It's nice to have creative friends. (By which I doubly exclude both Dan Zimmerman and Robert Farago.)

I have some amazingly talented friends who can write*. Some even get paid for it. Some don't.
I have some amazingly talented friends who can photograph. Some even get paid for it. Some don't.
I have some amazingly talented friends who can sing. (You see where this is going.)
Then there are those who have talents for putting things together creatively into a multimedia fashion that defies labeling. One such friend is my friend the Ambulance Driver. Given that he's published a couple of books and is on a regular speaking tour, and teaches a class of his own invention on Shooter Self-Care, and put together a great fundraiser in Kilted To Kick Cancer-- I think that it's probably okay to let the cat out of the bag to say that Ambulance Driver is Kelly Grayson. Kelly, a fellow admirer of my friend Tamara Keel, took a regular piece of hers and made it a multimedia slide show.

Back around 2006, Tamara, in her love of all things Gun Show/ Fun Show, wrote her own words to "These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things", and posted them on her blog as "The Gun Show Song." She posts it most of the time that she goes to a gun show. I can't even find the first time that she did so, but it's almost a decade ago, and she has posted the words to it maybe a score of times:

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

Kelly cast around to find someone who could sing the song in as Julie Andrews would, and Squeaky stepped up with her trained voice, and recorded it (and very nicely, too) for him.  Then Kelly put the song to slides on a YouTube video of his own creation, and voila! He had made his Christmas gift to Tamara. She liked it.

See? Creative.

But then Dan Zimmerman and Robert Farago over at that The Truth About Guns website did what they do: they stole the content. No attribution was given. They took credit for Kelly's work and Tamara's writing, and Squeaky's singing, without acknowledging whose innovation had created it.

This is not just rude and classless-- it's thievery. Tamara gets paid to talk about, write about, and shoot guns-- which is what The Gun Show Song is a product of that. Kelly gets paid to produce online content. This is their business, however lovingly they may practice it.

Well, stealing things is what Dan Zimmerman and Robert Farago do. They take content of value, host it on their site (without attribution), and then use it as click bait for their links along the sidebar. It's about profit without creating, for them. Notice that I will NOT link to their site. They can die in the cold, and I'm asking you, gentle reader, NOT to go there. Going to their site runs up their hit count meter, which they make money from with their advertisers' links. When they do it to me (and they have), it's just forgetting to attribute a hobbyist. But when they do it to Tamara and Kelly--- they're taking profit from professionals without giving them their due.

Roberta X put it neatly:

   Dan Zimmerman, widely held to be a longtime intellectual property thief and, I am given to understand, founder of Dead Hooker Magazine, has stolen Tam's "Fun Show Song" and posted the lovely video made as a Christmas present for Tam by Ambulance Driver and Squeaky and posted it over at TTAG, the other sink of iniquity and inequity with which he is associated, utterly without attribution to anyone but himself.

     Other than polite reminders (already issued) and the distant possibility of lawyering up -- Tam's a writer and her stock in trade is the unique groupings of words she creates -- there's not a whole lot that can be done.

     But there is one thing.  Cato famously ended every speech he made in the Roman Senate with "Carthage must be destroyed," even if all he was talking about was proclaiming Junior Vestal Day.  The phrase I'd like you to remember and to post all over the Internet is "Dan Zimmerman. Intellectual property thief. Dead Hooker Magazine."  And good morning, search engines! 

Oh, I see that Jennifer has already written a very similar article. Great minds, and all that.
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*Okay, when I started hot-linking friends of mine who can write, it didn't really cross my mind that I have a HUGE number of friends who can write, so I gave up pretty early. Don't feel slighted that I didn't link you, friends of mine; I didn't link a LOT of writers.

This is what class looks like.

Longtime online pal Marko Kloos is so classy, he even apologizes for being a little rude when he correctly identifies a rude individual.

Winning a Hugo, up to now, has always been very valuable for a science fiction writer.

If you're like many of us, you want to find a magical story that will divert you from the drudgery of reality, without having to wade through the crap. Just give me the good stuff. So, it's incredibly alluring to see that list posted up on the wall of your local book store with the Hugo winners by year. I've been guilty of having perused the list, found a title that I haven't yet read, and pulled it off the shelf and immediately gone to the cash register. It's that simple: I didn't have to read the slush pile.

I know that I'm not the only one. As do smart people like... well, like Marko Kloos.

Marko, however, found himself in a very weird situation. He had written a very compelling page-turner, which would have found itself in the running for a Hugo anyway-- but which was pushed to the short-list by an unsavory person.

Vox Day, AKA Theodore Beale, is not a person I would invite into my home. He is racist. He is misogynistic. He was expelled from the Science Fiction Writer's Association because of his attacks on fellow writers based upon their race and gender. He is bitter. The funny thing is, the man can write. If he weren't so obnoxious, he probably would have won something by now. But there are lines which you cannot cross without having some backlash, and he crossed them. He will never win an award in science fiction.

To make up for this, Beale/Day came up with a scheme: pack the nominations. Campaign on fairness! Your favorite writers have no chance to win, through no fault of their own! Though they have wrought the best stories, their only sin is that they are white males!  The P.C.-minded establishment wants a multicultural field of nominees, at the expense of Quality! Hell, it sounds good. We all just want the best writing. Who cares what color or gender the author is? We all hate reverse discrimination, because it's just another kind of discrimination, right?

When I saw that online pal and best-selling author Larry Correia was being labeled as a racist (!) and misogynist himself, I began to think, Yeah, I can understand why you'd get ticked about these things. Larry's a good man. Larry is not a racist. He may be a conservative, but he's not a woman-hater. Larry's writings depict strong woman characters, multiple cultures in his good guys... anyway, you get the picture.  So Larry's corner started up a little group called the Sad Puppies. And frankly, I was on board.

Then Vox Day starts up the Rabid Puppies. He endorses a group of authors for Hugo nominations, and they get short-listed. Marko Kloos was one of the authors.

For a few days, it was heady times at Castle Frostbite. Think about this: You're nominated for the Hugo --one of the most well-known awards in your profession*-- and word is that you've got a very good chance of winning it. Heinlein won that award. Asimov won that award. Clark. Le Guin. Dick. Niven. Haldeman. Gibson. Card. Those are the giants on whose shoulders you will get to stand. I'm not gonna lie: I'm giddy just knowing a guy who gets to have his name mentioned in the same lists as those people.

The same rocket ship badge that is on every paperback of Stranger In A Strange Land could be on your books.

But then comes the crashing reality, which is that people would associate your nomination with the unsavory person who put your name on a list that he advocated be nominated.

Some stains you can never wash clean of.

So Marko, faced with that situation, quit. He pulled his book Lines Of Departure out of the running.
He took his ball (which he was winning with), and went home to Castle Frostbite.

Drop the mic.

He'll write more. And we'll get to read it. But when he takes the awards, it will be on his terms, and not via some shady deal co-opted by a shady jerk.  Hey, Vox? Marko was never your kind of people.
______________________
*Though, apparently, not really as critically-judged as you might hope. "Hugo Award nominees and winners are chosen by supporting or attending members of the annual World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon..." LawDog writes on his disappointment about the process.

Just trust me, and read it.

Gordon Keith is a local sports radio yuk monkey who has become a shockingly good columnist for the Dallas Morning News.

Go read his Mother's Day column. Trust me.

Dispatches from the front.

Imagine your own descent toward death, and blogging it.


3BoyMom takes us a long way in one single moderate post.


She boils it down, so it's actually not dreary.


But you can taste the copper in her mouth as the blood drains away at the realization that the news is real, as the explanations become very hollow and distant because it all is a sum that equates to death.

Lines Of Departure

So, my friend Marko Kloos today celebrates the release of the second book in his science fiction trilogy. In his first big release, Terms Of Enlistment, Marko introduced us to the not-too-distant future world in which Earth is colonizing as fast as it can, and needs extra-terrestrial Terran military to assist in this (and to quell the riots back home on a rapidly-deteriorating Earth.).


