And sex. Did I mention sex?

These [...]]]> It’s lurid. History’s all full of sex, intrigue, greed, passion, spectacle, treachery, quests, pursuits, color, eccentrics, weirdness, wildness, perversity, heroes and villains (mostly villains), melody, noise, incense and decay, betrayal, grandiosity, more sex, folly, and humor. And of course duels, affrays, dust-ups, murderings, backstabbings, bushwhackings, shootings, slaughterings, battles, and mayhem.

And sex. Did I mention sex?

These are, indeed, a few of my favorite things.

Stories! And they’re all true. Yes, History is the potboiler Humanity eternally writes about itself.

I bring this up because of what I’m currently reading for pleasure. I just finished Steve Stirling’s The Sword of the Lady: A Novel of the Change. Which is itself full of chunky alternate-history goodness. And also rocked. Of course, you can’t read it until September 1, 2009. Heh, heh. Privilege of belonging to the writers’ group.

(Although I gloat obnoxiously, I graciously give you the opportunity to pre-order it by clicking on the title. See? I’m a nice guy after all.)

Now I’ve moved on to Juliet Barker’s mad readable Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England, which you can also order by clicking on the title. (Go ahead – at least give it a look.)

I’m about a quarter was through it and already I have several great tidbits and anecdotes I intend to inflict on you share with you. I’ll spare you the earlier ones for now – I really ought to do some writing I’m actually going to get paid for, in order that I might, you know, get paid – in favor of one I hit today.

Unlike a lot of monarchs, Henry V believed in detailed planning, and had a keen appreciation for logistics. (Come to think of it, in that he’s unlike almost all modern rulers, as well.) And if you know anything about the battle of Agincourt (if you don’t, welcome to Wikipedia) you know he relied heavily on English and Welsh longbowmen. Who to be worth anything needed boatloads of arrows.

The flight feathers, which spun the arrows to stabilize their flight, came from geese. Barker doesn’t have the stats for Agincourt per se, but in 1418, three years later, Henry put in an order for 1,190,000 feathers. She indicates they tended to harvest six feathers per goose.

As you know if you read, well, anything I’ve ever written, I’m something of a weapons enthusiast. Yet what I find so damned funny here has nothing to do with the arrows themselves. It’s the geese.

They’re famously surly bastards. They’re often used as watch-beasts (an across-the-alley neighbor keeps some, apparently for such.) Their primary value is held to be that if they detect intruders they’re just noisy as Hell. But the fact is, they’re also big and strong and if you piss them off – which you generally do by a) existing, and b) getting in range – they’ll whack you woggle-eyed with powerful wings while pecking and biting you enthusiastically.

So let’s do the math. 1.2 million feathers at 6 feathers a bird is … 200,000 geese. Each of whom is really going to resent having those feathers plucked from its ass. (But honest, now: you would.)

Keep in mind you can’t kill the damned things. That’s the point to the per-goose limit in the first place:  it would just not be economically viable to whack enough geese to reap 1.2 megafeathers.It’s pure pluck-and-release.

Now think about being one of the His Majesty’s Own Goose-Ass Pluckers. You undoubtedly have a steep quota to meet. Which means: close encounters with some arbitrary number of really angry geese. And face it – any number greater than zero is really gonna hurt.

And you think your job sucks?

Possible preparation for [...]]]> First off: looks as if I didn’t get sick after all, so Joe and Larry are off the hook for the whole Mystery Plague thing. That’s a relief. I didn’t look forward to texting them to get used to the idea of wearing their lungs on the outside or anything.

Possible preparation for a future near you.

Now that’s out of the way, what with one thing and another, I neglected to blog about the Milán/Miller Film Festival, Saturday night at the house of John and Gail Miller. Basically, John and I pick a theme, and then he, with some input from me, selects a couple movies to watch. Gail serves as ever-excellent hostess (i.e., does all the real work.) We’ve had festivals on Giant Monster, Alien Invasion, and sundry Asian themes.

Saturday night’s theme was a Robert Tessier Double Feature, featuring a pair of gritty 1970s action flicks. Tessier was an ex-paratrooper turned character actor who played the shaven-headed tough guy in a lot of flicks. He excelled in looking just mean as hell.

This guy.

