The Best Television Series Ever - There's Only One in This List

Someone over on Hubpages asked: 
If you could revive (or extend) any TV series of the past 50 years, which would it be, and why?

It took me about 1 second to come up with an answer.

"Firefly". 

No question about it. If I were asked to name the best TV series ever, my choice would be the same.

Retired after just 13 episodes, this Joss Whedon sci-fi gem, was badly handled by Fox, largely because Fox didn't understand its audience. Firefly only ran 13 episodes and Fox bounced it around the schedule so much nobody was really able to find it. Those that did were hooked on it. After Fox managed to mishandle the movie version, they pretty much buried it so it could never be revived.

Too bad. Firefly had the potential to draw a lot of sci-fi viewers that had long ago been turned off by Star Trek's inexplicable pie-in-the-stars smooshy liberalism after Captain James Tiberius Kirk retired.

Firefly was a gritty look at humans once again on the frontier; the space western motif was perfect and made sense to hard sci-fi fans. The lack of encounters with big-headed rubber aliens cleared out most of the horror movie sci-fi fans. Firefly was thinking man's science fiction and had more people had time to find it and watch a few episodes, they'd have been hooked. Many who have watched the series on the Syfy Channel or one of the Science Channel marathons or borrowed some Firefly groupie's DVD set have become hard core fans.

Firefly fans are more fanatic than Ron Paul supporters. The cast was perfect and every one of them has said they'd do the series again in a heartbeat. Nathan Fillion, Firefly's Captain Malcolm Reynolds, still manages to scatter a few Firefly references into his new series, Castle. He and the rest of the crew do appearances at conventions and to a person call the Firefly series one of the best, if not THE best acting work they've ever done.

If you have not seen it, jump onto a Sci channel marathon some weekend when they run the whole series and the movie back to back in one day.

You will not regret the day wasted unless you're an ignorant boob and then, don't worry. Fox still has plenty of reality TV shows where they eat worms and stuff. You'll be alright.

Tom

Five Steps to Happy Feet

by Tom King © 2011

A lot of people hate their feet. They hate other people's feet. They hate the very idea of feet. These are not people with happy feet. I, on the other hand, am a person with happy feet. They have served me well. My 10 ½ triple E's have a few scars and a flaw or two thanks to inuries over the years, but all in all they have held me up well. My right little toe is permanently numb, but then, when you kick a chair that hard, you can expect a little nerve damage.

So how do you get to the advanced age of 57 and still have healthy happy feet?

Step 1: Go barefoot as a child.

Nothing is better for your feet than exposing them to the varieties of surfaces and textures you'll encounter in the average backyard. The bones in growing feet need to flex and move freely if they are going to develop properly in order to hold us up when we reach our full height. Mom's overprotect kids feet, I believe. I have a nice wide stable foot thanks to running barefoot most of my childhood (and Mom saved a fortune in tennis shoes).

Step 2: Accep minimal support.

Sandals are wonderfully unsupportive. I used to wear thin-soled canvas running shoes as a kid. They had virtually no padding or arch support in them and my Mom didn't like them because she thought they'd ruin my feet. But since I had my own paper route, I could buy the shoes I wanted and track shoes were as close to barefoot as you could get and still be allowed to go to school. So that's what I wore and they did not ruin my feet despite Mom's dire warnings. Science backs me up. There are Indians in the mountains of Mexico who run marathons wearing only Huarache sandals. Curious researchers found that these thin, almost non-existant shoes allow the bones in the foot to absorb impact more effectively than expensive running shoes. Turns out there is evidence that all that support in so-called "scientifically" designed sports footwear may actually cause more injuries than they prevent. Giving the foot too much support can, apparently, weaken the foot's ability to absorb shocks.  A foot that can flex is a foot that will hold up under long usage.

Step 3: Ventilate your feet.

If you must wear shoes, go for ones that ventilate well. Fungal infections of the foot require a warm moist environment to grow – environments like the inside of a poorly ventilated shoe and thick socks. If you do, for whatever reason, need to don Nikes and sports socks, for goodness sake get out of them and air out your feet for several hours afterward. Wash and dry thoroughly, then run around unshod for a while. If you're out in hiking boots, get wool socks, even in summer. They wick off the moisture and keep your skin fairly dry. Around the campfire, though, kick off the boots and lounge about in flip flops or a pair of Huarache's you keep dangling from your backpack.

