Just when I was gonna write a post about what it's like to ride a bike to the grocery store and load-up (since the truck is still DOA at the shop), like it was twenty-five years ago all over again... Not!
So I get back home and I'm fixin' stuff, eggs in the egg-cooker for my wife's breakfast - and decide I need to go grab the cell-phone that I left in the backpack down in the garage. I head out the door to go downstairs - and surprise a robber on the landing.
Sheesh.
People use our pathways as a shortcut through the middle of the block and not always for innocent purposes.
I'm standing there in t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops - and pull up to a full stop.
A young guy was facing hunched away, toward my neighbor's door, and had what I immediately recognized as an Amazon dot-com box in his left hand, held down at his side. I think I must have given him quite a start. The scene looked and felt so wrong.
I said inanely, "Is there anything I can help you with?" I figured him for a kid somewhere between 18 and 20, now I think maybe younger.
Sheesh.
He said, "No I got it covered" - or something like that. He turned and I let him go ahead of me down the stairs.
Doh!
I followed since I was going that way anyhow. I kept a distance - but I wasn't even thinking about a knife. He was bulky-sized and heavy-set - about 5-10" wearing X, Y, and Z...sorta gangbanger-dressed, with a dark gray backpack. He walked slowly with a lumbering short-footed gait. Weight 190. Hispanic.
Jeeze!
Maybe he had a load in his pants, maybe it was everything he could do to keep from just bolting and running. I really wanted to see who's address was on that Amazon box, I believed it to be my slightly nerdy upstairs lady-neighbor who usually got software manuals and crap.
I let him walk ahead and after about ten paces I said in my most casual voice, "I'm just going down to my garage." And he kinda nodded Uh-huh and kept his shuffling pace.
I went straight down the driveway, flicking the garage-door opener, while he turned left and followed the path away from me. Upstairs in another Unit another neighbor lady came out.
The whole thing was surreal, each of us pretending that nothing was going on, knowing absolutely that something really was. I got the cell-phone and went across to say "Hi" to the neighbor, and pointed-out the kid out to her. His speed had shifted up a notch, heading around the corner. I walked quickly after him and paused to look in the dumpster where the empty box now lay. It stank. He was across the street and heading down to the Complex's pass-through that would take him onto Shoreline...
I went through another gate that leads around our lake to see if I could intercept - he was out of sight.
I got back upstairs and called the Cops. I didn't have the police on the cell-phone and I was reluctant to dial 9-1-1. I went back down and retrieved the empty box from the dumpster where he'd tossed it - it had an invoice for a bunch of DVD's and my downstairs neighbor's address, about $125 worth of stuff. I called again and reported that too, giving directions again.
In only a few minutes a young-ish undercover guy in a new-model SUV swooshed down the driveway, and talking into a radio asked a few question. I repeated my directions and he took off. As he was leaving, a uniformed officer walked up the path and we started the whole description thing.
While talking with him he got a call that they had a "stop," so we walked around to the other parking lot to his car and I took a ride to ID a perp. I had to gave a negative on the skinny, fuzzy-bearded, pony-tailed kid they picked up. Definitely not that one.
We'll see how it all works out. Back to reading Guns & Ammo...
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Aaargh!
Me damn Trrrruck still be in ye shop with its damned Computerrrr befouled, and there's a heap of Laundrrrry to be doin' wit' all the bedsheets to be warrshed! Avast and blow the Milk in the Frrrridge is expirrred too, so I'll have to rrrride my damn bicycle to the Safeway...
So, what kind of gun would a salty sea dog carry besides a Carrrbine? It's a lot like a cutlass, short and to the point. Maybe I can find some betterrrr magazines. The ProMag crrrap I have be sucky and each and everrrry time exhibit a last-rrrround FTF. The wee dimples on the rrrear of the magazine that catch and seat the magazine in place are noticeably smallerrrr and less prrronounced than my good-old orrriginal GI mag. Maybe I can bend the feed-lips?
