Second Best Place to Live? The Heck You Say!

18. May 2008 · Comments Off on Second Best Place to Live? The Heck You Say! · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Veteran's Affairs

Yes, this news story was a bit of an eye-opener. So it’s only one of those specialty stories by a specialty media outlet, but still; how very nice to know that I had the good taste and good fortune to wind up living in San Antonio. Whooda thunk it? Apparently we scored really high on clean air and water, reasonable housing costs and diversity, whatever the heck that means – possibly the ready availability of breakfast tacos, the food of the gods, at some divey little outlet on every block of every major street in town, and being able to buy bottled cajeta . Why, yes indeedy, we are diverse, and some of the neighborhoods are being gentrified at a pace that would warm the cockles of a real-estate investor’s heart. My dear late friend Dave advised looking toward wherever the gays are moving in and rehabbing. By his estimation, that would be Mahnke Park and Government Hill, around the fringes of Ft. Sam Houston. Umm, yes – despite all that you might have heard to the contrary, this part of Texas is diverse. They’re just not about doing it in the road and frightening the horses, k’?

Part of the charm – and there is considerable charm, once you can get past the incredibly awful summer heat – is that San Antonio is a small town, cunningly disguised as a city. I swear that everyone is only two or three degrees removed from everyone else. It seems to be a very tight set of interlocking circles, and once you become a member of two or three of them then you are linked to everyone that all the people in your various circles are linked to, and so on and so on. I wish I could play this a little better, because I would probably sell more books that way, but still, it is amazing how you can put out a call for help and have so many people just pop out of the woodwork. Last year, I needed to become acquainted with the workings of an 1836 Colt Paterson revolver – and lo and behold, within a couple of days I was getting a briefing session with the only owner of a replica pair in the whole of San Antonio. (Note to self – must remember to tell this nice person when the Adelsverein Trilogy will be available, and to include a thank-you in the book notes. Yes, there will be notes and a laundry-list of people and institutions who have helped me incredibly with the whole project!)

The walk with Weevil and Spike – or rather the usual round of them dragging me around the neighborhood at a brisk pace this morning only made me realize again that this is a very nice place to live; the sky was a clear rain-washed blue and it was cool, much cooler than we normally have a right to expect for May. Recent rains have made everything green, everyone’s garden looks lovely, even those gardens of neighbors who don’t usually fuss with their garden. There are some houses for sale, but no more than usual – and I expect that a lot of them will be snapped up in the summer PCS season. Yes, that is another sort of diversity; having military rotate in and out, and for a lot of them to retire here. I had read somewhere or other that just about every Korean restaurant along Harry in the vicinity of Fort. Sam was started by an Army spouse. This sort of phenomenon probably also counts for the Vietnamese restaurants and the British tearooms.

And if I needed any more proof of the fact that San Antonio is a very nice and upcoming place to move to, I have only to look out the kitchen window. They have put the frames, roofs and siding on two more houses that I can see, in the new development that took up the segment of the green-belt along Nacogdoches road. Every Sunday that we take the dogs around through the new development (which is called Rose Meadows, BTW – even though there aren’t any roses and hardly any meadows left!) a house or two more is finished, a house or two more is sold and a house or two more is moved into.

Hopefully by nobody who will be such an idiot as the one who abruptly cut in front of me from the center turn-lane on Perrin-Beitel just below the turn-off for Nacogdoches. Yeah, you in the beige Toyota Corolla. We got all the idiots we can handle – can you please learn some basic courtesy or go back to where you came! Thanks a bunch, sweetcakes – You’ll make San Antonio an even better place to live, in either case. We have a reputation to keep up, now.

Guest Post – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Amazon.com

11. April 2008 · Comments Off on Guest Post – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Amazon.com · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

(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 »

Round Two of the Great Amazon Imbroglio

02. April 2008 · Comments Off on Round Two of the Great Amazon Imbroglio · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Technology, World

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.)

The Eight Hundred Pound Gorilla

30. March 2008 · Comments Off on The Eight Hundred Pound Gorilla · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not

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)

Obamania Part Two

29. March 2008 · Comments Off on Obamania Part Two · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics

(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 )

Mo-Toon Cartoons of Doom One More Time

13. February 2008 · Comments Off on Mo-Toon Cartoons of Doom One More Time · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Rant, World

Yes, I did write quite a number of posts about them, didn’t I? Stern words, had to be said. And I think I did a pretty ringing job, the first time around, so here are exerpts and links:

The strength of the West is in that very noisy disputation, our freedom to put everything on the table, to question, to non-conform, and by disputation and argument, make our beliefs even stronger for having all the idiocy knocked out of them. As such has been our custom, and in the reported words of Martin Luther, at the Diet of Worms: “Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless I am convicted by scripture and plain reason–I do not accept the authority of popes and councils for they have contradicted each other–my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. Amen.” (original post here)

As far as American newsprint and broadcast television is concerned, the phrase “freedom of the press” is from this day now enshrined in my favorite set of viciously skeptical quote-marks. The affair of the Danish Cartoons, and their non-appearance in all but a handful of newspapers has put the lie to every bit of lip-service ever paid to the notion that the American people had a right to know… had an absolute right, enshrined in the foundations of our very Republic to know… well, whatever it was that would goose the ratings, or boost circulation this week… A right that every journalist would fearlessly defend, with every fiber of his principled, journalistic being. Oops, there seems to be a little contradiction there. Principled… journalist… now there is a concept worn to tatters by this little international imbroglio, especially after Eason-gate, Rather-Gate and all the other tedious-gates. (original post here)

…the next time I hear someone pontificating away on the awesome responsibilities involved in upholding the “freedom of the press”… and they are from a newspaper which refused to run the Danish Cartoons, or a television station which refused to air them, citing “community sensitivities” or “deference to religious feelings” or whatever the sad excuse du jour is…. I shall laugh and laugh and laugh. (original post here)

Amusingly, that lugubrious old talking prune, NPR’s Daniel Shorr was coming out on the side of being all sensitive and being responsible about “using the power of the press” as regards the Matter of the Danish Cartoons. (Doesn’t that sound like a very dull Sherlock Holmes adventure, or the worst name for a war since the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”?) Just like the pet professor of international relations whom my local paper keeps on hand to drivel on about the Moslem world and international relations, and how the US must…must…zzzzz… oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a moment. I do that when reading the gentleman’s editorials, but so do probably most of his students. (original post here)

Wouldn’t change a thing… well, except to point and laugh at Daniel Shorr a little more.

