BLOGS

Governor-General Jaqualik could have delegated command of the Silhouette battle ship he was on board to a capable subordinate. He huffed at the thought. As the one hundred ships of his vaunted Border Fleet neared the rebel occupied moon called Ponrek Point, Jaqualik gave in to a tingle of joy. How many years had it been since he had personally commanded a mission as pivotable to his career as this one? Dribik succeeded in eliminating a notorious terrorist and traitor. Now it was left to Jaqualik to wipe out the organization that its deseased leader had spawned.

            “Surface readings are active,” an officer at the scan station announced. “I’m getting massive vehicle mobilizations and heightened power surges indicative of weapons going online.”

            Jaqualik, standing beside his command post at the lowest level of the bridge, looked up at the elevated scan station. “Excellent,” he said to the station’s occupant. Any doubt he may have had as to whether the GLFF base was actually on that drab looking slab of a moon had been effectively put to rest.

            Of course where the Watch Department and its director were concerned, Jaqualik shouldn’t have had a morsel of doubt to begin with.

            “Weapons range in ten seconds,” Olek, his first officer reported, glancing up from the table top near-space status screen. “Orbital defense satellites are deploying.”

            No sooner had he said that did Ponrek Point’s higher orbital plain light up with the flaring discharges of over three thousand satellite-mounted pulse cannons. Highly condensed bursts of energy whipped out into space, streaking toward the inbound Opheren ships like a horde of avenging angels.

            The Silhouettes at the forefront of the formation opened up with responding volleys. First, they fired molecular missiles in the paths of the energy bursts. The missiles detonated at mid point, releasing vaperous compounds. Well over ninety percent of the energy bursts plunged into white cloudy mists formed by the molecular missiles and dissipated as if they were doused in an ocean. Which, essentially is what the compounds were: heavily fortified water capable of negating the effects of energy based weapons.

            A rapidly forming cloud from thousands of pulse/missile impacts billowed across the front of the Silhouette line. Dozens of ships disappeared in the artificial cumulus, reappearing on the other side or as parts of the cloud began to fade.

            The Silhouettes fired a second wave of missiles, targeting the satellites. Brutally simplistic affairs those missiles were. The missiles exploded when in close proximity to their targets. Only, instead of releasing water clouds, they released swarms of ball bearings. Every satellite directed toward the invading fleet was flayed to its core components in a savage typhoon of hyper accelerated metal spheres. In seconds, the satellite ring girding Ponrek Point fell apart like an unsnapped belt and died in a churning compression of hot reactor-spawned fury.

            “Arm planet missiles,” Jaqualik commanded. He fixed a borderline crazed look on his second-in-command. “Have you pinpointed their piss hole of a base?”

            “We have,” replied Olek.

            “Good, open fire!”

            Triangular missiles the size of heavy fighter craft and armed with neutron warheads exited every ship in the Opheren force. They descended upon the moon, their guidance computers directing them toward the target that sprawled beneath its atmospheric shroud.

Have you ever been been playing video games and woundered how in the world they make these stunning levels? It almost seems magical how the levels in the game are made, but its far from magic! A Lot of blood,sweat, and tears are poured into those levels. But, there are major tools that make this process easy somewhat. I'm taking about the game engines baby! A game engine is set of tools already programmed out the box! Simaler to a framework for the internet coders like jQuery or jQuery moblie. I'm going to talk about three of these engines, but be forewarned. Even though these are pre-programmed tools for game development use, these engines are very powerful and can be very hard understand without broud understanding of multiple disciplens in the digital and fine arts. Before any polygon is layed out, a lot of work goes into the planning stages (or pre-production). It's best to splash out all of your ideas in a mind-mapping format. Once your ideas are out of your head and onto paper you can start layout your map.

