BabyTrollBlog

2004-02-07T00:12:00.000-05:00

EMERGENCY POST
If you're wondering why the www.babytrollblog.com site seems down, it's not. It's just not answering to its name right now. As Dolly put it:

CAUGHT US BY SURPRISE
Da Doll tried to upload an update to the RoadRunner server and got the old and tired "disk quota exceeded" message. Alger decided it was time to go to paid hosting. FWIW, we have moved our sweet asses over to pmachinehosting (thanks to the du Toits for the recommendation). Thus far lookin' fines' kind all the way.

The scary part was that we couldn't continue to have the babytrollblog.com domain name forwarded to the RoadRunner server while simultaneously waitin' fer th' new DNS servers to propagate. So, for a brief period, BTB's beed down. Nothing to be done about it, though we did have a major panicattack to see that "coming soon" page in the meantime no nevermind.

But, if you're reading this, you got to the new site and all is hunky-dory. (What is a hunky dory? I mean, I know a dory is a rowboat. Is a hunky one that's well-built? Or one that's a little... awkward?)

Silver lining department, Alger says he will now be able to get the Apocrypha back up at the old Road Runner site, once he spiffs up the HTML. (Watch him try to fob that off on Da Doll. Whatcha wanna bet?)

Oh! And you folks who linked to the old site with the home.cinci.rr.com domain URL, your links will be broken. If you used relative links within the babytrollblog.com domain, you should be just fine.

So please bear with us as we move our stuff.

2004-01-01T02:13:00.000-05:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The new blog is up. The URL is http://www.babytrollblog.com/. Things are still a mess, but I will not be posting at this blog any longer. The last thing to be done to make the move official is to transfer the archives. Wish me luck.

2003-12-28T16:40:00.000-05:00

SWMBO POINTS OUT
That this is a leap year coming up. Being's I'm on salary, I 'spect that means I'm working the extra day free. Wonder if I can get it as a vacation day.

...

SO THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Was too big for the living room. We bought it last year on sale and never had it out of the box. Pre-lit artificial, narrow profile. Man, were we excited.

Then I got it out and set it up and, where the box said it had a 49" girth, it looked more like a 49" diameter. Yoiks!

After the requisite fifteen minutes of panic, rage, bargaining, pleading, acceptance, we decided to rearrange the living room for the season, giving us enough room to get around the tree.

Then we discovered we liked the room the new way and wanted to make it permanent. Which meant we'd have to move the TV and the entertainment center and the bookshelves and... out of eight major pieces of furniture in the room, two would stay in the same place — more-or-less.

Then we decided we wanted new tables — coffee and end. And I want a wall lamp. And we've been meaning to get a new couch for several years.

Then SWMBO sat in her chair in the new configuration and discovered that she couldn't see the TV in the old config (which will obtain for three more weeks).

She doesn't like the recliner. She wants a love seat instead of the couch. I spend most of my living room time on the couch (and am six-two and want place to stretch out) so tried to veto that, then pleaded like a tobacco lobbyist.

Today we went to Lazarus (the local Federated store — same as Macy's). And spent the price of a new roof on furniture. Including replacing one of those two pieces that were going to not-move in the reconfig.

Got off cheap.

Remember this started because the Christmas tree was too big.

2003-12-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

ART IMITATES... ART?
Author/Editor/fiction maven Chelsea Polk (Live Journal blog — no permalinks) in her 12/27/03 entry lays out a brief thesis which I, for one, intend to internalize and apply.

Comic artist Tony Cochran, in his strip Agnes (A linkable Sunday comic — are you nuts?), recapitulates Chelsea's thesis in three panels. Agnes attempts to tell a joke. Her buddy critiques it in-progress. Agness exhibits workshop burnout.

Ya hadda been there.

2003-12-26T11:45:00.000-05:00

ROGER'S BACK
Whew! Apparently some contretemps with Hosting Matters.

<JohnAstin>But he's much better now.</JohnAstin>

2003-12-26T11:27:00.000-05:00

I WANNA KNOW
How come Lileks gets these perfect Kodak-moment pictures and all I get is baby-blur?

2003-12-26T00:24:00.000-05:00

EVENING STROLL
Moonrise in the West just at sunset. The dark side of the Moon shines in faint earthlight. Venus accompanies. The air is cold and sharp.

2003-12-25T11:10:00.000-05:00

I WANTED TO DO THIS DIFFERENT
But time got away from me and, if I'm not careful, I'll miss the window altogether. SOooo....

While I continue to work on the site at www.markphilipalger.com, here's a reminder that the Dolly Apocrypha is up on the Web at my Old Site, and there's a story there that seems appropriate to the holiday.

("'Seems' my ass," Dolly says with a snort.)

It is called A Dolly XMas. Go and read it. Enjoy. Merry Christmas. (Or, as Dolly would have it, Merry XXXMas.)

And for those slow on the uptake, I suppose I should disclaim that — yes — the "XXX" does signify R-rated content.

2003-12-25T00:32:00.000-05:00

NOTHING FANCY
No graphics, no flash movie, no boobies — er... roasting chestnuts, I mean. Just an earnest wish

Peace on Earth
Goodwill Toward Men

Merry Christmas. Good night, Gracie.

2003-12-24T14:13:00.000-05:00

AND... CUT!
Scene! Scene! Scene! ::sigh:: I've been working toward this for what seems like a month. The cusp of conflict in the moment when Drummond and Witchlet finally meet. I've struggled with it and pounded my head against it, fought it to the ground a dozen times only to have it rear up once again. But now it's done and I can move on.

I can't wait to show the critters.

Trouble is, the oldest post — Chapter 8a — only has 3 reviews and I want to get at least 4 or 5 if I can. So I have to wait till those come in before I can replace the eldest post with this new one. I may have to wait until after New Year's.

Unless (gears turning in alleged mind) unless I offer the "chapter" early (before I post to the Workshop) to those critters who've already reviewed the earlier ones. So they can get their reviews ready in advance and argue over the two-pointer. ::evil grin::

Or I could reciprocrit. I mean... I owe Doc and Dorian, Larry, Lizzie, Jaime, and Trish. Only one who owes me (really) is JD and I 'spect he's lying in a quivering heap somewhere on account of having finally finished Fates.

::sigh:: Maybe tonight. Right now, I have to finish cleaning up the house for Christmas. ::sigh — again:: Seems like I've been doing nothing but since my vacation started.

...

IT'S FUNNY
I don't entirely get the concept of word count as a measure of writing production. Seems almost like KLOCs (thousands of lines of code) in programming. It's a meaningless metric, because the goal isn't to write the lines — or words — but to create the program... the story.

Take this latest passage.

In my organizational scheme, it's a fragment of a chapter — eight of eight allotted to this fifth of the book. While most of my chapters run 3-7Kwds, this one is turning out to be somewhere around 40-45Kwds. (There's one more major segment to go.)

The fragment I just finished is about 6800 words. It started at 10K and bulked up to around 13K before I whacked off about 5K and dumped it in the next bin.

It's all the same chapter, but because the Workshop limits posts to 7K, I have to work the fragments to fit. (Which isn't all bad in terms of self-discipline.)

So... Considering that I'm recombining and reworking old parts with new — reassigning roles and dialog, changing meanings, mêmes and themes to suit the new vision of events and subplots — how much of that 6800 words can be considered new work?

And what does it mean that I trimmed a rough cut of the finished scene from around 8K to 6800? It made the 6800 words that are left that much better, but what about my word count? Is the 6800 words more important than the one scene (actually two and a half)?

2003-12-24T00:39:00.000-05:00

MAKING SLOW PROGRESS
On Geppetto's Log. Am nearly down to the blowup between Drummond and Witchlet in Room A. If I can finish that tomorrow, I'll be one post ahead of the critters and feel like I should thereafter concentrate on doing reviews until I clear out the backlog. Either that, or get the hornies to write the next scene. ::grin::

Goodnight, Gracie.

2003-12-24T00:37:00.000-05:00

BRUCE STERLING HAS A BLOG
A tip, Bruce: coherence. It's a marvelous thing. Make sure when you're furiously communicating that people can follow what you're saying.

That was a waste of 15 minutes.

2003-12-23T22:55:00.000-05:00

I'VE LONG HELD THAT
America OnLine (AOL) is a tool of the Devil. Under the guise of making the Internet more accessible to (supposedly dumb) American computer users, the singular vision of Steve Case has been to dumb down the Internet. And people pay for this ripoff!

But there's a darker side to this vision, as well. And a corollary to Ben Franklin's truism that those who surrender liberty for security shall have — and deserve — neither. An ISP whose big selling point is ease of use is really talking ease of extracting you from your money for the least amount of effort possible — without regard to the quality of your experience on the 'Net.

Go for the low price.

Me, I think it's telling that AOL/Time-Warner does not use AOL for their in-house email system. If a company doesn't eat its own dog food, I'd suggest their product is unworthy of your custom.

2003-12-23T22:49:00.000-05:00

SCREWING AROUND WITH MUSIC MATCH
And my .mp3 library, I've built this (work-in-progress) Dolly sound track:

Amanda Marshall - Best of Me (Dolly's Theme)
Sarah McLachlan - Building a Mystery
Crowded House - Fall at Your Feet
Dido - My Lover's Gone
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
Garbage - Special
Jewel - I Won't Walk Away
Joni Mitchell - Carey
Sade - Haunt Me
Sarah McLachlan - Full of Grace
Martina McBride - Happy Girl
Laura MacKenzie - Brother Timothy the Storyteller
Sade - No Ordinary Love
Clint Black & Martina McBride - Still Holding On
Crowded House - She Goes On
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-Prelude To The Dance
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-The Setting Of Two Suns
David Lanz - The Skyline Firedance Suite-Firedance
Sarah McLachlan - Possession
Sarah McLachlan - Wait
Sade - I Never Thought I'd See the Day
Sade - Siempre Hay Esperanza

If anybody cares.

2003-12-23T14:54:00.000-05:00

CAN YOU TELL I'M ON VACATION?
I've been doing Other Stuff for a while. And I find it takes a certain sleeplessness and hunger to muster the requisite outrage to bloviate in a blog post. As I'm sleeping late and overeating, I can't... So, here's The Mrs, guesting in the Baron's blog. I think I linked to the article when Connie posted in her own blog. Or maybe I just meant to.

Quit arguing with the idiots. It’s been two years. They are NOT going go get it. Three thousand Americans murdered should have been enough of a clue, but even that wasn’t enough.

...

Tell the naysayers to fuck off. Confront them directly. Tell them they are idiots and their opinions no longer matter or will be considered. Remind them they are in the minority and we tried their shit for decades and all it got us was more danger in the world, increased hopelessness, a more illiterate population, more children without mothers and fathers, and taxes and regulations out the wazoo. Nothing they’ve offered or contributed has benefited anyone. The time for reasonable debate is over. Now it is time to remind these fucks that they are irrelevant. They had their day. The grownups are in charge again. The silent majority has found its voice. And it's about damn time, too!

Whew! Don't hold back, Connie! ::grin::

...

IT IS WITH REGRET
That I note Connie has a black-boxed notice atop her blog stating that she's stopped blogging. I expressed my sorrow in the comment thread, and must agree that it's a shame that the ones who can express it so eloquently are the ones who tire. I do, however, understand.

...

ALSO TO NOTE
That something is up with Roger Schultz. There's an ehostpros (why can't ebusinesses use capital letters like grownups?) Under Construction sign (on which "reliable" is misspelled) at the other end of the terpsboy.com URL. And the content has been nonexistent for far too long, though I've seen Roger in comments elsewhere. Ominous.

...

ES REGNET
We were hoping for a white Christmas, but that seems semi-forlorn. We're supposed to get flurries and cold weather tomorrow and Thursday, but... Right now it's 50-ish, rainy-clean and gray overcast — a poignant day in midwinter Cincinnati. Typical, actually.

...

BEEN AMUSING MYSELF
Making mixes and playlists to serve as background for writing. The requirement is that a tune must either serve as pink noise and mask the ambient or it must suit the mood of the moment — or both. As I think a lot about Drummond's relationship with Dolly, there are a lot of bittersweet love songs. Like this one, from Crowded House —

Pretty soon you'll be able to remember her
Lying in the garden singing
Right where she'll always be
The door is always open

This is the place that I loved her
And these are the friends that she had
Long may the mountain ring
To the sound of her laughter
And she goes on and on

In her soft wind I will whisper
In her warm sun I will glisten
'Till we see her once again
In a world without end

...

MAKING SLOW PROGRESS
On the next installment of Chapter 8 of Geppetto's Log (we're up to "8d," now and around 30Kwds).

I've been reading a lot of Kristine M. Smith's Jani Killian stories — all of them, as a matter of fact. To me Smith is like the valedictorian of the class ahead of mine in the Writers' School, and thus someone worth watching and emulating. I learn so much every time I crack one of her books, and this time is no exception.

Of course, when new wisdom forces a shift in your premises, it takes time to rearrange your world to suit the new Weltanschauung.

The other day I commented that Smith doesn't seem to use the verb "to be". Today I add that every action one of her characters takes is fraught with conflict.

I'm working over a scene I wrote a year ago, trying to tweak it to keep these and other lessons in mind. It's slow and painful, but the results kick ass. I can't wait to show it to the critters.

If I have any left after the unconscionable delays in reciprocating this month.

I'm — like — three weeks behind. And the queue is twelve deep. It's so bad that I think one of them has actually rolled over on me — replaced one post with another before I got the chance to review the first one.

I hate it when that happens.

2003-12-18T23:42:00.000-05:00

NO CARS
Though SWMBO has some tales. There is, however, a spot on the golf course at Cincinnati Country Club that is accessible from a dead-end side street — or was thirty years ago.

2003-12-18T09:51:00.000-05:00

A CONCENTRATED DOSE
Baron du Toit takes notice...

"The Democrats' hateful, moronic comments are beyond the pale, and the Democrats know it, but they don't care because they have nothing to offer the public debate but rage, resentment and quackery. Until other Democrats stand up against this hysteria, they're admitting to the country their party has no claim to national leadership." -- Tom DeLay

...but does not provide a source. Perhaps, as both the Baron and Congressman DeLay are from Texas, it's a local-media thing.

I might point out that there are some Democrats — Zell Miller for a national politician and Orson Scott Card for a grass (albeit prominent) roots type — who are standing up against the lunacy. The problem is — as the Right has been warning for decades — the socialist Left has so firm a grip on the center of the party that no amount of moderation can slake the extremism.

