I remember a college guy telling me that grammar and language structure didn’t matter anymore because images ruled the way we think. I suppose I could have argued with him by saying, “I love that flavor too. Hey, when sue melon get fetchit?” But that would require on-the-spot thinking or even living in my element at the split moment he spoke. I’m rarely in my element, and he was a college guy, which means he was susceptible to bad, even stupid, ideas, some of which he wrote with his own mental words.

Does anyone doubt that we live by words? That’s because words are the stuff of ideas. The image of a bombed out building tells us little about reality if we have not words to put to it. Was it empty and dilapidated, more harmful to the city than helpful? Was a target in a war? If so, was it a fair target? Do we know anything about the building, the explosion, or the context of both that words have not given us?

In the same vein, what makes us human? What words describe the meaning of person hood, not being an animal or a cell block? That’s a cultural argument we have had for years now, leading to crimes like this one in Hialeah, Florida. The Deputy Police Chief says, “They can slaughter anyone they want according to the statutes before birth, but not after.” They can slaughter anyone . . . only because many people want to believe that babies are not people until they are declared to be so. Every child is to be a wanted child, so if the child is not wanted, then he is not a child.

He’s an image. A nothing. If we don’t name him, he won’t exist.

Tags: words, children, images, personhood, life

Today was the first day of my week off from work. I took a walk for exercise, wrote a thousand words, and picked up a few needed items, including a rat trap. I don’t have rats, but I have chipmunks attempting to take up housekeeping in my garage. My instinct is to live and let live (perhaps charging a nominal rent), but people tell me chipmunks are prone to gnaw on your car’s wiring, so I’ve declared Total War. Three chipmunks have been liquidated to date, and I felt it was time for a new trap.

I have a higher regard for my white squirrel. One day last winter, shortly after I’d moved in, I was talking to my brother Moloch on the phone, and I saw an albino squirrel in the back yard. On Saturday I saw him again, in the front yard. Albinos are rare in the wild, being pretty easy targets for predators, but I suppose an urban environment provides better cover.

I feel an affinity, for some strange reason, with any creature ill-designed for survival by nature.

By way of Blue Crab Boulevard, some very nifty, downloadable inspirational posters based on the original Star Trek. I love this kind of swill.

Congratulations! This is your opportunity to win a copy of one of Lars Walker’s three published novels, signed, sealed, and delivered by one of the many Norse gods hard-up for work in modern America. If we can’t contract a god to deliver in your area, we will use the good old-fashioned postal service. Of course, if parcel post was good enough for Leifr Eiricsson when we was on the continent, it’s good enough for us too.

Here are the simple rules to win one of three signed copies of one of Lars’ books. Leave a comment in this thread with your name and email before Saturday, August 26, 11:00 a.m. One comment per participant, please. After the deadline, I’ll number the comments, spin the roulette wheel, and the contact three winners. When I send you an email, I’ll ask for your mailing address.

Tell your friends and send them this way for the chance to win a great fantasy/sci-fi read. If you are new to Brandywine Books, note the links to Lars’ books at the top of our bloogroll on the right.

This is the first of at least two contests at Brandywine Books, and this is the easiest of them. The next contest will require some writing. For now, just comment with your name and email. Thank you for participating, and keep telling your friends about Brandywine Books.

I don’t mean to rag on the Presbyterians as a group. I worshiped at a PCA church for some time in Florida, and it was one of the finest churches I’ve ever been associated with. But this story about the PCUSA (via Town Hall Blog) takes my breath away. It’s not enough for these people to apostasize. That’s appalling, but it’s sort of old news. We’ve come to expect it from them. But the PCUSA has published a book promoting the view that the Bush administration engineered the 9/11 attacks, a position generally held by people who’ve forgotten to take their medication because it fell through a hole in their raincoat pockets while they were fishing for lunch in a dumpster. From a materialist point of view, heresy is sort of understandable, because true doctrine can’t be scientifically proven. But these people have lost touch even with this-worldly reality.

Not that I don’t believe in conspiracies. I’m growing more and more convinced that the people who run road construction in the Twin Cities conspire to make their construction projects as inconvenient to the public as possible. Not for money. Not because of political corruption. But just because it’s so much fun to sit down around a map with their coffee and bagels and draw a red circle around a neighborhood, then pose the question, “How can we completely cut this neighborhood off from the outside world, blocking not only the primary but the secondary routes into it?”

