Strange Has Always Been With Us

You know about sex toys: You'd think this is a modern phenomenon, but it isn't, they go back to the Paleolithic Era. Of course, blow-up or silicone girlfriends are relatively new, but still, Perry Como charted with "Glendora," back in 1956. It was a novelty song, but it's a little creepy even so ...

Glendora by Stanley Ray, sung by Perry Como, 1956 

I'm in love with a dolly named 'Glendora'  
She works in the window of a big department stor-a!
Eyes of blue, hair like gold,Never been young, but she'll never get old
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

Chorus:

O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dor
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

She's so shy that I don't know how I found her
With three big body guards always workin' around her!
One just nods, an' two just grins,
An' three got a mouth full of safety pins . . . 

Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

(Chorus) 

Bridge:

I stand left an' I stand right,
Outta my head 'cause I'm outta sight . . .
Oh Glen-dora . . . I wanna see more of you!

Late last night at the store they did some changin' . . .
An' I stood watchin' when they started re-arrangin' . . .
She lost her wig, she lost her arms,
An' when they got through she lost all of her charms,

O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?
O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dora . . .
O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?
O' Glen-dora . . . O' Glen-dora . . .
O' Glendora . . . what did they do to you?

(Good evening, friends ....) 

Living in the First World

A little under the weather here, inside and out. At least the outside is just cold rain and not snow and ice.

Had to get a new universal remote for the TV. Back in the day, before remotes, you got up and walked to the tube and fiddled with the knobs. Nothing was automatic, and the picture would do all manner of funny things, roll horizontally or vertically,  compress, snow, and you had a row of knobs to turn to balance things. Sometimes you had to climb up on the roof and turn the aerial to get a signal.

The remote we had was going bad. Push the buttons, nothing happened, or sometimes it would do other than it was supposed to do. Probably I would have just gotten up and fiddled with the controls on the TV and put off buying a new one, but these days, there are no controls on the TV, it's the remote or nothing.

I  changed the batteries, didn't help, so I tooled on over to Best Buy and got a user-friendly new one. 

It's the cat's pajamas. Has a button says, "Watch TV." Push that, everything that needs to happen for that lights up, presto. Done? Push the power-0ff button, tah dah!

Once can get apps for one's iPhone or iPad if one wishes, but I would rather a remote that can live in the drawer of the little table next to the chair in the living room. 

The old universal remote I had worked by copying the signal from the separate remotes for the TV and VCR and whatnot. Don't have a VCR any more, but the new one, you plug it into your computer, go online, then download the control codes for whatever brand of whatever you have, and there you go.

If, for some reason, things don't work as they are supposed to work, the remote's help button asks questions: Is this the problem? Hold on a second: Did that fix it?

Great living here in the future ...

Zukulele Sound Sample

So, a quick and dirty sound sample on the new uke. You'll have to excuse the crappy playing, and the recording is a Blue Yeti mike straight into QuickTime on the Mac, no equalization, no tweaks on the sound at all, so it sounds better than that.

Glad the phone didn't ring, nor barked the dogs ...

I'll do another sound check in six or eight months when it has had time to open up.

More Ukulele Porn

Top: Woodley White Tenor; middle, Michael Zuch tenor; bottom, Alan Carruth tenor

So, the collection, and probably–probably–all the ukes I'll be owning for a while. Each has unique playing qualities and sound, and should cover all the needs I'll run into any time soon.

No, but, really.

These are tenor ukes, but interestingly enough, they are all slightly different sizes. The White is widest and thinnest–it won't fit in either of the other two ukes' cases. The slotted headstock makes the Zuch the longest, and the bottom is less rounded than the Carruth. The Zuch also has a slightly wider fretboard, 1-1/2" as opposed to 1-3/8".

The Zuch won't fit in the case that came with the Carruth, though it does work the other way around. 

The White has warm, woody tones. The Carruth is very bright and loud. The Zuch is midway twixt the other two, moderately bright and loud, but has to open up. For those of you who don't know what that means, wooden stringed instruments tend to change tones over time, particularly those with certain kinds of soundboards. While cedar seems to be pretty much open to begin with, spruce changes, as the wood "settles," which means several things: The glue sets, the finish hardens, and some other more mystical, hard-to-pin-down things that result in a fuller, more resonant sound as the instrument ages. It might take six months or a year or longer for spruce to open up. (In the case of violins, they might keep opening up for decades or centuries …)

The White is koa, that being the wood-of-choice in Hawaii since they started making these things, and what high-end makers went to when they copied ukes elsewhere in the world, and thus has a lot of brothers and sisters. There are tens of thousands of koa ukuleles in assorted sizes, probably more.

