the little things are really the big things.

It’s a lovely spring day here in the Upper Valley.

This morning, I took the kids out to the farm after breakfast to get milk and eggs.  We got our dairy for the week, petted doggies, looked at roosters, and had lollipops and cherry sodas.  Then we went for a little drive along Mascoma Lake, went into town to spend an hour at the park and playground, and topped off the morning with a lunch at Enfield House of Pizza.  All in all, it was just a lovely, relaxed morning.  Now the kids are napping, and I’m catching up on some writing work.

I have a feeling that thirty or forty years hence, I won’t remember much of our roofing troubles, or whatever annoying expense is popping up this month…but I’m pretty sure days like today will still be vivid in my memory.  My two kids, happy and healthy, petting the farm doggie, playing on the slides together, and sharing some chicken fingers at the local pizza place, a vignette of just another normal day.

On days like this one, I’m convinced that I have the best job on the planet.  The hours suck, and the paychecks aren’t anything to write home about once you calculate the hourly wage…but the fringe benefits are terrific.

a book destined to sell only nineteen copies.

A recent comment motivated me to create a protagonist for a new series of novels–a main character who’s designed to be as offensive as possible to the greatest number of readers, so I’ll get the maximum number of incensed letters from infuriated people, and indignant press releases from all the easily offended groups out there.

He’s a paranormal detective who moonlights as an abortion doctor.  He’s married to his husband Steve, a derivatives trader and investment broker who’s running a profitable Ponzi scheme.  He drives a Humvee without mufflers, and listens to The Origin of Species and The God Delusion on CD while commuting.  He starts all conversations with the most appropriate ethnic slur for the other person.  He owns a baby-eating pitbull, and deals crack in front of the elementary school in his spare time.  His favorite foods are foie gras, and fast food in non-biodegradable Styrofoam containers.  He owns a closet full of assault weapons, and enjoys denying the Holocaust.  His hobbies include child pornography, and going to neighborhood churches to loudly preach competing theologies.  On vacation, he goes to Greenland every summer to club baby seals for a few weeks.

That should just about cover all the bases, I think.

Now I just need a name for my protagonist.  Any suggestions?  (The key here is offensiveness without the brute-force approach of overt vulgarity.)

monday search term safari XLIX.

bulimia fairies

They’re called Purge and Binge.  I have a children’s book about them in the works, and I can’t wait for Oprah to review it.

waterman fountain pen

I prefer Lamys, Pelikans, and Parkers, but Waterman makes good pens.  I have a $20 Waterman Kultur that’s a lovely writer, and their Carene is a pretty pen.  For a starter pen, you could do worse than to pick up a Kultur or Phileas.

satanic train rituals

I must have missed that episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.  Can you give me an Amazon link, maybe?  I’d hate for Quinn to miss out on his favorite anthropomorphic locomotive sacrificing virgins under the full moon, or something.

religion of craigs list murderer

What does it matter?  If he follows a religion you don’t like, you’ll say, “Ha!  I knew it!  Those heretics are all good-for-nothing miscreants!”…and if he follows the same religion as you, you’ll say, “Obviously, he wasn’t a true believer.”

gay statues

Statues don’t have a sexual preference because they’re made of inanimate matter, you see.  If you mean “gay” in that juvenile, derogatory way that seems to mean “gauche” or “uncool”, the closest thing to “gay statues” would be the bombastic kitsch put out by the Nazi artists in 1930s Germany–huge statues of perfect Germanic peoples, chiseled abs and bulging pecs.  (Funny how Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering looked absolutely nothing like those ideal Germans.)

africa biggest government looters

Africa has a long tradition of thieving heads of state–people who, upon gaining office, immediately start converting their country into their personal treasury and fiefdom.  That’s how Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace can go on shopping trips to Europe and buy hundreds of pairs of shoes, while Zimbabweans die of cholera and malnutrition.  You can be pretty sure that once Mugabe’s gone, there’ll be someone else stepping up to claim the job of self-centered despot.

