Oh, and You *Got* to See This

Words aren't adequate:

Who Says Classical Guitar Can't be Popular?

Edgar Cruz, four million hits, "Bohemian Rhapsody." Basically, a vid lesson in how to play it.(Of course, the classical guitar newsgroup crucifies him for how awful his playing is ...)

Stick Peg

Might as well put this one down before it fades away ...

The players in stick peg all had sharpened rods about two feet long, usually old boom or mop handles. There was no limit to the number of players, but generally, three or four were the norm, and you only needed two.

How it worked was, one player lost the draw and went first. He threw his stick point down, hard, and tried to stick it as close to straight up as possible, to forestall the intent of the second player.

The goal of the second player was twofold: He tried to hit the first player's stick hard enough with his thrown stick to knock it down, while at the same time, making sure his dug into the ground deep enough to stay upright. If he didn't do both, it was the third player's turn.

If the second guy did unearth the first guy's stick and managed to stick his up, too -- not too hard in St. Augustine grass and damp alluvial soil, with a little practice -- he he got to pick up the first guy's stick and hammer it like a baseball player trying to knock one out of the part.

The first guy hauled ass to retrieve his batted-away stick. If he got to it and managed to stick it up in the ground before the hitter could stick his pointy stick up three times, he stayed in the game. If not, he was out.

If it stuck up after the flight on its own, he got a free pass.

If both sticks fell over, the third player got his choice of which one to throw at, and all he had to do was tap one that was down and stick his own up, whereupon he got to bat the stick out for the three-versus-one count.

A good and lucky throw, you could knock down two or three sticks, whack 'em all, and get three guys out at once, if you were fast enough.

It was a good game to learn angles -- how to cut the line to knock the other guy's stick down, plus you got to do some sprinting. And aerate the lawn, of course. Not that it was necessary down in the fetid and fecund south. If you went off and forgot your stick was stuck up, it would sprout leaves and roots in a couple days ...

This game was similar to tops, which were of wood, with a steel point. These were thrown, spun, and attacked the same way, with the goal of knocking an opponent's already spinning top out of a chalked ring with your own. If you did, you got to keep the top. If not, he got a shot at yours. Like marbles, it was a gambling game, and mostly, we played for keeps.

You Got the Right String Baby, but ...

... the wrong yo-yo ...

A link to a documentary in progress, "The World on a String," about the history of the yo-yo, aka the "return-top," in America. Fascinating stuff, if you grew up playing with these things, as I did.

Today, kids do things with these we couldn't dream of with the old wooden-axle models.

Spandex

Time is a useful construct, but sometimes it seems to have meaning that it doesn't really have.

Turning thirty-eight or thirty-nine on your birthday is not nearly so important in our society as turning forty. Why? Because forty was, for a long time, traditionally the start of middle age. These days, forty is the new thirty, but it used to mark a major milestone.

Those birthday years that end in fives or zeroes, they seem to have more impact. Not always, but I can tell you that turning sixty felt more monumental than turning thirty, forty, or fifty ...

Sixty was old, when I was growing up. The pyramids were sixty. Dinosaurs went extinct sixty years ago. My grandmother was sixty ...

Forty was middle-aged, but even if sixty is the new forty, um ... well ... you ain't no spring chicken no more. Patch, patch, patch.

The year I turned forty, I was determined that if I was going to be middle-aged, they were going to have to drag me into it kicking and screaming.

We tricked out half the garage into a workout room -- weight-stack machine, freeweights, stair-stepper, a rower, a mini-tramp.

We bought bicycles and did some serious riding. I did martial arts forms, hiked all over creation and gone, and walked the dog every day.

I bought Spandex. I wore it when I biked ...

Every set, every rep, every chin, I logged into a workout journal. Every other day, I hit the weights, at least to start out. I quickly realized I couldn't recover the way I had as a young buck, so I backed off to two or three sessions a week. I moved some serious iron. Not so much big weights as moderate ones, lots of times. My favorite torture was to do descending sets of chins: ten, break for thirty seconds, then nine more; break, then eight, seven, etc. down to one.

I burned all over ...