It's a shame, really. With the Democratic Party in the grip of extremists and moonbats (redundancy alert) and thus absent, the Republicans seem to be moving leftward to fill the void.

Not good.

2003-12-17T23:28:00.000-05:00

GIMLI GETS IT
Viggo Mortensen is an utter twit. And — unlike most — I don't even see him as an appropriate choice for Aragorn. He's too lightweight — not enough gravitas. Sully reports:

I saw Mortensen on TV the other night saying that the 'Lord of The Rings' was all about bringing people together, eschewing violence, promoting peace, etc etc. Poor guy. Cute, but dumb as a post.

I can't watch Mortenson out of character. It's too painful — even in the extended bits on the DVDs. Yeah. Dumb as a post. Hitchcock said, "I never said actors were cattle. I might have said they deserve to be treated like cattle."

John Rhys-Davies, on the other hand, so gets it.

'I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful. But I think that there are some questions that demand honest answers.

I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilization. That does have a real resonance with me... What is unconscionable is that too many of your fellow journalists do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a jewel it is.

How did we get the sort of real democracy, how did we get the level of tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you around this table, and yet you will take it and you will think about it and you’ll say no you're wrong because of this and this and this. And I'll listen and I'll say, 'Well, actually, maybe I am wrong because of this and this.'

[He points at a female reporter and adopts an authoritarian voice, to play a militant-Islam character:] ‘You should not be in this room. Because your husband or your father is not here to guide you. You could only be here in this room with these strange men for immoral purposes.'

I mean ... the abolition of slavery comes from Western democracy. True Democracy comes from our Greco-Judeo-Christian-Western experience. If we lose these things, then this is a catastrophe for the world.

The entire interview is here.

Interesting that the writing list is exploding with a debate over whether or not LOTR is a Christian work. The whole world gets it, but there are these few twits — wannabe scifi authors — who are so consumed with their hatred of everything "Xian" (can't even bear to write the name of Christ) that they have to force themselves to spew venom over all of Western civilization. Sad. Really sad.

2003-12-17T22:39:00.000-05:00

THE MRS IS HANGING IT UP
It must, indeed, have something to do with posting pictures of dogs.

2003-12-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

'WAY COOL!
Regular readers (all ten of you ::grin::) will be amazed to hear this, but there is good spam.

Well, it's not spam if you want it, is it?

I get regular commercial emails from any number of sources that I welcome and read avidly. There's Amazon, who occasionally manage to save me substantial sums of money. (Yes, it's a savings if you were going to buy the stuff anyway. Right?) There's the Digital Art Zone (DAZ3D), where I find all sorts of neat stuff for Poser. And there's Curious Labs, who produce Poser.

Or... did until this month.

The most recent missive from the company announces that they have joined forces with e frontier a company out of Japan which produces a program called Shade. Unfortunately, Shade is available only in a Japanese interface and is sold only in Japan. Until now. Or, until soon. The news is that there is an English-language version forthcoming with the next major-version release of the program.

Trés kewl!

Check out the gallery...

2003-12-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

ABOUT GEORGES
A discussion on the writing list about gay characters has sent me off on a different tack in a personal quest.

I've been trying to suss out the sexual orientation of one of the Walkers — Georges Somerville. He's a blond French-Canadian (what they call a Quebecois these days, although he comes from Montreal, not Quebec) with a pushed-in button nose, mischievous eyes, and a crooked smile. (Picture Ilya Kuriyakin with a boxer's nose.)

He's the Walkers' assassin. That is, he's the one who sneaks in and liquidates human targets when necessary. Otherwise, he's a handy guy to have around in a fight, and somebody with a sharp eye for situations and an ability to make snap judgements that don't get people killed — at least, not his people.

Something tells me he's gay. And he plays 180° against the common stereotype of a gay man. Reminds me, as a matter of fact, of a guy I knew back in the late '70's — a real man's man.

Trouble is — or was before today — I wanted Georges to make a pass at Jeep. Which would make him straight, or bi, or playing a game I really don't want one of the good guys involved in.

It's a pretty problem, and one I wasn't sure I was going to be able to resolve and still get my gay sidekick for Drummond.

Then it hit me: He doesn't make a pass at Jeep. He behaves in a training situation in a manner that Jeep interprets as a pass. And views as sexual harrassment. And, of course, not being very experienced in office politics, she handles it all wrong. (If there's a right way to handle such things when they happen for real.)

She's so insistent that that is what it must be that she makes a major issue of it. Goes to Drummond to raise a complaint, which Drummond laughs off — knowing that Georges wouldn't do such a thing.

In tears by now, Jeep turns to Martine (have to work out the question of why not Martine to begin with), who informs Jeep of the situation, thus outing Georges to her.

Jeep, who's got the street kid's perspective on gays — poofters, arse bandits, und so weiter — suddenly has her paradigm forcibly shifted by the prospect of this manly man being... a faggot.

She has a little trouble wrapping her head around that, but she does, and grows thereby.

All-in-all a satisfying resolution to a knotty little problem.

Dusts off hands and saunters off whistling a happy tune.

2003-12-15T23:30:00.000-05:00

FIRST DAY OF VACATION
And Day Two of shampooing the living room carpet. This is the penalty for not doing it regularly like you're supposed to. Four and five tanks of water for each 3'x4' section. But, when it's dry, it's a delight to walk on barefoot.

Strange to note the traffic patterns and where the cats have peed unnoticed. (We try to catch it with spot remover when we know, but with as many as nine cats in this little shack over the last [mumble] years, there were bound to be some we missed.)

I hereby resolve to get into the habit of doing this more regularly.

Dolly says, "Yeah, right." Can ya give me a "Yeah-right?" (Yeah, right.)

This concludes the sarcasm portion of our program.

...

Discovered that the absolutely hu-frickin'-mongous Tom Clancy novel I'd picked up to read this week is one I've already got. (Du-u-u-u-h.)

Went to the shelf and pulled down Kristine Smith's Code of Conduct. Got right into it. Immediate-like. I noticed she doesn't use to-be constructions in her description. I guess J.D. Paradise is right when he gets down on me for that. (Inside baseball — writer stuff.)

Somebody on one of the writing lists suggested an exercise: select a good book — one you admire for its writerliness — and copy it word-for-word. Take as much time as you need. Keep at it until you're done. See what you learn from the experience.

It's supposed to be similar in concept to apprentice artists' copying the Old Masters. I'm still wondering if it will really work. If the two experiences can be mapped onto one another.

If I was going to do it, though, Code of Conduct is one I'd pick. Another is C.J. Cherry's A Wave Without a Shore. Both are early works by J.W. Campbell Award winners, (as best new writer in Science Fiction).

...

No writing today. I worked a little on an essay sparked by a post on the Plotters list. But, as it refers to examples of the breed (foreshadowing) in Geppetto's Log, I'm hesitant to actually send it. It seems so... narcissistic. "Look at me doing this wonderful stuff! Aren't I a wonderful writer?" I know the value of a strong ego in the arts, but it is possible to go over the top and straight into the machine gun fire from across no-man's land.

I think I'll refrain.

...

I can't help but wonder at the idea that a seasoned writer should be able to paper his office with rejection slips. It almost seems as though some writers cultivate rejection and wear it as a badge of honor.

Not I.

I've been rejected more than enough in my career, thankyouverymuch. I prefer the check to the rejection slip.

They say that getting published as a freelance writer is a numbers game. You've got to send 'em to get 'em. I call bullshit on that. I made around seventy straight sales in the tech market. I quit when rejection started — when the editors started killing my ideas.

(As, I might point out, was Heinlein's stated deal with John W. Campbell back in the Golden Age. As long as Campbell was buying, Heinlein would keep sending them. The first time one bounced, that was it. Basta — no mas.)

I can't see where — in this respect — the spec fic market is any different than the how-to tech market was. It's a matter of suiting the material to the publication and delivering sterling copy. Doing so on spec rather than as assigned adds a level of difficulty, but only one.

I figure if — after I've done my due diligence — a story isn't snapped up immediately by, say, one of four markets, there is a fundamental flaw in the story that makes it unpublishable in its current incarnation and it should be pulled from the market.

When people approach us at the Patch Factory for free work... well, they can't say we should do it for the exposure. We're already the #1 vendor in the niche, the oldest, the premier supplier. The Best. So we tell ourselves we don't need the practice.

I want to always be at the top of my game. I would love to become perceived as a home run hitter — somebody who does it big every at-bat. That won't happen if I managed to get turkeys published.

I do need the practice. I need it badly.

When a story reveals not only that I need the practice, but that I apparently can't see it on my own, that's a potential major embarrassment. I figure the editor or reader who rejects such a mistake is doing me a favor.

But that doesn't mean I'm going looking for the experience.

...

Anyway, I'm done. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Now I lay me down to sleep. Good night, Gracie.

2003-12-15T09:17:00.000-05:00

SAY WHAT!?
Sully gets it right and presents the words of the anti-war Left in a concentrated dose. A more lackwitted, malinformed, morally hollow bunch it would be hard to imagine. If a betrayal of trust is not treason, then what is it? When journalists promote a lie, what is it but a betrayal of trust?

And remember, all parties on the Left virtually have their souls invested in this stance. Can anyone honestly say, "This stance is worthy of my support?"

2003-12-14T08:51:00.000-05:00

GET IN LINE
As Hemlock says, posting in Gwielo Diaries (Conrad being out of pocket for an extended period)... Mother, may I?

2003-12-13T18:26:00.000-05:00

ES SCHNEIT!
Woke up from my afternoon nap to find a light dusting of snow on the ground — the kind that doesn't stick to the street. Went out for my walk in it. Not quite a winter wonderland, but nevertheless neat. The snow on the ground reflects more ambient light giving the nighttime scene more depth and definition. The wind is low so, despite the fact that the air temp is around 25°F, it really isn't unpleasant. Just a little nippy.

I'm wondering if this is the first snow of the year? IWC, according to folk lore, we're going to have 13 major snowfalls this year. (The date of the first snowfall supposedly indicating the number of... this is where you came in.)

Cool.

From Weather Underground, this: it looks as though we're predicted to get 1-3 inches of slush by tomorrow evening. (Slush defined as snow mixed with freezing rain in temperatures dancing right around freezing.) Should be fun. I think I'll stay home tomorrow and shampoo the living room carpet.

Wonder if I should go out tonight to get the shampoo for the Bissell.

2003-12-13T17:30:00.000-05:00

ALGER DOES HIS VERY BEST ARTIE JOHNSON
Veddy Intellestink! (Thanks for the pointer to Ith.) A Spoonful of Cinnamon Helps Treat Diabetes

As they say about Czich'n Tsoop: It couldn't hoit.

2003-12-13T17:25:00.000-05:00

THAT RUBBER/GLUE THING AGAIN

Shouting, in a half Southern twang, half stutter, Carville began berating Democrats for being "namby-pamby" and "too nice." He ordered the crowd to, "quit pretending right-wingers have a point" and "stop apologizing for being Democrats." — Shawn Macomber in The American Spectator

The Right should take notes.

2003-12-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

A NOTE IN PASSING
If you caught Daniel Schorr's performance on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, it was a perfect case-in-point of what an ignorant, wrong-headed asshat he is. (And by extension, most leftist pundits are.) If you missed it, well... it was all pretty much of a piece. Seen one; seen the set.

2003-12-13T14:45:00.000-05:00

I COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT ANY BETTER...
Belmont Club —

For many, the creation of this identity coincided, by unhappy coincidence or Communist cunning, with adolescent self-awareness, so that the nostalgie pour la défaite became fused with the memory of summer nights and music drifting downward from an open door. The true country of the media elite is the land of rememberance; and their secret anthem is unsung.

Belmont Club (again) —

How will it be when a Rhodes scholar walks into a room 10 years from now and meets a person his own age who speaks fluent Arabic and has a pocketful of pictures of life and times in Central Asia? It will be dangerous.

Instapundit —

I think that one reason so many lefties have gone crazy regarding the war is that it is exposing their hypocrisy -- and even more damaging to their self-image, their lack of moral stature -- so clearly.

Steven den Beste

The philosophic justification for the "root causes" argument that we've heard so much about is the idea that the people who attacked us were motivated by what we ourselves had done to them earlier. But it goes deeper than that: if we are responsible, then they cannot be. And that can only be because they are not capable of being responsible. They are not truly adults; they are children or beasts who respond to conditions in predictable ways. We do not hold children to the same standard of responsibility as we hold adults, and these racists don't hold the people of the world to those standards either.

If by our acts we brought this tragedy upon ourselves, then had we acted differently we would not have. Which means that we have a paternalistic obligation to control how everyone else in the world behaves, through our acts towards them. They will merely react to us; all responsibility is here. We are the only moral thinking people on earth and thus the only ones who can sin. If we can only bring ourselves to be sufficiently kind and generous to them, then they will live good lives. They are innocent, they cannot know sin, for they are not sufficiently sophisticated to do so. They are less than we are.

This is deeply loving and compassionate chauvinistic contempt.

Even if Saddam and his government committed massive atrocities, wogs like him aren't expected to live up to the same standards as real humans do.

2003-12-12T16:25:00.000-05:00

720 TIMES A DAY
About once every two minutes, a message hits our mail server's SPAM filter in such a way as to spark off a notice to me (as the intended recipient) that such a message has arrived and identified as SPAM. Since, after a few weeks of enduring this flood, I set up my email client to delete such warnings unread, all I see is the flicker of icons as the message arrives and is deleted. Reminds me a little of the old communist system in the U.S.S.R., of which the workers would state — with deeply trenchant sarcasm — "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."

They pretend to be business emailers and I pretend to care...? Not quite it. Have to consider this.

2003-12-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

THURSDAY ANN

Consequently, the Parasite Party starts with a guaranteed 40 percent of the vote. They could run a muskrat for president, they could run a stalk of asparagus, they could run an insane person – in fact that appears to be their plan for next year – and the Democrats would get 40 percent of the vote. The Democratic Party pays people to vote for big government and then claims wide popularity for its heinous policy prescriptions. — Ann Coulter

Collect 'em all... er, I mean — read the whole thing.

2003-12-12T09:09:00.000-05:00

LATE NIGHT STUFF
Just keeping the pipes open...

SO. Does anybody know whether Battlestar Galactica will be a regular series? Or is this 4-hour tease all we get?

