Halloween - Greatest Holiday Ever Invented By Humankind!

Screw Christmas, Easter, Et cetera, Et cetera, and all the rest of those goofy RELIGIOUS holidays. (But please do still send presents - I like the part about presents - that was a good idea)! 


Anyway, none of them can hold a candle (pun) to Halloween. Compared to Halloween the rest of them are dog-meat.  Halloween is the night when we get to contemplate being all those beings that roam around inside our normal lives; the ones in our dreams, the ones in our imaginations, and even the most frightening ones of all living inside our normal routines. We put the real faces of Halloween over the masks of our "so-called" daily lives. Happy Halloween! Happy Real Faces Day!

Russelling Up Some Common Sense

In his autobiography, Bertrand Russell, writes, "There is a motive (in human beings) which is stronger than self-preservation: it is the desire to get the better of the other fellow." He is writing this as a reflection of his effort to rid the world of atomic weapons and the proliferation of nuclear bombs. I do not know the current state of the "Nuclear Arms Race." Are we still racing toward some grand superiority--constructing even more weapons after having already amassed enough destructive power to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth a 1000 or 10,000 times over? Are we reversing that absurd process in any way? We certainly hear less made of the situation than when I was a kid, being trained to secure myself against a Soviet attack of Hydrogen Bombs by hiding beneath my school desk. I was never quite certain whether the adults who lead us through those exercises were joking or not. I had see the photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My school desk seemed to me kind of inadequate, especially since the bombs coming at us might be 20 or something time more powerful than those used on Japan.

Lord Russell ends that paragraph with"...whether mankind will think itself worth preserving remains a doubtful question." And despite the fact that the whole subject is quite out of the news I fear we have not progressed much further than that day when Lord Russell, in his eighties, was imprisoned for the offense of suggesting  that we were worth preserving. The clarity and  wit and brilliance and humanity of Bertrand Russell will out live him (if we don't destroy ourselves first) by at least 10 million years. 

Did Cyril Kornbluth Invent the Jedi?

It is claimed that the Jedi, who are an order of warrior monks who serve as the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, were invented by the mind of George Lucas sometime in the early 70's. I wonder if Lucas has ever laid out why his Jedi resemble so very closely the College and Order of the Heralds from C. M. Kornbluth's 1952 story, That Share of Glory. If Lucas has never formally made this connection then I am here to say, someone has some splanin' to do and the family of Cyril Kornbluth is owed some serious royalty money. 

Subway Rockets

A very young writer

I love the stories of Cyril M. Kornbluth (under any byline) which I’ve just recently discovered. (I have lived a sheltered life).  I absolutely love them. I can’t help myself. They’re yummy, exotic hotdogs a southerner could only eat in Brooklyn in 1952 as they watch kids play stickball in the street wearing rocketshoes (which are, when you look closer, just old P-F Flyers with small atomic powered rockets tied to them with string). His stories are aged and yellowed Kodachrome photographs full of the recent past; a captured Brylcreem/Mickey Spillane world that exists now only in my parent’s memories; it’s all so wonderfully goofy and thrilling at the same time. If Kornbluth had practiced psychology instead writing he would have actually cured people of mental diseases of the ego(tism). He's a champion of the common man (person). His heroes are just a bunch of slobs like the rest of us, some old alcoholic or a guy whose not so good with the ladies. Kornbluth’s hard-bitten characters fly from planet to planet (often just in our own solar system! - obviously there are many more planets close to Earth than we thought and travel to other star systems can be accomplished in"rust-buckets") in a couple of hours or days but who must call back to Earth via a telephone operator (always some cheeky dame--probably a bottle-blonde) who hooks them up through a switch board. They smoke an entire cigarette while waiting for their calls to be connected. The rockets to Mars or Pluto are slightly modified 1950’s Subway trains to Coney Island. This is Science Fiction before PCs and the Web, a time before cyberpunk controversies. It’s speculation about the future before there actually was one. If you would like entertainment on a massive (gas giant)scale, amusement that makes your average Network program look like the absolute crap it actually is, then get a copy of His Share of Glory: The Complete Short Science Fiction of C. M. Kornbluth, for yourself and your kids. Therein lies at least six months of unadulterated delight, not to mention an opportunity for self-discovery. I'm getting the idea that Kornbluth had been through some hard times and was lovely enough to help us to learn something from them.