So, what kind of gun would a salty sea dog carry besides a Carrrbine? It's a lot like a cutlass, short and to the point. Maybe I can find some betterrrr magazines. The ProMag crrrap I have be sucky and each and everrrry time exhibit a last-rrrround FTF. The wee dimples on the rrrear of the magazine that catch and seat the magazine in place are noticeably smallerrrr and less prrronounced than my good-old orrriginal GI mag. Maybe I can bend the feed-lips?
Monday, September 18, 2006
An unremarkable outing
I don't even know my final Match score from Saturday, and they aren't posted to the website yet. Offhand and the rapids went by before I settled down to slow-prone.
I totally threw one away into the dirt, besides that Six. Damn.
(FIL care redacted)
Meanwhile my own Dad turned 82 on Saturday. I have a couple small presents and we'll have a get together dinner when my brother and his wife (and kid) come down on the 30th. The 30th is the day of the 2nd Mike Campbell Memorial Carbine Match. Gotta give the NPM a function checkout.
I totally threw one away into the dirt, besides that Six. Damn.
(FIL care redacted)
Meanwhile my own Dad turned 82 on Saturday. I have a couple small presents and we'll have a get together dinner when my brother and his wife (and kid) come down on the 30th. The 30th is the day of the 2nd Mike Campbell Memorial Carbine Match. Gotta give the NPM a function checkout.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Forty-Six Point Three 'Aitch Forty-Eight Ninety-Five
I went up point-three grains on the load. Why? I dunno, because that was the listed load in the Sierra Manual for H-4895? 46-grains works fine, it doesn't have to push the speed envelope. I just thought I'd make a small change.
It's partially overcast and cool today. Some weather is pushing in from the Pacific and South from Alaska. In the morning you can feel that Fall is in the air. Damn, I want to go to my happy-place where the fishies and turtles play.
Book Meme Expanded
Credit to blogger AnalogKid at Random Nuclear Strikes for getting me to dig back in old fields gone fallow, more easily done since the ground was disked-up by the MemeTractor of Fathairybastard. At any rate an easy post since I'm already reaching from the comments section.
As a kid overseas and unable to speak much of the local language I sought refuge in reading. I read old books that were on the old bookshelves, old Reader's Digest condensed books (including Michener's West Wind to Hawaii - that was some pretty racy stuff!), and swaths of an old Encyclopedia Britannica too. I remember a very old British-Era Missionary book with some grim photos from an old but not-so-much bygone era. One picture-caption read something like, "Tribal man standing by the roadway, holding the decapitated head of his wife's lover who he caught together, On his way to see the District Magistrate". Good luck buddy, you're gonna need it. I'd pull out a random volume of the Encyclopedia onto the cool, dark-tile floor, and flip through it reading whatever struck my 9-, 10-, and 11-year old fancy. I read about Richard Wagner and opera because of the creepy ghost-ship illustration for The Flying Dutchman. I read about the machines of the world. Following tiny arrows in detailed fold-out diagrams in the Encyclopedia, I learned how a gas-operated machine gun worked, the means and mechanisms of submarine buoyancy, and how an aircraft flew. Maybe that's why I needed glasses by 5th grade - tiny arrows and words, in tiny little diagrams and illustrations. I was totally enamored with WWI aircraft and the exploits of the pilots, from Americans Frank Luke to Eddie Rickenbacker, French Ace Charles Nungasser and of course the Germans; the Red Baron Von Richtofen, and Max Immelmann. My brother and I built tissue-paper covered airplane models and flew (crashed) them off the 2nd floor veranda of our house, onto the cow-patty covered playing-field.
