Thoughts about the "One Big Beautiful Bill"

There is both jubilation and lamentation abounding tonight following Congress's approval of President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill".  Personally, I have some mixed feelings about it.  I'm not going to let the shrill hysteria coming from some quarters persuade me that it's an entirely bad thing though.

I think the thing I've heard most from those opposing the budget is that it's going to starve "millions" of people.  And that it's going to deprive many others of necessary medication.

Well, let's see what someone who has in times past been on government assistance for food, and medicine, and has worked in the public sector as a mental health professional, has to say about the "One Big Beautiful Bill".  You ready for this?  Because you may not be expecting what I'm about to speak about it.

Okay, here we go...

The public food assistance is horribly abused.  A lot of people are on it that don't need to be.  Cut them out and there will be MORE assistance for the ones who do need it.

America is the only country in history that can not only produce more than enough food for its own people, it can also feed entire other countries.  That's a pretty good system if you ask me.  Not "perfect", that is not possible and never will be.  But nobody is going to starve because the "Big Beautiful Bill" was passed.  This of all countries is a place that doesn't have to worry about people going hungry.  If they need food they CAN get it.

I know!!  I've had to get help myself.  There are food ministries and other charities that are dedicated to providing sustenance.  It may not be the choicest food but it will feed and stave off hunger well enough.  Enough to hold out and wait for the bad times to end.  It's what I've had to do.  As rough as times have been, I believe enough in America to have faith that we shouldn't be defined by our circumstances.  A lot of people here have been reduced to near nothing, only to come back stronger than ever.  The "Big Beautiful Bill" isn't intended to be a hand-out... but it will be a hand-UP to those who need it.  We aren't meant to be wards of the government.  Get some help when we need it?  Yes.  But that shouldn't be forever.  A person should want and be driven to achieve more than that.  It's certainly been one of my motivations.

The "Big Beautiful Bill" isn't going to starve "millions" no matter how much people on the left claim that it will.  It won't deprive anyone of medication if they need that.  I've worked in the healthcare industry, in the public sector, and I have faith that people won't be losing services.  The bill is going to slash wasteful spending and make things more efficient though.  What resources have been there already, are going to be better allocated.  I for one am not worried about how it's going to impact mental health services especially.  That is arguably the most critical medical need that government can allocate resources to.  Take care of the mind and a lot of other things are alleviated, like substance abuse and homelessness and malnutrition.

We can't tax ourselves into prosperity, though that has been the core belief of modern liberalism for many, many decades.  And we are taxed to the breaking point already as it is.  We need tax cuts, very much so.  We need spending cuts too, and be wiser with our expenditures.  We can't keep going as we have been.  That has been found to be foolishness.  We have only been hurting ourselves.  Cut taxes, eliminate the waste, and watch the revenue come in.  It worked forty years ago and it will work today too.

It didn't have to be this way.  We could have avoided all of this.  We could have been more demanding of the representatives we sent to chambers of legislation from town council on up to the Capitol in Washington.  But it's better to willingly face reality now, than be compelled to confront it under harsher circumstances.

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"The earth isn't going to produce justice."

 Something I read on a news/politics discussion forum last night that has stuck with me almost 24 hours later:

"The earth isn't going to produce justice."

Isn't that the truth?

As much as things are wrong and we want to make them right, the sad fact is that this is a fallen and corrupted world.  No matter how much we long for it and try to bring it about, there is no lasting good.  There might be some temporary reprieve, it seems.  But it never lasts.  Wickedness will always prevail, at least until such time as Providence sees fit to directly intervene in our affairs.  Indeed, it seems that the more we strive for good, the more that effort is corrupted and brought to ruin.

What do we do, then?

Do the best we can.  Accepting that that's the best we can do.  Deceive none.  Let your "yes" be yes and "no" be no.  Seek wisdom and discernment.  Bind not yourself to the spirit of party, which is invariably reduced to collective foolishness.  Do not trust in governments of men: however well-meaning their beginning, though it may take centuries they will always let us down.  Don't trust in men.  Trust in God instead.  We should dedicate our efforts to Him. The good work is ours, but the results are forever His.

Those of wicked device in this world seem to be all powerful.  But they are as mortal as any of us.  They will pass in time.  Their realms will pass with them.  And in due time, a better world will be brought forth, wrought from holy Hands.

The earth isn't going to produce justice.  That is true.  But we can do what is within our power to seek justice.  Knowing that we will fail but having satisfaction in knowing that we at least tried.

