Chronologically challenged Istanbulians and other Denton denizens

Dang it, once again I've gone and missed the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival. I probably couldn't have made it to Texas in any case, but it would have been fun to finally get a chance to hear folks like Brave Combo and Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks in the flesh. (Some video clips of the latter here, in case anyone's interested.)

Dagnabbit. I used to do this while I lived there, too: find out about it the day afterward, purely by random chance. (i.e., not by browsing yesterday's newspaper). Yesterday's news is still news to me.

Ick.

Domino's delivery man transported pizza, corpses in same car

Who is John Galt?

Brad Pitt, according to Variety. Or at any rate he's reportedly being considered for the role.

It will be entertaining to watch the Rand cultists minutely parse the movie for its faithfulness to the Objectivist gospel. Just as it will be entertaining to see if the producers retain Rand's nearly fetishistic portrayal of cigarette-smoking as a symbol of capitalism. I'm not sure how hard I want to think about how accurately it might portray the railroad industry.

I also wonder how on earth anyone expects to fit anything like the plot of Rand's doorstopper-sized tome into less than, say, a two week miniseries. A key question: will the movie contain the entire text of Galt's 90-page broadcast sermon near the end of the book?

Previous filmic versions of Rand books (i.e., The Fountainhead) have been less than satisfactory, largely (in my view) because the material had to be so compressed and rushed that it sounded like a rapid-fire series of political soundbytes.

"Opal Mehta": the plot thickens

An interesting coincidence, as reported in the NYT and elsewhere:

"The relationships between Alloy and the publishers are so intertwined that the same editor, Claudia Gabel, is thanked on the acknowledgments pages of both Ms. McCafferty's books and Ms. Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Ms. Gabel had been an editorial assistant at Crown Publishing Group, then moved to Alloy, where she helped develop the idea for Ms. Viswanathan's book...."

Ha!

As someone on Library Underground said, this video clip is "just wrong on multiple levels". But it's funny.

Note to all future candidates: if you're going to go hunting, either because you really enjoy it or because your consultant says you need the NRA vote, try not to shoot anybody. It makes it way, way too easy for the comedians.

Would you trust (fill-in-name-of-Democratic-presidential candidate) with this power?

That's a good question to ask the conservatives of your acquaintance when discussing any question of executive power or privilege. They'll be forced to either seriously consider the merits of the executive power in question, without reference to current partisanship, or admit that they want to abolish free elections and establish permanent one-party dictatorship.

When Democrats hold the White House, just flip it around and ask it to the fervent Democrats who suddenly forget that they didn't like executive power when it was in the hands of somebody else.

So. Would you trust your least-favored candidate with this power?

US steps into wiretap suit against AT&T
(Other links here, here, here, and elsewhere.)

As near as I can tell, this represents a demand that the executive branch have the power to tell courts to dismiss any and all lawsuits filed in any matter, anywhere, whenever they feel like it, whether or not the government is even a party to the lawsuit. The Bush administration asserts that it need not demonstrate why it wishes to invoke this power or provide any evidence of any national security interest, not even to the judge hearing the case.

Not surprisingly, the administration's business buddies concur in saying that lawsuits involving them should be dismissed whenever the government says so.

As First Amendment attorney Glenn Greenwald points out, the so-called "State Secrets Privilege" was created by a judge, not by the legislature or by that forgotten scrap of paper, the Constitution. And it was, as he demonstrates, created as the result of deliberate fraud on the part of the government.

Who would you trust with this power?

For those in Texas...

... it's The Last Communion, courtesy of the Wittenburg Door.

Oh, fun!

The judge in the famous lawsuit involving Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code encoded a secret message in his ruling (.pdf link). The judge apparently really got interested in the conspiratorial, hidden-secrets aspect of the case. The fact that he himself is interested in military and naval history may have been a further inspiration. (Hints here.)

Have fun. Or if you'd rather, just read the answer. Note that the ABC News aritcle linked above includes some speculations about the answer which are not necessarily correct.

I wonder if this judgment will become one of those that future law students and law librarians will be sent to look up in the hopes that its eccentricity will amuse them. (For example, this case, or the rhyming judgement against a bad driver who ran his Chevy into a tree that I had to look up in the one class I took on law librarianship. Sadly, I can't find it now. Obviously the class didn't take.)

