Boy, oh boy, do I not have time to run this to ground right now:

As an example, [Senator Stuart] Symington once formally requested a report from military sources regarding the possible existence of subterranean superhumans, which one of his constituents had become concerned about after reading a fiction book and mistaking it for non-fiction. [Or so THEY say. -- kah] This and Symington's other senatorial correspondence and papers were donated to the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection (on the University of Missouri campus) in 2002 and are now available to the general public.

But if any of you good people have access to the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, or any idea how to Google up that report, I'm pretty sure I can use it Forever.

You'll be relieved to know that although often bruited as a Majestic-12 member, Symington's name is not on the orthodox list of directors. That said, Stuart Symington (then Air Force Secretary) rode with (MJ-12 member) Forrestal alone in a closed car right before ...

But Forrestal, not Truman, was the doomed man. His relationship with Symington went from bad to worse. For reasons still unclear, Symington embarked, in the words of one author, "upon a kind of personal guerilla warfare" against the Secretary of Defense. ... Friends commented on [Forrestal's] growing paranoia. He was convinced that "foreign-looking men" were following him, and that Symington was spying on him. ... Forrestal finally left office in a formal ceremony on March 28th, his last public appearance.

What followed after the ceremony remains mysterious. "There is something I would like to talk to you about," Symington told Forrestal, and accompanied him privately during the ride back to the Pentagon. What Symington said is not known, but Forrestal emerged from the ride deeply upset, even traumatized, upon arrival at his office. Friends of Forrestal implied that Symington said something that "shattered Forrestal’s last remaining defenses." When someone entered Forrestal’s office several hours later, the former Secretary of Defense did not notice. Instead, he sat rigidly at his desk, staring at the bare wall, incoherent, repeating the sentence, "you are a loyal fellow," for several hours.

Right. I don't have time to run this to ground. Right.

Oh, why am I looking up Stuart Symington in the first place? He's President of the United States on Reality Taft-1,¹ coming soon to Steve Jackson Games, and thence to you good people. In a project I'm not sure I can name, because you just saw what happens to people who cross Stuart Symington.

1. Harry Truman (D; dies in office 1947); Joseph Martin (R; Speaker of the House, succeeds to office and does not run in 1948); Robert A. Taft (R; defeats Alben Barkley in 1948, dies in office 1953); Harold Stassen (R; elected V.P. in 1948, succeeds Taft in 1953; defeats Adlai Stevenson in 1956); Stuart Symington (D; narrowly defeats Vice-President Henry Cabot Lodge in 1960).

• 07:44 @renatawc Ha ha! Good one. :) And: True story. ;) #
• 07:46 iPhone updates today: Scrabble, TwitBird, Minigore (FUN game, that one!), NASA App, Bump, and Snake Galaxy. Scrabble update most useful. ;) #
• 08:44 Huzzah! Chrome for Mac (beta) is now available! bit.ly/ZJ3zG (Of course I find this out just as I'm abt to leave the computer...) :/ #
• 08:52 @nicolespag Watch out for mice in bottles! #
• 08:58 Safari > Chrome. There's no one-click way 2 open a group of bookmarks at 1ce like there is in Safari.
  I'll use it for a bit tho. Experiment. #
• 09:07 @Sernett Also, Mira Sorvino is, in fact, a shapechanged owlbear. FACT! #
• 11:51 #WoW is still down for maintenance. It's officially Patch Day, it is! ;) #
• 11:57 @MatthewWRossi Who's that? ::Googles:: Oh! Hawt. #
• 11:58 @DaveTheGame Compendium trick? Explain! #
• 11:58 @brian_carnell Pic! #
• 
  12:09 @MatthewWRossi Who now? ::Googles:: Ah. #
• 12:10 @amybruni A Christmas Story is a exceptionally difficult to beat. ;) #
• 12:13 Bleah, what's with Chrome and YouTube videos? #
• 12:29 @MrBigFists Second the motion. #
• 12:30 @MatthewWRossi Oh, definitely heard of the show, but can't keep the names of the chrs in my head to save my life, except for Marsha. #
• 12:35 Judging from commercials, I can definit
  ively say that Ghost Hunter ripoffs are not even theoretically possible of offering anything new. #
• 12:35 Obviously, analysis of commercials is what I'm reduced to as I wait patiently for the server issues in #WoW to resolve. #firstworldproblem #
• 12:57 Summary of today's ep of _A Haunting_: "Don't worry, Wiccan lady, these good Christian ideals will save you from your CRAZY magic!" /sigh #
• 12:58 @brian_carnell Noo, there's everything right about that item! Woo! D&D! Wooo! :) #
• 13:08 @julianjrossi Canadians can watch moose instead! #
• 13:12 Grr. Was able to select my character but am hung on the loading screen. #WoW #
• 13:17 @mattycus Yarp! #
• 13:28 @mercuryeric Haven't noticed a difference twixt it and Safari. What site's a good example? #
• 13:29 @TheCreide Geh. I recommend a couple hours of #WoW as treatment. (Once the servers are up, of course.) #
• 16:26 OMG, MST3K is on Hulu. /fibrilate #
• 23:50 Wherein I discuss today's Big Patch
  Day: bit.ly/7XniaI #WoW #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

