from it all life is formed. From the earth all living things rise, and to it they decompose when they are done. The ultimate and final configuration of star-stuff that gives a place to stay, provides food, shelter, and all the comforts of life.

In Scifi stories, earth is the element of planetary bodies. The primary difference between spacers and terrestrials. Even alien worlds have all the makeshift necessity of earthiness—in fact, we could argue easily that even Mercury has “earth” although it is an airless, lifeless world it is only earth and nothing else. Spacers find it by taking small chunks of it in the form of asteroids, or necessarily learn to live with much less of it by producing food with hydroponics. The spacer and the terrestrial will, however, possibly argue about the merits of cold steel and artificial gravity, or gravel and the planetary weight of natural gravity.

Earth. It’s even the name of our home world.

It’s the calling card of modern day environmentalists. The body of the Goddess made manifest—the life-giver.

Mill Avenue in political news, recruiting ground in claimed electoral fraud

I am really not sure what to make of this, but it mentions both the Ave and Mill rats! See for yourself over at the The New York Times website,

But Steve May, the Republican operative who signed up some of the candidates along Mill Avenue, a bohemian commercial strip next to Arizona State University, insists that a real political movement has been stirred up that has nothing to do with subterfuge.

“Did I recruit candidates? Yes,” said Mr. May, who is himself a candidate for the State Legislature, on the Republican ticket. “Are they fake candidates? No way.”

To make his point, Mr. May went by Starbucks, the gathering spot of the Mill Rats, as the frequenters of Mill Avenue are known.

I can’t say that most of us on Mill Ave have any political aspirations, but he certainly picked from the new crew. Nobody from the old school would want to fall for this—well, actually, I can pluck up a few. In fact, I can think of some Mill rats, like Josh and Vince, who I wouldn’t mind seeing run for political office.

The only problem that I see here is that they’d end up getting chewed up and spit out. The political vein in Arizona runs deep into a subterranean motherlode of backstabbing, corruption, and dark subterfuge. The actions in and around Mill Ave and Tempe represent only the first few tunnels that wind through that strange, dark recess of the political mindset.

I don’t know that I’d inflict that on my worst enemy.

Not that people in some of those political offices don’t feel like our worst enemy sometimes.

Fortunately, the current mayor of Tempe, Hugh Hallman, is no bad person, nor is he a pushover. But still, I wouldn’t want his job.

Elements: Air

Our invisible friend, life-maintaining, and ultimately also one of the most destructive forces known to humanity. It contains all of my favorite things about the atmosphere. Thunderstorms—for all their connection to water, still remind me of the air that supports them—have always been my refuge. One of my favorite places to sit down and write happens to be amidst a storm.

(And, have I mentioned kissing during a T-storm can be the experience electric?)

Air has a special meaning when writing Scifi. Out there in outer-space, that airless void, it’s like a fish living in an aquarium—forever captured within the confines of a small space, a thin barrier between you and ultimate oblivion. Air is a necessity, and the oxygen in it our reaction fuel to run our muscles and build our bodies. Without it, we die very quickly. Which makes it even more amusing for first year biology students who learn exactly how poisonous oxygen is when presented in excessive quantities.

Want to kill people on a space station with air? First option: remove all of it, they suffocate; second option: pump in excess oxygen until their cells fry, or their very skin ignites and incinerates them like ghastly roman candles.

To the alchemists, the air supported a model for the luminiferous aether, a substance through which all light traveled—that possibly also supported the planets, as if they were suspended in a liquid, as well as the stars.

When the air is thin, we get lightheaded. And with that lightheadedness often comes a breath of euphoria—a twinkling exhalation of endorphins as the brain fights not to shut down. It’s the same reason why huffing works to produce profound pleasure, at the expense of damaging the brain.

Air.

If I am lucky today, it will deliver me a thunderstorm, and I’ll have more to write about.

Unexpected outage

So, about 12noon AZT, blackhatmagick.com went offline. I grabbed my cell and called Elaine once I noticed—at about 3pm AZT, when I was finally awake from an unexpected nap.

I had to move the flat screen monitor from Pixie over to Willowisp to get a look at the boot screen. She was up, running, and happy. I ran through a gauntlet of UNIX commands like “ifconfig” and “ip link” and “mii-tool” and discovered that both the ethernet card (eth0) and the cable were fine. In fact, thanks to mii-tool, I was able to determine that the cable itself had an actual link (no physical failure.)

Eventually, I relented and killed the CISCO cable modem. Up, down, and viola, she’s back online.

Now I just have to wait for ProjectWonderful to discover that the site is operating again and unsuspend my advertisements.

Oh, also, I have a nosebleed for no apparent reason.

What’s a capital 2 again?

This just in from my best friend’s day at work:

OMG… Gotta tell you something that happened at work today…

Just as the new boss entered the office I got a call.

User asks me how to make an @.

I say, "Okay. To get the @ sign: you hold shift and press 2."

She says, "Won't that make a capital 2?"

I do not miss a beat, and say, "Hon, the @ is the capital 2"

"Ooooohhhhh."

"Yep. Glad I could help you. See you later." *click*

Boss busts up laughing a moment later.

“Invincible” by Kyt Dotson

Go check out my short story, “Invincible” at Black Hat Magick.

This one is just geek-action-cheesecake for people who happen to like Hadaly, the AI from the Black Hat Magick series.

“The Fox in the Garden” by Kyt Dotson

Go check out my short story, “The Fox in the Garden” on Authonomy.

THANK YOU, Wren

We love you, and we will miss you.

It looks like the long lived, Wren’s Nest, is shutting down. From The Witches’ Voice Facebook page,

Greetings! As many of you already know – or have discovered via a TWV link – Wren’s Nest is closed. There are new ways by which media and people exchange information. This page is one of them. We would like to thank everyone who supported, shared, commented and otherwise made Wren’s Nest News the resource that it was. It was my heart-felt pleasure and deepest honor to serve you. – Wren

It’s been a constant inspiration and I’ve loved reading the Wren’s Nest.

Started in 1997? 13 years isn’t bad.

