David Dubrow

Author

RIP, Peder Lund

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Peder Lund (L) and Lee Morrison (R)

For about twelve years I was employed by Paladin Press, a mail-order publishing company in Boulder, Colorado. The stories I could tell, from my unorthodox job interview to my departure on a cold December morning before 6:00 AM could fill a book. A book few people would want to read, so I won’t put anyone through the experience of it. Nevertheless, I did work for what was called “The most dangerous publisher in America” for quite some time, and lived on the bleeding edge of First (and Second) Amendment issues long before today’s crop of free-speech warriors graced the nascent pages of the internet.

Paladin’s early history can be found here.

I recently learned that Peder Lund, Paladin Press’s owner and publisher, died in Finland on June 3.

He was generous and a good man to work for. Few people have TV movies made about their business.

Rest in peace, Peder.

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Twitter Is the Worst Thing Ever Devised

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Actually, social media is the worst thing ever devised. Twitter’s just the ugliest side of it. The seething, malignant id of the internet.

I’ve talked about Facebook many times in this space, and my having quit it has made a marked improvement in both my mood and productivity. However, to do a true cleanse, a social media high colonic, the next step would be to quit Twitter.

Like everything, Twitter is what you make of it. My Twitter is an unmitigated horror, because it involves the two non-family things that I spend the most amount of mental real estate on: politics/current events and writing. So my abhorrence of Twitter is my own fault: I choose what to see and what not to see. It’s the mirror of my worst self.

Writer Twitter is a cesspit of indie/self-published book advertisements, writing tips given free of charge by people who can’t write, memes/cartoons about writing Retweeted by people who love the hashtag #writerslife, left-wing political hot takes, and J.K. Rowling quotes. For some, it’s Heaven. For others, it’s a thing to be endured on one’s way to social media-fueled publishing stardom. For the rest of us, we unhappy few, it’s Hell. If you’re lucky you’ll meet some nice people to talk shop with, particularly if/when you get off Twitter and go to a less communication-hostile medium. Genre fiction Twitter, such as horror Twitter or sci-fi Twitter, isn’t much different except that it has more Stephen King quotes.

Political Twitter is far, far worse. Imagine an unflushed convenience store toilet five miles past an all-you-can-eat fried chicken restaurant. The hot takes are the worst: snarky quote-lets designed to make both reader and writer feel superior to the issue being commented upon. At 140 characters, that’s pretty much what Twitter’s made for. That and online slap-fights where nobody’s mind is changed, no relevant information is transferred, and everybody walks away having owned one’s opponent. If you’re popular enough you’ll get an audience of like-minded people who appreciate the time and effort you took to Tweet that sick burn off Donald Trump with the proper hashtag. That your time was utterly wasted is of no moment: you stood up for your side and put the other guy/gal in his/her/xer place.

You want to know what’s worse than both of these flavors of Twitter? When they mix. The combination of politics and genre fiction is one short step above the approving Retweets of jihadist beheading videos. Every minute of every day you’ll see no-talent hacks nobody’s ever heard of Tweeting hot takes like, “If you believe in X, unfollow me right now,” as if they’re the universe’s gift to ethics. Your political stance doesn’t make you more ethical than anyone else: it’s what you do that makes you ethical. Hard to hear in the era of internet slacktivism, but someone had to break it to you. Very, very few people can write both fiction and political commentary with any degree of insight, original thinking, or competence. Despite their popularity, neither Rowling nor King, both political activists, are worth reading outside of their respective fictional spheres. Stay in your lanes, guys. You don’t have it. You never did.

When I see someone with many thousands of followers and tens of thousands of Tweets, I see someone who’s underemployed. Political pundits can’t help it: they have to Tweet or they’ll die. The world has to know what they think about everything in 140 characters or fewer. Writers have to approvingly Retweet Stephen King’s latest broadside against Donald Trump; the King of Horror might notice them and lift them up out of undeserved obscurity. And what’s the point of being virtuous if nobody sees it?

Got me, man. I’m off to check my mentions.

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Writing Updates

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I’m three short chapters away from completing the first draft of the third book in the Armageddon trilogy. It’s a massively difficult task to bring everything together in a way that satisfyingly completes both character and story arcs, which is why it’s taking so long. And the first draft is so horrible I’m not even sure I can bring myself to look at it to work on a second draft. As we say in the video business, “We’ll fix it in post.” Anyway, the end is in sight. The story of angels, demons, psychics, Nephilim, witches, and ordinary people living in extraordinary times is drawing to a close. The series titles in order are:

After this series, I’ve got tentative plans for a more traditional Urban Fantasy series. And, perhaps, something more science fiction-oriented.

