Stuff 'yer feckin' e-readers up the 'ol cloudchute...

...and re-embrace the Gutenberg OS.

Because books were meant to be stored on shelves, not on the digital dildo of the moment. They were meant to be held, read, admired, cherished, displayed and eventually passed on, not downloaded, copied, pasted, and stored as binary code on some goddamned corporate-controlled HAL 9000 with a catchy, bullshit, focus group-derived name...

"Dickens, open my Kurt Vonnegut file, please."
"I'm sorry, Chad. I'm afraid I can't do that. Your Vonnegut file has been deleted as a result of our new corporate guidelines on the downloading of seditious and/or obscene materials. We regret the inconvenience. Would you care to download the latest young adult paranormal romance thriller* instead?"

All the goldbugs bitch and moan about the ephemeral nature of fiat currency, but no one ever says anything about fiat literature. Why is that?

But I digress. The original point of the blog (and really, it did have one, sort of) was to give a link to Steve over at Querencia, who recently put up a couple posts here and here with pics of some of his bookshelves. Proper bookshelves, chockablock with books, memories and mementos.

Cool stuff, and definitely worth a look. That's what I consider a proper e-reader (eclectic reader), one that never needs to be upgraded or replaced, and one that sports an indefinite battery life...

* Actual (and large) genre (with its own aisle!) I observed during a recent visit to a Barnes & Noble. The shelves were packed with titles and the aisle was packed with browsers. We're all fuckin' doomed...

*Definitely not my bookshelf, though I wish it were... the pic is from Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.

The Metamorphosis, Okie edition...*

No giant man-roaches, just a delectable transformation from this...

To this...

Forget that horrid, slimy, breaded, undercooked mess that restaurants try to pass off as "fried okra." The only acceptable way to cook okra is to lightly coat it with cornmeal, salt, and pepper (no breading and for god's sake no batter) and then fry it in a hot cast-iron skillet until it's crunchy, crispy and almost black (it's actually not quite done in this pic...).

Any other way is simply an abomination...

That represents the year's last batch of okra from the "Stick It To Big Agri-Business Revolutionary Garden." Never thought I'd still be getting okra on October 18. Maybe there's a silver lining to catastrophic climate change, after all...

This year's garden was a mixed bag. We ended up with a good okra crop, and our squash and zucchini harvest needed to be measured in metric tons. On the other hand the seventy-odd days of hundred-degree (and often much higher) heat completely shut down most everything else. None of the watermelon, tomatoes, eggplant or bell peppers produced anything until it started cooling down.

So now I've got tons of green tomatoes, tiny eggplants and itsy-bitsy melons, all doomed since we got our first good freeze last night.

Just as well, really. Duck season's nine days away, quail season opens Nov. 12 and I guess if I can muster the interest there's also a deer season or two mixed in there somewhere. Fall is no time to be messing around with vegetables, anyway...

* with apologies to Franz Kafka's dried-up exoskeleton...

Writing-Related Flotsam and Jetsam

A few writing-related quotes from perhaps the most acerbic wit of 20th-century journalism...

“...an author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in. His over-powering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow men, flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the police of all civilized nations, he takes it out by putting his yells on paper. Such is the thing called self-expression.”

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. ”

“I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.”

“Believing passionately in the palpably not true... is the chief occupation of mankind.” (not really about writing, but I'm making it so).

In other news...

An interesting account of how one first-time novelist (but established writer) came to the decision that giving away his self-published debut novel for almost nothing made the most economic sense, via BoingBoing

It's worth a read, especially for those aspiring (is there any other kind?) book authors who can't seem to gain any traction trudging along the traditional book publishing path (And if there are any literary agents out there, I'm now holding up a cardboard sign that reads "Will Work for Representation and/or Food").

A quote from the last graf...

As the screenwriter William Goldman said years ago about Hollywood, Nobody knows anything. You try something, you try something else, you try everything, even things that sound insane, because in an industry where the longstanding business model has been upended, everything else has been upended too, even the gravitational tug of logic. If you want to get rich, value your work at zero. Yes, okay, it reads like the last line of a Zen koan. But self-publishing’s best practices are still unwritten, so really: Why not? That tactical freedom might be the most disruptive, the most liberating part of the whole self-publishing business.

I'm still trying to decide if that's a fair statement or self-delusional bullshit. I'm thinking the latter, mebbe?

