Upcoming Silat Video

I came across this while I was looking for something else -- it's a short clip from what was a June, 2010, seminar. 


The technique in the teaser is a block and biset (foot-drag) takedown. 


Maha Guru Plinck, to the left in the b.g.,  sports his Yul Brynner look. 


I haven't heard from Guy Bowring, at Resonant Video, when it will be available or what it will cover and cost, but as a heads-up for Sera fans, there's the link. 


Guy doesn't make any real money at this, it's a service for the instructors and students of the art, and there are a couple of vids by Guru Plinck, one on the knife, and another that is a multi-instructor seminar in Las Vegas. If you are lucky enough to train with Guru Plinck, you know how terrific the quality of instruction is; if you can't make it to a seminar, the videos are worth having.

First Impressions: Chemistry

Jelly Bryce and Bill Jordan

Thinking about this one again, and while I don't have much new to bring to the subject, it's been awhile, so for the passing parade ...


We have, many, if not most, of us, a kind reflexive, quick-draw hip-shot when it comes to first impressions. You know instantly if you are gonna get along or not.


You meet somebody new and you have one of three reactions: 1) You like them. 2) You don't like them. 3) You aren't moved enough to care either way. 


I'm not sure it matters which happens, but it seems from my experience whichever the Augenblick reaction is, good, bad, or indifferent, changing that later is problematical. And for me, that's because more often than not, my first reaction turns out to be accurate when buttressed by the weight of later experience. 


It's like, "Well, this guy is an asshole." And you get to know him better, and nothing he does ever changes your feeling. 


Not to say that somebody you like won't screw you over later; nor that somebody you don't like might turn out to be better than you expected. Even the Meh reaction can be altered -- someone can grow on you. Always exceptions.


But I've found that in cases where the feeling is particularly strong, yea or nay, that impression tends to hold true unless I make a real effort to change it. And sometimes, when I thought I should make that effort and did, I wound up sorry I'd done it. Most of the time -- most of the time -- that chemical, gut-reaction, instant hackle-raising -- or big grin, is what the core of that person will be for me, no matter what I do later.


I'm thinking it's an atavistic survival characteristic. 


We've likely all met folks who immediately rubbed us the wrong way. Felt something decidedly odd or disturbing emanating from them, and then later, when they turned out to be bad apples, nodded sagely to ourselves. Yep. I knew it. First moment I met the guy. Might as well have had "Psycho" tattooed on his forehead ...


The problem with this kind of point-shooting is that while it's pretty accurate most of the time, now and then you miss, and when you do, it can mess you up. And that can rattle your confidence so that you trust your instincts less. Been there, done that, no fun. 


I bring this up because I am remembering a meeting with a fellow a while back whose mien was immediately off-putting to me. Salt-in-an-open wound, oil-and-water kind of thing. 


After a few seconds, I determined that he was the first part of Green Eggs and Ham -- I did not like him, Sam-I-am ... 


However, since I wasn't going to be running into him with any frequency, I shrugged it off and went on my way. Moot point. 


But, as it turns out, I will be seeing this fellow again in the near future. Now, to be honest, I suspect he is still a world-class asshat. Folks in that realm seem to cling to their idiocy. However; I have to allow for the notion that he has redeemed himself as a human being since last I saw him. And since I'm big into redemption, I am going to try to be as objective as I can be. No promises here, but I'm gonna make an effort. Not so much for his sake as for my own. Getting cocky about how sharp you are is a slippery slope, and I'd just as soon not slide down it on my backside to smack into a tree stump down the way. 


Been there, done that, too.


Wish me luck. I'll let you know how it goes ...

Lazy Musician

I know, I know, there are folks who say "lazy musician" is redundant, but there are some really hardworking ones out there; alas, I'm not among them. I'm not even comfortable with the term when speaking of myself.

Pause for a musician joke:

So there a rich guy standing in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter says, "So, how much money did you make last year?"

Rich says, "About a million dollars."

St. Peter frowns. "Huh. You know what they say about rich men getting into Heaven, don't you?"

Rich guys says, "Yeah, but, I gave a tenth of my income to the church, and I was active in charity work -- I contributed almost half of what I earned to good causes."

