Comparison

As recounted long ago, I once dropped my then-favorite camera off of North Harper Creek Falls. The camera amazingly survived (after being dried out), but began a slow decline until finally it stopped working. It took the best photos for a simple point-and-click. Since those days, I moved on to an SLR which takes near-professional quality photographs. But I always thought that some of my photos with my old Powershot S3 IS were among the best I ever took. For one thing, it took much better Macro shots than even my SLR camera. And while it was only 6 megapixels, unless I was trying to blow up the photo to large dimensions, the sharpness of the images were exceptional. I've been told that this was the case because of the unique lens that Canon utilized for that model.

Last week, I found one of these cameras on Ebay. Like-new condition. Flawless cosmetically, and flawless functionally. I took it on a jaunt to the mountains yesterday and snapped photos with it, and with my SLR. Guess which photos were taken by which camera. One camera cost $1000, the other $39, postage paid, from Ebay.

1:

Backbone Rock Falls.

2:

The Falls.

3:

Molly's Knob.

4:

Park Bridge in Hungry Mother State Park.

5:

Raccoon track, Hungry Mother State Park.

6:

Rhododendron hell, Hungry Mother State Park.

7:

Summit area of Molly's Knob.

8:

Backbone Rock Falls.

9:

Molly's Knob.

10:

Backbone Rock.

Stuff To Do

We had errands to run yesterday and it cut into my writing time, but I got to roam around the city a little bit with Carole.

I took my son to get some stuff at the drug store and stopped to take a photo of this tree. I've always thought that this was a very pretty and symmetrical oak tree. It used to have a circle of awful cedar trees planted around it so that you could hardly see the base of the tree at all. Fortunately, someone cut them down. I actually need to go back and take another shot of the tree, because from 45 degrees variant from this direction, you can see a tremendous iteration in the tree.

This the tire service run by Carole's cousin in Huntersville. We always go here to buy our tires and to have our vehicles inspected. This was our main errand to get out of the way today.

 

 

 

 

A talking Rodney Dangerfield Doll in the office.

The next place we hit was on the way home. I wanted to stop at Nova bakery on Central Avenue to have a latte and a pastry. This building is across the street from the bakery and is a curiosity because I once owned it. The building with the "Tattoo" sign on it and the "Twenty-Two" sign were once mine. There was no tattoo parlor there when it was mine, because I'd never rent any building that I owned to a tattoo parlor.

The outside of Nova's Bakery.

And here we were, at last, inside to order something.

One of the pastry cabinets. I got a walnut brownie. Carole got an almond pastry.

And just before we left we bought a half-dozen brioche buns to take home. Mmmm. Brioche!

WITHERING: A Horror Novel

 Who is kidnapping the people of Woodvine? The town has one last champion: Davis Ryan. He's gettin' too old for this kind of crap, but it's all up to him! A great pulp novel of mystery and supernatural horror.

WITHERING: A novel of horror by Robert Mathis Kurtz.

"Often the monster is just a misunderstood anti-hero. But sometimes it's a murdering, blood-thirsty asshole."

WITHERING. Buy it now! In paperback and in ebook format!

FROM SEVERED PRESS!

THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH (excerpt within an excerpt)

This is the last excerpt from THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH that I'll be publishing for a while.

In this one, I deal with something that I've thought about before. In most zombie novels and zombie films, no one has ever heard of the humans mindlessly rising from the dead to eat the living. That's why, I always figured, the pandemic spreads so quickly. It's not something the ignorant can deal with.

However, if my new novel, George A. Romero exists, as do his films, and many other zombie films and books. So what the government does is bring Romero in and interrogate him. They don't waterboard him, but I did consider putting that in the manuscript.

Here then, are several characters (government and health department officials) discussing the day George A. Romero was hauled in for questioning. (And, yes, I have a rough script outline for that scene.)

Every zombie novelist is George A. Romero's mutant child.

THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH, an excerpt

By James Robert Smith.

“We’re encountering the infected again.” Raines said.

Fear clutched as Cotter’s gut. Another outbreak would be…problematic. The government knew now how to handle such a thing, but the measures to control it again would be very harsh indeed. He didn’t like to even think about it happening again. Survival wasn’t the issue, but freedom was.

“Infected?” It came out as a whisper and his fear betrayed him. “Where is it happening?”

“No, no. Gosh, no, Davis.” The eruption of reassuring words from Rajh was almost comical. It was meant to placate him and dampen his fear, but that would have to wait for more information, more facts, something he could interpret as clinically as he did numbers and stats.

