R.P. Bird's Blog, page 4
May 6, 2015
Last Months 02
Last night, while waiting for Lyft to summon me into battle, I fell asleep on the sofa. It must have been a deep sleep, because when I jerked awake, my left arm and forearm were aching, the left side of my face was in intense pain, as if I had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. My left wrist ached for a couple hours, my face eventually went completely numb - and weirdly, I had sympathetic numbness in my left lower leg. This is par for the course with whatever's wrong with me. It's why I'm so disappointed in each and every doctor I've seen. They take my information, my symptoms, they hem and haw...and they don't do shit. They don't send me on to a specialist, they don't treat me, they don't do anything! What do I have to do, writhe on the floor?
Cinco de Mayo! It's a big bust here in Albuquerque. The rainy skies canceled the fireworks, nobody went out partying. Maybe the weekend. It's been a harsh few days, I'll start up again tomorrow.
It's tomorrow now. I woke up in intense pain. It radiates from my left temple down along my jaw - my teeth feel like they are being squeezed out of their sockets. The pain from the temple has affected my left eye, it's hard to focus out of that eye. It takes weeks to find another doctor with my insurance, so instead I went to an urgent-care clinic. After hours of complaining and arguing, a nurse gave me a prescription for pain-killers. It's the state of our culture that the intense pain I suffer means nothing, but, oh, my, they are so, so concerned that I might become an addict. The big joke, these new pain-killers only blunt the pain, they don't remove it. They block it just enough that I can sleep, which what I did. I took a long nap. Now I can drive for Lyft this evening.
What a bunch of cowards they are. The slightest push-back, and these supposed leaders of our new economy fold like wet paper. How proud we much be of them, these Silicon Valley innovators who believe so little in their creation, they throw it away when facing even token resistance.
Shout-out to my cousin Jeff, who sent me a movie to cheer me up.
Maybe I can find a way through the thorns. I hope so. There has to be a way for me to survive in this world, I just haven't found it yet. But I've faced death before, twice in fact in one terrible night, so I'm not afraid if I fail. I will be heartbroken to send Bright Eyes forward before her time. As for myself, it's not a problem.
Here's the link to my gofundme campaign: gofundme.com/twjx8zs
Cinco de Mayo! It's a big bust here in Albuquerque. The rainy skies canceled the fireworks, nobody went out partying. Maybe the weekend. It's been a harsh few days, I'll start up again tomorrow.
It's tomorrow now. I woke up in intense pain. It radiates from my left temple down along my jaw - my teeth feel like they are being squeezed out of their sockets. The pain from the temple has affected my left eye, it's hard to focus out of that eye. It takes weeks to find another doctor with my insurance, so instead I went to an urgent-care clinic. After hours of complaining and arguing, a nurse gave me a prescription for pain-killers. It's the state of our culture that the intense pain I suffer means nothing, but, oh, my, they are so, so concerned that I might become an addict. The big joke, these new pain-killers only blunt the pain, they don't remove it. They block it just enough that I can sleep, which what I did. I took a long nap. Now I can drive for Lyft this evening.
What a bunch of cowards they are. The slightest push-back, and these supposed leaders of our new economy fold like wet paper. How proud we much be of them, these Silicon Valley innovators who believe so little in their creation, they throw it away when facing even token resistance.
Shout-out to my cousin Jeff, who sent me a movie to cheer me up.
Maybe I can find a way through the thorns. I hope so. There has to be a way for me to survive in this world, I just haven't found it yet. But I've faced death before, twice in fact in one terrible night, so I'm not afraid if I fail. I will be heartbroken to send Bright Eyes forward before her time. As for myself, it's not a problem.
Here's the link to my gofundme campaign: gofundme.com/twjx8zs
May 5, 2015
Last Months 01
I thought I would keep a record of what might be the last months of my life. Several factors have conspired to do me in.
There's my temporomandibular joint disorder, which causes me almost constant pain...if it is TMJD. My last doctor thought it was a tumor or perhaps leukemia...but don't rule out TMJD. Victims of TMJD have killed themselves over the pain. My extreme fatigue made the doctor suspect cancer. It is so severe, it prevented me from working for many days over the last couple months, which is the partial cause of my current financial crisis.
I work as a Lyft driver. I'm good at it and the job allows me the flexibility to not work on days in which the pain or the fatigue are too intense to ignore. But the leader of the New Mexico senate is in the pocket of the cab companies. Current Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez’s brother is the lead lobbyist for the taxi industry, which hates ride-sharing. He blocked reform legislation from passing. The new rules by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission released last week will regulate Lyft and Uber in ways similar to taxis. Lyft decided to "pause" operations. Uber has not yet decided what to do. I could work for Uber...except my minivan's a 2005 model. Uber doesn't want to hear from anyone who owns a ten year old vehicle. I've tried several times to sneak it by them in the application process, so far no go. I might try again soon, if they stay around. There's no certainty they will.
So I'm between a rock and a hard place. I had brake repairs and tire problems this week that stripped me out of eight hundred dollars, almost my entire reserve. I will continue to drive for Lyft until the 14th, I might generate $900. My cousin is selling my storage unit full of stuff, so I'm hoping that will generate around a grand or more.
What if I can't make the rent in June or July or August? I won't be homeless. That won't happen to me. This may be the end of me. We'll see, I'm not giving in just yet. But if it happens, that's all right, we all have to die sometime. I thought I'd have more time, to write, to find my way through the hateful puzzle-palace of modern publishing - if that's not to be...all right.
There's my temporomandibular joint disorder, which causes me almost constant pain...if it is TMJD. My last doctor thought it was a tumor or perhaps leukemia...but don't rule out TMJD. Victims of TMJD have killed themselves over the pain. My extreme fatigue made the doctor suspect cancer. It is so severe, it prevented me from working for many days over the last couple months, which is the partial cause of my current financial crisis.
I work as a Lyft driver. I'm good at it and the job allows me the flexibility to not work on days in which the pain or the fatigue are too intense to ignore. But the leader of the New Mexico senate is in the pocket of the cab companies. Current Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez’s brother is the lead lobbyist for the taxi industry, which hates ride-sharing. He blocked reform legislation from passing. The new rules by the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission released last week will regulate Lyft and Uber in ways similar to taxis. Lyft decided to "pause" operations. Uber has not yet decided what to do. I could work for Uber...except my minivan's a 2005 model. Uber doesn't want to hear from anyone who owns a ten year old vehicle. I've tried several times to sneak it by them in the application process, so far no go. I might try again soon, if they stay around. There's no certainty they will.
So I'm between a rock and a hard place. I had brake repairs and tire problems this week that stripped me out of eight hundred dollars, almost my entire reserve. I will continue to drive for Lyft until the 14th, I might generate $900. My cousin is selling my storage unit full of stuff, so I'm hoping that will generate around a grand or more.
What if I can't make the rent in June or July or August? I won't be homeless. That won't happen to me. This may be the end of me. We'll see, I'm not giving in just yet. But if it happens, that's all right, we all have to die sometime. I thought I'd have more time, to write, to find my way through the hateful puzzle-palace of modern publishing - if that's not to be...all right.
January 23, 2015
Zombie Refritos
I hate zombies. I'm a science fiction and fantasy writer, so it's in my job description to think about these things. I don't mind them in a fantasy setting - I particularly like the draugr of Skyrim...but when the concept tried to enter the realm of science fiction...meh.
