The Sounds of Life

Sounds permeate the world, the sounds of electric and electronic machines and components that hum, whir and buzz in the background. It's the sound of electricity. There is also the sound of air moving through furnace ducts and the rustle of papers in the air's path. Phones ring, buzz and jingle, playing snippets of music. Computer twing, twang and ting with the sound of busy applications. But the music is missing from my life. I didn't realize how silent my world has been lately until I heard Dr. Walter Bishop on Fringe singing a few lines from Tears for Fears: Head Over Heels.

A couple of lines, a few words and I was off on the hunt because I couldn't remember the song or who sang it. I came across Whitesnake and remembered songs I loved from their albums. I downloaded a few and kept looking because it didn't sound right and then I came across Tears for Fears and downloaded the song I wanted. The air is filled with music now as I type, my body moving to the beat and my heart light and gay from the exercise of lungs and vocal cords singing along. I've missed this. How much I've missed I didn't realize until I heard Walter sing (baritone and badly) and my heart and mind and ears called out for more.

I sometimes think life is better with a sound track, a real life version of the Buffy episode, Once Again With Feeling, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. I need music to feed my soul and heart as much as my body needs food, and I've neglected both for too long. Music for dancing. Music for cleaning house. Music for doing laundry. Music for taking out the trash. Music for life. There should be music. I should have caught the hint from the Bones episode where a young Amish man on rumspringa considered living in the English world so he can play the piano, bring forth music into his silent and plain world where electricity and computers don't exist to provide that half-heard counterpoint to life. That young Amish man broke his hands so he could no longer play the piano because he decided to go back to his Amish life, back to the silence, for the girl he loved, giving up the music that filled his soul for the woman who filled his heart.

Whether it's Whitesnake, the best of the Beatles, Rhythm & Blues, Classical or good old Rock & Roll, and everything in between, I know now I need music, the music that fills my soul, makes my heart swell with joy, rushes like spring melt beneath my skin and along my nerve and gives my lungs and vocal cords a workout. I need music even more than food and much more than the silence that helps me concentrate when I write. I know why Stephen King weaves music throughout his writing; it is as much a part of him as grammar, punctuation and the fantasy of other lives. Music is life. Music is movement. Music is the sound track of the heart and soul.

Scorched Earth

There are some programs I enjoy watching again and again, finding something new among the old. Babylon 5 is one of those shows.

While watchingAnd the Sky Full of Stars this morning, the show seemed suddenly so timely despite having been off the air for years. Commander Sinclair is captured, drugged, hooked up to a cybernet and forced to remember what happened during the 24 hours he was missing at the Battle of the Line, the last battle between Earth and the Minbari during a war that would ultimately end with the genocide of the entire human race. Suddenly, with the destruction of Earth and the entire human race within their grasp, the Minbari surrendered. The war was over. Why did a superior force on the eve of victory surrender to a beaten enemy?

During the cyber-torture, the torturer tells Sinclair that many influential people back on Earth believe that Sinclair and others were recruited for a fifth column to destroy Earth and humanity from within, that Sinclair agreed to collaborate with the enemy to bring his own race down. The torturer points to aliens buying up land, investing in businesses and immigrating in ever larger numbers, pushing out humanity and taking over. Sound familiar? Like I said, old shows touched on the hot issues during their initial run and are seemingly prophetic. Or are they?

Do shows like Babylon 5 predict the future or do we just not learn the first time around and continue to repeat history? There is another possibility, that some shows act like barometers to point to the first hint of trouble, shining a light on a problem that, if unchecked, will continue to grow and get worse.

Near the end of the Shadow War when the Earth President (the VP who killed the President in order to take over) is trapped and Earth is being bombarded by the rebel forces gathered by the crew of Babylon 5, the President is in his office and he pushes a button that begins the process of what he calls Scorched Earth, turning the Shadow technology on Earth and its people. He knows he's trapped. He has weakened the planet and its people from within, but since he can no longer rule he is going to destroy the planet rather than face justice. Scorched Earth.

The men who vowed to protect Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic, had been corrupted, not by the Minbari, but by the dark forces of the Shadow, wooed by power and control and dark technology that counted human life as a commodity and the truth as malleable and elastic. They were co-opted by greed and the need to be seen as saviors, messiahs of truth and justice and everything that humanity held dear. It was a small concession at first to protect themselves against the covert invasion by the Minbari who helped to fund and build Babylon 5 and the four Babylon stations that were sabotaged, destroyed and went missing before the final Babylon 5 project successfully came on line to give form to the idea that alien races could all live and work together for the common good. While the powers that be were focused on the Minbari, they made a devil's pact with the Shadows and sealed their doom, sealed the doom of Earth and of all peoples living on the planet.

