Occupation Army

Posted on February 1, 2013 by ehurst

I’ve already pointed out here, repeatedly, that our entire social structure in the US is in violation of God’s Laws. We are pickled in a mythology built from from layers of Greek and Roman heathen notions, with a fat layer of ancient Euro-Germanic tribal notions, plus a heavy dose of Enlightenment secularism. Nothing we do will ever be right in God’s eyes until we start from scratch and build a society based on Ancient Near Eastern tribal feudalism. That system is the fundamental assumptions behind all God’s Laws, including Jesus’ comments about “love your neighbor as yourself.” You cannot possibly obey Jesus’ teaching until you embrace that ancient social structure. Period.
Aside from that, we have a lot of stupid arguments today about social issues and “there oughta be a law” arising from a complete misunderstanding of what was intended by those who thought they knew what they were doing. We have a vast ocean of stupidity about what’s actually possible and plausible within our very badly broken system. I’ll leave for the reader the task of deciding what ought to be, but will offer a firm prophetic warning of what is going to happen because nobody wants to do the right thing.
It is an ugly blatant lie to assert our current law enforcement is what the people want. What we have is the result of many small decisions over many decades in which a tiny vocal minority has hijacked government and all the primary public information outlets. This is not so much a conspiracy as a simple fact of how democratic government works. When the fundamental lever of power is a presumed “will of the people,” the primary path to power is deception. Good people don’t want power over others, so the only people who will gravitate to positions of power and authority are bad people, along with a lot of marginal folks who aren’t all that motivated about being good. This is simply how it is.
So here we are today with a very large and well-armed police presence which is frankly not any friend of the people. Their only mission is protecting state prerogatives. Any other language is simply intellectual dishonesty. Law enforcement people are not heroes; theirs is one of the lowest risk jobs possible these days. They do not face danger at every moment, though they do find themselves quite often in some very tense moments. That’s because most of what they do is not in any interest of the other folks involved.
In other words, almost all law enforcement activity is contrary to good public order and social stability. Whatever it may have been in the past, it is time to peel away the mythology. Almost everyone facing a hostile police intrusion into their lives today are just ordinary people doing things that aren’t anyone else’s business, but the state demands a level of control that is simply evil.
So we come to the place where most loud and abusive encounters with police are dangerously close to justifying the cops being shot. Let’s be precise: “justify” as in good and proper in the interests of the people. While it does vary widely across the US, there are places I can go today where the police are no more than a hostile occupation army, enemies of those they police. Ask the policemen a few questions; if they answer honestly, you’ll find a strong stain of open hostility to average people in their jurisdiction. They’ll justify it all sorts of ways, talking about how evil and mean the people are, refusing to obey the laws. What you will not ever hear from them is any honest discussion of whether the laws are in the least justified. They’ve been forbidden from thinking about that at all.
Most of those laws are poking a finger in God’s eye. They are designed to transfer control to the elite governing class, a level of control which enables rapacious abuse. If you don’t see these trends, chances are you are part of the problem. If you are an activist pushing for more draconian controls, don’t be surprised someday soon when someone in your neighborhood decides you are a good target for hunting.
Let’s be blunt: The Second Amendment was precisely so the average Joe had a reasonable chance of winning a confrontation with the cops. Our forefathers fully expected government would drift into oppression because all governments always do. It’s not as if they ignored the idea some folks might be crooks. They fully expected the average Joes would get together and run the crooks off or kill them. But they were elitist to the core themselves, refusing to recognize it. They falsely believed they could construct a system which would allow people to cycle through destroying those oppressive governments and starting from scratch, on a regular basis. They understood it meant regular armed revolt, but that whole idea has been buried under some sweet sounding rhetoric about peaceful change from within the system. It wasn’t supposed to last the first fifty years without complete replacement and rewriting the constitution. The forefathers said as much, quite bluntly, at the beginning of the US Constitution. They didn’t realize it was impossible to keep psychopaths from hijacking the process and locking in evil government.
I am not an activist of any stripe. I don’t like what I see on either side of this ugliness. But this stuff is getting worse and both sides are hardening in their hostilities toward each other. It cannot avoid boiling over into actions which result in open warfare in the streets. That this is entirely inevitable is what most people don’t understand.
Hear the warning of God: We have created a culture which values sin as a prize. The vast majority of the residents are discouraged from the sort of depth and intelligence which makes it possible to bear the normal sorrows of this world. Instead, they are sold every form of diversion, so it’s no surprise many abuse substances or engage other escapist addictions. Then we make all that escapism illegal when we listen to the vast lies of the elitists who steer this, putting people in prison for doing what we insist they must do because it makes them money. In God’s eyes, an awful lot of people in government today deserve to be shot, but most of us are no better, having listened to lies about a mythological good life that could never exist anywhere on this earth. We have rejected His Word before we even got started, so the whole thing serves only to bring Hell upon this earth.
The Christian Mystic will repent and stand weeping as all this ugliness ruptures around like swelling pustules of moral sickness. We can do nothing except call out His truth and hope just a tiny few will grasp that lifeline and climb up to sanity. No, we can’t escape completely; many of us will die violently because there is no way for us to avoid it. However, whatever good can be salvaged is only possible by clinging to His Laws as revealed by His Son.