First of all, the zombies of the zombie apocalypse are frightfully boring. Always a product of a strange new disease, an engineered virus, always behaving in the same goddamned way. In groups, stumbling around, trying to kill everything that moves. They do work effectively as a metaphor for the consuming, dominating nature of contemporary American society, but that's a one-shot thing. Attack on Titan uses a similar metaphor for the giants who consume humanity, only, notice that there are no knockoffs to that series. It works once. After that, just another gimmick.
They'd be so much more interesting in a science fiction apocalypse story if they were mutated into something more sensible. The head-crab zombies of Half-Life 2 are the perfect riff off of the concept. They make zombies comprehensible in the Half-Life universe. Excellent storytelling. If you haven't played Half-Life 2, you need to get the game and experience Gordon Freeman's journey. I'm such a fan, guess who's in my home-screen background image on my phone: the G-Man.
Imitation is flattery. I chose to emulate Marc Laidlaw and the other developers at Valve in my exploration of the zombie apocalypse, the short story "Retirement Age." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OXX9TRU Much more interesting to think about the technology that could create classic zombies, who would use it, and the purposes to which they would put it.
First, there is only one technology that could hold the "promise" of creating undead creatures, nanotechnology. Diseases, even artificial ones, have a patient zero. Modern medicine understands the spread of disease. There's an entire branch of medicine focused just on this one thing, it's so important to the health of humanity. Epidemiology. Look at the smackdown the epidemiologists of the CDC - yeah, there's an entire federal agency devoted to this one thing - gave to SARS, are currently giving to Ebola, because they understand how biological entities cause disease. They understand the patterns. Blood-borne diseases find it especially hard to spread. We didn't all die of AIDS and rabies, did we? Rabies is a ferocious disease, by the way. Spread by contact with blood and body fluids, in its end stage it causes infected mammals, including humans, to become raging beasts bent on attacking and biting anything that moves. Kinda like zombies. Has the world fallen to hordes of rabies monsters? Nope. "See that man over there, foaming at the mouth and trying to bite everyone? Shoot him." Also, rabies victims loose the ability to eat or even drink, their bodies wear out after a few days, their brains eaten up from the inside, they die...for real. Nothing in nature can prevent a dead body from rotting away. If there ever were a zombie outbreak, their bodies would be eaten by dogs and pecked away into nothing by birds, rotted into the soil by bacteria. You gotta bend molecules, reshape the human body to keep it moving after death. You need micromachines.
We can't yet build spooky shit like that. If someone could, they couldn't be from the Earth. ET hates us. But why not bombard the Earth with asteroids? That'd kill us real good. The only thing is, our nice, juicy biosphere, the global ecosystem within which we live, that's unique. Even if life were everywhere in the galaxy, none of it would look like life on Earth. You're aliens, you hate us because we're a bunch of kill-crazy cave men with nukes and not a lick of sense, but you love the dolphins. You deeply crave the scent of flowers. How to smoke us without destroying the Earth's beautiful, abundant, glorious life? Asteroids out, nukes out, violence is out. We can fight back. Even engineered diseases are out, since we have just enough medical technology to defeat them.
What you need to get the job done is an army of robots programmed to kill only humans, preferably made up of humans. I suppose you could use your gnarly mind-powers to create a kill-crazy religion...only, maybe they've tried that already, didn't work out. Martin Luther was an alien? Mohammad was an alien killbot? Hong Xiuguan a telepathic ET with a grudge? What next? Nanotech. They build nanomachines, distribute them throughout the environment, wait until they reach saturation in the human population, and activate them all at once. There will be freaks with powerful immune systems who can withstand the nanomachines, so convert the infected into killing machines to hunt down the immune. Wait a hundred years - seriously, if you can build sophisticated nanomachines, you can engineer yourself to be immortal - come back, pristine Earth, beautiful biosphere intact, no more killer apes.
Isn't that just a little bit more interesting than an unexplained rampage of dead people? Not counting the draugr, of course. I <3 draugr.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
First of all, the zombies of the zombie apocalypse are frightfully boring. Always a product of a strange new disease, an engineered virus, always behaving in the same goddamned way. In groups, stumbling around, trying to kill everything that moves. They do work effectively as a metaphor for the consuming, dominating nature of contemporary American society, but that's a one-shot thing. Attack on Titan uses a similar metaphor for the giants who consume humanity, only, notice that there are no knockoffs to that series. It works once. After that, just another gimmick.
They'd be so much more interesting in a science fiction apocalypse story if they were mutated into something more sensible. The head-crab zombies of Half-Life 2 are the perfect riff off of the concept. They make zombies comprehensible in the Half-Life universe. Excellent storytelling. If you haven't played Half-Life 2, you need to get the game and experience Gordon Freeman's journey. I'm such a fan, guess who's in my home-screen background image on my phone: the G-Man.
Imitation is flattery. I chose to emulate Marc Laidlaw and the other developers at Valve in my exploration of the zombie apocalypse, the short story "Retirement Age." You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OXX9TRU Much more interesting to think about the technology that could create classic zombies, who would use it, and the purposes to which they would put it.
First, there is only one technology that could hold the "promise" of creating undead creatures, nanotechnology. Diseases, even artificial ones, have a patient zero. Modern medicine understands the spread of disease. There's an entire branch of medicine focused just on this one thing, it's so important to the health of humanity. Epidemiology. Look at the smackdown the epidemiologists of the CDC - yeah, there's an entire federal agency devoted to this one thing - gave to SARS, are currently giving to Ebola, because they understand how biological entities cause disease. They understand the patterns. Blood-borne diseases find it especially hard to spread. We didn't all die of AIDS and rabies, did we? Rabies is a ferocious disease, by the way. Spread by contact with blood and body fluids, in its end stage it causes infected mammals, including humans, to become raging beasts bent on attacking and biting anything that moves. Kinda like zombies. Has the world fallen to hordes of rabies monsters? Nope. "See that man over there, foaming at the mouth and trying to bite everyone? Shoot him." Also, rabies victims loose the ability to eat or even drink, their bodies wear out after a few days, their brains eaten up from the inside, they die...for real. Nothing in nature can prevent a dead body from rotting away. If there ever were a zombie outbreak, their bodies would be eaten by dogs and pecked away into nothing by birds, rotted into the soil by bacteria. You gotta bend molecules, reshape the human body to keep it moving after death. You need micromachines.
We can't yet build spooky shit like that. If someone could, they couldn't be from the Earth. ET hates us. But why not bombard the Earth with asteroids? That'd kill us real good. The only thing is, our nice, juicy biosphere, the global ecosystem within which we live, that's unique. Even if life were everywhere in the galaxy, none of it would look like life on Earth. You're aliens, you hate us because we're a bunch of kill-crazy cave men with nukes and not a lick of sense, but you love the dolphins. You deeply crave the scent of flowers. How to smoke us without destroying the Earth's beautiful, abundant, glorious life? Asteroids out, nukes out, violence is out. We can fight back. Even engineered diseases are out, since we have just enough medical technology to defeat them.
What you need to get the job done is an army of robots programmed to kill only humans, preferably made up of humans. I suppose you could use your gnarly mind-powers to create a kill-crazy religion...only, maybe they've tried that already, didn't work out. Martin Luther was an alien? Mohammad was an alien killbot? Hong Xiuguan a telepathic ET with a grudge? What next? Nanotech. They build nanomachines, distribute them throughout the environment, wait until they reach saturation in the human population, and activate them all at once. There will be freaks with powerful immune systems who can withstand the nanomachines, so convert the infected into killing machines to hunt down the immune. Wait a hundred years - seriously, if you can build sophisticated nanomachines, you can engineer yourself to be immortal - come back, pristine Earth, beautiful biosphere intact, no more killer apes.
