See David. See David Write. Write, David, Write.

My day job consists of writing copy to help patients understand their medications and how to take them. As my audience ranges from the semi-literate to the college prof, it's best if we write to a grade 4 or below. The lower the grade, the higher the reading comprehension, even among the super-literate mooks like you.

This morning I learned how to test my copy. It's simple. If you write in Word, check tools, then options, then hit the spelling and grammar tab and check readability statistics.

So of course I had to run my WIP through the grinder to see how it measured up. Understand that this is a fairly ambitious book that deals in some complex themes (or so I tell myself) and here's what I got:

Averages:

1.8 sentences per paragraph.

10.6 words per sentence.

4.2 characters per word.

1% passive sentences (yay!).

Reading ease 85.3

Grade level 3.9

That's right, I'm writing

for dim 9-year-olds.

So how about you? Run your mss through the Word reader and as always...

...talk to me.

I have cross-posted this to Crimespace.

A Parting Shot

At the risk of repeating other blogs, just in case you haven't seen them, here are a few things Jerry Falwell said while he was alive:

"Aids is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals."

"I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations."

Forty years later: "You know, I supported Martin Luther King Jr., who did practice civil disobedience."

"I think [Bishop Desmond Tutu]'s a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa."

"In my opinion, the Antichrist will be a counterfeit of the true Christ, which means that he will be male and Jewish, since Jesus was male and Jewish."



This is what Larry Flynt said yesterday:

The Reverend Jerry Falwell and I were arch enemies for fifteen years. We became involved in a lawsuit concerning First Amendment rights and Hustler magazine. Without question, this was my most important battle - the l988 Hustler Magazine, Inc., v. Jerry Falwell case, where after millions of dollars and much deliberation, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in my favor.

My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like. Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.

I never thought I'd say this, but Larry Flynt is a class act.

What, besides the bus schedule to Nogales, is Dave reading?

I just finished A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read. I am such a slow reader, I'm embarrassed how long it's been since I started it. But that is no reflection on the quality of the book. Cornelia was nominated for an Edgar, and although she didn't take home the little mustachioed guy, she can take comfort in knowing she's written a terrific book. Man, she sure knows old money.

Next up? Because I desperately need a laugh, I'm starting Bermuda Schwartz by Bob Morris.

Bob? This better be good and goddamn funny.

Update: Stupidly, I did not provide a linky thing for Bob's book or Cornelia's book, which has been corrected so you can buy a copy of both right now.

I don't ask much from the comics...

...but, sweet Jesus, these make me want to eat my gun.

I expect Garfield to gorge himself on lasagna, but not go tits up from a damn coronary.

I expect Dagwood to get his ass kicked by Mr. Dithers, but not get laid off and turn to drink.

And Cathy can worry about her weight, but I don't want to see her struggle with bulimia.



What the hell is going on here?

Funky Winkerbean is dragging us through chemo again, For Better or For Worse is wallowing in the indignity of a stroke, and now Ted Forth is unemployed.

Look, if I want to read a downer I'll read Mary Goddamn Worth. What's next? Shoe gets beak cancer from cigars? Hagar gets captured by the English and hanged from a gibbet? Dilbert gets gunned down when Asok goes postal?

Honest, I can get depressed by reading the rest of the paper. So why do the funnies have to be so fucking unfunny.

I can't stand it.

And don't get me started on that suckfest Family Circus.

/rant

Protecting our babies.

I would jump in front of a truck to save my daughter. I would take a bullet for her. I would dive below the ice to pull her free. But I can't. I can't tie a bath towel around my neck, fly in and snatch her off the tracks. I can't kick in the door, my .45 shooting flames, taking down the bad guys. I can't clip the wire (is it the red one or the green one?) and disable the bomb.



All I can do is watch and wonder where this driverless bus is taking us, knowing I can't see anything beyond the headlights. And so I work and try not to look past today. I am not a worrier. My wife does enough worrying for all of us.





But I do wish there was something I could do other than sit here waiting for the roof to fall in.

Because I can hear the rafters beginning to give way.

It's all beginning to make sense.

Last year, right before the election, you may recall a young Republican congressman from my home state going on the attack when it came to light that Mark Foley (R-Skeeze) was soliciting male pages for a little game of after-hours stun the muffin.

That's him over there, Patrick McHenry, and you can see him in furious and righteous indignation here.

I wondered at the time why McHenry rushed to cover the considerable backside of Speaker Denny Hastert (R-Biscuitville) in the Foley scandal. Now we may have an answer.

But first, let's talk a bit about voter fraud, the crime that had Karl Rove's knickers in such a twist that the reluctance of some US Attorneys to pursue specious cases of this heinous crime led to their being fired by AG Alberto Gonzales. But, it's funny. No US Attorney got the pink slip for overlooking what appears to be voter fraud involving a College Republican, Michael Aaron Lay.

Michael Lay spent a great many nights at Patrick McHenry's house being tutored, no doubt, on the fine art of ducking your military obligations while still supporting the war.

He spent so many nights enjoying Representaive McHenry's hospitality that Mr. Lay voted in McHenry's district, even though his home of record was in Tennessee.

Now I see why McHenry was in high dudgeon over the sleezy inferences being made about Mark Foly's relationships with male pages. Just because a Congressman is unmarried and spends long evenings with young men does not mean he's doing anything that might upset his very conservative constituents. After all, he's already come out in favor of The Sanctity of Marriage, and what better heterosexual bona fides does an unmarried Congressman need?

Let me be clear. I don't care who a politician romps naked around the Tidal Basin with. I didn't care when Clinton was dallying with the fat chick, I didn't care when Newt Gingrich was playing introduce the amendment with an aide, and I don't care about the rumor that George Bush is sleeping with Secretary Rice. Hell, Bush could be as gay as organza and I wouldn't care except for the whole incompetence thing.

But voter fraud? Where is Karl Rove when you need him?

Editor's note: The colorful picture from the gay parade is taken completely out of context and has absolutely no relevance to Representative McHenry's sexual orientation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Key to Understanding Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Thanks to secretdeadartist for this.

