Words/Phrases you’ll start using after watching certain Sci/Fi Fantasy Shows:

BSG: Frak. Fraking, Get Fraked. Skin job. Toaster.

Firefly/Serenity: Shiny. Gorram. It’s broken…can’t be fixed. You can’t stop the signal. I aim to misbehave.

Buffy/Angel: That would be wrong. Gives me the wiggins.

Farscape: Frell, Frelling, Get Frelled.

Star Trek: Beam me up.

Those are just off the top of my head. Add any that you use or have heard used and I’ll keep building on this.

Inspired by this post over at Rachel Lucas’

More Lifted From The Comments:

Stargate SG-1: “Indeed!”

Stargate: “I have no idea.” “Unscheduled Gate activation!” “Cree!”

X-Files: “Disturbing on many levels.”

‘That Wonderful Offhand Position‘ by Kris Battles

Offhand - bleh. I was privileged to watch a master shoot in this position, once.

A Corporal in the next relay is shooting the 200 sitting.

Bang. Maggie’s drawers. Bang. High and right. Bang. Low and left.

Some grumbling heard; the rifle is messed up. Got to be.

The range OIC, a Warrant Officer 4, strolls up.

Lemme see that weapon, son.

WO 4 tips the sign to the tower. All targets down to half but his. He slips his own magazine into the weapon, tosses it to his shoulder and rips off twenty rounds, offhand - just that quick.

His target goes down and comes back up with a single spot, middle of the bull.

“Aint’ the weapon, boy, it’s the shooter.”

See more artwork at http://www.krisbattles.com/

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

On Friday night, Blondie and I daringly ventured into one of San Antonio’s most popular and certainly one of the most tasty – in the culinary sense – Fiesta events. Oh, dear, now I shall have to explain San Antonio’s yearly Fiesta to those who have not heard the legend; you may think of it as our peculiar version of Mardi Gras, but it has grown into something considerably more. My some-time employer, a San Antonio native, describes it as a city-wide, week-long block party, but it is a great deal more than that. One upon a time, in the 1890s, it started as a parade to commemorate the victory of the Battle of San Jacinto, where people rode around in carriages and threw flowers at each other. That was the humble beginning with the Battle of Flowers Parade. But everybody wanted to get into the act, and now Fiesta covers ten days, beginning to end and takes in just about every part of town and just about every socio-economic element.

There is a grand debutante coronation, where the two-dozen daughters of local elite wear gowns and trains crusted with about fifty pounds of rhinestones, sequins and metal-thread-embroidery (look, I am not making this up!), a raunchy variety show that sends up the whole concept (not making up that part, either!) , half a dozen elaborate parades – one of which is an evening torch-light parade, and anther is on flat-boats along the San Antonio River - an open-air oyster-bake on the grounds of a local private university and exhibitions, parties, open houses, athletic contests, pageants, shows and concerts all over the city, (schedule for this years’ events is here - one more day to party hearty, people!). It’s an excuse for people to dress up in strange costumes, eat, drink, party hearty and bash total strangers over the head with confetti-filled eggs. Like New Orleans Mardi Gras but on the whole, we like to think it is a bit more cooth. The crowds along the parade routes don’t yell at the girls on the floats to show their tits; they ask them to show their shoes. Under their ornate and gorgeous gowns, they are usually wearing running shoes, or crocs. One year, when rain threatened, one of the debutants was wearing swim fins, which earned her quite a lot of laugher and applause.

The culinary crown-jewel just might be NIOSA, or Night in Old San Antonio, a sprawling food-fest in La Villita, the old ‘Little Village’. It’s sponsored by the San Antonio Conservation Society and runs for four nights. My some-time employer has worked on the set-up for years, and knows practically everyone. He asked if Blondie and I would like to go, as his significant other had volunteered to dress up like a gypsy and work in the fortune-telling booth. I have to admit, Blondie was keener on this than I was. It was hot and sticky last night, thunderstorms threatened, and there would be dire traffic downtown, both coming and going. (Which there was – getting out of the parking garage afterwards was a lengthy agony; 45 minutes to get from where we parked to the exit!)