Luck

“Fate protects fools, little children and ships named Enterprise.” – Cmdr. Riker (Contagion, Star Trek: The Next Generation).

And in some cases: me.

Here I am today, Star Gate: Atlantis running through Netflix on the TV, wrapped up in the voices of my thoughts. And I am pretty lucky; although, one person’s fortune can certainly be another person’s misfortune. I have no job, no income, adding myself to the great unwashed masses—and not to mention starving authors who spend more time on their creative work than getting a living wage—but I am not homeless (again) nor am I without family or company.

I have chosen to study strangely divergent sciences: computers and anthropology. Yet, I am able to easily find ways to combine them through video games and social media. In fact, the emergence of social media itself is staggeringly luck-filled for someone of my interests. I use a lot of what I’ve learned from it, and from other people, in order to better enhance my writing. Such as how I’ve developed the most recent offering from Black Hat Magick in the form of Book 2 “Tango & Cache”.

(Still only three chapters and less than 9,000 words, but progressing on schedule for publication beginning during Fall 2010.)

I don’t see myself winning the lottery.

I don’t see myself being discovered by some traditional publishing house either, but I do hope to keep my semi-popularity up-to-date. One day I might have some minor fame to work from for my craft, but like most authors—especially the millions before me—I will probably languish in a glittering obscurity.

However, I might point out here: I am still lucky.

I have fans. I have a small cadre of dedicated, worthwhile fans, whose messages still warm my heart every time I receive them.

Keep an eye out for a new story appearing on Black Hat Magick for all you guys.

Proposition 8 ruled unconstitutional, violates 14th Amendment

From the CNN article on this recent decision by a federal judge in California:

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," Walker wrote in his decision. "Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."

I am sure those who have listened to the opposition to gay marriage and arguments presented by that side and find them unconvincing will probably find this judgment ring true. If our law is going to be a proper reflection of our culture, protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority, and actually “secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” then it will have to be rational.

No single argument for banning gay marriage to this day has been rational.

In fact, the most compelling arguments banning gay marriage would instead ban the institution of marriage itself!

"Big surprise! We expected nothing different from Judge Vaughn Walker, after the biased way he conducted this trial," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. "With a stroke of his pen, Judge Walker has overruled the votes and values of 7 million Californians who voted for marriage as one man and one woman."

Right, because majority rule has ever been a good or proper guide for morality. How many people across the world would have voted in favor of enslaving minority groups across many eras of our past? Those majority groups were as immoral then as they are immoral now. Your might in numbers does not make you right.

If each of those seven million Californians who voted would like to present their best argument for defining legal marriage as “between one man and one woman” they’re welcome to do so. If even a single one of those seven million manages to produce a valid, sound, and convincing argument then we have something to talk about; otherwise one or seven million bad arguments doesn’t amount to anything: zero times seven million is zero.

Those seven million people should instead stop, drop, and think. What if any one of them had seven million people arguing that they didn’t deserve to marry the one they loved because they said so, not because it would be reasonable to say so, would they still just lie down and accept it? What parts of their lives would they actually accept majority rule when the outcome would be both irrational and harmful?

Probably not many.

Link, via CNN.

On being different – Part I: What a distinction difference makes

As a writer, I find myself often asking myself about human nature. It’s the driving force behind every character driven story, and even the plot driven ones, not just because I’m writing about people in motion, but because I’m developing characters that readers need to sympathize with. People sympathize with the similar, but go too similar and the sense of self repels. This seems to be the stake in all relationships between people.

I am different. I grew up “different.” But not different in the fashion that a made-for-TV Disney movie might attempt to portray. I am not Dumbo with my giant ears helping me fly; I am not the kid who had bazillions of navigational data points poured into my brain by an ET; I am just myself, same as millions of others, no strange maverick when placed against the billions of humanity. Yet in my smaller community I am the black swan.

The concept of growing up different or being different is so broad that I am going to have to break it up into parts.

Being different is not about finding a distinction from the mainstream—it’s about being different from your local community. Why? Because anyone sufficiently different from everyone else simply stops being a social human and in those terms anyone can argue that nobody is different: everybody is the same. We all have the same underlying mechanisms driving our motives and needs, but this seems to be a hollow entreaty, especially when it’s an individual arguing this. We are all different and we’re all similar. It is only due to the basic similarities that tie us together that we can even give context to our differences.

As writers we draw upon our experiences to weave believable narratives from nothing. First we must produce a foundation from what makes everyone similar—those social motives and mores I just spoke about—then we have to tweak them slightly to move away from them. The character in question also cannot be so alien from the readers that they cannot relate. This is the problem of aliens.

The problem of aliens could be distilled into a single idea: that readers want to sympathize with characters coping with situations that they themselves can put themselves in. The crux of a great deal of Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction is about things that haven’t happened to anyone, and some of them want to prevent a world quite alien from our own, either alternate in reality or deeply futuristic. Aliens in these stories often become prominent; but they’re not that alien, especially if they’re the character telling the story. Narrator aliens happen to be very human (similar enough) where as non-narrators can be wildly alien; but instead they get lensed through an anthropomorphic camera.

Good example of this is M.C.A. Hogarth’s Spots the Space Marine. The aliens in this context are a type of sentient praying mantis. They’re definitely alien, but they use English to communicate, they’re capable of distinct social reasoning, and their behavior is portrayed to us through human characters. By forcing aliens in SciFi stories to interact with humans close enough to the reader it allows them to sympathize with the aliens through the narrator. This can also be true for actual humans who would otherwise alienate the reader by being crazy—there is nothing more alienating than complete breaks from social reality like schizophrenia.

Another case of careful difference in characters happens to be when portraying deep afflicting traumas. How a person reacts to PTSD, to a rape, assault, having a friend commit suicide—all horrible and sad traumas that must be coped with, but most people don’t experience most of these things directly, even many of our readers. Those that do, of course, have a context that they can draw from but it will different fundamentally from that of the writer (and probably every other reader.) So the writer first builds a world familiar to everyone. The mundane similarities that tie us all together: the desire for company, the need for comfort, the things that go bump in our heads when we feel insecure… And then they introduce the exotic portions of the trauma to show how all the above have been changed or struck by that trauma. And finally how the character copes.

