Early Morning Thoughts (from a NON-morning person)

09. December 2007 · Comments Off on Early Morning Thoughts (from a NON-morning person) · Categories: General

I woke up at 330 this morning, and when I couldn’t get back to sleep, my first thought was “I knew that long mid-day nap was a bad idea.”

But as I lay there in bed, trying to fall asleep again, thoughts started flittering through my mind, some of them worth sharing. And I found myself writing a post in my mind, with no way to get it from my mind to paper/PC, unless I got up.

Why hasn’t someone invented a “mind-writing machine?” One that you can turn on and off at will, that could record the thoughts you particularly want to keep for later playback, without one’s having to get out of bed, turn on lights, and find writing paraphernalia?

More importantly, Was I LYING in bed, or LAYING in bed? : I’m 46 years old, with 2 degrees and 1/3 of another, and have no idea which is the correct word. I’m tired of not knowing that (I researched it when I got up – it seems that “lay” in the 2nd paragraph is correct, because it’s the past tense of lie. But when I’m IN bed, I’m LYING in bed. Hopefully, I’ll remember this tidbit of English grammar for more than the next 5 minutes).

So now I know – I lay in bed, thinking, and letting my mind ramble where it would. And y’all are wondering why the heck I thought my thoughts were worth sharing. That’s coming up next. More »

A Sunday Morning at the End of the World

07. December 2007 · Comments Off on A Sunday Morning at the End of the World · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Military, War

“Life in the wide world goes on much as it has these past age, full of its own comings and goings, scarcely aware of the existence of hobbits… for which I am very thankful.” – Gandalf, from “The Fellowship of the Ring”

There are some things that are so obvious that 20-20 hind-sight is not required, and Sunday, December 7th 1941 is one of them. The events of a couple of hours in the skies over a tiny Pacific Island previously known more as a tourist destination and a source for sugar and pineapples created a rift across the American consciousness, an abrupt demarcation between “then” and “now”. Very much like the effect of 9-11, a snap of a cosmically huge cracker into two pieces; you could look across to the other half of the cracker, and see that on either side of the chasm everything appeared to look just the same… but in your heart, you knew that things were not the same, and would never be quite the same again.

It was a smaller world, that America of seven decades ago, a very local, insular and insulated world, and one which moved comparatively slowly. Only the wealthiest or most adventurous traveled widely. Those who did travel did so by train, or passenger steamship in varying degrees of luxury. Passenger air travel was in its infancy, an exotic and expensive curiosity, as was television – a fancy futuristic gadget displayed at the 1939 Worlds’ Fair. People got their news from newspapers and movie news reels, from weekly magazines like “Life” and “The Saturday Evening Post”, and from the radio. Telephones were large clumsy black objects, nine out of ten on a party line, if you had one at all in your home. Urgent news came by telegram, a little slip of paper delivered by a bicycle messenger.

There was a war on, in that year of 1941; a war that been brewing for years before it finally burst into the open. Europe had been at war and China… poor fractured China, had been racked and wrecked by warlords, civil war and the Japanese for most of a decade. To Americans, it was all very tragic… but it was happening somewhere else. America of 1941 was built on a century and half of emigration by people who had consciously chosen to leave the old world with its resentments and quarrels behind. The consensus among most ordinary working Americans was that it was none of our business and best to keep out of it. A bill to draft military-age men had just barely been passed, the standing regular Army and Navy were insular little worlds all their own. The catastrophe of our own Civil War was just passing out of living memory, but recollection of World War I remained quite vivid, along with the conviction that we had been suckered into participation against our best interests. Asia’s quarrels and Europe’s quarrels were nothing to do with Americans and there was an ocean – which took better than a week to cross by ship – between us and the belligerent parties anyway.

And then one Sunday morning, under a tropical blue sky, all those happy assumptions went up in showers of smoke, explosions and flame. We may not have had an interest in the quarrels of others… but those quarrels definitely had an interest in us. And we were reminded again, those of us who forgotten or chosen to put that knowledge to one side, that the world is with us always.

A long while ago, I read an essay about the day after Pearl Harbor – can’t remember where, or by whom – but one of the memories recorded was from a person who had lived on or near the big Navaho Reservation, in the Southwest. On the morning of Monday, December 8th, 1941 – so this person recalled – every able-bodied male on the reservation over the age of seventeen showed up at their local post offices, carrying a gun and wanting to volunteer for the war… a war that had chosen them.

