ZOMBIES vs EBOLA

What is it with our puzzling fascination with zombies?

Zombies embody an “all consuming evil” (pun intended.) 

 A malevolent evil with no mercy, regard, or compassion … only hunger. 
Worse.

If you are only infected instead of ingested, you become one of the hungry dead yourself! 

No sense of family, friend, or even of yourself.

And you develop terrible table manners!

Zombies are not unlike a force of Nature … 

and Nature has become unsettlingly dangerous these past months with the onslaught of new diseases like Ebola.

So perhaps we are drawn to the zombie movie because the zombie reflects the all-too-real terrors in our newspaper headlines. 

 Just as you cannot reason with a zombie, threaten its family or its further living … the same can be said of a terrorist or Ebola.

Terrorists keep on coming until you kill them. 

The same can be said for Ebola  

or for the deranged killer who stalks into a schoolroom and begins to open fire with automatic weapons.

Zombies provide similar evils … 

but non-threatening since they could never exist. 

We can work out our fears of Ebola, flesh-eating bacteria, terrorists, muggers, 

and insane gunmen in the dark of the movie theater or the bright light of a school classroom.

We can ask ourselves what would we do in a Zombie Apocalypse, 

who would we take with us, 

what we would take, and where would we go. 

In the unspoken thoughts of our minds, we translate that into a Nuclear War/Natural Disaster Apocalypse.

We identify with the survivors in the zombie movies. We want to believe that we would survive in such a crucible. 

And deep down that supports our fearful hope that we would survive should Nature, Nuclear War, or terrorism reign over our landscape.

Who would have thought it? 
Zombies as defenders against Ebola?

(Of course, if you watch THE WALKING DEAD, you LEARN the 21st Century's Dysfunctional Motto:

DON'T GET TOO ATTACHED TO ANYONE.)

CREEPY FREEBIES is here!

Courtesy of Milo James Fowler, Creepy Freebies is here!

Time to get some great reads for the dark winter months ahead...for free!

Here's the line up this year:

Cory Cone

James Garcia, Jr.

Anne E. Johnson

Simon Kewin
Michelle Ann King
Rhonda Parrish

Christine Rains

Mary Rajotte

Kay Theodoratus

Erin Cole

Milo James Fowler

To tip my Stetson to Milo and those other nice folks, I am offering for FREE this entire week of Halloween:

{Starting Monday!}

VICTOR STANDISH MUST DIE!
http://www.amazon.com/VICTOR-STANDISH-MUST-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00BSWXQKU/

Ever wonder how the Ulysses of the French Quarter would make out in THE WALKING DEAD?

This book tells you!

FRIENDSHIP?

Friendship?

My most popular post, visited many times each day is this one.

So I thought I would bring it to the attention of my new friends,

adding some new items to make it interesting to those who read my earlier post:

Anais Nin, the enigmatic French author famous for her journals spanning 60 fascinating years, wrote:

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world dawns."


It would be hard to say whether King Solomon was made more alone by his many wives or by the prison of his throne.
 
Nonetheless, King Solomon wrote:

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. 

For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: 

but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."

Friendship

It is what is so very lacking in today's cyber-society where everyone is twittering, but no one is listening. Or giving a damn.

They are hunched over their smart phones, waiting impatiently for the message to end so they can jump in with, what is essentially, a "Listen to me!"

Because so few of us have it, friendship and its portrayal are what will bring us back to a novel over and over again. I know that it is the case for me. And for the friends I talk to.

Frodo and Sam. Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Spencer and Hawk (from the always entertaining Robert B. Parker series.) Elvis Cole and Joe Pike (from the Robert Crais fascinating detective series.) Bill and Ted. Calvin and Hobbes.

Family is a crap shoot. 

Love cools. 

But friendship endures.

Friendship is one of the cornerstones of my surreal Noir urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

The supernatural predators come out after Katrina. Can two undead legends stop them?
 http://www.amazon.com/FRENCH-QUARTER-NOCTURNE/ebook/dp/B004YTMNRG/  

Two friends: 
 
Samuel McCord, agnostic undead Texas Ranger. Renfield, haunted revenant priest.
 
