A Television Series Inspired By Dean Koontz's Novel WATCHERS

This morning I saw fellow Atlanta Horror Writers Association member Andy Davidson posting on Twitter about his lifelong love of Dean Koontz's novel Watchers. Apparently he'd first read it when he was ten and re-read it every year since. I read the book somewhat later--I first got into Koontz in middle school with Cold Fire (the Dickerson Middle School library had it) and read Watchers and Phantoms soon afterward--and so I replied that I would love to see a quality movie adaptation. Unfortunately, most of the films based on it were direct-to-video garbage.

(Seriously, in the first one Travis and Nora, who are married in the book, are a mother and a son. A later version made Travis a military deserter rather than a decorated Delta Force retiree. One looks like a rip-off of Predator. And so on and so forth.)

Andy suggested a television series would be better than a film, something that reminded me of S.M. Stirling's comment at DragonCon many years ago that books made good miniseries. Although my first thought was something like one of those British TV series that lasts for around ten episodes and then done (what I think would be an appropriate adaptation of The Thing in the Woods), then I remembered the original 1960s TV series The Fugitive. Although in the 1990s film the events look like they take place over about a week or two (at most maybe a month), the original TV series ran for four seasons. The Fugitive presumably takes place in the 1960s and the novel Watchers takes place in the 1980s, both before truly large-scale government and private surveillance and tracking. It would be much easier for Dr. Richard Kimble to evade the U.S. Marshals or Travis, Nora, and the super-intelligent dog Einstein to evade the NSA, the KGB, and the predatory monster The Outsider for a prolonged period of time than today.

(It's been years since I read Watchers, but the NSA guys hunting Travis comment on how between his experience as a Delta Force operative and how he and Nora sold Nora's house for cash, tracking them would be very, very difficult. And we see that thanks to Travis's military experience, he knows just how to get false papers.)

The first season could be "everybody meets everybody" and the early hunt for the Outsider, with the climax being the Outsider's killing of Travis's landlady that causes Travis and Nora to become fugitives. The second season and perhaps a third could cover how Travis and Nora are fugitives, their getting stalked by the KGB's assassin, Einstein's distemper scare, and the final confrontation with the Outsider.

Between all the different factions hunting them, how some of them are working at cross purposes (the NSA and the KGB's hired hit-man), and one of them is chaotic force of destruction (the Outsider), a Watchers TV series could last a respectable amount of time. And given fiction's increased interest in exploring social issues these days, one could touch on other topics besides "how will Travis, Nora, and the dog escape the baddies this week" or "how will the NSA keep the Outsider from blowing the cover-up going on a rampage this time."

(In the book Nora, raised as a recluse by her emotionally-abusive aunt, initially has little ability to function in the real world and is stalked and nearly raped by the handyman she hires to work on her house. Given how fearful and lacking in self-esteem Nora is and how inept she is at "adulting" when we begin the story, I could easily imagine her blaming herself and not reporting it to the police if Travis and Einstein hadn't stopped the bastard. And if I remember right, the perpetrator only pled guilty to a lesser charge and got jailed because Travis--a man and a decorated soldier--wouldn't tolerate the police not taking it seriously. Travis's first wife died of cancer they didn't know she had until it was too late, so you could touch on health care, the importance of catching cancer early, etc. And lead NSA agent Lemuel Johnson is so hard-driving and neurotic because his father, a self-made wealthy black man who managed it during Jim Crow no less, raised him without any tolerance for failure whatsoever. One could use flashbacks Lemuel has to meeting Einstein and the Outsider before they escaped the lab to show how just pitiable and messed up the Outsider is despite how to all outward appearances it's a merciless monster. There's a lot of room for thoughtful stuff here.)

And if you make it a 1980s period piece, there's no cell phones or cameras, doing everything in cash isn't really suspicious, stuff like the Patriot Act doesn't exist, etc. That would allow for a much longer show simply because the NSA wouldn't be able to locate Travis and Nora easily, nor immediately locate and squash the KGB. And the success of It and Stranger Things shows that now is a good time for 1980s nostalgia pieces. Barnes and Noble went so far as to even point out that those who loved Stranger Things would really like Watchers.

HELLRAISER as...a Lifetime Original Movie

In mid-October I watched Clive Barker's horror film Hellraiser for the first time in several years for the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood. Here's the podcast for your listening pleasure.

Although I saw the film as an adult rather than a child or teen like most of the movies we've done, it didn't hold up as well as I'd thought. One of the big problems was pacing--the film could really stand to use a trimming. And then podcast host Nic made a comment that I can't really refute--Hellraiser came off like a Lifetime Original Movie.

(For those of you who aren't Americans or aren't super into television, Lifetime is a television network aimed at a female audience. It has a reputation for overdramatic low-budget movies focusing on women in peril from the latest in-the-news danger and/or dramatizing real-life incidents like the woman who killed her child's molester in court. Here's an article discussing the phenomenon; it even has an amusing TVTropes page.)

And if you stripped out the supernatural elements, it would seriously look like a "teen girl in peril" film more appropriate for Lifetime than, say, the horror streaming channel Shudder. Seriously, Kirsty could be an older teen (in the original script she's only twenty and she could easily be 18-19) who moves with her father Larry and disliked stepmother Julia to a new town and finds the situation so intolerable she rents an apartment of her own and gets a job she doesn't particularly like to pay for it. She finds a new boyfriend and things seem tolerable at least...until she learns that Frank her pervert uncle has escaped from prison. He's hiding in the attic of the family home and is canoodling with Julia, encouraging her to commit crimes to get money so they can run away together.

Furthermore, some of her uncle's criminal associates are looking for him (Frank in the book and film is referenced as owing people money) and if they can't have him, they'll gladly recoup their losses by taking Kirsty away for sex trafficking (with human trafficking being a major news topic I could definitely imagine a Lifetime movie about it--and I'm pretty sure they've covered this before) instead. She bargains with them by offering to give them her uncle (whom she discovered and who attacked and injured her) instead. This they go along with, arriving at the family home to find her stepmother and uncle have already murdered her father. The criminals kill both of them (or, like in the film, Frank kills Julia by accident before the criminals kill him), then renege on their deal and try to kidnap her anyway. Fortunately she's found her father's gun or managed to steal one from one of the criminals and disposes of them all like a Final Girl in a slasher film.

