incipit vita nova

More "Racism" and that Racist Dirty Harry

Just like in Nazi Germany, yesterday, Maricopa County sheriff's deputies raided Sizzler restaurants in Phoenix, arresting 9 employees who were found to be in the U.S. illegally.  Yes, it was Sheriff Joe Arpaio - who commented that the raid illustrated more workers who were in the U.S. illegally, taking jobs from Americans or legal immigrants (those with Green Cards).

In this case, the statement was literal.  The raid had nothing to do with the new AZ law requiring enforcement of Federal immigration law.  Deputies were looking for 23 suspects who were sought in connection with an identity theft scheme.  The raid was the result of a year-long investigation following "a tip from a former Sizzler manager who claimed he had been fired for his refusal to hire employees without the proper documents."

When I researched the Arizona immigration law, I knew that my basic position was that a person who committed a crime in the U.S. should be prosecuted under U.S. law, regardless of their immigration status.  I was able to identify the irony of a "immigrant rights attorney" saying how awful it was for a mother or father to be arrested for being in this country and separated from his or her family - I think the guy said, "Imagine what it will be like for the children for their parent not to come home that night."

Yes, he is right, that is very sad.  However, I also learned that the drive to pass this law began with the murder of Phoenix police officer Nick Erfle, who stopped to question 3 people who were obstructing traffic on the street.  One of the three, a lifelong criminal with illegal entry into the U.S. just one of his many crimes, killed officer Erfle.  So, at the time, a couple of weeks ago, I was able to contrast the sadness of the children whose parent had been arrested for violating immigration laws with the sadness of children whose father was a police officer killed in the line of duty.  By an illegal immigrant.

Pro-illegal immigration advocates go so far that they won't even acknowledge crime.  As far as I knew, a crime was a crime, regardless of who committed it.  Apparently, in the Phoenix group of Sizzler Restaurants, a manager who didn't want to break the law got fired and his tip started an investigation.  And, there's obviously more to it than saving money by paying low wages to illegal immigrants.  ID theft is a big problem and because illegal immigrants de facto need forged papers and almost universally use someone else's SSN to work, they are more exposed to that industry than many others.  

Advocates for illegal immigration aren't just lacking in respect for U.S. borders and immigration law.  They do not care what crimes illegals commit that harm other undocumented or legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, and they also support dishonest U.S.-based businesses who are breaking other laws in addition to hiring illegals.  That immigration rights attorney truly does not care about Officer Nick Erfle's children.  He probably even thinks that the officer deserved what he got, for trying to stop a disturbance on the street.

Because I am saying this does not mean that I believe all people who came to the U.S. illegally are serious criminals.  Nor do I think that crimes committed by illegals should be the motivator to deport everyone who is here illegally.  The most tragic irony of the Arizona law is that it reiterates current, unenforced Federal law, and that it's also identical to current law here in California.  

I told Meredith a few weeks ago that she should watch Dirty Harry (1971).  These things must go in cycles, because I hear the same nonsense today that got spewed at Harry Callahan by the Mayor, District Attorney, and various functionaries in that film.  Harry, whom some might interpret as a giant dick, has no patience for bureaucracy, hates pompous windbag politicians and lawyers, and seems like the lone man in San Francisco who cares that the totally insane, over the top "Scorpio" killer is randomly killing San Francisco residents, finally escalating to kidnapping a bus full of school children - a bus that only Harry can stop, saving the kids. 

A scene from the movie that I'd forgotten involved Scorpio's release after he had kidnapped and raped a young girl and buried her alive.  In the middle of the movie, Harry solves that crime, and after a phone booth-to-phone booth chase, apprehends Scorpio at Kezar football stadium.  In order to make Scorpio tell him where the kidnapped girl is, Harry stands on his leg causing excruciating pain until Scorpio coughs up the information. 

At this point, Scorpio has previously murdered several people of all shapes, sizes, races and ages, and has committed this heinous crime against the girl and has held the city up for a huge ransom.  He's previously beaten Harry to a pulp and shot Harry's partner.  In an agonizing twist and setback, Scorpio isn't even charged with any of these crimes (including after the recovery of the girl's lifeless body from the horrible place Scorpio put her - and she never had a chance).  Because of the unorthodox manner of Harry's pursuit, Scorpio is released directly onto the streets, where he promptly hires a criminal to beat him up so he can say Harry did it, thereby attempting to frame the one cop who has caught him and could catch him again.