Welcome to Bizarro World, where flaming idiots get a serious hearing while common sense is derided as old-fashioned reactionarism. Item: the French and German governments are pissed off because their corporate citizens may not be prime contractors on works in Iraq that are funded by American tax dollars. What the fuck did they expect? Have to love Dubya's reaction to the "International Law" crap — "I'd better call my lawyer." Make that your International lawyer, George.

So if you blog political, are you going to shut down 60 days before the '04 election? If I understand that feckwitted ruling by the soi-disant Supreme Court the other day, you're going to have to.

More later. Goodnight, Gracie

2003-12-10T11:55:00.000-05:00

STICK A FORK IN IT
It's official. We're done. The Supreme Court is no longer even pretending to rule based on the Constitution. We are faced with a choice: impeach the current Justices and replace them (along with most of the rest of the judiciary); or have a violent revolution. But the bottom-line fact is this country is no longer a representative republic. We are now an oligarchy with judges being the defacto oligarchs.

Oh, and another thing: WHAT DID I TELL YOU about this compelling interest crap! Hel-lo! The government has no interests. Period! End of discussion. "Compelling interest" is a repugnant concept!. It's code for infringement of individual liberty. Hewing to that concept alone ought to qualify a Justice to be fitted for a tar-and-feather suit and a seat on the next outbound fence rail.

2003-12-06T09:16:00.000-05:00

WE REPORT, YOU DECIDE

2003-12-05T11:14:00.000-05:00

PROBABLY UNCOOL
When I was a preteen, and lacking the throw weight to buck my elders in sartorial matters, my paternal grandmother gave me a t-shirt — or a long-sleeve, cotton-knit turtleneck, I don't remember which — that had a gold chain and a geeky medallion silk screened on it.

Can you imagine anything less cool?

I think I wore it once in her presence and sent it through the laundry as many times as possible without arousing parental suspicion until the fabric disintegrated.

Nevertheless, down the years, I have managed well enough on my own to find and fall in like with things that were unbearably uncool. Since I have a day job that, were its nature revealed, Bevis and Butthead would be bowing and chanting, "We're not worthy!" before me, I think I can get away with some uncool acts.

But this one may take the cake.

I have fallen in like with a LIFESCAPES® record, World Flutes.

Is it — like — over for me?

2003-12-05T08:41:00.000-05:00

WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?
An InstaPundit reader whinges:

"I am SICK AND TIRED of our media. I am SICK AND TIRED of the superficial nature of their reporting on Iraq and their incessant preaching of quagmirism. I am SICK AND TIRED of their efforts to turn every U.S. military action into Vietnam, all facts to the contrary be damned. And I am SICK AND TIRED of 16-words-gate and Plame-gate and mission-accomplished-gate and now, God help us, turkey-gate."

(Nice rant. ::grin::)

But more to the point — it's your own damned fault. If you didn't encourage them, they'd either learn better or go out of business. As long as you continue to buy their swill, to provide them with readership, listenership, viewership, you give them reason to hope that their idiocies are well-received out in the boondocks.

Besides, there's a thereapeutic value to not getting a daily stress quotient by simply ignoring them.

I used to watch ABC World News Tonight (with Goofy), and simply believe the opposite of everything Peter Jennings said. Worked pretty well, too. But it was still just too stressful.

Now I don't watch TV news at all.

Guess what? I'm still better informed than the blow-dried rubes in New Yawk.

Apply this practice to all mendacious and dishonestly-biased news sources. Encourage others to do the same.

The point about dishonest bias is important. The Guardian — a socialist rag if there ever was one — does some brilliant reportage. So long as they remain honest about their bias, there should be no problem. Filter everything through that knowledge and you'll do just fine. It's the ones that pretend to objectivity, then sneak sly digs in at every opportunity that need to be slapped down.

And don't worry that you'll lose all news sources. Nature abhors a vaccuum. New opportunists will move in to occupy the niche. Chances are poor that they'll be any better, but remember: the process is evolutionary. Baby steps. So long as each one is an improvement, accept it and move on.

2003-12-04T21:42:00.000-05:00

NOW LET THEM ENFORCE IT
St. Ann has another wacking day.

Having literally gotten away with murder for a quarter century, the court is getting wilder and wilder, deferring to "international law" and issuing nutty pronouncements more appropriate to a NAMBLA newsletter.

The law is the law. The writ of the Constitution is clear on its face; judges and lawyers have obfuscated it with pettifoggery since it was ratified. According to the Constitution, all limits on the right to keep and bear arms are unlawful, all taxes on interstate commerce are unlawful, the Federal Income Tax is subject to the rule of uniformity, the Internal Revenue Service is operating extralegally in enforcing the Internal Revenue Code... There are countless other examples.

Coulter asks for a President to say, "I refuse to pretend this is a legitimate ruling." I would rather ask for a citizen to stand before a judge, deny the judges authority to rule in a case because the law involved and/or the judge's ruling violated a tenet of the Constitution — and make it stick. (Say, in a CCW case.)

The question is, "How?"

2003-12-04T09:50:00.000-05:00

BTDT
Designed the T-shirt.

2003-12-04T09:02:00.000-05:00

WELL... YEAH
The Baron with a genius for the obvious:

"With the population density in the United States as it is today (and as it is in most Western countries), it is clear that under a popular democracy only the viewpoints of city and suburban folk would receive a hearing -- and moreover, only those cities and suburbs in the Northeast / Atlantic states, on the West Coast and around the Chicago / Milwaukee / Detroit Midwest metropolitan area.

Any politician seeking office need only campaign pretty much in those three areas to be assured of a popular voting majority -- and given the relative homogeneity of the politics in those areas, the United States would be a different country than what it is today."

Why, yes. So it would. Is it too cynical to conclude that this is precisely the point? The reason the Left wants to eliminate the Electoral College is because it would disenfranchise the diffuse majority of the country and allow them to manipulate the mob on the concentrated urban coasts, thus forcing their agenda — an agenda that otherwise has no hope of legitimate success.

2003-12-03T22:43:00.000-05:00

SULLY'S QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Am I saying that critics of the war aren't patriotic?

Not at all -- I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

—Orson Scott Card, Nov 16, this year.

2003-12-02T23:46:00.000-05:00

MORE CLUE FER YA

InstaPundit.Com: "ANOTHER STUDY (this one from Canada) says that gun laws don't reduce crime:

Vancouver, BC - Restrictive firearm legislation has failed to reduce gun violence in Australia, Canada, or Great Britain. The policy of confiscating guns has been an expensive failure, according to a new paper The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, released today by The Fraser Institute. . . .

Disarming the public has not reduced criminal violence in any country examined in this study. In all these cases, disarming the public has been ineffective, expensive, and often counter productive. In all cases, the effort meant setting up expensive bureaucracies that produce no noticeable improvement to public safety or have made the situation worse.

Add this to the CDC study mentioned [on Instapundit] earlier (which 'found no conclusive evidence that gun control laws help to prevent violent crime, suicides and accidental injuries in the United States') and the case for gun control seems to be growing steadily weaker.

Note to the ill-informed: The Second Amendment isn't about hunting and target shooting. It's meant to enshrine the need of the People to revolt against the government in defense against tyranny. But it's also in support of the moral right to self-defense.

The police can't defend you; all they do is clean up the mess and fill out the forms. Don't believe me? Push your alarm system's panic button. Count to six: "One" bang "Two" bang "Three" bang "Four" bang "Five" bang "Six." A revolver is emptied just that fast, (and not in any hurry, either), and you and five of your closest friends are dead. The police will be anywhere up to an hour (or more) arriving. That's that with that, then.

One more Leftist position — predicted to be wrong when first expressed — proven so terribly wrong. When will they ever learn?

2003-12-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

CLUE FER YA
If a business has to resort to subterfuge just to get your attention, has to engage in substantive fraud to gain your custom, has to hide from anticipated hostile responses to its marketing tactics, engages in pettifoggery in attempt to defend its indefensible business practices... Why would you even give it the time of day?

2003-12-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

TUESDAY NIGHT HATE
The old rubber/glue thing again. It's a growing même on the right that whatever the Left accuses us of doing, being, thinking, etc. is really what's uppermost on their minds.

All during the '90's, the hysterical Left in the chattering classes couldn't get over the idea that we on the Right hated Bill and Hillary Clinton when in reality we couldn't give a rat's ass about them as people, but it was their feckwitted policies and their malfeasance in office that drove our opposition to them.

This week we see where that was coming from. Now that our guy is in the White House, they can't come to grips with him on policy. (To tell the truth, he drives us crazy with some of the whacked-out things he does in the name of ecumenism.) So they have to resort to a little of the ol' ad hominem. Comes Hollywood's Tuesday Night Hate. That their transparency and the risibility of their contentions is painfully obvious doesn't seem to occur to them.

2003-12-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

TAMMY SPEAKS
A dear friend continues to espouse a false même — that the suppression of thought, art, and dissent in America is coming from the Right. This cannot be farther from the truth. Sister Tammy testifies:

One question I was asked more than once was why in the world would the Republicans of all people on campus ask me (liberal, Democrat, feminist) to come speak. Many of the liberal students were truly perplexed. And that was their first lesson. I had the pleasure of explaining that the foundational commitment to freedom of expression and new ideas rests at the heart of the colleagues they had been condemning all along. That conservatives and conservative politics might actually be beneficial for women, blacks, and gays in this country.

Make no mistake, this is no longer about differences of political opinion. This is indeed about life and death, totalitarianism versus freedom, and intellectual freedom versus the imprisonment of the mind. It has become a fight for the hearts and souls of the generations to come. It is a fight classical liberals and conservatives dare not lose.

Read, as I never tire of saying, the whole thing.

2003-12-02T09:07:00.000-05:00

THE CORE PROBLEM OF COLLECTIVISM
"America is the richest country in the world; surely we can afford [fillintheblank]." You hear it all the time. It's the chorus of the liberal marching tune. (Except that it can't be made to rhyme with "Hey-Hey/Ho-Ho!") Of course, as I keep saying, it's founded in ignorance (of human nature and economic laws), focused on irrelevance (the level of public support for indigents has nothing to do with a society's prosperity), and engaged in wishful thinking (that enforced charity can avoid exacerbating problems of poverty).

The ever-brilliant Natalie Solent, writing in Samizdata, points out that "Life is still tough for the owners of lazy slaves."

In this link Stephen Pollard quotes Roger Bate, writing in the Wall Street Journal, as saying that AIDS drug development is trending downwards.

Why the decline?

Because the drugs companies no longer believe that they are going to get rich out of AIDS research. In fact they begin to doubt they will get any compensation at all. They read the newspapers, they study the speeches of politicians, and they sense that the popular wind is blowing against them. They think, probably rightly, that governments will either force them to sell at a loss drugs that were developed at huge expense or will bypass them and the law entirely by buying generic copies of patent drugs. Governments, after all, are the ones who can change the law when it is inconvenient. One minute the authorities will come down like a ton of bricks on pirate music or pirate videos. The next minute they will say that it is 'unacceptable greed' for companies to actually want to profit from patents on medical discoveries. I accept that there are subtleties and genuine conflicts of principle in the field of intellectual property – but the bottom line is that if pharma companies get nothing but abuse for the work they put in they bloody well won’t put in much more of it. Just as for the slaves, it’s no surprise that if people are forced to work for nothing then they don’t bust a gut.

D'ya folla?

2003-12-01T08:33:00.000-05:00

CAN YOU SAY, "AID AND COMFORT?"

"Americans are wholeheartedly proud of what you are doing, but there are many questions at home about the (Bush) administration's policies." —Hillary Clinton, to U.S. Troops in Iraq

2003-11-30T16:11:00.000-05:00

AS USUAL
Somebody else says it better than I. In this case, the "somebody" is The Mrs. — Connie du Toit.

One of the arguments we keep hearing is that we're stifling dissent when we refer to our supposed allies and countrymen as traitors. A less extreme term has been to question their patriotism. Personally, I'm sick to death of that whine.

People really need to decide. ... Some things are black and white. If you continue to question America's reasons for engaging in this war, if you think we should bring our troops home, and allow the Iraqi thugs and villains to resume control of the country, you're damn right I'm going to question your patriotism. ...

...

It truly is a question of, "if you are not with us, you are against us." Choose. But choose carefully, because asking for forgiveness and expecting your fellow countrymen to forget is not going to be an option available to you later. Not this time.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

2003-11-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

I DON'T HEART NEW YORK
Of course, I haven't been since '81, but... Almost everything the city's denizens seem so proud of is an urban turnoff to me: the pavement, the intensity, the bustle, the noise, the self-designated smart people, the lefty politics.

I must, however, anticipate that sometime in the near future, I will have to travel to New York to meet with my agent and publisher to sign the contracts for my soon-to-be bestseller.

{Yeah, right, Alger. —GFD}

Just remember, Dolly, when I go, it will be your bestseller, too.

{GO ALGER! RAH! RAH! —GFD}

And when I do, I must remember that I want to stay at The Library.

Remind me, will you?

2003-11-30T09:43:00.000-05:00

DISS. A. POINT. ED.
Well. No. Not really.

Watched the Extra Special Gold-Plated-Platinum, Super-Duper Extended Wide-Screen, Hyperventilating THX Sounding, Dolby 5.1 Surroundish Edition of The Two Towers (in a fancy box). Twice.

It's not the big stuff, like pushing Shelob back to ROTK or the fact that I've always pictured Eowyn as having black hair. (Don't ask me why; my copy of the trilogy is buried in a closet under a ton of blankets.)

No, it's the little stuff. Like: when the elves show up at Helm's deep, Haldir was carrying a special banner sent to Aragorn by Arwen. No sign of it in the film.

Like: that nifty little fan-girl/hero-boy chat between Eowyn and Aragorn about how old he is. ::barf!:: In an otherwise brilliant script, that stuck out for me as being gratuitously insulting of the audience's intelligence. There must have been a gazillion other, more-effective methods to portray the difference in blood, heritage, stature, gravitas, and the like than what made it to the screen.

In the book, there was so much background, character development, and plot development that was delivered in Edoras, and it was all elided, as though somebody said, "Well, the fans know all this stuff, and the rest won't know that it's missing."

Well, no. But the resulting shallowness of the relationships between Theoden and Gamling, between Theoden and Eomer, of Grima's betrayal of Eomer, Grima's lust for Eowyn, the background history of Numenor, the vassalage of the Rohirrim to Gondor, the gradual unfolding of Aragorn as the King of Gondor... Was a few minutes of screen time gained worth the loss? I don't think so.