Now, his protagonist is a veteran, who has relationships in the military, and takes the next step in his career as an off-world soldier.


I've read a couple of chapters today, and it's smart writing that reads easily.


I hear that one might should keep an eye out for certain characters that we may know, too.


One of the joys of having a Kindle and an Amazon account is being able to instantly download Lines Of Departure for $4.99.


Marko is a good writer, who can do that magical thing, wherein he conjures up characters out of whole cloth, and keeps them true to their nature. When one questions whether a book is plot-driven or character-driven, the answer ideally should be "both," because the nature of the characters develop the plot. Marko Kloos writes plots, with characters whom you know, after awhile.


In this one, his spacefaring soldiers address 80-foot-tall alien invaders who are taking over planets that Terrain colonists have been terraforming. For starters.


Go read.

Because some things need to be ridiculed.

A family member works in a large state agency, and showed me this email, which was sent by the regional supervisor to everyone working under him. The man is known to be impressive in his arrogance, and in his lack of understanding how human beings work. Jokes that are funny to him are not to others, and conversely. Also, he takes offense at things no one else can find fault with.*

I was in an office recently and noticed the attached sign next to the office copier. The copier was not in public view; however, that is not a consideration. The sign conveys a message we all need to adhere too, but WE CANNOT post this type of signage in an office as it could be construed as offensive by an employee and result in a complaint against the supervisor(s) in which there is no defense.

 

DO NOT TAKE THIS MESSAGE LIGHTLY!!!

But, hey, at least he's trying to prevent a hostile work environment, right? That's good, isn't it? If it protects one worker, this email will totally have been worth it. So, prepare yourselves, gentle reader, because a screen capture of the scanned offensive sign** follows:

I apologize for the crass material that I have posted here.  But sometimes, to get internet hits, you've got to work blue.


_________________________
*Yes, I am aware of the condition that these symptoms point to, but am tired of hearing that label applied everywhere, lately.

**I work so hard for you people.

Another opportunity, missed.

Dammit, how often does an opportunity like this present itself? A world-famous Olympic athlete, known specifically for being a contender despite having no lower legs, is charged with murdering his girlfriend, and he fields a lame alibi.

So we get this:

That's what we get when cowards are placed in editorial positions. Clearly, it should have been run thusly:

Sorry, guys.

Today I had 127 spambot posts that I had to delete. Strangely, 67 of them focused on a haiku post #7 that I had made. I just now took that post down, but still, there's 60 other spambot posts that I didn't want to wade through in my email. That's a step up fromt he thousand or so that I've gotten since taking down the "I am not a spambot" word verification test.

This feels too much like work. I'm putting the Turing test / Captcha back up. Sorry.

"The Obligatory Cow Reference."

I had forgotten how well Stingray had written up a certain humorous-and-yet-tense moment, a couple of years ago, at Blogorado.

I just read it again, and laughed for a minute straight.

Like a favorite tiresome old great aunt.

I am of course finding that Letters Of Note is becoming a daily read. (and time-sink, damn it all)

I am tickled to see that the late children's author E.B. White had quite the sense of humor, in denying his local government the information that they demanded. Good for him.

I've got a little something for you. It's right here in my pocket...

When we say that the art of writing letters is in decline, we need reference points. I would submit that this one, a letter from a freedman to his former master who offered him a job, sufficiently makes most modern-day attempts seem feeble by comparison.

Withholding participation pending review.

I haven't read the text from SOPA or PIPA yet.

I've got friends and family who make or have made their livings from selling their intellectual property. They make something up, publish it, and other people pay for it, and they eat. "Piracy" undermines that. Someone who wants their product, and should by rights pay for it, gets it without paying.

Think of your favorite musician, writer, or programmer, and ask yourself what their incentive is to publish their work, if no one pays them for that work. This interferes with the free market.

A problem, of course, is that the Internet is not a national market; it is a global one. We can't control the world just because we say so.

