Grumble, grumble, OK! Fine! It’s Christmas time!
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on December 21, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/21/todays-earworm-682/
Today’s Earworm
Grumble, grumble, OK! Fine! It’s Christmas time!
Posted by daddybear71 on December 21, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/21/todays-earworm-681/
Indie Author Christmas Sale!
The good folks over at the Mad Genius Club have put up a list of good reads that are on sale this week for Christmas. Remember, a book makes an awesome gift. Enjoy!
Just in time for Christmas giving, here’s a list of books, stories, and other readables. Who doesn’t love to get a book in their virtual stocking? Bonus is that this gift won’t sit around collecting dust or taking up space. And you don’t have to go out and fight the traffic to buy it, or worry about shipping on time, and it’s as easy as a few clicks and knowing an email address.
1. Dragon Noir
By Cedar Sanderson
On sale for the first time from Dec 17-23rd
The pixie with the gun has come home to see his princess crowned a queen and live in peace. But nothing is ever easy for Lom. A gruesome discovery on his doorstep interrupts their plans and sends Lom off on a mission to save not one, but two worlds. It’s personal this time and the stakes are higher than ever before. With friends falling and the enemy gathering, Bella and Lom must conquer the worst fears and monsters Underhill can conjure. Failure is not on the agenda.
Or if you would rather give the whole trilogy, Pixie for Hire is now available in ebook form only.
2. Young Warriors
by Pam Uphoff
Free for five days!
It’s traditional for young lords in the Kingdom of Ash to spend two years in the army. Xen Wolfson is a young wizard, and Garit Negue a young prince. And the world is filled with adventures and danger . . . and learning experiences.
Their world has been in sporadic contact with two different cross-dimensional worlds–generally as a target for conquest. When the Empire of the One returns, the young warriors are standing foursquare in their path.
3. Nocturnal Challege
By Amanda Green
Brand New Release!
The one thing Lt. Mackenzie Santos had always been able to count on was the law. But that was before she started turning furry. Now she finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy to keep the truth from the public-at-large. She knows they aren’t ready to learn that monsters are real and they might be living next door.
If that isn’t enough, trouble is brewing among the shapeshifters. The power struggle has already resulted in the kidnapping and near fatal injury of several of Mac’s closest friends. She is now in the middle of what could quickly turn into a civil war, one that would be disastrous for all of them.
What she wouldn’t give to have a simple murder case to investigate and a life that didn’t include people who wanted nothing more than to add her death to the many they were already responsible for.
4. Hilda’s Inn for Retired Mercenaries
By Cyn Bagley
In Delhaven, there is an Inn run by a retired mercenary. If you are a down-on-your-luck mercenary or men-at-arms, come to the public rooms and Hilda Brant, the owner, will give you a bowl of stew. If you want ale, hand over the coins. Hilda may give you floor space, but she expects you to pay in favors or coins.
Hilda isn’t prepared for the damage and chaos caused by a dragon, black mage, and elementals. And a very angry Lord Barton.
5. The High T Shebang
By Mark Alger
Dolly was reborn into a new body just last week. Right out of the birthing chamber, she was tumbled into a conflict that goes back to the stone age. Her creator, the Greek Goddess, Aphrodite, has disappeared, and the God in charge of her institution — the Babylonian Marduk — has called for her death. Her lover and Geppetto, Mitchell Drummond, is threading his way through political minefields to keep Dolly safe.
New in love, they soon find they can’t keep their hands off each other. Their sexual fever comes to worry them. They suspect there’s more to the situation than mere new love. Meanwhile, they have a job to do. Keeping up the pretense that all’s well and nothing’s going on is wearing thin. But in Upothesa, you’re not allowed to talk about secrets. Dolly is a secret. Trying to keep it together, Dolly and Drummond go on a mission to New Zealand to protect the Dolly’s secret and the life of a major TV drama star.
6. Collisions of the Damned
By James Young
My God, we are losing this war.—Lt. Nicholas Cobb, USN
March 1943. The Usurper’s War has resumed, with disastrous results for the Allies. In Hawaii, the U.S. Pacific Fleet lies shattered after the Battle of Hawaii. Across the Pacific the Imperial Japanese Navy, flush with their recent victory, turns its gimlet eye towards the south and the ultimate prize for their Emperor: The Dutch East Indies.