Even the business of disarming Gandalf's party on their arrival in Edoras was poorly done. In the place of the badinage between Legolas and Gimli in that scene, we get more crap about dwarf-tossing at Helm's Deep. "Dinna tell the elf!" ::gag::

On the other hand, the bit of business over Eowyn's awful stew was inspired.

And, blondeness aside, Miranda Otto is... inspired in the part.

Or: the rather lame manner in which Merry and Pippin enveigle the orcs into getting involved in the war — entirely too late, IMHO. It diminishes the orcs' anger over the destruction of trees that it had no time to build. It morphs anger engendered by a bone-and-soul-deep conviction to the geopolitical equivalent of a spree killing. OK, so that wasn't so minor.

Like the fact that, despite all the damp undies all over the world, In My Not So Very Humble Opinion, Viggo Mortenson is a lousy choice for Aragorn. I thought so in Fellowship, and as the trilogy progresses, he's getting worse, not better.

To be fair, I wonder how much of my dislike arises from his performance and how much from Peter Jackson's editing. In the supplementary materials, there are multiple takes of a line delivered in Edoras. I thought the one chosen to be included in the film was the least worthy, the least appropriate of those shown. So it might not be his fault.

Nor can I think of anyone better. But then, I'm not a casting director with the resources of the world film industry at my disposal.

AND... I thought — camera angles, lighting, makeup... I don't know what — but I feel that Liv Tyler was much more effective and possessed of a terrible beauty in Fellowship than in Towers.

Other than that... Well, it's not what Tolkien wrote, but I suspect it's as true to the literature as the cinema is likely to ever come.

I hated it so much I watched it twice. ::grin::

...

More...

And don't get me started on Faramir!

{Too late! —GFD}

Yecch! Not the casting, although how would you like for your most visible work to be based partly on the fact that you have the doofy younger-brother look down pat? No, it's the whole thing to do with how Faramir handles the facts of Frodo and the Ring. Even after hearing Jackson's reasoning behind it and seeing the blind alleys the creative process led the filmmakers down, I must disrespectfully disagree.

The statement that Faramir makes about the ring — "Even if I found this thing lying by the side of the road, I would not pick it up!" — is fundamental, basic, vital, essential, core-ish to the moral underpinnings of the Trilogy — no matter the provocation or desperation, the strength or persistence of the evil encountered, it is the moral convictions of Man which will, in the end, prevail in resisting it.

The mood of The Two Towers is down, but it is the cliché-because-it's-true Darkness Before the Dawn. Jackson gets that part right in editing the end game of the battle for Helm's Deep. He shows a changeup in the tempo and the nature of the action. Haldir falls on the wall. Aragorn makes a desperate leap into the mass of the Uruk Hai and lays about him with Narsil. Theoden appears to despair and even Gamling cannot buck him up. The action on the Deeping Wall alters from the glorious stand-off archery of the elves to the bloody, muddy, messy axe-and-sword work of Gimli and the Rohirrim.

But the sky is lightening. The defenders of the Hornburg seem to catch a second wind. And then, Gimli sound's the Horn of Helm Hammerhand. At dawn, backlit in the east, comes Gandalf borne on the rampant Shadowfax; the Uruk Hai quail and break before the light.

It's all about hope. There's a reason, I think, that the Church views despair as a sin. It's a surrender to the darkness.

That is the point of Faramir's little speech. And it speaks, I think, to the essential cluelessness of the filmmakers that they could not see it, that they thought it made no sense in context. To them, it makes no sense to stand up in defiance of the darkness. The battle with the shadow must be seen to be against formidable odds. But that it be entered into against overwhelming odds seems... well, silly.

But it is the adamantine will to resist that gives mankind its true heroes. It's not the crazy men on the battlements, it's the stern, quiet women in the caves behind, holding things together — as Aragorn says, great valor without renown.

And it's Faramir — a better man than both his father and his elder brother — who stands as a shining example, hard against the darkness, and refuses to even acknowledge this powerful bauble for which the whole of the world is overturned.

2003-11-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

A SATURDAY SNAPSHOT
It's 30 degrees out and windy. At ten minutes to Noon, I'm driving up the hill on Madison Road into O'Bryonville when I spot a young woman in her twenties standing on the sidewalk. She's dressed in a blue chenille bathrobe over flannel PJ's. Her hair has that before-the-first-cup look. Her ankles are bare, her feet thrust into fuzzy slippers. She's hugging herself in the cold as she waits for her dog to finish investigating a spot on the verge.

2003-11-27T13:42:00.000-05:00

GIVE THANKS...
For our Ann.

The common wisdom holds that "both parties" have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.

2003-11-26T23:37:00.000-05:00

MICHAEL
I'll say upfront, I don't know — as in I have no idea — whether Michael Jackson is guilty or even close of what he's charged of. I tend to lean toward not-guilty, but I don't know.

And if I did, I'm not sure I'd tell. More about that later.

In the music biz — in any art (and whether you like it called that or not, it is art, so quit being a snob) — difference is king. If you don't stand out, you don't succeed. It's not enough to have talent, you also have to have vision. And you have to express your talent and vision in a different way.

Oh, sure, clones can succeed in a flash-in-the-tin-pan way, even for an extended period — e.g Poison/Mötley Crüe/Warrant/InsertNameOfYourFavorite80'sHairBand. Might even make a few million. And, if the managers and agents aren't too sly, the investments are careful and lucky, the bling might last beyond your window of marketability.

But to really endure — to have a Hall of Fame-worthy career — you must be and have something unique: The Beatles, The Stones, The Dead, The Who, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Dylan (or, in other genres, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash, Tito Puente, Sinatra, Miles Davis...)

And you have to have a drive. It's not enough to be good and smart and talented and special. Even with all of that, they're a dime a dozen. I see 'em come and go every day. You've got to want it. It must consume you in a way that wage slaves and salarymen will never understand. In business, only entrepreneurs are driven the same way that world-class artists are.

Mom used to say that artists are judged by different standards than mundane people. It's true. We don't fit the standards. We color outside the lines. It's the coloring outside the lines that contributes to human progress. Without it, the species would stagnate. But the success of it must be judged by how well the new idea — the coloring outside the lines — serves humanity.

Billy Jean and the dance performance on the Motown 25th Anniversary special hit the music industry the way that some deadly chemicals hit the human body — through the skin, on contact, and so fast you can taste them the instant you come in contact with them. It was a rush. The rest of that album had a similar effect. It made Michael Jackson from a marginally interesting child performer into a world-class megastar.

It worked. It served humanity.

I know there are culture snobs who might disagree. But, face it folks. Philip Glass couldn't fill a corner booth at Big Boy, let alone put 100,000 asses in the seats of a soccer stadium. Popularity isn't supposed to be a gauge of the success of art, but — absent the judgement of history — it's the only scale we've got. Artists who can touch large numbers of people serve humanity and deserve the remuneration they get for it.

But that thing that makes them special also makes them different. Other. Alien. It's not so much that they think they're better as that they realize they're different. Like it would do to anyone, it freaks them a little. But they get used to it and start to find it normal. And maybe, sometimes, the line between art and life gets blurred, and the uniqueness makes one think he has a license to step outside the lines in other arenas. It happens. Sometimes, it gets dark — very dark (think Manson). It could be what's happening with Michael.

But it shouldn't be the default supposition.

When I heard that OJ Simpson was accused of killing his wife, I didn't want it to be true. Right now, I'm thinking the same way about Michael Jackson. Too often, accusations arise from motives that are — shall we say — less than pure. It takes time and vigorous inquiry to figure it out.

Meantime, we stain our own souls by assuming the worst.

Nor should too much stock be placed in the words of betrayers. Michael's lawyer was absolutely right and proper to rock-and-roll all over the charter company for the unspeakably idiotic stunt with the cameras.

I can guarantee you that there are phone calls being made all over the world. Backstage in the concert industry, the owners and staff of that company are quietly being cut dead.

They are losing whatever friends they had in the business. They're losing business left, right, and center — and rightly so.

Professionals have a virtually fiduciary responsibility to protect the confidentiality of the client. It's an unwritten law in show business and allied trades, you do not pierce the privacy bubble. Period. No discussion.

Oh, yeah, people do it, but they never last. Do it and you're worse than slime — hell, you're worse than a lawyer. At least lawyers know when to keep their mouths shut.

2003-11-26T21:33:00.000-05:00

WEATHER REPORT
A great band of the '70's, with Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter... And I'm too lazy to go downstairs and look, so... Here.

Apropos of nothing at all.

The guy came to move the phones today. A week and a half after we started, TC and I are back in the old sales-weasel den, with 38 feet of big, beautiful window and a view of the levee through our big Aristocrat pear trees. The last nail was moving T's computer. (Mine was moved Monday.) I did a flock of new designs, got the wide-format plugged in. Life is sweet.

Of course, we still have to clear out a lot of the old furniture, move assorted junk that's not top-priority, need-it-now stuff. But the wall clock is hung in its new spot over the dividers. We cranked U2's Joshua Tree by way of celebration. T even admitted that, since I took my boombox from the old place to the new last week, she's missed listening to Rush. ::gasp!::

{Who'd ha thunk it? Isn't T the one who was amazed that a lifelong professional rocker was a conservative? —GFD}

Libertarian, please, Dolly.

Anyway... We're culling the files. Going back 22+ years and pulling out all the crap that accumulates in the file folders for clients of a custom-built, hand-holding-intensive fabricating business, from phone message slips to copies of incoming and outgoing courier waybills. Along the way, there's the change and development of our business methods and the kinds of records we keep. As a business that was, at the time I joined the company, a brand new line of country, we had few standards to go by. None of us were business-trained; we were all techno-geeks of various stripes. We made a lot of it up as we went along — still are — and it shows.

And then there are the changes in technology. Back in '81, I had to have my job tracker forms printed offset in the shop. Then we got reasonably fast copiers that could handle the stock and I produced the forms that way. When I first started doing them on a computer, it was in DOS, using a program called Form Tool. Output was a 24-pin dot matrix printer. It was pretty slick, too, for the period. Our graphics used to be done with pasted-up photostats (PMT was the technology for those who know or care), and most type came off an IMB Compositor (a Selectric on steroids). We used Letraset type for headlines, and occasionally sent out to type houses (there's a business that's gone belly-up in the intervening years).

I'm finding it amusing to see the change in my own design roughs, from typewritten notes to fully-rendered hand drawings, (some of which are pretty arty in and of themselves, and I wish there were some way to show them off). Then we went digital and everything changed.

To say nothing of fax technology and what happened when the customers started to catch up with us in the digital arena.

The amount of crap is vaguely amazing. I knew when I proposed the process that we'd be able to reduce the space the files take up, which is the aim of the process. I had no idea of the volume of stuff we'd be throwing away. We're filling 6-8 5-gallon trash cans with paper from each standard legal or letter file drawer (between 24 and 30 inches deep). Good thing we're a printing company and paper is cheap to us. I'd hate to be paying retail. Of course, the point of using the paper is to move the work around and communicate about it within the shop and without, and if efficiency, accuracy, and profitability are enhanced thereby, any price is cheap. But still...

[...]

The weather outside is turning, too. Pretty much the last leaves are falling. The leaves in the gutters are changing over from yellow and red maples to brown oak. Osage Orange bushes shit their hedgeapples into the street when nobody's looking. Like Sasquatch, nobody's ever seen a hedgeapple plant, only the lumpy green fruit, lying in the roadway. The crows mob up earlier every day as the sunset retards further into daylight until the solstice. Their murders seem larger and louder, as though the falling temperatures and shortened daylight drive them to seek warmth and safety in ever greater numbers.

This past week, we had the first night of the year where the low dropped solidly below freezing. Not quite a hard frost, but that's coming soon, I'm sure. Friends in the Rockies are talking snow and skiing, while friends and relatives in the Antipodes are getting cocky about the oncoming summer.

Monday a week, there was fog so thick you couldn't see the P&G building from the 5th Street Viaduct. They said it went as far north as Dayton. A little more than just a river fog, that. Down in the bottoms, though, they just yawned and didn't even turn on their headlights.

[...]

Plans are beginning to settle in for the end-of-year vacation time. I mean to write every second I can. I'm even daring to dream that I can take a significant chunk out of a first draft of Geppetto's Log... even ::gasp:: finishing. (Can it be?)

{Dream on, Alger. —GFD}

Yeah, well... You can say that, but just remember, the sooner I finish, the sooner I'm back to writing you.

{Oh. Yeah. Right. Carry on.}

Carrying.

Tomorrow night, T-Day dinner at F&N: prime rib, baked potato(e), carb overload. Tonight, Sarah Mac says she loves you. Goodnight Gracie.

2003-11-25T23:16:00.000-05:00

IT MAY NOT BE TREASON, BUT...
Is is suicidal.

2003-11-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

IF YOU ARE CONCERNED
That America has entered or will soon enter a "shoot-first" era, when the sherriff no longer gives the bad guy fair warning that he has the drop on him, but shoots him in the back, you're right. And it's tragic. The innocent soul of America — and make no mistake about it, until 9-11 America was an innocent among nations — is forever poisoned by madness and hate. Not ours, mind, but those of a small cadre of howling madmen.

Et in Arcadia Ego Sum

The Left should have figured that Osama was out to get them on September 11, when he targeted New York instead of Salt Lake City. Those who missed the point might have caught on when a truck bomb demolished the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. The Islamist war against Marxist Algeria, which kills 150 people a day might have suggested that they too, were on the jihad hit parade. But the Left is clueless, so it was hardly surprising to hear Howard Dean say in response to recent attacks in Israel that "it's not our place to take sides", little reckoning that Islam may have already assigned Howard Dean his 'side' whatever he says, whatever he does.

The madmen are counting on the pusillanimity that allows a candidate for the office of Commander in Chief in a time of war — a time when Civilization is fighting for its very survival — to say, "We ought not take sides." It provides them with opportunity. It weakens the resolve and alertness of the defenders of Civilization. It leaves gaps in the wall. It lowers a red cord from within, allowing spies to clamber over, sabateurs to sneak in through the judas gate.

Yeah. Sorry. Play time is over. This is the big time, and the game is for all the marbles. We can no longer afford to shout, "Drop your gun, Blackie!" Not at these levels of threat. Now it's drill 'em in the back of the head from a thousand yards and high-five your spotter. Damned right.