The Carruth and Zuch, not so much. As far as I can tell, there are only a few ukes made from osage orange, and none that match mine with the other woods. 

Google shows only one ukulele with tulip magnolia back and sides, and that's the Zukulele. 

These are not the most expensive instruments by a long shot, but If I'm not around, the ukes I don't take with me will be locked in the gun safe ...

NUD (New Ukulele Day)

This last image is closer to the true color, which is kind of a gingerbread shade.

I didn't put anything in to give you the size, but in the first photo, that sound port on the upper bout is just a little bigger than the last joint of my thumb.

I have been playing ukuleles for less than a year, and I claim no expertise in any aspect of them. I have, however, been fortunate enough to lay hands on several top-of-the-line instruments from well-respected luthiers, including Woodley White, Alan Carruth, and Gordon & Char Mayer, so I do know what a well-made and beautiful ukulele looks, feels, and sounds like.

The Zukulele that Michael Zuch has made for me is as good as any I've had a chance to play.

In his signature on UU, Michael has the term "Aspiring Luthier."  He has a full-time job, and does this for love, but I'm thinking he should drop the first word in that sig. He has made more than a couple-dozen of these, and I believe this one by itself certainly qualifies him as more than "aspiring;" he's there enough to drop the modifier.

This is a lovely instrument, clean, with a great tone, especially considering it hasn't opened up at all. I expect that six months down the line, it will sound better still. It is Low-G,CEA, and the action is smooth, the intonation great.

Here, the specs:

Back & Sides: Tulip Magnolia
Top: Adirondack spruce
Bracing: Sitka spruce
Neck: Spanish cedar with carbon fiber reinforcement
Neck joint: Mortise and tenon with bolt
Rosette, headstock overlay, end graft and heel cap: Brazilian rosewood
Fretboard and bridge and pins: East Indian rosewood
Bindings: Faux tortoise shell with B/W/B purfling
Inlays on headstock, fretboard and pins: Mother of pearl
Finish: Nitro-cellulose lacquer (over epoxy sealer and pore filler where needed)
Tuners: Grover Sta-Tite, for slotted headstock, with replacement buttons
Strings: Worth BT-LG Fluorocarbon

As you can see from the pictures, there uke is clean and form-follows-function. That works for me, though I've got nothing against tastefully-done bling. When we started talking about this, I allowed as how I had two things I wanted: Low-G tuning, and a slotted headstock. This latter is a want based on having played classical guitars for a while and I like that look and feel.

Other than that? Luthier's choice.

Michael had a set of back and sides in Tulip Magnolia which had a great tap-tone, he said, and he'd never built one using that wood. How would that be?

I'd never even heard of Tulip Magnolia as a tonewood. Go for it. 

Would I be interested in a sound port? 

Yes, I would. 

Would a fretboard a bit wider work, since I was coming from classical guitars?

You betcha.

What about trim?

Go with what looks and feels good, you're there, I'm here ...

So he did those things, and I couldn't be happier with the result.

The build went quickly, and the uke left Michael's shop in the middle of the Arctic blast that froze most of the U.S.

I expected it to be fairly bright, given the spruce top, and it is, which is good, since I think that works for fingerstyle playing, a thing to which I aspire. 

As soon as the strings settle in and I have some time, I'll do a sound sample and stick it up. 

This is just soooo cool!

Addendum:

My wife and I decided to go out for lunch, to celebrate this 'n' that, and give the Zukulele time to warm up in its case before I opened it, so we went to our favorite rustic Italian place. Got there, sat down, and there, on the decorative table next to us … ? 

Tulip magnolia branches with blossoms …

A coincidence, of course, but really, it seemed awfully auspicious. 

Cutter's Wars #3

The Vastalimi Gambit seems to be doing okay on Amazon.com. (By okay, I mean, in the top 53,000 in paper and 27,000 in Kindle, so I'm not buying the Rolls just yet.) Only a couple reviews, but at least a couple people liked it ...

