Peter is a friend of mine. He paid tribute to a friend today, and it was a fascinating read.
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2009/10/remembering-inyati.html
Edit: I just found out from Lawdog that Peter had a cardiac episode today. He’s okay, but he’s going in for sugery tomorrow. Keep him in your prayers.
Update: http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2009/10/infarction-interruption.html#links
If you live in Utah, come by and see me at the Sugerhouse B&N, from 12:00-3:00 this Saturday, October 10th.
It won’t just be boring old me signing books. There will be several other authors there as well, and we will be conducting a writing panel too. Check out who’s going to be there:
Paul Genesse: http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Hunters-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/dp/1594148252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254775404&sr=1-1
Mettie Ivie Harrison: http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Bear-Mette-Ivie-Harrison/dp/006155314X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254775364&sr=8-1-spell
I’ve been on panels at different Cons with all of these writers. They’re all really interesting, funny people. This should be a good event.
The manager at this B&N had heard that my other local signings had done really good, so he ordered a pretty big batch of books. Please come and buy some so I don’t look like a dork. MHI makes a great Christmas present, and as we learned from the wisdom of the Christmas Noun, everybody likes to get stuff for Christmas. A paperback might not be a rocket pony or a bag of adorable puppy-rabbits, but it beats a rock.
Maybe it is just further proof that I’m a shallow individual, but I’ve got to admit that it made me laugh when I heard that Chicago wasn’t going to get the Olympics. In your FACE, Daly!
Okay, I think part of my issue was that our president, the Big O himself, Franklin Delano X, Barack Obama has attended something like 30 meetings for this, while he hasn’t had time to talk to the general in charge of Afghanistan for three months. FDX flew to Europe, on the tax payer’s dime, to go to bat for the City of Teamsters, and he still didn’t get it.
Surely, it was only a coincidence that many of his buddies and political backers would make huge personal profits off of a Chicago Olympics, while the US would probably spend billions. His shyster friend, Valerie Jarrett, would really have spiffed up her slums with all those new Olympic buildings. It is hard out there for slumlords, and Barack feels their pain.
There are a bunch of people on Facebook defending the president trying to get the Olympics to his home town, and I’ve seen the following arguments this morning. Allow me to play whack-a-mole with them.
The Olympics are a huge economic boost for the host city. – Not really. The host city may make some money, but the rest of the nation gets to foot the bill. Just about all of the Olympics have been a net loser for the host country, and the more inefficient/corrupt the host city is, the bigger the bag the tax payers get stuck with.
The only recent Olympics that was in the black was in 2002 here in Salt Lake. From everyone I spoke with who was involved, SLC was about the single most efficient operation they’d ever seen. Say what you will about Mitt Romney, and I didn’t vote for him in the primaries either, he’s an efficient businessman. If there is one thing that Utahns do, it is get stuff done. We run a tight ship out here. And even then we still ended up prosecuting the original people in charge for corruption and bribery.
So… for the Chicago Olympics to be profitable, we’ve got to assume that a city run by the unions and the mafia will be more upstanding that a city run by Mormons.
The Olympics are good for America! – Why? They’ll cost us billions of dollars that we don’t have. Let somebody else spend giant buckets of money building condos for once.
Personally, I live about a mile from a former Olympic venue. If I ever feel the need to take up ice skating, this would be really awesome, but I don’t think it would be fair for me to ask the rest of the nation to foot the bill for it.
You’ve got to wonder though. What if it was say, Dallas, or another red state city that wanted the Olympics? Would the president have flown over for that?
Obama didn’t spend too much money on this. They only took two flights to Copenhagen. – Really? So all those armored Suburbans for the motorcade were stashed on Air Force One? That’s a pretty amazing plane. The president doesn’t travel anywhere without a giant group of retainers and security, especially for overseas visits. From what I’ve heard, a presidential visit overseas is usually about a dozen flights worth of men and equipment.
Not that it matters, the government will just print more money anyway. Surely that will work forever, with no consequences.
Well, at least while he was there FDX managed to squeeze in a visit with General McChyrstal, so it wasn’t a total loss. (too bad the general had to leak information to Fox News to force the president to actually, you know, pay attention to the war we might be losing or something).
We get to highlight Chicago to the world! – Really? I thought we did that with all the recent videos of kids being beaten to death with railroad ties. I thought we did that when their last governor got kicked out for selling a senate seat. (oh, wait, haven’t 4 of the last 5 Illinois governors ended up serving time or something?). This is the same city that is getting taken before the Supreme Court because they won’t let their residents own guns to protect themselves (go Gura!) but has one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation. Chicago is one of the most corrupt cities in the nation. It isn’t a beacon, it’s an embarrassment.
Jeez. I don’t want to show Chicago to the world. I want to put a big curtain around it so the rest of the world doesn’t see the place! They’re probably going to hold the Olympics in Brazil. Which is ironic, since a country that has Death Squads is actually safer for tourists than Chicago… I have several friends that live in Illinois. I think they’d be happier if Chicago just slid off into the lake.
Not getting the Olympics will make Oprah sad. – Well, crap. I can’t argue with that! I really want to make a lady with a bazillion dollars even happier. Well, actually, since my odds of ever getting a book onto Oprah’s Book Club is exactly null… she can suck it up with the rest of them.
So in conclusion, I’m glad Chicago lost. You feel that, Barack? That feeling you’ve got right now? That’s the feeling of losing. You better get used to it. It is similar to the feeling you got in the pit of your stomach when all those ACORN Big Pimpin’ videos popped up. You’ll be feeling it again shortly when socialized medicine goes down the tubes. You’ll really be feeling it hard in 2010 when your super majorities dry up and you actually get some opposition.
Go Rio!
