Beauty does not equate goodness

Seeing this quote gave me pause to think about how so often, humans are lured in by beauty only to discover that the wrapping on the outside does not equal at all what you find on the inside. And for me, beauty isn't just physical beauty. I define beauty as having an ability to appeal to any sense. Something you feel, something you hear, or something you smell and touch.

I'm sure the boys who were victimized by Sandusky in the Penn State scandal felt really good about themselves prior to their molestation because something beautiful had finally come into their lives through the Second Mile charity. The same goes for the Horace Mann School which got a tell-all expose written in the New York Times this week from author Amos Kamil. It's a long article, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. By the time I'd finished reading, I just about threw up in my mouth.

If you haven't read the New York Times article, please do so unless real life details of pedophilia and boys being raped by the teachers that they trusted offends you. It's horrific what happened to those kids in that place of such great beauty and promise. You can find it HERE. I guess the same can be said nationwide as more and more of these stories surface from elite schools, athletic institutions, churches, and scout troops.

In an interview on NPR this week, comedian Joan Rivers (I like Joan...say what you will about how fake she looks...I think she's a good person and keeps it real) said in defense of all of her plastic surgeries something akin to, "We live in a society where appearance is everything."

Do you agree with that statement? I know that I do. Just living in Salt Lake City, my ears get bombarded with advertisements to remove unwanted hair, to get liposuction, and to basically create a better you. I want to ask...what was wrong with the natural you? Is the way I am or the way you are not good enough anymore?

And then there's the other thought that creeps into my mind. As a society, are our children growing up in a world where they are learning that if something is beautiful, that it is inherently good and should be trusted? If so, I think that this is a terrible mistake.

Can you think of specific examples where something beautiful ended up being something evil? Is your villain in your book beautiful?

Do you judge a book's goodness by the beauty of its cover? And if so, have you ever been surprised by the "sour grapes"?

What's the deal with incest?

I watch True Blood, so I think those of you out there who watch it know where this blog post may be heading. But first, a few words. As far as the vampire series goes, it took a long time for me to really warm up to it. But there's just something hypnotic about all that white southern trash as a vampire setting. Girls walking around in Daisy Dukes with some hoodoo in the bayou and protagonists with awesome names like Sookie. And let's not forget Jason Stackhouse who's in the series for one reason...to be naked.

Eric and his sister just got done having sex while Bill (on the right) listened in.

So in the premiere on Sunday, Eric Northman banged his sister. And it makes me ask the question, what's the deal with incestuous storylines? In Game of Thrones, Jamie Lannister has an incestuous relationship with his sister Cersei (both are HBO Series by the way). Are writers using incest because it's shocking?

RECENT OBSERVATIONS:
I've heard Cassandra Clare has an incestuous relationship in her novel City of Bones (which will probably be turned into a movie one of these days).

In a Big Bang Theory episode, Howard Walowitz tells everyone that he lost his virginity to his cousin.

On one episode of Boardwalk Empire (another HBO show), a flashback-heavy installment revealed a sexual relationship between Gillian (Gretchen Mol) and her son, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt).

So anyone else notice that incest seems to be cropping up a lot lately? Or is this an old hat and has been explored for decades and I'm only just noticing it?

I remember when I was much younger overhearing a conversation in a store where a high school kid playing a video game in an arcade bragged to another kid that he was having sex with his own sister. I remember feeling quite repulsed by that statement. And I still think I'm a little repulsed by it.

I guess I should try to be more open-minded. But yeah, each time I come across one of these plotlines, it shocks me.

Are any of you writers out there using incest in your books? If so, why?

And to celebrate the return of True Blood I give you the following gifs :)))

Lafayette staring down Alcide. Too awesome for words. Go Lafayette. For those that don't
follow this show, Alcide is frickin' huge. Like seriously...take an MMA fighter at the peak of their
fitness and you'd have Alcide. He's also a were-wolf.

Jason Stackhouse playing Rock Band. He seems undamaged psychologically
from the fact that he was raped for an entire day last season by were-panthers.
In True Blood, sex with anyone, anytime goes hand-in-hand with grits in the a.m. 

Prometheus Review With Spoilers

This is a picture of Shaw's baby (the tentacled monster) taking out the lone
 space jockey on the planet that the crew awoke from a 2000 year-old hyper sleep.
 When the space jockey woke up, he was pissed and started killing everyone.
There was no explanation. He shares the same genetic code as a human, but
 clearly was very unhappy that humans had landed on the planet and had
 one thing in mind: pilot a ship filled with biological weapons to destroy Earth. Shaw
stopped him and basically opened a door that had the monster tentacled creature
 behind it that grabbed the space jockey that would have killed her. This was the biggest
face-hugger I have ever seen. It was really impressive.

Well I saw Prometheus at the midnight showing last Thursday, and I absolutely loved it. Here are the elements that fired my imagination:

1) The 3D was stunning. It wasn't too dark or too light, and it didn't feel like they were purposely going out of their way to make trick shots for a 3D audience. This is definitely a "big screen" film, and I feel that if you are a fan of these movies, you definitely want to invest the money to see it in IMAX if you can.

