Delta and Northwest have almost finished their merger negotiations. I really don’t care for NW, and have not enjoyed the few flights I’ve taken with them.
Continental, here I come!
So my first reaction to this story was a jaw-dropped five minutes of boggle-eyed amazement. The second was to double check – this wasn’t an intricate send-up by the Onion, or Iowahawk? April Fool’s day was almost two weeks ago, admittedly… but no, it appears to be a completely straight – in the sense of being accurate, not in the sexual sense – news story.
Third reaction – wow, what a horrible thing to do to a poor unsuspecting little Verdi opera. That rumble you hear for south of the Alps? That must be the great maestro himself, revolving in his grave at a couple of thousand RPMs. Hook him up to an electric generator, you could probably power a couple of good-sized American suburbs, or maybe all of North Korea with the resulting output. This is just the latest manifestation of a depressing and currently fashionable penchant for staging operas and incorporating trappings and conventions taken cafeteria-style from an assortment of sources, to include gangster movies of all ages, S&M porn flicks and bloody violence a la Peckinpah or Tarantino…no matter how unsuited the opera is to that sort of artistic vision, or how much violence it does to the plot, or the characters. (more here)
It seems to be the ultra-trendy thing in Europe, apparently; it doesn’t seem to have caught on much in the States, where an opera house actually depends on appealing to the subscribers, season-ticket holders and the audience in general. We’re… umm, kind of traditional, that way. Generally the people who want to revel in gangster movies, S & M porn flicks or whatever, can get their fix somewhere else than the stage of the Met or the Houston Grand.
You’ve got to hand it to the director of this 9/11 Masked Balls-up, though – for sheer Teutonic thoroughness in including every single stupid, tired and overworked anti-American trope in the eu –repertoire: ugly naked people in Mickey-Mouse masks, same old anti-capitalist political posturing, Uncle Sam and Elvis impersonators… the whole ugly collection, calculated to demonstrate American vulgarity and European cultural superiority and creativity. I’m imagining the creative types sitting around, brainstorming and shouting out their ideas for every element and laughing their asses off the whole time at the credulity of their audience. It would be reassuring to think this was some kind of ‘Producers’ type scheme, to deliberately create a production guaranteed to go down in flames on opening night, but apparently not. According to the linked story, it’s sold out, or near to being so.
Ah, well – the next time I read of some euro-snot looking down his artistic nose and condemning Americans for being crass and vulgar and generally uncaring of our artistic heritage, I shall think of this production… and laugh, and laugh and laugh.
(Although the following appears with my name on it, ths is actually a guest-post by another IAG member, who did a lot of numbers-crunching and came up with some recommendations: Michael S. Katz is an attorney, editor-in-chief of Strider Nolan Publishing, board member of the Independent Authors’ Guild, and author of the comedy novel Shalom On The Range Take it away, Mike!)
Amazon.com recently announced a new policy requiring all Print On Demand authors to use Amazon’s own printing company, Booksurge, in order to be sold through Amazon. Many POD authors and publishers are understandably upset by this, as this can only serve to cost the authors money, and cost the printing companies business. But in terms of Amazon’s market share, how much business are we actually talking about?
WHO’S ON FIRST?
Sales of books totaled $2 billion in 2000, at which time on-line sales made up between 7.5% and 10% of that total.1 Amazon and BN.com now account for more than 85% of online book sales.3 Recent data shows that Amazon’s book sales are approximately four times that of BN.com,4 and Amazon has a 70% share of the Internet book market, so this translates into a 15 to 17.5% market share for BN.com.5
Amazon’s total sales in 2006 were $4.63 billion, but this includes books, music, and various other items, including a lot of high-end electronics, jewelry, and the like. Barnes & Noble actually outsold them at $4.68 billion (and they were basically limited to books, music and movies), but their on-line presence had only $477 million in sales. Why are people flocking to Amazon over BN.com?
A LOT TO RECOMMEND IT
A lot of it has to do with programming. Amazon has a reputation for being the best at tracking customer habits, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. Over the years they have collected detailed information about what its customers buy, considered buying, browsed for but never bought, recommended to others, or even wished someone would buy them.10 Amazon uses this information to calculate recommendations that boost sales.
In the entertainment industry, recommendations are a remarkably efficient form of marketing, as they enable films, music and books to more easily find the right audience.9 For example, the book Touching the Void, a tale of a mountain-climbing tragedy, was released in 1988 to good reviews but modest success. In 1998, the book Into Thin Air, about another mountain-climbing tragedy, was released and became a bestseller. All of a sudden, people began buying the older book again. Touching the Void began to be displayed side by side with Into Thin Air, and actually wound up outselling the newer book. How did this happen? Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, attributes this to Amazon.com recommendations. Amazon’s programs note buying patterns and suggest similar books to readers. Some people follow the suggestion, enjoy the book, and post excellent reviews. These purchases and reviews lead to more sales, more recommendations, and the cycle continues.9
Readers’ reviews also stimulate sales, although moreso on Amazon than BN.com. One study (Chevalier and Mayzlin) examined how sales on both sites correlated with number of reviews and customers’ ratings.12 They determined that a good review will increase the number of books sold, although with much greater effect on Amazon than BN.com. A bad review has a greater effect than a good one, based on the assumption that many 5-star reviews are believed to be “planted,” whereas 1-star reviews are seen as more legitimate.12
GETTING FROM POINTS A(MAZON) TO B(ARNES & NOBLE)
How do prices compare between the big two? A study (Chevalier and Goolsbee) collected Amazon and BN.com data for 18,000 different books during three different weeks in 2001. They determined that there was significant price sensitivity for online book purchases at both sites. But the demand at BN.com was much more price sensitive—both to its own prices and to Amazon’s prices—than at Amazon.4
A one percent increase in a book’s price at Amazon reduced sales by about 0.5 percent at Amazon but raised sales at BN.com by 3.5 percent, implying that (based on the 4-to-1 ratio in sales) every customer lost by Amazon instead bought the book at BN.com. Conversely, raising prices by one percent at BN.com reduced sales about 4 percent but increased sales at Amazon by only about 0.2 percent.4 Therefore, a customer lost by Amazon would usually wind up buying the book at BN.com, whereas a customer lost by BN.com would not necessarily go to Amazon. If BN.com keeps its prices right, they can steal away a lot of Amazon traffic.
More »
It was raining this morning. A storm front blew in to South Texas in the wee hours, a cool breeze and the patter of rain in the dark. Spring has been warm this year; sometimes up into the high eighties, where it begins to verge on being hot, rather than just pleasantly temperate. When everyone starts to think seriously about using the AC – that’s when we know in South Texas that it’s summer. I refuse – it’s only April, for pete’s sake!
We need the rain, though; it would be pleasant to have a repeat of last year, where it rained, drizzled, showered, spat, poured, misted or came down in buckets more or less constantly all through spring, summer and fall with the pleasing result that most of Texas was as green as Ireland is legendarily supposed to be and the wildflowers lasted all through summer… but I have a book-signing this afternoon at the Twig Bookstore on Alamo Heights. If it’s still coming down in buckets this afternoon, Blondie and I will be sitting there with a stack of books on a little table, embarrassingly doing nothing much for two hours but look at each other.
For all that they call it “Alamo Heights” certain streets in it are notoriously flood-prone; a better excuse for many residents to drive 4WD sport-utes than most people living in top-crust old-money suburbs have. I’m not yet in the Phillippa Gregory class of historical novel-scribblers, for whom the usual fans would turn out for a signing in anything up to and including a hurricane. I’m afraid that a mild drizzle by this afternoon will be enough excuse to keep readers away!
