Tightwad-At-Large

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This Explains A Lot. No, Really.

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

RSI may cause sick worker syndrome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent Reading: Playboy 50 Years The Cartoons

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

I just read it for the captions, honest.

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

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

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

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

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

...that the cartoons are curiously sexless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End The Slump? End The Shame!

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

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

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

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

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

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

That honor isn't there anymore.

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

But the torture... the torture is indefensible.

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

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

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

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

Bardic Funeral

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Videogame Question

This is a question that came to mind earlier today:

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

Spammers. Why Des It Have To Be Spammers?

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

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

Well, it made ME Laugh!

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

So: Urinals of Middle-Earth.

You were warned.

Four Gunfights And A Funeral

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

What NOT To Do (for writers and others)

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

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

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

Recent Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*spoiler warning*

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

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

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

Various Links

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the Day

From Avedon Carol:

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

History Via The Blues

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

New Orleans Talking Blues

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

(click the link for the rest...)

A Damn Good Photo

Resourceful 

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

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

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

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

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

500 Eggs For 60 Guys

From the Times-Picayne website at nola.com:

500 eggs, 60 men in blue

Thursday, 4:25 p.m.

By Eva Jacob Barkoff
Staff writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's over eight friggin' eggs per man.

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

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

This Will Happen

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

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

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

New New Orleans: The Big Future

Okay, New Orleans is flooded out. Most of the city will be uninhabitable for months. Contamination from ruptured and damaged chemical and industrial storage facilities will probably turn sweeping areas of the city into a Superfund site for years. Initial estimates to restore the city are running at about 25 billion dollars; I think that's probably highly optimistic.

Maybe it's time, rather than thinking about restoring New Orleans, to think about replacing it.

And if we need to replace it, why not go for the big picture, why not go for... the future?

Why not go for something like... this?

An arcology. A self-contained city in a single building. Utilizing a variety of alternative energy sources (solar, wind, atmospheric diferentials).

"But that's not New Orleans!" you cry. No, but it doesn't have to be.

One of the things about this particular arcology idea, Ultima Tower, is that it's built in a lake, to provide water and cooling. Like say, Lake Pontchartain?

You could build the tower in Lake Pontchartain. Most of the original New Orleans would be dismantled. What would be left would be the "classic" areas, Bourbon Street, etc, and probably the rail and shipping facilities, the heavy industry. The tourist areas would be, basically, a theme park. And there could be high-speed transit lines between the tower and New Orleans Classic, for workers and for tourists. New Orleans Classic could either be protected from future floods by a high coffer dam, or possibly by having the entire area jacked up above water level. (Either would be a large project, and expensive, but a lot easier than trying to preserve and protect the entire city.)

Of course, "build an arcology" is a simple thing to say. In reality, as always, everything takes longer, costs more, and doesn't work as well as originally planned. (Just how many years has Paolo Soleri's mini-arcology, Arcosanti, been "under construction"?) An immense project like this, with this much money involved, would be a graft and corruption magnet. And since so many New Orleans residents live at or barely above the poverty level, would the inclination be to build the tower "on the cheap", with substandard materials and facilities? Would New New Orleans end up as a low-income housing project on steroids? Would the environment and ecology of living in an arcology produce new social customs? Would those new customs displace the traditional jazz-booze-Big-Easy traditions of the original city?

I don't know, but the possibilities might make, at the least, for some interesting science fiction....

Guest Writer: James Patrick Boyne

From Smirking Chimp's comments, in response to this article, James Patrick Boyne compares himself to George Bush, Cowboy Rancher:

I'm just like Bush. I'm a cowboy and I live on a ranch.

I live in a little 3 room apartment in an urban area of Connecticut----but its really a ranch. I call it a ranch and I think of it as a ranch and I use Krafts Ranch Dressing all the time too.

Its not 1600 acres like Bush's ranch but it is about 1/80 of an acre or about 792 square feet if you count the foyer (the entrance to my ranch).

I know its a ranch because my wife always yells, "Will you clean up the fuckin' ranch", so it must be. Not many tumbleweeds, or coyote, or praire dogs around here but last year we had a drive by shooting------it must have been one of those cowboys thinkin' this was the OK Corral.

There's an open field about 35 miles from here with two cows in it. Sometimes on a nice summer day I drive there and get out of the car and go over and pet the cows. I like to walk in the cow shit and get it all over my Florsheim Wingtip shoes so i feel like a cowboy. My wife won't let me in the house when I get home. I like the cows. I live on a ranch. I'm a cowboy.

I wear a cowboy hat just like Bush. And cowboy boots, and tight jeans and a big belt buckle, just like Bush. I like to sweat under the armpits just like Bush. It shows I like hard work. Hard work makes you sweat and I sweat, just like Bush.

