Christian fantasy literature, and commentary on assorted subjects
Hardly a day goes by without some bozo with The New York Times, The Huffington Post, or The Washington Post, or an overpaid academic, or babbling Democrat prating about the scourge of “income inequality.”
None of these turkeys ever shows up on your doorstep to hand you a check that makes your income equal to theirs. They complain about “income inequality” at $10,000-a-plate dinners.
I propose that from now on, anyone who speaks of “income inequality” as a problem to be solved–especially by government–be pushed down a long, steep flight of stairs.
Could we please use our heads for a minute? The term “income inequality” necessarily implies that there must be such a thing as “income equality.” But does anyone know when that ever existed? Or where–except in a cemetery?
Would anyone even want a state of “income equality”–in which the industrious and the bone-idle, the creative and the dull, the diligent and the indolent, the skilled and the inept, the dedicated and the what-me-worry, the deserving and the undeserving… all get exactly the same income? Why do these morons talk as if such a thing were actually desirable, something we ought to strive for?
Nothing good can come of releasing such toxic stupidity into any discussion of, or meditation on, public policy.
But just try to pry it loose from “progressive” ideology, and see how far you get.
There are lines spoken by characters in various movies that have crept into my own everyday language, serving as a kind of shorthand. Some of these lines have slipped into a lot of people’s speech–maybe even yours.
1. Mandy Patinkin, to the villain with six fingers, in The Princess Bride: “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” The fact that he’s holding a sword when he says this lends credibility.
2. Roy Scheider in Jaws, having just looked down the gullet of the meanest shark in the ocean: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Yes, many situations turn out to be a lot more challenging than you expected.
3. The Mexican bandit, Gold Hat, to Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre: “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” You can replace “badges” with just about any word you happen to need at the moment. As in, “We don’t need no stinkin’ cat license!”
4. The Witch to her slowly-being-hypnotized victims in The Silver Chair: “There is no sun…” Just like there’s no left-wing bias in the “news” media.
5. Stan Laurel to Oliver Hardy in Block-Heads: “Remember how dumb I used to be? Well, I’m better now.” Uh-huh.
I could keep this up all day, but those five above will always be among my favorites.
What are some of yours?
First it was the plumbers and the landlord turning everything upside-down, then family members needing help, and finally my knee blowing up. Nevertheless, as Helki the Rod might say, I reckon I’m about half done writing my new book–Bell Mountain #7, The Glass Bridge. I don’t know how.
Rocky Bridges said, “There are three things that everyone in the world thinks he can do–run a hotel, manage a baseball team, and write a book.” I don’t know about running a hotel or a baseball team, but I’m here to tell you that you would be positively amazed by the number of obstacles that pop up in front of you as you try to write a book.
Gee, this knee hurts.
Still, I’m happy with the way The Glass Bridge is taking shape. I think its readers will be, too.
Canada is not the only “free” country that has a problem with freedom.
You may remember the Christian bakers in Oregon who declined to obey a lesbian’s order that they create a cake for her same-sex mock “wedding.” Naturally, the state government treated them like criminals. Hey, when a lesbian says “jump,” you jump.
As reported recently by The Oregonian, the state of Oregon doesn’t want just to punish the Christians. It wants to get their minds right. The Oregonian quotes Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian: “The goal is never to shut down a business. The goal is to rehabilitate.”
Gee, I wonder how the government plans to “rehabilitate” this man and wife who believe the Bible means what it says, that same-sex relations are an abomination, and that they can’t allow themselves to participate in it in any way. It would be easy for the state just to crush this small business and ruin the owners: but that’s not good enough. These thought criminals have to be “rehabilitated.” Their core beliefs must be torn out and new core beliefs, approved by the state, installed.
I am sure this is not what it means to be free. It is probably not even what it means to be human.
Does your local police department have too much money?
