I've recently been talking with someone about the difficulties encountered in getting published, and the possibility of publishing yourself via Print-On-Demand, ebooks, PDF's on CD, etc. Having read this person's writing, I find it inconceivable that they'd encounter any serious roadblocks in being published, especially when I think of the material available at the local Barnes&Noble.;

I'm no rabid environmentalist, but I weep for the trees when I consider the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section at Barnes&Noble.; Easily 95% of the books sitting on those shelves are garbage. I often wonder if any of those authors ever questioned whether their efforts were worthy of the vast swaths of timber hacked down to produce the pages upon which their assault on our collective taste and intelligence are printed. Think of it: Out there in the wild stands a tree, old and majestic. Its weathered bark bears stark testimony to its age and grandeur, but it's coming down so some hack in Hoboken can treat us to the 4,000th re-telling of an evil wizard and the brave wariors who battle ogres and mangled text to defeat the Dark Power. I'd wipe my ass with these books, but their pages are already soiled with excretory content laid down when the knotted bolus in the author's head finally passed into a ready receptacle.

I see the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre and I think to myself, "It obviously isn't that hard to get published." I'm tempted to hack-out a story about a man and his friggin' elf just to prove the point. All I need is a tired storyline, 800 pages of meandering, needless crap to present the illusion of depth, and a book cover with a partially-dressed elf or sorceress. Oh yeah, and a really pretentious name. The three-name format is popular these days, for reasons unknown to me. I can only guess that this convention is intended to give the appearance of weight and seriousness to what is arguably a silly, lightweight genre (nowadays, at least). I don't know if I'd use my real name, though. While my last name will get me free beer at most any tavern in northern Wisconsin, I doubt it's conducive to moving product. I think I'm better off employing my current pseudonym and publishing A Man and His Friggin' Elf as John Aloicious Stryker, but does that really sound like a guy who writes Fantasy? No, you'd look at that name and say, "This would be perfect for military sci-fi!"

The naming convention for pulp sci-fi is a little different, though. Authors tend to forego the middle name and simply supply their middle initial, or if they're feeling really important, they'll go with two initials and a last name. One of the more well-known pulp sci-fi authors is Kevin J. Anderson, who's also published as K.J. Anderson (a two-fer!). His forte is writing for established franchises, most notably Star Wars and Dune, and it's one of his Dune novels that nearly sent me over the edge.

Granted, after Children of Dune the books were soaked with Frank Herbert's ejaculate, but at least they were inventive in their strangeness and at the same time pushed the envelope of monotony to new extremes. Yet the new Dune books, most notably The Butlerian Jihad, manage to prove that you can actually write a novel worse than Chapterhouse Dune. I realized this one day as I was on my porcelain throne reading Jihad. I was about 75 pages in when it ocurred to me that I'd read this before. I removed the dust jacket to see if some wiley clerk had swapped covers with Darksaber to fool unsuspecting customers. The book's spine said Jihad, but damned if I wasn't reading the same Star Wars story Kevin J. Anderson's been writing for the past 10 years. I was so angry, I nearly issued a fatwah against Anderson from my toilet and contemplated calling for Jihad against his works after I finished dropping a deuce.

It's with all this in mind that I come back to my friend who's had so much trouble getting published. If all that collective refuse can manage to litter the shelves at Barnes&Noble;, and if shallow, derivative works of science fiction can find their way into my hands, then surely my friend can get published. I figure anyone would be jumping at the chance to actually publish something fresh and creative, but then, I'm not a publisher. If I were, the material I'd market would be worthy of the trees cut-down to produce it. In fact, I know who my first author would be, and no, it wouldn't be Johnny Stryker with his book, Captain Dakota and the Androids of Dakor 6!

Short and sweet: Don't post off-topic link comments here. By that, I mean comments that have a link which has nothing to do with the post or the conversation in the comment thread. If you want to post a link to stuff, do it at Digital Warfighter. That's what it's there for. Also, please stop emailing me links to stories. Again, post it yourself to Digital Warfighter. That's what it's there for. Finally, if you're wanting to do debate in a comments thread, and it's just you two or three left jabbering, take it to the DW Forums. That's what they're there for. In fact, if a really interesting thread develops, it'll definitely get linked to from here. Everyone wins!

Here's the reason why: I learned from my recent server move that the comments alone for this site total about 18 Megabytes in size. We had well over 30,000 before the move. If I can keep the irrelevant stuff off here, it'll help in the long run. More importantly, I'm trying to plug Digital Warfighter, and will keep doing so as long as I feel like it. I know you guys are a talkative, opinionated bunch, so go over there and produce your own content. It'll make you happy.