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Notes on the Coming Network Civilization

Posted on January 31, 2013 by ehurst

I’ve often said some of my best work comes in response to good questions. While I would agree most people are capable of synthesizing from their own memories and intelligence, and need only someone to ask the right questions, sometimes it’s far deeper than that. When I bounce things off my spirit, the answers are of a totally different quality. Today someone asked some really good questions and I wanted to outline the results here.
We define a civilization as a social structure with rules and customs by which people can live in close proximity without killing each other. The nature of the coming Network Civilization changes the phrase “close proximity” to a figure of speech. That is, not physical geographical proximity necessarily, but a virtual proximity.
We see that developing as more and more people become reflexively Net-savvy. Some of the old swindles simply don’t work any more. People are becoming aware of how to have a viable Net existence without getting “killed.”
At the same time, we have a growing sense the Net is essential, such that there is now a solid core group of Netizens willing to commit mass murder to prevent losing the Internet. That is, if someone were to threaten broad access to networking and network access, you would see them willing to figuratively, or even literally, nuke someone to protect the Net. There is something so important, people will defend it with their own lives.
The essential elements are already in place.
I’m just guessing, but I am pretty sure the future infrastructure will be more wireless and less based on physical wires. Something tells me the undersea cables will go away last, but will go away. We will the Mesh, instead. Already, the technology and practices are growing to insure this becomes safe and viable in ways not yet obvious to most users. And despite the mass of users who are happy with merely consuming what comes over the Net right now, I believe those who actually use the Net to communicate and produce will double down on the demand for technology which supports their imperatives. It may not be what’s commonly used right now, with keyboards and so forth, but the cellphone and tablet interface is not the future. I’m quite certain it’s just a fad.
Whatever else we see going on around us today, or seeming to be the real story of the day, this business of the Internet is the real battleground. The West is rotting and collapsing from within, and the Networking Civilization is taking its place.

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The Moral Principle of Domain

Posted on January 30, 2013 by ehurst

The fundamental element in human existence is a sense of mission. By definition, that is your reason for living. It is not necessary to give it a name or be able to explain it in some concise statement. Chances are very good your concise statement will lock you into something that misses the point. It’s far more sane to express things in terms of roles. That’s how God views it.

Your role will always be relative to the context. The sanity anchor in the midst of this flexibility is your sense of something beyond yourself. While I typically use the language of God and His Laws, speaking of it as something beyond this realm of existence, you can still use the basic rationale with something less defined. The point is a functional sense of something beyond your ego boundaries that you can’t change, something to which you feel a sense of accountability. Without that, you aren’t likely to find much use in anything I write on this blog. There has to be something beyond you which offers the touchstone of reality or you lose your sense of identity. You can’t militate your role onto the rest of the world; it’s an interaction.

The concept of domain is recognizing the boundaries. It really isn’t a matter of enforcing them so match has having a distinct sense about when you have to decide, when something requires a response. Moral Law suggests you will definitely sacrifice at times, but you need to be aware of what it costs you. Otherwise, you can’t build an expectation of how the moral fabric of the universe will respond. The whole idea behind studying God’s Moral Laws is having an internal sense of regulation, a pattern with some sense of boundaries for all things. If you don’t get a feel for blessings and curses, you can’t gravitate to either one. You seek to build a faculty for measuring where things are on the moral scale.