What do you all think? All of these elements generally line up with what happened in Hellraiser, minus the whole "resurrected by blood from sadomasochistic Hell," "evil Rubik's Cube that opens dimensional gateways,"  and "leather demons" parts. And given the greater awareness of sexual assault (Frank's rampant perving on the teen Kirsty and the very rapey flashbacks with Julia) and human trafficking, this would definitely include Lifetime movies' "ripped from the headlines" tendencies.

Furthermore, Kirsty would be a good protagonist for a film intended for female audiences. She isn't reliant on or obedient to any male character (she gently disregards her father's wish that she live with him and Julia and chooses to support herself), she fights off the rapey Frank by herself upon their first encounter, she's able to bargain with the Cenobites (or in this case a bunch of human criminals) when she can't physically overpower them, and although the film never explicitly depicts her having sex with boyfriend Steve, one of them is definitely staying over at the other's home and yet she doesn't suffer Death By (Possible) Sex like many female characters in slasher films do.

Book Review: Blood Street (2018)

My Lovecraftian horror novel The Thing in the Woods was published by Digital Fiction Publishing, a small press headquartered in Canada. Although DFP ultimately closed its doors, it released a number of other books, one of which was Carl Alves' Blood Street.

I checked the novel out via Kindle Unlimited and burned through it pretty quickly. How did I like it? Well, here's the review. 

The Plot

A member of a Philadelphia crime family is killed (not just killed, but straight-up butchered) and his mob boss starts hunting for the killer in order to make them pay. There's one small problem--the killer isn't human. The killer is in fact the reckless and arrogant vampire Alexei, part of a clique of bloodsuckers who've taken up residence in Philadelphia. Soon the FBI gets involved, as do other vampires who don't want Alexei's idiocy to jeopardize their secret existence.

Shenanigans ensue (as author Mary SanGiovanni's cosmic horror podcast would put it) as blood runs in the streets and alliances are formed and broken. Who will live and who will die?

The Good

*I like the overall concept. I'm only aware of one vampire story involving the Mob--the film Innocent Blood, which I've never seen. This story, however, is much more complex, with Mafia, federal, and vampire factions all pursuing their own agendas and working with and against in each other in different combinations of alliance and betrayal.

*The book is a quick and entertaining read. I definitely enjoyed it. And there's room for more stories set in this universe if Mr. Alves chooses to go that route.

The Bad

*Since Alves holds to a tight third-person POV, other characters are well-described in terms of their appearance but the POV characters themselves are much less so. I'm not sure what a lot of them look like.

*The ruler of the vampire brood and the Mafia boss both don't seem particularly decisive in dealing with dangerous or idiotic subordinates. A lot of trouble could be avoided if they were a bit more ruthless with their underlings.

*A character makes a fairly drastic decision toward the end of the book, but it's not well-foreshadowed. And there's another character involved in said decision--their role in this decision doesn't really gel well with his characterization earlier.

*Per the above, the ending felt a little bit rushed.

The Verdict

A fun Kindle Unlimited read. Very absorbing. 9.0 out of 10. I would definitely recommend it.

Movie Review: I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (2016)

The evening of the first day of DragonCon 2016, I had the opportunity to see a screening of mystery-horror film I Am Not A Serial Killer, with Dan Wells, author of the novel on which it was based, answering questions before and after the show. The panel discussion will be its in own blog post; now it's time for the review...

The Plot

Teenage John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) works in a funeral home, has a fascination with serial killers, and has recently been diagnosed as a clinical sociopath. To prevent himself from harming others, he lives by a strict series of rules. However, a serial killer has begun stalking his small Midwestern town and Cleaver may have to break his rules to defeat him...especially since the killer isn't human.

The Good

*The film has some extremely creepy and suspenseful scenes. Even though I knew the general outlines of what was going to happen, there are many scenes where you fear just what Cleaver or his seemingly-benign elderly neighbor Mr. Crowley (Christopher Lloyd) are going to do.

*The film has a lot of really good dialogue, including Cleaver's Crowning Moment of Awesome from the book where he terrifies the oafish high school bully at a Halloween dance. Records delivers the lines with what another review I read describes as aggressive cheerfulness in a sequence that drew laughter, applause, or a combination thereof from the audience. Cleaver's reaction to catching his mother at dinner with his therapist Dr. Neblin (Karl Geary) is pretty funny too, as is Neblin's reaction to his comments. The confrontation between Cleaver and the killer in a chapel just before the film rolls to its violent conclusion is also well-done.

*Geary and Lloyd deliver the best performances in the film. Neblin is extremely witty and obviously cares very much for Cleaver, while Lloyd lets the occasional flash of creepiness or rage shine through Crowley's kindly old neighbor persona, setting up something much worse to come.

*There are lots of interesting character moments. Although Brooke (Lucy Lawton) plays a smaller role than I remember her playing in the book, the friendliness and kindness that marked her character are still made clear in a couple scenes. Crowley displays some interesting depths--in one scene he quotes William Blake's poem "The Tiger" to reveal what in hindsight is self-loathing.

*The filmmakers do a good job showing rather than telling Crowley's love for his wife, which is an extremely important motivator for his character.

*I noticed the film looked kind of old-fashioned in terms of the coloration, how things appeared on the screen, etc. It turns out it was shot entirely on 16mm film, film that is no longer made but the filmmakers kept cooled in their garage for years. Wells said they were going for an "old, gritty-looking" feel and in that they succeeded.

*The violence in the film is sudden and brutal rather than stylized. This is much more like real-life violence than movie violence.

*Per my comment above, the scene where the killer's true identity--and true nature--is revealed is very well-done. John's reaction is also done well.

The Bad

*The movie was rather slow-moving. That was my single biggest problem with the movie. I remember checking my watch multiple times, which is my main indicator of whether a film is entertaining or not.

*It's not clear why Cleaver decides to interfere with the killer's activities at all, although when he does decide to, the movie does make it clear why he chooses to challenge Crowley personally. It's been many years since I've read the book, but the book jacket suggests he's doing to protect his family and the town--he's fighting "a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could." Although he doesn't have an emotional connection with anybody, he knows he should and is acting accordingly. Yes, Cleaver is a psychopath, but instead of thinking nothing is wrong with him, he knows he's damaged and wants to be better.