I was not altogether impressed with the place, upon my first visit to Texas. That first visit coincided with Air Force basic training, which meant confinement to the premises of Lackland Air Force Base, with the exception of a couple of hours, aside from the time spent coming and going. Those few hours spent, on the day that we were all released to explore the off-post fleshpots available in walking range of the USO in Downtown San Antonio, while in Class-A uniform and in pairs with another military person, was barely enough to give any sense of the place at all. In my case, being fixed up with a blind date escort in the form of a tech school student friend of the boyfriend of one of the girls from my flight turned out to be a total bust. I got to see the Alamo, and a bit of the Riverwalk, before the escort ditched me while I was in the ladies’ in Joskes’ Department Store, and I had to throw myself upon the chivalrous instincts of the first guy I saw with a military haircut, pleading with him to walk with me back to the USO where I could catch the first bus back to base. I had not been impressed, either with the blind date or the city: the Alamo was full of souvenir tat, of the “supposed to have belonged to” or “carved from a piece of” tat, and the Riverwalk--- those bits that I saw at the time--- smelt of drains, and was a dank, mostly deserted backwater. Within a week and a half of that abortive visit, I was departing Texas, early on a dark January morning in a pouring rainstorm, and didn’t return for eighteen years--- coincidentally, the first hour back at Lackland AFB caught us in another frog-strangling rainstorm; some kind of symmetry in that, I think.

It is a mythical and curious place, Texas--- and this part of it rather baffles those people who come with expectations of oil wells! And cattle herds! Tall, drawly guys in big cowboy hats, brandishing six-shooters! The belt buckle on the Bible Belt!
That last may very well be, but Texas is not anything like the Deep South. I did a TDY to Gulfport, Mississippi a couple of years ago, and the biggest grocery store in town was practically deserted at 6 PM on a weekday evening. Mississippians were lovely, cordial people, charming and mellow, and so leisurely about things I kept wanting to scream in their ears and shake their shoulders, and slap them around some, maybe they would WAKE UP! Texas hustles--- the grocery store is jam-packed at that time of day, and people walk purposefully.

There aren’t any oil wells around these parts, either--- just rolling green, hilly country that reminds my mother of Pennsylvania, dotted with tiny stone houses built by the German and Alsatian settlers. And while Texans may reverence the Alamo, high school football and the cowboy way, they remain completely irreverent about everything else. In ten years I have yet to see anyone brandish a six-shooter; it being a concealed carry state, I think most people keep them in the glovebox of their motor vehicle. Those “gimme” billed baseball caps are rather more common than cowboy hats, and the businessmen around here wear ordinary business suits--- no string ties and cowboy boots. Cattle in the streets? Well, in Fort Worth--- they have a drive there. Occasionally on the traffic reports there is a mention of a fence down along the 1604 highway, and the odd cow wandering on the roadway. I see deer much more often--- in fact, I saw one at Thousand Oaks and Nacodoches, just last week, loping across the road from the direction of the cement plant, towards the Northern Hills golf course, and the green alleys leading out to the undeveloped acres of scrub, and a neighbor of mine nailed one with a late model Nissan, just around the corner from my house a while ago. (Killed the deer, and smashed the Nissan’s fender.)
There are a couple of classical music stations here, several universities, and the symphony orchestra keeps on trying. Every city block on every major road has a place where you can get breakfast tacos, the food of the gods. The hills and the highway verges in spring are all one color with wildflowers-- vast swathes of blue and pink and yellow.

I realized what a truly civilized place this city is, when driving home one afternoon, along one of the back roads, just one lane, either way, with deep sweeps of green grass and wildflowers on either side, and suddenly there was traffic backed up in my direction. All I could see were the cars and SUVs and trucks stopping in the road, and then carefully driving into either the oncoming lane, or onto the verge. They were carefully avoiding something in the middle of the single lane, something that I could not see until the last vehicle in front of me pulled into the oncoming lane, circling… the biggest, most angry, and coiled-up rattlesnake I had ever seen, in the exact middle of the road. And everyone was driving carefully around it. Anywhere else, I swear, the first bubbah in a pick-up would have run right over it… but they are getting a little rare, you know… and everyone was driving around it.
Truly special sort of place, after all.

(But opossums and armadillos are plentiful, and they take their chances!)

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In Part One, I took a look at campaign contributions by the college set. In this installment, I'll take a gander at Software/Computer geeks. Given that this is techno-geek capital of the world, I've decided to arbitrarily provide the highlights, instead of listing about 600 people.

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The Neighbor Search utility on the web is a pretty interesting tool. I typed in my area code, and since I live in the Eastern Bay Area, I could see donations by everyone from Walnut Creek to Napa.

I tried to see if I could spot trends or pigeonhole a certain group into a specific category (ie, R or D), but other than the usual suspects, I couldn't find anything that indicated whether a certain political party had a specific demographic firmly in its pocket. The only thing I could determine for certain was that this area is heavily Democratic, but I figure I can apply my own criteria for judging who is what and extrapolating that data for my own purposes (just like the pros!). If you click below, you'll see my arbitrary findings for the first group: College Professors/Teachers.

In this edition of The News, I've asked local people for their reactions to news items I read off the computer. All last names have been witheld by request. Warning: many words used in this piece may be unsuitable for some members of the viewing audience.

