Got the new iPhone 18 Pro Max (and a challenge to myself)

Two weeks ago I upgraded my telephony gear to the new iPhone 18 Pro Max (shown at right, displaying the Amazon Kindle app with my book Keeping the Tryst: pretty cool aye?).  The last time I bought a smartphone, it was early winter 2021 when I got the iPhone 12.  I had been mighty pleased with that one, with the exception that from the start it seemed to get low on battery too quickly.

(The previous phone replaces the iPhone 6 that I got a month before me and my dog's epic adventure across America that kicked off in late spring of 2016.  I guess getting a new phone every five years or so is a good pattern to have.)

Battery life is not a problem with the 18.  I'm using it regularly at my new job, for taking photos and filing reports etc.  The battery charge on the new phone is insanely good.  Color me impressed.

There is something else that impresses me about the iPhone 18.  Something that I've been hoping might make it into a smartphone design someday and now Apple has done it...

The iPhone 18 Pro has a camera (one of three) with an adjustable aperture and focal length.  Meaning it can capture true depth of field.  I've been playing around with that feature and have been astounded at how good it is.  This is many leagues beyond the traditional camcorder that I did a lot of my early cinematography with.  When I get some good subject matter I'll post a clip demonstrating the depth of field.

So this has given me  an idea.

It's been ages since I've produced a film.  The last time I did anything cinematically was around 2018 or so, when I was collaborating on a daily in-house news show with a group in Greenville.  It was an opportunity to really stretch myself creatively and the results were amazing.  I worked with a great crew there and when I left for other opportunities it was a sad thing to have to leave them behind.  But we did a lot of terrific work: some serious, a lot of funny stuff, reports from the field, informative clips, short films... we did everything but a full-length feature.

It's a feature film that I want to tackle next.  I haven't done anything like that since Forcery and that was in 2005 (what can I say? I've been very busy in the past twenty years).  Now Forcery was a lot of fun.  But for quite awhile now I've wanted to do some more mature storytelling.

I'm setting down a challenge to myself then.  I'm going to endeavor to make a full-length film - at least an hour and 20 minutes - shooting it with my new iPhone.  I absolutely believe it's possible to produce a serious motion picture with a minimum of equipment and have it be good enough to shop around for distribution, or at least enter it into a film festival.  The technology has progressed enough to the point where it's definitely feasible to be minimalist and still create a great looking film.

In addition to the iPhone, I already have other equipment on hand: tripods, the previous iPhone can be used to capture audio separate from the main phone, lighting... heck if need be we can recreate the "nine-dollar dolly" we used on Forcery.

It might be possible to edit the entire movie on the iPhone.  For that however I'm going to use my iPad Pro.  It's already loaded with various video editing apps that I'm adept with.

That's my challenge to myself: shoot an entire serious movie with my iPhone.  I believe it is doable.  And hey, if nothing else it will be an opportunity to bring the band back together!  The KWerky Productions gang has remained close all this time, I think they'll up up for it.

Now, as George Lucas said when he finally sat down to write Star Wars Episode I: "All I need is an idea."  My brain is trying to think of something useful.  Maybe one will hit me while I'm at my job.  I've already come up with a few ideas for the historical romance novel I've set about writing.  Perhaps one for a new movie will present itself too.

As always, I'll keep y'all posted on what develops.  Just as I did with Forcery.  

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It's the Star Wars/Hellraiser crossover we never knew we wanted

A very clever chap has put together something quite clever: a video (mix of AI and traditional footage) depicting a contest between Star Wars baddie Darth Vader and Pinhead from the Hellraiser series.  Who wins: the Dark Lord of the Sith or the leader of the Cenobites?

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The Final Hour of Christa Pike: Some thoughts about capital punishment

Many years ago, during a particularly dark period of my life,  I wrote a one-scene play.  It was one of a number of works that I felt inspired to create.  Thankfully I seem to have come out of that melancholy for good, but there will forever be a mark on my soul from that time.  I like to think that what I've done since has been, for lack of a better term, "happier".

So, about this play...

It's a single scene.  Involving a man and a woman.  And they come to have a heated discussion involving another woman.  All throughout the play you're wondering "who are these people?  What are they talking about?  Does this involve an affair that he's been caught in?"

Finally, in the last moments of the play, comes the big reveal.  The object of their conversation is a woman who is about to be executed and the man - who is the governor of the state - has rejected all requests for clemency.  The life of this woman has fallen into his hands and he has the power to grant mercy or to let justice run its course.

There was never an agenda when I wrote this play.  It was simply a scenario that had crossed my mind and I felt like it would make an interesting dramatic presentation.  And so I wrote it.  So far very few people have read it.  Who knows?  Maybe someday I'll get to see it produced.  That would indeed be a fine arrow in the quiver of my skills and accomplishments.

I'm thinking of my play this morning, mostly because of what is about to happen in the state of Tennessee in another hour.  At 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, Christa Pike is going to be executed by lethal injection.  It will be the final act of a chain of events stretching back to January of 1995, when Pike and two other people brutally murdered a young woman.  I'll spare you the details.  It was as heinous an act as there is likely to be.  Among other things Pike carved a pentagram into her victim's body.

And so it has come to this: all the appeals have been exhausted and the governor refuses to yield and the United States Supreme Court has chosen to not intervene.  In a short while Christa Pike will be brought into this room and strapped down to the gurney and have a needle inserted into her arm.  At the appointed time a series of substances will be injected into her: starting with a powerful anesthetic that will drop her into a sleep almost like death.  And then a "drug" that will stop her heart and breathing.

The death chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution
in Tennessee

Once upon a time, I was adamantly against the death penalty.  I thought it was barbaric, and beneath the level of civilized humanity.  We were supposed to be better than that, I believed.  A person who committed an act of murder should be imprisoned for life without parole.  There couldn't be anything worse than that.  It's what a people who have arisen above their impulses for revenge should do.

