Speaking of 20,000 Words

Figure 8: There will always be people who think
they can run your blog empire better than you.

On an old machine in the basement last night I found a book I wrote about 10 years ago that details how to establish a profitable online bookstore. I had it for sale online at one time, but as its revenue barely covered the advertising, hosting, and credit card processing costs, I shut the whole deal down and forgot about it.

However, if the lovely and gracious Rogue can make a suitable book cover, Book Profits Dot Com: How to establish a profitable online bookstore with little money and less risk should be available on Kindle by month end. It's still worthwhile and almost timely, with the exception of my silver market commentary, of course.  Not that the advice is bad, but explaining how people are ignoring $5 silver makes less sense when the price is up 5x.

Finding stuff like that almost makes me wish I hadn't sold the rights to Blog Empires* all those years ago...

* True story:**  I sold that book back in 2005, and it still generates "original" blog entries, like this one, and this one, and this one (from last month) 8 years later. I suspect the buyer got his $500 worth from it.
** Besides the one where I actually did build a profitable online bookstore but never managed to build a blog empire.*** Blog Empires had way cooler pictures, though...
*** Unless it's just a painfully small empire, consisting of only an emperor and about three serfs.

Huntress and other stories

It's like Die Hard 2, but without snowmobiles.

I seem to be back in the fiction mood, much to my chagrin.  I enjoyed it while it lasted the first time, though I gave it up 10 years ago when it began to look too much like real, actual work.  But I made the mistake of throwing my fiction out as a freebie over at Vox's a while back, and the universal feedback was that a book is judged by its cover.  The Tales of the Red Brethren cover was subpar for a number of reasons, but perhaps mostly because it does not match the stories within.  When I envisioned the stories years ago, they all existed in a world where the Red Brethren ruled m/l, but they never took on the quality of a whole.*  The three stories Beth saved and published she published under the name I had intended to use in the end.  That was probably a mistake, but it is one that can be remedied.

So I decided that I would re-work the book, or at least re-name it. I made a new cover based on the last story which, while not my favorite,** can probably make the best cover.*** Then I cleaned up the intro and bio - the preface, written by my daughter, remains untouched - and then a very bad thing happened. I re-read the stories.

I knew that there was a typo in one of them, but I did not remember where.  I found it, but in the meantime I also found where my minimalist narrative style of yore didn't quite give the feel I was looking for. So in 4 hours or so today, I added about 10% to the stories, little changes which I think bring depth to the characters and illustrate their motivations a little better. You know: more disappointment, more tragedy.  It's now about 20k words and I think if I went thru it for another 3 hours, it would be closer to 23k.

But I'm not sure if I should do that - left to my own devices, I would never stop editing - or if I should just write another story to bulk it up a bit.  I had one about a dragon who was so sick of a mouthy princess that he had to beg the handsome prince to take her away.  That one's lost, and I fear that if I try to re-create it, it will never be as flippantly good as the original.  There's another one I remember about a thief's quest - that one's lost, too, plus it doesn't really fit the book, even though the main character later served as inspiration for the cynical old guard, Fossick, who appears in both Strumplets and Ruinstone.  Or I could just go the easy route: write another story about a magical girl who saves the day (MGWSTD), which means that three of the four stories would follow that theme, while the fourth would still follow the self-sacrifice-to-save-the-world theme.****

I'm actually setting a date of Friday for myself to decide, because I want to decide to leave them the hell alone.  But I'm not sure that's going to happen. I keep assuring the lovely and gracious Rogue that there's a fine line between interest and obsession; she keeps assuring me that I'm on the wrong side of it.

UPDATE: 20,460 and I'm done with it. I have an idea for another story - which does not include a MGWSTD - that I may add in at a later date.  We shall see how that works out.

* Think of "evolution" explained by a few monkey teeth and trilobites and you have the general idea.
** Strumplets, being the first story I ever wrote for fun, remains my favorite. But not necessarily because it's the best of the lot.
*** A sublime exercise in circular reasoning, or at least in going too far the other way.
**** Chicks dig MGWSTD and suicide stories. And Dzhokhar.

Irony is dead

Buy pies, sell slices

This awesome set of CH 30 Newton dies can be yours...

So anyway, the BHN 8-16 Project continues apace, and I hope to pour my first actual .38 Special boolits tomorrow or Sunday.*  In the meantime, and as I thought might be the case, the ebay reloading die project has taken on something of a life of its own.