The York Regional Police in Ontario, Canada, certainly do. That’s how they can afford to have a special bureau of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” whose job is to suppress any speech or opinion deemed politically incorrect.
As reported in an Aug. 13 communique from the Christian Heritage Party of Canada, the thought cops recently swung into action to stifle free speech at a local synagogue–where an American blogger “critical of pro-Palestinian, pro-Arab, and pro-Muslim activists” was scheduled to speak, by invitation.
“But the ‘diversity’ head of the York Regional Police contacted the rabbi, who is a consultant to the Diversity bureau, and warned him that his status as a consultant might be in danger if he allowed [the blogger] to speak.”
Well, that’s what you get for being a consultant to the thought police. Toldja so.
So once again the “diversity” goons enforce uniformity of opinion, and the “inclusion” bullies exclude speakers and opinions they don’t like. If your police department has anything like a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureau, then your police department has way too big a budget.
Remember when police used to protect you from real crimes, not thought crimes? Dick Tracey‘s Crimestoppers‘ Textbook never had anything in it about stifling anyone’s opinion. I wonder how many stores got robbed while York’s Keystone Kops were leaning on the rabbi.
Oh, but who cares about some pesky blogger being kept from speaking?
But it’s only a matter of time before they silence your opinion.
Which is exactly what happened to that rabbi.
As reported Aug. 12 in The Washington Times ( http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/12/you-are-good-barack-obama-video-shows-little-boy-p/ ), there is now a youtube video of a little boy praying to Barack Obama, our First Voter Fraud President. The video is entitled, “Prayer for President Barack Obama,” but as soon as the kid closes his eyes and opens his mouth, he is obviously praying to the Marxist community organizer.
(This video has been pulled from most of its location and has become difficult to find. Maybe you can see it on this link to WND, below.)
Some of the quotes from this prayer beggar description. “Thank you [Obama] for doing everything… God has give you special power… you are good, Barack Obama, you are great…”
Hello? Where are the black churches? Where are the African-American pastors who are supposed to be teaching their congregations that you do not worship sinful mortal men as gods? What kind of depraved creature would stand by and let a child fall into such a terrible error?
In Acts 14:8-18, Paul and Barnabas, visiting the pagan city of Lystra, heal a man who was crippled from birth. Of course, they knew and we know it was the power of God that worked the miracle; but as the pagans of Lystra saw it, the miracle was done by Paul and Barnabas themselves. They leaped to the conclusion that these two men were pagan gods, Jupiter and Mercury, visiting them in mortal guise–and were determined to sacrifice some oxen to them. “Which when the apostles, Paul and Barnabas, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, and saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? …And with these sayings scarce restrained they the people, that they had not done sacrifice unto them.”
Why is Obama himself not protesting against being treated as a god? It’s not the first time it’s happened, and he has never once uttered a word of complaint about it.
Think long and hard, America, what it means that you have such a man as this to be your leader.
A novel, like a movie or a play, needs a cast of characters. Some of these will be supporting characters. It’s deadly dull to read a book in which the author fixates on his protagonist and all the other characters are one or even no-dimensional nonentities–a common mistake made by inexperienced writers.
Without further ado, here are a few of my favorite supporting characters.
1. Mr. and Mrs. Webb in the Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks. When Freddy’s in a jam, he turns to this pair of bold, resourceful, quick-thinking… spiders. Yup, I said spiders. They are invaluable allies in any complicated criminal investigation. They just have to be careful not to get swatted, stepped on, or sneezed into tomorrow. But don’t take my word for it: read a few of these books. It’s a great antidote for arachnophobia.
2. Tarzan’s monkey, Nkima, is in many of the Tarzan books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but in none of the Tarzan movies. Not taking away from Cheeta the chimp, who’s in the movies but not the books, but Nkima is a much more interesting character–terrified of practically everything in the jungle, boastful, easily distracted (but then so is Tarzan himself), vain, and totally devoted to his human friend. Great comic relief.