We all cope with stresses day to day. Small ones. Big ones. They differ greatly in type and amplitude; but when writing fiction they all take on the same sort of axis, one that either leads towards resolution or one that doesn’t. People read stories to escape their mundane stresses, so they add our exotic stresses instead. We reflect their coping mechanisms, their defenses, even sometimes their hopes and fears in our literary brush strokes.

My differences make my writing distinctive.

You should let them do the same for yours.

The Tempe Town Lake Monster gone for good?

As we all know by now: there is none. No monster.

For some time since the creation—flooding, filling, fish-stocking, et al.—of the Town Lake there’s been wild and delirious rumors of various critters thriving beneath the opalescent waves. Some of them described like the otter (or beaver) which frolicked there for a while in the early 2000s, although they described a creature almost ten times larger than any ordinary otter. Sleek and splashing through the waves, tossing fish, harassing boats. Then there’s the Loch Ness Monster sightings from the lake’s shores that coincided with nights after curfew and sometimes full moons. Loops of a large, reptilian creature that would surface momentarily like a submarine and peer around. Finally, I’ve read tales about a suspiciously tentacled creature, the giant lake squid or octopus that crawled in the depths during the day, attacking fishers’ bobbers, or thumping the bottoms of boats.

Now, with the lake drained, sadly we can see that none of these creatures has made their appearance.

We could speculate further.

Perhaps the lake monster is the reason why the dam burst. The official story a carefully designed cover up talking about sunlight and heat affecting the rubber until it gave way. No, this has been an escape.

The monster—by whatever phylogeny it might possess—must have grown weary of devouring the stocks of fish and decided to flee downriver. Perhaps it also has a mode of locomotion that permits it to stride overland without too much difficulty. This could certainly explain how it arrived at the lake originally. Either that or it might have come down from Hoover dam when the lake originally filled, sneaking in under the watchful eyes of the civil engineers who flooded the riverbed to create the lake.

Needless to say: our Tempe Town Lake Monster has vanished with the waters. Leaving behind only the strange legacy of its memory.

Tempe Town Lake drainage and the culture of nothing

So, there’s been a little bit of discussion about the Tempe Town Lake dam breakage over at Mill Avenue Vexations. And it’s certainly something that affects Mill Ave, both community and culture. Especially those expensive condominiums that sold billed as “water front property” due to the construction of the fake lake. I still recall the days that the fake lake got added, filled in, and became the glistening stretch is now—er, or was until a few days ago.

The project struck a lot of us who live at street level as a poor grab at celebrity for a town that already has a grassroots fame for being a historic venue, and a recently gained fame for being a music and artistic venue next to a college. At least that’s the outcome of the 90s bohemian “revival” effect. Which seemed to do the economy a lot of good, brought in a lot of people—like me—and made the place a lot more livable. I can’t speak much for the culture of the place before the 90s (because that’s before I arrived) but stories seemed to reflect that it was pretty dull.

A proper history of will reflect that before the 90s the artistic revolution did not represent Mill Ave; but those that try to use this to say that an artistic history for Mill Ave is improper are deliberately ignoring the impact that having one had. Especially in the fact of the 2000s being an era where every interested party in Mill Ave went out of their way to stomp and kill off that culture…while claiming it as a foundation. The Tempe Town Lake certainly handles a legacy of this sort of behavior and with their latest snafu they haven’t gained a lot of credibility.

The Lake failed to deliver what it suggested it would. Except perhaps cheap celebrity. The condos and business buildings there cost way to much, people don’t visit Mill Ave to visit the lake. People certainly won’t, and for the most part cannot, move into the condos due to their egregious pricing, and the failure of the dam only tends to illuminate this misfortune.

Now as for the mystique of the lake. I think I’ll talk about that in a separate post. I have some ideas to play with.

Anyone have an experience with the Tempe Town Lake they’d like to share?

Disability

I started the application process for Social Security Disability today.

For everyone who doesn’t know me that well. I have cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure, and I have had it for a while now. It limits the things I can do. Fortunately, I’m a writer, which involves sitting around a lot—and it would be nice also to have a lot more energy to do writing. My job situation has dissolved, and thus I’ve been looking for a new one that can accommodate my needs. As these are few and far between… It seems only responsible that I see if I can get on disability.

While most of my Mary Sue characters happen to also be sick, my best-written characters have amazing strengths. My illness has affected my writing in that I tend to design characters who have strengths to overcome their weaknesses. Vex Harrow may be seemingly crippled by the voices that she hears, but she’s an extremely powerful mage; her obstacles arise directly from the application of her power. Elaine Mercer happens to be somewhat socially inept even if she is brilliant with computers and technology; but she has her friend Frog, who is a social butterfly, to help work her through that.

I’ve never professionally written a character with my disability yet. Possibly because it hits too close to home. Also, when it comes to the audience, it can be a bit of a cheap shot. It creates a false sense of initial intimacy and involves an entire set of coping mechanisms that make the reader feel sorry for the character rather than actually sympathizing with them. Certainly, if I wanted to raise heart failure awareness, I might work out a character with my particularly romantic “rarified constitution,” but I prefer my superheroes somehow “super.”

I need not go into how my kryptonite happens to be walking more than a quarter mile or trying to lift anything heavier than a jug of milk.

Just like Vex I have a talent that arises from my disability—my patience and gentle teasing out of thought from the pliant nature of reality—and like Elaine, I have many, many wonderful and good hearted friends who help me when I’m unable to do things for myself.

I might get on disability, in which case there’ll be a lot more writing for everyone to enjoy; or I might not and instead find a new job, in which case there’ll be fewer projects but they’ll have a better budget.

Release: Mill Avenue Vexations Volume 14: Ghosts of the Past

Announcing the release of Mill Avenue Vexations Volume 14: Ghosts of the Past.

