Why the Republican Party Sucks: Part 1 of an Infinite Part Series

To get a sense of the priorities of the two major parties in American politics, I took a look at their platforms from the 2008 election. I searched each document for two words: "taxpayer" and "citizen". Here are the results:

Republican Platform:
"taxpayer" = 12 mentions; "citizen" = 17 mentions

Democratic Platform:
"taxpayer" = 3 mentions; "citizen" = 29 mentions

Just for reference, "taxpayer" is not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution, while "citizen" appears 22 times.

It is pretty clear that the Republican Party is more concerned about the size of your wallet than anything else when they consider your status as a taxpayer of equal or more importance than whether or not you are a citizen.

Wal*Mart pays taxes; Wal*Mart doesn't get to vote.

Taxpayers don't have rights; citizens have rights.

Sidereal

Review: The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip

Today: The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip, consisting of The Riddle-Master of Hed, copyright 1976; Heir of Sea and Fire, copyright 1977; and Harpist in the Wind, copyright 1979. All three of the editions I have were published by Del Rey Books.






Back in the days when I was but a wee Bok globule, I read a trilogy called the Lord of the Rings. Being greatly excited by this work, I looked for other, similar books that I might enjoy as much. Alas, there was not much on offer in those days, but eventually I did come across a book called The Riddle-Master of Hed, the back cover of which promised wizards, riddles, dead lords, evil forces, shapechangers and perhaps most importantly, that it was book one in a trilogy.

Synopsis:

Morgan is the Prince of Hed, and island state in a land ruled by the High One. Shortly before the events at the start of the book, Morgan's parents die in a shipwreck, and the "land-rule" (a magical divine right including near-complete knowledge of land itself) passes to him. He's at the College of the Riddle-Masters in the town of Caithnard being trained in riddle-mastery when this happens. On his way home he decides to detour to the kingdom of An (also part of the High One's realm), a land where the dead are only loosely bound to their graves, and a crown awaits anyone who can win a riddle contest with a dead king. Morgan wins the contest, takes the crown, and sneaks home to Hed without letting anyone know. At this point the story begins.

The High One's harpist, named Deth, arrives on Hed to express official condolences over the loss of Morgan's parents. In the course of conversing with Morgan, he figures out that Morgan is the one who won the riddle contest in An, and tells Morgan that the entirety of the High One's realm is gossiping and puzzling over the mystery. Raederle, the daughter of the king of An and the sister of Morgan's College friend, has been betrothed in advance by her father to whosoever wins the riddle contest. Morgan decides the time is right for him to travel back to An, this time as a suitor for her hand.

On his way to An he is almost killed in a shipwreck, almost killed by complete strangers, and almost killed by the Queen of Ymris -- who turns out not to really be the Queen at all, but a shapechanger instead. All these events seem to be related to three stars that he has on his forehead. It's never quite clear to me, but I assume he normally grows his hair long enough to cover them. The stars appear to be part of a centuries old prophecy, and the attacks by shapechangers compel Morgan to start investigating their meaning. This takes Morgan on a years long tour of all the kingdoms in the realm, where he picks up clues that seem to involve the High One himself.

Book 2, Heir of Sea and Fire, focuses on Raederle, Morgan's betrothed and her quest to find him after he mysteriously disappears. To say much more would give too much away, but she does discover that she has familial ties to the shapechangers who've been hounding Morgan across the realm. In book 3, Harpist in the Wind, Morgan and Raederle join forces, both of them having learned some potent magic during the course of their adventures in the first two books. Together they learn the significance of the stars on Morgan's forehead, and what the shapechangers are after, and in the process make some unpleasant discoveries about the founding of the High One's realm.

My Opinion:

A good tale, compactly told, especially in light of today's behemoth, multi-volume fantasies (Jordan, Martin, Erikson, I'm looking at you). Combined, all three books would barely amount to a medium sized volume in Erikson's Malazan series. But McKillip gets the job done. I often find it amazing that I like these books at all. Her prose is often described as "lyrical", which to my mind often means "intrusive and showy", and that has been my experience with a few others of her books that I've tried.

