BITS & PIECES

Openers:  "I am about to be killed," the woman said.

The taxi driver whom she addressed had been half asleep behind the whell pf his parked cab, but the text of the woman's speech was not condusive to further slumber.  He sat up straight

The woman asked, "Have you ever heard of Doc Savage?"

"who ain't?" growled the driver.  "Say, what kind of a gag--"

"You will take us to Doc Savage," directed the woman.  "And hurry."

The driver looked beyond the woman, after which his mouth fell open and his cigarette dropped off his lip and began to burn his coat front.  The woman was veiled, but it was not that which shocked the hackamn and scared him.

It was the four men behind the woman.  they were four very tall men who had heads likw cocoanuts in color, and who wore four of the most resplendent uniforms that the taxi driver had ever seen.  Each of the four carried a modern automatic military rifle which was not much less than a portable machine gun.

"Well," snapped the woman.  "Have you a tongue?"

"Sure."  The driver swalloed twice.  "I'll take you to Doc Savage."  Then, under hi8s breath, "ain't this a crackpot world!"

-- The Majii by "Kenneth Robeson"  (Lester Dent), from Doc Savage magazine, September 1933

It is a crackpot world, and it's only going to get crackpottier.  This adventure pits Doc and his gang against Rama Tura, the chosen disciple of the Majii, and will led Doc into a sinister world of drugs and advanced hypnotism, eventually taking him to far off Jondore, where a revolt is brewing the will pit the Man of Bronze against the man who cannot die.

Doc Savage was created by Street and Smith Publications publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic to create a fictional hero to supplement Street and Smith's widely successful The Shadow pulp magazine.  The first episode in the Doc Savage saga (as well as 158 additional novels in the series) was written by Lester Dent, who fleshed out the character in such a way that he could be considered the "real" creator of the superhero.  The Majii was the 31st Doc Savage story to be published in the magazine, althoug in the Bantam Books paperback reprints of the series it is listed as number 60.

For those unfamiliar with Doc Savage, Clark Savage. Jr., is the "Man of Bronze," and incredibly fir polymath who rihts wrongs and punishes evildoers, raised by his father and other scientists to become "one of the most perfect human beings in terms of strength, intelligence, and physical abilities."   A man of unlimited finacial resources, he is aided by five assistants -- all tops in their various fields and all devoted to Doc and his mission:  Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny, and Long Tom.  Doc's young cousin Patricia Savage -- herself accomplished in many fields -- is often added to the mix.  Doc's foes often appear to be fantastic but in most(although not all) cases are reveal to have natural explanations for their uncanny abilities.  This does not stop them from being super-dastardly.

Doc Savage has become a cultural icon.  His adventures continue in new novels.  He has appeared in film, radio, and comic books.  His star does not appear to be waning soon.

Incoming:  Because I am a techical Luddite, computers hate me and often try to do me dirt.  Such was the case over the past few weeks when my lists of Incoming Books vanished into the ether before I coud publish them, with of hope of recovery.  I've reconstructed them the best I've could and include them here.  This should get me up to date.

