On Medium: The Villain’s Journey Towards Embracing Antisocial Reality

Read on about how the myth of the hero's journey demonizes the existential heroism of renouncing a domesticated life for a dehumanizing immersion in the beyond. 

On Medium: Selling Superstardom with the Myth of the Hero’s Journey

Here's an article about the clash between the model of adventure and the Pareto principle, and how the myth of the hero's journey is propaganda for the minority of superstars.

On Medium: Would Societal Collapse Degrade or Improve Us?

Here's an article about postapocalyptic fiction, original sin, and salvation by philosophy.

On Medium: Saturated in Fiction: Consensus Reality as a Web of Stories

Read on to explore how we're more saturated with fiction than we realize, even in our concepts, scientific models, and the techniques we use, as well as our inner narratives.

On Medium: The Fictions of Moralists and Hypocrites

This article is about the inevitable unworkability of moral or religious principles, because of their basis in myths and fictions. So if we're moral, we end up lying to ourselves and if we're unprincipled, we lie to others to avoid being cast out of society. Either way, fictions rule.

God Decays has arrived!

My first novel, God Decays, is now available as a paperback from CreateSpace, which is Amazon’s self-publishing company. The book is also available from Amazon and from Amazon Europe (search for "God Decays" in the European site of your choice).

For some reason, I get higher royalties if the book is purchased from the CreateSpace page as opposed to Amazon itself. So if you’re interested in buying the book and you’d like more of the money to go to me, you’d want to buy it from CreateSpace.

I’m very proud of this novel. I wrote the first draft in 4 or 5 months and it was so much fun. But this novel is only the beginning of at least a 4-volume series I have planned. The scope is going to be epic.

The image at the left, of that zombie standing in front of a galaxy/halo was meant to be included in the book. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the resolution to work. (Microsoft Word or some other program kept lowering the resolution, so the printed copy looked fuzzy.) So there's the picture. I'll have to figure out the resolution issues for the next book so I can include more art in it.

Here are the first several chapters of the book, minus the snazzy formatting and fonts. Warning: God Decays falls within the horror genre, so there’s some gore in it as well as coarse language.

Talking Points should be delivered to Empty Rooms, Politicians and Journalists Agree

Dateline: WASHINGTON—At an unprecedented conference yesterday on relations between journalism and democratic government, Washington correspondents together with congressional leaders and the President reached an understanding about their public communications: from now on, the politician will deliver his or her talking points to an empty room.

At a subsequent press conference, House Speaker Boehner said that although talking points are useless if no one hears them, “no one takes talking points seriously anymore.” Politicians are “professionally and psychologically incapable of being candid in public,” he said, or of “listening carefully to a journalist’s questions and answering them to fulfill their side of the bargain in a genuine conversation.” But since “spinning issues in a stony-faced evasion of whatever the listener is saying” is part of a politician’s job description, the politician might as well deliver the spin without the intended listeners being in any way present.

The reader should be aware that because that press conference was the first of its kind and the House Speaker was therefore speaking to two hundred empty seats, the present RWUG reporter can only imagine that that was his rationale for agreeing to the conclusions reached at the conference. Political analyst Peter Beinart explains that not even robot-operated cameras will be allowed to record the events. That way, correspondents will be prevented from even indirectly paying any attention to the talking points. “The trick is to ignore them completely,” he said, “to retaliate against the politician’s ignoring of whatever the journalist is saying.”

According to this RWUG reporter’s imagining of what President Obama said in his later press conference to motivate this new era of American government-media relations, he said, “If you look carefully at how I handle questions at a press conference, you’ll see quite clearly that I just couldn’t care less about the actual content of those questions. Either way, I’m going to ram through my talking points. You could ask me about what’s happening in Timbuktu and I’d pivot to giving my multi-paragraph history lesson on how we reached the current American budget crisis, to frame that issue and make my policy seem the only responsible option. The same goes for every modern president before me.”

Questioned by a Washington correspondent—whom this RWUG reporter imagines might have spoken at Speaker Boehner’s press conference, had there been a single journalist in attendance—as to what political journalists should write about if they’re no longer transmitting the talking points, Speaker Boehner might have said, “They’ll just have to make stuff up. As it is, no one trusts the media either anymore.”

Tea Party Advocates Destruction of All of America (Except its Golf Courses)

Dateline: WASHINGTON—Senator and reputed Tea Party leader Ted Cruz introduced a resolution to the Senate yesterday, calling for the immolation of all of the United States apart from its golf courses. Speaking in favour of the motion on the congressional floor, he said he “wished to clarify the Tea Party message in response to misconceptions of Republican anarchism.”

He opposes what he called “the Democrats' slander of patriotic Americans,” according to which Tea Partiers are “bomb-throwing, black-mask wearing nihilists and anarchists.” Rank-and-file members of the populist movement mustn’t be mistaken for "rabble-rousers of that degenerate variety," he said, because Tea Partiers have learned from "the failures of their ideological cousins." “If you want to break a window,” said Sen. Cruz, “you throw a rock. If you want to blow up a small business, you toss a Molotov cocktail. But if you want to destroy almost all of a country, you take control of its political process so you can hit the self-destruct button.”

Questioned later by reporters about why his motion would explicitly spare the golf courses, Sen. Cruz said “We’re not barbarians,” adding that while most Tea Party voters have likely never played golf, they know enough to use golf-obsessed political representatives to achieve their goal of destroying themselves by laying waste to the American infrastructure and to most of the country’s landscape. “To get the job done right, you need professionals,” said Sen. Cruz. “The new breed of Republican leaders is made up of full-bore, big-picture anarchists. We don’t fool around with rinky-dink mobs. And we’re just absolutely obsessed with golf.”