Isn't that just a little bit more interesting than an unexplained rampage of dead people? Not counting the draugr, of course. I <3 draugr.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
January 21, 2015
When giants fight...
The two main ride-share companies are in a brawl. Well, not Lyft, mostly. Uber likes to play hardball. Remember, both these companies embody the Libertarian soul of Silicon Valley. It's an all-against-all hootenanny, where each company's drivers are pitted not only against the opposing company, but each other.
Right now, if you're thinking of driving for either company, you might want to consider that part-time job at Walmart instead. Both companies over-hired for New Year's Eve, which means in most cities there are too many drivers, too few fares. Uber wants to cut up Lyft's drivers by eliminating anyone driving for Uber who also drives for Lyft. They've designed a temporary program of perks to force their drivers into dumping Lyft. Uber also cut fares. Lyft cut fares. The get-rich-quick scheme peddled by both companies is a lie. Those perks Uber is using? If you don't follow the rules TO THE LETTER, you won't be getting that extra buck or two.
How does this make sense? It doesn't for a conventional company concerned about contractor retention and profits. It does for a startup. They don't want to make a profit, they want market-share, which they'll use on venture capitalists to generate more loans and investment. At the root, they don't care about the drivers at all. One of the two is more polite about it than the other one, but at root, yeah...
So why am I still driving? I am at the cusp of old age. The many years I spent as a caregiver, my life's work as a novelist, those aren't pluses when looking for work. I don't care about their games. I'm not in it to get rich quick. I'm in it to pay the rent. That's all. For that purpose, for the desperate, which I guess includes me, it's perfect.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
Right now, if you're thinking of driving for either company, you might want to consider that part-time job at Walmart instead. Both companies over-hired for New Year's Eve, which means in most cities there are too many drivers, too few fares. Uber wants to cut up Lyft's drivers by eliminating anyone driving for Uber who also drives for Lyft. They've designed a temporary program of perks to force their drivers into dumping Lyft. Uber also cut fares. Lyft cut fares. The get-rich-quick scheme peddled by both companies is a lie. Those perks Uber is using? If you don't follow the rules TO THE LETTER, you won't be getting that extra buck or two.
How does this make sense? It doesn't for a conventional company concerned about contractor retention and profits. It does for a startup. They don't want to make a profit, they want market-share, which they'll use on venture capitalists to generate more loans and investment. At the root, they don't care about the drivers at all. One of the two is more polite about it than the other one, but at root, yeah...
So why am I still driving? I am at the cusp of old age. The many years I spent as a caregiver, my life's work as a novelist, those aren't pluses when looking for work. I don't care about their games. I'm not in it to get rich quick. I'm in it to pay the rent. That's all. For that purpose, for the desperate, which I guess includes me, it's perfect.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
January 19, 2015
Incidents on the Road
So you want to be a ride-share driver? Here's a common occurrence.
After a fare in the North Valley, a lovely couple who like to drink, and who are great rides. They tip well, too, always a plus. After taking them to their favorite neighborhood bar, I immediately get another ride request. Google leads me to a drunken young woman in the middle of the street. She's too drunk to give me her home address. It was a residential neighborhood. I approached a family out tinkering with a car in their driveway. They had no idea where she had come from. While we were talking, a man came out of the house across the street. He was this woman's boyfriend. He started screaming profanity at her. I stepped in and shouted, "Calm down!" I thought I'd have to punch him if he made a move toward the woman. Can't have that. I wasn't looking forward to it, I'm a hair's breadth away from being an old man. This guy was in his twenties. But I can't have a man beating up on a woman in my presence. Don't go there when I'm around. The father, son, and mom started shouting at the guy. The man cursed them. The dad went thermonuclear. He was going to beat the guy's head in. I stepped up and started screaming, "Everyone calm down!" Something inside me desperately wanted to prevent this family man from going to jail on ag assault charges. The wife grabbed his arm. The man stormed back into the house, the woman following him a moment later. The wife talked to her, tried to get her address before she left. The girl was just too drunk. They were drunken guests of the woman across the street. She came out and apologized for their behavior.
If you can't do what I did that night, maybe you shouldn't be a ride-share driver. We deal with a lot of drunks. Most of the time, they're like the lovely couple at the start. Sometimes...yeah.
Personal note: I haven't been drunk since the day the first Gulf War ended in 1991. I think you can see the sense of that. I have nothing against stoners, by the way. The most someone high on cannabis has ever done to me: offer me a toke and a bag of chips. If you have to get high, smoke pot, don't drink.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
After a fare in the North Valley, a lovely couple who like to drink, and who are great rides. They tip well, too, always a plus. After taking them to their favorite neighborhood bar, I immediately get another ride request. Google leads me to a drunken young woman in the middle of the street. She's too drunk to give me her home address. It was a residential neighborhood. I approached a family out tinkering with a car in their driveway. They had no idea where she had come from. While we were talking, a man came out of the house across the street. He was this woman's boyfriend. He started screaming profanity at her. I stepped in and shouted, "Calm down!" I thought I'd have to punch him if he made a move toward the woman. Can't have that. I wasn't looking forward to it, I'm a hair's breadth away from being an old man. This guy was in his twenties. But I can't have a man beating up on a woman in my presence. Don't go there when I'm around. The father, son, and mom started shouting at the guy. The man cursed them. The dad went thermonuclear. He was going to beat the guy's head in. I stepped up and started screaming, "Everyone calm down!" Something inside me desperately wanted to prevent this family man from going to jail on ag assault charges. The wife grabbed his arm. The man stormed back into the house, the woman following him a moment later. The wife talked to her, tried to get her address before she left. The girl was just too drunk. They were drunken guests of the woman across the street. She came out and apologized for their behavior.
If you can't do what I did that night, maybe you shouldn't be a ride-share driver. We deal with a lot of drunks. Most of the time, they're like the lovely couple at the start. Sometimes...yeah.
Personal note: I haven't been drunk since the day the first Gulf War ended in 1991. I think you can see the sense of that. I have nothing against stoners, by the way. The most someone high on cannabis has ever done to me: offer me a toke and a bag of chips. If you have to get high, smoke pot, don't drink.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
January 18, 2015
Ride-Share to Hell and Back
I'm a ride-share driver. This isn't a rant against the company I work for, since my experiences with them have been uniformly polite, so I won't say which of the three or five ride-share companies in existence is mine.
The first thing you learn, watch your back. The company's not out to get you for the most part, it's your passengers and the street. I work Sundays, and on a recent Sunday morning, I picked up a fellow ride-share driver. He needed transport to the impound lot. He had been carjacked the night before. Some guy walked up to his car while he was waiting for a couple of drunken women to get in, knocked on his window, stuck a big gun in his face, and made off with his car. The police had found his vehicle that morning and had it towed to the impound yard for safekeeping. The street will bite you in the ass.
What would the Birdman have done? I'd call the drunks and tell them that I was putting them on the clock AND I was going to drive around the block until they were read to go. "Call me when you're ready, I'll pick you up. The alternative, I can cancel the ride. You can call back when you're ready to go." Of course, these are my after-the-bars-close-drunks-three-in-the-moring rules. I have a different set of rules for afternoons when I'm picking up my usual fares. Always have a sense of where you are and the possible dangers around you.