Beware those that work in the shadows and wear pleasant faces calling for peace and spouting peaceful platitudes and bromides, laying the blame on their opponents. That way lies danger and scorched earth.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— WB Yeats's "Second Coming"as first printed in 1920

Weekend follies

I spent the weekend in bed, mostly, and I wasn't alone. The weekend was an orgy of food, men, women, cultural discussions and electronics. There were also games and exchanges of ideas. My guests are still in bed with me now but soon will have to move so I can get up and get moving for another week of work before my vacation next week, which will be another week of work getting ready for the move. Yes, it's almost here. Even with the hot bed of activity here this weekend I managed to get a lot done, like the ham club newsletter.

One brand new ham demanded I send him the edited version of his article, which is something I usually do not do. I edit. I publish. You read. That's the way it works. I thought I'd be nice for a change (it's always good to try something new) and sent him the edited version. He added another paragraph to clarify things, which was more of the same and not very clarifying, and then asked me to change his photograph because he was recovering from the super flu in the previous photo. I didn't see much difference, other than a bigger and more detailed shot of his head. I explained that by the time he sent the photo I had already sent the file to the printer and he'd have to be satisfied with seeing his head shot only on the web PDF version. He didn't respond to that email. I don't expect he will.

One regular columnist sent in his article and said, "Try to get my callsign right this time." I emailed back that I would do my best without telling him that I cut and paste and edit but I don't write the articles and that the error in his callsign happened because he sent it that way. I did resent his tone, but didn't blast him the way I initially intended since I'm not going to have to deal with him or any of the rest of them much longer. I have two issues to go before I step down as editor and they still haven't found someone to take my place, which is a shame since I won't stay until they find one. I know how that game works and I'm not falling for it. This morning, after much deliberation, I sent off the PDF version to be emailed and uploaded to the web site. I'm done, except for picking up the printed copy of the newsletter, printing labels, putting on said labels when newsletter is picked up, attaching mailing disks and stamps and putting the rubber banded issue into the mailbox. At least I'm getting it done two weeks early this month.

You probably wonder how I worked in all those men and women while I futzed with the newsletter. Well, I'll tell you. In between downloading and watching Moonlight, Doctor Who and a few episodes of Firefly, which I adore, I plunged into a house of secrets and lies in Victorian England during the time Scotland Yard and the police were trying to decide whether to use dactylography or anthropometry as the tool of choice in discovering and unmasking recidivists. Well, I had to use the words eventually and this is as good a place as any.

Dactylography is fingerprinting and anthropometry is measuring a person from head to toe because supposedly a person's measurements, including distance of eyes, size of nose and ears, lips, fingers, etc., is unique to each individual. The French police during this time period had a department dedicated to anthropometry and were very successful in detecting career, or repeat, criminals (recidivists). The big argument between using fingerprinting versus body measurements is that it was easier to retrieve the data from measuring and nearly impossible to catalogue and quickly retrieve fingerprints data. I guess they hadn't heard of the computer and visual recognition scanning, but they are both rather backward countries. Anthropometry was the tool of choice in England for eight years before fingerprinting became the detection source in 1901. I was particularly impressed that the author managed to find an even more compelling story to weave in and around this bit of scientific trivia. I'll write and send my review later today and then you can read all about it.

That's one of the best things about reviewing books, being introduced to all sorts of writers and stories that I wouldn't have been drawn to in the first place. It has certainly broadened my horizons, although there are quite a few clinkers out there, and one or two near clinkers, like the book about a fiction class. I'm still not sure how to review that one because it is as much a fiction class as it is a story and I'm not sure I'd have paid cold hard cash to be taught by the protagonist. She's a whiny, self involved shrew that at times makes me want to punch her in the nose and I'm not even related to her. However, the fiction class was basic but interesting and helpful. More about that later.

Then I dove into the Indian Mahabharat told from a woman's point of view, for a change. So far, it's fascinating and I find the mythology very different from anything I've read so far. I always wanted to read the Mahabharata and now I can, although I'm still holding off on Mose Tolliver, folk artist. I need to get that one done this week.

