Who's Behind the Tea Party?

On Thursday, September 16, 2010, I heard a very interesting discussion about the Tea Party movement on NPR. Click here to listen to it yourself.

In the segment, Morning Edition anchor Steve Inskeep talked with two supporters of the Tea Party about what the movement stands for, and he got two very different responses.

Ms. Toby Marie Walker, lead facilitator for the Waco Tea Party, believes the Tea Party movement should focus on fiscal responsibility in government. TEA supposedly stands for Taxed Enough Already, so one could infer that the Tea Party's primary purpose is to reduce taxes and control spending in the national government. Ms. Walker seemed to think that was the most important issue for Tea Party supporters to focus on.

The original tea party, you may recall, was an action taken in 1773 by colonists in Boston who resented paying taxes to the British government. Remember the slogan from the Revolutionary War, "No taxation without representation"?

According to Wikipedia, the current movement began when Graham Makohoniuk made a post online suggesting that people mail a tea bag to Congressfolk who voted in favor of a federal government bailout intended to keep the shaken economy from completely collapsing.

From that simple suggestion grew a movement that now boasts several national organizations or coalitions that promote local chapters and events. In some cases, they are also pushing the agendas of particular parties or politicians. That's my opinion based on the little bit I've heard about the organization and what I've been reading today on their websites.

The media continues to refer to the Tea Party as a grassroots movement, but I believe it's grown beyond that. One example: the California-based Tea Party Express was founded by a political action committee run by Republicans, a fact I found in an article on Salon.com.

The Tea Party Express website doesn't say anything about who runs the organization. Neither does the Tea Party Patriots website. It disturbs me when a website (political or otherwise) doesn't say who is behind it. Is it run by paid staff members or volunteers? Where are these people located? How can organizers (paid or volunteer) be reached, outside of filling out a generic contact form on the site? This kind of identity opaqueness is a red flag for me.

Moving on, the Tea Party organizations that name their intentions all seem to focus on the same issues. Here's one national organization's mission statement, as presented on http://www.teapartypatriots.org: "The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets."

This brings me to the other guest on NPR, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer. He says the Tea Party should stand for everything that the Founding Fathers set down in the Constitution. In his mind, the phrase pledging "that among these rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" means the Founding Fathers were against abortion and gay marriage.

Oh, but wait. That's not from the Constitution. That's from a different document, the Declaration of Independence. If the phrase were in the Constitution, or if one chooses to include the Declaration as part of the Constitution for some reason, I could see how someone could use the right-to-life phrase as an argument against abortion, even though, "In early post-Revolution America, abortion, at least early in pregnancy, was neither prohibited nor uncommon." That's from Constitutional Law professor Lawrence Tribe's book, "Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes." It seems to me that granting the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" would do more to support the legality of gay marriage. Shouldn't any American have the freedom to pursue happiness by marrying whomever he or she pleases?

BOTTOM LINE

I believe that the grassroots beginnings of the Tea Party movement allowed common citizens to express their opinions on the proposed corporate bailout to their elected representatives. The Tea Party name has now been adopted by fundamentalist right-wing extremists who are surreptitiously using it to pretend a more wide-spread adoption of the same rhetoric they've been spouting for years.

The religious right and the Republican Party have the right to believe and say whatever they want. That right is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1. However, they should do that openly, not in secret behind the name of a true grassroots movement that has now, by and large, become a tool for political deception.

Star Wars Saved My Life

This past Monday, I drove my mom up to her cabin in Mansfield, Indiana. As we were passing through Huntsville, Alabama, I saw a billboard advertising a Star Wars exhibit at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center and immediately started making plans to stop by for a visit on my way home. (Left, the poster that saved my life!)

EXHIBIT CLOSED

On Tuesday, we went into the "big city" of Brazil, Indiana, and while mom was shopping, I got my internet fix using the free WiFi at McDonald's (thanks, Ronald!). I looked up the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, and to my extreme disappointment, the exhibit had ended eight days earlier. Eight days. ::sigh::

THE FORCE IS WITH ME

On Wednesday, I was driving home, south on Interstate 65, and I saw a sign for a rest stop up ahead. "Next Rest Area 81 Miles" it said. Hmmm. Better stop for a potty break. Then I saw one of those electronic signs typically used around construction zones, and it said "REST AREA CLOSED." Great. Then the words changed to say "TO TRUCKS." Okay, then, I'm in a passenger vehicle. I can still stop. Wonderful.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I could see why the truck area was closed. It was filled with law enforcement vehicles, primarily trucks hauling trailers and those large "mobile command center" vehicles. I could see the top of a boat behind one of the trailers. A law enforcement helicopter was swooping by overhead.

Oh, dear. It's not going into a heavy drive period like a holiday weekend, so it's probably not one of those demos for the TV news where they kick off a safety initiative. Hmmm.

While I was inside, I spotted a poster for the now closed-and-moved-on Star Wars exhibit, so I stopped by the desk and asked the staff member if - since the exhibit is definitely over - could I have the poster. While the very nice Mr. G. Knox hunted for tools to detach the frame from the wall, I wandered about the small area looking at the posted map (222 miles to Pensacola), and I overheard someone say that the LEO were out in force because of some kind of chase. One traveler mentioned that he'd heard something about it on the CB, but they were headed south, implying - or at least I inferred - that the chase was happening in the northbound lanes.

When Mr. Knox handed me the poster. I thanked him and walked out the door.

AVOIDING AN ACCIDENT

And that's when the law enforcement vehicles took off. Woosh, woosh, woosh, one after the other. I hung out by my car, tried my cell phone and realized that it didn't actually charge while it was plugged in overnight (probably because it was pre-occupied with trying to find a non-existent signal in Mansfield), considered taking out my camera to take action shots of the chopper swooping low over the now-backed-up lanes of traffic. The last LEO vehicles pulled out and the stopped traffic started moving, so I figured I'd just go on.

