Society Today

I have had a few days to reflect on may things recently, in part through my meditation, in part via sleeping, writing or reading (yes I multitask, except in meditation as that defeats the purpose), and I have come to realize just how fucked up society is.  It never used to be this fucked up; so where did it all go wrong?  That is hard to say, but let's examine it some.

Rome, heralded as one of the ultimate civilizations of all time, certainly had its share of troubles.  Sex was always rampant and never far away, with anything goes, the army was used to keep everything in check, and as far as they were concerned, they had it right to the point of beating down everyone in their path that disagreed with them.  And bonus was, if you didn't like the person in power, just kill him and make room for the next one.  Hell, it's even coming out Nero wasn't as bad as he was supposed to be, much like Richard the III.  I have often wondered how much of an impact Christianity had on the fall of the Roman Empire.  Perhaps it is time to write a paper on it.  But either way, Rome used its military quite effectively, to the point that if the Tenth Legion was coming, the enemy were pissing in their pants.  And let's not forget the Colosseum, excellent way to rid yourself of your enemies. 

So is it any wonder we see things like the killing of the school children in a school over in Pakistan.  We see here the same mentality:  you don't agree with what we believe, then we're going to force it on you, and then kill you.  Nice to see that big super powers cannot deal with what essentially are a group of nomads living on ideals from 2000 years ago.  But then again, has the Western World really evolved from those ideals at all?

I have often said that Western civilization reached its peak in the 1920s, and that we are in slow decline, but once again, when things didn't meet up with Western standards, off the US goes and into war, to correct it, thus forcing their ideals down someone's throat.  And I'm not talking recent wars, but more along the lines of the Vietnam War.  I once saw a Monty Python skit that described the spread of communism very well involving tooth rot.  But essentially the Vietnam war was pretty much a war to make sure that Asia in that area, remained closer to the values of the US, and to prevent the spread of communism.  And they lost once again, in part to a superior force in terms of tactics, but inferior to some degree in technology.  The saddest part of this war is that its veterans were never welcomed home properly, rather they were spit upon and despised by many.

But in a smaller sense, we see this in individuals too.  The Korean Air Lines brat as I will call her, threw a big hissy fit over the fact she was served nuts in a bag, rather than on a plate and made an entire plane turn around and go back to get rid of the Steward.  This is much like a Roman Emperor who wants everything, but then in the end is killed.  And in this case, everyone turned against her and now she is the equivalent of an assassinated Emperor. 

Even in my day to day, I see people who push their views down others' throats, whether it be over policies, points of view or just lack of listening.  And even resort, behind your back, to push their view.  I can respect someone's view, even when disagreeing with them, but when you become a dumbass, that's where I draw the line.

So when I look at society today, I realize we really haven't evolved at all since the days of the Roman Empire and perhaps earlier.  Many people believe in Atlantis in part because it was a society that didn't suffer from such things.  As a kid growing up in the 70s and 80s, I certainly don't remember seeing stuff like this happening, but then I was more oblivious to it. I don't think having a war to exterminate others because they don't like your points of view is ultimately going to work, quite simply because it never worked for anyone else.  Until society decides to evolve beyond the principles of the past, we shouldn't expect any different from anyone, should we.  And for that to happen, someone, somewhere must take the first step.  But for now, as people are calling for vengeance, perhaps we need to return to the ways of the Romans:  forget vengeance, just wipe them all out like Rome did with Carthage.  I mean, what have you got to lose, this world is still the world of the Romans in many ways.

Not sure we've gotten beyond the third from the right yet......

What things were like when I was a kid...

As we approach Christmas here, I thought I would take some of you youngin's back to what it was like when I was a kind.  Some of you older folk out there will remember some of this.

Snow, we has a shit ton of snow.  It was common that come January or February, we would have snow that was up to the telephone wires, a good 20 feet or so, stacked up along side the road as sniw banks.  Not to mention that the temperature often reached around -17 deg C or lower (we measured in deg F back then) and we bundled up really good.  Making snow forts was no problem, all you needed was a good shovel.  Yup, no building walls up.

