Growing Up Monster

A recent article in The Arizona Republic newspaper discussed the subject of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a type of mental illness where a person believes and obsesses that their face and features are somewhere between flawed and hideous.

Reading the article was Deja Vu Time for me. If the teenaged me from forty years ago were brought to the present, he'd probably -- almost certainly -- be diagnosed with BDD.

One difference from some of the patients mentioned in the article is that they are described as obsessively looking at themselves in mirrors or reflective surfaces, focused on their "flaws". I wasn't that way; I could not -- literally NOT -- look fully at myself in a mirror.

(So how did I groom myself? By never looking at more than a part of my face: When I shaved, I'd look only at the right cheek and shave there, then shift focus to the left cheek and shave that, then to the chin. Likewise with combing my hair, or washing my face, or brushing my teeth.)

But when I did on occasion try to take a full look at myself in the mirror... I could tell myself, intellectually, that this was really just a rather average-looking guy, about twenty pounds overweight, but nothing, really, nothing that bad or that horrendous.

But emotionally... emotionally when I looked in the mirror, I would see someone like this guy. Or this guy. Or this guy.

Where did this conviction, this certainty, this absolute unyielding visceral sureness that I was hideous and repulsive, come from? I honestly have no idea. It was just... there... one day. And then there every day. And then always there. Always.

Did this neurotic obsession affect my social life? Oh, yeah, you could say that.

Though not completely. I wasn't so disturbed, so unbalanced, that I wasn't aware, on a thinking level, that this was a neurotic/unhinged way to think of myself. (This is actually something I think might be worse than being fully insane: To be aware enough to recognize that you're unbalanced, you're neurotic, you're nutso, but you still can't stop the nutso thoughts from thinking themselves... that's a tough place to be in. The idea of turning totally, completely delusional actually starts to look attractive.)

So sometimes, a few times, I'd work up the courage (a lot of courage) to try asking a few girls for dates. With, umm, mixed success. (This attempt set me back on my heels for -- literally -- several years, until I was in college.)

Somehow, I managed a semblance, a weak imitation, of a normal life. (Though, considering how infrequently I dated or even flirted with any women, I suspect there was probably speculation among my social acquaintances about my sexual orientation.) Always with this deep, visceral certainty that I was, at best, unattractive ranging up to hideous.

And then came Hilde. Getting involved with her, taking a friendship into the next step, and then the next, and the next... was the bravest thing I've ever done. (And I almost... almost... turned away, kept quiet, backed off like I'd done with so many women, with almost every woman.)

So, did my neurotic view of myself suddenly vanish in the irresistible light of love? Ummm... no. I just thought that Hilde was the wonderful exception, the one person who couldn't see what I was really like. And I still looked at my face one section at a time in the mirror.

I can tell you, though, when the breakthrough was:

I actually had a genuine flaw on my face. One of my front teeth had a discolored brownish spot on one corner, about the size of the head of a pin. Wasn't a cavity or a chip in the enamel, just that particular tooth had grown out that way. I had never gotten it fixed; I'm not sure why.

I was brushing my teeth one morning, and suddenly noticed, in the mirror, that the discolored tooth was no longer discolored. I stood there, stunned, for a long moment.

I had been to the dentist recently, and I realized that the dentist (Dr. Lundgren, retired now. Best. Dentist. Ever.), while working on a neighboring tooth, must have gone ahead and patched the discolored tooth without bothering to tell me.

That dental appointment had been three weeks before. It had taken me that long to look closely enough at myself to notice the difference.

I stood there at the bathroom sink for several moments, staring at the all-white tooth. And then I looked up a bit, and drew back a bit... and I looked at my entire face, as a whole, for the first time in a long, long time.

And the face in the mirror... wasn't bad-looking. Certainly not strikingly handsome, not movie-star handsome. But a decent-looking guy. Not bad. Not bad.

Not bad.

It was August 18th, 1990. I was thirty-seven years old.


Postscript: I know that in one of the boxes up in the attic, there are some of the wallet-size photos from my high-school yearbook portrait. Writing this, I thought I might go up there, rout out one of the photos, scan it, and include it in this post. But thinking about that photo... and even though I know, KNOW, that it shows nothing except an average-looking, slightly chunky teenager in a coat and tie... I found my chest growing tight and my shoulders starting to draw themselves up. So, yeah, there still is a monster in my mind. It's an old monster, and a weak monster... nowadays, at times when my weight's where I want it to be, and I have my beard properly trimmed, I can even look at myself in the mirror and think "He's kinda...dashing, y'know?"... but it's not a dead monster.

Long Days

Over thirteen hours yesterday at work. Over twelve today. (Would have been less, but one of the other letter carriers passed out, so I had to do over two hours of his route.) And the long weekend off (Friday-Saturday-Sunday) I was scheduled for this week was cancelled, so I'll be working those days as well.

On top of all this, I have a head-pounding, great-gruesome-gobs-of-snot-producing cold. (There will be no photos. Say thank you.)

I. Am. Tired.

10,956 days

Hilde (photo ca. 1981 by Gil Gaier)

Today marks 30 years since the day I was driving Hilde to one of the local SF club meetings, we got to talking, and we found out we'd both been thinking "What if...?" about the other.

Thank you, Hilde, for thirty years of being companion, lover, wife and soulmate. You changed my life. You made me human. I love you.

We Have Seen The Future, And It Is Slush

Back in 1991, the World Fantasy Convention was held in Tucson, Arizona. I had a little part in that, as editor of an anthology, Copper Star, of Southwestern-themed sf, fantasy & horror that was given out to the membership of the convention (plus extras that were sold to help recoup costs). Not a bad little book, if I say so myself.

I edited Copper Star as an "open market" book, where anyone could submit manuscripts for consideration. ("Open market" vs "invitational" anthologies is a subject for another post.) So I had, as I recall, about 300 stories submitted to go thru and reject, accept, or ask for a rewrite-&-retry.

One of the stories in the slushpile featured a near-future in which the USA's border with Mexico had been lined with a series of highly-automated forts which, whenever Mexicans tried to cross the border into the US, would open up with machine guns, flame throwers, missiles, etc, and slaughter men, women and children alike.

In the story, a female reporter manages to sneak into one of the tightly-sealed forts, where she discovers a human in control of the slaughter-machines. And it turns out that he (and all the other operators in all the other forts) are the worst psychopaths available, drafted from prisons and asylums to perform patriotic (and fun!, by their standards) duties for their country. The fort's operator shows the reporter the facilities, blows some approaching Mexicans into little chunky bits, has rough sex (bordering on rape) with the reporter, and throws her back out of the fort. End of story.

In my rejection letter, I noted (besides the icksome main character) that the story had no explanation why Mexicans would continue to try and cross the border, even in the face of certain death. Civil war? Pandemic disease? The story needed something to justify the actions of the doomed.

So here we are, fifteen years later, and there are people, even Congressmen, seriously suggesting that all 11,000,000 or so illegal immigrants in the US simply be rounded up and thrown back into Mexico. (Never mind that a lot of those eleven million people come from countries other than Mexico.)

What would happen if you actually did that?

Millions of people, suddenly thrust back into Mexican society. Millions of people without jobs. Millions of people now NOT sending substantial portions of the US dollars they earned back home into the Mexican economy.

In that situation, I think the stage will have been set for civil war in Mexico, between the poor and the better-off. In that situation, yeh, you might have human traffic -- refugees fleeing violence, rather than people simply trying to find jobs -- trying to get into the US, even against a heavily-armed border.

But who, besides a psychopath, would think the idea of slaughtering anyone, everyone, who tries to cross the border was morally defensible? Could anyone actually want to see the scenario of that slushpile story made into reality?

Well, pretty damn close. From the comments section of a Defensetech post on "border security theater":

The thing Defense Tech posted just before Bush's speech was about an unmanned gunner thing that mounted on top of a humvee. I think we should have one of those with night vision & infrared & have it be mounted on the top of a 50 foot high metal pole...and have that duplicated. I would have 1 pole per mile...So thats around 3,000 of these. Spend several years to write there software, and have the whole thing automated. So that if an Illegal gets within half a mile of the US border...they get a warning shot fired around 50 feet from them, then have the gun wait like 30 seconds...and if they haven’t begun going backwards (towards Mexico) then another warming shot would be around 15 feet from them...then another 30 seconds...then after that, if they are still walking towards the US border...shoot to kill.

After a week or so, the bodies will be piling up, that will send one hell of a clear message to any illegal citizen...there is no better deterrent then force.

Posted by: Murc at May 15, 2006 11:31 PM

So the good news is that the future will be like science fiction. The bad news is that some people want it to be badly-written science fiction.

A Novel Means of Motivation

In the same breakfast conversation mentioned in the last post, the subject turned to the writing of novels.

I've had a number of short stories published over the years, and wrote a number of movie scripts (tho' none ever resulted in more than a few trips out to Hollywood to meet with producers who never actually put money on the table); the scripts were essentially novellas in length and amount of plot.

But I've never been able to finish any of the novels I've started working on. Somewhere between 50 and 100 pages, I'll almost invariably start muttering to myself, "My god, this sucks. It absolutely, totally sucks," and end up abandoning the project. With a shorter work, I can fool myself long enough to actually finish the piece... and find, surprisingly, that it's not that bad once it's done.