Now with you're data planed out you need to start blocking in the your level, lets look at the easiest engine to use and then the most powerful!

http://unity3d.com/

The Unity Game Engine is one of the most flexible game engines on the market. It has support for many 3D modeling programs like 3Ds Max and Maya. Along with this great terrian creation tools, support for shaders and normal maps, programming in JavaScipt, C#, and Boo. There is also support many audio and video formats, great particle effects tools, and much more! Unity is also free to use, but there is also pro addition worth $1,500. This such a great entry level engine its hard not to reccomend it!

http://mycryengine.com/

When Unity begins to get small for you (really?) then check out the Cry Engine! They named this engine right because of the sheer graphical power this thing has is unbelievable! Like Unity, the Cry Engine has support Maya and such programs, but at much stricter and more powerful way for example; a more powerful audio system (7.1 anyone?) S-3D veiwing, the sandbox editer, and more!

http://www.unrealengine.com/

The Unreal Engine is pretty much the most popular engine to date. Epic Games really put a lot of pain into making this engine avalible to all that wish it. The Unreal Enigne is just as powerful as the Cry Engine, but Unreal is used for more game productions then Cry. This has ton of features, but also has support for Adobe Flash! Yes, the means that all Ureal developed games can be exportable to Flash in full 3D Glory!

As you can you can see, these are very powerful tools! I think it's a good idea for you to take each tool step-by-step, and be ready to have an understanding of programming fundamentals. These tools give you a great chance to make amazing games! Make sure you done your're homework by going to sites like http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/. Be safe and keep gaming!

All Links:

http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/

http://unity3d.com/

http://mycryengine.com/

http://www.unrealengine.com/

"He said: 'Baby you know what I like, and I love showing you time after time. Let me give you my lips—anywhere I want to put them on you, so romantic and very intimate.'
She said: 'Daddy, I love doing what’s right to you—giving you all of me—being freaky and naughty to make you happy.'
Unexpectedly, she lifted up her miniskirt: showing her thick, smooth thighs and fire-engine red panties and boots. She walked slowly over to him, and put her arms around his neck..."
Come into the garden of United Souls. With his second volume Quinton Veal gives us erotic fiction and poetry just for lovers.
Sit back, relax and enjoy...
Cover art and design by Quinton Veal

Check out my new book United Souls: Stories and Poetry of Seduction contact me at quintonveal@hotmail.com

available too at amazon & barnes and noble

April 15^this the day! Countdown at the link below.

Or...you can commiserate over your taxes (ahem: like me).

More at: PhDComicsdotcom/movie

Good morning fam:

I just wanted to let everyone know that my 4th and 5th novels Immortal IV: Collision of Worlds and The Switch II: Clockwork are now available at amazon and barnes and noble! Readers can also contact me for purchase :)

The long awaited sequel to the Switch! Includes Book 1 & 2 
"As she looked on, the target unzipped his jumpsuit and pushed it down. His blond companion sauntered over to his desk, and slipped off her pants..."
York is a city of contradictions. Women are hard-pressed for lovers, because lovemaking can be dangerous. The upper city is powered by computers, the underground by steam. And the wealthy don't work for a living, underdwellers do it for them.
But certain underdwellers have a big problem with this arrangement. And so does the time keeper.
Welcome to the Revolution...
Cover art and design by Quinton Veal

Danita Henries awoke at the helm of her Star Sprinter, grimacing as pain roared through her head like a tornado. She leaned back in her chair, massaging the ache out of her skull until the worst of the storm subsided. Reaching up to an overhead compartment, she pulled out a first aid container, opened it, took out a thin blue tube, and popped a pain tab. She placed the tab on the tip of her tongue and felt it dissolve in her mouth. The pain vanished in seconds, enabling Danita to focus on her current predicament.

The last thing she remembered was eluding a raider ambush by entering a nebula. There was a reason why those raiders didn’t follow her into the cloud. Raider anti-ship missiles degraded her shield, increasing the Sprinter’s vulnerability to the nebula’s harsh radiation. When her instruments went haywire and her screens turned fuzzy, thoughts of frying pans and fire flashed through her mind.