When we returned to the US from overseas I read a lot of science-fiction, in fact almost the entire stack at the library over a five-year period. I didn't read Ayan Rand though, who I thought was tedious and lecturing, her characters stilted and mannered. I preferred P.G. Woodhouse and British writers for that society stuff. (Like they weren't stilted either?) I read fantasy and adventure to take me elsewhere, not social-criticism that left me wallowing in realty. But I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and was much impressed my the machineries of madness and jail. From The Hobbit to Heinlein - when Stranger in a Strange Land got me close to some sympathetic high-school girls I realized that "book learning" could serve an ulterior purpose. Heinlein's archives are at my alma-mater U.C. Santa Cruz where I was pretty much a hippie - or so I thought. I had long hair anyhow.
For some reason I didn't actually fit in very well there, despite every effort and Hippie-habitue experience attempted. Not-Fitting-In was a feeling I had experienced much of my life, when I chose to dwell on it. It was something I had always attributed to life overseas, to lacking some shared, common-ground experiences - a lost piece of the socio-cultural puzzle. As far as politics I never strayed much beyond the Liberal Garden of Notions (certainly not far enough to doubt it anyhow); that conservatives were uptight and constipated, that they hated other races and were mean-spirited, that guns were psycho-sexual and secretly dangerous and contained the seeds of self-destruction, that all they cared about was Money. The Usual, and all of it a projection. As a growed-up Liberal in a Blue-blue sea of Liberals it was all as one thing - like water to a fish. But there were times I couldn't breathe either.
I changed when I started riding motorcycles off-road and competing in Enduros. I saw how great and well-funded the Ecoweenie anti-access groups were, and how rigid, doctrinaire, and intolerant also. When I became a gun-owner all the same parallel tracks were there, only doubled. Finally while working in the publishing industry among Super-Blue Uber-Liberals (my boss' wife was a bigshot lawyer/counsel for the state Democrat Party), on 9/11 among the first things I heard from them was self-blame and the weepy lament, "What did We do to deserve this?" Maybe collectivists just can't help using the royal WE, I dunno it's a trace anyhow. My mind was racing in the turmoil of the aftermath and it was saying instead, "How could those BASTARDS do THAT to those poor people, to US!" If there is a difference in the alignment, it's in responsibility. I'm not so egotistical to think that all things come from me, or should. I think there's a lot of hubris in that way of looking, as if this instant in time is some kind of cultural pinnacle, a seat of superiority from which to look downward at every other instant and event.
I downloaded Ann Coulter's Slander to my eBook and read it on a flight to Hawaii. I recognized and questioned many of the fallacies that I had assumed to be true from my former general perspective. I realize now that I never fit-in because I wasn't like them from the beginning. The overseas experience had introduced a lot of anomalies to the Standard Set of Liberal Instruction. Through alternative but direct-experience I had validated a lot of Deviations from the Norm. I wasn't like the college friend who made a career for himself climbing up the Sierra Club corporate ladder - I saw that for what it was. Nor like the one who happily works with the Center for Biological Diversity - it was all just displacement. Various institutions and Foundations threw open the doors to Success and Wealth to naive college eco-recruits willing to climb a corporate ladder of a faintly different stripe - eco-tools on a Government grant.
So this turned into a bit of a rant, sorry.
As a kid overseas and unable to speak much of the local language I sought refuge in reading. I read old books that were on the old bookshelves, old Reader's Digest condensed books (including Michener's West Wind to Hawaii - that was some pretty racy stuff!), and swaths of an old Encyclopedia Britannica too. I remember a very old British-Era Missionary book with some grim photos from an old but not-so-much bygone era. One picture-caption read something like, "Tribal man standing by the roadway, holding the decapitated head of his wife's lover who he caught together, On his way to see the District Magistrate". Good luck buddy, you're gonna need it. I'd pull out a random volume of the Encyclopedia onto the cool, dark-tile floor, and flip through it reading whatever struck my 9-, 10-, and 11-year old fancy. I read about Richard Wagner and opera because of the creepy ghost-ship illustration for The Flying Dutchman. I read about the machines of the world. Following tiny arrows in detailed fold-out diagrams in the Encyclopedia, I learned how a gas-operated machine gun worked, the means and mechanisms of submarine buoyancy, and how an aircraft flew. Maybe that's why I needed glasses by 5th grade - tiny arrows and words, in tiny little diagrams and illustrations. I was totally enamored with WWI aircraft and the exploits of the pilots, from Americans Frank Luke to Eddie Rickenbacker, French Ace Charles Nungasser and of course the Germans; the Red Baron Von Richtofen, and Max Immelmann. My brother and I built tissue-paper covered airplane models and flew (crashed) them off the 2nd floor veranda of our house, onto the cow-patty covered playing-field.