Traffic was moving along well, and then it stopped. All those LEO were lined up along one lane of traffic, while traffic crept by. News trucks from Montgomery channels 8 & 12 were set-up on the side of the road by what appeared to be an accident. Here's the CBS 8 report on what happened:



And a report on the accident from WSFA 12:



Once past that scene, traffic opened back up. I noticed more people pulled over for the next hour or so, so I guess as long as all the law enforcement was in the area, they were racking up a few tickets. I also noticed streams of LEO heading north again, including that boat plus an airboat. All for a guy wanted on domestic violence charges?! Doesn't make sense.

Then I found another report at Channel 12 WSFA:



The proliferation of LEO vehicles was not related to the chase, although I suppose everyone was ready to help if needed.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

The thing that gets me is, if I hadn't pulled off in the rest area and waited that extra few minutes for the poster, I might have been in the middle of this chase. They couldn't use that electronic sign to warn drivers to clear the road? An innocent civilian now has damage to her car and thankfully she's okay, but whatever she was supposed to do Wednesday afternoon was blown, and she'll be dealing with the aftermath of this accident for weeks, explaining to her insurance and having to get repairs done. None of it had to happen, if drivers could have been warned.

I should have won.

I followed the rules, as far as I can tell. I tweeted about the Geek Twins giveaway. I posted on Facebook. I blogged. I included links to everything that I did. I earned 11 points, as you can see. The two posters with the most points were to win a free download of the Star Wars fandom documentary Jedi Junkies.

The person with the most points, 62, got 50 bonus points for being featured in the documentary's trailer.

The person who took second place had 8 points.

My post has shown up on the site. When I first posted, I got a message that it had to be approved by the moderator.

The post announcing the winners is dated Monday August 9, but it's not time-stamped.

Supposedly the contest ended at midnight MT on August 9.

The only thing I can figure, unless the site owner just has it out for me personally or something, is that by midnight, they meant 12:01am MT, which would have been 1:01am CT, and I didn't post until Monday night, because I was thinking that by midnight they meant more like 11:59pm on Monday.

I am quite devastated.

Jedi Junkies Giveaway

I'm a big fan of Star Wars, and I suppose about 20 years ago if someone had made a documentary like "Jedi Junkies," I might have been in it. I'm still interested in seeing it, and I'm trying to win a copy from the Geek Twins blog. You can, too. There's still a little time to enter. Head on over to Geek Twins now for your chance.

Film Review: Predators

THE FRANCHISE SO FAR

Back in 1987, I really enjoyed the movie Predator, the original film about a race of warrior aliens who home to Earth on hunting expeditions. Their prey is an elite military team on a covert rescue mission. The Predator kills the team members one by one, but it is ultimately defeated by the team leader, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The sequel, set in present day Los Angeles, pitted the Predator against rival drug cartels and LAPD officers. It's a much more convoluted story and not as well done as the first film.

The less said about the two Alien V. Predator movies, the better.

A FRESH APPROACH TO THE SAME IDEA

As in the original film, Predators pits a group of humans against alien hunters. In this film, the group of trained soldiers and experienced killers are dropped into an unfamiliar jungle, which they later discover is an alien planet. They soon realize that they are in a game preserve, where they are being hunted for sport by aliens.

The movie begins with an unconscious man (Adrian Brody) plummeting through the air. He wakes up, panics, but then begins beating the parachute harness on his chest. It seems to be malfunctioning, but opens soon enough that the man makes a survivable hard landing. He is equipped for battle so quickly pulls out his machine gun. Soon more humans fall out of the sky near him. None of them know what's happening, and they are inclined to fight with each other. Brody (his character refuses to give his name) convinces them to calm down, and they figure out that most of them are soldiers, one is a convicted murderer, and one tells them he's a doctor. No one can identify the jungle that they're in, so they begin to travel towards higher ground, where they can observe the lay of the land. When they reach a clearing, they see a sky filled with planets and realize they are no longer on Earth.

During their journey, the group are pursued by alien hunting dogs, encounter booby traps set by another human, and are almost lured into an ambush when the Predators nab one of their group and use him to set a trap. They locate a death camp, where they see the bodies and bones of many previous victims, as well as a living Predator captive. One more human is killed there. The lone female in the group (Alice Braga) recognized the captured Predator, and explains that a similar creature attacked a group of soldiers in Guatemala in 1987 (a reference to the first film).

Another member of the group is almost killed when another human comes to the rescue. Noland (Laurence Fishburne) has been on the planet for a long time, surviving by salvaging weapons and tools from the Predators and their victims. He talks to an imaginary friend, seemingly suffering from the stress of battle and being alone. He tells the group that an alien spaceship has landed near the death camp, and he also explains that they are up against two species of Predators. One is larger and kills the smaller ones (the ones we have seen on Earth before) for sport, just as they kill the humans.

Predators find their camp and several of the humans are killed. One of the humans uses an ancient Japanese sword and duels with a Predator. Both are killed. The doctor is injured by a steel jaw trap, and Brody encourages Braga to leave him. She refuses. Brody releases the Predator in the camp and they seem to come to an understanding. Then the bigger Predator attacks. Brody runs for the spaceship. The spaceship takes off. The big Predator kills the little Predator. The spaceship blows up.

BIG SPOILER ALERT!!

The doctor and Braga are trapped in a pit. Braga offers to kill them both before the Predators can, but he doesn't care about that. He cuts Braga with a poisoned knife, paralyzing her. He tells her that he's a murderer and is going to kill her. Brody comes back in the nick of time, having not gotten on the spaceship after all, and he stops the doctor. In a technique similar to what the Predators did with the first human victim, Brody uses the doctor to lure the Predator close then detonates a bunch of grenades. The Predator is not killed, so they have a big final battle. Braga is wounded. Brody beats the Predator to death. Brody admits that his name is Royce and Braga introduces herself as Isabelle. They look up and see a bunch of new victims parachuting into the jungle, and Brody announces that it's time to find a way off this planet.

