Old Enough to Know Better

Death Drone Details at Eleven ...

2009-12-17T15:53:00.000-08:00

Seems that the Predator drones that fly about over the Middle East and take videos and potshots at suspected insurgents aren't that hard to swipe video feeds from. Local hackers, using commercial software, were able to see what the drones could see.

Couldn't take over from the controllers in Langley, nor cause any damage to the drones, but being able to see what they see might be considered a tactical advantage to the guys on the ground.

Oops.

A little-known fact about these rains-death-from-the-sky craft is that that over the course of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, (and over places like Iran and Pakistan) they have nailed, according to best estimates, about five hundred people who weren't legitimate targets -- men, women, children, and not counting camels, goats ...

Apparently being tall, bearded, and robed out in the open after 911 anywhere in the Middle East or West Asia was a good way to die a fast and expensive death ...

Like This Picture

2009-12-17T08:50:00.000-08:00

Got this off Bobbe's blog, and while I'm guessing my reason for liking it probably isn't the same as his for posting it, I wanted to share it ...

Knives Redux

2009-12-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

Back to playing with bare hands against knives in the silat class, and once again -- even though I've mentioned it a time or twelve -- the realization that against an attacker (or defender) who has a clue what s/he is doing with a sharp and pointy thing in your direction? You are in trouble.

Run away if you can.

If you can't run away and you don't have an equalizing weapon, the functional situation you will find yourself in is what we call Oh Shit! Mode. There are things you can do, though you really don't want to do them unless there is no other choice. All those fancy disarms you see in the movies, those multiple passes back and forth? Good luck with those.

Trading a punch for a stab? Only if you are the stabber.

A guy puts a blade out and has any skill, you go charging in at the wrong moment, you get to be shish kebab, a graduate of Skewer U ...

Men of a Certain Age

2009-12-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

New series on TNT, Men of a Certain Age.

I thought the premise sounded interesting, and I liked the actors cast, so I tuned in.

Basically, it's a show about three men, long-time friends, who are now middle-aged and dealing with lives that didn't turn out nearly as well as they hoped and expected.

On the face of it, they are all losers.

Played by Ray Romano, ("Joe"); Andre Braugher ("Owen"); and Scott Bakula ("Terry"), all three men have come to mostly-unrealized lives.

Joe owns a party store, is separated from his wife and children because he had a gambling jones, and living in a hotel. Also married, Owen sells cars at a dealership owned by his father, who takes every opportunity to shit on him. Terry is single, an actor who doesn't work much, and earns his living as a not-so-temporary temp. He hits on girls young enough to be his daughter.

Why, I wondered, would anybody want to watch such a depressing show?

Yeah, the actors are terrific in their portraits. How truly miserable Owen is when his father takes away his spiffy demo car and gives him a tiny hybrid because his sales numbers have dipped.

Joe can't stop betting, nor lying about it to his friends. He makes his bookie leave by the back door of his store, and forbids him from coming during work hours.

Terry almost gets run over by a driver on a cell phone who blows through a stop sign, and when he tracks the guy down and goes to give him a piece of his mind, meets a young man holding a toddler that stops his rage in its track. Watching him try to stay mad makes you cringe.

Losers, living in loserville, sad and pathetic. And yet ...

Now and then, there is a little spark, a bit of hope that pops out and allows the trio to rise above their misery and, for a brief and shining moment, stand in a kind of muted glory.

Joe finds a girl at a party and realizes she wants to sleep with him. He doesn't, but it's a sign.

Owen tells his father off for treating him worse than the rest of his employees, and gets a better ride.

Terry manages to best another bad driver, and the theme from Billy Jack playing over as he does it is laugh-out-loud brilliant -- if you are old enough to remember the movie.

It's a better-to-light-one-candle-than-curse-the-darkness kind of story, and since I like that notion, the show works for me.

Romano is the producer and his role is, at least in the episode I caught, a little juicer, but I expect that all the guys will shine equally.

My slogan uptop is "If you do the best you can, nothing else matters worth a damn." I think this show offers that, sometimes, the best you can do might not be much -- but it's all you got.

Unfortunately, the show is on here opposite Castle, which has less substance than cotton candy, but which is way more fun and a guilty pleasure. That one is in reruns, and so Men might have a chance to catch an audience before the new season. It's got my attention.

You Look Mahvelous!