The breakfast conversation led me to muse on what it might take to motivate myself to actually complete a novel (even if it does suck). And the thought that came to mind was a reverse-advance.

Suppose I gave somebody, oh, a hundred bucks. And I told them, "Hold onto this hundred dollars for a year. If I haven't finished a novel by then, you get to keep the money."

And ideally the person you give the money to won't be family or friend, but someone you really, really dislike, and who feels the same way towards you. Because not only will you face the prospect of seeing your hundred bucks end up with someone you loath, but you'll just know that that person, if you don't finish that frigging novel, will wave those bills in your face and say "Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, you're a fucking lo-o-o-o-oser!"

This... might... actually... work.

And the really tempting thing about this idea is that I can think of several people whose money, if they wanted to write a novel, I would cheerfully hold onto for a year. And I'd probably end up keeping it. Cool!

Expository Gruel

(Not a foodblogging post.)

I had a disappointing experience recently, reading a new book by a writer whose earlier work I had enjoyed a lot.

It was a sequel to an earlier book, and in the new book he needed to restate some of the backstory and world-data that had been presented, pretty successfully, in the first book.

And it... didn't quite work out as well in the second book. Clearly the writer was trying to incorporate the info smoothly into the action of the new book, but...

...but while there weren't any specific passages that I could point to and say, "This is an expository lump," I couldn't help but notice that the writer was inserting backstory information into the new story. It was just obvious enough that it kept me from fully focusing on the new book's story.

I was mentioning this the other day, when Hilde and I went to breakfast with some other people, and described it as "expository gruel".

"Hmmm. I like that," one of the other people at the table said. "That could be a very useful expression."

So, here you go: "Expository gruel", tossed free into the blogosphere for anyone who finds it worth using.

Memorable Moments From Nebula Weekend

So Hilde and I are out in the Mission Palms' upstairs courtyard for the pre-Banquet reception, with bunches of writers and editors sipping drinks and chatting. And we compliment Steve Gould on his spiffy tuxedo with the green-accented bowtie and vest.

"Yes, and look," Steve says, "it matches your wife's dress." Sure enough, it's the same shade as Hilde's green silk.

Then Steve looks at me, in my natural-colored sportcoat & pants and black silk shirt. "But you're not wearing green," he says.

"No, I'm afraid not," I reply.

Steve, after a second or two pause, says, "Well, I guess I'll just have to imagine you wearing a lime-green thong underneath."

I am not sipping a drink at that moment. I am very grateful.

"Ohhhh, that's okay, Steve. You don't have to go to any trouble on my behalf. Really, you don't. Really. Thank you. Please."

Fin-- OWWW! --ished

The housepainting is done.

(Well, almost. Still have to get the last of the painter's tape removed, put stuff away, and move back all the stuff on the front and back porches that was originally up against the walls. Oh, and still have to paint the entrance door to the garage.)

It is... amazing... just how stiff and sore one's hands and wrists will get after days of using brushes and rollers. Excuse me while I go make obeisance to Ibuprofen, the God of Pain Relief.

Crassphemy, Revisited

Back in June of 2005, I posted an entry, Crassphemy, regarding a news item about a French shoe designer producing shoes decorated with Hindu mythological art, including depictions of Hindu gods. Some Hindus were upset, and legal action was threatened.

Some late comments, from a Hindu, just showed up on the entry. The commenter noted something that explained much more clearly than the original news item did about why Hindus would be upset by the shoes:

In Hinduism, we dont touch anything/anybody with our legs. We consider each person/thing associated with God and if we touch them with our legs it means we might be kicking God. In the same context Lord Rama is God for us Hindus, so when we don't even touch others with our legs, how can we be quiet when our God's picture is appearing on the footwear.

This is a belief that I had never heard about Hinduism, and one that wasn't mentioned in the news item. And it makes the strong reaction to the shoes a lot more understandable.

The excerpt above is only part of the comment. It's the type of comment I like to receive. It disagrees with what I said, but it does so politely and by presenting facts and sincere opinions. This is a great comment.

I just wish the commenter had included a name, rather than posting as "anonymous". I tend to associate "anonymous" comments with drive-by snarkings and trollings; this wasn't one. Even a nom de internet would have been better.

And, rather than just saying, "Hey, thanks", I'd like to be able to say, "Hey, thanks, _______. Feel free to drop by again."

Crusie & Mayer: The Stand Up, Sit Down, Sign Books Comedy Tour

Yesterday evening I took our friend Anne over to the Desert Ridge Barnes & Noble where Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer were having a talk & signing for their first collaboration, Don't Look Down.

DLD is an odd duck, a lighthearted funny romance combined with macho "men's fiction" adventure action. Reportedly pretty good. (Haven't read it yet myself.)

But Crusie and Mayer are a pretty odd duo to find collaborating. (They met at a Maui writers conference several years ago.) Vivacious writer of funny modern-day romances, quiet ex-Special Forces guy who writes thrillers. Jeez, these two are a walking set-up for an odd-couple romance plot themselves. ("She writes love stories. He can kill people with one finger. They're protagonists!")

I thoroughly enjoyed the signing. The interaction between the two earned a comparison to the Smothers Brothers. Since Mayer is so quiet (at times his side of the conversation consisted of a raised eyebrow or an askance look), Penn & Teller also come to mind.

Jennifer Crusie is one of the funniest speakers I've heard in a long time. How funny is she? Let's put it this way: If she and Esther Friesner ever end up in the same room tgether, an entire city will be reduced to rubble in a jocular explosion.

(You can get some of the flavor of the event at Crusie's blogs. He Wrote, She Wrote currently features the ongoing saga of their book tour. Crusie's general blog is Argh Ink.)

Working Vacation

I've been at home all this last week, which is why I haven't had any time to post new entries here.

No, really. I've taken four weeks leave from work to catch up with some major obligations and overdue projects.

The major obligation, as a glance at the calendar will tell you, is getting income taxes done. So, have I gotten all the information together, entered into the tax program, printed out the results, and gotten everything ready to put in the mail by Monday's deadline?

Ahem. Yeh, and horses will give birth to chickens, too.

Trying to get taxes done, though, meant that I did get one of the major projects on my list done: Cleaning up, organizing, and filing everything in the office, which has been, umm, way behind. ("Hey! There's a floor in here!" That was amusing when the first person said it; not so much, the second.) Which means that, as far as I've gotten on them, I've been able to now find the information I need for figuring taxes.

Other major projects on line, after I really do finish off the taxes, include painting the outside of the house (long overdue), and redoing/repainting the master bedroom's bathroom (also long overdue). And, if there's still time left before I have to head back to work on May 8th, going back into the office, moving everything out, ripping up the ghastly red shag carpeting (last of the original carpeting from the previous owners before we moved here in 1985) and replacing it with tile, painting the walls, and installing adjustable shelving along the north wall of the office.

I'll try and do a few posts in the odd spare moments (I've had several in mind) between slugging away at the to-do list. But it will probably be fairly skimpy on blog posts here for the next three weeks.

Heard In Passing

A few days ago on the radio I thought I heard quick clip of one of my Senators, Jon Kyl, saying that most illegal immigrants were "murderers, rapists, and child molesters."

Say wha---? This seemed like a remarkably extreme statement, even from a strong right-winger like Kyl.

So I did some Googling (God bless Google!), and found the full text of what he said on his website, jonkyl.com.

Not quite as bad as what I thought I'd heard. (Since the online version is dated March 16th, and the audio clip was only a few days ago on NPR, I'm uncertain if the audio came from Kyl reading from the written version, or if he might have been paraphrasing himself.) This is the pertinent paragraph from the website:

The number of illegal immigrants who are criminals is rapidly escalating. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 139,000 of the 1.1 million people apprehended on the border in 2005 were criminal aliens seeking to illegally re-enter the United States. The majority are serious offenders: rapists, murders, child molesters, drug dealers and the like. We've got to get control of our border to prevent this chaos and ensure terrorists are unable to sneak into our country.

So apparently Kyl wasn't claiming that over half of the eleven million illegal aliens in the USA are murderers, rapists and child molesters. He was claiming that 139,000 of the 1.1 million, or slightly more than 1 in 8, of the illegal immigrants apprehended by border police, were known criminals, and that over half of those (or about 70,000) were known rapists, murderers, child molesters "and the like".

What the heck, exactly, is "the like"?

Frankly, though, that "and the like" makes these numbers sound very fishy. Not so much that 1 in 8 of illegal immigrants might have a criminal record -- illegal immigrants tend to come from the poorest and most desperate portion of their countries' populations, and I suspect if you ran figures for criminal records among poor blacks or hispanics in the US, you'd find similar numbers for our own residents, both because crime rates (particularly for property crimes like theft and burglary) are higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods and because there's more police attention to those areas -- but that over half of those criminal records would be for rape, murder and child molestation. "And the like."

I tried to find some general numbers on crime rates in Mexico, but my Google-fu apparently isn't good enough to find it easily. (Although I can give you crime rates for Mexico, Missouri and Mexico, Maine. That's easy!)

And, of course, the subtext of Kyl's remarks is that similar numbers would apply to the much larger numbers of illegal immigrants who were not caught in 2005. Which is a way of proclaiming that probably several hundred thousand rapists, murderers and child molesters entered the USA illegally in 2005.

