The Daily Brief

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN AGING DISC JOCKEY WHEN…

05. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Working In A Salt Mine...

(Courtesy of the FEN news group: One of those nostalgic things going around. I do, in fact, have scars on my fingers from miscalculated cuts, while editing audio tape with a razor blade. Just call me Miss Butterfingers)

– You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before becoming GM.

– Radio stations were no place for kids.

– You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of “dead air” on the competitor’s station.

– Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor.

– Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the manufacturer.

– You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it.

– Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball team every summer.

– You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared.

– Engineers always had the worst body odor, not because they worked too hard, but because they just didn’t shower that often.

– You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape.

– Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given time, and still made money.

– You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer – – just in case.

– You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be back in 2:50 for the segue.

– You knew exactly where to put the tone on the end of a carted song.

– You only did “make- goods” if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?

– You can remember the name of the very first “girl” that was hired in your market as a DJ.

– Somebody would say, “You have a face for radio”, and it was still funny.

– Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.

– You always had a screwdriver in the studio so you could take a fouled-up cart apart at a moment’s notice.

– You always had a solution for an LP that ‘skipped’. (usually a paper clip or a dime on the tone-arm, somewhere)

– You would spend hours splicing and editing a parody tape until it was “just right”, but didn’t care how bad that commercial was you recorded.

– You still refer to CDs as “records”. (really old hands refer to them as ET, or electrical transcriptions)
– You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits.

– You answer your home phone with the station call letters.

– You used to fight with the news guy over air-time. After all, what was more important: your joke, or that tornado warning?

– You knew how to change the ribbon on the Teletype machine, but you hated to do it because “…that’s the news guy’s job.”

– You know at least 2 people in sales that take credit for you keeping your job.

– You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your basement that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you’ll never throw them out or tape over them. Never!

– You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using a razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra long cotton swab on a wooden stick.

– You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. (I have nightmares about the various players not working, or the control board has magically reconfigured itself)

– You’ve ever told a listener “Yeah.I’ll get that right on for you.”

– You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with corroded batteries inside them.

– People who ride in your car exclaim, “Why is your radio so loud?”

– You remember when promotion men brought new LPs to the station – and you played them the same day.

– You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people whom you haven’t seen since, and wouldn’t know you today if you bit ’em on the ass.

– You wish you could have been on “Name That Tune” because you would have won a million bucks.

– You even REMEMBER “Name That Tune”.

– You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the directions you received from the sales person.

– You’ve run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin.

– You remember when people actually thought radio was important.

Why I Write, Continued

03. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Home Front, Working In A Salt Mine...

Over these last five years, people who blogged on the side, or got bitten by some other bug have moved on, in various forms and manifestations. Some have even decided that they had said all they wanted to say and moved on to some other enthusiasm. One of my very favorite early bloggers, Stephen Den Beste, packed it on over health issues, and three others (Cathy Seipp, Acidman, and Mother Bear) died in harness, as it were.

Others are focusing on things that just do not pull my interest as much; only fair, because I have gone wandering off on a tangent of my own, back into the 19th century. It is the pursuit of literary creation that drags me there, at least as much indulging my own interest. And it’s a damned fascinating century for all that: it made America, in all it’s contradictory glory, over the span of a single person’s lifetime. The beginning of that century of marvels and wonders saw a just barely post-Colonial nation, clinging to the land between the Atlantic coast and the spine of the Appalachians, a rural nation, where necessary things were manufactured by craftsmen working by hand, cooking was most likely done over an open fire, and heavy cargo moved by horsepower, or the wind caught in the sails of ships. It took two months to cross the Atlantic, six months or a year to get a letter from halfway around the world. Water turned the wheels of mills, garbage was thrown into the streets of cities, and two states away was practically a foreign country. The early part of that century looked much like the century before, and the century before that, at least in the way that people commonly lived.

Yet, within a bare hundred years, electricity lighted the cities, telegraphs sent the news instantly from halfway around the world, factories churned out a constant stream of goods and materials and it might take a week or so to cross the Atlantic on a luxurious steam liner… and another week to cross the United States from one ocean to another. In a theoretical single lifetime, over that bare handful of decades, the United States spilled over the mountain barrier, rushed headlong across the plains and the desert to the Pacific, while new intakes of hopeful immigrants filled up the spaces between, built and filled up cities where nothing but woods and clearings had been before. The States fractured, nearly fatally and fought a desperate Civil War, reunified and kept on building, inventing, innovating.

Again, it was a century of marvels, and made us in many ways what we still are… but we need to keep the memory of it green, but not in that self-flagellating, politically correct wank-fest sort of way so beloved by the modern academic bean-counters, so busy with finding fault that they miss the grandeur of the whole creation entirely. More than the grandeur that needs to be brought to mind, also the optimism, the hard work and the sheer stubborn courage. My first book was about a pioneer wagon train, the first to bring wagons all the way over the Sierra Nevada, and I am sure there is some snotty academic historian somewhere (probably whole departments of them, actually) who will whine nasally that my pioneers were grasping, land-hungry and bigoted, careless of the pristine environment, unsympathetic to other cultures, and embarrassingly unrepresentative of our multicultural society that… et cetera, et cetera.