*Records delivers some of Cleaver's snarky dialogue really well, but I never got a creepy incipient psycho-killer vibe from him. In the book there's a scene where he discusses with Dr. Neblin trapping and torturing prairie dogs in a way that comes off like he's discussing playing with Legos. That illustrates just how warped he is, but didn't make it into the movie. He does watch Brooke and her family through a window early on, but the creepiness in that scene was too subtle. I expected someone far more intense and overtly unsettling. The closest we get to that early on is a scene where he has to restrain himself from attacking a trio of bullies, but that could have easily been him trying to avoid escalating a situation into a fight he can't win, not checking murderous tendencies.

*At one point Cleaver catches the killer in the act, but the killer frightens him away rather than immediately attack him as well. Wells said during the panel that in the novel it was explicitly stated he was too weak to kill Cleaver and finish what he was doing with the corpse at the same time and the film let the reader draw that conclusion. However, I didn't get that, which is why I had to ask in the first place.

*The final confrontation between Cleaver and the killer is rather underwhelming.

The Verdict

A rather minimalist film, but still creepy and suspenseful. 8.5 out of 10.

Redgum, Or More Aussie Rock Courtesy of YouTube

Here're another couple of cool songs from Australia that I found via YouTube. The first is "I Was Only Nineteen," by Redgum.

I'd known that there were Australian soldiers who'd fought beside Americans in Vietnam since I read Peter F. Hamilton's second Reality Dysfunction novel in high school. That one featured a dead Australian Vietnam veteran possessing a living convict in the distant future.

(It's a long story.)

Something notable about this song is that the Australian protagonist has an experience very similar to that associated with American Vietnam veterans (and veterans in general, although Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder became more well-known in the Vietnam generation). He can't sleep at night due to the nightmares, the news helicopter frightens him, and "the rash that comes and goes" might be caused by Agent Orange.

And thanks to "I Was Only Nineteen," I found "Poor Ned," which is about the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly.

The song conflates Kelly with the Eureka Rebellion ("hoist the flag of stars"), in which a bunch of Australian gold miners rebelled against the unpleasant British colonial government. Imagine the Battle of Bunker Hill, only if the Patriots got crushed immediately after inflicting little damage on the enemy but were found innocent of any crime due to jury nullification and ended up getting into elected into the government.

Eureka was many years before Ned Kelly, but Kelly did release a manifesto denouncing the government and calling for justice for the Australian poor. The song lyrics tie in heavily with the manifesto, including defending his shooting of some police (he claims self-defense) and claiming mistreatment of his family by the police. I haven't read Eric Hobsbawm's Bandits, but I do know what a "social bandit" is and Kelly seems to fit the description.

A Marcus Rediker Take On PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

Awhile back I remember a critique of the third Pirates of the Caribbean film that takes issue with, among other things, the depiction of pirates as some kind of quasi-ethnicity being mass-murdered by the East India Company. In particular, the reviewer objected to the sequence where a bunch of pirates, including a child, get hanged and it's depicted as a bad thing. After all, pirates are basically sea robbers and were prone to committing atrocities--for a paper I did on the historiography of Atlantic piracy, I found accounts of pirate Henry Avery's men committing a mass rape of Muslim women on the pilgrimage to Mecca, other pirates torturing and murdering the crew of a ship they'd taken, and various other grotesque acts. The book Under the Black Flag strongly disputes the romanticized view of pirates that omits or downplays their bad behavior.

However, there are pirates and there are pirates. The earliest buccaneers weren't pirates at all, at least at first. They were European adventurers who lived in various Caribbean islands, hunting the cattle that the Spanish had introduced (that had gone wild) and selling the meat to passing ships. Their name comes from a Taino Indian word for "grill." The Spanish repeatedly tried to run them off, until they took control of the island of Tortuga and started attacking the Spanish instead. Furthermore, many later pirates were actually licensed by their governments to attack enemy ships in wartime. The "classic" (and worst-behaved) pirates were at the tail end of the age of piracy, when governments no longer employed freelancers against each other and the pirates basically preyed on everybody.

(To be fair, many pirates had understandable reasons for adopting that way of life--sailors who'd been abused aboard merchant ships or in the military, runaway slaves, etc. Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations and the book he co-wrote The Many-Headed Hydra describe these people in more detail, including accounts of how sailors on ships attacked by pirates would often jump ship and join them. However, that still doesn't acknowledge torturing people to find hidden money, rape, etc. Somebody can have a sympathetic back-story and still be an unpleasant, nasty person. Consider Severus Snape, the poor Goth kid oppressed by the rich spoiled popular athlete as a student--who became a cruel teacher who bullied his students and rarely if ever bathed. And Snape is one of my favorite characters.)

So here's a way to get sympathetic pirates and still be at least somewhat realistic. Depict Jack Sparrow and others like him living on some nominally-English but de facto independent island near Port Royal in Jamaica, perhaps a more benign and less violent version of Nassau (depicted as an independent pirate commune in The Republic of Pirates). Emphasize that despite the disdain of Port Royal's residents, most of them are making an honest living selling meat to passing ships, fishing, growing enough food in a month to sustain them for a year, etc.

If they are engaging in criminal behavior, it's more sympathetic activities like smuggling to avoid excessive tariffs. After all, our Founding Fathers did it. :) If there's any actual piracy, it's defensive or retaliatory in nature--they're fighting more violent criminals trying to take control of their island (think how The Godfather made the Corleones sympathetic by pitting them against even more immoral crime families and dirty cops), plantation types trying to reclaim members of their community who'd fled slavery, former employers who'd mistreated them, etc. Emphasize the more sympathetic parts of Jack Sparrow's back-story in particular--according to a deleted scene, he refused to participate in the slave trade. Think Han Solo, who on the surface was a rogue, mercenary, and criminal but had been drummed out of the Imperial Navy for defending a Wookiee slave.

However, not all residents of this island are good folk deep down beneath the veneer of roguishness and petty criminality. Barbossa could be present as a crueler and more violent pirate, with the back-story of him usurping Sparrow's ship still there. He comes to the island and despite Sparrow's opposition is welcomed for his wealth and powerful ship. Then he promptly starts raiding the Port Royal merchants, engaging in the more typical pirate atrocities (including the "dining with the crew...and you'll be naked" implied rape threat from the first film). The fantasy elements can stay or not--their terrorizing her with their undead nature would further show they're bad apples and retain the supernatural stuff depicted in the Disney World ride.

