Yet More Confusion over God, Atheism and Theism

Hi. Welcome. This, should be fun.

Then again, this, is kind of sad. Christopher Hitchens, it seems to me, is not on top of his game in this video (see below). He is also playing by the rules of this debate, which is good, but really, it evades fully understanding the topic.

Christopher Hitchens

Watch the video, then think if the logic presented external to the video subject, makes full sense to you. That, is only partially important here, but it full irritating in its lack of clarity of logic.

In the video one Dr. Craig says that both the theist and the atheist share a burden of proof, as they both hold claims about reality which needs justification (i.e., God does/does not exist).

Mr. Hitchens says the atheist bears no burden of proof (it's ALL on the theist), because atheism is merely a lack of belief in God... but it's also distinct from agnosticism! Right, well.... let's back up a bit.

First, about the debate itself. It's a prime example of a condition regarding this debate, that is really so very much misunderstood. I'll give you an example in an entirely unrelated area.

In Full Contact Martial Arts, such as the UFC, which many may know of because of their show "he Ultimate Fighter", which did a lot to bring this form of Martial Art Tournament fighting to the public attention. These guys (mixed Martial Arts fighters in general) are incredible athletes and have my respect for their sacrifices, sportsmanship and abilities. Let's face it, they are tough guys.

However, although on the street or in a bar fight, they would typically be the guys to bet on most of the times, just because a guy is a champion in this type of ring or cage fight, it has little or no bearing on his being a champion on the street. This is something people haven't understood for as long as I can remember, even predating full contact mixed Martial Arts. You see, a true, professional martial artist in the oldest and truest sense of the word, in theory, could drop a UFC fighter pretty readily.

That being said, that same martial artist, if put in that champion's ring, with those rules and those limitations, could very well encounter extreme frustration and in the end, lose to that "champion". He is after all, a Champion in that ring, cage, or universe, if you will. But we have to consider, just what is he a "Champion", of?

This is something I experienced rather clearly myself in fighting tournaments when I was younger and it was quite frustrating to me, and my fellow style of Martial Artists that came to a head at one tournament in Tacoma. I won't bother here to explain why. But at that one tournament, after several of them going by and our style getting pretty much beat down, our heavy weight put the other style who were the big winners at that time, in the hospital. Three rapid punches to the body did it.

Some of us felt it was because our style had finally had enough of the constant humiliation in comments and lack of successful tournaments, which are the bread and butter of a martial art style or dojo (school) back through history. What we heard from the other leading style was that our style was lame and weak (typical comments) and theirs was the better style (this has been going on for a thousand years in East Asia). But in reality, their style was gross (in movements) and based bludgeoning in techniques, great for tournaments but not on the street.Where our style was elegant, specific and focused.

What happened was that this new style had been (rightly) designed toward tournament fighting. Our style was old and designed toward a specific purpose of killing Samurai, in full armor and gear, by little Okinawan farmers. But in a tournament, we were severely handicapped, while the other style, was pretty much actualized into winning, by design. Something we felt wasn't that useful in a real fight to the death type of match. It, would lose. No doubt about it we felt. After all, our style was designed for that. And so our style fell out of favor. Why. Because were weren't a good style? Or because we weren't a good style for tournaments?

So in a debate such as this, we find something similar. Before the debate gets started, the Atheist's side, is already at a disadvantage and some of that you can see in Hitchen's lack of fielding his argument well. So, let's follow these rules, starting here and ending there, and with a defined set of criteria, which stops the reality of the argument from ever actually happening or being addressed.

And so what Hitchens is bravely doing, and as he does so well, time and time again throughout the years, is play a theist's debate game, and repeatedly beating them at it. Granted in this video, its a closer decision on the debate and for obvious reasons, thus further spurring on and deluding those who are on the theists side, that Hitchens has proved nothing. But regardless of that, I would argue the same to be true on the other side, regardless of the banal over texting on the video stream. Nothing, really was proved. Which allows the Theists to walk away feeling successful. Because they proved their argument? No, because they didn't lose their argument. But really, neither did Hitchens. Think about that.

