Bye Bye Dickie!

Richard Pombo, (R, Exxon) goes down to defeat.

Endangered species and persons sensitive to air pollution across the country can breathe a little easier tonight. Pombo's all out assault on environmental protection regulation, federal land stewardship, and global warming mitigation will continue to damage this country for decades to come.

Asshole.

Bye Bye Donnie...

Please be sure to let the door hit you in that fat desk chair inhabiting ass as you leave. You mendacious little sack of putrid protoplasm. You incompetent fatuous neocon chickenhawk. Leave before I taunt you once again. PHHFFFPT!

How did I do?

Election Eve Predictions:

PA Governor: Rendell(D) over Swann(R) by 15%
(Actual: 20%)

PA US Senate: Casey(D) over Santorum(R) by 8%
(Actual: 18%)

Democratic US House pickup in PA: 4 seats
(Actual: 3 with 1 additional probable after recount)
Update: Fitzpatrick just made his concession.
That makes 4 pick ups in PA.


Democratic pick up in US House nationally: 37 seats
(Actual: 29 with 7 additional races too close to call)
Update: NBC projects a pickup of 33 seats with 4 other seats still too close to call

Democratic pickup US Senate: 6
(Missouri, Montana, Ohio, PA, RI, Virginia)
(Right)

Republican pickup US Senate: 1
( Maryland)
(Wrong)

50/50 tie US Senate
(Actual: D 51, R 49)

Local Races:

PA House: Conklin(D) over Spencer(R) by 8%
(Actual: 18%)

PA Senate: Corman(R) over Eich(D) by 3%
(Actual: 12%)

PA US House: Peterson(R) over Hilliard(D) by 14%
(Actual: 20%)

Democratic pick-up PA House: 5

(Actual: 5 with 2 additional possibles after recounts)

Well, remember you heard it here first -- back in October 2002

from the WaPo:

GREELEY, Colo., Nov. 4 -- During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush and his aides sternly dismissed suggestions that the war was all about oil. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declared. "This is not about that," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

Now, more than 3 1/2 years later, someone else is asserting that the war is about oil -- President Bush.

Told you so. Told you so. Neocon scum.

Nelson Bond

I met Mr Bond many years ago at a convention in Roanoke.  Somehow, I ended up with the great good fortune of talking to him for 5 or 6 hours that day. He gave me an veritable seminar on the old pulp days. A true gentleman, he was a fascinating tale teller. He was also for many years one of the foremost booksellers in fandom.

from Locus:

Nelson Slade Bond was born November 23, 1908, in Scranton PA, and grew up in Philadelphia. He attended Marshall University, Huntington WV, from 1932 to 1934, and that was also where he met his wife, Betty Gough Folsom; they married in 1934, and had two sons. He worked as a public relations field director for the Province of Nova Scotia in 1934-'35, then began freelance writing, at first with non-fiction pieces.

The first of his many story sales came in 1935, but he came to science fiction and fantasy in 1937 with SF ''Down the Dimensions'' (Amazing) and the memorable humorous fantasy ''Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies'' (Scribner's). The latter, which spawned several related stories, was turned into a radio series, and eventually a TV play. He wrote extensively for Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Weird Tales, and non-genre magazines Scribner's and Blue Book. His ''Magic City'' in Astounding (1941), part of the ''Meg the Priestess'' series, was very popular. His works were collected in Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies and Other Fantastic Tales (1946), The Thirty-first of February (1949), The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman (1950), No Time Like the Future (1954), and Nightmares and Daydreams (1968)

from the Roanoke Times

Nelson Bond's career included fantastical fiction, radio and TV, and local theater.

He wrote about bumbling space travelers, invisible companions, a great bird that would hatch from the Earth as from an egg, a secret race of superhumans who could walk through walls.

He wrote radio scripts and television plays when the mediums were still young, and was once named in a lawsuit filed by Orson Welles -- though he quickly got himself dropped from the suit.

Though he retired from fiction writing in the 1950s, books collecting his stories continued to appear, the most recent, "Other Worlds Than Ours," published just last year.