St. Peters shrugs. "Okay, I guess that's good enough. You can come in."

Guy standing behind the rich man steps up, shaking his head.

St. Peter looks at him. "What?"

"That guy gave away more last year than I made in the last ten years."

St. Peter raises his eyebrow. "Oh, really? So ... what instrument did you play ... ?"

Back to lazy. A few years back, fooling around with my guitar, I tuned it down a full step. I liked the deep and resonant sound that it made. And I also found there were a lot of songs that were done by folks with vocal ranges much higher than mine that I could then sing with the tuning dropped that way without having to transpose the chords. And I learned some new songs -- wrote some of them -- with the DGCFAD tuning.

So I started going to jam with some folks, and to be able to play, I had do do one of three things: Either retune my guitar to EADGBE; capo up a full step; or transpose on the fly. 

All of these had disadvantages. 

Once guitar strings get stretched out to a certain tuning, they seem to like it there, kind of like a homeostatic set point. Tune 'em up, they keep going flat. Keep them sharp long enough, then when you go back to the lower tuning, then they go sharp. Big tuning changes are therefore a pain in the ass.

A capo is the fastest -- clip it on, you get an instant step up without having to change chords, you just play them relative to the capo as if it were the nut. Everybody is in the key of C, you play C-shapes, you're good.

Problem there is, with a classical guitar, which has twelve frets to the body, you then lose a couple frets worth of barre chords, and anything above the body gets tricky to play, plus the open strings don't sound quite the same. Run out of neck on some of the stuff.

Transposing on the fly -- that is, changing the key up or down from the guitar's tuning as I go is beyond me for anything past three-chord blues. If the song is in, say, the key of G, and I play G-shapes, then what comes out of my lower-tuned instrument is going to sound like the key of F, and once you leave the key of C, you get into sharps and flats and the chords and notes get tricky. You can pull this off with barre chords, but I still have to think about it too much, and it still cuts the number of frets to the body down. I like to play a barred-G on 12. I can't pull it off on 14.

So, I took the easy way out and retuned to standard. Unfortunately, that meant a bunch of the songs I had been singing at home that I could just hit the high notes on in the lower tuning were immediately out of my reach. I'd get to that high note, and my head-voice would give up. (Head-voice or natural voice, as opposed to falsetto, which has limited application and not nearly as much power.)

So, if I want to sing "Hey, Jude, " which I'd been playing in C, but which was dropped to ... um, B-flat? -- then I had to make that choice again -- capo or transposition. (Transposition means, you change the chord up or down and keep the relative positions. So in say, 12-bar blues, if you are in A, then the I-IV-V progression is ADE. Switch to E, and it becomes EAB.)

There are a couple of songs I've been playing for a fairly long time that I want to continue, and short of  having a guitar with the lower tuning, those have to be transposed. So that's what I'm doing. 

B-flat, by the way, is not the greatest key for guitars. Horns, yeah, guitars, not so much ...

(The picture at the top? Nothing to do with this posting. I just liked it ...)

Tough Crowd

I dunno if you follow the news, but in Italy a while back, an American woman, Amanda Knox, and her boyfriend were indicted for the murder of a woman at what has been called a stoned free-for-all sexual party. The Italian court found them and another fellow guilty and put them all away.

At her trial, Knox allowed as how the police beat her when they took her into custody. The police apparently took umbrage at this, and so Knox was recently indicted on charges of slander.

Got to love it.

I wonder: Is it technically possible that if you are convicted of a crime that you swore under oath you didn't do, you could then be tried for perjury?

Tough crowd in Italy ...

Biz

My friend Dan Moran (a terrific writer, by the by) is going to be offering a new way to sell ebooks -- he's working it out even as we speak. It's a referral engine -- basically, the advantage is that if you buy books there and then recommend them to friends, you get a 10% discount on your purchase price for everybody on your referral list who buys one. Get ten folks to buy a book, your book is free. And they get to refer folks and get the same deal. 


No, it's not a pyramid scheme,  no Ponzi here, just a clever way to market things -- you don't have to sign anybody up to buy the books at a price less than you'd pay for a paperback, it's just a way to get a nice discount if you want.