In honor of the first snow of winter...

I Hate Snow

To The Tune of Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Authorship Unknown

1. Oh, the traffic outside is frightful,
Accidents aren't so delightful,
I'm stuck in this stop-and-go,
I hate snow, I hate snow, I hate snow.

2. Cars are having troubles stopping,
Each other they keep popping;
I am moving so really slow,
I hate snow, I hate snow, I hate snow.

When I make it back home tonight
How I'll hate going out in the storm;
Because cutting wood really bites,
But I need more to stay warm.

3. Traffic is slowly dying,
While I sit here I keep crying
Cause it just won't end, I know.
I hate snow, I hate snow, I hate snow.

When I make it back home tonight
How I'll hate going out to the store;
And the crowds that I'll have to fight,
I am sure that they won't have any more.

4. Oh, the blizzard outside is frightful,
Snowflakes aren't so delightful,
I'm trapped with no place to go,
I hate snow, I hate snow, I hate snow.

The last time I dedicated myself to acquiring tier gear was with Abethany and her Magister's set. In fact, you can see her wearing it in the icon I used for this post and for the profile pic on Abethany's Twitter feed.

Despite the fact that I think it's ugly...

...I have nevertheless decided that I will make the effort to collect all five pieces of the latest tier gear, the Bloodmage's Regalia (and later Sanctified Bloodmage's Regalia).

Reason? None, other than I haven't pursued such a thing in a very long time indeed, nearly four years actually. Anyhoo, that's the new goal.

So it is written!

P.S. Here's what Abethany looks like now:

Patch 3.3 contained a lot, including new content in the form of a new sprawling dungeon featuring the Lich King and the new Looking for Dungeon (LFD) tool.

How did the first day go? Well, that was a mix of really good with really bad.

Good:
• The Frozen Halls are neat. Fun, quick, nice aesthetic, interesting quest line, and just a delight. I had to PUG the first part since there weren’t enough guildies and despite none of us having ever set foot in it or read a word about what to do, we were able to comport ourselves with enough competence to complete the first section and be ready for the Halls of Reflection.

• The new Looking for Dungeon (LFD) tool is great—when it works, it works really well. I was usually able to join a PUG for the random heroic dungeon in under five minutes, with one notable exception described below (plus an additional incident that took about 20 minutes). I thoroughly enjoy how it groups people together and the fact that you can teleport right into the dungeon is the bee’s knees—when it works. The grouping of people together seems to work well, we all seemed to be evenly matched and we all held our own well. There’s one very bad thing about the tool which is described below.

• The Core Hound Pup is absolutely adorable!

Bad:
• Server congestion was severe, hampering the ability of the LFD tool to teleport people to dungeons and the Halls of Reflection, in particular, were shut down and I had a very frustrating time trying to PUG it to complete the Frozen Halls quest line I had to stop because a couple of the PUG members from the previous group got d/ced. I ultimately had to stop playing altogether because my character was trapped at the dungeon loading screen with no way to escape it, I just had to sit there and wait to time out and be disconnected from the server entirely.

• The LFD tool no longer allows you to look for help for a quest. You can only look for dungeons. This is extremely frustrating. It’s compounded by the fact that since the daily dungeons have been (rightfully) replaced by a weekly raid quest, there’s no way to LFD to complete it. I tried pretty much all day to find a way to complete the quest but to no avail.