They have known one another since Istanbul was Constantinople and honor still had meaning.

Both love mysterious, beautiful, deadly women. 

McCord would say all beautiful women are both mysterious and deadly. His love is Meilori, a being from another plane of existence. "Born of stardust and the sea" as she once told him.

And Father Renfield loves Sister Magda, the nun who serves with him in his church. 

Yet the friendship of the two undead men is a kind of love in itself like David's and Jonathan's:

{At this point in the novel, Renfield, the vampire priest, and his best friend, Sam McCord, are stepping out from behind MEILORI'S, looking at the flooded street before them.}:

Renfield bent down and picked up a floating child’s doll, its false hair soaked and hanging. Its glassy eyes eerily reminded me of too many human corpses I had seen floating down this same street.

Renfield stroked the plastic cheek softly as if it had been the flesh of the girl who had lost her doll. Closing his eyes, he dropped the doll with a splash that sounded much too loud.

That splash said it all. Renfield looked my way with eyes that clawed at me.

“I could take the Blitz. It came from Man. This .... This is from God.”

I just looked at him. From God? I bit back the words that first came to my lips.

It was plain he was hurting inside. And I put up with such talk from Renfield. He was my friend. And he was a priest.

Priests were supposed to see life through the filter of faith. Still, I had lost faith in the unseen long ago. It had slowly faded like mist on a summer sea.

But there is a toll to such a thing. I looked around about us, trying to see it through my friend’s eyes of faith. I failed. Not a first for me.

Renfield’s head was down, though his eyes followed the floating body of the plastic doll as the currents pulled it under the black waters.

“Do you think He finally has had enough of us, Sam? Enough of our cruelty, our madness?”

I rubbed gloved fingers across my face. Like I said, I was at a loss at whether the Great Mystery even existed or not, much less be able to give a true answer to that question.

But Renfield had his own doubts about God. He was my friend, and I wouldn't push him over that dark edge.

“Hell, Padre, I don’t know. Could be.”

I smiled bitter. “You know the Lakota Sioux call God The Great Mystery.”

“You call Him that, too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what He’s up to most of the times is surely a great mystery to me.”

He studied me. “You’re not ---”

He waved a hand around us. “ --- mad at Him for all of this?”

Mad at someone who might only exist in empty prayers to equally empty darkness? I saw the anguish in my friend’s eyes. I chose my words carefully.

“Hell, Padre, we all chose to live in a city seven feet below sea level right by the coast, protected by levees built and maintained by a corrupt government. What did we think would happen?”

Renfield shook his head. “We all denied. It’s what humans do.”

His lips twisted. “Even those of us whose humanity is only a memory.”

I clamped a hand on his left shoulder. “You’re human where it counts.”

His face twitched as if his tongue tasted bad. “And where’s that?”

“Your soul, Renfield, your soul.”

“I lost that a long time ago, Sam.”

I might be at a loss about God, mind you. But I was sure about the soul, for I had seen its lack often enough in too many eyes. Just like I saw its solid presence within Renfield's.

“No, you didn’t. Like mine, your soul is a cocklebur. You can’t shake it no matter what you do.”

He smiled wearily. “I must have missed that verse in the Bible.”

“Gotta read the small print, Padre.”
*****************************************************
I'll let Mark Twain have the last word on friendship: 
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with."

ARE YOU A PSYCHOPATH?

Do you wonder?

TAKE THE PSYCHOPATH TEST 

and find out:

http://psychopath.channel4.com/quizzes.html

The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency.  

30 of them, in fact.

An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

 Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers:

 to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will.

 "What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. 

It's like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on," 

said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University.

But what does this perpetual state of national emergency do to psyches of the citizens of this nation?

When you have a phenomenon like 9/11, it’s literally a disclosure, which is the Greek meaning of the word.

It unveils an understanding of the world that is beyond what any of us possessed before or could’ve imagined having.
  
In other words, the end of the world as we know it can show the world as it always really was, beneath the veneer of stability.

Apocalyptic events seriously draw into question people’s taken-for-granted understanding of their worlds. 