Dude.

Big News! Michael Moore Annoys People In Government.

Michael Moore has made a new documentary, this time turning his eye on something much bigger than the perfidy of the Bush administration: America's health care system.

Sicko is Moore's new doc and according to news sources, he took New York rescue workers suffering from post-9/11 maladies to Cuba for treatment.

This pissed off the administration for a number of reasons. First, no one wants to admit that we let rescue workers expose themselves to poisons, not with Giuliani running as the Savior of 9/11. It's not like the EPA withheld reports that the air was toxic or anything.

Oh, wait.

Second, health insurance companies are beyond criticism. Do not look at their administrative costs or their practice of denying payments to old people until they die. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Third, Michael Moore went to (drama sting) CUBA! That's right, that island of the damned. That place where Americans must never go. Not ever. Forget it. They even went after Ry Cooder for making The Buena Vista Social Club because everyone knows that octogenarian Cuban musicians only want to destroy our freedoms.

So Michael Moore is in trouble. Even though Michael Moore, much like Jesus and Mary, has apparently turned up on a biscuit.

I love Michael Moore's movies. Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 are terrific films that ask important questions about life in America. Do they have a point of view? Can he be caustically unfair? Does he go after big targets, inviting big reaction?

Does George Bush hold hands with Prince Bandar?

Yes, I've read the critics and find, quite objectively, that they have their heads up their rumps. Really. Go read some of those Moore debunking sites. One actually says that Moore got a phone number wrong! Horrors!

But what really irritates me here is this prohibition of traveling to Cuba. When I was a child in the 50's, I remember being told that one of the great things about being an American is that, unlike the evil commies, we're free to travel any goddamn place we like, because we're Americans, dammit.

But then the Cold Warriors discovered the financial and political clout of the Cuban expat community and now Cuba is verboten, even years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Why do I care? Because I want to set my next John Harper novel in Cuba. I think it's time. Castro is almost dead and we're on the cusp of big changes . I think it's a great setting for a Harper novel, but I can't travel there. Not without catching the eye of Big Brother. The government doesn't want me spending my measly research budget supporting the economy of Fidel. Europeans can go. Central Americans can go. I bet even Iranians can go. But not us.

And that pisses me off.

But maybe Michael Moore's case will re-open talk about lifting the restrictions.

And maybe Michael Moore's film, Sicko, will spur a new look at our health care industry.

And maybe those are monkeys about to fly out of my ass.

UpDate: General Batiste fired by CBS for this ad.

That's what happens when brave men who have served this nation dare criticize the petit dauphin.

You can see Keith Olbermann interview John Batiste here.

CBS News. Our liberal media at work.

Please, God, let this be true.

According to this guy on the Internet tubes, our family values VP has caught his pecker in a ringer:

"WMR has been informed that the CEO of a major corporation ... reportedly engaged the services of [the DC Madam's] escort firm while he was the CEO and maintained a residence off Chain Bridge Road in the Ballantrae neighborhood in McLean, Virginia, a few blocks from the headquarters of the CIA."

WMR has confirmed with extremely knowledgeable CIA and Pentagon sources that the former CEO who is on Deborah Jeane Palfrey's list is Vice President Dick Cheney.

Dick "Dick" Cheney is touring the Mideast right now, but I bet Lynne just can't wait for him to get home.

Heh heh.

Finally, something noncontroversial:

Race.

That's right, let's talk about honkeys and spades, ofays and spearchuckers. Let's roll over that slimey rock and take a look at America's great big ugly black-faced bugaboo, that four-letter word with a history so awful that white people want to forget it ever happened (la-la-la I can't hear you) and black people, my age, who remember getting the high balcony at the Carolina Theater, the back end of the bus and the short end of the stick.

I'm working on a novel set in 1941 Washington. When I started this book (back in 1958), I was attracted to the backdrop of a sleepy southern town being shoved onto the world stage before it had time to learn its lines. But as I did my research, I discovered that according to all of the newspapers and magazines of the era, there were no black people in Washington.

One guidebook light-heartedly referred to the black mammy and her picaninnies, but there wasn't a paragraph on Howard University or the rising black middle class, bouyed on the backs of Pullman porters; or the Civil Rights march scheduled for the summer of '41; or the jazz clubs on U Street, so ubiquitous that Ella Fitzgerald called it "the Black Broadway." A third of the city was black and not a mention in the books. Just mammy and her picaninnies. That store sign is from that era. Nice, huh?

We've made progress, but Don Imus can still conjure up "nappy-headed" and Rush Limbaugh can call Barack Obama "Halfrican," so we're not out of the woodpile yet, are we, children.

The reason I bring this up is because I'm not only writing about people in another time, but I'm also writing about people of another race. I'll be the first to admit, I don't know what it's like to be a black man in America. I don't know what it's like now, and I sure don't know what it was like in 1941.

But I can imagine. I can do my research and I can imagine the life of a black woman passing for white, or a jazz musician trying to find work with a swing band, or an honest man working hard behind the counter of a chili joint on Fourteenth Street. I can imagine and then I can write it.

Will it be any good? Will the characters become real people in the reader's mind? Will I find their voices without slipping into black-face stereotype? I don't know. All I can say is what Stephen King once said to his critics:

"I'm doing the best that I can."

It's not that I'm having a hard time. In fact, it's just the opposite. The people show up in my head and speak the way they speak. Whether they're white or black, men or women, cops or robbers, it doesn't matter. I don't know how that happens, exactly, but it does.

And I've always written female characters, and I'm not female. I write kids, and I'm a grown-up (kinda). I've written Latinos and I'm Anglo, Jews and I'm goy, the rich and I'm as broke as a novelist can be.

But it does give me pause, because I need to do it right. Maybe that's why I'm taking so long to finish this book. Or maybe I'm just slack. I don't know. But I know enough to approach this with a great deal of respect for both the people and the craft.

If you have the inclination, share your thoughts about writing from another's POV. Do you find it tricky, or do people just spring up and speak their lines? Do you see them complete or do their features come into focus over time, as mine often do? And do you ever hesitate to write a character out of your own insecurity that you're not good enough to get it right?

