James Pyles's Blog, page 135

Is Jeff Sessions Trying to Establish an American State Religion?

Originally posted on Morning Meditations:
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. I just found out that “Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday announced the Department of Justice’s creation of a ‘religious liberty task force’ to ‘help the department fully implement our religious guidance'” over at CNN. Actually, someone I know from my Powered by Robots sister…

The WorldCon 76 Incident: The Consequences of Twitter

After I wrote The WorldCon 76 Incident: This Never Happened to Me on Twitter Before (and yes, I posted links on twitter and Facebook), I thought it was over. True, I did get one response from a very nice person saying (basically) that I was overreacting and people on twitter were just trying to be […]

The Red High Heels

George looked admiringly at the shoes on his wife’s delicate feet. This was the finest shoe store in Hong Kong. “What do you think?” She turned her ankle, modeling the heels. “They look lovely. Another wedding gift, Edith?” He smiled at her as only a newlywed can. “Would you?” She clapped her hands and laughed. […]

Dark Carnival

“Oneida, I wish you wouldn’t torture yourself this way. Come back with me.” Del held out long, skeletal fingers toward the diaphanous waif that he loved with all his heart, that is, if he still had one. “Just a few more minutes. I like to hear their laughter.” “We have laughter, too. It just takes […]

Meg: A Story of Deep Terror – Book Review

A few days ago, I came across something about a movie due in theaters in a few weeks called The Meg starring Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, and Rainn Wilson. It’s based on a 1997 novel written by Steve Alten called Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. Yes, it’s about a shark, but an extinct species […]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi – A DVD Review

I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi on DVD. I checked it out from my local public library because, if I ended up hating the film, I could say that I didn’t waste a penny on it, or give up my hard-earned bucks to Disney. I have to admit that I […]

The Street Children’s Mother

Mamadou, Karla, and Bonte were trapped in the alley by the policeman. “I’ll give you little street rats what you deserve,” he said, unzipping his trousers. Mamadou was nine, the oldest, and Bonte was eight. The boys got in front of five-year-old Karla, for though man would abuse them all, he would start with her. […]

The WorldCon 76 Incident: This Never Happened to Me on Twitter Before

Apparently, discussing WorldCon 76 and the tremendous mess they’re currently in on twitter has involved me in a bit of a conversation. Really, nothing like this has happened to me before. I’m pretty amazed. Of course, it’s more than just the WorldCon issue involved, so just for giggles, I’m posting a screen capture (actually, several merged […]

I Was Curious About How the WorldCon 2018 “Refit” was Going

In the past day or so, I’ve not seen a lot going on in the news or the blogosphere about the WorldCon 76 crash-and-burn fest, so I thought maybe there’d be something on their website. On their homepage, the words “We will do better” jumped out at me (If you’re having trouble reading the text […]

Moon River

Francisco Sanchez was the chief surveyor on the Moon Base One project at Mare Tranquillitatis. His team, plus support personnel, lived in a series of dome covered depressions nearly a mile distant from the site of the proposed base colony. In the temporary survey shelter, heated and pressurized to a “shirtsleeve” environment, he was going […]