Now that's the sort of thing I expect Kyl to do. Not to directly come out and say "Wetbacks are going to rape your wives, sodomize your sons, and kill YOU!" but to do it indirectly, genteely, and politely. Kyl is very much a well-mannered, well-dressed politician, but one should try never to forget that a significant part of his support comes from The Guys In The Bars who will say, flat out, "Wetbacks want to rape my wife, sodomize my children, and kill ME!"

Oh, The Things You'll Learn!

We've been having a friend and her two-year old daughter stay with us in recent months.

Having Bronwyn around means that we've been exposed to more children's programming and DVDs aimed at the pre-school market than usual. ("Usual" being equivalent to "none".)

Short overview: The Wiggles, good. (They're amusing and have considerable charm.) The Doodlebops, bad. (They're not amusing, not charming, and the costuming makes me want to call, not the Fashion Police, but the fashion Death Squads. Like the Teletubbies, the Doodlebops is a show best watched on drugs.)

But what I really wanted to mention is the hidden connection between Sesame Street and science-fiction:

On the DVD for ELMO IN GROUCHLAND, the annoying little Elmo character ends up briefly at the bottom of Oscar the Grouch's garbage can.

Which looks to be about several thousand square feet in area.

Yes, Oscar's garbage can is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

You can see the implications of this, can't you?

Yes, Oscar the Grouch is a Time Lord!

This explains much.

Flashback: "This Is The Day"

In note of the 3rd anniversary of George Bush's invasion of Iraq, here's a poem I wrote back then:

This Is The Day

This is the day.
This is his Big Day.
This is the Biggest! Bestest! day
of his life.

This is the day
he will be remembered for.
This is the day
his father's folly is erased.

This is the day
the naysayers are silenced.
This is the day
their numbers could not stop.

This is the day
the missiles will fly.
This is the day
when ancient cities burn.

This is the day
collaterals are damaged.
This is the day
that Jesus will applaud.

This is the day
his name becomes immortal.
This is the day
he finally shows them all.

This is the day.
This is his Big Day.
This is the Biggest! Bestest! day
of his life.

I generally don't consider myself competent or experienced enough to pass judgement on my rare attempts at poetry, but this one worked pretty well, I thought. It's been on the Poets Against War website since back then, and even (I found a few months later) got swiped for reposting to another website.

Almost All Things Considered

The All Things Considered newsmagazine on National Public Radio recently had a piece on "word fugitives", words for those concepts, actions, feelings or objects for which there isn't -- quite -- a proper word yet in the English language. Words which ought to exist, which ought to be right on the tip of your tongue, words for which you find yourself haplessly searching (hence "word fugitives").

ATC ran a contest along with the piece, asking listeners to submit their invented terms for the following phenomenon: Those times when you feel a sneeze coming on, and coming on, and coming on, and then it doesn't happen.

Well, I listened to that radio challenge during my daily commute, and thought that the best answer to the contest was so friggin' obvious that there was no sense in submitting it, since dozens of other listeners would have already beaten me to the website.

Yesterday, the winners of the contest were announced. Not only was the winner ("sniffhanger") NOT my word of choice, but my word didn't even APPEAR in the list of most frequent entries.

Unbelievable. How could this possibly be? Obviously, an unfinished sneeze has to be...

a s'not.

Downfalls: The Advisor and the Sergeant

In the news: Former White House domestic-policy advisor Claude Allen was arrested for multiple instances of refund fraud, spread over several months, at Target and Hecht's stores in the Washington DC area. Allen was apparently apprehended in January, but was not charged until this month; he resigned from his White House position in February, reportedly "to spend more time with his family."

This is a guy who was making over $160,000 a year, who was working at one of the highest and most prestigious non-elected positions in government. And, as an African-American, he was one of the Bush Administration's role-models for minorities.

So if the charges are true (and since the incidents are reportedly not only numerous -- over two dozen -- but took place in several different stores, it seems very likely they are), the question comes to mind:

What was this guy THINKING?! Why would he risk his career, his reputation, his family, for what was (considering his income) a series of second-rate ripoffs?

What came immediately to my mind was Sergeant Faust.

Sergeant Faust was one of the NCOs in my Army unit. He was a tall, horse-faced, strong-voiced black man. He was career military; I think he had about twelve yars under his belt when I met him. He was a very capable NCO, fair but firm with the soldiers serving under him. I liked him, and respected him, a lot. So did most of the other soldiers and NCOs in the company.

Then one day he was arrested for shoplifting a steam iron from the base PX.

Everyone who heard the news was just flabbergasted. Sergeant Faust had a spotless record; he had never done anything to even merit an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment for minor infractions of military regs and discipline) in his entire career. Why would he do something so small, so petty, but so serious that it would cause his arrest and (eventually) court-martial? What would make him do something so... crazy?

One of the company's other sergeants, a pretty close friend of Sergeant Faust, had a possible explanation: Faust's wife was a compulsive shopper, and Sergeant Faust had been trying to deal, privately, with both his wife's compulsions and the crippling debts that resulted, for years. And the other sergeant felt that Faust finally just broke, and did something, anything, to upset the applecart, to change the status quo. Even if the result was to make things worse.

That may have been a part of it. But I don't think it was the only reason.

About six months before Sergeant Faust's arrest, there'd been a serious incident in the company: After a training exercise, the company's soldiers checked their weapons back into the weapons room. But after everyone had gone thru and apparently checked in their weapon, the gun racks still had one empty slot.

One of the M-16s was missing.

This was serious enough that the entire barracks was locked down; no one still there was permitted to leave, and everyone who'd already left was ordered back, even if they had off-post living quarters. (Some people slept on the floors that night.) The most logical suspect, and the one the military police centered in on, was the soldier who'd used the missing weapon that day. (He'd come to our unit after serving a stint in the stockade for drug-related charges.) The soldier maintained his innocence, but was taken into custody regardless.

Sergeant Faust, and one of the other sergeants, weren't so sure the suspect soldier was the person responsible for the theft. For one, the suspect soldier lived in the barracks, and a search of the building hadn't found the weapon. Most likely, they thought, the weapon had been transported off-base.

And they knew their soldiers pretty well, and they knew which of the people who'd been recalled to the barracks after leaving the base were most likely to have tried stealing a weapon.

Faust and the other sergeant got permission to leave the barracks, and the base. They went to the home of the girlfriend of the soldier they suspected was responsible, and they told her what would happen to her if she knew anything about the theft, or if she helped in any way to keep the weapon from being returned. They told her that if she helped them now, she might be able to stay out of trouble, and out of jail. She was, as I heard the story from the other sergeant involved, shaking and crying on the sofa where she was sitting.

And then she turned and reached behind the sofa, and brought out the missing M-16, and handed it to the two sergeants.

(How The M-16 Was Stolen: The soldier originally issued the weapon checked it in properly, and the weapons clerk placed it in the rack. The actual thief, several people back in line, noted that the weapons clerk then turned his back on the rack to handle the next check-in, and that when people left the weapons room, they moved past the rack of weapons. After checking in his own weapon, the thief quietly snatched another M-16 off the rack and concealed it under his Army jacket; leaving the barracks, he took the M-16 to his girlfriend and told her to hide it for him. Shortly afterwards, he was recalled to the barracks along with the rest of the company.)

Sergeant Faust and the other sergeant showed intelligence, and initiative, and were able to resolve the situation faster than the military police (who were concentrating their attention on the wrong man) would have done. There probably wasn't a medal quite suited for what they had done, but certainly they deserved at the very least a letter of commendation. Didn't they?

What they got was... nothing. Nothing at all. Not a letter, not a commendation, not even a private "Thank you" from the company commander. The CO, as best as I can guess, just wanted the entire embarassing incident to have never happened, even to not being willing to acknowledge even in private that it had happened.

What a shitty thing to do to a good soldier, to a good NCO.

And after Sergeant Faust's shoplifting arrest, I couldn't help wondering how much that denial of recognition must have dwelled in his mind, how much it must have bothered him, how much it must have hurt.

And I couldn't help wondering if that stupid, career-destroying act, that stupid ten-dollar steam iron stuck under his jacket, wasn't his (probably unconscious) way of striking back at the institution that he'd given so many years to, and which had so deeply disrespected him.

I don't know what might have sent Claude Allen along a similar path. Maybe he had his own personal, family problems. But there's been a lot of speculation on various blogs that Claude Allen was, in essence, the White House's "Pet Negro", someone given a high position, but whose work in that position was never really that important, that essential, that respected.

And if Claude Allen came to realize, to understand, how little respect his superiors actually had for him, how much must that have dwelled in his mind, how much must it have bothered him, how much must it have hurt?

And I can't help wondering if those stupid, career-destroying actions, those stupid refund scams, wasn't his own (probably unconscious) way of striking back at the people he'd given so many years to, and who had so deeply disrespected him.

I can't help wondering whether, if he couldn't be respected, he decided, somewhere in his mind, that he could at least be... an embarassment.

Well, Finally

After a 140-day-plus dry streak, we finally got measurable rain here in the Phoenix metro area. Since early this morning, the Glendale area has gotten slightly over an inch of the wet stuff.

