Shameless plug for the book, along with a quick excerpt: * * * * * * * Keilie shivered. “I’m frightened.” “Me too.” “I should have stayed in Hightown.” “Maybe. But what’s done is done. If we escape these woods, do you want me to take you home?” She did not answer. Wendt said, “There … Continue reading Excerpt from Pilgrimage to Skara
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Comment on A new “Splash.” by Beth Turnage
I saw a trailer for the Magnificent Seven in the theater this weekend. It looked okay, but trailers can be deceptive. I agree that perhaps Hollywood should sometimes leave well enough alone but then there are other movies that beg for a better remake. Dune is one such story. How I longed for the SyFy channel version with the original movie’s cast. Of course that could never happen.
On the other hand there is plenty of new material that would suitable movie material, but I guess its easier to dig among the dusty piles of old movie concepts than to develop new ones. 🙂
The Lonely Life of the Writer in the Age of Social Media
Hello, blogosphere. I’ve been absent for some time but I’ve recently been reminded that this is a bit of sin. I need to maintain my web presence if I ever hope to be a published or successful author. Agents and publishers want to authors who are active…
Literariness
I write fantasy. I imagine that if I am ever published, my books will appear in the fantasy/science fiction section of the bookstore. Is that a bad thing? Is it something to be ashamed of? Is fantasy only childish, escapist make-believe? I think the an…
Called it
For anyone who thought that my portrayal of jihadis as thugs with no knowledge of Islam was maybe too harsh, we have the following corroboration from the Economist:
For recruits to an ostensibly religious militia, many of those joining IS seem to display a notable ignorance of Islam. Before leaving for Syria, Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, two young men from Birmingham who pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses in July, ordered copies of “Islam for Dummies” and “The Koran for Dummies” from Amazon.
You see, just because you made something up on the spot doesn’t mean it’s not true. Metaphysical journalism wins again! Though for some reason the Globe and Mail still returned my resume with the note, “Send this again and we’ll get a restraining order.”
Charlie Hebdo
Today I conducted a metaphysical interview with one of the men who allegedly carried out the massacre at Charlie Hebdo, killing Stéphane Charbonnier and eleven others. As you may know from earlier posts, a metaphysical interview is like a real interview except instead of talking to people you speculate about what they might say. It’s basically like Fox News without the pretence of factuality.
The killers are in hiding, of course. I met them in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Before me was a thin, thuggish man, his head not quite shaved recently enough to hide his widow’s peak. He fixed me with a menacing stare. “Allahu akbar,” he said slowly. “I am Cherif.”
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.” Then I froze up, not sure what to say to someone who had allegedly just gunned down twelve people in cold blood. “Um – so you are one of the alleged attackers.”
“Yes,” said Cherif. “I was one of those who allegedly executed the infidels. We allegedly cut those bastards down where they stood. We allegedly went in there, found that beast Charbonnier, that foul cartoonist, and put an alleged cap in his alleged ass. And then we allegedly shot everybody else, mostly because they were there.”
“And – why? I guess that’s the question, right? Why did you allegedly do this?”
“To defend Islam. They blasphemed the Prophet.”
“And so you killed them all? Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh?”
“Allah is harsh,” said Cherif. He leant towards me, scowling. “You don’t fuck with Allah, see? You try fucking with Allah, and you’ll hear from us.” He tapped his chest with his fist.
“This,” he went on, “was divine motherfucking wrath. The Koran says that blasphemy must be punished with death.”
“Where does it say that?”
Cherif took a yellow-striped paperback out of his pocket. The cover read Ql’iffs Notes: The Qu’ran, and below that Your imam will never know you didn’t read it! “Right here,” he said. “‘It is forbidden to make the Prophet look silly.’ And when you insult Muhammad, we are gonna fuck you up.”
“If Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were offensive and broke Allah’s law,” I said, “God would punish the cartoonists in the afterlife, wouldn’t He? Why do you need to kill them?”
“You stupid or something?” Cherif snarled. “You want Allah should go around breaking kneecaps himself? Is Muhammad gonna have to cut a bitch?”
“I’m a little confused here, but I think – ”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Think.”
