“If the Holy Bible was printed as an Ace Double, it would be cut down to two 20,000-word halves with the Old Testament retitled as ‘Master of Chaos’ and the New Testament as ‘The Thing With Three Souls.’ ”
(an unknown editor)
***
“You have to give Bill Clinton his due: When he bombed Kosovo in 1999, he became the first president since World War II to bomb white people.”
(Seymour Hersch in an interview with Rolling Stone)
***
“I’m beginning to understand just what a dreadful curse it can be, the novelistic ego. And I think whatever complications being the son of Kingsley involved me in, that’s been a help [perceiving writing as a trade]. This curse, the way it works is that any praise you get is instantly assimilated, and it just brings you up to where you should have been already. But any criticism just jangles around in your head and makes you stay up at night. Kingsley says somewhere in his letters that nothing quite lays you open so much as a novel, and so for a lot of my friends, a lot of the time, their thoughts are almost poisoned by criticism.”
(Martin Amis)
***
“Yeah, I’m mildly ticked off. I’ve had three decades of being told that forms I work in can’t possibly do anything that isn’t cliched and juvenile by their nature, and it got old three decades less five minutes ago. Judging an art by its bad examples isn’t criticism; it’s tossing a grenade into the barrel and then complaining that the fish are dead.”
(John M. Ford)
***
“I hate that expression, 'fusion.' What it means to me is this movement where nothing ever really fused. It ended up being the curse of Miles Davis. Where Miles discovered that playing for the rock audiences, he could reach more people with the Grateful Dead than he could playing four sets a night at the Village Vanguard for three years. What happened was that he influenced a new generation of musicians and the way he influenced them was cool but what you ended up with was Kenny G and jazz-lite.” (Wayne Kramer of the MC5)
***
In what cultural anthropologists are calling a "colossal achievement" in the study of white-collar professionals, the popular radio show “This American Life” has successfully isolated all 7,442 known characteristics of college graduates who earn between $62,500 and $125,000 per year and feel strongly that something should be done about global warming.
"We've done it," said senior producer Julie Snyder..."There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.".... This American Life host and producer Ira Glass began work on the project in 1995 in Chicago, where he found himself inspired by and catering to an audience of professionals who dine out frequently and have a hard time getting angry. Glass and his team of producers, writers, and interns set about the exhausting task of gathering all available information on a range of subjects from minor skirmishes with the law to the rewards of occasionally talking to poor people.
(The Onion)
***
“To our joy or to our misery, the contingencies of reality have a great influence on what we write,” says Natalia Ginzburg in her book “It’s Hard to Talk About Yourself,” in the chapter in which she discusses her life and her writing in the wake of personal disaster.
It is hard to talk about yourself, and so before I describe my current writing experience, at this time in my life, I wish to make a few observations about the impact that a disaster, a traumatic situation, has on an entire society, an entire people. I immediately recall the words of the mouse in Kafka’s short story “A Little Fable.” The mouse who, as the trap closes on him, and the cat looms behind, says, “Alas . . . the world is growing narrower every day.”
(David Grossman, in The New York Times Magazine)
"All the Stones the Builders Rejected" 
(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
Showing posts with label John M. Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John M. Ford. Show all posts
John M. ("Mike") Ford, 1957-2006
Terrible news, which wasn't news anymore, except to me: the writer John M. Ford died unexpectedly September 24 in Minneapolis.
I met him briefly at WFC in Wisconsin, long enough to shake his hand and ask him to sign THE LAST HOT TIME. I knew I'd be lugging home boxes of books from the convention, and that was the only book I'd brought from home to be autographed. We chatted about inconsequential things and I didn't get to tell him how good I thought he was, or how I always recommended him when people asked me about books.
I heard him read the next day, and it was my favorite of all those I attended. He read something called "The Fellowship of the Woosters", Tolkein's trilogy if it had been written by P.G. Wodehouse, and Bertie Wooster had been assigned to destroy the Ring instead of Frodo, with the Great War of the Ring another muddle for Jeeves to sort out. Evidently he never published it, just saved it for conventions. I laughed out loud and thought that was unusual for a writer to not try and sell every scrap he produced, but then I read some of his posts at Making Light and
incidental pieces elsewhere-- poems with technically proficent meter and scansion, a "Talk Like a Pirate" entry written in the voice of Stephen Maturin-- and I realized his throwaways were as good as most of the things the rest of us sweat over. The voice of the Wooster and Jeeves piece was so letter perfect it should have been given the case of Bollinger and prize pig the Wodehouse estate gives out every year... now I wonder who will ever read it again, will it be saved.If writers have "chops" like jazz musicians, John M. Ford was the most technically skilled of any contemporary writer I know. Lots of writers are good or great at their own niche; John Michael Ford seemed to be good at whatever genre he turned his hand to, better than Gaiman or Moore or whoever you care to name. He won a couple of World Fantasy Awards and the Philip K. Dick Award, but like R.A. MacAvoy or Thomas Burnett Swann, he deserved more attention than he was given. I hope the regard of a discerning few was enough for him.