The final Dirty Harry script wasn't fully-written by awesome Badass John Milius, but "Do you feel lucky, punk?" was.  I'm pretty sure Harry's initial discussion with his partner Chico was also written by Milius.  Harry's reaction to Chico informing him that he had a college degree in sociology definitely sounds like Milius (and is so spot-on true).

Things are as backward as the horrible pro-serial killer environment in Harry Callahan's San Francisco.  The more heinous the crime committed by an illegal immigrant, the more their diehard defenders will downgrade it and criticize the victims.  This was so true in the case of the murder of Jamiel Shaw, where Jamiel was painted as a gang member - and his killer really was!  Just one of Pedro Espinoza's crimes was coming to the U.S. illegally, among many many others. As Pedro had come as a child, he isn't totally responsible for that, but for everything else?  Very much so, and our law enforcement couldn't keep him off the streets for much more than a day at a time no matter what he did.  Illegal Alien News Update covers all of this information - which is seldom coherently covered elsewhere.  I heard Jamiel's father on the news addressing the Los Angeles City Council, who thought it was more important to put on a for-show only boycott of the state of Arizona, while stating Arizona's law was "like Nazi Germany," than it was to give Jamiel's memory one second of respect, much less respect for his father.  You can read all day on this website, which documents the countless situations where law-abiding U.S. citizens and documented workers have been victimized by this cold-hearted, immoral machine.

According to Immigration's Human Cost, "We often hear that "immigrants only come here to work" but that sentimental fluff ignores the obvious truth — that to a crime-minded foreigner, America is the full refrigerator of his dreams. The material riches, combined with many Americans' naivete when it comes to crime, make this nation easy pickings for the lowlifes of the world."

But this started with ID theft.  Undocumented/illegal workers steal (or rather, they purchase them from criminals who steal them first) legitimate social security numbers so they can do the following things unmolested:  obtain credit and credit cards, work, healthcare benefits, food stamps, TANF, and even Social Security benefits.  This lady's social security number was stolen by an undocumented worker who made more money than she did - thus causing the original woman's two children to lose their health insurance.  Every utility company in America has a loss that could be ten times as much as it was 15 years ago from this type of customer opening accounts using fraudulent social security numbers that actually belong to someone else, then skipping out on the bills.  For every article detailing the costs of ID theft, there are 20 to 30 telling the sad stories of "undocumented families" struggling to survive in America's cruel, draconian, "racist" system.  I have yet to read one of these stories where the reporter was even remotely qualified to tell whether or not the interviewees were lying to them, or where they would even comprehend what those lies might be, or what they might mean.  These reporters won't get it until they or a family member is hit by an illegal drunk driver, has their identity stolen or utilities shut off because someone they don't even know is using their social security number, or they are somehow victimized by another type of crime.  Half of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted right now are undocumented immigrants (not all Latino - one is Russian).  They are fleeing criminal prosecution from their countries of origin, as well as committing ongoing heinous crimes here.

I do believe that callous, uncaring officials are being at-best used by drug-cartel funded "advocates". 

President Obama's joke - funny to those living in fear in Phoenix?  Funny to Officer Erfle's fatherless children?  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Here are the requirements for becoming a citizen. Here is all the information anyone would need.  Oh - remember the 9-11 flight school?  Busted last month for an ongoing illegal immigration fraud.

What's a Professional Writer? What's Unprofessional?

No matter what you may think of my product, I am a professional writer.  That means that I earn substantial income from the fruits of my keyboard, and I also use that keyboard to help make millions for the organizations with which I am associated (you did read that correctly).  I don't make $50 here or there, I make enough that I might find my carbon footprint suffering from the proposed cap-and-trade legislation.  Do I mean I've got fiction-writing income like the UK's richest woman, JK Rowling?  My gosh, of course not.  Do I mean like the Twilight Saga's creator Stephenie Meyer?  Oh, my goodness - no way!

