by Brian Knapp
Today was the first in a month-long series of flash fiction stories called The End is Nigh. The story is simply about a man who decides to commit suicide, but he gives his family and friends 30 days to talk him out of it.
I wrote the story over the course of a year from 2006 to 2007. It was originally a screenplay that I entered into a few different contests where it was summarily rejected without a second thought. Given that rejection looked to be a continuing trend, I put it on the shelf for over a year and let it go.
After writing a few stories for Heretical Ideas, including one that was also adapted from a screenplay, and after having realized that I will in all likelihood never earn a cent from any of them, I decided to put the remainder of my most ambitious projects on the web. (Yes, there is indeed more to come.)
The other story that I adapted from a screenplay was rather difficult to shorten from 100 pages of script into a more conventional narrative. As it turned out, it worked well and I am quite proud of the effort.
Yet, it was much easier to take something that relied heavily on the internal workings of a man’s mind and translate that into more traditional prose. It was much more difficult to attempt to take the story that was completely void of the protagonists inner workings (as is the case with The End is Nigh) and make that work.
Instead, I decided to keep the format of a play where dialogue dominates and is highlighted by small bits of action. The device of using the calendar as a simultaneous timeline and timeclock was original to the screenplay. However, it seems to be much more effective as the first “real-time” serial novel. Well, novella in the least. Ok, it’s a short novella as it runs around 16,000 words.
Anyway, we are taking advantage of the audio-visual elements of the web as the thumbnails, format, and schedule all play a role in telling the story. Additionally, throughout the month, I will be posting a Youtube playlist on the blog that coincides with specific days of the story. Even though they do not necessarily mean anything to the story, they certainly capture the feeling of it.
At any rate, check in everyday to read the next installment of The End is Nigh. We will post seven days a week through October 1st, so make sure that you keep up as the story unfolds.
by Alex Knapp
by Alex Knapp
“I was slightly disappointed to be missing Woodstock until the nightly news reported that it had turned into a catastrophic, drug-addled, rain-drenched disaster area lacking food, water, shelter, and Port-A-Potties. Then I was furious to be missing Woodstock.”
– P.J. O’Rourke
by Alex Knapp
Here’s the comics news of the day, True Believers.
“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” said Robert A. Iger, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Walt Disney Company. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”
“We believe that adding Marvel to Disney’s unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation,” Iger said.
“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”
I look forward to the animated Dark Phoenix movie, where Jean Grey overcomes the power of the Dark Phoenix through Cyclops’ love, and learns the valuble lesson that you just have to be yourself. With Eddie Murphy co-starring as a jive-talking Nightcrawler!
by Alex Knapp
Will Wilkinson makes an excellent point about manliness in the modern age that’s worth reading in full. Here’s a snippet:
I think Hymowitz’s story gives too small a part to resentment at the loss of male privilege. Many men aren’t angry and confused because they don’t know what women want. They’re angry because they want what their fathers or grandfathers had, and they can’t get it. They’re confused because they can’t quite grasp why not. I think part of the fascination for many white guys with the show Mad Men is that it is a window into an attractive (to them) world of white male dominance and privilege that has largely disappeared. It is still possible to create a traditional patriarchal household, but it’s harder than ever for men to find women who will happily play along. And, in any case, there is little assurance of the stability of this sort of arrangement, since the social esteem that was once accorded to it — which helped reinforce men’s and women’s confidence in their traditional roles within it — has largely dissipated.
To my mind, too little attention has been paid to reconsidering ideals of manhood in the age of equality. Since I was a teenager, I’ve found old-school machismo pathetic and somehow irrelevant to the problem of becoming a man. Without even knowing what or why it was, I was heavily influenced by gay culture, which provided me, and many other straight young men, a wide variety of templates for manhood that are at once unmistakably masculine, playfully ironic, aesthetic, emotionally open, and happily sexual. You can be manly and care about shoes!!! I’ll confess that I used to periodically regret my heterosexuality because there seemed to be greater scope for constructing a distinctive and satisfying male identity within gay culture. I think that’s telling. And the virulent homophobia that remains in most American dude subcultures has cut most young men off from the possibility of modeling their manhood after any of the delightful variety of types available to the homophile. And that really doesn’t leave them with much to work with. Most Americans these days seem happy enough to see women succeed as high-achieving go-getters. And who doesn’t love Tim Gunn? But most of us have not yet given up on oppressively restrictive, strongly normative conceptions of hetero masculinity. That, I submit, is what stands in the way of a real, um … renaissance for men.