Doesn't mean you have to be grumpy about it, though. I'm still cheerful to my passengers, even the drunks. I still have a positive outlook on the job, but my awareness of my surroundings has increased. My awareness was already at a high level - that's just me, a friendly nice, honest guy who has known murderers, grifters, burglars, barroom toughs, and shoplifters. Me, the nice guy, one of my ex-girlfriends was a thief who stole money from the purses of other women, who ripped off furniture to furnish her own apartment. "I'd never steal from you," she said to me once, when we were naked together. I'm honest, it's a karma thing for me. I know death is always close. Act the way the universe, quantum mechanics, M-Theory, Buddha, Jesus, the Tao, and Confucius tell you to act, and you don't have to worry about death. Just another transition. It's also the way I was raised. I honor my parents by my good behavior. But most of you fucks haven't a clue. You'll do anything to anyone to get off, get high, or get money. So, to borrow a phrase from popular culture, my Force Sense is active, my spider sense tingles, I know Voldemort is nearby...always.
That's how you have to act when you drive in an urban area, or anywhere, really. Lock your doors unless a passenger is entering or leaving. Always make sure a passenger enters their house or apartment after dropping them off. Only takes a few seconds, once they're in the door, then leave. This should be doubly true of female passengers. Women in American society are a prey species. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. It's up to all of us to change that.
Second, watch out for yourself. If a certain area creeps you out, leave that place. Don't stand there fucking around with the ride app. Don't wait on a passenger whose phone doesn't work or who won't answer their phone. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. Don't carry a gun or knife, it will make you overconfident. Rely on your Jedi training, on what you learned in class at Hogwarts. Listen to Master Yoda, pay attention to the Force, what it is telling you. Leave that place. "Keep you safe, it will!"
Thus ends the lesson for today.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
The first thing you learn, watch your back. The company's not out to get you for the most part, it's your passengers and the street. I work Sundays, and on a recent Sunday morning, I picked up a fellow ride-share driver. He needed transport to the impound lot. He had been carjacked the night before. Some guy walked up to his car while he was waiting for a couple of drunken women to get in, knocked on his window, stuck a big gun in his face, and made off with his car. The police had found his vehicle that morning and had it towed to the impound yard for safekeeping. The street will bite you in the ass.
What would the Birdman have done? I'd call the drunks and tell them that I was putting them on the clock AND I was going to drive around the block until they were read to go. "Call me when you're ready, I'll pick you up. The alternative, I can cancel the ride. You can call back when you're ready to go." Of course, these are my after-the-bars-close-drunks-three-in-the-moring rules. I have a different set of rules for afternoons when I'm picking up my usual fares. Always have a sense of where you are and the possible dangers around you.
Doesn't mean you have to be grumpy about it, though. I'm still cheerful to my passengers, even the drunks. I still have a positive outlook on the job, but my awareness of my surroundings has increased. My awareness was already at a high level - that's just me, a friendly nice, honest guy who has known murderers, grifters, burglars, barroom toughs, and shoplifters. Me, the nice guy, one of my ex-girlfriends was a thief who stole money from the purses of other women, who ripped off furniture to furnish her own apartment. "I'd never steal from you," she said to me once, when we were naked together. I'm honest, it's a karma thing for me. I know death is always close. Act the way the universe, quantum mechanics, M-Theory, Buddha, Jesus, the Tao, and Confucius tell you to act, and you don't have to worry about death. Just another transition. It's also the way I was raised. I honor my parents by my good behavior. But most of you fucks haven't a clue. You'll do anything to anyone to get off, get high, or get money. So, to borrow a phrase from popular culture, my Force Sense is active, my spider sense tingles, I know Voldemort is nearby...always.
That's how you have to act when you drive in an urban area, or anywhere, really. Lock your doors unless a passenger is entering or leaving. Always make sure a passenger enters their house or apartment after dropping them off. Only takes a few seconds, once they're in the door, then leave. This should be doubly true of female passengers. Women in American society are a prey species. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. It's up to all of us to change that.
Second, watch out for yourself. If a certain area creeps you out, leave that place. Don't stand there fucking around with the ride app. Don't wait on a passenger whose phone doesn't work or who won't answer their phone. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. Don't carry a gun or knife, it will make you overconfident. Rely on your Jedi training, on what you learned in class at Hogwarts. Listen to Master Yoda, pay attention to the Force, what it is telling you. Leave that place. "Keep you safe, it will!"
Thus ends the lesson for today.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
December 25, 2014
Merry Christmas!
Several of my novels are free today on amazon. My way of saying: "Merry Christmas!" to my readers. Take care this holiday season, take a Lyft if you are worried about your ability to drive. Who knows, I might be behind the wheel if you do. If I am driving you, please tip heavily.
Here's my author page on amazon: http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
Here's my author page on amazon: http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
October 24, 2014
The Case of the Haunted Computer
Back when I had a life, at least a part-time life, I fixed computers. I was also a college history instructor, but I took little joy from that job. Why? Two examples will suffice. A student disliked a grade I gave her. She complained to someone, we actually had a hearing, at which I was exonerated after many wild accusations were hurled at me. Second example: at most of my teaching gigs, I had upwards of nine bosses - supervisors on top of supervisors on top of supervisors. What the fuck?
Though it paid less, and I only worked for Gary of Gary's Computer Repair part-time - full-time during the summer - it was much more rewarding. People were actually grateful that I was able to fix their machines, retrieve files from crashed hard drives, and otherwise cure their computer ills. So I look upon my repairs with pride...unlike my other career. Even a letter of apology from the young woman who tried to get me fired didn't help. She graduated from community college and started at a big four-year university, and almost sank without a trace. Only the skills I tried to impart to her saved her. It was an awakening. That's when she sent me the note.
Long-way round to the central topic of this essay, fixing computers. One of my more memorable fixes involved sound.
This was during the summer, when Gary and his henchman were off laying CAT5 cable for a company and I was mostly alone in the shop except for another part-timer, a kid who showed up every now and again. A man brought in his PC.
"It's making a funny noise, moaning sounds. I think the power supply is failing."
"I'll check it out," I replied.
After he left, I took it in the back and hooked it up. There really was an odd throbbing sound coming from the thing. It was hard to locate, somewhat generalized around the case. It diminished a bit when I took the side of the case off, but it didn't go away. I started with the cheapest fix first, disconnecting the cooling fan. That stopped the noise. Not the PS after all.
I inspected the fan. After years of DIY, of part-time repair work, I could tell when a fan has gone. One sure sign: it stops spinning. Just kidding. Nope, it spun fine, no hesitation at all when reconnected. Next, the feel of the fan blades when turned off, moving them with a finger. There was none of the gritty hesitation normally apparent in a failing case fan. Good case fans "bounce back" when moved slightly with a finger. I was puzzled. I blew the thing out with compressed air, cleaned the entire case out, in fact. I even used the little homemade cleaner attachment for the shopvac on it. Dust bunnies be gone!