I'm probably never going to get up to the income level of today's most successful English-language authors - like J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, and Dan Brown.

Increasingly, I have been doing new freelance writing and art projects.  With each new project and person with whom I establish a relationship, I learn a lot more about professionalism, and about how to please the desired audience.

The biggest message I have right now for aspiring writers is:  think about your audience.  Think about the "end user" and purpose of the product you are creating.  Often, we talk about separating the creative and marketing steps of our work.  But they are inextricable in the sense that, when you are writing a piece of fiction (or nonfiction), and it is intended to be published to a paying audience (subscribers, book-buyers - all are readers), there has to be some "cachet" to it.  In other words: telling a good story.  The marketing part comes in when deciding which market/publication is the best "fit" for the story you have told.  With books, for example, publishers, whether they are new presses, or long-established divisions of one of the six large international publishing houses, have audiences, or markets, as you will, that they publish to.  Most publishing "arguments" and discussions revolve around failures to reach those audiences, and the causes for those failures.  That's what e-publishing chitchats are about, that's what chitchats about books or authors that didn't perform are about, and that's what "these midlist authors aren't getting a chance to build an audience" chitchats are about.

I can turn every one of these author-centric complaints or chitchats around and say, "Show me several real examples of great books that were not eventually published, and did not eventually find its audience." Of course, this is also "proving a negative," and usually A Confederacy of Dunces is brought forth to illustrate this concept. According to a 2006 Slate article focusing on Dunces' relationship to the film business, the book ". . . has always been shrouded in heartbreak. Its publication came 11 years after author John Kennedy Toole committed suicide at the age of 32, and it reached print only because of the singular persistence of his mother, who harassed novelist Walker Percy so intently that he finally agreed to read the lone ink-smudged manuscript in her possession."

John Kennedy Toole didn't stick around long enough to see what became of the book he wrote.  I honestly can't remember the story well enough to remember if his death was connected with the failure of Dunces to immediately find a publisher or not.  But I rather think that it was, and this contributed to his mother's persistence.

And this post isn't about John Kennedy Toole, anyway.

It's about one of the most idiotic posts about rejection I've ever seen, and the fact that this post and everything about it, defines "unprofessional" writer.  I don't know the author's name - his screen name is "Scoubidou" and his free Slate blog has a picture of a wolf.  He states he is "an amateur writer of crime - this crime of writing."

OK, be your own judge about this.  The blog entry is all about how a rejection experience, something we professionals experience every day, seems to have really messed up his life.  The event occurred in 1986, and the blog entry is titled "F**k You, Alan Rodgers."  Yes, that Alan - the one whose well-meant and professional rejection CARD made me "quit" writing back in 1985 - one year prior to the dreadful events described in the blog post.  Alan says I've drawn his attention to this post before.  Well, I hadn't and haven't, because I just saw it today, and it was so "inspirational," I'm writing it up.  It's crazy, all right, but it is textbook unprofessional, and I'm going to give this gentleman credit, he does state up front that he is an "amateur" writer.

So, here's what Alan did.  The post is unclear, but the first-mentioned rejection can only be from Twilight Zone magazine (about which the author complains bitterly for the first part of his post, and calls former Twilight Zone Editor and author T.E.D. Klein "T.E.D. Bundy").

"My worst young experience? I sent a story in to a horror magazine. The editor was a pretty well known toff named Alan Rodgers. It came back after a loooong time with this heart-pounder of a note: I really like this, unfortunately this magazine is folding. I’m moving over to a new magazine, and if you send it there, I’d really like to publish it."

So, "Scoubidou" recalls that he sent the story with a reminder note to Night Cry, and got a form rejection in return, and this seriously ruined his life. 