Longtime Roanoke resident Nelson Bond died Saturday of complications from heart problems, less than a month shy of his 98th birthday. Bond, once called the dean of Roanoke writers, leaves behind more than 250 short stories and a career that earned him the admiration of authors as diverse as Isaac Asimov and Sharyn McCrumb.

"Nelson Bond was large on the horizon for anyone who enjoyed fantastic literature as far back as the '30s," said Harlan Ellison, the 2006 Grand Master Award recipient from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

"For originality and inventiveness he was rara avis," an extraordinary person, Ellison said. "He wrote a clean line of prose, because he understood in that best part of a writer's craft where the soul resides that when you have a fantastic idea in the story line, you must have internal logic."

Ellison, who built his own writing career on short stories, looked to Bond for inspiration, as did Ray Bradbury, who in a 2001 interview with The Roanoke Times praised Bond's sense of humor and quirky imagination.

Born in 1908, Bond grew up in Philadelphia, where his father ran a public relations firm. He attended West Virginia's Marshall College, now Marshall University, where he met Betty Folsom, marrying her in 1934. By 1939, when the couple moved to Roanoke, Bond had already established himself as a prolific and popular writer. Often, he dictated his stories and his wife typed them.

Throughout the 1930s, '40s and '50s he wrote sports, detective and fantasy stories that appeared in magazines ranging from Esquire to Weird Tales. As radio and then television caught on, he was there, scripting hundreds of shows for the national networks.

When he entertained guests in the basement of his Roanoke County home, Bond often shared war stories of his time in television.

He scripted the 1957 CBS teleplay "The Night America Trembled," dramatizing the national reaction to the Orson Welles radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds." It was that show that resulted in Welles' lawsuit.

Bond's signature story was the tongue-twistingly titled "Mr. Mergenthwirker's Lobblies," the story of a man with two invisible companions who can foretell the future. He wrote several sequels and adapted them to radio. When "Mergenthwirker's" aired on NBC in 1946, it was the first full-length play broadcast by a television network.

The teleplay's director, Fred Coe, who went on to be a powerful television producer, invited Bond to join him in the new medium of television, but Bond declined. He later spoke of Coe's offer as a great opportunity that he had missed.

By the 1950s, frustrated with the oppressive working conditions for writers in Hollywood and the death of the pulp magazines, Bond retired from writing. He first opened a public relations firm in Roanoke, then became a bookseller. He was also instrumental in founding the Showtimers community theater, where his nationally renowned stage adaptation of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" was first performed.

Betty Bond had her own career in local television, interviewing notable locals for "The Betty Bond Show" on WSLS (Channel 10).

But Nelson Bond's writing career wasn't quite over. Ellison recalled badgering Bond in the early 1970s to write his first new story in more than a decade, "Pipeline to Paradise," which was eventually published in 1995.

"I'm the one who shook Nelson out of retirement," Ellison said. The new story proved that even though Bond had not written fiction in years, "he still had the chops."

In the 1970s Bond's fans gathered locally to form the Nelson Bond Society, which became the seed for many of the Roanoke-based science fiction conventions and clubs.

In 1998, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored him with an Author Emeritus award. In 2003, Bond donated his papers to the Marshall University library, which created a replica of the office in Bond's home where he wrote most of his stories.

Fred Eichelman, who runs the Point North science fiction convention, called Bond a "Renaissance person." His organization's latest newsletter has a photo of Bond and "The Empire Strikes Back" screenwriter Leigh Brackett arm in arm on the cover.

Eichelman, a retired schoolteacher who used Bond's stories in the classroom, recalled an instance when a student wrote to Bond asking what motivated him to write.

"My motivation was to put three meals on the table for my family," Bond replied.

Even with his most creative years behind him, Bond said in 2001 that he had never grown bored. "You've just got to stay interested in life, that's all."