In between writing, editing, dozing, watching a little TV on the laptop and reading, I also found out that I can connect my laptop to the TV to watch my shows. There are only three right now, which amounts to about 2.25 hours per week of time that I could be writing but choose to fritter away laughing and sighing over antics and hot guys with and without fangs. As a middle class American, it should be no surprise that in these times of stress and economic uncertainty I would cling to guys with guns, like Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Firefly class ship Serenity. Go figure.

As for my staying in bed over the weekend, I confess I have a problem. When I sit too long, like the hours I spend chained in my chair at the work computer typing operative reports, my feet and legs swell and the best thing I've found to relieve the pressure is keeping my feet up over the weekend and getting some rest. The swelling is a result of pressure edema, which is a result of my backside turning to lead and forcing all the fluids from my brain and blood to pool in my trapped hips, thighs, calves, ankles and feet after sitting for 10-14 hours a day. I do get up to empty my bladder fairly frequently and get more water to drink so it, too, can pool in the tissues in my lower extremities, but it's a job and it pays every two weeks, so if I have to spend a weekend in bed reading, writing and editing, then that's what I'll do. It's severe punishment, but I've had worse -- and liked it almost as much.

Now it's Monday morning, 5:39 a.m. to be exact, and the birds are rioting outside. The midnight blue sky is lightening just a bit between the budding and leaved branches of the trees and the glittering gems of the lights across town are beginning to look less bright and twinkly. I could turn off the light, close up the laptop and slip back under the covers for another hour or two or I could dive back into Indian mythology for a while. Then again, I could drag my lazy butt out of bed and take it to the shower and get ready for another grueling day of operative reports, punctuated by a trip to the new landlord's office to pay the first month's rent ahead of time and see if he won't let me begin moving a few things in early, and maybe have lunch at Coal Mine Dragon for some soft noodles and shrimp or scallops and vegetables with a side of jasmine tea and fresh orange. Then again, Nel's taking a shower next door and I'm averse to having my warm shower go cold on me right when I get to the good parts. Choices, choices.

That is all. Disperse.

Catching up

The new season, and the last for a while, of Doctor Who has started and overall I'm impressed with the show. The Narfer commented that one of the episodes was dire and dark, but it reminded me more of an early episode when William Hartnell was The Doctor. They were in Mexico among the Aztecs and one of his companions (he had three) was upset about the sacrifices and wanted to change them. As the Aztecs queen/leader/oracle, she started changing their culture and the Doctor told her that wasn't acceptable. She had to accept their customs without changing them or making them over in her own image. It was the same sensibility that the current Doctor showed in the second episode of the season when they went to Pompeii the day before it destroyed the city and Herculaneum. The Doctor said some points in history are fixed and others are not and he was willing to let the disaster happen without saving any -- almost. Donna convinced him to save one family and it turns out they were the ones who coined the word "volcanic". Just when you think the Doctor is changing a fixed point in time it turns out he's not, that it was meant for him to save the family all along, which in turns argues for the fixed point in history theory and the theory that everything is predestined even if we don't know it, sort of like Meg Ryan in the present following Hugh Jackman into the past to become the great grandmother of her recently ex-boyfriend. Nothing like sampling the fruit before you're the seed.

Battlestar Galactica is back and is following a strange story arc, although an interesting one. It seems one of the Cylon skin jobs just spaced the last of the five remaining Cylon skin jobs, if that's what they are. The Cylons are fighting among themselves and destroying some of their own by not having the resurrection ships jump with them when they attack some of their group; they are dying and this time they won't be coming back, so there is trouble in toaster paradise. What was most interesting to me is that some of the Cylons think of themselves not as God's instrument but as programmed machines with a softer side, sort of like Sears. Okay, not like Sears, but I couldn't resist. Starbuck is back in a brand new off the showroom floor Viper and she thinks only a little time has passed when it has been two months. The Cylons don't seem to know about her so what happened and where did she come from? Have the current writers delved back into the past to pull the light beings from reruns to help with Starbuck's return? It certainly has all the earmarks, but one never knows what goes on in a writer's mine, even the writer at times.

Desperate Housewives (yes, I watch it) has surprised me, not with its story lines, because it's still just Knotts Landing with a smaller community and smaller incomes, and without the nefarious J. R. Ewing mucking around and injecting venom, but with a budding friendship that does not bode well for the future. Something tells me Bree Hodge and Katherine Mayfair are headed for a hair pulling, eye scratching, leg biting cat fight that even the dark and salty goodness of Adam (Nathan Fillion) can break up, but I'm sure he'd rather watch Katherine get the lemon meringue pie stomped out of her anyway.