We've even had snow (in March!!) over in the Cave Creek/Carefree area, about twenty miles to the northeast of here.

It's been an all-day drizzle, which lets most of the rain soak into the ground rather than run off and raise the risk of flash flooding. (Which also means we haven't, so far, had any of the traditional rainy-day news video of pickup trucks and SUVs stuck in the middle of a flooded wash they've tried to cross. This usually falls under the category of "Morons On Parade".)

This really is a big deal. The rain and snow will help replenish the reservoirs and lakes that provide a lot of the water for Phoenix. And the moisture will refresh the desert and forest greenery and help ward off what looked like it might be a record-breaking year for wildfires. (And considering how bad some recent years have been... that would be something unpleasant.)

Plus, the world smells good.

Let Me Feel

Octavia Butler died yesterday. She was 58.

Hilde and I first met Octavia in 1978. She was an intensely shy and thoughtful person.

She was also one of the most sincerely caring people I've met. This came across not only in person, but in her books. (Kindred and Parable of the Sower in particular.

Tanarive Due said, at the news of her death:

“What she really conveyed in her writing was the deep pain she felt about the injustices around her. All of it was a metaphor for war, poverty, power struggles and discrimination. All of that hurt her very deeply, but her gift was that she could use words for the pain and make the world better."

We only saw Octavia a handful of times in the years after we first met her. Once, after a dinner in LA's Koreatown, we went back to Octavia's house. I remember the outside border of the monitor on her desk, and the shelves above it, had a dozen or so Post-It notes stuck on, with short notes on plot developments and goals for the work-in-progress.

One note in particular sticks in memory: "Let me feel her fear."

"Let me feel" is, I think, a good summation of her writing. And she let her readers feel, as well.

She'll be missed.

Earthdust & Stardust

The annual week-long Estrella War, the SCA's second-largest event, wrapped up and packed up a few days ago.

I was in charge of the kitchen and cooking for our group. Hilde and I daytripped, since the location, Estrella Park in Goodyear, Arizona, is only about 25 miles from home.

The event was held after a record-breaking (and still continuing) dry spell, over 120 days without rain. Which meant that the fine flour-like dirt grains in the area were no longer being held down by healthy grass. Which meant that when fairly strong winds blew the first few days...

...that dust was everywhere. And that trying to keep an operating camp kitchen was a constant exercise in wiping and cleaning, and more wiping and cleaning, and still more wiping and cleaning. It felt very much like the descriptions of the old Oklahoma Dust Bowl days of the 1930's, when dust was a constant, blowing and drifting through every crack and into every cranny. (When you're trying to work in a tent, there are a lot of cracks.)

Fortunately, the winds died down after the first few days, and the rest of the War was relatively normal. I was able to cook and serve the meals I'd planned and prepped for (Tomato Bread Soup with Chicken, India-Style Pork Chops, Belgian Beef Carbonnade, Salmon Steaks with Dill, Pork Stew with Root Vegetables & Dried Fruit, and Chickensnitzel) without too much trouble.

In fact, the winds died down enough to leave the skies clear and cloudless. Which, in combination with Estrella Park's location far enough outside the Phoenix metro area's light-island, meant that on the last night of the war, I paused from packing up stuff to take home the next day, and spent a few moments staring up at a night sky that contained at least twice as many stars as I can usually see from our yard at home.

The thing was, it's been so long since I've had, and taken, an opportunity to do that, that I've largely forgotten what constellations appear in what part of the sky. (I was never a hardcore astronomy buff, but as a kid I had a moderately good idea of what to look for in the night sky.) So I was standing there with my head tilted back, muttering to myself, "I think that's Taurus. I think that's Leo."

I think that's sad.

Cheney Conspiracy Theory, version n

So there's a lot of speculating online about just what happened or didn't happened, what's being kept secret or not secret, what's being lied about or not lied about, in regard to Dick Cheney's shooting of Harry Whittington.

Some theories are rather reasonable. And some (particularly in some of the comments on more reasonable posts) are a little, umm, off the wall. ("Gay lovers having a bad breakup"? I don't think so.)

It's rather like a game of "Can You Top This?"

So, putting on my own tin-foil beanie, I came up with:

A small scorch-marked tape-recorder was found on the roof of a Houston parking garage. Examination showed the recorder had been fitted with a self-incinerating device that failed to fully employ. The machine's tape contained the following recording, in a woman's voice:

Good Morning, Mister Whittington. Thank you for responding to our call, despite many years of retirement from the IMF. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to assassinate the Vice-President of the United States.

The assassination will have to look like an accident. We have arranged for you to be invited as part of a hunting party with the Vice-President and others. A 'tragic accident' would be the most desirable outcome.

A note of personal caution: If the Vice-President becomes aware of your mission, he will not hesitate to strike first. He is a mean son-of-a-bitch, and he will NOT shoot to kill; he would shoot you either in the face or in the balls.

As always, if you or any member of your IMF team are killed or captured, I, umm, [sound of throat clearing] the Secretary of State will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. [tape ends]

Even Being Rich Won't Protect You Anymore

I've been doing the headless-chicken routine recently, trying to get everything together for the SCA's upcoming Estrella War, where I'll be running the kitchen for and feeding a bunch of people, so posting here has been light. But a quick look online a little while ago provided a news story that literally made me do a double-take.

Just when you think things can't get any more bizarre, Vice-President Cheney goes and shoots a guy in the face:

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - [edited]Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital on Sunday, according to Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System.

The incident occurred Saturday at a ranch in south Texas where the vice president and two companions were hunting quail. It was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after the incident was reported locally by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Katharine Armstrong, the ranch's owner, said Sunday that Cheney was using a 28-guage shotgun and that Whittington was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest.

Each of the hunters were wearing bright orange vests at the time, Armstrong told reporters at the ranch about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She said Whittington was "alert and doing fine."

Armstrong in an interview with The Associated Press said emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington before an ambulance — routinely on call because of the vice president's presence — took him to the hospital.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Whittington has been a private practice attorney in Austin since 1950 and has long been active in Texas Republican politics. He's been appointed to several state boards, including when then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission.

McBride did not comment about why the vice president's office did not tell reporters about the accident until the next day. She referred the question to Armstrong, who could not be reached again Sunday evening.

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year and is "a very safe sportsman." She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.
___

Nedra Pickler reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.

So... the Bush Administration really is The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

(But before I go on to make more smartass remarks, one serious thing: Some people might doubt that Mr. Whittington is really in as good shape as reported, since he's also in "intensive care". My own experience with intensive care, when I had what looked and felt like a heart attack in 1995, was that, even after the ER established that I probably wasn't having a real attack -- I was reacting to intolerable stress from workplace harassment -- I was still sent up to the ICU for 24 hours of monitoring. Because that's where all the monitoring equipment was. So Mr. Whittington is probably being monitored in the same way.) (It would be so embarassing if he developed complications, and wasn't being watched.)

Okay, back to smartass!

Cheney's Secret Service detail is being expanded. Half to protect Cheney, the other half to protect the public from Cheney.

Just goes to show: If you're a Republican millionaire, don't skimp on your party contributions.

And Mr. Whittington is reported to be 78 years old. At that age, he would have been tough and stringy anyway.

It was the first time the two men had hunted together. Gee, you think it might be the last?

How To Blow A Trial

One of the news stories on the current Enron trial relates that the judge in charge told prospective jurors not to seek "vengeance":

More than 100 jurors packed a cavernous courtroom to undergo questioning by U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, who has said he plans to seat a panel of 12 jurors and four alternates by day's end. If he succeeds, the long-awaited trial of Enron's former top two corporate titans will get under way Tuesday.
...

Lake told the pool that the jury box was no place for anyone seeking vengeance.

"We are not looking for people who want to right a wrong or provide remedies for those who suffered from the collapse of Enron," he said.

Whatever the results of the trial, Judge Lake has given the Enron defense attorneys grounds for appealing the trial or asking for a mistrial.

Howcum? Because it can be argued that by raising the issue of "right[ing] a wrong", Judge Lake implied that Lay and Skilling, the defendants, were guilty. This violates the "presumption of innocence" standard, and will in all probability end up with the trial results eventually being thrown out and a whole new trial [perhaps] being called for.

Thanks a lot, dumbass.

(If I were really really cynical, I'd want to see if Judge Lake's bank account had a BFD -- Big Fat Deposit -- made recently.)

IMBB #22 -- Tofu Noodles with Spicy Sardines

It's been a few months since I've had a chance to participate in the sort-of monthly Is My Blog Burning? food-blogging events. (A "Beginner's Guide To Food-Blogging Events" is included at the IMBB food-blogging-event news-site.)

The latest theme for IMBB is "Noodles", hosted by Cooking With Amy.

I've been down with a bad cold for most of the weekend, so if I was going to do an entry for the IMBB, I wanted it to:

1) use the "Noodles" theme,
2) be spicy to help clear my sinuses, and
3) be simple, since my attention span/energy level isn't at its best right now.

Hence:

Tofu Noodles With Spicy Sardines




1 pkg (8 oz) Tofu Shirataki (noodle-shaped tofu)
1 tin (4.375 oz) Hot-&-Spicy style sardines
2 Tbsp green onions, sliced into threads
1 Tbsp red bell pepper, also sliced into threads
Gyoza (potsticker dipping sauce)

Drain the packet of noodles. (They come packed in liquid, and have a noticeable fishy odor.) Parboil the noodles about 3 minutes in fresh boiling water. (This removes the fishy odor.) Drain.