2009-12-15T11:03:00.001-08:00

Years ago, Billy Crystal did a character, "Fernando," based, ostensibly, on the late actor Fernando Lamas. No matter how terrible your life might be, Fernando would, if you looked great, allow that you looked mahvelous! and that, of course, was what mattered. Because -- especially in Hollywood -- it was better to look good than to feel good.

Turned out out he was right.

Apparently, people who look younger tend to live longer than people the same age who look their age.

Those of you who don't do links, the basic story allows that research, using identical twins and physical and cognitive tests, demonstrated a relationship between looking younger and living longer. One theory involves telomeres, those genetic tip ends. (I believe the women who discovered the chemical telomerase and named it just won the Nobel prize.)

Ain't life strange?

Hands Off Learning

2009-12-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

I got an email from a correspondent across the pond in Europe who is a Silat Sera student. This writer's teacher has visited here to train with us, and a nice fellow he is.

The further away one is from the fire, the less it warms one, and I am once again reminded of how lucky I am to be within range of a world-class instructor in an art that I want to learn.

My fellow student asked me some questions, based on some of the stuff I wrote about in my e-book, But What If I Did This!? And again, I am also reminded of how limited the written word is when it comes to explain physical motions.

Learning martial arts from a book or even a video is tricky. I believe that these are best utilized when you already have a basic foundation, an understanding of the activity to which you wish to add. Picking up balance and position and timing from a video of an art in which you have never had a good teacher's hands-on adjustments, while not impossible, is, at best, difficult. What you see somebody demonstrating is not what you feel when you do it.

If you have never ridden a bicycle, then watching somebody do it who is expert at it tends to make it look a lot easier than it is. The skill, for instance, needed to sit on a bike in balance while it is not moving involves kinetics you can't get from looking at a picture of it, or having somebody tell you about it.

Maps are useful, but not, as smarter people than I have said, not the territory. Learning how to swim requires water.

Still and all, I tried to offer a general explanation for the queries. I don't know how much good that did, but it's what you have to work with when the tool is the written word. A video might be helpful, but the best help is from somebody who knows how to do it standing there and giving tactile feedback in the moment. This doesn't have to be a day-to-day process once you have gotten the basics: A visiting teacher can impart a lot in a few days or a week or two that will provide much material for practice, but without that, I think long-distance learning is a most hard row to hoe for any activity that requires complex physicality.

Current Set - December

2009-12-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

A few new ones, dropped a couple, but mostly the same as in October:

Bell Bottom Blues

Can’t Get Used to Losin’ You

One Toke Over the Line

Daydream Believer

Political Science

Layla

Hotel California

Lola

Walk Away Renee

We Just Disagree

Year of the Cat

Hallelujah

Angel from Montgomery

Sail Away

Way Down in the Hole

Dixie (Instrumental)

The Weight

Blackbird

In My Life

Yesterday (Inst.)

Here Comes the Sun (Inst.)

Hey, Jude

Stand By Me

Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay

Brand New Key

Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)

The Water is Wide (Inst.)

Ashokan Farewell (Inst.)

Born to Run

For What It’s Worth

Telstar (Inst.)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Inst.)

Vader’s Theme (Inst.)

Werewolves of London

It’s Lonely at the Top

Love and Affection

Have a Heart

Ruby Tuesday

Merry Christmas from the Family

Critters

2009-12-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

Had to take a couple of the critters to the vet today: Ballou, for pre-op blood work for the upcoming loss of los ping-pongs, and a career thereafter as a soprano. Jude, because he needed to update his rabies vaccine. Nothing spoils an evening watching TV quicker than having your dog foaming at the mouth and savaging the couch. (Although the last case of rabies in a domestic dog in these parts was, I think, more than fifty years ago.)

Jude also needs to lose some weight. He's always been chunky, but he porks up around Thanksgiving -- all that turkey skin and gravy -- and he needs to slim down. My fault he's overweight -- he sits there looking pitiful -- Oh, please sir! May I have some more? -- and it's too easy to give him the leftover sandwich instead of going to get a nice non-fattening bit of apple or green bean instead. And in the cold and wet, the walks tend to get shorter ...

If your dog is too fat, so the saying goes, you aren't getting enough exercise ...

The solution is simple, if not easy: He needs to a) eat less and b) exercise more. That's pretty much the solution for people, too.

Psst! Tubby! You want to get skinny? I got what you need. Eat less. Exercise more. Ta-dah!