It's been a while before I was able to get this one online. I went to my friend, Luis Boisvert, who designed the very first covers for Mill Avenue Vexations. There isn't going to be a physical production of this booklet for the time being until I have enough funds to publish one; but right now we do have the web version and you can read it.

In this volume the strange changes taking effect have been given palpable form. We get introduced to Vex Harrow's mother, and we get to visit the 'A' on A Mountain. The world and reality may be coming apart at the seams but it's a good time for a hero to step up.

With work on Black Hat Magick Dread Vote complete we will be seeing further work on Mill Avenue Vexations until it’s completion sometime next year. There are probably only two or three volumes left to complete this arc and afterwards I’ll be compiling it together into a full novel. It might even be fore sale as a hard copy. A representation of almost five years of constant work.

It’s been a beautiful drive, with lots of amazing artwork, wonderful artists, interesting people, and a rich, vibrant culture to follow from the year 2005 until 2010. We’ve seen 14 volumes, half as many tribute booklets, two humorous short stories, a short story published in a magazine, and so much more from this project.

It’s been an amazing cultural success.

Anyone who wants to, come find me on IM, tweet me (twitter @kytsune), or call me—we can celebrate the release of Volume 14!

Link via (Mill Avenue Vexations).

Why is Veronica Mars so awesome?

I don’t know, but one of the bad perks of unemployment: I can spend all night on a Netflix video marathon.

Just finished both season one and season two of Veronica Mars and I really love the show. Of course, we’re talking about me here: I grew up on Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, and other teenage detectives.

Veronica Mars reminds me of those books, but updated for the 21st century.

The Monday after…the 4th

So, I’m discovering that most doctor’s offices are closed (this because I want to get an appointment at a specific few) and my guess is that I should have listened to my editor. She’d warned me they might be closed today.

Of course, I should have guessed. It is the day after the 4th of July.

I haven’t slept—which is actually rather odd.

We’ll see how this affects my writing today!

US Vice President promotes lie about US piracy law

Vice President Joe Biden introduced the Joint Strategic Plan to combat intellectual property theft today. In his speech Biden declared war on ‘pirate’ websites, both foreign and domestic, arguing that piracy is theft and a potential threat to national security. Read the article at torrentfreak.com.

Upon the nomination of US President Obama to office my friends told me that Joe Biden, his chosen VP, happened to maintain a penchant for gaffes—but this isn’t exactly what I thought they meant.

To top it off the Vice President reiterated the words commonly uttered by pro-copyright lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA. “Piracy is theft, clean and simple, it’s smash and grab,” Biden said, comparing unauthorized downloading to robbing a jewelry store. Although semantically incorrect, since ‘theft’ implies that something is taken away and not copied, the message is clear.

I am not sure what the Vice President is smoking, but it’s obvious that the MAFIAA have spiked his weed with the propaganda of stupid. There is nothing clean or simple about copyright being theft except for in a diseased left-brain sort of stretching-facts-to-fit fashion. It’s especially not comparable to burglary. Nothing gets smashed (no windows, no doors, no barrier that needs repair later) and in a sort of way nothing gets grabbed (no product taken needing to be replaced, no store owner waiting on insurance to make up the loss.) No. Something gets copied. The only working metaphor comparing copyright to a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store is that one morning a jeweler wakes up to discover all of their alarms, windows, and cases intact—no jewelry missing, nor disturbed—but the store across the street is now selling the exact same product.

“No, officer they didn’t take anything they copied it exactly and are high tailing it out of here to sell it across the border! Arrest them!”

In fact, the US Supreme Court does not agree with the MAFIAA or Vice President Biden in this account. In their 1980 decision in Dowling vs. United States the Supreme Court opined that “copyright infringement is not theft.” Both of these terms have distinct definitions in our legal system and they don’t overlap—playing dishonest games with language to pretend that they do makes for some stunningly disingenuous acts by our leaders.

Is copyright infringement illegal? Yes. Is theft illegal? Yes. Is copyright infringement: theft? …vandalism? …racketeering? …assault? Shall I continue to compare illegal acts that don’t legally overlap seeking a deceitful metaphor? This is the basis of this propaganda spread by the MAFIAA and their PR cronies and we, the public, shouldn’t be falling for it.

Tell us that copyright infringement is a problem; then show us why it’s a problem. Stop bleating at us with loaded language, propaganda, and non-sequiturs trying to connect these acts to laws that don’t relate to them. If you cannot argue copyright infringement poses a threat to us, without being dishonest about its place in our digital culture, then perhaps it’s because you don’t have the case you pretend you do.

Does Biden know better? Probably. The copyright and IP law lobbies of the RIAA and MPAA to create an IP mafia with public opinion continue apace, but it’s not fooling everyone.

Grow up, Mr. Vice President.

Link, via torrentfreak.com

A letter to A. A. Milne

Hails Mr. Alan Alexander Milne,

I would really love to be on a first name basis with you. Alexander. Alan. It would be a fitting honor for someone that I literally grew up on. I’ve loved the 100 Acre Wood since I was a foot tall and lived in my own imaginary woods between the brick alleys of my neighborhood.

Did you know that I was almost named after Christopher Robin? (Although the name would still be odd today, I would proudly wear it.) While the stories certainly resounded more around the inhabitants of the 100 Acre Wood than Christopher himself, he did represent the numinous event that produced their need—and not without a minor “Tut, tut it looks like rain!” and that little red umbrella.

Perhaps I should get myself one.

You’re one of my literary heroes to this day. Enlightening me with moral stories that didn’t make grand patronizing gestures to me as if I didn’t understand the world; that actually presented dilemmas that I found frustrating, and giving me a reason to like the disliked neighbor—Rabbit.

(To be fair, aside from Christopher, my favorite has always been Eyore—perhaps I’d been goth way back then as well. Give me an Eyore patch and perhaps a backpack and I’ll be happy as a lark under a branch in a rainstorm.)

Who are we as writers if not the replay of our favorite moments from our own lives and those of our literary progenitors and you have many progeny today, Mr. Milne. I may not write children’s books that I so lavishly grew up on, but you are never far from my thoughts even as I yank ghosts and goblins from the collective unconscious of the human race and parade them through gaslit streets.

