Dispatches from the Flying M

Idiocy, the sequel

I haven't been picking on Bush much lately--how much fun is it to kick a man when he's down?  Now that the whole country has realized he's a liar, a criminal, quite possibly the worst president we've ever had and a man who hates the Constitution and all it stands for, it seems less important to point out every example that demonstrates the above conclusions.  Besides, it's a full-time job, and I already have one of those.

So consider this post a salute, to the first public figure I know of who has managed to release a sequel to one of his most famous verbal gaffes.

The original one, of course, was "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"

The new one, uttered last Wednesday, was "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."

To her credit, when the White House website tried to edit Bush's line in order to be in English, new press secretary Dana Perrino demanded that it reflect the true record and not the scrubbed one.

For a complete list of Bushisms, visit Slate.

Bittern

We had an unusual visitor yesterday.  This American bittern came to our pond at about 7:30 in the morning, and stayed until about 4:00 in the afternoon.  It might have been around later, but we went to a football game.  It hasn't been around today at all.

We have mosquito fish in the pond, recently donated by friends of ours, and I suspect they're what drew the bittern.  Its movements are extremely slow and stiff, its posture hunched, and it gives the overall impression of someone trying to get away with something, but with a guilty conscience about it.

Fortunately, if it ate any fish, it didn't eat them all.  It dropped a stick on Maryelizabeth's head, from atop the ramada, but that seems to have been its worst crime.  And it was fascinating to watch.  We won't mind if it comes back, as long as it leaves the fish alone.

Robotic Puppets

Another county fair has come and gone. 

Since we're a small, rural county, our county fair is a small rural county fair (although people kept telling us this year how much bigger it used to be).  I hope rural county fairs aren't doomed by "progress" and technology.

The entertainment this year (besides college rodeo and bull riding) consisted of a few bands, an "Ultimate Elvis Tribute," a "comic unicyclist," and "Alfy's World of Robotic Puppets."  That one, frankly, had me a little worried.  As Dwight points out on The Office (which should have won more Emmys), you don't want robots too big because they might turn on you, and you should keep them on extension cords so they can't chase you.

Alfy's weren't life-sized (although his pig was close) but no extension cords--and wheels, so they could chase you all over the place, had they gone berserk.

Here's one of them.  And yes, they talk, too.

Goodbye to the swallows

For the past two summers we've had barn swallows living in our carport, trying to raise young to maturity.  This year, on their second try, they finally succeeded.  We got to watch the chicks grow up, from Mohawked newborns to fledglings to aerodynamic marvels.  The parents got used to our presence; the young ones knew us from birth and were almost without fear of us.

On Friday, they were making a lot of noise in the carport, and when Maryelizabeth looked out, there were eight of them fluttering around, not four.  A little later in the day we counted thirty on a power line.  They were gathering into a flock for their winter journey.  Still later, they had left.

We like having them around, although it'll be easier to keep the cars and carport floor clean with them gone.  We wish them the best of luck this winter, and hope to see them when it warms up again.

A local farmer told me recently that birds have been on the move much earlier than usual this year.  This, he said, means we're in for a cold winter.  There's no way to know but to wait and see, which we will.

But we'll be laying in plenty of firewood.

Here's a repeat look at one of our carport swallows, on a favorite perch.

Suffering for my art

If you're a long-time reader of this blog, or if you've read Missing White Girl, you've probably figured out that the San Pedro River is one of my favorite places in southern Arizona.  It runs from Sierra de los Ajos in Mexico north across the border, eventually feeding into the Gila River.  Its course is a series of graceful arcs and curves and meanders, with oxbows here and there and side channels it fills during times of heavier flow, and sometimes it dries up completely, but most of the year it's water and sandbars and trees and life.  Its mammalian biodiversity is greater than anyplace on Earth except the Costa Rican rainforest, according to some who study these things. 

Yesterday I spent the day there, exploring some ghost towns from the late 1800s and bushwhacking my way through thickets and wandering trails where they existed, fording the river a couple of times (in spots it's only inches deep, but in others there are holes and even quicksand), looking for the right setting for a short story I'm writing.  I eventually figured it out, and just as important, I soaked in the atmosphere of the setting and figured out some aspects of the story that had eluded me until I was there.