What? Oh, yeah, I can hokey it up, but that the secret, and all the rest is just bullshit. Huh? Oh, yeah. Right. No money in doing a diet book that simple, is there?

So, it's rabbit food and more walks for the dogs, cold and rain notwithstanding, and the long loop instead of the short one.

And it's also true that a tired dog is makes for a happier household, that's a bonus.

An amusing note: As we took off for the first of our long walks today, The mail truck was in front of our house when we left. We walked straight down the street to the end, about half a mile, and the truck's delivery route was the same. We beat the truck to the turnaround.

Slow delivery as Christmas gets closer.

What Really Happened?

2009-12-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

This post an addition to the previous one, concerning the notion of truth sometimes being more in the middle than on either side of an argument.

If you have somehow missed Rashomon in your movie viewing , you should try to catch it. It's in Japanese with subtitles for English speakers, but a great study in subjectivity.

Another case in point. A few years back, a bus passed a bicyclist on one of Portland's bridges over the Willamette River downtown. (The Hawthorne, for those of you who are local.)

The cyclist's version (his name is Randy) is that yes, he was not in the narrow bike lane, because the lane was littered with gravel and the city had not, after repeated reports, cleaned it out, thus he had no choice. And that the bus driver almost hit him as he blew past, missing by only a foot.

Angry because he was nearly run over, Randy slammed his fist against the side of the bus as it went by, and because the driver paid him no heed, he stood on the pedals and put his bike into a sprint, managed to catch the bus when it slowed, and pass it, whereupon he pulled in front of it, stopped his bike and got off, thus blocking the road.

The bus screeched to a stop.

I don't recall if the driver honked the horn, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did.

The biker stood there, glaring at the driver, cursing like a ship full of sailors, wanting him to acknowledge his fault, and to make a point. The other lane moved, but the bus couldn't.

I'm not sure what would have satisfied Randy, but he apparently showed no sign of moving out of the road.

Cyclists in Portland, considered a good town to bike in, sometimes get militant when they think their rights aren't properly respected. I understand the feeling, having ridden a bike for a time as primary transportation. It's dangerous out there. Still ...

The bus was full, SRO, and the passengers, wanting to get to work or home, quickly became irritated. After a bit, one of the passengers asked the driver to open the door. He may or may not have said, "Let me take care of this." His nickname was "Gator," and he was an ex-boxer.

There was a videocam going, but no sound.

Gator approached the biker, and here the story veers. Gator's version is that he told the guy to get out of the road, the biker cursed him and refused, so Gator popped him one, wrestled him down and out of the road, along with the bike, then climbed back onto the bus, which then went on its way.

Randy's version is that Gator charged him and began throwing punches without a word.

Pretty good hit, from the images, and Randy needed to get his lip stitched as a result.

Naturally, Randy sued TriMet.

Eventually, an arbitrator found that both sides were negligent. The cyclist shouldn't have blocked traffic. The driver shouldn't have let the passenger off the bus, especially if he suspected what Gator was going to do.

But you got an idea that the arbitrator didn't really feel that the weight of negligence fell too heavily upon TriMet, since the forty-eight grand Randy sued for was reduced to an award of $601.

Bicyclists were outraged and their sympathies lay with Randy, even though they tended to think he had maybe stepped over the line, just a hair.

Bus passengers seemed to feel like I did when I first read about it, which boiled down to, "Served him right." I mean, yes, certainly Gator shouldn't have assaulted Randy, just because he was standing in the road blocking traffic and making everybody on the bus late for work. On the other hand, I understand Gator's impulse, too. Randy might ordinarily be a swell fellow, but in that instance, he was not behaving as one ...

Sci Fi is Dangerous

2009-12-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

So, a Canadian SF writer, Dr. Peter Watts, got into a set-to whilst crossing the border back into Canada from the U.S. His version is that he was singled out, pulled over for inspection, and when he got out to inquire what the beef was -- and for no reason whatsoever -- he was beaten, pepper-sprayed, cuffed, arrested, and charged with assault a federal officer.

The ICE version is that he was pulled over, he got out of his car, became verbally abusive, and refused to get back into his rented automobile when told to do so. When they tried to arrest him, he resisted, and tried to choke out one of the officers.

On the face of it, if you believe Watts's account, then this is simply unacceptable behavior on the part of the ICE agents.

But as in all these kinds of things, there is that pesky other side to the story, and it has that fishy smell that makes me wonder.

