Mystery Writer Parnell Hall Sings The Book Tour Blues (VIDEO)

Be careful what you wish for, especially if you are a writer.

Parnell Hall's tongue-in-cheek music video humorously yet accurately depicts the double-edged sword that is finally becoming a "published" author: now what? Book signings are one of the Holy Grails of the struggling author, but seldom does it occur to them (okay, us) that unless you are one of the elite literary celebrities who are well-known enough to have name recognition with people who have never read your books, it isn't likely that you will have a crowd of people asking you about you and your latest novel.

As Hall clearly demonstrates, the only thing worse than being an obscure author is being an obscure author at a book signing at the same table as Mary Higgins Clark.



Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Book Review: The Rare Anthology

As with any short story compilation, The Rare Anthology is something of a mixed bag. A collection of horror stories ranging from impressively brutal to disappointingly tame, the book's host Brian Knight (credited as "Compiled by") has assembled a bunch of horror stories with no discernible theme connecting theme, despite Knight's convoluted explanation in the introduction that the stories all contain "something rare." Of course, the reason for why the stories are included in the book isn't important, what's important is how good the stories are.

There are some truly choice cuts in this compilation, and three of them actually share a theme of obsessions. J. Newman's opening story, When Satan Sings Th' Blues (13 Sinful Selections From A Little South O' Heaven)...Vol. I., is a charming little tale about a vinyl record collector's ultimate find, a demonic blues album. Sasquatch Cafe, by the book's Compiler Brian Knight, is a cautionary tale of what happens when you push the boundaries of culinary experiences, and features a truly great twist ending. Then there is Funky Chickens by Drew Williams (The Corruptor), which explores the darker side of roadside attractions featuring mutated livestock. All three deliver on the promises made by the opening paragraph, the true sign of a competent short story writer.

Two other excellent entries delve into the battle-of-the-sexes, and takes 'battle' quite literally. Old Bones, Old Bones is a well-crafted examination of of battered women, emotional trauma and protective fetishes by Kim Guilbeau, while M.J. Euringer (The Jaws of Adana) delivers a cryptic yet compelling tale of power, desire, submission and dominance in The Jeweler. Both are a little deeper then your typical shock and slash stories, deserving of compilation if feminist-themed horror stories.

My personal favorite of the bunch, however, is Freak Gallery by Daniel W. Gonzales. A journalist's journey into the twisted world of a demented painter that can only end in madness, Gonzales' story is not only full of startling imagery, but features masterful lines that will attack your eyes and lay eggs in your brain, and that's what good writing is about.

The rest of the collection ranges from poor to passable, and is mostly populated by the usual suspects: killer plants, killer tattoos, family curses, medical torture, and brutal killers who have the tables violently turned against them. Not all of them are bad, but none of them brings anything fresh or new to the table. Even the Edgar Allen Poe parody at the end, The Tell-Tale Fart, is a bit longer than the joke demands.

Still, six out of seventeen isn't that bad of a ratio for a horror compilation. If nothing else, it fits into the book's theme after all: really good horror stories are a rare find indeed.

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Mohammed Who?

Overheard in a conversation from the chair next to me at the barber shop shortly after Faisal Shahzad was identified by authorities as the person responsible for the failed car bombing in New York City:

Barber: "You see they caught that guy that left the car bomb in Times Square?"

Patron: "Yeah. What do you expect, that's how they're raised over there, bunch of psychopath savages."

Barber: "I heard he was born here."

Patron: "Doesn't matter. It's that religion the bring over here with them. They all worship Ali."

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Fat Kids Get Bullied More? Really?

Cover of Lord of the Flies, Educational Edition

I try not to bitch and moan too much about useless tests and surveys that are performed in the name of science or knowledge and then later highlighted as transitional filler during the cable news hour-long cycle. Harping on why scientists would study cricket orgasms or the eating habits of nuns (does that count as a pun?) gets old quick, and more importantly, "useless" studies singled out by politicians usually end up having legitimate scientific implications. It's a waste of time that doesn't seem worth the effort.

But of course, I had to turn on MSNBC today at the exact moment they ran a quick news item about a recent study that has shown that obese children get picked on more than children of average weight.

Holy shit. Really? Are they sure about this? I mean, maybe we should get a couple more years of research under our belts before jumping to any harsh conclusions. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that Dr. Julie C. Lumeng from the University of Michigan led the study thoroughly and without cutting corners. But I'm going to need some pretty well document case study reports to convince me that overweight children are picked on more. The whole idea sounds more than a little suspect to me.