“What?”
“Thinking is forbidden. Islam prohibits it. Everybody knows that.”
I smiled nervously. “For a second there I thought I was talking to Geert Wilders.”
“Islam means submission to God. It does not mean ‘think about shit’. Ever heard of a Muslim who – ”
“Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina – ”
Cherif waved his Ql’iffs Notes in the air. “The Koran says – ”
“That’s not actually the Koran, though.”
He tucked in his chin and glared. “Let me tell you a story. There was once a great Islamic scholar. And when he came across people in the marketplace blaspheming and apostating and philosophering, he said to them, ‘You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend.’”
My jaw dropped so fast I pulled a muscle. “That’s from Scarface.”
“Yes. That scholar was the great al-Pacino.”
“It’s a movie about a psychopathic drug dealer.”
He shrugged. “It’s allegorical.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Is this really what you believe in?”
“Hey!” said Cherif. “I’m a devout Muslim. I check Muhammad’s Twitter feed five times a day, sometimes more.”
“Muhammad died in the seventh century. He does not have a Twitter feed.”
“Well, the angel set it up for him. I don’t know. Allah is all-powerful.” Cherif narrowed his eyes. “You’re thinking again, aren’t you?”
I sighed. There was no point arguing with him. But maybe something else would work. I leant forward and said in an Oprahish kind of voice, “Was this really about Islam?”
“Everything is about Islam,” Cherif snapped. He began counting on his fingers. “Scarface, Taxi Driver, that one where they cut the guy’s eyeball open – ”
“Or is this about your own pain?” I continued. “Did you feel that Charlie Hebdo was insulting you?”
Cherif’s eyes suddenly misted over. His voice wavered. “Maybe – maybe I was jealous, since that blasphemous magazine was so popular and my rap career never took off and the networks won’t broadcast my show.”
“Your show?”
“The Super Salafist Funtime-mentalist Variety Hour. Good, wholesome, pious entertainment, but the liberal media refuse to air it.” He leapt from his chair. “We’re taping a new episode right now, in fact.”
“I thought you said the networks refused it.”
“We put them on YouTube. We get dozens of views – sometimes. Come on! You can watch!”
He dragged me through another door, where to my shock I found a soundstage. Men, and women in niqabs, were milling about. There was a live studio audience, with all the men seated on one side and all the women on the other, and a portable chain-link fence set up between them. Cherif and I sat down in the back row.
“Can you sit in the audience like this?” I asked. “You said it was your show.”
“I’m an executive producer,” Cherif said. “Now hush, it’s about to start.”
The house lights went down. A loud recording of a man singing played for a moment, and then a sign reading APPLAUSE IS FORBIDDEN in red letters lit up over the stage. Two lines of veiled women walked out and formed a sort of phalanx.
“These are the Funtime-mentalist Showgirls,” Cherif whispered excitedly.
“They’re, um, not moving.”
“Dancing is forbidden,” Cherif replied.
“Shouldn’t there at least be music or something?”
“Can’t have women and music together. Things could get out of hand.”
Several minutes went by. “How do you even know they’re women?” I whispered. “You can’t see anything but their eyes.”
Cherif pouted. “It would be improper for me to see their faces, but I talked a bunch of times with one of them, while chaperoned. There, the tall one in the back row. Her name is Richard.”
I coughed.
“She has the loveliest knuckles,” Cherif went on. “And this husky voice. Once we even talked about getting married. Richard wanted to have our wedding in Canada or Oregon, but I said, no, we should go to Saudi Arabia. And she said we couldn’t get married there for some reason she never really explained.” He sighed. “Well, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
The dancers filed away, and a portly man with a long beard walked onstage. “Good afternoon and welcome to the Super Salafist Funtime-mentalist Variety Hour!” he said. “I’m your host, Abdul al-Unser.” He took a book out of his pocket. “We’ll begin tonight’s show by reading some of Muhammad’s sayings.”
“You see,” said Cherif, “unlike that degenerate, corrupting mockery Charlie Hebdo offered, we both entertain and teach.”