So what? They were 19th century Americans, some of then native-born and some recent immigrants. Some of them were barely literate, others not even that. They chewed tobacco and spat in the street, didn’t care much for Indians, barely tolerated Catholics, and didn’t give a toss what Europeans thought of them. Most women of the time wanted to be married to a good provider, and thought going to church on Sunday was a good thing. They probably had pretty rank BO, and ate crackers in bed, too. But held against all those 21st century high-culture misdemeanors… on a day in 1844, they stood on the back of the Missouri river, and looked clear-eyed at two thousand miles of trackless nothing. With no one but themselves to rely upon, they took their families and everything they owned… and walked out into the wilderness.

This is where we came from, what we need to remember, even if most of our forebears came a little too late for that part of the American adventure. So this is what I do: reclaim our saga and our heroes, against the day when we will need them again. And I am afraid we will need them again, and sooner rather than later.

Why I Write

01. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Memoir, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Because I breath, and I can tell stories, and stories are important. They connect us to our history. Those stories are a shining path in the tangle of that amorphous mass loosely known as popular culture. Stories are a guide and inspiration for those of us who must find our way through the tangled jungle, for those of us who would rather not sleep-walk along a perilous knife-edge… and certain stories are also a warning of danger

“The story of the Fall of Singapore has exercised a powerful influence over my imagination, because it was in its way a dramatic re-enactment of the tragedy of the Titanic on a much vaster scale. Singapore was a place where the assumption of the British hereditary right to rule was so strong that even the obvious advance of the Japanese Army down the peninsula could not waken social circles which had known nothing other than ineffable superiority to the new reality.

The British governor told his army commander, “oh I suppose you’ll see the little men off.” Only after the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk in an afternoon did it begin to dawn on them that they were all of them doomed. Doomed.

They simply couldn’t imagine what doomed meant. People accustomed to teas and dances, deference from the natives; accustomed to snapping their fingers and parting crowds at the bazaar simply couldn’t come to terms with the idea that in a little while they would beaten, raped, and starved. If they were lucky. This effervescent bubble of oh so clever people even organized something called a Surrender Lunch, during which they were supposed to gorge themselves in preparation for the privations ahead. It was beyond sad. It was pathetic.

And as I said, Singapore has exercised a powerful influence on my imagination because this forgotten incident is the nearest we can come to past as prologue. That is what awaits the liberals when Islam takes over. They will still be yelling for their rights as they are led away to be flogged.”

Comment, Wretchard, at The Belmont Club

Wretchard’s example of the fall of Singapore is an example of an historical event that I also circle back to, along with a handful of others. Writers have our favorites, apparently. Certain events, times and places force a recognition that all things are transient, that all flesh is grass, that these things shall pass, as immutable as they might seem to the casual glance. The apparently unsinkable ship can sink out from under you. We aren’t at the end of history, after all. Maybe this might be a good time to retrieve into active consideration certain of our historical memes.

I started writing on this blog when it was still Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief, when the original creator of it put out a call for more writers, active duty and veterans both, round and about July or August of 2002. A lot of things changed in five years. My first post here is now three jobs (not counting temp assignments), and three posts weekly times 52 times 5 years more or less, plus a whole change in professional focus ago. When I started, I thought of myself as an office-manager/administrative assistant who wrote on the side, but as of last July I began to think of myself as a writer who did a little office managing/administrating on the side. So, for a few years, I wrote about mil-bloggy matters, interspersed with entries about my admittedly eccentric family and non-conformist childhood, about living in Japan and Europe as a military member, and about my daughter’s doings as she was deployed with her Marine Corps unit to Kuwait and Iraq, early in 2003.

I looked at writing for this blog as a means to educate and entertain the general reader about the wonderful, wacky world of the military. But on the way to that end, a lot of other stuff happened. First, there are other military blogs now, veteran’s blogs, family-of-military blogs. We stopped being unique in that respect quite some time ago, in blog years. (Which must be somewhat like dog years) Writing for the blog was always supposed to be about the writer wanted to write about. Current events, politics, war, military trivia, and popular culture. Whatever… just make it good writing, sparkle a bit; and someone will find it interesting. Which is good, but nothing stays the same for long.

I pretty much milked the family stuff pretty well dry. (It’s all in the book, mostly, be a sport and order a copy if you want all the scandalous details). The same for my various cross-Europe junkets; I wrote all about that, don’t want to repeat myself. I can only extract so much amusement out of the menagerie of dogs and cats, and the maintenance of my house. So… I moved on.

Everyone does. A lot of the bloggers that I used to read regularly in 2002-2003 have done exactly that. Other interests, other lives, they had said all they wanted to say on a particular subject, they wanted to write a book, they had health issues, family issues, other interests, another job. Some of them turned to writing seriously about things that they felt were important to them. And so have I.

(More to follow. Of course. Would I leave the regular readers hanging?)

I Pity the Fool…

30. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Back in the days when “The A-Team” was a popular television show, Mr T had a catch-phrase: “I pity the fool.”

I was almost the fool, today. I’m sitting here in the Pittsburgh, PA airport, waiting on my homeward flight, and I had hours to kill, since all earlier flights were booked solid. “No problem,” says I to myself. “They have free wireless here! I’ll just while away the hours surfing the ‘Net.”

So I dig out the company laptop, fired ‘er up, and let the trusty wireless device search for the local free wireless network.

And I was almost caught. Not by the cops, but by those folks who have nothing better to do than look for ways to steal data from other folks.