It's how I try to live, anyway.

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Kenneth Colley, who played Admiral Piett AKA the luckiest guy in the Empire, has passed away

The sad news is coming out today that Kenneth Colley, the British actor who portrayed Admiral Firmus Piett across two Star Wars films, has passed away at the age of 87.

Colley had enjoyed having many roles in his six decades as an actor.  He did some work with Monty Python (that's him playing Jesus in the opening of Life of Brian) and he appeared in Clint Eastwood's 1982 sci-fi Cold War thriller Firefox.  Colley was also among the amazing cast of the sweeping television epic War and Remembrance.

But it is his portrayal of Captain... and then Admiral... Piett that is most remembered in the annals of pop culture.

Piett first appeared in 1980's Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back as the captain of Executor, Darth Vader's flagship Super Star Destroyer.  Following the deployment of thousands of probe droids across the galaxy, Piett was monitoring their progress when a droid in the Hoth system picked up signs of habitation.  Admiral Ozzel was quick to brush it off, though Vader took interest and was convinced that this was the Rebel base that the Empire was looking for.  Vader ordered the fleet to set course for Hoth, as Ozzel gave Piett a spiteful glare.  Piett merely stood in quiet confidence, content to have done his job to the best of his ability.

I think that Darth Vader appreciated that.  Vader appreciated Piett as a man.  I have to wonder if Vader had wanted Piett to be higher up in the chain of command all along.  It would explain Vader's disdain for Ozzel.  When Ozzel messed up by coming out of hyperspace too close to Hoth, Vader was all too eager to express his displeasure.  Vader immediately tapped Piett to take Ozzel's place: "You are in command now, Admiral Piett."  Piett expressed his thanks and immediately gestured for Ozzel's corpse be taken off the bridge.  And then toward the end of the film, when standing there after Vader had lost the Millennium Falcon, Piett awaited his lord's next action, certainly that he now would be punished.  Instead Vader walked away, and no doubt Piett breathed an inward sigh of relief.

Piett showed up again in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.  He must have been doing something right because by that point in the story he had survived being admiral aboard the Executor for a year.  Admiral Piett had been ordered by Emperor Palpatine to move the fleet around the Death Star to the far side of the Endor moon, where it waited to ambush the incoming Rebel forces.  In the massive space battle that followed a Rebel A-wing veered out of control and slammed into Executor's bridge.  Piett and the rest of the command staff were killed, and Executor was sent smashing into the second Death Star's  surface.

Piett has been called one of the most important of the many background characters in the Star Wars saga.  Kenneth Colley certainly brought dignity and gravitas to the role.  It was one of those nuances that gave Star Wars its rich and deep presence in our culture.  It also endeared himself tremendously with fans, who Colley always came across as being very appreciative of.  I had the honor of meeting him a couple of times, at Star Wars Celebration II and then III a few years later.  The first time we met, I told him that it must be quite something to be known as "the luckiest guy in the Empire".  Colley said that he heard that quite a bit actually!

He played an honorable and decent bad guy, and you had to respect a character like Piett.  Colley really was the only person who could have pulled that off as magnificently as he did.

I think that in his memory I'll plop in my Blu-Ray of The Empire Strikes Back for background sound as I work this afternoon.  Which includes this classic scene of Darth Vader "promoting" Piett to admiral:

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I'm going to start a Fallout tontine

This November will mark ten years since the release of Fallout 4.  That game was published seven years after Fallout 3.  There was Fallout: New Vegas in 2010 (still need to finish that one, my friends swear it's the best of the series).  And I suppose there was Fallout 76 in 2018 but that game just isn't the same.  Fallout really is more of a single-player experience, though I know that Fallout 76 does have its loyalists.

So this will be a full decade without a mainline Fallout entry.  Surely we're going to get word sometime soon that a new one is coming, right?  Right?!?

The sad fact of the matter is, friends, is that video game production is now (a) very expensive and (b) very loooong.  Grand Theft Auto V was first published in 2013.  Its follow-up was announced two years ago and it's going to be fall of 2026 before it's released.  Which if the trend continues means that Grand Theft Auto VII won't see the light of day until around 2040.

See where this is getting at?

So when I came upon this article at Gaming Bible about when we might expect to see Fallout 5, my heart fell.  But I suppose I should already be braced for it.  The next Fallout game may not get published until I'm pushing sixty.  Maybe by the time Fallout 7 comes out I'll be looking forward to seeing Halley's Comet for the second time in my life.

