The Daily Show doesn’t usually top the chart for political commentary, but this one is brilliant — even Noah’s vocal mimicry of the various players!
What’s on the agenda for the rest of the evening?
.
Oh boy. The new cover of @TIME went there. pic.twitter.com/NDWyQEahk0
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 18, 2017
Mike in NC
Trump and his collection of misfit stooges: Bannon, Spicer, Conway, Priebus, etc. would have fit perfectly on the Politburo circa 1975.
efgoldman
Did they borrow the front page designer from the Daily News?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t watch and don’t know if this happened, but given Pudge Carlson’s desperate efforts to not talk about trump, I wouldn’t be surprised
SiubhanDuinne
That TIME cover is brilliant. I hope their art director gets a big raise.
NotMax
Enlightening (though far from comprehensive) look at the question of whether a sitting prez can be judicially indicted.
(For the Hamilmaniacs, Aaron Burr may provide fodder for claiming the foundation of a close but yet maybe still a cigar precedent.)
amk
mai naem mobile
Wonder if Dolt will brag about that Time cover. ‘Look at this Time cover.I did the best reno of the WH. The best. Time even put it on their cover. It looks like Moscow. Beautiful!’
Mnemosyne
Getting ready to order some Chinese food for dinner. The place down the street has a really good BBQ pork wonton soup that my sore throat is demanding.
Also, someone in an earlier thread recommended the new Netflix series of Anne of Green Gables. I don’t remember who it was, but thank you! I will check it out. AGG is one of my all-time favorites.
Jeffro
@NotMax: it’s funny…the wingnuts never had any doubt about whether a sitting prez (or a future one) could be indicted, as long as his/her last name was Clinton.
Kelly
That cover nearly dislocated my jaw.
For a bit of insight into timber country here’s the sigline on an email from my road grader guy. Most his work is grading logging roads. Top notch operator.
“– NOTICE: It is okay to print this email. Paper is a plentiful, biodegradable, renewable, recyclable, sustainable product made from trees that supports our economy by providing jobs and income for millions of Americans. Thanks to improved forest management, we have more trees in America today than we had 100 years ago. —
Shana
@Mnemosyne: I love the older version with Colleen Dewhurst but am looking forward to this new version. Are you, by chance, also a fan of the Betsy-Tacy books? Some of my favorites from childhood.
I aways want fried rice when I’m sick.
trollhattan
@amk:
What cracks me up is Trump is kinda describing himself as a witch. There are accepted tests to determine whether that’s the case,
Off to fetch a duck.
clay
@amk: i wondered if someone would bring up the actual, literal witch hunts we had in this country.
Of course, the term ‘witch hunt’ implies that there are no witches. But no one has ever asked what would happen if a witch hunt actual turns some up?
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Jesus tapdancing Christ. Yeah, after clearcutting N acres of climax forest you’ll have a hundred tiny trees for each mature tree you cut. That really increases the tree count, dunnit?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jeffro: I’m so old I remember when the GOP tried to stir up the idea that Bill Clinton had been turned over a long weekend in Moscow during his time in Oxford– honestly can’t remember how far toward the Village that drifted from the fringe, but I’d bet ten bucks that animated scowl Robert Novak put it in his column or on one of his TV shows.
Wag
@trollhattan:
I got better…
amk
Did the pudgy good ole time really go there? Brilliant.
clay
Rachel is hammering on Pence, by the way. Nothing we haven’t discussed here, but it’s good to see people note that Pence ain’t clean of this mess.
mainmata
Trevor Noah has really blossomed into his Daily Show host role. I think, given his South African upbringing he really understands over-the-top authoritarian regimes.
Baud
@Kelly:
Didn’t realize Dunder Mifflin was so large.
Mary G
That Time article is a bit scary too. They say the Russians may have moved on from the obvious bots and Bobs in Portland to attaching viruses to links on Twitter posts.
Kelly
@trollhattan: Most folks here in the Cascade foothills figure the logging cutbacks are an enviro/commie plot. A lot of them were born after the spotted owl war. I wonder how many have seen this country from the air.
amk
any more tiny violins left in the market? or did twitler and his team treason buy them all?
mainmata
@Kelly: The fact that we have more forests also has to do with the disappearance of the horse and buggy. Horses required a lot of pasture and so look at old landscape photos from the late 19th , early 20th century – not a lot of trees, especially east of the Mississippi. Also lots of forests were denuded for charcoal before they figured out how to use coal to make iron and steel. Also, about 100 years ago the US Forest Service was created. That made a big difference.
