Christopher Moore's Blog

It’s  Christmas Eve, kiddies, and I’m signing in to wish you all a very merry and whatnot (or a happy third night of Hanukah for the Chosen.) I’m totally in the spirit of giving and generosity. I relish the company of friends and family, and I believe that we should take this time to be thankful for our blessings, and feel compassion for those less fortunate than we are, and allow our feelings to drive us toward helping to alleviate the suffering of our fellow man.  I’m all about peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

But that said, and with the warmth and love of the holiday season in my heart, I have to say, that even though it’s Christmastime, some motherfuckers still need to be punched in the junk.

Allow me to clarify,  s’il vous plait–

(This rant may take a while. You might want to go have some egg nog and come back tomorrow to read the first chapter of Fool.)

So last night I get this e-mail entitled:
Could Barack Obama Be the Antichrist/Beast?
13 Considerations

Before I even started looking at the 13 considerations, I decided to actually give some thought to my answer, which was:
Absolutely. Barack could be the Beast.  For a long time I was hoping that I might be the beast, particularly back in the late 80s when I was in radio and needed a gimmick for my drive-time show. But certainly, I’m less qualified than Barack for most any position, except maybe “pasty white guy”, which I excel at. So if someone had to be the Beast instead of me, I’m okay with it being Barack.  I’m not sure, however, how Sarah Palin missed that during the campaign. Seems like that would have definitely been a talking point. “Sure, he was the editor of Harvard Law review, a professor of Constitutional Law at University of Chicago, but also, he was the BEAST, which we don’t go for out here in real America.”

So, once I accepted that Barack might be the Beast, I had to in logical progression, ask the next questions?
Could Barack Obama be the Tooth Fairy?

And again, Abso-fucking-lutely. I’ve never seen a picture of the Tooth Fairy, but I certainly have more empirical evidence of his/her existence than I have for the Beast. In fact, Barack might have leveraged his position as the ToothFairy to get the BEAST job. “I bring upon you seven years of darkeness and pain and suffering, and a plague shall fall upon the land, and oh,  here’s a quarter for that bicuspid you left under your pillow.”

So, I was already convinced that Barack could be the BEAST, without even reading the reasons, and after I concluded, as you would, “So what?” I thought. Wow, this guy deserves not one, but perhaps multiple punches in the junk, and he was going for it big time. After all the guy who sent me the e-mail also CCed it to Dean Koontz and William Gibson, and it’s a proven fact that Koontz has trained Labrador retrievers who will bite your junk right off, and Bill Gibson has a cryo-compressed ball of mercury on a nano wire that can deliver over seven-thousand foot pounds of pressure to your junk with just the flick of his wrist. But alas, I digress. It’s Christmas and you need to get back to your stuff.

So here’s the 13 things you should consider before giving Barack beast-props.

1. Charismatic Speaker Worshipped By The Masses.  The Book of Daniel says the Beast will arise in a country made up of “diverse” people from “all kingdoms” [which could describe the USA].  The Beast “shall speak great words …and think to change times and laws.”  The Beast will have “understanding [of] dark sentences,” “shall magnify himself in his heart,” and will talk of peace “and by peace shall destroy many.”  Daniel 7:23-25; 8:23-25.  The worldwide masses will worship the charismatic Beast/Antichrist who will have a “mouth speaking great things.”  Revelation 13:3-8. [sic]

Obviously, the most ominous of these is his understanding of “dark sentences”.  Clearly, someone had to be able to interpret what the fuck Flava-Flav was talking about. Mad BEAST skills, if you ask me.

2. False Prophets.  The advent of the Antichrist will be heralded by false prophets.  Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger, who claim to be in the prophetic tradition, compared Barack to Jesus.  Louis Farrakhan called Barack “the Messiah” to whom the youth will listen.

I’m not going to say that we’re cherry-picking here, as far as false prophets go, but is it okay to mention the prophesy that “we will be greeted as liberators” and “Iraqi construction will pay for itself”.  Doesn’t false prophet mean someone who comes up with prophesies that are wrong? Like, oh, I don’t know, prophesizing that the rapture is upon us because the president elect can speak in complete sentences and pronounce nuclear?  Punch in the junk for you, Elijah!

3. Treated As A Religious Figure.  The Bible says the Beast will substitute himself in place of God and Jesus.  Oprah Winfrey called Barack “The One” who will help us evolve.  Chris Matthews blasphemed that Obama “is writing the New Testament.”   Newsweek and Rolling Stone both added halo effects to their Obama magazine covers.

Look, if it were up to Oprah to pick the Beast, then Dr. Phil, Maya Angelou, that chick who wrote The Secret, and cake would have all been the BEAST a long time ago.

Chris Matthews? Chris Matthews?  You’re citing Chris Matthews as the voice of prophesy? I don’t care if he blasphemes, I just want him to stop yelling at me. Punch in the junk just for that one.

