The Secret Life of Stephen Bannon

The other day, I saw yet another article about the books you need to read to understand Stephen Bannon, the current White House’s ideologist-in-chief and resident Jabba The Hut impressionist. Specifically, the piece was an excerpt from an upcoming book by Joshua Green, and ran under the title “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steven Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia.” I saw it in the online version of Vanity Fair.

In the excerpt, the author, Joshua Green, makes the compelling argument that Bannon may be considered a radical traditionalist, and that his thinking can be traced back through authoritarian political Catholicism, through the Italian national-racialist, Julius Evola (1898–1974), and finally to “René Guénon, an early-20th-​­century French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Shari.”

I’d heard of Evola, but Guénon (1886–1951) was completely new to me. According to Green, Guénon, like Evola, believed the West has been sickened by materialism and modernism. Thus, we need to return to a purer, more simple age, when spirituality was a living thing among us.

I rather enjoyed Mr. Green’s writing. It was informative and interesting. But, it struck me that the excerpt is actually part of a larger genre—that is, texts which try to figure out Bannon by looking at his reading. I’ve seen a good many such pieces in the last few months. In February, Neil Howe wrote in the Washington Post, “Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.” Howe says that Bannon is “enthralled” by The Fourth Turning, the book Howe wrote along with the late William Stauss proposing that American history runs in roughly 80-year cycles spanning prosperity and crisis, with us very much due for a crisis in the near future.

Meanwhile, last March in the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal  and J.M. Rieger, say that you can’t make sense of Bannon without reading The Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail. This, they say, is key to understanding Bannon’s conception of race. It is a dystopian tale in which Europe (and white people) are overwhelmed by hordes of economic migrants from the Third World.

And, I could go on, naming article after article. I’m sure, too, that such works are useful things, and that they really do help us understand what is happening in Washington, and the world, at this particular moment. After all, if we are to understand and oppose our adversaries, it is necessary to get into their heads...know what they are thinking, what ideas they hold dear, and what ideologies. Given that Bannon seems to be the closest thing to an official ideologist that the Trump cabal has, it is therefore important to understand him and his intellectual underpinnings.

Still...

Sometimes I wonder if all of that is quite as useful as we think. People on the Left tend to be....not exactly bookish, but at least reflective and self-aware. We tend to take ideas seriously. So, we assume that other people do so as well.

However, in the case of Bannon...or, rather, in the case of Trump’s inner circle...

Consider the Great White Shark. From one perspective, it could be considered the supremely philosophical beast. It is perfectly attuned to its world, it knows neither guilt nor shame, it suffers not from self-doubt, it never feels ennui, is never neurotic or maladjusted...always lives life to the fullest, always seizes the day.

Yet, were it somehow possible to enter its brain, I doubt you would find there thoughts of Nietzsche or Adorno...or even of Evola and Guénon...but something rather less. Say, something more like elemental passions—hunger, fear, rage, the siren scent of blood in the water.

I draw no parallels. However, should you wish to do so, you would have my truest encouragement and fullest consent.


Addendum

In the piece above, I (entirely unoriginally) use the metaphor of the shark. It’s amazing how much things have changed with that particular animal. When I was young, it was regarded as the quintessential apex predator, to be feared and hated and perhaps destroyed. Now, forty-something years on, the shark is very much under siege. Overfishing and shark fin soup have begun to seriously endanger its populations and men and women of good will are now working to protect them.
But, of course, “good will” is not a term I would use for the Trump administration. Which worries me.
I wonder, do they...those genuine apex predators, those suits and ties at the top...have any idea what they’re doing? And how grim and sad and empty a world it would be, should we not learn to practice restraint?

---

Sources:

“Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” an excerpt from Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green . Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

“Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book,” Neil Howe, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.f1c725a4baf5

“This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” by Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03


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An Alternative History of Sean Spicer

So, like everyone else in the populated universe, I’ve watched with considerable fascination the departure of Sean Spicer from his sublimely agonizing role as White House spokesperson these past few days. I gather, from what I read on the web, that he left as he came in—with a final snarl at the press he was supposed to be wooing.

It is hard to have sympathy for him, of course. He knew the job was going to be horrible when he took it. And he clearly lacked some of the fundamental skills required to be a PR person. Likability, being one of them. Yet, in spite of that, I (like, I’d guess, a lot of people) still found something sad in his departure, and even felt a little sorry for him. His task was, after all, impossible—to make the rantings of our current commander in chief something like a coherent statement.

So it is that I like to envision a different future for him. Yes, I know it will not happen. I know it is impossible. Yet...what a wonderful thing it would be for him, and for us, if rather then slink off in a sulk to seek that final and total obscurity which is the normal lot for such men, he had instead left the White House, hailed a cab, and gone directly to the offices of the Washington Post. And that, once there, he’d sung like a canary. Or, rather, not a canary, but like the entire, combined cast of Wagner’s Ring cycle, from Wotan to Fafner to Brünnhilde and back again, complete with thunder, hail, and gargling Gibichungs...

And, after that...he’d caught a shuttle north and shown up, unannounced, at the offices of SNL, with a bouquet of roses for Melissa McCarthy, and, for the writers and producers, an offer of one free episode, with himself as a reporter, and her, as himself, in that former, sadder, and more torturous role.


*

BTW, I read today that in his first post-resignation interview, Mr. Spicer said he rather enjoyed Ms. McCarthy’s impression of him, though sometimes she went “too far.”

So, who is to say? Maybe the above scenario is not completely impossible. Merely almost so.

And, for him at least, therefore all the more sad. For you see, revenge may or may not be living well. But it can certainly be found in a guest shot, and making your choicest enemies appear the most exquisite of all possible idiots.

Download these and see if they work

Hi, Everyone,

So I am trying out something new. I've started playing around with visual novels written in the Ren'Py language.

I have just finished my very first such effort, a witty little piece (and I mean little) called "The Luminiferous Aether."

So, could you do me a favor?

Below you'll find the thing set up for either a PC or a Mac. The files are hosted on dropbox.

Could you download the one that you can use and then tell me if works on your system. (And it may not, alas. Still figuring this all out.)

These are compressed files so you should be able to just download 'em and open 'em.

Also, I've put more detailed instructions on downloading and running the game on dropbox as well. It is a pdf, so you should be able to read it on any system.

A thousand thanx in advance.

Anyway, here's the links to the game files:

For Macs

For PCs

And here's the link to the pdf of instructions:

Instructions


cheers
mjt

My parents, my nation

A curiously symbolic day.

Today, I closed down the two remaining bank accounts that had been in my parents’ name. There wasn’t much in them, actually. We had transferred the bulk of the funds long before. But we had to keep those accounts open to deal with a few outstanding expenses, and a few incoming checks, that were in their names.

I realized that...well, this is hard to explain...but somehow, it was the final act for them. It was the last of their business. It was the moment that they were genuinely gone. They exist no longer now even as a legal fiction...as names on pre-printed checks.

It makes me sad, of course. Though, also, it is fitting, for they were of the “greatest generation.” They were not old enough to fight in World War II, but they participated in it on the home front. And, afterwards, my father served on shipboard during the Korean conflict. Then, both of them were involved in that great labor which made America the wealthiest nation in the world.

