David G. Cookson's Blog, page 26
August 9, 2017
The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War by Robert CormierMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Robert Cormier's book about a student's refusal to participate in his school's annual chocolate sale is a classic of Young Adult Literature.
I read this book when I was a kid (along with Beyond the Chocolate War, the sequel to this one) and just recently picked it up for a re-read. This book and it's simple yet powerful story has stuck with me for years, and on this second reading my question to myself is why? And is it really that good? Does it hold up?
I believe it does. The story is so straightforward yet there was some very good planning involved...it is deceptively simple, belying the masterful job Cormier did in crafting this rather dark tale. It is noteworthy for the fact there is little to no humor to soften the harshness. There is a message about the dangers in the abuse of power and authority, the inherent cruelty of man and especially of children. It's hard shit. It's about more than just a simple school chocolate sale.
It's no wonder that it has been a controversial and frequently banned book in schools and school libraries. It is NOT a kids book. But it is not quite a grown up book. But either way, it is brilliant, on the level of Lord Of the Flies or the Outsiders. So damn good (like chocolate), but definitely not as sweet.
View all my reviews
August 1, 2017
The Final Assault!
The Alien communication link was jammed, trying to formulate logical responses to “your mama” jokes. And getting quickly overwhelmed.
And then the Atomic weapon was unleashed, based on an old idea from the 90’s, only done in reverse…Mystery Science Theatre 3000…where the bad guys made the good guys watch cheesy movies on the Satellite of Love…
“Get the uplink ready!”
“Streaming Service…away!!!”
The opening credits of Jury Duty, the Pauly Shore bomb from the 90’s, suddenly blasted the alien ship…along with all his other movies…Encino Man, Bio dome, Son In Law…I can’t possibly name more, it’s making my head hurt!
“Fire 2!!!”
While simultaneously every episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and all the programming from MTV and MTV 2 overwhelmed the alien airwaves…
And then every cable news channel…turned on full blast to mass effect…
It was going exactly the way the OHTMEC…the Only Human to Ever Make Contact…had said it would.
Only now the great weapon was being unleashed on him!
“Oh no!!!”
A great mind was assaulted by the noise, the terrible noise…like lying in a waking coma in a hospital room somewhere, unable to change the channel from soap opera…Channels, movies, opinions, Fox News, CNN, TLC, Sean Hannity, the Kardashians…Dog filters…mic drops…share if you like…draconian parking laws…loudmouth talk show hosts…memes…outrage over things no one should really care about…un-researched and unqualified opinions…Bad comedy…creation science…Pat Robertson…people that are so convinced yet so wrong…uninformed leaders…Beer Club 3: It’s Not as Bad as You Might Think…
And then the Atomic weapon was unleashed, based on an old idea from the 90’s, only done in reverse…Mystery Science Theatre 3000…where the bad guys made the good guys watch cheesy movies on the Satellite of Love…
“Get the uplink ready!”
“Streaming Service…away!!!”
The opening credits of Jury Duty, the Pauly Shore bomb from the 90’s, suddenly blasted the alien ship…along with all his other movies…Encino Man, Bio dome, Son In Law…I can’t possibly name more, it’s making my head hurt!
“Fire 2!!!”
While simultaneously every episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and all the programming from MTV and MTV 2 overwhelmed the alien airwaves…
And then every cable news channel…turned on full blast to mass effect…
It was going exactly the way the OHTMEC…the Only Human to Ever Make Contact…had said it would.
Only now the great weapon was being unleashed on him!
“Oh no!!!”
A great mind was assaulted by the noise, the terrible noise…like lying in a waking coma in a hospital room somewhere, unable to change the channel from soap opera…Channels, movies, opinions, Fox News, CNN, TLC, Sean Hannity, the Kardashians…Dog filters…mic drops…share if you like…draconian parking laws…loudmouth talk show hosts…memes…outrage over things no one should really care about…un-researched and unqualified opinions…Bad comedy…creation science…Pat Robertson…people that are so convinced yet so wrong…uninformed leaders…Beer Club 3: It’s Not as Bad as You Might Think…
The End Of My Career
The End of My Career by Martha GroverMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Martha Grover has been publishing the Somnambulist zine since 2003 and one day about 8 years ago I picked up a copy and this is how I was introduced to her writing which led me to this book.
