Authorpreneur Dashboard – Scott Davis
Apocalypse! A Guide to Survival
Humor & Entertainment
Coming Summer 2015! Scott's tongue-in-cheek guide to surviving the inevitable Apocalypse – whether it be Zombies, Aliens, Environmental Catastrophe, Science gone wrong, or Tea Partier's, Scott demonstrates simple ways you can be ready for the End!
Book Bubbles from Apocalypse! A Guide to Survival
RUN!!!!
When imagining the sorts of skills that will give one an advantage during an apocalypse, the list became rather long. Essential skills included familiarity with firearms, edged weapons, blunt weapons, medicine, engine repair, chemistry (for making bombs), and food gathering (Safeway and Kroger will be out of business!) At the very top of the list though, was RUNNING!
Guns, guns, guns!
Frankly, I'm pretty sure guns will only be useful for the first few days of an Apocalypse (or the inevitable Post-Apocalyptic Horror.) There's only so much ammo, after all, and little of it is standardized ... it will do you little good to come upon some gun-nut's stash of .45 ammo, if you're carrying a .357 hunting rifle, a 12-Gauge shotgun, or a 9mm Glock! You should really consider getting a Katana and learning Kendo – a gun is only so much metal when out of bullets, but a sword is a thing of beauty forever ...
Apocalyptic bang-bang ...
Coming this fall! My newest book Apocalypse! A Guide to Survival offers a tongue-in-cheek guide to surviving whatever horrific Apocalypse might happen – and the inevitable post-apocalyptic horror, of course!
Apocalyptic Explosions
Coming this Fall: Apocalypse! A Guide to Survival ... With all the various apocalyptic scenarios being bandied about, I began to wonder (while seriously drunk) whether there were steps that would be applicable to ALL apocalypses, be they traditional zombies, worldwide pandemics, global climate change – or the post-apocalyptic horror that would follow any of the above ...
Fit to fight ...
Coming Soon! Fall 2015! There's been lots and lots of emphasis on a Zombie Apocalypse - but it could be something else entirely: Global Pandemic, Alien Invasion, Science gone horribly wrong, or a take-over by Tea Partiers ... Whatever form the Apocalypse takes, it's a safe bet that running will be near the top of the survival skill set!
It may NOT be Zombies ...
Coming Soon, Summer of 2015!
A Tarot Guide
Religion & Spirituality
Incomplete manuscript of my guide to learning Tarot
Book Bubbles from A Tarot Guide
Tarot and Religion
When you take up a spiritual practice like Tarot, it behooves you to give some thought to how it works, what might be the dangers, and how, exactly, the practice fits into your spiritual life and believes.
My first reading
This was my first experience with Tarot, and greatly influenced my later practices.
Messed-Up!
Humor & Entertainment
Coming Soon! A riotous look at the history of man, from our hominid ancestors to our most recent attempts to mess up the Planet!
Book Bubbles from Messed-Up!
Evolution
Humanity is the first species we know of capable of transcending evolution. The Darwin awards are evidence.
Eastern Ideas
Very little (so far) has been said in the book about Eastern ideas ... very largely because I don't understand them. Here's why!
Religions and Science
This is very likely going to tick off both the spiritual part of my audience, and the scientific part. It can't be helped, because a HUGE amount of the confusion in this world is caused by the squabbling of these groups.
Religions, gods, and God
People really NEED to believe some things. What I've always found amazing is just how ready they are to believe something else, if someone charismatic enough tells them to!
Spartacus
When you think about it, slavery is pretty stupid: at any moment, your labor force might just rise up and kill you! ARMING slaves, and forcing them to fight one another to the death is the ultimate in stupidity – as Spartacus and his friends carefully explained to Rome.
Rome's Beginnings
The story of Romulus and Remus and how they founded Rome reads like a really badly written super hero origin story. Is there any truth to it? Who knows! Like all myths, this one probably has some kernels of truth – but to my mind, the only part of the story that sounds believable is the Rape of the Sabine women! It's easy to believe a brand new settlement might attract young men, and equally easy to believe that they'd resort to kidnapping and rape when they realized there weren't enough women to go around!
Farming
It's not difficult to imagine how farming began; someone buried some stuff, probably saving it for later, only to have it spring up as a mature plant. In the wake of this discovery, we can only imagine how many things got buried in the hopes of duplicating them – livestock comes to mind.
Mortality
Religion is the very oldest tradition of humanity, after the elementary technology of stone-chipping. Yet, religion itself couldn't just burgeon out of nothing: more than anything else, Religion has always been the answer to two fundamental questions. The first of these is "Where do I come from", and the second is, "where do I go after death". In order to even ASK those questions, some pretty heavy thought has to have already taken place! The concept of the Self, the realization that one's self didn't always exist, and that one day the self was going to perish, and just what the hell WAS death, anyway? Religion steps in about there ...
Jesus
Wow, am I gonna get it! Treating the arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection of Jesus as a comedy, is more likely than anything in the book to get me lynched – particularly here in Mississippi, where I live! The thing is, Jesus is the only person in the whole chapter who is NOT portrayed as a joke!
Moses
The story of Moses is usually one of the earliest Bible Stories that most kids learn. Wrapped-up in the Middle English of the King James Bible, it's a tale to inspire awe. A tale of the Might of God, wrenching the enslaved Jews from Egypt's hard-hearted Pharaoh. Couch the tale in modern English, treat the characters as real people rather than religious icon, and the story becomes a LOT more humorous!