When we returned to the US from overseas I read a lot of science-fiction, in fact almost the entire stack at the library over a five-year period. I didn't read Ayan Rand though, who I thought was tedious and lecturing, her characters stilted and mannered. I preferred P.G. Woodhouse and British writers for that society stuff. (Like they weren't stilted either?) I read fantasy and adventure to take me elsewhere, not social-criticism that left me wallowing in realty. But I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and was much impressed my the machineries of madness and jail. From The Hobbit to Heinlein - when Stranger in a Strange Land got me close to some sympathetic high-school girls I realized that "book learning" could serve an ulterior purpose. Heinlein's archives are at my alma-mater U.C. Santa Cruz where I was pretty much a hippie - or so I thought. I had long hair anyhow.
For some reason I didn't actually fit in very well there, despite every effort and Hippie-habitue experience attempted. Not-Fitting-In was a feeling I had experienced much of my life, when I chose to dwell on it. It was something I had always attributed to life overseas, to lacking some shared, common-ground experiences - a lost piece of the socio-cultural puzzle. As far as politics I never strayed much beyond the Liberal Garden of Notions (certainly not far enough to doubt it anyhow); that conservatives were uptight and constipated, that they hated other races and were mean-spirited, that guns were psycho-sexual and secretly dangerous and contained the seeds of self-destruction, that all they cared about was Money. The Usual, and all of it a projection. As a growed-up Liberal in a Blue-blue sea of Liberals it was all as one thing - like water to a fish. But there were times I couldn't breathe either.
I changed when I started riding motorcycles off-road and competing in Enduros. I saw how great and well-funded the Ecoweenie anti-access groups were, and how rigid, doctrinaire, and intolerant also. When I became a gun-owner all the same parallel tracks were there, only doubled. Finally while working in the publishing industry among Super-Blue Uber-Liberals (my boss' wife was a bigshot lawyer/counsel for the state Democrat Party), on 9/11 among the first things I heard from them was self-blame and the weepy lament, "What did We do to deserve this?" Maybe collectivists just can't help using the royal WE, I dunno it's a trace anyhow. My mind was racing in the turmoil of the aftermath and it was saying instead, "How could those BASTARDS do THAT to those poor people, to US!" If there is a difference in the alignment, it's in responsibility. I'm not so egotistical to think that all things come from me, or should. I think there's a lot of hubris in that way of looking, as if this instant in time is some kind of cultural pinnacle, a seat of superiority from which to look downward at every other instant and event.
I downloaded Ann Coulter's Slander to my eBook and read it on a flight to Hawaii. I recognized and questioned many of the fallacies that I had assumed to be true from my former general perspective. I realize now that I never fit-in because I wasn't like them from the beginning. The overseas experience had introduced a lot of anomalies to the Standard Set of Liberal Instruction. Through alternative but direct-experience I had validated a lot of Deviations from the Norm. I wasn't like the college friend who made a career for himself climbing up the Sierra Club corporate ladder - I saw that for what it was. Nor like the one who happily works with the Center for Biological Diversity - it was all just displacement. Various institutions and Foundations threw open the doors to Success and Wealth to naive college eco-recruits willing to climb a corporate ladder of a faintly different stripe - eco-tools on a Government grant.