School, we had the strap if you were a bad little motherfucker.  Yes, we had whatever the hell punishment that fell under.  And it was a deterrent let me tell you.  Hell, watching your grade 7 teacher throw people into the wall and smashing their heads together kept us in line, not to mention the deafening yelling that went with it.  We failed things, something that taught us we had to get our shit together and we were allowed to fail, hell they took pleasure in it, right on up until the point you showed up in their class next year (happened to a few friends of mine).

On the playground we were allowed to play full contact foot ball, red rover, whatever the hell we wanted until we drew blood, then it became a true sport.  Nothing was too far unless it was a fist fight, which was rare cause of the strap.

Lawn darts, that was a big one we played after school and on weekends, and not the shitty ones we have now.  No, my lawn darts were weighted darts with very sharp points.  The best part of them, is they were weapons, and it separated out the dumb ones from the smart ones very quickly.  Yeah it just did, did it well enough that it is now banned.

The final thing is that we had no political correctness.  None at all.  No one at that time really gave a flying fuck what you said.  It was simply just said.  You went about your business and no one said a word.  And for that matter, it was Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays.

Well that being said, I will leave you this little bit about Christmas, via our friends Matt Parker and Trey Stone:

An introspective to Anthology of the Guardians

Anthology of the Guardians is the second series I am working on, with some new entries in it coming up in the new year.  A closer look at the Anthology of the Guardians is below:

Anthology of the Guardians came out because as I was writing Triumvirate, I began to ask many questions, including were the immortals natural, or part of an experiment, if they were an experiment, what events deep in the past brought about their creation?  And what was the galaxy truly like and why in the time frame of Triumvirate does it seem there are only humans in the galaxy and no other life forms?

In one of the early drafts of Triumvirate, the antagonist was originally a mortal, while Savage was one of the last remaining immortals left alive after a purge that saw the death of many of his kind.  But as time moved on in the drafts, I re-examined the story and saw that too many had been like this:  an invasion from an external foe and someone special was there to stop it.  I took it to the next notch and made the antagonist and his closest advisers exiled immortals, and with that, the Anthology of the Guardians series was born. To this date, only short stories and novellas have been written, but some novels are planned once the Triumvirate Chronicles gets off of my plate.

One of the big pushes for new technology of course is war, most of our modern conveniences we have, such as blue ray players, GPS, cellular phones all came from some sort of military research.  So why not make the origin of this particular generation of Guardians be a war, and that they are created to save humanity.  Now where I perhaps move off in a different direction relative to most authors in this "let's create the ultimate beings" to beat back the enemy, I have chosen not only upstanding citizens for the research, but also individuals who happen to be murderers, rapists; basically the dregs of civilization.

It is through the Anthology of the Guardians that the reader gets to explore a galaxy full of many different civilizations and lifeforms.  And it is this story that gives some of the background to some of my characters in the Triumvirate Chronicles, while others are dealt with in an as of unnamed project looking at the Grand Galactic Empire. 

My books are currently on sale at Lulu and at my Digital Store!!

 

The introspective on my writing....in time for the sale!!!

Well as it is Christmas, if you are wanting to get that really happy person, who is so fucking happy you want to just smack that smile from their face, then may I suggest my dark writings.  Here is the introspective about the Triumvirate Chronicles:

So just what is this book series about???  Well it is best said that it is the end of the story.  I know that kind of sounds like the first 3 Star Wars movies where Lucas gave us the end and had us wondering for close to 20 years what happened to turn Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader and why were the Jedi killed?

Well with respect to this book series, I started at the end because it was where it brought all the key characters together.  And it really wasn't until I was part way through writing that I realized it was the culmination of many stories from the past.

The Triumvirate Chronicles starts during a war that has been ongoing for just over a century.  The Hegemony are invaders from another galaxy who are being manipulated by ancient immortals that were exiled from our galaxy 70 000 years ago.  Standing in their way in one small part of our galaxy is the Territories of the Twenty, an alliance of several worlds, that despite their inferior technology, has survived, in good part because of another immortal, William Savage, who commands part of the their fleet. 

The galaxy portrayed throughout the Triumvirate Chronicles is that of a gritty human dominated one where at the foundation laid for a larger alliance against in the galaxy to stand up to the Hegemony.  But unlike Anthology of the Guardians, the answer to why is this galaxy dominated by humans is not entirely clear, and it isn't until later in the series that the genocide brought down by the immortals against non-humans in the galaxy is truly revealed in not only its true extent, but also the abuses by the immortals sworn to uphold justice.

