Data Stream

04. March 2009 · Comments Off on Data Stream · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Rant, The Funny

Still waiting to see if there will be another “Tea Party-San Antonio” in the near future, in which case Blondie and I will happily join in; the weather is fine and mild, and I wouldn’t mind at all a chance to actually commingle in the real-world with some of the other people that I know are getting more than a little annoyed with the current administration. As another commenter remarked on another blog – and it was so apt that I have promptly stolen it and used with great effect ever since: “I knew the Obama administration was gonna be a train wreck; I just thought it would make it out of the station first.”

The nice thing about having low expectations is that one is very rarely disappointed in a politician, and often quite pleasantly surprised. At this point in time, all I am reduced to asking of our elected public servants is that they would cover their mouths when they cough, and to kindly refrain from sexually molesting barnyard animals and interns in public – and there have been moments over the last couple of years, when I wondered if that were asking altogether too much. The passing spectacle is just getting to be all to much; the affirmative action President and his race-mongering attorney general all hot to have conversations about race in America, as if we haven’t hardly been having anything else for the last forty years. Then there is Sen. Dodd with the charming Irish cottage and his sweet-heartedly favorable mortgage arrangements – and his many friends in the House and Senate who also appear to have had similar friendly arrangements with their mortgage lenders. Follow that with a chaser of the pols who scrambled to explain their omission in paying taxes … jeeze Louise, does everyone going into politics these days have amnesia when it comes to filing their income tax report?

And the stock market has been dropping like a rock over the last two days, to the tune of ineffectual bleating by the Anointed One, who appears to be making the discovery for the very first time – that what he says does, indeed, have effects in the real world, outside the arena of Chicago politics. It would be amusing, watching him twist and turn – if it weren’t for the very real repercussions. It’s also amusing watching a variety of Obama media fans from last fall owning up to second thoughts now that their guy is actually ensconced in the White House. Nice timing, sports – very nice timing, indeed. Sorry, mediawhores, in my own mind and after your performance coming up to the election, you are now firmly and irretrievably stuck to him. Would it be racist of me to draw a comparison to the tar-baby? Perhaps – but it is apt enough. You are stuck on to him for good, and even if you break free at the last minute, you will still have all that icky tar smeared all over your face, and the rest of us will point and laugh, as your TV network or newspaper goes down to insolvency and you look for another job.

Interesting times – just as that ancient Chinese curse prescribes.

(Later – another perspective, found courtesy of Rantburg, home of all that is surly and cynical.)

Aww

02. March 2009 · Comments Off on Aww · Categories: General

The Future by you.

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

It Is Here – Wild West Monday Has Arrived

02. March 2009 · Comments Off on It Is Here – Wild West Monday Has Arrived · Categories: General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Oh yes – the day to go out and ask your local bookstore or library for a western novel – any western novel!

Not just mine, you know – but any of the classics, ancient (relatively) or modern. Although I wouldn’t take it amiss if you did go out and ask Barnes & Noble, or your local Borders or independent bookstore to order The Adelsverein Trilogy. There are piles and shelves of good classic westerns out there and a lot of people interested in reading them, so why not draw the attention of retailers to that market, today!

More here, from “The Tainted Archive“.

Godspeed, Paul Harvey. R.I.P.

01. March 2009 · Comments Off on Godspeed, Paul Harvey. R.I.P. · Categories: General

source

Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona. He was 90.

Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.

“Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation’s history,” Jim Robinson, president of ABC Radio Networks said in a statement. “We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him.”

Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.

He was a staple in the radio of my youth. I will miss his gentle humor, and his stories. Farewell, sir, and thank you for 50 wonderful years.

Reminder – Wild West Monday is Coming!

25. February 2009 · Comments Off on Reminder – Wild West Monday is Coming! · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

And more here, at “The Tainted Archive” – one-stop shopping for all fans of traditional westerns … which the Adelsverein Trilogy is, sort of, if you bend down and squint at it sideways.

Taken as guy fantasy

23. February 2009 · Comments Off on Taken as guy fantasy · Categories: General

We saw Taken last night.  My wife’s review?

The movie was very good and kept us on the edge of our seat. It was great to see a parent be able to beat up a slew of bad guys and save his daughter, although it was a bit disconcerting to see he wasn’t the least bit concerned with other people’s daughters and their safe return. You’d think someone that had lost his little girl would have had a bit more compassion, but hey, he saved his girl and it was great.

It is a kick-ass movie, oh yes.

Thought the First.  It wasn’t, I think, that he was unconcerned about the girls, but that Liam Neeson’s character is a guy.  A guy on a mission.  A guy who is focused.  He’s got a job to do and not a whole lot of time to do it in.  This is, I think, a very guy kind of a trait and very much who the character was.

Thought the Second.  There is a scene where he is talking with some Bad Men – and from their actions he is not a guy speaking English but a guy speaking French so well that they think he is a Parisian cop.

Which probably meant that he and they were speaking French. Fine, the part of me that is good at ignoring dumb stuff can handle it.

But oh, Hollywood, how you vex me! I and about 100% of the public would have been fine with Neeson breaking out the Francais and cluing us in with sub-titles. We can handle it.

Final Thought.  This is very much a fantasy movie for realistic down-to-earth guys in the way that Anita Blake is smut for gals from the Midwest who would not dream of looking at the naughty stuff.

The bad guys are messing with his baby.  There is no time for police or the authorities and the only thing that will save her is a whole lot of ass-kicking and gunfire and clued-in friends with secret-scary access to government databases.

And then he does that thing.  And he wins despite long odds against him.  Because he is such a bad-ass he doesn’t have to look like Harrison Ford or Stallone – he’s just Liam Neeson.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Other Ones

20. February 2009 · Comments Off on The Other Ones · Categories: General, Memoir

I know I haven’t been writing here much.  Haven’t had much going on that I wanted to write about.  The one big thing on our minds around here is something I’m not very proud of, but thought I’d throw it out here and see if the half dozen of you who still come around might find it interesting.

