Book Review: Devil's Contract by Ed Simon

 

My Goodreads review: As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. While informative and very well researched, some of the philosophizing can be a bit wordy and there are also some parts where I feel the analogy was stretched to fit the narrative. But otherwise, I enjoyed this. Fun read.

As much a philosophy book as a history book, Devil's Contract is a very interesting look at the concept of deals with the Devil in fiction and in history. Throughout history, the idea of dealing with the Devil has been a part of the human experience. Author Ed Simon reminds us that the first humans in the Bible, Adam and Eve, dealt with the Devil, exchanging their eternal life for knowledge and an apple.

Needless to say, deals don't often go humans' way. Many times, humans need divine intervention to get out their deals with the Prince of Darkness. Simon discusses examples in which the Virgin Mary helps sinners get out of their hellish predicaments. Sometimes God has to get involved and sometimes the human is damned and has to live with their unfortunate choice.

Devil's Contract definitely made me think. I would never have thought that Satan's meeting with Jesus in the desert in the New Testament was an attempted deal with the Devil. Satan was appealing to Jesus's human side, which is always vulnerable. Simon goes through thousands of years of examples of vulnerable humans, from Marlowe and Goethe's Faust characters to the real Faust, to show this trend. The book is extremely well researched.

But as I mentioned in my Goodreads review, Simon can lose the reader in his philosophical points. There are a few sentences that just didn't make sense, no matter how many times I read them. There were also several sentence fragments that had me scratching my head, thinking I missed a word. Although these grammatical faux pas made me stop, they didn't take away from my overall enjoyment of the book. But it means Simon's editor could have used another look through.

Some of Simon's analogies were a stretch. I still don't understand how capitalism is a deal with the Devil and if it is, what about other economic systems? Are they better? And the section on the atomic bomb wasn't very clear. What about other weapons? Does mutually assured destruction mean we have all signed deals with the Devil?

I did however really like Simon's conclusions on "terms of service" and other agreements we automatically sign in exchange for the ability to use our phone and apps. The power of these devices and programs comes with a choice. Usually it means we agree to send our user data and sometimes our personal data to companies that don't have our privacy in mind. Is that a deal with a Devil? Maybe not in the Biblical sense, but maybe in a modern, technology sense.

That's the point Simon wants to leave us with. As we no longer believe in demons and Devils as they did five hundred years ago, are there still Devils in our society and we still dealing with them?

Recommended. 4 Devil horned stars out of 5.

Long live The Mutant

 

This week, my longest e-friend passed away. I never met him, but we conversed on these innerwebs for over 25 years. That's a long time and it deserves a story.

Way back in 1997 or so, when the World Wide Web was more Wild, Wild West, I found a webpage entitled you-suck.com . If I remember correctly, Yahoo! pointed me there from their list of "Cool Links" webpages. Back then Yahoo! tried to categorize the entire web. There wasn't much to visit, so maybe they did a good job.

You-Suck.com wasn't exciting, unless you liked travel pics. But it was subversive and it was edgy. Here is a screen shot from 1998. At different times, there were links to a guy calling himself The Mutant and he traveled around the world.

 

I had no idea who this Mutant was, but I knew he was interesting. So in November 1999 I decided to write him (yes, I still have the email!):

From: Jordi Scrubbings <torgo99 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Hey Mutant
To: root at you-suck.com

Dear Mr. Mutant,
You rule! Me and my friend go to your site daily. How
often do you update it? It needs a Mutant daily diary.
Other than that the site is one of the best on the
net. I am curious though, is there or has anyone ever
proposed a "Mutant" fan-club? I would like to start
one if there isn't one already. Please respond. It
would mean a lot to us.
  Jordi Scrubbings
  torgo99 at yahoo.com

 He wrote me back!

 Hey Guy!

Thanks for the kind words about my site;  it just sorta exists
as a snapshot of my life.  If you poke around enought there are
pages in there from 95 or so.

I don't have the time to update it often or even to create a weblog
due to work and school.  I have negative free time,  if there is
such a thing.