And now they’re gone.

Gone on the very same day the Electoral College confirmed Donald Trump in his presidency. Gone, indeed, on the same day that Liberalism died in America, and the New  Deal was finally euthanized by billionaires and plutocrats. Gone on the day that so many of the things which they valued and fought for...came to an end.

And I think it is in fact an end. A transition. Today, we ended our great experiment with the Enlightenment tradition. Perhaps, forever. Or, if we are lucky, then maybe we, as a culture and a nation, may some day return to democracy, and reason, and science, and compassion. But I very much fear it will not be as the same nation we were before...not the United States we knew.

And I fear, too, that that future nation, that coming America, whatever it is called, ...will not be quite so great nor entirely so wise as the one constructed by people like my parents...built by their labors...and then abandoned with such ease and eagerness...by  those who are truly, and fundamentally unworthy...

To be their heirs.

In memoriam...Mom and Dad.

Nancy Pelosi...if only you were joking

Okay, is it just me, or is this really scary?

Apparently, newly returned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was on Face The Nation the other day. And, also apparently, she indicated that she saw no reason for the Democratic Party to do anything differently. She is quoted, at least in the transcript, as saying, “Well, I don’t think that people want a new direction.”

In a word, whoa.

We are sitting here after one of the greatest defeats in our history as a party and a movement, with an out-and-out fascist about to take over the government, with a solidly red House and Senate, with a Supreme Court that is certain to be packed with hyperconservative fanatics...and she doesn’t feel some sense of urgency? Some sense of a need for change?

And, about those people who “don’t want a new direction.” She says this after millions of voters supported Bernie Sanders. Voters who are still fuming about what they saw as a rigged primary? She doesn’t include such people in her calculations? She chooses to ignore them? So, she saying, in other words, that those “people who don’t want a new direction,” are the people she knows, and who therefore matter.  The rest of us...we don’t.

I am at a loss to explain this remarkable, almost chilling quote of hers. But a friend of mine, Rick, may have come up with the proper interpretation of her position. I posted an article about Pelosi’s quote to Facebook with the despairing comment, “Oh, F*cking H*ll.” And Rick replied with something sage. He quoted Harry Reid, a man of considerable wisdom, and then noted that Pelosi, and the scores of DNC mandarins like her, have no particular reason to want change...or to see or hear those who do.

After all, Rick went on, they... Pelosi and her tribe...will not lose their jobs. They will not lose their health care. They will be warm in winter and air conditioned in summer. They will remain members of the American power elite. Even under Trump.

And so, he concluded, they really don’t have much motivation to do anything different. Or even, particularly, to oppose Trump.

Is my friend right? Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Which is a terrifying thing, indeed.

The Professor Who Wasn’t There

 A brief meditation on a professor who really wasn't there at all.

https://vimeo.com/169623455

My videos

So I haven't been here in a while. Just haven't had the time.

But...I guess I should start up again. Over the new few days, I'll be posting links to all my most recent video experiments.

Stay tuned :-)

What a nightmare!

Haven't been here in a bit. But I felt the need to be so now...

This election?

What a nightmare.

The Smartest Kid In School

A brief meditation on a young and gifted academic who was, alas, so obsessed with being the most intelligent person in any room that she became, in the end, very much the fool.

The Sad Professor

Submitted for your approval, a professor who was in agony...because of his own narcissism.

The future belongs to her

A little meditation on a extremely annoying theorist I once met in passing...who was very sure that the future belonged to her.

Note To The 1%: The Alternative

Note to the rich and powerful, here are your options...

Choose carefully.

On The Morning Of The Coronation

I woke up this morning to find that Hillary Clinton had won not only the primary in California but also in several other states, including the one in which I live, New Mexico. As a good Bernie supporter, this disappointed me. But I can live with it, so long as there is not a Trump presidency in November.

What does disappoint me, however, and genuinely concerns me, is the media coverage so far. I don’t just mean the failure of the major news networks to notice the Sanders campaign for, like, ever. We’ve known all along that was happening—the vast crowds at Bernie rallies that somehow didn’t get televised, the primary victories that somehow were reported as defeats, and on and on and on.

What I do mean is that reading and watching the news this morning I was struck by the extraordinary uniformity of tone in the reportage. Commentator after commentator, news outlet after outlet, proclaimed that Clinton’s victory was total, and more, and that we should all be terribly proud of her, for it was “historic”—the first time a female candidate had gotten this close to the White House.

And if there was any notice at all paid to the Sanders campaign, it was to chide the man himself, and his supporters, for not doing the graceful thing and bowing out now. In fact, in several pieces I saw on the web, Sanders was portrayed as a rather mean old man, too stubborn to know that it was all over. And his followers? Infantile, entitled, and maybe even potentially violent. Oh, and via the marvelously effective but vaguely defined term, “Bernie Bros,” doubtlessly sexist as well.

Now, I’m going to skip over the issue of whether or not these interpretations of events are correct. I think they’re not. I think, in fact, that they’re so wrong as to be laughable. I want to focus instead on the reporting itself. It is stunning, genuinely stunning, to note just how universal these attitudes are in the media. Except on the odd fringe outlet, like the marvelous “Young Turks” Web-news service, you simply don’t see an alternative to this particular narrative.

It is so consistent, indeed, that it seems…let’s be blunt… a bit scripted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not saying that everyone in the national media is in on a secret plot to throttle the Sanders campaign and install Hillary in the White House. But, still this whole thing just feels creepy. There is something odd about so many people in positions of authority being on the same page at the same time, and reading in exactly the same tone of voice.

At the very least you have to suspect there is some groupthink going on here—that the pundits are talking way too much to one another, and not nearly enough to us unwashed masses outside the Beltway, Manhattan, and L.A.

And at the very most…well, there are only six major communications corporations in the country right now. Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, Viacom, and General Electric (NBC) own pretty much everything. I believe the term is “oligopoly,” which sounds distressingly close to “oligarchy.”

Either way, groupthink or worse, I’m worried. A democracy does not work without the free flow of information…and without a news media that actually reports something like news.

Though, there is a small bright spot in all this. To wit, this has been an instructive day for me. And maybe for us all.

Specifically, if this primary has proved one thing, it is that our electoral system is in deep trouble, and has strayed far from the basic principles of democracy.

And an excellent first step to fixing that would be to break up the media oligopoly that controls the news…and with that oligopoly, the insularity of media people it has bred.

Because the alternative would be rather horrible, with the great Fourth Estate transformed into…nothing. Merely the outlet of whatever shared conception (real or illusion) which the Great Powers have decreed to be, in spite of all evidence…

The Truth.

Judged

I am not exactly innocent, but there is a reasonable doubt of guilt.

Conjectural Demons

In which I meditate on the uselessness of many fears and most worries...

Revenge

A brief meditation on the fact that revenge may be sweet...but it is often (alas) not cost effective.

A word of explanation to the Republican National Committee

So, the other day, I read that the Republican National Committee, and the Republican establishment in general, just couldn't understand why Trump...a radical populist demagogue who openly employs quasi-fascist rhetoric...could possibly have become their party's front runner.