On top of the hot noodles, arrange chunks of the spicy sardines. Scatter the threads of onion and pepper over the top. Add potsticker sauce to taste.


This came out quite well, considering it was pretty much improvised. The sweetness of the potsticker sauce made an interesting combination with the spiciness of the sardines. If you wanted it even spicier, you could dribble a bit of the chili-infused oil from the sardine can over the noodles.

If I'd felt better, I might have gone to a bit more trouble and made a from-scratch sauce in place of the bottled potsticker sauce. (A vinegar sauce would have been tasty.) But this was quick, easy, and rather good.

Update, 1/31/06: The roundup of links to the submitting blogs and recipes is now posted to Amy's blog.

Tagged with: IMBB # 22 + Noodle

APOD Outdoes Itself

The Astronomy Picture of the Day site routinely posts striking photos of nebulae, galaxies, etcetera.

But this recent photo of the New Horizons launch to Pluto is especially outstanding. The photographer,Ben Cooper, not only had to work with a changing, dynamic scene, but frame those changing elements into a well-composed photo. Kudos.

This would make a wonderful poster. Or it may end up as the default wallpaper on my monitor.


New Horizons launch (by Ben Cooper) 

The full-size photo is here. The APOD archive is here.

New Millenium, Old Style Medicine

If you ever watch old movies about the Civil War, or read old books about the period, one of the standard cliches of the genre is the Army medical tent where the surgeon, in blood-spattered apron, saws off arms and legs as the wounded flood in. And the anesthesia given to the wounded before the cutting starts is... whiskey. Lots of whiskey, sometimes from a tin cup, sometimes poured straight from bottle to mouth.

I got called out on a Good Samaritan run the other night, to drive a drunken young man home.

This young man, who doesn't like the taste of most liquor, and who rarely drinks at all, had -- in a short period of time -- drunk six ounces of Jack Daniels and a shot of vodka. He was, in a word, stinkin'.

He had, earlier in the night, managed to dislocate his shoulder, and efforts to reseat it had not availed.

If this had been my own situation, my next step would have been to go to an emergency room. At the ER, I would have been given a shot of muscle relaxant and some pain-killers, then had the shoulder reseated by the doctor. There would probably have been some x-rays somewhere in there, too.

But I could have gone that route because 1) I have a good job, with decent pay and good medical insurance, and 2) I have money in savings that would have enabled me to cover out-of-pocket expenses.

This particular young man is one of the Working Poor. But not poor enough, or in desperate enough straits, to qualify for welfare. He's been working dead-end jobs for years, living from paycheck to paycheck, and watching any savings he's managed to scrape together get wiped out repeatedly by unexpected expenses. And he'd already, in the last few months, been to the ER once.

When you're one of the Working Poor, even if you have some medical insurance, you can only afford so much medical care. You can afford (barely) to go to the ER. Once.

You can't afford to go twice.

So you make yourself get snockered, plastered, smashed, drunker than you've ever been in your life. And when you're drunk enough that your legs won't hold you up anymore, your girlfriend (with some telephone guidance from a friend with first-aid training) is finally able to twist your arm back into its shoulder socket.

Here we are, in the 21st Century, and people are still practicing -- have to practice -- 19th Century medicine on themselves.

It makes me mad. It makes me furious.

It makes me ashamed of my country.

The Sinister Butt of Hugh Jackman

I just realized today that our friend Anne's calls to her friend in England may have been among the international calls monitored by the NSA.

I now have a mental image of an NSA analyst with a puzzled expression turning to another analyst and saying, "These two women are talking about Hugh Jackman's butt. Do you think that could be code for something sinister?"

Twisted Genius

Occasionally, among the thousands of other catalogs I deliver to people, are ones that advertise, umm, "erotic" clothing. One of those catalogs a while back, on its back cover, had pictures of its line of... latex clothing?

I tell you, looking at that picture of that guy in a latex leisure suit made me break out in a sweat. (Yeh, really, a 1970's-style go-to-the-disco leisure suit. Didn't know anyone still made them, much less that anyone still wore them.) And not one of those, umm, good sweats, either. It was not, AT ALL, erotic.

Well, as it turns out, the latest cover of NEW TIMES WEEKLY, our local alternative weekly, features a young woman wearing a cocktail dress made of latex. Hundreds of pieces of latex. Hundreds of latex... balloons.

The inside article is about a local group of balloon-twisting artists. Not your ordinary one-minute balloon-doggies and balloon-swords anymore, but large elaborate projects that take hours of work, and sometimes several people, to create. Besides the cocktail dress, one of the photos features a full-sized motorcycle that would make American Chopper green with envy.

Interesting piece. Take a look.

Peek-A-Bear, and other photos

The 2005 Photo Contest winnersfrom the National Wildlife Federation. Sample below:


peek-a-bear 

Going Bananas: German Chocolate Banana Bread

We had some people over to the house last night, with a potluck dinner, so I baked a couple of banana breads for my contribution. The German Chocolate version I came up with, adapting a recipe off allrecipes.com, came out particularly well, I thought. So:

German Chocolate Banana Bread

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup butter or margarine
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups mashed overripe bananas
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut, toasted

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9x5 inch loaf pans.

2) Toast shredded coconut. This can be done in a dry skillet on the stovetop, or in the microwave; microwave approximately 1+1/2 to 2 minutes, stirring every 15 to 20 seconds. Set aside to cool while putting everything else together.

3) Combine flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda in a large bowl.

4) In a second large bowl, mix butter or margarine and the white and brown sugars together until smooth. Stir in bananas, eggs, nuts and coconut.

5) Pour wet ingredients into dry, and stir just until blended. Divide batter between the two loaf pans.

6) Bake 60-70 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted comes out clean. Cool in pans for 5 minutes, then turn loaves onto wire rack to cool completely.

Yummy.

Spoke Too Soon

So just when I say that I'm taking a break from political blogging, I actually get the three-day weekend off work I'm scheduled for, decide to take a quick look online...

...and find all hell breaking loose over the news that President Bush, in violation of law, ordered the National Security Agency to conduct domestic spying operations.

People are upset. A couple of particularly notable commentaries: Hilzoy at Political Animal. Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory

But those are from the liberal/progressive blogs I tend to follow. So maybe the views I'm reading there are slanted and one-sided.

A handy website I've used in the past is congress.org, which, among other things, lets users write to their Senators and Congressmen online, and also has a "Letters To Leaders" section where letterwriters can post their letters publicly as well. My impression has been that the letters posted there tend to be a pretty fair reflection of the country's general mood.

I just spent about forty-five minutes going through recent letters there about the NSA spying, and the letters are heavily against Bush's actions. VERY heavily against, about 8-1. Even more notably, at least three-quarters of the negative letters explicitly call for Bush to be impeached over the illegal spying.

Here's my own letter to my Senators and Congressman (McCain, Kyl,and Franks):

In the last several days, it has become publically known that President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct domestic spying operations against American citizens.

The President has broken the laws of this nation. What will you do in response?

When President Clinton lied under oath about a personal matter, Congress prepared articles of impeachment against him. That offense pales in comparison to President Bush's apparent contempt for the rules of law, and his contempt for the Constitution and the "checks and balances" established in that founding document.

The President has broken the laws of this nation. Will you be brave enough to call for impeachment, or will you place the interests of your political party above the future of our country?

Please let me know where you intend to stand. For our country and for our laws, or to surrender the rule of law to an executive who has publically proclaimed he is above the law?

Thank you for your time and attention.

I tend to be less dutiful than I ought to about keeping my Senators and Representative apprised of my views on matters. But this one... this is scary enough to get me typing.

Still Breathing

I've been working lots (and lots) of overtime recently, and my days have been basically: work, come home, make dinner, quick check on email, and bed. Repeat. On days off, try (and fail) to catch up on all the household chores and errands that are ordinarily done on workdays.

Which is why you haven't seen many posts here lately. Things should get back to normal after Christmas.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that having to skim, or skip altogether, the political blogs I usually cruise on a daily basis is... sorta relaxing.

Before the Bush administration, I tended to largely ignore politics. Back then, if it wasn't smart to ignore politics, it generally wasn't actively dangerous to do so. Most people could coast thru their lives and figure that if their government was out to get them, it was an incidental part of the political process, rather than deliberate.

Can't do that anymore, with the Bush administration's foundation in anti-government, anti-labor, anti-rights, anti-freedoms, anti-choice, anti-citizen extremism. I've felt an obligation, especially since 9/11, to -- at the minimum -- pay attention and stay informed about what's really going on in our government and country.

But... it gets wearying after a while. (And depressing. And scary.) And I've found that taking a (involuntary) break from watchdogging the government, going back to the pre-Bush practice of not paying attention to politics, is... kinda nice.

One of the repeated complaints heard in the anti-Bush blogosphere is that the "sheeple" won't wake up and realize how much danger their rights and freedoms and lives are in from the Bush extremists.

Maybe it's just as simple as this: Paying attention, and trying to stay informed, is hard and unpleasant work. And people, as a rule, don't like hard and unpleasant work, and try to avoid it as long as possible.