But I *have* thought about the weblog 'thang and moving my root level
page (http://wwww.you-suck.com) to that format in the near future.
I'm working on some Perl scripts that will minimise the amount of
work a weblog takes to maintain,  and when they're finished I'll
change the root page.

I do have a mailing list;  if you're interested send an
email to ListBot at you-suck.com,  with the text 'Info' in the subject
field and you'll get subscription instructions.  You can subscribe
or unsubscribe at will,  so if you just want to see what it's
like feel free to sign up.

WARNING:  we talk about a lot of wild and sick shit,  so if you're
easily offended you won't like it!!!

Hey!  I've got some 'bots that you might like.

http://www.you-suck.com/CtySongBot    Generates the lyrics to country songs
http://www.you-suck.com/ScandalBot    Generates the next Clinton scandal

This isn't a 'bot that I've programmed but a PhotoShop image one
of my buddies did

http://www.you-suck.com/BillGates      The leader of the Evil Empire himself

So what are you up to at Florida State?  If you're ever going to be over
UK  way,  and find yourself in London drop me a line!

Away I went into MutantTawk mailing list. I still have a large collection of the many interesting links and conversations the group provided. Many from The Mutant and dozens from his wide array of eclectic friends. While the threads continued until 2013 or so, the group conversation on 9/11/2001 was the most impactful. The Mutant spent many years working on Wall Street and many of his friends were still living in New York City, and those who weren't there still had fond memories of the City. Their perspectives brought the tragedy to my inbox in a personal way.

MutantTawk eventually died out and was replaced by social media. I eventually followed The Mutant and a few of his friends and his new wife on Facebook,Twitter, and Instagram. Along the way, I also discovered who The Mutant was. He was Dr. Dave Coker, International Investment Banker and "pioneer in Fintech" - the space where technology aids finance and transactions. The Mutant was telling us about Bitcoin when it was less than $100 a coin. It is now near $100,000 a coin. When he writes about being financially well-off, there is little doubting him.

The Mutant was also an old punk from the 1980s New York City underground. He had a mohawk, dyed his hair pink, wore tattered clothes and a headpiece with "666" on it, and frequented the London pub and ethnic market scenes. I doubt he fit the mold of international investment banker. But that's what kept me interested. He was an original.

In 2013, I started my journey to get my MBA from the University of South Florida. I had very little background in the numbers side of business. But I did have a great and powerful ally - The Mutant. Early in my studies, when I first enrolled in graduate-level accounting and finance, I messaged Dr Coker and asked if I could pick his brain. Within a few days, we talked via whatsapp or some other app for over an hour. He gave me valuable insight and information, from how to think about accounting to where to find my books cheap. It was a great call and much needed to give me confidence in my new adventure.

Fast-forward a few years, and Dr. Coker put himself out there much more. He became a lecturer at a university in London and was making appearances on BBC and other channels to opine about Brexit and the fintech issues of the day. He was also doing a lot of freelance writing on various websites. As a follower of his work, and as a friend, I tried to watch or read it all. I even watched his financial lessons on his various youtube pages. I learned something new every time.

One of my goals was to eventually go to London and have a pint with the man, the myth, the legend, The Mutant. All I had to do was get my career in order and my finances in order and buy the ticket. If you know me, then you know finding career stability has been a decade-long struggle. 

Although I did follow The Mutant's financial advice and finally got into Bitcoin in 2020. I've tripled my money.

Alas, in late October 2024, I received a direct message from The Mutant on twitter.

Hi there

How are you?

I got diagnosed with terminal cancer, given 18m to live so unlikely to hop on tiktok

Let me know how you're doing!

Still creating

Coker.me

I couldn't believe it. I immediately replied to him on twitter with the hopes of maybe arranging a month to visit. Unfortunately, I didn't get a reply.

On December 6th, 2024, Dave Coker's wife posted on Facebook that he passed away. My longtime e-friend was gone. I'll never have that chance to say hello in person.

As Dave, he taught me about finance, technology, and how to make money. As The Mutant, he taught me that having a career wasn't everything. Being yourself, no matter how different, is important. And there is a way to balance both.