• "Luke Adams,"  Apache Law:  Showdown  (Bill Crider wrote a couple of these; I'm not sure who wrote this one)
• Kelley Armstrong, Betrayals
• Issac Asimov, The Genetic Code
• J. G. Ballard, A User's Guide to the Millennium
• John Barth, The Sotweed Factor
• Stephen Baxter, Transcendent
• "Francis Beeding" (Hilary St George Saunders & John Palmer), The Norwich Victims
• Max Beerbohm, And Even Now and A Christmas Grland
• Texas Bix Bender, Don't Dig for Water Under an Outhouse and Other Cowboy Commandments
• Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier, editors, Zombies Vs. Unicorns
• Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ghostlight
• Phil Budahn, Specters Anonymous
• James Lee Burke, Two for Texas
• Kealan Ptrick Burke, Stage Whispers:  The Collected Tommy Quinn (includes The Turtle Boy, The Hides, Vessels, and Peregrine's Tale)
• Henry Cecil, Natural Causes 
• Robert Crais, The Two Minute Rule
• Frances Crane, The Turqoise Shop
• John Creasey, Accuse the Toff
• __________, The Beauty Queen Killer (also published as Beauty for Inspector West and as So Young, So Cold, So Fair)
• __________, Follow the Toff
• __________, Holiday for Inspector West
• __________, Inspector West Makes Haste (also published as The Gelignite Gang, as Night of the Watchman, and as Murder Makes Haste)
• __________, Kill the Toff
• __________, The Killing Strike (also published as Strike for Death)
• __________, Poison for the Toff (also published as The Toff on Ice)
• __________, A Rocket for the Toff
• __________, Send Superintendent West (also published as Send Insp[ector West)
• __________, The Toff and Old Harry
• __________, The Toff and the Deep Blue Sea
• __________, The Toff and the Spider
• __________, The Toff in Wax
• "Edmund Crispin" (Bruce Montgomery), Fen Country
• Joshua Criss, The Moving Soul
• Linda Crockett Gray, Scryer
• B. M. Croker, "To Let"and Other Strange Stories
• Charles de Lint, Forests of the Heart
• Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection
• Cory Doctorow, Overclocked:  More Stories of the Future Present
• J. Allan Dunn, The Treasure of Atlantis
• George Alec Effinger, Shadow Money
• Willard R. Espy, Another Almanac of Words at Play
• Loren D. Estleman, Alive!
• __________ - The Branch and the Scaffold
• "Leslie Ford" (Zenith Brown), Three Birght Pebbles
• C.S. Forester, Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
• __________, Hornblower and the Hotspur
• __________, Lieutenant Hornblower
• __________, Mr. Midshopman Hornblowe
• R. Austin Freeman, The Best Dr. Thorndyke Stories
• "Bartholomew Gill" (Mark McGarrity), McGarr and the Politician's Wife
• "George G. Gilman" (Terry Harkness), Edge #1:  The Loner
• __________, Edge #3:  Apache Death
• Lynn Hightower, Fortunes of the Dead
• Lee Hoffman, Bred to Kill
• Nancy Holder, Buffy the Vampire Slayer:  Blood and Fog
• Nancy Holder & Jeff Mariotte, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel:  Unseen, Book 2:  Door to Alternity 
• "Ingulfus" (Arthur Gray), Tedious Brief Tales of of Granta and Gramayre
• N. K. Jemisin, The City We Became
• Elmer Kelton, The Rebels:  Sons of Texas (originally published as  Sons of Texas:  The Rebels by "Tom Early")
• __________, Texas Vendetta
• "Cassandra Khaw" (Zoe Khaw Joo Ee), Nothing But Blackened Teeth
• A. F. (Chico) Kidd & Rick Kennett, No. 472 Cheyne Walk:  Carnaki, the Untold Stories
• Harold Lamb, Genghis Khan:  Emperor of All Men
• "Murray Leinster" (Will F. Jenkins), First Contacts:  The Essential Murray Leinster
• Richard A. Lupoff, Writer, Volume 1
• John Lutz, The Havana Game
• __________, The Honorable Traitors
• Clare McNally, Somebody Come and Play
• Premee Mohamed, No One Will Come Back for Us (thanks, George!)
• Terry Pratchett, The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy (includes Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead, and Johnny and the Bomb)
• J. B. Priestley, Lost Empires
• "Ellery Queen," editor, Six of the Best:  Short Novels by Masters of Mystery  (sopyrighted by Davis Publications, Inc.)
• Helen Reilly, Compartment K
• Jennifer Roberson, editor, Out of Avalon:  An Anthology of Old Magic and New Myths (also copyrighted by Martin H. Greenberg's Tekno-Books)
• "James Rollins" (James Czajkowski), The Devil Colony
• Tom Savage, Scavenger
• Dorothy L, Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, Volume II;  1937 to 1943, From Novelist to Playwright (chosen and edited by Barbara Reynolds)
• Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, editor, Past Lives, Present Tense
• Alex Scarrow, Plague Land (also pubished as Remade)
• Georges Simenon, The Little Doctor
• Neal Stephenson, Cyptonomicon
• Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives
• Arthur Tofte, Walls Within Walls
• Paul Trembly, No Sleep Till Wonderland
• Jim Tully, The Bruiser
• Arthur W. Upfield, The Lake Frome Monster
• Edgar Wallace, The Council of Justice
• Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart
• James White, The Watch Below
• Colin Wilson, Beyond the Outsider
• Don Winslow, California Fire and Life
• Stephen Woodworth, In Golden Blood
• Cornell Woolrich, A Young Man's Heart
• Philip Wylie, The Disappearance 
• Anthony E. Zuiker & Duane Swierczynski, Level 26:  Dark Origins
• John Richard Stephens & Kim Smith, editors, Mysterious Cat Stories

Animal Birthdays:  this past Thursday was a big day for animal birthdays.  Aside from the fact that it is the birthday of English romance novelist Denise Robins (b. 1895), as well as her daughter and fellow romance novelist Patricia Robins (b. 1921), it was the fourth birthday of granddaughter Amy's sweet albeit neurotic dog, Chicken Nugget.  It was also the birthday of granddaughter Erin's hedgehog Potato., whose name Melville Dewey, inventor of the library classification system, would have famously spelled GHEAUGHTEIGHPTOUGH (GH is P, as in hiccough; EAU is O, as in beau; GHT is T, as in naught; EIGH is A, as in neigh; PT is T, as in pterodactyl; and OUGH is O, as in though -- thus, POTATO).  I hasten to add that Erin is resistingthis spelling.