While struggling to maintain a connection to something outside you, the whole point is embracing and internalizing something of that moral fabric. It is guaranteed to conflict with that of others at some point and on some level. That is the norm, even if they are on the same sheet of music about moral foundations. Their mission is not your mission. The people closest to you will collide the most, but they remain close because there is some indefinable affinity which makes it necessary to cooperate for the sake of the mission itself. They are part of the mission, even if they are your primary source of conflict. Conflict is an essential feature of living in this world. Don’t attempt to objectify the mission, but realize handling the conflicts is critical to what the mission is.

It shouldn’t be necessary to state the obvious: If you transgress your own moral boundaries, you will pay. Temptation is anything drawing you across those boundaries by taking advantage of entirely normal desires and needs. The whole business of studying God’s Laws is seeking a sense of where those boundaries are in His mind. We try to make our understanding match His, since He’s running the show. But less obvious is the understanding that we face painful consequences for failing to defend our mission and our domain, whether it be from others or from our own weaknesses. There’s nothing schizophrenic about recognizing your worst enemy lives inside your own soul. You have to keep an eye on your boundaries, not as a hard and fast rule, but as a living expression of your divine imperative.

Thus, the principle of domain is the idea you must decide. It’s not a sense of privilege, but of obligation to some divine imperative. It’s not even about winning your battles, but of knowing when to engage the battle. As always, it’s not about being or doing, but about commitment. When something enters your domain, you take responsibility for your response to it. Your domain is whatever falls inside the fluid boundaries of the imperatives which shape your existence. Neurosis is a volitional attempt to avoid it; psychosis is an inability to deal with it, regardless of how you lost that ability. Dr. Szasz says the same thing in other terms, but the principle remains that the whole question of sanity is one of moral choices.

Your mission and your domain are roughly equivalent terms.

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Reprise: The Folly of American Style Evangelism

