My Open Letter to Clive Barker - Part II

To My Dear Mr. Clive Barker,

Hello again, Clive!

Cutting to the quick, here's my plea:

Do please consider, would you give me a short (or long) blurb for my book?

Feel free to send me a new address or I can just use the one I sent to twice before that Phil and Sarah gave me. I'm also on Twitter where I've messaged before with you.

Continued from Part I....

Okay, now please allow me to lay out my rambling argument for why I think it would be fair and completely awesome, if you did.

Yes, we have met in person before.

A few times, actually. Years ago, back in the late 80s and early 90s, you replied a few times to my letters via international post (not electronic). Back when you still lived I believe, in London. I had sent them to your publisher at the time and they forwarded them to you. No I don't really expect you to remember me at all, though you did think my name was funny the first time we met. Then more recently we exchanged messages on your Twitter account about my book, which this is all about.

To my surprise, you not only received them, you wrote back! I still have those letters. How could I not? One is in fact framed on my wall next to a few signed photos of others like Tom Savini (whom I have also met), Woody Allen (whom I haven't), and Richard and Danny Elfman (that's a story too long for this situation).

As I said, we most recently chatted on Twitter but even that now was a year or two ago. I had also entered your short story contest on DeviantArt but I didn't get anywhere with that as I think my story on the Men of the City may have been taken too literally. I had fun writing it though and I think I got a great story out of it based on your painting. Love your art by the way and no I'm not just saying that. Anyone who has seen your art could understand why.

These more recent communications were about my book, Death of Heaven. A book I believe is good enough to bother you about and that I thought you might even be interested in being associated with, in some way or another. No, really. I wouldn't waste your time otherwise. Or mine.

One more thing. Please do not judge my writings overall by this letter. I put a lot more time in the book and my published writings. Or does that even need to be said anymore?

Here's the thing. I could really use your help on this as my newer revised copy is an even stronger read now that I have an editor. Stronger than the original release was, the one I sent you a while back to the address that Phil and Sarah gave me. That was the original release, the one that actually got me compared to you and your Books of Blood by one reviewer (see below). I couldn't have been more pleased that he registered and drew that comparison. Perhaps compared is too strong a word, but hey, I'll take what I can get.


"[Death of Heaven] ... has a Books of Blood vibe, which really works well. It's in these tales that the author's writing ability shines. He demonstrates a lovely turn of phrase and some of the writing is almost poetic in it's beauty. There's an interesting mix of tales, although the focus of the stories narrows as the book progresses."
-From Author & Reviewer Michael Brookes.

This blog today is therefore an open letter to you. A most dear and perhaps foolish request to even think you might consider it. But hey, who know?

Allow me to offer a reintroduction of myself to you and as well as a piece of your history and mine. Should I ever myself become someone notable as you are now, I do hope that one day I can help some nobody, just as you can here.

This will also serve as a piece of my own history for any who are interested as I do actually have a few fans. So it's also about what I've accomplished since we last shook hands in Seattle around those many few years ago of 1988-90.

Basically this is my pitch:

I'd love to get a blurb from you for my book. I think it's something you might feel good about being associated with. 

You'll see shortly what I mean.

An early version of the revised Death of Heaven release cover by Marvin Hayes

Just for fun, here's what I looked like back when we last stood in the same room and spoke.

Me in the late 1980s from a head shot

Now we haven't seen one another in many years, decades even. We met as you have with so many others, several times at book signings in the Seattle Tower Books. I certainly don't expect you to remember me, being who you are and the numbers of people you have met. But I'll never forget meeting you and I won't go into all that here.

When we first met I told you that I had written you before. You perked right up and with a big smile proudly said, "And I wrote you back too, didn't I!"

Yes, yes you had. You said you were trying hard to reply to all your fans. With my minor experiences with social media and in not being the big name you were even then, I'm even more impressed now by your efforts in that. I know who that can easily become overwhelming.

I look back now on those letters that I sent to you and I cringe on my part. Still, you were kind enough to reply to myself as an aspiring writer. To one such as that, it was pure gold. By the way, Stephen King never wrote me back, but then I was lucky enough to catch you before fame struck you so hard in the middle of your talents when then the entire world wanted a piece of you.

I had corresponded with Phil and Sarah a while back and sent them the cassette tape cover from the music for a play of yours that was done in the Netherlands, "History of the Devil", with music by Hank Toet.

This tape was originally sent to me in the 90s by Erwin Verweij of Yellow Productions. I have more recently reconnected with him on Facebook. I ran into him on the internet back in the 90s and we struck up a bit of a long distance friendship leading to my request and his sending me a copy of the music.