And if Rolling Stone airbrushing you on the cover make you the beast then Britney’s implants were the BEAST(s) back in ‘99.  (And lo, she did taketh of the percocet and mojitos, and then she did push the beasts together so they did nearly spill out of her top, and into the land she did go, totally commando, flashing the pixilated beav unto who all who did look upon TMZ or Entertainment Tonight. )

4. 666.  Revelation 13:18 says “the number of the Beast … is the number of a man and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”  6+6+6=18, the number of letters in Barack Hussein Obama, whose Chicago power base includes the 60606 zip code.
On November 5 — the day after the election — in Obama’s home state of Illinois — the evening pick 3 lottery number was 6-6-6.

Because all cataclysmic events are foretold by the Illinois pick three lotto number.

5.  What Jesus Saw.  In Luke 10:18, Jesus is quoted as saying: “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”
“Barak” is the Hebrew word for “lightning.”
So Jesus said he saw Satan as barak.
“Bama” is the Biblical Hebrew word for a “high place” such as heaven.

Uh huh. And Ala-bama means that the entire state is a secret Muslim heaven, because all Muslims dream of an afterlife with 99% humidity and where inbreeding is the national sport.

6. Beast Is A Hybrid From The Sea.  The symbolic Beast of Revelation 13:1-2 will “rise up out of the sea” and is a hybrid of different species with “the mouth of a lion.”
Barack is a Leo with great speaking abilities.  He is part black and part white and has both Muslim and Christian heritage.  He was born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the island of Oahu, surrounded by the sea.

WTF?  WTF? WTF?  A Leo with great speaking abilities? Are we placing a singles ad on Craigslist?

7. The Burak In The Koran.  The rider on a white horse in Revelation 6:2 is the horseman of the apocalypse considered to be the Antichrist.  His “crown … given unto him” and bow without arrows signify he will be freely chosen by the people without violence.
Barack’s connection to a religious white horse:  In the Koran, the buraq or burak was a magical white horse that Mohammed flew upon at night from Mecca to Jerusalem, where it was tethered to the Western Wall (called Al-Buraq in Arabic).  When Barack went to Jerusalem in July 2008, he paid a night visit to Al-Buraq (the Western Wall).

This is some fine detective work, here. Clearly, with the spotting of the white horse that Mohammed rode from Mecca to Jerusalem we know for sure that Barak is the BEAST. Because Barack means white horse. I mean, it means, light, as in consideration 5.  Or does it mean Junk in the Trunk, as in Baby Got Barack, by the prophet Sir Mixalot?  OMFG! Barack isn’t the Beast? He’s the booty of the Beast?

8. Evil Goat Connection.  Throughout the Bible, sheep are associated with good and goats are associated with evil, which is why Satan is often depicted with goat horns.  In Matthew 25:31-41, Jesus says that upon his return, he will separate the good sheep on his right from the evil goats on his left and shall cast the goats “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Barack is the lefthanded son of a Muslim goatherder.
In Kenya, Barack’s election was celebrated by the slaughter of goats.

I’m not quite sure why it’s relevant that Barack’s dad was a MUSLIM goathearder. But you had me at “left-handed”.  All of them should be burned!  Burned as left-handed witches.  I do think that “The Evil Goat Connection” should be the title of the sequel to “The Audacity of Hope”. I’d buy the omnibus edition with both books.

9. Nostradamus’s Mabus Prophecy.  Nostradamus’s first antichrist Napaulon Ray turned out to be Napoleon, and his second antichrist Hister turned out to be Hitler.  The third and final antichrist in Nostradamus’s prophecy is associated with someone named Mabus, whose death will trigger massive calamity.  (Century 2, Quatrain 62.)
The only prominent person ever named Mabus is Ray Mabus, the former Governor of Mississippi and Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia.  Ray Mabus is a Middle East policy adviser to Barack and campaigned for him.  If Barack sends Ray Mabus on a mission to Iran where Mabus is killed and Barack retaliates, the Mabus prophecy will be fulfilled.
Also note: obaMABUSh.

There has got to be a line in Vegas on this one. “Yo Ray, you going to Iran? Really? Wait, I need to call my bookie. I think I smell retirement money!”   I’m just going to wing it here, but if we’re going to go with Nostradamus and his clearly dislexic antichrist spellings, wouldn’t it make more sense to go with someone named, oh, Mavis? Rather than Barack? Clearly all prophesies use JUMBLE as an oracle.

10. Unstoppable Rise To Power.  Barack’s meteoric rise to power out of nowhere has been unstoppable.  He overcame problems in his background that would have sunk an ordinary candidate.  Barack steamrolled over the Clinton machine, with the Democratic superdelegates and mainstream media unable to resist his spell.  Hurricane Gustav delayed the start of the Republican convention.  Just after McCain pulled ahead in the polls, Wall Street suddenly collapsed to ensure Barack’s election.

Absolutely. I think the key here is “Unstoppable”. While there’s no citation of a source, I’ll buy the Unstoppable part. And given that, what am I supposed to do with the information that Barack is the BEAST?  I’m definitely saving my Obama 08 bumper sticker though, because I am totally going to get to sit with the cool kids at the Apocalypse. You McCain voters can just be raptured off to Alabama.

11. Satanic Palindrome.  Sasha is only the nickname of Obama’s oldest daughter.  Her legal name is NATASHA — the reverse of AH SATAN.

