This is my lawn. You know what to do.

Is it a sure sign that I'm getting old when I blog more about crotchety-old-man topics than anything else? I need to get out more. Maybe I need to join a band (again) and, you know, leave the house, interact with adults. Stuff like that. Or I can put on my headphones and write more.

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First off in Old Man JD's craw today: changes in the TSA's rules of security theater.

A few months back, a guy who works for the Campaign for Liberty (formerly the Ron Paul presidential campaign) was trying to get through airport security when he was stopped, sequestered, harassed, threatened and, eventually, let go. The reason? He was carrying a lot of cash (which just happened to be campaign contributions, but that was none of the TSA's business). This type of thing, I'm sure, happens a lot since 9/11--the TSA was made into a pseudo Federal police force with no oversight. The reason it made news this time was that:

1. Being part of the Campaign for Liberty, this guy takes his constitutional rights seriously, and asserted them repeatedly, much to the TSA agents' confusion; and
2. He turned on his iPhone audio recording app once he was taken aside, and posted the entire 30 minute ordeal on the internet. Priceless.

Anyway, the ACLU filed suit on his behalf, and the TSA admitted that they did not have the right to engage in search and seizure outside of their duties to keep dangerous materials off of planes. A small win for liberty, but these days you have to take what you can get.

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The longer I live in Las Vegas, the more it seem like a big wasteland. I think I have a full article to write on that topic, but here is my Vegas Rant of the Day™:

I'm walking my dog, and notice that the street near my house--a typical Las Vegas road with 8 foot high block walls on either side--had a lot of new graffiti. Across the street was a man of about 50 going to town with a spray can, painting squiggles, squares, and random marks. It was white paint--same color as the graffiti, and definitely not the original color of the wall. I crossed the street to confront him.

I came up behind him and asked "What the fuck are you doing?" It's important to note here that I've spent my entire life being a socially awkward numb nut, and I see no signs of that trend abating. For some reason, he didn't take to that very kindly to my greeting. I can't imagine why.

In a thick accent that seemed to be Eastern European, he replied: "What the hell does it look like?" He puffed up, walked over, and looked, for a moment, like he wanted to square off with me. Not that I look intimidating, but he apparently decided that fisticuffs in the middle of the street with a 215 lb jackass and a 70 lb Malamute didn't sound productive, and he went back to work. "I'm covering up graffiti," he continued. "Are you trying to be a smartass?"

I took a step back to re-assess his work. It just looked like a bunch of squiggles. But, I decided, it was possible--probable even--that there was more graffiti underneath and that he was doing exactly what he said he was. It looked like shit, and was obviously intended to spite the taggers more than to mask the graffiti itself, but, I figured, at least he's trying (I've done the same on my street, but I, at least, tried to match the goddamn color of the painted surface). I bit my tongue as hard as I could and continued my walk. I even wrote his license number down, but decided later that reporting him to the graffiti hotline would be nothing more than Old Man JD being vindictive and petty, just because we had a misunderstanding.

I guess what I did there was I delineated graffiti-as-vandalism from graffiti-as-reclamation. And, apparently, I've decided that the latter is OK. I'm still not totally sure about all of that, but I guess that can be filed under "picking your battles".

In my mind, it all just adds to the large-scale ghetto vibe of Las Vegas. The kids tag the neighborhood, the "good guys" (there aren't quotation marks big enough to contain my sarcasm) almost come to blows over it, and I'm unsure if I'm part of the problem, the solution, or just standing around watching it all go to hell.

Like I said, I have a whole bag of rant about Las Vegas...more on that another day.

Wise Man Says: A Finger In the Nose is Not the Nose

I'm just shy of 40k on my WIP, working title of "Amity". I'm procrastinating starting writing for the night, because I have to get up from my chair in about 10 minutes and make dinner. Just enough time to blog.

This story is different than anything I've written, and different than anything I've read. It looks at a subversive community--a real community, mind you--and, as such, uses a lot of the extremely non-PC, offensive language of this group. My fear--other than it will never see the light of day because it sucks--is that it doesn't suck entirely but nobody will publish it because of said offensive language. I've also considered that it will get published, and that the people that this group mocks make a big deal out of it. It's not the worst thing published, by any means--think of, maybe, American History X or Brokeback Mountain, and the language that an antagonist would need to use to develop the persona of a, well, a hateful prick. It's that kind of colloquial banter. I'm wondering about potentially alienating an audience right out of the starting gate. But, that's definitely cart-before-horse. I need to finish the damn thing first.

