Rodney Whitaker, who wrote under the pen name Trevanian, has died.
When I was a yoot, I read and reread Trevanian's books five or six times each. He was probably best known for his novel The Eiger Sanction which was made into one of the more fun 70's Clint Eastwood flicks.
The movie was certainly memorable, but there was no way to capture on film that certain atmosphere that Trevanian brought to his spy adventures, that sense of never being quite sure when he was putting you on. I mean, how could you resist a character like art collector/assassin Jonathan Hemlock, who worked for a shadowy (literally) intelligence boss named Yurassis Dragon? (say that last name fast if you don't know why it makes me laugh out loud).
My absolute favorite Trevanian character was Nicolai Hel, the half-Japanese assassin of Trevanian's classic Shibumi. Killer. Philosopher. Lover. Wine connisseur. No offense to Ian Fleming, but Nicolai Hel was cooler than James Bond by a factor of 10.
Trevanian's books had style. They had wit. They had great and often bizarre characters. They had hot sex. They were, above all, huge fun to read.
As it turns out, Whitaker wrote under at least five pseudonyms. I'm sure that he published great work under all of them.
But it's Trevanian I'll miss.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Bill O'Reilly's War on New Year's
Latest newspaper column:
As I’m sure you’ve heard (because he’s incapable of shutting up about it), talk show host and falafel aficionado Bill O’Reilly is really, really cheesed off about what he calls the “War on Christmas.”
He and his followers have their knickers in a big ol’ Yuletide wad over the fact that some retailers are using the words “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” at this, the most festive and financially lucrative time of the year.
According to O’Reilly, there are some people out there who hate, hate, HATE the idea of anyone saying “Merry Christmas.” These people, as I understand O’Reilly’s argument, have formed some sort of sinister cabal and infiltrated the highest levels of our society with the sole mission of destroying the entire holiday as revenge for the offense. So Big Bill has decided to declare his own war on anyone who dares go about with “Happy Holidays” on his lips.
He’s even makin’ his own list and checkin’ it twice. O’Reilly recently went on the air and proposed a “coalition of the willing” to fight against this “secular movement.” He also railed against what he called the “defamation pipeline,” which apparently consists of “far left smear sites.”
And how does Bill propose to plug up this pipeline and, in doing so, help save Christmas? Two words: enemies list. He promised to post the names of the offenders on his Web site, billoreilly.com, so that people would, uh, know who they are, I guess.
Boy, nothing says “Christmas” to me like a good, old-fashioned blacklist. I get all misty just thinking about it.
(By the way, I looked. I’m not there. Dang.)
Actually, I’ve never actually met anyone who was truly offended by the term “Merry Christmas,” so I have no objective evidence that such people exist outside of O’Reilly’s head. I have met several Jewish people who have gently corrected me when I forgot and wished them a happy celebration of a holiday that they don’t celebrate.
But O’Reilly apparently could give a rats’ hindquarters what a bunch of Jews think. His reply to a Jewish caller on his show was: “You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don’t wanna hear about it? Come on, [caller] — if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel.” Not that there’s any anti-Semitism there, oh no.
Actually, what I think Bill O’Reilly’s really up to isn’t a war to save Christmas. No, I think that’s just a smokescreen for the real O’Reilly agenda: the War on New Year’s. Think about it. The phrase “Happy Holidays,” the one that so enrages O’Reilly, refers to the entire season, both Christmas and the New Year’s holiday that comes the next week.
Now, Christmas is a wonderful time, what with the tidings of great joy to all people and chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all that. But New Year’s is an important part of the holidays as well. It provides time for reminiscence on the year past, time for sober reflection (or, if your New Year’s Eve is like mine, deeply hung-over reflection) on what’s to come.
O’Reilly and his ilk, apparently, want no part of reminiscence or reflection or Auld Lang Syne or any of that commie pinko claptrap. They hate New Year’s so much that they don’t want to include it in the greeting.
Why, Bill? Why do you hate New Year’s? Did some horrible trauma happen to you on New Year’s Eve? Do you not get invited to the good parties? Do you end up spending every New Year’s Eve alone in your apartment, slugging down Irish whiskey while watching “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” and weeping softly to yourself as the ball drops? Is it that you have more than the usual trouble getting a date for New Year’s after that whole sexual harassment thing?
Folks, here’s what we need to do at this holiday season. Someone needs to take one for the team and invite Bill O’Reilly to their house for New Year’s. He’s got a contact e-mail address on his website, and I know he’d be glad to hear from you.