I hit everything hard. By the end of the year, I was the fittest I had ever been, including the year I trained to run a marathon. Bounce quarters off me, resting pulse of fifty-eight, hold my breath for three minutes, bench press three hundred pounds for reps, I was in shape.

Now, fitness is not about how you look, but about how you feel, and how you can function. How slow and steady your heart beats, how much air you can move efficiently, how you can apply yourself to tasks that need to be done. There are obese folks who run marathons who are in better shape than guys who win bodybuilding contests. However, there are usually some side effects to feeling good, and one of them is that you tend to look fit.

I used to could wear Spandex. Well, except for having to carry a big stick to keep the women off me when I was out and about ...

Which is all to say that, twenty years later, I am going to have to work a little harder to get in shape -- I don't want to peak too early -- and it might take a little longer, since I'll have to go slower and rest more frequently. And probably no Spandex this time ...

Play Nice

I find it fascinating -- especially when it comes from folks I know who are pentjak silat players -- to see all the shit Hillary Clinton is getting as the campaign for the D's candidate for President progresses.

Why, she is saying bad stuff about Obama! Can you imagine? Just to get the nomination! She even says McCain would be better than Rocky! She -- she's trying to win, and doesn't care how!

What a bitch!

So, I have to ask: Where were you when politics were covered during history class? What were you smoking that semester?

Pick an election, back to Washington, and look at what got said. Go back to Hamilton and Burr -- people used to kill each other of the slurs, slanders, and libels that were flung around like whiskey bottles at an Irish wake.

Scurrilous talk, sir! How dare you? Pistols at dawn, you cur!

Of course, some of it was true. Jefferson, that paragon who wrote that all men are created equal, owned slaves, and even fathered children by one. That was bandied about by the yellow press even way back when. He denied it. Our brilliant forefather was a liar. It took DNA testing to prove it.

Politicians bend the truth like pretzel makers. It's always been that way. Always.

When you are fifteen points ahead in the polls, you can afford to be magnanimous; you can play nice, you can duck debates, you can avoid saying the other guy's -- or gal's -- name. Take the high road. Be above it all.

Once you draw even or start losing, the game changes.

First off, anybody who wants the job of President has two strikes against him or her going in. A) They have egos the size of super-tankers. They think they are qualified to run the country and not coincidentally, have the wherewithal to be the most powerful person on the planet. Somebody who can wipe out most life on Earth. Once you get to that level, when you truly believe you are The One, then ends-justify-the-means is SOP. You can smile, hold your nose, and swallow stuff that would gag a maggot and rationalize it as being for the greater good. Once you get the job, you'll make up for it. Really.

I was for it, now I'm agin it, and once I get elected, why, I'll be for it again. The sand shifts underfoot, one has to step lively or get sucked under.

B) Any Presidental candidate has -- any of them -- in order to have arrived at the place where they have a legitimate shot at the office, given up part of their soul. Yes, it's true, you can't get anything done if you can't bend with the wind now and then. Politics is the art of compromise, you have to be a horse trader, quid pro quo, or you can't do the job. But: I have yet to see a President in my lifetime who didn't give up something that he once swore he'd never do, to be able to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. (Well, except maybe for the Current Occupant, and about whom I have nothing good to say, so I'll stop now.)

They lie. They have to. They promise the moon and deep down, they know they can't deliver it. But, they think, they will be ever so much better than the alternative, that such, um, shadings are necessary and valid. They'll make up for it. Really.

The silat reference? Our art has a running joke: If somebody says, "Hey, you cheated!" we all laugh. Stealthy and sneaky are part of what we do, because the goal in our fighting art is, when the dust-up is over, to be the guy who goes home, under his own power, with his teeth intact, instead of the guy who is going to the hospital or the morgue. We don't play fair, and we are proud of it. But, of course, that's just us. Nobody else should do that, especially not in the sainted realm of politics, where everybody should always, you know, play nice ...

Please.

People don't like to see negative campaigning. But as long as it works, you will see it, and it does work. War hero? Why, not at all -- he's a coward who lied about his record, he kicks old ladies down escalators, plus he has children who say Baaah! when they try to talk ...

