Cacoeidechthineologism* of the Day

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

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

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

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

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


*"cacoeidechthineologism" comes from here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Halloween LOL-lection

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

Back Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . delete it without opening or reading.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Surgery, and other news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- - - - -

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

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

From Sling To Linger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Singapore Sling, Hold The Singapore

Took a fall onto the kitchen floor yesterday. Hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons learned?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Is A Proud And Lonely Thing...

...to be a fan of Zardoz.

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

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

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

News, And A New Profile Photo

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

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

Dear Pedro,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thug. Vandal. Thief. Coward.

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

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

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



photo by John Nyberg from stock.xchang

The Way The Future Wasn't

Tempe Town Puddle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Life As A Superstar Cheezburgerer

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





























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

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

Urrrmm....

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

*ahem* Where was I?

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

God, I Hope These Aren't For Real Books

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





















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

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

Big Beetle

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

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

A Few Links

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

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

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


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


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

Adventures In Catspeak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How To Draw Sharks

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

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

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

I've Been . . .

. . . in a funk lately.

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

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

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

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

Robert McCall has died

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

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

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

















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

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

Sweet!

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

The Future of Used E-Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next reader: mildew stains.

Next reader: scorch marks

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

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

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

[wild applause from the Internet]

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

A Few Links

As promised, a few links of interest:







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






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









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

I Did Not Mean . . .

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

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

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

Fame, No Fortune

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

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

Here's the LOL, in all its glory:


















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

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

Christmas

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

What a perfect turn of phrase, I thought.

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

Thanksgiving

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

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

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

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

LoLiterature

Halloween

Insufficient Information, Drunkards Walks, and Blindfolds

Well, huh.

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

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

...well, Holy Shit!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, huh.

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

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

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

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

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

*sigh* Doesn't work that way.

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

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

The Most Terrifying Sentence In The English Language

"Seth Rogen is The Green Hornet"

Hilde Is Home

Hilde came home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Yay!

Snarkaption Nation #8

It's been a while since I did a "Snarkaption Nation":

Brief News: More To Come

After a long illness and hospitalization, our friend and neighbor Anne Braude passed away on August 25, 2009. Hilde and I were at her side. I'll write about Anne at much greater length later; she was a pretty extraordinary person. I'll probably also write some posts about having, and having to use, a medical power of attorney (and, for the last few weeks of Anne's life, a financial power of attorney), and about trying to deal with hospital rules and policies.

Hilde herself ended up in the hospital early the next morning, after experiencing stroke-like symptoms much like what she went thru in May. Like then, this appears not to have been a real stroke, but something caused by another UTI infection turned septic. She was mostly recovered later the same day, but has remained in hospital for tests and antibiotics. The major concern at this point is that her blood pressure has gone high (into the 200's) and stayed there; this is something completely new for her, and she's always tested in the "low" or "too-low" range for her blood pressure before.

Yep, these are the "Golden Years". Your friends get old, they get sick, and they die. Your family gets old, they get sick, and they die. And finally you get old, you get sick, and you die. "Golden Years", my rosy pink ass.

11:59 High

Okay, a short version of why I haven't been posting here lately.

Basically, even at the best of times, I tend to run short on time and on sleep. The last few months have seen a statistical cluster (as in "clusterf***") of additional responsibilities, commitments, and stresses. The result has been even less time available for things like browsing the Internet or posting here. (I've cut way back on the blogs I regularly follow or post on, from about fifteen to three -- Making Light, Supergee, and John Scalzi's Whatever. The political blogs I read have been dropped entirely for the present -- Obama's still president, isn't he?)

The biggest source of stress has been having our neighbor and friend Anne end up in the hospital and having emergency abdominal surgery over five weeks ago, followed by a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, improvements and complications, since then, plus a second bout of surgery two weeks ago. When I took Anne in to the ER last month, she signed over a medical power of attorney to me, and since she's never quite recovered enough to make her own decisions since the first surgery, I've been called on to make some of those decisions regarding her treatment and care. Not fun.

We've known Anne for nearly thirty years, since Ed Meskys introduced us back in the early Eighties. Some readers here may recognize her as Anne Braude, one of the co-editors of Ed's fanzine NIEKAS. Since she discovered the Internet about ten years ago, she's been -- as "Talpianna" -- an active commenter on websites like dictionary.com and others. Back in 2003, she had some major health issues, moved in with us for several months, and ended up buying the house behind ours and has been our neighbor ever since, with a gate installed in the fence between our two backyards.

