The Wotch II - To mike weber`s website

ront cover: From Cheer! I, a
spinoff webcomic from The
Wotch II; Jo (with the wand)
and Alex are two of four cheerleaders who used to be really
annoying sexist jocks.
They were changed into
cheerleaders when they messed with
a temporarily autono-
remembers that they were ever anything elseIII.
You may recall Alex, transformed into a minotaur a bit later in
the story, from the cover of my earlier
zine, Improvised Weaponry.
Both The Wotch and Cheer! have
stopped updating (though i note that
author Tselsebar has updated the
Cheer! copyright notice to say "2015")
- but both have deep archives that
you can spend some enjoyable time
binging on. (The links for both
comics lead to the first page.)
There is Much Silliness waiting in
store if you do.
And so this is the first zine
in quite a while without a song
based title; i linked to the page on
the front of the zine in an online
forum discussing the webcomic
Magick ChicksIV, in which the
Left to right:
Sam, Alex, Lita and Jo
(more-or-less) Good Magical
GirlV and her Evil Counterpart
have exhausted their magic in
a duel and are reduced to
punching each other...
mous personality fragment of Anne
Onymous (the Wotch) - her anger who zapped them into cheerleaders.
And nobody, including them,
I
http://tinyurl.com/q7z97p5
II http://tinyurl.com/o5ruwoj
III
Well, Jo remembers - but life is better for
the others, and not so bad for her, too,
so she doesn't say anything.
IV http://tinyurl.com/pywj2yh
V ...who has a wand she inherited from one
of her mothers.
Contents
Our Cover....................................................1
Disemvoweling Days...................................2
George Washington and Buzz Aldrin - a
eird. I just spent
Study in Financial Contrasts................4
ten minutes or
Oh What a Brilliant Businessman The
more trying to
Donald Is.............................................5
Say It Ain't So, Josephine!.........................5 post a comment to an article
I guess i was due after forty years...........6
on The Daily Beast.I
Undt Zo, the Hugos Survive Again.............8
The article was a piece on what
Further Mailing News................................10
the
writer
considers to be the death of
I am now officially ready to spit..............12
MCS on Mailing 306 Begin.......................16 (meaningful) satire.
So i remembered a lovely quote
The New Port News 282.................16
and tried to post it as a comment:
The Typo King 33.............................18
Spartacus...............................................20
Jewels and Binoculars 26.................20
Spiritus Mundi 268.............................22
"Satire is what closes on Saturday night." , 1937
Wot?.........................................................23
I used exactly that wording.
Our Friend................................................24
It automatically went into modBack to MCs............................................27 eration.
Peter, Pan and Merry 122.................27
Twygdrasil & Treehouse Gazette 153
......................................31
And the hits just keep on
comin'.....................40
Variations on a Theme
106..............................41
Velociraptor-Free
Workplace................43
Sporadic 32...............45
Online PDF Version.......46
Revenant 88...............46
I
http://tinyurl.com/nveces7
a
SFPAzine
from
mike weber
655 old lakeview rd
gainesville ga
"test", in case there
was some problem
on the site, or TDB
had suddenly taken
a grudge against
people posting
under the screenname "Fairportfan".
But no.
So just on a
hunch, though i
couldn't/can't
think of any reason
it should be the
problem, i tried
"Satire is what
closes on
S*t*rday night."
, 1937
A fair amount of fiddling which may, eventually, result in about
five slightly different versions of the
And that went through.
comment appearing - finally led to a
Wot?
version thatsuccessfully got through
I wonder why "Saturday" is a
without going into moderation hell.
potential no-no?
First, i wondered if Kaufman's
(Referring to a mixed drink as a
name was, for some reason, anath"cocktail"
will get you tossed into
ema, so i disemvoweled it:
"pending" status, too ... but "Satur"Satire is what closes on Saturday"?)
day night." , 1937
ince i wrote this, it has been
suggested on an online forum
But no.
where
i also posted it that perhaps
Then i tried just the quote, with
the problem is that the over-enthuno attribution.
siastic board auto-censor software
But no.
doesn't like "turd" in the middle of
Then i tried a post that just said "Saturday"
ave you ever encountered the book George
Washington's Expense
Account?I Washington
nobly declined to accept a
salary, if Congress would
agree to pay his expenses as
Commander in Chief during
the Revolution.
A general's pay was
$166/year. Washington's itemised
expenses came to just shy of half a
million dollars.
Talk about doing well by
doing good.
(When he was elected President, he made the same noble offer,
and Congress said "Uh, no, we'll
...uh... just pay you a salary,
George...")
Well, Buzz Aldrin has now
published his travel voucher for the
trip to the Moon.
Buzz didn't do as well as
George.
I
http://amzn.to/1P52eqa
Larger views:
http://electronictiger.net/buzz/2.jpg
http://electronictiger.net/buzz/1.jpg
inheritance,
invested in a
market index
would be
worth $4.5
billion at least
a few billion
more then he's
currently
worth.
And the astronauts had to fill out a
Customs declaration
on the Moon rocks
they brought back...
omment
to an
article at
The Daily BeastI
about Trump
milking jury
duty for publicity. (And announcing he
would never eat Oreos
again):
Larger
"Entprof" said:
hat's hilarious is that
'great' businessman The
Donald would be richer
today if he'd just put his
money in index funds in
'74 when he inherited it.
That's right folks $50 million, a low estimate of his
I
http://tinyurl.com/qbnan4g
I
The Daily Beast
girls' Little League
team from Washington was accused of
throwing a World Series
game after it lost 8-0 on
Monday. The undefeated
South Snohomish, Washington team was no-hit
by a North Carolina
team, which meant it
would not go on to play
an otherwise-undefeated
Iowa team it had previ-
http://tinyurl.com/o2g2ak7
ously beaten. In
response to the apparent
tanking, Little League
International ordered
the Washington team to
play the Iowa team in a
special playoff game to
determine who would go
to the semifinals.
On Tuesday, the
Iowa team beat
the Washington
team 3-2 and
advanced.
8-0 seems a bit less
than subtle.
That 3-2 score they
lost the game to Iowa by
would have been a bit
more plausible.
Apparently the Little
League World Series is run
as a round-robin double-elimination (i assume) format
because there are so many teams.
So losing one to avoid a team
that's kinda hard to beat sort of
makes sense.
But, you know, 8-0?
Say it ain't so, Josephine!
The original story was at the
Des Moines Register:
http://tinyurl.com/o9vc8q3
n September 1975, as well
as leaving Atlanta to move
back in with my parents
temporarily in Greenville SC,
i sent in my first
SFPA contribution as a member.
404 page
As the years have passed, i've
seen other members reporting mailings lost by the PO (and had one zine
delivered to the OE after the deadline,
even though it was
sent Express MailI)
- but i've never had
a mailing lost in
the mail.
Until the
final mailing of my
fortieth year, that
is.
About the
12th or 13th of
AUgust, i began to
get a little nervous,
and i contacted
Guy, Jeff and Ned
to see if they'd
gotten their mailings yet. Guy said
he had just
recently, so i
decided to wait a while longer.
After a few more days, still no
mailing - so i contacted Joe. He said
the mailings went out on the sixth,
and supplied me with the tracking
number for mine.
Checking that, i found that the
bundle had apparently fallen into a
black hole between his PO and the
Birmingham sorting facility and had
not been logged in or out anywhere
since the sixth.