I'm older now.  Hopefully not too jaded.  I still believe that people are capable of great things, that they are not necessarily creatures of inherent cruelty.  However, I am also a realist.  And I do know that for as long as man will be upon the earth, there will also be the capacity for terrible acts of violence and bloodshed.

I used to be against the death penalty.  And now?  I believe that it should not only be legal, but that there are times when it is warranted and even necessary.

Human life is a precious and sacred thing.  There can be no taking from that without dire repercussion.  Acting to murder someone diminishes that sanctity.  It takes away from the priceless value of life.  We like to believe that a civilized society regards all human life as, for lack of a different term, holy. And I could say something about other issues regarding innocent life, but I shall save that for another time.

It's not left to anyone to decide that another person should die.  That is something left to higher power above mankind.  To assume that power is to violate the natural order of things.  Are there occasions where taking of human life is justifiable?  Yes, there are.  Acts of self-defense or defense of loved ones, those especially come to mind.  And again, I could say something about another matter pertaining to self-defense, but I won't for now.

An act of heartless and soulless murder, however, inflicts a horrific wound upon the body of the human condition as agreed upon by a people of law.  And it is something that requires an act to bring it back into balance.

That act is at least a penalty of time in prison.  And at its worst, it calls for the forfeiture of the life of the offender.  It has to be this way.  For life to remain of value, a life must be exacted in kind.

That is what Christa Pike is going to do this morning.  She is going to pay the price for taking a life in the manner that she did it.

"But Chris, she can be forgiven for what she did!"  Yes, she can.  I'm of the belief that forgiveness is always available for us, no matter our transgressions.  I believe that God is ever ready to forgive those who believe upon His love and redemptive nature and finished work.  What a person has done, no matter how terrible, it doesn't matter in God's economy.

People like Christa Pike can find forgiveness.  They can not find escape from the temporal penalty however. That remains to be paid.  And I believe that a person who truly is remorseful is going to accept that as being their fate.

That's a harsh thing to believe, but there it is.  If Pike has remorse for what she did, her soul can be saved.  But ultimately that is not the prerogative of the government to grant.  It's up to her.  I hope that she does feel remorse for her actions.  I like to think that as long as they live no one is beyond redemption.

That's something between her and God however.  Or whoever or whatever the higher power it is that she chooses to believe in.

So there it is: I once considered the death penalty to be a cruel and heartless thing.  I now believe that for a culture to continue to value the sacredness and priceless value of human life, it must also be prepared to take life that violates the natural order in the worst way.  We can choose to mete out the final act of justice in a way that is solemn and dignified, and I think that is morally required for a noble people.

I pray that Christa Pike, and anyone else facing execution, will be at a place of enormous peace when they come to the last moments.  And I pray that the rest of us will find a sense of completion.  The deed will have been done.  Life will continue, and perhaps with a bit more regard for innocence.

Which, is what this is all about to begin with.

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It seems that Connor Heggie of SW Geek Hub hates the Jews

I debated about whether to post this.  Truth be told apart from some mad comment left on a previous post I'd forgotten about Connor Heggie, the owner of Facebook group The SW Geek Hub and the extremist LGBT stalker who accused me of bigotry because of my convictions about the homosexual lifestyle and how it is not only wrong, but it's dangerous.

There have been too many great things in my life lately than to be concerned about a twit and his fellow goons on Facebook.  Things like new friendship, well-paying new job, new car, my book selling well and I've begun writing another... God has been very good to me in the past few months.  I'm extremely thankful for what has been happening in my life.  More than I can possibly convey.

There are far better blessings to appreciate than to let cowards on Facebook come into mind.  There have been others like he and his cohorts before and I've largely forgotten about them too.  They can stay in their own little realm, isolated from the rest of the world.  Nobody serious cares about their circle-jerk (if I might be allowed to use crude language).

But when it comes to antisemitism, that's where matters do become too severe than to not address.

A reader of this blog who has been watching Heggie's "SW Geek Hub" Facebook page (I blocked Hegggie so I can't see his activity anymore, and I don't care to either) sent along the following screenshot of a recent post that our least favorite loon made:

Ed Sheeran is the singer-songwriter who kicked Macklemore off his current tour because the rapper expressed political opinions during a recent show.  Something that no responsible musical artist should do with people who paid for him to perform, not to insult his audience (as Michael Jordan said when asked why he didn't use his stardom to promote political agendas, "Republicans buy shoes too.")

Macklemore used his platform to express his longstanding belief that the Palestinians are the victims of a "genocide" by the Israelis.  It is a notion that is shared by many who are against Israel.  Who are against the Jewish people and their right to occupy a homeland that they have had for four thousand years.  To claim to be pro-Palestinian is far less a statement of solidarity with an ethnicity that only came about in the past century or so, than it does with being antisemitic: harboring a hatred of the Jewish people and everything about them.

I know something about anti-Judaism.  I've studied history for most of my life.  It's led to a lot of understanding about what the Jews have been through over the millennia.  I've also met too many survivors of the Holocaust than to not be bothered by the kind of hatred that led six million innocent people to the "showers" of places like Auschwitz and Treblinka.

That is the kind of hatred that is now in our present day.  "From the river to the sea" is the chant of many in the Middle East and abroad who want to wipe out the Jews and their country.  It is the madness that has resulted in the very real atrocities against modern Israelis for going on eighty years.

Atrocities like what happened on October 7th, 2023.  When the Palestinian group Hamas massacred more than a thousand innocent Israelis, wounded many thousands more and took captive hundreds of Jews who were attending an outdoor concert.

The Israeli government has reciprocated against Hamas, including targeting those lunatics' infrastructure and ability to wage further war and commit more acts of deadly violence.

The Israeli government has also gone out of its way to not involve non-combatants.  Indeed, what they are doing in this conflict is perhaps the most cautious that any armed force in the history of the world has been to not bring harm to those who are not with the belligerents.