If you click on the link above and read Watts's account, take note of the language and alternate-world construction in which he framed it.

Consider two possibilities:

1. Watts is stopped because he is in a rental car and asked to pull over. He exits the vehicle, politely inquires as to the cause for the stop.

The agent, insulted to the hilt, screams, "Get back in the car, now!"

Watts, puzzled, repeats the query: "I'm sorry, I'm not looking to cause trouble, but what is the problem?"

Whereupon a couple of the jackboots proceed to punch him in the face, hit him with pepper spray, knock him down, kick him, handcuff him, and after stripping him half naked, throw him into the slammer. Upon his release, he is put out jacketless in a snowstorm and told to stand by because he is surely going to get a couple years in prison for the assault.

Or this:

2. Watts is stopped because he is in a rental car and asked to pull over. He exits the vehicle, says to the ICE agent, "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Please get back in your vehicle, sir."

"Hell I will. I asked you what the fuck you are doing, and I want an answer!"

It could be somewhere in between.

And we are off -- !

Watts is not twelve-years-old. One assumes that the "Dr." before his name, indicating at least a Ph.D, would indicate he has some education and might be expected to know the ways of the world.

If he mouthed off to the border guys and got feisty and, the agents were having a bad day, you can see how that might go.

But you know all major crossings have videocams covering the gates, and that vid, if it exists, will become somebody's evidence pretty quick. I'd love to see it before I passed judgement on this incident. In the case of the girl in Portland being shot by the beanbag, I did see the video and I thought the officer overstepped. In this case, while it might be possible the agents just flipped out and for no reason beat the crap out of a science fiction writer, I find that it sounds just a little, I dunno, too pat.

Why bother? Science fiction writers have the crap beat out of them by critics, fans, and literary writers all the time ...

Breathless

2009-12-12T09:41:00.000-08:00

I'm a Dean Koontz fan, have been since the days he was writing under a bunch of pseudonyms and turning out books in half a dozen genres. When I was first getting into the writing field in the late seventies, I got a copy of Writing Popular Fiction, in which Koontz laid out the formulas for how-to-write Science fiction and fantasy, Suspense, Mysteries, Gothic-romance, Westerns, and Erotica, all fields in which he had published novels. He knew the beats and tropes. (By the time my first novel came out, in 1981, Koontz had written at least forty books, under ten different pseudonyms.)

When he hit it big doing horror, he reinvented his look. The book cover jackets before then showed a balding fellow with a big handlebar mustache who looked maybe fifty; shortly thereafter, following a hair transplant, and clean-shaven, there appeared this handsome, at least ten years younger guy who, if you looked at the pictures side by side, you'd never guess they were the same man.

I like it that Koontz is an animal lover, especially dogs, and critters smarter than the ones I've owned are frequently featured in his books. Plus he's a pro's pro -- his prose is clean, he sucks you in, and his characters are interesting odd-balls, and flawed enough to be intriguing.

Which brings us to Breathless, the latest Koontz's offering.

It has all the elements of a typical Koontz's novel -- quirky characters with old wounds; animals that make Lassie look slow; and a skying off into esoteric science and math theories that make you really think. (Koontz was, for instance, one of the first fiction writers to deal with nanotech, years before it was a hot topic, and I like being led into new paths that make me wonder.)

The writing here is as clean and evocative as usual, and the action compelling. Some terrific scenes ...

But ...

Have you ever been reading along, caught up in a tale, and looked at how much book you have left and think: Jeez, there's only a few pages until the end. How the hell is the writer going to wrap it up? He doesn't have the room.

My usual reaction when I get this feeling is, oh, swell, this is going to be the first book of a series, and I'll have to wait until the next one, or the third book in what will be revealed as a trilogy, to find out what the end of the story is. Koontz does have a couple of continuing characters I've followed.

Not to get ahead of myself, but this isn't the case here.

From the first chapter, Koontz sets up these fascinating creatures who show up in the woods, the best combination of dogs, monkeys, and people, with big, glow-in-the-dark eyes, and who are so cute as to make giant pandas look hideous. Lab creations? He's gone that way before. Aliens? Could be. Certainly not something anybody has ever seen in these parts.

There are four other stories woven into the narrative, all interesting themselves, and as a writer, I enjoyed them even as I kept thinking: How on Earth is he going to be able to braid these lines into a coherent whole during the remaining pages and have it work?