This series examines through the eyes of many of the immortals the age old question:  does absolute power corrupt absolutely?  There is no true black and white answer for this, but certainly many of the immortals over their long lifetimes all fall from grace at one point or another, and through abuse of their powers, the effects are far flung.  Often there is nothing more separating the  good guys from the bad guys other than their uniforms.  Where many works of fiction would take immortals and imbue them with a god-like essence that they can do no wrong, other than maybe suffer some arrogance, I let my immortals keep their human failings and show how they deal with it. 

Overall I have tried to succeed in writing something a bit different, something more realistic not only in the science behind things, but also in attitudes and perhaps in all this, capture the danger of absolute power given to wrong people even though they may fight on the side of the good guys (and of course that in itself is all subjective). At the same time, in writing the end, it made it much easier to go back and write how this ending all came about.  So I hope that you the reader will take a chance to hop aboard this train shall we say, and see where it goes.

On sale now at my Digital Store or at Lulu!!

Cosplayers and Conventions: The vendors versus the players

Perhaps I am really stepping into it here, but oh well, not the first time.  During the past 6 months I've seen a lot of vendors take to the internet complaining about how shitty sales are at the cons, where not so long ago, you were guaranteed to make your table and then some.  I have seen this myself in the cons I was at this year.

Part of this post was inspired by reading a post on a Cosplayer's facebook and I want to maybe try and put some sense behind it, from both sides.  The author of the article shared was going on about how Cosplayers are ruining conventions for vendors because their sales have gone down.  I too saw this amongst the veterans of the cons I was at.  Here is the thing for me:  we are in tougher financial times, so maybe we need to lower our expectations on sales, but then again, neither should a vendor have to shell out $3000 for table, travel, lodge, food and so on and only make $300 over a four day convention in a major city.  That is bad for the convention all the way around.

I appreciate that the Cosplayers put a lot of time, effort and money into their costumes as they all go way beyond even a fancy halloween costume, but the problem lies in when you go walk around the aisles of vendors, which are often too narrow, people crowd around you and you essentially cause a traffic jam in the aisle.  Potential buyers come around, see the traffic jam, and say fuck it, and move on, all potential sales for those vendors in the aisles now gone as they usually don't come back.  I had the experience of a Cosplayer take up residence across from my booth for 30 minutes, who wouldn't move their ass, and caused such a traffic jam, I had no one at my booth during that time.  How many potential sales did I lose during that time?

As much as the cons are both vendors and Cosplayers, Cosplayers, listen up.  You want to stop being blamed for vendors losing sales, then instead of taking up valuable space in the vendor's area in your costume, you can do 1 of 2 things:  either don't wear your costume when in the vendor's area, or better yet, if you get stuck in front of a booth and are blocking people from getting to vendors, chip in and help the vendor sell for a little bit.  The vendor will be grateful and may just give you something for your troubles.

Keep in mind, it is also the responsibility of the people running the convention to make sure the aisles are wide enough to handle this kind of traffic, that they keep rates reasonable for vendors, and to maybe encourage some of you to go pick a booth you like and help sell stuff.  Rather than work against each other, work together, it is far better.  Some of you may think this is very simplistic, but sometimes it is simplicity that wins the day.

Wish I had a pic there, but nah, not today, so I will leave you with a random video:

You have to be shitting me....and South Park always got it right

So I am willing to bet that if you were to go look at celebrities, there are a lot of assholes.  Over the years, a show near and dear to my heart, cause me and my good friends all watched it together writing up our Master's theses, hell I even put stuff from this show in my defense, was South Park.

There have been a few really good ones during the show; everyone remembers the John Travolta episode and would he please come out of the closet.  I was rolling in the aisles. and despite that Mr. Saturday Night Fever, Vinny Barbarino says he's not gay, well we will leave that with his medichlorians I think.

