So then

While I’m waiting for my (really very mighty and powerful) bunnies to kick in, I'm also waiting for this hideously decorated day to finally gasp romantically and then crawl back into the crypt it emerged from this morning.

Oh.

Did you not know that I do not much enjoy Valentine’s Day? Huh.

Here... push the little button.


Happy Fckin' VDay


That’s the Screeching Felines. Pretty sweet.

Anyway... the sun has set. The day is done. Soon enough, people will cease with their otherwise incessant wishes for me to have a “happy Valentine’s Day.” Soon enough. Right.

I’m just going to keep telling myself that until it really happens. Then, I’m going to pretend it happened promptly, that I did not repeat that it will end soon enough like a mantra until it was just a rhythmic ululation of muffled vowel sounds. Yup... I shall pretend that it happened promptly, and be pleased.

Odd question: do people realize that not wishing me a happy Valentine’s Day is the surest way of producing happiness in me? Do they not realize that, once morning has ended, there really is little point to wishing me a happy day? Whatever.

Soon enough, they will stop and I will be pleased by the quiet.

There is compensation for enduring Valentine’s Day. There is. It’s a little on the new side. This is a reason to make a Very Big Deal about it.


Steak and BJ day.



Totally not kidding.

March 14th is now officially “Steak and Blowjob Day”. Simple, effective and self explanatory, this holiday has been created so you ladies finally have a day to show your man how much you care for him.

No cards, no flowers, no special nights on the town; the name of the holiday explains it all, just a steak and a BJ. That’s it.

I bet there isn't even a color scheme for it. Why would there be? No fake lace, no satin hearts. That's nice.

Yup... the fourteenth day of March is Steak and a Blowjob Day.

Mark your calendars.

That does it

It's cold.

More importantly, I'm cold.

I'm really cold.

The year had been shaping up very nicely. I had been enjoying the weather. At least, I've been pretty much completely content with the weather, which isn't at all the same thing as enjoying it, but that's what passes for enjoyment most days in the Tree House. Whatever.

I do not care for temperatures below freezing. I especially do not care for daily high temperatures below freezing. I don't. If I wanted something resembling that, I'd live somewhat closer to the arctic circle than I do. I don't, you know. Nope. I don't live anywhere near the arctic circle. This cold poop... it will not do.

So then...

It does appear that it is time to dust off my shockingly close to not imaginary mystical powers. Oh yes.

Let there be bunnies...fuzzy, springtime baby bunnies.

Not ice and snow... no. Not chattering teeth. There shall be bunnies.

Possibly accompanied by that weird, amber light that just doesn't seem to be all that possible when it's cold and vile.

Or not. There can be picnic hampers... and bunnies.

You do see what they're doing, don't you? Multiplying.

I hear it's been disappointingly chilly in Europe, as well.

Karnickel, I say!

So there.

Meme

So I got tagged again. That’s fine. I don’t at all mind this game. It’s pointless, you know. Of course, there aren’t so very many games that do have a point to them. Nope. Show me a game that has a point to it... a real game, not some serious shit wrapped up in enjoyment. That’s a pill, not a game. That’s one of those bitter analgesics with a slippery, glycerin coating... the kind you had better just swallow quickly because that coating doesn’t work half so well as people imagine it does.

Whatever.

The challenge is posed: tell something about yourself that nobody knows.

Huh.

You know... the list of things about me that my readers don’t know is long. It’s very long. It’s monumental, this list. The proportion of items on the list of things you folks don’t know about me that is deliberately included is quite high. It is. If there’s something you don’t know about me, chances are I have no intention of you knowing it. I can be like that.

So, you know, can you be like that.

Oh yes... don’t think I don’t know about you. Don’t think that your own list (and a very long one it is, surely) of things I don’t know about you is anywhere near so long as you imagined it to be, as you planned for it to be. It’s not, you see, as long as you think it is. It’s just not. That’s because you aren’t as special as you think you are. You aren’t. You think you’re just special as all hell... unique. Huh.

Neither am I unique, in that ‘no one knows who I really am’ sort of way.

Nope.

Both of us are humans. I feel very comfortable with the notion that the number of non-humans reading my scribblings is zero. Whoever you are, whoever I am, there’s just a drab blob of overlap: we just aren’t all that individual.

Don’t get me wrong... you and I are just as different as can be. We are. My quibble is with just how much ‘as can be’ is. In the end, I find it’s less than most people imagine. In the end, I find it’s a lot less than most people imagine.