La Villita was crammed with food booths – and the extraordinary thing is, all of it was pretty good, and not that expensive, even if Some-Time Employer basically comped stuff for us, from booths where his friends and buddies were in charge. It was all organized roughly by ethnic neighborhoods; Mexican foods all clustered together, regular American (mostly barbeque of various animal parts) a hugely popular booth with egg rolls and other orientalia, a French-Cajun section offering jambalaya and delicacies like…umm, snails, and the German neighborhood, who had cannily set up inside the biggest building, the assembly hall where they could benefit from the air conditioning. (Sausages, pretzels and cream-horns, but we were all pretty filled by then). The thing about the food is that many of the food booths have been run by the same set of volunteers for years, and they have done a lot of tinkering with the recipes, besides cooking it all from scratch. (One variant of meat-onna-stick is famous locally – this is one recipe for it, but apparently the original was done with beef hearts. It’s a Peruvian specialty; one of the volunteers adapted the recipe for American palates years ago with considerable success.)

And every third or fourth booth offered soft drinks, water and tasty adult beverages - sangria, wine and beer. We even dared to try escargot; snails to you. Having had a couple of cups of beer first helped. Three dark little wads of gelatinacous phlegm drenched in melted butter and garlic, served on a slice of baguette; which only goes to prove that if you throw enough melted butter and fresh garlic on anything, you have a chance of rendering it edible. Not appetizing, but at least edible. You could have done a whole fifteen-course dinner, just walking from booth to booth, grazing; appetizers, fish course, vegetable, entrée, salad, dessert- eating out of hand as you walked.

In the German area, Blondie and I talked to a re-enactor and local history fan all dressed up like a member of the 19th century Bavarian royal regiment. Blondie refrained from asking him earnestly why he had a feather-duster stuck on top of his hat – since he did have a sword, too. I passed out my ‘books and writers’ business card to a couple of people; I mean, why turn down a chance to network. Got home at nearly midnight, in the middle of a thunderstorm, which mercifully had held off until well after NIOSA closed for the evening. Good times – and I just may do it again, but I think I’ll pass on the snails, next time.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch this program the other night. It flashed past as we were channel-flipping. Our neighbor Judy had come over for dinner (beer-can chicken with Memphis rub on the grill, if that is of any interest) and we had watched one of the Young Indiana Jones DVDs that I am reviewing. Judy said,
“Oh, I saw that in the TV guide and I thought it looked interesting – what was the story on that?”
“A very sad one,” I said and Blondie added,
“No, I don’t want to watch – it will only upset Mom.”

And she was right – it would have. Rudyard Kipling’s only son was only seventeen and as blind as a bat, quite unfit for military service. But in that surge of intense patriotism and sense of duty that attended the beginning of World War One, he asked his father to pull strings for him; and Rudyard Kipling obliged. He had friends everywhere, as one of England’s most famous writers, the poet-laureate and chronicler of all things Imperial. He wrangled a commission as a second-lieutenant in the Irish Guards for his son; John went off to France with his regiment, arriving on his eighteenth birthday. He disappeared in fearful combat sometime during the second day of the BEF’s attack on German forces at Loos six weeks later. Rudyard Kipling spend years hoping that he had survived somehow, more years searching for any witnesses to his son’s death, or clues to where his body lay… and finally worked tirelessly on various memorials to those dead in the Great War, the one that unfortunately did not end all war. A close friend of the family discovered from some surviving members of John Kipling’s unit that when last seen, he had been badly wounded, his glasses smashed and he was crying in agony; these details were kept from his parents. Other witnesses told other stories; at this late date there would be no earthly way to sort out which was the truth, or where his body was finally buried. Any time after 1919 was probably too late, anyway.

No, I didn’t much want to watch it; that kind of thing just comes too close to home. And I’ve always loved Kipling’s stories; the poems too. (I had a go at writing some Kipling-type stories myself, here and here) Loved the stories of the Jungle Book from when Mom read them to us as children. Later I thought Kim was absolutely sublime, and then I found the other India stories, the other animal stories, the stories about soldiers and travelers, ghosts and Masonic lodges, of madmen and beggars, railwaymen and elephant drivers, of colonial administrators and their desperate housewives, of schoolboys and small children sent ‘home’ for their health and continuing education. I loved the lot, and ploughed gamely through a copy of the complete collection which my high school library unaccountably had on its shelves. Lord only knows how that came about, because Kipling drifted out of fashion with the literati well before the end of his own lifetime, reaching a sort of nadir in the sixties. Imperialist, colonialist, racist, sexist – all the heavy brickbats of ‘ists’ flung his way! And he would have just as enthusiastically flung them right back, god love him – perhaps that’s why he attracted such enthusiastic animus.