In case you missed it, the previous paragraph was more than a tad sarcastic.

Of course fat kids get picked on more. Nobody likes a fat kid, and everyone knows it. You couldn't come up with a better example of common knowledge if you tried. Unless you managed to grow up without being exposed to any kind of unsupervised social interaction with other children, you aren't even going to attempt to deny it. Fat kids are catnip to bullies, so much so that even non-bullies feel compelled to mess with the fat kids. Its just some perverse extension of human nature that will never be eliminated. Remember Piggy from Lord of the Flies? Yeah, of course you do. Everyone who reads above a third-grade level does. Piggy was the fat kid, and what happened to him? That's right; his classmates crushed him to death with a giant rock. And you know how many English students in middle or high school read that chapter and found it to be outrageous, unrealistic, or even a tad unusual? None of them. Not even the fat ones.

But I'm not annoyed that someone felt the need to devote time and energy into proving empirically that fat kids get bullied and abused more than skinny ones. I'm not even upset that they felt the need to publish the results in some bizarre attempt to further educate the world about this previously unrecognized bias against chubby kids. Not at all.

What pisses me off to no end, however, is that the continual and unrelenting joke that is the American News Media somehow felt that this startling revelation was newsworthy enough to not only publish as if it were an actual news story, but to highlight with other breaking news items during the course of a normal news cycle. Not only do they care so little about delivering real news that they'll waste time with this useless nonsense, but they think so little of the average viewer that they seem convinced they are stupid enough to actually consider this a real news story.

The sad part is, they're probably right. About the stupid American audience, I mean. Then again, they're also right about obese children being bullied more. Just ask a fat kid, they'll tell you.

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Making Unpopular Literary Connections

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About two hours into my late night English class, an integral part of Project Unending Education, Robert Frost's poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening came under scrutiny when one of the students interrupted the Professor's praise of the rural imagery to point out that many people consider the poem to be about suicide.

A friendly yet heated debate broke out, with the Professor rejecting this interpretation despite its growing popularity among the students. Not be left out of the conversation, I decided to add some cultural background to the discussion:

"Actually, it seems to be a common interpretation," I blurted out. "The last stanza of the poem was even used as the trigger phrase to activate sleeper-agent suicide assassins in the Charles Bronson espionage thriller Telefon, which ironically was an adaptation of a novel by the same author who wrote the book that Die Hard 2 was based on."

The entire class freezes in an uncomfortable, wide-eyed silence, all eyes focused on me sharing the same
mixed expression of confusion and disbelief.

Someday I'll learn that not everything has to do with movies, even when it does.

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Book Review: The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Cover via Amazon

Web Goodhue is what many might refer to as a loser. A former schoolteacher turned full time slacker, Web divides his time between surviving off handouts and pissing off anyone he comes in contact with. Things begin to change rapidly, however, when his friend and roommate loses what remains of his patient understanding and forces him to take a job with a mutual acquaintance. This plunges Web into the bizarre and gruesome world of Crime Scene Cleaning, launching him on a frantic and brutal journey that will force him to examine his few crumbling relationships, re-evaluate his life, confront hidden memories of a traumatic past, and deliberate on the best way to clean brains and skull fragments out of shag carpeting.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is one of the few stand-alone novels of Charlie Huston, the popular crime fiction author responsible for the successful Hank Thompson and Joe Pitt series. Departing once again from his popular serialized novels, Huston has created a wonderfully captivating story of self-discovery and evaluation with enough criminally insane characters and violently graphic murder scenes to please even the most jaded pulp fan.

The majority of the book’s success rests on the shoulders of the main character Web, whose first-person narration guides us through his personal journey. Web is the perfect anti-hero, displaying anti-social behaviors and poorly motivated decision-making that repel the thought of emulation, yet with a level of self-awareness and confusion that never risks alienating the reader. The slow reveal of the source of his post-traumatic disorder not only explains his behavior without excusing it, but its revelation is a surprisingly human and believable scene, and a true testament to Huston’s mastery of true-to-life dialogue and the frailty of human emotion. Also, his sudden relationship with the daughter of the suicide victim of his first crime scene cleanup, while convenient for the advancement of the story, is far from contrived or easily explained away.

