Troubled Teen-agers in Iowa have uncovered a sinister conspiracy. What happens when they face ultimate evil?

-Hi. When you use the publisher link, you might have some problems. I'm really sorry. They provided it and it doesn't work so well. But it's worth it to get the book from them. So, here's what you do: Go to their online bookstore, select 'horror', go to page five, then on page five go halfway down to my book. Bingo! Easy.
(Their website is www.PublishAmerica.com, in case the link totally doesn't work)

Merry ... somebody ... Mas!

At a former job of mine there used to be this one older, kind of sour, guy who would sit out all of the office Christmas parties because: 'The Bible says there were shepherds out in the field watching their sheep when Jesus was born, which means that he couldn't have been born in December, so it's wrong to celebrate his birthday now'. Well, duh. Okay. But that doesn't mean that you can't have a few cookies and chug some egg nog anyways and just pretend that Jesus was born December twenty fifth, just like the rest of us are doing.

This guy, by the way, was a member of one of the more extreme Christian evangelical faiths - I forget which one - and, predictably, it was discovered that he was misbehaving scandalously. As you probably could have predicted. For some reason you never hear about this sort of stuff with secular humanists. Why do you think that is?

Really, there is about a one in three hundred and sixty five chance that Jesus was actually born on Christmas, so it's not entirely wrong to celebrate on this day. It's just not very likely that you're right. The Roman Emperor Constantine wisely decreed that since every good Roman was celebrating Saturnalia at this time - where people exchanged gifts and whooped it up a lot -
this would be a good time to also celebrate the birth of Christ. Constantine wasn't himself a Christian but a worshiper of Sol Invictus (the all conquering Sun) so, in the Good old Roman tradition of borrowing convenient Gods from foreign lands, he decided that Jehovah was just another name for Sol Invictus and there you go. Problem solved.

You have to wonder how pleased the Son of God is to have his birthday commemorated ... whenever. It's not really an honor when your worshipers purposefully and knowingly have it all wrong and don't seem to care much. It's nice, I guess that people remember your birthday but it probably would be nicer if they remembered your actual birthday, rather than just some day they were partying, anyways. Did you ever think that maybe one of the reasons he hasn't come back to the Earth is that he wants us to get it right? Maybe when we do, maybe then he'll return from Heaven.

Oh, the Shame

Apparently I had a better Sunday then Brett Favre in that I didn't throw any interceptions and he threw two. 48- 3 is certainly a dismal score, although from what I hear from True Blue Packer fans this means that we are more likely to get better draft picks next year. That's sort of the Football booby prize, isn't it? You Eff up big enough and they reward you for it.

Sigh. I claim not to be a sports fan, but even in my sports oblivion this is pretty depressing. Why is that? I don't actually play on the Packers or even watch them but it makes me sadder to live in Wisconsin when they aren't performing.

The best I can figure out is that Sports is actually sublimated, symbolic warfare. Therefore, we in Wisconsin are at war with every other single state or city that also has a similar sports team. The Packers, then, are our symbolic army - symbolic defeated army. Thank God, too, because if it were real and not fake then we would be marched away as slaves of the victorious Ravens. As I understand it - not a good team.

Who Deserves to Die?

Former Crips co-founder Tookie Wilson was executed in California when Governor Arnold Schwartzenager refused to grant him clemency. Even though I don't believe in the death penalty I still debated with myself whether if I did I would still execute the guy. He's been on death row for twenty four years, supposedly a changed man. But really, if they were going to keep him there much longer then they might have lost the opportunity of taking his life at all because he was getting old, man.

The debate centered on two things, first, whether he actually committed the murders that he got sent up for and, second, whether he had redeemed himself through good works and was doing more good alive than he would dead. I don't know if I would stress so much who he had or had not murdered myself so much, because even if he hadn't killed the particular people that he was convicted of - he's killed a lot, I'd bet you. I can't prove it. But what do you think? Do you think one of the founders of one of the bloodiest street gangs in the world has clean hands?

And what about the good works he's committed since being incarcerated? Well, I don't think you should get so much credit for seeing the error of your ways when you're not given any choice in the matter. As far as doing more crimes and murders and such - it's not much of an option when you're on death row. So, why not write childrens books saying how awful gang violence is? Who knows better how awful gang violence is than the guy who created a whole bunch of it? He's an expert on the subject if ever there was one.

Killing people who kill people is thought to be a fair punishment - eye for an eye and such, just like Hammurabi told us. But is it a Christian punishment? Most of us here in the US claim Christianity as our faith - eighty percent - so you other twenty percent can sit this one out. Christians believe in redemption. They believe in forgiveness. They believe that through the power and faith in Jesus Christ anyone can go to Heaven as long as they truly repent and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior.

Just like Tookie Wilson did. Do any of the Death Penalty Christians - who worked so hard to see that this man got what was coming to him - realize that what he got coming to him was a trip to Heaven? According to the Christian scheme, he goes straight to the head of the line. And he gets there sooner than others, because instead of letting him cool his heels doing more good works in the slammer, you all decided he should get his afterlife right now. Did you think that maybe God would want to decide when his number was up without our help? Maybe the Lord Almighty wanted this guy to write more books or maybe he just wanted him to stick around and think about the suffering and pain he'd caused.

The Subtext of Jonny Quest

I got the first years episode of the cartoon series Jonny Quest, which I just watched this weekend and holy crap! Is this stuff gay or what? Adult Swim did a neat satire of Johnny Quest with it's Birdman Attorney at law series which I thought it was a little harsh until I revisited my memories with the actual videos.