Egg in a Basket

06. December 2007 · Comments Off on Egg in a Basket · Categories: Eat, Drink and be Merry

We watched “V for Vendetta” again a couple of weeks ago. Two of the characters in the movie make “eggs (eggies) in a basket” for Evey.

I think I’ve had that for breakfast about four times since then.

It’s simple, heat a fry pan with butter or butter flavored low fat spray, tear a hole in the middle of a piece of bread, put the bread in the hot butter/spray, crack an egg and put it in the hole. Fry until you can see the bottom of the egg get solid white. Flip. I add a piece of swiss cheese to the top and let it melt because there’s not enough in there that’s bad for your heart.

Simple, plain, good food. Ya can’t buy this anywhere and I wouldn’t want to.

Items of Note – Progress Report

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

A few items of note to report

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Caption This One, Da Winnahs (071201)

01. December 2007 · Comments Off on Caption This One, Da Winnahs (071201) · Categories: Fun and Games

Thought it was time to bring this back. I’m not as bored with captions as I was earlier in the year and I’ve been captioning at other places again.Rodney has a good roundup of other captions going on.Winners on…hmmm…Tuesday…okay Wednesday. Perhaps we’ll do better next week. I like them both.

  1. De Campptown ladies sing this song,
    Doo-da, Doo-da
    De Camptown racetrack’s two miles long
    Oh, de doo-da day    Gwine to run all night
    Gwine to run all day
    I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
    Somebody bet on the gray!    Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20071202 @ 1224
  2. Initial testing of new “anti donkey” armor appears successful, however the camouflage segment leaves something to be desired.Comment by Sam Parkins — 20071203 @ 0707

R.I.P. Evel Knievel

30. November 2007 · Comments Off on R.I.P. Evel Knievel · Categories: General

This was one guy my Dad and I agreed on. Evel Knievel was the coolest. If anyone else had broken as many bones as he had and I heard he was going to do some insane stunt, I probably wouldn’t pay much attention. Evel Knievel? You HAD to watch him. It didn’t matter if he made the jump or not. The red, white and blue leather jumpsuits. The Jimmy Dean way of looking at who he was talking to from under his brow. And that grin.

To the entire Knievel family, you have my heartfelt condolences. Your Dad gave me and my Dad some amazing Saturday afternoons together. You have no idea how much that means to me.

And for the record, Evel Knievel wore a cape before Elvis.

A Note to the People of Sudan

30. November 2007 · Comments Off on A Note to the People of Sudan · Categories: Fun With Islam, Good God, History, Stupidity

There was a time when the British Empire would have wiped you off the face of the earth for threatening harm to one of their subjects…it wasn’t that long ago…

…just sayin’.

The March of Technology

29. November 2007 · Comments Off on The March of Technology · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, The Funny, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Sorry to have been a bit chintzy with the free bloggy ice cream over the last couple of days; I was wrestling with the many-limbed monster that is technology – or at least that aspect of it involved in doing a version of “To Truckee’s Trail” for Amazon’s “Kindle” reader. It turned out that the PDF version that I have, which is the final print version was incompatible with what Amazon has established for their system.

Which was a bit of a facer, because it uploaded and converted and looked – if not perfectly OK, at least fairly OK – but some of the other information I had to load – about which I would never in the world goof up (you know, like my SSAN?) were kicked back as invalid. What the hey? Email to Amazon customer service, expressing bafflement and considerable annoyance. Received an email back, with an option for a phone call to a customer service rep, which was totally surprising. I mean – there’s an option for speaking to a real hoo-man at Amazon?

Well, there was, but the first person I talked to sounded like a cousin of Special Ed, who handed me on to a technician who was about as helpful as one of those terrifyingly crusty old senior technicians, back when I was not Sgt. Mom, but merely Baby Airman… with a completely baffling problem.

You remember – the exchange with the crusty old technician with enough stripes on his arm for a zebra farm, which went roughly like this:

Baby Airman: Umm… can you tell me how to perform this insurmountably complicated and obscure task about which I have not the slightest clue?

Crusty Old Senior Technician: It’s in the manual. (Which is, let me add, about the size of the LA phone book, and printed in eeensy weensy type)

Baby Airman: (quavering slightly) Yes, but I…

Crusty Old Senior Technician: (growling contemptuously) Didn’t you read the manual?

