Everything Old is New Again

There are legions upon myriad upon beaucoup ways to work out -- if you look around, you'll find books, courses, videos, personal trainers, all manner of instruction in ways to enhance your physical being. Pay your money, take your choice.

Many of these "new" systems, are, alas, simply recycled methods with new names and some tiny spin. The latest, most up-to-date, you-heard-it-here-first! systems.

Yeah, science marches on, we know the whys and wheretofors, but the principles of exercise and staying fit are essentially pretty simple: Eat less, exercise more. Do something that causes you to work up a good sweat. Train for the specific things you want or need. If you want to move heavy things around, lift weights. If you want to run a marathon, jog a lot. If you need to be able to put your ankles behind your head, yoga ...

The new age sellers nod, but say their way will allow you to do it faster, easier, and more efficiently. Probably some of them are right.

P.T. Barnum, were he alive today, would probably walk around in a permanent state of dazed disbelief. A sucker born every minute? How about ten a second? He'd have to hire a fleet of trucks to fill his money bin.

There's a machine, ads for it in Discover Magazine, that supposedly does it all -- strength, fitness, flexibility. Only takes four minutes a day. Four minutes, that's it. It really, really works, they swear.

Even if it did? There's a little drawback: It costs a tad more than a set of kettlebells (another old toy that has made a comeback) or the 110 lb barbell set down at Sears.

Check out the ROM. Go here, they'll send you a free DVD.

You can have one delivered for a mere $14,615.0o

Thing is, there have been strong and fit people as long as there have been people. Look at the statue of the Farnese Hercules, and you can bet the model for that didn't take anabolic steroids, nor spend fourteeen grand on a Rube Goldberg toy.

When I was a more serious weightlifter, I used to read the muscle 'zines. Foremost among those then -- and now -- were the Weider magazines, from Joe and Ben Weider. Joe was a pioneer in the bodybuilding field, and along the way, came up with a list of principles on how to do it right.

Cocentric, eccentric, overload, ascending sets, descending sets, push-pull, circuit -- you name it, Weider had principle for it. Started out with a few, but built steadily on them, until there were many. And, just in case you might possibly come up with something new, he had the best one of all: The Instinctive Training Principle. This basically meant, "Anything you come up with on your own? That's mine, too." Could have been subtitled "The Everything Else Principle ..."

Give credit where it is due, Weider had some training chops. All of the major bodybuilders up to and including lately were, at one time, training with his system. People would break away, usually to sell their own courses, but any big-name bodybuilder you ever heard of -- Ahnahl, Lou, Lee Haney, they trained at Gold's or World's, and they did it with the other Weider boys.

But, in the end, the principles are simple, and all the rest? That's mostly packaging.

Look at that picture of Hercules up top. How you figure he managed to get that way? Maybe it was the Weider Lucked Out Principle ...

Obama Stands Up

Well, I have to say, Rocky's speech regarding his former pastor laid it all out there on the table.

May be the best, most direct talk on race relations to come out of a national politician ever. He's walking a tightrope, blindfolded, no net, no pole, not even an umbrella for balance, and I thought he crossed the abyss as well as anybody could.

Man has a way with words. And balls. Got to give him that.

Clarke Dies

Arthur C. Clarke
(1917 - 2008)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, one of the ABC's from SF's pioneering days -- Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, (and add in H, for Heinlein,) has died. He was ninety. He spent his last years in Sri Lanka, where he moved, he said, because the water was warm and he could approximate the condition of weightlessness by scuba-diving.

He had been in poor health for years, secondary to post-polio syndrome he began suffering the 1960's.

If he had done nothing else but the short story upon which Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was based, he'd be remembered, but he did a lot more. He was not only a science fiction writer, but also a scientist, and those are fewer and farther between.

Of the grand old men, only Ray Bradbury is left to us now.

Handmade Musical Instrument Exhibit

The Handmade Musical Instrument Exhibit, which features a fair number of guitars of all stripe -- classical, acoustic steel-string and electric -- as well as other stringed and wind instruments, from flutes, to violins, to harps, will be held at Marylhurst College, in Portland, OR, on April the 19th & 20th this year, from noon to five p.m. both days.