And despite all of this, many if not most of the leaders of countries of the world dare to claim that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians.

What Israel is doing is not genocide.  It is self-defense.  It is breaking the ability of an enemy to make sure that it never hurts the Jews and Christians, and even some Muslims living within Israel's borders, ever again.

Yet the claims of genocide continue.  Perpetuated by antisemitic leaders and celebrities and the media.

And fools like Connor Heggie fall for it.

Show me a person who is "pro Palestine" and against "genocide" of Palestinians, and I will show you a person who is not only anti-Israel, but is strongly anti-Jewish.  They'll deny it up and down but in their hearts they can barely contain their loathing of the race and religion of Judaism.

These people are but a few steps removed from the Nazi mentality that almost completely wiped out the Jewish people from the European continent.  The people who saw Jews as vermin "life unworthy of life".

That is what I see when I look at Heggie's pro-Palestinian remarks, however brief they are.  It also dovetails too much with the hatred of Christianity that he has expressed on numerous occasions.

Antisemitism is something that can't go unaddressed.  And for all of Connor Heggie's ravings that others are bigoted, he is demonstrating to the world that HE is a far greater and more true bigot than is anyone who expresses disagreement about a lifestyle that is physically and spiritually self-destructive.

When Connor Heggie aligns himself with those who claim that Israel is committing genocide, he is aligning himself with the very worst of racists.  Oh, he's concerned with genocide all right.  Genocide against the Jewish people, that is.

He is a poor example of what alleges to be a decent human being.  He is certainly a poor example of an alleged Star Wars fan.

Connor Heggie is a bigot in general and an antisemite in particular.

And I'm calling him out on it.

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Sunday morning political shows ZZZZZZzzz...

Right now at this moment I am doing something that I have not done in many years: watching Sunday morning political talk shows.

And I am shaking my head in disbelief at how little these people are actually saying.

These are partisan hacks, every single one of them, including the hosts.  They are not saying anything at all that is really enlightening or mind-broadening.  They are parroting their party’s agenda, without any legitimate thought processes at all.  There is nothing original they are speaking aloud that I have not heard before.

They are soooooo boring.

I'm reminded of an episode of The Cosby Show that I saw many years ago.  Claire is invited to go on one such Sunday morning show.  Including the hosts there is also a conservative commentator and a liberal scholar and they were PERFECTLY cast and acted.  They were total parodies of real conservatives and liberals.  Claire is the only one at the table who is acting like a mature intelligent adult.  She's smart.  She comes knowing what she believes and she runs circles around everyone else.  It was a hilarious episode.  And even as a kid watching it, I wanted to be like Claire if it ever came to me being in a situation like that also.

These real-life political shows couldn't handle someone like Claire Huxtable.  They can't handle ANYONE who really thinks for themself.

I actually feel dumber for watching these shows.  I'm tuning off.  There's the live stream of a church I really appreciate that is starting in a few minutes (it's the church I attended when I was in college).  MUCH more uplifting and thought provoking than Meet The Press or any other of these programs.

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9/11: What I saw from Asheville

Yesterday I shared an excerpt from my memoir Keeping the Tryst, from the end of chapter 37.  That excerpt dealt with my life on September 10th, 2001.  And the last thing that I did before falling asleep late that night was to thank God for all of the good that He had brought into my life.  If the previous several months could have been that good, I had no doubt that the rest of my life could be just as amazing.  I was 27 years old, with everything ahead of him.  I was in love, I had a good job, I was writing for publication on a daily basis.  And on the night of September 10th I had started writing the script for my very first movie.

My eyes closed, and I was looking forward to another day of being grateful.

Here is another excerpt.  The final part of chapter 37 and all of chapter 38.

---------------

The phone rang sometime later during the morning.

I picked it up, and it was Mom.

“Are you watching the TV?”

I told her I was just waking up.  I asked her what was going on.

“A plane hit the World Trade Center!”

The first thought that went through my bleary head was that a plane had once crashed into the Empire State Building.  Maybe this was pilot error, like that had been.

“Yeah and a few minutes later another plane hit the other tower!”

~

Within minutes of turning on the television to see the World Trade Center, I called Lisa and made sure she was okay.  Then I went online and went to the news forum I frequented.  There was the shock and terror, giving rise to rawest anger, now being immortalized in real time as an online monument to the evil that men do and their victims.

I cranked up AOL Instant Messenger and found Ed was on.  Everyone in his office was watching the live coverage.

I was in the middle of replying to his previous message when the first tower fell.

~

What was supposed to have been a wonderful day for TheForce.net turned into a real-time reflection of the horror.  Josh posted a prayer.  The site’s forums within hours became a clearinghouse of information for those in the New York and D.C. areas, as users reported that they were okay while others were looking for fellow fans who had been in the vicinity of the towers and Washington.

We couldn’t locate some members of our staff who had been in New York.  Lisa and I had dinner with one of them the first night of Dragon Con, a week and a half before.  When we finally located Alena she told us that she had been on the street in front of the north tower, directly below where the first plane hit.  Alena saw it all happen.  She had then run for cover into a subway entrance and heard the debris crashing onto the street above her.

~

Maggi and Helen were enraged.  Maggi said things that one dares not share in polite company.  In her words were well reflected the wrath inflaming all good people of conscience.

~

I watched the coverage all day, up to being time to go to work.  I arrived at 4.  Only five potential customers came into the Best Buy that evening.  They shuffled in, looked around, and walked out.  Each of them had that “thousand-yard stare” in his eyes.  They appeared dazed and confused.  Like they had only come in to keep their minds off the wretchedness of the outside world.

Not a single item was sold in our store all night.

~

I returned home a little after 9.  Lisa and I talked for a long time.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so thankful to hear the voice of a loved one.

~

Chad was at his desk in the CNN Building.  There was nothing to post to the Sports Illustrated site that night.  Up until almost 1 A.M., it was Chad and I over Instant Messenger talking about what had happened.  We shared a lot of images we had found.  Like the San Francisco Examiner special edition headline that screamed out “BASTARDS!"