More recently (already now some years ago) Phil and Sarah had given me an address to send my book to you, and I did. But it had apparently gotten misplaced. Though now, happily so. Happily because I've since re-released it after a massive re-edit as I finally got an editor.

Sorry, back to our having met. Obviously, I remember our meetings like they were yesterday.

During one I only heard you were in town that day and I had my son with me. My wife was working. What could I do but I brought along my then two year old in his stroller to meet you. I wanted to be able to tell him one day that he once shook hands with who Stephen King had said was the "future of horror", and so I have.

You did indeed shake hands with the little guy and it seems it's not the only time you have met kids (Sasha Meets Horror writer and Director Clive Barker in 1989) like that back in the 80s. That son of mine is now twenty-seven and has an adorable daughter of his own.

My son around that time

More recently

I was a proud dad then and now, though now my son stands 6'5" and I have to look up to him and he is a brilliant young man now of twenty-seven. I continue to be proud of him as I am, both my kids as they are extremely bright, talented and charismatic. My daughter is twenty-three and has now traveled Europe on her own (twice for a year at a time) playing her awesome music (singing with her accordion and hoola hoop) and is herself writing and illustrating a couple of very cool children's books and is as well a talented photographer.

The first time I met you I was first in line of a long line of Stephen King fans with an hour wait before you were to arrive. I thought they were more than a bit irritating. I had read your books. They had not.

You arrived in a suit looking quite dapper. Your handler asked if you wanted anything and you smiled and said, "Yes, some coffee would be nice." When asked how you would like it, you said, "White." Which stumped the guy. However, the guy next to him said he fully understood and quickly acquired it, bringing you what you had requested. Coffee with cream. Americans, right?

Sitting there and settled in at the author's table at Tower Books' Mercer Street store in Seattle, you looked up at me and said, "Hi."

I smiled back happy to finally get to meet this amazing author and briefly I told you my story and about the King fans in line behind me who were trailing in line around the store. You smiled a knowing smile. I thought it odd that as far as I could figure I was the only actual Clive Barker fan there. Where were the Barker fans?

You took your time with me, about fifteen minutes actually, while the King fans fidgeted behind me. You had said you were always happy to acquire new fans from wherever and then you took your time to draw some artwork (it was a head) in the front of my book. You seemed to quite enjoy yourself. I was myself having a very good time.

Thanks for that by the way. And of course I still have all of my signed Barker books. But that one was my first.

Cutting to the quick, I had hoped through all these years that should I ever get there (in having written a book of my own, that is), that if you thought it showed talent, then perhaps as King had done for you, you might be so kind as to give me a blurb for my own book. A sentence, a phrase, a word. even, "I really hated this book" - Clive Barker,,, would work for me, I suppose. I just never had considered the necessity of getting it to you, or in getting your attention in the first place. Amateurs, right?

That eventual book in question ended up being my book titled, "Death of Heaven." A title that I borrowed from one of my son's songs on a CD of his original music he produced in a High School music production class. It is also the music I used for my video book trailers. I used a piece of my daughter's artwork in my book, too.

My slightly younger brother by another mother graciously did the awesome cover art for most of my books and is himself a truly great and genius artist. No, seriously. I'm not kidding, he's pretty amazing. Check out below his cover for my book. And this book cover is almost lame in comparison to most of the things he's been winning awards for over the decades and in a variety of mediums.

Final cover by Marvin Hayes

Here's a review from WILDSound Writing Festival's First Chapter Contest:

"The story itself is very strong, lulling the reader into a false sense of security as two young boys hunt for treasure, before ultimately morphing into a violent and sometimes disturbing tale of horror. This is done with such swiftness that it takes the reader almost completely by surprise, which only enhances the effect."

That is about my horror story The Conqueror Worm which opens the book and then goes into much more serious situations one after another, all the way to the end. I had no choice at that time, no extra money with which to get an editor. Yes I know, it's like a defendant being his own attorney in court, perhaps I did have a fool for a client in thinking I could self-edit. And yet not such a fool perhaps considering my reviews.

Reviewer Lynn Worton said of it: "4 out of 5 stars! JZ Murdock has written a horror story that completely had me transfixed! I'm intrigued as to what he is working on next! Although horror is not one of my favourite genres, I recommend this book to those who do love it."

Originally the book came out early in 2012 and I've since re-released it in 2014. Since then I've been working hard on screenplays including one that did well in the Circus Road Films screenplay contest where my horror comedy "Gray and Lover The Hearth Tales Incident" placed as a semi-finalist and my biopic "Teenage Bodyguard" was requested by a London production company.

