The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department said Robert L. Johnson, 40, of Byers went to the jail Saturday to surrender on an outstanding warrant from another, unspecified incident."
Monday, November 01, 2010
Criminal Mastermind of the Week
Body Found During Bomb Search - News Story - KRDO Colorado Springs: "LITTLETON, Colo. -- Deputies in suburban Denver found a dead body in the trunk of a car parked outside the jail and arrested the driver on a murder charge, officials said.
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department said Robert L. Johnson, 40, of Byers went to the jail Saturday to surrender on an outstanding warrant from another, unspecified incident."
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department said Robert L. Johnson, 40, of Byers went to the jail Saturday to surrender on an outstanding warrant from another, unspecified incident."
Once Again, Texas Leads the Way
And keep off his lawn.
Gideon's Sword -- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
I got an ARC of this book at Bouchercon. Gideon Crew is a rocket scientist. Okay, maybe not, but he works at Los Alamos, and that's close enough for me. He's also a Ph. D. who was for a long time a professional thief, but then after he avenged the death of his father, he decided it was time to settle down. Before he can relax, he's recruited by a super-secret organization to do a little job for them. He decides to do it only after he discovers that he's going to die within a couple of years because of a rare medical condition.
If you think Crew sounds like a character in a lot of other bestsellers, well, you're probably right, and this book's probably headed for that list as soon as it hits the street. Even though it won't be published until February, Michael Bay has already bought it for the movies and commissioned a script.
I'm not sure what the title of the book means, but then I'm not a biblical scholar. I remember that Gideon's sword is metaphorical, or at least that's what I think I remember. As far as I can tell there's no sword, literal or metaphorical, in this novel. Crew is after a mcguffin. Nobody knows what it is, but then it doesn't really matter, does it? Nodding Crane, a Chinese assassin who plays a mean blues guitar and kills people with his special finger picks (again, a bestseller character if there ever was one), is out to prevent him. There are no prizes if you guess who wins.
I've read only one other book by Preston and Child. I thought it suffered from the "extended climax syndrome," which means that the climactic scene goes on and on. And on. That's true here, too. I admit that I skimmed a lot of pages toward the end. Compared to the other book by the pair that I read, though, this one's pretty short, a mere 342 pages of decent-sized print. It reads fast. If you like this kind of stuff, this is exactly the kind of stuff you'll like.
Did Texas Lead the Way?
Hallowe'en was different when I was a kid. For one thing, it wasn't Halloween. I don't know when the apostrophe disappeared, but I know it was after I got out of the public schools. I learned to put the apostrophe in, but now the spellchecker doesn't like it.
But I digress. What I meant to talk about was what kids did when I was one of them. Life then was more like a Peanuts comic strip. You know the ones, where the kids are out roaming the streets, trick-or-treating with their paper bags and not an adult in sight. About sundown, off we'd go. The most elaborate costume I remember wearing is a Lone Ranger mask. I thought those were cool. A couple of friends and I would walk all over town, knocking on doors and ringing doorbells, and it was all great fun. When we'd gotten enough candy, we'd go to the community Hallowe'en carnival and try our luck at bingo or the cakewalk. When the booths started to shut down, we'd walk home.
Nobody worried that the candy we'd scored would poison us. Nobody worried that we'd be stolen off the streets and assaulted or killed. I'm not sure anybody was ever poisoned by Hallowe'en candy except for one kid in Texas, and he was poisoned by his own father, who wanted to collect the insurance money. Aside from that one incident, Hallowe'en candy's pretty safe as far as I know. Maybe it's all that guy's fault that things have changed. The assaults and the murders might be happening, but I lived in a small town, and that kind of thing never happened in the old days. Maybe it does now.
I still remember those October nights and how much fun they were. I guess kids still have fun, just not the way we used to do. I'm fine with that, as long as they keep off my lawn.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Ted Sorensen, R. I. P.
Post Mortem - Ted Sorensen dies: JFK's speechwriter was 82: "Ted Sorensen, who served as President John F. Kennedy's adviser and primary speechwriter, died today at New York Presbyterian Hospital of complications from a stroke he suffered last week. He was 82."
Want to See Something Really Scary?
Dark Roasted Blend: Siberian "Ghost" Cities Scare: "We'd like to call them 'ghost towns', but they are clearly not abandoned. Amazingly, people still live in them, go to work in harshest possible conditions (paradoxically making it the richest and mightiest industrial area in Russia) and then come 'home' to relax in this inhuman weather, non-existing infrastructure, in dangerously dilapidated buildings..."
Ft. Worth Public Library Painting
This "Texas Tales™" painting by Marjorie Stark Buckley is in the Ft. Worth Public Library. It was commissioned to commemorate the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. I'm standing under the plaque with my name on it. I'm still a little overwhelmed that I was chosen.
I Grow Old, I Grow Old
Texas Exes | Jester Center Gets Snazzy Updates After 41 Years: "Its own ZIP code is gone, but beds for 3,066 people — more than in some entire Texas towns — remain.
Forty-one years later, Jester Center is still one of the largest residence halls any university has ever built. But the epic dorm has come a long way, especially in the past few years."
Forty-one years later, Jester Center is still one of the largest residence halls any university has ever built. But the epic dorm has come a long way, especially in the past few years."
This dorm opened ten years after I entered the university. It's on the site of what was the intramural field when I was an undergrad. In 1969, I'd returned to Austin to graduate school, and I still think of Jester as "the new dorm."
Suspicions Confirmed
Extending daylight could boost health, help planet - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) – Putting the clocks back in winter is bad for health, wastes energy and increases pollution, scientists say, and putting an end to the practice in northern areas could bring major health and environmental benefits."
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