Anne's prognosis in still uncertain. Even setting aside the surgeon's comment that it was "probably a miracle" that she survived the initial surgery, she's also had to deal with several secondary infections that she's picked up simply by virtue of having been in the hospital as long as she has, and which kicked her back from the progress she'd made up to then. So the uncertainty and stress look likely to continue for a while.

There have been other stresses as well, including a major financial setback that means Hilde and I won't be, except for the house mortgage, debt-free by the end of this year like we expected. I... am... pissed (to put it lightly).

So that's why you probably won't be reading a post about why the winner of the Hugo Logo contest will probably be mediocre at best, or a post about The Worst Nebula-Winner Ever, or about an interesting first novel titled The Dust of 100 Dogs (that I managed to read recently mostly during periods sitting in hospital waiting rooms), or some of the other posts I've been wanting to write recently.

Eventually, tho', I may post some photos from the Making Light party at the recent FiestaCon (which Hilde and I managed to daytrip to, one of the few bright spots lately), and I may make an update on the "Six Characters In Search Of A Plot" post I made a while back. (I was able to do a little more work on the idea during a morning in, yes, a hospital waiting room.) And I'll probably eventually make a post with more details about that financial setback. (Have a plastic raincoat standing by for reading that post, because when I start Naming Names and Giving Details, there'll be blood spatters jumping out of your computer screen. I.. am... REALLY... pissed.)



(The "11:59 High" title on this post is a reference to Twelve O'Clock High, the classic WWII movie with Gregory Peck. Near the end of the movie, Peck's character finally hits his stress limit and is literally unable to climb into his Flying Fortress to accompany the rest of his unit on a bombing mission over Germany. There have been points over the last month or so when I've felt pretty close to that, like a rubber band stretched almost to its limit. Not enough sleep, what sleep I do get tending to be in two or three hour chunks, eating irregularly too much of the time as well, and not just not getting what I want to get done done, but not getting done what I need to get done. This can't last. Well, actually it could, but only until Bruce falls down, goes boom.)

Watch This Space

Too much has been going on, taking up too much time, to post here lately. Plenty to write about ("interesting times", indeed), but... oh, foo, you've heard the excuses before, from me and from innumerable other bloggers. I'll post when I post.

Update: Hilde Comes Home

Hilde came home from the hospital yesterday, five days after the events described in the previous post.

The final diagnosis was a systemic infection. She's off the IV antibiotics she was getting in the hospital, but will be continuing on pills for a while at home.

Things are getting back to normal, or as close as they ever get to normal around here.

One thought that occurred to me: If I hadn't switched to working nights a few months ago, Hilde might have died. If it had been a normal Wednesday when I was working days, I would have given Hilde her morning meds, etc, tucked her back in bed, and gone to work. Instead of my coming back from errands three hours later and calling an ambulance, she probably wouldn't have been checked on by Tabbi, her caregiver, until early afternoon. (Hilde usually sleeps until about two o'clock.) Considering how quickly and viciously that infection went on the rampage, by two o'clock Hilde might have been beyond critical, or already dead. Sometimes even seemingly small changes have big unexpected consequences (the "butterfly effect"); in this case, that change in schedule had a positive consequence, a very BIG positive consequence.

"Thanks", also, to all the friends, family, co-workers, etc, for their concern and best wishes.

So My Day Started Out Pretty Well....

I got up, fed the dog, gave my wife Hilde her morning meds and put her back to bed, went out to a doctor's appointment, picked up a few items at the grocery, dropped off a prescription, got back home, moved a load of wash into the dryer and started another, went into the bedroom...

...and that's when I called the ambulance.

It's... stressful... to find the spouse who'd been fine three hours before gasping for breath, arms and legs jerking spasmodically, unable to respond to you or to speak at all, possibly not even recognize you, covered with sweat and running a burning fever.

The good news is that by the time I got home from the hospital tonight, close to twelve hours after the ambulance took her there, Hilde had made an almost complete recovery. She was focused and coherent again, with no problems speaking or verbalizing. She was even able to speak to our son Chris on the phone and ask what he wanted for his birthday dinner tomorrow. (Though she'll likely still be in the hospital then, either getting tests or waiting for the results of them.)

She remembers going back to sleep before I left for my doctor's appointment, but the next time she was aware of her surroundings was in the early afternoon, when I was giving the ER doctor some further information at her bedside. She drifted in and out for several more hours, but then became more and more awake and aware. By the time a neurologist came in to look at her, she was able to give normal responses to his questions.

We're still not certain what exactly happened. Stroke was the immediate concern, which is why she was taken to the closest hospital with a stroke unit, rather than to Mayo Hospital, which is about ten miles further away, but which she prefers to go to when possible. (Her primary care doctor is with Mayo.)

