Coincidence & #TheGuernseyLiteraryAndPotatoPeelPieSociety

“When respect for other people goes out the window, the gates of hell are surely opened and ignorance is king.” 

#TheGuernseyLiteraryAndPotatoPeelPieSociety

Okay. This is a twofer.

Coincidence #1:

A week or so ago, my best friend / friendgirl texted me and asked what I knew about Charles and Mary Lamb. No context, just that question. I wrote back and said that all I knew was that they had written a book called Tales From Shakespeare which retold The Bard's plays so that children could understand and appreciate them. She thanked me and said she was going to go look for it. I thought that that was kind of strange, as I've been reading for about fifty-five years and I don't think I've ever heard anyone else mention Charles and Mary Lamb. But I stopped thinking about it almost immediately.

This morning I was folding some laundry and I decided to watch something while I did it. I tried to news, but it was just the same old thing. I looked at what I had recorded, and just didn't feel like going there. So I dialed it over to Netflix and started going through My List. Nope. Nope. Nope. Went over to look at Trending Now. Was going through the list when I needed to focus on folding for a moment, and as I did the show on which I had paused in my  search began to play a preview. It was  The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society. Of which I'd vaguely heard, but was not in the least bit interested. But as the Preview played, I saw that it was about a book group...and Nazis...so I thought what the heck and hit the play button.

It didn't take long before a character in the story mentioned Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. I immediately paused the movie and texted my friendgirl, asking if she had seen the movie and if that is why she had asked me about the Lambs. She texted back "Yes!" immediately.

So that's a pretty weird coincidence, ennit? I mean, of all the things I could have watched, I happened to watch that show.

Coincidence #2:

I started liking the movie quite a bit, so I continued to watch it even after the laundry had all been folded. And I was brought up short when one of the characters said the line

“When respect for other people goes out the window, the gates of hell are surely opened and ignorance is king.” 

to a sleeping Nazi. (He'd been sent to monitor the group, but he couldn't take the boredom engendered by a bunch of people talking about books and ideas and such stuff.) That line really hit me, and I wanted to see where it had come from, so I paused the movie and Googled. So far as I could tell, it was original to the movie...though there was a vague comment that it was similar to something said in Walter Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz. So I thought I'd go and have a look for that...but as I was on the movie page for the quote, I happened to see that the name of the actor who had said the line was Tom Courtenay. That rang a bell...a distant bell...miles away and muffled by thick fog. So I Googled his name. 

His first movie was The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, in 1962. When he was 25 years old. And if that sounds familiar, then thank you, because you must be a loyal reader of my blog. Yesterday morning I watched The Loneliness of the Long Distance runner, and one of my comments about it was the the guy who played the lead looked a lot older than the part called for, but he was in fact only 25 years old. And just to add to the level of coincidence, the only reason I watched that movie was because a former student had recently Facebook Friend Requested me, and I remembered that she was a long distance runner, which made me want to re-read that story. When I looked on the library website I saw that there was a movie, requested it, and just happened to get around to watching it yesterday morning. So in the space of less than 24 hours I saw Tom Courtenay age 56 years.

That's pretty weird, isn't it?

Is this mic on?

P.S. I did a little poking around, and I found two passage from A Canticle for Leibowitz which could be seen as inspiring the line from the movie:

"Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him."

&

"Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges."

Wow. That is some powerful stuff, isn't it. I think I'm going to need to read that novel right quick soon.

An Embarrassing Bronze Age Myth, Catholic Priest Sex Abuse Scandal, and Jacqueline

Met a friend for coffee the other day, and, as usual, the conversation turned to religion. He asked me which church I had visited most recently. He then veered into one of his set pieces, as to how he hated the Catholic church, at least in part because of the sexual abuse which has come to light over the past decade and a half, and, even worse, the hierarchy's attempts to hide this abuse. Which, of course, is understandable...and even moreso for those were were victims of abuse. My friend has never alluded to that, but I often wonder if part of his fierce hatred for the church is due to that. I have not and will not ever ask him, of course.

He also made reference to Bill Maher saying that Christianity was "an embarrassing Bronze Age myth." 1  My friend must have really liked that line, as he repeated it several times in the course of our four hour conversation.

And I've been thinking about it and other bits of our conversation ever since.

First off, in an attempt to push our talk into some new directions, as I truly like my friend but have been frustrated in that he often goes to his "set pieces" and we end up having a Groundhog Day, I said something along the lines of, "You seem to be interested in my visits to different churches, though, aren't you?" (Keeping in mind that every time we have met for the past six months he has asked me which church I most recently visited, and I have literally not brought up this subject myself.) He responded, "No, not really." At which point, of course, I resolved that I would cease to talk about any churches I visited with him, whether he asked about it or not. He also added injury to insult when he said that when he did ask me about the churches, I always commented on the décor of the church, but not about what was said in the homilies. It seemed pretty clear that he was saying that my reactions to these churches was superficial. I tried to explain that I was simply commenting on my preferences for a place to worship, and that places which were ornate and incensed and filled with organ music and choirs allowed me access to a spiritual dimension which I often struggled with. 