Whatever.

Something about me that you don’t know. Fine.

Once upon a time, very far away from here, I had a fondness for Japanese folklore. Mmmmmm... yes. I remember. I was mad for it. Today, I can’t remember any of it. That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough. I remember remembering it, but I don’t quite remember. There’s this word, though.

Yurei

It’s a ghost, more or less. In my own head, it’s most assuredly a ghost. It doesn’t really matter what the Japanese think the word means. After all, they aren’t in my head. In my head, it’s a ghost... as in dead people.

They don’t have feet.

Folks who actually deal in such things (and they are rare) will tell you that the yurei do have feet. They have feet if they want feet.

Then there are the folks who not only don’t actually deal in such things, they actively scoff at such things. Those folks aren’t rare at all. They’ll tell you that yurei just don’t have feet, to the extent that yurei exist at all. Indeed, that’s how you tell when a painting of a yurei is depicting a yurei, and not something else.

Sure.

Yurei don’t have feet. They haven’t had feet in a couple of centuries, by my count. Maybe the yurei got bored with feet.

Once upon a time, very far away from here, I cared very much about whether yurei had feet or not, and they did not. It was long ago, though, as you might have guessed from the ‘once upon a time.’ Nothing recent was once upon a time, even though everything is.

It faded away... just like a yurei’s feet. I stopped caring. I stopped hunting kappa along overgrown riverbanks, too.

Have you ever done that? Hunt kappa, I mean... hunt them along an overgrown riverbank? They can drown you, you know. Oh yes. If you aren’t careful, they can do many nasty things to you. Once upon a time, I hunted kappa along the banks of a river. I never found any. That may be why the pastime faded away like a yurei’s feet.

Maybe.

It’s all just fuzzy memories of having once remembered something now. I do not hunt kappa. I do not concern myself with the absent toes of yurei. Not now. Now I’m old. Now I’m here, not very far away from here. Now, you’d think it doesn’t matter.

And it doesn’t.

This is where the challenge is met. Rather, this is where I start meeting it. I had to do the setup first. You knew that. All my regular readers knew that. I just repeated it for no reason at all... because I’m like that.

Porn.

Mmmmmm. That will send the search engines into a frenzy. It will, too... Yahoo, especially. Whatever.

Porn. I said it again. I really am fond of pornographic images. “The Island of Beautiful Boys,” it’s called here in the Tree House.

I’m going to the Island of Beautiful Boys.

I don’t share my beautiful boys. I’m like that. All the odd creatures from Yahoo and Google and Bing (in that order) can just scurry off now. Porn, porn, porn. I said it, I like it, and I don’t have any for you. Be off.

I’ll be browsing my usual queue of likely images. These images are intended to be stimulating. They’re intended to arouse. That’s what they’re for.

I’m thinking, “This man is dead.”

The picture in question, you see, will be cropped at the knees. The fellow has no feet. He may have a lovely torso, he may have a curiously impressive allotment somewhat below his navel, he may be otherwise entirely engaging...

...except it’s a yurei.

There are a lot of yurei around these days. I don’t know why. If I were a superstitious fellow, I might suspect that something dire was afoot. I might.

It’s not like none of the men on the Island of Beautiful Boys have feet, but... damn, there’s a lot of handsome yurei on that island.

And I’m looking at the flawless skin and I’m thinking, “This man is dead.”

I do not find corpses engaging. I don’t find them to be arousing or stimulating in the least bit. No.

I find it odd. Thoughts of yurei were, once upon a time, commonplace, at least for me. That was, though, a very long time ago. Thinking about them now is just an intellectual exercise in history. Once, when I was young, I cared about such things. Now I am not young and I not only don’t care about such things, I don’t care about not caring.

Somewhere in my head, though, there is this fossil... a small void in the shape of a yurei. If I see a picture of a lad with no feet, I instantly think, “This man is dead.”

You shall probably leap to the conclusion that I have some issue with feet... a fetish, perhaps. No. I don’t find feet to be especially interesting at all. Their absence, though...

Ghosts have no feet.

The Island of Beautiful Boys is filled to overflowing with ghosts. This is counterproductive. The dead are not hot... not to me.

True, that

I’m sitting here thinking about books.

