Invictus

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

This is a favorite poem of mine. William Ernest Henley wrote this poem in 1875 when thanks to tuberculosis he had to have one leg amputated. He narrowly avoided losing his remaining leg. So, presumably as a way to avoid saying "why me?" for the rest of his life (Henley lived another 28 years after the amputation), he wrote this poem. It wasn't the only work he ever did but it was his best known work. It's something that has touched people who are motivated by good (Mandela) and evil (Timothy McVeigh). The bottom line is that we all have to make our own decisions in life. And no matter what happens in life we have to keep on going. Though this poem has a grim determination to it I don't think you have to lose a leg, spend 27 years unjustly imprisoned, or blow up a government building to find inspiration in these words. There's nothing guaranteed to us in life so there's no point in crying about your losses. You might as well get up when you get knocked down. After all what else are you going to do? The important thing to remember is that each of us gets to make our own moral choices. You should never let anyone warp or remove your moral barometer. 

Book Reviews: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
By Stephen King

I am always fascinated by artists or other performers who are at the top of their game. Whether it's watching Rahsaan Roland Kirk playing three saxophones at once, Stephen Curry making other professional basketball players look silly or Bruce Lee demonstrating his one inch knockout punch it's a beautiful thing to experience. We only see the finished product but don't see all the hard work it took to get there. Stephen King is one of America's, maybe the world's greatest writers. And he's still got it. This is a collection of short stories which were all new to me though several of them were previously published in slightly different forms in such magazines as Playboy, Esquire, The New Yorker or The Atlantic. So if you're an King collector/fanatic you may already be familiar with some of these tales. But as King says as far as he is concerned no story is every really done until the writer is dead. King says one question that people always ask him is where he gets his ideas. King states that the question is essentially unanswerable. Nevertheless he gives an introduction to each story which provides the reader an entry into his state of mind at the time of the story's creation. He even occasionally explains exactly where and how he thinks the story germinated. So there's that gift for those of us who want to know how the magic works. King also announces that he does not do confessional fiction but then declares that obviously as he ages ideas about what happens next and what do we leave behind start to come more and more to the forefront. And his near death experience after being hit by an inattentive driver has seemingly become something which well, haunts his writing, might be too strong of a phrase but informs his work, would not be. So like everyone else King is a man of paradoxes and contradictions. Go figure. Although King is known as a horror writer, that's not necessarily a title he seeks out. He tells the story of being sent to the grocery store by his wife and being accosted by a woman who chides him for writing all those scary supernatural stories. She wants to know why can't he write a nice uplifting story like "Shawshank Redemption". King replies that actually he wrote that story. The woman responds "No you didn't". And King can't convince her otherwise. Perhaps this collection can be of interest to people who think that King can only write supernatural or downbeat stories. Even where there is a supernatural element it is extremely well integrated with the rest of the story. I think that about half of the stories in this book do not have any supernatural components. You will have to decide for yourself if they are uplifting or not.

King has always impressed me most with his ability to create firmly believable characters. This talent is most easily seen in his novels of course but it's even more on display in his short stories here. In a very small number of pages King can build fictional people who just reek of verisimilitude while other authors can take damn near the entire book to create flat and lifeless characters. With most of the stories here I didn't feel as if I was reading them so much as if I was transferred into that reality. There was very little skimming occurring while reading this collection. That's usually a benefit of a short story collection though. If something doesn't really make your skirt fly up there's a new story arriving in just a few pages. I liked most of these stories. King includes some of his poetry. But I'm not a huge poetry fan so I couldn't really get into that. If you're looking for what you think of as the "typical" King story, the author has got you covered with "Mile 81" which introduces some good Samaritans, some frightened kids and a car that is more than meets the eye. "Dune" could be the best story of the book as it saves the shock for the final sentence. Then again "Herman Wouk is still alive" could also challenge for the best story of the collection. Two impoverished women, best friends since high school, go on a road trip while at the same time two old poets go on a picnic. King strongly believes that a writer should be able to write from any point of view. He puts this belief to the test in "Mister Yummy" in which an elderly gay man tells of strange things he's seeing in a retirement home. "Blockade Billy" is a rollicking story set in the classic 50s-60s baseball era. A strange catcher comes out of nowhere to invigorate a team. "Morality" examines how a married couple in dire financial straits responds to a proposal (and no it's not that kind of proposal) from the wife's employer, a wealthy older man. In "Drunken Fireworks", a Maine rivalry between a wealthy Italian-American vacationing family and a drunk man and his obese alcoholic mother slowly gets out of hand. In "Under the Weather" King examines the ability of the human mind to deny reality. As the story is told from the pov of the person who's an unreliable narrator there are a few juicy surprises in store for the reader. "Ur" uses a typo made while ordering online to explore love, fate and the question of multiple universes. There are other good stories here which I won't describe. Basically if you're a King fan you should buy this book. And if you're new to King you should buy this book. I read most of it while spending too much time at an auto dealership waiting on repairs. The repairs took twice as long as they should have but I wasn't that upset because I had this book to read.