seax knife

The Seax was the traditional personal weapon of my ancient ancestors, the Saxons.  (They derived their name from the Seax, actually.)  It was a large, single-edged knife that often had brass studs on the hilt.  Tip to aspiring fantasy authors: if you want to create a believable culture, give it a signature weapon.  Just about every notable culture in world history has a particular weapon that’s closely associated with it. 

favorite 80s movies grosse point blank

Grosse Pointe Blank is not an Eighties movie, having been released in 1997.  You may be confused because Grosse Pointe Blank stars John Cusack, who starred in a trillion movies in the 1980s, and without whom we wouldn’t have such Eighties classics as Say Anything and Better Off Dead.

stanag bullpups

The only bullpup rifles that take STANAG magazines are the British L85, FN F2000, and the Bushmaster M17.  The only working bullpup rifles that take STANAG magazines are…uh… 

*cue sound of crickets*

browncoats hitler

The term you’re looking for is brownshirts.  Hitler’s SA goons were the brownshirts.  Browncoats are something else entirely–duster-wearing libertarian-leaning geeks who all dream of flying around in a battered old smuggling freighter, and having sex with Kaylee or Jayne Cobb. 

(Before I get hate mail from all you Browncoats: I have a brown duster, too…and yes, Jayne is totally hot.)

nh resident car purchase pay mass sales

Why in the world would a NH resident buy a car in the People’s Republic, and pay MA sales tax, when you could be giving your business to NH car dealers who will sell you that vehicle sales tax-free?  (AFAIK, Vermont also doesn’t charge sales tax to NH residents who buy a car in the Green Mountain State.)  If you absolutely have too much money to spend, just buy a car in NH, calculate what the sales tax in MA would have been, and then send a check to the MA People’s Secretary of Paying Your Fair Share, So Our Governor Can Keep Giving Cushy No-Work State Jobs To His Pals.  (Yeah, it’s a long title.  You should see the sign on his door…even the acronym looks like one of those Welsh town names.)

being a parent soon

Oh, you’re in for a fun ride, and I don’t mean that with any degree of sarcasm. 

 

Thus begins your Monday, loyal readers.  Grab that bitch by the horns and show it who’s boss, will you?

he’s pining for the fjords.

Can anyone give me a positive ID on the avian trespasser pictured below?

It looks like a Chinese Pheasant (Chrysolophus pictus) to me, but I’ve never seen one in the feathers, so to speak.  Also, I don’t think that kind of pheasant is native to NH.

This guy walks around the house once or twice a day.  Pretty plumage, eh?

(Bonus question for you Southerners: identify the species, the proper shot size, and a good recipe.)

I kid, I kid.  I like this one better out there than on my plate, I think.

thursday randomosity.