It's worth seeing just for the instruments, but there are mini-concerts running both afternoons, in the chapel just across the lawn, in which the players showcase the makers. Some of these are superb, and you get in to those with the price of admission, a whole $3 for adults, and
kids under 12, free.

If you are within range of Portland, you might want to consider it -- it's a cheap date and a lot of fun. The acoustics in the small theater are great, and there are some first-class guitars on display.

One More on Expertise ...

Back when Johnny Carson was doing The Tonight Show, there was always some dancing when contract renewal time came round. Carson was pretty much irreplaceable, but the network would make noises about finding a new host as part of its bargaining position. They never did, of course.

One year, apparently, the name of an up-and-coming comedian arose as a possible replacement: Chevy Chase.

For those of you too young to remember, Chase was one of the original Not-Ready-For-Prime Time players who started out on Saturday Night Live. He was funny, did everything from pratfalls to the Weekend Update segment in SNL, and a lot of his comedy was physical and visual. He was the first of the cast to bail and head out to Hollywood. Apparently he was not altogether popular with the cast, and on his return to guest host, got into a fistfight with Bill Murray backstage. They made fun of it on a later broadcast.

Chase did several well-received movies before all that falling off ladders caught up with him, and he got addicted to pain meds for a bad back. He cleaned up, and has been fairly quiet in the biz since, showing up now and then in odd places.

The story goes, when Carson heard Chase's name being bandied about, he laughed. "Chevy Chase? He couldn't ad lib a fart after a baked bean dinner," he was reputed to have said.

Later, Chase was on The Tonight Show, I disremember what they were talking about, he and Johnny, probably flacking a movie, but there was new comedian on the bill: Gallagher. He's also funny, and he does a lot of stuff with props. His most famous routine is a takeoff on all those late-night ads for kitchen slicers and dicers, the Sledgeomatic, which involved a massive mallet and assort fruits and vegetables, including a watermelon. People in the front row at his show bring sheets of plastic to cover themselves, and need it. One of my favorite lines he did was, "Why is there a permanent-press setting on your iron?"

So, Gallagher does his routine to much applause, and Johnny waves him over -- an honor for a new comedian.

Gallagher sits, they say hello, and Chase says -- as best I can recall -- "Is that it? That's your act? Prop schitck?"

Gallagher gave Chase a hard look, and then proceeded to offer opinions on his clothes, his attitude, and the state of his haircut, and in no sweet terms, either.

Chase backed off: "Oh, I think you're probably a fine young comedian -- "

Gallagher: "Nobody gives a (bleep!) what you think!"

I made it Gallagher, by six lengths, and going away. Gallagher didn't take no shit from nobody.

Carson, who was a master interviewer on his worst day, just sat there, grinning. He could have stepped in and shut it off, but he didn't. He let it go on.

There's no way to know what Johnny was thinking, of course, he's been gone for years, but I felt at the time it must have been directed at the network executives: Hey, this is the guy you want to replace me with? Look how he handles a little heckling ...

We miss you Johnny. You were the best.

Ford Tough. Ford Smart ...

So, on the tube last night, another commercial, this time for a Ford pickup. (Can't get there by clicking on the image above, sorry, use the link.)

Guy comes out, and narrates as a group of "scientists" hooks a truck via chains to an arm of a huge, rocket-testing centrifuge. The truck is then whirled about, demonstrating the strength of the tow loops under the front bumper.

Aside from the Ford-needs-those-tow-loops jokes, the test doesn't mean much. But the part I liked was, down in the corner in small print, it said:

"Closed centrifuge. Do not attempt."

The classic warning: Don't try this at home, kids.

Well, phooey! I was just about to go out back by the oak tree and hook my wife's SUV up to the centrifuge and give it a whirl, but since they warned me not to, well, I guess I can't ...

Hair dryers come with warnings not to use them in the bath tub. There are street signs I drive by that say "Red Means Stop in Beaverton!" just in front of traffic signals. Like it means something else in other towns. Even some guns come with warnings stamped into the barrels. (Don't point this at your head and pull the trigger! Well, okay, it doesn't say that, but it might as well.)