Sales of “Truckee” trickle along in a steady little stream, by the way. With luck that will increase, as a couple more reviews come meandering in. The Historical Novel Society has a copy for review… with a six-month window, so around about any time now…I also entered it in two independent book contests; the IPPY and the Writers Digest Independent Book contest. Entry fees for those two contests are there mainly to winnow the field slightly. Placing among the honorable mentions or higher means a nice bit of exposure and hopefully some more sales, all of which will go to fund the next book.
I have about decided to go ahead and shoot for December, 2008 as a date with Volume 1 of the Adelsverein Trilogy will be available. It’s pretty much edited and polished to a fine glossy gleam. I am coming down the home stretch of the first draft of the final volume, about six chapters or so from completing something that I began scribbling notes and outlining in October of 2006. I think of the initial research and chapter outline as sort of the skeleton of the book. The first draft is creating and applying the innards and flesh. That’s the slow and exciting part, because that’s when the characters come to life, some of them even developing a stubborn will of their own. Revising and editing – that’s like a little bit of nip and tuck there, a nice bit of couture styling there, a touch of makeup and a flattering hairstyle… and there you are.
This one will be a much easier sell in Texas – and I’ve already been told that most of Gillespie County will want to buy copies, just to see if I have worked in their ancestors. (I probably have, even if only in a brief mention.) I’ll be a bit down, when I finally finish the last revisions to “Barsetshire with cypress trees and a lot of sidearms”. I’ve been living with the characters for a year and a half, they’re real to me and I am nearly done with them now, and ready to set them loose on other people.
Blondie is already asking me, what the next book project will be, and I keep saying that I don’t know. She says I should stretch myself, and do a kid’s adventure set in ancient Britain, about three children who escape the massacre of the Druids by the Romans.
I just don’t know… but I’ll know it when I see it. Another relatively unknown story, for sure, something that reclaims an honorable past. Any suggestions?
Odds on, the first thing that anyone walking into any of the various places that I have lived- starting with the enlisted barracks in Japan in those dear distant days when female troops lived in a female-only dormitory was something along the lines of “Gosh – have you read all of those books?” To which the answer was some kind of polite rephrase of “Of course I bloody have! Did you think I had put them up as decorating elements?!!”
Yes, I have books. Lots of books; books in the bedroom, books in the den, books in the hallway, books in the living room and even a shelf of them in the kitchen – what better place for the cookbooks, pray tell? There aren’t any in the bathroom; first of all, the light isn’t that good and secondly there isn’t any place for shelves.
I used to buy books that I liked, just so that I could have copies of my own, which I could read any time I felt like it. Then I wound up overseas, where English-language bookstores were few and far between, and the Stars and Stripes Bookstore was pretty limited; if you saw it there and thought you might want to read it – better buy it quick, because it wouldn’t be there next time, and even though the base library did their best – well, there were other seriously committed readers out there. (When I moved from Spain, the packing crew had a pool going, on how many boxes of books there would eventually be; 63 and no, I don’t know what the winner got. Probably had many cervezas bought for him, after they finished nailing up the packing crates.) And then I came home, and discovered second-hand stores and services like Alibris, and the online behemoth which must not be named because they are behaving like total d**ks in regard to POD publishers… oh, off-topic. Never mind. Books, the topic was books, the love for (or addiction to!) and constant acquisition of such.
Now, I review books, for Blogger News Network, and for iUniverse Reviews, with the result that I get a constant trickle of books from other writers asking for reviews through the Daily Brief or the IAG. But writing books myself is another splendid excuse for buying more; for the research, you see. The shelves of my writing desk (built by Dad for Blondie’s use, but too big for her room) are now crowded with Texiana and various books on aspects of the Old West. I had a fair number of them already – it’s as if I knew there would be an eventual use for that Time Life series about the Old West. It’s not so much the text in that case, but the pictures.
Blondie and I went to the library book sale on Saturday, at the Semmes branch on Judson road. There’s always a crowd for this, the room where the sale is set up almost instantly achieves a ‘black hole of Calcutta’ degree of heat and overcrowding. Fortunately, most of the people lined up for admittance –many of them armed with large plastic tubs and canvas shopping bags – are intent on the novels or the children’s books. I am on the lookout for more Texiana and western stuff – especially with illustrations, especially with contemporary – that is contemporary 19th century artists. I need pictures of all sorts of things; horses and wagons, of old forts and plains river valleys covered with buffalo herds, of buildings and animals and people, something for my imagination to fix upon, so that I can build all the other living elements around it.
I scooped up a couple of prizes almost at once – Don Troiani’s American Battles and a thick coffee-table treasure-trove called “The Art of the Old West: From the Collection of the Gilcrease Institute” which has color plates of practically everything, and a collection of Frederic Remington’s black and white magazine illustrations – all for considerably under 20$.
There’s enough pictorial stuff in those books alone to start me off with ideas for another book of my own. My only problem is that I am running out of shelf-space for all of my necessary research materials – but it’s a happy problem.
(Cross posted at the IAG Blog)
Being a child of the later baby-boom, of course I remember seeing Charlton Heston on the big screen – the very big screen at the drive in, when Mom and Dad packed JP and Pippy and I into the back of the trusty jade-green Plymouth station wagon for an evening at the double-feature. We were all in our pajamas for this sort of excursion, with our pillows and blankets in the back; lamentably, we usually fell asleep before seeing very much of the first feature, let alone the second.
But I do have a hazy memory of him as El Cid, in desert exile, seen through the windshield of the Plymouth, between Mom and Dad’s heads, as Ben Hur – especially the bone-crunching chariot race – a very much better one of him as Moses in The Ten Commandments – this one at one Pasadena’s gloriously ornate picture palaces, and of him as the devious and worldly Cardinal Richelieu in Richard Lesters’ Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers. Mom always said it was because of his background in classical theater, that he could swish about in historical costume so convincingly.
So, he was about the biggest star that any of us had ever heard of, when he came to Zaragoza, Spain sometime in the late 1980s, and the Public Affairs office informed us that we had a chance for an interview. We were all of a twitter; Zaragoza was kind of a backwater – I used to compare it to Bakersfield – and whereas it had a lovely old downtown, a cathedral (two cathedrals), a Roman bridge and a Moorish castle, practically everywhere else in Spain had better, more beautiful, more historic and better preserved. Our radio and television broadcasters there had practically no chance of doing celebrity interviews; I saw more interesting and famous people come through Sondrestrom, Greenland than I ever did in Zaragoza.
What was he doing in Zaragoza, of all places? Filming the commentary for this program series, on location in the old Alcazar; of which he said jokingly during our interview that it was practically the only castle in Spain that he hadn’t been to before. We were the only news outlet to get a TV interview with him on that trip; he was terribly busy with the location shoots, and it wasn’t the sort of enterprise that needed additional publicity anyway. We all liked to think that it was because of his service connection that we even got in the door. He couldn’t have been more gracious or considerate to our two nervous young airmen who shot the interview.
No, I did not do the interview; I came up with the questions for our staffer to ask, since the ones suggested by the Public Affairs officer were embarrassingly amateurish. We all watched the raw video of the interview afterwards and marveled – because he was a pro. We could use practically every second of the footage we taped, he was that good. Most people we did interviews with were nervous, fidgety and stiff. They radiated discomfort; it came off them in little wavy lines that you could almost see, like those used in cartoons to signify a stink. We usually had to spend a lot of time putting them at ease, and a lot of video time and editing to just get something useable that didn’t make them and us look like idiots.
But Charlton Heston sat still, graciously playing to the camera – (Of course! He was an actor!) – he didn’t fidget nervously. His responses were thoughtful, smooth, as composed and literate as a small essay or sonnet. No awkward umms and pauses, no false starts; he was at ease, completely comfortable and polished to a high gloss in a way that most of us- even those who had interviewed various currently popular celebs before – had never seen. He wasn’t just a star; besides being a military veteran, he was a total pro in a way that you rarely see these days.