I did quit writing for 8 years myself after Clarion (2 years, to be exact) - so at the same time, I got the same treatment as "Scoubidou" or similar.  But . . . I don't blame Alan, and I didn't get a note like that, either.  I happen to know from personal knowledge and experience that Alan meant that, and would never have sent that out if he hadn't meant every word of every sentence.  And as far as form rejection letter from Night Cry goes, I am no Night Cry expert, but I know it wasn't a one-person operation.  The likeliest "explanation" is that Alan didn't see the second submission.  Someone else there did this dirty deed.  Or, failing that (because this "Scoubiedou" mentions pastrami or grease, etc.), "Scoubiedou's" cover letter got separated from the manuscript (as happens) and Alan did see the manuscript but not the reminder cover letter, and the story didn't work as well the second time around (as, sorry "Scoubiedou" - also happens).

I can share with "Scoubiedou" that Alan has always prided himself on making editorial decisions by reading a few sentences at most.  At least, decisions of the "rejection" kind.  You can often tell from titles, to be honest.  You can tell from a lot of things.

You can tell from the use of language, most of all.  Someone who has command of the language knows how to open, how to pace, how to do the basics!  These are the basics, "Scoubiedou," and the rest of it isn't craft, it is art!  It's also taste, and common sense.

The rest of "Scoubiedou's" absolutely bonkers post is about mostly how much he can hate on Twilight Zone and others, angst, and some moderate success with the gents markets of the day, Esquire, I think and good old Playboy.

I'm the sort of arrogant, vaguely madcap person who might, on a whim, decide to read 3-4 current Playboy stories (but aren't they going out of business or close?) - but let's say Esquire, because I did do that around Christmas, and pastiche up something that "feels" like what they're publishing, send it to them, and publish it, because mimicry and emulation is one of my skills.  It's not a skill I'm particularly proud of, nor do I think it's something that has to do with stories I would approach in a more legitimate, less off-the-cuff fashion.  I realized I could do this, oh, gee whiz - about - 12-13 years ago or so.  Only later did I realize the real-world connection to "selling actual work to actual people so real readers will read it and like it."

To "Scoubiedou," it's all one big ball of angst - he still hasn't the slightest idea, in his extensive trashing of a magazine that's been out of publication for a quarter of a century (Twilight Zone) that this, like every other magazine, had an editorial purpose, slant and readership.  Moreso, and different from, and a lot more complex than his trashy evaluation of it:  "The fiction in there was terrible. The large majority of the stories were rewrites of Stephen King stuff, backwards, forwards, anacrosstic [sic]."

Now, as far as writing novels, or even much short fiction - I mean short fiction that's worth something - what YOU as a writer believe in is really what you should be sending out.  This callous "matching" and mimicking thing I mentioned - that's not real writing, and that isn't worth much money.  But if you can't get your thinking process more in order than "Scoubiedou" did - no.  And truly, to his credit, he stated right up front, he was an "amateur writer of crime - this crime of writing."  Writing - and selling - fiction (and nonfiction) professionally isn't the same as the passion for marking down words that "Scoubiedou" describes very vividly.  It's about communication, and it's about audience.  It's about understanding, or at least, if you are starting out, picturing that audience.  And it's also about understanding simple things like the form rejection letter.  All that means is that one seeks another market.  And, creates enough - spending enough time in focused creation - to begin to create work that is something people will pay for.  In the case of fiction, that's "good storytelling" that will satisfy the audience. Professional writing.

I'm still famous at Literary Rejections On Display, too.  Imagine that.  And of writers that make money, you'll find few more supportive of genuine individual expression than me.  And few who have made fewer compromises in what they write than me.  There isn't one of those ludicrous, "mimicry" stories that I have published that didn't turn into something very different in the end - a real story.  If it did not - I didn't publish it.  I put it aside and reminded myself not to play that type of nonproductive game. I have put many projects aside that I feel are not important or worthy - things that I don't want my name on.  Money isn't that important to me - not like that.  When both meet together: that is very much the ideal goal, and something that is a "win" for everyone involved:  author, editor, publisher, bookseller - and especially - the reader.

Consulting Experts

I was stunned this a.m. to see video of AP reporter Rich Matthews diving into the Gulf to see the underwater effects of the Gulf oil spill.  His article noted that the other divers wouldn't go in without their hazmat suits, but that he wanted to go in to see for himself.  Approximately 40 miles offshore, the water that Rich dove into was filled with oil, completely hazy, with huge blobs of oil floating around.  The surface was covered with the thick brown sludge we've seen on so many of the suffering animals and birds.

