For your delectation and delight on this Monday - first, a performance of “Smoke On the Water” by classical Japanese musicians…

and if that doesn’t peg your strange-meter, how about the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Chorus in concert?

Enjoy… especially the tractor.

How come Oprah Winfrey is on the cover of every issue of her own darned magazine? I mean, even Martha Stewart gives it a rest.

Why does it have to be so bloody hot in Texas in the summer? And how long will summer last this year? How many more months of running the AC night and day will we have?

How come we were supposed to be moving beyond race with the nomination of the Fresh Prince from Chicago… and yet here we are again, having the same old discussion! But with the added frisson of being called a racist it we don’t vote for him. (Oh, yeah, and can we have a break from his entitlement-addled BAP of a spouse moaning about how hard it is to get along on a yearly salary of more than I will ever make in the next decade? Or two or three? Thanks.)

How deep are major media in the tank for Obama, actually? Deep enough to need a snorkel? A deep-sea divers’ suit and something to pump down oxygen to them?

How come anyone cares what celebrities think? About anything other than their next professional appearance, that is.

Who the hell cares about Paris Hilton? And why?

Which one of the dogs or cats threw up a strangely reddish patch of vomit, and please god, let the red color be from the reddish chunks of stuff in the dog food.

What’s Madonna’s new remaking of herself going to look like? Anything age-appropriate? She’s pushing 50, you know.

Will the price of gas go down? Would it be a little cheaper to run the car on milk? It’s at about the same price per gallon this week. How soon will the owners of all those big honkin’ SUV and pick-up trucks replace them with something smaller and fuel efficient. I remember the 70s, people – I remember this happing once before, and yes, I’d like to be able to see past the vehicle waiting next to me at a stoplight. Instead of looking at the step that allows them to climb into the cab of their big honkin’ SUV, which is at my eye level, thank you very much.

When those SUV’s and pick-ups get to expensive to run… will they wind up in the hands of people, who… I don’t know… live out in the country and really need a big, sturdy, 4WD vehicle with space to stuff a couple of Angus cows in the back?

How badly am I going to hate the part-time and regular job that I start next week at “Enormous National Call-Center Which Shall Remain Unnamed” by the next of six months? One year? Can I stick it out long enough for some of my books and on-spec writing jobs to pay off… so that I can turn in my employee badge of servitude and shake the corporate dust off my feet… again.

Stay tuned – we’ll know the answers to most of these in a couple of months. Or a year, tops. All but the one about Paris Hilton. That’s a mystery for the ages.

So I get an email from a former classmate today. That, in itself, is not unusual. This classmate periodically forwards emails to me, thinking that I agree with political viewpoint and will enjoy them. She’s usually fairly correct in that assumption. Unfortunately, she also seems to be one of those people who automatically assume that anything she reads on the internet or that gets forwarded to her from a friend is incontrovertibly true.

On that, we disagree. I’m a big fan of Snopes.com, and a firm believer in checking the flotsam and jetsam of my inbox before sending it on to others. And it irritates me that others don’t do the same.

Usually, I can simply ignore the bazillion forwarded items, but sometimes I just get an itch to do a public service and let folks know that no matter how much they want it to be true, Barack Obama is not the child of the anti-christ (or the devil himself), and the little boy in the UK is not still on his deathbed and trying to set a guinness world record for number of greeting cards received (if, indeed, he ever was). When this itch strikes, it’s usually not enough for me to simply reply to the individual who forwarded the email to me and her 5000 closest friends.

Not this time. Maybe it’s because I had a bad day at work today, or maybe it’s exhaustion, or the summer heat/humidity affecting my brain, but this time, I chose to “reply all” and let the entire recipient list of that email know that snopes calls it false.

Oh, maybe I should describe today’s email in more detail? Sure. (more…)

From: Sgt Mom
To: B. Obama
CC: Mainstream Media, Lefty Blogosphere
Re: The Sound of Skewered Sacred Cows in the Morning

1. I haven’t read the New Yorker in a while; somehow all that New York trendoid media’s almost incestuous fixation with its own navel kind of wore thin after a couple of decades. They will also persist in paying great wads-o-cash for Seymour Hersh to dribble all kinds of disinformation from his handlers – er, his oh-so-secret gummint sources into the world at large – apparently on the off chance that the law of averages will catch up to him someday and he will actually make an accurate prediction. So here they go, making a huge splash with a cover that has managed to become the blogosphere’s “S**tstorm of The Day” by skewering both the anointed of the lefty blogosphere, the Obaminator himself and his missus… and the so-called follies of the righty blogosphere.

