Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in hackmeister's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, November 7th, 2009
10:04 am	My Chemistry Lesson Something is happening to my body’s chemistry. For years I struggled with chronic gastrointestinal distress. The name of my condition was one of those damned acronyms, but it’s not GERD, and it’s not Crohn’s Disease, and it’s not purely ulcers, though I do have a chronic lesion that flares up once in a while. What it was, was CFUS, or, to put it delicately, Chronic Fouled-Up Stomach. It started in 1970, when I worked in a TV station as a technical director. It was a high pressure job, and I developed long-term, persistent gastrointestinal upset. For the next forty years. . .let’s do that again. . .forty years I suffered and groaned, bouncing in and out of hospitals and clinics, gulping every remedy known in the Western pharmacopoeia, and them some. I was hospitalized half a dozen times, and ended up in ICU once, bleeding almost to death. It was not fun. No doctor ever ventured to posit a cause. The cure was always the same. Take these pills, watch what you eat, and avoid stress. Sure, I will do that thing. Avoid stress. Thanks, Doc. From time to time doctors would put me on a diet, with orders to avoid coffee, or to drink decaf coffee, weak, and only a cup or two. No doctor ever said it’s coffee that’s causing the problem. Not once in forty fracking years. That is exactly what was causing the problem. I know this because a few short months ago, I stopped drinking coffee altogether. I switched to tea in the morning, and felt better. The CFUS, however, still recurred periodically. I got another idea, and shut off the tea. My CFUS all but disappeared. This was the biggest revelation of my life, and it led to an almost miraculous, and quite ironic, transformation. Not only did the total abstinence (T-total) from coffee clear up my chronic indigestion and heartburn (and other gastro pain: cramps, burning, nausea, etc.), but it allowed me for the first time (and herein lies the irony) to drink alcohol with no gastrointestinal side effects at all. Heretofore, drinking alcohol was for me was not possible without a heavy price to pay well beyond the usual penalties associated with imbibing. I took one drink, and the next day I would be laid up, stomach sick. If I drank as much as some people drink routinely, say, two or three beers, glasses of wine, or cocktails, I could end up in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer. Now, for the first time in my life, I can have a drink without running the risk of getting sick the next day. I don’t know how much I can drink, because I am so used to not drinking that I can’t take more than two or three alcoholic drinks in one day. I hate getting drunk, so that is not the goal here. The goal is to enjoy alcohol as much as any normal alcohol-imbibing person does, without pain or fear of serious illness. For the first time in my life, I can see how people become alcoholics. I can understand, now, that alcohol is an addictive substance. Very addictive. It does not take much drinking to find yourself wanting a drink. And it is not very far from wanting a drink to needing a drink. In the thrall of CFUS, I could not understand how anybody could drink to excess and live. Now I know that it is possible, and quite easy, to get to the point where alcohol could aggrandize itself into becoming a major influence in one’s life, where it could come to dominate, even to rule. So, the road ahead is clear. I did not throw off the yoke of Maalox, Zantac, and Pepto-Bismol to get myself enslaved by Demon Rum. I’ve got to watch myself very closely. I will move down this road, but I will be very mindful indeed. I must watch my step. There is an AA meeting place just up the street from my house. I figure this is a fallback position. An emergency redoubt. But there is a final irony to all this. If I ever have to avail myself of that facility, it will be very hard for me. I see them in there, sitting around in a big circle of chairs, talking and smoking cigarettes. . . And drinking coffee. There are about a half-dozen coffee pots brewing up in there. It’s a nightmare. If I ever become an alcoholic, I’m as good as dead. There won’t be a thing I can do about it. Does anyone have a cigarette? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
5:21 pm	-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
8:31 pm	Yes, I've been neglecting LiveJournal. Lots of stuff happening, scripts, books, rights, reads, the chance for a TV series, and just meeting after meeting. And that problem of the Next Book. A tough nut to crack, that. There were some concerns back East, and they seem to be resolved now, family matters. One family matter that needs no correcting is shown above. The Kid is cool. What can I say. A born hipster. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
6:34 pm	Home again, home again, jiggedy jig. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
3:14 am	Had lunch in a casino today, one of the outlying off-strip ones, and when I walked past a Wizard of Oz slot machine, couldn't resist. I put in five bucks and gave it a spin. Almost instantly, the thing started to gong and bong, and "Over the Rainbow" swelled to a deafening crescendo, lights like fireworks began exploding, and on the screen huge letters flashed BIG WIN!!! I'd hit a jackpot. The music got louder and louder, and soon I was looking around for Judy Garland to come out, and the numbers started building up zeroes... Ready for the punch line? Wanna guess how much the "jackpot" was? Ten bucks. But I walked out a winner, and anytime you can do that, you're ahead. I just wonder what the thing would've done if I'd hit the big progressive jackpot. What, it explodes?? (Comment on this)
