Greetings and Salutations.

This will be the home of my musings, scribblings, and test pages for Things I Am Working On.  I hear that, in the voice of James Earl Jones, or Morgan Freeman, depending upon my mood.  Some days I may even comment on things of note, but mostly I hope to keep you entertained, or provoke some thought.  Occasionally, I may even piss someone or three off.  Since I'm a firm believer in life being offensive, I'm not going to apologize for that. 

Still reading?  Good. 

I don't know if you've seen the coverage, but everyone is gaga over the discovery of the B-29 Kee Bird.  I say discovery, but honestly, they've known where the bird has been since 1947, when it went down on a top secret mission during the Cold War.  Now, sixty seven years later, NASA has photographed the bird as it sits on the ice in Greenland.  Problem I have with the coverage is that they tried to recover the bird back in 1994.  And it caught fire after it was restored for recovery.  So, its been sitting on the surface since then, burnt to a crisp.  If you've never seen what an aircraft looks like after its burned, you should.  Thin aluminum does not stand up to heat well at all.  But now, the talking heads are all concerned that we might loose secrets from the mission.  What?  The crew was recovered back in 1947 after spending three nights on the ice.  Is it possible, when they were recovered that they took all the top secret stuff with them?  Common sense people.  While the concept of a secret project that is lost being found with data that "Can change the world" makes for great reading (or even the occasional movie), in real life it doesn't work that way.  Sure, we've lost things beyond hope of recovery.  But that phrase is the key - beyond hope of recovery.  They recovered the crew.  Let that soak in for a minute.  They recovered the crew.  So, if they knew where the bird was in 47, what do you think the odds were that they left the super secret squirrel gear on board?  But hey, lets generate some controversy that 70 year old tech is still super secret and might be found by someone with nefarious plans.  Did they miss the part where the AIRCRAFT BURNED in 1995?  Or that people were on site in 1994 and 1995?  Anything super secret would have been either removed or destroyed back in the day.  If not then, they would have made sure it "disappeared" in the intervening 67 years.  But, I guess I expect way to damn much from the level of journalistic talent we have these days.  They all look real pretty, but I long for Walter Cronkite. 

Now for today's look on the lighter side -

G.R.R. Martin has a character up for auction. For $20,000 you can appear in a future Game of Thrones novel, and die a horrible death.  Its all for a good cause, the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.

http://rt.com/usa/164328-george-martin-book-kill/

I encourage folks to donate to the cause - its a good un.

With that in mind, I will say, as a beginning author, I'll kill you off in fiction for a lot less money.  For $20k I'll let you live.  At least for a while.