For Good Reason
Critical Thinkers of the World Unite! D.J. Groethe, formerly of the Center For Inquiry, has a promising new podcast known as For Good Reason, which intends to encourage listeners to think critically about the central beliefs of society, focusing on supernatural, paranormal and psuedo-scientific claims. You can check out episodes here.
Countdown to Richmond...
Ok, just to get everyone who will be joining us in Richmond VA in a couple weeks totally pumped and primed to penultimately party, i give you some randomly chosen pieces of live footage taken from around the world last year: perhaps you’ll enjoy the soothing sounds of A Speculative Fiction? Or maybe getting berated by Todd prior to sampling some Human(e) Meat is more to your liking? What’s that you say? You are a sad loser with no friends and therefore completely Without Love? Join the club! Or should i say, join the Supporting Cast(e)? If you don’t, you may end up going Back To The Motor League in which case Tertium Non Datur, amirite?
So if you’re going to Richmond, make sure you’re fully lubed and loaded fuckers. There will be no prisoners taken! No quarter spared! No mercy given! No half-heads not pointed out to their peers a hundred times during the course of the set! No! Never! We won’t back down!
Edumaction
I never got past high-school, but maybe if there were more educators like this guy, i would’ve been more interested in learning instead of cutting class to watch a shitty beta copy of Kreator’s “Toxic Trace” video for the 100 zillionth time.
Are the Days of the Full-Time Novelist Numbered?
Robert Sawyer is one of the most successful speculative fiction writers on the planet, and certainly one of the most successful fiction writers in Canadian history. He has a talent for broaching very big ideas within a very accessible, fast-paced format (once in a while at the expense of the aesthetics of a more seasoned SF audience). I’ve read most of his books and outside of Kim Stanley Robinson, i’d have to credit Sawyer with fueling my intitial interest in what i think is the most exciting and important genre of writing we have. He keeps a blog that i visit once in a while and i thought this post about the end of the full-time novelist was interesting enough to share, in part because of the analogies one can make to the music industry, which is of course, also in free-fall. Generally, i think the music industry is getting what it deserves for producing so much utter garbage over the years that people simply aren’t willing to front their hard-earned money for something that sounds exactly like 4000 other records that already exist and that as a matter of design, doesn’t take the listener anywhere new, intellectually or spiritually. Still, his comments towards the end of the post concerning “lengthy, ambitious, complex works works that take years of full-time effort to produce” are worth thinking about.
G'Day Mates!
If you were to subject me to a snap quiz in which i had to name the current elected/appointed/inherited leaders of all the world’s 190+ nations, i would probably score less that 5% correctly. The fact that i admit this does not make it any less embarrassing. Once in every very long while, i make a half-baked effort to skim through the CIA Factbook and see who the latest crop of clowns are who are running various countries into the ground across the planet. Then i promptly forget, displacing these facts with more important things like the names of recently drafted professional hockey players.
One place i tend to pay a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more attention to is Australia. Partly because in many ways it is an analog to Canada. Partly because i used to live there when i was 5. Partly because outside of central/south america, it is the place on the planet where we have been most warmly received as a band. I know many Australians visit this site. So i thought i’d post a link to the this very short and provocative piece about some of the players in post-Rudd Australia. In the words of Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes, “food for thought!”.
Red Oktoberfest/ Riot Fest
Well, punch me in the nards and call me flat-nuts! We’re playing Chicago this October for our pal Toby’s first annual wedding celebration! And now the good news (just kidding Toby): also playing at this festival — among many others — will be the mighty Corrosion of Conformity (with their 1985 lineup! jesus wept!), Articles of Faith, Agnostic Front, High On Fire, Negative Approach and CROMAGS!!! Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy, am i stoked.
you will be too. anybody who has seen Captain Ron knows that chicago is good people.
it appears that the schedule and ticket info can be found here.