Author: Don

The Semantics of War (… and no sex till 30!)

The talking heads have this week become engaged in a bizarre, twisted parody of a Bud Lite commercial. Civil war! Sectartian violence! Civil war! Sectartian violence! Tastes great! Less filling! Pundits on both sides are popping out of the woodwork with their own favorite definitions for the term “Civil War”, tweaked of course to fit their own personal viewpoint on what’s going on over there.

Now, I’ll be the last person to criticize those media outlets which have actually had the courage to step out of lock-step with the administration and its chosen terminology for doing so. My problem with the way this has unfolded is that the debate over semantics is overshadowing the actual news that feeds it. Hundreds of civilians dead every week, basic services still not restored in many places, thousands fleeing to neighboring countries, and American soldiers (who should never have been sent there to begin with) still being injured or killed on a daily basis while the Saudis and Chinese grow richer from the amount of money we’re borrowing to pay for our little Middle-Eastern excursion… and we tune in to the network news for the latest round of to-may-to vs. to-mah-to?

For all their faults, at least the Bushies provide the comedians with plenty of material. I can’t wait to see the Daily Show and their ilk get hold of the latest memo from the morality-through-ignorance “abstinence education” folks over at Bush’s Department of Health & Human Services, which recommends sexual abstinence until age 30!

For the 90-plus percent of Americans in the 19-29 age bracket who are sexually active, this is the point where you’re supposed to say, “Oops! Too late!” For the rest of you: I’m sorry about your condition, and I hope medical science finds a cure for it in the near future.

Today is Susan’s birthday and I won’t say how old she is, but I will reveal that, should we have the energy after a big steak dinner and the nightly chore of getting the kids into bed, any activities might engage in will be sanctioned by the Bush administration. Well, that is, unless they’ve also issued guidelines on positioning, or prohibitions against… oh, never mind.

An Update on the Search for Publication

Sent off a partial manuscript two weeks ago based on the inquiry I mentioned. I’ve taken a break from sending out queries for the time being because after not working on the manuscript itself for half a month, I looked back at it and decided there were more changes I wanted to make. So I’m temporarily back in edit mode, with agent-hunting to resume soon. Assuming I don’t go back to make more changes, that is.

We’re Number 2! We’re Number 2!

(I started writing this several days ago but didn’t have time to struggle with table formatting inside the blog software until now – so it’s a bit dated, but still relevant).

As Bill Maher pointed out not long ago. in a number of important ways the US has fallen behind any other nations in recent years. In best-to-worst rankings we’re well into the double digits on many health and education issues, freedom of the press, etc.

Well, this week there’s good news and bad news for those who would see our rankings improved. In a poll among British citizens, we came in at a solid number 2 in one category! The bad news is that Al Qaeda was the overall winner.

The category? Nations or organizations posing the greatest threat to world peace.

The results of this poll are clearly ludicrous. I mean, really, for all his faults – George Bush ranked between Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il as a threat to world peace? Preposterous. Let’s debunk this clearly biased paper’s flawed results.

Dictatorial Powers:

Osama Bin Laden Kim Jong Il George Dub Ya
Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers in the streets of many third world nations. Has to get past law enforcement and military to get at potential victims. Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers in Korea. Power limited outside his own country. Can have people yanked off the street, held indefinitely without charges or trial, and tortured, with cheering support from fanatical followers, plus FOX news, countless neo-con think-tanks, Limbaugh-Hannity-Coulter types, etc., and a legal mandate granted by over half the members of the sitting legislative bodies. Worldwide reach.

Winner: USA

Conventional Military

Osama Bin Laden Kim Jong Il George Dub Ya
Bunch of guys with AK-47s, old US-issue stinger missiles given to them by some of the folks in the Bush administration, pipe bombs, box cutters, and molotov cocktails. Not capable of invading or holding foreign territory. Moderate-sized, moderately-equipped army. For all the strutting and posturing, hasn’t attacked anyone recently. Big, well-equipped, modern military and a demonstrated willingness to use it to further his own political goals. Launched poorly justified invasion and occupation of Iraq, now saber-rattling toward Iran.