So I'm on (an enforced) vacation from political blogging for a few more weeks. I think I'll go ahead and enjoy it for the duration.

(There is, of course, the nagging feeling, that if I don't personally pay attention and stay informed, everything will go to absolute hell before New Year's. I think this may be like the old worry that if I press the wrong buttons on my keyboard, I'll launch nuclear missiles and start WWIII.)

Whoo Hoo! Good News!

Got e-mail from John Scalzi yesterday, telling me he was accepting my story, "Labyrinth's Heart", for the issue of SUBTERRANEAN MAGAZINE he's guest-editing.

This is a good feeling.

Recent Reading: Storyteller

I've been reading Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller (Small Beer Press, 2005, $16.00 tpb), a combination memoir of the 27 years she and Damon Knight were guest writers/teachers at the Clarion workshops and a guide to writing well (in a both literary and professional manner).

Overall, this is a very nice book. It's short, less than 200 pages. The memoir portions are entertaining and historically informative. The suggestions and guidelines on writing are succinct and sensible.

A few things stuck out at me:

1) One of the writing exercises she suggests is to take a completed manuscript and cover up everything on a page except a single sentence, one sentence at a time, and examine the sentence in isolation, out of context with the rest of the manuscript. Does the sentence say exactly what you wanted it to say, does it say what it needs to say?

This is, literally, a way to line-edit a story. The thought struck me that it shouldn't be too difficult (he said, with the benefit of ignorance and inexperience) to develop a short program or wordprocessing macro that could extract one sentence at a time, display it in a separate window, allow it to be revised there, and then put back into the manuscript, replacing the original sentence.

2) Wilhelm says, at different points in the book, "Think of the worst incident in your life, and use it", and quotes Alfed North Whitehead: "Art is the imposition of pattern on experience." I think those two go together well. I've tried at various points to use real experiences in my life as the basis for stories. It's very difficult (and mostly unsuccessful); sometimes (usually) that "imposition of pattern" requires major revision and simplification of those messy, complex emotions and interactions to suit the purpose of writing a properly structured story.

And sometimes you find yourself writing about your life unconsciously, in a thematic rather than specific way, and only recognize the influences after the fact. There was a story I wrote about ten years ago, where I was going over the finished manuscript, and read over one character's physical description, and how that character acted in the story, and realized with a start, "Oh crap, it's Alan Bostick!" (I sold the story anyway.)

An Open Letter To "Bob Woodward"

Dear "Mr. Woodward",

Who are you, and what have you done with the real Bob Woodward?

Sincerely,
Bruce Arthurs

Link-Fest

Dr. William Frey, on republicansforhumility.com, has written "Confessions of A Repentant Republican", a long but thoroughly-reasoned essay on his disillusionment with the Bush/Republican administration and policies. Worth the reading time.

Hell has officially frozen over. Arizona Congressman and Bush-team-waterboy J.D. Hayworth stated on the Don Imus show that he would NOT want George Bush to campaign for him in a re-election campaign.

Weirdness. News article on "Rogue Taxidermy". And the website for the Minnesota Association for Rogue Taxidermy.

Our neighbor Anne, who writes online as "Talpianna", has started a blog of her own, Fluffy Cat Babylon, focusing on her cats. "Life In A Cat House" is particularly amusing. (Now if only she'd start a blog about books and writing....)

Several months ago, Molly of My Madeleine blog (about food, cooking,and her goal to work in the food industry) was struck by a car. Besides other injuries, she suffered a fractured skull and brain bruising that resulted in the loss of her senses of smell and taste. They've been slowly returning, and in her latest post, "Salsa, Rosemary, and James Bond", she writes evocatively of the sensation and feeling of regaining lost skills.

Update 11/13/05: Some non-working links fixed. (Thanks, Tal.)

Still Missed

In one of my filing cabinets is a file marked "Unpublished/Unpublishable". It contains material I've written over the years that, for one reason or another (too personal, too angry, too et cetera), I've chosen not to put in print.

What follows is something I wrote in November of 1980. At the time, I decided it was too personal, and that it probably said more about me than about the person I was writing about.

After twenty-five years, though... perhaps it's time:

Hilde, my wife, spoke the words to me when she came back from a shopping trip with Paul Schauble, who had spoken the words to her. These are the words that I heard:

"It's not Wednesday."

In 1975, July, I was attending the Westercon in San Francisco. It was the first major convention I had been to since being discharged from the Army and returning home to the West from the East Coast. I was at a room party, sitting off on one corner of a bed, alone and feeling uncomfortable in a group of people most of whom I did not know or knew only through fanzines and did not know how to start a face-to-face conversation with.

A young lady entered the room, and spoke with some of the other people in the room. She sat down on the bed, read my nametag, and began talking to me about my fanzine.

She began talking to me. It was as if I was an interesting person, which I did not believe myself. I talked clumsily back, in my low, semi-audible voice, and she did not seem to be bored. She did not seem to be bored, and I found that hard to believe. It was not a long conversation by some people's standards, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, but by my own standards it was an immense stretch. We talked about my fanzine, how I felt about it, about what I had been doing since leaving the Army, about me. And she seemed to care, and she seemed to like me, and not once during that conversation did she glance around to look at anyone else's nametag, to find someone more interesting to talk with. (I broke the conversation off; as I said, by my standards, it was immensely long and I was suffering from... shock?... and I did not know how to cope with it at all.)

We never really saw each other very much. A few minutes talking at the Westercon two years later in Vancouver, some scatteed "Hi's" at another convention or two. We traded fanzines, though, and I felt I knew her from those. And I looked forward to each ccasional issue of her life, and I remembered the kindness she had shown to me at that Westercon in 1975, and I think I can say that I loved her.

It was not a mad, passionate type of love, although I suppose that if I had lived closer and seen her more often, I might have been goofy and foolish enough to succumb to that goofy and foolish madness. But it was more than what I felt towards most people in fandom, where the term "friend" is mistakenly applied to so many acquaintances. But she already had so many friends, who felt towards her as I did, and I never mentioned my feelings to her in the occasional letter I sent. And had I known that she would at last need a friend, any friend, I would have moved heaven and earth to have been there.

"It's not Wednesday."

Those are the words I heard Hilde speak. They were not the words she had said. Something, between my ear and my brain, had altered them, rejected the true words as unacceptable. Hilde repeated the words:

"Susan Wood is dead."

I wish it was Wednesday.

Tightwad-At-Large

I'm cheap. I like to save money. I like to get bargains.

I also like books. So does Hilde, but usually totally different books and writers than the ones I like. Which means we tend to buy lots of books. Lots and lots of books.

I've been a member of two book clubs for years: Science Fiction Book Club and Quality Paperback Book Club. I keep a wish list on each website, and try and wait for a special offer (like free shipping) before making an order.

The SFBC just offered such a special deal, buy 2 books and get a 3rd book free, said deal available for a limited time. Okay, I think, time to go through the wishlist and make an order.

But I decide to take a quick look at QPB's website first, and I realize something that should have been obvious a long time ago.

QPB has a standing deal, where you order your most expensive book at the full club price, and subsequent books cost 50% of the club price. (There's a limit -- ten books -- you can order at a time under this deal.) Buy one at full price, and up to nine books more at half price.

As it happens, both QPB and SFBC are the handsome children of the same parent (Doubleday), along with a few other book clubs. What this means is that most of the books for both clubs come out of the same warehouses.

And what that means is that if I order SFBC's offerings through the QPB website, I receive the same 50% discount as if they were part of QPB's regular selections. (The SFBC books don't earn the "bonus points" that you can accumulate on QPB offerings and occasionally trade in for free books, but that's not that big a deal.)

A substantially better deal than the "buy 2, get 1 free" offer. Which means that in a week or two, I'll be getting a big box of hardcovers and trade pbs at essentially paperback prices.

(Although... I must admit... I sort of feel like I just mugged Ellen Asher and swiped the SFBC payroll.)

This Explains A Lot. No, Really.

From The Guardian, an article on "Sick Worker Syndrome":

RSI may cause sick worker syndrome

Alok Jha, science correspondent
Wednesday October 26, 2005
The Guardian

...scientists say the nerve damage caused by repetitive motion could be a cause of "sick worker" syndrome and such symptoms as poor performance, fatigue and depression.

Ann Barr and Mary Barbe of the College of Health Professions at Temple University in Philadelphia studied the early changes in nerves caused by repetitive activities. They found the injuries are caused by the action of proteins called cytokines, which help start the inflammation. The proteins appeared in rat models of RSI within three weeks.

As the injury progressed, more cytokines were produced at the inflammation site. The researchers found unexpected links between the production of cytokines and the rats' psychosocial responses. "At three weeks, even before the rats experienced pain from their wrist injuries, we watched them self-regulate their work behaviour," Dr Barr said. "With inflammatory proteins in the bloodstream, they began to slack off." After five to eight weeks, many of the rats curled up and slept between tasks.

The researchers said people who took days off work owing to undefined symptoms or slowed down their work rate may be suffering from the effects of the raised cytokine levels. A low-grade depression may also set in. As the proteins appear soon after nerve damage first happens, when actual pain is rare, many people might not make the connection between the "off" feeling and possible RSI. It could take months before the nerve damage is bad enough to be noticed.

