Chrononautic Log

May 30, 2004

I’m definitely getting the feeling the authors of Fafblog read Bob the Angry Flower.

FB: So what is Your position on the Iraq war Jesus? Does the Holy Spirit have an exit strategy?

JC: I think you’re missing the point. Acquiring earthly power for the sake of the church, making laws in my name — it’s the last thing I want. I told them my kingdom was not of this world.

FB: Is it on the moon?

JC: It’s —

FB: ’Cause we’re goin to the moon again Jesus!

JC: (sighs)

FB: It’ll be awesome!

JC: Yes, Fafnir. My kingdom is on the moon.

FB: That’s so great! Jesus and the moon, together at last. Are there robots in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus?

JC: Sure. Why not.

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May 29, 2004

And here’s me without my hat nor my umbrella. Actually it’s only 50° now. On the Doppler radar I can see a rainstorm the size of Michigan; on the satellite it’s clouds from the Rockies to the Appalachians, except for a bit of Iowa and a bit of West Texas. Damn it, it was bloody beautiful out here yesterday.

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Update: Memo to self: The idea of — rain or no rain, hat or no hat, umbrella or no umbrella — taking a brisk turn around the Capitol Square Farmer’s Market, amusing though it may seem at first, will cease entirely to seem amusing just about at the point where it’s no better to go back than to go forward.

The current temperature has dropped to 45°, and the predicted high is now 66°.

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May 26, 2004

In twenty-four hours I should be in Wisconsin. See you there.

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May 24, 2004

 . . .But I’ll do my best. Received over the weekend by the All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories inbox:

From: Bookman Publishing <sendmail3@certifiedit.com>
To: zeppelin@allstarstories.com
Subject: Sell your book in our bookstore, even if you published with another company!
Reply-To: brien@bookmanmarketing.com
Date: 21 May 2004 23:06:22 -0500

Bookman Publishing is already the only company in the industry contacting bookstore owners for our authors.

What industry would that be? The vanity publishing industry? Hey, I suppose they might even be telling the truth.

Now, to learn even more about the retail book industry we have just purchased our first bookstore.

So they went into “publishing” without knowing anything about how to sell books. Still, at least they’re honest about it.

This is not a website, it’s a real store made out of bricks and glass. The Bookman Store is on the square in Franklin Indiana and will be open in June. All of our author’s books will be sold there automatically.

MapQuest gives me two candidates for “Franklin, Indiana.” I think I might have driven through the one between Bloomington and Indianapolis. Nice enough area, I guess, but, somehow I don’t think my book is exactly going to be hopping off the shelves.

(Plus, ten yards and a loss of down for apostrophe misuse. Or do they only have one author?)

For the very first time ever, we can now guarantee that your book will be sold in a real store. As always, we will sell your book even if another company published it.

“For the first time ever . . . As always . . .” Er — what am I missing here?

You still have time to take advantage of our 50% discount on selected bookselling services, or publish your book at our introductory price. (Both offers expire May 28)

Gosh. Unfortunately, their web site doesn’t tell me what that introductory price is, or what those services have been discounted from. Sadly, though, it provides no hard numbers. In fact, it doesn’t even mention this offer, though it does mention their March Publishing Promotion: 30% Off All Book-selling Services!

Still — if only ASZAS was finished! If only I didn’t already have a gentleman’s agreement with a reputable small press! Alas, Fortune is bald behind . . . But perhaps one of my readers can still grasp her by the forelock.

Just reply or call:

Brien Jones
Bookman Publishing
35 Industrial Drive, Suite 104
Martinsville, IN 46151
Author Consultant
(800) 342-6068 Phone
(765) 342-7217 Fax
brien@bookmanmarketing.com
www.bookmanmarketing.com

Comments (4)

May 20, 2004

I am so tempted by this —

— but I’m afraid too many people wouldn’t get the joke, and one of them would smash up my car.

Does that mean the terrorists have already won?

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May 19, 2004

I don’t know who the Medium Lobster is or where it came from, but it is one insightful arthropod:

Western Civilization. Born 3500 B.C. in early Mesopotamian city-states, Western Civilization developed numerous complex systems of political governance, conquered most of the inhabited world, and invented the hot air balloon, the nuclear bomb, and the ice cream cone. Died May 17, 2004, of a gay agenda in a Massachusetts court house. It is survived by isolated anarchist survivalist camps and nomadic bands of flesh-eating zombies.

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May 18, 2004

I watch about as much “Meet the Press” as I watch anything else on broadcast TV (which is to say, not at all), but it would have been fun to see this one:

EMILY MILLER, STATE DEPARTMENT PRESS AIDE: You're off.

SECRETARY POWELL: I am not off.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: No. They can't use it, they're editing it.

