Author Archives: Tim Byrd

Just How Selfish WAS Jesus, Exactly?

It’s not often you see a true man of faith who’s a public figure in our culture who actually walks the walk.

Stephen Colbert is exactly that.

A devout Catholic (who actually teaches Sunday school), he not only bases his political views on principles like compassion and rationality, he’s extremely active with a long list of charities. He’s clearly a much better man than the buffoon he lampoons, Bill O’Reilly (who this week hilariously tried to one-up an atheist on his show by telling him we don’t know what causes the tides to go in and out).

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Witchery

Ladies, if you want to capture my heart, this hat, a bed-table heavy with books, and a searingly carnal trickster spark in your eye will all definitely help…

Well Nigh Apocalypse

An undead ex-VP rejects another heart…

Thousands of black birds with blood-red marks fall from the sky…

Dead fish choke the shores…

A troll doll from a northern state gets a book deal…

Orcs seize control of the House…

A newt and a hagfish in grizzly furs set their crazed eyes to the White House…

The Rupture is nigh.

Good Memories of 2010, Day 1: My New Phone

My relationship with my phone is traditionally contentious at best.

I hate talking on the phone. I hate when the phone rings. I often ignore it, I rarely check messages, and I’m a pain in the ass to get in touch with.

But I love my new iPhone 4.

I still hate talking on it, and its ring still makes my soul bristle. But oh the things I can do with this little gadget…

I’ve watched movies and TV shows on its gorgeous, high rez screen, streaming from Netflix. I’ve watched many a clip on YouTube. I’ve absorbed some great TED conference presentations via their dedicated app.

I’ve read several novels, and been amazed at what a pleasant experience it is. The screen is sharp, the text clear (and resizeable). It automatically saves my place. I can lay on my side in bed and hold it in my palm, tapping the screen with my thumb to flip pages. And I always have a library in my pocket, ever ready for reading emergencies.

I listen to a lot more music. I have an 80 GB iPod with over 9,000 songs on it, but rarely carried it anywhere. My iPhone has only 16 GB, so I can’t get all my music on it, but I can get a hell of a lot, and since it’s my phone, I always have it with me. I also listen to Pandora, discovering new music, and there are other great music apps like Bing’s (which lets you listen to the top 100 songs of any year back to 1947) or Wolfgang’s Vault, a treasure trove of live concert recordings.

If I want to identify a song I’m hearing, I can let the SoundHound app listen a few moments, then it’ll not only ID it but give me lyrics, links to YouTube vids of the song, and buying info.

I can plan workouts and keep track of my progress at the gym.

I can keep up with my peeps on Facebook and Twitter, check email, do on the spot research, identify constellations, get directions and maps (including topo maps of wilderness areas), explore with Google Earth, track the weather, make notes, shop, and of course take pictures and videos. Which I can instantly upload to share if I want.

All with this little wafer of tech.

Good Memories of 2010, Prologue

2010 kinda blew.

I had major health issues and major struggles with my depression. As a result, I blew a deadline on my next book, which I still have yet to finish.

I realized that some people I thought I was close to weren’t really there for me in a meaningful way. These epiphanies come when you’re sitting around week after week thinking dark, with no one around.

I watched a Democratic president with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress govern with his fucking hat in his hand, accomplishing some good things that could have been great had he acted with a tenth the chutzpah his ridiculous and vile predecessor had.

I watched ignorant rabble and theocratic authoritarians rebuild their power and influence in a time when rationality and progressive values were initially emergent, thanks to the lack of effective political leadership by that president and his party in general.

I didn’t get to sleep with Olivia Wilde.

And, basically, not a whole lot of good happened in my life otherwise.

Now my year has opened again with illness, and my “fine Irish melancholy” is clawing my eyes, and I feel somewhat  less than motivated to write about the good things I experienced last year. It’s an effort of memory even to recall such things. But I’m going to, because I’ve established that tradition and keeping to it is good discipline, and because it may do me some good to think back on some positive things.

Auld Lang Syne (Song of the Week, 1/3/11)

I hope the year ahead is great for all of you. And for me too.

That it started with the date 1/1/11 seems auspicious, as if we get to start over after a nightmarish decade of strife and stupidity. Here’s hoping.

This week’s song  is one of the loveliest takes on this tune I’ve ever heard. Thanks to Betsy Burnam for sharing it.

Song of the Week, 1/3/11

The Ballad of Fuck-All (Song of the Week, 12/30/10)

By Malcolm Middleton

Oh will you come home soon
Come home soon and save me
I’m so bored
Life threatening doom
The walls are closing in all around

Oh will you find me now
Find me out and save me
I can’t get up
Life threatening doom
Dragging me darker and down

Take my hand
Dragging me down
Through the ground
Darker and down
Down down down
All the way down

Oh will you come for me
Comfort me in the night
I’m so tired of feeling sick and tired
Dying at life’s door all the time

Oh I’m locked inside
Trapped inside this body
I can’t get out
And there’s not enough room
I’m glued to the back of this bone mask…

Some Snowy Drifters (Song of the Week, Christmas 2010)

Happy Holidays, all.

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How Obama Will Defeat the GOP (humor)

Made this myself. Now feel free to pass it on, especially to Democratic leaders.

I’d stand in line to meet Obama just to put this in his hand.

