HI –
First a business note: we keep getting emails expressing regret that we’re shutting down. This is to clarify that HI PIERS as a business has shut down; it no longer has a physical office, and no longer sells books. But this Web Site will remain; we have no plans to shut it down. I will continue to write column for it. In fact if I ever get a modem and learn to use it, I may start visiting the site myself and answering spot queries, so that they don’t have to be printed out for me. We’ll see.
We’re just back from our trip to Vermont, which is enclosed elsewhere; suffice to say here that it took five days and now we’re trying to catch up on what piled up during our absence. So this may be somewhat scattered as I jump from note to note. Let’s start with something simple: why the Microsoft Word Save As function is like quantum physics. For years I couldn’t figure it out; I know how to save a file to a new title, but it kept saving it to the wrong Directory (Folder, in Windows-speak), forcing me to copy, paste where it belonged, and go back to erase the original. Windows doesn’t have a Move function, for reasons of sadism. Finally I tackled it boldly, and after the usual struggle figured it out: Quantum Physics. You see, therein the act of looking at a particle changes it; it remains undefined until viewed. Why a particle should care who looks at it I’m not sure; maybe it has to get its panties on or something. Who can understand the rules of magic? Well, that’s what Save As was doing: the act of checking it changes it. If you don’t check it, it remains on its own default, which isn’t necessarily yours. So every time I looked, it was right, and every time I didn’t look, it was wrong. So now I check it before I use it, and have no further trouble. The key is when you check, to be on a file from the Directory to which you wish to save. It may have been there when you last checked, but may change if your file does, so you can’t trust it to be constant.
Now another analogy: how my exercise runs related to the home run derby. I jog three times a week, and time the runs. Last fall I had a record series of 50 fast (for me) runs. Then, just as it was getting hot at the end of Apull, another series of fast runs started. I know it would soon poop out, because of the heat, but it didn’t. In fact it started breaking my speed records, and kept going all summer. 10, 20, 30 runs – when would it end? I turned 64 and still it continued. I bought new running shoes, as my old ones are over a decade old and worn out, and the new ones make my feet feel better. Meanwhile in baseball Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were hitting home runs. Their season started a bit earlier than mine, but by the end of SapTimber I had a string of 55 fast runs, the same as McGwire’s number of home runs. Then the race got tighter, and the three of us were tied at 63, again at 65, and at 66. Where would it end? Well, my trip to Vermont interrupted my streak at 68, while McGwire was 70 and Sosa was 66. So I was in good company, in my fashion. Not that I care about baseball.
I like to work the chess puzzles in the newspaper. I’m not a great chess player, but those puzzles aren’t very complicated, and I generally get them in one to five minutes. If I can’t solve them quickly, I look up the answer, because I have other things to do. Sometimes I have missed the obvious. But sometimes the given answer is wrong, and I know that no one actually played it through to discover that. One thing that annoys me is the puzzle-maker’s evident ignorance of the rule of taking a pawn en passant: when a pawn jumps two spaces on its first move, if an enemy piece is covering that jumped space, it can move in and take that pawn as if it had moved there. This must be done immediately following that jump, or the chance is lost. Twice this year the answer has depended on just such a jump, with a pawn’s jump making the solution – when the intervening space was covered by an enemy piece. In real chess that pawn would be taken, and there would be no solution. No one has told the puzzle maker this?
Here are three paragraphs from my recent weekly letters to Jenny: This week we went to see the movie The Avengers. That’s right–I’m redeeming this sorry letter with a movie review. We had seen an ad for it when we saw Godzilla, and then when there was no advance showing for the critics, because of course the critics would trash it, we just had to see it. The critics trash anything they think you and I might like. Sure enough, the critics did trash it–and we did enjoy it. It’s about this dapper English hero and this lovely British lady scientist Emma Peel who try to stop the evil weatherman from ruining England’s weather. Naturally they succeed, after fantastic adventures. They are forever pausing for tea, which is something they do in England; ask your British mother. The car even serves fresh hot tea. There are some nice weather effects. And in one scene Emma, who has been abducted by the bad man, who wants to make her his love slave, is trying to find her way out of the castle. She encounters a stairway from an Escher picture, and keeps descending it without getting anywhere. Then she enters a room, and leaves it going on to the next–and finds herself in the same room. Bemused, she smashes a statue on the floor, to mark it–and sure enough, when she goes straight ahead, she enters that same room again, with the smashed statue. This is my kind of fun. She finally hurls herself through the window on the side and lands on the street, where our hero finds her. So it’s a fun movie, that you’d like. So why did the critics trash it? Maybe because critics have no sense of humor, and don’t understand Escher art. We concluded that it was neither a top movie nor a bottom one; I rate it a B-. I’m enclosing a ticket stub for you, of course.