Let's just get the obvious out of the way: there are many people reading these words who won't be with us when Fallout 5 comes out, and certainly not when Fallout 6 is released.

I've got something figured out though.  A strategy that will help pass the time.  I'm going to start a Fallout tontine.

You probably know the concept even though the word is fairly rare in the English language.  A tontine is an agreement where a party of individuals put something in security.  It could be a sum of money.  It could be a more material item.  And whoever is the last surviving member of the agreement gets the goods.  There was an episode of M*A*S*H where Colonel Potter and his friends during World War I had saved a bottle of fine French wine, and the final friend left got the bottle to enjoy.  It was also the subject of an episode of The Simpsons.

Here's the plan: I'm going to get some friends together.  We're each going to contribute some money to the tontine.  Whoever is alive when Fallout 6 comes out (I'm going to allow for robust health between now and then) gets the money, which after accumulating interest should be enough to buy a then-modern generation video game console, a new high-def screen, and a copy of the Fallout game.

No, seriously, this is what I intend to do.  I may be coming up on eighty years old when the chapter of Fallout following the next game is released, but I'm going to do my best to play it.  It's going to be a life goal.  And if I don't make it to then, I will get the satisfaction of knowing that a good friend is going to play it in my honor.

I do NOT plan on doing this with a BioShock game though!!

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Book Update: I am in LOVE with this picture

I'm starting to wonder if the most realistic route to getting my book out there might be publishing on Amazon.  It's not really self-publishing, it's pretty much like traditional publishing in many ways.  As much as I would love to see my book on the store shelves that may not be possible right out of the gate.  Going through Amazon would let me keep the rights to my work, it gets released, and maybe it will sell well enough that a proper publishing house will want to buy it.

I've noted before, that this book is probably too Christian for the secular market and it's much too secular for Christian audiences.  Maybe this gets to be something that breaks new ground for other books that can't be readily defined.  Which would be a great honor if that happens.

So yesterday afternoon I had some time on my hands and I decided to work on a cover for my book, if it goes to Amazon first.  I went looking for pictures depicting men of chivalry.  My first resource to investigate was a website that hosts a big image of the Bayeux Tapestry.  For an hour I looked all over that thing and found nothing that really jibed with what I had in mind.

About 45 minutes later though I came upon this pic.  It's from the Codex Manesse and dates back to the very early 1300s:

It's perfect.  It absolutely fits with the themes of my book.  It's very beautiful too.  I honestly can't believe that I came across this image.  I could have been looking forever and not found an adequate pic for the cover.  But this one absolutely fits with what I have written.

It will make even more sense when the title is revealed.  I'm still not ready to reveal that.  It's not time for it.  But I can't but think that the time for that is drawing closer.

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Watch the General Lee jump the fountain in Somerset, Kentucky

This is already the most beautiful thing I've seen all week.  A Dodge Charger kitted out to look like the famous General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard goes roaring down the street in Somerset, Kentucky and jumps a ramp and goes soaring through the town's water fountain.

Behold the stunt!

Okay, yeah the car got banged up a bit (the driver didn't get a scratch apparently, thank the Lord) but that'll buff right out.  Throw on some Bondo and a good sanding and it'll be good as new!

Notice how this car is all-out faithful to the General Lee of the show.  Including the Confederate flat on the roof.  That's a really good touch, completely in the spirit of the TV series.

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ChatGPT Psychosis: Yes, this is a real mental illness

I regularly work with artificial intelligence as an AI trainer.  I also have a lot of experience in the mental health field, as both a professional helping others and also as a manic depressive who has been a "consumer" of services at various times.  So this article both fascinates me and also greatly disturbs me.

The website Futurism has published a VERY disturbing article about "ChatGPT Psychosis".  Ever since the rise of that and other popular artificial intelligence "chatbots", there has been an ever-increasing number of people who have become consumed by the technology.  Maggie Harrison Dupré has turned in a remarkable report illuminating the issue.

From the article:

And that's not all. As we've continued reporting, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.

"I was just like, I don't f*cking know what to do," one woman told us. "Nobody knows who knows what to do." 

 

Her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusion, or psychosis. He'd turned to ChatGPT about 12 weeks ago for assistance with a permaculture and construction project; soon, after engaging the bot in probing philosophical chats, he became engulfed in messianic delusions, proclaiming that he had somehow brought forth a sentient AI, and that with it he had "broken" math and physics, embarking on a grandiose mission to save the world. His gentle personality faded as his obsession deepened, and his behavior became so erratic that he was let go from his job. He stopped sleeping and rapidly lost weight. 