In that as indicated in the over texting on the video, "Atheism, was originally A-Theism, and so it's Athe-ism"?  The text writer of the subtitles was simply deluded by their own comments. But I appreciate they put their fallacy right there on the screen for everyone to see. I simply wonder, how many of the theists who see that, will even notice it, or simply accept it as, if it's presented, then it proves our case (a total lack of critical thinking, which is part and parcel in theism).

If you watch the video and see this and don't get it, I really don't know what to tell you. Read a book? Stop watching "Hoarders" on cable?

Life existed originally, with no god. Thought one day, then existed, still no god. Thought then either created or became aware of god and therefore, theism came after belief, or you could argue, simultaneously. Either way, atheism may have come after theism as a reaction to it, but the actual belief or understanding of there being a god, came after there having been no god, or any understanding of there being a god.

Consider also, especially in the Middle Eastern desert religions, Christianity (including Catholicism), Islam, Judaism...why was their God, not available during the early Sun worshiping thousands of years periods up until it hit where and when it did? Where was this God in the Mayan, the Aztecs? The Hindus? The Shinto, Buddhism, and others? Why is this God so specific to region and period in History? But, let's let that go for now.

The point of what is and when did it come to be, or what is it a reaction to if anything, really is a moot point.

Theists say that God always existed which comes from within their own argument and others are supposed to prove it incorrect. This is logical lunacy. It SOUNDS good (to them) but you have to back away from them and their arguments to clearly see it.

The problem we face in this God vs no god issue, is that in the beginning, there WAS no God. Accept it. Now, YOU prove to me, there is a God. Feels different, doesn't it?

And to be fair, theists because of the form of their philosophy, really do not have the luxury of admitting, seeing, or acknowledging God didn't exist and then try to prove it. And so by necessity, they start their argument there but, so do the atheists who have to begin their argument there.

THAT is where the problem lay in why the atheists have so much trouble in these debates (and let me say, that actually Hitchens frequently has little difficulty in his debates and his tactics are proper and accurate).

And so we have the issue now where people will argue that yes indeed, God was there at the beginning, because and only because, people proclaim it to be. Then they turn around and say if you don't believe us, prove it.

What? Uh... Really?

You are sitting at a nightclub. A magician is on stage. He does an incredible but doable magic trick that is, it's not real magic. Okay? Now, you let 2000 years pass. People talk about it, write about it. Start little clubs for it.

Now one day, we have a debate. Was what he did, Magic? Or make believe. Prove it wasn't for real, honest to God, Magic.

I'll wait.

Still waiting....

Hmmm....

Well?

Okay. I thought so.

Weekend Wise Words - Happy Father's Day!

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

Okay, that's all I got on Father's Day. I hope all you Dad's have a good and rewarding day! Hopefully, you've earned it. Because some of you? Haven't. And for those, just try harder this year, okay?

Now....

Maybe instead of talking about Writer's Block, one should be examining the opposite? How one seduces The Muse, into giving you the ecstasy of an extraordinary flow of writing? - JZ Murdock

For the writers among us:

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Frank Lloyd Wright

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." - Thomas Mann

St. Kavorkian - Doctor of Euthanasia

Dr. Jack Kavorkian. Remember Jack? Dr. Death? No, some people mostly people no longer with us, if they could come back, just might see him as an Angel. He famously said, "dying is not a crime". And if you need to die, an no one will help you, that, is Hell. 

If you don't believe it, try being in constant and extreme pain, knowing its for the rest of your life and no one will do a thing to help it stop; in fact, they will do everything they can to prolong your pain and discomfort, all the while saying they are doing either God's will, following their Hypocratic Oath, or simply trying to "make you comfortable" until you die. All the while, you just want to die. Now.

I don't think he was the nut, or the death lover people made him out to be. I know he stood for something we need to deal with and are too chicken to want to deal with. It also is a topic that Doctors are too afraid to deal with. Why, are we so scared of something so universal as death? Really, it's something we should deal with.

Beginning in 1999, Kevorkian served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence for second-degree murder. June 1, of 2007, he was released on parole on the condition that he would not offer suicide advice to any other person. He died in 2011.

A Kavorkian "War"

Wikipedia indicates that Dr. Kevorkian marketed limited quantities of his visual and musical artwork to the public having also been an oil painter and a jazz musician for years. Kevorkian was a jazz musician and composer. The Kevorkian Suite: A Very Still Life was a 1997 limited release CD of 5,000 copies from the 'Lucid Subjazz' label. It features Kevorkian on the flute and organ playing his own works with "The Morpheus Quintet". It was reviewed in Entertainment Weekly online as "weird" but "good natured".

