Undulant Fever

Forty Years Ago Today

2012-01-23T12:33:00.002-07:00

I was doing a walking patrol at work in the early AM this morning, with jacket and ear mitts and gloves and knit cap on, thinking that if the weather got much colder in coming days I'd have to dig out my old woolen long underwear left from when I was in the Army.

And that was when I realized that exactly forty years ago was my first day of that three-year enlistment in the US Army. January 23rd, 1972.

It was an interesting three years. I had some of the best experiences of my life, and some of the worst. All my service was at Stateside posts. I never saw combat. But there was one period when things got stressful enough I would have jumped at a chance to go to Vietnam rather than stay where I was. (I got lucky, and ended up in a different company at the same post, with different people and doing a different job, and did pretty well the rest of my enlistment.)

The deep tint on my rose-colored glasses faded a lot during those three years. I met a lot of good men, and some outstanding ones. But it was also the first time in my life that I met, and lived and worked with, bad men, men who would probably have ended up in prison in civilian life. Some of whom were in the Army because enlisting was offered as an alternative to prison, and a few who went to military prison in the end anyway.

But the worst was learning that... well, when I went into the Army it was with the belief that officers were the cream of the crop. They were smarter and wiser and better trained for and more suited to leadership than us ordinary grunts. And you know what? Some of them were. And then I learned, from harsh experience (this was part of that very bad period I mentioned above), that there were some officers who put the welfare of their careers ahead of the welfare of their men. Hell, ahead of the lives of their men! It was... disheartening.

But overall... overall, it was a positive experience. I learned I had more strengths and abilities than I'd thought. That was a good thing. And I learned what some of my weaknesses were, and are. And that was a good thing, too.

For years after getting back into civilian life, I had the thought in the back of my head that if things got rough in the real world, I could re-enlist in the military. Sometimes that seemed like a tempting thought. And then one day I found myself taken quite aback when I realized, "Holy crap, I'm too old to re-enlist anymore!"

(photo above from Library of Congress, via Flickr Commons)

Changes In The Works

2012-01-21T14:36:00.001-07:00

For the last three years, I've been working as a security guard ("security officer" if you want to make it sound a little more important) during graveyard shifts at an upscale shopping/office development in Scottsdale. The company I technically work for had a contract to provide security there, but for most of those three years the actual management of the development has said they intend to move to providing their own in-house security team "in a few months".

Much to almost everyone's surprise, that's actually going to finally happen, on February 5th. Most of the current security personnel are being offered the opportunity to be hired on as part of the "new" security team, but a sizeable proportion (including me) have decided to pass on that offer and try to find new positions elsewhere.

(At times over those three years, there have been issues with the workplace that have left me feeling very frustrated and unsatisified. Particularly recently, and I'd already told my shift supervisor earlier this month that if things didn't change soon I'd be leaving. The move to an in-house team isn't a move that will solve those problems, so....)

I'll probably be offered a position at one of the other properties my company has contracts with, but it may be a while before an opening becomes available. So in the meantime, I'm already starting to send out resumes and applications to other companies and places. With three-plus years experience and some good references, I should be able to land somewhere fairly soon. It would also be nice to end up someplace with better pay and/or better hours and/or a shorter commute and/or a better working environment.

I'm also better off than some of the people who are leaving, because I have my retirement checks from the Postal Service and Hilde's disability that cover most of our monthly expenses. So the idea of being without that extra paycheck for a while isn't as scary as it might be otherwise.

(No, I won't actually work for books. But I'm willing to work for that extra paycheck that allows Hilde and me to buy books. You can get the t-shirt that image comes from at the Unshelved store.)

Weird referring sites

2012-01-08T20:39:00.003-07:00

One of the things Blogger Stats keeps track of is the "referring sites" where people can find links to various posts here.

One of the recent such was a hemorrhoid treatment site in France. Say what? To the best of my memory, I've never mentioned hemorrhoids here, ever.Or ever had any thoughts to write such a post.

But hey, if you have to mention hemorrhoids:

Writing: the middle is the beginning

2012-01-06T17:56:00.001-07:00

More on my renewed efforts at writing. Here's a brief excerpt from the current work-in-progress, tentatively titled "Alice In Zero":

"There are no wonders in this world," said the Zero King.

"Oh, sir," Alice replied. "I believe you are much mistaken. I have met a cat that consumes itself in fire, and is born again. I have spoken with eagles, and they have spoken back. I have sailed with pirates on a sea of mirrors, and fished for the reflections of shadows. I have outplayed the Crooked Man with his own deck of cards, and won an Unbreakable Promise. And, sir, you yourself live in a palace carved from a unicorn's horn a full mile high."

(Not, as is probably obvious, from the beginning of the story. But sometimes you start writing from the middle, or the end, to know where the beginning will come from. I know, now, where the beginning begins, and where the end will end.)

Resolutions

2012-01-04T22:16:00.003-07:00

Like most people, any New Year's Resolutions I make tend to be better in concept than execution.

But the Ur-resolution, which would pretty much apply to any more specifc resolution I'd make, would be to try and become more organized and effective. To Get Shit Done, Quicker. Like, oh, writing and posting about New Year's Resolutions on January 1st, when it would be most pertinent.

Two specific goals I'd like to accomplish this year:

To get back into fiction writing. I'm trying to write a little bit every day, hopefully several pages, but something, even if only a paragraph. (So far, so good, on that.)
Get my backyard garden reestablished. At present, it's devolved back into bare dirt, weeds, and grass.

One of the big time and energy commitments the past several years has been acting as personal representative (aka executor) for our friend Anne's estate. That should finally be resolved and concluded by sometime in the spring, which will be a considerable relief.

(Anne died without a will. Write a friggin' will, people! Don't make the whole mess of dying even messier for your family and friends.)

The Santorum Surge

2012-01-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

In the last few days leading up to the Iowa presidential caucuses, candidate Rick Santorum has had a sudden surge in his support. One news source accredited this to his "impeccable conservative credentials." As a public service, I thought I'd translate that bit of Newspeak into plain English:

"impeccable": bat-shit crazy
"conservative": bat-shit crazy
"credentials": bat-shit crazy

You're welcome.

Christmas Connections

2011-12-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Sixty-nine years ago in 1942, these American soldiers in the South Pacific were celebrating a makeshift Christmas, with a "tree" decorated with bits of surgical cotton and cigarette cartons.

About that same time, my father would have been on a ship, also somewhere in the South Pacific. He rarely spoke about his service in WWII, but I wonder if he and his shipmates would have tried to do something similar for their own Christmas celebration away from home. (My mom once pointed ut to me that, since my dad's shipboard duty was running water purification systems that involved fire and steam and long pieces of pipe and tubing, he very likely knew how to make moonshine. Not that he ever made any for us kids, to be sure....)

I don't know if any of the soldiers in the photo above died in WWII. I know that my father saw combat, and saw shipmates die. (He never talked about it. Never. But among his military mementoes were some photos of ships he had served on, and that were sunk in combat.)

Thirty-eight years later, my father would die on Christmas Day 1980. That was not a good Christmas.

Shift to today, a family get together at a cousin's. My mom and brothers, assorted cousins, with spouses and children and grandchildren.

This was a good occasion, for the most part, but with an underlying bit of melancholy for me. Seeing my family reminds me just how old we're all getting. My brothers are all grey- or white-haired now. My mother seems thinner and more frail every time I see her. And the reason why so many more than usual of the relations got together this year was because the cousin who was hosting the party had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor several months ago. (She's had surgery, and is undergoing chemo, and actually looks pretty good, considering. But still, the chance that she'll be around for next year's Christmas is a lot less than it seemed four months ago.

I don't like this getting old. It kinda sucks.

But then again, the youngest person there was a grand-niece, an oh-so-cute toddler with a head of curly hair so flamingly red it would make the entire Weasley clan gnash their teeth in envy. Someone with a long life still ahead of her. Someone to feel positive about.

Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Future. Dickens got it right.

More Tyr

2011-12-23T17:11:00.001-07:00

Tyr (15 weeks)

The new kitten is losing the fluffy and starting to grow into a cat.

Catbus

2011-12-17T18:25:00.001-07:00

MY FRIEND TOTORO is a cool movie. But the coolest thing in it was the Catbus. Which is why I've had this sitting by my printer for several years:

Catbus

Cute and charming and whimsical. Great fun.

BUT... in that alternate universe where Spock has a beard, the movie is titled MY FIEND TOTORO, and instead of the Catbus, you have...

SHARKBUS!

Well, that will certainly give one nightmares. We need something to soothe our minds and let us sleep at night again. We need something... even cuter and more charming and more whimsical than the Catbus. But what could that be? What could that possibly be?

There's only one thing cuter and more charming and more whimsical than a Catbus. And that thing is...

CATBUS KITTENS!!!

The Catbus kittens are the work of Hwei Lin Lim, a Malaysian artist/illustrator who posts on Flickr as lalagepon . Some very nice work there.

Today In Headlines

2011-12-15T13:24:00.001-07:00

From the Phoenix New Times website:

This Cat Is Now Dead

2011-12-06T15:43:00.001-07:00

Rikkus

I wrote about Rikkus earlier this year, in a post titled "This Cat Is Not Dead". In that post, I mentioned Rikkus had been in poor health and we'd come close to having him put to sleep. But I'd realized almost at the last minute that adjusting his thyroid medication might make him a little better again.

And it did, until just recently. He gained back about a pound and a bit of weight. Still very thin and frail, nothing like he'd been at his peak of health, when he'd been a stocky and robust cat who could hold his own against other cats. But... okay. He ate, he slept, he purred when he was petted. He seemed to be okay with his life.

About a week ago, he stopped eating. Completely. He'd sometimes been picky about which flavor of canned food was being served him. When all else failed, though, he'd always eat tuna. Not that nasty, smelly, reddish cat food tuna made from scraps and ends, but the good stuff, the Human's Tuna. He'd never turn that down.

Except now he even turned away from the good tuna. I hoped maybe he'd get his appetite back in a few days, and offered him bites of various cat food flavors several times each day. But he showed no interest, and it became clear that he wasn't just sick, he was getting ready to die.

He never seemed in distress or pain. He was just... waiting. Occasionally he'd totter over to the water bowl and get a few licks of water, but that was all. He still purred when he was petted. That pound of weight he'd regained went away, and more. He was growing visibly weaker. He still purred faintly when I stroked him about 10:00 this morning, but it was clear the end was near. When I woke up about 1:30 this afternoon, he'd finally passed away sometime in those few hours.

We gave him a few extra years by taking him in when his previous owners abandoned him and moved away. We gave him a few extra months when we adjusted his medications earlier this year. He was never a snuggler or a lap cat. But he was a good old guy. I liked him, and I'm going to miss him.

At TusCon

2011-11-20T14:53:00.001-07:00

TusCon, where we went last weekend, is a small but friendly SF convention held each year in, duh, Tucson. We tend to see and catch up with old friends there.

This is Curt Stubbs, from back in the way early days (the 70's) of Phoenix fandom. Curt moved to Tucson in the 80's. Besides the latest year's worth of medical problems to report, Curt had the better news that he'd been working on poetry again, and had read a piece on local radio.

He also has an awesome beard, the bastard. (Not that I'm BITTER, y'know, or OBSESSIVE, y'know, about having to stay clean-shaven for work the last few years.)

We also saw Jennifer Roberson again for the first time in a few years. Jennifer had moved to Tucson since we'd last spoke, and was multitasking, hitting both TusCon in her career as an SF/Fantasy writer, and a major dog show in her capacity as a Corgi breeder. This is Jennifer with Gabby, one of her newest Corgis:

Gabby was named after Gabrielle Giffords, being born a week after the shooting last January. In evidence that Everything Is Connected, Curt had been in hospital (a MRSA infection in his foot) the day of the shooting, and was one of the ICU patients hurriedly transferred to a regular ward to make room for some of the shooting victims.

We also saw Tom Watson, for the first time in about twenty years, at TusCon. Tom had been one of the members of a writers' workshop back in the 80's, along with Jennifer, Hilde and me, Mike Stackpole, and Liz Danforth. He's gotten back to writing again (unemployment can do that to you), which is good. (Tom was, I think, the member of the workshop who was actually making the steadiest income from writing at the time, but it was non-fiction for pet industry trade journals.)

I was struck, at TusCon, both by how many young people (late teens, early 20's) were in attendance, and by how our own generation of fans is (phrasing it politely) "greying". Curt was using a walker, Jim Webbert was using a walker, and Jan Lockett was not only using a walker but had a litany of health issues and crisises from this last year that had us amazed she was still alive. (She actually came to the convention from the rehab hospital where she's still recovering from the latest crisis.) Made Hilde and me feel we've been pretty lucky this last year. (Although the con suite had a large mirror on one wall, and I kept being taken aback when I kept seeing an Old Guy looking back at me whenever my eyes drifted in that direction.)

First Look: Tyr

2011-11-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

After Gremlin's death earlier this year, we started looking into the possibility of getting another Siamese. So we stopped in Casa Grande on our way to TusCon Friday where the very nice woman who operates Siam Moon Cattery showed us her newest purchase-ready litter. We'd already seen photos of the litter's kittens online, so our stop was to decide which of the two male Sealpoints we would pick. This little guy turned out to be the one; we picked him up Sunday on our way home. We've already named him Tyr.

posted from Bloggeroid

My Downtown Adventure

2011-11-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

I got asked last weekend to do a fill-in shift at a different property from where I usually do Security work. So I ended up working Saturday afternoon and evening at Cityscape, a fancy new office & shopping development smack in the heart of downtown Phoenix.

(I usually try to avoid extra shifts, but the Security Director at Cityscape had been an easy-to-get-along-with Acting Director at my workplace for a while, and someone walking out on him at Cityscape without warning put him in a bind to fill the shift. So, hey.) (The extra pay will also make up for the day's work I lost to my concussion-based ER visit a few weeks ago.)

Cityscape is very spiffy and upscale, part of the ongoing effort to refurbish and reinvigorate downtown Phoenix, which used to have the reputation for having no life beyond office workers at all, and for being dead, dead, deader-than-dead at night and on weekends. At some of the early Phoenix SF conventions that were held at downtown hotels in the 1980's, the convention attendees pretty much had the downtown sidewalks to themselves for the weekend. Definitely more lively now than then, though a large part of this is from the sports venues built downtown (basketball arena and baseball stadium), which definitely aren't my cup of tea.

But what actually piqued my interest the most working downtown was finding that Cityscape was built directly across the street from the Luhrs Tower.

The Luhrs Tower is a fabulous Art Deco building, one of the first skyscrapers built in Phoenix, back in 1929. Here's an article on its history, and here's a photo:

Every time I've seen the Luhrs Tower, I've said to myself, "Cool. Very, very cool." At Cityscape, I saw the upper stories of the Luhrs showing themselves behind a section of the Cityscape structures. I would have liked to have taken a photo from that viewpoint, because it would have contrasted the ornate richness of the Luhrs Tower with the relative blandness of Cityscape's buildings. (They may be new, they may be spiffy and clean, but Cityscape, when you come down to it, is just another set of buildings from the "steel-&-glass" school of architecture. Meh.)

(A photo of Cityscape is included in the set of High Dynamic Range photos of downtown Phoenix buildings where I found the Luhrs photo above. Full article here.)