As I said in an earlier post, it doesn't seem to be enough for people to triumph, they need to feel that their enemies fail, as well. Nobody running for President has reason to claim purity, because none of them are pure. You pick one you like, who seems closest to your philosphy, whom you believe will do the best job for the country, and you make your mark. But if you put them up on a pedestal and think they are any better than the rest of humanity, you are apt to get surprised two years on.

(Two points if you know where the picture came from and why I used it here ...)

Boy Seasons

Another old man memory:

When I was a lad, we broke our year up into play-seasons: Baseball and football season, of course; and then there were times of the year when we turned to yo-yo's, marbles, or tops. We played knife peg from spring to fall, and also stick peg, which was done with sharpened broom-handles sections about two feet long. There was kite-season, too, in the spring. And war: we used slingshots, slings, boomerangs, spears made of cane that we threw at each other, peashooters, and dirt clods. Later, BB guns and roman candles ...

Ah, we were violent children, back in my day. We climbed trees, waded in ditches, caught snakes, rode our bikes in the summer behind the DDT truck spewing white fog to kill the mosquitoes, a miasma so thick you couldn't see each other.

Also great fun to ride our bike during the hurricanes, too. Great going down the street, you didn't have to pedal at all. Coming back, you had to get off and walk, and push the bike, it was too windy to ride.

Wonder any of us survived ...

Bookworm that I was, I spent a lot of time outside doing what little boys did. My grandchildren don't do any of these things, they play computers. Safer for them, but ...

Far Ago and Long Away

The names of some of the moves in a couple of activities I used to do as a child. If you are old enough, or a student of ancient history, you might know to what these lists refer ...

1. Spinner
2. Walk the Dog
3. Over the Falls
4. Skin the Cat
5. Around the World
6. Rock the Baby
7. Around the Corner
8. Three Leaf Clover
9. Creeper
10. Loop the Loop
11. Man on the Flying Trapeze (Breakaway)
12. Barrel Roll
13. Lindy Lou
14. Shoot the Moon
15. Atom Bomb

And:

1. Palm - half flip
2. Back of Hand - half flip
3. Elbow - full flip
4. Knee (ditto)
5. Nose
6. Head
7. Slap Pappy Over the Fence
8. Ten Sticks

Perry Posts About the Perry Post

Came across a picture cleaning out my file drawer this morning, taken during a club match, back when I shot .22 silhouette. Late 1980's, '87 or'88. This was then under the auspices of IHMSA, the International Handgun Metallic Silhouette Association, and I was, at my best, ranked AAA. (Rankings started at, I think, C, rose to B; A; AA; AAA, and finally, International Masters, which last meant you seldom, if ever, missed a target during a match.

The difference between a AAA shooter and an IM'er, was two points. I could manage a 37 or 38 in the open position on a good day. Serious shooters shot 39 or 40 every time, and did stuff like weigh each cartridge and measure the headspace so that each round was as much like the others as possible. I usually shot Winchester T-22, standard velocity ammo.

How the game worked, was, you had steel targets set up at four ranges: 25, 5o, 75, and 100 yards. (For centerfire handguns, these ranges were doubled and the targets made much larger.) Each range had ten targets, and you got one shot at each, for a total possible score of 40 points, one for each one you knocked over.

The first and closest set of targets were cut-out metal chickens, about the size of a teacup. The second range was pigs, about a saucer's size. At 75 yards, the targets were turkeys, tall and skinny, slightly larger. At 100 yards, we shot at steel rams, about the size of a dinner plate.

In the second picture above, the targets on the step ladder are .22 versions. The smaller ones are for airguns.

These all looked impossibly tiny the first time I saw them. I couldn't believe anybody could actually hit any of them with a handgun. They were set on big six-by-six boards and to get a score, the targets, which were freestanding, had to fall over. If you nicked one and it tottered or spun but stayed up right on the rail, you didn't get the point. The bigbore shooter had to have guns with some punch, because their steel rams weighed over fifty pounds, and anything less than a hotloaded .357 Magnum round didn't have the power to knock it over, even with a solid hit.