The final book in the Cutter's Wars series is turned in and tentatively-scheduled for January, 2015. There will be more work done on it, CE ms, galleys, cover art, etc., but in the back-and-forth with my editor, I did a bit of back-cover blurb work. This isn't what will show up on the book, but it is a general idea. Attend:

The Fog of War. The uncertainty that came with bullets and bombs and enemies charging or retreating, You could never be sure exactly what was happening on the battlefield, no matter how many eyes and ears you had watching and listening. Never ...

After a couple of assignments that involved a lot more intrigue and skullduggery than Cutter Force Initiative ever wanted, the unit is looking forward to being part of a straight-up, short-term industrial war on Earth.

Cutter agrees to a support role offered by an old Army comrade who is now a general in a larger military force, and the pay is good, the unit happy. All they have to do is basic ranger stuff, sneak-and-peak, shoot-and-scoot, with no responsibilities for the overall effort, which is a welcome relief.

Set in a section of SoNorAm called Tejas, Cutter’s forces hit the ground to gather intel in preparation for what is to be a simple and quick engagement.

But, of course, it’s not that simple. What starts out as a corporate fight to occupy a valuable piece of contested territory quickly goes sideways, and once again, Cutter and crew find themselves in the middle of situations in which things aren’t as they seemed on first look, and the unit must determine the truth or lose more than just a battle.

It’s hot, it’s wet, and there are old enemies as well as new. There are duplicitious aliens with religious issues, genetically-engineered forests, boots-on-the-ground battles, bar fights, big game hunting, and some really nasty weather. The solution to the final problem is serious business and if they screw it up, they won’t have to worry about getting in trouble, because they will likely be dead ...

Never a dull moment in CFI.

Plenty of gunsmoke and action for the team, and some surprising events that will change them dramatically in ways no one ever saw coming. 

Who wins? Who loses? Who lives? Who dies? 

The answers lie in The Tejano Conflict ...

Bullet Technology

Check this out. Fan rounds …

Of course, most shooters of any skill will look at this and allow as how if you can't hit your intended target, you ought not to be shooting, and I have to wonder how wide most shooters in panic mode miss,  too. Will this kind of thing do any good? Maybe. 

It's surely spooky to watch that whirling dervish hitting targets, though ...

More First World Problems ...

Yeah, I went down to Starbucks, but my coffee got cold/

My Rolex needs windin', my Mercedes is gettin' old …

From Whitebread Blues

My leaf blower shorted out last week and died. Plug wire had been getting chippy and there came a bzzzt! and the extension chord and leaf blower cord became one as the prongs and socket welded themselves together …

So I had to get another leaf blower and extension cord …

For years, I resisted the very notion of a leaf blower, which I considered a noisy abomination spawned by the Devil to ruin Sunday mornings. I had a rake, by God, what kind of pansy needs a leaf blower?!

Turned out, on me, it didn't look so bad, and it was ever so much less work. Never use it before ten a.m weekdays, noon on the weekends, my attempt at balance.

After one of the driest Decembers on record here, the forecast was for a week of rain, ending in a visit from the Pineapple Express, which means a lot more rain, so I wanted to get the leaves off the walks and patio, and also clean out the gutters, which were full.

Why a leaf blower in full-on-winter January, when most of the country is freezing its nuts off?  Because my stupid gum ball trees out front are still dropping leaves, that's why. Last to lose 'em in the winter, last to green up in the spring. 

These kinds of tree lines the walks up and down my street, and mine are always the last and last, go figure.

So, got the blower. Got on the ladder and hand-scooped out the gutters. Even though it was a dry December, there was still a half-inch of water under the dried leaves, go figure that, too.  Cleared the walks. Which already have more leaves out front from the retarded gum ball trees.

All done, at least for now.

Came the rain, and I felt good about having beaten it to the task.

Then the clothes dryer died. Well, it had a major heat-attack, in that the drum still rotated but there wasn't any warm air, which meant that it takes about three days of tumbling to dry one's clothes. Last time that happened, it was a thermal fuse, repair guy was in and out in fifteen minutes, relatively cheap. 

This time, it was the heating element. Not as quick a fix, and not as cheap, but still less expensive than a new dryer. He also found a quarter that had gotten into the werks and was worn almost completely smooth, so now le drier runs fine and is also a little less noisily.

Had the plumber out a couple weeks ago for a couple of leaks. All fixed. Well, except for the one out back that drips a little when you run water through the hose. That would have involved tearing out sheetrock and fairly big bucks for something that a bowl under the faucet takes care of just fine. 

