alcimines

01:42 am: As Dark As Her Eyes (WatX-verse; Domino, Pietro, Sooraya; PG-13)

( In the hills of Afghanistan )

12:00 pm: John Alva Keel, R.I.P.

John A. Keel -- the author of "The Mothman Prophecies" and other works -- has passed away.

I've never known exactly what to think of the man. It's within the realm of possibility that he was not completely sane, or was a bit of a hoaxster, or (more generously) a teller of tall-tales, or some combination of the above. But his work was undeniably fascinating. And if there is some reality to the world of the weird and unexplained that he investigated, I suspect that he was closer to the truth than most others.

From the Wikipedia article, discussing Keel's 1960s investigation of UFOs:

Like contemporary 1960s researchers such as J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, Keel was initially hopeful that he could somehow validate the prevailing extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis. However, after one year of investigations, Keel realised that the extraterrestrial hypothesis was untenable. Indeed, both Hynek and Vallée eventually arrived at a similar conclusion.

From "Book of the Damned" by Charles Fort (1919), "I think we're property."

11:32 am: Sow the wind...

...and reap the whirlwind.

I remember when Judge Bork was demonized to the point that he was denied a seat on the Supreme Court. That created the modern spectacle that the Supreme Court nomination /confirmation process has become. Our nation and our system of government has only recently begun to get over that event. And I suspect we'll never fully recover.

Since she appeared in the public spotlight, Governer Palin of Alaska -- and particularly (and unforgivably) her family -- has been the subject of an incredibly brutal series of assaults by Democratic party activists and their news and entertainment media shills. If that was what drove her out of office, I wouldn't recommend that her attackers celebrate the event. We're all going to suffer in the aftermath.

11:48 am: Fanfic: Movie Night (WatX-verse; Logan/Ingrid Bergman, Others; G)

Just a quick drabble that focuses on an idea that I keep coming back to: Logan's been around for a long time.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the lady, Ingrid Bergman was one of premiere movie stars of her era. She was born in 1915 and passed away in 1982. Her role as Ilsa in "Casablanca" is widely considered to be her signature performance.

"Casablanca" was made in 1942 and usually appears either leading, or near the top of, lists of "the greatest movies ever made". If you do the math, Ingrid Bergman was 37 years old when the movie was made. She was no longer a young woman, yet was still one of the great beauties of the time. And she was a damn fine actress.

I was inspired (in a round-about way) by this nice bit of fanart by kelly1_watxm.

---

( Play it, Sam )

02:41 pm: Gaming: Darkest Heresy -- The Reign of the Vampires

Set on modern day Earth, using the Dark Heresy rules.

The world has long since been taken over by the Lords of the Night, and the era before the Ascension of the Undead is considered to be an age of endless chaos and carnage. In this campaign, the players are human acolytes of the Inquisition, whose job is to defend the Wise, Just, and Holy rule of the Vampire nobility.

Impure thought, evil magic, and the corrupting influence of Hell are just a few examples of the many threats to the proper order of things. Thank God that you and a few, brave others are there to defend all that is right and true.

The path you follow is a hard one. You may find yourself exterminating bands of "freedom fighters" in the Pyrenees, or stalking a Liche through the sewers of Paris, or executing radical "thinkers" in the halls of Cambridge, or even battling the minions of Satan himself in demon-haunted Los Angeles. But sacrifices must be made, and somebody has to keep society from crumbling under the onslaught of Deviancy.

Blood for the Blood Gods.

03:18 pm: Hollywood Glamor

Michael Jackson's death got me thinking about the music video for "Thriller". As I said before, I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan, but I had to admit that video in question was extremely well done. And one of the reasons for that was the expert direction of John Landis.

Of course, whenever I think of John Landis, I think of the disaster during the 1982 filming of "The Twilight Zone" movie. In that accident, veteran actor Vic Marrow and two child actors (Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen) were killed when a helicopter crashed on top of them. It was a horrific accident and if you read one of the suprisingly few accounts of the incident, Mr. Landis doesn't come off very well. In fact, he was eventually prosecuted (and acquitted) for his actions that day. Given the clear disregard for safety during filming, and the blatant violation of child labor laws that led to the accident, it's rather hard to see how Landis managed to escape without even a slap on the wrist.