"Gray" is an excellent franchise film opportunity by the way. People just seem to like the story and its wise cracking , mercenary demon hunting duo, two women who dress steampunk because demons cannot so easily mimic them. So it's only a matter of time before it gets produced.

With this revision of Death of Heaven I'm looking to push it and my writings into the public's consciousness. As an indie author (through Zilyon Publishing) I don't really have the money for making a big noise about it. I'm just trying to make my way and find a niche like any other author as I work myself out of life in corporate IT work. I've been in that nightmare for a while. I raised a family as a single father doing it and now that they are raised and moved out and I'm stretching for my future and a new career.

So you see any help would be greatly appreciated.

That's what this is all about here. This blog that is. Trying to get you to check out my book. If you like I'd be happy to send you a third copy (perhaps to a new address?). Maybe I have less claim upon you than anyone else, yet we all do have to try in life and so this here is me, trying.

Back in 2012 I had sent you a copy of the book to the address that Phil and Sarah gave me. I told you about that on Twitter and you had actually replied and said that you'd look for it and if it was there, you'd find it. But that was the old version, and from a while back. Which might explain your not finding it and which, though other people liked it, this new edition really is much better. I sent you a copy of the revision in 2014.

Stephen King had said of you in that Newsweek article, something I'll never forget it. And what a comment it was:

"I've seen the future of Horror and it is, Clive Barker."

My God, what a statement! Right? I was floored when I read that.

I would never hope for anything like that but anything would be amazing. I'd even take, "This piece of shit sucks so bad I couldn't even make it to the end of page one. Avoid it at all costs. I've seen the future of Horror and if it's this guy well, we're all in very big trouble!"

I don't think you'd find that to be the case however, but hey, whatever!

As I said the first time I met you as was at Tower Books on Mercer Street in Seattle, across from where now TS McHugh's is, a bar that used to be where all the local bands would go after their gigs. I was at the time working at Tower Video up the street. This was after I graduated college with a degree in psychology and a minor in creative writing, fiction and screenwriting.

Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam) during Mother Love Bone years

I was supervisor back then to eventual Pearl Jam bassist, Jeff Ament. This was back when he was in the band Green River and before his Mother Love Bone days. The day he quit to go and try to become a "real musician" I had told him that I thought of anyone I knew, he would be the one to make it. That seemed to mean something to him, considering his momentary contemplation, his bowed head, and then his telling me so.

Those were rough times back in the late 80s.

I had graduated from WWU and simply couldn't sell any writings. So I did as a famous author suggested, I started collecting rejection slip after rejection slip. Perhaps I simply wasn't ready yet.

Once I sent one story to a horror rag in Oregon who had claimed in a magazine advert that if you can't sell your horror elsewhere, they'd buy it. My story was turned down because she didn't like stories where the protagonist dies in the end. So I gave up for a while at that point. Eventually I got back into sending short stories off again though.

Finally in 1990 I sold my first short story, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear." This is now in my collection of old short horror and sci fi stories titled, "Anthology of Evil" and also available as an ebook. An east coast horror quarterly bought it, twisted piece of social horror that it was and that my friends had said was too high brow and too impossible to write.

See, that was the challenge they gave me back in the early 80s. To write a story about "a guy who turns himself into a computer chip." One day I had jokingly told them that "I could make any concept workable. Give me something you think is impossible to write and I'll do it." Ironically, that "unsellable" story (which they liked a lot by the way) turned out years later, to be my first horror story to sell and actually be published.

After I fulfilled my four year commitment in the US Air Force where I had a secret clearance for working around nuclear weapons, I had happily gotten out. Truth be told, the military was somewhat of a nightmare to an artistic type. Still, I survived it to my benefit as it paid for first a two year college degree and then a university degree.

From time to time because of my background in martial arts and firearms I've actually written a screenplay about my first time acting as a bodyguard. That revolved believe it or not, around a strip club waitress and murder witness who had seen a murder committed by an organized crime group in Tacoma back in 1974.

Why screenplays? What kind of a diversion is this now?

Well, I had a year of screenwriting that I fell into after being chosen in playwriting for a special year long, team scriptwriting class. See, I had been sent to playwriting in the Theatre department by my Fiction 101 professor because he thought I needed to learn dialog. Even though that class was mesmerized by my fiction stories that we had to read in class, mine did have little dialog.

In 1984 in college I wrote a screenplay that got me two A's. I had actually graduated college and took one final quarter after that, just so I could leave college with a fully written screenplay under my belt.

