No Religion

"Once I'd improved my diction, I found I had nothing left to say." Van Morrison . Guess where.


I'm thinking the sudden overwhelming technological burst of Means to Communicate has widened the gap in actual communication between individuals. There is a feeling of a Matrix, a Skinner box, walls of information so high and so solid I know less now about myself than ever before. I have so much freedom I can hardly move, can hardly speak. Friendships have withered and died. Family has become the more familiar group of strangers. What I write goes unread, what I say goes unheard. I'm drowning in a sea of input. I know more about North Korea than my next-door neighbor. There is a new deadly virus every five or six days, there are no jobs, no money, no health insurance. No religion. There's no religion here today. And the Christians who bring me pamphlets in Spanish take one look and know there's no saving this one.

This is a paragraph from my new unread story, There Is No Non-Fiction.

Pearls Before Swine Flu

Does Beer Affect Whom We Find Attractive? http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893671,00.html?cnn=yes
Do Bears Shit In The Woods? Is The Pope Catholic?

Michael Gavaghen went to the swine flu prep school in NY, and reports on it in this morning's post.http://frequentlyalert.blogspot.com/
Friday Night I'm sitting way the hell over on the other side of the room.

I'm going with my whole family this weekend to Orlando-Kississimee for my granddaughter's birthday. We're staying at the new water park hotel.I can feel swine-cooties jumping on me already. What are we supposed to do?

Ayn Rand has a bestseller. Atlas Shrugged, with its free enterprise will save the world message, has been selling better than ever, says CNN.

"Her philosophy of selfishness and her love of pure capitalism (she used to wear a dollar-sign brooch) has earned her many followers, particularly on the right. Rush Limbaugh is a fan; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was a Rand acolyte in his younger days and a member of her New York salon.

But Rand critics are equally fervent, questioning her belief in pure free markets.
"What I find so remarkable about it is if capitalism can work on its own without any government regulation, then we wouldn't be here," said economist Heather Boushey of the left-leaning Center for American Progress."

Key phrase here: Rush Limbaugh is a fan. And Alan Greenspan has rethought his position:

Boushey points out that even Greenspan has reversed course, to an extent, in his admiration of laissez-faire economics.
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity -- myself, especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief," Greenspan told a congressional hearing in October.http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/04/27/ayn.rand.atlas.shrugged/index.html

Little GTO: GM cuts Pontiac brand and eliminates 23,000 jobs.http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/27/news/companies/gm_announcement/index.htm

Screaming, Howling Fantods

All through Infinite Jest, central character and possessor of "what's ever beyond eidetic" memory, Hal Incandenza, who has like memorized the O.E.D., is dealing with other characters or situations that give him the "fantods"--either screaming or howling fantods.

Worldwidewords.com defines fantods as: a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-fan1.htm
And even quotes Twain's use of the word in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
“These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn’t somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods”.

Something else DF Wallace did in Infinite Jest: Ex-crooner and now President of the United States Johnny Gentle (The only president ever to twirl the microphone by its cord during his Inauguration) changes the calendar by selling each year's title to major corporations to help offset the cost of giving half of New York and New England to Canada. The New Calendar features, chronologically, these Revenue-Enhancing Subsidized Years:
(1) Year of the Whopper (2) Year of the Tucks Medicated Pad (3) Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar (4)Year of the Perdue Wonderchicken (5) Year of the Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishwasher
(6) Year of the Yushityu 2007 Mimetic-Resolution-Cartridge-View-Motherboard-Easy-To-Install-Upgrade For Infernatron/Interlace Teleputer Systems For Home, Office, Or Mobile
(7) Year of Dairy Products From The American Heartland (8) Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (9) Year of Glad

At page 469, most of the narration has been about events in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, or Y.D.A.U. There are 184 footnotes this far, and you can go to the backpages and read the notes that enhance the history described.

To learn more about David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, and fantods, visit The Howling Fantods website, http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/ Here you'll fond some real and sincere work done by fans and friends of the recently deceased writer. Included is a link to the memorial article in Rolling Stone by David Lipsky: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace

Publishers Weekly Review of The Barricades of Heaven

ABNA Publishers Weekly Reviewer (Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award)
https://www.createspace.com/
http://www.createspace.com/pub/member/feedback.abna.do.


"This novel details the struggles of 50-year-old Rooster McNair, a one-time drug smuggler who’s now a respectable computer industry worker trying to escape a past that refuses to let him go. Like Rooster, the novel struggles for a clear identity of its own: in one corner is a dark and often compelling crime story that doesn’t find its legs until nearly halfway through; in the other is an occasionally silly and offensive social and domestic drama (Rooster is doing a project for the DooMee Corporation, maker of virtual sex toys, that unintentionally makes women defecate in their pants). Unfortunately, there is no clear winner, and despite the ostensible thematic relationship of the struggles between loyalty and infidelity, the redeemed and the corrupt, the hybrid never really takes. This is not to say that Rooster’s complicated relationships with women are without interest, or that there are not occasional flashes of wit and insight, but the “bromantic” struggles he has with fellow ex-con and childhood best friend, Johnny Fallon, are compelling and deserve more focus. While Rooster’s adventures in the computer trade are humdrum, reading about them should not be, and the failure of this subplot is spectacularly counterpointed by the vivid, entertaining and fresh description of a smuggling trip that Rooster and Fallon took to Colombia."