I buy books. I do. Oddly, books are something that I don’t download. That, to me, just isn’t a book. There just aren’t any authors out there pining away because Feral downloaded one of their precious manuscripts for free. There aren’t. There isn’t even one of them. Neither are there any authors out there who are quietly contented with the small pittance (and it is both small and a pittance) they personally received because Feral paid to download one of their precious manuscripts. Books are made of paper. They have covers. That’s just the way it is.

I hear (and read about) folks carrying on about the new digital stuff. Huh. Whatever. These so-called e-books may well be the big new thing. I remember when eight-track tapes were the new thing. I remember when video cassettes were the new thing. I remember laser disks.

I had a laser disk player at one time. Isn’t that a kick in the rubber parts? It is. I had an eight-track tape player also. Let’s not go into video tapes. Everyone used to have video tape players, I think. Well... the truly poor probably didn’t. At the time, that was probably a hallmark of the truly poor: they didn’t watch movies on video tapes. The world is different now, obviously. Whatever.

I have a few of these so-called e-books. I do. Most of them are unread. They are all of the sort that were freely offered up to the universe. You know... that “give it away for free” thing that supposedly entices people to pay for more of the same. Huh. I’m up for that. Mind you, I tend to be firmly of the opinion that stuff is generally worth a little less than you paid for it.

I really do find that this is true. You have to pay your share of the “rent” on the store shelves. You have to pay your share of the “cab fare” that got the book to the store in the first place. The folks who print books... I have personally known several hapless drones whose profession was the creation of printed matter. They produced books. “That’s more than half cool,” I say. “No... it’s not,” they say. They say that; every single one of them has said that. There is nothing especially glamorous about working in printing plant. They get paid, though. In order to have a book, you have to pay your share of the not-very-big wages of the hapless drones. After that, there are all those editors and agents. Of course, there are authors, too. The authors are at the very bottom of the food chain. What you’re paying an author for a copy of a book is just absurdly small. It’s a pittance... a nominal pittance.

So sure... the price of a book is a tad over its value. You can disagree with me on that. I don’t mind. I separate most of the steps in the supply chain for books out from the value of the book itself. I think that’s halfway sensible. You might quite reasonably refuse to make that separation. Whatever.

If I’m not paying, if it’s free, then I still think the price is a tad over its value. In other words, the free thing is not only worthless, it’s less than worthless. It’s an indulgent allocation of hard-drive space. I’m inclined to rent space on my hard-drive; I am not inclined to let you squat there for free. If I do let your manuscript sit there for free... that is seriously indulgent of me. I’m not likely to do it at all, and I’m not likely to do it for long.

It remains that you have to pay if you want to curl up in bed with a book and read it long into the night when you ought to be sleeping. I do that... read in bed when I ought to be sleeping. I also pay for books. I don’t have any sort of e-book reader and I don’t want one. I like pages. I like covers. That’s why the few e-books on my computer sit there unread. I do mean to get to them. I do. I can’t curl up in bed with my computer, though. I’d have to read them sitting up. I’m rarely in the mood for that. When I am, I really do have more important (to me) things to be doing with my computer.

Which brings me (in a characteristically round-about way) to the point I had planned to make.

There I am, trolling through a bookstore. I’m stalking books. I’m a bit like Elmer Fudd in that way. “Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting books.” I’m in the section of the bookstore that houses the genre I prefer to hunt. You don’t, for example, hunt kick-ass space operas amongst the cookbooks. You just don’t. I’m scanning the authors’ names on the spines.

Most of the time, I’m looking for authors I have read and liked in the past. I like proven authors. It’s not that I like established, mainstream authors... no. I like authors who have written enjoyable books. “Enjoyable” means that I enjoyed it. It does not mean that you did. It does not mean that some reviewer did. It means that I did.

In that sense, offering me a book for free isn’t all that bad of an idea. I tend to fall in love with authors. Melanie Rawn, for example. Mercedes Lackey, Ursula LeGuin, Colleen McCullough.

Weird, huh? I don’t like female authors. It’s the voice. I don’t relate well to the female voice. That’s just me and it’s nothing anyone should take personally. I don’t care for female authors. Thing of it is, there are an awful lot of female authors on my overflowing bookshelves. There are. They’ve written things I’ve enjoyed in the past. I’ll totally pluck a Melanie Rawn off the shelf at the bookstore.

