Author:  [In a whisper, like an announcer at the U.S. Open]  Today we meet Sirena, certainly the most unusual character in my sci-fi thriller Evil Agenda.  The villain in that novel, Rupert Snyder, also known as Vladimir Kalinin, sponsored the research that produced her.  Sirena is a mutant, the first in a projected line of super soldiers, especially built to overpower her opponents, whether using enhanced body armor or not.  We find her coming onto the beach on her island in the Bahamas.  [Normal voice now.]  Good morning, Sirena.

Sirena:  [Starting with her mane of hair, she shakes off the salt water right down to her webbed toes.  We can see her gills pulsating as she adjusts to normal breathing.]  If I didn’t already know you, I’d think you were a voyeur.  Come along.  It’s time for my morning coffee.

A:  [I follow her up the dunes to a patio that sits on the edge of the grassy backyard leading to their house.]  I just have a few questions.

S:  Fire away.  [She throws on a beach robe.]  I don’t want to distract you.

A: You already have.  You were more magnificent than either Ursula Andress or Halle Berry.

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From a line of hundreds of people trying to climb Mt. Everest or die trying, to an eighty-year-old taking a birthday parachute jump and getting more than she bargained for, to a young man that thinks that kayaks were made to go over huge waterfalls, our news media does an excellent job of portraying the active thrill seekers in our society and the world.  These recent events show that humans’ thirst for thrills and adventure is still around albeit not as common as it used to be.  After all, we have some good substitutes.  Many people will not view a movie without spiffy special effects, car chases, shootouts, and, yes, plenty of sex and violence.  Video games allow pubescent teens to chase full-breasted women and blow the heads off people, both good and bad.

There are two kinds of thrill seekers.  The first needs the physical situation to generate the adrenalin—the climbers, the jumpers, and the hobbyist stunt men.  The second survives just fine stretched out in a recliner participating more vicariously in the thrills from his home theatre system, video games…and books!  I’m a writer.  I don’t make a living writing—not yet—but I depend on the more passive thrill seekers in general and book lovers in particular.  I’m also an avid reader.  I’d rather not subject myself to situations where I might die or be physically harmed.  I’ve never rode a roller coaster even.  I can imagine the thrill people receive when doing it but I prefer to read about it.  In fact, I prefer books over movies and definitely over video games.

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2012…a presidential election year…Memorial Day…a time for reflection….  At my age, I’ve lost friends and relatives, some from sickness, others from accidents, and still others in service to our country.  I value everyone that has served our country, from infantryperson to Peace Corps volunteer, infinitely more than the good old boys and girls sitting in the nation’s capital, those politicos who scheme and manipulate and put these volunteers in harm’s way.

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#153: Last gasp for relevance or a really neat idea?  Esquire Magazine recently announced that it will start publishing eBooks devoted to “men’s fiction.”  Besides the question in my subtitle, there are two other questions that jump to my mind here:  (1) Why in the world would an author want to (a) bury his struggle for name recognition in the shrouds of an irrelevant magazine and (b) let them rake off the profits to earn the measly royalty percentages that big publishers pay?  (2) What the hell is men’s fiction?

First, the question in the subtitle.  I don’t know if Esquire has an eZine edition (call it eSquire?).  Since it has a tradition of glossy fluff appropriate for doctors’ waiting rooms, heavy on the graphics and light on content, I don’t know if an eZine edition is appropriate.  I just know I wouldn’t buy an eBook just because it’s produced by Esquire.  Yes, I know they have a fiction tradition (notably the Napkin Fiction Project of 2007), but I still can’t get past the gloss.

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Ah, Ohio, that rust-belt decider of American elections.  John Kerry must remember it with affection.  It just might be Barack Obama’s Waterloo too, although, if you believe the numbers game, he should be a shoo-in because the average unemployment level is below the national average and much improved over 2008.  Kerry’s loss, though, was due to the GOP putting gay marriage on the ballot.  Riding in on the shirt-tails of that debacle, was Fox News commentator John Kasich, who became governor in 2010.

Bordered on the North with old manufacturing towns and urban wastelands, its once thriving farming communities have been laid to waste by agribusiness and born-again fundamentalism.  Johnny Appleseed passed through here but didn’t stay.  His Swedenborgian philosophy would have been like matter to the modern day anti-matter of Fox News ranting.   Amish clans practice new barberian warfare and Mennonites are the new entrepreneurs.  Small-town America meets big-city America.  Here racism, homophobia, and the war between the 1% and the 99% are daily realities in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus and spill across the Ohio countryside—the 1%, though have already laid waste to Ohio.

I’m not writing this to blast this umbilical feature of modern Americana, this state once connected to the birth of a nation, and present-day hernia.  It is what it is.  Like many states in our federal system, states’ rights and lack of interest by the federal government have resulted in progressive rights legislation passing Ohio by as fast as a 747 in route from JFK to LA.  While human rights are also a concern, I’m speaking about animal rights here.  Ohio is the land where not even Jack Hanna has clout.

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#149:  Those readers who have read my Soldiers of God and, to a lesser extent, some of my other books, know I’m concerned with both kinds of terrorism, home-grown and imported.  In fact, Soldiers portrayed the dangers of the home-grown kind long before the DHS made it a priority.  In that book and elsewhere (including the articles in this blog), I have discussed the distinction between spirituality and fundamentalism.

Many people, from U.S. presidents to megachurch ministers, claim to talk to God, to have a one-on-one with the Old Lady who can explain everything science can’t possibly explain.  I always thought this was part of spirituality and, in some sense, admired people who could do it, although I knew the Old Lady had to be really good at multitasking to talk with everyone.  Now a new book by T. M. Luhrmann, When God Talks Back, paints this as something belonging to neither spirituality nor fundamentalism (by the way, the eBook breaks my price barrier since it’s priced at $14.99).  From what I understand about Mr. Luhrmann’s thesis, the person who talks with God is simply having a schizophrenic conversation with a section of his mind he or she has created and called God.

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I’m not referring to a mathematical conjecture like Fermat’s last theorem (this was proven by Wiles and Taylor, by the way).  I’m referring to presidential mettle and resolve and the current debate on whether Mr. Obama has them and should tout them, and whether Mr. Romney ever can have them.  Let’s face it:  Mr. Obama’s mettle and resolve are proven; Mr. Romney’s are not, beyond his desire to do something his father never could do.  While Mr. Romney has tried to belittle the leadership role of his opponent in saying that even Jimmy Carter could have killed bin Laden, the question still remains whether Mr. Obama should brag about it.

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