So this turned into a bit of a rant, sorry.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
House mouse
Hogue rosewood grips sure make a handfull better. The old 158-grain "FBI load" mixed with hydra shoks may not be the best idea for long-range accuracy, but we don't have a long range to deal with indoors. The 1968 Model 10-8 is a little-used Cop turn-in and the newest thing I have in my non-collection.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Remember Norma Lang Steuerle
Norma Lang Steuerle (5/1/47 - 9/11/01) - of Alexandria Virginia was a clinical psychologist who worked with women and children with depression and AD/HD, and with their families. She was on board American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington to Los Angeles, that was seized by terrorists and flown into the Pentagon killing the 64 crew and passengers on the airplane, and many-many more in the Pentagon.
Norma was on the first leg of a trip to meet her 28-year-old daughter Kristin, a Navy doctor in Okinawa, and then to meet up with her husband Gene and travel to Thailand, where together they all planned to celebrate Gene and Norma's 31st wedding anniversary.
She is survived by her husband Gene and daughters Lynne and Kristin, here is her eulogy.
Described as a gifted and no-nonsense psychologist, with a take-charge attitude and an ability to make others feel comfortable, she is said to have had a unique ability to connect with her clients on a fundamental level.
Outside work she was known for her energy and zest for life, and sense of humor. She relished driving her Mazda Miata with the top down, spending time at the beach, traveling, going out to eat, reading, decorating her house, and browsing in stores. Norma is also remembered for her involvement in the activities of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, which reinforced her spiritual longing for and deep feelings about the "dignity and value of each person."
September 11th, 2001 was a Tuesday.
There are many confused people who live in denial of events, of the fire-blackened and blood-soaked ground. Of three buildings attacked and a large, smoking crater in a Pennsylvania field, of bodies everywhere. They babble a litany of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that streams from their disturbed and disconnected subconscious - a projection of all their confusion. They mouth conspiracies and chant the evidence of their disconnection over and over, as a magic charm to ward off the Hatred and the Evil. They regress behind the sheltering walls of their mind. They are the Villagers of September 10th Past.
Like the villagers of Old Transylvania they know Evil's name and are afraid to invoke it. Unwilling to speak it, their fear drives them to appease it. In the labyrinth of their confusion they believe they can make diplomacy with the Minotaur. Hoping to slake its thirst they are prepared to send ten, twenty, or forty virgins to the lip of the volcano, to the feast of blood.
In the quicksand of their unsteady emotions, they give up who they are. Their own identity is a target, they fear who they are and that which might identify them. Point away, point away from the All-Seeing eye of the Monster! Put down the sword, and hide the flag! Crouch in the corner of the wall, hands over eyes, and speak only in whispers. Repeat the Magical chant with mystical fervor. With protest signs like a string of Garlic, the Villagers clamor for shelter beneath the castle-walls of the Evil itself. A shelter that will not stand.
The Hatred carefully, casually, and lustily destroyed the lives of over two thousand small people who were simply going about their business.
And after the killing The Hatred danced upon its millipede feat in the foul streets of its diseased home, and called shrill cries of gloating from it's hundred Hydra-heads, as thousands perished in flames, in explosion, in falling, and in smokey rubble.
The Appeasment Villagers of September 10th plead, "Do not harm us! We are like you! Take this gift." and offer up the key to the town and all their virgins. The Evil will take their gift and laugh as they give up the lives of others, while it remains at the banquet of blood, hungry for more.
This is "Fear Itself" that is to be feared: the blindly confused struck dumb with terror and stupidly running towards the compelling voice, the mouth that feeds, the Deceiver who will feed on them.
Like the villagers of Old Transylvania they know Evil's name and are afraid to invoke it. Unwilling to speak it, their fear drives them to appease it. In the labyrinth of their confusion they believe they can make diplomacy with the Minotaur. Hoping to slake its thirst they are prepared to send ten, twenty, or forty virgins to the lip of the volcano, to the feast of blood.