Like with the Donor options of some years ago, where the government pushed for people to sign their body parts over to the public need in event of death, it was a terrible subject to bring up, but we finally did and it became a kind of "why aren't you donating" when you die stigma. Why? Because in the end, the loss of so many organs and so much meat and tissue from humans on a daily, even hourly basis, when so many could use that to have longer, fuller lives, was ridiculous.

During the Vietnam war Dr. Kavorkian found that you could use a cadaver to replenish the blood of a wounded soldier and that the Russians had been doing it for years. So if two soldiers get hit, one dies and one needs blood, and the deceased soldier has compatible blood according to his dog tags, you could save the living solder's life. But no, that wasn't the John Wayne way. Or, whatever.

He also found that by studying a person's eyes, you can tell if and when they had truly died. Rather than do that however, the establishment that be, preferred to spend thousands on a machine to do the same thing. Jack was always attracted to the odd or taboo. But this was a good thing. We just didn't want to believe it. He was odd, so we wanted to discount him. Our loss.

This man had a lot of good ideas and he had enough compassion for the dying that he thought they should be given not the dignity of dying when they wanted, but the compassion to relieve their suffering.

For those who point out the abuses that corporations, the State, or relatives can make on the no longer desired elderly, that is not an argument against this, it is simply lazy thinking. Dispassionate thinking not unlike that of those who would deny Cannabis to cancer patients in great pain or discomfort.

Just what is a Monopoly?

We have laws against monopolies. But we still seem to have them.

They're just not your Father's monopolies anymore. Examples are the ten largest banks in America now. They were consolidated into these banks recently because of the huge economic issues we've had that have lead us to the current situation in America and around the world.

The Dutch ING bank has just been forced by their home country to sell off their American assets so that Holland wouldn't have to pay so much to straighten out the bank's situation. Seems Holland, regardless of their reputation and orientation on drugs (regardless of how functional it is there), has their act together.

The American banks, it would seem, were too big to let fail and rather than sell off, we added to them.

So perhaps we need to reexamine at what a monopoly is?

It used to be that a monopoly (as in AT&T in the old days, "Ma Bell" had America literally by the privates), needed at some point, to be broken up to allow the fresh air of capitalism and free market to allow motivations for lower pricing and innovations.

But it's starting to look, and it may have been this way for a while (or forever), that even having more than one, is not enough. It's a good possibility that in only having about ten major banks in the country, as we've seen, if one goes down they can all go down.

I know many people who live within ten miles of me have pulled their money from Bank of America and other large banks, some of these people having lost jobs when Washington Mutual went under, and have put their money in the local county bank, which actually had higher rates on things like CDs and lower costs on bank accounts.

We may have consolidated America's major banks in order to avoid a catastrophe, but perhaps we now need to start looking at solidifying them, and breaking them down into smaller institutions. These banks have been fighting the idea of limiting compensations (salaries, bonuses, etc.) since the beginning of "The Troubles" here.

So listening to them, may be problematic as a drowning person is when you are trying to save them. Or once you get someone out of trouble and they learn nothing and simply want to continue making money as before in a broken fashion that is bound to lead them back into debt yet again at some future point.

But perhaps now a days, a monopoly isn't just one, but more than one, to make a dysfunctional failure capable system of economy and perhaps, we need to protect that economy. Maybe, just regulation is needed, or maybe something more, like looking at a monopoly as a small group that can fail and bring down the country. It seems to me we need to break up these banks as soon as they are healthy enough to be split up. Multi-National companies have also become a nightmare management consideration both internally and externally in recent years.

Let me say here, that I'm no financial expert. I got a degree in Psychology in order to avoid math. Then I found I had to take a year of the hardest math or Algebra that I'd ever experienced, that of Psychology Statistics. And I learned a lot, though my other classes all suffered gradewise because of it. But I learned how you can say one thing, when something else is true. Or how one thing can look to be true, when something else really is. Or, how something that is counter-intuitive is what needs to be done, when everyone is doing something completely different.

