Lest We Forget...

On this day we know that evil does walk among us.

Let us not forget its victims.

The Canal

From the Sandwich Jetty to the Sagamore Bridge, this piece of water occupied so much of my world growing up.

So many summers spent fishing, watching boats, and exploring the rocks along the jetty and rip-rap from that particular stretch of water... So many years that this was the dividing line between the constraints of childhood home and the greater world beyond. And, more than nineteen years later, it doesn't feel as large or mysterious as it all once did. 

This of all trips reminded me of that cliche that you can never truly go home again. Everything was smaller, quainter, even quieter and more laid back than I remembered. Yeah, it was the off-season and Tulip and I were spared the hordes of out-of-state plates choking the Mid-Cape Highway and Route 6A, acting like they owned the place and we were the seasonal help there only to fulfill their summer beach adventures.

And, don't get me going again on the politics of the area...

My parents are elderly (and all of us hate to admit it) and the lives of my siblings, nieces, nephew, and grand-niece are all rolling along back here without me. My brother's family is set to grow by one more next spring and I find an ache in my heart to think of another growing-up with the stories of crazy old uncle Pat lost up there in the wilds of Alaska; just another voice on the phone, late birthday card or quick text during any of the important games.

The distance seems as insurmountable as swimming those swift currents in the canal. My uncle had warned me about this so many years ago (he'd lived in Alaska since before statehood) and, in my immortal youth, had thought the price well worth it. For the first time in my life, I wonder if I now have a sort of buyer's remorse?

For the first time in so long, Tulip and I find we're not ready to head back to Juneau after a visit. For the first time in my life I find myself homesick.

Guess We Need to Push the Drinking Age Back a Few Years Then

If this is true, no way in hell should anyone vote or drink before 25:

Is 25 the new cut-off point for adulthood?

 Hat tip to the Bayou Renaissance Man.

Um... Was Yesterday Supposed to be the Two-Year Anniversary of Something Grand?

I guess whatever it was no longer occupies my attention span.

Popcorn (Ceiling Textures)

I'd really love to meet the numbnuts who, way back in the 1970s, thought it would be a really neat idea to popcorn-texture ceilings in homes.

I'd love to meet him [Note: I'm assuming it was a "him"] and introduce him to a well-charged cattle-prod.

Why, Bartitsu, My Dear Watson

A little interesting martial arts-related something for Holmes fans and history buffs:

Bartitsu: The Sherlock Holmes Way of Self-Defense

"Is this a good weapon?" Mr. Donnelly, clutching the umbrella, asked a crowd of several dozen here last weekend at the Steampunk World's Fair, an annual steam-age science-fiction festival. "It is if it's in my hands at the time of attack."

Other items in the Bartitsu arsenal include walking sticks, top hats, snuffboxes, handkerchiefs or "any item a gentleman would have at his disposal," says Mr. Donnelly.

The system was long thought to be part of the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes. But in the past decade, a handful of martial-arts enthusiasts, historians and Holmes scholars have rediscovered Bartitsu by piecing together archival newspaper and magazine clippings from turn-of-the-century London, among other sources. These include such articles as a "Defense Against Hooligans," tips on "Conducting a Person Out of the Room," or methods for overcoming an "assailant who seizes you by the waistbelt."

 Hat tip to the Vodkapundit.

Happy Day, Tulip!

Hah, didn't think you'd get away with having a birthday without a little Boogie, did you Love?

Happy birthday sweetie!

Big Boys' Tonka Toys

I've never really considered myself that mechanical or into things like big trucks, semis, bulldozers, and the like. I sure as hell would never consider getting my CDL. Wanna see me break out in a cold sweat? Put me behind the wheel of anything bigger than a Ford F150.

Still, I've gotta be honest that there's been something thrilling in looking out the window at the newest (if temporary) addition to Juneau's skyline on my breaks. Was a lotta fun to watch them assemble this thing and I feel like a little kid getting a new Tonka Toy watching it go about its business.

Stay young and awe-inspired!

Bi-Polar (weather) Disorder

Ah, great flakes of anthropogenic global warming come once again to tickle my nose as I rush to catch the bus on this last day of April. With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather:

Maybe John Ringo Wasn't too far off in The Last Centurion?

Stay warm out there.

Spring Forward

[Half-asleep grumbling...] Frigging daylight savings time.

It's 8?! Cr@p, my body's telling me it's 7. Wait a minute. Did I remember to set that clock ahead an hour?

I'm so confused...

Some March Birthday Wishes

To protect the innocent, I'll leave real names and specific dates off; however, we can't let a good old wishing of a Happy Birthday to some special folks go by without some sort of acknowledgement.

