Malcolm, buy this and we’ll show you how to predict the future

On March 9, 2023March 9, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Tarot, writing

Years ago, we all said everything is now. Oh, and a few memories about how each of us perceived that “now” at one intersection of time, space, and mind or another.

So, when somebody wants a stack of money from me to show me how to predict the so-called future, I don’t quite know how to respond to that other than “I think not.”

Typically, we assume time works like the drawing shown here. That means that the astrologer, psychic, tarot card reader, or snake oil salesperson wants to give me a peak into that cone at the top of the drawing.

Their deals always leave something out of the magic answer: me. To put it simply, when a person tells me s/he will give me insight into the future, they’re telling me what I’m going to do tomorrow and next week. Like I don’t know that already. I have a calendar on my desk with stuff written on it for the upcoming days, weeks, and months. If somebody breaks into my house, looks at that calendar, and sends me notes about what they see, they believe they’re providing me with a valuable service. At a premium rate.

The “I’ll Show You The Future” spam plays on people’s fear that the so-called future is already set up by forces unknown and we’re at its mercy. If we’re at anyone’s mercy, it’s ourselves because everything that shows up in that cone at the top of the drawing is what we put there.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism and contemporary fantasy novels and short stories.

One key fob to bind them

On March 7, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life

If you have a recent car, you know that the most important piece of equipment is the key fob, the remote that unlocks the car as you approach and locks it as you walk away, and allows you to start the car by holding down the brake pedal and pushing the start button. I think it will also cook breakfast and start the car on a cold winter’s day.

Key Fob - 2016-2021 Honda HR-V 4-Button Smart Key Fob Remote (KR5V1X, 72147-T7S-A01) The primary key fob includes a key that will start the car during the apocalypse if need be. That key will also open the remote so you can change the battery inside even though this isn’t mentioned in the car’s operating manual. On the secondary key fob, there’s a slide switch half the size of a grain of rice. What it does, I don’t know because it doesn’t open the remote’s battery compartment.

Since this key fob will control the universe, you’d think the car’s manual would mention it, possibly including instructions for changing the battery and mentioning what size that battery is. I hate to drive by the dealership and ask, er, how do you change the battery in this sonofabitch that isn’t mentioned in the car’s operating instructions.

Maybe I’m supposed to ask the key fob how to do that, like Alexa. I’m thinking, though, that changing the battery in the fob is classified information because, you know, if the fob falls into the wrong hands those hands can launch missiles or otherwise mess up life as we know it.

–Malcolm

Book Bits: Theodora Goss, Scott Adams, Tár, James Bond

On March 5, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

This column about books, authors, publishing, and related films used to appear here frequently. I hope you enjoy the links and find a few things to strike your fancy.

I try to avoid sites with paywalls unless they give people several free reads before the paywall kicks in. I know how irritating it is to find interesting links on Facebook only to discover when I click on the that I’m now allowed to see the stories.