The End of My Career is a series of slice of life tales taken from Martha Grover’s own life, and it is some of the most honest, brave writing I’ve come across--maybe like a younger female Jonathan Ames (both Grover and Ames shame me with a level of honesty I’m not capable of).
These are 13 true life stories that don’t disappoint. Among these stories:
Funny observations about the man whose house she cleans yet has never met; her story about taking the cruise with all the rich older folks (though she is not rich); tales from working at the cheese shop; plus two longer stories about a harrowing relationship with a man with a dark secret, and the eponymous “The End of My Career” about Martha’s job as a private investigator investigating medical claims (the irony being she has more in common with the people she’s investigating than with the company she works for) and much more!…it really is a terrific book.
Spending time with The End of My Career is like spending time with Martha. She doesn’t hold back, and the book is stronger for it. This was 5 stars pretty much from the first page.
View all my reviews
July 30, 2017
Engagement!
Month is almost over, just gotta finish this thing.
The word had gone out, the message received. The Keyboard Army volunteers who had been rounded up, given an energy drink and forced into the light of day had duct taped themselves up and brought their laptops, smartphones, tablets, which were altered so that they could be patched in to the alien frequency, which had been transmitted to SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial intelligence, what with those big ass satellite dishes out there in the desert somewhere...
The weeks of training for the onslaught had brought them to this point, this morning, this spot.
Now that that was taken care of, there was nothing to do but wait…
Wait for dawn.
What time is it?
Game time.
Game time.
Game time.
And then the ship appeared in the sky….
The word had gone out, the message received. The Keyboard Army volunteers who had been rounded up, given an energy drink and forced into the light of day had duct taped themselves up and brought their laptops, smartphones, tablets, which were altered so that they could be patched in to the alien frequency, which had been transmitted to SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial intelligence, what with those big ass satellite dishes out there in the desert somewhere...
The weeks of training for the onslaught had brought them to this point, this morning, this spot.
Now that that was taken care of, there was nothing to do but wait…
Wait for dawn.
What time is it?
Game time.
Game time.
Game time.
And then the ship appeared in the sky….
July 28, 2017
The Keyboard Army...
the key to defeating the aliens is at hand...
Brave…on the screen.
Fearless…in a chair.
Unstoppable…with a strong wireless connection.
When there’s something to fight, will your keyboard fingers be ready?
“If there is one thing about the current political climate that pretty much annoys the shit out of me, it’s the people who think that by tapping a few words in a tweet or a Facebook Status, they are somehow a part of ‘the Resistance.’ What a fucking joke. Grab a gun, start a riot, kill some rich people or something, then I might have some respect for you. But don’t you dare believe that you are changing anything because 20 of your best friends liked your damn post about some shit.”
The assembled volunteers were quite dismayed at what was supposed to be a rousing battle speech…Braveheart, this was not. No one would play this one at the old ball yard when the home team needed a rally.
Kyle knew something about that, previously having been in the Mascot business.
“But for this fight…you might be just what’s needed.”
Brave…on the screen.
Fearless…in a chair.
Unstoppable…with a strong wireless connection.
When there’s something to fight, will your keyboard fingers be ready?
“If there is one thing about the current political climate that pretty much annoys the shit out of me, it’s the people who think that by tapping a few words in a tweet or a Facebook Status, they are somehow a part of ‘the Resistance.’ What a fucking joke. Grab a gun, start a riot, kill some rich people or something, then I might have some respect for you. But don’t you dare believe that you are changing anything because 20 of your best friends liked your damn post about some shit.”
The assembled volunteers were quite dismayed at what was supposed to be a rousing battle speech…Braveheart, this was not. No one would play this one at the old ball yard when the home team needed a rally.
Kyle knew something about that, previously having been in the Mascot business.
“But for this fight…you might be just what’s needed.”
July 27, 2017
The Mass Lav bath for Humanity.
Beer Club 3 hits critical mass!
“To single out and identify those who will NOT be joining us on the Next Step, the Mass Lav bath for humanity, the Aliens have shown us their plan and allowed us to be their instrument. And in classic ‘I’m going to tell you my plans because you won’t remember anyway’ manner, I will tell you all about it…”
Eugene had been in a room with about 20 men such as himself, selected by the Beer Club Elders to achieve the Special Mission status. They were men selected for their service time and their level of commitment to the cause was deemed worthy of greater responsibility.