Book Reviews: The Grey King

The Grey King
by Susan Cooper

This book was a gift from my maternal aunt all those years ago. It's something I like to pull out and re-read or just skim from time to time. It always brings back good memories of Washington D.C and North Carolina and other southern places. It's funny how gifts can become associated with particular times and places. Anyway, nostalgia aside this book holds up and then some to the fantasy series of today. Like the best books which are aimed at children, this book can be understood at different levels by children and adults. Cooper didn't write down to children nor did she dumb stuff down.  To be fair this book is probably aimed at older children. Although obviously children wouldn't always understand or relate to many of the sexual or violent urges that lay behind a culture's unifying myths, children certainly understand jealousy, fair play, betrayal and meanness. And all of those things are on display in The Grey King. The Grey King is the fourth of Cooper's five book series, The Dark Is Rising. I believe I read one of the earlier entries in the series. One day I will need to go back and read the series from start to end. But The Grey King stands alone. It helps to have read one of the previous stories but it's not necessary. As you can no doubt guess from the title of this series this is about, what else, the epic battle between Good and Evil (Light and Dark) for all the marbles, life, the universe and everything. What makes this book interesting among other characteristics is that, much like F. Paul Wilson does in his Repairman Jack series, Cooper posits a good that at its core is something which is beyond human capacity to understand or accept.  After all if you are concerned with the entire universe, whether one human finds love, lives or dies is perhaps not of much import. As one character says: "But those men who know anything at all about the Light also know that there is a fierceness to its power, like the bare sword of the law or the white burning of the sun. Other things, like humanity and mercy and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh sometimes they are there; often indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good , ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders--oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe."

Humans are fortunate that The Light seeks not to enslave humanity but to help it. The Dark seeks enslavement and degradation of humanity before the destruction of everything. Usually, neither The Dark or The Light can directly physically harm a human being. Humans are mixtures of Light and Dark and thus open to influence by either.The Dark, being the Dark is much less likely to take no for an answer. Most humans are not aware of the Light and would be unable to successfully interface with it if they were. The people who can interface with the Light and wield its powers are known as Old Ones. They are all immortal and can't be killed. Some of them live outside of time; others are constantly reborn. The English boy Will Stanton is one such Old One. Actually he's the last of the Old Ones to be born. He's currently in the body of a pre-teen boy. As this book starts Will has amnesia and is also ill. At his mother's and doctor's request, he's sent away to Wales to recuperate at his aunt's and uncle's home. There Will meets and befriends a strange albino boy named Bran and starts to remember what his mission is. Bran knows a lot more about The Light and The Dark than he should, and may be able to help Will on his quest. Bran's dog (and constant companion) is named Cafall. Dogs, and other canids, play an important part in this story. Unfortunately Will soon becomes aware that the most powerful of the Lords of the Dark, the Grey King, is nearby and intends to prevent Will from succeeding at his quest. There are certain rules, however, which bind even The Dark. But The Grey King could get other people to do his dirty work. These people aren't bound by the rules of the conflict. Some of those people are predisposed to dislike an English boy who talks and acts as if he's much older than he is. This book is crammed full of Welsh mythology with a few shoutouts to Arthurian, Norse and Christian lore. Much as with similar work with L'Engle and Tolkien, Cooper's world balance can change drastically on small decisions made by people of seemingly little import. The small stuff matters. It's important. Human choices, love and hate can alter the entire universe. Again, some of the themes in the book are not things which would be understood by children but are certainly familiar to any adult. There's a lot here about loneliness, longing and need. In hardcover version this book was just over 200 pages. None of them were wasted. This book has such vivid description that it could make you fall in love with the Welsh countryside and language. 