Of course, the episode where Cartman becomes Hitler and everyone is watching the Passion of the Christ, we see Mel Gibson at his finest.  Many thought, no way he's this crackerjack, but it was only a few years later that we found out South Park was right once again:  Mel Gibson is fucking looney tunes, but then you had to be to make Lethal Weapon 4.\

The one I want to look at it, is good old Number 2, weighing in at close to a 100 courics, was Bono himself.  You see, we all knew he was arrogant, demanding first world countries give up a ton of money to help third world countries, while in these first world countries, people are still starving and homeless and so on, yet he himself lived high on the hog, the money from his tours often being the income for an entire third world country he was trying to help.  He really is a piece of shit as far as I am concerned.  Hell I would pay good money to go to a U2 concert just to start the stadium booing when he goes on his tirade.  His band mates even time him and I'm sure that they are embarrassed by this. 

What is truly mind boggling is this:  Rolling Stone on U2's latest album
I mean what the fuck here, I deleted this piece of shit (came in at 30 courics) from all of my iTunes on all of my devices.  I want to know where the class action lawsuit against this flagrant spam is? I mean everything else ends up in a fucking lawsuit these days, why not this one?????

I personally think that GQ got it right with this article on who are the 30 least influential in 2014.
For once someone got it right.

Yup they got it right.

The news today, or lack of actually reporting the news...

What the hell is up with modern media of late?  Have they forgotten what news actually is?  I used to blame it entirely on the fact that it was a slow news day, but of the past few weeks, if that is the case, then there is simply no news.  Let me show you what I mean.

The Toronto Sun today for headlines, out of the 5 possible that first come up on my page, 2 are on sports (for those that know me, don’t ever get me going on sports, as they are used as a means to distract the populace from the real shit going on out there, and I’m sure modern politicians would say they created this, forgetting this is what the Romans used to do), one is about the Ferguson cop, one is about the new Mayor of Toronto’s team, and the final one about something called Nannyville.   It is the last one that irks me the most cause it uses up one of the free views you can have on the Toronto Sun for the month.  I read this last one, I can’t even find a story in there other than it was a bunch of whining.  If this wasn’t a veteran reporter, I’d bet you this guy would never get a job.  Of course go down the page, and you find that the next 6 stories, 4 are of sports and 2 are of something about some supposed celebrities (at the bottom of the page is the big story about Mel B having a girlfriend, who the fuck cares, it’s not like she’s going to be in your house giving you a sex show with this girlfriend, not that you want to see Mel B naked).  There are other Toronto newspapers, but they aren’t any better really, the Toronto Star being no more than a glorified gossip rag, leaving the Globe and Mail to pick up the pieces.

CNN is fun, because they don’t hide what they’re doing.  The amount of time they spent on the missing Malaysian Plane while Obama was doing his thing out of the scene was hilarious.  They were taking up hours of media time, especially on TV, moving around Tony Bourdain’s new show such that I have no idea where it is on anymore.  All for a missing plane.  The fun part I found was that during the tragic shooting up in Ottawa, a US newspaper ran an article, saying how things were so much different in Canadian media.  The big point of the story was how the media interrupted shows on TV, but for only as long as it took to report, do a live update, and then off the TV and back to the regularly scheduled programming.  If that were CNN, fuck they would run for 9 months on this.  I blame part of it on Ronald Regan and who he would do a press conference for hours at a time.  The Gipper just loved being on TV (many of you will probably do not know of the Spitting Image TV show of the 80s where Ronny almost started a nuclear war by ordering a pizza).  Just to be fair, the big stories shown on CNN at 5:53 AM Eastern Standard Time, is one about 4000 flight delays, a really newsworthy piece, but right below is an article about racism and Star Wars, all about, god forbid, the black storm trooper.  As one blogger and fellow writer I read has stated about the new Star Wars trailer, guess they’re not using clones.  And of course, look at the editor’s choices – Ferguson, Football Player dies, Chernobyl (WTF?), FIFA corruption (get used to it, all sports are crooked), Muscle Village, Janay Rice (Who the Fuck is this, and yes Fuck gets capitalized here), the black Storm Trooper (cause we all know Star Wars is real, people get a life!!) and CNN Heroes (not even going to open that one, just can’t do it, nope, too much ammo).  How many of those are useful?  Ferguson, yes, given all the stuff that went down, Chernobyl (must be talking about the Bermuda Triangle gate over it, oh wait that is the book I’m reading, sorry).  Once again more useless news.  I wonder how Emperor Palpatine dealt with racism?  I’d say we ask, but once again, get a life people.