As for the "embarrassing Bronze Age myth"...well. I guess technically you could ascribe the Judeo-Christian System to  The Bronze Age . Although I am pretty sure that you can find people who identify as Jews and Christians to this day, so I think that labelling it in the way has more to do with wanting to turn the insult knife than with historical accuracy. But "embarrassing." Hmmm. If by that Maher / my friend mean that there are stories in the Bible...especially in the Old Testament...that seem silly, stupid, and mean, then I'd have to agree with that. But that's not how I see the Bible. I see it as a record of the struggles of human beings to define how a creator God was involved in their experiences of life. So of course when people were first attempting to grapple with this, their concept of God was not fully developed. It made sense to them that God was vindictive and petty...and pretty fucking insecure. There are times when I think, I wish that Christianity would just divorce itself from the Old Testament, because while there are some problematic moments in the New Testament, there are nowhere near as many...nor are the problems so egregious...as in the Old Testament. On the other hand, some of those stories are pretty good, you know? Not in terms of religious messages...not for me, anyway...but just on the level of, "Now that was a story." 

So I have to say that from my perspective...which is not, I am at least a little bit sorry to say, a perspective you could label as True Believer...more like Interested Tourist...I'd say that the label An Embarrassing Bronze Age Myth is just indicative of a mind that is unwilling to grapple with the reality of the subject. Perhaps the product of a mind that has been disappointed or even damaged by Christianity or Judaism or whatever other religion we're talking about. 

And that's where I was going to quit and leave this blog entry in the unpublished pile (along with the other 2,711 Draft items), but I was Facebook chatting with a friend and she said something that made me want to get back to this whole religion thing...especially this Catholicism thing.

Said friend responded to my comment that my two youngest kids were committed to going to a Catholic church by saying, "Good for them! It’s hard to be pro Catholic right now!"

Now, I know that she meant no harm at all by saying this. She is not that kind of person. But even so...it's the same germ that Coffee Friend had built his hatred of the church around. And I'm not really talking about the sexual abuse by priests or the cover-up of that abuse. I'm talking about the larger picture: rejecting a religion because of the bad behavior of its adherents. Understandable, for sure. Been there, done that, bought souvenirs, for sure. But not logically permissible. 

Rather than take it on philosophically, though, I'm just going to go the Jacqueline route.

Jacqueline loves the Catholic church. She uses prayer candles when we pray together at night. Every night we say God Blesses, then do Hail Mary, The Lord's Prayer, and The Prayer to St. Lucy. We have read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation together. We've also read many "kid Bibles" of various sorts and levels of difficulty. And when we get to the story of Jesus's crucifixion, she cries when I read the story.

Jacqueline doesn't know anything about the priest sex abuse scandal or the cover up by the hierarchy. If I tried to explain it to her, she wouldn't get it. And you can certainly say that that is indicative of her low I.Q....if you're a fucked up, cruel person...and if you don't believe me when I say that her I.Q. is higher than mine, and mine is not too shabby...but I don't think that has anything to do with it. I think that Jacqueline sees the real church. Not the fucked up shit that human beings make of it. The real church.

If life is not about pursuing ideals...which may well be unattainable...then I don't know what life is for. But correct me if I'm wrong...don't you have to be able to see the ideal in order to pursue it?

Just sayin', sir.

As for me, I'll be going to church with Jacqueline this Sunday. And one of my prayers will be, "Let me be more like my daughter, God."

1  Keep in mind that (1) this is second-hand, (2) I don't like Bill Maher, and thus am not checking up to make sure my details are correct...though I did check the spelling of his name, for which I would like a little extra credit.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I just watched The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), a film which I'd never seen before. I read the story quite awhile ago...I can't remember if it was in high school or college, but even if it was the latter, we're still talking about 35 years since my eyes touched the page. But I have thought about that story off and on over the intervening years. Not in any specific way. In fact, I couldn't tell you a single thing about the story itself. But it gave me a feeling which remained with me over the years. A sense of the desperation which lies curled up in the center of the shelled walnut of life. Like a desiccated fetus.

And I was recently contacted by a former student who was a runner, so that brought the whole thing thundering back into my brain. I meant to read the story, but as I was looking for it online at the Louisville Free Public Library website, I saw that someone had had the temerity to make a movie of it, and I thought I'd have a go at that. 