 If you get a little thrill when you contemplate the worldwide obliteration of society in a horrific Armageddon, 

have you crossed a line from “person with a guilty pleasure” to “person who is a dangerous psychopath”?

 When the apocalypse is in the hypothetical, it’s normal for the excitement to be stronger than the fear. 

If it’s not in the hypothetical and you’re seeing the devastation and you’re more excited than distraught, 

then you’re in the psychopathic range.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

MYSTERIES

MYSTERIES LURK ALL AROUND US

SOME ANCIENT, 

SOME HIDING IN THE SHADOWS 

OF OLD TOMORROWS

1) THE RETURN OF JOHN TWELVE HAWKS

 The author was, and still is, a mystery. "Living off the grid" he continues to be unknown, 

 although speculation abounds while stand-ins appear at readings around the world.

The Fourth Realm Trilogy - consisting of THE TRAVELER, THE DARK RIVER, and THE GOLDEN CITY - 

has been translated into 25 languages and has sold more than 1.5 million books.

His latest novel, SPARKS, was just published this month.  Its film rights were sold to DREAMWORKS last year.

2)  THE ALUMINUM WEDGE OF AIUD

In 1974, this is a wedge-shaped object found 1.2 miles east of Aiud, Romania.

 It was discovered on the banks of the Mures River. It was reportedly unearthed 35 feet under sand and alongside two mastodon bones. 

 It’s strange because aluminum was not discovered until 1808 and not produced in quantity until 1885. 

Since it was found in the same layer as mastodon bones, it would indicate that this wedge was at least 11,000 years old. 

3) THE DIGHTON ROCK

The Dighton Rock is a 40-ton boulder located on the shores of the Taunton River in Massachusetts and it is covered in puzzling petroglyphs. 

For nearly 300 years, people have speculated about its origin and meaning.

 Investigators have attempted to decode the odd glyphs since an English colonist first described the boulder in 1680, but they have had little success.

4) THE POLLOCK TWINS

In 1957, 11 year-old Joanna and 6 year-old Jacqueline Pollock were tragically killed in a car accident in Northumberland, England. 

They were sisters. 

A year later, their mother gave birth to twins Jennifer and Gillian. 

The younger twin, Jennifer, had birth marks on her body in exactly the same place as Jacqueline had them. 

The twins then started requesting toys belonging to the deceased girls which they had no prior knowledge of. 

The twins even asked to go to a park they have never been to before (but their deceased sisters had). 

A well-respected psychologist at the time, one Dr. Ian Stevenson, studied the case in-depth and concluded it was likely the twins were reincarnations of their departed sisters.

5) OVERTOUN  BRIDGE

This seemingly innocuous bridge in Dumbarton, Scotland, is a suicide hotspot for depressed canines. 

Over 50 dogs have thrown themselves headlong from the bridge to death or serious injury. 

It also occurs at the same part of the bridge, in the same weather, to the same long-muzzled breeds. 

Back in 1994, the bridge was the site of an even greater horror story, 

when local man Kevin Moy cast his baby off the parapet, claiming the youngster was the Anti-Christ. 

6)  THE MARY CELESTE

The ship was discovered off the coast of Portugal in 1872, completely devoid of captain or crew.

 None of the cargo was missing and there were no signs of violence aboard; 

and though the lifeboat was missing, where did they all go? 

The captain had brought his wife and child on board, and not a trace of any person was ever found.

 7) GIANTS IN NEVADA

Nevada Indian legend of 12 foot red-haired giants that lived in the area when they arrived. 

The story has the Native American’s killing off the giants at a cave. Excavations of guano in 1911 turned up this human jaw. Above it is compared to a casting of a normal man’s jawbone.

 In 1931 two skeletons were found in a lake bed. One was 8′ tall, the other just under 10′ tall.

HOW DO YOU GET NEW IDEAS?

DID YOU EVER WONDER WHERE PEOPLE 

GET NEW IDEAS?

In 1959, the fabled sci-fi author, Isaac Asimov (I, ROBOT, FANTASTIC VOYAGE) was asked to work for the government.

