about a connecting flight

A beautiful woman sat in the aisle seat, row 6, and I took the window. More passengers filed in, and then a man took the middle seat. He wanted to sit by her. The plane was full of conversation minutes after takeoff. The man and woman talked. They talked the whole flight. I caught bits and pieces of what he said, but nothing she said. He told some stories. One was about a time he cashed a check at a bank drive-through but at home discovered the teller gave him too much money, which he reported. What a guy: honest and so secure that he doesn't even count money when it is given to him.

 

His smothered, gentle laughs, his quiet applause at her jokes, and the sun streaming through the window onto the pages of my book—it all felt so good. 

a review of some metal band from Cyprus

The tectonic plates pushed Cyprus up from the eastern Mediterranean Sea amid some incredibly pivotal pieces of land. The island-country has seen kings, conquerors, and empires. So I appreciate that, amid all this history, Whispers of Lore includes "Arrow," a song about a lesser-known figure from the past—the defiant Nikolaos Pappas.

Greece was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship, the Greek junta, from 1967 to 1974. In 1973, Pappas, a Greek naval commander, publicly defied the junta by refusing to return to Greece with his Fletcher-class destroyer Velos (or Arrow) after a NATO exercise. Lyrics from "Arrow"—"In a sea of corruption, we’re sailing the Arrow / Though the path now seems narrow, we won’t stop the fight / And against the oppressive dictatoring sorrow / For a better tomorrow, we'll stand for our rights."

Pappas fled in the destroyer to Italy, where he claimed political asylum and denounced the junta at a press conference. After the junta fell in 1974, Pappas was reinstated and resumed his meritorious career.

Whispers of Lore defies cynicism, and Receiver would relegate no act of courage to a footnote.

The album is an enthusiastic foray into the current revival of new wave British heavy metal. The band sounds tight and balances its polish with great energy. Lots of bands now are honoring the epic storytelling sound of Iron Maiden. Besides Maiden, Receiver cites as influences Dio, Riot, Savatage, Omen, and Saracen.

The Cyprus-based band plays proficiently and with sincerity. The songs on Whispers of Lore tell of adventure. But the key to this genre is the vocal—does the singer have the juice?

Singer Nicoletta can belt out the drama. Listen to “Trespasser”: “The modern warlords waging war / peace stands afar out of reach / Witness machinery at roar / The corporate amused and rich / Destroying their hope and lives rearranged / Trespasser storming the gates / Reaching your goals, in madness and in vain / Your sin will not become our fate.” Nicoletta’s committed delivery is reinforced by crunchy, punchy guitars that pace ahead with defiant, simple riffs along with rolls of double-bass.

Gates of Hell Records released Whispers of Lore on November 10.

a creative-type exercise

ʿAtā was evil without reason. An invisible acid filled the void he created, eating away. ʿAtā freely and imaginatively practiced, and The Sorcerer considers him among the worst of all time just because he did not have to be.

For ʿAtā, standing next to Marut in the end was unbearable. Marut started burning the air in consumption. Just burning it into himself.

Another flip of the coin, and we would be sport for evil, evil for fun, evil for the purpose of sport.

 

Think about it. Think by rational numbers about that kind of evil in context to what the textbooks tell you. The logic of allowing it to live and those that built it to exist.

Can you put that evil into context? Not until you meet it from a non-linear perspective. Not until you realize the math inside the word. And not until Marut makes you understand what it means to be physically and mentally and arithmetically and literally evil.