Political analysts credit that obsession as the reason why the Tea Party doesn’t advocate the wholesale slaughter of the nation by the launching of nuclear missiles against itself. “What would happen to the golf courses, then?” pointed out one such analyst. “That’s the sticking point, you see. If you want to destroy modern civilization, but you also happen to just adore stepping onto the fairway and swinging away at that golf ball, you have to be careful about how you go about your business. You can’t lay about willy-nilly with crude grenades, since you might just hit a golf course.”

Asked why his resolution specifies that American society be “immolated,” or burned as a sacrifice, Sen. Cruz said, “Well, that proves we’re not nihilists, doesn’t it! That’s contrary to the scurrilous rumours you often hear from the other side of the aisle. No, we don’t believe in nothing. We believe in Azathoth, the God of Chaos, and He demands human sacrifice.”

Speaking at a fundraiser, David Koch, the wealthy financier of the Tea Party, which he called the “anarchist heart of the GOP,” welcomed the clarification. “I’m appalled by almost every facet of American society and have spent millions trying to tear it down. But I really love to dress up in gaudy, thousand dollar outfits and drive around highly-exclusive golf courses with my servile caddy and tungsten-weighted Maruman clubs in tow.”

Asked what would become of capitalism and big business if most of the country were burned to the ground “so that Azathoth might inhale the smoke rising from the flames,” as Sen. Cruz put it, Koch said “Business would proceed, of course. In fact, we’d finally have a perfectly free market. It would be every man for himself, free to do whatever he wants as long as he’s a billionaire golfer. Haven’t you people been listening to anything we Republicans have been saying?”

Prisoners of the Power Pyramid

Todd Frogonherben parked his mother’s sedan in the lot of the Convention Centre for the monthly Omega Gathering. He glanced in the rearview mirror at the balding dome of his head, the red blotches around his ears and forehead, and the dandruff that marked the spots where he habitually twirled his remaining greasy locks when nervous, which was often. Sighing, he double-checked his wallet to ensure he’d brought his identification card. There it was: a photo of his miserable face and hunched shoulders besides which the classification “Omega” stood out, typed in bold above his age, date of birth and home address. Strapping on his backpack which he’d had since high school, he left the car, waited in line for half an hour, displayed his ID card to the beta at the door, and took a floor plan from the brochure rack.

Dressed in cheap shirts and jogging pants, and challenging the Centre’s air conditioners with their questionable body odour, thousands of underemployed, undersexed and introverted omega men swarmed the aisles of the convention. They hounded alphas for their autograph, paid for photos with their favourite seduction artist, squealed with glee as they lay on stage while alphas ceremoniously ground their flabby bellies beneath the soles of their thousand dollar Italian shoes, or sat in packed program rooms where panels of Game experts lectured or led workshops.

Those lessons were all fantasies, of course, thought Todd. Not that the rules of the Game didn’t apply; naturally they did, but only alphas could fairly win. The shy, bitter, overweight, ugly, or mentally ill omega men could be coached all they liked, but everyone knew that was just for the vicarious thrill of pretending you were something you’re not. It was like those cooking shows that bored people liked to watch even though they never bothered with any of the recipes in their home cooking.

In years past, Todd had cowered on that stage and sat in those lecture halls too, but this month he was here on business.

After roaming the aisles, he stood for an hour in another line until he earned an audience with Alpha Lord Scott Derringer, Wall Street bank VP at 26 and nationally renowned pickup artist and cocksman. It was like beholding an Olympian god: you dared not raise your eyes for long, but when you did catch a glimpse of his perfectly square jaw, prominent chin, piercing gaze, and muscular physique beneath his tailored suit, you began to share the alpha’s disgust with you—assuming you weren’t an alpha yourself. Todd berated himself like a crazy person on a street corner, bewailing his homeliness, his poverty, his many personal failures and failings.

“That’s enough of that,” Scott said. “I don’t have all day. If you’re into masochism, that underling there will show you to Stage B.”

"God Decays" is coming!

I've just uploaded my first novel, God Decays, to Amazon's CreateSpace printer. In a day or so I'll order a copy to check how it prints and after that it will go up for sale! If you enjoy my writing on this blog, you haven't seen anything yet. I'm very proud of this novel and it's only the first of a projected four-volume (minimum) series of novels. The series begins with my philosophical, action-packed take on the zombie post-apocalypse, and then it will get into some fantasy and science fiction. Check out the attached version of the first book's cover. And here's the book's description.

Cheers!

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At the end of history, our epilogue will be epic

But first we'll be dethroned within the animal kingdom and left to rot...yet not to die

Howard Rhodes, an NSA cryptanalyst, engineered the zombie apocalypse. So said the President of the United States in his shocking final address to the nation, which served as the nation's epitaph. Four years later, the old world is in ruins and is stalked by the living dead. Some of the survivors keep journals to record their travails in the hope that their lives still matter.

There's Jenna, a sardonic loner who is forced to care for others; Douglas, a young boy who wants to see the world outside his bomb shelter and make his dead mother proud; an old vagabond who has made his peace with the harsh truths he learned living in the margins of society; Thaddeus, a family may who will nevertheless do anything to see what comes after humanity; Hernando, who sees the dark humor in the new world; and Eric, Hernando's mentally ill neighbor in Richmond, VA, who yearns for an adventure to shake up his routine and who just might know where to find the world's most profound secret, hidden in the bowels of NSA headquarters, a secret from another star, the secret of why the world ended...of why God decays.