I think once the servers calm down that things will be just swimming and awesome, with the exception of the weekly raid quest in particular, and miscellaneous group quests in general. Not being able to get help for quests is unfortunate but being able to get metric tons of emblems of triumph through the LFD tool is good.

I needed some sort of LJ entry to call the Absorbing Man commentary closed. It was fun, and we'll do more of that sort of thing when time allows, but I had to finally leave the bar and go home, if you know what I mean.

That being said --one interesting thing I noticed in the previous discussion (besides how many of you know a lot about Carl "Crusher" Creel, The Absorbing Man (tm)) -- in all the comments made, not one person, as far as I can recall, made any mention of the drawing I posted. I point this out not to goad anyone into giving praise or an opinion on the drawing (especially if it's along the lines of, "it stinks") but because it's a good illustration of an aspect of my career that used to bother me a lot, and doesn't so much now. Basically, my writing often merits a response of some sort, my drawing does not, or rarely does. Let me stress that I'm gratified anything I put out there gets some sort of response out of folks out there. Secondly, I'm not a creator who issues art books or sketchbooks or puts out prints, I know what I am and I know what my drawings look like, I know what my art sells for (or doesn't sell for), and I know where I stand in the scheme of things, cartooning-wise. I've also learned to deal with the fact that humor cartoonists often are perceived as either funny or not funny, and that's pretty much the extent of the feedback unless you are a super-sharp, important satirist like Feiffer (he's funny), or a super-skilled draftsman, like, well, I'd offer up Richard Thompson as a modern example (and he's funny). it's just something that really struck me on this occasion and I felt like discussing it. So, this honestly isn't a cry for attention, or for a pep talk, I'm in a good mood (except for a headache and anxiety over finances, but otherwise, yeah, I really am) and I like the drawing just fine and am glad the last post entertained a bunch of people, myself included. I wish I had time to finish my Mole Man drawing, or the damned Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android piece that I never quite nailed down some months back. Among the several others I started and had to toss in a pile. I will, though, and we'll talk.

In the meantime -- this shit year's almost over, and this shit decade's almost over. Yay. Feel free to toss out the names of some comics you enjoyed this past year. I'm so backed up my list would be somewhat dated (I'm a year or three behind on a lot of stuff: I just read Paris, by Andi Watson and Simon Gane and really liked it, ditto The War at Ellesmere by Faith Erin Hicks, both from my home publisher, SLG. I just picked up the Doug Wright book in April while doing a signing at Bergen Street Comics. I finally read The Rabbi's Cat this year, borrowed from the library --it's great, btw -- just finally catching up with Richard Thompson's great Cul De Sac strip). I loved The Toon Treasury of Children's Comics. Popeye vol 4 just dropped, essential. Hellboy Library vol 3, beautiful stuff. I liked The Simpsons #50 by Sergio Aragones. I mainly read books I get from publishers I'm working for. I admit it. Haven't read Asterios Polyp, it's on a shelf. Haven't yet read The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke. Want to read the new Sacco book. Haven't read Love and Rockets vol 2, series 3, chapter 7, or whatever they call it now. I'm behind on various and sundry Gilbert Hernandez books. Haven't picked up the Rex Morgan book. Haven't read this year's Dick Tracy or Little Orphan Annie volumes, they're on a shelf. Fell behind on the Peanuts books. Haven't read A Drifting Life, yet, it's by my bed, along with Blackjack vol 7-8 or 20 or whatever. I'm ignorant of practically every comic on the web, I admit it, I have no bias against the format or delivery mechanism, I just have no time to stay in touch with any web strips, and I also don't love reading comics off my monitor. or any monitor. I get a headache. Especially if the comic has elves.

Oh, I am enjoying the Steve Ditko pre-code collection from FBI, crazy, pulpy, great junky stuff. I read some of the wonked-out Jack Kirby Losers comics in the book DC put out this year. Can't remember anything else off the top of my head, I know I've read and enjoyed more than that. Oh, well, no big deal. This isn't my job, and I'm not a goddamned professional critic. What I remember is what I remember, so screw it. The list stops there.

Anyway, what did you read and like (and remember) in 2009? What did you not like? What did you hate? What did you avoid like the plague, what drove you crazy, what disappointed, what surprised, what are you looking forward to next year in funnybook-land?