(Note – I am a bit off Amazon.com, and protesting their recent decision to pressure POD publishers into using their print service by sending all my links for books and DVDs to Barnes and Noble. Take that, Jeff Bezos!)
Charlton Heston has passed away, at 84 years of age.
Heston lent his strong presence to some of the most acclaimed and successful films of the midcentury. “Ben-Hur” won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent “Titanic” (1997) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003). Heston’s other hits include: “The Ten Commandments,” “El Cid,” “55 Days at Peking,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Earthquake.”
He liked to the cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed:
Andrew Jackson (“The President’s Lady,” “The Buccaneer”), Moses (“The Ten Commandments”), title role of “El Cid,” John the Baptist (“The Greatest Story Ever Told”), Michelangelo (“The Agony and the Ecstasy”), General Gordon (“Khartoum”), Marc Antony (“Julius Caesar,” “Antony and Cleopatra”), Cardinal Richelieu (“The Three Musketeers”), Henry VIII (“The Prince and the Pauper”).
And here’s something you don’t often read in an actor’s obit (emphasis mine):
Calling himself Charlton Heston from his mother’s maiden name and his stepfather’s last name, he won an acting scholarship to Northwestern University in 1941. He excelled in campus plays and appeared on Chicago radio. In 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a radio-gunner in the Aleutians.
In 1944 he married another Northwestern drama student, Lydia Clarke, and after his army discharge in 1947, they moved to New York to seek acting jobs.
(snip)
Besides Fraser, who directed his father in an adventure film, “Mother Lode,” the Hestons had a daughter, Holly Ann, born Aug. 2, 1961. The couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1994 at a party with Hollywood and political friends. They had been married 64 years when he died.
Godspeed, Chuck. Thank you for your service to your country during the War, and for your faithfulness to your wife and family, as well as for your contributions to theater, film, and television.
Thank you so much for putting my favorite shows online. Once I found out my cable company was charging me $20.00 a month for the “convenience” of a DVR I dropped it like a sammich with a roach for a garnish. I work nights. It’s nice that I can watch a show after it’s run without having to set up an old VHS recorder.
Here we are, after a week of the Great Amazon-Booksurge Kerfuffle of 2008; wherein the great 800 pound gorilla of internet retailing has strong-armed various small POD (publish on demand) houses into having any of their books sold through Amazon printed for delivery to the customer by Amazon’s in-house print division. They did this by the simple expedient of threatening to ‘turn off’ the Amazon “buy” button for those authors who publish through those POD houses. Essentially, the book would still be there on the Amazon page… but if you wanted to actually to buy, you’d have to go through one of the secondary vendors… and it wouldn’t qualify for the free Amazon shipping. And having Amazon do the printing – through a POD publisher notorious among the cognoscenti for shoddy work – and charging for it, chipping away even further at author royalties… the fur is still energetically flying among the book-bloggers and writers’ discussion groups. It was the blatant bullying of the Amazon/Booksurge reps which got up peoples noses the most. Honestly, it’s as if they never heard the old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Scroll down for my previous posts on this – and check out this page of updated information from Writers Weekly is here Oh, goody, the American Society of Journalists and Authors is adding their voice to the mighty chorus! This doesn’t look like it is going to die a quiet death and very soon, as much as Amazon probably hopes it will.
Now there seems to be a lull in the storm while everyone takes stock and figures out what to do next. Although my publisher, Booklocker, has declined the offer of a contract for Amazon-Booksurge’s services with the vigor and force of a concrete block thrown through a plate-glass window – indeed has taken a very prominent place in aggressively reporting on the tidal wave of criticism crashing upon Amazon.com as well as practically surfing on the leading edge, “To Truckee’s Trail” is still available through Amazon. (No link, I’ve sworn off Amazon for the moment!) To the best knowledge of the other IAG members, no one’s buy buttons have been turned off, and we have member-writers published by just about all of the various POD houses. The fury continues unabated, though – and it’s hard not to imagine various lawyers hastily brushing up on various anti-trust regs and laws though. And whatever in-house emergency meetings at Amazon this week must have been eventful. Oh, to have been a fly on those walls!
Standing back and taking a long look, and considering other developments though – as the release of the handy-dandy-Espresso Book Machine and perhaps this kerfuffle-du-jour is just one more of those harbingers of change in the world of books and publishing. Everything changes, nothing stays the same for long. Having been hanging out in among the book blogs and in the author discussion groups for the last two years has been enlightening. Many of the other writers in the IAG have been in and around the writing game for years . They don’t have the five-figure royalty checks – if they did, they wouldn’t be hanging around in the discussion group skulling out ways to market their books if they did. But what I picked up, over and over again was a feeling that for most writers, the way the literary industrial complex is set up… it just was not working, and not working in a big way. This guy (now on hiatus, unfortunately) was a shrewd and extremely knowledgeable insider.
This blogger is another: and what they were saying was confirmed by the writers that I met in putting together the IAG; which is that it is nearly impossible for interesting, genuinely original books with niche appeal to even slip in over the transom at traditional publishers.
If you aren’t an established best-selling writer already, forget trying to break into the club. Still, there were all sorts of interesting bits of knowledge floating around – like the day of big advances from a publisher is probably over. And if you do get one, you might have to pay it back if the book doesn’t sell. And that more and more publishers were using print-on-demand, for exactly the quantities needed, rather than print a warehouse full of cheap copies that would be remaindered and pulped. And all but the very top rank of best-selling authors had to go out and do their own marketing, organize their own signing events.
In the light of all that, I speculate that Harper Collins’ new imprint is trying to tap into the indie-author and POD paradigm. From what I can make out of this story and from some of the IAG group discussions, it all seems like Harper Collins is having a go at what we’ve been doing with our various POD houses – Booklocker, and iUniverse and all the rest for the last couple of years. We’ve saying with varying degrees of desperation, hope and passion that big publishing just couldn’t go on the way it has been; it had to change, or go down. Now we see the very first cracks in the wall of Things as They Are, and hope that the paradigm shift has really and truly happened.
One of the big traditional publishers is tentatively trying out something new, and trying out what indie writers have been doing in the last five years. Why, yes, I think I’ll have a drink, so that I can toast to them.
And to myself – I sold a copy of “To Truckee’s Trail” to a contractor doing work on a house in my neighborhood, and two copies to co-workers at one of my jobs. There is a reason to keep a box of copies and a fistful of promotional materials in the car, you know!
Well, this is getting interesting – last weekend the writing world – or that portion of it that doesn’t have a name which frequents the New York Times best-sellers list – was all agog over Amazon.com’s fiat that all books sold through Amazon must be printed by it’s POD subsidiary, Booksurge. (Gruesome details here in my post of Sunday last).
Many of us ink-stained scribbling wretches are being advised to A-remain calm, it is not the end of the world as we know it and B- that Amazon doesn’t own the bloody world yet, anyway so change over all of your links to Barnes and Noble and sit tight.
Angela Hoy at Writers Weekly has the latest development here; yes, a couple of POD firms have caved, given yesterdays deadline to stand and deliver, or else their authors ‘ buy buttons’ be disabled on Amazon’s website. Angela has some shrewd guesses about why and how this is all going down the way that it is, as well as a link to further developments – and the cheery news that no buttons have actually been turned off or harmed in the making of this power-grab/controversy.
