1007: “Fresh” (the movie).

0910: Against cities

0829: Proud of Being Ignorant

My first…

At the top of the Science Fiction Parthenon sit Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein, each a genius and prophet of the future without comparison. In the Golden Age they inspired many a boy, and girl, to lift their eyes to the stars.

Yet there is another, the Moses to their Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel: Ray Bradbury.

Nataniel Rich does a good job this morning at Slate of reminding us why that is true. Among Bradbury’s works that Rich mention is the 1953 short story The Murderer, a story that resonated and resonates with me nearly 50 years after its publication. It begins:

Music moved with him in the white halls. He passed an office door: “The Merry Widow Waltz.” Another door: “Afternoon of a Faun.” A third: “Kiss Me Again.” He turned into a cross corridor: “The Sword Dance” buried him in cymbals, drums, pots, pans, knives, forks, thunder, and tin lightning. All washed away as he hurried through an anteroom where a secretary sat nicely stunned by Beethoven’s Fifth. He moved himself before her eyes like a hand, she didn’t see him.

His wrist radio buzzed. “Yes?”

“This is Lee, Dad. Don’t forget about my allowance.”

“Yes, son, yes. I’m busy.”

“Just didn’t want you to forget, Dad,” said the wrist radio. Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” swarmed about the voice and flushed into the long halls.

The psychiatrist moved in the beehive of offices, in the cross-pollination of themes, Stravinsky mating with Bach, Haydn unsuccessfully repulsing Rachmaninoff, Schubert slain by Duke Ellington. He nodded to the humming secretaries and the whistling doctors, fresh to their morning work. At his office he checked a few papers with his stenographer, who sang under her breath, then phoned the police captain upstairs. A few minutes later a red light hunked, a voice said from the ceiling:

“Prisoner delivered to Interview Chamber Nine.”

He unlocked the chamber door, stepped in, heard the door lock behind him.

“Go away,” said the prisoner, smiling.

The psychiatrist was shocked by that smile. A very sunny, pleasant warm thing, a thing that shed bright light upon the room. Dawn among the dark hills. High noon at midnight, that smile. The blue eyes sparkled serenely above that display of self-assured dentistry.

“I’m here to help you,” said the psychiatrist, frowning. Something was wrong with the room. He had hesitated the moment he entered. He glanced around. The prisoner laughed. “If you’re wondering why it’s so quiet in here, I just kicked the radio to death.”

Violent, thought the doctor.

The prisoner read this thought, smiled, put out a gentle hand. “No, only to machines that yak-yak-yak.”

Bits of the wall radio’s tubes and wires lay on the gray carpeting. Ignoring these, feeling that smile upon him like a heat lamp, the psychiatrist sat across from his patient in the unusual silence which was like the gathering of a storm.

“You’re Mr. Albert Brock, who calls himself The Murderer?”

Brock nodded pleasantly. “Before we start….” He moved quietly and quickly to detach the wrist radio from the doctor’s arm. He tucked it in his teeth like a walnut, gritted and heard it crack, banded it back to the appalled psychiatrist as if he had done them both a favor. “That’s better.”

The psychiatrist stared at the ruined machine. “You’re running up quite a damage bill.”

“I don’t care,” smiled the patient. “As the old song goes: “Don’t Care What Happens to Me!” He hummed it.

The psychiatrist said: “Shall we start?”

“Fine. The first victim, or one of the first, was my telephone. Murder most foul. I shoved it in the kitchen Insinkerator! Stopped the disposal unit in mid-swallow. Poor thing strangled to death. After that I shot the television set!”

The psychiatrist said, “Mmm.”

Yak, yak, yak…

From CNN:

The Billings, Montana, City Council will take up the issue of regulating medical marijuana on Monday night in a meeting expected to be intense in the wake of the firebombings of two of the city’s medical marijuana storefronts in the last two days.

The southern Montana city’s dispensaries legally provide marijuana to medical patients who use it for maladies from glaucoma to nausea to lack of appetite. In the latest incidents, the phrase “Not in our town” was spray-painted on the businesses, police say.

Tea Baggers, the lock ‘n’ load, hell no, whack job wing of the Tea Party movement are created not born. Beginning next week I intend to start a series demonstrating how the process has been carefully sparked, breathed upon and fanned to flame by those who truly hate our freedom.

From Jay Leno: As you know Hurricane Rita is headed toward Florida, Texas and Louisiana. Another hurricane! It’s like the ninth hurricane this season. Maybe this is not a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Don”t make the title do the story”s job. p. 241

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

As promised, US assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, returned to Myanmar to continue the dialogue with that country’s State Peace and Development Council (aka, Myanmar’s military dictators) in the run up to the faux elections suggested for this fall. As I expected, the visit did not go well.