And if you're a writer or journalist who just doesn't have enough despair in your life (and who couldn't use a little more despair, right?) I'll now direct you to this cheerful little report on the current state of the alleged creative class, via Salon

Read it, writers, and weep for the present, never mind the future, 'cause there 'aint one...

Listen to the optimists and the great recession sounds like a great opportunity. This is the time for the creative class to brand itself! A day job, they say, is so 20th century – as quaint and outdated as tail fins and manual sewing machines. Thanks to laptops, cheap Internet connections and structural changes in the world economy, we’re living in a world of “free agents” – “soloists” who are “self-branding” and empowered to live flexible and self-determining lives full of meaning.

We are all citizens of Freelance Nation — heirs not to the old-school stodgy, gray-flannel-suit Organization Man but to the coonskin-capped pioneers and rugged, self-made types who built this country.

But for those who must actually scrape together work in this new “gig economy” – architects, filmmakers, writers, musicians, bookstore managers, graphic designers and other downsized members of the creative class, folks made obsolete by the Internet and the current predatory style of corporations – Freelance Nation is a place where they fight to keep a home or medical insurance.

Some are losing their houses. Others are watching marriages go up in smoke or falling into heavy drinking. Still others are couch-jumping for months or years at a time. Or they’re veering close to bankruptcy because of the risk of living without medical insurance. Call it the new creative destruction.

"...In fact, many free agents see themselves not as freewheeling soloists but as permatemps and content serfs."

Content serfs. I like that one, because in the sucker's game that is modern freelancing, that's exactly what you are - a serf. And if you don't like it, if you can't live on what they offer, then tough shit, there's another serf waiting right behind you who'll do it for less. Move along, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Haven't you heard, dumbshit? Everyone's a writer these days...*

* Of course, the ironic thing is that most of the really good writing I'm finding these days is on personal blogs...

Do Morons Dream of Being Mindless Sheep*

From a press release I saw this morning...

"Have you ever dreamed of hunting waterfowl on TV with a professional sportsman?"

A "professional sportsman?" What? You mean like this guy?

I've met a few "professional sportsmen." And the only thing I ever dreamed about was getting the hell away from them as quickly as possible. But then again, I always was a sloth-infused small-time dreamer with no real vision, so if it's your dream - out of all the possible dreams in the world - to hunt waterfowl on TV with a "professional" sportsman, then who am I to judge? Reach for the stars, dude...

*With apologies to Philip K. Dick's corpse...

Mallard's Cop-Out Rewind: It's That Kind of Place

Apologies for the lull. I've got blog material stacked up (hunting trips, books, decoys, dogs, the shitty and depressing state of writing as a viable career, and many other random thoughts) but I've been busy the past three weeks and haven't quite had the time to sit down and write anything.

So of course I'm copping out (temporarily) by recycling an old post that maybe a few of you haven't seen. Lazy, I know. So sue me...

I have no idea what story is contained within this picture's alloted thousand words, but I was cleaning out some files in anticipation of switching over to a new computer this weekend when I stumbled across it and said "that's so weird it needs to be on the blog".

I took it some years back on a state highway somewhere between the southeastern Oklahoma towns of Antlers and Broken Bow. As I was driving along I looked over, saw something dangling from the highway sign, thought "what the hell?" and turned around to take a look.

It turned out to be a string of decapitated catfish, mainly flatheads. I have no idea what compelled someone to hang them there: an angler's pride, some kind of hillbilly voodoo, perhaps a warning to to stay the hell on the main roads (homegrown weed is and always has been a big cash crop in the mountains of SE Oklahoma). I never figured it out. I snapped the picture, looked over my shoulder to make sure Leatherface wasn't watching from the trees and got back in my truck.

I shouldn't have been surprised, though. My mother was born and raised in Antlers and I still have a pile of relatives down that way. I spent a lot of time there as a child so I was well aware things are a little, well...different in that part of the state.

How different? When I took that picture I was down there on an assignment, writing about... Bigfoot.
Yep, it's that kind of place. Beautiful, but strange, a little spooky and completely unlike the popular image of Oklahoma.

The year prior I had been down there on another assignment, writing about Oklahoma's timber industry. While there I had arranged to drive around some logging sites with a local timber company foreman. As I got into his truck and snapped my seatbelt into place he looked over at me and quite unexpectedly asked "You gotchaself a gun, doncha?"