My wireless program found several wireless networks, all listed as free. And because I was tired, at the end of a long 2-week stint imparting knowledge to our customers, I didn’t notice at first that the network I selected, labeled “Free wireless network” was, in fact, an ad-hoc network created by someone else’s laptop. NOT the actual, true wireless network provided by the airport.

Happily, I noticed before I had ever typed in any passwords.

I’ve been in a lot of airports with my laptop, and used a lot of airport wireless connections. This is the first time I’ve noticed ad-hoc networks in my list. And it wasn’t just the one. When I powered up again after lunch, in a different part of the airport, I noticed 2-3 other ad-hoc networks next to the official airport wireless.

I do, indeed, pity the “fool” who doesn’t know the difference between the ad-hoc network hosted by someone’s laptop, and the official wireless networks offered by the airport. It could be an expensive lesson for them.

I’d rather pity the fool who is out there creating bogus networks for nefarious reasons, but if that’s really what they’re doing, they have my disgust rather than my pity.

Resist By All Means Available

29. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, GWOT, Iran, Pajama Game, War

From our POW Code of Conduct

“….I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.”

This code of conduct was created and adapted for all the American services in the wake of the Korean War, when American (and other nationalities) POWs were both brutally mistreated and exploited for propaganda purposes by their captors. While some service personnel may be a trifle foggy on the exact requirements of the Geneva Convention until the need for familiarity with those conventions floats up to the top of their personal “to-do” duty requirements, the POW code of conduct is branded on our consciousness. Well, that and the bitter knowledge that the last military opponent of ours who paid anything like strict attention to Geneva Convention requirements when applying them to captured American service personnel were the Germans in WWII.

So, we have quietly gotten our heads around a couple of facts, one of the most important being the brutal reality that Americans best not surrender. The odds of surviving long enough for the International Red Cross to make that all-important visit to verify your well-being are practically non-existent. Snuff videos made available through various pro-fundamentalist Islamic media throughout Middle East make it pretty damn clear that no surrender in the first place may be the most viable career option.

Even if a prisoner is lucky, and the market for death-porn is flooded, the odds of being used as a hostage, and paraded like a puppet in front of the video cameras are pretty much a given. Exactly how far one can or ought to go in resisting this kind of exploitation is a judgment call. Admiral James Stockdale, as the senior American POW in North Vietnam chose to mutilate himself rather than be paraded in public for propaganda purposes, and threatened suicide if the North Vietnamese continued to continue torturing other POWs.

Pvt. Patrick Miller, of the 507th Maintenance Company was taken prisoner during the dash into Iraq in 2003, (at the same time as Pvt. Jessica Lynch) and was one of the five surviving members of his unit paraded on Iraqi television. I remember seeing the clip of the five on the news, and thought that he was the only one of them who seemed to be defiant. He answered back with his name and rank, and looked like he was about to spit into the camera, even if he and the others were entirely at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s goons. In the long run, ones’ response to the extreme of captivity and threatened (or actual torture) depends on training, and maturity. But sometimes it depends on strength of character, and maybe a large lashing of stubborn bloody-mindedness, which are harder to predict in advance and inculcate with training. But I digress. I have a point, and I am getting to it.

This week, it’s the fifteen British sailors and Marines, taken by Iranian goons, and paraded in front of cameras, while Tony Blair and the British media agonize over how to react, what should have been done, and what can be done to get them back without loosing any national self-respect, and their families try and maintain a stiff upper lip under the hot searchlight of media interest.

It pretty much looks like it was deliberate and well-planned, done expressly for the purposes of getting hostages to toy with, probably with an eye for a prisoner exchange, and building up their image internally. They announced their intentions to kidnap coalition personnel some weeks ago, but at this point in the war, American personnel are probably just too damn hard to catch unawares. So, go for the easily gathered harvest, and drag it out as long as possible. I am afraid that if it drags on for a long time, as long as the Teheran embassy hostage crisis that it will become as much of a political hot potato. I can see the Blair government in a cleft stick; having neither the means or the will to respond with gunboats, or the 21st century equivalent. Being that the war in Iraq is resoundingly unpopular (as near as I can judge from a distance) I wonder if there is any stomach for that kind of response anyway. And while the diplomatic alternative grinds slowly away, over weeks and months, and the hostages families fret and worry, and the national media pounds away, involvement in the coalition may become even less popular. Getting the hostages freed may come to seem to be such an overwhelmingly good thing that no one will care very much about the price paid for such an end.

I hope that there is a Stockdale, or a Miller among the captured British sailors and Marines. I hope that they are not being tormented, as Admiral Stockdale was, at the hands of the North Vietnamese… and I hope that they are resisting as best they can, for the sake of their own self-respect as members of a proud military with a long tradition of defiance and resistance to captivity. I hope they will return knowing in their hearts that they held to the code, and to their comrades, and never in their hearts surrendered.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network)

Texiana

27. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Old West

Still working my way through the tall stack of books, provided by the San Antonio Public Library (may their stacks never fail, and their incredibly helpful staff go on saying “shusssh” yeah, unto generation after generation). This has put me in the way of a lot of interesting, or startling historical tid-bits, for instance:

Ice harvested commercially from New England began to be shipped to the Gulf-Coast town of Indianola in 1851. Ice cream and chilled drinks were wildly popular and freely available from that time on. (Except during the Civil War.) Kind of a mind-blower to know that ice cream parlors could exist in a state at the same time as people cooking beans over open fires and fighting with the Indians.