But the jerking arms and legs seemed more like some kind of seizure. And the high fever and sweats seemed like an infection. (Which it turned out she had, and received several units of IV antibiotics for, but the ER doctor said the bacterial count didn't seem high enough to account for everything happening with her.)

So she's in the hospital tonight, with an MRI and EKG due tomorrow, to try and figure out what was happening, and if there's any sign of permanent damage.

But, oh, man, trying not to panic once I found her in crisis was a struggle. We've been through a number of medical crisis' over the years, but every other time -- even if she was in agonizing pain -- she could still communicate something of what was happening to her to me and/or the medics. This was the first time where it was completely up to me.

And beyond the obvious fear that she might have been dying, there was that other fear, possibly even worse: That she might not come back to a state of awareness; that her body and brain might remain "alive", but that Hilde, the person, the mind inside that brain, might never come back.

We seem to have dodged a very large bullet today.

(It's after midnight here. I'm going to take some anti-anxiety meds of my own and go to bed.)

Six Characters In Search Of a Plot

Over at ConceptArt.org, where I tend to follow the CHOW (CHaracter Of the Week) themed art challenges, they recently had a one-off "Team Chow" throwdown where several of the Chowdowners teamed up to produce a group portrait of six characters, based on short character descriptions.

The descriptions were purposely written to be vague on world and society background, so the teams could produce works widely varied in genre: fantasy, space opera, historical, Old West, cross-over ("Viking Steampunk" was brought up as a possibile interpretation), etc.

The drawback to this idea, from my point of view, is that the competition essentially produced a series of "snapshots" of the characters at a frozen point in time. The story, the dramatic narrative and background behind those snapshots, is largely unrevealed.

So I've decided to take those character descriptions and approach them from a writer's point of view, to try and springboard off them to develop a story arc and an accompanying world and background, and a set of antagonists for the characters to interact with.

How far I'll be able to push this, I don't know. Partially, this is to try and jumpstart myself into working on fiction again. I've never been able to finish any attempts at novels over the years, and it's been more than two years since I even finished a short story. (And that story will probably never be marketed.)

In the meantime, let's see what sort of general brainstorming I can develop as a beginning effort. Here are the character descriptions:

Characters:

The Hero- Female, between 20 - 30. Has no memory of anything beyond a year
before present.
- Stubborn to a fault, but unswervingly loyal to those she cares about,
convinced that she could lose her memory of them at any time she makes the most
of every moment.
- Has a tendency to say things before she thinks about them.
- Rumoured to have a second personality that can remember everything from
before, a 'dark' side, as it were, with totally different personality traits.
- A quick learner, but unlikely to pay attention unless something
immediately catches her interest.
- Searching for her past but ultimately easily caught up in the present and
the worries of others, tending to think of other people before herself.
- Found (to her horror) that she is more than capable of handling
herself in a fight, and likely capable of killing.

The Shadow- Male, between 20 - 30 (should be around Hero's age).
- The only person that the hero has any memory of, beyond the last year
(though she can only remember his face), and the only person who might know who
she is. He pretends he doesn't know, or refuses to say.
- Seemingly self-absorbed but actually self-destructive, has a tendency to
take out his insecurities as malicious remarks on other people.
- Isn't well liked, but doesn't care, or pretends he doesn't.
- Doesn't seem to have any friends except the hero, who he would do
anything for, though of course he would never say that. However, though he seems
to actively despise the rest of her friends, he cares for them more than he
admits.
- Whether he is helping the hero find her memory, or actively hindering
her, is unclear. She believes he is helping her. He doesn't necessarily believe
that it would help her to find it.
- Often disappears for long periods.

The Protector- Male or Female, between 25 - 50, well-built
- Found the Hero directly after she had lost her memory, and managed to
piece her back together.
- Strong and loyal, but prone to worry. Decided to take hero under wing,
and began to notice the very strange energies* and events that surrounded
her.
- Completely distrusts the Shadow and the Sage and believes they are
actively working against the Hero's interests, but defer's to the Hero's opinion
and trust of them.
- Strengths lie in activities done with the hands - higher concepts either
are not a concern, or are too hard to think about in depth.
- Honest and blunt, so sometimes seems unkind, but never means it.
- Sometimes wonders if accidently stepped in way too deep into something
never meant to be approached.

