PROOF OF LIFE!

Is he leaving or returning?

Well, at that moment I was playing President of the Imaginary States of America. That’s one of the old Air Force One 707’s, and it’s mounted in spectacular fashion at the Reagan Library. When you take the tour they take a souvenir photo at the entrance. I did the standard arms-round-the-family one, then asked for another. The only photoshopping was to take out the hangar behind the plane and replace it with a night scene of Tuzla. I think that considering the amount of sniper fire I was taking, I look remarkably calm and collected. It’s good to be the POTIS.

Back to the question: is he leaving? Returning? What?

Both! Mostly returning. Kind of. The fact is, my absence has left me bitter, and clinging to my religion and my guns.

I’ve been busy with two major breakthoughs in my non-Eject! life: one I can tell you a little about, and the other I can tell you nothing about, other than to say it will be news when it breaks and I look forward to the day I can write about being a part of it.

Sound mysterious? Great.

I can tell you a little about what I’ve been writing in the last six months. But those of you who come here often know there’s no reason to get right ot the point when we can tell a little backstory first to shapen the focus.

It has long been apparent to me that even on those days when all the various and sundry -lanches line up perfectly, I might see 120,000 hits in a two day period… hits for which I am eternally grateful and which have provided me with so many opportunities. However, the fact is that most of those people are folks who already get it. And over time, I have watched the river of poison flowing out of Hollywood… a toxic Mississippi of self-hatred and just plain lies about this amazing country — this reactor of creativity and freedom.

And I’ve had enough of it. And I’m not the only one.

So I spent the last several months not just working on a movie script, but actually finishing it. And finishing it in a way I have never been able to finish these essays, which I post hot off my fingertips with only a few quick glances for cuts and corrections before I hit the button.

But this script I have polished. I’m polishing it still. The first draft, which was appalling, should have come in at about 120 pages. It was 363. Then, right after the Boyd essay, I went at it in earnest. I made a few minor piddling changes… like, say, adding conflict and writing the characters in such a way as to make what they said and did interesting. Little tweaks like that.

So what I have is a story where businessmen and engineers are the heroes, the protestors are the bad guys, people accept risk willingly and some of them die for it, where they do amazing things and go to astonishing places on their own dime, where nuclear power is good and essential and the motivation is not money or power but freedom and a love of humanity, and where America and all she stands for is a beacon in a darkening world.

It’s a crazy bizarro world of science fiction!

But it’s actually not too bad, and for the first time in 30 years of trying I actually have a chance to get it made. And now we get to the point, because just about any film that gets distribution will be seen by thousands and thousands more people that have ever, or will ever, come to this little corner of cyberspace. And they will be exactly the kind of people we need to reach most: young, and hungry for something to believe in.

I’ll have more on that later.

Once I do the final polish on this baby, I hope to come back with a vengeance. I have five essays stacked and ready to get to “paper:”

THE REPUBLIC OF EMOTION — How schools and modern teaching methods prepare us to be a society of self-centered crybabies without a clue as to how to think critically and act like adults.

LIFEBOAT — immigration and why the Melting Pot whips the Mosaic hands down and twice on Sunday.

THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT — The long-promised Global Warming essay, less about the science and more about the aneurism of politics and control that gives a very big lever to some very bad people.

THE WEIGHT OF OUR SKINS — A look at race, now that the Great Uniter has healed my soul.

THE PLAGUE — Civilizations rise and fall, and the pattern is always the same. Why? I think I may have an idea. And there may be a way around it.

All of these I hope to do quickly, since they’re already written in my head. As soon as I get the free time I hope to pound them out, and add them to Boyd, and the It’s a Conspiracy, Rafts and You Are Not Alone posts and put out a second book of essays, which will hijack the title SEEING THE UNSEEN. The book will be about critical thinking, reason, and the ability to sift fact from fiction like a grownup.

Starting with the next essay, I’ll be outsourcing my comments to India, where opinions are pennies on the dollar. You can’t afford not to do it! Seriously, though, I’ll be moving the comments into the capable hands of my friends at the E3 GAZETTE, where many of the fine people I worked with on Ejectia! have gathered for online fun and enlightenment.

Finally, for those of you who are willing to face the disappointment that comes from realizing My Voice does not in fact thunder across the light-years, carried on the echos of dying stars, but is in fact rather thin and reedy… I present to you a link to an hour radio show I did recently here in L.A. with Tim Conway, Jr.: a fine fellow and a great American, like his dad. I was on as “a guy who thinks America is a great country and who has the facts to prove it.”

The tragic thing is, this passes for newsworthy in Los Angeles. Well, one step at a time. The linky is here:

I’m not dead. I didn’t quit. And I’m not alone out here.

Look for us at dawn of the fifth day!