Commercial shipments of sides of beef, under mechanical refrigeration began in mid-1869, also from Indianola.

Texas politics during the time of the Republic can be described in three words: Tomcats. In. Sack. No one emerged unscathed; least of all Sam Houston.

Sam Houston; a fascinating and contradictory person, and almost too big for the 19th century. Autodidact, runaway, alcoholic, slave-owner and Unionist, brawler and dandy, soldier and politician, twice-divorced, and Indian-lover. Worshipped and loathed in about equal measure.

Houston’s worst enemy (except for a couple of hundred others) was probably a man named Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. With a sissy name like that, he had to come to Texas, of course.

At the Battle of San Jacinto, where Houston finally turned and fought, defeating a much larger and better-trained Mexican army, his army advanced to music played by a small scratch field band; a raunchy and suggestive ditty called “Come to the Bower”. It may have been the only song that all the volunteer bandsmen knew.

Everyone who was in Texas in the 1840s and 1850s knew Captain Jack Hays… mostly from having served with him. He was kind of the Kevin Bacon of the period, but I can only find two biographies of him. And one of them uses the phrase “beauty and chivalry of San Antonio” in a completely serious and un-ironic manner.

Several useful volumes put together by local historians of the Hill Country, with all sorts of interesting stories, and accounts of local haps and heroes. Some of the biographical sketches are so reverent in tone that it reminds me of the old joke about Charleston.

Why are the Charlestonians like the Chinese? Because they eat rice and worship their ancestors!

(More to follow, as I encounter them)

2008?!!!

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Battlestar Galactica ended their season on a much better note than they did last year. THAT’s how you throw a cliffhanger.

However, if they’re serious about BSG not continuing until 2008, I have to say that the Science Fiction Network is continuing their long standing tradition of fracking up a good thing.

Log Cabin Days

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Old West, Pajama Game, Technology

Among the books in my tall stack to read, in preparation to revise and polish the current epic is one with the very dry title of “Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture” – which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together- which is good, especially since I need to write a description of building such a thing as a log building. Little details like how many days it would take to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout – these little details count.

Previously, the one description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was “Little House on the Prairie” – and it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything – allowances were made.

That was almost everyone’s first and most urgent need, upon settling on a new grant or homestead, that and planting some kind of crop in the ground; building a cabin, to meet immediate shelter needs. This book differentiates very clearly the difference between a log cabin, and a log house. A log cabin was small, twelve to fourteen foot square, windowless, with a dirt floor. They were scratch and hastily put up to use as a temporary dwelling place, whereas a log house was larger, permanent, and much more carefully constructed; even quite elaborate as to comforts. For much of the 19th century, at least in Texas it was a matter of some embarrassment to still be living in a log cabin after a couple of years; rather like living in a trailer would be. In fact, many log houses were covered with siding and paint as soon as their owners could afford to do so. If they had lived in a little cabin before building the permanent house, the cabin was frequently reused as a smoke-house, or a stable.

Pace “Little House” and a whole raft of western movies, I’d always visualized such houses and cabins built out of the whole, rounded logs, with simple interlocking half-round notches (called a saddle notch) cut close to the ends, and about a foot or so of the log hanging out beyond at the corners, rather like a “Lincoln-log” house. This method of construction turns out have been employed by the relatively unskilled and/or those in a tearing hurry. The majority of Texas log structures were built of timbers which had been at least roughly shaped on two sides, and carefully notched at the ends to make a square corner. With the exception of part log, part dugout shelters built in far western Texas, where trees were scarce, most log structures were also raised off the ground on corner piers, to prevent rot and termite infestation, and to take advantage of air circulation.
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American Idol…the SNL version

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Bianca Ryan

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Remember the little girl who won the talent show, “America’s Got Talent?” Bianca Ryan? You know, the one that made Brandi stand up with her mouth hanging down?

Apparently she snuck an album out last fall when we weren’t watching and she has her own web site. I have to admit, until recently, if it wasn’t on iTunes I wasn’t paying much attention to new releases.

The album is a little too overproduced. The songs are all standards. But anyone who can listen to her version of The Rose and not have their heart torn out needs to simply shoot themselves, they’re already dead. I think if she doesn’t self destruct she’ll be bigger than any female singer out there today because she’s better than just about anyone I’ve ever heard in my 45 years on this planet.

I have to admit it feels weird saying that about a singer this young and I pray that she goes toward Rock vs AC or Country, but DAYUM. She’s got some serious pipes.

I Got the Gardening Bug

25. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Pajama Game

Growing up, my dad always had a vegetable garden. In fact, he always had a large vegetable garden. We had very few store-bought vegetables because Dad grew so many in the garden and canned them that we had enough some years to last more than just one winter. Unfortunately, though not at the time, I was not allowed in the garden because I might mess it up. I therefore didn’t get lessons on how to weed, the proper way to hoe a planted garden, how to thin plants, etc. I didn’t care either because I always figured I would just buy it from the store.

Now after years of buying from the store, I realize that my parents were right. Fruits and vegetables are better home grown. Now I am starting my own garden. So far, it’s really small, and really more of a test run to see if I can actually grow one. The small area I have chosen for my garden spot only has a small area fit for growing currently. The previous owners had put a bunch of wood chips down in the area to use for a play area for their kids. I haven’t managed to get a full half of the chips out of the area yet, so I only have about 1/3 of the area available.