But he was a story teller; I think an almost compulsive one. Everything and everybody interested him. Explaining how things worked interested him – everything from engines, to railway-bridges, to the workings of a lowly colonial district office and a pack of wolves. He also had a gift for writing dialog - not only dialect, which is not as common as you would think, but an ear for the way people speak and put their words together. I’ve always compared that to having perfect pitch. A perceptive listener can sort out all kinds of things from the way someone talks; and a good writer can put this down on paper! So many things can be given away in speech; age and education, origins and way of life. I think Kipling did this beautifully – even the animals that he gives speech to are consistent and unique; compare the Maltese Cat and his friends to the beasts in “Servants of the Queen.

And I still think this is one of the best explanations of journalism around; still relevant after all those years.

(If you’re not following American Idol, this will make no sense, carry on.)

How in the name of all that’s holy can you take on Lord Andrew Lloyd Weber and NOT do something from Jesus Christ Superstar? You’re the rock guy! “Heaven on Their Minds?” “Simon Zealotes?” “Damned for All Time?” I’d have been highly amused if you’d have tried “Herod’s Song.” Or maybeeeee, I dunno, “The Rum Tum Tugger” or “Mr. Mistofelees” from Cats? There’s at least a rock beat in those.

“Music of The Night?” Really? The Phantom? I mean you pulled it off but come ON!

Well, at least you performed a song written for a male lead. I thought Jason and David were a tad confused but tonight absolutely proved it. A man…singing “Memory?” I had to listen to the original Broadway cast version just to get that baritone version out of my head. It’s just…wrong.

But dude…seriously, you’re the rock guy. I was counting on you.

In a better - or more interesting world - this couplet would be as well known as ‘hark what light through yonder window ..’

Speak ‘What’ again! Thou cur, cry ‘What’ again!
I dare thee utter ‘What’ again but once!
I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
If thou hast any in thy head but ‘What’,
Of Marsellus Wallace!

From ‘Pulp Fiction, as performed by the King’s Men’

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Just a small taste to whet the appetite, a climactic chapter from the final volume of the Adelsverein Trilogy. All three volumes will be availabe in December, 2008 from Booklocker.com and all the usual sources.

The Civil War is over, some little prosperity is beginning to return to the Hill Country and the Becker and Richter families.

Chapter Forty-Eight: Day of Reckoning

“It all seems very quiet,” Magda remarked, on the Saturday that she and Anna reopened the store. “And so empty!”
It was a week after Rosalie’s funeral, a week after Hansi and the boys returned, empty-handed and covered in trail-dirt, on horses trembling from weariness.
“I still keep expecting to see Vati in his room, or sitting under the pear tree,” Anna agreed, wistfully. “I wish Papa and I could induce Mama to leave her room – but she will not hear of it.” Hansi had exhausted himself, pleading fruitlessly with Liesel. He had finally lost his temper and left with Jacob, taking a wagon-load of goods to Kerrville. He had promised to deliver a load of cut timber to the Becker farm, where work had commenced on the house, after the spring cattle round-up. Magda didn’t know if Liesel would have forgiven Hansi by the time he returned, and was herself too grieved over Rosalie to care very much.

“It’s like one of those starfish,” Sam observed earnestly. He plied a broom with great energy, although Magda thought he was merely stirring the dust around. “When it loses one of its arms,”
“How is that, Sam?” his mother asked, much puzzled.
“It grows another one to replace it,” Sam scowled, thoughtfully, “Or maybe it’s one of those jellyfish things I am thinking of. It grows again into the shape it needs, even if it’s not in quite the same shape as it was before.”
“Clear as mud, Samuel,” Anna said, but secretly Magda thought her son was right. The household, her family – it was reshaping itself, like a starfish. Wearily, she wondered if the starfish, or whatever Sam was thinking of felt pain when part of it was cut off. For they all felt pain, but only Liesel was incapacitated by it, by the unbearable absence, the emptiness in the places where Willi and Grete should have been. She had withdrawn into her deep, deep cellar, leaving Marie to cope valiantly with the household, aided as always by Mrs. Schmidt in the mornings and by her sister and aunt whenever they could step away from the shop, and Hansi’s freighting concerns.

Vati might have coaxed Liesel to come forth – he had always been good with her, but then there was the Vati-shaped absence where he had always been, as well. Magda had the same sense that had haunted her in the months after Carl Becker’s death – that he had not really gone, but was somewhere in the house or close by. When she looked into the parlor, or into the garden she half-expected to see Vati there, dozing over a book with his glasses slipping down over his nose, or deep in some abstruse discussion with Pastor Altmueller.
Hansi insisted she move into Vati’s room; certainly she preferred that to her old room, which for her was marked forever as the place where Rosalie had suffered, and where the miasma of death still clung to the walls. Still, there was something restful about returning to the shop – restful and yet exhilarating. All the plans they had made while in Indianola, which had needed to be set aside for Vati’s final illness – all of them could be picked up again and coaxed towards fulfillment.