Nevertheless, this is a gritty crime story, and Web’s road to emotional discovery is heavily paved with ruthless killers, street-hardened hoods, delusional criminals, and a wide variety of inventively graphic deaths. The title of the book refers to the newly chosen career path of Web’s, Crime Scene Cleanup, and a good portion of the story dwells on the darkly humorous potential inherent in scraping up and hauling away the aftermath of violent crimes and messy suicides. From detailed explanations of how to get blood off wallpaper to the results of committing suicide with a pipe-bomb suppository, Mystic Art dwells in so much bloody minutiae that the reader will occasionally wish they had a hazmat suit of their own. Of course, this sort of detail could easily devolve into a tedious grocery list of factual data reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk’s works, but Huston never comes close to overwhelming or boring his audience with the research he obviously put into the novel.

Charlie Huston is well known for delivering top-notch work, and The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is no different. It is an unflinching exercise in gallows humor and crime drama with a solid plot and remarkable yet wholly believable characters. Not only will you enjoy it, but you might even learn how to detect blood splatter on upholstery.

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Are The Children Our Publishing Future?

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Harlan Coben to write Young Adult Novels

It seems like a lot of authors are making the switch to teen audiences these days. Harlan Coben signs a three-book deal to write about a teenager attempting to expose a conspiracy behind his family, F. Paul Wilson has a new series of young Repairman Jack novels on the way, and the list continues to grow. And it isn't just books, either. The next batch of James Bond movies are going to focus on a young, teenage Bond (presumably minus the martinis and gratuitous sex), and have you see the new Doctor Who? More like Doogie Who-ser, M.D. Of course, it isn't unusual for Hollywood to tone everything down to a broader PG-13 audience when things get tight, but at this point I'm waiting for Dan Brown to announce a new young adult series featuring a teenage Langdon skipping his study hall to chase down adolescent Templars.

So what gives? Have teenagers suddenly grown as a literary market? It seems kind of contradictory that Young Adult sections at bookstores and libraries are doubling in size at the same time that parents and other irrational busybodies are crying out that texting and twitter are raising a generation of functional illiterates. Then again, I've always been wary of the naysayers who claim that the advancement of communications technology actually has teenagers communicating less. But even if I disagree with that, can I deny that teens are spending more and more time online, texting, tweeting, messaging, and playing video games that becoming eerily realistic? How can teenagers squeeze all of this in and still have time to read the last Young Adult series? They must be, as I would hope the publishing industry has sales numbers to back their big push to enlarge the YA market.

Harry Potter and Twilight might be a major reason for the move. All of those young kids who started reading the first Harry Potter have grown u along with the scar-faced wizard, and have joined forces with the equally obsessive (if not more so) Twilight crowd. With such a large fan base of teenagers devouring Atlas Shrugged-sized tomes about glittery vampires and dysfunctional warlock apprentices, and spending great wads of cash on anything tying in with the books and movies in the process, there is definitely money to be made. But how does that translate into bigger book sales overall, especially in a recession that has even the major publishers scrambling to justify their roles in the marketplace?

My theory (and I'm sure it isn't mine alone) is that the blending of technologies into the world of print, far from being the death knell of the publishing industry as many have predicted, has actually begun to breath new life into it. While eBooks and eReaders have yet to take over the marketplace, they are definitely gaining in popularity, and have helped make written works more easily accessible to those with powerful handheld communication devices, and we all know how much teenagers love their powerful handheld communication devices. Add this to the growing number of teenagers actively reading or writing in the ever growing blogosphere, and you have a new generation of children actually being led to the literary world by the very machines we feared would destroy it.

So yes, we will most likely see an increasing number of established authors jumping gleefully into the Young Adult pool. And as eReaders and ePublishers begin integrating animation and interactive features into their eBook releases, more and more kids are going to be tricked into thinking that books are just as cool, if not cooler, than 3D movies and PSP.

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Itawamba High School, Educating the Bigots of Tomorrow

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That sounds a bit harsh, I suppose. After all, where do I get off accusing an entire school of being ignorant, backwards, redneck, homophobic redneck bigots? Seems kind of cruel, doesn't it?

Indeed, let's talk about cruel.

If you watch or read the news with any regularity, you've probably heard about the struggles of young teenage lesbian Constance McMillen, who has been jumping through legal hoops in order to take her date to the Itawamba High School prom. Usually not a big deal. But it suddenly becomes a big deal when your prom date is of the same sex, and school you attend is populated by uptight judgmental tools abiding by a morality system half a century out of date.