Invite the big guy over. Show him a good time. Get him loaded. Put a little paper hat on him and give him a noisemaker. Have some good-looking young lady give him a big ol’ sloppy kiss at midnight, then whisk her into the Witness Protection program before he gets hold of her phone number.
Show Bill O’Reilly that New Year’s has its charms too, so the phrase “Happy Holidays” doesn’t make him so all-fired angry and bitter any more. I’d do it, but I’m, uh, washing my hair that night. But I’d appreciate it if someone would ask him about putting me on the blacklist. That would be cool.
And in the meantime, don’t worry about Christmas. It’ll be fine. Like the Whos down in Whoville say: “Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp.”
Have a merry one of whatever you celebrate .
Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, practices law, and celebrates in Carthage.
As I’m sure you’ve heard (because he’s incapable of shutting up about it), talk show host and falafel aficionado Bill O’Reilly is really, really cheesed off about what he calls the “War on Christmas.”
He and his followers have their knickers in a big ol’ Yuletide wad over the fact that some retailers are using the words “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” at this, the most festive and financially lucrative time of the year.
According to O’Reilly, there are some people out there who hate, hate, HATE the idea of anyone saying “Merry Christmas.” These people, as I understand O’Reilly’s argument, have formed some sort of sinister cabal and infiltrated the highest levels of our society with the sole mission of destroying the entire holiday as revenge for the offense. So Big Bill has decided to declare his own war on anyone who dares go about with “Happy Holidays” on his lips.
He’s even makin’ his own list and checkin’ it twice. O’Reilly recently went on the air and proposed a “coalition of the willing” to fight against this “secular movement.” He also railed against what he called the “defamation pipeline,” which apparently consists of “far left smear sites.”
And how does Bill propose to plug up this pipeline and, in doing so, help save Christmas? Two words: enemies list. He promised to post the names of the offenders on his Web site, billoreilly.com, so that people would, uh, know who they are, I guess.
Boy, nothing says “Christmas” to me like a good, old-fashioned blacklist. I get all misty just thinking about it.
(By the way, I looked. I’m not there. Dang.)
Actually, I’ve never actually met anyone who was truly offended by the term “Merry Christmas,” so I have no objective evidence that such people exist outside of O’Reilly’s head. I have met several Jewish people who have gently corrected me when I forgot and wished them a happy celebration of a holiday that they don’t celebrate.
But O’Reilly apparently could give a rats’ hindquarters what a bunch of Jews think. His reply to a Jewish caller on his show was: “You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don’t wanna hear about it? Come on, [caller] — if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel.” Not that there’s any anti-Semitism there, oh no.
Actually, what I think Bill O’Reilly’s really up to isn’t a war to save Christmas. No, I think that’s just a smokescreen for the real O’Reilly agenda: the War on New Year’s. Think about it. The phrase “Happy Holidays,” the one that so enrages O’Reilly, refers to the entire season, both Christmas and the New Year’s holiday that comes the next week.
Now, Christmas is a wonderful time, what with the tidings of great joy to all people and chestnuts roasting on an open fire and all that. But New Year’s is an important part of the holidays as well. It provides time for reminiscence on the year past, time for sober reflection (or, if your New Year’s Eve is like mine, deeply hung-over reflection) on what’s to come.
O’Reilly and his ilk, apparently, want no part of reminiscence or reflection or Auld Lang Syne or any of that commie pinko claptrap. They hate New Year’s so much that they don’t want to include it in the greeting.
Why, Bill? Why do you hate New Year’s? Did some horrible trauma happen to you on New Year’s Eve? Do you not get invited to the good parties? Do you end up spending every New Year’s Eve alone in your apartment, slugging down Irish whiskey while watching “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” and weeping softly to yourself as the ball drops? Is it that you have more than the usual trouble getting a date for New Year’s after that whole sexual harassment thing?
Folks, here’s what we need to do at this holiday season. Someone needs to take one for the team and invite Bill O’Reilly to their house for New Year’s. He’s got a contact e-mail address on his website, and I know he’d be glad to hear from you.
Invite the big guy over. Show him a good time. Get him loaded. Put a little paper hat on him and give him a noisemaker. Have some good-looking young lady give him a big ol’ sloppy kiss at midnight, then whisk her into the Witness Protection program before he gets hold of her phone number.
Show Bill O’Reilly that New Year’s has its charms too, so the phrase “Happy Holidays” doesn’t make him so all-fired angry and bitter any more. I’d do it, but I’m, uh, washing my hair that night. But I’d appreciate it if someone would ask him about putting me on the blacklist. That would be cool.
And in the meantime, don’t worry about Christmas. It’ll be fine. Like the Whos down in Whoville say: “Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp.”
Have a merry one of whatever you celebrate .