One of those things I was going-to-get-around-to was an appreciation on this blog of his short story and poetry collection, HEAT OF FUSION. I was looking forward to meeting him again. This is written and posted in a hurry, without his skill or polish-- if I have any strengths as a writer, they lie elsewhere. It is heartfelt.
Track down THE LAST HOT TIME, the only urban fantasy I know where Chester Himes characters meet Chicago gangland elves, an EMT hero and girls in Louise Brooks haircuts with the best written explication of bondage and discipline sex I've ever read (come to think, it's the ONLY book like that I ever read), or GROWING UP WEIGHTLESS, or HEAT of FUSION, (with a version of Oedipus and Antigone if a Seymour Hersch or Frank Rich were trying to write a profile for the New Yorker); I still plan to write that appreciation of the stories there. I've never read THE DRAGON WAITING or DRAGONS of LIGHT, but I know some people swear by them. He even wrote a couple of Star Trek novels, and one of them, HOW MUCH FOR JUST THE PLANET? is considered the best of them all by people who know better than I. 
You know that great feeling when you think you've read everything written by all your favorite writers, and then you discover someone new to you and you realize that your finding their work makes you young again like finding an unexplored world...?
Halfway Through September: Commonplace Book of Current Readings
“.... there are things that prose can do that visual media require both far more effort and vastly more artistic acuity to put across. What they are good at is transmitting extremely simple ideas; the villain kicks a dog, the hero grumbles at the outrage and shoots him. This is great if your goal is to sell a million movie tickets. It ain’t particularly good for the development of complex thought. Or, indeed, any thought at all.”
(John M. Ford, on the blog Making Light)
***
“It would be impossible to be taken seriously as a reporter or expert on Russia, France, Germany, Latin America, or perhaps even China or Japan without knowing the requisite languages but for "Islam" no linguistic knowledge seems to be necessary since what one is dealing with is considered to be a psychological deformation, not a "real" culture or religion.“
(Edward Said)
***
"In the aftermath of 9/11, the world was united with America. Even in Arab and Muslim countries, the sense of shock and feelings of solidarity with America far outweighed any sympathies with the terrorists. ...Immediately after 9/11, Al Qaeda seemed to be losing its battle with America and the West. Unfortunately, that changed when America invaded Iraq. The fight against the jihadists will not be decided simply on the battlefield; it will also be decided in the sphere of international legitimacy. ... Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the situation in Iraq could hardly be called successes.”
( Joschka Fischer)
***
“All the same, I suspect that we will miss Tony Blair when he is gone. The boyish charm is fraying but still intact. The exhaustion, the desperate need to convince everyone of the truth of his own delusions, the raw emotions worn as a kind of exoskeleton, all show one of the great actor-managers in heroic decline. Blair may be the last British prime minister able to trade openly on his emotions. He knows that we are secretly rather drawn to bad acting and are happy to collude in his exposure of his weaknesses.
“He is the beaten husband, still in charge of the car keys and the TV remote, but aware that the rest of the household despises him and is impatient for him to bring down the curtain. He jokes and winces, and makes fun of his own despair. The longer he hangs on, the more he can steer us towards the steamy, emotional bath we were happy to help him prepare. Would he like to drown us? After all, we like being lied to, we like promises that will never be kept, we like being locked into his smiling neediness.”
(J.G. Ballard)
***
“For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is a lot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I'm gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.”
(Outlaw Vern for 8/21/06)
***
“Unfettered power... cannot go berserk like this and expect to hold it all together.” (S. Roy)
***
“Is there anything about the current [9/11 commission] hearings that does interest the administration? From the evidence so far, they're interested in controlling what you and I find out about what happened, and what the administration did and didn't do about it. But they're only concerned about that because we vote, and because Dubya's perennially sensitive about the lustre of his reputation. Our actual safety doesn't enter into the calculation.”
(Teresa Neil Hayden on her blog Making Light)
***
“Fending off the chaos that would almost certainly come with civil war would be a reason to stay the course, although it does not inspire the full-throated rhetoric about freedom that Mr. Bush offered last night. But the nation needs to hear a workable plan to stabilize a fractured, disintegrating country and end the violence. If such a strategy exists, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush could see it through the filter of his fantasies.” (NYT editorial)
***
“Another attempt on the scale of the 2001 attacks hasn’t been necessary. The last one is still doing the trick, and the terrorists’ resources are limited.”