Don’t wait up for me.

I’m already a fan.

Sincerely yours,

Kyt Dotson

Via my blog on Redroom.com.

REVIEW: Kanira Baxter – Chapter Two Pelak IV

The WHITE KNIGHT receives a transmission sending them to a watery planet. A world with a problem: namely a colony that suddenly stopped talking to the rest of the civilized universe. Upon their arrival they discover some disturbing factors—one in particular which happens be the colony, empty of people.

The space opera continues in full force and we learn a little bit more about the crew and their reasons for following Kanira. And we get to learn about how the watery world happens to be a prime distributor and producer of sushi. Not unexpected, I think, lots of water means lots of fish!

Of course, with all the colonists gone dark maybe sushi production might take a hit.

Fun takeaway? In this one we get to see Meglen, the mouse-like alien Myanai, sometimes walks on all fours. And also why certain sushi isn’t exactly the best thing to tangle with.

Expect some common space-opera themes, well rendered sci-fi scenery and some really angry seafood.

Link, via Comic Genesis.

The best thing about growing older, and it’s not growing up

Everyone wonders if they’ll die in interesting times—the old oft-retold Chinese curse that places its recipients in a strangely unfortunate situation. It’s a parable almost. “May you live in interesting times.” Believing how something so innocuous sounding could be a curse.

Growing older is interesting times; perhaps, at least, it’s an interesting reflection.

Only through changes in the world do we have a chance to compare ourselves now to ourselves then. To see what’s change and what stays the same; or perhaps what keeps happening again-and-again. I’ve lived through some strange events—only some interesting—which have made life stranger for all of us. Things like 9-11 or the various wars-that-aren’t-wars, the election of a black President to the United States of America. But these, unless affected directly, are hardly “interesting times.” They’re just more of the same, swinging like a pendulum.

Growing older doesn’t mean growing wiser, nor more sedate really. Being a writer doesn’t just mean sitting around in front of a glowing screen—or a softly buzzing typewriter—it also means living. Getting out there and looking at the world. It means that those interesting times might as well become my words onto the paper so that I can not just connect with my audience but give them the broad stroke of my lifetime.

In growing older I also grew up on Mill Avenue.

Series that I write like Mill Avenue Vexations exist in an idyllic continuum of the street. Attempting to combine the curiosity and living-breath of the current street with the romantic ghosts of its past. My past. A lifetime ago, within my lifetime.

As writers we are not just historians of people, places, and things, but some of us reproduce worlds never visited, places that only exist in our heads. And we get older with them as well. Both the purely imagined to the imagined-from-real. As we age, we accumulate different parts of our life, and shed others. Certainly a teenager doesn’t have much of an experience to write about mid-life-crisis or living in a cubicle farm except bought cheap from the stories of others (thankfully I know neither of these by experience, but I sometimes I wonder.)

The trick, I suppose, is not to become conformed to the mundane times; or caught up in the interesting times so much that we make them mundane. Readers look to us to highlight, contrast, and stark out their world, to give them a lens they cannot access through any other means and to become that lens we cannot let ourselves grow too comfortable.

Grow older. Age that imagination like a cyclist training for the Tour of Germany. It’s not just the start—muscles bulging, brow trickling with sweat, breath bated—to the finish line—triumph in the veins, the burn of adrenaline, the tears dripping over cheeks—but also the vistas in between, the drama of the other racers, the strange, beautiful journey.

Not everyone can make that race; but with our help, and as we age with them, they can imagine it.

Reposted from Kyt Dotson’s Red Room blog.

Kindness from the fanbase

Today I received an e-mail from Paypal that someone extremely awesome in the UK sent me $2 based on reading Vexations. I am absurdly grateful. Every, tiny drop counts. I haven’t written them back yet (and they deserve some kind of thank you note, I just haven’t the energy.)

Today has been rainy out here. No thunder & lightning, but the gales of water sheeting the sky just the same.

How Vex Harrow met Cory Doctorow

Just properly published this one, “Hell Cory” by Kyt Dotson. It’s been in the forums for ages (since 2007 when I wrote it.) So now, I’ve brought it out of there and put it where it belongs, amid its siblings in the proper story queue.

If you haven’t read it before, mosey along and peruse it.

The image (and part of the story) is a homage to xkcd.com.

Link, via Mill Avenue Vexations.

REVIEW: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium, by Robert C. Rodgers

Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is a rock-solid, hilarious foray into a steampunk dystopian alternate past. It’s been getting some rave attention over at Web Fiction Guide and there’s some very good reasons why. Keep reading and you’ll understand.

What a calculating beast is man

Deep within the strong-beating brass heart of every steampunk aficionado is a vacuum chilled series of hopeful gaslit rooms filled wall-to-wall with books. And one day soon, one of those shelves in my heart will have this book.

Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium is a tour de force of silly mixed with the macabre, scabrous copper tinge of blood. It manages to wind the dizzying height of humor and edge it aptly with careful cuts. From the very first chapter—and the chapter that hooked me—it makes its lighthearted swipes at the imagination and drew smile after smile. At first the steampunkish metaphor and simile seemed heavy-handed, overwrought in fact, but soon they became fuel for the whimsical engine of my delight.

Victorian attitudes abound in the brass-city, a dystopia in its own right but not in our future, but our accidentally forgotten alternative-past. A place where villains and heroes alike have an almost cartoonish bearing on a world that manages to tempt suspension of disbelief with daunting and brazen attitude but never ceases to both enchant and frighten at the same time. This tale has left me in fits of gooseflesh laughter more than once.

Expect strong humor mixed with the oil and grease of industry; expect grand legerdemain run through the cogs and wheels of progress and chewed up by clever antagonists, incompetently-competent protagonists, and even a bit of social commentary about the Victorian attitudes about gender wars. Why I even caught an almost-reference to the old television series “Remington Steele” (wherein a woman detective hires a male “face man” to pretend to be the investigator.)