My family is going through what millions of families have been going through over the past year or so.  We’re looking at losing our house.  Now we didn’t buy a house that we couldn’t afford, and we didn’t get a mortgage that exploded one day.  Life happened and the economy happened.  I lost my job and didn’t find a new one for a month and a half, then my wife lost her job and didn’t find a new one for a month and a half, and we had utilities to pay and food to buy and we fell behind in our mortgage.  Our lender is NOT willing to work with us to bring down the payments or to put what’s missing on the end of the loan.  They want a payment and a half until we’re caught up.  And the way the cost of living went up and didn’t really come back down, we can no longer really afford the mortgage payment much less a payment and a half.  We’re the other ones.  The ones you really don’t hear about much.  We didn’t do anything wrong, we bought the place in good faith.  We never thought we’d be trying to choose between paying the mortgage and paying for food.  What really kills me is that if we get rid of cable, cell phones and internet, we’d still be short.  I’ve never been in that position before.  We’ve tightened our belts before, but even if we do now, it doesn’t matter.  What really kills me is that we’re making more now than we were when we bought the place.  Kinda makes me crazy.

The only thing that MIGHT save us is if there’s anything in the President’s Magical Bailout for us.  Our problem?  We don’t want YOU paying for OUR mortgage.  We’re seriously against that, and besides, from everything I’ve read, we’re not really the folks the President is trying to save.  Our lender didn’t screw us over, they didn’t see the economy tanking either.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t have lent us the money in the first place.

So we’re looking and believe we found a nice little rental house.  I’ve been trying to contact our lender all week but all I get is voicemail.  Apparently, we’re not the only ones wanting to talk to them.

We’re going to lose our house and I’d like to feel worse about it but after all the figuring we’ve done I just can’t.  We simply can’t afford this place.  God help us if the hot water heater or the a/c or the furnace died.  There’s no way to replace them.  God help us if we had anything happen to either of the cars, which we NEED to work.

We can’t keep going like this and that means letting them foreclose.  That hurts.  I tend to be on the proud side in case you’ve missed that part of my character over the years and we’re going through all five stages of mourning.  I’m going to really miss the backyard, but I’m thinking we can get to the foothills easier once we can buy a tank of gas without worrying about we have enough money for food.

A fine thing

19. February 2009 · Comments Off on A fine thing · Categories: General

The payback for obligatory attendance at middle school concerts is being privileged to attend your spawn’s high school concerts: good music played well by youth is a fine thing.

Hearing Ashokan Farewell played with skill and joy?  Took me right out of winter and clean into a warm summer evening: that was bliss.

Ashokan Farewell – Jay Ungar

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Memo: On the Fear of Open Discussion

19. February 2009 · Comments Off on Memo: On the Fear of Open Discussion · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, History, Rant

To: Atty-Gen Holder
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Not having open discussions about the r-word

1. Well, thanks, your attorneyness. Just thanks. After about forty years about being called racists when we open our mouths on any topic remotely to do with race, now we get whipsawed by being called cowards for not opening our mouths. Look, we got wise about noisy race-hustlers long since… is it OK to lump yourself in with them? With Al Sharpton, Jesse the baby-momma-banging-hypocrite Jackson, and Spike Lee and all the rest of the easily offended crowd with the dark year-round tans?
2. Frankly, no one really digs being screamed at when we had one of these mandatory equal-opportunities encounter sessions, and no, it never much changed anyone’s mind, and these little sessions hardly ever cleared the air much. It just took up however many hours were mandated by whoever dictates those matters.
3. It did, however, shut up most of the virulent white bigots… forty years ago. I have a heck of a time recalling the last time in real life that I actually heard someone in a social setting uncork some casual racism, misogyny, or anti-Semitism, so mad props for social pressure and all that. Pity one can’t say the same of thug-rap music, but then I’m white so I’m probably disqualified from commenting on that.
4. Let it be noted that we do, in fact, have discussions about racism with friends and acquaintances of all color – but they tend to be those people who we are fairly sure will not come f&$#@ing unglued and begin screaming and calling us racists when we decline to blame ourselves personally for everything to do with race relations in the United States over the last couple of centuries.
5. Hoping this memo will prove of help in assisting you to understand this, although I am not gonna hold my breath about it. Will we have to listen to you bang on about this for the rest of the Obama administration? (God, it’s going to be a long four years!)

I remain,
Sgt Mom

PS – Just as a reminder, a good chunk of the Founding Fathers were not slave-owners, and very much disapproved of chattel slavery… and seventy years after the founding, we fought a particularly bloody civil war over that very issue. Do history much. AG Holder?

Thrift Shopping

18. February 2009 · Comments Off on Thrift Shopping · Categories: Ain't That America?, General

Honestly, I can’t help but think that I am way ahead of the game when it comes to an economic down-turn, incipient depression, bubble-bursting, or whatever the heck the mighty media organs want to call it. I lost three jobs alone last year, before the major misery even started. I’ve already processed the grief, adjusted to a fairly Spartan lifestyle, and gotten very well adept at bargaining with institutions demanding money from me. I cobbled together another series of paying ventures, including fifteen hours a week at the phone bank – which does have as a virtue (perhaps it’s only virtue!) that it is at least reliable in providing work hours and the resulting paycheck. Amazingly enough, I’ve lasted there long enough that many of the other drones on the floor know me by name, which is nice enough, I suppose – but I still call it “The Hellhole”. My original plan called for quitting around Christmas – but alas, Blondie loosing a job of her own put paid to that notion. So – tight budget all around, and welcome to the joys of bargain hunting, at yard sales, thrift-stores and in the untidy shelves at the back of various retail establishments labeled ‘clearance’ or ‘final sale’ or ‘70% off!’