Television With Pliers

McLuhan's Nightmare

A Very Good Man of the Depression Era

It is not an exaggeration for me to claim that if I was to watch television in my home growing up in the urbane metropolis of Clinton, Tennessee during the years of 1963 to 1968 I had to employ the use of a pair of flat-nose pliers. My father's thriftiness is legendary. He grew up in the North Jersey of the 30's and may have lived in 100 tattered apartments by the time he was 16. And in 1963 he purchased a Black and White Zenith television set from Cardwell's Store, an establishment that sold ONLY televisions, that had a missing channel knob in order to save $3. His attempt to fashion a knob from the top of an old pot failed despite the fact that he had earn a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia following his rather dangerous WWII stint in the Navy --perhaps if he had studies Mechanical Engineering things would have turn out differently. We will never know. However, once his first redesign had fallen short we simply resorted to a pair of pliers. I remember they had a blue rubber handle. Over the next five years those pliers were a crucial object of my daily life. The larger world's entree into our tiny living room required them. Johnny Quest and Space Ghost needed them in order to save the world and other planets. Then, after the forces of embarrassing social pressure (and the wailing and gnashing of our ever mutating teeth) my father caved in and bought our first color set (which was, of course, equivalent for us kids to having won 10 Zillion dollars from some prize contest in The Lady's Home Journal). To this day I have a fondness for pliers, the U.S. Navy, saved planets, and North Jersey.

What is Space Ghost drinking?

Ours were not actually this nice

Why Don't People Read As Much As They Use To? (Maybe They Never Did)

Marshall McLuhan

Imagine a world awash with important literature, where vital things have been written down: penetrating essays, profound print journalism, and deeply entertaining and gratifying fiction--but also a world where none of it is actually read by most of the people, a world where the average teenager can’t name a book that they have (completely or voluntarily) read by the time they’re about to enter college. Imagine such a world where long established and well honored newspapers are going out of business because not enough people read them any longer. Imagine a world that had struggled, even unto death for the privilege--no, the right to read, but had quickly forgotten this hard won battle to provide (me) the common citizenry with the luxury of being capable of reading in the first place. Now imagine Simon Ings’s short story, Russian Vine, in which some alien race has nefariously and entirely "pruned" the peoples of Earth of their ability to read and thus returning them to the darkness of their preliterate state of being. After doing so they then become invaders of the Earth turning us all into slaves for their own amusements. If we can we all may need to re-read (or read for the first time) the dark pronouncements of Marshall McLuhan regarding the decline that may accompany the onslaught of a primarily verbal Age of Television. An Age ripe with the availability of 24 hour news but devoid of the capacity to make any useful sense of it.

I'm certain that I have not fully grasped the meaning of Mr.Ings story. This is a complex read, made so intentionally by the author’s abstract and non-figurative style as his device (I think) to help the reader achieve some feel for what it may be like to be illiterate. I’ve never encountered a story like it. I’m going to have to read it several more times to feel any confidence that I understand its whole meaning.

[Photos taken from the Internet - is that legal?]

The Long Spectrum of Religious Expression

 



Crown Heights, Brooklyn



Debbie Pustorino and Michael Harney



Sunday, [17 Oct. 2010] Debbie and I spent a few enjoyable hours attending the 8^th (I think) annual Hardlox Jewish Food & Heritage Festival in downtown Asheville, NC (our beloved hometown). I had recently had the benefit of a day in NYC with some of the morning spent in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, a center of one of America’s largest Hasidic communities. I had simply wanted to feel the energy of the place which I had read about many years ago in Chaim Potok’s wonderful novel, The Chosen. As an atheist I am dubious of religious fervor of any kind, however, I cannot avoid a rather deep appreciation of many of the heartwarming aspects of the richness of Judaism (as well as every other great religious tradition). The small (I suppose) Jewish community in Asheville have created with this festival a delightful opportunity for the whole community of Asheville to grow in and learn from and relish the long tradition of Jewish life (part of which, in recent times, has grown an interesting atheist branch that I also appreciate). I will never intentionally miss out on this event in the future. We had a blast. Thank you Jewish Community of Asheville, you really know how to make a guy smile!