 

"He was like, 'just talk to [ChatGPT]. You'll see what I'm talking about,'" his wife recalled. "And every time I'm looking at what's going on the screen, it just sounds like a bunch of affirming, sycophantic bullsh*t." 

 

Eventually, the husband slid into a full-tilt break with reality. Realizing how bad things had become, his wife and a friend went out to buy enough gas to make it to the hospital. When they returned, the husband had a length of rope wrapped around his neck. 

 

The friend called emergency medical services, who arrived and transported him to the emergency room. From there, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric care facility.

 

It sounds almost like something out of science-fiction.  But it's happening.  Thankfully it hasn't struck me.  Maybe one reason is because as remarkable as artificial intelligence comes across as being, I'm really not all that impressed with it.  Strip away all the shiny veneer and AI isn't much else but advanced mathematical set theory with a language emulator welded on.  Granted, it also has an enormous base of data to draw from, but proportionally not much more than has been made available to the average Internet user for more than thirty years now.

I use ChatGPAT every so often.  It can be a terrific tool, if used responsibly (and generating "art" depicting General Robert E. Lee dueling with a Predator probably isn't that).  When it comes to research it can be a solid instrument.  However do bear in mind, I do not and never will use it to "write" for me though!  Unless it's explicitly stated that it's generated by an AI, pretty much everything you read or see on The Knight Shift - apart from cited articles like in this post and the like - comes from my own mind and whatever hands-on skills and creativity I have been endowed with.  If only many others would have more confidence in their own minds and know that they are loved and appreciated in ways that no computer, regardless of how advanced, can possibly possess.

Maybe I should consider getting back into the mental health field.  It seems that there may be a burgeoning "market" soon for technology professionals who also have expertise in psychiatric health.

Since I mentioned it, here indeed is a rendering of Robert E. Lee fighting a Predator, generated by ChatGPT.  I'm not all that impressed with this either, to be honest.  Lee looks way off.  It's a pretty spot-on Predator though...

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Svengoolie! Or: How I spend many Saturday nights

Not looking like there's going to be any going about this evening.  There are a few things I've got on my plate, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  And there is always church in the morning, so that accomplishes my spiritual and social needs in great part.

So on a Saturday like this I do some errands around the house, play with my miniature dachshund, make dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon and early evening it's usually sitting up on my sofa with my iPad and keyboard and working on writing.  And that's how a lot of my other nights develop into: writing for my book or op-ed pieces, or the fantasy romance novel that I've been inspired to start (seriously).

But since this is Saturday I've also got the weekly entertainment to look forward to, straight outta Berwyn.

Every Saturday night at 8 p.m. Eastern (and 7 Central) sees the next two and a half hours blocked off for Svengoolie on the MeTV network.  Svengoolie is a madcap "horror host" of the kind that many television stations had back in the day who every week would present a scary(?) movie.  These actually ran the gamut from straight-up horror classics to science-fiction extravaganzas to mélanges of both and sometimes it would be more comic fare.  It was all good and great fun!  And the hosts were as much a hoot to behold as the movies themselves.

Svengoolie - whose real name is Rich Koz - has been upholding this noble tradition from the Chicago market since 1979 (yes, more than 45 years now!).  Some time ago he and his franchise were picked up by MeTV and he's now presenting his favorite films for a nationwide audience.  And the nation has certainly taken notice.  Svengoolie is now one of the most-watched programs during the weekend.  It has become a true Saturday night ritual for countless fans, who show their appreciation in many different ways (being photographed wearing a Svengoolie shirt in some exotic location is particularly popular).

It's a terrific formula for good hearty entertainment!  And it has also introduced me to a lot of movies that I otherwise might have never seen.  A few weeks ago Svengoolie presented Strait-Jacket from 1964 starring Joan Crawford.  I thought it was an amazing film that more than deserved to be seen by a modern audience.  And last week's feature was Village of the Damned (a movie I first saw in 1989 on "Billy Bobb's Action Theatre" on Greensboro's Channel 48).  That is also a motion picture that merits appreciation by people of our era.  Whether the movie of the week is terrifying or thought-inducing or evoking laughter, you can't go wrong with Svengoolie (and his pals on the Sven Squad).