(William Gibson)
***
“In cultural evolution, [Susan] Blackmore claims, the replicators are hypothetical entities called memes, a term coined by Dawkins as a cultural analogue for genes. Dawkins intended it as a metaphor, but Blackmore (and others) argue that memes are real physical entities, like genes (DNA). Moreover, memes have a mind of their own; they compete among themselves "for their own sake" [Blackmore's emphasis]. ... Memes have taken control of our cultural evolution, she says.....
“The trouble is, memes don't really exist as a distinct causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won't make it so; I predict that they will prove to be more elusive than the Higgs boson. As a metaphor for various forms of learned cultural "information", the term might be quite useful. It has the advantage of being more generic than such familiar terms as "ideas", "inventions", "behaviors", "artifacts", etc., and it is certainly preferable to such clumsy neologisms as Edward Wilson's "culturgens". But as a shaper of cultural evolution independently of the motivations, goals, purposes, compulsions and judgments -- in short the minds -- of human actors, memes rank right up there with the fiery phogiston and the heavenly aether.”
(Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.: “The Invasion of the Memes: Is It Science Fiction?”)
***
“Earlier this month Banksy surreptitiously placed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantánamo detainee inside the fence of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, where it apparently remained for more than an hour before park officials shut down the ride and removed it. Recently he also smuggled 500 altered versions of Paris Hilton’s new CD into record stores around Britain and placed them in the racks.... [a] panel van with the notice on the back, “How’s My Bombing?” and an 800 number that links to a Navy recruiting office in Phoenix.... “1.7 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line. Every day hundreds of people are made to feel physically sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it. Anybody want a free glass of wine?”...Many comment on war, like the stark image of a television camera crew filming a child amid ruins as the producer holds back aid workers to allow for just one more shot.”
***
"ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush." (Frank Rich)
(John M. Ford, on the blog Making Light)
***
“It would be impossible to be taken seriously as a reporter or expert on Russia, France, Germany, Latin America, or perhaps even China or Japan without knowing the requisite languages but for "Islam" no linguistic knowledge seems to be necessary since what one is dealing with is considered to be a psychological deformation, not a "real" culture or religion.“
(Edward Said)
***
"In the aftermath of 9/11, the world was united with America. Even in Arab and Muslim countries, the sense of shock and feelings of solidarity with America far outweighed any sympathies with the terrorists. ...Immediately after 9/11, Al Qaeda seemed to be losing its battle with America and the West. Unfortunately, that changed when America invaded Iraq. The fight against the jihadists will not be decided simply on the battlefield; it will also be decided in the sphere of international legitimacy. ... Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the situation in Iraq could hardly be called successes.”
( Joschka Fischer)
***
“All the same, I suspect that we will miss Tony Blair when he is gone. The boyish charm is fraying but still intact. The exhaustion, the desperate need to convince everyone of the truth of his own delusions, the raw emotions worn as a kind of exoskeleton, all show one of the great actor-managers in heroic decline. Blair may be the last British prime minister able to trade openly on his emotions. He knows that we are secretly rather drawn to bad acting and are happy to collude in his exposure of his weaknesses.
“He is the beaten husband, still in charge of the car keys and the TV remote, but aware that the rest of the household despises him and is impatient for him to bring down the curtain. He jokes and winces, and makes fun of his own despair. The longer he hangs on, the more he can steer us towards the steamy, emotional bath we were happy to help him prepare. Would he like to drown us? After all, we like being lied to, we like promises that will never be kept, we like being locked into his smiling neediness.”
(J.G. Ballard)
***
“For me SNAKES ON A PLANE is like an ex-girlfriend: my feelings toward it are complicated. There is a lot to say about my relationship with this movie, and I'm gonna try to say it all. But it all boils down to this: I used to think I loved SNAKES ON A PLANE, but now I just want to be friends.”
(Outlaw Vern for 8/21/06)
***
“Unfettered power... cannot go berserk like this and expect to hold it all together.” (S. Roy)
***
“Is there anything about the current [9/11 commission] hearings that does interest the administration? From the evidence so far, they're interested in controlling what you and I find out about what happened, and what the administration did and didn't do about it. But they're only concerned about that because we vote, and because Dubya's perennially sensitive about the lustre of his reputation. Our actual safety doesn't enter into the calculation.”
(Teresa Neil Hayden on her blog Making Light)
***
“Fending off the chaos that would almost certainly come with civil war would be a reason to stay the course, although it does not inspire the full-throated rhetoric about freedom that Mr. Bush offered last night. But the nation needs to hear a workable plan to stabilize a fractured, disintegrating country and end the violence. If such a strategy exists, it seems unlikely that Mr. Bush could see it through the filter of his fantasies.” (NYT editorial)
***
“Another attempt on the scale of the 2001 attacks hasn’t been necessary. The last one is still doing the trick, and the terrorists’ resources are limited.”
