Having seen the good stuff with Viking reenactors, I can’t get behind the style or lack of it in this video. If it wasn’t the pirate’s intervention, these tin cans might have hurt each other.
Friday without a fight
Thought for the day: “His strength was as the strength of 8.273, because his heart was in compliance with minimum federal purity standards.”
This disjointed post may be all you get today. I have a phone meeting with my editor tonight, followed by a Viking meeting.
Today is the birthday of one of the greatest Norwegians of all time–Hans Nielsen Hauge. I note with some shock that I’m cited as an authority in the Wikipedia article on him.
This month’s Writer’s Digest features a joint interview with Jerry B. Jenkins and Stephen King. Note that I say “joint.” It’s an interview with both of them at once. Apparently they’re buddies. Who knew?
King says, “I got to know [Jerry] through the Left Behind series, which has a lot in common with The Stand–both are stories about the end of the world, with Christian overtones (mine has more four-letter words). While I’m not a big believer in the Biblical apocalypse and end-times, I was raised in a Christian home, went to church a lot, attended MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship–lots of Bible drills, which every writer could use, Christian or not), and so I knew the story…. Jerry writes sturdy prose and plots well. He’s also warm and compassionate. Understands families inside out. There’s a lot there to like.”
Maybe King will cut evangelicals a little slack in his future books.
Devil’s Garden, by Ace Atkins
As many of you may know, pioneering hardboiled detective writer Dashiell Hammet, creator of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, paid his dues as a real-life detective, an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
Ace Atkins, author of Devil’s Garden, discovered a fascinating fact about Hammet’s detective career—that he actually worked for the defense in one of the big court cases of the 1920s—the trial of movie comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle for manslaughter.
(Even though not well known today, Arbuckle was a superstar in his time. He rivaled Chaplin and Keaton as the most popular silent comedian. That all ended when a young actress died during a party he hosted in San Francisco in 1921. Lurid rumors about her death spread [and were printed in newspapers], with the result that, though he was eventually acquitted, Arbuckle’s movie career died.)
This novel employs multiple viewpoints, but we see the action mainly through Hammet’s and Arbuckle’s eyes. Their vantage points are very different. Hammet is a poor man, suffering with tuberculosis and alcoholism, barely managing to support a wife and baby. Yet he has a future. Arbuckle lives like a king, eating at the best restaurants and riding around in a car with a built-in commode. But his good times are nearly done. Continue reading Devil’s Garden, by Ace Atkins
In which Walker attacks another straw man
First of all, please understand that I’m not becoming an atheist. I’m about to restate an argument against the existence of God, one which I feel as if I “grasped” today. But that doesn’t mean I’ve adopted that argument. It’s my job, as a novelist, to try to understand how people think, even when they’re very different from me. I’d say, “I’m a professional. Do not try this at home,” but I don’t really believe it’s destructive to faith to understand opposing arguments. It’s vigilance and intellectual honestly.
Anyway, I think I figured out one reason why atheists feel morally superior to religious believers, even though history is not exactly overflowing with examples of atheists who were great humanitarians and moral paragons (no doubt there are some, but in general religious believers have been both far worse and far better than atheists).
To an atheist, anyone who says he believes in God appears to be complicit in cruelty. Continue reading In which Walker attacks another straw man
How appropriate
Last night, Sen. Norm Coleman’s lawyers conceded that, under the rulings of the Minnesota courts, it’s not possible for Norm to win the recount.
Here’s Hot Air’s report.
So now my new senator is Al Franken. On top of having Amy Klobuchar for my senior senator, and Keith Ellison for my congressman.
And today is April Fools’ Day.
Tragically, this isn’t a joke.
Except in the cosmic sense.
Update: According to the radio, there still remains the step of taking it to the MN Supreme Court. But I’m going to save wear and tear by giving up now.
Apropos of nothing: the father of the Stooges
First of all, let me state for the record that I’m not a fan of the Three Stooges. I liked them when I was about ten years old, but lost early my taste for slap-in-the-face, poke-in-the-eye humor (I got plenty of that in real life).
But there’s been talk lately about a new Three Stooges movie, which is supposed to star Benicio Del Toro as Moe, Sean Penn as Larry, and Jim Carrey as Curly (!). It’s not supposed to be a biopic, but a new work in Three Stooges idiom, sort of a live-action pastiche.
That reminded me of a story I discovered while noodling through Wikipedia one sleepless night. I’ve always been fascinated by early Hollywood, for some reason, and this was a very odd story I’d never heard of before. Continue reading Apropos of nothing: the father of the Stooges
There’s a moral here somewhere…
Of all people, Floyd at Threedonia posts a story and a link about how T. S. Eliot actually rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm, when he was working as an editor for Faber and Faber:
IT must rate as the literary snub of the 20th century. T S Eliot, one of Britain’s greatest poets, rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm for publication on the grounds of its unconvincing Trotskyite politics.
And you’re upset because Dubious Stories rejected your fanfic novella?
Sunday thriver
It was a good weekend. I spent it pretty much alone, but for me that’s a feature, not a bug.
I spent most of Saturday concentrating on reading over the galley proofs of the new novel, West Oversea. It had been some time since I’d actually looked at the thing, and to my amazement I thought it was really good. There were plot twists I’d forgotten about completely, so I had the odd pleasure of surprising myself.
I’ve often thought that it’s too bad I can’t read Lars Walker’s novels, because he seems like the kind of writer I’d take to. Apparently that’s true.
Sunday started, as they generally do, with church. I don’t think I’ve told you that I finally made the big jump and started attending a different church. Not the one I blogged about visiting a while back, but a different church which I’d known about, but whose location I’d entirely mistaken. Turns out it’s convenient for me—miles closer than my old church. And the great thing is that they offer a traditional service (with Communion), so I don’t have to do praise songs anymore.
The difficult part is that this service is at 8:00 a.m., which means I have to get up at my normal getting-up-for-work time. The upside is that when I come home, about 9:30, I’ve got the whole beautiful Sunday in front of me. Continue reading Sunday thriver
Links and fallacies
I’ve discovered a couple good blogs I hadn’t seen before. One is Salvo Blog (Signs of the Times). They provided this further link to a report from another good-looking blog, Mindful Hack, which examines the tale of Phineas Gage, a story you probably heard or read in college (I know I did), and demonstrates that it doesn’t necessarily mean what that guy in the tweed jacket with the arm patches told you it meant. Continue reading Links and fallacies
Online Reading
Here’s a pile essays from Reformed and Puritan authors, such as William Bridge, C.H. Spurgeon, J.C. Ryle, and John Owen. These are types of things you could see printed in small paperbacks, pamphlets almost, with great depth of thought beneath the cheap cover.