I mentioned a few weeks ago my purchase of 100-some dies in a mixed lot, some of which I subsequently cleaned up and sold on ebay.  Six weeks and 200% of the original purchase price later, I'm developing something of a business out of it: buy dies in lots, clean them up and match them up, then sell the second-best** sets in each caliber for big monies to people who can't get ammo through regular channels. Well, not big monies really, just 3-4x what I bought them for.  Doing so has allowed me to purchase of all the equipment I need to complete the BHN 8-16 Project without consulting the lovely and gracious Rogue.*** And I still have around 70 dies of various calibers left with more on the way.

One of the bigger problems I faced had been figuring out how to rebuild the innards of the many damaged FL sizing/decapping dies that are available; however, with the arrival today of my RCBS micrometer and with the help of The Reload Bench, that problem is solved as well. I can now buy boxes of unmarked spare parts and use them to rebuild dies for savings or sale. After all, the 29% are going to require a lot of ammo. I don't mind being an arms dealer. I do not however, have anything related to plastic guns and certainly did not download the plans to print one, even for safekeeping.

All that said, now that the threat of snow seem to be past at last,**** I'll be putting in my tomatoes and peppers tomorrow morning before the boy needs Dad to help move furniture. #2 son is out, but #1 daughter, husband, and 2 grandsons just moved in temporarily as they transition from the Air Force to college. Never a dull moment at Casa d'El Borak.

* Since #2 son is moving out tomorrow and Dad is helping, Sunday looks more likely, so long as it doesn't rain. Again.
** the best of each caliber go in El B's collection.  He's got a Fourth Turning to prepare for.
*** though surely she wonders about the origination and financing of all this stuff that arrives in the mail, seemingly daily.
**** Drat that global warming

Fairy Tale Fiscal Salvation

As Vox notes, no matter how poorly economists use Excel, when it comes to managing our massive debts:

"... there are only four options: slow growth and austerity for a very long time, elevated inflation, financial repression and debt restructuring. And the only one that offers any possibility of success without massive social disruption and violence is the last one."

It ought to go without saying* that policy makers are not going to go for debt restructuring any more than they are going to support actual austerity.

Imagine what would happen to every pension in the country if the gov't gave a 50% "haircut" to every t-bill floating around in Retirement Land - which would only reduce our debt to 2008 levels - and let's even assume that such a haircut would affect no other assets. Every pension's assets would be significantly reduced, and that reduction would make their impossible return targets double-dog impossible. No small number would go insolvent, throwing their claims back on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp, which is sort of a Fannie Mae for old men in checkered pants. Reducing federal obligations like that bankrupts pensions, which increases federal obligations.  Our system is riddled with such Catch-22s. And even if we did it, at the current rate of spending, we'd be right beck to this spot by the end of Obama's second term.  Voluntary restructuring is not going to happen.

Anyone following the screaming about a temporary 2% cut in spending that's backing up airports all over the nation** ought to realize that the necessary cuts, which run 10x the Sequester cuts to even be called a good start, are not going to happen, either. There is no place the government can cut that does not ultimately have a constituency that will react nastily at the end of the free lunch. Federal workers hold up the lines. Welfare professionals march in the streets.  Angry, scared, old people vote. Politicians are masters of avoiding the short-term pain*** threatened by all three. Slow growth may (will) happen, but voluntary long-term austerity is not in the cards.

Bennie and the Jest are currently trying, unsuccessfully, to create inflation, for only inflation promises**** a way to manage these debts by mercilessly reducing their denominator. Failing this, we will pass into brutal financial repression, while they again try to create inflation. Failing that, they will try cruder, more time-tested methods to create more inflation, and they will eventually succeed. At least until the wolves' teeth meet behind the trachea.

* but doesn't, apparently 
** in an attempt to bludgeon Americans into demanding the beast be fed. Call it the Washington Monument Strategy.
*** It is telling that the only time in recent memory that we had actual (if temporary) budget cuts, it happened in spite of the efforts of both parties to avoid them.
**** "No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bernanke carries the same iron of life and death."

"Rescue"

"Each time the SWAT team would rescue a family at the point of a gun, they would rush into the home in an armed line, guns ready in case the suspect was hiding inside."

You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

You forgot your Bernanke, too.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only person who thinks so:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite vast differences with President George W. Bush on ideology, style and temperament, President Barack Obama has stuck with Bush policies or aspirations on a number of fronts, from counterterrorism to immigration, from war strategy to the global fight against AIDS...

The article goes on to explain how the incredible similarities between the actual policies of these administrations can somehow be chalked up to "how the realities of governing often limit solutions."  I would suggest that in fact, the "vast differences...on ideology" between the two are mostly matters of rhetoric on the parts of the men themselves and wishful thinking on the parts of their most ardent supporters. Obama has not only not repealed much of Bush's damaging legacy, he has for the most part not even attempted, though he both voted against and ran against it.