The Day's Catch

News stories that have caught my interest today:

The bibliosphere has been all atwitter for the last few days about the 19-yr-old college student who got a half-million-dollar advance for her first novel, courtesy of a so-called "book packager", and then apparently plagiarized large chunks of another novel. Whether she or the "packager" is responsible for the mess seems to be an open question, since copyright to the book is reportedly shared between them. John Barlow discusses his experience with a "book-packaging" company which proudly boasts of perpetrating the Sweet Valley High series.

Perhaps I should be farming out my name to such book-packaging companies. At a half-million a shot, it's pretty good money for, apparently, not much work.

Pirates in Ypsi!

Pirate radio, that is. Sadly, I didn't find out about it until after they were busted by the Guardians of Clear Channel Profits... er, Guardians of the Airways.

Typical.

Yikes!

Don't get in the way of this "wheelchair"!

Another filtering squabble....

... that I didn't find out about until a month later, thanks to the vagaries of staff-periodical routing lists.

Hate speech filters in MO Libraries draw lawsuit

It's not very pleasant to defend groups like this, but free speech demands it.

I'm not sure this is a good idea

I Am Legend is reportedly being remade for the third time... with Will Smith as the vampire-hunting Robert Neville, previously played by Vincent Price and Charlton Heston. (Some discussion here.)

I suddenly have nightmare visions of the Fresh Prince exhorting a bunch of hip-hop vampires to "get jiggy wit' it." Or, almost as bad, a "cool", wisecracking action-hero version of the lonely, violently paranoid, nearly-psychopathic lone survivor depicted in Robert Matheson's classic novel. (Say what you please about Heston's politics, but his involvement in the NRA does make him more creditable as a survivalist and vampire-killer.)

I suppose one can always hope.

Late edit: Speaking of vampiric entertainment... critics seem to be unimpressed with the musical version of Lestat. I'd cut-n-paste excerpts of the Reuters article, but it's just too hard to pick and choose. Read it yourself.

Haven't they tried this before?

Doctor Who dog K-9 gets spinoff

Let's hope they do better than they did with Penland.

Thee University has announced plans to demolish the 85-year old dormitory in which Your Humble Blogger and some of his little friends, as well as many other university denizens of the male persuasion, spent their formative years. Those who are not among that select group can get a glimpse of its amenities here. (More news stories here.)

I note that a few amenities seem to have been introduced over the years since I was there. Cable TV connections and additional phone lines, for example.

Darnit, when I was a young 'un, we trekked down to the central TV room on each floor and we watched TV shows together. And we liked it! (Uphill in the snow both ways, etc., etc.)

Or at least those who managed to wrest control of the channel changer liked it. Those of us who wanted to watch something other than sports or Saturday Night Live had to resort to various underhanded strategems and bluster and persuasion. ("Hey, did you know they're also watching this up on the third floor? ANd they have pizza and popcorn?")

Many are the stories of students coming home in a ... shall we say, less than sober ... condition, and of their roommates and friends smuggling them into their rooms through the many stairwells and exterior doors that bypassed the designated nighttime door and its university-appointed guardian. (I'm sure it helped when they weren't singing tipsily at the time.)

Actually, my favorite part of Brooks Hall was the unused top story, which was accessible through one or two neglected doors. I spent quite a few sunny afternoons lazily reading and watching the campus from its dormer windows.

It won't stay dead

"Star Trek set for '08 revival", according to CNN.

The Return of the Water Hustlers

In 1960, John Graves published a book that was to become a classic work of Texana and a classic of the conservation movement. The book was Goodbye to a River, an account of his last canoe trip down a stretch of the Brazos River before it was flooded and destroyed for the benefit of faraway cities.

In 1971, he followed up by contributing a portion of a book titled The Water Hustlers, in which he and two other writers described the arrogance and corruption of various big-city water project promoters whose mode of operation was to simply ignore the rights and interests of rural landowners, farmers, and ranchers in order to concoct ever more grandiose dams and pipelines to take water away from one group and sell it to another.

Well, they're back again. To preserve the God-given right of north Dallas suburbanites to spray millions of gallons of potable water over their Day-Glo-green lawns throughout the 100-degree Texas summers, the powers-that-be in north Texas are once again demanding the power to seize land and rivers and water rights belonging to someone else, elsewhere in the state.