The sound was still there, especially loud when the case was put back together. I was leaning over looking inside the case when the moment of enlightenment came. My hand was inadvertently covering some of the back ventilation holes. The noise stopped. I removed my hand, the noise started. I then began to experiment with the placement of my hand. Noise starts, noise stops. It was as if I were working a flute. Which is exactly what was going on. For some reason, air flowing out the side of the ventilation grid at the back had started to make noise. By experimentation, I discovered just a few holes along the edge of the grid of vent holes were responsible for the sound. I went into Gary's office, got some scotch tape, and taped those holes along the edge closed. It wouldn't affect cooling, since only one short line was involved - like 95% of the vent holes were still open. Sound stopped for good. When the man came back for his machine, he was astounded by the fix. I showed him which holes were involved, just in case the tape needed replacement in the future. I charged him the base fee for any repair, $25, nothing more. He was so happy at the absence of that sad moan, he didn't care.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
Though it paid less, and I only worked for Gary of Gary's Computer Repair part-time - full-time during the summer - it was much more rewarding. People were actually grateful that I was able to fix their machines, retrieve files from crashed hard drives, and otherwise cure their computer ills. So I look upon my repairs with pride...unlike my other career. Even a letter of apology from the young woman who tried to get me fired didn't help. She graduated from community college and started at a big four-year university, and almost sank without a trace. Only the skills I tried to impart to her saved her. It was an awakening. That's when she sent me the note.
Long-way round to the central topic of this essay, fixing computers. One of my more memorable fixes involved sound.
This was during the summer, when Gary and his henchman were off laying CAT5 cable for a company and I was mostly alone in the shop except for another part-timer, a kid who showed up every now and again. A man brought in his PC.
"It's making a funny noise, moaning sounds. I think the power supply is failing."
"I'll check it out," I replied.
After he left, I took it in the back and hooked it up. There really was an odd throbbing sound coming from the thing. It was hard to locate, somewhat generalized around the case. It diminished a bit when I took the side of the case off, but it didn't go away. I started with the cheapest fix first, disconnecting the cooling fan. That stopped the noise. Not the PS after all.
Quick aside: "power supply" is a misnomer, it's just a transformer to turn alternating current from a wall socket into the direct current the computer components need. I didn't invent the term, that's what it's called...even though it's just a fucking transformer. Please don't poke screwdrivers into them, you'll get electrocuted. It's the only dangerous component inside a computer case.
I inspected the fan. After years of DIY, of part-time repair work, I could tell when a fan has gone. One sure sign: it stops spinning. Just kidding. Nope, it spun fine, no hesitation at all when reconnected. Next, the feel of the fan blades when turned off, moving them with a finger. There was none of the gritty hesitation normally apparent in a failing case fan. Good case fans "bounce back" when moved slightly with a finger. I was puzzled. I blew the thing out with compressed air, cleaned the entire case out, in fact. I even used the little homemade cleaner attachment for the shopvac on it. Dust bunnies be gone!
Another aside: fortune smiles on you if you've never had to clean out and repair computers owned by heavy smokers. Holy shit, it's disgusting. Black tarry crap over everything, gummy stuff...and it stinks. Literally stinks.
The sound was still there, especially loud when the case was put back together. I was leaning over looking inside the case when the moment of enlightenment came. My hand was inadvertently covering some of the back ventilation holes. The noise stopped. I removed my hand, the noise started. I then began to experiment with the placement of my hand. Noise starts, noise stops. It was as if I were working a flute. Which is exactly what was going on. For some reason, air flowing out the side of the ventilation grid at the back had started to make noise. By experimentation, I discovered just a few holes along the edge of the grid of vent holes were responsible for the sound. I went into Gary's office, got some scotch tape, and taped those holes along the edge closed. It wouldn't affect cooling, since only one short line was involved - like 95% of the vent holes were still open. Sound stopped for good. When the man came back for his machine, he was astounded by the fix. I showed him which holes were involved, just in case the tape needed replacement in the future. I charged him the base fee for any repair, $25, nothing more. He was so happy at the absence of that sad moan, he didn't care.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
October 4, 2014
I'm still obsessing over No Country for Old Men
Don't ask me why. The story plagues my mind. There are two possibilities: the author's a scam artist who intentionally put the antagonist from a slasher movie into a noir crime drama, or it's a "metaphor." Fuck metaphors, though that choice is less damning of Cormac McCarthy. Either way, the story could have been grounded, put into a shape I might have liked, by one change. Wells, the other narco errand boy, played by Woody Harrelson in the movie, is taken out by Chigurh in true slasher movie style. Chigurh appears from nowhere, corners Wells, and murders the hell out of him. One change would make it all better. Wells isn't sent by a competitor, he's sent by the same boss who sent Chigurh to recover the money. The boss is pissed at all the attention Chigurh's mindless rampage is bringing down on him. This has a basis in reality, unlike the story as it is. Local law enforcement isn't hung out to dry in the real world. In a drug case involving lots of bodies, the DEA, the FBI, and various state agencies would pour into the area. There'd be so many cops, they'd be bumping into each other. So the boss sent Wells to get Chigurh under control. One scene and Chigurh is transformed from a hellish Jason Voorhees into a real-world hitman. Chigurh corners Wells, but Wells reacts this way...
***
"Point that little toy of yours somewhere else or I'll ram it up your ass. You know who sent me, dickhead. You know what will happen to you if you ignore what I have to say."
Chigurh's demeanor changed slightly. A flicker of doubt crossed over his eyes. He lowered the mutated shotgun and hid it under his jacket.
"What the fuck do you think you've been doing here?"
"Getting back his money."
"No, you've been spreading bodies all over the landscape. The fucking feds are involved. A couple of the dead men are linked to men who are linked to the boss, so now the boss has heat on himself thanks to your fucked up killstreak. What otherwise would have been a bunch of dead narcotraffickers in the desert has become a manhunt for you. They have a hard-on for the boss, they want you to take them to him. That's not going to happen, because you're going to ditch your weird little toys. Throw them in a lake. I've brought some tools we'll use, but only if we have to. Nobody anybody gives a shit about dies. No store owners, no cops, nobody. The cartel has people involved..."
"We'll have to kill them."
"Well, yeah. They're only here because of the mess you made."
Chigurh was now contrite, as if the murders he had committed were school-boy pranks. His face took on some character, it was no longer dead. He looked at Wells with appealing childish eyes. "Will I be forgiven?"
"You're already forgiven. You do good work, but you get carried away. Need to calm down, man."
"You're here to help."
"Yes. He would have sent the other ones down if you were in serious shit with him. Let's go out to the car and get my bang-bangs."
Chigurh smiled. He must have smiled before at some point in the past, because the expression did not surprise Wells. "What did you bring?"
"Clean weapons. Silenced .22s, a silenced Mac-11. I figure you'll want the Mac."
"Yeah." It was drawn out. "Too bad about my other stuff."
"We're going to have to ditch those. You can make more later."
They left the room.
***
See? Metaphor or misplaced Freddy, keeping Wells alive, shaming Chigurh makes him human, which also makes him more sinister. Wells and Chigurh wipe out the cartel guys, leave with the money. Moss's wife isn't murdered by Chigurh, she's killed in a car accident driving back from his funeral. To me, this is a more satisfying story. I hate Jason and Freddy anyway. Don't mind Pinhead too much, though. Regardless, they don't belong in noir crime fiction. Noir addresses the underlying harsh realities of human existence. To mess with it by inserting metaphors or creeps from horror movies is an insult to the genre.
***
"Point that little toy of yours somewhere else or I'll ram it up your ass. You know who sent me, dickhead. You know what will happen to you if you ignore what I have to say."
Chigurh's demeanor changed slightly. A flicker of doubt crossed over his eyes. He lowered the mutated shotgun and hid it under his jacket.
"What the fuck do you think you've been doing here?"
"Getting back his money."