Bush likes to cut trees that have already fallen with a chain saw. He always seems to need about 6 big guys with him when he uses that chain saw. Where do you always find six big guys when you want to chainsaw a big tree that has already fallen? I have a chainsaw but my wife says I have to bring it back to the store because there are no trees around here, only telephone poles, and she said I'd get in trouble if I tried to cut down a telephone pole. And I dont think that I could find 6 neighbors that would want to help me cut one down, especially with drive by shootings going on in the neighborhood.

How come every time Bush chainsaws a tree a camera crew always arrives? A camera crew is never allowed to show him mountain biking nor does a camera crew ever show him eating at the kitchen table, or watching TV, or writing, or reading, or talking with Laura on the front porch, or nothing else on that ranch. He is always just chainsawing trees that have already fallen down. I never ever hardly see any standing trees so where do all the fallen trees come from? Maybe they have them trucked in just so he can be filmed chainsawing a tree.

I tried to drag a small tree into my apartment, I mean my ranch, because I wanted to chainsaw it and my wife had a shit fit.

I'm a cowboy, just like Bush.

Cowboys like outhouses. Flushing is for sissies. So I constructed an old outhouse and placed it in the corner of my kitchen so I could take a shit, just like a real cowboy, in my very own outhouse, on my ranch, I mean my apartment. Wifey says it's got to go, or I'll never get another meal made in that kitchen of mine.

I'm a cowboy. Just like Bush. He's my idol. I voted for him because I like his big belt buckle.

I'm born again, just like Bush. I even started to drink heavily just so I could stop just like Bush. I even snorted cocaine just so I could stop just like Bush (but not before I cooked my brain, just like Bush).

I talk to God all the time. And HE talks to me. Just like Bush. I carry the Bible all around with me. Thats why I got fired. My boss said I was neglecting my work. I told my boss that I was just praying for the fallen heroes and those who had given the ultimate sacrifice. My boss said, "Thats fine, but you're fired." I said back to him, "Fuck you," and he replied, "Up yours."

Its fun being just like the President.

Well, gotta go, gotta oil up that ol' chain saw and sharpen the teeth on it. Never can tell when a tree may come by and 6 big guys will show up to help me and all the local news stations will arrive with their cameras so I can get on the Nightly News.

I wonder how Bush arranges all that? Do you think he gets up in the morning and Karl Rove gives him a call and says, Hey George, we need you to go out and saw a tree with your chainsaw? I just called CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, FOXnews, PBS, the History Channel, National Geographic, and the Animal Planet and they will be out this afternoon to take a 15 second shot of you chainsawing a tree.

And whats with the background scenery at Crawford of the giant round bales of hay, the old fence, the tractor, and the old unpainted barn that looks like its about to fall down? How come all the TV achors all stand in the exact same spot. The tractor never seems to move and that hay has been in the exact same positon for 5 years now. And I've never seen a single soul in the background either coming out of or going into that old barn. Where is that place? Is it real or is that just a giant picture in a sound studio somewhere back in the White House? I used to have a scene like that that was really wallpaper. It covered the whole wall and when I stared at it I got the feeling I was really on a ranch. Hey, I think I'll get another one. I'll surprise my wife for her birthday.

My wife's name used to be Jennifer but I made her change it to Laura. I call her Laura all the time. She hates it, but shes getting used to it. When we make love I blow in her ear and call her "Laura" and tell her she is my little own "First Lady". When I introduce her to people I call her my "my bride", just like Bush calls Laura.

My dog's name used to be Abby. I changed it to Barney, like Bush's dog. Even though it's a German Shepard I tell everyone its a Scottish Terrier.

My son's name used to be Billy. I call him Karl now. He's only two, but he'll understand when he gets older, I told him. He looks a little like Karl Rove. I shaved his hair off.

I always wanted to meet Dick Cheney. He's my idol. Whenever I meet anyone, whether it be in the bank, at the supermarket, at the gas station, or at the unemployment office where I pick up my unemployment check, I always say "Hi Dick". They just look at me funny. My favorite all time quote of Dick Cheney's was when he told Senator Pat Leahy to "go fuck yourself" so instead of saying "good morning" to people I just say "go fuck yourself".

Anyway, I'm just like Bush and I live on a ranch.

More of James Patrick Boyne's work can be found at pulsetc.com.

Simple Salmon Cakes

As an antidote to our previous post, here's something I whipped up for tonight's dinner:

Simple Salmon Cakes

6oz can of salmon
1 egg
1/4 cup bread crumbs
2 Tbsp minced green onion
salt, pepper, garlic to taste

Combine all ingredients. Take about 1/3rd cup of mixture, put it into a medium-hot skillet. Use spatula to form into patty, brown on both sides. Makes about 4 salmon cakes.

I served these with boiled potatoes, seasoned with butter, parsley & dill, and a salad. Pretty darn good, if I say so.