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Posted on 03.11.07 by Widge @ 4:34 pm
An interesting little film. It has some very valid points to be made. I would like to make one additional one. There are people who want to kill us. And as one Holocaust survivor said, paraphrased, when somebody says they want to kill you…believe them. So I'm not against taking steps to prevent getting killed. I don't think anyone I know would disagree with this. But as I've mentioned before, a lot of the laws and regulations that are being enacted will do nothing to keep us safe. They are instead grandstanding by politicians who want to make you feel better about what they're doing–much as in the film they're "dressing up" all of this surveillance as a positive thing. And yes, in the wrong hands, they can be used in damaging ways. And here's the thing: I don't believe anyone in government right now is competent enough to be actively pushing us towards a police state. A true sign that you don't have a handle on things is to just throw everything into a state of lockdown. I think we'll get to a police state by the sheer stupidity of the government, if nothing else. And I, for the most part, agree with the Bullshit episode which talked about the inability of government to really effectively use all the data that they get in thus far. Really, the most disturbing portion of this is the surveillance of e-mails and communications. It's true–we all do stuff online at some point, and to varying degrees, that we wouldn't necessarily want people knowing about. I'm reminded of a bit in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (and I'll paraphrase, since the idea of flipping back through that tome to find the actual line is daunting) where it's explained that governments control criminals and so if they want to control everyone they simply make it impossible for you to exist without criminalizing yourself. Anything in that sound familiar? Thanks to ScottC for sending over the link. Direct link here for the feedreaders. Filed under: General BS
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Posted on 03.09.07 by Widge @ 1:02 am
Something Ken Hite was writing about here got me thinking. While I think there's something to be said for grounding a story in an actual location, so you can get the feel of a real place, he referred to the "no-place" of Poe–and that struck a chord with me. Reason being is that I've always had it as part of my setup that the location the story was taking place was not really something to be considered much. It's obvious that Mystics takes place in the southern United States. Overkill is set in the same community (which fewer people have caught on to that I would have suspected–there's a bunch of links between various stories that people haven't caught yet). None of my other stories jump out at me about being distinct about their location. This is by design. If you pay attention to the clues I give about the geographical location of Macomber County, it becomes patently clear that if you're looking at a map of the United States, there's no place where Macomber County could be that would match up with all the clues. I think there's three or four specific things, mentioned in passing, and I picked them specifically to make that happen. The reason it's important to me, I think, that the location remain ambiguous is that I don't want it to be important. While some of the subject matter of Mystics makes it relevant specifically to the southern U.S., I want it to be relevant everywhere as well. So I try to keep it being grounded some place and instead want it to be potentially next door to you, wherever you are. Filed under: General BS
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John Robinson is a writer of prose, poetry and comics who also writes under
the pseudonym of Widgett Walls.
This is my latest book. Short stories written especially for you, or at least someone who reminded me a lot of you at the time.
