Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
Well, I finally got around to taking down the PJ Media ads… why the heck should they soak up ad space on this blog? At this point, about all I want to promote is my own darned books, thank you. I will attempt to further tweak the sidebar to that effect, utilizing my own somewhat less than totally mad HTML skilz…
As you were.
(Gomer Pyle voice): As you were what?
Never mind.
You can make the Dog play dead.
Bang! Dead Dog.
You can make the Dog stay dead.
All the way dead.
With bacon on her muzzle.
I said all the way dead.
But good luck keeping her from rolling her eyes and drooling when she’s playing dead with bacon draped across her muzzle.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
In Last Week’s Episode ..
Congress wrote into a bill that allowed AIG to pay bonus money. President Obama signed the bill into law.
Congress and the President got on their moral high-horse and said how awful it was that AIG followed the letter of the law.
Congress is passing a bill that taxes those bonus monies at 90%.
Which is prohibited by the Constitution.
Regardless of how you feel about the specific matter – does anyone think that de-facto changing our tax policy from progressive to confiscatory is a good idea?
Links ..
They told me that when Bush was President ..
Dodd Fesses Up: Admits AIG Bonus Amendment Added at Behest of Obama Administration
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
No, not the writing one – that is as liberating and as enjoyable today as it was when first I sat down to scribble the first couple of chapters of what would become “To Truckee’s Trailâ€, and even earlier, when I first began to write for this blog, back in the high middle ages of the blogosphere, some seven years ago. (My, how time flies when having fun, et cetera…)
I don’t hate the various freelance author-wrangling/editing gigs that I have, through the good offices of one part-time source of employment, the tiny boutique subsidy publisher, or learning the various ins and outs of the small-book-subsidy press. Neither do I hate wrangling the world’s tallest ADHD child – the real estate agent who specializes in Texas ranch properties, who must simply adore tap-dancing on the edge of economic ruin, since he finds himself out there doing it so frequently. No, I view these jobs with considerable affection. The only thing the least little bit wrong with them is that they are not a reliable, steady source of income.
Which brings me to the one job which does indeed provide reliably constant hours and a resulting and reliably steady income stream – and which I hate with a passion, the phone-bank job with a certain large corporation which shall remain nameless, doing hotel-resort reservations for a large nation-wide chain which shall also remain nameless.
That is the job that I hate with such a desperate passion that in future not only will I try to avoid driving past the building where the phone bank is located – but I have taken a vow to never even darken the doors of the hotel-resort chain involved, or set a toe in the city where the properties that I specialize in is situated. I find everything to do with it is loathsome, from the little half-cubicles in the large glass-walled room where a fifty to a hundred of us sit, to the constant racket of voices saying basically the same thing, over and over. “How may I assist you with that? Can you verify…I have requested for you a deluxe room with a king-sized bed… your confirmation number is… thank you for choosing…â€
I hate the sound of the beep in my headset when a call comes through, the automated male voice telling me which property the caller wants to make a reservation for. I hate the antiquated, insanely complicated DOS-based system that was so cutting-edge twenty-five years ago, with it’s million quirks, peculiarities, obscure abbreviations and having to manually enter just about every necessary bit of information when a more up-to-date revision would have that data auto-populate. I hate having every single call listened to and recorded, and timed to the second. I hate being dinged for taking too long with a caller – and dinged again for not cross-selling another property or service or gourmet restaurant, when doing so would increase the call-time.
I hate the dress-code – casual office attire, but no jeans permitted – even though we are doing phone work, and not direct, face to face sales. I hate the fact that we can no longer bring a book to the floor and read between calls when it slows. I hate the fact that the only two computers that we might use for personal business on our rigidly scheduled breaks are the slowest and nastiest in the whole building and one of them doesn’t connect on-line any more. I hate having to wear an employee badge on a stupid lanyard around my neck whenever I am in the building. I hate the callers who mumble, who hold a cell-phone away from their mouth, or are calling from an area with rotten connections – who then berate me because I can’t hear half of what they are saying.
I don’t hate the supervisors – who, to give them credit – do their best to ameliorate the rotten conditions and circumstances of the job as much as possible. I’ve been working there now since July, and many of them now know me by name. Most employees only last a maximum of six months – of the lot I trained with, I only see one other working in the cubicles. The rest are gone. And I am pretty sure that I will be gone also, at some point in the near future. The only questions remaining, are how soon can I afford to quit – in these shaky economic times a regular paying job is not something you abandon. I have no wish to napalm that bridge until I get to it. Secondly, will I plan a graceful and professional exit and leave with two weeks notice, or will I suddenly just be pushed too far one day? There are days when I can see myself melting down, tossing my badge at the floor supervisor and leaving abruptly in the middle of the shift, perhaps after a set-to with a particularly unreasonable caller. I don’t usually do nuclear meltdowns – but in the case of this job I might be pushed into making an exception.
Yes, I hate this job – but now I do feel better.
