Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 177

‘We need to get rid of copyright’ says new copyright office tsar

Washington, D. C. April 1, 2018, Star-Gazer Crystal Ball Service–During his confirmation hearings before the Senate, Joseph A. Doaks, CEO of Big Ass Feature Film and Music Productions (BIGASS), said that before the President nominated him to run the copyright office into the ground, he though copyright was a provision in the Bill of Rights that gave rich and power corporations the right to copy whatever they wanted without paying for it.

[image error]“I said ‘Yes,’ Mr. President, I’ll put my BIGASS stock into a quasi-blind trust and help people satisfy their copying rights.”

The confirmation hearings are the first tangible result of the so-called Copyright Reform Act of 2017 which proponents said would “rescue the copyright office from the safety of the Library of Congress and give it to the politicians and lobbyists so that the rights of the creators of original works would forever after be blowing in the wind.”

According to a spokesman for Rescue the Copyright Office, LLC, “Think about this. Why should some rich, former welfare mother in England control the entire Harry Potter world? There are millions to be made here. But she says ‘no.’ This is undemocratic. We need a law that lets Congress decide whether it’s okay to start production on our movie HARRY POTTER GETS LAID and on a proposed new SLYTHERIN GANGSTA RAP musical.”

Doaks said that he supports the Copyright Reform Act “hook, line and sink her” when it comes to people like Rowling.

“Sure, the little people sit in their garrets and write this stuff,” said Doaks. “But they are few and far between. The rest of us have less talent. Without the right to copy and create related works, we have no way of making a living. We need to get rid of copyright because it protects the needs to the few over the right to take what we can and make whatever we can from it.”

After consulting with film and music producers and distributors and their lobbyists and tallying up recent campaign contributions, Senators are expected to approve Doak’s appointment.

Story by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

 

Some days, writers are flat too tired to write

Even the words of a decent blog post don’t come to mind.

This list of the day’s events doesn’t sound that arduous:

Up at 7 a.m.. after five hours of sleep (typical)
Emptied the dishwasher
Ate breakfast.
Cleaned frying pan and put plate in empty dishwasher
Picked up garden soil and potting soil at Home Depot (still in the trunk of the car)
Got four new tires put on the car and found out the alignment was messed up (wait time = 90 minutes)
Bought a new coffee pot (took two stores to find one)
Picked up a few groceries
Lunch (not proud, it was a cheap TV dinner)
Made a vat of beef stew (still simmering)
Watered new veggies and flowers outside
Wheeled garbage bin back up next to the house
Cleaned up a hairball
Fed the cats
Publisher reminds me Eulalie and Washerwoman will be on sale on Kindle on Friday (don’t want to get in trouble by neglecting to mention that)
Poured a glass of wine (just before burning myself out on this exciting post)

–Malcolm

For Mother’s Day – One of Mother’s Recipes

Green Rice
Kathryn Belle Campbell

Mother kept her recipes on 3X5 cards in metal boxes, one of which ended up with me. This is one of my favorites because it works so well as a comfort-food side dish for many things, including fried or baked chicken, pork chops, pork or beef ribs, and even cubed steak or fried fish. As her recipe card said, “this rice dish is unusual and very good.” (Note: the rice itself is not green.)

Cook 1 cup of long grain rice according to the instructions on the package.
To the cooked rice, add 1 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 cup grated sharp or extra sharp cheddar cheese, 1/2 minced green pepper, 1/2 cup of minced parsley, and 1 half clove of garlic.
Mix thoroughly and pour into a greased baking dish.
Pour 1/2 cup of olive oil over the top.
Bake for 1 hour in a moderate (350 degree) oven. Casserole top will be slightly browned.
Serves 6-8.

Notes:

Neither of us likes green pepper and since the taste in the casserole is pervasive, we omit it.
Fresh parsley tastes a lot better than dried. (No offence to the McCormick Company.)
We use a lot less olive oil: you can get the taste of it with 1/4 a cup or even a little less.
We cheat with a little garlic powder. (Yes, I know, Chef Ramsey would be ticked off.)

When I was recovering from kidney surgery a year ago, my wife found that this food was gentle on my stomach and hit the spot when served alone. It warms up easily in the microwave.

–Malcolm

Mother’s Day Weekend Sale – three books are free

Three of my books are on sale on Kindle Sunday and Monday for $0.00. (May 14th and 15th).