Unfortunately, even though I have a semi-adequate camera built into my cell phone, Cityscape is yet another place with one of those bothersome "no photography" policies. And I didn't think it would be ethical to violate that policy while I was in uniform and supposed to be enforcing it.

(I like the part of Security work where I'm doing good deeds, helping people out, solving problems. But part of the job sometimes feels like being a High School Hall Monitor, enforcing policies and rules that mostly just annoy people. But the "no photography" rule is the one that has me scratching my head in puzzlement the most. The developers spend millions and millions of dollars trying to make their properties photogenic, and then they say "no photos"? Since I usually work graveyard shifts, I don't have to do it too often, but when I have to ask someone to not take or to stop taking photos, I feel embarassed and stupid.)

Welcome To The Wonderful World Of Concussion

2011-10-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

I said hello to The Wonderful World Of Concussion yesterday afternoon, spending an evening in the ER.

When I slipped on the wet floor ("Incontinent Dog" will be the name of my next rock band*), I at first thought I'd only landed on my butt, which hurt a lot. But my head felt like it should be puffy and swollen on the left side, only it wasn't; but it felt like it was. And the lights seemed bright, a lot brighter than normal. And my thinking was foggy and slow.

All that (wrong signals from the nervous system, overly bright lights, half-speed thinking) made me think (slowly) that I might have hit my head in the fall too. But I didn't remember hitting my head, which was yet another reason to worry.

So I had one of our housemates drive me over to the Mayo Hospital ER. (We have another hospital and ER less than a mile from our house, but my primary doctor is with Mayo, plus Mayo's ER has a lot less traffic and can usually get you in and out in a few hours, whereas the closer hospital usually has a minimum wait time of about eight hours. The ten-mile difference is worth it.)

While waiting for examination and a cat scan, it was interesting to see how my mind was working. Idle thoughts, "daydreaming", were much more like actual night dreams, going off in odd little unexpected directions. The name "Esme Savage" popped into my mind at one point, for absolutely unknown reasons; it'd be a good character name for a story, though, so I might use it someday.

Cat scan came out okay, so I got diagnosed with a mild concussion and basically told to take it easy for a few days. Called off from work, slept quite a bit last night. Doing better today.

*(I'm growing increasingly frustrated by our dog's bladder problems, which have been going on for months and have had only temporary abatements with antibiotics and other medications. The latest round of antibiotics seemed to be helping again, but in the last few days... twice more just today. I'm about ready to scream. At the veterinarian, not the dog.)

Fashion Captain

2011-10-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Occupy Phoenix, 10/15/2011

2011-10-16T14:13:00.002-07:00

I wasn't able to make it to the Occupy Phoenix event yesterday, but Flickr member Ronald Morrison posted a large photo-set at Flickr. With permission, some of his photos below:

Full set of Morrison's Occupy Phoenix photos here. Looks like it was a pretty peaceful event. Well, yeah, but then there were these jerks:

These are some of the "Border Guards" group who showed up, ostensibly to "protect everyone". Yeah, right. You not only show up with semi-automatic weapons at a protest that specifically emphasizes non-violence, you bring your friggin' pit bull with you? Give me a break.

What these guys show up for isn't protection or protest. They show up for intimidation. They show up because it's fun to make people nervous, it's fun to make people afraid. They show up to display their manly macho manliness. They show up because it makes their little tiny dicks hard.

Those aren't military uniforms they're wearing. Those are fetish costumes. They couldn't be more obvious if they were wearing ballgags, leather harnesses, and butt plugs.

Go back to to the border, so-called Border Guards. You're over a hundred miles off-course. But then, that's pretty much a description of your entire life, isn't it?

UPDATE: After posting the above, I found an updated timeline for Occupy Phoenix at Downtown Devil . Apparently police moved in late last night and arrested about 40 protesters who were refusing to leave Hance Park. One person pepper-sprayed, but overall still seems to have been mostly non-violent.

Recent Cell-Phone Photos

2011-10-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Sethra, in bean-bag mode:

Mineral deposits on the side of a commercial A/C unit. ("Hard water? We gotcher hard water right here!"):

posted from Bloggeroid

More for Halloween: Benefactor Cellars

2011-10-16T01:47:00.000-07:00

Seen in the wine aisle at the local Trader Joe's:

And more, for those who want to get boozed up at Halloween. For beer enthusiasts, Reaper Ale puts out an entire line of rigorously brewed beers:

And in the hard liquor line, there's always this good old standby:

Halloween Should Be Scary, Dammit!

2011-10-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

I've always felt that Halloween should be a scary holiday. Apparently there are those who think "gross" is close enough:

I say no.

(Googling, I find that the Flix Candy company has actually been offering the "Box of Boogers" as a Halloween offering for several years. At least they've changed the packaging to remove the word "Fresh!")

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

2011-10-06T22:32:00.005-07:00

(1955? Jeezus, he was younger than I am!)

A Wedding Cake As Writing. Writing As A Wedding Cake

2011-09-20T21:38:00.002-07:00

From My Madeleine, Molly Birnbaum's excellent food-and-writing blog:

I thought about this a lot last weekend. Because as I baked my first wedding cake, I was in the middle of writing my book. I was buried in outlines and research; I had no idea where it would go. Back then, it was all about the creativity. It was all about forging new paths ahead. I was living in a miniscule studio in Brooklyn, had a boyfriend fighting a war in Afghanistan, and was using 14 pounds of almond paste to create a wedding cake in my mother’s kitchen with nothing but a couple recipes and a half-baked plan. If I could make and transport that cake, then of course I could finish my book. It was all about magical thinking. What surprised me is that it worked.

(I'm still having trouble getting links in Blogger to work right now. URL for the full piece: http://mollysmadeleine.blogspot.com/2011/08/wedding-cake-ii.html )

If I Ever Ride In A Hot Air Balloon...

2011-09-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

...I want it to be this one.

(from a September 2010 balloon festival in Boise, Idaho. Found via one of those Drunkard's-Walk searches on Flickr and Google Images at http://www.boisedailyphoto.com/2010/09/fly-me-to-moon.html , which won't link for some reason. Photo by Debbie Courson Smith. )

Hellbox: Towards An Alternate Definition

2011-09-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

The word "hellbox" popped into my mind a few nights ago. At the office/shopping development where I work security, a large company is setting up their new HQ on most of two floors on one building's office levels. Part of my rounds has been to check the floors, so I've watched the development of the space from bare open concrete to where it's only a few weeks from having employees report to their new workplace. Most recently has been the delivery and set-up of several hundred cubicles and workstations.

The sight of all those identical cubicles raises my hackles and crottles my greeps. It's cookie-cutter, assembly-line workspaces, interchangeable, and my impression is that it's all meant for cookie-cutter employees, also interchangeable. That, to me, is Hell. And so a work cubicle is a "hellbox".

It turns out, though, that "hellbox" already exists as a word. It's from the printing profession, back when set type was taken out of the printing forms and tossed into a box, which some junior apprentice was damned to sort back into each letter's individual slot in the typecases. It's also used in a more general sense, of a container filled with a miscellany of small items difficult to sort apart.

But I like my own use of the word, to mean an office work cubicle, particularly when it's one of a large number of identical cubicles. So I'm tossing it out there into the wilds of the Internet, where one hopes kind-hearted strangers will pick it up and give it a good home.

(How large is "a large number"? The hellishness of cubicles seems to increase, at least in my mind, the larger the number of cubicles grouped together. Some of the smaller companies, in the other office buildings, have smaller groups of cubicles, and those don't particularly bother me. Four cubicles together, no problem. Eight, well, okay. Twelve, that's starting to push my buttons. But forty or fifty or sixty in a group, like in that new HQ? Ewwwww......)

The Mercury Men on SyFy

2011-09-18T15:04:00.001-07:00

Say what you will about SyFy Channel's crappy "reality" shows like GHOST HUNTERS, their Turkey-of-the-Week original movies ("TURKEYSAURUS!" That's not a real title, but please don't anyone suggest it to SyFy executives!), or, God help us all, wrestling, they have occasional shows (EUREKA and WAREHOUSE 13) that are amusing and entertaining, if rather on the dumb side. ALPHAS, a little more adult in tone, got off to a slow start, but it's been growing on me.

But the best show on SyFy isn't on TV. It's a web series called THE MERCURY MEN, 10 short episodes that evoke not only the feel of old movie cliffhangers, but show a strong influence by the original black-&amwhite episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS from the 1960's. Not just in the cinematography and special effects, but in the feeling of paranoia and entrapment that was so common in those old TOL episodes.

Official website, with links to episodes, here.

Cold Comix Turkey

2011-09-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

I bought and read a number of comic books while growing up. (And had to sneak them into the house past my Mom, who thought they were the next-worst thing to porn.) Quit when I started college, and didn't start again until 1985, when the bookstore Hilde and I frequented added a comics section and several titles caught my eye. (WATCHMEN and the Ted Kord version of BLUE BEETLE, in particular.) I've continued since then, usually buying 3-4 titles per week. That bookstore went under, eventually, but I continued buying comics, now at comics specialty shops, and have been shopping at the same vendor for over fifteen years.

DC Comics announced a few months ago that they would be relaunching their comics line, with new #1 issues of 52 different titles. The stated purpose of this was to give a new generation of readers a jumping on point to start reading comics.

But this also meant that a bunch of the old titles were suddenly cancelled in mid-storylines. That hasn't made the old generation of readers happy. The last conversation I had with David, the owner of the comics shop I shopped at, I said, "This could just as easily be a jumping off point for the current readers." He told me that a number of his customers had already cancelled their standing orders for DC titles.

Another reason for DC's relaunch was to start promoting increased digital sales of comics, rather than the old-fashioned paper-and-ink versions. Not good news for comics shops owners.

David's shop had already been hanging on by its fingertips, with a lot of customers cutting back or stopping completely in the wake of the general economy's weakening in the last several years. When you cut back on non-essential spending, things like books or movies or comics are among the first to be cut. He'd come close to losing the shop about a year before, only staying open when he'd been able to renegotiate the shop's lease at the last minute.

So I wasn't too surprised when I went back a few weeks later to find the store's lights out, the doors locked, and a notice from the landlord taped to the door. (Man, that's gotta hurt for David. He's started working for the store's original owners as a teenager, then bought the store from them about ten years ago. Hopefully nearly twenty years of retail experience will let him find another source of income soon.)

So there I was, suddenly cut off from my usual source of comics. (There are other comics shops, but all considerably farther away and in the wrong direction from my usual travel patterns; David's shop was less than a mile away.) What to do?

What I've done is... nothing.

I have to admit that I've thought for a long time that the cost-to-benefit ratio of buying comics is a negative one. I can buy a comic that costs $3 or (usually) more, and get ten or fifteen minutes reading pleasure from it. Or I can buy a paperback novel for about $8 and get hours of reading from it. (When I bought my very first comics, as a kid, they were still twelve cents apiece; they've increased in cost 25-fold. My first paperbacks, a couple of years later, averaged sixty cents; they've only risen 12 to 13-fold since then.)(Yes, I'm old.) I've kept up the habit of buying occasional comics mostly from... habit.

So I've gone cold turkey on comics. So far I haven't missed many of the titles I was following all that much. And I'm saving about $40 to $50 a month in expenses.

(The one title I've missed the most has been T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, one of the titles cancelled by DC in their relaunch. It's been an interesting update to the original series from the 1960's, with some unexpected twists. Googling for this post, however, it seems enough people objected to losing that particular title and story arc that DC may put it back into production in a few months. I'll have to think about that one....)

(I also wanted to note that the relaunch of Superman reportedly involves some changes to his costume; it's now going to be a type of "Kryptonian battle armor". Say what? I say, "Bullshit!" to that. Everyone knows -- KNOWS -- that Supe's costume was made by Ma Kent unravelling the blankets that swaddled Kal-El inside that rocket and weaving the uniform from those threads. These are immutable truths about Superman: He can fly. He has super-strength. He's invulnerable. And his mother dresses him funny.)

Fuzzy Thinking

2011-09-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

The first panel Hilde and I did at CopperCon was on H. Beam Piper. The programmer for CopperCon wanted to have some panels on good writers of previous generations, and we suggested Piper because John Scalzi's recent "revamp", FUZZY NATION, of Piper's first book in the Fuzzy series, LITTLE FUZZY, had brought some attention back to Piper's work. Small audience, about half a dozen, but it seemed to go well and stayed on track.

My take on FUZZY NATION: This is the novelization of the screenplay for the Hollywood adaptation of LITTLE FUZZY.

Keeping in mind that Scalzi is a long-time film buff & critic, the changes he's wrought from the original novel seem very much to be changes that would be made for a film adaptation of Piper's novel: The protagonist is younger, with a romantic sub-plot. His version of Jack Holloway is also a bit of a scoundrel, whose motivations aren't always noble. Scalzi's narrative flow is faster, with leaner dialogue.

(Skimming back thru the original LITTLE FUZZY, I noticed that there's a lot of talking in Piper's book, a lot of discussion of what sapience is and how it might be detected.)

Significant parts of both books take place in courtrooms. I think Piper's original wins out here; his presentation of courtroom wrangling is larger and messier than Scalzi's; it's more complicated, with more factors and players involved. In short, more realistic.

One of the elements in LITLE FUZZY was the veradicator, a lie-detector with 100% accuracy, used in courtroom testimony. Much as I love the idea of a veradicator (I want one, dammit!), Piper's machine only give a postiive or negative response; there's no gray areas of half-truths or delusional thinking allowed to it. That was never realistic (dammit! I still want one), and Scalzi leaves the veradicator out of his version. A good change, I'm inclined to think, on Scalzi's part.

[spoilers below the break...]

Not so good a change in the Scalzi version: The bad guy who actually murders several of the Fuzzies in FUZZY NATION isn't just a bad guy; he's a cartoon of a bad guy, a brute, a thug, a man who likes the power violence gives him over other people and who desn't hesitate to use it. In Piper's version, the killer isn't so one-dimensional, and eventually commits suicide after realizing he had indeed murdered a thinking, sentient being.

And that leads me to the one scene in FUZZY NATION that really rankled me. The rest of the book, even where I thought the changes didn't work as well as Piper's original, was an enjoyable read, a lot of fun.

But at one point, in the courtroom, Jack Holloway taunts deLisle (the murderous thug) into attacking him in front of the judge and everyone else... and doesn't defend himself against deLisle's attack. He takes deLisle's punches until others pull deLisle away.

No. No, no, no. DeLisle may be a cartoon of a character, but there are people like him who really exist; they usually end up in prison, or dead, at an early age. Their power lies in their ability to hurt people, and to hurt them badly and quickly.

Scalzi's courtroom fight is a "movie fight", full of sound and fury and then the stuntmen get up, brush themselves off, and get ready for the next take.

In a real fight, with a real person like deLisle (I've witnessed a couple), that thug who has no moral restraints about hurting another person, who wants to and enjoys hurting other people, will win with the first punch, because that first punch, with everything behind it, almost invariably takes the other person down to the ground. And then the kicking and stomping begins: face, throat, ribs, crotch. A thug like deLisle would not only have hurt a non-resisting jack Holloway, he would have hurt him quickly, he would have hurt him badly, and there would even be a good chance of Jack Holloway being killed or mortally injured in the first few seconds.