I sat down back in January and decided what I wanted to plant. I finally settled on lettuce, spinach, broccoli, turnip greens, green peas, carrots, snap beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, eggplant, bell pepper, cayenne, jalapeno peppers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Of those already planted, I only managed to get 4 pea plants up, a handful of turnip greens, a handful of lettuce, a couple of handfuls of carrots, and I’m not sure that any of the spinach has come up. I also put out some strawberry plants that still look as dead as when I pulled them out of the bag. I started the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers indoors, and aside from what Notch decided to munch on, I have almost all of them to come up and look real good. I could probably put them out this weekend, but I am going to leave them outside in the containers over this week to harden them before transplanting.

Now flowers are another matter entirely. Mittens, the stray cat we adopted, has decided that every place I have put potting soil is a toilet. Now fortunately, she isn’t doing any “real business” in them, but still she’s digging. Bad kitty. I suppose I am going to be forced to put netting (like vinyl chicken wire) over all my flowers and pots until she takes her business back to the leaves. But I digress. I didn’t have good luck with flowers last year. I can only blame myself as I didn’t keep them weeded, watered, and fertilized as I should have. I will put some of the blame on the software engineering course I took as I had absolutely no free time during that term and it was spring term. This year, I will have the time to do proper weeding and watering. Then I will see if I do truly have what my mom calls “Susie’s green thumb” referring to my paternal grandmother who could grow anything anywhere.

Iran Hostage Crisis Redoux

23. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, Iran, Rant, War

Not a good feeling about all this. Will the British let themselves be played for 444 days, like we were, after the Teheran embassy was overrun? Are we prepared for another long series of staged demonstrations and photo ops, fruitless diplomatic wrangling, a ceaseless media circus, yellow ribbons around the old oak tree, and an assortment of clueless do-gooders making their way to Teheran on their knees, and making sure their good side is to the camera? Five will get you ten, George Galloway already has his bag packed.

So, is this a calculated move from the highest levels in response to the alleged defection/kidnapping of a top Iranian military man a couple of a weeks ago, or just some ambitious and impulsive underling taking a chance and seeing how far he can go?

How far will the Iranians go? How far will the British go? Will Ahmedinajad still be admitted to the US on his way to address the UN? How many of the UN members will break out the old knee-pads and kneel down before him, metaphorically speaking.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets, please. I have a feeling it is going to get kinda interesting.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network… and corrected)

The Writers Life Waltz: Con Brio

21. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General

I’ve come up for air this week, because I need to sit down and read a stack of books as tall as my bedside lamp table, and take copious notes in preparation for revising and expanding my first draft of “Adelsverein – Volume One”… or as a reader called it “Barsetshire with cypress trees”. Yes, I have taken everyone’s advice and broken it into a trilogy…since I was about a third of a way into my Sooper-Dooper Detailed Chapter Outline and had clocked over 105,000 words. I believe that in the mystery-writing biz that sort of happening is called “a clue”.

Otherwise it would take me the rest of the year, and result in a paperback book about the thickness of a concrete block. The first part stands alone as a ripping good yarn anyway, but I have salted it with enough foreshadowing to leave everyone hungry for Volume Two (The Civil War years). The stack of books for that part is another pile almost as tall as the bedside table, but the stack for Volume Three (the open-range cattle-ranching and Indian War years) is only about a foot tall, most of it taken up by a single book which I scored at the library sale for a mere pittance. It’s a massive compendium of first-hand accounts taken down from members of the Old Time Trail Drivers’ Association… pure gold for my purposes, but I am getting ahead of myself. (Oh, and the reason for the odd historical essays… I just find odd tidbits in all these books which I find kind of fascinating. Especially if some of them are not well-known at all. I write about stuff that interests me at the moment, ‘kay?)

I also needed to get cracking on marketing “Adelsverein” to agents and publishers, because it doesn’t look like “Truckee’s Trail” is going to go very far with them. It’s a ripping good yarn and I am not giving up on it, but I’m not holding my breath either. The feedback that I have gotten so far from the two agents who have read it is that marketing it to a publisher is a chore they don’t want to take on, for various reasons. It’s not quite a Western, not the sort of historical that really sells, the major romantic relationship is between two people happily married to each other; not an easy book to categorize, and that’s why it’s a hard sell. There is no word from the publisher who got it in January to review, but if they decline it, I’ll put it up to Tor Books… and by the end of the year I’ll go back to the POD publisher who did my memoir if they pass on it. It will be published, one way or another. I’ve put too much work into it, and the people who have read it have liked it too much to just stick it away in my desk drawer and forget about it. Frankly, I have enough stuff in that drawer already… and “Truckee” is just too damn good to drop. “Adelsverein” is more marketable, as it contains near-operatic levels of passion, murder, adventure, war, stolen children and Dire Revenge.

My friend the computer genius will set up a website especially for my books and help me market them through other means… which I will probably do anyway, even if I do manage to get somewhere with an agent and/or a mainline publisher. On the bright side, I just received an email from an agent who wants to take a look at the first couple of chapters of “Truckee”… could the third one be the charm? And I got another email from another agent who said she is intrigued by “Adelsverein” but is absolutely swamped in too much work to give it full attention… but if I haven’t found representation by July, she’ll be happy to take a look.

