And the National Book Award goes to...

Here is another case in point on the growing Stupification of the American reading public. Richard Power's The Echo Maker received the National Book Award, one of the country's most prestigious writing awards. Unfortunately, this novel is little more than mediocre shlock. On the other hand, it does have angels-- which seems to be the growing trend in fiction today.

Stinko!!

Last week I attended a performance of a Beethoven symphony. I arrived at the auditorium and sat in a seat near the front. Just as the performance began, two old trolls walked in and sat in the seats directly in front of me. In a few minutes the scent of hairspray wafted over me and I could feel an allergic reaction in my nose and throat. As soon as I could, I moved further down the row.

Not good enough. The smell was still overwhelming. How much hairspray do you have to put on for crying out loud!

I then moved to the far side of the room.

Why do people feel they have the right to douse themselves with perfume, cologne, hairspray and other loud scents and then go into a public place? Don't they know that many people have strong reactions to that crap?

Christian Bookstores-- a contradiction

The current issue of Christianity Today (April 2008) has an article "How to Save the Christian Bookstore" which suggests that Christians make bookstores more friendly and less obviously religious. Some bookstores (mainly the independently-owned stores, which are in decline) might be able to pull this off. If the focus is truly on using the bookstore as a forum forum for recruiting and indoctrination, this might happen.

But in reality Christian bookstores are primarily in it to make a buck.

I often visit the mall in Joplin, Missouri, which includes a religious bookstore. I've often beem surprised by the staff of the bookstore. Invariably they are very tightly-wound creepy characters, exactly the kind of people you see on The X-Files as running cults in rural towns and practicing cannibalism, child molesting, and other such rituals.

From the expressions on their faces and the twisted body-language it is clear that they are very, very unhappy people who have been trapped in dead-end jobs. Since the owners of the Christian bookstore are probably Christians, we can also be fairly sure that these people are working for minimum wage with no benefits ("they can always rely on God for help") and no hope to escape their taskmasters.

How could you make this place "friendly" when the workers are so miserable and unhappy?

Pandering to the Religious

When you work at a university in the Bible Belt, this is the kind of stuff you have to deal with. The university plays the host for this show:

“AFTERdark,” an evening of music, motivation, and evangelism geared toward college students, will begin at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1, in the Weede Physical Education Building. The event will include music from country group Blue County, and will feature national guest speaker and author Joe White.

"White, who lives in Branson, Mo., tours the country with “AFTERdark,” speaking to millions of people about Christianity. He has founded 19 schools and an orphanage in Haiti, and is the founder of Kanakuk Kamps, which has hosted more than 20,000 campers from all over the world.

"The free event is open to the public and is being sponsored by PSU’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Cross Quest, and Campus Christians."

A bulk email was sent out to all faculty, and it suggested that faculty could give out "extra credit" to students for attending this religious service. Several days later, and probably because of complaints, the university sent out another email. This email stated that faculty at a state university should probably not be giving extra credit for attending an evagelical Christian religious service.

Duuuuh!

Of course, by the time the second email went out, all the Religious faculty had probably already promised to give extra credit. So the contrary email sent out several days later probably had litte effect. The damage was already done.

After the event, the local newspaper reported that over 1,000 people attended. These 1,000 attendees were, no doubt, students and local ministers and their congregations who had supported and promoted the event. This kind of event, held on a university campus, gives local ministers a chance to prey on young people, usually when they are away from home and at their most vulnerable. This is why religious cults always hang around colleges and universities. It's a good place to find new cult members. One of the very earliest groups to be labelled a "cult" was based on a college campus in Boston.

Who Murdered Socrates?

The Rise of the Mediocracy as a Social Theory

"No reports are more readily believed
than those which disparage genius,
and soothe the envy of conscious
mediocrity." -- Macaulay (1837)

There is probably no social force more completely overlooked and ignored that the role of mediocrities in shaping human history. From the collapse of the Greek city-states to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, no particular human failing has played a greater role in our history than the mediocrity of the popular opinion makers--"the media elite" and their envy of the accomplished, the able, and the achiever. They not only engage in character assassination, but sometimes go for the real thing.
From the assassination of Julius Caesar to those of Trotsky and Malcolm X, from the forced "suicide" of Socrates to that of Rommel.

In a very real sense, human history is the record of leaders who build empires, only to be destroyed by the envy of their followers, and the resulting decay and collapse as the mediocrities fight among themselves for control of the empire. In a very real sense, human history is largely the record of lions being brought down by jackals, and the resulting disaster as the jackals fight among themselves for the scraps of power and pieces of empire.

This idea will go towards explaining how, after taking the nomination, Barak Obama will be mercilessly ripped apart by Joe Scarborough, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter,.....

Jumper -- the movie

I went to see the new film, Jumper, a hight-tech sci-fi wonder with tons of special effects and (the usual) poor writing that we have all come to expect from Hollywood. I am amazed that Hollywood studios are willing to invest tens of millions to make a film, but aren't willing to shell out a few grand extra to get good writers.

Every writer I talk to wants to go to Hollywood and write for films. There should be hundreds, if not thousands, of good writers who would like to do a screenplay. Then why is it that we get this horrid, crappy plots and lousy dialog... over and over and over again?

The Sci-Fi Channel movies are clearly the worst offenders in this area. Their films are horribly written.

I think the culprits are the producers and directors who think that, just because they can talk people into investing in a film and green-lighting its production, that they also have the talent to write. Eddie Murphy's _Vampire in Brooklyn_ is a case in point. According to the newspapers, Eddie and his brothers sat around a kitchen table, drinking beer and writing the screenplay.

It shows just how little regard Hollywood has for good writing. The recent writer's strike is proof (as if we needed any) that movie companies think of writers as noisy pests that they can do without.

And, as if that was bad enough, I had to sit through the entire film near an old woman who had some serious hygiene problem--as least I assume she had a serious hygiene problem since she obviously poured a whole bottle of perfume on herself before she left the house.

We had a Russian exchange student stay with us for three months (some years ago) and he did the same thing. Except that he used Old Spice cologne.

And the Pulitzer goes to....

Any time you go to a bookstore, you can see dozens of novels that have won one prize or another. One of the most coveted prizes is the Pulitzer, but there are many lesser-known prizes, too. Some are legitimate awards and others are phony cocked-up awards created to promote a magazine. And then there are the awards created by publishers for the sole purpose of feeding the ego of a favorite writer. For example, recently a group of publishers got together and created a phony award to give to Stephen King. God knows that King would never win an award based on actual talent, so these guys decided to create an award for him. Nice!

The problem with many of these awards is that they are given to mediocrities by a committee made up of literary mediocrities. For example, giving the Pulitzer to _Middlesex_ is a case in point. The author of _Middlesex_ is an accomplished mediocrity--his writing is at a high level of mediocrity--but it is, nonetheless mediocre. His character of Callie is supposed to be female, but never actually escapes from his male viewpoint.

This is a problem when you set out to reward merit, but rely on mediocrities to select merit. There is always the Scalieri Factor, where the mediocrities conspire together against the truly talented and present an award to one of their own.