There were things in that screenplay that I didn't see in any produced film for another ten or twenty years. Had I been able to get that screenplay ("Ahriman") produced, my entire life would have been completely different and I wouldn't be writing this here today.

Movies that later incorporated elements of my script were Dune (1984 I'll grant you, but I honestly didn't see it until 1985 or so), The Thirteenth Floor (1999) and Dark City (1998) just to name a few. I did eventually get to work with a production company as an "in house" writer for a few years, but never got anything on screen by 2000 so I quit. But it was a good experience in learning to work with producers.

My writings weren't going anywhere, other than I had a good job through the 1990s working as a senior tech writer in IT. After my divorce in 2002 I kept up tthe IT work, moving out of tech writing and into full on system administration. Finally in 2010 I turned my mind back to my writing as my children were pretty much raised and beginning to move out of the house. I even broke up with my girlfriend in order to spend all my time writing thinking that once I got that going, I could return to the arena of romance and the lighter endeavors in life. Kind of still waiting on that now and really ready to pick up the pace on things.

I have a few screenplays done now. "Popsicle Death" is a short screenplay now in the Rod Serling contest at Ithaca College where he used to teach. I wrote that one for my team script and screenwriting class.

There's also "Colorado Lobsters" and "Poor Lord Ritchie's Answer to a Question He Knever Knew." The latter of which I wrote as a short story and just for fun in college. The actor Rutger Hauer chose it as a winner in his short story contest in 2004. I then later adapted it to screenplay format. A professor of mine in college had wanted to do it as a one man stage performance but it never came to be. I guess I'm more of a screenwriter than a playwright. Well, maybe some day.

Back when I met you that first time, I had very little money. There were times when dinner was an apple from the Circle K up the street from Tower. Times, were pretty rough. Even buying one of your books was difficult, but reading it made life all the easier.

Eventually, times got better but I was still at an emotional low. My first marriage had failed when I got out of the service, and I lost everything to the point that I was living in my brother's loft in his garage. Not a bad life for a year until he convinced me to start college ("Hey, parties, girls, degree, more money!").

One day in Seattle I was eating lunch at a Greek restaurant half way between Tower Video Mercer Street store and Tower Books. While enjoying a Celebrator stout, where each bottle comes with a tiny, plastic white goat on a string, I read that life changing Newsweek article about a new force in Horror named, Clive Barker. I went back to work invigorated. It had fascinated me. So I got one of your Books of Blood and read it. Then another. I was hooked.

Not long after on the day I quit Tower in order to go into IT work at the University of Washington, my employees finally admitted they could tell what my mood would be upon returning from lunch. It depended upon how many little dangling plastic Celebrator goats on a string were hanging on my jacket when I returned.

It wasn't that I wasn't normally good natured, but they said they would know how much they could get away even with more than usual by how many goats there were, 1, 2 or 3. Hey, those goats are cool. I have a few hanging on my key holder downstairs, even now.

My first Barker book signed at that first meeting

Those times have passed, as so much has.

My kids are now grown. I've now been at this job for twenty years as of next April 1, 2016 (yes, I know... April Fool's Day) and I'm still single and living alone on a couple of acres just across Puget Sound from Seattle with my German Shepherd of thirteen years named Buddha Thai. I've started working with Kelly Hughes Productions on their next horror film. My kids are happy and seeking their own artistic pursuits. Now it's my turn. Beyond time for mine, really.

I still have my original collection of your books from back then, all signed by you personally in front of me, as well as later books. "Weaveworld" will always be a favorite for the concept of the rug alone and that first day meeting you. I had even gotten you at one point to sign your Books of Blood for  my girlfriend at the time, later my wife and later still, my ex-wife, albeit mother of my only son.

Well, that's more than enough I'm sure. That is who I am in a nutshell but not the entire story surely. There is so much more and much of that will be coming out in my books and screenplays. So keep an eye out, you'll be hearing of me, one way or another.

I wish you well as always and thanks so very much for the memories and the good times!

All the best to you, Clive.

Cheers!
JZ

#CliveBarker #HorrorBooks #Horror

An Open Letter to Mr. Clive Barker - Part I

Dear Mr. Clive Barker,

Hello again, Clive! Haven't talked to you directly face to face since the 90s. Haven't written to you or had you write back since the 80s or early 90s. And we haven't communicated at all even on your Twitter account, since a couple of years ago. Cutting to the quick, I'll just ask outright.

Here's my plea....

Please, consider giving me a short (or long?) blurb for my book, Death of Heaven?