From: Sgt. Mom
To: Members of the American Moslem Community
Re: Choosing Between Loyalties

1. Let me make myself perfectly clear--- I do not intend to impugn the patriotism or the loyalty of those citizens of this country who happen to be of the Moslem faith, or to encourage the assumption that origination in certain foreign countries equates to an enemy alien.

2. However, it has become abundantly clear over the previous 20 years that elements of that faith do not view America and all its’ works and all its’ ways with anything like favor. The mass-murder of 3,000 people in the streets of our own cities in a single day have made that manifest and unmistakable to all but the most deluded.

3. It is also unmistakable that those who continue to plot the continued mass-murder of the citizenry of this country and others camouflage their intentions by hiding within the community of co-religionists. It is also clear that these jihadists are funded and encouraged by substantial elements, are offered shelter when needed, justification after the fact for atrocities of every sort--- and at the very least are enabled by the larger Moslem community, out of malice, solidarity or simply indifference.

4. This continues at the peril of the entire community. When the next mass atrocity occurs, and is laid at the door of Islamic fundamentalists, it will be at the door of every Moslem, much as Pearl Harbor was laid at the door of every Japanese American, whether they sympathized with the aims of the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere or not. Those who held silent, out of community solidarity, were interned along with those who had cheered as the bombs fell. Such mass internment was not the fate of the Italian-American, or the German-American communities, although certain elements of both were quite demonstrative in their support of Mussolini and Hitler prior to 1941. Enough members of both communities, long-time residents and recent émigrés alike spoke out in condemnation, spoke loudly, repeatedly and unmistakably, making their detestation of America’s enemies clear to their fellow Americans, and their loyalties beyond any doubt.

5. These are once again extraordinary times, times when choices must be made, and made clearly. The peril is in remaining undecided, and keeping silent about where you stand, and with whom. There is no shelter in silence, people--- those who do not speak against, are in danger of being assumed to agree with the perpetrators of the next jihadist atrocity.

Sincerely
Sgt. Mom

In today's Orange County Register, entertainment reporter Andre Mouchard claims 1974 was the "worst year for popular music". He cites such Billboard #1 songs as "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks, "Hooked on a Feeling" by Blue Swede, "The Streak" by Ray Stevens, "Billy, Don't be a Hero" by Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods, "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot, "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace, "(You're) Having My Baby" by Paul Anka, "I Honestly Love You" by Olivia Newton-John, "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas, "Cat's In the Cradle" by Harry Chapin, "Angie Baby" by Helen Reddy, "Dark Lady" by Cher, and "Sunshine on My Shoulders" by John Denver.

Well, a couple of those ["(You're) Having My Baby" and "Cat's In The Cradle"] I personally like. But that's not the point; indeed, overall that is one large collection of dreck.

But I think Mouchard lacks a bit of perspective here. I think history will show that we are currently at the low ebb of popular music. At least in 1974, there was some originality, melody, and pleasant vocals. In 2004, the pop charts are little more than a collection of recordings featuring sampling, scratching, and sleaze.

Mouchard correctly identifies the chasm that existed between AM radio and FM. In the early to mid '70's, while that pap was playing on AM, guys like me were installing FM in our cars and listening to Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Yes, and ELP. But he fails to recognize the historical parallel to today.

1974 marked the swan song of Detroit. Buyers were turning their backs on domestic cars and buying Japanese imports, which - by the mid '70's - were largely equipped with AM/FM radios as standard equipment. Today, in a curious juxtaposition of 'what comes around goes around' and 'history repeats itself', FM radio has gone totally corporate, guys like me are turning to the Internet and satellite radio to sate their aural palate, and the leader in satellite radio is GM.

Update: I was looking for Rolling Stone's critically flawed list of the 50 'greatest' guitarists, for an entry on the comment thread. And I ran across this recap of their list of 50 'essential' albums from the '70's (published, 9/20/90). Interestingly, the only entries from 1974 were the totally forgetable "Radio City" by Big Star and "In Too Much Too Soon" by The New York Dolls. It's also interesting to note how '74 was like a 'fulcrum' year: the early '70's were marked by the likes of Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder, the later years by The Ramones and Blondie. :)

Andre is asking for participation to determine 'the worst year in music' I'm sure you will have to be a registered user at The Register's website to participate, but it's free. I'll post on the details when have them.

I'm still alive and kicking. I hope to get back into the blogging saddle once this latest set of "dog and pony" are over. Note the emphasis on the word hope...

Hi ya’ll sorry I’ve been so long out of touch, but things here have finally settled down to a degree, well kind of…. A good number of Marines from my unit are getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan, we also have Marines back in Iraq and a few standing by to go to Haiti, as well as support our usual operations. The upside of this is better parking at the barracks.
But especially thanks to all of you who helped out my grandparents when they lost their house in the fire, and to everyone who gave me tips for my PCS move, I was able to talk my speeding ticket in Arizona down to just a warning.