Thursday was also the birthday of the late and sadly missed sweet Chesapeake retreiver Acorn, who went to Glory shortly after my wife did.  (I miss them both greatly, although I miss Kitty far, far more than doggy.)  The Glory that Acorn went to should not be confused with Glory, the dog who went to Glory long before Acorn was born.

Do normal people keep track of animal birthdays?

Presented Without Comment, Except to Note that the Source for This Is 44 Years Old:   "Joel Weiss says the injustices of discriminatory pronouns can be overcome by creating a single word to represent he, she, or it.  Mr. Weiss suggests h'orsh'it."  -- Another Almanac of Words at Play by Willard R. Espy

A Blast from the Past:  From 1974, Kikki Dee with "I've Got the Music in Me":

https://archive.org/details/youtube-Fqg80DNQB0M

En Passant:  Wikipedia lists almost 900 deaths of notable persons for January (although I wuld argue for those involved every death is notable), among them is Gottfried Munzenberg (1940-2024), the German physicist who was noted for discovering the superheavy elements bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darnstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium.

Gottfied did give with Hassium

And then, poor man, did passium.

This past Wednesday marked the death of Belgian journalist Flip Voets and age 74.  I'm not sure how the last name is pronounced but I suspect the MAGA crowd will be using it to justify their claim of the elction steal.

We also lost Broadway legend and American treasure Chita Rivera at age 91:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEPx_uvqERY

MJB infielder, coach and manager Jimy Williams died on on the 26th at age 80.

Jimy played for the Cards, managed the Red Sox and the Jays;

Somehow, somewhere, he lost an "m" along the ways.

Tennesse State politician Frank Buck (1943-2024) should not confused with noted hunter and animal collector Frank "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Buck (1884-1950).  This Buck bucked the system a number of times and championed ethics reform.  Among other things he exposed a whiskey-for-votes racket in DeKalb County and managed to stop the state from requiring certificates of health from kids' lemonade stands.

Whiskey and lemonade, lemonade and whiskey:

Two drinking potables that made out Frank frisky.

Porn actress Jesse Jane, 43, died of an apprent drug overdose; her body was found on January 24.  Before embarking on her film career, she wa a model for David's Bridal, a regional traiing director for Hooters, and a Hawaiian Tropic bikini model,  She was nominated for 31 awards from the aqdult film industry.  In 2007 she announced that she would be having her breast enahncement surgery to re-dome for high-definition movies -- whether that happened I can't say.  She was one of the few adult film stars to transition into mainstream Hollywood.  she retired fro aduil;t films in 2017, although she made a brief comeback in 2019.  In 2011 and 2014 she was named by CNBS as one of the twelve most popular porn stars.  Her bio gives me ample opportunity to make some snarky comments but I won't lower myself to that level.  I think it's a shame that someone died so young.

January also took a heavy toll on genre writers, including Jack O'Connell, Tom Purdom, Howard Waldrop,  Fred Chappell, Brian Lumley, David J. Skal, and Terry Bisson, as well as mainstream writer M. Scott Momaday and Anne Edwards.

Farewell also to Melanie, Charles Ogood, Dexter King, Norman Jewison, Mary Weiss, P. D. Q. Bach, Joyce Randolph, Tom Shales, Bill Hayes, Glynis Johns, and David Soul, 

January took a heavy toll from our collective humanity, and February is starting out on a sad note with the passing of actor and football player Carl Weathers.

National Fart Day:  You don't have to celebrate, but today is the day, also dubbed Fart Out Loud Day.  I'm sure why ths day was chosen, or if there is a historical reason for it.  The holiday was first celebrated worldwide in 2008.  It's one of several that celebrates the passage of natural gas, including January 7 (National Pass Gas Day), March 5, and July 31.

