by J. Thorn
Demons Within: Unholy Fire (Book 2 of The Hidden Evil Trilogy)
Ravna thought his ordeal with the hungry ghost was over. However, when a road trip takes him on an unexpected detour, Preta resurfaces, threatening to tear apart Ravna and his new love. Ravna must again battle the hidden evil, though he now faces a choice that could destroy everything, including the Demons Within.
Eternal: Blood Curse (Book 3 of The Hidden Evil Trilogy)
Doug believes Ravna has the power to defeat the hungry ghost once and for all. But he soon realizes that the final battle with the malevolent creature has yet to begin. Doug must combine forces with another Hunter in a race against demons and apparitions, hoping he isn't already too late. If they cannot close the portal in time, Gaki will call forth the hidden evil and the darkness shall be Eternal.
* * *
If you enjoyed this title, you'll love Reversion: The Inevitable Horror (The Portal Arcane Series - Book I). Find out why readers that enjoy the creeping doom of Stephen King's Langoliers are diving into the engaging world of the Portal Arcane series.
Praise for the Portal Arcane Series...
"This is a great start for what promises to be an engaging, intense series."
Scott Nicholson, Author of the #1 Amazon Best Selling Horror Novel, The Home
"It's all about the journey, about the creeping horror of individual moments, the long wait, the brief moments of terror, and then more waiting. It was... a fascinating read, and I will definitely be interested in following this series.."
K. Sozaeva, Amazon Vine Voice, Top 500 Reviewer
Reversion: The Inevitable Horror (The Portal Arcane Series - Book I)
With a noose around his neck, Samuel arrives in a forest littered with caution tape and artifacts of the deceased. He struggles to regain his memory while fending off a pack of wolves and the mysterious visitors who seem to know more about this dying world than he does. Major, Kole, and Mara, new companions also trapped in the strange locality, realize they must outrun the ominous cloud eating away at reality. As their world collapses upon itself, Samuel must find a way to escape the Reversion.
The Law of Three: A New Wasteland (The Portal Arcane Series - Book II)
The Reversion plucks Samuel from a dying world and drops him into another, a decaying desert wasteland of darkness and peril. As his memories return, Samuel finds himself in another cycle of destruction, and he leads newcomers Jack and Lindsay towards redemption in the mountain stronghold of the mysterious one known as Deva. Finally, as the locality collapses behind him, Samuel realizes his only escape from the Reversion will be putting his faith in The Law of Three.
The Portal Arcane Series - Book III - COMING IN EARLY 2014
* * *
If you enjoyed this title, you'll love The Seventh Seal. Find out why The Seventh Seal, is a best-selling, post-apocalyptic, dark fantasy thriller that has placed in the Amazon Kindle Top 100 Paid Best Seller lists in four different genre categories!
The Seventh Seal
John Burgoyne awakens from a Halloween party, with a hangover and a dead cell phone, on the first day of the End of Days. He's desperate, on the run, and fighting for his life. After a violent coup, the Father, the figurehead of the Holy Covenant and the commander of a new military order, pursues John through the post-apocalyptic wreckage of Cleveland, Ohio, in search of the hidden knowledge he believes John holds. Burgoyne escapes and aligns with the resistance until Father orchestrates a final showdown.
In the words of author Vicki Keire, author of Worlds Burn Through...
"...an edge-of-your seat apocalyptic adventure full of twists and turns. I couldn't put it down!"
* * *
If you enjoyed The Seventh Seal, you have to read the novella sequel, Man's Ruin.
Man's Ruin - A Dark Fantasy Novella (The Seventh Seal Sequel #1)
A band of revolutionaries fights for survival in the urban decay of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, thirty years after the First Cleansing brought an end to civilization. Their enigmatic and seasoned patriarch, John Burgoyne, protects the clan until a man on horseback delivers an ominous message. John decides to lead his tribe on a grueling march down the treacherous highway stretching from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, unaware of the forces aligning against them. When the clan faces a major decision on the road, John will be forced to do whatever is necessary to ensure their survival.
In the words of reviewer, Gordie, on Amazon.com...
"I started this in the morning and had it finished by lunchtime as I could not put it down..."
* * *
If you like tight and fast-paced short stories, you'll love J. Thorn's horror and dark fantasy collection, Voices from Beyond: Volume 1 as well as The Hunt and Tunnel.
About the Author
J. Thorn believes in the imaginative power of the horror novel and the escape from reality it provides. He knows that embracing the entire spectrum of human emotion, even its dark realms, makes for a more meaningful and authentic life.