Twerking, Sexual Assault, and Double Standards

We've previously discussed the differences between men and women insofar as who's more likely to initiate declarations of sexual interest (men) and who's more likely to reject them or become offended that someone said something offcolor (women). I believe that these tendencies are virtually hard coded between the genders though obviously there are coy men who play hard to get and aggressive women who demand immediate no strings attached sex. But generally men initiate (often after a woman sends a signal) and then women respond. I think that's just the way humans are made. Obviously each culture regulates this dance of life differently.  Some men get in trouble by misreading signals that were meant for someone else or seeing signals that weren't even there.  Serious protocol violations can lead to verbal/physical conflict, police involvement or worse. On the flip side some cultures attempt control over all expressions of a woman's sexuality to the point that her travel is restricted. And in some areas an accusation that a woman was speaking to a man who is not her husband or relative can have very negative results. We generally give negative attention to men in public spaces who shout out double entendre salutations or ruder statements to women. In some quarters this is called "street harassment". Men who do this rarely seem to achieve their desired result though as with lottery winners there's no doubt someone out there who has hit the jackpot. Most women seem to dislike this verbal attention though paradoxically some women who complain about it the most also complain when they no longer receive it. Whatever. Everyone's different. Although reasonable people can disagree about the timing and propriety of approaching a woman on the street, no one could disagree that putting hands (or other body parts) on someone without her permission is grounds for assault charges. It's just not something you do. Well the door swings both ways.
Recently, in what appears to be a "man bites dog" event two women in a Washington D.C. gas station decided to physically harass a man who was rather obviously not interested in buying what they were selling. And selling is probably not a figure of speech here. At least one of the women has been charged with prostitution before. The women ground themselves against the man and touched his chest, backside and manhood. The man claimed that he feared for his life.  One of the women has since been charged with third degree sexual abuse. On a local radio station some hosts derided the man's "feared for my life" claim or the idea that the women should be criminally charged.  


The way I see it Mr. Tharpe, a middle school teacher, had no idea who those women were, if they were armed, or where they had been. He didn't know if this was a police sting operation. He didn't know if the women had pimps or other associates who were watching him and preparing to rob/extort him. And would you want some street hooker of either gender making a grab for your privates? I'm thinking not. Perhaps for any of a thousand reasons Tharpe doesn't want to be touched by or have sex with nasty women whom he does not know. That is his right, after all. The idea that men should always be (ahem) "up" for sex at any time for any reason with anyone is balderdash.  As he explains it was a lot more than twerking.

So society should be just as intolerant of unwanted touching/abuse/assault from women as from men. I don't think that we're there yet though. I don't know why it is so difficult to get people to understand that you need to keep your hands to yourself. It's a very simple concept. Ask first. That will usually clear up any unpleasant misunderstandings. Or if you make a move and someone reacts as if they just touched a live wire and starts screaming for their Mommy, chances are they aren't interested in doing anything with you. Take the hint.