Except for that, I thought both LITTLE FUZZY and FUZZY NATION were solid, enjoyable reads, each with some flaws but no major ones. Hilde and I would both give the edge to Piper's original, but only by a small margin. But with that courtroom fight, I have to give the clear win to Piper's book. (Sorry, John.)

Hilton Garden Inn gets it right

2011-09-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

The Hilton Garden Inn in Avondale, Arizona, where we're staying for CopperCon, has one of the best wheelchair-accessible rooms we've ever stayed in. Some hotels think putting a grab-bar on the wall above a tub equals "accessible". No, it doesn't.

Wide traffic paths and doors, and things like a roll-in shower stall, that's accessible. Thanks, Hilton!

posted from Bloggeroid

CopperCon 31 this weekend

2011-08-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

CopperCon 31 will be held this coming weekend, September 2-5th, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Avondale, AZ. Hilde will be the Fan Guest of Honor.

Hilde was an active and important figure in the early days of Phoenix SF fandom, from the early 1970's on. We'll both be on a fanhistory panel, along with Mahala Sweebe and possibly others, to discuss those early days. (The agony and the ectasy! The Sturm and the Drang! The angst and the texture!) Plus other panels about books, reading, H. Beam Piper and other topics.

(This will be the first time I've been on programming at a local convention for about a decade. I used to be a fairly frequent participant, but the person who planned most of the programming before that got burnt out and was replaced by someone new. When the new person took over, my name apparently got dropped from the list of local writers and knowledgable fans who tended to be invited onto programming. And I just never got around to beating the drum to get back on that list.)

More Tweaks

2011-08-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

A few changes to the sidebar over on the left. I've added a "Followers" section for people who, umm, follow what I write here.

I also finally got around to rebuilding the list of blogs I read regularly. The old list got deleted in the changeover to New Blogger a while back, and it's only now I've put it back together.

On that blog list, I particularly recommend D. Gary Grady's Fusion-Powered Mediocrity. I've enjoyed Gary's writing for years in a private apa (one of those things that still use that paper stuff), but it's only recently he's started an online blog. He does both serious and funny with non-mediocrity.

Stalking The Wild Child

2011-08-22T01:30:00.000-07:00

For some reason, this photo from 1930's Australia strikes me as just a little creepy.

(via Flickr Commons)

You Will Believe A Tree Can Fly

2011-08-10T21:16:00.000-07:00

A restaurant under construction at work is including a rooftop dining area. Getting the landscaping upstairs took some extra effort.

posted from Bloggeroid

We Get Fan Letters. Yes, Really!

2011-08-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

This showed up in the comment moderation queue a few days ago:

Hi there! This isn't actually a comment (so you can delete it, since I'll be putting my email address in it, please) but this is the only way I can think to contact you. Oh, the wonders of the internet.

I'm trying to find a short story of yours -- The Skycastle -- which I read many, many, many years ago in the first issue of MZB's Fantasy when it came out, and still remember to this day. Of course you can't find back-issues of the magazine anymore and, really, I don't remember any of the other stories in it. But your story I remember, and must have reread at least a hundred times.

I suppose I should say "thank you" while I'm at it...!

Anyway, I've long since lost the magazine, of course, but I was reminded of the story tonight and found myself wondering if it ever made its way into an anthology? Or, hell, if not: have you got a copy you'd be willing to email me? I'd be happy to paypal you something for it...!

And, well, if not: at least 23 years on I can finally say "hey, that was a pretty good story you wrote.

Thanks so much,

Ariana Osborne

Well, that's pretty damn cool. I responded:

Dear Ariana,

Thanks! I don't hear from fans of my old stories all that often anymore. (Real life has kept me from writing much, and the last new story I had published was in 2006.) Glad you enjoyed it, and still remember it.

No, "The Skycastle" has never been anthologized. I was a bit disappointed when DAW Books published a BEST OF MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY'S FANTASY MAGAZINE collection, and my story wasn't included.

I've been thinking of making some of those old stories accessible again, either by e-pubbing, POD, or just posting online. But that will probably (real life...) take a while. (I'd have to dig out the old disks, then an old disk drive, then convert them to a different wordprocessor... it would take a while.)

If you don't mind sending a physical or PO Box address, the quickest way to get the story would be for me to xerox it from my old copy of the magazine and send it to you by mail. (Mail? In an envelope? How quaint.)

If you liked "The Skycastle", you'd probably also like "Death and the Ugly Woman", published in SWORD AND SORCERESS #4, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW Books, 1987. That's the story of mine that's gotten the most fan reaction, including a movie option by a small (really small) production company. (But it's never been reprinted, either. I scratch my head in puzzlement.)

Your comment to my blog ended up in the moderation queue, so your email address never went public. I'll go ahead and delete it.

Thanks again
-- Bruce Arthurs

So, yes, I really have been thinking of making my old stories available again. Certainly wouldn't hurt.

(I've also been thinking of self-publishing some of my unpublished fiction. Some of those old unpublished pieces I re-read nowadays and cringe, but there are some that I still think are pretty damn good, but just never sold for some reason. I'm particularly thinking of a 29,000 word novella titled "Junker Tommy", whose major fault seems to be an awkward length and a lack of markets for stories of that length.)

Here's an image of George Barr's cover for that first issue of MZBFM, illustrating "The Skycastle":

Thirty Four

2011-07-22T17:05:00.001-07:00

As of yesterday, Hilde and I have been married 34 years. Yes, I'm astonished, too.

Flowers were provided.

posted from Bloggeroid

Broken Chain Reaction

2011-07-21T17:21:00.000-07:00

The Borders bookstore chain abandoned all hope of reorganization or sale this week and announced it will be closing its 400 stores. Liquidation of inventory will begin Friday.

This is a shame. It will mean fewer and fewer places where bookreaders can go in and actually see and handle and browse thru thousands and thousands of titles, all of them written by James Patterson.

- - - - -

Surely it was only a coincidence, that Borders' announcement came only a few days after I had -- abandoning years of standing firm on noble principles and long-ingrained habit -- installed an eReader app on my cell phone. I start reading one friggin' digital book, and suddenly a billion-dollar chain of brick-and-mortar bookstores falls into ruin, putting thousands of people on the unemployment line and sending shock waves thru the entire publishing industry. I'm sorry; this was not one of the mutant superpowers I've always wanted to see manifest. It's like dreaming of being Superman and waking up to find you're actually Lex Luthor.

I suppose I can share the blame with George R.R. Martin, since it was one of his books I loaded onto my cell phone. No, not A Dance With Dragons. The previous book, A Feast For Crows. Since Feast and Dance were essentially supposed to be two halves of one big book, I had thought to wait until Dance was published before reading both of them one after another. Five years later, with a copy of Dance finally in hand, I'm not sure where, or how deeply buried, the hardcover copy of Feast I bought back then has gotten to in the house.

So, I loaded Overdrive Media Console into my Droid, and checked out a copy of A Feast For Crows from the Greater Phoenix Digital Library. (GPDL is a central eBook source for the Phoenix library system and the library systems in the surrounding towns and suburbs.)

Getting the software installed and signing up for GPDL access was pretty smooth and straightforward. And I'm impressed with how the book presents on my Droid's screen. The text is crisp and clear (and adjustable in size), moving around in the book is pretty easy, and it's certainly easier to carry around my cell phone (which I do all the time anyway) than a thick hardcover.

It does suck up quite a bit of battery power, primarily because it's in use for longer periods than most of the other phone apps I use on the Droid. I may have to start remembering to use the phone's car charger when I'm driving around town.

This may be the start of a beautiful friendship. Or a horrible addiction. (Omigod, the first one really WAS free!)

- - - - -

In case anyone think's I'm snarking on James Patterson up above... well, yeh, you're right. I read the first Alex Cross mystery, Along Came A Spider, when it first came out. My reaction was "Meh," and I've never bothered to read any of his other books. So I'm always a little surprised to see how many books he's published since then, and how well they sell.

The puzzling thing is that there's no "buzz", insofar as I've encountered, about his books. People can stand around the proverbial water cooler and talk about a Stephen King book, or a Dan Brown book, or a Stephanie Meyer book. They talk about the plot, and the characters, for those writers' books. But I've never heard a conversation like that about any of James Patterson's books. What I keep hearing about Patterson is that "He's a page-turner" and, repeatedly, "His chapters are short." So I guess Patterson is writing for the short-attention-span crowd, and it's turned out to be a pretty damned big crowd.

- - - - -

(Photo credit for the empty bookshelves goes to the Smithsonian Institution, via Flick Commons.)

This Cat Is Not Dead

2011-07-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

Rikkus

But it was a close thing.

This is Rikkus. He's the "foreclosure cat" we rescued a few years ago, when his owners moved away and left him behind. We found out he had a microchip, but it was to the Seattle shelter he'd been adopted from in 1998, and his owners nevr updated the chip's records from that shelter address. We think he might have originally belonged to an older person who passed away, and while the younger generation took him in initially, when they encountered their own troubles Rikkus became an option, not an obligation.

We don't know what his original name was. "Rikkus" is the word for "lion" in the invented language our housemate Tabbi uses for her online persona and writing. He was informally known as "Stalker Cat", because when our friend and back fence neighbor Anne was alive, he'd come up to the patio door or bedroom window ledge and get Anne's cats Aliera and Sethra all flustered and upset. (We took in Aliera and Sethra when Anne died, so now they're actually all living in the same house. They've never been friendly, but they don't fight or throw hissy-fits.)

Rikkus was a big ol' guy, fairly stocky under long black fur. When he was still a street cat, he pretty much owned the street. But about a year ago, he started losing weight, fairly drastically, and getting stiff and slow-moving. Blood tests showed hyperthyroidism, so he's been on meds for that for about a half year.

But he's continued to decline, eating poorly and getting gaunt. Recent developments included pulling out chunks of fur, treating the litter box as an option, and throwing up a lot of what he reluctantly ate. He was being a pretty miserable kitty.

So we'd been thinking that it might be time to have Rikkus put to sleep, and made an appointment for earlier this morning to have it done.

Rikkus has never been an enthusiastic pill-taker, to put it mildly, and I didn't see any overwhelming need to continue his meds for the last few days before his final appointment. So I stopped giving him the hyperthyroidism meds.

And... he began to improve. He started eating again (and in decent amounts) and keeping it down, he seems to have stopped pulling out fur, and he's been using the litter box again. He also seems more alert and engaged.

This made me wonder if the meds he'd been taking might actually have been part of the problem. When I checked online for hypothroidism (underactive thyroid), the list of symptoms were almost a complete match for what Rikkus had been showing.

So it seems possible that he's been getting too high a dose of the hyperthyroidism meds. I consulted the vet, and we'll try cutting back on that dosage and see how he does. (Also start giving him something to try and help with his stiff and creaky old joints.)

I'm frankly relieved to be able to give him a reprieve. Losing Tia and Gremlin -- bam! bam! -- one after the other was hard enough. I really don't want Undulant Fever to be "All dead cats, all the time." (I have visions of walking down the street and having people shouting "It's that guy with the Dead Cat Blog! QUICK! HIDE THE KITTENS!")

Died On The 4th Of July: Gremlin, 2000-2011

2011-07-10T02:54:00.000-07:00

We have lost another of our cats.

Losing Gremlin was harder than Tia. Hilde and I are both compulsive cat-lovers, but Gremlin was definitely a "favorite son" among the herd.

He was also the only non-rescue cat. Hilde used to breed Siamese, for several years before she and I got together, until the combination of rheumatoid arthritis, becoming a parent, and a divorce forced Hilde to close the cattery. But she's always had at least one pure-bred Siamese as a pet since then (and a fair number of our rescue cats have been part-Siamese).

Hilde likes Siamese because they tend to have a strong personality. Gremlin took that trait and double-downed on it. He got his name when the cattery we were negotiating with, back in 2000, sent a photo of a Siamese kitten with hu-u-u-u-uge ears and a wicked expression, causing me to exclaim "It's a gremlin!"

(Yet one more proof that you should be careful what you name your cats. Sometimes they live up to it.)

Gremlin was a cat for whom rules, guidelines and acceptable behavior were optional. Counters and tabletops were one more roadway. He was usually the smallest cat in the household, and at the same time the almost-alpha cat of the pack. (He could have probably been the alpha cat, but he didn't have any interest in leadership, being much more into the "instant and unquestioning obedience to my slightest whim" thing.) But he was also the cat who would spend hours on Hilde's lap, and snuggle up to her legs in bed at night.

Gremlin's final illness was unexpected and sudden. Late Saturday night, June 25th, our housemate Tabbi called out "I think Gremlin's choking!" I found him on the dining room floor, frantic and making retching motions, head and jaws extended, as if something was blocking his airway. When I tried to hold him, he bit one of my fingers deeply, something he'd never done before. (There'd been a few "play bites" over the years, but this one went deep, nearly to the bone.) I grabbed our cat carrier and had Tabbi and James, one of our other housemates, get Gremlin into it while I threw some clothes on, grabbed the loaded carrier from them, ran out to the car, and sped off to the closest Emergency Animal Clinic.

"sped" is not an exaggeration. I've had the Outlander up to 80 mph on the freeway occasionally, but this was the first time I've ever driven 80 mph on city streets. Gremlin thrashed and made strangled throat noises during the ten-minute dash, but the noises slowed, then stopped about a half-mile away from the clinic.

How bad off was he? Bad enough that the emergency vet's first notation on the medical chart was "DOA". Chest compressions and oxygen got Gremlin breathing again.

While x-rays were taken and bloodwork done, I tried to think what might have caused Gremlin's choking. Eventually I realized that he'd been occasionally acting, for about the previous week, like he was trying to cough up a hairball. (Gremlin never coughed up the type of Big-Momma, "Oh my God! What IS that thing?" hairballs our long-haired cats sometimes produce, but he'd bring up an occasional thin, streamlined version.) He'd also acted like he was getting the beginnings of a head cold. With hindsight, these might actually have been the early symptoms of whatever was causing his respiratory distress.

Which was uncertain. X-rays showed no actual blockage in the air way, and the lungs looked pretty clear. He'd been placed in an oxygen cage, and had recovered dramatically, regaining consciousness and alertness. Throughout the night, the oxygen ration was stepped down to normal levels, and the vet thought Gremlin able to go home Sunday morning, to be followed up on by his regular veterinarian on Monday.

Except Sunday night was a repeat of Saturday night, but catching the early choking signs soon enough to get Gremlin back to the Emergency Clinic and the oxygen cage while still conscious. An internal medicine specialist performed an ultrasound and endoscopy the next morning, and drew some fluid from the lung for further testing. The fluid in the lung was not a good sign, and Gremlin was started on an antibiotic and bronchodilator while the fluid samples were being tested. This time Gremlin was kept until Wednesday morning, when he again seemed to be okay without oxygen.

At least until late Thursday night/early Friday morning, when he went into the scary HEY!-CHOKING-TO-DEATH-HERE! behavior for a third time. This time I was at work, and it was James who got to make the mad dash to the Emergency Clinic. (Thank you, James.)

Back to the oxygen cage. By this point, we were waiting for the final test results from the fluid samples. The fluid and mucuous in Gremlin's lung did NOT appear to be coming from a bacterial infection, we knew by this point. One of the alternate possibilities raised by the internist was Valley Fever, and it was that test we were waiting for the results on.