Hmmm.  Again, clearly the future has been foretold by the jumbling of letters in a language that didn’t even exist when Revelation was written. Why do you suppose God is giving us such subtle clues?  Do you think he just like watching us try to figure out puzzles, like, making fire or curing cancer?  Want’s to make us work for it, I guess. Someone should make a checklist.  Is It the End of the World? Take the Test!

12. 2012.  According to Revelation 13:5, the Beast/Antichrist will rule for 42 months of relative peace and prosperity before all hell starts to break loose in the middle of the fourth year of his reign, culminating in the Battle of Armageddon.
The fourth year of Barack’s presidency will be 2012, the year the Mayan calendar comes to an end, the year of a rare planetary alignment, and a year that scholars say Nostradamus foresaw as tumultuous.

All these prophesies, from the Mayans to Nostradamus, to the planets aligning point to one thing: Before the forty-two months of relative peace and prosperity, the guy who sent me this should be summarily punched in the junk.

13.  Shiite Islamic Prophecy Of “A Tall Black Man” Running The West.  According to a 17th Century prophetic text of the Shiite branch of Islam, the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic messiah, in the End of Times will be preceded by “a tall black man” running “government in the West” and commanding “the strongest army on earth.”  The black “promised warrior” will carry a “clear sign” from Hussein ibn Ali (the third imam) and will assist the Mahdi in converting the world to Islam.  The Iranian media have identified Obama as the “promised warrior.”

So which is it?  Whose end of the world is this?  All all the Christians going to get raptured, then the rest of us converted to Islam? Cause if that’s the case, I have got forty-two months of serious bacon eating in my future.  And we’re letting Iranian media identify prophets now?  Cause you know what the Iranian media does in my town? That’s right, they sell rugs.

The saddest thing about all of these prophesies, is that someone wasted a lot of time trying to put together an argument with less structural integrity than a fighter jet made of waffle cones. And now I’ve burnt an hour or so and even worse, I’ve burned a bunch of your time, holiday time, when you should be getting drunk and fighting with your family. Sorry.

Which is why, this Christmas, I’m praying to the Tooth Fairy to give the guy who sent me this a punch in the junk.

Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukah. See you tomorrow.

<img src="<img src="“The Author Guy Making Thanksgiving Pizza”

Photo by Flip Nicklin
National Geographic
(Really)

Hey Kids,

It’s that time again, and in honor of our favorite brain-eating holiday season,
here’s a candy-striped peppermint bunch of Zombie Haiku, with selections by
Billy Collins and your very Own Author Guy, as well as some
talented writers and comedians.(Thanks to Ryan Mecham for putting this site together.)

ZOMBIE HAIKU

And while we’re on the subject, here’s that link I promised where you can order signed copies of The Stupidest Angel. The perfect Christmacaquanza gift.

Signed Stupidest Angel

Your homework, if you decide to accept it, is to write your own Christmas Zombie Haiku.

If you missed 6th grade, the format is

five syllables,
seven syllables
five syllables

But if you come up with a really funny one, no one will hold a syllable or two against you. (But if you do happen to be in a crowd, and someone starts holding his syllable against you, report them to security, because that shit is not in the Christmas spirit. Or, better yet, hand them some twinkle lights and some tinsel and tase them, bro. See if you can make the lights come on.)

Hey Kids, here’s the tentative schedule for my tour for Fool in February.

You know I think the world of you and would like to make peanut butter toast for each and every one of you (unless you have a peanut allergy, in which case, I’d like to make you toast and stab you in the leg with an epi pen.), but I don’t pick the cities and I can’t add cities because you ask, even if I want to.

And here is what’s confirmed, and the cities still to come:

Feb. 10: Books Inc., Opera Plaza, San Francisco CA
Feb. 11: Book Passage, Corte Madera CA
Feb. 12: Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego CA
Feb. 13: Barnes & Noble, Santa Monica CA
Feb. 15: Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA
Feb. 16: University Bookstore, Seattle WA
Feb. 17: Powell’s, Portland OR
Feb. 19: Tattered Cover Lodo, Denver CO
Feb. 20: Boulder Bookstore, Boulder CO
Feb. 22: Bookpeople, Austin TX
Feb.23: Wordsmith, Atlanta GA
Feb. 25: Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Square, NYC

Still to be Confirmed: Chester County Bookstore, Philadelphia; Washington DC, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Minneapolis, Phoenix/Tempe, additional SF/Bay area appearances. I’m told they are working on some sort of Canadian tour, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Details will follow soon. What normally happens — I talk for 30-40 minutes, take questions for 20 minutes or so, sign books until everyone gets their books signed. The signing policy varies for each bookstore, but usually I’ll sign as many books as you bring, but I can only personalize one or two due to time constraints. The bookstores usually ask that you buy at least one book at their store, though. (You’ll have to inquire about that. I’ll post the store addresses and phone numbers as the time approaches. ) If you’re a dealer or collector and you have a backpack full of books, I ask that you wait until everyone else has had their books signed.

Contest news coming up, but start thinking about your “most foolish picture of you and a Christopher Moore book”.