Baud
@Kelly: I was on an Alaska cruise once, and the ship passed some bit of land that had been clear cut of trees. It was a really sad sight.
zhena gogolia
@Mnemosyne:
Uh, if I were a fan of AGG I probably wouldn’t like this reboot. It sounds misconceived to me.
Shana
@clay: I’ve started imagining that Pence is the Congressman in Born Yesterday with his mousey wife that Broderick Crawford’s character is buying off. He looks so ineffectual but is crooked as f&%k. I’ll have to watch that movie again.
Mnemosyne
@Shana:
I’m pretty much all about Anne and Avonlea — never got into LMM’s other series. In retrospect, I realize it’s because Anne is so clearly someone with ADHD who nevertheless manages to get through life pretty well.
NotMax
@Mary G
Perhaps BiP will get the nod as ambassador to some out of the way post in the general geographic neighborhood. Maybe Bhutan.
:)
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
They STILL believe that shit.
Ok, get this folks: I forwarded the TIME story to my RWNJ dad and brother. Dad gets back to me asking why I never look at Hillz and Obama, ESPECIALLY Hillary’s sale of uranium to Russia(!) I told him it was “Clinton Cash” bullshit and I’d get back to him in the morning with plenty of reputable info that showed how “Clinton Cash” – and specifically, blaming HRC for the uranium sale – was bullshit.
Points for Jeffro! No late-night time wasted, can always get back to Dad in the a.m.
…then he sends me one last response for the night: “No need to send me Liberal links or WP or NYT articles. All are part of the anti R conspiracy”
! !! !!!
Anyway, here I was about to spend time explaining “whataboutism” (you know, “what about Hillary’s emails? what about Obama’s tan suit?” etc) and how it benefits a slimeball like Trumpov by causing people to believe there’s not much difference between the two sides, and then show him plenty of evidence about how “Clinton Cash” was crap.
And now I don’t have to do that – unless there is a Fox News or Breitbart story about how “Clinton Cash” is crap? I’m guessing there’s not.
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
As the world’s biggest fan of the Kevin Sullivan AoGG series, I was hesitant to watch the Netflix version. But I was desperate to remove myself from Trumplandia and gave it a try. Watched the first season (7episodes) in two days and really enjoyed it. I think when you begin with such good material, it’s hard to really mess it up.
Shana
@Mnemosyne: I’m almost ashamed to admit I’ve never actually read the books, only watched the miniseries.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
I wish I could remember who recommended it, but s/he said that there were a few moments when Gilbert and the other boys seemed a little too modern, but overall they thought it was good.
Of course, they were recommending it as something to watch on my sickbed because they’d just gone through a bout of their family being down with the flu, so maybe their whole family was delirious when they saw it. ?
Kelly
@Baud: Growing up with clearcuts I don’t find them to bad. It’s when they are most of the landscape that I’m upset.
Kelly
Oh, dinners on see you all later.
Baud
@Jeffro:
So am I. Aren’t you?
Mike J
@efgoldman: No, Mad magazine. Check their twitter feed for their cover from, uhm, Decemberish?
zhena gogolia
@Mnemosyne:
Well, you should probably listen to someone who actually watched it as opposed to someone (me) who just read the NYT review, which was positive. But it struck me as, let’s take something sweet and heartwarming and make it “gritty.” Not my cup of tea.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Suggestion for throat aid for you one thread down.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@SiubhanDuinne: Isn’t it amazing? Someone suggested on twitter the Saffron Shitheel might want to count it in his Time cover total.
sdhays
But can Twitler count this as getting on the cover of Time Magazine again? Maybe 50/50?
jl
@mainmata: Maybe from Zimbabwe, not South Africa. Both de Klerk and Mandela look pretty responsible and sober, and statespersonlike compared to Trump. Mbeki left quietly when it was decided it was best he resign. And Noah was in the US by then anyway, I think,
But maybe Noah understands that if Trump has his way… our own version of Zimbabwe will be the last station on that track.
jl
@mainmata: Also, the Civilian Conservation Corps. The deforested land didn’t all reforest itself so quickly on its own.
Ladyraxterinok
@Shana: Amd what about Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? Was this written after Ann? Lots of similarities.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
Well, come on, we’re talking about a book where an abused orphan manages to find a loving home with an elderly brother and sister, only to have one of them die in front of her as soon as she graduates high school. LMM didn’t shy away from bringing tragedy into her books.