I don’t know if I will really ever be able to embrace full retail prices again, after this year. I don’t think I will ever be able to walk into an upscale shop and cheerfully pay the full price for something, without feeling an incapacitating twinge of regret. I guess I have just enough of my grandmother’s canny puritan soul in me, and how it has a chance to flower. Unlike Granny Jessie in the Great Depression, though – we will not be keeping chickens. That’s going a little too far. But we have picked up a barely-used bread machine (at a yard sale for $10) and make our own bread, since I have a liking for the very expensive wheat varieties that are loaded with fiber and flavorful seeds and spices, which cost better than $3.00 a loaf at the Humongously Enormous Big-Ass Grocery. So one step closer to self-sufficiency – and Blondie is teaching herself how to knit. Much more of this, and I can see us living away off in the country with a satellite dish, a generator, our own water well and a milk cow. Talking over this whole gestalt with Blondie, and neither of us can remember the last time we bought a non-food item at full price. Everything has been on sale, second hand, bought in bulk at Sam’s Club or an ethnic grocery, or made at home. Even the ink cartridges for my printer are recycled from Cartridge World.

And this is not to say we don’t have a lot of quiet fun with this – we have bought some lovely, frivolous things for practically pennies and even some items which miraculously replaced those lost in the fire at Mom and Dad’s house in 2003. This very week at the new Goodwill Store which opened in our neighborhood, Blondie found a round silver-plate drinks tray which – after ten years worth of grimy black tarnish was cleaned off of it and she checked the now-visible hallmark – turned out to have a market value of about a hundred times what she spent for it. And there was also an odd set of crystal glasses, all jumbled among a long shelf of glassware. These were as fragile as bubbles, and appear to be hand-etched with a bamboo pattern; four with a short stem, three with a long stem and three which look like miniature martini glasses. I think they are Japanese, since they look so much like a set of crystal that I bought in the BX there ages ago. Blondie adds them to the collection that she is setting aside for her own house, against the day when I am a best-selling author and can buy her one.
I was much more interested in a find on a table of books: a stack of the old Time-Life series about the foods of the world. Mom had a subscription to the series in the late 1960s; each volume focusing on the food of a particular country or region came as a two-part set. One was a lovely, lavishly illustrated examination of the country and it’s cuisine, and the other a small spiral-bound collection of recipes. Of course, Mom’s collection was among those lost in the fire, and the ones I found at the thrift shop were the coffee-table book only – but still, I was very fond of that series. The cooking of provincial France, of Spain and Portugal, of Great Britain, and Scandinavia…. I think those books were where we all learned to be adventurous about food. It’s good to have them back.

The README is there for a reason

18. February 2009 · Comments Off on The README is there for a reason · Categories: General

Me: Hey, wait a second. The README claims we need sqlite3 on your webserver. I’m not sure it’s installed …

Her: Give it a shot.

Me: (aghast) But … if sqlite3 is not on the server it won’t work.

And we run smack-bang into a divide more fundamental than the male-female thing: the ones who check things out before launching and the ones who give it a shot and see if it flies or splats into a wall.

God love her, my beautiful and attractively intelligent wife falls firmly into the latter camp.

I fall firmly into the camp whose theme song contains this verse ..

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s ways may be long in the land.

Oh, and her revamped web site is up and running. Joe Bob says check it out.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Politics at the Speed of Light

16. February 2009 · Comments Off on Politics at the Speed of Light · Categories: General

Everything moves faster these days. Music has a faster tempo – I find some pop songs that I remember from the 80s as fast and peppy drag along. Television from the 70s – when it’s aired uncut – seems to take forever to get to the point and horribly static.

Heck, even politics moves faster than it used to: it took less than a month for President Obama to break seven campaign promises …

1. Make government open and transparent.

2. Make it “impossible” for Congressmen to slip in pork barrel projects.

3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. (Even Congressional Republicans shut out.)

4. No more secrecy.

5. Public will have 5 days to look at a bill.

6. You’ll know what’s in it.

7. We will put every pork barrel project online.

Via.

Breaking promises is par for the course with politicians.  But a) this guy was supposed to be different [1] and b) has anyone so explicitly promised a set of talking points and then gone back in less than a month?

A comment from Chicago Boys ..

The Ghost Shirt Democrats are doing their dance, but the vast herds of union-member Democrat-voting buffalo will never return to the plains, and [the] magic ghost shirts will not turn the ballots of angry voters into water [in] 2010 and 2012. Of course, the Republicans could still blow it, but even if they do, the Democrats have shown in a few short weeks that they have no idea how to govern the country, just to loot it. They will be replaced, if not by Republicans, then by somebody else.

Maybe.  We’ll see.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Yes, even I believed he would be.  And there I was, trusting a politician, like a sucker.

The Proud Tower and the Buccaneers (Part 2)

15. February 2009 · Comments Off on The Proud Tower and the Buccaneers (Part 2) · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, World

One of the most curious instances of the rich American heiress for old European title exchanges was the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough; the wedding itself was covered with breathless interest by the media of the time – which since it took place in 1895, meant coverage by newspapers only. However, the wedding was as lavish, and the interest in every tiny detail as intense as that paid to the nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It took place at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on New Yorks’ 5th Avenue, and the crowds of spectators outside the church and for a good way down the avenue was so thick that squads of policemen could barely force enough of an open way between them for the invited guests. The inside of the church was lavishly decorated with flowers – pink and white roses, swags of lilies, ivy and holly, arches of ferns, palm leaves and chrysanthemums. No expense was spared – even more astonishing was the fact that Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke had only been engaged for about six weeks and only known each other for barely a year. She was barely eighteen, reserved and sheltered, the very pretty daughter of a woman with a will of iron and ambition to match. After her marriage, she would blossom into one of the acknowledged beauties of that era: Playwright James Barrie supposedly said he would wait all day in the street just to watch her get into a carriage.