He was an Algonquin Indian; Saturday I remarked that I could just see him in a Mohawk and buckskin leggings, wielding a tomahawk in some Pennsylvania forest in 1763. Except you really wouldn’t want to see him there. He’s long been kind of a favorite of both John’s and mine.

Also in attendance were Steve “S.M.” Stirling, his wife Jan, Scott Denning and Patricia Rogers (who’s possibly the most widely-beloved person I know.) Pat and Scott brought tasty hummus dips and ice cream. Steve had created another of his astonishing salads (which introduced me to the delights of garlic-stuffed olives.) Gail cooked up a couple of pizzas from Papa Murphy’s. I brought salsa and chips from Mis Amigos, which seems grossly inadequate, somehow, but was what John and Gail requested. It was all great.

Movies – oh, yes, them. Top of the bill was Walter Hill‘s directorial debut, Hard Times, starring Charles Bronson, who at 54 (!) was no softy, as a bare-knuckle fighter; and James Coburn, charismatic as ever as the gambler who promotes him through a series of street fights. Guess who Big Chuck winds up facing?

Guess who wins, too. It was not Bob Tessier’s lot to win many of those climactic cinematic battles. If you wonder why he seldom played the lead, pop another squint at the picture up there. (Reportedly, he was an extremely nice guy in real life. He could afford to be.)

Second feature was The Longest Yard – the 1974 Burt Reynolds original, not the remake.

I have to admit I’m not as enthusiastic about either movie as John is. Hard Times I find pretty good, Longest Yard not bad. Both worthy of a watch, and made for an excellent evening.

Of course it’s hard to go wrong with company like that. Not a dud in that string of firecrackers.

(Hit the picture of Charles Bronson or the title links to buy the movies mentioned through Amazon. Thanks for supporting this site!)

Of course my friends will be thrilled to learn they may have dined with Typhoid Victor. Joe doesn’t read the blog, so he’ll be spared the anxiety. Larry does, as you [...]]]> Just got home from dinner at Los Cuates with Joe and Larry and found my throat felt like sandpaper. This is not a good sign.

Of course my friends will be thrilled to learn they may have dined with Typhoid Victor. Joe doesn’t read the blog, so he’ll be spared the anxiety. Larry does, as you can tell if you follow the comments to this blog.

Sorry, dude. Sure hope I didn’t infect you.

Dinner was good as always. I had chile con queso (almost as good as mine) and a carne adovada burrito, bringing home some of each to feed me on the morrow.

Mostly the point was to get Larry and Joe together, since they hadn’t done so in some time. Some fascinating conversation on the world of technology.

Joe didn’t stay the whole time. When he wasn’t there Larry and I discussed this very blog and its role in my life – and vice versa. He expanded on a most excellent detailed email he sent me right before I took off to meet with him and Joe, which I had but time to skim.

Larry was even kind enough to spring for dinner: many thanks! It seems more as if I should’ve been paying him, but I didn’t argue too vociferously.

Some of the high points: to find the balance I seek, blog less but more often. I ought to do a little more behind-the-scenes blogging on my writing, as well as a bit more on action/adventure entertainment (and you know how much I hate that!) Rationalizing my links. And I need to figure out how to use a three-column WordPress theme without tying up too much time/mental energy figuring out how.

A good time, and most educational. He put me in mind to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which he thoughtfully gave me a copy of a couple years back. This is good because I needed a new self-improvement book to read of a morning. I recommended he read John Scalzi‘s Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony as a trilogy (the last volume changes the philosophical spin of the whole set as well as providing a dramatically very satisfactory conclusion.)

In other news, I’m stoked because I finally worked out the basic plot for a story for a new BattleTech anthology in the works, which I’ve been asked to contribute to (thanks, guys!)

And down came the flakes.

I’d be tempted to call it typical [...]]]> This afternoon I went out the door around 3:30 to go meet Joe at Café Napoli to find snow falling from a sky that was almost exactly half clear. The sun was shining. Basically the whole northern part of the sky was clear.

And down came the flakes.

I’d be tempted to call it typical NM weather, but it really wasn’t. For one thing, I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite like it before. I’m used to sun-showers, and if the wind blows hard enough we can get the somewhat startling phenomenon of a dust storm in the middle of a rainstorm with the sun shining. But not snow coming out of a largely blue sky.

Wasn’t snowing hard, nor in big flakes. But definitely snow.