But Beer Club Leaders were no fools.
Energized by Alien technology and in some cases, given access to time travel, for which they mostly did stupid things. For example, many bragged about a little ‘weekend trip’ where they decided to go back to the 2005 Kentucky Derby to get a better seat and get ‘even more drunk’ then they were the first time around. (these people could be pretty dumb: even with the ability to look up the winner and put in a bet based on that foreknowledge, some of those idiots still made wild ass guesses on horses who had no chance of winning, though the eventual winner, Giacomo, went off at something like 50 to 1.) the Beer Club left nothing to chance. Because while the Thaller/Kaku Mind control project (the Cassandra Project, they had tried to dub it, ripped off from a popular sci-fi book of the time and nixed because of copyright infringement issues…which happens a lot more often than you might think in the evil science business) had a decent success rate, it was much less sophisticated than what the aliens were offering.
“To single out and identify those who will NOT be joining us on the Next Step, the Mass Lav bath for humanity, the Aliens have shown us their plan and allowed us to be their instrument. And in classic ‘I’m going to tell you my plans because you won’t remember anyway’ manner, I will tell you all about it…”
Eugene had been in a room with about 20 men such as himself, selected by the Beer Club Elders to achieve the Special Mission status. They were men selected for their service time and their level of commitment to the cause was deemed worthy of greater responsibility.
But Beer Club Leaders were no fools.
Energized by Alien technology and in some cases, given access to time travel, for which they mostly did stupid things. For example, many bragged about a little ‘weekend trip’ where they decided to go back to the 2005 Kentucky Derby to get a better seat and get ‘even more drunk’ then they were the first time around. (these people could be pretty dumb: even with the ability to look up the winner and put in a bet based on that foreknowledge, some of those idiots still made wild ass guesses on horses who had no chance of winning, though the eventual winner, Giacomo, went off at something like 50 to 1.) the Beer Club left nothing to chance. Because while the Thaller/Kaku Mind control project (the Cassandra Project, they had tried to dub it, ripped off from a popular sci-fi book of the time and nixed because of copyright infringement issues…which happens a lot more often than you might think in the evil science business) had a decent success rate, it was much less sophisticated than what the aliens were offering.
July 26, 2017
And then...
Beer Club 3 moves into the final push...
And then the experiments began.
One by one, each man was exposed to a fully charged alien blast that scrambled their brains.
Left them compliant.
And forgetful.
And useless in any other capacity other than to be drones for the job for which they were hired.
Perfect employees.
Unable to remember where they’d been, only with knowledge enough to get where they were going. Weird Bourn Identity on a twelve dollar budget, men used as lab rats to progress the agenda of the Beer Club Leadership, who surely would believe themselves in line for a big bonus…only to pull up shocked at their eventual comeuppance via something else that the Aliens were keeping from them, because they also were no fools and really were just humoring Beer Club because, well, they’d at least had the courtesy of trying to contact them in the 70’s. I mean, that had to count for something.
And then the experiments began.
One by one, each man was exposed to a fully charged alien blast that scrambled their brains.
Left them compliant.
And forgetful.
And useless in any other capacity other than to be drones for the job for which they were hired.
Perfect employees.
Unable to remember where they’d been, only with knowledge enough to get where they were going. Weird Bourn Identity on a twelve dollar budget, men used as lab rats to progress the agenda of the Beer Club Leadership, who surely would believe themselves in line for a big bonus…only to pull up shocked at their eventual comeuppance via something else that the Aliens were keeping from them, because they also were no fools and really were just humoring Beer Club because, well, they’d at least had the courtesy of trying to contact them in the 70’s. I mean, that had to count for something.
July 25, 2017
Eugene Remembers.
Ok, you probably don't care, but this is actually a huge revelation in my story.
“You’re like no other woman I’ve ever met…so…confident…and you sell time shares! You're all I’ve thought about. I didn’t know how to find you.”
“Couldn’t you have just looked me up?”