            She undid her restraint harness and stood, stretching out kinks, making sure the rest of her was whole and fully functional. Then she checked her panel, tapping buttons to get her instruments active. Her electronics were quiet as a graveyard.

She hit the panel in frustration, but in so doing the forward monitor sparked to life.

A surface of silvery grass popped on the screen, stretching to a treeline in the near distance. Beyond the treeline loomed a cluster of ivory colored buildings.

            Danita’s felt relieved that she at least crashlanded on a world appearing to harbor higher life, judging by the structures. Apprehension poured a damper on that relief, though. What if the higher life was hostile?

            She mulled over the possibility as she removed a console access panel and fiddled with a few relays. Additional screens came on.

Danita checked the diagnostic readout. Most of the Sprinter’s drive capacitors were damaged in the landing…such as it was. Five thrusters were down along with a series of burnt out optics.

No worries. Well…mostly. She was a good enough mechanic where she could effect necessary repairs. But she needed parts. They didn’t have to be perfect, just compatible.

Danita eyed the buildings on the screen, rubbing a hand through the woolen thickness of her jet-black hair. It was time to find out how friendly and generous the locals were.

Ten minutes later, Danita departed the Sprinter, wearing a nanotube-lined flak vest and a mirror tinted sun visor. She carried a Nova-Cell carbine, with a Durex 12 assault pistol holstered on her right hip. The weapons belt around her waist accommodated a combat blade, solid munitions clips, a brace of grenades, and a first aid pouch.

            Preparation is the first rule of self preservation. She always harkened back to those words prior to a new venture. Words of wisdom from a revered combat trainer.

 Danita’s mood brightened in recollection as she tread cautiously through stiff, chafing knee high grass.

The sky twirled with every color in the spectrum. The same blaze of colors as the nebula, except the rays of a bright sun ameliorated its visual intensity.

According to the Sprinter’s computer, this world didn’t have much of an ozone layer.

Before stepping outside, Danita slathered a special sunblock on exposed parts of her ebon skin to protect against the environment’s heightened radiation. Her well-toned arms gleamed with the gel based application.

            As Danita neared the stand of towering red-leaf trees she slowed.

            There were bodies tied to the trunks of five trees. She paused, easing her carbine to firing position before resuming her approach. She spotted additional bodies, counting up to thirty. The corpses had been gutted and from their obvious dessication, drained of their life fluids.

            A low keen graced Danita’s ears.

She shifted to the sound’s source and saw that one of the victims was alive.

The local stood about her height, bearing a slender build topped by a large, oval head embedded with tiny facial features. Its head lolled unsteadily, its distended eyes half lidded.

Thin chains coiled around the victim, pressing it securely to the tree.

Danita approached the local, took out her blade and hacked.

Solid metal links gave way to her blade’s carbon edge. The chains dropped.

            Danita clutched the local, easing it gently to the ground.

            The local’s eyes fell on her and widened, revealing dark, green pupil less orbs.

            “Don’t worry,” Danita soothed. “You’re alright now.”

            The local’s gaze traveled past her.

             A sound of engines reached her ears. Danita twisted about to see inbound creatures riding grayish, sloped, open top hover vehicles resembling ancient Earth snow sleds.

            Up to a dozen sleds zeroed in on her.

            The local tried to clamber away as Danita rose, her carbine leveled upon the intruders.

She deliberated on whether she should hold fire until the arrivals’ intentions were determined.

            The foremost sled decelerated in front of her.

The pilots’ purplish body was a formless, undulating blob, layered with a network of overlapping, pulsating veins. Six spindly arms, ending in clawed three fingered hands, sprouted from its body, giving the thing an insect-like appearance. A pair of glistening nubs that may have been eyes poked from the top of its body.

Bending its forelegs, the creature leapt from its sled toward Danita.