SECRETARY POWELL: He's still asking the questions.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was not ...

SECRETARY POWELL: Tim, I am sorry I lost you.

MR. RUSSERT: I am right here Mr. Secretary. I would hope they would put you back on camera. I don't know who did that.

EMILY MILLER, PRESS AIDE: He was going to go for another five minutes.

SECRETARY POWELL: We've really scre...

MR. RUSSERT: I think that was one of your staff Mr. Secretary. I don't think that's appropriate.

SECRETARY POWELL: Emily, get out of the way. Bring the camera back please. (Camera returns to the interview subject) I think we're back on Tim, go ahead with your last question.

(Transcript via BoingBoing. Video here courtesy of Lisa Rein.

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To promote America's Army: Overmatch, a free game created by the Army as a recruitment tool, a group of Army Special Forces personnel staged an urban tactical assault exercise outside the L.A. convention center where the E3 gaming expo was taking place. It may have been a staged promotional event, but judging from the panicked expressions on pedestrian faces, some may have thought it was the real thing.

(Wired, via BoingBoing.)

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May 14, 2004

Or as he puts it:

I admit, I’m a little slow. Because I tried to think about something as deadly serious as Iraq, and the post-9/11 world, in a nonpartisan fashion — as Joe Biden, John McCain and Dick Lugar did — I assumed the Bush officials were doing the same. I was wrong. They were always so slow to change course because confronting their mistakes didn’t just involve confronting reality, but their own politics.

In a side note, I was woken up in the middle of last night by some asshole in either the alley or the parking garage having a drunken argument about what a great guy George W. Bush is.

Naturally this did not endear me to his argument or to his candidate. I know it takes two sides to make an argument, but since this asshole was yelling loud enough to disturb my sleep and the anti-Bush guy wasn’t — kind of like talk radio, at least till Michael Powell went after Howard Stern — it’s the pro-Bush asshole I’m blaming.

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May 11, 2004

For those of you who haven’t seen it already: Robots, brain-eaters, starships: a dozen evocations.

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California: Clear, winds gusting to 20mph, highs in the mid-70s, deceptive wind chill making it easy to forget you’re spending all day in the sun. With a little luck my new forehead and ears will be ready by WisCon.

Saw Brandon, Rob, Heather, Tim, Jed, Mom, Carolyn, and “Van Helsing.”

Drank a ten-dollar cup of kopi luwak at the Bean Street Cafe in San Mateo. (It was okay.)

Ate some excellent Mexican food.

Bought too many books.

Didn’t get enough sleep.

I remember this defense
Progress fails pacific sense
All those sweet conspiracies
I remember all these things

I should move back.

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Looks like chrononaut.org/allstarstories.com is happy enough sitting on the corner of Brandon’s desk. Hope the intermittent high-pitched chirping noises aren’t keeping him awake.

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May 6, 2004

chrononaut.org and allstarstories.com will be down for a day or two starting this evening while I move the server down to San Francisco. Even after it’s plugged in again, it’ll probably still take a little while for the DNS changes to propagate; so don’t be surprised if things stay dark for a couple of days.

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May 5, 2004

Michael F. Patton provides some deeper analysis of the trolley problem.

On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.

On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans’ bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can. . . .

It gets better. (Courtesy of the Making Light sidebar.)

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May 3, 2004

Prior to the revelations, [Brigadier General Janice] Karpinski assured the US media that Abu Ghraib was run according to “international standards”.

——“The Pictures That Lost The War”, Sunday Herald, via Kathryn Cramer

Nice choice of words, General. Would those be the formal international standards laid out by, say, the Geneva Convention and the UN Declaration on Human Rights? Or would they be the de facto standards established by some of the market leaders on Jim Henley’s list, below?

Tacitus writes “Let’s be honest and declare that what happened at Abu Ghraib, while awful, was a mere fraction of the horrors that go on in Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, and yes, old Iraqi prisons.” Absolutely, let’s. And prisons in non-muslim nations too: Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Israel, China, even the Philippines — all countries that have been credibly accused or admitted using torture in interrogation or punishment.

If we want to live up, or rather down, to those international standards, we have some distance yet to sink. But as Mr. Henley goes on to point out, the question

is not “Are we as bad as Saddam's Iraq?” but “Are we getting more like it or less like it?” We might never get as bad as Saddam’s Iraq or even squalid old Egypt, second-largest recipient of US aid in the world before Iraqi reconstruction began. But we can be much better than those countries and yet a disgrace to ourselves.

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May 1, 2004

“The Legend of Jake Einstein.” Deborah Layne. Fortean Bureau. It’s the rootin’-est, tootin’-est tale of high-energy physics since Nils Bohr shot George Gamow. Y’all go read it, now, and y’all better laugh.

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