Dr Barbe said: "Cytokines are self-protective. This undefined feeling of malaise may be telling the body to take some time off to heal, before things get worse."

As I've mentioned before, my job with the Postal Service has in recent months entailed a lot of overtime work. A lot. One of the reasons for this is that the current bosses in charge seem to be of the school of management that it's cheaper to work current employees longer hours at overtime rates than it is to hire new employees and pay them regular rates plus benefits. (Yes, working for USPS still has benefits like retirement and health isurance, much as the idea makes upper management gnash their teeth and rend their sackcloth.)

The overtime has been across the board, affecting almost all employees. (There are some who are on restricted hours/duties because of previous injuries or health problems.)

What has also happened across the board has been an increase in the number of sick calls, of people begging off work. Before all the overtime started, out of a workforce of approximately a hundred carriers at the station, there'd usually be three, four, maybe five people calling in sick. Since the overtime has grown by leaps and bounds in recent months, the sick calls have grown apace; it's not unusual anymore to have eight or nine people (once, thirteen) call in sick.

With more sick calls, the overtime problem grows even worse. With that many more delivery routes not manned, the people who have shown up for work have to work even longer hours. Management doesn't like paying time-and-a-half for overtime, even if they think it's cheaper in the long run than hiring more employees. They like it even less when employees work past ten hours in a day; after that point, employees start earning double-pay. And a lot of carriers have been working past the ten-hour mark.

And delivering the mail entails a lot of repetitive work: Sorting mail in the mornings, and delivering it the rest of the day.

The cytokine findings in the study noted above certainly seem to explain a lot of the increase in sick calls. Long hours, much of it in repetitive tasks, for days on end, and surprise, a lot of the workers feel like crap. And some of them finally call in sick, because they feel just plain friggin' worn out. (While a lot of others -- like, say, me -- will continue to report to work, and drag themselves through each day, even when they feel like crap too.)

The obvious solution would seem, duh, to hire more employees to try to eliminate/minimize overtime and the excessive sick calls that seem to result. But, as noted, this is a solution upper management doesn't seem willing to entertain at this time.

(And a lot of employees appreciate the overtime money. As I noted in an earlier post, my overtime money is largely going for debt reduction purposes, and should leave me debt-and-mortgage-free and able to retire in about four years. Without the overtime, I'd probably have to continue working several additional years before I could retire. But those extra hours spent working are hours that can't be spent with your home, your family, your life. And that gets to be a major, major drag sometimes.)

Recent Reading: Playboy 50 Years The Cartoons

Playboy 50 Years The Cartoons, intro by Hugh Hefner, Chronicle Books, 2004

I just read it for the captions, honest.

Like science fiction, the Golden Age of PLAYBOY is, I think, thirteen. That was about the age at which I started sneaking looks at the issues in the house.

(Now where did those issues come from? Did my Dad have a subscription? I suppose he must have, but I don't remember him ever looking at them. Perhaps the Naked Women Fairy snuck into the house at night and left copies in the bathroom. The Naked Women Fairy must have been kept very busy, because back them it seemed like everyone's bathroom had an issue or several of PLAYBOY. So busy, in fact, that it was years, dammit, before he got around to leaving an actual naked woman in my bed.)

Of course I looked at the centerfolds and other photos. (And yeah, I actually read some of the articles and fiction they printed too. Ian Fleming, Jean Shepherd, Damon Knight; they published some damn good writers.) And I looked at the cartoons.

Some of the cartoons in this collection are ones I remember seeing back in the 60's. The collection reprints a selection from the 50's to the 00's.

From the perspective of forty years later, I'm struck by the similarity in reaction to the cartoons between my thirteen year-old self and my current self. And that reaction is...

...that the cartoons are curiously sexless.

When I was thirteen, with the first stirrings of sexual curiousity, it was largely a matter of not having a context to judge or react to the cartoons. I was so ignorant about sex, women, men & women, social interactions, and the whole game of people that many of the situations depicted in the cartons might as well have been in heiroglyphics. I had a curiousity, and a certainty that there was something being referred to, but it was something that, at that age, I didn't understand.

(It's difficult to communicate, today, in an age where so much information is so available at such an earlier age about sex and sexuality, just how deprived the information-environment about sex was back in the 1960's for young people. Trying to figure out what sex is about, and how it's done, from centerfolds and cartoons -- trust me on this -- is not a great learning method. One usually didn't start to get a handle on the subject until you were old enough to start actually dating and funbling around in the back seats of cars.)

("Well, that explains a lot, Bruce.") (Yes, it does.)

Forty-plus years later, with a bit of experience and some understanding of how the game of people works, I look at the cartoons and find them... innocent. Particularly from the earlier years, they're sorta... goofy, with odd underlying assumptions that it's difficult to fully accept anymore. (The sight of a naked breast will throw men into a state of fascinated paralysis, all social situations have seduction as their end goal, etc.)

I find myself amused by a number of them. Some because they're still funny, others because they've become old-fashioned and quaint. Others leave me without reaction. A few... surprisingly few... strike me as puerile and annoying.

I don't think I can recommend this purely as a cartoon collection. But as a historical document, flashes into the evolution of an important magazine and the changes in social mores and attitudes, it's pretty interesting.

(I've been referring here to the sexually-themed cartoons in the collection. There are a number of non-sexual cartoons as well, by Gahan Wilson and others, which overall stand up much better to age.) (Except for the politcal cartoons, which haven't aged all that well, I thought.)

End The Slump? End The Shame!

The US Army has announced some plans to try and increase recruitment. This comes about because of a continued failure to meet recruiting goals.

Methods include: Increase enlistment bonuses. Increase the number of recruiters. Target people who've already begun college, but might "want a break" from schooling. Target high-school age kids who are being home-schooled.

This sounds to me like deep denial. It sounds to me like the military still doesn't want to admit (or isn't being allowed to admit) the root causes for the slump in recruitment.

Some people join the military becauses of bonuses, training and such, yeh. But a lot of -- I think most -- recruits join the military because they really do want to contribute to their country, they really do want to be one of the "Good Guys" helping defend their own country and going after Bad Guys in other countries.

When I joined the Army in 1972, some of my reasons were personal. (Yeh, I really did want a break from college, because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do there anymore; and I wanted to get out on my own, away from my parents, as well; it was also the tail-end of the American involvement in Vietnam, and while I never sought out duty there, my enlisting was also partially a test of my own courage, and whether I was man enough to endure danger [as it turned out, I spent my entire enlistment Stateside, probably a good thing; in retrospect, I would probably have sucked in a combat role])

But I also joined because I wanted to be a good citizen, because I thought the USA was a great nation, because I wanted to contribute to continuing that greatness. And serving in the military was a traditional and honorable way to serve.

That honor isn't there anymore.

People can still argue that invading Iraq was worthwhile. They can still argue that progress of some kind is being made there. I think they're wrong, but the argument can be conducted, even if not concluded.

But the torture... the torture is indefensible.

And the military has acquiesced to the Bush administration's approval of, endorsement of, encouragement of, torture. They enable it, they commit it, they fail to object to it.

The American military has lost its honor. The American military has shamed itself.

As long as the United States government acts like a rogue state, holding prisoners without charges or trial, and committing torture on those prisoners, with the military's acquiescence and assistance, serving in the military cannot be a source of pride, but only a source of shame.

I think it's as simple as this: Stop the torture, stop the slump.

Bardic Funeral

Hilde and I went to Barry Bard's funeral this morning.

Barry'd been a friend of ours, and of hundreds of other people, for thirty years. He was one of the most well-known, and well-liked, people in local Phoenix' sf and SCA fandoms. He was also well known and appreciated at other Southwestern conventions, particularly Comic-Con, where he was given the Inkblot Award earlier this year.

He could be a grump and a kvetch, but he could also be charming and generous. He was a raconteur who knew everyone, and had stories about most of them.

He was the source for providing most of the posters, cards and buttons on the freebie tables at local conventions. He presented the popular "Barry Bard's Movie Previews" at many conventions, screening trailers and promos for forthcoming films, with commentary that was sometimes as, umm, respectful as the films deserved.

And he was a bookseller. At conventions and SCA events, he'd unload a grey station wagon filled floor to ceiling and side to side with boxes of books, and set up his bookselling tables. And what books! "Eclectic" barely touches the variety of volumes he could display in a limited space. Fiction and non-fiction, books on history, art, crafts of all types, cooking, fashions and costumes, literature, the list went on and on. I probably shopped at Barry's tables close to a hundred times through the years, and I could count the number of times I went away empty-handed on the fingers of one hand. (And usually because of being flat dead broke at those particular times.) And sometimes he'd show up at a party or other social function and say, "Hey, I've got a book here I thought you'd be interested in," and he was usually right.

Barry never had children. (He was married once, but it broke up after a few years.) But I figure that over the years, he probably sold at least a couple of hundred thousand books to people, even though he never had a full-time bookstore or website. To have spread that much knowledge and enjoyment, to so many people, is still a pretty damn good legacy.

A Videogame Question

This is a question that came to mind earlier today:

In the notoriously violent and amoral Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, is it possible for a player to get a job, save money, go to a used car lot, and BUY a car?

Spammers. Why Des It Have To Be Spammers?