Credits roll over to the tune of "Long Tall Sally" sung by Little Richard.

MY COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS

Most of the characters are not likeable. They are thugs and murderers. Why should we care that they are in the position of being hunted like animals. They are animals.

The planet was too much like Earth. The doctor recognizes a strange looking plant as containing a dangerous neurotoxin. I know they had to film on Earth, but we saw nothing alien at all except the Predators and one alien hunting victim. No plants that were unrecognizable. No animals or birds. (Hubby says he heard birds but I don't recall seeing any.) Some kind of beetle is found in the crate that an alien captive was dropped in, and they saw the same beetles on the corpse. Brody slapped a bug on his neck once. Just once. He also skewered a beetle of some kind, but I don't know if it was the same as the ones on the alien.

I thought Brody was going to eat the beetle. It would have been gross, but not at all unexpected. They hadn't eaten or said anything about food the whole time. They walked and walked and walked and ran and fought and walked, and never talked about being hungry or thirsty. Some of them had their battle backpacks with them; maybe they had some rations or bottled water, but we never saw it. We never saw the inevitable confrontation by the people who didn't have packs with them and would have also been hungry or thirsty.

The doctor is hanging from his parachute straps in a tree when the others first encounter him. He falls into a pool of water. It's played for laughs like, he's acting like he's going to drown then he stands up. None of these people think about the things that are in water in a jungle. There might have been leeches or bacteria or any number of nasty things. Nobody says to get out quick or anything. Later they are chased off a cliff and into a larger body of water, but they still don't seem concerned about dangers that might be in the water.

When Isabelle (Braga) tells about the Guatemala incident, she says one man survived by covering himself with mud to hide his body heat. The movie goes on for another hour before anyone uses that tip, and even then, it's not really used effectively. A ring of fire is more useful camouflage at that point.

The humans don't seem very careful to grab weapons when someone is killed. They do salvage a few things from Noland's place when they have to leave quickly. Near the beginning, they are using their guns pretty carelessly. After a big gun battle, when they have wasted a lot of ammo, in my opinion, Brody says that they need to count their rounds and conserve what they have, but we don't get a count and they don't seem ever to try to make their shots count.

The doctor's change at the end seems to come out of the blue. He has one conversation with the convicted killer/rapist that could possibly have made us wonder about it, but if they tried to do something subtle, it was too subtle for me. Near the end, he makes one decision that didn't seem in character, and then he lies about a photograph, but this was very near the end. It almost seems like they started out with him as a doctor then decided to go a different direction midway through the script.

The doctor finds the neurotoxin plant early on. Two other characters know about it. we don't see what the doctor does with the poison on his little knife; one assumes he wiped it off somewhere. At no point does anyone suggest that they use the neurotoxin on spears or arrows or bullets that might help defeat the alien enemy. Nor does anyone suggest that they try to reset the booby traps at the other human's camp or create similar ones around a camp of their own. It's like they just don't think about it.

The music was adequate and draws on the themes created by Alan Silvestri for the first film. New composer John Debney has never done anything truly inventive or inspiring, so it's not a surprise that the score wasn't anything special. The Little Richard tune was used in a couple of scenes in the original film, but my husband and I didn't remember it from the first movie, so its use over the end credits was mystifying at the time.

The direction by Nimród Antal was adequate. It's certainly not the worst film direction I've seen. Only one scene featured truly irritating camera work; it's near the beginning when the convict is fighting with a soldier from Sierra Leone. They stand up and the camera is shaking and the men are wobbling, and it's hard to focus in on anything. My husband was not impressed with the way some of the fights were shot. Antal has done a couple of features and apparently a lot of music videos. It's a really bad idea to use music video and videogame directors to direct features, but it seems to be the recruitment tool of choice for Hollywood. I think that's a lot of the reason that movies don't seem to have much heart and soul these days.

Predators was an interesting enough film and a somewhat worthy sequel to the 1987 movie. It's far from a great film. Like so many movies today, it seems less a cohesive script than a compilation of scenes and lines and characters cobbled together from previous films. It's not well thought out. There's no point to having the fight on an alien planet, except that it leaves two characters trapped there in set-up for another sequel.

I'm trying something new.

The BeFrugal website contacted me about becoming an advertising affiliate, and through that site I learned about Commission Junction. The registration process took a few minutes, and now I'm about to ad an advertising widget to my blog. I have Google Ads, but they're really not very targeted. I guess they key in on select words and stick up links, which I've never completely trusted, either on my site or anyone else's. I always figured it was worth having, even though hardly anyone visits my blogs. It can't hurt.

And so, it can't hurt to put in an advertising widget for something specific, and through BeFrugal and Commission Junction, I can choose what business I want to feature. I selected Entirely Pets, which is a website I patronize. They have a really good price on Pill Pockets, which are instrumental to getting my cat Remy to take his heart medicine without a fight. Remy's littermate died of a heart attack. Poor Quinn had a terrible time with all the meds he had to take after his first attack. Not only that, but we had to take him to a lot of different vets for tests, and at one of those locations he picked up a respiratory infection which he then passed to all the other cats in the household. Just about the time we though he was going to recover fully, he had another attack.

Anyway, between the heart meds and the respiratory meds, Quinn was taking pills around the clock. It broke our hearts that he would look sad and try to hide from us to avoid the pills.

A few months after Quinn died, Remy's heart murmur was diagnosed. He only takes one quarter of a very small pill every day, and at first we hid it in Pounce Hairball Treats. That can be a little messy, and I didn't necessarily like to give him a hairball treat every day.

Finally, we found Pill Pockets. A half a pocket easily hides his tiny pill, so a bag of 45 can last for almost three months. I say almost because we also use them as treats for everyone, and sometimes I'll break up an allergy pill into pieces and hide them in pockets for Trickster, when he's having a bad day.