• Michigan man is charged with felony for checking email over a coffee shop’s unsecured WiFi network.  That’s right, folks: piggybacking on someone’s WiFi without asking permission is a F-E-L-O-N-Y now.  Felony, as in: lose your voting and Second Amendment rights for life.  Pretty soon, it’ll be easier to just write all the stuff into the penal code that isn’t a felony.  This one’s for all you “There ought to be a law” types: they don’t need to take your guns or voting rights overtly.  All they have to do is make everything under the sun a felony (with your support), and then prosecute selectively at will.
• Why did I purchase a Best of Talk Talk CD at Borders the other day?  I haven’t listened to any Talk Talk since the 1980s…and I couldn’t stand most of their stuff back then.  Someone take my debit card before I start buying Depeche Mode and The Cure CDs next.
• Hard deadline for novel completion: April 30, 11:59pm.  I’m in a home stretch competition with one of my VP pals, who is trying to finish a play by the same date, and the loser will have to buy the winner a bottle of decent wine.  There will also be gloating and general trash-talking involved, so I have a vested interest in making deadline above and beyond the whole “sell this thing and see it on the bookshelf” bit.
• After this thing is in the mail, I’ll be finishing a short story that’s been on the back burner, and waiting patiently at 75% completion.  Then I’ll write another short story that has been on the tip of my brain for a month or two now, and then I guess I’ll decide whether to start with the follow-up to the SF novel, or tackle the YA urban fantasy novel that’s been percolating in my head.  But first: a break, and the reading of the ten novels stacked on my desk.
• For the one or two ink-and-paper fans among you: my current favorites are Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown, and 4001 Violet.
• Does anyone out there play World of Warcraft on one of the new Mac minis, aluminum iMacs, or unibody MacBooks–the ones with the new nVidia graphics chips?  if so, what sort of frame rate can you report?  It’s about time for another upgrade-and-hand-me-down cycle here at Castle Frostbite, and I’m toying with the idea of getting one of the new Mac minis instead of going the usual route and ordering the bits for a new gaming rig from Newegg.
• Robin’s Chicken Tikka Masala is the bestest chicken dish in the history of the universe.  In fact, it’s so good that if I were a chicken, I’d stand in line for the honor of getting my neck snapped just to be included in that Tikka Masala…it’s that good, folks.
• A tip for prospective parents: when shopping for toddler socks, never get the variety pack that has five pairs of socks with five different motifs on them.  The only time you’ll ever have matching pairs is when you take them out of the bag.  Get multipacks of identical pairs instead.

That’s all the Thursday Randomosity we have right now, folks.  Expect more substantial blogging later, because I haven’t had my fill of controversy yet this week.

a short commute.

Today is Take Your Daughter To Work Day!

The question is–do I really want to encourage her to develop a writing habit?

yo quiero kevlar vest.

Here’s a recent incident from Tennessee:

Man shoots neighbor’s Chihuahua.

Cliff Notes: Elderly woman lets her dog out of the house one day, and her cul-de-sac neighbor shoots it through the eye when it comes onto his property unleashed.

Killing dogs–there’s another subject that’s almost as polarizing as religion, as reading through the comment thread of that news article will show you.  One one side, you have the dog lovers, who suggest that the shooter is mentally unhinged, and that nothing ever justifies killing someone’s beloved pet.  On the other side, you have the curmudgeons who say that any free-roaming animal on their property is either dinner or trash can liner, depending on species.

Now, we own dogs here at Castle Frostbite, and sometimes they will escape the property and go roaming about.  If they ever chased someone, and got themselves kicked or shot for their aggression, the fault would lie with me for not containing my animals.

That said, I sometimes go walking on the same road, and I’ve had several dogs accost me–one day, I had to interrupt my run three times because I had three separate large dogs running after me, dashing off their owners’ properties and into the public road.  I had a gun with me, as I usually do when I leave the house, but I didn’t consider shooting those dogs despite their initial aggressive stance.  Maybe it’s because I’m a dog owner and know a little bit about dog psychology, and maybe it’s because I understand the amount of grief I’d cause a dog’s owner by killing his pet, but I wouldn’t actually pull the trigger on a dog unless it’s already chomping down on my leg, or attacking my kids.  Conversely, I have had strange dogs walking onto my property, and I didn’t instantly haul out the .303 and bust a cap in Rover’s ass because ZOMG ITZ MAI PROPRTEE!!!

This is another one of those subjects where one has to carefully weigh property rights, circumstances, and the overall situation before making an irreversible decision.  Was it his property?  Yes.  Did the six-pound Chihuahua present a threat to him or anyone else at the time, therefore necessitating instant destruction? No.  Was there a safer and less confrontational way to handle the situation?  Most likely.  She should have had the common courtesy to leash her dog and not let it crap on someone else’s lawn, and he should have had the courtesy and common sense to call his neighbor to task before going all Terminator on Rosie the Chihuahua.