Al-Unser began to read from the book, in what appeared to be Classical Arabic spoken with a thick French accent. I looked around the audience, then nudged Cherif. “It doesn’t seem to me like anyone here understands what he’s saying.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” said Cherif. “He’ll explain it for us afterward.”
Sure enough, after several minutes al-Unser closed the book and said, “And those are the passages where Muhammad said that we must kill all the infidels, women are not allowed to use phones, and Mountain Dew is liquified sin. And now,” he continued, “it is time for entertaining jokes. Please welcome Abdul al-Jolson!”
Another stout bearded man came on. He must have been the designated comedian, as his robe was made of different clashing plaids. “Good afternoon, al-Unser,” he said. “Tell me, how many Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“Why, I don’t know,” al-Unser replied. “How many Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“I don’t know either,” said al-Jolson. “I don’t speak to Jews.”
No one laughed. Cherif nudged me with his elbow and whispered, “He’s a comic genius, isn’t he?”
I was too flabbergasted to answer.
“Knock knock,” said al-Jolson.
“Who’s there?” said al-Unser.
“Allah.”
“Allah who?”
“Allahu akbar!”
I couldn’t help snickering. Cherif jabbed me hard with his elbow. “Laughing isforbidden.”
Al-Jolson bowed to the silent audience and left the stage, and al-Unser said, “And now everybody’s favourite part of the show: the Funtime-mentalist Puppets, featuring the severed heads of executed infidels!”
The curtain of a Punch-and-Judy-like booth behind him opened up to reveal two decomposing heads with arms shoved up the necks. One began moving its mouth, and a second or two later a voice said, “Good afternoon, fellow infidel. How many Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“All right, that’s it.” I stood up. “This has gone way, way too far.”
“You can’t leave now!” Cherif hissed. “I co-wrote the next sketch! It’s called ‘Jihad to Avonlea’. Some hair is sticking out from under Anne’s hijab and so al-Unser – well, I won’t ruin it for you, it’s too hilarious!”
“It’s horrible,” I said. “This is all horrible. You’re so stupid and cruel it’s almost pathetic.”
Which I should not have said out loud, because I was immediately surrounded by men waving guns and shouting “Blasphemy!” and “Kill him!”
I had to think fast. “There!” I cried. “Look over there!”
No one looked. I had to come up with a better plan.
“In the…backstage dressing room! There’s a piece of toast with Muhammad’s face on it!”
The men stared at me in horror. “Kill the toast!” somebody bellowed. “Kill that blasphemous toast!” The mob charged toward the stage. There were screams as they trampled one of the alleged showgirls. And I got out of the building as fast as I could.
On Style
Be clear. Be concise. Omit needless words.This is the prevailing advice on writing these days. Avoid long sentences and figures of speech. Beware of adverbs. Go light on the exposition. Use modifiers sparingly. Show, don’t tell. It is the notion that t…
12 People You’ll Never Believe You Actually Elected
Today, instead of a fictional farce, we look at the actual farce that is Alberta politics. The Progressive Conservative party has been in power in Alberta for 43 years. I’m just going to repeat that number in case you missed it the first time: 43 years. They have literally been around longer than disco.
They can be called a centre-right party, inasmuch as a party whose name is an oxymoron can have a coherent position. But it’s not very accurate to call the PCs a party. A party is a faction, a group of like-minded individuals who band together to better compete against other groups of like-minded individuals. The PCs are an institution. They are the Blob, inexorably absorbing every sentient being within reach.
For starters, they haven’t just governed this province for 43 years, they’ve done it with overwhelming majorities. In the last election, the PCs won 61 seats, and all three other parties combined won 26. That’s less than three-quarters of the total, which is well below average for the PCs. Every twenty years or so, another party actually tries to winan election in Alberta. The rest of the time, they try not to lose every one of their seats.
But that by itself kind of understates how dominant the PCs are. The second-biggest party was the Wildrose, a sort of right-wing protest group. Rather than progressively conservative, they were straight-up 160-proof conservative. (You’ll see in a moment why I’m using the past tense here.) Several Wildrose members were former PCs who’d grown disaffected with the government’s unaccountability and ideological incoherence. Another party, the Liberals, are led by another disaffected former PC. So our legislature consists of the governing party, the governing party’s castoffs, and a smattering of other politicians who spend nearly all their time complaining about how nobody ever pays attention to them.