Feeling Feisty (Song of the Week, 12/6/10)

My eternal war with the darkness of depression kicks off a new initiative today. To commemorate, here’s Leslie Feist with her own single-handed festival of lights…

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As a bonus, here’s an awesome acoustic take on the song which Feist performed on The Colbert Report. (Plus you get the surreal pleasure of glimpsing Colbert in the blue shiny outfit Feist wore in the “1-2-3-4” video).

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Want To Enjoy A Sacred, Raunchy Holiday Season?

‘Tis the season to remind folks of a holiday staple around the Byrdcave, the Santa books of Robert Devereaux. These incredible works of fantasy are both moving and filthy, sacred and profane, and guaranteed to awaken parts of your brain you might not even be aware of.

The first, Santa Steps Out, has been out of print lo these many years, but Devereaux recently regained the rights and has made it available as a Kindle download at Amazon. The second, Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes, is available in paperback and Kindle format.

I reviewed both here, and you can read the entries at:

Santa Steps Out

Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes

An evil elf also recently told me there’s a third Santa book on the way, and a likely hardcopy set of all three by next Christmas.

Wikileaks FTW!

I love me some Wikileaks.

Julian Assange is a superhero. Or, actually, the hero of the most relevant thriller Robert Ludlum never wrote. I would buy him a beer and toast his health and hide him in my basement while Homeland Security agents menace me with buckets of Freedom Water.

Our government, like all governments, is made up of human beings, full of flaws and foibles. Additionally, like all governments, the sort of people who often fill its halls of power are people who seek not the betterment of the world, but power and money and self-aggrandizement. To trust them wholly, to not question, and to attack those who do, is to be an idiot.

(Which reminds me of my favorite quote of the week, from Keith Olbermann: “Calling an idiot an idiot is not personal – its almost mathematical.”)

People get all bent out of shape when “our side” gets pegged for doing the wrong thing. They think it harms us when “our” misdeeds are swept into the light for all to see. Actually, it harms us when those who represent us mis-do. Pointing it out gives us a chance to look at our mistakes and try to do better. Continue reading →

Possibly the Coolest Website I’ve Ever Seen

This is masterful marketing and just fucking cool as hell…

Click here to see it, and just scroll slowly down the page once you arrive.

Actual Abstinence Education

This shit is appalling, but real. No wonder abstinence programs fail so badly.

Abstinence education is abstinence from education.

Kicking Amphibian Butt: One Of My Favorite Doc Wilde Reviews

A Great Christmas Gift! Buy Now!

One of the most thorough and thoughtful reviews of my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom, came from writer/librarian Werner A. Lind, who posted it on Goodreads around the time the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans group discussed the book.

The review is below, but first a couple of points…

First, you may note there’s a discrepancy between the 4 star rating shown above the review and Werner’s statement grading it with three stars in the initial paragraph. Werner explained in a comment during the group discussion:

I hope you noticed that I later added a comment to say that honestly, on reflection, I’d give it four stars based on my own enjoyment of it, not just that of a hypothetical younger reader. (Sometimes it gets tiring to always have to wear the mantle of a sober academic critic. :-)) And I want you to know that once Doc Wilde and the Mad Skull is published, it’s definitely going on my to-read shelf!

The other thing is that he, like quite a few others I think, found the kids’ ability to use echolocation to navigate darkness a bit too over-the-top and unrealistic. The truth is, human echolocation is real, and it’s fascinating. Look it up on Wikipedia.

And now, take it away, Werner… Continue reading →

Hey There, Cthulhu

A song to get you in the Saturday Night With Cthulhu mood…
(Thanks to horror-meister Ray Garton for sharing this)

Sarah Palin, Mom of the Year?

I don’t watch much TV. I especially don’t watch much reality TV. So I missed out on the exciting antics displayed on this last season of Dancing With The Stars.

I do follow political news, however, so I’m somewhat aware of the controversy about supporters of Sarah Palin gaming the voting to make Bristol Palin win, and the show making some sort of changes in how they handled things to prevent such abuse.

The previous paragraph entirely sums up my knowledge on the matter, and is probably more than I need to know.

Someone did point me to an interesting blog post from Margaret Cho, who apparently also danced on the show.

Everyone was trying to pit me against Bristol, but the truth is, we got along well. She never asked me to babysit Tripp or anything like that, but I consider her a friend…

…Although I don’t agree with the family’s politics at all, I really like Bristol as a person. She’s warm and incredibly supportive, and I think that she looks beautiful out on the dance floor.

She also shares her understanding of exactly why Bristol was on the show in the first place:

I heard from someone who really should know (really should seriously know the dirt really really) that the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly (in the circles that I heard it from) for not winning the election, and so she told Bristol she “owed” it to her to do DWTS so that “America would fall in love with her again” and make it possible for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 with America behind her all the way. Instead of being supposedly “handicapped” by the presence of her teen mom daughter, now Bristol is going to be an “asset” – a celebrity beloved for her dancing.

To be much fairer to Sarah Palin than she ever is to anyone she disagrees with, this is, of course, hearsay. But it rings true. That’s the Sarah Palin we see just about every day. And if this is true, we can only hope that Bristol can break free of her mom’s harpy grip to dance her way to a full life without mommy dearest pulling the strings.