Paris, Terrorism and Politics

On Friday the 13th the group ISIS attacked a concert hall and stadium in Paris because well that's what they do. Over one hundred people died. Many more were wounded. The proximate cause was retaliation for France's support of the bombing campaign against ISIS targets in Syria. The deeper cause could be revenge for a long history of Western intervention in the region. And the deepest cause of all could be, well that the sorts of people who attack civilian targets are cowards and a$$holes. Today France struck back on the ground.The button men are all over the street looking for anyone and everyone who had something to do with the attacks. With few exceptions, these attacks will just make most people even stronger in their previously held convictions. People across the political spectrum immediately used 11-13 to demonize their political opponents or argue that events proved their pet political theory correct. If you are on the right these attacks may have strengthened your conviction that immigration or refugee movement (particularly of racially, culturally or religiously disparate people) needs to be slowed, halted or reversed. Unlike the United States, which theoretically has no formal or informal link between race, religion, ethnicity and citizenship, many other nations in the Old World, especially in Europe, are more or less ethnic homelands of very long standing. When you say that someone is French or German or Japanese that usually brings up a different image in your mind than to say someone is American. This has changed in Europe, particularly Western Europe after WW2, but there are plenty of shall we say self-proclaimed "indigenous Europeans" who strongly dislike these changes. That at least some of the people who carried out the attacks were apparently European nationals of non-European origin will give fuel to various political parties across Europe who want to stop any further demographic transformation. Many people who will vote for a LePen or a Orban are stone cold racists. Nevertheless just as the US didn't accept massive immigration from Germany during WW2, there just might be something to be said for not accepting immigration from countries you're currently bombing. Because some of those folks will surely hold grudges. The fact that some of these grudges are beyond ridiculous (the people who carried out the Madrid bombings were still po'd about the Reconquista) doesn't matter.

Now if you are of the Left you may see attacks like this as reminders that France must try harder to live up to the slogan of "liberty, fraternity and equality". Why, for example, does France apparently have more of a problem assimilating non-white non-Christian immigrants than the US does? Why has France outlawed Muslim headwear or in some cases refused to provide non-pork meals at public schools? You may argue that France needs to do more to make its Muslim immigrants welcome so that they no longer identify with a crazy warped version of end times Islam. This is not about political correctness as much as it's about building a society that is both fair and cohesive. You might ask why has the atrocity in Paris attracted so much attention when ISIS and fellow travelers have committed similar crimes in Kenya, Nigeria, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Some French who found the ISIS attack on Russia humorous are presumably no longer laughing. The West has been bombing in the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa almost non stop over the past twenty-five years or so. Has that worked? And turning to the US in particular, although some governors have claimed that they will refuse to accept any Syrian refugees and some Presidential candidates have suggested only accepting Christian refugees, the truth is that the law doesn't allow for religious discrimination in the refugee process. And the Federal government, not the 50 states, gets to decide refugee status. Governors can talk smack but in the face of a sufficiently determined President, they would have to shut up, take it and smile. But this is just demagoguery. The US has accepted fewer than 2000 Syrian refugees. Hilarious is not the word to use but it is blackly humorous how people's willingness to restrict civil liberties depends on whether they think they will use the liberty in question. Some people on the right don't think very highly of the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Amendments so in the wake of 11-13 there are calls from that segment of society to increase surveillance, shut down mosques, establish government backdoors to encrypted communication, consider collective punishment and generally chip away at the presumption of innocence (at least for those people). The people calling for these steps are often the same folks who stoutly resist private background checks for all gun sales and are unmoved by arguments that saving lives requires limits on gun ownership. And some other people (often but not always on the Left) who would like to strongly discourage or even eliminate private gun ownership because somewhere somebody might commit a crime appear to be blithely unconcerned about letting in people who might want to get some payback on the country that bombed theirs. 

So what's the answer? The problem is that there is none. 

Or rather there is no quick answer or one that can be sufficiently dumbed down for Ben Carson to get it. I don't think that you can ever blame any sovereign nation state for taking swift action when someone murders your citizens and basically says "Yeah we did it. So what are you going to do about it b****?" But look at the Afghanistan War. It started as a righteous crusade to get Bin Laden and put the fear of God into the people who took down the Twin Towers. It is currently in a pointless stalemate featuring moral atrocities such as the bombing of wedding parties and hospitals and US soldiers being ordered to ignore child sex abuse. ISIS would not exist if the US had not post 9-11 gotten the bright idea to invade Iraq and thus further destabilize the entire region. The Taliban would not exist if Russia had not invaded Afghanistan, causing the US and Pakistan to arm and train people who would later execute 9-11. So will more intervention solve the problem? I doubt it. The only sort of intervention that might work would be a multi-generational crusade/colonial project that would put Western troops on the ground from Aleppo to Mecca. And that's not going to happen. All that can be done now is to manage the conflict. That's unsatisfactory but that's reality. This is going to include a lot more death and mayhem before things get better. Something else we can do is to start to put the squeeze on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to get with the program. Some elements in those nations provide ISIS material and ideological support. Some leaders in the Middle East simply don't see ISIS as the worst group. They have other concerns. I do think that there will be some permanent changes in how European nations manage and accept refugees and immigrants. That train has left the station. Expect certain political parties in Europe to find more success with messages of unabashed nationalism, immigrant restriction, xenophobia and not so hidden bigotry.