Still, it's kind of pricey at the stores. They are anywhere from $7.99 to $10.99 a bag locally. When we were first getting them, I didn't realize they had expiration dates and a local (chain) store sold me two expired bags! When I opened the first bag, I knew there was something wrong, because they were dry and crumbly. Then I saw the date stamp. I still had the receipt and took them back to the store. They had two more expired bags on the shelf, so I felt it was easy to prove I had just purchased them and wasn't trying to pull something. They still didn't want to give me a refund! I finally convinced the manager to give me my money back, but I will never shop there again.

Entirely Pets has always shipped my product well in advance of the expiration date. It only takes few days to get an order filled. I'm on their mailing list, so I regularly get offers for free shipping over $25. I buy six bags at a time and they're about $5 each, so I easily meet the minimum. I've been really pleased with their service and the quality of the product I receive, so that's why I picked their company for my first affiliate ad.

Entirely Pets did not ask me to do this. I'll get credit for every click through on the ad in my sidebar, but that's all. I'm just happy to have the opportunity to help someone else save a few bucks and to help a business that does a good job.

Cox HSI is hijacking websites to make money.

I am so mad at Cox Communications, my home ISP, that I could spit nails.

If you've read my blog before, you know I enter a lot of sweepstakes. I visit 50-60 websites per night to fill out entry forms and to learn more about the sponsors. That's not counting my webmail service (not Cox); news and weather sites; entertainment sites and forums.

On a usual night, I might get a couple of "page not found" messages. Sometimes the page will load just fine a minute or two later. Sometimes the URL was posted somewhere incorrectly.

I have noticed, of late, that I was seeing a lot of "Cox Finder" error pages instead of the usual "page not found" pages. I guess I paid more attention tonight because the problem was so frequent and irritating.

The Cox Finder, or as they refer to it the "Enhanced Error Results" page, tells the user that the page cannot be loaded, but wouldn't you like to try one of these other pages instead?

Here's what the Cox website says about "Enhanced Error Results":

Cox is currently providing an enhanced error results service that redirects URL entries in Internet Explorer to relevant alternative results provided by Yahoo! Search Marketing. When no relevant keyword can be extracted to produce a list of alternative sites, a search box is presented to the users so they can conduct the search again. If relevant results are identified, an enhanced results page displays providing a suggested list of alternative sites.

My arguments:

(1) I wasn't searching for terms. I plugged in a URL or clicked on a link.

(2) I primarily use Mozilla Firefox. I only use Internet Explorer when a site doesn't open correctly in Firefox.

(3) I received these "Enhanced Error Results" instead of valid URLs. In one case, I had a site open but something within the page (an ad or a form) showed the Cox Finder page. I refreshed, and then I got the Cox Finder message for the whole page. Eventually, the page reloaded after multiple tries from the original link.

(4) I received the "Enhanced Error Results" when trying to visit a manufacturer's website. The same website came up as the last search result in a list of about 10 options. Cox says, "The results served are a combination of sponsored links and ‘natural’ search results, depending on what you were looking for –- just the same as if you used any search engine."

As I became more and more frustrated and suspicious of Cox's motives and methods, I did a Google search for the phrase and found a FAQ about "Enhanced Error Results" on the Cox website. I found instructions on how to opt-out. I logged into my account and followed the instructions. Then I logged into a different account and attempted to follow the instructions, and I received a message that I had already opted out.

I continued to have some problems off and on with pages not loading. Then I started seeing the "Enhanced Error Results" again.

Giving Cox the benefit of the doubt, I contacted their 24/7 Live Technical Support via Chat. Here's how it began:

Edward> My name is Edward, welcome to Cox High Speed Internet Online Support.

Auriette> Is there some problem with Cox HSI service in my area tonight?

Edward> I am really sorry for the inconvenience.
Edward> Unfortunately, there is difficulty with the e-mail service for your
area.
Edward> Our technicians are aware of the issue and are currently taking care of
it.

Hmm. Did I say I was having problem with my email? I don't use Cox for email. So I asked if he meant there was a problem with internet connectivity. At that point, he asked for all kinds of account information. Now, if he didn't know where I was, how did he know there was an email service issue in my area?

So then Edward tells me "I have checked your modem signals and are working properly and there is no reported outage for your area."

And then he tries to blame it on my router, saying, "we do not provide technical assistance for connections behind a third party router."

This would be the router that Cox's installer recommended and installed more than five years ago. We've never been connected to the internet without it. I've had techs over the phone tell me to disconnect everything and unplug it and turn it all back on, but never to remove the router and connect the modem directly to the internet, and I had no intention of trying it tonight, because I believe the problem is related to this sudden influx of sales pitches via the "Enhanced Error Results."

So, I ask:

Auriette> I opted out of the "Enhanced Error Results" sales page over two hours
ago. How long does it normally take for the opt-out to take full effect?

Edward> It is immediately. However, sometimes the site does not work.

Ahhh. Sometimes the site doesn't work. Hmmm.

So Edward pastes in a link and says I'll have to change my settings manually in order to "opt out." I cannot, however, copy or paste the link.

Auriette> Please wait while I try that.
Auriette> I'm not able to copy and paste that link or to click on it.
Auriette> Please email to auriette@tmlindsey.com

Edward> Just a moment please.

That is not the end of our chat, but it is the end of the transcript that Edward emailed to me. Here's what really happened:

I ask him to send it to the email address that I use, the email that I had open on my desktop. He sent it to my Cox address. I ask him again to send it to my usual email address and HE LIED TO ME! He said he sent it there, but he sent it again to the Cox address.

AND THEN HE DISCONNECTED.

I was able to click on the link in the transcript and follow the instructions to manually set my DNS settings. I'm not sure what will happen the next time I have to repair my LAN settings after leaving on the firewall for a few minutes.

I am continuing to have problems with my internet connection, though I haven't seen the "Enhanced Error Results" page lately.