RIP, my friend.

PS: when I received word of his illness, I wrote him into a small scene in the rough draft of my new novel. The final version should be published sometime in 2025. Including him was my way of saying thanks. Long live The Mutant.

Novel number two update number one

 

I haven't mentioned it here yet, but I have mentioned it on my social media. But I should mention it here, because it is a good idea to mention good ideas when there are good ideas to be mentioned.

Novel number 2 is a thing. It's a big mess of a thing that is currently under construction. It is over 64,000 words of a rough draft. It's gonna take some work and some time. I think I am approximately 66% through the plot. Which means it will probably be somewhere around 80,000 words. Which is a lot for a fiction novel. Which means a lot of editing needs to happen. And we need a title and a cover and formatting and printing and publishing.

In time, dear reader. In time. But that's a good thing. We are closer today than we were yesterday. And closer yesterday than we were the day before that.

What is novel number two about? Like novel number one, it is about the Devil. This time however, pro wrestling is involved. And novel number two is darker. Much more evil and bigger in scope. Sprinkle in some occult and some heavy metal and there is something there.

A big mess of something.

Not so Serious Movie Review: Battalion (2018)

 

In a world where CGI space ships destroy Los Angeles, only one team of Australians cosplaying as US Marines can stop the alien invasion.

Why not Australian military? Why make the US military look like idiots in a half-baked low budget snooze fest? The uniforms were bad, the gear was bad, the interactions were bad, the logic was AWOL, and almost everyone spoke with an Australian accent. Whoever the military advisor was for Battalion should be sent to Fort Leavenworth for making the US military look bad.

Other than that .... that's it. It's just bad. I wish I had something positive to say about Battalion. The camera work was shoddy, the dialogue wasn't good, the action scenes were meh at best, the CGI wasn't great, the aliens had no motive other than destruction, and despite CGI scenes showing spaceships blowing up cities, most of the "action scenes" were on a beach or in the woods.

Battalion is easily one of the worst war movies I have watched. When you make a movie with a small group of people, it is a good idea to keep the idea small. Especially if your budget is small.

Grade: 1 CGI star of 5

Would you want to go to war with this motley group of ragbags?

 

Hanging out with Vale Anoa'i at the Lake County Comic Con

 

On November 17th, I was a guest at my first comic con, the Lake County Comic Convention. The LKCC is a nice size comic con, not as big as the Tampa Comic Con, but featured approximately 100 vendors and guests, to include Tommy Timmons from The Sandlot and other artists, writers, and creators.

Among those artists and creators was my friend Vale Anoa'i. Vale has authored nine books and has created an impressive array of art, some of which I own. She is a fantastic creator and a great person. So of course we had to cut a promo video.

You can find Vale's creations at The Art of Vale.

Movie Review: The Unbreakable Bunch (2023)

 

 

Making movies is hard work. There is a lot that goes into filming, acting, lighting, directing, editing, and all the other components that comprise a movie. But sometimes movies are fun. Sometimes the fun actors have making a movie comes out in the final production. The best mainstream example I’ve seen is Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups, where Sandler and several fellow comics looked like they had a blast throughout the movie. The positivity and comradery came through the screen.

The Unbreakable Bunch is a similar movie. Not in plot or in budget, but in the feeling that everyone in the movie enjoyed being part of the project. While watching, I could see the fun they had making it.
Truth be told, there isn’t a giant global market for low budget alien flicks. They are fun, but not for everyone. The same is true for seeing pro wrestling legends. But put low budget aliens and pro wrestling legends together and you could combine the fanbases and double the niche. Like peanut butter and chocolate, or lamb and tuna fish, The Unbreakable Bunch works.

It works because it’s fun and because viewers get to see a bunch of their favorite wrestlers of yesteryear act tough one more time and punch, kick, body slam, and shoot an invading alien horde. Of course, the aliens decided to only invade the streets of Sanford, Florida and the only group who could possibly stop them are former wrestlers. Of course.