3. Reepacheep the Mouse, in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia: imagine a Cyrano de Bergerac who’s only two feet tall, and you’ve got him. Courageous to the point of idiocy, Reep nevertheless sometimes sees more clearly into a situation than the human characters.
4. Prior Robert, in Ellis’ Peters’ Brother Cadfael mysteries. A Norman of noble birth, proud, arrogant, convinced that he ought to be the abbot, finicky and overly fastidious, inclined to self-righteousness–in spite of all these flaws, there is a wide streak of innocent un-worldliness in Robert’s psychology; and deep down inside, he is truly a man of God. Ellis Peters was the best when it came to creating truly complex characters; and she had the rare gift of being able to write about goodness, and truly good people, without ever being gooey or unbelievable.
5. Duke Corsus, a second-tier villain in E.R. Eddison‘s quirky fantasy masterpiece, The Worm Ouroboros, was once a great man. But years of wine-bibbing, pointless plotting and scheming, and inactivity have taken their toll. Corsus is just so bad in every aspect of his character, so lacking in redeeming qualities, that his actions become oddly fascinating. And then, given one last chance, he almost returns to greatness–but winds up making a hash of it. He’s just too steeped in villainy even to be successful as a villain anymore. He’s truly the worst of the lot, which makes him interesting. Which would certainly not be true if he really existed and had a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Yes, I know I’ve failed to mention many more great supporting characters. I’m hoping my readers will join in the fun and nominate some favorites of their own.
One of my all-time favorite mystery series–I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it before–is H.R.F. Keating‘s novels featuring Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay CID. Written over a span of 45 years (1964-2009), and winning several major awards along the way, these books are a treasure. You may not have heard of them–which means you have quite a treat in store, once you start reading them. Most of them seem to be available via amazon.com, and you might also try your local library.
Ghote is hard-working, dogged, modest, humane: if he’d been born in America, he would have been Columbo. He goes up against fiendishly clever criminals, wooden-headed superior officers, rich and powerful witnesses and suspects who think they’re above the law, and not-very-helpful assistants. He is a loving but often hard-pressed family man. I promise you’re gonna love this guy!
My favorite of the series is The Body in the Billiard Room (1987), in which Ghote is “assisted” by a retired ambassador–a person of great importance, whom he can’t get rid of. This character insists on introducing Ghote as “the Great Detective,” continually embarrassing and exasperating him by expecting him to perform like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. There’s an awful lot of humor in this book, but a touch of pathos, too: the old ambassador’s whole way of life–he is a relic of the British Raj–is passing away. No writer ever did a better job than Keating (d. 2011) at combining those two elements.
Then there is Sergeant Desai–incompetent, lazy, corrupt–who “helps” Ghote in a number of investigations. The wretched man provides wonderful comic relief.
I could go on and on about these books–their adroit use of local color, their ability to transport you to India, their satisfying solutions to often complex mysteries. But I won’t. Just go out and get one! You can thank me later.
There is a rumor going around that Book No. 6, The Palace, will be the last of my Bell Mountain series. Imagine my surprise when I heard that!
No one at Storehouse Press has suggested to me that I should just drop the whole business. I mean, I’m 20 chapters into Book No. 7, The Glass Bridge. So as far as I know, the rumor is untrue.
I have high hopes for The Glass Bridge. Some things have happened in the story that have very much surprised me. I think they’ll surprise you, too, when you get a chance to read it. I really can’t say when I expect to be finished. Sometime before winter sets in, probably. Then, if the leaders of this great country of ours haven’t totally destroyed it, and there are still publishers and writers and readers, the editorial process will begin.
News Note: HUD, an agency of the federal government, a head of the hydra, has announced a plan “to racially, economically integrate neighborhoods.” The NAACP supports the plan, so you know it’s bad. Its purpose is supposedly to promote economic equality.
Uh-huh. Just like the Green Martians in A Princess of Mars.