While all this is going on, we can have the canonical romance between Will Turner and Elizabeth. Will is an unappreciated apprentice--he's a trained sword-fighter and makes an excellent weapon, but his lazy master gets all the credit. He might be tempted to join the pirates himself. Elizabeth could too--she clearly has issues with the gender roles of her time ("Do you like pain? Try wearing a corset!") and isn't interested in marrying the older Commodore Norrington.

For the later films, here's where the East India Company (or a more Caribbean-focused equivalent) comes in. Even with Barbossa defeated, the Powers That Be use the fact that Sparrow's island hosted him and many of the inhabitants joined him as a pretext to drive the population away...so they can make it into a sugar plantation. And sugar-production back then was horrifically destructive to the enslaved work force. This is where we can meet Beckett and get his back-story with Sparrow. If Sparrow and his friends engage in outright piracy and the more aggressive behavior originally more characteristic of Barbossa, it's in defense of their homes against a ruthless and dangerous opponent operating under the color of law.

(And, if we retain the fantasy elements, possibly in collusion with evil supernatural forces like Davy Jones.)

So, you all like?

In Defense of Joss Whedon (But Not The Marvel Swag Department)

The other day, I learned that Joss Whedon has left Twitter and some people attributed it to attacks on him by feminists and "social justice warriors" (a term I use solely to refer to belligerent vicious cyberbullies who happen to have socially left-wing views, not legitimate opponents of racism and the like). Here's a link to a Storify someone made depicting some of the nasty things they said to Whedon, including possible legally-actionable threats. Their major beef seems to be the Black Widow storyline in Avengers: Age of Ultron, although some are mad about about the deaths of certain characters and Whedon's tendency to throw snark into everything.

Whedon himself has recently said that it wasn't feminists who have driven him off Twitter--he points out how various social movements are constantly attacking each other and him--but because it was proving to be a distraction from his real job, writing awesome stuff. Social media is a massive time-waster, so let's hope he's getting a lot more productive. However, given how feminists have written that dealing with Internet harassment is taxing to female writers and might deter them from writing, surely Internet harassment of a male writer is bad too, though I doubt someone as successful as Joss Whedon is going to give up on his dreams over this.

(According to one article I read people talking trash about Whedon are getting death threats themselves. Given how SJWs often claim their harassment, attempts to get people fired from their jobs, etc. are nothing more than "consequences" of "hate speech," the fact they're reaping the consequences of their own odiousness is quite appropriate.)

And now here's where I dispute the claims that the Black Widow's depiction in Age of Ultron is sexist...

*Natasha Romanoff's reference to herself being a "monster" is not solely about her infertility (sterilization being the final phase of the "Red Room" training program for female assassins), but about how they trained her her entire life to be a killer. The sterilization--to avoid the possibility of something one of their assassins would love more than the mission--is played up alongside images of the young Romanoff using a bound, hooded man as live target practice. It's all part of a greater dehumanizing process to make an ordinary girl into something that exists for the sole purpose of destruction.

*It was Bruce who brought up his inability to father children -- either the radiation bombardment that made him the Hulk has left him "shooting blanks" or he might "Hulk out" during sex, something implied in The Incredible Hulk -- first. She then revealed her own problem as a means of connecting with him.

*Even if she views herself as a monster due to being unable to have children, that doesn't mean Joss Whedon thinks women who can't or won't have kids are monsters. S.M. Stirling put it well when he said there was a term for someone who thought a character having an opinion meant the author shared it--idiot. That obviously doesn't hold true in all cases--see obvious Author Tracts like neo-Nazi The Turner Diaries or most stuff by Ayn Rand--but Joss Whedon is not one of those people. A character hating herself for something that's not her fault is called a character flaw. Someone doesn't have to be perfect to be a strong female character. There was an article I read online yesterday I can't find at the moment (maybe it's on my phone) that points out this latest wrinkle is further building on the character we've seen several times before.

*Although being infertile obviously sucks for her, it made her relationship with Hawkeye's family and how his children (especially his daughter) view her as a beloved aunt all the more poignant. She might not be able to have (biological) children of her own, but she has found a family.

*Her getting kidnapped by Ultron does not make her a Damsel In Distress. She could have escaped from that dungeon at any time--in The Avengers she's tied to a chair with three big strong Russian mob types standing around her and she takes all of them apart--but instead she stuck around to get hold of a radio and transmit Ultron's location to the rest of the team. Her remaining "imprisoned" prompted Bruce to "rescue" her himself, thus allowing her to "trigger" the Hulk (by shoving him off a cliff). Knowing how Bruce fears that side of himself to point he attempted suicide sometime before the first Avengers film and how before she was terrified of the Hulk, the fact she was willing to trigger "the other guy" for the sake of the mission shows a lot of strength on her part. Furthermore, during the Red Room flashbacks, her trainer comments on how she "pretends to lose." There's a TVTrope for this--Wounded Gazelle Gambit. She uses people's (or snarky robots') notion that because she's a woman she's not a threat to her advantage.

*I'm not the only person who's seen Romanoff as a feminist character in all this. See this article here. This article here also defends the baby-issues plot and Romanoff as a character.

However, there is at least one legitimate criticism to be made on feminist grounds. Something I noticed in the stores is that the Black Widow has not been included in Avengers merchandise; this is something that's been going on for years. According to the Legion of Leia, only three out of the sixty promotional products for the movie at present feature her at all.

Ahem? In terms of seniority, she's got most of the team beat. Based on her dialogue with Loki in the first film, I'm guessing Hawkeye was the first member of the modern Avengers and he recruited her after he "made a different call" when sent to Russia to assassinate her. This would have probably been before Tony Stark became Iron Man, or possibly soon afterward given that her first appearance in the Marvel movies is in Iron Man II. Although The Incredible Hulk was the second Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, he did not become an actual Avenger until the events of the 2012 Avengers film. The same with Thor, even though he was introduced earlier. So basically she's either the second or the third member of the team, before Thor, Hulk, and Captain America.

Do the powers that be in the realm of merchandise think that boys won't play with Black Widow toys or want Black Widow on their backpacks? Or do they think people will complain about the tightness of her clothes? I admit I was rather sexist back in the day, but that was in the early 1990s. From my observation of little kids these days, boys and girls seem much more willing to play together--and even if boys still disdain Barbies, they'd still love the Avengers. And social conservatism has been in decline, so I don't think there'd be as many complaints as there might have been in the 1990s or 1980s.

