Pretty Pictures

A striking photo-montage:

Crow Fight


And a spectacular take on a usually cliched subject:

Bald Eagle

Shatner Roast: 350 Degree Oven, Baste Frequently With Ego Sauce

The William Shatner Roast will be on television later tonight. The occasion moves me to tell my favorite William Shatner story; this is one of those stories that, if it isn't true, ought to be:


Everyone knows that Bill Shatner has, as he's gotten older, had some problems with his weight.

Part of this was because of a habit of sneaking midnight snacks from the refrigerator. So his wife, as a motivational aid, got ahold of some of the slash fanfic-zines published by some of the more uninhibited Star Trek fans, unstapled them, and removed some of the more explicit illustrations from them.

That night, Shatner snuck downstairs to raid the refrigerator again. When he turned on the light, there, taped to the refrigerator, was a double-page drawing of himself:

Young, slim, lean, totally nude, and spectacularly endowed.

Shatner stared at the drawing for a long moment. Then, he turned his head and shouted back up the stairs:

"Honey, do we have any bananas in the house?"

A Shocking Display of Utter Geekitude

I've been watching the Sci Fi Channel's reality series Who Wants To Be A Superhero? since it premiered earlier this summer.

The premise is that participants create a superhero character and portray that character themselves during the course of the show; the payoff is that the last surviving superhero will have a professional (Dark Horse Comics) comic book produced about their character, written by Stan Lee. Participants are eliminated in each episode via tests and trials for the proper characteristics of a superhero: helpfulness, courage, self-sacrifice, honesty, etc. The judge for the elimination process is Lee.

This is not a great reality series; I'd like to see more of the personal interactions between participants (a la The Real World) when they're not being tested; the editing is rather lacklustre and the seams show at times.

But it's been interesting, particularly to someone who's been reading comics on a fairly regular basis since childhood, daydreamed about having superpowers himself, and when he got older and started writing fiction, made a few attempts toward breaking into actual comic-writing.

(In fact, the very first real story I wrote, when I was fourteen, was a superhero story. Actually, more of a supervillain story: The character was a scientist who was repeatedly turned down for research money, had to do his experiments on the cheap, and had them blow up in his face as a result. Good news: the chemical explosion gave him superpowers; bad news: they also drove him insane and turned him into a compulsive bank robber. Even back then, I tried to put a twist into my fiction.)

When I saw the announcement of the show earlier this year, my first thought was "No way would -I- ever dress up in a costume and let myself be filmed wearing it for weeks." Writing about superheroes is one thing; dressing up like one for more than a convention masquerade or the like is another.

And, if I created a superhero character that was going to have an actual comic produced around the idea, I wouldn't want it to be written by Stan Lee. I'd want to write it myself, dammit!!

So I had no urge to participate in the show. But it's been interesting to watch. It's coming close to the end of its run, and only three superheroes are left: Major Victory, Feedback, and Fat Momma.

I'm going to predict that Feedback will the the final winner of the series, barring some boneheaded error during the remaining trials.

The reason I say this is that in terms of character (courage, honesty, etc), the remaining participants are on about equal footing. So I think the final choice will be determined by one question: Which superhero will be the most interesting hero for Stan Lee to write a comic about?

Major Victory is a hero out of the Big Strong Doofus school of superheroes. (Superman, Captain Marvel, etc.) Admirable, but... in the end... boring.

Fat Momma is a "novelty" superhero, with a limited cause of action. (She defends the "differently sized".) Again, admirable, but not that interesting as a character.

Until last week's episode, I'd have said the same thing about Feedback. But in that episode, we learned that Feedback's real-life father had committed suicide during Feedback's childhood. (And that, in part, was why Feedback became a heavy-duty comic fan, seeking a better, more understandable world there.)

And that was the point at which Feedback became an interesting character, one that a writer would want to write about. His father's suicide, like Uncle Ben's death in Spiderman, could be the starting point for the comic book's origin and motivation.

So I'm calling Feedback to be the winner of the series.