Even people not inclined to the steampunk aesthetic will probably enjoy this story. It has a little bit of something for everyone. Little explanation is needed for much of the far-fetched mathematics and mechanics of the lunatic mind as it’s deeply buried in laugh-out-loud metaphors; allowing the conspiracy, detective work, and general slapstick amazement to drive the story onwards.

Link to review (via “Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium” @ Web Fiction Guide)

Direct Link: Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium.

REVIEW: Kanira Baxter – Chapter One Cruise Ship Hostage Rescue

Light-hearted, full-throated space opera at its best, The Adventures of Kanira Baxter by Kate Fahr happens to be a comic worth reading between projects, during lunch hour, or in the morning before work. It’s one of those comics with long running, memorable characters and an ongoing plot. The first chapter off with a bang with our merc group showing up uninvited for a cruise—to deal with some other uninvited guests who have started a hijacking coup.

The comic is generated with an interesting 3d program (3DSMAX maybe) and the characters pose and display enough emotion to follow. The eyes are a big wide and large for my aesthetic taste but it grows on you quickly. I do love the sound-effect methods displayed (WOOSH, PEW PEW.) This is a space opera, they do have blasters.

The crew has the requisite team a hard-hitting commander, Kanira, a computer-tech and fighter, Dare, and even an alien who looks a lot like an anthropomorphic mouse. The alien happens to be one of the only species that humanity in this universe has ever met—which is pretty interesting, but more are to come in later chapters as foreshadowing might suggest.

Space ships. Blasters. Aliens. Hijacking in space. The part that makes the first chapter so much fun is the whole mundanity of the exercise. A hijacking is a common experience and cruises are pretty passé when it comes to everyday experience. Of course, the difference is that we’ve got a crew of mercs, we’ve got outer space, and we have some witty back-and-forth.

Those who watch BionicDance’s YouTUBE channel probably hear her voice when we see Kanira talking. She happens to also be the author and she uses her same 3D program to do videos. There’s also some suggestion that there might be a 3D movie coming out; there is a well-cut little trailer for the comic, but I’d really love to see a mini-episode.

Link, via Comic Genesis.

Facebook widgets and gadgetry

Yesterday, I added a wee little Facebook like box to Mill Avenue Vexations hoping to help spike the number of people who like the page on FB. Mostly because it still doesn’t have enough fans to get its own nice looking title.

It’s in the sidebar, and fun enough, two people got added shortly after I put it up! Which is cheerful.

In Defense of Draw Muhammad Day

Comic book: The Deal by Kyt Dotson

I am so glad that I can finally announce this. It’s been a long, long time in coming but the Vexations comic book has finally finished the editing stages and proofing so now I can show off a few things about it!

Mill Avenue Vexations: The Deal by Kyt Dotson.

Twelve pages of beautifully rendered artwork by Sanjana Baijnath, with story by Kyt Dotson. They will probably sell around $3 and I’m going to try to get them into some comic book stores around Tempe, we’ll see how that goes. If anyone knows a place that might be interested, contact me and I’ll try to get it figured out.

The story is short, but it revolves around Vex’s usual sleuthing, hunting down a demon, and then taking over a deal—hence the name of the story. As usual, things never go entirely as planned, when dealing with demons, but especially when dealing with Vex Harrow.

Copies will also be available for purchase from this website for a very similar price, and if anyone would like to pay extra to help out with future releases of Vexations I am willing to part with signed copies as usual.

Look forward to this coming out next month if all goes well.

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE HERE!

Link, via Mill Avenue Vexations.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day Videos (Part 3 of 3)

Fallout from the Everybody Draw Muhammad Day has led to Pakistan banning Facebook over the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” page as well as today banning YouTUBE, Wikipedia, and other sites not for just participating, but actually containing information on the event.

 

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day Videos (Part 2 of 3)

 

 

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day Videos (Part 1 of 3)

Today is 20 May 2010 and thus the First Annual Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. There have been protests against Facebook because they have a group supporting it—even to the point that Pakistan has blocked the entire site from their Internet providers. Censorship is rampant. Altogether a better need to show our solidarity against censorship, that there is no room for the sacred in the congress of free ideas. And while to defend free speech we must sometimes defend scoundrels; but sometimes we must also defend free speech against scoundrels.

 

 

 

REVIEW: Wonder City Stories, Jude McLaughlin

For anyone who likes super heroes and days-of-our-lives style drama, this story reviewed over at Web Fiction Guide, Wonder City Stories, might be just the thing for you.

Superhero life has the mundane and profound too, you know

"Young Paranormals Christian Association of Wonder City, working with super powered youth since 1964!"

The parallels between the YMCA and the YPCA tickled the cockles of my heart when I read the first two chapters of this story (And to start when I saw YPCA, I thought of the YMCA. This simply got confirmed straightaway when there's a pool near the YPCA.) I guess I'm just a sucker for four-letter-acronyms. I also play City of Heroes and I like super-powered stories. This may color my review positive somewhat.

I enjoyed following the heroine through her day, coming to the city, and living her life in the strange shadow of her mother. It has all the hallmarks of young adult drama and romance, with some slice-of-life as well. Especially the parts where sometimes as a reader I forgot that our heroine is indeed taller than most.

In my reading I fell in love with the history of the characters as much as the history of their entire society -- the paranormals and their plight.

Readers who want well-rounded drama stretched over believable, and adorable, characters who dwell in a living, breathing world, will find everything they're looking for in this story. There's almost something for everyone. The conversations and scenes trace a lineage of heroism and paranormal lives from the young (in our heroine) to the middle-aged and elderly lifestyles of these magnificent and interesting people.

Link to the review (via “Wonder City Stories” @ Web Fiction Guide.)

Direct link: Wonder City Stories, by Jude McLaughlin.

First Livingston Parish pagan festival event goes off without a hitch…

…in spite of stupid, inflammatory commentary by local Sheriff’s Office.