Luckily, there was one left, which he hath
mailéd unto me ... and i expect it possibly
I
...which, of course is the one time i've sent
something Express Mail or UPS and
lost the receipt...
tomorrow (well, later today - it's 013 EDT
on 21 August as i type), or Saturday Monday for sure!
Well, just got back from the
mailbox (Friday, 21 August). Not
here yet.
One of the regulars on the
message board for Wapsi Square had
a .sig file that said:
F5 * Is the page up yet? * F5 * Is the page up
yet? * F5 * Is the page up yet? * F5 * Is the
page up yet? *
The notion of supernatural phenomena is a
false construct. Everything in the cosmos
is essentially natural - except for certain
forms of fast food - of course, and possibly some aspects of Los Angeles
Laura Resnick,
o, the Sad Puppies
(who i count as
sincere but
misguided/under a wrong
impression) and the Rabid
Puppies (who should only be
put down by Animal Control) have failed in their
attempts to influence/rig the
Hugo Ballot.
The Sad Puppies (well, a lot of
them; see next paragraph), in my
opinion, simply failed to comprehend
how the Hugos work - they seem to
think the Hugos are intended as a
more-or-less objective indicator of
quality. Which they aren't - they're
intended as exactly what they are, an
index of how much the members of
the WorldCon liked particular works a liking which may or may not correlate with quality on some objective
scale, but which also inevitably will
include political bias, personal
like/dislike of the creatorI, world
events at or around the time the
member votes, earlier or later works
by the creator, and whether the voter
is part of another fandom whose interests overlap with the Hugo categoriesII.
The Rabid
PuppiesIII, OTOH,
though the groups
surely overlap,
were strictly in it to
I
Hello, Scott Card
Dr Who, comics,
Buffy, horror movies,
Star Wars/Trek, etc.,
etc., ad infinitun et
nauseum.
III Under the Svengalilike direction of "Vox
Day"
II
See next page for how Dan
Shive handled this in El
Goonish Shive
i-don'tremember-thedate
stir up political shit and scatter it as
I anticipate that my Disqus feed
widely as possible. Their (his) whole will be ... interesting ... for a while,
purpose, obviously, was to disrupt
because i have posted a number of
and (in their own eyes and those of
comments to the NPR articleIV that
his followers/sycophants) discredit
got things wrong by, among other
the process.
things, blaming the whole thing on
the Sad Puppies, rather than pointing
And why?
a finger at Venereal DiseaseV and his
Because fandom in general
knows (and says, loudly) what a gen- Rabid Puppies...
erally-disgusting bit of human fecal
I've already gotten some, even
matter "Vox Day" is.
while i was still going
down the list and
Well, guess what,
making a few more
guys?
comments.
Didn't work.
IV
Yes, the Hugos
http://tinyurl.com/pesdl66
took a hit, and i'm sure
As a writer of satire in V Doncha just love it when
"Vox Day" will be back
my spare time, Texas is someone you dislike
again next year, running
chooses a pseudonym that
very frustrating.
his hate campaign
Nothing I come up with is has an abbreviation that's
again.
repulsive?
as good as what the
With luck, a few
loons in Texas spout.
fewer people will be
taken in by his bullshit,
and at least some of his slate won't get
nominated, and works that actual
he mailing arrived
human beings with normally -funcWednesday, 26 August
tional minds will like will have a
2015. This is the
chance to get on the ballot.
second one Joe mailed me And, if it happens that way,
the first is apparently still lost
Hugo voters will actually be able to
vote for the works that they like again, in a space/time warp somerather than having to vote "No
where in Birmingham.
Award" to prevent the mad dogs from
The interesting part is that,
kneeing us in the groin.
when i checked the tracking number
for this package on Tuesday, it said
that delivery had been attempted that
afternoon (at 4:12 PM, much later
than our mail normally arrives), and
that a notice had been left in the box.
What made this particularly
interesting is that
Ÿ i had been either at my computer
- ten feet from the door - or in
the kitchen - six feet further
away - virtually the whole afternoon and nobody had come to
the door, and
Ÿ i had sent Maggie and Natalie
down to the mailbox to check
the mail a little earlier than that,
and there was
mail, but no
notice.
So,
Wednesday,
when i anticipated being
out running
errands all
afternoon, i
planned to
stop by the
"carrier
annex" with
the notice, and
pick it up.
Except,
when i checked the
box ... there was no notice.
So i figured to head over to the
annex with a printout of the mailing
receipt that Joe had scanned and emailed me ... but i couldn't find it, so i
decided to drop by home (after dropping back at the office at 2PM, print
another copy, and head over.
Except that when i got home
and checked the box ... there was the
mailing.
This was not the only ludicrous
run-around i got that day, but the
other is not related to SFPA.
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times
Free Press, 28 August 15
Non Sequitur,
23 August 15
Continued next
page
mean - is this hypocrisy,
obliviousness or just plain
stupidity? The man is certainly capable of any or all
of them at any given
moment.
The Daily Beast
eorge W. Bush praised
New Orleans for its resilience during a visit to the
city on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane
Katrina. Speaking at
Warren Easton Charter
High School, he emphasized that the city’s school
system is now the “beacon
for school reform.”
If more of our so-called leaders would
walk the same streets as the people who
voted them in, live in the same buildings,
eat the same food instead of hiding
behind glass and steel and bodyguards,
maybe we'd get better leadership and a
little more concern for the future. -
“You’ve achieved a lot over the
last 10 years, and with belief
and success and a faith in
God, New Orleans will
achieve even more,” Bush
said. “The darkness from a
decade ago has lifted, the
I
http://tinyurl.com/optqgts
Crescent City has risen
again, and its best days lie
ahead.”
“New Orleans will always be
your home,” Mayor Mitch
Landrieu told him.
A longer Daily Beast pieceII
includes this:
ush’s visit was far more
low-key than President
Obama’s stop here on
Thursday, with a fraction
of media and only one protester, who had shown up
at 7:45 in the morning,
outside.
“I’m standing here to bear
witness to the fact that a lot
of people still remember his
incompetence,” Aaron
Grant, 35, told me while
holding a sign of Bush
looking out the window of
Air Force One—that reads,
YOU’RE EARLY COME
BACK IN A WEEK.
“The suffering is impossible to
quantify. The emotions are
very alive and very raw. A
lot of people just want this
week to be over.”
When I first found out Bush
was coming here this week, I
started asking everyone I
came into contact with
II
http://tinyurl.com/o3rxg47
whether they were aware
that the 43rd president was
returning to the city it took
him three weeks to visit
back in 2005.
The overwhelming response
was utter disbelief. And
there is arguably no greater
disconnect than Bush
returning here, to a city that
generally loathes him, with
a sign outside a charter
school that reads “Welcome
Back President George W.
Bush and Mrs. Bush No
Child Left Behind.”
“It’s outrageous that this No
Child Left Behind sign is
here,” said Serena Sebring,
38, a protestor who arrived
at some point during Bush’s
speech and who stood
outside the school. “George
Bush left all of New Orleans
behind that day.”
Inside the building, Bush
addressed the pain but
never acknowledged his own
role in the response.
Instead, he praised the resiliency of the people and the
school, that later re-opened
with all of its students
essentially homeless. And he
praised the controversial
charter school system— 91
percent of
schools here
are chartered—
that critics
have said is
decimating
poor communities.