Attention Local Weather Forecasters

31. January 2008 · Comments Off on Attention Local Weather Forecasters · Categories: Letters to the Editor, Media Matters Not, Stupidity

Temps in the 30s with wind, rain and snow, does NOT qualify as “SEVERE” weather.  If I can see down my street clearly to the “T” intersection (about a block and a half away) this is not limited visibility.  Visibility would be more limited if we weren’t getting any weather and the smog got a chance to settle down.  “Mountain passes are closed!” is not a reason to break into Regis and Kelly, it’s what’s known as “normal” for winter in the freaking mountains!  A crawl across the bottom would suffice.  Seeing your red, panic-stricken, hyperventilating face telling me you’ve come in early to “monitor the situation” doesn’t make me think any better of you, it makes me think you’re an idiot who migrated here from Southern California back when we were in a draught.

Seriously people, get a grip.  It’s just snow and ice.  You handle it by driving what we call “carefully.”  Say that with me, “Care-full-ly.”  Full of care.  It’s simple.  Slow down and be aware of the people around you.  Get off the damn phone, especially if you’re talking to someone you’re on your way to see.  Oh, and your four wheel drive protects you against, say it with me, “nothing.”  We’ve had black ice for the past three nights.  In case you haven’t learned the hard way yet, all four tires slide on wet ice just fine.

Your freaking out over every “weather event” just makes people become immune to your warnings.  If we ever do get a no-kidding, rip roaring blizzard dumping a foot or three of snow on us, we’re not going to believe you when you say to stay inside.

Good Dhimmi

29. January 2008 · Comments Off on Good Dhimmi · Categories: European Disunion, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, World

“Here, dhimmi! Sit! Stay! Roll over! Want a treat?! There you go – such a good dhimmi!

“Now, give up your minorities… there’s a good dhimmi, now!”

“Sit! Stay! Who’s a good dhimmi then?

“Quiet, now! Good dhimmi!”

“So obedient! I hardly have to tell them what to do!”

(All links courtesy of Da Blogfaddah)

Later: “Now, Dhimmi – quiet! Sit still!”

Another Fine Mess

17. January 2008 · Comments Off on Another Fine Mess · Categories: General, General Nonsense, GWOT, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs, War

Oh, so it looks like the ever beloved New York Times has nobly volunteered itself to be the Piniata o’the Month for unleashing yet again – in the words of Maxwell Smart “the old Krazed Killer Veteran Story”. You know, the same old, same old pathetic round of stories that those of us over a certain age saw in the 1970s – and not just in the news but on every damn cop show; the freak who got a taste for killin’ and brought it home with him after the war. Honest to key-rist, NYTimes-people – what is your assignments editor these days smoking these days? I am a little late to joining the predictable pile-on from every quarter, which looks like it includes just about everyone short of the VFW.

At least it’s nice to know legacy media drones can do a google search these days and assemble a laundry list of whatever it was they were looking for in the intertubules. A step up from a couple of years ago, all things considered. But… and that is a big but there, almost as big as a Michael Moore butt…it is just that – a laundry list of incidents where someone who was a military veteran of a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq was subsequently involved in or thought to be involved in a murder. Or manslaughter, or something.

No context, no analysis – just OMFG, the Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming (and it’s all the military’s fault!) Look, NYTimes-people, coincidence is not co-f**king causality. Sometimes, it is just a co-incidence, and laying on a smarmy layer of sympathy and glycerin tears over the poor *sniff* innocent *sniff* widdle misdiagnosed *sob* veterans does not make your s**t-sandwich of a story any more palatable. Not to veterans and their families.

Not only can we remember this kind of story post-Vietnam, but the very senior among us can remember it post-WWII. I am reliably informed that there was even a certain amount of heartburn over an anticipated propensity for free-lance violence on the part of returning veterans from the Civil War – and no, I will be not sidetracked into a discussion of how the still-expanding western frontier managed to provide an outlet for all of those Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs seeking post-war excitement.

My point would be that when this same-old-same-old went down post-hostilities every other damn time, the experience of military service was a bit more evenly spread among the general male population. The general reader had enough friends and relations in his immediate circle to take the whole Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming narrative with a large handful of salt. They knew enough veterans personally to not take what they read in the papers as necessarily the whole truth, and to put the sensational stories of post-war veteran crime into context. And they could blow them off as just another grab at the headlines.

But service in the military these days draws on a smaller sub-set of the population – and unfortunately that set does not include the media or cultural elite. Tripe like the NYT’s Krazed Killer Veteran – if it is not challenged and countered robustly- will soon solidify into conventional wisdom, just like it did with Vietnam veterans. And that, my little scribbling chickadees at the NY Times – is not going to happen again. Welcome to attitude adjustment, Times-folks. I can promise a real interesting and educational time for you over the next couple of days. Take notes. They will come in handy, especially for the next time you are assigned a story about military veterans.

Later: (Update from Iowahawk, too delicious to leave unlinked. Beware, NYTimes- this one is gonna leave a mark!)

Still later: And so will this blast from Col. Peters. My advice to the NYTimes writers is to load up on Midol, as well as taking notes.

Mo-Toon Fallout

12. January 2008 · Comments Off on Mo-Toon Fallout · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not

I think the fuss over the Danish Mohommad cartoons was the point where I definitly lost all respect for that segment of the Western press who were all about striking a brave pose about the so-called “right of the people to know” against any threat to that most sacred of rights…but folded like a wet paper bag when it came to actually – you know – telling people about things, like the Danish Cartoons o’ Death. Here the fearsome Muslim street was going ape-shit over a set of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, which poked mild fun at how Danish cartoonists were afraid to publish cartoons about Mohammed for fear of the Muslim street going ape-shit… and our brave palidins o’ the press were all in fear and trembling of actually showing us the cartoons that set the world on fire. (Or that part of it actually Muslim.)

Yep, in the face of it all, they delined to publish a set of drawings about three degrees milder than Family Circle, for fear of ‘offending people’. Nice to know the guardians of the press have our backs, good to know they will fearlessly stride forth and defend our right to know. Thanks, press guardians – appreciate the effort.

Of course there were some who did slap their manly chests, step forward and actually publish the Mo-Toons of Doom. And one of those who did, is caught in the predictable fallout and has made a defense of press freedom that ought to put a blush of shame on the face of every editor of a news program or newspaper who declined to live up to what they had claimed to be their reason to exist.

Courtesy of Da Blogfadder and Samizdata.

Items of Note – Progress Report

05. December 2007 · Comments Off on Items of Note – Progress Report · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

A few items of note to report

A bit of progress in the first draft of Vol.3 �Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms� � well into chapter 4 of the final volume. A test reading by my skilled and perceptive first-line editors (ok, Mom and Dad) provides positive feedback and a high interest in a new cast of characters. I am setting up a positively soap-opera-esque level of drama here, and yes, I will be careful not to turn the sister-in-law aka the Southern Belle from Hell into a caricature� although she is a walk-on, and at full strength these ladies tend to seem terribly over-the-top to us repressed Anglo-Yankees anyway. Mom and Dad give high props to the introduction of new leading characters, BTW. Since this is by way of becoming a family saga, and covers about half a century of eventful Texas history, this was necessary� a hero of a wild, wild western creaking around on a zimmer-frame just does not work for me. There may be writers of genre fiction this would work for, but not me and not this genre.