He is survived by his wife, Betty, sons Kit and Lynn, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Election Eve Predictions:

PA Governor: Rendell(D) over Swann(R) by 15%

PA US Senate: Casey(D) over Santorum(R) by 8%

Democratic US House pickup in PA: 4 seats

Democratic pick up in US House nationally: 37 seats

Democratic pickup US Senate: 6
(Missouri, Montana, Ohio, PA, RI, Virginia)

Republican pickup US Senate: 1
( Maryland)

50/50 tie US Senate

Local Races:

PA House: Conklin(D) over Spencer(R) by 8%

PA Senate: Corman(R) over Eich(D) by 3%

PA US House: Peterson(R) over Hilliard(D) by 14%

Democratic pick-up PA House: 5

“Godzilla’s Acre”

from Kolchak:

Nearly everyone who’s seen a Godzilla movie knows that the Big G originated in Japan. However, the movie that actually introduced Godzilla has not been available in America until relatively recently.

I’m not talking about . Godzilla, King Of the Monsters. I’m talking about the original Japanese production, Gojira. “King Of Monsters” includes an hour’s worth of footage from the original, rearranged and re-edited to incorporate new scenes with Raymond Burr. However, a full-length version of Gojira had a short theatrical run in America in 2004 and it’s now part of a classy--and inexpensive--DVD boxed set with Godzilla, King Of the Monsters..

Even if you’ve seen other movies in this series, I think Gojira is going to surprise you.

According to the background material that comes with the DVDs, Gojira was born out of pure necessity. In early 1954, a major project for Toho studios in Japan fell through. In order to fill the hole in their production schedule, the studio heads decided to make a movie about a giant monster awakened by an atomic blast.

By itself, this idea was nothing special; American movie-goers had already been introduced to The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. What makes,Gojira different is the way this basic idea is handled. In it’s own way, the movie is a sincere attempt to grapple with a world with the atomic bomb, just as films like United 93 attempt to come to terms with a world where America can be attacked by terrorists.

In the case of Gojira, though, the movie happens to include a man in a latex dinosaur suit.

Much of the credit for .Gojira’s tone can be given to director and co-scripter Ishiro Honda. The son of a Buddhist priest, Honda was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army in 1936, and fought as foot soldier for eight years in occupied China. After Japan’s surrender, he saw the ruins of Hiroshima on his way home.

As Honda , who died in 1993, told one interviewer, “Most of the visual images I got were from my war experience. After the war, all of Japan, as well as Tokyo, was left in ashes. The atomic bomb had emerged and completely destroyed Hiroshima.

“If Godzilla had been a dinosaur or some other animal,” he said., “he would have been killed by just one cannonball. But if he were equal to an atomic bomb, we wouldn’t know what to do. So I took the characteristics of an atomic bomb and applied them to Godzilla.”

Honda came to Gojira,after directing documentaries for Toho, so the movie has a grainy, newsreel look that helps to establish the story’s realism. That can still be seen in “King Of Monsters,” though. There are some things that don’t make into the American version, or, if they do, it’s in a very altered form.

The original includes a scene where the members of a government committee argue over telling the public that the appearance of Godzilla is connected to atomic testing ( They finally decide to do so.)

During Godzilla’s rampage through Tokyo, there’s a touching scene where a mother tries to comfort her children by telling them that they’ll be with their father soon. In “King Of Monsters”, this scene is reduced to just a few seconds, with no dialogue.

In the same movie, after the oxygen destroyer kills Godzilla (apparently), Raymond Burr intones, “ The whole world could wake up and live again.” In the original, though, Dr. Yemane warns, “If we continue testing H-Bombs, another Godzilla will one day appear.”

(If you’re wondering why I’m using the name Godzilla, no matter which movie I’m referring to, it’s mostly a matter of convenience. However, in this DVD set, the subtitles in Gojira, do use the name Godzilla, despite the title of the movie. Honda’s quote also used Godzilla.)

In general, Gojira has a darker, more somber tone than its American cousin, and it’s filled with images of ruined cities and orphaned children, inspired by reports from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In comparison, Burr tells the story of Godzilla, King of the Monsters as a flashback, which eliminates some of the tension immediately, since we can be fairly sure that Burr’s character survived the monster’s attack.