For Commander Jacob Morton and the other members of the Asiatic Fleet, the oncoming Japanese storm means that the U.S.S. Houston and her Allied companions must learn to fight against overwhelming odds against an enemy who claims the night as their own. In the skies above Houston and the other old, tired vessels of the ACDA Fleet , Flight Lieutenant Russell Wolford and his men attempt to employ the Allies’ newest technology to even the odds. With full might of the Japanese Empire falling on them, the ACDA’s soldiers, sailors, and marines must fight to hold the line long enough for reinforcements to come.
7. Blackbird
By Alma Boykin
$.99 Dec 21-24, 1.99 Dec 25-28
One man becomes all that the Turkowi fear – and respect. Matthew Charles Malatesta, second son and rumored bastard of a mercenary, grandson of Duke Edmund “Ironhand” von Sarmas. One man, who will fight to the last breath to carve a place for himself, who will create a court of learning and civilization, who stands alone between the might of the Turkowi Empire and all of Godown’s people.
8. One in Infinity
By Amie Gibbons
On sale for $0.99 from 12/19 to Christmas
Turns out coincidences do happen, and it sucks when it leads killers from an alternate reality to your door…
Rose plans on partying her last weekend of freedom before her residency starts, but fate has different plans. When men straight out of a fantasy novel attack, she gets pulled into a blood feud between magical beings thanks to a random stroke of luck. Now she has to adjust to her new world view and help one of the men to save herself from a fate worse than death.
9. Tick of the Clock
By Travis Clemons and Michael Z Williamson
A man awakens in a 21st century Illinois hospital, holding very distinct memories of being shot in Switzerland decades earlier. The nurse calls him Detective Crabtree and says the DuPage County Sheriff will be by to check on him shortly. Yet he remembers his name being Sherlock Holmes.
When Sabrina Worthington is killed during a home invasion, her billionaire husband has an ironclad alibi. But Adam Worthington does not appear to be the grieving widower people would expect to see. Meanwhile, their former girlfriend keeps tugging on every possible string to convince the authorities to indict the man for murder.
By the tick of the clock, it would seem impossible for a man to be shot in the 19th century and wake up more than one hundred years later. It would also seem impossible for a man to shoot his wife while she’s at home and he’s at a theater thirty miles away. But when the seemingly impossible is properly analyzed, will Holmes determine the improbable truth behind her death and his life?
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The Spaewifeby David L. Burkhead
Pricing will be $0.99 the 19th through the 26th.
A young mother hears the Norns. They tell her of terrible things to come. When Ulfarr wants her gift of prophesy to serve him, he takes her, murders her husband, and steals away her children. Can the young mother escape from Ulfarr’s clutches and save her children from him? Only the Norns know.
11. Via Serica
by Tom Rogneby
on sale from the 19th to the 26th for $1.99
Marcus Aemelius Paullus has a problem – he is playing with fire and falling in love with the wrong woman. Appius Plinius also has a problem – he has a unit full of warriors who continually get themselves, and him, in trouble. Caesar Augustus has a solution to their problems, but it may cost them their lives. Eastward lies fame, fortune, and the key to returning home. Deserts, mountains, marsh, and ocean lie between, occupied by barbarian cultures and hostile rulers. On this grueling journey, Marcus and Appius will find their courage tested to the limits. But before they’re done, the world will know the unconquerable spirit of Rome!
Posted by daddybear71 on December 20, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/20/indie-author-christmas-sale/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/18/todays-earworm-680/
Repost – I Blame Qui-Gon
In honor of the release of the latest episode in the Star Wars universe, here’s a blast from the past that I think explains a lot.
This afternoon, Girlie Bear and I decided to do something out of the ordinary and went to the movies. George Lucas recently re-released The Phantom Menace, the first episode in his six episode Star Wars saga and the fourth movie released in that series. The movie has been re-done in 3D, which was OK, and as usual, a Lucas movie does really well in special effects and does OK in acting, dialogue, and story.