Such is the fate of my pleasant little part of Robbinsdale. I dwell in a sort of a bottleneck—not the useful kind that could easily be defended if the Assyrians attacked (a possibility that grows more and more likely with the passing years), but a traffic bottleneck. I live to the east of a park. Not far north of the park is a freeway. Not far to the south is a lake. My workplace is to the west. The practical jokers tore up the main artery yesterday, while I was at work. I made the mistake of following their “Detour” signs on the way home, and ended up lost in Brooklyn Park. I’ve found a way to get home from work (and vice versa) now, but it involves passing through a construction zone.

Commenter Aitchmark sent me the following entertaining review. At his request, because he is a tenderhearted man, I have excised the name of the author and the title of the book:

I kind of enjoyed ___________’s recreation of classic kid SF in _____________, so I went into the online system for the library and put a hold on the sequel____________.

Well, there’s another book with the title ___________, and in some kind of mental glitch, I clicked the right title but the wrong author. So I ended up with a cop thriller called ___________ by a fellow named _____________.

One of the worst pieces of writing I’ve ever read. Unimaginably bad. Bad grammar, bad diction, one gaping howler of disregard for reality after another, plot transparently ripped off from another book….

Example — a burglar gets killed by a booby trapped clock that fires a 2-inch dart at him…. which injects 6 ounces of snake venom.

Must have been from a neutronium snake.

And the writing….

“The darkness enveloped him with the suddenness of an unexpected physical attack.”

“An investigation that had nearly gotten him killed but had brought him and Detective Edna Gray very close together.” (yes, that’s the complete sentence)

I can’t go on. It’s just too much.

This is the guy’s 5th published book!

I’ve read 37 pages (Carmen challenged me to read 50). I can’t decide whether to just take it back to the library, or keep slogging through it to see how bad it can get.

Be careful if you see this book. It may rub off on you. Like a virus. A big, nasty virus that hurts people and sometimes even kills them. Dead. And dead is forever. So you have been warned. In case it infects your brain and makes you less intelligent than you were before reading the terrible book, you won’t be able to say you weren’t warned emphatically by me. Who warned you to be careful and think before picking up this terrible tome.

(help me. please… help me. Send Shakespeare or something. Fast.)

Brandywine Books will soon hold a book drawing for one of Lars Walker’s books. I’ll give you the simple rules on opening day. It’s coming soon, so watch for it.

Yesterday I wrote about instructors who will always get their book orders in just after I’ve been on the phone with the publishers.

That puts me in mind of one of my favorite stories. I shall share it now, even though I know most of you have probably heard it before.

Because in cyberspace, no one can hear you scream.

The date was December 6, 1941. A young man took his shoes in to a shop to be re-soled.

The next day, of course, he forgot all about the shoes, because of the news of Pearl Harbor. He did his patriotic duty by enlisting in the Navy immediately.

He saw considerable action in the Pacific. One day late in the war his ship was torpedoed, and went down with great loss of life. Our hero managed to clamber into a lifeboat alone. He floated for days, finally washing up on the shores of a remote island, far from the shipping lanes.

For 25 years he remained on that island. He was listed as Missing In Action.

Finally a passing freighter saw his smoke signal and he was rescued. Back at home he was hailed as a hero.

His delighted parents showed him his old room, which they’d preserved precisely as it had been the day he left home.

After his parents had gone to bed, the young man looked through his well-remembered possessions. He tried on an old suit, put his hand in the pocket, and discovered the shoe repair claim ticket.

“Could the shoes still be there?” he wondered. “Only one way to find out.”

The next day he took a bus to the shoe repair shop. He found it still in business, and inside, older and grayer, he found the same shoe repairman.

“Are these shoes ready?” he asked with a smile, handing the old man the ticket.

The old man looked at the ticket, then went into the back room. A moment later he popped his head out.

“Have ’em for you Thursday,” he said.

At first, the Cincinnati-area family said the goat in the yard of their suburban home was for a 4-H project and would be sent away after the county fair. Now the Valentines have two goats, and they won a lawsuit, filed by community trustees, to keep the animals because they help their 13-year-old son cope with his ADHD. According the family, their dogs, rabbits, cat, and guinea pig do not help their son handle himself, but the goats do. The family is in the clear as long as they deliver a doctor’s testimony to the town every year to validate their claim.

In case you wonder, let me say that I do not believe that ADD and ADHD are medical fantasies, and some children are properly diagnosed with it and I hope properly treated. Thank you for your attention.