Still, I really don’t want to badmouth “King Of Monsters” here. It’s nobody’s classic, but it’s fun to watch. In addition, the scenes with Burr are integrated pretty well from a technical viewpoint, particularly when you consider that the filmmakers are doing it without the help of computers. It’s just a very different movie from Gojira.

***

It looks like it’s time for me to start earning my merit badge in self-promotion. I’ve got essays in two books of BenBella’s Smart Pop series which are now in stores. One is Star Wars On Trial , which also has contributions by David Brin and Mathew Woodring Stover. The other is Getting Lost , edited by Orson Scott Card.

The first book has a different format from most of the other Smart Pop entries. Pairs of writers debate different questions related to the Star Wars film. If you want to get a taste of what the book is like, check out the website at (surprise, surprise): www.starwarsontrial.com.

I also have a short story in Lance Star-Sky Ranger, a pulp-style anthology now available from Wild Cat Books. You can take a close look at the book at: www.lulu.com/wildcatbooks.

We return you now to your regularly scheduled blog.
 

The Tragic Consequences of Cocaine Use Exposed

Maybe there's more to Bush Avoidence Syndrome than we thought. Watch in horror and shame as the Resident misidentifies the Congresscritter he is stumping for not once, but twice. (here)

And he's the Decider?

gHod, somebody please get him from behind the wheel before he kills again.

Seems we're not the only ones who are confused...

MEMPHIS - Would-be rescuers ended their search Friday for a manatee that strayed an unprecedented 700 miles up the Mississippi River, leaving the warm-water mammal to an uncertain fate far north of its natural range.

The manatee, which had been spotted several times since Sunday along the Memphis riverfront, eluded a rescue team that had hoped to haul it by truck to Florida.

Biologists were unsure if the animal could find its way back to warmer waters or how long it could survive so far north. (more)

New Jersey court recognizes right to same-sex unions

via CNN

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples.

But the court left it to the Legislature to determine whether the state will honor gay marriage or some other form of civil union.

Advocates on both sides of the issue believed the state posed the best chance for gay marriage to win approval since Massachusetts became the only state to do so in 2003 because the New Jersey Supreme Court has a history of extending civil rights protections.

Instead, the high court stopped short of fully approving gay marriage and gave lawmakers 180 days to rewrite marriage laws to either include gay couples or create new civil unions.

"The issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people," the court said in its 4-3 ruling.

New Jersey lawmakers voted to allow domestic partnerships in 2004, but they have been reluctant to delve into the sensitive issue of marriage.

Under domestic partnerships, gay couples have some benefits of marriage, such as the right to inherit possessions if there is no will and healthcare coverage for state workers. (more)

Finally, some sanity prevails in this country.

Jesus Christ on a Raft

War Room - Salon.com:

Rick Santorum and the 'Eye of Mordor'

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings.' According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the 'Eye of Mordor' has been focused on Iraq instead.

'As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,' Santorum said. 'It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.'

We're sure that we wouldn't either, if only we had the slightest idea of what Santorum was saying. The Courier Times translates for those of us who are not so conversant in spooky Tolkienese: The 'Eye of Mordor,' it seems, was 'the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.'

To be fair, Santorum's interview with the editorial board wasn't all about fantasy. Well, at least not the Dungeons and Dragons kind. Santorum said that he disagreed with the notion that the United States is 'bogged down' in Iraq. As for talk of a troop withdrawal? Santorum said: 'I don't think you ask that question. I know that's the question everybody wants to ask. But I don't think anyone would ask that question in 1944, 'Gee, how long are we going to be in Europe?' We're going to be in Europe until we win.'

-- Tim Grieve

Doesn't surprise me much. I have always thought of him as the Dark Helmut of the wingnut right. Taller than Rick Moranis, but far less funny (at least by intention).

He'll have plenty of time to read his stained and well paged Gor books after the forthcoming elections.

