Tag Archives: satire

Through The Looking Glasses

glasses

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

“Dad?” Rod turned to his front door as his Dad Frank walked in. He was expecting him to bring the pumpkin pie, but the old man had something else.

“Happy Thanksgiving, son,” said Frank. “Where are Holly and the kids?”

“Kitchen and the backyard respectively.” Rod’s mouth was agape. “What’s that on your face?”

“These glasses?” Frank chuckled and looked around the living room.

“What was your ophthalmologist thinking?”

“Ever see the movie ‘They Live,’ Rod?”

“Yeah, but…”

“I can see you’re real. I just want to make sure about the rest of my family.”

“You’re off your meds, right?”

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The Armies of Ishtar vs. The Jesus Freaks

bunny and eggs

Image found at Mindlovemisery Menagerie’s website. No image attribution listed.

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

It was early morning on Easter Sunday in the field behind a local Lutheran church nestled at the edge of the suburbs. Young children, both those who regularly attended, and their friends who just thought it would be so much fun, were scurrying around the trees and bushes looking for colorful eggs with which to fill their baskets. Some were of the poultry type while others were chocolate and filled with yummy caramel.

All seemed well. The air still held a crisp chill but excitement and sweaters kept the cherubs warm. Their parents and grandparents watched from a distance, smiling at this idyllic scene, and anticipating the most Holy Day when they would worship their risen Lord.

Then, from the opposite end of the field, they came, the Armies of Ishtar. Legend had it that over all the Earth, they attacked one church on Easter morning, disgracing the Christian tradition of the Easter Bunny with their much older fertility traditions.

Dressed in hideous, giant bunny costumes, fur burned and unkempt, ears bent, cute bunny teeth replaced with six-inch fangs, and red, bloodshot eyes scanning the scene, they rushed forward. Their cries were ghastly, terrifying the children. But the bunnies were far too fast for the kids to be able to escape.

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Five Ridiculously Implausible Things The Progressive Left is Afraid Of

A.M. Freeman

A.M. Freeman as found on her blog.

A little while ago (as I write this), I came across something on A.M. Freeman’s blog called When The Satire Site Can’t Recognize Satire. It was written in response to an article at Cracked.com called 5 Ridiculously Implausible Things The Alt-Right Is Afraid Of (Yes, I ripped off the title). Apparently, the missive’s author S. Peter Davis read the Superversive Press anthology Forbidden Thoughts, first published in January 2017 (to which Ms. Freeman contributed a story), edited by Jason Rennie, and with a foreword by the highly controversial Milo Yiannopoulos, and didn’t like it very much (Oh, keep in mind, I’ve read some of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s work and frankly, I don’t have much use for it).

Reading his review, and assuming his rendition of the stories contained within the anthology are accurate, yes, the themes and content are wildly exaggerated outside the realm of probability, but that was exactly the point. As Freeman pointed out, they were written as satire, blowing modern controversial topics way, way out of proportion to prove a point. The same was done in another Superversive anthology I read and reviewed called To Be Men: Stories Celebrating Masculinity. Yes, they’re all written from a very conservative and sometimes religious perspective, but the concern here, and probably the reason for the existence of Superversive Press, is that SF/F is increasingly becoming biased (or so is the belief) toward the left and perhaps the progressive far left (alt-left?), such that the rest of us don’t have a voice in the genre.

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