Shocked, they were, they said, just shocked...and utterly mystified.

I therefore did this little video to, shall we shall, explain things to them.

https://vimeo.com/166115668

A meditation on something dread-full...but meaningless

Today I saw an interesting thing. There was an article on the web…actually a personal essay. It was written by an extremely earnest young individual and published (as I recall) by a left of center website.

But what intrigued me was the topic. The author was a white woman, intensely opposed to the patriarchy and the system As It Is. Which is quite understandable and, indeed, in my opinion, praiseworthy. Even as a white, middle-class, middle-aged male, I can see that.

But, where the story gets complicated is in her topic. She had written what amounted to a mea culpa…because of her hair.

She had, it seemed, dreads—dreadlocks, I mean. She had adopted this style as a means of advertising her opposition to the white patriarchy in all its manifestations.

Okay, fine. I’m not particular fond of dreads on us white people. I think they look kind of ridiculous. But it absolutely none of my business how people want to their wear their own hair.

But, the woman wrote…and wrote with what I think was real anguish...she realized that her adoption of the hair style was “cultural appropriation,” that it signified her own white privilege, and that she should be truly ashamed of herself. As an act of contrition, she then promptly snipped off her un-curly locks.
I came away from the story just a bit astonished. Because, well, bluntly, it is beyond what good or bad was done here.

I mean, honestly, exactly what real, honest-to-God, actual harm did her dreads do anyone or anything? Did they increase the probability of a young black man getting shot at random traffic stop? No, probably not. Those odds are pretty damn high as it is.  Okay, so did they cause more young women of color or otherwise to be raped and killed in their own neighborhoods? Again, no. That happens all too often, neither in spite nor because of anyone’s haircut.  So…let’s cut to the chase. Did her dreads mean that there were more drone strikes in Iraq, more innocent people blown to shreds in the Middle East, more people of color beaten to death in the backs of police vans…more wars or destruction or death or oppression?

Answer? No, no, no, and, for a change, no.

Okay, let’s play it back the other way. The author cut her hair. Did that do any good? I mean, real, material, physical good that you could see, feel, or measure? Did it reduce poverty in America? Did it feed hungry children in the streets? Did it put any serial killers, sadists, thugs, child abusers, terrorists, KKK members…or International Bankers…in jail?

Uh…no.

Very, very honestly, I am not sure that anything did happen here. I feel that it is complete non-event. Maybe it made the author feel better, which is fine. Maybe a few of acquaintances were no longer offended by her act of cultural appropriation…which is a good thing, I suppose. But, again, it seems a little irrelevant to the world at large.

Yet, clearly, this was an issue…for the author, and perhaps for the acquaintances I mentioned. And that concerns me.

The reason? If you really want something to be concerned about, if you want an issue, open your newspaper. Or turn on the computer. There’s lots to pick from, much of it perfectly horrible. In my own city paper, this morning, the headline article refers to a child, a Native American girl of just 11 years, who was abducted and killed by a stranger. They found her body on the mesa. The good news, if there can possibly be any, is that think they’ve caught the man who did it. (He won’t last long in prison, I suspect.)

Or, if that’s not to your taste, look over to the right side of the paper. We have news of Donald Trump’s more or less total victory in the GOP primaries. It is now pretty certain that he will be the candidate. That is a terrifying thing. I am one of those who believe that a Trump presidency could spell the end of the nation as we know it. But, then, none of the other Republicans were much less of a threat. (Can you genuinely envision a Ted Cruz in the White House? Or any of the puppets of the Koch Brothers?)

Still not enough? Okay, let’s flip open the paper. On the next few pages we have shootings and killings; stories on the increasingly bloody wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan; refugees turned back or beaten in Europe, or drowned off its shores; a feature on increasingly severe weather events, and the global warming which may make parts of the Middle East and North Africa uninhabitable before the end of the century; job losses and factories closing everywhere as the Neoliberal, Neo-Managerial, Post-Industrial Economy completes its disembowelment of the world…

There is, in short, not a place on the planet where you couldn’t find something…something real, something tangible, a genuine threat to life, limb, and liberty…to be concerned about.

In comparison to that, hair…or “cultural appropriation,” whatever the hell that really means…simply doesn’t cut it. No pun intended. It is, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it is a distraction from the real problems that we face as a civilization…from, in fact, the things which could result in our demise as a species.

That’s why this story of the author and her hair worries me. I don’t mean to focus on this one woman, or her essay. I don’t mean to personally rebuke her or discount her concerns. But, I have seen too much of this kind of thinking among the intellectuals, academics, activists, and others who should be at the cutting edge of social change, who should be the ones leading the charge, who should be fighting for inclusion, liberation, the end of oppression in all its myriad forms…

Yet, instead, they have focused on symbols rather than facts, on the abstract rather than the actual. Which means, in material terms, in terms of measurable good or bad, they might as well have never existed at all.

So, I beg you… all of you…idealists and activists and intellectuals…

For God’s sake, forget the hair, forget the “cultural appropriation,” forget the relentless hunt for slightest ideological imperfections in yourself and others… even, yes, for now (if not forever), forgive and forget the occasional “micro-aggressions” and insensitivities of even clueless white males like myself (well-meaning, but so dreadfully unaware of our privilege)…

And see the world as it really is…where they are much greater, much more dangerous dragons to oppose… far more deadly than dreads… even more perilous than men like me. Because dreads can be cut. I can be ignored.

But the deaths of children, of hope, of life…

Such things are horribly, terribly, unforgivably eternal.

The Most Moral Among Us

So, here’s something I’ve talked about before, but I’ll revisit it in light of the current election…

Certain figures in American politics (mostly on the Right) tell me, quite forcefully, that they represent the best in us. They say they are principled, strong, wise, and, for lack of a better term, genuinely American and truly Christian.

Which may be so…but…well…

I am a middle class, middle-aged chap who lives in the suburbs. I pay my bills on time. I don’t deal in drugs or steal cars or snatch purses. I have never cheated on my wife and don’t intend to. I don’t molest children. I even go to church on a regular basis.

And yet…

I just can’t escape the feeling that if those figures in politics, with all their self-professed morality, should come to power…

I might find myself in a very difficult position. I might find my, shall we say? position in society…terminated.

With extreme prejudice.

Taking Hate Seriously

Here’s an interesting piece of history. Until quite late, as late as 1940, a surprisingly large number of well-informed people thought that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was more show than real. It was, some people thought, merely a way of stirring up the masses, and would dissipate soon enough.

It made sense, really. Hitler was an Austrian, and an admirer of Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna who preached but did not practice anti-Semitism.

Only afterwards, did people realized that Hitler had been, all along, entirely ...and terribly...in earnest.

Why do I bring this up? Well, the amazing thing is how often in history we encounter exactly this sort of situation. A monster comes along and tells us precisely what he...or she...is going to do. But nobody believes him...or her. It is all put down as rhetorical flourish.

And then...and then...too late, we learn the truth.

Which is why I bring it all up now. It seems like we’ve got a few people making similar statements today...calling for violence...or making excuses for violence.