So, anyway – last night I rewatched Serenity for the first time. Great movie. It surprised me to see it came out in 2005, and yet I hadn’t seen it since catching it in the theater. I fear I let myself kind of get talked out of it by quibblers, both in person and online.

There are certainly some questions that can be raised, at least from an SF-nerd viewpoint. For instance, I had to wonder if Joss Whedon really understands, any better than most of Hollywood does, just how big space is. Did the Serenity really have to fly through a whole cloud of Reaver craft, all seemingly within a long spit of one another, to get from planet to planet?

Then again I might have missed something, and could certainly rationalize it myself. One might also question whether I should have to. On the other hand, I was willing enough to do it. Because the movie earned a certain suspension of disbelief.

Because, it’s really a wonderful movie; and in its own terms almost perfect. I was really impressed. The characters were alive and engaging; the dialogue sparkled. The setting was intriguing. The story was basically all about the characters having to make difficult moral choices. Plus there were lots of guns and SBU. Always a bonus.

And of course it had a truly all-time great movie villain in Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s Operative. I can’t quite bring myself to call him Hans Gruber great, but he comes close. And like the Die Hard villain the Operative works so wonderfully because the part is so damned well written, well acted, and well-directed. It really takes all three.

I suppose this’ll come as small surprise to Firefly fans. Confession: I’ve never watched the show. In spite of the fact that my friend Larry was kind enough to give me the full-season DVD, I’ve not yet gotten to it.

I don’t like series-TV shows. I usually find them weak in content and smug in tone. Then again just about everybody I like and respect enjoyed the series. And hey, I can watch it without commercial breaks, and in the proper episode order. And the movie definitely put me in a frame of mind to watch it.

Serenity is always associated in my mind with V for Vendetta. They came out a year apart, they’re anarchist classics, I loved both of them when I saw them in the theater without having watched or read the originals. And I allowed other people’s opinions to make me doubt my own assessment of them post facto. Which I admit is goofy. (I saw V for Vendetta again for the first time just a few months ago. And was blown away all over again.)

The other, and potentially most fascinating, similarity between them – and the real reason I connect them so strongly – is that a pivotal character in each is a Monstrous Saint. V and the Operative alike believe above all they’re doing the right thing – all the while knowing perfectly well that they are monsters.

Much as I loved Agent Smith‘s bravura Guy Fawkes-masked performance, I think I have to give the edge here to Serenity. Both characters are tragic heroes. Unusually, both know it – but the Operative doesn’t understand his real flaw, which is his belief that the end justifies the means. He has that additional depth: he’s a terrifying villain who, by most assessments is an extraordinarily good man. It’s just that he does awful things.

And he doesn’t hide from it. So you get that incredible exchange when Mal says, “I don’t kill women and children,” and the Operative says, with evident pain, “I do.” Which leads into his frank admission that he is a monster, and moreover that one necessary precondition of the Better World he’s fighting to create is that he himself die. Powerful stuff.

And of course in the end Mal brings him low not by physically defeating him (although he has to physically subdue him) but by moral suasion. He defeats the Operative by attacking his truly unshakable integrity. The Operative chooses defeat because he realizes he has been wrong. Which, well, is awesome.

It’s also interesting to me that in one movie it was the hero who was the Monstrous Saint, and the other the villain. Yet both worked for me (and, well, lots of other people, apparently; like a lot of good movies Serenity tanked in theaters and rocked in DVD.) I guess I’d say in one case the Monstrous Saint fought against oppressors, in the other for them. Makes a difference to me.

(And please don’t take that to mean I believe ends justify means; short form, I don’t believe V did that much that was wrong. The closest I’d call to that was his treatment of Evey – and on watching it again I realized he had a colorable reason to believe she’d consented in advance.)

For that matter please don’t let my enthusiasm for a great screen bad guy imply distaste for the good guys, especially Captain Mal and his own spiky brand of integrity. Nor for the extremely personable Nathan Fillion, whom I first really saw perform in the underappreciated horror/comedy classic Slither, wherein he plays a similar character. And gets to utter one of the great lines of modern cinema: “My easy-going nature is getting sorely fuckin’ tested.”

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to watching the series.

And apologies for going on so long. It’s a big reason U don’t post more frequently … this tendency to run off at the keyboard.