First-world problems are often those which, if you throw money at them, go away. If you have the money, of course, which in this case, I did. So I don't get to bitch about them. 

If you want to see how people who have no right to gripe do so anyway? Drop by WhiteWhine.com. Some of these are so laugh-out-loud funny you will, but mostly, you'll just shake your head and wonder how some people have enough wherewithal to remember how to breathe ...

New Uke

Adirondack Spruce / Tulip Magnolia Ukulele

So, it's done, the new Zukulele, and on its way. Trekking across the frozen country, and I hope that Arctic blast dropping the temperature and wind chill way down into the basement doesn't craze it ...

I'll put up specs later.

Accidental Blues

Funny how easy it is to write a blues song when you aren't trying to write a blues song.

I'm in the middle of a scene in Stemwinder in which my protag is teaching a blues class to a group of fay players in faerie. Basic I, IV, V stuff, and so as he is telling them how to do it, I came up with three verses of a song, "Rat Catcher Blues." Just off-handedly, and it's actually
not too bad. Third verse is a reprise of the first, but in the past tense, and there is room for, oh, sixty or eighty more verses if I want ...

Here's a teaser from the novel, now a little over halfway through the first draft:

Nobody else had any questions. “Okay, let’s try it. And remember, I’m an embee*, we have have very low standards and lousy ears, so don’t worry about hitting bad notes.”

They laughed, which is what he wanted. 

“Counting it down ... one and two and three and–”

He did an intro as he talked and then nodded on the first note.

Gonna catch me a rat, darlin’, I heard him creepin’ round your back door/

Yeah, gonna catch me a rat, baby, I heard him creepin’ round your back door/

When I get done with that rat, honey, he won’t creep round here no more ...

Reach smiled as he listened. They were pretty good. There was somebody, probably that little woman on the violin whose instrument seemed a few cents sharp, and a couple of clams that buzzed from the old fay with the parlor guitar, but not bad.

Lot of worse ways to spend an evening.

Even as he played, he wondered how Scar was doing, chasing shapeshifters in the outback. She had been gone but two days, and he missed her. 

I see you behind that barrel, rat, you can’t hide yourself from me/

I see you behind that barrel, rat, you can’t hide yourself from me/

I’m gonna take my knife and cut you, gonna laugh while I watch you bleed.

One night early on in his first trips back and forth across the border, Reach had found himself in a dump of a bar in Memphis. There was an old bluesman drinking rye next to him. The old man was pretty soused and talkative, and Reach bought him drinks and listened. Sometime during the evening, the old man said, “Listen up, kid, here’s the secret to songs, hell, secret to all stories. Ain’t but two things worth writin’ about: Love and death. Get ‘em both into your song as much as you can.”

It struck a chord at the time, and Reach had see the truth of it more than few times since. All the memorable blues, all the memorable rock songs, were about love, death, or both. 

Cheap wisdom, for the cost of a few shots of rye …

*stands for MB, "monkey-boy," a term of derision used by fay about humans ...

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Back in my young and crazy days, gone more than forty-five years now, I had a best-buddy I ran with. Brothers-from-a-different-mother kind of thing, I really admired the guy, would have gone to help him bury a body.

Make a long story short: He wasn't what I thought, and we went our separate ways. I'd say no hard feelings, but that wasn't so; I despised the man for a long time. Eventually, that passed, but much later.

For a while, I thought he was outright sociopathic; later, I came to believe he was probably just completely undeveloped emotionally. He was kind of like a brilliant two-year-old. It was always all about him, and he wanted everything he wanted right now, and fuck the consequences. 

And, really, don't we all know people like that … ?

So he went off and hooked up with a young woman in a band, and hung out with them on the road for a time. That didn't last long, and later, he bedded her sister. 

Of course, that didn't last, either. Dude ran through women faster than snowballs melt in Hell, and it wasn't until he was much older that he mellowed enough for one to stay with him for any significant period.

Turns out that the second woman in the band he hooked up with has written an autobiography, those early-seventies figure in her story, and my old buddy is featured.

When he hit the road, he was on the run from the law and using an alias. Bad boys always seem to find women who think they can save 'em. For her, for a while, he seemed quite the magic man.  

It was more than a little interesting reading about my old pal from the viewpoint of a young woman taken with his mystique. Some of the stories she told sounded awfully familiar, and some of them had me shaking my head. Yeah, that was him, all right. Guy lied reflexively. Every story he told was spun like an atomic-powered gyroscope ...

