Test - disregard

Everyone, this is just me screwing around making my own notes. Move along.

box. net test

web address Leverage post

direct link Leverage post

Note, web address includes preview options in something called Scrib'd, while direct link goes straight to a download.

Also, iPaper/Scrib'd allows one button page turn (see section in Notes on intuitive interface). pdf reader Preview works off right&left arrows. CHECK FOXIT AND ADOBE

But also, dumb info works/reproduces simply in both formats. Text good reading size -- could use dividing line between columns. Check how to do in PAGES or even better OPEN OFFICE/NEO OFFICE.

revised version web address

Revised version direct link

Hate the Video ...

... but dig the tune.

Conspiracy Theory #2479

Right then. A day before the CA supreme court decision allowing gay marriage to move forward --

Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada. (link)

I believe we all know where I stand on this. But f I may indulge in some good old fashioned conspiracy mongering on a late night:

Gov. Paterson, as a child, often stayed with a gay couple who were dear friends of the family. As a result, he was immunized against the oogies and so decided (rightly) to honor the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution. (Or at least that's his legal excuse, in case "being a decent human being who understands how separation of church and state works" isn't enough) This sort of action on the part of other states is crucial in legitimizing the legal underpinnings of gay marriage, even as gay marriage itself struggles in Gray America. It's part of the accretion process, as it were. And having New York be a leader in this regard is particularly valuable.

Now, stay with me. We all knew when this court decision was coming down. At the same time, Gov. Spitzer supported gay marriage but had accumulated so many enemies in the state house, he had no political capitol. His own gay marriage bill went nowhere, and he probably would have been too politically damaged to be able to make this move.

So the Homosexual Agenda arranged for Spitzer to take the fall for his prostitution habits, installing Paterson -- who was inclined to aid the cause of gay marriage but was not the political pariah Spitzer had become in Albany by this point.

Check and mate. Nice move, Evil Gay Geniuses. Well played.

(Congrats to everyone who's got a ceremony coming. Hop to it!)

Greatest Generation, Indeed

Just ... ahhh.

And so it's not a snark-only post.

Senator Obama's issues page.

Senator McCain's issues page.

Vote the goddam issues.

Pulp Synchronicity

Right.

Right.

I just had a seriously creepy moment.

For years I've mentioned an old book I read back when I'd left university, a book about writing in the pulp style -- not consciously pulp, but the author was plainly an old pulp writer, and there was a great letter from one of his editors that he quoted at length. A book I read 20 odd years ago, with not a chance I'd ever recall the details. Just mentioned it again, as a matter of fact. A few days ago. Hadn't really thought of it for ages, before that post.

Now, stay with me. When one buys a book from the Writer's Store in Westwood, they often throw in some free CD's of writers' lectures. Freebies with the related books. I'd picked up a book maybe a year ago to review for this site, and promptly tossed the accompanying CD's into a drawer.

Doing a little cleaning today, I decided to put one of the CD's into the XBox 360, see if there was anything interesting. Didn't recognize the name on this particular seminar, kind of tuned out ...

The old guy on the CD was reading the letter.

The old guy on the CD wrote the goddam book.

And he's been dead for 16 years.



I cannot, in good conscience, recommend buying the book. It was written in 1965. The fictional writer he lampoons is nicknamed "Fred Friggenheimer." It's corny and simplistic and everything's stated with a broad enough brush to paint a barn in one stroke.

And yet ... but yet ...

An abridged version of letter from his editor, copied by hand as he reads it on the CD. It'll delight Bill and JDC to no end:

“... I’ve got an assignment for you, keed. I want 25,000 words a month - one story - that is ACTION! The type of yarn, for instance, where a group of people are marooned in, say, a hilltop castle with a violent storm raging and all the bridges out and the electric power gone and the roof threatening to cave in and corpses falling down the stairs and hanging in the attic and boards creaking under somebody’s weight in the dark and COULD THAT BE THE KILLER? and flashes of lightning illuminating the face of the murderer only the sonuvabitch is wearing a mask that makes him look even more horrible ... Do these stories in the style Burroughs, old Edgar Rice Burroughs of TARZAN fame, used to use. You know, take one set of characters, and carry them along for a chapter, putting them at the end of the chapter in such a position that nothing can save them. Then take another set of characters, rescue them from their dilemma, carry them to a helluva problem at the end of the chapter, then switch back to the first set of characters, rescue them from their deadly peril, carry them along to the end of the chapter, where once again they are seemingly doomed. Then rescue the second set of characters, and so on.

Don’t give the reader a chance to breathe. Keep him on the edge of his goddam chair all the way through! To hell with clues and smart dialogue and characterization! Don’t worry about corn! GIVE ME PACE AND BANG BANG! Make me breathless, bud!”

So in the spirit of good old Dwight Swain, a link to the fine fellows at Astonishing Adventures, who are now on the third issue of their great experiment.

Testing

Experimenting with Amazon Associates, as I do tend to link like mad to useful/geek-interesting products.