2. I presume that the editors of the New Yorker are chortling all the way to the bank, having created more interest in this particular issue than in practically anything else since the cover that featured a Hasidim in a torrid embrace with a black woman. Still, if they really had a pair, I can’t help thinking that they’d have used one of the dreaded Danish Motoons of Doom on the cover. Ah, well, say what you will, I don’t think Moveon.org or the Huff-Post will slap a fatwa on their asses or break out the exploding vests at this act of les-majestie against the Chosen One, the Fresh Prince of Chicago.

3. It has not gone without notice that other political figures have been savaged in caricature and cartoons in recent times, occasionally by this very same publication, with scarce a resulting peep. In fact, sitting presidents and aspirants to that office have been savagely caricatured for simply decades, nay for the two centuries plus that this nation has been a going concern. There were early politicians of hot temper and thin skin who were moved to fight duels, and a senator of Southern sympathies who took a cane and whaled the tar out of a senator with abolitionist leanings on the very floor of the Senate in the lead-up to our Civil War… but in the main, they manned up and developed a hide of the approximate thickness of a rhinoceros’s. The very best of them managed to pass it off with a quip and a chuckle – a course of action I would suggest to Mr. Obama.

4. It is being said – with an increasingly defensive tone of voice – that no, no, no, the cover is supposed to represent the those fears and rumors being whipped up by those running-dogs of the Right, the Minions of the Dreaded Lord Rove, all those gun-hugging, God-clinging white racist lumpen-proles who are not falling to their knees and instantly worshipping the Anointed One, all those ignorant Jesusland freaks who would just redeem their horrible selves if they would only accept the changyness and obey the commands of the anointed… and if they don’t it only proves that they’re “teh racists!” Oh, yeah. Whatever. Go pull the other leg, sport, that one has jingly bells on it. Being one who actually hangs out on some of the dreaded “Right Wing Blogosphere Weblogs o’ Death, I must observe that the objections to his proposed tenancy in the White House mostly center upon a resume as thin as his skin, his choice of friends, his propensity for using and then throwing the embarrassing and/or inconvenient ones under the bus, his background as a product of Chicago Machine politics, and the whole “tomorrow belongs to me” * ambiance about his followers. I won’t even get into his search for a father figure except to note that these ‘seed and leave’ men (such as Obama, Senior) do tend to leave a lot of damage in their wake.

5. Eh, well – this is what makes an election season so interesting. It makes amusing sport, so pass the popcorn. At this rate, it may be a very interesting summer.

6. Sincerely though, Mr. Obama – develop a thicker skin. You are only a politician. Man up and take your lumps like all the rest. You are not special, and you are not allowed to float graciously above the fray. The color of your skin does not give you a pass. As MLK so cogently observed, one should be judged upon the content of ones’ character.

Sincerely,

Sgt. Mom

* For those who need reminding, here is the best “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” sequence that I could locate. It’s from “Cabaret”, and pretty well illustrates some of the creepiness that some critics see in elements of the Obama campaign:

Oh, but to have the popcorn concession, as we observe the latest developments in this 2008 political season, as the elementals of ebony and ovary collide. Really, it’s like the clash between the gingham cat and the calico dog – they’ll be nothing but little shreds left. Or might it be like matter and anti-matter – nothing left but a little smoking hole in the ground. How the various partisan factions of the Democrat party will ever be able to work together after all the free-flowing animus is beyond me. And I’ll have my popcorn with a teensy bit of salt, please.

What to say about Her Perhaps Not Quite So Inevitableness? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There will be a female President of this US of A in the near future, but I never invested any of my faith that she would be the one. It has annoyed me no end over the last couple of years, the blanket assumption that because she is a woman of certain age, as I am, that of course I would vote for her, strike a blow against the patriarchy, and for equal rights and anyway aren’t we entitled to have one of our own elected to the highest office in the land? Er… no.

I might have, once. Say, if she had divorced that two-timer she was married to, as soon as they moved out of the White House, and build a political career on her own, and on her own accomplishments. And if I had a lobotomy, or spent the last thirty years in a patchouli scented haze, re-living the glory days of the 60s. But I didn’t. I don’t do entitlement politics. I do accomplishments; Real accomplishments, not something jiggered up in an attempt to meet some vague ideological component or for a crowd to cheer at.

About the one positive thing you can say about Her Perhaps Maybe Inevitableness is that just about all the dirt ever on her has been out there for decades, and pretty carefully sifted through. If she is to be the Democratic nominee, AKA The Last One Standing after the convention, we can be pretty certain of there being no startling new developments. All the existing well-known dirt would be pretty well sifted again over the next five months, but I can’t visualize anything new and startling emerging.