People sue McDonalds when they hit a speed bump and the coffee cup they have clamped between their thighs spills and burns them. And win in court.

Makes you wonder how bright a species we are ...

Addendum to Expertise

I'm reminded of a story I heard years ago: A park ranger somewhere in the west was out hiking when an excited birder came running up to him. Guy pointed at a feathered critter nearby and said,"Do you know what kind of bird that is?!"

Ranger said, "No, but I have a copy of Peterson's Guide in my backpack."

"Won't help," the man said. "I'm Peterson."

Second story concerns an argument I had with my father last time I went home to visit. My mother has bird seed feeders out, and she also hangs sugar water bottles for the hummingbirds, and we were watching a black bird. I mentioned as how we had some birds out west I had never seen in Louisiana. In eastern Oregon and Washington, there is a kind of black and white bird with a long tail, I said, called a magpie.

No, my father said, that's a barn swallow.

I learned a long time ago I couldn't argue with my father -- he is always right, and if you disagree, you are wrong, period. So I shrugged it off, and let it go.

My mother left the room. When she came back, she was carrying a copy of her bird identification book, opened to the page on magpies. "Is that it?" she asked me.

"Yeah."

Triumphant, she flourished the book at my father. And he said -- and not the first time I had heard him say this -- "Well, the book is wrong!"

I tell these two stories together because a) sometimes the book is wrong -- or incomplete. (And even R.T. Peterson kept on learning, after he was the man to ask.) And b) sometimes the book is right, but people don't want to hear it. You have to be able to figure out which is the case now and again ...

Walk a Mile In Your Enemy's Shoes ...

At the end of which, if still disgree, at least you'll be a mile away -- and your enemy will be barefoot ...

The good thing about the internet is that it allows a lot of long-distance conversations you might not otherwise be able to have; the bad thing is that it allows a lot of long-distance conversations you might not otherwise be able to have ...

I've spoken to this before, how words alone offer only broad and relatively inexact communications, even in the hands of experts. I do this every day, easily have written six or seven million words and make a living at it, and on my best day, I might bat .500. Anybody less practiced has a harder row to hoe.

So, after a recent discussion online in which I found myself shaking my head over something I thought I understood, I wondered: If our positions were reversed, if I was making comments about something I considered myself something of an adept at, would I offer the same kind of pronouncements?

I certainly could make a case for so doing:

I've been writing and selling stuff for more than thirty years. I've sold scores of short stories; articles, TV scripts, movie treatments and a bunch of novels. If you haven't sold a novel, if you start writing and selling one a year, and if I quit writing today, chances are you won't live long enough to catch up.

Does that make me more experienced in the writing biz than somebody who hasn't sold anything? Probably.

Does it make me a better writer? Well ... no.

The ability to put the words on the paper in some kind of order is major, and it is a skill that sharpens with practice, but not the only factor. Luck, timing, the economy, the state of the nation, all kinds of things come into play to get a book published. There are better writers who don't do as well as I; there are worse writers who make a lot more money. Talent isn't the only measure. Sometimes who you know is more important than what you know.

For me to say to a newbie writer, "Listen, I understand more about how a book contact is structured than you, based on my experience." that's probably valid. But maybe it isn't. Maybe the newbie writer is a contracts lawyer, or maybe she worked in the publishing business's legal department. Her experience isn't the same, but because it doesn't match mine, that doesn't make it invalid. I don't know what she knows.

If I read somebody's manuscript and offer comments on the content, they will be based on my taste, my experience, and my knowledge of what works and what doesn't. But my critique will be, at the bottom, my opinion. I'd like to think it would be a fair appraisal and mostly right, but I could be dead wrong. I have to allow for that. It is tempting to hold up my experience as the be-all, end-all, and it simply is not.

What I know isn't all encompassing, and while I am going to roll using it because it is what I have to get me where I want to go, there are many paths up the mountain. When I hear that brushed off with, "Well, yes, but my path is better." it trips alarms bells. If it is, "Mine is the only true one," well, I've heard that one before, and I ain't convinced. And "Because I have experience and I say so." isn't enough to make it so me. So when I say it, it ought not to be enough to convince anybody else, either. Sauce for the goose and all.