Very gradually, over the weeks and months of the summer – the summer of the first full year of peace, they were able to do just that, although Liesel still refused to come downstairs. Lottie began school that autumn, walking to the schoolhouse between Hannah and Sam, blithe and eager, with not a backwards look to Magda, who lingered in the shop door watching after them. Her older brother and sister had earnestly begun teaching her letters, marking out the shapes of them on Sam’s school slate and challenging her to sound out the letters of the shopkeepers’ signs along Main Street. Lottie stopped asking wistfully after Grete about that time. She was a sensible and sensitive child; Magda thought that her younger daughter had worked out the connection between the absence of her almost-twin cousin, and her aunt’s withdrawal into seclusion for herself.

There had never been any news of the children, in spite of all the letters that Anna wrote in careful English for her father, letters to the governor, to the officer commanding Federal Army troops in Texas and the territories, letters to the Indian agency. They received replies, expressing regret and occasionally even sympathy, but nothing more effective than that. Encouraged by Charley Nimitz, they placed advertisements in certain newspapers in Kansas and the Indian territories, asking for information and promising a reward should that information lead to the return of Willi and Grete Richter, aged seven and four years of age, taken by raiding Comanches from Gillespie County in the spring of 1866. They received some reply to those; mostly semi-literate scrawls asking for money, in exchange for information.
“They are extortionists, Papa,” Anna said firmly and burned the letters before Liesel could see them, and frantically beg her husband to pay anything, anything at all, to anyone who claimed to know where the children were.
(more…)

I received an e-mail from Ken Meyers over at Operation: A BIT OF HOME.  They’ve completed one DVD lending library for our folks in Iraq and they’re working on another.  When you’re doing your Spring Cleaning, take a good look at your old DVDs and see if you can’t send a few to our folks over there.  And don’t worry about whether or not it would be appropriate…military folks love Disney movies and other kid’s fair for the sheer escapism.

Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here. — attributed to Capt John Parker, Lexington Militia Apr 19, 1775

Patriots Day… the day we all take time to remember and celebrate the heroic action taken by a few farmers and townsmen over two centuries ago - what’s that? You’ve never heard of Patriots Day? Doesn’t surprise me. While it SHOULD be a date recognized nationwide, not unlike Independence Day, it seems to be limited to the New England area, where those farmers and townsmen shed their blood that April morning.

If you don’t know what happened on the morning of April 19, you might at least be familiar with the night that preceded it…

Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
‘Twas the 18th of April, in seventy-five,
hardly a man is left alive
who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”
–H.W.Longfellow

Ordinary people. Citizens, fed up with tyranny, reached their breaking point on that April morning. The king had no true understanding of the colonial mindset, nor their determination. His soldiers and generals were equally clueless, and thus the bucolic sounds of a springtime morning in a small country-town were shattered by the sound of gunfire. “The shot heard ’round the world,” they call it.

The shot that changed everything, and led to “the world turn’d upside down” at Yorktowne, a little over six years later.

Spend a moment, today, in gratitude to those ordinary citizens, farmers and townsmen alike, who stood up for their rights to be a free people.

Patriots Day - it’s not just for Maine and Massachusetts - it’s for all of us.

h/t instapundit, by way of day by day

I’m hoping Sgt Mom will turn her brilliant sarcastic wit loose on this topic, but until then, in case you’ve not seen it yet…

I read about it over at Baldilocks, and then I followed her link to the transcript of the interview with Time’s managing editor, whose justification was the following (all emphases mine):

And by using that famous Iwo Jima image and saying basically what we have to do iswhat we did before World War II by creating a great national effort, national endeavor, to combat this problem.

Gee, and here I thought that when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor we had decimated our peacetime military so much that our guys were training with wooden cutouts of rifles and shouting “bang” when they’d shoot someone. Or have I confused my wars? Then again, maybe accuracy isn’t important if it gets in the way of whatever the point you’re making - what’s that old line? My mind’s made up - don’t confuse me with facts.