This cannot be said of The Fresh Prince of Illinois. B. Obama, he of the middle name which can’t be mentioned, he of the thin resume and even thinner skin, nourished and groomed by the Chicago political machine and led before us, the Chosen One himself, hailed by the hosannas of the elite, the trendy, the daring… and also the Europeans. (Note to Euro political thinkers – umm, many of us have ancestors who left Europe to get away from people like you. Your recommendation in this respect is kind of a kiss of death. It’s like that letter-writing campaign during the last election, where Guardian readers were encouraged to write personal letters to American voters encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. )

As of this weekend, Sen. Obama has done a U-turn and departed his church of twenty years; that very trendy, large Chicago church with the charismatic and very popular black liberation theologist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright… whose fulminations from the pulpit (handily recorded and originally distributed by the church itself !) did not strike quite the same note with the larger public. Observers of the current election scene had wondered for weeks if Obama really believed various of the Reverend Wrights’s racist fantasies – in which case he is belying his own words about racial healing - or did he just go along with it all because it was politically useful – in which case he is just another cynical, grubby politician, whoring after votes and influence. Guess that question has been answered.

Considering all the people who have now been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign – the Fresh Prince’s white grandmother, various staff members, the Reverend Wright and now his church – one hopes that sucker has wheels on it like a monster truck. I am sure there will be more, even without the rumored recording of Mrs. Obama saying quite unfortunate and impolitic things. I have the impression that the Obamas and their circle live very circumscribed lives, an echo chamber of their own making. They appear to have no notion of how appalling, ham-fisted or just dim-witted some of their off-the-cuff remarks sound to the larger world outside their little bubble.

I rather miss Teresa Kerry, as the campaign season gets into full swing! I despised her husband, but at least she seemed to be a quirky, intelligent, interesting woman and a fairly experienced political wife. Michelle Obama just appears as a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement. I can imagine her behaving appallingly and when called on it, blaming it all on teh racism! Straw-person argument, I know. But I have run into women like that in real life. In interviews and speeches she comes off as just that sort of woman.

Oh, yeah – interesting convention coming up. Interesting election season too. Pass the popcorn.

(Later - Additional thoughts from Cassandra at Villanous Company)

Just when I was beginning to think the whole Amazon-Booksurge-POD imbroglio was dying down, now it begins again. Angela and Richard Hoy of Booklocker.com have filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon. Com (details here)

I had begun to hope that Amazon had seen the error of their ways, deafened by the level of outrage expressed by the many, many, many POD small presses and niche writers like myself, as well as professional associations like the The Author’s Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA),and The Small Publishers Association of North America and was going to rethink their policy of demanding that all POD books sold directly through Amazon.com be printed by their in-house print service. Well, there was certainly no more talk of any more POD houses caving in , under threat of having the “buy’ button turned off on the Amazon page for any authors’ books published by those houses.

At the Independent Authors’ Guild, our members are terribly split over how to respond. Not in the sense of “I’m going to take my marbles and go home” sort of split, more the “everyone decides what is in their best interests” in the way of response. We are an association of equals; there is no corporate line to be toed. Some of us do not give a rat’s patoot if we have any sales through Amazon or not, especially after this greedy grab. Others care very much, since they make the bulk of their royalty payments through on-line retailers, of which Amazon.com is the 800 lb gorilla. One very dedicated member felt that she had no choice but to sign with Booksurge to publish her historical novel, into which she had put too many years of work to put at risk. Others of us are boycotting Amazon.com, and switching any links in our book-marketing materials to Barnes & Noble or Booksamillion. It’s not just buying books and other goods through Amazon.com – I’ve stopped posting book reviews there, participating in any of their blogs or discussion groups, or asking my readers to post reviews for “To Truckee’s Trail” there; I’d much rather throw my custom and marketing interests to Barnes and Noble. (They answer emails about my book page there much more readily than Amazon does, oddly enough. Amazon’s ‘author tech help’ runs the gamut between unresponsive and non-existent)

I’m only too proud to be a Booklocker author, and to continue to be published by Richard and Angela: the Adelsverein Trilogy (aka Barsetshire with cypress trees and lots of side arms) will be available from Booklocker in December. I got my ‘economic stimulus’ tax rebate this week and am using the largest portion of it to get started. Who says that the gummint doesn’t support the arts and literature?