This is why I tune into the Australian News.  They tend to get things right, with the Australian flavor that goes with it, and don’t forget, they live in the future.  With stories such as reporting that People Magazine killed off Kirk Douglas, the stupidest headline ever concerning Australia’s royalty, the Irwins, the best free stuff on the internet, something about Freddie Prinz Jr., a hotel you can stay at for $9200 per night off the coast of England, the black storm trooper (this is going to be a meme), Mel B is a lesbian, and of course, what celebrity just got naked.  The neighbors from hell story, yeah worth it. 

So are we going to see a return to actual news stories in the media?  Not likely.  Our world leaders want to keep us all distracted from what is going on out there.  Only you, and I mean you, can prevent this.  Time to turn off CNN, time to let your rabbit shit, piss and shred those newspapers.  Get rid of your internet newspapers.  Why waste money when you will never get the truth.

As for the black storm trooper, apparently people are up in arms over the fact that the storm troopers are not clones anymore.  Well what do you expect, there is fifty years at least between Star Wars 2 and 7, get a life people.

And of course, because I can....

 

The House of Cosbys....

Given all the shit going on with Bill Cosby, I figured I would post this, why the hell not.  Years ago, there was on YouTube a series of videos, that were stopped by legal action, called the House of Cosbys.  There are 4 episodes in total, and the basis is that some guy builds a machine to clone Bill Cosby, as he has found a hair from the real Bill Cosby.  I won't ruin the rest of the plot, but man were they hilarious.

Episode 1

Episode 2

 Episode 3

Episode 4

Remembrance Day

So, there seems to be a lot of controversy over Remembrance day this year, with the fact that many people feel we should have this as a stat holiday here in Ontario.  Many of my readers are probably not old enough to remember when it was this way.  When I was in school, we always had the day off, and well shit, we only knew it was a day to remember the wars as it was put and that was pretty much it.  Then somewhere around grade 3 or 4, it was removed as a holiday because it was deemed that none of us actually appreciated it.  I can remember being in school as over the PA things were told about the wars, the sacrifices, the playing of The Last Post, the reading of In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, born in Guelph Ontario where I reside.

Most people honestly do not really understand the sacrifices these soldiers have made for us.  I am here able to write a blog about almost anything because soldiers at some point have died in the past.  I had two uncles who fought in World War II, one who saw the atrocities of the concentration camps and another who was a tail gunner on a bomber.  Both never really talked about the war and it was only recently that the surviving uncle even started to write down what he experienced.  He didn’t want to think about it all those years.

In today’s society, hell let’s say it, going back to the Viet Nam war, no one has welcomed home soldiers like they did in World War II.  These heroes all deserved this.  It doesn’t matter that you disagree with a war, these men are out there for your country, putting their lives on the line, while you sit there playing your video games, screwing your significant others, getting high, or just having the freedoms we have here.

I don’t think anyone really appreciates how close we came to having North America invaded in World War 2.  German POWs were kept in a concentration camp in Bowmanville, Ontario, next to Oshawa, where I grew up.  There was a rebellion there as they tried to escape.  We had Camp X in Whitby, training the spies they sent into occupied Europe, and hell, let’s put it right here, the electron microscope that was used to create the firing grid for the atomic bombs, was Canadian, and taken by the Manhattan Project from the University of Toronto (this story was from one of my profs).  The war was close to home for everyone at that point.  But at the end of the day, everyone chipped in to deal with the evil that was in Europe.  It is a shame that these bits of history are not taught to high school kids, rather war is something that rarely affects them. 

On other notes, no one also understands what our veterans go through.  Even as an author who writes war epics, I don’t know what it is really like.  Many of my scenes are based upon things that push the limits of evil.  But that is all.  I have never talked with veterans, something I would like to do, but you know what, being in school for Remembrance Day, I learned to think about what my uncles went through, and the others and how our veterans are not treated properly, even by their own families.  All this in the minute of silence.

Until we get back to the point where society returns to walking up to a veteran, either welcoming them home or thanking them for their service, and with a hand shake to boot, then dammit we need the students to be educated.  Leave them in school and don’t make this a holiday.  I know the powers that be feel this would honor the veterans, but honestly, we will only forget what the day is all about.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)