First the War in Iraq was a comma, now it's Sauron bait.

Sigh.

Daily Show: What Exactly Is President Bush's Job?

Jon does it again. Masterful.

Asylum Street Spankers Video

Just too, too much.

Charles L Grant

A man of great wit, wielder of an impossibly huge literary talent and the possessor of a stunningly giving heart.

Someone who could make you laugh as the ghouls were sawing off your head and whose horror stories could frighten the bejeesus out of the staunchest secular humanist. 

Fan of his beloved football Giants. 

Fellow devotee of chop-sockee movies.

And a great Scot as well.

That was a bit of what Charlie brought to the world.

I had the privilege to call him my friend.

Ghod how I will miss him.

.


from Locus Online:

Writer and editor Charles L. Grant, born 1942, died yesterday, Sept. 15, 2006, shortly after returning home from a long hospital stay. Grant wrote over 100 books, mostly horror and fantasy, under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms, notably the "Oxrun Station" novels set in an imaginary Connecticut town. He won Nebula Awards for short story "A Crowd of Shadows" and novelette "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye", World Fantasy Awards for anthology Shadows (first in an 11-volume series), collection Nightmare Seasons, and novella "Confess the Seasons", a special British Fantasy Award in 1987, a Life Achievement Stoker Award in 2000, the World Horror Grandmaster Award in 2002, and the International Horror Guild Living Legend Award in 2003.

From International Horror Guild:

Charles L. Grant has been writing for thirty some years now, and in that time he's published over 100 books in various genres, with a number of his novels appearing on the bestseller lists of USA Today, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and London Times. His nearly two hundred short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines worldwide. He also edited the award-winning anthology series, Shadows. Other anthologies included Gothic Ghosts (with Wendy Webb), the Gallery of Fear, and the Greystone Bay series.

In 1987 he received the British Fantasy Society's Special Award, for life achievement. In addition, he has received two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for his writing and editing. In 2000 he was given the Horror Writers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002 he was honored with the Grandmaster Award of the World Horror Convention.

A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Grant served two years in Vietnam. He is a past officer of the Science Fiction Writers of America, served ten years on the Board of Directors of the World Fantasy Awards, and is a past president and trustee of the Horror Writers Association. He shares his Victorian home in northwestern New Jersey with his writer/editor wife, Kathryn Ptacek, five cats, and a lot of cobwebs and a few earwigs. Currently he is at work on a dark fantasy novel.

Star Trek Meets Monty Python

Via Kolchak

President Bush uses Little Richard as translator

The Simpsons vs Star Trek

A sweet sanity.....

What I did on my summer vacation

David Hartwell wins Best Editor Hugo

Best Editor: Finally!

My convention boss Scott Dennis, on behalf of the Clothiers Guild, presented David Hartwell, with this shirt, commemorating his Hugo win for Best Editor.

Take that, you mangy little curr!

Keith Olbermann does a wonderful job articulating the rage induced by Donald Rumsfeld's mendacious little paen to fascism at the American Legion meeting in Salt Lake City. Watch, oh my children, and marvel at the power of words when they are bravely spoken to power.

from Crooks and Liars:

By: Jamie Holly on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 6:22 PM - PDT

Keith had some very choice words about Rumsfeld’s "fascism" comments tonight. Watch it, save it and share it.

Video - WMV Video - QT

Olbermann delivered this commentary with fire and passion while highlighting how Rumsfeld’s comments echoes other times in our world’s history when anyone who questioned the administration was coined as a traitor, unpatriotic, communist or any other colorful term. Luckily we pulled out of those times and we will pull out of these times.

Remember - Rumsfeld did not just call the Democrats out yesterday, he called out a majority of this country. This wasn’t only a partisan attack, but more so an attack against the majority of Americans.

The transcript of Keith’s comments tonight is available below the fold.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

We end the countdown where we began, our #1 story, with a special comment on Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday. It demands the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom;

More<

Happy Fourth Of July!

Let America be America again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!