Karma took its time, but eventually it came round, and my old friend died young from his excesses. By then, we had reached a kind of deténte. Not friends, but not taking potshots at each other.

Reminds me that one man's floor can be another woman's ceiling. Plus if you are adept at fooling folks, you can do it for a while, but eventually, some of them catch on. And, of course, last one standing gets the last word, too ...

And so, as Vonnegut was wont to say, it goes ...

Musical Set Back

Notice that I am typing a little slower and more gingerly than usual? That's because I bought my wife a new knife for Christmas. She bakes us bread fairly often, and the old knife wasn't giving us clean slices on warm bread, even after it had rested properly, no matter how much I sharpened it. So, I got a Kai Wasabi 9" serrated. 

Not the top-of-the-line, but I have a couple other knives by Kai and they are well-made and useful.

The new one? It's really sharp. 

Anybody not-know where this is going? 

Yep. Play with knives, you get, well, you know. 

Yesterday, as I sliced a nice olive roll open, I decided it need a bit of seasoning, so I also sliced off the tip of my left middle finger.

It really is a sharp knife.

Fortunately, the amputation was only the very tip, angled slightly, didn't get into the nail bed. A nice little oval, a millimeter or two thick, mostly skin, but enough meat so it bled like a fountain.

 I put pressure on it, bandaged it up good, and that's pretty much all there is to be done. Not something that can be stitched together, and the medical term for the healing process in this case is "secondary intention." You keep it bandaged, wait for it to scab over and new tissue to grow from the edges. As long as there is no infection, this usually gives good results.

This takes a while, typically six weeks or so, and it will be tender for a time after that.

Playing the ook or guitar with a big bandage on the tip of a fretting finger is problematic. 

There are ways around this. Barre chords up the neck that need only the ring or pinkie, or open tunings (where you tune the strings to a chord and then just use barres for major chords.)

And probably once the finger scabs over, I can go to a smaller band-aid and alter the finger position a bit

I can type, albeit not as cleanly as normal. It does make me realize that somebody like a surgeon or violinist or watchmaker really needs to watch it when they chop vegetables or slice open their bagels …

Update:

Three days along:

Not so bad ...

Alien Creatures ...

Got a note from a fan, regarding the alien (Predator) language my daughter and I created for the AvP novelization we did a few years back. There was a Yautja word he wanted to know about, connected to a character in a video PS2 game, had we come up with a particular term … ?

No, I said, we didn't do a realized language, no dictionary, only a few terms to make the story flow, and I don't remember creating that word, sorry. Maybe somebody after us addressed it in a book or game, but we didn't.

Yes, yes, he understood that, but, well, um, maybe I could, you know, check out the book and see if it was in there, because he didn't have a copy of the book? Or if it wasn't, I could maybe make a word up for him?

No, I said, Fox is particular about such things and while they probably wouldn't give me any grief over one word, there were contracts and rights and like that, and I'd rather not go there.

He understood, he understood, but was there any way I could help him?

Not really, no. I answered your question, it just wasn't the answer you wanted.

Got a resend on the email today. Could I help him?

Actually, come to think of it, yes, yes, I can. Here, some advice: 

Look, I'm sorry, kid, but do your own research. Get the book, read it, see if it is there. I'm pretty sure it isn't, and told you that. Goest thou and find it thine ownself. 

I want to be polite to fans, but this is not in my job description ...

For Dog Lovers: Too Cute for Words

Hurray for Hollywood!

Disney Studios has done a movie, Saving Mr. Banks, which is supposedly the story of how the screen version of  Mary Poppins came to fruition. 

It should come as no surprise that the studio who gave us Snow White has, according to folks who know, turned this story into a complete fantasy that Harlan Ellison refers to in his video review as "total bullshit!"

Pamela Travers, the creator of the character Mary Poppins in the late 1930's came to loathe the movie, and in the Disney-fied version of the story, they blow right past that.

I don't disagree with anything Harlan has to say about the subject, and I haven't seen the movie. However, I did, for the sake of balance, post a note about it on his site.