This Gulf oil spill is about a lot of things.  First, BP, which has and had some good things going for it, has been incompetent and abusive, and hasn't contained the oil.  The degree of helplessness and apathy all around is scary, because more and more information comes out that people wanting to help have been turned away or ignored despite repeated pleas.  Three weeks ago, Kevin Costner's oil cleanup machines were ready to go.  I just heard his sad, regretful testimony to Congress yesterday, describing how he had tried to get somebody - anybody - interested in using the machines to clean up the spill.  A month ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal went public with his frustration that his state's sand berm proposal to try to keep some of the oil off coastal wetland areas, protecting wildlife and fisheries, was ignored for two solid weeks by Federal authorities.  It got ignored for 2-3 more weeks, and apparently there's one berm under construction and the Administration made sure to say in the President's initial, unfocused and weird "speech" a few weeks ago that they had taken over from Gov. Jindal - just about stating that "they knew best." Yesterday, President Obama admitted on national television that, nearly two months after the initial leak, he hadn't yet spoken to BP's CEO directly.

And three days ago, I couldn't help but see the now-infamous Matt Lauer interview with the President where he "articulately" stated he was consulting experts about the spill "in order to find out whose ass to kick." 

That did drop my jaw.  If we were to play, let's say, National Disaster Mad Libs, what would our sentence completion options be?  Here's the quote:

"I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they, potentially, have the best answers so

A) We can know how to clean up the spill.

B) We can stop the spill.

C) We can prevent more damage from happening.

D) We can help the people and environment in the Gulf.

Well, in this case, the President chose E)  I know whose ass to kick.

It's not hard to know how to react in that case.  I was expecting him to refer to A), B), C) or D) and when I heard E), my first reaction was another profanity, which I didn't say out loud.  First, my jaw fell, and then I thought, "What the f***?"  Then I thought, he can't even talk about helping the people and animals?  What is wrong with him?

So by all means, feel very, very free to call me a racist like "political commenter" Mark Halperin did on Bill O'Reilly's show.  I mean seriously - fat people thought I was against them, so why not call me a racist?  At this point, I have a couple of simple theories as to what is wrong with President Obama, and they boil down to:

A) He literally has no idea what to do, and doing something about anything is NOT what he signed on for. He signed on for TV interviews, awards, living in a cool White House and getting ovations and cool prizes.

B) No matter what the Halperins of the world say, I don't think he's going to get it together and do anything constructive - about anything. 

That's not because he's black, that's because he is who he is.  America elected yet another do-nothing politician whose 100% interest is his own self - the daily attention he is paid, the opportunities to be on TV and media, his "prizes" (Nobel, etc.).  Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that the President is an "alien" in the White House.  She referred to his choices of administrative personnel, and his refusal, and theirs, to refer to Islamic terrorists as that - apparently they are all unwilling to say the terror attacks on US soil over the past year are related to Islamic terrorism.  That's apparently because they care more about what Islamic terrorists think of them, and miscellaneous "foreign" others (i.e. I guess, the Nobel Prize committee) than about the victims of these attacks, which in the case of Ft. Hood, are tragic and severe.  Since most Americans don't read international news, even though it's easy via the internet, apparently commenters like Mark Halperin think that worldwide, our "world leader" is totally popular and beloved, and only "ignorant, racist, redneck Americans" think he's not doing a very good job.  That's because people like Mark Halperin ignore international media, which is all over the President - and not favorably.  It began with the economic meltdown and "Stimulus," during which French President Sarkozy and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel told the President - DON'T DO THAT.  WE DID THAT AND WE ARE STILL TRYING TO FIX IT.  The current headline of English-language Pravda, which is a publication meant to subvert and demoralize Americans and EU members, is "America Sinks Into Marxism" and also "Obama and Elites Party While America Crumbles."

However, the President's new foreign policy plan, which was barely covered in the US (and features the "no Islamic terrorists" doctrine), did receive favorable mentions in Arab News and even Al Jazeera.  He got good coverage there for yesterday's special visit with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, too.