The activity has had a long and stories history.  Around 1900 BC in Mesopotamia, the first known fart joke was told. According to Herodotus, a fart led to the downfall of Egypt's King Apries in 569 BC.   In 44 BC (according to Josephus), a Roman soldier farted to a group of Jews during a Passover celebration, resulting in a riot that led to the deaths of 10,000 people, mainly Jews.  Harry Ludlow, a Memeber of the British Parliament, let one rip during a debate in 1607 -- an eruction that was celebrated in the 1781 poem "The Censure of the Parliament Fart."  Benjamin Franklin wrote the essay "Fart Proudly" and urged his friend, the chemist Joseph Preistley, to invent a potion to mnake farts smell good.  The most popular entertainer in the Moulin Rouge (outselling even the divine Sarah Bernhardt) was professional farter Joseph Pujol, who discovered he could suck air in through his rectum and expel it at will -- the idea of what constituted entertainment was a bit different back then.  Adolf Hitler suffered greatly from uncontrolable farting (meteorism) and would take up to 150 anti-gas pills a week in hopes of controlling it; the adverse effets of the pills, which contained small amounts of strychnine and atropine were not discovered until six months before the Fuhrer commited suicide.

Farting is natural.  We all do it 14 to 24 times a day, emitting some one to three pints of gas daily.  Farting can be an indication of good intestinal health; excessive farting should be brought to the attention of a physician

Let us toot our horn -- so to speak -- in celebration of this holiday!

On a Happier Note:  Today is also National Chocolate Fondue Day and National Shower With a Friend Day!

Here's a simple chocolate fondue recipe:

https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chocolate_fondue/

I have no hints on how to celebrate taking a shower with a friend.  You're on your own there.

On This Day in History:  An earthquake destroyed Pompey (62 AD), Belgiuim's King Leopold declared the Congo as his personal possessio (18855), the Apollo 14 astronauts land on the moon (1971), and actor Kirk Douglas passes at age 103 (2020).

In Brief:

Pompey shook.

The Congo took.

Lunar pride.

Douglas died.

Florida Man:

• Florida Man Thomas Ebersole, age not given but I expect it to be creepy, was arreested for trying to marry a sixteen-year-old girl he had met on an online World of Warcraft computer site.  Ebersole trav elled to Ohio to pick up the minor before returnig with her to Florida.  Ebersole denied having sex with the girl but did admit that the petting got hot and heavy and he had the hickeys to prove it.  He is charges with traveling to meet a minor for sex, interfering with the custody of a minor, and sheltering an unmarried  minor.  There is no word on how he scored on World of Warcraft.
• Florida Man Dempsey Halley allegedgely stole some cigarettes from a Wewa convenience store in Deltona.  When the police arrived, Hadley was supected of carrying a knife.  He ran away and, after a brief chase that ended up at Hadley's home, where he alledgedly fired a shot at a deputy, grazing his face.  He ran into his homes, which began a four-hour standoff.  At some time, Hadley's car caught fire, then the house turned into a "complete inferno" and officers feared Hadley had died.  He didn't and was arrested.
• Also in Deltona, Florida Man Jose Rivera, 31, was viewed by bystanders hitting a dog in the face with a chain.  When the bystander Ramon Prush tried to stop the beating, Rivera alledgedly attacked them.   A total of nine bystanders stepped in trying to stop Rivera until the police arrived.  Court records show that Rivera has a history of violence, including several convictions.  The dog proved to have had minor injuries and is being sheltered elsewhere.
• Florida Man Brendan Kapas, 24, of Palm Bay, was threatening his uncle and other family members with a gun.  Police were told Kapas had other weapons in his car.  Kapas reportedly resisted arrest and a shoot-out took place where two officers were wouinded before police shot and killed Kapas.  On entering the house, police found the body of Kapas's 78-year-old grandfether; witnesses said the Kapas shot him when he tried to get Kapas to stop.  Kapass had been driving a vehicle not registered to him, and when police went to the residence of the car's owner, they found the bodies of a Catholic priest and his siter shot dead.  Any relationship between Kapas and the priest was unclear.

Good News:

• Irishman whips out fiddle to entertain passengers in-floght while some dance a jig in the aisle      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/irishman-whips-out-fiddle-to-entertain-passengers-in-flight-and-people-dance-a-jig-in-the-aisle-watch/
• Ecosystem on the mend thanks to sea otters and their appetite      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/coastal-ecosystem-on-the-mend-thanks-to-sea-otters-appetite/
• Singing or playng music throughout life is linked to better brain health while you age     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/singing-or-playing-music-throughout-life-is-linked-with-better-brain-health-while-you-age/
• Bride donates $15,000 reception to special needs families when her wedding is called off        https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/bride-donates-15000-reception-to-special-needs-families-after-calling-off-her-wedding/
• One of Scotland's last master kilt tailors creates an online course to keep the skill alive  https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/one-of-scotlands-last-master-kilt-tailors-creates-unique-online-course-to-keep-the-artform-alive/

Today's Poem:

Groundhog Day has come and gone.

What will the prophecy inspire?

It's a crap shoot, I'm afraid,

That rodent is a liar.

Six more week of winter?  Ptah!

Let's throw him on the fire!