If you've never had the pleasure, I can't recommend Svengoolie nearly enough for Saturday night.  It's a rollicking fun time to be had by all.  And hey Sven, if you're reading this, I would like to suggest that some week you might run Yor: The Hunter From The Future.  It's perfect Eighties schlock that deserves some modern appreciation.  The #svengooolie hashtag on X/Twitter will be burning up with commentary!

'We will need a lot more hemp before we're through."

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Time to play... The Lottery

Will this be Old Man Warner's "lucky year"?  He's no doubt praying that it isn't.

A 1969 film adaptation of Shirley Jackson's horrifying classic short story "The Lottery".

I first read "The Lottery" during my freshman year of college.  Our English instructor Phil Conte promised that this story would scare us as few things in literature could.  What was Jackson trying to convey with her tale?  The older I get the more I believe that "The Lottery" is a dark parable about rigid conformity and obedience to mob mentality.  Something that must be sacrificed to if it's to have any power.  In my mind the people of the town are no different from those among us who place party over all else, even if their loved ones must suffer for that.

Or, well... who knows what Jackson meant?  Almost eighty years later and here we are still debating it.

Anyhoo, enjoy the above adaptation.

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The Supreme Court does right: Slapping down rogue judges and asserting parental rights

This is a good day to be a sensible American.

This morning the Supreme Court handed down some rulings and I was looking forward to seeing how they would go.  I am not disappointed at all.

Mahmoud v. Taylor is the case out of Maryland involving parents who wanted to opt out of having their children exposed to homosexual material in public school.  The justices went 6 to 3 in favor of the parents.  It's a magnificent win for parental rights regarding their children.

It should have been a unanimous ruling though.  I'm going to be looking for the minority opinion.  As many would guess the three dissenting justices were Kagan, Sotomayor, and "I don't know what a woman is" Brown.

And then there is the situation involving the Trump Administration and all of those federal judges who have been hitting the president with nationwide injunctions, effectively keeping Trump from implementing the agenda he was elected to adhere to.  Once again the justices ruled 6 to 3.  The rogue judges have been stopped.  For the time being anyway.  But it really wouldn't surprise me if some judges try to ignore the Supreme Court on this.

The importance of this case cannot be over-emphasized.  The out of control judges have been taking it upon themselves to have the authority of the executive, disregarding the separation of powers embodied in the Constitution.  Had the judges not been challenged, we would have had hundreds of judges across America thinking that they could legislate from the bench.  Without anyone really able to stop them.  This decision was a victory for constitutional rule of law.  And we should be thankful that the high court went this way.  Otherwise, well... it would have been one more step toward something regrettable.  It certainly would have sent America spiraling into chaos.

So, sanity prevails this day.  I am choosing to be thankful for that.

EDIT 06/27/2025 7:21 pm EST:  I was curious about what the minority justices in Mahmoud v. Taylor were going to say and... good lord this is hideous.

This is what Justice Sonia Sotomayor - one of the worst justices in the history of the high court - had to say:

Sotomayor said public schools “offer to children of all faiths and backgrounds an education and an opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.”

   “That experience is critical to our Nation’s civic vitality,” she added. “Yet it will become a mere memory if children must be insulated from exposure to ideas and concepts that may conflict with their parents’ religious beliefs.

Sotomayor said Friday’s ruling ushers in a “new reality” for American public schools.

“Casting aside longstanding precedent, the Court invents a constitutional right to avoid exposure to ‘subtle’ themes ‘contrary to the religious principles’ that parents wish to instill in their children,” she wrote. “Exposing students to the ‘message’ that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny.”

Justice Sotomayor, it's not the purpose of government to create and enforce a "multicultural society".  And it's certainly well within the rights of parents to choose to not have their children exposed to material that so egregiously violates their beliefs.  The agenda of a deviant minority do not trump the right to the majority's freedom of faith.

Most of the United States Supreme Court just told the radical LGBT lobby to sit down and shut up.  And it's a beautiful thing.

EDIT 06/27/2025 8:02 PM EST: and of course, there is also Justice Amy Coney Barrett's slappping Ketanji Brown Jackson down.

One of the things that Joe Biden promised when he was running in 2000 was that he would put the first black woman on the Supreme Court.  So it is that Ketanji Brown only got on the bench because she was a "diversity, equity, inclusion" hire.  She has absolutely no merit whatsoever.  Brown is the WORST justice in the history of the high court.

I suspect that one of the reasons why Donald Trump won this past November is because most of the American people are disgusted with identity politics.  Brown represents the worst of that.