The latest scheme, recently approved by the legislative shills in Austin, proposes to build yet more dams, including one on the Sulfur River and one on the Neches River. All this despite the fact that public opinion in East Texas is firmly against these projects which seek to seize and destroy massive swathes of the region for the benefit of Dallas suburbanites.

Farmers, loggers, and environmentalists aren't the only ones affected.

Goodbye to a Railroad?

From Railroad Newsline:

The North Texas plan calls for about $3.3 billion to be spent on new lakes, including $2.15 billion for the 62,000-acre Marvin Nichols Reservoir on the Sulphur River and its 130-mile pipeline to North Texas. Two 32,000-acre lakes and another of about 7,500 acres would be built.

An additional 200,000 acres or more could be taken from landowners in a mitigation process that is required if prized bottomland habitat is flooded for the reservoirs. The proposed Lake Fastrill would flood four miles of the Texas State Railroad State Park and most of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed Neches River National Wildlife Refuge.

Employers and landowners said the plan would be detrimental to East Texas.

Kevin Driscoll, manager of International Paper's Texarkana Mill, which has about 860 employees and an annual payroll of about $70 million, said his mill would be hurt by the loss of water to new lakes.

Bill Ward, president of Ward Timber in Linden, said the plan would "cripple the timber industry."

Said Max Shumake, a sixth-generation Texan whose family settled the Sulphur River area in the 1840s: "I don't see the need to give up my heritage to water someone else's grass."

I'm sure those who stand to profit from such projects would tell you that it's just a happy coincidence that their shills in Austin have recently declared fiscal war on the Texas State Railroad despite its long and successful history, its prominent role in bringing movie productions to the state, and the thousands of visitors who enjoy it each weekend.

That famous Dallasite love of the free market and property rights? Well, suh, it ends where other people's property begins.

"Unit floater?"

I'm not quite sure what that is, but it sounds unappealing.

Yee-haw!

Let's saddle up, podner, and head on down t' Texas, t' see if these city slickers can start up a ranch without goin' belly-up!

Seriously... the PBS "House" programs are the only form of reality-television that I enjoy watching. Unlike most "reality" shows, they actually have some connection with reality. And I can easily picture myself in the situation of the participants. B. and other family types (if they're still reading) may remember my suggestions that we do something similar with the family's old Ozark farmstead. Just for fun.

Recent viewings : The Avengers (original series)

After hearing several participants in a fiction-magazines listserv sing the praises of Diana Rigg, I finally broke down and watched a few episodes from the first season of the old Avengers television series in which she played the sexy and, perhaps, ambiguously kinky secret agent Emma Peel.

It's enjoyable enough as a kind of lightweight cross between James Bond and a screwball romantic comedy, but even in the few episodes I watched, I couldn't help but notice a rather weird subtext. At the end of every episode, there's a brief vignette, completely unrelated to everything else, in which Emma Peel is shown, in some way, dominating her male partner, John Steed (played by the patrician Patrick McNee). In one, she's riding in a rickshaw that he's pulling down an English country lane for no apparent reason while she cries out commands in a strident voice; in another she's ordering him about while he rows a boat. It seems rather apparent that "Steed", in addition to his eminently English virtues of suave demeanor and elegant apparel, may a devotee of "the English vice".

As for me, I think I prefer my English secret agents to be a little less overtly kinky.

The doom of Europe?

Mark Steyn, of National Review, contemplates the demographic and spiritual doom of Europe.

Having duly noted the dippy newage beliefs and practices of some post-Christian "spiritual" folks in the West, Steyn notes:

I’ve been a demography bore for years now — pointing out how aging childless French, Belgian, and Dutch populations are surrendering their turf to young fecund Muslims — but, at the risk of piling too many doomsday scenarios atop one another, it’s worth noting that Islam is advancing not just by outbreeding but also by conversion....

The ... “reverts” — as Islam calls converts — are not merely the Muslim equivalents of the Richard Gere Buddhists and Tom Cruise Scientologists but the vanguard of something bigger. As English and Belgian and Scandinavian cities Islamify, their inhabitants will face a choice between living as a minority and joining the majority: Not all but many will opt for the latter. At the very minimum, Islam will meet the same test as the hippy-dippy solstice worship does in Vermont: It will seem environmentally appropriate. For many young men, it already provides the sense of identity that the vapid nullity of multiculturalism disdains to offer.