Dusty Rhoades lives, writes, practices law, and celebrates in Carthage.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Heh.
"Operation Kringle Kill": The blog of one of the soldiers currently engaged in fighting the War on Christmas.
A Dark Planet
My good friend David Terrenoire joins the ranks of blogdom (aka people who waste time rambling on the Internet when they really should be writing) with his blog, entitled A Dark Planet. Welcome to the blogosphere, David!
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Christmas in Crawford
Latest Radical Islamist Newspaper Column
One of the great traditions of Christmas is, of course, the Christmas card. Some folks prefer, in lieu of a card, to write everybody a long chatty letter telling folks how the year has gone. Even some of the world’s most famous people indulge themselves this way.
Here, courtesy of your Humble Columnist, is one example of just such a letter:
Christmas Greetings from Crawford!
We’re having a quiet Christmas in Crawford this year. Just a few friends. Very few. Actually, just Karl and Dick. They insisted on that. And it was their idea to ban all TV, radio and newspapers from the house. They call it the Christmas Bubble. Isn’t that cute? And it’s done wonders for George’s mood. We’re so lucky to have Karl and Dick to keep his spirits high.
Wow, what a year it’s been! Things started off really well, what with the fun and excitement of our second inaugural celebration back in January. We had a lot to look forward to, what with George winning that huge mandate and amassing all that political capital. And boy, did he spend it!
We’ve got so much to show for it, too. Take Social Security reform. … OK, bad example. Well, seniors got that Medicare prescription drug benefit. I hear one or two of them can actually understand it, which is more than I can say for George! Ha-ha!
Of course, no year is without its setbacks. I’m sure you all heard about Scooter’s little trouble with the law. But Dick tells us that it’s going to turn out fine and that Scooter will be totally exonerated. His exact words were that the prosecution was in its “last throes.” Funny, I seem to remember hearing that before somewhere, but I can’t remember exactly where.
Speaking of trouble with the law, our friend Tom got some great news the other day. The judge threw out one of the three charges against him. George called him up to congratulate him on his big win. “That’s half the case!” he said. (George is so funny when he tries to do math.) Tom seems pretty sure that he’ll be acquitted. Of course, he said the same thing about Duke Cunningham, but I’m sure this time he’s right.
Another good friend who faced hard times this year was poor Brownie. Who knew that when he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he’d end up actually having to manage an emergency? I mean, is that bad luck, or what?
But Brownie being Brownie, he’s managed to hold on to his sense of humor. I heard he was going around telling people, get this — that his next venture was going to be setting himself up as a consultant on disaster preparedness! Isn’t that a scream?
Harriet’s back at work and seems pretty happy, even though she’s obviously disappointed after having to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court. I really think people were unfair to Harriet. I mean, so what if she had no experience and was completely unqualified? It’s not like we were sending her there to actually think about complicated legal stuff! We were sending her there to watch George’s back! I mean, what part of “crony” do these people not understand?
Unfortunately, even at this happy holiday season, some people just have to be nasty ol’ Grinches. Like that silly Sheehan woman, going on and on and on about her dead son, and how she doesn’t like the war and blah blah blah. I wish she’d just get over it, you know? I mean, a lot of people have lost someone in this war. No one we know personally, of course, but I’ve read about them.
And that John McCain! I’m so mad at him I could just spit! How dare he propose a law that says George can’t order that people be tortured! Not that we actually do torture people, of course. Oh, sure, we may strap people to a board, put a cloth over their face and pour water on the cloth so they think they’re drowning, but Rummy tells me that that’s just, you know, horseplay.
Besides, George explained to me, we don’t torture people, because torture is illegal. We only do things that are legal, so if we do it, it’s not illegal, therefore, it’s not torture. You see why I love this man? Anyway, John McCain should just shut his big mouth. After all, what does he know about torture?
Whew! I seem to have gotten a wee bit out of the Christmas spirit for a moment there, didn’t I? Sorry about that. But don’t worry about me! A few dozen Xanax and I’ll be my cheery holiday self again!
Anyway, I’ve got to run. The twins will be home for the holidays any minute now, so I’ve got to make sure all the liquor’s safely locked away. And George’s mother will be here, so I better down a few more of those Xanax.
Hugs, Laura.
One of the great traditions of Christmas is, of course, the Christmas card. Some folks prefer, in lieu of a card, to write everybody a long chatty letter telling folks how the year has gone. Even some of the world’s most famous people indulge themselves this way.
Here, courtesy of your Humble Columnist, is one example of just such a letter:
Christmas Greetings from Crawford!