How much did that incident hurt Landis' career?

Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen were killed on July 23, 1982. The "Thriller" music video was filmed and released in 1983.

It must be nice to one of the Princes of Hollywood.

09:37 am: The Rules of Haiku

Three lines written with 17 syllables. The first and third lines have five syllables, the second has seven.

I ponder this day
Lightning on the western sky
Most inconvenient

***********

Green and white merge
A kiss made under blond hair
"I'm sorry," says Kara.

***********

Whisper in the night
Claws out, prey scent in the air
She only knows the hunt

07:18 am: Obituaries

I never really "got" the fascination with Michael Jackson. Personally, I thought he was just another singer -- obviously talented, but no better or worse than many others. And as he descended into eccentricity (I guess that's a polite way to say it) in his later life, I found him more appalling than interesting or entertaining.

On the other hand, I completely understood the (male) enthusiasm for Farah Fawcett. But age is the remorseless enemy of anyone whose major feature is their attractiveness. I sometimes wonder how the simple reality of getting old effects the mind and spirit of those who have been blessed with beauty.

In any case, may they rest in peace, with all the travails of this world now behind them.

01:16 pm: Transmutation

I'm packing up my apartment in preparation for a move. While I was doing so, I found a developer's envelope full of color photos. If I remember correctly, those are the last pictures I took with my old 35mm camera. That was something like eight years ago.

The pictures are of my parent's house. Someone else now owns that house. I can't really recall why I took them. I think it had something to do with the fact that it was summer and the back of the house was particularly colorful thanks to all of the flowers. Obviously, I didn't think too much of the photos, since I simply stuffed them back into the envelope and forgot about them.

When I took those pictures, my father was still alive and my mother was okay.

It's funny how, in an instant, as I looked at those photographs, they transformed from something I'd completely forgotten about into something precious.

09:45 am: If You Look into the Abyss...

In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations.

Source.

That wasn't an explosion. It was a chicken. A chicken coming home to roost.

09:24 am: Tipping Point

Mr. Roger Cohen of the New York Times, reporting from Tehran, catches a stray moment in whatever the hell is happening in Iran:

The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

...

I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basijis. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted.

In the modern Kabuki Dance of Revolution, it has long since been decided that the cops are Bad and the demonstrators are Good. Of course, there is also a thing in this world called a "riot", and it is the proper duty of the police to deal with such events. Many people seem to think it's easy to tell the difference, but I strongly suspect that some -- or most -- of those people actually don't know what the hell they are talking about. However, if the above report is accurate, then at least some of the police in Tehran are deciding that they are looking at something that it is not their duty to firmly put down.

If enough of the security services come to that conclusion, then Iran will experience its tipping point. What form the new Iran will take is, however, unpredictable.

11:03 pm: A Striking Turn of a Phrase

On March 24th, 1998, a worried English doctor named Linda Reynolds contacted the authorities with some alarming information. It seemed to Dr. Reynolds that a startling number of patients under the care of another local doctor (Harold Frederick Shipman) were dying under circumstances that struck Dr. Reynolds and her colleagues as suspicious.

The deceased were overwhelmingly elderly women who were usually not suffering from immediate ill health. The person who usually found the dead women was Dr. Shipman.

To make a long story short, the investigation initially suggested by Dr. Reynolds came to naught, and Dr. Shipman was cleared. Then more women died. A second investigation uncovered evidence that Dr. Shipman had committed a considerable number of murders.

How many is "a considerable number"? At least 215, and quite possibly more.

The horrified authorities eventually issued a formal report on the Shipman case. That included a re-evaluation of the initial investigation the cleared Dr. Shipman. It's within the that part of the "Shipman Report" that I found this remarkable paragraph:

The Coroner communicated Dr Reynolds' concerns to CS Sykes and DI Smith. He told them that Dr Reynolds had advanced two explanations, either of which might account for the factors giving rise to her concerns. The first was that Shipman was a caring doctor, who looked after his elderly and sick patients in their own homes, rather than having them admitted to hospital, and who visited them frequently when he knew them to be ill. The second was that he was killing his patients.