In any event, as female geek organizations like the Legion of Leia, Heroic Girls, etc. have pointed out, there're a lot of girls who'd love a Black Widow toy or Black Widow swag who aren't happy campers. See these two disappointed little munchkins here. Furthermore, Mark Ruffalo (you know, the Hulk) agrees.

So yeah, SJWs need to lay off Joss Whedon himself, but it looks like whoever's in charge of marketing needs a bit of a kick in the pants. Lack of action-girl/geek girl role models for little girls who haven't drunk the princess Kool-Aid strikes me as a much bigger problem than whether or not the Black Widow mourns the fertility the Communists (or, given that she's depicted as a teen in the Red Room and Winter Soldier states she was born in 1984, the Putinists?) stole from her. Here's a petition you can sign to help let Marvel know they need to do better. Lest anybody disdain signing petitions, Change.org has racked up some big successes over the years. And Marvel is already listening.

Some Thoughts on MARTA, Infrastructure, and Keynesian Economics

I was perusing some articles from magazines published by a company I've been working for since midsummer and that got me thinking about transportation, Atlanta's mass-transit system MARTA, and related topics. Here goes...

MARTA has historically not functioned very well for a number of reasons, including a lack of support from the state, state meddling in how it spends its money, opposition to expanding it from its core territories (for various reasons--although a lot of opposition is driven by excessive fear of crime and even outright racism, there're better reasons like not wanting to pay extra taxes and the fact the train doesn't go to places like Turner Field), etc. However, under new management, it has undergone a major turnaround. The possibility of extending MARTA buses and even rail (although they really should stop being so vague about doing this "in the future") to Clayton County is on the table, while 2012's failed TSPLOST (which would have passed if it had been limited to a more truncated area instead of including counties like Cherokee) included proposals to extend MARTA rail to Emory and even up Ga. 400 into North Fulton or up I-75 into Cobb. As the Governing article notes, there's a lot more support for expanding MARTA due to people moving in-town, high gas prices, etc.

And now for the Keynesianism. This article here describes how in many places, growth and employment are low but so are borrowing costs. That would be a good time for infrastructure investment, since it would employ people and get them spending money ("priming the pump" if you will) and low interest rates mean that it's safer for a government to borrow money to fund the project. And given the dilapidated state of much of U.S. infrastructure (here's a specific example of where things can go very wrong), we wouldn't be talking about stupid make-work projects like paying people to dig holes and paying others to fill them, but stuff that is in legitimate government purview. Here's some evidence that this can kick in the "money multiplier" effect.

As far as Atlanta is concerned, Georgia recently had the highest unemployment rate in the nation, although things have gotten better now. MARTA has a bunch of projects under consideration already. I'm not a transit expert, but I can see some areas where expanding MARTA rail in-town and out-of-town would merit further investigation and, if built, would provide lots of construction/infrastructure-type jobs.

*Although the stereotype of MARTA opponents is white people from the northern suburbs, there was opposition to the TSPLOST based on how it wouldn't have extended heavy rail to Stonecrest Mall. Residents don't want to wait decades to get rail out the I-20 East corridor. This would be pretty pricey based on that article--according to these specifics here, it'd be 12 miles of heavy rail, some transit centers (presumably for buses), and a bunch of other stuff, at a cost of $2 billion. That's billion with a B. Still, if it would clear out the traffic in the area, it would reduce air pollution and improve quality of life for area residents on top of the obvious "reduce traffic" parts.

*The Clifton Corridor project would extend MARTA to Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control facility in Atlanta. This is the main reason I advocated in favor of the TSPLOST, since I've visited friends out there and the place is a traffic black hole at certain periods of the day. Someone I knew online opposed TSPLOST funding for the project by saying that Emory and the CDC should contribute and that's not a bad argument. I'm not sure about using light rail vs. heavy rail--a lot of the times light rail isn't separated from car traffic and if the trains get snarled among cars like a streetcar would, people won't use them.

*A direct rail connection to Atlantic Station would help remedy the "doesn't go anywhere" problem inside the Perimeter. I've seen movies like Ender's Game with friends from Alpharetta and it was easier to drive than take the train because then we'd have to use a shuttle bus to actually get to Atlantic Station. This would be even more convenient for people already in-town, since they wouldn't need to make the long trip down from North Springs into Atlanta proper. Thing is, with all the development already there, it would be more expensive to build a rail connection (even a cheaper light rail one) and according to the MARTA site, it's not that far of a walk.

*Assuming Clayton votes for MARTA this November, go to page 2-11 to see where rail stops can go. I used to live in the Lovejoy/Jonesboro area (back when I was a reporter for The Griffin Daily News) and I would have loved this for DragonCon and even for church (I go to a church in-town near a MARTA stop). Although rail wouldn't go as far south as Lovejoy (at first), it would have been much better to get on the train at the Jonesboro Justice Center than drive all the way up to Lakewood/Ft. McPherson.

*Extending MARTA rail to Turner Field (which would allow the buses used for the Braves shuttle to be deployed elsewhere) was on the initial TSPLOST project list, but was ultimately removed. The lack of transit options was one reason the Braves gave for leaving Atlanta, although the fact they're moving to Cobb (where the transit situation is even worse) makes them look dumb at best and dishonest at worst. Still, given the possible uses Turner Field could be put to--Mayor Kasim Reed wants a middle-class housing development and Georgia State University wants to transform it into a combination of sports, retail, and student housing--extending MARTA rail to the site anyway would be a good idea.

*As far as extending MARTA outside the Perimeter is concerned, back when I was a reporter in North Fulton I heard all about various proposals to extend MARTA into Alpharetta. That particular line would begin in the Perimeter area and extend all the way to Windward Parkway, with stops in Roswell along the way. That has faced some opposition from people who think it would "urbanize" Alpharetta (in context they're talking about dense development, not using "urban" as a synonym for "black"), but others have pointed out that there's a whole lot of office space in the area. If you work in the same office all day, you won't need a car like more mobile workers (such as journalists like me), so if a lot of office workers commute to Alpharetta from elsewhere, rail service might be a boon for them.