Because I don’t have enough to do, I’m also contributing to a short story anthology. This is a collaboration effort with another writer, and will focus on near-future science fiction along the lines of my short story Hold On. Stories about next week as opposed to next year, focusing on the cultural and social changes we’ve instituted, and where they might lead. Plus some very strange stuff I’m really looking forward to writing. You want to be entertained? Provoked? Amused? Horrified? It’s in there. More details will become available when we’ve got the foundations laid a bit better.

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Evergreen: Memorial Day 2015

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Two years ago I wrote this:

American Exceptionalism is an acknowledgment that, of all the countries that sprang up before it, the United States is the exception in human history.  The framers of the U.S. Constitution were brilliant, learned men.  They’d studied the great philosophers like Charles de Montesquieu, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes, and adopted the principles learned from them into the Constitution. They enshrined in this country’s founding documents first and foremost the God-given rights of the individual. They deliberately limited their own power to govern despite the blood they’d personally shed to achieve liberty from England’s tyranny*. That’s different. That’s the exception.  That’s what’s exceptional.  Prior to the founding of the U.S., the vast majority of human beings were born under tyranny, even slavery.

It’s still relevant. Read the entire post.

Saying, “Happy Memorial Day” never seemed right, considering what we’re commemorating, so I’m glad my family and I were able to go to the Curlew Hills Memory Gardens for a beautiful and moving ceremony. Every other day of the year, gratitude is a difficult attitude to maintain. Today, however, it’s a necessity.

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MRE Experiment: Menu 12

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My son and I like to watch science experiments on YouTube, like the Backyard Scientist channel and the Crazy Russian Hacker channel. Lately, the Crazy Russian Hacker has been filming the unpacking and consumption of MREs that people mail him from around the world. (MRE stands for Meal Ready to Eat. For more information on military chow in the field, click here.) It’s fascinating to see these military food kits, particularly the ones that include breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We like to get out and do things we see on video, within reason. Including science experiments. As I don’t have a 25-pound Gummy Bear and a bunch of M-80s to ram up its poop chute, let alone a slow-motion camera to capture what happens when it explodes, I figured the next best thing would be to acquire an MRE myself so we could see what was in it and how it tasted. Unlike the men and women in the United States military, we’re doing this in ease and air conditioning; we’re not fooling ourselves into thinking we’re roughing it in any fashion. The MRE I got is Meal 12: Penne With Vegetable Sausage Crumbles in Spicy Tomato Sauce.

Everything came in this one package. Note the helpful description on the front.

 

Clockwise from top left: non-dairy creamer, sugar, chewing gum, instant coffee, salt, Tabasco sauce

 

Clockwise from left: heating kit, matches, toilet paper, wet wipe, hot beverage container, spoon

 

Clockwise from top left: nut raisin mix, lemon-lime drink powder, penne with vegetable crumbles in sauce, white wheat snack bread, energy bar, chocolate peanut spread

[Read more…]

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My Triumphant Return to Facebook

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It’s never happening. Please forgive the clickbait title.

I quit Facebook a year ago, and my reasons why haven’t changed: it’s a terrible waste of time; it encourages jealousy, pettiness, and negativity; what you post there is used by Facebook to manipulate you; and Facebook’s editorial stance is entirely at odds with my values. While I do miss occasional family updates, friends’ pictures, and the pride of showing my friends what my wife and son are doing, the cons significantly outweigh the pros.

Yes, I have my website link to Facebook when I have a new blog post, but that’s me using Facebook rather than it using me. I still maintain that nobody gets rich off of Facebook ads, but even if they did, there’s no way on God’s green Earth that I’ll give my money to Facebook.

I moderate my use of Twitter with an electronic timer. My daily Twitter allotment is 20 minutes a day, though I haven’t gone past 12 minutes since I began timing myself. Sitting there, scrolling through the feed, is exactly like looking at Facebook, just with shorter posts and more hostility. Between the endless book advertisements from the same rapacious hack authors and the blistering political hot takes retweeted from a thousand bleating opinion sites, it’s digital noise. No, scratch that: it’s digital cacophony.

Oh, I still kibbitz with my Twitter buddies and enjoy seeing what they’re saying and doing. But more time spent on Twitter means less time working, reading, or being with family. We used to say that TV rots your brain. Social media rots your brain now. And it doesn’t make you feel good afterward.

I communicate with about 3 or 4 people on Google Plus, so it’s worth keeping. It has actually become my favorite social media platform. I’m in, I talk to friends, I read content, I’m out.

When I consider that few of the people I admire and want to emulate post a lot on social media, I realize that it’s a bad place to use what minutes I have on this planet to achieve my goals, whatever they may be.

My friend David Angsten, a terrific, thoughtful writer, titled his blog Be Here Now. Isn’t being here now the way to go? And doesn’t social media deny that by making us spectators in our own lives? David’s right: be here now.

It’s where I’m trying to stay. I hope you’ll join me.

We still have telephones and email addresses. We can talk and write letters and visit each other and maintain friendships the way we used to.

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