2) Michael Fassbender as David was the most interesting android ever. There are parts where he is on the spaceship, engaging in sports by himself to clearly wile away the time and then he also emulates Peter O'Toole's character in Lawrence of Arabia (by the way Fassbender looks a lot like a young Peter O'Toole, and I had previously not noticed this connection). Anyway, why would an android need to use old movies and sports to entertain himself unless he was bored? And this begs another question...can computers be bored? I have no idea. But it's an intriguing concept. Roger Ebert pointed out in his review that Peter Weyland referred to David as the "son I never had". Charlize Theron plays the daughter of Peter Weyland and there was definitely sibling rivalry there as well as a startling physical appearance (both blond, both tall, etc.). But Peter Weyland strips David of humanity by declaring him soulless. Is this statement true though? I don't know.

3) The concept of parents. David the android says in one scene that "all children secretly want their parents to die". I thought this was fascinating that someone would even say this. I for one don't want my parents to die. I kind of feel that having my parents die will be the thing that makes me really aware of my mortality--that I too can and will die. And I kind of wonder if David said this because he's essentially immortal and wants to know what it will feel like to die and doesn't believe he can do so UNLESS the ones who created him perish.

Additionally, in Prometheus, one of the characters named Shaw is obsessed with finding an explanation of "where do humans come from?" She's Christian in the movie, which suggests to me that she already has an answer. So why then is she doing all of this searching? Does she want proof? Is belief not enough for her? Maybe there is something to the statement "All fanatics hide a secret doubt". What do you think?

Basically, I see Shaw's quest as a search for parentage of some kind and when she finds it, the parents are not what she was expecting. In fact, they're pretty terrifying. Physically, the "space jockeys" look like the most muscular humans on earth, only half again as tall. Take the offspring of NFL superstars like Eli Manning and Tom Brady and couple that genetic code with really tall supermodels for about three hundred years and then smack that offspring with an ugly stick, and you'd probably end up with a space jockey. So really...not all that far-fetched.

And the gist of Prometheus is that this "super race" created humans (basically destroying all of her beliefs in one fell blow) and to top it off, they're jerks. They offer no explanation for what they did, and it looks like they changed their mind about humanity. In other words, the stuff on the world that the Prometheus visits is a biological weapon. The alien xenomorph is a creation manufactured in a lab somewhere and meant to deploy against the human race to wipe us out. But why?

4) The unanswered questions. The end of the show has Shaw zooming off in a space jockey ship with David along for the ride and she isn't going back to Earth. She's going for the Engineer's (space jockey) homeworld. But what does she hope to find there? They clearly wanted humans dead. However, it's been 2000 years since the engineers on this world were in touch with their core civilization. Did something happen to them? Did they get wiped out by their own biological weapons? Or maybe they were designing a weapon to take out their own parents (the ones that created them).

All in all, Prometheus is the magnificent film that I was hoping for, so I'm pleased. I just hope it makes enough money to warrant a sequel. I want answers that the film didn't provide. And I would also like to see how the first Alien movie and the events in Prometheus connect. Where did the derelict spacecraft on LV-426 come from as well as the huge cargo of eggs. The end of Prometheus showed the birth of a xenomorph, but that's basically a harmless lifeform as the planet had no indigenous population really (unless the alien could learn to pilot an empty ship).

Insecure Writer's Support Group Dating Tip #24

Are you insecure about meeting new people? I know I am. And that's a detriment for those of us that actually want people to read our books because marketing is all in the hands of the author these days. Maybe it all comes out of a fear of rejection. This Dating Tip from Ken, I think, is applicable to most situations, including those we face as a writer. I know I take his advice to heart. It's so simple. Know yourself. Be Yourself. Who knew?

Remember. Solid. That is the key. Thank you, Ken :).

I'll be on a blogging break until Monday. My friend Tomeka is flying in from Detroit, and my friend James from Idaho is driving into town too. We're all going to go see Prometheus at the IMAX, I'll show them the KIA Optima (which is most likely the next car I'm buying), and probably eat really good food.

Love people. Feed them good food.

I think that's a good  motto.

What will happen to Samwell Tarley?

Okay, so I needed a day to think about the finale of Game of Thrones, season two. Basically, everything happened...not as I remember it from the book. Not at all. I still liked the season. It had the flavor of A Clash of Kings, but honestly, I'm confused at what will happen to Samwell Tarley. Why did the writers do what they did to him at the end of the show? How can he expect to get out of this situation?

For those of you who haven't read the books, I'm going to talk about something that could be considered a spoiler. But not really...as they seem to be changing everything, and I have no idea what is going to happen next season.

In A Clash of Kings, the White Walkers attack the Fist of the First Men enmasse and destroy the entire Night's Watch (all 300 men). There are some that flee into the woods (there are no woods in the scene in the HBO drama) and Samwell is tracked by one White Walker which he kills using a weapon made of dragon glass (obsidian).