In the meantime, Gremlin became a full-time occupant of the oxygen cage, and despite medication, seemed to slowly be getting worse. When the door would be opened for cleaning or feeding or visits, and regular air replaced the oxygen-rich environment, he'd start showing beginning signs of distress within a few minutes. He never got weaned back to regular air this time. (Part of this may have been because after three episodes of choking and agonal gasping and straining to breath, the internal stress and strain he'd gone through would have been like being in a bad fistfight with your own insides.) The fluid in his lungs did not improve under the antibiotic treatment.

The Valley Fever test came back negative. At this point, the internist thought there were two possibilities: Gremlin might have aspirated something foreign into his lung, or there might be cancer. In either case, surgery to remove the affected part of the lung would be the next step.

And that was when Hilde and I had to make a decision. I thought it was most likely the cancer diagnosis was the correct one. (The first visit's emergency vet had raised cancer as a possibility.) So even if Gremlin survived the lung surgery and rallied back to health, there was a possibility the cancer had metatasized elsewhere in the body and the surgery would only be a delaying tactic, not a cure.

And there was another factor, the factor no one likes to think about. Gremlin's medical bills had already cost nearly $8,000. Surgery and aftercare would be at least another $5,000. We would have maxed out our primary credit card and had to move to using a second one, something I'd never had to do before. And there was a significant possibility that all those extra efforts and expenses wouldn't save Gremlin, or save him only temporarily.

That's something you don't want to think about. It's something you don't want to have to think about. Thinking about it gives you feelings of guilt, of betraying your beloved pet. You don't want to be "reasonable". You don't want to be "pragmatic". You want the financial costs to be irrelevant, to not be a factor in your decisions. But there's a point when those costs become so overwhelming that they have to become a factor.

So we made the decision, to stop Gremlin's treatment and have him put to sleep. This was tough, and made tougher because, just so long as he stayed in that oxygen cage, he didn't seem sick. He was active, and alert, and annoyed that he was being kept in a strange place and in a cage. (That was another factor to consider: Even if we could afford to continue paying hundreds of dollars a day to keep him in that oxygen cage, how did it feel to Gremlin to go from having a territory of several thousand square feet to being restricted to one of less than a square yard?

We were put into one of the examination rooms, where the doctor brought Gremlin to us a few minutes later. We gave him petting and chin-critches and held him for a little while, until he began to show early signs of having to work at drawing breath. I held Gremlin in my arms while the doctor put the syringe's contents into the injection port in Gremlin's front leg, and then he was gone.

We had Gremlin cremated, and the box with his ashes is on top of the A/V cabinet in our family room. We've always buried our pets before, but it's gotten harder to go through that again, especially after burying Tia just a month or so before Gremlin's illness. (And it's probably not going to be too much longer before Rikkus, the frail old man of our cat herd, passes on.)

I'm not a believer in Heaven or Hell for humans, but I'd like to think there's a Heaven for cats, where the food and water dishes fill themselves, where you can actually catch that damned red dot, and where there's always a sunbeam to sleep in.

Requiescas in pace et in amore.

Testing, Testing

2011-06-28T03:10:00.001-07:00

I'm seeing if this Bloggeroid app lets me make posts from my cell phone.

posted from Bloggeroid

A Few Adjustments

2011-06-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Tweaking the layout and design of the blog just a bit. Not sure I like the font for the main text, may change it again later.

More posts to come, eventually. Probably subjects: Dieting, job-hunting (I'm still employed, but trying to find something/somewhere else), and Those Darn Gorillas!

Coming Soon To A Planet Near You

2011-05-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

.

*knock knock*

"Who's there?"

"The Rap-Rapture!"

So I hear this Rapture thing is supposed to be happening tomorrow, when God lets down the velvet rope and the celestial doormen let the people on their list into Heaven, leaving the rest of us standing out on a cold sidewalk, in the rain, with dogshit on our shoes. Or something like that.

But that's okay, because the people who believe in the Rapture most strongly seem like people I really wouldn't enjoy spending time with. Apparently, God loves suck-ups.

Oh, wait a minute, though! Aren't you also supposed to qualify for Rapturing if you're a really really really nice person?

Well, I've always tried to be a nice person. Or, at least, not-an-asshole. I don't think the super-nice people get a choice when the Rapture happens, though. It's just *snatch*, *whoosh*, and there you are in Heaven, surrounded by crowds of annoying people, forever. What if I've been just nice enough in my life that God includes me on his to-be-Raptured list? I don't think I really want that, thanks.

I'm not even sure Heaven has cable. (I mean, hey, Game of Thrones is only halfway thru its first season!)

I think I need to run out and steal some candy from a baby or something. I need to pile up some Sin Points pronto.

The Daily Train Wreck

2011-05-15T11:25:00.001-07:00

[The first part of this, before my night at the sleep lab, was drafted back on April 24th. I added an update today, May 14th.]

I've referred to my sleep patterns as a "train wreck" before, but it's gotten worse the last few months. There are a number of reasons for this.

I don't sleep a continuous eight-hour stretch, but in scattered shorter sections, which only rarely add up to that recommended eight.

I can't really blame too much of this on working graveyard shifts, midnight to 8:00 AM, five nights a week. Lots of people work graveyard, and arrange their lives to where they sleep soundly during the day.

But that daytime period is also standard business hours for most people, and sometimes you have to be up and awake to take care of business. Doctor's appointments, phone calls, shopping, etc. So I can usually depend on staying up after getting home from work, or having to get up after a few hours sleep, at least two or three days out of those five.

There are also my other jobs, beside the one that actually pays. As Hilde's become progressively more disabled over the years, I've had to take on more and more of her care-giving, of being her hands and feet. That usually runs about five to six hours per day, and those are hours that really can't be cut back on. (I love my wife like crazy, but I hate her disease.)

(We have Tabbi living with us, who takes care of Hilde while I'm at work, but considering the pittance we pay her -- a babysitter would get paid more -- I'd feel guilty asking her to take on more work.)

In amongst all that, my third job is struggling to get things done, to keep up with paperwork and housekeeping, with shopping and yardwork. And the only category where it seems I can cut back on to make time for everything is by cutting back on sleep. Which leaves me in a walking fog half the time I'm up, which means I don't get as much done in that waking time as I would if properly rested, which means I end up trying to stay awake longer to try and get enough done, which means... well, just Google "diminishing returns".

(Which all makes writing my fourth job, at best. I suppose for a fourth job, I've done pretty well, but it help explains why I haven't finished or sold a story for over four years.)

A few weeks ago, I took a treadmill stress test. This happened to be at the end of a workweek, so I'd only had about 20 hours sleep the previous five days. (That was less than usual, but not by much.) Have you ever ("Keep your eyes open, Mr. Arthurs!") started to fall asleep ("Keep your eyes open!") on a treadmill? That kinda goes beyond "walking fog" into "situational narcolepsy".

(You might wonder, how do I ever manage to drive a car without falling asleep at the wheel? Because my doctor's aware of my sleep pattern, or lack of same, and prescribes Provigil, an anti-drowsy drug that turns off the "sleepy" switch in your brain for a few hours. I try to take it at times when I'll be able to drop into bed after it wears off, so it doesn't keep me awake in bed.)

In all, I'm kinda feeling like there are no good options to improve this situation. I'd like to be able to ditch the outside job, but we still need that to stay in a positive cash-flow status. I can't cut back on the time spent with Hilde, or on the time spent handling the day to day tasks of living; I barely keep up as it is... and far too often I'm not keeping up.

Except for sleep, the only place where I could cut back is the time I spend on the Internet... and I'm reluctant to do that as well. I browse about a half-dozen blogs daily, and about another dozen less frequently; I check my email; I check my bank account and pay most of my bills online. I try to keep my online time to 90 minutes or less daily (not always successfully, I admit). But if I gave up those social aspects of being online, I'd feel like there wasn't much of me left. Gaining extra time for not-fun stuff isn't a trade-off I want to make.

I'm having a sleep study done at the end of this week, but I don't really expect too much out of it. I had one done about five years ago, which came back with completely normal results. Probably because having that sleep lab was one of the rare times when I was able to get an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep. If they really want to test my typical sleep period, they'd wake me up a few hours in, have me perform a variety of tasks for a few hours, then have me get back into bed and try to go back to sleep again.

(That's another thing: Sometimes I can be bone-tired, barely staying on my feet, but when I get back into bed, sometimes I lay there for hours before I actually get back to sleep. This is incredibly frustrating, to say the least.)

- - - - -

Update, May 14th: Somewhat to my surprise, the results from my night all wired up at the sleep lab were... informative.

I originally went to the sleep lab, not because of my broken sleep patterns and overall lack of sleep, but because there had been scattered occasions when, first laying down to go to sleep, I would suddenly be unable to take in a breath. It was as if the autonomic breathing impulses were suddenly turned off. Kinda alarming. But when I'd react by rolling over from my back to my side, I could suddenly breathe again. This wasn't common enough to be considered an emergency -- it happened about five or six times over about a two-month period -- but often enough to be of concern. I described it to my regular doctor as "It's kinda like what sleep apnea is supposed to be like, only without the sleeping part."

To make sure I didn't have a tumor or growth starting in my throat, my doctor first sent me to an ENT specialist , where I got to watch a scope-on-a-rope send back images from my sinuses down to the top of my esophagus, with normal results. After that came the appointment with the sleep lab.

This time the results were not "completely normal". The results showed I was having the scattered stops in breathing during my sleep as well. Overall, I was diagnosed as having mild sleep apnea; however, whenever I was on my back that night, instead of on my side, the number of incidents-per-hour jumped, from about half-a-dozen to over forty.

The recommendation was for me to start using one of those CPAP machines while sleeping, where a breathing mask over your face keeps a continuoous pressure in your airway, preventing it from closing during an apnea incident.

However, the data shows that a lot of people prescribed CPAP machines have trouble using them regularly, or stop using them after a few months. So I'm trying "Positional Therapy" first, arranging things where one spends sleep on their side, instead of on their back. The basic methods are to either block oneself in, or to wear a snug t-shirt that has tennis balls or other obstructions sewn into pockets along the spine. One keeps you on your side, the other wakes you up if you roll onto your back.

Since getting the results, I've been sleeping with Big Kitty, an extra-large stuffed animal which has doubled as a body pillow in the past, behind my back at night. (I've also bought a "Sidesleeper" pillow, shaped with an extension along the back, but it just arrived yesterday and I haven't used it enough to say how well it works yet.) Staying on my side doesn't solve everything, but there does seem to be some improvement, waking up feeling better rested and with a bit more energy during the day.

It would probably also help to lose those thirty excess pounds I've picked up over the last five or six years. Getting back to exercising regularly would help with that, and it would really help if I stopped snacking and "grazing" so much. (But it's hard to resist the siren call of the Doritos, or the "yip-yip-yip!" of the Cheez-It herds as they roll across the plains.)

Tia, our Ghost Cat, 1997-2011

2011-05-09T17:47:00.006-07:00

Tia, in a rare public moment

We came back from spending Saturday at LepreCon, one of the local conventions, and were starting to get ready for bed. Part of the checklist for that is giving some of our cats a few kitty treats. Which is when we realized that Tia, our older Ragdoll mix, not only hadn't come out for her treats, but hadn't come out the night before as well, and possibly longer.

Tia (short for Tiamet) has always been our "ghost cat", very much a solitaire who didn't interact much with the other cats and who was extremely shy about people in general and especially when there were strangers in the house. We've had friends who've visited dozens of times, over years, who would finally get a glimpse of Tia and ask, "Oh, did you get a new cat?" Until the last few years, when she got a little more outgoing, she'd spend almost all of her time in one room, our bedroom. So it wasn't at all unusual -- in fact, the default -- to not see Tia. When we realized she hadn't been seen at all for several days, our fear was that she might have slipped out the back screen door -- we've had people going back and forth to the backyard more often than usual the last few days -- even though that would have been extremely unusual for her. (Except for watching an occasional episode of Bird TV, she showed little interest in the outdoors.)

But we found her under our bed. Our mattress is on a multi-drawer pedestal, which most of the time means the bed is effctively a solid block. But if you get down on the floor and wiggle and shimmy around like an urban spelunker/contortionist, there's a crawlspace under the headboard (the headboard is a bookshelf attached to the top rim of the bed itself; we are so predictable) that leads to an area under the bed between the drawers on each side. A quiet, private place.

Tabbi, who's younger and far more limber than me, was able to bring Tia out. Tia was very dehydrated, thin, and obviously in distress.

This was a shock, because while Tia is actually our oldest cat, adopted from a rescue organization in 1997, she's always been exceptionally healthy. Our next oldest, Rikkus, the "foreclosure cat" we rescued after his owners abandoned him a few years ago, was born in 1998 and has become a frail, slow-moving old man who'll sometimes sit on the floor and stare at you until you pick him up and put him in the high spot he wants to go. Tia...? Except for routine vaccinations and the bad case of ringworm she had when we adopted her, I don't think Tia has ever had to have a vet visit in her entire fourteen years. It was only a couple of weeks ago she was trying to catch a laser pointer's red dot.

This happened past midnight on a weekend. So I drove her to the closest Emergency Animal Clinic, rather than waiting a day and a half for our regular vet's office to be open. Findings: Besides the dehydration, Tia had an irregular heartbeat, her blood oxygen was poor, and she was very, very anemic. The doctor's prognosis was pessimistic; aggressive treatment might bring some improvement, but even with that, the odds of Tia dying before Monday morning were probably over 50%.

And that was just to treat the current crisis; it didn't address the original, unknown, cause of Tia's sudden downslide.

(Speculation: Tia might have had a slow-growing tumor that didn't produce obvious symptoms until it caused internal bleeding, leading to the severe anemia leading to the heart problems leading to all the rest.)

It was a hard decision. But after talking with Hilde on the phone, we finally decided euthanasia was the best choice. The vet had already installed an injection port during the critical care after Tia first arrived at the clinic, so there wasn't the ignominy of a final needlestick. I petted her while the injection went in, and she went quietly and quickly (and with, I suspect, relief).

Tabbi and James, one of our other housemates, dug a hole in the side yard and buried Tia for us. We've lived in this house for over 25 years, so there are about another four or five cats buried over there from years past. It doesn't get any easier.

I said that Tia didn't interact often with the other cats. Oddly, though, she seemed to love our Welsh Cardigan Corgi, Madame Mim. When Mim would be laying on the floor in the bedroom, Tia would sometimes come up and start washing Mim's face and ears, and doing the head-butt PURR-PURR-PURR thing. ("Tia," I sometimes told her, "you are a traitor to your own species.") Mim, to her credit, would lay there and take the washing and loving without objection, albeit always with a horribly embarassed expression on her face.

The Ethics of Earworming

2011-05-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

Ever hear a song on the radio or wherever, that sticks in your head and just won't stop? That's an earworm.

The quality, or lack of, isn't particularly relevant to the, umm, earworminess of a particular piece of music. Recent case in point: Rebecca Black's "Friday", which (so I've heard) is pretty unforgettable, no matter how desperate you are to do so.

But sometimes the earworm can come from a good piece of music.

Hilde and I, when there's nothing we want to watch on tv, sometimes turn the channel to one of the "Golden Oldies" music channels as background noise. The 1960's had a lot of suckitude, but it had a lot of great music.