If you don't like it... Well, there is a course of action, but gentle people will not suggest it. Suffice it to say you'd be saving the howling madmen the trouble.

2003-11-25T10:39:00.000-05:00

ROGER RELAYS THIS
They're not unpatriotic; they're just Democrats.

2003-11-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

AND OF COURSE
This is neither treasonous or seditious. Merely stupid.

I'm definitely torn, because I obviously don't want any more of our soldiers getting killed, but I also wouldn't mind the quagmire going on just long enough to ruin Bush's re-election chances. (—SF Gate)

Link via InstaPundit.

2003-11-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

THE LOVELY AND GRACIOUS
Mrs. du Toit raises the plaint:

Damn, it is frustrating to deal with this constant double-standard.

Well, yes. It is. But, from the perspective seen from within the Marxist dialectic (and never forget, oh best beloved, that the force behind the drive to the Left is ever collectivist in general and Marxist in particular) — seen from that perspective, it is the frustration that is the goal, not the standard.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Damn the torpedos! Full. Speed. Ahead!

{To coin a pair of clichés —GFD}

Out of the mouth of a babe.

{::dimple:: I am a babe, ain't I? —GFD}

2003-11-23T12:46:00.000-05:00

SOME DARE CALL IT TREASON
Some time ago, noted Marxist virago Hillary Clinton shrilled that she was sick and tired of — every time she questions the Administration's policies, her patriotism gets called into question. This straw man argument is becoming an ever-more-common même among those on the Left: "Just because I disagree with you, you call me a traitor!" (With the subtext that it's not cricket to call someone a traitor.)

Well, in a word, no.

What is treason? In the Constitution (Article III, Section 3), Treason is defined thus:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

A quick Google DeskBar Definition search yields the following

A crime that undermines the offender's government

Disloyalty by virtue of subversive behavior

An act of deliberate betrayal

A crime against the government of a country.

Killing the sovereign, making war against the sovereign or instigating a foreigner to make an armed invasion...

Plotting against a ruler or government

Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. A betrayal of trust or confidence.

Someone who commits treason is called a traitor.

What is patriotism? A similar search yields the following, (Dr. Johnson's cheap shot held in abeyance.):

Love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it.

Virtuous citizens display a devotion to their country in words and deeds, including devotion to the fundamental values and principles upon which it depends.

Loyalty to one's country and its values and principles.

Two last items of exposition. First: the Oath of Office sworn to at the start of each Congress (January of odd-numbered years) by all members of both houses of Congress:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Second:

for·swear for-'swar, fOr-, -'swer v. for·swore /-'swOr, -'swor/; for·sworn /-'swOrn, -'sworn/; -swear·ing ME forsweren, fr OE forswerian, fr for- + swerian to swear bef. 12th C 1: to make a liar of (oneself) under or as if under oath 2a: to reject or renounce under oath b: to renounce earnestly 3: to deny under oath 4: to swear falsely

The Constitution and long practice dictate that law is made by a certain process: bills are proposed to the houses of Congress, voted on, signed into law by the President. Congress has the power to declare war, the President to wage it. When a sitting member of Congress encompasses some act that is contrary to law or the Constitution, and said act amounts to levying war against the United States or ("or," not "and") gives aid and comfort to her enemies (and, as the oath says those enemies may be foreign or domestic and are not limited to nation states), that act must be considered a betrayal of (in descending order of importance), the country, the Constitution, that Congresscritter's Oath of office, his or her fellow Congresscritters, his or her home State, and his or her constituents.

If you can name this as other than treason — and, the nation being in a state of war, declared by both Congress and our enemies, high treason at that — then perhaps you need to re-examine the premises on which you base your claim to loyalty toward this country.

There is no doubt that vigorous debate is needed. There is no claim here that simple matters of disagreement rise to the level of treason. There is, however, a clear-eyed recognition here: That active measures taken against the provisions of the Constitution — to alter or subvert them by means other than those provided within that document; That falsehoods spoken in public in the clear knowledge that their utterance will diminish morale of citizens and the military while simultaneously heartening those who seek our destruction... These. Are. Treasonous. Acts.

Not only that, but, given that the open agenda of the Democratic Party requires the subversion of the Constitution, every elected official of that party, insofar as he or she supports or furthers those aims, is foresworn of his or her Oath. This, too, is betrayal and, as the Oath is meant specifically to ensnare traitors (and those taking it are informed of that fact beforehand), the conclusion we must draw from it is obvious.

That's not to say that all Republicans are innocent of the same perfidy. We on the Right who are concerned for individual liberty and the protection and defense of the Constitution are aware of perfidious individuals taking cover amongst us and work tirelessly to remove them from office. Can any Democrat say the same of those foresworn persons in their midst? Do you shout from the rooftops that Zell Miller is right? Do you rush to the barricades shoulder-to-shoulder with Camille Paglia or Christopher Hitchens? I don't think so.

Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary carries this definition of patriotism:

n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

I submit that both are wrong. Patriotism, like war and fire, is value-neutral. It depends on the context. When patriotism is meant to be unquestioning, unswerving loyalty to a bit of ground or a single man, it is being put to an evil use. But when patriotism is meant to be a freely-expressed and open admiration and allegiance to the highest ideals of humanity — individual liberty and justice for all — then it is being put to the highest possible use. Someone who seeks to or does pervert the idea of patriotism to conceal base acts of treachery and subversion does not deserve consideration as a worthy human being.

Hillary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, et al, know very well that what they are saying in public about the war, the President's prosecution of it, etc. is not true. They know that what they say gives aid and comfort to the enemy. (Or they have failed to absorb the lessons of communist agitprop and its effect on the home front during the Vietnam era and are thereby (in my opinion) disqualified to serve.) They do not care. They seek to wrap themselves in the flag, to claim the cover of a loyal opposition, all while subverting the lawful and Constitutional aims and policies of the nation.

They are traitors.

If you don't like that, tell them so. But don't gripe at me for speaking the truth about them.

2003-11-22T23:37:00.000-05:00

I WEEP
Sometimes at the desipicable treatment women meet at the hands of some individuals. I sometimes think that every woman I know has been the victim of a hate crime sometime in her life — preyed upon because of her sex.

Why?

I don't have answers. Can't even guess where they might be found.

Dolly is supposed to be different enough to give some perspective, but I find myself repeating the same old patterns in writing her.

On CSI the other night, there was an exchange between Katherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger's character) and Warwick Brown (Gary Dourdan's character).

The team is investigating the kidnap-murder of a model/showgirl. There is, of course, resonance for Katherine, who was a showgirl before single motherhood forced her to take a mind for her future and she went into law enforcement. Plus: the prime suspect has demanded that he will only talk to Katherine. He's playing a head game, of course, but Katherine hopes to turn that against him.

Warwick and Katherine are in the locker room (a unisex locker room — tres racy) and Warwick wonders how women let themselves get into these positions.

Katherine's reply was dead-on something I've been thinking for Dolly all along. (And I wish I could accurately remember the whole exchange, because it was so well-written. What follows is an approximation of the exchange.) She asks Warwick:

KW: When you were in high school, did your dad tell you you were brilliant?

WB: Of course.

KW: Did he also tell you you were good looking.

WB (derisive snort): Hardly.

KW: What if that was all you ever heard? If it was the only thing you had going for you?

A single-mother friend of our daughter has a little girl-child, just ten years old, who is interested in electronics. She's taking stuff apart and fixing it — even if it's not broken. Both SWMBO and I jumped on that with all four feet: Encourage the hell out of her! Don't let that get away from her! Don't make her face and her body all she has going for her.

My little sister — the one who's done the family proud by contrast with the rest of us wasters — was a beautiful baby, with Delft-blue eyes, a perfect butternut tan, and ass-length sun-golden hair. That she turned out such a together individual, I believe, is due in large part to Mom 'n' 'em's insistence that she not ride on her beauty. But it was hard; every adult she met would instantly exclaim, "What a beautiful little girl!" on meeting her. Our society does that — corrupting our young women and crippling them — leaving them defenseless — if their parents are not most vigilant.

There's a thought in there somewhere.

2003-11-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

YOU GO, CONRAD!
One of the first political mêmes I absorbed as a youth was the concept of MYOB — Mind Your Own Business. (To which I, as an adult, add the gerundive of a quaint Anglo-Saxon monosyllable, modifying the phrase to "Mind Your Own Fucking Business." Then, adding in Spike-like apposition (from Buffy) "Bitch!")

Not directed at anybody in particular, mind you. I just liked Spike's go-to-hell attitude in that particular moment.

There are busybodies on the Left and the Right. Unfortunately. Some times the best thing to do is to tell them to fuck off. Other times, perhaps a more intense reaction is more apropos. A du Toitian response, if I may — "Fuck off!" ::kapow!::

2003-11-22T14:55:00.000-05:00

I WAS PREPARED
To not-like low-carb pancake mix. Mixing the batter and smelling/tasting it, I was already mentally composing a blog entry trashing it.

But, to coin a cliché, the proof of the pancake is in the eating. Quite good. I tried the brand called Carb Sense, but I'd imagine almost any soy-based low carb pancake mix will yield similar results. It's a substantial breakfast and good for you, too. And a pleasant change. All that fat and protein and rabbit food can get really old after a while.

2003-11-22T14:47:00.000-05:00

I HAVE TO PLEAD
Agnostisisity on the whole gay marriage/defense of marriage thing. I could really care less on most levels. My biggest gripe, I guess is that — once again — leftists are taking the good-intentions-paved high road to Hell by perverting the system of public consensus in order to force the minority grievance-demand on the majority without due process.

"B-b-b-b-but," you say so ingenuously, "the thing was decided in court. Isn't that due process?"

(Aren't you a cute one?)

Well... no. In the Constitution, it says:

Article I
Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

What the court did in the Massachusetts case was define law. In other words, it exercised legislative powers. It violated due process, which is that the legislature makes the laws.

Hey, yer honor! What part of "all" doesn't register in your little pea-brain?

Another thing it did (and, in truth, the Right is also seeking to do in reaction) is to redefine the word "marriage." As, in my not-so-very-humble opinion, marriage is not a matter for the state — being ordained by God (or nature, if you prefer), it is a matter of religion, in which the State is forbidden to intervene by...

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

And, of course, since "all legislative powers" are vested solely in Congress, the courts have no say-so in the matter whatsoever. Period. Game, set, match.

Leftist — soi-disant "progressive" — activism utilizes these tactics a great deal. Their ideals and policies cannot be realized by constitutional means — i.e., in the legislature — so they turn to the courts, where lawyers can nitpick and pettifog and schmooze judges (who are also lawyers) into ruling on subjects and in ways they could never persuade a legislature to agree to.

And who is there to say them nay? Sure, the judges, by their actions, have impeached themselves and ought to be removed from office for violations of their oaths. But, given substantial minorities in legislatures — and even occasional majorities — and a relentless persistence, the Left can keep moving the goalposts farther Leftward, away from constitutionality and into the arbitrary tyranny that, in many areas of American life, we now observe. With corrupt and perfidious legislators running interference for them, laws that would never pass elected lawmakers or be signed by elected executives, pass from de facto to de jure by judicial fiat.

That the practice violates the fundamental rules of the game — the Constitution — never seems to bother a sufficient number of voters at once or on any one subject to raise enough stink to make legislators take action. Surely if enough constituents raised enough hell in enough legislatures, the situation would change. But impeaching judges? It's very inside baseball. And most people just want to be left alone. They have more important concerns than who runs the country and/or what they're doing.

(And, IMO, rightly so. The government should be made to stay out of people's businesses; people shouldn't have to constantly watch Washington with one hand on their wallets. Question is: how do you make it work?)

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the educationist establishment, as deliberately designed by John Dewey et al ::spit::, has failed ever more egregiously at educating succeeding generations as to the basic facts of the matter to the point now where I suspect most high school and college graduates of the last thirty or forty years actually believe that the Left's default stance on a good many matters is good, right, proper, and legal — when it is, as a matter of objective fact — quite the opposite.

Every once in a while — usually when some radical revisionist reform is proposed (such as welfare reform or the elimination of Cabinet departments), pundits will say that one Congress cannot bind another. That is, what one Congress passes, a succeeding one can repeal.

If only it were so simple.

It seems to me that, as regards vast swathes of the Left's agenda, the entire country has been bound from generation to generation, with no hope of repeal or appeal. As ever more provisions of the Left's agenda and policie are revealed to be the bankrupt boondoggles and risky schemes they were predicted to be before their enactment, it also becomes clearer and clearer that it requires nothing less than a wild swing toward liberty, individual self-ownership, self-determination, freedom of conscience, property rights, self-defense — in short, a restoration of the right to the pursuit of happiness — to turn back the tide of so-called progress.

Hillary Clinton recently shrilled that the Right seeks to roll back the last century of progress...

Well, yes. But only if you view much of the change in the last century as being truly progressive. From an objective perspective, I can't say that it has been. Not so long as you define progress as being a movement toward ever greater improvement of the human condition.

Enslaving a portion of a nation to the support of another is not such an improvement.

The betrayal and murder of millions of individuals under custody can hardly be judged an improvement.

The enmeshing and enmiring of billions of individuals over the world in poverty, disease, and famine in service to some pseudo-intellectual ideal of an environment that never was and never will be is hardly an improvement.

The freezing of human development is not progress.

Yet these are the accomplishments or the results of accomplishments Senator Clinton touts as being those of the last century of progress — welfare, social justice, environmental protection... (revolution, Marxist-Leninist struggle against "oppressors.")

All of these are to be or have been accomplished via the methods we witness in the case in Massachusetts. In short, the Left has bound us all to a future I can't help but be convinced will be disastrous — both for America and for mankind — by means that can only be described as unlawful. They have broken the law and the system founded upon it.

Nor is this accidental; it is an open and fundamental tactic — if you can't win according to the rules, cheat.

So, no... I don't really care if gay couples want to say they're married, or grant each other the rights of spouses in their personal affairs.

But I do care that yet another chunk has been hammered off the edifice of my country.

And, no, I'm not afraid to call it Treason. Though the enemy doesn't have a name or a nation-state whose armies attack, collectivism is every bit as evil and deadly an enemy as terrorism or Islamofascism. The policies of the Left — and in this country, in this day and age, the Left and the Democratic party are, sadly, one and the same — are the enemy of the American people.