And the answer is, not nearly as well as I hoped. Yes, the stories are intertwined, and all are related to the main line -- though one is such that I couldn't see any relationship to the plot closer than humans to garter snakes, and pretty much a total red herring.

Without giving specifics away about the resolution, it's all based in Chaos Theory, and the explanation of how the amazing things all came to pass is not just mind-boggling, but for me a suspension of disbelief that can't support its own weight, much less that of me trying to cross it.

The ending is virtually deus ex machina. A character blithely tosses into the trash one of the bedrocks of current science, and offers in its place an update that makes the theories of Phlogiston, Noxious Vapors of the Night, and Intelligent Design seem like works of pure genius by comparison. Rather like somebody saying, You know that old theory that flies arise from rotten meat? Spontaneous Generation? Well, guess what? It's true!

Didn't work for me. As much as I like Kootnz's stuff generally, this one was disappointing because I simply couldn't buy the central premise.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and if you read it and find that it works for you, good.

Tiger Would? Nah. Tiger did ...

2009-12-11T16:48:00.001-08:00

I suppose I should weigh in on the most critical, important, burning story of the day, and possibly our times, just to show I heard about it. Of course, anybody who has a television, radio, computer, newspaper, tom-tom, or ESP heard about it. President says he's gonna ship thirty thousand more soldiers off to war, and the lead story? Tiger is up to seven ... no wait, eight -- hold on a second, nine ... ?

News? Good Lord, why anybody is surprised that a rich jock fools around is what is so amazing. Why ... that's never happened before! Can you even imagine!

And why he thought he had a prayer of getting away with it is only slightly less amazing. Man can't stick his head out a door without somebody snapping a picture of him. Them chickens have just been biding their time before they came home to roost.

The first rule in committing a perfect crime -- which is, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, is not one in which the authorities can't figure out who did it, but one in which nobody knows it ever even happened -- the rule is: Do it solo.

If you have a partner, there will always be somebody who can rat you out. If nobody knows you did it but you? You never confess, you were in De-troit when it happened, you stick to that story.

Of course, screwing around kinda requires that you have partners, doesn't it? And of course, none of the legion who boinked Tiger was ever going to say anything, them all being women of deep moral, intellectual, and spiritual substance, right?

Tiger might be dynamite on the golf course and maybe even aces in conjugal playing fields, but he's ot-nay oo-tay ight-bray when it comes to fooling around. Little head ruled, and all that money and fame made him think he wasn't gonna get caught. They all think that.

Can anybody say, "Bill Clinton?"

I understand that in Las Vegas, somebody came out with a T-shirt for women, said: I DIDN'T SLEEP WITH TIGER! It didn't do well -- couldn't find enough potential buyers, apparently.

Avatar Premieres

2009-12-11T10:16:00.000-08:00

Check out Nikki's site for the buzz on Avatar, which premiered in London.

Critical acclaim isn't 100%, but got five of five on Rotten Tomatoes at first look ...

The Three Most Important Things In Life

2009-12-11T09:44:00.001-08:00

According to Harlan Ellison. These are Sex, Violence, and Labor Relations.

Those of you who are into things martial will appreciate the essay on the second topic, but they are all most entertaining. Go, read, enjoy.

If you are any kind of fan of science fiction, fantasy, or other speculative fictions, and you haven't read Ellison, you are missing something. And he's just as good a speaker in person as he is on the page.

Ho, Ho, HO ... !

2009-12-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

If it were up to me, Christmas wouldn't start the day after Hallowe'en, but about three days before Christmas Eve. Time enough to get excited and stay that way. I dunno about you, but while I'm still figuring out how to avoid eating the leftover trick-or-treat candy, I do not want to have the radio blasting me with "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Silent Night" and "Jingle Bells," it's just not right.

Of course, it isn't up to me, so I dragged the white-trash bottle-brush tree down from the attic yesterday and assembled it. I bought some new politically-correct energy-efficient lights but they were dim, ugly, and made the tree look altogether hideous after we decorated it, so we stripped everything off that sucker and got better lights today. Still have to put the ornaments on, but we like it.

And in what has become another tradition, here is the YouTube embed for Robert Earl Keene's "Merry Christmas from the Family," hands down the best Christmas video ever.

Yeehaw, ya'll.

How, Ah, Cold Is It?

2009-12-10T10:36:00.002-08:00

Can't tell by me.

