Get your Hamlet On! David Tennant as Hamlet available on DVD

David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who and was also in league with Lord Voldemort in a Harry Potter movie, has also played Hamlet, in a production which also featured Patrick Stewart--- Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And now that performance is available to anyone who has a DVD player. So if you'd always wanted to see the Melancholy Dane played by a Sci-Fi icon, here is the link: Hamlet (DVD)

If, on the other hand, you'd rather just read the book, you could try: Hamlet (Ignatius Critical Series). Yes, Hamlet is now available in an Ignatius Critical Edition. The Ignatius Critical Editions are annotated editions of Great Books where the annotations are from a Christian (Catholic) point of view, rather than the traditional hard-core Marxist POV.

Featured Posts:
Doctor Who Video: Best Thing in the History of Ever
Cool Guys don't Look at Explosions

Featured Item:
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Widescreen Edition) (Harry Potter 4)(David Tennant is in this one. Briefly.)

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Reddit up to 10 Subscribers

There is a very new Reddit subdivision dedicated to Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy. It's a great place to share your favorite blog-posts on the topic, and to promote your own blog.

Find the new Reddit at: http://www.reddit.com/r/christianSFF/

Once there, you can:

1. Join Reddit, if you haven't already.
2. Subscribe to the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy sub-reddit. Don't worry, it doesn't show up in your in-box, it's just available when you visit Reddit.
3. Read the articles shared at the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Reddit.
4. Vote the articles up (or down, if you must).
5. Comment on the articles.
6. Post your own favorite blog posts and web sites relating to Christian science fiction and fantasy.
7. Promote one or two of the Very Best of your own blog's posts.

Reddit can be a great way to promote your blog content--- ProBlogger has a good article on how to use it. The main problem is that you need to submit your material to the correct division of reddit to find good readers.

I'm hoping that the new Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy reddit will soon have many more subscribers--- please blog about it or spread the word on FaceBook if you can.

You can even add a reddit button to each of your blog pages which will add the page to the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy subreddit.

Diana Wynne Jones dies

Just discovered over at the blog 'Happy Catholic' that author Diana Wynne Jones has died. Go to the blog for some more info.

I was not a big reader of Diana Wynne Jones, but I do have a few books of hers. The one which I really enjoyed enough to read again and again was Howl's Moving Castle.

The story begins with a young girl who is cursed by a wicked witch to instantly become an old woman. She leaves her home and gets a job as housekeeper in the strange household of the wizard Howl (Howell), and, in her new form of a crochety old woman, even manages to bully the fire-demon Calcifer.

It's a delightful book and I highly recommend it to all lovers of fantasy fiction. It was also made into an animated movie which was fairly nice as well.

How to Write a Juxtaposition Poem

When I write poetry I like to write what I call juxtaposition poetry. It's a little like found poetry, except that you 'find' the raw materials from three different sources--- books, newspapers and the like. It's not only interesting of itself, but is something that can get your writerly juices going when you have writer's block.

Your three sources need to be very different from one another--- in 'nuclear sainthood profits' from my book Where the Opium Cactus Grows I used a Catholic prayer book, a book about nuclear war, and something by Karl Marx.

What you do with your sources is 'point and click'. Open each one at random and point, without looking, at the text. Copy out words or phrases from that point. Do this one after another until you have enough material for the poem at hand.

A pure juxtaposition poem just uses this material as you found it. But the secret to writing a good juxtaposition poem is to cheat like hell. Fudge a bit when you are pointing to select your source material, and add, subtract and re-arrange the material to help it make more sense. Or less sense, depending on your writerly goals.

I might point out that my 'nuclear sainthood profits' is not an average example of my juxtaposition poems, but one I feel is one of my best efforts in that direction. Most juxtaposition poems are choppier and don't have unified themes (whatever themes are, I try to avoid them). 'nuclear sainthood profits' is what happens with juxtaposition poetry when your Muse is in the building.

Here is the complete text of 'nuclear sainthood profits' from 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows'.

nuclear sainthood profits


wages after the labour, we beseech you, o limited nuclear war
a son is given to us, testing increasingly smaller warheads
if this limit is overshot, ground zero will accumulate debris
o mary conceived without sin, detonate a nuclear weapon
in the presence of mine enemies


behold, a virgin shall declare war on the soviet union and china
the market price of our pope, our bishop, and all true believers
includes mutual assured destruction when wages and prices are high
and large numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles
now and at the hour of our death

This poem was written 21 years ago--- wow, a poem that's old enough to drink! At the time I wrote it I was NOT a Catholic, and I WAS a Marxist. But I never meant it as in any was anti-Catholic. It was more like a nuclear-war-drives-us-all-to-pray thing. And of course there was the 'blame-capitalism' reish going on as well. (Did you know that capitalism is responsible for the lack of life on Mars?)