Friday, July 31st, 2009
12:30 am	Baen books is releasing STARRIGGER as an e-book available through their Webscription service. New slick cover. I'm glad to see it with Baen, one of my favorite publishers. URL below. The other two books in the trilogy will be up at a future date. http://www.webscription.net/p-1090-starrigger.aspx (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
8:20 pm	Ouch! "...a work that forgets to entertain but somehow manages to bore, bewilder, and disgust. . .None of (the superheroes) is striking enough to hold our attention for long; their powers, superpowers, toys, and disguises seem wide-ranging but indeterminate, and any hint of political satire. . .is drowned in a flood of brutal murk. The result takes infinite adolescent pleasure in its own nastiness and gives no pleasure in return." --The New Yorker, Mar. 16, 2009 (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
10:33 pm	Fannish life in Las Vegas seems an unending social whirl. In the space of merely one week, my first week of residency in the city, I've so far I've attended four major fan gatherings, and a host of lunches, dinners, coffees, all more or less involving fannish friends. The day I arrived, I went to a "meeting" (read party) of the Las Vegrants, hosted by Arnie and Joyce Katz. A week later I attended SNAFFood, the monthly group dinner held by the Southern Nevada Area Fantasy Fiction Union; lots of people showed up for that. Between those two dates, election night saw a gathering of Libertarians to watch the Democrat victory—with some fans attending, including me, a libertarian (mark the lower case) fan. And on Friday, Cineholics, a film-screening group gathering at Alan and Didi White's place. That's a lot of fanac crammed into one short week. And I left out a few other personal meetings. . .but all fan-related. I am impressed. Do any of these various fan clusterings have a permanent clubhouse? None do. Have any of these groups been meeting since 1934? I don't even know if the city existed in 1934 (OK, it probably did, but was it more than a desert crossroads?—I dunno). Do Vegas fans throw cons? Yes, but recently, and nothing on the scale of the LASFS. However, what they lack in fannish gravitas, so to speak, they make up in quantity. These folks like to party. After all, this is Las Vegas, the party capital of the Western world. I don't expect this frantic pace to continue unabated. Surely there are slack periods. He said confidently. We shall see. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 26th, 2008
8:18 am	I'm moving to Las Vegas again. Let's not call it permanent, OK? We've gone through this before. It's not temporary, it's not permanent, it's just a move. I like to change scenery now and then, and lately I've been more antsy than usual. LA is wearing thin, and I need...well, I need something, don't know what. It doesn't mean I won't miss my LA friends, but to tell the truth, a lot of them have taken a powder, some of them are gafiating...and some I just don't see around any more. Now, I've lived in the Vegas area before, for a spell, and I know the Vegrants and the other fan groups in the area, and I'm quite comfortable with them. In fact, I like 'em a lot. So. . .partly this move is an effort to seek out a new social galaxy to explore, to boldly go where. . .well, you know. So please no one take offense or think I don't like you any more. I just need a change. Besides, the family wants me to learn the casino business. Ahem. Never mind. I've rented a house and it's very nice, with a swim pool and it abuts a golf course. Couldn't be nicer. Hot? Yeah, Vegas is hot in the summer, but that's when I might come back to LA! You never know with me. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 25th, 2008
2:06 pm	(2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
2:41 pm	Lots of people have liked "The Farthest Star." I'm putting together a video for it to put on UTube. (Or is it YouTube?) I just have to find the right visuals for it. I'd like to animate, but can't think of a cheap, fast way to do that. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 7th, 2008
5:33 pm	Tom Disch More death in the field. Tom Disch, now, by his own hand. Sad. I did not know he had a Live Journal. I read a few entries, and noted a lot of references to death, but no overtones of despair that I could hear. I didn't read much, though. Perhaps a wider reading of his blog will uncover clues as to why. He was a brilliant writer. He imparted to SF an intellectual respectability that the field lacked. He was a very good poet. I did not particularly care for his SF, but liked his poetry. I think he would have been happier as a mainstream writer. Maybe we all would. H. Beam Piper took his own life, and I can't think of anyone else, and I can't think of two more disparate writers than H. Beam Piper and Thomas N. Disch. But now they are linked in a way. Strange. I never met him, we never spoke that I can remember. But he was a respected colleague. His story was a dark tale, drear and dour, yet infused with the light of human emotion. It is over now; there is no more to tell. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
12:01 pm	Have I put this up before? Nice cover of the anthology I edited for DAW Books a while back. Well, it was 1996. That's fairly far back there. Time marcheth. It is a pretty good anthology with a sad note to it. In it is the last Amber story of Roger Zelazny, "Hall of Mirrors," and one of few Amber short stories he ever wrote. I was thrilled to publish it, but was devastated when Roger died before the book came out. Thinking about this with the news of Robert Lynn Asprin's passing. The field has taken a lot of hits lately. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