Catblogging -- Special COTD Editon

A few days ago on Cat Of The Day, the featured feline was one Memo, from Chile.

Besides being a strikingly handsome black cat, the accompanying text reported something unusual about Memo: returning from an outside foray, he had returned to his owners' doorstep carrying a young abandoned kitten in his mouth.

Most of us have heard of mother cats going to extrardinary lengths to rescue their own imperiled kittens (see Scarlett Saves Her Kittens), or of nursing cats accepting orphaned kittens from another litter... but this is the first time where I have ever heard of a male cat rescuing a kitten.

(Among feral cats, at least, the more usual reaction would be for a tom to attack and/or kill kittens not from its pack.)

PATCO 1981: A Postal Perspective

Over at Firedoglake, there's an interesting post on the 25th anniversary of the 1981 PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) strike.

When that strike occurred, then-President Ronald Reagan fired all 11,000 air traffic controllers. They were temporarily replaced with military ATCs (I believe some of the striking ATCs who belonged to National Guard units actually got called to duty and ordered to replace themselves), and "permanent replacements" were hired and rushed into expedited training (which sounds a lot better than "crash course", in this context).

This was the first, and most drastic, attack on unions by Reagan's right-wing administration. As the Firedoglake article points out, the number of strikes by organized labor dropped drastically afterwards, and union membership in general has also dropped dramatically. The successful firing of the PATCO members also set the groundwork for rollbacks on benefits (pay, pensions, hours, insurance, virtually every benefit labor had gained in previous years has come under strong attack since PATCO).

The firing was also a high-risk gamble by Reagan's administration; they were gambling that they'd be able to get replacement workers trained and in place without having an air disaster take place in the interim. They won that gamble. But boy, I (and a lot of other members of the public) was aghast when the PATCO members were fired and suddenly air traffic was in the hands of (considerably fewer) military ATCs, and then in the hands of quickly trained replacements; I could scarcely believe that Reagan and company could place so many innocent travellers at such high risk.

Thinking back on it now, I believe that Reagan and his chorts saw the action against PATCO as, literally, an act of war. The PATCO firing was their own, earlier, version of the "Shock & Awe" attacks on Baghdad at the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And if there had been an airliner crash, if there had been hundreds of people killed because of an error by the replacement ATCs... I think the Reagan administration, while publically regretting the loss, would have simply considered hundreds of dead Americans as "collateral damage" in their war to "protect American business interests".

As it happened, the year 1981 was also the year in which the NALC's (National Association of Letter Carriers) contract with the Postal Service had, several months before the PATCO strike, come up for renegotiation.

It was a very tense period for letter carriers. The talks between the NALC and management were light in conversation and compromise, heavy in confrontation. And the general consensus among letter carriers seemed to be that a strike would have to take place before management would bend. The day before the current contract expired, the word being passed around amongst employees was that a call to strike would almost certainly be issued by the NALC the next morning.

I was highly anxious about the prospect of a strike. I wasn't a union member back then. And I didn't believe that a strike was, quite, necessary yet. I thought that the union and management should issue a temporary -- for a month, or a week, or even just a few days -- extension on the current contract, and keep talking. Keep talking, until an absolute stonewall impasse had been reached. Then, and only then, could I see a strike being justified.

And if I thought that a strikecall was not justified... then I couldn't see myself making any other choice than to cross the picket line if that strike were called.

When I mentioned this to a couple of the other employees, they were aghast. I was warned that my car's tires would be slashed, that my wife and son would receive obscene phone calls, that if I was ever in the wrong place alone I might be badly beaten.

(None of this was told to me as if the teller would be the person doing all these things. A sort of amorphous "They" would be the people doing all these horrible things. But this sort of intimidation, and other reports of corruption and violence in unions that I'd seen in the news for years, was one of the major reasons I hadn't felt comfortable joining the union.)(And didn't, until more than ten years later, in large part because of those intimidating remarks made to me in 1981. And when I finally did join the union, it wasn't so much that the union had cleaned up its act, but that management had grown so much worse in the intervening years.)