B.A.: Yes, but…

C.O.S.T: Well then, what are you asking me for? Go and read it again!

B.A.: (creeping away in silent despair, racking brains in a futile attempt to figure out task)

So the Crusty Old Senior Technician – Amazon version basically told me the file format was all wrong, contemptuously forwarded a page with a lot of links to discussion forums – none of which really addressed my problem, since I wasn’t really sure what it was, exactly, and I wound doing just as what usually happened back then: some slightly more knowledgeable tech whispering “Pssst! Try this!” and handing me a short and well-thumbed little cheat sheet which told me exactly what I had to know to perform that formerly insurmountably complicated and obscure task.

In this case, it was one of the other Independent Authors’ Guild writers who said, “Oh, just convert it from PDF to Word and upload it again.”

So, within another ten hours, assuming something else hasn’t thrown a spanner into the works ( translation: a monkey wrench into the gears) “To Truckee’s Trail” will be available for purchase by those who are keen on the latest hot technological gadget! Enjoy! And thanks to those of you who have purchased paperback copies in the last couple of months!

Ewwwwwww

29. November 2007 · Comments Off on Ewwwwwww · Categories: General

2,921,100How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?Louisville Dating
I’m more than twice as gross as Kate…but we knew that.

Dear Fox News,

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

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

Drill Instructor

27. November 2007 · Comments Off on Drill Instructor · Categories: General

Let me tell you about my Senior Drill Instructor.

Throw out your preconceptions; Staff Sergeant King was not R. Lee Ermey, he was not Jack Webb.

What he was was the eptiome of ‘Marine Corps SNCO’. He walked the walk.  He talked the talk. He led by example.

He was the most unusual SDI at MCRD. Platoon 3099 was a herd of non-marching diddy-boppers, going into third phase. This was clearly unacceptable and if we kept it up we’d embarrass ourselves.

How bad were we? At one point SSgt Q. called out a command. First and second squad heard ‘By the Left Flank .. March’.

Third and Fourth squad heard ‘Column Half-Right . . March’

So .. ya. The platoon is rapidly marching away from itself. In front of a brace of Captains and a clutch of Majors and Colonels.  I was in First squad and had a perfect view of SSgt Q’s face. I thought his smokey-the-bear hat was going to pop off from the pressure.

We were pretty bad.

SSgt King brought a metronome in and installed it by the DI Hut, had it on 24×7.  Soon we’re all marching around in time in the barracks. My dreams were in time with a steady ‘click-click-click’.  He borrowed a bass drum from the band and had a pair recruits from the sick, lame and lazy section out beating on it while we drilled.

But they could not carry it around (sick, lame and lazy) so they stood in one place, beating away while we marched around them.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM …. BOOM …. BOOM

“FASTER!”

BOOM.BOOM.BOOM .. BOOM .. BOOM

“SLOWER!”

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM .. BOOM .. BOOM

“JUST LIKE THAT!”

I don’t have a lot of fond memories of boot camp – it’s not summer camp – but that scene is one of them. Thanks, SSgt King.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Christmas Music

27. November 2007 · Comments Off on Christmas Music · Categories: General

Okay, it’s that time of year. No matter where you go, be it office or department store, Christmas Music is being forced into our ear canals like creamed green beans through a toddler’s locked jaws. It’s the audio equivalent in my mind.

For today’s fun, what are your favorite Christmas Tunes and what can you simply not listen to one more time?

Favorites:

White Christmas – Bing Crosby

Baby It’s Cold Outside – Almost any version as long as there’s heat between the two singers. This version doesn’t suck one bit, especially for a contemporary duet. I found a new respect for Joan Osbourne after watching this, I didn’t think she had a sense of humor.

Elf’s Lament – Bare Naked Ladies

Silent Night – Celtic Woman (In Gaelic…actually I have an audio crush on Celtic Woman, I love everything they do. Give me my Bose headphones and a collection of their stuff and I’m in bliss.)

Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt (Madonna’s got nuthin’ on this.)

River – Robert Downey Jr.

Almost anything by Trans-Siberian Orchestra

The entire sountrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas (this IS Christmas to me).