While airborne, black, suction-covered, tentacles slithered from an orifice in its torso, grasping Danita’s left arm.

 At that point, the creatures’ intentions were clear enough.

Danita wasted no time dousing her opponent’s center mass in an incandescent riptide of carbine fire.

A&T-UNCG Nanoscience-Nanoengineering Consortium

Admittedly biased; tremendously blessed.
December '84, Engineering Physics graduate - Aggie Pride!

A&T-UNCG Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering

Submit yours: ScienceDebatedotorg2012

Hiya gang ready for part II? I'm going to just add chapters as we go and include the previous one in the new weeks offering.

“Red solo cup, I’ll fill you up, let’s have a party, let’s have a party”
You can get the damndest country songs stuck in your head hanging around with white friends, and growing up just outside of Ft. Sill Oklahoma a little black boy doesn't have many choices and the Indians are on the reservation.

Sport and I met when I was 13. Moms moved us back to Oklahoma to be next to Master Sergeant Grampa U.S. Army Retired and the pee wee football coach discovered I’d arrive at the ball hard and fast while Sport would get there fast and hard. I love that fool like people love brothers they don’t have to live with, like someone comfortable even though he is a country fuck.

When he called me that Saturday morning talking about going noodling I knew I had other things to do. Grampa said he was going to kick my ass if I didn’t get the pole barn put up on his land out the other way, but his threats usually came with a smile and I got things done anyhow even if it wasn’t on his time so I let him talk me into it without having to talk about my Momma.

You could always hear Sport coming even before you saw him and that’s even if he wasn’t saddled up to Miss Chatelaine his overly loud F-150 but when he was in her the next county could. Black folks aint the only ones who like loud music, but the difference is in the bass and not the guitar.

Sport got to the little trailer I stay in on Gramps land far enough away for privacy but close enough for dinner right as the sun was rising. Miss Chatelaine loud as ever would have brought gramps out with one of his guns if I were any closer.
“S’up Soul Brother”
“S’up Sport”
we said repeating the greeting that we’d shared a million times before.

Sport’s actual name was Hartwell Carver and his family had been in Oklahoma since they first shot the gun to let the White man carve out sections of it for their very own. We were going to go to one of the many little lakes that dot the landscape that was on one of his uncle’s stakes.
“Soul Brother where’s beer?”
Sport didn't have many words but the ones he spoke had meaning.
“Yeah Sport grab the cooler, but us a case on ice before the stores closed last night. Was gonna take it to the head myself putting up the pole barn but I ‘spect there’s enough to share with yo ass”.

I don’t know how people go hungry in Oklahoma when there is noodling. It’s all about holes and you don’t even need bait, hell you’re the bait. You get yourself down in the muddy water and kind of bob along the banks looking for a hole. In a good 3 out of 5 of those things you can find a throwback creature that was going to be the star of my apology to Grampa the good out the frying pan 45 pound catfish. Just bob along the bank stick your foot in wait for him to bite it with that sandpaper mouth of his and yank his behind on out.

Sport and I filled up Ms. Chatelaine with the cooler and all the gear we’d need in ourselves and headed out before 7 in the morning had really got there stopped by the local McDonalds for 8 mcmuffins apiece as a light snack and headed for the spot. Sport had the ability to take a sandwich in multiples and had downed all 8 by the time we got to turn off the highway and the bare road that led to the lake I still had 3 left I’d leave in Ms. Chatelaine and let Sport try and talk me out of later.

“Sport I can’t take this sad shit anymore let a brother start the day undepressed”
he was feeling cool that day cause he let me without bitching and soon as I reached down into my backpack to pull out some ¾ beat BOOM both of us hit our heads on the roof as Miss Chatelaine bucked.
“The fuck Sport how many times we been down this road for you to be hitting bumps and shit”
“Ayup twernt no bump”
Sport said rubbing the contact on his head like it felt good.
“Well whatever, dude watch that”
he answered with the national gesture of Sportania his middle finger.