The Unbreakable Bunch starts like a wrestling version of The Blues Brothers. In order to raise money, a wrestler gets a bunch of his “unbreakable” buddies together and they cris-cross the United States putting on shows and making money. As their small show with six wrestlers makes the needed money, a group of aliens is slowly taking over small Florida towns. I don’t know which story requires more disbelief. Although the wrestling scenes drag a bit and we don’t see much alien action, it is fun to see Haku, Glacier, Ernest Miller, and Luther Biggs thrown down again. There are also some independent wrestlers taking falls to the legends and they are fun to pick out if you know.

One of the highlights of the movie occurs at a town festival when the wrestlers and the local fire department have a brawl to end all brawls. Fellow legends Stan Hansen and Gangrel just happen to be working for the town’s fire department. Bodies get tossed and pizza gets eaten and everyone looks like they had a good time wreaking havoc.

Finally, the wrestlers and the aliens cross paths and it’s time for the main event. The final 30 minutes of the movie is worth the slow set-up. Sadly, there are a few losses that took me by surprise. But there are some great scenes of alien annihilation. Haku, for example, kicks some major butt, both with his fists and with his pistols. The producers definitely made the toughest man in professional wrestling look good. Not even extra-terrestrials can slow down the world’s toughest Tongan.

Of course, everyone else gets their share of the action, shooting and stomping out the heinous alien threat.

My one critique of The Unbreakable Bunch is that the ending was a little weak. There was no final resolution. No boss alien or final bad guy. Just a montage of the Unbreakable Bunch walking around shooting aliens. Viewers are left to ask if the event actually happened or if it was just a road story from a bunch of legends of the ring. A small twist at the end might have helped stick the landing.

I also have to ask if the aliens act like zombies, why not make them zombies? Instead of low budget sci-fi, the Unbreakable Bunch could have been a low-budget horror. I wonder why they chose aliens. Maybe they didn’t have zombie make-up or maybe the risk of unleashing a Zombie Haku on the world was too dangerous.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Unbreakable Bunch. It was as fun to watch as it looked to make. Definitely for fans of cheesy sci-fi and pro wrestling, both of which I enjoy.

Grade: 5 alien elbow drops out of 5

Curveball at the Crossroads is approved by Tommy 'Repeat' Timmons of The Sandlot

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Shane Obedzinski this weekend at the Lake County Comic Con. Shane is famous for playing Tommy "Repeat" Timmons in the baseball classic "The Sandlot". He was nice enough to give Curveball at the Crossroads a shout out.

Quotes I like

  These are not my quotes, but quotes other people said or wrote that I like.

"Even among men with the most modern arms, time is the hardest thing to kill" - The Musher, newspaper, 1907

"Words win wars or sell soap." - C. Wright Mills

"Not knowing is the ground of mystery, the land of wonder; a haven to be visited daily. It is the source of creativity, inventiveness and tranquility all in one." - Zen saying

"But I like to be surprised, and I like to be proved wrong. Not in public, because that’s humiliating. But in private, I really like to be proved wrong, because that means that afterward, if I come to terms with it when the dust settles, I am ever so slightly smarter than before, and I feel better that way." - Tadashi Tokieda

"The world needs less specialists in force and murder and more generalists in love." - Tuli Kupferberg

"Some people are steak people and some people only like fish, if I am steak and they are fish people, they might not like me very much." - Lorenzen Wright

"A Nation's fun will tell you more about that nation than anything except its jails." - PJ O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell (pg 79)

"The Islamic Jihaad has no relationship to modern warfare, either in its causes or in the way in which it is conducted." - Seyyid Qutb, Milestones

"Difference of opinion in my community is a source of blessing." Muhammad (reportedly)


"There a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root, and it maybe be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve." Thoreau, Walden

"If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think." - Charles Darrow

"It was not from want of will that I have refrained from writing you, for truly I wish you all good; but because it seemed to me that enough has been said to effect all that is needed, and that what is wanting (if anything be wanting) is not writing or speaking - where of ordinarily there is more than enough - but silence and work." - St. John of the Cross

"Being drunk is a good disguise, I drink so I can talk to assholes." - Jim Morrison