Does it seem obvious that the writing is not the writer, or do you just draw that connection automatically that, for example, based only on the works and not interviews, etc, that Annie Proulx is sympathetic to gays, or Chuck Palahniuk is an anarchist, or Ayn Rand is hyper-conservative, or Dan Brown is an iconoclast, or Hunter Thompston was, well, whatever the fuck Hunter Thompson was?

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My copy of Barry Napier's Debris just arrived. I have been very neglectful of my reading and still need to knock out my current book, but I'll probably put that one next on the pile.

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"...cast vicariously as both victim and villain... "

    Remember, remember the fifth of November,
    The gunpowder treason and plot,
    I know of no reason
    Why the gunpowder treason
    Should ever be forgot.

Today, of course, is the Night of Bonfires in Britain.

Maybe those in the UK understand it more, but I think that most Americans have culled their knowledge of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot from the comic and later movie "V for Vendetta". It strikes me that for most people, at least outside of the UK and Ireland, the ongoing battle between Protestants and Catholics doesn't get much spin time in the front part of the mind.

The reason Guy Fawkes day is so romanticized, I suspect, is the same as for Bastille Day in France and the commemoration of the Boston Tea Party (and, of course, Independence Day) in the states: the religious connotation is secondary--if even that--to the idea of throwing off ones oppressors, aggregating as a people and sticking it to the overlords. It's the reason people show up to Presidential town hall meetings with Colt .45s strapped to their legs, why hordes of anonymous protesters can coordinate via the internet with no clear leadership structure and show up en masse to call attention to some perceived (or real) injustice, and, in a more groupthink but subtle manner, the reason why every other (or third) election cycle brings in the opposition party--we're sick of "their" shit and want to give the underdogs a chance (we tend to forget that once someone is elected, they automatically and without exception become "them").

So, even though it has nothing to do with my country, per se, and that I couldn't possibly be any more against justifying violence in the name of religion, tonight I will raise a glass of some kind of viscous alcoholic beverage in salute to our friends across the Atlantic, and to those across the globe and within our borders who continually remind us that an unchecked government is a corrupt government.

Here's to the Night of Bonfires.

Halloween 2009 Pic Dump

Not much to say on this that readers of this blog don't already know...yesterday was a crazy Halloween adventure. It took me 2 full days to set up the garage haunt, and I'm sure it will take me most of today to clean it up (if I can stop procrastinating and get out there). We didn't count but I'm sure we had at least 300 visitors, maybe 350. It was fun...everything worked, no props failed. The only real disappointments were the Pepper's Ghost (it is sooo hard to get that illusion right...maybe next year), I ran out of red dye for the fountain (which also leaked, but not until we were ready to close shop) and my costume. As usual, I threw it together at the last minute after working in the garage all day, and it kind of sucked. Also, not to self: when you have a complex, somewhat fragile haunt to manage in the dark, don't wear a prosthetic that covers one of your eyes. That was just dumb. I kept knocking stuff over lurking around behind the scenes to adjust the fogger, manage cords, etc.

So, without further ado, a photo and video dump:

"Lobby" of the garage (daytime)


Hanging Pepper's Ghost (notice the ghost image and my reflection in the glass)



Notice the Bone Collector over my shoulder in mid-lightning flash


This one reminds of of Silence of the Lambs






Kind of a cool minimilast shot of the skull from Pepper's Ghost floating through the air


And two vids: the first one is standard def with normal lighting, so it's kind of hard to see everything


Second is a full walkthrough with my HD camerca, once in daytime, once in infrared (I think you can click on the video to see it in HD).

Garage Haunt Walkthrough from Jeremy D Brooks on Vimeo.

Fright Dome

Less than one week until Halloween--Hallowe'-en, short for All Hallows Evening, the celebration of the night before the old Pagan celebration of All Saints' Day (later co-opted by Pope Gregory III, who, in Papal tradition, sought to divert attention to his deity by moving the Catholic All Saints' Day from May to November 1); also known as Samhain, from the Gaelic word for summer's end--a celebration of the end of the light, fruitful days of summer, and the beginning of the lonely, scarce days of winter's darkness.

Last night there was a zombie walk down on Fremont Street; I unfortunately had to take a pass on that, but I'm very anxious to hear how it went (I suspect Mercedes will blog it). The reason I missed was entrapment--my daughters got caught in the kind of dramatic turmoil of which only school age kids are capable; and, long story short, I should know better than to let schoolkids coordinate events without close oversight, and the only way for me to keep my weeks-old promise to my daughters to make sure they get to Fright Dome this year was to take them myself.