“I couldn’t remember…the Beer Club…they did something to me. I don’t know what it was…but you were the only memory that stuck. I was like a robot…delivering things and then forgetting. Always a blank slate when I came back. Always…”
He lost his train of thought as his attention was drawn to an object in Pamela’s dressing room. Something shiny and round…
“Pamela?”
“Yes, my love?”
He pulled out the replica Golden Record from the desk where it had been, “What the hell is this?”
And Suddenly, Eugene remembered.
He remembered everything...
“You’re like no other woman I’ve ever met…so…confident…and you sell time shares! You're all I’ve thought about. I didn’t know how to find you.”
“Couldn’t you have just looked me up?”
“I couldn’t remember…the Beer Club…they did something to me. I don’t know what it was…but you were the only memory that stuck. I was like a robot…delivering things and then forgetting. Always a blank slate when I came back. Always…”
He lost his train of thought as his attention was drawn to an object in Pamela’s dressing room. Something shiny and round…
“Pamela?”
“Yes, my love?”
He pulled out the replica Golden Record from the desk where it had been, “What the hell is this?”
And Suddenly, Eugene remembered.
He remembered everything...
July 23, 2017
A silly Interlude in my story...which is already silly
I may have to move the goalposts to "finish" this project, but we will always have this dumb exchange.
"I gotta admit…I’m shocked. Shocked by what I found in the book."
"It gives me a clue of where I should go next."
“Where WE should go next,” Gus added.
“Tight.”
“Word.”
“Swift.”
“Dope.”
“Ok, that’s enough.”
“Yeah, joke got old pretty fast.”
“Yeah, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, sure did.”
“Yeah.”
“Word.”
“We’re doing it again.”
“Are we?”
“We are?”
“Damn.”
“Yup.”
“Ok now stop.”
“Ok.”
“Ok.”
“You hang up.”
“No…YOU hang up.”
“Let’s both hang up at the same time. Ready?”
“Stop it.”
“Ok.”
“Word.”
“Tight.”
"I gotta admit…I’m shocked. Shocked by what I found in the book."
"It gives me a clue of where I should go next."
“Where WE should go next,” Gus added.
“Tight.”
“Word.”
“Swift.”
“Dope.”
“Ok, that’s enough.”
“Yeah, joke got old pretty fast.”
“Yeah, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, sure did.”
“Yeah.”
“Word.”
“We’re doing it again.”
“Are we?”
“We are?”
“Damn.”
“Yup.”
“Ok now stop.”
“Ok.”
“Ok.”
“You hang up.”
“No…YOU hang up.”
“Let’s both hang up at the same time. Ready?”
“Stop it.”
“Ok.”
“Word.”
“Tight.”
July 22, 2017
Latest Pain Center Giveaway Closed! Another one takes its place!
Hello everyone!
Just cutting in to my almost daily posts from Beer Club 3: It's Not as Bad as you Might Think (the new story I'm working on) to thank all the readers who have expressed an interest in Pain Center the Novel! My July Giveaway just closed, and the winners have been selected.
Right on the heels of that one is a brand new giveaway, which ends in 30 days. 10 more lucky winners will get a copy of my little black comedy/sci-fi/horror story with the cute little bear on the cover.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The giveaways are extremely popular, so good luck! If you can't wait for your lucky day to come, please feel free to purchase a copy from one of the many links on my site:
http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
I highly recommend Atomic Books here in Baltimore and Quimbys NYC and Quimbys Chicago. Even if you don't buy Pain Center, check them out anyway!
Thanks again!
David G. Cookson, author of Pain Center the Novel!
Just cutting in to my almost daily posts from Beer Club 3: It's Not as Bad as you Might Think (the new story I'm working on) to thank all the readers who have expressed an interest in Pain Center the Novel! My July Giveaway just closed, and the winners have been selected.
Right on the heels of that one is a brand new giveaway, which ends in 30 days. 10 more lucky winners will get a copy of my little black comedy/sci-fi/horror story with the cute little bear on the cover.
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The giveaways are extremely popular, so good luck! If you can't wait for your lucky day to come, please feel free to purchase a copy from one of the many links on my site:
http://davecookson.tripod.com/PainCen...
I highly recommend Atomic Books here in Baltimore and Quimbys NYC and Quimbys Chicago. Even if you don't buy Pain Center, check them out anyway!
Thanks again!
David G. Cookson, author of Pain Center the Novel!