Father Christmas – The Kinks

Can NOT listen to again:

Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town – Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band (Used to love this, now it gives me the wiggins. There’s just too much going on here.)

Do They Know It’s Christmas (The Original with various artists…I kind of like Bare Naked Ladies riff on it.)

Happy XMas (War is Over) – John freaking Lennon. I’ve almost caused an accident convulsing to change the channel on my car radio. I like the idea behind the song, but I simply cannot listen to it again.

Okay, let me simplify this. Just about any remake of a Christmas classic by a rock band or singer is going to make my skin crawl. Just quit already. Where is it written that when your career is taking a downturn you should try to put out a Christmas Album? A Very Special Christmas was a nice idea at the time, but it opened the floodgates for a plethora of contemporary artists thinking they could and should do a Christmas album when their careers have run into trouble.

Oh, and I SO stole this idea from Michele’s post.

A Plague of Politicians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Questions of the Day (071126)

26. November 2007 · Comments Off on Questions of the Day (071126) · Categories: Politics

If you had to go to the polls today, who would you vote for in the primaries? Both of them. When Nov 08 rolls around, who are the two you want to see running against one another? Why?

I’ll be honest, I haven’t been paying a lot of attention. I know, shame on me. I was tuning it out mostly because it was too damn early and now that the primaries are coming up, I find myself playing catch-up. I don’t think I’m alone.

As God is My Witness…

22. November 2007 · Comments Off on As God is My Witness… · Categories: General, The Funny

you should go to Michele’s and view these classic bits of Thanksgiving humor.  Warning, severe screen and keyboard damage.  View with your mouth empty.  You’ve been warned.

The humanity

Top Ten Worst Thanksgiving Day Sides

22. November 2007 · Comments Off on Top Ten Worst Thanksgiving Day Sides · Categories: General

Found through a comment thread on Lileks; Angie Schultz posted this link and I couldn’t resist.

We’re having roast duck (with pear relish) with fresh green beans, organic fingerling potatoes, and strawberry cheesecake for afters. It’s not that we don’t like turkey and all that traditional stuff – we just don’t like eating the leftovers for a month afterwards!

FALCON – America’s newest weapon in the war on everyone else

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on FALCON – America’s newest weapon in the war on everyone else · Categories: General

Intrepid activist Bruce Gagnon bravely writes in from Bushitler’s Amerika to warn us

Each year the Space Command performs a war game set in 2016. In that war game the new military space plane, the Falcon, flies across the planet at six times the speed of sound and delivers 12,000 pound bombs against the “Red” team. Red team means China in Pentagon language.

I do not think that phrase means what you think it does.

In wargaming, the opposing force in a simulated military conflict is known as the Red Team, and is used to reveal weaknesses in current military readiness.

And .. what a new space plane?  How cool. Except, not so much.

The FALCON project includes:

Calling FALCON – a program with 6 vehicles (and one cancelled) in test – a new space plane is stretching the truth a bit.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

There will always be an England

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on There will always be an England · Categories: General

I found this note on how the RAF used to arm their nuclear weapons to be charmingly English . . .

Newsnight reveals that RAF nuclear bombs were armed by opening a panel held by two captive screws – like a battery cover on a radio – using a thumbnail or a coin.

Inside are the arming switch and a series of dials which are turned with an allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or ground burst and other parameters.

The bomb is actually armed by inserting a cylindrical bicycle lock key into the arming switch and turning it through 90 degrees.

There is no code which needs to be entered or dual key system to prevent a rogue individual from arming the bomb, although RAF crews were supposed to always work in pairs if they were near the bomb or had the keys for the bomb.

Opening up the hatch with a coin – then using an allen wrench (for the love of mike) to adjust the darn thing – and then launching with a bicycle key – is a touch worthy of Monty Phython. Mary Poppins would appreciate the thriftiness demonstrated; Yanks would spend billions on a special key system from Boeing. The Brits just ran down to the hardware store one day and called it good.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Cowboy Way

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on The Cowboy Way · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

I never have quite understood the appeal of the cowboy, when it came to the whole western-frontier-nostalgia-gestalt. How on earth did that particular frontier archetype sweep all others before it, when it came to dime novels, movies and television shows… given that the classic “cowboy” functioned only in a very specific time period; say for about twenty years after the Civil War. Admittedly, the Western cattle industry seemed to be co-located with spectacular bits of scenery, and the final years of the frontier per se offered all kinds of interesting potential story lines, many of them guaranteed to thrill urban, eastern wage slaves living blamelessly dull lives… but still.