2003-11-22T13:57:00.000-05:00

LARGE CAN OF SPAM
The other day, Connie du Toit complained about getting 125 spam messages and I had to snicker a little. I mean: yeah, I know 125 message is a royal pain in the tukis, but — puh-LEEZE!

I get sometimes that many spam messages in an hour. Our email server went down on a Saturday and stayed there until I got to work Monday morning, meaning all of our incoming was queued up at our ISP for two days. There were over 5,000 spam messages to a subnet with fewer than ten users. The flood essentially shut down our ability to use our Outlook clients for two hours, they were so busy processing incoming messages. It slowed our overall Internet access (.75M SDSL) In the same period, there were 350 messages that made it past the spam filter at the server and into my Inbox. — there to be further sorted by the Outlook Junk filter. About 2/3 get caught that way.

Nor can we, as Connie did, shut down the email addresses. Our clientele is such that we only have contact with them when they need us. And there's no pattern. We might not hear from a given customer for a couple of years, and then work with him closely — almost intimately — for six-to-nine months. Therefore, were we to change email addresses, any number of our most valuable customers might suddenly find their emails to us bouncing or going unanswered. Not a way for a business to survive — turning away customers like that. Nor, for reasons having to do with false positives, can our spam filtering be as aggressive as I — as the (part-time) email admin — might like.

I therefore follow developments in the fight against spam with considerable interest.

This morning's Cincinnati Enquirer ran an article below the fold on the front page, Congress Passes Bill That Will Limit Spam. My first thought was that I'd like to see the actual provisions of the bill, rather than politicians bloviating. I have a low opinion of most attempts to control such behavior — they generally cause more problems than they solve. It's my firm, considered opinion that any sanction against behavior must carry penalties of one of two types: physical (flogging, hanging, etc.), or commercial (fines, damages, bankruptcy, etc.).

Notice I don't include imprisonment. The purpose of imprisonment is to remove the miscreant from society. It does little or nothing to correct behavior.

BUT... I couldn't find anything more recent than the two summaries below. They are listed at Thomas (the legislative directory at the Library of Congress) as having been introduced in June. More-recent summaries don't appear to be available. (And wading through the text of markups is headache-inducing, if sometimes informative.)

IANAL, but it appears to me that all this will do will push most spam transmissions offshore.

The only positive note I see is the one wherein Internet Service Providers have a right of enforcement action. But the provisions are different in the bills in the two chambers, nor do the summaries provide information on what actions are provided for. I'm certain that the ability to block spam at servers, routers, and switches without fear of reprisal from spammers with First Amendment issues (Note to spamidiots: the First Amendment protects your right to talk; it doesn't say a damned thing about your being heard.) would be a Good Thing. But I suspect that far more effective would be any provision that increases the cost of sending spam without an overly adverse effect on more-legitimate users of email.

For a very long time, John C. Dvorak has been saying (words to the effect) that what will be needed to contain spam is email postage. I agree, but as Dvorak acknowledges, the problem is non-trivial.

First, you have to address the problem of anonymity. The Internet is at bottom a trust medium. People are counted on to be honest; and most are. They don't hide behind aliases, handles, and avatars for nefarious purposes, but to protect their own privacy. Unfortunately, this pattern of behavior is not universal. Individuals who do use the Internet's systemic anonymous nature invidiously quickly poison the well for the rest, as spams and scams readily illustrate.

(Aside: One of my little aphorism-rules is that the Tragedy of the Commons is the Tragedy of the Commons, that what everybody owns (in the sense of taking possession of), nobody owns (in the sense of taking responsibility for). The Internet, email, and spam being a case in point. (Despite the fact that every part of the Internet is somebody's property (if you allow that government entities can also be corporate persons).)

But anonymity permits people to behave in ways they would never try — let alone get away with — were their identities readily visible — the Internet and email spams and scams being a case in point.

Second, you have the problem of metering. Due to the way the Internet passes data — rising as it does from a DARPA requirement that the overall network be capable of surviving catastrophic physical damage (such as a nuclear attack) — there is no single data stream or route for any given message. It is therefore next to impossible to monitor and track traffic for purposes of metering and billing without a massive invasion of user privacy.

Now, the fixes for this are pretty simple — if costly. The problem here is one of interia. The installed base is monumental. A significant percentage of the wealth created in the '90's went into building up Internet infrastructure. And all of it has these systemic... well, you can't call them flaws, can you? Call them characteristics. If you want to change them, you have to replace all of that. Somebody's going to have to pay for it.

Finally, you have the problems of economic scale. (I'm not an economist, either, so I may be misusing terms of art; I beg your forebearance.) The size of payment-per-message that the traffic will bear is too small to allow recovery of overhead costs involved in metering and billing. There needs to develop a system of micro-payments that can cover the price of postage, so to speak, without breaking the bank with accounting costs. So far, nothing has emerged, though a lot of smart people are working on it.

It's my considered opinion that, until these problems are solved, no law will do more than aggravate the situation and, perhaps, push it beyond controlling. I suppose we can hope not, but I don't see that as realistic.

Anyway, here are the summaries. See what you think.

Summary of House bill: H.R. 2515 (in part)

Anti-Spam Act of 2003 - Prohibits a person from initiating in interstate commerce any commercial electronic mail (commercial email) message unless the message contains: (1) identification as commercial email; (2) notice of an opt-out opportunity, along with an email address or other mechanism for doing so; and (3) a valid physical street address of the sender. Prohibits the transmission of commercial email: (1) after valid objection; (2) with false or misleading header information or subject headings; (3) from illegally harvested email addresses, including addresses generated by automated means; or (4) without warning labels on commercial email containing sexually oriented material.

Provides a right of enforcement action for: (1) providers of Internet access service; (2) States on behalf of any of their residents; and (3) the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Amends the Federal criminal code to provide criminal penalties for: (1) falsifying the identity of a commercial email sender; (2) failing to place warning labels on commercial email containing sexually oriented material; (3) repeat offenses and bulk email violations; and (4) illegal harvesting of email addresses. Provides for enforcement of such penalties through actions by Internet service providers, the FTC and the Attorney General, and State attorneys general.

Requires the FTC to report to Congress regarding the need to protect the rights of users of email to avoid receiving unsolicited commercial email.

[...]

Summary of Sentate bill: S.1327 (in part)

Restrict and Eliminate the Delivery of Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail or Spam Act of 2003 or REDUCE Spam Act of 2003 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit the initiation of a transmission of any unsolicited commercial electronic mail (spam) message with the knowledge that such message contains or is accompanied by false or misleading header (identifying) information.

Prohibits any person from initiating the transmission of a spam message to an electronic mail (e-mail) address within the United States unless the subject line includes legally compliant identifying information or "ADV" as its first characters for commercial advertisements or "ADV: ADLT" for adult advertisements. Requires a sender to establish a valid sender operated return e-mail address where the recipient may notify the sender not to send further spam. Prohibits: (1) sending spam after notification of the recipient's objection; or (2) including false or misleading header information or deceptive subject headings as part of spam transmissions. Provides: (1) affirmative defenses; and (2) enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Permits a spam recipient or a provider of Internet access service adversely affected by a violation of this Act to bring a civil action.

Requires the FTC to submit to Congress a detailed analysis of the effectiveness and enforcement of provisions of this Act and the need, if any, for modifications.

Directs the President to study and report to Congress on the possibility of an international agreement to reduce spam.

2003-11-22T09:54:00.000-05:00

UH... YUP!

2003-11-21T23:51:00.000-05:00

NOTES TO MYSELF
The thaum mortars are a low-power weapon. They get beamed in and the Gods can't carry a lot of mass if they're not beaming themselves with.

In the early stages of Dolly's development, Drummond really has trouble with his feelings for Dolly. He has to be concerned that he might be taking advantage of Dolly's youth and inexperience. He's very much aware of the reasons for the jailbait taboo. But then Dolly sets him straight. She asks him, "February 14, 1998: how old was I?" He answers, "A newborn." She comes back with: "Bzzzt! Wrong! I was: One. Hundred. Sixty. Years. Old." "But you didn't remember your..." "Doesn't matter. I knew. Does thirty-year-old amnesia victim suddenly lose her rights as an adult? Does she become a newborn?" It doesn't mollify him right away, but it's a start. He holds on to reservations right up to the moment she attacks him in the Admin Bldg parking lot with the katana.

2003-11-21T23:43:00.000-05:00

CATEGORY: THINGS I KNOW
That other people apparently don't.

Vitamin B is good for hangovers. I'm not entirely sure, with this simple and easy cure available, anyone suffers a hangover.

Short of abstinance, VitB is the sovereign cure. I already take a B100 Complex daily, so have the pills around. But every drug store in the world sells them, including places like Kroger pharmacy. In this town, Krogers are open 24/7, so there's really no excuse.

Take one or two before you go to bed (drunk), and when you wake up — viola! — no hangover. Should you forget and wake up hungover, take one or two and, within a half hour, you should be feeling better.

I would advise the morning-after dose be taken with buffering. Scrambled eggs or a toasted bagel should be just fine. Coffee will do, but I advise you take it with cream. A hot shower helps, too. But the Vitamin B is what does the trick.

2003-11-21T23:38:00.000-05:00

SLOW BLOGGING WEEK
I guess every blogger with regular readers of any quantity (I'm guessing I have between 12 and 15) must go through this. Real Life intrudes and the blogging slides. Blogger worries about disappointing readers.

My officemate TC and I are moving our office in the Patch Factory building. We're getting back our beloved old office with the wall-to-wall east-facing windows and big space (18x36 for two people) that we were kicked out of to make room for a momentary-lapse-of-reason acquisition on the part of TPTB a couple years back.

Of course, the Patch Factory being an eensy company, we don't get the luxury of calling the movers. Wouldn't that be sweet? Call the movers, pick up your coffee and saunter to the new office, park your butt in the new executroid lounger, pull your keyboard nigh, and start producing those obscene profit margins.

But NOOoooo. We have to do it ourselves.

And in all fairness, it's better this way. We couldn't very well predict that this week would be a slow one far enough in advance to reasonably book movers, have things packed and ready to go, move the phones and network cabling, and all the rest. But doing it ourselves, it becomes feasible to check the gut and say, "Today we start the move," and just do it.

Ordinarily, what goes on at the Patch Factory doesn't affect my blogging. But this isn't ordinary. Being as I'm the largest, strongest, malest, and stubbornest of the people involved, I'm doing all the heavy lifting. (This is why women outlive us, you know. Simple wear-and-tear.)

On the other hand, all props go out to Mighty Mouse, one of our artists whose just been a super helper — even to the point of horsing filing cabinets around and driving the pallet truck. (I'm also somewhat amazed at how much she resembles Dolly, but that's another story.)

Anyway: it's much more physical exertion than I'm used to, but not enough that I can skip my regular exercise. As a result, I'm much sorer and tireder than normal this week and blogging isn't the only thing going by the wayside.

Sorry.

I hope to be back to my old hair-on-fire, over-the-top bloviating self by Monday.

The real ironic part is this is the week I tell Baby Sister that she really ought to be reading this blog every day, and my posting drops to — like — a tenth my normal rate. A true giggle of irony of Universal scale.

2003-11-21T23:26:00.000-05:00

A REAL HEAD_SHAKER
Jaime, God love her, has decided to blog political. Welcome! The more the merrier. But I gotta say... Wow! She says... (in part)

...why I will be voting for Dean. ...

Today's quote comes to us from Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, son of George, and brother to George II.

Now, I have to scratch my head, here, and ponder. We're supposed to accept that Democrat partisans at the grassroots level support Howard Dean for President — as opposed to Dubya, now — because of something the Governor of Florida (who is — I hasten to point out — not in the race) said. Once. In jest.

Meanwhile, we are supposed to ignore all of the ignorant, seditious, hateful, mendacious, and downright dangerous things that Howard Dean says daily in complete seriousness. With a straight face. (Lame prop jokes with stethoscopes notwithstanding.) (I mean — Carrot Top is a prop comedian.)

So we're now down on the President for something his brother said. Judging people not by their own deeds, but by their family associations. How — exactly — is this different from racial profiling again? Oh. Right. It's directed against a Republican, so it must be alright.

Meanwhile, the same party that's running the Nine Dwarves for President — no, for the nomination, I'm sorry — also contains Teddy Kennedy, whose mendacious bloviating on the floor of the Senate has given Dean fodder for his most mendacious and sedititious invective. Trouble is, even the party operatives are finding the bitter, divisive partisanship, mendacity, and — yes — sedition to be too much to bear.

What? Did you really think the Republicans — either elected officials or staffers — are good enough to be able to find, steal, and leak all of those memos? Wake up and smell the green tea. The memos coming out of Democrat committee staff are being leaked by disgruntled officials and staffers being jackbooted into line by the leadership of a party in meltdown.

And, Jaime; it might be good if you separated your political posts from the ones about life and writing, and to get your webmistress to turn on your permalinks.

2003-11-18T09:17:00.000-05:00

A DIFFERENT TAKE
Kim du Toit has his choice of money 'graph from Mark Steyn's Telegraph UK take-down of the idiotarian (anti-war/anti-American) Left. I have mine.

If the anti-war cause is so just, it seems odd that it has to be so risibly "sexed up" by Medact and the rest, but the post-9/11 grand harmonic convergence of all the world's loser ideologies, from Islamic fundamentalism to French condescension, is untroubled by anything so humdrum as reality or logic. There's "no connection" between Saddam and al-Qa'eda, because radical Islamists would never make common cause with secular Ba'athists. Or so we're told by pro-gay, pro-feminist Eurolefties who thus make common cause with honour-killing, sodomite-beheading Islamists, apparently crediting Saddam with a greater degree of intellectual coherence than they credit themselves.

Kim follows with a mini photo-essay of reasons it's Good to Be ~~King~~ — er — American.

I especially appreciate the last. Yes, indeed, it is the most wonderful thing in the world to live in a country that has Ashley Judd in it. If I may be so bold, Ms. Judd is the quintessential American girl — smart, sexy, funny, cute, and has her head screwed on straight. Good choice, Kim.

2003-11-16T23:33:00.000-05:00

WEEKEND OVER
There's another 48 hours of my life I'll never get back.

Didn't get nearly as many crits done as I hoped to, although the to-do list is considerably cleaner than it was Friday. With luck, I may be able to get farther along this week.

Heard from younger sister — the middle one, responsible wife, mother, senator and all that, not the vagabond hippie, run-off-to-the-Antipodes one —

...