My writer friend on the West Coast counsels a spirit of Zen detachment and patience. Which I want now, dammit!

Somebody Put a Stop to This Boy!

20. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Sanjaya. Must. Kill. Sanjaya.

You. Don’t. Fuck. With. The. Kinks.

Must put on headphones and get that-that-that out of my head.

Comancheria: The Meusebach Treaty

19. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Old West, Pajama Game

(earlier parts, here, here, here and here )

But first, before they were welcomed to Ketumsee’s main camp, the interpreter Lorenzo de Rozas told Meusebach’s party that as a demonstration of their good faith and confidence, they should empty all their firearms, firing them into the ground, or into the air.
For the forty men of Meusebach’s peace venture, it was a pivotal moment, for they were far beyond the safe frontier, and surrounded by what was estimated to be five or six thousand Comanche, the acknowledged warlords of the Southern plains. They had assembled on a hillside near Ketumsee’s encampment on the San Saba, mounted on their best horses, in all their finery and carrying their weapons, on either side of a flag on a tall staff; warriors on the right, women and children on the left. It was a splendid and heart-stopping sight. In the event of Meusebach having entirely miscalculated the Comanche’s desire for a peace treaty there would be no aid, no cavalry pounding to their rescue. About the only thing that would be a certain guarantee in that event… would be that every one of them would die, in as agonizing a manner as the most creative sadist could devise.

Meusebach quietly ordered all his men to empty their firearms. And in response, the Comanche warriors who carried firearms also emptied theirs. Chief Ketumsee and his senior chiefs came forward to greet them with handshakes and with elaborate ceremony; Meusebach and his party were conducted into the village. They were invited to stay within the Comanche encampment, in their skin lodges, but on the excuse of finding better pasture for their horses, Meusebach graciously declined. They set up their own camp, but might as well have not bothered, because almost all of Ketumsee’s tribe came to visit over the next day or so; men, women, children and all, and mostly on horseback As one of the German visitors later wrote “Horses play an important role in the life of the Comanches… when there is a scarcity of food, horses furnish a supply of meat…from early youth both sexes are taught to ride… we saw children who had been nursed by their mothers until their third year, leave their mothers’ breast, jump on a horse and light a cigarette…”

Dear Quiznos

18. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not

I’m hereby boycotting you until you stop marring my Sunday Nights on Sci Fi with that stupid giggling woman who wants more meat. Her voice is annoying enough, but that bordering on insanity giggle? Look, she’s creepier than the Burger King.

I do prefer your sammiches to Subway’s, but I’m serious, lose the bimbo.

AARGH

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Home Front

Red Haired Girl competed in the regional Scripps Spelling Bee this week – a victory there would have taken her to Washington for the national competition. She’s a very good speller, but these things tend to be luck-of-the-draw (I never heard of a cruller, or for that matter, a muumuu). She did well until the second from the last (p-e-n-u-l-t-i-m-a-t-e) round when she got the word fuselage. When asked to repeat the word, the pronouncer – consistent with her performance the entire evening – gave it a somewhat British flavor. RHG, who reads a lot but not the things that boys read, spelled it the way it was pronounced that night – fusilage. Another girl was eliminated for spelling angst as ongst, and yet another for spelling chronology as chrinology – in both cases they spelled it as it was pronounced to them.

I have always considered my time in the USAF in the early seventies to be a defining point in my life, and have an on-going fascination with airplanes, so this particular defeat was somewhat crushing. RHG took it in stride though, looking forward to next year. On the way home we went through some words that she might encounter in the future, like empennage.

The Top Ten Signs That You’re Being Stalked By A Leprechaun

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

(More e-mail fun, for St. Patrick’s Day)

Generic-looking green van parked across the street with Notre Dame bumper sticker.

Every time you turn around the pitter-pattering stops and that green fire hydrant seems to have gotten a little closer.

Green lipstick marks on the butt of your Dockers.

You’re being followed by a large woman with a sultry voice and a dying career. (Oops! That’s a sign you’re being stalked by Chaka Khan.)

You don’t recall owning an anatomically correct lawn gnome.

Card delivered with the bouquet of 4-leaf clovers reads, “I bet you’re magically delicious!”

When you come home from work, the potatoes are missing from the cupboard and your parrot is singing “Danny Boy.”

Prank caller has a really corny Irish accent, and Richard Gere has an airtight alibi.

Those tiny green hairs on your toilet seat.

Sultry voice from shower soap dish asks, “Is that your shillelagh, or are you just happy to see me?”

Pink hearts, yellow moons, blue diamonds scratched on your car at knee-level, and Ross Perot is nowhere to be found.

Them little green pellets in the litter box ain’t M&M’s, Chester.

Every day this week you’ve noticed the same buckle shoes dangling just above the floor in the stall next to you.

Stories

16. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!, World

I am not one of those given to assume that just because a lot of people like something, then it must be good; after all, Debbie Boone’s warbling of “You Light Up My Life” was on top of American Top Forty for what seemed like most of the decade in the late 70s, although that damned song sucked with sufficient force to draw in small planets. Everyone that I knew ran gagging and heaving when it came on the radio, but obviously a lot of people somewhere liked it enough to keep it there, week after week after week. A lot of people read “The DaVinci Code”, deriving amusement and satisfaction thereby, and some take pleasure in Adam Sandler movies or Barbara Cartland romances… no, popularity of something does not guarantee quality, and I often have the feeling that the tastemakers of popular culture are often quite miffed — contemptuous, even — when they pronounce an unfavorable judgment upon an item of mass entertainment which turns out to be wildly, wildly popular anyway.