First, they told Constance that she would not be allowed to attend the Itawamba High School prom with her girlfriend. Constance rightly deduced that she was being unfairly discriminated against, and with the help of the ACLU got the courts to force the school to allow her to attend the prom. Not to be outdone, Itawamba High School cancelled the prom, insisting that it was being cancelled for a completely unrelated and unspecified reason. Constance, the ACLU and the courts saw through this clever ruse, however, and promptly ordered them to hold a prom.

So, what did the proud members of Itawamba High School, which laughingly includes the word "empowerment" in its Mission Statement, finally decide to do? Begrudgingly accepting the court decision and take a reluctant step into the dawn of acceptance and tolerance would have been way way to handle the decision. Instead, Itawamba High School decided to adhere to playground rules and hold a secret prom.

Just to be clear, this is not an exaggeration or embellishment for dramatic effect. A "fake prom" was held at a Fulton, Mississippi Country Club, to which only seven students were directed to: Constance and her date and five other students, two of which were students with learning difficulties. The rest of the students were apparently directed to a "secret prom," or as I like to call it, a No Gays Prom, at an undisclosed location.

Now, there is no shock when it comes to teenagers acting cruelly or maliciously, or using exclusionary tactics to embarrass or degrade others. Kids are kids, and there will always be those who seek to feel better about themselves by publicly ostracizing or excluding other kids for any reason available that marks them as being "different." If this was just the students, then this sort of behavior, while still unacceptable, would be sadly expected.

But this isn't just about the kids. These are the parents of teenagers, active in the community, no doubt with direct ties to the school board, that actively coordinated the creation of two separate proms: one for "our kids," and on for gays, mentally handicapped, and any other unwanted students.

It goes even wider than that: there can be no doubt that the faculty of Itawamba High School knew about these arrangements, and that word spread to at least some of the residents of Fulton, Mississippi that the grandest display of juvenile exclusionary backstabbing was about to take place. Yet no one saw the need to inform Constance, her parents, or the media closely monitoring the whole scenario that something foul, disgusting, and downright immature was about to take place. Indeed, it seems that the kind of petty isolationist attitude you would expect at a twelve-year-old's birthday party was fully supported by any and every so-called responsible adult that knew about it.

Any rational human being (i.e., not someone from Itawamba High School) might be tempted to feel sorry for Constance, just imagining the emotional impact of having the entire student body, as well as the staff and faculty of Itawamba High School, and a good portion of the town of Fulton, Mississippi tell you that you are unwelcome by inviting you to a fake prom. But there is no pity to be had here, for Constance truly comes out as the victor in this scenario. She not only successfully stood up to institutionalized discrimination and bigotry, she forced the bitter, hateful people of Itawamba High School to show their true faces while simultaneously hiding from public view.

All it takes is a brief trip to the Photos section of the Itawamba High School Website to see the true display of cowardice; the blank page where the Prom 2010 Photos should be is blank, as the school apparently doesn't feel the need to post pictures from either the Fake Prom or the No Gays Prom. There is also no email address listed on their Contact page, only a physical mailing address, although whether this was the case before the No Gays Prom is unknown to me. Their omission reveals their acknowledgement of their complicity, that a whole nation of rational human beings would hold these smiling pictures of happy students and proud parent chaperons, and rightfully declare every smiling face the face of ignorance and prejudice.

I hope colleges across the country are taking note of Itawamba High School's graduating class. I think any institution of higher learning would want to take into consideration a potential college student's involvement in a vast conspiracy to publicly shun and segregate a fellow student based solely on her sexual orientation. Always looks good on a job resume, too. 

Constance is already far wiser than most of the jackasses currently attending her school and teaching her classes. When asked about the fact that two students with learning disabilities were also directed to the Fake Prom, she said "They had the time of their lives. That's the one good thing that come out of this, they didn't have to worry about people making fun of them." It's a sad but intuitive realization for a young girl to have, that sometimes it is better to be excluded than to be mocked and ridiculed by ignorant and immature people full of little more than hate and uncompromising intolerance. Especially when that level of ignorance and immaturity is being displayed by a majority of your town's parents and educational professionals.

Itawamba High School, Home of Intolerance and Bigotry. Now there's a Diploma worthy of framing.

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More Than 200,000 Could Lose Unemployment Benefits This Week

If you ever needed a clear example of exactly how little politicians care about the people whose welfare they supposedly are working for, you won't do much better than this.