"No, you've been spreading bodies all over the landscape. The fucking feds are involved. A couple of the dead men are linked to men who are linked to the boss, so now the boss has heat on himself thanks to your fucked up killstreak. What otherwise would have been a bunch of dead narcotraffickers in the desert has become a manhunt for you. They have a hard-on for the boss, they want you to take them to him. That's not going to happen, because you're going to ditch your weird little toys. Throw them in a lake. I've brought some tools we'll use, but only if we have to. Nobody anybody gives a shit about dies. No store owners, no cops, nobody. The cartel has people involved..."
"We'll have to kill them."
"Well, yeah. They're only here because of the mess you made."
Chigurh was now contrite, as if the murders he had committed were school-boy pranks. His face took on some character, it was no longer dead. He looked at Wells with appealing childish eyes. "Will I be forgiven?"
"You're already forgiven. You do good work, but you get carried away. Need to calm down, man."
"You're here to help."
"Yes. He would have sent the other ones down if you were in serious shit with him. Let's go out to the car and get my bang-bangs."
Chigurh smiled. He must have smiled before at some point in the past, because the expression did not surprise Wells. "What did you bring?"
"Clean weapons. Silenced .22s, a silenced Mac-11. I figure you'll want the Mac."
"Yeah." It was drawn out. "Too bad about my other stuff."
"We're going to have to ditch those. You can make more later."
They left the room.
***
See? Metaphor or misplaced Freddy, keeping Wells alive, shaming Chigurh makes him human, which also makes him more sinister. Wells and Chigurh wipe out the cartel guys, leave with the money. Moss's wife isn't murdered by Chigurh, she's killed in a car accident driving back from his funeral. To me, this is a more satisfying story. I hate Jason and Freddy anyway. Don't mind Pinhead too much, though. Regardless, they don't belong in noir crime fiction. Noir addresses the underlying harsh realities of human existence. To mess with it by inserting metaphors or creeps from horror movies is an insult to the genre.
September 20, 2014
You Will Hate Me: MIni-Reviews
One might ask just why I review what I review. I confess: I'm cheap. I save money by not renting videos or going to movies. What I see is mostly on cable TV or some free promo at Amazon. Go ahead and complain - did you pay to read this? There's enough here for everyone to hate. Be patient, if not now, I'm sure at some point in the near future I will piss you off. Several provisos - "excuses" if you want to use that term - all opinions on creative endeavors are prone to disagreement, tastes vary, and nothing is static. Translation: don't get too upset, everyone has a different opinion and that's all right, and I might change my mind.
***
No Country for New Ideas
Why does anyone like No Country for Old Men? Book or movie, doesn't matter. This is prompted by its showing on cable TV the other night. Don't think it is just this one book, I don't care for anything Cormac McCarthy writes. Never did. Don't know what people see in his fiction. This one in particular, can't stand it. He pulled off a neat trick when he wrote this. It's actually a genre mash-up, sticking the antagonist from a slasher-horror movie into a noir thriller. Chigurh is Jason. He stomps around, killing aimlessly, unbeatable, immortal. Good trick if you can get away with it...and apparently McCarthy has. Congrats, you jerk.
***
Smand of God
It's...okay. Sorry, I wish I could say I loved Hand of God, the Amazon Studios TV series. I have been a huge Ron Perlman fan for time out of mind. I wish I could like it. I'm not the one to ask for a review of this, not really, since I don't watch much in the way of conventional crime dramas. I deeply enjoyed both Fargo and True Detective, but more conventional TV, as this seems to be, is not to my taste. The pilot was strongest when it was on Perlman, when he was experiencing visions, and weakest when it was away from him on the standard apparatus of conventional TV crime dramas - scheming politicians, pliant cops, corrupt preachers - it is as if it were trying to be two things, an offbeat story about a man led by visions, while at the same time trying to abide by conventional expectations. Can't be both. It is also very reminiscent of an old Rod Serling screenplay about a man taking revenge on apparent strangers for his wife's assault. The recent film Broken Cityalso comes to mind, along with a little flavoring from a bit of Breaking Bad. Too derivative for my liking. Very sorry I couldn't give it a thumb's up.
***
Alpha House
This is Garry Trudeau's satiric take on a small group of Republican congressmen, bound together because they are sharing a townhouse. It is apparently in its second season. Amazon Studios has the first episode for free, that's how I got to see it. It is occasionally very funny - Trudeau wrote it...so...yeah. Very good writing - Trudeau, again - very professionally made. John Goodman is the main lead. Bill Murray had a cameo in the opening sequence, hilarious. Why do I seem so...subdued? For the same reason I often dislike Saturday Night Live. When the comedic writing is excellent, when the acting is superb, sometimes it goes horribly awry. The satire becomes so refined, so well-done, it becomes indistinguishable from reality. Where the fuck is the fun in that? Partly it comes from the quotidian premise, following around congressmen in their corrupt ordinary weaselly little lives. My mind sees vast expanses of possibility: why can't Trudeau see these vistas? John Goodman stars in a comedic TV series about the head of the DC division of the FBI corruption department. He and his henchmen HUNT congressmen...and it's a comedy! The Office marries NYPD Blue and they have a baby. Comedy crime drama about FBI agents who hunt congressmen! Am I the only one to see the lofty mountainscapes in that?
***
The Roosevelts, or How to Make History Boring
This is Ken Burns' latest historical miniseries on public television. TR and FDR are right at the top of my personal list of Best Presidents Ever. One could not ask for more drama in history than the times in which these two men lived. So just how did Burns manage to make it so fucking boring? And what's with the soundtrack, does Ken have money in elevator music companies? Holy shit, the music of TR's and FDR's age was vibrant, alive, powerful! Jazz, the Blues, Ragtime, Swing, American classical composers, music that will drill into your heart. Do we get any of that? Nope, just like everything else in this fiasco, drained of light and life. And what the fuck are a bunch of DC pundits doing in this? More air time is given to George Will than to anyone else. Is Kenny-boy having a secret love affair with that right-wing nut job? Why is Will in this at all? He's a winger, he hates FDR with a passion, he continually advocates for the destruction of every last bit of FDR's heritage. What the fuck?
Kenny-boy did okay with the Civil War, but it's been downhill ever since. If I remember correctly, he had Shelby Foote, the renowned Civil War historian, to keep him on an even footing. Much of what FDR did during the New Deal years is still controversial with the DC establishment, even our illustrious socialist leader - not really. I'm a socialist, give me at least a tiny bit of credit for being able to recognize my own. President Obama is not a socialist, he's a slight variation on the standard centrist politician. To deal with FDR honestly, you'd have to get other people into the act, economics guys like Krugman and Stiglitz, to talk about things like Keynesian economics. Those guys, Krugman included, scare the shit out of the "centrists" in Washington. And where was mention of the Business Plot, a real conspiracy to overthrow the US government by rich businessmen? Even Alf Landon didn't get the right punch line. Landon, governor of Kansas at the time, didn't win his home state when he went up against FDR's re-election campaign. When you can't win Kansas against a liberal progressive Eastern politician, you know you're shit out of luck.
Burns has created junk history here, with the apparent intent to undermine the fundamental values TR and FDR espoused. It's another in a long list of crimes against American history perpetrated by the mainstream media...and the presence of so many talking heads from Sunday morning talk shows illustrates that Ken Burns is the quintessential Washington insider, bent on maintaining the status quo, dedicated to the destruction of progressivism - because that's what TR and FDR were, progressives. Those ideas must be destroyed, for if they live on, even if only in history, someday they will lead to the fall of the neoliberal order. Ken can't have that.