Back story for those who don’t know about these proceedings. Livingston Parish is a town in Louisiana through with a particular brand of religious bigotry flows that promulgated a religious ban on fortune telling (the law was taken to court and the town lost.) Now, a group of pagans wanted to run a festival near the city to celebrate their culture and religion and before it happened the Sheriff’s Office felt like making an unprofessional statement weighing in on the celebration:

“A scheduled pagan festival is under the scrutiny of the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office. “Obviously, we don’t like this type of activity, but if they are following all of the laws to the letter of the law, then we can’t do anything about it,” Perry Rushing, chief of operations for the Sheriff’s Office, said Thursday. “We vehemently oppose this type of activity in Livingston Parish.” The pagan festival is scheduled to be held the last four days in May at Gryphon’s Nest Campground Inc. at 19306 Bull Run Road in southeastern Livingston Parish.”

Such terrible depths that law enforcement has fallen when they make statements like this that basically read like tacit permission to groups to go out and hinder, damage, or injure the festival. After making a public statement like this the the Sheriff’s Office would have had a hard time showing that they didn’t fail to do their jobs properly if anyone decides to do so. Perhaps they should stick to their duties—dispensation of the law—in the future and stay out of religious relations.

Well, this statement came along other statements from various religious groups that they would proceed to protest the festival. Including language such as “educating” the visiting pagans about how Christianity feels about them. All well-and-good to me, they’re welcome to bring their education and signs and the visiting pagans are also welcome to show them hospitality and otherwise totally ignore them.

The protestors plan to appear at the end-of-month festival, so still more could unfold from this event; but insofar they’re not organized enough to care about the first, albeit smaller, event.

I enjoy both protests and festivals. I thoroughly enjoy the activism and the interest generated by them; but I am not encouraged by the statement and behavior of their Sheriff’s Office. We’ll keep our eye on them, and hopefully this is simply a gaff and not an outward indication of bad intent on their part.

Link, via The Wild Hunt blog.

RESPONSE: Is atheism a religion?

In response to “Is Atheism a religion?” by Craig Portwood via Examiner.com:

Another non-response to straw man atheism. To quote, "Atheism is the belief that there is nothing in existence that can be called God." No: atheism is a response to the belief claim that gods exist, not a belief claim in itself. In of itself it's a single position on a single claim, this is hardly sufficient to be a religion.

The article really falls apart when the author decides to conflate science and atheism. Unlike atheism, science doesn't have a position on the existence of a god (being an untestable proposition, science as a tool doesn't reply to it and remains both apathetic and agnostic.)

"Other philosophies which hold themselves to be above and beyond religious thought, fit neatly into such a category as religion. Evolutionists for example, fancy themselves to be part of the science community. Even though their position has yet to be proven,(hence it is described as the theory of evolution) they put forth their proposition that life somehow magically appeared as if by random accident."

(1) Science doesn't deal in proof but the collection and modeling of evidence;

(2) The theory of evolution exists to model how the fact of evolution functions; (to see how absurd this statement is replace words with "Gravitationists" and "theory of gravity.")

And the real failure here:

(3) ...the theory of evolution does not postulate how evolving life "appeared" it makes no claims about abiogenesis. To state that it does it to dishonestly misrepresent the theory of evolution.

The author continues to make outright distorted statements about disbelief in gods and other non-related subjects like economics and politics.

After the first failure to honesty research this subject, I decided it wasn't worth my time to continue reading. If a person cannot do the bare minimum of honestly presentation, I don't have time for their propaganda.

Link, via Examiner.com.

Everybody Draw Muhammad Day - May 20th, 2010

COPIED FROM FACEBOOK ===============================

For those of you not already aware of the South Park Muhammad fiasco, I will attempt to enlighten you. If you already know about it, skip to the steps below.

South Park released an excellent episode that displayed the problem with showing Muhammad — you can’t show him or death threats will ensue. The first episode (part one of a two-part show) ended with Muhammad being brought out in a bear costume that didn’t even show his eyes, so that the town of South Park would not be blown up (or so the characters of South Park had hoped). This episode resulted in multiple death threats from Extremist Muslim communities. Comedy Central, the network that airs South Park Episodes, caved to the threats. They suspended the internet version of the episode (this is an episode you can no longer watch on the South Park website) and severely censored the second episode, which was never released online. They also suspended an old episode called “Super Friends” which featured an actual cartoon version of Muhammad. The makers of South Park have issued a public statement saying that they did not authorize the censorship. Comedy Central still has not issued any comment on the matter.

Comedy Central’s fear is not unwarranted. Several people who have drawn and displayed images of Muhammad or criticized Islam have received the same death threats. Some went into hiding, others were murdered. Theo Van Gogh, a film director who produced a documentary criticizing Islam’s treatment of women, was one of the murder victims. Photos of his body were used to threaten Comedy Central. This represents one of the worst forms of censorship I have seen — because of its international scale. It isn’t being perpetrated by any one government; it is being perpetrated by murderous extremist groups who reach around the globe to kill anyone who offends them. It’s time this murderous censorship came to an end. That’s why the International Draw Muhammad Day meme was started.

Our plan is to spread the images of Muhammad around the internet in order to send a message to these murderous extremists. We must all tell them that we will not be silenced. They can’t tell us what we can or can’t say, or who we can or can’t draw. Censorship cannot take all of us down.

The way this will work:

1. Everyone who receives this must spread the word. Post it on your blog, write a note or bulletin, make a journal entry, send e-mails to everyone in your address book, make a youtube video talking about it, whatever it takes. That way, if one of us is taken out, there will still be millions more who are spreading the word.

2. Draw Muhammad. You don’t have to be an artist. Draw a stick figure, a smiley face, whatever you can. Those who use different media in their artwork can show Muhammad differently (sculptures, carvings, whatever)

3. Photograph or scan in this artwork, in an internet-compatible file type.

4. On May 20, post it in all the places where you told people about the event. Make sure it’s posted in as many places as possible, so that it can’t be censored away.

And that’s all there is to it. By participating in this, you will take a stand for free speech. You will stand up for the rights of every person around the world. Murderous extremists will not rule over what we say and what we draw. We will not be silenced!!!

Link to the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everybody-Draw-Muhammad-Day/116425498385947

REVIEW: Spots the Space Marine, M.C.A. Hogarth

Spots the Space Marine has received some well deserved acclaim over at the Web Fiction Guide. I’ve been reading it this week and it’s certainly shaping up to be a story worth the time of any space opera loving sci-fi geek.