(Yes, I realize there’s another person we frequently refer to as LMM around here, but it’s making me giggle.)
@NotMax:
I will go check — thanks!
Jeffro
@Baud: I think it’s funny that RWNJs still think the NYT is a liberal paper.
Then again, in some spots, it has those pesky “facts” and “information”. Probably best to lump it in with the rest of the lie-brul media
sigaba
@Jeffro:
The trick here is, you say, “No I’ve never heard that Clinton sold Uranium to Russia, tell me about it.”
(Sends links to American Thinker.)
“This article doesn’t say what she did, can you send me an article explaining exactly what her role was?”
(Sends links to Breitbart.)
“This article just cites the American Thinker post and rephrases the claim but there isn’t any new information. When you say she sold Uranium to Russia, was it the US’s uranium? Was it a private company’s? Was it legal for her to do it? Was her participation essential or necessary? I don’t understand what the problem is.”
It takes time.
efgoldman
@sdhays:
He’ll get KellyAnne or somebody to photoshop his portrait in. Then it will count.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Yup, the Sierra Nevada foothills are similarly enraged at the DFHs taking away their livelihoods, what, thirty years on? Grew up in Seattle and while earning my Boy Scout forestry merit badge was indoctrinated in the FACT clearcutting was the bestest path to healthy forests. At the time Weyerhaeuser was the region’s second largest employer, so we were encouraged to go along with the company line.
Emma
@sigaba: This is the best technique, I think. Questions, not answers.
Baud
@sigaba: Good advice.
Jeffro
Also looks like McGahan is being thrown under the bus (he should have known/reported that Flynn was being paid by Russia and Turkey) in order to protect Pence
dogwood
@zhena gogolia:
Don’t watch Call the Midwife if you are opposed to the juxtaposition of sweet and charming with grit and grime. You’d really hate that series.
Baud
@Jeffro: While the NYT is garbage, it clearly isn’t the type of right wing media that people like your dad and brother get news from.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
I think @sigaba has the right method — make them explain exactly what Hillary did wrong. This is also a scientifically-proven method for getting people to change their minds about something. If they have to explain it through logically to someone else, they start to see where the holes in the story are.
efgoldman
@Baud:
A distinction without a difference. Implied lies on the front page of the newspaper aren’t any “better” than actual lies on Fox.
Jeffro
@Baud: Dad is a complete Fox Fear Channel zombie. My brother thinks he gets his news from a variety of sources…strangely, they all agree with his worldview and include much more editorializing than news.
They often have no idea what I’m talking about when I bring up Trump-related stupidity. They almost always respond with major doses of whataboutism. And they are perfectly willing to betray their professed American and Christian values so that ‘their’ party can stay in power and deliver on tax cuts for the rich and delay the decline of old white male privilege.
amk
I caught just the few seconds of pox news clips from the trevor noah’s vid and I feel already stupider. How could any sane person watch that crap all day long?
Baud
@efgoldman: Fair. But the NYT will also report certain things about the GOP that right wing media won’t.
@Mnemosyne:
it’s also a dominance play. Put the onus on them to persuade you.
Baud
@amk: I think the unfathomableness of that culture helped make us a bit flat footed in the election.
NotMax
Just putting this snippet out there after seeing clips of Dolt 45’s presser, during which his increased blink rate (although not determinative in and of itself other than as a sign of unease) was particularly noticeable. Also a noticeable increase of lip pursing. (emphasis added)
Baud
@Jeffro: Glad you turned out so well.
sigaba
@Jeffro:
Whataboutism is about moral conflict. “I don’t want to argue about what Clinton or Trump did, I just want to talk about good and bad, and if you say Trump is bad, I can counterclaim that Hillary is bad too, but I will always hold out some efficient reason for my preference for Trump.” People often want to drag the conversation this way because it doesn’t require in thorough knowledge of the subject, you just need to have a sense of right and wrong and then have a little news trivia about Pizzagate or whatever.
They change the subject because they don’t really know what you’re talking about and don’t have enough of a factual background to have a conversation with you. Taibbi said it best: “You try to argue the facts, where you’re right, but they always drag you back to the vague generalities, where they’re strongest.” Everybody knows corruption is BAD and the Clenis did this one thing I heard about that in isolation seems vaguely corrupt so I win.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
Is she a vampire or zombie hunter? Seems to be the trend with all reboots these days.