At long last, Moonlight returns on Friday, April 25th and I am glad. Talking about dark and salty goodness. Mick St. John is what has been missing from my weekends. The show got off to a rocky start but it has gotten better and it's definitely different than the usual vampire fare and a little closer to Stoker's vampire vision since these vampires can go out in the sun without exploding into a pillar of fire and being reduced to ash. They do suffer but not in the usual comic book way and the only way to kill a vampire is to cut off his head. Stakes through the heart just paralyze them, even if they're made of wood. And to add my take on Spike's Leman's concerns over a newly created vampire not recognizing the vampire who made him and yet being able to recognize Mick as "like" him, I think the vampire who made him was not the same kind of vampire -- a killer -- that Mick is and has had to be. The guys a professor and more of a geek. Add to the confusion of being turned and not knowing what was happening to him, the disorientation and the bombardment of so much coming at him so fast, it's easy to see that by the time he confronted Mick he was a little more in control and less deluged by the flood of sensory input that he was able to recognize one of his own kind. Okay, so actually two possibilities. I may not be right, and I did notice the gaffe when it happened, but I think I'm probably close to what the writers intended, or at least what they'd say once they noticed the gaffe when vampire lovers from all over the world stuffed their email in-box with complaints about it.

The only thing to catch up here is packing for the move, which will happen after May 2. The lease is signed. The deposit is paid. I'll pay the rent at the beginning of May and begin shuttling things from here to there. I'll move something myself, like clothes and sundries, a bit at a time until the movers arrived on May 8th to pack up the rest and shift the heavy stuff from here to there. I've hired someone to steam clean the carpets and someone to do a final cleaning on the place and make everything ship shape and Bristol fashion. The utilities and phone are scheduled for the change and I'll be one day without an Internet connection, unless I can find a local unsecured line to ride along but it will give me time to inaugurate the kitchen, make the bed for the first time in months and sleep in my new place. I might even get some reading and writing done or at least get some of my books unpacked and put on the built in shelves while I luxuriate in the blissful sound of silence and the feeling of privacy. A friend mentioned yesterday that I was spoiled by the seclusion and privacy of the cabin and she's right. Once I get moved and settled in maybe the deep crease between my eyebrows will finally soften and dissipate. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Buffy and Quantum Physics

I've heard people say they don't get Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I'm confused as to why, especially when I see episodes like, Out of Mine, Out of Sight about a student who becomes invisible and has a grudge against Cordelia (who wouldn't). It's Joss Whedon's version of Schrödinger's cat.

In a quantum physics world, reality is determined by seeing it -- or hearing it like the tree in the woods. Nothing exists until you observe it. Everything is in a state of waiting to be seen or never existing at all. In Joss Whedon's world this means that a girl who was overlooked by all her classmates and ignored becomes invisible because no one sees her, which segues into the wackiness that ensues when said girl, suddenly given a most powerful superpower like invisibility, uses it for evil instead of for good. It's an elegant concept and Joss did it proud.

That's the thing about Buffy and her Scooby gang and the various evil elements that pop up on the show. It's not just about a young girl killing vampires and staying alive longer than any other vampire slayer in history but about so much more: quantum physics, philosophy, sociology and the arc of existence that is growing up. The theme of death and how we deal with it is all part of the experience, and not just in the vampires are the undead and they kill people kind of way. Buffy is a very complex and multilayered show.

That is all. Disperse.

What it takes to be a hero

I finally saw the new Battlestar Galactica and it was really good, a fitting end to the season finale, asking more questions than it answered. Is Gaius Baltar a Cylon? The real question is whether or not Starbuck is a Cylon, but she actually grew up and was a baby and a child and Cylons don't grow up; they wake up in a new adult body. It brings up all kinds of questions, like whether or not the current Battlestar Galactica is a repeat or rewind of history or if history is nothing more than a series of do overs with slightly different story arcs. After all, the original Starbuck was a guy: a cigar smoking, womanizing, comet steering pilot. The new Starbuck is a girl: a cigar smoking, manizing, comet steering pilot. The funny thing about the name, Starbuck, is that it calls to mind a dreamer, a man of tricks and treats who brings rain to parched lands and withered hearts.

I also saw the latest episode of Heroes and the show continues to be a delightful mix of pathos and insight, X-Men without the tights and capes. The show gives a sense of reality to what seems like fantasy but may be closer than we think.