The sharpness of this poem is a result of using sources with high emotional impact. You don't have to do that all the time--- I've used a local newspaper as a source many times, both for juxtaposition poetry as I've described it here, and for single-source found poetry.

These blander sources are essential for school teachers using juxtaposition poetry in the classroom, since in a school setting one WANTS a bland result. In homeschooling, a wider variety of sources are possible, whatever the homeschooling mother thinks is acceptable.

In my experience, some juxtaposition poems are finished after the first day's work, and others need more work. In addition, any type of poem benefits from being 'aged' in a file for a few months and then being given a bit of polishing if needed--- or even a complete re-write.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: write a juxtaposition poem of your own. (If you post your poem on your blog, do post a link to it here in a comment.)

Related Post:
Blogging 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows'

Featured Books:
The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
Modern Korean Poetry
Where the Opium Cactus Grows





Seven Ways You Can Help The Lina Lamont Fan Club:
1. Pray for me and for the readers of my blog.
2. Share this post on FaceBook, using the button below.
3. Link to this post on your blog.
4. Comment on this post.
5. Buy a book from links on this blog or the Amazon.com search box.
6. Consider taking the Holly Lisle 'How to Think Sideways' course through the links on this blog.
7. Cuddle a cat for me. Any cat. Except maybe a surly tiger. They bite.

Mommy Aborted Me and All I Got was This Lousy T-Shirt

NARAL Prochoice America is peddling T-shirts! This is what their e-commerce site says:

NARAL Pro-Choice America's official t-shirts for the April 7 Pro-Choice Lobby Day in Washington, D.C. are here. By buying one or both of these t-shirts, you'll do more than just stand up for a woman's right to choose. In fact, your purchase will make it possible for thousands of pro-choice Americans to flood Capitol Hill and visit face-to-face with their members of Congress.

Add your name to the list of other pro-choice Americans making a strong statement in support of women's freedom and privacy today. Now is the time to show politicians attacking legal abortion and other reproductive-health care that their War on Women must end.

NARAL's War on Women (and their children) continues, but at least they're making good money selling T-shirts about it....

Cross-posted from Inglourius Ranterz

The Silent Scream DVD - Eight Languages
The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind


Seven Ways You Can Help The Lina Lamont Fan Club:
1. Pray for me and for the readers of my blog.
2. Share this post on FaceBook, using the button below.
3. Link to this post on your blog.
4. Comment on this post.
5. Buy a book from links on this blog or the Amazon.com search box.
6. Consider taking the Holly Lisle 'How to Think Sideways' course through the links on this blog.
7. Cuddle a cat for me. Any cat. Except maybe a surly tiger. They bite.

Strange Blog Wins Second Award

Amanda Borenstadt of A Fortnight of Mustard has awarded The Lina Lamont Fan Club the Stylish Blogger Award. Maybe it's because of the fetching nightgown and ratty blanket I'm wearing right now?

Amanda claims I now must tell seven things about myself. But then again she's part of some weird cult that worships Playmobil people, so what does she know? But I'll do it anyway as I promised I'd finish this blog entry before I have breakfast and I'm hungry....

1. There is a two-day-old kitten in the room making weird kitten noises. His name is Other Joel 2. Last year his mama had 5 kittens, 4 survived and were named Joel, Other Joel, Girl Joel and Other Girl Joel. This year his mamma had 5 of which Other Joel 2 was the only survivor. It was a narrow thing since he chose to spend his first night on Earth making kitten-racket all night long.

2. I used to have Asperger's Syndrome but I gave it up for Lent.

3. I am addicted to Facebook games, chiefly FrontierVille, and, lately, PriestVille (which is kind of like Mafia Wars but with less whacking people. Too bad, I like whacking people.)

4. My role model and secret crush is the Crazy Cat Lady from the Simpsons. Like her, I also enjoy screaming gibberish and throwing cats at people. I'm throwing one at Barack Obama right now, for interrupting the soap operas 2 days in a row. (It's a really bad tempered black-and-white cat named Sarah Palin. Yes, my cats are all Republicans. One is even named after Dick Cheney. Cheney is the mother of 5 kittens, by the way.)

5. My third favorite character from Doctor Who is The Master (Harry Saxon version). My eighth favorite character from Star Trek (The Original Series) is Khan Noonian Singh. I'm writing a story about The Master and Khan. It's a romance.

6. Is it seven things yet? I lost count. I hate mathematics and counting and crap.

7. I'm older than dirt, but I still haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up. I'm thinking 'cowboy'.

Now I'm supposed to pass on the award to seven other bloggers. Which ones to pick? I'll just have to pick out the top seven from my Best Blogs Ever list. Or maybe I'll just throw darts at the wall--- or cats--- to pick seven at random.