Either way, I don't think this is what was originally intended by the country's Founders. They didn't want people to be oppressed by either Lords of Royalty, or Lords of Banking.

Still, the brilliant minds of economy can't even agree on what needs to be done. So aside from the fact that some fixes are counter-intuitive, it does seem reasonable that to have all your eggs in one basket, is a formula for catastrophe.

It's only a matter of time. Deregulation has allowed some very bad things to happen. And in fixing those bad things, to consolidate those who have done this, is if not insane, severely unwise.

I had always dreamed of retiring at 50, but at this rate, we may all retire when we drop dead. But even then, the banks will probably find a way to charge us for our lengthy stay.

Then again, there is good news in that, as it will finally be over. For those who will be reincarnated, welcome back, you may have to work longer hours, and thanks to advances in health care and genetics in life extension, maybe even later in life next time, if something isn't done to stop this continual and ever increasing crawling into the pockets of the banks and corporations.

The Czar's War on (American Citizens) Drugs

President Obama has declared the "War on Drugs" to be over. But some Police authorities are saying he isn't doing enough to see that through to completion. This wasn't going to be a diatribe on Cannabis but it's the prime example to use, but try to read beyond that, as the true issue is the abuse of American citizens rights to have more freedom than is currently being allowed and Cannabis is only one tiny example of that.

President Nixon (remember him? the criminal President?) set the War on Drugs up. During the Reagan years, however it turned into the War on drugs users, on American citizens and in some cases Americans who either didn't use drugs or were involved in victimless and certainly non-violent crimes.

Nixon's program focused on education. Reagan on incarceration. During Nixon's time, we were on the way out of the drug infused 60s. It was a drug culture. Mom's took Valium ("Mother's little helper") to help her through the day. Everyone (it seemed) smoked Pot. Pills were almost considered harmless. People would give you drugs free, friends would offer them to you. You could find a Cannabis cigarette on the sidewalk, a not unusual thing in the 70s.

However, perhaps because of the Reagan program, now the drug culture is pretty dead. People point at statistics showing how many drugs are still coming into the country and how many still use drugs, but at some point, that is always going to be there. But the "War on Drugs" is over. So declared by the President. The Drug Czar, an ex Seattle Police Chief, himself wants it over and says they should be focusing more on education and the positive end and no longer on the negative end of punishment of users.

The current "Drug Czar" is Drug Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske. Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief, has traveled recently to discuss prescription pill abuse, which he calls the country's fastest-growing substance abuse problem. He says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have classified prescription drug abuse as an epidemic. They aren't even concerned with things like Cannabis  any longer. Read the writing on the wall. 

If I thought Cannabis was a dangerous drug, I would be the first to admit it. But its not, it's just been vilified by those misguided people in positions of authority and now most of them are even saying to knock it off and legalize it. State after state is legalizing it. People who point to it as a gateway drug are deluding themselves. For those who will go into harder drugs, they will do it regardless. For those who say tobacco and alcohol are bad, why legalize yet another drug. It's simply not for them to make that decision. It is up to the American people, not to mention, ethics based upon truth. The one bad thing about Cannabis is inhaling smoke, especially hot smoke. And there are ways to fix that becoming more and more popular. Even Willy Nelson uses a vaporizer because he says, "I hear it's much healthier."

Many Police Chiefs want legalization. We shouldn't be putting users in jail for simple use of a weed that grows naturally and is a medicinal simply by pulling it from the ground. You could use that argument for Opium Poppies too and I might agree. Although I do see the dangers in addictive drugs such as opium. Still, people who get addicted, tend to have personalities that have a propensity toward that kind of thing and they need help, not incarceration.

The point here is not that people using drugs is a difficult thing for the government to regulate. In many cases it is simply none of their business. The point here is in the freedom to use your own mind to live as you choose. If, in some cases you choose to be addicted, or simply to use a drug, that is a medical issue and the government has taken it to be a judicial issues, leading to abusing American citizens; not to mention all the money that taxing things like Cannabis would bring into our not only empty coffers, but coffers with a huge hole in their bases.

This Drug War has turned into a religion with many in the police and judicial side of government. This is definitely something that is politically correct, like Christianity and religion in this country, and something that needs to be muscled under control. No, it will not be fun, easy, or popular with the ignorant and self serving and vocal conservatives. But it needs to be done.