In and around all this new season show watching I have connected with an old friend, made a new friend who could turn out to be more than a friend and heard that my father is back in the hospital, this time with chest pains and rectal bleeding. Beanie called me late last night to tell me Dad was staying in the hospital until they ran some more tests. He was in a lot of pain and the x-rays showed lesions on his bones. Well, that's what cancer is all about and those lesions are eating into his bones and that's why he's in such pain. No surprise there. All I keep thinking is, "What's next?" And I wish that Dad had an adamantium skeleton like Wolverine so the cancer couldn't eat into his bones and cause him so much pain so that he needs Dilaudid and morphine to give him a few moments of relief. In my book, what Dad is going through and how he's handling it makes him a hero, but he's always been my hero.

The little blue pill

In most of the books I've read over the past few weeks there is a recurring theme: older men falling for much younger women. Viagra has been just one of the reasons for this belief that an older man would be attractive to younger women, but it is Stephen King's reasoning in Bag of Bones that I find most interesting, especially contrasted with a recent article about men's preferences, and not just for younger women.

King, in the character of Mike Noonan, best selling author hiding a career ending case of writer's block, writes that younger women want older men because they are more stable and secure: financially and emotionally. Men of middle age have found themselves and are established in a profession. They have lived. Conversely, men are drawn to younger women not only because of the biological urge for procreation but also to women who are unstable because men see adventure and excitement, the very things they feel they have lost by becoming financially and emotionally stable and secure in their professions.

It reminds me of something I heard once. Men marry women expecting them not to change and women marry men expecting to be able to change them. It is the dichotomy of the species that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus attempted to explain.

It never occurs to men that the damsel in distress they find so appealing is probably going to spend the rest of her life running from one chaotic situation to another, upsetting his stable world and draining his finances if she sticks around for any length of time or that he is willingly taking on Sisyphus's task of eternally rolling the ball uphill only to have it crash to the bottom so that he must start all over. He doesn't see the jagged murderous rocks as he is lured to destruction by the siren's call.

Then I am reminded of Samantha Jones from Sex and the City who was successfully (for a time) lured to the stark reality of an 80-year-old billionaire's bed by the glittering promises of diamonds and Viagra only to run screaming from the sight of his wrinkled and sunken behind as he stopped in the midst of foreplay to relieve himself. Samantha got out of Dodge very quickly and the security and stability she saw in the aging Romeo with a pocket full of little blue pills.

Even Philip Roth in The Human Stain contrasts a writer who survived prostate cancer intact without his libido, something he felt he had easily and painlessly left behind, with a 71-year-old retired dean of a college having an illicit affair with an illiterate and battered woman whose Vietnam veteran husband stalks them and blames her for the deaths of their two children. The writer is drawn into Silk's life as a moth drawn to a flame just as surely as the stable and secure retired dean is drawn to Faunia, the beast of his youthful libido awakened by a pocket full of little blue pills.

I wonder if it is the chemical miracle of those little blue pills that has writers dwelling on the these May-December romances or the fact that the writers themselves are looking into the beast's sleeping face and daring to waken him while they stand looking after the damsels in distress with their tongues hanging out even when their mouths are closed. Or is this the libidinous version of King Midas's lust for gold that was nearly his undoing? Only time will tell as more and more authors look into their winter years and rage against the dying of that lustful light, reaching into their pockets and their dreams for one of those little blue pills.

Out of the flames

While checking my email and going through the posts on the herbal medicine tribe I found myself mentioned and not politely. I was being flamed. Since I get digest emails instead of the usual clutter of almost hourly messages sent from that very busy tribe I didn't realize this had been going on. Someone I've never met attacked me openly and very rudely and asked that someone use his flames for a haiku. Someone jumped in and did. I thanked them for their creativity and asked the flamer why he found the need to attack me. I then went to his profile on tribe.net, as he obviously had read my profile (he could've gotten the information he used in no other way) and sent him an email asking why he felt the need to attack me since I had no knowledge of him, had never written anything to or about him and hadn't posted anything other than a little information about a rude and crude individual who finds it necessary to attack people looking for information and asking questions about colloidal silver, something about which he is strong and rudely vocal. I wait for his answer.