Cox needs to understand that they are not the only option for broadband connection. By partnering with Yahoo Search for this "Enhanced Error Results" process, they are playing games with their customers. In trying to earn a few pennies from click throughs, they are going to end up losing steady customers to other ISPs. Their rude, incompetent, lying tech support personnel will only hurt the situation.

I hope they wise up and correct this problem.

UPDATE: 24 hours later, and I haven't gotten a single "page not found" of any variety, and no sign of the Cox Finder "Enhanced Error Results" page. Perhaps my opt-out was finally processed. Maybe they repaired the non-existent problem that was causing the lost connections. I'm still suspicious of the Cox-Yahoo partnership.

Review: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman

Contains observations that may be considered SPOILERS.

I received an advanced reading copy of “The Left Hand of God” through a giveaway at the Goodreads website. It’s not something I would have picked up on my own. I’m not sure if that small detail colored the way I feel about the novel, but it’s worth mentioning.

The plot seems fairly standard, combining elements from myth, fairy tales and film. Young boys are bought or kidnapped and brought to a monastery where they are cruelly treated and trained for warfare. The protagonist is Thomas Cale, a boy brought to the Sanctuary as a child and who is now the top student. He witnesses an unexpected and savage event that leads him to escape the Sanctuary, taking with him three others. They make their way to Memphis, major city, where Cale earns both respect and hatred. He falls in love, and that completely changes his outlook and approach to combat. The book concludes with a massive battle between the Redeemers of the Sanctuary and the Materazzi of Memphis.

The story doesn’t end there, because “The Left Hand of God” is, in another commonality, the first in a trilogy.

I must admit that the novel is compelling. I was never inclined to set it down and leave it, which I have done with books on rare occasions. I wanted to know what happened to the characters and what secrets they were hiding. I can’t say that the characters are well developed. We don’t often see into their thoughts, and when we do, it’s as though the door is cracked just a little. We get a glimpse, just enough to let us know that there is much more that remains tantalizingly beyond our view.

The time and place of the story is one of the most frustrating elements. According to the back cover blurb and the publisher’s website, “The Left Hand of God” is set in a “distant, dystopian past.” Many of the locations we visit or hear about bear familiar names: Memphis, the Appalachians, Fatima, Silbury Hill. Even the ones that didn’t sound familiar tend to show up in a web search, although they are not close together. The presence of plate armour suggests that it takes place during the middle ages, though certain aspects seem more akin to the Roman Empire. The characters will make one comment that makes it seem later in history then say something that seems contradictory.

The language includes many unfamiliar terms, some of which appears to be slang. I’m not sure those words are British slang or something that Hoffman made up. The characters know what they mean, so nothing is defined for us. Sometimes the meaning is easily discerned, but at other times I had no idea what I was supposed to be picturing or what the character was trying to say. A couple of times, I was left wondering if I was experiencing a typographical error. When the book says “squits” was it a typo for “squirts?” Hard to say. As I mentioned, the copy I have is an advanced reading copy, specifically an “advance uncorrected proof.” Had the book not been released shortly before I started reading it, I might have felt a duty to record the many typos and mail it in. In the past, I have read ARCs that contained typos and I have found those typos in for-sale copies of the book. I truly wonder if the “uncorrected proofs” are actually used for proofing.

In addition to the typos, I found any number of sentences that were not well constructed. I sometimes had to read over a line several times, trying different inflections and breaks to figure out exactly what Hoffman intended to say. Most of the time, I eventually understood. A couple of times, I just moved on. Those lines just weren’t written clearly, and could have been broken up or rearranged to have them make more sense.

The Redeemers are a religious cult that is very much based on Christianity or perhaps more specifically Catholicism. They worship the Hanged Redeemer, a martyr worshipped as the son of God, and death without redemption means burning for all eternity. Hoffman makes frequent and obvious parallels between the faiths. One of the primary Redeemer characters reveals, at the end of the novel, a prophesy given to him by a vision of the Redeemer’s mother.

It was at that point, at the end, that I came to believe that the novel takes place in a history so long ago that it’s been forgotten, with mankind and all civilization wiped out in the interim and reinvented by a God trying again to get things right.

So just tell me that. Don’t leave me trying to figure out if this is an alternate history or a fantasy world that just seems like Earth. I also would have liked more insight into who was telling the story. The book starts out (and I’m pulling this from the official series website, not the uncorrected proof):

“Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie, for there is no redemption that goes on there…”

The first word suggests that someone is telling this story, someone who witnessed the events or who’s passing down the legend. It’s not written in first person, so it can’t be (or shouldn’t be) any of the characters we meet in the book. Sometimes, the narrator is omniscient. He knows what’s going on at the Sanctuary after Cale leaves, he tells us about secret meetings between a Redeemer agent and Kitty the Hare, a perverse businessman who seems to have some sort of physical deformity or mutation. Sometimes the narrator gives us a glimpse into a character’s mind; at other times, we get no insight into what anyone is really thinking.

While I was compelled to finish reading this book, I am not inclined to buy the next two books. I feel no pressing knowledge to know what happens next. So much of the story seems trite, endless set-up for religious and social commentary from the author, which he may reveal by the end or perhaps he’ll just let the readers decide for themselves.

A final note: on the official website for the trilogy I found a map of Cale’s world. I’m not sure if the map or any reference to it was included in the for-sale version. If not, it should have been. It doesn’t offer any particular insight, but it would have been a nice touch. I would also like to have had a guide to pronunciation for unfamiliar names and words and a dictionary of the unfamiliar or slang terms.

“The Left Hand of God” was released in hardcover in June 2010. It’s available for $25.95 from Penguin.com.

Review: The Exile of Sara Stevenson (novel)

I won a copy of "The Exile of Sara Stevenson" on goodreads. I finished it a couple of days ago, and I've been mulling over what I should say about it. I was very intrigued by the blurb that suggested a supernatural element.