Well, really, isn’t that what it is turning into, what with Her Inevitableness and The Fresh Prince of Chicago locked in a knock-down, drag-out grudge-match to the death. I can hardly wait for the showdown at the convention – this is going to get really interesting, in the sense of ‘slow down and look at the carnage on the highway’ sort of interesting.

There is so much to dislike about both of them – who would have thought that a young and doe-eyed political neophyte, fresh from the mills of the Chicago political-machine could exhibit a collection of such embarrassing associates, unfortunate missteps and evidence of obvious wheeling and dealing. It’s a fascinating - in the forensic sense - collection of soiled laundry. And Her (perhaps) Inevitableness has been assembling her own vast collection for twenty years, so all hail the ambitious newcomer! Each has a spouse which may prove to be just as much of a millstone – the serial sexual harasser against the BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement and injury. Yep, the convention is going to be a cage match. I predict blood, inside and out, before and especially after – the fans of whoever doesn’t get The Big Nod will be extremely resentful.

It’s too much to hope for, that the delegates wander in the way of a ration of sense and nominate a compromise third candidate. Nope, never happen, although it’s been suggested – laughingly I am sure – that the Goricle himself would nobly put himself in the way of such an effort…

All kidding aside, I don’t think that Obama himself had any idea of how swiftly and how completely the Reverend Wrights’ inflammatory sermons would percolate through the national media and the body politic, or how absolutely offensive that ordinary people outside the holy environs of his immediate circle would find them. And they are offensive – I don’t care how many ways you slice and dice it. I am a fairly devout and intermittently observant mainstream Christian; any white minister preaching the Reverend Wrights’ line from the pulpit would have been disowned from a mainstream church so fast his clerical collar would have spun around his neck like a horseshoe flung towards a stake. There’s a lot to be said for the ‘flip’ theory – that is, reverse the colors (or the genders) involved in any controversy and see if it still seems fair to you. The Fresh Prince worshipped for twenty years and took as his mentor a racist and demagogic nut-case. Deal, ‘kay? So we’re started a dialogue about race in America in the 21st century – not quite the one expected, but as I said – deal.

I’m not even getting into the question of Obama’s association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers, except to note that damn-it, won’t the Sixties ever die? What do we have to do, bury that low dishonest decade at the crossroads with an ash stake through its heart? This picture says about all that you have to know about Bill Ayers, except to note that the advance publicity about his memoir – from which this local story derives - got lost in all the news coverage about 9-11. Bet he cried into his Chablis for months – how dare a bunch of Islamic fundies ruin his carefully laid publicity campaign about the golden days of ‘fighting the power’?!

Yep, it’s going to be an interesting couple of months. I’m going to need a couple of hundred pounds of popcorn just to be able to deal with it all.

(Link courtesy of Rantburg, my source for all that is sarky and cynical)

And if I thought the snails at NIOSA were dubious eats, I hadn’t had a chance to grok the full horror of the guacamole bird – it’s the third one down, here Found this through neo-neocon, here who was running a two-part Jello retrospective. Some of the recipes which Neo’s commenters recollected fondly don’t seem too bad at all – the salmon mousse here was especially savory

You see, there is Jello and there is just plain gelatin mixed with a variety of sweet or savory liquids and poured into an appropriate mold. There is the stuff whipped up by the staff of women’s home magazines trying to catch the eyeballs and not coincidently sell more Jello… and of late there is the parody stuff (like the famous brain mold), and a lot of bizarre things put together for contests; I have heard of Jello aquariums with lettuce for seaweed and Goldfish crackers as… er, gold fish swimming in the pale green lime depths.

And then there is stuff like my mother’s favorite – the wine-orange gelatin dessert, and my own yoghurt cream mold – I posted the recipe in January.

From Joy of Cooking, p. 745 “Wine Gelatin”

Soak 2 TBsp gelatin in ¼ cup cold water. Dissolve it in ¾ cup boiling water and stir in until dissolved, ½ cup sugar. Allow to cool and add 1 ¾ cup orange juice, 6 TBsp lemon juice and 1 cup well-flavored wine. Sugar amount may be adjusted if the orange juice and/or wine are sweet . Pour into sherbet glasses and chill until firm. Serve with cream, whipped cream or custard sauce. (It strikes me that this might be very nice with blood-orange juice and a nice rose wine)

Gelatin molds – not just for Lutheran church suppers!

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.

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.

(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.

