Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 65
April 11, 2011
joe_haldeman @ 2011-04-11T11:12:00
Little watercolor sketch I did just before we left the river house --
Joe
Joe
semantics and semen-tics
[In sff.net, we're talking about structural linguistics and Hemingway's first marriage . . . ]
Dave, I'm sure in another life you were a structural linguist. And you challenged Noam Chomsky to a duel, morphemes at dawn. The morphemes you chose were ambiguous, and you both won.
For what it's worth, although I'm not familiar with the book, the morphemes (paris), (wife), and (hemingway) open up a cascade of associations. I could sit here without opening a single reference and write you a thousand words about Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. Most of the words would be about Paris, where they loved passionately and doted on their first baby, Bumby (conceived in Paris but born in Canada, and returned to Paris; I met him in Key West in the 70's) – and where Hadley unfortunately met and befriended Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway fell for Pauline like a ton of baguettes and the trio experimented with a three-way relationship in 1926, which didn't work, and Hadley became the Paris ex-wife.
Just before he died, Hemingway said he still loved Hadley best, three wives and god knows how many women later. He was no doubt drinking at the time, but veritas is where you find it.
Joe
Dave, I'm sure in another life you were a structural linguist. And you challenged Noam Chomsky to a duel, morphemes at dawn. The morphemes you chose were ambiguous, and you both won.
For what it's worth, although I'm not familiar with the book, the morphemes (paris), (wife), and (hemingway) open up a cascade of associations. I could sit here without opening a single reference and write you a thousand words about Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. Most of the words would be about Paris, where they loved passionately and doted on their first baby, Bumby (conceived in Paris but born in Canada, and returned to Paris; I met him in Key West in the 70's) – and where Hadley unfortunately met and befriended Pauline Pfeiffer. Hemingway fell for Pauline like a ton of baguettes and the trio experimented with a three-way relationship in 1926, which didn't work, and Hadley became the Paris ex-wife.
Just before he died, Hemingway said he still loved Hadley best, three wives and god knows how many women later. He was no doubt drinking at the time, but veritas is where you find it.
Joe
April 10, 2011
kicking back
We just spent three days in the Middle of Nowhere, Florida. Not wild-'n'-wooly middle of nowhere, but just equidistant from a couple of places you never heard of, Florida. We rented a nice rustic house on the St. John's River with Brandy and Christina, and just kicked back.
Of course I wrote every day and (as expected) got more done than usual. Get up a few hours before everyone else and there's not much to do but write. Not even a newspaper to waste a half-hour's worth of morning. Finished the Larsson novel THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and liked it a lot; will read the other two in the trilogy later. Didn't have the second one with me, though, so moved into Elmore Leonard.
The Larsson novel did have a couple of consistent flaws that might be characteristic of modern Swedish writing or might be artifacts of translation. I was often confused as to which character was talking, in one-on-one conversations, even when the characters were otherwise quite different and well described. That can be a problem in any language, of course, since any writer has a natural voice that's sort of a default pattern. One big trick in writing fiction is in consistently deviating from that default in different ways for different characters.
The novel was very heavy with information, but being a sci-fi guy, I'm used to that. Suspense was handled well; the novel has genuine surprises. Even though I remembered the movie pretty well, a couple of twists jumped up and slapped me.
(The characterization of the tattooed girl, Lisbeth Salander, was translated to the screen with creepy fidelity. Really good acting and screenwriting.)
Besides reading and enjoying idleness by the river, Brandy and I played a lot of guitar. He finished writing a new song, a good one. I had a few parodies I'd never played for him, like "The Sci-Fi Po-Mo Blues" and "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Vampires." Brandy's a full professor of English at the U. of Florida, who's been playing longer than I have, and is better. Christina is semi-retired from dancing and teaching yoga. (She used to be our masseuse, and we biked together, which is how she met Brandy.)
The above written Friday night. Going into town tomorrow.
Good observing Saturday morning, the little Questar perched on the river's edge. Mostly roamed the southern skies, the star fields of Scorpius and Sagittarius. Spent some time gazing at Saturn in a pretty steady sky. The Cassini Division was clear, and I could just barely convince myself that I could see the transient white smear that's been in the astro-news. Spent an hour, much of it just sitting back in the deck chair enjoying the night. Waiting for meteors, which didn't come.