There are authors I’m allergic to. I won’t touch their books. It’s not that I won’t read them. No. I won’t, of course. It’s that I totally won’t even touch them. I’m not sure what solvents would cleanse my hands if I accidentally touched an Orson Scott Card. That extends to Orson Scott Card readers, as well. I have no inclination to touch even a fingertip to someone who enjoys reading Orson Scott Card. I wouldn’t support legislation to round them all up and imprison them, but I don’t plan on touching one of them. If I do touch them, I’m leaning toward acetone as the solvent of first recourse. Whatever.

Having plucked a book up, I look at its cover.

It’s weird.

I’m looking for beefcake. I like books with hunky dudes front and center. Mmmmmm. I do. I also like airships. Those are sweet. Dragons. A dragon on the cover is not at all a bad thing... but it has to be a kick-ass dragon. I don’t want some nasty lizard thing. I want a dragon. Give me a hunky dude with a dragon stooping at an airship on the cover and I will... oh yes, I most certainly will... leaf through the book.

Man-boobs will not sell me a book. The content needs to entice. The content needs to confirm the cover. If I open the book at three random places, there had better be mention of that dragon in at least one of them. There need to be airships inside. There need to be engaging fellows in there (with their man-boobs, not without). It really, really helps if the cover artist bothered to read the book.

Yeah. When I finish reading a book, I close the book. I look at the cover. If I can’t place the scene in the text where that cover illustration is taken from, I’ll be throwing the book in the trash. I’ll be remembering the author’s name, too. Yeah. And I won’t be buying their books ever again. I’m like that. It’s mean, I know. The author has no control over the cover. Still... trash, and the author of trash. Like I said, I’m like that.

If I encounter homophobia... that’s a deal-breaker. I throw a book away on the second instance. I don’t read homophobia. The “second instance” is important because, sometimes, homophobia is a relevant element in the narrative. That’s allowed. Homophobia exists, as sparrows exist. I don’t mind sparrows hopping around for no reason at all in a story. I don’t mind homophobia appearing in a story. Make it an issue, though, and you’re treading on very thin ice.

In the end, I’d have to say there is little point in offering me a book for free. There just isn’t. I might well read it. I might well like it. I might well fall in love with the author’s way of telling tales and proceed to buy everything in sight with the right words on the spine. I might well. It’s just that my purchasing decisions are made almost entirely on the ability of the cover art to induce a flight of fancy. Then, the text needs to feed that flight of fancy into something that will keep me up far later than is appropriate. Giving it to me for free... that won’t do that.

There is, by the way, something else that will keep me away from a book: stupidly sexist covers.

Muscled dude, airship, dragon... fine. Add barely draped damsel in distress and I’m out of there. That’s dumb. I don’t read Damsel in Distress tales and certainly not Hapless, Incompetent Damsel in Distress tales.

Drop the muscled dude and insert a woman. That’s fine. Really... it is. The airship and the dragon will carry my foray into three random peeks at the text. That woman, though... she needs to be doing something sensible. She needs to be doing something a person really would be doing on that cover. She must absolutely not be gyrating into some physically improbable pose whilst trying to entice me with her tits and ass simultaneously.

Have you seen these? There are blog posts ranting about the phenomenon. A guy with a sword on a book cover is, for some reason, allowed to just stand there looking like he knows what he’s doing with that pointy thing. A woman with a sword on a book cover is, for some reason, required to be twisted into some grotesque pin-up pose. I hate that. I just hate it.

Give me a fierce chick that looks like she knows what she’s doing with a sword. I like fierce chicks. Fierceness is inherently attractive. So is competence. Just as the guy is allowed to just stand there looking like he means business, so ought the gal be. The chain mail bikinis, by the way, are absolutely out of the question.

Seriously... beefcake has been used to sell books for decades. Does some sword-swinging, dragon-defeating hero need a stainless steel jockstrap? I mean, he’s otherwise naked. Not that I mind an excess of flesh. No. An excess of flesh is totally going to send me scurrying to the halfway point looking for... friction... in my fiction. It is. And if it’s there, I’ll buy the book. I’m like that. A chain mail banana hammock, though... STUPID. Not fun. Not engaging. As some curious prop in a more friction-filled interlude... why not? But sword-swinging, dragon defeating heroes don’t need metallic lingerie to be sword-swinging, dragon-defeating heroes. The heroines who swing swords at dragons don’t need metallic lingerie, either.

Not that I advocate fully clothed protagonists. I don’t. I just oppose inane armor.