In the quicksand of their unsteady emotions, they give up who they are. Their own identity is a target, they fear who they are and that which might identify them. Point away, point away from the All-Seeing eye of the Monster! Put down the sword, and hide the flag! Crouch in the corner of the wall, hands over eyes, and speak only in whispers. Repeat the Magical chant with mystical fervor. With protest signs like a string of Garlic, the Villagers clamor for shelter beneath the castle-walls of the Evil itself. A shelter that will not stand.
The Hatred carefully, casually, and lustily destroyed the lives of over two thousand small people who were simply going about their business.
And after the killing The Hatred danced upon its millipede feat in the foul streets of its diseased home, and called shrill cries of gloating from it's hundred Hydra-heads, as thousands perished in flames, in explosion, in falling, and in smokey rubble.
The Appeasment Villagers of September 10th plead, "Do not harm us! We are like you! Take this gift." and offer up the key to the town and all their virgins. The Evil will take their gift and laugh as they give up the lives of others, while it remains at the banquet of blood, hungry for more.
This is "Fear Itself" that is to be feared: the blindly confused struck dumb with terror and stupidly running towards the compelling voice, the mouth that feeds, the Deceiver who will feed on them.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Anti McCain-Frankenfeingold - it's Free Speech!
Free Speech! And Dissent, the sincerest most semi-Jeffersonian American Patriotistical form of Action!
Anybody want a crack at breaking the McCainFeingold beaverdam? This is a free-speech blog. Any organization* that wants to run a political ad criticizing any politician can do so here.
I don't run ads, but maybe I'll start running ads to see if there's any money in it.
* The organization must pass the Anthroblogogy semi-Sanity Test, i.e., no NAMBLA, Peta, GreenPeace, Homeopaths, or other weirdo fruitcake extremists. :-)
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Memesmacked
Crap, I got tagged by the Memefairy - or I should say Memefathairy. This is a first, fortunately I can deal with it. I think. Oh God, it's about books - I used to read books like a fiend, a madman.
When we returned from overseas in '69 and I was a strange little boy in Grade-School, I read instead of attempting to (re)adjust. My best-friend was with the In-Crowd and I was not, so I read. By the time I left to go overseas again and finish High School, I had read through our Public Library's stack of Science Fiction.
Asimov, Bradbury, Blish, Heinlein, Laumer, Silverberg - the usual stuff and the early stuff too, like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. But before that I awoke one day to the realization that outside it was sunny and warm and I needed to do something else.
Since my memory wanders and the most recent things pop-up out of the landscape first, this is a random and recent list.
1. A book I've read more than once? - That's tough because I seldom re-read stuff, but just recently I was sentimentalizing after re-arranging and getting rid of old crap on my bookshelf, and after a conversation of sorts with Bob, and I went back and re-read Jim Corbett's The Man-Eaters of Kumaon, and My India. Thinking back a loooong time ago I did read and re-read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, because you really had to read it more than once in order to get all the stuff going-on in it. It was practically required hipster reading in College, but getting through the first chapter was a bitch.
2. What book would I want on a Desert Island? - That's a good one, recalls to me that Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, so I think I'd need a simple book for the stupid, and study astral navigation - to figure out where the hell I was and then how to navigate off.
3. A book that made me laugh? - There's some hilarious stuff in Gravity's Rainbow, and in Ann Coulter's How to Talk to a Liberal. I haven't laughed out loud lately I guess.
4. A book that made me cry? - Seems to me that Biography has more in it that tugs the heartstrings than Fiction, Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest has some pieces that are truly touching, and My India did too.
5. A book I wish I'd written? - I dunno, I had always wanted to be a writer up to a time, probably just because I read so much it seemed likely and possible, but that desire has vanished. Possibly whatever academic dribble my thesis might have expanded into, had I gone onto get a PhD.