I got up this morning, my thermometer, on the porch post outside the kitchen, looked like it was about 9º F.

My computer has a Dashboard weather widget connected to my zip code, and it said 8º F.

So far, so good.

The WeatherChannel's reading? 25º F. ...

Even though I expect the WeatherChannel's sensory gear is more advanced than the device I got at Rite-Aid, out on the porch post there, I'm going with mine as a more likely accurate reading.

First, I stepped outside, and no way it was in the twenties. Single-digit cold bites harder than a few degrees above freezing. Second, there are a lot of things that will make a thermometer read higher than it actually is -- maybe the WC has its unit next to somebody's dryer vent or something -- but only a malfunction will make an outdoor gauge read lower than it really is.

Put the hummingbird feeder back out, and have had several visitors already. They look chilly.

Armageddon on the Streets

2009-12-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

Here we go -- there's a company in L.A. now offering tourist buses to the worst areas of the inner city, to see where gang shootouts and sundry evils have taken place.

Are still taking place.

L.A. Gang Tours. I'm serious.

I think the St. Valentine's Day Massacre site got on the tourist maps after it went down in 1929, but I do believe they waited until after the killers had left the building before they started busing the tourists in ...

Can't you just see it? L.A. Safari?

Can I get an African drumbeat as b.g. music here?

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you look to the left, there, on the porch of the 'crack house,' you'll see two of the locals engaged in a drug transaction. The taller one is the 'dealer,' and the shorter one, the 'buyer.' Note how they keep looking around for law enforcement agents. If our Stretch Hummer didn't have fully-tinted windows, they would surely be spooked by the sight of us. So to speak.

"Now, if you will turn your attention to the corner, you will see a trio of brightly-arrayed female 'ho's,' and behind them standing next to the Cadillac Escalade in a zebra-skin coat, the male protector, 'the playuh.' Observe as 'the playuh' scans the street, looking for likely prospects and law enforcement officials. If you listen carefully, you can hear the 'ho's' mating calls, 'You-wanna-date? You-wanna-date?'"

"Here, across the street, a group of 'Bloods.' These young males are identified by their plumage, which is predominantly red. This is in contrast to the 'Crips,' whose markings are in the blue end of the spectrum. Generally, these two tribes are not found in close proximity, save for ritual combat over their territory. Observe as the -- uh oh! Step on it, Jerry, they are heading this way!

"Don't be alarmed, folks, the limo and glass are bulletproof and -- whoa! what the fuck was that? IED! Jerry! Get us out of here -- !

"Uh ... good afternoon, sir. Can we -- ah -- help you with something? Our watches and wallets? Certainly, certainly, no problem ..."

Packin' Cold

2009-12-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

The duck pond -- actually a wide spot in Johnson Creek. Dunno if you could skate on it, but it is frozen over completely. (Update: Friday -- you can skate on it . Three or four kids and two adults were doing so when I drove by there earlier.)

Jude and Layla looking for the ducks, who have left the building ...

Corgis, like German Shepherd Dogs and some others, are double-coated. This makes for dust bunnies the size of real bunnies in the hall corners when they shed, which they do several times a year. They are supposedly all-weather critters, but they prefer cold to heat. A hot summer day, mostly black fur, I have to take a water bottle if we walk more than few blocks. So a brisk stroll in the warming morning cold today-- already up to 18º F., practically summer -- not a problem.

Dogs can get frostbite on their ears, which are a little less insulated, but I figure that if my bare face isn't freezing, the dogs are good.

Mostly in winter, the weather is mild here in the Willamette Valley. Gets to freezing at night, warms up during the day. I can get by with a couple of layers and a light jacket, thin football gloves, maybe a hat.

Now and then we get stretches were it gets cold and stays below freezing for a few days, and we are in one of those now. Not talking Dakotas or Minnesota or even Chicago. (I was in Chicago one Christmas years ago and saw blowing snow stick to the face of a stop sign, followed by a cold snap and a wind off the lake that took the thermometer below zero and turned your head right around. I was not prepared for that -- nor to be literally pushed backward on an icy sidewalk by that lake-wind. Not my kind of town, Chicago.)

I have a heavy, hooded jacket and gloves and watch caps and they will keep me toasty in weather as cold as it's gotten around here. If the wind is blowing, I might have to put a muffler over my face, but even in the teens or single-digits, if it's still out, as it it now, it's certainly doable for a twenty-minute walk with the dogs.