The short length also means these books lack the detailed world building that is more or less standard in epic fantasy today. McKillip manages to invoke a detailed world without actually showing all the details. Sometimes this reveals holes in the fabric of her world, for instance a political system featuring feudal overlords with millenial lifespans, everyman farmer-princes, and law and order imposed from above by the threat of magic of the largely absent High One. I just don't get the feeling that such a system could last a normal lifetime, much less a millenium.

Magic is shown as being, well magical of course, but also utter without any rhyme or reason. This despite the fact that a wizard's school flourished in the realm for hundreds of years. What were they teaching, if magic was not amenable to being understood by an organized framework.

Despite the fact that it sometimes feels as though McKillip didn't think through the consequences of the world she was setting up, I still really like these books, largely for the characters. Morgan and Raederle carry the books, and Raederle in particular is one of my favorites. I first read these books almost thirty years ago, and only infrequently re-read them (maybe twice), but I can still remember the slow developement of a relationship that they were tossed into by prophecy and the arrogance of rulers. Even at the end of the third book, they are still trying to figure out if they can be together, even though they clearly love each other.

The Round-up:

If you like your fantasy dark and gritty, where you can smell the urine in the back alleys, then these books probably aren't for you. If you like your fantasy with a strong, self consistent underpinning of magic and politics, then these books aren't for you. If you like your fantasy high, and let's go ahead and say lyrical, with an actual plot, then these books may be for you. McKillip's fantasy isn't like anyone else's I've read (not necessarily a good thing in this case), and The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy isn't really like any of her other work I've read (definitely a good thing). Although the resemblence isn't strong, the books I'm most strongly reminded of when I read The Riddle-Master of Hed are Le Guin's first three Earthsea books.

Sidereal

What other people have to say about the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy:

Lela Olszewski at SF Site

Robert N. Tilendis at Green Man Review

Laurie Thayer at Rambles

James Schellenberg at The Cultural Gutter

A review by Russ Allbery

Introducing: The Ho Ho Diet

Feeling a need to purge all that wholesome food from your body? Need a quick boost of sugar and preservatives to get you through that long, boring meeting at work? Want to stick it in the you-know-what of all those smug eco-shoppers who park their bloated Escalades in the compact spots at Whole Foods? Then the famous Ho Ho Diet may be for you!

The Ho Ho Diet has a multitude of benefits:

1. It's cheap! One pack of 3 Ho Hos has 250 calories. You only need to eat eight pack, or 24 Ho Hos a day to get a full 2,000 calorie diet. At an average price of $1.50 per pack, that's just $12 a day!
2. Low sodium: 24 Ho Hos per day give you less than half your daily amount of sodium, but simultaneously provide a solid 32% of your recommended amount of protein.
3. Great taste! People who eat Ho Hos are happy. You can't say that about someone shoving celery and rice cakes in their yap.....
4. Chocolatey goodness: Ho Hos feature rich chocolate cake inside, wrapped in a scrumptious chocolate frosting. Chocolate has been linked to many health benefits, such as lowering cholesterol, reducing risk for heart attacks, increasing serotonin levels, and causing mild euphoria.
   
5. Iron! The chocolate in Ho Hos contains iron, an essential nutrient. Deficiency of iron in the blood can cause anemia. Some of the symptoms of anemia include weakness or fatigue, general malaise, and poor concentration -- all of which are statistically linked to being a Republican.
6. Cylindricity: food presentation is important, and who can resist those little brown cylinders? Arrange them on a bed of white rice for effect (but don't eat the rice!!).

Some doubters will claim that you can't lose weight by eating only Ho Hos. Guess what? They are right! but it's all a matter of perspective. You're a good person, aren't you? So making more of you is like making more of a good thing. And that's a good thing!

Sidereal

New Word: autophotovisualization

Autophotovisualization: noun. The process of using a camera to take a photograph of one's self. Normally this is done by holding the camera at arm's length, pointing it in the general direction of one's face, and hoping for the best. Most often photos taken using autophotovisualization wind up on one's Facebook or My Space pages, or else are featured prominently on one's blog. Autophotovisualization is most common among computer users, especially Facebook or My Space account holders, as these individuals spend so much time on-line that they have no face-to-face (ftf) relationships anymore, and thus have no friends who will hold the camera for them while a photograph is taken.