* * *
Official Website
Facebook
Twitter
"The book combines a few wild adolescent tales, an Animal House-type prank or two, a couple of interviews with veteran and beginning teachers, and plenty of references to sports and rock-and-roll mixed in with fifteen years of observations about educational foibles. Self-indulgent at times, off-task often, and too obviously aiming at shocking us old farts with rap lyric vocab, J's humanity and concern for kids still seeps through the tough guy mask."
Doug Johnson
Author of The Classroom Teacher's Technology Survival Guide and curator of The Blue Skunk blog
"...and any further contact with my client shall result in immediate legal action."
An Attorney
(just a big misunderstanding)
"Mr. Thorn's writing is insightful and humorous...If you want to laugh or to be made to think a bit, I would recommend this book as I enjoyed it very much myself."
Robert, Amazon Reviewer
"If you want to know what happened to the self centered ass from high school, read this book.'"
Alida "Alida66", Amazon Reviewer
Raising Zombies
By J. Thorn
Start Reading
About the Author
Other Works
Raising Zombies
Family Life in the Modern Age
Second Edition
Copyright © 2012 by J. Thorn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Edited by Talia Leduc
For more information:
http://www.jthorn.net
[email protected]
http://www.raisingzombies.com
For Deebs, the best educator I have ever met.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gay For Brett
One Nation
Are You Serious?
More Than Dead White Guys
How to Avoid Conflict Avoidance
Wired
Live Like a Convict
Who Wants Self-Esteem? We All Do!
Smells Like School Spirit
Thoughts on Social Engineering
I Can't Get No Respect
Conclusion
Appendix (with obligatory charts)
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Other Works
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
“Strike five!”
I turned to look at my neighbor as she clapped her hands and cheered for both the batter and the hitter.
“Throw a good pitch, pitcher. And you, batter, take a good swing,” she said.
My son looked at me as we both counted on our fingers.
“Did the ump say ‘strike five,’ or am I hearing things?” I asked.
“Yes, five,” she replied.
“This is baseball, right?”
She gave me a sly glance until the batter received strike six and walked back to the bench. He did not strike out. He had exhausted his supply of six pitches.
“They don’t call them ‘strike outs.’ You get six pitches and then you return to the bench.”
My son looked at me again, this time with the face of someone who had just stepped in dog shit.
“Well, what’s the score?” I asked my neighbor.
“Oh, it’s the regular season,” she replied as if I were to know better than to ask such a stupid fucking question.
“And?”
“They don’t keep score during the regular season.”
My eyes darted around the field and over the dads pulling beef jerky from their fanny packs. If Ashton Kutcher had a Punk’d crew there, I could not see them.
“No, of course they don’t,” I said.
She kept her eyes on the infield although I could tell she knew what I was about to ask.
“They keep score starting in the playoffs,” she said with a preemptive verbal strike. “That’s when things count.”
“Right, the playoffs,” I added. “Which teams make the playoffs?”
“All of them,” she replied.
***
Sparing children from all of life’s discomforts is akin to child abuse. It does not leave marks or draw blood but is far more damaging. Schools and parents aim to make children’s lives as boring as possible. It sounds crazy, but getting everything you want and winning all the time is boring. Parents demand an immediate audience because Johnny received a B+ on a test and it upset him in the worst way. What kind of monster gives a kid a B+? Kids unknowingly suffer the consequences. Children think it’s foolish to have second winners, and they cannot understand why you would play a game without keeping score. They know that somebody has to lose. Kids do not like to lose. Nobody does, but they recognize it as a risk of competition.
In addition, our terminology has gone to the absurd. Whether it’s a child or an adult, everyone has a condition. This condition causes them to be nervous, shy, inattentive, an asshole, whatever. The condition takes the fall for behavior that society deems unacceptable. Big Pharma seems to have a pill for every condition, even ones that do not exist. The lexicon reflects the use of fabricated disorders when frustrated teachers say a student has “processing issues” instead of calling him out on disruptive behavior. Nobody is fat. Nobody is stupid. Nobody is a loner. The true insanity comes when educators believe every child is a superstar—until they reach adulthood, when some become complete assholes. Special Johnny grew up to post a YouTube clip where he rammed a remote control up his ass because his mom cancelled his World of Warcraft account. Special Sally grew up to take her clothes off at the local strip club.
Imagine what Adolf Hitler’s grades and comments would have looked like if written by today’s teachers:
Adolf is a determined and resourceful young man poised to make a difference in the world. His charismatic leadership bonds our community together. Although Adolf can engage in not-so-pleasant behavior with the Semites, he plays nicely with the blue-eyed, blond children in our class. Adolf is adept at public speaking, and I enjoy watching him grow into a powerful young man.