(William Gibson)
***
“In cultural evolution, [Susan] Blackmore claims, the replicators are hypothetical entities called memes, a term coined by Dawkins as a cultural analogue for genes. Dawkins intended it as a metaphor, but Blackmore (and others) argue that memes are real physical entities, like genes (DNA). Moreover, memes have a mind of their own; they compete among themselves "for their own sake" [Blackmore's emphasis]. ... Memes have taken control of our cultural evolution, she says.....
“The trouble is, memes don't really exist as a distinct causal agency in evolution, and saying they do won't make it so; I predict that they will prove to be more elusive than the Higgs boson. As a metaphor for various forms of learned cultural "information", the term might be quite useful. It has the advantage of being more generic than such familiar terms as "ideas", "inventions", "behaviors", "artifacts", etc., and it is certainly preferable to such clumsy neologisms as Edward Wilson's "culturgens". But as a shaper of cultural evolution independently of the motivations, goals, purposes, compulsions and judgments -- in short the minds -- of human actors, memes rank right up there with the fiery phogiston and the heavenly aether.”
(Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.: “The Invasion of the Memes: Is It Science Fiction?”)
***
“Earlier this month Banksy surreptitiously placed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantánamo detainee inside the fence of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, where it apparently remained for more than an hour before park officials shut down the ride and removed it. Recently he also smuggled 500 altered versions of Paris Hilton’s new CD into record stores around Britain and placed them in the racks.... [a] panel van with the notice on the back, “How’s My Bombing?” and an 800 number that links to a Navy recruiting office in Phoenix.... “1.7 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line. Every day hundreds of people are made to feel physically sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it. Anybody want a free glass of wine?”...Many comment on war, like the stark image of a television camera crew filming a child amid ruins as the producer holds back aid workers to allow for just one more shot.”
***
"ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush." (Frank Rich)
The Commonplace Book of Quotations-- Current Obsessions and Preoccupations
From a blog called The Evil Editor:
“You seem to have confused "requesting manuscripts" with "reading manuscripts." An average timeline, measuring time in sentences (or ETU's, which, for those of you outside the editorial loop, stands for Editorial Time Units), for reading a requested manuscript is as follows:
3 ETU's: Start thinking, What planet was I on, and what was I smoking, when I requested this?
5 ETU's: Toss MS onto recycling mountain in corner, pour self a stiff one, and pop in DVD of Misery to watch an author being tortured.”
***
(forwarded by Naseem)
“What has been lost in the debate about immigration is this fact: our country’s foreign and economic policy is largely to blame for the flow of people who come here illegally…If you think about the hundreds of thousands of people who have come here over the past several decades from countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, many of them fled to the U.S. because they would have been killed or imprisoned by their government’s repressive regimes or forced to live as refugees. These were often regimes that our government supported for many years, if not decades, with large infusions of weapons and money.”
-- Jonathan Tasini (Hillary Clinton’s opponent for the NY Democratic senatorial nomination)
[OEE note: Let the Republicans show their pious respect for the law by making it a felony to HIRE illegal immigrants.]
***
“The Post has a graphic depicting that this war in Iraq, in dollar terms, has surpassed the U.S. Civil War, the first Gulf War, and World War I in cost. We are going to surpass the Korean War in 9 months. And we are spending at a rate far greater than we were in Vietnam, and will surpass Vietnam in about 24 months.“
-– Steve Clemons, The Washington Note
***
“If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12.00 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself. A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want.” --Tommy Johnson, brother of Rev. Ladell Johnson (no relation to Robert)
***
Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Iranian human rights advocate and
dissident Shirin Ebadi was asked on PBS last week about the $75 million the US State Department intends to spend supporting pro-democracy groups in her country, to which she answered, "Can democracy be brought to people by bombs? Democracy is a culture. It has to come from within a society, not brought by America to a society."
***
Qwest, fourth-largest phone company in the US, refused to turn the company's calling records over to the government because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," according to their lawyer.
***
***
Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!)
The shame
The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" (Hey!)
And bleed, the company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time
Another protestor has crossed the line (Hey!)
To find, the money's on the other side
Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!)
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument...
--“Holiday” by Green Day (on "American Idiot")
***
"As with all the monsters of legend, the death and destruction of the werewolf requires some special effort. And once the lycanthrope, like the vampire and even the animated mummy, acquired a subconscious and a sense of tragedy, it gained a tragic flaw. Putting aside silver bullets (merely an instrument) we find that the secret ingredient is... love.....Whenever the end comes...it must involve someone who was emotionally involved with the werewolf's human persona... Very often it is this person who strikes the deathblow, and then watches, with deep sorrow or deep shock as appropriate, as the fangs retract and the hair does whatever it is the hair does..."