05:36 am: Elementary, my dear Eames

As I've mentioned before, if you're sitting in a hotel room, then there are going to be episodes of "Law and Order" on television. A year or two back I finally threw my hands up in disgust and stopped watching the show. However, I just caught a few minutes of an episode that reminded me why I find the character of Detective Robert Goren to be so completely ridiculous.

The show is about a murdered architect -- apparently a young man of rare talent. There is evidence that suggests that the killer was another architect.

So, of course, it turns out the Detective Goren is an expert on architecture. In fact, he's capable of looking at a new window in a woman's home and instantly draw a convoluted path of association to one suspect based on the similarity of the features of that window to equivalent elements in the Taj Mahal.

It was about then that I turned off the show.

09:04 pm: Iran

When you have a fast-breaking situation, such as current events in Iran, it's often difficult to sort out fact from fancy or news from propaganda. However, it does appear that a stage has been reached in Iran that virtually guarantees major bloodshed.

We can certainly all hope that the bloodshed will be minimal and that a fairer and more reasonable government will take hold in Iran. However, I have a pretty basic rule about revolutions: never fall in love with them.

Back in 1979, a great many Americans -- enchanted by the myths of the 1960s -- come to the conclusion that the Shah of Iran's government was irredeemably evil, and that the revolutionary forces being unleashed in Iran would obviously result in something much better than what the despised Shah was offering. In fact, the largest demonstrations that I have seen in my life were the anti-Shah demonstrations that took place on my college campus. But just a few years later I couldn't get anyone to admit that they had been in favor of the Iranian revolution -- and that included people I had personally seen marching in those demonstrations. Whenever I challenged them, the best they could usually muster was to mumble some boiler-plate anti-American / anti-CIA rhetoric and then slink away. And thus the role (maybe big, maybe small) that the Western Secular Left played in bringing about the modern era of Islamic Fundamentalism fell down the rabbit hole of history -- never to be seen or discussed again.

As I said above, we certainly should hope for better days for Iran and the world. And I frankly can't see how Iran can get better unless the religious oligarchy is overthrown. But I recommend that we beware the very human desire to the assume that everything is going to be just so tickety-boo (or even just a little better) when and if the new guys take over.

11:16 am: Comedy in the Age of Obama

There's a controversy going on that involves Gov. Palin of Alaska and talk show host David Letterman. I won't go into to the details. But Mark Steyn made this marvelous observation about comedians in the Obama era: "It's very difficult to be a state ironist, which is the role America's establishment comedians have volunteered themselves for."

Edit: Mr. Letterman has apologized for his joke. Once in a fairly weasel-like manner, the second time more fully and formally. The blogosphere is full of stupid reactions from the folks who think everything is about politics and that this is somehow a loss for their side and That Cannot Be.

Let me be clear: if the damned Mafia can establish rules that declares the non-combatant family is off-limits, then surely our humorists can do the same. Sarah Palin is fair game. Her daughters are not. Barak Obama is fair game. His daughters are not.

01:50 pm: Gaming: The Day After Ragnarok -- Kansas is a Gas

In the post-Ragnarok world, airships are suddenly beginning to make more sense (mostly due to reasons of fuel efficiency). But there's a problem. Everyone has learned the hard way that hydrogen isn't the safest substance you can put into an airship. Helium is far preferable. However, the largest natural source of helium in the world is the natural gas fields of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas -- and Texas is currently being a pain. If what's left of the US government wants to firmly control a source of helium, then their best bet is to put a facility into what's left of Kansas. Unfortunately, Kansas is a now a part of the High Plains -- which the TDAR book describes as, "...once more the Great American Desert, a windswept taiga of giant beasts and desperate drifters." And not too far away from whatever remains of the Kansas oil and gas fields is the Iowa Soviet.

Scouting expeditions into Kansas are on the way. The PCs are a mixture of US military and/or civilian mercs and outdoorsmen. An oilman (whether of an academic or practical bent) would be a big help in terms of determining the condition of the equipment in any gas fields that the PCs explore.