"You have opened the gates of hell, from which shall flow the curses of the damned which shall sink you to perdition!" - Richard Keith Call, former governor of Florida, to secessionists

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." - Thomas Edison

"Have a mind open to everything; attached to nothing." - Vedantic Scholar Telopa

"Our appetite for discovery slows as our familiarity with the status quo grows." - Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine, September 2010

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

"When you meet a beautiful woman who has everything going for herself, but you are not yet ready, admire her from afar. Don't try and spoil greatness just because you aren't quite on that level." - Monica Delgado

"People that are brilliant and successful, we think they’ve just always been that way. That’s not the case. Most of them have had some tough adversity in their life. It’s prepared them. I’ve never felt like you could develop character without adversity. A guy’s who has all the money he needs and never faced any hard times, he won’t have any character. But when you’ve had it tough and you’ve had it rough and you thought you were at the end of the rope and you work your way out of it, that’s the way you build character."  - Bobby Bowden

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops." - A. Bartlett Giamatti, Green Fields of the Mind

My Personal Quotes

"If time equals money, and money buys resources, and time is our most valuable resource, would that make time priceless? Could money buy time? Or would that be like money buying itself?" - Me

"You wake me up - agitated. I try to take a shit - constipated. I go to school - get educated." - Me

"Triceratopian hustle/ Mastadonian wassle" - Me

"I know I am smart because if I asked you if I was smart I would not know something easy to know therefore I would not be smart." - Me

"Everyone who says I need help should get help because I know I don't need help, especially when I know I know what I am doing." - Me

"Stress and panic cause nothing but high blood pressure and a low sperm count." - Me

Not so Serious Movie Review: The Devil's Hand (1961)

 

My latest cinematic adventure was The Devil's Hand, a 1961 independent horror featuring the guy who played Commissioner Gordon in the old Batman TV show.

At only an hour and seven minutes - which is actually sixty-six minutes and sixty-six seconds (wow!) - The Devil's Hand is too short for a movie, but too long for an episode of the Twilight Zone or any other broadcast show, although it does play like a Twilight Zone movie.

Our story begins with a gentleman having vivid dreams about a woman who is not his girlfriend. Somehow his actual girlfriend is ok with this. The dreams lead to him quitting his job and wandering the streets. Again, his girlfriend has no problem with this. The dreams also direct him to visit a small boutique doll store where he finds a doll of the woman in his dreams. After bringing his girlfriend to the store, where she not only sees the doll of the woman, but also the doll of herself, the guy's girlfriend is creeped out, but still not upset with him.

We then learn the dolls are voodoo dolls and the owner of the store stabs the girlfriend-looking doll, causing her to need medical care at the local hospital. How long she is there is not determined, but it is long enough for another woman to swoop in and steal the dude and them to join a satanic cult that holds meetings under the doll store. Good things happen to the guy when he joins the cult. He wins at the track. His stocks go up. Life is good.

He still has feelings for his hospitalized girlfriend, however. He finds the doll they pierced and removes the pin, causing her to miraculously recover. Then after the cult kidnaps her and attempts to sacrifice her to Satan, he rescues her, punches the high priest/doll shop owner, and starts a fire that burns the store down. Of course, his girlfriend is still not upset with him, despite the fact that everything that has happened is his fault.

The Devil's Hand also has a hip surf rock soundtrack, which considering the link between the Beach Boys and the Manson Family, adds a little weirdness to the movie.

Grade: 4 voodoo dolls of 5.

The Fire Burned in the Crossroads

 

"While he slept, the fire burned in the crossroads, first feeding on the alcohol and then on the dirt, as if the earth itself was soaked in moonshine. Within moments, the spark turned into a full blaze. Unlike a usual fire, however, the blaze was contained in the middle of the old intersection.

Before long, a hole grew in the middle of the fire that burned at the crossroads. From the blazing flame and the depths of the earth emerged a figure – a tall, slender, well-dressed man in a black suit, tie, and matching top hat. Once fully risen from the earth, the man spread his arms and extinguished the blaze."
 

- taken at the Bradfordville Blues Club, Bradfordville, FL 2/19/2022