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.
(more…)

Here we are, after a week of the Great Amazon-Booksurge Kerfuffle of 2008; wherein the great 800 pound gorilla of internet retailing has strong-armed various small POD (publish on demand) houses into having any of their books sold through Amazon printed for delivery to the customer by Amazon’s in-house print division. They did this by the simple expedient of threatening to ‘turn off’ the Amazon “buy” button for those authors who publish through those POD houses. Essentially, the book would still be there on the Amazon page… but if you wanted to actually to buy, you’d have to go through one of the secondary vendors… and it wouldn’t qualify for the free Amazon shipping. And having Amazon do the printing – through a POD publisher notorious among the cognoscenti for shoddy work – and charging for it, chipping away even further at author royalties… the fur is still energetically flying among the book-bloggers and writers’ discussion groups. It was the blatant bullying of the Amazon/Booksurge reps which got up peoples noses the most. Honestly, it’s as if they never heard the old saying about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Scroll down for my previous posts on this - and check out this page of updated information from Writers Weekly is here Oh, goody, the American Society of Journalists and Authors is adding their voice to the mighty chorus! This doesn’t look like it is going to die a quiet death and very soon, as much as Amazon probably hopes it will.

Now there seems to be a lull in the storm while everyone takes stock and figures out what to do next. Although my publisher, Booklocker, has declined the offer of a contract for Amazon-Booksurge’s services with the vigor and force of a concrete block thrown through a plate-glass window – indeed has taken a very prominent place in aggressively reporting on the tidal wave of criticism crashing upon Amazon.com as well as practically surfing on the leading edge, “To Truckee’s Trail” is still available through Amazon. (No link, I’ve sworn off Amazon for the moment!) To the best knowledge of the other IAG members, no one’s buy buttons have been turned off, and we have member-writers published by just about all of the various POD houses. The fury continues unabated, though – and it’s hard not to imagine various lawyers hastily brushing up on various anti-trust regs and laws though. And whatever in-house emergency meetings at Amazon this week must have been eventful. Oh, to have been a fly on those walls!

Standing back and taking a long look, and considering other developments though – as the release of the handy-dandy-Espresso Book Machine and perhaps this kerfuffle-du-jour is just one more of those harbingers of change in the world of books and publishing. Everything changes, nothing stays the same for long. Having been hanging out in among the book blogs and in the author discussion groups for the last two years has been enlightening. Many of the other writers in the IAG have been in and around the writing game for years . They don’t have the five-figure royalty checks – if they did, they wouldn’t be hanging around in the discussion group skulling out ways to market their books if they did. But what I picked up, over and over again was a feeling that for most writers, the way the literary industrial complex is set up… it just was not working, and not working in a big way. This guy (now on hiatus, unfortunately) was a shrewd and extremely knowledgeable insider.
This blogger is another: and what they were saying was confirmed by the writers that I met in putting together the IAG; which is that it is nearly impossible for interesting, genuinely original books with niche appeal to even slip in over the transom at traditional publishers.

If you aren’t an established best-selling writer already, forget trying to break into the club. Still, there were all sorts of interesting bits of knowledge floating around – like the day of big advances from a publisher is probably over. And if you do get one, you might have to pay it back if the book doesn’t sell. And that more and more publishers were using print-on-demand, for exactly the quantities needed, rather than print a warehouse full of cheap copies that would be remaindered and pulped. And all but the very top rank of best-selling authors had to go out and do their own marketing, organize their own signing events.

In the light of all that, I speculate that Harper Collins’ new imprint is trying to tap into the indie-author and POD paradigm. From what I can make out of this story and from some of the IAG group discussions, it all seems like Harper Collins is having a go at what we’ve been doing with our various POD houses – Booklocker, and iUniverse and all the rest for the last couple of years. We’ve saying with varying degrees of desperation, hope and passion that big publishing just couldn’t go on the way it has been; it had to change, or go down. Now we see the very first cracks in the wall of Things as They Are, and hope that the paradigm shift has really and truly happened.

One of the big traditional publishers is tentatively trying out something new, and trying out what indie writers have been doing in the last five years. Why, yes, I think I’ll have a drink, so that I can toast to them.

And to myself – I sold a copy of “To Truckee’s Trail” to a contractor doing work on a house in my neighborhood, and two copies to co-workers at one of my jobs. There is a reason to keep a box of copies and a fistful of promotional materials in the car, you know!

Well, this is getting interesting – last weekend the writing world – or that portion of it that doesn’t have a name which frequents the New York Times best-sellers list - was all agog over Amazon.com’s fiat that all books sold through Amazon must be printed by it’s POD subsidiary, Booksurge. (Gruesome details here in my post of Sunday last).

Many of us ink-stained scribbling wretches are being advised to A-remain calm, it is not the end of the world as we know it and B- that Amazon doesn’t own the bloody world yet, anyway so change over all of your links to Barnes and Noble and sit tight.

Angela Hoy at Writers Weekly has the latest development here; yes, a couple of POD firms have caved, given yesterdays deadline to stand and deliver, or else their authors ‘ buy buttons’ be disabled on Amazon’s website. Angela has some shrewd guesses about why and how this is all going down the way that it is, as well as a link to further developments – and the cheery news that no buttons have actually been turned off or harmed in the making of this power-grab/controversy.

The Independent Authors’ Guild forum has been all of a twitter though: what would Ingram/Lightning Source do about this? (Break out the terrible swift sword and start trampling those grapes of wrath, some of us hoped!) How would the various POD firms react ? (Stand tall and tell ‘em “Nuts!”, some of us hoped!) And how would the general public react? A volcanic outburst of rage would be nice, but perhaps a little much for us mere scribbling mortals to hope for. Some of us still have day jobs, you see, Although book-blogger PODdy Mouth has a nice takedown here, including a number that can be called…

OMG Amazon has a actual telephone number for people to talk to a real live human?

Well, OK, probably some poor barely-minimum-wage call center drone, so keep it civil and dignified, people. It isn’t their fault; the guys whose f**king brilliant idea this was are well beyond being reached by a phone call. Maybe not beyond subpoena… eh, call me a dreamer. It goes with the territory, I write historical novels and would like to make a living from it, for f**ks sake! Given that there are so many lawyer-bloggers, perhaps some searching analysis of whatever basis there might be for anti-trust action. All well and good; and this sort of controversy is bread, butter and circuses to the blogosphere.

But I have long predicted that the towers of the literary industrial complex would totter, crumble and fall when a certain technological point was reached – when there was a desktop gadget that would print and bind a nice little paperback or hardbound book. Even if it was so expensive to buy that only places like Kinkos would have them, even if it could only crank them out one or two at a time, even at a cost per unit substantially above that of one of those industrial print shops that could churn out a thousand in a minute – it would mean the end of the literary-industrial complex. Anyone could take their book content and cover file, with ISBN and everything, down to the corner copy place, pay them to print and bind a couple or three or half-dozen copies of your book… and you could mail them to whoever had bought them. Or who you wanted to send them! That’s the future, and according to this release, may be here already, in the form of the Espresso Book Machine. Think of this as Ingram/Lightning Source looking across the poker table with a steely gaze and saying, “raise.”

“It’s always been the holy grail of the book business to walk into a store and get any book,” said Kirby Best, president and CEO of Lightning Source. With the signing of today’s strategic agreement with On Demand Books, proprietor of the Espresso Book Machine, Best sees that goal coming a little bit closer.”

And savor the discription and call me a prophetess: “We’re building a new machine that’s much smaller that can be mass produced, version 2.0,” said cofounder and chairman Jason Epstein. Neller adds that a beta machine, which will be the size of a copier at Kinko’s (3’ X 2-1/2’ for the finishing unit with another 2’ for a duplex printer), will be ready in the fall. If all goes well, a less expensive model will begin leasing in 2009. “The point of this machine is to represent the ultimate in POD,” said Epstein, who sees it as the best way to preserve backlist. If the machines catch on and proliferate like so many Starbucks outlets, the marketplace would become radically decentralized and book distribution would require simply an Internet connection.”

Oh, yeah… definitely we’re into round two. Pass the popcorn.

(Crossposted at the IAG Blog)

(And yeah, my blogosphere cover is now comprehensively blown - I blog under the name “Sgt Mom” and write books under the name “Celia Hayes”. It turns out that someone is already using my real name and has somewhat of a reputation under it. I understand that Elizabeth Taylor had something of the same problem.)

Oh, my goodness gracious me, the presidential-race politicking is just betting more and more engrossing, in that tacky drive-by on the high-way and slow down to take a look at the interestingly arrayed wreckage sort of way. Honestly, as an independent-tending-to-the-Republican side of the political side of the scale for the purposes of this particular race, I am a mere interested spectator to the machinations of the Democratic Party side of the house… rather in the sense of a spectator in the seats of the ancient Roman Coliseum was to a show on the sands down below to a match pitting a team with nets and tridents against a team with swords. There will be blood. Just not sure at this point who will be left standing, to receive the thumb-up or thumbs-down at the end of it all. Or how many corpses will be left strewn across the sand.

