Sympathy for the Devil Next Door

I don't typically like to spend time here discussing anything political, but am at a loss for anything else at the moment. So I'll rant...

Twice now this year the Marine Corp have gotten into trouble, first for a squad videotaping themselves urinating on dead Taliban and now for this photo.

The explanation for the latest is that they "Thought" the lightning bolt Seig-Seig runes stood for Sniper Scouts.

Whatever.

I can't believe anyone has missed what the SS runes mean as depicted by popular culture. Military guys like action movies (I sure do) and what World War Two movie doesn't have the SS? They are always the worst of villains. This is a terribly weak excuse.

That said-these service men~and it is a service-are under an incredible amount of stress and mental fatigue, making them do stupid things and we should account for serious PTSD rather than simply giving them a verbal lynching and forgetting about it. The repercussions of these type of activities will haunt all parties for years to come. And until someone has taken fire while wearing those combat boots, I'd urge compassionate judgment regarding anything you have not had the great misfortune to have experienced.

I've read pundits say that these heinous acts (and they are heinous) are inflaming the terrorists

-Check please-Our servicemens mere presence is inflaming them.

You can't throw a log in the fire and wonder why it burns and the log didn't start the fire either.

Big Audio Madness

The  first ever audio version of one of my short stories is now available at the most excellent

 Lovecraft ezine a free online magazine featuring lovecraftian horror and cthulhu mythos-so check out my tale and others.

Strange Sights of the Week

Books Read Lately

I've fallen way behind with books I'm supposed to read for friends and reviews etc, I have yet to catch up with technology.  I can't read ebooks at work like I can the typical paperback, so here is what I have caught up on for the moment...

Among Thieves, by Douglas Hulick

I think I first heard about this from Keith West at the Adventures Fantastic and it looked interesting. I liked the premise of fantasy gangsters (I've mentioned I'm doing something along those lines).

Told in the first person POV (very popular these days) we follow Drothe, a Nose=an information gatherer for the Kin = the fantasy mafia, as he uncovers a series of strange events, coincidences and murders relating to an ancient book. A book rumored to contain unspeakable magic that can threaten the very foundations of the empire, and everyone wants it.

We meet a great cast of characters and the action and intrigue never let up. Hulick pulls off a grand tale in a standalone novel, though we are supposed to get a trilogy. We never get bogged down in world building or a unintelligible magic system (man, I hate those). I'll be on the lookout for Hulick's next book.

Hellboy 11: The Bride of Hell and others, by Mike Mignola and others

This book like the Chained Coffin, Strange Places and the Crooked Man, is a collection of unrelated tales across of a variety of time and place-and while it IS good, especially the title tale, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed and anxious-because the regular linear? time line of Hellboy is reaching such a powerful conclusion and while I wait for that big confrontation, I get a handful of tales outside that ever growing whirlpool of destruction. So yes I'm angsty.
That said, most of these shorts are wonderful, the last being in my opinion the weakest-Buster Oakley gets his Wish. If only because it makes light of a serious situation-granted this a Hellboy comic, but still, just my opinion.

In conclusion, its good, but perhaps not as good as the previous Hellboy shorts.

Conan Chronicles vol 18. Isle of the Dead and others, by Bruce Jones, John Buscema and more

I took a long time to pick up another of these reprint collections of Marvel's heyday Conan's after #17 The Creation Quest proved to be such a disappointment. So giving another go, I find myself not caring about any of these particular Conan adventures-I started pondering that these were exactly the type of tales where the public at large gets it so wrong about Conan.
At one point not only is Conan getting drunk to "deal" with the horror of some monster, a bar fight breaks out and somebody knocks Conan's ale over and his response-you ready? "Sweet Mitra! My ale."

Give me a break, does Conan ever lament in his cup over some monster? Does he ever lament over spilt ale? This was so weak and I blame Jones for not giving us a valid reason to put Conan to work in these tales. The one high point for the book was Buscema's work was at the top of his game. I have the next Conan 19 cued but glancing at it it is also a Jones, so it moves way down my priority list of reading material.