And anyone who can't tell us what a woman is has no business being anywhere in judicial branch at all, much less the high court.

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Found on a Peanuts page on Facebook today...

This definitely made me crack up.

It is said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  If that's true then Lucy Van Pelt's grasp of astronomy is downright lethal.

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Dear people of New York City: Why are you doing this to yourselves??? (Zohran Mamdani)

To be honest, I had never heard of Zohran Mamdani until this week.  But what I've learned in the past few days scares me and it should scare you too.

For anyone reading this who doesn't know yet, Mamdani just became the Democratic nominee for the office of mayor of New York City.

Here is what Zohran Mamdani is about (partial listing)...

- He is openly Marxist

- He hates Jews

- He sympathizes with the same mentality that brought about 9/11 and a lot of other acts of terrorism

- He wants to fund illegal aliens and provide them with sanctuary (as if that's not bad enough already)

- He wants a $30 minimum wage by 2030 (which would DESTROY many if not most small businesses)

- He wants to channel funding that SHOULD go to the police department and instead pay for "social workers", the result of which will only be more skyrocketing crime

- He wants city-owned grocery stores (ask your local typical "Russian of a certain age" about what it was like to wait in line for ten hours at the Moscow GUM store just to buy toilet paper)

- He wants a freeze on rent and more government housing (which will also makes things worse)

- He wants to DRASTICALLY increase taxes in order to pay for his wild wacko schemes

Those are just some of the policies that Mamdani wants to implement.

To think that New York City has gone almost a quarter century from being strong and indomitable under Rudolph Giuliani, to possibly being run by someone who has only been a United State citizen since 2018.

What is it about voters in urban areas, especially places like New York City and Chicago and Los Angeles, that they continually elect people who only make things WORSE?

Why are the Democrats doing this to themselves?  Do they have America's best interests at heart when they nominate extreme socialists to represent the people of their city, or state, or nation?

A good friend said something earlier today: that Jewish people in New York City would overwhelmingly vote for Adolf Hitler if he were to run as a Democrat.  He said that party loyalty is all that matters to them.

Oh yeah, my good friend is also a Jewish man living in New York City.  He has witnessed firsthand the constant betrayal of that town by his kindred.

Why would ANYONE commit to electing people who have demonstrated time and time again that that they cannot govern wisely?

Well, Mamdani so far is just the Democrat's chosen candidate for the job.  He doesn't have the position yet.  But if he should win, well...

I will have absolutely no compassion for the people who voted for him.   They should have known what they were getting into.

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Happy fiftieth anniversary to Jaws!

Making us afraid to go into the water for a full half a century.

One of the greatest scenes in film history: Quint (played by Robert Shaw, who practically rewrote his lines) telling the tale of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.

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Laz A. Mataz presents his debut novel: Dimensions of Essence

Hey gang!  Got something special for ya...

A very dear friend of mine, Laz A. Mataz, has been working on his first novel for awhile.  Dimensions of Essence is a science-fiction story about what happens when a mysterious disc of otherworldly origins suddenly appears in a field in Ohio.  I was honored to be one of the first to read Mataz's book and I was thoroughly entertained and also made to think a bit deeper about some things.  Dimensions of Essence strikes me as being part Tom Clancy, part Philip José Farmer, and a dash of Christianity.  And it works quite well.

Well, today is the big day!  As of a short while ago this morning Dimensions of Essence has debuted on Amazon for purchase to read on Kindle and its associated apps.  Click here to purchase it for $5.99.

Congrats Laz!  And I'm really looking forward to the sequel and where you take this tale next :-) 

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Book status report for June 2025: Proposal, agents, subtitle

This was supposed to be a weekly feature.  That notion has obviously fallen by the wayside.  But many of y'all have asked how is the book coming along.  So here's an update...

The manuscript is in as good a shape as it's likely to be, barring someone with a better mind than mine for this kind of thing going over it and marking places where it can be improved upon.  I'm looking forward to working with such a person.  Writing this book has been a process that is germinating enormous growth of mind and spirit within me.  I'm eager to experience what else might be coming along in that regard.