You see, the PCs are what they call a ‘big-tent’ party, meaning that they have colonized a wide swath of the political spectrum. PCs come from right and left, but they are all united by one belief: they want a share of power, and the way you get power is by joining the party that’s had it all since before I was born.
With that in mind, let’s move to recent events. Three years ago the PCs were facing a major threat from the Wildrose, who had a likeable leader, Danielle Smith, and a clear message.
Danielle Smith dreams of power
The first problem the PCs were having was that people were getting tired of being governed by a dynasty about to enter its fifth decade. The other problem was that the premier at the time was Ed Stelmach, the blandest politician ever to live.
Ed Stelmach’s official portrait
This was a serious threat to a job security that tenured professors envied. So the PCs sent Stelmach back to his farm (I am not making that up) and cast about desperately for anyone who might win them the election. They settled on Alison Redford.
Alison Redford suspects we’re talking about her
Redford came from the left wing of the party; rather than progressively conservative, she was progressive, though conservatively. She cozied up to leftish types in the big cities. Her strategy was to portray the Wildrose as a bunch of grumpy old white men who hated everything invented after 1900 and a great deal of things from before then.
It worked mainly because of an almost unprecedented twist, which was that what she was saying was more or less true. One example among many was Wildrose candidate Allan Hunsperger’s blog, which described in detail what he wanted God to do to gays. (Hint: it’s like what the server does to a baked Alaska, but longer-lasting.) The Wildrose party’s attempt at damage control was just to say that raging homophobia wasn’t official party policy, which is like the cable company saying that, yes, some of our customer service representatives are assholes, but we don’t require them to be that way.
It was an interesting election, with the PCs basically running under the slogan “Corrupt and Out of Ideas, but Not Evil” and the Wildrose riposting with “Honest, Fresh, and We Might Not Hate You Specifically”. The Wildrose swept the grumpy old white man vote, but the PCs won the election through a last-minute surge of liberal urbanites voting for them out of sheer terror at what the Wildrose might wreak.
But things didn’t go swimmingly for the new government. The main problem was that Redford spent most of her time in office circling the province in a taxpayer-funded private jet sending out tweets like “what up, alberta? just cracked a fresh bottle of dom perignon. btw have 2 cut all higher education funding by 20% 🙁 ”
The fun finally ended when her own party went after her with torches and pitchforks. She was replaced by Jim Prentice, a former federal politician, then vice-chairman of a large bank.
Jim Prentice gets ready to bring the pain
In one of those quirks of the Canadian parliamentary system that is not endearing, Prentice became leader first and was then elected. That is, he was chosen as party leader and then ran for office in a byelection in a safe district, one where a majority of people would vote for a genital wart if it was running for the PCs – not that anybody shows up for byelections anyway, since they’re roughly equivalent to inviting all your friends to the bar on a Tuesday afternoon. Prentice won with 6 898 votes. This was 58% of the people who bothered to show up, 15% of the population of the district, and a resounding 0.189% of the people of Alberta.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Wildrose, Danielle Smith, had been fighting for her party to officially agree to equal rights for everyone regardless of race, religious belief, or sexual orientation – because, as she repeatedly pointed out, it’s hard to win an election when you come across as bigoted against most of the electorate. And the party of course agreed, since no political organization not actually run by Archie Bunker would be so committed to bigotry that it would rather give up the chance of ever governing than compromise on the issue.
No, I’m kidding. They refused. And so what happens? Well, the Wildrose leader and ten other legislators from her party figured out their best route to power was, as always, to join the Blob. So they – and this is the majority of the Wildrose caucus we’re talking about, including the party leader – defected and joined the PCs.
So let’s review. Who governs Alberta now?
- A bank vice-chairman who got almost 7000 ordinary citizens to vote for him.
- A party one-sixth of whose representatives were actually elected as members of a different party.
Is this undemocratic? Well, let’s compare it to, say, Russia. On the one hand, Vladimir Putin won the presidential election in part by jailing all his serious opponents. On the other hand, he actually bothered to hold a fucking vote.