"Here's how I see it," is not the same as "Here is how it is."

I must try to remember that ...

And, hallelujah, we have heat here again. Burned-out igniter, less costly than the electronic module would have been. Though that term "less costly" is relative ...

Disclaimer

Water Tower, Ypsilanti, Michigan

So, I was huddled in front of my fireplace, watching TV when the latest Viagra commercial came on. Featured a bald guy in a vanilla car, ho hum, until once day he showed up on a big honkin' motorcyle, with Viva Viagra playing the in the b.g., to the tune of Elvis's Viva Las Vegas.

Don't let LD get you down. (Limp Dick ...) Take that little blue pill ...

At the end of drug commercials, it has been mandated that the fine print be read aloud, side-effects and odd symptoms. The most famous in the Viagra/Cialis realm is, of course, the four-hour woody. "If you should have an erection lasting more than four hours, you should call your doctor."

Yeah. After you call the circus and every girlfriend you ever had, and then offer to serve as a springboard on the vault for women's gymnastic team ...

This one is such a howler, even though priapism can be very serious, involving gangrene and like that, that you miss the next two: "If you notice a sudden decrease in hearing or vision, you should also call your doctor."

Right. You go deaf and blind. Assuming you can find your way to the telephone and punch in the number, how are you gonna know if anybody answers? Can't see, can't hear, but got wood.

Some trade ...

Jogging My Memory of Winter

I have, over the years, gotten spoiled with my creature comforts. Gotten used to electricity, hot water, and central heat. TV, the internet, all that.

As a boy in Baton Rouge, whose winters seldom had snow but were often as cold and nasty as the season gets up here in Oregon, we lived in a small house whose heat was provided by a fair-sized, but single, space heater in the living room. My mother kept a pan of water on top of the metal grate to help keep the air from drying out, and it was usually too hot in the living room and considerably colder in the bedroom down the hall I shared with my brother. No big deal.

We used to go camping in the Boy Scouts during winter where we'd hike five miles into a site, pitch tents, and get up the next morning to find the soup we'd left simmering in a big pot over the campfire coals frozen solid.

Until my wife and I bought our first house, every place we lived had space heaters or baseboard units We had an oil heater in Port Townsend, but we used a free-standing woodstove for most of our heat there, being afraid the oil furnace would blow up, having read Stephen King's The Shining.

Which is to say that I don't really miss those days. But this morning, bright and early, our force-air natural gas furnace died. Probably the igniter; maybe some other circuit in the control module. Had juice, motor was running, but no fire. Not a major repair, you unplug the old one, toss it, plug the wires into the new one, all done. Happened once before, a dozen years or so ago. Happened on a weekday.

Finding a furnace repairman or even parts if you want to essay attemping to fix it yourself on Palm Sunday, however, is passing difficult; which is to say that neither were to be had, and the heat still isn't on. Maybe tomorrow.

Temperature tonight supposed to be in the high thirties, rainy and fifty-four tomorrow. Fortunately, we have extra blankets, and a wood-stove insert in our living room fireplace, so between those and a little portable electric heater I used for the garage back when the weight machine was out there, I am in no immediate danger of freezing. Plus the hot tub. And the dogs.

My lovely spouse is out of town on a business trip, and spending the next couple of days in balmy Charleston, SC. (Balmy now, after the tornadoes blew through there Friday and Saturday.)

Doesn't feel much like spring at my house ...

Agility Dogs

So, Phase One of the backyard agility course is complete. We now have two cheapo homemade obstacles -- a bar jump and a tire jump.

Phase Two will require clearing away all those dead bush stumps and some of the English Ivy, whereupon we can install a tunnel, a chute tunnel -- first piece of which is on hand and in the picture, next to the lettuce barrel --weave poles, and a resting table. Plus another bar jump or two.

Phase Three will include the teeter-totter, bridge, and maybe the A-frame. You can see what real dogs and equipment look like here: Dog Agility.