So I didn't sleep very well that night. But woke up to the clock-radio announcing the news that a tentative agreement on a new postal contract had been reached at the last minute (literally, at sunrise) after all-night talks, and that there would be no strike. *whew*

But if a strike by letter carriers had occurred that year... I think it would have been the NALC, rather than PATCO, that would have been made an example of, with thousands of letter carriers, rather than air traffic controllers, being fired and replaced. I think Reagan was looking for a union to destroy, and it was just luck that letter carriers dodged that bullet, with PATCO taking it instead, a few months later.

Answer: About Two Friggin' Hours

Question: How long does it take to clean up about two gallons of liquid laundry detergent off a laundry room floor, sufficiently that the floor doesn't act like a Slip'N'Slide?

Threat Levels

In the wake of the recent British roundup of suspects in an apparent plot to smuggle explosives onto airplanes, the US Department of Homeland Security brushed off its "threat level" color code and declared Red, its highest level.

At the same time, it was reported that individuals in the Bush administration and other Republicans welcomed the news of the plot's foiling, not because suspected terrorists were behind bars and lives had potentially been saved, but because the news could be used to Republican political advantage in campaigns for the upcoming midterm elections.

Can I make a suggestion here? Rather than referring to the DHS' categories as "threat levels", let's call them what they really are: "anxiety levels".

Because the Bush White House, and the Republicans as a whole, want the American public to be anxious, they want us to be afraid, they want us to live in fear.

Because the more anxious, fearful, and afraid the public is, the more inclined they'll be to not vote for a change in elected officials come November.

Eddings' Heir Apparent, Alas

In spite of David Eddings' popularity, I never read more than a portion of the first Mallorean book.

What kept me from continuing wasn't the story itself, but several stylistic tics of Eddings' writing that kept jarring me out of the actual story. In Eddings' case, it was running across repeated instances of starting a paragraph with "However," or "Unfortunately,". These were not only unnecessary words, but they were the author's voice intruding on the story.

It was sort of like going to a movie, only to have the rude kid sitting behind you keep kicking the back of your seat. After about forty or fifty pages of the first Eddings book, I put it down and never went back to the series again.

I have found the new Eddings, and the magic word this time around is "Now".

p.17: "Now Lord Hasha turned his attention toward me"
p.19: "Now Maram's knuckles grew white around his bow"
p.21: "Now Lord Hasha swallowed the last of his beer"
p.25: "Now both Lord Hasha and Asaru -- and Joshu Kadar as well -- looked at me in amazement"
p.38: "Now Asaru examined the arrow"
p.40: "Now a fire burned through me"
p.68: "Now my father looked at Asaru with puzzlement"

Which was about as far as I got. I don't object to starting a paragraph with "Now", when properly used. But my idea of proper use would be to use it when there's been a break in the narrative to refer to past events, and use "Now" as a time-check to restart the present-time flow of the narrative again. That didn't apply in any of the above instances.

(There's also a heck of a lot of "And then"s that, to a lesser extent, also kicked the back of my seat.)

So congratulations, David Zindell, The Lightstone wins you my judgement as "Heir apparent to David Eddings". (Out of context, that will make a great blurb for a paperback edition.)

(Endnote: I see from the copyright page of Tor's American edition that The Lightstone was originally published in England in 2001, and that "The Tor edition has been specially revised by the author." I will refrain from comment.)

Drive-By Posting

Still working far too many hours at work; over twelve today.

Thus largely accounting for the paucity of postings here of late. Working long hours means that 1) I have less time available at home in which to try and get done all the things I struggle to get done after ordinary eight-hour workdays, and 2) that trying to keep up means I tend to stay up later and get less sleep. (Rule of thumb: Each hour of overtime worked means half an hour's less sleep that night. Which frequently means I'm using "energy drinks" to get thru the next workday. Why, yes, this is an example of "diminishing returns" in action; thank you for pointing that out. So the next time you see a postal vehicle driving down the street, get out of his way just in case the driver's about ready to pass out over the wheel.)