Just watched it this morning.

Y'know, it's funny. This wasn't a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. The sound was bad...in the way that all British films from the 60s seem to be bad, kind of muffled and empty. And for the most part there was either no music or really bad music--the happy spritely tune with lots of flutes kind of music. And there were some extremely corny directorial choices--for instance, there were three times when the film was speeded up...for no apparent reason, and much to the detriment of the story, I thought, in that it trivialized what was going on. And the actors who played The Boys all looked like they were in their forties...though I don't suppose they were. The guy who played the lead was 25. Sure looked older than that, though. (All of which reminded me of Orwell's nasty and funny comments about The Ugliness of the British People.) And I think the fight choreography in this film was the worst I have ever seen in my half a century's worth (plus a few years--I started young) of movie viewing. But despite all of that...this movie was about something. About something more than the brutality of human nature and the lack of possibilities for redemption or salvation. And yes, I am thinking of Red Sparrow there. 

Watching this movie also made me feel like reading the short story again. Think I'll go hit the library website again.

John McCain

Just heard that John McCain passed away. Don't want to say anything about it in terms of politics, political context, or any of that. Just want to say that I had almost nothing in common with him or his perspective, but I always admired him, and I cried when I heard that he had died.

God bless him. 

Re: Action...or Beck It Like Bendis

Action Comics and I go back a long way. Although I no longer possess it, I am reasonably sure (I have a pretty good memory for old comic book covers) that the first issue I purchased was #354, which hit the racks (we didn't have stands back in those days) on September 6, 1967, which was (1) shortly after my 10th birthday and (2) just slightly over a year after my first ever comic book purchase, which was Batman #181 (June 1, 1966). It was never a title I bought religiously, but I had some pretty long runs with it over the years. Like when it went weekly from issue # 601 to #642? Oh, yeah, I was there. I loved that run. But I fell away from mainstream comics awhile back. Not so far a fall that I wasn't more than a little miffed when DC decided to re-start the numbering on Action, though. That really irked me. And when I heard that they were going to go back to the original numbering, I was so pleased that I decided to check it out. Thus did I buy issue #957. And I did like it, so I continued to buy it. And then I thought, "Heck, they're going to hit #1000 any minute now, so I might as well stick around for that, right?" And there were highs and lows, but it was coming out bi-weekly, so it only took about two years to get there.  

And that's pretty much where we are now.

I have to admit that I was less than happy with Brian Michael Bendis's first issue. The writing seemed a bit too cutesy pie to me, a bit too self-important. But I was planning to give it an honest try...even though the book went up a buck, to $3.99 per issue, which I thought was not very nice.

But today I read issue #1002, and that's it for me. The straw that broke this camel's back was this bit of dialogue:

I don't know why Bendis thinks it's okay to use "autistic" as a pejorative adjective preceding an obviated obscenity...but you know what? I don't care, either. It was as offensive to me as if he'd used the word "retard" or a racial epithet. I don't care that this bad language is put into the mouth of a bad guy. It's a nasty way to use the term, and all I can say to Brian Michael Bendis is Fuck You. Not that he would care, of course. Nor would he care that I will never buy another comic book with his name on it. But at least I'll feel that there's one bad human being I've stepped away from.

Well, that's not fair, of course. Writing one nasty thing doesn't make BMB a bad human being. But I'm pissed off, you know? As if autistic people don't get enough shit already. As if the people who love autistic people don't get enough shit already. In the world of autism, shit is as steady as rain in the Solomon Islands. There's no need for a writer to go out of his way to add to it.

This Is Not Your Father's Mickey Mouse...It's More Like Your Grandfather's Mickey Mouse, Actually

I bought Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #741 from Comixology the other day. For $4 cheaper than cover price. I like the idea of WDC&S, but I don't buy it very often. For one thing because it's $5.99 on the stands. For another thing because they don't usually print stories by people that I'm familiar with. But last week was a light one at The Great Escape, so I looked harder at the kiddie rack, and when I saw WDC&S #742 I picked it up and had a look. The lead story was a Mickey Mouse adventure in which Mickey, Goofy, and another character I'd never encountered before went in search of Atlantis. Mmm-hmmm. Speaking of, if you like the genteel, pablum spewing idiot Mouse of recent vintage, then this is not the rodent you're looking for. This Mickey Mouse is actually kind of a bad ass. And you know...that's the way it was forty or fifty...well, maybe it was even sixty or seventy...possibly eighty...years ago. Mickey was a slam bam adventure man. And that's what this story looked like to me. But it was part two. I did a quick run through the store to see if there was a copy of #741 to be had, but there wasn't. So I put that lone copy of  #742 back onto the rack and resolved to look on Comixology for both issues.

