Harlan Ellison Interview

I've been reading some Harlan Ellison short stories lately out of Angry Candy and what do I stumble upon but an interview with Ellison (part 2 here) at the AVClub. Ellison is without a doubt one of the great American writers and is a very entertaining person to boot. Here he responds to a question about science-fiction fans.

Well, I suppose I agree with that, but with this proviso—it's not just science-fiction fans, it's the whole human race. As an outsider, I look on the human race as highly flawed. My feeling is that any species that can paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling and write Moby Dick and put someone on the moon does not have to settle for McDonald's toadburgers, novels by Judith Krantz, and American Idol. I get very annoyed at the potential that is in everybody, and how little people will settle for, and how easily they are turned away from their true purposes that can enrich them, by the most transitory silliness! Whether it's Paris Hilton or KFC food! [Sighs, pauses.] It's a frustration, and it's one of my most serious flaws.

Here is a hilarious segment from an interview he did on the same site about ten years ago.

The problem is that the intellectuals, the people who really do have some sort of education, the atavists and elitists like me who do read, don't understand that they are surrounded by people who are bone-stick-stone stupid. Every time we have some lunatic run amok and shoot someone, when we have kids in schoolyards blowing each other's asses off, everybody says, "What was the reason? What was the motivation?" There is no fucking motivation! The world is turning into a cesspool of imbeciles! The genetic pool has been so hideously polluted, and we have condoned all of it—every bit of stupidity from bad movies and cheap novels and shit fast food to rap music to pretending that the gun lobby is not an evil and insidious operation that serves the gunmakers... All of this crap is part of our inability to deal with the size of our own brains. We've got technological wonders around us and we've used them to abrogate all responsibility for everything in our lives. You call someone on the phone; you don't get anybody. There's voice mail: That way, no one ever has to return a phone call. If they don't like you, or if they're so filled with arrogance and hubris that they think they don't need to respond, they just don't return your calls. That sort of thing produces a level of frustration that in turn produces people who run around with guns and shoot the shit out of everybody because they're just fucking pissed off. They watch TV and see Leonardo DiCaprio being interviewed about fiscal responsibility and the International Monetary Fund, and no qualitative distinction is made by a Leno or a Letterman or a Larry King between an uninformed "celebrity" and some smart but tv-boring [Ellison insisted that "tv" be in lowercase. —ed.] authority. So we wind up with piss-ants like Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan and Falwell, who are so bloody damned meanspirited and Ugly Elitist that the noise-to-signal radio is overwhelming.

Yes, he is always this opinionated and ranty, but there is no denying his talent. I highly recommend The Essential Ellison as a starting point if you are unfamiliar with his work.

Catholics, Abortion, & Torture

Andrew Sullivan takes to task those Catholics who stand against abortion on all grounds, but turn a blind eye to torture.

There is no way that someone can say that a politician allowing abortion in a free society is on the same moral plane as directly authorizing, monitoring and covering up the torture of prisoners. No way. And any Catholic who voted for Bush in 2004, after the full evidence of his complicity in the torture of prisoners was well known should examine his or her conscience before examining anyone else's.

I semi-agree with this and also believe that supporting the death penalty while being against abortion is another double standard.

Weekly Music Video

Yeah, yeah. I was a day late with this and the Weekly Secret. How about an epic (nearly 11 minute) song to make up for it? The video is nothing special (because it is just the album cover with the song playing), but the song is incredible. This is epic, triumphant, European power metal at its very best.

"Theater of Salvation" by Edguy

Weekly Secret

PostSecret

The Post-Clinton Years

Andrew Sullivan and Marc Ambinder, both with The Atlantic, discuss what Obama's victory means for the country, the Democrats, and the Clintons.

Star Trek Luminaries

I mentioned the passing of Alexander Courage recently. Geekdad also pays tribute to him and to two other people who were important to the development of the original series, Joseph Pevny and Robert H. Justman.

UPDATE: Here is a link to a .wav file of the awesome theme that Courage wrote.

Kids are Mean

Just about anyone who has been through school will tell you that kids are mean. They may not have been on the receiving end of it, but they have seen it. A post on the GeekDad blog over at Wired is about the topic in response to an almost too outrageous to believe story from Florida in which a kindergarten teacher had her students vote on whether or not to expel another student.

I was bullied a lot as a kid. It had a profound impact on my life and not in a good way. I became a very angry teenager, not just because of the bullying but it played no small part in it. That anger led me to a lot of self-destructive choices that in some ways I am still trying to recover from. I think it is safe to say that I am at a point in my life where I have worked through that anger and dealt with the issue, but it has taken a lot of self-discipline, a lot of time, a lot of emotional release. The impact that bullying has on kids cannot be underestimated.

The source of bullying must be understood. It is about insecurity. The kids (well, all people, really, including adults) bully others because they feel insecure. They feel powerless. It is their way of asserting themselves, of hiding their true face, that of a scared kid worried that no one is going to like him or her. Bullies are lonely, afraid, and desperate for acceptance. They lash out in the only way they know how, but unfortunately it only serves to make those being bullied miserable while doing nothing for their own problems.

So, what to do about it? Well, parents must give their kids the self-respect and confidence so that they do not feel a need to bully other kids and so they can weather the storm if they are the target of bullies. It sounds so simple, but as a parent, I understand the difficulties in doing this. My youngest daughter, Shaena, is very insecure and feels worthless. Unfortunately, at her mother's home she is often called "fat", "worthless", and told she won't ever amount to anything. She is being bullied at home which is ten times worse than being bullied by your peers and it's not something that can just be made to go away. I see it in Shaena's face when I tell her how beautiful she is, how smart she is, what a wonderful kid she is, that a part of her doesn't quite believe me and it breaks my heart.

