Disbelief, On A Meat Hook

Dammit!

I'd picked up a copy (ebook) of James Ellroy's American Tabloid based on a review and it has been pretty much as-promised, a sleazboid angle on events of the late 50s/early 60s, replete with Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, various Kennedys, Cuba, the Mob and bad cops of every sort. And the cast goes morally downhill from there, with a plot of wheels-in-wheels-in-dead bodies left in ditches....

But every so often, he gets something wrong -- a little wrong at first, room-bugging tech poorly described and obviously not understood, and then I flipped the page and a rogue FBI agent, off to shoot porn movies in Mexico with Jack Ruby (yes, the book is just that cat-litter gritty) snaps an (innocent, for once) picture with a Polaroid and the snapshot whirrs out--

No it didn't! BLAST YOU, ELLROY! You just stuck an SX-70 from 1972 into a guy's hands in 1959 -- and 13 years might look small from where you're sitting, but it's a huge leap from "set the iris, snap the shutter, pull the tab, wave the film around a little, pull out the fixing-compound sponge and coat the shot, then stick it to a pasteboard backing so it won't curl" to "just push a button and, hey-presto! out pops the snapshot," and that's the difference between a 1959 Polaroid Land Camera and an SX-70.

That dull thud? That was my disbelief, padded cuffs broken, dropping right onto the unpadded floor. Sheesh. It's not like five minutes of research could've told him when and how when it came to instant cameras? I'm almost afraid to finish the book. What's next, Bobby Kennedy with touch-tone phones in his office? (Dial, by the time he was Attorney General, FWIW, with something weird for the secure line(s); it's not like there aren't documentaries showing the office, phone bank, desk, stuffed tiger under a wall-hanger rifle and all.)

I need to write more. While "pulp hack" is kind of a high goal for me, at least I try to look stuff up; SF involves a lot of making things up but I work to riff from reality -- and avoid jarring anachronism.

Breakfast: Hot Scrambled...Salad?

Not quite, though I'm skating on the edge:

• Bacon, fried and set aside to drain and ponder its inevitable fate
  
• "Caribbean Style" rice with red beans, nuked and fried in the bacon fat with:
  
• a Leek
  
• Carrots, a couple
  
• Celery, 3 stalks (half with the preceding ingredients, half later)
  
• Hot pickled cherry peppers, 2, diced fine
  
• Radishes, 2, one diced and the other halved, sliced thin, and set back for garnish
  
• Get all the above cooked 'til the veggies are "bright," then push it to the sides of the wok and add some chopped cabbage (half a cup or a bit more; I used leftover coleslaw mix, with both green and purple cabbage) that has been very lightly sprinkled with good vinegar
• Plus the remaining celery (less a taste!); saute lightly (the purple cabbage starts to fade) and add
• One-quarter of a large, red sweet or bell pepper, diced. (Set another quarter back for garnish and save the remaining half for later) Stir it in and push to the sides of the wok. Eggs are next; if it looks like you'll need to add some fat or oil to keep them from sticking, do so.
• Scramble two eggs in the center
• When the eggs are done, turn the fire off and crumble the bacon in
• Add a good cheese -- I shaved corners from the remainder of the Provolone Picante.
• Mix well, garnish with radish and/or red pepper to taste, and enjoy!

Tam put Sriracha sauce on hers; I added a nice big dollop of pesto, instead. Either way, it's good! And good for you, too. --I suppose we could've had a V8, instead, but hey, it's the weekend.

Archer

Archer, the TV series. The recent, animated TV series. Yep, a cartoon; but you probably don't want the kids watching it until they're 21. Or 35. Maybe 42?

Tam got pointed at it and asked me last night to, "See if it's on that Rock On -- that Widgidoo? The purple thing next to the big TeeWee?"

"The Roku?"*

"Whatever."

Of course it is, and popularly priced,* to boot. I bought the first episode just to check it out, and watching it, we laughed until our eyes watered. I bought the whole first season and we kept watching (each episode is an action-packed twenty minutes long), giggling, guffawing and sometimes having to backtrack to catch a missed line or punchline. ("Oh, we'll watch just one more." Five episodes later...!)

It's a spy spoof to end all spy spoofs. The weaponry is authentic ("Hey, that's a Deagle! Hey, who uses a Broomhandle Mauser for an assassination?" And so on) and even -- sometimes! -- runs out of bullets. The people are a bit larger-than-authentic, but the office dynamics will be only too familiar. Out of the office -- you've seen a Bond film or two, haven't you? Like that, only better. And animated. --Oh, and with Jeff Cooper's attitude towards the .25 ACP.

Archer. Even IMDB likes it. VFTP-recommended, TAORX-approved!
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* Best of all, if you go to Tam's Amazon link to buy it, her next rent check probably won't bounce! And then I can buy the really good coffee and drink it until my eyes start buzzin'. Real loud. Oooooo! Yeah.

"Occupy Site R?"