I�m tinkering a little with the first volume, and meditating upon revisions to the second volume; I�d like to finish the whole thing before going out and fishing for publishers again � just in case I am struck by a wildly creative notion about two chapters from the absolute end, and need to go back and set up the preconditions.

Blondie and I finished Christmas shopping last weekend � er, rather we emptied out the closet where we chuck the items as we buy them here or there throughout the year, take an inventory and figure out what few little items we need to put on the glorious display of generosity to our nearest and dearest that custom requires of us.

Never mind that most of our gleanings were bought on sale, from yard sales or are items for D-I-Y gift basket assortments needing assembly and the lot is currently spread out over the dining area table along with rolls of Christmas paper and a bundle of bags and Christmas tissue paper picked up on sale after Christmas last year. Note to our nearest and dearest � the book-writing thing is not paying off that well yet although I do have hopes. �To Truckee�s Trail� is available at Amazons� Kindle reader store. Can�t figure out how come the cover pic isn�t posted, and given their customer service degree of friendly helpfulness I am afraid to ask why.

The Fat Guy did a lovely review here; so did Juliet Waldron for this month�s issue of the Independent Authors Guild newsletter (scroll down, it’s on the third page), and Jaime at FictionScribe posted a long interview on how I came to write it. Might I suggest that it would make a lovely Christmas present for anyone who likes a good old-fashioned read?

I�d work up some bile for Franklin Foer�s belated and protracted apologies for the Private Beauchamp/Baghdad Diaries debacle, but I have to be in a sour mood to do it proper justice.

As for Legacy Media/The End of/As We Know It, I�ll note that a sales rep from the local newspaper called last night, offering a special home delivery deal; the Sunday paper for $2.00 and the rest of the week at no additional charge. I love the smell of economic desperation in the morning. Or whenever.

Dear Fox News,

28. November 2007 · Comments Off on Dear Fox News, · Categories: Media Matters Not, My Head Hurts, Politics

Is it really that slow of a news day that your lead story at the top of every hour involves dissecting a speech by Bill Clinton? Is it really news that Bill Clinton did one thing in the 90s and then has changed his story today? This surprises…hands…anyone? It’s like slapping your forehead realizing the Donald Rumsfeld may not have been a strategic genius after all.  It’s like thinking, “Hmmm, I think that Fox may not be “fair and balanced.”

A Plague of Politicians

26. November 2007 · Comments Off on A Plague of Politicians · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant

Not even in the election season yet and I am tired of it already. God give me strength to endure. I think I’ll go hide out in the 19th century and review the build-up to the Civil War for a while, refresh my memory of what bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred, knock-down-and-drag out national politics really was like. Puts it all into proper proportion, I guess.

I’ll come out of my burrow in about eight months. I can always hope that there has been a vicious caning, or a duel on the Capitol lawn, something to break up the monotony of leaks and counter-leaks and he-said-she-said gabfests on the Sunday morning political affairs TV shows, and of political pundits knitting their brows and talking through their hats about who is ahead in the polls and why. Newsflash – they’ve got about as much chance of being right as any fool with a Magic 8-Ball.

Seriously, who the hell talks to people who call out of the clear blue and want to take up fifteen minutes of your life asking stupid-ass questions? I don’t – who the hell doesn’t have caller ID and an answering machine?

I will commit myself to two principles: one, I will try and refrain from using sarcastic names for the various hopeful pols parading their various qualifications or lack of same in the 2008 version of our national political game of “Survivor on the Potomic”. Her Thighness, the Silky Pony, Pretty Boy, or the Hildabeast – such derisive nicks shall not cross my keyboard after today. That is just too junior high, so very Maureen Dowd. I promise to stop it at once. Mom raised me with better manners. When someone made a disgraceful display of themselves in public, Mom said that nice people do their best not to notice – or at the very least least, to be gracious about it.

And two: I will most likely not vote for Hillary Clinton, AKA her Inevitableness. I am qualifying this, because you never know. An unforeseen political tectonic spasm in the next few months may throw to the surface some morally disgusting, totally unacceptable, completely charmless dreg with a murky background and apparently bottomless sources of funding… sorry, Senator Kerry, I wasn’t talking about you. Anyway, someone who makes Her Inevitableness appear to be the lesser of two evils. Hard to picture anything short of Cthulhu performing that feat; but so far one thing about her which disinclines me toward her how the legacy media has sort of crowned her in advance. Oh, and the way that some people blithely assume that just because I am a woman, and a small-f-feminist of many years standing that I will of course vote for here.

Think again. Frankly, I think Rudolph Guiliani might do. At least he looks better in a dress.

Memo: Derisive Head-Shaking with a Splash of Schadenfreude

13. November 2007 · Comments Off on Memo: Derisive Head-Shaking with a Splash of Schadenfreude · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm

To: Various Movie Producers
From: Sgt Mom
Re: The Current Gaggle of Anti-War Movies

1. Yes, that would be you that I am looking at; Mr. DePalma, Mr. Redford, and all the rest of you whose releases, despite being advertised expensively, applauded by the ever-so-cool award-giving set, and drooled over by your fan-boys and fan-girls in the critics circles to the point of having to tread water … are nonetheless tanking like the RMS Titanic. Audiences in flyover country are avoiding plonkingly earnest sermons like “Lions for Lambs”,”The Valley of Elah”, “Rendition” and others of that ilk as if they were made of plutonium. Fleeing reviewers aren’t even flinging any hilariously sarky remarks over their shoulders like they did for a vanity stink-bomb like “Battlefield:Earth” – which at least produced viciously amusing reviews. You guys can’t even hug that thin comfort to yourselves.

2. There is a somewhat soothing chorus of justification, cicadalike in it’s buzzing monotony: oh, it’s those silly proles in flyover country, they just can’t handle difficult questions, or they’re tired of the war, and really, popularity isn’t everything-our filmmaking is selective in it’s appeal, and anyway we’ll make it up in the overseas markets, or on DVD. Good luck with that line of reasoning, guys and gals. It’s worked for a good long while, and it may work for a little while longer, but methinks I see the edge of the cliff fast approaching. Wily Coyote, super-genius might stay suspended over thin air for quite some time – but eventually the laws of gravity and economics will apply. Piss off your natural audience once too many times, and one is as a tiny splat on the canyon floor, way down below. Just ask the Dixie Chicks.

3. See, it’s like this; you’re in the entertainment business. Emphasis on Entertainment, emphasis on Business. As a very wise movie producer observed some decades ago, “You want a message? Send Western Union.” Doing earnest dramatizations of your own opinions might make you feel all bold and stick-it-to-the-manly, and make your closed little intellectual set all misty-eyed with adoration for your cinematic genius, but frankly it’s leaving the rest of us looking forward to our next round of un-anethesthetized root-canal work, performed by a sadist with a jack-hammer.