Jeffro
@Mnemosyne: I don’t see how this works – if I tell them “Clinton Cash” is pure propaganda, paid for by a Hillary-hater, and full of lies, they’ll just tell me that’s the liberal media’s perspective and oh well. I doubt they’d believe any amount of anti-right evidence from some “unapproved” source.
We’re going to have to figure this out…state and national candidates especially. These clowns have their own propaganda networks and with social media than can just talk directly to the faithful. They can literally pee on their constituents and tell ’em it’s raining.
Baud
@Jeffro: Just tell them you don’t believe them.
NotMax
Rather complex comment went poof. Hope it can be liberated, please.
sigaba
@Jeffro:
Avoid declarative statements. Ask them to tell you how they know. They’re the ones saying the government is run by crooks, it’s their burden.
A lot of right wing media doesn’t outright lie, because that’s libel; a lot of it is just based of oblique innuendo, and the people who read it think they know something but when you actually go to the article you find a lot of the central facts live between ellipses and handwaves.
Jeffro
@sigaba: I disagree…”whataboutism” is mostly about dragging a valid argument into the mud by making some stupid counterargument that either is of much less significance, has much less of a factual basis, or both.
Ex:
“Trump and his campaign colluded with a hostile foreign power to corrupt our elections and benefit themselves, at the expense of our democracy. This is practically an act of war, enabled by treason”.
“Yeah, well, whatabout Hillary’s emails?”
it’s like comparing the two foundations: Trump donates nothing to his and often uses it as a slush fund to benefit himself…actually buy himself goodies. Hillary (and Bill) donate a shitload to their foundation, actively work to get others to donate to it, and use the proceeds to make huge differences in peoples’ lives around the globe. But attack Trump’s slimy foundation practices, and Vichy Republicans quickly respond, “but what about the Clinton Foundation?”
Jeffro
@Baud: I’m trying to wake people up, not settle for a stalemate. I mean I appreciate the advice, but I’m trying to crack the code here: what will it take for the scales to fall from their eyes? I’ve already told them their values are essentially un-Christian and un-American.
Jeffro
@sigaba: They know because their favored news sources have told them so. And it fits with their worldview, and it’s soooo soothing.
Baud
@Jeffro: Good luck. FWIW, I don’t think facts and information will wake the types of people up. You need another strategy.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry for the self-promotion, but if this is an interesting storyline for you, could I recommend a story about an abused orphan that manages to find a loving home with a bunch of hockey players?
StringOnAStick
@Jeffro: I feel for you Jeffro. My parents are just as RWNJ, but since I’m a godless liberal they no longer speak to me. Its rather a relief really, no more crazy emails so no time wasted on my part refuting insane allegations, and no more being yelled at or thrown out of their house for not sharing their opinions. I’m sure O’Lielly will step right up and help them out as they age. O’Lielly or my oldest sister, because I’m done dealing with their abuse and my life is much better because of it.
efgoldman
@Jeffro:
They will go to their graves with scaly eyes, sorry.
sigaba
@Jeffro: Yeah but the comparison isn’t relevant. The CGI could be corrupt as hell and Clinton could have been selling Colombian white through her Grindr account but that’s utterly beside the point of wether or not Trump colluded with the Russians. This is an argument about why someone would support Trump, not why Clinton sucks. We can talk about why Clinton sucks later. What it does is it forces an argument about an absolute statement, like “Trump colluded with Russia” into an argument about two relative claims which aren’t mutually exclusive.
Both could be true, it doesn’t matter, it’s not a contest to see wether Clinton or Trump is a better person or more worthy. That’s only something we can determine after we’ve established all the facts, like, did Trump collude with Russia.
On right wing sources, here’s my favorite example. [Turns on private browsing window] Khizr Khan Believes the Constitution ‘Must Always Be Subordinated to the Sharia’
You go read that article and tell me where Khan says that. He doesn’t. You go through and basically the article amounts to, Khan wrote a book review about someone else’s book on Sharia law, and he failed to denounce some of the opinions in it.
You just start asking questions and it all starts to unravel.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: You can’t convince them. They have to convince themselves.