11:41 pm	More musings on Superman. Kryptonite is an Achilles' Heel. Very mythic, this. The invincible hero needs a vulnerability to lend drama. Otherwise, there is no dramatic tension. In fact, just about every episode involves something that threatens Superman in some way, or attacks a vulnerability. His concern for the welfare of Lois and Jimmy (and Perry) are vulnerabilities. If anything should happen to them, he is defeated. Crooks try everything, but Supe outwits them. I remember one episode in which some mad scientist builds this contraption to kill Superman, a room full of arcing electrical discharges. Superman feigns death, but the viewer isn't aware he's faking. I remember this as extremely traumatic as a child. I hated to see Superman die. It depressed the hell out of me. It turns out he wasn't dead, but I still didn't like the episode. I felt I had been betrayed. Kids take things so seriously. Years later, in the comics, they did have him die. It must have caused neurosis across the nation in kids. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
6:52 pm	SUPERMAN IN RETROSPECT Watching DVDs of the 1950s TV version of Superman, I am struck by any number of things about it which I never realized. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I knew nothing of Los Angeles and did not realize that quite a lot of it was filmed in locations now all too familiar to me. I didn't know that the "Daily Planet Building" was in fact City Hall. Nor did I know that "Jor-El's Laboratory" (in the Krypton prequel, which ran as the first episode) was Griffith Observatory. Now I wonder how local LA viewers reacted to this series when it first aired in 1951. They must have laughed at the notion that this was "Metropolis." Then again, I don't know what LA was like in 1951, when the show first aired locally. I didn't see it that early, at least I don't think so. I must have seen in when it first went into syndication. I don't know what kids thought in LA, but to me, that was Metropolis. I thought it looked a little odd, though. I had always thought of Metropolis as an alternate New York, which I knew, and that city on the tube sure wasn't New York. It looked rather weird, in a nice way. Another thing I didn't realize was how well directed and acted the show was, despite the ultralow budget. Jack Larson is superb as Jimmy Olsen. George Reeves, to me, was Superman, and always will be Superman. Not that Chris Reeve wasn't great. It's just that for this kid, George will always have top billing. The writing was pretty good, too. The scripts were not bad at all, cuts above the old Republic serials. Larson was a method actor, and took his part seriously. There were two Lois Lanes, as you probably know. All things considered, I think that Phyllis Coates' interpretation was more in line with my idea of the character, although Noel Neill made the part her own eventually. John Hamilton as Perry White was iconic. And Robert Shayne, who crops up in picture after picture in the 1930s and 40s, was a redoubtable Inspector Henderson. These were top Hollywood character actors. This was not a slipshod production. The FX are laughable today, but then they were respectable, if not state of the art. As I watched these discs, I filled in some Superman backstory, at least the TV version of that backstory. I had always thought Superman's costume based on Kryptonian native dress. Not so. Ma Kent made it, she said, out of the "blue and red blankets that you came wrapped in" when Superbaby came crashing to earth. This brings up a question. Why did she make him a costume at all? And why that particular costume—tights, shorts, cape, boots? What was the rationale behind this fashion statement? Not explained. This to me is a central plot point. Granted that Clark Kent wanted to put his great powers to good and ethical use--why did he choose to do it in long underwear and not. . .well, slacks and shirt? Seems to me the writers missed an opportunity to explain this point using the Kryptonian origin idea. Just something that occurred to me as I bathed in nostalgic photons propagating from the screen. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
12:25 am	TOP TEN INHERENTLY BAD IDEAS 2 Concepts which. . .well, there’s just something very wrong about them. 10. HENROACHES 9. SNAKE JERKY 8. YELLOW SNOWCONES 7. FOOTCHEESE 6. HOTOX INJECTIONS 5. GINSENG FUDGE RIPPLE 4. REPUBLICAN SOCK MONKEYS 3. GULAGER BEER (best served ice cold) 2. FUN WITH FORENSIC MEDICINE (GRADES K-5) 1. “COSTCO NOSTRA” (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
2:49 pm	TOP TEN INHERENTLY BAD IDEAS Some ideas for new products and services that simply don't have any chance of getting off the ground. 10. GEFILTEHAM 9. THREE MILE ISLAND SALAD DRESSING 8. FIRESTONE CONDOMS 7. RAT LITTER 6. KEVORKRAFTERS -- SUICIDE IN ABOUT AN HOUR 5. PROCESSED TOFU PRODUCT (with artificial tofu flavor) 4. I-CAN’T-BELIEVE-IT’S-NOT-FUGU 3. LICESICLES 2. GARLICORICE 1. SNAIL MCNUGGETS (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
8:10 am	Just got word that John Berkey, SF artist, died on April 29, 2008. Born in 1932, he did lots of SF cover art, including my own RED LIMIT FREEWAY. He was hired when Jim Gurney, the artist for the first book of the series, wasn't available. Berkey was asked to do the painting in Gurney's style, and he did. Great job. Never met Berkey, to my regret. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
2:51 pm	All the smaller shops in Glendale are closed today. Let us take a moment to remember the Armenian Genocide, which began in earnest on April 24, 1915. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 11th, 2008
7:29 pm	I don't like people who interrupt. (2 Comments |Comment on this)