Hey, looky: the White House has moved the G8 summit from Chicago to Camp David! As Wikipedia so drily puts it: "President Obama denied that the decision was motivated by demonstrations. [...] The new location will be inaccessible to the public."

NATO's still gathering in the City With Broad Gun Laws; I guess Generals are held to be better able to deal with rock-throwing, window-smashing peaceniks than economists and either way, we can probably count on seeing the worst of Chicago's Finest if things heat up. In some minds, it's '68 forever on both sides, oi!

Seen At Breakfast

So, I'm at the computer, enjoying a nice breakfast of corned beef hash with a chives-and-sharp-Provolone omelet (really good, especially together), chasing Tam's cat, Random Numbers, off the desk about once every two minutes, when, all of a sudden, thump! Huck the giant tomcat appears on the desk and moves rapidly to a place of refuge behind the monitor, over which he ponders my plate and the rapidly-diminishing comestibles upon it--

--Just as Rannie leaps up and says A Very Bad Word, turning so she can A) Keep an eye on The Boy and B) Stay within grab-and-go range of my plate. But it's a cat standoff; she doesn't dare try for a stolen snack because she'll have to turn her back on Huck to go for it.

Across the room, Tam turns to see what her cat is cussing about. So I ask, "Hey, will you come sit on my desk, too? Might as well go for a clean sweep!"

The only thing better (worse) is the Smallest Room, about walk-in closet size, if that -- one of us in the shower, one us at the mirror, Huck hiding between the shower curtains waiting to attack and Rannie eeling about underfoot. I'm starting to get the least inkling of how a submariner feels.

Bird Or Flower?

...Sometimes there might be some confusion
Despite Bob Wood's examples in profusion:

"How To Tell The Birds From The Flowers"

(First published in 1917, preceding The Snouters by no few decades.)

Yes, Robert W. Wood invented blacklight; how ever did you guess?

(This very cute book had a hard-fought argument as a backdrop, with figures including Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London duking it out, pen-to-pen and typewriter-to-typewriter.)

B-P: "Be Prepared!"

A nice link from Barron Barnett led me to this quote:

Then my idea that Scouting could be educative was strengthened also, through the following incident. General Lord Allenby was riding to his house after a field day when his little son shouted to him, "Father, I have shot you, you are not half a Scout. A Scout looks upward as well as around him - you never saw me." There was the boy, sitting up in a tree overhead; but far above him, near the top of the tree, was his new governess. " What on earth are you doing up there?" cried the General. "Oh, I am teaching him Scouting," she said. She had been trained at Miss Charlotte Mason's Collage for Teachers, and they had been using my book, Aids to Scouting, written for soldiers, as a textbook in the art of educating children.

That's Baden-Powell and he's speaking, in 1937, of events along about the turn of the century -- the 19th, that is, as it turned into the 20th. He's speaking to the origins of Scouting, and the appeal of being able to stand on your own two feet. RTWT.

(Great Moments in Scouting, 1909 edition: "...among the boys as they marched past, we found some groups of girls in Scout hats with staves and lanyards and haversacks, like the boys. 'Who are you?' we said. 'Oh, we are the Girl Scouts.' 'The devil you are!' 'No - Girl Scouts.'" Heh! See there, fellers?)

You can bet there are Scouts helping out in Southern Indiana and the other storm-struck areas right now. And you can learn a lot from 'em.

If You Are Reading This...

...It means the power grid and communications infrastructure was not wiped out by a magnetic storm resulting from a huge solar flare on 6 March, huzzah! --It also means if you live very far North, you should hie yourself outdoors right now, as there's liable to be a wondrous aurora.

The flare itself wasn't aimed directly at our little ball of mud, but it will pass right near, like a near-miss with birdshot. Dammit, watch where you're pointing that thing! We (probably) lucked out this time, but we have to keep on rolling those eight-sided dice -- and fate always wins in the end.

What would you do if ol' Sol put the lights out? Me, I'm fillin' up every container in the house with water. And then I'd dig a latrine. -- And fort up. Cities are not gonna be safe places, a few hours in.

Doin' The Mokita

It's not the latest dance craze; it's not a new mixed drink. Nope; it's one of them-there furrin' words* and it means, "What everyone knows but no one will mention," things like fascination of car wrecks or the person responsible for noisy/obnoxious flatulence in a large group.

Or -- what the heck -- the way Social Security went over the cliff a long time back, and is just whistling in the wind before it goes smash at the bottom. Even Huffies get it. And best of all, everyone gets to blame their most favoritest villains: the looting was done in a warm glow of bipartisanship, a little bit of a time! Of course, the real crime was fed.gov making such a promise in the first place, and the changes in both retirement age and increasing lifespan that moved it from a kind of "last man's bottle" or tontine to a generational pyramid scheme. --But hey, on the bright side, you got a nifty little blue-and-white card and an official .gov tracking number, all your very own!