Of course, being a geek, I’ve seen it before, so the story wasn’t exactly a surprise. Lucas did a lot of the scenes, even ones that do nothing but plot exposition, in 3D, which was interesting. Watching the scenes where tanks and droid soldiers march down the main street, complete with arch and the victory parade at the end tells me that Lucas has watched Triumph of the Will and movies from Paris in 1940 more than a few times. So in addition to robbing Kurosawa blind, he also owes Leni Riefenstahl a beer.
But that’s not what struck me as the credits rolled.
What hit me was that all of the turmoil of the remaining five movies was the fault of one character. No, not Palpatine, the Naboo Senator, Republic Chancellor, Emperor of the Galaxy, Sith Lord, and collector of authentic Wookie and Ewok teddy bears.
No, all of it was brought about by Qui-Gon Jin.
Qui-Gon is the master Jedi Knight who is teaching Obi-Wan Kenobi to be a Jedi when the movie begins. He and Obi-Wan are sent on a mission to ‘convince’ one faction in a trade dispute to stop leaning on another faction. By convince, I mean ‘show up wearing light sabers and force them to back down’. You know, the same way that Vito Corleone and Luca Brazi got Johnny Fontaine that movie gig. He fails when the people he was there to put the arm on tried to kill them both, launch a planetary invasion, and arrest/compost most of the opposing side in the dispute. He convinces the leader of the losing side, Queen Amidala, to flee from the scene, lands on Tattooine to find parts, makes off with a slave he thinks might be the Jedi messiah, and deposits both of them on Coruscant, the Republic capital. He picks a fight with the Jedi Council when they tell him that teaching the force to an emotionally unstable former slave is probably not the wisest thing to do. He gives them the rhetorical finger and is sent back to Naboo with a ragtag band of people wearing red shirts. On arrival, he follows the battle plan of a teenage girl, fights an evil Sith that looks like he was born out of a Larry Correia fever dream, and loses because his devoted Padwan was never good at wind sprints. Obi-wan then goes on to finish the job by turning Darth Maul from an innie into an outie, saving the day. Obi-Wan makes a promise to Qui-Gon to teach Anakin Skywalker all of the skills he will need to bring down a democratic regime and murder just about everyone Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon know.
In all of those little plot points, all of the mistakes are made by Qui-Gon, and if he had zigged instead of zagged on any of them, Palpatine would have gone down as being the most affable evil Chancellor the Republic ever had, Anakin Skywalker would be the Jeff Gordon of the podracer circuit, and Amidala wouldn’t have passed on the “worst hair styles in a quarter century” gene to her daughter.
Here are the biggest mistakes he made, in your hosts humble opinion:
- Didn’t leave JarJar to get turned into cat meat. When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan trick the Gungun boss to let them go and give them transport so they could get to the Naboo capitol, Qui-Gon also asks that JarJar Binks be released to them. It was done almost as an after thought. If Qui-Gon hadn’t done that, JarJar wouldn’t have been there in the next movie to hand Palpatine dictatorial powers on a silver platter with a side of fries. We would also have been spared two more movies worth of a bad Caribbean accent.
- Left Naboo with no air cover. After freeing Queen Amidala and her entourage from the droid soldiers, they all decide to run like scalded dogs back to Coruscant. In order to get to the Queen’s ship, which apparently was kept ready to go with her wardrobe and hair goop, they have to defeat the droids guarding the hangar. These droids are also guarding the pilots for the fighters that are housed there, because when you’re decapitating a government, the last thing you want to do is massacre their elite pilots immediately. After quickly dispatching the droids, the pilots are told to run, and they do. Heaven forfend that they be inspired to jump in the cockpit and defend their queen as she runs to get help. So the ship containing the soon-to-be government in exile takes off with no fighter escort. This probably led directly to the ship being damaged, which necessitates the next stop in their journey: Tattoine. This is the home planet of everyone’s favorite Sith Lord in waiting, Anakin Skywalker.