“Not an outbreak?”

“No. When I say that we’re encountering the infected I am referring to some of the people who died and were never accounted for. The missing walkers. The zombies,” he added. 

“Hell, I swear to God I hate that term. Zombies.” He seemed to spit it out.

Raines smiled then. “You know I was there when they brought in that director after the infection had gotten out of control and no one had quite figured out to get a handle on the situation.” He laughed. A good, healthy laugh. This did more to contain and dampen the tension in the room than had Patel’s clumsy attempt.

“I…uh…I heard about that.” A smile clawed its way up from the realm of nerves to Cotter’s face. “Romero, right?”

“Yeah. George A. Romero.” Raines’ gaze seemed to drift as he remembered. “Nice guy. Someone in the chain of command got the bright idea to find him and haul his ass in for questioning. The guy seemed almost to expect it, which made some people even more suspicious of him.” He cleared his throat. “Goddamn. It’s a good thing I was there. Someone with a sense of humor in that room.

“Hell! They were ready to throw his ass in Gitmo and hook electrodes to his balls to get answers.”

“Heard that, too” Davis said. “Of course only rumors.”

“He had a good sense of humor about it,” the Colonel said. “That’s what he meant when he said he’d expected to get hauled in. I mean…hell…he made movies about this shit decades before it actually happened. And those damned movies were so close to what was really going down that…well, of course there were people who were suspicious. He even made some jokes about being water boarded and I didn't have the heart to mention to him that it had been discussed.” 

Suddenly, and for no real reason beyond the sense of paranoia that sometimes had gripped him since the early days of the infection, Davis was suspicious. The Colonel had lulled him into a comfortable place and he would have to be careful not to say something that might get him into trouble with the brass. His life had been made exceptionally comfortable by his labor and the work ethic he devoted to it. For all he knew, they were probing him for weakness. He had always been suspicious of the kind of man who could make you laugh too easily.

“What did he have to say about the situation? Did he have any worthwhile insights? You never know where one can find useful information,” Dr. Patel said. He was genuine in his comments.

“No. It really was all just a crazy series of happenstance. He said the whole thing was a variation on a theme by another writer and it was just weird synchronicity.” Raines seemed to examine a spot on Cotter’s bare desk, his gaze piercing it to another time and another place. He chuckled, coming out of his near-trance. “He asked us if we were going to haul in any other horror movie directors and we told him he was the only one.” The man cleared his throat. “But I lied. Those crazy bastards upstairs did haul in a couple more of those fellows. That son of Mel Brooks who wrote that zombie novel best seller. But I didn’t get to debrief him. After Romero no one took that shit seriously.

“It was just a coincidence. For real.” And then his piercing gaze returned and he was all serious Defense Intelligence again. “Okay, Patel. Fill him in.” His eyes flicked from Rajh to Davis.

Patel leaned in, his forearms resting on Cotter’s desk. Most people asked him why his desktop was so clean and free of the debris of business, but so far that topic had been left out of the conversation. The Pakistani’s face was passive and there was nothing of the level of stress that Davis felt coursing through his own emotional state. “We’ve had some interesting things come up lately, Davis. Nothing huge. Just what have been some minor anomalies.”

“You mean anomalies when compared to my statistics and graphs.” He smiled lightly for both men, as if to let them know he was not concerned. But he was.

“Not per se,” Raines let him know. “But some things you’ll have to consider now that we can provide you with some real numbers.”

“Real numbers? I take it that this has to do with something that has been going on for a while?”

Patel sat back, removing his arms from Cotter’s desk and crossing them in his lap. He was wearing a pale gray suit and not his usual lab smock. For some reason, Davis had not noticed that Patel was in his civilian clothes, and for the first time he gave him a hard look. The man had obviously been going to the lab that morning, as usual. There were always specimen to examine and patients to see, even now, two years on when the plague had been placed well and under control. But here he was in civilian clothes instead of a lab smock.

“Yes, we noticed some things happening over the past couple of months.”

“New infections. You guys are talking about new infections.” Please, not that. Here it was again. Were they leading him on just to break the news to him gently. He had other sets of statistics and graphs that he had shown to no one. These graphs showed a precipitous and statistically solid chance that the human population of the planet would fall into the low millions if another pandemic of the infection hit them.

The Strain! Oh, the Strain!

Through the ill health and the pain medication of recent months, I've found that the only thing that can chase me away from my wordprocessor is eye strain.

Living with sight in only one eye sucks. Not as much as being totally blind, of course...but it still sucks.