Still cold for a Louisiana cracker, though.

Packin' Heat

2009-12-08T21:25:00.001-08:00

(The picture is supposedly some of the hardware owned and carried by John Dillinger over his career. That's his death mask in the upper left corner and -- I think -- the jacket he was wearing when gunned down.)

Recently, I went to get my Oregon CHL renewed. I have had one in Oregon for like nineteen years, along with one in Washington. I travel a lot back and forth twixt the two, and for some odd reason, they don't seem to offer reciprocity with these things. Odd, because both of their CHL's are recognized in twelve or fifteen other states.

Ah, well. Bureaucracy.

Being an upstanding citizen, never arrested, not more than two beers if I'm driving, I can, with my CHL, carry boomware concealed upon my person in these states, excepting such places like courtrooms and post offices and airports and like that. I am a legally armed citizen.

Some changes over the years in the process. The law was passed as part of a deal with the NRA and state gun groups for a waiting period on gun purchases. Most liberal woman in the House set it up, which shows how strange bedfellows get.

Local sheriffs were the issuers, and they weren't prepared for it. People wandered in, produced documentation showing competence with a handgun, filled out some papers. They got fingerprinted with perp-ink, paid for an FBI check, and in a few weeks, the license arrived.

Now, they have their own office in the courthouse, appointments are necessary, and there are electronic signature and fingerprint readers to speed up the process. And pretty soon, proof of citizenship is going to be required, i.e. a birth certificate or passport to go along with your DL, if it was issued before 2008. (After 2008, you don't need that because you had to have a birth certificate or passport to get an Oregon Driver's License.)

There are thousand of folks with CHLs in Oregon, more in Washington, and relative few of them have been rescinded for misuse of the firearms.

Long Train Running

2009-12-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

In 1991, I got a call from Mike Richardson at Dark Horse Comics. He and I had bumped into each other years earlier, when he'd been running a comic book store, also known then as Dark Horse Comics, (now called Things from Another World.)

Mike had gotten the rights to do graphic novels that continued the Aliens series, what they call EU stuff (expanded universe.) And somehow, he also managed to get the rights to do novels based on the graphic novels. He remembered me from the days when I'd take my son into the comic shop and we'd talk, so he asked me if I was interested in taking a shot at doing a novelization of the first of the graphic novels.

He originally planned to publish these himself, though he wound up doing a deal with Bantam instead.

This would be a novel based on a comic based on a movie, some distance removed from the source material, but it sounded like fun. Money wasn't all that much, but he seemed convinced that the books would sell well. (I had my doubts. Like most mid-list book writers, I had learned to live on the advances, and didn't really expect to see any royalties past that.)

So we sat down and talked about it. The graphic novel, written by Mark Verheiden, essentially picked up after Aliens, the second movie. Because they did a third movie after that, and because the storyline was different, Mike and I came up with new names for the characters in the book. "Newt" and "Hicks," became "Billie," and "Wilks," to avoid confusion, since the third movie killed both of them off. Which is why it sucked as a movie, among other reasons. (I still recall the expression on his face when I offered up my list of possible names for Hicks/Wilks and rattled off the last one I'd come up with as a joke: Mtumbo. He looked at me as if I had turned into a tree frog. Mtumbo?)

The book came out as Aliens: Earth Hive, from Bantam, in October, 1992. It sold pretty well.

Later, when the first graphic novel was remastered (as Outbreak) going to color panels instead of B&W, they did some more revising, and changed the names there to match the novelization I did. I'm not sure any confusion was avoided by this point, but: Here's the wiki.

Anyway, this brief history was to tell you that this book led to others, including some in the Predator universe, and a long and happy professional relationship with Mike and Dark Horse.

A:EH got me the job doing the first Star Wars novel I did, too. Mike bragged on me to the powers-that-were at Lucasfilm. Between that and doing a novelization for the Star Wars editor Tom Dupree at Bantam (on The Mask), I got to write Shadows of the Empire.

Dark Horse been bery, bery good to me -- apologies to Garrett Morris and SNL.

Earth Hive, which is up to Lord knows how many printings by now, has just gone back to press for another couple thousand copies, seventeen years after it first hit the racks.

My apologies to Mike for doubting him. He was right and I was wrong. The books did sell well and earned out long ago. Collectively, the ones I did, and those my daughter and I did together, have sold more copies than my first Star Wars novel did, and that one -- also still in print -- is pushing three-quarters of a million copies after almost fourteen years ...