This situation reminds of situations in the past when I have offered information and mediation only to be attacked. I went back to those posts and found that although my conciliatory words were still there, as were my responses to the flaming attacks, the attacks had been deleted. I'm certain the same will happen with the herbal medicine flamer. From what I know and from what I've read about the peacemakers, those who offer mediation and a chance to find some common ground in the midst of war and personal attacks, the peacemakers are usually cut down by those who do not wish to find an amicable settlement and do not want to listen to reason or find common ground. Seldom do the peacemakers die a peaceful death. Those who do not want peace and who are totally invested in their anger and need to demonize someone, anyone, find ways of creating chaos and strife no matter where they go or what they do. They are the drama queens who delight in feeding off negative and heightened emotions like vampires.

Vampires are seen nowadays as romantic figures doomed to walk the earth without a soul, victims of predators who made them the unwilling recipients of a dark gift, demon lovers who stalk the night and offer their bloody kiss, but vampires are predators who feed off the light and the energy of the living.

Vampires were unholy creatures of the night, fetid carrion eaters who stank of the grave until Dark Shadows gave us Barnabas Collins, the victim of a scorned witch who cursed him with eternal life and an overwhelming thirst for blood. Then came Lestat and Louis and a host of other vampires who offered romance for their pint of blood and suffered the torments of the damned, making us forget they are still predators who would rather drink the last drops of our blood than surrender to Death. Some preyed on rats or only on criminals, thus making them a little less repulsive as they wooed us with their grace and strength and marble carved beauty. Some vampires fed on the blood of cattle while we fed on cattle's milk and meat, making us civilized predators, but predators all the same.

Romance can be found in the strangest places and faces and people tend to romanticize everything and everyone at one point or another, turning the world upside down and seeing everything through rose-colored glasses. We fail to see the friend or lover who uses and abuses us, making us the butt of their thinly veiled jokes, as vampires feeding off our energy and light and intelligence like ticks and fleas and mosquitoes -- or larger more seductive predators. But we are all predators. Whether we feed off animals or vegetables or the bright energy of a peaceful soul, we are first, last and always predators standing on some rung of the food chain waiting to eat or be eaten with or without the flames.

Happy dance

I knew the ice truck killer was still at large and the guy they picked up, a taxidermist, living in an old trailer, with a genius IQ and a desire for immortality, was a dud. The ice truck killer would have definitely have not had a lame hobby like taxidermy when he practices his art on humans, and I don't mean to demean taxidermists. They have their art, too, but it's like equating Picasso or Michaelangelo with a kid in high school art class who can draw stick figures. No contest.

Anyway, I was right about the identity of the ice truck killer. i knew I was right two weeks ago and today I got confirmation.

Don't know who I'm talking about? Check out Dexter. If you haven't seen it on Showtime at least check it out the available episodes on the web, and definitely make a trip to the library and check out Jeff Lindsay's Dexter books. They're both worth the time and effort and you'll be amazed. This is how truly creative minds work.

That is all. Disperse.

Genesis

Ever since Darwin wrote his Origin of the Species on Nov. 24, 1859 he has provided people with the fuel to jump start their brains and should probably be called the Father of Science Fiction. His writing was not based on science fiction but on his voyage in 1856 on the HMS Beagle and sparked by Gregor Mendel's work with pea plants. Mendel was a little known Central European monk who experimented with what farmers and herdsman have always known about breeding and cross breeding.

Out of this quest for knowledge begun by Descartes who believed that nothing in nature could not be recreated by Man comes the science fiction watched and read everywhere these days. The roots of the Human Genome Project are deep in this fertile soil which gives fruit to speculation about the evolutionary track Mankind will take. Enter the X-Men and Mutant X and now Heroes.

My subscription to the Sci Fi Channel's newsletter made me curious about the new show, Heroes, and after a brief struggle of several weeks I gave in and downloaded all seven episodes. Now they haunt my dreams. The show is interesting and gives reality to what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created in 1963 with the X-Men, a comic I avidly devoured in my formative years. Not to take anything away from the movie versions of the X-Men, but Heroes is the embodiment of those ideas and people without the strong, gentle guiding hand of Professor Charles Xavier. However, once again life hangs in the balance as these models of natural selection and genetic mutation figure out what is happening to them and why and what they must do with their powers. The show's narrator says that change is violent and there is certainly violence in what is happening to these ordinary people who are beginning to understand just how extraordinary they really are as they head towards a cataclysmic clash with destiny.

What I want to know is whether or not Mendel and Darwin should be compensated for their work? The heirs of the protohuman who discovered how to make fire certainly didn't get his share of the residuals.

That is all. Disperse.