It’s not an open-and-shut argument (If it were, we wouldn’t have free-will any more, would we? Perfect ads would warp out minds to support the advertiser’s choice.), but there are lots of papers out there on how well various political persuasion techniques work. E.g. “Changing Minds: Political Arguments and Political Persuasion,” Michael D. Cobb and James H. Kuklinski, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 88-121
Political beliefs (like religious beliefs) have a lot to do with much, much more than facts and evidence. Changing minds is very, very hard. It’s probably best to figure out ways to get people to change them on their own.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@NotMax
Anne Laurie, could you check the Trash folder? Per Adam, that’s where FYWP has been diverting stuff of late.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
Right, that’s why you don’t tell them that.
What you say is, Wow, I hadn’t heard that. Can you explain it to me? Yes, I read the article you sent, but it didn’t make any sense — can you explain it to me? No, I read the other article, but I’m still confused — can you explain it to me?
It’s the process of making them explain the supposed conspiracy in their own words that can sometimes make them go, Wait, hang on, now I’m getting confused, too.
This usually works better in person, because in an email they can just drop the thread and come back the next day with a new conspiracy theory.
NotMax
@NotMax
Ignore, as Adam just freed it from incarceration.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
You realize that, with that summary, it could easily be a Penthouse Forum letter, right? ?
I’ll tell you what — I promise that I will buy your book on Kindle after you sit down with a notebook, a timer, and a cup of coffee (or your beverage of choice) and brainstorm ideas for your next book for 30 minutes. All ideas must be written down, no matter how dumb you think they are, and you have to keep going for the full 30 minutes. Deal, as writer to writer?
sigaba
@Mnemosyne:
Or they get bored and stop emailing, which is a push.
If they’re just trying to bully you obviously this technique has its limits, the problem isn’t actually politics. Natch people send things to each other on Facebook and email in order to elicit a response.
Maybe your family members are lonely and feel alienated. Old retirees are fertile ground for conservative nonsense, I think this is in no small part due to their isolation, lack of day-to-day face-to-face contact with new and different people and their feelings of abandonment and resentment towards impersonal institutions, the Nursing Home, Medicare…
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne: Actually, I have ideas at that level:
Artificial human (i.e. is highly genetically modified) with extremely enhanced perception and analytical skills, at the expense of being able to speak and devoid of empathy (they have to repurpose parts of the brain) who works as a homicide investigator for the FBI in a near future setting stumbles onto a very odd case in which the body is actually a clone, which is supposed to be illegal, and stumbles into a political conspiracy. I actually know the ending and several key scenes in the middle, but I haven’t been able to come up with an architecture to link them.
Also near future, the protagonist works in Internal Audit in a major corporation. (The seed of this idea came about in a conversation with Max Gladstone, of course.) All publicly traded companies have an AI that is essentially a watchdog for the board of directors, and Internal Audit works directly for it rather than the CEO. I haven’t got the plot worked out much, which isn’t a surprise; character and setting come very easily for, but plots to use them in are a different story. I do know that the protagonist is in love with the AI and that badly warps his judgment at times.
I have several ideas connected to a fantasy setting in which I want to explore the idea that fantasy settings have a strong tendency to never develop technologically or socially. One thing in particular I want to look at is the creation of surplus labor in a fantasy society. Another is how certain types of magic can replicate much of what technology does in creating the surveillance state. One society is largely built around necromancy and the use of zombies to provide free unskilled labor; the surplus value is distributed quite equitably, and so you see a lot of arts and other “leisure” pursuits. Another is using magic to produce something resembling the industrial revolution, and orcs (or whatever equivalent I use) are flowing in from the places their nomadic tribes live to provide labor. Another seems to be the good guys on the outside, but are really a totalitarian police state. The problem, as above, is coming up with plots to use this setting; so far I’ve drawn almost a complete blank.
And that’s really it. I’m lacking either the motivation or the creativity necessary to flesh these things out. I’d almost love to have a coauthor who could help with the bridge between my rough ideas and having something to write.
Steve in the ATL
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
The 6th Day?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Steve in the ATL: Doesn’t sound much like it.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Have you ever looked at K.M. Weiland’s website? It looks like she’s having a special on her book Creating Character Arcs right now, which is specifically about how to create a plot by starting with a character. I bought it as a paper book and then got the eBook version for cheap through Kindle Match.