As always,

talk to me.

(cross-posted to Crimespace)

Tough guys take it on the chin.

Tough guys might get knocked down, but they don't stay down. Tough guys might hesitate before entering that dark room, but they go in anyway. Tough guys take the news of their partner getting iced by flexing their jaw muscles and staring out at the street. Then they go find the killer.

I write about tough guys. The leads in all of my novels spring consciously from Chandler's Philip Marlowe. They're flawed men who may do bad things, illegal things, even things they will regret.

But they never do the wrong thing, not without doing whatever needs to be done to make it right. Because men like Marlowe have that code the academics write dissertations on, a code that is simply knowing that the right way is rarely the easy way, but it is the only way.

Their code may not be the same code as society's, but it is bedrock, and I can close my eyes, toss a Bible and smack some self-righteous prick with fewer scruples than the assorted hit men, con men, mooks, palookas, grifters, gamblers, hookers, dirty cops and drunken spies we write about in our fiction.

I am not a tough guy. I walked through this past week numb, and I know that things here are still dark and it could be a long time before we can see any light again. But I am back on my feet, ready to do whatever it is I have to do. Sometimes, as any infantryman knows, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other. I am not a tough guy, but I can do that.

My friends, which include the people here who wrote to say we were in their prayers (or whatever positive energy it is you heathens let loose into the cosmos), were a consoling and comforting voice, and I consider myself truly fortunate to have you. I will never take your generous offers for granted and I owe every one of you a giant debt it is my honor to carry.

I am not a tough guy.

But my wife is. She stood up for all of us. She stood up, did what needed to be done without a word or a whimper. That's why she'll always be the hero of this picture.

I am not a tough guy, but I am a smart guy, and smart guys know that the really tough cookies are the skirts. And this palooka is lucky to have a great one around when he gets knocked on his ass.

Thank you.

For a murder-minded crowd, you have shown yourselves to be the kind, generous, giving people I always suspected you were.

Even Dusty.

Things have taken a turn for the better here, but we still have a long way to go. When I can find my way to making crude jokes at others' expense again, I'll be back.

You can't get rid of me that easily.

Think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound...

I am a complete and utter ignoramus when it comes to classical music. Unlike our friend Charlie Stella, I couldn't tell Shostakovich from Rostropovich, the cellist who joined the choir invisible yesterday at age 80. That's him up there giving what the Times called, "an impromptu concert at Checkpoint Charlie after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989."

Very cool.

The reason I bring him up at all is because I love that picture and can only imagine the sheer joy the moment and the music gave him and how those gathered around him were witnesses to the man's irrepressible celebration.

And while it's true that classical music in our house is more Sonny Boy than Saint-Saëens, I know that in times of darkness and uncertainty, I can always find solace in music. It's the one thing that's never let me down.

That's why I love that picture.

We often speak of the music we listen to when we write, and music we quote in prose. When I was an actor, I landed the role of an Eastern European Jew. I went to the local Rabbi to get lessons in the accent because, as always, I wanted to get it right. The Rabbi took one look at the script and said, "David, I don't see the problem. The melody is written right into the words."

Ah, music is everywhere and we would indeed be a sad and low species without it.

Mstislav Rostropovich, RIP. You can read more about this remarkable man here.

Now, I need to go put on some Coltrane.

How can such a tragic guy bring so much joy?

My TBR stack just got bigger.

I know this is probably the last site anyone comes to for real news, but just in case, these are last night's Edgar winners. And while my faves like Cornelia Read didn't take home the little mustachioed guy, I extend my congratulations to everyone nominated.

Winning is good, but nominations are nice, too.

And special props go to Richard Abate, the agent who swung the deal for MANHUNT (and another, lesser known book by a lesser, little-known author).


BEST NOVEL
The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson (Random House)

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Snakeskin Shamisen by Naomi Hirahara (Bantam Dell Publishing Delta Books)

BEST FACT CRIME
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson(HarperCollins & William Morrow)

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fearby E.J. Wagner (John Wiley & Sons)

BEST SHORT STORY
The Home Front, Death Do Us Part by Charles Ardai(Hachette Book Group, Little, Brown and Company)

BEST JUVENILE
Room One: A Mystery or Two by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

BEST YOUNG ADULT
Buried by Robin Merrow MacCready (Penguin YR Dutton Children’s Books)

BEST PLAY
Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure by Steven Dietz (Arizona Theatre Company)

BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
Life on Mars, Episode 1, Teleplay by Matthew Graham (BBC America)

BEST TELEVISION FEATURE/MINI-SERIES TELEPLAY
The Wire, Season 4, Teleplays by Ed Burns, Kia Corthron, Dennis Lehane, David Mills, Eric Overmyer, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon & William F. Zorzi (Home Box Office)

BEST MOTION PICTURE SCREENPLAY
The Departed, Screenplay by William Monahan (Warner Bros. Pictures)

It's easy to be humble.

Laura Bradford over at the Good Girls site, wonders about fans and what hooks them, whether readers of Romantic poetry or followers of that American Idol hair guy.

I'm more interested in those things that keep us humble. Being married works. Nothing can puncture an over-inflated sense of self-importance like a wife with a good memory.

A few years ago a young man posted a nice mention about Beneath A Panamanian Moon* on his blog and I responded with a thanks. He immediately went into fan stammer, astonished that an actual author would post on his blog. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be in such awe, that I begin every day of my life picking up dog turds, but I didn't. Why ruin the kid's illusions. That'll happen soon enough without my help.

True story: I went to get my hair cut, coincidentally on the same day I'd finished writing a novel. As I sat in the chair the barber asked how I was doing and I said, "I only get to say this once every year or two, so I hope you won't think I'm bragging, but I finished a book today."

He said, "Oh, yeah? What are you reading?"

Of course, reading better books than mine, and they are legion, will keep me humble, but it's the day-to-day that does it best. I'm curious, what is it in your life that keeps you grounded, especially as you meet gushing fans or get glowing reviews?