The Dog Drank Koolaid

So I got an e-mail today from a Peace Corps volunteer in Guyana, who thought it was a little ironic that he was writing me, in the Bay Area, on the 30th Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre. He signed the letter, “Don’t drink the Koolaid.” And I sort of shuddered.

I was reminded that what seems like a fairly innocuous phrase that we use to denote someone who has bought into a concept, or joined a cult, either a real one, like the one James Jones started in the Bay Area, which ended thirty years ago in Guyana when all of the followers drank Koolaid laced with cyanide, resulting in the greatest mass suicide in American history, and maybe human history, or a perceived one, like being an Obamaniac or believing in supply side economics.

That’s where it comes from kids, the “He drank the koolaid,” phrase. We threw it around all through the election (when we weren’t comparing everyone, including the Pope, to Hitler), I even saw it in the paper today, “they drank the Palin Koolaid, she drank the Obama koolaid, they sipped on Neo-con koolaid and watched their world burn (with respect to Harlan Ellison). *

We forget the dark origins, the tragedy of the origin of the phrase — that there are many people still living who feel a blade of grief twist in their soul when they hear, “drank the koolaid”. But the defusing of the extreme into turns of phrase goes back through history and literature, some we can trace, like “pound of flesh” from The Merchant of Venice, to “Ring around the Rosey” a song sung by children in London during the plague years. Ring around the rosy — the red rings around the sores, or buboes, left on the skin by the bubonic plague; pocketfull of poseys – they put flowers in the pockets of the dead to masque the smell. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down — well, you can kind of figure that one out, can’t you?
There are many, many more, the etymology of which elude me right now, and I loaned my Morris Dictionary of Phrase Origins to someone twelve years ago and I’m still waiting for the fuckstick to return it.
Many of us remember the, “Pod people” that started with the Jack Finney novel, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where a “pod” was placed by aliens next to your bed at night, and when you awoke, you were part of a very docile, hive mind, all very June Cleaver, Eisenhower Idyllic. It was carried forward in the 80s when Saturday Night live used it as an explanation why so many, otherwise reasonable people, seemed to be supporting Ronald Reagan.

How many other figures of speech that we take for granted have some historical basis? In agriculture: bet the farm, living high on the hog, a bumper crop, rode hard and put away wet, counting your chickens before they’re hatched, putting all your eggs in one basket (somebody, somewhere, dropped a bunch of eggs to get that one); Military: Shot his wad (having to fire a flintlock rifle before it’s fully loaded, thus rendering it useless until the reload), or shot his bolt (similar circumstances with a crossbow), flash in the pan (again, from flintlock, when the powder in the pan ignites with a flash, but the powder in the barrel doesn’t, which is, a disappointment). It goes on. Nearly all can be traced to some real-life activity or event.

So I’m thinking, “Fucked the Dog” Hmmmm. “Screwed the Pooch.” Meaning in present day, having made a grave error. But where did it originate? Who, originally, gave the dog a bone, and what did he (or she) set out to do, that they ended up pounding the Pomeranian (it’s funnier if you think of it as a Pomeranian).
I remembered 8th grade study hall, when we were supposed to be studying, but instead we were taking turns reading aloud from The Happy Hooker. It was the most popular book in 8th grade, right up there with The Exorcist and The Prophet, which no one read aloud from. So Xavier Hollander is in South Africa, home more or less alone, and she’s got her horns up, but it’s completely forbidden to have “relations” with any of the Black African servants, so she recruits the home owner’s German Shepherd to do the deed. Yes, literally, she screws the pooch, but at the time, it doesn’t seem like that huge a mistake. She pretty much fucks the dog on purpose, and for about three pages, if I remember correctly. And they both enjoyed it, we suspect, but you know how those German Shepherds lie. She can’t have been the first person the fuck the dog as the prime example of the ultimate fuck-up.

No, someone had to set out to do something else and ended up fucking the dog.

“I was trying to adjust the carburetor on my Camero.”
“I know, Bob, but as it turned out, you fucked the dog instead.”
“So, I should have brought a phillips screwdriver, huh?”

Was this actually a farmer’s daughter joke originally? Did, Bob, set out to say, screw the farmer’s beautiful daughter, but ended up going in the wrong room, and it the dark, well — it could happen to anyone.

(I’d like to say right here, that I was a traveling salesman in the early 80s. You had to keep moving or someone would put a Regan pod by your bed. But I never, ever, got an invitation to stay over at a farmer’s house, nor sleep with anyone daughter, or dog. There was one time where a woman put Oreos under my briefcase and made me watch while her English bulldog snuffled it out from under the case like a truffle snuffling pig. It was deeply disgusting, but I did not have sexual relations with that bulldog. Which is not say that it wasn’t a mistake, but I pretty much consider all of the early 80s that way. It was the “fucked the dog” demi-decade”. )

And why, for that matter is it the dog? I’d think there’d be other, more colorful animals to denote a mistake:

“Wow, Bob, you really masturbated the marmoset on that chip shot, you’re going to have to take a penalty stroke.”

“Geeze, Alice, you certainly sucked-off the rhinoceros the the sales projections.”

“Yeah, Frank sure felated the flamingo on that one.” (I’ve just discovered that my spell check doesn’t know felated. Doesn’t even have any suggestions. I’m thinking this may be part of an ongoing curse I bear.)