As for the gals, I was startled in successive weeks to hear from both Dutch and English acquaintances that they’ve begun going out “covered.” The Dutch lady lives in a rough part of Amsterdam and says, when you’re on the street in Islamic garb, the Muslim men smile at you respectfully instead of jeering at you as an infidel whore. The English lady lives in a swank part of London but says pretty much the same thing. Both felt there was not just a physical but a psychological security in being dressed Muslim. They’re not “reverts,” but, at least for the purposes of padding the public space, they’re passing for Muslim in public....

Will we live to see the imposition of sharia law in western Europe, either by demographically-driven popular vote or through intimidation, a la Yeats' famous poem? ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.")

Steyn goes on to suggest that Pope Benedict (the former archconservative Cardinal Ratzinger) "foresees dark days ahead and his job as being to save European Catholicism". (European Protestantism, sadly, isn't up to the challenge, in Steyn's opinion.)

Is it really so paranoid to wonder whether the growing numbers of Muslims in Europe will demand the imposition of their form of theocracy if and when they get enough political pull to do so, as suggested by Bat Ye'or in her book Eurabia?

It's a new form of the old question about whether a tolerant and free society can survive when large numbers of its inhabitants demand repression. But, perhaps, with a new urgency.

The latest FBI fishing expedition

They apparently want to rummage through the personal papers of Jack Anderson, the late investigative reporter, and grab up anything that's embarrassing to the Bush administration.... er, I mean, Classified. (Classified at the time, I wonder, or retroactively classified to hide Republican screwups?)

Read all about it here. (Or here, or here, etc.)

Many years ago, as a public school student, I wrote a paper which my grandmother (proudly?) showed to her brother, an employee of... well, I probably shouldn't name that agency. Anyway. He found it very interesting, according to a conversation we had years later. Apparently I had managed to describe things in my school paper which were officially "classified information". "The only way I could figure it," he said, "was that you probably found some of Jack Anderson's columns where he had discussed this stuff."

I wonder what they're really after.

The wonders of technology

Someone remind me. Just why, exactly, is mandatory digital TV supposed to be good for us?

Phillips patents technology to force ad viewing

Life imitates art

In Robert Grudin's academic satire, Book, there's a scene in which a fatuous professor of literary theory, one "E.F. Taupe", files a complaint that another professor's book has "intellectually raped" her by exposing her to ideas which she dislikes.

Comes now the faculty of the Mansfield campus of Ohio State University, which last month voted unanimously to investigate reference and instruction librarian Scott Savage for alleged harassment based on sexual orientation. Savage is a member of a conservative Quaker group and the author of two books about living simply and avoiding unnecessary use of technology, one of which (A Plain Life) I've read and enjoyed. It appears that he has come to a somewhat eclectic meeting of the minds with technology, on the one hand using e'mail and other electronic resources in his job, but on the other hand commuting to that job by horse-drawn buggy instead of automobile.

His crime? As a member of a campus committee tasked with recommending books for first-year students to read, he recommended four controversial books by politically conservative authors. Savage reportedly stated that other books suggested for the list reflected a liberal political bias, one that he wished to counterbalance. One of the books he suggested was The Marketing of Evil, by the editor of WorldNetDaily, a popular right-wing news webpage. It reportedly criticizes homosexuality as one of the "evils" endangering modern society.

At least one previous recommendation by Mr. Savage, Freakonomics, was turned down for not being controversial enough, not likely enough to spur debate. It's safe to say that this batch of suggestions didn't have that flaw. In response to his book suggestions, three OSU faculty members filed a complaint of harassment against Mr. Savage, claiming that his recommendation that students read these four books made them feel "unsafe" and "threatened".

Various conservative webpages and weblogs have discussed the matter over the past couple of days. For more details, see here, here, here, etc. Fiend has pointed out to me that most of the sources covering the story appear to have a conservative bias. This might be a result of conscious bias on the part of liberal commentators, but it seems more likely that it's a result of information about the situation being disseminated through conservative news alerts and advocacy groups who saw one of their own academic oxen being gored. (It appears that Mr. Savage appealed for aid to at least one such group when it became clear that he was the target of a leftist academic lynch mob.)