Dexter, Kansas (ca. 40 miles southeast of Wichita -- and just across the old Kansas/Oklahoma border) was where helium-rich natural gas was first discovered back in 1903. For that reason (and because it's relatively close to civilization) that area has been picked as the first to be reconned. The recon team is to determine if any of the gas fields in the area can be placed back into production.

Dexter was destroyed during the long winter of 1946-47. Wichita has a population of about 3500 desperate and fairly tough squatters (ca 5% of the 1940 population). Unknown to the U.S. government, the Texas Rangers run patrols semi-regularly into southern Kansas. The Rangers have been routinely exceeding their orders by giving the survivors in Wichita all they help they can manage -- and the people of Wichita are grateful. If the PCs aren't careful, they might find themselves cross-wise with both the Rangers and the locals.

Oddly enough, there are a dozen heavily armed folks from the Iowa Soviet who are also in the area. Oddly enough, they're also looking at abandoned oil and gas fields. And oddly enough (for the third time), they also seem to be concentrating on those fields known for producing helium.

Of course, a far more immediate problem for the PCs will be the two Wendigos, ten Ghouls, and six Dire Wolves who have made what little is left of Dexter, Kansas into their lair.

The Wendigos and Ghouls are from TDAR. Dire Wolves are Dogs from SWEX with +1 die type to Strength, Vigor, Fighting, and Guts.

11:39 am: Fanfic: The King in Exile (WatX-verse; Magneto and Pietro; PG)

Where did Magneto and Pietro end up after season one of "Wolverine and the X-Men"?

---

( One thing about being in exile. It gives you time to think. )

11:04 am: Facepalm Moment: 'Obama Beach'

Today is the anniversary of D-Day and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the U.K. was giving a commemorative speech in Normandy when he made an odd verbal slip. He accidentally referred to "Omaha Beach" as "Obama Beach". President Obama was present at the speech and it's being reported that he visibly winced at the error.

Bottom line: if you talk for a living -- and that's what politicians do -- you'll eventually say something in public that you'd give almost anything to take back. This is obviously a simple mistake caused by the similarity of the two names.

09:49 am: Programming Idea

Someday I'm going to write a program that reads a text file and checks for word frequency. The program will check for repeated occurrences of words in a file, in paragraphs, and within individual sentences. The purpose of the program will be to detect word overuse. For example, if you look at the previous post to this one, I use the word "weirdly" twice. That's not the end of the world, of course, but it does look a little strange.

09:56 am: Gaming: The Day After Ragnarok

"The Day After Ragnarok" is a "Savage Worlds" sourcebook written by Kenneth Hite and published by Atomic Overmind Press. Brief plot summary: the Germans are losing World War II and some of their Ahnenerbe nut-jobs decide it's time to end the world. Drugs are taken, herbs recovered from ancient bogs are burned, rituals are conducted, chants are sung, General Patton is assassinated, and then the freaking Midgard Serpent shows up. Fortunately, the Americans are able to fly a B-29 loaded with an A-bomb into the Serpent's eye and kill it, but the carnage is still incredible and two loops of a 1.5 trillion ton magical/radioactive snake corpse are left draped across Africa and Europe. The US is almost destroyed by a venom-filled tsunami generated by the Serpentfall, England has been crushed (but the Empire lives on -- sort of), Japan survives, and the USSR (with the aid of frost giant allies) picks up the pieces in Eastern Europe and Asia.

The USSR and the remnants of the British Empire square off against each other. The Americans and Canadians are trying to reclaim their ruined continent. The Japanese are rebuilding and they apparently haven't learned a damn thing. The world is undergoing a low-level Fimbulwinter. Magicians and miracle workers are performing feats not seen since the days of the Pharaohs. Giants are given advice to Stalin. Strange critters, bizarre organic materials, and a weirdly efficient fuel (with a lot of ominous side-effects) are being extracted from the carcass of the dead Serpent. Monsters born of Serpent venom and radiation stalk the globe. Nazi holdouts are hiding in Antarctica -- planning God knows what. Piracy and banditry are rife. Colonial possessions hunger for freedom. And Serpent cults abound.

The book is weirdly brilliant. I recommend that Mr. Hite be taken off his meds more often.

( Odd thoughts relating to the world background. )