Review: Tell Me Everything: A Memoir – “Actor Kelly recalls her far-from-privileged upbringing and reflects on the skills that helped her survive it in this heart-stopping debut. In nonlinear vignettes, Kelly recounts her chaotic childhood as the daughter of an addict.” Publishers Weekly Additional Info, Wikipedia: Minka Kelly is an American actress and model. Her first starring role was in the NBC drama series Friday Night Lights and she has also appeared on the shows Parenthood, Charlie’s Angels, and Almost Human. From 2018 to 2021, Kelly portrayed Dawn Granger /Dove on the DC Universe / HBO Max series Titans.
Feature: A flood destroyed all of Sarah’s books, but a gift from a librarian changed her life – “In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston. More than 70,000 houses were flooded, including the home of Sarah Feldman and her family. At the time, they were in Connecticut on vacation, so they didn’t know what kind of damage they were going to face when they got home to Texas. But then Feldman’s grandparents called with bad news: all of her books had been destroyed in the flooding. Feldman was 14 at the time and loved reading.” NPR
Review: The Collected Enchantments, by Theodora Goss – “This vibrant collection brings together World Fantasy Award winner Goss’s exquisite interpretations of and variations on familiar folk and fairy tales. The 48 poems and 25 stories span the length of Goss’s career.” Publishers Weekly – Goss is also the author of three fantasy novels in the Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series.
News: ‘SNL’ Takes Aim at ‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Following Racist Rant – “The centerpiece of “Saturday Night Live’s” March 4 ‘Weekend Update’ segment was a skewering of ‘Dilbert’ comic creator Scott Adams, who went on a racist rant last month that spurred dozens of newspapers to drop his long-running syndicated cartoon strip.” Variety See also ‘Dilbert’ cartoonist Scott Adams will be ‘backpedaling’ from his racist remarks for ’years’: Rich Lowry
Review: The Writing Retreat, by Julia Bartz – Five writers, four weeks, and a $1 million book deal for the lucky winner. Unless they disappear first. . .Despite Alex’s somewhat whiny nature, the book’s pacing—a slow roll of dread and horror, especially in the first half—is exceptional. Bartz hits all the gothic highlights, but, far from feeling stale, they work. A perfect winter night’s haunting.” Kirkus Reviews. See also: WITHOUT SHAME: FEMALE WRITERS ON FEMALE PSYCHOPATHS by Julia Bartz in “Crime Reads.”
Opinion: Why Tár should win the best picture Oscar – “Cate Blanchett is wonderfully commanding as the sociopath musical megastar whose life is crumbling around her but it is the steely menace in Todd Field’s film that is simply delicious. The great crack-up of Lydia Tár, the Berlin Philharmonic’s entirely fictitious but docudramatically real-seeming chief conductor, has given the cinema its greatest spectacle, its greatest provocation and its greatest pleasure. If there is any justice, it will be producer-director Todd Field, with fellow producers Alexandra Milchan and Scott Lambert, who will be invited up on stage at the end of the evening to receive the climactic best picture statuette.” Guardian
News: Fleming’s Bond Novels To Be Edited for Language, by Michael Schaub – “Ian Fleming Publications Ltd., the company that manages the literary estate of the British author who created 007, is republishing the writer’s spy novels this spring, in a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the first Bond book, Casino Royale. The new editions of the books were reviewed by sensitivity readers, who recommended that the n-word be removed from the novels. Other racially insensitive passages have been changed, including one from Live and Let Die, which originally described patrons at a Harlem nightclub as “panting and grunting like pigs at the trough.” The new version reads, “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.” Kirkus Reviews (Comment: The sensitivity police strike again.)

–Malcolm

Writing, my time machine

On March 1, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

The road on the cover of Conjure Woman’s Cat is an artist’s conception of an unpaved piney woods road and yet, I have driven down that road hundreds of times.

For most children in my growing-up world, nothing of consequence happened inside a building. Play, and the imagination that fueled it, was our true reality. Authors and other artists tend to hold onto that belief longer than most, often for a lifetime.

So, when I write, I’m sitting in a time machine that takes me back, as all country roads do, to the roads of my coming-of-age reality, a world outside the claustrophobic confines of the house where I lived in a middle-class white neighborhood to the great freedom of the woods, rivers, swamps, and Gulf coast far away outside the front door.

Life actual, the consensus reality inside the buildings, featured me dutifully sitting in a classroom or church pew, doing homework and chores, taking tests, and in every way that mattered to the establishment, acting like a normal kid en route to becoming a drone when it came time to go off to war or go off to the office.

Life in truth, where imagination is more important than cold, hard facts, is the fabric of my books, coming from a world where I camped and hiked in the piney woods, sailed between Florida’s barrier islands, and drove hundreds of miles a week along unpaved roads in my unreliable 1954 Chevy. In this world, I learned who I was as opposed to life actual where I didn’t want to be.

Writing the books in the Florida Folk Magic Series takes me back to the part of my childhood and young adult years where the “real me” lived and breathed and learned the magic that would sustain me (even inside buildings).