Full Black, by Brad Thor

I heard about this last summer, when I listened to a radio interview with Brad Thor and the interviewer said the book scared him. It is a current events thriller that fictionally ties together a number of likely scenarios-fictional characters are obviously real people-the main bad guy James Standing is obviously George Soros. But did anyone involved go Full Black? not really.

This was my first time reading Thor and while it does what it is supposed to - be a military thriller, I kept expecting something bigger, something more sinister ~ YES, there are terrorist bombings on U.S. soil, multiple attacks and lots of people die in the book.

BUT

the ending was too simple, too easy.

The good guys for a private intelligence group partly contracted by the CIA and NSA (this is plausible enough) figures out who is behind everything and take care of him-WAY too easily. IF things were this simple we wouldn't be in the state of affairs we are in at all.

And make no mistake we are.

My problem is things wrapped up too well-this book despite what are scores of true (yet fictionalized) military intelligence ops just lets the good guys win and ride off into the sunset.

This was not Full Black this was Warm Afterglow.

And I say that after actually enjoying the book as a whole-but the interviewer saying this book scared him?

Come on, I had all kinds of terrifying visions of things to come...that never did-so many things I envisioned that would lay open the maddening immensities of night, guess I'll have to write that book.

the GREY man passes

I saw The GREY with a bunch of people for work yesterday and I was the only that came away from it who liked it and I'll tell you why.

Aside from a few typical movie goofs and what to me was an erroneous zoological fallacy (the relentless wolf pack) it is a brutally simple movie that hits home. It is artistic and has a soul that so many movies miss these days. The opening narration supplied by Ottway (Liam Neeson) let you know exactly what was going on without giving you too much-it was spartan, but anymore would have been reaching into overkill-the simplicity is what won me over.

That and the dark humor.

Flying back to Fairbanks Alaska from whatever northern refinery Ottway was employed (to keep men safe and kill things) he dreams of his wife-who is gone for whatever reason, later revealed.......*(I realized as I posted this Neeson is also a widower-HE IS the perfect man to play this role and I suspect it must have been very intense and emotional for him) 

The plane ices up and goes down. A handful of survivors struggle to survive the bitter cold and onslaught of a ravenous pack of wolves. Having read Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf multiple times as a child and later Of Wolves and Men by a ??? Lopez, I don't buy a pack of wolves going after a group of men-who can fight back-especially not when there is the easier pickings of the dead-so let that part run into the realm of fantasy and picture Frazetta's wolves for the sake of enjoying the movie.

There was a scene as the men were holed up beside the false safety of a fire that they could hear a challenge to the alpha male wolf-and then hear it savagely put down. In a similitude, one of the survivors challenges Ottway and is equally-though mercifully put down. Also the darkness hiding the wolves yet their breath in the frosty air being visible-wonderfully creepy.

Also as they sat beside the fire and discussed why they wanted to go on living, Ottway recites a poem his father had written. It gave a little something to the film, that soul I mentioned earlier.

Without spoiling too much-you know they are in a terrible place, you know death surrounds them at every turn and as Ottway (Neeson) cries out to God, a number of pleas' and expletives, and is met only with silence he responds with, "Fuck it , I'll do it myself."

Now the audience laughed at that, I didn't and its not because I'm a spiritual person who won't curse God but because all I could think was-You CAN still do it yourself. We know he is capable, he doesn't need a miracle-a 'God in the machine' ending or even a Man vs. Wild scenario of a cabin or well traveled road right around the corner, these would only take away from and weaken the STORY and we are here to discuss stories not happy endings.

Ultimately we do have our climax and here is where I suspect most of my fellow movie goers had a problem~I don't wish to spoil anything-it is worth seeing, but it is a "You figure it out" ending.

I loved that as he prepared for his confrontation with The GREY? alpha wolf, he recited his fathers poem yet again...

Once more into the fray.
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.
Live and die on this day.
Live and die on this day

Strange Sights of the Week

A Glass Raised: Robert E. Howard

The Phoenix on the Sword

What do I know of cultured ways,

the gilt, the craft and the lie?

I, who was born in a naked land

and bred in the open sky.

The subtle tongue, the sophist guile,

they fail when the broadsword sing;

Rush in and die dogs-

I was a man before I was a king.

Robert E. Howard

January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936