I won't bore you with countries who have done this, but they are out there. We should be treating American citizens with compassion, not punishment. We should be doing what is right, not easy. The American government and people have become fat (no, really, look around at how many fat people there are in America compared to 100 or 200 years ago) and lazy (people want what is fast and easy, thanks MTV and the 60's "me" generation).

In closing, speak up. Stop being a coward. Check out the real issues and statistics. Don't let conservatives bully you into submission. Get angry! People are in jail, people are DEAD, because of this war on drugs. People who should be in the yard, playing with their kids. People have had their children taken away, good people. People who are good citizens, only they choose to smoke some pot.

People who have drug problems go "underground" in their use. Let's legalize things so we can tax them; let people grow what they want. I see tobacco as no different that Cannabis. Except, that tobacco is more dangerous and actually IS addictive. Pot, is not addictive. If anything it may be mentally addictive, but if you quit, you do not die as with Heroin, you do not go into withdrawals, and anything you could claim as withdrawals is less than that with caffeine withdrawals, which I assure, is no fun.

The point here, is always looked at from the wrong perspective. Those who adhere to the "War on Drugs" concept mislead. First, the name is as horrible as the name, "Global Warming" which is a stupid name: "Climate Change" is far more correct. And so too, "War on Americans" is far more accurate. Surely you say, that can't be, people that don't do drugs, aren't being "warred upon". But, they are, they have been and they will be. Check the stats, people who haven't done anything, have had their houses broken into by Law authorities, have been shot, handicapped and in some cases, killed.

Don't fool yourself, as long at this goes on, you can one day be standing in your nightclothes, woken from bed, and thrown to the ground with guns at your head. Only to later hear, "Sorry, it was the house next door we meant to hit." Or, "your child was mad and turned you in to the school." These things have happened. And if they have, then can again.

Not to mention, people on the "three strikes" laws are in prison who shouldn't be. Or the non-violents who are in jail at our expense. We're in a bad economic situation. Let's do everything reasonable to fix this and take this opportunity to clean up some poor government abuses.

What is Faith? Is it really important?

First let me say that it's not a bad thing, to start into an area of deduction or discourse, by assuming that everything you know, is wrong. Just from an academic point of view. It let's you view your beliefs from outside and with a fresh consideration. Otherwise, you find yourself stuck in your static mindset. Then if you come upon the same conclusions, they carry far more weight. See what I mean?

People like to say, "I have "Faith" in God." But, what is Faith. How does "Faith" have anything to do with getting to Heaven. What is the purpose of "Faith"? Is having "Faith" of the purpose to get to Heaven, is it a fear of avoiding going to Hell, is it because your God commands you to have Faith in a belief of that God's existence?

It is true, and research has proved this, that to have a belief in something outside of yourself, allows you to do things beyond what you would normally and reasonably do. If you believe in a force outside yourself, you will rush into battle (believing you have God on your side, or that the regiment is only a minute behind you to pull your ass out of the fight, or the Great Pumpkin, is watching over you).

But it is a belief in economics, really, typically, that is governing most people's desires to please that force beyond themselves. "I will be good" therefore, Heaven. "I will do what I believe God asks" so therefore I will get virgins in Heaven (no matter that I personally think that is more something you'd get in Hell, but hey, whatever, to each his or her own, right?). "I will do God's will" therefore, I please God (and what's behind that? Heaven, not Hell? And which is really the motivating factor, is up for grabs).

We can also here skip the entire concept of why a God, an omnipotent being, would need to be Worshiped.

We don't even need to get into the fact that there are multiple God's around the world meaning different things to different cultures and people. Or how "God parameters" are local and specific to various geographical regions, or how they are temporally located with no concept of a future, other than perhaps, giving out obscure fiction as in Revelations or the Apocalypse, in the Christian Bible.

We don't need to get into how the bible was compiled by a council that was set up by an Emperor who feared losing his empire so much that he switched from his religion to the one that was rapidly becoming most popular in his lands. Or, how that Emperor Constantin had anyone who had books not included in the final "authorized" edition to give up their books or be put to death. Or simply be put to death if found with one.

