Category Archives: politics

Ben Jörgensen to narrate Locus Amoenus audiobook

Award-winning actor Ben Jorgensen will be reading the audiobook version of Victoria N. Alexander’s new novel Locus Amœnus, which is due to be released in hardcover at the end of April. The story is told by Hamlet, whose mother, a 9/11 widow, has recently married a corrupt bureaucrat named Claudius.

Beginning his acting career as the boy in Calvin Klein’s Obsession commercials directed by Richard Avedon, Ben Jorgensen’s credits include feature films, The Break with Martin Sheen and The Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio. He won Emmy and GLAD awards for his portrayal of the gay teen Kevin Sheffield in All My Children and also had a feature role in As the World Turns. His most recent theater credits include What Will People Think!?, a Strawberry festival finalist, A Season in the Congo at La Mama, Hamlet (as the ghost) and Trial and Treason in the lead role as President. He also wrote and acted in the original play Manny’s Last Stand, starring Austin Pendleton, which was chosen to open the Summer Strawberry festival in 2013. He is currently working on his own version of Hamlet as a blues Opera.

The audiobook will be available late summer. Order a hard cover edition of Locus Amœnus from Amazon at a 13% discount for a limited time. (Next week the discount will be 12% then 11%…)

Galley proofs for Locus Amoenus are in

The galleys (review copies) of Locus Amœnus came out today. Permanent, the publisher, will be sending them to Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly and various other trade review publications.

Locus Amœnus will be out very, very soon. You can pre-order from Permanent or from Amazon at a 15% discount.

How to pronounce Locus Amœnus, the title of my new novel

Okay, so maybe picking a Latin phrase, Locus Amœnus, with its weird spelling, for the title of my latest novel might make it a little hard for people to recommend it to friends. (If you order now from Amazon you can get 13% off.) Locus amœnus can be pronounced in English, Low cuss a men us, with stresses on “low” and “a.” In Latin you want to make “amœnus” sound more like “a moin us.” I have also heard amœnus pronounced “uh mean us.” Any of these are acceptable. This is America, after all.

Locus Amœnus means “pleasant location,” and it’s used in poetry to describe a restful place where nothing bad ever happens. It also happens to be the scene of the crime in many of Ovid’s tales, an idea which fits well with the theme of my novel. I couldn’t pass up this phrase for my title, despite its awkwardness, because the story is set in the rural upstate town of Amenia, a would-be pastoral paradise where I own a sheep farm. The name “Amenia” of course comes from the same Latin word as amœnus. Amenia is, by the way, variously pronounced as “Uh many uh” or “Uh meanie uh.”

Cover for Locus Amœnus

Here is the final cover design for Locus Amœnus, which will be released at the end of April. The novel is a dark comedy/tragedy, a revision of Hamlet set in rural upstate New York in 2009. I requested a graffiti font for the tile to add a bit of irreverence to contrast the pastoral scene. The designer chose to use a bullet-holes-and-blood font to make it look like a thriller. The story does involve an old murder, two accidental deaths, some bloody noses and an allusion to Shakespeare’s heap of bodies at the end of his play, but no one actually gets a mob-style hit in Locus Amœnus.

You can pre-order from Permanent or from Amazon at a 14% discount.

New scientific study reveals that GMOs are safe

The Central Organization for Regulating Unilateral Protection Today (CORUPT)* released its findings of ten-year study on the effects of genetically modified organisms (GMO) on human health.

A survey, conducted from 2004-2014 of 134,567 U.S. households, found that 98% of the people reported no ill-health effects due to GMO food consumption during the ten-year period. The survey contained ten multiple-choice questions asking participants to report any side-effects experienced directly after consuming any of the five different GMO foods included in the survey. The survey was conducted by land-line telephones between 9AM and 5PM. The households included in the survey were chosen at random from local white pages in Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

A biased detractor, Harland Loveland, from the Organic Small Farmers Association, cast doubt on the findings, noting that the participants were probably not informed on the issue.

Richard Peters, head of the Central Organization, notes “although most of the people surveyed claimed they had no knowledge of whether or not GMOs were contained in the food they were eating, since most foods do contain GMOs, it’s safe to say that they were consuming nothing but GMO foods. So our findings, that GMO food consumption results in no ill-effects as per the survey findings, remains unchallenged.”

Peters opposes legislation requiring food manufacturers to label GMO products. He maintains that consumers may be “frightened” and “confused” by the information. “We don’t want that to happen,” Peters stated.

James Weasal, head of Marketing for the Industrial Foods Association, optimistically notes that the GMO issue “is just a marketing problem. If this unnecessary and potentially harmful legislation is allowed to go through, we will address the problem head on. We are already developing an exciting campaign with fun and eye-catching labels that say, “GMO Proud,” and “100% pure American GMO,” or “33-percent more GMO, Free” to stress the positivity of GMO foods. As long as consumers see GMO foods in a positive light, we can safely avoid any problems this unnecessary and potentially dangerous legislation could cause.”