But even great music, after the third or fourth day of having it play in the back of your head, gets a little... wearying.

They (the ubiquitous "They") say the best way to get rid of an earworm is to share it with someone else. So:

The main reason "Have I The Right" makes such a strong earworm is the especially strong beat. In the original recording, besides Honey Lantree's drumming (one of the few female drummers in rock), the rest of the band was foot-stomping on wooden stairs, and the tambourine was being beaten, not by the player's hand, but directly onto the microphone. The resulting triple-threat THUMPA-THUMPA-THUMPA gets right into one's midbrain; your heartrate speeds up and adrenaline starts to flow. This is a great piece of "stay-awake" music.

Latest LoL

2011-04-24T10:44:00.000-07:00

One of my recent contributions to Historic Lols got picked for the front page there, and has picked up about 270 votes so far:

Coff Hack Wheeze

2011-04-17T14:25:00.008-07:00

Today's strip from Sinfest pretty much nails how my last few days have been. (Well, except that when I'm fighting giant spiders with a sword, I'm generally not wearing a cute little blouse-and-skirt outfit.)

A new twist to this latest flu, mega-cold, or whatever it is, is that the associated fever and inflammation seems to have set off a reoccurrence of the hip bursitis I had about five years ago, on top of all the other symptoms. Not fun. Not fun at all. I don't like to take narcotic pain-killers except as a last resort; for this, I ended up taking T-3's (Tylenol with codeine).

I happened to have an appointment with an ENT doctor on Friday, for unrelated reasons, but he prescribed antibiotics for the crud I was having, and there's been vast improvement since then. I'll probably be back at work tonight.

(Going back to work is less pleasant than it used to be. This news item took place the night I was off sick. I've been predicting that something like this would happen for months. I was right.) (Anything further I could say here, and I could say a lot, would probably get me fired.)

A Fistful of Panthers

2011-04-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

(via Flickr Commons, a 1968 photo from the Amsterdam Zoo.)

A Death In The Family, Part 2

2011-03-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

On Thursday I got the news that Tom McGril, my stepdad (he and my mother had been together for about ten years), had died. Unlike the death of Hilde's brother Greg, this wasn't unexpected; Tom had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a six month prognosis about five-and-a-half months ago. Still, hard to hear, especially coming on top of Greg's death last week.

Tom and Mom met when Tom was recovering from hip surgery, and hired Mom (she was living in the same trailer park community) as a caregiver until he (literally) got back on his feet. Things developed, they moved in together, and eventually got married.

Tom was a good guy, who reminded me a lot of my father (who passed away in 1980) and made life better for Mom while they were together. He was also an accomplished painter, who was still giving classes when Mom met him. (He'd stopped painting in recent years, having lost enough fine control to feel he could continue. That was a loss.)

I'm of mixed mind about Tom's death from cancer. Yes, it gave time to make some preparations and planning, but the last couple of months of Tom's life varied from Pretty Bad to Really, Really Bad. Greg's death, shocking and unexpected as it was to his family and friends, at least meant that Greg went quickly and relatively painlessly. (And it also, speaking pragmatically, saved the expense of a long drawn-out illness. Tom's care and treatment over the last months means Mom is left with little in the way of savings anymore.)

(I also want to give a shout-out to my brother Denny and his wife Debbie - especially Debbie - for extraordinary expenditures of time and energy caring for, arranging care for, transporting to medical appointments, etc, for both Tom and my Mom these last months.)

A Death In The Family

2011-03-13T12:42:00.000-07:00

Hilde's brother, my brother-in-law, Greg Hildebrand, died unexpectedly last night.

Apparent cause was a heart attack. He'd complained of aches in his shoulders and back, and went to bed early, about 9:00. When his wife Deb checked on him about a half-hour later, he was non-responsive. She called 911, and he went into full cardiac arrest in the ambulance and couldn't be revived.

Totally unexpected. There's no family history of cardiac problems; the Hildebrands almost invariably die of various abdominal cancers, and at a considerably older age. (He was 57.) Greg had been losing weight and reducing his blood pressure in recent months, so to all appearances he was getting fitter.

We'd been over to Greg & Deb's Friday night, and there were no signs of what would happen 24 hours later.

Hilde's being hit pretty hard by this. Greg was her only sibling, and he was seven years younger than her; she'd more or less helped raise Greg while her mother worked to support the family. With all of Hilde's health problems, she never expected to outlive her brother.

Besides Deb, his wife, he leaves behind his two daughters, Lea and Gwen, from his first marriage, and a lot of friends.

He was a pretty good guy. (If I tried to say he was a saint, he'd have guffawed.) He was always there for family and friends. Our politics tended to be pretty far apart a lot of the time, but he was always good-natured about it. I'm going to miss him.

(Just for the record, I should point out that Hilde's brother, Greg Hildebrand, should not be confused with the fantasy artist Greg Hildebrandt. It's happened a time or two.)

Google Gets Its Priorities Straight

2011-03-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

Google, in its practice of having special logos for special days, celebrates Wil Eisner's 94th birthday:

A little music to pass the time until I write a real post.

2011-02-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

I've had a number of posts I've wanted to write in recent weeks, but have been extraordinarily busy (and "ordinarily busy" is already pretty hectic). Maybe later.

In the meantime, a little music. Hilde and I first heard "Concerto Antico" on our local classical station, KBAQ, while driving to a doctor's appointment, and liked it enough to check the station's playlist after we got home and identify the work. This YouTube video of the work's first section also coordinates music and images nicely. Enjoy.

Nouveau Robotica

2011-01-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Artist Chris Kawagiwa has been producing a very cool series of "Nouveau Robotica" works. Think of them as high-tech Mucha.

Gallery of the full set can be found here.

Nothing To Do With Today's News, Nope.

2011-01-08T21:14:00.002-07:00

A Tea Partier went to the movie theater.

He didn't like the movie. So he shouted, "THIS MOVIE SUCKS! SOMEONE SHOULD BURN THIS THEATER DOWN!"

But nobody burned the theater down. A week later the Tea Partier went back to the theater and watched a different movie.

He didn't like that movie either. So he shouted, "THIS MOVIE SUCKS! SOMEONE SHOULD BURN THIS THEATER DOWN!" again.

But nobody burned the theater down. So he kept going back to watch other movies. He was a pretty crabby old guy -- he'd yell "Get off my lawn, you spic!" at the guy he'd hired off a street corner to mow his lawn, that's how crabby he was -- and since John Wayne and Ronald Reagan were both dead, there weren't really any movies he liked anymore, so every time he went to the theater. . . "THIS MOVIE SUCKS! SOMEONE SHOULD BURN THIS THEATER DOWN!"

Then one day he went to the theater, only to find the parking lot crowded with police cars and ambulances, and a line of blanket-covered corpses laid out on the asphalt. The theater building was in flames, its walls collapsing inward, showers of sparks climbing into the sky.

Someone had burned the theater down.

"Oh, my god! This is horrible! Horrible!" the Tea Partier cried in anguish. "Now I have to find a different theater to go to!"

It's 2011

2011-01-01T15:24:00.001-07:00

Still no jetpack, dammit.

2010 passed away quietly at midnight, and 2011 snuck into the room just as quietly.

This in spite of some varieties of fireworks having been made legal in the State of Arizona, and Glendale being one of the few cities that didn't institute their own local ban in response. (Glendale allows them, but only on private property.) Probably because the varieties allowed are only the sissy-foo-foo types that sit on the ground and shoot off a feeble shower of sparks. Because what good are fireworks if you can't use them to blow a few fingers off or an eye out, or set an entire neighborhood ablaze?

My resolutions? Pretty much the same as previous years. Lose weight, reduce debt, try to write more.

I'm actually pretty good at reducing debt. It's just that by the time I've reduced the old debt, new debt has come along. Besides recovering from the cash-flow imbalance while off work these last few months, and the medical costs that weren't covered by insurance, it looks like we'll have some major dental expenses to deal with in 2011. (My insurance is generally pretty good -- it's paid about 90% of the cost for shoulder surgery and the subsequent physical therapy -- but the dental coverage is feeble.)

As for the writing: I have no idea if I'm going to write fiction again. It's been over four years since my last completed story (there have been ocasional fragments since then), and that was a story far too autobiographical and not safe to market until at least several people have passed away. The drive, the at-least-occasional fire in the mind that produced earlier stories, doesn't seem to be there anymore. (Possibly it was because I finally wrote that too-autobiographical story, which I'd been wanting to do -- and skittering away from -- for thirty years.) If I write fiction again, it will be by means of perspiration, rather than the mostly-inspiration stories I've done until now. Craft, rather than art. (Am I a craftsman? I don't know.)

In the meantime, I've put together a bibliography of my published fiction. There's a new link to that page over in the sidebar. Rather slight, for that long a time, but there are stories in that list I'm proud of, so hey.

And there are stories I wrote before that last one, good enough I should try to get them out to markets again; I think they'd sell, if they just hit the right editor at the right time. There are a few that don't seem to be marketable, or marketable enough; I might go ahead and put them online here.

And I'll continue to post here with the occasional comment or news, of course, leavened appropriately with snark or outrage. Bcause I am snarkish and outrageous, that's why.

Christmas Snowpocalypse -- the view from sunny Arizona

2010-12-27T21:33:00.002-07:00

Here in Arizona, I had to brave temperatures in the 70's while running errands earlier today. Life is tough.

But I've been looking at pictures from the big blizzard that's been dumping snow on the Northeast states. That's some pretty cold-looking stuff you got there, people!

A photo gallery at Talking Points Memo led me to Dan Nguyen's Flickr set from New York City, which has some particularly nice shots. This is my favorite, of Union Square:

Union Square - New York Snowstorm Blizzard 2010

I like the sense of calm in this photo, at a location that would normally be filled with traffic moving in all directions. The emptiness of the vista, the lack of vehicles and the wonderful old buildings (the snow-haze gives the buildings a layered effect not unlike that seen in Chinese mountain landscapes), make it almost seem like one has dropped a century back in time. (Just put your thumb over that McDonald's sneaking in on the left edge.)

UPDATE: Here are a few more outstanding photos I've found on Flickr. One that could be titled "New Yorkers Are Crazy" by O62, and a lovely self-portrait with snow by esparist.

One Word

2010-12-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

Via Jay Lake, Daniel Abraham is having a discussion on story vs. sentence in fiction over on his Live Journal blog; Part of the discussion has been about how a story can change when the choice of words is changed.

As it happens, I can give an example where one word, being changed, changed a story:

One of my own stories, "Angel's Blood", published in Heaven Sent (ed. by Pete Crowther, DAW [US] and Signet Creed [UK] 1995).

The Big Reveal in that story came in the following sentence:

"There is war in Heaven, and God is losing."

For whatever reason (it showed up in the galleys without explanation), Crowther decided to change that to this:

"There is war in Heaven, and the angels are losing."

I think that both versions are effective stories. But they're not the same story.

- - - - -

In that same discussion, Daniel brought up the loss of accessibility to written language over time, as the language of later generations changes in usage and meaning, gaining new vocabulary as well as losing the old. Chaucer and Shakespeare were brought up as examples (outliers?) whose work is still read today because of their sheer strength of story, rather than their now-difficult language.

Language-change is only part of that, however. Culture as a whole changes over time. So there's less and less overlap between the culture of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time and that of a reader fifity or a hundred or five hundrd years removed. The context is lost.

So, in the context (*ahem*) of reading classical literature, to better understand that literature one needs to learn at least some of the historical context. For that, things like annotated editions are useful. But then your understanding of that context is dependent on the understanding and style (their own word-choices) of the annotations' author. So ideally, the author of such an annotation would be a capable historian, linguist, archaeologist, anthropologist AND author. And even then, your own brain is getting only a second-generation xerox of that author's understanding.

So it shouldn't really be a surprise that "popular culture" is, well, popular. There's a "common context" that the reader can share, being a resident of the same culture the author of a modern work lives in. The context of a work of classical fiction has become an uncommon context.

I think this may be why "historical mysteries" are popular. The context of the historical period used for the mystery may be uncommon, but the meta-elements of mystery and detective fiction are part of the "common context" an average reader will be familiar with. That gives the reader sufficient grounding in a work to give the author a chance to present the historical and cultural context clearly enough to give the reader a grounding in that aspect as well.

Conversely, even in a modern work, context can be relative. Why is fiction from other countries rarely popular in the US? I suspect it's because the cultural context is different enough to become part of the "uncommon context" I've mentioned above. Off the top of my head, it seems that the further away from the US (or the UK) a work of fiction originates, the less likely it is to gain a readership here.

And this can even apply to modern works supposedly set in a culture common to the average reader. Back in my early 20's, I found myself reading Roommates by Elsie Lee. Lee was a romance writer whose readership overlapped to some extent with SF readers. (I think I first saw her work mentioned by Juanita Coulson in YANDRO, though I may be misremembering.) At any rate, I came across and read the book.

I'm pretty sure I was not the audience for that book. I was a young, socially awkward, inexperienced (worrying about getting laid wasn't a big concern back then; my state of general despair was more about just getting a date!). And when I read Roommates, I was pretty thoroughly aghastified. The lead characters in Roommates were... "husband-hunters" is the best term I can come up with. To become someone's wife was the #1 goal in their lives.

I didn't have the context to understand those characters, or to sympathize with them. To me, Roommates wasn't a romance novel, it was a horror novel.

(The website where I found the cover image, Fantastic Fiction, also quoted the backcover blurb to Roommates: "They were roommates happily sharing expenses and men, secrets and strategies, until they discovered the real meaning of womanhood--and love." And underneath that was a "Similar Works By Other Authors" section. The work cited as similar was Oath Of Fealty, by Elizabth Moon. Wait, what?)

On the Subject of Beards, With Visual Aids

2010-12-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'll be going back to work in early January, having recovered from shoulder surgery sufficiently. Which means I'll have to once again shave off the beard I've been growing back these last few months, and which I prefer to have.

A lot of people have said I look younger without the beard. I think they're wrong, but it's actually a matter of how good you look, not how young you look. Here's a piece of evidence to that effect:

The Most Interesting Man In The World

Not convinced? Okay, how about this?

with beard

without beard

I trust I've made my point.

Naughty or Nice?

2010-12-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

Moonwalking Zombies of 1921

2010-12-19T00:14:00.002-07:00

found on MagazineArt.org

A Questionable Christmas

2010-12-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Every Christmas season, there come along various seasonal items that make you stop short and say, "What? Really?" Here's a couple. (I'll probably add more as I come across them.)

From the Toscano catalog, the Christmas Yeti ornament:

And from a Park Seed email, something to do with those overgrown, woody okra pods from your garden:

Every nativity needs a dragon, doesn't it?

You might think someone thinks dragons are just too damn cute to leave out of a Nativity. But this particular setup was put together by someone basing it on the Book of Revelations, rather than the earlier parts of the New Testament. That sounds like a fun family to be part of.

The Paris Exhibition on Flickr

2010-12-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. Very good book, but I was especially struck by the section set in and during the Paris Exhibition of 1900 (think World's Fair), with lush descriptions of the buildings and exhibits.

Thought to take a look on the Flickr Commons pages to see if there were photos from the Exhibition. Turned out there was not only a set of photos, it was a big set (271 photos), and they were even in color! (Hand-colored, but still....)