Winner: USA

Category: Nukes

Osama Bin Laden Kim Jong Il George Dub Ya
Would be perfectly willing to use them if he had any. Fortunately doesn’t, but is still at large to be able to try to get one. Can build bombs in small numbers. No long-range deployment capability. ICBMs, missile subs, and nuclear-capable cruise missiles out the wazoo, with many of them approaching the “Best if used by” date stamped on the casing.

Winner: USA

Category: Death Toll

Osama Bin Laden Kim Jong Il George Dub Ya
Maybe 10,000 at worst, including all 9/11 victims, and making the sweeping generalization that all our troops killed in the middle-east were killed by Al Qaeda. No idea. Lots, probably. Esitmates range from “why should I trouble my beautiful mind with that” to 600,000+, and that’s just in Iraq in the last 4 years.

CLEAR WINNER: USA! USA! USA! WE”RE NUMBER 1!

(Do I really think the US is as dangerous to the world as Kimsama bil Jongen? Of course not – not so long as our system of government still allows us to vote out the guys who are doing this damage to our nation.)

Where is the demand for No Recount?

As of this morning, despite their massive dollar advantage, voter supression drives, robo-calling schemes, and propaganda network, the Republicans have lost control of the House in a big way. As for the Senate, it appears that the Demcrats will also pick up the six seats they need for control, with the Allen-Webb race in Virginia the deciding factor on whether Dick Cheney gets to be a tiebreaker for two more years. At present, Webb is ahead in that race, but only by 8000 or so votes – close enough that there will likely be a recount demanded.

So, to the right-wingers out there who in the last couple of presidential elections have shouted down recount efforts with cries of “Just declare Bush the winner and let’s move on!”: I’m waiting for you to denounce the coming Virginia recounts and just declare Webb the winner.

Because, of course, you’re all nothing if not consistent in your Fair-and-Balanced(tm)-ness.

How Many Snickers Per Gallon Does That Thing Get?

I’m not one of those militantly anti-SUV sorts. I don’t need or choose to own one personally; I think a fair percentage of them are bought as status symbols rather than out of any need (says the guy who drives a Mustang) and there’s a subset of SUV drivers who need to realize their vehicles are not race cars, but in general I’m not going to think much of someone’s choice to drive an Explorer instead of a Camry. (Because it’s those damned Wonder-bread-mobile Camries that are truly evil!)

There are times, though, when it’s tough not to embrace the “SUV as the embodiment of selfishness” school of thought.

Last night was Halloween. I live in a suburban neighborhood populated by lots of families with young children and the weather was unseasonably warm yesterday, so the streets were full of trick-or-treaters. One woman in a full-sized SUV (bearing no handicapped tags or other indication that the driver had some physical impairment) felt it was necessary to drive, rather than walk, to accompany her children on their rounds. The kids would walk to a house, she’d pull up in front of it and idle until they were done. Pull up, idle, pull up, idle, pull up idle, all through the neighborhood. I leave open the possibility that she may have some legitimate, genuine reason for this behavior, but I think it more likely that her motivation was just sheer laziness. Laziness which, in this case, put a large, moving vehicle in the midst of swarms of excited, sugar-laden children.

I hope her kids didn’t wipe their chocolate-laden fingers on the leather upholstry on the way home.

A Nibble!

One of the agencies I e-queried last week has asked me to mail them a partial manuscript. They’ve asked that along with it I send “a cover letter with a short but detailed bio highlighting your publishing credentials and/or related information about you and a one-paragraph blurb that summarizes your work and highlights your pitch.”

I’m at a bit of a loss as to whether this just means to use a slightly modified version of my query letter (with “I am seeking representation before” replaced by “Here is the material you requested”), or whether the agent will expect to see something new here. I’ll be spending some time searching Writers.net and other sites today in search of a clue.

Slow Week

Not much of note so far this week. No new replies from agents save for one who essentially said he was too swamped to take on new clients. Spent Wednesday at an all-day meeting in lovely downtown Trenton, NJ. Bleh. On Tuesday, Bush ran the constitution through a shredder, burnt the resulting slivers, then, with a sigh of pleasure, proceeded to relieve himself on the ashes. Arrest without charges and indefinite detention without trial is now the law of the land here in the good old Land of the Free.

So, yeah. Slow week.