We do see it on the Left. Let’s be honest. It’s there. Seek and you shall find.

But, at least here in America, what I find most disturbing is its presence on the Right... in the statements of certain candidates.

And sometimes I fear that we are, once more, making an error...that we are discounting these remarks, a little too easily...

Because, history seems to show that when someone talks about expulsions, concentration camps, carpet bombing, targeted killings...we need to take them at their word. For they may well mean it.

Or even if they do not mean it, well, soon enough, there may well appear, some dreadful literalist, with no subtlety and no sense of humor, who shall make horribly real what his...or her...mentor considered merely abstract speculation.

And from that, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we might never recover.

This is the first of a series of short videos which I shall do about my father. And my mother. Their lives. And their deaths.

The videos will accompany a book which I’m also writing about them. When it’s done I’ll post links to where you can find it.

Why am I doing this? Well, as an homage to them. As a way of dealing with my feelings toward them. And, because we all go through this eventually, as a way of stating my affinity with the world.

With, that is, you.

mjt

My latest video...this one a little postmodern in that it talks about art and artist in an age of intelligent creations ...

Yet another experiment

So now I'm trying something else new. I have been posting my videos to Youtube, but then it dawned on me...why not just post them to Google drive (or wherever) and then provide a link to them?

Let's see if it works.

My father's obit...

Another little experimental video. I think this is a little more successful than the previous one, and I learned a great deal while making it (notably getting a better handle on having a picture in a picture).

Still, I think it didn’t quite work out as well as I’d hoped. The idea of a conversation between present, past, and future is an interesting one. But I’m not sure I completely pulled it off here. The meaning of the “future” framework around the major part of the story (my vide0) is just too obscure.

Still, it was interesting to make. (And yes, I really did have this talk with a friend.)

This may be the last of the purely experimental ones for a while. So, stay tuned for the next project...

Just a little meditation on the joys of being an obscure non-entity

Dedicated, with real affection, to those futurists who attempt to predict coming events to the best of their ability, regardless of who their prophecies might offend. And, with perhaps less affection, to those consultants who tell their clients only what they want to hear.

Plus, maybe, a little speculation on the capacity of ideology to blind us to peril.

And, finally, perhaps, some thoughts on the long term effects of the automation of white collar professions.

And part 4 of the Pucket Saga

And here, finally, is part of the Plucket saga :-)

cheers
mjt

And part 3 of the Magnificence of Rudolf O. Plucket!

I'll be interested in seeing how people respond to these. They are my very first attempt at story telling with limited animation. Clearly, I need a lot more practice before I get to the level of high-, middle-, or even low art. But, it is a fascinating experiment for me.

The Magnificence of Rudolf O. Plucket - Part II

My second attempt at telling a fiction as a multiple part, limited animation video. This is Part 2 of a four episode series.

Keep in mind, this is only an experiment...

mjt

The Magnificence of Rudolf O. Plucket - Part 1

Here's something quite new...

This is my first experiment at telling a fiction as a multiple-part, limited animation video.

This is part one. Parts two through four will follow.

Maybe not as close to the bone as my confessional pieces, but I’m learning a lot by doing them.

See what you think.

mjt

Once again, I've been stupid. And done an animation about it.

Like it says, I've been stupid and done a video about it.

The good news is that this is an interesting experiment, combining animation with live video.

Ode To Consumption

Just a little protest written when I was temporarily overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity of holiday shopping. Plus a few terrors about whether or not our society can survive in its present form.

But, don’t worry, I promise, in a week or so I’ll be back to normal and salivating over sports cars like a normal person.

On why the universe doesn't give a d*mn about your morality...

Like it says...

The Very Young Therapist

On why you should never play the martyr card...

Acid, Base...Shame

Another of my animations. This one deals with shame...my own shame, to be precise...but also that of others'

And how really useless, self-destructive, and dangerous it is.

Note to readers...and viewers

Wonder if I will do any more explosive-cargo writings as opposed to videos. No idea. The videos just seem to be more interesting at the moment. Though, truthfully, they don’t get much viewership.

Also, I am tempted to abandon the videos of myself. They worked, sometimes, but at others they just seemed repetitive and boring. And my technique is crude. As my son David put it, quite respectfully, “We need to work on your lighting.” Meaning, at the moment, with the camera I’ve got and the light and shade of things in my office, I look a bit like a cast member of the Walking Dead. And we’re not talking the folks that are still alive.

So I’m focusing on the animation. I suppose that’s pretty crude, too. I’m no cartoonist or professional animator. But, still, my little moving pictures are a hell of a lot more interesting than moi…even if I were (to quote Bloom County)a great Robert Redfort-esque male beauty.

Perversions...

this week's confession. A particularly embarrassing one.

But...

Confession...and Demons

Hey, All,

I'm working with some graphics and animation software. See what you think of this.

Padre and Ashes

A note about South Padre Island...and human remains

Cables

More angst and craziness about getting to South Padre Island...

Click

Click

Boxes. Ashes.

On the road to South Padre Island...with the ashes of my parents.

Thinking about 9-11

A break from my parents to consider 9-11

To South Padre Island, and farewell to my parents

We've back from a trip to South Padre Island and Brownsville, TX, where we visited my son and daughter-in-law. It was a wonderful trip, but also sad, in that we spread the ashes of my parents on a beach they loved.

A little literary revenge

Like it says, a little literary revenge...

Maybe not warranted, but fun just the same.

createspace:  https://www.createspace.com/5570742
kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0110PFUJY
amazon paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Psionic-Beasts-Women-Must-Purple/dp/0692474765/

Fun in politics...not such a good idea

Just a little video meditation on why having fun in politics may not be such a good idea...

Wedding: 1

Something different. A meditation on the June wedding of my son and new daughter-in-law.

T.J. Tucker, a failed obiturary

My father's obituary ran on Friday, 7 August, 2015. I did this video about why I felt I failed him. At least as a writer.

33 years of marriage!

In honor of our anniversary! Thirty-three wonderful years.

Oh, and the book is here:  

1) createspace:  https://www.createspace.com/5570742
2) kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0110PFUJY
3) amazon paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Psionic-Beasts-Women-Must-Purple/dp/0692474765/

August 1, 2015

I return to video blogging...

Independence Day, or not

July 5, the day after Independence Day.

It was relatively calm night, here, last night. There were some fireworks in the park east of us, and not a few loud bangs. Oh, and the air was redolent with sulfur. If you didn't know better, you would have sworn you were in the third act of Faust.

But, surprisingly, it was limited. It didn't have that artillery barrage feeling that 4 July sometimes gets. And there were only a few sirens…meaning, I hope, that there were few injuries. Though, sadly, there are always some. And, in a dry climate like this one, there are always fires where the rockets or sparks fall to earth, in the grass or on the mesa, or on peoples' roofs.

Sometimes…well, many times…there are also deaths. Someone elects to hold a firework in his teeth. Or to throw a smoke bomb through the open window of a house or a passing car. Or, whatever. And someone dies.

