The Nutmeg of Consolidation

• Sheri S. Tepper, sf author.  (John Scalzi notes her passing.) 


• John Zacherle, TV horror host (and later dj), sometimes called the Cool Ghoul.

• Bob Elliott, the other half of Bob & Ray, the durable long-playing radio & TV comedy team.  They also did commercials.  I was too young to understand them in their heyday (I did understand they were supposed to be funny--I just didn't get how) but eventually they began to make sense.  
• Frank Finlay, actor
• Included for the record:  The New York Times obit for David Hartwell, which has taken almost two weeks to appear.

• If you have missed or are studiously avoiding the Hugo kerfuffle, you should ignore this post, not that this post is about that, but I am pointing to delightful by-products, and they won't otherwise make sense.
• ( The aforementioned delightful by-products. )
• Any of the links on this page will get you to selected quotes from the factions. Warning: Have shower and brain bleach standing by.

• Suzette Haden Elgin, author, poet, linguist. (I have The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense somewhere in the apartment.)
• Rod McKuen, poet/songwriter/singer.  Ne me quittez pas.  (And translated Jacques Brel.)

• Bobby (Blue) Bland, bluesman.  (Other stuff, too.)


• Richard Matheson, writer.


• Gary David Goldberg, writer and producer.


• Parke Godwin, writer.  (Wintermind seems to pop up at the weirdest times.)

• Raw Story has a short article:

  The Republican Party’s platform committee has struck down a proposal to include language expressing support for same sex civil unions as an alternative for LGBT Republicans who want to formalize their unions without treading on the politically and religiously sensitive ground of “marriage.” When reached by Raw Story for comment, GOProud activist Jimmy Salvia was angry and disappointed over the civil union fight, but probably not for the reason that one would suspect.

• Also, Gawker has the lowdown on Mr. Romney and his finances.


• And at The Reid Report are a lot of excerpts from a GOP insider who left. Here's the complete article by Mike Lofgren, published at Truthout almost a year ago. There's a link to something described as a thorough rebuttal. Which sneers a lot.


• Fred Pohl remembers Harry Harrison.

• Margaret Atwood
• Tom Waits

So, according to our local Breitbart-knockoff, Obama is the sinister author of a Big Brother Government, and it is against Obama's Insidious Liberal Triumvirate of "welfare spending, the so-called stimulus" and "Big Brotherism" which the nearly-90-year-old science fiction Grand Master was inveighing.

So, is any of that actually true?

Nah.

How do I know?

Because it says so in the very first sentence of the LA Times blog/article to which our local Breitbartlette was referring:

"Ray Bradbury is mad at President Obama, but it's not about the economy, the war or the plan to a construct a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City."

So what specifically is it that Ray Bradbury is pissed at the President about?

Conveniently, the article makes that clear in the second paragraph:

“He should be announcing that we should go back to the moon,” says the iconic author, whose 90th birthday on Aug. 22 will be marked in Los Angeles with more than week's worth of Bradbury film and TV screenings, tributes and other events. “We should never have left there. We should go to the moon and prepare a base to fire a rocket off to Mars and then go to Mars and colonize Mars. Then when we do that, we will live forever."

Well, shit, I'm pissed about it too. Yes, this filthy, America-hating Liberal of the First Water could (and has) done thousands of word on both the pragmatic, dollar-and-cent value of sending human beings to space, as well as how vital it is to the human soul to have crazy, awe-inspiring, long-term goals to shoot for.

Hell, the space program's educational and technological spin-offs alone are enough to justify tripling our investment.

So what does any of that have to do with ""welfare spending" or "the so-called stimulus" or "Big Brotherism"?

Nothing, of course. Nothing whatsoever. Just another steaming bit of offal dropping off the assembly line at the Breitbart Conservative Lie Factory[.]