6. A book I wish had never been written? - One of those hate-filled screeds of classic phony-literature like "The Protocols." And those moronic social-simpleton screeds that bent people out of shape and fixated them on complete Utopian illogic, all that pseudo-economic Communist garbage like "Kapital" written by an economic illiterate, and the cousin to which is another idiot's "Kampf" and yet another idiot's "Motorcycle Diary." And anything by Al Gore.
7. A book I'm currently reading? - Probably the most visited book at this moment is the 5th Edition of The Sierra Rifle & Handgun Reloading Data. But the most significant that I just finished was Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.
8. A book I've meant to read? I've heard Trekka Round the World by John Guzzwell is a good sailing story, and One Ranger: A Memoir by H. Joaquin Jackson, and the book about clockmaker John Harrison, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, and Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride...
9. A book that changed my life? Each one does in their own way, that's a terrible cop-out but I have felt remote from the sensation of movement suggested by the question, and nothing particular pops out of the landscape even while the landscape is littered with mountains of books. All the Dashiell Hammet stories and books, and the splurge of Raymond Chandler followed by MacDonald and the pulps. All the spies and intrigue of Ian Fleming and Len Deighton, the Le Carre and Eric Ambler. The hilarious-sexy Flashman stories of George MacDonald Fraser, and the real colonialist Kipling and the dark Conrad -- all that time spent engrossed in words that moved like pictures and lit up the synapses, it must count for something.
I don't know who to tag, tag yourself if you like.
When we returned from overseas in '69 and I was a strange little boy in Grade-School, I read instead of attempting to (re)adjust. My best-friend was with the In-Crowd and I was not, so I read. By the time I left to go overseas again and finish High School, I had read through our Public Library's stack of Science Fiction.
Asimov, Bradbury, Blish, Heinlein, Laumer, Silverberg - the usual stuff and the early stuff too, like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. But before that I awoke one day to the realization that outside it was sunny and warm and I needed to do something else.
Since my memory wanders and the most recent things pop-up out of the landscape first, this is a random and recent list.
1. A book I've read more than once? - That's tough because I seldom re-read stuff, but just recently I was sentimentalizing after re-arranging and getting rid of old crap on my bookshelf, and after a conversation of sorts with Bob, and I went back and re-read Jim Corbett's The Man-Eaters of Kumaon, and My India. Thinking back a loooong time ago I did read and re-read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, because you really had to read it more than once in order to get all the stuff going-on in it. It was practically required hipster reading in College, but getting through the first chapter was a bitch.
2. What book would I want on a Desert Island? - That's a good one, recalls to me that Tom Hanks movie Cast Away, so I think I'd need a simple book for the stupid, and study astral navigation - to figure out where the hell I was and then how to navigate off.
3. A book that made me laugh? - There's some hilarious stuff in Gravity's Rainbow, and in Ann Coulter's How to Talk to a Liberal. I haven't laughed out loud lately I guess.
4. A book that made me cry? - Seems to me that Biography has more in it that tugs the heartstrings than Fiction, Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest has some pieces that are truly touching, and My India did too.
5. A book I wish I'd written? - I dunno, I had always wanted to be a writer up to a time, probably just because I read so much it seemed likely and possible, but that desire has vanished. Possibly whatever academic dribble my thesis might have expanded into, had I gone onto get a PhD.
6. A book I wish had never been written? - One of those hate-filled screeds of classic phony-literature like "The Protocols." And those moronic social-simpleton screeds that bent people out of shape and fixated them on complete Utopian illogic, all that pseudo-economic Communist garbage like "Kapital" written by an economic illiterate, and the cousin to which is another idiot's "Kampf" and yet another idiot's "Motorcycle Diary." And anything by Al Gore.
7. A book I'm currently reading? - Probably the most visited book at this moment is the 5th Edition of The Sierra Rifle & Handgun Reloading Data. But the most significant that I just finished was Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.