I've had several postings in mind, but it may be another few days, or more, before I actually have a chance to write them here.

(I haven't even noted how I came home about ten days ago to the news that we had running water in our kitchen. Unfortunately, it was running from the ceiling. The furnace/blower combo that had been installed in the attic as part of our new air-conditioning system included a large drip pan to collect condensation from the coils, plus PVC piping to direct the excess drippage out the side of the attic and onto the ground. Unfortunately, not only did the drip pan not drain properly, but one of the joints in the PVC piping leaked, badly. End result: sodden attic insulation, a soggy kitchen ceiling, and about half a dozen steady drips from various points on the ceiling. Good thing I have a fairly large number of stockpots. The A/C company fixed the leaks and drip pan the next morning, and is sending someone over this week to inspect and repair the damage to the kitchen ceiling. Good for them, but I'd rather they'd done the job right the first time.)

No "Thanks", Thanks

So Saturday afternoon I get back to the station after delivering my route, plus several hours off another, and find a little Post-It note stuck on my card by the time clock:

"You have to come in on Monday (forced OT). Thanks. [supervisor's initials]"

Being forced in on my SDOs (Scheduled Days Off) isn't that much of a surprise anymore these last few months. The surprise is much more when I don't have to go in on my days off. Still annoying, though.

But I was actually more annoyed at that "Thanks" on the Post-It. It made it sound as if I had been asked to come in and work Monday, and as if I had agreed to do so.

I'd actually have been less annoyed if the Post-It had said something a little more suitable, like, oh: "I'm forcing you in on your day off again. Up yours."

Life As Damage Control, or, Why I'm A Grumpy SOB

There are times when it seems like life is 90% cleaning up other people's messes.

As mentioned downblog, we ended up having to replace our air conditioner. Since we have a fairly large house, and I didn't want a unit that would start needing repairs within just a few years, or one that would make our electric bill creep up, we got a top-of-the-line double-compressor 5-ton Trane. About $10,000.

Ouch. Should pay for itself eventually, but still....

I put $2,500 from savings down as a deposit. For the rest, I initially thought of using the home equity credit line from our credit union, but some number crunching revealed that using our Mastercard (which I got a few years ago, when they were still offering very low fixed rates) for the remainder would actually save about $400 in interest (based on a three-year payoff plan). And still leave a couple thousand available for other purchases.

So, when the new a/c was installed, I gave the company the credit card info. Checking online a few days later, though, there was no sign of the charge to the credit card. After a week (!), still no charge.

I call the company. The lady responsible for running the credit card charges had been on vacation. But she was back, and she told me she'd run the charge right away.

Problem solved? Uhhh... no. Checked again yesterday, four days after the phone conversation, and still no charge to the card. Called the lady at the a/c company again.

When she'd submitted the charge, she'd forgotten to deduct the $2500 deposit I'd already paid. Which meant the submitted charge had been for the full $10,000+.

Which was more than the credit limit on that card. Which meant:

1) The charge was not approved.

2) But it wasn't disapproved, either. What the attempted over-limit charge did was kick the transaction over to the "Authorization" division of the credit card company, where an "authorization representative" would determine whether the credit limit should be increased and the charge approved... in about a week.

3) If it had been simply disapproved, the a/c lady (who realized her error after getting the bounceback from the credit card company) could have resubmitted the charge with the correct amount. Which she tried to do. Except...

4) The other automatic result of the over-limit attempt was to place a "Hold" on any further transactions to the account until the "authorization representative" made his decision on whether to allow the incorrect charge to be processed.

5) This also meant that the a/c lady couldn't even cancel the over-limit charge. Which she also tried to do.

6) And this ALSO meant that I couldn't make any OTHER charges to the credit card until the "authorization" guy makes a decision on Monday or Tuesday. Charges for things like... oh, refills for some of Hilde's medications.

I spent about half an hour on the phone with the credit card company yesterday. I must have heard the words "we can't do anything for you" seven or eight times in that half hour.