I'm going to put some of my novels up there and see if I can get rich and famous.


Stay tuned: Once he is up and running, I'll put a link to the site here.


Here's another bit of business:


My nephew, Jon Heiner, a passing good guitarist, took an MP3 of my most recent song and put in a nice country lick on the chorus. He's working up a slide lead, too. He sent the amended file to me, and I've uploaded it to SoundClick, here. 


You can get the band together without getting the band together ...


Ain't it great living here in the future?

What A Strange World We Live In

There are many things that don't bear close examination without causing shock and awe. I won't get into the most disgusting ones I've seen or heard. We all have our own horror stories.


However, I got a heads-up from an old buddy recently that I had to share. Not so much disturbing -- nobody is getting hurt by it -- as one of those shake-your-head-in-wonder things. Yeah, everybody has to to be some place, but ...


A couple years back, we got into a discussion about how to use the HOV (diamond) lane in traffic, and the idea of using a dummy as a passenger to sneak past any watching police if you are alone in your vehicle. I posted the image above and wondered if the silicone woman would fool anybody. 


For those of you with normal relationships who might not know, there are anatomically-correct silicone dolls, male and female versions, sold as sex toys. They are quite expensive, and as you can see from the picture, disturbingly realistic. (The bodies are as realistic as this face. If you are curious, go look here. Expect a "Holy shit!" reaction when you look -- rated R, and not safe for work. And probably not safe for your psyche, either.)


It's The Stepford Wives, and sad. But what I've heard -- though, thankfully, not seen, is that there are videos of guys going at it with these things. So here's the wonder: Who watches something like this? 

Eee ...

Here's a New One

A kid looking for refugee status in Canada apparently boarded a flight in Hong Kong disguised as an old man, then shed the mask in the bathroom in flight. Story here.


I wonder what the law is regarding that? They didn't catch him before he boarded, and they are supposed to check ID, which, in theory, wouldn't match up with the face. 


Interesting.

What Did You See?

One of the keys to memory is conscious observation. As a writer, being able to remember things comes in handy -- as it does in many other professions. You can pass a place a hundred times and never take note of what color it is, because you never bothered to mark it: It isn't information you need. Even if you do, it might fade unless there is a reason to need  it. Short-term memory and long-term needs aren't the same, else you could remember every phone number you ever looked up.


You can train yourself to do these things until it becomes a habit, if it is worth the time and energy.


I have a pretty good memory for faces, but not for names. If you meet a lot of people and you aren't apt to see most of them again, knowing the name attached to the face is less important and it burns up dendrites. I usually figure that if I keep bumping into somebody, I'll need to know their name, and eventually, I'll learn it.


There's no rule of thumb I apply, I just go with the flow.


Observation is also a good thing for cops, soldiers, bouncers, doctors, reporters, and even old martial artists trying to think tactically. I was in a fast food place recently and intent on my burrito, but as an exercise, I counted the number of employees working out front, the number of diners, where they were seated, and how many were men, women, or children. Took about two minutes as I chowed down. No reason I needed that information, but had a reason arisen, I'd have had it ...


I usually mark the exits of a building when I go into it. If there's an emergency or the Chinese army barges in and blocks the front door, I want to know how to get out. This comes from a time when I was in a department store that caught on fire and burned to the ground. One guy, trapped, ran into the bathroom and started running water. A fatal mistake. 


In that case, I didn't worry about how to get out because there was a wall of glass and lots of things I could use to knock a hole in it. But that's not always the situation.


My second fire story was when my son was a baby and we were living in L.A., upstairs in a four-plex apartment. The next door neighbor, a ... lady of the evening, was entertaining a guest late one night and they set the place on fire. I awoke to the sounds of her screaming "Fuego!" and the smell of smoke.


We were on the second floor and there was only one exit. I went to the door, but it was stuck. I had a moment of panic. I pulled harder on the door -- and learned that hysterical strength is not a myth. The door frame kind of shattered and I ripped the door from it, hinges and all. After I got my wife and the baby down the stairs, I went back and started throwing our stuff out the window. By the time I had all our clothes out, the smoke in the stairwell was too thick to try it, so I went out onto the nice pile of padding I'd made.