The first time this happened, back in February, you could pretty much level the blame at the Republicans exclusively. This time around, however, both sides are guilty of putting the chance of scoring a political win ahead of the importance of lending financial security to the growing number of Americans currently unemployed because of the governments initial failings at monitoring economic policy and procedure.

The Democrats could have easily called the Republican bluff and worked through the Easter break to get the job done, or could have accepted the temporary extension offered and fixed things on the return. Instead, they decided to double down and gamble on some more negative press for the GOP. It is rather unfortunate that the only time the Dems seem to grow a pair is when it doesn't benefit anyone.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Publishers: eBooks + Libraries = Bad (For Them)

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Trashing eBooks in one form or another seems to be all the rage in the publishing industry these days. You can't really blame publishers; it must be hard when you wake up one morning and find that POD services and eBooks have suddenly obliterated your virtual monopoly on the market. But as the debates rage, a lot of attitudes and philosophies towards the reading public that were lurking below the surface are being eagerly aired for public consumption.

Take, for example, this quote from Eric Hellman's blog, Go To Hellman, about Macmillan CEO Sargent:

"That is a very thorny problem", said Sargent. In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time. If it's a popular book, maybe it gets lent ten times, there's a lot of wear and tear, and the library will then put in a reorder. With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it, maybe you check libraries in three other states. You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing. "It's like Netflix, but you don't pay for it. How is that a good model for us?"Eric Hellman, Go To Hellman, Mar 2010

Libraries + eBooks equal free Netflix? Well, if you ignore that libraries don't loan stuff out of state, that libraries are free lenders regardless, and a host of other problems with this comparison... well, it just shows how good the major publishers are at ignoring a lot of the realities inherent with the advancement of the digital age. The short answer to his question "How is that a good model for us?" It isn't. Unfortunately for you, however, the decision about how the future will unfold isn't up to you.

This kind of attitude towards the market is frighteningly indicative of how the producers of consumer goods (not just publishing) view the structure of the open market in our increasingly consumer-driven world. It used to be all about Supply and Demand; We demand, They supply. But these days corporations have grown accustomed to manipulating both sides of the equation. So when they suddenly find themselves unable to dictate exactly how and when we will be able to purchase what they want us to buy, things start to get a bit chaotic, a bit more crazy, and a lot less logical.

You think these major publishers are pulling their hair out over Amazon because it has successfully increased book sales by drastically increasing accessibility? No, they hate Amazon partially because they've ruined the "Buy in Bulk From Us and Bargain Bin What You Don'T Sell" business model, and mostly because they have given the public what publishers have increasingly attempted to deny you: choice.

Ever wonder why when you walk through a Borders, you see three copies of the same books always lining the shelves? Or why you can never find what you are looking for, unless it isn't the newest "Best Seller" or hot celebrity author? They have enough room to stock ten times as many titles as they do. Why don't they? Because the publishers and distributors have a say in what they order and what they stock. The fact is, over fifty percent of the titles sold by Amazon in any given year aren't even available in these borderline monopoly bookstore chains, and you can bet the big boy publishers don't fare well in that equation.

There's a lot to think about in this and other statements by Sargent in this must-read article. Like how Sargent thinks the big publishers will survive because their too unprofitable to fail, or how eBooks are bad because they don't deteriorate and force people to buy new copies (nothing spells profits like planned obsolescence). But what it really gets you thinking about is how these companies aren't concerning themselves with how to compete in a new marketplace. Instead, they are devoting their energies to trying to keep the marketplace the way it is, to somehow hobble the evolution of eCommerce and an ever-changing market so it adheres to their rapidly antiquated business model. They've realized that it has come down to either Us or Them.

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Texas Education Board Approves Conservative Curriculum Changes By Far-Right

So, Republican revisionism finally makes the leap from Journalists to Historians as they successfully force their own far-right political views into text books. Other changes soon to come to an American History Textbook near you:

• Supplemental Chapter: Tea Parties: Then and Now
• Section listing requirement of US President's to be born on American soil includes the addition "Until recently..."
• Economic history involving the dropping of the gold standard includes a half-page ad for Goldline featuring Glenn Beck.
• America acquired from Indians legally at fair market values, a perfect example of unregulated capitalism.
• All references to "Democratic Party" changed to "Democrat Party"
• Racism no longer exists; successfully defeated by Republican in the late sixties.
• Kennedy Presidency briefly mentioned as a "transitional period," remaining space dedicated to Ronald Reagan.
• God mentioned at least once every two pages, listed among founding fathers.
• Ayn Rand listed as Economic Expert in section on capitalism, Atlas Shrugged added to "Suggested Reading" list.
• All references to "President Obama" changed to "President (?) "Barry" Barack Hussein Obama"