Step 4: Go bare-footin'.

No need to spend a fortune on a foot massage or a reflexologist. Find a safe place to walk unshod and take a hike once in a while. The textures of the ground, rock, grass and earth, not only thoroughly and naturally massage your feet, but the sensations give you an all over sense of well-being. Mother Earth was meant to be felt through our soles. In the process, you'll also build a nice thick protective layer on the bottom of your feet – something that may come in handy some day if you ever have to cover some ground sans Gucci loafers.

Step 5: Let your toenails grow out a little.

When they advise you to cut your toenails straight across, there is a good reason. If you let the edges of your toenails grow a bt beyond the skin and don't cut them low in the channels along the sides of the nail, you'll save yourself a lot of pain from ingrown toenails. Buy yourself some proper nail clippers for toes and keep up with your toes. An ingrown toenail is very painful and can even require surgery to remedy. If you go barefoot a lot, you'll be more likely to notice a developing problem.

People don't appreciate how important their feet are to their happiness. Show me a man with unhappy feet, I'll show you a miserable human being capable of talking on his cell phone in the theater, committing genocide or starting a nuclear war.

May the road rise up to meet you and may your feet be happy upon the road you have chosen!

Tom

Who's Your Favorite Conservative Science Fiction Author?

As a conservative, I find it almost impossible to stomach some of the leftist nonsense that comes out of the science fiction genre.  I grew up on sci-fi as a kid, but was lucky to have found a wide range of political ideology in what I read.  Some rang true to what I had learned in history and sociology (often in spite of my history and sociology teachers).  Some did not.  I remember being drawn to elements in science fiction that seem to be a recurring theme - even in the works of writers who probably see themselves as ardent progressives. Liberty and freedom of the individual is one of these themes and the only way to pit liberty and freedom against an adversary is to pit it against a believable one.

What you get are sorely confused people writing about the heroic, rugged individualist fighting against the evil corporate dominated governments, insect hive minded aliens, brutal tyrants and evil forces bent on world domination. And yet, how many of them go out and vote for political parties that would increase the size power and intrusiveness of government? Sci-fi writers flirt constantly with the idea of a government by the wise (and let's face it most sci-fi writers consider themselves among the "wise"). Such a government, if managed by the proper folk, the pure nobles, the great wizards or wise men or sorceresses, would manage everything so all the regular people would be fat and happy and satisfied with their lot in life.

But it never really works that way does it? 

We never can quite get away from the obvious defects of such a system. You'd have had to be blind not to have seen the horrors of unfettered communism once the Iron Curtain collapsed in the late 80s.  Turns out communism was far worse than we ever knew.  Even the Chinese have realized the problems with communism and are moving away from it, retaining the authoritarian bits, of course. The Chinese always preferred their governments authoritarian for some reason.  I suspect preserving an authoritarian government machinery has always been the point of progressivism, socialism and communism anyway. Many SF authors point out this problem that authority has in co-existing with freedom in their novels, movies and stories - sometimes unwittingly. That's why you get leftist writers writing the most damning things about big governments.

My top eight favorite SF authors whose works ring true for me include:

1. Poul Anderson:  Anderson is not only a scientist, but a student of history as well. His future cultures recognize the problems with bureaucracies, corporate or government and his stories deal with the impact of such repressive societies on men and women with brains, creativity and a love of freedom. The man almost preaches sometimes. He produced a steady stream of characters like notorious trader to the stars, Nicholas Van Rinjh, Dominic Flandry, David Falkyn and a host of others provide an almost endless stream of reading - the man was a voracious writer. If you're a conservative/libertarian like me, you'll find yourself nodding in agreement as you read his finely crafted stories that weave history, anthropology, sociology and science into a seamless whole. 
2. Orson Scott Card: Orson sits on the outside of mainstream science fiction. A Mormon like Glenn Beck, Card is not shy about his political opinions. His masterpiece, "Ender's Game" is on the commandant of the Marine Corps' recommended reading list for Marine officers. While, I'm not particularly a fan of his fantasy work, his hard science fiction is a delight and I hope he never runs out of Ender sequels.
3. Dr. Jerry Pournelle:  You probably know this very intelligent man from his work with Larry Niven, but he has quite a few novels of his own. He, like Poul Anderson, believes that space exploration is the royal road to freedom for man and has long promoted the idea that if we focus on the stars, it will reduce the problems we have here. He opposed the Gulf Wars saying that if we spent the money developing nuclear and other energy technologies we could tell the Arabs to go drink their own oil and not have to meddle with them.  His SF work will not make you cringe.