Angels and De Mans

There 's still 2 weeks to enter the American Fiction Prize competition. Entries must be postmarked by May 1. 2009. This year's judge is Clint McCown from Virginia Commonwealth University. First prize: $1000, 2nd: $500, 3rd: $250. The entry fee is only $12. So put up or shut up, my scrivening compats! Questions can be emailed to: americanfictionprize@yahoo.com.
Winners will be published by New Rivers Press. Contest details: http://www.newriverspress.com/

Details can also be found at http://www.kristentsetsi.blogspot.com/ Check out her great homemade video on the Auction for Soldier's Angels.That's it to the right, used by permission. She's helping raise money to help the veterans and currently deployed.

In fact, I like it so much, I'm entering a second story as well.

Also, my scary story, "While Researching a Horror Story" will appear this fall at BewilderingStories.com. Thanks to my FNW buddies for feedback and suggestions.
The original title The House didn't cut it. Who's De Man?

On With The Show

Karen Kravits is the only Survivor from Friday Night Writers who made the Semifinals of the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Awards. Out of 15,000, 4 of us made the Quarterfinals, the Final 500. Now Karen's great novel, Leaving Folk, has made the Final 100. Read her excerpt. She can go on to win, it's that good.

Now I can get back to the art of insignificance, a kind of literary feng shui. Actually it's a poem I'm trying to find on a crashed hard drive somewhere. The Art of Insignificance. Don't read too much into this.It's re-write time, in other words.

I was very impressed to see the hand of God photographed by NASA and so left it posted for several days. NASA calls it a Cosmic Hand, but really, who else has a hand 175 light-years across? Even Galacticus was not that big.

Also, Poets and Writers magazine lists 30 new lit contests, for those who like to mail money to strangers. I find it's easier to get readers that way. Simply enter a contest and send them $15 and maybe three people will read your story, if you're any good. It's like publishing in reverse. The reader gets the dough. Isn't the future wonderful?

And in sports... John Madden retires. Thank God. He's the best but still, announcing does not have to be a Bop Till You Drop competition. And Isaiah Thomas will coach basketball at Florida International University. I was pissed since it seemed like a bad idea to be discontinuing Speech Therapy classes for lack of funds then hiringa big name coach. But he's actually giving the salary back, and coaching for free. Free is good. I wonder if I send him my contest entry stories, if he'll read them and send back my money too. Go Coach Thomas!

Cosmic Hand

NASA photos show gigantic cosmic hand:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/04/14/space.hand/index.html
See actual photo to right

Scientists warn of Twitter danger:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/mentalhealth/04/14/twitter.study/index.html

Marilyn Chambers, Ivory Snow Porn Queen, dead at 56
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1891127,00.html

Study: Stem Cells May Reverse Type 1 Diabetes
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1891122,00.html

What Facebook Users Share: Lower Grades
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1891111,00.html

Misc.

Things not to do at the Berlin Zoo: Polar bear mauls woman who jumps into its moat at feeding time.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/11/polar.bear.attack/index.html

The healing powers of fly-fishing for injured servicemembers:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/04/09/cnnheroes.ed.nicholson/index.html

Hannah Montana Number 1 at Box Office:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1890869,00.html

Cows With Gas: India's Global Warming Problem
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890646,00.html

Historic Celebrity Bashing: Thomas Jefferson's Birthday
http://a-list.msn.com/default.aspx?cp-searchtext=Thomas%20Jefferson

Easter Poem/Revised for Nat'l Poetry Month

For us redemption
Is not centered on
Rolling the stone
We are not saved
By coming back from the dead
We are not saved
By being born again
We are not saved

In a park
We hide colored eggs
Eat chocolate bunnies and Peeps.
Climbing the monkey bars
Goes our hope, our joy.

I won't spoil her play
With talk of crucifixion
Thorns in a crown
Give flowers instead
A plastic shovel to dig in the sand
No hammer no nails
Just a bright red bucket
The reckless fun of bare feet
Touching lightly reborn earth

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

When I transferred to The University of South Florida in Tampa in 1970, the largest auditorium classroom on campus belonged to the College of Behavioral Psychology. Behaviorism, with its scientific approach to why we do the things we do and its resistance to the ghost in the machine concepts of traditional psychology, was the hippest thing going. B.F. Skinner, the Skinner box now well known to any academic, was a towering figure, having replaced Freud as the Guiding Light.

