Road Not Taken

Got a call from my agent today; somebody looking for a ghostwriter. I listened to the pitch and decided to pass on it. The money sounded good, but the scope of the project and the interaction with the client weren't going to be my cup of tea. 

There was a time when I'd have been all over it, but that's the key word these days, "time." I don't have so much of it left that I want to do stuff just for the money.

Always makes me a little uneasy when I turn away work; but the advantage of having gone down so many roads is that you come to realize which ones you don't want to go down again ...

And Speaking of Dogs ...

The dog days of summer ...

Making Dogs

I've mentioned this before, but I came across a reprinted article that lays it out nicely, and thought I'd put up a link. Fascinating reading.

 Basically, back in the Soviet days, the late 1950's, a Russian scientist, Dmitry Belyaev, began an experiment using foxes, breeding them for certain traits. The short version of the experiment is, if you select for their qualities, after several generations, you turn foxes into dogs.

They act like dogs, look like dogs, and are, essentially, dogs. 

Not the first example of hands-on evolution, given all the varieties of critters we have husbanded into existence, but good science nonetheless.

Bad Cat Blues

(Lyrics by Tiel Ansari; Photo by Todd Ellner)

Bad Cat Blues

Dm, G7, A7, Dm

It was early in the morning when the bad little cat came in

With his fur all full of dust and his heart all full of sin

Got a mouthful of kibble (Got a mouthful of kibble) and he goes back out again.

I don't know who feeds him when he ain't hanging round

Don't know where he sleeps at night when the rain's a fallin' down

All I know is he's a bad cat,  (yes, he's a bad cat) the baddest cat in town.

Neighbor says he killed a crow and left it in her yard

He never brought me nothing, that bad cat broke my heart

When your bad cat does you wrong,  (When your bad cat does you wrong) well I tell you life is hard.

Everybody knows that cat around in our neighborhood

He eats in other houses and he sleeps wherever he could

They tell me cats are always bad,  (yeah, cats are always bad,) like dogs, dogs are always good.

Fifteen minutes in my lap, then he left me all alone

Walked off like a feral tom with no use for house or home

Swear I'm gonna boil him down  (Swear I'm gonna boil him down) for a black cat mojo bone.

I don't know who feeds him when he ain't hanging round

Don't know where he sleeps at night when the rain's a fallin' down

All I know is he's a bad cat,  (yeah, he's a bad cat) the baddest cat in town.

(You can listen to it here ...)

Diversity

Face it, there were more black and brown people in Star Wars than at the Republican Convention ...

Ocean of Whiteness

Dunno if is this legit or a Photoshop, but I like it, since it's true ...

Passages

When I started martial arts training, I read Black Belt. Two of the main karate fighters of the day featured were Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis. In those no-contact days, the winners of each weight division faced off at the end for the grand championship. Norris was a middleweight, Lewis, a heavyweight, and more often than not, Chuck won. He was faster and could circle. Lewis, who had a major sidekick, was straight in and out, and if you didn't get out of his way, he was strong enough to blow right through your block.

Lewis learned the sidekick he used from Gordon Doversola at Okinawa-te.

When I got to L.A. in 1967, Lewis didn't train regularly with Doversola, but he would drop by now and then. He was a big, muscular guy, one of only a few serious karate guys who trained with weights.

Time passed, worlds moved ...

Lewis died today, a brain tumor. He was 68.

As I was reading about this, I came across a reference to Shihan Doversola. It has been a few years since I checked up on him, and the reference took me by surprise: Seems that he had a stroke almost two years ago, was in a coma for much of a year, and died in April, 2011.

Well, shit. 

Not that I could have done anything about it, but I feel remiss in not noticing his passing. 
He was 77.

Republican National Convention

Governor Smoke and Representative Mirrors, with a little doddering Clint Eastwood on the side ...

Wasn't for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, I couldn't stand to watch any of it. Unlimited magazine capacity? No abortion even if that will kill the mother? 

Geez Louise. 

Wonder how they will goose the Democrats? Good thing about Comedy Central, they skewer everybody ..