“300” looks to be one of those wildly popular things, for which the intellectual great and good have no explanation. This amuses me very much, because I think I do. As I wrote last week “the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one of those stories which has kept a grip on us in the West for nearly three thousand years… Courage, honor, duty, clear-eyed self-sacrifice in a cause, for the lives of those you hold dear, for your city or your country… those are values that hold, that define who we are and what we stand for.”

It’s all about stories, and our human need for stories; stories about other people, stories that explain, that make things clear for us, that inspire us to great deeds, to set an example or spell out a warning. We need stories nearly as much as we need oxygen. And we will have them, bright and sparkling and new, or worn to paper thinness in the re-telling. We will have stories that have grown, and been embellished by many narrators, with heroes and minor heroes and splendid set-piece scenes, and side-narratives, like one of those sea-creatures that collects ornaments to stick onto its’ shell any which way, or a bower-bird collecting many brilliant scraps and laying them out in intricate patterns. A longing to hear such stories must be as innate in us, as it is to those creatures, for our earliest epic, that of Gilgamesh may be traced back to the beginnings of agriculture, and towns, and the taming of animals, and the making of a written language. It may go back even farther yet, but there is really no way to know for sure what those stories were, although I am sure the anthropologists are giving it the good old college try.

Our values are transmitted in the stories that we go back to, over and over. A long time ago, I read this book, which recommended, rather in the manner of the old Victorians, that children be given improving books to read, that their minds be exercised by good examples. I was initially rather amused… and then I went over the reading list in the back. I realized just then how many of those books the author cited I had read myself… and how many quiet demonstrations of honesty, courage, ethical behavior, loyalty to family, friends and community, of doing the hard right as opposed to the easy wrong had been tidily incorporated into such books as the Little House books, or Caddie Woodlawn, or “All of a Kind Family”, or Johnny Tremain. We imbibe all these values from stories… and lest we think that these sorts of moral lessons are obscure and tangled things, best suited for a long theoretical discussion of the life-boat dilemma in some touchy-feely ethics seminar, the author (or someone that he quoted – it’s been a long time since I re-read the book) brought up the old black and white movie “A Night to Remember”… the movie account of the sinking of the Titanic. The whole story of the unsinkable ship is laid out, based on research, and with the aid (at the time it was filmed) with many still-living survivors; running full-tilt into an ice-field, hitting an iceberg…loading the relatively few lifeboats while the band plays, and the ships engineers keep the lights and power going, of husbands putting their wives and children into the boats and stepping back to leave more room, knowing that the ship is doomed… of steerage passengers taking matters into their own hands and finding their way up to the boat deck, and deck-hands trying to launch the very last boat as the seawater rises to their knees. Twice a hundred stories, and at the end of it one has a pretty good idea of who has behaved well and honorably… and who has not.

Stories. We need them, and we’ll keep coming back to them. And to the best ones, we will come back again and again.

No Rosie, His Actions Rob Him of His Humanity

16. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Go read this article over at NewsBusters.

Can anyone explain to me how anyone could give Khalid Sheik Mohammed the benifit of the doubt while assuming that your own country tortured the man into confessing?

How much self-loathing does that take?

And if it’s not self-loathing, then what the hell is it?

Seriously, I’m asking, because I simply don’t understand it.

Job Descriptions in the Real World

15. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, World

(From one of those e-mail lists going the rounds)

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand.

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. (Mark Twain)

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he
predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the
personality to be an accountant.

An actuary is someone who brings a fake bomb on a plane, because that
decreases the chances that there will be another bomb on the plane.
(Laurence J. Peter)

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
which isn’t there.(Charles R. Darwin)

A topologist is a man who doesn’t know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000 word document and calls it a
“brief.”

A psychologist is a man who watches everyone else when a beautiful girl enters the room.

A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.

A schoolteacher is a disillusioned woman who used to think she liked
children.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.

Bwahhahahahahaaaaa

15. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General Nonsense

Overheard on the First Sergeant’s radio:

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to every evil on earth today EXCEPT the sinking of the Titanic, he claims Osama handled that one himself.”

My take? You know that guy who’s like 25 years old and has a “life experience story” for everything that comes up and if you take the time to add it up, he should be about 75? Yeah, Khalid is like that. I bet if you asked him he’d say he was at CBGBs when The Clash first came over.

He wants to die that badly? I say we accomodate him. I think drowning him in a vat of bacon grease would be right…but we’ve already agreed that it’s a good thing I’m not in charge.

Well This is New…

15. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Apparently I work with a group of people who are infected with something known as “March Madness.” There seems to be an almost universal hatred towards an entity known as “Duke.” The fact that said “Duke” seems to have nothing to do with jazz music or Hunter S. Thompson has me completely confused.

Update: Basketball? All this excitement is about BASKETBALL? Tall dudes we made fun of in high school running up and down the gym playing bouncey-bouncey-throw?

Eeegads! The Commander is infected with this thing also.

We live in a strange ass country.

…There’s Always Something to Remind Me

14. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General Nonsense

People either love or hate the Geico Cavemen.

If you’re one of the former, check out their crib.