The Independent Authors’ Guild forum has been all of a twitter though: what would Ingram/Lightning Source do about this? (Break out the terrible swift sword and start trampling those grapes of wrath, some of us hoped!) How would the various POD firms react ? (Stand tall and tell ‘em “Nuts!”, some of us hoped!) And how would the general public react? A volcanic outburst of rage would be nice, but perhaps a little much for us mere scribbling mortals to hope for. Some of us still have day jobs, you see, Although book-blogger PODdy Mouth has a nice takedown here, including a number that can be called…
OMG Amazon has a actual telephone number for people to talk to a real live human?
Well, OK, probably some poor barely-minimum-wage call center drone, so keep it civil and dignified, people. It isn’t their fault; the guys whose f**king brilliant idea this was are well beyond being reached by a phone call. Maybe not beyond subpoena… eh, call me a dreamer. It goes with the territory, I write historical novels and would like to make a living from it, for f**ks sake! Given that there are so many lawyer-bloggers, perhaps some searching analysis of whatever basis there might be for anti-trust action. All well and good; and this sort of controversy is bread, butter and circuses to the blogosphere.
But I have long predicted that the towers of the literary industrial complex would totter, crumble and fall when a certain technological point was reached – when there was a desktop gadget that would print and bind a nice little paperback or hardbound book. Even if it was so expensive to buy that only places like Kinkos would have them, even if it could only crank them out one or two at a time, even at a cost per unit substantially above that of one of those industrial print shops that could churn out a thousand in a minute – it would mean the end of the literary-industrial complex. Anyone could take their book content and cover file, with ISBN and everything, down to the corner copy place, pay them to print and bind a couple or three or half-dozen copies of your book… and you could mail them to whoever had bought them. Or who you wanted to send them! That’s the future, and according to this release, may be here already, in the form of the Espresso Book Machine. Think of this as Ingram/Lightning Source looking across the poker table with a steely gaze and saying, “raise.”
“It’s always been the holy grail of the book business to walk into a store and get any book,” said Kirby Best, president and CEO of Lightning Source. With the signing of today’s strategic agreement with On Demand Books, proprietor of the Espresso Book Machine, Best sees that goal coming a little bit closer.”
And savor the discription and call me a prophetess: “We’re building a new machine that’s much smaller that can be mass produced, version 2.0,” said cofounder and chairman Jason Epstein. Neller adds that a beta machine, which will be the size of a copier at Kinko’s (3’ X 2-1/2’ for the finishing unit with another 2’ for a duplex printer), will be ready in the fall. If all goes well, a less expensive model will begin leasing in 2009. “The point of this machine is to represent the ultimate in POD,” said Epstein, who sees it as the best way to preserve backlist. If the machines catch on and proliferate like so many Starbucks outlets, the marketplace would become radically decentralized and book distribution would require simply an Internet connection.”
Oh, yeah… definitely we’re into round two. Pass the popcorn.
(Crossposted at the IAG Blog)
(And yeah, my blogosphere cover is now comprehensively blown – I blog under the name “Sgt Mom” and write books under the name “Celia Hayes”. It turns out that someone is already using my real name and has somewhat of a reputation under it. I understand that Elizabeth Taylor had something of the same problem.)
Things in Zimbabwe are bad.
How bad are they?
Things are so bad in Zimbabwe that the ruling party can’t even rig an election.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Question: Where does the eight hundred pound gorilla sit?
Answer: Anywhere it wants to!
It hasn’t made much of a ripple yet in the political blogosphere, but among the various writers discussion groups, websites and e- newsletters, discussion of the Amazon-Publish America imbroglio is achieving a melt-down-and-drop-through-to-the earths core degree of nuclear passion. The implications of Amazon’s recently announced policy of requiring that small independent and publish on demand (POD) presses who want to sell through Amazon must print their books through Amazon’s Booksurge publisher-printer are being chewed over like a mouthful of rubbery and vile-tasting bubblegum through this weekend, ever since this story was posted in the Wall Street Journal.
A short background refresher in the vagaries of independent publishing may be in order here. Once upon a time, in a universe far, far away there used to be two ways of being published. The first kind was the respectable kind, with one of the big name publishing firms that with luck and if you were any good, or fairly good or even a literary genius, and you had any sort of agent, you would wind up with stacks of copies of your book in all the bookstores, a nice royalty check, maybe even an advance, good reviews in the right magazines, and hey, presto – as Blondie says, pretty soon you were a “real arthur.” The other kind of publishing was disdainfully known as “vanity” publishing. The assumption was that untalented hack with lots of money would contract with a publisher to print quantities of a book that “real” publishers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole and no one but the vanity author and his family and friends would ever read, and the vanity author would wind up with a garage full of expensive books that would never go any farther than that.
Clear so far? Good. It’s different now; between the internet, the development of POD, or print-on-demand technology, and the big-name publishing houses becoming risk-adverse, unadventurous and stodgy. Rather like Hollywood and the music industry, come to think on it: stuck on established big names, carefully constructed sure-fire blockbuster hits and guaranteed big returns. The quirky, original, eccentric and genuinely creative will likely never be invited in the door – even if they are talented, too. The result has been an explosion in the numbers of writers who have gone “indy” – just like filmmakers and musicians, because the technology has allowed it. Getting in through the doors of the big-name publishing houses is no longer the only game in town.
Print on demand technology allows a printer to print up copies of a particular book as they are ordered from a formatted electronic text file. Because they are usually printed in small batches, not in 10s of thousands at a whack, the cost of the individual copy is higher, but not all that much. And because they are printed to order, the matter of warehousing thousands of copies doesn’t come up; all very ecologically sound. It allowed writers who couldn’t or didn’t want to publish through a traditional publisher and couldn’t afford to pay for a print run from a so-called vanity press to pay a small set-up fee for their text and cover, which would be available to the printer. Whenever orders came in for their book, the printer could run off as many copies as needed and drop-ship them to the customer.
Sensing an opportunity, a whole host of new publishers sprang up or morphed from their previous incarnation. Most of these are internet-based: Author House, iUniverse, Booklocker, Booksurge, Publish America, Lulu: just check out the IAG books and members to get an idea of the range. And a fair number of authors set up as publishers themselves, since the actual printing of the books was now relatively inexpensive and accessible. While a good many of resulting POD books are just as much vanity publications as ever were, and are pretty dreadful besides – quite a few are not. In fact, the best of them are as quirky, literate and as high quality as anything available from the big traditional houses – and those authors who took it seriously have reached a wider audience. As another IAG member pointed out, readers don’t much care how a book that they love to read was published – they just want to read it. Nothing is in stasis for long – POD publishers grew, or were absorbed by others.
Amazon.com purchased the POD publisher Booksurge in 2005; not a large publisher or a particularly well-regarded one. In fact the worst POD book I ever reviewed was a Booksurge product, although that seemed to have resulted from author stubbornness rather than Booksurge incompetence. Still, it didn’t seem to be terribly out of line for a book retailer to be also in the book publishing business – and Booksurge books didn�t seem to be given any special favors among all the other POD books available from Amazon – until this last week. If anything, I thought it might indicate that the bright sparks at Amazon thought that POD published books were the wave of the future.
The main printer for many, if not most POD publishers is called Lightning Source; it�s owned by Ingram, the mega-huge book distributor. It’s essential for POD books to be included in the Ingram catalogue; it’s a main line into brick and mortar bookstores; other wise you might just as well be back in the vanity-press days, with a garage full of copies to hawk around. But it’s also essential for your books to be available on-line, and on-line means Amazon.com = the proverbial eight hundred pound gorilla of internet book marketing. If it�s published, it�s available from Amazon. Over the last couple of years, Amazon.com has been relatively welcoming to readers and writers alike; offering opportunities to review and blog about our books, to do Kindle reader editions of our books, to do wish-lists and recommendations, to set up discussion groups; as a matter of fact, the Independent Authors Guild started as an Amazon discussion group.