“Isn’t it amazing,” Bush told
the packed
auditorium
after receiving
a polite ovation. “The
storm nearly
destroys New
Orleans and
yet New
Orleans is the
beacon for
school reform.”
And:
The people, the natives, the victims, the ones who were in
the water, in the dome, on
the levees, or those whose
loved ones were—and still
are- the people who are most
likely at home, riding this
out, waiting for #Katrina10
to pass.
They are the ones this week on
the sidelines, watching
everyone else remind themselves of how this city has
come thundering back,
while narratives of redemption and hope are spun so
often that any other counterpoint to that gets lost.
“I’ll be so glad when this week
is over; I don’t want to see
another Katrina memory for
a long time,” said Joe Gilyot,
assistant principal of
Warren Easton High School.
Back then - when things were
starting to shake out and it looked like
recovery efforts that actually meant
something were on the horizon, i was
afraid (as were many others) that
NOLa was going to get the Times
Square Disneyfication treatment.
What i've been reading in the
last few days seems to suggest that it's
at least partly true - with people
unable to afford homes in the nowgentrifying areas where
they used to live, and the
gentrifiers complaining
about the very things
that make New Orleans
the funky, multicultural,
just-plain-cool New
Orleans that attracted
them.
Complaints about
noise. Complaints about
people out in the street
having a good time.
Street-corner
musicians and bands
getting hassled.
And now the
mayor wants to tear
down parts of New
Orleans' heritage.
Yes, i know they're monuments
to the Confederacy. Yes, i know all
that. But i perceive the statue of
Robert E Lee and other such monuments rather differently than i perceive the "Heritage Not Hate" types
with their malformed Battle Flags that
they think is the "Confederate Flag".
One is part of the history, the
culture and the aura of the city, longstanding and established; the other is
a recent phenomenon, taken up specifically for racial/political reasons by
yahoos who have no idea what "heritage" means, who wouldn't recognise
it if it bit them on the ass.
I won't say for sure it will fall
out this way - but i wouldn't be surprised if many black citizens are as
opposed to Landrieu's plan as well as
whites.
29 August 2015
20 Aug 15
THE NEW PORT NEWS
282
NBrooks
don't know if that caterpillar ought be courting
that ladybug - ladybugs eat
other insectsI.
"There wasn't much winter
here this year"?
Our three-day power outage
begs to differ.
Dan Mannix, in his memoir
Step Right Up (most recently re-published under its UK title, Memoirs of a
I
...and the invasive Japanese ladybugs bite
people, too.
Sword-Swallower),
once described a
routine that KrinkoII, owner of the
ten-in-one where Mannix ate fire and
swallowed swords did.
Krinko would drive a nail into
his right eye with a hammer. He
would grimace and distort his face ...
and then press on his left cheek, and
the nail, having passed from one eye
to the other, would pop out.
What Krinko knew that the
marks in the crowd didn't was that it
is possible to slide a thin metal rod
(the size of a small nail) into the tear
duct with no problem. So he preloaded his left eye with a nail, and
then faked "driving" the nail into his
right eye, where it slid in easily...
II
Krinko was a genuine fakir from India
Your thing about chapbooks
covered in the hide of unborn unicorns reminds me of a humourous
piece in one of the auto magazines
forty-plus years ago - the author was
describing his experiences as a firsttime purchaser of a fictional (but
obviously Jaguar) sports car.
He said that the service
manager recommended that he use
only a specific, high-end polish on the
ity that which may be adequately
explained by editorial meddling."
The Germanwings pilot had
been instructed by his doctors to not
fly, but he concealed this from his
employer. This, i'd say, is an indicator of premeditated suicide.
Oh, certainly triac chopper
dimmer switches probably could
existed in 1975 - if something is inter-
SPEED OF GLACIER RETREAT WORLDWIDE
coachwork - of which the dealership's
parts department conveniently turned
out to be the sole supplier in town.
When he looked at the price, he
demanded to know what was in the
stuff - unicorns' earwax?
No - this is what a Tiger
Moth looks like.
You may be assuming too
much when you ask why a writer
would give his book an already
overused title. I quote Napoleon:
"Never ascribe to auctorial stupid-
Rhone Glacier
June 2007
fering with AM radio reception, i'm
pretty sure it has some sort of active
components, as opposed to a rheostat,
which is passive.
Susan and i bought a Silver
Reed daisywheel printer to cut stencils
with our first computer. Basically one
of their typewriters without the keyboard.
I'll get back to Challenger later, i
Given that surgeons these days
operate on an almost assembly-line
basis, and have to depend on others to
collect and collate the background for
each patient, i'm mildly surprised we
don't hear more stories of healthy gall
bladders removed, or wrong leg
amputated.
Out of course, i've come to suspect
that that knee had some cartilage
'HISTORICALLY UNPRECEDENTED'
Rhone Glacier
June 2014
http://tinyurl.com/nlbr
obc
think. I hope.
THE TYPO
KING 33
RJennings
he marking they had
me put on my right
knee to make sure
they did the right one was
done using iodine, which
easily washed off.
problems as far back as when i was
thirteen or so.
If the "midget-mobile" was
Very Small, with a Very Small engine,
and the weather was Very Cold, it
may well have taken the coolant a
while to come up to a warm enough
temperature to make the heater effective.
I know the heater in my '69
Spridget took a while to get warm.
(After which i had to intermittently
shut it off because it was over-enthusi-
astic.
concentrated brine the process produces.
I have never picked up Astro
I really doubt the story about
City in a store, but i read one or two
trade collections in the library. Pretty the ISP that hijacked people's computers - there was no way (at that time)
good, but the nearest comic shop is
twenty-some miles away, so i haven't that the ISP could possibly turn on a
been picking up any comics for years. computer that was off.
And since the connection
Speaking of women in early
fandom/prodom - i have the impres- would have almost certainly been
dial-up, people would have noticed
sion that many of the women who
participated when fandom was mostly that their phones were in use a lot
postal either used initials or non-gen- more than they should have beenIII.
der-specific versions of their names.
Now, Dave Minch pointed out
(This, of course, is the sort of
that The Source (in the days long
thing that Heinlein plays on as a story before the internet), a company that
element in Tunnel in the Sky.)
offered pretty much what is known as
"cloud storage" these days - in megaGas prices spiked briefly in
bytes, not gigabytes or terabytes, as
mid-summer and are now falling; i
today - was headquartered in Langley,
anticipate we'll see sub-two-dollar
Virginia.
prices by DSC. (It's currently $2.199
"Hmm," quothee, "what is
at Kroger - down from $2.40-somelocated
in Langley Virginia that might
thing a month or so ago.)
A major expense in desaliniza- have excess computer capacity to
sell?"
tion is getting rid of the poisonouslyThe
monster Easter
Bunny was found
online; i forget
where. I find a lot
of such stuff at
III
And the bandwidth
over dial-up would
have been way too
low to allow the
scheme to actually
work.
odd moments, that i (a true denizen of
the internet) reshare with othersIV.
As to being able to watch The
Black & White Minstrel Show - this URL http://tinyurl.com/otdw96w - will take
you to a YouTube search page with lots
of clips and such.
IV
Including SFPA
SPARTACUS
ghliii
lad to see we agree on
Landrieu's plan to desecrate NOLa history.
One reason i plan to get to DSC
this year (even though we really can't
afford it) is to get photos of some
landmarks before he tears them
down.