Speaking of Bears, “Some days you shag the bear, and some days that old bear shags you.” Either way, can’t really be that great a thing. Maybe worse, I’m thinking, than screwing the pooch. That’s all I’m saying.

I know. There has to be an original dog fucker. There has to be dog-fucker zero, as they say in statistical medicine. (Okay, they probably don’t say it that often, and if they do, maybe you should consider changing doctors.) There has to be an alpha-dog-fucker. (Which in this case, means the first dog fucker, not the dominant dog fucker, although, to be fair, I suppose one could be both.)

We’ve all thought, “Who was the first person who thought an artichoke was a good thing to eat?” Right? Or, “How hungry did the first guy who ate an oyster have to get before giving that a go?” And someone, somewhere, had to try eating oleander, foxglove, hemlock, rhubarb leaves, and castor beans before everyone else said, “Well that shit will kill you.” So why isn’t there a phrase, “Wow, Phil, you sure ate the oleanders on that one.”?

But you get the idea. Generally, I understand, without trying it, that fucking the dog is probably a mistake. I like dogs, but not that much.

But then there are some other turns of phrase, figures of speech, whatever, that elude me even more.

I was in my teens, standing around with some buddies, I think at a CanAm race, and a very attractive woman in summer-dress walked by. And we, politely, and among ourselves, without any direct contact with the woman, nor leering, whistling, or otherwise harshing her space, or objectifying her in any way, were making comments like, “Oh man, I’d wash her windows for free.” And, “Oh man, I’d drink her bathwater.” And my friend Steve, whose name really was Steve, in this case, said, “I’d eat a mile of her shit to find out where it came from.”

And the rest of us just turned and looked at him. I mean, up to that point we’d been nodding like bobble-heads, sort of paying tribute to the communal god of not-gettin -any, but Doooood!? He ruined that poor woman for everyone, sullied the act of public lust, and pretty much creeped out a whole group of teenage boys, which is nearly impossible.

Where the hell did that come from?

And I turned to him and said, “Steve, man, you fucked the dog on that one.”

Well he did.

Your Homework: Some speculation on the origins of some of the more bizarre figures of speech in our language. Extra credit if you’re multilingual and can tell us about stupid figures of speech in other languages.

*A paraphrase of the great first line of Ellison’s story, Kiss of Fire: “He drank ice crystals laced with midnight and watched their world burn.”

The holidays are looming, kids, and once again Books Inc in San Francisco has agreed to ship signed, bibley leather Lambs to you, for that special someone, or for yourself, because some punk bastard stole yours. This edition has a special second afterword, written five years after release of the book, gold edged pages, and a spiffy red ribbon marker. Under twenny bucks!

Order Signed Gift Lamb

I’d get your order in ASAP. While these guys are great on shipping, they have a limited quantity and if they have to reorder and get me to come sign them — well, get your orders in early.

You can probably get this edition at your local book store or other sources on line as well, it just won’t be signed.

A link for signed Stupidest Angels coming soon. You know how gradma loves her some brain-eating zombies at Christmastime…

OMGMOOSES! Canadians, good news. Books Inc says they will ship your book to Canada, but you’ll have to call to make the order, since there address form doesn’t have a field for Canadian postal codes.

Here’s the number: 415-221-3666.

To the McCain Voters

I know how you feel. Honestly. Been there. Got the T-shirt. But look at the spirit of those kids who have lined the streets of our cities tonight, the tears and the smiles, and you should know. We wish you no ill. I understand if you’re angry, disappointed, or incredulous, but that will pass, really. I understand. You don’t get to drive for a while, but you can scream, grab the wheel, and freak us out the whole way. Really, that’s more fun than driving.

Come on. It’ll be fun.

So, Publisher Weekly liked the new book. To be fair, here’s the link to their site:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6606052.html?q=Christopher+Moore

Coming soon, tour date details, as well as a contest for you guys to win

you some great Fool swag. Check back.

“We’re on a mission from God.”

Chris Moore: So before you wrote The Tiny Templar did you ever practice any medieval combat?

Mike Spradlin: No. And the book is called The Youngest Templar.

Chris Moore: Whatever. Did you ever bash anyone in the head with one of those spiky things on a chain?

Mike Spradlin: A mace?

Chris Moore: I guess. Whatever!

Mike Spradlin: No. But when I was six I did shoot one of my sister’s boyfriends in the butt with my Robin Hood Bow & Arrow set. Does that count?

Chris Moore: Was he severely wounded?

Mike: No. Well, I had removed the suction cup tip from the arrow so I imagine it smarted pretty good.

Chris Moore: Cool! So what is the Tiny Templar about?

Mike: It tells the story of a young orphan boy who becomes a squire to a Templar Knight and during a battle in the Holy Land…

Chris: Do people get their heads bashed in?

Mike: Um. Yes. But you see during this battle in the Holy Land the young squire is given the Holy Grail….

Chris: And he uses it to bash someone’s head in!

Mike: Well. No. He doesn’t do that. He’s ordered to return the Grail to England for safe-keeping.

