Two years

And still I miss Mike Ford, despite the minor fact of never having met or spoken to him. I eventually forgave him for naming a madam in The Last Hot Time Chloe Vadis, though getting to that point took a certain amount of agonized writhing on my part. Let's hope that wherever he is they appreciate him. In the meantime, fire up the heavy artillery in his memory: Infernokrusher Romeo and Juliet!

Ro-Mo. Your windows are still mirrored; taunt me not,
But show your colors, dare to challenge me,
These lips are two shaped charges, primed and hot,
That wait the go-code for delivery.
J-Cap. The flag is to the deadly, not the loud,
Yet aim as well as posing shows in this;
The worthy throwdown's always to the proud,
And hammer down is how the hard girls kiss.
Ro-Mo. My draft is stopped; I struggle toward the clutch.
J-Cap. And would a charge of nitrous make thee run?
Ro-Mo. Too much; but what else is there but too much?
Let me take arms, and elevate the gun.
J-Cap. Small arms but hint what demolitions say.
Ro-Mo. Then, gunner, gimme one round.
J-Cap. On the way.

[H/T, of course, to Making Light]

We band of what now?

Drat. DRAT. Yesterday was the day of Saints Crispin and Crispianus, patron saints of shoemakers, and I missed it. It's one of several saints' days I try to remember for reasons largely unrelated to church standing, right up there with the days of Saints Thecla and Severian (Gene Wolfe is pretty sneaky for an Aggie). The Crispin/Crispianus connection is the really obvious one about it being part of the speech that, to paraphrase a better writer, reached down the throats of a band of tired wet miserable outnumbered men and pulled them to their feet by their testicles. I'm sure Henry V only wished he'd been that eloquent, but whatever he said did the trick and the rest is just posing for the photographers. Portrait painters. Whatever.

Apropros of the young king's big day, however, herewith an excerpt from the modern version, from the late lamented Mike Ford. I will pay my penance by having "Bon Dieu, achetez-moi un Mercedes-Benz" stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

HARRY. What is not messed with, there we do not mess.
Our beer is strong, our judges paid on time,
And every jerk we whack has whacking won.
So lay it on the table from your boss
And what is up his snoot.

AMB. Let's cut the crap.
You sent a note that him what's runnin' France
Should give a wad of territory up
'Cause Crazy Eddie ran a game there once.
On this, my boss the Dolphin ain't so keen,
Says that you is a, or is smokin', dope,
An' wonders how you got in them long pants.
You risk a grabbing by the wide lapels,
And havin' your hat handed you real hard.
But hey, he pays his markers. So here is
A bunch of boodle that should square things up,
And put this stupid tsimmis in the bag:
So's all the gloves stay on. Thusly the swag.

The zen of activity

When the world is too much with my level of indignation, as when Michael Chertoff gets up on his hind legs to prate about how we, by God, need another way to say, "Ihre Papieren, bitte," to potential terrorists and anyone who doesn't look sufficiently anglo, or when the White House deals with Jose Padilla's verdict by announcing Jenna's engagement, I am glad to have physical action in my life. John M. Ford's advice about dealing with stress--"Find a distraction and allow it to distract you"--is straight to the point.

I was the only student at last night's dressage class, so I got a serious workout; inside of ten minutes, sweat was trickling down my face and my legs were aching. Private lessons are great, because you don't have to keep tabs on other students and whether their horses are about to be unpredictable (or whether yours is going to be so in their flight space), you get lots of direct instructor feedback, and you can work on your weak spots. The downside is that you can't hide or slack or learn from other people's mistakes.

I was paired again with Cappi, a plump little Morgan. He's not a bad critter, but he's smart enough to have learned the trick of ducking out of a turn and running down the long side of a ring when he doesn't want to do something. Unfortunately for him, I am learning a trick known as not letting him do that. In a way, his spastic attacks are even helpful: I have to pay more attention to him and read his intentions, I damn well better be balanced on his back to handle his lateral moves, and I eventually have to be able to bring him back to wherever he might have freaked out and make him do the move correctly. Also, the adrenaline rush after he bolts down the ring, maybe veering a little too close to a pile of jump standards ("Not the face! Not the face!"), clears the nervous system out a treat.

To balance out the inevitable "whoa, about to die" moments of excitement, there are the long stretches of hanging out the horses in the barn. You still have to be careful, because they're still large skittish prey animals with big teeth and feet, but within those limits it's possible to decompress a lot. Contact with a large relaxed animal, just leaning into a shoulder and maybe giving them a good scratch along the neck where they can't reach, is very good for the blood pressure.

Orrr you can go home and attack the chilly peach army using strategy e-mailed from a friend. It's like Sun Tzu, only with more brown sugar and almonds!

J'adore

The people at Making Light are warped sick frightening individuals, which is why they've been able to keep the site lively and entertaining even when their hosts are away. They've formulated some useful theorems, too, such as the one about how any work of science fiction (or any fiction, really) is improved by the addition of dinosaurs and sodomy, and that anyone who uses the term "you people" in an online discussion is an unredeemable troll. There's a pretty solid group of regulars who post, many of them pros in the SF publishing field, and the sheer level of erudition that happens in the comments thread is intimidating. I usually watch from the sidelines and pick up things like truffle recipes and coqz heaumez.

John M. Ford, known to his friends as Mike, was one of my favorite contributors, especially when he was posting off-the-cuff poetry to leave readers slackjawed and often howling with glee. Check out his sonnet on entropy, which is a solid emotional kick in the gut, much as "110 Stories" was, and then cleanse your palate with "Harry of Five Points," where he managed to write gangster-and-moll slang in neat iambic pentameter AND bastardized French and to hit all the major plot points of the first few scenes of "Henry V." I figured, when he died last year, that there was no justice in the world and that the days of found poetic joy on Making Light were over.

I am glad to be wrong on the second count. Look upon their works, ye lolcats, and despair.

LOLcat for the Makers
John Dunbar (c. 1500)

I that in heill wes and gladnes
Am trublit now with great sicknes
My sicklie stait is no surprise:
IM IN UR BASE KILIN UR GUYZ.

Death sovran is of all the tubez,
Of rich, of poor, of l33t, of n00bz;
No mortal shal escaip his eyis:
IM IN UR BASE KILIN UR GUYZ.

Al flesh is dust; we are but bones;
Baith knight and maid he freely pwns;
Against his glanse brooks no disguyse;
IM IN UR BASE KILIN UR GUYZ.

He draws al to his dark bucket;
Whoe'er ye be, ye're surely f***kit;
The Walrus wil not sympathise;
IM IN UR BASE KILIN UR GUYZ.

Our base are al belong to Death
And have done since our natal breath
(This point I'd like to emphasise):
IM IN UR BASE KILIN UR GUYZ.