The best explanation to this conundrum is not that these men disagree, but that their parties are not willing to allow each other to receive credit for what they both want to implement. Opposing someone's plan because they're in a different party is not the same as opposing the plan. It's more a matter of opposing the timing.

Ooh, that smell

Let the lead cool before flipping

The  smell of BHN 8-16 is around you.

Day 1* was, as might be expected, something of a learning experience. This is shorthand for, "even though I didn't accomplish as much as I'd hoped, I learned a lot and no one got poisoned or blown up." So, being in a generous mood, I'd call it a qualified success.

But the setup that I had originally expected to use really didn't work: we had just enough wind - and it kept switching directions -  that the cook stove got off to a very rough start. I actually got frustrated enough at one point to do a melt of some ingots in my Big Dipper and then add wheel weights directly to that, which didn't get me very far, either.  But once I moved the camp stove inside the barn,** I was able at long last to build up a little processing speed.

Things I learned:

1. a 15,000 BTU cook stove is just barely enough to melt lead, so long as it's out of the wind. 35,000 would have been much better.
2. All the utensils you think you'll use are too big. What you need are small utensils with long, preferably wooden, handles.
3. It is better to let the lead cool too much in the pans than too little.
4. While the idea of a light-adjusting welding helmet sounds cool in theory, a clear plastic mask would have worked much better. Every time I fluxed I went blind.
5. 10# of lead is an amazingly small volume, surely not enough to be able to stir metal clips to the top of.

No accusations of consistency here.

So all that said, what I ended up with was about 40# worth of ingots after about 4 hours of work.  Many of them have impurities in them and look like silver swiss cheese.*** They took too long to make and I would be embarrassed to sell them.  But they represent a completion of Step 1, which is "Turn wheel weights into lead ingots."

Step 2, of course, is "Cast lead ingots into boolits."  Because my bullet-swaging press does not have a heater, Step 3 ("Swage and lube boolits") might have to wait for the heat of summer. But in all likelihood, Step 1 will be repeated several times in the short term as I process the buckets of wheel weights I managed to accumulate over the winter.  Once the steel footlocker in my barn is filled with however-poorly processed lead, then I can stop annoying the great guys at Wiseman's Discount Tires for more.  I think they're getting tired of seeing me anyway.

* Meaning today is the first Sunday in more than a month that it hasn't rained or snowed here.
** With both doors open and industrial-strength 3M breathing apparatus firmly in place, of course. I just hope I did not poison the dozen or so pullets in there.
*** For fear of zinc I poured them immediately once they reached melt temperature.  I discovered no zinc that I had missed in the sorting process.

No, not her! Not her!

She pees standing up:

(Reuters) - A transgender woman whose use of a women's restroom in an Idaho grocery store reportedly upset other customers has been cited for trespassing and banned from the store for a year, police said on Friday.

A Rosauers supermarket in Lewiston asked police to charge 25-year-old Ally Robledo, who was born male but identifies as female, with the misdemeanor trespass charge on Monday, Lewiston Police Captain Roger Lanier said.

"The store security officer said he had been dealing with a problem over a couple days with the person going into the women's restroom and urinating while standing up," Lanier said.

He added that the store had reported that Robledo's use of the restroom made other female customers "very uncomfortable."

There seems to be no limit to how far the press, in its attempts to be ultra-sophisticated, modern, and tolerant, will wrap itself in verbal knots to avoid the truth.  The simple fact is that the subject of the story is a man. His significant psychosexual issues aside, the biology is not really up to debate. He's not a "she" whether he "identifies"* as a she or not: he's a he. Yet the story consistently refers to him as "she."

That said, as this new obsession with sexual confusion spreads from sea to shining sea, I wonder very much how the perpetually-victimized are going to balance the "rights" of sexually disoriented men to use the ladies' room with that very loud part of humanity that demands the right not to be made uncomfortable under any circumstances.** Let's face it, if you walk into the powder room, whip out your concealed rape instrument,*** and use it to pee standing up, you're going to offend a large percentage of the population.  Not that the left cares in principle,**** but they do care very much when it is their own sensibilities being offended. When they finally realize that they are also the primary cause of that offense, the left's innate self-contradictions are going to explode.

And won't that be fun?

* I've decided henceforth to identify as Michael Jordan. That way I'll be 7' tall, rich, and have the ability to sink 30' jumpers.
** "People need to understand that being offended is a really big deal and that we should be able to make you not offend us."
*** Just as guns facilitate murder, penises facilitate rape. I can't believe you can still bring one into a school or federal building.
**** See "lactivist."

OMG Market Crash!

Better sell all your gold, jewelry, and tooth fillings before the price gets to zero. After all, now that the value and stability of world paper currencies have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,* there remains no reason to own that barbarous relic.

* Hat tip: Irving Fisher.