I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism, is that you have to have a point of view about things. You can’t always just say “on the one hand, on the other” and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let’s just say so. And we’ve done that a number of times since I’ve been back. We did the case for national service, a cover story last summer. The end of cowboy diplomacy where we said that foreign policy had to change. I think readers expect that. I think, look. You guys are up there all the time. On cable television, people are giving you their point of view, giving their opinions on something and people want to know that.

Funny - I always thought it was only in editorials where journalists were supposed to show how they felt, not news articles. But what do I know? I never went to journalism school - I’m just an ignerant amurrken who loves her country and respects its veterans and their sacrifices.

So… how is that book-thing going, ask all both of my readers? Very well, thank you, in spite of the Great Amazon-Booksurge Kerfuffle of 2008. That, by the way appears to have died down to a small and resentful simmer. Way to go, Amazon – completely piss off a lot of articulate fans and customers by going all heavy-handed on small-press and independent writers. A couple of the bigger POD presses capitulated, accepting Amazon’s terms, but for now they are not pressuring any other presses. Something about the threats of legal action under certain trade laws might have something to do with it. That and the fact that there are other internet outlets for books. (Barnes and Noble, anyone?)

I am going ahead with plans to bring out the the “Adelsverein Trilogy” or as it is better known around here, “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Side-arms” this coming December. Originally, I wanted to bring out just the first book, with the subsequent books a year apart, but Angela at Booklocker strongly advised against it, saying that it would be better to have all three available at once. Because it will be a set, with a unified ‘look’ to each volume, they are going to cut me a deal on the fees for the custom-designed cover. They will even offer a small discount to anyone buying all three at once, and we are working also on a means of putting all three into one volume at a later date – which may not even be possible, because it will be about a thousand pages long, all told. Drop that on your foot, you’ll feel the pain for about a week. (I am using my income tax rebate to fund this, and the continuing royalties for “To Truckee’s Trail”. Think of it as government really supporting literature and art!)

So, I am galloping through drafting the last five chapters, neatly wrapping up and tying off all the threads of a plot that has sprawled across a couple of countries, three wars, four towns, one blood-feud, a lot of romance, two interconnected German-American families, sudden murder, stolen children… and a lot of cows and horses. And a Texas Ranger or two, even. Then, what with revisions, editing, polishing to a high glossy finish, and scrounging for the usual reviews’n’links; my dance card is pretty well filled for the next few months. Blogging continues, of course, especially if the election follies continue to provide bitter amusement – really, didn’t I say months ago that Obama was a beautifully tailored but empty suit?

Stay tuned – more to follow.

But .. more and more it may resemble an outake of Monty Python.

ON THE HIGH SEAS ABOARD HMS PINAFORE
Lookout: Captain! Look!
THE CAPTAIN HURRIES TO THE BRIDGE. THERE IS A SCRUFFY LOOKING VESSEL ON THE HORIZON.
Captain: Ahoy the vessel!
Pirate: ‘Allo. Whoo is eet?
Captain: I am Captain Upstanding-Forthwright, Royal Navy. Whose vessel is this?
Pirate: This is the vessel of the Dread Pirate Smeeth.
Captain: Tell your captain to stand by to be boarded.
Pirate: I don’t think he’ll be very keen - you see we don’ need to be boarded today.
Lookout: He says they don’t want to be boarded.
THEY ARE STUNNED
Captain: Are … are you sure?
Pirate: Oh yes, we’re doing fine, thanks. Nice day isn’t it?
Captain: Well, we’d really like to come aboard. Pretty please.
Pirate: Of course not. You are English pigs.
Captain: What are you then?
Pirate: We’re pirates. Why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly sailor fop.
Captain: What are you doing on the high seas, with machine guns and cannon?
Pirate: Mind your own business.
Captain: If you will not allow us to board we shall take your vessel by force.
Pirate: You don’t frighten us English pig-dog. Go and bite your bottom son of a silly person. I blow my nose on you so-called sailor Captain, you and all your silly English k…..niggets
Captain: Prepare the boarding party, guns, one round from the forward five-inch mount, prepare to fire ..
XO: Ur, Captain. The latest directive from Foreign Office.
Captain: … on my comman .. oh. Yes. Human rights.
Pirate: HE PUTS HIS HAND TO HIS EARS AND BLOWS A RASPBERRY.

With apologies to the Pythons.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

(From an email posted to the Old FEN’ers Website - yeah, I’m just warped enough to find them amusing!)

Birds of a feather flock together and crap on your car.

When I’m feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor’s dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.

A penny saved is a government oversight.

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat have gotten to be really good friends.