The Sage- Male or Female, any age
- Does not come from the same country as hero. Came from far away to find
something, and claims that the hero will lead her to it, though will not say
what it is - even whether it is a physical object* or a higher plane*.
- Often seems to be looking through the person that he/she is
speaking to, and just as frequently stares off into space.
- Seems to disappear whenever trouble starts, but has saved the hero and
her companion multiple times to threats that they were completely
obvlivious/unaware of.
- Eats very little and sleeps less, and makes very little noise when he/she
walks.

The Technician*- Female, 18 - 28
- Completely in tune with anything mechanical. Takes things apart /
dissects things with disturbing regularity, and while can usually put them back
together again sometimes forgets to do so, to the dismay of her friends whose
objects* she 'borrows'.
- Fascinated by all methods of transport, and has an amazingly large
memory for all vehicles and machines but not for people or places (they are
just not important!)
- Initially hired for one-off job by the Hero and the Protector, but took
an instant liking to them and convinced them of her usefullness.
- Not very good in rough situations like fights, prefers cold logic of
puzzles, as her size tends to work against her. However, pressed into a corner,
she can make her technical* knowledge work to her advantage in place of physical
prowess.
- wears her heart on her sleeve and is often very cheerful, but takes some
blows very hard (a friend getting hurt, etc). Sometimes flighty.

The Rabble Rouser - Male, 20 - 30 (should be around Hero's age)
- Met Hero + crew rather accidently and they helped out of a bit of trouble
(which he had gotten himself into and was almost entirely his fault).
- Developed instant infatuation with Hero + told her that he would help her
find her memory. Infatuation may or may not be sincere. Hero does not return
it.
- Tends to bring trouble with him, or create it when he gets there, as he
grates people's nerves.
- Charming and seemingly hollow, but in select instances with the Shadow
has shown that he's invested more in the quest than one would think - though
perhaps not for the apparent reasons.
- Has good luck with gambling to match his bad luck with people, and never
is wont for money - it tends to find him as easily as he finds it.
- Has an excellent memory for faces as well as for numbers.- Well groomed,
but not as flamboyant as one might expect - unless it is on purpose as part of a
bluff.

Okay, where do we start?

First of all, whose story is this going to be? At first glance, one would think it would be the Hero. She's lost something (her memory) and has to find out who she was and where she came from, and why.

But I think the best choice for a main Point-Of-View character would be... the Protector.

The Protector is the one who first finds the lost and damaged Hero, and takes her in. We know from the character descriptions that these two characters have been together for at least a year. What happens during that year?

The Protector is a cautious type, but he takes the risk of taking in this unknown quantity of a person and helping her build a new life. We don't know, yet, why he took that risk. (Which will eventually become even more dangerous than even he expected.)

That new life for the Hero, what will that be like? Well, what's it like for the Protector?

So this is when we have to take our first baby steps towards building a world and society in which this story will take place.

First thoughts: A society with distinct class levels. A wealthy upper class, with the most power and access to the best resources and technology. A middle class that mans and provides the infrastructure supporting that wealthy upper class. And a lower class, with depleted or unaffordable resources, whose members struggle every day.

Let's take "upper class" and make it literal: A planetary ring around the earth, where the wealthy and powerful live. The middle class are those whose maintain and support that mini-Ringworld.

For varying values of "mini". Even a planetary ring is uber-huge, possibly containing tens of thousand of square miles, or even magnitudes more if the construct is built in multiple levels.
(Here's a thought: What if that planetary ring is NOT a human construct? Surmise: Enigmatic aliens entered our solar system at some point and, rather than directly colonize the planets, built planetary rings to occupy. Further surmise: They're not oxygen breathers, so had no reason to occupy Earth's surface. The Earth ring is, from their POV, essentially an outpost; the important rings are those built around the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. They did, however, strip out a lot of Earth's resources, and offhandedly destroyed a lot of human civilization in the process of contructing their ring. Humanity and their concerns are essentially irrelevant to them. The vast majority of the ring belongs to the aliens, and is forbidden to humans. That upper-class, wealthy society is only a relatively thin strip - -but still huge by human standards -- built on the exterior of the aliens' ring; why they allowed it to be built is still unknown.) (All this paragraph is very tentative and speculative at this point. It might be used; it might be completely discarded. For the moment, we'll give it a spot on the Maybe Shelf.)

Back to our human characters: The Protector would be a member of that middle-class.

Initially, the Hero, freshly amnesial, would be fairly child-like. The Protector would be more of a father-figure to her, as she learns, grows, and begins to fit into the Protector's sector of society. (Thought: Has the Protector lost his own family -- wife & child, perhaps? Is that why he takes the risk of taking in the Hero?) This relationship may change as she becomes more knowledgable, more able to function as an individual. (Would they become lovers? Possibly.)