Because any time I get too full of myself, I always have my dogs, eager to produce instant indignity at a moment's notice.

Talk to me.

*Speaking of keeping me humble, my Amazon ranking for BAPM this morning is 1,625,350. Ouch.

In praise of friends and relatives.

The man behind the eye is Ted, my nephew, although he's more friend than relative. See, I can choose my friends, and relatives I get whether I want them or not. But if Ted was not related to me, I'd still choose his company.

Ted comes down every year to sit in the dark with me and watch documentaries for days. The great fun is talking about the movies afterward and sometimes arguing, because he refuses to acknowledge that I am always right. Always.

I attribute his reluctance to his youth.

But sometimes even I can learn something from the youngsters and Ted, a film maker, has introduced me to painters, musicians and cork flooring.

A few years ago, Ted and his patient wife Jen, bought a house on the outskirts of DC, gutted it and rebuilt the interior, piece by piece, moving bathrooms and walls, wiring and plumbing, all themselves. It was truly impressive. You can see Ted's place on line because the Geico caveman lives there. Yep, that's his place you can snoop around in. Go take a look.

He's a great editor, hard-working producer, solid soundman, art collector, lover of music and man with a vision and the stamina to see it through.

But his most appreciated talent is his ability to listen patiently to his uncle talk absolute blather.

So, here's to friends. Here's to relatives. And here's to Ted, a man whom I admire and I'm happy to say is both.

Love at first sight.

Today, Jenny and I have been married for 27 years. That's 27 years of good times, hard times, really hard times, and a love for one another that seems to get stronger every day.

I don't know where I'd be without her.

In this week of such terrible news, it's good to look at the the things we take for granted and find the divine in the mundane and the eternal in the day-to-day.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating. I first saw Jenny on stage, a star of our summer theater company, rehearsing for a show. I was a character actor, far from being a major player, but when I looked across that dark theater and saw that long neck and wicked spark, I whispered to my friend, "That's the woman I'm going to marry."

It took quite a while to convince her to jump into my leaky boat. I was unemployed 27 years ago, with few prospects, but she saw something in me that I couldn't. Which is why I dedicated my book to her this way:

To Jenny,

who is good when times are good,

and when times are bad

she's even better.

I love you, babe. Please, don't ever come to your senses.

Enough to make Jesus drink himself to sleep.

My pal, Dusty Rhoades, has posted two reprehensible posts from right wing fucktards about the Virginia Tech murders. I was going to link to them myself, but you can read their screeds over at Dusty's place here. I don't have the heart to search them out myself.

I try to entertain people with this blog. I don't tell you how to sell more books, or how to write better, or how to be a better person. Sure, I post political rants about things that piss me off, but always in the hopes that, in the end, it will make you laugh.

I can't quite gin up something funny today.

In response to something truly twisted from Michelle Malkin, one of the dumbest fucking people on the planet, I posted the following comment. With apologies to Dusty, I thought it was appropriate for me to also post it here.

There's a reason I haven't posted anything about the Virginia Tech shootings. I read things like Malkin and other blogs in a tizzy, right and left, about guns and gun control, and I have to turn away.

This is a real human tragedy, one that causes me to think about our place in this extended family, the pain a mother must feel waiting for that call that tells her her child is safe, the darkness that would bring a young man to do this horrible thing, and the trauma the survivors feel now and will feel for years, wondering why the kid next to them is dead and they're not.

Malkin, the asshat at the NRO, they all make me slightly nauseated with their pouncing on this tragedy in order to score a cheap partisan political point. These are horrid human beings. Absolutely horrid.

Come to think of it, maybe I do tell you how to be a better person. I apologize for being so presumptuous. Tomorrow, a more entertaining post.

I promise.

I could do wonderful things for you...

The sexiest woman alive sent this to me. Enjoy.

Yeah, if King Lear had stabbings, eye-gougings, patricide and long-winded jokers...

...oh, wait.

"I've always had a thought maybe that I might have been Shakespeare in another life. I don't really believe that 100%, and I don't really care about Shakespeare, I've never been into Shakespeare, but then people are constantly bringing up all of these qualities in my work that mirror Shakespearean tragedies and moments and themes." - Tarantino in GQ

How can you support the troops and not support the war?

I saw this question posted on a conservative blog and it ended with this:

They would rather support the failure of a political adversary (the President, the Republican party, an alternative ideology) than the future of a free people. And they call themselves "liberals" or, better yet, "progressives".

The question has come up hundreds of times, and there are plenty of people who have made stupid statements like the one above, suggesting that anyone who doesn't back Bush is pro-terrorist and will somehow rejoice in America's defeat. What a pantload. But occassionally we have to engage in the conversation in the slim hope that light will finally dawn. Here's what I wrote:

I consider myself a liberal, but I'm not sure it means the same thing as you think it means.

People I know who think this war is a futile effort include military, retired military, active intelligence, former federal law enforcement and a whole bunch of average citizens just like you and me. Not a one of them wants Bush to fail.

Predicting failure and then pointing it out when your worst predictions come true is not a thing that gives me comfort.

As for not supporting the future of a free people, that's something the people themselves have to choose. It's not a gift we can pass along and then suddenly animosities that go back to the Fifth century will vanish like a bad smell in an ocean breeze.

That's not going to happen.

I think Iraq will be a disaster if we pull out, but this surge is far too little and far too late. If we were serious about fighting this war, and this is just me, I'd put another 400K troops in, create safe training places for the Iraqi military and police, draft a boatload of young American men (attention College Republicans!) and raise taxes, yes taxes, to pay for it.

That's not going to happen.

That means we're not serious about fighting this war and if we're not serious, how can you ask your brother to pay with his limbs or life?

Vietnam? The VC and NVA demonstrated by kicking Japanese butt and French derriere that they were willing to do whatever was necessary for as long as it took. The American people, with good reason, weren't willing.