Alva Smith had married for money herself – having pursued, wed and just recently divorced the oldest grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, called ‘The Commodore’, who had founded the family fortunes in shipping and branched out into railways. Her own father’s fortunes were sadly diminished by the Civil War, and Alva resolved to secure her own future and those of her family by marrying rich. She emerges as a domineering, driven and stubborn woman with a fiery temper. Very few people ever said ‘no’ to Alva Vanderbilt, least of all her own family; neither her parents, either of her husbands, or any of her children. Her own mother, a cultured Southern belle spoke French, and traveled widely in Europe with her children in those distant days when it meant a long voyage on a sailing ship. In a fragmentary memoir written late in life, Alva recalled that her mother had made a yearly order of clothes for herself and her daughters from a Paris dressmaker. All the clothes they would need for the next year would arrive one time – a means which was sufficient for that era, but not when Alva was raising her own children. By that time, being rich and in the social set meant a degree of ostentatious competition that is purely mind-boggling to contemplate today. Everything about those at the very top of the social network still astonishes, beginning with the ‘summer cottages’ built at the edge of Newport, Rhode Island. Alva was responsible for one of the most lavish, ‘Marble House’ which seemed like nothing much but a couple of square acres of the Sun King’s Versailles, set down in the New World. The balls and parties that prominent members of this high society threw for each other also defy belief. At one infamously grand banquet, an artificial river filled with live fish ran the length of the dining table – and guests were provided with little silver shovels to search for jeweled party favors in the sand at the bottom of the river. Such a grand dinner ran to course after course of elaborately prepared dishes, and an ordinary day for a society woman might involve changing clothes four or five times over. And Alva Vanderbilt was one of the leading social lionesses by the time her daughter was of marriageable age, despite having divorced William Vanderbilt.

Divorce was almost unthinkable in that milieu – and yet, Alva went ahead with it; she would marry her daughter off to a nobleman, and having achieved that apotheosis, would marry again herself, to Oliver Belmont – another wealthy member of the Gilded Age’s highest social circle. Incredibly, she would have a contented marriage with him – and maintain her high position in that society – until his sudden death from complications of appendicitis. Almost without a moment’s hesitation, Alva would involve herself in the campaign for women’s rights to vote, using her considerable wealth to fund suffrage organizations and publications, to lobby in Washington and among the highest levels. She would fight for women’s property and political rights with the same stubborn intensity that she applied to any of her previous enthusiasms. In fact, she became something of a militant – and after her own death in 1931, had a full suffragette’s funeral, with women pallbearers and choir. Never mind the contradiction, of being for women’s rights, yet having dictated Consuelo’s marriage and overruled any of her daughter’s considerable misgivings.

Consuelo married reluctantly, in obedience to her mother. In spite of that, she serenely adorned the great estate of Blenheim Palace – which her marriage settlement helped repair and renovate – and the highest levels of British political and social circles equally. She was one of the noble wives who carried the canopy over Queen Mary at the coronation of King George V. She would produce two sons, and is thought to have been the originator of the expression ‘an heir and a spare’. The marriage was not happy; she and the Duke were of different and incompatible temperaments and Consuelo had something of her mother’s spine. They separated barely ten years after their lavish wedding day, and divorced in 1921, upon which Consuelo married a wealthy French aviation pioneer named Jacques Balsan. She achieved no small victory in managing to remain on easy and affectionate terms with her ex-husbands’ family, which included his redoubtable cousin, Winston Churchill. Her further life adventures included escaping with her husband from France in 1940, and returning to live in the country she had departed nearly half a century before. Amazingly, she lived until 1964 – and if pictures taken of her are any guide – she was still amazingly beautiful.

(No particular reason for writing all this – I had heard of these women in a vague sort of way, but the entire book about them was rather fascinating.)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

14. February 2009 · Comments Off on Happy Valentine’s Day! · Categories: General

I don’t celebrate it personally, but in case you’re one who likes hearts & flowers, here’s a heart for you, courtesy of NASA. 🙂

heart nebula

update: for some reason, it’s showing up sideways. Sorry about that.

What GS cookie are you?

14. February 2009 · Comments Off on What GS cookie are you? · Categories: General

Hey – that’s one of my faves 🙂


You Are Peanut Butter Sandwiches / Do-si-dos


You are easy going and naturally happy. You don’t need a lot to make you smile.
You genuinely care about people and are a great friend. You’re always doing your best to make the world a better place.

Even though there isn’t an immature bone in your body, you still are like a big kid sometimes.
Why make life complicated when the best parts are actually quite simple? You enjoy the small joys of life.

h/t: Blonde Sagacity

Here come the personal bail-outs

13. February 2009 · Comments Off on Here come the personal bail-outs · Categories: General

Not really. But I don’t know what else to call it. The end of accountability? The end of personal responsibility for choices? The beginning of the end of capitalism? Or maybe it’s just plain old greed, and the thought of getting something for nothing.

news article

This might be old news, but it’s the first I’ve seen of it, so it’s news to me. It seems that a Florida jury has decided that a man who chain-smoked for 40 years was helplessly addicted to nicotine, and therefore Philip Morris is responsible for his death. Now they get to decide how much Philip Morris should give the grieving widow.

The article says he was 55 years old when he died in 1997. So he started smoking at 15, in or around 1957. By 1966, when warning labels appeared on all cigarette packages, he’d been smoking almost 10 years then, so I’ll cut him a little bit of slack. That was plenty of time to get addicted to nictoine, and I don’t know what kind of information was available then regarding the dangers of smoking.

So yes, the tobacco companies bear some responsibility in all this. But the ultimate responsibility rests with the human being who made a choice to smoke, and continued to choose to smoke even as medical evidence mounted that it was an unsafe practice. According to the article, he tried to quit on numerous occasions, but kept going back to smoking. Addictions will do that to you, and he was, indeed, addicted. But the original culpability belongs to him, not to Philip Morris. Philip Morris did not come along, tie him to a chair, and force-feed him cigarettes.

What’s next? Can alcoholics who die from the ravages of their disease sue the liquor/beer companies? What about morbidly obese folks who die from complications of being overweight? How about this one – can I sue the credit card companies because they kept increasing my credit limit and so I kept spending their money?