In the end, we could have left the door closed and we'd have been fine -- the FD got it out pretty quick. As it was, we got a lot of smoke damage because some fool had ripped the door off its hinges ...


Odd what sticks with you once you learn it. When I was a private eye, I got pretty good at tailing and surveillance. One of the adjuncts to following somebody is that you begin to look into the rearview mirror more often. Not that anybody had any reason to be shadowing me, but if they were and winging it, no bugs on the car, and nobody to switch off with? After two turns behind me, I'll notice. No use for that in particular, but even thirty-five years later, I still have that habit. 

The Perils of the Flying Sidekick

In a discussion about flying kicks, and thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I can put up one of my fond memories of this technique. It's from the movie Marlowe, 1969. Philip Marlowe (James Garner) is a seedy L.A. private eye -- which I happened to be when I saw the movie -- and is menaced by Winslow Wong (Bruce Lee) in his first American movie role. 


Base on The Little Sister,  a novel by Raymond Chandler, it features a low-rent but morally-upright detective who is warned off a case by Wong, who works for a local gangster. (Those of you too young to remember Marlowe from the novels or movies might remember the comics and movie Sin City, by Frank Miller. His protagonist in that is based on Marlowe.)


First time we see him, Lee destroys Marlowe's office after he won't take a bribe, which sets up a fight scene on the roof of a restaurant. In 1969, the line about being a little bit gay was much funnier than it is now. And the real payoff is when Marlowe goes back into the restaurant and wordlessly explains to the gangster what happened to Wong. I thought I was gonna hurt myself laughing at that.


Hey, it was funny back then.


Enjoy.

Studio Engineer R Us

Somebody asked me how I record those songs I've inflicted on people on SoundClick. It's pretty easy.


Here's how the current song, "Guns and Butter," came to be out in the world.


I wrote it last night after midnight. Came up with a chord progression this morning. Typed the song up. Sang it through twice to get the feel, then opened the Mac music program GarageBand. 


Gear: I have an inexpensive Samson USB microphone plugged into my computer for input. I lit that and opened a blank vocal track in the program, no EFX, just plain. (You can do all kinds of things to adjust the sound, echoes, changes in pitch, other instrument loops, and whatnot, and then equalize the tracks -- EQ -- to get a final product.)


I pushed the record button, read the lyrics and chords off the screen, and sang the song with my guitar.


Once that was done, I doubled the track, i.e., made a duplicate of it. 


A bit of technical stuff, not much, and I'll explain. When you record something with one mike (single signal) onto whatever medium, you get a single channel, resulting in a recording that is monophonic or monaural. If you use two or three or however many more microphones, multiple channels result in stereophonic sound, albeit the channels get fed into a single path.


So when you listen to stereo with two or more speakers, you can hear different parts of the band from one or the other or both if that's what the producer wants. Stoners love listening via earphones to music that starts in one ear and flies over their heads to the other ear ...


To make a monophonic recording work better with multiple speakers, you can do a kind of cheat -- if you pan the output to the left or right, that's how it comes out. So with more than one track, you can pan one left and the other right, and make it sound as if two singers are on different sides of a listener.


If you double a track and pan one each way, it gives you a fuller sound. Don't ask me why.


After that, I put on headphones and changed the output driver in GarageBand to those, and listened to the recording. When it came to the part where the chorus began, I hit record again and sang along, this time trying to do harmony. I'm not very good at it, but it is what it is. 


I doubled that track and panned it left and right, too.


On the last chorus, sung Acapella, I added a third track, with a slightly different harmony.


One take each track.


Once that was done, I sweetened one of the original tracks using an effect called "Gospel Choir" -- appropriate for me, don't you think? -- then exported the whole thing to an MP3, and uploaded that onto SoundClick.


It is warts and all -- buzzing strings, flubbed lines, I didn't punch in any notes or try to adjust the pitch or tuning. I'm not selling CDs, nor auditioning for anything, so I'm not going to get into perfect takes. If I were, I'd have to sing the thing a hundred times to get it down cold, and where's the fun in that? 