So last Friday’s action by Amazon.com, demanding that POD publisher, Publish America now and henceforward have their books be printed by Booksurge, or else their authors books would not be sold directly through Amazon comes as a rather thuggish slap in the face. (Publish America’s news release is here.)
Worse – as reported here by Angela Hoy at Writers Weekly – it looks like other POD publishers are or will be getting the same treatment. (there’s a long bloglist of other reactions to this at Writers Weekly)
In essence, POD writers are being told to make a choice between doing business with our chosen publisher and printer – or being sold through Amazon. Amazon might be able to make this stick – they are, after all, the eight hundred pound gorilla. But pissing off people who bought as well as sold a fair number of books through them is perhaps not as good a business model as previously assumed. There’s a petition here, and a place to comment. I hope it does some good. (Donation not needed, though!)
(Crossposted at Blogger News Network, and at the Independant Authors Guild Blog)
Sardoodledom is, apparently, another word for melodrama. Watch the spelling bee contestant try to spell it.
h/t Joanne Jacobs
(Part one is here)
As was noted by a number of other bloggers and commenters, one doesn’t usually have a choice about your relations. Parents, cousins, grandparents and all; you’re stuck with them, as embarrassing as they are. Friends or spouses, business partners or clergy — those we choose — and we are known for good or ill by the company that we keep. Barack Obama’s chosen clergyman and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has been shouting pernicious and venomous nonsense from the pulpit, apparently to great applause, every Sunday for twenty years. From this distance, he sounds too much like a black version of Fred Phelps for my taste. Black racism ought to be just as much the political kiss of death as white racism.
And perhaps it is – since well-meaning people of pallor seem to be fed to their back teeth with having “you racist!” screamed at them, every time they voice a mild criticism of controversial mayors like Ray Nagin and Marion Barry, or buffoons like Al Sharpton – or any one of those other race-card playing luminaries, who seem to have no more qualifications for the position they hold other than a whip-lash inducing swiftness in accusing critics of racism. Here we are in this year 2008; at least forty years since casual social racism was acceptable in most circles, more than that since racial segregation was the law of the land, sixty years since it was the common practice of the military, a hundred and forty since chattel slavery was outlawed utterly – well, really, what better time to have a conversation about race and racism in American society? Even if it is a rather academic discussion; most of the people who are not paid to care about racial relations simply don’t care all that much. They just get on with living and working.
So here’s the ultimate bottom line: give or take a couple of points either way, the percentage of Americans identified as ‘black’ lingers somewhere about in the low teens. A politician who has made a career about being ‘black’ and being the ‘great black hope’ just is not going to get much traction nationally, even if he or she can get all of that ‘black’ block to vote for them. They have to appeal to everyone else in the body politic, and a great many of them, too. Kicking a white, or Hispanic or Asian voter in the teeth in order to make points with the black constituency on Sunday, and then turning around and asking those white, or Hispanic or Asian voters to vote for you on Monday isn’t going to work all that well. It’s why Jesse Jackson never got vary far with any of his bids for national office. Considering his established track record, one really couldn’t picture him kissing Anglo babies or eating breakfast tacos on the South Side with much enthusiasm.
A serious candidate for higher office has to be able to do that – just like a woman seeking higher political office cannot be too closely identified as a radical feminist. You can’t make your initial appeal to the angry fringe, and then move smoothly on in appealing to the majority, not after spending months or years bashing the very people you are asking to vote for you. It just will not work, as Senator Obama probably already realized. His initial appeal was precisely because he appeared to be a skilled and polished mainstream politician who just happened to have the year-round permanent dark tan. Alas, the association with the Reverend Wright (not to mention his apprenticeship in Chicago machine politics) has revealed him as just another race-card player like Sharpton or Jackson, only with nicer suits and a more polished manner. Pity that. We will have a black president in the near future, but he or she won’t be one of those whose identity and appeal has been built exclusively as a ‘black’ candidate. They will be a candidate whose color is incidental to who they are and what their qualifications are; someone from the mainstream, someone like Colin Powell, or like the late mayor of Los Angeles, Ed Bradley.
(Later: amusing video from Conservativeintelligencer.com, “>here )
Except .. they weren’t turkeys. They were eggs. Plastic easter eggs. Dropped from a helicopter.
The idea behind the Cartersville EggDrop was to replace the old boring egg-hunt thing with a helicopter dropping 10k Easter eggs onto a small section of a football field. After the event a neighbor said to me after the egg hunt, this had to be an Easter egg hunt engineered by men with no women involved. I added that it was most likely ex-military men.
He’s got a point.
The first sign of a plan gone wild revealed itself as we approached a fenced-in football field that already held about 5.000 crammed-in people. My first instinct was to turn and run, but I doubt that I could have explained my flight to the 5-year-old with a vice grip on his Easter basket . EggDrop ground zero was the 50 yard line, and it was surrounded by yellow event tape at a radius of about 20 yards. When the helicopter made its first pass, that yellow event tape was no match for the thousands of screaming kids who burst through to catch the falling plastic eggs. The real problem, though, was that the organizers had not expected that the first drop of around 700 eggs would pelt moms, dads, and unsuspecting eight-year-olds.
I would never … never … have expected that result.
At one point, I ran over to M-I [3]
They had a helicopter and a tank? That is all kinds of awesome. God Bless the South. [1]
and tried to explain to him that no parent is going to leave the field without the right wounded children, myself included. I further pleaded with him to radio the helicopter and ask them to hold off dropping any eggs until things could be sorted out. He informed me that he did not have radio contact with the helicopter.
Say ‘hello’ to my good buddy, Murphy!
As I pushed my way to the 48 yard line, I saw my two boys sitting on the ground crying. Meanwhile, goofy old Ray Liotta [2] in the helicopter was circling with another drop of about 700 more plastic eggs, which cascaded onto the field amidst rippling pops as the egg shells bouncing off every man, woman, and child.
It ended well – in that John escaped with his kids. I did some due diligence via Google and, sure ’nuff, there was a helicopter drop of eggs and there was a fair amount of chaos, confusion and general hurly-burly.
[1] I mean this sincerely.
[2] Not really Ray Liotta – but that would have been a nice touch. John bypassed the obvious ‘Turkeys Away‘ reference and compared the situation to ‘Operation Dumbo Drop‘
[3] On further review this isn’t really a tank – I have no idea what he’s talking about. But a tank would have been cool.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Just for fun, another writers’ blog; this month, she is spot-lighting Westerns. If you are thirsting for something newer than Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, check it out.
Does anyone need an explanation for the title?
(Part one of two)
An age ago when I had to keep closer track of what currently bubbled up to the top of popular culture and remained there as a sort of curdled froth, suitable for generating one-liners for whatever radio show I was doing for Armed Forces Radio, I read a long interview with Spike Lee. This would have been about the time that he floated into everyone’s cultural consciousness as a specifically black filmmaker, with She’s Gotta Have It and Do The Right Thing; a new fresh voice with a quirky and nuanced take on being black in America. It was a revealing interview which left me shaking my head, because it seemed to me that Mr. Lee was animated by a deeply held conviction that the American establishment and white people everywhere were coldly, malevolently and persistently dedicated with every fiber of their being and every hour of every day, to the sole objective of “keeping the black man down.” It was the top item on the agenda at every business meeting, every political gathering, and the topic of fevered discussion at every dinner table and whispered in every cloakroom, yea verily, wherever where white Americans gathered – there was the grand conspiracy to ruin the black American community. Or at least make them have a crappy day.