I wrote about 25,000 words of my book, realized I had the heroine all wrong, and am now going back and re-doing a bunch of character stuff so I can write a full outline. Ugh. Not the recommended way to write a novel, to say the least. It turns out I am not good at being a pantser — I need an outline, or else I get frustrated and give up when I get stuck.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Honestly, what I really need right now is a writers group to belong to, or at least one reader who will both critique stuff and make me accountable. I need some sort of push or nagging, I think. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a writers group that really meets my needs and has openings. I can’t be in a group with hobbyist writers rather than pros or seriously aspiring pros. I can’t dial the feedback I give to a level useful and appropriate for hobbyists, and I find that their feedback isn’t useful.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
You may already know this, but it’s generally accepted that the original zombie myth of the Caribbean is an allegory for slavery, with people being afraid that they will essentially be forced to continue to be slaves even after they die.
laura
@Mnemosyne: You’ve been poorly, what with the fever and ague. Bar-be-que pork & Won Ton soup with a side of Anne of Green Gables is just the ticket.
Feel better soon.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I realize this is going to sound crazy, but once again I urge you to go to a meeting of whatever Romance Writers of America group is closest to you (an area like MSP probably has a couple of different ones). Your published book easily fits into women’s fiction, and you will find a LOT of women (and some men!) in the group who are basically writing straight sci-fi or fantasy with a romance added in. You can usually attend the first meeting for free and without having to be a member, though membership will usually run about $150-$200 per year.
RWA chapters have a really good mix of published and unpublished authors (my chapter is about 55 percent published authors) and they’re very supportive. You will probably be one of the only guys in the room, but if you can get over that, I think you may be able to find some people to write with.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Trivia: When the Comics Code Authority dictated in the 1950s that the word zombie was verboten (the company which became) Marvel kept right on publishing the same types of stories, using the invented word “zuvembie.”
Mnemosyne
@laura:
The nice man who delivered my soup seemed amused by my Batgirl t-shirt. ? And the Excedrin did a really good job on my sore throat.
@NotMax:
I think the cold remedy you posted inspired me to order Mongolian beef for dinner, even though my tummy is no longer fond of onions and garlic.
NickM
@zhena gogolia: I’m watching it with my daughters, 12 and 9 and I’ve seen other versions before. This is my favorite Anne of Green Gables. She’s awkward and unglamorous and so sympathetic and wonderfully herself. No needless grit. Great show. My girls love it and they like almost none of the same things one being a theater nut and the other a tomboy.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne: Unfortunately, Becoming Phoebe is quite unlike anything else I write. Not only is it the only thing that isn’t spec fic, very little of the rest of what I write really has much in the way of romance elements. And most romance subgenres don’t really interest me as a reader, so I’d be committing to read stuff that’s not really up my alley.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne:
One of the things to explore about the society I have in mind is that they have very different ideas about using their bodies after death; it isn’t “me” in any real sense. Identity is tied up entirely with the mind and soul; the body is just something they’re borrowing. So, they have no revulsion at the idea of becoming a zombie, because it isn’t really them. Indeed, their dead body is something that they owe to the rest of society.
If you are familiar with the distinction between mindless undead (like a zombie) and undead that are sentient and self-aware (like a vampire or a lich), they think the latter are abominations because they mean that some aspect of the self has not moved on to where it should properly go after death. The exception to that is a council of their greatest people who agree to sacrifice their afterlife to remain as liches as something of a governing council.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
*wipes drool from keyboard*
NotMax
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym
Not quite the same thing, but if you watch the Brit series In the Flesh it may set those cerebral cogs a-spinning with myriad possibilities.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
You might be surprised. The last RWA writer’s group I was in, one of the women was writing a post-apocalyptic vampire novel where the heroine was about to be dragged off and drained of her blood as the last remaining human. A lot of the time, it seems to be a place for women who want to write science fiction and fantasy to go and be in a more cooperative environment. Writing groups that are male-dominated tend to get creepily competitive and the site of dick-waving contests.
The first meeting is free, so you should at least check one out. What do you have to lose?
chopper
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
an interesting twist would be to have people in this society take an early contractual payout based on the provision that after death and reanimation they do manual labor as the undead. take the money and do what you want with it. and nobody really cares cause they figure they’ll be doing all the work when they’re dead. only after a while people start finding out that the soul survives the process and you end up spending eternity “locked in” in a slave body.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@chopper: That could be interesting, but it’s not what I’m interested in doing.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Also, my first though was Science Fiction Writers of America, but they don’t seem to have the same type of chapter structure that RWA has so it was harder for writers to connect to each other. At least with RWA you would know going in that at least half of the members are published writers, not hobbyists.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne: Yeah. Membership in the SFWA is dependent upon already having a certain amount of published spec fic.
chopper
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
well then I’ll do the writing! with booze, and hookers! in fact, forget the writing!