Didn't go to Ex Machina may watch on DVD - the trailer
seemed to imply a basic misunderstanding of the Turing Test on the
part of the filmmakers - or else to
signal an Amazing Plot Twist.
JEWELS AND
BINOCULARS 26
TMcGovern
ow - whose
basement is that
on your cover?
He's got a hell
of a model
railroad
layout!
Well, it's
not so much a
"reboot" at the
Archie line, as it's
a parallel line,
with a comic that
was divided into
two running storylines - one
where Archie
married Betty, and
one where he
married Veronica which turned out,
in fact, to be parallel universes
Forty years ago (if the internet had
existed then) i would have figured
this was a
ad satire.
In 2015, it's a real ad.
which could be traveled
between.
And then there are
the current horror title.
But the main
Archie line continues, as
well.
I wanted the alternative cover to one
Archie title in the relatively recent past - the issue in which
everyone got gender-swapped,
because that cover was done by one of
my favourite webcomic artistsI, but i
missed it. (She's also done an alternate cover for #3 of Archie Meets the
Predator - which i figure i've missed as
well.)
If that's your philosophy about
snow, i'm afraid you live in the wrong
part of the country.
About click-bait:
...what you get when you click to
see what it was that happened is
often unremarkable.
More than that - at least some
of them will take you to Bad Places
which will try to install malware on
your computer.
I
Who pretty much used one of her existing
character designs for the male version
of Betty.
Actually, if the Saudi over-production is to mess with any other producer, it's to undercut that
competition.
If Iran manages to start selling
oil openly again, expect prices to fall
again/some more.
SPIRITUS MUNDI 268
Do you remember Rally!, the
semi-satire/semi-news
zine he pubghliii
lished? The way i remember it, he
nteresting (if somewhat creepy)
included a line something like "Ellicover. Almost puts me in mind of son talks talk - Will he walk walk?"
the SailorSun.org pic i used for a
I'm not even sure he included
cover a while back (bottom of pre- anything beyond that line.
vious page).
Harlan found out and he went
ballistic. He called Don (late at night)
Paul McGann only appeared
and screamed at him. After Don
I
once as the 8th Doctor - in a TV
hung up on him, his
movie intended
phone would ring
as a pilot
three or four
for a UStimes every
produced
fifteen
series,
minutes
for
which was
the rest of
not well-rethe
night.
ceived and
sank without a
As i
trace.
recall, Markstein was indeed
That's not
Head of Publicaone of my
tions for Iggy granddaughters
which was apparwith the Evil
ently a kinda
Bunny - that's a
ragtime
operation
picture i found online.
in
Speaking of Trump general - Clay Bennett
apparently Trump's people said that
and he got booted. You
21 July 15
David Duke had endorsed him, and
could look back through
Duke responded by saying he hadn't
past mailings from around then and
and wouldn't because Trump supports find he version of the story.
Israel.
Personally, i have no problem
Don talked about the whole
with what Don said - but Harlan's
IguanaCon/Ellison thing here.
incredible ego and need to prove that
he has the biggest dick around made
I Well, twice - the second time very briefly
the situation a lot touchier than it
in one of the teasers for the 50th
needed to be or should have been.
anniversary special,
seems to turn up in his
vicinity, sooner of later.
I bought a 12-pack
of the "made with real
sugar" Dr Pepper a
couple years back - it
was HORRIBLE.
The Daily Beast
Have you heard the story of
what happened when Marvel was
trying to start up a weird/horror
fiction digest?
They ran a story by Ellison in
the second issue; somehow the page
order got screwed up.
Harlan waited until midnight
L.A time to call Roy Thomas in New
York.
And then, as i had the story at
the time, he insisted that they run the
story AGAIN - and PAY him for it
again.
The third issue was the last.
Brilliant writer, egotistical jerk
and caring humanitarian.
Best to admire from afar, out of
range of the flying poo that always
ext year, Illinois
will become the
first U.S. state to
put locking devices
on some prescription painkillers to discourage abuse of the drugs.
The pilot program—proposed in
a bill signed into law this
week by Gov. Bruce Rauner—will use numerical locks
on painkillers that contain
hydrocodone (aka Vicodin or
Norco).
“Too many Illinoisans become
addicted to these powerful
medications,” state Sen. Iris
Martinez, a sponsor of the
bill. “This legislation will
help prevent individuals
who haven’t obtained a
written prescription from
using hydrocodone, a dangerous drug when used
without a doctor’s supervision.”
longer than anyone else in my life
who isn't part of my family. My first
I repeat: Wot?
contact with Ned was back in 1969,
I will now sound like an NRA when i was in Crypto School at
Norfolk Navy Shipyard.
shill:
I came back to the barracks one
People will just use hammers or
day,
and
i had a phone message saws to commit their addictions.
"Call Operator 29" (or whatever number).
I have heard some truly ludicrous ideas coming out of state legislaWorried that it might be a
tures, but this one may
be the most ludicrousist
ever.
Come to think of
it - could this be a Clever
Ploy by the NRA to
allow them to make
some sort of anti-gun
control argument by
comparing it to trigger
lock and gun-safe laws?
Original story at
the AP:
http://tinyurl.co
m/ottoecd
've been stalling
on writing this - sort of if,
as long as i didn't write
about it for SFPA, it
wouldn't be true.
But it is.
As near as i can recall, i can say
that i (more or less) knew Ned Brooks
family emergency, i embarked on a
frustrating five or ten minutes of
dealing with the minions of TPCI,
finally getting connected to a total
stranger - somebody named "Ned
Brooks".
Ned was, as i was, a member of
I
This was, after all, a year or so after the
release of The President's Analyst.
the N3F in those days, and had seen a
CoA for me in the N3F bulletin, and
decided to call (he was, as we all
know, working at the Langley wind
tunnel and living in Virginia)II.
After i went to and came back
from Viet Nam, the first weekend of
my leave before i went to Sicily happened to be the weekend before Labor
Day ... so, more-or-less on the spur of
the moment, i decided to attend DSC.
Forty-five years later, i don't
definitely recall if Ned was there - but
if i didn't meet him face-to-face there,
i'm sure i did at DSC in Atlanta in
1972.
We'd run into each other at
DSCs and other cons - Kubla, RiverCon and so on.
I got on the SFPA
waitlist, of course - i
forget when - but Ned
was (of course) there.
In September 0f
1975, i joined the roster.
And Ned was
there.
And forty years
II
Between the last footnote
and now is another hour
or so of stalling, looking
up the movie to get its
date and then clicking on
all sorts of randomassociated links that led
to. I really do not want
to be writing this.
passed.
I met Susan at the first RiverCon. In '76 we moved in together. In
'77 we got married.
We went to a lot of cons, and,
as likely as not, Ned was there.
Susan and i were in SFPA
together for a long time.
And Ned was there.
After fourteen years together,
Susan and i split. I kept on with my
life as well as i could - and i kept
going to cons, i tried to hang on.
And Ned was there.
Twenty-five more years passed.
I stayed in SFPA.
And Ned was there.
Along the way, Hank Rein-
hardt, who i'd known almost as long
as i'd known Ned, died, and the tribe
gathered for his funeral.
And Ned was there.
And i met Kate along the way,
and she went to some cons with me and we got married in Hunstsville and
then went on to Constellation.
And Ned was there.
Just a week or so ago, i got my
SFPA mailing, and i opened it, and
Ned was there.
And then i got an e-mail a
couple days ago, and i read it.