Aftermath

My sister and my niece sent me this picture of my parent's yard in the aftermath of the hurricane. One of the pines snapped off just above the ground and fell on the neighbor's shop. Doesn't look like it did too much damage. The swing set is tied to the tree, I dunno if that was to keep it from blowing away, or to bolster the tree when it cracked.

There were a lot more trees there when I was growing up, but every hurricane seems to take another one or two ...

Power is back on–they have a generator they go to for fans and the TVs and lights when the juice goes out, and it always does. My sister and brother-in-law are there, along with one of my parents' caregivers. Everybody is doing fine. 

Welcome to hurricane country ...

Gimme a Ticket for a Hurricane ...

Isaac is still a tropical storm churning up toward landfall in the U.S., last time I looked, and it might make it back to a Category One hurricane by the time it does get there.

And the news media turns into Chicken Little: "The sky is falling and we must tell the King!"

Really? 

If you live in Boise or Butte or New York City, you might not realize that for folks on the Gulf Coast, a Category One isn't something that sends you screeching to the market to buy all the toilet paper there. It's rainy and windy but, no big deal. 

A Category Two is a little more serious, but still, we aren't talking Camille.

The regular afternoon thunderstorms in Louisiana sometimes drop three or four inches of rain in an hour and gust to fifty or sixty mph and everybody goes on about their business. A One throttles back to a tropical storm soon as it makes landfall. It rains a lot. The wind blows some. You might have to turn your windshield wipers on high. Nobody gets too excited about it. 

Of course, TV news likes to issue STORM ALERT! if a fly sneezes. Two snowflakes fall and there are some parts of the country that go absolutely bugfuck as they prepare for The End Times. 

And if there's no story there? Why, they can surely try to make one ...

Expendables II

Okay, so I didn't like the first one. Didn't work for me on a lot of levels. And the second one isn't what you'd call the acme of the moviemaker's art, either, more fluff than a Chinese laundry, plot's got more holes than a colander factory, and the credit crawl numbers in the thousands, most of them Bulgarians, Indians, and Chinese, but ...

It had its moments.

Stallone apparently had enough sense this time to skip any attempt reality and make it into a full-out nostalgic cartoon, and on that level, I have to admit I had some fun.

Completely silly, and pretty much on a par with Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner–beep, beep!–but there you go.

Trampoline-fu fight scenes, a big part of the budget must have gone for artificial blood, and a whole lot of shit gets blowed up real good. Nobody on the other side can shoot worth a damn, and nobody on the old guys' side can miss. 

Some funny lines: Listen early for when Bruce Willis talks about "Male-pattern badness ..."

Chuck Norris playing with the Norris-is-so-bad stuff, talking about the cobra that bit him.

Schwarzenegger and Willis riffing on famous lines from their movies at each other. It's no spoiler to reveal "Ah'll be back!" and "Yippie ki yay!" but there's some fun with those. 

Even making fun of Couture's cauliflower ear at one point.

Van Damme chews enough scenery to choke a pod of toothed whales. 

Probably most of the people who go to see this are going to be old enough to remember the action movies these guys were in, and the in-jokes are why you go. 

They are all here: Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, Norris, Lundgren, Li, with Statham, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, and a young sniper and kick-ass Chinese girl, neither of whom add much. 

They are all in pretty good shape to look at, though interestingly enough, Ahnahl appears to be less so than the others. 

Popcorn and a drink full of sugar, and have at it ...

With Two Cats in the Yard

"Our House," written by Graham Nash for Joni Mitchell when the two of them were living together in Laurel Canyon in the late 1960's. Performed here by Crosby, Stills & Nash–Neil Young isn't on this version, despite what the title says. 

Simple, melodic, and sweet, a man singing to his woman, telling her what a wonder she is:

Life used to be so hard / now everything is easy 'cause of you ...

That's how it's supposed to be, isn't it?

They didn't stay together. Love can be ephemeral, but at least this song came out of it and touched a lot of people. 

So many great songs come out of failed relationships ...

Big News on the eBook Front

Amazon.com has finally cranked up in India. Folks there will be able to buy ebooks online; stores will carry Kindles; and they can pay in rupees.