-- John M. Ford, in his collection “Heat of Fusion”
***
"See---one kind of my face is gentle and kind, incapable of anything but love of my fellow man. The other side, the other profile, is cruel and predatory and evil, incapable of anything but the lusts and dark passions. It all depends on which side faces the moon at the ebb of the tide."
--Lionel Atwill, 1944 (quote provided by Wayne Sallee)
***
Oh wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it ?
-- John Donne, “A Fever”
***
“A few years ago, I drove nearly seven hours to read two stories at a
Monday night session hosted by the Twilight Tales Reading Group in Chicago. And every penny I spent to get there and back was well worth it. The Twilight Tales gang are some of the nicest people you can meet, and they are amazingly supportive of writers. Not just horror writers either. Just plain W R I T E R S.” -- Judy Rohrig
***
“After being asked ... to speak at an event held at the International Reading Association's conference in Chicago earlier this month, [Patricia] Polacco said she accepted the invitation through her staff.
A number of exchanges between Buchanan and Polacco's people followed, largely regarding what the author would discuss at the event, until Polacco was ultimately told she could not speak against No Child Left Behind in her speech.
.... Because SRA/McGraw-Hill publishes a number of the tests used in NCLB, the house was not eager to have Polacco speak her mind on the Bush-established initiative. And, after Polacco refused to alter her speech, she was dropped from the program.” – Publishers’ Weekly
***
See Also:
"We're literally going to drown in our own uneducated"
Why am I being played by a 16-year-old lipgloss model?,
"He was like a murderer annoyed at being called a shoplifter",
"I've had far more sex than I've had fights on water towers against guys with super powers"
“You seem to have confused "requesting manuscripts" with "reading manuscripts." An average timeline, measuring time in sentences (or ETU's, which, for those of you outside the editorial loop, stands for Editorial Time Units), for reading a requested manuscript is as follows:
3 ETU's: Start thinking, What planet was I on, and what was I smoking, when I requested this?
5 ETU's: Toss MS onto recycling mountain in corner, pour self a stiff one, and pop in DVD of Misery to watch an author being tortured.”
***
(forwarded by Naseem)
“What has been lost in the debate about immigration is this fact: our country’s foreign and economic policy is largely to blame for the flow of people who come here illegally…If you think about the hundreds of thousands of people who have come here over the past several decades from countries like El Salvador and Guatemala, many of them fled to the U.S. because they would have been killed or imprisoned by their government’s repressive regimes or forced to live as refugees. These were often regimes that our government supported for many years, if not decades, with large infusions of weapons and money.”
-- Jonathan Tasini (Hillary Clinton’s opponent for the NY Democratic senatorial nomination)
[OEE note: Let the Republicans show their pious respect for the law by making it a felony to HIRE illegal immigrants.]
***
“The Post has a graphic depicting that this war in Iraq, in dollar terms, has surpassed the U.S. Civil War, the first Gulf War, and World War I in cost. We are going to surpass the Korean War in 9 months. And we are spending at a rate far greater than we were in Vietnam, and will surpass Vietnam in about 24 months.“
-– Steve Clemons, The Washington Note
***
“If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12.00 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself. A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want.” --Tommy Johnson, brother of Rev. Ladell Johnson (no relation to Robert)***
Nobel Peace Prize-winner and Iranian human rights advocate and
dissident Shirin Ebadi was asked on PBS last week about the $75 million the US State Department intends to spend supporting pro-democracy groups in her country, to which she answered, "Can democracy be brought to people by bombs? Democracy is a culture. It has to come from within a society, not brought by America to a society."
***
Qwest, fourth-largest phone company in the US, refused to turn the company's calling records over to the government because of "a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," according to their lawyer.
***
***
Hear the sound of the falling rain
Coming down like an Armageddon flame (Hey!)
The shame
The ones who died without a name
Hear the dogs howling out of key
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery" (Hey!)
And bleed, the company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time
Another protestor has crossed the line (Hey!)
To find, the money's on the other side
Can I get another Amen? (Amen!)
There's a flag wrapped around a score of men (Hey!)
A gag, a plastic bag on a monument...
--“Holiday” by Green Day (on "American Idiot")
***
"As with all the monsters of legend, the death and destruction of the werewolf requires some special effort. And once the lycanthrope, like the vampire and even the animated mummy, acquired a subconscious and a sense of tragedy, it gained a tragic flaw. Putting aside silver bullets (merely an instrument) we find that the secret ingredient is... love.....Whenever the end comes...it must involve someone who was emotionally involved with the werewolf's human persona... Very often it is this person who strikes the deathblow, and then watches, with deep sorrow or deep shock as appropriate, as the fangs retract and the hair does whatever it is the hair does..."