Finally, schools and parents assassinate diversity of thought. It is crushed by conformity peddled through school spirit, religion, and patriotism. Although many teachers promote the individual and strive to create unique thinkers, the final solution is a mass of dull clones. The programming is well meaning for many, and I do not want to diminish the love educators have for their students, but in the end, they teach and reward conformity to the least creative kids. We are raising zombies.
***
Read this collection of essays however you see fit. There is no significance to their order that would prevent you from skipping around. The index card images that appear at the top of every essay are real and come from my years as a classroom teacher. The words of wisdom speak to the students’ experiences and my core beliefs about learning. Except for the blurring of names, the cards are unedited.
Like many writers and artists, I have lived through several career changes, including newspaper delivery boy, short-order cook, snobby record store clerk, geeky IT guy, and classroom teacher.
The stories from my personal and professional life are also real. Some have been enhanced or shortened to meet your lessening attention span, but they are all true. Again, I have changed names to protect myself from a lawsuit. The appendix is new and something I hope to grow in subsequent editions.
Enjoy the book, and be sure to email me kind words of encouragement and praise, even if I do not deserve it.
*A note on formatting:
The original print edition contained footnotes. However, ebooks no longer have fixed page numbers. Therefore, I have adapted and used parenthesis to represent the comments I would mumble under my breath if we were sitting together in a smoky bar.
Gay for Brett
I’m gay for Brett Favre. I suspect a lot of straight men who watch football are, too. After all, we watch guys in tights grabbing other men in tights as they lie on top of each other trying to get balls.
***
The Cleveland Plain Dealer published an article about the controversy surrounding a tax on soft drinks (soda to you East Coasters and pop to those of us in the Midwest). While I wholeheartedly despise the government telling me what I can do with my body through the use of taxation, the article addressed an alarming trend: childhood obesity.
According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, childhood obesity has risen from 5 percent in 1980 for kids aged twelve to nineteen to 17.6 percent in 2008. These may sound like numbers that do not make much of an impression, but consider this: The president hopes that the recession’s hold on the country is relenting given that unemployment is hovering around 10 percent. When it broke the double digits, the coverage was everywhere. Currently, almost 18 percent of our teenagers are obese. Not overweight, but fucking obese. Close to one in five. If we saw the same increase in unemployment as we did in childhood obesity, people would take notice.
While it’s difficult to pin down a specific cause for obesity, there are many contributing factors. Genetics play a role, but behavioral factors have a much greater impact. Genes have not changed much over thousands of years, but the rates of obesity have skyrocketed over the last three decades. The CDC identifies energy intake, physical activity, and sedentary behavior as key elements in creating childhood obesity, which quite often leads to adult obesity. Around 80 percent of obese children become obese adults, according to the CDC website.
Evidence is limited on specific foods or dietary patterns that contribute to excessive energy intake in children and teens. However, large portion sizes for food and beverages, eating meals away from home, frequent snacking on energy-dense foods and consuming beverages with added sugar are often hypothesized as contributing to excess energy intake of children and teens. In the area of consuming sugar-sweetened drinks, evidence is growing to suggest an association with weight gain in children and adolescents.
Consuming sugar-sweetened drinks may be associated with obesity because these drinks are high in calories. Children may not compensate at meals for the calories they have consumed in sugar-sweetened drinks, although this may vary by age. Also, liquid forms of energy may be less satiating than solid forms and lead to higher caloric intake.
As they say, it ain’t rocket science. Kids are eating more, doing less, and getting fat. Surprisingly, the CDC does not cite being a Trekkie or fourth-level Dungeon Master as factors for obesity, but they do consider those primary indicators of virginity.
Obese children and teens have been found to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), including high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, and abnormal glucose tolerance. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese children had at least one CVD
risk factor while 39% of obese children had two or more CVD risk factors.
-Asthma is a disease of the lungs in which the airways become blocked or narrowed causing breathing difficulty. Studies have identified an association between childhood obesity and asthma.
-Hepatic steatosis is the fatty degeneration of the liver caused by a high concentration of liver enzymes. Weight reduction causes liver enzymes to normalize.
-Sleep apnea is a less common complication of obesity for children and adolescents. Sleep apnea is a sleep-associated breathing disorder defined as the cessation of breathing during sleep that lasts for at least 10 seconds. Sleep apnea is characterized by loud snoring and labored breathing. During sleep apnea, oxygen levels in the blood can fall dramatically. One study estimated that sleep apnea occurs in about 7% of obese children.
-Type 2 diabetes is increasingly being reported among children and adolescents who are obese. While diabetes and glucose intolerance, a precursor of diabetes, are common health effects of adult obesity, only in recent years has Type 2 diabetes begun to emerge as a health-related problem among children and adolescents. Onset of diabetes in children and adolescents can result in advanced complications such as CVD and kidney failure.