So there you have it. Cheap and dirty home studio work, and now you know. 

New Song for November

Lying in bed last night reading after watching the late news, this one popped out. I jotted the lyrics down, and pretty much here they are ...

To hear it, click on the title "Guns or Butter," in the player under "La Musica!" Or click here.

GUNS OR BUTTER

(The letters in parentheses are chords)

1.

(G)War’s still (D)goin’, it’s (C)costing us a (D)fortune our  (G)troops are (D)still getting (C)shot/ (D)

(G)People need (D)jobs, the (C)market’s in the (D)crapper, the (G)economy (D)still ain’t so (C)hot/ (D)

(G)The world is getting (D)warmer, Chi(C)nese are takin’(D)over (G)everybody (D)says it’s (C)so/ (D)

(G)Congress is (D)looney, the (C)courts have gone (D)crazy, but (G)here’s one (D)thing I (C)know: (D)

Chorus:

(G)You can have guns or (C)you can have butter, (G)but you know you’re gonna have to (D)choose/

(G)Caught between the Devil and the (C)deep blue sea, any (G)way you (D)look at it you (G)lose.

2. 

People got pissed and they kicked out the Republicans, but that didn’t work so well/

Then they got pissed and they kicked out the Democrats, and now we’re on the road to Hell/

We’re runnin’ out of patience, we’re running out of parking and there’s the horror of Glenn Beck/

Better sit down and buckle up your seat belt, there’s gonna be a honkin’ train wreck.

Chorus

3. 

If your computer goes out, your techie lives in India, how’s the weather there in Mumbai?

Granny’s medications, they all come from Canada, and she needs to hurry up and die/

What the hell happened to the land of milk and honey, how did everything get so bad?

I think you have to say when you look around the country, the whole damn place has gone mad.

Chorus x 2 and acapella the second time.

Very Funny

All right. Who did it? Which of my friends or family sent me a gift subscription to Maxim? Not that I don't appreciate a good set of hooters, but c'mon -- I'm somebody's grandpa, I don't really see myself reading a 'zine aimed at twenty-somethings.

I've waited for a couple months but nobody has come forward sniggering.

Which of you clowns did it?

Movie Update - The Man Who Never Missed

Mark Kilbane, the producer, actor, and screenwriter -- a triple-threat guy -- has finished the first draft of the script for The Man Who Never Missed. 


He was gracious enough to let me read it. He didn't have to do that. Book writers often go ballistic when they behold what scriptwriters do to their novels. 


My response: Not bad ... for a white boy ...


As a now-and-then scriptwriter myself, and the guy who wrote the novel upon which Mark's script is based, I can't pretend to objectivity. It's not exactly how I would have written it, it couldn't be. But the spine of the story is there, that's what matters, and I thought he did a great job capturing the essence of Khadaji's story. 


Yeah, there were a few niggling things I thought he should fix, but really minor stuff I'd have pointed out in any script, details that went to what little I know. So I mentioned them. None of these fazed him. (He'd already re-read the draft and dealt with the first one before I brought it up, and is perfectly willing to address the others.)


His script serves the material well, it moves right along, and I was pleased. If it were to show up onscreen as he has it, I'd be happy to point at it and grin. He done good.


Of course, that's not how things work in LaLaLand. If you start out with a terrific script, by the time it gets whittled on by everybody who is allowed to take a knife -- sometimes an axe -- to it, what you wind up with never looks the same. (In my capacity as a novelizer of a couple movie scripts, I've seen how changes can go right down to the wire. In one case, I was sent the final draft of a screenplay to use for the novel tie-in. I started writing. A couple weeks later, they sent me the final final draft, and a big chunk of what I'd already written had to be thrown out because they had changed it. And when the movie finally hit the silver screen, there were more changes still ...)


But all that's down the line. What's important is that Mark has a clean script he can wave at folks, and that is the heart and soul of the process. 


And we are off -- the game is afoot ...

Another Blast From the Past

More old hippie nostalgia, this time for pop-folk fans: Peter, Paul & Mary, Donovan, and the Smothers Brothers, doing short versions of their assorted hit songs on stage together.

Nine minutes' worth, and when's the last time you saw anything that long on a variety show?