Posted on January 29, 2013 by ehurst

This actually deserves a book, but we can start here with a rehash of previous material.
Evangelism and False Guilt
Nothing in Scripture obliges you to go out and cold call people with your gospel sales pitch.
The entire notion of activist religion does not arise from Scripture. It comes from people who did not know the Word of God, but did know some Bible verses, and were utterly convinced by what was then the modern cultural mythology of fixing humans. The entire business of what most people call “soul winning” is not in the Bible. That silliness arose after the Industrial Revolution got under way and people began to believe they could solve the world’s problems.
First, we must understand that people who are spiritually dead cannot be persuaded to believe the gospel message. Only the mighty hand of God can work that miracle; people with dead spirits are not even capable of wanting spiritual birth. The Bible says that bluntly in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (especially ch. 8). You and I have no power to change that, nor has God somehow placed upon us some burden of responsibility for making it happen.
Indeed, aside from the basic requirement that you be able to answer simple questions about your faith when non-believers ask, you need not worry too much about what to say. You most certainly do not need forty weeks of classes to teach you various memorized manipulative spiels so people can pretend they got saved.
What you are commanded to do in Scripture, unless you are called to preach and teach, is simply live that message. People shouldn’t have to ask if you are a Christian. Your evangelism is living the truth, speaking the truth as would naturally be the case in your normal course of business. You don’t even have to announce a single thing, just say “no” when someone encourages you to do something you know isn’t right.
More than anything else, people should know you care about them, but not much about stuff. You’ll be responsible with things delivered into your care, but you know in your heart nothing you can see or touch is really worth that much. People matter, but only in the sense they see God’s glory. Not their feelings, nor their knowledge, nor even their sorrows, but their understanding that there is such a thing as sacrificial love.
That’s your obligation. God did not require of anyone to sell the gospel, as if it were some market product. The American delusion with sales and marketing has created a vast collection of spiritually dead religious institutions.
During my ministerial training, a wise old preacher told me, “In every congregation, you’ve got a lot of people who don’t do much of anything. They are members, but it doesn’t seem they are actually born-again. There are a bunch more who do stuff, but try to avoid decision making. They are faithful, but want no part of keeping discipline. They’ll try to go with the flow on voting and such. You have to pastor them, too.” This is wrong. Not that they should not be pastored, but we should not settle for that. It’s wrong on several levels.
First, we have here a reflection of the false model of church structure. This situation assumes a business model, not the proper biblical concept of the family. Too often a pastor refers to his “church family” when it means nothing more than a CEO referring to his “corporate family” — words to justify demanding an organizational devotion. A church has business aspects, but its basic identity is not as a business. Membership guidelines should reflect courtship and marriage, not contract negotiations. It is scripturally impossible to treat each new member the same regarding entrance, because each carries their own baggage, needs, and gifts. We have too hastily drawn each candidate into our churches in the drive for numbers.
Second, that preacher assumes it rests on human power to run a church. A proper biblical church is saved by grace and must continue in grace. While we acknowledge the factors of psychology and group dynamics, we defy them to have the last word. Those behavioral sciences are tools to diagnose spiritual problems, to which the real solution is the Spirit, which may or may not include using standard behavioral remedies. We do not accept the human norms for a divine operation. We do not sit down and calculate an acceptable level of loss, of carrying a certain amount of dead weight, and focusing on simple “smooth operation.” If all you want is organizational tranquility, try a graveyard. People living and growing in Christ is messy, all the way to the top.
Third, this all puts the organization in the center, rather than the individual believer. While we might say good words about individual needs, we don’t act on them. We’ve been conditioned to think quite backwards, because seeking the health of the group should take us through the lives of every individual. The group is not, and should not be, some homogeneous thing, but a collection of unique individuals. Adding or removing any one person changes the character of the group. If we follow the concept of courtship and family, no one can possibly be left to their own devices with some unspoken requirement to fit themselves into the group. We don’t sell our faith as a standard package offered to all candidates. Evangelism is enticing new members by the greatness of our love for them; discipleship is continuing that courtship by pulling them ever closer and more deeply into family involvement.
Fourth, we assume too much a tightly limited involvement, as if church was just one more thing people do. It’s not about scheduling a few hours of each week for something added to a busy life. The Kingdom of God is central to a person’s being, or they have no part at all in it. Faith in Christ is not a selection of minor adjustments to your normal routine, born on a sales pitch offering a better way to do those routine activities. It is a complete disruption of the routine, consuming it and subsuming it wholly under a new and all-encompassing regime. We offer the one thing in life these people really need, regardless whether they are conscious of that need when we encounter them. It may require shedding everything they felt mattered up to that point because it most surely requires we stop caring about this world. We are citizens of Heaven and this world is just shadows and deceptions. We keep alive in this dead world a glorious sacrificial love from Heaven.
Everyone can do evangelism, because everyone knows how to fall in love. Winning souls is more about winning hearts. Perhaps some would say it’s too easy for sinners to mistake what we are offering. Yes, it’s more dangerous than the standard soul-winning approach, but “danger” is one of the primary adjectives of a life following Jesus. Remember that business of bearing your own cross? Part of this risk is due to the Western twisted cultural view of love. We have a mandate from God for redeeming human misunderstandings. Everyone has an almost instinctive grasp of proper boundaries.
Our primary struggle is not against lack of intellectual knowledge about evangelism, nor against the inertia overcome by behavioral conditioning. Even lunatics could be successful with that standard. Our primary struggle is getting people to understand the very nature of sacrificial love, of healing their emotional injuries so they can reach out from their very inner nature. We depend too much on the imagery of soldiers, but have forgotten the chief weapon is the Word of God, a phrase referring to a Divine Person, who personifies love.