Remember back in Apull, I told you about Gavin Grow, who was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident, and had no reason to live, until a friend lent him my collaboration with Cliff Pickover, Spider Legs, and that novel gave him reason? I quote from his letter to me: “Your book represents my first conscious memory of something good…” I sent him an autographed copy of that, together with Letters to Jenny and Isle of View, with a nice letter, and later I sent him an article about chances for regeneration of injured nerves, just as I do with you. I received an impersonal thank-you letter which didn’t name any books; in retrospect I recognize it as a generic form letter. Well, this week I received a copy of AMERICAN WIND SURFER magazine at the behest of Gavin Grow, containing his first article. There was also a long comment by the editor, saying that Grow was injured 11 years ago, and for the past 6 years has been writing two letters a day to people he admires. He has hundreds of pictures, books, and gifts from folk he has written to. There’s a two page spread showing some of the autographed pictures celebrities have sent him. The editor is very positive, and it’s a beautiful magazine, huge and slick with many lovely pictures. They have set up a Gavin Grow Fund to get him a van with an electric lift for his wheelchair. But here’s the thing: Spider Legs was published in Jamboree 1998. So how could that have been the novel that brought Gavin Grow out of his funk six to eleven years ago? Obviously he just filled that name into a form letter–and filled in other names for the letters to others. So while the man is paralyzed, and I applaud his effort to make something of his life, I do feel used.
And this week was a column by a local newspaper columnist, Howard Troxler. It’s priceless. He asks, suppose the players in the Washington scandal were to write to Ann Landers? What advice would she give? The first letter is from Moping and Lonely, telling how she had an affair with her boss, a prominent middle aged man who dropped her like a hot potato when others found out about it. Do they have a future together? Next letter is from the boss in a rather large government office who got flashed by a young intern, and one thing led to another until somebody blew the whistle on them. Now he’s in hot water with his wife and at the office. Next letter is from a woman who learned that her husband was fooling around with a younger woman at work. Then a letter from an office worker who signs herself Likes to Tattle. And from a secretary covering for the boss. And from Tele-miffed who suspects a man he called was doing something else at the same time. And from Embarrassed at Stanford. And a subpoena from Kenneth W Starr, who just spent $40 million to determine that toilet paper should be hung over the top, not against the wall.
Now back to today’s column. You see, sometimes I write a paragraph first for Jenny, with the intention of using it elsewhere also, because I don’t like to repeat myself. As you can see, all three of these are on subjects of general interest. But I have to say that as I approach ten years of weekly letters to Jenny and little gifts for her birthdays, with the last response from her or her family months in the past, most of a year actually, I am increasingly inclined to bring an end to it. The time is expensive for me, and with no evidence that the effort is still appreciated or even noted, I think it is time to let it go. I can’t quite be sure that my letters are being opened. Jenny Elf is now married in Xanth, and will continue, however. I got a new credit card via AAA, figuring it would be a good one. It was Platinum, with a credit limit of up to $100,000, it said. But when it came the limit was $5,000 and the time one year – compared to twice the credit and three times the time for my old Gold card. It isn’t as if my credit is bad; I routinely deal in larger sums than their max, in and out. I don’t need it; I don’t use credit cards for investments. But it rankles in the way a snub might. I suspect I am about as good a credit risk as exists. So what does it take to rate their maximum? Bill Gates? I think they are guilty of false advertising, and I’m half inclined to let the card go after its year expires. They did send a nice traveling bag, though, for joining.