8. A book I've meant to read? I've heard Trekka Round the World by John Guzzwell is a good sailing story, and One Ranger: A Memoir by H. Joaquin Jackson, and the book about clockmaker John Harrison, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, and Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride...
9. A book that changed my life? Each one does in their own way, that's a terrible cop-out but I have felt remote from the sensation of movement suggested by the question, and nothing particular pops out of the landscape even while the landscape is littered with mountains of books. All the Dashiell Hammet stories and books, and the splurge of Raymond Chandler followed by MacDonald and the pulps. All the spies and intrigue of Ian Fleming and Len Deighton, the Le Carre and Eric Ambler. The hilarious-sexy Flashman stories of George MacDonald Fraser, and the real colonialist Kipling and the dark Conrad -- all that time spent engrossed in words that moved like pictures and lit up the synapses, it must count for something.
I don't know who to tag, tag yourself if you like.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Convaslescence III
My truck died at In'N'Out Burger on Friday, on our way down to see The Old Man at the Skilled Nursing facility (SNF). He hates the place and it makes him more depressed and inactive, but it appears they've dropped the dosage on the Zombie Juice Cocktail they were administering to control him. Some wins, some losses.
With the truck dead in the lot I called a buddy who works in town on my cheapass TracFone - but he was at work by motorcycle. He called back to say he borrowed a car from a co-worker, and got us back to home and the other vehicle. In the meantime I called my tow-guys to tell 'em to put the F-150 on the hook and take it to my repair guys. Don't know what's up with the truck, the starter was spinning and it tries to catch but just wouldn't - maybe the EFI is dorked.
When we finally got down there The Old Man was in a complete state, after being bullied by nurses who tried to shave him three times that morning with the crappy electric triple-header - WTF? Assholes. We couldn't even get him out for ice-cream, upset and demoralized as he was. So instead we visited a while and calmed him down, reading stuff from the Bible, book of John that he enjoyed hearing. He likes when I say stupid crap like, "Jesus went throughout the land healing people, in a Red Corvette." He knows when I insert stuff just to liven' him up. We left the wardrobe improvements that I'd bought: fresh khaki stain-resistant pants, and some new shirts.
Came back on Sunday with new shoes too, and had much better luck. With the great assistance of his former care-giver, we got him over to visit the facility where we're trying to get him moved. Dressed-up he looked sharp and presented well. He knew where he was going and enjoyed the visit, including the ice-cream afterwards.
Thank you all for your kind well-wishes, prayers, and support. God bless.
No shootin' this weekend.
With the truck dead in the lot I called a buddy who works in town on my cheapass TracFone - but he was at work by motorcycle. He called back to say he borrowed a car from a co-worker, and got us back to home and the other vehicle. In the meantime I called my tow-guys to tell 'em to put the F-150 on the hook and take it to my repair guys. Don't know what's up with the truck, the starter was spinning and it tries to catch but just wouldn't - maybe the EFI is dorked.
When we finally got down there The Old Man was in a complete state, after being bullied by nurses who tried to shave him three times that morning with the crappy electric triple-header - WTF? Assholes. We couldn't even get him out for ice-cream, upset and demoralized as he was. So instead we visited a while and calmed him down, reading stuff from the Bible, book of John that he enjoyed hearing. He likes when I say stupid crap like, "Jesus went throughout the land healing people, in a Red Corvette." He knows when I insert stuff just to liven' him up. We left the wardrobe improvements that I'd bought: fresh khaki stain-resistant pants, and some new shirts.
Came back on Sunday with new shoes too, and had much better luck. With the great assistance of his former care-giver, we got him over to visit the facility where we're trying to get him moved. Dressed-up he looked sharp and presented well. He knew where he was going and enjoyed the visit, including the ice-cream afterwards.
Thank you all for your kind well-wishes, prayers, and support. God bless.
No shootin' this weekend.
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