Gambler's Wisdom

Most recent jam session with the NFUs Band, one of the songs we played was "The Gambler," written by Don Schlitz, and sung worth a Grammy by Kenny Rogers. 


Have to pause for an aside: Kenny Rogers. Here's a guy with a checkered musical past. He started out singing doo-wop, then got into a jazz trio, then rock, folk, and country, sometimes all on the same album. Who among the hippie culture could forget The First Edition's classic, "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition my Condition Was In)? Mickey Newbury's LSD song? Not me.


And as a caution against too much plastic surgery, Kenny looks as if you could bounce quarters off his eyes ...


You gotta watch this (and you will cringe no matter what your age ...)





Um. Back to "The Gambler." Aside from spawning like, five bad TV movies, it was one of a handful of  #1 songs Rogers had consecutively on the country charts, though it only made it to #16 on the pop charts.


It is one of those story-songs, and not at all cheerful, at least insofar as what the story is. Has a nice beat, though. Basically, it's how a down-on-his-luck young man meets an old gambler on a train "bound for nowhere," and after giving the old gambler his last slug of whiskey and cigarette, gets some advice -- whereupon the gambler falls into a drunken sleep and dies.


Here's the chorus:


You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

Upon reflection, not bad advice ...

Elections

So, the mid-terms are over, and the R's came out with more victories than the D's. No surprise -- when the electorate gets unhappy, they throw the incumbents out. In this case, I think the cure is worse than the disease, but the D's had the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, and when people vote their pocketbooks, as they always do in a recession, it costs the party in power.


The party of "no" gets to say it louder now.


I think the D's flubbed on several fronts, not the least of which was making it clear that climbing out of the deep hole we were in wasn't going to be easy, nor quick. Once again, the victors did not win so much as the losers gave it up. 


Be nice if it made a real difference. I don't think it's gonna.


It is what it is. The people have spoken, that's how it works here, you casts your ballot and you makes your choice. We get to do it again in two years, and I'm already not looking forward to the blitz of TV ads ...

The Reverse

I've talked about this a few times in the how-to-write stuff, what is called a reverse in a story -- it's going one way, then it does a ninety or one-eighty, and heads off in another direction. This results in a either something dramatic, or funny, and as often as not, both.


This footage, meant to be taken as real, was obviously staged. Viewed alone, you can see that.


The first time I saw it, however, it was tacked onto the end of a string of near-accidents that were caught on camera and real, and for people who aren't being critical, it could easily fool them -- if you tell the truth nine times, it's easier to pass off a lie the tenth.


Classic example of a reverse, though.

Steve's Sweetener

I've stabilized my weight about five pounds down from where I usually am -- I can replace that sugar I gave up with complex carbs, fat, and protein, just a matter of adjusting the balance.


So far, not a problem with losing the sugar. I passed out handfuls of Hallowe'en candy without taking one mini-Snickers, thank you. I did have to have a slice of my son's birthday cake, but it was pound cake and not that sweet, and it was a small slice ...


And thinking about all those cookies and pies and cakes I'd have to forego, I came across a solution. A substitute aptly named Stevia.


I'd seen this advertised on the tube but never paid it any mind. Then I started doing a bit of research. I don't want to get into artificial sweeteners for several reasons, not the least of which is they all taste crappy. But a test of Stevia -- how sweet it is -- and no problem. 


You still have to replace the bulk of sugar with something in a baked recipe -- you can use ground nuts or fruit or somesuch, because if you pull a couple cups of sugar out, whatever you are baking will miss it enough to go flat and crumbly. However, the sweet part is easy with Stevia, which comes from the leaf of a South American plant. You can even grow your own -- one of places you can find the plants for sale is a couple miles down the road, if I've a mind to do that.


The herb is not cheap, but a little goes a long way -- the ratio of concentrated Stevia powder to sugar is one-quarter teaspoon of the former to a cup of the latter. And it doesn't have any calories to speak of, and doesn't spike your blood sugar. 


Learn something new every day. 

Don't Bogart That Glenfiddich, My Friend ...

British scientists have announced that alcohol does more damage to folks than crack or heroin or other drugs.


