Moe Lane's Blog, page 784
January 12, 2021
A new installment of THE BOLD MARAUDER is up for free at Patreon!
The usual drill: somebody signs up, I write another installment of my space opera THE BOLD MARAUDER (free, at the moment). Let’s get a dozen more people or so, so I can write a new installment every week!
Patreon!
01/12/21 Snippet, THE FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF COAHUILA.
A paladin, this guy ain’t. Also: I decided that in Westerns you should show people getting shot, instead of not showing them getting shot. Hey, I’m figuring this out as I go.
Patreon!But there Jimmy was, sitting by a campfire by his wagon and his dead horse. The damned fool must have decided he was safe after all, because he was actually brewing a cup of damned coffee, without a care in the world. Well, right up to the point where Bailey whistled a greeting. It was comic, the way Jimmy started and scrabbled around – to see Bailey’s revolver pointed right at his head.
Fear cracked across the Royalist’s face as he raised his hands above his head. “But… but I saw you go over that cliff, Bailey. You and your horse both.”
“Well, Jimmy,” Bailey said in a calm voice, “maybe I’m a haunt. Or maybe you should’ve gone to check.” He shook his head, just a little. “See what happens when you don’t?”
Jimmy opened his mouth to say something – and that’s when Bailey shot him. The look on his face was something to see, briefly. He didn’t need a second shot, but Bailey gave him one, anyway. He believed in making sure of a dead enemy, you betcha.
Today is threatening to be a ‘bye’ day.
We have contractors over to fix the walls and bathroom after a pinhole leak in the pipes finally manifested itself last year. The racket is, honestly, kind of frustrating. My kids are already in headphones and whatnot and I kind of want my own.
I dunno what I can do about it, too. Except maybe order my kids pizza, by way of apology. It’s hard enough to concentrate normally.
Tweet of the Day, The Song Is ‘Wellerman’ edition…
…and the link to an album featuring it is below.
2021 is the year of the sea shanty pic.twitter.com/ohOAGvkbtC
— Tim – Poster of Hugo Pics (@Beertheist) January 11, 2021
As promised: a Sea Shanties (sorta) list.
This came up elsewhere earlier, so let me offer a quick list of good sea shanty compilations. Or, at least, sea shanty compilations that I like. A lot of them are nautical music collections in general, because I don’t care it’s my list.
97th Regimental String Band, Vol. III: Chantey Irish. An excellent string band in general for Civil War music, in fact, but there’s good stuff on this one.Clam Chowder: various. They were always happy to sing a shanty or two.Classic Maritime Music from Smithsonian Folkways. This is gonna be one of your go-tos, actually.The HPL Historical Society: The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth. Lots of fun if you know the originals. Hopefully lots of fun if you don’t. And, by all means, pick up the monograph, too. In fact, buy them both.Paul Clayton: Sailing And Whaling Songs Of The 19th Century. Okay, this is one of the serious ones. Melancholy and somber, but it’s good for a foundation in the genre.The Pyrates Royale: just keep buying. Shanties, piratical songs, nautical songs, a lot of songs about booze.Stan Rogers: various. Not many shanties, strictly, but… you really don’t have a bunch of Stan Rogers already? REALLY? Well, fix that.The Revels: Homeward Bound: Sea Songs, Ballads, and Chanteys. Adapted for a theatrical performance, but a couple of songs on here I listen to regularly. You will not find a better “Drake’s Drum,” and I’ve looked.January 11, 2021
Deadpool officially joins the Mouse.
This should be entertaining:
Just two months after setting Bob’s Burgers alums The Molyneux Sisters as the writers for the highly-anticipated third installment in the Ryan Reynolds-fronted franchise, Kevin Feige has confirmed in an interview with Collider that Deadpool 3 will not only be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but will keep the R-rated tone of the first two films.
That’s more or less everything. How the hell they’re going to cram Deadpool and the X-Men into the MCU is… not my bloody problem, is it? I’m sure they’ll work it all out in the end. Or perhaps they won’t even bother to explain. I mean, shoot: comic book movies.
In the Mail/Email: Bring Me the Head of the Comte de Saint-Germain (UNKNOWN ARMIES).
The print version of Bring Me the Head of the Comte de Saint-Germain is making its way to me even as we speak, but Atlas Games reminded me that I got the digital version, and I actually sat down to read it. It’s for the Unknown Armies underground occult RPG, and I am pleased that the game line is being supported, at least a little. So many good ones no longer are.
Moe Lane
PS: Pretty much what it says in the title, really. Although admittedly the head is stone, and weighs 600 pounds. But that’s mostly because it’s really, really funny to watch four to six intelligent people try to figure out how to move something that ridiculous.
Ganymede has Wi-Fi.
How many bars?
SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) – The Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter has discovered an FM radio signal coming from the moon Ganymede. The find is a first-time detection from the moon.
“It’s not E.T.,” said Patrick Wiggins, one of NASA’s Ambassadors to Utah. “It’s more of a natural function.”
Juno was traveling across the polar region of Jupiter — where magnetic field lines connect to Ganymede — when it crossed the radio source. Scientifically, it is called a “decametric radio emission.”
Here on Earth, we know it as Wi-Fi, and we use it every day.
…That’s it. That’s all the joke there is. Sorry.
(Via @disclosetv)
01/11/21 Snippet, THE FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF COAHUILA.
I think it’s a working title.
Patreon!The Fall of the Kingdom of Coahuila
Chihuahuan Desert
Contested Lands, Kingdom of Coahuila/State of Houston
June, 1861 AD
It’s never colder in the desert than dawn. As the sun pulls itself over the mountains a man can fancy he can hear the frost puff away into the thirsty air. Everything’s thirsty, in the desert. Even the purples and golds you only see at daybreak and dusk look soft and crumbly, like a can of paint left out in the sun to half-dry. The desert craves water, and it doesn’t care how it gets it; and so it was with no real surprise that Hank Bailey saw how quickly Jimmy’s blood had sunk into the desert ground.
Jimmy Chestnut had been a bad man, with a full canteen. The first earned him a bullet from his killer; the second made sure Bailey had shot nice, and careful. He didn’t want the thirsty dirt drinking anything except Jimmy’s blood. He certainly hadn’t wanted the dirt drinking his blood, which was why Bailey hadn’t wasted time talking before shooting.
That traitorous son of a bitch was lucky I ain’t low enough to shoot a man in the back, Bailey thought as he reloaded his gun. Bailey’s shot had echoed through the lightening dawn, probably alarming nobody except the coyotes and vultures, but there was no reason to take chances. Maybe Jimmy had had a compadre. Or maybe just a minion. There must have been a reason Jimmy rode out here, after all.