And Ned ... wasn't there any
more.
So many things we think will
go on forever- and so many ... don't.
MFIII, Karl Wagner, Khen,
GInzer, Hank, Markstein, Dolbear...
Ned.
I've never gotten drunk. I hate
the sensations even beginning to be
affected by alcohol gives me.
I won't get drunk now.
But i wish there was something
i could do to forget that Ned's not
there any more.
I hope to be at DSC.
If i can get to Ned's memorial
service, i will.
I will see my friends and we'll
remember.
That so many of you are still
there.
And i'm still here.
Incidentally - "Our Friend" was the
caption that Road &
Track ran under the pictures (that were generally not of Henry N
Manney III) ran with
Henry N Manney III's
monthly columns,
which were some of the
wittiest writing on a
regular basis that i ever
encountered.
While there wasn't a lot
of resemblance between
HNMIII and Cuyler
Warnell Brooks, there
was a certain commonality of dry wit and
deadpan understatement.
mation of Israel
and forced them
into permanent
refugee camps.
've been having a a hard
time getting back to SFPA;
the news about Ned kinda
threw me off.
PETER, PAN AND
MERRY 122
DSchlosser
he various Arab
nations had a big hand
in creating the Palestinian Problem - possibly for
political reasons - when they
refused to accept the Palestinians displaced by the for-
Nobody's hands
are clean over there.
The kosher caterer
pork/shellfish question is
simple; as opposed to the
baker/gay wedding cake
one - the baker normally
and routinely makes
wedding cakes for public
sale, therefore cannot
claim religion as a basis
for refusal.
Whereas the kosher caterer
doesn't handle shellfish or pork for
anybody, so cannot be required to as a
special thing.
Why the double-spaced section
on page 2?
I always thought it was the
Thunderbolt Grease-Lapper Special.
Political comments - i just ran
across an online piece whose title (i
couldn't get the article to display properly) is ... eye-catching:
think a lot about the
Department of Energy,
because energy is my
baby: oil and gas and min-
erals, those
things that God
has dumped on
this part of the
Earth for mankind's use
instead of us
relying on
unfriendly
foreign nations,"
she told CNN's
Jake Tapper in
an interview that
aired Sunday on
"State of the
Union."
But Palin, the GOP's 2008 vice
presidential nominee, might
be the first potential cabinet
member to openly speak
about dissolving their office.
"I'd get rid of (the Energy
Department)..."I
Being a half-term Governor
was so much fun; being a half-term
Secretary of Energy must be even
more fun!
Another reason to hope that
Trump is just a bad joke God is
playing and the GOP base just hasn't
seen it yet.
(Yes, i was eventually able to
read it.)
I
http://tinyurl.com/nvtxx7n
Better yet - if all the Republican
candidates stood on each other's
shoulders (in pool number order),
could Trump shake hands with a cosmonaut as the ISS went by?
ISIS is defending the True
Islam against MINOs who have been
corrupted by the West. Especially the
ones who've never had any contact at
all with the West.
The top ranks of the military those who haven't seen combat in
years (if at all) - are willing to go
along when the political "leadership"
(read, chickenhawks who never even
saw service, or deserted, or used
Daddy's influence to get yanked out of
a combat regiment on its way to
Korea and re-assigned as O Club
liquor officer in Seoul) when they start
beating the drums for a new war
against some new bunch of wogs. I
mean, if they didn't, how could they
get to play with their wonderful toys especially those thousands of toy soldiersII they have in their toyboxes?
I think Prometheus just did it to
stir up ... stuff. I mean, he just sounds
like the sort who did things just to see
what would happen.
Well, the BSA changed the
rules to allow gay Scout leaders, and
that's stirred up even more flying
smelly brown stuff.
I think that, in at least some
aircraft, you literally need to pull a
fuse/breaker to shut down the transponder.
II
That are so realistic and bleed reallooking blood when they get blown up
by a toy IED.;
The "media mail" classification
is a judgement call, and subject to
being made at every stage of the package's transit.
And the Benghazi Four are also
much more important than the hundreds that died in embassy attacks and
military barracks attacks on Republican watches, too.
Of course, somehow the Benghazi Inquisition Investigating Committee's remit has expanded to include
all of Hillary's e-mails, sort of like the
Whitewater Witch-Hunter General's
Special Counsel's somehow included
whether Bill Got SomeIII.
Talking about "title/inspired
by" movies - for anyone here who's
familiar with Arthur Ransome's
"Swallows & Amazons" seriesIV there's a new film of the
first book that should be
III
I'll say it again - the fact
that not one real indictment
came out of that circus after
the completely free hand
Foster was given and the
amount of money he spent is
proof he was totally
incompetent.
Given the agenda he was
obviously working from,
any even half-competent
prosecutor should have
gotten at least one
indictment.
IV http://amzn.to/1VFSkPe
just about done filming in the Lake
District and Yorkshire - and they've
added a plot about a Russian spy
tracking down Uncle Jim/"Captain
Flint", who had been a spy for MI5 in
Russia. (There are a couple of other
changes, both sort of understandable a major character called "Titty" just
won't fly...)
{Which, actually, wouldn't be
so far off the mark if it were a film
about how Ransome was inspired to
write the first book by his association
withy the Altounyan children Captain Flint is based pretty clearly
on Ransome himself, who was an
agent for MI5 in Russia... Or perhaps
a double agentV - his second wife was
Trotsky's personal secretary, and
apparently smuggled 2 million pounds
worth of diamonds and
pearls to Paris for the
Comintern on her way to
England.}
Speaking of religious symbol stand-ins in
a cartoon, i've got one
somewhere i have to
remember to run in a
future zine.
The nephew scam
is a short-con variation
on the long con called
"The Spanish Prisoner".
And i heard about
someone working a variV
http://tinyurl.com/qg5pxlk
http://tinyurl.com/q42z2fe
ation of that one not all that long ago.
Wish i could remember when, where
and what they told the mark to set
him up.
Brooke McEldowney's 9 Chickweed Lane usually has a running storyline these days ... except for the last
month or so where he's been playing
with meta fiction and negative space.
And, of course, there are a
number of running-story webcomics,
some of which might as well be newspaper comics, based on format.
As to the Czar's cousin-monarchs coming to his
aid if the Revolution Having been designated a magic user
started earlier by the game system,
neither the Kaiser
Alex was expected
nor the King of
to summon an "abysEngland seems to
sal elemental" familiar.
Alex is prone to what TVTropes calls
"Suspiciously Specific Denial":
"I have no idea how that moose got in
the dance team's dressing room."
have had any real hesitation or uncertainty about attacking his cousin.
TWYGDRASIL &
TREEHOUSE GAZETTE
153
RDengrove
f the Outlander series holds
closer to the original books
by Diana GabaldonI than
True Blood did to Charlaine
Harris's books, the history in
is it probably pretty sound,
from what i recall.
I need to hunt up that new Carriger book. I enjoyed the "Parasol
I
http://amzn.to/1FryDBB
Protectorate" and the
related "Finishing
School" series.
Hmmm. The first
dirigibles (basic experimental craft) in our world
date to the 1870s, and
Count Zeppelin was producing early rigid airships
by 1900. So i'd expect
commercial dirigibles in a
world like this book by
the 1880s/90s. (Maybe
earlier, since apparently
Europeans have easy access to helium
- which they didn't in our world, since
the main early sources were in the
USII, and her dirigibles have steam
engines, as opposed to IC engines.)