I hoped out of Miss Chatelaine to open the gate to the last quarter mile or so to the lake we were fishing in and let Sport drive on up. I wanted to get a little warm up in before we hoped in that cold water so I jogged the last bit in. By the time I got to the bank Sport had already cracked a beer and tossed me one.  I chugged it down without taking a breath and we both jumped in the water. No need to torture yourself with tippy toeing in better to take the bull by the horns.

Bobbing in the water is pleasant. The Oklahoma sun is plenty hot and it does shine through the water but the water is so cool we played like hippos regulating our temperature by either stooping down or standing up as the day demanded.

Sport got lucky in his first few holes and pulled out fish that would satisfy both our families before 1 o’clock. Me I couldn’t seem to get a good grip on the one I saw plus when he bit me he rubbed my knuckles so raw I actually yelped. Wasn’t fun hearing Sport tease me about my bitchiness but damn it hurt. We had just got done sitting on a bank about half a mile from Ms. Chatelaine arguing over who was going to have to lug the fish back when I felt it. Felt like a current, but this lake was one of the ones hooked up to the Ogallala aquifer it didn’t have a river to feed it that was above ground, but dang I could feel a pull. Round about that time the pull started to get strong enough for even Sport to notice it and we stared at each other and jumped the fuck out.

It was an amazing sight. The middle of the lake started to whip up like one of Momma’s lemon chiffon toppings accompanied by a sort of hum. Sport and I headed back for the truck forgetting about the catch he’d worked so hard to pull out of them holes and as we were jogging back to the car the lake started to hum some more, like a negro spiritual being sung by a fog horn on crack it hummed.

We got on Miss Chatelaine climbed up on her roof and spied the lake which had moved from lemon pie to crashing half a mile wide whirl pool. The water was angry and heading elsewhere and for half an hour we watched it saying very little beyond “dayum” then it was over. Lake Get Us Some Fish was empty as a whores heart and not near as pretty. All I got out of Sport for the next 10 minutes of staring was
 “Sheeite”

Credit: PhysicsWorld

...thank Einstein (though reluctant to have contributed to its creation), preceding him James Clerk Maxwell,  Michael Faraday, Gustav Kirchoff, Ludwig Boltzmann, Henrich Hertz, Max Planck; contemporaries Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and Max Born who coined "Zur Quantenmechanik" in a 1924 paper, the inimitable Richard Feynman, and any physicist or engineer that has studied, used and designed with quantum mechanics since.

The 2011 Japanese earthquake disaster showed that the first few minutes after an earthquake are critical. When the Tōhoku earthquake struck, it took geophysicists more than 20 min to compute that the earthquake was magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale. Had the authorities known the full extent of the earthquake sooner, it would have given them valuable time to activate early-warning systems to help prepare people for the large tsunami that would inevitably follow.

a cautionary tale of technological excess Θ 

The conference hall was brilliantly lit. 

As we waited for the first speaker of the day to deliver the keynote address, I marveled at the fantastic location for the conference. This was the first conference of this type and they spared no expense to buy the entire building for a day. They hired their own catering companies, with food from twenty five different countries, had a personal security force with sophisticated support services for all technology, incoming and outgoing. Nothing was left to chance. As far as anyone could tell this was just another dental conference in the middle of downtown San Francisco. 

The first speaker was a tall man, possibly from Norway, his blondish white hair was stylishly combed and his suit was impeccable. Once he spoke, his accent was a crisp and cultured German but his English was completely able to be understood. He had learned to speak English in America and I suspected he could make his accent completely disappear if he wanted to. It was the nature of everyone here. We were all able to be more than we appeared to be. 

"Good morning, everyone." 