The search for an agent has been erratic, I must admit.  This also has been a growth experience.  In looking over the query letters I've sent out across the past several months, I can tell that there has been drastic improvement.  There's a lot of confidence that has been built up about this project.  The other week I shared what a friend had to say about the subject of humbleness.  I've been called humble before but I wonder if I've had too much of that.  My queries are reflecting much more boldness now, and that's been building up for awhile already.  I believe that I have written a heck of a book, and I believe that somewhere out there is someone who is going to take notice.  My looking for an agent has been re-invigorated.  I harbor no delusions: this part of the process is tough.  And my project was already going to be a hard sell before I ever set my hands on the keyboard.  But I believe in it.  The people who have been reading along the way believe in it, and they have been very honest and forthcoming in their judgements about it.  And now?  Now... there is a manuscript as mighty as any that has come along for a memoir.  So I'm going to keep sending out those queries and be praying that something will result from that.

One thing that has really gotten better is the nonfiction proposal.  That's a formal document that the author uses to present his or her project to the agents and publishers.  It's a business plan for the the book: who its audience is intended to be, what titles are comparable to it, a summary of its contents, a biography of the author... anything that can be done in the space of fifty pages to pitch and sell what the writer is presenting.  My first attempts at writing a proposal were, well... bad.  For much of March and April I spent some time studying proposals that others had put together.  Then I started fresh and worked on and off for a month and a half.  And now, I think I've assembled a pretty solid proposal.  People who've seen it have said they are impressed by it.  So I've started sending that out to agents who ask to see a proposal.

Here are a couple of pages of the summaries from my book's proposal (click to enlarge):

Okay, now finally: a lot of people keep asking me what the title of the book is.  Apart from the agents I've been querying with, less than ten individuals know the title.  It's something I'm keeping close to the vest for now.  There should be some mysteries in life, yes?  It's had a title for a year and a half now and I believe it's a beautiful title.  A team of wild horses couldn't tear it out of me though.  But I am looking forward to sharing it with the world in due time.

What I can share though is the subtitle.  It took awhile to settle on one.  But I believe it has at last presented itself.  Although it seems too easy in retrospect.  It doesn't really portend much more than has already been known: that this is a memoir about someone who is very much a child of the Eighties (a decade that gets a chapter all its own).  I think that right now I can tease y'all a bit.

So here is the subtitle: "A Generation-Xer's Quest Through Life".

It says what it means.  It means what it says.  It might still change though.  But that's the subtitle that's going out on all the queries right now.  It's as good as anything I suppose.

And that's pretty much all for now.

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Father's Day 2025: Pictures of Dad

Today is Father's Day.  And more than usual I'm feeling melancholy.  This is the eleventh Father's Day without Dad.  There's not a day that comes and goes, that I don't think about him.  He always had great advice.  What he liked to tell me often was "Always think positive!"  He told me that even though he knew I was struggling with a mind turned against itself.  He may not have understood what it meant to have that but he still abounded in empathy.

Thought I'd share some photos of him.  This first one dates to November 2006.  It's of Dad in his favorite place: his beloved knife shop.  It was really rainy and cold that day and I went by the shop to ask him something.  This is how I found him: reclined back in a chair with his pipe, thinking up new projects.  It's classic Dad.  Click to enlarge:

This next one is one of the best taken of him ever.  This photo, taken in February of 2012, was published in newspapers and websites across America.  It depicts Dad and his friend John Ashe.  This was for a story about John being an independent farmer.  Someday I'm going to get this photo blown up, printed, and framed for my wall.  Click to enlarge:

This is from the day we brought Tammy home in May of 2012.  She was six weeks old.  Click to enlarge:

A look at Dad's more whimsical side. Wearing his Camp Carefree Chili Cook-Off cap:

This was taken for the church photo directory.  I've got this picture framed and on display in my living room:

And then there's this one: Dad and I together on my fortieth birthday:

There is one other photo that I'm trying to find.  I'll post it here if I can locate it.

Edit 06/16/2025: I knew I had it somewhere!  For many years this pic hung on the wall in Dad's shop.  On the left side of the photo is George Herron, a master of crafting folding knives.  At center is Dad  On the right is Bill Moran, the gentleman who rediscovered the art of making Damascus - that is, folded - steel.  This picture was taken during a knifemaker's meeting and as you can see it depicts Dad, George, and Bill standing outside smoking their pipes.  There's a real sense of belonging and camaraderie among the knifemaking community.  It comes with sharing a love and passion for the art.  This photo captures and conveys that beautifully.  I've come to know a lot of knifemakers over the years, they come in practically all varieties of people.  George and Bill were some of the best and Dad was very honored to have gotten to know them.  A few days after Dad passed I was in his shop and saw this picture up on the wall, and I couldn't help but imagine George and Bill and now Dad up in Heaven with their pipes in their mouths and talking about their mutual love for the craft.  Anyway, here it is:

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George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four now has a trigger warning

Of all things 1984-ish, this story about Nineteen Eighty-Four itself might be the most 1984 in the history of anything.