Well ... duh!


How long did it take them to figure this one out, I wonder?


You think maybe because it's legal and you can get it anywhere, or make your own with nothing more than some kind of fruit or vegetable might have something to do with that? Or that alcohol has been know to be a poison for, like, forever? 


That you could dissolve all the coke and smack ever produced and wash it way with what the frat boys put down on an average weekend kegger?


Next up on the research front: Scientists Discover That The Oceans Contain Most of Earth's Water ...


Details at Eleven ...

Blossom

Year or so ago, my wife brought one of her office plants home, an orchid. We stuck it on a shelf in the hall bathroom and when I remembered, I watered it.


Been busy around here of late, but I did water the plants last week, Tuesday or Wednesday, I think. And this morning, I noticed that it had blossomed.


I dunno about these things, which variety it is, anything like that, but it's pretty.

A Not-Paid Political Announcement - Guest Editorial Post

My sometime-collaborator, Michael Reaves, has, for good and sundry reasons, allowed his blog to lapse. But he had something about the mid-term elections he wanted to put forth, and so -- even though I never get into politics myself, as long-time readers all know -- I am giving him the space for a guest editorial. His opinion does not necessarily reflect those of this station, nor its employees -- well, except that it kinda does ...


Here it is:


"If things go the way it appears they will this Tuesday, we are, all of us, royally, painfully, mind-numbingly fucked. Without soap, without a cushion for the sawhorse, without even the cold comfort of a reach-around.

I am deeply puzzled by the actions of the Republicans (including the tea party, birthers, and others who usually don't leave the  house without wearing their trusty tinfoil fedoras). What's wrong with you people? I mean, there's not playing well with others, and then there's stalking onto the playground with a militia strapped beneath your black leather duster, screaming "SEE YOU IN HELL!!!" and proceeding from there. This is usually known, in terms of  The Hero's Journey, as the Path Of the Raving Loony. It is the path most of you have apparently chosen, albeit on a slightly more sophisticated level. But only slightly.

Listen up, all you Neanderthals in three-piece suits: a democracy is founded on informed consent -- a concept most, if not all, of you are having more trouble with than a hunchbacked lab assistant trying to remember if Doctor Frankenstein told him "Brain A " or "Brain B". "Informed" consent is not "unformed" consent. What difference a vowel makes.

Look, I'm going to take it as a given that you have your reasons - and they probably even make sense - to you. I also know that you people see conspiracies everywhere (and the really scary part? These are the relatively normal ones I'm talking to now.) But seriously - I gotta ask: What the fuck is wrong with you people? Even though it's typical of you folks to see everything and everyone in black-and-white starker than film noir, please try to hear me when I say that there are subtleties and hidden agendas when even just two people get together. With 300 million? There are more.

But 'tis all to no avail. The hollow-eyed, stone-faced multitude makes the typical computer-augmented hordes of Undead zombies swelling the local multiplex seem about as terrifying as multiple clones of Fred Rogers, sans sweater. They are Republicans; until recently cast into Lovecraftian Outer Darkness, they have clawed their way back into the coveted center once more. Their sheer, True Grit-style indomitable determination is something the Democrats not only do not understand but cannot understand. The Dems, it must be said, have backbones of pliable plastic at best, like a lab replica, while the Republicans have spines sheathed, Wolverine-like, in pure indestructible admantadine. The only problem, of course, is that it sheathes their brains as well. They are Republicans; fear them."


We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.


And agree or not, if you aren't in a mail-t0-vote state and your ballot already in, do exercise your constitutional right to be part of the process, however flawed, come Tuesday. It is your right and your duty as a citizen. If you don't vote, you don't get to bitch.

Internet Scam

I'm sure you've seen variations of the Nigerian Scam, aka the 419 Scam. The essence of the con is that if you'll help this person transfer their money, which is in the millions, out of the country and into the U.S. (or wherever you live), they'll cut you in for a big chunk of it.

The stories get quite creative as to which relative of the writer the money belongs to, how they were stuck in prison or died, and that the fortune will be snagged by the authorities if they don't act now. Like all the best cons, what they ask you to do is not legal, and by entering into it, you are less likely to report it, since you've made yourself complicit in a shady deal.