1. Fabianspace, by author Karina Fabian
2. The CHASTITY Ring, which is about my favorite alternative lifestyle.
3. Operation Counterstrike, by Melvin 'Operation' Counterstrike. Hey, he's got style, it's just not a very civilized kind of style. His blog has gone all by-invitation-only, so someone please tell Mel he's won an award?
4. The Least Read Blog on the Web by John, a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod pastor.
5. Tea with Morbius , a Doctor Who blog by Celestial Fundy.
6. Expression Express by author Tracy Krauss
7. Biblical Evidence for Catholicism by apologist Dave Armstrong

And now, The Game. I'm not going to tell the award winners that they won just yet. That's YOUR job! So, go to the blogs on the list and drop the authors a comment that they won an award.

UPDATE: Celestial Fundy is the first award winner to have discovered his award, so as a prize, he gets one of the NEUTERED cats. The hard bit is sticking enough postage stamps on the cat to get it to the UK.

Operation Counterstrike (real name Theodore Shulman) will probably not be picking up his award as he's been arrested for making death threats. When he gets out he will probably have to give up his blog, or at least refrain from making death threats there, which means he's going to have to find a new theme for his blog. Please folks, pray for Theo!

And Other Joel 2 the kitten has passed away. His mamma has also had 1 other dead kitten for a total of 6. Luckily there are other kittens around here who will volunteer to dispose of her milk supply.

Related Post: Prolific Blogger Award goes to Crazy Cat Lady

5 Weird Things in Mike Duran's The Resurrection

Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour

1. Mr. Cellophane - Mr. Cellophane is a ghost. Not a demon. In a Christian novel. That's as much against the rules of the Christian genre as having a non-evil KKK member would be against the current rules of secular fiction. (If you have a KKK member in scene one, he must be fired by scene three--- or was that a gun, I can never remember....) Duran gives an explanation of the theology behind his use of Mr. Cellophane at the back of the book.

2. Those Weird Catholics - The boy resurrected in the book is a Catholic. But not an ordinary one. The author mentions Latin being used at the funeral Mass. They don't have Latin Mass all over, and even when they do I'd imagine that nearly all funeral Masses are conducted English (or whatever the preferred language of the region/people is). So that kid and his family must have been major league Latin Mass geeks.

3. Questions not Asked - The early part of the story is largely concerned with the raising from the dead of a local boy. But there are questions that just screamed to be asked that weren't mentioned--- number one being: 'Was that kid embalmed?' Most people are embalmed these days, in some states I believe it is required. Embalming has nearly done away with the event of people being buried alive since people don't survive being embalmed. Yet it wasn't mentioned in the book.

4. The Church Ladies' Visit to the Pagan Stores - As a former Pagan myself, I took an interest in the fearful attitude the three Church Ladies had when going in to the local Pagan (occult, demonic) stores. It was realistic --- I had similar fears myself when I, during my Pagan years, had occasion to go into a Christian bookstore or a church. I might point out that the Pagans in the book are very evil and demonic compared with the wimpy tree-hugging sweetness-and-light (except during Witch Wars) Pagans and Wiccans one meets in real life. (Of course Christian authors have the same right to depict Pagans as demon-influenced as secular authors have to depict Christians as violent haters.)

5. Mike Duran compared to Peretti, not King - I've never liked Peretti's Christian horror books. I was a Pagan when they first became popular and at that time was concerned that some of Peretti's plotlines were vilifying Pagans as Satanists. And the one Peretti book I read cover-to-cover didn't impress me in the writing quality department.

But Mike Duran--- well, if Stephen King gave up Christian-bashing and compulsive cussing for Lent, he might manage to write at Mike Duran's level. Duran's fiction just does not have the flavor of books written for the Christian-fiction ghetto. I think he'll go far....


Blog Tour Links:

Buy the book at Amazon.com The Resurrection

Author's web page: http://mikeduran.com

Noah Arsenault
Brandon Barr
Red Bissell
Book Reviews By Molly
Keanan Brand
Kathy Brasby
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Melissa Carswell
Jeff Chapman
Christian Fiction Book Reviews
Carol Bruce Collett
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Wanda Costinak
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Janey DeMeo
Cynthia Dyer
Tori Greene
Nikole Hahn
Katie Hart
Joleen Howell
Bruce Hennigan
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Emily LaVigne
Shannon McNear
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Joan Nienhuis
Nissa
John W. Otte
Gavin Patchett
Sarah Sawyer
Andrea Schultz
Tammy Shelnut
Kathleen Smith
Donna Swanson
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Dave Wilson

BBC's Being Human: George and Nina expecting Werewolf baby

First George accidentally turns his girlfriend Nina into a werewolf. Then Nina becomes pregnant, and after considering killing the baby for most of an episode (and poor George dare not say anything to defend his child's life), Nina decides not to abort, but then the werewolf couple have to worry about whether a preborn child can handle the stress of its mamma turning into a dog once a month.