"Good morning," the audience responded. I looked around at the room and saw an unexpected diversity in the crowd. The room was filled with the old and young, the obscenely wealthy (whose clothing gave them away) and the absurdly radical (like me, wearing whatever crossed our path). Every color of the human rainbow and from every social group on the planet. I could personally recognize at least thirty different facial/social groups in the audience from where I was sitting. Facial recognition was my specialty. I wrote software that could recognize faces from nearly any quality of video. I had auctioned the technology and the client wanted to meet here to contract me for further work. He felt we were kindred spirits and would mutually benefit from the conference. 

"My name is Lars Ulfrich, and I am here to lead into a series of discussions regarding our product. We are at a crossroads in our work. Government agencies have decided to take greater steps to monitor and track our individual efforts. One hundred and seventeen nations have come out against what we do." Lars directed our attention to the screen and listed the nations who were opposed to our work. 

"While most governments disapprove," he began again, "they have no way to effectively track or deal with our business model. Indeed, missing people have simply become a fact of life in most major cities. With that said, even government will eventually get their act together, and the threat of that has kept our opportunities small, but manageable. It has come a time for us to begin to recognize both our vulnerabilities and our potential opportunities that could come from our pooling our efforts. It is also time to talk about some of the newest capabilities taking place in the world of software." 

Lars turned back to the monitor behind him and the screen lit up with three words I had come to hate so much. 'Privacy is dead.' 

"Ironic isn't it. These three words ushered in a new age in communication a few years ago when social media was becoming the future of human communication. People were told they did not need to be private any longer. 'Share yourselves with the world, place your photos online, talk about where you're going, tell everyone what you're doing once you get there.' These words were uttered by privacy pundits everywhere and people believed it. No greater bounty has come our way since the invention of the handcuff and the taser. With the tools of social media, we can effectively transform our industry in ways scarcely conceived of at the turn of the century when the term 'shanghai' was used to describe our early twenty century habit of acquiring 'manual labor.'" 

Using his remote, Lars turned on a video feed of a techno-geek in a lab with six monitors, assorted computers on the floor and a central screen that used a gloved interface. Nice, kind of geeky. The room was dark and the images on the side windows were of a variety of data streams from a number of modern social media programs. 

"This is our future." Lars waved his hands expansively toward the screen and the technician raised his hand without turning around as if to say he was aware of our existence. "Imagine, if you will, the ability to have a client request a particular desire." 

On the right side of the display, a number of older men's faces appeared, with the occasional woman's face appearing among them. The technician then moved to the left side of the screen displays and air-typed a command. "Let's start with a client searching for a subject who is sixteen to twenty-five, fair skinned, dark haired, middle America, five feet, five inches to five feet ten inches. Our technical staff would access the largest social media tools and having written a series of programs that query the site, can pull approximately sixteen thousand names matching those criteria across the United States. He would then parse the list, reducing low quality subjects, or subjects whose criteria would put them on the periphery of desirability. The second pass would reduce the number of potentials to two thousand. He would then look for subjects who could meet any extenuating desires of the clients such as linguistic expertise, cultural awareness, or extraordinary physical attributes. This reduces the list from two thousand to two hundred. The remaining two hundred would then be cross-referenced with a list of 'acquisition agents' who are all vetted and experienced in collecting subjects. The collection agents locations or travel radii would determine the suitability of the subjects, as well as outstanding bulletins  which would reduce an areas potential, depending on the effectiveness of the local constabulary." 

Bringing the audience back to him for a moment he dims the display and turns back to facing the audience. He began, "At this point we have not even ventured out of the office yet and have already been able to search through a pool of thousands of prospective subjects who have all willingly given out everything we need to be able to find them, monitor their activity, their physical location during the course of a day and what their habits, entertainments, and filial relationships might be. Photographs of their cars reveal their home via a quick DMV scan. Geotagging their photos gives us a pattern of potential locations and with a couple of days of regular tracking we can begin to set up a pickup point. We can scout locations ahead of time to ensure no effective security cameras or personnel will be in the area when we are ready to pickup." 