People aren't afraid of President Obama and don't think he's "menacing" because he chose the mindboggling choice "E" when referring to consulting experts about the oil spill.  I'm pretty sure if showed that video independently, 90% or more of people watching it would just be flabbergasted as I was.  They would wonder what was wrong with the President, that he didn't include choices A-D.  And he didn't.

I always liked Kevin Costner.  I am pretty sure he's been fighting a huge uphill battle to get his oil machines in use, and already stated that he'd warned oil companies seven years ago that this type of horrible spill could occur.  I would much, much rather have him as President.  I know a lot of people think he is a "dumb" movie star.  But at least he could choose A-D.  Even with the big egos of many performers, and I'm pretty sure Kevin has a fairly large ego, he seems to want to clean up the oil.  He is focused on stopping the disaster.  There will be plenty of time for attorneys to "kick BP's ass later."  In fact, they have ordered several of Kevin's oil-cleanup machines.  So if they are put out of business prior to that, how will these machines be constructed and used?

Nothing that any commenter like Mark Halperin or others can say is going to change the fact that the President does not care, and it is brutally obvious.  It's even more obvious that he has so little clue about what real people think and how they go about their lives that he can't even choose reasonable choice A-D, not because he genuinely "cares" but because he understands like a good politician that doing that will preserve his own reputation and maybe even get him another prize.  He actually thinks that threatening BP before the oil is stopped or cleanup begins, is preferable to stopping the oil, or cleaning up.  For real.  And nothing will move him off that position.  That's because he's a selfish, self-interested and completely clueless politician.  And there's lots of those, of all races, shapes and sizes.

Les Grossman's Back!

I was so excited to see that Les Grossman is working again - what an amazing show last night at the MTV Movie awards!

Watch the 2010 MTV Movie Awards at MTV.com!

Oh - just in case you're worried that anti-Semitism is far too rampant, I am pretty sure Les is supposed to be of the Hebraic persuasion.  And can he dance?  Oy!

To Face the Wild

I grew up outdoors, and had a pretty adventurous life as a kid, with a few close calls.  As an adult, I've had two life-threatening experiences, one of which was a total shock, and the other of which, I only realized later how close I had come to losing my life.  As to extreme experiences in nature, I have never been on a canoe trip, and I have never climbed a peak over 10,000 feet.

My fascination for real-life adventure and survival is endless.  One of the best books about survival and family that I've read in recent years is Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad, about which I have previously written.

What I thought was a similar book, but which turned out to be a very different animal, is Death on the Barrens by George James Grinnell. I believe it was originally published in 2006, but as you can see, a new paperback has been released by small press North Atlantic Books.

What I can say is marvelous about the book is the first three-quarters of it, all of the gorgeous watercolors, and the poetry throughout.

At the end, author Grinnell tells of how many years he worked on this book (most of his life) and the many publisher rejections he had.  The current book is the product of encouragement by George Luste, who writes the introduction.  It is a part of the tradition of northern canoeing lore, a tradition I knew little of - and still know very little.

This interview with George Grinnell seems a bit more honest than the latter portion of Death on the Barrens.

And that's the problem I have with the book.  At first, I was enthralled, and felt it was a great piece of nature writing.  The longer I read, however, the more it seemed that Grinnell was holding back.  I can only conclude that he feels so sad and guilt-ridden about the tragedy of his canoe trip in the Canadian Barren lands that he can't write accurately about it.  Death on the Barrens tells the story of an ill-fated canoe trip in 1953 led by Art Moffatt, who lost his life on the trip.  George Grinnell, the author, was one of five young men who were led by Moffatt into the wilderness.

Having no idea of what the Canadian Barren lands were, really, I found this website showing pictures of a shorter, much happier trip.  This snowmobile journey traversed the area for a scientific survey in 2007, ending at Baker Lake, which was also the Moffatt group's eventual destination.  The area around the Thelon River, which is the last river the ill-fated Moffatt group traversed prior to arriving at the Hudson Bay Company station at Baker Lake, is also one of the ice road areas featured in Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel.

The Moffatt party set out with far more food than Chris McCandless' bag of rice.  While Grinnell describes extreme hunger from the calorie deficit that built up for each man daily, the men weren't completely bereft of food.  Moffatt had provisioned the expedition, and done a bit better than the Franklin Expedition had.  Grinnell also describes catching, cleaning and eating fish, and three Caribou.