4. C.S. Lewis:  A surprising number of people don't know that Lewis wrote a science fantasy trilogy. The books are "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength". His fantasy series "The Chronicles of Narnia" have been made into a series of movies. Lewis was a firm opponent of socialism and wrote several fiery condemnations of the creeping "nanny state" in Britain. His SF work, while implausible scientifically given what we now know about Mars and Venus, is a wonderful philosophical treatise on the consequences of the lust for power.  His very funny "Screwtape Letters" is a brilliant take on demons and the devil. 
5. Michael Flynn:  I got into Flynn after stumbling on his first book, "Firestar". Firestar depicts an independent woman, a corporate magnate, who has a childhood fear of an asteroid striking the Earth and wants to see a system put in place to protect the planet. Tired of waiting for a foot-dragging government to do things, she starts her own school system that trains up kids to be astronauts and scientists in her own privately funded space program.  The series definitely leans conservative in its disdain for bureaucracies.  Whatever political views Flynn may espouse privately, he gets me as a reader for that.
6. J.R.R. Tolkien:  While more strictly a fantasy than a science fiction writer, I include him on the principle that if the Syfy Channel can show horror movies, I can include Tolkien in this list. I like that, while his novels are full of kings and nobles, its the small fry that count. Big powerful forces in his novel, when they are doing as they should be doing, serve to support the meek who are the ones who really make the difference in the end.
7. Michael Crichton:  If you're looking for a smart writer, pick one that finished med school and chose to become a science fiction author. His brilliant "State of Fear" is a scathing indictment of the global warming scam that has upset more than a few of his Hollywood colleagues. We will miss his intelligent observations about science medicine and technology. I bet he had some doozies left to write.

8. Daniel da Cruz:  Daniel didn't write a whole lot of books. He spent most of his career as a journalist and general man about the world. In the 80s, however, he wrote one of my favorite sci-fi series of all time.  The first entitled, "The Ayes of Texas" takes place during the Carter years when the US is being sold piecemeal to the Soviets. A charismatic Texas governor and billionaire inventor join forces to lead Texas out of the union and re-establish the Republic of Texas, prompting a war with Russia. In a classic shootout, the upgraded Battleship Texas dukes it out with a Russian Fleet that attacks Houston and finishes it off in convincing Texas Navy fashion. In the second book, "Texas on the Rocks" the inventor's son brings and iceberg to Corpus Christi and supplies water to a drought-stricken US Midwest and fights off assorted villains that want to bring down the fledgling Republic of Texas. In the last book, Texas Triumphant", our hero drills a tunnel from Texas to Moscow and sets off an unusual and no-lethal bomb that destroys the Soviet Union once and for all. The solution that wins the war is one of the most original weapons of war I've ever heard of. If da Cruz had written nothing else, these books set him as one of my favorites in the SF genre.  Every Texan should own the set.

Now it's your turn. Leave a comment below telling us a sci-fi author that warmed the cockles of your conservative heart. I'm looking for new reading material.

Tom King

If You Love Series Fiction - 12 Great Reads

My Dozen Favorite Book Series

(c) 2011 by Tom King

If you've come to the end of the Harry Potter books and you need another book to read, but you want one that will be with you for the long haul, what you want is a book series.  Have I got some winners for you. These books take you deep into the lives of some characters you will love. If you're a voracious reader, you've probably read most of these. If you're new to series fiction, however, then you are in for a treat.  To wit - my top ten book series............es. Oh, to heck with the grammar.  On with the story......