For the generic cowboy was a himself hired hand. Yes, indeed – working for wages as hard (or harder) than any store clerk or factory laborer, tending to semi-wild cattle – of all the domesticated animals only very slightly brighter than sheep. Your average cow is pretty much a functional retard. If if has had one functioning brain cell to rub against the other, all that would happen would be smoke trickling out of their ears. And, not to put too much of a fine point on it – herding cattle, even on horseback was unskilled labor in the 19th century. It was grueling, low-skill, low-paying labor, most often seasonable, and most intelligent and ambitious young sparks didn’t do it for a month longer than they needed to. It was the sort of work done these days by high-school kids and illegal aliens, mostly until better employment opportunities came along.

You have to wonder, especially when there were so many other truly heroic epic adventurers available to hang the hero worship on. How did the cowboy even begin to loom so large – especially when the cattle business (and it was a business!) didn’t really begin to thrive until all the excitement was practically over? What about the mountain men, living on their wits in the early days, alone among the variously tempered tribes of the Great Basin? And surely the miners in the various gold and silver booms – they worked just as hard at pretty mucky drudgery, for themselves in the earlies and for their employers later on. And what about my own personal favorites among the frontier archetypes, the wagon-train emigrants, setting out with their whole families along a two-thousand mile road through the empty lands? Stage drivers and teamsters were quite a bit more likely to have adventurous encounters with the lawless element, or particularly hostile Indians… although even the stereotype of the Western towns being particularly lawless falls down a bit in contemporary comparison to elements of big cities in the East. Why one particular line of work would inspire a century of dime novels, moves and television shows is enough to make you shrug your shoulders and say “que?!” to the camera, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

So how did all that glamour and mythic stature come to sprout from acres of Western cow pies? Damned if I know, although I can take some guesses. The popular press fairly exploded after the Civil War, creating a demand for tales of frontier adventure. Right time, right place; and it has often been noticed that the typical Western TV show or movie perpetuated ever since is more often set in about the 1865-1885s time frame. Telegraph and the transcontinental railroads are in place, the Indians are reserved (with sporadic exceptions necessary to the plot of the moment, of course) and all the little towns have wooden sidewalks and glass windows, suitable for a reckless cowboy to ride his horse down one and crash through the other. But still – a pretty limited visualization of the frontier west – surely there was more, even in the late 19th century for popular culture to fixate on?

I wonder if the attraction for the cowboy thing wasn’t based on a melding of one particular and very old archetype and a certain cultural folkway. The archetype was that of the independent horseman, the chevalier, the knight – able to go farther and travel faster than a person on foot. There was always a predilection in the West to look up to the man on a horse, to see them as beings a bit freer, a little more independent. The cowboy might be a paid laborer, but in comparison to man working in a factory, much more independent in the framing of his work day and much less supervised. And as was noted in the lively yet strangely scholarly tome “Cracker Culture”, the Scotch-Irish-Celtic-Borderer folkway which formed a substantial layer of our cultural bedrock rather favored herding barely domesticated animals (and hunting wild game) rather than intensive cultivation. Better a free life, out of doors and on horseback, rather than plodding along behind a plough, or stuck behind a workbench – even if it didn’t pay very much at all.

It is fascinating to go back to the roots of the cattle industry – as I am doing for the final volume of Adelsverein ( or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”) – just to discover how very, very different it was from what has always been popularly presented. Owen Wister didn’t get the half of it.

Beautiful Wife’s Cranberry Chutney

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on Beautiful Wife’s Cranberry Chutney · Categories: Eat, Drink and be Merry

This is a recipe Beautiful Wife has been using for about 10 years. I know the holidays are coming when I start to smell this throughout the house.

Beautiful Wife’s Cranberry Chutney (Adopted from Father Pat’s Recipe and it may be exactly the same, but after 10 years, God only knows.)