So...anyway, the thing I really wanted to talk about was Fright Dome. If you've ever been to Las Vegas, Fright Dome is built inside of the Adventure Dome at Circus Circus. (note: I couldn't find any good pictures of FrightDome in action...I suspect the fog makes photography almost impossible).

If you've never been to Las Vegas, let me 'splain what this is, so you can get an idea of the coolness of this thing: imagine a glass-shrouded dome about the size of a small football stadium. Inside of the dome is an amusement park, including a roller coaster, water ride (a la Disney's Splash Mountain), 6 or 7 big carny-style rides, a midway, video games, kiddie rides, concessions, and sideshows, all anchored in the center by a massive faux-stone mountain.

Every October, that park takes on a new life as Fright Dome, a massive haunted village that is only open at night. The Circus Circus takes that amusement park and turns off all of the lights, fills it with thick fog, adds lightning/thunder generators, laser light shows, stobes, and high-end Halloween decorations: pneumatic monsters, flying demons, echoing screams filling the dome. That alone is pretty cool, but that's just the beginning.

They close down a few areas, like the laser tag maze and some of the winding caverns underneath the mountain, and construct five large, elaborate haunted houses. This year they did a licensing deal with the producers of Saw, and had a haunt called Jigsaw's Revenge, complete with live actors and electronic/pneumatic props acting out torture scenes from the movies. Very cool. There was also a hillbilly maze, a haunted hospital, and a couple others.

Roaming the haunts and the hallways in between are dozens of actors in makeup, whose sole purpose is to scare the hell out of guests. The overall theme is evil clowns, but they also had hooded hillbillys with chainsaws (real, but no chain attached), mad scientists, popular baddies like Jason, Mike Meyers, etc, flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz, and dozens of generally weird characters.

In all it was fun--I loved the creepy ambiance of seeing big rides like Chaos and The Inverter running in the dark, their signage lights barely visible through the fog, and the packs of kids running and screaming while being chased by a green-haired clown with a chainsaw. The waits were killer, though...about 40-50 minutes on some haunts, which wasn't fun. Also, I was probably amongst the seven oldest people in the building, security guards included.

As much as it sucked missing the Zombie Walk, the kids had a good time, and I can say that I've done the Fright Dome. Finally.

Poltergeist IV: Cable Guy

In keeping with our (well, OK...my) October tradition, my Netflix queue is stacked with horror movies. Last night was the BluRay release of Poltergeist. I gotta say, that movie really stands up well. I'm sure they did some remastering for BluRay, but it looked great, the story was good, and it was just a well-built movie.

I haven't seen it since the theatrical release (I was in 3rd grade, I think), and I remember not sleeping well for the next 3 days. Poltergeist, I think, is responsible for my propensity to put scary-ass clowns in my stories. It's interesting how different parts of a movie resonate with you as an adult, as opposed to the same movie watched as a child, how the family and children become more your concern than the safety of the adults--especially since Carol Anne was a dead-ringer for my oldest daughter when she was five.

Also, watching Craig T Nelson smoke pot while reading a book about Reagan's greatness was funny.

I'm a data fiend, and after I watch a movie I will almost always hit the IMDB to see what the actors have done recently, where they got started, and useless trivia about the movie. I knew that the little girl who played Carol Anne died during the third Poltergeist (mis-diagnosed medical condition), but I didn't realize that the actress who played the older sister was murdered by her boyfriend right after the movie was finished. Tragic. The guy served I think 6.5 years. Also tragic. Both of them are interred near each other in the same cemetery.

Anyway, I think my wife gets the next movie in the queue, and then I get one more scary flick before Halloween: Creepshow.

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No idea why, but this My Chemical Romance song (Helena) has been stuck in my head for days. I had to track down the video. If you've never seen it, take a look. The song is very hooky and over-produced, but it tells kind of a catchy story. Also, the video is stunning.

My Chemical Romance "Helena" from Cinelicious on Vimeo.

Free Speech, Protected Actions

I don't want to use this blog as a political platform, per se. My primary purpose here is to connect with writers and readers and those who appreciate literature in all genres, be it Faulkner's immersive southern plantations or Tolkein's hobbit-holes and dead marshes or Herbert's spice-scented political landscapes, or even Sam Harris' biting secular lectures or the DT Suzuki's wonderful insights into Zen Buddhism.