Hereunder, what I said:

Speaking for the Devil …

I suspect Pamela Travers was less upset about how Walt sugared up Mary Poppins than the brothers Grimm would have been, had they been alive to see what Uncle Walt did to their hard-edged material. Travers would have seen what Disney did to the pigs and princesses and wolves, et al, and thinking that she wouldn't be subject to that treatment was maybe something of a naive attitude. Give her that, but even so, she was loath to do it. Maybe she should have stuck to her guns.

Or not.

From all accounts, Travers was seldom a boring, mean-spirited woman, though that whole adoption business does gum up the works some, and she apparently made most of her major life decisions based on advice from astrologers …

As a scribbler of little note, I absolutely understand how the desire to protect one's work feels. I won't be going to see the Disney-fied version of how Mary Poppins came to the silver screen, and in no small part due to what I have heard here. A vote with one's wallet matters, if only a little bit.

But: (and you knew this was coming, right?) There are a couple of things I think maybe ought to be laid out, simply for balance.

As I understand it, Travers was not rich, but not missing any meals. Her books sold, the stage adaptions did business, and she was probably in as good a shape as most mid-listers. That she resisted Roy and Walt's drooling for two decades indicates she wasn't starving. But, in the end, she sold the rights. Got 60,000 pounds up front, and this was nothing to sneeze at in the late 1950's, but it was her five percent of the action that made her rich. And we are talking gross points, not net.

So you get the money. If, however, you sell somebody your cherry 1955 Chevy convertible and they drive to the end of the block and plow into an armored car? Sucks, but it isn't yours any more.

You can point out that Disney pushed and wheedled, but, in the end, she didn't have to sell him the rights.

As I understand it, Travers supposedly had script approval, and was an adviser on the project, right there, hands-on, came down from the suite and to the studio, inspected storyboards, listened to the music, and offered her input. That she despised the final project isn't a surprise, and that Walt probably smiled and told his editor to take out that and leave in this without her knowing would not shock me. But Travers certainly wasn't completely blindsided if she was there and part of it.

The Siren lure of Hollywood is great. Money, fame, a wider audience. If, however, you make a deal with the devil, you ought to know there's a reason he's called The Father of Lies.

Apparently the stars and planets weren't too reliable when it came to dealing with The Mouse.

From folks I know who have had movies or TV series made based on their books, there are two things that result. The perk is, your books suddenly come back into print and sell like ice water in Hell. Witness George R.R. Martin. The Game of Thrones did pretty well as a novel, but when the HBO series came out? Everything George writes in that series from now on hits the bestseller list and stays there. It doesn't even have to be a good movie or series. When True Blood cranked up on HBO, Charlaine Harris's original paperback books, all eight of them, arose from the out-of-print boneyard and shambled onto the bestseller lists, all at the same time.

Yeah, you get a nice fee from the production company for the media rights, but you are apt to make more from your novels afterward, unless, as Travers did, you have a piece of the gross. She made millions, and while she might have come to regret the sale, it was her choice.

It's sometimes attributed to Raymond Chandler, but should be credited to James M. Cain: When asked about what Hollywood had done to his book, Cain said that they hadn't done anything to his book, it was right there on the shelf. Mary Poppins the book is still what it is, and Disney's movie, and rewriting of the history about how it came to be, are what they are. That these latter are as much fantasy as Snow White? Shouldn't surprise anybody who has ever ridden the Pirates of the Caribbean boat.

The drawback is, of course, from then on, anybody who reads the books and sees the series will likely visualize the characters as the actors cast in the roles. I couldn't read Pat Conroy's Santini Dies without seeing and hearing Robert Duvall. I usually like my mental casting better, though you can never go wrong with Duvall. That was the joy of radio. (Who was the best character in A Christmas Story? Jean Shepherd, as the V.O. for Ralphie, hands-down. Can't imagine that movie without his unique voice.)

Some years ago, my collaborator and I pitched a novel to a publisher. The money they offered was much less than we felt we deserved. My co-writer ran into Harlan at a gathering in L.A. and whined about it. Harlan's advice was, Hey, take the money. If you are broke, there's no shame in honest work to get by.

Travers took the money, and I don't blame her for it, but when you sell it, they own it. I know a few folks who have sold stuff to the movies, had script approval, and likewise hated the results.

When you deal with the devil, you really need to read the fine print, and even then, you need to know that pitchfork is there somewhere ...

Perry

P.S. This is not a blanket condemnation of the Biz, merely a recognition that as often as not Shit Happens, and if you are unprepared to deal with it, you might have problems.

