LIFE AND BOOKS

RECENT EVENTS
By Alex Ness
March 19, 2023

As some have become aware, I have cancer in my body, in numerous places, and of numerous varieties. My (adoptive) mother had it five times, with two terminal diagnoses included, that she the defeated. I'm aware that for some folks that might mean I've got the correct DNA to fight it. As I was adopted I will have no DNA assist but, I watched as my mother, that little old lady 5 feet tall and feisty, fight every battle her life, everything mattered to her, she fought as if the survival of the world depended upon it. I don't plan to quit posting here, I might slow down. Chemo can be brutal. I'd someone as a role model who showed me never to give up. In the last two decades someone, more than a few someones, chose to ghost me, ignore me, stop talking to me, for whatever reason. And since they never said why, I kept talking to them. Eventually that pissed them off enough to tell me why they now hated me. Well, I am going to deal with cancer that way too, keep fighting until there is nothing left but life or death. 

TO REVIEW OR NOT TO REVIEW ISN'T THE QUESTION

The kind people who contributed to this review materials in this blog are Mike Baron and Joe Monks. Both are friends but if I didn't like the works I would either not review them, or, I'd be honest about why I didn't find them to my taste. Just because my reviews or offerings seem positive predominantly does not mean I only like things. It does mean that I tend to feature or focus upon things that I think people would find of interest.

This edition of this blog isn't really any different than most, but I am cognizant of the facts that I might not have many more editions of it, if cancer interrupts my work. So, I have wanted to change up from Q&A or comics, even if that is what my audience seems to prefer. In this edition I am trying to expand my reach, and I am here thinking of doing a multi review blog of books with different genres, with recently purchased not solely new or used, from different genres. Whatever you might read, therefore, I am hoping that perhaps I might guide you to a good find.

BOOK 1
Genre Action/Adventure: 
Biker book 4, SONS OF BITCHES
by Mike Baron

Book 1 of the Biker series was reviewed here. And I liked it very much. Book 4 review below, with the image of book 4 shown above with the other books being considered. Josh Pratt is a private investigator and motorcyclist who works in a world of revenge seekers, vigilante justice, and most unexpectedly comic book art and Muslim outrage. 

In this book a woman creates and releases a comic book featuring the prophet Muhammed. The resulting outrage from extremists, mostly from outside the US. But her actions also lead to her need for a bodyguard. The other threat comes from within the United States, and from Americans, of the American left. The threats are one thing, but what lays at heart here is not freedom to write, however much it is a part of this. It isn't the threat of force to prevent one from speaking, a truth or even a lie. It really is about the decay of a society and modern civilization, where violence is used to frighten people from speaking truth, and boycotts and cancel culture act in accord to make others with different ideas either conform to the mainstream, or be exiled, unable to earn a living, unable to speak their own view. After all, if you have a view that you believe is true, who gives others the right to keep you from speaking it?

Mike Baron himself has experienced being canceled, not yet fully. I've not met Mike Baron in person. I can say, however right wing that people perceive him as being from outside the comics industry (this book is prose) in my 20 years of knowing him online and many email exchanges, whatever the topic, I've not seen him say the things people like him are said to think or say. I don't believe he holds back his true thoughts. If you saw him edit a work, all he cares about seems to be making a written work better than it is at the moment. In that, he seems to give not one F'k for your feelings. This book was very well written, and if the subject alone doesn't interest you, know that he tells a real, fully wrought story, with excellent dialogue, original thoughts, and the writing itself is damn near perfect.