Make Do Musical Instruments

Here's something Bobbe might try. Of course, if the glasses had Chinmay in them, the notes would all be sour and flat, but ...

Speedy Musical Glasses

The Readers Speak

It's been about three weeks since I sent out the first draft of The Dreadnaught, and most of the first readers who volunteered to have a look at it have reported back. There are a few who got the file late, and a few more who have made partial reports, but I thought I'd offer a progress report as to how it's going.

So far, most of the readers seem to think it works okay. Some even liked it. Comments have been offered in the spirit of constructive criticism, and some of them will be reflected in the rewrite(s). Some of them missed the mark, and won't show up in the finished ms. That's how it always goes -- win some, lose some.

To those who read and reported, thank you.

Some of the readers worked too hard. They did line edits for typos and punctuation, and while I appreciate it, I didn't even run the spellchecker, I never do that until final draft. It has at least two more passes -- Michael's, then me again.

One dedicated reader printed the ms out, bound it in three volumes, went through it and marked typos, and offered critiques on content, and tabbed each page. Way more work than I expected, though I certainly appreciate it.

Without offering too many specifics to get in the way of those still slogging their way through the book, a few things I've noticed:

People seemed to have different favorite characters. A couple pointed out how pleased they were that there weren't many real villains, just contenders with opposing ways of looking at the world. I was happy to hear that. Good villains need to be understandable, even sympathetic.

There was one woman that nobody felt comfortable around. Her, I wanted to make people nervous. There is a scene -- I won't spoil for anybody still reading -- wherein a couple of readers came back with, "Oh, man! That's just cold!" I was happy to hear that. Exactly the reaction I wanted.

Everybody who said anything liked Ven, our archer.

Our comic relief characters seemed to play okay, and the resolution there paid off.

The martial arts guys mostly liked the martial arts stuff, though they wanted to see more of it. One reader wanted to see more of the economic effects of steam on society, but we planned to get to that in the second or third book, since the technology is just in its infancy in this one.

A few people have said they thought the book was slow, and much of that due to the cadence of its language, much different from what I usually write in my science fiction or technothriller stuff. The Matadors don't beat around the bush, they shoot right through it, and these readers preferred that.

Me, too, generally, but not here.

Most of the people who said this confess to not being fans of doorstop fantasy, which is why I made this request up front -- if you don't read the stuff, probably you ought not bother with this. (If you want to see real foot-breakers, pick up any of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The shortest of these -- there are, I think, eleven of them, with one more half-finished when Jim died -- and the shortest of them is longer than The Dreadnaught. Dense with detail, not much plot, though many plots afoot, and pages and pages without a paragraph break ...)

The ratio -- usually for me -- between a manuscript's page count and that of a printed page in a novel is about 10:7. A tad more or less, depending on font in the book, but that's the norm. So, for a 700 pp ms, you are looking at a novel that will run under 500 pp. Not something you read on the bottomless throne Monday morning before your shower, but not anywhere near the really big ones, which can be half again, or even twice as long.

Big fantasy is an acquired taste, and part of it has to do with that King James' thee-thou-thither prose. People in magical book realms are less direct in their speech and thought, they dance around things before getting to the point. The pace of life is slower when you have to walk or ride a horse or a cart drawn by aurochs everywhere. No TV, no movies, no electric lights.

Sure, I liked The Princess Bride, too, but that's not the audience we are looking for here. If you noticed such a stately flow of prose in this ms, it was because we did it on purpose, not because we suddenly forgot how to write. At least we didn't make up an entire language and force you to learn it ...

In a short story, everything has to move the piece forward, there's no room to lollygag. In a big fantasy, you can wander around in the wilderness for twenty pages and as long as it is, in itself, interesting, it need only have the most distant relationship to the storyline. People who like this kind of thing, like this kind of thing.

Oh. And some some of what is there has to do with marketing. We might not be able to convince our usual publishers to take this one on, and if we wind up at a new house, they need to know this is but the first book of a series, and that we have some clue as to where it is going.
They might not know us well enough to trust us, so we have to lay some things in to show them.