At what point does personal responsibility enter into this? Or have we as a nation moved away from the concepts of being responsible for our own actions, and moved into the concept of doing/saying whatever will give me the most free stuff, especially if it’s coming from a greedy blood-sucking corporation that is only out to advance its own agenda on the backs of the poor uneducated masses (in other words, any company that wants to make a profit). What will happen when they bankrupt the tobacco companies and all the folks who are currently addicted to nicotine can no longer get their cigarettes?

I should probably add that I am not a smoker. In fact, I am almost allergic to cigarette smoke, and hate the smell of cigarette smoke or stale cigarette smoke. That said, I firmly believe that as long as something is legal, then companies have a right to provide it, and people have a right to indulge in it. Cigarettes are legal, and it’s well-known that they are addicting. I don’t know when we first realized they were addicting, but it seems to me that anyone who started smoking after that became common knowledge has no grounds to sue any tobacco company.

Wild West Monday

10. February 2009 · Comments Off on Wild West Monday · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West, Veteran's Affairs

So, I belong to a number of different chat-groups about books, and historical novels and Westerns and all … and at one of them, fans of Westerns are trying to raise interest in that particular genre, by mobilizing other fans, around the world to go into their local library or bookstore and ask for Westerns – any western, new, traditional or somewhere in between. The thinking is, we can achieve a critical mass of fans, and maybe take the book-selling world – if not by the throat, maybe we can gum their ankles a little, when it comes to stocking genre Western books. Which are really madly popular, but you’d hardly know it, to look at the shelves in your local Borders or whatever.More here, thanks to Gary Dobbs of “The Tainted Archive“.

Gary says, in part:

“At the moment we are in a situation where bookshops control the market (a select amount of buyers chose the titles they think we want to read ) and they seem to think all we want to read are massive tomes with more padding that substance. The days of cheap paperbacks that existed to entertain, excite and delight are long gone. Strange when those are the reasons we started reading in the first place. But it doesn’t have to be so – so come on get involved, hit the bookshops, hit the libraries. All of us on MARCH 2nd.
Come on get involved.”

Not just my books, which count as Westerns if you get down and squint at them sideways, but a whole range of others. Some of the classics are being profiled at Gary’s blog, and I would like to throw in a mention of a book by the micro-publisher who helped me launch The Adelsverein Trilogy, Michael Katz at Strider Nolan. His Western is called “Shalom on the Range”, and is about the adventures of a Jewish railway detective who knows nothing about the west but what he has read in dime novels, investigating a train robbery in the 1870s. Think ‘Seinfeld on the Prairie’.

Mark it on your calendar, if you are a fan of Westerns: March 2 is Wild West Monday!

Share The Love

09. February 2009 · Comments Off on Share The Love · Categories: General

Hey – what’s up Team Obama?

The media is filled with numbers about the economic crisis. But the numbers do not tell the full story.

They don’t?  I’m confused – I thought unless you had numbers you didn’t have the full story.

The story of this crisis is in homes across the country — homes where a family member has lost a job, where parents are struggling to pay a mortgage, and where college tuition has slipped out of reach.

Usually when a politician wants anecdotes and not numbers he’s trying to spin a story to a conclusion not supported by the facts. 

But Barack doesn’t play that way. 

You know when Tom Clancy totally let his muse get on top of him and he had Jack Ryan catapulted to the Oval Office and it was like all was Suddenly Right in the world? 

Barack is like Jack Ryan, but real.  Totally.

Share your story about how this economic crisis is affecting you and your family and join your fellow Americans in supporting bold action to speed our recovery:

http://my.barackobama.com/sharestories

Well, OK then!

My Crisis Story

My government wants to spend a whole bunch of money on a whole bunch projects of dubious value.

The crisis will end once the government stops helping.

Respectfully Submitted,

Brian Dunbar
Neenah, Wisconsin

I’m sure their filter will have that sucker right back into the public’s face.   Real Soon Now.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Proud Tower and the Buccaneers

09. February 2009 · Comments Off on The Proud Tower and the Buccaneers · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History

I am immersed in a schedule of reading over the next few weeks, devouring omnivorously a stack of books from the local library branch, another stack from my sometime employer at Watercress Press – she has a splendid collection of Texiana – and re-reading some of my own not-inconsiderable collection. This is where the stories, characters and incidents are planted and begin to grow and entwine; but the soil they sprout from is composted from all this reading, if I am allowed to milk out the gardening metaphor as far as is possible… well, anyway, circling back to the beginning again – I’ve got a tall stack of books about Texas, about the Gold Rush, and the 19th century in general. Too many to stack up on the nightstand, so the overflow is piled up on the flat-topped cedar chest, in three or four tall stacks. One of the potential story-lines in the projected trilogy is about how the American cattle business boomed and collapsed in the 1880s, which is about the very same time that many of the most popular envisionings of the Wild West were laid down in the form we have come to know best. It is also the setting for the concluding volume of my projected new trilogy; picking up the story of the next generation of the Becker family, once the Texas frontier calmed down a little.

There were a lot of other things going on at about that same time, including a veritable explosion in the number of American millionaires. In the post-Civil War years, enormous fortunes were being made in industry, from building railways, in steamship lines, in mining, in mercantile interests. The post-Civil War decades increasingly came to be dominated by ‘new money’ men, beside which the ‘old money’ families – with fortunes based on land, banking, the fur trade, sailing ships, or cotton and rooted in the earlier decades of the 19th century began to appear pale, and dull to everyone but each other. Mark Twain called the latter decades of that period ‘The Gilded Age’ – and he didn’t mean it particularly as a compliment, even if people have used the expression ever since as implying something rather fine. Twain meant it in the sense of something cheap, of a microscopically thin layer of gold overlaid on cheap metal, something flashy, over-ornamented, an object which would not wear very well, but caught the eye and impressed no end in the short term.