And wonder of wonders, I actually remembered to do it when I got home. And, much to my delight, it had a list price of $1.99...and was also subject to a little discount as I am still a Comixology Unlimited member. They also had issue #742...for $2.99...but I decided to see if I liked the first part before I went the whole hog.

And?

Oh, man, what a great story. There were a few moments of European awkwardness, but this was quite a thrilling little adventure story...and with a pretty high intellectual content for a kiddie comic. For instance...the titular Eye of Fire was referenced in the context of Jewish, Egyptian, Mexican, and Celtic mythologies. And it seemed pretty real to me (always a good sign in a story, whether it actually is real or not), so I had to Wikipedia a bit of it. And? They were real, man.

There was also a mention of a Lake Tritonis in Africa...which I Googled, and yep, that was a real thing, too. And in the story a mishap with that lake leads to an explanation of The Flood, and that lead to brief references to flood stories appearing in various different mythologies. It also lead me to find a Dave Brubeck album of that title, which I listened to and enjoyed immensely. And when I examined the fine print on that video, I saw that it was just posted on YouTube two days ago. So how's that?

And as if that's not enough, there was also a satiric jibe (not an unkind one) at Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible (Tom Snooze, Mission Implausible)...and there were 42 story pages.... 

So of course I bought part 2. I probably could have waited a few weeks and got it for a buck cheaper, but I wasn't wanting to wait. 

And? It was as good as part 1. Also had a nice little bit about the media and "truth" which seemed very topical. Check this out:

Hells, yeah. I don't know if all of the stories in Walt Disney's Comics & Stories are as good as this one, but you know what? Ahmo be checking next time it comes out. And if I see the name  Andrea "Casty" Castellan on a story (story and art, by the way), I am going to be buying it. Matter of fact, I think I'm going to go look for some more of his stuff right now.

You come too.

God

It's been 294 days since I decided that I was going to try to read Fr. Frederick Copletston's A History of Philosophy for 15 minutes per day. Somewhere along the line I decided to take that a little bit farther, going for 10 pages per day instead (15 minutes tended to get me through 7 pages, so it was a substantial increase--about 40%--in time commitment), and I think that I've met or exceeded that goal every day. And, in fact, I have yet to miss a day of reading...though it's been a little dicey a time or two...and a little Reading Under the Influence a time or three. But here I am, and today I opened up the third omnibus edition to its first page, which means that to date I've read 2,961 pages of this monumental work to date. 

It's funny. If I'd sat down and tried to plow through, I don't think I'd have ever even finished the first volume...and by that, I mean the first 1/3rd of the first omnibus. I tried to do it that way before, as a matter of fact, and I pooped out very quickly. It's the fact that I approached it as a small amount of time daily that I've been able to get so far. And barring accidental death or dismemberment (and maybe  not even then in case of the latter), I am sure that I will finish this entire work...which includes two additional volumes after this third omnibus. It's been quite a life lesson in and of itself, aside from the content. (Which, by the way, has regularly been revelatory and fascinating.)

All of which is just preamble. But as I did my reading today, I ran across a line which I thought deserved to be pondered, and I do my best pondering in front of a keyboard, so here I am. Hi. How are you? Wife and kids? Ah, yeah, right. Been there, done that, bought souvenirs. But as for this line I was talking about? Yeah. It went like this: "...reality is the process of the self-expression or self-manifestation of infinite thought or reason." Which seems pretty straightforward to me, but just in case I'm missing some ambiguity, here's my layman's translation: "Reality is God in the process of being created." 

Bam.

I like that thought for many reasons, but one of the foremost amongst them is that this fits in so well with one of the ideas I've been playing with in a novel which is currently under construction, to be entitled (I think) ...then there is no mountain... which is a line from one of my favorite Donovan songs, the whole of which goes like this (after excising the repetitions):

Look upon my garden gate, a snail, that's what it is

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is

The caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within

Oh Juanita, I call your name

Oh

The snow will be a blinding sight to see, as it lies on yonder hillside

In fact checking those lyrics (I do it for you, my love) I found that several sites had the first line wrong, putting it as "The lock upon my garden gate's a snail"...which amuses me because (1) Donovan's diction is not ambiguous and (2) the line these sites put up makes no sense whatsoever. (Snails make notoriously poor locks, after all.) But hey, that's life in the 21st century. 

Anyway. The song pretty obviously alludes to the Buddhist concept that before you are enlightened, you see the physical mountain, while you struggle to become enlightened you no longer see the mountain / the material world, and once you become enlightened you see the mountain for what it is: a manifestation of the spiritual reality. (At least I think that's how it goes. If you want more of that, you can find it in lots of places, one of which is "First There Is a Mountain (Then There Is No Mountain): How science brought down the Buddha’s Mount Meru" by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., which appears in the FALL 2008 issue of Tricycle, and which you can find online. Sorry, I don't do links anymore. Not sure of the legal ramifications, and want to stay safe.) 