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Not an American

Posted on January 29, 2013 by ehurst

No, I am not an American. I was born and raised in the US, and will probably die here, but I am not an American.
In a giant box hardware store, I approached the heavy hand tools rack: shovels, sledge hammers, axes, that sort of thing. There was a new style of ax hanging on the rack. Another man was there admiring the display. I took the ax out, felt its heft. In one hand, I held it behind my back as if to swing and chop downward in front of me. It was a tad light, but I liked the way the blade was cast extra wide and how the edge was ground. I’ll try to buy one like that with my next paycheck if nothing better comes along. The man asked me about it and we discussed the differences between various types of axes and how they should be used.
By the way the conversation went, you would not know he was of a different race. It didn’t matter at that moment; we met on common ground, speaking the same language with pretty much the same accent, etc. A moment later he was talking to his wife. What I overheard was familiar in one sense, but radically different from the man who just finished chatting with me about working with axes. I was totally unsurprised; the man was black.
The ways in which we as humans overlap are actually more varied than the ways in which we can differ. But our human differences are more fundamental than is recognized by popular social orthodoxy. Could I live in his world? Sure, if it was worth it for some reason. He certainly had no trouble entering mine; that’s what he did by choosing to address me in “white talk.” He could have spoken in some other patois and I would not have batted an eye, would have understood and talked with him just the same. He did what he felt was best for the moment. I doubt any of us could answer why we might choose one path or another in the minute risks of such situations. We calculate from our own inner perceptions. That’s how it is. Was he an oppressed minority, forced to cater to the whims of an arrogant race? Only in the wild imaginations of a tiny few whiners. He could have chosen any number of options, but seemed to enjoy our conversation. He told me all sorts of details of his life which weren’t necessary, but served to open channels of understanding. At that moment, we were men talking about manly things we did with axes and stuff, and we shared a mutual manly respect.
Any crusade to change and improve things is doomed, built on false motives. That’s because a crusade is always wrong. Every crusade has the intent of forcing someone else to surrender something. It won’t matter which of the options is closer to perfection, no matter how you measure such things. The problem is so fundamental, it won’t matter which flavor of culture or civilization you represent. The problem is that this world is permanently broken and cannot possibly be fixed. God said so, in no uncertain terms, but people insist on missing that. He also offered a general outline of optimal existence, the path of least sorrow, and people ignore that, too.
My personal identity is tied to that path, as best I can understand it. I’m a Christian Mystic, a man Not of This World. I don’t take seriously any human concern as typically recognized. The only thing I take seriously is glorifying God in the prescribed fashion, pointing all eyes to another plane of existence. Doing so means I have to reject the importance of any other factor of human identity. My citizenship in some particular political entity on earth means nothing by comparison.
So was that fellow in the hardware store was racist by presuming on the probabilities based on my appearance? Would he have taken umbrage if I had initiated the conversation and done the same thing? I have no idea and I don’t really care. He wanted something from me and made a guess how he could get it. So far as I know, he got what he was after. He showed distinct signs of not wanting to end the conversation. Nor was it essential I stop the conversation by trotting out the Four Spiritual Laws of maybe the Roman Road and evangelize as most American Christians might, if they followed their own religious apprehensions. I definitely want no part of Decision Theology. God’s glory isn’t in that, either. It’s just another flavor of cultural arrogance pretending to be from the Bible. I’m willing to bet that man was already well endowed with his own version of that, given what few clues I could gather on the question.
Pretty messed up that such thoughts would pass through my mind? Maybe so, but awareness is simply the result of my own peculiar experiences in life, and so it was with him. You can read a million things into every little element of your daily experience. After being hammered by vast hordes of fools bearing tons of propaganda, it’s easy to get lost. Instead, it’s more sane to say simply that I’m not an American, whatever that means, simply because I know I’m none of the things everyone else seems to claim about it.
I belong to another nation, scattered throughout this world by God’s design. There will come a time and place when all this is over. I’m looking forward to that. In the meantime, I have His standards for living here, and those standards include a conscious rejection of even the most fundamental assumptions about reality as found among the majority of those who reveal their assumptions. Sadly, if I simply say I’m a Christian, that would only confuse things in most people’s minds. It’s the same reason John the Baptist denied he was the Second Elijah. He was, but saying so would mean embracing the false ideas of those who were asking. But I have to say something because that’s part of what God requires of me. Sometimes I state it pointedly; at other times, I simply show it.
Whatever you want to make of my identity, it starts with being alien to this world, the whole thing.

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Mystical Tales of Romance Published

Posted on January 28, 2013 by ehurst

red rose on wood floow - black and whiteOkay, the good news is Smashwords accepted my blind fixes to the Old Testament History book and it’s in the premium catalog. The bad news is, I have yet to figure out how to make my stuff fit any kind of usable format coming out the other end of my own personal “meatgrinder”. It would take a long time for me to learn all the ins and outs and the nit-picking options regardless of which method I use. So far, I haven’t liked the results of any of it, so I’m letting it rest.
Meanwhile, I bundled up four of the stories previous posted here or on other blogs. The tales are combined in Mystical Tales of Romance and you can get your copy here. Wanna know something funny? My first run through required fixing, but before I could fix the input file and resubmit, three people had already snagged a copy.