Chris: And he takes the Grail and bashes in Richard the Lionheart’s head?

Mike: No. But Richard the Lionheart is in the book.

Chris: Who else is in the book?

Mike: On his trip to England he is rescued from bandits by a young archer who hails from Sherwood Forest near the shire of Nottingham. Later they meet up with a girl who is a member of Al Hashshashin, a Muslim warrior cult. They team up with Tristan.

Chris: Does the girl warrior happen to carry one of those spiky things on a chain? I love a chick with a spiky thing on a chain.

Mike: No, but she does carry twin daggers.

Chris: Awesome. So there’s lots of battles and explosions and head bashing.

Mike: Yes. And it ends in a pretty terrific cliff hanger. The Youngest Templar is the first book in a trilogy.

Chris: Does the main character die?

Mike: Well, it’s the first book of a trilogy so…

Chris: How about this? Have readers send you $1 and he lives, $2 and he dies?

Mike: Um. Well. Sure, I could think about that I guess.

Chris: Where can readers find your book?

Mike: Visit my website www.michaelspradlin.com or www.theyoungesttemplar.com but its available wherever books are sold.

Chris: What about www.thetinytemplar.com ?

Mike: Um. No website there. Sorry. And the book is called THE YOUNGEST TEMPLAR: KEEPER OF THE GRAIL by Michael P. Spradlin

Chris: Good luck!

Mike: Thanks!

A TINY TEMPLAR OF YOUR VERY OWN!

It’s great when it’s them, not you, isn’t it?

I mean, when you see a news teaser on TV that says, “Certain snacks cause incontinence and dementia, find out at eleven if you’re at risk.” Then you tune in at eleven and sit through the inane city council meetings, the woman who was jailed for keeping three tigers and an ostrich in her studio apartment, the weather, the sports, and the water-skiing squirrel, and finally, when you’re convinced that it’s you — that you knew you shouldn’t have eaten nothing but Pop tarts in your freshman year at college — the prompter puppet comes on and says, “Hair gel.”  Then she explains that a five year study at the university of Helsinki concluded that people who have a diet high in hair gel tend to be incontinent and demented.

And man does it feel good. It’s not you. It’s SO not you. Sure, you ate a little paste when you were six, and you might have built that model of the Battleship Missouri in the closet with the door shut and went kind of blind for a week or so from the glue fumes, but you have definitely never eaten hair gel, that you can remember. You rule!

Take a minute to enjoy your internal gloat.

Well this blog is like that.  I am totally not writing about you. Not one of you. I’m writing about them. So don’t roll up in the comments all, “That’s not me.  I’m not that way at all.”   I know.  Isn’t it great?  Let’s take a minute and feel just a little better about ourselves, shall we?

Come with me.

First, the teaser. Here’s a comment on my blog the other day about Experience and Imagination:
— (I couldn’t reach this guy to see if I could use
his name, but if he contacts me, I’ll put it in)

I personally am an independent voter with a political philosophy similar to Andrew Sullivan (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com which is to say i am fiscally conservative but socially libertarian). I am also a person of dark skin who grew up in an area that is 99% white. I have many white friends who are from blue collar/union and traditional democratic leaning families. It is with unfortunate realization that they have often mentioned to me that they simply can’t vote for Obama simply because of his skin color. I am often flabbergasted by their honesty and they will only do it because I grew up with them and at this point they don’t think of me by my skin color. How ironic. And unfortunately for the country I often wonder how many people are there like this in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan (the swing states that can determine this election) that won’t admit to this fact.”

And there’s the rub. I’ve read it in a dozen places, people who say, “there are just some people who, no matter what they think about the issues, will not vote for a black man.”

Are you feeling a little superior? Are you feeling a little smug. Of course — you are voting the issues, or experience, or ideology — goes without saying. I stipulate that you are voting for your candidate and not voting for the other one for good reasons. I even understand if you’re Libertarian/Green/Telletubbie Party and you just won’t feel irrelevant enough unless you choose your own personal moonbat.  You have got to feel good about not voting race. You have got to be pleased that you are evolved and enlightened enough to not make decisions based on skin color.  In short, you rock.

But let’s talk about them.

Let’s talk about them, on their deathbed, shall we?  Not tomorrow, not in two years, but oh, forty, fifty years down the line.  Children and grandchildren gathered around the bed. And there they are, with their life stretched out behind them.  I’ve written a fair amount about death, as those of you who’ve read A Dirty Job know. I’ve thought about it, researched it, and I’ve sat deathwatch on a couple of people as well, caring for them in their last days. I’d like to tell you that it’s all a bright light and morphine haze.  I’d like to tell you that people, in their last days, are wise and forgiving and possessed of an inner peace.  But in my experience, that’s just not the case.

Regrets come back. They circle in the mind of the dying like carrion birds. Even people of faith, who believe that they are forgiven, can be nagged by regret.