I couldn’t at that time say much about what went on at political and business meetings – unless it was anything like commanders’ calls or unit staff meetings. But I could speak rather frankly about what went around the dinner tables of white folk in America; being, to the best of my knowledge (and a look in the mirror confirms this) a person of decided pallor. Yep – as far as I can tell, even onto Granny Jessie’s farthest ancestral generation in this United States (which dated to 1670 something – all the other ancestors were comparatively recent arrivals) they were all white. Anglo. WASP. Whatever. Family was white, neighborhood mostly but not exclusively white working class (with lashings of Japanese, Hispanic, European Jewish), schools integrated but mostly white (ditto), churches mostly the white. Until I joined the Air Force, I swam in a pool of whiteness. After that point, I had quantities of friends, fellow barracks rats, NCOs, commanders, neighbors with, as one of them put it, a year-round very dark tan. But I could confidently say that white malevolence toward blacks – which Spike Lee took as a given as being ubiquitous and central to white life as Jello salads with crushed pineapple in them at Lutheran church pot-luck suppers – was an issue so far off the table that it wasn’t even in the same room.
It just never came up – well, except maybe at school, and in discussions of the civil rights movement; and in that venue I recall those others present rather mildly wished those black protestors well. Of course, segregation was not a good thing, racially-based poll taxes and tests, siccing police dogs on perfectly legitimate protest marches, or midnight lynchings; none of those things were approved of among those people I knew growing up. Separate drinking fountains, or separate but equal anything else were seen as pretty ridiculous. People ought to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin; an eminently reasonable proposition, then and now. I was left shaking my head thinking that Spike Lee would be terribly distressed to know that there wasn’t any grand, overarching institutional malevolence towards blacks on the part of whites.
How deflating it would be for him to learn that there were only varying degrees of disinterest. But if it filled something in his life to believe so, to paint up his fellow citizens as unrelenting and tireless persecutors; it’s a free country. You’re free to believe whatever idiocy you choose – in the full knowledge that such beliefs say more about the believer than it does about those he believes it of. If Spike Lee and other movie people want to go wandering in their own fantasy-land, god knows they have enough company. It’s not called Hollywierd for nothing. The political realm is another matter.
(Part Two – the Toxic Reverend Wright to follow)
Interesting link, here.
My own thoughts on this…later. Interesting week, in the sense of that Chinese proverb.
Pippin and I don’t play “Fetch,” we play “Catch.”
Hope at least some of our readers have spring weather to enjoy. We’re certainly enjoying ours!
The grave-side service for Dave, my good employer and good friend, mentor in all things computer-related was held this morning at the Fort Sam Houston cemetery. I think his daughters had initially wanted to make it more private than it turned out to be. His sisters made no end of fuss over being so exclusive, especially when Dave had so many other good friends likely to be considerably miffed at being left out. Matters like this are sometimes the cause of family feuds that last for decades, with so many kinds of feelings running high. Grief, guilt and stress make a fairly toxic brew when words are spoken and cannot be taken back.
A good collection of his close friends and clients attended, scattering their cars alongside one of the rule-straight roads under the oak trees adjacent to pavilion number two. The Fort Sam cemetery is all very tidy and organized– as it should be; acres and acres of green grass and sturdy white marble headstones. With the newest, the letters on them are clear and picked out with some kind of paint; with the older stones, the paint has weathered away, and it is harder to read the names and dates from a distance. It was cool last night, but clear and mild today with a light breeze. On the whole and if there is such a thing, it was a very good day for a funeral – the first day of spring.
I went with my other regular employer, Mr. W, the Worlds Tallest ADHD child – who was also a friend and client of Dave’s computer business. Dave had referred me to Mr. W., precisely because Mr. W. was absolutely hopelessly disorganized, and Dave was tired of going to his place of business and doing secretarial-admin work at 65$ an hour, when I could do just the same for considerably less. So we gathered under the sheltering oak trees, in the little pavilion, while the honor guard stood off well away with their rifles among the marble stones.
Dave’s family asked that flowers not be sent – it was going to be a very simple and short service. I brought some anyway; from my garden. The Spanish jasmine that I planted when I first moved in is blooming in showers of little white stars that bathe the house and the garden in their scent. I clipped half a dozen long strands and tied them with a cream-colored ribbon, laying them before the little box of his ashes on the dais in the pavilion. I was glad I thought of doing that – very simple, elegant and tasteful, but not so large as to present a hassle for anyone.
There will be a celebration of his life tonight, at a place in Alamo Heights that he was fond of. I have promised everyone that I would be there, for even more of his friends are coming to it, and I will have to support his sisters and his father – they have been absolute sweethearts, have said over and over again how much they appreciate what Jimmy and I were able to do. I really wish we could have done this immediately after the ceremony, for I am so tired now that I feel like I have been beaten up. I’ve been over at Dave’s place every day this week, helping them sort out things.
It has been a very long week and it still isn’t over yet. I was paid – and I have a job interview from one of Dave’s other clients, but even if I get that job, I won’t begin work until April. I am more incredibly grateful for everyone who hit my tipjar since Sunday, who sent me advice, and even some offers to consider my resume. On Saturday, it looked like the wolf was not only at the door, but had moved right in and made himself comfortable in the living room. As of now, the wolf is banished – at least as far as the bottom of the driveway, or even to the next block over.
I am sending personal emails as soon as I am not so tired that I am cross-eyed, thanking each and every one of my readers who were kind and generous. But for now I can thank you at least in this post. Your kindness to me allowed me to help Dave’s family in a way that wouldn’t have been possible, if I had been freaking out over the taxes and the entry fees.
Again, thank you so much! John M. H. , Barbara S., Jason van S., Theresa H., Frank G., Philip M., Janet B, Tony Z., Christopher H., Bill W., Robin at Rant ‘n Raven, Michael T., Thomas S. Sean W., The Mind Body Institute (huh?), Winston C., Oren W., John M., Paul Van B. Barbara P., Heather M., Sissy W. @ Sisu, Mary Y., Eric S. @ Classical Values, D. Scott A., Sherry R., Brian @ FasterJags, Day By Day, Kevin B., Michael W., Clare T., Paul K., James McM., and especially Da Blogfaddah, who was kind enough to link to my original post. Thank you so very much. – Sgt Mom
Dave’s family arrived last night – his father, two sisters and a brother-in-law, along with his older daughter. His second daughter arrives tonight… maybe. Weather and the airline schedule permitting. So far, sorting out everything has not been as fraught as expected. I spent a good part of the day at the trailer with them: very nice, level-headed and sensible people, not much given to hysterical demonstrations. His brother-in-law was doing valiant duty with various local funeral directors when I arrived this morning, while Jimmy and Dave’s oldest daughter sorted out what was in his various accounts. One of his sisters set to sorting out his clothes, the other to the books and various family pictures and Dave’s Navy memorabilia – the usual clutch of things that accumulate in a corner of a military veteran’s desk or bureau drawer; a couple of metal or cloth rank insignia, some name-tags, the usual handful of ribbons and decs. Jimmy’s little boy amused himself with a box of dominoes, and built towers and walls out of them on the glass coffee table. Jimmy, Dave’s daughter and B-in-L went downtown to get the death certificate and to sort out what they could about Dave’s car, which is still at the garage. I drove his youngest sister over to the grocery store for some cases of soda and water, and a Little Cesears for enough luncheon pizza all the way around.
I can only think that doing all these practical things is very steadying, and obscurely comforting. Occasionally one of us teared up, but just a little. They have decided on a private interment at Ft. Sam on Thursday afternoon, with a gathering at a place he was particularly fond of, for all his friends afterwards. I have edited the website to reflect this, and added a picture of him, from when he finished Navy Basic – which his sisters unearthed and we all thought was just perfect.