4. And furthermore, (and I am looking at you, Mr. DePalma) reliving the 1960ies and the Vietnam War by recycling the same old scripts, the same old villains and the same old conventions is worse than tiresome. In vigorously painting the military, the US government and Americans in general with the same old United Colors of Atrocities, you are essentially doing the work of enemy propagandists. Adding insult to injury, it isn’t even good propaganda. You are insulting an enormous chunk of your domestic audience, routinely and substantially reducing the numbers of people in flyover country willing to plunk down $10.00 at the multiplex. This will not end well – again, recall the Dixie Chicks.

5. Thinking of all the stories that you are isanctimoniously gnoring, in order to churn out these politically correct wankfests is enough to make me want to pick up a good book. Or write one; a book that recalls to us what we are, what we stand for, and what we fight for. As for yourselves, enjoy the applause of your peers and their tinselly awards, and the perks that Hollywood offers you… for now.

Sincerely, Sgt Mom

My previous memo on the topic is here, and no, my first name is not Cassandra – Sgt. Mom

The Meme Pool

31. October 2007 · Comments Off on The Meme Pool · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Politics, Reader Mail, Veteran's Affairs, War

For no particular reason, over last weekend I was re-reading David McCullough’s account of the Johnston Flood, and was struck by the chapter which recounts the aftermath. Scores of reporters for American newspapers leaped upon the story – it wasn’t every day that a thriving industrial town gets wiped out in forty minutes flat by a sudden colossal rush of water from a catastrophic dam failure upstream, not even in the admittedly accident-prone 19th century. Among the first sensational stories reported from the wrecked city were lurid tales of gangs of Hungarian immigrants – the downtrodden and resentful minority du jour of that time and locality – looting the dead and raping the living, and of vigilante justice on the part of other survivors… all of which turned out to have been untrue. Even retractions and corrections afterwards wouldn’t squash those accounts dead in their tracks, and it reminded me of the stories of horrors in the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina; also lurid, also untrue… but widely disseminated, and even when debunked at length, with footnotes, forensic evidence and pictures… still passionately believed.

It all comes down to memes. They are a set of assumptions which have a life of their own through being repeated, especially by organs like the news media and beacons of popular culture like the entertainment industry. Thus propagated, memes are pernicious as nut-grass. No matter how many times they are debunked… still they exist, springing up sturdily in the cracks of public discourse and popular culture. Most of them do little harm, and even boost the subjects’ ego in a small way: Frenchmen are good lovers, New York is the center of American intellectual life, you get the best education at the most expensive college. Others exasperate experts by their persistence, in spite of being debunked, corrected or explained, over and over: Columbus was NOT the first European to believe the world was round, aliens from space did not build the pyramids- or any other monumental structure in the ancient world, and President Bush did not serve up a plastic turkey to the troops.

This morning the Blogfaddah linked to a discussion of l’affaire Beauchamp, which began with the lament “Isn’t it sort of disappointing that one has to spend this much time telling journalists, and journalist’s most ardent supporters, why it is important that journalists don’t lie?” Discussion immediately lurched away from examining what I thought was the point of the essay in question; why the milblog community landed on the New Republic’s fables with such energy and enthusiasm.

The answer is because it was another brick in the wall of meme under current construction, itself is an extension of the one constructed around Vietnam war veterans, which almost without exception painted them as tormented and drug-addled lost souls, riddled with guilt over having committed atrocities, and unable to make anything of their post-service lives. This meme had far more damaging results than just providing a handy stock character for movies, television and news documentaries; it impacted the lives of real veterans, essentially isolating and silencing them. Men and women who had satisfying, productive and well-adjusted lives did not particularly want to be identified as Vietnam war veterans, not if it meant being dismissed as a freaked-out looser.

That is why milboggers came unglued over Beauchamp’s and other fraudulent and malignant stories given credence by self-isolated specimens like Franklin Foer; because it’s being attempted, all over again with a new generation of veterans. Last time, it went unchallenged for decades. By my recollection it took about fifteen years for a TV show to feature a well-adjusted non-traumatized Vietnam veteran hero. It’s not going to happen again, not if we have the ability to forcefully question the individual meme-bricks before the mortar has set. Doesn’t matter that The New Republic is a small-circulation magazine or that some kind of truthiness about the brutalities of war -blah-blah-blah, or that our pop-cult gurus are too damn lazy to work up another set of clichés. This one we’re going to fight on the beach.

A more interesting line of thought is – is there something more than just intellectual laziness and the comfort of slipping into a well-worn track at work here, even if only subconsciously? Could there be something to be gained on one side of the debates about war, Islamic-inspired imperialism, the whole tar-baby of nuclear Iran, if military veterans whose service at the pointy-end-of-the-spear might have given them some particular interest or insight can be easily silenced and isolated… simply by being routinely characterized as ignorant, out-of-control redneck freaks?

Yeah, I’ve wondered about that myself, lately. Discuss among yourselves.

Memo: A Rich Banquet

26. October 2007 · Comments Off on Memo: A Rich Banquet · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, World

To: Various
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: A Surfeit of Crow

1. What a deliciously rich week this has been, as regards legacy media meltdowns! I can barely keep up with it all. Every time I repair to the kitchen for another bowl of popcorn,( lightly salted with schadenfreude) there is another development. At this point it looks rather like the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers “Night at the Opera”. It’s as if everyone wants their fifteen minutes of infamy all at once.

2. Ted Rall has flexed his buns and squeezed out another offensive turd of a cartoon, alleging the extreme stupidity of those who join the military and claiming (if I can read his lettering correctly) that every one of them killed raises the overall IQ of the United States. To which I have two reactions: One – someone still publishes Ted Rall? And two: He hasn’t met too many military people lately, has he? A fair percentage of them do attend college, one way or the other – the conventional indicia, for what that is worth. Regardless, I’d bet most of them could draw better drunk than Ted Rall can sober.

3. A formerly obscure reporter for McClatchy Newspapers decides to be a total d**k to a soldier guarding an entry point to the Green Zone in Baghdad, and play the “Do you know who I am?” card? Note to Mr. Bobby Calvan – this gambit is only really effective if the public easily recognizes your face, or in Brittny Spears’ case, your nether regions. Mr. Calvan then compounds this bad judgment by lovingly detailing the incident on his blog, in an account which fairly oozes with faux-macho bravado and self-regard. He is promptly slammed with nearly two hundred comments unanimously pointing out with varying degrees of wit, exactly what kind of d**k he is. As was the phrase at Mount Gleason Junior High School, “he was chopped down so low he could play Sea Hunt in a loogie”.Such a beat-down is rare and to be cherished; and although Mr. Calvan took down the whole post and the comment string, it was saved and replicated by others for the delectation and amusement of us all.

