The passing of the Old White Guys Party

Man. You got to love the way the OWG Party is going down the tubes. Ricky Santorumi is just serving up the latest racist homophobic stew of a party in reverse going beyond the 1950s straight past Puritanism back to the Dark Ages (cue guys in black hoods and robes) and cant get enough wood to burn every Gay, Woman, Black, Protestant, Liberal, Democrat who would dare to speak of egalitarianism or equal rights or contraception or abortion and who would not buy into the new theocratic state of right wing demigods and stooges who dress up good old fashioned racism and homophobia and xenophobia as a Republican agenda for change and fiscal responsibility and God and Country.

REPEAT AFTER ME:  YOU CANNOT LEGISLATE MORALITY.

Ok. Good, we got that out of the way. Now the OWG Party can concentrate on bringing down the economy by reversing the bail out of Detroit. Romnose got it right. Controlled bankruptcy would have destroyed the Unions. Big on the OWG agenda is to rid America of Unions and working people who would would dare to demand equal pay or a decent minimum wage or decent working hours or child labor laws. Yeah Baby! Roll back the clock and lets get in lockstep with the Chinese and fry some people in an aluminum flash fire (see Apple IPOD disaster in China factory) and get them all living in barracks. But I digress.

The really great news is that the four stooges of the last great OWG Party will eventually shoot each other. They hate each other almost as much as they hate women, people who have sex, people who are not Catholic, blue collar Union workers, women definitely women, blacks, gays, urbanites, liberals, Democrats....I got it! (eureka moment) THEY HATE EVERYONE THAT'S NOT LIKE THEM! AND THEY EVEN HATE THEMSELVES!(see the last four implosion debates)

So here is the terrible news for the OWG Party. Time is not on your side (to coin a Stones tune they grew up with forty five years ago) because the world is going global global global and getting more and more multicultural multicultural multicultural and the OWG party will be dinasourial anachronistic extinctual..(see Jurrasik Park) And so my fiends, my fine brethren of OWG Party members everwhere. Ask not what you can do for your country but what the country of the last Old White Guys can do for you!

The sun must set eventually on all of us and so it is setting on you. You fine, bigoted, narrow minded, phobic, rich, demonizing, inhuman, environmental terrorizing, polarizing, viscous, pathetic last Mohicans of Manifest Glory Warriors gone horribly horribly wrong. The planet will not mourn the passing of the OWG Party. May your history vanish quickly.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Book Clubs Get Fiery

Just did a ladies book club for Rocket Man and I expected it to be the normal give and take of any book club with questions about the writing process and themes. I don't know if it was the wine or what but these ladies came at me with both barrels. Why did I write a book about someone losing their home?  A lot of people keep their homes and don't shortsale them away they pointed out. True. True. It's fiction. But your character just keeps doing all the wrong things! He is so immature!

Now you may think fiction gives you a sort of bye on the I made it all up front. It doesn't. These ladies saw the main character ( a man hanging on the edge of a cliff financially, morally, losing his home, marriage_ as myself and they asked me if I was getting a divorce, if I really hated my father, if I was losing my house. I told them that I see things going on write about it and that I saw the American Dream in trouble and that was my theme. Huh!

Which brings the whole thing of suspension of disbelief. Rocket Man is about what is happening right now to people in their homes and so there is a natural inclination to say that is me! But in fact it is fiction but I think reality television has blurred the world in terms of what we think is true. The ladies at the book club never for a second believed I had made up this story of woe. "It is just too much like what is going on," one lady told me, pointing out that real fiction takes places in different times and different places. The novel of social commentary really didn't compute with her.

Anyway, it was a great time. But man, those book clubs can get rough!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Whats with the Republican War on Women?

So I get it. Republicans don't like women now. They must not. Um...vaginal ultrasounds for abortions...oh no...yeah just pelvic ultrasounds and by the way the women can pay for it before they get shamed out of having an abortion. And if they question the Republican candidates on it then the crowd boos. You must have seen the boos when the contraception question came up at the debate. The crowd didn't want those pesky contraception issues to c confront the old white mans brigade. They want 1959 with June and Ward and Larry and the Beaver and Eddie Haskell and Wally. But I digress.

Yeah no contraception for women. Just ask the Catholics they don't want it either. They don't need it and they don't need abortions and if they think about having one because they were denied the pill then they surely need a VAGINAL ULTRASOUND so they don't get the abolition they don't need. Wow. Those Republicans are really great guys. Guess they are just looking out for their daughters and wives and all those women who just don't need to be protected against getting pregnant.

I mean these guys don't like Planned Parenthood and want to take away all the funding for those pesky tests for Ovarian cancer or Uterine Cancer or Pap smears because they sure as hell don't want any money going for abortions or any other type of women's health and they sure don't women to have control over their bodies. They want control their bodies with their new theocratic society.

I know lets just go back to when they burned women for being witches. You know all those women they burned in the Salem witch trials. Yeah, they burned a lot of innocent women but hey, they cant have an abolition then and I guess you could call that contraception of a kind. So bring on the torches boys and lets get to burning and then we can get a handle on all those unwanted pregnancies and it  wont cost the taxpayers a dime!

www.billhazelgrove.com

John King Should Punch Back

John King should have really told Newt Gingrich to fuck off. What is with that guy? Didn't anybody tell John King of CNN you have to fight back. Since when did journalists become such wimps? This was not always the case. Edward Murrow and company would have told Newt the pompous ass to fuck off. Journalists used to be very hard bitten fellows who were not above taking a punch. If anyone deserves a punch it is Newt Gingrich. And John King should have done it in the debate last night.