Some things will wrap up, but not nearly as many loose ends will be tied-off as in a stand-alone one-off. We do have to offer satisfactory character arcs, but many of these people are going to show up in the next book, and maybe the one after that, so they aren't done yet. This isn't the story of the Great Eilandia War, it's the story of the start of the war, and focused on a new invention, the steamship. Our folks don't have to change as much in Part One of a trilogy as they would in a single novel.

Readers who have read a lot of doorstop fantasy didn't seem to think the ms was slow or overlong at all. One took me to task for claiming it was a big book. Not a patch on George R.R. Martin's arse, this. (In more ways than one, sez I, not the least of which is page count.)

So there we stand. Just for fun, I've put up a cartoon I did of The Britta when I got started, just so I'd know the general layout of the vessel.

Thanks again for the input, folks. We do appreciate it.

Bruce & Bruce

Before Bruce Lee was Bruce Tegner. When I was a young fellow, books on martial arts were few and far between, (what with having to be chiseled into stone or written on papyrus) and the leading writer of these was Bruce Tegner. His parents taught ju-jitus and judo, and he was born into it, became a judo champion, eventually studied karate, and combined them into something called Jukado.

He also wrote books on arts about which he knew very little, interviewing those who did, and using them as models. Born in the late 1920's, Tegner died in 1985, and is little remembered today for the pioneer writing he did. (If you went looking for martial arts book in the sixties, you seldom found one. If, over the course of a few months of looking, you found, say, five of them? Four of those would be by Tegner.)

His training philosophy was simple: You should know a few basic moves well, and that fighting smart was better than fighting hard.

It came up in a comment to a posting as to whether or not Bruce Lee, who was James Coburn's teacher in the late 60's, had anything to do with showing Coburn how to play with a knife in The Magnificent Seven. Great cowboy picture, and almost a straight-across rip-off of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. John Sturges was a Kurosawa fan. Most good Hollywood directors were. Still are.

You ever have five or six hours to burn, watch one movie, then the other. There are differences, but some of the scenes are exactly the same, shot-for-shot, with guns instead of swords.

Lee didn't teach Coburn the knife-work for Seven. Coburn was one of Tegner's students -- Tegner even had a small role as one of the attackers in a martial art's training sequence early on in Our Man Flint, a spoof of James Bond. Years before Lee did The Green Hornet, which packed his private lessons with big-name actors, Tegner had a similar roster of Hollywood celebrities. Before Coburn trained under Lee, he had spent years training with Tegner. He was one of Lee's first celebrity clients:

Bruce Lee Teaching
Uploaded by Petidragon

When I was seventeen, I wanted to be Derek Flint. Looking back from here, his kung-fu was no good, but back then, it was the only game in town and it was really impressive to somebody yet to take his first martial arts' class.

Flint was the absolute renaissance man -- brilliant, tough, beautiful women hanging on him, a teenage boy's idol. Coburn, along with Spencer Tracy, in Bad Day at Black Rock, were my first on-screen martial art influences. Tracy, who plays a one-armed veteran come to pay his respects to a fallen Nisei comrade, gets bullied by a young Lee Marvin in the local diner. You hurt for the guy -- until he tosses Marvin on his ass using some sneaky Japanese fighting thing.

Thus the history lesson for the day ...

Oh, Yeah, the Mood Music

To go with the previous post ....

Special Post, at Bobbe's Request

Come back and see me when you're sixty, Kid ...

Oh, and You *Got* to See This

Words aren't adequate:

Who Says Classical Guitar Can't be Popular?

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

Stick Peg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You Got the Right String Baby, but ...

... the wrong yo-yo ...

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

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

Spandex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I burned all over ...

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

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

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

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

Play Nice

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

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

What a bitch!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please.

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

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

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

Boy Seasons

Another old man memory:

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

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

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

Wonder any of us survived ...

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

Far Ago and Long Away

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

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

And:

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

Perry Posts About the Perry Post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, What I Meant Was ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sense of Wonder

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

Read about it here: NASA

And Speaking of Tarzan ...