And I'm supposing that you can easily see the connection between the is / no / is and the quote from A History of Philosophy. The world as a manifestation of the infinite spirit, right? Right. This also is starting to fit together with another idea that I've been kicking around for awhile now...and which is also a major bit of my gestating novel: the idea that it is our experiences, our perceptions, which create God...which also explains why some people suffer so terribly while others slide down the surface of things: in order for God to become, EVERY perspective must be considered. Which is, I suppose, either an argument against the infinite or an argument against the existence (at least in a final sense) of God. At least from this point of view.

And even though it smacks of Scientology (I think I'll make up my own religion!), the more I think about this thing, the more sense it makes to me. So I am delighted when I read something in, say, A History of Philosophy which corroborates my point of view...even though the person writing that thing was not writing from anywhere close to my perspective. 

Nude Girls! Well...Girl, Anyway.

So, hey. I'm still reading John Taliaferro's Tarzan Forever, and when he talked about the 1934 movie Tarzan And His Mate, he happened to mention that there was a scene which was cut out prior to its release...a swimming scene featuring a nude Jane (not Maureen O'Sullivan, alas, but a very hot 24 year old stunt double named Josephine McKim ). So of course I had to check that out. And, thanks to You Tube , it was easy to find. 

4 minutes later...

Very nice. Not in a smutty way (...sigh...) but still, very nice. Artsy, even. Not such a great deal for the man-loving ladies, as Tarzan kept his loincloth on and his knife sheathed. But still, Johnny was a good lookin' feller. 1

Funny, I haven't watched any of those Tarzan movies since I was a kid, but reading about them does make me want to do a little revisiting...especially of the Johnny Weissmuller ones. (He made 12 of them, you know.) Taliaferro gives JW pretty good reviews, both for his bod and his acting. Might have to go there.

In case you're interested in a map of the territories, I'll save you some Googling: 

1932  Tarzan the Ape Man

1934  Tarzan and His Mate

1936    Tarzan Escapes

1939 Tarzan Finds a Son!

1941 Tarzan's Secret Treasure

1942 Tarzan's New York Adventure

1943 Tarzan Triumphs & Tarzan's Desert Mystery

1945 Tarzan and the Amazons

1946 Tarzan and the Leopard Woman

1947 Tarzan and the Huntress

1948 Tarzan and the Mermaids

And sheesh...can you imagine a series so popular that they not only makes 12 movies in 16 years, but actually release two movies in one year? That is some impressive stuff. The only thing that could possibly make Johnny Weissmuller cooler would be if he were Hungarian. 

1  Not in a gay way. 2

2  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I Had a Dream...Crazy Dream

I just had the most wonderful dream. All of the news stations decided that they would no longer cover anything #PresidentTrump said, only what he actually DID, and they would not show any images of him at all. No still pictures, no video clips. Nothing. After three days, a haggard Trump showed up in an emergency broadcast, in the course of which he confessed to colluding with #Putin, witnessing #PeeGate, and to being a really bad husband.

ERB, Pain in the Ass Biographies, and The Publishing World.

I've been reading John Taliaferro's Tarzan Forever, which is a biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Just here and there reading it, not focusing on it intensely, but it's a good read, so I've already finished 244 of its 383 pages (not counting the index, btw). This is my second biography of ERB. The first was Richard A. Lupoff's Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs...which I thought was interesting, but written with a shitty attitude--lots of sniping at ERB. And though I am rather fond of some of Mr. Lupoff's work...especially Space War Blues (and even more especially its original incarnation “With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama,” which got inside of my head so hard that I wrote my second novel (senior year of high school, 1975--now resides in my closet--in its shadow) but also Into the Aether, All in Color For a Dime (which he co-edited with the great DonThompson), and Where Memory Hides: A Writer's Life...I have to say, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." So where does Lupoff get the balls to throw turds at ERB? I don't know, but it marred my enjoyment of his book. And, alas, the same criticism must be applied to Mr. Taliaferro's biography. 

And it's not that I don't want to hear negative things about a writer I admire. I'm a big boy, and I realize that my heroes all have feet of clay. Even Jesus got a little snippy with that Samaritan woman. And that fig tree incident? I mean, really.... But this goes way beyond that. There are times when Taliaferro just goes out of his way to say shitty things about ERB. For example...at one point he's talking about a little ditty that ERB came up with as a mini-paean to his new digs in Tarzana. After quoting five lines, Taliaferro says, "Now such lyrics only seemed mawkish and passé." I mean...seriously...it's not like this was one of Burroughs's major works, for fuck's sake. It was a little thing he composed for his own amusement. And this is by no means the only example of this kind of shitty sniping on the part of Taliaferro. It's not enough to make me stop reading the book, but it is enough to make me not like the writer very much.

