A plan for long-term Federal debt reduction

Faux News Network political reporter Stacy Conundrum has learned one aspect of this plan from a Tea Party operative who demanded anonymity because the plan hasn't been finalized.  The plan, according to the source, will be the cornerstone of the Tea Party's initiative to lower longtime Federal spending.  The operative described part of the plan this way.  "The first step will be to overturn Obama's health plan.  This will eliminate health benefits for over thirty million Americans.  Without access to health care, many of these people will die early, before they are old enough to qualify for Social Security and Medicare.  While this will not solve the Federal deficit by itself it certainly represents a positive step forward to longterm financial stability."  She continued, "If even half of that thirty million don't live long enough to collect, the savings will be enormous."

Our source said the plan would be rolled out in the next few months, Stacy reported, and they expect all of the Republican Presidential candidates to endorse the plan and that they will agree that they have found the key to long-term deficit reduction.

The source concluded by saying, "This type of creative legislation will allow us to continue to give tax breaks to the oil industry, deregulate the banking industry and maintain the farm subsidies, all of which are vital elements in our national interest."

Anti-Orwellian Developments

Have you noticed how many stores and public places now have video cameras? They record everything going on around them.  Sounds a bit like Orwell's 1984, doesn't it?  Except--how many times have you seen a film clip of a crime in progress on the TV news? Using the cameras to identify criminals and protect private property isn't exactly Orwellian.

And then there are the Smartphones.  Almost everyone has one and most of them can shoot video clips.  In what amounts to an anti-Orwellian development, people use those smartphones to record acts of violence and unlawful activity such as police brutality.  The videos, posted on the web, are seen by millions of people.

Unfortunately, many police officers don't seem to understand that the brutality they are accustomed to use without fear of reprisals is now permanently documented and subjected to public scrutiny.

It is mind-boggling that neither criminals nor the police seem to have grasped the impact of the new technology on their traditional method of operations.  The  crooks continue to pull off robberies under the eye of the camera.  The cops continue to brutalize peaceful demonstrators as if they were invisible and unaccountable for their actions.

These developments certainly weren't foreseen by Orwell when he wrote his horrific novel. 

What do you think about these developments?

Freebies!

Check out the new freebies pages on my website Strange Worlds.  You can find a story, fiction writing articles and even mind-maps all ready to be down-loaded. More stuff will become available over time so bookmark the site

Congressional Greed

Can you believe the imbeciles we have in Washington?  Congress is composed equally of those who are frightened to raise taxes and those who are scared to cut expenses.  The don't fear the wrath of the voters; they fear the wrath of their corporate masters who have bought their loyalty.

Why do we tolerate this nonsense?  Why do we allow these idiots to remain in office?

The obvious response to this situation is to take action next spring.  Many of our corrupt or stupid representatives will be running for reelection in 2012.  They have to go through a primary election and there is where we must act.  We must swarm to the ballot box and vote for the challengers.  Once the incumbent loses the primary election, we will have a new set of representatives who may act in the best interest of the voters. Until they get comfortable with the money the lobbyists drop on their desks to buy their votes. Then we will have to clean house again.  Since we don't have automatic terms limits, we, the voters, must implement out own term limits.  

And don't tell me everyone in Congress is corrupt except YOUR Representatives and Senators.  They are ALL corrupt and have to be voted out of office.

Two new interviews

Two new interviews of mine have appeared over the last week.

One of them is on Joylenne Butler's site: http://cluculzwriter.blogspot.com/2011/11/another-great-interview-hank-quense.html

The other is at Angel's Cove: http://angelscove.blogspot.com/2011/11/interview-with-author-of-zaftan.html

Both are interviews about Zaftan Miscreants.  Check them out.

Merchant of Venison; a sample read

One of the stories in Tales From Gundarland is my version of one of Shakespeare's most famous stories.  I transported it to Gundarland and changed the main characters slightly.  The entire story can be read in my award-winning collection of six short stories and two novellas.

MERCHANT OF VENISON

By HANK QUENSE

SCENE ONE:

© 2010

In response to Bassanio's urgent plea, Antonio hurried along the still-dark streets of Dun Hythe to the home of his friend.  Since Bassanio rarely awoke before noon, the reason for the early morning meeting must be extraordinary.

He turned off the cobblestone main road and walked the unpaved side streets towards the city walls where Bassanio's house stood by itself.  After his experiments had destroyed his last three homes, two by fire and one by explosion, the city leaders demanded that Bassanio live in isolation from nearby houses.