Now, for those unfamiliar with that part of Oklahoma, it's as rugged, as isolated, as wild and as suspicious of outsiders as any place in the country. I was going to be spending all day in the woods with this guy, alone. And here he was asking me if I happened to have a gun on me. Cue banjos.

As it turns out I did, in point of fact, have myself a gun. Yep, it's that kind of place. Notebook? Check. Tape Recorder? Check. Camera? Check. Glock? Check. But I wasn't sure if I should tell him or not. I didn't know this guy from Adam. And he was big, kind of wild-looking. I was from "the city." Cue banjos again.

Would it be tactically prudent to keep it a secret or should I just come out and say upfront that I was packing. Was it a trick question? Would I be violating some company policy? The question, however, was rendered moot as he pulled a scoped .223 from behind the seat and shoved the barrel into the floorboard next to me.

"This is for coyotes 'an such," he informed me with a grin. I instantly wondered if nosy reporters, taxonomically speaking, fell into the "such" genus. "But," he continued, "Ah don' go nowheres roun chere without a gun. Dope growers. An there some roads you doan wanna go down even then."

Great. With the prospect of armed conflict apparently part of the day's tour, I figured I might as well tell him. He gave me an approving look and off we went, engaged in perhaps the most heavily-armed interview in Oklahoma journalism history. Yep, it's that kind of place.

I never ran into Tony Montana and his little friend on that trip, and I after I snapped this picture I went on, but never found Bigfoot, either.

Didn't really matter, though. The locals were scary enough...

Hate To Keep Flogging a Deceased Equine, But...

Did I mention that duck season's not looking so good this year? This is the old flood-control lake on the in-laws' homestead and my A#1 fowling spot. If I had taken this picture in a normal year I'd be standing in about four feet of water, ducks would be dropping from the sky and all would be good and right in the world.

So it goes...

At least I got in a little work on some planted birds with knucklehead Jenny while we were down there seeing how bad things were.

I'll be hitting the Kansas prairie chicken opener with Scampwalker this week and it'll be interesting to see how she does, or doesn't. I thought I had her pretty well whoa broke but we had some issues when the quail started flying. Hope the guys I'm hunting with are patient souls or I may be relegated to hunting along so they can actually enjoy themselves...

Copy Desk Fail and "One Ticket to High, Please."

Just a little random Friday flotsam and jetsam consisting of two absolute gems, both courtesy of BoingBoing...

First, the "Unfortunate Headline of the Day" award  goes to the Washington Post for this doozy...

'Nuff said there...

Next, seemingly staid, buttoned-down travel writer/PBS television host Rick Steves goes a little wild as he gives the funniest travel/getting stoned analogy  I've ever heard...



"I love going places, and to me high is a place."

I and the millions of geriatric PBS viewers anxiously await the debut of that particular episode of "Rick Steve's Europe." I'm guessing it couldn't be any weirder or more hallucinogenic than those old re-runs of "The Lawrence Welk Show."

This Is What A Cosmic Screwing Looks Like...

The highest fall flight numbers in decades whisper promises of an epic waterfowl season. And I finally have a boat to duck hunt out of. No more busting reeds, busting ice or busting my ass. Just launch the boat and go.

All those shallow backwater areas at the upper end of the lake, the areas you could never reach on foot? The areas you see ducks pouring into year after year as you hunker down in the ass-deep water blowing your duck call like a kazoo hoping to peel off a few tone-deaf stragglers?

They're yours now. Just launch the boat and go. That's your new mantra: no worries, just launch the boat and go.

Uh, yeah. About that...

And that's the best-looking boat ramp on the lake. The others are much, much worse. And with the long-term fall and winter forecast calling for a La Nina pattern, it doesn't look to get any better any time soon, and in fact will - in all likelihood - only get worse, water-level wise.

All my other spots are bone-dry. The walk-in areas I typically hunt on the lake are mostly high and dry and the water level of the main lake body is so far away from any shoreline cover I'd need a layout blind to kill anything.

What I need is a small sneakboat I can throw in the back of the truck and launch from anywhere. What I have is a brand-new, much-anticipated, long-dreamed-about 16-foot, 25-horsepower albatross. What a cosmic screwing...

Teal season starts in three days. The general waterfowl season starts Oct. 29th. Time to start doing some rain dances...

Technical Difficulties...