1. "The Chronicles of Narnia" by CS Lewis.  I discovered this gem in college in a children's literature class I took for my teaching certificate.  We were supposed to read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by Friday.  I read all seven in chronological order (not the order of writing which I recommend by the way) and was finished to my regret by Thursday night. Lewis' highly readable and engaging Christian allegory chronicles the dealings between eight English schoolchildren, Digory, Polly, Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace and Jill and a powerful lion king called Aslan in the land of Narnia from the Lamp Post to Cair Paravel. Narnia keeps summoning the kids to itself via magic items like horns,wardrobes, rings and pictures from train stations, back bedrooms and holes in walls. The books carry you on to the end of the world itself where Narnia and Earth become one. It is a lovely trip The books in logical order are:

• The Magician's Nephew
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Horse and His Boy
• Prince Caspian
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• The Silver Chair
• The Last Battle

2.  "Horatio Hornblower" by CS Forester.  It is a complete and total accident that my two favorite series are by authors with the initials CS. The C and S both stand for different names altogether, but that doesn't matter. I stumbled on these after watching a Gregory Peck movie on the late show one night. I didn't know that Captain Horatio Hornblower was the subject of a series of books. The novels trace the career of an awkward young commoner midshipman, without advantage or patron who rises in the British Navy on brains, nerve and an innate understanding of just what it takes to be a captain. I'm told Gene Rodenberry studied Capt. Hornblower in designing all the captains in the Star Trek series. He could not have picked a better character study in leadership.  The books, again in chronological order, not the order in which they were written are:

• Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
• Lieutenant Hornblower
• Hornblower and the Hotspur
• Hornblower and the Atropos
• Hornblower During the Crisis
• Beat to Quarters
• Flying Colors
• A Ship of the Line
• Commodore Hornblower
• Lord Hornblower
• Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies

3. "The Polesotechnic League" by Poul Anderson.  I discovered Poul Anderson early in my science fiction reading. Nicholas Van Rinjh, a recurrent character in the series is a fat Dutch trader who is wildly wealthy, a thorn in the side to the authoritarians in the League and a genius at horse-trading with alien cultures. His purpose in life seems to be to figure out how to get everyone to play nice so he (and they) can make a little money. Van Rinjh is the ultimate capitalist.  These are most of the books and story collections in the Polesotechnic Universe:

• War of the Wing-Men
• Trader to the Stars
• The Trouble Twisters
• Satan's World
• The Earth Book of Stormgate
• Mirkheim
• The People of the Wind 

 4. "The Time Patrol" by Poul Anderson.  I keep coming back to Anderson. His Time Patrol series is more of a psychological, sociological and historical study as it is impacted by future science. Manson Everard, an out of work ex-soldier/engineer answers a cryptic want ad and finds himself taking a job that sends him to the Cretaceous Era for basic training and up and down the time-line as an unattached agent and Time Patrolman, guarding the timeline against interference by future time travelers. The historical detail is breath-taking and the situations are mind-bending. I recommend buying the collections so you get all the stories in the series:

• Time Patrol
• Brave to be a King
• Gibralter Falls
• The Only Game in Town
• Delenda Est
• Ivory and Apes and Peacocks
• The Sorrow of Odin the Goth
• Star of the Sea
• The Year of the Ransom
• The Shield of Time
• Death and the Knight

The shorter novels above have been collected in "The Time Patrol" or "Annals of the Time Patrol". If you love history and science fiction, this series gives you both with a taciturn hero and great back stories.

5. Robots, Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.  Asimov built these three series over decades of his science fiction career, then came back after a lengthy hiatus and wrote the ending in which he connected the three series into one long chain. Asimov explores the idea that robots and/or smart people can "take care" of the human race over long periods of time and keep the galaxy from going to hell in a handbasket. It's a progressive fantasy, but I have to give it to Asimov, he does point out the flaws in the concept quite nicely. Asimov is himself a scientist with four or five Ph.D.s and an exhaustive collection of dirty limericks. He takes a long look at the human race and how our creations may one day wind up our masters. While not as much fun as Anderson's rough and tumble capitalist universe, it's a fascinating look at the possibilities and dangers of scientistific meddling.  Hint - Asimov comes down on the side of science.  Here they are in roughly the order I'd read them:

• Robot Visions (Includes the original "I, Robot") with inventor Susan Calvin and introducing Elijah Bailey and his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw
• The Caves of Steel (Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Naked Sun (Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Robots of Dawn (Bailey and Olivaw)
• Robots and Empire (Last with Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Current of Space (first of the Empire Series)
• The Stars, Like Dust (Empire)
• Pebble in the Sky (Empire)
• Prelude to Foundation (Empire and Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Forward the Foundation (Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Foundations Fear (by Gregory Benford - Foundation, and Hari Seldon)
• Foundation and Chaos (by Greg Bear - Foundation, Hari Seldon, R. Olivaw)
• Foundation's Triumph (by David Brin - Foundation, Hari Seldon, R. Daneel Olivaw)
• Foundation (Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Foundation and Empire (Foundation)
• Second Foundation (Foundation)
• Foundations Edge (Foundation)
• Foundation and Earth (Foundation and R. Daneel Olivaw)

The ending is a stunner. Save for the three editions not by Asimov himself, the series is tight, a smooth read and masterfully plotted. I've not read all the new stuff yet, but most of it and am collecting original editions to complete my set.  Isaac will be missed.