Those days, it was restricted to iron sights only. No scopes, red dots, lasers. You could shoot in different classes: pistol or revolver, and you could stand or you could lie down and prop the gun next to your leg. I had several handguns along the way, starting with a High Standard semi-auto, and ending with a Browning Buck Mark, the Silhouette Model, with a nine-inch bull barrel.

Standing was harder, the scores always lower. Knocking down ten of ten at any range standing was worth a special award hat pin. You competed against other people using the same kind of weapon -- pistol or revolver -- pistols being considered more accurate, and either standing or lying down. There was a time limit, and you shot your targets from left to right, sometimes with the ejected hot brass of the shooter next to you bouncing off your head. You didn't wear open-necked shirts for that reason.

You were allowed a spotter, who, using a scope, could tell you where your bullet hit and allow you to adjust your sights if you were too high or low. You learned how many clicks to go up or down for the various ranges pretty quickly. Even a flat-shooting .22 needed to be adjusted between 25 and 100 yards, to allow for bullet drop.

Generally, my misses were mostly on the turkeys, which were always the hardest to hit for me.

Most of the shooters lying down propped the gun next to their strong-side leg, on the outside, a position called Creedmore. I developed my own position, which was, far as I know, unique -- the Perry Post. Looks funny, but on a good day, I could hit 38 or 39 in practice, and once -- once -- I did a 40.

I did weigh my ammo for matches, but never got to the measuring stage, or match-grade ammuntion.

Not combat shooting by any means, this was a thing of precision, and excellent practice for developing sight picture and trigger control. My club phased the smallbore version out some years ago when they were rebuilding the range. Fun, back when I had the time to go and practice three or four times a week.

No, What I Meant Was ...

A quick aside on writing/critique groups/telephone/face-to-face discussions and sex.

Writing, at its best, is a so-so method of communication. Lot of nuance is lost because all you have are the words. Like looking at a steak under glass -- you can see it, but the aroma, the warmth, the texture, they aren't there to be had.

A phone call with somebody you know offers the words, and the tone, cadence, rhythm of the speakers, but it's still not perfect.

A conversation over a beer in a quiet pub is much better, because you get the words, the sounds, and the gestures and expressions, as well as pheromones. Even so, it's not telepathy, so its just a better approximation of communication, because touch, save with somebody special, is very limited.

Good sex is much better, but again, somewhat limited if your preferences run to monogomy and sockets but not plugs ...

I bring this up because I was reading a blog and a post by somebody I know a little bit, and his words on the screen aren't getting his message across as well as they might. Because I have talked to the man, I think I know more what he really means, but to people who haven't sat down with him, what he says might not resonate the same way.

One of his posters, who could be a very bright and insightful person, is even more murky, and that's because I haven't met the fellow and his words are -- to me -- unclear.

When the only tool you have is written language, it can be like cutting down a large tree with a pocketknife. Possible, but not an easy task if you have someplace you need to be soon.

In SF&F writing critique groups -- gatherings that can be helpful or hurtful to a writer, depending on how well-built they are -- there are two common models: Clarion and Milford.
Both of these come out of Damon Knight's and Kate Wilhelm's traditions, and the differences don't really matter to this discussion. What they have in common is that writers sit around in a circle and take turns offering comments on the story they've read.

Generally, the writer sits mute and is only allowed to speak after everybody is done slaughtering his or her pig, save for elements of fact that readers might get wrong. If you write, say, that our sun is a G-class star and somebody points out that this in error, you can correct them. Like that. Otherwise, you sit on the hot seat and take it, and you only get your turn at the end, during which it is considered bad form to argue overmuch with what has been said. You might not like their opinions, but that's what they had to offer. (Some of them will likely have value, if you listen carefully enough. Some comments won't be useful. Some might even be mean-spirited. There is a human kink that pops up from time to time: It isn't enough that you succeed; your enemy must also fail. It's that either/or dichotomy: If I'm good, then s/he who opposes me must be bad. Not necessarily so, of course, but you have to deal with the mindset.)

A comment that newbie writers often make after their story has been flayed is, "Well, okay, I know I said that, but what I meant was ..." whereupon they explain.