I don't know how well my stuff will go over where the Raj once held sway, but it is a potentially-huge market, given there are more people who speak (and read) English in India than anywhere except the U.S.

Stay tuned ...

My Way or the Wrong Way

There is something in the human psyche, certainly in the American psyche, that hates to see somebody satisfied with his or her lot. It's not quite Mencken's quote–"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time."—but it does seem to come from that same part of the mind: Why would you be doing things your way when you could be doing them my way? Since, you know, my way has to be better?

And how can you say you are happy and satisfied with your life? What's wrong with you?

At its best, this is an attempt to share something folks have found they think is of great value, ranging from religion, to diet and exercise, to politics, to beer. Lookit, lookit, here! I've found something wonderful! Check it out! It will make you happy, smarter, it will whiten your teeth! Come and see!

Done it myself. It's hard to suppress. You want to share it, help your friends out. You have good intentions, really, you do. 

You've bumped into this, haven't you? Or even been guilty of it yourself? I have, both counts.

I'm about to be guilty of it again, right here, right now ...

So, a couple of Joseph Smith's boys or the Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door, or your dotty old Aunt Sally tries to fix you up with the Pastor's spinster daughter. Still good intentions, albeit a tad obnoxious because of what it implies:

That you need help. That they can provide it.

When the two nice young men from Orem in white shirts and ties knock on the front door and want to tell me about the plates of gold and the Lost Tribe of Israel and Jesus in the New World? Excuse me, but I'm as old as your grandfather, you really think I haven't come up with some way of looking at the world by now that I need lessons from an eighteen-year-old kid whose entire life experience is Utah? Listen, children, I appreciate your zeal, but I have my own beliefs and I'm happy with them. You want a glass of water or something?

Below that, it can devolve into mean-sprited stuff, the isms–racism, sexism, nationalism. The notion that if somebody doesn't agree with what they believe, they are so wrong they don't deserve full human status. You believe that? You are a heretic! You should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail!

Vote? You want to vote? But look at you! You aren't one of us! 

A few years back, a silat guy I knew slightly went charging off on the my-way-is-better-than-your-way rant. I should, he said, come to his house and learn the Real Deal™. Because his was the  One True Path™ and what I had, while okay, was the art of a lesser teacher, nice guy, but really ...

Really? I don't think so, so I'll stay here, thank you. Glad you like what you found.

But–but–you don't understand! Why would you do that? Stay with something when there might be something better? 

Well, first, because I think you are basically full of shit and it isn't better. Second, because even if it is filet mignon, I'm happy with sirloin here, like the taste better, and I'm getting what I need to sate my hunger. How much better can it really be?

But no: Got to be higher, faster, stronger. 

I have a friend who, every so often, finds a new and improved way to work out, and he shifts from what he was doing, which was working perfectly fine, into the new and improved method. You should try it, he says. It's really good. Better than what you are doing.

Probably. But if I'm not in as good a shape as I might be, it's not because I don't have the tools to get there, I do, and they work just fine. It could be because I'm too lazy to use them. Tossing them and getting a new set won't fix that. Or it could be because I don't want to go there.

Because, you know, I'm happy here ...

See, at some point, you might come to realize that you are high enough, fast enough, and strong enough to do what you need to do. And elect to maintain rather than increase. You balance what you need, what you want, and what is possible. And you have to be realistic about the last. What is fit for an eighty-year-old desk jockey is not the same as what is fit for a twenty-five-year-old Olympic sprinter, now, is it? If I tried to train like the sprinter, it would kill me. I can probably keep up with the old desk jockey most of the time.

For those of you who are going to shake your heads and blather on about how the only limits you have are mental! that age doesn't matter! that what you can do is unbound and unfettered!? Try this: Jump off a tall roof and try to fly by flapping your arms up and down real fast. Let me know how that works for you–if you recover. 'Cause my money is on gravity and the biomechanics of an unaided human body = Wile E. Coyote augering into the hard pan way down there below the cliff, waaahoohoohoohoooo!

There might not be limits, but my ability and yours to get there from here needs more than positive thinking. 

Jump, Steve, jump! Fly, Steve, fly!