6.  The Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card is sixth because I'm more or less writing in order of discovery. Ender's Game is a stunning novel about the misuse of brilliant children. It leaves us with no clear answers about the morality of it, because, after all, the Earth is saved and the pupils soon become the masters in this brilliant series and it's take on how to effectively respond to bullying is disturbing, if effective. The book was so ahead of itself that it's taken 30 years for the movie industry to figure out the technology to make it into a film. Here's the more or less chronological list as it now stands:

• Ender's Game
• Ender's Shadow
• A War of Gifts
• Ender in Exile
• Shadow of the Hegemon
• Shadow Puppets
• Shadow of the Giant
• Shadows in Flight (soon to be published)
• Speaker for the Dead
• Xenocide
• Children of the Mind

7. "The Dragon Riders of Pern" by Anne McCaffrey.   McCaffrey is a relentless serial writer. It's like science fiction meets romance novel in some ways. Her female characters are strong and well drawn. She can be a little corny. The novels of Pern are an easy read, big fat books and a fun alternative to television and you're not likely to run out of reading material any time soon. Once every four years, the colony world of Pern is visited by a space born rain of fire called "thread". Genetically bread fire-breathing dragons and their riders burn the thread up in the sky to prevent wholesale destruction of the colonists below. Each 150 some odd year visitation is called a "pass". Here they are chronologically:

First Pass

• Dragonsdawn
• The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

Second Pass

• Dragonseye

Third Pass

• Dragons Kin
• Dragonsblood

Sixth Pass

• Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
• Nerilka's Story

Ninth Pass

• Dragonflight
• Dragonsong
• Dragonquest
• Dragonsinger
• The White Dragon
• Dragondrums
• Masterharper of Pern
• Renegades of Pern
• The Girl Who Heard Dragons
• All the Weyrs of Pern
• The Dolphins of Pern
• The Skies of Pern
• A Gift of Dragons (collected short stories)

8. The Aubrey/Maturin Series by Pat O'Brian.  This series brings me back to my love of swashbuckling sea captains. Also set during the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship's physician, spy and naturalist Stephen Maturin would have been Horatio Hornblower's contemporaries. Truth be told, I don't like Captain Jack as well as I do Hornblower. Aubrey is a deeply flawed man and there are times I'd like to thrash him. His sins, for some reason, are, though common to sailors, less forgivable than are Hornblowers. That said, the series is a deeply detailed look at the lives of sailors and their captains and officers and O'Brien brings us another worthy study in the art of leadership. In chronoligical order, the books are:

• Master and Commander
• Post Captain
• HMS Surprise
• The Mauritius Command
• Desolatin Island
• The Fortune of War
• The Surgeon's Mate
• The Ionian Mission
• Treason's Harbour
• The Far Side of the World
• Reverse of the Medal
• The Letter of Marque
• The Thirteen Gun Salute
• The Nutmeg of Consolation
• Clarissa Oakes
• The Wine-Dark Sea
• The Commodore
• The Yellow Admiral
• The Hundred Days
• Blue at the Mizzen
• The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

9.  "Rumpole of the Bailey" by John Mortimer. I am not a big fan of the mystery genre, but then Rumpole is not a detective. Rumpole is a pudgy, opinionated, small-cigar-smoking Old Bailey Hack - a lawyer of all things. I am not fond of lawyers, except for perhaps, this one. Rumpole lives his live between the Old Bailey, London Sessions and his Froxbury flat with his wife Hilda (SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED). They made a series out of the books that's as funny as the originals. It's more leisurely reading the books and wll worth your time. You'll feel you've made a friend of old Rumpole. I find him one of the most sympathetic barristers in all of literature, right down to the spattering of ash on his waistcoat.  The series, originally written for television, later became a book series and I prefer them that way. The books include novelizations and short stories from the series.:

• Rumpole of the Bailey
• The Trials of Rumpole
• Rumpoles Return
• