A story you probably won’t see in the New York Times…or any other major media. Yeah, thanks guys – for keeping us in the loop.
Courtesy of Rantburg, my source for all stuff that is beyond the usual media fringe.
Oh, but to have the popcorn concession, as we observe the latest developments in this 2008 political season, as the elementals of ebony and ovary collide. Really, it’s like the clash between the gingham cat and the calico dog – they’ll be nothing but little shreds left. Or might it be like matter and anti-matter – nothing left but a little smoking hole in the ground. How the various partisan factions of the Democrat party will ever be able to work together after all the free-flowing animus is beyond me. And I’ll have my popcorn with a teensy bit of salt, please.
What to say about Her Perhaps Not Quite So Inevitableness? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There will be a female President of this US of A in the near future, but I never invested any of my faith that she would be the one. It has annoyed me no end over the last couple of years, the blanket assumption that because she is a woman of certain age, as I am, that of course I would vote for her, strike a blow against the patriarchy, and for equal rights and anyway aren’t we entitled to have one of our own elected to the highest office in the land? Er… no.
I might have, once. Say, if she had divorced that two-timer she was married to, as soon as they moved out of the White House, and build a political career on her own, and on her own accomplishments. And if I had a lobotomy, or spent the last thirty years in a patchouli scented haze, re-living the glory days of the 60s. But I didn’t. I don’t do entitlement politics. I do accomplishments; Real accomplishments, not something jiggered up in an attempt to meet some vague ideological component or for a crowd to cheer at.
About the one positive thing you can say about Her Perhaps Maybe Inevitableness is that just about all the dirt ever on her has been out there for decades, and pretty carefully sifted through. If she is to be the Democratic nominee, AKA The Last One Standing after the convention, we can be pretty certain of there being no startling new developments. All the existing well-known dirt would be pretty well sifted again over the next five months, but I can’t visualize anything new and startling emerging.
This cannot be said of The Fresh Prince of Illinois. B. Obama, he of the middle name which can’t be mentioned, he of the thin resume and even thinner skin, nourished and groomed by the Chicago political machine and led before us, the Chosen One himself, hailed by the hosannas of the elite, the trendy, the daring… and also the Europeans. (Note to Euro political thinkers – umm, many of us have ancestors who left Europe to get away from people like you. Your recommendation in this respect is kind of a kiss of death. It’s like that letter-writing campaign during the last election, where Guardian readers were encouraged to write personal letters to American voters encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. )
As of this weekend, Sen. Obama has done a U-turn and departed his church of twenty years; that very trendy, large Chicago church with the charismatic and very popular black liberation theologist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright… whose fulminations from the pulpit (handily recorded and originally distributed by the church itself !) did not strike quite the same note with the larger public. Observers of the current election scene had wondered for weeks if Obama really believed various of the Reverend Wrights’s racist fantasies – in which case he is belying his own words about racial healing – or did he just go along with it all because it was politically useful – in which case he is just another cynical, grubby politician, whoring after votes and influence. Guess that question has been answered.
Considering all the people who have now been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign – the Fresh Prince’s white grandmother, various staff members, the Reverend Wright and now his church – one hopes that sucker has wheels on it like a monster truck. I am sure there will be more, even without the rumored recording of Mrs. Obama saying quite unfortunate and impolitic things. I have the impression that the Obamas and their circle live very circumscribed lives, an echo chamber of their own making. They appear to have no notion of how appalling, ham-fisted or just dim-witted some of their off-the-cuff remarks sound to the larger world outside their little bubble.
I rather miss Teresa Kerry, as the campaign season gets into full swing! I despised her husband, but at least she seemed to be a quirky, intelligent, interesting woman and a fairly experienced political wife. Michelle Obama just appears as a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement. I can imagine her behaving appallingly and when called on it, blaming it all on teh racism! Straw-person argument, I know. But I have run into women like that in real life. In interviews and speeches she comes off as just that sort of woman.
Oh, yeah – interesting convention coming up. Interesting election season too. Pass the popcorn.
(Later – Additional thoughts from Cassandra at Villanous Company)
When is a scarf not a scarf? Apparently when it’s a keffiyeh. I know, I know, I said I was done reading Michelle Malkin over a year ago and seriously? I haven’t. But I do read Venomous Kate regularly and her post led me to MM’s. Apparently Charles Johnson of LGF was the first to “report” on this serious breech of national security, but I only read him when I’m bored and I’m looking for someone or something to be pissed off about. Frankly with my blood pressure, reading him would violate my Doctor’s and Beautiful Wife’s orders.
When I first heard about this on the news all I could think was, “Rachel Ray? A Terrorist Sympathizer? Give me a freakin’ break!” She needs to be arrested for being overly perky, but I’m fairly certain that she didn’t wake up that day thinking, “I’m going to send a message of support to our Palestinian brothers and sisters while I try to help Duncan Donuts sell some coffee, maybe I’ll get the Arafat secret recipe for falafel.” It wasn’t until I read Kate’s post that I discovered it was Johnson and Malkin who “got the word out.”
Malkin and Johnson’s point seems to be that if Ray and Dunkin Donuts had no idea about the political overtones of wearing a keffiyeh, they darn well should have and being “clueless” about the symbolism was just as bad. At least that’s what I got out of it.
Sigh. Excuse me while I go pound my head on a wall for about 15 minutes.
Thanks.
What’s my point? Well, you all know that I’m not a fan of radical islam. It’s what I consider a “Bad Thing.” But I think we have enough real things to be worried about without having to look at every piece of minutiae that might be part of a terrorist plot. Instead of “exposing” what for some is just a fashion accessory as the insidious symbol of Palestinian terrorism it REALLY is, steal the symbol.
Ya see, in my mind, if folks who aren’t terrorist sympathizers choose to wear a keffiyeh because, oh, I don’t know, they think it’s a cool scarf that goes well with their outfit, then it stops meaning what the terrorists and Gladys Kravitz’s of the world want it to mean. It takes the power out of it.
Think about it. If designers started making kaffiyehs with little stars of David? Maybe with American Flags? Make them in red, white and blue? Car companies could put their logos on them. Cafe Press could sell them with Little Green Footballs all over them, or maybe tiny pictures of Ronald Reagan. Or even…I don’t know…have a cooking celebrity with no ties to any terrorist organization wear one when she’s selling coffee for Dunkin Donuts. Liberals would start hating them it because now it’s a symbol of U.S. capitalism instead of Palestinian unity. Conservatives could start wearing them with pride. I’d like to get one with the Starbucks Mermaid all over it because it would offend people that don’t know a mermaid when they see one.
Robert Ferrigno on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Usually I hope that Robert is just kidding. In this case, I hope he’s not.
Sung to the tune of R.E.M.’s “The One”
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out to the one I left behind
A simple prop, to occupy my time
This one goes out to the one I love
Viaaaaaaagraaaaaaa, viaaaaaagraaaaaa.
It came to me while driving on the way home from work.
Harvey Korman passed away last night.
Some of my fondest family television memories are of watching Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett Show. The best sketches? The ones where Conway cracked Korman up.
I remember my whole family, from my Gramma down to lil me laughing so hard we cried as those two clowns performed.
And can anyone forget the delightfully degenerate Heady Lemar (That’s Headley!).
Thank you for the laughs Sir. You will be missed.
On a side note, there’s just no television show that the whole family can sit and watch and have THAT kind of belly laugh together with anymore. I think CBS could play those old shows in primetime today and get a HUGE audience.
My pet-loving neighbor, Judy, claims that the very best cats have something of the qualities of dogs in them; they are friendly, curious and open to all kinds of adventurous interaction with other species. Sometimes such cats as these like water, are perfectly agreeable to walking on a leash and display a fondness for dog-like amusements such as playing fetch, and eagerly eating anything that takes their fancy. In childhood, my family had a Siamese cat who had a peculiar fondness for popcorn, cookie dough, canned peaches and cornflakes – but then Siamese are notoriously eccentric. In any case, perhaps we can consider a name for these special cats. They are not kitty-cats – they are puppy-cats.
The most determined puppy-cat we know is a black cat named Horatio Caine, who lives just up the road – obviously his people are CSI fans. He has a collar with his name-tag hung on it, and the usual sort of animal license tags. I know nothing about his owners, save for what I can deduce from their garden: neat and ornamented with about the average number of garden tchochkas – fancy pots, banners, chimes and sculptures, and their car – slightly more than the usual number of in-your-face bumper-stickers. But they have a really cool cat.
Horatio lives in the garage, which he seems to prefer. They leave the garage door cracked about six inches, so he can come and go as he pleases, and does he please! He is almost always somewhere close by, when we come past with the dogs, and often comes trotting down the sidewalk to meet us. He has become perfectly amiable with Spike and with the Lesser Weevil. He will throw himself down on the warm concrete and bat at Spike with his paws, in an attempt to get her to tussle with him. One day, he even ran out from behind the car and batted Spike on the hindquarters to get her attention. He twines himself around the Weevil’s legs, walks underneath her and rubs the side of his face against both of them. This action may be taken as affectionate, but I am also told it is how cats mark objects for their own. This sometimes happens twice in a day, as we go out and as we return; it really seems that Horatio is glad to see us. When we depart, he runs after us the length of several houses, before trotting back to his garage.
It didn’t happen overnight, of course – he wouldn’t come very close to Weevil, at first. Spike was much closer in size, and not nearly so intimidating. Gradually, he put aside a certain wariness about the Weevil, coming closer and closer, or allowing her to come closer to him, as they sniff at each other in a companionable way. For the last month or so, they have been easy and comfortable with each other. Horatio walks below her chin, and she drools on him. I think the Weevil would like to be better friends with cats, but of ours, only Percy and Sam allow any such familiarity.
It is really quite marvelous, to have a cat be so friendly with dogs that are not part of their household. I shouldn’t be surprised to know that Horatio has other dog-friends, but it must make a curious sight for anyone driving through our neighborhood: a black cat, so utterly friendly and affectionate towards a pair of dogs, out for their daily walkies. He is obviously very fond of his people, and they of him – otherwise, we’d add him to our menagerie, or at least see if he wanted to put on a leash and go on walkies with us.
“What’s the point of sending that to Mars, it’s a waste of money. We should give that money to the poor.”
Krep. Nothing pushes my buttons like reading stuff like that. [1]
I’ve got nothing against charity. We all need a hand sometimes. But let’s put this in perspective.
This article says there are 37 million poor in the United States. Go with that figure. [2]
Government figures are hard to nail down – Nasawatch claims $420 million for the Phoenix lander.
briandunbar_natasha_~:irb
>> 420000000/37000000
=> 11
If we smeared the cost of the Phoenix Lander into a thin paste and divided it up even-steven we could buy all the poor people in the US a nice lunch at Applebees.
In the meantime we’ve lost whatever science data the mission will yield. We don’t know the economic benefit of this but in the past such returns have been huge – the way of life that enables me to type and you to read comes from unexpected riches derived from scientific research.
If we buy every poor schmo in America a single meal at a cheap restaurant .. jobs have been lost because we’re not paying tens of thousands of people to build the rocket, the probe, to monitor and direct the mission. They’re not all rocket scientists – no small percentage of the people involved with the mission – NASA, JPL, contractors, sub-contractors – are just people. Some of them are officially poor persons who sweep floors and clean out toilets.
Now they’re really poor because they don’t have a job.
They have lunch, so that’s something. If they’re canny they’ll save back part of their meal for take-home so they can eat it for dinner.
[1] Outlanders disrespecting the Green Machine, will do it as well.
[2] We can ignore the snide ‘holier than thou’ tone of the article.
Memorial Day, Afganistan – May 2005
by Michael Fay
In case you missed it, it’s Memorial Day.
If you look around the web you’ll find some awesome tributes to our Vets. I think the gang here has done a wonderful job as always.
I just wanted to add my thanks to the families of those who serve. The wives, husbands, sons and daughters who were left behind because their loved ones paid the ultimate price.
On behalf of the entire Timmer family, Beautiful Wife, Gorgeous Daughter, Dashing Son in Law, Boyo and myself, consider yourself hugged and thanked.
This granite wall may startle you
with its listing of our dead,
but if you’ll let your heart respond,
the wall speaks life, instead.
Unlike our walls that keep things out,
this wall serves as a bridge
linking hearts and memories
from the dead to we who live.
While memory may fade with time,
our pain somehow stays new.
Yet we leave our heartaches at the wall,
no longer torn in two
by sorrow that cuts like a knife,
leaving festering regret.
Instead, our healing has begun,
and we find our faces wet
with tears for loved ones gone ahead,
while we somehow still live.
And we marvel at the message
this black wall has to give,
that Love stops not for death nor time,
but is guaranteed to last,
and healing is within our reach
once we accept our past.
–mvy 1991 —
Once there was a country, a foreign country which hardly anyone in the US save for a handful of scholars and specialists had ever heard of, and certainly cared little about. It wasn’t a country that had contributed many immigrants to the United States – not like England, or Ireland, Germany or Italy. It couldn’t be described as a Christian country, although there was a substantial Christian element. It was just one of those faraway foreign places that Americans really didn’t give a rip about until a shooting war started there, and American boys died in quantities in locations with strange-sounding names.
So, there was a war, and American troops were in the middle of it, along with some stout allies, a war that looked uncomfortably like a civil war, with saboteurs and insurrectionists and foreign sympathizers to the side the Americans were fighting against, sneaking over the borders – there were even other nations giving substantial aid and comfort to the side that the Americans were fighting!
This country was a wrecked and traumatized place – once it had boasted a proud and independent culture, but it had been occupied and broken to the will of the conqueror, a brutal dictator that had imposed alien concepts and practices upon it, and used their young men to fight in regional wars. But the conqueror did not think much of the fighting qualities of those soldiers – and neither did the Americans, at first. Here they were, spending their lives, their blood and treasure in defense of a people who seemed hapless in their own defense. Bit by slow and painstaking bit, progress was made: soldiers were created out of seeming unpromising materiel. Sometimes it seemed that every one of these solders had to have an American soldier at his elbow, giving patient instruction… and yet, and yet, when the war ended – the country thus painfully established was still there.
And of course, being a bloody and seemingly unpopular war, with a full schedule of blunders, incompetence and atrocities – both actual and alleged – there was the usual sort of newspaper headlines. Never mind about the successes, the space and time that was bought in American blood for the inhabitants of that country to recover, to find their own feet, tend their gardens and begin to build again. Never mind all that – good news doesn’t sell. Some of this country’s home-grown politicians turned out to be of an unsavory sort, more authoritarian than truly democratic, so there was another black eye for Americans, in propping up what appeared to be hardly an improvement on what this country had before. There is always a market for bad news, the ‘gotcha’ headline and so-called important people being cut down to size.
Seeming to be such a pointless and futile effort, wasteful of American lives and treasure made that war into an entertainment staple, after all the newsy goodness had been absorbed. American soldiers were portrayed as luckless dupes or malignant martinets, the American military was incompetent, wasteful, foolish, there was no point to the war, all these sacrifices of lives, of limbs, health and happiness was for nothing. There was no point, it was all useless, and destructive… the inhabitants of that country didn’t want or need our military to be there anyway, so what was the point of fighting? Everything would be better off as soon as we departed and left them to themselves.
Except that we didn’t. The war did end – with an armistice. American troops still serve tours there in that country, on the off-chance that the fighting might resume – although after fifty years, it just doesn’t seem very likely. South Korea is prosperous, modern, bustling with industry – as different as can be from the picture it presented fifty years ago, as different as it can be from the communist-ruled North. What would the whole Korean peninsula look like, if we had chosen to leave Koreans to their own devices, fifty years ago? Starving, poor and xenophobic, at the very least, living in darkness and want, a country-sized concentration camp.
What will Iraq look like after the passing of another fifty Memorial Days? Will it be anything like Korea; a regional powerhouse of industry, cultured, prosperous and politically stable? Will Saddam’s reign of terror be something relegated to the history books, will their present war be something barely recalled by the elders, a matter of monuments to be decorated with flowers and ceremony on certain days, while two or three generations have grown up knowing nothing but peace, security and plenty? Will there have been two or three generations of American military who have served tours at a few long-established bases and garrisons, stuck in out of the way corners of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Will there be American soldiers and airmen who have come away with pleasant memories and a taste for local food and some pictures of ancient ruins and modern buildings looming over them, who made friends there? Fifty years is a blink in time – but it was long enough for South Korea to pull together in the space that Americans and their allies made for them. It may yet be time enough for Iraq, too, but its not as if we’ll be able to tell until long afterwards.
For Dad, who served in Korea and came back, for Wil who served in the 8th Air Force and came back, and Blondie who served in Kuwait and Iraq and came back – but for all those who served and didn’t come back, and who made the sacrifice without even being sure of what it was about or what it was all for, even – thank you, on this Memorial Day.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
and how it came to be:
A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.
The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l’Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.
In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.
A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. “His face was very tired but calm as we wrote,” Allinson recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”
With somber gratitude for all who have given their lives in service to their countries, and heartfelt prayers for the safety of those currently serving.
Thank you all, and may God bless and keep you.
Of all of the manufactured news “events”* of the last couple of years – the Koran flushing story, the so-called Jenin massacre, the adventures of Green-Helmet Guy and his penchant for playing with dead children, 60 Minutes and Dan Rather’s amazing faked TANG memos – the Al-Dura hoax sets a number of awful records, besides being about the first of them all. Jenin was debunked within a couple of weeks, ditto for Green-Helmet Guy, and about the only casualty for Dan Rather’s adventure with copies of old files was his own credibility. The Koran-flushing story sent the Moslem world screeching like a cage full of howler monkeys, even though no one could explain how on earth a solid book could be flushed all the way down past the u-bend anyway.
The Al-Dura story – that stands by itself for a couple of reasons, not least because of the very horror of the event that it presented; a frightened, cowering child, killed by Israeli troops right in front of the news cameras. A horrible event, as presented – but what was even more horrible was the speed with which the image and the event became an icon and how unquestioningly it was accepted at face value across the Moslem and the western world as well. The Al-Dura story also killed people, quite a lot of them, starting with the two lost Israeli reservists who were murdered and torn apart by a Palestinian mob within two weeks of its’ incendiary broadcast.
Of course it had happened, right in front of the television cameras – couldn’t you believe your own eyes? But as it eventually developed, maybe you couldn’t. Compare all the other video footage shot that day, of Palestinian mobs trying to provoke a reaction from Israeli solders at the Netzarim junction, while dozens of news cameras rolled, to the final edited version of the apotheosis of the littlest Paleo-martyr – which no apparently no one saw fit to do until months and years afterwards. If anything, the whole appalling story is proof of the axiom that a lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its’ boots on.
To me, the worst thing about matters like the al-Dura affair, and the TANG memo was how eagerly a thin story and staged footage were initially embraced as a representative of a gospel truth by reporters and news establishments that we had come to expect better of. Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity doesn’t even begin to excuse actions like that. I don’t know which is worse – that our national and international media overlords would be so stupid as to swallow stuff like that listed in my opening graf whole, or so venial, malicious and arrogant as to cooperate in perpetuating a blood-libel, fully knowing the basis for their story was manufactured.
I do know that increasingly the credibility of the traditional news media has been pissed away over the last half-decade, now that we have the ability through the internet to follow-up on stories like this, that once would have been relegated to the newspaper morgue and to history books written decades after events. Progress in that, I suppose. Tn the popular mind, the half-life of a libel like the al-Dura hoax is probably right up there with that of plutonium, and President Bush’s famous plastic turkey and several times more harmful.
Michele Catalano is writing…again…over at Pajamas Media. Her first post is on the Lori Drew Cyberbullying case. She makes some good points that some of us here need to consider…including me.
Hopefully this will be a regular thing. This blog here was the first one I ever read and hers was a close second or third. While she’s gotten away from her snarkier rants, she’s still one of my favorite writers.
Just when I was beginning to think the whole Amazon-Booksurge-POD imbroglio was dying down, now it begins again. Angela and Richard Hoy of Booklocker.com have filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon. Com (details here)
I had begun to hope that Amazon had seen the error of their ways, deafened by the level of outrage expressed by the many, many, many POD small presses and niche writers like myself, as well as professional associations like the The Author’s Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA),and The Small Publishers Association of North America and was going to rethink their policy of demanding that all POD books sold directly through Amazon.com be printed by their in-house print service. Well, there was certainly no more talk of any more POD houses caving in , under threat of having the “buy’ button turned off on the Amazon page for any authors’ books published by those houses.
At the Independent Authors’ Guild, our members are terribly split over how to respond. Not in the sense of “I’m going to take my marbles and go home” sort of split, more the “everyone decides what is in their best interests” in the way of response. We are an association of equals; there is no corporate line to be toed. Some of us do not give a rat’s patoot if we have any sales through Amazon or not, especially after this greedy grab. Others care very much, since they make the bulk of their royalty payments through on-line retailers, of which Amazon.com is the 800 lb gorilla. One very dedicated member felt that she had no choice but to sign with Booksurge to publish her historical novel, into which she had put too many years of work to put at risk. Others of us are boycotting Amazon.com, and switching any links in our book-marketing materials to Barnes & Noble or Booksamillion. It’s not just buying books and other goods through Amazon.com – I’ve stopped posting book reviews there, participating in any of their blogs or discussion groups, or asking my readers to post reviews for “To Truckee’s Trail” there; I’d much rather throw my custom and marketing interests to Barnes and Noble. (They answer emails about my book page there much more readily than Amazon does, oddly enough. Amazon’s ‘author tech help’ runs the gamut between unresponsive and non-existent)
I’m only too proud to be a Booklocker author, and to continue to be published by Richard and Angela: the Adelsverein Trilogy (aka Barsetshire with cypress trees and lots of side arms) will be available from Booklocker in December. I got my ‘economic stimulus’ tax rebate this week and am using the largest portion of it to get started. Who says that the gummint doesn’t support the arts and literature?
Senator McCain showed up on SNL this weekend, dropping by Weekend Update and spoofing a political ad. Apparently, some on the far right have determined that “it’s beneath the dignity of the office he aspires to.” He’s pissed off Ingraham? Point John McCain.
This is just me, and I don’t claim to be a conservative, other than I’m more conservative than most in the “mainstream” left, but I think that appearance can’t do anything but help and I’ll tell you why.
Back in the fall of 1996, AFTER the general election, Bob Dole appeared on SNL. I remember looking over at Beautiful Wife and asking, “Where the HELL was THAT guy when the election was going on?” Bob Dole on the campaign trail, wooden and lifeless. Bob Dole on SNL, relaxed, smiling, having a good time, with a vibrant personality. McCain on the Campaign trail; not able to tell the difference between Iraq and Iran, kind of stuffy, taking shots at Obama’s war policy, not paying a lot of attention to Clinton. McCain on SNL; Giving “advice” to the democrats, urging them to not pick a nominee until the last possible second, relatively good timing, sporting something resembling a genuine grin.
Like it or not, the Presidential race is mostly a personality contest. And yes, I hate agreeing with Bill O’Reilly but even a broken clock etc.. How else do you explain eight years of Bill Clinton? How do you begin to explain Jimmy Carter? How did George W. Bush defeat Al Gore? Actually, Al Gore defeated himself by being such a condescending shmuck during the debates…as spoofed by…you guessed it…Saturday Night Live. John Kerry? Well, he’s John Kerry and I think I would have voted for Bill Clinton again before I voted for John Kerry, but that just proves my point.
Once the dems finally get around to picking their candidate, which I’m assuming will be Senator Obama once Senator Clinton gets dragged away kicking and screaming and trying to gnaw through her leather straps, Senator McCain is going to need all the personal goodwill he can get. Senator Obama is like-able, he’s a superior speaker, he looks young and relaxed on television, and I’m guessing he’s going to slaughter Senator McCain in any debates. Senator Obama may very well be wrong on every important issue that this country is facing, and I don’t concede that sweeping of a statement but he’s going to look and sound magnificent. Senator McCain needs to have something in his personality account. Is SNL enough? Nope. Is it a good start? Yep. Do I think he’s going to be our next President? I don’t know…which makes this all the more fun.
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.
Back in my neighborhood on da Nort Side (sic) a Chicago, the name “Kennedy” was spoken with reverence. It was not odd to see a picture of JFK on the wall next to the Pope, or possibly off to one side of the ever-present statue of the Blessed Mother. For an Irish Catholic to raise themselves up to the level of President of The United States was the ultimate for Irish Immigrants. We were not always the most popular kids in the town.
Ted isn’t Jack, he’s not even Bobby. He’s no saint. I don’t agree with most of his political stances. But for some reason I’m incredibly worried and saddened by the news. My prayers are with the Kennedy family.
Just this afternoon I finished the last few pages of the final chapter of the final volume of the Adelsverein Saga (known to all as “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and Lots of Sidearms” – first draft, so there is quite a lot of snipping, editing, revising, et-cetera to be done.
But still – a grand total of 437,800 words, spread over three volumes. It’s nearly as long as Lord of the Rings, which is supposed to have clocked in at half a million. No wonder I feel like I have just finished a marathon.
There is so much that I wanted to do, to flesh out the characters and the various dramatic incidents, to include some significant backstories and to generally do right by the epic, even if some of the not-so-essential stuff is snipped, I may very well finish with just as many words or more.
Something to think about, perhaps dividing the final volume into two. Say the heck with that and make it a quartet….
Slightly depressed this evening – the part-time job that I went to, after my dear friend Dave the Computer Genius and part-time employer died most unexpectedly, has come to an end. Also somewhat unexpectedly. Eh, I knew it was temporary, I just thought it would last a little longer! But they did think the world of my work and enterprise, will call me in again to work on specific projects and will recommend me enthusiastically to their various clients, I departed on extraordinarily good terms – it’s just that I am back to a certain degree of job and financial uncertainty.
On the up-side, the commute, even once a week was a bear and I would have slashed my own wrists with my teeth after spending another couple of eight hours a day on the phone doing cold calls.
One thing that makes cellular users crazy is the inability of their providers to turn off text messaging. While younger folks are texting at a rate that baffles most folks over 30, many older folks don’t want it, don’t need it and get upset to the point of stroke when they’re told that their service provider cannot and will not remove the ability to accept text messaging from their cellular service. To add insult to annoyance, the cellular companies charge you for these unwanted messages after they’ve told you that the can’t remove the feature.
Very simply, you’re mad at the wrong people. It’s not the cellular companies that make it impossible to remove the text messaging feature, it’s your federal government.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 to be exact.
Now…you may say, “But Timmer, that Act was never ratified.” and you’d be right.
However, the FCC in its infinite wisdom still took the part of The TCA of 1996 which said that telecommunications companies could not restrict telemessaging services and ran with it anyway. The idea being that if those messages were restricted, that would be an infringement on the senders’ First Amendment rights.