I began reading the book during my day at jury duty, and it was a great way to pass the time. The characters are all well-drawn and intriguing. It's written in first-person, and we can tell that the other people populating the story have secrets of their own, but we must discover them along with Sara.

I found the dialogue to be very well written. Almost everyone who appears in the book is Scottish, but they speak in a variety of dialects, and author Darci Hannah does a great job of writing so that I could really hear the characters' voices.

The farther along I got into the book, I found myself wondering when the mysterious time travel element would come into play. It's well over halfway into the book when we get our first inkling of what's going to happen (or what's happening, rather).

When we reach the denouement, I found it a little odd and not entirely satisfying. On the surface, it's the kind of lighthouse story that might be passed along from generation to generation. Maybe there's just a little too much to it. I don't want to say too much and ruin it for anyone.

I enjoy historical romances, some historical non-fiction, and science fiction. I'm not someone who usually enjoys "good literature." Please don't take that the wrong way, Darci! Aside from that little bit of oddness at the end, I really enjoyed the book. I would say that I might have enjoyed it more had the supernatural element not been revealed in the cover blurb; then the events would have been more mysterious and let me "play along" with Sara trying to figure out what's happening. However, that element is part of what interested me in reading the book, and not giving a hint could also disappoint readers who don't like that kind of thing in their fiction.

"Extraordinary Measures" DVD Review

We finally picked up the DVD of "Extraordinary Measures" this weekend and watched it tonight. CAUTION: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

I am an unabashed Harrison Ford fan, and he did a very good portraying a crotchety and opinionated scientist who forms an uneasy partnership with the father of two children debilitated by the rare condition Pompe's Disease. Both men are seeking a cure for Pompe's for their own reasons; of course the father, John Crowley (Brendan Fraser) is the more driven of the two. He will do whatever it takes to keep his children alive.

Dr. Robert Stonehill is twice-divorced and spends all his time at his university laboratory. He wants things done his way and on his schedule. He doesn't care about the profitability of a drug or how to get it approved by the FDA; he just does the research. He alienates potential investors, then complains loudly when Crowley offers them lucrative terms to get them on board. When the pair's newly formed company is having a hard time financially, he courts a larger biotech company to buy them out. This time, Stonehill talks the talk and walks the walk that the executives want to see. The start-up is absorbed into the larger company, Stonehill and Crowley relocate to the corporate labs, and the two of them butt heads with the hierarchy to get what they want. In Stonehill's case, he just wants to do things his way. For Crowley, it ultimately means leaving his job in order to get his two children -- for whom time is growing short -- into the clinical trials.

It's really hard to follow the timeline of the movie. Everything seems to be happening too fast. As it turns out, the real story evolved over several years. The movie begins on Megan Crowley's 8th birthday, and I believe it is her 9th birthday that we see near the end of the film. That's very significant because research that John Crowley is shown reviewing near the beginning suggests that children with the
disease are not expected to live more than nine years.

I did not fully get a sense of urgency during the film. Some of that could be because I knew the outcome of the story; I had seen video of Megan and Patrick Crowley taken when they visited the set of the movie probably two years ago. I hesitate to accept all the "blame" for the lack of urgency, though, because when I saw "Valkyrie" (the Tom Cruise-starrer that told the story of a plot to kill Hitler), I knew that the group failed and the men involved were executed), and yet I still felt great suspense at each step of the way.

The filmmakers did not focus very much on the home life. In fact, two deleted scenes on the DVD showed the tension between John Crowley and his wife Aileen. Scenes like that would have gone a long way to demonstrate the real-life toll that Crowley's drive for a cure was taking on his family. Megan Crowley was presented as a typical
precocious adolescent, always positive and a real trooper. If she throws a tantrum once in a while (another excised scene available on the DVD), it's okay, because she may not live very much longer. When mom gave in following the tantrum, I would have liked to have seen something in her eyes and demeanor that she's giving in because how can she deny her child the small joy of sparkly sunglasses (even though she'd just learned that her husband took out a second mortgage on their home to fund research).

We see very little of Patrick Crowley, their younger son with Pompe. He seems much weaker than Megan and contributes little to the story. There's not even any discussion about his being weaker, of losing muscle control sooner than Megan, just a few knowing glances between the parents. The third Crowley child is portrayed
as being completely understanding, even selling his toys to raise money for a research fundraiser.

Near the beginning of the film, Crowley makes the decision to leave the pharmaceutical company he works for to partner with Stonefield in a new venture. He discusses with his wife the difficulty if he loses his insurance (health care costs, including home nurse care, are $40,000 a month according to the script). Yet, he makes the move with no further mention of any financial strain for his family. Even the aforementioned deleted scene suggests that the money from the second mortgage went to the company, not to personal expenses. When the film begins, the Crowleys are living in a rather nice looking two-story house in Oregon. Later (after the start-up gets bought out), they are shown living in what looks like a mansion on a cliff. These are not ordinary people concerned about paying hefty medical bills. Is this a Hollywoodization of the story, designed to present the Crowley family in the best possible light? Or did the screenwriters leave out that they are an independently wealthy family who can afford, unlike the average person, to buy a custom treatment for their children's rare disease? (I don't mean to downplay the difference this treatment has made in the lives of other Pompe families.)

In doing a little further research about Stonehill, I found out that he doesn't really exist. The real scientist is Dr. William Canfield. He started his company without Crowley and brought him aboard later. Other scientists who also made contributions to the same area of research weren't mentioned at all and they (or at least their supporters) are a little peeved. Crowley, meanwhile, is still working in the biotech industry and also has a political career (which could explain some of the whitewashing of the story). If you're interested, you can read more here:

http://harrisonfordonline.com/?p=1588
http://harrisonfordonline.com/?p=6992

I found it interesting that Dee Wallace (the mom in "E.T." and "Cujo") played a character who had one or two lines and Alan Ruck (the friend whose dad's car they used in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off) also had a tiny little role. Work's work, I guess, but I felt bad for them.