Doing a little YouTube search, we find several fine (and feathered) friends stepping-up to tread where none else dare and wish Fishing Buddy, Skeeter, and the Druid some Very Happy 29th Birthdays (for the Xth time, each)!

They probably won't see it back on the Cape; however, I'd still like to wish even bigger and more loving wishes to my sister and grand-niece, Didda and the Sue-nami, whose birthdays plop right in the middle of the month. Love ya and miss ya both!

First up, we hear from Boogie:

And, then there's Boozle:

Happy Birthday, All!

And, best wishes from the Ex-pat, Tulip, Weewolfe, and the Green Bean.

Warning: Be Ready to Fight the Blue Tidal Surge

The Instapundit calls attention to an article by Conn Carroll:

What Happened to the Golden State?

California was an engine for innovation and job growth. It was a prime destination for middle-class families throughout the country who were looking for a better life.

But it isn't true anymore. More Americans now emigrate from California to other states than immigrate from other states to California. This exodus has cost California more than 1.5 million residents since 2000. And the reason is simple -- the jobs are fleeing first.

As so many of us have warned before, be ready for this. We can dance in gleeful schadenfreude all we want. Once these folks start fleeing to your state, your town, they will take their Californication with them. 

I'm Sorry Oscar. It's Not You. It's Me

Well, it appears that my last enjoyable reason for spending Sunday evening with Oscar & Co. has flown out the window in the beak of a raven:

Rob Gronkowski replaced by Ed Reed as red carpet correspondent at Oscars

Wasn't like I was planning to tune in to feel Miserables or anything (and, as somewhat of a connoisseur of that musical, what a depressing, in-your-face disappointment that turned out to be).

[Sigh] Oh well, there's always next season...

I Guess It's Time...

...To brace myself to face some cold days.

The End of an Age

This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was an ending.
- from A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

And, so, my reading quest—an age lasting about 18 years—comes to its conclusion and a new one stands ready to begin...

I came rather late to the series, having been first introduced to it in the fall of 1994. I'd just permanently moved to Southeast Alaska that July and was employed for the winter by the local bookseller. Book 6, Lord of Chaos, had just been released in hardcover and the locals were going nuts trying to get copies, even going so far as to come by everyday to note who had not yet picked-up their special orders and trying to convince me that it never would be and I should sell it to them instead.

Hah, nice try. Cripes, the extent that people would go over a freaking book! I was and still am a near fanatical reader; however, no book should be that important. Should it?

Having a slow afternoon, one shift at the downtown store, I grabbed a copy of Book 1, Eye of the World, in order to see what all the fuss was about...

It was quickly thrown onto my already large employee account and I was off and running, not unlike Rand, Perrin, Matt, Egwene, and Nynaeve fleeing Emonds Field. I devoured Eye of the World, was swept along on The Great Hunt, and held my breath for The Dragon Reborn. Rare sunny summer afternoons were spent in parks reading The Shadow Rising, trying desperately, like Rand, to understand the Aiel culture and witnessing Perrin's resistant rise to lordhood, while Tulip tried to comprehend my own fanaticism for a rather large book. I felt that I fought the Shaido alongside Mat in The Fires of Heaven and was awestruck by the Lord of Chaos before it'd even made it to paperback.

And, then came the waiting...

Two whole years for A Crown of Swords. When I received it, I thought the cover a cheesy ad for that video game, Street Fighter. Yep, it is possible to judge a book by its cover. It did, however, begin to introduce me to the madness of channeling Saidin and handling the filth of its taint. Over and over and over again (with 2-3 years between each book), it would be described throughout The Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart until I felt I'd burn out from it; that is, until that satisfying ending of Rand and Nynaeve cleansing Saidin at the conclusion of Winter's Heart. There was hope again!

And, then we spend the better part of 100 pages of prologue to Crossroads of Twilight describing how multiple people experienced the cleansing from different points around the world. And, I despaired. In hindsight, I have to wonder how much of this was due to the onset of Jordan's illness? By the time Knife of Dreams was released, I was sick of continually relearning how the Sea Folk would stand to show their social ranking and was especially ready to smack Perrin Aybara except that the story was finally beginning to move again. I wondered if I could handle reading anymore; however, Irish obstinacy won out and I vowed to finish this journey no matter what (wish I could say the same for A Song of Ice and Fire—I'm not sure which I'm more sick of: the series or Martin's political yapping).

I wondered if he was going to end this quest with a whimper as he spun so many threads out from the main pattern of the plot. I resolved to hold a nice bonfire if he ever did.

I again despaired for Jordan and his readers with his announcement of his diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis in 2006. The despair turned to hopelessness at his passing and I didn't hold much hope for a new writer picking the series up. I was even less happy to find out that the planned conclusion, A Memory of Light, was to be broken into 3 books.