If liberal commentators have knowingly failed to discuss the matter, it's a black mark against them, not agasint Savage or the validity of his position. Right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who reports it.

Now as it happenes, this has lately become a moot point... at least for the present. It seems that after considering the matter, OSU officially cleared Mr. Savage of wrongdoing. The timing of this decision, though, casts some doubt on its motivation. It came one day after a conservative advocacy group went public with the story. (Note: the comments following this article make for very interesting reading, not least because they include Mr. Savage's take on the events.) Savage, and others in similar positions, can only wonder whether the university, in the absence of a glaring spotlight of politically-tinged publicity, would have simply "put him away privily". It remains to be seen whether OSU will target him for retaliation later on, when the spotlight has moved elsewhere. Especially if he does not enjoy the privilege of academic tenure.

My take: the books recommended by Savage, especially The Marketing of Evil, may be of dubious academic merit, but recommending that people read them doesn't constitute "harassment" of anybody. Especially when the express purpose of the recommendations was to spark discussion and debate, which could easily include critiquing the books' flaws and biases. The OSU faculty's treatment of Savage is embarrassingly bigoted.

Cool stuff

Librarian trading cards, via Flickr. Sadly, I am not cool enough to have a trading card.

Struwwelpeter on the web!

In the course of commenting on another blog, I noticed that Struwwelpeter, which I discussed in a previous post, is (at least partly) available on the web. Check out The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches. My favorite! (Mmm. Crispy!... )

Who is your constituent?

In a recent nationally-distributed fundraising letter, Katherine Harris, the Republican apparatchik who used her position in the government of Florida to influence the 2000 election in favor of her boss's brother, has unwittingly revealed the basic nature of today's Congress. In between sycophantic solicitations for payment, she promises that "When elected to the United States Senate, I will represent ALL conservatives." (emphasis in original.)

Now forgive me for being naive. But I was under the impression that it was the duty of Senators and Representatives to represent the residents of their designated districts. You know, the people who actually vote in the elections. Even the undecided moderates and those who are not card-carrying, blood-oath-swearing members of one's own political party. Not so, according to Harris and many other politicos. Their duty as they see it is to serve the interests of the national or extra-national interests who pay them.

In other words, Katherine Harris is more interested in supporting the interests of someone on the other side of the country who wishes to buy her vote, or to promote some kind of perceived national conservative agenda, than in the interests of mere insignificant voters in Jacksonville or Miami or Apalachicola.

The day when we actually and openly have Congresscritters openly representing partisan organizations, corporations and churches, rather than voters who inhabit actual geographic districts, may be upon us sooner than we think. But, as long as we actually go through the motions of conducting elections, the good folks in Florida still have the final say, and they may balk at the prospect of being "represented" by someone who displays such fundamental unconcern for their local interests. The Lakeland, Florida Ledger notes, in an editorial entitled Katherine Harris Should Step Aside, that "Strong as Harris remains with Florida Republicans, she is extraordinarily weak with Democratic and independent voters."

Gee. I wonder why that might be.

Recent Reads : Shared Fantasy: Role-playing games as social worlds, by Gary Alan Fine.

Pablo and I have sometimes been wont to theorize, speculate and otherwise wax garrulous on the social and psychological significance of role-playing games in the world at large and in and the lives of those who play them. Apparently we aren't the first to do so.

Way back in the ancient age of 1977-1979, Gary Alan Fine, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota, decided to observe and report on this strange subculture which had just reared its head among the wargamers and college students of the country. For approximately two years he participated in both isolated gaming sessions and extended campaigns in and around the university, and interviewed players and referees. This book, published in 1983 and reissued in paperback in 2002 by the University of Chicago Press, reports his observations and interpretations.

The first chapter is a useful short history of the development of role-playing games, concentrating on the development of Dungeons & Dragons from earlier military simulations but also touching upon other games such as Traveller, Chivalry & Sorcery, and U of Minnesota professor M.A.R. Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne. Subsequent chapters discuss the observed characteristics of players and referees, observations about their interactions both as characters (within the game) and as players (outside the game), and a more detailed examination of Barker's Tekumel, the imagined world of Empire of the Petal Throne. Since Barker's long-running game campaign set in Tekumel is something of a legend among gamers, this in itself is worth the price of the book.