Ornithopters are still prettymuch impossible - a power source that
can supply the power needed but be
small/light enough is still beyond us.
(Fusion. That'll do it. Next
year, for sure.)
Boilers that look like Ganesha?
Heck the Corbetite Monks style
their locomotives as seriously impresII
The company tried to get helium for the
Hindenberg and its sister ships, but that
the US classified helium as "war
materiel" and banned it export to
Germany.
sive monsters - an example, the Limerick Wyrm:
You know, the
needle gun fight between
Jerry Cornelius and his
cousin(?) that kills the sister they both
love is basically the same fight except with enchanted swords - as in
the first Elric novel.
Moses as an Apache - well,
there are those who claim the American Indians are descended from the
Lost Tribes of Israel.
You just need the right font
with Cyrillic characters included, like
Nautilius Pompilius... (and maybe use
Character Map).
Many small nations contract
their postage stamp (and money)
printing out to other countries or even
private corporations. There's a
"Saint" storyIII in which Simon
III
The Million Pound Day
Templar gets involved in a scheme
revolving around the Bank of England
printing currency for, i think, Italy.
Somebody arranges to have a lot of
extra printed up and diverted.
And then Simon Templar gets
involved and interested.
About factions inside Disney
sabotaging the release of John Carter that may or may not have happened,
but it's pretty sure that's part of why
the Disney film Return to Oz flopped.
Bookings were cut short, advance
publicity was pulled, no special newspaper ads were bought, a merchandising campaign tie-in with Macy's was
slashed.
In the case, it was the last film
greenlighted by the studio brass prior
to their being fired and replaced by
one, the only thing to do is lie on the
Eisner and Iger, and would be all that ground and scream for three minutes.
would be out before anything they
The blog post i got that picture
planned could come out - if it did
from is about being stung by one:
good and their first films didn't, it
ou may have seen them
would look bad.
lazily floating around your
Discussing dancing/not
garden, and hastily
dancing in agony after ingesting a
avoided them - as these
minute amount of Dave's Insanity
2-inch black and orange
Sauce reminds me of the article i
recently read about the Tarantula
wasps command quite a
IV
Hawk, a large wasp . It quoted an
presence. But, luckily,
entomologist who specialises in wasps
as saying that if you're ever stung by
IV
like Godzilla is a large monster.
they are quite docile as far
as wasps go, and are relatively reluctant to sting.
The reason they can be so
docile is because nothing
will come anywhere near
them, on the off chance of
what happened to me happening to them. Within half
a second of being stung, the
pain begun, and I dropped
straight to the ground and
started screaming my head
off (I wish I had been
recording - it'd make a good
Wasted gif, I bet). It was
excruciating, all-encompassing - I lost the ability to
think about anything else
but the brutal, blinding pain
wracking my body. I honestly thought this
thing had killed me.
The pain lasted for
about 5 minutes
(though it felt like
eternity), for the
duration of which I
did nothing but lie
in the fetal position
and
scream/wail/moan. It's
hard do describe the
pain - I've never felt
anything anywhere near
the level these things
dish out - but if I had to,
I'd say it was like having
all your blood suddenly turn to
hydrofluoric
acid acid
while being
electrocuted. But
after the 5 minutes of hell
was over, it hardly hurt at
all - now it's just slightly red
and tender.
By this point, my family had
called 911. By the time the
ambulance came, though,
the pain had subsided, and I
had to explain to the EMTs
why they had been called to
care for a man who was perfectly fine. I told them I had
been tending my garden
when a big black and orange
thing came at me, and then
I was, for all intents and
purposes, in another plane
of existence for 5
minutes. After
the EMTs had
left, I looked up
"black and orange
thing with a sting
like death" on
Google, and the
first result was
Tarantula Hawk
(Google, you are good
at this), so I did some
research. And now it's
present day, when I'm
typing this.
And by the way, the
author of the insect
sting
Clay Bennet/1 Sep- pain
tember 2015
index (a
guy
named Justin
Shmidt) said a
Tarantula Hawk sting is
"…immediate, excruciating
pain that simply shuts down
one's ability to do anything,
except, perhaps, scream.
Mental discipline simply
does not work in these situations." That is shockingly
accurate, I must say.
Actually, the diseases that the
vaccines the ant-vaxxers don't want
are against are rapidly becoming
menaces again, in large part due to
the anti-vaxxers' efforts.
Actually, considering the "Rio
Grande" (which, as we know, means
"Big River" or some similar thing),
even those crossing it would generally not be "wetbacks" - "wet knees",
maybe.
Your analysis of Castro's
going all the way Communist is logical, however, he did proclaim that he
was a Marxist-Leninist not long after
the Revolution. The same thing has
been said of Ho Chi Minh and the
Viet Minh.
As to tire spped ratings - if the
car can go that fast, in general in the
EU it must come with tires that can
stand it:
n many countries, the law
requires that tires must
be specified, and fitted,
to exceed the maximum
speed of the vehicle they
are mounted on, with
regards to their speed
rating code (except for
"temporary-use" spare
tires). In some parts of
the European Union,
tires that are not fit for a
car's or motorcycle's par-
hundred MPH, you can afford the
tires.
And afford to replace them
every few thousand miles, because
racing tires are not intended for high
mileage use. High speed, yes. High
mileage, no.
Anyway, it's seldom tire failure
that takes hypercars out - it's driver
stupidityV. (Or lack of skill, which
amounts to the same thing at those
levels.)
It's not the Sad Puppies people
are up in arms about - or, rather only
as a side-effect of Rabid Puppies. As
usually happens when some extremist
hijacks a fairly-reasonable cause, the
original people got splashed with
mud, too.
Which is not to say i think
they're right - just that they're not
completely raving-dingleberry crazy.
Actually, i think that badgering
and browbeating witnesses was fairly
common in courts in the Fifties and
maybe on into the Sixties - though i
suspect Hamilton Burger would have
been ore likely to get away with it
V
ticular maximum speed
are illegal to mount.
Certainly there are racing tires
that could stand the gaff at those
speeds; expensive, but if you can
afford a "hypercar" that can go three
Like this one: http://tinyurl.com/opqhtss
The idiot in the passenger seat (he's an idiot
because he got in that car with that
idiot) gets shots of the speedometer
reading over 330 KPH (over 200 MPH)
before the crash at about 310 KPH.
Both idiots survived. The logo at the
bottom of the video is the Hungarian
police (where it happened).
than Perry Mason in the real world of
the time, since the judge and prosecutor were more or less regarded as a
team, and the defense as the "other
side".
Personally, i'm afraid of peaceful
microwave-beamed-power-from-space
setups. Think about who'd be operating those things - remember Gus Grissom's comment about "the
lowest competitive bidder""?
Actually, the characters in Rick O'Shay were originally kids playing "Western
Movie" in a ghost town.
Then it evolved into adults
and then it was set back a
hundred years...
Considering
that the Germanwings co-pilot
covered up the
medical certificate
saying he
shouldn't fly, i'm
fairly sure there was
some earlier intent;
certainly, he executed a careful planVI
as soon as he had the
chance.
I can't recall the title of the
VI
Setting the aircraft in straight and level
flight below the height of the peaks
ahead worked well - there are built-in
safeguards against an all-out power
dive.
recent movie where the protagonist
begins hearing a voice in his head narrating his ife, and realises he is (or has
become) the protagonist of the latest
novel by a popular writer who's notorious for killing off her protagonists in
every book.