There isn’t a customer service rep working for a cellular company today who doesn’t WANT to turn off your text messaging. Believe me when I say that as much as it annoys our customers, it annoys us just as much. We don’t like being told what low-lifes we are or that we’re in cahoots with the texting spammers or what a scam it is. We don’t.
It is nice to be able to tell everyone that you’re mad at the wrong people though, and that word is getting out. Apparently the FCC is getting tired of cellular customers calling THEM to complain about it and there’s hope that by the end of the summer, we’ll be able to turn off those annoying messages for those folks who have no use for little messages on their phones.
UPDATE: The more I read about this issue, the less the above explanation holds water. I’m on my weekend, but I’m going to be speaking with the person who offered this explanation to me come Monday. I’m not going to take it down though. I’m going to leave this up as a reminder to do more research BEFORE I put up a post. Thanks to those of you who chimed in and made me look closer at this.
Men,
If you want to maintain a healthy marital relationship, do not regale your beloved over lunch about the good times you had before you were married.
Specifically don’t talk about liberty in Okinawa, the red light district outside Kadena and bar girls. More specifically don’t say anything like the following: Boy, I could have married that girl – mmm hmm.
Because that would be what is referred to as a mistake.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
Okay, so summer is right around the corner and if you’re shopping for new cell phones, now is the time to start looking for that new phone that you’ve had your eyes on for the past few months. Prices are coming down on a LOT of phones from all of the cell phone companies.
But…wait…if the prices are coming down on all of last year’s hot models, doesn’t that mean that new models are getting ready to be introduced?
Yes.
So, before you drop $19.95 on last year’s newest and best thing, keep in mind that this year’s newest and best phones are getting ready to be introduced. And no…after a certain amount of time, you won’t be able to return that cool phone from last year to get the newest and shiniest new toy that’s just come out.
Patience. Do some research. Check out the plethora of cell phone blogs and see what your carrier is getting ready to introduce before you jump on all of those inexpensive phones that the cellular companies are trying to unload before the new ones come out.
I know that iPhone has been burning a hole in your brain since it was introduced, but keep in mind that some of the companies that aren’t AT&Cingular are looking to introduce their Google Android Phones in the upcoming year. You all know that I’m an Mac-head. I wouldn’t give up my MacBook Pro for any other laptop out there. However, while I lust after an iPhone as much as any Mac Fanboy, I also know that the Androids are going to be the most customizable communications devices that we’ve ever seen. Third party applications will be the norm on these “phones.”
Remember, most companies give you discounted pricing on phones after you’ve had a phone for one year and then huge discounts at the two year mark. (Coincidently when your contract is about to expire.) If you’ve got a phone that you’ve had for two years and have that huge discount available, do you want to use it for a very cheap phone that’s going to be outdated by the end of the summer, or do you want to use it to bring down the price on a full blown communications device?
Me? I want my phone to be my phone, my iPod to be my iPod, and my laptop to be my laptop. I don’t think any of the comm devices out there or that are getting ready to come out take care of all of those tasks as well as the individual devices do…yet.
Of course, none of these new “all in one” devices are good without the features to support them. Check with your provider to see what the price is on the features that you want/need on your device. Some features are bundled. You can get internet/email/text messaging all for 19.95 with some devices, while others only have internet and email for 19.95 and you have to add an additional texting package. Some devices are less expensive (coughBLACKBERRYcough) but their features are going to cost you more. The sleek “grownup” device may be what fits your look, but the device targeted at the younger crowd, often have less expensive bundles that take care of all your needs.
What do I think of the Sprint “everything for 99.99” plan? I think that’s the last ditch effort of a telecom to increase it’s customer base before they sell to another company. Unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited internet and email all for 99.99 simply isn’t fiscally maintainable for very long.
Having said all that, don’t look for the cheap or free or cool phones, look at what you need and then check with the wireless telecoms to find out what the total cost of ownership over a year is going to be. A couple hours worth of research can save you hundreds of dollars in you personal comm budget. And just a warning, if you’re going to start texting anytime soon, or give your teenager the ability to text, make sure you give yourself and them enough messages to last the month. The thing about text messaging is that the more you do it, the more you do it.
Sorry for the light blogging this week; I can only handle so much Obamania. Having pegged him as a gorgeous, charismatic empty suit a couple of months ago, watching the wheels wobble on his bus, in spite of all the fawning adoration of our supposedly non-biased press corps… well, it’s just tiresome. The crash is inevitable; it will be messy. His wife is a shrew, his associates are as embarrassing as the close associates of machine pols always are, and the professional black race-mongers will rally around him regardless. Yawn. I think I will have another cup of tea – I have a book review, two DVD reviews and the draft of an old-media article about city politics (in another city!)… and a book chapter to finish.