"I love you, brother," Chad said as he signed out for the night.

"I love you too, man."

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The last waking moments of a sane world

The following is an excerpt from my memoir Keeping the Tryst.  It appears just before the end of chapter 37.

~

September 10, 2001…

That night I was scheduled to work. And there were three things that I was eager to do when I got home…

The first was to call Lisa.

Secondly, I wanted to start work on writing the script for the movie.  Even though I had no grasp whatsoever of crafting a screenplay.

Finally, it was a big night for TheForce.net staff.  We would be up all evening getting a bunch of stories about the Episode I DVD release ready to publish at midnight Pacific Time.

Lisa and I talked for a bit, then I threw a pizza into the oven and while that was cooking I started writing the first lines of what I was calling “Sithery”.  It seemed as good a working title as anything.

I wrote a page and a half of what passed for a script, then logged into TheForce.net’s staff portal.  There were a couple of posts that I needed to have ready, and those were done.  I hung out online until 3 a.m. and saw all our work get posted.

Satisfied, I went to the sofa and crashed hard.  And before going to sleep I found myself feeling pretty good.  I had my own place, a job, and an amazing girlfriend whom I cared for deeply.  I was writing a script for a movie.  And my words were being read by tens of thousands of people each day.

I thanked God for giving me so much.  And then drowsiness took me.

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Labor Day weekend 25 years ago...

This weekend in Atlanta is the annual Dragon Con.  I'm remembering the first time I went to that.

It was another Labor Day weekend, twenty-five years ago.  The night before it started, my Star Wars website TheForce.net published an interview that I did with "Weird Al" Yankovic.  I left my apartment in Asheville the next day and drove three hours to my girlfriend's place at University of Georgia.  We got to Atlanta and walked around Dragon Con a bit, then we hooked up with another TheForce.net staffer named Alena.  We wound up having dinner along with a few Dragon Con guests (the actress who played Vasquez in the movie Aliens was a few spots down the table from us).  Alena was a really sweet young lady, she was host of the site's new weekly video feature.  We then went to a little gathering where among other people were Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca (VERY giant but soft-spoken man) and Jeremy Bulloch (who wore the Boba Fett costume in the original trilogy).

Later that night at the convention I represented TheForce.net with a presentation on midi-clorians: those weird germ things that George Lucas had introduced in Episode I.  There was this girl in a Princess Leia costume who kept interrupting me as I was talking, and I kept thinking "she's like Annie Wilkes in the movie Misery".  And that's when the idea for my first movie hit.

We were at Dragon Con the next day too.  Following a panel discussion about the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Lisa (my girlfriend) and I got to meet John Rhys-Davies, who has been in a lot of movies and would soon be seen as Gimli the Dwarf.  A short while later my girlfriend and I shared a booth at Planet Hollywood with Paul Blake, the actor who played Greedo in the first Star Wars movie.  A very nice chap.  I asked him what did he think of Lucas changing the movie so that Han Solo didn't shoot first.  I'll never forget his response: "I think it's absolute BOLLOCKS what George did!  Why did he do that?  Han was perfectly justified in shooting me, I was about to kill HIM after all.  Why did George do that?  I'll never understand it!"

It was a great two days at Dragon Con.  And then the next day on Sunday my girlfriend and I went to church where she worshipped while growing up.  An hour or so after that we were on our way to Atlanta to see a performance of the musical The Phantom of the Opera.

I'm sharing these memories, because they are among the last, most precious memories that I have about the way the world used to be.  Before everything changed a week and a half later.

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Romance Novel: The First Status Report

Keeping the Tryst came out a little less than a year ago.  I'm still hoping that it might be picked up by a real publishing house someday, but in the meantime I've been happy with it.  It's sold enough to make a bit of money, but more important than that it seems to be appreciated and enjoyed by the kinds of people I was especially writing it for.

Toward the end of Keeping the Tryst I allude to what else I want to do with my life.  For the past many months I have been bogged down by a number of crises that have kept me from doing anything toward those.  Thankfully - and I truly believe that God has been at work in these matters - I have emerged from that in a better position than I've ever been in my life.  I can now throw myself fully into some of those endeavors.

I have decided to devote much of my "own time" for the foreseeable future on my historical romance novel project.  I am still going to compose op-ed material because that kind of writing has been part of my nature since I was a high school student.  But I'm going to give this novel as much focus as I gave to Keeping the Tryst.  I believe that I have hit upon an original idea that no one has done before and I think it's unique enough to stand a good chance of getting published.  It needs to be as good as it can be and that's what I'm going to set out to accomplish.

First up on this project: brainstorming.  The basic concept is in mind, now it needs some elements that will make it really cool.  All the while I'm going to be outlining and revising that, to get the basic endoskeleton in place.

I know how the story begins.  I also know how it ends.  That is how I like to start writing anything.  Just need to fill in the long space between those extremities.

Consider this the first status update of my new project.  As I did with Keeping the Tryst, I will be sharing reports from time to time, until the book is finished and I start trying to land it an agent.

This may take awhile.  A few years, likely.  But I think it will be fun to follow along 🙂

Depiction of the Sacking of Constantinople.
This is a clue.  Maybe.

EDIT 09/06/2026 9:36 am EST:

Yesterday was the first day I significantly dedicated toward work on my next book.  That mostly entailed nothing more than reclining back and letting my mind orient toward the story I want to share.  I allowed my imagination to run wild with ideas of characters and locations and various props that come into play.  This morning I have Microsoft Word open on my iPad and I'm filling a new document with those ideas.  So that is the first real writing I'm doing on this project.  It will be at least a year before there's a first draft.  I can't imagine it taking anything less than that.  The brainstorming will go on, new ideas will come and be considered and either be let go or implemented.   There is a lot of historical research to do.  There are shades of characters but they don't have proper names yet, just mere shapes of purpose.  But in the end, twelve months or so from now, there will be a finished draft that I can set about refining into the book's final form.