Speaking of investments, I believe I have mentioned that I ventured into venture capital to invest in Xlibris, an Internet publisher that enables hopeful writers to cheaply self-publish their books, bypassing Parnassus, the conventional New York publishing establishment. Xlibris will actually print out single hardcover copies of the books, indistinguishable from those of regular publishers in appearance and price. My World War Two novel Volk is there. My reason for the investment is ideological: I want there to be a viable alternative that gives everyone a chance. I have never been online, but I see the Internet as the best prospect for doing that. So I want to see Xlibris and other Internet publishers succeed; I think it would be good for the world. I won’t go into detail, but will say that this is turning out to be an education not only about the potentials of the Internet, but about Parnassus itself and the ways of money. I was prepared to lose my investment, and have added to it to be sure the venture survives, but at this point I think I will probably recover it. I will surely have more to say at such time as the fate of Xlibris is certain.
I continue with my archery, which I started as another type of exercise, and remain with for that and pleasure and learning in a new discipline. Each morning I’m not firing arrows I draw the 60 pound compound bow twenty times for arm strength, one day right handed, the next day left handed. For those who came in late, let me clarify: the bow does not weigh 60 pounds, it weighs about 4 pounds. The Draw Weight refers to how hard it is to draw the bowstring back. I started at 45 pounds, went to 50, then 55, and a year and a half ago went to 60 pounds, which is enough. So drawing that string is like doing half a chin; my weight is about 145 pounds, but a chin requires two hands, so each arm would be drawing about 73 pounds. The other arm has to keep the bow in place, so is pushing with the same force. I don’t do chins or pull-ups any more, lacking a bar, but 20 fast bow pulls suffices for a man of age 64. Anyway, for my birthday I bought myself a larger target. The old one is fine, and weighs under 20 pounds; the new one has about twice the target surface and weighs 55 pounds. But I discovered that it didn’t make a lot of difference, because my aim is now fairly accurate, except for flukes that go way out. So I was hitting near the center of the big target – or still missing completely. Sometimes an arrow just doesn’t go where I aim it; it’s a frustration. I have front and rear sights, so I do know where I’m aiming. So I saw a smaller, lighter, cheaper target in an outdoorsman catalog, and ordered two. I set them on top of the big one, and my old target to the right – most misses are to the right, even when I fire left handed – and that array does catch most of my misses. So I no longer have to spend an hour searching for a lost arrow, or try to repair a broken one, and that’s a relief. But when I ordered the targets, I saw a sale on arrows. The local store carries Easton arrows, which are all right, but these were Bear arrows, and my compound bow is a Bear. They were half price, under $2.50 per arrow instead of $5.00. So I bought a dozen. This resulted in my further education. They were shipped full length, without heads. When I buy them at the store, the man cuts them down to my length, 30 inches; he could as readily make them 31″ or 32″. I have some 31″ arrows, and they work okay. But these were 33″, way long. But I like to experiment, so I put three together at that full length and tried them. They worked well; I liked their feel. But they squeaked when drawn. I pondered and considered, and found that these were of larger diameter. My wife figured out the coding, and I got it interpreted in the archery manual that Dee Lightful Dee Lahr of Kiss Mee sent when I bought her left handed bow: I had some 2016, with 20 indicating the diameter of the shaft in 64ths of an inch, and 16 indicating the thickness of the aluminum tube wall in 1,000ths of an inch. Those are my lightest arrows, subject to bendage and breakage. I have some 2117, thicker and thicker, which are stronger. Well, the Bear arrows are 2216, visibly bigger in diameter, but not much heavier because their cell walls are thinner. But since I left them full length, that extra three inches adds to their weight. But they work, and I like them. I learned to use epoxy to glue in the inserts that hold the points, and used point from my old broken arrows, and now I have six functioning king sized arrows, with six more ready for when I go to the archery store and buy more points. Understand, I’m a duffer, so it doesn’t make much difference whether an arrow is properly balanced or flexible; I’m not going to score dead center bullseyes anyway. So I fire several weights and lengths of arrows with both my 60 pound compound right handed bow and my 30 pound reverse left handed bow, and they all work well enough. Well, the big Bear arrows do strike low on the target, left handed, but I can compensate for that. And I learned something else: one reason for a fluke miss is that I can draw an arrow too far back and it drops off the arrow rest just as I fire. Well, that can’t happen with the 33″ arrows. I did have one fluke miss with a Bear arrow; I haven’t figured that one out yet. If I ever write a book about my experiences in Archery, I’ll title it Bone Arrow. Yes, that’s a pun: Bow ‘n Arrow.