*sigh* It looks like the comment spammers have found UNDULANT FEVER. In the last few days, I've had about a half dozen comment spams posted here. (Mostly linking back to weight loss sites, but one referring back to swimming pool chemicals. WTF?)

I've turned on the "word verification" setting to try and keep out the automated spams. This means anyone making a real comment will have to go thru an extra step. Sorry.

Well, it made ME Laugh!

Regular readers of UF may have noticed that from time to time I display a weakness, a slight weakness, for low-brow toilet humor. Sometimes literally.

So: Urinals of Middle-Earth.

You were warned.

Four Gunfights And A Funeral

When most of the household (Hilde, me, Michelle and Caty) went to the Scottsdale Fashion Square mall where the early screening of Serenity was being held, we got there a bit over an hour before the 7:00 PM showing. SFS is a pretty big enclosed shopping mall, and we found that the line of other people who'd gotten passes to the screening went from the top of the escalator just above the theatre entrance over to the side of the mall, all-l-l-l the way down the long side of the mall, back across to the other side of the mall, and halfway back down the other long side.

The chances of getting into the screening looked iffy. And it turned out that the line was cut off about a dozen people short of where Michelle and Caty were. But since Hilde was in her wheelchair, she and I got to go to the head of the line and were actually the first people into the theatre. (Michelle and Caty took the disappointment, and having to wait around for two hours until we came out, with grace and good nature. True, I could have stuffed Michelle's ears with rice and steamed it, but...)

So how was the movie? Slam-bang action, a good story, with amusing/intriguing characters. The "science" of Whedon's frontier planetary system is actually science-fantasy, and takes a deliberate effort for suspending disbelief. Once over that hump, though, it's a heck of a ride.

Pretty impressive, considering that Whedon had to try and achieve four things in writing the script: 1) Continue the story of Mal and the rest of the Serenity crew, to the satisfaction of people who've seen the original series, 2) Make the story self-sufficent and stand-alone enough to satisfy people who've never seen the show or characters before, 3) add new developments that will leave room for future stories in the Serenity universe, if the current movie proves popular enough to call for sequels, and 4) tie up the main plot threads securely enough that if the movie doesn't have further sequels, it will be able to stand as a fitting coda to the Serenity saga.

I thought Whedon did pretty well on three out of the four. Trying to look at the movie as if I'd never seen the series, some of the relationships seem a little vague. This doesn't hurt that much in regard to Shepherd Book, who's always been rather a mystery man, but the relationship and feelings between Mal and Inara felt as if they needed a bit more backstory; I didn't feel that a newcomer to this universe would get a real feel for why Mal and Inara have such an... odd, and mostly unsaid... relationship.

As for the new developments... well, I'm trying to avoid any major spoilers...




...but remember that Whedon's universe is a rough and dangerous place. Things happen in the film that are going to make a lot of the series' fans very unhappy. (On our way out of the theatre, Hilde and I passed by a young man who'd had to sit down on a bench while he cried himself out.)

Oh, and I will mention that we finally get an explanation of why the Reavers have that little attitude problem. (It's not hemmorhoids, after all.)

What NOT To Do (for writers and others)

From 52 Projects, a list of things NOT to do while trying to work on a project.

One of the items listed is "Do not post to your blog." Duhhhhh...

If you're anything like me, reading the list will make you feel s-o-o-o-o guilty...

Recent Reading

Singer of Souls by Adam Stemple, Tor Books, 2005, $22.95

Reformed (but still tempted) heroin-addict Douglas flees Minneapolis, and his still-addicted fellow junkies, to his grandmother's home in Edinburgh, Scotland. His skills as a street musician serve him well during Edinburgh's annual Fringe Festival. Until he encounters a mysterious woman who leaves him with a dubious gift: the Sight, the power to see the fairies, elves, trolls, bogies and other creatures of Faerie whose own Festival overlaps, unseen, with ours. And these Fair Folk are very, very dangerous.

There's a fairly standard plot progression for stories where a young protagonist discovers a secret world behind our own, whether it be aliens, fairies, or Illuminati: Protagonist discovers secret world. Adventures and danger ensues as the protagonist tries to learn more, and he gains both enemies and allies. As the story progresses, the protagonist begins to guide and influence events, rather than reacting to the actions of others. By story's end, the protagonist has gained skills that enable him to take control of the story's situation. Villains are vanquished, wrongs are avenged, happiness ensues.

At first, I thought Stemple was following this plot-path in Douglas' story. But then things began to turn very dark and grim. Douglas' grandmother tells him:

"There's not a Scottish fairy tale that doesn't end without someone getting hanged or burned at the stake or thrown down a well. And the faeries themselves? They're all the wandering spirits of unbaptised children or murdered relatives, and even the good ones will turn on you in a second if you break one of their unwritten rules."

I think that's called foreshadowing. Brutal and explicit violence takes place, sympathetic characters die, and apparent friends prove false.

But still the reader hopes that the villains will be vanquished, wrongs avenged, and happiness achieved.

And villains are vanquished. Wrongs are avenged. The story's protagonist discovers his unsuspected strength and power.

*spoiler warning*

But at a cost. Because Douglas' choices, though they vanquish villains and avenge wrongs, are the wrong choices. He yields to his inner weaknesses, and at story's end he is addicted again. Not to heroin, but to something even worse.

Thinking about the book's ending, I realized that Stemple never intended to write a standard adventure fantasy. What he has written is a genuine tragedy.

Stemple's prose flows smoothly and colorfully. And there is a lovely (of course) cover by Charles Vess.

Various Links

Some stuff I've been meaning to post links to:

For the SCA family that has everything else: The Gothic Commode Seat

From Edmund Scientifics' website, the world's coolest ant farm

The Graceful Envelope Contest is a yearly joint project between the National Association of Letter Carriers and the Calligraphers Guild of Washington DC. Entrants decorate an envelope with illustrations and artwork around the year's theme (the letter "P" for 2005). The decorated envelopes are then sent "as is" through the mail to the Calligraphers Guild. Some of the entries are absolutely lovely. Here is the link for the 2005 Graceful Envelope Contest Winners.

And, if you haven't read it already, John Scalzi's "Being Poor" essay should be required reading. I'd like to see this made into a wall poster, and posted in every office of everyone who deals with the underprivileged.

Quote of the Day

From Avedon Carol:

"The fact is that, for whatever reason, Fidel Castro was more ready to save American lives than George Bush was."

History Via The Blues

From papersky (with thanks to Making Light for the link), Jo Walton provides:

New Orleans Talking Blues

When levees are flooded and hurricanes roar,
When the waters start seeping up under the door,
You'd expect the escape plans to include the poor
But this isn't that kind of song.

(click the link for the rest...)

A Damn Good Photo

Resourceful 

From a purely photographic viewpoint, this is one of the best I've seen coming out of New Orleans.

The composition is excellent. The horse and rider form the traditional pyramid shape, drawing attention to the flooded fancy car in the upper photo.

It's also a study in contrasts. Horse and rider, coping with the high water, while the fancy car sits useless. The rider's modern-day clothing, particularly the reversed cap, compared to his 19th-Century transportion.

I'm also very struck by the rider's expression: The slow-burning anger on his face. One feels that this anger will be there for a very, very long time.

(Off the topic of photography: I think it's possible that new leaders of Black America may eventually arise from the ruins of New Orleans. And such leaders will probably be angry leaders, who refuse to forget or forgive the indifference shown to them by America's current power structure. A new Malcolm X, perhaps?)

500 Eggs For 60 Guys

From the Times-Picayne website at nola.com:

500 eggs, 60 men in blue

Thursday, 4:25 p.m.

By Eva Jacob Barkoff
Staff writer

NEW IBERIA -- Around 5 a.m. today, Mary Tripeaux received a call that members of a search-and rescue-team from Phoenix, Ariz., were on their way for breakfast at Victor's Cafeteria on Main Street. Soon the crew arrived and filled themselves with coffee, grits, biscuits, bacon, potatoes and sausage -- and more than 500 eggs.

"There are 180 eggs in one case and we went through at least three cases," Tripeaux said. "And by around 9 a.m., we had run out of sausage. They had eaten it all."

After breakfast, about 60 men in blue uniforms from Phoenix's Urban Search and Rescue Team held a meeting under a gazebo across from Victor's to go over final details of their mission. They wouldn't discuss details with a reporter.

The men had arrived in several trucks and two 18-wheelers filled with equipment. Also along were three Labrador retrievers.

"We have a lot of equipment here to try and do what we can to help," one of the men said.

Before leaving for New Orleans, he reflected on breakfast at Victor's and concluded: "That was the best meal we have had in 48 hours."

That's over eight friggin' eggs per man.

Didn't these guys think to, oh, you know, bring their own food and water with them?!! And maybe some extra for the hungry, thirsty refugees in New Orleans?

Five hundred eggs, plus side dishes. Kee-rist, that could have been a decent meal for at least 250 refugees.

This Will Happen

There are tens of thousands of New Orleans residents displaced from their homes, their jobs, their city, with the likelihood that most won't be able to return for months, possibly years, possibly never.

They'll need jobs, they'll need housing, they'll need daily meals.

Let's start a betting pool: How soon will military recruiters show up at the refugee camps?