Book Reviews: Devil Dog, The Wheelman

Devil Dog
by David Talbot

The United States was created in a revolution against monarchy. So there is a long standing anti-authoritarian and anti-colonialist streak that runs weakly or strongly through huge portions of the American body politic. On the other hand many of the people who led the revolt against monarchy were slaveowning traditionalists who had no problem with colonialism and hierarchies based on race, class and other immutable characteristics. They were, even while piously making universalist claims about human rights and morality in their revolt against the British throne, eagerly engaged in exterminating or expelling the indigenous peoples in what would become the United States. And of course they wanted the ability to put down slave revolts or revolts of poor whites who got too uppity. (Shay's Rebellion/Whiskey Rebellion) To do this Americans also needed an appeal to authority, a glorification of militarism, aggressive policing, and a strong central government. So these two different streaks are both old and equal portions of the general American character. They aren't going away anytime soon. They are us. One man who may have embodied them both in equal measure at different times was Marine Major General Smedley Butler. Although a Quaker by upbringing, Butler was certainly no pacifist in his youth. He received multiple medals throughout his long military career, leading from the front long after his growing rank should have foreclosed such possibilities. He was in his early days by our current standards a racist man of the Right. Butler was best known for revealing a plot by business interests to overthrow President FDR. Devil Dog is not quite a graphic novel though it makes use of some lurid illustrations more typically associated with that genre. The book also utilizes historical photographs and primary source documentation to tell the story of Butler's life.  Butler had a front row seat to much of the imperialist wars and interventions that the United States fought. Butler gradually moved from someone who followed orders without question to someone who was disgusted with doing the bidding of the not so hidden big business interests. He became a man of the Left. Butler made this abundantly clear in the most famous quote from his book War is a Racket writing:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Devil Dog skillfully explains together how racism, greed, naivete and jealously of European colonies led the US, having "pacified" the Native Americans, to seek its own empire abroad. This was an ugly business. Butler's hands were figuratively and often literally soaked in blood. Although it's not clear from this book whether Butler actually believed the propaganda about bringing democracy and good government to the darker peoples, Devil Dog does show Butler being increasingly disturbed by the denial of self-rule and unhinged corporate greed that usually followed any interventions in which he was involved. But it wasn't until World War I, in which he was more directly engaged in battling bureaucratic indifference and war profiteering that several lights seem to have gone off simultaneously in his head. Whatever his politics were, Butler always had a well known reputation as a man of integrity who loved his troops, which according to him is why he was approached by the plotters (backed by the DuPont family among others) to oversee an "army" which would maintain order after the coup to take down FDR. The plotters misjudged Butler's loyalty to the military. They didn't realize that his belief in following the rules and having elections was greater than his desire for glory or money. This high quality hardcover book is just under 150 glossy pages. It's a worthwhile view into a piece of our history which has mostly been forgotten.  The title refers to a nickname for a US Marine. The tenacious Butler certainly lived up to it. Always do the right thing is something that is easier to say than to embody but Butler certainly came close by his standards. Sadly were he alive today there is probably very little that would surprise him, politically speaking. If you are unfamiliar with Butler's life or the interventions throughout what today be called Third World nations you might want to check this book out. Many of the arguments, actions and justifications will resonate with today's reader.