Apparently, having a transaction sent to the authorization division puts the charge inside of Schrodinger's Box: neither alive or dead, until the authorization rep issues his decision. It can be neither processed, or cancelled. The customer service rep I spoke with couldn't even transfer my call to anyone in the authorization division.

I was not impressed.

Fortunately, the medications I tried to refill aren't any of the absolutely essential ones, and Hilde probably won't run out before I (hopefully) get this mess straightened out next week. (And I could, if absolutely necessary, activate a couple of other cards I've only previously used for their 0% introductory rate to save interest on paying off some earlier debt.)

But still... lots of people order meds online these days. And the customer service rep said I was not, by any means, the only person who's found their credit account frozen by situations like this, or even the only one unable to order urgently needed goods. Which means that eventually, some customer will end up in a world of hurt, in the hospital or worse, because the credit card company's policies don't allow for an error to be corrected in a swift manner. Which means the credit card company will eventually find itself facing a wrongful-harm-or-death lawsuit.

And that's why I'm a grumpy son-of-a-bitch today.


("Idiots!" -- Napoleon Dynamite)

Ketchup

Catching up with goings on:

Still working lots of overtime. Thirteen-hour-plus day yesterday, over twelve on Saturday. Annoying. Tiring. Though the big fat paychecks will help pay for the new air conditioner.

Managerial mathematics: One of the routes I had to carry a long relay on has a street delivery time of at least five hours, on a good day. So the supervisor told the carrier casing in the mail to "Split it into two two-hour relays." Well, duh, I ended up taking close to three hours to deliver one of those relays, in addition to overtime on my own route.

Working that many hours in a day is also a violation of the local contract, which means the union has been filing numerous grievances daily, which means management will eventually end up paying penalty money on top of the overtime pay. (But it will probably be months or more before it's actually paid.)

I don't usually gripe about work. But, jeez....

- - - - -

Hilde should be getting a walking cast on her foot next week, if the x-rays show good fusion in the ankle. This will make life a lot simpler.

- - - - -

I've been feeling less inclined to write political posts lately, even if I had time. It seems to be a combination of ennui and angst (textured angst available for a small extra fee)(old, old fannish reference) and futility. I noticed this in the last few months before the 2004 elections as well. I can't seem to shake the feeling that writing a blogpost that'll be read by a few dozen (maybe fifty? I should install SiteMeter) people will have as much influence on deciding the future of the US as trying to stop a runaway train by pissing off the side.

I tend towards a deep cynicism and pessimism, particularly where politics is concerned. I hope I'll be proved wrong in November. But I have a bad feeling....

Missing Movies

Barnes & Noble has been having a "Buy 2, Get A 3rd Free" sale on DVDs recently, so I've been splurging a bit.

Browsing their website, I came across... or rather, didn't come across... several titles I would have liked to buy.

If... was pretty much a cult movie, which may be why it's not available. Ditto O Lucky Man!

But... A Clockwork Orange not available? (By itself; the B&N website did have it as part of a Kubrick boxed set, but I didn't want to spend $100 for it.) I'm really, really surprised. It's not only highly regarded as a science fiction film, but I think I've seen it listed on several "100 Best Movies" lists over the years. (Checking around the Web a bit, I find Amazon.com does have an ACO DVD available. But DeepDiscountDVD.com, like B&N, doesn't. Hmmph.)

(And yes, I do like Malcolm McDowell, if you noticed the common denominator.)

The Way To An Editor's Heart

John Scalzi, guest editor for the just-out 4th issue of SUBTERRANEAN MAGAZINE, bought one of my stories for the issue.

In his intro to "Labyrinth's Heart", Scalzi also mentions that I make "a kick-ass German Chocolate banana bread", a reference to this post from last year, and gives the URL for this blog. So I thought I should post a link to the recipe, in case any SUBTERRANEAN readers wander by as a result of the mention. I'll also post a link in the sidebar.

Hilde At Home

Hilde came home from the rehab facility a few days ago, after only three weeks, rather than the six planned for.