Several people have e-mailed to tell me that they are unable to post comments on the blog. I have the "comments" settings as liberal as they'll go, and apparently people are still having trouble. Might this have something to do with Blogger's new automatic spam filter that I can't seem to get rid of or modify?

Anybody have any ideas? Anyone with a Blogger account having the same issue? What the hell am I doing wrong? Is it time, once agan, to think about moving over to Wordpress?  Please feel free to leave a comment, unless, of course, you can't...

Gratuitous Body Count Pic: At Least It's Not a Tailgate...

One thing you almost never see from me is one of these...

Not that I have anything against guys (or gals) who like to take pics of their limits, it's just not something I generally do (although if I manage to scratch out an Oklahoma quail limit this year you can bet your ass I'm taking a picture of that. Lots of them. But don't hold your breath. See below...).

As a sort of half-assed photographer, I'd much rather try to take an interesting picture of a single bird (feather detail, macro, different angle, whatever) rather than a big pile of perforated birds (as an example, I'm kinda fond of this one ). And it's not like an opening-day limit is some sort of accomplishment or personal milestone for me. I shoot a lot of them. Not a brag, it's just that I live in an area with (most years) a lot of dove. Hell, I'm sure if you gave The Suburban Bushwacker a plane ticket and a shotgun, he'd shoot a limit, too.

**EDIT: Actually, I just realized that technically, this picture is two birds short of a limit. Why? The two collared dove on the end don't count toward the combined mourning dove/whitewing limit, which makes my small victory in the face of today's lousy conditions, and my resulting euphoria (see below) essentially null and void. Sigh. Carry on...

But you know what? I'm posting this gratuitous body count pic, proudly, because damn it, I earned this 15-bird limit. I don't think I've ever been more miserable on an opening-day dove hunt, and I've been on some scorchers.


It's not that it was so terribly hot: it "only" got up to 106. It's not that it was so terribly windy: it was "only" gusting to about 35 mph or so. But the combination of 106 degrees, 35 mph winds and the effects of this (insert any adjective here) drought all combined to form some weird sort of unholy synergy of misery. It felt like someone was standing directly in front of me holding the world's largest hairdryer and a bucket of sand, and all the while the giant klieg light of the sun burning holes in my retinas, even through the sunglasses.

Misery. My only solace was leaning my back against the water-cooled steel of the stock tank and drinking gallons of ice-cold well water (out of the pipe, not the stock tank...) while waiting for the evening flight.

     Unfortunately, the dove were mostly coming in from the west so I had to get up, walk around the pond and go hunker down in the sagebrush, which meant my ass immediately got punctured with dozens of these little bastards...

That's a sandbur, if you're lucky enough to not be familiar with them. And if the abstract concept of pain could take a physical form, this is what it would be. If you ever plan on bird hunting northwest Oklahoma or southwest Kansas, I'd advise you to bring a good pair of hemostats, because you'll be picking these out of everything...

But eventually, after the pain and cursing subsided, I started shooting a few birds, including a pair of these...

The Eurasion collared dove, a non-native transplant which is quickly establishing itself across the region. It's still mostly a bird of towns, suburbs and semi-rural backyards (we've got a couple here at the house) but they're showing up in hunters' bags more frequently. These are the first I've shot. They're considerably larger than a mourning dove and when this pair came flying in like a couple B-52s even I could manage the double.

After limiting out I walked back to the truck just in time to catch the area manager driving by. I hadn't seen him in a while so he stopped to talk and eventually the conversation came around to quail. The news, as expected, was grim. It's going to be a tough year. Really tough.

He told me that according to the trapping results, it looks like the quail on that particular area managed to get off one meager hatch in the middle of August, which isn't a good time to be a quail chick in the best of years, much less the hottest, driest summer in recorded history. There were no other age groups for the young quail, which means all other hatches this year apparently failed.

And judging by the heat and condition of the cover, I'm surprised anything survived at all. It's hard to put into words just how desiccated the landscape in this region truly is. I hadn't been out to this particular WMA since the end of quail season back in February, and in fact hadn't spent much, if any time this summer north of where I live. It was dry in February, but it's powder now.

How anything as fragile and high-strung as those little nine-ounce birds can live through a summer like this is beyond me, but as I was sitting there this evening I heard a few bobs whistling from somewhere out in the sagebrush. But just a few.

I may shoot some quail this fall, or I may not, but I'm guessing this is the last "look-at-my-limit" pic you'll be getting from me for quite some time. And really, that's not a bad thing.