Convictions

I don’t normally discuss things like religion or politics but considering Facebook has become a hotbed of activity for the civic minded, I’m at the point where movements are happening all around me and I’ve not thrown in with any of them. To be sure, I have no intention of taking a side such as republican or democrat, liberal or conservative. If truth must be told, I am more conservative than anything but where I differ from others, I have a lot of tolerance and acceptance for all manner of issues.

Take Religion for example. I don’t believe in ‘God’ in the traditional organized religious sense. Nor am I agnostic. I have a very complex set of beliefs that, perhaps like Mr. Hubbard, decided to use it in a novel (The Entropy Initiative). I firmly believe that there’s more to humanity than meat and blood, a random spark of electricity causing creativity, deja vu, love, hatred, sadness, etc. I’ve gone to great efforts to explain my beliefs in my book while keeping it exciting and action packed.

In brief, my beliefs are fairly Buddhist but the similarities are shy.

I don’t push these beliefs on anyone. It’s not that I don’t think people would benefit from feeling the way I do, it’s that I don’t think that something as personal as religion can be embraced through the arms and eyes of another. Convincing arguments aside, if your heart and soul don’t embrace faith, then chances are good that you’re not going to really benefit from that gift.

My beliefs can further be used to govern the concepts of same sex marriage. I don’t think about it on the physical side. Lawful definition of ‘marriage’ aside (and my solution is a little drastic, doing away with traditional definitions altogether but that’s neither here nor there) I believe that love is a spiritual thing. If I love a man or a woman, it’s our spirits that are touching and if we need to express that physically, that’s our business. Gone are the days that sodomy is a punishable crime and considering the world we live in, there are precious few happy moments as it is.

Ultimately, I have feelings that are contradictory to tolerance. They came to me as a child and I intellectually stuff them down and shut them off. Many people do not know the difference between compulsion and reality. They act out of passion and do whatever their hearts tell them. They should learn to keep it to themselves and think objectively. Will same sex marriage hurt a straight person? Will taking guns away from people who want to legally get them stop people getting shot? Will making abortion illegal make a better world for unwanted children?

Considering all of the above, I tend to look at the world with the thought ‘what is trying to hurt me’? Answer those questions above and maybe you can be happier. Maybe that’s my religions belief talking but I like to think that I’m a rational person who would rather see people happy than denied. I thought we left that crap back in the 1800s. Why do we need to impose beliefs or imperatives on those who don’t feel the same way as our majority?

We don’t. We shouldn’t. And when we do, we should be shamed. That’s my conviction and so far, it’s worked out pretty damn well for me.

The Carnival of the Poisoned Rose Arrives

We have finished the Carnival of the Poisoned Rose, our most ambitious and recent recorded project. The CD will be released on October 21st and will later appear on iTunes and CD Baby.

The theme of the CD revolves around the events in a small town in the ambiguously eighteenth century environment of uncertainty, mysticism and the glamour of vaudevillian entertainment. There are four central characters to the story:

Rosie, the owner of the Carnival

Madam de la Vie, the star performer of the tight rope and trapeze

James, a young soldier

The Dark Persian, a mystic and sorcerer

The Carnival of the Poisoned Rose is a 16 track theme CD coming in at just over an hour of music. The cost will be $14.99 plus shipping. However, if you pre-order the CD prior to October 21st, it will be $11.99 and include some added incentives.

1) A signed copy of the Carnival of the Poisoned Rose

2) 20% off the retail price

3) Two remastered & redone tracks from Clockwork Dreams (digital copies)

4) Access to the Digital CD on October 21st prior to your CD being shipped

5) Our undying appreciation

Please visit our Pre-Order site to see the track list and listen to a couple of samples of the work. A Pay Pal link is at the bottom to make your pre-order. Or you can buy it straight from the link to your left.

That site is: http://www.deadlynightshadebotanicalsociety.com/carnival

Games, Movies, Updates

I’ve been crazy busy with all kinds of stuff.

First off, we’re feverishly working on the vocals for the DNBS CD: Carnival of the Poisoned Rose. In between working on those, we’ve written an entire CD worth of other music too. Very soon, we’ll be putting out 28 new songs including a cover of Hey You by Pink Floyd.

In other news, I’ve played and finished Deus Ex Human Revolution (I highly recommend it), picked up Space Marine (half way through the campaign and enjoying the multiplayer alright), and Dead Island (I’ve only scratched the surface but what a GREAT game!!!) These distractions have been a great bit of fun and I should also throw out that I’ve been taken by Black Ops. A friend and I have been going crazy with it for a few weeks.

On the movie front, I’ve still been hitting the theater. I’ve seen The Debt, Columbiana, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Cowboys & Aliens, Captain America, Conan, and Fright Night. Great times for the most part and enough entertainment to get me playing Age of Conan, at least for a month. On the BluRay front, I picked up Hanna, Thor and X Men First Class. It’s been movie central at our place.

In October, Dizzy and I will be conducting the great Halloween movie experiment. We’ve made a list of movies that we need to see and we’ll check them off the list throughout the month. I have entirely too many DVDs if I was able to come up with enough to get through the entire month and see at least 3 movies a day.

I’m working on a couple of books right now, nothing I should talk about yet. I’m worrying about audience for one. I’ll post on that more later.