It's going to be a lot of work.  But this book isn't going to write itself.  Neither did the last one.  I came to a point where I had to decide if I really wanted to write it or let it go.  I'm glad that I committed to it.  And I now know how to write a book and also how not to write one.  Keeping the Tryst was a very personally trying endeavor.  This next one is going to be tough, but it is also going to be much more fun.

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I've been reading up more on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. And now?

A few days ago I shared some cursory thoughts about Lindsay Clancy and her murder trial.  What immediately shocked me was the sheer number of medications that she was on.  As a former mental health professional, as someone with a mental health condition myself who has experienced issues with meds, I was absolutely floored by all the drugs that Clancy was taking.  What I was thinking most was about the very significant probability of drug interactions that would have possibly clouded her senses, including her moral judgement.

Intrigued, I looked into the case further.  One friend alluded that he couldn't believe I had been unaware of this trial going on.  What can I say?  I've been very busy lately: everything from starting a new job to getting a new car, to the past few days when I've been working on a horror story (that will absolutely outrage some people if it ever gets published).  And I'm not really all that much a fan of sensationalism, something the Lindsay Clancy murder trial seems rife with.

But I took a harder look at the case.  And now, what do I think?

Lindsay Clancy needs to be found guilty and sent to prison for the rest of her life.

There are three possibilities that I see going on with her.  There is the notion that she suffered from post-partum psychosis, on which her defense is hanging their chances on.  There is the possibility of a condition like bipolar disorder.  And then there is the possibility that she is a full-blown psychopath: something that there is no cure for and it could perhaps be said there is no hope either.

Folks, mental illness can distort thought.  It certainly has to me, too many times since the onset of manic depression in the winter of 2000.  It suppresses inhibitions.  I've written about it in my book, how being manic led to me doing some horrible things because of an outraged libido that could not be satisfied.  I did other things too, that I am not proud of.

But there was always a choice.  Unfortunately I chose wrong, more times than I can count.

There remained moral choice though.  And that is where Lindsay Clancy went horribly wrong and deviated straight into pure evil.

Clancy, apparently, researched ways on how to kill her children.  She planned this.  Clancy spent an inordinate amount of time looking at methods of ending her children's lives.  That is something that mental illness can never bring about.  Can mental illness lead to murder?  Yes, when passions go out of control.  But to premeditate the harming of others?  That takes free will.  She had every opportunity to pull away.  If she was going through psychiatric issues she could have addressed those.  But she didn't.  If she truly has a mental illness she spent far more time indulging her dark fantasies than she did in doing her damndest to stave off the dark thoughts bedeviling her.

I don't believe that mental illness, including post-partum psychosis, can be used as a viable excuse of what Lindsay Clancy did.  She maintained enough reason to spend time studying how to kill her own children.  That alone invalidates her defense.

Which leaves us with psychopathy.  Something almost entirely removed from the concept of traditional mental illness.  A complete disregard for others.  A detachment from moral restraint that makes anything justifiable in the eyes of the psychopath.

There is no real treatment for such a person.  There is no "getting better" for a psychopath.  Thankfully true psychopathy is a rare condition.  And not all psychopaths are necessarily evil.  It's been suggested that psychopathy is a trait that can be found in many among the executive business community.  It might make them exceedingly cutthroat in their dealings but there seems to be at least some realization that bad things will happen if they go too far.

That isn't common among psychopaths however.  But I'm digressing.

What Lindsay Clancy did in murdering her children involved either a chosen course of action in researching how to kill her offspring and she's trying to hang that on a temporary mental condition.  Or she is a psychopath who did what she did without feeling moral compunction.

However it is, she does not need to be given the opportunity to ever again be a free woman.  She chose her actions.  Or she has no restraining morality at all.  One or the other.

The jury needs to find her guilty.  Send her to prison for the rest of her life.  Not just to hold her accountable for her temporal sins, but as a service to society as a whole.  She is too dangerous to treat with overbearing kindness that does not adequately address the severity of her crimes.

If there is no justice in this case, then there will not be true justice in a lot of other situations that will come about.

I originally expressed the belief that Clancy might not have possessed enough sense to keep from murdering her children.  I see now that I was wrong  in that assessment.  She did what she did of her own volition.

And I hope that the jury in her trial will do the right thing and make damned sure that she never sees an iota of freedom again.  Ever. 

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One of my favorite animated characters turns 80 today

Happy Birthday Foghorn Leghorn!  Made his debut in "Walky Talky Hawky" on August 31st, 1946.

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Drug interactions: My thoughts on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial

Illustrating how out of touch I am with much of current events, this morning I finally educated myself about the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.  Clancy is being prosecuted for the 2023 murders of her three young children.  The defense is arguing that Clancy was suffering from psychiatric issues, including postpartum depression.  If convicted she would get life in prison without parole and if she's found not guilty she's looking at being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for a long, long time.

I guess I should have been keeping up with with this all along, given my background in mental health as both patient and professional.

So I just finished reading about Clancy's medical history.  And two words come to mind...

Sweet Jesus.

This woman was on WAY too many medications.  With that wild variety of drugs in her system, it's no wonder that things were going to go bad.  It really is completely possible that Clancy was screwed up, entirely disregarding postpartum depression and perhaps bipolar disorder altogether.  She may have had only the vaguest notion of what she was doing when she murdered her kids, doing so robbed of conscience.

The doctors and nurses attending to her made a very serious mistake, having her being on all those meds.  The interactions could not have been adequately predicted.  Anything at all could have gone wrong in her mind.

I'm not making excuses for her.  I believe that she needs to be put into a psychiatric facility for a long time.  But having had some troubling experiences with being overly-medicated myself, I can understand how Clancy could have become unhinged from reality because of being on too many meds.