After an hour it was 5:45, and I went in to drink coffee and write for another hour. It started to get crepuscular out, and so I went back and trained the scope on Venus, rising. Nice bright gibbous phase, but of course no detail. For a goof I maximized the power (8mm eyepiece with stacked Barlows) up to about 600X. The image was surprisingly sharp, though wobbly with thermals and showing strong chromatic aberration – Venus was red on one side and blue on the other. (The theoretical maximum for a 3.5" scope is 175X, and the Q gives about that, 189X, with the 8mm. The built-in Barlow gives a factor of about 1.7, for 320X, and my outside Barlow doubles that.)
Joe
Of course I wrote every day and (as expected) got more done than usual. Get up a few hours before everyone else and there's not much to do but write. Not even a newspaper to waste a half-hour's worth of morning. Finished the Larsson novel THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and liked it a lot; will read the other two in the trilogy later. Didn't have the second one with me, though, so moved into Elmore Leonard.
The Larsson novel did have a couple of consistent flaws that might be characteristic of modern Swedish writing or might be artifacts of translation. I was often confused as to which character was talking, in one-on-one conversations, even when the characters were otherwise quite different and well described. That can be a problem in any language, of course, since any writer has a natural voice that's sort of a default pattern. One big trick in writing fiction is in consistently deviating from that default in different ways for different characters.
The novel was very heavy with information, but being a sci-fi guy, I'm used to that. Suspense was handled well; the novel has genuine surprises. Even though I remembered the movie pretty well, a couple of twists jumped up and slapped me.
(The characterization of the tattooed girl, Lisbeth Salander, was translated to the screen with creepy fidelity. Really good acting and screenwriting.)
Besides reading and enjoying idleness by the river, Brandy and I played a lot of guitar. He finished writing a new song, a good one. I had a few parodies I'd never played for him, like "The Sci-Fi Po-Mo Blues" and "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Vampires." Brandy's a full professor of English at the U. of Florida, who's been playing longer than I have, and is better. Christina is semi-retired from dancing and teaching yoga. (She used to be our masseuse, and we biked together, which is how she met Brandy.)
The above written Friday night. Going into town tomorrow.
Good observing Saturday morning, the little Questar perched on the river's edge. Mostly roamed the southern skies, the star fields of Scorpius and Sagittarius. Spent some time gazing at Saturn in a pretty steady sky. The Cassini Division was clear, and I could just barely convince myself that I could see the transient white smear that's been in the astro-news. Spent an hour, much of it just sitting back in the deck chair enjoying the night. Waiting for meteors, which didn't come.
After an hour it was 5:45, and I went in to drink coffee and write for another hour. It started to get crepuscular out, and so I went back and trained the scope on Venus, rising. Nice bright gibbous phase, but of course no detail. For a goof I maximized the power (8mm eyepiece with stacked Barlows) up to about 600X. The image was surprisingly sharp, though wobbly with thermals and showing strong chromatic aberration – Venus was red on one side and blue on the other. (The theoretical maximum for a 3.5" scope is 175X, and the Q gives about that, 189X, with the 8mm. The built-in Barlow gives a factor of about 1.7, for 320X, and my outside Barlow doubles that.)
Joe
April 3, 2011
gators and stompers
Got properly worn out yesterday. The bike ride to studio and back was only 16 miles, but much of it was uphill into wind.
Wound up not staying in studio anyhow – I was late, and all the regular tables and chairs were taken. I squeezed into a little space in the corner, but it was no go. The model was a skinny guy all covered with tattoos, and the tattoos were so dark and complicated I couldn't see where the shadow lines fell over his skin. So after one sketch I said the hell with it and biked out into Payne's Prairie a mile, where I found an excellent model, an alligator lounging in the sun.
An excellent model. Didn't move an inch. No attitude. A little too far away, but if I had gone closer it might have changed our relationship.
Then in the evening we went out to Melrose, the little artsy town, with Brandy and Christina. An interesting evening, first going from gallery to gallery looking at art and nibbling canapés, and then to the major Shake Rag gallery, with a main room that had been cleared for a dance floor. Bob McPeek led a retro 70's band called the Psychedelic Relics (in properly outrageous chrono-drag) and we listened to period music and danced – even I danced a half-dozen numbers, so was pretty done in by midnight. (Having gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to work.)
Good time had by all, though most of the music was totally incomprehensible to me -- I have to admit that even the Beatles are past my own time, since I stopped paying attention to popular music about then. Still, the standards for male dancing are so low that I could stand out there and move a random body part every now and then, and some of the girls were gorgeous to watch. (Girl = female under 50 in this context.) And the women weren't bad, either.