Word to 2008 presidential candidates: I’m voting for whoever’s platform is based on taking the following actions on day 1 in office:

Step 1: Every Politburo member who voted for the repeal of Habeus Corpus is declared an enemy combatant and, under the very law they put into place, swept up and interred without trial at a prison camp in some desert hellhole. Likewise every pundit who went on the air screaming the need to relinquish our safety for our own safety.

Step 2: Repeal the act, but not retroactively. Need to put the fear of “freedomboarding” into those folks for a bit first.

It occurs to me that under the new law I’m quite possibly putting myself at risk of “disappearance” by writing this. Good thing nobody reads it.

Rejection at the Speed of Light

I sent out a few e-queries today, not expecting to hear anything back for a few weeks at least. To my surprise, I got a reply on one of them before I had even sent out the next:

Thank you for your recent letter. I regret to say that your work doesn’t appear to be the kind of material I am currently looking for.

However, opinions vary considerably in this business, and I wish you the best of luck in your search for representation.

Best wishes,

Basically a fairly standard cut-and-paste e-rejection. Doesn’t tell me much but that this particular agent, for reasons unspecified, isn’t interested in seeing my work beyond the query letter. No big deal, really; I expect to get lots like this.

Still, the surprise of insta-rejection spurred me to go back and take another look at my query letter and see where there might be room for improvement.

It was during this review that I realized I had spelled his name wrong.

Oops!

October Surprise Office Pool

If that sort of thing wasn’t frowned upon where I work, I would start a pool to see who can predict this election year’s October Surprise most accurately. Pay a buck, pick an event from a list of choices, and pick a day. At the end of the month, the pot is split between everyone who made a correct prediction.

Make no mistake, the October Surprise is coming. Our Republican masters are in serious danger of losing their monopoly – especially given the impact of recent scandals. The question on my mind is: what form will it take? Let’s look at a couple of possible scenarios:

Terror Alerts, Foiling of Plots, Non-Osama Kill/Capture

A boost in the terror alert level was a useful distraction from other news for a while, but it seems to have lost its potency and today would likely not produce even a blip on the ol’ approval-rating-ometer. We’ve killed or captured “Al Qaeda’s number 2 man” so many times that hardly anyone pays attention to that sort of news anymore.

The recent tactic of announcing a foiled terror plot has met with some success. A couple of guys sitting around in a bar in Florida saying, “Dude, wouldn’t it be cool if we could, like, blow somethin’ up?” becomes “Major Terrorist Ring Disrupted!” An alleged plan to mix multiple liquids into a bomb on board a plane becomes big news, never mind the fact that to turn said liquids into explosive material would require a fair amount of laboratory equipment to also be carried on and set up while the aircraft was in flight, or that British authorities more or less came out and said the US pressured them to make the arrests on a time frame that had to do with politics rather than with catching all the perpetrators and building a solid case against them. For the most part we’ve become jaded to even this method of propaganda, though, so even if they do uncover some new conspiracy, I doubt it will have much effect.

Saddam Sentencing

Saddam will be sentenced before Election Day, and the pundits will be out in force shouting cries of victory while ignoring the fact that by and large Iraqis were better off under the reign of a brutal dictator than they are under US occupation.

Might help the right-wing re-election effort, but in my opinion this in itself won’t be enough.

Osama bin Captured

The administration has a vested interest in keeping Osama alive and free. With him gone as a figurehead, a large portion of the electorate will likely lose interest in the War on Terror™ before there’s a chance to invade any more middle-eastern countries. Of course, if things look desperate enough, they may be forced to play the OBL card. If they can find him, assuming they don’t already know where he is.

And Iran, Iran So Far Awaaay

The same folks who knew where the WMD were in Iraq are convinced Iran is on the verge of blowing up half the planet. Never mind those nuclear experts who say the country is at best years away from building a viable bomb.

A bunch of surgical air strikes and some dramatic footage of exploding buildings will go a long way toward convincing many among the public that the Bushies are still actively Blowing Stuff Up For Freedom. Note that I’m not saying that dropping some ordnance on Irani nuclear sites is a bad idea in itself; I certainly don’t want that lunatic leader of theirs getting his hands on nukes. I suspect, though, that any action we might take at this stage will be motivated by politics rather than accurate intelligence, and will be ineffective and come back to bite us in the long run.

Guess what? As I write this, the Eisenhower Carrier Group is on its way to the Persian Gulf – within easy striking range of Iran.