I'm going to be tuned in to the verdict when the jury hands it down, likely this coming week.  This could establish a significant legal precedent, one that might impact mental health care in this country enormously.

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WillieBoy Eats the World: A delightful picture book for children of all ages!

Hey gang!  So a few weeks ago I started a new job.  I'm still doing artificial intelligence training a little bit but that needed some serious supplementing.  Lo and behold I wound up in a position that really plays to my strengths as a journalist and as someone who appreciates precision.  I'm really loving it!

When the first paycheck arrived I celebrated by doing something that I've wanted ever since it came out a few months ago: I bought a copy of WillieBoy Eats the World.  It's written by Steve Schirripa.  Yup, that Steve Schirripa: the brilliant and much-beloved actor from The Sopranos and Blue Bloods.  He's well know for those roles but in the past number of years Schirripa has become famous again for his dachshund WillieBoy, with whom he often shares photos and videos on social media.

Well, y'all know me: I'm a sucker for anything dachshund-related.  My own little girl Tammy is very precious to me, and we follow several other dachshunds (and their minions) on Facebook.  So when I heard that Steve Schirripa was coming out with a children's book about the relationship he and WillieBoy have, I knew that it was something I would be very interested in.

I am happy to report that WillieBoy Eats the World is just as sweet as I had hoped it would be. In it WillieBoy is on a mission to convince Steve that although Italian food is good, it's not the only fare that is worth enjoying.  And so WillieBoy leads Steve on a culinary journey across the food of many cultures.

It's a very delightful little book, written by Schirripa and Philip Lerman, and beautifully illustrated by Kirk Parrish.  It captures and conveys the love that all dachshund owners have for their fur babies.  It also encourages people, no matter what their ages might be, to explore beyond the boundaries of what they know and expect.  To dare to discover other cultures and what they have to offer.  As Steve learns by way of WillieBoy's leading, it can be rewarding and fun to expand one's range of repast.  I am especially appreciative of Steve coming to encounter proper Southern food... but I might be  biased when I say that.

WillieBoy Eats the World is available on Amazon as a hardcover and also via instant delivery on Kindle devices and apps.  If I were you I would get both.  It's a nice little book to keep handy wherever you are and it also looks quite lovely on your bookshelf (of which my own, I am not embarrassed to say, includes many children's books).  However you acquire it, I believe you'll really love WillieBoy Eats the World.  The world needs good things right now, and you can't go wrong with Steve Schirripa and WillieBoy.

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Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime, has passed away

Thank you for the memories, Mr. Cullen.  You were one of the best voices of my childhood.

Til all are one!

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It seems everyone is paying tribute to Tim Curry...

The magnificent Tim Curry passed away two days ago.  The tributes have poured in, from his legions of fans that he made across more than five decades.  So many things that I could say about Curry.  I think my favorite performance of his was when he played Pennywise in the 1990 television adaptation of Stephen King's It.  Nobody could pull off that kind of malevolence like Curry did in that movie.

Well, there is something I'd like to offer up as a token, a gesture of appreciation to Tim Curry and his work.  I went looking for it and sure enough, YouTube has it.  This is from the Eighties television movie The Worst Witch.  It features Curry as the Grand Wizard.  There is no thing that I could say that would adequately prepare you for what you are about to behold.  This is... the single most INSANE music video in the history of anything.  It is positively bonkers!  It would have been wild as all get out on its own but having it be Tim Curry singing and performing in this well... that just makes it all the more bizarre.

Here it is.  The music video from The Worst Witch.  You have been warned.

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Farewell to Silver

This past weekend was a bittersweet one for me.

As of five days ago I am the owner of a brand new car.  It's the third Toyota Corolla that I've driven and it's the very first car that I've gotten on my own.  All the others that's have come over the course of my life I've had help with or co-owned.  This new one is all mine.  And when I have time I'm going to properly go through the owner's manual and familiarize myself with all the gizmos and do-dads that are part of a modern automobile.  I regret to say that my father would be mighty upset at me, that I've bought a vehicle so apparently overly-laden with technology.  Dad hated computers and he especially hated computers in cars and trucks.  I can still hear him now: "A car only needs gas, air and electricity, it don't need no stupid computer!"

I tried Dad, I really tried.

So I said hello to a new car.  But it only happened because it was time to retire a vehicle that has seen me through thick and thin for almost twenty years.

This is the 2004 Toyota Camry that I had been driving since December 2007.  It replaced the Corolla that I had been driving from the time I was working as a reporter in Asheville.  That car was totaled on the way to a wedding, it was rear-ended by an off-duty sheriff's detective.  A few weeks later my wife at the time and I got this Camry.  It was still practically new, had very little mileage on it.

It never had a proper name, but I liked to call it "Silver".  After the paint color of course, but also because it was as trusty as the Lone Ranger's horse.

When my wife and I separated, I wound up with the Camry as she went to another state.  And it and I have been together all this time.  I drove it all around Reidsville and the surrounding area.  When I was dating my girlfriend Kristen I would drive it up to Roanoke, Virginia at least once a week to see her.

Slowly but steadily, the mileage crept up.  It hit 100,000 one night on my way back from getting a sandwich at the Sheetz in Eden.  And still Silver went on.

Then came 2016.

I wrote about it in my book.  About how one night that February, God spoke to my heart and asked me what was I doing?  That I knew Dad wasn't coming back (he had passed away a little over a year earlier).  That I wasn't going to be happy where I was, that I knew these things and I needed to accept them.  Then God put something else on my heart: "Go.  Just pack up the car with Tammy and the essentials and Go!  Let Me lead you to where you are supposed to be.  Don't plan it.  Have faith Chris, as you never have had faith before."

A few months later I filled Silver up with clothes, my Bible, my iPad, my dog Tammy's belongings, as well as a pocket compass and a black cast-iron skillet (you simply do not go onto a journey into the wilderness without a cast-iron skillet) and we headed off into literally God-knew-where.  June 12th, 2016.  It was Sunday morning.  We left the hotel we had been staying and when the car hit US 158 out of Reidsville I started playing Lee DeWyze's "Blackbird Song" over the car stereo.