Alas, one wonders how long we can continue to celebrate the fourth in the way that we do. I mean, with fireworks. We have already made fire crackers (the loud explosive sort) illegal and done our best to replace them with various, less dangerous alternatives—fire fountains, whistlers, smoke bombs, and so on. But, ultimately, you cannot escape the fact that we have a holiday that involves the ignition of low-level explosives by people who are not trained to handle pyrotechnics…and who are often under-aged and/or drunk at the time.

I wonder if, in the end, we will have to stop it entirely, the way that many communities now make trick-or-treating illegal on Halloween.

There is something very sad about that. Yet, sometimes, it seems that as a people we lack the discipline, self-control, and, well, simple wisdom to be trusted with these particular toys, with their unique capacity for injury. It seems that, maybe, we need keepers.

As I say, a thought terribly sad…

And, worse, perhaps metaphoric.

For so much that is going on, now, in our politics and our place in the world.

News, Information, Treason...

BRICS 2, and why I'm not really a B*stard

Another little video meditation on the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)...

And on why I'm not really a B*stard. Or, anyway, not as much as you might think.

kinda blue #1

Just some kinda sad thoughts about the election...

A (probably useless) letter to the chiefs of the Democratic Party

Like it says...

a little video about love in Ozlandia

Like it says.

Link to the books is below the video

Love in Laverton
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NCGWRLE

Along the Finke
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ8K1G6

Beautiful Volcanoes, Ugly Politics

Like it says, a video meditation on beautiful volcanoes and ugly politics...

A video about BRICS and Brazil

A video with a few thoughts about the recent election in Brazil (2014) and the long term prospects for the BRICS...

And for us...

Another video, this one a triffle sad

As it says, another video I did for Belfort & Bastion, also promoting Prometheans. A little different in that it is more meditative and, indeed, a bit sad...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sR3BVuo3-c

the video from the Breaking Bad dam

Here's one little video I did to promote  Anastasia Leach's short story collection, Prometheans. (Link to the book is below the video on Youtube.

The one interesting thing about this is that I shot it (on my phone, obviously) at the John B. Robert Dam, in ABQ, NM. It has the distinction of being a major fixture in the Breaking Bad TV program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DexNTtC_hLY

I'm experimenting with videos

I'm experimenting a bit more with videos at the moment. I'm not quite sure why. I'd never intended this to be a "Vlog." And, certainly, I'm nobody's idea of a photogenic superstar.

Still...it's interesting to play with cameras and special effects, no matter how crude they may be. And, besides, I've not been posting here much. Just haven't had the time mostly, but also the motivation's been a bit lacking. Maybe this refocus me. Re-establish my interest in this, my most personal form of personal expression.

What got me into Vlogging (this time, I've done it before) was doing some mildly promotional videos for Belfort & Bastion, my micro-publishing company. In the the next entries, I'll put links to the places where you can see some of the more interesting of those videos.

Anyway, that's what I'm up to.

cheers
mjt

Xcargo 2 is free!

Seems like I never get a chance to write here any more...

But, as one quick note, my second collection of vintage Xcargo columns is free Today (Aug 26, 2014) through Aug 28, 2014.

So head on over and grab up some cargo!


http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MP5XXA2http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MP5XXA2

Explosive-cargo 1 is free for a couple of days

I'm getting away from monsters for a while.

I'm gathering up all the old Xcargo Columns... I mean the early ones, the ones that date back to when Xcargo was an ezine...and publishing them as ebooks on Amazons.

the first collection, dating from the first quarter of 1994, is free tomorrow and the next day, that is Aug 17 and Aug 18.

So, head on over and grab a Cargo or two.

cheers
mjt

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MOPKU54

Monsters 2

I never meant to do more monsters.

I did not intend, again, to visit the subject of horrors. I had no wish to do more pictures of fiends and ogres and damn'd souls, in this world or the next.

Yet, and somewhat to my own disquiet, I discovered that I had (first) stumbled upon a genre unknown to me…i.e., the book or other work meant as a curse…and (second) that there were yet more people in the world who desperately needed cursing.

Here's the background. Sometime I did quasi-published an e-booklet or e-sketchbook entitled Montag's Monsters. itwas a personal thing and rather ridiculous. In it, I displayed a series of illustrations meant to accompany a horror novel I was working on some time ago. The story involved a graduate student who is murdered by a jealous professor. The dead man goes immediately to hell. There, he discovers that each of his professors has preceded him to Hades. Their bodies remain on earth, but their souls are down below, each transformed into the monsters which they actually, if secretly are.

I never finished the book because, well, frankly, it bored me. Or, more precisely, the people in it bored me. The damned were, of course, based on people who I really knew, and who genuinely had harmed me quite badly. Yet, they demonstrated quite well the banality of evil. Like many bullies, they were vile, but not interesting. They were bores and boors. And best left forgotten.

But I had the images already done and I published them. This gave me a certain petty and childish revenge. I could, in my own small and nasty way, portray them as I felt they truly were.


*


As I say, I thought that sort of thing was over for me. I never thought I'd do another monster.

And then…

Then came "ISIS"…The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. A.k.a., ISIL, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This group appeared in the wreckage of our American "liberation" of Iraq, and the revolution of Syria. It set out to create its own nation in the ruins.

I was only faintly aware of ISIS/ISIL. I knew that its fighters were renowned for their brutality. I knew that they were winning. But other than that, I paid little attention to them. They seemed merely one more group of bloody-minded lunatics, in a world full of bloody-minded lunatics.

Then…but then…I saw a photo. You've probably seen it, too. It was taken by ISIS's own people. It shows a child, a toddler, circled by armed men. He, or she, it is not clear to me, looks up at them confused.

They are, I gather, about to kill the child. I gather they did so.

I saw the photo for the first time last night (August 9, 2014). I went to the web and learned after that the scope of ISIS's horrors. They burn. They mutilate. They torture. They enslave. They are butchering children.

It is part of a larger plan. A strategy, even. ISIS/ISIL uses terror as a weapon. It practices "propaganda of the deed." It commits horrid acts and lets it be known that it does so. And thus the mass murder of children. The message is that "if we can kill these innocents, think what we will do to you."

Alas, it is effective. I have watched the news while the Iraqi armies and Syrian rebels have scattered before the berserkers like leaves before the storm.


*


And they are real. These images. These news stories.

At first, like many others, I had that moment of doubt. There have been so many lies told. Remember WMDs?

But, no. The more I researched the more it seems clear that this is actually happening. That there are real bodies in the desert. That there really are POWs being shot in the head. That there really are women being raped and sold into slavery. That there really are children being murdered.

We cannot doubt it. There have simply been too many reports from too many sources …too many pictures and videos from too many places…too many eye witness accounts from too many creditable men and women …

Quite simply, ISIS/ISIL claims to be brutal and murderous and even joyfully pathological. And I think we must take them at their word.

We would be fools not to.


*


When I realized this…when I realized that the photos of the doomed child were real…I was aghast.

I was horrified that I could do nothing to save him. Or her. I cannot go back in time and pull the guns away from his head. I cannot walk between the killers, pick her up, comfort her, and carry her back to her mother.

I cannot save other children who are even now dying, or will die soon, at the hands of those madmen…

I was and am furious at my helplessness.