*If we go through with bringing the Braves Stadium to the Cumberland area (gag me with a spoon), it's going to create a traffic nightmare in the area. Extending MARTA up I-75 will connect the system to in-town fans and fans from the south who could take MARTA through Atlanta to Cobb, but one reason the Braves moved is because, based on ticket sales, they figured most of the fan base lived in the northern suburbs. However nice building a MARTA line connecting Cumberland to the rest of Atlanta would be in and of itself, it won't help "northern arc" people get there any faster and, as the following article points out, the politically-easiest route would also be quite expensive. Here's a transportation proposal that should make things easier and would create jobs to boot.

*This is an odd proposal that I'm not aware anybody has even studied, but some kind cross-Perimeter line connecting Doraville (Gold Line) to Dunwoody (Red Line) would be interesting. The distance is relatively short and it would allow much easier transit between the Red and Gold lines if somebody wants to go from the Northside to Lenox or Brookhaven rather than having to go all the way to Lindbergh Center and then change trains. If someone is heading up from downtown to the Northside and wants to detour to Lenox for whatever reason, they could keep going on the Gold Line and get back on the Red at Doraville.

Why You Might Need a Gun at Kroger (and Some Thoughts on Open-Carry In General)

Lately, the anti-gun advocacy group Moms Demand Action has been putting pressure on the Kroger supermarket chain to ban private citizens from carrying guns (or at least carrying them openly) in their stores. As a private business, Kroger has the right to determine what happens on its property and Moms Demand Action, however annoying they are, has the right to advocate for the policies they think best.

However, some recent news articles have come to my attention indicating that being armed at Kroger can be a very good idea...

Brutal Kroger parking lot attack caught on camera

And here's another one, involving a defensive shooting at an ATM outside a Kroger.

Man shoots, kills suspect after attempted robbery

Note that the police were nearby but failed to intervene until the private citizen shot and killed the perpetrator. I've seen gun-control advocates claim that people shouldn't carry guns and should instead rely on the police, but the police can't always respond in time, especially in more rural areas or areas where there are lots of demands on them. And under U.S. law, the police have no obligation to protect any individual citizen. This is not to cast aspersions on the police's good intentions, but on their capability.

Fortunately, Kroger has not yet bowed to the pressure from these people. Hopefully they won't, even if the individuals in the following link who are either brave enough or stupid enough to post under their own names start deliberately spoiling food or even making armed-robbery calls against open-carriers, both of which are crimes and the latter of which could lead to someone getting killed. Here's a National Review article on just how many anti-open-carry people are advocating "Swatting."

That said, the open-carry movement comes off as rather trollish. They may have the legal right in states to open carry, but are they openly carrying for any purpose other than to thumb their noses at people they don't agree with? The NRA itself said that this wasn't "neighborly" before the open-carry people pitched a fit and forced the organization to back down.

To paraphrase Scripture, everything may be permissible, but not everything may be beneficial. I'm a supporter of gun rights, I don't have a high opinion of the gun control movement, and I think the "don't sink to their level" argument often serves to put good people at a disadvantage compared to the wicked (think honorable Ned Stark getting screwed by the treacherous Cersei and Littlefinger), but I fail to see any advantage to be gained from this open-carry business. It risks alienating moderate people and gives the gun-rights movement in general a bad name. Furthermore, were I a criminal, I might shy away from a bunch of open-carriers but if I wanted to commit a crime and saw there was only one or so present, I'd shoot them first. It might not even be that effective against crime.

Why Sociopaths Make Poor (Fictional) Villains

As I have noted before, it has become common in certain quarters to assume evil people are sociopaths or psychopaths (I think they're pretty much the same thing), especially those in high places. This is something I object to for a variety of reasons (it seems to me to be a convenient way of "Othering" people one doesn't like and avoiding facing the reality of human fallibility), but one problem is that it reduces complex (albeit wicked) people into caricatures.

This io9 article written by a psychologist goes into a lot of detail about the symptoms and signs of psychopathy. Among others, psychopaths are not capable of normal emotions. They're also quite shallow emotionally. This article states they might intellectually understand the concept of sadness, but they won't feel it. The article states that Sherlock, for all his claims to be a sociopath, is not a cold, calculating machine focused only on his own gratification. Specifically, he is capable of emotional attachments, something psychopaths simply are not. This TVTropes page discusses how most fictional villains aren't actually sociopaths because real sociopaths are real-life "flat characters."

Here are some villains, both real-life and fictional, that from what I know of them don't appear to be sociopathic and are all the more complex characters for it.

Loki-The villain Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been referred to as a sociopath and in terms of bad behavior, he's done a lot--the attempted genocide of the Frost Giants, the attack on New York City that killed many thousands of people, etc. However, he has entirely too many emotional attachments. The driving force of his antics in the first movie is trying to please and/or show himself worthy of his adoptive father Odin. He sabotages Thor's coronation not (necessarily) because he wants the throne for himself but because he thinks Thor would be a poor king (and at this point in Thor's personal development, he'd be right). In the second film, when Odin calls him onto the carpet for his attack on Earth, he says he wanted to rule humans as a benevolent god--like Odin himself rules Asgard. The second film also shows how attached Loki is to his mother Frigga, including his total meltdown when he learns she was killed by the Dark Elves. He also throws Jane Foster out of the way when one of the Dark Elves throws a vortex grenade at her, even though she'd slapped him earlier. This shows he cares enough for Thor to save his love interest even if he doesn't care for the squishy mortal Jane (and he might--note the "I like her" comment after she slaps him). He's also too emotionally "deep" to be a sociopath--go to the TVTropes page for the first film, his character page, and the page for the second film and you'll see all sorts of explorations of his character.

Most importantly, Loki is supposed to be a tragic figure. If he was never "good" to start with, he can't fall into evil and make the audience sad.

Khan Noonien Singh-The greatest Original Series villain of them all, he was a dictator on Earth who fled into space and upon being defrosted in "Space Seed," nearly took over the Enterprise and was only undone by the treachery of the Starfleet officer he'd seduced. In Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khanhe successfully took control of a Federation ship and seriously damaged the Enterprise, killing Scotty's nephew (the relationship is made clear in a deleted scene that's included in some DVD releases) and eventually no less than Mr. Spock. A pretty bad dude? Yes. However, when Kirk exiles him he was a remarkably good sport about it rather than lashing out as some kind of psychotic man-child. He accepts the presence of Lt. McGivers among them despite her ruining his plan (and according to some sources killed other Augments to make sure she was respected) and it was her death that drove him to such vengeance against Kirk. Many of the Enterprise crew admired him as "the best of tyrants" even though they knew they had to beat him. The Wikipedia article lists a bunch of positive traits uncharacteristic of a psychopath (I'm thinking primarily the "not threatened by the success of others" and encouraging other people), with the exception of the whole "lack of regard for the rights of others" part. Obviously that's not good, but that makes him a villain, not (necessarily) a psychopath. The Wikipedia article also describes him as possessing many of the same traits as Kirk, but in much larger helpings. A "Dark Kirk" is a lot more interesting than some emotionally-shallow monstrosity any day.