Personally, the book chapter is the most important. It’s the final chapter of the Adelsverein saga, AKA “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a lot of Sidearms”, for which I first sketched out some notes and a short plot outline eighteen months ago. It was going to be a single book, incorporating a lot of the elements for which “Truckee” was criticized as not having, in order to be commercial; a lot of suspense about survival of the main characters, a fair amount of violence, romantic tension and even a hint of sex. I decided that I might as well throw in operatic levels of everything, in the hopes of being more commercially appealing. I thought I could do another unknown dramatic story of the frontier, since hardly anyone outside Texas has ever heard of the German colonies. The more I discovered in the course of researching this little corner of the 19th century, the more that I was drawn into my characters’ lives.
I wanted to go farther than just a simple romance about the founding of a small town, and the heroine’s discovery of love and a new land, of marriage and the birth of her first child. I had to follow her and her family and circle of friends through the crucible of the Civil War, through loss and desolation, up to the dawning of new hope and the crumbling of the Confederacy. The last volume does not tell quite so neatly contained a story; it’s a story of building again, of the rise of the cattle baronies in post-war Texas, of middle age and seeing your children open their wings and flying, of letting go of illusions and coming to terms with life. At the very end, my heroine sits in the 20th century parlor of her younger daughters’ house, reflecting on it all. She has seen marvelous things, known fascinating people, seen the world move from one powered by horse and sails to one where men fly, in engine-powered contraptions of wire and canvas. She has also become an American.
Sometime this week, I will write that last chapter of her story, Oh, I won’t be done with it, of course – I will need revise and edit, polish and format. I will need to re-read a stack of books, classic and modern Westerniana, immerse myself in the coffee-table books of Western art that I bought at the library sale last month, make about a thousand notes of new inclusions, take in the feedback of all the people who have read all three volumes, and chain myself to a hot computer for a couple of months. But it is the beginning of the end. One of the other Texas IAG members takes beautiful scenic photos and likes to fiddle around with artistic effects. He is letting me use three of them as covers for the Adelsverein Saga – look for all three in December of this year. For a sneak peek at his work, I put some of them up on my book website.
What to do next? I don’t know, yet – I had thought of doing a sort of prelude, about pre-Republic Texas, and maybe an adventure to do with the Mason County Hoo-Doo War, the original farmers-and-cattlemen feud. I’d hate to milk a franchise to death, though. I’d almost rather start on something original.
On the literary front I have a signing for “Truckee’s Trail” at a local Borders next month, a place that not only has a very interested and supportive general manager, but a venue that jumps most evenings, being co-located in a complex which includes a huge movie megaplex and a lot of popular restaurants in a well-heeled part of town. Alas, the IPPY short-list has been released, and “Truckee” didn’t place. The other contest I entered it in won’t be announced until October, so I’m well served by putting it out of my mind entirely.
Back to the 19th century…
Now THAT was a good movie. It wasn’t a good comic book movie, it was a good movie. Just go.
I have to confess, one of the reasons I liked it so much is that Iron Man flies exactly the same way I fly when I have flying dreams. I know, sounds weird, but true.
Oh, and if you want to know what possible sequels may be coming out, stick around until after all the credits have rolled.
Update: While I was watching BSG last night, I had a brilliant flash of the obvious that Iron Man is a good Science Fiction Movie. That’s what makes it better than some of the other comic to screen stories that have come out recently. Plausible story, realistic human interaction, and current technology pushed to heightened capabilities. I also remembered thinking when I was in high school, that Iron Man’s armor was directly “borrowed” from Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers.”
Okay, I’m done geeking out for the week.
Not everyone has issues after a tour of duty in a hot spot. But if you do … don’t be a hero. Get help. Learn from this man: Skippy comes clean on his PTSD issues.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
I had a nice tidy blog post all ready to go. [1]
It wasn’t a masterpiece of snark or derision. It wasn’t a world changing essay. It was geeky: I managed to talk about Boomer, Athena, Caprica Six and Solaris Zones.
Just a projection – it wasn’t really there.
But, the heck with it. It’s not nearly as good as something that has Grace Park and unix in the same post should be.
Solaris is a marketing term, but SunOS is clunky.
Instead, an article by a bint who gets all worked up that the nearly 10,000 Marines and sailors at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base have access to a beach, post exchange, a Wal-Mart and your standard gift shop selling t-shirts.
fear, mortal terror, etc.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
[1] Originally it was not going to be posted here, but since it veered off into a link to a bitchy news article editorial about Guantanamo Bay, it – sort of – belongs here.