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

He who hesitates is probably right.

Did you ever notice: The Roman Numerals for forty (40) are ‘ XL.’

If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.

If you can smile when things go wrong , you have someone in mind to blame.

The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.

There’s always a lot to be thankful for if you take time to look for it. For example I am sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don’t hurt.

Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words ‘The’ and ‘IRS’ together it spells ‘Theirs.’

Aging: Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.

Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know ‘why’ I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.

When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.

You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young.

Ah, being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Then you forget to pull up your zipper.
It’s worse when you forget to pull it down.

Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft.
Today, it’s called golf.

This post over at Wizbang by Jay Tee (one of the only bloggers I still read regularly) received this response from me:

Delta and Northwest have almost finished their merger negotiations. I really don’t care for NW, and have not enjoyed the few flights I’ve taken with them.

Continental, here I come!

So my first reaction to this story was a jaw-dropped five minutes of boggle-eyed amazement. The second was to double check – this wasn’t an intricate send-up by the Onion, or Iowahawk? April Fool’s day was almost two weeks ago, admittedly… but no, it appears to be a completely straight – in the sense of being accurate, not in the sexual sense – news story.

Third reaction – wow, what a horrible thing to do to a poor unsuspecting little Verdi opera. That rumble you hear for south of the Alps? That must be the great maestro himself, revolving in his grave at a couple of thousand RPMs. Hook him up to an electric generator, you could probably power a couple of good-sized American suburbs, or maybe all of North Korea with the resulting output. This is just the latest manifestation of a depressing and currently fashionable penchant for staging operas and incorporating trappings and conventions taken cafeteria-style from an assortment of sources, to include gangster movies of all ages, S&M porn flicks and bloody violence a la Peckinpah or Tarantino…no matter how unsuited the opera is to that sort of artistic vision, or how much violence it does to the plot, or the characters. (more here)

It seems to be the ultra-trendy thing in Europe, apparently; it doesn’t seem to have caught on much in the States, where an opera house actually depends on appealing to the subscribers, season-ticket holders and the audience in general. We’re… umm, kind of traditional, that way. Generally the people who want to revel in gangster movies, S & M porn flicks or whatever, can get their fix somewhere else than the stage of the Met or the Houston Grand.

You’ve got to hand it to the director of this 9/11 Masked Balls-up, though – for sheer Teutonic thoroughness in including every single stupid, tired and overworked anti-American trope in the eu –repertoire: ugly naked people in Mickey-Mouse masks, same old anti-capitalist political posturing, Uncle Sam and Elvis impersonators… the whole ugly collection, calculated to demonstrate American vulgarity and European cultural superiority and creativity. I’m imagining the creative types sitting around, brainstorming and shouting out their ideas for every element and laughing their asses off the whole time at the credulity of their audience. It would be reassuring to think this was some kind of ‘Producers’ type scheme, to deliberately create a production guaranteed to go down in flames on opening night, but apparently not. According to the linked story, it’s sold out, or near to being so.

Ah, well – the next time I read of some euro-snot looking down his artistic nose and condemning Americans for being crass and vulgar and generally uncaring of our artistic heritage, I shall think of this production… and laugh, and laugh and laugh.

(Although the following appears with my name on it, ths is actually a guest-post by another IAG member, who did a lot of numbers-crunching and came up with some recommendations: Michael S. Katz is an attorney, editor-in-chief of Strider Nolan Publishing, board member of the Independent Authors’ Guild, and author of the comedy novel Shalom On The Range Take it away, Mike!)

Amazon.com recently announced a new policy requiring all Print On Demand authors to use Amazon’s own printing company, Booksurge, in order to be sold through Amazon. Many POD authors and publishers are understandably upset by this, as this can only serve to cost the authors money, and cost the printing companies business. But in terms of Amazon’s market share, how much business are we actually talking about?

WHO’S ON FIRST?

Sales of books totaled $2 billion in 2000, at which time on-line sales made up between 7.5% and 10% of that total.1 Amazon and BN.com now account for more than 85% of online book sales.3 Recent data shows that Amazon’s book sales are approximately four times that of BN.com,4 and Amazon has a 70% share of the Internet book market, so this translates into a 15 to 17.5% market share for BN.com.5

Amazon’s total sales in 2006 were $4.63 billion, but this includes books, music, and various other items, including a lot of high-end electronics, jewelry, and the like. Barnes & Noble actually outsold them at $4.68 billion (and they were basically limited to books, music and movies), but their on-line presence had only $477 million in sales. Why are people flocking to Amazon over BN.com?