The full set here.

Two-Fer Teapots!

2010-12-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

I occasionally browse around for teapot competitions online. These are usually for ceramic artists, working within the constraints of teapot design; sometimes those constraints are stretched way-y-y-y beyond what one expects, and the results can be astonishing.

Saddleback College in California has an annual competition along those lines, and past years have produced fine work. Alas, for 2010, Saddleback decided that rather than a gallery with individual photos of each entry, they'd only post a PDF of the winning entries and honorable mentions.

But wait! Browsing a bit more, I came across this gallery from a teapot-themed competition/benefit-auction held by the AAW. That's the American Association of Woodturners. All those teapots are made of wood (or wood-like materials; one is made from corrugated cardboard). Woodworking is another area of interest to me, so, hey!, I get two-for-one pleasure from these. Here are several examples:

Some or most of the AAW teapots are purely decorative (I'd imagine you'd need to coat the interior with a food-safe varnish or polyurethane to actually brew tea in them). Some are more than obvious about being purely art pieces, like this one, and especially this delicate little number.

And then there's the piece shown below, by artist Binh Pho, made of maple and decorated with glass beads, pearls, and 14k gold; detail photo here:

Yowsa!

Latest LOL

2010-11-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

Gary Farber reminds us that there aren't enough cats on the Internet. So:

The Way To A King's Stomach?

2010-11-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

Browsing the selections over at the Science Fiction Book Club, a two-book combo selection popped up:

The Way of Kings/Best of the Year Cookbook Recipes

O-kayyyyyy....

I'm scratching my head, wondering how someone made the decision that a Big Fat Fantasy and a recipe collection have sufficient appeal to each other's audience to be offered as a set?

Publishers work in mysterious ways....

Look, Ma! No Sling!

2010-11-23T11:58:00.008-07:00

I had my first follow-up appointment with my shoulder surgeon on Monday. The good news is that he told me to start leaving the sling off my arm.

The bad news is he thought I should have a better range of motion at this point, so he wanted the sling dumped to let the arm move around more and get more flexible.

Yes, I have been wearing the sling pretty much 24/7 since the surgery, because that's what I was told to do. The first month following surgery, other than the passive therapy when the therapist moves the arm around while I try to keep it limp, was supposed to give the incision a chance to heal, and not to stress the sutures and repairs to the rotator cuff.

But the second month (as in, now) is when I'm supposed to get more active with the arm, including home-based exercises to stretch the shoulder as well as more-physical appointments with the PT people.

I'm kinda happy to have the sling off. "Kinda", because I still have to be careful not to overextend or overuse the left arm, and because it does ache some just from being out loose. But I can use that arm a bit more than before, with care, and I appreciate that. (Typing one-handed has been, umm, dreary.)

The stretching exercises started today. I figured they'd probably hurt. I was right. (I was saying "Owch! Owch! Oooch! Owch!" when another patient in another room gave a sharp, loud scream from thir own therapy. "Hey, someone's having a worse day than I am," I said. It's very, very bad of me, but that made me feel a bit better about the whole thing.)

Besides the appointments for physical therapy, I'm supposed to do the stretching exercises at home two or three times a day, using a stick and a set of pulleys to help push and pull the arm past it's comfort zone and into larger extensions. This hurts, too, but it does help get the range of motion slowly back to normal. (Right now I can only raise that left arm up to about shoulder level without an assist from the stick or pulleys. That's not sufficient, so I need to do the exercises, regardless of how much they hurt.)

After a month of stretching and extending the range of motion, the third month will be when I start working on getting that arm's strength back, because between not being able to use it fully before the surgery and not being able to use it pretty much at all since the surgery, the strength on that arm is pretty much punked out. Something tells me that's probably going to hurt too.

New Face, Same As The Old Face

2010-11-16T06:35:00.001-07:00

I've complained before (bitterly, with much rending of sackcloth and angst-ridden wandering about fog-shrouded moors) about having had to shave off my beard -- my awesome, AWESOME beard! -- when I hired on as a security guard a few years ago.

Being off work for the next several months following the rotator cuff surgery, I've taken the opportunity to let the beard grow back. After four weeks, we're at this stage:

Past the skeazy-bum stage and starting to fill in nicely. Could even use a light trim on the lower edge of the moustache. This is much more what my real face looks like.

Sure is grumpy lookin', though, isn't he? That's probably because I know I'll have to shave it all off again in a few months.

Cacoeidechthineologism* of the Day

2010-11-16T02:01:00.000-07:00

In the news: the word "refudiate", coined (or perhaps "misstruck" is the appropriate word) by Sarah Palin in a Twitter post, has been chosen as the new "word of the year" to be included in the latest edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Divorced from its source, the word refudiate isn't all the worst neologism ever. But it's not all that good, either. It's a pretty simple and obvious cojoining of two words into one, but doesn't really add any new nuance or meaning to the original words. If someone coined it deliberately, I'd give them a C- grade.

The question is whether this was a neologism -- the coining of a new word -- by Sarah Palin (whose rhetorical skills are, shall we say in the politest of tones, rudimentary), or simply a malapropism -- a garbling of either "refute" or "repudiate". If the latter, should points be taken off and the grade lowered?

(Data point: When it was pointed out that "refudiate" was a non-existent word, Palin revised her Twitter post to replace "refudiate" with "refute"... which was an inaccurate use of that word.)

In any event, when there are so many more creative and useful neologisms around, I find the OAD choosing "refudiate" above other, better, words to be utterly indenstible.

*"cacoeidechthineologism" comes from here

Killing Mrs. Kimble -- life as a one-armed man

2010-11-10T09:01:00.000-07:00

Three weeks since my rotator cuff surgery, and my left arm into a sling for almost 24/7 over the next few months.

The goal of keeping the arm immobilized is to let the torn end of the rotator cuff tissue grow a firm reattachment to the bone it's been screwed and tacked to. This takes a while, and putting stress on or trying to use those shoulder muscles too early runs the risk of tearing those fresh connections loose and resetting everything to zero.

In one regard, I'm glad for the sling. Its presence requires me to be aware of my surroundings, and try to NOT use that shoulder. Not just to let it heal, but because moving it too far friggin' hurts.

It's difficult to remember to just let the arm hang and be supported by the sling. My natural bent is to keep my arms slightly tensed and ready to move around. When the arm aches, it also tends to make me tense up the mucles on that side.

So I've been trying to keep pain meds balanced to where I don't ache too much, but also not so doped up that I'm fuzzy-headed. Mostly large doses of Tylenol, backed up with occasional Vicodan. Works fairly well, except for sleeping.

I've found that a Vicodan with the usual bedtime pills lets me get to sleep fairly easily, but that I tend to wake up after about four hours. Having laid flat on my back all that time (I usually shift around while sleeping,mostly on my side), the shoulder has stiffened up and is now really really aching. Even with extra pain meds, it's difficult to get back to sleep and I frequently lay there for hours, "squirrel-caging" in my head, before falling asleep again. (If I do at all.)

This is annoying. I had thought that being off work for several months would at least mean I'd be able to have a semi-normal sleep pattern, with sufficient hours, instead of the trainwreck (chunks and pieces of sleep scattered over the landscape of the day) sleep I can't seem to escape while working a graveyard-shift job.

I'm trying several things to improve my sleep. Different combos of meds, including anti-anxiety stuff to help stop the squirrel-caging, and arranging pillows to raise my upper body at an angle, instead of flat on the mattress. (This last seems to have helped.)

The sharp intense pain after surgery has mostly faded, except when the range of motion is being tested during physical therapy. Instead, deep and long-lasting aches, sometimes for hours, sometimes just in brief but intense occurences. Not necessarily around the shoulder, either; sometimes I'll get "referred pain" down my arm, or back on the shoulderblade, and once in a while I'll actually get an ache in my right arm, which is confusing.

I've been having physical therapy three times a week. This is currently passive therapy, where the therapist moves your arm around while you try and keep the arm completely limp and relaxed. Not easy to do.

Coping with day-to-day things: mixed. I'm not completely one-armed; I can use my left-hand fingers to help manipulate stuff. I just have to be careful to try and keep any hand movements from being strong enough to tighten up the shoulder muscles. Keeping the forearm snugged against my chest helps with that.

Pants: I can work the zipper up on jeans, but that waistband button? *ahem* So Ive been sticking to sweatpants and gym shorts, with elastic and/or drawstring waists.

Shirts: I mentioned in an earlier post that I picked up some snap-buttoned shirts at Good Will that can be buttoned up one-handed. What I didn't mention is that for some reason snap-buttoned shirts tend to be made from one particular style of fabric. So for the first time in my life I've been wearing plaid. PLAID! I'M WEARING PLAID! AIIIIEEEE!!! THE HORROR, THE HORROR!

Between the baggy old sweatpants, the dorkmeister plaid shirts, and the fact I've been letting my beard grow back in while off work, I've been doing a pretty good job of generating that "crazy old homeless guy" mystique that people find so fascinating and appealing.

Kitchen stuff. I can cope with a fair amount. One thing that caught me up was trying to use a can-opener; those almost all require two hands to operate. I found a OneTouch battery-powered can opener that can be used to open cans one-handed... once you've opened the battery compartment and put batteries in, a task that requires two hands.

Medication that comes in those blister packs that are so difficult to get into even two-handed? Jeezus. Prop and brace upright, then attack carefully with sharp scissors. Be prepared to curse.

So a lot of stuff I can kludge or improvise my way around, without having to ask anyone for help. That, asking for help, even when it's appropriate or necessary, is something I've always had trouble doing. So the most frustrating thing about this recovery period has been being unable to drive, and having to ask Tabbi to drive Hilde and me around. I also hadn't realized how often and casually, when out driving, I could add to or rearrange how many stops and errands I made.

I'm coping. But I'll be very glad when this is all over.

A Halloween LOL-lection

2010-10-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

With Halloween upcoming, I thought I'd skim my LOLcat creations for appropriate entries. Feel free to re-use!

Back Home

2010-10-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

My rotator cuff surgery went well on Wednesday, spent overnight in hospital, came home Thursday afternoon. Went to first PT session Friday; future PT will be about three times a week over the next two to three months.

Surgery site still fairly painful; trying to find the right balance between painkillers and having a semi-functional brain. Alternating Vicodan with extra-strength Tylenol about every three to four hours does a fairly good job on that.

I'll have about a two-inch scar on my shoulder when the incision is completely healed, which means I won't be able to get away with telling people about being attacked by a shark and beating the shark to death with an alligator. Damn.

Learning to cope one-handed: Some things easier than expected, some things not so easy. Some useful tips here.

Meanwhile, normal life refuses to sit back in a recliner with a bowl of chips and a big Pepsi and watch TV for the next three months. Got called last night, with the news that my mother -- who's been having her own, more serious, health problems the last few months -- took a sharp turn for the worse. Still waiting for test results to try and get a firm idea of what's going on, but it doesn't sound good, and the word "hospice" has been bandied about.

If you get an email that supposedly comes from me, but has a blank subject line . . .

2010-10-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

. . . delete it without opening or reading.

My system seems to have been hacked, and fake emails from "me" have been going to people on my contacts list, containing links to penis-pills sites and worse. (Such as malware sites that will try and infect YOUR computer too.)

The good news is that the malware isn't smart enough to generate a fake subject line to go with the fake email.

So, Rule of Thumb in this instance is: If an email is lacking a subject line, delete it unread.

My standard security software (Trend Micro) didn't catch the bugger whenever it got into my system (*grump* *grump* *grumpety-poo*), so I'm curently running additional software to try to find and remove the culprit.

When the Revolution comes, and the triumphant mobs thrust me into my rightful position as Semi-Benevolent World Dictator, hackers will be executed in slow, cruel and appropriate ways.

UPDATE 10/23/10: The additional software I ran reported my system as clean, but it didn't report actually finding or removing anything. But nothing new in the line of fake emails has been reported to me, and nothing I've supposedly sent to myself (I got some of those too) has shown up in my email queue, for the last several days, so -- fingers crossed -- hopefully the problem has been eliminated. Still wish I knew where the problem originated, though.

Upcoming Surgery, and other news

2010-10-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've noted in the last several posts my problems with my left shoulder following a bad fall on a wet kitchen floor at the end of August. The problems haven't been getting better, but worse: my range of motion with that arm is getting less, and the pains are getting stronger and sharper.

So I finally got an MRI on that shoulder last week, and it found what I'd been afraid it would find: a rotator cuff tear.

Most rotator cuff injuries and tears take place on the upper part of the rotator cuff. Mine's on the front of the rotator cuff, a more unusual situation, and harder to repair. (Also harder to diagnose, which is why I wasn't sent for an MRI earlier.) The surgeon has told me that while he prefers to do most rotator cuff surgeries arthroscopically, in my case he thinks it better to do an open surgery, laying the shoulder open to go in.

That will mean at least one night in the hospital. Surgery's curently scheduled for October 20th, next Wednesday.

The last time I was in the hospital for surgery was forty years ago, and I wasn't thrilled by the experience. But I'm a lot more anxious about the recovery period. I've been told that the left arm will need to be used not at all for the first month post-surgery. In the second month, it can be moved, but only in passive therapy where a therapist moves it around. Only in the third month will I be able to start doing some resistance exercises to build arm strength back up again.

I'll essentially have only one arm for about three months. (Oh, and the surgeon told me I shouldn't drive during recovery, either.)

When you're the primary caregiver for a disabled spouse, and have been helping her with... well, almost everything... for years, this is not good news. In fact, this situation -- ending up disabled or out-of-commission myself, and unable to care for Hilde -- has always been just about my biggest source-material for nightmares.

The good news is that we've had a charming young woman, Tabbi, living with us for several years, who acts as backup caregiver for Hilde when I'm at work or running errands. So she'll be able to take up a lot of the slack once I'm unable to do the heavy lifting I usually do. But that will put a big crimp in her own activities, which I'll feel guilty about (because I'm really good at that sort of neurotic navel-gazing).

On top of needing the surgery in the first place, the long recovery period will also mean I'll be off work for those three months. Hilde and I will still have her disability income and my Postal Service retirement check each month, but the lack of those security-job paychecks will mean we'll be running into red-ink territory each month I'm off. (I have some disability coverage through my insurance, but it won't kick in until after the first sixty days off work.) So I'll be having a financial ouchie as well as a physical one.

I've been trying to practice living one-handed before I go into surgery. One of the things I found is that it takes a long-g-g-g time to button a shirt one-handed. So I went down to the local Good Will store and picked up some snap-button shirts to use during recovery. I may also pick up some suspenders, to avoid having to try and thread a belt thru belt-loops, even if suspenders make a person look like a grumpy old guy. (Oh, wait! I am a Grumpy Old Guy....)

One piece of good news comes out of all this: Being off work for three months means I'll be able to grow my beard back! WOO-HOO!

- - - - -

In other news, last week the Phoenix area had a fairly spectacular storm, including heavy -- and large -- hail. "Golf-ball size" hailstones were reported widely, with some baseball-sized hail in a few areas. Lots of broken windows and damaged roofs across the city, though fortunately not in our neighborhood. (The hail here was heavy enough to set off the car alarm, though.)