4 Cups whole cranberries
1 2/3 Cup Sugar (Splenda works great for anyone cooking for a diabetic)
1 Tsp Fresh Ginger
½ Cup (1 Med) Chopped Onion
½ Cup Thinly Sliced Celery
½ Cup (1 Med) Apple (Peeled, Cored, Chopped)
1 Cup Seedless Raisins
1 Tblspn Ground Cloves
1 Cup Water

Combine cranberries, raisins, sugar, ginger, cloves and water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir frequently. This is a good time to prep/chop the onion, celery and apple. When cranberries start to pop/split, stir in onion, apple and celery. Bring back to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 15 minutes.

If canned in sterilized jars and properly sealed can be stored on pantry shelf for quite a long time. Otherwise, refrigerate. Serve as you would with cranberry sauce, use as jelly, or as a marinade. Good with any meat, not just turkey. Great as a topping for oatmeal or on crackers with cream cheese.

Venomous Kate posted her stuffing recipe too.

Here’s a question…why do southerners think that their stuffing is the “authentic” kind? Didn’t yankees start the whole Thanksgiving thing?

Other recipes welcome.

It’s About Time

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on It’s About Time · Categories: General

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – The head of the Khmer Rouge’s largest and most notorious torture center appeared in court Tuesday in the first public session of the long-delayed U.N.-backed tribunal probing the regime’s reign of terror in the 1970s.

The 4-year regime of the Khmer Rouge resulted in 1.7million deaths. Pol Pot, the dictator responsible for it, died in 1998 without ever being brought to trial.

I have no idea what delayed the trials for 30 years, but I’m glad to see that they’re finally going forward.

Source

Things About Myself That Surprise Even…Myself

18. November 2007 · Comments Off on Things About Myself That Surprise Even…Myself · Categories: General

When the opening to the Bowie/Queen classic, “Under Pressure” begins…I secretly hope that it’s “Ice-Ice Baby.” I’m not proud of that.

I don’t find the the new vampire-detective drama “Moonlight” half as annoying as I thought I would. I mean, it’s no “Angel” but it doesn’t suck…and yes, I meant to say that.

I’m so not ready for the holidays…seriously…I think we had some silly idea that we’d have more money after I retired and we’d be able to get all new decorations. We might have a tree this year.

I’m really happy we have a fireplace…almost giddy especially on really cold nights.

I hate to admit this because I always have taught my airmen and the folks in the classes I’ve taught, “The first thing you do when troubleshooting anything electrical is to check your power supply.” Our clothes dryer was spinning but not drying…no heat. Did I break down and find my electrical probe to see if it was the outlet or perhaps the fuses? Of course not. I replaced everything in the dryer first. My son-in-law found the “so burnt it disintegrated in his hand” 20 amp fuse that was the real problem. I’m not supposed to beat myself too much over this, but jeez, I feel like a schmuck.

I’ve discovered from hearing recordings of my customer service calls at work, I say, “Ummmmm…” far too often. I haven’t done that in years…decades even.

I’d rather spend a Saturday afternoon cooking for my family and then spend the evening sitting around watching movies on DVD than to go out and DO something else.

So it’s strictly one step at a time for Bangladesh

18. November 2007 · Comments Off on So it’s strictly one step at a time for Bangladesh · Categories: General

Bangladesh has been hit by a cyclone

DHAKA, Bangladesh (CNN) — More than 1,000 people have died in Bangladesh after a devastating tropical cyclone ripped through the western coast of the country, and the toll is expected to rise, a government spokesman tells CNN.

15,000 people hurt, 1,000 missing – it will be worse before it gets better. Villages are flattened, wells poisoned by salt water flooding, crops ruined .. ugh. Puts natural disasters in the West in perspective, hunh?

Oh and the fleet will be ashore soon

U.S. military officials said Friday that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was ready to dispatch Navy vessels carrying 3,500 Marines to the region to help in recovery efforts.

It is expected that the USS Kearsarge and USS Wasp would move from the Gulf of Oman. The USS Tarawa recently left Hawaii, and it could go to Bangladesh as well, officials said.

Semper Fi – again. I’m sure the Army barracks we used at the airfield in Dhaka in 1991 are still there, as are the spiffy flush toilets connected to the open sewers.   Watch your step at night, is all I can say – in a country that is pool-table flat the sewage doesn’t flow so much as amble.