In front of the house, he paused to straighten his brown jerkin and to adjust his rust-colored cloak before he knocked on the front door.  Bassanio's pale face and red-rimmed eyes alarmed him.  He wore a yellow dressing gown pocked with burn holes and old, fluffy slippers with bunny faces sewed into them.  An elf, Bassanio towered over Antonio's dwarfish figure, but he stooped as if suffering from exhaustion.  His long, light brown hair, now disheveled, partially concealed his face.  Considered the most handsome male in Dun Hythe, he looked far from his best this morning.  "Good! You're here," he said.  "Come in."  His breath reeked of stale wine.

Antonio entered the front room of the house and was greeted by the acrid stink of burnt chemicals.  He noticed that more ceiling beams had been charcoaled since his last visit.  Bassanio's lab was in the back of the house, but he frequently performed experiments wherever he happened to be.

"Are you all right?"  Antonio asked.  "You look like a zombie."  He tugged his short, brown beard in distress.

"I was up late."  Bassanio plowed a hand through his hair.  "Working on a plan to ensure my fortune.  I need your help."

"Tell me," Antonio said.  Bassanio was his best friend and had been ever since they met in the Academy for Agriculture, Business and Science.  He majored in business while Bassanio took science.

"It has to do with Portia."  Bassanio sat down at a low table, picked up a scalpel and chopped up a brown weedy material know as pipeweed, a mild hallucinogenic, into small bits.  "I need money to get her hand in marriage."

Antonio's heart skipped a beat at the mention of her name.  "I thought you two were in love.  You need to woo her some more?"

"Portia loves me and has agreed to marry me whenever her father gives permission.  I need a loan so I can woo the old geezer.  He suspects I'm irresponsible."

"He suspects?  The man must be a lack-wit."  Antonio smiled.  "Everyone in town knows you're irresponsible."

"Very funny."  Bassanio made a face while he massaged his forehead with one hand and continued cutting the pipeweed with the other.

"You must have drunk a lot of wine last night developing this plan."

"Wine loosens the brain cells and encourages innovative thinking."  He scraped a pile of small brown bits into a straight line.  "So, can you lend me three thousand silver pennies?"

"What?  It'll take me years to sell that much venison.  I'll have to take out a loan.  Why so much?"

"You know Portia's old man is filthy rich.  It'll take lots of money to impress him.  I can pay you back right after we marry.  That'll be in three months at the longest."  He took a thin glass tube out of his pocket and lined it up with the brown bits.

"What are you doing?"

"Smoking pipeweed can ease the effects of a hangover, but that is inefficient.  First, you have to find a pipe and then you need to light it and it takes time for the smoke to have an impact.  I'm investigating a new approach.  One that will accelerate the effects."

Antonio made a face and shook his head.  Bassanio never stopped his experiments into new ways to get high or to mitigate the aftereffects of the high.  Someday, one of his experiments would end up killing him.  His eyebrows still hadn't completely grown back since one recent experiment ended in spectacular fashion and involved every fireman in the city.

Bassanio put an end of the tube in one nostril, stopped the other nostril with a finger pressed to the outside.  He inhaled the chopped pipeweed.  He gagged and dropped the tube.  His eyes opened wide and his face turned red.  After a few unsuccessful tries, he sneezed so violently that he and the chair tumbled backwards and crashed to the floor.  After righting the chair, he sat down again, coughing and wiping his running nose.

"I guess," Antonio said, "there's a reason they call it pipeweed and not snortweed."

Bassanio groaned.  "Once I marry Portia, I'll hire an assistant to do this part of the experiments."  After another coughing and sneezing fit, he said, "So what about the money?  I can't get a loan, but I'm sure you can."

"I hate going to a money lender, but I'll have to.  Are you sure you can pay me back in three months?"

"Not a problem."  Bassanio waved a hand dismissively.  "I'll pay you back long before then."

Read more: Tales From Gundarland

Alien Sex!

Have you ever wondered how aliens Do It?

Wonder no  more.  My novel Zaftan Miscreants has an erotic sex scene in it.  Between 2 hideous aliens.  Guaranteed to make you gag. Or laugh. Or both. One of the participants is my heroine, Klatze, pictured here.

If that isn't enough for you, there is also a sex scene between an android and a ship's main computer.