Then in 1971, Skinner published Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and the party was over. Skinner denied the autonomy of the individual: "In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment."[21] (Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Freedom_and_Dignity)

Skinner also decried the ineffectiveness of simply imprisoning offenders over and over, while worrying about their civil rights and personal dignity--Dignity a term he redefined in his argument: "Almost all major problems involve human behavior, and they cannot be solved by physical and biological technology alone. What is needed is a technology of human behavior."[1]

And: "[the literature of freedom and dignity] has been successful in reducing the aversive stimuli used in intentional control, but it has made the mistake of defining freedom in terms of states of mind or feelings..."[3]

Within two years, after attacks on Skinner in Harpers, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Review, particularly the well-structured attacks by Noam Chomsky, the College of Behavioral Psychology at USF no longer existed. The name of the auditorium was even changed. Why?

Because in the era of Vietnam-Nixon-Agnew-4 Dead in Ohio, the last thing anyone wanted to hear about was Cultural Behavioral Modification. The movie A Clockwork Orange, based on the futuristic novel by Anthony Burgess, showed a young Malcolm McDowell as a leader of a gang of drug-taking rapists, thieves and murderers, and he was the Good Guy. We don't need no thought control, we sang.

Now, nearly 40 years later, we have a country without any clear cultural objective, with more people in prisons here in the Land of the Free than anywhere else in the world, with horrible crimes taking place in every city everyday, and nothing seems to stop the downward spiral.

The body of an 8-year old California girl was found stuffed in a suitcase thrown in a pond:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30080313

Our children are being stolen, harmed, murdered at an alarming rate. Maybe we can re-read Skinner now, and see what he tried to tell us. I certainly don't give a damn about the freedom and dignity of anyone who molests and murders children.

Good News

CNN.com this morning reports on an author who could not get a literary agent to place her book and still ended up successful. Lisa Genova's novel Still Alice was rejected by literary agents who told her no one would want to read a book about Alzheimer's.

"But she decided to press forward. Turning to the Author Solutions self-publishing brand, iUniverse, Genova published her book for $450, a cost that included an ISBN -- the International Standard Book Number that uniquely identifies books -- and the ability to sell on Amazon.com.

Months later, after receiving positive reviews on Amazon.com and a favorable review in the Boston Globe, Genova's book was picked up by Simon & Schuster and is in its 12th week on The New York Times Bestsellers List.

"If you believe in your book, I think you should give it a chance," Genova said. "Still Alice" "was a book that people already identified with and [Simon & Schuster] saw the book's potential in a very real way."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/06/print.on.demand.publishing/index.html?iref=t2test_techmon

This woman's struggle to overcome resistance from the traditional channel to publication closely resembles that of friend Kristen Tsetsi with her own novel Homefront. I hope this will be an encouragement to anyone who has spent time and effort to write something worthwhile.

Atmosphere of Murder

From Murder, Inc., Bruce Springsteen:

That apartment you live in feels like it’s just a place to hide
When your walkin’ down the streets
you won’t meet no one in the eye
Now the cops reported you as just another homicide
I could tell that you was just frustrated
from livin’ with MurderIncorporated
Everywhere you look now
Murder Incorporated
Down on your knees
Murder
Everywhere that you turn it’s murder
Murder
Everywhere you look there’s murder.

News of Tomorrow Today

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is shrinking. The 4 million tubes of Clearasil sent on Jupiter-4 finally taking effect.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/04/02/jupiter.red.spot.shrinking/index.html

Madonna's Adoption Bid Rejected By Judge:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/03/madonna.malawi.adoption/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
What does it say, that an African orphanage is a better life than living with Madonna?

Oil To Be Moved From Huge Tanks Near Volcano:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/03/alaska.volcano.oil.tanks/index.html
The dynamite factory at the base of Mt. Redoubt will also be relocated.

Tall Man's Legs Severed To Fit Him In Coffin:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/01/tall.man.coffin/index.html

10 Questions for Van Morrison:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1882001,00.html

National Poetry Month

This is National Poetry Month, in case you haven't seen the pajillion emails for all places having to do with writing, reading, rhyming. So do something poetic. Here, go to Poets.Org:http://www.poets.org/

Here's Philip Larkin, from Collected Poems:

A Writer

'Interesting, but futile,' said his diary,
Where day by day his movements were recorded
And nothing but his loves received inquiry;
He knew, of course, no actions were rewarded,
There were no prizes: though the eye could see
Wide beauty in a motion or a pause,
It need expect no lasting salary
Beyond the bowels' momentary applause.

He lived for years and never was surprised:
A member of his foolish, lying race
Explained away their vices: realised
It was a gift that he possessed alone:
To look the world directly in the face;
The face he did not see to be his own.

WE ARE ALL APRIL FOOLS

New fiction from David Foster Wallace in The New Yorker: "The Wiggle Room" is an excerpt from a long unfinished piece to be published soon. IRS examiners fighting the boredom of their routine.
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace

G-20 has the same problem as the Obama White House: People who don't have bills to pay can't help peole who do. The consumers have no money so business around the globe is tanking. Why not give the money to the consumers, instead of to the empty stores and banks and car makers?
This simple solution will never happen, because the people in charge have more than enough money and credit, and have no idea what it's like not to.

The Simpsons will appear on US Postage: http://www.newsweek.com/id/191961

Be careful with email attachments. can you get Microsoft upgrades? If not, you may be infected.
Get Anti-Malware software, as posted previously.