My father was a staunch supporter of that war until he had two sons in uniform. He'd lost his brother and countless friends in one war, a good war, a war worth his sacrifice, and he proudly sent his boys off to serve when our time came. But when the reality of that homebound box hit home, he started asking why. It didn't make him a cut and run American. It didn't diminish his patriotism and sacrifice. It made him question the cost and he decided that the benefit wasn't worth his potential loss.

No American, left or right, wants our president to fail. Because if he does, it means we sacrifice our fathers, brothers and sons for a mistake.

I'm a liberal, but I take a back seat to no one when I say I love this country.

But I mistrust this government and that's a whole different thing.

As I get more time I'll catch up with the film festival with a few titles for you to watch for; an appreciation for my nephew, a smart kid who has taught me more than he probably suspects; and another love post to my wife as we begin the 28th year of this adventure.

On this Monday morning I consider myself a very lucky man coursing with the milk of human kindness. But stay tuned, that could change by lunch.

Shhh. The movie's starting.

I'm doing my annual doc block with 3+ days of movies.

Yesterday, opening day, we saw a film about the booming film industry in Nigeria, Catalonians who spend an inordinate amount of time climbing onto one another's shoulders to build fifty-foot high human towers that quite often collapse, a new look at DA Pennebaker's landmark footage of Bob Dylan's UK tour of '65, and two people talking about Katrina.

I love documentaries. Give me a good argument over whether there's objective verite in cinema verite and I'm a happy man.

Durham has received some pretty ugly publicity this week, even attracting the unblinking gaze of media harridans Rita Cosby and Nancy Grace, attention usually reserved for missing white women.

Yes, Durham has its troubles. But it also has the Durham Bulls, a terrific independent book store and this, what's been called the Cannes of documentary film festivals. In the ten years of this festival, and yes, I have attended every one, watching movies until my ass is flat, Durham has played host to Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Harry Shearer, Ken Burns, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and hundreds of other filmmakers. It's a lot like writers' conferences in a way, and I'll talk more about that next week. After the festival.

But for now, you'll excuse me if the planet is a bit darker than usual.

I have movies to see.

Connie and Walt. Gettin' busy.

With apologies to the King of Comics Commentary, the Comics Curmudgeon, I have to point out this recent installment from Zits, one of my favorite strips. If you don't know this strip, it's about a 15-year-old kid named Jeremy. He has an older brother named Chad who you see about as frequently as you saw little Richie on the Dick Van Dyke show, but I love that Connie and Walt, his parents, named their kids Chad and Jeremy.

OK, up to speed? The storyline here is, Jeremy's gone off to a friend's place for the weekend. And what do Connie and Walt do? They immediately leap into the sack for a little afternoon bed bounce. Boo-yah.

I only bring this up to do what old men do everywhere: Point out how things have changed since I was a kid.

There was sex in the comics, of course. Ask any male which one they'd rather boink, Betty or Veronica, and they'll tell you without thinking. Because they've already thought about it. A lot. They'll also tell you that Judy Jetson was hot, and Betty Rubble was a stone-age babe.

(Women don't do this, I don't know why, and when they find out we do they look at us funny.)

But back to the point. We never saw Blondie and Dagwood in post-coital bliss. Hell, they still sleep in separate beds. Donald Duck doesn't wear pants, for God's sake, but there's never been a hint of Donald and Daisy doing the nasty. And I don't even want to think about Popeye and Olive Oyl naked.

But Connie and Walt? Yeah. I like that. Progress has been made.

As always, I invite your thoughts on this weighty subject of the day.

Who's that talking smack about our President? Not me.

It seems I've been mistaken about George W. Bush. He really isn't gay, drunk, cowardly, incompetent or sleeping with Condi Rice. And I know the reason our Cowpoke-in-Chief doesn't ride a horse has nothing to do with his being afraid. It just looks that way.

No, this administration is an efficient, well-run machine and Bush's compassion, intellectual rigor and work ethic should be models for us all.

What made me change my mind about The President™?

I'd really like to be able to board an airplane sometime in the near future.

It seems that people who have criticized The President™ are having problems getting on flights. Here's a letter [edited for short attention spans] from a retired Marine officer, decorated combat veteran, and professor of Constitutional law at Princeton:

"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list ... I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: 'Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.'

I explained that I had not so marched but had ... given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution.

'That'll do it,' the man said."

You can read the complete letter and more at Talking Points Memo.

So, all those terrible things I wrote about The President™ were the result of a chemical imbalance. Or someone else wrote them. I don't know, I can't recall and I'm pleading the Fifth.

From now on, The Planet will have nothing but praise for The President™ and his excellent leadership in these times of terror. Thank God for George Bush, the bestest president we've ever had.

Now can I get my boarding pass?

All Hail Dear Leader!

This came out a while back but I've been too busy to mention it. But in case you've missed it, Bush is installing political officers in every branch and bureau of the Federal government.

You read that right. Political officers. And no, this is not one of Olen Steinhauer's novels about Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe. This is America. Or it was last time I looked.

But like Stalin, Bush wants total control over everything that moves. That means his political hacks will have oversight over anything involving public health, the environment, civil rights and our quickly evaporating rights to privacy.

In an executive order, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee to supervise all documents and all rules that regulate anything larger than a chicken fart.

This means people with real expertise will have to submit everything to this "regulatory policy office" to, in the words of the New York Times, "make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities."

You know, like FEMA in New Orleans and the CPA in Iraq, because those groups have done such sterling work. Particular targets? The EPA and OSHA. Jeffrey A. Rosen, general counsel at the White House OMB said, “This is a classic good-government measure that will make federal agencies more open and accountable.”

Open and accountable. The Bush administration wants open and accountable. Done laughing? No, I'll wait.

OK, let's continue.

The way things usually work is, agencies enforce laws enacted by Congress, but Bush doesn't like Congress, so he's decided to to say "fuck them." He's done this with his signing statements before, plenty of them, but that hasn't give him the reach he really wants. No, Dear Leader needs political officers throughout the bureaucracy to make sure nothing gets by that might give Dear Leader a rash.