Can I get a bomb-falling whistle and ka-boom! SFX here?

If you can fly this way? By all means talk to me, I'll listen. A working demonstration tops talk all to hell and gone. 

Had a well-known and highly-regarded PE teacher tell me once that there was no such thing as over-training, only under-recovering. Really? You can make that rope longer by cutting a piece off one end and tying it to the other end? 

We might say we don't believe in it, but a lot of us want magic. The magic pill, the magic bullet, the secrets of the Illuminati. Folks are always looking for a better path. Nothing wrong with being a seeker, with wanting to better yourself, learn more, achieve something. Life is about learning lessons and growing. However, that doesn't always mean you have to jump from this lane to that lane like some teenage driver in his daddy's BMW cutting through traffic as you wend your way up the mountain, hoping the new route will be faster, smoother, or more interesting. You can do that if you want, but that's not how I drive.

Sometimes, like the tortoise, you can achieve a lot by moving along slow, but steady, on a path that works for you. In a short race, yep, my money is on the hare. For a long race? Not so much. And if you are happy on your trip? Doesn't mean you are wrong because somebody else says so. They don't know you like you know you. 

Cover Flat

Got the cover flat for the next book, courtesy of my editor at Ace, Ginjer. On sale 24 December, for those of you–and you know who you are–who hold off on your Christmas shopping until the last minute ...

Hydration

Summer generally arrives here around the Fourth of July, and if we are going to have a hot stretch, it is usually in mid-to-late August. Didn't happen last year, summer just kind of waved at us as it went by.

She stopped to visit this year. We have had a couple days this week where the temperature hit a hundred F. and it looks like it'll cool off to maybe 97 or 98º here today ...

We can't complain about the heat, compared to the rest of the country which has been broiling; the Mississippi River shut down, crops shriveled, dried-up lake beds crazed all over the midwest. 

For years I had a window unit AC in the garage that I'd haul out and install in my office if the stretch of heat was going to last more than three or four days. That was because above ninety or so, my computer would start to babble at me. Most years it stayed in the garage. Eventually, I gave it to my daughter, whose place gets much hotter than mine.

Most of the houses up here don't have AC installed because it's not worth it for the few days of real heat we get each year. Open the doors and windows, crank up the fans, sleep on top the covers.

However, if you plan to exercise in the out-of-doors, you need to keep a few things in mind when the thermometer is up above body temperature, else you will court heat exhaustion or worse.

1. Stay in the shade as much as possible.
2. Take frequent breaks. If you start feeling woozy or really hot, sit down and cool off. 
3. Drink a lot of water. (If you are going to be at it more than a couple of hours, you might add in something to replenish electrolytes, ala Gatorade or somesuch.)

Our most recent silat class, we were out in the yard, since our host's garage was full of appliances awaiting installation in his getting-redone-kitchen. Probably that'll get finished around, oh, Christmas. Here's a redundant term for you: Lying home contractor ...

The yard is grassy and by seven o'clock, in full shade. Still, when it is 101º F., it is easy to overdue it, and we were focused on leg work, which is ever so much fun; even on a cool day, the blood gets pumping pretty good.

Couple guys got pretty red and needed to use the garden hose. All of us got really sweaty. 
Nobody fell over, but there is always that danger, especially when it's a bunch of martial artists who don't want to be the guy who sissies out.

The tendency in such situation is to keep going: Hey, I ain't your wilting pansy here! 

This keep-going, shrug-it-off, man-up attitude can lead to man-down, so you have to know your limits. Macho can kill you: Dude worked himself into heatstroke and died. A real man, you know? Got to admire that ...

No, you don't. You shake your head at how stupid it is to die trying to show how tough you are. 

Know the signs of impending trouble: dizziness, exhaustion, nausea, cramps? Sit down and cool off–the hose, an ice pack, the upturned water bottle over the head. If you ignore the symptoms and keep going, heatstroke can follow, and if you stop sweating, a seizure or death is right there waiting. Don't be stupid. Listen to your body. 