But in the season finale, Samwell is on a snowy plateau...no woods are nearby, and the White Walkers surround him with an army numbering in the hundreds. LIKE WTF?!? How can his character possibly survive? The White Walker obviously saw him. He's surrounded by hundreds of wights. I don't see anyway out of this.

I will be disappointed if he kills one White Walker and the entire army dissipates because they are afraid of his dragon glass weapon.

I will be disappointed if they kill Samwell as he is still alive in A Dance With Dragons.

I will be disappointed if they ignore Samwell because the White Walkers don't ignore humans. They kill everyone, unmercifully.

So what will happen to Samwell Tarley? I'm so irritated by this choice that the writers of the show made. They could easily have had Samwell back at the Fist of the First Men when the attack started. Then he could have been a coward, slipped away, and got trailed by one White Walker that he kills off in the woods with the dragon glass dagger. But I just see no way out of this "Battle of Little Bighorn" that he finds himself in.

Any thoughts? Sigh. Checkout the scene below as it appeared Sunday night. I so would not want to be part of the Night's Watch about now.

Tomorrow I shall post for the Insecure Writers Support Group (June 2012 edition) and then I shall be taking a blog break until the following Monday to entertain out-of-town friends. Alex C., I shall be wanting to compare Prometheus notes next Monday with you. :)

The Sholes Key by Clarissa Draper

The Sholes Key is a real page turner. It's a book that reminds me of Whispers by Dean Koontz. I don't know if any of you read any Dean Koontz, but it has that same edge-of-your-seat thrill that I expect from one of his novels.

The Sholes Key takes place in London, and Clarissa immerses us in action pretty much from page one. Furthermore, I got so into the story that I actually felt like I was in Britain.  The dialogue carries the accents that you'd expect to hear when visiting there from America. As a fan of James Bond movies, I really liked this. When I finished, I was so impressed with the book that I did a little research. I guess that this is a book that's part of a larger series, however, it easily stands on its own. I'm definitely going to pick up the others.

The Sholes Key is a cerebral read. Now as a reader, you might ask why would I say that? One of Clarissa's characters, Sophia, is a genius code-breaker. And the kind of code that she has to break in this novel is similar in difficulty to the stuff you see in Dan Brown's Davinci Code. And if she fails, the stakes are quite high. You see, there's a monstrous serial killer on the loose, and he's strangling and mutilating women. And just for your information, this book gets gory. If you don't like gore, you probably will be grossed out by the book. But it's written so well that you might want to chance it in order to read a thrilling novel.

As far as the mystery in the book goes, Clarissa is an incredible plotter, using numbers and codes, and hints to provide just enough information, that you feel compelled to try and figure out the puzzle.  But when you can't (because it's hard) she does give you an answer at the end.  I got pretty close to figuring it out, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, right?

In addition, Sophia has a sub-plot working as a spook (this is a word I had never seen used before) in the British context for MI5 in order to stop a terrorist. It was refreshing to see a female in the role of seduction instead of a male (James Bond anyone?), so the plot is one of the most original mystery thrillers I've ever read. And Sophia is an incredible protagonist. She's gorgeous. She's a genius. She can cook. She breaks codes. She's a secret agent. She busts terrorists and serial killers and packs a gun and isn't afraid to use it. Wow.

The Sholes Key is a no-business, take off running, kind of book. I don't think there's a single page wasted, a single word that is used incorrectly, and everything means something. You think a detail is extraneous and she comes back to it later and you think...damn, why didn't I see that? And at its best, it's also unpredictable.

I give this book five stars out of five. I can't think of anything that I would add or take away. Way to go Clarissa.

Buy it on Amazon HERE

Mark it "to read" on Goodreads HERE

Intrigued by Jupiter Ascending

The famed Wachowski's that launched the Matrix franchise and brought us such awesome shows as V for Vendetta have a new project called Jupiter Ascending. Here's the synopsis for it, and I'm rather intrigued:

In a universe in which human beings are just the Cro-Magnons of what beings can ultimately go on to become in the galaxy, higher forms of life are watching us from other planets and moons.

The unlikely heroine is a Russian immigrant who is busily scrubbing toilets for a living. Unbeknownst to her, she actually possesses the same perfect genetic makeup as the Queen of the Universe and is therefore a threat to her otherwise immortal rule.

The evolved beings fall into various different groups, all of which share some human DNA but who have over centuries been bred with animal DNA to heighten their best characteristics-e.g., soldiers getting their fearlessness, strength, and a pack mentality from wolves; workers getting their industriousness and reputation for diligence from bees.
Pretty soon, a bounty hunter of the evolved-being type is dispatched to dispose of the genetically blessed cleaning lady, but, as you'd expect with a Matrix re-dux, they fall in love. And for having fallen for his target, the bounty hunter gets targeted for extermination.

What do you think? I believe they have another hit on their hands...

Have a great weekend.