That era seemed strange and uncomfortable to someone who remembered an earlier day – for all it’s comforts, convenience, riches and plenty. Changes came thick and fast; the telegraph, the transcontinental railway, the ease of taking a steamship passage across the Atlantic and being there in a week or so, where once it had taken months. Americans of the upper crust began traveling for pleasure and for education, rather than strictly business and in numbers, once the crossing became relatively pleasant and short. The United States had never, even before the Civil War, been particularly isolated, but the 19th century world became appreciably smaller. Mark Twain himself became a part of this trend, by participating in one of the first great American tourist excursions, the 1867 voyage of the “Quaker City” to the Holy Land and elsewhere, which was documented in one of the funniest travel books ever, “The Innocents Abroad”.

It was an interesting time, no two ways about it – and one of the interesting aspects is that there were so very many assorted experiences recorded in the years between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the new century – rich pickings for someone like me, doing research. One of those collisions that I am interested in exploring is the same collision that Twain wrote about so humorously: the Old World and the New. There were quite a lot of opportunities for them to collide, and nowhere more than among the very newest of the new money, or even the semi-new money of the New World and the aristocracy of the old. One book I picked up at random was a joint biography of Alva and Consuela Vanderbilt – of whom I was sort-of-aware, mostly because the Vanderbilts are one of those filthy-rich families that you can’t help not having heard of, and because Consuela Vanderbilt was married off – mostly unhappily – to an English Duke. It was kind of ick-making to think about; fabulously wealthy American heiresses married off to the impecunious inheritors of ancient name, royal favor – and crumbling stately homes. Their vulgar American new dollars in exchange for an old name, a title and a coronet with strawberry leaves on it; it’s hard to decide which is more awful, the decayed noblemen hunting for heiresses that they would condescend to honor with their titles and past-due bills, or the social-climbing and wealthy American families of a supposedly democratic and more or less equalitarian nation going all weak-kneed at the thought of a title in the family.

(to be continued)

I’d like to dynamic entry on Server 2003, that’s what I’d like to do

05. February 2009 · Comments Off on I’d like to dynamic entry on Server 2003, that’s what I’d like to do · Categories: General

This tickled my funny bone. Dynamic entry …  Sluggy Freelance style:

Sluggy Freelance: Dynamic Entry by you.

And what are Torg, Riff and Gwen doing? They’re hunting zombies, duh.

And what am I doing at zero-dark thirty? I was woken up by the forces of darkness and e-vil [1] because a Very Important Server had stopped talking.

Windows – man don’t tell me it sucks: it is such a kick-ass operating system that it finds a way to issue a BSOD at 01:00 in the a.m., just so I know it cares.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Also known as third shift.

Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735

04. February 2009 · Comments Off on Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735 · Categories: General

Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735

would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

Now that is an example of a good law: it’s just, it makes sense and it pokes fun at an individual who richly deserves it. 

Too bad it’s got a snowball’s chance of passage.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Sunday Afternoon at the Dog Park with the Lesser Weevil

03. February 2009 · Comments Off on Sunday Afternoon at the Dog Park with the Lesser Weevil · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, General

There is a dog park, hidden away in the back forty of McAllister Park, a sprawling public park/semi-wilderness area in Northside San Antonio. It is formed by a large fenced area, about half an acre of trees and shrubs, dotted with benches, a pavilion with a concrete table and benches under it, a couple of structures that hopefully the dogs might find amusing to run through or jump on top of and a lavish number of heavy trash cans and dispensers offering what my daughter describes as ‘poopy-bags’. There is a paved path leading around the perimeter of the fenced area, the rest of it being spread with free mulch generated by the city waste disposal department’s industrial-sized tree shredders. Another long paved path leads from a parking lot: on any given afternoon when the weather is fair and mild, and most especially on weekends, that path is alive with leashed dogs and their people. The dogs are normally wild with excitement, for they are either coming from or heading toward their social-hour, play-date or mad-minute. It must be something they look forwards to all the rest of their limited, doggy lives – if they are capable of retaining a pleasurable memory. I rather think they are; at least they know, through constant repetition, that something nice is about to happen. Spike and the Lesser Weevil are insane with excitement every morning when I put on my exercise things; for they know that it means the morning walk is imminent. So when the dogs are decanted from their owner’s cars in the parking lot on the third or forth time around – they must know. By the time they get to the double-gated entry-way enclosure to the park itself they are usually mad with excitement

It was one of our neighbors told us about the park; admittedly, we were nervous when it came to the whole off-the-leash concept when it came to the Lesser Weevil. We know that she is part Boxer; it’s obvious, just to look at her. But we don’t know for sure what the other half is, and suspect that a considerable lashing of what is usually described in screaming headlines as ‘pit bull’ is included in her genetic makeup. She is adoring and lovable to all humans. Without exception everyone she meets is instantly her bestest friend in the whole wide world, and the way she went all gooey and affectionate over the cable guy was quite embarrassing – especially since she is supposed to be a guard/watch dog. No, we have no apprehensions about the Weevil and humans – it’s other dogs, and only now and again in the early months that she took an instant and abiding dislike to another dog on a leash. If she had not also been on a leash herself, and for Blondie or I instantly half-strangling her in the pinch-collar, it might have gotten very ugly. But our neighbor assured us, over and over – that it is all right, the dogs seem to govern themselves very well, off leash, and the more there are of them in the confines of the park, the better they all behave. So we took a chance – and we stuck very close to her that first time, and waited until she had behaved well for the first half-dozen dogs who came romping up for a bit of friendly butt-sniffing.

Weevil still does not play quite so uninhibitedly with the other dogs as some of them do. She will chase a thrown tennis ball and race with some of the others, but she will stay fairly close to Blondie. And Spike basically attaches herself to my ankles, never going much farther than ten feet away, even if there are other small dogs – Shi Tzus, Jack Russells and Chihuahuas and the like who want to play with her. It was quite lively this last Sunday; not least because it seemed to be Big Dog Day. No kidding – don’t they keep insisting that everything is bigger in Texas? Sometimes people tell us that the Weevil is a big dog; no, she actually is rather agreeably medium-sized. On Sunday she looked positively dainty, next to a Newfoundland the size of a small sofa (there were three of them there, that day), two mastiffs who topped out at a couple of hundred pounds each, and a Great Dane who looked big enough to put a saddle on and ride like a horse. No kidding, that last dog’s nose alone was bigger than the smallest dog present – a four-month-old Chihuahua puppy, too small even to be put down on the ground among all those specimens of canine gigantism.