Ouch! Ouch! Mom!! They're hitting me!!

{And you in no way asked for this? — GFD}

OK! I'm sorry. Just stop hitting me!

Sheesh! You'd think being the Oldest would get ya a little respect. ::straightens jacket, combs hair with fingers, brushes dust from sleeve::

::WHACK!::OW!
What was that for?

{Feminine solidarity. — GFD}

...

ANY way. Good medium-long catching-up. Good to hear her voice. She always was the smart one. Made more of herself by age 19 than the rest of us have yet.

Watched Finding Nemo, including the "Making of..." featurette. I've been an animation freak for the longest. I see the way that stories are handled in feature animation projects and think, "We novelists could learn a lot from that crowd." Trying to figure out how.

Music: Jewel, This Way. Weather, 60's-ish, temps dropping. Drizzly today, clearing this evening. Mood: minor frustration.

Moving offices at the Patch Factory this week. Should. Be. Fun. Tomorrow, the server.

Good night, Gracie.

2003-11-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

TRUDEAU HIMSELF
In today's Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau reveals that he must be as enamored of St. Ann as we on the Right. (As if Annie would grant an interview to Slackmeyer to begin with.)

(click on image to see full-size)

In the money panel, Slackmeyer asks Ann if she really believes that half of the citizens of the country should be subject to the death penalty. (Well, Mark, if the shoe fits...)

{(And leaving aside that nowhere near half the people in the country are espousing the views of the radical Left cadres in control of the Democratic Party — and which is kind of the point.) — GFD}

But really, Trudeau is being disingenuous and should know it. The logical flaws in the contention being voiced are so numerous as to make ridiculous the application of the label argument to the strip.

No, Ann is not saying all Democrats are traitors. She is saying that a good many Democrat positions amount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which is (in case you hadn't noticed), one of two Constitutional constituents of Treason. (The other being that of "levying war" against the United States.)

So, as I said, if the shoe fits...

Many terapixels have been slain on the altar of trying to make clear the perfidious nature of the Left, (and why good people who vote Democrat should be urged to re-examine their premises, as Ayn Rand put it). But the best such essay I can call to mind is by (who else?) Kim du Toit — Traitors Within Our Walls. You really must read the whole essay. However, here are the bullet points, so to speak:

1. The first manifestation of traitors is those who would change our government completely...

2. The next manifestation of traitors is those who would replace our basic freedoms, either by legislation or by regulation.

3. Another manifestation of traitors is to create disunity in the republic.

4. Finally, we find the manifestation of traitors in those who espouse causes other than (small "r") republican ones: those who call themselves "progressives", "socialists", "communitarians", "populists", "globalists" and so on.

And most important, there is no attempt — none — by Democrats (link) who claim they do not back extreme anti-American positions to repudiate them.

If you vote Democrat, if you participate in events organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R., if you think Aaron McGruder (Boondocks) has a point, if you don't see why people get so worked up about Noam Chomsky or George Soros but are OK with Dubya and AG Ashcroft, then maybe you need to re-examine your premises.

And... check your feet. Does the shoe fit?

2003-11-16T14:00:00.000-05:00

I DON'T UNDERSTAND
Women's clothing sizes. Yet, I feel I must in order to really get inside my lead character — Gabrielle Dolly.

The image of Dolly above-left sits on my computer desktop, except it's a full-length nude. Dolly sits straddle-legged on the edge of some unseen surface. In the photo from which I drew the inspiration, the model — a doll-like Chinese girl — is sitting in a bathroom sink. It's cute. You hadda been there. In my image, Dolly is naked as a jaybird.

The phrase is very apropos of Dolly. If only you knew. She's brash. Brassy. Sassy. A shy exhibitionist, she will shed her clothes at the drop of a gentleman's hat. But... you may only look — not touch.

Being the kind of girl — and thus the kind of character — Dolly is, she wears clothes. I mean to say that she wears clothes. I mean... she changes clothes as though she is shedding a skin. The clothes become a part of her — as a person and as a character. What she is wearing at any moment has become inseparable in my mind from her state of mind, her emotional weather, where she is now and has been and is going.

In You Could Spend Years and The Next Story, she wears leather jeans, a cabretta halter-vest, and Doc Martens, an armlet of moly steel around each bulging biceps. (Make sure they bulge if you draw her.) The halter-vest has a keyhole opening in the front to show a peekaboo of her lush cleavage. In the opening scene of Armed Citizen, she wears a white knit halter-topped micro dress. In Out of Bounds: Unplugged she wears a toga and a conical bamboo lampshade in imitation of a Chinese "coolie" hat. In Double Switch, she wears tight, low-slung capri pants in one scene, then practical uniform khakis in another. In Godslayer it's the capris and a tee shirt in one scene and a black lace micro-mini with a wide-brimmed veiled hat in another.

But in all of this, I have never been able to say, "She's a size two." (Whatever that means.) Nor do I know any way to find out. I've tried. I don't understand women's clothing sizes. More: I suspect most women don't, either, but are unwilling to admit it. Otherwise, I could issue a set of Dolly's specs (5'2", 125#, 34-26-37, DD-cup (?), 29" inseam, 34" ankle-to-hip, 14.5" collar, 27" sleeve, ? shoe) and be reliably informed that she would wear a size X dress. Or jeans.

Aside: Why is it that 3D character software, Poser, doesn't seem to admit to being induced to generate a figure from this kind of specification?

Now, I could side-step all of this and simply dress her in men's clothing. Except that her jeans — if she wore them (Dolly refuses to wear blue denim — she'd rather go naked.) — would always have to be hip-huggers. No way a simple waist-inseam pair will find a fit around those callipygian hips to that high, hourglass waist. Not that that's a problem. Though it's not exactly appropriate for combat with edged weapons, there is a certain appeal to the low-slung look. To me, anyway. I know there's some sticks in the mud old fogies who don't like it. I always have.

{But you degrease. — GFD}

Right. Sorry.

And what's with the bra size? The cup I mean — I get that the band is sized by the circumference of the ribcage. That even makes sense. But that the cup is sized by the difference between chest and bust measurements? Excuse me? Wouldn't the volume of the breast be a more rational measure? I seem to remember reading somewhere that cup sizes larger than D are largely a product of male fantasies and aren't manufactured. Or standardized. OR whatever... OK. Fair enough. Though Dolly is busty, she does have to be able to function — at least in theory — and a triple-F cup would probably give her a behavior profile more appropriate to Little Annie Fanny than Lara Croft. So tell me. Given that her chest circumference is a putative 34", if I showed you a picture, could you tell me her cup size?

I guarantee you no man could. Why? Remember the old joke about how women are lousy at estimating distances? Because all their lives they've been told that this [ | is ten inches. Well, on the male side of things, don't ever ask a man to measure baking ingredients by eye. Ever since he first stole his old dad's stroke mag from under the matress at age [FITB], he's been told that anything larger than about a pint in volume is (variously) anything from a double-D to triple-F, depending on how carried away with hyperbole (or drunk) the magazine's photo editor was that day.

This, by the way, folks, is called cat-waxing. It's what writers do when they can't motivate themselves to actually write.

Jaime will probably accuse me of being obsessed. Guilty as charged.

{Obsessed with my boobs? No! Say it ain't so! ::giggle:: —GFD}

2003-11-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

BIG BROUHAHA
in the blogosphere over some numb-nutted tactics by attorneys representing some outfit called Infotel. (Roundup here.)

From what I can gather, these guys' scam is that they make cold phone calls to businesses, misrepresent what they're up to, trick the person answering into committing to something they otherwise wouldn't commit to, then sue when the cash is not forthcoming: "I never ordered that!"

All of which reinforces some of my attitude about telemarketing:

1) Telemarketers are uninvited trespassers on your telephone line. They are wasting your time — rare and precious moments of your life. You owe them no courtesy. NONE.

2) Knowing that these specimens will try anything to get a foot in your door, claiming that there is a business relationship and they have the right to some of your hard-earned money, there is only one practical response. Say, "No." (Or, if you prefer, "No, thank you," though I would be concerned that the "thank you" might be misconstrued — purposefully.) And hang up.

3) This being a sensible policy, one should put it into practice at every turn. If someone identifies himself to you as calling from an organization with whom you do not or do not wish to do business, respond per 2) above. If a caller will not identify himself or his purpose for calling immediately on completion of a call, respond per 2). If a caller attempts verbal fancy-dancing with mentions of surveys, free premiums or prizes, or asks for "just a few minutes of your time," respond per 2).

4) I understand that people need to make a living. That does not give them the right to make it at your expense. Your time is precious; guard it well. If telemarketers find the profession too demanding perhaps they will seek employment that is less of a karmic suck-job. If enough of them quit, perhaps the type will become extinct. (Dream on, Alger.) Think of it as evolution in action.

Don't give telemarketers, cold-callers, and other scam artists the time of day.

2003-11-15T23:38:00.000-05:00

RAINY DAY, DREAM AWAY
Cold, gloomy, rain. Good day to stay inside and cocoon. Took some good advice and made a few last-minute edits to Chapter 8b of Geppetto's Log before posting it to the Workshop. One view so far. I always wonder who it is.

Pen made cogent comment on the passage wherein Jeep appropriates just how big Trolls (in general) and Dis (in particular) are. Is. She noted that there's too much tellin' goin on out dere! We need more show — Ah say, ah say, ah say... Boy! ::smack!:: Pay attention, boy! You look like a bulldog who's chewin' on a wasp! Now wheah was Ah? Oh, yeah. We need more — Ah say — we neeeed a LOT more showin' an' a little less tellin' 'round heah.

::sigh::

I despair of ever getting enough of the right kind of detail in. I always seem to forget to put it in. I feel like a delinquent adolescent reminded of his obligations. "Oh, yeah"--and do it. "But why not do it right in the first place?" I mumble something in reply. The truth is, it just doesn't occur to me.

Somebody on the Plotters ML put up a checklist/form for scene-length planning. I'm going to give a whirl with Ch8c and see if I learn anything from it. I can't see it as a regular thing — too much work to achieve that level of granularity all the time. The time saved is offset by the time spent building the time-saving device. But maybe as a tool for devloping better thinking habits, it might help. We'll see.

Late. Tired. Rounding Third and heading to bed.

Good night, Gracie.

2003-11-14T10:11:00.000-05:00

MORE GENIUS FOR THE OBVIOUS
Samizdata takes note of (and quotes from) a scintillating article on Econ 101 by Thomas Sowell. Should be Sir Thomas or Lord Thomas for the wisdom he has incidentally dropped into the mêmosphere over the years. They call it "The impenetrable stupidity of socialists". As good a title as any.

2003-11-14T09:32:00.000-05:00

THE COMMERCE CLAUSE, NU?
So the Ninth Circus has a come-to-Jesus moment and the blogosphere explodes with hosannahs. And huzzahs, even.

But no, guys.

The the extreme-Left statists keep their universal definition of Interstate Commerce. We, in turn, will take our reading of Article I, Section IX to mean that no tax may be laid on anything that "affects Interstate Commerce".

I mean... I live in Ohio and work in Kentucky. That means (I guess) that I am engaged in Interstate Commerce. (I even commute on one across State lines.) Where do I apply for my rebate? Going back to 1988 when the company moved south from Ohio? City, State, Local, FICA, MFICA... None of it is legal, even though, if there were a bridge, I could walk to work in less than 20 minutes.

Think about it.

2003-11-14T09:21:00.000-05:00

IF YOU THINK I'M RABID...
Check out the blog at Lew Rockwell dot-com.

2003-11-14T09:05:00.000-05:00

YOU'D THINK THIS WOULD BE OBVIOUS
Wouldn't you?

If a man means to kill you, either you persuade him that he should not, or you kill him first, or you die. Sometimes you can get him locked up, but that only postpones the problem. By the same token, if an enemy political power is engaged in war with you with the goal of your destruction, you either persuade its supporters that they should not, or you kill those supporters, or you die. The international equivalent of imprisonment (diplomatic and economic sanctions) only postpones the problem. ( — Steven den Beste)

But — apparently — you'd be wrong.

2003-11-14T08:41:00.000-05:00

WHEW!
Don't sugar-coat it, James. Tell us how you really feel.

the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.

Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!

Well... Yes.

2003-11-14T08:28:00.000-05:00

22 THINGS THAT ARE TRUE

2003-11-13T23:18:00.000-05:00

CHAPTER ENDS
Finished Chapter 8b on a minor tear-jerker note as planned. I'll want to review and polish it before posting it to the Workshop — possibly tomorrow night, leaving the weekend completely clear for doing crit catch-up.

Weather fall-like. High winds, lots of scudding clouds. Time to get out the coats, maybe. (Been wearing hooded sweatshirts mostly.) Music: That same damned Crowded House album. I'll have to pick something else tomorrow, now that this chapter's done.

Goodnight, Gracie.

2003-11-13T15:44:00.000-05:00

COURT REVERSES ELECTION
On utterly specious grounds. Yet you won't hear the liberal elite media cast the situation as fallout from the overreaching of the Federal courts. Oh, no.

But ask yourself: what authority in the Constitution gives a Federal judge the power to infringe upon a citizen's First Amendment rights? Like it or not, that is what happened.

Update: I'm hearing hysteria from the Left that "Moore defied the law." Unfortunately, the "law" he defied was an order from a court ruling beyond its jurisdiction. And... the ruling was wrong on the face of the law involved. Therefore a loud shout that "HE DEFIED THE LAW" comes across as nothing more than obfuscation of the point — the Federal court has no jurisdiction in the matter and, if it did, would be restricted in ruling to follow the text of the First Amendment, which says (in part) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

2003-11-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

SENATE DISSES CONSTITUTION
I'm shocked — shocked — to discover that members of the national legislature are contemplating passage of legislation that on the face of it violates Article I, Section IX of the Constitution, to whit:

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

To me, this means that, unless the entire transaction — offering of a good for sale, the completion of the transation, and the delivery of the good being sold — takes place within the physical boundaries of a single state, then no tax — of any kind, local, State, or Federal — may be laid upon the transaction. (Which, by the way, kind of obviates the idea of a "National Sales Tax."

It most certainly means that, if I (in Dayton, Kentucky) buy a computer from Dell (in Round Rock, Texas), no tax of any kind may attain to the transaction. None.

Therefore, it seems clear to me that, no matter what Congress may do or want to do, the idea of taxing "The Internet" per se is a non-starter.