On the monitor, we are watching as our technician has been watching his custom designed data engine propagate potential points of retrieval from a subjects geomapped information from social media tags, text messages, and photos, and cross-referencing against a map of citywide surveillance. Three different blind locations are available and set along with the subject scans, a variety of photographs to potential clients who might be interested and a cost to acquire and ship the subject. 

Lars looks back to address the room. "What makes this set of new opportunities most appealing is the data being collected is in the public domain, so we are not forced to randomly appropriate subjects, risking surveillance, accidents or dumb luck. Using this process, we will eliminate any random chance by planning far ahead enough and leaving no incriminating clues. Yes, the local governments are also trying to use social media to understand and potentially track subjects who could be criminals, but what they are looking for is almost impossible for people to be able pick out of the background noise of our world. We have a major advantage, we know what we are looking for. They don't realize we can change our selection process, targets, locations, and methodologies. Constantly rotating, we would make it difficult for them to get a pattern." 

Turning off the monitor and turning up the lights, Lars smiles a gleaming white band of teeth and says "Hah? What do you think of that? Can you see the potential? Last year, we unofficially made approximately $32 billion, by the estimates of the FBI. Our numbers indicate we were able to make twice that easily. With the continued development of our social media tools, which give greater and greater veracity to the information being collected, plus with our recent technological acquisition  of software and technicians, many of whom were once on the government payrolls before being thrown to the wolves, we have the potential to triple our numbers without any increased sense of risk on our parts. Clients from the developed world fetch the highest prices. With social media only growing more prevalent, it is only a matter of time until the next generation doesn't even know or care what the word privacy means." 

Lars tossed the remote to someone in the orchestra pit and turn again to the crowd. "We will be breaking into smaller groups in just a few minutes, many of them will have conversations discussing in greater detail how each individual process will be integrated into the greater whole. We invite anyone who is interested in further opportunities with this new process to begin to sign up for the coursework and head to the forum areas to continue their training. I expect our new year to be prosperous. Remember those three words that have changed our methodology and will make us richer than we have ever imagined." 

A man dressed in dark clothing is seen coming through the back door of the stage, dragging a blond young woman about eighteen years of age. Her face is immediately familiar and I get a sick feeling as I realized who she was. She is being half dragged, half carried to the center of the stage. She was every bit as beautiful as her photos suggested. "To show you the speed and effectiveness of our new process, this young woman was picked out before this seminar started, right here in the Bay Area. From start to finish, the entire operation once the technical aspects were done, was less than an hour. She has been plucked right out of her day and will not be missed for nearly six hours. She will be on her way to Hong Kong in less than four. I hope this presentation has been informative. My name is Lars Ulfrich, thank you for coming." 

The room was dead silent as he dragged the girl away. The hungry stares of the audience seemed to drink in her pain and suffering. Then she whimpered for just a second, a sad sound. If I had a heart it would have been breaking right then. I looked away in shame.

Then the lights went out indicating the end of the presentation. The applause was deafening.

Dark Harvest © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

"Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism." ~ Audre Lorde

From Greg Laden's Blog: Evolution of the Moon

 Is the Film industry ready for a Black Female Syfy Action Hero ?

      I submitted two short stories that I have been working on for the last month. In "Zambeto" I played with the standard idea of two worlds: the world that we live in and a mystical African world. For the second story "Kokopelli" I reversed this. Both stories feature a black woman central character, both draw on real mythological creatures for inspiration. 

      "Zambeto" is a helpful spirit akin to the boogie man in Benin, West Africa. Here are some clips from  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c95IAxGRUSA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Up4br89lQ&feature=related . An alternative spelling is Zangbeto. My sister, Shawna Holbrook, was an IFESH volunteer in Benin for three years (www.ifesh.org). In 2001, we visited her and I was introduced to the Zambeto. There was a special room in the central market where she lived where the Zambeto costume was kept. I got to inspect the costume but couldn't touch it. One night when we were out at a restaurant we could hear the eerie music that was played when the Zambeto was roaming. We went in the opposite direction so I didn't get to see the Zambeto in action. 