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

New Soul

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

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

Mo' Music

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

Dang ...

Guitar Virtuoso

Listen to Doug Smith play a little Sousa ...

Snappy Comeback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poetry

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

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

Way to go, Tiel.

Design Flaw

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

Map Redux

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

Draw

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

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

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

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

Call for Super Chicken

Saw this on Bobbe's blog and had to share it. No explanation needed ...

Spring String Change

Say that title three times fast ...

Changed the strings on one of my guitars last night. This is a process that a good guitarist can do in about ten minutes. Takes me half an hour ...

I generally do this every four or five months. Philosophies differ on string-changing. There are guitarists who never change a string unless it breaks. Others will play with the same strings for years, wiping them carefully after each use so they don't get grody. Even so, they eventually do gummy-up. Oil from the fingertips, dust, perspiration. The metal ones -- bottom three -- tarnish where they are pressed against the frets. The top three stretch out and eventually go flat after a few minutes.

Average woodshedders like me can get by with two or three times a year, unless they have toxic fingers -- some players can rust steel strings after a few sessions, something in their body chemistry.

Some professional classical players will change strings every time they do a show.

I use Nylgut, which are classical strings designed to replicate the sound of gut. This tends to be a bit more woody and mellow than standard nylon strings. (You can still get real gut strings, but they cost five times as much as nylon and last half as long. Not cat-gut, by the way, even though it is called that, but sheep-gut.) The Nylgut Alabastros are the middle-of-the-line versions. You can also get basses that are pure silver instead of just plated, but I'm not that good that I need those.

My chore is made somewhat easier, because this guitar, a cedar-top/walnut back, made by Jason Pickard has a 12-hole, Gilbert-style tie-block, which looks like the one in the pictures, sans the experimental G-string pin. Easier to use.

It takes a few days for the new strings to stretch out and stay in tune, without you having to constantly fiddle with the tuning machines, but the guitar immediately sounds cleaner and brighter, more resonant.

Probably it's time for you to change yours; no point in putting it off, it's spring ...

Road Rage

Did I mention that there are a lot of assholes in the world? I had an encounter with one this very day.

Driving on the interstate, bumper-to-bumper traffic. Warm spring day, the sun shining, top down, music playing, I was fine. Save that I was in the right lane and need to be in the middle one. So, I waited for a gap, put my turn indicator on, looked and saw I was clear, and moved over.

Came the horn. Seems a guy in a Dodge Ram pickup wanted to move from the left lane into the center, and was unhappy that I beat him to it.

No big deal, it's rush hour, there's a lot of doh-si-doh, and you made it anyhow, so what's the problem?

Didn't like a convertible getting ahead of him, it seemed. Turns into the artery-blowing version of Marcel Marceau, goes into a pissed-off trio of gestures: First, of course, The Finger. Then, a c'mon-let's-get-it-on wave -- as if he really expected me to park my car in the middle of I-5 and walk back to discuss it with him. Then, the pointing-an-imaginary gun and shooting me. Probably I would have been more nervous at this last had he had a real gun, and the thought crossed my mind that there might be one on the seat next to Goofy back there. Never know. Which is a good reason not to give somebody The Finger. I might have had a gun on the seat next to me, mightn't I?

I wanted to laugh. I didn't offer any return hand signals, just shook my head, and that set him off again. Limited vocabulary, alas, he only had the three moves. Finger. Come hither wave. Imaginary gun.

Part of me wanted to point to the shoulder and nod: Okay, Goofy, let's go dance -- show me what what you got. But, of course, part of being an adult is realizing that chastising the world's assholes would be a job entailing much overtime for no pay, so I resisted the urge.

Sometimes being the grown-up isn't as much fun, but, hey ... somebody's got to do it.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do ... ?

I was not a bad boy growing up. No angel -- I was there when the po-lice came out of the bowling alley and caught Jimmy Head trying to steal the hubcaps off'n their cruiser, but merely an innocent bystander -- who knew he was that stupid? Just because he had been riding with us ...