The Wheelman
by Duane Swierczynski

I like stories with lots of twists, protagonists with limited or incorrect information, people who are either opposing or supporting each other without realizing it, and protagonists who aren't necessarily angelic. I also like authors who can give you a very strong sense of place without turning you off to the story location. Swierczynski is a Philadelphia native , author, journalist and comic book writer who has set this story in and around Philadelphia. I have never been there nor am I likely to ever visit but after reading this book I feel like I am a bit more familiar with the city. This is a very fast paced novel which is just begging to be made into a movie. If you have enjoyed such films as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Drive, Get Shorty, Pulp Fiction, Payback, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels then you will enjoy this story. It will feel comfortable and not at all in a bad way. I liked how Swierczynski switched points of view through the story. His characters never have all the information that they need and as a result neither does the reader. There are double crosses, triple crosses, mistaken assumptions, betrayals that don't work out and plenty of nasty surprises for the characters and the reader. Some of these surprises I saw coming but many more I didn't. The author isn't afraid to shape events in a more realistic way. Just because you may like or identify with a character doesn't mean that they're safe. This book was about 250 pages or so. There is some comedy within but it's not really a comedic book by any means. Lennon is a professional getaway driver. He's good at what he does. He works on various heists-specializing in bank robbery jobs. Lennon is not a bank robber per se. Obviously if ever arrested he would be charged with that crime though. He certainly intends to take his share of the loot. No, Lennon stays in the car. While other people plan and execute the actual bank robbery Lennon meticulously plans the escape. He knows where the police are and how long it will take for them to arrive, the traffic flows at the time of the robbery, the layout of the local streets, what his car will do and what it won't do, and anything else he needs to know to keep himself and his partners out of Johnny Law's grasp. 

People like working with Lennon because not only is he an incredible driver but he's also mute. So if things ever go wrong, presumably it will be that much more difficult for Lennon to rat out anyone. But on this deal things go wrong very badly indeed. Instead of splitting up and reuniting as planned later to equally divide the money from the heist, Lennon and his two pals are deliberately targeted in an auto accident.  When Lennon wakes up he is on the verge of being tossed down a drainage pipe along with his dead friends. Being a resourceful man, Lennon swiftly rectifies that situation. However there are a lot of questions that Lennon must address before he can leave Philadelphia. Like for example, who sold out his team? There were very few people who knew the details of the heist.  The one person who did know all the details is the one person Lennon could not imagine betraying him. Where is the money? Why are both the Russian and Italian mobs involved as well as the Mayor? Lennon is not an implacable killing machine by any means. He makes mistakes and underestimates people. But he does want some answers. This story has very concise short punchy sentences. There aren't a tremendous number of wasted words. There are a tremendous number of plot twists. Plot, not character, drives the story. As mentioned above this story really does move very quickly. There's not a lot time given explaining who people are. I mean after all are you going to be too worried about someone's motivations if they are trying to stuff you down a pipe? This is fast food. Good fast food.

Book Reviews: The Prince of Thorns, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

Prince of Thorns
by Mark Lawrence

This book was a gift from my brother. I didn't love this book. I may or may not read the sequels. My biggest issue was that the story is told in first person by a teen sociopath. Many stories use themes of young men and women who have been viciously wronged, sinned against or had something stolen from them. They then turn to a life of crime and outlawry. Sometimes they have a fair end they're trying to obtain by foul means. Sometimes they only rob those who are political enemies. Sometimes they have just devolved morally until a previous comrade or moral guide shames them into returning to righteousness. Tolkien used this trope in his Turin Turambar stories in The Silmarrilion. GRRM uses this both in the Brotherhood Without Banners and with a few other characters I can't name yet for spoiler reasons. This trope is played for laughs in the The Pirates of Penzance and in The Princess Bride. Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard both used this in their Elric and Conan stories. In some legends Robin Hood was a loyal noble retainer to King Richard III or a brave Saxon resistance leader against Norman invaders. This is an OLD storyline both in fiction and reality. But to my memory few or none of the stories I mentioned above opened with the protagonist and his friends completing a rape and slaughter campaign against poorly armed peasants. We didn't have the "hero" musing about how he'd prefer sex with a willing woman or cursing the fact that he has to wait in line to "enjoy" an unwilling teen girl. We didn't have heroes stripping and despoiling the dead or killing a person because he didn't like the man's tone of voice. No hero mocked a farmer as he died or questioned him about the location of any hidden gold or daughters.

Now we can argue that this behavior is the reality of how armed groups of men behave when they have no powerful state, leader or organization to restrain them. If you give someone unchecked power of life and death over other people it's a good bet that various bad behaviors will occur. Human beings are mixes of angels and devils. And war is no place for angels. 