-- John M. Ford, in his collection “Heat of Fusion”
***
"See---one kind of my face is gentle and kind, incapable of anything but love of my fellow man. The other side, the other profile, is cruel and predatory and evil, incapable of anything but the lusts and dark passions. It all depends on which side faces the moon at the ebb of the tide."
--Lionel Atwill, 1944 (quote provided by Wayne Sallee)
***
Oh wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it ?
-- John Donne, “A Fever”
***
“A few years ago, I drove nearly seven hours to read two stories at a
Monday night session hosted by the Twilight Tales Reading Group in Chicago. And every penny I spent to get there and back was well worth it. The Twilight Tales gang are some of the nicest people you can meet, and they are amazingly supportive of writers. Not just horror writers either. Just plain W R I T E R S.” -- Judy Rohrig
***
“After being asked ... to speak at an event held at the International Reading Association's conference in Chicago earlier this month, [Patricia] Polacco said she accepted the invitation through her staff.
A number of exchanges between Buchanan and Polacco's people followed, largely regarding what the author would discuss at the event, until Polacco was ultimately told she could not speak against No Child Left Behind in her speech.
.... Because SRA/McGraw-Hill publishes a number of the tests used in NCLB, the house was not eager to have Polacco speak her mind on the Bush-established initiative. And, after Polacco refused to alter her speech, she was dropped from the program.” – Publishers’ Weekly
***
See Also:
"We're literally going to drown in our own uneducated"
Why am I being played by a 16-year-old lipgloss model?,
"He was like a murderer annoyed at being called a shoplifter",
"I've had far more sex than I've had fights on water towers against guys with super powers"
What I Saw at the World Fantasy Convention 2005
(I'll start in the middle and work outwards): This was my first convention, so I hadn't prepared for Autograph Night, when almost all the authors, Great and Small, wait at tables like smiling teachers on parent conference night without the hypocrisy. 
If I'd understood what "Autograph Night" meant, I would have brought along my Peter Straub books (especially "Shadowland"-- Fanny the Wonder Rabbit, alas, made toast out of Straub's "Ghost Story". I could honestly tell him that she really enjoyed it, prefering it to everyting else on the shelf except Steinbeck and Robert Stone, and those she only sampled.)
I settled for shaking hands with Charles Vess to tell him I admired his work.
It might have sounded more sincere if I'd bought his print of a faery procession in the dealers' room, or I'd brought his Sandman work or "The Book of Ballads"from home, but he seemed very pleasant and I'm sure he would understand the vagaries of a schoolteacher's budget. Later learned that the Comic Book Defense Fund has been helping them with catastrophic medical bills-- what a culture is this, that a Charles Vess doesn't have health insurance but God forbid we should tax windfall profits on oil. Saw them at parties but was too shy to approach. I later read that his wife (and this year's winner of the "cute spouse" award) Karen Schaffer is involved with the Mythic imagination Institute. If I'd known, I certainly would have introduced myself to ask about that and talk about Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, Gioia Timpanelli, Coleman Barks et.al.
Aside from technical prowess, I admire how Vess avoids the "too pretty" trap of most faery art because he remembers both sides of the archetype.
His cheerful Puck has vicious teeth, his painting of Death is surrrounded by mummies as well as embryos waiting to be born, and there are drowned men's bones at the mermaid's feet.
John M. Ford's "The Last Hot Time" was the only book I'd packed for an autograph.
Mr. Ford is my nominee for the funniest person at the convention, though Graham Joyce might have tied. John M. Ford's reading included something called "The Fellowship of the Woosters". I have the impression that he saves this for readings and I don't think it's never been published, but Teresa Neilsen Hayden's blog mentions it fondly.
Ford's was my favorite of the readings I attended. Imagine that P.G. Wodehouse had written the first volume of Tolkein's trilogy, and an exasperated Bertie Wooster was dispatched instead of Aragorn to rescue "the world's only manic-depresssive hobbit".
It seems pitch-perfect to me; I laughed out loud at some of it and constantly smiled through the rest of it. Our flesh has memory, and this reminded me of the first time I saw "Zelig", when I went home with my face muscles hurting. Let's face it, Gandalf IS rather like one of those scary aunts of Bertie's, and Arwen throws the wounded Frodo over her horse exactly as Honoria Glosssop might have done. 
Mr. Ford's friends should urge him to send this to Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. I don't expect they'd put on funny beards and produce it, but they might send a nice letter.
