Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Absurdity

Revenge Porn

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

There is probably no way for me to write this without tripping over some bloodthirsty reactionary’s sensibilities, but you know, I don’t really give a damn.

In my home town, too.

A St. Louis publishing company has released a 9/11 coloring book.  There is a reaction to it here.  Wonderful cover.

 

Very patriotic.  Nothing violent on the cover itself, but there are the twin towers and, I think, the proposed memorial tower.

Oh yes, and a cross.  This is, after all, commemorating the assault by Muslims against Christians.

The subtitle is interesting: A Graphic Coloring Novel on the Events of September 11, 2001.…

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Playing Around

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I’m trying another new theme.  One of these days I may build something all my own…or, at least, watch while someone who knows how to do it builds something for me at my direction.

But I like this one, I think I’ll leave it alone for a while.  It’s more in tune with what I like to think myself all about—broad vistas, cosmic scenery, special effects.  Well, maybe not so much special effects, but, you know, skiffy.

From what I have seen so far, I’m very much liking the new WordPress.  Of course, that means I’m distracted.  This is not the sort of writing I need to be doing just now.…

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Pathetic

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Representative Andrew Weiner has admitted that the now-famous snapshot of cock-in-shorts really is his.  I have only one reaction:

What the hell is wrong with these people?

I am a photographer.  I photographed all sorts of things, even naked people, and I have taken more than a few photographs for laughs.  But I was never tempted to mail any of them to someone just on a lark!

This is beyond juvenile behavior.  Sorry.  It’s not even so much that boys will play with their toys, but there must be something about being able to tweet that scrapes a few I.Q. points off. …

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Still Here

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

old-new-may-2011.jpg

So, it’s the 23rd of May now.  I heard on the radio this morning someone claiming that we’re now in the Tribulations and that we’ve got 153 days before the actual end of the world.  That might be just about enough time for me to finish the rewrite on my desk and the new novel I am now half-finished with.

I thought about writing something scurrilous and amusing, but why?  People who would laugh at it don’t need to be reminded that this was silly and those who wouldn’t laugh likely wouldn’t read my blog anyway.  And there’s the story about the kids whose parents, utterly convinced that this was the weekend, had quit their jobs and went on Mission, handing out tracts and stopped paying attention to the college fund the kids were acutely aware of. …

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Rapture Ready

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This weekend, it’s supposed to be all over.  Harold Camping of the Family Radio evangelist organization has announced the Rapture for May 21st—at six P.M.

In my own little patch of interest, the SFWA Nebula Awards will be given out this weekend.  If Mr. Camping is right, this will be the last of these.  Going out in grand style, that.

I don’t have a lot to say about this other than it’s silly.  It’s one more reason that makes me wonder about the people who follow this kind of nonsense.  I can’t help but think that, beneath all the sanctimony and babble, a lot of these folks are just, well, unfortunate. …

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My Obligatory Piece About Ayn Rand

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

From time to time, here and there, someone brings Ayn Rand up as some kind of role model.  Lately it’s even in the national news, thanks to the Tea Party and an apparently not very good film of Rand’s seminal masterwork, Atlas Shrugged.  The uber conservatives now crowding reason out of the halls of congress with their bizarro legislation and their lectures from the floor and on committees about how their toilets don’t flush right so why should regulations on light bulbs be passed are the children of the Dragon’s Teeth cast randomly by Ms. Rand and her philosophical cult followers. …

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On Being Fooled

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Okay, it’s April 1st.  We all know what that means.  I have myself played an occasional prank in years past, but tend not to as a matter of principle.

See, I don’t care much for being teased.  Lots of reasons, but a big one has to do with having been not particularly cool for a very significant part of my childhood, which meant not being “in” on a lot of the current really important stuff that all my peers thought was the basis of timeless significance.  So I was an easy mark when it came to being tagged in pranks and April Fool’s Day was a big one for being made to feel, well, stupid.…

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“I do not like Home School and Ham…”

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Ken Ham is the head of Answers In Genesis, an organization that promotes and perpetuates the Creationist view that the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, that homo sapiens sapien  trod the same ground at the same time as dinosaurs, the the story of Noah is literally true, and that evolution is All Wrong.  He’s an Australian and a biblical literalist.  He built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, in 2007.  Check the link for an overview by an (admittedly) biased source, but for simple clarity is hard to beat.  It is a fraud of research, flagrantly anti-science, and laughable in its assertions (in my opinion).…

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Blind Spots

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

It’s almost sacrilege to admit to disliking certain things.  People who regard themselves as culturally aware, artistically sensitive, aesthetically sophisticated must occasionally find themselves faced with work that has such apparent popular appeal among those they consider simpatico which they frankly do not care for or do not understand or both.  Uttering their honest opinion can be the equivalent of farting in church.

So they suppress that opinion, perhaps nod politely and even go so far as to find some pseudo-intellectual way of understanding the thing disliked so they can at least be seen as trustworthy within their circles.  It really is a case of the Emperor’s new suit.…

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