We all have regrets, things that we will never admit that we did, that we’re ashamed of, and that we can make excuses for, but things that raise up in the back of our minds whenever we make a sweeping statement: “Well at least I never–”

Maybe you murdered a songbird with a slingshot when you were a kid, showed your hoo-hah to the boys behind the garage, maybe you told your brother you just didn’t have the money, when, in fact, you just didn’t want to give it to him. Maybe it was the time your wife sent you out for Huggies and you shagged the counter girl with the brace on her leg in the back room at the Jiffy Mart, maybe you saw that guy get hit on Highway 280 and you didn’t stop to see if he was okay, maybe you could have done something, sometime –something to make life better for someone, but you didn’t. You might have been able to save someone but you didn’t, but only you know.

So, now it’s forty years from now. You’ve taught your children how to be good people. Maybe you’ve taught them about the compassionate Buddha or the forgiving Christ, you’ve taught them that it’s never wrong to do the right thing.  But as the light dies, and you want, so badly, to go gently into that good night, you start, you jerk, like a dream where you miss a step. You’re wrenched back into  ache and unsettling, because you know, and only you know, that despite how you felt about the health and prosperity of your country, you just could not pull that lever because you just couldn’t vote for a black guy.

That’s how you sum up a life of accomplishment, with a deep, wrenching feeling that you did the wrong thing. And you lay uneasy forever .

I’m so glad that none of you are that person.  Let’s rejoice, shall we.  For no matter our choice, we did not make it for hateful, small-minded reasons. Doing the right thing never needs to be justified.

And come Wednesday morning, after election day, you will wake up to the first day of the future of our country — a future that you made.  Imagine how great you’re going to feel, how satisfied with having done the right thing.

And in the end,  you can rest easy. Forever.

VOTE

(Warning, this is kind of a political rant. I didn’t know it was going to be when I started. You might want to go look for new LOLCATZ if you’re not interested in politics and my completely biased opinion.)

Couple of days ago, because I’m interested in books,  I posted a blog on MySpace about the inquiry by Sarah Palin about banning books in the library in her home town in Alaska. Well, that happens, and it’s only the First Amendment, which I don’t think Ms. Palin is fond of because that’s also the one about congress not sponsoring a State religion, and she’s on record as saying that the war in Iraq is a mission from God, as well as how building a gas pipe in Alaska is doing God’s will.  Anyway, that’s not what I’m writing about.

In the comments yesterday, I got this:

“I think she is hot. I mean the hair up in a bun and those glasses…… Oh wait, we don’t make our political decisions based on superficial circumstances. I mean would you really vote for someone because they are a great speaker but have very little experience?”

Here’s my response.

I’ll vote for the person I think is the smartest.

George Bush is a nit-wit, whose blunders have cost the lives of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands,
as well as the reputation of our country around the world.  He’s added four trillion dollars to the debt and virtually all measures of economic and social progress have slowed or regressed during his presidency — and McCain said that he completely supports the policies of George Bush. (Although that was a couple of weeks ago, before he became the change candidate.) John McCain voted with George Bush 90% of the time.

McCain votes the nitwit ticket. If that’s the sort of experience you think is required, then McCain is your man. By all means. I wouldn’t dream of trying to change your mind. If John McCain represents the kind of change you’re looking for, which he is evidently getting around to mentioning now that he’s been in Washington for 26 years, then by all means, have at it. The reason these guys are pounding experience so hard when they’re talking about Barack, and ignoring it when they’re talking about Palin, is that the only thing they get right the first time is being disingenuous. (Lipstick? Really?)

Examples of Bush Administration Executive Experience: No meetings about Osama Bin Ladin, no mention of him, and ignoring completely the White House Memo entitled, Obsama Bin Ladin Determined to Strike Within the U.S.. August 1, 2001. Richard Clark told them again and again that this guy was dangerous, but because they wanted to go after Iraq, they ignored Clark (and Bin Ladin). Well, after we were attacked, they decided that Islamic Extremist Terrorism was a priority. Well, that is learning from experience, but maybe if they’d been smart, they would have been able to stop the attack. “Nobody could have seen it coming?” Condiliza Rice said. “No one could have seen terrorists using aircraft as weapons.” Well, yeah, except for the two movies where that happened, and the episode of the Lone Gunmen. (Great title, sort of like The Two Mavericks — the irony is built in.) “A failure of imagination” the bipartisan 911 commission called it.  (Make a mental note, a FAILURE OF IMAGINATION)

They invaded Iraq because after the first Gulf war, Saddam Hussein was still in power and the Neocons from the first Bush Administration (Rumsfeld/Cheney) wanted him gone. It’s on record, they were looking for ways to invade Iraq and made them up. Then they invaded, declared mission accomplished, and fucked up for six years until they finally did what Colin Powell and other generals, who were dismissed, by the way, told them what they needed to do in the first place, which was send in the overwhelming force to secure one area at a time — a page right out of the military manual on fighting insurgency. So yes, the surge worked, but they got it wrong for six years before the surge, and they got it wrong when they attacked Iraq in the first place, NONE of the justifications for war were true. But they did learn from the experience. (1 Trillion Dollars, hundreds of thousands dead.)