I also oppose doing stupid things with cutlery. If you don’t have any idea what the sword-swinging, dragon-defeating hero and heroine are doing with those swords, don’t put the swords on the cover. Let the hero and heroine combat their draconic foe with something more sensible. After all... dragons? Swords? Really?

Real

People have been vexing me of late. That's fine. Being vexed is something I'm good at. I haven't noticed any special skills at being inherently vexing in others of late. I do believe that it's more likely than not that my current vexation is something that originated with me, not someone else.

Whatever.

I have been yammered at recently about swords. Mind you, I'm fond of swords. I am. I have a couple. I like them. That's neither here nor there. I don't like them so much that I have any real plans of blogging about them.

Really... I see no sense in that. There are others who disagree. There are others who maintain blogs on pretty much nothing but swords. Fine. I see no sense in that (which is why I don't plan on blogging about swords) but the world is a remarkably large place. It's a fairly diverse place, too. There's ample room for people to chatter on about swords and I'm happy to let them do so.

Not that I could stop them if I wasn't happy to let them do so. No. I couldn't do anything of the sort.

But that's just a paradox in my own head that may not exist. I find, ineluctably, that intense, splendid diversity is a characteristic of the world. It pretty much goes without saying that there is diversity... except that it seems to never, ever, go without saying. We prattle on about diversity all the time, it seems. We do so even though diversity is as inescapable as gravity. I sincerely believe, as a matter of religious conviction, that there is almost certainly a blog out there devoted to everything. If there isn’t, there soon will be.

Whatever.

I'm not being vexed by swords. I'm not being vexed by a diversity (or illusory lack thereof) of anything. No. I'm being vexed by reality.

How very strange it is to have people toddling to the threshold of the Tree House looking for “real swords.” Huh. Or they come on a quest for “real katanas.” Some folks are earnestly seeking after “true katanas.”

I don’t have the inclination to fuss over the word “true” just now. Surely, at some point, someone has pointed out that there may be no “truth.” It is possible that there is no “true” anything. If not, then I’ve just done so. Really... truth may not exist. I wouldn’t know for certain. I definitely know that I just don’t care about truth enough to muster either a defense of or an attack on its existence.

But “real” is a different matter. It vexes me when people who seem otherwise entirely sane have difficulties with “real.”

Sweeties, listen: if you have trouble with whether something is “real” or not, you have a more than slightly important problem. As with all problems of more than slight importance, you should seek out assistance.

See that? It gets bigger if you click on it. I wouldn't bother doing that if I were you. After all, it's a rock. It's just some rock. A larger image of it couldn't possibly be of any assistance. I could be wrong, though, in which case the larger image does exist.

The rock is real.

It weighs thirteen pounds. I weighed it. Of course, the scale I weighed it with isn’t exactly the most delicate of instruments for determining mass. That number, thirteen, is not quite as real as the rock is. The concept of pounds... there’s a measure of unreality there. To someone more accustomed to kilograms, this notion of thirteen pounds might be vexatious. You could probably convert that thirteen pounds into 5.8967 kilograms if you wanted to. Whether this rock really weighs 5,896.7 grams, though, is not something I’d wager money on. There is, after all, a certain lack of reality to that entire thirteen pounds thing. The margin of error in grams may well be immense. Whatever.

The rock is possessed of a certain number of grams of mass. If I dropped it on your foot, there would be a noticeable impact. (Oh yes... you would notice at once.) Some physicist could almost certainly produce a quantified description of that impact. There’s an equation, after all—something about mass and acceleration. If I just dropped the rock, the acceleration would be a function of gravity. You could look that up.

You and I both know, however, that we don’t especially need a physicist’s opinion on the matter: it would hurt.

There’s a doctor’s blog where I could probably get a very cheerful response on the medical question of whether the bones in your foot would break if the rock dropped on your foot. That fellow would probably also quite happily quantify the pain I imagine would surely come from this occurance... at least in terms of the likely prescriptions. Some kinds of pain warrant the administration of stronger drugs than others. I doubt, for example, that you’d have much success in wheedling a morphine drip out of this unhappy encounter with a rock.

The rock is real. If it fell on your foot, the consequences would be unpleasant.

There are people who believe that nothing is real. Huh. The pain from the rock landing on their foot—it’s just as illusory as the rock that caused it, you see. I don’t follow the thinking. I’m happy with “the rock is real.” The pain would be real, also. Such things are, in my way of thinking, to be avoided. I’ll not be dropping that rock on your foot. I'm a nice guy that way.