Yeah, well – I’ve beaten that imagery into the ground… ooohh, now we have a comic interval, with the Spitzer-fest. A prominent crusading New York DA, who made his political bones (and strewed his path lavishly with the bones of others, through strategic leaks to a compliant media) on prosecuting crime! Prostitution Rings! Wall Street White Collar Insider! Hoist on his own petard, stewed in his own juice! Great heaping plates of just desserts, just entrees, just salad course! All the way to the governors mansion on his record (and his family money) but wow – usually my dread is that someone this spectacularly big of a hypocrite and all around a-hole is a Texan. Thanks, New York – this one is all yours! Is he any sort of relation to crusading DA Mike Nifong of infamous Duke University rape case memory? Pity the wife doesn’t have the nerve of some wronged Texas wives- she just appears to be too lady-like to kick him out of the house, loot the bank account and run him over a couple of times in the parking lot with her BMW.

Eh, well – the political season is young, yet. I’d have had a lot more respect for Her Inevitableness… er, Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton if she had done something along those lines to demonstrate her displeasure after The Big He had confessed to his extra-curricular antics in the Oval Office. Sorry, it’s not a shock to me to learn that big men in high political places might be tempted to play hide the salam’ with women not their legal spouse. I just wish that if they must, they would have better **$#^!”!!! judgment about who they do it with. And that perhaps their spouses might be just pissed off enough about being paraded out for the big ‘stand by your man’ finale. Sorry, I don’t mind sex – it’s the stupidity that I can’t make allowances for.

So, the Fresh Prince of Illinois has for two decades attended a church and accepted the spiritual guidance of a minister who is given to saying things like this in the pulpit of a Sunday morning. Hooo-kay… is he some sort of weird kin to Fred Phelps? So much for the appearance of having moved beyond race in this happy shiny 21st century America. At this point, the great insert-whatever-here just looks like Al Sharpton with nicer suits and a bit more polish to him. Note to Sen. O’B.: the clue to being the first ‘black’ whatever in America, is not to be ‘black’. It’s to be… American. Any message, any person in your campaign that counters that impression does not play well, outside whatever bubble you may have been playing in heretofore.

Let the games begin. It’s gonna get very interesting, if this week has been any indication.

(link courtesy of Roger Simon, and practically everyone else who has been linking to the ABC report all day. Note - this intelligence about Sen. O’Bama’s church has been kicking around for a bit in the conservative blogosphere, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise)

Interesting take on international relations beginning with WWII, in this animated short. Seriously warped and very creative, although you might develope the munchies after watching.

The run-up to this presidential election has a horrid fascination about it, kind of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. We have on one side, Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois, in the words of a recent blog commenter, vigorously throwing melanin and ovaries at each other. It would be funny, if not for the sure and certain knowledge that one of them will be the Democrat’s anointed by convention time. And also that our grandees of the conventional media establishment will have pulled themselves together by that time and tied a big best-of-show ribbon around the neck of one or the other. Never mind that half the MSM are at present going all wobbly-in-the-knees for Mr. Obama and the other half are indignantly insisting that there is nothing wrong, nothing the least bit wrong with the spouse of a two-term president waltzing into the White House for a term of her own, born up on a rising tide of her previous experience there.

Me, I am left relatively unmoved by the dreaminess, charisma, vision and whatever of Mr. Obana. Like P.O’Rourke, I consider the desire to adore a head of state, or any prospective applicants for that office, to be a grim transgression against republicanism (Small r there, meaning the system of government, not the actual political party). I am also left similarly unmoved by the notion that just because Her Inevitableness is a woman of certain age, with all that long memory of feminism in the last quarter of the last century, that OF COURSE I am going to vote for her. Fight the Patriarchy, the glass ceiling, sisterhood is powerful! Umm, no. Sorry; this is not Argentina and she is not Eva Bloody Peron. Frankly, the thought of Bill “It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” Clinton prowling the corridors of the White House trolling for interns – yet again, sort of makes my skin crawl. I would have respected Her Inevitableness so much more if she had dumped his sorry ass, after L’Affaire Monica. And dumped it with vigor and sufficient force to achieve low orbit

On the other side; not much better, really; either Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani would have worked for me. I could have voted for either one without too much cringing – but alas, neither had the stamina to hold out long enough to be a serious contender. Which leaves me with John McCain; and I keep thinking I ought to be more enthusiastic about that. Way back in the primordial dark of the 2000 primary season, I had rather liked his candidacy, and held considerable of a grudge against GWB for certain dirty tricks pulled against McCain in the South Carolina primary. So, the man has a good shot at the Republican nomination now – and I ought to feel better about that. But he has a long record in public life, he is a cranky maverick with a bad temper and has gotten into political bed with some pretty unsavory people…so, who knows?