They let Cheney formulate energy policy in secret, with oil company executives, and seven years later they decide that maybe they ought to get an energy policy. They deregulate S&Ls, and S&Ls crash, and they say, “You know, maybe we ought to regulate them a little.” (That was in the 80s, when McCain was one of the Keating five, and Bush’s brother was implicated in the failure of Lincoln Federal. McCain was not indicted, but the judge in the case admonished him saying, and I quote, “the senator showed incredibly poor judgment” in regard to the scandal.)  Then they deregulate the mortgage industry, and shazamm! “Well, maybe we do need some Federal oversight.”  And taxpayers are footing the bill for hundreds of billions in bad mortgages.

They refuse to regulate because “government has no business in business, the free-market will fix everything”, then they bail out the failures when they realize that the economy can’t absorb a five trillion dollar hit (that’s the value of outstanding debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).  At every step, these guys have to screw up at least once, before they get it even remotely right.

They govern by ideology, instead of intelligence and logic. They believe that greed is good and government cannot be effective, then they go on to prove it every time they get in power. They have to value experience above anything, because they are constantly making the wrong decisions out of an ideological outlook instead of a logical one. Experience instead of intelligence. Experience instead of imagination.

Every single analyst on Wall Street, every think tank, and every energy analyst I’ve heard says that drilling for oil on the coasts and in protected areas will not bring significant amounts of oil to market for seven to ten years, and will make no significant difference in the price of oil. Yet a whole arena of Republicans chant drill, baby, drill for five minutes and seem to want that as part of their political agenda. Slowly now, the important point is, “will make no significant difference” in the price of oil. How can the be the smart way to go?  Well, experience may prove, and I’m just guessing here, that drilling off shore and in protected wildlife areas will not significantly impact the price of oil. But by golly we’ll have experience.

Working-class voters continue to vote republican for various reasons, and continually fail to get what they voted for. They do worse, economically, under Republican administrations, and the “wedge” religious issues are dropped from the Republican agenda as soon as they are in office.  What good is experience if you don’t learn from it?  Most conservatives I know are scratching their head right now going, “Wait a minute, we had both houses of congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and spending did what? Government grew how much? My wages declined by how much? Gas costs how much? The employment rate is what? The deficit is what?”

But you certainly can’t question the experience of the administration. Cheney had many, many years in government, in appointed cabinet positions, and his way into congress was garnering the votes of nearly 100,000 people from a state of 530,000. Why, that’s almost a fifth of the number of people who bought my books — last year.  And he did have all that executive experience running an oil exploration company. (Hey, wait a minute…) And George Bush had two terms as governor of Texas, and he too had business experience as an oil man. Of course he failed as an oil man. In Texas. But he used that experience to later on fail miserably as a president.

John McCain’s executive experience is commanding a fighter squadron in Viet Nam. That is certainly valuable experience, and I’m sure that if elected president, he will not be shot down again, because he has learned from his experience. I’m completely confident in that. I’m not that confident that he won’t lead us into a completely misguided war like Iraq again, because he thinks the surge working, is the same as the war being the right thing to do in the first place. Just to be clear, we were not attacked by Iraq and we were not defending ourselves. We picked a small (albeit obnoxious) kid on the playground and beat him up. It’s below the dignity and honor of the United States. Honorable servicemen were given a dishonorable mission, and they carried it out. It’s their job and they are compelled to do it — by love of country, duty, loyalty to comrades in arms — but the people who set them to their mission should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who supported the war, and the compromise of America’s honor by playing bully, should be ashamed of themselves, including, John McCain. I hope he learns from the experience.

I wouldn’t dream of trying to change anyone’s mind regarding experience. Absolutely go for the guy with the most experience. What do I know about experience?

I do, however, know something about inspiration and imagination. I’m sort of in the inspiration and imagination business. I’ve been in it for twenty years (and did it as a volunteer for twenty years before that). From my perspective, inspiration is very valuable thing.From Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech (we Band of Brothers), to Elizabeth I’s speech at the attack of the Spanish Armada, to Roosevelt’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” to Churchill’s “We will never surrender” to John Kennedy’s “Ask not, what your country can do for you,’  to Dr. King’s “I have a dream” — inspiration and motivation have been the very catalysts of history. I’ve been in a room where Barack Obama was speaking, I’ve talked to people who were inspired to get involved by him. I had dinner with a guy tonight, who is Canadian, he said, “I can’t even vote,” and for the first time in my life I sent money to a politician, to Barack Obama,  because he inspires me to make things better.  Inspiration IS  LEADERSHIP. Rallying people to help their fellow citizens so they might improve their lives and the lives of the less fortunate,  IS LEADERSHIP.  Having the intelligence and imagination to foresee trouble and avoid, or defuse it, those are qualities above those of experience that doesn’t inform good judgment.

What I find baffling, is that the very same people who decry inspiration and oratory and not being of value, who scoff at someone who was a “community organizer”, are people of the Christian faith. Faith IS an act of imagination! If you can’t imagine a world where God cares and sent his son to die for your sins, you really can’t, as a Christian, be faithful, can you? There is, I think, I hope, in every single person of faith, the potential for imagination beyond that of fear. An ability to imagine that which is better. If you can’t imagine it, you’ll never get there, and if you’re not inspired, you can’t imagine it.

I know the value of imagination, judgement, and intelligence.
I’m voting for the smartest guy running.