Watch the video. Legal scholar, Whoopi Goldberg, pontificates on Roman Polanski raping a kid and running away to France.
Hmmm… So when a 45 year old man gets a 13 year old drunk, drugs her, and then repeatedly sodomizes her while she begs him to stop and let her go home, that’s not real rape, or “rape-rape” in the mind of Whoopi Goldberg. That is something else.
So, to clarify, from the wisdom of Whoopi and the other harpies on the View, what part of that isn’t “rape”? Was he not wearing a ski-mask? Did he need to be a hobo?
Oh wait, it was because he was a celebrity. That moves it into a lower category of crime, like jaywalking. It isn’t something terrible, like Rape-Rape, or voting Republican. I got it.
So, if you’re a regular dude, and you drug and sexually assault a child, you’re a rapist. If you’re a celebrity or a Kennedy, and you drug and sexually assault someone, that is just having a little fun. I’m glad I got that clarified.
Seriously, watch the video. If she doesn’t piss you off, then there is something wrong with you. See, according to the Whoopster, part of this is just a cultural bias. In Europe, you can sex up your 13 year olds all you want (or something, I wasn’t real clear on that part), and that Polanski didn’t flee the country because he was guilty of Rape-Rape, he fled the country because the judge thought he was guilty and was going to sentence him accordingly… Which is totally understandable… If you’ve got the higher brain functions of a piece of fruit.
Look, I don’t care how brilliant you are as a director. I don’t care if you’re the greatest film maker alive. If you are a child rapist, you need to be tried, judged, and sentenced accordingly. Now I diverge slightly from the justice system on what the appropriate punishment should be for child rapists, (both the Rape-Rape, and Pseudoraping kind), in that I think their sentencing should consist of a single .45 caliber bullet and a pine box. But then we wouldn’t have The Pianist. Oh the humanity.
I’ve heard some morons say that “Well, the girls has forgiven him, we should just move on.” That’s not how the legal system works for anyone else. Regardless of the victim’s feelings in the matter, a crime was committed. If the dude wasn’t a famous director, then said morons wouldn’t be making this argument. If it was one of their kids that had been attacked and abused by a pedophile, do you really think they would be so eager to have him walking around on the loose if their kid later forgave the bad guy?
Whoopi said she had a 13 year old grand-niece or something. (couldn’t tell, blood pressure spikes make paying attention difficult by that point), as if that information somehow made it so that Whoopi understands. No. It just means that Whoopi is a lousy relative too.
I believe she was trying to make the argument that statutory rape (i.e. consensual sex with a minor, and the legal issue is about if the minor give consent) is different than violent ski-masked hobo rape. Except that logic falls apart when you realize that this wasn’t an oversexed 16 year old getting it on with her 18 year old boyfriend behind the roller rink, (and my parents are still together after all these years!) this was a 45 year old man drugging and repeatedly attacking a junior high kid while she begged him to stop.
Whoopi. You are an idiot.
I’ve been really busy lately, with super-cool guy-top secret-writer-type stuff, so I haven’t blogged as much as I’ve liked to. I need an update post.
In local news, MHI has been doing really well still. Toni at Baen told me that I’d had one of the fastest releases they’d had in awhile, with the whole first run selling out in a month. I’ve been editing MHV, and it is pretty much done. It will be going in to the publisher shortly, and should see the light of day about a year from now. I’ve just got a couple of little things to poke at, and then it is over.
After MHV goes in, then I’ve got to do a 2nd pass on TGC:HM to get it ready for shopping around. Then I’ve got to write the next Monster Hunter novel, and I’ve not decided which one to do yet. I’m actually inclined to do the Earl Harbinger book next, Monster Hunter Alpha. Depending on Mike’s active duty schedule, D6 will finally be finished sometime soon too.
I actually took a brief break from editing this week, so I watched like 5 movies and played some Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 and Ace Combat 6. (from Nightcrawler for my birthday, thanks, man.) Being a CoD:WaW kind of guy, I died about 300 times last night on R6, because I kept accidentally mashing the wrong button. (oh, that’s not reload, that’s drop a frag grenade at your feet…) AC6 has the most hilariously bad Japanese translated cut scenes I’ve heard in awhile. “We must protect the capital city of Gracemeria, which is the capital city of our beautiful country, which is Gracemeria. The golden king smiles on the capital, which is Gracemeria. Matilda! NOOO!” Huh? But then I shot stuff with missiles between the cut scenes, so it’s all good.
Of the movies I watched, some were good, like: Liam Neeson Presents the Documentary Film for Fathers: Taken, where you learn that if you’re a pretty girl in France, you will be kidnapped and sold to Saudi oil sheiks as a sex slave (I believe ACORN has a similar program). Some were b-movies that I needed to see to round out my overall b-movie nerdhood, like Baby Blood, about a slutty French girl who has a circus cheetah explode and then she’s impregnated by a parasite that makes her murder people and drink their blood, also in France. So basically my movie week really discouraged French tourism.
We’ve been thinking more about moving to the country. I currently have a 45 minute commute (if traffic is good) because my job is so far north of where I am. If I move so that I’m 45 minutes north of that, it places me out in the mountains instead of in the suburbs. If I’m going to drive that far anyway, I might as well be someplace that I can shoot a high powered rifle off my back porch. Unfortunately the value of my home has gone down so much that I need to save up a bunch more money to make moving feasible. We’re not the kind of people who go into extra debt unless we absolutely have to, but I am really sick of living in town.
I’m an asthmatic with bad allergies, and the air in the Salt Lake Valley is terrible for half the year. We live in a valley that has an awful inversion, and sometimes the air will be so nasty, brown, or on-fire that I can’t hardly breathe for a week. Luckily we’re not upside down in our house, not even close, we just don’t have as much equity as we thought there was.
Overall, life is good.