Still, I set myself to face The Gathering Storm while traveling to Fairbanks and Anchorage for business. That first prologue written by Sanderson was devoured while eating dinner at one of the small restaurants attached to the Captain Cooke Hotel. And, I was once again awestruck with the series as Sanderson began to move the story forward at an engrossing pace and more than satisfactorily began to re-weave all the loose threads back into the pattern to take us through the storm, into the Towers of Midnight, and out to regain A Memory of Light. It was an incredibly satisfying conclusion and I'm not afraid to admit that I actually found myself tearing-up as I realized I was at the final 3 pages last night...

If they weren't such distinctly individual stories, I guess I could count all of the various Robert B. Parker (can't be from Massachusetts and not appreciate Spenser) and Ed McBain books as something similarly epic; however, I can't quite go that far. The Wheel of Time has been engrossing and infuriating and such a thread within the fabric of my adult life that I have to say that, with maybe the experience of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, nothing else has compared in my literary experiences. Even Roland's quest, with its disjointed bizarreness stemming from the collision of fictional worlds within King's creative mind (and, yes, that's what I see the Dark Tower as—the nexus of his alternate realities) was a spark compared to the overall brilliance (of light and thought) of the Wheel of Time in all its slogging yet enthralling grandiosity.

No adventure, quest, or saga is ever experienced by our heroes without hating it all as it unfolds. It is at its completion that we can look back with fondness, humor, or even thankfulness. The Wheel of Time has proven no different and I regret not one single moment of it.

Thank you, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson for spinning us into this pattern as the Wheel turns.

Program Note: No, I Haven't Dropped Off the Face of the Earth

Been a busy weekend between watching Super Bowl (and, did I mention Guiness, lots of Guiness?) and working on stuff around the house with Tulip.

It'd been a couple of years since we've last had schedules where we both had weekends off together (and the house definitely shows it).

Early parts of the week may be light for the next 7 weeks as Winter Rimfire League kicks-off tomorrow evening.

Oh, yeah, and I'm still trying to get through Tarmon Gai'don...

Stick around and thanks for your interest!

Programming Note: The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills

Sorry not more out there...

The Wheel of Time has been weaving me out of the blogging pattern the past several evenings as I try to regain A Memory of Light after 18 years.

More than 2 weeks in and I've only managed to read about half the damned thing due to other issues. Hope to change that this weekend. Been a good, satisfying read so far.

Urk! [Hurl]

I really did not need to know this; however, now that I stumbled upon it, I find that I am severely traumatized.

Care of Eliana Johnson, over at the National Review Online:

Forthcoming ‘Erotic’ Novel Features Barack and Michelle Obama

A forthcoming erotic novel being described as “fan fiction” will feature the first couple as protagonists-in-chief. According to Pop Culture Public Relations, the firm representing the book’s publisher, the novel, a version of a “personalizable” erotic tome, will be printed with the first couple’s names in it and available online at no cost on January 28. In an e-mail circulated yesterday, Pop Culture PR wrote, “Barack and Michelle Obama Star in This Erotic, Romantic Novel.”

Surely American literature will reach new heights with the publication of GuestHouse Games, in which the Obamas, “alone in their isolated beachfront guesthouse in the tropical paradise of Kailua, Hawaii,” are “drawn into the ancient Hawaiian spiritual world and into the exploration of their own deepest and most forbidden desires.”

It looks like you’ll have to read the whole thing to find out why they’re staying in the guest house as opposed to the main residence, among other mysteries.

 OMG! Will it never end?

Her Boyfriend's a Real Neanderthal: A Moral Dilemma

Wanted: 'Adventurous woman' to give birth to Neanderthal man - Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby

They're usually thought of as a brutish, primitive species.d ever

So what woman would want to give birth to a Neanderthal baby?

...

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA.

He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

 All the talk seems to be about what crazy woman would ever volunteer (but we're sure someone will)?

Call me a predictable prude but should that be the question to ask? At least the volunteering woman has free will in the matter. The clone won't.

Programming Note 2: I'm Getting a Little on the Side

Got your attention, didn't it?!

Over the years that I've been perusing blogs and even more so, now that I'm blogging, myself, I've been noting the cases where armed civilians have protected themselves and others. I've also noticed the lack of coverage beyond occasional local press.

So, I've started a side project called If it Just Saves 1.... You can see some of my rational for this title here.

What I'm trying to do is set up a common place where we can go to locate such stories (and maybe a few contrasting examples of how madness, mayhem, and murder may occur without firearms). I see it more as a resource than a blog.

Please check it out and, should you happen to have stories of your own to pass along, let me know and I'll get them posted (I will respect confidentiality unless directed otherwise).

Thanks for stopping by!