We purchased some medical equipment to make it possible for her to function at home for the remaining weeks of "No Weight-Bearing On That Leg!" that will allow the ankle bones to fuse properly. Besides the hospital bed (which we already had in storage), one of the pieces is called an "E-Z Turn Transfer Disc" by its manufacturer, but which we call the Tilt-A-Whirl (think of a heavy-duty lazy-susan with handlebars), which allows her to get out of bed on the good foot and rotate in place to use her wheelchair or the portable commode.

It's good to have her home. She's been spending a lot of time with Caty (her daytime caregiver) watching DVDs of the old HIGHLANDER tv series and INUYASHA, a Japanese anime series Caty is a fan of. (I'm thinking of making up a t-shirt for Caty with SIT, BOY! emblazoned across the front.)

Now if only the air-conditioning hadn't gone kaput last night.

(This last is actually a good thing. We've had an intermittent problem with the a/c for the last three summers, where the compressor would sometimes stop when the outside temperature got up in the 110-degree range, but (usually) be able to be restarted after a twenty or thirty minute wait, or sometimes restart spontaneously. The half-dozen or so times when we had repair guys out to try and track the problem, the a/c would of course be operating just fine. Then the weather would drop back into lower temperatures, and the problem go away. This latest compressor failure, though, is the first time it's happened at night, during lower temperatures, and we haven't been able to get it restarted. Huzzah, it's completely broken! So finally, once the repair guy gets here later today, we may actually be able to get the problem fixed for good.)

Smart Pills, Smart Sex

Via Amygdala, a link to this story in the Washington Post, about how school kids are increasingly taking memory and concentration-enhancing drugs like Adderall to prep for exams and focus on schoolwork and grades.

So-o-o-o...the thought occurs to me...

...if a guy took Adderall and Viagra at the same time, would you have a guy who'd actually pay attention to a woman's needs in bed?

It also occurs to me to wonder if there have been any writers, facing tight deadlines, who've used Adderall or its ilk to focus on their projects in-progress? And how effective it might have been? (Instead of NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month -- you could have NaNoWriWeek!)

Under The Knife Again

Hilde's newest surgery, for a fusion on her right ankle/foot, took place this morning.

She'd been having increasing pain and trouble with that foot for the last several years, as the RA-degraded bones shifted and drifted into incorrect positions. (Plus a twisting of the entire foot about sixty degrees to the right.) And it finally got intolerable enough to make losing flexibility an acceptable tradeoff.

(There hasn't been an acceptable artifical replacement for ankle joints developed yet, unlike most of her other major joints which have been being replaced -- and sometimes re-replaced -- since 1975.)

So, four hours in surgery. Basically, her foot was taken apart and the bones put back into proper position, held in place, and then a length of cadaver fibia was inserted into/thru the foot, ankle and leg bone to act as a dowel holding everything together. Also, a blade-shaped piece of metal was inserted into her heel bone, then bent and shaped to run up along the back of her lower legbone. Screws were inserted to hold the blade-piece securely, and more (diagonal) screws to hold other bones together. Plus bone paste in between the joints. Over about the next six weeks, the ankle should fuse together into a solid mass.

During those six weeks, however, she's not allowed to put any weight AT ALL on that foot. So, after a few more days in the hospital, she'll be going to a rehab facility for six weeks.

*ouch* This will be the longest we've slept apart since we got together thirty years ago.

This is going to be a rough summer.

(And since I'll be visiting her as much as possible, don't be surprised if it's even longer than usual between blogposts here.)

"Ce n'est pas une aubergine."

Meanwhile, over at Making Light, Patrick Nielsen Hayden has posted about LiveJournal's recent ban on using breastfeeding images as user icons, with copious comments.

Well, jeez. I guess LJ users will just have to end up using nice, safe, tasteful pictures for their user icons. Like flowers. Or fruit. Or vegetables.

So here, for anyone who wants to use it, is a picture of one of the Thai eggplants from my backyard garden. And, as an added bonus, the same picture Photoshopped to turn it into a neon display:


 

 

Remember: Clean icons, clean minds.

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.