Adolf Hitler-We all know just how monstrous Hitler was--not only did he start WWII (in Europe) and kill six million Jews and six million others in the Holocaust, but his intention was to turn the Slavic peoples into helots for the German Spartans at a planned cost, according to my high school history textbook, of fifty million Slavic lives. Heck, just look at Generalplan Ost, something so hellacious that many people defend Stalin's industrialization-through-forced-labor-and-famine as the most viable alternative. However, this wicked man still had some very human traits. This article here corroborates Hitler's devotion to his mother (and how normal he was as a teen--he doesn't display obvious-in-hindsight warning signs like Eric Harris here), something that extended to some degree of protection for his mother's Jewish doctor later. His mistress Eva Braun's two suicide attempts seem to be motivated by a desire to get Hitler's attention--if he weren't capable of emotional attachments, that wouldn't have worked (as it did the first time). Seriously, from a purely pragmatic perspective why bother with someone that unstable? For all his many sins he must've had some legitimate feeling for her.

Darth Vader-On the issue of emotional attachments alone, Vader cannot be a psychopath or sociopath. He was quite attached to his mother and his first major crime -- the massacre of the Sand People tribe in Episode II -- was in reaction to her death. One could imagine a sociopath punishing someone for harming HIS kin, but his guilty feelings in which he confesses his sins to Padme look genuine rather than some kind of act to get her sympathy. A legitimate psychopath (at least a smart one) would keep it secret or, if he figured he'd be exposed, be "honest" but downplay it. In the third film, his devotion to Padme was what Palpatine (who credibly can be described as a psychopath) played on to corrupt him. If we're going to be playing armchair shrink, some psychologists have suggested he had borderline personality disorder. However, this article has been written in rebuttal. And he feels quite a bit of guilt over Padme's death--see this image here from this comic. Psychopaths can't feel guilt, period. And before his fall into evil, he was notably loyal to his friends.

Josef Stalin-Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, presided over the mass starvation of Ukraine to export grain to fund industrial projects, his control-freak attitudes toward foreign Communists contributed to the rise of Hitler, and his paranoia-fueled purges crippled Soviet espionage efforts in the United States and the Soviet military on the eve of Barbarossa. Even though the opening of the Soviet archives reduced the number of his victims, his body count ranges from three million to 20 million. However, for all his wickedness, his mother recounted that he was a sensitive child. He was totally wrecked by his first wife's death, to the point his friends feared he would commit suicide, and however odious he was to his sons he was kind to his daughter. He also semi-adopted the son of a deceased friend. He also seems to have been at least a decent poet. An exceedingly wicked man, yes, but hardly a shallow one or one incapable of emotional attachments. This article here (which is about a book) attributes Stalin's horrors to his zealous adherence to Marxism-Leninism--basically he became evil because of the politics he adopted.

Genghis Khan-Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, a realm that despite uniting most of Eurasia in a zone of free trade and travel required a ludicrous degree of brutality. The Mongols killed so many people it may have affected the Earth's climate. However, as a young man his wife Borte was kidnapped by rivals, raped, and soon after her rescue gave birth to a son of questionable paternity. Many men in the pre-modern era would have committed infanticide at this point and possibly even killed the mother as well. To his credit, Temujin did neither. Furthermore, when the paternity issue came up when it came time to decide his succession, Temujin seems to love all of his sons, is upset when they're fighting, and points out how hurtful their behavior would be to Borte. Despite the atrocities inflicted both personally and on his orders, this is a man capable of forming emotional attachments, so he can't be a psychopath.

Eric von Shrakenberg-Here we're getting a bit obscure, but he's one of the major characters of S.M. Stirling's Draka series. The books follow him from his youth in the Domination's military during WWII in which he's under a cloud for helping his illegitimate daughter with a serf concubine (one he was very attached to, to a degree his landholding family found quite unhealthy) escape to the United States all the way to his becoming the Archon of the Domination. Along the way he seeks to reform the Draka slave system and consents to more extreme proposals for super-weapons, secret wars in space, etc. only to horse-trade for his reforms and for defensive purposes. Although he's the one who pulls the trigger on a nuclear war that kills 1/3 of the human race, his hand is forced by the rash actions of his niece and he orders it only because he knows if he refuses, he'll be killed and someone else will do it. He even remarks that all his life he's sought to free his people from "a way of life based on death" but in order to do this, he'll have to inflict more killing than any human who ever lived. Afterward, with the Domination victorious, he allows the Alliance for Democracy's starship to escape the solar system and grants (limited) Citizenship to the Alliance survivors in space as well as telling his niece he's going to be handing out Citizenship liberally, "as many as I can swing."

Although by any objective standard he's the worst murderer in human history, he's a very sympathetic, thoughtful character, not a heartless monster. That's what makes him all the more tragic--the man who would abolish the slave system (or at least reform it drastically) if he could is forced by circumstances and his own sense of duty to commit genocide on a scale undreamed of in order to extend this system over the overwhelming majority of humankind.

Bernie Madoff-Madoff is routinely considered a corporate psychopath (think the book Snakes in Suits)and given how unbelievably destructive his crimes were, it's easy to see how this account is credible. However, something that clashes with that portrayal was his taking all of the blame for the Ponzi scheme on himself. Psychopaths routinely blame others for their problems and refuse to take responsibility. He was pretty obviously trying to shield his family and associates from the blame--not surprising considering how other people were part of the plan--but the fact he was willing to protect others rather than sell them out to save himself is fairly telling. He was greedy, selfish, dishonest, and generally slimy--but his taking responsibility for his actions undermines the idea that he is a psychopath.