THE NEW ECOLOGY OF DEATH, yet another excerpt

By James Robert Smith.

Mark Wenzler went to school with the rest of his pals every morning, riding the school bus. Most of the kids of Mark’s age couldn’t recall what it had been like before the infection had caused the government to change the way almost everything was done. If you were younger than ten or so, it was hard to recall that once upon a time either your parents took you to school and picked you up, or you rode there in a normal bus that wasn’t almost an armored tank.

And even though he’d been just a little kid, only in first grade, Mark remembered those days well. It was because he had loved his father so much that mixed in with the general fog of the past were very bright memories of the times he’d spent with his father. Even though his stepdad was a neat guy and was great to have around, he wasn’t Mark’s real father and never would be.

Mark wouldn't say that to Davis Cotter. He didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and sometimes Mark had to admit that it almost seemed like Davis really was Mark’s dad. But then he’d remember something funny his father had said to him, or some goofy thing his father had done to amuse him, and he’d laugh and forget about his mom’s new husband.

Remembering, he turned to Betsy Polk who was sitting just behind him.

“Hey, Betsy!”

She frowned at him, knowing something was coming and never being able to figure out just what it might be. Sometimes Mark Wenzler made her laugh, and sometimes he was interesting, but most of the time he was just gross.

Turned in his seat, his hands on the padded bar and looking down at Betsy sitting alone, Mark suddenly belched. But instead of just a sudden burst of air, he turned it into a word. Instead of a burp, he said it:

“BART,” pause, “Simpson.”

“Oh, Mark Wenzler, you are just gross! That’s what you are! Just gross!” Then she pulled her backpack to her stomach and bent over it, doing her best not to laugh. Because that was one of the funniest things she’d seen him do in a day or two. She could feel him hovering over her, looking down, waiting for her to break, so that he could gloat over the fact that he’d made her laugh with his gross joke.

But then the call came from the front of the bus. “Mark Wenzler! You turn back around in your seat and stop bothering that young lady right now!” Fred Drake’s voice was like a foghorn, and Mark did as he was told, turning and collapsing back into his spot facing forward before he could taste the victory of having seen Betsy Polk laugh at him. He liked her, and he liked making her laugh.

Once, seeing Mark talking excitedly to Betsy at a PTA event, Davis had walked up to him later and said, “So, you like the shiksas, do you?”

That was the only time Mark had gotten really angry with his stepdad. He knew what shiksa meant. It was not a nice word and he didn’t like it being used about any of his friends, especially not about Betsy Polk. Instead of saying anything that day he had just glared at Cotter and  he ran off to be with some of his pals.

Facing front, Mark watched Mr. Drake’s eyes dart to him for an instant, just to make sure he was behaving, and the driver went back to paying attention to the road, pulling up to the next bunch of kids waiting with today’s adult volunteer. Every bus stop had at least one adult supervisor since the infection days. Sometimes they were either police or deputized citizens who were allowed to have a gun. Mark had never seen a gun with one of them, but he knew they had them, concealed somewhere. Once he had seen a bulge under the jacket of Betsy Polk’s dad, in fact, and had known immediately that it was some kind of firearm. Maybe it was a .45 like the soldiers in World War II used to shoot the Nazis. He sure would have liked for Mr. Polk to have shown them the gun, but he knew better than to ask.

The bus came to a halt and the armored door opened with a pneumatic hiss. Kids climbed aboard, filling the last few empty seats. Mark recognized all of the kids—no big surprises there. He could feel another belch rising naturally in his gut. This one was for real, and not a fake one like he used with Betsy. One of the kids was coming close to him. Now was his chance.

“Hey, ART!” He belched the name at full blast, greeting Art Wallace, the red-headed menace of gym class.

Behind him, Betsy Polk could not contain herself and the laugh bubbled out of her.

That’s all he wanted. Despite the playful but sharp punch in the arm Art delivered with martial excellence to his shoulder, Mark smiled in triumph, and none of the kids knew exactly why he was so happy as the door sealed shut and they pulled away, headed for school.

Books as Oil Wells

One thing that hit me when I was studying the self-published ebook fad is that many authors came to the conclusion that their books were meant as paydays. This is okay. Unless you're trying to produce something that is solely a work of art, you need to keep a commercial eye on the ball. It's unfortunate that the self-published market is more like a produce store filled only with rotten fruit, but that's not the point I'm trying to make today.