Another mokita -- dig that hint of mint and alum? -- is the way "capitalism" takes the rap for cronyism and mercantilism. Alan Greenspan is still tryin' to 'splain -- and just as naturally, the lamestream media thinks the big lede is that dour Uncle Alan has opined that capitalism needs a tune-up.

We've all got our own list of unfaced truths. Now at least you know what name to file it under.
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* It's Kivila. Well, of course. Spoken on some island utopia in Papua New Guinea, no doubt far from the scourge of modern dentistry or internet access.

Combat!

The Romans knew it; William Randolph Hearst knew it and you know it, too; but few will ever come right out and say it:[CLICK TO ENHUGENATE]
There's nothing that grabs eyeballs better than a fight.

Gah.

Linguistic Patrol Once Again: Nuking Meaning

(Or whatever it was I used to call it.)

Some abuses of the language -- of plain sense -- are so egregious that, like the old firehorse responding one more time to the bell, I just gotta pull on the hip-boots, fire up the flambéthrower, get out the killing tweezers and go after them.

Such would be the case with a month-old, breathless bit of self-panicking from NDJworld: Fukishima Leaking Again.

It starts in a way that makes me itchy, "A new radioactive leak has been discovered..." Umm, how's that? The leak itself is radioactive, or is there radioactive material that is leaking? And just what is it? Steam? Water? Harsh looks? Molten lead?

Damifino and the next para. is no help; we're told Tepco "announced the radiation leak" and that it is "another radiation leak." Alpha, beta, gamma, hard X-rays, a big, glow-y dinosaur, what?

Who knows; the troubled site's previous history of "radioactive clouds" and "radioactive water" leaks is mentioned (and it's no joking matter, a massive mess), but nary a clue as to the nature of the February leak; for all the reader can tell, it could be strawberry jam.

"Reportedly, enough radiation leaked into the air to cause radiation sickness," avers the article. No! Wrong! It might be enough radioactive something, or even something radioactive enough, but radiation itself would just...radiate. Like light from a shaded lamp, or X-rays from the machine in a dentist's office, it travels in a straight line. It would hurt you only if you got in the path of the radiation, or if it was so terribly strong it was amping up the air as it passed by. (Hint: highly unlikely.) It would not be "leaking" as most of us understand leaks.

But wait! There's more! You can relax, because "...no one was exposed to the deadly toxin." Aaaaargh! No, no, nooooooooo! It's bad stuff, but not a "toxin." Toxin is a very well-defined word. Toxins are produced within living organisms. While you could argue that the Fukishima reactors have behaved with a degree of perversity somewhat akin to a living organism, they are not alive; they're lumps of metal and concrete, huge tanks and pools and, yes, leaks of water, and some of what comes out are poisons.

Is getting it right really too much to ask?

Strongman

In recent days, I've heard some folks wondering how Russians could re-elect an authoritarian like the spymaster*-turned-politician, while others nod knowingly and murmur, "Russians, what'd'ya expect?"

Would that it was that simple; would that you could point to a nation out from under Czar and Commissar within living memory and sigh that they could know no better.

They're not the only ones! Any time you've wished aloud for a U.S. President to "grow a spine and show those so-and-sos," you've been wishing for a strongman; presidential election campaigns hammer over and over how their guy is a powerful leader who would set things right at home and abroad! --Bold claim for an office that was only supposed to be implementing laws passed by Congress, doing the Head-of-State waltz with kings and autocrats and making all the day-to-day gap-filling or crisis-driven decisions needed to keep the country running.

Most people miss Daddy sometimes, but there's a whole big section of the human race that longs for an über-Daddy. A strongman. Maybe you aren't that way but your neighbor, boss or coworkers are.

And guess what? The people who look to authority by default, the ones who feel, deep in their souls, that authority is to be deferred to simply because it exists, end up running things, since they're the people who can -- and will -- jump through all the hoops, working their way through the maze. Knowing what to kiss and what to kick -- and enjoying being a part of it -- they end up in charge. (See Kevin Baker's postings anent "administrative control bias" in the media and academia for one example of what results therefrom).

Meanwhile, ol' intractable you -- and me, too -- is on the outs. Doesn't make any difference what you know or how well you do it: if you lack that essential sense that those above you must be right, just 'cos they're up there while you're down below, you're not going to find the Ladder of Success an easy climb unless you figure a way to do it solo.

And while you are at it, those around you are looking for a new Man On Horseback.

The Constitution was supposed to limit this, or at least to limit the harm it among the elected and to the electorate; but the Founders and Framers had only an inkling of the innate drives and expectations they were up against.

So Russia gets a Putin. And we get demagogues, making promises they cannot possibly deliver without a compliant Congress and malleable courts -- and most of the discussion I'm hearing and seeing isn't about what despicable nonsense that is, but only how terribly awful it would be if the wrong man got the job.

From where I'm sitting, they're all wrong.
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* An earlier version of this posting identified Putin as a former "spamaster." It was a typo. For the record -- and as spook-y as his is -- I do not think the man has been involved in spamming. Or bossing a spa.