Prison Break

13. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Is it just me or does the Mahone character on Prison Break look like Alan Colmes?

MICROSOFT – THE EVIL EMPIRE

11. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: General, My Head Hurts, Rant

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to reactivate Windows XP on Red Haired Girl’s Mac. It ran fine when I installed it, but because it is on a differant machine than what it was originally installed on, it went dark after a period of time. Because I did not set it up with capability to access the Internet, a phone installation was required – just as well because I knew that explanations would be required about the entirely different hardware footprint. According to Microsoft, the purpose of requiring activation is to prevent “casual copying”, and that the minor inconvenience will actually save consumers money through the prevention of piracy.

Well, the truth is a bit more complicated. According to the customer service rep and his supervisor (Bill Gates was unable to come to the phone), their policy is not to activate preinstalled versions of Windows, regardless of the circumstances. I asked him what would happen if I had fried a motherboard (which requires activation), to which he replied that it would be a warranty issue with Gateway. I asked what if the warranty is expired, he told me that, in that scenario, the license dies with the computer.

The issue is supposed to come down to one license, one computer. I can live with that. All they needed to do was give me a 45 digit number (really – 45 digits) and RHG would be playing Nancy friggin’ Drew and I would be happy, but nooooo. They want a war, and that’s what they are going to get. The first thing I am going to do is carve up the computer that the software was originally installed on and send it to Bill Gates with a signed affadavit attesting to the fact that it is no longer in service. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Against Fearful Odds: 300

11. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, War

To all men living on this Earth, death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than by facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the Temples of his Gods?”
— Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome

So Blondie and I were intrigued by several different premises – intrigued enough to actually go and see the movie 300 on opening weekend; she because it starred Gerard Butler and several acres of well-oiled, well-built male hunkiness, and me because – well, it sounded interestingly unlike the usual Hollywood bucket o’krep poured out for the plebeians. For a start, no car chases, or machine gun fire, and most definitely not a remake of a TV show which wasn’t that good to start with, or a movie which should have been left alone. Neither one of us had ever read the wildly popular “graphic novel” it was based on. (Do I have to call them graphic novels? I always slip and call them comic books, it’s the same way I call “mobile home developments” “trailer parks” and it’s a movie, dammit, not a film.) Blondie hated the movie version of Sin City BTW, and I would like to serve notice right here and now that I would usually avoid movies which incorporate buckets of splattered gore, and collections of human grotesqueries – but the story of the Spartans at Thermopylae is one of those stories which has kept a grip on us in the West for nearly three thousand years. Every forlorn last stand, against overwhelming odds has harked back to the King of Sparta and his picked band, standing in a narrow pass. And that many of those so choosing would have known of it— like Travis at the Alamo— testifies to the enduring power of their story.

Through the rise and fall of Greece itself, and the Romes that followed it, into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and into this century, the story of Leonidas and his stalwart few resonates – as much as the righteous and politically correct would have it not so. (like this reviewer. Note to Mr. Smith; Bite me. Sincerely, Sgt. Mom). Courage, honor, duty, clear-eyed self-sacrifice in a cause, for the lives of those you hold dear, for your city or your country – those are values that hold, that define who we are and what we stand for. To have them set out unapologetically in a movie like this is as jolting as a triple-latte with a shot of brandy, after a diet of nothing but mineral water. Some years ago, I lamented that Hollywood just couldn’t bring themselves to make a movie about the war we are in. (here) Perhaps this may be the closest that they can bring themselves to do it, without running the risk of having the gentlemen from CAIR parked in the outer office.

This is not one of those movies where you go for authenticity about Greece, Sparta and the Persian empire. I can just imagine scholars of the classical world hyperventilating and gibbering incoherently for the next decade on that topic. Ancient Sparta was not anything like a democracy as we know it, Spartan women probably wore a few more clothes and took no part in public life, Greek warriors in battle wore little more than a leather Speedo and a flowing cloak, I very much doubt that anyone has ever been able to use a rhinoceros as a war-beast – and Xerxes probably wasn’t a 7-foot tall mulatto with a lot of body piercings. Some of the dialog clunks a bit, though. I can tell, because I was mentally re-writing it. All that is beside the point.

Because it is not just the story by itself; there was the look of it, the whole visual spectacle. The word that kept coming up in my mind, over and over was “painterly”. That the story of 300 was created by some who is an artist was obvious in the very first frame. Every scene was set up as if it were a painting or a classical frieze, a vase-painting; all of it harking back to something that an artistically literate person would recognize. The flow of a cloak, the jut of a bearded chin, the fall of golden sunset on a craggy mountain pass, the way a man holds a spear and shield – all of it evocative and visually rich in a way that doesn’t happen much in movies. Without having read the book, I can’t say if the movie version was true to Frank Miller vision , but it definitely made for an arresting look. We did notice some little grace notes that seem to be quotes from other movies; the fields of wheat from Gladiator, Xerxes’ monumental throne looked the one from the Elizabeth Taylor vehicle in Cleopatra and the assorted war-beasts from Lord of the Rings. (Also Blondie was bugged throughout the movie as to where she had seen the actor who played Dilius – he was in Lord of the Rings, also. She could have asked me, of course!)

All in all… ticket price and time well-spent, especially for Frank Miller fan. There are also some bonuses for the straight women and gay male demographic as well. It seems to be going over very well in flyover country, too.