Subject line hat tip
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Still Waltzing Madly

17. November 2007 · Comments Off on Still Waltzing Madly · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

So Philippa Gregory still has nothing to fear in sales competition from me as the author of “To Truckee’s Trail”, as I have to sell another one million, nine-hundred thousand plus copies before I can even think of buying that tastefully renovated castle in J.K.Rowlings’ neighborhood. I can’t make out from either Amazon’s stats or Booklockers’ how many – if any copies have sold in the last couple of months, because the book distributor Ingram has a four-month lead anyway. And individual POD books like mine are so expensive, relatively speaking, to print when they are done in runs of fifteen or twenty, rather than fifteen or twenty hundred thousand copies at a whack – that bookstores usually can’t get them at a 40% discount… which is a whole nother ball of wax, and the reason that the big-box-bookstores are an un-crackable nut for us independent authors. Thank god for the small local bookstores: I have a book-signing event planned tentatively at Berkman Books in Fredericksburg in December, and another one January 16th at The Twig in Alamo Heights. And my Number One fan, Mom, might be able to twist the arms of her literary friends in Escondido and Valley Center, and schedule something for me over Christmas week. Discouragingly, it still takes months to get reviews, though. Apparently not everyone can read a book as fast as I can.

Still, at least independent authors can get published now – they can get their books out there without having to pass through the gates of the literary industrial complex. There are other options than paying a bomb of money to a printer and stashing crates of copies in their garage. There is another way to find an audience, as independent musicians and independent movie-makers have already discovered. I have gotten together with a handful of other writers to brain storm some marketing strategies; all of us are either small-press or POD and totally exasperated with the current paradigm. There must be a better way for our books to reach interested readers. Without very much more ado, we formed the Independent Authors Guild, put up a website and a discussion group, published a newsletter (which will be a monthly) and began recruiting more members. So far we’re still working out future moves, and putting in sweat equity rather than a lot of cash. Check out the website… my work! (Not the logo, though – someone else did that, and it’s a book, not a pair of panties!)

Oh, and I scored a stack of books for reviews that I have to read and then write about. I promise I will post some more of that good bloggy ice cream here.

And I am four chapters in to the final volume of the “Adelsverein” trilogy – or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”, and need to do some very specific research on 1) how to harness a team of draft horses to a wagon, and what driving them involved -diagrams would help enormously and 2) 19th century prothesis available for a below-elbow arm amputation. Does the BAMC medical museum have a collection, I wonder?

232 Reasons Why the Marine Corps Kicks Ass,

14. November 2007 · Comments Off on 232 Reasons Why the Marine Corps Kicks Ass, · Categories: General

232 Reasons Why the Marine Corps Kicks Ass, from the Marine Corps Times.

Cherry picking, we have …

2. Civilians have to find time to go to the gym. Marines get paid to go.

4. There’s no such thing as an “ex” Marine.

8. “Every Marine Into the Fight.”

18. The lance corporal underground.

22. “No better friend, no worse enemy.”

23. Typhoons approaching Okinawa often spark islandwide beer runs

26. 10 rounds from the 500-yard line.

36. Running cadences that mention napalm. And Eskimos.

55. As if ranks that include the words “master” and “gunnery” aren’t intimidating enough on their own, the Corps uses them both. At once.

60. Marines predicted the WWII campaigns in the Pacific years earlier and prepared for the inevitable. So when a Marine says, “Hey, I’ve been thinking .” perhaps you should take notes.

61. Give a Marine some free time, and he’ll rip down your dictator’s statue.

83. Chuck Norris was in the Air Force. Steve McQueen was a Marine.

90. Arty guys who do civil affairs. They blow it up, then they fix it.  Circle of life.

140. Gunnery sergeants. Don’t know the answer? Ask the gunny. Need something? Ask the gunny. In trouble? Avoid the gunny.

153. Shirt stays. Or garters. Whatever you call them, they’re a triple whammy, keeping your shirt tucked, your socks up and removing all that unwanted leg hair.

199. “8th and I.” Ten bucks says you have no idea where the Army chief of staff lives. Commandants don’t hide.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Via.

Memo: Derisive Head-Shaking with a Splash of Schadenfreude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely, Sgt Mom

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

Memorial Day Links

11. November 2007 · Comments Off on Memorial Day Links · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Iraq, Memoir, Military, War

Two essays for this day, the eleventh day of the elevenths month: First – Austin Bay and second, my own reminiscence of my great-uncle William

Later: from Youtube, via my computer genius friend who sent it to me this morning – “A Pittance of Time“.

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