From The Financial Times:

A senior US official has met Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Burmese opposition leader, but Kurt Campbell, the top US state department official for east Asia, said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the unwillingness of the generals who run Burma to modify their plans for elections later this year.

“What we have seen to date leads us to believe that these elections will lack international legitimacy,” Mr Campbell said in a statement at the end of a two-day visit to Burma.

As I’m fond of reminding people, we build our communities with our conversations. Talking, in the absence of violence, is better than not talking.

Every morning is the dawn of a new error.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Watch out for unpronounceable words. Robert Ludlum”s titles are always carefully chosen and invariably combine a distinctive proper name and a noun-The Scarlatti Inheritance, The Osterman Weekend, The Matlock Paper, The Matarsee Circle. One book was very nearly entitled The Wolfsschanze Covenant, until an informal survey revealed that a lot of people were by no means confident of their ability to pronounce Wolfsschanze correctly. p. 241

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Running even a faux election can be difficult when several professional armies are at work in parts of your country that might take exception to your gaming your faux election. That’s what the State Peace and Development Council (aka Myanmar’s military dictators) would really like to disarm its opponents. That ain’t happening.

From the Bangkok Post:

The Shan State Army has vowed not to bow to the Burmese government which is trying to put armed ethnic groups under its control ahead of general elections later this year.

In an interview with the Bangkok Post Sunday, SSA leader Col Yodsuek insisted his group had never thought of surrendering to the junta. “I will not disarm before the Burmese government no matter what happens. It is impossible for our army to disarm and come under the Burmese army,” he said.

The SSA is one of a number of ethnic minorities who have fought against Burma for autonomous homelands, many of which are situated near the Thai-Burmese border.

The situation has led to prolonged conflicts in the country which have shown no sign of easing.

The latest strategic move by the junta is to persuade ethnic groups into a border force under its control.

This includes the SSA ally, the United Wa State Army, which has been under increasing pressure from the government to end its military activities against the junta by joining the Border Guard Force controlled by the Burmese military.

The UWSA, with approximately 10,000 militants under the leadership of Bao Yuu Zhiang, has been contacted by Burmese army “representatives” to negotiate for disarmament but it has refused to do so.

Now, if the internal armies were to agree to disarm after a free, fair and internationally observed election were held, that might not be bad. But that ain’t going to happen (the former, not the latter) either.

0809: A very Cleveland day at River Sweep 2010 in County Council District 7

God made man before woman so as to give him time to think of an answer for her first question.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

A title should be memorable and fit the book or story that follows it. p. 241

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I should have seen this coming. Forming a new party is the logical response to the absurd pre-election rules instituted by the State Peace and Develompment Council (aka Myanmar’s military dictators) for its faux election maybe planned for this fall. My question now is: how will the old and the new interact?

From the Voice of America:

Members of Burma’s now defunct opposition party, the National League for Democracy, have split to form a new party and contest this year’s controversial elections.

The National League for Democracy confirmed Friday that some members have split off to form a new party to be called the National Democratic Force.

The split came after authorities dissolved the NLD for failing to register as required under the military government’s strict election laws.

More than 25 senior members broke ranks with the NLD, and plan to register as the NDF to contest this year’s elections.

May, I’m sorry, I can’t help myself, the force be with them.

MJ Rosenberg writes:

I have an alternate label for them. They are the “Jon Stewart” generation. Whether they watch Stewart’s “Daily Show” when it’s broadcast or just on YouTube, he typifies their world view. Not surprisingly, he is a late Baby Boomer, about the age of the parents of the youngest of the Millenials.

And what is the worldview Stewart conveys? It is skepticism about any and all ideology, a belief that racial and ethnic boundaries between people are just plain dumb, and, above all, that true believers in anything are downright funny.

Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart is Jewish and assertively so. Being a Jew is part of his shtick. But he’s clearly neither religious nor an ethnic chauvinist. As for his politics on Israel, I’d classify him as J Street. And that makes him typical of both the late boomers and their kids.

That is why all the free Birthright trips to Israel aren’t changing anything. And it’s why those cheering young AIPAC-ers do not represent anything.

The generation coming up now tries to think for themselves. And, although no smart kid would ever turn down a free trip to Washington, DC or to any foreign country with a beach, they take the propaganda with a grain of salt. It does not matter that they are told that the Palestinians are responsible for their own problems, these kids don’t buy it. And neither do their parents (although their grandparents might).

The irony of life is that, by the time you’re old enough to know your way around, you’re not going anywhere.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

The title you give your manuscript is very likely the least important factor in determining whether or not it sells. p. 240

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.