With ten slender days until one of the most important elections in our country's history, I can't resist throwing a little love at my man, Senator Barack Obama. There's not a lot to say that hasn't been uttered ad infinitum by now, but there are a couple of points that haven't received the attention they should.

One of the most ridiculous charges that keeps getting leveled against Obama is that he has never stood up to the power within his own party, that he's just a party-liner. I don't suppose it would be politically clever for the senator's campaign to use this argument, but allow me to remind y'all that he whupped a certain Clinton's butt in the primary. I don't point this out with any disrespect for Senator Clinton (well, okay, maybe a little), but with great admiration for the honorable and formidable campaign Obama has run. So let's please add this little footnote to his leadership qualifications, shall we?

Another thing that drives me crazy is the rampant pessimism in this country. Yes, we're in some kind of global financial predicament that no one seems to fully understand but that appears mostly to be the fault of Alan Greenspan. Things might even get worse before they get better, But is it sacrilegious to contend that crises can also be opportunities? That tragedy can give rise to nobility? We've seen the opposite in the years following September 11, 2001. It was one of the most grievous days in American history, and yet it presented us with an opportunity to unite our allies around a common cause and re-evaluate our position in the world. Instead, the Bush administration chose to go it alone with a my-way-or-the-highway approach to foreign policy and a laissez-faire approach to all things domestic (including natural disasters) that have just about run us out of friends and credibility. Sadly, many of our countrymen fell in line with this ill-conceived reaction to 9/11.

What I'm getting at here, in my happily clumsy fashion, is that Obama has something we desperately need. You can call it rhetoric or a way with words. You can try to write him off as a giver of good speeches. But although it's obvious there's far more to the Illinois senator than a knack for language, my passion is aroused more by the fact that some are so eager to dismiss his eloquence in the first place. With his words he inspires people, and that, it seems to me, is at the very core of strong leadership. And Leadership is what we need if we want to turn the corner on economic peril and civic apathy in this country.

Oh, and may I just take a moment to remind you that Obama voted against the war in Iraq? Thank you.

I quake with bated breath to think that all the kids in the United States who have grown up under Bush—expecting nothing from their nation's leadership but incompetence, fear mongering, and languid prevarication—may soon be watching the bar as it rises to heights previously unimagined by them. Maybe even the more open minded among the Republican apologists will come to see that they've been voting against their best interests for far too long—those without gobs of money, that is. Let's turn this ship around, people! It could be a long time before another Barack Obama comes along. Worse, when he or she does, it could be too late to matter.

Ah, The Midnight Meat Train. I'm late jumping into the fray on this one, but better late than never. Lion's Gate has done some good work on horror films, but their lack of marketing and distribution of the latest Clive Barker film is a real head scratcher. First, you've got Clive's name attached to it. Plus, some of his paintings appear in the film. And it's based on one of his most popular short stories. In other words, there was serious money to be made by putting this thing on as many screens as possible, it seems to me. Did it ever occur to them to try something like, "From the man who brought you Hellraiser ..."?

After driving twenty miles to see Meat Train in the only theater showing it in the greater Seattle area, I was left more perplexed than ever by the lack of attention given to this film by the Lion's Gate machine. Meat Train, it turns out, isn't just good. It's a major horror film, one of the best in the last ten years. From casting, to direction, to script, the movie more or less hums along on its uniquely suspenseful track until its shocking conclusion.

It's not a perfect picture. For instance, it looked to me as though every drop of blood—and there is a lot of blood—was computer generated, which hurt the look of a few scenes. Also, too much of the violence happened on screen, which killed the effectiveness of some of the bloodshed. There's a balancing act to working with such extreme subject matter, and director Ryuhei Kitamura stumbles once or twice. But such flaws really only serve to point out the overall power of the movie.

The title, I suppose, is a little problematic. But if you've read the story, you know how apt it is. It's a pulpy title that makes it easy to believe, in the beginning, that you're reading nothing more than a serial-killer tale, which was a very popular sub-genre when Clive wrote Meat Train. But the deeper you get pulled into the narrative, the more apparent it becomes that there's more to the title than meets the eye.