And, of course, there is an addendum that speaks to another factor that might or might not be relevant:

When Travers took the upfront advance for Mary Poppins, that £60,000 Sterling, (about $180,000, USD) circa 1960, the average income in the states was about $5000. 

To put that into perspective, today, that would be twixt a million and two million pounds, depending upon which of the various inflation indexes you use. The pound isn't worth what it used to be, so only a million-and-half to three million bucks. 

But, wait, that's only the anteroom of Uncle Scrooge's bin ...

The 5% she got of the *gross* profits in the mid-sixties would have been worth at least 4.5 million pounds, using the gross revenue figures, and, again, in U.S. dollars, the ratio then was about 1:3, bucks-to-quid, which would be $13.5 million, which inflation would pencil out today to, like ... $64,000,000, give or take a million. 

I'm pretty sure nobody held a gun to her head and forced her to sign. Let's be real: Her unhappiness about how awful the Mouse behaved is going to be viewed a tad askance by a guy who has to count his pocket change twice if he wants to get fries with his burger at Mickey D's.

Oh, poor, woman! Cry me a fucking river!

You sold your book for a fortune and you are pissed off because they make a bad movie from it? Crank up the violins doing "Hearts and Flowers," You made your choice, and you can buy a lot of hankies with that kind of jack. 

Long John Baldry

Don't Try to Lay No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock 'n' Roll …

Lot of Americans might not know who Baldry was, but if you know who Clapton, The Rolling Stones,  and Rod Stewart are, you may have heard of him. One of the original white British bluesman, Baldry was the hot ticket in the early sixties, before the Beatles blew everybody else out of the water.

He knew everybody, everybody knew him, and if you ask Mick Jagger or Rod Stewart or Paul McCartney or Eric Clapton about the guy, they will all say he influenced them. At one point or another, most of them opened for, or actually worked in a band with, him.

Called Long John because he was 6' 7" tall, he was a seminal influence in the British blues/rock scene of the sixties. A lot of those he mentored moved past him, but he was considered to be among the best by his peers.

He was also a voice actor, and most notable among his creations is probably Dr. Robotnik, from Sonic the Hedgehog; he did dozens of TV animated shows, including one of the Conan incarnations.

Baldry eventually moved to Canada, and spent his last few years doing gigs there, and in the Pacific Northwest. He died from complications of a lung infection in 2005.

Moo

Back when we were studying meditation (the Ananda Marga Hindu-system, wherein one sits and silently intones a mantra for no-mind) I learned about an exercise that one does in a graveyard. 

The theory is, spirits are real–in fact, spirit is the only thing that is real, all else is Maya, the Grand Illusion–and some of them are good, others evil. A cemetery of any size will contain the good, the bad, and the ugly, and that to test one's ability to tune out distractions and maintain the no-mind focus during the meditation, one is sent to a boneyard to spend the night in quiet contemplation. 

The spirits, the evil ones, will attempt to invade your soul and do you psychic harm, but even the good ones will offer distractions, and like writers and book reviews, one is supposed to ignore them all …

If, the theory goes, one can hold the course through the night without giving up or being overrun and turned into a gibbering idiot, one has passed a major test and can move forward on The Path.

I've tried this, at least for a half-hour, and survived.  

I have what I think is a better version of it: 

Going to the mall just before Christmas. 

If you can hold to your equanimity during the annual madness, then surely you can also move forward on The Path …

I've done this a few times, and it is possible. That lemming-like frantic energy is all around and impossible to miss, have you any sensitivity to such things:

OH MIGOD, OH MIGOD, I HAVE TO FIND THAT TOY! WHERE IS IT?! I HAVE TO BUY IT, BUY IT, BUY, BUY, BUY, MOO, MOO–!

The monomania is unleashed, the dogs of commerce foam and rage, the thunder of panicked hooves echoes past the phone kiosks.

Ho, ho, ho!

I have managed to do this exercise and prevail, but I can't say it's something I willingly subject myself to every Christmas season. To manage it, you need the proper mindset before you go, and it takes a bit of work. Even my recent visit to Costco, I wasn't ready, as you can tell from the posting about it. Had I been pure of heart and calm of mind, the lunacy of shopping cart pushers and taste-samplers would have passed right through me without stirring any negative energies. Peace on, Sister.

Perhaps I am not yet ready to leave the temple; just call me Grasshopper ...

