perfidy

Well, I'm back, and just in time for World War III, it seems.

Hearing from Buckethead out of the blue was a welcome rekindling of an old friendship. I spent a lot of time blogging here, snarking, and shitposting before that was really a thing. Now everybody's doing that on Xwitter, or Bluesky, or Threads (my hangout of choice), or even CounterSocial (my other hangout of choice). Nevertheless, before there were Tumblrs and Substacks and everything else, there was Blogger, where I cut my eyeteeth on this type of stream-of-consciousness posting, and that led to an invitation to join the Ministry. And now, an invitation to rejoin it. There's just me and Buckethead now, but with luck, we may yet run down the old crew. And maybe even find a few new faces.

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It's been about a year and a half since I last posted anything at all on Perfidy, and even longer since I posted anything of substance.

The fact is, I just haven't been all that evil recently, and certainly not discriminating. What I have been doing is writing up a storm. In the last 18+ months I have, in no particular order, completed three novels, landed an agent, had said agent retire only days before I was going to fire her anyway, and in turn landed a remarkable pair of agents who are doing their damndest to sell my stuff. I've also refurbished my author website - twice - and relocated my webcomic so everything is now in one easy-to-find package on www.ianthealy.com. It's hands-down the best place to keep track of what I'm doing and to watch the cavalcade of guest stars as they parade through every Saturday (you fellow Ministers are encouraged to submit something should you wish to do so).

So with that brief update on my insanity, I shall return to work on my latest project, a slipstream inspired by such oddness as Six String Samurai, Circuitry Man, and The Bible. The title, I hope, says it all: Hope and Undead Elvis at the End of the World.

Yeah, it's like that.

...nothing will.

"Microsoft says next Windows won't be as annoying"

I meant to share this one earlier. Yes, I'm pimping my strip here but this one is pretty perfidious in its nature.

Read the entire strip from infancy to present day right here. The Adventures of the S-Team...bringing teh funnay every weekday for like two and a half years 'nshit!

Posted without further comment.

I ran across this video the other day, and in the interest of furthering Dark Knight Hysteria, I present it here for your edification and amusement, and to make you extremely depressed. Why? Because it's a fake. It's not a real movie, and it never will be. Still, though...wow!

[wik] from Buckethead: if you go here, you can read the entire screenplay for the nonexistent movie this is a trailer for.

Why the hell is THIS a top headline this morning? Could we PLEASE report on something newsworthy, like troops being slaughtered in Afghanistan or at least A-Rod playing cork-the-bat with Madonna?

At least now I have something I can plan to do after retirement.

Score one for the good guys.

Texas, long known as a stronghold of Republican might, oil, presidents and ex-presidents, and conspicuous consumption (Texans are the only visitors to Colorado who exceed Californians in sheer obnoxiousness) could possibly be the starting point for the long-sought Green Revolution.

Algae-based biodiesel. This is pretty cool stuff.

Well, not EVERYONE, exactly...just those of us who intend to make our living through our creativity.

There's a Bill sneaking its way through the government, called the "Orphan Works Bill," and it's absolutely worthy of Germany ca. 1935 (which, if you think about it, wasn't ALL that different than America ca. 2008). I'm parroting the email I received from my local writers' organization.

There's a reason why Google, Getty, Disney, et al are interested in seeing this bill pass:

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=CqBZd0cP5Yc

PASS IT ON

The Orphan Works Bill promotes theft of creative work, pure and simple. This bill, currently under consideration in Congress, will deny you the right of immediate ownership over the product of your own creativity, and therefore makes it increasingly difficult to make money--much less a living--from it.

Copyright law, as it is now, acknowledges that the work you create is legally yours--your own property--as soon as you create it.

The Orphaned Works Bill will deny that right of ownership. It requires that the creator of any work must pay to register that work before it can be legally deemed the property of the creator. It means you have to register with a private company to have it copyrighted. That means your work can be "orphaned" as soon as it's created, especially since such companies don't exist right now.

Should someone copy your work and leave off your name, it becomes "orphaned" especially when the copied work is copied again and again. These days, this happens all too easily. That repeated copying makes it difficult to discover who created the work in the first place--even for the "diligent" copier.

In addition, it pits million- and billion-dollar companies that want easy access to creative work against artists who can hardly make ends meet from their own work as it is. Why? Because it puts the burden of proof on the creator of the work, rather than the copier.

Worse, it seriously erodes the property rights of citizens of the U.S. as outlined in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution.

Write your senator and congressperson now. Find your state representative: https://forms. house.gov/ wyr/welcome. shtml Feel free to forward this e-mail.

"The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave."

- George Sutherland, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1921.

...Unless you're involved in the publishing industry.

Here's what's going on, with Amazon.com playing the drunken frat boy to Print-On-Demand Publishers' ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

And in case you're interested, yes it is affecting me and my book sales. My reaction is here, complete with a troll commenter whom I strongly suspect to have Amazon ties.

Maybe it WON'T be the robots that do us in...

I found this list of the Best Evil Robots we've ever created. Remember that when they come to destroy and enslave us. We made them.

A fascinating article about a fictional character's take on the 2008 presidential election can be read here.

Discuss, fellow Ministers, since we seem to outnumber our readership by a margin of approximately 4:1.

Gary Gygax, one of the creators of Dungeons and Dragons, failed his last saving throw Tuesday morning. We've consulted the appropriate table, and learned that geeks everywhere are in mourning, displaying their +2 Armbands of Dismay (purchased for only 7 Gold Pieces from a mysterious beggar outside the Tavern where they always seem to meet).

I'm fakeblogging.

This is from the brilliant webcomic xkcd.

Just in case you thought this might be a politically-oriented post, don't worry. I'll leave that to Ministers better suited for all things governmental. This is mostly a self-serving post to let you all know I am a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with my as-yet-unpublished novel Deep Six. You can go read an excerpt here and write a review of it. To make it to the finalists round (100 out of the existing 500 novels will move on), I'll need plenty of positive reviews. To sweeten the pot, there are prizes for reviewers. And remember, if you can't say anything nice, lie.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Evil.

I know you've all been holding your breath for this one...the Top Ten Best Quotes of 2007. This is your opportunity to play trivia and see if you can remember the circumstances behind each one, so phone the neighbors and wake the kids.

1. "Don't tase me, bro!"

2. "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."

3. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

4. "That's some nappy-headed hos there."

5. "I don't recall."

6. "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval rating."

8. "I have a wide stance when going to the bathroom."

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history."

Find out who said what and why here.

Lots of people in this country see our President as, um, not too heavy in the brains department. I don't disagree with that assessment. But apparently he's smart enough to have learned the lesson known by fat people for years, which is that if you want to appear thinner, surround yourself by people fatter than you.

And if you want to appear smart...

Well, just be glad there wasn't anything nuculer involved.