[image error] At Sea

Even though he wanted to dodge the draft in Canada or Sweden, David Ward joined the navy during the Vietnam War. He ended up on an aircraft carrier. Unlike the pilots, he couldn’t say he went in harm’s way unless he counted the baggage he carried with him. As it turned out, those back home were more dangerous than enemy fire.

This novel was inspired by my services aboard an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin in the late 1960s.

[image error] Mountain Song

David Ward lives in the Montana mountains where his life was impacted by his medicine woman grandmother and his utilitarian grandfather. Anne Hill suffered through childhood abuse and ultimately moved in with her aunt on the edge of a Florida swamp. Their summer romance at a mountain resort hotel surprises both of them. But can they make it last after the initial passion wears off and they return to their college studies far apart from each other especially after an attack on a college street changes Anne forever?

This novel was inspired by my work as a seasonal employee in Glacier National Park.

[image error] Carrying Snakes Into Eden

The title story, “Carrying Snakes Into Eden,” is a whimsical 1960s-era tale about two students who skip church to meet some girls at the beach and end up picking up a hobo with a sack of snakes, and realize there may be long-term consequences.

“Hurricane in the Garden” is a folktale that explains why the snakes were swept out of Eden in the first place. The story features animal characters who made their debut in the three-story set called “Land Between the Rivers.”

These stories are inspired by a love of the Florida Panhandle where I grew up.

Happy Mother’s Day,

Malcolm

The many worlds of fiction are calling you away

“I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day.” – Joy Harjo

I won’t try to second guess what Harjo, winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, meant exactly when she mentioned several worlds. If you’ve read her 1983 book She Had Some Horses, you might suspect–as I do–that her “several worlds” are more than figurative. The title poem, which I can never read often enough, says the horses are sand, are maps, contain ocean water, are the sky’s air, fur and teeth, breakable clay, and splintered from a cliff. Throughout the poem, those horses are everything else.

Nothing figurative there. I see it as real because when I’m there, reading, I’m in that world, and she did not say, like sand, like maps, like fur and teeth, etc. When you read and when you are where the words take you, you are no longer in your safe bed or your easy chair or at your desk. You are in a place where “She had horses with eyes of trains.”

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NASA Photo

If you write, you are where the words have taken you, perhaps with Joy Harjo, in a place where “She had horses who licked razor blades.” The typewriter, yellow tablet, or PC slip away, and now you see the bright cold day where the clocks were striking thirteen, where the screaming comes across the sky, where there was a dark and stormy night where the rain was falling in torrents, where Mrs. Dalloway bought flowers for herself, or where stars are living and dying.

If you read and/or write, it is hard not to talk in and out of several worlds each day. The words conjure you there. Those words are your quantum entanglement, placing you simultaneously at one place and another place, and the place with the strongest attraction is where you attention is, often more within the book than your safe bed or easy chair. Perhaps the call of sleep, the ringing of a phone, another person entering the room, or a thunderstorm will draw you away from the horses “who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.”

That sudden change of worlds can be like dying or being born. It’s often wrenching like being pulled suddenly out of weep water or stepping into a fire. Sometimes the worlds blur the way dreams and waking moments tangle together at dawn. Sometimes you’re sure you safe bad is made of sand, is a map, contains ocean water, is fur and teeth, breakable clay, and a splintered sliver from a red cliff. Worlds can tangle for readers, writers, dreamers, and anyone else with an free-ranging imagination.

You become a shaman when you read or write. To the logical observer, you appear to be a man or woman reading in bed or a man or woman writing a book at his or her computer. They can’t quite see that you are the sky’s air and the ocean’s water.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the magical realism novels “Conjure Woman’s Cat” and “Eulalie and Washerwoman.”

Writing Prompts from Hell

Disclaimer: The devil didn’t make me write this post.