***
The Hobbit: Murdered by Peter Jackson
The Desolation of Smaug is dismal. If you haven't seen it...don't. This warning is a little on the late side for a simple reason, I long ago had to cut out such things as movie attendance, too hard on the budget. Don't buy many books anymore, either. I'm not complaining, just explaining. My complex has free cable TV and free internet, so I finally was able to see Desolation. It came as a surprise to me when I saw just how bad it was compared to the first Hobbit movie. That one took some liberties with the book, but at least stayed close enough to it - it was also somewhat entertaining in its own right. Desolation is neither of those things. It is a clumsy, ill-conceived, blundering attempt at a motion picture. It contains so much that is not of the book, it is no longer the story of the book. The sense of distrust that came over me after I discovered Peter Jackson's original ending for the Lord of the Rings movies was validated in Desolation. Jackson is a Hollywood hack.
Who's the real hero of The Hobbit? Bilbo is the observer, the truth-seer, the peacemaker, the narrator, but is he the hero? No, mostly he's along for the ride. Who's the hero? Not Thorin, he ends up as a quasi-bad guy, who essentially deserves his fate. Who's the hero? Bard? Maybe, but he only gets to act the hero because of the real hero's actions. Who's the hero?
The thrush. Not the eagles, but the smallest, least menacing animal in the book. A little thrush. It braves danger, misery, and a great journey to deliver vital information just when it is needed. The three most important people in the novel are a nobody of a hobbit, a tiny bird, and the captain of the archers. Not the Master of Lakeview, not the elven king, not the dwarf-prince, not the dwarves. No. The creatures who save the day are the ordinary nobodies of everyday life. Kinda reminds me of Lord of the Rings, where the one person most responsible for the destruction of absolute evil and the salvation of Middle-Earth is a middle-aged middle-class nobody of a hobbit.
Gee, you'd think there's a theme going on here, like maybe Tolkien, the guy who wrote The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, had something in mind, something so fucking important, he said it in a series of novels. That many words, that many stories of so many characters...and the same damn theme over and over again. Ya think it's important? Do you?
Watching Twelve Years a Slave now. Tolkien is just as deep, just as profound. Both wrote, one from experience, one from the imagination, about fundamental aspects of the human condition, of human suffering, of our redemption at the hands of the least among us, a carpenter or a small bird...yeah, even in a kid's book. The Hobbit is written as a children's book. I'm guessing, but maybe Tolkien thought this theme was so important, children should be exposed to it at an early age.
Peter Jackson thinks none of this is important. He pretends he isn't, but he's a Hollywood boy. He almost destroyed the Lord of the Ringswith his brain-dead idea to have Sauron and Aragorn fight it out in a duel at the end - how we should thank Jackson's production assistants, who refused to go along with it. Now he actually is destroying The Hobbit. Congrats, Mr. Jackson, I'm sure you'll be paid in full for this.
Skip watching the last one...I know you won't, you want to watch the big battle...but try. Step out of line, go home, open up one of Tolkien's books, and put Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man on the stereo. As you read, think on Tolkien's service in the front lines of the British Army during World War I. Think on Tolkien watching his beloved country bombed to ash in World War II. Maybe think on when Copland wrote Fanfare and just why he named his composition "Fanfare for the COMMON MAN." There is a deeper meaning to Tolkien. His books are not merely primordial Skyrim. They make you think, they inspire, and they ennoble the low while they throw a revealing light on the mighty. Read them. Fuck Jackson and all his works. Read the books instead.
***
Bowfinger Saved Me: Or How A Movie Taught Me to Love My Pathetic Life
For those who don't know, this 1999 movie starred Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy. Martin assumes the role of Bowfinger, a down-and-out movie producer, the kind of guy who makes direct-to-DVD/direct-to-streaming movies. He has the idea of stalking the rich movie star Kit Ramsey, played by Murphy. Bowfinger thinks that since the clandestine recordings are in public places, he can use them in a film. The movie itself is a horrible remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The vibrancy with which Martin and the rest of the cast capture the nearly uncontrollable urge to create takes my breath away. He and his merry little band will do almost anything to make movies, even abandon successful careers, give up day jobs, cheat, steal, screw anybody, just to have the chance to create. It reminded me of who I am, what I'm up to. I won't lie, times are hard. I have less than a year's worth of money left before I either have to get a day job or starve to death on the street, and that's after squeezing the pennies so hard, Lincoln starts to cry. I constantly question my decision to spend my savings on this endeavor...but I'm older, and if not now, when? It has to be now. Martin's performance reminds me of this. Like his character, like Bowfinger, I have to create. It's not a choice or a scam.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
***
No Country for New Ideas
Why does anyone like No Country for Old Men? Book or movie, doesn't matter. This is prompted by its showing on cable TV the other night. Don't think it is just this one book, I don't care for anything Cormac McCarthy writes. Never did. Don't know what people see in his fiction. This one in particular, can't stand it. He pulled off a neat trick when he wrote this. It's actually a genre mash-up, sticking the antagonist from a slasher-horror movie into a noir thriller. Chigurh is Jason. He stomps around, killing aimlessly, unbeatable, immortal. Good trick if you can get away with it...and apparently McCarthy has. Congrats, you jerk.
***
Smand of God
It's...okay. Sorry, I wish I could say I loved Hand of God, the Amazon Studios TV series. I have been a huge Ron Perlman fan for time out of mind. I wish I could like it. I'm not the one to ask for a review of this, not really, since I don't watch much in the way of conventional crime dramas. I deeply enjoyed both Fargo and True Detective, but more conventional TV, as this seems to be, is not to my taste. The pilot was strongest when it was on Perlman, when he was experiencing visions, and weakest when it was away from him on the standard apparatus of conventional TV crime dramas - scheming politicians, pliant cops, corrupt preachers - it is as if it were trying to be two things, an offbeat story about a man led by visions, while at the same time trying to abide by conventional expectations. Can't be both. It is also very reminiscent of an old Rod Serling screenplay about a man taking revenge on apparent strangers for his wife's assault. The recent film Broken Cityalso comes to mind, along with a little flavoring from a bit of Breaking Bad. Too derivative for my liking. Very sorry I couldn't give it a thumb's up.
***
Alpha House
This is Garry Trudeau's satiric take on a small group of Republican congressmen, bound together because they are sharing a townhouse. It is apparently in its second season. Amazon Studios has the first episode for free, that's how I got to see it. It is occasionally very funny - Trudeau wrote it...so...yeah. Very good writing - Trudeau, again - very professionally made. John Goodman is the main lead. Bill Murray had a cameo in the opening sequence, hilarious. Why do I seem so...subdued? For the same reason I often dislike Saturday Night Live. When the comedic writing is excellent, when the acting is superb, sometimes it goes horribly awry. The satire becomes so refined, so well-done, it becomes indistinguishable from reality. Where the fuck is the fun in that? Partly it comes from the quotidian premise, following around congressmen in their corrupt ordinary weaselly little lives. My mind sees vast expanses of possibility: why can't Trudeau see these vistas? John Goodman stars in a comedic TV series about the head of the DC division of the FBI corruption department. He and his henchmen HUNT congressmen...and it's a comedy! The Office marries NYPD Blue and they have a baby. Comedy crime drama about FBI agents who hunt congressmen! Am I the only one to see the lofty mountainscapes in that?