But I also have something like thirteen new mosquito bites, my arms are crisscrossed with scratches and cuts, my neck is sunburned.  I hiked somewhere between eight and ten miles, much of it up and down steep hills, clinging precariously to cliffs, and shoving my way through thick stands of mesquite.  Today I'm sore and itchy.  But I can finish my story, because now I know where the characters are, and who they are.

As usual, I took a bunch of pictures, some of which are below.

Some scenes from the Fairbank cemetery:

 

The remains of...something, near Fairbank.

O.J.

If you or I thought someone had property stolen from us in a hotel room, we'd probably call the cops. Instead, O.J. apparently gathered a gang of armed men and stormed the room.  And now he's surprised that he's in hot water again.

But then again, you and I aren't known murderers.

O.J. Simpson has some wires loose in his head.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that.  But given that there's an audiotape of the room invasion, unless he lucks out with another short attention span jury, he could go away for a good long while.  The nation would only be better off if he did.  And it's too bad there isn't a law against being stupid enough to be an O.J. memorabilia "collector."

Maybe he can be cell mates with Michael Vick, and someone can just forget where the keys are.

The Lessons of Vietnam

The pro-surge, pro-war Iraq hawks (of whom there are fewer and fewer these days) seem not to be able to make their arguments without relying on the same sort of disinformation and outright dishonesty that took us to war there in the first place.

Sen. John McCain said on Meet the Press this morning, arguing in favor of the surge in Iraq and essentially supporting President Bush's "stay the course" strategy, that his analysis of military history didn't show him any cases in which withdrawing troops led to a positive result (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember his exact words).  He was debating Sen. John Kerry (both men are Vietnam veterans and former naval officers), who pointed out that, since the real goals are political and not military, we should be able to withdraw a substantial number of troops from Iraq, and that such a withdrawal will apply leverage to the Maliki "government," forcing them to actually decide how Iraq will be governed.  With an unlimited, open-ended commitment to keeping the troops in place, there's no pressure on the Iraqis to change anything or make the necessary moves.

McCain is, of course, forgetting about his own war, Vietnam.

Yes, after we withdrew our forces from Vietnam, there was a long bloody period.  But there had been a long bloody period there from the 1950s on.  Our presence there ensured only that some of the blood spilled was American blood.  After we left, Vietnam became a Socialist state, as it remains today, but it did not become a falling domino, tipping the whole region into Chinese rule.  Now, as a Socialist state, it is implementing economic reforms and has become a trading partner to the U.S. and a relatively stable nation.  Are the Vietnamese people in general better off now than they were when war ravaged their country, every adult was conscripted to fight for one side or the other, and bombs rained down on the landscape?  It took time, but the answer is undeniably yes.

Bush mentioned Vietnam recently, saying that those who advocated leaving Iraq had forgotten the lesson of Vietnam.  Never mind the unbelievable hypocrisy of someone who took the extreme measures of utilizing family connections to get himself a safe perch in the Air National Guard protecting Texas and Alabama from the Communist advance, and then failing even to fulfill that obligation, presuming to preach to the nation about the lessons of Vietnam. By his logic, the lesson of Vietnam is that we shouldn't have left.  Would the nation have stood for the U.S. still having the same number of troops there now that we had in 1972?  Would the world be a safer place in any way?  Bush completely fails to understand what lessons Vietnam has to teach--primarily that it's nearly impossible (if not absolutely impossible) to militarily win a guerrilla war against an enemy that has the support of the populace, and that it's a bad idea to get in the middle of another country's civil war.

Bush and McCain both talk about the "chaos" that will descend upon Iraq if we leave.  The fact is that 4 1/2 years of war have already thrown that country into chaos.  4 million people, out of a population of 25 million, have fled their homes.  2 million have left the country, destabilizing the neighbors who have been swamped with refugees.  Our presence there has brought an al Qaeda element to the country that wasn't there before, and that the Iraqis seem determined to reject--but who they'll be able to reject much more easily and forcefully when we aren't there as a recruiting tool.  Iran has made inroads into Iraq, its ancient enemy, because of our involvement there.  Everything Bush and McCain predict will happen if we leave has happened because we invaded and stayed.