If the suits of Hollywood understood the subtleties of art, they wouldn't let a title like The Midnight Meat Train scare them off. But, having an unshakable faith in the rampant stupidity of Tinsel Town's power brokers, I don't find it unlikely that the film's title prejudiced the corporate slobs against the project from the outset. They probably didn't even care enough to consider changing it. In fact, it seems pretty clear that Lion's Gate's only interest in Meat Train is to pile up as many DVD dollars as they can from something they can't imagine has any kind of real audience. Hence the limited run in discount theaters only.

May Mahogany haunt their dreams!

Stuart Gordon's adaptation of Poe's "The Black Cat" is the only episode I've seen from the second season of Masters of Horror, so I have no way of ranking it among the other offerings. But as a stand-alone film, it's pure Gordon all the way. If I remember correctly, Jeffrey Combs was slated to star in Gordon's Dreams in the Witch-House from the first season of Masters. Well, we couldn't have hoped for a better stroke of casting genius than Ezra Godden for that role, but it's good to see that the masterful Combs made it into the new film.

You see, there's a twist to Gordon and co-writer Dennis Paoli's version of the Poe classic: the master of the macabre is himself the main character—played to nerve-fraying effect by Combs. He gives the impression that it's a role he was born to inhabit. Not that Poe would be particularly pleased with the psychotic characterization, perhaps, but he's not around to complain. In truth, he'd probably have a good laugh over the whole thing. But one of the really interesting things about this film is that it's never exactly clear whether the portrayal of Poe was meant to be sympathetic or derogatory. Maybe Gordon has found a kind of ambiguous middle ground.

"The Black Cat" remains, for me, one of the scariest tales ever penned, and Gordon intones many of the right notes in his daring adaptation. All doubts have been put to rest, in other words, as to whether the director of some of the very best Lovecraft adaptions can apply the same steady hand to the work of Poe. He can, and he has.

It's difficult not to think back to Roger Corman's 1962 film version of Poe's nasty little story (one of the vignettes in the three-part Tales of Terror) and the brilliant touches of humor and charm brought to it by Peter Lorre's and Vincent Price's performances, as well as the innovative script by Richard Matheson, which cleverly weaves the plots of "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado" together. Gordon's "Black Cat" is a much more somber affair, but there's still a kind of playfulness in the decision to give Poe the lead role, so to speak. And let's face it, there's plenty of room for dramatic exaggeration, if not outright parody, in the melancholy romanticism of Poe—or at least Poe as he's remembered. Gordon leaves few stones unturned in this regard.

The issue of Doorways magazine in which a story of mine appears alongside the fiction of Clive Barker and Bentley Little has been available for purchase since late summer, and it's a beauty. "The Tree Mumblers" is a very short tale, but it seems to have hit the mark. And it's in some very good company—even disregarding Mr. Barker and Mr. Little, which one is never encouraged to do.

I'm not sure to what extent size matters when it comes to short fiction, but I am looking forward to the next milestone in my nascent writing career, which is the publication of some short fiction at the lengthier end of the spectrum. "Such Bitter Business," published in the second Potter's Field anthology from Sam's Dot Publishing, was a step in this direction, but the forthcoming "Decisions, Decisions" and "The Singular Talent of Nisqually Joe" will be the lengthiest pieces I've published so far. Both are due out this year, in The Willows and Aoife's Kiss, respectively.

I guess I bring up all this business about length because it interests me that some ideas want more stage time than others from the beginning. Flash fiction presents its own challenges, and I hope to write a lot more of it. But longer works also have their own unique demands. And maybe word counts and so forth are at the forefront of my mind because lately I've been clocking in a lot of hours on my first novel, a form that adds a whole new dimension of complication to the fiction-writing process.

Speaking of that novel in waiting, I'll be work-shopping it next January at the illustrious Borderlands Press Bootcamp, led by no less a personage than Thomas F. Monteleone. I look forward to being verbally flogged and generally schooled by His Eminence.

And that's all I've got for now.