We were headed into the unknown.  Smack toward the edge of the map.

That turned into a year-long odyssey across America, through eighteen states all the way to California.  And though we didn't settle down anywhere out west, we did eventually find a place to be.  It took us a year and more than 10,000 miles but we ended up in South Carolina.

Tammy and I spent over a year staying with friends, giving me time to figure some things out as I never could before.  Eventually I was able to find work and land my own place.  Sometime after that I began my career at the state department of mental health.  A few years after that ended I wound up finishing writing my book and seeing it get published.  I recently began a new job.

And Silver had been with me all along.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end.  My trustworthy Camry began to succumb to age and mileage.  It needed repairs that would have made it more economical to find a newer vehicle.  It had come to a point where going out every time became something to desperately pray for safety.  I knew when a mechanic told me last week that the timing chain was causing the knocking under the hood, that it was time to bid farewell.

But we had some glorious times, Silver and I did.  Over 232,000 miles.  There were only two real significant incidents that she was involved in.  One was when I hit a deer one night on the way back to my parents' home, where I was living for awhile.  The other happened in California, when I shredded a tire and ruined a wheel trying to get to a garage (something that cost me a few hundred bucks).  Other than that, Silver went untouched by anything other than foul weather... and she handled that pretty good.

During our last Christmas together, my wife gave me a Yoda dashboard ornament.  It's the kind of thing that speaks to you when it's turned on.  I only did that a few times before Yoda's voice got too much while I was driving.  But I still kept it on Silver's dash.  I've still got that ornament.  I'm going to get some fresh Velcro and put it in my new car, so that the spirit of Silver can be transferred to the Corolla (I'm trying to come up with a name for it).

And so I took a few last photos of Silver at the Toyota dealership.  And if the meds would have let me, who knows but I might have shed a tear.  It was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  But in the past few days I'm also coming to see that embracing the new can be a good thing, too.  Silver served me during a long stretch of my life.  That time is something that I'm ready to move on from, and come to discover new things and new experiences.  I think I was holding onto the car because there were a lot of great memories that I was still clinging to.  Memories can be good.  But they shouldn't stifle one from making new ones that can be just as wonderful.

And that's what I want, what I need, to do now.

Silver, you were a good car.  The very best of them even.  With a grateful heart, and thankful to God for His provision, I salute you dear friend.

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Rest in peace Dolly Parton

A truly amazing woman.  She began with nothing but her family's love and the gifts that God blessed her with.

She then became one of the most beloved people in the history of American entertainment.  I don't think anyone ever had a bad word about her.

Dolly Parton was, and forever will be, a legend.

See you in Heaven, Miss Parton.  Thank you for sharing not just your talents with us, but also your heart and soul.

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My latest article at American Thinker: Kids, don't play with communism

This morning the website American Thinker has published my latest essay.  "Young People, Listen to Your Gen-X Elders: Communism Sucks!" is something that's been percolating for awhile and  I suppose recent events in the American political realm made it time to deploy.  This article is a few things: history lesson (has it really been thirty-five years since I was a high school senior watching the attempted coup against Gorbechev?), recap of the rise of extreme socialism in this country, and finishing off with a stark warning to the young people of this land.  Take it from someone who was there during the height of the Cold War: communism is NOT something we should want to entertain notions of accommodating, much less adopting (or having it forced upon us).

From the article...

The ad begins with a poor Russian peon, bundled up for the harsh winter, cautiously asking a stern sentry about what he is guarding.

“Is toilet paper.”

“Is good?”

“Is cheap,” replies the soldier.

The word spreads down the ranks of the people standing in line at the store. “Cheap toilet paper!” they say in astonished turn. One gets his hands on some: it bends and folds, as if it’s not toilet “paper” at all but lengths of semi-raw wood pulp.

For some reason that television commercial from the mid-’80s has come to mind quite a lot lately. It was played for laughs. But it was based in a very tragic reality, one that most people in the free world readily grasped. The Soviet citizenry, for all of the power that their government boasted of having, were utterly miserable. Toilet paper and nearly every comfort enjoyed by their Western counterparts were in dire shortage. Including food in its usually sumptuous variety.

How we laughed at the sight of all those people, in lines stretching out the building and down the block, waiting to get inside GUM—Moscow’s biggest department store—because rumor had hit the street that a shipment of canned potatoes or new stockings had come in. 

For all of the fear of World War III that many of us in America harbored, we also understood fully well that “they” were in fact quite a pathetic lot. The Soviet people wanted for canned goods and toilet paper, but it was an open secret that their leadership abounded in such luxuries and more. They were a people who nobody in their right mind would ever dare dream of emulating. How did the Russians get into such dire straits to begin with, anyway?

Mash down here for the rest of the essay.  And welcome to everyone who's visiting this blog from the link on the essay's page!

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Another memory: Breaking Bad in Albuquerque

This is starting to make me regret that I didn't blog all along the epic journey ten years ago.  I could have shared about so many neat places and people.  But then again it really was a time of introspection, a journey of self discovery and trying to chronicle that as it happens, well... it takes something away from the experience.  But I think I could be forgiven for sharing them now, all this time since.

These photos were taken at a store called The Candy Lady, in Albuquerque.  And they are rather famous for a certain special confection.  Because it was The Candy Lady that supplied the "Blue Sky crystal meth" during production of the television series Breaking Bad.  The good folks at the store are very proud of their connection to one of the greatest TV shows ever, there is all sorts of Breaking Bad memorabilia they offer.