A LOT TO RECOMMEND IT

A lot of it has to do with programming. Amazon has a reputation for being the best at tracking customer habits, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. Over the years they have collected detailed information about what its customers buy, considered buying, browsed for but never bought, recommended to others, or even wished someone would buy them.10 Amazon uses this information to calculate recommendations that boost sales.

In the entertainment industry, recommendations are a remarkably efficient form of marketing, as they enable films, music and books to more easily find the right audience.9 For example, the book Touching the Void, a tale of a mountain-climbing tragedy, was released in 1988 to good reviews but modest success. In 1998, the book Into Thin Air, about another mountain-climbing tragedy, was released and became a bestseller. All of a sudden, people began buying the older book again. Touching the Void began to be displayed side by side with Into Thin Air, and actually wound up outselling the newer book. How did this happen? Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, attributes this to Amazon.com recommendations. Amazon’s programs note buying patterns and suggest similar books to readers. Some people follow the suggestion, enjoy the book, and post excellent reviews. These purchases and reviews lead to more sales, more recommendations, and the cycle continues.9

Readers’ reviews also stimulate sales, although moreso on Amazon than BN.com. One study (Chevalier and Mayzlin) examined how sales on both sites correlated with number of reviews and customers’ ratings.12 They determined that a good review will increase the number of books sold, although with much greater effect on Amazon than BN.com. A bad review has a greater effect than a good one, based on the assumption that many 5-star reviews are believed to be “planted,” whereas 1-star reviews are seen as more legitimate.12

GETTING FROM POINTS A(MAZON) TO B(ARNES & NOBLE)

How do prices compare between the big two? A study (Chevalier and Goolsbee) collected Amazon and BN.com data for 18,000 different books during three different weeks in 2001. They determined that there was significant price sensitivity for online book purchases at both sites. But the demand at BN.com was much more price sensitive—both to its own prices and to Amazon’s prices—than at Amazon.4

A one percent increase in a book’s price at Amazon reduced sales by about 0.5 percent at Amazon but raised sales at BN.com by 3.5 percent, implying that (based on the 4-to-1 ratio in sales) every customer lost by Amazon instead bought the book at BN.com. Conversely, raising prices by one percent at BN.com reduced sales about 4 percent but increased sales at Amazon by only about 0.2 percent.4 Therefore, a customer lost by Amazon would usually wind up buying the book at BN.com, whereas a customer lost by BN.com would not necessarily go to Amazon. If BN.com keeps its prices right, they can steal away a lot of Amazon traffic.
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It was raining this morning. A storm front blew in to South Texas in the wee hours, a cool breeze and the patter of rain in the dark. Spring has been warm this year; sometimes up into the high eighties, where it begins to verge on being hot, rather than just pleasantly temperate. When everyone starts to think seriously about using the AC – that’s when we know in South Texas that it’s summer. I refuse – it’s only April, for pete’s sake!

We need the rain, though; it would be pleasant to have a repeat of last year, where it rained, drizzled, showered, spat, poured, misted or came down in buckets more or less constantly all through spring, summer and fall with the pleasing result that most of Texas was as green as Ireland is legendarily supposed to be and the wildflowers lasted all through summer… but I have a book-signing this afternoon at the Twig Bookstore on Alamo Heights. If it’s still coming down in buckets this afternoon, Blondie and I will be sitting there with a stack of books on a little table, embarrassingly doing nothing much for two hours but look at each other.

For all that they call it “Alamo Heights” certain streets in it are notoriously flood-prone; a better excuse for many residents to drive 4WD sport-utes than most people living in top-crust old-money suburbs have. I’m not yet in the Phillippa Gregory class of historical novel-scribblers, for whom the usual fans would turn out for a signing in anything up to and including a hurricane. I’m afraid that a mild drizzle by this afternoon will be enough excuse to keep readers away!

Sales of “Truckee” trickle along in a steady little stream, by the way. With luck that will increase, as a couple more reviews come meandering in. The Historical Novel Society has a copy for review… with a six-month window, so around about any time now…I also entered it in two independent book contests; the IPPY and the Writers Digest Independent Book contest. Entry fees for those two contests are there mainly to winnow the field slightly. Placing among the honorable mentions or higher means a nice bit of exposure and hopefully some more sales, all of which will go to fund the next book.