Gene Wolfe had the longest autograph line and everyone at the convention, young and old, seemed to regard him with great affection. I've never read his books but he has a great walrus mustache and funny, self-effacing humor on panels. If there were ego battles going on at this convention, everyone kept it away from the kids; I supect this is because this class of artists and writers are indeed ferociously competitive, but the war is with ourselves and with the ideal we've set for ourselves.
As far as I could tell, none of the rich and the powerful (read: published authors and artists blessed with at least a nominal existence) behaved like snobs to the underlings, with the exception of a couple of editors and a small press dealer or two. (To be fair, they were probably on their guard because everyone there wanted something from them. They could smell the hunger coming off the unpublished writers and beginning collectors like the ambidextrous pheromones at a Tori Amos concert.)
Judi Rohrig, the publisher of Hellnotes-- who also bought my story "Witch"-- was very kind and answered my endless questions about convention etiquette. I'm sure she saved me from any major faux pas (too bad about the Teresa Neilsen Hayden incident; maybe she's forgotten my name by now...) This is sort of a holiday for many of the people there, so I kept my own work to myself unless someone asked.
I chatted with an amiable, rumpled curly fellow named Mike Dringenberg
about Salt Lake City, Neil Gaiman's coming movie and fan stuff. I recognized his name, and knew I had some of his work at home, but it wasn't until the next day that 
I made the connection-- he was the co-creator of "Sandman" characters like Death and Desire, and started talking to me as easy as Stevie Yzerman down at the muffler and brake shop. (In an alternate dimension, my sister Colleen is married to Steve Yzerman, he runs the most honest garage in the state, and they have ten wonderful children.)
My favorite paintings in the art exhibit were illustrations for the ballad "The Faithless Sister" by Hicaru Tanaka.
This is almost my favorite of the old ballads: a jealous girl drowns her sister because the sister won't give up her own true love. A bard-- not the leapy, "Brave Sir Robin" kind, but one of the scary shamanic Yeats black magician kind of bard-- finds her body and makes a harp from her breast bone, with her drowned hair for the strings and tuning pins made from her finger bones. When he sets the harp on the hearth stone of the proud house, the sister's voice sings the name of her murderer. There's a wonderful cover of the song by Loreena McKennitt on "The Mask and Mirror. She calls it "The Bonny Swans".That last scene with the murdered woman's voice reciting the members of her family and finally naming her killer: "And there does sit my father the King
with a hey ho and a bonny o
And yonder sits my mother the Queen
the swans swim so bonny o
And there does sit my brother Hugh
And by him William, sweet and true
And there does sit my false sister, Anne
Who drowned me for the sake of a man..." is for me one of the most chilling moments in literature. What came next? Madness, murder, suicide? Was anyone else complicit? (As Stephen King says somewhere, we try to achieve a Shirley Jackson frisson of terror, and if that doesn't work, go for the gross-out.)
The next night, someone introduced me to Mr. Tanaka. We shook hands and he offered his card in the Japanese manner, but alas, I've no business cards since the Emotional Collapse of Ought-Eight, when my pretension was lost in a fire. Everyone scolded me at the convention for not having a business card, so maybe it's time to revive them.
Although I'd written down the name "Hicaru Tanaka" after seeing his paintings, I made no connection with the gentleman there before me. We were both temporarily mute and we drifted apart, mildly embarassed. The next morning I realized he had made the paintings I so admired. I'm sure this happens a lot at conventions, where even the extroverts have to pace themselves.
More to come....
If I'd understood what "Autograph Night" meant, I would have brought along my Peter Straub books (especially "Shadowland"-- Fanny the Wonder Rabbit, alas, made toast out of Straub's "Ghost Story". I could honestly tell him that she really enjoyed it, prefering it to everyting else on the shelf except Steinbeck and Robert Stone, and those she only sampled.)
I settled for shaking hands with Charles Vess to tell him I admired his work.
It might have sounded more sincere if I'd bought his print of a faery procession in the dealers' room, or I'd brought his Sandman work or "The Book of Ballads"from home, but he seemed very pleasant and I'm sure he would understand the vagaries of a schoolteacher's budget. Later learned that the Comic Book Defense Fund has been helping them with catastrophic medical bills-- what a culture is this, that a Charles Vess doesn't have health insurance but God forbid we should tax windfall profits on oil. Saw them at parties but was too shy to approach. I later read that his wife (and this year's winner of the "cute spouse" award) Karen Schaffer is involved with the Mythic imagination Institute. If I'd known, I certainly would have introduced myself to ask about that and talk about Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, Gioia Timpanelli, Coleman Barks et.al. Aside from technical prowess, I admire how Vess avoids the "too pretty" trap of most faery art because he remembers both sides of the archetype.