- Going through an elaborate scheme to get parts to fix the ship. Following the Star Wars tradition of using hyperdrive engines made out of paper mache and Coke bottles, our ragtag band of Jedi knights, queens with weird clothes and hair, and amphibious Rastafarians touch down on Tattoine to get parts and make repairs. Qui-Gon goes into town to find parts, where he meets Anakin and discovers that only one junk dealer has the necessary gear, or at least that’s what the junk man says. Qui-Gon doesn’t seem to check with the competition to see if he might be telling a little fib in order to get the rube in the brown coat to make a purchase. The junk man won’t take the money they bring with them, and Jedi mind tricks don’t work. Apparently Qui-Gon isn’t comfortable using the tactics he would have used on the Trade Federation on this slave-owning cheat of a junk dealer, so he has to find a less direct way of bilking the parts out of him. He comes up with a convoluted plan to put a 9 year old into a dangerous podrace and cheat the junk dealer out of not only the parts, but also his slave. I mean, it’s not like he could have just whipped out that light saber and started singing off wings to get the parts or anything. He could have gone to another junk dealer who would have taken his Republic money or fallen for Jedi mind tricks to buy the parts or make a three cornered deal for them with the first guy. Or he could have just sold the broken ship for whatever he could get and arranged transport on another ship. Or heck, just offered to trade R2D2, a valuable repair droid he had brought along with him on this run to Starship Depot, for the parts. That would have gotten him back to Coruscant quicker, spared the galaxy the scourge of Darth Vader, and saved us from all of those “why did the Empire make all of the power receptacles the same size and shape as the USB ports?” jokes.
- Taking Anakin with him to Coruscant. After winning the parts from the junk dealer, Qui-Gon cheats him out of Anakin’s freedom. He could have left him there to work as a tradesman or podracer long enough to buy his mother’s freedom. That way he could have felt better about saving one slave out of the scores that must have existed on Tattooine, and we’d have been spared Hayden Christensen in the next two films. Instead he thinks that he can make a 9 year old former slave with separation anxiety into an elite mystical warrior that will enforce the will of a democratically elected government that didn’t give enough of a damn about his plight as a slave to detail someone to free him and the rest of the human chattel on Tattooine. The word you’re looking for here is ‘hubris’, which is pretty much the reason the rest of the series had a plot line.
It goes on from there. If he had failed to do any of these things, all of the unpleasantness in the remainder of the series wouldn’t have happened. No Sith takeover, no massacre of the Jedi, no clone troopers, no Rebellion, no Death Stars, nothing.
So in the end, I have come to believe that the villain of the entire six movie series was not Palpatine. He at least was honestly evil. Qui-Gon was a so-called good guy enforcer who brought down a millennium old Republic because he was “just trying to do the right thing”. Kind of like someone taking money from hard working citizens to give to those who don’t feel that work is really that necessary, or a politician that would try to tax his way out of fiscal armageddon. But then again, those last two might be too out of left field for anyone to believe. Faster than light ships, laser swords, and sentient robots that are used and abused as slaves but don’t rise up and slaughter their former masters are more believable than that.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 18, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/18/repost-i-blame-qui-gon/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on December 17, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/17/todays-earworm-679/
Musings
- Irish Woman has been doing a fine job of letting me sleep after working the night shift. Other people, not so much.
- I must remember to send a nice check to the charity that called and woke me during normal business hours and got a rather rude response in a foreign language before I woke up enough to be human.
- I finish night shifts on the morning of Christmas Eve. That gives me 24 hours to get my sleep cycle flipped back before the true madness begins.
- Boo was a baby chick in the Christmas play at his school the other night. Irish Woman made him a costume for it, and she put a lot of work into it. I gave her some grief about the hours she spent on it, but I repented after I saw the elaborate costumes other parents made or bought for their kids.
- I noticed something while watching Boo’s play: The boy angels all looked like they’d been hit by a truck, while the girl angels looked, well, angelic.
- Irish Woman is donating a batch of yellow-cake cupcakes topped with her home-made bourbon caramel fudge icing to the school Christmas bake sale. Something tells me that the more Catholic she is in the use of the bourbon, the better they will sell, if you know what I mean.
- Don’t ask for her recipe. I’ve been with her for 15 years, married to her for 11. I’ve contributed the height gene back into her bloodline. After all that, I’m still not sure what it takes to make that icing.