I'm happy to send you another copy to the address Phil and Sarah gave me or another address. This would be my third book. Which is fine as my first was my first edition and I'd prefer you saw my revised second edition after I got an editor. Though I got some good reviews without having one. Which this one is:

Cover art by Marvin Hayes

Maybe, perhaps allow me to lay out my argument for why I think it would be completely awesome if you did give me a blurb. Anything? But that will be in my letter to you in Part II that will be posting here the morning of Monday, October 12, 2015.

Cheers!

[No Clive, really, I'm warning you, don't go to Part II. Just let me know what address to send you another copy to. But if you're unsure what that means, well, then go ahead I guess, head over to Part II....you'll find out all you want to know and then some.]

And again Clive, cheers!

On Leaving a Clean Kitchen, America

Being able to cook good food makes you a good cook. Quite obviously.

But cooking, serving and then eating a meal, while leaving the kitchen still a wreck, in still having a kitchen full of all the pots and pans and utensils you used, doesn't just show how you know how to use all that stuff, that is not the badge of honor.

It also shows that you don't know how to manage a kitchen. It may say that you have good (or great) cooking skills. But it also says you have terrible kitchen skills.

A chef in a professional kitchen has a staff who cleans up. Or if they don't, they clean up themselves. Typically after the night is over, or throughout a shift in order to have the clean tools to cook with.

Though more typically they will have a dishwasher to help them keep up. Otherwise, they'd need way too many utensils and dishes to cook with and serve on. Besides they are cooking dish after dish, meal after meal for person or group after group, for hours on end. While cooking at home is one meal at a time.

A cook in a home kitchen who leaves a mess to clean up later, after the meal, simply shows how inexperienced and amateurish they are. After all, cleaning up as you go really isn't that difficult. It just takes practice and some organizing.

Nor is saying "the dishwasher is full" an excuse for leaving a kitchen mess and certainly not leaving a mess overnight to wake up to. Certainly not for someone who was uninvolved in the previous night's revelry.

So keep up as you use utensils, pots, pans, dishes and so on. Then when you finish the meal and it's ready to eat and serve, you will walk out of a kitchen that is truly ready to be ignored until the next meal and you can eat in peace and relaxation.

If there are any dishes left over it should be from the meal itself and not from the cooking of it. But even that should be taken care of and not left overnight.

Surely there are good times here and there that come up wherein it simply detracts from the event to be cleaning when you should be socializing. That is true enough. But how often should that be considered reasonable to happen throughout a year? A few perhaps, to be sure, but not a lot of them and not on a regular or certainly not on a daily basis.

Because in that case, you are just lazy. Admit it, then you're just a slob.

It takes organizing skills to cook a sophisticated meal. It takes true organizing skills to finish cooking a meal and leaving things so that it looks like no one has even touched the kitchen.

That is the sign of a true master. And a thoroughly achievable one at that.

This isn't just about cooking dinner, however. You may have guessed by now this is about so much more.

America has become very good at quick fixes. Fixes that simply don't work but sound really great. At first. Those "fixes" then continue to remain in place even long after it's common knowledge they failed. Which as we've seen, leads to some very angry communities. Some very damaged communities.

We're not the only ones in the world doing this kind of thing.

Many other countries have picked up some of our bad habits. We have been world leaders in so many areas and that has led to some mimicking our good as well as our bad behaviors.

It's far easier to say for instance, "I'm tough on crime." Then to say, "We have to address the reasons for the crime we're seeing."

As in much of western medicine, we choose to fix the symptom rather than the cause.

This leads us to end up doing things like lowering taxes until we can't afford real maintenance of our country and citizens. When really we need to fix the middle class so we don't have to lower taxes in the first place so we can continue to afford to fund and fix things. As we should be doing.

This twisted thinking leads us to fall into believing some very odd things indeed. Things like we must push all the money up to those who least need it in order to fix things that are wrong with our country. Things that got to be needing to be fixed because of wrong thinking to begin with.

This leaves those at that other lower end to have to be "creative" simply in order to exist, many of whom end up in a biased and broken judicial system. While those committing crimes in acquiring more money at the uppe other end of things, in being people who don't need more money just want it, seem to get off completely free when they get caught. If they ever do get caught. If their crimes are even brought out to the light of day. In fact, many times they are rewarded for their illicit behaviors, even if they are ever fired.

There was a time when common wisdom was to choose the hard road because in that way you learn the most and you end up fixing more.

Anymore however that is considered insane by too many. We have gotten lazy, rationalizing we have to produce more and more rather than better and better. After all, when there is an easy way to accomplish something, the easy fix becomes the priority in order for you to move on as quickly and cheaply as possible.