To all of the parents out there, tell your kids how wonderful they are just the way they are. Tell 'em when they are young. Tell 'em when as they are growing up. Give your kids the strength to stand before anyone and say, "I am a good person and I don't care what you say." God knows, they'll need it.

Is Hope So Bad?

Matt Yglesias writes about pessimism, hope, and Obama.

All in all, the pessimist in me sees it as an approach to politics designed to set us up for a hard fall when it fails. But in a deeper sense I find it incredibly appealing. To me, it's incredibly frustrating to hear that ideas "can't be done" not because they won't work, but because people know -- just know -- that they're not politically possible, even though they're things that have never been tried. I think almost every worthwhile accomplishment of progressive governance -- from the UN and NATO and the NPT to Medicare and Medicaid and Title I school aid to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act to the ongoing feminist revolution that's completely transformed American society in a generation and a half with no sign of slowing down -- is the kind of thing that before it happened, a lot of people would have said that it couldn't happen. And of course sometimes the pessimists are right, but unless you sometimes assume they're wrong then nothing's ever going to happen.

As someone who tends toward pessimism myself, I find this one of the more, if not the most, compelling cases for Obama.

History is Made

He has clinched the nomination.

Primary Voting in Montana

I hope all Montana citizens eligible to vote in today's Democratic primary did so. I did.

And the Beat Goes On

The Democratic Rules & Bylaws Committee came to an agreement yesterday on the status of Michigan and Florida delegates, but it seems that it will only serve to further divide the party especially since Clinton and her surrogates keep hammering at the wedge. Much of the blame for this has to lie at the feet of the Democratic Party leadership. It was very foolish to strip both states of all of their delegates. The Republican plan of only stripping the two states of half their delegates made much more sense and would have spared everyone of much of this drama.

Of course, once it was done, it was up to Howard Dean and other party leaders to make sure something like the current circus did not occur. They should have been working behind the scenes to hammer out some sort of deal when the issue began to heat up or at the very least get Clinton to shut up and quit whining about the deal. She had no problem with the DNC decision back when she strutted around self-assured of getting the nomination. It was only after she realized Obama was going to smoke her that she started worrying about "disenfranchised voters." Why hasn't the media been hammering her more directly about this? I want to see her attempt to assemble a coherent answer when asked why she approved of the decision for awhile and then did a complete 180 on it.

The Dems need to rethink their rules so this does not happen again in the future. Clinton and her most fervent supporters are only making things more difficult for Obama and the party in the fall. The ludicrous calls to vote for McCain over Obama in November just boggle the mind. Obama and Clinton are very close policy wise. Anyone who supports Clinton just because of her genitalia needs to get their head examined. Obama has out-campaigned her plain and simple. Her argument that she is stronger against McCain in the fall is undercut by the fact that she can't even win her own party's nomination.

Weekly Music Video

Epica, a Dutch symphonic metal band performing two songs from their Consign to Oblivion album, "Blank Infinity" and the very cool "Mother of Light."

Weekly Secret

PostSecret

Justice?

A 22-year-old man has been sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Making it even better, her MySpace page says she is a 19-year-old divorcee and has videos of her dancing very suggestively. And, to top it all off, this is not the first guy she has done this to.

Now, I whole-heartedly support people not jumping in the sack until they are in a marital relationship; but I know that humans being the creatures they are, it is going to happen. So how can a case like this be called justice? This isn't a rape. This isn't a teacher sleeping with a student. No, this is a young girl who looks older, knows it, and uses that to deceive men and then get them into trouble. She is suffering no consequences from this from either the law or her parents who admit she still "stays out late" and only in the last few days has her MySpace page been taken down. Morris Williams, the most recent man going to jail went to her father after he started to suspect the girl was younger than she had been saying. We can debate the brains behind that move, but the point is that this guy is not some dirty pedo who needs to be locked up and branded a sex offender for the rest of his life.

This girl is only 13 years old and she has already ruined two men's lives. How many more times will it happen before her parents do something about it?

Angry Clinton Supporters

If I was a politician, I would be embarrassed to have people like this supporting me. I suppose that's probably reason #1,627 that I wouldn't ever run for office.

Alexander Courage Passes Away

Alexander Courage, composer of the Star Trek theme, has passed away. I can't help but think of that theme music whenever I think of Star Trek; it's just such an integral part of the show and eerily awesome. Mr. Courage will be missed.

New Insight About Stonehenge

Researchers have determined that it was used as a burial site for much longer than was previously thought.

Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.

And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.

"It's now clear that burials were a major component of Stonehenge in all its main stages," said Mike Parker Pearson, archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield in England and head of the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project.

In the past, many archaeologists had thought that burials at Stonehenge continued for only about a century, the researchers said.

Writing Competition Update

I just found out that the links I put up for my two entries in the writing competition were not working. I didn't have my settings on Google Docs set properly. I went back and fixed them, so they should be working now. I also put the links to the pictures and the stories at the bottom of this post.

Round 1: Pics, Story - "Cycle"
Round 2: Pics, Story - "A Great Illusion of a Dream"

Intelligent Americans

College may not be for everyone, but surely stupidity like this can be dispelled without a four-year degree.

One relevant piece of context: Large minorities of Americans consistently say they hold wildly out-of-the-mainstream views, often specifically discredited beliefs. In some cases, those views should make them pretty profoundly alienated from one party or the other.

For instance:

22 percent believe President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.
30 percent believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
23 percent believe they've been in the presence of a ghost.
18 percent believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

People aren't that dumb, are they? Are they?

Okay, they probably are. :sigh:

Bring on the Sugar Pills!

Some doctors are arguing for the legal right to prescribe placebos in certain cases. The mind is a fascinating beast.