Computer challenges: I was using Microsoft’s Access database program to enter some income – my wife keeps my accounts, but I also keep my own accounts, using different systems, and periodically we compare notes and discover each other’s errors – and I tried using the number-pad to make an entry, instead of the top-row numbers on the main keyboard. Access called an error and gave me no option but to shut down the program without saving, thus throwing away all my prior entries – a real rat trap! I assume that the programmers really get their jollies by setting it up that way, refusing to let it be intuitive or user friendly, finding artificial “errors” to call, and refusing to let you save when one happens. What sadism, to flash a message saying, in effect, GOTCHA! CLOSE WITHOUT SAVING, and no option but OK, so you have to seem to agree to throw away your work. I finally figured out the technicality that did it: I normally leave my number-pad natural, while it seems Access expects you to lock it on NUM-LOCK. So it punished me for trying to use it in its natural state. I think programmers must be related to cri-tics, existing in a different and nastier realm than real people do. Sort of the way mischievous fairies find it hilarious to grow a chain of sausages from a man’s nose, that he can’t remove without the agony of cutting his own flesh. Why am I not laughing? Hey, I have the ideal title for my book on the perils of using computers: Hardware’s From Jupiter, Software’s from Neptune.
We shifted some of our investment from mutual bonds to stock funds. The stock market can go up or down a hundred points in a day, while at the same time a bond moves one cent. So the first business day in AwGhost we shifted – and the second business day the stock market dropped 300 points. But the end of the month our new investment had lost about 15% of its value. We had impeccable timing. I may have commented before: I have discovered that after a while I lose my taste for losing money. My daughter Penny gave me a glass mermaid, who is suspended by a thread tied to a hank of her flowing hair. I also heard from Eric Torgerson, who hand sculpts glass fairies: he had a winged one he wanted to send me. She too suspends from a hank of hair. So now I have two lovely slender full-breasted nude figurines floating before my keyboard. I love them.
More is being heard on the Y2K problem – you know, when computers glitch at the Year 2,000 because they think it’s the year 1900. Naturally the Conspiracy theorists are latching on. Some figure it will make for a horrendous economic crash. Some think it will bring on a new dark age as civilization collapses. One says that the resultant chaos will be used as a pretext to put people in concentration camps, establish a New World Order, and eradicate two thirds of the world’s population. Well, I believe there will be a problem, but not to that extent. I hope I’m right. I figure the arrogant IRS will fall, because it will think computers wouldn’t dare to balk lest they be audited, but much of the establishment will tide through merely bruised. Last winter we put in a geothermal air conditioning / heating unit, replacing a conventional one that was breaking down. We hoped it would save us on electric bills, as well as being more environmentally friendly. Well, over the course of the hottest summer yet, it saved us approximately 20%. This looks like success.
HiPiers forwards email printouts. I have been answering those with snail-mail addresses, and sometimes typing letters to be translated into emailese. One said that with respect to my imagined dialogue with Bill Gates about the lack of user-friendliness in Windows that this was not far from the real world, and recommended that I look at http://www.cantrib.org/nobugs.html. I asked HiPiers to check it, but am told that there seems to be no such address. There seems to be a fair number of emails with inoperative return addresses. Meanwhile some emails send good suggestions or puns for Xanth; without addresses I don’t reply, but am noting these as I write #24 The Dastard, which I am about half way through at this writing. One email says “Sexist male pig! Try writing about a strong woman for once! After all, not all women are easy, beautiful, tall, thin, air-headed bimbos! We don’t all wear short, cleavage-showing, scanty dresses and jump in bed with every half-wit male that happens to come along! Stop stereotyping women in your writing you disgusting horny parasite!” The return name is Marie Arnold. Well, Marie, you charming creature, just which of my novels are you describing? Surely not my just-published Xanth novel, Zombie Lover, which features Breanna of the Black Wave, who does not take much guff from any man. Nor my most recently published GEODYSSEY novel, Hope of Earth, whose females are hardly of that nature; in fact one masquerades as a man and takes a position on a Greek fighting boat. Even the most graphically sexual of my novels, Firefly, is not like that; its lead female is 40 and mousy, and the lead male is impotent. You will have to be more specific, if you don’t want me to suspect that you haven’t actually read any of my novels, and are just playing a pseudo-feminist record you direct at all male writers. Show me that you can present an informed opinion, rather than contumely, and I’ll be better able to address your concern.