Hummingbird's Lament

2009-12-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

One of our local species of hummingbirds doesn't migrate for the winter, but sticks around. Given that it is thirteen degrees F. outside Steve's house, you have to wonder how they survive.

Even under the eaves outside my office window, it is sufficiently cold to freeze the feeder solid.

What? Yes, of course I'm thawing it out. Can't let the little birds starve, can I?

Can't do anything about the rhododendrons, who look pretty chilly, too.

Guess I'll be breaking out the big jacket to wear when I walk the dogs this morning.

(Wednesday Update: 8º F. out there at nine a.m, which is as cold as it has ever been while we have lived here.)

Connections

2009-12-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

My son's father-in-law is Tim Combes, a Brit. Delightful fellow. When I first met him, before he retired, he was an actor's agent in the U.K., but he had a long and varied career in the entertainment industry, and this included a stint as a director for the BBC.

Included in this periods were episodes of Dr. Who, featuring the Second and Third Doctor.

The Evils of the Daleks

Dr. Who and the Silurians

The Mind of Evil

When we talked about this during a recent family visit, it was fun to hear how they put together the cheesy special effects back in the day. Now, you can crank up your Mac and do things in CGI that are amazing. Then, the rubber suit was state-of-the-art ...

Never Rains but It Pours ...

2009-12-07T11:24:00.001-08:00

The last year has been fairly lean, workwise. Not dead -- I did have a novel come out in September -- but the recession hit the book-biz, too. So I was trying to get a fish on the line and hoping my bait was okay. In such times, you just keep casting and hoping for a bite ...

Then, all of a sudden, fish are leaping into the boat ...

Enough torturing of that metaphor.

Most of what's going on I can't talk about, but it's always interesting to go from slack to taut. Phone rings, and it's somebody who needs something in a hurry. Hey, got you covered -- and before you can flex your hands and crank, another call from somebody else: Here's a new project, you interested?

Plus some of the already-in-progress stuff I have needs to be wrapped up. Even though the book biz, like the movie biz (and like a lot of other things) tends to pretty much shut down between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, my self-imposed deadline on the current novel decrees that I get it done and to my agent before Christmas. (Missing your own deadlines isn't so bad -- nobody's tapping their foot and looking at their watch. Missing contractural delivery dates is a no-no. I've always been of the mind that if I couldn't write it great, at least I could get it in on time. There are projects wherein fast and okay are better than slow and terrific.)

I really will let you know what is going on, soon as I have leave to do so. I can say that the draft for Bristlecone is almost done, and that if a couple other projects come to fruition, the coming year will be more prosperous than the previous one.

One can hope.

Brrr

2009-12-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

So, it's cold here today.

"Cold" is a relative term -- we have this discussion every winter. What they consider cold in L.A. we sneer at. What we think is cold, the folks in Michigan allow as shirtsleeve weather. What they think is cold in De-troit makes people in north Saskatchewan laugh.

Cold, sonny? Why, back in the winter of ought-two, I found a little blue thing on top of eight feet of snow at fifty below. Took it into the house, and when it thawed out, it went pooot! and disappeared. Stunk up the place something awful ...

But temperatures here are going down, maybe into the low teens the next couple of days, depending which weather guys you like. Channel 8 says 14º F. Weather Channel says 18º, Accuweather, 20º. Weather at the airport now says it's 35º. My thermometer out front says 31º. Microclimates galore around here, valley, mounts, gorge, seashore.

Add in an east wind, gusting to thirty mph or at my house, maybe forty-five in the Gorge, and the handy-dandy windchill chart makes it that feel like single-digits on exposed skin, going into the minus range in Troutdale. Twenty-thirty minutes to frostbite if'n it ain't covered up.

C'mon dogs, lets go for a walk. What are you standing there staring at me for? Out! Outside! Don't you run from me!

Makes wintering in Hawaii sound real good. Mostly sunny and 82º at the beach in Haleakala, Maui, today, a chance of scattered showers.

Pass me the Coppertone, would you, hon?

Central High School, Baton Rouge - Class of 1965

2009-12-04T09:34:00.001-08:00

What's always amazing to me is how much older we looked back then.

I'm easy to spot -- there's only one guy in the picture with his hair combed forward and down --like those long-haired Beatles (and it's not that long ...)