Did I need to say that? Are you reassured?

You needn’t be. What you see there is not, in fact, a thirteen-pound rock. It’s not. It’s a digital image of a thirteen-pound rock. I could count how many pixels of pretty colored light your monitor is reproducing it at. I could. That would be boring, useless, and more than slightly dumb. It’s enough that it’s not a rock, it’s a picture of a rock. You aren’t confused by that, though... I’m sure of it. The rock, while real, is here; you are not. You're safely somewhere else, looking at a digital image of the rock. You are in no danger of having this particular rock dropped on you. There's a layer of unreality between you and this rock that makes you quite safe. Were that layer removed, were you here with me, were that rock physically able to fall on your foot, you'd still be safe because I don't plan on dropping the rock on your foot. The layer isn't removed, you're not here, and the rock just plain can't fall on your foot, whether I'd drop it on you or not. Sometimes, no matter how real a rock is, it's not real enough. This is the case here.

So then, katanas. Specifically, “real” ones.

What is “real?”

Never mind what a katana is. The folks who come by the Tree House to vex me clearly already know what a katana is because they’re looking for a  “real”  one.

What is “not-real?”

Fake? Counterfeit? Imaginary? Illusory?

I’m very comfortable with the idea that a picture of a katana is a picture, not a katana. It’s not even a fake katana. A picture of a katana isn’t a katana at all.

Fine.

The sword moves through the air. It does so with a certain amount of speed. It strikes something. The thing (let us, please, imagine that this “thing” is a rolled-up reed mat) is cut through.

Is that not real enough?

Totally serious and not catty at all, swords are for two things: sitting around looking cool as shit, and cutting things.

The looking cool as shit part... I don’t think they’ve quantified coolness. I do think that pictures of swords are just about as good at looking cool as shit as actual swords are. There’s an enhanced coolness to the three-dimensional object, though. There is a certain “something” to the mass, the surface textures. Fine. Whatever. All of that is more than moderately subjective. There’s nothing “real” about the subjective. No amount of “realness” in a sword will salve your ego if you don’t like the sword. No lack of “realness” in a sword will dull your enthusiasm if you find that it just plain looks cool as shit.

Cutting things... that can be demonstrated. It can probably be quantified. I might even go so far as to say that it surely has been, but I won’t go that far. Really, though—cutting is a binary thing. The sword cuts or it doesn’t. Certainly, some skill at moving a sword through space is called for. It’s a totally bum rap to malign a sword for not being able to cut when the fault is with the wielder. Some swords, however, just don't cut well, if they cut at all.

There are physical attributes that affect a blade’s ability to cut. Any reputable sword dealer will freely admit to whether their products are suitable only for light cutting or whether they will be useful for heavy cutting as well. Most sword fanciers of my acquaintance find that the dealers are too conservative by far in these estimations. Most sword fanciers of my acquaintance find their light-cutters do heavy cutting just fine. Yeah. They also complain about rolled or chipped edges. They whine about bent blades. Sometimes, they even imagine that their comparative lack of skill was to blame. Light-cutters are likely to suffer when used for heavy cutting. Heavy cutters don't suffer from heavy cutting. This is why they are said to be suitable for heavy cutting.  Whatever. 

Swords aren’t actually for cutting firewood. They’re for cutting people. You know that’s true. Cutting people is frowned on. You know that’s true, also. Cutting things with swords... you can find any number of videos on YouTube of people happily doing just that — cutting things, and not people.

Cutting things with swords is more than slightly fun. I think it makes far more sense to cut things with swords as a recreational activity than it does to chase some inflated ball around a meadow. I dislike chasing balls. I’m also not fond of meadows. I think it’s the height of absurdity that people would do so for enjoyment. I also find it absurd that people would puff themselves over their imagined skills at ball-chasing. Why ever would you do such a thing? Chasing balls around a meadow... piff. Then, there are all those people who watch such activities on television. They follow the ball-chasing exploits of their favorite ball-chasers in the news media. Odder still, the news media eagerly provides the tales on a daily basis. Imagine.

But then, the exploits of the assorted thing-cutters on YouTube are, I think, worth watching. Not being able to replicate their activities, I do find that I garner some measure of enjoyment from appreciating their accomplishments. Swords are for looking cool as shit and for cutting things. Swords actively engaged in cutting things are an order of magnitude cooler.