Magneto-This gets tricky due to all the retcons and the abominably out-of-character moment in the the second X-Men filmwhen he decides to kill all ordinary humans. However, in the comics, between his escape from the concentration camp and his daughter being killed by an angry mob frightened by his mutant powers (something I remember very vividly in a flashback scene in a comic I read a child), he lived a fairly normal, loving family life. No abuse, no affairs, no secret serial killing while maintaining an upstanding facade, none of that. This biography here describes how his creators never intended for him to be a "bad guy" per se and he's described as "charismatic, noble, and wise." When he thinks he nearly killed the young Kitty Pryde, it horrifies him so much he renounces his terrorist ways for a time and later even becomes a teacher at Xavier's school, returning to villainy only after a series of murders of mutants. There's a line I remember from one of the comics in which Xavier points out Magneto refraining from some particularly large act of villainy and says that Magneto knew that going through with this would make him a Hitler, something a Holocaust survivor would not want to be.

This is not to say that there aren't psychopathic villains, both fictional or historical. However much I object to using "psychopath" as some kind of post-Christian attempt to pathologize moral failings or even political disagreements, I'm not such a fool to ignore the obvious physical evidence for it. Prominent Nazi Reinhard Heydrich seemed like a totally amoral killing machine, with the only "complicated" aspect to him being his self-loathing over possible Jewish ancestry. Palpatine and Columbine mastermind Eric Harris I've already mentioned. The sadistic degenerate Ariel Castro seems to fit as well.

However, if I were writing a villain, I wouldn't use them for models and neither should you. The ones I listed above are much better examples. They're deeper, more complicated character rather than two-dimensional monsters. And if you can write them well enough that at least some readers will take their side over the protagonist, Internet fan controversies raise awareness and thus sell more books. :)

A Little Image I Made About the Ferguson, MO Situation

Here's a little image I made to show my opinion about what's going on in Ferguson, MO.

Some people think conservatives and/or Libertarians are hypocritically staying quiet about Ferguson because they don't mind a police state so long as it's deployed against black people. I call BS, especially now.

I'll post more later. In the meantime, please share the heck out of that picture. Sorry for my mediocre MSPaint skills.

"Silverbolt" Strikes Again

ATLANTA, Ga.--A group of alleged members of the Cazadores gang have been taken into custody after another attack by the costumed vigilante known as "Silverbolt."

According to police reports, Adamsville residents first reported gunshots around 10 p.m. Monday evening. Police arrived at a two-story rental house near Collier Park within ten minutes to find six men all alleged to be members of the Cazadores, a Mexican street gang reputed for its involvement in the synthetic drug trade. Several were unconscious and all six had been bound.

Preliminary interrogation revealed they had been attacked by Silverbolt, a costumed vigilante who has been involved in multiple incidents involving Atlanta gangs over the last year including an incident in East Point that led to the arrest of a fugitive wanted for murder. Police spokeswoman Teresa Jackson said four of the men have outstanding warrants and three will remain in custody pending transfer to the appropriate jurisdiction.

Mark Alvarez Abano, 22, of Adamsville-Parole violation, possession of "Alpha Z," a type of synthetic cocaine, with intent to distribute.

Eduardo Sanchez Santana, 30, of Decatur-Assault and battery, including an incident where the victim was in a coma for two weeks, as well as tampering with a witness.

Jimmy Grissom Vela, 19, of Birmingham, Alabama-Probation violation, possession of "Alpha Z" with intent to distribute.

Jose Garza Molina, 20, of Atlanta-Public intoxication, turnstile jumping, disorderly conduct. Molina was released on bail soon after the incident.

Jackson emphasized materials found during the investigation of Silverbolt's attack will not be taken into account when the decision is made on how to prosecute any of the arrested men. The involvement of the vigilante raises the possibility of planted or tampered evidence.

Jackson had the following words for Silverbolt.

"Whoever you are, I don't doubt you mean well. However, we are a nation of laws and your activities undermine that. No citizen can be permitted to take the law into their own hands."

She called on Silverbolt to turn himself in or at the very least abandon his vigilante campaign, citing the risk to his own safety and that of innocent bystanders.

Adamsville residents also reported a series of mysterious fires near the house as well as the appearance of a dark-skinned man who was not taken into custody as a result of the incident. One of the arrested men referenced a "doctor" who had some kind of practice in the house, but refused to speak further. Police advised residents to be alert for any further suspicious activity.

So who is this "doctor"? And what happened in that house that night? Find out in "Ubermensch," available on Amazon.com. Resemblances in the rap sheet to any living, real persons are purely coincidental.

Pets Going Missing in Geauga County

Chardon, OH--Geauga County residents have been reporting an uptick in the number of missing pets over the last two months.

Newly-installed County Dog Warden James Gibson said there were 20 missing dogs and 10 missing cats reported in October, up from 11 missing dogs and four missing cats this month last year. In September, there were 15 missing dogs and eight missing cats, an increase from last September's numbers of eight and two respectively.

What's more, no identifiable dead animals were found. A skeleton later determined to belong to a Labrador retriever was discovered in Munson Township, but no connection with any of the missing dogs could be made.

"It'd been picked clean," Gibson said. "Clean."

He suspected turkey vultures had been at the carcass for days before it was found. There were no other dead animals found on county roads or in any of the townships.

Gibson advised residents to keep their pets, particularly cats and small dogs, indoors unless on leashes. This is doubly true at night, when predators would be most active.

Leslie Groves, a resident of Claridon Township, lost her beagle Samwise in September.

"He got out when I was taking out the garbage," she said. "Wriggled between my legs and out the door he went."

Samwise had gotten out before, but had always come back within a few hours. It's now been over a month and no sign of Samwise, alive or otherwise. Groves doesn't know what she's going to tell her daughter Abigail, 10.

Andrew Steinberg, a resident of the Huntsberg township, said the pet disappearances began increasing when some forests near Chardon-Windsor Road were cleared to make room for a new shopping center, the first new commercial construction in the area since 2008.

"Dozens of acres of forest, clear-cut," he said. "Whatever's living there, if it's still alive, is having it make its living elsewhere."

He suspects the perpetrators are coyotes, although he admits he hasn't actually seen any coyotes even at night.

Alva Jones, a representative of Donner Construction, denied any connection between the new development and the missing animals.

"There was no sign of coyotes or any other large predator when we surveyed the land," he said. "We found what looked like a squatter camp, but it had been abandoned for some time."

He offered his condolences to those missing their pets.

So just what has been driven out of the forests and forced to prey on cats and dogs in order to survive? Find out by reading "Melon Heads" by Matthew W. Quinn, available on Amazon.com.