The consensus now seems to be that we'll have to keep some troops there indefinitely, as we have in Europe, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere.  Ideally not in combat situations, but to "safeguard our interests," make a diplomatic presence secure, continue the training of Iraqi forces, and so on.  So Bush lied us into a war that has become one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in American history, and now we're stuck there, with a commitment that will continue long after his presidency is over. What a legacy.

I wonder if the war hawks of the future will accurately remember the lessons of Iraq.

Work update

It's been a while since I posted on the status of various projects, so here goes.

I've finished the first draft of horror novel River Runs Red, which will be published sometime next year by Penguin, probably under the same Jove imprint that published Missing White Girl. Now there's a lot of editing and polishing and rewriting ahead.  It's due November 1, which shouldn't be a problem. RRR is a big book, the kind of rich, thick horror novel I love sinking my teeth into.  It's not quite as epic as King's The Stand or McCammon's Swan Song, but it's no quick 80,000 word airplane read, either. Not that there's anything wrong with those--if there's anything worse than being on an airplane without an involving book to read, it's not finishing it while you're landing, and not having time while you're at your destination to get to the last 30 pages.

I'm letting it sit for a week or so between the first draft and the polish, so when I go back to it it will be with a fresh eye.

During that time, I've been working on some comics stuff.  Three of the four Graveslinger scripts are finished, and I have to get to work on the fourth.  I've also done the first script for another miniseries, which shall remain unnamed for the time being, until there's a real announcement of it.  The other original graphic novels coming up in the early part of 2008, Zombie Cop and Fade to Black, have been written for a long time.

I'm working on a Western short story for an anthology for next year.  More details to come on that one as well.

The next novel will be the third 30 Days of Night book, for which which Steve Niles is wrapping up the outline.  Then there'll be a Spider-Man novel for Marvel, and then another original horror novel for Penguin.  There are some other projects in the planning/proposal stages now, as well.  So late 2007/early 2008 looks like another busy stretch here at the ranch.

And that doesn't even include the ranch work...

Missing White Girl review contest

Congratulations to Johnny Crow, who posted a review of MISSING WHITE GIRL on Amazon.com and whose name came out of the ol' medicine bag when I drew from all the entrants!

I'm waiting to hear if Johnny wants to be a character in a novel or graphic novel. Either way, he gets a signed free copy of it, and he'll be immortalized forever in print.

Thanks to everyone who wrote reviews! And even though the contest is over, it's not too late...MISSING WHITE GIRL is still on sale everywhere, including via my website--just click here to be taken there.

War speeches

President Bush will be on TV tonight taking credit for the fact that, next summer, the 30,000 additional troops who made up his "surge" in Iraq will be coming home next summer.  Never mind that a surge is, by definition, a temporary thing--the truth is that our armed forces can't keep that many soldiers deployed there for that long anyway.  They're already dangerously close to being overtired, overwhelmed, and overexposed.  Of course, he'll also be touting General Petraeus's conclusions that the surge is working, in spite of the fact that the general's statistics are a complete reversal of other, possibly more nonpartisan statistics, the fact that the stated point of the surge, when Bush announced it, was to give the Iraqi government breathing space to do things it still has not done, and the fact that the general's only truly glowing words were for Anbar province, which he already told us in January--pre-surge--was improving.  Part of why it's improving is that it's already been largely ethnically cleansed--when only Sunnis are left in a region, then there's likely to be less Sunni vs. Shia bloodshed.

So we know what Bush will say, and we already know basically what's wrong with what he will say.  The only real reason to watch is to see what he'll screw up.

But after Bush's speech, John Edwards will be speaking on MSNBC about his take on the war and what needs to be done about it. Bush's speech will be carried on most networks, but Edwards is buying the MSNBC time, because he feels it's important to provide a strong antiwar voice (and because, frankly, he needs to catch up to Obama and Clinton in the national polling, although he's doing well in early primary states).  I've seen Edwards talk about the war, and he's an impressive speaker.  If, after the president's speech, you feel the need to see someone who can speak English, and make sense doing it, tune in to MSNBC.