Truth is, given the choice between battling the evil spirits in the cemetery and the mad consumers at the mall? I'd pick the spirits every time; much easier ...

Xmas

Okay, so I put the outside lights up yesterday, and we got the tree today; we went for the spare look, a Noble Fir.

I guess it's time to post the link to the best Christmas (or in this case, Xmas) song extant:

Upcoming Story

Over the years, I've sold a few short stories to Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, mostly for Pulphouse, a couple to Kris when she edited F&S, and here recently, to an original anthology series they are doing, epub and trade paper print, Fiction River. 

This latter is a series of anthologies, all original material, each with its own theme. 

Good books, good stories, funded by a most successful KickStarter campaign a year and some ago. I heard they were doing these, I sat down and in a couple days, cranked out a couple pieces. They liked one, and they are kinda-sorta thinking about the other, which is much longer, and in the military SF vein.

The latest sale, which will be in the April '14 collection, is another wild hair story that will fit into the fractured fairy tales that comprise this particular collection. I just got the galleys and the cover, haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I am reading the current issue, Hex in the City, and it is boffo. There's a Jay Lake story in it that will knock you down, especially if you know Jay.

Um. Anyway, I read this piece, called "Generations" at the most recent Orycon, to a small, but appreciative audience, and outside of a short I did for Trent Zelazny and Warren LaPine for a theme anthology featuring the late Roger Zelazny's creations, it's the only short likely to see the light of day for a while. (There's one I did about a rat in a soufflé a while back, "A Few Minutes in the Kitchen and Dining Room of Hamelin's Restaurant," though I dunno what happened to that one; plus that AvP thing for the game rule book. Not much of a short fiction guy.) 

Fiction River is here, as well as in the link section of my blog. You might want to check 'em out, they have some passing good tales there. 

Civilization ...

… and Its Discontents …

My wife usually makes the Costco run, but she is under the weather, nasty cold, so I went to the Big Box after a visit with the youngest grandson. I am not by nature a shopper, nor do I like going to Costco twixt Thanksgiving and New Year's, since the place is almost always a cattle stampede during those times …

But I had a list, and I girded my loins and headed for the store. Got a dusting of snow as I arrived at the parking lot, so I wanted to hurry along.

And once inside, the recurring question arose: How smart do you have to be to push a shopping cart down a triple-wide aisle in Costco?

Answer: Not very ...

I mean, here is an aisle that you can literally fit three carts across side-by-side, albeit a bit snugly. And there, just ahead, a woman coming from the other direction who stops and with only one cart and herself, manages to block the passage entire. And stands there oblivious, deep in her examination of a display of granulated sugar, apparently completely unaware that there are folks queuing on both sides of her waiting to get past.

C'mon, lady, it's sugar, for God's sake, how hard can it be to, you know, pick up the bag and plunk it into your cart and allow the flow of traffic around your absorbed self?

Unaware. Or doesn't give a damn, either way of which makes me want to back off a couple steps and get a good run as I bang my cart into the front of hers and blow past …

But, no. Instead I stand there, smiling thinly, until she decides she really doesn't want any of that Organic White Death, turns her cart back up the aisle, and cruises on, never noticing those of us Who Wait.

Merry Christmas.

This same woman–and her numerous, yea, unto the multitudes, kin–will also stop cold in front of you, the figurative middle of nowhere, and stand there, blinking like an owl and looking around as if unable to remember who she is and why she came here.

Give a fucking signal!

Don't even get me started on the crowds that throw up roadblocks at the free sausage display to dine on microwaved tidbits, said display being right in front of the freezer with the shrimp I need to complete my list …

Excuse me, may I get in here for a second? When what I really want to say is, Move it or lose it, asshole!

Um. Yeah, yeah, a First World problem, but still. Some of these people drove to the store and will be out on the snow-dusted streets as I head home, and that idea is scary.

Reminds me of the old story: Ralph is driving, Bill is shotgun. They come to a traffic signal, the light is red. Ralph blows through the intersection, never slowing.

"Geezus, Ralph! What the hell are you doing?"

"Hey, my brother does that all the time."

Come to a second intersection, the light red, same-same.

Bill is coming unglued. "You are going to get us killed!"

"My brother does it."

Come to a third intersection, this one, the light is green. Ralph slams on the brakes.

Bill bounces off the dashboard. "What the hell did you do that for!"

And Ralph said, "My brother might be coming …"