Zaftan Miscreants, part of my Strange Worlds.

Faux News Network: Republican Demands More Regulation

Stacy Conundrum, FNN political reporter, talked exclusively to Dr. Phillip Pompous, an economist and CEO of a conservative think-tank who advises the Republicans on regulatory manners.

SC: why do the Republicans aver that the financial industry doesn't require additional regulation to keep them from perpetrating another disaster like the one we still haven't recovered from?

PP:  Like most liberal media types, you have no idea about what caused the meltdown and you blame the easiest target available.  The cause of the problem was the middle-class property owners who couldn't pay off their mortgages.   How dumb can these people be, taking on a mortgage that they can't pay off.  Didn't these people ever hear of working a second or third job to get the money to pay off the mortgage?  The financial industry was left on the hook because of these incompetent, lazy mortgage holders.

SC: isn't it true that the financial industry enticed the mortgage holders with misleading offers and half-truths?

PP: More liberal propaganda.  Blame the victims.  Without the stupendous efforts of the financial industry to repair the damage caused by the unprincipled mortgage holders, the country would have slipped into a full-blown depression.  Instead of praising the banks and other financial corporations for their heroic actions to staunch the monetary bleeding, the media blames the banks and spreads the lies put out by the government.

SC: Wait a minute.  The heroic efforts you just mentioned, wasn't it the taxes paid by the middle-class that bailed out the banks?

PP: The dishonest mortgage holders drove the banks to the brink of bankruptcy.  The use of the tax-payer bailout money was necessary and was the best use of taxes in the last several decades.  The government should set up a ongoing fund for corporations to tap when they need additional cash for some purpose. But without all the red tape and oversight of the last time.

SC: So your position and the position of the Republican Party is that the banks don't need more regulation and oversight. Is that correct?

PP: Of course it's correct.  The problem isn't the banks or the energy industry or other corporations, the problem is the middle-class and the poor.  They're the ones causing all the problems in the country.  Unions use negotiating tactics to drain profits from corporations, thus depriving stock holders of needed dividends.  People sue corporations to get compensation for accidents caused by their own stupidity.  We have to stop this guerilla warfare against corporate interests.

SC: So where do you stand on regulation?

PP: Actually, I am in favor of much more regulation and oversight, but not on corporations.  It is desperately required to be applied to the masses.  The government has completely missed the point of regulation.  It has to regulate the actions of the middle- and lower-classes.  The aim of the regulations will be to protect the corporations from these predatory cheaters and liars.  The regulations must make it a crime to walk away from a mortgage and cause a loss to the banks.  Consumers must be prohibited from suing corporations for any reason. Unemployment benefits must be cut.  There are plenty of jobs available. If an illegal alien can find a job, an unemployed can find the same job.  If a few million unemployed took the jobs from the illegals, we'd eradicate several of our nasty national problems.  That is the direction we must get the government to go in.

SC: That's it from FNN news. I'll interview more politicians after I recover from this one.  It may take a while.

FNN Report: Responsible Godhood Movement Gains Traction.

Today, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street Movement, thousands of protesters gathered in front of churches and temples to decry the slipshod methods used by the Creator.  They demanded change and insisted on higher quality control by used by the so-called omniscient deity currently in charge of production.

FNN Religious Reporter Matthew Mark Lukejohn interviewed the movement leader Thaddeus Humbug about the Movement's objectives. Here's his interview.

MMLJ: Why are these people protesting against God?

TH: We are disgusted with the shoddy workmanship put out by He/She/It.  For eons, people have accepted the substandard garbage because they didn't know better.  Well, no more.  Science now allows to identify the defects that plague the production process.  Our movement is calling He/She/It out and demanding changes.

MMLJ: Can you give us examples of what your demonstrating against?

TH: Sure.  We are against people getting born with genes that make it highly likely they will get cancer at an early age.  We're standing up for people born with weak hearts.  We are vehemently against babies getting born with birth defects.  These babies have little or no chance of having a normal life.  Why do these innocent babies have to suffer just because He/She/It can't put out a decent product?

MMLJ: How do you think the process can be improved?

TH: What are all the saved souls doing?  As far as we can tell, they just sit around and sing Hosannas.  It's about time they were put to work on quality control.  And then there's all those angels.  What exactly is their role?  Why aren't they helping out?  Why don't they get busy stopping wars or eliminating pollution?  And don't get me started on why churches and temples need all the gold and treasures that are stored inside them.  Why does He/She/It need treasure?  What does He/She/It do with it?