In general, I'm against extra legislation. And of course the test to see if Sky-Is-Falling legislation is really needed is to stop for a day or two and see if, in fact, the Sky really is Falling.

I have some reading to do before I jump on any bandwagons, though.

And so do y'all.

The passage of time.

This month  marks 5 years since I started this blog, and also half a million discrete visits to my blog.

I've met some good friends here, whom I identify with.

Thanks for the good times, friends. Let's continue to try to see the other side of the issues that we discuss, even if we don't ever believe that we'll agree with them.

And let's continue to laugh. You people crack my happy ass up.

Thinking about tragedy.

I just got off the phone a few minutes with my friend Ambulance Driver. If you're not aware, this is a practitioner of emergency medical response who has dedicated his life to teaching its effective application in the field. Last year, I was telling him on the phone about a CPR case that I had worked until we shoved the guy into the ambulance. He pointed out to me some changes that have recently been made in protocol, and said derisively, "Some paramedics are still treating cardiac cases like it's 2007." I made him repeat that. It was 2010. "Para medicine has made some real advances lately," he told me. "Especially in cardiac cases."

So when I read his recent blog "To Jennifer," I thought back to the compilation that we worked on together. I have in the past few years met the people affected by that wreck, and I promise you that AD has, too, from his end.

I just wish that I could write as well as he can.

_______________
For what it's worth, I think we'll just put together a little Perspectives post again, soon. Too many of our experiences dovetail.

Things to come: Building To Existing Structure Is Hard.

When I was a ranch hand for my 17th summer, a large portion of my job was helping an alcoholic carpenter (and by "help," we mean, keep him sober and working) to build out an existing small 700 square foot hunting shack into a rambling 2500 square foot house with an upstairs and a patio. We kept it in the original theme of cedar, with corrugated steel roofing.

A problem was, that a shack that's been standing for 50+ years will pretty much never be square to anything. Wood warps. Ground shifts. Carpenters who thought that they were just building for a humble one-room building had no idea that this would become the great room (central living room) off of which the rest of a rather nice rustic show-home would be built. And did you catch that it stood in the middle, so that we had to build out away from it, in multiple directions?

In the end, it would have been a LOT easier just to have demolished the original structure, and started over. But we didn't. We radiused out our squares to obtuse and acute angles. We checked every abutment with a plumb bob and a protractor before cutting.

That's what I'm doing now, to fit a story of my own, built out of several experiences, to a story of Ambulance Driver's, again.

Stay tuned.

Motivation for a drama queen.

A lot of things have been attributed to the late Kurt Vonnegut, some of which the crusty old writer disavowed. But Derek Sivers says he saw Vonnegut describe this phenomenon himself, in a lecture, about why people demand drama. Good, quick read, with graphs!

Bah. Humbug. Thank you.

There's snow on the ground. My girls were giddy as I took them to school today. It won't last, but it's a fun sight for north Texas in early December.

The New York Times published a fun little bit of history: The original manuscript for A Christmas Carol. Like I always do, I flipped quickly to my favorite part, about Old Fezziwig:

“He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?”

“It isn’t that,” said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. “It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

Dickens was writing about more than some silly feeling evoked by a season. He was writing about the simple acts of kindness that bring dignity and even joy to one's labors. You may not be a supervisor, but you probably have co-workers. You, by yourself, can make their existence a little more cheerful, and not in that schmaltzy way of greeting cards and tinsel. Every time you make a person feel welcome at their job, or proud of their work, you have helped give their life some more meaning.

I'm not kidding about this.

Try to catch somebody doing their job well, and tell them that you notice it. And after chatting with a co-worker or a friend or even a family member, thank them for their time and conversation. (I learned this last one recently from my friend John Shirley, who teaches me small but important things, once in a while.)

Consider this my late Thanksgiving post. I give thanks for those around me-- even strangers-- who help give joy and meaning to my life.

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”

“Small!” echoed Scrooge.

Looking back.

When I went off to Methodist Youth Summer Camp in early August of 1983, I was 11.