My first brush with the law came because my buddy had taught me, the summer we were fourteen, the exciting activity of roof-top running. In downtown Baton Rouge back then, most of the office buildings had fire escapes that were easily accessed, and we did so. Even spent the night in our sleeping bags on one of the taller ones once, just because we could. We had 2X6 boards in strategic places where we could cross from one to another. Several stories up, no net, and, being young and stupid, no fear.

One Sunday, after we were done I was headed home, he went back up on his own. Got spotted and caught when he descended, and arrested for trespassing. To make it worse, he had a BB pistol in his coat pocket, so they threw in a concealed weapons charge. Dumb ass.

I went to juvenile court to testify on his behalf, and him being fifteen, it being a first offense and essentially harmless -- single-shot BB pistol, you could hold your hand in front of it and shoot, wouldn't break the skin -- the judge gave him a few months probation.

Not counting traffic stops, a couple of which were scary because real guns were involved. the next time the law called on me was when I was pulled out of a college sociology class and hauled downtown to answer questions. That same buddy, having decided that Army life wasn't for him after all, went AWOL, and the feds had the local po-lice pick me up, in case I might know where he was.

I didn't, I told them, which was true. At that moment, I did not know. I did have a letter folded up in my back pocket from him which gave a return address in New Orleans where was living, but I didn't that he was there, now did I? My first experience with mendacity fugue ...

I got to see the inside of a jail holding cell, though, and then they cut me loose. Scared the crap out of me.

After that, there were several visits from the FBI looking for my pal, which were nerve-wracking. Seemed the penalty for aiding a federal fugitive was much worse than being busted for going AWOL. Go figure.

Eventually, he turned himself in, did eighteen months at Leavenworth, and life went on. Outside of hippie activities, I was pretty much a law-abiding citizen from then on.

Next time I got visits from the po-lice was when they were looking for that selfsame buddy for stealing a bunch of typewriters from the local high school. Which crime he did.

If you are wondering by this point why I didn't, uh, stop hanging out with this guy, seeing as how he was going to get me in trouble, it's a good question. This last event was the straw, more or less, and shortly thereafter, I stopped taking his calls ...

Been clean and mostly legal since ...

Book List

So, somebody dropped me an email and asked for the current book list.

Here you go:

Books by Steve Perry

The Tularemia Gambit
Civil War Secret Agent

The Matador Series:

The Man Who Never Missed
Matadora
The Machiavelli Interface
The 97th Step
The Albino Knife
Black Steel
Brother Death
The Omega Cage (with Michael Reaves)
The Musashi Flex

Conan the Fearless
Conan the Defiant
Conan the Indomitable
Conan the Free Lance
Conan the Formidable

Aliens: Earth Hive
Aliens: Nightmare Asylum

Spindoc
The Forever Drug

Stellar Rangers
Stellar Rangers: Lone Star

The Mask
Men in Black
Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
The Trinity Vector
The Digital Effect
Windowpane
Tribes: Einstein’s Hammer
Immune Response
Champion of the Dead (in progress)

With Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik

Net Force
Net Force: Hidden Agendas
Net Force: Night Moves
Net Force: Breaking Point
Net Force: Point of Impact
Net Force: CyberNation

With Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik and Larry Segriff

Net Force: State of War
Net Force: Changing of the Guard
Net Force: Springboard
Net Force: The Archimedes Effect


Others with Michael Reaves

Sword of the Samurai
Hellstar
Dome
Thong the Barbarian Meets the Cycle Sluts of Saturn
Star Wars: Battle Surgeons
Star Wars: Jedi Healer
Star Wars: The Death Star
The Chronicles of Elandia (in progress)

With Stephani Dañelle Perry

Aliens: The Female War
Aliens versus Predator: Prey
Predator: Turnabout

With Gary Braunbeck

Isaac Asimov’s I-Bots: Time Was

With Dal Perry

Titan AE
Star Risk, LTD: The Gangster Conspiracy (with Chris Bunch)

New Book is Out

Just a heads-up for you rabid fans of blood and gore: My new Predator novel from Dark Horse, aided and abetted by my daughter, is officially in-print, as of yesterday. Local comic book stores will likely have copies, or there's Amazon.com