I took a picture of one of the hailstones that fell here. This isn't the largest -- others were about half again as big -- but this one was in easy reach:

From Sling To Linger

2010-09-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

The shoulder injury I reported in my last post, from four weeks ago, seems to have been more damaging and long-lasting than I first thought. Although the inital pain, over the entire shoulder area, faded off over a few days...

...I was still left with pain in several smaller areas, sometime sharp and intense, sometimes deep and lingering (like a bad bruise, except bruises get better). If pain could be seen, my shoulder would have a dull glowering reddish area most of the time, with occasional bright sparks and flashes.

Been to physical therapy, but if there's been any improvement, it's so marginal that I'm not sure it isn't wishful thinking.

My doctor's initial "You don't have a torn rotator cuff," has now become, "Well, maybe you have a small tear in your rotator cuff." I'm scheduled for an MRI next week, and a consult with an orthopedic specialist.

I'm hoping this doesn't end up with surgery, because I've been told the recovery from that would involve immobilizing my arm for weeks, and strongly restricting its use for months. At the present, I can still use the left arm at about two-thirds of its normal range of motion, inside a tolerable pain range. Push it too far in certain directions (I try very hard to avoid putting my hand behind my back) and I find myself suddenly making very interesting squeaking noises.

But the shoulder is a drag. It slows me down, it distracts me, and it makes me grumpy and irritable. (Okay, more grumpy, and more irritable, than usual.)

It's one of the reasons this is the first post in a month. (That's also because I've been trying to Get Things Done, with partial success. But I need that shoulder working right, dammit!)

Singapore Sling, Hold The Singapore

2010-08-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Took a fall onto the kitchen floor yesterday. Hard.

This came about as the result of a Rube Goldbergesque series of events. If THIS hadn't happened, then THAT wouldn't have happened, and then THE OTHER THING wouldn't have happened, and there wouldn't have been water all over the kitchen floor.

So, hello, Emergency Room. The shoulder wasn't broken, fortunately, but, hoo-hah, did it hurt! So I'm wearing an arm sling for awhile, and am living life with, mostly, only one arm. Tylenol, anti-inflammatories, Vicodan for bedtime all help with the pain.

Had to take Hilde to vote yesterday afternoon. Getting her wheelchair in and out of the car was interesting. I ended up putting my good arm under the folded-up seat-bottom and lifting it up like a one-tined forklift. The voting place had "Curbside Voting" available for the disabled, so Hilde was able to stay in the car while completing her ballot.

I'm hoping the sling can come off before I'm scheduled to go back to work Friday night.

Catching Up On Paperwork -- The Agony and the... More Agony

2010-08-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

The photo up there isn't of my own desk, but it's more similar than I'm comfortable admitting.

But I finally managed to catch up on my tax returns, which is something of a relief. What wasn't a relief was finding that, rather than the refunds I've gotten used to over the years, I ended up owing an uncomfortable amount for 2008 and an eye-popping amount for 2009. Ouch. (And, contrary to what I thought after filing an amended return for 2007 earlier this year, the IRS told me I still owed money for that year as well. Double-ouch.)

Part of this was my own fault. After I got the security guard job in August '08, I kept neglecting to increase the withholding amount until earlier this year. Retirement income from the Postal Service also did a number on the numbers. Mea culpa, mea checkbook.

Besides upping the withholding on my guard pay, I'll be going to my credit union and setting things up to transfer a healthy percentage of my monthly retirement check into a savings account reserved for taxes.

We also owed big for 2009 because our income was up and our deductions were down. Having to see doctors less often: good news for your health, bad news for your tax refunds.

[venting]
I'm peeved about part of that extra "income" because it was no such thing. A few years back I co-signed a car loan for a close friend. She moved across the country in May of 2008, and stopped making payments on the truck. The truck was repossessed in October 2008.

-I- never heard about any of this, even though we were still in touch, until June 2009, eight months later, when I was contacted by a collection agency and told I was responsible for the balance left on the truck loan, close to $12,000.

For various reasons, the friend's own income wasn't seizable, and she could just tell collectors to go fuck themselves when they tried to collect the loan balance. But when she told them to go fuck themselves, she was saying "Go fuck yourself" to me as well, because she knew I'd have to pay if she didn't.

In return for quick payment, the collection agency settled for $8,400. Had to take a home equity loan to pay it. Not happy, me.

Not end of story. Earlier this year, I got a 1099-C, Cancellation of Debt, form from GMAC, the original loan company. The $3,500+ amount that had been waived when I paid the $8,400 was required to be reported as "income" on my tax return.

Oh, not happy, me. Especially when I plugged that information into Turbo Tax a few days ago and watched the "Amount Due" box climb by over six hundred dollars. For a truck I never owned, rarely drove, and should never have had to make any payment on at all. I think this qualifies as adding injury to injury.

(That friend -- let me rephrase that -- that former friend has still never said or written a single word directly to me or Hilde about any of this, even though she knows we know the truck was repossessed, even though she knows we had to pay the balance on her loan ourselves, even though she knows we had to go into debt to pay off her loan. Even just the words "I'm sorry" would have helped a lot with the anger I feel about this.)

Lessons learned?

Specific lesson: Don't co-sign a loan. For anyone. Ever.

General lesson: Don't trust your own trust in other people. (It's not the first time I've been burned by thinking other people would act the same way I would if the situation were reversed. I really should know better at my age.)
[/venting]

One of the reasons I got behind in getting the taxes filed is that I hate the process. Hate. Hate, hate, hate, hate. HATE. Have I mentioned I hate it?

Doing the actual tax returns is not the big problem. Turbo Tax actually does a pretty wonderful job of simplifying tax returns for most people, and even making them understandable for the most part. I want to have Intuit's children.

The hard part, the frustrating part, the part that has me clenching my teeth and bulging my eyes in bloodshot fury, is getting together the information to enter into those tax returns.

Especially because it's shouldn't BE a problem. Every year, throughout the year, I try to put info and papers I know will be needed for the next tax season into a separate folder or container. So it should just be a matter of cranking up Turbo Tax, opening that folder, and starting to enter that information.

And every year... EVERY YEAR... some of those papers and information, that I KNOW I received, that I KNOW I put into that folder... ISN'T THERE. Every damn year, I have to go on a scavenger hunt through every other piece of paper in the house, and usually find some of them in other places and files where they SHOULDN'T and WOULDN'T and COULDN'T be. And still others I have to contact the source for fresh copies, with associated delays.

(This is one area where Turbo Tax has failed miserably for me. Because TT is supposed to be able to download various information directly from one's various financial institutions. Except that every time I've tried using that "Import" button, it does not work. My batting average for downloading information via Turbo Tax is zero point nada nothing.)

But if I've moved into a part of my life where I seem more likely to owe taxes, rather than receive a refund, I really need to figure out some way to stay more organized. Not just with that "Taxes" folder, but with all the other papers & miscellanea that piles up so quickly; if I can change that annual "scavenger hunt" into just a regular "hunt", it would save a lot of time and frustration.

Because Why Should I Be The Only Person On The Internet To Not Write Something About It?

2010-08-19T21:53:00.000-07:00

Over at The Rude Pundit, the quotable Mr. Pundit boils it down to it's bleached white bones:

"You despise this country if you think the Cordoba Initiative should move its planned community center. You have no understanding of the Constitution. If fact, you are in opposition to it. You have no respect for freedom of religion or speech. You are a coward who believes that the Constitution and the nation are too fucking weak to handle such freedoms. If you're not one of the crass politicians seeking to exploit the simpletons for your gain or a ratings-whore on Fox, you are a vile, hate-filled, unprincipled lump of shit who thinks that rights are only good when convenient for you, and you are too fucking lazy to fight for anything other than your prejudice and hatred."

It's Been A While Since I've Made A Cooking Post.

2010-08-13T20:27:00.001-07:00

Perks of the Job: A Paycheck, Free Uniforms, and Live Sex Shows

2010-08-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a recent news item: "Couple Caught Having Sex In Scottsdale Parking Garage"

Yep, that's the place where I work as a security guard. No, I'm not the guard who caught them on camera, or the one who approached them in person. (This happened on an earlier shift.)

I am the guy, whoever, who was watching the monitors and caught another couple on a sidewalk bench a few nights later, with the very, very drunken young woman trying to get her hands inside the guy's pants. I dispatched our roving guards, who got there before Mister Johnson was dragged out of his tent, and who asked the couple to leave the property. Which they still had enough functioning brain cells left to do, unlike the couple in the news item linked above.

Ever since a large and popular bar opened up on our property a few months ago, the Incident Reports we've had to write have gotten more numerous, and a lot more interesting.

I've never been a big drinker, and never been all-out down-and-dirty drunk. Getting tipsy a few times when I was in my 20's was enough for me to recognize that drinking too much alcohol would make me start to turn into an asshole.

("Don't you mean more of an asshole, Bruce?")

And since the #1 Rule I try to follow is "Try to not be an asshole," I've always been careful not to drink much, if at all.

(That rule works pretty well, actually. I don't have to try to be a saint. I don't even have to try to be good. I just have to try to... not be an asshole.) (Yes, even that's a struggle sometimes.)

But it means I don't have much understanding, or sympathy, for people who seem to think getting drunk (or perhaps "dr-r-r-u-u-u-u-unk" would be a more apt version of the word) is its own end, and its own pleasure. Seeing the more intoxicated patrons of that bar just makes me want to do a facepalm and mutter "Oi vey. Mama Mia. Potrzebie!"

It Is A Proud And Lonely Thing...

2010-08-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

...to be a fan of Zardoz.

In John Scalzi's latest film column, about well-regarded film directors who flopped at making a science-fiction film, the last of the list is reserved for what seems to be the obligatory hate for Zardoz.

*sigh* Yes, the costume designer should have been shot, or forced to wear that red loincloth/diaper in public. And some of the acting was done in an arch and mannered way. But still, the concepts were sound, the imagery was spectacular, the score introduced me to Beethoven's 7th Symphony, and I've watched the film multiple times with enjoyment.

Excuse me, I must go console myself with a peanut-butter-&-mustard sandwich.

News, And A New Profile Photo

2010-08-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

The new photo is over there in the sidebar. It's been nearly two years since I had to shave off my long-time (33 years) beard for the security guard job, so I'm finally breaking down and putting my naked face online. I still want my beard back. *mrff*

The news is that the film option for my short story "Death And The Ugly Woman" was renewed. The option is for a projected anthology series, sort of like Masters of Horror , only adapting fantasy stories to the screen. Whether this will ever end up with D&TUW being produced . . . well, we'll see. But it means I get a check for another couple years option on the story. And considerable egoboo that they considered the story worth optioning again.

Dear Pedro,

2010-08-02T10:44:00.000-07:00

"You DELETE real comments about the truth that is currently happening in America?"

No, Pedro, I delete deranged comment spam from some whacko who not only wants to use MY blog to present his raving views on fluoridation and demonic conspiracies, but who SERIALIZES his opus across four different posts here. None of which posts have any relation or connection to anything you write about.

I delete deranged comment spam from some whacko who not only tries to post his crap on MY blog, but who's posted the same wild ravings on thousands of other blogs. And it doesn't seem to matter what kind of blog, either. Cooking blog? "FLUORIDE! DEMONS!!" Sports blog? "FLUORIDE! DEMONS!!" My-Cute-Cat blog? "FLUORIDE! DEMONS!!"

And when I delete those irrelevant ravings, you have the audacity to try and play the Victim Card? You have the GALL to act like I'm fucking obligated to leave your unwanted intrusions untouched?

You're no better than someone who comes into my house and scrawls obscenities n lipstick on all the walls. You're a thug and a vandal.

You're also a thief. Because I've had use my time to wipe your scrawls off my walls. You've stolen my time, Pedro. I resent that. I resent it deeply.

And you're a coward. Everything I write here is under my real name. You? You hide behind the name of an Italian shoe company. (WTF? Is that supposed to be clever?)

Thug. Vandal. Thief. Coward.

Oh, and one more thing, Pedro: ONLY A COMPLETE FUCKING MORON WOULD STILL THINK THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS A GOOD THING.

If I haven't made myself clear, here's the short and simple version, for you and every other spammer: Fuck off.

Sorry about that, folks. He got my dander up. Here's a kitten chaser to make up for it:

photo by John Nyberg from stock.xchang

The Way The Future Wasn't

2010-07-27T13:17:00.001-07:00

Tempe Town Puddle

2010-07-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night, a portion of the dam that creates Tempe Town Lake, a recreational spot in the normally dry Salt River riverbed bordering on Tempe, Arizona, burst and released about 750 million square feet of water into the riverbed, creating flash flood conditions downstream for a considerable distance. The Salt River bed is mostly undeveloped, so damages have been light, though there's some fear homeless people who ocasionally set up camp in the riverbed might have been washed away. (Hard to tell yet.)

The dam in question isn't a normal concrete dam, but one that uses a number of extremely large inflatable rubber barriers to hold back the water. The barriers can be inflated or deflated to control the lake's volume.

The barrier section that burst ("exploded" was the word used by some witnesses) was one that had been supposed to be replaced earlier this year. Since the dam was first built about ten years ago, that particular portion had been riding higher than other sections, and it's top edge had been out in the open sunlight, rather than slightly underwater like it was supposed to be.

Take a piece of rubber. Leave it out in the Arizona heat and sunshine for ten years. What do you expect to happen? Duh.

The replacement didn't happen when it should have, apparently for budgetary concerns on the part of the Tempe city council. Double-Duh.

The company that built and installed the rubber barriers is named Bridgestone. I wonder if this is the same Bridgestone that had to recall about six million defective auto tires about ten years ago when the tires began blowing out much faster than would have been expected? Triple-Duh.

Shorter Tempe Town Lake Dam Debacle: "Oh no, the rubber broke!"

(note on the photo shown above: According to the New Times article, the photo and several others were taken from the seventh floor of the old Hayden Flour Mills building. This explains why there was no photographer's credit given; the Hayden building has been empty and boarded up for years, so anyone photographing from there would be doing so illegally. I've seen other photos of the insides of the Hayden building, and it's pretty decrepit, so it was probably dangerous for the photographer as well.)

My Life As A Superstar Cheezburgerer

2010-07-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of the captioned photos I've done for Pundit Kitchen, the news-photo wing of the Evil I Can Haz Cheezburger Empire, recently made it to the front page, to gain notoriety, acclaim, and votes. This first one has gotten over 800 votes:

And this one just got front-paged a few days ago, and has gotten nearly 240 votes so far:

I thought that was pretty cool. Go, me. And then I had to read the comments posted to the photo, and realized that a lot of people were voting for and favoriting the picture not because of my witty, ingenious caption, but rather because Look at those awesome abs! Those guys are HOT!

Urrrmm....

Back in the old days, I knew a guy who had abs that chiselled and defined. I happened to see him nude from the rear one time (don't ask) and not only did he have those rippling abs, he had a rippling butt. Did you know there's a specific term to describe guys with that kind of physique? Yeah, really: Bastards!

*ahem* Where was I?

Bonus LOL below. This one I find rather odd, because it only got one vote on the "Voting" page (from where LOLs are picked to go to the front page), but it's been Favorited by over two dozen people. Huh. I think it's funny:

God, I Hope These Aren't For Real Books

2010-07-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, artist Oleg Medvedev has produced some covers for Italian variations on the theme.