Some say you can’t go home again. What a crock. I go home every time I write. Home is like that picture with the egret in it. I knew every nook and cranny of the Florida Panhandle because I hiked, drove, and variously wandered through it when I escaped from my house and my schoolroom. The events in the stories are “fiction.” Nonetheless, I was there to the extent that even to this day I find the world of piney woods and conjure more real than my life in school, home, and church.

Writers are often hard to get to know because of their split personalities, 10% based within consensual reality and 90% based within the realm of dreams. In general, we prefer the world of dreams, dreams that include our stories and the characters that appear in them. We’re not easy to know or to live with because we’re always somewhere else and because we think consensual reality is an illusion.

–Malcolm

E-mail in basket: what a minefield

On February 27, 2023February 27, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Internet

Sometimes I see e-mails from people I know, family even. Sometimes there are e-mails from newsletters I subscribe to or vendors from whom I’ve ordered products. Occasionally, I receive e-mails with headers like “Are you the Malcolm R. Campbell who wrote Carl Jung and Alchemy.” I’ve never gotten one of those messages about anything I did write.

The rest is swill.

Lately, there have been several e-mails a day with the word CONFIRMATION in the header. Most of these come from companies I’ve never heard of. Sometimes the title even says what the sender wants me to confirm, like: “CONFIRMATION: Brothels of the World Tour.” I never open any of these.

Then there are the e-mails that try to shame you for not opening previous e-mails, usually newsletters I’ve subscribed to. Often there’s a code of some sort hidden within a photo that tells the newsletter people whether I’ve opened their e-mails of late. When that happens, it means that I’ve subscribed to too many newsletters and have been skipping some of them.

There’s also this sort of thing: “Malcolm, 25 years ago you gave money to our save the whales’ foundation but you haven’t done jack shit since then. . . WTF” I don’t answer these even if the outfit is working for a good cause. One can go broke donating $10 here and $20 there.

Occasionally–and this happens on Facebook, too–I get a message that says, “Hi, I’m Melanie, a single mother with three children who has needs for male companionship. Write me back if you’re interested.” Obviously, I delete these, though I wonder how many of the senders know I’m old enough to be their grandfather.

I’ve been online since the AOL, CompuServe, and MySpace days. I think I’ve seen it all. If I haven’t, don’t tell me about it.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the comedy/satire Special Investigative Reporter. Check it out (if you dare).

Sunday’s Goulash (with smoked paprika)

On February 26, 2023February 26, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri

No worries, smoked paprika provides (obviously) a smoky taste but is not hot.
Cloudy weather in NW Georgia today at 65°. Almost time to swap out my flannel shirts for denim.
Nice to see this headline: “Roald Dahl Publisher Bends to Controversy, Will Release “Classic” Version of Controversial Kids’ Books” “’We’ve listened to the debate over the past week, which has reaffirmed the extraordinary power of Roald Dahl’s books and the very real questions around how stories from another era can be kept relevant for each new generation,’ says Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Random House Children’s.”
Finally got around to reading Kirstin Hannah’s Home Front. She not only did a good job with the issue of women soldiers leaving their families when their guard units are deployed but called attention to the fact that PTSD has an impact on both the soldier and his/her family. I agree with the lawyer and psychiatrist in the book when they say that the county, including the legal system, still has a ways to go in seeing PTSD as a real disorder rather than jargon about veterans “having a hard time.”
Last night’s movie from Noir Alley on TCM was “Human Desire.” I always enjoy the ambiance of a movie directed by Fritz Lang. I’m also a fan of Gloria Grahame. Glenn Ford appeared in a lot of movies, but I agree with reviewers who said his performance in this one was rather flat. Broderick Crawford was very believable as the jealous husband. As a connoisseur of railroads, this film had plenty of train footage–too much, some reviewers said. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to have too much railroading footage in a feature film.
My wife has been making Waldorf salads recently. Neither of us can talk about them or enjoy them without thinking about the “Fawlty Towers” episode about the salad. According to Wikipedia, “The episode has been described as being ‘massively popular’ and a great success commercially internationally in the 1980s and 1990s. Its source of amusement derives from the cultural differences between the Americans and the British and the perceived differences in manners. The American is very rude in expecting food that is not on the menu and complaining about the service in contrast to the English guests who are very guarded when it comes to complaining. The book Great, Grand & Famous Hotels remarked that ‘Fawlty Towers is real to everybody who has ever worked in a hotel, anybody who has ever stayed in one, or anyone who has ever tried, unsuccessfully, to order a Waldorf salad.'”
I’m rather astonished at the fact my best friend from high school and junior high school, who’s my age, is still a captain of tall ships. And he’s even had a hip replacement at some point. I hope he’s not climbing up in the rigging anymore.