[image error]A man buys a round trip ticket to hell without reading the fine print on the on the ticket. He’s dressed for a warm climate because he’s heard stories. When he arrives in a hand basket, hell looks like the Mauricio García Vega painting shown here. He looks for a lover to share the experience with.
A 737 crashes into a farmer’s empty chicken house in a ball of flame that’s so large it scorches the low-hanging clouds. Before he can call 911, the passengers and crew walk out of the chicken house as though nothing unusual has happened.
Your protagonist learns on page one that he has one hour to live. Since he was on a quest to find the Fountain of Youth, he goes on Twitter to find a quality person with whom he can share his secrets so that once he’s gone, the journey will continue.
A stick falls into a mud puddle during a rain storm.
A young woman sincerely believes she’ll bump into her soul mate by running up the down escalator. Her friends have warned that she won’t accomplish her goal if she’s thrown out of the store/airport/theme park, if she’s arrested, if she gets sent to the asylum, or if she gets pulled down into the gears and ends up looking like chopped liver, all of which will discourage Mister Right.
A man believes he’s died when, if truth be told, he’s merely roaring drunk and trapped in a house of ill repute. Luckily, he has plenty of money and decides death is really the way to go. “Bless his heart,” says the madam, “what’s going to happen to that poor fool when he wakes up.” They decide to keep him drunk so that he won’t discover the truth of the matter.
A minister is discovered having sex with a woman who’s not his wife on the communion table by church goers who arrive for Sunday morning services several hours earlier than expected. After a brief discussion, everyone decides there’s a way to make this event a win-win moment for everybody.
Two roads diverge in a wood. Several hikers decide to test Robert Frost’s poem and determine whether the problems (if any) of taking one road or another amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
After a man hypnotizes himself into believing he is totally innocent of any discretions, errors in judgement, jilting of lovers, or ever saying an hurtful things, he keeps meeting people who think otherwise. He must decide whether or not they are lying and, if not, whether the easiest way to remain innocent is by murdering those who claim to have evidence that he’s guilty OR simply to run like hell. As the story unfolds, readers learn this choice wasn’t easy.

Disclaimer: If anything bad happens while you’re using these writing prompts, you’re on your own because I don’t warrant that they are safe or any damn good at all, and further that they’re displayed here merely as curiosities.

Malcolm

If your conjure woman stocks Belladonna, run like hell

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Wikipedia photo.

Belladonna (nightshade) and the potato you eat with your steak are related. Solanaceae, plants that prefer shade or dappled sunlight, is a large family! However, if your conjure practitioner keeps belladonna in stock, its primary use–other than as a curiosity or an ornamental–in folk magic is to poison people. In 1915, plant researcher Henry Walters said nightshade was a plant filled with hatred.

Several berries might do the trick. Touching it will badly inflame your skin. In areas where belladonna grows wild, medical students were (and perhaps still are) taught to recognize the symptoms of belladonna poisoning by memorizing this phrase: “Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beat, and mad as a hatter.”

It’s use now in cosmetics is rare, though it once was fairly common. It was once used by women to accentuate their eyes, hence bella donna (beautiful woman). It still has some medical uses, though the dangers it presents are outside the skill set of most herbalists and root doctors.

It can be used in the treatment of whooping cough, Parkinson’s disease, motion sickness, psychiatric conditions, and as a painkiller. (.)

[image error]How apt that the active agent in belladonna, atropine, is named after Atropos, the Greek fate who snipped an individual’s threat of life. Or, as Milton said, “Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears/And skits the thin-spun life.

The plant often appears in myths and fairy lore. Purportedly, it put Snow White to sleep when it was injected into the apple she was given. Like Henbane and Thornapple (aka Devil’s Apple), Belladonna is associated with the goddess of night and death, Hecate.

According to Amy Stewart (in a handy and fun little guidebook called Wicked Plants) says that nightshade “causes rapid heartbeat, confusion, hallucinations, and seizures. The symptoms are so unpleasant that atropine is sometimes added to potentially addictive painkillers to keep patients from getting hooked.”

The plant’s names, nightshade and belladonna sound like magic, mystery and enchantment. Yet, it’s not the kind of mystery I want my friendly neighborhood herbalist or conjure woman playing around with.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of Conjure Woman’s Cat and its sequel Eulalie and Washerwoman.

Cool, an error screen instead of a book piracy listing

[image error]After going through several e-mail addresses, my persistent publisher (Thomas-Jacob) has gotten a pirated copy of my novel Eulalie and Washerwoman removed from one of those sign-up for free downloads sites. We have no idea how they got a PDF file: we’ve never released the book in that format. Did they create it from the Kindle edition, use conjure, break into my house while I was having a late-afternoon glass of wine? We may never know. But, the error screen is a welcome sight when we click on the link.

Florida Folk Magic Stories: Speaking of conjure, your response to Eulalie and Washerwoman and Conjure Woman’s Cat has been wonderful. Thanks for your support. I said I wasn’t going to write another conjure book because it was time to move on. But people kept asking when I was going to have it ready. Er, well, I dunno, maybe later.

Novel in Progress: Okay, I’ve changed my mind and have gotten started on the third book which will be called Lena. I know how it begins: things don’t look good for Eulalie. I have no idea how it ends. Finding out is just as much fun for an author as it is for a reader.

