Glen W. Bell, R. I. P.

Taco Bell founder dead at 86 - Yahoo! News: "Glen W. Bell Jr., an entrepreneur best known as the founder of the Taco Bell chain, has died. He was 86.

Bell died Sunday at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, according to a statement posted Monday on the Taco Bell Web site."

Anthony Neil Smith will be in mourning for a month.

Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.

Edgar Allan Poe Update

Edgar Allan Poe - Salon.com: "Edgar Allan Poe's fertile imagination has endured for more than 150 years -- and so has his pale, death-haunted image, with his sunken eyes, a trim mustache and unruly mop of curly hair.

However, scholars say Poe looked far more vigorous, perhaps even dashing, in his earlier years than he does in the well-known series of daguerreotypes taken in the final years of his life.

The more robust Poe is captured in a small watercolor by A.C. Smith, one of just three surviving portraits of the author, which will be shown publicly for the first time Saturday and is expected to fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction."

Small photo at the link.

If It's Not Nachos, It's Tacos

Stabbing Reportedly Started Over Tacos - Central Coast News Story - KSBW The Central Coast: "A Greenfield woman accused of stabbing her husband allegedly did so after the two argued about tacos, prosecutors said."

Jack Benny Update

Killing Comedic Heritage? CBS Reportedly Seals Some Classic Jack Benny Show Comedy Masters | The Moderate Voice: "Late last week the International Jack Benny Fan Club got some very bad news: rather than allow the club with the Benny family’s enthusiastic blessing to digitally preserve some unreleased public domain Benny show masters that CBS has in its possession, the network is giving a thumbs down to the idea — thus sealing these shows’ fate so they will never be seen again. In effect, it’s a bullet through the head of this body of Benny work. And here is the most frustrating tidbit for comedy fans and those who study comedy: the Fan Club offered to do the preservation at no cost to CBS."

Link via Boing Boing.

No Comment Department

Boom in Avatar names for kiddies | The Sun |News: "MOVIE fans are rushing to name their babies after characters in sci-fi smash Avatar.

Choices include Neytiri - after the film's Na'vi warrior-princess - and giant flying creature Toruk.

Another favourite is Pandora, name of the blockbuster flick's fictional planet."

Bring Me the Head of -- oh, and Bring Me a Flower, Too

Human head found by tomb of Mexican drug lord Beltran Leyva : America World: "A human head and a red flower were found Sunday by the tomb of Mexican drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed by Mexican security forces in a raid last month. The office of the Attorney General of the state of Sinaloa said that an employee of the Jardines del Humaya cemetery in the city of Culiacan, about 1,200 kilometres northwest of Mexico City, had informed them of the finding. Several suspected drug bosses are buried in that cemetery.

Mexican authorities did not immediately know the identity of the person whose head was laid on the steps of access to the tomb with a flower in one ear. The rest of the body was found inside a plastic bag in the same cemetery, by the tomb of Gonzalo 'El Chalo' Araujo, a boss of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was killed in October 2006."

Time Travelers Never Die -- Jack McDevitt

When i was a kid, one of the first grown-up SF stories I read was "E for Effort" by T. L. Sherred. It was in some fat Groff Conklin anthology that was full of great stories, but of them all, this one excited me the most. It's still one of my favorite SF stories, and I've read it several times since then. It never fails to impress me, and it's one reason I enjoy time-travel stories so much. So you have to take that into account when I say that I got a kick out of Jack McDevitt's Time Travelers Never Die.

The novel begins with as a kind of crime story. Shel Shelbourne appears to have been murdered. But then he reveals himself to his friend Dave Dryden. Shel has discovered an invention of his father's, the Q-Pod, that allows him to travel in time, but his father has disappeared. Dave and Shel search for him through the centuries.

There's no attempt to explain how the Q-Pod works, but it does, and all the expected paradox elements also apply. McDevitt has fun explaining and playing with them. Dave and Shel can't resist mingling with the people from the past, but nothing serious comes of it because they're careful. Well, most of the time. They run into trouble in Selma, Alabama, and they tangle with a Borgia. There are other bumps in the road.

Mostly the search for Shel's father is an excuse for a "and then we visited" kind of novel. (I was pleased that Shel and Dave attended a Kingston Trio Concert; I'm assuming they saw the original group.) Some might find the plot a bit rambling, but eventually Dave and Shel get around to the "crime" that began the novel and its ingenious resolution. A couple of other bloggers have commented, and you can find James Reasoner's comments here. Randy Johnson weighs in here. And George Kelley's review is here. George is the one who first recommended McDevitt to me some years ago, and I've enjoyed several of McDevitt's books since then.

Scott Cupp: Ten Overlooked Odd Speculative Fiction Classics

The SF Site: Ten Overlooked Odd Speculative Fiction Classics: "Ten Overlooked Odd Speculative Fiction Classics"

A good list, I think. Scott and I have talked about several of these over the years.