If i saw that rabbit i'd call
Animal Control.
Hmmm. If Sherlock
Holmes and Watson are
assumed to be in their midtwenties when they meet in
A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887, and
we assume it was
set contemporaneously - yeah,
they'd be in their
mid hundred-fifties this year.
(Holmes would
have been just about a
hundred when Solo and
Kuryakin met him in The
Rainbow Affair.)
The Battle Flag
(NOT the "Confederate
Flag") has pretty much
been a symbol of racism and
repression since it came into general
use during the Civil Rights era.
The MAD Magazine bit about
rewrites looked at the "folk process",
following a song from the Middle
Ages up to the present day, showing
all the (ridiculous) changes at each
step ... until it was finally recorded by
some hippies, who desecrated that
fine old song ... which was exactly the
same as it had started out centuries
ago.
Well, Trump[ looks more and
more like a clown - sort of the Joker in
flesh-coloured makeup - but nobody
on the right seems to have noticed yet,
based on the polls.
Apparently The Shadow Magazine #1 was basically
an ashcan issue - published mostly to
secure copyrights
and trademark on
a character.
A similar situation in the 1960s
was when Warren
Publications was
publishing Creepy (a
magazine-size
B&W horror
comic, if it doesn't
ring a bell) bimonthly, and they
decided to publish a
second bi-monthly in alternate
months that they decided to call
EerieVII.
Somebody else - Waldman,
maybe? - suddenly announced that
VII
Eerie and Creepy were essentially the
same magazine - same editor/chief
writer, same artists, same format. But
by alternating two bi-monthly titles,
both could stay on the stands longer.
they were going to do a B&W horror
comic called Eerie, and publish before
Warren planned to, apparently trying
to trade on whatever publicity Warren
had managed to generate.
So Warren rushed out an
ashcan, printed just enough copies to
lock down copyright/trademark
rights, and the real run for Eerie began
with issue #2. (All of the stories in
Eerie #1 were eventually reprinted
in the real magazine.)
Actually, Archie is
one of the consistently
best-selling comics lines.
You don't see digestsize Marvel or DC
comics in the
checkout lanes of
every supermarket
along side People
and the like.
They are also
one of the more
innovative.
I don't generally
buy their stuff, at least
partly for moral reasons,
after the whole thing with Dan
deCarlo. (Gary could exp-lain it more
clearly that i, i think, if you're interested.)
But they do, on occasion,
employ one of my favourite webcomic
artists, Gisele leGace, and i try to buy
those issues.
I remember citing Wikipedia in
a discussion with you and being told it
performances. The brevity
was not a reputable reference. Personally, i decided that Pavane was set
of the run has been attribin a world completely divorced from
uted to the stylistic gap
our own, in a manner different from
between the Weill-Brecht
what i consider "alternate history".
work and the typical
But if that's what you prefer to call it, i
Broadway musical during
won't argue, because it's as good a
a busy and vintage period
term as any.
in Broadway history.
There had hardly been any productions of Threepenny Opera in the
...although i believe Broadway
US prior to the Theatre deLys Blitzruns in general were shorter than they
stein version. It had played Broadway are today in the early Thirties.
briefly, in - lemme see:
It really isn't a play that i would
Non Sequitur, 21
July 15
dapted into
English by
Gifford Cochran and
Jerrold Krimsky and
staged by Francesco Von
Mendelssohn, featured
Robert Chisholm as
Macheath. It opened on
Broadway at the Empire
Theatre, on April 13,
1933, and closed after 12
expect to appeal to the
USAian bourgeoisie at any time.
My dad was involved in the
first post-World War 2 production in
the US by the Theatre Guild at University of Illinois. They were unable
to get scripts or sheet music, so they
did their own translation from a
prompter's script, and basically transcribed the music from two partial
record albums, neither of which had
all the songs - one was in Spanish and
the other in German.
It just occured to me - i think
Martin Landau was at UofI at the
same time my dad was - wouldn't
he have made a hell of a Macheath?
Current gas prices heraround
are $2.099 to (at one station) $2.599; i
anticipate it may be below $2/gallon
by DSC. (and it's lower yet right now
in the NOLa area, so...)
I'd like to have seen Floyd live.
That's one of the things i'd do if
i invented a time machine.
The first thing i'd do is go back
to February 1975 with HD ideo equipment and get a good-quality recording
of the multimedia show version of the
Kinks' A Soap Opera that was the first
live Kinks show i ever saw...
fight for religious liberty (she
might want to bone up on
her James Madison), but
now she’s being attacked by
one of the most vile pseudoreligious organizations ever
to spawn.
The Westboro Baptist
“Church.”
Indeed.
The gaggle of spiteful hatemongers flocked to the Kentucky clerk’s
polarizing story like starving,
demented geese on a cheese nip. Yet
did the douchey injustice warriors
rush to Kim Davis’ side with awful
multi-hued signs in hand to take up
the fallen sister’s cause?
Nope. Westboro virtually bludgeoned her with them. Because she
was divorced and remarried.
Why didn’t
Anonymous
Graffiti
Kyle Becker/Independednt Journal
oor Kim
Davis. Not
only did the
anti-gay marriage
crusader go to jail
in defense of what
she believes to be a
anyone else think
of that? An interesting hypothesis,
bomb-throwing
idiots.
Right, she’s
not actually
married now,
because her
divorce is ‘illegitimate’ in the eyes
of God. And she
must leave her
man-who-is-nother-husband. Got
it.
And then,
like the Columbos
they are, they followed the breadcrumbs to why
there is same sex
marriage to begin
with.
Sometimes, politics make
strange bedfellows. But in this case,
some of the bedfellows have a screw
loose.
http://tinyurl.com/qfp7baj
The universe is run by the complex
interweaving of three elements. Energy,
matter, and enlightened self-interest. G'Kar,
Personally, i think GKar was wrong
about at least one of those.
VARIATI
ONS ON A
THEME 106
RLynch
eah.
Stars
can
only get to
Iron 56 and
then they
nova and that
process
creates
heavier elements, as i
seem to recall
the processI.
I'd say that R&H were definitely sending a message there "You've Got to be Carefully Taught"
is not a song written by people who
approve of racism.
In "Loco Motive", the first of
the Craig Rice/Stuart Palmer stories
featuring John J Malone and Hildegarde Withers, set during the early
run of South Pacific,II Hildy mentions
seeing it and is a touch doubtful about
I
...and i could easily be wrong.
II Hmmm. There are a lot of soldiers and
sailors traveling on the train, so it may
have been early Korean War.
the language, but there's no mention
of the theme.
I went into a liquor store a few
years ago, and asked if they had any
porters.
The guy pointed to the wine
section.
Blish worked the question of
whether the transporter destroys you
and creates a perfect duplicate at the
other end into the opening of one of
his Star Trek
adaptations, i
seem to recall McCoy and Kirk
(i think) discussing
itIII.
CBR and
CBZ are electronic
comic book formats. Basically,
they consist of a
compressed container file with
each page inside it
as a JPG - the difference between the two is whether it
uses ZIP or RAR compression.
Okay. Let me unpack what i
said about deCamp, Burke and so on.
DeCamp in no way - as i read it
second-hand, relayed through my
mother who knew nothing of the situation or the personalities - accused
III
Definitely McCoy, maybe Kirk. And it
may have actually already een in that
script. Don't know.