I had already gone to Boy Scout summer camp at Sid Richardson Scout Ranch the month or two before. It had been a long week of hiking, canoeing, and sweating. More significantly, however, it had been my first week away from home.

At Boy Scout camp, I remember going to my tent one evening, and crying. I still can recall hearing my best friend, then and now, remarking on it to someone (his father?), who said, "Leave him alone." Fabric walls don't stop even gentle words of concern. Grateful for the time alone and yet embarrassed that my sobs hadn't been effectively muffled by the Coleman sleeping bag, I stopped, and by and by joined the rest of the troop for supper.

It wasn't so much that I was a Mama's Boy (I'm fairly certain that I was) that drove me to cry "I want my Mama" into my sleeping bag, as the fact that I was away for the first significant time while my parents were beginning the separation that would eventually lead to their divorce. While I later felt that things actually got better for us kids after the divorce (Dad was very attentive as a divorced father, meaning that we actually seemed to see more of him afterwards), it was a time of Change, and a boy who is uncertain during change seeks his Mama. She wasn't there. Only boys and good men who volunteered as Scoutmasters and Assistant Scoutmasters were there.

The next month (or the next-- a quarter century has obscured some facts), I went off to Church Camp. It was way up at Lake Texoma, and we all gathered at a large regional church to get on the high-capacity vans to go. My father took me up there, and as I waited to get on the van, he handed me a paperback book. He asked me if I was nervous about the time away, and I said that I was not. (I felt that I was past that weak point, so long ago, about a month or two before.) He told me that a lot of boys were not used to leaving their families for any time when they were eleven years old, and somehow managed to compliment me for being mature enough to deal with it. I felt embarrassed, a little-- I should be mature enough. Just look at me: about 5'11" to 6'00" tall, eleven years old. Probably about 170 lbs. I was man-sized, in most cultures. [But still a boy.]

I got on the bus, and had an enjoyable ride with kids that I would get to know over the next 7 days. It's amusing that I still can remember some of the songs that we listened to on the radio; they tended heavily toward the Eurithmics. When I arrived at church camp, I found that our "cabins" were kind of bungalows spaced widely about the camp. I was in one with a group of 7 other boys of widely different cultures. I was neither the center point of our group, nor the outcast. I was an island unto myself; I was approachable, but discrete.

Well, a bit of loneliness almost set in, one night, when I opened my paperback (I think I was supposed to be studying a text for vespers, or something), and found an inscription from my Dad. I can't recall if it said anything more than "To Matt, Love, Dad." But does it matter? That's about the only part that matters in any inscription I've ever read: Who, why, and from whom. I seem to recall that he dated it. The paperback was a thick one, and had a painting of D.D. Harriman looking wistfully up at the stars with a spaceship in the background. It was The Past Through Tomorrow, a compilation of stories by Robert A. Heinlein.

I started with the first one, "Life Line." I was hooked.

My reading of Heinlein's works continued, with me consuming all that I could find in the school libraries (almost exclusively juveniles, but I found, inexplicably, a ratty hardcover copy of I Will Fear No Evil, which was racy stuff for a rural junior high school library). I kept it up long after the man died (I remember that hollow feeling, standing in Fultz's News when the counterman told me he had passed), and long after I had come to the conclusion that he was an idealist and a Dirty Old Man.

I don't doubt that a lot of my current philosophies have been influenced by a science fiction writer who died 21 years ago, and with whom I disagree about 1/3 of the time.

It's funny where you get your beginnings.

Y'all know Brigid, right?

No? Well, then go, and find beauty there.

Huh. I hadn't noticed.

At some point yesterday morning, this site broke a quarter million page visits.

This isn't rock star status, but it means that my scribblings have probably distracted enough people to fill a small city council meeting room.

Maybe even a library board luncheon. :)

Thanks for reading, friends. After over 850 posts, I'm still not quite sure why I type these. But I appreciate your dropping in to check them out. Every once in a while, I think I manage to put up something of value. What's fascinating to me is the disparity between what one person thinks is valuable and the other person considers boring.