His cheerful Puck has vicious teeth, his painting of Death is surrrounded by mummies as well as embryos waiting to be born, and there are drowned men's bones at the mermaid's feet.John M. Ford's "The Last Hot Time" was the only book I'd packed for an autograph.
Mr. Ford is my nominee for the funniest person at the convention, though Graham Joyce might have tied. John M. Ford's reading included something called "The Fellowship of the Woosters". I have the impression that he saves this for readings and I don't think it's never been published, but Teresa Neilsen Hayden's blog mentions it fondly. Ford's was my favorite of the readings I attended. Imagine that P.G. Wodehouse had written the first volume of Tolkein's trilogy, and an exasperated Bertie Wooster was dispatched instead of Aragorn to rescue "the world's only manic-depresssive hobbit".
It seems pitch-perfect to me; I laughed out loud at some of it and constantly smiled through the rest of it. Our flesh has memory, and this reminded me of the first time I saw "Zelig", when I went home with my face muscles hurting. Let's face it, Gandalf IS rather like one of those scary aunts of Bertie's, and Arwen throws the wounded Frodo over her horse exactly as Honoria Glosssop might have done. 
Mr. Ford's friends should urge him to send this to Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. I don't expect they'd put on funny beards and produce it, but they might send a nice letter.
Gene Wolfe had the longest autograph line and everyone at the convention, young and old, seemed to regard him with great affection. I've never read his books but he has a great walrus mustache and funny, self-effacing humor on panels. If there were ego battles going on at this convention, everyone kept it away from the kids; I supect this is because this class of artists and writers are indeed ferociously competitive, but the war is with ourselves and with the ideal we've set for ourselves.
As far as I could tell, none of the rich and the powerful (read: published authors and artists blessed with at least a nominal existence) behaved like snobs to the underlings, with the exception of a couple of editors and a small press dealer or two. (To be fair, they were probably on their guard because everyone there wanted something from them. They could smell the hunger coming off the unpublished writers and beginning collectors like the ambidextrous pheromones at a Tori Amos concert.)
Judi Rohrig, the publisher of Hellnotes-- who also bought my story "Witch"-- was very kind and answered my endless questions about convention etiquette. I'm sure she saved me from any major faux pas (too bad about the Teresa Neilsen Hayden incident; maybe she's forgotten my name by now...) This is sort of a holiday for many of the people there, so I kept my own work to myself unless someone asked.
I chatted with an amiable, rumpled curly fellow named Mike Dringenberg
about Salt Lake City, Neil Gaiman's coming movie and fan stuff. I recognized his name, and knew I had some of his work at home, but it wasn't until the next day that 
I made the connection-- he was the co-creator of "Sandman" characters like Death and Desire, and started talking to me as easy as Stevie Yzerman down at the muffler and brake shop. (In an alternate dimension, my sister Colleen is married to Steve Yzerman, he runs the most honest garage in the state, and they have ten wonderful children.)My favorite paintings in the art exhibit were illustrations for the ballad "The Faithless Sister" by Hicaru Tanaka.
This is almost my favorite of the old ballads: a jealous girl drowns her sister because the sister won't give up her own true love. A bard-- not the leapy, "Brave Sir Robin" kind, but one of the scary shamanic Yeats black magician kind of bard-- finds her body and makes a harp from her breast bone, with her drowned hair for the strings and tuning pins made from her finger bones. When he sets the harp on the hearth stone of the proud house, the sister's voice sings the name of her murderer. There's a wonderful cover of the song by Loreena McKennitt on "The Mask and Mirror. She calls it "The Bonny Swans".That last scene with the murdered woman's voice reciting the members of her family and finally naming her killer: "And there does sit my father the King with a hey ho and a bonny o
And yonder sits my mother the Queen
the swans swim so bonny o
And there does sit my brother Hugh
And by him William, sweet and true
And there does sit my false sister, Anne
Who drowned me for the sake of a man..." is for me one of the most chilling moments in literature. What came next? Madness, murder, suicide? Was anyone else complicit? (As Stephen King says somewhere, we try to achieve a Shirley Jackson frisson of terror, and if that doesn't work, go for the gross-out.)
The next night, someone introduced me to Mr. Tanaka. We shook hands and he offered his card in the Japanese manner, but alas, I've no business cards since the Emotional Collapse of Ought-Eight, when my pretension was lost in a fire. Everyone scolded me at the convention for not having a business card, so maybe it's time to revive them.
Although I'd written down the name "Hicaru Tanaka" after seeing his paintings, I made no connection with the gentleman there before me. We were both temporarily mute and we drifted apart, mildly embarassed. The next morning I realized he had made the paintings I so admired. I'm sure this happens a lot at conventions, where even the extroverts have to pace themselves.
More to come....
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