And of course, the Weevil behaved herself – how could she not, when the whole place was seething with dogs; dogs running, chasing tennis balls and each others’ behinds, begging to be played with and petted, and romping in front of, or behind their people making a slow circuit of the path around the park? No, it was a good day and good for her – and kind of a relief to know that Blondie has trained her to obedience well enough to trust her off the leash and with a large number of other dogs.

Stimulus Watch

02. February 2009 · Comments Off on Stimulus Watch · Categories: General

Watch the government piss away [1] your money!  On the Web! [2]

StimulusWatch.org was built to to help the new administration keep its pledge to invest stimulus money smartly, and to hold public officials to account for the taxpayer money they spend. We do this by allowing you, citizens around the country with local knowledge about the proposed “shovel-ready” projects in your city, to find, discuss and rate those projects. These projects are not part of the stimulus bill. They are candidates for funding by federal grant programs once the bill passes. Learn more by reading the FAQs.

So .. what are you – my out of state virtual friends – being asked to pay for in my fair state of Wisconsin?  Welp, I’m glad you asked!

Anyway – this is what my state wants from the stimulus pork:  Subsidized bus fares, sidewalks and walking trails.

We thank you kindly for your participation.


[1] Sort-of Stimulus Watch. Anyway, it’s Transparent Government. Whatever that means.

[2] This would work, I think, if the people spending taxpayer money had a sense of shame.  Which we can see that they don’t. [3]  It’s not enough to to simply watch the bastards at work, we gotta raise a ruckus, get people involved.

For Pete’s sake, last year I had to take the day off and cart my family down to Madison just to make sure the Lege didn’t enact a bill that would have shut the school down.

You can do this once, or twice.  But you can’t get all excited about every bit of pork the government wants.  There are more of us than there are of them but for them it’s a full-time job.  We’re busy making a living and can’t afford the time needed.

[3] No, seriously – we’ve got candidates for the highest office in the land who are not ashamed at lying, but only chagrined they’ve been caught.  People who want cabinet positions who (whoops) forget to pay taxes.  Congress critters who pay back taxes only when people raise a shit storm .. and don’t have to pay any penalties.  Who, not to drag on and on, feel that because they’re on the People’s Business they can act like immoral shits.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

On Unicorns, Change, and Long Hours

02. February 2009 · Comments Off on On Unicorns, Change, and Long Hours · Categories: General

For the past couple of years I’ve been logging about 55-60 hour work weeks and it has been getting to me. Last night when I finally logged off the VPN a half hour into the Big Game, I kind of freaked out because I could actually not remember what I had accomplished on Saturday. I checked my home computer email logs and doc files – nothing. Then I remembered that Saturday was spent in the office all day. Pathetic. Maybe it is my age (going on 55), but I remember working even more hours back in the early eighties designing automotive test electronics and loving it. Maybe it the stress of knowing that you do what you do because you have a wife and daughter that absolutely need you employed with insurance, combined with psychotic management that, in their relative youth, cannot comprehend that some people would rather not rise all the way to the top – instead just be enormously competent two or three levels down. In the past year, in a town of less than 3,000 people, our company has shed more than 500 manufacturing and probably 150 engineering/admin jobs (hable Espanol or Cantonese?). I think we are down to around a hundred souls from what was, ten years ago, about sixteen hundred.

It fell to me (because I volunteered .. because nobody else would do it) to scan and catalog about 1000 photos from various sources taken in the office and plant floor over the past thirty years. At first it was fun; all the guys back then looked like John Holmes wannabees and all the women had big hair. But it got to me by the time the project was finished. We are now all ghosts, some of us actually dead, others just old. I see many of the old ones regularly – as I said its a small town – and even those who were once close friends somehow make me feel as though I betrayed them because I am still there and they are not.

Now we have these asshats that seem to have a problem paying their own taxes telling me that I’ve got to fork over to pay for rubbers, community organizers, and whatever socialist item is on The One’s list of chits that he owes. Okay, but at the same time it is the group of, what – 40% of the population that doesn’t even pay taxes (not counting Democrat politicians; they get Extra Special treatment) – that will be the recipients of my largesse?

My fallback plan was to work at home, maybe even 55-60 hours a week, blogging for Pajamas Media. That is not looking very good (not that it ever did – I can only write well when it is technical and/or dry).

Fuck it, it don’t mean nothin’. I think I need a vacation.

Go Home, Put In A Movie

31. January 2009 · Comments Off on Go Home, Put In A Movie · Categories: General

They’re working hard for you …

Mr. Obama’s tendency to work late into the night will also pose problems. Politico.com reports that the White House staff is “preparing for a return to long nights, heavy weekend shifts.” Requiring a senior staff that meets at 7:30 a.m. to work until 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. will quickly cause burnout and diminish the quality of advice and oversight.

Perhaps too hard?

I don’t know running a large organization from fishing for cod in the Atlantic, but I do know about working long hours.

Meeting at 07:30 means getting to the office at 07:00 at the latest – you gotta get your stuff lined up for a meeting. Which means leaving for the office by 06:15, so awake by 05:45.  So .. 5 1/2 hours of sleep at best after getting home after working until midnight.

Every .. day.

And this is the senior staff – the younger and dumber junior staff will man up and come in earlier and leave later than their bosses.

You can work seventeen hour days for a while, when it’s important. But you can’t really do that on a regular basis without burning out. You start making dumb mistakes and your thinking gets sloppy.