I suppose we did vote, in a way. We voted for the Blob, and they’ll keep us posted on who exactly we elected. Isn’t that so very nice of them.
The young man and the sage
Once upon a time a young man who was acclaimed for his wit and the profundity of his thoughts decided to visit an old sage who lived as a hermit on a mountain. The young man climbed up the steep path to the hermit’s hut and found him working in his garden.
“Great sage,” said the young man, “I have come to you because you are reputed to be very wise, and I wish someday to be as wise as you. So, tell me: what is the secret of your wisdom?”
The old sage sat back on his haunches and looked the young man over. He scratched the side of his nose as he thought. “Wisdom,” he finally said, “is the sea.”
The young man waited a moment in case the sage added anything, but he didn’t, so he replied, “Ah, yes! Of course! Why couldn’t I see that before! Thank you, thank you!” He went back to his town and relayed the old sage’s account, expounding and expanding it, and soon he had built up quite a reputation as a teacher himself.
All the time, however, something was nagging at him, which was the feeling that he didn’t completely understand what it was for wisdom to be the sea. In fact, when he was really being honest with himself, he felt like he didn’t understand it at all. So after ten years had passed, he decided to go back to the sage. He climbed the mountain much more slowly this time, his impending confession weighing heavily on his mind.
The sage was resting under a tree. “Wise sage,” said the young man, “I am grateful for what you revealed to me, but I must admit that I do not fully understand yet what wisdom is.”
The sage looked him up and down, scratched the side of his nose, and thought. After several minutes he said, “What I said before was true, and yet – wisdom is not the sea.”
“Why, of course!” said the young man. “I understand now. It’s much clearer.” And it did seem that way for a while. But then the doubts returned, and he found himself lying awake at night wondering: how is wisdom the sea and also not the sea? He decided the meaning was ineffable. That satisfied him for a number of years, but then the nagging worries began to grow, that maybe his understanding was not so much ineffable as nonexistent.
And so, ten years after his last visit, he returned to the sage. The path up the mountain seemed much steeper than it had been before, and the man had to stop several times to rest. The sage had grown very thin. He was slumped in a chair watching a girl, a granddaughter or even great-granddaughter, tending his garden.
“Oh great sage,” said the man, “I have considered what you said for all these years, but I regret that I still lack your insight. So please tell a poor suffering soul: what is wisdom?”
The old sage looked him over. He thought for so long that the man started to wonder if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. And then the sage said, “Wisdom is the slightest blade of grass and the mightiest mountain.”
“I see,” said the man. “Yes! It explains so much!” And it did seem for a bit like it did. He felt like he was right on the cusp of understanding, but every time he tried to take that last step and grasp the meaning, it would slip away like a ghost. He took to meditating on the sage’s words for several hours a day, but it did him no good. He drank gingko biloba tea every morning, and ate fish for dinner. When he was sick of those, he tried fasting, but he still could not understand.
After ten more years, he could no longer stand his hollow life, where he was wealthy and respected as a learned man but was unable to grasp the simplest truth. So he gave away all his worldly possessions and set out on foot across the countryside seeking enlightenment – until his sciatica got so bad he had to have his brother send him money for a carriage home.
When he returned, he heard that the sage had taken ill. The man realized this might be his last chance to learn what wisdom was. He struggled up the path until he reached the little hut. The sage was bedridden, but the girl – who was now a grown woman, and quite pretty – propped him up on some pillows so he could receive his visitor.
“Oh great sage,” said the man, “I have thought and considered and fasted and meditated for so many years. But I still cannot grasp the secret of your wisdom. You said that wisdom is the sea, and you said it is not the sea, and you said it is the slightest blade of grass and the mightiest mountain. But sometimes I cannot imagine how such things could mean anything at all.”
“Neither can I,” the sage replied, “but it didn’t take me thirty years to figure that out.”
Accounting for Taste
I have long believed that taste, one’s aesthetic sense, one’s choice in music, literature, art and fashion, is important, that it is not trivial or superficial. I’ve always struggled to articulate the idea, always wondering how people can like certain…