Once Again, Texas Leads the Way

McCoy's proposal came off without a hitch - Big 12 Blog - ESPN: "Colt McCoy had been planning to pop the question to his fianc�e, Rachel Glandorf, for several weeks."

McCoy took advantage of favorable circumstances to propose to Glandorf Sunday night at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, shortly after he returned from an examination of his injured shoulder from Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Ala., earlier in the day.
[. . . .]
The proposal was made inside the stadium with the question flashed on the facility’s giant scoreboard. Glandorf quickly accepted."

They Had to Do a Study to Find This Out?

Current Biology - The cry embedded within the purr: "Despite widespread interest in inter-specific communication, few studies have examined the abilities of companion animals to communicate with humans in what has become their natural environment — the human home [1,2]. Here we report how domestic cats make subtle use of one of their most characteristic vocalisations — purring — to solicit food from their human hosts, apparently exploiting sensory biases that humans have for providing care."

Flying Leathernecks

A Weighty Problem

Floor caves under Weight Watchers weigh-in - Diet and nutrition- msnbc.com: "As a Weight Watchers group gathered for a routine weigh-in, the dieters got an idea of how far they still had to go: The floor underneath them collapsed, a Swedish newspaper reports.

'We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air,' one of about 20 group members said to the Smalandsposten newspaper. 'The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls.'"

Hat tip to Richard Wheeler and Jeff Meyerson.

They Had to Do a Study to Find This Out?

Weekends Are Good For You, Study Finds - Yahoo! News: "Just about everybody - even workaholics - should look forward to the weekend, when most people get a mood boost, a new study suggests.

Participants in the study often reported better moods, greater vitality, and fewer aches and pains from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon as compared with the rest of the week.

'Workers, even those with interesting, high-status jobs, really are happier on the weekend,' said study researcher Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester."

Skinks on a Plane

Michael Plank arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for strapping 15 lizards to chest: "Federal officials say they arrested a man who strapped 15 live lizards to his chest to get through customs at Los Angeles International Airport.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that 40-year-old Michael Plank of California was returning from Australia when U.S. Customs agents found two geckos, two monitor lizards and 11 skinks - another type of lizard - fastened to his body Tuesday."

Hat tip to Art Scott.

Kenn Davis, R.I.P.

Kenn Davis, author of the Carver Bascombe series and Bogart '48, passed away on January 12. For a bit more info, see Bob Randisi's comments as PWA News and Views.

Update: More at The Rap Sheet.

Bury Me Deep -- Megan Abbott

I know I've been a little slow getting around to this one, but it's been reviewed in so many places that it doesn't need me to do any more cheerleading. The story, as you probably know by now, is a fictional retelling of the story of Winnie Ruth Judd.

Although I don't have any trunk murderers in my family, unlike some people (*kaff*Richard Moore*kaff*), some of my relatives were fascinated by that case, and I remember my grandmother and my aunt talking about it when I was a little kid. There were other references to it over the years, so I was aware of the basic story before I picked up Bury Me Deep. This book goes way beyond the facts I knew, however, and fleshes out the characters in a way the turns the story into pure noir.

Marion Seeley is the Judd stand-in. She's married to a doctor with a morphine addiction. He's lost his license and goes to Mexico to work, leaving Marion behind in a little Arizona town where she falls in with the wrong crowd. Before long, she's going to wild parties, and not long after that, she's having an affair with a supposedly upright businessman who turns out to be anything but.

Marion's bad choices lead to even worse results, as they so often do in noir fiction, and while there's action and suspense aplenty, Bury Me Deep is really a character study. Why does Marion do the things she does? Why does she keep on doing them? Is she entirely to blame? How can a person do terrible things that don't fit with her own image of the kind of person she is? What can she do when everyone turns against her?

Megan Abbott is a skillful writer, and she's already won an Edgar. I'll be surprised if she's not nominated for another one. Bury Me Deep is just that good.

In Its Own Quiet Way, . .

. . . this is an amazing story.

I Have No Excuse for Posting This . . .

. . . other than the fact that I can't resist and article that mentions "a snail-sucking snake."

Spot the gecko: Reptile so small it can fit on pencil top found along with dozens of other new species in threatened Ecuador jungle | Mail Online: "A gecko so small it can perch on top of a pencil has been discovered along with dozens of new animal species in Ecuador’s threatened rainforest.

Scientists also found 30 new varieties of frog and a snail-sucking snake – all on the verge of becoming extinct."

Gator Update (Breathing Edition)

Alligators breathe like birds: "University of Utah scientists discovered that air flows in one direction as it loops through the lungs of alligators, just as it does in birds. The study suggests this breathing method may have helped the dinosaurs' ancestors dominate Earth after the planet's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago."

She Demons