Sidereal

The Big One

Just my luck to start a blog about ranting (and books) at a time when my reasons for ranting have suddenly gotten scarce. So I'm having to dig back into my mental rant archives for something..... Luckily the previous eight years have provided enough rant fodder for a lifetime (or maybe not so lucky). This one's been brewing in the back of my mind since the year 2000.

So it is pretty much a given at this point that the presidency of Little Bush was a complete disaster, except for bazillionaires who don't plan on ever having children. Those guys at least got their tax cuts. What's not so clear is who is responsible. I mean, sure, Bush is responsible, as well as whoever was pulling his strings (Cheney???). But how did such a person, one of such questionable qualifications for high office, get into a position so that he could steal the election with a minimum of handwringing by the people?

Obviously Republican voters bear the brunt of responsibility for this. Without their 47.9% of the vote, Bush could never have beaten Gore's take of 48.4% of the vote. What about the other 3.7% of the vote, you might ask? Well thanks to the winner-take-all system of the Electoral College, these votes tend not to mean much in presidential elections, and this has pretty much been the case for over 200 years! When the election isn't close, or when both major party candidates espouse similar view on the issues, voting third party can be an important expression of dissent. Please note, however, than neither of these two conditions held in 2000. As we've seen (and as was clear even before voting began) the election was very close. As for anyone who can honestly claim that there's no difference between Bush and Gore, all I can say is get your head out of the toilet because after eight years of being submerged in your own vomit you probably need a bath. Or is that stench the rotting corpse of our civil liberties?

From an Electoral College point of view, Florida turned out to be a pivotal state in this election. It was razor close in votes for the major party candidates, and whoever got its E.C. votes would win the big banana. Included among the third parties on the ballot in Florida were the Reform, Libertarian, Natural Law, and Constitution parties. Voters in these parties are nutjobs who didn't want to vote for Bush because he refused to adopt the following into the Republican platform:

1. Paying out all monies in the Federal Treasury to "tax-payers", i.e. members of the Reform, Libertarian, Natural Law, and Constitution parties.
2. Disbanding the Federal Government in favor of home rule by the States, or else into smaller political units, the size of which will be determined later on the basis of effectiveness of allowing conservative nutjobs with guns to boss everyone else around.
3. Grinding up all people who are not True Americans -- those not Reform, Libertarian, Natural Law, and Constitution parties -- and disposing of the remains in vast toxic waste storage facilities constructed in Sodam and Gomorrah (i.e. Hollywood and New York City).

The only effect these voters were going to have on the election was to reduce Little Bush's votes, which is really a good thing, so more power to them.

But there was another third party at play in Florida, one whose voters were ardently opposed to all the principles behind Little Bush's candidacy. These voters were also in favor of many, if not all, of the proposals put forward by the Gore campaign, the difference often being one of quantity, not quality. Even for those who did not find much common ground with Gore would admit that he was by far better than a patently unqualified candidate whose policies would run the country into the ground (which is exactly what happened). Logic, common sense, call it what you will, even self interest, would suggest that in an extremely close election, voting for someone you don't like is better than shooting yourself in the head.

Yet these voters did exactly that, shoot themselves in the head. Not only that, but the bullet passed through their empty heads and managed to bring down the whole rest of the country. According to the Federal Election Commission, Little Bush won Florida by 537 votes. If even six-tenths of one percent of these voters had put the interests of the country over their own selfishness, held their noses and voted for the anti-Bush candidate who actually had a chance to win, then Little Bush wouldn't have been able to steal the election at all.

These people voted for Ralph Nader, and they "elected" Little Bush. They bear almost as much responsibility for the eight year long national nightmare as Republicans do, and no amount of clicking their ruby slippers together and chanting "there's no vote like IRV, there's no vote like IRV" is going to raise eight years worth of dead, heal eight years worth of wounded, or restore eight years worth of lost opportunity.

Eight years later I'm still pissed off, and it makes me hope that the religious nutjobs are right, that the Devil exists and that Hell is a real place, because the Green party presidential candidate from the 2000 election has a lot to answer for.

Sidereal

Further Conversations with Sidereal Jr.

How you know your kid is gonna be a geek.....

S. Jr. (holding hands up): Daddy, how come I can't generate a forcefield?

S.: ??? Uh..... ???

I am so proud.....

Sidereal

Orbits

Today I begin my forty-third orbit around Sol.