Peter L. Strauss of the Columbia Law School said the executive order “achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government.” Which is such great news. This administration has been so competent at governing, why not give them more power? Hell, let's abandon Congress altogether and install Bush as Emperor for Life.

Over the past few years I've written short films for two Federal agencies and each time the script was gone over for anything that colored outside the lines of administration policy, so this has been going on for a while. The old hands told me they'd never seen anything like it. Well, with this new executive order, they ain't seen nothing yet.

And for further proof this stinks like a dead fish on a hot manifold, the Times reported that "business groups hailed the initiative."

And if that doesn't keep you awake nights, you haven't been paying attention.

Wow. The NY Times says nice things about one of our own.

I didn't want to pile on the plaudits when Laura Lippman hit the Times best seller list because, well, Dan Brown and Ann Coulter have made the Times best seller list. So while it was worth celebrating (especially if you're Laura's agent), it didn't rise to the drink-raising-inspiration of the review by Janet Maslin.

After a few hundred words of praise Maslin says:

“What the Dead Know,” like the best books in this tradition, is doubly satisfying. You read it once just to move breathlessly toward the finale. Then you revisit it to marvel at how well Ms. Lippman pulled the wool over your eyes."

Now that's worth celebrating. Congratulations, Laura.

And don't you just love that picture, all dark and sultry? The woman's a class act, through and through.

Where the hell is everybody?

It's come to my attention that readers of The Planet wonder why so few comments lately. Easy. Everyone's over at Crimespace. Go check out the Forum. Lots of chatter and plenty of opportunities to kill time. Like you need more.

I have been remiss in not adding Crimespace to my linky things over there but I'll rectify that this weekend.

Maybe.

Justice, with a small "j."

Yes, it's Photoshopped, but one can dream.

The day Karl Rove is tossed into the joint will be a grand day for America. This festering boil on the ass of American politics was speaking at American University last night, invited by the campus College Republicans, the ones who love the Iraq War but not, you know, well enough to enlist. (For more on that, visit Operation Yellow Elephant.)

After speaking to the assembled Brown Shirts, Rove went outside and was heckled by students, some of whom threw things at him, and although we don't know what, it probably wasn't monkey feces or human blood, either of which would be applauded here at The Planet.

Of course, those intrepid members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders think this is just terrible and are wringing their Cheeto-stained little hands over Rove being heckled because, you know, that's just wrong.

Not as wrong as stealing 1,000 sheets of letterhead from the office of a Democratic candidate and printing “Free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing” on the stolen sheets and sending them out as an invitation to the candidate's rally, but still wrong.

And not as wrong as Donald Segretti, Rove's mentor and one of the felonious bastards uncovered when Woodward and Bernstein rolled over that rock on Watergate. But still, wrong.

And not as wrong as bugging his own office and then claiming Democrats did it so the FBI and newspapers would investigate. But still, you know. Wrong.

And not as wrong as starting the whisper campaign that John McCain was unbalanced from his time as a POW or that McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter was his illegitimate black child.

And certainly not as wrong as questioning the service of a decorated veteran who volunteered for combat in a war both of his bosses dodged.

But still wrong.

Because these protesters actually confronted Rove, (the horror!) and embarrassed him. No, he was in no danger. Unlike the thousands of young men and women he helped send to Iraq.

Protesting one of the vilest humans in America makes me think there's hope for this country yet. Every one of those kids who laid down in front of Rove's car showed more courage than all 600 of those College Republicans hiding inside the speaker's hall combined.

Rock on.

Update: All the liberal blogs and talk shows have been tut-tutting the throwing of things at Mr. Rove. Not me. I was talking to a friend last night and we decided that this would be a better country if everywhere Karl Rove went, citizens would pelt him with whatever's at hand wherever he is - at home, work, a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike, or a bath house in Georgetown. Wherever.

I'm not talking bricks, people, but stale dinner rolls would be perfect.

The Essential Book

There have been quite a few posts lately about books you read as a child, books that inspired you to write, and books you're reading now.

This is about a book that made me realize I wasn't crazy, or if I was, I was in good company. But first, like all bad writers everywhere, I want to stop this narrative to inject a little backstory.

I was seventeen in the Summer of Love, living in a small town in the mountains of Pennsylvania. We got three channels on TV, maybe four with a fuzzy UHF receiver. There was no Rolling Stone. There were no videos, DVDs, or Internet. I knew little beyond what Time and Newsweek reported and it was only luck that steered me toward vinyl by a guitar player named Hendrix and a singer named Joplin. In that same store, among the paperbacks, was The Essential Lenny Bruce.

I knew next to nothing about Bruce. I knew he was considered a "sick" comic and I knew Paul Simon wrote a line about him in a song. That was enough. I bought the book, took it home and read it.

It was a revelation. For the first time I didn't feel like all those uncivilized thoughts rolling around inside my cranium were weird. Here was a guy talking about language, so much language, and sex and the lies we accepted every day from the church and government. It was comforting to know that it was OK to talk about these things (it wasn't OK, of course, but I didn't learn that lesson until much later) and in fact, people I respected encouraged this kind of thinking.

For a boy in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods in 1967, this book literally changed my life. The Essential Lenny Bruce became my essential book. I would never think about religion, sex, language or politics the same, small-town way again.

There was so much more to learn, but that book was a start.

So, the question is, do you have a book like that? One that twisted the top of your head off and shook things around up there?

Talk to me.

BTW, the video up there is Thank You Mask Man. Enjoy.

My Favorite Practical Joke

It should surprise no one that, as a kid, I loved hand buzzers, whoopee cusions and stink bombs. Which would lead you to think, quite wrongly, that I loved April Fool's Day. But to those who know the nuances of fake vomit (tip: sprinkle water on it), April Fool's Day is like New Year's Eve is to a serious drinker.

Not that any of the jokes worked worth a damn. What third-grader could keep a straight face when a plastic dog turd was involved?

But as we grow older, the pranks become more sophisticated and the really great jokes are the ones that play off a person's own weakness. The best I ever saw was pulled by a pretty country blonde receptionist named Buffy, a woman you underestimated at your peril.