4. Hollywood’s current string of anti-war movies are tanking like the Titanic… all except possibly “The Kingdom”, AKA “CSI-Riyadh”. Well then, what did you guys expect – as I pointed out here “No, we will not line up and plunk down our movie ticket dollars to have our country slimed, our military family members defamed and our efforts to fight terrorists belittled, and all the glowing reviews from your media buds will not make us toddle down to the multiplex to watch your damned movie. At least the Hollywierd ‘tards can comfort themselves with the thought of how well their anti-war wankfests will play on foreign movie screens. And all their media syncophants will coo and ahh and tell them how brave they are, speaking “trooth to power”! Apparently none of these “creative geniuses”* paid attention to the guy from www.boxofficemojo.com who pointed out “…audiences seek out movies for inspiration, for laughter and to be moved.” Yes, the audiences in flyover country America have indeed figured out that the yellow stuff pissing down on us from the cinematic clouds is not rain. You want to make movies for the overseas audience? Be my guest – everyone needs a hobby. But it looks like American audiences outside your little circle have a better use for their time and money than indulging you in yours.

5. And the wall of denial regarding Baghdad Diarist and Hemmingway wanna-be Scott Thomas Beauchamp finally crumbled, spectacularly! To quote P.J. O’Rourke – just desserts! Just hors d’ oeuvres! A just main course of crow! Practically every veteran or serving military member took one look at the infamous posting (once their attention had been drawn to it) and thought – “Gee, that doesn’t sound quite right…” Young Pvt. Beauchamp may survive the debacle relatively unscathed, but it doesn’t look like gullible editor Franklin Foer will for long. Frankie, Frankie, Frankie – it’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up, as I am sure anyone who recalls Watergate could tell you. Jeeze, I’ll bet he falls for Nigerian spam emails asking for his bank account number. Some people are just too damn gullible to be in the news business!

Thank you all for providing this rich vein of amusement. I can hardly wait for next week.

Sincerely,

Sgt Mom

* viciously skeptical quote marks

Memo: Just to Make One thing Clear

18. October 2007 · Comments Off on Memo: Just to Make One thing Clear · Categories: Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Rant, Stupidity, That's Entertainment!, World

To: The World, and Especially KDFW “News” Reporter Rebecca Aquilar
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Do-It-Yourself-Law-Enforcement

1. As you may have gathered by now, residents of Texas take a rather rough-hewn approach to law enforcement and defense of self and property. This sometimes results in the perforation and/or premature demise of assorted freelance criminal types.

2. In the long run, no one is very sorry about this. There are very few home-invasion robberies in the Lone Star State, since a fair number of would-be home-invaders are dropped on the doorstep, so to speak, by a well-prepared homeowner or tenant.

3. Count yourself fortunate that being an obnoxious pain in the ass with a TV camera attracts only scorn and derision. I trust that this episode has made it plain to you that a large chunk of the public holds your kind in contempt.

Sincerely,

Sgt.Mom

(Go to Instapundit and scroll down – Da Blogfaddah is all over this like white on rice)

And, an amusing poll to take, here, courtesy of Ace of Spades. And no, no multiple vote casting!

Addtional thought: One of the most gaulling things about this whole thing is how rude and relentless she was in questioning someone whom she would not expect to ever interview again… and contrast how deferential interviewers are when they interview someone they will have to deal with over a long period of time. Why don’t we ever see hostile interviewers hector people like Teddy Kennedy, or Al Gore, or anyone else you could name like this? It’s pretty clear that the press would cheerfully burn the little guy and suck up to the bigger ones in the name of preserving access.

All The News

14. October 2007 · Comments Off on All The News · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, War, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

…That�s fit to print.

Or not, as the case may be. My own disillusionment with legacy media over the last three or four years has been pretty profound � not that I had them on all that high a pedestal to begin with. Being in the military media afforded enough occasions for brushing up against the big guys, either at first hand, or at second. There were enough stories filtering around the world of military broadcasting, of incredible arrogance, lack of accuracy and lack of professionalism displayed by the big names to give me a bad taste in my mouth anyway. I was already aware of the tendency for blow-dried big-name anchors and reporters to helicopter in, do an on-scene standup reading words that some lowly staffer had written for them. I already knew of how news luminaries like Peter Arnett had to back down over the bogus �Tailwind� story � which had made my eyebrows raise skeptically from the very first; I mean, guys handling a chemical so dangerous that a single drop on bare skin could be fatal? And not being in MOPP-gear (or the Vietnam-era equivalent) up to their eyeballs? Pull the other leg, chaps � that one has bells on it. I could cheerfully write off the cack-handed treatment of all things military by the legacy media to sheer bloody ignorance � after all, the military is a weird and wonderful world, all to itself.

What became harder to take over the last couple of years is their ignorance, credulity and bias regarding just about everything else. This list is a pretty comprehensive encyclopedia, although I am given to wonder how many bogus stories were never noticed until the rise of the internet, and the ability of astute news consumers to fact-check legacy media asses from here to the ends of the earth.

And to add one more depressing example, there is the matter of General Sanchez�s recent double-barreled blast. Of course, it was relayed to us by legacy media in the manner which we have come to expect of them; omitting the withering criticism directed at them� which formed the larger part of General Sanchez� remarks. (linked here) Now that�s a shocker � one might think they didn�t care for criticism directed at their impartial and noble selves, so down the memory hole it goes, at least as far as the headlines are concerned.

And finally, another writer friend of mine is curious about this photograph � an AP stock photo which has been used lately in venues such as the LA Times and Newsweek in their stories about Blackwater. He is a veteran, a combat photographer and former AP editor himself � and he thinks it is a little too perfect. Well, the two Blackwater guys rushing towards the camera while the guys behind them are all sitting about, in apparent relaxation. Take a look � what does it look like to you? Firefight or lunch break? Both? Or just another example of AP faux-tography?

Thinking of Television

13. October 2007 · Comments Off on Thinking of Television · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, World

I have now come to that stage of life where I have seen every standard TV plot so many times that I am now able to predict the denouement almost as soon as I see the setup and have declared a personal embargo on watching any more shows about doctors, lawyers or cops. While some of the current offerings (House, Scrubs, etc) are quite passable � there are other occupations, and other situations which in the hands of the creative, will offer sufficient interest to keep viewers returning on a regular basis. Shows like �Lost� and �Ugly Betty� are splendid examples of what can be done by stepping outside of the cop-lawyer-doc box, and �Jericho � Season One� is another. Take an intriguing and (for television) a semi-original situation, involve a large cast of interesting people reacting to it and voila � something that will bring back the audience, over and over. Especially when it is a situation that we might imagine happening to ourselves. After 9/11, and Katrina (which provided the genesis of �Jericho� to its creators) it is all to easy to imagine what happens when the world we know suddenly ends, right in the middle of all our mundane plans for a perfectly ordinary day.