[image error]Review: My colleagues and I at Thomas-Jacob Publishing don’t review each other’s books on our blogs, Amazon or GoodReads because, quite frankly, it wouldn’t look good. I think it’s okay for me to include the link of a review of one of those books written by an impartial (and sometimes, hard to please) reviewer: Big Al’s Books & Pals.

Big Al didn’t see the ending coming. I have to admit it: neither did I.

Satire: For those of you who missed the last post, it’s another one of my “Jock Stewart” satires: Feds Bust Sneezeweed Resisistance Movement Scam. The headline alone tells you this is solid news reporting.

For Writers: For actual solid news reporting, check out Melinda Clayton’s How to Set Up an eBook Ad with Amazon Marketing Services at IndiesUnlimited. If you’ve looked into Amazon book ads and found that the setup resembles a Greek tragedy written in Greek, this handy post will help your sort it out.

–Malcolm

Feds Bust Sneezeweed Resisistance Movement Scam

Junction City, Texas, April 29, 2017, Star-Gazer News Service–Agents from multiple alphabet-soup agencies within the Department of Homeland Insecurity swooped down like a coven of witches on their brooms and arrested Bob and Sarah Smith for allegedly failing to deliver free snuff samples to the “down-trodden widows and orphans” who donated their life’s savings to “get rid of the haints infesting Congress” in the widely publicized RESIST WITH SNEEZEWEED crowdfunding affort.

[image error]

Sneezeweed

According to the warrant, Bob and Sarah Smith “shamelessly and expediently” solicited $100000000000 from a large crowd to build a snuff factory that would purportedly convert dried sneezeweed leaves into enough snuff to force Congress to sneeze all the “treacherous haints and malevolent spirits” out of its system.

Weed enforcement tsar Mary Warner told reporters that while sneezeweed snuff probably causes cancer, the United States is not currently engaged in a war on snuff.

“Thing is,” she said, “if you take people’s money to build a snuff factory, promise to send them a free sample of your best stuff, and then ship the remainder to Congress, you gotta do it. The Smiths didn’t do squat except spend the money living high on the hog instead of bringing home the bacon.”

Congressman Amos “Grandpappy” McCoy (R-TX), best known for his campaign to change the Texas state flower from “something named after a brand of margarine” to the yellow rose, said that as far as he knew, the only evil spirits in Congress were the “bottom-shelf whiskeys sucked up by Democrats and other vermin.”

Smith, speaking through his lawyer like a ventriloquist with a dummy, reminded reporters that his RESIST WITH SNEEZEWEED plan was still in the planning stages because “you just don’t go into your kitchen and whip of a batch of snuff in a Crock-Pot.”

“Plus, who knew you can’t build a snuff factory on an EPA hazmat site?” he asked, more or less rhetorically.

“The irony is that had Smith bided his time, the EPA and its hazmat sites would have been phased out and the factory could have turned out enough snuff for every man, woman and child in the country with no federal interference,” McCoy said.

Informed sources believe that the feds tracked down the Smiths after a church bible study group member “ratted out” Sarah for saying, “We know resistance is futile, but getting people to spend their time and money on meaningless petitions and marches helps them cope. Like we’re really going to send snuff to Congress–puh-leeze!”

“Truth be told,” said Warner, “I hated arresting these folks because clearing the evil spirits out of Congress really was an admirable goal.”

–Story filed by Jock Stewart, Special Investigative Reporter

 

 

 

Don’t be fooled: Best Ebooks Popular Free Downloads is not authorized to distribute free copies of my book

If you were to search for my novel Eulalie and Washerwoman on the Internet, the following listing might display:

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This site is not authorized to distribute free copies of my novel. So far, it has not replied to my publisher’s DMCA complaint that mandates they remove the book because:

Adherent to DMCA 512(c) (3), upon a good faith belief I attest, under penalty of perjury, the disputed material or activity is not authorized by the copyright or intellectual property owner, its agent or the law. Mr. Campbell’s copyrighted material is not legally authorized to be distributed on your website. You are not the owners nor do you hold legal rights to his intellectual property and you are thusly infringing upon his copyright, which is registered in the U.S. Copyright Office. Any distributor making his books available in any format without express permission from the author (Malcolm R. Campbell) or his publisher (Thomas-Jacob Publishing LLC) is infringing upon his copyright. 

Frankly, I doubt the offer because we have never released a PDF version of the book. If they have one, it has somehow been created by converting an e-book edition.

If you see any of your books improperly displayed on this site, contact: Concatdevelop@gmail.com.

–Malcolm