Newt has been riding King for a while. He humiliated him about three debates ago with the same tactic of accusing the elite liberal media of being bias. Horseshit as my father used to say. Newt is just pissed because he is getting called out along with the other Republicans for the wacky narrow social issues they have focused on to use as wedge issues against Obama. Religion, procreation, abstinence, birth control, abortion, contraception. Name it and the oh mighty middle aged white ones are using it. But Newt is just a bully and a bully needs to be confronted.

Last night King brought up contraception and Newt blasted him by saying that during the Obama debates issues like these were never brought up. He turned the question against King and gave everyone a pass and even emboldened Romney to snipe back at poor old John. King really should have swung back at Newt and told him to shut up and answer the question or get off the stage. It is time for the mainstream media to push back against these wacko far right Republicans who think they can bully their way to the Presidency.

I hope John gets another crack at Newt or somebody does. But the next time he brings up the lame stream media ala Sara Palin then whoever is posing the question should respond by saying: Shut up and answer the question. That should get Newt going and make great television. Ratings will soar and maybe these clowns will realize they cant hide when they don't like the question.

You know what guys, if you cant take the heat, get  the hell out of the kitchen.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Book Downloading by Google Inc.

Good luck stopping the illegal downloading of books.  I have seen my titles popping up here and there and I requested that Google not scan my books. Mostly they disappeared after that but I just saw Tobacco Sticks my second novel out there on a Google site. The whole book just sitting there for whoever wanted to read it. Sure. Why not? Can you really stop people from downloading books? No. You can't. Think of a ship taking water with a million holes in it...no way. The era of the contained paper book ended with the digital age. Everyone is going to have to get used to it and start thinking along the lines of Steve Jobs

The IPOD did a huge favor for the music business. It produced a paraydyme where downloads could be corralled and paid for by the end user. The Napster world was scary, a universe of people shooting music all over with sharing engines.And  of course that goes on but what Jobs did was he made paying for music sexy. The same way the Kindle is making paying for books sexy. And we better hope those Kindle users stick with the program and don't go rogue and start shooting in files from Google.

The reality is this. The people who are honest and feel the need to pay for a service provided will pay for their books and music. The people who feel they are entitled to take what they can will do so and nobody will be able to stop them. The same people that speed or blow tolls or cheat or don't put their shopping cart back or steal a case of water in the bottom of their cart will swipe books and music files. Nobody will ever change that.

But fortunately, a lot of people will follow the rules and still pay for their books be they paper or digital. The rest will steal until they publish a book or write a song. Then they will scream bloody murder.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Quest for Writing Privacy

It is getting increasingly harder to isolate yourself for sustained writing which is writing a novel. I have no phone or Internet connection in my office but the day to day life of kids and work and logistics chases me like the long the tail of a kite. It is just harder and harder to disconnect. I use earplugs and a laptop with the Internet connection turned off. My one office is outside the home (Hemingway house) but a lot of times I just go up to the office over my garage. There is no entrance from the house and no phone. I sit down and close the blinds and put in my ear plugs and you would think that is enough. It isn't.

The UPS truck pulls up. Ding dong.  Hmmm...I wonder what that is? No matter back to the writing. Intense. Amazing. My neighbor rolls past with her trashcan then stops and talks with another neighbor. Incredibly I can hear them. I redouble my effort. Now I am really going. Very good. In the zone. Thump thump thump. I hear the steps like an executioner, the door opens and my wife faces a man in agony....WHAT? I need that phone number I asked you about earlier? NOW the man in obvious pain screams. Yes.

I get the number and the steps recede. Now...where was I. Yes.Yes. Moving again. Moving along. DO YOU WANT TO UPDATE YOUR MCAFEE VIRUS CONTROL? What? Where the hell did that come from I have no connection, some  cyber bomb built in by the software gurus...I know even if somebody goes off line we will hawk our product. I respond. NO! And the spy ware slips under the screen like a mole. Now...where was I. Oh yes....yes...yes...I am in the zone....yes...flowing again...perfection.

Dad?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

A Great Recession Story

Saw my neighbor and some friends hurriedly throwing wood into a pickup truck. I hadn't seen him since he divorced his wife and we all speculated that Ron might have just left the house. They couldn't sell of course and so they squatted like two Indians waiting for the next one to blink. Rons business had gone down the tubes when municipalities quit paying their bills and his wife didn't want him sopping up all of her money trying to save it. So they divorced and remained in the same house.

But one day two squads pulled up and we  never saw Ron again. He was just gone. We speculated that maybe he was still in the house but Ann only kept a few lights on and Ron used to light up the house like Christmas. So we figured the police meant Ron had been kicked out and we forgot all about it until I saw him out there by his woodpile with three women and two men. They moved like lightning throwing the cord wood into the back of Ron's white pickup. I used to help Ron cut that wood. It was sort of a fall ritual.

They finished throwing the wood in the truck and sure enough a squad pulls up. I see Ron talking to the cop, gesturing to his wood and the cop shaking his head. Finally Ron left and then the cops left. I stared at where the wood used to be. Ron loved chopping that wood. It was a ritual and now it was just gone. We would all be gone eventually. Ron was just the first.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/