Tiger Would? Nah. Tiger did ...

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

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

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 ... !

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?

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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 ...)

Freddy Mercury Spins

The More Things Change

Had to go to the dentist again this morning for a new crown -- second round, since the dentist didn't like the way the first one looked. Perfect fit this time, and one more reason for the metal detector to ping at the airport ...

On the way, since the appointment was early, I saw the neighborhood children gathered at the bus stops for transport to school. Thirty-five degrees F. or so the temperature, and most of the teens I passed were dressed as if for a warm summer's day. Jeans, T-shirt, shorts in one case.

What is it with teenagers that they think it is uncool to put on a jacket when the weather dictates that such a decision is reasonable? Fernando's Dictum, ala Billy Crystal: It is better to look good than to feel good ...

I remember my mother telling me to put on a jacket when I was fifteen. I recall saying the same to my children, and more: Excuse me? You are planning to wear your pajamas to school? That would be over my dead body. Go put some outside clothes on!

And the beat goes on ...

Too Cute

Check Out the Suit

Afghanistan

Those of you who have been dropping round here for the last few years know that I supported Barack Obama in his run for the Presidency. And that I didn't think he would be able to do anywhere near as much as he promised once he got the job. People who expected that he would, I said, were going to be disappointed.

I still support this administration, especially given the other choice, but that speech on the Afghan war last night was not a home run. In trying to please everybody, I'm guessing that he didn't much please anybody. Too hawkish for the doves, too dovish for the hawks, and too confusing for those in the middle, I think.

More than one empire has foundered trying to bend that hard land to their ends -- and here again, Santayana's Dictum holds sway -- if the Mongols, the British, and the Russians couldn't pull it off, why do we think we can? There seems to be a certain arrogance in that view that reminds me of a straight guy hitting on a woman he knows is a lesbian: Oh, sure, but I'm not like those other guys.

Many lives and much treasure have been spent in that part of the world, and in the end, we aren't going to have it our way. Just not gonna happen.

You step stupid, sometimes you get away with it. Sometimes, karma is a bitch that sucks you dry. What was Bush's War is now Obama's War, and I don't like his chances any more than I did when the Previous Occupant was running things. What defines "victory" has gotten really narrow.

Vegitus offered it: Those who wish peace should prepare for war. The road to the former is sometimes through the latter. But this war, and the one next door to it were and are more stupid than most, and I think that's saying something, since war is about the stupidest thing men do to each other.

Civil Discourse

I'm pretty flexible when it comes to allowing spirited discussions in the comments section here. Free speech and all. But civility matters, and when you drop by here, keep it civil or don't bother.

If you want to call me stupid and tell me to go fuck myself and you aren't smiling when you say it? We're done talking.

I'm not a computer whiz that I can spot it if somebody wants to change names and sneak back, but I certainly can delete postings from a name I'm unhappy with. And will.

Just so you know.