There's no question that Grinnell and the others experienced a harrowing journey.  The trip was made more harrowing by the fact that their leader, Art Moffatt, was peripatetic at best.  One of the other young men, Peter Franck, was scheduled to start Harvard in early September, and they had been progressing so slowly that not only was this date missed, the group was still traveling long after they should have reached Baker Lake. 

I'm not really sure how to categorize Death on the Barrens.  Although it's clearly a wilderness adventure story, Grinnell is or was so conflicted about Art Moffatt's tragic demise and the role that Grinnell himself played, or failed to play, that it is a less than satisfying story.  Although many feel that Christopher McCandless was a fool who caused his own demise, I don't agree with that - I think Chris was the victim of a cruel, ironic fate.  As to the Moffatt party, the young men were woefully unprepared mentally for their long canoe and portage trip in some of nature's most unforgiving lands.  The book covers nearly every meal, and most of their food preparation, sharing and storage practices.  It is Moffatt's peripatetic non-leadership that seems to have led them to their final disaster of a failed run on rapids in freezing weather. 

And I am becoming more aware that, just as Jon Krakauer covered young men with a taste for adventure and risking life and limb in Into the Wild, there is a slightly different breed of British, American and Canadian madman who drops out of society and seeks solace and enlightenment in the wild - but who sometimes find death.  Their graves are all over these frigid northern areas - one of the most famous is the collapsed cabin and gravesites of the ill-fated John Hornby expedition along the Thelon River.  I am not sure there is much enlightenment to be found in ill-prepared men wandering into the wild to starve and die.  And not much enlightenment in Death on the Barrens.

Sarah Zettel in Shadow Conspiracy Nominated for Sidewise Award

The "Sidewise" award is a juried award given each year for the best in alternate history. BVC's leader Sarah Zettel is nominated for her amazing story, "The Persistence of Souls," in the Shadow Conspiracy anthology, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford and Laura Anne Gilman.

According to the official press release, "We are pleased to announce this year's nominees for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.  The winners will be announced at ReConStruction, this year's NASFiC, in Raleigh, North Carolina during the weekend of August 5.  The Sidewise Awards have been presented annually since 1995 to recognize excellence in alternate historical fiction.  This year's panel of judges was made up of Stephen Baxter, Evelyn Leeper, Jim Rittenhouse, Stu Shiffman, Kurt Sidaway, and Steven H Silver.  To forestall questions, although there is only one nominee in the Long Form category, "No Award" is also an option."

Short Form

Paul Di Filippo, "Yes, We Have No Bananas," Eclipse No. 3, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books
Alastair Reynolds, "The Fixation," The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3, edited by George Mann, Solaris
Chris Roberson, "Edison's Frankenstein," Postscripts 20/21
Bruce Sterling, "Black Swan," Interzone (April 2009)
Sarah Zettel, "The Persistence of Souls," The Shadow Conspiracy, edited by Phyllis Irene Radford & Laura Anne Gilman, Book View Café
 
Long Form
Robert Conroy, _1942_, Ballantine

Steve Silver is such a great guy!!  We are all incredibly thrilled and proud at BVC.  I knew Sarah's story was marvelous, and I am so glad to see it getting the recognition it deserves.  With the ultra-sick "Richard Dadd" in Shadow Conspiracy II - well, let's just hope our other highly-talented authors can carry the flag onward.

Why Are Atheists So Stupid?

I saw somebody state yesterday that "there were more Atheists in the U.S. than African-American or gay people."  This person said "homosexuals," but they sincerely were comparing unbelievers to a race and/or a sexual orientation.  Yes, the implication was that now that the numbers of Atheists are increasing, they too can bid to be a class eligible for protection under anti-discrimination laws.

If you Google "Why Are Atheists so Stupid?" you'll get 134,000 results.