God knows, I don’t. All I can do come this November is to walk into the voting booth and vote for the one that I think is the least worst.

And then I remember - and hope! Even given that the worst of the three takes the oath of office next January. It’s only four years. God knows, we should be able to survive. I mean, we got through the presidency of that blob of vacuous sanctimony known as Jimmy Carter, even if we are still cleaning up some of the mess from his term.

To: The Arch Bishop of Canterbury
From: Sgt Mom
Re: The discrete attractions of sharia vis a vis English Common Law

1. Having been raised in the relatively intellectual and logic-based tradition of the Lutheran church, the temptation to take a swipe at a church founded on Henry VIII’s scheme to get out of one unrewarding marriage and into another more to his liking is almost overwhelming. The Church of England came about because King H. had the hots for Anne Boleyn and she wasn’t giving him any until he ponied up a ring and a crown and lots of other pretty shiny baubles. Lutherans have the 95 Thesis nailed to a church door, and the C of E… has Henry VIII’s gonads. I admit, Bish – you made a damn good show of it though, especially with the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible and all that. Speaking as a wordsmith, it beats Luther’s Small Catechism all hollow. Pure ecclesiastical and literary gold, but lamentably, it looks like your church has been running out of steam ever since.

2. What on earth where you thinking, urging your fellow citizens to acquiesce to the use of sharia law in Britain, as anything other than a small-scale, mutually-agreed-upon-between-the aggrieved parties adjunct, a sort of counseling service? Did you have any idea of the ruckus that would arise, upon suggesting that it was inevitable and by implication a good thing in this pretty, shiny multi-culti 21st century Britain? Do you even, god save us, have any idea that your casually tossed off remarks appeared to approve of grafting an alien sprout onto the tree of common law? An alien and wholly contradictory sprout that no matter how often or how loudly the praises of sharia law are sung by the usual chorus, casual consumers of recent media reports cannot help concluding those places in which sharia law holds sway are violent and benighted hellholes? In the eyes of those innocent of spectacles constructed of industrial-strength rose-colored glass, it is a turd. No amount of gold-plate will make it acceptable, not least, I suspect, to those who have had first-hand experience of it. (Especially those of the female gender.)

3. It is one thing, my good Bish, to discuss theoretical constructs – it is quite another to install them as workable and working systems, when real-world experience of them suggests that the outcome will be something comprehensively different, from what it appeared to be in ones’ airy world of theory and abstraction. See the practice of communism, when tried out in any place you could name.

4. Hoping that this memo will be of assistance to you, in explaining the storm which has descended upon your miter-capped head.

5. Sorry; coming up with an explanation for all those gorgeous but empty church buildings the length and breadth of Britain is more your line of work. Good luck with that.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Later:This lovely monologue/rant courtesy of I-don’t-know-who-it’s-a-couple-glasses-of-chablis-into-my-birthday-eve here

Eh - Rantburg, the source of all things sour and sarky

(Another one of those rather amusing emails, forwarded by a friend)

The North has Bloomingdale’s, the South has Dollar General.

The North has coffee houses, the South has Waffle Houses.

The North has dating services, the South has family reunions.

The North has switchblade knives; the South has Lee Press-on Nails.

The North has double last names; the South has double first names.

The North has Indy car races; The South has stock car races.

North has Cream of Wheat, the South has grits.

The North has green salads, the South has collard greens.

The North has lobsters, the South has crawfish.

The North has the rust belt; the South has the Bible Belt.

FOR NORTHERNERS MOVING SOUTH :

In the South: –If you run your car into a ditch, don’t panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don’t try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.

Don’t be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store…. Do not buy food at this store.

Remember, “Y’all” is singular, “all Y’all” is plural, and “all Y’all’s” is plural possessive
Get used to hearing “You ain’t from round here, are ya?”

Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it.

Don’t be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can’t understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted Northerner’s vocabulary is the adjective “big’ol,” truck or “big’ol” boy. Most Northerners begin their Southern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.

The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.!

Be advised that “He needed killin’” is a valid defense here.

If you hear a Southerner exclaim, “Hey, Y’all watch this,” you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he’ll ever say.

If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn’t matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.

Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim.

In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway.

AND REMEMBER: If you do settle in the South and bear children, don’t think we will accept them as Southerners After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we wouldn’t call ‘em biscuits.