MMLJ: So your movement is also protesting against the idle saved, the heavenly staff and excessive church wealth?
TH: Exactly.  But out protest is mostly demanding production changes.  The process probably hasn't had a decent quality review since it was started. And whose fault is that?  He/She/It is so pompous and arrogant He/She/It can't conceive of the possibility that the process is defective and can be improved.  This pomposity and arrogance must end.  We demand changes and we want to be involved in the decision making process.  Until the situation improves, we will continue to camp out on church grounds and insist on process improvements.

This is Matthew Mark Lukejohn reporting from The Church of the Holy Elbow in Weehawken, New Jersey.  I'll continue to cover this breaking story.

Five Star review

Zaftan Miscreants has picked up another five-star review. The review reads in part:
The story line itself was not just one cut and dried road, it had a lot of little twists and side-stories and I don't want to give away too much but a lot of the goings-ons could really be paralleled to things happening here and now. Life, love, government, deception, lies, hope, despair, it's all in there wrapped up with some of the best satirical humor I've ever read. Just like a good spaghetti sauce IT'S IN THERE. 

Once you pick up this book and take a taste, you don't wanna put it down til your overly full and sated. 


I would recommend this first to anyone with a sense of humor! Secondly to all fans of sci-fi who are looking for something just a little different. 


Check it out!

Zaftan Miscreants Sample

Sample Scene from Zaftan Miscreants: Book 2 of the Zaftan Trilogy

Backstory

The book's antagonist, Gongeblazn, is freed from prison where he heard tales of a famous pirate, Blackbeard the Dwarf. Gongeblazn, who believes he is channeling the famous pirate, changes his name to Blackbeard, steals a trading vessel and recruits a crew from the galaxy's worst tavern.  In this scene he musters the crew for the first time:

==========================================

With everyone on board, Blackbeard called a muster.  He looked over his crew as they stood approximately at attention, most holding their noses and breathing through their mouths.  They consisted of a half-dozen porcines, three zaftans, five dwarfs, one elf, seven humans, the yuk bartender and a half-pint.  He looked down on the diminutive would-be pirate and said, "I do not remember ya signin' The Articles."

"I did sign them."

Blackbeard unrolled The Articles and scanned the signatures.  "What's yer name?"

"Harry Hotspur.  I was a teacher in the high school, but I decided to go adventuring."

"By the tides, ye did sign up. It's just that yer a bit small to be a pirate.  Someone will step on ye when we board a ship."

"I make up for my small stature by being overly aggressive."

"And ya talk funny."

"I'm a political science teacher and it's pretty boring stuff."

"He's kinda useless as a pirate," the former bartender said.  "Maybe, we could throw him at da other crew we when board dere ship."

"Useless, am I?"  Harry charged at the yuk, lowered his head at the last moment and rammed it into the yuk's crotch.  The yuk folded up with a whooshing sound and collapsed to the deck."

"Arrgh, where did ya learn that trick?" Blackbeard asked.

"From my students.  To survive in that high school, one has to be tough and a fast learner.  The students are vicious."

Blackbeard turned his attention to the rest of the crew.  "It has come to me notice that none of ye has a peg leg.  A good crew needs a peg leg or two.  Who will volunteer to get a leg hacked off so he can use a peg leg?"

"Ask one of them," a dwarf replied and jerked a thumb towards the zaftans.  "They look like they can do without a tentacle or two."

"Are ye daft?  Who ever heard of a pirate with a peg tentacle?"  He scanned his forces.  "Anyone own a parrot?"

No one answered.

"All pirate ships have a parrot.  Computer!  Buy a parrot as soon as ye can."

"Live or stuffed?" Slash 9 asked.

"Either one.  Now then.  None of ye are wearin' eyepatches.  Anyone want to get an eye gouged out so ye can look like a salty dog of a pirate?"

"I can hardly see out of my right eye," a porcine said.  "I'll wear a patch if you like."

"Arrrgh!  A volunteer.  Right, put it on."

"Can't.  I don't got one."

"Computer!"

"I know.  Order eyepatches.  Black ones I suppose."

"Right.  And order some peg legs and crutches.  Mayhap, one of these lads will lose a limb boarding a ship."  Brimming with pride over his new command and crew, he dismissed them to let them discover the ship had only a dozen bunks for the crew of twenty-four.