Time travel makes me right

I is not a clever man, so I lied. I can't do two shows a week (trying somehow almost prevented me from doing one) so it's back to the old format. The problem is a combination of music (I had twenty songs lined up, listened to them again, and hated all of them; end your songs early! You have a great tune, but ten minutes is too fucking long!) Also, Bill Summerson is dead and recuperating in Florida. He should be back in a week or two.



No news, since Bill is a dead and lazy bastard, so extra links! Many piss me off.

Links

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

This chaps my ass. Itunes and various conspire to fix prices on ebooks to prevent  prices from getting too low (courtesy of Amazon) and to encourage print sales. Which makes Amazon the bad guy? Ebooks are necessarily cheaper because they are not a physical product - for the same reason an album on digital download and on cd are not priced the same. When I see an ebook priced at $25 I laugh and find another author who doesn't have his head up his ass.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150568478/christian-conservatives-poverty-not-government-business
Who gives a shit what Jesus would do. I'm gonna go ahead and call it that no one cares what the Bible says. If Jesus is in favor of absolute capitalism, dirty communism, or the hokey pokey, who gives a shit. Why is this a subject for debate? I'm good with the overall philosophical message, but how many social, economic, and military lessons can we take from a dead man? Say it with me: if Jesus wants something specific done, he can come down here and do it himself. (I am reading Paradise Lost and what surprises me most is how lazy God is. He knows everything, but can't get off his ass to stop the guy he created from corrupting his new creation. I guess Jersey Shore was on).

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150563229/double-take-toons-doomsday-drones 
a good example of why political cartoons are dumber than a box of hammers. The first isn't so bad - Obama's drone happy! Fair enough. But did you need to put all the fucking markers on there? Did you have no faith in your audience?
And the bottom one makes no fucking sense. What the fuck is wrong with his teeth and fingers? What is the goddam message here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDLXPpooA18&feature=player_embedded
I mock Anderson Cooper specifically, and all the news outlets, for being useless blabbing lumps, but I have to agree with this guy (http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/attacks_on_rt_and_assange_reveal_much_about_the_critics/singleton/?miaou) that sometimes mocking them doesn't really do their uselessness justice. The day Assange (who had the baffling label of traitor, despite not being American) aired his show, CNN spent all day mooning over Dick Clark's corpse. I'm sure he was great, but did you really need to call in the guy who walked Clark's dog that one time?

Late Facts: I've never seen a birth, so I picture it as a disgusting slip-n-slide.

Superlate Facts: Codex Alera is like Narnia, but with rape and crucifixions. 

Special Edition 1

Links:

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/09/150250294/study-warns-of-autism-risk-for-children-of-obese-mothers
Holy shit, he wasn't kidding.


Sometimes I write weird things. Here's an excerpt from an epic poem I may or may not be working on, but is awesome nonetheless.

"No!" he cried, to an incandescent, hostile sky,
"anywhere but here, lest we fall under his mur'drous eye"
But as he turned to run, he found his 'scape route gone,
the path blocked by those perfect, monstrous
creatures, resembling humans only in form.

Their teeth flashed in ugly grins, devoid of all sympathy,
 his arms they pinned to his sides under that hateful sky.
in the midst of whirling scree,

He and the captain they bore, to their leader's
feet, to send them soon toward the furthest shore,
but no, he exclaimed, pain is their fate, their death
must wait, until I fully settle the score.

"Liar!" the hero proclaimed, full of fear,
yet his manliness maintained, in the face
of losing himself forevermore. "Your chance you
threw away, and on this desolate rock you'll
stay, for failing to heed the kind advice of
my well-loved leader, you deserve this fate and more.

For if you had only stayed, comfortable,
and out of the way, on the peaceful planet
where you were placed-"
At this the mad chief grew wroth, and with
great strength, picked the tiny Russian up,
and with full hate glittering in his eyes,
screamed his madness, triumph, revenge,
so that all the world must listen,
toward the sky:
"This IS Ceti-Alpha Five!"

I'll Devito Your Schwarzenegger

So when I said, last week, that we are overconcerned with image, this is what I meant: that we won't go into Syria, that we won't try to do anything with Syria, because there's no reason for us to. What we will do is feign concern because that is the image we want to project, the story we want told; we are big daddy democracy and we want what's best for everyone. When someone like Manning or the pissing troops disrupt that, people get upset. And situations like the marine being demoted for killing innocents require very special image manipulation.



If you enjoy this podcast you should do several things. The first is listen to Writing Excuses available on Itunes. It's interesting and funny and talks about fiction in the same sort of way I do, only those podcast-ers are much smarter. The most interesting episode I've listened to is "The Hollywood Formula" (it's fairly recent) and it has a cool discussion of protagonists and antagonists in relation to the Dark Knight. I don't agree with their conclusion, but it's interesting as hell nonetheless.
Also, you should follow this blog, and recommend it to folks you think might like it.