I have about decided to go ahead and shoot for December, 2008 as a date with Volume 1 of the Adelsverein Trilogy will be available. It’s pretty much edited and polished to a fine glossy gleam. I am coming down the home stretch of the first draft of the final volume, about six chapters or so from completing something that I began scribbling notes and outlining in October of 2006. I think of the initial research and chapter outline as sort of the skeleton of the book. The first draft is creating and applying the innards and flesh. That’s the slow and exciting part, because that’s when the characters come to life, some of them even developing a stubborn will of their own. Revising and editing – that’s like a little bit of nip and tuck there, a nice bit of couture styling there, a touch of makeup and a flattering hairstyle… and there you are.

This one will be a much easier sell in Texas – and I’ve already been told that most of Gillespie County will want to buy copies, just to see if I have worked in their ancestors. (I probably have, even if only in a brief mention.) I’ll be a bit down, when I finally finish the last revisions to “Barsetshire with cypress trees and a lot of sidearms”. I’ve been living with the characters for a year and a half, they’re real to me and I am nearly done with them now, and ready to set them loose on other people.

Blondie is already asking me, what the next book project will be, and I keep saying that I don’t know. She says I should stretch myself, and do a kid’s adventure set in ancient Britain, about three children who escape the massacre of the Druids by the Romans.
I just don’t know… but I’ll know it when I see it. Another relatively unknown story, for sure, something that reclaims an honorable past. Any suggestions?

Odds on, the first thing that anyone walking into any of the various places that I have lived- starting with the enlisted barracks in Japan in those dear distant days when female troops lived in a female-only dormitory was something along the lines of “Gosh – have you read all of those books?” To which the answer was some kind of polite rephrase of “Of course I bloody have! Did you think I had put them up as decorating elements?!!”

Yes, I have books. Lots of books; books in the bedroom, books in the den, books in the hallway, books in the living room and even a shelf of them in the kitchen – what better place for the cookbooks, pray tell? There aren’t any in the bathroom; first of all, the light isn’t that good and secondly there isn’t any place for shelves.

I used to buy books that I liked, just so that I could have copies of my own, which I could read any time I felt like it. Then I wound up overseas, where English-language bookstores were few and far between, and the Stars and Stripes Bookstore was pretty limited; if you saw it there and thought you might want to read it - better buy it quick, because it wouldn’t be there next time, and even though the base library did their best – well, there were other seriously committed readers out there. (When I moved from Spain, the packing crew had a pool going, on how many boxes of books there would eventually be; 63 and no, I don’t know what the winner got. Probably had many cervezas bought for him, after they finished nailing up the packing crates.) And then I came home, and discovered second-hand stores and services like Alibris, and the online behemoth which must not be named because they are behaving like total d**ks in regard to POD publishers… oh, off-topic. Never mind. Books, the topic was books, the love for (or addiction to!) and constant acquisition of such.

Now, I review books, for Blogger News Network, and for iUniverse Reviews, with the result that I get a constant trickle of books from other writers asking for reviews through the Daily Brief or the IAG. But writing books myself is another splendid excuse for buying more; for the research, you see. The shelves of my writing desk (built by Dad for Blondie’s use, but too big for her room) are now crowded with Texiana and various books on aspects of the Old West. I had a fair number of them already – it’s as if I knew there would be an eventual use for that Time Life series about the Old West. It’s not so much the text in that case, but the pictures.

Blondie and I went to the library book sale on Saturday, at the Semmes branch on Judson road. There’s always a crowd for this, the room where the sale is set up almost instantly achieves a ‘black hole of Calcutta’ degree of heat and overcrowding. Fortunately, most of the people lined up for admittance –many of them armed with large plastic tubs and canvas shopping bags - are intent on the novels or the children’s books. I am on the lookout for more Texiana and western stuff – especially with illustrations, especially with contemporary – that is contemporary 19th century artists. I need pictures of all sorts of things; horses and wagons, of old forts and plains river valleys covered with buffalo herds, of buildings and animals and people, something for my imagination to fix upon, so that I can build all the other living elements around it.

I scooped up a couple of prizes almost at once – Don Troiani’s American Battles and a thick coffee-table treasure-trove called “The Art of the Old West: From the Collection of the Gilcrease Institute” which has color plates of practically everything, and a collection of Frederic Remington’s black and white magazine illustrations – all for considerably under 20$.

There’s enough pictorial stuff in those books alone to start me off with ideas for another book of my own. My only problem is that I am running out of shelf-space for all of my necessary research materials - but it’s a happy problem.

(Cross posted at the IAG Blog)