Rusty of anything. All i said was that
he mentioned that there were two particularly prominent people speaking
out who were unhappy with the REH
biography. As i recall now - what twenty years alter? - he actually didn't
mention Burke by name, but said
enough that i was able to recognise
who it must have been. I got no
implication (again, second-hand and
filtered) that he in any way accused
Burke of anything except not approving of the book.
Pretty
much the same for
the guy who ran
around dressed as
Solomon Kane,
though there i got
a bit of "What a
wacko!" coming
through.
In my
mother's account,
he in no way
implied that he
thought either
Rusty Burke or the Kane guy were
behind the death threatsIV.
Not at all, and i did not mean
to convey that impression. Hell Burke is one of my friends and/or
acquaintances i i'd be least likely to
IV
And, let's face it, if deCamp reported the
death threats - which i assume he did those two would have been checked out
first as basic police procedure, and,
presumably cleared.
imagine being behind a
death threat.
There are some
others...
The entire conversation seems to
have been five or ten
minutes at a "Meet the
Distinguished Guest
Lecturer" breakfast, so
different things tend to
run together, i guess.
Was it the PC or
the PC jr that the Boca
Raton group did the
original R&D on? i
thought i'd heard that
the PC was done elsewhere and the PC jr
was handed to the BR group.
We have a cat who stops by
periodically to mooch - Helen calls
him PK ("Pretty Kitty") and he is a
beauty - and i'm sure he's some sort of
Siamese Cross. I took some pictures
just the other day - see previous page.
VELOCIRAPTOR-FREE
WORKPLACE
JCopeland
tried to post a review of
Kratman's first turd bookI
on Amazon - it was
I
Which Baen presented and promoted as
SF, while it's basically just a pile of far
right wank.
removed because
i "reviewed the
politics of the
book, not the
content" and
So, you were up late, or you've got a hangover, or just low blood sugar generally; you
haven't had your first shot of caffeine, and
you sit down at the breakfast table...
admitted i read
about a third and
skimmed the rest.
(I got word
through a third party
who i'm inclined to
believe) that Kratman openly bragged
about gaming the Amazon review
challenge process, with particular reference to my review.
So i wrote another.
You can see my original
review, some comments on the
removal of the review and other
things, and the replacement review at
http://tinyurl.com/ollytls.
I sincerely doubt that he has
improved any in the intervening
years.
I can see why Vox Day would
love him, though.
Speaking of The Man from
UNCLE - ComicmixII informs us that
II
http://tinyurl.com/qdk2k5r
we can now get all eight of the feaAnd meets basically the same end.)
ture-film versions of episodes (seven
At one time, we had three
of which we intended for overseas the- Netflix accounts here - Steve and
atrical release and running in the US Helen had a streaming-only account,
as two-part episodes, one of which is Kate had another one, and i had a
patched together from the original
two-disks-out mail account.
pilot and additional footage) on
Delenn's announcement is,
Amazon digital or "print-on-demand"
indeed,
my favourite B5 line - though
DVDs, and apparently the transfers
Ivanova's explanation to some bad
are quite good.
guys exactly who she is and why it's a
Some of them are pretty good, bad idea to get on her bad side is
and one, which was called "The Five Right Up There.
Daughters Affair" on TV, and The
But i have to go to another
Karate Killers in theatres, features quite
a cast: Joan Crawford, Curd Jürgens, page to read your art credits. Simpler
just to ask and find out several months
Herbert Lom, Telly Savalas, TerryThomas and Mrs David MCallum (at later. I may even remember what it
was i was asking about.
the time), Jill Ireland.
Well, at one time, When
Also a wonderfully staged fight
in a disco while the dancers keep right Pyramid had all the "Skylark" books
in print, they listed Skylark Three as
on dancing to the music of Every
Mother's Son playing their hit, "Come the third book in the series.
Which must have confused hell
on Down to My Boat".
out
of
people
who read it for the first
(Oddly enough, Luciana
time
after
reading
Skylark of Valeron,
Palluzi appears in basically the same
which Pyramid had listed second.
role in To Trap a Spy, the
one patched up from the
11 August
2015
pilot ... and in Thunderball.
2/3 of a faerie ring on a
Gainesville church lawn.
SPORADIC 32
interesting non-mainstream music, if
it is.
BPlott
Since Susan was from Louisardstown Road has
ville, and we used to visit her father
and her aunt, i became fairly familiar
always been a neat
with the town (but i've only been back
place to just wander
once in the last twenty-some years, for
and window shop.
RiverCon in 2000). I never particuI don't know if Ear X-Tacy, one larly took to Hot Brown - maybe i just
never had a good one ... but i did have
of the best new/used record stores i
Native Guides.
have ever shoppedI, is still there, but
Is Kevin Cannon the artist who
it's worth a look-in if you're into coldid the Cartoon Guide to History, or
lecting records/CDs or looking for
whatever it was called?
I When i first met Kate and Helen, i had
Perhaps Pulp Tales Presents
three stickers on my truck's tailgate - a selects its reprints by whether they are
Darwin Fish, a Cowboy Mouth sticker, in Public Domain or not?
and an Ear X-Tacy sticker dead center.
No, actually the zines in last
Kate and Bill, her ex, had joint custody;
mailing
were mailed. What i handHelen spent her weekends with Bill and
delivered was Waterloo Sunset, first in
Gail, and the school week with us.
this
mailing.
One weekend, when Bill brought her back,
I quite enjoyed the October
he stopped behind my truck in the
Daye books; i couldn't finish the first
drive, and asked Helen if i was into
InCryptid - i think it's because i sindrugs.
cerely disliked the protagonist.
The film of Damn Yankees was
pretty good, but i didn't like the handling of Applegate's "Good Old Days"
number. The stage version (at least as
the Greenville Little Theatre presented it, lo these many years agone)
does it as a soft-shoe, not the static
staging of the film.
At one time the Foster's oilcans
i saw hereII stated that it was brewed
in Alabama - i confused Gadsden
(which we don't pass through on our
way to Hartford) with Dothan, which
we do. Doesn't MillerCoors have a
brewery in Dothan?
II
victory, that would the Rabids.
See my comments regarding
Kratman in my MC to Jeff.
Don wasn't a committee
REVENANT 88
member, so far as i know, he was sort
SStrickland
of a contractor.
ow did you get to
Back-to-back i get corrected for
Carnegie Hall,
knowing one thing and then typing
Sheila?" "Practise, another and you say you did it and i
caught you.
practise, practise."
Oh, i definitely include the
NYC is trying to get the painted
ladies and knock-off characters out of habañero seeds - i mince everything
but the stem Very Finely.
Times Square.
Specifically some years ago when i
needed less than a sixpack of
inoffensive beer for a recipe.
I shall have to
check out the two
books you mention how recent are they?
If either Puppies
were planning a "No
Award" result to claim
As soon as this zine is finalised, i'll be putting
a PDF of it online at
http://tinyurl.com/pubks3s
Note that the links in the text (including that one) will
be live in the PDF so you can click them to follow them.
By golly - i
said a max of
forty-eight
pages and i
did it.
Comment on
next
mailing, probably.
THE
SUMMONING
OF BREE
The thing
to remember here is
that Alex
has never
done
MMORPG
gaming
before she has no
idea that
what she's
doing is
impossible.
Llita,
OTOH,
has and
knows.