Joe
Wound up not staying in studio anyhow – I was late, and all the regular tables and chairs were taken. I squeezed into a little space in the corner, but it was no go. The model was a skinny guy all covered with tattoos, and the tattoos were so dark and complicated I couldn't see where the shadow lines fell over his skin. So after one sketch I said the hell with it and biked out into Payne's Prairie a mile, where I found an excellent model, an alligator lounging in the sun.
An excellent model. Didn't move an inch. No attitude. A little too far away, but if I had gone closer it might have changed our relationship.
Then in the evening we went out to Melrose, the little artsy town, with Brandy and Christina. An interesting evening, first going from gallery to gallery looking at art and nibbling canapés, and then to the major Shake Rag gallery, with a main room that had been cleared for a dance floor. Bob McPeek led a retro 70's band called the Psychedelic Relics (in properly outrageous chrono-drag) and we listened to period music and danced – even I danced a half-dozen numbers, so was pretty done in by midnight. (Having gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to work.)
Good time had by all, though most of the music was totally incomprehensible to me -- I have to admit that even the Beatles are past my own time, since I stopped paying attention to popular music about then. Still, the standards for male dancing are so low that I could stand out there and move a random body part every now and then, and some of the girls were gorgeous to watch. (Girl = female under 50 in this context.) And the women weren't bad, either.
Joe
April 2, 2011
Source Code / The Cure
Interesting movie yesterday. A few minutes into Source Code I had a funny déjà vu feeling that finally solidified this morning – I wrote basically the same story, or at least the same setup, almost twenty years ago. "The Cure," which was in Terry Carr's Universe 3 (1993) and my collection None So Blind. It's about a guy who keeps being recycled through virtual reality scenarios where he dies; at first he has no idea why it's happening, but slowly he comes to realize that he's in a hospital undergoing some experimental treatment that has gone awry.
In the movie, he goes through the same experience over and over, which would be a lot less expensive to film. In mine, he's in the Yukon for one paragraph, and then in Vietnam, and then in outer space, and so forth. The pattern's similar. I think mine would make a better movie, but it would have a Kubrick budget.
I do recommend Source Code as an exciting movie with an engaging level of structural complexity and some really super acting. Good dialogue and dramatic in-your-face special effects. But I wish they'd done my story instead, and I was lounging in a hammock in Tahiti on my ill-gotten gains.
Joe
In the movie, he goes through the same experience over and over, which would be a lot less expensive to film. In mine, he's in the Yukon for one paragraph, and then in Vietnam, and then in outer space, and so forth. The pattern's similar. I think mine would make a better movie, but it would have a Kubrick budget.
I do recommend Source Code as an exciting movie with an engaging level of structural complexity and some really super acting. Good dialogue and dramatic in-your-face special effects. But I wish they'd done my story instead, and I was lounging in a hammock in Tahiti on my ill-gotten gains.
Joe
April 1, 2011
ISS
There's a neat graphic at
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
showing the International Space Station as it grows, piece by piece. It has a kind of "Hey, guys! Let's build a fort!" quality . . . .
Joe
http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm
showing the International Space Station as it grows, piece by piece. It has a kind of "Hey, guys! Let's build a fort!" quality . . . .
Joe
March 31, 2011
hogging thee bush
Right now I'm going over the copy-edited manuscript of EARTHBOUND, and have a query about the verb "bush-hogged."
Here in Florida, a bush-hog is like a super heavy-duty lawnmower, used to clear brush in a forest.
My editor notes that the machine is called a "brush-hog" in upstate New York.
This part of the story is set in California. What is it called there? A Reagan?
Thanks
Joe
Here in Florida, a bush-hog is like a super heavy-duty lawnmower, used to clear brush in a forest.
My editor notes that the machine is called a "brush-hog" in upstate New York.
This part of the story is set in California. What is it called there? A Reagan?
Thanks
Joe
March 30, 2011
joe_haldeman @ 2011-03-30T15:22:00
[talking about RAGBRAI down in sffnet] . . .
. . . while I was quartering oranges for the greater good of Bike Florida, a guy showed up with a RAGBRAI shirt -- turns out he hadn't done it; he just got the shirt ahead of time and will be out there this summer.