My favorite lampoon of this is done in a Star Wars style -- if you'll help this poor person smuggle her money off Coruscant, you'll pick up a few million credits for your aid. Long live the Alliance ...

But it's no laughing matter -- they've been running this game since at least the 1920's, and since there's a sucker born every minute -- people are still falling for it, and more since the internet opened up the pool.

They are easy enough to recognize -- words are often misspelled,  the language runs to the ornate, and the grammar is mangled. (One guy I know, who knows that Nigerians tend to be superstitious, sends the emailer a curse in return. Check it out.)

Here's one I haven't seen before, thought it's been around a while, arrived in today's mail: Got to give the guy credit for balls (Italic bold emphasis is mine):

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division (No such division.)
FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Redundant)
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Website: www.fbi.gov.

ATTENTION FUND BENEFICIARY

This is an official advice (what is an official advice?) from the FBI foreign Remittance / telegraph department. (telegraph department. Really?) It has come to our notice that the C.B.N Bank Nigeria district has released 5,300,000.00 US dollars into Bank of America in your name as the beneficiary by inheritance means. (beneficiary by inheritance means?)

The Bank in Africa knowing fully well that they do not have enough facilities to effect this payment from the united kingdom (caps?) into your account, Used what we know as a secret FBI Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer Certificate (DIST CERTIFICATE) to transfer these fund via wire transfer.
(Uh huh. Gobbledegook.)

They are still waiting for confirmation from you on the already transferred funds which was made in direct transfer so that they can do final crediting to your account. (Subject-verb agreement? And they are going to be waiting a while -- I hope they aren't holding their breath.)

Secret diplomatic payment is not made unless the funds are related to terrorist activities.
(Uh huh. Really?) That is why your payment has been made in secret transfer. If your transaction is legit (legit?) and you are not a terrorist. Then why did you not receive the money directly into your account? This is a pure coded means of payment? (It is? A pure coded means?) Most Records we have had with this method of payment in the past has always been related to terrorist acts, (Most has always?) We do not want you to get into trouble as soon as these funds reflect into your account in the U.S.A, so it is our duty as a world wide commission to correct this little problem before this fund will be credited into your personal account. (Anything in this graph work for you? Anything? Not me.)
 
Due to the increased difficulty and unnecessary security by the American authorities when funds enter from outside of Europe, and the Middle East, The F.B.I Bank Commission for Europe has stopped the transfer on its way to deliver payment of $5,300,000.00 to debit your reserve account and pay you through a secured diplomatic transit account (S.D.T.A). We govern and oversee funds transfer for the World Bank and the rest of the world. (Um, no you don't, even if you were the FBI. And the rest is just ... sad.)

We advice (we advice?) you contact us immediately as the funds have been Stopped and are being held in our custody, until you can be able (until you can be able?) to provide us with a Diplomatic Immunity Seal Of Transfer Certificate (DIST CERTIFICATE) within 3 days from the world local bank that authorize (more subject-verb problems.) the transfer in order to certify to us that the funds you are about to receive from Nigeria are anti-terrorist/drug free (terrorist and drug free funds. Non-fattening, too?) or we shall have cause to cross and impound ( cross and impound?) the Payment, (and the sentence runs on ...) we shall release the funds immediately we receive this legal documents. (DIST CERTIFICATE). You will be directed where and how to get the document if it is not in your possession. (Oh, I bet. And I'm sure there will be a small fee for this. Or access to my bank account.)

Guarantee: Funds will be released on confirmation of the document, (carrot) But If you fail to provide the Documents to us, we will charge you guilty with the FBI and take our proper action against you for not proving to us the legitimate of the fund you are about to receive. (Stick. And what a shame the FBI can't hire somebody who can speak English, isn't it?)

These Condition Is Valid until 20th November 2010 after which we shall take actions on canceling the payment and then charge you for illegally moving funds out of Nigeria. (Yeah. I'm shaking in my boots here. These conditions is valid? My second grade teacher would have stuck me in the corner with a dunce cap on if I'd said something that stupid.)

Yours in Service
              
Robert Mueller, III
FBI Director"