He had to decline since any access to secret info would limit his freedom of expression in his writing.

But he wrote an essay on where new ideas came from to help those in the Think Tank he was saying NO to.

It has just now been released:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531911/isaac-asimov-mulls-how-do-people-get-new-ideas/


It is a hard topic since even those generators of new ideas rarely know where they came from.

He looked at Darwin and Alfred Wallace (did you know he simultaneously thought of Evolution along with old Charles?)

Both traveled to far places, observing strange species of plants and animals and the manner in which they varied from place to place.

Both were keenly interested in finding an explanation for this,

and both failed until each happened to read Malthus’s “Essay on Population.”

So what is needed is not only people with a good background in a particular field,

but also people capable of making a connection between item 1 and item 2 which might not ordinarily seem connected.

 Thomas H. Huxley is supposed to have exclaimed after reading On the Origin of Species:

“How stupid of me not to have thought of this.”

But why didn't he think of it?
 

 It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

 A person willing to fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance.

Since he occurs only rarely, he must seem eccentric (in at least that respect) to the rest of us.

A person eccentric in one respect is often eccentric in others.

And creation always occurs in isolation since when alone one dares to imagine the impossible.

(Oscar Wilde expressed that viewpoint -- which I had him do again in my DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE.)

 The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it.

His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it.

The famous example of Kekule working out the structure of benzene in his sleep is well-known.  

(At least it was to a genius like Isaac Asimov!)

For a work to be truly creative, it has to depart from the status quo at some point. 

That departure makes many people uncomfortable.

 Bias is present in most people during periods of uncertainty -- 

which explains why society has a history of rejecting its greatest innovations --

And why at this very unstable time in the world, NOW would be a very bad time to be innovative!

OH, YOU THOUGHT I WOULD TELL WHERE TO GET STORY IDEAS!

1) TURN THE ORDINARY INTO THE EXTRAORDINARY:

You know those cute little girls selling their lemonade?  

What if their father spiked that lemonade with a designer bug ... one to which he alone had the cure?


2.) NO PEOPLE ARE LITTLE - JUST THE MINDS OBSERVING THEM:

Ever think of all the mini-slices of life your local mail deliverer sees?  Day by day, week by week, month by month.

What if he were a closet blackmailer?  

A timid soul longing to be a vigilante?  

A bit of healing in a cold world, leaving money, dolls, or clothes where they were badly needed.


3.) MIND {and MINE} YOUR SURROUNDINGS:

Stuck at a dull lecture or civic function?  

Try to imagine the wildest curve that could be thrown to this pompous occasion and write a short story of it.

Observe keenly all the interactions around you no matter if you are eating out, or at the mall, or in the doctor's office.


4.) SEE THE BRUISED HEART BENEATH THE ODDBALL:

While waiting at a distant city's gas station and Quick Shop, I saw a homeless man, wearing a long brown blanket as if it were a cape. 

He walked across the busy interstate, moving his arms as if he were swimming.  I breathed a prayer he would make it safely across.

What had his childhood been like?  Had his mother held him, cooing at the lovely baby given her?  What had fragmented his mind?

Was he happier than most of us who thought we were sane?

Where do you get your ideas from"

WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?

The other day I was looking up a topic on Google and wrote WHAT ...

Google Search provided me with WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?

To which I intelligently went HUH?


As it turns out, WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY? is a very strange, nonsensical but upbeat song  

(I could only take about 10 seconds of it!):

Like Hibbs with RIVER FACE from his little book, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE, I had found a new game:

I found though that Google Search just gave me a record of what questions I had earlier asked until I got to N

Neuro3X was brought up:

Remember that little clear pill from LIMITLESS?

Some folks are selling "Brain Boosting" pills, using the movie and Will Smith's testimonial to hawk them.

 Neuro3X boosts your IQ in just minutes 

but not before you, in your denseness,

 give your credit card info to a company who will not accept PayPal.

The website has been newly registered with a short life expectancy, 

which follows the pattern used by many fraudulent and fake selling websites.

Please be vigilant and take extra care before providing any payment information.

But wouldn't it be fun if it were valid?