I was somewhat disturbed by the outright attitudes of sadism and misogyny displayed by some player characters described by Fine in part of chapter two. However, it's consistent with what I observed among some players when I was in high school. Perhaps it's inevitable that when adolescent males are given the opportunity to vicariously act on whatever fantasy they please, fantasies of power and sex unrestrained by responsibility, morality or long-term personal involvement come to the fore. It may be that the relatively young ages of the players observed by Fine had something to do with this. (He comments at one point on the disruption wrought when the median age of a certain gaming group dropped from 20 to 15.)

Fine also describes, in later chapters, the greater degree of personal and dramatic involvement displayed by older players, especially with regard to role-playing aspects of a characters' personality which are harmful to the character's prospects of "winning", and otherwise becoming engrossed in the game world as a complex imagined secondary reality instead of "just" a game to be played for immediate entertainment or simplistic wish-fulfilment. This, again, is consistent with my own experiences. The last gaming campaign in which I was involved was in a mixed group of men and women, all of whom were in their mid to late twenties and most of whom were members of a conservative church. All of these characteristics are atypical according to Fine's observations from the groups he observed. In this long-running campaign, there was far less concentration on hack-and-slash fighting, and far more concentration on the building of long-term storylines involving personal and political relationships than in previous games I'd encountered.

I wonder if the same kind of shift has occurred on a wider scale, and if so, how it may have affected the "typical" behavior of RPG players. This assumes, of course, that there is a homogenous group of "typical" gamers to be measured, an assumption which may no longer be true as role-playing games have evolved out of their original niche among military wargamers, passed through the demimonde of bored college students' entertainment, and metastasized throughout the world of popular culture and science-fiction and fantasy fandom.

Recent Reads : Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler

Without particularly trying to, I seem to have stumbled into a rut of reading apocalyptic fiction lately. When Octavia Butler died recently, I was prompted to pick up one of her novels and read it. I had heard of her for years, but did not actually pick up one of her books until now.

As suggested above, it's apocalyptic in tone and substance, but it's a different kind of apocalypse. Each of the books I mentioned while discussing Califia's Daughters recently is based on the premise that some externally-generated catastrophe -- a nuclear war, a super-potent plague, etc. -- brought civilization crashing down.

Butler eschews such drama in favor of a much darker and more disturbing prospect. In her story, civilization is not overwhelmed by massive wars, natural disasters or fatalities, but simply withers away through lack of any organized will to sustain it. The dystopian nightmare she proposes bears some resemblance to the America being brought into being by the policies of the modern-day Republican Party and the "shrink government until it's small enough to drown in the bathtub" theories of Grover Norquist.

The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is the daughter of a preacher who has organized a group of families into a walled, protected community while all around them, public services and infrastructure have, over the years, decayed into rampant corruption and functional collapse. The ultra-rich live in their barricaded fortresses; the corporations have fortified compounds; the poor live a hardscrabble, animalistic life of violence and starvation amid acres of burned-out building shells and collapsed highways. The middle class, already reduced to living in communal groups like primitive villagers, is being, quite literally, exterminated through lack of economic opportunity on the one hand and constant violent assault by desperate thieves and deranged drug addicts on the other.

Lauren, due to the prenatal effects of an experimental drug that her mother took, is cursed with the gift of hyperempathy, the ability to literally feel others' pain. This, and the stresses of the increasingly desperate life she's forced to live, push her to develop a philosophy, or religion, upon which she hopes to found a new kind of society. Personally, I found the "Earthseed" passages in the book, which describe her poetry and philosophy, to be the least interesting and least compelling, although the inconclusive ending of the novel suggests that a community founded on these principles may be the subject of a sequel. I was fascinated by the nightmarish disintegration of society as depicted by Butler, and her characters' attempts to ward off disaster and survive. Perhaps I'm just a Philistine who prefers tales of Thrilling Adventure! to gentler philosophical explorations of more positive prospects.

Thanks, Dorothea, whoever you are.

There are days when scanning the output of the blogosphere is just an extended waste of time. Today's not one of those days, thanks to the keeper of Caveat Lector. Her description of Durufle's "Requiem" is intriguing enough to persuade me to try out a classical composer I've never heard of before, and she -- like Jessamyn over at www.librarian.net -- hits the nail on the head regarding the ALA's obscenely silly campaign to get retired librarians to work for free.