Despite that, the book has been a good source of information on Burroughs's lesser known works. I have been carefully taking note of any titles that I don't recognize in the hope that I can track down works which have not been published in book form...and some works which have never been published. (After all, there is a very extensive collection of Burroughs material housed in the basement of the U of L library, and the man in charge there is a very nice fellow....) This morning I thought I was onto a new one when I read that Burroughs had written a short story entitled "That Damned Dude." I knew it was neither one of the 70.75 (halfway through Savage Pellucidar and one fourth of the way through The Mad King even as we speak) ERB books I've read so far, nor was it one of the twelve ERB books I have left to read (only 12! sigh)...so I got down to Googling. 

It didn't take long to find out that this story was actually published as "The Terrible Tenderfoot"...and that it was eventually published in book form as The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County, which I'd already read (and enjoyed immensely--I wish that ERB had written more Westerns, as all four of those he published were excellent). Though apparently the book form excised some of the text from the story publication, so that's kind of a pain in the ass. I don't often wish that I were a rich man, but if I were...one of the things I'd do would be to publish a Complete Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs which offered the full texts of every one of his works. Oh, and help the poor, too.

But in the course of my investigations, I ran across this bit of information from the ever excellent webzine.com:

"Collier's rejected the story. The story was also rejected by Saturday Evening Post, Liberty, Ladies Home Journal, Blue Book, Argosy (twice), College Humor, Short Stories. Five years later he re-submitted the manuscript to Liberty under the title "The Brass Heart" using the pseudonym John Mann. Liberty rejected it again. The story eventually saw print in Thrilling Adventures in 1940."

Keeping in mind that when he first tried to publish this story in 1930 he had already published over four dozen books, sold millions of copies of those books, and was at least one of the best-selling writers of his time...and add to all of that that this was a good story...and, well.. it just gives a vivid picture of what the publishing world was like. And of course it's much worse now.

Sigh. 

You know, that doesn't make it any easier to get back to work of There Is No Mountain...but ahmo give it a try anyway. Maybe my reward will be in the next life.

Walt Disney's Comics & Stories & Atlantis

This was one of those Not Very Many Comic Books Came Out This Week weeks. I was more than happy to see issue #3 of The Lost City Explorers, which I am enjoying mightily. And I was happy to see Cave Carson Has an Intergalactic Eye #6...until I saw that it was the last issue of the title, which I had thought was an ongoing. But that was it...and it wasn't enough. So I went through the racks again, just to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Nope. Then I took a look at some For Sale back issues, some used trades. Nope. Ah, the Kiddie Comics! Looked...and there was one copy of issue #742 of Walt Disney's Comics &Stories. I am not averse to buying Disney Comics...especially not one so long in the tooth. (In fact, this title is one of the long toothiest of them all...and has the unique characteristic of maintaining continuous numbering over the course of 78 years of publication via 8 different companies. 1 ) It looked good, too: kinda pricey at $5.99, but big enough (54 pages) to justify it, and some high quality production values as well. And the lead / cover story looked interesting: "Fire Eye of Atlantis," Part 2 of 2. I put it in my (small) pile and--waitaminute. Part 2 of 2? I went looking through back issues...no sign of #741. Sigh. I put it back on the kiddie racks...after taking a picture of it to remind me to have a look for it on Comixology.

And when I did, I had two surprises: (1) they had issue #741 for $1.99 (and 46 pages)...and with my Comixology Unlimited membership that drops another 20¢ (hey, I'll take it)...and (2) they had issue #742 for $2.99 $2.69. Whaaaaaat? 

Have I mentioned that I love Comixology?

Got to go read some Mickey & Goofy adventures now. BTW, it's a first U.S. publication of an Italian story. I'll let you know how it goes. 

1  In case you have to know, it goes like this:

1. Dell Comics (1940–1962) #1–263

2. Gold Key Comics (1962–1984) #264–510 (#474–510 under the "Whitman" name)

3. Gladstone Publishing (1986–1990) #511–547

4. Disney Comics (1990–1993) #548–585

5. Gladstone Publishing (1993–1999) #586–633

6. Gemstone Publishing (June 2003 – November 2008) #634–698

7. Boom Kids! (Boom! Studios) (September 2009 – June 2011) #699–720

8. IDW Publishing (July 2015–) #721- #742 (as of this writing) 2

2  Hey...I just did some math. 742 issues, 78 years...that comes to an average of about 9 1/2 issues per year, which says (to me, anyway), that despite all of the publisher shifts, this title has been pretty much in continuous production for 78 years. Yowza. That some impressive run.