*


I could not sleep that night. I tossed and turned. I dreamed. While my wife slept, I went back into my office and checked the web for news. I cheered the victories of the Kurds and the Americans and Brits and the rest. I mourned the dead. I feared for the future.

And I wondered: what could I do to help?

Alas, alas, nothing. Nothing. I can write my congressman. I can post to my blog. I can make appeals.

But otherwise…nothing. I am reduced to watching while yet another group of self-righteous psychopaths inflict horror on the world. How many has it been so far? And just in my own lifetime? Genocides and mass death in how many places? Rwanda, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia…killing field after killing field. Concentration camp after concentration camp.

And that doesn't even count the genocides that came before me…Holocaust and Holodomor, massacres and horrors…


*


I found myself a little obsessed with the situation in Iraq and Syria. I began to search for some way, however ineffectually, to express my feelings. I needed some way to, well, let it out.

I finally conceived the idea of going back to my little pictures. My "curse book" for lack of a better term. I decided to create a series of images that would portray ISIS/ISIL as it genuinely is…inside, that is. I would portray the souls of its leaders, and soldiers, and sympathizers. I would show the souls made monstrous by crimes against humanity.

I would show the fate that would await them if there is such a place as hell. I doubt that there is, but you never can tell.

I would insult and denigrate them.

*

So, I did more images. This time of ISIS/ISIL's leaders, its volunteers, its sympathizers, its paymasters…

I don't know if I'll publish the pictures. They are grotesque and the world has enough of that sort of thing already. (If you really, really want to see them, let me know. I'll send you copies.)

Though, who knows? Maybe I'll put some of the pictures out into the world.  Here and there. In one form or another.

Maybe I will do so on the theory that they will, somehow, actually impact the ISIS/ISIL psychopaths in their killing fields. Oh, don't get me wrong.  I do not believe in magic. And even if I did, a picture is not a voodoo doll with which to afflict your enemy.

But, still, perhaps these pictures will act like insulting caricatures. Maybe they will make ISIS/ISIL seem pathetic or ridiculous or, even, damned. Maybe one potential Jihadist will see the images, or encounter someone who has, and come away a little less likely to sign up at their local ISIS recruiting station.

Or, maybe, someone in the group or its leadership will see the pictures. Maybe (we can but hope), it will infuriate them. Maybe, in their rage, they will make an error…

And, finally, well, I've said I don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don't. But I could be wrong. Maybe there really is something in sympathetic magic. Or, maybe, ESP exists. Maybe there is some undetected wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum that can be shaped and focused by the human mind.

So, perhaps…just perhaps…these images might somehow cause real damage to those men who are both evil and deranged.

Particularly if not just I but many focus their mental furies upon them.

Let us hope so. Let us hope that many virtuous minds focusing their righteous anger against evil might have good effect.

Might, indeed, be mighty.


*


It may be that by the time you read this, the problem will be solved. Perhaps the ISIS/ISIL state will have collapsed. Perhaps one or more of the world's powers will have intervened and brought the bastards to heel.

Sadly, though, I suspect not. It is simply too complicated and too hellish a problem to solve easily or quickly. I suspect that, as you read this, war continues in what used to be Syria and what used to be Iraq. I suspect that ISIS/ISIL continues to murder and maim.

And even if it does not, then history seems to show there will always be others…of whatever religion or political position…willing and eager to proclaim the Holy War, the Crusade, the Holy War, the Final Solution, the…whatever.

If the original target is gone, then let these images be for those others. All who long for the apocalypse…

All who murder children.


*


If you should ever see these images, you will note several things. For example, I have tried to adapt the vision to the cultural milieu of the individuals in question. I made some pigs or dogs, animals obviously considered unclean in the Levant. In other cases I've shorn them of the male sexual characteristics that are, for them, the signs of personal superiority.

Also, in many (almost all) cases, I've shown the individual subjected to some sort of torture or bondage, frequently with strong sexual overtones, i.e., it is sadomasochistic. I wanted to add that note of perversion because I think it is fitting. "Perversion" as a word implies something evil and sick. But the average sadomasochist is, usually, a fairly harmless individual. It is thus wrong to call him or her a "pervert."

But someone who kills in the name of an all-merciful and loving God, that is a diseased and disgusting individual…a true pervert.


*


In any case, that's what I did. Those were the images I created.

As I say, I will not openly publish them. But, again, if you really want to see them, let me know. And, keep an eye out, you may run across them by accident at this or that place on the 'net.

An aside, if you do see them, you should know that they are protected by a Creative Commons mark. This will specify that you may download them, hold them, keep them…but must not resell them, or claim them as your own. Nor can you adapt them without my permission.

But you can forward them to all and sundry.

Let us hope that, eventually, they come into the hands of ISIS and its people.

And that at that moment, the images become like glass…broken glass…clear, transparent, revealing all, jagged, and, lastly…and horribly….

Wounding.

Cheesecake and Coffee At The End Of The World (as we know it)

Special note: The following is a brief description of a wild and wooly adventure I had with a book that is, alas, no longer publishable…by me, in any case. More importantly, it contains a call to arms and authors (of a certain age). It asks that you who are both writers and members of the Millennial generation take pen in hand …or wordprocessor on desk…and write a great American novel. Or non-fiction blockbuster.

Exactly what kind of book that is…well, you'll have to read the essay to find out.

Also, there are some really amateurish, badly done, probably sexist, and downright silly cheesecake-type illustrations of beautiful women and stalwart men to go along with it. But, to see those, you have to go to the other place this essay is posted, Belfort and Bastion's PWYW page, or right about here:

Cheesecake and Coffee

Or, if you don't want to read the essay at all, and just want the really amateurish, badly done, probably sexist, and downright silly cheesecake-type illustrations of beautiful women and stalwart men, well, there's a link on the PWYW site that will take you to where you can download a bunch of 'em.

Cheers
Mjt



*

                           Cheesecake and Coffee, or the End of the World As We Know It


                                                     By Michael Jay Tucker

1.

So, once again, I offer you a story of an illustrated book that I’m not publishing.

It is a complicated tale: one in which I strive to protect an author, wrestle with the end of the world, and…and ….

Produce pictures of pretty girls and handsome boys. In varying degrees of undress.


2.

It starts like this.

About the time I founded Belfort and Bastion, my little publishing company, I was approached by a talented young writer whom I happened to know from another aspect of my professional life. Let's call him Siegfried.

Anyway Siegfried had several books he wanted to show me. Most of these were travel books…visits to lands new and far (he's a great traveler) and his observations on same.

But, one of these manuscripts was a novel. Part of it was pure fiction, that is, invented, but much of it (like all novels) was autobiographical. Individual details, the general pattern of events…these were from the author's life, and he admitted to me as much.

In the book, the protagonist, like the writer, is a young man, in his mid-20s, from a privileged upper-middle to upper class background. Over the course of the novel, this character flounders about, desperately trying to find some place for himself in life…and failing consistently.

Also, there was an awful lot of sex in the book, and for this reason Siegfried was reluctant to have the work published under his own name. In fact, his family didn't want him to publish it at all.