Do the ball-chasers set their inflated balls on mantelpieces? Are there special ball stands for displaying them? Can the ball-chasers incite envy with a rack of eight balls laid out in a stately array? Do you clean and oil an inflated ball? Can that activity be ritualized? I wouldn’t know. I don’t fancy inflated balls.

Swords, though... the cutting on display in YouTube videos is almost all light cutting. Most all of the swords marketed by reputable dealers are suitable for light cutting. Heavy cutting, though, is the province of cutting people. That activity is frowned upon. Cutting people is not a recreational activity. Wanting a heavy-cutter is more than slightly odd. It’s also a little sinister. I know of no manufacturers of mass-market heavy-cutters. There doesn’t seem to be a market for it.

Heavy-cutters have, however, been a staple of sword-making in the past. “Cutting things” didn’t used to mean chopping water-filled beverage containers. Miyamoto Musashi did not, I’m fairly certain, carry around swords of the sort that are widely sold today. Musashi’s swords were not forged with snipping rolled mats in two or water bottle cleaving in mind.

This sort of sword is still made today. They are expensive. They are works of art. As it happens, it’s that “art object” thing that allows them to be possessed at all. Lots of places have very strict rules regarding weapons, you see. A sword specifically designed for heavy cutting, for cutting people, is the sort of thing many governments would prefer you not carry around. They’d prefer you not have them lying around, either. That’s why you have to look far and wide for an art object that (almost by coincidence) approximates a good, old-fashioned, weapon. Many of these swords are antiques. After all, there have been times and places where cutting people with swords was not frowned on quite so sternly as today. There have been times and places where a "light-cutter" would be a little (not a lot) more absurd than chasing an inflated ball around a meadow. A great many swords were made back then—what with people-cutting being popular —and many of them are still around. It's been awhile, so they're antiques. 

If you’re looking for a “real” katana, you need to get over yourself. Almost all of them are real. Some of them are complete crap. That’s a quality issue, though. A crappy sword is real. Proper crapitude is a spectrum, though. Quality works that way. There’s not some bin labeled “crap” that all the crappy swords come out of (or ought to be deposited into). There are crappy swords, not so crappy swords, barely crappy swords, not at all crappy swords, and then there are those swords that fill in the constellation of “good.” Whatever.

It’s the same with orchids, you know. There are crappy orchids. You can buy them in grocery stores when the weather is fine. You can subscribe to “orchid of the month” schemes where some enterprising fellow will send you a plant every month. They’re affordable. They’re pretty enough. They’re most assuredly “real” orchids. There are, however, orchids that cost somewhat more than your car. There are. There are more orchids that cost less than your car but more than your entire wardrobe for this month. That’s because orchids occupy a spectrum of crapitude. A crappy orchid may well be exactly what you want. After all, they’re inexpensive, as a rule.

Ferns... there are ferns that will cost you a month’s rent (at least, a month of my rent). There are ferns that are weeds. I’ve been paid to rip ferns out of the paving stones of a greenhouse. They were just as real as the expensive ones. The doomed ferns were, as it happens, of a species that will cost you more than the price of a lunch.

Price is not very real. Whether a fern or a rose or an orchid is a weed... not real at all. Whether something is crappy or not depends entirely on your standards of crapitude. I’ve seen people discard as garbage things that I would happily pay large sums for. I've seen people spend vast sums on antiques that are currently nonfunctional garbage. Crapitude is, without question, not real.

Not real in the way that the rock is real.

Is the rock a good rock? Good for what? Is it a high quality or a low quality rock? What standards are we arguing about? Is it an expensive or a cheap rock? I picked it up off the ground. It cost me nothing. Someone picked the Hope Diamond up off the ground too...I bet they did. Plucked it right up out of what passes for dirt. Feel free to wrap as many layers of dreams and delusions around the rock as you wish. Be contented with your imaginings. Underneath all of that, the rock is real. Seriously... do not fish around for a "real" rock.

All rocks are real.

Except for the fake rocks. There are fake rocks made of polystyrene and the like. There are also synthetic rocks.

I am vexed. People come to me looking for “real.” Better to come asking after the “not real.” Most things of value aren’t at all real. Quite a few of the things we value highly aren’t real. In the end, though, the things we value most highly are very real—as real as rocks.

I get questions

What was Rich Merritt's porn name?

Again? Still? OK... fine. IMDB is your friend. So is Google.


Is Rich Merritt dead?

Why would he be dead? No... as far as I know, he's not dead.