I think that this is exactly right. I’ve also had little patience for the pathetic machismo that passes for “manliness.” And I’ve never understood why so many of my male peers have so much trouble with what it means to be a man. Growing up, I had no problem with the idea that a man is someone who is strong and brave and intelligent, as well as fully capable of accepting a woman as a partner and equal. Hell, when I was 6 years old, my hero was He-Man, who had no problem fighting alongside Teela as an equal partner. (Without, I might add, any hint of romance.) As I got older, my model for manliness was sculpted by a number of sources, but in the end it’s always been the intelligent, ethical, wily, jacks-of-all trades that continue to serve as my inspirations: Sherlock Holmes, Odysseus, Emmett “Doc” Brown, Benjamin Franklin, Mathurin Kerbouchard, and others.
I’ve been fortunate in life that all of my male friends have been cut from the same cloth. Respecters of intelligence, respecters of women, able to admire success without being envious–is it really that hard to be a man? Actually, yes, it is. It’s a lot easier to whine about how women don’t like you and act like an entitled jackass than it is to actually live up to a personal code of conduct and abide by it.
But that’s what you’re supposed to do.
by Alex Knapp
The Washington Post reports that, thanks to our pals in the Federal Government, the banks that were “too big to fail” are now even bigger:
When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation’s leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.
The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.
J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street’s most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.
A year after the near-collapse of the financial system last September, the federal response has redefined how Americans get mortgages, student loans and other kinds of credit and has made a national spectacle of executive pay. But no consequence of the crisis alarms top regulators more than having banks that were already too big to fail grow even larger and more interconnected.
I have a feeling that this story doesn’t end well.
(link via Matthew Yglesias)
by Alex Knapp
by Alex Knapp
“There’s a special rung in hell reserved for people who waste good Scotch.”
– Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) in Inglourious Bastereds
by Alex Knapp
by Alex Knapp
Just a few short months after Rev. Wylie Drake openly prayed for Obama’s death, it now turns out that yet another fundamentalist preacher seems to be having trouble with the whole literal word of the Bible thing. Pastor Steve Anderson has a pretty long and terrible rant against the President. Anderson is the pastor of the Faithful Word Baptist Church. Here’s a snippet of his sermon:
But let me tell you something: I don’t love Barack Obama. I don’t respect Barack Obama. I don’t obey Barack Obama. And I’d like Barack Obama to melt like a snail tonight. Because he needs to recompense, he needs to reap what he’s sown.
[...]
Now, look, if somebody wants me, it somebody twisted my arm and tells me to pray for Barack Obama, this is what I’m going to pray, because this is the only prayer that applies to him: ‘Break his teeth, O God, in his mouth. You know, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away.
[...]
Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. When I go to bed tonight, that’s what I’m going to pray. And you say, ‘Are you just saying that?’ No. When I go to bed tonight, Steven L. Anderson is going to pray for Barack Obama to die and go to hell.
You say, ‘Why would you do that?’ That our country could be saved.
As always when a major religious figure makes a statement about Christian doctrine, here at Heretical Ideas we called up our favorite expert on Christian ethics and teachings–Jesus Christ.
Heretical Ideas: Jesus, as always, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. Let’s get started. Now, it seems that Pastor Anderson has been pretty quick to condemn President Obama of sins and to call down judgement upon him. Even if the Pastor is right, and Obama is sinful, should a Christian call down for the wrath of God like that?
Jesus Christ: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
HI: Interesting. Now, in this same sermon, Pastor Anderson states that he does not love President Obama. The reason why appears to be the myriad disagreements that Stevenson has with him. Is it appropriate for a Christian to not love somebody because of such disagreements?
JC: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
HI: Hmmm. Seems like the Pastor is way off here. So what should the response be to sin and disagreements?
JC: For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
HI: Well, it seems to me that Pastor Anderson’s sermon isn’t exactly in keeping with what you’re saying here, Jesus. Is there anything you’d like to add to this discussion?
JC: O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
HI: Thank you, Jesus. We look forward to talking to you again soon.
[Editor's Note: Although we at HI usually use the NIV translation of the Gospels, we used the King James' Version here, as that is the preferred version of Pastor Stevenson.]
Other Interviews with Jesus:
10/10/2008 - On prayer gatherings for lower taxes.
10/30/2008 - On fasting against Homosexuality.
10/31/2008 - On praying to rescue the stock market.
1/7/2009 - On “Extreme Faith”
5/28/2009 - On the Christian response to waterboarding
6/08/2009 - On Praying for Obama’s Death