But I just don’t know how long it will take, when I am having trouble with a computer to get over the impulse to call Dave and ask for help with it.
Later: his website is here – it was down all last night when I wrote this and wasn’t available for the linkage.
(Thanks to so many friends who read and linked to my Saturday entry – thanks to some incredible generosity, my financial crisis has been whittled down to fairly manageable porportions. I can never say thank you enough!!! – Sgt Mom)
Chris Gerrib writes
In the process of writing yesterday’s entry, I found the USMC Rules for Gunfighting. It’s both true and amusing.
Thank God I never had to apply these to ‘real life’.
Watch their hands. Hands kill.
Except that one, once. Kinda-sorta.
I was reasonably sure the guy wasn’t armed and he was what he looked like he was, which was a yokel from town delivering a new ditch witch to contractors aboard base.
But, god-damn. When a uniformed Marine roars up in a government vehicle that vaguely resembles a police car, parks it so the motor block is between you and he, unsnaps his holster and yells ‘show me your hands’ you do not stand there with your paws in the pockets of your overalls going ‘hunh?’
I did relish the look on his face when I un-holstered my M9 and chambered a round [1]. Hands were extracted and poked up in the air with gratifying speed.
For my enjoyment, even better was my next direction: to pick up the phone, mounted on a pole about two feet from his head, that had been ringing for five minutes.
If I’d been an ass I would have asked him to read the sign mounted above the phone:
VISITORS: ANSWER PHONE IF RINGING OR PICK UP PHONE TO CONTACT THE SENTRIES.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
[1] Readers might be wondering if drawing a pistol was a tad extreme. To this I will answer that this was not the main gate at Camp Lejeune but a rather more secure facility – we weren’t there to mess around.
An armchair grunt would also take issue with my not drawing the weapon as soon as I exited the vehicle. To this I can only say that it wasn’t until I exited that vehicle that I observed he had his hands covered at which point the situation went from ‘drive out there and tell the asshole to answer the phone’ to ‘potential use of deadly force’.
Saturday – it’s a work day for me. My weekend is split – Sundays are for a long hike with the dogs and work in the house and garden. Wednesdays are my Saturday, a long day given up to writing, both morning and afternoon. Mondays and Fridays are my workdays with my friend Dave the Computer Genius, doing office admin for his computer repair business, trying to launch the carpet-cleaning business for his friend Jimmy. Dave is a Navy veteran, horrifically overweight, divorced and a good platonic friend and as I said – a computer genius. I’ve known him for about six years, ever since he gave the coup de grace to the computer I bought in Korea to start my writing career and sold me a rehabbed computer to replace it.
Since then, he did work for the company I worked for then, for the company my daughter works for now, referred me to many of his computer clients – and when he discovered last fall that his admittedly serious and chronic health problems were not going to carry him off in a matter of weeks, he hired me to do his admin work, intending to build up his various businesses again. It suited me fine to work for him, two or three mornings a week; he had fitted up the back bedroom closet of the trailer that he owned and currently lived in as a tiny home office, just for me. That was my regular job to go to, on Mondays and Fridays, five minutes drive from home and I didn’t have to wear anything more formal than sweats or jeans. Fridays, he was usually out on jobs, but Mondays were days that we did marketing, and plotted out various mailings and letters for the computer business. He was a night owl – most of the times still asleep when I arrived. I am a morning person, so I was used to this. He had a key in a lockbox, so that I could let myself in.
He had planned a couple of weeks ago, to move again – into a small apartment attached to a house owned by some friends in Alamo Heights, a neighborhood that was closer to his computer business clientele. On Friday, he was out all day, but he telephoned me to ask if I could pack up all the things in my little office and from the bookshelves in the hallway – which I did. One thing about being in the military – good at packing up stuff for moving – and Moving Day was Monday. I finished packing up my office, all the files and mailing materials and stuff, broke down my computer and packed that, took down all the books from the hallway shelves and packed them. By then, it was almost two o’clock, an hour past my usual time; I was out of tubs and boxes and Dave wasn’t back from his afternoon job. I went home to call him – no phone at the trailer. All of his business went through either email or his cell phone. He asked me to come back in the morning, if I had time before going to the radio station; there were some more tubs I could use to pack the stuff in his desk. In the kitchen where I had not thought to look for them. And also, he said he would leave my salary for two weeks work in a place where I could find it.
So I came back this morning, just before nine. His car wasn’t in the driveway – not at all unusual. His Saturdays are like mine – a work day, usually. I didn’t have any reason to go down the hall, since my office was already emptied out, and everything I needed to work on was in the living room or the kitchen. It took barely an hour to empty out the desk, and the drawers, sorting everything into plastic zip-lock bags and layering it neatly in the tub. Well, everything but what looked like a couple of moldy, gnawed barbequed short-ribs in a plastic baggie, buried and forgotten a couple of layers down. OMG, every story about forgetful guys and computer geniuses – it’s true! I was looking forward to razzing him gently about that. I even made a note to point out the disgusting things, on the top of the kitchen trash. But my salary was nowhere to be found. I called up his schedule – oh, he had an appointment at 10 AM. Maybe he had left early and I had just missed him.
And I had also left a handful of computer equipment boxes on the top shelf, not being entirely sure that he wanted to haul them down to the new place, I had asked him about those when I talked to him on Friday afternoon. No, he said – they were for things that he might want to sell as used; keep the boxes and pack them. I had an empty crate still – perfect for the boxes. When I went down the hall to get them, I glanced into the bedroom and saw him lying sprawled on top of the bed, deep asleep. Oh, another one of those mornings when I tip-toed in and worked for hours without waking up the slumbering night-owl. Happened often enough before – I tapped on the door-jamb and said that I was done.
I didn’t tap very loudly, and I didn’t want to go any farther into the bedroom – yeah, we were friends and all, but I have imbibed so many of those Victorian principles about single gentlemen and bedchambers and all that. No, better to go home and call him on the cell-phone, save us all the embarrassment, since he was so deep asleep; night-owl and all. I went home and called his cell number, said that Blondie and I would stop in, on our way to the radio station. She wanted to take me to work this weekend, kill some time hanging out in Huebner Oaks, take in a movie, and I thought that it would give him time to wake up, pull himself together and remember where he had put my paycheck. And besides, Blondie wanted to see my tiny closet-office.
So, we let ourselves in again; I showed Blondie the closet-office, and I saw when we went down the hall again that he was still in the same position. Not a good sign.
And it was what might have been expected to have happened to an obese man in his late fifties, plagued with a colorful assortment of ailments. I didn’t even try looking for a pulse: his arm was cold, his chest was motionless and his fingertips were a uniform bruised blue. We called 911 from her cell-phone; the paramedics took what seemed like an ungodly time to get there, but were very kind when they did. So was the SAPD police officer who arrived sometime afterwards. I think he was weirdly relieved to find that both Blondie and I were calm enough to be of help; to locate some documents in the packed tub of stuff from Dave’s desk with his social on it, the cell-phone number for his next of kin from the computer data-base, to call Jimmy and find out that Dave’s car was in the garage for a suddenly-developed problem on Friday afternoon.
We stayed until the contract medical examiners van arrived, having already spent considerable time on Blondie’s cell-phone. His daughter authorized me to see to locking up the place, and on her instructions, the very helpful SAPD officer let me keep Dave’s wallet and keys. While we were waiting for the medical examiner’s crew to do their job, the manager of the trailer-park came by. It’s a natural nesting place for snow birds, so I imagine that this has happened many times before. The manager was very understanding; a special eye will be kept on the place, until matters are sorted out. Dave’s daughter will come to San Antonio on Monday, but tomorrow, Jimmy and Blondie and I will sort out more of the housekeeping things at the trailer.