-VNA, author of Locus Amoenus

*funded by Wall Street Democrats for Obama (WSDO).

Vegetable Oil: a DiY solution to fossil fuel pollution

The fossil fuel industry has an enormous impact on politics, the economy, and our health. This pollution Goliath is just too powerful to fight with government regulations. Take matters into your own hands and put vegetable oil in your fuel tank.

Electric cars will also be a good green choice some day. Unfortunately 44 percent of electricity is generated at coal-burning plants. The new construction of wind farms and run-of-the-river hydroelectric dams to power our super high-efficiency electric cars should be part of our long-term green energy strategy, but such projects require huge start-up funds and massive political support. People who want to help fight environmental pollution and disentangle our politics from the Middle East now — with the technology that is currently available — can run their diesel vehicles on vegetable oil.

Although burning vegetable oil does release carbon into the air, this carbon is already part of a natural cycle of plants taking in CO2 from the air and releasing oxygen. When plants decay, the stored carbon is released back into the environment. Burning vegetable oil does not add more carbon into the atmosphere than is already part of the available carbon constantly being recycled. In contrast, the carbon in fossil fuels is brought up from deep below the surface and added to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Continue reading →

Homeschooling: A DiY Alternative to Public Education

Top universities actively recruit homeschooled applicants. On average, they test 37 percent above public and private school students and tend to be better prepared for life, career and college. Is it time to rethink our educational system?

When public education was established in the U.S. back in the 19th century, cost efficiency was undoubtedly a primary concern and a main motivating factor. A dozen children could be educated by a single well-qualified teacher for far less than the cost of hiring a private tutor for each family. Today the average cost of education in U.S. public schools is about $12,300 per student per school year. Private school can cost anywhere from $6,000-$50,000 per student per school year. Much of this money goes toward overhead, administration, transportation, insurance, and fringe benefits, not toward teachers’ salaries. In 2014, over 50 percent of families with children in public school were classified as “low income,” e.g. under $37,000 for family of four, under $24,000 for family of two. If the average U.S. family has two children, the cost of educating these children is more than half the family’s entire income. Continue reading →

Tired of signing petitions? Read my new do-it-yourself-political-change series

While the world waits for corrupt politicians to pass legislation against political corruption, we can start voting with our dollars to help decentralize and diminish the political-economic powers that control us.

Every Thursday, Digital Journal readers will find a new article in the Do-It-Yourself Political Change series, describing some simple steps that we can take now to be the change we wish to see in the world. If we alter our consumption habits, we stop feeding the beast, and we can spend our time and energy building our local communities and doing the things for one another that the Federal government has promised, but failed, to do, such as clean up the environment, improve education, encourage small businesses, and alleviate extreme economic disparity. We may not have any power as voters (especially if we are given a choice between Hillary and Jeb for U.S. President in 2016), but we do have power as consumers and tax-payers. Our leaders, Right and Left, have abandoned us or been beguiled or blackmailed, and it’s up to us now straighten things out. Read more

Victoria N. Alexander is the author of Locus Amoenus, a 9/11 political satire novel about the decline of America.

Permanent announces 2015 titles

The Permanent Press, which will be publishing my novel Locus Amœnus, announced its 2015 titles today. I am pleased to find myself among some very talented writers. I am also happy to discover that several of the sixteen novels on the list have anti-war themes; one takes on drone warfare, another economic disparity; a couple of them are pretty quirky; one even invokes Hamlet, as mine does.

I like the company.

From the catalogue:

LOCUS AMŒNUS by Victoria N. Alexander Continue reading →

Locus Amœnus on “No Lies Radio”

I just sent my manuscript off to the publisher a week ago, and, as luck would have it, I got a call from Andrew Steele, host of No Lies Radio, asking me to do an interview on the theme of the book.

The program will air Thursday, January 23, 2014

Here’s a summary of the story: In this dark comedy, a 9/11 widow and her son, Hamlet, have retreated from Brooklyn to the idyllic rural countryside upstate, where for nearly eight years they have run a sustainable farm. Unfortunately their outrageously obese neighbors, who prefer the starchy products of industrial agriculture, shun their elitist ways (recycling, eating healthy, reading). Hamlet, who is now 18, is beginning to suspect that something is rotten in the United States of America, when health, happiness and freedom are traded for cheap Walmart goods, Zoloft, endless war, core curriculum, and environmental degradation. He becomes very depressed when, on the very day of the 8th anniversary of his father’s death, his mother marries a horrid, boring bureaucrat named Claudius. Things get even more depressing for Hamlet when his friend Horatio, a conspiracy theorist, claims Claudius is a fraud. The deceptions, spying, corruption, will ultimately lead, as in Shakespeare’s play, to tragedy.
Continue reading →