December 19th, 2001

December 19, 2001

Posted at 6:58 PM by Jack Chalker

Well, temporarily at least my email is back to normal. In general, the miragepress.com address will work even if there are problems, but only after I know that a problem exists. They say they’re going to be upgrading the servers again in January. Their customers shudder. It’s also the fifth time they’ve said that in the past year. Either they are fixing what ain’t broke or the dog keeps eating their homework. Lots of folks offered email sites, but it’s not the email site but the ISP that’s the problem, and at the moment they’re the only folks who can offer me broadband (we’re outside any DSL areas and satellite’s got that annoying delay at $20 more a month and is reported to have its own service interruptions, so…).

     I almost wrote that I “celebrated” my birthday day before yesterday, but at my age now what you’re celebrating is that you have birthdays, not the alternative. My oldest son will turn 20 today, and plans to celebrate it by having his gaming group take him out to see the premiere of Lord of the Rings. I’ll wait until next week, when the crowds are down. I hear surprisingly good things about the film, but, then again, I was one of the half dozen who liked The Frighteners. I also liked the first Harry Potter movie. I’m getting a kick out of those folks parroting the art film critics about “slavishly following the book” when (A) I’m an author. I like films that follow books, and (B) it’s so word for word that it’s very clear that those folks never saw the film nor, in fact, read the book(s). With technology finally up to it, it’s a shame we can’t get somebody out there to do Midnight at the Well of Souls. It almost happened once, but after months of tough negotiation they tried to slip in the clause that basically reserved all the uranium to them and the shaft to me and I wouldn’t be so goshwow blinded by Hollywood glamour to tell my Hollywood agent to sign it anyway. Too bad, though. Rights still available.

     Well, I hope I’m wrong, but at the moment it looks like a second Bush administration is about to declare victory and lose another Asian war. Think not? What was our objective? To overthrow a bad government and install a possibly better one in Afghanistan? Nope. That was just a means to an end. The objective was to destroy the Al Qaeda infrastructure and kill or capture their leaders. Osama is as dead and gone as, well, Saddam Hussein. We’ve got no money men, no computerized records, no bank accounts or financeers, and just about none of the top leadership. We didn’t even get the top of the Taliban. The poor brainwashed grunts of theirs we did catch look very much like, well, the Iraqi soldiers we captured or killed a decade ago. Well, as usual, not many of our professional military got hurt. Only our civilians….

     Happy holidays, folks! jlc

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