BOOK 2
Horror/Splatterpunk:
EXACTLY THE WRONG THINGS
by Franklin E. Wales, Joseph M. Monks & Candace Nola

This is not a book for anyone with a sense of proper and polite, good winning over evil or anything like a sense of righteous or moral sensibilities. It takes a concept, that all the authors must begin with, then follows up with how each author tells their tale that "blossoms" from the seeds that it was begun with. I am not going to detail each or anything like offering the synopsis, because anything you start with here, is going to lead you to make assumptions, and the point of this book is to show how F'kd up things can progress, when the only rules are to begin with the same paragraph and proceed from there. Do I love it? Well I think from the premise it isn't meant to be loved, so no, but I definitely appreciated the premise and the offerings. Do I think that you the average reader will love it? I think what it does is done well, so perhaps if you enjoy works about serial killers or enjoy graphic violence or horror. Do I think you should buy it? If a horror fan, yes, absolutely. If you are looking for something with a happy ending? HELL No. But as a practice of how to tell a scary story, how to expand from a common or central thesis? Hell yes. I am aware that people all have different tastes, have different mindsets regarding how to tell a story and how to see the steps of how a writer follows a personal path of writing to deliver a work, however short or long, that is exactly what they intend. As an exercise, if you enjoy horror, I'd say this is pure horror, and something you won't forget, once reading.

BOOK 3
Fringe History:
THE SECOND MESSIAH
by Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas

This work is by two researchers/explorers/theorists of Freemason history and the odd paths it would take. They previous wrote works exploring the mysteries that form the backbone of the secret society of the Freemasons. I am not a big fan of the Freemasons, but mostly because people take a subject area I am highly interested in, the Templars, and force the ideas and practices of the Freemasons into it, falsely. The Templars were secretive, but anything but liars and vulgar practitioners of cultic and evil practices. Having said that, this work presents an actually clever and perhaps true theory. The Shroud of Turin was an artifact said by some to be the burial shroud of Christ. The Catholic church suggests it is miraculous not for the provenance of history showing it was the shroud for Christ, but that this clothes is marked, somehow with a ghost image of someone with looking like Christ, have suffered the wounds of Christ, and who, for the content of the work, has a known trail of control of who owned the work. I know a lot of the facts of the work, including dates of the threads being made, the fires in the chapel that might have changed the fact base, regarding the DNA or carbon 14 evidence of creation.

I don't know if I believe in the authenticity of the shroud or not but I do believe in Jesus Christ as a historical figure, and I am a believer in the spiritual aspects of his being. However these two authors make sure I'm to be less convinced that the image upon the shroud is an image of Christ. They take careful and manifestly engineered efforts to achieve a path of supposed facts, the setting upon which the events happened, and then slowly and rather convincingly show, the date of creation of the threads and provenance of owner ship really only show one thing. This is not a hoax of the Christ image. It isn't an image of Christ.

Quar nous navons volu ne volons le Temple mettre
en aucune servitute se non tant come il hy affiert

No, it is said to be not a hoax, but a similarly holy image of Jacques de Molay, the Templar grandmaster who was gruesomely tortured and then burned. This happened shortly after the Templars were broken apart, their monopoly upon money lending and financial stability destroyed, and the possible use of their quality of arms against a standing monarchy or any trek or quest by one or another private houses of trade or finance ended forever, sort of. I think that the writing of this is quite good, but I also believe Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas are likely wrong. It doesn't change the fact that the book is rather good, especially if you know the facts going in. I do recommend it, but not as a book of history nor of a book solving a standing mystery. It proposes theories that have a chance of being accurate.

BOOK 4
True Crime, Crime Drama, Noir:
THE BLACK DAHLIA
by James Ellroy

The true story of the killing of Beth Short, known by the press of her era as The Black Dahlia. She was called such for her attention to style and dress, her style of hair, and make up. She was living in public, but had very little life in private. She had to do many things to simply have a place to sleep at night.  The three best books about the Black Dahlia all have aspects of fiction and truth. That isn't in any way meant view any of the three best books are written to create a fabric of falsehood, or to create a narrative that lies about the life of Beth Short, the sadly imperfect Black Dahlia of media and the popular culture's imagination. This woman was kicked out of numerous homes, even of friends, she was forced to pawn beloved items, but never let the most important possessions out of her sight, the letters to the various war heroes and simple soldiers she longed to be wed to for life, and the ultimate house, two children, and proper existence, with admiration and adulation.