Holy Shit! Ralph Peters on the Theological Implications of The Trump Presidency

"...to just wrap up Trump, Trump's genius, and it's been done before by many a dictator, many a charlatan, his genius with his core supporters is that he has offered them absolution. Nothing is their fault. It's the fault of The Deep State, it's the fault of minorities, it's the fault of The Left, it's the fault of traditional Republicans, it's the fault of immigrants...and his message to them is, "You're not responsible. Whatever failures you've had in your life, whatever bad choices you were, it's somebody else's fault. He gives them somebody to blame. And at heart, his core supporters aren't builders, they're couch potato anarchists who are just thrilled to tear things down. ...His supporters come in a lot of different flavors, but the core supporters I see as people who've been told so many times that they're entitled to more, that despite their red hats saying Making America Great Again, they're not really wild about America. In fact, that's a charge that I'd lay at the feet of the Left and the Right. We're an ungrateful nation. We're spoiled, and we're crying out that we deserve more. No, we don't! We've lost that fundamental American value, the sense of responsibility. Trump is ultimately the theological anti-Christ of our political scene, arguing that nothing is your fault, I can save you."

Ret. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters 
former FOX News contributor
on The Beat With Ari Melber
MSNBC, August 17th, 2018...around 6:30-ish

Sometime...a lot of the time...I'm disappointed in MSNBC. And I have to confess that I am no fan of Ari (How Many Rappers Can I Allude to Today?) Melber. But I caught a bit of his show today, and I am glad that I did. Lt. Col. Ralph Peters is a-fucking-mazing! Got to get me some more of this pie.

Watching

So here we are. Driving to places we don't need to go to. Buying things we don't need to own or eat or see. Talking to people we give fuck all about. Coming home tired and wondering why we bothered. 

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a fucking joke.

http://phonynoam.tumblr.com/post/177037700975/i-think-this-is-itthe-version-that-i-hear-in-my

 

Perspective Rolls

or

Holy Shit!

What a maroon! What an ignoranimus!

Stephen King's The Outsider

I'm reading plenty of books right now, so I really didn't need another one, but when I saw The Outsider sitting on the 7-Day Shelf I had to pick it up. And when I got home I pretty much had to start reading it. And if you've ever started reading a Stephen King book, you know how that goes: you want to keep at it. And this morning I was reading a scene in which a father and son have a touching moment, and when I finished the chapter I closed the book and thought about how much I missed my eldest son. Then I looked down at the book edgewise for the first time and saw

Jimmy's birthday is May 24th. Not the most astounding coincidence of all time, but still...kind of cool, huh?

Presidential Paper

Deny it all you want, Humpty #Trump-ty...one look at you and we all KNOW that you chewed up that piece of #paper. (Even an #Omarosa Clock is right twice a day, after all.)

As for this Carson of Venus...this so-called Caron of Venus....

Just finished reading the Len Wein / Michael Wm. Kaluta version of Carson of Venus from 1972. And? 72 pages of pure plum pleasin' pleasure. This was pretty early in Mr. Kaluta's career, but he already had it together...though his work looked a little more Barry Windsor Smith-y then. I was particularly impressed by his design work exhibited in the title headings. 

Very classy. Len Wein was a young buck back in those days as well, though he and  Bernie Wrightson had already created Swamp Thing by the time he took on Carson, so I'm thinking he was a bit more seasoned than Kaluta. ANYway, he did a pretty good job of adapting the Pirates of Venus novel...I mean, pretty good is about the best that you can hope for in terms of turning a novel into a 57 page comic book, right? 

The whole thing breaks down like this:

"Mars--Or Bust!" 9 pages
"The Girl in the Garden" 6 pages
"Battle Cry!" 6 pages
"Gathering Tarel" 7 pages
"Terror From the Sky!" 7 pages
"Mutiny at Sea" 7 pages
"Duare...Princess of Venus" 5 pages (script and art by Kaluta henceforth)
"Catastrophe" 5 pages
"Into the Land of Noobol" 5 pages
This is where the adaptation of Pirates of Venus ends...

...and in the next issue the adaptation of Lost on Venus begins:
"Lost on Venus" 5 pages
"Babes in the Woods" 5 pages
"Into the Noobolian Valley" 5 pages

At the end of episode 12 there's a 
Next Issue: "The Black Castle!" blurb, but, alas, it was never published.