Intriguing, bite sized slices of life from the front lines

War. War never changes.

Except maybe when your squad happens to be named Team Kitty and your callsign sounds slightly silly to remain thematically prudent.

The prose of “Spots the Space Marine” is spartan almost laconic, but the mood comes across loud-and-clear. It reads generally like a radio-play; but retains the solid impact of a heftier work. The presentation forces the reader to instead invent their own voice for each of the characters and imagine themselves into the situation that narrates itself from the screen. The chapters are also so short they can be read in a bite—a style allowing the entire series to be grazed casually, episode at a time, or swallowed in a huge handful as time permits.

Spots presents herself as a likable person, yanked out of her comfort zone and thrust into a war zone. A woman among the war. The story then plays out in the conversation space between Spots and other marines. Their voices resonate, with hers playing the following melody of the narrative. Spots isn’t your normal marine. She’s also a mom. A fact that makes her something different, something familiar yet out of the ordinary to read about.

The part of the story that really began to hook me, however—like any proper sci-fi geek—happens to be the aliens. Not just aliens: bugs. The introduction suggests that the insectoid aliens have brought technology and know-how to humanity to aid them in their upcoming war against invader xeno bugs; but the first time that one of the friendly xenos appears in the story happens to be during a vignette titled “The Violinist,” where one gets an introduction to Spots. I have a soft spot for aliens and xeno racial epithets (like the piggies from Ender’s Game.) The friendly xenos here get to be the “fiddlers.”

The hardcore sci-fi reader and drama aficionado alike will find something to like about “Spots the Space Marine.”

Link to the review (via “Spots the Space Marine” @ Web Fiction Guide.)

Direct link: Spots the Space Marine, by M.C.A. Hogarth.

Bad behavior by LoveASU and Urbanevangie on Mill Ave

Friday and Saturday, Mill Avenue becomes a collusion of community and audience, making every street corner into a forum. Striking upon this, numerous minds find them irresistible for promoting their arts, religious opinions, politics, and ideas. Mill becomes brightened for every person who does this.

So when I found an article posted at Urbanevangie.com about when they teamed up with LoveASU to speak, prance, and be merry on Mill Ave, I figured there’d be a good place to see something interesting unfold. The event took place Friday, April 23^rd 2010 right out in front of the US Post Office on Mill.

“We started the night off by sharing the gospel via mic a few times. From there we let the Love ASU crew have a go at the mic. Between our group and Love ASU, the Christians totalled in at about 40 people! We were able to use that amount of people as an advantage, to form a crowd. As people passed by in the streets they quickly joined the large group, curious as to what was going on. We rotated on the mic for about an hour and a half. Anything and everything was shared, from testimonies, poems, skits, spoken word, scripture reading, etc.” (via urbanevangie.com)

The interesting thing that struck me about this article is how most of the black & white photographs contain a person who I know and recognize: Kazz. His person—or at least his equipment and display—show visible in every single photo. The narrative spoken by the photographs silhouettes a hollow in the very content of the article; while Kazz and his happen to be visible in the photos, he remained entirely invisible to the article’s writer.

Kazz is part of a protest group who provide a response to religious opinions on Mill Ave: The Mill Avenue Resistance. If these photographs reflect reality and his loudspeaker and he happened to be near the epicenter of this forum of religious opinion, he wouldn’t have been so silent as to have no impact. The lack of acknowledgement in the article itself is baffling; although the blatant bias makes a short explanation as to why this might be the case.

An interview with Kazz, however, reveals the side of the story deliberately left out by the Urbanevangie writer. A story of bad acts perpetrated by both Urbanevangie and LoveASU; a tale of breaking the understanding of basic decency in a public commons and forum. LoveASU’s place in this story may still be ambiguous; they have no history with Mill and may well be dupes in this trite little play. The manipulated hand puppets of a more sinister hand, but I think that if they want to be good members of the Mill Ave public they should earn up to their part in this.

When Kazz and Kayleigh arrived at the scene, the LoveASU and Urbanevangie groups had already set up their thing over to the side and Kazz let them be. As the crowd expanded, he spoke to a man identified as James, who I believe is a member of LoveASU, about giving up some time to the other group in the commons. A proper concession of the forum which did not get honored appropriately.

At one point, LoveASU even approached The Resistance about using their amplification. The reason being that LoveASU had some singers with a greater range than their own speakers could handle appropriately; Kazz accepted and allowed them to use his equipment for a time so that the singers could be heard in their full flavor.

As the night wore on the LoveASU and Urbanevangie group began fielding members to speak life stories. Kazz explains that at first he went to wait for a break in the speeches, trying intermittently to speak between speakers; but as they started going the varied speakers began to roll smoothly, making no break between persons taking up the microphone. Even going so far as to deliberately ignore Kazz and Kayleigh—even with the common’s compromise on the table with James.

Eventually fed up with this behavior, Kazz waited until one speaker had finished and hit the button on some loud music. “I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short sighted, narrow minded hypocrites. All I want is the truth. Just gimme some truth.” (Lennon, “Gimmie Some Truth”.) According to Kazz, with the volume set high enough to encumber the next speaker LoveASU and Urbanevangie were forced to acknowledge their presence and assented to James’s earlier promise to give them time to speak.

Both Kazz and Kayleigh indict Phil, a member of Urbanevangie, for this bad behavior. Both replied during my interview that he appeared to have taken over pushing speakers to their microphone, doing so in such a fashion so deliberately saturate the forum as to deliberately disallow and disrupt any reply. From my reading of the article on the Urbanevangie website, which carefully ignores their scrape with the Resistance it’s easy to see that they see no need to defend or even outline their actions.

LoveASU and Urbanevangie clean up your act. When you approach our community in this fashion, when you deliberately close out others who have equal place in the commons because you have greater numbers, then in this you become bullies.

I expect that if either of you make numbers again on our Mill Ave that you will reconcile this problem with your conduct and act to better our public commons and not pollute it with your bad manners.