I didn't see any 2009 movies or tv shows (other than what we worked on), or read any recent books, or watch any wrestling, or play any new video games or pinball machines (if Stern produced any). I did listen to some music from the last year, but it was all on WFMU.org or on MP3's, and I'd have to hunt around to make a list that was longer than songs by The Electric Six, The Thermals, The Ettes, The Black Hollies (was the Night Marchers CD released last year or this year? The last Ladytron CD --2008? The Knife --that's old, right --?) and that's where my memory quits as far as tunes go.

Okay, your turn:

Oops, bit late with this, so I’m backdating it to before midnight, haha. Fuck the future.

I came across this book a few months back, and was reminded of it yesterday. CYCLONOPEDIA: Complicity with Anonymous Materials, by Reza Negarestani. So I did a little look, and found the website. And, if the author will forgive me, here’s the entire, mental description of the book:

The Middle East is a sentient entity – it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ’lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.

An American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along. Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil …

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, Cyclonopedia is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. Cyclonopedia is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

After reading that, I decided that I needed a copy — I mean, christ, wouldn’t you? — and it arrived today. I intend to get into this over Xmas, with a bottle of wine and Xela playing through noise-cancelling earbuds while my family spend a day trying to kill each other over possession of the tv remote.

–

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

It's farkin' COLD here in the Bay area. Yeah, I know it's nothing compared to, say, Montana, but it's all relative, innit? This morning we had frost on the back yard and the water in the bird bath was frozen solid. That's the first time I've seen that since we moved here 2 1/2 years ago.

We're getting flocks of fifteen or so doves at a time, and we've done a superb job of fattening up the squirrels for the winter. We're keeping the wildlife happy.

The flowering vine that grows all over the back fence has surprised us with something that looks like a big, fat, green peapod. The plant puts out pale pink, trumpet-shaped flowers. Could it actually be some kind of a pea plant? It doesn't look like the google images of pea plants I've looked at so far. The crows like to pluck off the flowers. I'm not sure if they're eating them or just being vandals.

Probably Quebec City. It's beautiful, it's unique in North America, the food is marvellous, the history is astonishing, and the people are wonderful.

-- Steve still has a couple of prints on his wall that he bought within the walls of the Old City. It's a great place to find art.

I’ve pounded out the mystery portion of the book, and now I’m hitting the denouement… this all went so fast. Comics are definitely faster than novels, but oy, kind of strange nonetheless.

I’m really enjoying this process.

Automatically cross-posted from NealBailey.net

Only nearly a week later, LiveScience does a much better job than the Telegraph at explaining the implications of the recent Kew paper on protocarnivorous plants. Naturally, this isn't any surprise to anybody familiar with carnivores: let me introduce you all to the Devil's Claw, which is definitely going to be an essential part of my next garden this coming spring.

The gorgeous Greek edition of THE SEARCH FOR THE RED DRAGON just arrived. There's something particularly thrilling about having a book that features the Argo on the cover printed in Greek.

Last week, I had the great fun of talking to San Antonio Express-News reporter René Guzman about Cthulhu, as an expert source for a piece he was doing on the lighter side of Cthulhu in pop culture.

The result of our chat/interview is up now: "Cult of Cthulhu Crowns Its Icon." I assume the piece is in print somewhere in the greater San Antonio area, too.

Should you be interested further in René Guzman, check out his newsy, chatty blog Geek Speak.

Should you be interested further in the lighter side of Cthulhu in pop culture, well, you know where to go.

And speaking of Cthulhu 101, billzilla wrote a fine and generous review of it for Flames Rising. I always respond with consternation when people thank me for reviewing their game, but in case Bill is more together than I (seems likely), thanks, Bill!

Oh, and Cthulhu 101 made the prestigious OgreCave Christmas Gift Guide ("A Dozen Game Gifts Under $25") for 2009, which is something else nice.

So, the UPS truck was just here, and my Studio Manager came upstairs to tell me the truck had dropped off two packages: a box from my editrix Navah (which contained copies of the Greek edition of RED DRAGON!) and a freaking COOLER from Omaha Steaks.