Which is exactly what happens to the citizens of the small town of Jericho, Kansas, to the family of Johnston Green (Gerald McRaney) and their neighbors and friends. Jericho is a small, pleasant place, full of people going about their own business � farming, stocking the grocery store shelves, going through a mayoral election, planning a wedding and enduring an audit by a visiting IRS agent. The school children are off on a field trip and the Green�s black-sheep son Jake suddenly appears needing a great deal of money � the only ripple in the pleasant still pool of a modern American life. In one of the most quietly effective sequences, the camera follows two children, playing hide and seek in a back yard, while one climbs on the roof of a shed, and then onto the house roof. The boy suddenly freezes there, silhouetted against the clouds and the sky � and then we see what he has seen; a mushroom cloud, coming up from a line of mountains on the distant horizon.

And that is the exact point where the people of Jericho, and a handful of visitors who just happen to be there begin a long slow devolution from the twenty-first century into something that more resembles the frontier West� and then to a condition that looks more like the warring city-states of Renaissance Italy, or classical Greece. First they struggle to figure out just has happened to the rest of the country � and then begins the fight to survive, ending in a cliff-hanger which promises a large audience for the second-season premiere. It makes for a more interesting television show than I had thought, when I first heard about it. The first season set of 22 episodes is neatly packaged on 6 discs. Commentary and deleted scenes are included for selected episodes on the same disc. I would have much rather that deleted scenes be edited into the episode where they belonged, to make a sort of �director�s cut�, rather than having them tacked on as an appendage. The omitted scenes would have done a lot for the overall story; it�s clear that they were omitted to shorten each episode for broadcast.

It’s an interesting show, on the whole – well worth watching, although I hope that it won’t disintegrate like “Lost”. I think of Jericho as a remorseless study of what people will do under prolonged stress in a particular situation. There are some who adjust to the situation without losing their own core values, some who can see into the situation and confront the unthinkeable without flinching. And then there are those who can’t and won’t… and you can never really tell in advance who will be one or the other. But as I wrote earlier this week, just having to think about this sort of thing is the first step in beginning to cope – should such a situation ever arise.

Cross-posted at Blogger News Network.

Dan, Dan, Dan

20. September 2007 · Comments Off on Dan, Dan, Dan · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Stupidity, World

What is it they say; the first time tragedy, second time farce? What do they call it when it was a farce the first time around – only dressed up in the high seriousness of a Searing Sixty Minutes (dum-de-dum-dum!) Expose? Here it comes around again, with Mr. Rather’s suit against CBS News for making him the scapegoat in the whole “not only does the Emperor not have any new clothes he is as nekkid as a jaybird” imbroglio that was the 6o Minutes “scoop”, concerning the so-called finding of some 1973 Texas Air National Guard.

For those of you who spent 2004 in a coma, the memos appeared to give backing to the contention that President Bush spent part of his Air National Guard service AWOL, and that his then-commander (now deceased) was exceeding wroth about this. Unfortunately for CBS News, for 60 Minutes and all of Mr. Rathers’ minions, those documents appear to have been inexpertly forged; a fact that became fairly obvious early on. One can only assume that Mr. Rather and his team desperately wanted them to be authentic, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary. And that they desperately wanted to drop a just-before-Election-Day bomb on the Bush campaign, and didn’t care how thin the evidence was.

Quelle tacky, Mr. Rather, quelle tacky. Kind of makes one wonder about all the other documents uncovered by Sixty Minutes over the years, which made one or two flash appearances on camera and then were gone before anyone could say, “Hey, wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!” Ah well, just another reason that legacy media is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her.

Anyway, enough of a stink was raised about this at the time… and now it looks like we are in for another round of slapstick. Dan Rather is going to sue CBS for mishandling the resulting s**tstorm. Cooler and more legally-oriented minds than mine are betting A) that it is just a means of squeezing some more retirement monies out of CBS and B) that if it continues, the process of discovery is going to be embarrassingly revealing and C) Pass the popcorn, it’s a pity they both can’t loose.

Myself, I keep imaging the hostage-taking scene from “Blazing Saddles”… only instead of Cleavon Little holding a gun to his own head and begging for mercy, I’m seeing Ted Baxter (the hamster-brained newscaster from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) holding himself hostage and squeaking “Lemme out of here or the newscaster gets it!”

Oh, yeah… pass the popcorn. I’ll take mine with melted butter, but hold the salt.

(Later: More here from Captain’s Quarters)
Even later: still more giggling and requests for popcorn, here

Random Rants and All-Purpose Insults

14. September 2007 · Comments Off on Random Rants and All-Purpose Insults · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm, World

From: Sgt. Mom
To: Various
Re: Making an Exhibition of yourself in the News

1 – To Sandy “The Pantsman” Berger, on the occasion of joining Hilary Clinton’s topmost advisory circle: Are those top secret archives in your shorts or are you just happy to see us?

2 – To O.J. Simpson; What, are you jealous of Britney Spears getting all the tabloid attention? Instead of exploring the penal code, sport, why don’t you just prance around on stage in a black sequin two-piece for a while, and see if that works for ya?

3 – To Britney Spears; The trailer park is calling to you girl… you can’t deny it, it is your destiny!

4 – To Moveon.org; Move on. Please. Alpha Centauri would work for me, but Mars would do fine. Say hi to the face of Cydonia while you are there.

5 – Al Gore: please come do a global warming lecture in San Antonio. We need the cooler temperatures now. Some rain would be nice too, but hold the snow.

6 – To Uber-Fundraiser Norman Hsu; The flood of bad puns just keeps on and on and on: Hsunamis, the other Hsu dropping, the boy named Hsu, Hsunanigans. Thanks – it’s a nice change from just slapping “-gate” onto the political scandal du jour.

7 – To Hillary Clinton; About all that baggage? I don’t think divorce is gonna be much help at this point.

8 – To Osama Bin Laden; nice job with the Grecian Formula, dude.

Sincerely

Sgt Mom

A Jolly Good Time Was Had by All: Pvt. Beauchamp

08. August 2007 · Comments Off on A Jolly Good Time Was Had by All: Pvt. Beauchamp · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Home Front, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military, World

Well, that was fun; sort of what I imagine a fox-hunt to be, with a pack of hounds and a merry collection of red-coated hunters on swift steeds. The successful conclusion of the milblogosphere kerfuffle-du-jour, the beat-down of aspiring fabulist Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp was just like one of those exhilarating hunts beloved by viewers of the very high-quality BBC dramas that have been exported to the lonely outposts of Peoria, Tujunga and Boise for lo, these many years.