This is not human thought, this is "corporate thought". A disease seemingly invisible to so many people now a days. But it has become insidious and ubiquitous.

It is however fixable. It is all fixable. With effort. Learn to love effort. Learn to love fixing and not masking symptoms. Learn to be aware of results, of the facts, of cause and effect.

Try the longer road. Try the harder road. Try the better road.

Try to fix things. Not just make them unnoticeable.

Clean the kitchen as you go along. It seems like a lot of work a the time but once you get used to it you begin to realize, it really is the better way. And it will also lead to other things in your life increasing in their quality, and decreasing in their perceived effort.

Life can be good. Life can be better. It's all up to... us.

Robots, AI's, Immigrants...could a Future with no jobs be a good thing?

I really don't see a nearby future with no jobs at all. Immigrants surely  aren't our biggest concen. Those who complain that they are, are a far bigger concern. Because they are detached from reality.

What I do see is a not to distant future with fewer jobs, with jobs taken by robots and AI's and a few people. Times are changing and we can either get on the bus to the future, or we get run over by it. As things are now most of us are about to get run over by it because of the (allowed) greed of corporations, and an inability to change quickly by government and the electorate.

Foolishness in politics and a lack of proper priorities is major a part of our problem. Politicians trying to point everyone in one wrong direction for their own benefit is another problem.

I have said repeatedly before that we need to pay workers more. Why? Because they have been kept back from receiving the increases they have earned and deserved now for decades. And those in charge merely argue reasons why it is okay, rather than reasons why it is not.

Worker need to be working less days per week, less hours per day. Not more. That then would not only give us more workers in the workforce , but would prepare us for when robots do more and more take over our jobs.

We also need to start preparing now for a future of people living longer while there are fewer jobs available.

If we don't make that connection soon, not only will we have shirked our duty as a nation, to increase the quality of the lives of our citizens as we have been doing (or not doing) for years in pushing workers to work more days and longer hours for less money, but we will be unprepared when we find that we really do not need these workers either to to jobs having moved out of country, which isn't as bad as we make it if we had handled things in the ways I'm pointing out, or robotics having replaced our workers.

Having fewer jobs or some day, no jobs, is NOT really a bad thing, We have merely made it that seem that way due to a lack of vision, planning, and proactivity. At the very least we have allowed it to have been made that way.

If we had built our economy properly, if we had other things for people to do, if they had been oriented to consider that once freed from slaving at their jobs, they can move on to higher ideals, things such as the sciences, inventions, the Arts, of bettering humanity's existence both on this planet and off, then the quality of life in general for all would be increasing now and not following a path that is no where near that kind of a consideration.

Now, if you think none of this is possible then you are simply considering the wrong things, and looking at all this in old fashioned, anachronistic ways. You are taking the tact that it's not possible, rather than considering how it is possible. And we need to be considering how things like this ARE possible. If you like, we need to "think outside the box".

But I would argue, we are currently living an existence that is outside of that box already. We have merely be deluded for so long that we can no longer see it, beyond the status quo that has been sold to us as just, "how it is", when really we have all been "sold down the river" just so the rich could become richer, and powerful, more powerful. All at our expense.

I'm not even arguing a national or global conspiracy here. It's just how it is, has been, and those who can, have jumped on the bandwagon in order to further their own agendas, bettered their own lives. It has replaced the American Dream with the Dream of the Rich and Powerful.

And no one seems to have noticed! Though I suspect they are finally now beginning to.

Central to all of these things is not despondency among the masses so much as poor education. In cutting our benefits over the past decades, at letting our infrastructures go, to devolve, we have dumbed down our population and made it easier for some of the stupid beliefs that are going around and have been governing our nation. We need to change that.

We need to be thinking through a new paradigm shift in preparing for it to allow it to happen. We need to be living it and moving on into the future. We need to do  it, ourselves. We need to vote for those who should be running things. Those who want to end big money in politics. Those who will oppose the ignorance and stupidity in politics and in the voting public.

As with others knowledgeable in the topic, I do not so much worry about the resiliency of people but in the inability of the lumbering giants of government, business and finance. We will have to kick them repeatedly in order to give them a consistent and hard myocardial thump to the near cadaver of those who have been handed over the charter to protect us. We need to push through to their central cores, to their hearts if you will. To restart it to once again beat for us and not just as they seem to do so well and so often, merely fend for themselves.

Robots, AI's, Immigrants? Could a Future with no jobs be a good thing?

Digital Dilettantes and Their Fundemental Misunderstanding

I was once one of those believers in “Information should be free." That was back at the beginning of the public internet in the 1980s before the web took hold in the 90s. But the issue really wasn’t not paying people for their efforts, their art, their genius. It was about what can be free being free. 