Speaking of religion (which I plan to do only rarely), while we were at the Hardlox Festival we ran into our glorious old friend Michael Harney. In regard to Michael I once enjoyed one of the few lucid moments of my life. Michael is a man full of an almost magical capacity for giving to others. Without wanting to sound too flowery, I must say, sincerely, that Michael Harney is one of the world’s special people. Michael actually lives his life by the dictum that, in some remarkable way, it is more fulfilling to give than to receive. Well, one day, a couple of years ago, Debbie and I were attending another festival in Asheville at which we were accosted by our local Christian loony brigade, the do-you-know-your-savior-jezuz-christ contingency, presenting with their ever hubristic brand of social dysfunction (thou doth protesteth too much). In one moment of clarity, when asked if I knew jezuz, I immediately came back with, “no, but I do know Michael Harney. Michael works for the local AIDS Project and you too can meet him if you wish.” They were not amused.      

Christ almighty, where do these people come from?

















Certain Women Have Extraordinary Skills

It’s pretty early. Debbie is still sleeping. She’s just as beautiful in her sleep as she is awake. She’s is a truly remarkable woman. If life suddenly required her to lift the corner of a large skyscraper, she would find a way to do it with one hand while keeping the other hand free to make sandwiches for the homeless, while at the same time using her free foot to help someone move furniture into a new apartment--she has learned how to manage life and love it all at the same time.

One of my heros - Michael Swanwick

 

I just finished Michael Swanwick’s short story, Libertarian Russia. Holy crap--life’s tough in rural Russia in the near future. (From my reading, Russia seems to have always been a rough and tumble kind of place). Apparently, in the near future we’re all going to be able to make certain technological enhancements to our bodies (machine guns on our finger tips, rocket launchers out our wazoo, and the like) which we’ll need to remember to do in case we run up against any former Soviet security personnel out of a job--their going to be pissed off and their not going to transition well into a more egalitarian society.  Also, if you happen to be on a

Russia has always been a little wierd

  search for genuine freedom while riding to Siberia on your grass fueled motorcycle on the lam for petty crimes committed while fleeing Moscow, go ahead and pick up that prostitute. She may just save your life. Mr. Swanwick, this is another little masterpeice. Thank you for helping me to feel somewhat happy (safe anyway) about living in lil' old North Carolina.



Discovering C. M. Kornbluth

Alas, he died too young - the Master craftsman - C. M. Kornbluth

Sometimes I am slightly concerned by the fact that I am OLD and find a writer I've not read before and discover--genius. It causes me to worry that I might have died without ever encountering their work. I begin to wonder who else I've missed. Aren't we always hearing that the world is, "going to hell in a hand basket?" I actually have the opposite fear - THERE'S SOOOO MUCH COOL STUFF IN THE WORLD I MIGHT MISS SOME OF IT! (Sorry about all the CAPITAL letters and bold print - I may have over emphasized my point).

I have just discovered (for the first time, I'm embarrassed to add) the work of C. M. Kornbuth. He writes so well it almost hurts.  I refer you to his short stories: The Altar at Midnight and That Share of Glory. (The latter is so good I think Kornbluth may actually be an extraterrestrial).


Thank you, Robert Silverberg, for your article about Mr. Kornbluth in the recent issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. I am indebted!

Starting a blog

17 Oct. 2010

My Porch of Happiness

This is the first evening of "my blog." I don't know what the word "blog" means or where it comes from - I'll google it (smile) and find out.


Who the hell am I, you ask? I write Science Fiction stories. I try to be nice to people and not be the ass my closest friends (which I am lucky to have any at all) know I am very capable of being.


I plan to keep a journal here on my blog--it is a rather cool word, isn't it.  I will also write essays and post(when and, if, I do actually get them written)them here as well. By the way check out Michael Chabon's website for some of the most illuminating and delightful essays.


My story-in-progress is currently entitled, Silver Wheel. It's about a civilization of very highly advanced aliens who decided to make contact with Earth by sending a young Haitian boy a communications device by FedExpress. Well, I'm off to write.


Goodbye for now Computerland-Internet-WWWworld. Take care of your circuits.

Shells in Spring Lake, NJ - The Gug Upper Eastside - Autumn in Asheville, NC - Home in Gerton, NC

My Journalistic Friend