For the non-bikers, RAGBRAI is the [Des Moines] Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, and I think it's unlike any other such effort. Thousands of bicyclists from all over the world ride across Iowa in a huge mass, and every little town they go through goes out of their way to show how friendly Iowans are -- the road lined with tables of snacks and drinks. When they stop for the night, their tent city has a greater population than most of the towns they pass through. It's a pretty big logistic undertaking to keep them all fed and watered and sheltered. Eighteen-wheeler showers and out-houses . . . .
I'd love to do it some day, even though it's in the hot summer.
Joe
. . . while I was quartering oranges for the greater good of Bike Florida, a guy showed up with a RAGBRAI shirt -- turns out he hadn't done it; he just got the shirt ahead of time and will be out there this summer.
For the non-bikers, RAGBRAI is the [Des Moines] Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, and I think it's unlike any other such effort. Thousands of bicyclists from all over the world ride across Iowa in a huge mass, and every little town they go through goes out of their way to show how friendly Iowans are -- the road lined with tables of snacks and drinks. When they stop for the night, their tent city has a greater population than most of the towns they pass through. It's a pretty big logistic undertaking to keep them all fed and watered and sheltered. Eighteen-wheeler showers and out-houses . . . .
I'd love to do it some day, even though it's in the hot summer.
Joe
Bike Florida
Spent the day finding out that it's a good thing I have a job. There would be no future for me in fast food.
Gay went to ride in Bike Florida today, and though I'm skipping the event on account of feeling half-biked, I volunteered to work at rest stops for two days.
The first day wasn't so bad. I sat at a table on the outskirts of Alachua (a town of a few thousand) and quartered oranges for a few hours. When Gay showed up we had a nice lunch and went home.
Today my duty was forty-some miles away, at Itchetuckney Springs, and for five or six hours I stood making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hours. In the rain. (Under a tarp, fortunately.) Four or five hundred bicyclists rolled past, stopping long enough to snag a sandwich or two.
Finally the last one rolled by. I sat on a log for another hour until Gay reached the end of the day's ride and collected me. On the way home I had a hot dog, which was not scrumptious but was not made of peanut butter and jelly.
How could making a few hundred sandwiches be so tiring? I guess standing up doing anything for hours does take it out of you.
Going out with Brandy tonight for a Chinese dinner. I don't think they ever heard of George Washington Carver. Wait, they do have a peanut sauce in Szechuan recipes. I'll watch out for it.
Joe
Gay went to ride in Bike Florida today, and though I'm skipping the event on account of feeling half-biked, I volunteered to work at rest stops for two days.
The first day wasn't so bad. I sat at a table on the outskirts of Alachua (a town of a few thousand) and quartered oranges for a few hours. When Gay showed up we had a nice lunch and went home.
Today my duty was forty-some miles away, at Itchetuckney Springs, and for five or six hours I stood making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Hours. In the rain. (Under a tarp, fortunately.) Four or five hundred bicyclists rolled past, stopping long enough to snag a sandwich or two.
Finally the last one rolled by. I sat on a log for another hour until Gay reached the end of the day's ride and collected me. On the way home I had a hot dog, which was not scrumptious but was not made of peanut butter and jelly.
How could making a few hundred sandwiches be so tiring? I guess standing up doing anything for hours does take it out of you.
Going out with Brandy tonight for a Chinese dinner. I don't think they ever heard of George Washington Carver. Wait, they do have a peanut sauce in Szechuan recipes. I'll watch out for it.
Joe
March 29, 2011
Is a simulated rifle better than none at all?
[The subject of the 1960's M-16 "rifle-simulator" came up in sff.net . . . . ]
I remember those rifle-simulators with fondness, BOb. It was such a riot when
you pulled the trigger and they'd fire one round and jam! What a sense-a-humor
those guys at ArmaLite and Colt had! And then breaking your thumbnail trying
to get the magazine to release, while those comedians with AK-47s just kept
shooting. What a gas!
Joe
(That's Yours Truly back when he had hair. Though it was starting to fall out . . . . )
I remember those rifle-simulators with fondness, BOb. It was such a riot when
you pulled the trigger and they'd fire one round and jam! What a sense-a-humor
those guys at ArmaLite and Colt had! And then breaking your thumbnail trying
to get the magazine to release, while those comedians with AK-47s just kept
shooting. What a gas!
Joe
(That's Yours Truly back when he had hair. Though it was starting to fall out . . . . )
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