Information, should be free. Information that IS free, should be made free. Old information surely. Public information, absolutely, and so on. Government for one should be supplying citizens with all the information possible. 

An informed citizenry is far more productive for a nation, for the world, than an ignorant citizenry. 

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820.

The current spate of dilettantes crying for “free information for all” have diluted the original meaning of the original intent of the phrase. To quote, as friend and fellow author Kurt Giambastiani put it in his blog recently, "Talent Just Wants to be Free: The Idiocy of Digital Dilettantes", there is a problem with thinking that all information should be free. Obviously, artists deserve to be rewarded for their talents and efforts.

Please feel free to go check out Kurt's blog that spawned my blog here as well as his comments there on this blog. Kurt always has something interesting on his blog. He offered this as an example of part of the problem with this information should be free issue: Income for US authors falls below federal poverty line – survey.

If information is made freely available to the general public, it will enhance the human experience overall. Certainly Public Domain works should be freely disseminated to the public, world wide. The downside is that some ignorant people will take in some of this information and yet remain ignorant as we have seen so much of lately. 

At that point those people are stumbling into the realm of stupidity in choosing to accept bad information merely to support bad information they already have. However, if we offer as much good and accurate information as possible, eventually the truth tends to win out. 

Supplying information leads into the same issues we see in the services industry. 

Why for instance does a mixed drink cost more at a bar than at home? Because you’re paying for more than the ingredients. You're also paying for the venue, the mixologist’s skills and knowledge, the server serving you so you don’t have to serve yourself, others of the public congregating in the venue, perhaps music or talent that is supplied, and so on.

So it is with supplying information to the public. 

Someone needs to package, store and disseminate it. The infrastructure leading to accessing that information needs to be monitored and maintenanced. Which is why I think the internet is no different than our roads and bridges and should be available to all to utilize them. If the government needs to pay (through us) to have and make information freely available online, then so be it.

Someone has to do it, and it needs to be done.

That is not to say that new information that has a cost. especially for individuals, musicians and artists, people who deserve to eat and live a good life while producing their works, should have their works devalued. Of course their works shouldn't be free and they should be appropriately compensated for the quality of their time and works.

The issue isn’t so much that these digital dilettantes are wrong, as they are misguided and perhaps being cheap bastards too. 

YES, information should be free and freely available to all. IF it’s free to begin with. At some point then down the long road of time it should become free. Free as in public domain. A concept I think we should retain after the death of the artist and perhaps that of their immediate family. As for the succeeding members of their family retaining rights, there are currently laws in place about that as well as their ability to retain those rights and so on.

We do need to push information out to all humans everywhere who want it and it does therefore need to be free. 

There are also other important considerations as has so kindly and eloquently (as always) pointed out by Kurt Giambastiani. 

Still, people need information to live, to eat, to survive. Artists and content producers do need to live and eat and survive. We just need to consider the context and not gloss over the issues like ignorant and greedy dilettantes.

Getting a project going, moving, done and completed

This story was taken from the book, “Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers.”

I got this from Robert McKee who was talking about the actor Charlton Heston.

 “Heston said getting his first acting job came down to luck. After a theater production he had auditioned for fizzled and a directing job ended, his wife suggested Heston go to auditions for a production of "Antony and Cleopatra." Heston went over to the office and found it crowded. People who had connections in the theater industry auditioned first. Finally, Heston was the only one left. A staff member asked his name. "I said, 'Charlton Heston. Maynard Morris of MCA sent me up,'" Heston remembered. "I'd never been inside MCA and never met Maynard Morris. She said, 'Well, we're a little ahead, I guess we can see you'... Don't ever say luck doesn't count."

Again, let me be clear just as Robert was being. I'm not condoning lying or cheating to get ahead anymore than he was. That being said, I can tell you what the director Stanley Kramer once told me during a seminar series in talking about how he first got started in film.

He got his first film made through sheer guts. Since he couldn't get together the three pillars of filmmaking, what you need to produce a film, he told the bank that he had he actors and the studio. Then he told the studio he had the bank and the actors. And obviously he then told the actors he had the bank and the studio. And so he got his first film produced.

However that may not work so easily now a days. With instant media and such ease of checking into things now, it still may work if you handle it right. It's not so much in lying about things to get the ball rolling (though maybe sometimes). It's more about your attitude. About what you are projecting to those you need to be projecting it to.

It is about getting things done. Pushing through the impossible to the plausible on into the completed.