Is Jeff Stryker dead?

Hold up... why is everyone fixated on whether people are dead or not?

Anyway, last I heard, he's still not dead. He looks good, too. I mean... he's a year younger than I am. I'm as old as fossilized shale. That means that Mr Stryker is one year younger than fossilized shale. Or something like that.


What's the difference between exacerbate and exasperate?

Really? Seriously?

Sweeties... they're completely different words. Not making this up: the first one means to make a situation worse and the second one means to vex.

Oddly enough, the word 'aggravate' can be used for both meanings. Isn't that a kick in the rubber parts? Yeah... I thought so. Whatever.

I got taken to task in another missive for being 'mean' about just this topic recently. Huh. I hadn't meant it to be mean. Looking back over it, I don't find that I was mean.

Read this carefully: you get to choose which words you use when communicating. You do. I very strongly recommend that you choose from among the words you know. That's not mean.

Use the words you know.

It's true that there are just oodles of words in English... words that you might even have heard of. That's fine. Sweeties, listen for a change. Just because you heard the word 'exacerbate' somewhere doesn't mean you're somehow obligated to use that word in a sentence. You're not. You don't ever have to use the word 'exacerbate.' You can get through life just fine without it. The same thing goes with 'exasperate.' I can think of no reason at all why someone should be required to use the word 'exasperate' in a sentence.

I mean... totally serious here... you get along without the word 'vex,' don't you? Of course you do. When's the last time you said "Go away, you vex me"? You've probably never said something like that. You don't need to ever say "you exasperate me," either. You can (and almost certainly already have) get along just fine saying the things you want to say with the words you know.

There's a second half to communicating with words. The person you're communicating with also has to have a reasonable understanding of what the words you've chosen mean. What point is there to saying "you vex me" when the person you're talking to doesn't know what 'vex' means? There isn't one, Sweeties. There just isn't.

And if you don't know the difference between 'exacerbate' and 'exasperate,' your intended audience probably doesn't either.

I'm serious about this. Those two words have something in common apart from being able to be replaced with the word 'aggravate.' Yup... you probably shouldn't use them at all. Lots of people can't define either word, so using the words is a waste of air.

Now stop asking me about those words. You're aggravating me. Asking again will just aggravate the situation. Then there will be aggravated aggrivation.

We can't have that.

Overheard on the Street

So... I'm laying in bed. I'm pretending that I'm asleep. That would be because I get up at a most unsavory hour of the morning. This is not by choice. Oh no--I would prefer to be retiring at that hour rather than arising. Whatever. I'd prefer that it be more or less quiet while I'm trying to decieve myself into falling asleep.

There's this voice.

It's a loud voice, a male voice, and a decidedly hostile voice. It certainly does not fall anywhere near the "more or less quiet" category.

"I'm going to kill you. I'm going to fucking kill you."

That's what the fellow said. He seemed to mean it, too. You might want to re-read that with explamation points added. I didn't put any exclamation points there because I hate exclamation points. Also, I'm pretty sure those words aren't normally uttered without the exclamation points being assumed. But sure... see, it seemed to me that the fellow clearly did mean what he said. He had a very earnest voice.

That's a reason for a moderate amount of concern. Just a moderate amount, because he just plain wasn't addressing me. Then there's the fact (and I find that it really is one) that the fellow just wasn't all that focused, despite the clear level of passion being expressed. See... saying you're going to kill someone doesn't advance that agenda one tiny bit. To the contrary: it's a counterproductive strategy. Seriously... hollering about how you're going to fucking kill someone does injury to no one (apart from making it difficult for me to sleep) and gives your opponent the perfectly reasonable motivation to preempt your declared intentions with actions of their own. Do consider the possibility that someone might decide to shoot you after you yell "I'm going to fucking kill you."

Anyway.

The voice is immediately followed by another.

This voice is also loud. It's a female voice, however, and the voice's flavor is one of annoyance rather than hostility.

"Shut the fuck up. You ain't going to kill nobody. Now get in the car."

Yup.

My mom might as well have said, "Put the cat down. You're going to school. Now get in the car."

Whatever.

There are the sounds of two car doors slamming. A car drives away. It remains more or less quiet for the duration.

"You ain't going to kill nobody. Now get in the car."

I don't quite know what to make of it. I do know that this anonymous woman is obviously a bad-ass.

I'm going to be telling people to "get in the car" all week now. I'm like that.