This gets a pretty standard response: "If that's what you meant, then that is what you should have said ..."

As a writer, all you have are the words, and either a reader groks what you meant or they don't. If you sell the story and it goes forth into the world, it must stand or fall on its own -- you won't be there to explain the answers to a reader's questions when they arise.

If it isn't on the page, they likely won't know what you meant.

That bears repeating: If it isn't on the page, they likely won't know what you meant.

(If you are good enough, you can hint at things, and a reader will make the connection. But if you are that good, I'm not the guy to be offering you advice anyhow, so you can skip the rest of this.)

People will bring their own axes to everything you ever write, even your diary if you die and somebody finds it. They will read your stuff with a built-in bias, no matter how open-minded or objective they might try to be. We are all products of biology and experience, nature and
nurture, and we crack any book with a personal history that will shade everything we read.

On your best day, happily post-coital, with a custom-made pen and fresh coffee, pieces you write will go on to be misunderstood. People will read things into it that aren't there, and they will miss things that would seem obvious to anybody with two dendrites to spark at each other. That's the nature of the medium, and you have to know this. It's more like horseshoes than pinpoint sub-MOA same-hole rifle-shooting.

The John Lennon quote, when asked about the real meaning of of a stanza, to the effect of, "Well, it rhymed with 'Queen,' didn't it?"

There is a screenwriting book by Linda Seger, How to Make a Good Script Great. The premise is, there are so many things that Hollywood can do to screw up a script along the path to a finished movie, so many people who, in the collaborative process, can lay hands on the things and alter it, that the only way to get a good movie made is to start with a great script. That if you start out with a script that is merely good, by the time it runs the gauntlet and gets slashed at by all those who get a free cut, what you have won't have much oomph left.

It's an interesting concept. Given how things get done down in LaLaLand, it is amazing that good movies ever get made, much less great ones.

This is how it is with your writing in general. Since people are going to bring their own axes, they will misunderstand things; best it be as clear and clean and tight as you can make it before you let it out of the house.

You won't be there to tell them what you meant. If it isn't on the page, it will hard for them to get it.

Sense of Wonder

Spiral Galaxy M104, edge-on
Photo by: Vincent Peris

Read about it here: NASA

And Speaking of Tarzan ...

Before the Hayes Commission gutted movies and made them clean enough to watch in Sunday school, nudity was no big deal. Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Jane, had a terrific underwater nude scene with Johnny Weismueller, in 1934:

New Soul

So, when Apple came out with its new ultra-slim laptop, the TV commercial featured a song over the visuals. Something about the song struck me -- I liked it, even though I was only able to catch about every third word. So, the joys of Goggle gave me the lyrics, the music, and a link to the YouTube video of the singer, somebody called Yael Naïm, a fetching young woman who is Jewish-Tunisian, born in Paris, and who lived for a time in Israel. She sings in French, English, and Hebrew.

The singer is backed by an oompah-band (a term that generally includes a tuba in the mix), and the piece, "New Soul" is very catchy. Check out the vid:

Mo' Music

And Guy Van Duser doing Jelly Roll Morton's stride piano on a guitar, "Wolverine Blues." And on a nylon string, to boot.

Dang ...

Guitar Virtuoso

Listen to Doug Smith play a little Sousa ...

Snappy Comeback

We have occupied our current home for a little over twenty-five years. Longest that either my wife or I have ever lived anywhere in one place, together or separately.

When we arrived here, we had a dog, and save for a brief period when she dug out under the fence and ran away, never to be found, have had a dog or three and assorted cats since. The last cat has been gone for a while but one will step up to replace him. One always does. Word goes out on the cat vine: Hsst. Vacancy down near the corner ...

When I am at home and not on the road, I walk my dogs through our neighborhood, at least once each day. And since Jude is on a diet to drop a few pounds, I have been upping the walks to longer distances and more of 'em. (If he is going to jump in agility, he needs to be lean, to save wear on his joints, even though his maximum jump need only clear the bar set at eight inches.)

This morning, having gotten up early, secondary to fasting-sleep, and after three cups of coffee and still no food, I took the pups out.

