Panzy

Yes, he keeps his balls in the purse that his wife (looks a bit like a Hollywood wookie) is holding...  There's something about a panzy that turns my stomach.

Thursday Tunes

I forgot about Tuesday Tunes -- where was my head? Don't answer. I'll be out of town today, but I'm advance posting this because "Wednesday Tunes" doesn't sound right and it's a good message for a Thursday.

Fleetwood Mac is touring this year, but without Christine McVie. Too bad, her voice blended with Nicks and Buckingham and the combination is what made Rumors the 8th highest selling album of all time. 

I lost a bet

I lost a bet.

How could I loooooze?

Betting has consequences and though I almost never lose, I did this time. Which means that I have to pay up. So I am (as set forth below). I usually avoid these Internet - things I love posts in much the same way as I'd avoid living in a yurt with a homicidal, tuberculin, yak herder, feeding on whale blubber, north of the Arctic Circle. 

But a bet is a bet.

I love waking up in the middle of nowhere with a horizon that seems to be a million miles away, and watching the sun peek over the globe of the world to a brilliant blue sky and a new day.

I love the company of people I cherish – friends and family. Nobody needs to speak (thought they almost always do) to make the experience complete. Mere physical proximity is enough.

I love making things orderly and harmonious. Yes it’s an obsessive thing. Whether organizing clothes in my drawers, my gear or a project, order brings me peace.

I love to learn. My mind is usually quite active and learning to me isn’t a matter of being one up on anyone else. It brings me deep personal satisfaction. I love knowing not just how but WHY things work.

My favorite sounds are the crack and roll of thunder in a summer storm, the sound of breaking ocean surf and laughter, not necessarily in that order.

I love overcoming a challenge. Perhaps this is what brings me the greatest inner satisfaction. The bigger the challenge, the greater the satisfaction. Especially if nobody else has done it yet. If Sir Edmund Hillary hadn’t climbed Mount Everest, I’d be there with a Shirpa trying to do it.

I love to encounter -  travel and to experience new tastes, sights, sounds, and the wonder that comes in my own soul as I meet new cultures and ways of looking at the world.

Half Life

I came up with the idea for the novel, "Half Life" about three years ago, in an effort to do something unique in a Science Fiction market that seems to consist of people copying each other--where most people still fight with swords 10,000 years in the future or in a far-away galaxy.

Brief Teaser

In a dystopian oligarchic future, a warrior father returns home for a son that he’d left behind.

On a distant world, a girl child, not wholly human, is born to physically share the dreams of that boy.

Its beautiful when you find someone that is in love with your mind. You experience a type of epiphany when that someone wants to undress your conscience and make love to your thoughts and watch you slowly take down all the walls you’ve built up around and let them inside.

In order to enjoy science fiction you must first suspend disbelief. There are a lot of people who don't enjoy science fiction because they have difficulty with that disconnect, however, I maintain that a well written story that connects with people is interesting no matter what genre that it is written in.

What if you dreamed someone else's life while you were asleep and they dreamed your life? What if you were starcrossed to meet? And what if one of you was pledged and honor bound to kill the other? That is the core of the plot and while there are other story arcs, it is that sharing that this book attempts to imagine and explore.

I hope to have the book complete and edited by the end of summer at the latest.

Tuesday Tunes

Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter - You and Tequila make me crazy.

I'm not a huge fan of country-western music, but it does speak to the human condition.

From the Police Blotter

Do Police Officers have more fun?

Some people have no sense of humor...                      (h/t BR Man)

Like tying a knot in a cherry stem with no hands...

Partners...



And my favorite slogan from working homicide cases, "When your day ends, ours begins."

Boy Toys (Part 3)

Admiral's Barge

I was not an admiral in the US Navy, but if I'd made the grade, they would have given me my own "barge". You don't have to be an admiral to own a barge these days -- simply have the means to pick up a barge on the secondary market. 

44' in length, with all the "bells and whistles" due rank, the Admiral's Barge is the ultimate boy toy for local cruising and hanging out. And when it comes to entertaining, the barge provides indulgent luxury.

King's X

As those of you who care may have read, the US Government has had a truthfulness problem with regard to the attacks on the US Consulate and CIA Base in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012

Wednesday’s testimony on the Benghazi terror attacks by State Department whistleblowers before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform contradicted several statements by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who is running for the US Presidency in 2016) in testimony before House and Senate committees in January.

However, while Clinton may have lied to Congress in her testimony, she likely did not commit perjury because she never actually testified under oath. Apparently the good old boy's club didn't think that somebody with Clinton's stature would stoop to outright lies. (rewind to her husband, Bill, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" -- until the blue dress with his genetic material on it surfaced)

So it would seem that she can't be charged and convicted of perjury no matter how damning the evidence is and her path is clear to run for President of the United States.

Boz Kashi, Marriage, and a Yurt

Are women merely chattel? Are they simply playthings for men--property to be stolen and kept? The answer in Kyrgystan would seem to be yes.

Nothing says fun like playing polo with a freshly killed goat. And nothing says love like kidnapping a girl on the street and making her your lawfully wedded wife.

In the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, the men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: by abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife. Bride kidnapping is an ancient custom that's made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some regions.

The Kyrgyz philosophy would seem to be that when a young lady says, "no", she really means, "yes"...

It's Cheaper than a Real Warship

The puns keep on coming with the ads for the new computer game, "Leviathan : Warships". I'm not a huge computer gamer, but there are times when I like to immerse myself in strategy games in the hope that the world around me will vanish for a while while I solve the problems of a make-believe universe. 

I enjoyed Harpoon because it felt as real as a computer simulation naval game can feel. Will I buy Leviathan Warship? I doubt it -- no matter how cheap it turns out to be. Even a small dose of reality in a game of strategic problem solving means more to me than the arcade does. Bring back the reality and I'll throw my money into the void (with the knowledge that no electrons will be hurt by my actions.

BUT I do think that the trailer is funny.

USS Leviathan (US Naval Institute Press)
archive photo

The Relative Value of Life

pro-life makes pro-choice possible.

There is something rotten about women lining up for abortions. Maybe if you feel that the unborn are not people/human/have a spark of spirit, etc., you can reconcile it. I can't. Once you start treating some life as if it has no value as a matter of law, the value of all life begins to diminish. 

The most dangerous place for a black man in New York City is in the womb since somewhere around 60% of black pregnancies are aborted in The Big Apple. More stats here.

The New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene revealed that in 2009 48,627 of the 87,273 abortions in New York City, or 56%, were repeat abortions. 33,401 or 38%, were paid for by Medicaid. Your tax dollars at work.

Whose fault are repeat abortions? The pro-choice/pro-abortion lobby blames the faulty education system for 1st timers. If so, isn't their own abortion and contraception industry at fault for repeat abortions?

It's a sick society.