What James Ellroy has done, is not altogether something that anyone would want to do, nor do I think he did so for prurient or cynical purposes. He saw the Black Dahlia as the mother he lost, and by writing a fictional narrative, he tries to weave a story that makes sense of the the various strands of truth, and tie it together into a form that can stand the test of questioning and inspection. His writing is amazing, and the story he tells is compelling, but it doesn't seem to have proved the case, only asked more questions.  And worse, to some it seemed, and I disagree, that Ellroy cynically used his mother's tragic life as fodder for fiction. And that his own story was added, to create a layer of verisimilitude, a feel of truth, without it being true. Which is fiction, is a very powerful tool and talent to possess.

I've known someone and interviewed him and became friends with him, who might well have found the killer, discerned his motives, and nearly led the police to the capture. John Gilmore found someone almost perfect, and just like a perfect mystery, as the police were coming to inspect and interview the subject, he died, from smoke inhalation and burns from when a cigarette lit his bed afire, that also burned the evidence left that could prove the case.

Steve Hodel wrote a very solid work, about a man, his father, who well could have been the killed of Beth Short. James Ellroy even believed, for a while, that Hodel had perhaps named the proper suspect.  But when certain aspects of the story were expanded upon, the Hodel case proved flawed, and while his father was a terrible man, he might just have been an terrible man who didn't kill Beth Short, but killed many others, without being apprehended.

BOOK 5
Earth mysteries, History, Myth:
ATLANTIS
by Ignatius Donnelly, illustrated by Gustave Dore

There is a thought that the world that existed before our current, extremely modern world, the ancient prehistory time existed with some level of sophistication, but... The world of today ignores much of what was known, forgets what was found, and argues over times, whether there is a difference between 12000 years ago, and even 5000 years ago, or more. My suggestion, and that of Donnelly, is that for whatever disaster that destroyed Atlantis, there was a higher form of sophisticated knowledge in the deeper past, than the more recent past. His was not a thesis based upon science, truly, but of observation of artifacts, evidence, and basic knowledge making less sense than the myths and legends that were claimed by the non-science thinkers. Donnelly wasn't correct, but like the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky, based on observation rather than pure science, there are reasons for the arguments of Donnelly that have some basis for belief.

If the society of Atlantis existed and fled the disaster, wherever they fled to, would have the benefit of the advanced ideas of Atlantis. Lost ages of technology could EASILY have happened. The concept of sophisticated ancients suggests aliens, well, that ignores something much more likely, a branch of humanity that somehow learned new ideas suffers from a natural disaster, and spreads in a vast diaspora, fertilizing each distinct people with seeds of intellectual advancement. This book is beautiful and rather interesting, but like most books that offer a proposal of new ideas, it is at least important to consider the points that were valid and interesting. Gustave Dore's art was alone in his day, excellent and beyond the typical imagination.

END NOTES:
I usually find myself writing months and months ahead of schedule. But losing my sister in January 2022 began a slow down in my work. Having health issues that turned out to not only be painful and real, began at a point in fact when I'd stopped using any meds for pain, stopped drinking any alcohol, and refused to seek advice from doctors who suggested I was imagining my pain. A single scan from that doctor would have shown what was later found 6 -7 months later. But before that happened, I thought I broke a second rib, the pain felt like a knife in my back. Due to what the previous doctor said, I avoided seeking help. And in the end of December 2022 upon a trip to help my son find his forever fur friend, in Ohio, I learned that my brother died. He was perhaps not a perfect person, and neither am I, but I will miss him for as long as I exist.

But while I went through being told I had stage 3 lymphoma and possible other killer things, I did not.  I had something I'll discuss further later, when I know things.  While this was written as one of the last three I would write, it isn't.  I am not dying, yet.

LINKS:

My 5000 poem Blog AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com
 
Cthulhu Alien Horrors CthulhuDarkness.Blogspot.Com

Atlantis & Lost Worlds AlexNessLostWorlds.Blogspot.Com
My Published Work  AlexNessPoetry.Blogspot.Com/2007/01/My-Work.html

All images are copyright © their respective owners, use is simply as fair use and no ownership rights asserted.