Recent Reads: The Star Woman, by H. Bedford-Jones

Pirates in Canada!

I requested this book by interlibrary loan after it was mentioned on a fiction-magazine listserv. It turns out to be a very strange but entertaining pulpish tale of an Englishman who has renounced all allegiance to king, country, and church, and sets forth into the frigid seas and untracked wilderness of northern America during the period when French, British, independent freebooters, and various warring native tribes all contended for control over its lucrative fur trade.

The first part of the book takes place along the seashore and aboard ship as our raffish hero, one Hal Crawford, proclaims his disinterest in worldly allegiances and his independence from political states:

"I have perceived the fallacy of giving allegiance to another man and fighting for him. I shall now fight for myself alone.... "

Why should I fight for money? Why should I rob and murder in order to take other men's money and goods?"...

"You are certainly mad!"

"No," said Crawford. "I am free."

Our rakish hero, having thus renounced all worldly allegiances and ambitions, comes into possession of a strange, star-shaped medallion. Hearing rumors of a mysterious "Star Woman" who lives among the Indian tribes of the western forests and is revered by them, he takes it upon himself to seek her out. His destiny, he decides in fine fey romantic style, lies "beyond the horizon," and the devil take all who stand in his way.

Affiliating himself with a piratical crew in quest of a lost Spanish treasure-galleon, he becomes embroiled in all manner of derring-do. Despite displaying great talent as a pirate, he eventually comes ashore, always striving westward toward his self-appointed destiny. Both hostile and friendly native tribes and fellow Europeans stand between him and his goal, as well as vast forests and one or two surprising strangers. Deceit, betrayal, courage, death, desperate fights and startling revelations, all for desire of the mysterious Star Woman he's never seen. It's a bit like "Captain Blood Meets Black Robe."

Great pulpy fun, although late in the narrative it becomes somewhat difficult to tell who's on which ship, who's on which side, and who's betraying whom.

Editorial note, 4/10: Thanks to fabulous Fiend for this informative brief article about H. Bedford-Jones, the "King of the Pulps". He seems to have been quite a prolific fellow.

"'Henry can't come to the phone,' his wife is said to have reported. 'He's working on a novel.'

"'I'll hold on until he's finished,' said the caller.

On religious requirements for jobs

I keep noticing job postings from religious institutions, most of which strongly suggest that applicants better be faithful and devout members of the One True Church, OR ELSE.

A question for ethical discussion: would it be unethical to pretend great enthusiasm for the Second Reformed Holy-Rollin' Double-Dipped Sanctified-in-the-Blood Church of the Whatever in order to get a full time job with a living wage?

Any halfway competent librarian can research a denomination well enough to pretend to be at least casually acquainted with its beliefs and practices. One would have to count time spent faking an interest in its worship services as simply an unpaid job requirement.

After all, the Elmer Gantries of the world do quite well for themselves. Why should I exclude myself from success and riches?

Forewarned is forearmed.

How to release a bad movie (from CNN.) Take note & act accordingly.

A rare victory for common sense

Da Vinci Code author wins battle against plagiarism claim

The Plame Game: the moment of truth

White House spokesperson, Sept. 29, 2003:
"[T]here's been no information that has been brought to our attention, beyond what we've seen in the media reports, to suggest White House involvement...."

"I've made it clear that there's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement, and that includes the Vice President's office, as well. When I'm talking about the White House, I'm talking about the Vice President's office as well....

Q: "You continue to talk about the severity of this and if anyone has any information they should go forward to the Justice Department. But can you tell us, since it's so severe, would someone or a group of persons, lose their job in the White House --

"At a minimum."

Q: "At a minimum?

"At a minimum."


George W. Bush, Sept. 30, 2003:
"I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.... [L]eaks of classified information are a bad thing."


Now that the world knows who was ultimately responsible for leaked classified information identifying a CIA operative and her network of sources, will the President keep his word?

After all, he's such a good Christian man and all....

Latest Republican political tactic:

Sending amateur thugs to disrupt dissenting political meetings and push women around.

No joke.

Reported by "Juanita", of The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon. Also picked up by DailyKos, Wonkette and others.