–Malcolm

In addition to magical realism, Malcolm R. Campbell is also the author of satire.

My father was the dean of the Florida State University school of journalism He often invited old-line reports from his staff out to the house for supper. Their stories inspired this novel.

Religious jokes: Good clean fun or offensive?

On February 25, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn religion, writing5 Comments

Comedians on the old comedy circuits used to tell plenty of religious jokes, usually about their own religion or denomination. The habit was still going strong during the years of “The Tonight Show” in Steve Allen’s tenure and Johnny Carson’s tenure. I thought most of the jokes were funny.

Now, with so much hatred in our world, I wonder if those jokes can still be told. I think we should still be able to tell them, but worry that they might be taken as an offensive attack rather than a lighthearted jest aimed at the foibles of our own or our friends’ beliefs.

Perhaps our concern about the jokes tells us just how rampant the hatred has become. Rather than friends laughing at their differences, we seem to have become enemies attacking each other over things that don’t matter or things that seem threatening now to live as we know it.

This joke, from 58+ Quirky & Hillarious Baptist Jokes, is the sort of thing I’m talking bout: “After the plane took off, the cowboy asked for a whiskey and soda, which was brought and placed before him.

The flight attendant then asked the preacher if he would like a drink.

Appalled, the preacher replied, “I’d rather be tied up and taken advantage of by women of ill-repute, than let liquor touch my lips.”

The cowboy then handed his drink back to the attendant and said, “Me too, I didn’t know we had a choice.”

So, do you laugh or do you say that such jokes aren’t woke?

Or this, from Brentwood Presbyterian Church:

A woman visitor to a Presbyterian Church was disrupting church one day with your enthusiastic yelps of “Praise God!” and “Hallelujah!” One of the ushers tried to quiet her down. He tried to explain to her that she was disrupting the worship service.

“But mister, I got religion!” The woman proclaimed.

“Yes, madame,” replied the usher. “But you did not get it here!”

I see the humor in that. I grew up in the Presbyterian church and knew that we were fairly boring to the members of other denominations, especially the Southern Baptists whom we thought really overdid the gaudy decorations in their church. The Methodists had two pulpits for reasons we didn’t comprehend, so we assumed it allowed the ministers to speak out of both sides of their mouths.

Growing up, I poked fun at the Presbyterian Church’s historic belief in predestination, including the concept of election, a philosophy that asserted those going to Heaven and those going to Hell were predetermined and unchangeable. My approach to this was that it didn’t matter whether we went to church or not since our fate was already engraved in stone. My parents and minister didn’t like my view, but then I was quoting doctrine.

So, what’s your take? Can I still say I’m giving up sobriety for lent or is that something I shouldn’t say?

As a writer, I always like to push the envelope–or perhaps destroy it–but the hatred of the times keeps trying to keep us in line.

–Malcolm

Listen to your muse–or your subconscious or your dreams when you write

On February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

If you want fresh ideas for your novel or short story in progress, keep the work on your mind, at least sort of while you’re doing repetitive tasks or end up watching a boring TV show. (I’ve learned that it’s not good to do this while you’re having a conversation with your spouse.)

Keeping the story in mind during times when I’m not facing the pressure of a blank screen seems to bring ideas to mind that I hadn’t thought of before. Quite often, they’re about something a character should do or say in the scene I’m about to write.

Most writers I know choke up–rather like the batter in a world series game who finds himself facing the ace reliever on the other team–when they start a new chapter. It’s as though the page break at the end of the previous chapter has turned into a scary threshold and now the ideas just won’t come.