What the more successful of the self-published writers (for some reason they like to call themselves "indie writers", even though they're all fodder for Amazon.com, a burgeoning monopoly) have learned is that their books are like oil wells. An oil well can make you a lot of money. Or it can make you a decent amount of money. It can make you no money at all. It can even break you (too bad this doesn't happen more often with self-published books).

One thing about oil wells is that they are not perpetual. That pool of oil or lake of oil or even sea of oil will run out at some point. Most successful ebooks will explode out of the gate like a newly tapped gusher. It will then subside just a bit and then begin to taper off and eventually cease selling altogether. This is the way of book sales in any market, but it's compounded in the ebook market.

It's a rare author who can pen a book that keeps on selling month after month, year after year, decade after decade. I like to use Richard Matheson's seminal paranoid fantasy I AM LEGEND as a good example of an excellent book that just keeps...on...selling...year...after...year. Deservedly so, I must add. (It's a classic of apocalyptic fiction.)

But almost all ebooks have a short life-span. And what the most clever of the so-called "indie" writers have done is to just keep drilling. Well after well. They churn out one book after the other, spilling their literary bowels onto the marketplace and trying to hang on to the fans that they have inexplicably earned. When one well runs out, go to the next. On and on. As long as they can keep this oil well strategy making them a living, they're not going to stop. Hell--we live in a free enterprise system and we shouldn't begrudge them their little success stories (save for the fact that, ultimately, they're harming the book market).

"Give us the ka-chunk ka-chunk!"

So, if you're going to start into that game of self-publishing, do what the more clever of the ebook fadsters have already learned: churn that shit out. Keep it coming. Drill that next well. Frack every reader out of the substrate. What I'm hoping you all eventually do is drain that lake completely dry and go extinct. No more wild-catters in the writing biz. Then literature can return to the world.

Break This! (Second in a series.)

Years ago, discussing the slimiest sort of people that I have ever collectively encountered--Libertarians--one of my online pals took issue. He told me that he admired many Libertarians and that he was "proud to have broke bread (sic) with them".

I absolutely hate that kind of use of a term. Ignoring the fact that it came from an idiot and that he was quite happy associating with neo-Fascists, it's just an annoying bit of poorly understood language.

What the fuck did he mean?

I reckon what he meant was that he had either been invited to dine with some right wing assholes and had accepted the invitation, or that he had invited some right wing assholes to dine at his home and that they had accepted his invitation. Or, perhaps, they had met at a mutually agreeable neutral location where assholea go to eat a meal together.

So much for "broke bread".

It's one of the single most annoying uses of a commonly repeated saying that I regularly encounter. The dickwad using it generally thinks that it imparts some kind of intellectual weight to his comments. In fact, though, it alerts me to the fact that I'm listening to the yodeling of an idiot. If what he meant to say is that he had lots of friends who are right wing assholes, then why didn't he just say so? Admission that he was proud of the fact that he mingled freely with neo-Fascists and racists and pro-corporate stooges. That's a lot better than saying that he was "proud to have broke (sic) bread" with such human stench.

So shove your "broke bread" up your conservative asshole and try to speak like a normal human being.

Thanks for your attention to this issue.

(Moron on a Segway)
and second in a continuing series of instructional posts.

OZ, THE GREAT AND SUCK-ASS!

The makeup sucks almost as bad as the film.

My wife and I went to see the new WIZARD OF OZ movie. Holy Hell...it SUCKED!!! I have no words to stress the utter and overwhelming acidic suckiness of this crap-ass movie. We saw the 3-D version, which means it sucked extra hard. Ever wonder what it might be like to be married to Mila Kunis and have her scream at you like a harridan? Wonder no longer, me boyos, wonder no longer.

Joe Sinnott and Vince Colletta.

Joe Sinnott is regarded these days as one of the finest inkers the superhero comic industry ever saw. And I would have to agree with that assessment.

Vince Colletta, on the other hand, is today almost universally reviled as among the worst of the Silver age inkers in superhero comics. Many particularly hate him for what he did to Jack Kirby's pencils.

I can cover this topic in detail later. But basically both of those assessments about the two men hold merit, and I will write about it at another time. Currently I'm too busy working on a new novel.

However, two of the newest additions to my FANTASTIC FOUR collection just arrived. One issue was inked by Joe Sinnott, followed by an issue inked by Vince Colletta. Sinnott's work shines. Colletta's...well, the word "suck" comes to mind.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #45. Cover and interiors inked by Joe Sinnott.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #46. Cover inked by Joe Sinnott, interiors inked by Vince Colletta.