Let's call this what it is. They're brownshirts, a la Adolf Hitler. Amateur thugs incited to go beat up dissenters and disrupt the activities of opposing political groups. The Republican party is quite openly adopting the tactics of the Nazi Party, and Americans have no one but themselves to blame if they fail to get the hint.

It remains to be seen whether the local prosecutor will file charges and whether the police will follow through on them.

Briefly noted

Donkeys better than wives, says Indian textbook.

The Mad Bookseller opines about ABE's promotional bookmarks, and the Freeper reaction to them.

Smithsonian Institute privatizes access to its archives.

An amusing piece of experimental fiction in the form of a series of check stubs.

Another documentary I'd like to see...

... if it were available.

Pulp Fiction Art : Cheap Thrills and Painted Nightmares

On a related topic: I recently watched a documentary on Frank Frazetta, the famous/notorious creator of many pulpish book and magazine covers. I suppose it should not surprise me that a documentary of the artist's life was somewhat less thrilling than the scenes depicted in his work. The film producers, unfortunately, had chosen to use, and over-use, the rather gimmicky device of using computer imaging to 'animate' some of his works. The first time it appeared, in the form of a three-dimensionalized version of one of his Conan paintings, it was mildly startling. The second and later times were simply annoying.

Ah well. The documentary neither adds to nor subtracts from Frazetta's paintings. Like 'em or not.

01:02:03, 04/05/06

It's coming up early tomorrow morning. It will only happen once in this century. Celebrate however you please.

Fiend has pointed out to me that for those who follow the British convention of listing day/month/year rather than month/day/year, this happy occasion will not arrive until May 4th. (She also pointed out that the year is really 2006 rather than "06", but I refuse to listen to such tedious hairsplitting!)

Unfortunately, I don't think I have time to start an apocalyptic cult of people who will sign all their earthly possessions over to me in anticipation of the world ending on this momentous occasion.

Without further DeLay.

There. I said it, although I can't take credit for it.

Animal acts

Superior Township, just north of the crime-ridden little slum where I used to live, seems to have developed problems of its own.

Between the rampant theft, robbery and sexual assaults in Ypsilanti, sadists in Superior, and the various thieves and perverts who frequent the libraries, I'm becoming more and more convinced that taking the old saying about homes and castles literally may be the only way to live without being perpetually victimized. Unfortunately, people who work for their living rather than stealing it from others a la Bush, Cheney, Kenny Lay, et al, can't afford castles.

(For a sample of Ypsilanti's lovely environment, check out this fellow's resume.)

"I got a one track mind,
going down a one train line
Living on dreams half the time
Going west...."

From Fortune magazine, a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern, a regional railroad formed from routes discarded by the Chicago & North Western and other class-I mainlines, is poised to expand into the lucrative Powder River coalfield. (A map of the DM&E and its affiliated connections can be found here.)

Hm. If I had any money, and if the company were public, I might consider putting a little money into it just so I could say I owned a piece of the first major US railroad construction project in half a century. Not to mention the dicey hope of cashing in on a combination of government loans and rising fuel prices. (No one should take this as investment advice, though; I'm far too ignorant about financial matters for that.)

(Note: Yes, I stole the title of this post from Jimmie Dale Gilmore. It seemed appropriate.)

A place to visit if I'm ever in Torrance, California


Red Car Brewery. Two hobbies in one!

In case you ever wondered:

According to a recent listserv posting from one of the principals of Norstrilia Press, the correct pronunciation of Cordwainer Smith's dry, dusty planet of sick sheep and fabulously wealthy farmers is "Nor-strile-ya".

Quoth Bruce Gillespie:

The contention was that, in using the term Norstrilia, Linebarger invented 'Strine' (the language that Australians actually speak) well before Professor Afferbeck Lauder (= 'alphabetical order') published 'Let Stalk Strine' in 1966.

The other contention is that Linebarger's satire of Australia in the early sixties in Norstrilia is dead-on. Gillian Polack at last year's Continuum convention in Melbourne pointed out that Linebarger's description of Norstrilia is an exact description of Canberra as it was at the time. It is not (as I assumed) merely a generalised description of northern, outback Australia, but shows how Canberra was a national capital set up among grazing and agricultural properties.