A block west of my house, to the south side, the mostly-shared wall condos that make up the area called Crystalbrook lie across the road from the creek where the ducks and geese hang out.

I like walking in there because there is almost no traffic; most of the inhabitants of Crystalbrook being retirees who don't seem to drive much. My mother-in-law used to live there before she moved back to Louisiana.

So there we were, tooling down the middle of the street, when a woman came out of her condo. She was older than I -- hard to believe, I know, but either that's true or she had a very hard life -- wearing a blue flowered house coat. With her arms crossed, she glared at me, and in a voice that could cut glass said, "Do you live in this neighborhood?"

Technically, residing a block away via the nearest cross-street, I do, but I knw that she meant Crystalbrook, so I said, "No, ma'am." Polite to my elders, that's me.

And she said, "Then why are you walking here?"

Understand, my dogs were nowhere near her yard, and I carry plastic bags to clean up after them if they poop.

Several answers sprang immediately to mind, some of them including Anglo-saxon terms considered impolite in mixed company and allowing as to how the query was not any of her business. But now and again, even an old pig finds a truffle, and what I said instead was, "Because the dogs don't get as much exercise riding in the car."

I confess I was rather pleased with myself. Sometimes you get these verbal assaults, and you fume, and only later does a clever response present itself, too late to fling. But fasting does sharpen one's wit. I thought it was a nice, clear, literal response, ab lib, bam, gotcha!

To which she said, "There's no need to be rude!"

And on a roll now, I said, "No ma'am. We didn't need to have this conversation at all, far as I'm concerned. You have a nice day." Whereupon I walked away ...

(And let's be honest here, I didn't really hope she had a nice day at all. I hoped Ezekiel would come down on his Wheel, haul her off for Judgment, and she'd get sent to see the Prince of Darkness.)

This hasn't happened that often, people coming out to say stupid stuff, but it has a few times. I was asked a similar question, back when I waked the German Shepherd Dogs, in another neighborhood. Once, I had a voice blast out of a bedroom telling me in no uncertain terms to get my dogs off the the speaker's lawn. A woman once rapped on her kitchen window at me and wagged her finger when my dog stopped to pee on the base of the plum tree across the sidewalk from her yard. And one time, with both dogs on a leash, a fellow coming from the other direction said, "You know, not everybody likes dogs." as he drew near. To which I replied, "How sad for them."

Takes all kinds, I know, but to be honest, there are some kinds I could do without ...

Poetry

Poetry is not my forte. I've written a few that worked okay, but mostly, I don't venture into the form. (Song-writing, while similar in construction, is not quite the same. I'm more comfortable there.)

There are people who are good at it, though, and here is one of them. Check out Tiel Ansari's first collection, Knocking from Inside, which is also the name of her blog.

Way to go, Tiel.

Design Flaw

I'm guessing somebody down at the switch plate factory is looking for a new job ...

Map Redux

For those 1st readers who asked for the Eilandia map. Click on it, you can see a decent-sized image, and get more of a sense of where things are if you couldn't get enough from context.

Draw

About fifteen years ago, my friend, the late journalist and mystery novelist, Vince Kohler, did a slide show presentation for the Mystery Writers of America's annual convention. Seems a lot of mystery writers get the gun stuff wrong -- they put safeties on revolvers, or shove clips into the butts of same, and have folks using calibers that don't exist in the configurations they make up.

Kohler did a nuts-and-bolts presentation, and part of it was a piece on carrying concealed and how to get a handgun out and on-line. I got to be the model. We had just taken an NRA class in how to teach pistol shooting, and were feeling as if we knew stuff.

Vince's widow, who is moving to Australia, came by with some books and pictures from that session, and I thought it would be fun to put them up.

I've gotten a little fitter since, dropped a few pounds, as well as a little grayer and more wrinkled, shorter hair and all, and I went to paddle holsters over IWB carry, they are much more comfortable. Plus the Smith Chief .38 Special snubby is not a really serious gun, I prefer a K-frame; still, I thought the picture sequence got the point across. What it looks like under a shirt, the draw, and four shooting stances -- hip-point, extended-point, Weaver, and Isosceles.