In the end, Constantin's plan worked, for a while, but in the end things fell apart anyway. But the religion he set up goes on and on. We could go through the same origins of the Qua'ran (or Koran), but aside from being too obvious to bother with, those who adhere to these religions really need to know and look into these things on their own. But, they won't. Because, they don't think they have to. Because, they have "Faith".

But, is Faith really even important? Religious Faith is a strongly held belief in something. It's believing in something even against evidence to the contrary. Strong Faith is a focus, an unswerving coherence to a subject. By saying it's a focus, a coherent thought, one indicates an integrity of personality; that a person is of one mind on this topic. That they will live a life with the core of their being, as that of one who has no disbelief, who follows tenets to further enforce their beliefs.

But do you know many, or any, whom that fits? Even those hard core ones, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhists, if you delve deep into their being, you will find that for most of those, this is not true for them either and that they tend to fool themselves as well as any. True, this is a goal that we poor Humans attain to.

But what makes Faith, the ultimate thing to get us there?

It would seem that more so than Faith, is integrity. Faith, from practice of those I've come into contact with, seems to indicate less Faith and more a faith of ignorance. To ignore the Truth. In many cases to believe in what they really know is false. Some are so deluded that they will admit what they believe has no basis in reality, no proper history to support their beliefs, but they continue to believe, to have faith, anyway.

It is my contention, that Faith in something you have no true knowledge of, other than, "This is what my parents taught me" or "I believe what I'm told" by church, community, whomever, then you are wasting your time. If however, you research and learn the truth of what you believe, then you have hope of having true Faith. Because if you can believe when you learn how religion and the Bible, or other "Holy Books" came to be, and you can still believe, then that is true Faith.

 It is also a total delusion, but still, one has to respect someone that believes in the face of information to the contrary.

So, the only way to achieve whatever it is a religious person is trying to achieve (getting to Heaven, avoiding Hell, getting rewards, pleasing their God figure), needs to learn first where their beliefs came from. Then they needs to have Faith that even in the face of evidence to the contrary, God exists, their religion is the true one, and continue on having their Faith. Of course, at this point it makes no sense to continue on; but well, there it is.

If you find the truth, that religion is a creation of Humans from a distant path where they needed explanations for the mysteries of the Universe, and there was no God who did anything, but men (yes, men, mostly not women back then, which many women would then say, well, that explains a lot), and you still want to believe.

Then if you take the position that this is a way to order your mind, to be a "good" person with the off chance that it is all real, or that what you are being taught is total nonsense but perhaps there is some more (meta)physical reason to do it (reincarnation perhaps, another interesting and pleasing myth; ascension, as some new age beliefs teach; or whatever people can imagine to make themselves feel better), then perhaps it would be understandable why you would want to choose to have such beliefs.

For religion has two soul purposes, honed to perfection over thousands of years: to relieve Humans of their fears of natural life, and to control the minds of groups of people by those in authority.

But then, you have to consider the downsides of these religious beliefs. Yes, they have done some good through history, but I would contend that about a hundred years before the beginning of the religiously created and titled "Dark Ages", religion had becomes superfluous and was no longer necessary, and any advances from then on we could not only have made without religions, but we would have made in a far more accelerated form. For at that point, religion became little more than a "governor" on the engine of Humanity, restricting its progress. Yes, progressing with thought and consideration with a nod to ethics, is important, but that existent outside the belief systems that include ethereal beings.

You can believe the veracity of the above chart or not. The truth is, it is true at least to some extent. How do I know that?

I have Faith in it.

The Intelligent TV Set - 30 years ago

I was on the phone with my friend John recently, whom I've known since 1979. I had just gotten out of the service and he was a friend of my girlfriend. I met her in college that first summer and she introduced me to her friends, including John whom she knew since they were much younger going through the Catholic private school system. I don't know her anymore, though we ended up living together and going through college for years. But I still know John.

The other day, John mentioned my first published short story, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear", an homage of sorts to one of my favorite Science Fiction writers at the time, Isaac Asimov and the first section of his autobiography, "In Memory, Yet Green".

John is an artist and should have had a job decades ago as a comic book artist. I had wanted him to do the art for my short story when it got published, but I was told the publisher had an artist on retainer. I hated the art when the story came out but now in looking at it, I don't think it was that bad after all. I'm including a scan of it on here.