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Bits and Pieces 7

Posted on January 28, 2013 by ehurst

I learned how to sharpen a green wood saw blade. A few months ago I stumbled across a huge 30-inch (76cm) bow saw; I didn’t know they made them that large. So I grabbed it for just a few dollars and have been using it to cut firewood (for my brother). It works pretty well, even up to 12-inch (31cm) logs, though it takes awhile. After a couple of months, it got dull, started drifting to one side when cutting. Nobody carries blades that large locally and the ones online looked pretty cheap and fragile compared to what was on it, so I decided to learn how to sharpen it. Must have done well enough, because I have to be careful handling it now or it will shred my fingers. Cuts as nicely as before.
It’s not as if I really gave up on Linux and Open Source completely. While I no longer recommend it to people who already have trouble enough with Windows, I keep hoping someone somewhere will understand and meet the needs of users. Apparently Linux Mint gets it. They have two different interfaces which can help you forget the misery of GNOME 3. Right now it’s the most popular Linux distribution, and I hope support grows to the point Clement LeFebre can make the project depart even farther from its dependence on Ubuntu. Using their stuff leaves way too many decisions in the hands of people who don’t understand users’ needs. I’m testing Maya 64-bit with the MATE interface on my laptop.
I’m trying to learn how to produce ebooks in the epub format. While I haven’t heard back from Smashwords, the more I learn about the cheap and rickety process they use to produce their files, the more I would prefer a chance to do it right for the sake of the readers. I’m going to collect some of my “romance” stories into a single book and see if I can do a better job than Meatgrinder. From what I can see, it would be hard to do worse. I’m testing various different routes to the product. Calibre says one of the best input formats is MS Reader’s LIT files and MS offered a plugin for Word 2000 and 2003 to output Word files into that format. Another path is direct input in XHTML format, but with some restrictions on the range of tags you can use. The formatting is pretty specific that route. The other way is the Sigil project, which permits some WYSIWYG options for creating epubs from scratch, but it’s not simple.
It’s all about the message. Whatever route is the best way to get the word out to the waiting world, that’s what I am trying to find.

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Zechariah 10

Posted on January 26, 2013 by ehurst

As before, the prophet reveals to us the truth of God on multiple levels. This is how God operates, an image of what He is like when people embrace His truth. On the immediate level, Judah has yet to fully embrace and claim the Covenant of Moses still in force. At the same time, no one denies the Messianic intent of this chapter. Christ conquered from the Cross and from the grave, so reading this literally would be sheer stupidity.
Under the Covenant, the people should not take God’s blessings for granted. Therefore, they are instructed to ask for the blessings. This puts them in a frame of mind to hear His prophetic word to meet contingencies in a changing world. But He would surely bring the necessary rains in season for the growth of crops, both literal and spiritual. You might hear claims on behalf of false gods about the plainly literal blessings, but they cannot offer a window onto eternity. When the leaders of Judah in times past allowed the people to wander from the Covenant, they were like worthless shepherds. We also see the image of goats as protectors of the flock, a symbol of political leaders who don’t understand spiritual matters. They have only a limited use. If they fail that purpose, they are worse than useless; they are threats.
God wants to turn His sheep into a conquering army. We have rather obvious images of the Messiah who is the Cornerstone on which the whole building of community life rests. He is the peg on the wall, and every good and useful thing depends on Him. He is the battle bow, ready to strike His enemies from afar. He will command the commanders, and they will oppress the enemy. Evil and injustice will be stomped like the muck under their feet as they march past.
In both the literal and in the Messianic sense, the Lord is eager to rebuild His kingdom on this earth. Think of all the people who can be called home, if only those already there would ensure it is the home of truth and justice, the place to which the wander souls return for rest, peace and security. What a homecoming celebration it could be! They will come with tales of how God opened the way for them, drying up the Nile, destroying the power of the Assyrian army, breaking the whip of the slavers. Think of a kingdom of people who walk about in honest representation of what God says He is.