And I had an interesting publication by regular mail: Alexandra Bonyun sent me a copy of THE XANTH X-TRA, “The Newsletter by Xanthians for Xanthians.” Alexandra and her friend Sara Bruce made it up as a school project, and it strikes me as really clever. It starts with an article on the benefits of crossbreeding, readily accomplished because “There are love springs sprinkled all over Xanth.” There’s the Dragon of the Month, Draco. There’s an advice column by Nada Naga; I liked that notion so well that I wrote it into Xanth #24, The Dastard, as a passing scene; this is obviously Nada’s calling. There’s an interview with Marrow Bones: “How do you feel about Grace’l?” “I’d love to pick a bone with her!” And a public service one on “Surviving the Gap Chasm.” A crossword with words like BEDMONSTER, DEMON, CENTAUR, and ROC. An interview with Magician Humfrey’s wives titled “Half a Wife Too Many?” and a listing of the 25 worst talents of all time, such as the ability to turn back time one second, or to make the smell of sour milk, or to dull pencils from a distance. Alexandra also sent her picture: she’s a brown-haired girl. As I may have mentioned before, I have always been partial to that type; when I met one in college, I married her.
I try to avoid talking politics here, because I feel that whatever credits as a writer I have do not qualify me as a political commentator. My inclination is generally liberal, but I would value an honest conservative over a dishonest liberal. The current situation, Monicagate, bothers me for not quite the ordinary reason. Here’s my analogy: suppose there is a speed trap, with a motorcycle cop hiding behind a Happy Motoring billboard with a radar unit. He watches the cars whiz by, and times nine of them significantly exceeding the speed limit. But only when the tenth speeder passes does he go out and ticket the man. Then he hides again, and lets three more speeders go by, before going out after the fourth. I suggest that this is not justice. Oh, the two cars were speeding all right, but not any worse than the twelve that weren’t challenged. The thing is, they were the only black speeders; all the others were white. This is selective prosecution of a racist nature. Okay, now let’s get political: President Clinton, a womanizer from way back, got caught having sex with a groupie and lying about it. He’s guilty of adultery, and no prize in that respect. But why is he the only one being prosecuted for it? Some of his accusers in Congress are guilty of the same thing, as have been prior presidents and other officers. What makes it an impeachment offense in the one case, and not in the others? From here it looks like hypocrisy by those who don’t like the fact that a Democrat is president, and that he turned out to be not guilty of any real crimes. I suggest that either all of the adulterers and liars of either party should be kicked out, or that the matter be dropped as irrelevant private business. Selective enforcement is not ethical, and in light of the serious national and world problems that are being ignored in favor of voyeurism, it verges on treason.
Meanwhile, having found that I can watch TV on the two inch square in the corner of my computer screen, without interfering with my writing, I’m interested in seeing some of my own kind of junk, such as the old Avenger shows I ordered on sale, or historical videos. So I got a VCP – Video Cassette Player – and am learning to use it. They say the real master of the household can be told by who has the TV remote control; only recently have I figured out even how to use it, in those moments when my wife’s away, and the VCR was pretty much beyond me. But on my own computer maybe I’ll fare better.
And I received a solicitation from Gannon University in Pencil Vania, starting: “As a famous celebrity…” It is addressed to Mr. Anthony Piers, and starts “Dear Mr. Piers.” I gather my books are not much read there.