Time to lob a few hand grenades into the story: Something happens to trigger the Hero's fighting abilities. Holy shit, who IS this dangerous woman?

Next hand-grenade, the Shadow shows up. (Perhaps as a result of the story of the Hero's kick-ass abilities spreading?) The Hero recognizes the Shadow's face, but only his face. Who is this guy? What's his connection to the Hero's past? (A connection he denies.) Does he have connections to that wealthy upper-class? And if he does, what does that imply about the hero's past? And does that make him a threat to the Protector, and the Protector's relationship with the Hero? (This is why I like the Protector as POV character; he has something to lose.)

Let's take our aliens back off the Maybe Shelf and throw in one more hand grenade: The Hero finds her amnesia is not the result of injury. Rather, it was something that was deliberately imposed on her brain. And not by human technology, but by alien technology.

And could that mean that the Shadow not only has connections to the human upper-class, but to the aliens? Is that even possible?

How about our other three characters?

The Sage: Perhaps the Sage is a member of a church that believes the aliens were sent by God. Word of a human affected by alien tech might bring her onto the scene. She may also have connections and resources available across all the human classes.

The Rabble-Rouser and the Technician would, I think, start out as background characters. They become more important when the Rabble-Rouser screws up, and gets the authorities (who essentially work for the upper-class) coming down on the Hero and other characters. The hero and Protector have to go on the run. Rabble-Rouser, feeling guilt, helps them in their escape. (So does the Sage. The Shadow? Perhaps he offers an alternate escape route, one the Hero and Protector are not willing to trust.)

It's the Technician who can provide the vehicle that will let them travel from the Ring down to Earthside in search of sanctuary. (Perhaps literally, provided by the Sage's church?)

But that sanctuary needs to fail. At some point, I see mountain-ripping alien ships in the skies of Earth again. Will they finish off humanity completely this time?

The Hero has to go from the defensive to the offensive. She has to find out who she was, why she was so important, and what she has to do to save her friends and the world.

Stuff happens. Bang! Boom! Wowie and zowie. Stuff blows up real good. Unexpected alliances and tragic betrayals. (Yeah, this part is a little vague at this point.)

Some things to remember: 1) Everyone has a past. 2) Everyone has an agenda. 3) Not everybody lives happily ever after.

I think we have a rough story arc at this point:
- Hero, sick and lost, is taken in by the Protector. Things go smoothly for a while.
- Complications arise. The Hero's fighting abilities are triggered. The Shadow comes on the scene, with a possible connection to the Hero's past. The Protector's chance at happiness is threatened.
- The Technician discovers the alien technology in the Hero's brain. The Sage arrives.
- The Rabble-Rouser knocks over the applecart. Everyone has to go on the run to planetside, with the Technician's assistance. The Sage provides a hiding place on Earth.
- Things go to hell. Not only is the group in jeopardy, but humanity is in jeopardy. The Hero has to go on the offensive.
- Boom, bang, wowie, zowie, et cetera. The Hero discovers and confronts her past. Revelations and resolutions. Not everyone lives happily ever after. The End.

I'll leave things at this point, but I'll try and do a "Six Characters In Search Of A Plot, Part II", developing things in a bit more detail, sometime soon.

Welcome To The Surveillance Society, Mr. Hanes

So the technicians finally finish up their wiring and troubleshooting, and pack up their tools and leave, and, hey, the Security office at the retail/office/hotel development where I've been working finally has access to the over one-hundred fifty security cameras scattered over the property. So this morning I'm spending a couple of hours there, very bored, eyeing the monitors and waiting for something, anything, to happen on camera.

And it does. I pick up the radio mike:

ME: Unit 211, could you go to the bus stop and speak to the man changing his clothes there?"

211: "Uhhh... repeat?"

ME: "There is a man at the bus stop changing his pants. He is standing in his underwear as we speak."

211: "Uhhhh... I am enroute."

ME: "He is putting on shorts, currently. Look for the guy with the yellow t-shirt and no shame."

The bus stop at the development is a small shelter with about a half-dozen hideously uncomfortable concrete seats. The space is about three-quarters enclosed by perforated metal screens, providing a measure of shade and some heat relief for people waiting for a bus. The guy changing his pants apparently thought the screens would keep anyone from seeing him change from pants to shorts.

Nope. On camera, on tape.

But even if there'd been no cameras... what the heck makes someone think, "Hey, I've got a few minutes before the bus gets here. I think I'll change my clothes."?

Get a room, guy.