Eventually, he had gotten their permission to try to publish the work on the condition that he do so under a pseudonym. I suspect, but do not know, that they also gave their consent knowing that I would be the publisher…i.e., someone unknown, whose customers would surely not include family, friends, or important connections.

In any case, we chatted about the problem. I agreed to keep his identity a secret. I even invented the penname he elected to use. Again, to protect his identity, I will not reveal what it was. Suffice to say that it had connections to the Aesthetic Movement of the nineteenth century.

And, like that movement, it had a certain overtone of studied decadence.


3.

Why decadence? Because of the sex.

Siegfried's goal with the book was to explore the ways that people of his generation and his class have been, well, set up. Young people of his cohort, and he is from the upper crust, have been given a rather fearsome set of instructions. They have been told time and time again that they must not have ordinary, everyday, happy lives of moderate means. No. They are supposed to achieve genuine greatness. They are expected to go forth and become CEOs and Senators, great Scientists and Doctors, fabulously successful Entrepreneurs and Artistic Innovators...

The problem is that not everyone can be a CEO, a senator, a famous scientist or doctor, or an innovator of any sort. Most of us can't. Most of us are doomed to lives of mediocrity, if not of outright failure. That is the sad fate decreed by an indifferent heaven to the vast majority of men and women, even when they are gifted and talented. The race, alas, is not always to the swift. Indeed, it usually isn't.

But Siegfried felt that he and millions like him …the children of affluent suburbs across America…had never learned that. They were burdened with, or, rather, poisoned by these vastly unrealistic expectations. They were sent out into the world with the motto do or die…and, most often, discovered the first wasn't really an option.

So, Siegfried's character spends most of his time in frantic activity. He is almost a blur! He tries one thing after another. Surely, surely, something's got to work. Something will allow him to achieve the grandeur that he feels he must somehow obtain…or else, be a total failure.

And in this breathless dash toward a wholly unobtainable goal, sex is something of a distraction. Yet, he cannot help himself. Siegfried's character is an attractive man, and a lusty one, and he finds himself blundering into and out of relationship after relationship. All of them cold and empty. None answering any human need. And yet the protagonist is enmeshed in them. Trapped. A "prisoner of sex."

Thus the connection to decadence. To a sexuality which includes no humanity. Which is casual to the point of indifference.


4.

I thought that was all a rather good idea for a book. Still do, for that matter.

The problem was, I really didn't have a handle on the book that Siegfried had genuinely written. I was so taken with the idea of the protagonist in his struggle to achieve greatness that I missed what the author was really after.

You see, Siegfried's book was a very personal book. It was profoundly autobiographical. It reflected his own struggle to find some way of leaving his mark upon the world. It was the story of one human being in a particular set of circumstances.

But I, being me, interpreted the book instead from my own strange perspective. I am obsessed with the idea that ours is an age of transition…an age that will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution or even the Neolithic. When it is done, our lives …how we make our livings, where we dwell, who commands and who does not… will be radically different.

I think all this because I cannot help but see the trend toward intellectual industrialization … to computers, to machines. I'm not talking about Artificial Intelligence or the "Singularity" or any of the rest of it. No.

But it is inevitable that most white-collar jobs are going to be as automated as the blue-collar ones before them. Just as the artisan fell before the Assembly Line and the industrial robot, so too will the middle and even the upper manager be increasingly rendered irrelevant by machines. (Every economist, every social planner, should be forced to watch the Jeopardy episode in which IBM's Watson successfully competed with humans. It is…instructive.)

In the long run, I am an optimist about this transition. I think we will see a more comfortable world for it.

But in the short run, I'm afraid that things are going to get very messy, indeed.

And that was the framework into which I tried to shove Siegfried's book. I tried to make it the story of a man who realizes that some ages lend themselves to new explorations, to the winning of empires, to new and stunning insights.

But some ages do not lend themselves to such things. In some ages, the path to greatness is quieter and less evident. In eras when empires collapse, when horizons contract, the resolute hero is the man or woman who fights to conserve what has been gained. He or she is the individual who entrenches, who retreats, who fortifies, who evacuates the innocent to shelter, and who plans the counter-attack.

And having thus realized the nature of his age, the protagonist would, like the older and wiser Candide before him, set out to cultivate the garden to the best of his ability.

In the process, telling his parents, his high school guidance counselors, and all the other self-important and toxic people who would run his life for him…that they can go straight away to hell.

Like I say. I think it's a great idea for a book. I wish someone would write it.

It can't be me, because I'm the wrong generation. It should be someone in their 20s or 30s. Maybe, someday, some young writer will appear with such a book in hand at my door. Or, maybe Siegfried will do the piece.

But, in the meanwhile…


5.

So, I set out to sell Siegfried's opus. And,  I failed.

I failed because I was actually trying to sell the book I wanted to see written. Not the one that Siegfried had written. I marketed a book that existed only in my imagination. That's the book I described in all the supporting materials, the press release, the "about this book" that went on Amazon, and so on.

And, of course, it didn't work. When people downloaded the text, they discovered it was not the story I'd told them it was. So, they did not recommend it to friends and family. They did not review it. Or, if they did, then they did so in grudging tones.

I grew increasingly frustrated. Why, I wondered, wasn't the book selling? It seemed like such an easy pitch…

I went back and re-read the work. Dimly, I began to realize that I'd not understood it.

Or rather, I'd understood it well enough. But I had chosen to promote another book entirely… the one in my head.

And both consumer and creator had genuine reason to be angry at me.


6.

The good news was that Siegfried wasn't angry at me. Or at least didn't elect to show that he was. The bad news was that having perceived my error I didn't know how to correct it. You see, it is hard to sell a personal vision.

Yet, I thought, perhaps, I could do so. First, I'd have to recast the advertising materials to stress the protagonist's genuine condition. That is, I would abandon the conceit that he was Everyman (and -woman) in the Age of Diminished Expectations. Instead, I'd point out that Siegfried's character was what Siegfried himself was, i.e., a semi-aristocrat, the child of the 'burbs, facing the anguishing question of what he could do to be worthy of his nobility.

Second…the sex.

I could stress the sex. I hadn't done so because I'd thought of it as being far less important than the social message of the text. But, on reflection, I realized that it was at the heart of the book. The protagonist is constantly attempting to make human connections, through sex, and never manages to do so.

That was an interesting way to take the marketing—particularly since the protagonist, at one point, considers a career in writing erotica. After all, he has lots of experience. It is just that when he tries to put pen to paper, it all comes out dry and tasteless.

But how to emphasize the sex? That was my problem.  After considerable thought, I had a bit of a brainstorm. Why not illustrate the book?

The wonderful thing about electronic books is that you can have pictures in them quite cheaply. Where a full color illustration in a print book can cost you an arm and a leg, it is pretty simple to slip it into an e-book.

Maybe, I thought, we could even break the book up into a series of illustrated, interconnected sub-sections. It would be like an old-time serial. Each chapter would be published separately, as a stand-alone e-booklet, each with five or six semi-erotic pictures in it.