- It is exceedingly difficult to estimate travel times of people who alternate modes of transportation between walking, boats, horses, camels, and yaks.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 17, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/17/musings-174/
DaddyBear’s Debate
Guys, I tried to watch the debates the other night, I really did. I just couldn’t get through it. We need to be informed voters, but this debate format just isn’t cutting it.
So, being the creative Internet crank that I am, I’m proposing a solution: Let’s have another debate, but with better rules.
- In order to participate, candidates must poll 10.0% or greater on the ABC News / Washington Post poll taken closest to the debate.
- There will be no under-card debate. Make the cut or go home and watch hockey.
- All candidates must blow a .08% or more on a breathalyzer test at the start of the debate. Those who refuse to drink alcohol are not invited to the debate.
- Each candidate must take a 1 ounce shot of 100 proof grain alcohol before they answer a question.
- Any candidate who interrupts another candidate or the moderator must take two 1 ounce shots after they are told to shut up.
- Each candidate will be given 60 seconds to respond to a question. Candidates will remove one article of clothing for every 15 seconds they go over. Refusal to do so will cause their ejection from the debate hall.
- After a candidate has removed all of their clothing, the moderator will be allowed to shoot them with a paintball gun for every 15 seconds they go over their allotted time.
- Candidates may not use their podiums or other candidates to take cover when shot with a paintball gun.
- Candidates that get sick will be asked to leave the debate.
- Candidates that pass out will be propped up on their podium and will have their questions, illustrated as necessary, written on their skin in permanent marker by the candidate to their right.
- Insults and fisticuffs will not be broken up.
- Medical personnel with oxygen masks and hydration IV’s will be available both during the debate and for 24 hours afterward. Use of their services during the debate signals that a candidate no longer wants to participate.
- The debate goes on until only one candidate is still able to respond to questions.
I think that as the event goes on, the answers will be better. We’ll finally be able to see what these people really think and how they can do with a few drinks under their belt. I’m not worried about the “3 AM” call. Anybody can make a decision after 30 seconds of adrenaline. I’m worried about the call that comes in when the President has had a really crappy day and decides to throw a few back.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 17, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/17/daddybears-debate/
Hard Truths
- Only one of the Star Wars movies, so far, have been worth the cost of a full price ticket and a bucket of popcorn.
- The same holds true for the Star Trek movies, and most of the television episodes.
- Music wasn’t any better when you were young. You’ve just had a couple-three decades to forget all the crap and only listen to the good stuff.
- Most of the really thorny issues in our nation pretty much boil down to “How do you separate the sheep from the goats?” and “Who died and left you in charge?”.
- Most of today’s technology is either a derivative of something an engineer did half a century ago, or the result of someone having to come up with something to get their thesis done on a Sunday night two weeks before graduation.
- About six weeks after the CMP starts selling M1911’s, there are going to be a rash of posts on gun fora about how they are pieces of crap that don’t shoot worth a darn. A few months after that, there will be a rash of posts that showcase the “customization” that their new owners put into them to “improve” them.
- There are probably more people who can rattle off the properties of a rare card from a game or can recite the intimate details of fictional characters from television shows that were cancelled during the Vietnam War, than can list the first ten amendments to the Constitution or the Ten Commandments.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 14, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/14/hard-truths/
Musings
- I may be getting cynical, but when somebody advertises “industry leading innovation,” I hear “buggy, untested, and probably unsupported.”
- One of the benefits of having a young son is being able to play “Rock-em Sock-em Robots” for an hour.
- It is December, not October. Why is my furnace off? Why are my windows open? I blame Al Gore.
- One benefit of working third shift for the rest of the month is that while other people are being Christmasy, I’ll either be at work or unconscious.
- I am officially over instant replay in sports officiating. Either trust the zebra on the field or get rid of them and do everything remotely.
- If the only way your team has a chance of winning a football game involves an eerily accurate asteroid strike, maybe it’s time to switch over to watching documentaries on Netflix.
- You know, it’s rather impolite to give Irish Woman the hairy eyeball because the ice-skating program manager asked you to get your son to stop smacking Boo upside the helmet for fun. The alternative was my approach, which involved me teaching Boo how to pull your little twerp’s sweater up over his head and punch him in the kidneys for a couple of minutes.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 13, 2015
https://daddybearsden.com/2015/12/13/musings-173/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 