There was the wily fox; not as wily as he thought he was, obviously… spinning an oh-so-tempting yarn for the editor of TNR, who eagerly snapped it up. And over there is a hound, a hound with a very clever nose who thinks something stinks and begins to bay, and a huntsman with a horn blows “tally-ho”, as the hounds quarter the rough ground, yapping noisily as they discover more and more interesting little discrepancies. No wounded woman at FOB Falcon? A small graveyard and not a dumping ground for victims of an atrocity? And where are the officers and NCOs, and how the hell is it possible for a clumsy tracked vehicle to run over a nimble street-mutt anyway? And for someone to find himself jaded and degraded by war… before he even arrives in theater?

So the hunt went off, in full cry, hounds and horses pounding over the rolling field and between the trees, spilling through the gaps in the fences, in hot pursuit of the nimble fox… who runs and runs and runs, twisting and backtracking. But every time he looks over his shoulder, the pack and the hunters are closer behind. And when the fox looks ahead, suddenly there is another hunt… a hunt of grim-faced people in mottled green and brown cammies, with lots of stripes on their sleeves or dull-metal stuff on their collars.

And the fox runs to ground. But he is hauled out by the scruff of his neck by the grim-faced people, and held so that everyone in the milling crowd… the hounds, the hunters, a great crowd of spectators can take a good long look. The fox squeaks out a few words admitting that everything he wrote was not true, whereupon he is sentenced to clean latrines with his long bushy tail for the foreseeable future.

Oh, there was a hunt-saboteur who tried to run interference for the fox, insisting that everything the fox said was of a high degree of truthiness… most everything had been confirmed by other foxes and experts, but that he just couldn’t share their names just yet, and why was everyone being so mean?

Well, that’s what the hunt-saboteur was saying just as he got trampled by the hunt, so he went off on vacation, and is there still, nursing some bruises and wondering what he did to deserve this, no doubt.

I shouldn’t worry, though. There’ll be another fox and another hunt, any time now. Just listen for the hounds and the sound of a horn, ringing over the blogosphere. And it will be fun!

The Gift That Just Keeps On Giving

29. July 2007 · Comments Off on The Gift That Just Keeps On Giving · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, World

TNR’s “Shock Troops” diarist is just the gift that keeps on giving. After reading this, and shaking my head, I sent the following email to “editors@cjr.org” offering this feedback:

I read with interest and considerable amusement Mr. McLeary’s comment, as regards the wanna-be Hemmingway, Pvt. Beauchamp and the kurfuffle-du-jour over his “Shock Troops” article in TNR:

“How dare a college grad and engaged citizen volunteer to join the Army to fight for his country! (Which is something that most of the brave souls who inhabit the milblog community prefers to leave to others.) ”

I doubt that I am the first, and probably won’t be the last to write to inform Mr. LcLeary that the term “milblog” is a contraction of “military blogger” and in current usage means “members of the military, their families, or veterans who blog”.

Such veterans and currently serving military members took the lead in reviewing and debunking Pvt. Beauchamps’ extremely dubious stories, offering an expertise in military culture and current events in Iraq which seems to sadly lacking at TNR. And to judge by Mr. McLeary’s off-hand comment, it appears to be also lacking at the CJR.

BTW, all military officers are required to have a college degree, as a prerequisite for recieving a commission. These days, it is not uncommon for enlisted members to also have degrees, either before enlisting, or to work towards one while in service.

I myself came into the service with a college degree, but while I flatter myself that I am a much better writer than Pvt. Beauchamp,…so are most of the milbloggers out there. TNR would have been better-served with practically any of them.

Sgt. Mom, TSgt, USAF (Ret)
The Daily Brief

This tempest is far outgrowing it’s teapot; is anyone making more popcorn? If I get any reply, I’ll post it.

Note, as of 9:45 CST: recieved the following reply from Paul McLeary, at CJR:

“I’m getting slammed with emails about this, but I want to answer
every one, because I think that it’s important. Here’s the email
that I sent to the Mudville Gazette milblog, who posted part of it
Sunday afternoon.

————-
I really walked into this one.

I actually spend a lot of time on milblogs. I was careless in my
choice of wording when I wrote the piece. What I meant was the
whole community of blogs that have sprung up in the same universe
as milblogs — Hugh Hewitt, etc., who act tough about the war, but
have never served, and have never left the comforts of their
air-conditioned offices to see what might be going on in Iraq or
Afghanistan.

I’ve written a lot about milblogs, actually: Interviewed Matthew
Currier Burden for CJR, as well as a couple soldiers who were
blogging for the New York Times. I’ve also spoken to, and exchanged
emails with Yon and Bill Roggio and such, and I blogged the whole
time I was in Iraq back in ’06, which doesn’t make me a milblogger,
but hey, it’s something, I guess.

Like I said, I really stepped in it because I didn’t take the time
to clearly define what I was talking about.”

OK, so honor is served. Says something that he is replying to emails on a Sunday evening, and admitting to not paying proper attention to detail. On that account, I’ll give him a pass from being the milblogosphere’s chew-toy du-jour. Go ye therefore and sin no more, but what any other milblogger does is up to them, of course.

Fallout

27. July 2007 · Comments Off on Fallout · Categories: General, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, War, World

Well, it took about a day longer than I estimated for the Beauchamp-TNR kerfuffle-du-jour to expand to the size of the Hindenburg, metaphorically speaking, and then explode like a couple of wads of dubble-bubble chewing gum once the upper expansion limits had been reached.

Wow, look at all that sticky pink stuff all over the place… some of that is stuck in places and on people who will probably never be able to peel it off of themselves and go about their business as usual. Having written and published the “Shock Troops” pieces is a richly deserved embarrassment, but I don’t think the two most responsible parties will ever acknowledge that their own actions had a part in bringing on the landslide-quantities of fall-out. I imagine they will find some handy other party to blame it all on.

But I can almost bring myself to feel kind of sorry for young Pvt. Beauchamp, and Franklin Foer; it’s all a jolly good game, until someone gets hurt. And no one ever starts out intending to put themselves under the million-eyed, coldly analytical publicly-wielded CAT-scan that is the blogosphere. The inexperienced editor of stalwart and once-respected legacy media magazine probably had no idea of the firestorm that would erupt, once milbloggers and veterans began looking carefully into “Scott Thomas’s” curious accounts of vehicular canine-icide, trash-talking in the dining facility, and games with dead things.

If all one knows of the military life is the movies… especially Vietnam-War movies, such an account must have seemed quite credible. Sad to know that of all the staff at a mag like TNR, there was no one on hand with any sort of experience in the military in the last twenty years or so, who could take a look and say, “Look, there’s something not quite right about this.” Or even to do as Cpl. Blondie did, when she read about running over dogs with a Bradley. Which was to fall about laughing, and then to say, “Whatta pile of bull-s**t!”