The art on the Lost on Venus sections seems different to me...more like it was shot from pencils, almost. Maybe Kaluta had just taken a lighter touch on his inks at this point. At any rate, it's here that his work begins to look more like Modern Kaluta...both in the look of the art and in the way he breaks down the pages. The breakdowns are much more sophisticated, much less generic from this point on.

The last published episode, "Into the Noobolian Valley," bears the credit WM Kaluta and Phil Trumbo--with whom he would later work on The Adventures of the Galactic Girl Guards. The art is very different on this episode, so I'm guessing that Kaluta did the layouts and Trumbo finished it off. And since this is the last published episode, maybe that's indicative of the fact that Kaluta had found bigger game and no longer had the time to devote to Carson? The Tarzan comic book (in which this episode appeared) kept chugging along for a couple of years after this...although it's possible that the powers that be decided that Detective Chimp (the feature that replace it in the next issue of Tarzan) would be a bigger draw than Carson. (Although I've got to say...I think not.) So let's see what Kaluta was doing...oh. Oh, right. A little something called The Shadow with Denny O'Neil. Maybe that mystery is solved, then?

ANYway...this was a fun strip. And on October 31st American Mythology is starting a reprint of this thing...and I might could have to buy it, since (1) it's Michael Kaluta and (2) the online version was not exactly crisp, and I would really like to see this thing in all of its glory. The only thing that might prevent me from buying the comic books when they come out (I presume that it will take at least three issues, since the original run was 72 pages long) is that I would really like to have a deluxe hardcover version of it. Or maybe I'll just do both. But you know what would be really super de dooper cool? If Kaluta decided it was time to finish this adaptation off. Oh, yeah. That would work.

(I, Kant)

It's a little bit funny.

I've been hitting Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy every day for the past 283 days, have read more than half of its 5,344 pages, and was pretty excited about encountering Mr. Immanuel Kant (despite reports that he was "a real pissant who was very rarely stable"). But now that I've been reading about him for more than a few days (he gets a pretty big chunk of Volume VI), I have to admit that I am less than thrilled. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to wrap my mind around this stuff...but it seems to me that this is the most turgid and least interesting material I've encountered in the past 3,000 pages and 9+ months. There are times when I think, "Surely you've missed a step there, because that is NOT an inescapable conclusion you've just drawn." And there are times when I think, "Well, you just fuckin' SAID that." But it's probably me.

At any rate, I continue to plow ahead. And today I encountered an idea which actually interested me. I will admit that I'm not completely sure that this is what Kant was saying...or, more properly, what Copleston said Kant was saying...but I've done my best to untie the Gordian knot, and this is the best I can do with it. And if I'm wrong, and it's not what etc., then what the hell, it's still an interesting thought.

That thought being: you can either pursue happiness or virtue, but not both.

Which does not mean that pursuing virtue cannot lead to happiness...though I think the implication there was that the happiness was most likely to arrive in The Next World...or that the pursuit of happiness could not be virtuous...though I'm picturing a camel and the eye of a needle on that one....

But that is an interesting, isn't it? Do you want happiness or do you want to live virtuously?

And I immediately had to look at my life and conclude that I have often chosen "virtue" over happiness. And the pursuit of that virtue has, indeed, contributed to my unhappiness in some quite vivid ways. Many of them having to do with splendid women I had the opportunity to have sexual congress with, but did not because I was attempting to Do The Right Thing.

It is not uncommon for me to berate myself over this.

But you know...I think I would probably make the same choices if I had the opportunity to go back and do it all over again. It has to do with not putting my desires above the good of someone else. Which is pretty much the definition of Virtue, isn't it? 

Damn.

"Hey, you want to have sex?"

"I can't."

"Fuckin' loser."

"Sigh."

3 for $1

When I was a young fellow growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I didn't really care much about music. I remember getting excited about Jesus Christ Superstar after the 7th grade chorus teacher played "Heaven on Their Minds" to us for some reason.* (It wasn't because we were going to sing it...thank God.) And I have a vague memory of Les Crane's Desiderata being in my possession. But my first music purchase was in a drug store, where they had a 3 albums for one dollar sale. I picked up Silver Throat: Bill Cosby Sings...which I still have, by the way...and it is in pretty good shape, too...and a knock-off version of the Shaft soundtrack performed by Soul Mann & The Brothers, which I, alas, do not have any more. But today I saw it at Half-Price. I didn't think it was worth $6.99, so I didn't buy it, but it was nice to meet up with it again after fifty years or so of not seeing it. 

I think everything shows up at Half-Price sooner or later.

Oh...I don't remember what the third album was. Maybe it was just 2 for $1?

Pretty sure it was 3, though.

* A chorus class I shared with Bob Ehrlich, who went on to be the Governor of Maryland from 2003 to 2007. Just sayin', sir. 

Land of the....