Jonny Quest was a cartoon show where blond and very pretty ten year old Jonny travels the world with his single scientist father, Dr. Benton Quest, and Dr. Quest's large blond muscluar companion, Race Bannon. Bannon serves as Dr. Quest's man Friday doing everything including flying jets, teaching Jonny self-defense, rescuing them from cannibals ... you name it.

The three of them travel the globe having adventures until a few episodes into it they find a pretty brown boy named Hajji whom they invite along. Then it's a threesome having adventures while rarely being troubled by the presence of girls. It's never explicitly stated that Dr. Quest and Race Bannon are gay lovers, just as it's never explicitly stated that Hajji has been taken along as a catamite to sate their twisted desires. But what else could it be?

There is a female character named Jade who shows up in Hong Kong and has some connection to Race. But it's real clear that he wants nothing to do with her. The same goes for Jonny and Hajji because - ewww girls are icky. Perhaps the lack of meaningfully developed female characters on the show could also be due to old-fashioned patriarchal mysogeny. It's a toss-up, but either way - no chicks are allowed in this club.

I never really got exactly what kind of Doctor Dr. Quest really is. He is a medical doctor, because he does medical things, but he's also a scientific researcher. His scientific research involves pretty much anything. Like, he's an anthropologist but he's also a physicist, but it turns out that he's also a chemical engineer, and he's a linguist, and a biologist. All this in addition to practicing medicine. He's probably a chiropractor, too. So, I guess they must have thought that Doctor means you can do every type of job that might mean doctor.

These guys travel the world doing their best to extend the American empire and take on their white man's burden. Constantly they are running into 'primitive' cultures who are beating their drums while saying 'Ooogah-Boobah' more or less. Don't worry. These types can be easily tricked into worshiping our heros as Gods by means of cigarette lighters or handily placed loudspeakers. Or Race painted purple to imitate a Water God. And they worship airplanes and all sorts of other silly stuff. No one is at all afraid to deal with stereotypes and believe me, if you have a german accent or a Chinese accent you can tell which side of the Good/Evil equation you're on. (Hint: Evil)

Anyways, I do wonder why Race wasn't fired from his job. In two seperate episodes he has to land their wonderful special jet someplace remote because he has forgotten to do some sort of maintenance. For instance, because Race neglected to put fuel in the jet the whole crew has to land at a landing strip in the Andes where a fugitive Nazi has his castle. What is wrong with Race Bannon? He almost kills everybody because he's too lazy to fuel up the jet. How did he not think about this? Or another time he crashes the jet in a jungle somewhere while remarking that he thought her heard some noises in the engine. So why did he take off instead of trying to fix the problem?

I'll tell you why: Dr. Quest didn't want to fire his boyfriend.

How Jason Does It

There is a scene in slasher movies where the slasher/murderer/bad guy/what-have-you is chasing the young nubile maiden through the woods, she's the virgin, of course because we know that they have the best odds of surviving to the next sequel. She has usually already taken a little damage and she is absolutely hauling tail along the trail, just running to beat the band and the slasher/what-have-you is striding slowly and purposely after her. The key word here is slowly. She stumbles and stuff, but even so, she is still going a lot faster than the guy who is chasing her.

And then he catches up with her.

Did you ever wonder how on earth he did that? I sure have. Even in the world of fake movies where mass murders are regularly committed at Summer camps, and it never makes the network news but instead has to be whispered as a story around a campfire, this couldn't happen. Faster still beats slower, or at least it should, wouldn't you think?

Okay. I have the answer. You see, while the terrified virgin is fleeing the woods the awful slasher/or whatever is not, in fact, pursuing her through the woods, but rather he is intercepting her. The horrible killer is not following the exact path that she is but using his precise knowledge of the woods - gained from his years of lurking out there - to use the shortcut which is why he can afford to take his time because he wants to be fresh for when he finds her.

And how does he know where she'll go? That's simple. Humans without the aid of maps or compasses have a tendnecy to go in large circles. I think people to go more towards the right than the left. It's just like rabbits do. Anyways, the awful, horrible slasher/killer/What-have-you only has a short jog to make to find his way to his victim.

As far as the rest of the seemingly miraculous and superhuman things these guys do: I don't have the answer to that. Most of that is just bad screen writing, but you know what? If you're watching one of these movies in the first place you pretty much know you're not going to get Shakespeare. A little implausibility goes with the territory.

The Best Defense

When I was driving home a few minutes ago I saw a guy in another car who looked like Saddam Hussein and then I looked twice. Because, of course, it's entirely plausible that he would be standing trial in Iraq one day and the next one be driving around free in a small town in Wisconsin.

Anyways, I just checked out CNN and there was no word that he had escaped from American custody or anything. So, maybe I was wrong.

I've got to say that he really looks much better since he trimmed down and grew that beard. I feel guilty about thinking that, but the US military really did a nice make-over on him. He looks good. The pentagon must have had the Queer Eye guys fly out in secret.

I notice that former attorney general Ramsey Clark is now sitting on Saddam's defense team. He was the attorney general for - I believe - Johnson back in the sixties. The guy is really, really ancient. These days he's been taking on the cause of horrible mosters like Hussein. He had previously defended Slobadan Miloscovic who commited genocide in Serbia. You know, everybody deserves the best defense thay can have, though I got to wonder if Ramsey Clark is the best one out there. He didn't get old Slobby off, after all.

And he won't get Saddam off, either; that's just a given. If I were Ramsey and I were defending Saddam I would definitely try and go for a plea bargain - not to spare Saddam the death penalty since boy, oh boy, that's never going to happen. Instead I would try and negotiate how they're going to execute him. It's not much, but it's about the best he could ever do.