As we watched the film, my husband kept saying, "Oh this must be where the terrorists attack and try to take over the lab and Stonefield has to stop them. Oh, guess not." He was only partly joking; we have seen too many examples of where a role was changed to be more action-oriented after Harrison Ford was cast. In this one, the most action Harrison sees is running down the sidewalk in a race with the wheelchair-bound Megan.

It's a good enough little film, and for the few people who see it, it will raise awareness of this debilitating condition. It's easy to see, though, why "Extraordinary Measures" did not garner much critical acclaim or popular success.

The only extras on the DVD are the movie trailer (and previews for a few other films), several deleted scenes, and two featurettes - one on the making of the film and the other on John Crowley (who also appears in the film in a small role as a corporate executive).

Why can't I feel strong positive emotions anymore?

For a while, I've been noticing that nothing really excites me anymore. Two years ago, we went to England, and while I was somewhat excited, the worry factors overpowered it. What was going to go wrong? Was my husband going to have a good time? Now that I look back, the first things that come to my mind about the trip were the things that did go wrong. I think of the crying babies that kept us awake all night on the flight over. I remember that I didn't write down the address of one of the B&Bs, so I had to go find an internet café, and Tim decided to wait with the luggage in the underground, so every minute I was gone, I knew that he was worrying and waiting and wondering. Those memories overpower the good memories like seeing Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov and David Tennant in Hamlet, of visiting the Doctor Who exhibit and having lunch in an outdoor market, and walking along the Thames until we found the London Bridge.

Recently, I was in a play, and I arrived for opening night, and I was a little worried about myself because I didn't have that nervous anticipation, the excitement, the little butterflies that usually accompanied an opening night for me. When I arrived at the theatre and saw the buzz of activity, a few patrons waiting in the lobby, I started feeling a little excited, but not THE feelings I used to have when I performed in theatre years ago. This was the biggest role I've done in years. When I did Short Attention Span Theatre and my scene was maybe 8 minutes long, max, I thought I wasn't nervous at all because it was just a tiny part of the evening. This time, I was in lot of scenes and I still didn't have that energy that comes from opening night.

The only strong emotions I feel are the negative ones. When I worry or get stressed, then I start crying, then my chest tightens up. Although now that I'm writing this and thinking about it, those times even come farther apart than they used to.

Except that I don't want the expense, I should probably see a psychiatrist. I am so tired of never feeling good about myself. When something good comes along, I can't fully enjoy it. It's like most of my emotional nerve endings are dead, and the ones that are still alive only transmit negative energy.

What can I do to be happy?

Star Wars Tees for Gals

I'm really exited by the new Her Universe line of clothing for female Star Wars fans! No products are available online yet, but the site says that an online shop is coming soon. I'm not sure that a tee cut and designed for women would work for me, because I'm not a skinny young girl anymore. However, I would like to see more adult shirts featuring female characters like Leia and Padmé. Can't wait to see the line when it's revealed!

Am I too critical?

My mom accuses my husband and I both of being too critical. We do have high expectations, whether it's with customer service or product quality or personal actions. We spend a lot of our time together talking about the stupidity that we see from people on a daily basis.

Would we be happier if we were less critical? If we lowered our expectations on a personal, national and global level?

Maybe.

I can't help but think what a better world this would be if people were able to meet our expectations. It's not that it's impossible. It's just that people don't think or don't care, and they do the minimum necessary in their jobs and in their lives instead of doing the very best that they can and being the best that they can be.

They're satisfied. And I'm critical.

Would you like a free Oreck Vacuum?

I sure would. That's why I've been entering every Oreck giveaway I can find, because I can't afford to buy one right now. The feature I like best about the Oreck Halo is the UV germ-killing light. Using an Oreck makes your house cleaner AND healthier. This post is part of my attempt to win an Oreck vacuum cleaner. Blogger Mom's Focus on Cyberworld is giving away an Oreck Halo via her blog. Click on the link for your chance to win.

Even a man who is pure in heart....

Tim and I went to see "The Wolfman" with Benicio Del Toro for Valentine's Day. We both love the old Universal Horror films, as does Mr. Del Toro, so despite some mixed reviews, we had high hopes for the film. We were not disappointed. We came right home and watched "The Wolf Man" with Lon Chaney (Tim had also watched it on Saturday night) for comparison's sake.

The new film begins with the poem that is oft-repeated in the original film. I was surprised that they made two changes to the poem, but not the one I expected.

The new poem is Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

The original by screenwriter Curt Siodmak is Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

I'm not sure what the difference is between "pure in heart" and "pure of heart." I gather that "wolfsbane" is the correct name for the plant.

I expected them to change the last line, or rather to use the last line from one of the subsequent Wolf Man movies. Later films used "when the moon is shining bright" and "when the moon is full and bright" rather than the autumn moon reference.

Moving on, there's really just one major change in the basic story from 1941, and that's who the werewolf is who bites Larry Talbot. They could have stuck with Bela the gypsy and been just fine. What they did works fine, but it wasn't necessary.

The acting is excellent and so is the make-up. Rick Baker, famous for his work on "An American Werewolf in London" and a host of other films, did a great job on the transformation, keeping it faithful while also keeping it fresh. Mr. Baker also makes a brief appearance in the film as one of the villagers hunting the werewolf. Some CGI is also used, of course. You can't get away from that these days, and from what I've heard the studio demanded some changes, including more CGI and more gore (which really could have been scaled back without losing any of the intensity of the scenes).

Joe Johnston directed the film. I have always enjoyed his work, and he did a fine job on this film, setting a creepy mood and depicting the horror that Larry Talbot goes through after he is bitten.

I was sad that more people didn't come to see the film today, but we saw it at kind of an off-cinema in town; the Rave probably had more people, but we're made at them right now. Maybe most people don't want gore on Valentine's Day, either. A father and middle school age child was there, and a family with elementary school age children. Of course the youngest child was scared, or at least that's what he kept saying very loudly. At least the mother took him outside a couple of times. I do not understand what people are thinking to bring a small child to a bloody horror movie.