     "Kokopelli" is a spirit deity from the American Southwest. He is a trickster and a fertility God. His image is found in many rock art sites, some nice examples are on this website http://www.real-dream-catchers.com/Kokopelli_Project/kokopelli_legend.htm. Notice his erection which has been removed in the numerous commercial items that feature Kokopelli today. Living in Tucson, Kokopelli is everywhere. My daughter has a pair of Kokopelli socks! Ok, I admit that I bought them for her. To see the modern (and sanitized) Kokopelli get on images.google.com and type in Kokopelli. 

      In Zambeto, rather than being a person wearing a mask, the Zambeto is a real creature that visits the world that we live in. The heroine has to send the Zambeto back to its own world. Kokopelli is also real, but in the world the heroine lives in such things are normal. Kokopelli helps the heroine transition to the other world, our world.

      Zambeto I submitted to Milton Davis for his Griot: Sword and Soul anthology. Kokopelli I submitted for the next edition of Genesis the Black Science Fiction anthology. I think the deadline for each is the end of April. I will know in a couple of months if either have been accepted for publication. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JLtZ4Ccno

BY DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/VIDEOGRAPHER DR. JONATHAN GAYLES
CREATOR OF WHITE SCRIPTS, BLACK SUPERMEN SITE
http://blacksuperherodoc.com/

NADRA ENZI AKA CAPT BLACK ANTI-CRIME ACTIVIST & HOOD CONSERVATIVE
(504) 214-3082

I knew my older brother and I didn't agree with his direction but I am thankful he kept discouraging me from following him. The crap I was introduced to as the younger brother on the outside via my outcast vantage point and my imagination running amuck. He disappeared into the army, went to Viet Nam. Someone eventually came home banishing my brother's name. Damn man, what happened to you, I asked. He remembered me alright but that person too had moved on.

Been struggling with slave descendants returning to Africa where some of our forefathers lived or passed through. When you are away, you diss-own on both sides over time. You are a stinking African and you are a stinking American. OK, we are odious to each other. Present generations have looked at each other from a distance through the biased media lens of a third party. Africans see the "famous" blacks, with bad behavior, immorality, back stabbing antics and money grabbing sell-outs, pimp'n and murdered english speaking. I have yet to see prosperous African city life on TV akin to my own American city life. Always ghettos and starving kids and folks wearing colorful rags, chasing goats and driving cars you couldn't sell to a junkyard. And highly colonized schooled Africans reminding us of the slave masters we are trying to escape from.

Reminds me of the field nigger vs the house nigger debate. You got the manners of a pig boy, shut up fool if I don't grow it you'd be with the pigs too. Time and distance, long time and great distance. While you were gone, things have changed here, the people who birthed you are history. I am not like the ones you left behind. That's OK, I am not like the ones who left either. We were not allowed the freedom to propagate our heritages, the agenda was to strip away everything but the work. Yeah we here in Africa are running crazy, the agenda is to strip everything away from us too. Why you black Americans say you are African? That's where we came from! Why you Africans say you are not French, British, you've been colonized more than us? We still got the land and our language! They look at each other, "damn man what happened to you?"

My brother passed on a couple of years ago. I looked at him wondering how he could have changed so drastically in such a short a time. When you grow up with family the change is shared. When time and distance are involved you grow differently. Who reached across the water to maintain the shared growing up during slave times? Today the communications reveal the changed persons. But the images are managed to give false information. Sorry Africa the famous black personalities in media do not represent all or typical black Americans, just like the images of famine and war are not the true face of Africa we are often shown. Eventually we must meet, reacquaint, form a buffer culture strategy, plan for a few generations down the road, learn from each other, peel away the bias, weed out the elements that hinder us. The antidote to time and distance is time and closeness. Painful either way, yes.