In real life, war criminals were often feted and rewarded. American soldiers sexually mutilated Native American women and took trophies. British settlers in Australia shot aborigines for sport. From boredom and sadism, Spanish conquistadors set mastiff war dogs on Taino children. And so on. So I can't say that the attitudes on display in The Prince of Thorns have no basis in reality. I just found it very difficult to sympathize with the protagonist.

This book skips back in time to tell the story. When it opens the "hero", Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath is almost fourteen. Jorg leads a murderous bandit band of older men. When Jorg was nine, his convoy was attacked by soldiers belonging to the rival Count Renar. His brother was murdered. His mother was raped and murdered. Jorg nearly died himself but was wounded and trapped in a thorn patch where he witnessed the atrocities against his kin. For reasons that become apparent later, Jorgs's father the King did not take vengeance against Count Renar, thus losing the support of his father-in-law and the love of his son. After being rescued Jorg wanted revenge. He ran away from his castle, but not before releasing a number of imprisoned ruffians, who became the core of his band of brothers. They now roam the lands, looting, robbing and raping, while Jorg seeks a way to kill Renar as well as punish/impress his father, who very ominously from Jorg's POV has remarried. The King of Ancrath appears ready to disinherit Jorg and pronounce his new wife's child as heir. All of this is told piecemeal as to give you some sympathy for Jorg. He has nightmares of his mother's screams and his brother's blood.

Jorg plans to get back into his father's good graces or failing that, deal permanently with his father. Jorg's goals are complicated by his father's adviser, a foreigner named Sageous, who influences the King and knows more of Jorg than he should. Sageous isn't the only wizard with big ideas, either.

Like Moorcock's Runestaff series this story is slowly revealed to take place in a post-apocalyptic world. There was a "Time of a Thousand Suns" which seems to refer to nuclear Armageddon. Humanity has reverted to medieval level technology. There are still chemical and nuclear weapons lying around. Some people have been genetically and physically warped by these weapons. Magic is real although some of it is likely science. This was a quick read at just over 300 pages. This book has black humor. For example, Jorg having been manipulated into a sword duel with a skilled knight twice his size, ends the duel by simply shooting the hapless knight in the face. Jorg is not completely given over to evil, just mostly. He has a soft spot for a few younger children. My brother says that the sequels make Jorg more heroic. I may see. To be fair, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, who was similar to Jorg, became sympathetic by the writer's trick of being contrasted against and used by worse people. Maybe that is what will happen in the sequels. 







The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics
edited by Alan Aldridge.

This is a book that is truth in advertising. What you see is what you get. If you are a serious Beatles fan or just someone who is interested in art you may want to pick this book up. It was originally published in 1969 but was republished in 1999 and 2012. Although I don't think many people would say that the Beatles were among the greatest musicians of all time they were in my opinion excellent songwriters. So what could be better than viewing some great pop art circa 1969 that was influenced by the Beatles lyrics and/or seeks to captures the artist's impression of a song or a particular turn of phrase. Additionally this has little blurbs by the Beatles or their wives, relatives, or girlfriends discussing what was the story or meaning behind a particular lyric or what made the writer think of xyz or how the lyrics came together. Of course sometimes the writer doesn't really know why he wrote a certain lyric and can only discuss what was going on in his life at that time. For example McCartney speaks with regret of his initial attempt to boss around Starr because he felt he was a more accomplished and professional musician than Starr was. This is a lovely book that captures the majority of the Beatles discography. It has all the hits and most of the lesser known songs as well. The art is definitely of the time and feels like a trip down memory lane for those people who are familiar with late sixties, early seventies pop art. Some of the art, not shown here, is honestly erotic. For example the artwork inspired by Lovely Rita Meter Maid, might make many men decide to park illegally somewhere. Other art, is dreamy and out there, as befits Beatles songs like A Day in The Life. All in all good stuff and something that may make you appreciate the Beatles more.