Oh, and every sale of a copy of the Trilogy moves me just a little bit closer to the graceful and professional exit. Thanks.
|
You Are Peanut Butter Sandwiches / Do-si-dos |
 You are easy going and naturally happy. You don’t need a lot to make you smile. You genuinely care about people and are a great friend. You’re always doing your best to make the world a better place. Even though there isn’t an immature bone in your body, you still are like a big kid sometimes. |
– clonk – clonk – clonk –
Older Monkey, why are you hitting the driveway with a shovel?
I’m not hitting the driveway.
Um …
I’m moving the ice.
Okay …
Into the sun.
Because ..
So it will melt faster.
We are so ready for spring.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
So, ages ago, Karen M. who manages the speaker’s schedule for the German Texan Heritage Society emailed me to ask if I would like to come and do a talk about the history of the Adelsverein in Texas, and how I went about writing three historical novels based on those events – which are dramatic to the nth degree and which hardly anyone outside of Texas has ever heard of. Of course I said yes, how could I resist any organization which contains a large number of people who are, or might be interested in my books, and whose’ tag-line on their website is “Guten Tag, Y’all?†Besides, they offered refreshments for afters; I will work for cookies and punch. Perhaps someday I will be able to throw all sorts of hissies and demand Perrier on tap, a fruit tray and a private dressing room before engagements, but that day is not yet – really, my sense of entitlement is all but stillborn. Either that or I haven’t become jaded – darn it, I still enjoy these things, once I get over the initial panic of standing up and looking at all those strangers or almost-strangers in front of me, waiting for me to say something deathlessly witty. This is where having been a broadcaster comes in handy. I know that I have spoken, through a microphone or a TV to larger numbers of people, but those audiences were not ‘there’, not in the same room. On those occasions, I could fake myself out, pretend that I was only speaking to a handful of people, be casual and friendly, informative and remember to stand up straight, not pick my nose and not cuss in front of them … but having them all look back at you – that is another kettle of fish. Fortunately, I am getting accustomed to a live audience…
Blondie programmed the GPS unit, and I did a google-map search for the venue, which was described as being “The Old German Free School†in beautiful downtown Austin, Texas… which is, I feel only fair to point out, really quite beautiful, as it is spread over a number of scenically lumpy and rather nicely-wooded hills on either side of a lovely deep-green river. A lot of the streets were strategically and alternately one-way, but – thank god – there was no particular festival going on, which might have clogged traffic unbearably – but we did have to go to one exit and then zig-zag through another couple of streets which afforded us some nice views of assorted college students enjoying their last day of spring break, and one particularly large complex which seemed to be ‘street-people central.’
The old German Free-School turned out to a lovely antique two-story building, constructed of stone, and stone and plaster, and stone and plaster over rammed-earth, a long structure just one room deep and turned sideways to the street, with balconies and terraces overlooking a series of pocket-gardens connected by stairs. Most of the rooms opened onto balconies or the terraces, with long windows on either side, which reminded me irresistibly of 18th and 19th century townhouses in Charleston or Savannah or Beaufort, built up on narrow town-lots with the narrow end of it to the street. All of the rooms had tall windows on either side – to ensure a good draft through the room, essential in those far-distant summer days before the invention of air conditioning. It had just gotten over being unbearably chilly and rainy, so the rooms were quite pleasant. The German Free School was the first institution of public education in Austin, according to one of the members of the society who came for my talk. In the mid-1850s, there were sufficient numbers of German-speaking settlers who were totally exasperated with the lack of educational resources; the only option for educating their children was to hire a private tutor, or send them to the Anglo-American ‘Sunday Schools’. According to my informant, one of the founders was totally fed-up, (possibly with listening to all his fellows kvetching about the subject) so he threw down a thousand dollars in gold and growled, “So, build a school!†and there you go – apparently the Free School predated the Austin Independent School District by at least a decade.
There were about fifteen or twenty attendees – and the room was fairly small, so I went ahead and used the podium, with my notes and my pictures of certain relics and locations, 81/2 by 11 pictures mounted on foam-core board, with little hinged supports to hold them up – all of essential items or evocative locations in Fredericksburg. It really went well, this time – I have quite a sort-of-planned talk-with-notes that I use for these occasions, a list of notes, names and things that I simply must cover, and in the proper order; not a set script, for that is the absolute death of this kind of event, just a memory-jogger of the high points. This is the best and most-spontaneous seeming kind of talk, I am not bound by an every-single-word script and can play up or play down things, and respond immediately to what the audience seems to be most interested or engaged in. I wing it, every time – but a wing-it with some sturdy yet invisible supports! Finished with a reading – a couple of pages from “The Gathering†– about the feast and bonfire the first settlers held among the trees of what would become Fredericksburg, and took questions until everyone repaired for punch, home-made coconut cake and a plate of little baked pastry and sausage nibbles.
The members of the audience were all enthusiasts – the very best kind of audience an author can ask for, for they had interesting questions and a lot of knowledge behind them – even if only one person among them had actually the Trilogy. Doris L. purchased the Trilogy and read it all – her husband is from one of the old Gillespie County families and by one of those interesting coincidences of history and the internet and all – it was her husband’s several-times great grandfather who owned the sheep-flock that a boy named Adolph Korn had been watching over, when he was taken by raiding Comanche Indians. Adolph Korn’s g-g-I don’t-know-how-many-times grand-nephew Scott Zesch wrote bout his life and the ordeal of a number of children taken by Indians from the Hill Country in his book “The Captured†– which was one of my references in writing Book Three “The Harvesting†– about the multi-leveled tragedy of young children taken captive by the Comanche or Apache and later returned to their white families. Some of the other questions asked of me were about Prince Solms – who I do still think was rather an idiot, in spite of what one of his particular partisans could say. Sorry, buying into the Fischer-Miller Grant was not an act bringing any particular credit upon Prince Solm’s financial or political acumen. Also, the train of personal servants and his insistence on his title of nobility – not a good move, all around, no matter what his qualifications as a serving military officer might have been in other fields. Although there was an excellent point made, about how perceptions about Germany and German settlers went to the bottom of the tank after about mid WW I or so.
Until that very point in time and history, and in most places in these United States – being from the German settlements and of German ancestry were seen as pretty favorable things. It was OK to be one of ‘the folk’, to remember Germany as it was… until history and Germany changed; the place that these hard-working and cultured immigrants came from, the place that they remembered with fondness and reminiscent affection morphed into something ugly. That Germany – or those duchies and principalities that they came from – all of those places changed during their absence, into something that they would not have recognized, these innocent and trusting immigrants, taking ship from Bremen, carrying their memories and those wooden trunks with them, hoping for new lives but recalling their old country. But in the 20th century, their new country would fight two wars against the old – against what the old country had become, while they were busy building lives and towns, bringing up their children as free citizens of their new country. Funny, how history happens, when you are just trying do your business and get by.
All in all, a most gratifying Sunday afternoon spent, in the company of book and history enthusiasts.
It appears that San Antonio is brewing up a tea party too, along with all the others in the works for April 15th. The grand plan is to throw a thousand tea-bags into the San Antonio River – how the River Authority will feel about that, also have no idea how they would feel about me adding a little milk and sugar – well, that’s the way I drink my tea… and even though we’re as mad as hell about an impossibly pork-packed, and most likely totally counterproductive stimulus package which most of the Congressional numb-skulls who voted for it never read… there is no need to let the standards down.
More here. Blondie and I plan to attend, and to take pictures. Any suggestions for signs would be appreciated; something witty, literate and short would be appreciated.
You *have* to read this. It’s the funniest thing I’ve read in awhile.
Teaser excerpt:
Dog: I am starving.
Me: Actually, no. You aren’t starving. You get two very good meals a day. And treats. And Best Beloved fed you extra food while I was gone.
Dog: STARVING.
Me: I saw you get fed not four hours ago! You are not starving.
Dog: Pity me, a sad and tragic creature, for I can barely walk, I am so starving. WOE.
Me: I am now ignoring you.
Dog: STARVING.
Dog: Did you hear me? I am starving.
Dog: Are you seriously ignoring me? Fine.[There is a pause, during which the dog exits the room in a pointed manner.]
[From the kitchen, there comes a noise like someone is eating a baseball bat.]
Me, yelling: What the hell are you doing?
Me: *makes haste for the kitchen and finds dog there*
Dog: *picks up entire raw sweet potato, which is what was causing the baseball bat noise, and flees for the bedroom*
Me: *chases dog, retrieves most of sweet potato, less the portion which has disappeared into dog’s gullet*
Dog: See? STARVING.
I kid you not. GO READ IT ALL. You will laugh yourself sick.
Wow, have I been out of touch, I used to hear about this kind of stuff the same day.
I got to hear him speak once, long ago when he was touring with then Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Parish. He always seemed taller and bigger than everyone around him. He LOVED our Air Force.
Rest well Chief. Thanks for leading the way.
Attend a church service with your entire family knowing that the fellow parishioner sitting next to you has a handgun tucked in his belt?
I’d rather shoot an armed thug from 10 yards away than run over there and tackle his ass.
Perhaps I’m just lazy.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Fred Winters, his family and the congregation of First Baptist.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Yep, it truly is a bit of a dilemma – is the just newly-new and fresh-out-of-box purveyor of hope ‘n’ change and all that – just beginning to gleam with a discrete and gentlemanly film of flop-sweat? Mom always used to say ‘never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity’ but as I scan the newsblogs of late, I am seriously torn: is the man of hopey-changy acting out of deliberate and long-considered malice? Or is he just an arrogant, medium-city pol with delusions of grandeur, now dug into a job which is so far above his head that he would need a couple of floors worth of elevator to even get level with the demands of a position that a narrow majority of American voters, a large portion of the MSM and such international hacks as the BBC airily assumed he was more than equal to?
Eh – I just don’t know, can’t decide… and can’t even figure out which of those two options is the lesser of evils. And here I was, lo, these many moons ago, pointing out that his resume was thinner than Callista Flockhart’s thighs, and all he really had going for him was that he looked so nice and talked so sweet, and a dismayingly large portion of the traditional news media were drooling over him like fan-girls in the presence of Menudo – (the boy-singing group, not the tripe soup.) Yes, even with a series of unfortunate friends and associates, like the Reverent Wright, Bill Ayers, the entire Chicago political machine and a scarily resentful BAP of a spouse, he was hauled like a juggernaut, by the labors of his supporters and a complacent media into the highest office in the land. So there he is, rather like a fly in amber – except that everyone pretty much knows how he got there, unlike the late 19th century British politician of whom a similar comparison was made.
But now that the One has been duly anointed, blessed and installed – what next? Chaos, disaster, and the stock market dropping like Michael Moore stepping off the top of a tall building seem to be the order of the day. And the Russian-language gaffe over a gag gift ‘reset’ button, and the really unfortunate gift exchange with the British PM. Ugh – that was truly cringe-inducing. Al and any other British readers – I deeply apologize: a couple of cheap toy helicopters and a gift-package set of DVD movies apparently pulled at random out of the “miscellaneous white-elephant gift assortment closet†that most sensible social persons keep as a kind of emergency fallback when presented with last-minute present-giving occasions. But there are people and occasions where something pulled out of that closet is appropriate and expected – like unit Christmas parties, or Red Hat association affairs. A State Visit by the head of another state is not… especially when the poor man is going blind and the DVDs are the wrong format, anyway. Honestly, until this week, I thought our gummint had a very efficient protocol office who would keep track of occasions, and of the likes and preferences of State visitors, the general suitability, utility and tastefulness of formal gifts — just to prevent embarrassing things like this happening at the highest levels. Perhaps all the people who had expertise in these matters were let go in January, and replaced by twenty-somethings who are – or were, until last week – relatively innocent in the savage requirements of the higher good taste. Still – a very hard and embarrassing lesson, which may cost the One with regard to foreign allies, farther down the line. The other option is, of course – the tacky gift-giving was a deliberate slam. Hard to know which bodes worse; petty and deliberate malice, and the joys of sticking it to ‘the man’ or just plain administrative incompetence? In any case I do apologize, and note that I did not vote for him. Whatever criticisms that Al and others might have about GWB – at least the point can be made that none of his state visits had this kind of fall-out in their wake.
Oh, yeah – interesting times. Pass the popcorn.
OK class, this one will take a bit of effort, but I promise you will be justly rewarded. First read this, and the update here, from Iowahawk and vote in the comments whether either Kelsey Grammer or David Hyde Pierce should do a monologue, to be widely televised, of course.
Appetizer: “Even Peggy Noonan — the Grand Dame of Gipperism — has succumbed to Obama’s undeniable conservative charms. Just last month I listened to her wax poetic about the Adonis of Chicago between chukkers at the Newport Club polo tournament final. “Why Peggy, you old dowager,” I quipped, “I believe you just had an orgasm.”
Perhaps not in lights, but it was definitely my name on the marquee in front of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library in Kerrville last Saturday. Blondie took a picture, so we have the evidence. It seems that they like to do author talks on Saturday afternoons, and it would appear that Phillippa Gregory or Diana Galbadon already had busy schedules – so the librarian in charge of author-wrangling emailed me to ask if I would come and talk about the Trilogy. Of course I said agreed; I’d much rather drive an hour and talk with a group of people about my books, or local history, or the vagaries of 19th century frontier Texas then sit at a small table in the front of a big-box bookstore and watch shoppers carefully avoiding me for an hour or so. There’s just no contest there – and frankly, doing a talk and answering questions is much the better way to build my local fan base anyway.
This talk turned out to be for an audience of about a dozen or fifteen, in the basement meeting room of the library, which – since it is built on a steep hillside overlooking the river, looked out on a stone-paved terrace and a line of trees at the edge. I’d feel such an idiot, standing at the podium and talking to such a small group, so we circled the chairs and sat down. As it also turned out, most of the audience hadn’t been able to read any of the Trilogy yet, not even the librarian. Although the library does have a single copy of all three books – they have hardly spent any time at the library and the reserve list for them is lengthy. Gratifyingly, as soon as they return, out they fly again! Excellent news for me, and perhaps they might even consider buying another set, if Adelsverein is going to be that popular.
For my talk, I did a brief overview of the entrepreneur scheme, the grand plans and bungling that doomed the Mainzer Adelsverein, outlined how I came to be interested in such a relatively obscure historical event, and what I did for research, and how I really had to make up very little regarding the various historical events that I touched on. Amazingly, most of the people present – just about all of them from Kerrville or close by – had not heard much about either the Adelsverein, or the travails in the Hill Country during the Civil War, so much of I had planned to talk about was a) new and b) interesting. All in all, a pleasant afternoon, well spent – although we did have to hustle back to San Antonio in time for me to get to work – in my ‘author’ tailored suit and well-chosen accessories, which proved something of an astonishment for the Saturday evening co-workers, who are used to seeing me slop around in something considerably less professional-appearing.
On Tuesday evening, with my computer returned to me and functioning more or less normally (fried mother-board and CPU, but all docs retrieved and saved – whew!) I followed up the library talk with a book-club meeting, on-line and through an organization called Accessible World, which provides books to the vision-impaired. Nan Hawthorne, another author and IAG member, had finagled me into putting the Trilogy into the Accessible World library, and Book One was the book to read for Accessible World’s historical novel book club. So that made another very gratifying hour, linked into their internet ‘conference room’, with about fifteen people who had read “The Gathering†and loved it, loved the characters, and had lots of detailed questions about what was real, what were the character’s motivations, and why had I written things in the way I had. Now, that was an hour that went past very quickly. It’s caviar to the writer’s soul, hearing from people who have read your books and are passionately interested. It makes up in a small way for the months and days, spent alone but for the world that you have created in your head, when you hear from people beginning to share that world and to become as engaged and interested in that world as you are.
And as of this morning, and possibly thanks to a wonderful write-up from David Foster at Chicagoboyz – the Amazon ranking for all three books of the Trilogy was at and around 150,000, which is possibly the highest it has been at since all three were released for sale in early December. So it appears that I am a few steps closer to being a famous ‘arthur’!
Still waiting to see if there will be another “Tea Party-San Antonio†in the near future, in which case Blondie and I will happily join in; the weather is fine and mild, and I wouldn’t mind at all a chance to actually commingle in the real-world with some of the other people that I know are getting more than a little annoyed with the current administration. As another commenter remarked on another blog – and it was so apt that I have promptly stolen it and used with great effect ever since: “I knew the Obama administration was gonna be a train wreck; I just thought it would make it out of the station first.â€
The nice thing about having low expectations is that one is very rarely disappointed in a politician, and often quite pleasantly surprised. At this point in time, all I am reduced to asking of our elected public servants is that they would cover their mouths when they cough, and to kindly refrain from sexually molesting barnyard animals and interns in public – and there have been moments over the last couple of years, when I wondered if that were asking altogether too much. The passing spectacle is just getting to be all to much; the affirmative action President and his race-mongering attorney general all hot to have conversations about race in America, as if we haven’t hardly been having anything else for the last forty years. Then there is Sen. Dodd with the charming Irish cottage and his sweet-heartedly favorable mortgage arrangements – and his many friends in the House and Senate who also appear to have had similar friendly arrangements with their mortgage lenders. Follow that with a chaser of the pols who scrambled to explain their omission in paying taxes … jeeze Louise, does everyone going into politics these days have amnesia when it comes to filing their income tax report?
And the stock market has been dropping like a rock over the last two days, to the tune of ineffectual bleating by the Anointed One, who appears to be making the discovery for the very first time – that what he says does, indeed, have effects in the real world, outside the arena of Chicago politics. It would be amusing, watching him twist and turn – if it weren’t for the very real repercussions. It’s also amusing watching a variety of Obama media fans from last fall owning up to second thoughts now that their guy is actually ensconced in the White House. Nice timing, sports – very nice timing, indeed. Sorry, mediawhores, in my own mind and after your performance coming up to the election, you are now firmly and irretrievably stuck to him. Would it be racist of me to draw a comparison to the tar-baby? Perhaps – but it is apt enough. You are stuck on to him for good, and even if you break free at the last minute, you will still have all that icky tar smeared all over your face, and the rest of us will point and laugh, as your TV network or newspaper goes down to insolvency and you look for another job.
Interesting times – just as that ancient Chinese curse prescribes.
(Later – another perspective, found courtesy of Rantburg, home of all that is surly and cynical.)
Oh yes – the day to go out and ask your local bookstore or library for a western novel – any western novel!
Not just mine, you know – but any of the classics, ancient (relatively) or modern. Although I wouldn’t take it amiss if you did go out and ask Barnes & Noble, or your local Borders or independent bookstore to order The Adelsverein Trilogy. There are piles and shelves of good classic westerns out there and a lot of people interested in reading them, so why not draw the attention of retailers to that market, today!
More here, from “The Tainted Archive“.
Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.
“Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation’s history,” Jim Robinson, president of ABC Radio Networks said in a statement. “We will miss our dear friend tremendously and are grateful for the many years we were so fortunate to have known him.”
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
He was a staple in the radio of my youth. I will miss his gentle humor, and his stories. Farewell, sir, and thank you for 50 wonderful years.
And more here, at “The Tainted Archive” – one-stop shopping for all fans of traditional westerns … which the Adelsverein Trilogy is, sort of, if you bend down and squint at it sideways.
We saw Taken last night. My wife’s review?
The movie was very good and kept us on the edge of our seat. It was great to see a parent be able to beat up a slew of bad guys and save his daughter, although it was a bit disconcerting to see he wasn’t the least bit concerned with other people’s daughters and their safe return. You’d think someone that had lost his little girl would have had a bit more compassion, but hey, he saved his girl and it was great.
It is a kick-ass movie, oh yes.
Thought the First. It wasn’t, I think, that he was unconcerned about the girls, but that Liam Neeson’s character is a guy. A guy on a mission. A guy who is focused. He’s got a job to do and not a whole lot of time to do it in. This is, I think, a very guy kind of a trait and very much who the character was.
Thought the Second. There is a scene where he is talking with some Bad Men – and from their actions he is not a guy speaking English but a guy speaking French so well that they think he is a Parisian cop.
Which probably meant that he and they were speaking French. Fine, the part of me that is good at ignoring dumb stuff can handle it.
But oh, Hollywood, how you vex me! I and about 100% of the public would have been fine with Neeson breaking out the Francais and cluing us in with sub-titles. We can handle it.
Final Thought. This is very much a fantasy movie for realistic down-to-earth guys in the way that Anita Blake is smut for gals from the Midwest who would not dream of looking at the naughty stuff.
The bad guys are messing with his baby. There is no time for police or the authorities and the only thing that will save her is a whole lot of ass-kicking and gunfire and clued-in friends with secret-scary access to government databases.
And then he does that thing. And he wins despite long odds against him. Because he is such a bad-ass he doesn’t have to look like Harrison Ford or Stallone – he’s just Liam Neeson.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
I know I haven’t been writing here much. Haven’t had much going on that I wanted to write about. The one big thing on our minds around here is something I’m not very proud of, but thought I’d throw it out here and see if the half dozen of you who still come around might find it interesting.
My family is going through what millions of families have been going through over the past year or so. We’re looking at losing our house. Now we didn’t buy a house that we couldn’t afford, and we didn’t get a mortgage that exploded one day. Life happened and the economy happened. I lost my job and didn’t find a new one for a month and a half, then my wife lost her job and didn’t find a new one for a month and a half, and we had utilities to pay and food to buy and we fell behind in our mortgage. Our lender is NOT willing to work with us to bring down the payments or to put what’s missing on the end of the loan. They want a payment and a half until we’re caught up. And the way the cost of living went up and didn’t really come back down, we can no longer really afford the mortgage payment much less a payment and a half. We’re the other ones. The ones you really don’t hear about much. We didn’t do anything wrong, we bought the place in good faith. We never thought we’d be trying to choose between paying the mortgage and paying for food. What really kills me is that if we get rid of cable, cell phones and internet, we’d still be short. I’ve never been in that position before. We’ve tightened our belts before, but even if we do now, it doesn’t matter. What really kills me is that we’re making more now than we were when we bought the place. Kinda makes me crazy.
The only thing that MIGHT save us is if there’s anything in the President’s Magical Bailout for us. Our problem? We don’t want YOU paying for OUR mortgage. We’re seriously against that, and besides, from everything I’ve read, we’re not really the folks the President is trying to save. Our lender didn’t screw us over, they didn’t see the economy tanking either. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have lent us the money in the first place.
So we’re looking and believe we found a nice little rental house. I’ve been trying to contact our lender all week but all I get is voicemail. Apparently, we’re not the only ones wanting to talk to them.
We’re going to lose our house and I’d like to feel worse about it but after all the figuring we’ve done I just can’t. We simply can’t afford this place. God help us if the hot water heater or the a/c or the furnace died. There’s no way to replace them. God help us if we had anything happen to either of the cars, which we NEED to work.
We can’t keep going like this and that means letting them foreclose. That hurts. I tend to be on the proud side in case you’ve missed that part of my character over the years and we’re going through all five stages of mourning. I’m going to really miss the backyard, but I’m thinking we can get to the foothills easier once we can buy a tank of gas without worrying about we have enough money for food.
The payback for obligatory attendance at middle school concerts is being privileged to attend your spawn’s high school concerts: good music played well by youth is a fine thing.
Hearing Ashokan Farewell played with skill and joy? Took me right out of winter and clean into a warm summer evening: that was bliss.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
To: Atty-Gen Holder
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Not having open discussions about the r-word
1. Well, thanks, your attorneyness. Just thanks. After about forty years about being called racists when we open our mouths on any topic remotely to do with race, now we get whipsawed by being called cowards for not opening our mouths. Look, we got wise about noisy race-hustlers long since… is it OK to lump yourself in with them? With Al Sharpton, Jesse the baby-momma-banging-hypocrite Jackson, and Spike Lee and all the rest of the easily offended crowd with the dark year-round tans?
2. Frankly, no one really digs being screamed at when we had one of these mandatory equal-opportunities encounter sessions, and no, it never much changed anyone’s mind, and these little sessions hardly ever cleared the air much. It just took up however many hours were mandated by whoever dictates those matters.
3. It did, however, shut up most of the virulent white bigots… forty years ago. I have a heck of a time recalling the last time in real life that I actually heard someone in a social setting uncork some casual racism, misogyny, or anti-Semitism, so mad props for social pressure and all that. Pity one can’t say the same of thug-rap music, but then I’m white so I’m probably disqualified from commenting on that.
4. Let it be noted that we do, in fact, have discussions about racism with friends and acquaintances of all color – but they tend to be those people who we are fairly sure will not come f&$#@ing unglued and begin screaming and calling us racists when we decline to blame ourselves personally for everything to do with race relations in the United States over the last couple of centuries.
5. Hoping this memo will prove of help in assisting you to understand this, although I am not gonna hold my breath about it. Will we have to listen to you bang on about this for the rest of the Obama administration? (God, it’s going to be a long four years!)
I remain,
Sgt Mom
PS – Just as a reminder, a good chunk of the Founding Fathers were not slave-owners, and very much disapproved of chattel slavery… and seventy years after the founding, we fought a particularly bloody civil war over that very issue. Do history much. AG Holder?
Honestly, I can’t help but think that I am way ahead of the game when it comes to an economic down-turn, incipient depression, bubble-bursting, or whatever the heck the mighty media organs want to call it. I lost three jobs alone last year, before the major misery even started. I’ve already processed the grief, adjusted to a fairly Spartan lifestyle, and gotten very well adept at bargaining with institutions demanding money from me. I cobbled together another series of paying ventures, including fifteen hours a week at the phone bank – which does have as a virtue (perhaps it’s only virtue!) that it is at least reliable in providing work hours and the resulting paycheck. Amazingly enough, I’ve lasted there long enough that many of the other drones on the floor know me by name, which is nice enough, I suppose – but I still call it “The Hellholeâ€. My original plan called for quitting around Christmas – but alas, Blondie loosing a job of her own put paid to that notion. So – tight budget all around, and welcome to the joys of bargain hunting, at yard sales, thrift-stores and in the untidy shelves at the back of various retail establishments labeled ‘clearance’ or ‘final sale’ or ‘70% off!’
I don’t know if I will really ever be able to embrace full retail prices again, after this year. I don’t think I will ever be able to walk into an upscale shop and cheerfully pay the full price for something, without feeling an incapacitating twinge of regret. I guess I have just enough of my grandmother’s canny puritan soul in me, and how it has a chance to flower. Unlike Granny Jessie in the Great Depression, though – we will not be keeping chickens. That’s going a little too far. But we have picked up a barely-used bread machine (at a yard sale for $10) and make our own bread, since I have a liking for the very expensive wheat varieties that are loaded with fiber and flavorful seeds and spices, which cost better than $3.00 a loaf at the Humongously Enormous Big-Ass Grocery. So one step closer to self-sufficiency – and Blondie is teaching herself how to knit. Much more of this, and I can see us living away off in the country with a satellite dish, a generator, our own water well and a milk cow. Talking over this whole gestalt with Blondie, and neither of us can remember the last time we bought a non-food item at full price. Everything has been on sale, second hand, bought in bulk at Sam’s Club or an ethnic grocery, or made at home. Even the ink cartridges for my printer are recycled from Cartridge World.
And this is not to say we don’t have a lot of quiet fun with this – we have bought some lovely, frivolous things for practically pennies and even some items which miraculously replaced those lost in the fire at Mom and Dad’s house in 2003. This very week at the new Goodwill Store which opened in our neighborhood, Blondie found a round silver-plate drinks tray which – after ten years worth of grimy black tarnish was cleaned off of it and she checked the now-visible hallmark – turned out to have a market value of about a hundred times what she spent for it. And there was also an odd set of crystal glasses, all jumbled among a long shelf of glassware. These were as fragile as bubbles, and appear to be hand-etched with a bamboo pattern; four with a short stem, three with a long stem and three which look like miniature martini glasses. I think they are Japanese, since they look so much like a set of crystal that I bought in the BX there ages ago. Blondie adds them to the collection that she is setting aside for her own house, against the day when I am a best-selling author and can buy her one.
I was much more interested in a find on a table of books: a stack of the old Time-Life series about the foods of the world. Mom had a subscription to the series in the late 1960s; each volume focusing on the food of a particular country or region came as a two-part set. One was a lovely, lavishly illustrated examination of the country and it’s cuisine, and the other a small spiral-bound collection of recipes. Of course, Mom’s collection was among those lost in the fire, and the ones I found at the thrift shop were the coffee-table book only – but still, I was very fond of that series. The cooking of provincial France, of Spain and Portugal, of Great Britain, and Scandinavia…. I think those books were where we all learned to be adventurous about food. It’s good to have them back.
Me: Hey, wait a second. The README claims we need sqlite3 on your webserver. I’m not sure it’s installed …
Her: Give it a shot.
Me: (aghast) But … if sqlite3 is not on the server it won’t work.
And we run smack-bang into a divide more fundamental than the male-female thing: the ones who check things out before launching and the ones who give it a shot and see if it flies or splats into a wall.
God love her, my beautiful and attractively intelligent wife falls firmly into the latter camp.
I fall firmly into the camp whose theme song contains this verse ..
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not preach that His Pity allows them to drop their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren’s ways may be long in the land.
Oh, and her revamped web site is up and running. Joe Bob says check it out.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Everything moves faster these days. Music has a faster tempo – I find some pop songs that I remember from the 80s as fast and peppy drag along. Television from the 70s – when it’s aired uncut – seems to take forever to get to the point and horribly static.
Heck, even politics moves faster than it used to: it took less than a month for President Obama to break seven campaign promises …
1. Make government open and transparent.
2. Make it “impossible” for Congressmen to slip in pork barrel projects.
3. Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public. (Even Congressional Republicans shut out.)
4. No more secrecy.
5. Public will have 5 days to look at a bill.
6. You’ll know what’s in it.
7. We will put every pork barrel project online.
Via.
Breaking promises is par for the course with politicians. But a) this guy was supposed to be different [1] and b) has anyone so explicitly promised a set of talking points and then gone back in less than a month?
A comment from Chicago Boys ..
The Ghost Shirt Democrats are doing their dance, but the vast herds of union-member Democrat-voting buffalo will never return to the plains, and [the] magic ghost shirts will not turn the ballots of angry voters into water [in] 2010 and 2012. Of course, the Republicans could still blow it, but even if they do, the Democrats have shown in a few short weeks that they have no idea how to govern the country, just to loot it. They will be replaced, if not by Republicans, then by somebody else.
Maybe. We’ll see.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
[1] Yes, even I believed he would be. And there I was, trusting a politician, like a sucker.
One of the most curious instances of the rich American heiress for old European title exchanges was the marriage of Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough; the wedding itself was covered with breathless interest by the media of the time – which since it took place in 1895, meant coverage by newspapers only. However, the wedding was as lavish, and the interest in every tiny detail as intense as that paid to the nuptials of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. It took place at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on New Yorks’ 5th Avenue, and the crowds of spectators outside the church and for a good way down the avenue was so thick that squads of policemen could barely force enough of an open way between them for the invited guests. The inside of the church was lavishly decorated with flowers – pink and white roses, swags of lilies, ivy and holly, arches of ferns, palm leaves and chrysanthemums. No expense was spared – even more astonishing was the fact that Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke had only been engaged for about six weeks and only known each other for barely a year. She was barely eighteen, reserved and sheltered, the very pretty daughter of a woman with a will of iron and ambition to match. After her marriage, she would blossom into one of the acknowledged beauties of that era: Playwright James Barrie supposedly said he would wait all day in the street just to watch her get into a carriage.
Alva Smith had married for money herself – having pursued, wed and just recently divorced the oldest grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, called ‘The Commodore’, who had founded the family fortunes in shipping and branched out into railways. Her own father’s fortunes were sadly diminished by the Civil War, and Alva resolved to secure her own future and those of her family by marrying rich. She emerges as a domineering, driven and stubborn woman with a fiery temper. Very few people ever said ‘no’ to Alva Vanderbilt, least of all her own family; neither her parents, either of her husbands, or any of her children. Her own mother, a cultured Southern belle spoke French, and traveled widely in Europe with her children in those distant days when it meant a long voyage on a sailing ship. In a fragmentary memoir written late in life, Alva recalled that her mother had made a yearly order of clothes for herself and her daughters from a Paris dressmaker. All the clothes they would need for the next year would arrive one time – a means which was sufficient for that era, but not when Alva was raising her own children. By that time, being rich and in the social set meant a degree of ostentatious competition that is purely mind-boggling to contemplate today. Everything about those at the very top of the social network still astonishes, beginning with the ‘summer cottages’ built at the edge of Newport, Rhode Island. Alva was responsible for one of the most lavish, ‘Marble House’ which seemed like nothing much but a couple of square acres of the Sun King’s Versailles, set down in the New World. The balls and parties that prominent members of this high society threw for each other also defy belief. At one infamously grand banquet, an artificial river filled with live fish ran the length of the dining table – and guests were provided with little silver shovels to search for jeweled party favors in the sand at the bottom of the river. Such a grand dinner ran to course after course of elaborately prepared dishes, and an ordinary day for a society woman might involve changing clothes four or five times over. And Alva Vanderbilt was one of the leading social lionesses by the time her daughter was of marriageable age, despite having divorced William Vanderbilt.
Divorce was almost unthinkable in that milieu – and yet, Alva went ahead with it; she would marry her daughter off to a nobleman, and having achieved that apotheosis, would marry again herself, to Oliver Belmont – another wealthy member of the Gilded Age’s highest social circle. Incredibly, she would have a contented marriage with him – and maintain her high position in that society – until his sudden death from complications of appendicitis. Almost without a moment’s hesitation, Alva would involve herself in the campaign for women’s rights to vote, using her considerable wealth to fund suffrage organizations and publications, to lobby in Washington and among the highest levels. She would fight for women’s property and political rights with the same stubborn intensity that she applied to any of her previous enthusiasms. In fact, she became something of a militant – and after her own death in 1931, had a full suffragette’s funeral, with women pallbearers and choir. Never mind the contradiction, of being for women’s rights, yet having dictated Consuelo’s marriage and overruled any of her daughter’s considerable misgivings.
Consuelo married reluctantly, in obedience to her mother. In spite of that, she serenely adorned the great estate of Blenheim Palace – which her marriage settlement helped repair and renovate – and the highest levels of British political and social circles equally. She was one of the noble wives who carried the canopy over Queen Mary at the coronation of King George V. She would produce two sons, and is thought to have been the originator of the expression ‘an heir and a spare’. The marriage was not happy; she and the Duke were of different and incompatible temperaments and Consuelo had something of her mother’s spine. They separated barely ten years after their lavish wedding day, and divorced in 1921, upon which Consuelo married a wealthy French aviation pioneer named Jacques Balsan. She achieved no small victory in managing to remain on easy and affectionate terms with her ex-husbands’ family, which included his redoubtable cousin, Winston Churchill. Her further life adventures included escaping with her husband from France in 1940, and returning to live in the country she had departed nearly half a century before. Amazingly, she lived until 1964 – and if pictures taken of her are any guide – she was still amazingly beautiful.
(No particular reason for writing all this – I had heard of these women in a vague sort of way, but the entire book about them was rather fascinating.)