Alex the Great
I've never really understood what the bid deal was about Alexander. It's true, he was a gifted battle leader, but his much vaunted empire was basically the already existing Persian Empire, with the addition of Greece. The Persian Empire had been stable and known peace for more than 200 years. Within 50 years of Alexander's conquest the whole region was fragmented and their civilization was pretty-well stamped out until the Romans showed up and forced THEIR civilization on them. Under the circumstances, I consider him Alexander the Not Really So Great.
Mortality
Religion is, at one and the same time, one of the most inspiring, uplifting, and bizarre achievements of the human mind – and it didn't come from OUR species, but the Neanderthal! A study of Neanderthal artifacts leads to the conclusion that they had nowhere near the manual dexterity of modern humans. A study of their vocal tracts strongly hints that, while they were certainly capable of language, it very likely was a much simpler form of language than any used by modern humans. Despite this, they somehow were able to come up with the preeminently human concept of an afterlife!
Nosy Neanderthals
We can tell a lot of things about the Neanderthal, just from their anatomy. They were short, barrel-chested, probably had some form of speech – though it would have been far different from what we call speech, today. We can also tell how long they lived (about 40 years, tops), we know the cared for their sick and injured, buried their dead with rituals, and probably were lacking in manual dexterity – this insight came from an examination of their tools, which really didn't advance much in the quarter-million years they were around. We also know that had really big noses.
Slings and Arrows
The sword and spear, while important to the progress of humanity, were nowhere NEAR as important as slings and bows! Human beings have been clubbing, stabbing, slinging, and shooting at things for at least 20,000 years, and in all that time, the single most awesomely successful weapon was the bow and arrow – closely followed by the sling. For the last 20,000 years, 19,800 of them have been dominated by the bow!
Apples and Oranges
Early barter was a process fraught with frustration: the simple fact that you had something to trade did not in any way guarantee that someone else would have something you wanted to trade for – and if they DID, there was no telling whether they'd be willing to trade what you needed, for what you had available to barter with. Uncivilized behaviors would often ensue.
Early Armor
We really don't know anything about how people came to use animal skins as clothing. We DO know, that once they started killing one another, they began using heavier clothing as a means of staving off death, and in time, this led to the development of what we would consider armor: a garment meant specifically for protection in battle. Sadly, the fact that it hadn't done much to prevent the death of the animal that donated it constituted a serious flaw in the very first armors.
Indolence
Our earliest ancestors quickly learned the value of mobility, when they basically ate everything there was to eat in a particular area, and found that the only prey left for the Leopards to go after was THEM!
A Stone's Throw
Don't imagine that the art of throwing rocks is in any way natural! You want some laughs? Go to YouTube and Search for 'Chimps vs. Fake Leopard'. You should find a short excerpt from a film made by Dutch Primate Researchers. They wanted to explore aggression in our nearest relative, the chimpanzee. The thing is, these creatures didn't evolve to use weapons, whether sticks or stones! A chimp is IMMENSELY more powerful than a man, and ought to be able to make short work of a leopard, if only they had the skills we humans spent a couple of million years developing!
Green Acres
The emergence of farming was almost certainly an accident – but, having caused plants to grow on command, one must wonder how many OTHER things early agriculturalists experimented on. In particular, I have to wonder whether anyone ever tried to raise livestock by burying cattle, horses, pics, and sheep.
Stoners and Boners
My book spends a fair amount of time lambasting religion. In the interest of equal treatment I spend nearly as much time lambasting Scientists! There are loads of Scientists that I hold in high respect, just as there are plenty of religious types that I admire. The exceptions are the squabbling mass of jerks who grow passionate about this or that utterly trivial Bible verse, or unusual scientific finding – sadly, like terrorists, they make a LOT more noise than less obsessed scientists, so it's really hard to ignore them!
Meat: it's what's for dinner!
You really just can't downplay the importance of meat in human evolution! It's not just a matter of the nutritive value of meat, though that's a powerful chunk of the equation. The thing is, hominids were really LOUSY predators! In order to regularly consume meat, they had to overcome their lack of carnivore teeth, their decidedly un-predatory senses, their lack of speed and coordination, and their lack of claws! THEN they had to learn, from scratch, behaviors that they had never evolved to perform: tracking, stalking, and killing. THEN they had to learn what to DO with the carcass – how to skin it, butcher it, how to cook the meat ... EVERYTHING involved in eating meat is COMPLETELY removed from any instinct those hominids possessed!
Extremity
I really don't have anything against Islam, any more than I have a problem with Christianity – I do have a problem with EXTREMITY, however. Every religion and political viewpoint has its extremists – and they almost always fit the exact same profile: 1) They believe THEY, and ONLY THEY, are right. 2) They believe no one else is even worth listening to. 3) They believe that they have a right to their beliefs – but no one else has a right to their own. 4)They usually believe it's perfectly ok to kill people who disagree with them. This is true of ISIS, The KKK, and the Westboro Baptist Church. Note that the last two are supposedly "Christian" organizations. So, if you think I'm anti-islamist, you'll also have to consider me anti-christian. I'm NOT, but you're entitled to your opinion – and no one will kill you for it!