So, not only am I now out for a regular job – I am short of a crackerjack computer tech, a hosting service – but most importantly, a very good friend and mentor, in one fell swoop. He tried to teach me everything he knew about computers; I am lucky if I retained about a quarter of it all.
I’ll be a week or so, sorting out all this and trying to keep calm. He had been dead for hours, as I worked away in the living room, packing his desk stuff. I keep telling myself, if I hadn’t come in at all, it might have been Monday before anyone thought anything amiss.
(Later note – as well as being a personal loss, this is a financial disaster for me, at a time when I most particularly needed a paycheck. I have a tax bill coming up, and the entry fees for a couple of literary contests that I had planned to enter “To Truckee’s Trail” in. I hate to bleg… but donations to my paypal tip-jar would be particularly welcome at this time.)
Oh, my goodness gracious me, the presidential-race politicking is just betting more and more engrossing, in that tacky drive-by on the high-way and slow down to take a look at the interestingly arrayed wreckage sort of way. Honestly, as an independent-tending-to-the-Republican side of the political side of the scale for the purposes of this particular race, I am a mere interested spectator to the machinations of the Democratic Party side of the house� rather in the sense of a spectator in the seats of the ancient Roman Coliseum was to a show on the sands down below to a match pitting a team with nets and tridents against a team with swords. There will be blood. Just not sure at this point who will be left standing, to receive the thumb-up or thumbs-down at the end of it all. Or how many corpses will be left strewn across the sand.
Yeah, well – I’ve beaten that imagery into the ground – ooohh, now we have a comic interval, with the Spitzer-fest. A prominent crusading New York DA, who made his political bones (and strewed his path lavishly with the bones of others, through strategic leaks to a compliant media) on prosecuting crime! Prostitution Rings! Wall Street White Collar Insider! Hoist on his own petard, stewed in his own juice! Great heaping plates of just desserts, just entrees, just salad course! All the way to the governors mansion on his record (and his family money) but wow – usually my dread is that someone this spectacularly big of a hypocrite and all around a-hole is a Texan. Thanks, New York – this one is all yours! Is he any sort of relation to crusading DA Mike Nifong of infamous Duke University rape case memory? Pity the wife doesn’t have the nerve of some wronged Texas wives- she just appears to be too lady-like to kick him out of the house, loot the bank account and run him over a couple of times in the parking lot with her BMW.
Eh, well – the political season is young, yet. I�d have had a lot more respect for Her Inevitableness – er, Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton if she had done something along those lines to demonstrate her displeasure after The Big He had confessed to his extra-curricular antics in the Oval Office. Sorry, it’s not a shock to me to learn that big men in high political places might be tempted to play hide the salam with women not their legal spouse. I just wish that if they must, they would have better **$#^!#!!! judgment about who they do it with. And that perhaps their spouses might be just pissed off enough about being paraded out for the big ‘stand by your man’ finale. Sorry, I don’t mind sex – it’s the stupidity that I can�t make allowances for.
So, the Fresh Prince of Illinois has for two decades attended a church and accepted the spiritual guidance of a minister who is given to saying things like this in the pulpit of a Sunday morning. Hooo-kay – is he some sort of weird kin to Fred Phelps? So much for the appearance of having moved beyond race in this happy shiny 21st century America. At this point, the great insert-whatever-here just looks like Al Sharpton with nicer suits and a bit more polish to him. Note to Sen. O-B.: the clue to being the first ‘black’ whatever in America, is not to be ‘black’. It’s to be – American. Any message, any person in your campaign that counters that impression does not play well, outside whatever bubble you may have been playing in heretofore.
Let the games begin. It’s gonna get very interesting, if this week has been any indication.
(link courtesy of Roger Simon, and practically everyone else who has been linking to the ABC report all day. Note – this intelligence about Sen. O’Bama’s church has been kicking around for a bit in the conservative blogosphere, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise)
There’s one terribly inconvenient and sort of disgusting thing about daylight savings time… well, aside from the bit about setting the clocks ahead one hour. The additional daylight in the evening is nice, very nice. Nicer when I was working until 5 at various corporate hellholes, and usually arrived home after dark throughout the winter months; very pleasant, all the way around to arrive home with an hour or two of daylight remaining, and sit out on the back porch and go through the mail, while the birds squabbled around the feeder. But it puts the dark at the other end of the day now, and when I set out at sevenish for Spike and the Lesser Weevil to drag me around several blocks at the end of their leashes, it is still quite defiantly dark. Dark when we head out the door, dark when we jog up the street, with the Weevil leaping and pirouetting like gazelle on amphetamines. And dark when we get to the corner and run along Creekway street… where, with luck one or both of them will want to poop.
Good god, do you know how hard it is to see dog poop in the dark, let alone be sure of getting all of it into the plastic bag? Even with a flashlight, it’s no picnic. A couple of lines of dog poop blending in with un-raked leaves and uncut grass, especially when everything is wet… definately no picnic, I assure you. There are means of training dogs to use a king-sized litter-box or pan of something or other, so I have been told. By summer, I might very well consider that.
Lesser Weevil’s socialization continues apace. She will sit and hold her bearing, when commanded in a sufficiently masterful voice, while other dogs trot by… all but the bad-tempered little black and white rat-terrier from up the street. His name is Peanut, since he is hardly larger than one. He barks to beat the band, whenever he sees us. Spike goes into hysterics of barking – noisy but relatively harmless. Lesser Weevil seriously wants a piece out of Peanut, and stalks onward, turning her head towards Peanut and growling in a fairly menacing way. One of these days, she seems to be saying. One of these days, you piebald little rat.
On the other hand, Weevil is perfectly amiable to the pretty young Weimaraner female, who lives along one of the side streets and comes to the iron gate to be courteous, whenever we pass. She got out one Sunday and followed after us, which is how we came to know her. The family who owned her had just moved in, and discovered only too late that she could squeeze through a gap in the iron fence. They tell us that they had another dog, an older one who died about eight months ago, and that she misses the company. So, when we walk together, Blondie takes Weevil up to their gate so they can pass a few minutes together; rather odd because Weimaraners are supposed to be rather standoffish about dogs they haven’t been carefully socialized with
Then there is Horatio, the cat who is more dog than he is cat. Horatio is black and looks rather like my own Morgy and Little Arthur, is extremely sociable and doesn’t seem to mind dogs. He lives mostly in the garage of a house up the road, where the garage door is very considerately left six inches open to facilitate Horatio’s social life. When we pass by the house, we usually stop and call him, and he trots out to say hello. Blondie likes him very much, saying that he is such a cool cat and she doesn’t think his people appreciate him nearly as much as they ought. If she didn’t already have two cats of her own, she would have taken him home already.
It rained, rained buckets yesterday, accompanied by amazing quantities of thunder and lightening; no way of knowing if this spring and summer will be as rainy as last year – which was so rainy —
—-how rainy was it???—-
That the spring wildflowers lasted all summer, and some of them were still going strong in the fall. And instead of turning light brown and crispy by mid-summer, fields and brush remained pretty green all year. Kind of nice, seeing Mother Nature do all our lawn-watering for us, but I just don’t think we’re going to be that lucky. Whatever weather we have in Texas… there’s always too damn much of it.
the song stuck in your head is that insipid “FreeCreditReport.com” jingle. The one where they’re in the seafood restaurant? Yeah, that one. All through Max’s walk. Yeesh. Have to grab a good CD for the drive to work.
In other news, E.D. Hill on Fox News just said, “…a tawdry triangle of trists and tricks.” The Spitzer thing. Shouldn’t that line be on The Cobert Report?