Image from the motion picture Nineteen Eighty-Four

Out of all the books that have ever been published, George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (I prefer to spell it out like that when referring to the book or movie instead of shortening it to its numerical equivalent) is the one screaming most against attaching an advisory before reading.  It doesn't need anything so ridiculous.  Nineteen Eighty-Four speaks for itself, from the first sentence on through the final four words.

I wonder if people like Dolen Perkins-Valdez have ever bothered to try to understand what Orwell was conveying, what his underlying message was, when he first wrote his classic novel about totalitarianism and absolute control of the human spirit.  Perkins-Valdez is the one who has composed a new foreward to Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Which ordinarily isn't something too unprecedented.  There is a foreward by Walter Cronkite in the thirty-fifth anniversary edition of the book and I am sure there have been others.  But I could readily accept that Cronkite at least had sincerest appreciation for the novel.

The same cannot be said for Perkins-Valdez, whose foreward is actually a "trigger warning" of the kind slapped upon all works that fringe leftists declare to be "problematic".  After all this time, since Nineteen Eighty-Four's first publication in 1949, it has finally been revealed that Orwell''s book is misogynist and not sensitive enough to racial issues.  Perkins-Valdez, like too many others, demands that this most classic of warnings about absolute government must be perceived through the lens of those obsessed with identity politics.  "A sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity," she writes.

These people just don't get it, do they?

I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four during spring break of my senior year of high school, while recovering from a second-degree burn inflicted during a part-time job.  That book completely absorbed me far and away from any pain I might have otherwise been feeling.  I had just recently finished reading Stephen King's The Stand.  Nineteen Eighty-Four was even more of a horror novel.  It wasn't altogether beyond the imagination that a realm like Oceania really could come about.  It was about language: the alteration and mutating and ultimately obliteration of words and the ability to verbalize an idea.  The destruction of language was an act of obscenity, one that tyrants and regimes and entire nations of their supplicants had perpetrated since time immemorial.  Our own times have proven to be no more invulnerable.

The destruction of thought.  That was the greatest crime that Nineteen Eighty-Four described.

And that is the crime that Dolen Perkins-Valdez and too many who describe themselves as "liberal-inclined" are guilty of not only aiding and abetting, but thoroughly advocating.  They are attempting to take apart books like Nineteen Eighty-Four and indict against them with the very same tools that the books utilize in their admonishments about totalitarian thought.

These people have never had any real jobs, I am sure of it.  They sit in their ivory towers and think themselves masters of all that they survey.  Putting a trigger warning on Nineteen Eighty-Four is how they justify their notion of having a "real" career that in the end does nothing to serve anything but their own egos.

As for what Perkins-Valdez is claiming, I've always thought that Nineteen Eighty-Four already addresses the racial issue.  Oceania, and its adversaries Eastasaia and Eurasia, are multi-ethnic states.  But that isn't a distinguishing factor in those nations' demographics.  The three super-states of Nineteen Eighty-Four have no "ethnicities" at all.  Why should they?  Each of them has de-humanized the lives of their individuals to such a degree that things like "race" are absolutely meaningless elements.  Yes, there are black people in Nineteen Eighty-Four's world.  For all we know Syme, the much-too-smart-for-his-own-good colleague of Winston's at the Ministry of Truth, is a "black person".  We don't know.  We simply aren't told.  It doesn't matter.  One day Syme is there and the next day he is not: just another "unperson" vaporized by the Party as if he had never existed at all.

Any person who thinks Nineteen Eighty-Four, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or To Kill A Mockingbird has to pass the muster of leftist racial sensibilities before they can be experienced by the reader, is himself or herself attempting to destroy a thing.  In the end works such as these are the product of their respective authors, above and beyond the demands of modern ideology.  Indeed, if there is any book that preaches against the fruits of such ideology, it is Nineteen Eighty-Four.  It is a warning that we would do well to heed.

I close this essay with something very special to me.  It's the copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four that I bought in the spring of 1992.  I have kept it all this time, in remarkably excellent condition.  I take good care of the books that mean most to me.  I try to read Nineteen Eighty-Four every few years, along with Fahrenheit 451 and Atlas Shrugged.  Maybe that will suffice as a peak into the mind of this writer.

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