And I really don't give a schist if the States are losing billions in revenue. Let them cut expenditures if times are tough. After all, citizens have to. Why shouldn't government?

2003-11-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

PART-TIME ARTIST BLUES
Jaime blogs about the woes of trying to write in "spare time." In her case it's that she's head-hitting-the-desk tired when she sits down to write. In mine, it's that I often try to write through a fog of fatigue plus maladjusted blood glucose levels.

Aside: On some of the diabetes lists and groups I belong to, there are some really angry sorts who rail against the medical establishment. Sometimes I feel like joining them on the barricades. Especially when I see some of the unadulterated crap hospital "nutritionists" are pushing on SWMBO in aid of her coronary care. I mean... even the New York Times is hip to the "carbs: bad" equation. But, whatever...

I was just thinking about this the other day. Well, this morning in the shower and ... really, just about constantly: how does a mature individual, with job and family responsibilities, go about building a career as a freelance artist — especially assuming, as fiction authors must that said career will never provide sufficient return for independence?

One of the hardest things to do in writing fiction is to hold onto the picture. The vision, image, idea — what you may call it. It requires a great deal of concentration over relatively long periods of time. If you are at all concerned about the national attention span, you may find encouragement in the notion that ever-increasing numbers of people are turning to novel-writing as an avocation.

This is a pursuit which requires long attention span. I've been working on Geppetto's Log since January of '02 and don't see it being finished in 2005. Much of the delay comes in having to pick up the conceptual threads for each work session, an exercise which may consume half of a one-hour session.

The alternative is to walk around in a daze all of the time in a desperate attempt to carry the picture constantly. (And then you lose parts that fall off because you aren't able to write down all of the random ideas that crop up in the times you're not actively writing.)

The consummation devoutly to be wished, of course, is to be able to work at writing full-time. I'm sure every writer dreams of the luxury of being able to spend all day at the keyboard and of the productivity that would surely result. I am, for example, planning my annual vacation activities as we blog. The last three weeks of the year, I will enjoy unlimited freedom to pursue my work. (Subject to honeydo projects and fixing my meals.) (Oh, and little things like family holiday events.) (And the daily routine of keeping the house in operation.) (And...)

But how do you get there? How do you buy the time to work more-or-less continuously? By struggling for years and admitting you may never win the fight. By being a bitch or a bastard to those around you when they — despite your polite requests of them to leave you alone — insist on breaking your concentration with random brain farts. By locking yourself in a room and diving under headphones and — no matter how tired you are — writing.

...

I should report that Jeep's scene in Ch8b of Geppetto's Log is creeping up on 4Kwds and I still have the conversation with Martine to do. I'm also coming to the conclusion that it may have to be cut or combined with a too-similar scene in Ch5. But I'm also realizing it can wait for second draft. The important thing now is to gain momentum. Or re-gain it. Music is still that Crowded House album. Mood: neutral. Weather: autumnal. breezy, not yet crisp or sharp, rain yesterday, bright and clear today. I'm behind on crits and am hope to get caught back up this weekend. We'll see. (As Roo said, "You're always 'We'll-see'-ing and nothing ever happens!")

2003-11-13T10:59:00.000-05:00

BETTER A LIVE LION
Winston Churchill must have been a marvelous dinner companion. It is reported that The Viscountess Astor once said to him,

"If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee.

To which Winnie replied, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

Another time, someone asked him whether it was better to be a dead lion or a live jackal. He replied — of course — that it is far better to be a live lion.

Samizdata has an interesting take on national ID cards. (It's not our problem if you can't keep track of us. Get over it.) My slightly slantwise answer to the question is, "A live lion." I hope.

2003-11-13T10:43:00.000-05:00

LOL! I LOVE IT!
(Link via Samizdata)

"The dumbest idea is to suppose that an inanimate object can turn a noncriminal into a criminal. To believe that guns cause crime is as stupid as believing that hammers and saws cause houses. It is the grossest kind of mindless superstition to suppose that some magical qualities of an inanimate object can overpower the human will." (— Charley Reese, "Dumb, Dumber And Dumbest," LewRockwell.com)

But in case you miss the point...

Here are the statistics from the National Safety Council: In the year 2000, firearms killed 600 Americans accidentally. That's 600 out of nearly 280 million. Here are the other numbers of accidental fatalities for that year: autos, 43,000; falls, 16,200; poisons, 11,700; drowning, 3,900; ingestion of food or other object, 3,400. The only number of fatalities lower than accidental firearms deaths is that from poison gases – 400. (— ibid.)

And one more, (but read the whole thing anyway):

The Founding Fathers of our country, as politically incorrect as it might be to say so, were revolutionaries who had to use violence to overthrow tyrannical rule. They wrote the Second Amendment not to make sure people could go duck hunting, but to make sure that they would have the means, if necessary, to overthrow tyranny again. The meaning of the Second Amendment is clear to all but those who hate the idea of a free people. It states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." It does not say members of the militia or policemen or soldiers. It says the people, and it means every individual American citizen in this God-blessed land, whatever shyster lawyers have to say notwithstanding. (— ibid.)

2003-11-13T10:19:00.000-05:00

GLOBAL WARMING
Cox and Forkum touch on the global warming nonsense, concluding with the money quote:

But just to cover their bases, environmentalist scaremongers have a new doomsday scenario: Global warming could trigger a new ice age.

About which it should be noted: rationality isn't on the menu. The point of the exercise is to so obfuscate and subvert the actual science of the matter as to degrade the authority of rational thought and objective fact.

When in danger
Or in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout.

2003-11-13T10:11:00.000-05:00

REQUIRED READING FOR DEMOCRATS
...and finish it. I'll know if you don't, because you'll still be supporting the Left.

Could it be that America’s first feminist president understood exactly what he was doing? Could it be that, given a choice between a "bourgeois" society of happy, prosperous families and an authoritarian police state, Bill Clinton actually preferred the latter?

2003-11-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

BELATED V-DAY POST
I wasn't too high on Veteran's Day. Not because of the Veterans, but because of the politicians who suddenly develop elbow action that would be admired in a rugby scrum getting in front of microphones and cameras to BS the voters how much they support the troops (but not their mission — never mind that the troops themselves support the mission and failure to support... [circular reasoning alert!]).

But Sully pixels a letter...

Finally, a United spokeswoman got on the PA and said this, "Folks. As you can see, there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days of leave and we're trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more time in an airport then they have to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you're doing, we are here for you and we love you."

Yeah. ::gulp, tear::

Oh, and the soldiers got their seats.

2003-11-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

PROFESSIONAL CHILD ABUSERS
I know it's anecdotal, but it seems nearly universal. Connie rants. Go read it. I do mean you!

My grandchildren are in the Failed Cincinnati Public School system. (Well, the elder is. The younger seems destined to be unless somebody in the fam hits the lottery.) They are the case-in-point for vouchers. Mixed-race children of a poor unwed mother trapped in rundown and failing schools. Yes, the sins of the fathers and all that. But remember: the greatest betrayal is by custodians of the helpless in custody.

We grandparents do what we can, but we're struggling, too. (Top whatever percent in income, but taxed into penury — fuck you, Tom Daschle; fuck you, Ted Kennedy; fuck you Hillary... er, forget that.) ::sigh:: I'll stop bitching now.

2003-11-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

MOONBAT ALERT
Sully also makes mention of slavering mad-dog Ted Rall. The guy is a textbook case of somebody choking on his own bile. It would be one thing if there were any rational reason for his behaviors or attitudes. But all he does is spew knee-jerk hate to his right. That much of it spatters his own partisans, espouses harm to his fellow citizens, and encourages people who want to kill him seems to escape his notice.

It all brings to mind a one-liner from the old Rowan and Martin's Laugh In show. In the Party segment, Arte Johnson delivers this in a mouth-full-of-marbles faux-Slavic accent: "If they don't like it here, why don't they goink back where they came from?"

Well, Ted...? If you hate America so much, why don't you crawl back under your (Ir) Rock?

The other day, Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder was heard to call Condi Rice a murderer. (And NAA(L)CP President Julian Bond was heard to "agree 100%".) Here, again, is someone so bulemic with his own hatred of anything remotely ordinary in America that he has swallowed whole (then regurgitated — the whole binge and purge thing) the offensive and patently racist line of the Democrats that any black (or member of any other minority grievance group) who strays from the Party plantation — and has the temerity to succeed despite that — is ipso facto to be read out of the race.

Uh-huh.

2003-11-13T08:54:00.000-05:00

AND BY YOU, THIS IS RATIONAL?
Sully notes planned protests (A.N.S.W.E.R., anyone?) with this:

From all reports, the hatred of George W. Bush is now at fever pitch in London. All sorts of vicious tyrants have met the Queen for state visits - but none will recieve the outpouring of hate that will await Bush. Heads up: this will be a big deal. Hundreds of thousands will likely turn up to protest; the capital city is on the verge of shutting down; there will be demonstrations in Trafalgar Square in which an effigy will be toppled in mimickry of the defeat of Saddam. All this is designed to make the demonstrators to feel good but also to show Americans that even their closest ally despises the president and wants him defeated, humiliated, removed. Even if it means supporting the forces of terrorism in the Middle East. That's how inflamed and irrational this has become.

Concern for one's co-speciesists rises anew. I don't advocate forced psycho-therapy. But some interventions might be in order.

PEOPLE! GET A GRIP!

2003-11-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

PUH-LEEZE!

Controversialist Gore Vidal To Suggest In Interview: Bush and Ashcroft would be 'hanged' by Founding Fathers; they are 'despots'.... Developing... (Drudge)

Citizen Mark Alger suggests that people today have gotten soft, or Gore Vidal would have been — at best — bitch-slapped and challenged to a duel and at worst tarred and feathered for sedition and despicably low character thirty years and more ago. By our Founding Fathers.

Or arrested by Founding Father John Adams and charged with sedition for his statements during the Vietnam War and since.

Idiot!

Buckley should have finished him off in '68.

2003-11-12T11:36:00.000-05:00

HMMM...
Bill Gates is — or was — famous for deprecating others with the statement, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

Microsoft Outlook — in Corporate/Exchange Server mode — has an option called Out of Office Assistant, which will cause Outlook to reply to incoming messages with a canned message, usually "I am out of the office until Tuesday" or the equivalent.

The provision is indiscriminate — i.e., it replies willy nilly to all incoming messages without regard for InBox filtering, content, context, or relevance.

Given that as little as 40% of Internet email traffic is SPAM or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) (in my office, it's closer to 90%), what do you suppose the contribution of Out of Office Assistant is to Internet congestion?

The stupidest...?

Word to the wise: be a good netizen; don't use automatic replies unless your SPAM filter is 100% effective.

2003-11-12T10:50:00.000-05:00

A LIE...
can be twice around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on. It therefore behooves men and women of goodwill to ensure that truth and facts trump lies and rumor wherever possible. Read this, or remain ignorant of the facts on the ground.

Remember: The current crop of candidates for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, the leaders of the Democrats in Congress, as well as the hierarchy of the national Democratic Party, oppose, undermine, obfuscate, and subvert the legitimate efforts of the Administration to bring these results about and to extend and affirm them in the future.

2003-11-12T10:25:00.000-05:00

IT OCCURS TO ME...
upon reading this —

Republican Reps. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and Sue Myrick of North Carolina fired off an angry letter to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority after reading ads — placed free, it turns out — in the Washington public transit system: "Enjoy Better Sex: Legalize and Tax Marijuana!"

Ironically, a recent study finds that smoking pot decreases the sex drive. (John McCaslin, in The Washington Times)

— that perhaps the constituents of these Repugnican Reps might want to fire of angry letters asking them just where the fark the Federal Government gets the authority to tell free and sovereign citizens of the United States what they may or may not put in their bodies.

2003-11-11T23:40:00.000-05:00

A CRITTER REQUEST
for back chapters of Geppetto's Log spurred me to make the long-delayed fixes to continuity in Chapter 5. The foreshadowing and omens and all of that in Aphrodite's perspective passages now work according to plan. I'm even thinking of putting the revised Ch5 up on the Workshop in place of the abortive Godslayer. It's been a while since I got any crits on that. It's time to move on. That would give me Chs 5-8a on the OWW at once.

But then there's some major changes in Ch7, made necessary by the changes in Ch5. (This is how it starts: you pull one thread and the whole damned sleeve comes off your sweater.)

It also brings me up short on one thread in Ch8b, which I've been working on of late. I'll have to go back and fix that as well. Shouldn't be too hard. The blessing is I haven't show 8b to anyone, yet, so the continuity glitch shouldn't bother my critters. As we say at the Patch Factory, if you catch a mistake before it goes out the door, it didn't happen.

Well, we don't say it exactly like that, but the sense of it is there. ::grin::

Music: Crowded House, Woodface. Weather: 60's, rainy today. down in the 20's tonight. Mood: moderate-to-OK.

Goodnight, Gracie.

2003-11-11T12:49:00.000-05:00

EU CUTS OFF NOSE TO SPITE FACE
Of course, they've embraced socialism, so they obviously don't know jack about economics. But to the point. This:

US goods set to double in price as Europe plans huge trade war

means....? Anybody? Beuller?

The consumer in Europe will suffer. Right. And in America, supply will increase while demand stays level, meaning that prices will trend lower as manufacturers scurry to unload inventory.

The thing all of these fools always forget is that markets exist for the benefit of the customer. This makes the customer king. Anything that benefits the customer is good. Anything that harms him (i.e., costs him more money), is bad.

Sellers are in a constant battle for survival. Demand fluctuations are just one of the myriad pressures they must deal with. For them this is business as usual.

High tarrifs, or trade wars, cost only the consumers in the country taking the action.

Learning. Love it. Live it.

::snicker::

2003-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

MARK STEYN SAYS...

When you say as much to Euro-grandees, they say, ah, but you wouldn't understand, here on the Continent we have seen the horrors of war close up, the slaughter of the Somme casts long shadows. I'll say. In the New Statesman last week, Philip Kerr managed to yoke All Quiet On The Western Front with Joan Baez and John Lennon, and unintentionally underlined just how obsolescent the Sixties folk-protest canon is. Where Have All The Flowers Gone? would have made a great song for the First World War, but not for Afghanistan or Iraq or anything we're likely to fight in the future.

In other words, it's actually the pacifists who keep fighting the last war. Or the one before that...

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PEOPLE! GET A GRIP!

Peace on Earth
Goodwill Toward Men