And as for Private Beauchamp; I don’t think even the most relentless narcissist really would enjoy having their Myspace page fisked down to the sub-atomic level, and their own person, and every shred of their writings relentlessly and coldly analyzed by thousands of strangers. But then again… he put it all out there, on Myspace and in the TNR. . Made no real secret of wanting to be the next Wilfred Owen/Ernest Hemmingway, but comes off as a haphazardly educated, very bright, self-centered young idiot with an elevated sense of his own talent and not a shred of sense. He is still young enough to grow out of it; honestly a lot of people his age are idiots, but most of them improve over time, and exposure to real world of consequences.

And he sucks as a writer, too, which is even sadder. He doesn’t have that certain gift; that way of “seeing” that a writer has to have. Oh, you can have the vocabulary, you can sling together the sentences, and it all will parse on the page, but unless you can “see into” other people, and sense how they think, and deal with their foibles and take on their voices, your words all fall rather flat. Intuition, empathy, whatever you call it; if you have it, you can create people on a page, you can write about a place or an event and make it so other people can see and feel it also. Good writers, good story-tellers have that, but narcissists can only fake it for a little bit, about as far as Pvt. Beauchamp did. What a waste of time and tuition, and TNR’s reputation, just to mince up and re-hash outtakes from “Full Metal Jacket” and “Platoon”, for the titillation of the readers. And what a waste for the magazine. Of all the milbloggers on active-duty tours in Iraq, Mr. Foer had to select this unconvincing, unobservant fabulist, and throw his magazine’s authority behind him… because his wife/significant other worked there. How lame. What a smack in the face to the hundreds or even the thousands of better writers among currently serving milbloggers.

Memo: On Nothing Certain Events

13. July 2007 · Comments Off on Memo: On Nothing Certain Events · Categories: General, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs, World

To: Senator John Murtha, D. Penn (12th District)
From: Sgt Mom
Regarding: A Certain Matter in Regards to Certain Marines

1. That would be the Marines accused of murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq in November of 2005, by you among a host of others.

2. This story seems to indicate that the whole case is falling apart faster than the Duke Lacross rape case. (see attached)

3. I, and other veterans await your apology to those Marines charged. You were quick enough to pile on with accusations of war crimes and atrocities, using the handy pulpit afforded to you as a member of Congress…. regardless of how it might have affected the outcome of an investigation and/or trial.

4. I’d like to see the apology given the same placement on the front page, and the same depth of coverage as your original statements, but I am not holding my breath.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

PS: Congressman Murtha’s contact information is here. For… ummm. Whatever. (Keep it civil, people…)

Another Heartfelt Book Bleg

09. July 2007 · Comments Off on Another Heartfelt Book Bleg · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, World

So the writers’ life waltz as it applies to the current book project “To Truckee’s Trail” has accelerated to a particularly mad whirl. The final text of it has been reviewed and is set to go to the printer, and all that I lack right now is the final cover, which one of Booklocker’s designers is working on, presumably even as I write this.

I have a list of possible reviewers to send hard copies to, when I have them, and another much longer list of possible markets; various museum bookstores and independent bookstores in towns along the historic emigrant trails.

And I have promise of aid and assistance from a couple of proprietors of various blogs as regards an advertisement… but I need to put together a “skyscraper ad” 160 x 600 which they can plug easily into their ad-space. I have no idea how to do this… (sob! I’m only a writer, I’m not a designer or a techie!) Is there anyone out there who can do this, or advise me, or walk me through it? This ad will have a pic of the cover of “To Truckee’s Trail” and some interesting blurbage.

Email or comment, please. I can promise a copy of the book, with a personal inscription, and my heartfelt thanks.

The Whip Hand and the Velvet Glove

02. July 2007 · Comments Off on The Whip Hand and the Velvet Glove · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, sarcasm, War, World

It is reported in the aftermath of the car-bomb attempt on the Glasgow airport terminal, that bystanders yelled “let the ****er burn!” as rescuers attempted to extinguish the fire burning on the clothes and flesh of one of the aspiring jihadis.

This happening and the fact that it was even noted and reported may be seen as a kind of harbinger. It may be an indication that the masses, or the ordinary people, the proletariat… or whatever you want to call the non-elite are no longer buying the load being sold to them.

Time after time, over the last five years, the plummy-voiced public intellectuals, the emollient gentlemen from CAIR, or the European equivalent thereof, the glad-handing politico and the exquisitely face-lifted news reporters have assured us, solo and in chorus of several things:

We have been told that Islam is a religion of peace, and that it is just an infinitely small minority of Moslems committing these outrages, not representative of the whole at all.

We are also assured confidently that if we are not satisfied with that assurance, then it means we are just some kind of ignorant red-necked, yob racist.

We are also assured that it’s all to do with Israel oppressing the Palestinians, or the US oppressing the Iraqis… and never mind that while the wholly understandable rage of gentleman named Mohammed may be directed towards American troops, or Israeli settlers… the concrete actions taken to express that rage, seem to land everywhere else. No convincing explanation is ever given for this… other than the multitudinous dead are not Muslims, or not good Muslims, and therefore had it coming anyway.

Pointing out in all reasonableness that the Lutherans, or the Amish, or the Presbyterians are not carrying on like this does not seem to butter any parsnips.

We are also assured that any such plots carried out, or interdicted before they are actually carried out are actually a plot by the CIA, or the Mossad, or some dreadful Bushitler plot to take away our civil rights and foment anti-Moslem xenophobia.

Never mind that the airwaves emanating from the Moslem world are full of spittle-flecked orators, seething and fuming and threatening exactly such actions, and cheering them on, except when they actually happen and then everyone reverts to item one. It seems a pity to have to give the CIA, Mossad and the Bushists all the credit, though.

It has often been speculated by the prescient and those students of history that another outrage on the scale of 9-11 committed by radical Islamists somewhere in the First World, whether tied to an identifiable country or not, will call down quite dreadful repercussions upon the Moslem population of the country where it happens. There has been speculation about why such a catastrophe has not happened, yet. Perhaps the loosely connected web has been sufficiently disrupted to prevent developments along that line, that the A-list plotters and experienced technical experts have been neutralized… or perhaps it is their intent to avoid an action that will unify an outraged First World and call down just such a reaction. Perhaps the continuing series of smaller actions are a deliberate policy; inflicting the death of a thousand cuts upon us, a constant dribble of incidents and deaths; towards the same end, but without attracting retaliation on a massive scale.

But if that is so, then the reaction of Glasgowegian air travelers suggests that a tipping point may be near. The cumulative effect of bombings, murders, foiled plots and Muslim riots over matters as diverse as newspaper cartoons, ennobling of controversial writers, and the spurious desecration of Korans may be coming to a head… for all that we have been told all this time to look away and pretend that we don’t see a thing. The whip hand of “How dare you, you racist!” and the velvet glove of “Islam is a religion of peace!” may soon fail to have any effect at all.

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