Which might not be a great idea when you’re the guys who want to run the country.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

They Always Do These Things on Friday

31. January 2009 · Comments Off on They Always Do These Things on Friday · Categories: General, Site News, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

Received the following yesterday afternoon, while working away on a poetry book for Watercress Press:

“As you know, last September Pajamas Media began a new initiative in Internet television called Pajamas TV. When we started with our RNC coverage from Minneapolis, we noted that we would be in a Beta Phase through the first quarter of 2009. In the last few months we have strengthened the PJTV lineup with shows covering Media Bias, Education Bias, Middle East Update, Sharia and Jihad, Powerline Report, Ask Dr. Helen, Hugh News, Poliwood, Conservatism 2.0, Economy and Finance, National Security, and others.

As the end of the first quarter approaches and we near the production phase of Pajamas TV, we will continue to build our emphasis in this area. As a result we have decided to wind down the Pajamas Media Blogger and advertising network effective March 31, 2009. The PJM portal and the XPressBlogs will continue as is.

You may continue to display the Pajamas Media ads through March 31. We will be sending you information in mid-March on removing the ads.

We thank you very much for participating during the formative years of Pajamas Media and we look forward to working with you in other ways. One of those is, of course, Pajamas TV. If you have any ideas in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our best wishes in the new year and again our deepest gratitude for your participation in Pajamas Media.

Sincerely,

Roger L. Simon
CEO, Pajamas Media”

It seems that quite a lot of other blogs which were initially a part of PJ Media are also being kicked to the curb, as regards the advertising revenue. When PJ was first put together and the Daily Brief invited to join, it seemed like one of those ideas whose time had come; there would be an enormous range of linked blogs with all kinds of interests and specialties, and in a position to negotiate for serious advertising opportunities and the income arising from it. At least, there would be enough coming in to cover the hosting fees, and a little over. This didn’t last at the Brief for more than a couple of years: about three years ago, I was informed that the Brief didn’t get enough page views to justify any revenue for running the ads – but if page views went up, then the Brief would have that revenue stream restored. So, I went back to paying the hosting out of my own pocket, and kept the PJ ads in place, partly in hopes of eventually getting some revenue out of it and partly for the association. Because of sticking with the PJ ads, I couldn’t place ads from another agency, since PJ had the top place: so, nothing out of having them there – and nothing from anywhere else, either.

I will remove the PJ ads with the greatest pleasure, possibly even before the drop-dead date. I haven’t gotten much out of the association at all, save for PJ including my books on their “Christmas Gift” page throughout December. Frankly, it looks to me that PJ Media has become what they professed to counter – Big Media, in all it’s glory. A handful of the top blogs, all linking to each other, and the rest of us pretty well shut out. All things change, and often not much for the better.

I might as well have a bigger ad for my own darned books. I’m a little tired of looking at that Joe the Plumber picture, too.

More Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer

30. January 2009 · Comments Off on More Lifestyles of the Struggling Writer · Categories: General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Still here, finally over the massive, incapacitating head cold/allergy I came down with in the middle of last month. I missed a week of work at the telephone center, and cut short a couple of shifts when volunteers were asked for, mostly because the cough lingers on. I don’t think it sounds at all good when a hotel reservations agent sounds like she is hacking up lung tissue whilst entering guest data into the hotel reservations data base, but that’s just me. I had originally planned to quit after Christmas, but since Blondie lost her job, and my other employers have work for me on such an erratic basis, a regular check has certain charms. Even if I loathe everything about the call center – the break room is a pit, the two computers there which employees can use for personal stuff like checking emails barely function, and the restrooms smell like ass, I’ll have to stick it out a couple of months longer. I also confess to such a deep dislike for the client, a certain hotel-resort-casino chain, that I will never, ever set foot in any of their properties, because I now hate it so much. Eh, I’ve had jobs that I hated even more. The last one took me a year of plotting my escape, and that was a full time, 40-hour a week hellhole. This is only mini-hellhole.

The income from books is still a trickle: one very nice check straight from the publisher for books bought outright immediately upon release by several different shops. Alas, I won’t get much from royalty payments in February, mostly because sales made through Ingram (the book distributor) and through Amazon and other Humongous Sales Outlets are only reported and paid quarterly. So, the results of sales of the Trilogy made in December will show up at Booklocker in March, and in my bank account maybe in April. This kind of delay in registering results of sales efforts makes it damned hard to figure out what works, let me tell you! It’s also the after-Christmas sales slump, also – things won’t pick up again in the Hill Country until spring break time, so I am making plans to gear up again then, and in late spring, when the tourist season, such as it is, kicks into high gear, with the wildflowers and all. I do have a talk in March, at the German –Texan Heritage Society, in Austin, and the Trilogy is now available to readers with vision impairments at www.bookshare.org. In March, The Gathering will be the book for an on-line book club of Bookshare members, thanks to the interest of another IAG member who posted a very nice review of “The Harvesting” on her own website.

I also had a lovely interview on another Western enthusiasts blog – The Tainted Archive which may have bumped up the Amazon rank a notch or two with a couple of sales

In the meantime, my campaign to have the Trilogy stocked at various Texas historical museum bookstores continues apace: the George Ranch management sent me a very nice reply, and the buyer who manages stock for the store at the Alamo asked for two copies of The Gathering for review. Talk about the Ground Zero of museum bookstores – the Alamo would be it. I have to sit on my hands and wait patiently for their response, at this point. I don’t think I’ll pursue too many more signings in the big-box stores, though. There’s a brand-spanking new Books a Million over on the other side of town, but all signing events for it apparently have to be requested/approved/coordinated through either their regional manager, or god help us, their corporate HQ. It’s the same thing with Barnes & Noble; local managers are exceedingly cold to independent writers, and the signing experiences I have had at Big Box places have been so miserable, I’d rather put my efforts into museum stores, independents and on-line.

And I started on the next book, this week. The prelude, and most of Chapter One already done, finished, backed up onto disc. Am I a glutton for punishment or what?

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