I usually wait a day or so before starting a new chapter. That gives time for my muse, so to speak, to supply some ideas for jump-starting the action. When I’m not sitting at the PC, a treasure trove of ideas comes into my thoughts out of nowhere. These are pure cold and much better than anything I would have come up with while staring fearfully at the screen.

According to Wikipedia, “In modern figurative usage, a muse is a literal person or supernatural force that serves as someone’s source of artistic inspiration.” I prefer the supernatural force explanation. The muse in the painting, who works with sacred poetry, is Polyhymnia. My muse is much more up-to-date.

Somewhere or other, I have a post out there in which I said that I rejected the idea of an author’s muse because those portrayed by artists always seemed to be fragile women who were dying of consumption. As it turned out, a character in one of my older novels became the personification of my muse. She’s really badass.

I don’t try to visualize this character while waiting for book ideas. I just think about the work in progress and Siobhan always shows up with the ideas I need to get back to work.

Does this sound weird or does it already work for you?

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell’s muse got really snarky while he was writing “Special Investigative Reporter.” That’s probably why the AudioFile Magazine reviewer said, “The story is high on humor but light on plot–a vehicle for sex, cigarettes, steak, and zinfandel.”

Paper burns at 451° F

On February 23, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

Paper burns at 451° F, sometimes as low as 424° F.

So, you can see how easy it is to burn books or–as we often see in the movies–incriminating notes in an ashtray.

Do you suppose this will be our ultimate method for keeping unapproved books off the shelves, out of the classrooms, and outside public discourse?

We even have a manual for how to do it, a manual that the publisher “cleaned it up” before Dahl’s publisher and estate applied the cutting torch to his works.

Suppose, like the Catholic Church, the Imperial Federal government and the state governments were to decide upon one approved list that would prevent the contamination of our citizens or the corruption of beliefs and sensibilities through the reading of theologically erroneous or immoral books.

This would save money because there would be no more book ban hearings, no more teachers sneaking personal books into their classrooms, and no more publishers having to clean up works that might offend some weakling who might turn into a serial killer by reading a 100-year-old swear word in a novel.

A simple match will clean house and save humanity.

–Malcolm

Are we as weak as the ‘modern sensibilities’ advocates think we are?

On February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

Roald Dahl’s estate and publisher are “cleaning up” parts of his books so they can continue to be enjoyed by people with “modern sensibilities.” This has caused a backlash, but the changes will probably go through.

The revisions are an outrage that I hope isn’t going to be applied to all books written in the past that use descriptions from authors and norms that were the product of their times.

**Published by Penguin, so it should be an undamaged version.**

The gist of the thing is that apparently writing or saying anything that offends anyone on the face of the earth is immoral. Well, that view pretty much kills debate, new ideas, and most fiction.

Those advocating not offending anyone have learned the power of mob action and well-financed protests. They don’t care about the “bad words,” they care about the message itself. So they claim XYZ offends them. My response is “so what?” I have the right to say what I believe even if people don’t like it. The “modern sensibilities” advocates purport to believe, for example, that if a fat child reads about a fat child in a story, that fat child will probably be scarred for life. Sorry, I don’t buy this.

A BBC story about the changes to Dahl’s books includes the following quote:

“Laura Hackett, deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times, said she would continue to read her original copies of Dahl’s books to her children in all ‘their full, nasty, colourful glory.’

“‘I think the sort of the nastiness is what makes Dahl so much fun,’ she told 5 Live. ‘You love it when, in Matilda, Bruce Bogtrotter is forced to eat that whole chocolate cake, or you are locked up in the Chokey [a torture device] – that’s what children love.

“‘And to remove all references to violence or anything that’s not clean and nice and friendly, then you remove the spirit of those stories.'”

Salman Rushdie said on Twitter that “Puffin Books and the Dahl estate should be ashamed.”

And they should be. They are doing something that I believe is unethical, misguided, and offensive.

We’re all doomed.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of an anti-KKK series of novels set in the 1950s that uses the language and beliefs of that period. If this bugs you, don’t read the four books in the series.