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Book Review: The Bronx Kill by Peter Milligan

The Bronx Kill is the first truly successful entry in Vertigo's new manga-style crime series imprint, Vertigo Crime. This is most likely due to the fact that unlike the first two attempts, penned by popular novelists Ian Rankin and Jason Starr, the writing duties have been handed over to veteran comic book author Peter Milligan.

At first, Milligan seems like an odd choice for a crime story series, considering his notoriety for offbeat comic titles such as Shade the Changing Man and Animal Man. But he also has a lengthy history of strong storytelling with a dark edge, and he knows how to utilize the comic format to achieve the greatest possible effect. These are the skills that shine through in The Bronx Kill, and make it an engrossing (dare I say riveting?) read.

Most notable is Milligan's deft handling of the story-within-a-story device, in this case featured as the excerpts of the novel that main character Martin Keane is working on; a novel with themes and obstacles that mirror events in his own life. This kind of device can feel cheap and gimmicky when used improperly, as can when writers make their main characters authors, but with Milligan this is never a concern. While some might remark that the manuscript excerpts scattered throughout the graphic novel read more like a short story than a full-length historical crime novel, consideration for the time and space constraints of the comic format make this less a flaw in writing than a necessity of design. With that aside, Milligan's tale flows smoothly, and feels like much more than an exercise in plot-twists or a rehash of an old Law & Order rerun.

What really separates The Bronx Kill from the previous entries in this series is not only Milligan's experience with comic books, but his respect for the format; where the previous novelists seem to simplify for the comic audience (almost talking down to them), Milligan creates a level of complexity to the characters and plot that should be expected from any decent crime story. Let's hope that Vertigo Crime approaches more comic veterans in the future, and avoids trying to rack up crime-novelist celebrity credits in an effort to cross-advertise. Some more entries like The Bronx Kill, and this might become an imprint to keep an eye on.

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Book Quote: Carson McCullers on Love

Here is a passage written by Carson McCullers, which I found while reading The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, regarding the nature of Love. I wish I had stumbled upon this before Valentine's Day, but here it is anyway:

          First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons - but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience for the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world - a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring - this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

     Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man might be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else - but that does not effect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

     It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

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The Stack Manifesto

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Just in case anyone is curious enough to read what the lunatic that flew his airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas had to say (and anybody willing to fly a plane into a building is just that, a lunatic), I'm copying his "Manifesto" below in its entirety. Haven't read it myself yet, but it looks a lot shorter than the Unabomber Manifesto, so I'll probably tackle it over lunch.

The "Stack Manifesto"

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Obama's Socialist Book Club

The author over at the SayAnythingBlog recently posted a major breakthrough in the case against Obama. While touring the White House as a time-waster until CPAC started, this fearless crusader against the Obama Oppression was supposedly told by a tour guide that Michelle Obama had made some recent additions to the White House Library. SOCIALIST additions! Knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words, this brave soul managed to take a picture of the damning evidence of our country's idealogical takeover before Socialist Security Guards could stop him:

Smelling a major Scoop, he rushed the photo out and implied that this, taken with the fact that a member of the Obama administration once mentioned Chairman Mao by name, was damning evidence indeed.

Apparently, the "SayAnything" name of the blog is a reference to saying anything that comes to mind without doing any kind of fact checking or research. After he rushed this photo out with his accusations of a Communist Takeover, the Washington Post (which apparently likes to fact check) felt the need to point out that the books in question have been sitting on the shelves of the White House since 1963, when they were placed there (along with over 1,700 other books) by a committee created by Jackie Kennedy.

The humbled whistle blower at the SayAnythingBlog reluctantly posted a correction (because taking the original inaccurate post down would be silly), blaming the tour guide rather than himself, and insisting that his error did not invalidate his accusation that the White House has been overrun with Marxists.

I'm assuming that it will only take him a day or two to realize that the books are actually proof of vast Left-Wing Conspiracy stretching from the Obama Presidency all the way back to Kennedy's Camelot. That timeline should look good on Glenn Beck's chalkboard.

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