To see a quick and unscientific measure of how much sweating goes on during a vigorous workout in these conditions? I had a two-liter bottle of club soda going, and by the end of class, had less than a cupful of it left. And I didn't need to pee. The soaked shirt and shorts were testimony to where the liquid went. And the top on the convertible was down on the way home–at nine p.m., it was still 84º F. all the way ...

Public Service Video

The Sting

When we got our RV–and never having owned one before–we discovered a raft of things we didn't know, including sewage disposal. 

Not to get too technical, but there are two waste tanks under the camper: One holds gray water, the other black water. I don't expect I have to explain that any further.

You roll along and these tanks fill, and–this is important–before they get full, you hook up a big hose to an outside valve and drain them into an RV septic tank, to be found at many campsites and some rest stops. Dumping your tanks is always in the back of your mind. 

As part of the black water lesson, we were told to buy a special kind of toilet paper made for boats and campers and all, which would dissolve and thus avoid plugging up the system.

Which we did not want, to be watching in horror as the toilet or shower backed up into the vehicle. 

So we bought a couple of cases of the special TP and went on our way.

It was spendy, spendy stuff. Four rolls of  retail? Eight bucks. But we didn't use much and it lasted a long time.

And as such things do, we ran out of it recently. I got online to find the best price and came across this article, which basically says the whole thing is a scam. That if you don't believe it, take a big jar, drop a couple sheets of your house arsewipe into it, let it sit for a bit, then cap and shake the jar.

Some brands won't break up but chances are the Kirkland double-ply stuff you buy at Costco for a buck a roll in the Carload Size will work just fine, the article says.

And I am here to tell you, it does ...

Gun Stats: Pistol-Packin' People

Carrying a concealed handgun is allowed in most of the states, if you meet the qualifications. (Not in Illinois or D.C., and severe restrictions in Maryland, New Jersey, and Hawaii.)  

Here, some numbers–valid permits, as of 2011:

1. Florida -- 887,000;
2. Pennsylvania -- 786,000;
3. Georgia -- 600,000;
4. Texas -- 519,000;
5. Indiana -- 406,000;
6. Washington -- 351,000;
7. Utah -- 347,000;
8. Tennessee -- 341,000;
9. Michigan -- 296,000;
10. Virginia -- 279,000.

Interestingly, California, the most populous state, issued about 35,000 concealed handgun licenses at last count. California is a "may issue," state, and most of the top ten are "must issue," meaning that the hoops you have to jump through are more in CA. Pretty much, you have to show necessity, have a clean record, and wait for a while as all the wheel slowly grind. Most of those licenses go to rich and famous, a few professional personal protection folks, people who have gotten serious death threats or who carry major monies or gems. 

Population-wise, more of a percentage of people in Georgia go strapped than elsewhere, about 11%. Devil goes down to Georgia, he better watch who he messes with ...

Port Townsend - Road Rage

Had a great few days in the camper at Port Townsend. As we hiked around Fort Worden, we spotted Alexander's Castle. The short story is, the British Consulate built the place for himself and his bride, but when he went home to fetch her, she'd married somebody else.

Oops.

He didn't live there on his own for long.

On the way home, we were on Hwy. 101 skirting the Hood Canal, which is actually just a narrowing-extension of Puget Sound, and in no way canal-like. A curvy, two-lane road, and as we approached a narrow bridge in a no-passing double-yellow line zone, traffic on-coming, and doing the speed limit of 55 mph, some loon in a VW Jetta passed us.

Two seconds slower, we would have been dodging shrapnel and wounded vehicles, and if you know the three-second rule when following somebody, you know how close that was.

I uttered an expletive or three. So did my wife.

If you've never felt road rage, let me explain how it goes: I wanted to catch the idiot in the VW, who was probably high or stupid or both, cut him off, remove him from his vehicle via the driver's side window, and then whack him against the ground like the Hulk did Loki.

I mean, I really did. 

If you want to jump off a bridge or eat an overdose or shoot yourself, that's your right. But you don't get to take anybody with you, especially me and my family. 

I didn't chase the guy down. Aside from that being hard to do in an RV on a curvy road, that would have been illegal, and I am a good citizen these days. Still, it was one of those adrenaline-fueled moments I could have done without, thank you ...