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Other Formats for My Books

Posted on January 26, 2013 by ehurst

If you would like to have any of my free books in a format not offered at Smashwords, or have trouble getting a copy from there, let me know. I’ll do what I can to produce a version in any format I can manage. There are lots of free tools for this stuff and I’m willing to try almost anything so you can get the message.
Smashwords is a better distributor than a publisher. I’m having some trouble, and I’m not sure I want to keep using it. On the other hand, I may not have much choice. I started this whole thing simply because I wanted better exposure for the message, wanted more people to have a chance to see it. If I had the money, I’d use another service. I’m not angry, just disappointed by the hype when the product falls short.
Did some reading last night and there are several articles and blog posts which confirmed my suspicions. People who know a lot more about ebooks formats than I do have examined the headers of the files coming out of the Meatgrinder process. From what I gather, Meatgrinder runs on some sort of Unix machine. The files submitted in Word DOC format are opened with OpenOffice, then converted to HTML. The file is checked by Tidy; I’ve used it before, and it’s okay. Then the files are sent through Calibre and converted into multiple formats.
So far as anyone can tell, all of these are running several versions behind the current one. I have a copy of each of these tools on my computer, but it appears Coker would rather check each book coming out of his shaky and unreliable process rather than check the books people could submit in the proper format. Coker uses these tools but discourages submitters from using them, which is downright crazy.
I submitted my last book and, for the first time, felt the need to include some bulleted and numbered lists. The review claims they didn’t come out right. I understood the error and went back over the file. I also double checked my copy of the ebook Meatgrinder produced. There was nothing wrong with the file. Whatever the review found, it’s not an error in the epub version, so I’ve asked for an explanation which book format produced the errors. The tools to fix this exist, but Coker refuses to accept that. That is, I could probably figure out how to correct the flaw in whichever format has the problem, but Coker insists I have to start from scratch and resubmit through his creaky Meatgrinder process.
In other words, Coker refuses to make room for people who know more about it than him. There are people out there who can code all the formats by hand or using better software, but he only just this month began accepting finished epub books. He refuses to accept any other format and refuses to offer a conversion process, despite having the tools right there on hand. I’m not saying he’s evil, nor even lazy. I’m sure the volume is high, but I suspect this is the only way he can afford to offer books by people like me who don’t want to charge for them. He makes no money having authors like me.
At any rate, my latest book is available, but it appears it won’t make it into the premium catalog, so it may not reach the wider audience. If something as simple as Word’s own bullet and number list formatting can’t be processed, I don’t know what to do. Coker makes no room for any give and take for people like me. So the least I can do is offer to covert my books into any format readers request.

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A Lady in Waiting 11

Posted on January 26, 2013 by ehurst

Waking up in his arms, she decided she had never slept so well in her life.
Naturally, they had discussed the implications long into the night. She knew she would probably never understand all of it and didn’t care. She realized those women who accused him of being a misogynist in comments on his blog had no more idea what they were talking about than the flirty trio. Somehow the expression “in love” just fell flat before her reality.
Frankly, it was her job to know what to do next. That was the easy part. Making the changes to her personnel file would be the biggest job. The rest of the bureaucratic tangle they would play by ear. She was confident in a way her experienced cynicism could never match.
They would write their own ceremony simply as a means of crystallizing this for the people on the installation. Last night he made a tiny ceremony of adopting her as the covenant successor to his first wife, henceforth known to them as her predecessor. Then he pulled out the rings they had worn. Becky put his back on his finger, and wasn’t the least bit surprised the other fit hers well enough. Plain silver bands, but more than fancy enough for her. The man was what really mattered.
He took the time to make her understand, assured her most earnestly of all the things about her that constituted icing on the cake for him. She warned him a woman would always have doubts, always need reassurance on that point. He warned he she would need to get used to someone who couldn’t keep his hands off her.
What surprised her most that night was how little he surprised her. All the mind-numbing, virtual earthquakes in her soul had prepared her better than she could expect. She knew him. A good deal of what she dared to hope was accurate enough. He was more ordinary than the flirts ever could imagine, yet more wonderful than they could have recognized. They were on the wrong planet. She had already been halfway across the space between when he showed up, calling her to his planet. Now, she was lost at home and determined to enjoy every minute of exploring it. She was surprised to discover she hadn’t the slightest fear anyone else would interest him.
He had to leave early today, so she kissed him long and hard goodbye, leaving him to get his bike and laptop ready. Bouncing down the entire three flights of stairs, she jogged to her dorm room and grabbed her shower kit. No way would she skip the morning workout with the other women. For once, a little gloating just felt right.
Everyone said she looked so different, and not simply because she chose to leave her hair down. The gym attendant said it: She was a lady with sparkle.
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