Of course, my worry would be that since the baby was conceived while mamma and daddy were in wolf form, that Nina's pregnancy would take a course typical for canine females and she will give birth to a whole litter of werewolf children. That would be so cool, except the poor werewolf kiddies will never be invited to slumber parties on full moon nights....

Bone Fires of Kaalaa: Excerpt

Imagine landing on an alien planet and finding yourself surrounded by 9 billion skeletons...

"You must know," Natalo told his officer, "that Terra is not the only world the Logua have attacked as, almost, a side effect of their war with the Sposeni.

"According to the Loguan records the most recent world they attacked was Eorahal, homeworld of the Kaal. The Loguans won a decisive victory, and decided that Eorahal would make an ideal colony world for them.

"So they packed the entire Kaal population into cargo ships and took them to a world they knew of which was too far away from their own network of permanent Gates to be of any use to them.

"The Loguan records don't say, explicitly, what happened to the Kaal. But ever after this planet has been called Kaalaa--- Loguan for 'graveyard of the Kaal.'"

"Nice," said Emilina Danubo. "The lesson for us is, don't lose the war."

This is a little taste of my current work-in-progress, and I'm sharing it in celebration of the fact that there HAS been progress...

The Word Cloud is from http://www.wordle.net/, which I learned about from the blog of Amanda Borenstadt (author of Syzygy)

NOTE: this month's Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy blog tour is coming up--- watch this blog

Read the Bible in a year--- and the Catechism

There are a lot of plans out there for reading the Bible in a year, and now that I am a Bible Christian instead of an Odin-worshipping Neopagan, I see the value of them. It's harder to get in the discipline of Bible-reading if you always are wondering which part of the Bible to be reading on any given day.

Today I found a Bible reading plan with something extra--- it's based on the complete Bible, not one that omits the books tossed out of the Bible by most Protestants after the Reformation. And it ALSO includes daily readings of the Catholic Catechism, so that you will also read THAT in a year (if you so choose.) Read the Bible and the Catechism in a Year

The daily reading includes a chapter from 3 different books of the Bible each day. It's in PDF format and if you print out the 2 pages onto the same sheet of paper and fold it in quarters, you have a little leaflet you can keep in your Bible.

Some people might assume that only those Bible Christians who are Catholic would like this scripture reading plan. But nowadays Protestants and Evangelicals are often less than fully convinced that Martin Luther was inerrantly inspired by the Holy Spirit when he treated the Deuterocanonical books (the 'Apocrypha') as not really Biblical, since Luther also wanted to kick the epistle of James out of the Bible altogether (the Deuterocanonicals were included in the Luther translation of the Bible, but grouped together between the Old and New Testaments).

Even Pastor Arnold Murray of the Shepherd's Chapel TV Bible study program is not against reading the Deuterocanonicals and says good things about them, though he doesn't preach on them as he does with other books of the Bible. So this Bible reading plan meets the needs of many Bible Christians who are Protestant/Evangelical as well as the Catholics.

I'm starting with the Bible reading plan today. Another nice thing about it is that it doesn't have the months and days listed so you can start any time, and if you skip a week, you can just keep going with where you left off--- and you can read ahead when you are energetic. I challenge anyone out there to do likewise.



Kindle Bible (KJV with Apocrypha) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump)
Kindle Catholic Bible (D-R) (best navigation with Direct Verse Jump)

Blogging 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows'

My book 'Where the Opium Cactus Grows' will soon be available not only at Lulu.com, but also at other booksellers such as Amazon.com. Soon anyone with 7.76 to spend will be able to own a paperback copy. It's totally worth it just for the cute kitty-picture on the cover.

'Where the Opium Cactus Grows' is a collection of all the offbeat and non-sane poems I have written over the past couple of decades. Some of them have actually been published. Many are from my infamous Youthful Marxist Phase, most are weird to very weird, some are semi-comprehensible, all are in English (more or less) and none have any themes, deep meanings or any of that other sh&t you had to learn about in English class. It's all 'just for funny'....

In honor of the publication I will be blogging the book, one poem at a time, over the next couple of months. I hope it makes you laugh, cry, pray, scream obscenities, or all of the above.

In other news: Sarah Palin has just given birth to 2 kittens. Film at 11. Kitten daddy unknown but could be John McCain.

(No, not THAT Sarah Palin and John McCain, I mean Sarah Palin and John McCain my cats. And John better not be the daddy because Sarah's his sister.)