Pirate Guy

Thanks to Steve Perry for forwarding this ....

Thinking about getting some little gold hoop earrings. Just for the look.

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One more for the Dodgers and they've won their division. Admittedly this is the worst division in baseball -- earlier this year it was in contention for the worst division in MLB history -- but hey, they're the Dodgers. This is progress.

BTW, you Brooklyn Dodgers fans -- I've heard it all. The reason I was born in Los Angeles in the first place was that my father followed the Dodgers 0ut from Brooklyn, fifty years ago this year ....

I am pleased for Joe Torrey. A year after being unceremoniously booted out of New York, he has the Dodgers in the playoffs -- and the Yankees are missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade or more.

Courtesy, Miracles, and Very Cool Art

This is pretty much an open subject blog. I'm talking about whatever I want to talk about, but if you want to make posts on any given subject, feel free to post a comment and go wherever you want to with it. My one request -- and this is me being nice, since really by "request" I mean I'll delete your posts if you repeatedly ignore it -- my one request is that you be polite to the other posters. There really is a difference between "That's a fascist idea" and "You're a fascist," between "That's a dreadful idea" and "You're a bad human being for suggesting it."

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A news headline this morning: "Man shot in Miracle area." I clicked through and it turned out that a guy had been shot in the "Miracle Mile" area of Los Angeles. I e-mailed the headline to myself, though. There's a bit in one of the later stories where James Camber gets shot -- he's holding his hands out in a reflex action and the bullet passes through his hands and strikes him in the ribs. I have to be able to use that headline somewhere.

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Extremely cool post over on Steve Perry's blog. For some reason it reminded me of my friend Milda de Voe, I'm not sure why. :-)

For those of you who don't read the comments ...

Steve Perry writes:

And one of the funniest ever stories in SF came from his daughter, Astrid. She was taking a science fiction class and there was a quiz question: Why did Robert A. Heinlein write Stranger in a Strange Land?

She answered "For the money."

Teacher marked it wrong, she went up to see him. "Why did you mark this wrong?"

Teacher laughed. "Why did you answer it that way?"

She said, "Because he was at my house talking to my dad and I asked him why he wrote it and that's what he said ..."

Happy Birthday ....

... Steve Perry. Today is Steve's 60th birthday, and I want to wish him a happy birthday and congratulate him on still being on the right side of the dirt, which is a real accomplishment when you're as ancient as he is.

Steve is a man of superb good taste, as partly evidenced by the fact that he's repeatedly said nice things about my writing, and without actual payment. Probably more indicative is the list of other work he likes -- Ursula Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Lonesome Dove, the Travis McGee series -- the dedication to the Machiavelli Interface mentions both the McGee series and "Great Souled Sam" -- and you know, McGee is McGee and Great Souled Sam is the guy I took my handle from: I've been FatSam online for closing in on 30 years now, and Mahasamatman from Lord of Light is where that came from. (Frequently people think it's the drug dealer in "Fletch" -- which is one of my favorite novels -- and is the only other FatSam I know of in fiction, outside my own work. But it's the Zelazny.)

If it turns out he's a fan of "Rustler's Rhapsody" as well, I might have to travel to the northwest to marry the guy. ("Rustler's Rhapsody? Rex O'Herlihan, the Singing Cowboy? No, no, no," Perry said hastily, "I swear I've never heard of it.")

Steve does beautiful work. The trilogy he's probably best known for, starting with The Man Who Never Missed, features a protagonist who's non-violently waging war against a corrupt, failing, centralized government ... which I wish I'd read before writing The Long Run, because there's stuff in there I could easily have lifted and rubbed the serial numbers off of. Steve Perry: one of the writers I wish I'd stolen from, and will steal from going forward.

Happy Birthday, Steve. :-)

The Long Run is off ...

-- and available at Immunity.

Anyone wanting to volunteer to help proof Last Dancer, I'd appreciate the help. I just don't see this text any more. (For that matter, typos in the existing documents at immunity -- let me know. I'll correct them.)

There were two blogs I read daily until I ran across Steve Perry's blog, when it turned into 3. They're all in good shape lately --

Scott Adams on urine-drinking coal miners.
Steve Barnes on flying chickens.
Steve Perry links to a very cool website showing your "real age," sort of.

Coolest thing I've seen in a while -- very high-res photos from the latest Shuttle mission. Just outstanding.

John D. MacDonald ...

This is incestuous, since he starts out mentioning this blog, but even so:

http://themanwhonevermissed.blogspot.com/2007/08/busted-flush.html

Really nice post by Steve Perry on the late great John D.