Never say die, they say. Never give up. It is those who stick with the process to the bitter end who survive to win.

If you have a dream, don't just dream it, but dream it big, with passion and bring others into that dream. Do things and get things done. Show people you can do those things. Infect them with your passion for your project, your business, your dreams.

You'll be surprised what you can accomplish if you just act like you should be doing what you're doing and then, do it.

Do we really need gun control in America?

Something about gun control just occurred to me. We need it.

Conservatives who are pro gun and concerned about having guns to protect themselves from their own government, are part of the group who have a strangle hold on America in many questionable ways. IF they are truly worried about their government to the point that they need assault rifles should they need to bear arms against their own nation and government, then they should vote appropriately to keep that from being a concern.

So that they do not need guns to protect themselves from their own government. Then they would not need assault weapons, just if anything, hunting and sport weapons and assault weapons (ASSAULT) weapons, are not sport firearms. Listen to this again.
Assault weapons are not sport firearms.

They are weapons.

If they think they need to protect themselves from their own government they need to be active in their government to keep vigilant so they never need weapons against their own stewards of their nation. if their nation is not going the direction they think it should be going and they are involved, perhaps they are looking at things wrong and in the end they are the ones who aren't seeing reality, who aren't evolving. Assault weapons are fun.

There is no doubt about that. Owning a fighter jet or a tank would be fun. Boom, ha ha. Yes, fun. But we should limit weapons. Otherwise nukes would be legal and most would agree that isn't a good idea. So there are limits, there is a border. Perhaps we do not need assault weapons. Yes the old argument when guns are outlawed only criminals will have guns is a double meaning. Only thugs will have and use guns illegally and only law abiding citizens will own them illegally because they have the moral right somehow to them.

If we have guns being used illegally more guns aren't the answer. Social programs are. Yes, that means spending money and spending it correctly. And I wouldn't look to a conservative for that answer. We need mental health considerations and programs. We need to address the things that have led us down a path of having more people in prison than any other country, more deaths by gun than any other country in peace time.

We can have guns enough however and of a type to protect ourselves against illegal guns. Yes, some will die because they too do not have a machine gun. But that is part of life. It's unfair. But when you consider the number of these incidents it's really not much of an issue, it's a fear stoked by people with an agenda that goes all the way up to the gun manufacturers and back around to the most powerful lobby in the world. The US gun lobby. The NRA.

Part of the nightmare we have today, the polarized separation of left and right, of conservatives and liberals falls right on the head of the NRA's divisiveness over past decades and Wayne LaPierre's actions in particular. A man who couldn't even use a gun when he started with the NRA. He was a politician seeking power and he found it in the ignorance and power of the NRA's membership and advocates. He has turned the NRA into something that politicians and Americans fear as well as gun manufacturers.

To say like LaPierre said, what if an armed and trained individual was there when a grade school got shot up, is a stupid, monstrous, decisive thing to say. Inflammatory and it got him a lot of donations from those he was trying to inflame. What if a cop where there? How often are cops really where shootings happen? It's a pipe dream. It's ineffectual. It's a lie.

Then the one time the NRA under LaPierre was going to compromise, after the Sandy Hook school shootings, the Gun Owners of America group, and even harder core of gun supporters than the NRA stepped in and subverted what could have been a good thing, saying that if you give in once you set the tempo for losing more. Which is a stupid thing to say, it's a politician's thing to say, a conservative's comment, a professional's comment, showing no real concern for people at all or for the real issues at hand.

The real issue is not guns, it's people. It's not about people's entertainment shooting guns, it's certainly not for the most of us, about food, shooting game, it's not about protecting America from it's own government. It's about people dying. Or not dying, through some common sense and reasonable measures to protect the citizens of this nation, from themselves. The odd and ironic thing about this is that the citizens of this nation are trying as hard as they can not to protect the citizens of this nation, from themselves.

The point is that those who think they need all guns all the time will never feel safe. Nothing will ever be enough. They will never trust the government, a functionary that swings like a pendulum from year to year election to election from right to left and back again. It's apart of democracy. What these people want is not democracy however. It's something else. And it's something we don't want or need as a nation.

It's past time to do something about it, put these people in their place, and push the NRA back into the safety and sport organization it once was, and was what I grew up with when I looked up to the NRA not as a beast trying to wear sheep's clothing but as an advocate for safety and sport, not murder and mayhem and power.

I used to belong to the NRA. I belongs when I was a kid int he 1960s and was proud of it. I haven't belonged to it in many yeas now. Because I dont' even recognize what it is anymore.

Do we need gun control in America? That's not even a question, it's a fact.