We’re having a quiet Christmas in Crawford this year. Just a few friends. Very few. Actually, just Karl and Dick. They insisted on that. And it was their idea to ban all TV, radio and newspapers from the house. They call it the Christmas Bubble. Isn’t that cute? And it’s done wonders for George’s mood. We’re so lucky to have Karl and Dick to keep his spirits high.
Wow, what a year it’s been! Things started off really well, what with the fun and excitement of our second inaugural celebration back in January. We had a lot to look forward to, what with George winning that huge mandate and amassing all that political capital. And boy, did he spend it!
We’ve got so much to show for it, too. Take Social Security reform. … OK, bad example. Well, seniors got that Medicare prescription drug benefit. I hear one or two of them can actually understand it, which is more than I can say for George! Ha-ha!
Of course, no year is without its setbacks. I’m sure you all heard about Scooter’s little trouble with the law. But Dick tells us that it’s going to turn out fine and that Scooter will be totally exonerated. His exact words were that the prosecution was in its “last throes.” Funny, I seem to remember hearing that before somewhere, but I can’t remember exactly where.
Speaking of trouble with the law, our friend Tom got some great news the other day. The judge threw out one of the three charges against him. George called him up to congratulate him on his big win. “That’s half the case!” he said. (George is so funny when he tries to do math.) Tom seems pretty sure that he’ll be acquitted. Of course, he said the same thing about Duke Cunningham, but I’m sure this time he’s right.
Another good friend who faced hard times this year was poor Brownie. Who knew that when he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he’d end up actually having to manage an emergency? I mean, is that bad luck, or what?
But Brownie being Brownie, he’s managed to hold on to his sense of humor. I heard he was going around telling people, get this — that his next venture was going to be setting himself up as a consultant on disaster preparedness! Isn’t that a scream?
Harriet’s back at work and seems pretty happy, even though she’s obviously disappointed after having to withdraw her nomination for the Supreme Court. I really think people were unfair to Harriet. I mean, so what if she had no experience and was completely unqualified? It’s not like we were sending her there to actually think about complicated legal stuff! We were sending her there to watch George’s back! I mean, what part of “crony” do these people not understand?
Unfortunately, even at this happy holiday season, some people just have to be nasty ol’ Grinches. Like that silly Sheehan woman, going on and on and on about her dead son, and how she doesn’t like the war and blah blah blah. I wish she’d just get over it, you know? I mean, a lot of people have lost someone in this war. No one we know personally, of course, but I’ve read about them.
And that John McCain! I’m so mad at him I could just spit! How dare he propose a law that says George can’t order that people be tortured! Not that we actually do torture people, of course. Oh, sure, we may strap people to a board, put a cloth over their face and pour water on the cloth so they think they’re drowning, but Rummy tells me that that’s just, you know, horseplay.
Besides, George explained to me, we don’t torture people, because torture is illegal. We only do things that are legal, so if we do it, it’s not illegal, therefore, it’s not torture. You see why I love this man? Anyway, John McCain should just shut his big mouth. After all, what does he know about torture?
Whew! I seem to have gotten a wee bit out of the Christmas spirit for a moment there, didn’t I? Sorry about that. But don’t worry about me! A few dozen Xanax and I’ll be my cheery holiday self again!
Anyway, I’ve got to run. The twins will be home for the holidays any minute now, so I’ve got to make sure all the liquor’s safely locked away. And George’s mother will be here, so I better down a few more of those Xanax.
Hugs, Laura.
Arguing With The Voices In Their Heads
In today's edition of the Pilot, Martin Samchalk of Pinehurst uses an updated version of Dickens to explain how I'm really a radical Islamist:
Next, the Ghost of Holiday Future takes Dusty into the future when his heroes, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Hillary have surrendered the country to al Qaeda. The state religion is Islam and there is no more Christmas to fret about. In fact there is no more Constitution, no Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and no more Congress to make laws. We all live under Islamic law.
Finally, the Ghost of Holiday Present shows Dusty how he is helping to bring about future holidays under Islamic law, by repeating lies against President Bush and the Iraq war....
In Dusty’s dream he lives and is learning Islamic law in Carthage.
Heh. Now who can argue with that?
Next, the Ghost of Holiday Future takes Dusty into the future when his heroes, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Hillary have surrendered the country to al Qaeda. The state religion is Islam and there is no more Christmas to fret about. In fact there is no more Constitution, no Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and no more Congress to make laws. We all live under Islamic law.
Finally, the Ghost of Holiday Present shows Dusty how he is helping to bring about future holidays under Islamic law, by repeating lies against President Bush and the Iraq war....
In Dusty’s dream he lives and is learning Islamic law in Carthage.
Heh. Now who can argue with that?
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