Our boss was known to rifle through trash and desk drawers after hours in order to find out what his employees were up to, because he was sure they were up to something. He would sneak around corners and stand in hallways, hoping to overhear the mutinous staff hatching their plots against him.

And as paranoid as he was, he was even more of a misogynist. Pretty women were stupid and pretty women with country accents were really stupid. When Peter talked to Buffy, he was so condescending that no one would have blamed her if she'd shot him. But she didn't. What she did do was even better.

Buffy began carrying a manila folder that held a few typed sheets of paper. She would pretend to read it at her desk and when the boss approached she would casually close the folder, smile, and say, "Is there something I can do for you, Peter?" No, he would say, and slink away as the only thing he hated more than secrets were confrontations.

When Buffy went to the bathroom, she took her folder with her. When she left for the day, she took the folder home. And with each passing day, Peter became more and more obsessed with fiding out what Buffy was reading.

But of course, she wasn't reading anything. The typed sheets of paper were just that, merely office effluvia she'd picked up for the prank. Buffy did this for almost two weeks, the folder her constant companion and Peter so strung out on the secret that he could think of nothing else.

Then the folder went away.

It took Peter a few days to stop spinning. And I believe that to this day, just as Peter is falling asleep, the picture of Buffy with that folder comes into his head and he starts awake in the dark, unable to close his eyes for hours.

Practical jokes. When they're this smart, you've got to love them.

Insurance industry unveils new monument to the elderly.

There are weasels in America and they work in the insurance industry. The latest proof comes from a NY Times story about denying old people's claims until they die. One of the biggest weasels is Conseco, a company that in 2006 took in more than 4 billion dollars in premiums and yet denied assisted living claims made by an old woman who had paid her premiums when healthy and now needed help.

Denied, said Conseco. They said she was healthy as a horse at age 81 and implied the old woman was a malingerer, goldbrick and potential fraud for having the audacity to file a claim.

The nerve.

Then, that tactic not holding water, Conseco said she'd waited too long. Then it said her state-licensed assisted living home wasn't an "approved facility." Jesus, these guys change their stories so often they could work in the White House.

But it would be wrong to pick on Conseco alone. There are, unfortunately, other weasels in the pen. In fact, the investigation by the Times uncovered the shocking fact that insurance companies will do anything to avoid paying. Some insurers prohibit their employees from returning calls from policyholders.

And neglect is one of the more benign tactics. A subsidiary of Conseco, Bankers Life and Casualty, sent an 85-year-old woman suffering from dementia the wrong form to fill out and then denied her claim because she had filled out the wrong form.

I don't know how the executives sleep at night on their 400-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

From the Times article:

“The bottom line is that insurance companies make money when they don’t pay claims,” said Mary Beth Senkewicz, who resigned last year as a senior executive at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. “They’ll do anything to avoid paying, because if they wait long enough, they know the policyholders will die.”

That's their strategy. Put off the old people long enough and they'll die. If there is any justice, all these insurance executives will contract a horrible, disfiguring, painful disease and their claims for coverage will be denied.

And don't even get me started on health insurance.

Weasels. Every last one of them.

P.O.V.

This is all about the voice. When you write in first person, you're telling that story from one character's point of view, in that character's voice. It's the classic PI perspective and allows the hero to make all sorts of comments on the action, comments that might be out of place in third person.

The first version of Panamanian Moon was in first person and third person because I had no idea how to build suspense when I was limited to what John Harper could see for himself. But I thought that switching from first to third was cheating, so I rewrote it all in first person.

One of the reasons my WIP is taking so long is that I'm writing in third person and that magnifies issues of plot, rhythm, voice and in each scene I risk switching points of view, something that is so easy to do and so hard to fix. The advantages are a bigger book with a wider scope, subplots that are well-developed, and the ability to set things in motion with one character and watch as it plays out with other characters. All good, but it's a lot harder, at least it is to me.

What about you? What POV do you use and why? What do you sacrifice and what do you gain by the choice? And I know several writers who switch from first to third and pull it off just fine, but is it kosher?

Talk to me.

Update: For those interested in the comments, go to Crimespace.

Tom Waits knows more than you.

Thanks to my old pal Jerry (aka secretdeadartist), we learn that the Vatican digs Tom Waits. OK, maybe not all the Vatican, but Jesuits, the mensa members of the Catholic Church, think Waits is the man.

This stands in sharp contrast to the Pope who said he doesn't like this new-fangled rock music. He did, however, enjoy a polka or two with Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. "He can cover the dance floor," Benedict said, "as smoothly as he covered up all those buggered altar boys. You got to give the man his props."

In the latest issue of Civilta Cattolica, the Jesuits said that Waits represents “the marginalised and misunderstood.”

I'm looking at you Mr. Banks.

According to the London Times, Father Antonio Spadaro normally writes about literature but is quickly becoming the Church authority on pop music. Spadora said that Waits had lived a youthful life of “drugs, alcohol and sex” and can understand the desperation of men and women who live on the fringe. But out of desperation, Waits finds “capacity for hope and instinct for happiness.”

Damn, I wish I had written that. Capacity for hope and instinct for happiness. I love that.

The article quotes Waits from a 2004 interview: “I don’t know what’s out there any more than anyone else, cause no one’s really come back to tell me. I think everyone believes in something. Even people who don’t believe in anything believe that.”

Contrast this enlightened attitude with the Holy Father's. When he was a Cardinal, Benedict condemned rock music as the work of the Devil. "Except for Fergie. She's fabulous," he said, casting doubts on the notion of infallibility.

Father Spadaro respectfully disagreed. Rock is “not the music of Satan but has great expressive power which reaches peoples’ souls.” It would be churlish of me to point out that this news is about 40 years too late, but hey, it took the Church a few centuries to admit they had that whole sun around the earth cosmology wrong, so there's hope for Mother Church and Benny of the Big Hat yet.

Well I've been faithful
And I've been so good
Except for drinking
But he knew that I would
I'm gonna leave this place better
Than the way I found it was
And Jesus gonna be here
Be here soon

Sing it, Mr. Waits. Sing it.