Also bear in mind that this was a residential cul-de-sac, not a huge country property.  It’s much easier for an overexcited canine to cross the boundaries of the average suburban front yard than to cross from one thousand-acre farm over into Farmer Jim’s neighboring thousand-acre farm.  Property rights are the same in both examples, but I’d say the proximity and ease of accidental boundary violation should have a bearing on how fast the owner of that property is getting that rifle out of the closet.  (Also: shooting rat-sized dogs in a residential cul-de-sac with a firearm?  Not too awfully bright.)

What’s your take on the issue?  Who has the moral culpability for the demise of the canine in question?  Under what circumstances would you shoot a dog on your property?

and they so went there.

Today’s Penny Arcade is so very, very wrong…and so chock-full of win.

sniper’s a good job, mate.

Here’s my favorite class video of the character classes in Team Fortress 2:

The Sniper.

I can’t quite nail down what I find so hilarious about this video.  It’s probably the combination of the Aussie accent, the sage career advice, and the pitch-perfect timing of the visuals.  It never fails to crack me up.

(Link NSFW due to comic violence and gratuitous gunplay.)

on self-deception.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.  –Bertrand Russell

I largely agree with the quote above, but I have to amend it a little.  Humans have an amazing ability to rationalize their prejudices and preferences, to the point where they will refuse to believe something despite a mountain of evidence, or fervently believe something not only in the complete absence of evidence, but in the presence of a mountain of contradictory evidence.  (That’s why so many religions make unquestioning faith the highest of virtues, especially when that faith contradicts “worldly” knowledge.  That’s how Tertullian could proudly proclaim “I believe because it is impossible.”)  To modify yet another famous quote, I’d say there are only two things that are infinite: the universe, and the human capacity for self-deception…and I’m not so sure about the former.

Case in point: the Casey Anthony case, and the brand new “Craigslist Killer” case.

Craigslist killer accused’s friends say police “have the wrong man”.

The friends and relatives of the man arrested in connection with a slaying and several robberies of women advertising services on Craigslist are in denial about the situation, because the admission that their friend/fiancee is a robber and murderer would upset some of their core beliefs about themselves: that they are good people, and that they are good enough judges of character to not hang out with (or be engaged to) bad people.  His fiancee sent an angry email to ABC News, insisting that the whole thing is just “cops trying to make money off accusing an innocent man.”

“Unfortunately you were given wrong information as was the public,” Megan McAllister wrote to ABC News in an e-mail. “All I have to say to you is Philip is a beautiful person inside and out and could not hurt a fly! A police officer in Boston (or many) is trying to make big bucks by selling this false story to the TV stations. What else is new?? Philip is an intelligent man who is just trying to live his life so if you could leave us alone we would greatly appreciate it. We expect to marry in August and share and wonderful, meaningful life together.”

In the Casey Anthony case, her parents still insist that she is innocent and a victim of malicious prosecution, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  When they were in court to respond to a civil lawsuit recently, they lashed out at the lawyers and reporters, claiming all these people had destroyed the Anthony family and ruined their lives.  When they left the deposition, Casey’s mother shouted, “You have to have faith!  If you don’t have faith, you don’t have hope!”

That, of course, cuts right to the heart of the matter.  When people are faced with accepting a reality that is just too fundamentally threatening to their most dearly held beliefs, they have a vested interest in denying that reality just for reasons of mental self-preservation.  They will deny the evidence for that reality, and latch on to anything that will enable them to continue their self-deception.  It’s a natural–and very effective–defense mechanism.  The alternative would be to admit that you are indeed capable of making friends with (or getting engaged to) a murderer…that your daughter did indeed kill your granddaughter…or that demographics and geography have far more to do with your chosen religious affiliation than its inherent truth does.

The trouble is that humans are wired for seeking out truth, and that even the most elaborate act of self-deception can’t ever suppress the knowledge that it is, indeed, self-deception.  That knowledge sits in some corner of the brain, and its presence causes discomfort through cognitive dissonance for as long as its bearer refuses to match their world view with the facts.