We'll definitely buy the DVD of "The Wolfman" when it comes out, and I sincerely hope that Mrs. Johnston, Baker and Del Toro will do a commentary with all three present in the studio. I think that would be very interesting and enlightening.

Win a Slanket

Brown Couch Events is giving away a Slanket for Two. It's a Valentine's Day giveaway, so hurry on over.

Waiting for Results

For seven years, when I worked as a TV news producer, I didn't really wait for results. Sure, we had the ratings four times a year, but our station did well as a whole, and when I had a newscast for a while, the ratings usually seemed to go up. I never felt like I could take full responsibility for the increase, but I felt good about it. Still, my focus was not on what would give the 'cast strong ratings, it was on reporting the news well, on giving people information they could use, accurately and without bias.

Now, I'm in public relations, a field where I'm constantly waiting for results. You throw a party or put on a show, and it's not just about how well it's done, it's about how many people come, how much money is spent, and what's being said about it. I chose to move into this field, and I enjoy a lot of what I do. Sometimes I feel good about my results, at least until someone tells me that it should have been better.

When I feel badly about the results, I feel that I have let everyone around me down.

So, basically, I've lost the good feeling I had at the end of a newsday, where the work was its own reward, and I think that's affected my mental and physical health.

I can't go back to the news. I didn't think I burned any bridges when I left, but apparently I did. My new career in public relations is the only one I have, for better or worse. All I can do is my best, even if it's not always good enough.

Would you like to check out my current projects?
FPRA Pensacola 2010 Toolbox: PR Power Tools
Pensacola Little Theatre

How does what you do affect your overall well-being?

Don't buy Acer for Customer Service

My Acer Aspire was part of the massive recall for a potentially hazardous wiring problem. The company did not notify me. I contacted them and arranged to ship it back. Despite this not being my fault, they used FedEx Ground, instead of overnight, thus taking my laptop out of service for a week.

The company sent me three pages of generic shipping and repair information that was poorly organized. The company failed to verify my preferred shipping address and sent it to my home instead of my work. I couldn't be home because I was at work. I tried to get the address changed, but the company representative didn't understand the terms of their contract, wasting more valuable time. I couldn't pick it up from FedEx because the nearest Ground distribution center is two hours drive away.

Lucky, FedEx has terrific customer service and was able to get it re-routed to me.

Then I opened the box to find my computer bouncing around in inadequate packaging. They had my original manufacturer's box, but apparently that was too much trouble for them to repack it in and they threw it away. After a number of complaints to corporate management, the sales rep called me back, said I'd simply failed to understand the instructions sent to me, and the laptop was packed loosely and that they intentionally packed it so that it would bounce around.

Two weeks ago, I would have encouraged anyone to buy an Acer computer. It seems to have very good battery life, and I hadn't had any problems with it. Now, I would discourage the purchase of an Acer product, because they don't offer good customer support when things go wrong, even if it's their own shoddy workmanship that caused the problem in the first place.

I re-wrote their repair information sheet for them, too. I wanted them to see how their convoluted instruction sheet could be made simpler. They have not responded, which only reinforces that they really don't care about making things easier for their customers. They just want to blame them when it's their communications strategy that's at fault.

No luck at the movies.

On Sunday, January 31, I tried to go see the new Harrison Ford film, Extraordinary Measures. We got to the box office window at the Rave Pensacola on Bayou only to be told that the projector was having problems and the showing had been cancelled. We saw Sherlock Holmes instead, which we both enjoyed and the fairly full house was surprisingly well-behaved, aside from the young woman who sat beside me and seemed intent on carrying on a conversation with her date throughout the film. She kept it down after I made a snarky comment about it.

On Sunday, February 7, we tried again to see Extraordinary Measures. The Bayou Rave only had one screening, at 11am and we'd missed it, so we went to the other Rave on "W" Street. That location has become quite rundown! We were the only one in the theatre for about 15 minutes. Then an old couple came in. Then with just a couple of minutes to go until the movie theatre, the trouble group came in. Mom, Dad, their pre-schooler, and the grandparents. They were all talking in normal tones of voice, like they were at home, but one had hopes that things would settle down once the movie started. No luck. The child talked constantly, loudly, in a clear high-pitched voice that was impossible to tune out. Mom shushed him frequently, but the child has not been taught at home to be quiet or to behave. Grandma was talking to the child, still in normal tones, as well as repeating everything to Grandpa. So, we left and got our money back.

Why are people so inconsiderate as to bring an undisciplined child to a movie that is clearly over his/her head? Why do they think it's appropriate to speak in normal tones of voice?

I'm really disappointed. I haven't missed a Harrison Ford film in the theatre since the last century (with the exception of Crossing Over which had only limited release). I'll be surprised if it's still around next weekend. Looks like I'll just have to wait for the DVD.

I need a new mattress!

A few years ago, hubby and I decided it was time for new mattresses. We have a queen frame and two twin XL mattresses. We went to a local place, Koala, that makes mattresses. Apparently not very well. We tried some mattresses and told them how firm we wanted them, went back and they weren't firm enough, they told us they'd mis-quoted us but they'd stand by the price. We borrowed a truck and took them home and it wasn't long before we heard one of them crack inside. Of course by then, we couldn't find the paperwork and when we finally did it was just too big a pain to go back. We'll never buy from them again, though.

Now the "new" mattresses are at least seven years old, and they're kind of saggy. They're not comfortable at all. We turn them regularly (top to bottom and back to front), and maybe that has helped prolong the lives, but it's time for them to go now.

I'd love to win a really high quality mattress, like the Sealy Posturepedic® Signature 11-Series innerspring mattress being given away on blogs like BizzieMommy.com. Visit the site and enter for your own chance to win, but I'm not going to wish you luck. This is one I need myself!