I would sometimes jot down a story and show it to these friends. One day John read one of these clips and put it down, angrily saying, "Why in the hell don't you ever write endings to these things! I want closure, I want an ending." The others in the room agreed. "Look, we like your stuff, it just needs an ending." I told him that endings are hard to do, you have to make decisions, accept finality. I really couldn't do it. After getting into college, then I had to do it and I got quite good at it. It made them all very happy.

On another day, they complained that I wrote over their heads, they couldn't understand what I was saying half the time. So I promised, I would start to work on writing endings, and I would gauge my writing to be a bit more accessible. But I said, I would write one more story completely at my own comfort level. Then I would try to start to write from then on at a more comfortable, general level. If newspapers are written at a 9-12th grade level, then I should probably stay around 12th grade level or first year college.

Now I was just starting my first year of college at this time. It was 1980. We were sitting around enjoying the day and getting a slight inebriation on as was custom at those times. Somehow I started to say that I could write anything, that I enjoyed taking the unwritable and making something functional and enjoyable out of it. They didn't believe me.

So I said, "Okay, tell you what. You guys come up with an impossible to write idea and I'll make it work." They smiled, got together and came up with something.

"Okay," they said, "we have something."

"Shoot," I said.

"A guy turns himself into a computer chip."

"Not bad," I said. And over they next week or so, I worked on it.

Finally, I finished it, ending and all. I had them read it. Everyone agreed, it worked. But it was still written too high for them, but they got it. They were, by the way, younger than I was, by some years. They decided that I'd never sell it. I ran it through a word processor years later and it said it was written at a grade seventeen level, which is like a first year College Masters Degree level after a four year college degree.

So I started to send it out. Eventually, after rejections, a guy on the east coast, the publisher of Haunts Horror Quarterly magazine said he'd buy it if I cut 1500 words. I was concerned about that. How do I cut that much? My wife (at the time, my son's mother) said maybe I should see if there's a section that big and cut that. I looked for it. It occured to me that he may have been testing me, to see if I could find a section he wanted removed.

I found a section, not that necessary to the plot, and nearly exactly the right size. I cut it, he bought it. It was my first fiction sale, my first horror fiction sale. I got $28 for it. I still have a copy of that check. I had wanted John to do the drawing for it, but they had a house artist so he didn't get to do it. And I hated the drawing in the magazine. However, in looking at it today, I think it wasn't so bad, really.

Back to today. John asked me, having read the first page today, if I actually wrote the part about the home device that long ago, predicting as he put it, the modern TV set. I said, "Let me check." I pulled out my copy of Haunts, and read it to him. We both were tickled by it for some reason.

And so, the real reason for this note. This story is also to be included in my new anthology currently at the publishers. A release date has not yet been set at this time. Here is that paragraph. No big deal, but what the heck, it's kind of fun.

This paragraph is explaining something one of the main characters invented:

"Our great Philip Carey. Designer of that ubiquitous dream machine, the Intel-Set. The offspring of what had once been acrimoniously called, "Idiot Box" and "Boob Tube"; and such it had been -- back then. Use of the acronym I.S. brings incorrectly to mind the old T.V. device, whose electronic hybrid-descendant today, now also includes within its eclectic system: the home-intelligence interface, the computer module, communications, and all such necessary items compulsory to your All-Modern, Extra-New, Communicative Homo Sapiens, or: "A.M.E.N.C.H." The "Yuppie" and "Dink" of the 1990s, has given way for the Master's coined phrase. A reference from Philip's forgotten, semi-Jewish background. God, Philip always did have a warped sense of humor."

The A Mench thing cracked me up at the time, and in the full context of the story, makes much more sense. It was an interesting story of "social horror" and got even more interesting reactions from people that read it.

Especially at the end where the main character has lost his way but does not understand why those countries furthest from the US all want in on the action, but those closest in Canada and Mexico can't seem to back far enough away from us.

Why? After all murder had been eliminated (by legalizing it). And all advertising was run by one person, regardless of his mental instability having oozed out into the public mind.

Anyway, it's good to have old friends who from time to time, bring up the past revisiting your roots.


There are now two other books available with my short stories:
The Undead Nation Anthology and
Rhonny Reaper's Creature Features.
Both offer their proceeds to research for Cancer and Diabetes, respectively.