(by Oleg Medvedev, CC-licensed, attribution, no derivatives)

Any resemblance between the Yeti and Chewbacca is strictly coincidental, and should not be taken as encouragement to make Classics/Star-Wars mashups the next literary fad.

Big Beetle

2010-07-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

This is a beetle I snapped at work the other night. Actual size about two inches long.

I used the built-in camera on my new Droid cellphone, and I have to say I'm impressed that it was able to focus and capture that much detail at a distance of several inches away.

A Few Links

2010-07-08T12:24:00.000-07:00

Moscow 2050 -- like Steampunk without the steam. (Gearpunk?) (by Valdimir Shelest, CC licensed -- attribution/noncommerical.)

TILT -- offering a slanted perspective on life. (Click "Project Info" at the top of the page for rights information.)

Both the above come from the BeHance Network, a website for artists to display their portfolios and projects. Great stuff there.

Unsolicited plug: One of our own favorite artists is Sandra SanTara, from whom we've bought a lot of prints and t-shirts, both for ourselves and as gifts for friends & family. Her website is Windwolf Studio. (Image use restricted, or I'd include a sample here.)

And moving from the sublime to the ridiculous: Fellowship of the Vuvuzelas

Adventures In Catspeak

2010-06-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

Some guy that looks like me comes into the bedroom after washing his hands, and sees our cat Bastet on the bed.

SGTLLM: "Hey, Bastet, wants some pets?" [proceeds to pet cat]

Bastet: "Mrrrr, mrrrr, mrr--AROWWW, ROWWW, ROWWW!" [translation: "Sure, thanks a lo--HEY, YOUR HANDS ARE WET!"

SGTLLM: "Relax, cat." [continues petting]

Bastet: "ROWWW! ROWWWW! ROWWWWWW!!!" [trans: "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

SGTLLM: "My hands are dry now, what's the problem?"

Bastet: "ARROWWW! ROWWW!" [trans: "CHRIST, WHAT AN ASSHOLE."]

How To Draw Sharks

2010-05-31T15:27:00.000-07:00

From the treasure hoard of ConceptArt, a brief guide to "How To Draw Sharks" by Waterbird.

I'm linking to this not from an overwhelming desire to draw sharks (though God knows, sharks are Friggin' Cool, Man!), but because I found it an exceptionally well-done combo of art and writing. Waterbird's authorial "voice" is engaging and informal, but the guidance is informative, succinct, and easy-to-follow.

This is how to "how-to" a subject.

I've Been . . .

2010-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

. . . in a funk lately.

Not as bad a funk as the guy pictured over there. but still a significant funk. Feeling overwhelmed, overstressed, underslept, etc.

Various factors have been playing into this. Sick friends, sick relatives, sick family, sick cats, sick me. Current and upcoming (and uncertain) changes at work. Too many things that can't be punted to some other time. Way too many things that have been punted to some other time, but that time is now, or last week, or last month, or even earlier.

I realized about a month ago that I was showing signs of major depression (Thanks, Will!), which has actually helped. Being aware of that has helped me cope rather better -- got a long-standing problem with our 2007 taxes hopefully resolved, for one, which should actually mean we get a slightly larger refund than we did, rather than owing the IRS over a thousand dollars. Better progress on other fronts as well, though it would certainly help more if I could just skip that "sleeping" thing altogether.

So one of the things I wanted to start doing again was posting here. (Hopefully more often than every three months -- did I really let it go that long?)

Robert McCall has died

2010-02-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Artist Robert McCall, known worldwide for space art and portrayals of an optimistic future technology, has died. He was 90.

His poster art for the film 2001 is probably his most widely known work, but he also did many, many pieces for and in support of the NASA space program.

The piece of his I'm personally most familiar with is "Icarus Triumphant", a mural McCall did for the main branch of my local Glendale, AZ library. There doesn't seem to be a full image of the mural online, but here's a detail from the painting:

Among the comments to the news at collectSPACE.com was a note from "KSCartist" who shared some advice McCall had given in correspondence. Worth sharing, and it's advice McCall clearly followed in his own career:

To Achieve Success:
1) Evaluate your talents honestly
2) Set your goals realistically
3) Work tirelessly at your art and love every minute of the work.
4) Study the great art of the past
5) Come back from inevitable failures and diappointments with courage
6) Work relentlessly

Sweet!

2010-02-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

Over at DerekMDesign, I found some wowser photos and an interview with John Learner, maker of some of the best damn gingerbread houses I've ever seen. Learn abut the maleability of Pop-Tarts, and why you should never vacuum chocolate dust!

The Future of Used E-Books

2010-02-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

The recent Amazon-MacMillan brouhaha made one thing clear: people who read e-books don't want to pay a lot for that muffler!

Now if they read regular books, like most people, they could always go down to the local used-book store to browse for cheap books. But if you want to go down to the local used e-book store... umm, well there's a bit of a problem there, since the most popular e-books tend to have DRM protection on them, and you're not supposed to be able to transfer that data to another reader.

But, hey, I once donated five bucks to the National Association for the Advancement of Smart People, which makes me an honorary genius.

So here's what we need to do to make a used e-book store possible: Rather than the current DRM model, e-books need to be coded to follow the natural life-cycle of a regular book.

What gave me this idea was the sad fact of JPEG degradation: every time you change and save a JPEG image, the image degrades, eventually becoming illegible after enough cycles. I figure e-books can be deliberately encoded to do something similar. ("I have this great idea. If you do the programming, we can split the money fifty-fifty!")

So, the original e-book is pristine and spotless. Done with the book, you transfer your copy to an online used-e-book store.

For that copy, the style-commands of the book get changed, and the new buyer finds himself reading a book set in Aged Book Worn font. Any color contents fade slightly, like a poster that gets direct sunlight on it.

The next reader down will notice the pages on the screen starting to yellow. Some of the pages will have coffee-cup circles on them. If previous owners have bookmarked any pages, those pages are now actually dog-earred, with the page corners breaking off and falling down the screen at unpredictable intervals. Color fading continues to worsen.

Next reader: mildew stains.

Next reader: scorch marks

We get serious with the next reader in line: silverfish and bookworms start crawling across your screen, eating holes in the pages.

And finally: the binding comes undone, and whole pages and entire signatures rip loose from the left edge of the screen and fall down below the bottom edge.

And that's how you'll get used e-book stores.

[wild applause from the Internet]

Thank you, thank you. It was nothing. Next week, I solve global warming.

A Few Links

2010-02-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

As promised, a few links of interest:

Good art, good sex, and a good cause: Endangered Species Condoms (SFW)

Our smart and charming niece, Lea, has spent the last year and a half in South Korea, helping Korean schoolchildren learn English and learning Korean in return. She has an occasional blog, A Geek's Eye View, writing about her experiences and travels.

Over at ConceptArt.org, the latest Team Chow contest (#3; collect them all!) had a Tarot theme. Lots of interesting entries there. The entire thread can be found here. (Page down past the polling area to find individual posts by each team, with larger images; most are on page 1, with a few more on page 2.)

I Did Not Mean . . .

2010-02-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

. . . to let more than a month pass between posts here.

In fact, one of my New Year's resolutions was to post more frequently. It hasn't happened, for a lot of reasons. Some unavoidable, others that could have been with a little planning and forethought.

I'll try and do better. There may be more short fluffy posts, and links to other sites, rather than long rambling pieces of writing, but I'll try to maintain at least a presence, if not a personality, here.

Fame, No Fortune

2010-02-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

I have, over time, captioned quite a few LoLs over at the I Can Haz Cheezburger? site. Generally this is for my own amusement. Occasionally, some of them get seen by others and get chosen to go on the viewer's list of favorite

One of my Lols recently got posted to the front page of ICHC's celebrity captions site, ROFLrazzi. The front page is where you want to be, because that's where you get lots of votes and even, hey!, comments. The groupies and the cash come later, I guess.

Here's the LOL, in all its glory:

This has actually gotten over a thousand votes so far. More proof that puns may be the lowest form of humor, but they're also the second-most popular, right after seeing some guy get hit in the crotch.

Here's a link to my LOLz page on ICHC, where you can view my other low puns, smartass remarks, and twisted interpretations and captionings of various photos. Some of them are actually funny, once you get past the sullen, bitter misanthropy. (I should probably put a link to that page in the sidebar.)

Christmas

2009-12-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

The late Steve Gilliard, of The News Blog fame, once noted that he had been involved for most of his life with "strange, bright people".

What a perfect turn of phrase, I thought.

So... Merry Christmas and best wishes to all the strange, bright people in my own life!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Usually we host a large dinner for family and friends on Thanksgiving. This year, though, we're going over to my cousin Hal's. This is mostly going to be my side of the family, who I don't see that often. (Most of them live on the other side of the Phoenix metro area, which is an hour's drive, one way.) Tuesday next week, my next day off work, we'll have a smaller TG dinner with Hilde's relatives, some friends, and the rest of the household.

To be honest, it's been a pretty rough year: We lost our close friend Anne, Hilde -- on top of her regular medical problems -- was in the hospital twice, my mother had several mini-strokes (mostly recovered) and her husband Tom had health problems of his own, friends and family members have lost jobs and had hard times finding new ones. Even our Corgi, Madame Mim, has been sick. (Valley Fever, a fungal infection endemic to the Phoenix area; so I'll be putting pills down Mim's throat twice a day for, oh, the next year or so.) And someone we considered a friend stabbed us in the back, financially, for over eight thousand dollars. I'm having difficulty feeling thankful for much.

There are indicators that next year may be better in several regards, particularly financially. (Things actually are better financially already, but the friend responsible for that improvement probably wouldn't want her name mentioned.)

So if I was asked what I'm thankful for, I'd probably say "I'm thankful there's only one more month left in 2009."

LoLiterature

2009-11-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

Halloween

2009-10-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

Insufficient Information, Drunkards Walks, and Blindfolds

2009-10-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Well, huh.

I have a long, long to-do list, including some pretty urgent stuff... so of course I decided to take a quick look at Undulant Fever instead, maybe make another apologetic post about not posting.

So, browsing the list of old posts, I saw one whose title I didn't remember. But it had more than the usual number of comments. So I click on it, and...

...well, Holy Shit!

A couple years ago, I got into a short dustup on another person's blog. My fault; I should have resisted the impulse to express my surprise that two people I despise and wouldn't trust as dogcatchers had managed to do an adequate job on a major project. Hot blog posts ensued, until the blog's host told all of us to knock it the hell off. Hot e-mails ensued for a while.

What I didn't realize was that in addition to the emails, several of the people involved reacted to the dustup on that other blog by posting comments on this blog.

They posted their comments on the most recent UF entry at that time... which happened to be one of the most frivolous posts I've made, and one I paid little attention to after posting.

My Blogger settings are marked to notify me by email whenever a comment is posted. This sees to work only intermittently. So in this case, I never got the notifications from Blogger, and today's the first time I've seen those comments.

Backtrack to this year's Westercon: One of the people there was someone I had not had a face-to-face conversation with for more than thirty years. That previous conversation hadn't gone so well ("Go to hell" was said, among other things), and I wasn't sure if I was going to slapped, kneed, or presented with a restraining order.

As it turned out, she greeted me warmly, and we had a short but cordial conversation. In the course of which, she said something that surprised me: During that dustup two years ago, one of the people upset with me had sent a copy of an email I'd sent him to this person, I guess to demonstrate what a horrible person I am, and informed me he'd sent it to her and to several other people. (I'd said, in the email, that he was fucked up in the head, needed professional counseling, and was a lousy husband and father. For some reason, he took this personally and got upset.)

I'd never seen a reaction from her about that email and was surprised, when I mentioned it, at what she said: She had no idea what I was talking about. She had never received or read the email in question.

Well, huh.

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened over the years. Letters sent never get received, emails don't arrive in inboxes, words put on public display are never seen by the person they're meant for or about.

I mention this because I had an uncharitable thought when she told me she'd never read the email: Has she really not read the email, or is she just saying that she never got the email? (Saying that she hadn't, even if she had, would give her a lot more control over the direction of our conversation, something she's always been very good at and at which I have no skill whatsoever.)

Finding those never-read comments on an old, unrelated post sets me back a bit. Perhaps an apology is in order for that uncharitable thought.

I'd like to have a tightly plotted narrative to my life. There's be no loose ends, no missed connections, everyone would know their lines in the script: everything would make sense. I want to be my own omniscient narrator.

[Homer Simpson voice]Mmmmmm... omniscience.[/Homer Simpson voice]

*sigh* Doesn't work that way.

Sometimes life is just a Drunkard's Walk. With blindfolds.

I think I'll just leave those old comments in place, and not make a two-years-later response. You could probably find them if you want to make the effort, tho' I suspect the most likely response would be "WTF is that about?")

Undulant Fever

Forty Years Ago Today

Changes In The Works

Weird referring sites

Writing: the middle is the beginning

Resolutions

The Santorum Surge

Christmas Connections

More Tyr

Catbus

Today In Headlines

This Cat Is Now Dead

At TusCon

First Look: Tyr

My Downtown Adventure

Welcome To The Wonderful World Of Concussion

Fashion Captain

Occupy Phoenix, 10/15/2011

Recent Cell-Phone Photos

More for Halloween: Benefactor Cellars

Halloween Should Be Scary, Dammit!

Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

A Wedding Cake As Writing. Writing As A Wedding Cake

If I Ever Ride In A Hot Air Balloon...

Hellbox: Towards An Alternate Definition

The Mercury Men on SyFy

Cold Comix Turkey

Fuzzy Thinking

Hilton Garden Inn gets it right

CopperCon 31 this weekend

More Tweaks

Stalking The Wild Child

You Will Believe A Tree Can Fly

We Get Fan Letters. Yes, Really!

Thirty Four

Broken Chain Reaction

This Cat Is Not Dead

Died On The 4th Of July: Gremlin, 2000-2011

Testing, Testing

A Few Adjustments

Coming Soon To A Planet Near You

The Daily Train Wreck

Tia, our Ghost Cat, 1997-2011

The Ethics of Earworming

Latest LoL

*Coff* *Hack* *Wheeze*

A Fistful of Panthers

A Death In The Family, Part 2

A Death In The Family

Google Gets Its Priorities Straight

A little music to pass the time until I write a real post.

Nouveau Robotica

Nothing To Do With Today's News, Nope.

It's 2011

Christmas Snowpocalypse -- the view from sunny Arizona

One Word

On the Subject of Beards, With Visual Aids

Naughty or Nice?

Moonwalking Zombies of 1921

A Questionable Christmas

The Paris Exhibition on Flickr

Two-Fer Teapots!

Latest LOL

The Way To A King's Stomach?

Look, Ma! No Sling!

New Face, Same As The Old Face

Cacoeidechthineologism* of the Day

Killing Mrs. Kimble -- life as a one-armed man

A Halloween LOL-lection

Back Home

If you get an email that supposedly comes from me, but has a blank subject line . . .

Upcoming Surgery, and other news

From Sling To Linger

Singapore Sling, Hold The Singapore

Catching Up On Paperwork -- The Agony and the... More Agony

Because Why Should I Be The Only Person On The Internet To Not Write Something About It?

It's Been A While Since I've Made A Cooking Post.

Perks of the Job: A Paycheck, Free Uniforms, and Live Sex Shows

It Is A Proud And Lonely Thing...

News, And A New Profile Photo

Coff Hack Wheeze