Examination of the contents label showed it to be a gloriously full cooler:



And at the bottom, the mystery of who sent it stands revealed with a note from my favorite publicists:



It's terribly gratifying to have worked so hard on one's book tour - and then to have that effort recognized in such a kind and thoughtful way. I have wonderful publicists, and I know they work just as hard for me. But this is an awesome thank-you present.

-- Steve has starlings roosting behind his apartment every fall during their migration, and he's often been tempted to return the gesture during their dawn choruses.

I’ve had a bunch of questions on the forthcoming movie version of mine and Cully Hamner’s graphic novel RED, which starts shooting next month (I think). Let me try to field a couple of them.

First off: RED, the book, is 66 pages long. If you were to film 66 pages of comics, you might, might just about get 40 minutes of film out of it. If you added a musical number. The comics-page to film-minute ratio is pretty bad. A straight adaptation of a 150-page graphic novel might, if you squint at it, get you a 100-minute film. But it’s unlikely, because comics and films use time so differently. One page with four lines of dialogue on it can be slowed to a crawl to the point where you have to spend several minutes digesting the information on it. In film, however, four lines of dialogue is four lines of dialogue, and you can’t just pronounce it very slowly for the same time consumption. Beyond filmic/dramatic effects like the pause or montage or whatever, film is timelocked.

So, yes, RED the film is very different. Not least because it needed to generate more material than the book itself actually constituted.

It is in fact best to consider RED as a short story being adapted into film.

Next, and related: RED-the-book is also something of a chamber piece. There are essentially only four characters. (And a lot of people who get killed.) Now, while you can perfectly well make a film with only four characters in — or even just one character — those films tend not to be massive commercial propositions. And Summit is in the business of making commercial films. Also, they needed to expand RED from a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half. So, yes, there are a lot of new characters.

The new characters are all in theme, all in the same line of work as (Paul in the book, Frank in the film) Moses. The theme being, in part (and also poked at in my other books GLOBAL FREQUENCY and RELOAD) the unexploded bombs of the 20th Century.

(This actually gave the Hoebers the excuse to have fun with old spy tropes like CIA Nutter Guy — there’s a lovely piece of business with him in the first half-hour that amused me no end.)

I don’t think any of them are bad. Also, did you see the goddamn cast list that’s signed on for those characters? Bruce Willis as Moses, yes. But also: Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John C Reilly, Helen Mirren, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfus. It reminds me a bit of those 70s films like THE TOWERING INFERNO, that had in them everyone you wanted to see in a film, all at once. RED is a bit like that, only with more automatic weapons.

Bruce Willis: when you look back over his filmography, that man’s actually had an incredibly weird career. DIE HARD and all that, sure… but also FIFTH ELEMENT, TWELVE MONKEYS, PULP FICTION, an adaptation of a Harlan Ellison short story for TV and getting a film adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut book made by sheer force of will. Not bad.

The tone: no, the film isn’t as grim as the book. The book is pretty grim. But it’s also pretty small. When I sell the rights to a book, they buy the right to adapt it in whatever way they see fit. I can accept that they wanted a lighter film, and, as I’ve said before, the script is very enjoyable and tight as a drum. They haven’t adapted it badly, by any means. People who’ve enjoyed the graphic novel will have to accept that it’s an adaptation and that by definition means that it’s going to be a different beast from the book. The film has the same DNA. It retains bits that are very clearly from the book, as well as, of course, the overall plotline. But it is, yes, lighter, and funnier. And if anyone has a real problem with that, I say to you once again:

Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle.

I mean, if you don’t want to see a film with Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle, I’m not sure I want to know you.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I must admit I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be standing in line at a grocery store and see a magazine that had the words "gay douchebag" emblazoned on the cover.

In fact, "douche" and "douchebag" seem to be rather in vogue at the moment...a dubious accomplishment.

Look at it for a minute. You’ll get it.

Or if you don’t, please, spike your Tab with Drano.

This is real, btw, not a manip.

Math fail, ethics fail, and hypocrisy fail all in one.

Automatically cross-posted from NealBailey.net

And because I'm going to be incommunicado, I bring everyone the annual seasons greetings card, just for mrdankelly.

I've met many serious, enthusiastic, and dedicated bonsai experts over the years. There's dedication, and then there's the dedication to find beauty in raising poison ivy as bonsai. That's a lot more dedication than I have in me, and having to wash one's tools in gin just confirms what Evan Dorkin has been saying for years.