***
The Roosevelts, or How to Make History Boring
This is Ken Burns' latest historical miniseries on public television. TR and FDR are right at the top of my personal list of Best Presidents Ever. One could not ask for more drama in history than the times in which these two men lived. So just how did Burns manage to make it so fucking boring? And what's with the soundtrack, does Ken have money in elevator music companies? Holy shit, the music of TR's and FDR's age was vibrant, alive, powerful! Jazz, the Blues, Ragtime, Swing, American classical composers, music that will drill into your heart. Do we get any of that? Nope, just like everything else in this fiasco, drained of light and life. And what the fuck are a bunch of DC pundits doing in this? More air time is given to George Will than to anyone else. Is Kenny-boy having a secret love affair with that right-wing nut job? Why is Will in this at all? He's a winger, he hates FDR with a passion, he continually advocates for the destruction of every last bit of FDR's heritage. What the fuck?
Kenny-boy did okay with the Civil War, but it's been downhill ever since. If I remember correctly, he had Shelby Foote, the renowned Civil War historian, to keep him on an even footing. Much of what FDR did during the New Deal years is still controversial with the DC establishment, even our illustrious socialist leader - not really. I'm a socialist, give me at least a tiny bit of credit for being able to recognize my own. President Obama is not a socialist, he's a slight variation on the standard centrist politician. To deal with FDR honestly, you'd have to get other people into the act, economics guys like Krugman and Stiglitz, to talk about things like Keynesian economics. Those guys, Krugman included, scare the shit out of the "centrists" in Washington. And where was mention of the Business Plot, a real conspiracy to overthrow the US government by rich businessmen? Even Alf Landon didn't get the right punch line. Landon, governor of Kansas at the time, didn't win his home state when he went up against FDR's re-election campaign. When you can't win Kansas against a liberal progressive Eastern politician, you know you're shit out of luck.
Burns has created junk history here, with the apparent intent to undermine the fundamental values TR and FDR espoused. It's another in a long list of crimes against American history perpetrated by the mainstream media...and the presence of so many talking heads from Sunday morning talk shows illustrates that Ken Burns is the quintessential Washington insider, bent on maintaining the status quo, dedicated to the destruction of progressivism - because that's what TR and FDR were, progressives. Those ideas must be destroyed, for if they live on, even if only in history, someday they will lead to the fall of the neoliberal order. Ken can't have that.
***
The Hobbit: Murdered by Peter Jackson
The Desolation of Smaug is dismal. If you haven't seen it...don't. This warning is a little on the late side for a simple reason, I long ago had to cut out such things as movie attendance, too hard on the budget. Don't buy many books anymore, either. I'm not complaining, just explaining. My complex has free cable TV and free internet, so I finally was able to see Desolation. It came as a surprise to me when I saw just how bad it was compared to the first Hobbit movie. That one took some liberties with the book, but at least stayed close enough to it - it was also somewhat entertaining in its own right. Desolation is neither of those things. It is a clumsy, ill-conceived, blundering attempt at a motion picture. It contains so much that is not of the book, it is no longer the story of the book. The sense of distrust that came over me after I discovered Peter Jackson's original ending for the Lord of the Rings movies was validated in Desolation. Jackson is a Hollywood hack.
Who's the real hero of The Hobbit? Bilbo is the observer, the truth-seer, the peacemaker, the narrator, but is he the hero? No, mostly he's along for the ride. Who's the hero? Not Thorin, he ends up as a quasi-bad guy, who essentially deserves his fate. Who's the hero? Bard? Maybe, but he only gets to act the hero because of the real hero's actions. Who's the hero?
The thrush. Not the eagles, but the smallest, least menacing animal in the book. A little thrush. It braves danger, misery, and a great journey to deliver vital information just when it is needed. The three most important people in the novel are a nobody of a hobbit, a tiny bird, and the captain of the archers. Not the Master of Lakeview, not the elven king, not the dwarf-prince, not the dwarves. No. The creatures who save the day are the ordinary nobodies of everyday life. Kinda reminds me of Lord of the Rings, where the one person most responsible for the destruction of absolute evil and the salvation of Middle-Earth is a middle-aged middle-class nobody of a hobbit.
Gee, you'd think there's a theme going on here, like maybe Tolkien, the guy who wrote The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, had something in mind, something so fucking important, he said it in a series of novels. That many words, that many stories of so many characters...and the same damn theme over and over again. Ya think it's important? Do you?
Watching Twelve Years a Slave now. Tolkien is just as deep, just as profound. Both wrote, one from experience, one from the imagination, about fundamental aspects of the human condition, of human suffering, of our redemption at the hands of the least among us, a carpenter or a small bird...yeah, even in a kid's book. The Hobbit is written as a children's book. I'm guessing, but maybe Tolkien thought this theme was so important, children should be exposed to it at an early age.
Peter Jackson thinks none of this is important. He pretends he isn't, but he's a Hollywood boy. He almost destroyed the Lord of the Ringswith his brain-dead idea to have Sauron and Aragorn fight it out in a duel at the end - how we should thank Jackson's production assistants, who refused to go along with it. Now he actually is destroying The Hobbit. Congrats, Mr. Jackson, I'm sure you'll be paid in full for this.
Skip watching the last one...I know you won't, you want to watch the big battle...but try. Step out of line, go home, open up one of Tolkien's books, and put Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man on the stereo. As you read, think on Tolkien's service in the front lines of the British Army during World War I. Think on Tolkien watching his beloved country bombed to ash in World War II. Maybe think on when Copland wrote Fanfare and just why he named his composition "Fanfare for the COMMON MAN." There is a deeper meaning to Tolkien. His books are not merely primordial Skyrim. They make you think, they inspire, and they ennoble the low while they throw a revealing light on the mighty. Read them. Fuck Jackson and all his works. Read the books instead.
***
Bowfinger Saved Me: Or How A Movie Taught Me to Love My Pathetic Life
For those who don't know, this 1999 movie starred Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy. Martin assumes the role of Bowfinger, a down-and-out movie producer, the kind of guy who makes direct-to-DVD/direct-to-streaming movies. He has the idea of stalking the rich movie star Kit Ramsey, played by Murphy. Bowfinger thinks that since the clandestine recordings are in public places, he can use them in a film. The movie itself is a horrible remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The vibrancy with which Martin and the rest of the cast capture the nearly uncontrollable urge to create takes my breath away. He and his merry little band will do almost anything to make movies, even abandon successful careers, give up day jobs, cheat, steal, screw anybody, just to have the chance to create. It reminded me of who I am, what I'm up to. I won't lie, times are hard. I have less than a year's worth of money left before I either have to get a day job or starve to death on the street, and that's after squeezing the pennies so hard, Lincoln starts to cry. I constantly question my decision to spend my savings on this endeavor...but I'm older, and if not now, when? It has to be now. Martin's performance reminds me of this. Like his character, like Bowfinger, I have to create. It's not a choice or a scam.
......................................................................
Links:
http://www.rpbird.com/
https://twitter.com/rpbirdwriter
http://rpbird.blogspot.com/
http://amazon.com/author/rpbird
https://www.facebook.com/rpbirdwriter
http://www.amazon.com/Suzies-Technical-Support-R-Bird-ebook/dp/B00KOYRRQ2
http://www.amazon.com/Contravallation-Realm-Gods-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00IHRXCQM
http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Realm-Gods-Book-One-ebook/dp/B00GC0X6AS
http://www.amazon.com/Essa-In-Realm-Gods-novel-ebook/dp/B00CHAPSKS