Well, it so happened that they had just finished a batch of Blue Sky (it's edible and perfectly safe) and they always keep Walter White's hat and glasses handy.  Here is Yours Truly as Heisenberg:

When the people running the store found out that I had a dog, they invited Tammy in too.  And that's when we took this next pic.  One that I call "Barking Bad":

Incidentally, I have yet to finish watching all of Breaking Bad.  I watched the first season and enjoyed it but that was a few years ago.  Maybe I'll try it again sometime sooner than later.

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"But finally I arrived at the world famous ALBUQUERQUE HOLIDAY INN!!!"

Yesterday my Facebook suggested sharing a memory from ten years ago.  It's almost incomprehensible that it's been that long since this photo was taken.  But I was on a respite from blogging for awhile as Tammy the Pup and I crossed America.  So now I'm sharing a few photos from the journey that I hadn't before.

On the evening of August 17th 2016 we arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  And the very first thing we did when we got there was to look for the Holiday Inn, just as "Weird Al" Yankovic sang about in his long song "Albuquerque"...

"Where the towels are oh so fluffy!    And you can eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna.  It's okay they're clean!"

(Interestingly, there were a few places there where the air did smell like warm root beer!)

I might post a few more pics from the New Mexico stage of our adventure soon.

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One of the most disturbing movies ever made turns forty years old today

Happy Birthday to David Cronenberg's 1986 adaptation of The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.

"Be afraid.  Be very afraid."

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Late-Term Abortion: Musings of a Man Born Dead

This is the first photograph that was ever taken of me.  A few hours after I was born on March 31st, 1974.

A lot of people over the years have remarked that I was the brightest and most alert baby that they had ever seen.  That they had never beheld a newborn who had a smile like that.  One person told me that even then it was like I was plotting mischief upon an unsuspecting world.

Keep that photo in mind while I openly ponder some recent developments.

A few days ago Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed legislation that radically expands abortion in that state.  It is now perfectly legal to kill an absolutely normal and healthy baby in the womb immediately before it would be naturally delivered.

Massachusetts is now the twelfth state as well as Washington D.C. that allows abortion without limits.

I used to believe that a woman had "a right to choose". That was when I was much younger and far more foolish.  I started coming around to the true horror of abortion about the time that I started college.  I now regret that I ever supported the abortion procedure, but hey: we live, we learn.

My stance today could not be more wildly the opposite direction.  There is not only the life of the child that is exterminated during abortion, but there is a terrible social cost also.  When human life is judged "inconvenient" then anything becomes permissible.  A civilized society is supposed to be one that places a value upon the human soul.  But for more than half a century in this country that value has been horrendously diminished.  Human life has become something practically disposable.  What were once atrocities have become an accepted part of daily existence.

Abortion may not have started it.  Ultimately that is the fault of fallen human nature.  But abortion certainly has exacerbated it.  As Mother Teresa said when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, the greatest destroyer of peace in this world is abortion.  If a mother can kill her unborn child, then what is there to keep me from killing you or you from killing me?  There is absolutely nothing in between to keep that from happening.

So now it is legal in too many places to kill a child just before it would be born.  And the cold, cold rationale that I have read, from quite a few people, is that such abortion isn't ending a human life at all.  The reasoning is that a fetus only becomes fully human when it takes its first breath.

Let's be clear on what they are saying.  If a baby is moments away from being born but still attached to the mother by the umbilical cord, it's subject to abortion.  Only when it's outside the mother and breathing on its own, is it to be considered a human being.

Huh.

I might have some things to say about that.  Actually, I do have some things to say about that.

Look at that picture again.  The sweet little cherub who had his whole life ahead of him.  The miracle of life.  Among the most beautiful of the experiences of the human condition.

That picture however does not convey how much things could have been very different.

There were complications during my delivery.  A Caesarian had to be performed.  And when I came out of my mother I was not breathing.  I was not moving.  I was not doing anything.

I was just an immobile infant in the delivery room, unresponsive to any stimuli whatsoever.  Not crying.  Life's first breath was not entering my lungs.

According to too many abortion advocates, I was dead.  A "non-viable tissue mass".  Something that could have and maybe should have been discarded.  If I wasn't able to breathe on my own, then by what right could it be said that I could claim to be alive at all?

Dr. Carl Weatherly, an amazing man, saw that I wasn't breathing.  He went to work immediately, doing everything in his power to compel me to take my first gasp of air.

One minute passed.  Two.

Three.

Four and five minutes, still no breathing.

At six minutes without oxygen the cells of the brain begin to die.  With each passing moment the chances of irreversible brain damage increase.

Seven minutes.  Eight.

Nine.

And finally, twelve minutes after being born, I began to breathe on my own.

That's twelve minutes that I was, for all intents and purposes according to the pro-abortion side, a dead clump of inanimate tissue.

Dr. Weatherly and his team pulled off a miracle that Sunday night.  Or rather, I believe that God used them to pull off a miracle.  I was breathing on my own.  And a short while later the photograph you see above was taken.

Maybe I'm biased, but I don't think the baby in that picture was someone to discard as already dead just because he didn't come out of his mother crying as a baby normally should.

When I was first told the story of my birth, I resolved to myself that I would do what I could to make my life count for something.  That has taken me down many a strange and winding road.   I have had to confront a lot of bad things in my time.  But there have also been many wonderful and magnificent experiences also.  Sometimes I wonder if I've lived as fully as I had wanted.  Friends and family who know me best have told me that I've taken as big a bite as anyone they have ever seen.  Some good people were committed to making me survive that night.  I have done what I can to honor them.

And now, I merely want others, who have not yet taken their first breath, to have the same chance of that full life as I have been able to enjoy.

That some among us do not believe that those unborn children do not deserve that chance, and applaud the notion as did Governor Healey and the "healthcare workers" surrounding her this week as she signed the law, is nothing other than pure evil.  It is something that hearkens back to the sacrifice of infants on the altar of Moloch.  The ancient Israelites ended up paying a terrible price for their idolatry.

We cannot thrive, or even survive, as a culture that celebrates death.  It is impossible.

And it shouldn't take a dead man to state that obvious fact.

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