The topic of anti-blasphemy legislation and special protections for religious groups has been coming up quite a bit recently, and, regardless of where I stand on that topic philosophically, it can--and will--impact literature sooner or later. Hence this essay.

Caitlin Kiernan tweeted this article earlier today, and I RT'd it in kind. It is an Op/Ed from USA Today columnist Jonathan Turley (also, a more measured analysis from The Desmoines Register) that gives an overview of a UN resolution co-authored by the US and Egypt regarding religious protection: "...the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any "negative racial and religious stereotyping.") Read that last part again and see if your head has exploded: Egypt, not exactly known for human rights or religious tolerence, has co-authored a resolution with the U.S. (home of Larry Flynt, Scientology, and adopted homeland of Ayn Rand) to define the international stance on free speech and religious protections. And it doesn't seem to be a let's-synthesize-our-ideas thing, it looks to be more of a concession on behalf of the US for whatever political reason.

The resolution, as I understand it, doesn't really have teeth, in that it carries no punitive measures and no body of enforcement (if I'm incorrect, please tell me). But, this has to be taken into context; in the last few years, we've seen violence, murder, and attempts of both done in the name of religion (the fatwah against author Salman Rushdie, the UK riots against Denmark for cartoon depictions of Muhammad, parents who refuse their sick children healthcare because their religion prohibits it, child marriage and abuse in the name of a person claiming they have been appointed as a diety's representative on earth). And that doesn't even take into consideration the "sanctioned" violence in the name of religion: Pakistan v India, Israel v Palestine, Ireland v N Ireland). If you take away people's ability to discuss the hows and whys of bad things like violence and war and crime within context, you kill the discussion before it has even started and you, to some extent, legitimize the activities.

I am not positing that violence is the domain of religion, nor that there is necessarily causation therein. I will say, though, that history has shown that a person or group with the inclination to violence or general nefas often have no problem doing it under the flag of piety. And the reason they do that, I submit, is that religion is given special protections against things that would often be seen as illegal, immoral, or objectionable if done outside of the realm of those protections.

There are oh-so-many reasons that giving religions--any religion--international standing as protected from derision or criticism is a horrible, horrible idea. Not the least of which is the potential for abuse of the "privilege", iterations of which I'm sure any of you could conjure up in horrifying detail.

But, let's take the very American (I can't profess to speak for my friends in the UK, Australia, Candada, etc) staple: Freedom of Speech--the very cornerstone of the Constitution, the first amendment added to the Bill of Rights in 1791. How can the concepts of "not criticizing religion" be synthesized with the Bill of Rights? I submit that it can't, not without outright destroying that document and all it stands for.

Criticize a Christ Scientist for letting their child die because insulin is not allowed? Out.
Protest a Scientology office? Out.
Make a joke about the Pope's funny hat collection? Out.
Debate creationism vs evolution? Out.

All horrible things to lose the ability to do. Not reduced privileges--eliminated rights.

Now, take that into consideration how this affects you, the author/reader. For this, I employ gross O'Reilly/Olbermann-style hyperbole. Why? Because it drives home the point of where this, unchecked, leads.

First of all, put Dan Brown's ass in jail, tout de suite. Salman Rushdie must be extradited to the U.S. and turned over to his accusers. Neil Gaiman, who is in China this month, may just want to stay there (between American Gods, Anansi Boys, and Good Omens, he may only be facing 10-15 if he behaves). Rand is lucky that she's already passed, she'd be first against the wall.

/End hyperbole.

If you care, what can you do? I don't know. I'm not an activist. But, a few places to start may be the Comic Book Defense Fund, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and American Civil Liberties Union...I'm sure there are plenty more places out there you can talk to. I'm not sure what they can/would do, but harrassing your Congresscritters is ALWAYS a good idea. Do NOT let these folks off easy (not just on this topic--ANY topic).

Most importantly, I think, is for all of us to be aware of the discussions that are taking place, and how they affect all of us, and make sure that the people around you are aware as well. It isn't enough to just say "hate speech should be prohibited". If the PATRIOT act and DMCA taught us anything, it is that overly general laws can, and will, be abused by somebody to violate existing law and rule. And such laws tear through skin and attach their sucking tendrils at the bone, and will not be removed.

So, that's my rant. Apologies to anyone offended or bored, but that's what is on my mind today.