And thanks, Jerry, for the tip.

Getting High With The High Court

The Supreme Court is firing up a fat one with the first free speech case since Barbara Bush told a veteran in a wheelchair to "walk it off, you big pussy."

OK, I made that up, but it could happen.

It's true that for the first time in nearly 20 years, the highest court in the land is hearing a case about how far a school principal can go in shutting up one of her students.

The facts, if my short term memory is accurate, are these: In 2002, Principal Deborah Morse of Juneau, Alaska let her young charges skip class so they could watch the Olympic torch pass by.

As an aside, isn't that one of the lamest field trips ever? When I was a young boy they let us out of school so we could watch the Vice President whisk past in his limo and that was Richard Frickin' Nixon. We're talking history here, children, not some ectomorph trotting by with a ball of flame on a stick.

Anyway, one of the students, a kid named Joseph Frederick, waited until the TV cameras were almost on him and then unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Immediately Principal Morse got a migraine. Then she suspended Joseph.

Now the Supreme Court is contemplating whether stupidity is protected by the First Amendment or whether school principals can use the Bill of Rights to roll up a big fat doobie and set a match to it.

David Souter, a guy who looks like he's no stranger to a one-hit toker, said, "It's political speech, it seems to me. I don't see what it disrupts."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg added, "And no one was smoking pot in that crowd."

Asked why he did it, Joseph Frederick said he just wanted to get on television. That I can believe.

But Principal Morse has her panties in a twist. She said she suspended Frederick because "bong hits" referred to smoking marijuana. Well, duh. She also said the banner advocated or promoted illegal drug use in violation of school policy although I suspect she was more disturbed by the thought of Jesus firing up than she was anything else. Just a suspicion.

Stephen Breyer, who is named for yummy ice cream, said a ruling for Frederick could result in students "testing limits all over the place," like students don't already test limits in high schools across the land. On the other hand, he also said that a ruling for Principal Morse "may really limit people's rights on free speech."

Can we guess what side the Bush administration is on? Headed by a surly drunk who famously said, "there ought to be limits to freedom?" Is there any doubt that the government is siding with Principal Morse? Not once you see Morse's lawyer is. He's none other than Ken Starr, the guy who started out investigating a failed real estate deal and ended up encouraging a homely girl to tape a fat girl so he could nail the president for lying about a little humma humma on the side.

Starr said that Morse is right for censoring speech about drugs and another government attorney argued that public schools don't have to tolerate a message inconsistent with its educational mission and that makes me wonder if teaching the Constitution is part of this school's educational mission.

Sam Alito doesn't like that line of reasoning any better than I do. "I find that a very, very disturbing argument," he said. He argued that schools could define their mission so broadly that they could suppress any political speech.

Anthony Kennedy asked if Principal Morse had the authority to squelch the banner if it had said "vote Republican, vote Democrat" and the government hack said she did have the authority, so there.

Clarence Thomas asked, "Have you ever really looked at your hand?"

Frederick's lawyer, a guy named Doug Mertz (no relation to Fred) said, "This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs," and asked the court to remember the famous 1969 ruling that said students don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech ... at the schoolhouse gate." But that was a different time.

Lately the court has come down more in favor of the hobnail boot ruling that students' right to free speech isn't absolute, interpreting the words, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech..." unless it's about drugs and it's just kids who can't vote anyway so fuck 'em.

A decision in the case is expected by the end of June around 4:20 PM.

Bad guys and good writing.

I was doing a bit of research (OK, I was goofing off) following the bread crumbs wherever they took me. I started looking at events in 1941 and wound up reading a review of Saving Private Ryan written by a former soldier of the Waffen SS, those guys in black with the Death's Head on their caps. The guys who ran the camps. Yeah, those guys. Real nice. This old soldier's movie review is written as an open letter to Steven Spielberg and I'm doing fine with it until I hit this:

"...almost all the German soldiers seen in "Private Ryan" had their heads
shaved ... something totally in conflict with reality. Perhaps you were
confusing, in your mind, German soldiers with Russians of the time.

Or else, your Jewishness came to the fore, and you wanted to draw
a direct line back from today's skinheads to the Waffen-SS and other German
soldiers of the Third Reich."

The rest of the review is more anti-Jewish spew, inadvertently revealing more about the man than the movie and reinforcing all those negative things we thought about Nazis.

And that got me thinking about writing bad characters, the kind of person who would spend all day counting shoes at Auschwitz and then go home feeling like she'd done a good day's work, blind to their role in the evil that surrounds them.

If we're to write these people honestly, we have to climb inside their skin and walk around a bit. We have to know how they were bent as children in order to grow up so twisted as adults. When they say things that we find unacceptable, and there were plenty of things people said in 1941 that we would find grossly inappropriate today, we have to understand the context, right or wrong, because no one except Richard III has ever set out to be a villain. They rationalize. They accept the unacceptable. They twist things around in their heads so that they're right and everyone else is wrong. They're human.

See where following bread crumbs can lead you?

I'm curious how you write villains, if you'd like to comment. But it's Monday, so there's no pressure.

Oh, and I'll cross post this to Crimespace. It seems to be the place everyone is hanging out these days.

Further adventures in the passive voice.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, known to the president as "Beanie-Baby," channeled the ghost of the Gipper today when he said, "mistakes were made," a favorite GOP locution of near-guilt. That's right. No one actually made those mistakes, they just appeared on the porch of the Justice Department like a flaming sack of dog turds.

Gonzales held a press conference today to explain away the politically motivated firings of US Attorneys. But Congress, now with New and Improved Subpeona Power™, wants to find out just who it was who put the match to the burning sack.

Could it be Karl Rove, a man quite willing to sell out anything, including justice, in return for a slim political advantage? Or could it be Harriet Miers, the gushing former Supreme Court nominee who thinks George Bush is like, the bestest president ever?

We don't know and Alberto the Torture King isn't saying. Because that would require the active voice and no Republican has used the active voice since the Eisenhower administration.