Like this: motorcycle rider forums - 68 pages to date, mostly filled with Atheist cartoons and insults, like the up-to-date pictures of former Pres. George W. Bush and chimpanzees. Godlike Productions (new age, 2012 type message boards) more hundreds of identical messages.  English language learner message boards - yet more messages.  This gentleman has some spelling and grammar issues, but experienced the same phenomenon.  This atheist was shocked to find the thousands of Google entries for "cowardly atheist" and tried to explain the phenomenon.

This spring's Sean McDowell/James Corbett debate shocked students, regardless of their background and beliefs, because Corbett was so woefully unprepared.  I could only interpret Corbett's lack of preparation as contempt for his opponent and his position.  However, I found a sophisticated atheist commenter who was able to state what Corbett should have:  rational arguments to show why morality is not derived from God.  Here's a whole post about why Atheists think Christians are stupid.

I just completed grading this semester's papers, and numerous students chose to write about freedom of speech in the classroom, inspired by Jim Corbett's 3-decade rant against Christ (he's the "Jesus Glasses" teacher from Capistrano Valley High).  Twenty separate classroom statements against Christianity made by Corbett were put on trial in Federal District Court, and his "Jesus Glasses" statement was not the one found to have violated the Establishment clause of the First Amendment.  Instead, it was a justification of Corbett's participation in a lawsuit in 1991. At least four of my students were former Corbett students, and all had stories to tell based in real classroom experiences.  Despite Corbett's fairly numerous defenders, these students said he was a bad teacher, and that his combative style of teaching hindered their learning.  Most telling was all, each student described separate incidents where Corbett mocked students for their pro-religion statements, and other statements, in class.

To paraphrase Corbett, when you put on your Godless Glasses, you can't see the truth.  It continues to be all over the internet that Corbett was put on trial because he was opposing "Intelligent Design."  That is not the case.  Student Chad Farnam taped multiple anti-religious statements made by Corbett in Advanced Placement European History class.  In Corbett's mind, he "won," because only one statement was found to be unconstitutional - and after reading the statement, it was merely one of the typical "bad teacher going on and on about themselves" statements.

Which brings me to Corbett's soulmate, Joseph Smigelski.  Smigelski is a community college teacher and blogger for the Huffington Post and wrote "Why Tiffany Can't Write," last week.  In summary, Smigelski's article stated that a community college student that he named "Tiffany" asked in response to an in-class writing prompt, "Does this need to be a 5-paragraph essay?"  Smigelski took this as evidence of Tiffany's stupidity, and of the total failure of K-12 schools to teach students how to write.  He supported this assertion by re-telling a Harlan Ellison story from the recent documentary film about his life.  

I confronted Mr. Smigelski on his assertions, because I believe that they are false, based on my own experience, and upon our national writing associations.  In response, Mr. Smigelski made one boneheaded error after another.  He confronted me on my expertise, and asked if I had published any work - and, when I stated I was a friend of Harlan Ellison, he and yet another typical message board rat questioned that, too.  His last error was to state that the Naomi Campbell quote he used as evidence for all college students being developmentally disabled and unable to write, was from Dreams With Sharp Teeth, the Harlan Ellison documentary, and therefore, of course my broader interpretation of the meaning of the story was untrue.

I broke down yesterday and Googled Mr. Smigelski, and all the puzzle pieces fell into place when I saw that the guy was a sniggering Atheist.

This isn't about belief or disbelief, it's about a common behavior pattern and attitude.  Of course there are highly-religious people who are close-minded and who would make poor teachers.  However, the number of outspoken loud-mouthed and tone-deaf Atheists seems pretty large, because Smigelski is a chip off the old Corbett tree.  For the Atheists who hate Christians so much, it's quite ironic that they exhibit the same behavior patterns as seen in the Salem Witch trials or other incidents of religious persecution.  And I don't think it's possible to have that fixed and rigid a thought process, one that precludes other information at all times, and be a good teacher.

The Mad: Chiller Outdoes Itself Again

I'm not sure The Mad (2007) is all that bad, but it's not too dangerous to know.  Another entry in the squee Chiller/SyFy Channel "I'll never get that 2 hours of my life back again" sweepstakes, The Mad features an agonized Billy Zane with a soul patch and horn-rimmed glasses.

I haven't seen any zombies yet, but so far, it's pretty sucktastic.