Where would we get the pictures? Well, that was a problem. However, if we could come up with the money, we might be able to hire an artist to do some illustrations for us. In fact, I knew an artist I might be able to use. I had been at one of the innumerable arts and crafts fairs that regularly pop up in New Mexico and I'd met a woman who did color drawings that looked a bit like those of the great Art Deco illustrator, Louis Icart (1880-1950)—i.e. languid women, lounging in clinging evening gowns, mischievous and lascivious, each faintly considering an evening of passion with whichever swain it is that most attracts her.

Or, if we couldn't come up with the money, I might try something myself. I'm not an artist, God knows, but I might manage something with my little painting programs and the Seashore graphics editor.

In fact, I realized, I should do up some images in any case. If I was going to pitch the idea to Siegfried, I'd need show him a little bit of what I had in in mind. And, besides, I thought it would be cool to something kind of sexual. I'm a good, red-blooded, heterosexual male. I'd enjoy doing those kind of pictures.

And…

And it would make a nice change from all those monsters I'd done as Montag.

I produced several images that might perhaps be used to illustrate such a series. (I ought to stress that they were not based on any particular scenes in the book. I just produced the pictures as something Siegfried and I could use as possible models for something we might do later.)

Then, I gathered up the results and prepared to share them, and my idea, with Siegfried.

Cue the Debacle, stage right…


7.

It was, I think, the day before I intended to actually get in touch with Siegfried and explain what I had in mind.  Martha, my father, and I had all gone down to the big Walmart store on Wyoming and Menaul. We'd seen an advertisement about upgrading our iPhones at the store and we thought it be would be quick, simple, and cheap to do so. (It wasn't. And we didn't. We finally had to go to an AT&T store to get the job done.)

Martha decided to visit the women's department. Dad and I went up to the front where we could get a coffee and he could sit down.

While we were there, lingering over the coffee and watching the whole wide world go by (as it always does at Walmart), my phone beeped. I had email.

I glanced at it.

Siegfried…


8.

Siegfried had a problem. Or, several of them. I only got bits and pieces of the details, and I'm not sure I understood everything, but what it boiled down to was that his novel and his other works had to absolutely…positively…exit the Belfort and Bastion catalog. Right now.

Why? Well, it seems he'd gotten a job with a certain large organization. A powerful one. Doing good things for America everywhere. However, this organization would look with displeasure on an employee who might have authored a book that could be considered …pornographic.

In some of our subsequent communications, in which I basically pleaded with him not to take his stuff out of the B&B catalog, I pointed out that he had published it under a penname. There was no way for his employer to know he'd written it.

He did not exactly say, Yeah, right…but that's what he meant. Had I ever heard the name Edward Snowden? If so, did I really believe that there was anything like privacy or secrecy on the Web?

Oh, I said, in a very small voice.

So down came the novel. And all his other books. They are no longer in our catalog. There's no record they ever even existed.

All gone down the memory hole…

Welcome to the new millennium. When technology was going to make censorship impossible. There was a TED talk that said so. So it must be true.

Right?


9.

I didn't blame Siegfried. He was quite right.  He needed to protect himself.

But I was disappointed. His going meant a big hole in our catalog. And, of course, I had those pictures sitting on my hard drive…just waiting for my wife or someone to run across them and raise an eyebrow. ("So, exactly what are you doing with your computer when you say you're working late.")

At first, I was tempted to trash them. But, then, I thought, well, what the hell? Let's use 'em. Let's just throw 'em out there. Maybe someone will find them arousing. Or at least amusing.

So that's what's here. In this document you read.

Oh, and one other thing.

I still think that someone ought to write that book I described. Someone, somewhere, a member of the Millennial Generation…someone in that age cohort which has taken so much abuse from their elders for being "The Peter Pan" generation, and the "boomerang generation," and all the other well-reasoned insults which basically come down to, "You have not lived up to our expectations…even though the world we have given you is resource poor, threadbare, in debt, and in conflict."

Someone needs to write the book that rejects that criticism as drivel, the slander of self-important and self-aggrandizing old fools...

And that, afterwards, points the way forward. 

The way that leads through sacrifice, and struggle, and pain…and, ultimately, I think, to a new world. A world made pure and golden and one.

So, writers, begin. I await your wisdom. And your manuscripts.

~mjt

The B&B PWYW site

Sorry I've been so long away from Xcargo. I've been doing a bunch of things and they taken up most of my time.

I'll spare you most of the details. But here's one thing I'll mention. If you haven't already read about in one of many other websites (sigh), I'm a starting a new little project with Belfort & Bastion. It's the B&B Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) website.

The idea is as follows: we post e-books, e-art, and so on to the site. You can download them freely, or simply read them on the site. If you like them, then you have the option of paying the creator what you think the material was worth—$0, $2, $50…whatever you decide.

So, if you get a chance, do check it out. You might find something you like.

Onward and upward.

Finally...

Tired. You'll recall that I had an author leave Belfort and Bastion. That meant I had to take all his material off my various sites.

Finally got it done. I have removed all his material...both the stuff he wrote under his own name and the material he'd done under pen names.

Lot of work.

Amusing, really. Takes as much effort to un-publish something as to publish it.

Maybe there is a moral there, somewhere.

First Data Problems Resolved!

So I'm happy to report that my problem with First Data Merchant Services have been resolved almost painlessly. A First Data person contacted me and within a day everything was neatly settled.

Ergo, kudos to First Data! Special thanx to Stacie W. 'Twas above and beyond.

Problems with First Data Merchant Services

So here's my tale of woe.

Early this spring, I thought I needed to have the ability to take credit cards for purchases on my tiny little company's website, BelfortandBastion.com. For companies interested in getting such a capacity, my web hosting providers, GoDaddy, offers a link to First Data Merchant Services a.k.a., First Data.

I filled out the necessary forms, including one that listed my bank account number and the routing number of my bank. However, when I did so, I must have mistyped one of those two numbers. Either way, something went wrong.

Then, in May, I received a note from First Data Merchant Services (or, more precisely, its collection department) saying that I was in default, that I had not paid the $30 a month processing fees, or start-up costs, and billing me $160. The note, by the way, was dated May 12.

I contacted First Data and some very nice person there explained what had happened. When First Data had been unable to collect its fees from my bank account (because I'd mistyped a number), my First Data account had been instantly closed. (She was unable to explain why no one attempted contact me before the account was shut down, but that's beside the point.)

I asked if that meant I no longer had an account with First Data. She said that was correct.

I was not concerned about that because I had realized I really didn't need credit card processing (just yet) for my company, which only sells a few items a year. I therefore said I understood, and was content that I no longer had an account with First Data. I then sent the company a check for what I owed, i.e., $160.

I thought the incident was closed.

However, yesterday, or June 30, I received a "second notice" from First Data's collection department saying that I now owed $235 and that failure to pay could negatively impact my credit rating.

But, of course, the problem is that I thought I no longer had an account with First Data, and so it seems as if I'm being charged credit card processing fees for credit cards that aren't, well, being processed.

So how on earth do I get out of this situation? I've left a message with First Data's collection department, but so far haven't heard back from them.


Thank you so much in advance.

mjt