Hot for Teacher-Adult Actress Teacher Stacie Halas Fired

I've got it bad
I've got it bad
I've got it bad
I'm hot for teacher
Hot For Teacher-Van Halen

It's been a minute since I was in grade/middle school. I don't remember having crushes on any of the women teachers there. I knew virtually nothing about their personal life and wasn't that interested. It was big news when occasionally their boyfriend or husband would pick them up from or drop them off at school. I mean who knew that Miss or Mrs. so-n-so actually had a life outside of the classroom? Of course I was a bit of a solipsistic young lad and the times were more conservative so it wasn't surprising that I didn't know anything about a teacher's extra curricular life or her activities and lifestyle before she became my teacher. Of course, as the Stacie Halas story shows us, maybe it's a good thing that I didn't know anything about my teachers' lives prior to them becoming an educator.

32 year old Stacie Halas was a California middle school teacher who was recently fired from her job. She lost her appeal of that firing as well. Why was she axed? Well she was terminated from her position because she was, prior to working as a teacher in her current school, but perhaps not other schools, an adult film actress. Evidently some other teachers and/or students recognized Halas' .... (ahem)... face and did some quick research to make sure. Once this information became public, Halas was let go. People found interviews in her movies in which she talked about being a teacher and hoped her other job choices would not be discovered. I wonder who got the job of downloading and reviewing those movies, purely for research purposes of course.

Her lawyer, Richard Schwab, said Halas had tried to be honest but was embarrassed by her previous experience in the adult industry."Miss Halas is more than just an individual fighting for her job as a teacher," he said Tuesday. "I think she's representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody."

Halas has been on administrative leave since the video surfaced in March. Teachers then showed administrators downloads of Halas' sex videos from their smartphones. 

In hearings, former assistant principal Wayne Saddler testified that, at the start of a sex video, Halas talked about being a teacher, and he felt her effectiveness in the classroom had been compromised.

In October, Oxnard Unified School District spokesman Thomas DeLapp told CBS Los Angeles that once students were able to find the videos of Halas on the Internet, they made it difficult for her to be an effective teacher."We even had kids who were referring to her by her stage name in class, from catcalls in the back," DeLapp said.

LINK

Of course there are other jokes I could make about this but right now I don't have any more*. When I first heard about this I was somewhat opposed to the school board's action because people can and do change. Do we want to put a scarlet letter on someone for the rest of their life for a bad, but legal choice they once made?  Halas' time as "Tiffany Sixx" appears to be in the past. It's not as if she were arriving directly from the studio sets to teach impressionable young teens/pre-teens and/or tell them all about her deeds. At least, that doesn't appear to have been the case. But thinking more about this teachers are indeed supposed to maintain a good moral example for the children they instruct. Performing circus sexual acts on film for money with men and other women is usually not considered to be setting a proper moral example. I used to be a 12 yr old boy. I can definitely say that Halas' effectiveness as a teacher would be near zero if she was teaching boys of that age. So for that alone, even if I don't care about her previous career, she'd probably have to find a different job.  

And while the sordid details of her paid interactions with men or women may have been outre, the fact is that virtually every teacher, heck almost every human being has had sex or will have sex at some point in their life. There's just a record of some of her activities.  If she had announced she was gay, should/could she have been fired for that? That is still considered deviant in some circles and to be setting a bad influence. But working essentially as a prostitute is, unlike gayness, something that still unites many on the feminist left and on the traditionalist right in disgust. So maybe it's not as cut and dry as people might think.

And let's be honest, it's not just about the children. That's something of a cop-out. I do not think that in the average corporate workplace, were it discovered that the budget analyst in general ledger was or had been an adult actress, that she would be able to keep her job, or at least keep her job with the same level of respect and productivity that she had had prior to that information becoming public. Is that fair? Probably not. People should be judged on what they do at work, not on what they've done in their private lives. But that's idealistic. The reality is that often you sell not only your on the job skills to your employer, but also the implied or actual promise that you won't embarrass your employer or bring undue complications to your job. If, for example, a man who was an actuary, supply chain mgr or officer for a Fortune 500 Company decided to supplement his salary by investing in perfectly legal strip clubs or lingerie football leagues, chances are good that his company might bid him adieu. That's just how it goes.

So what do you think?

Was the school district within its rights to terminate Halas?

Was it the right thing to do?

Would you be concerned if Halas were teaching your children?

If you were a male student in her class would you ask her for extra "homework" or some one-on-one tutoring? (*Ok, just one joke)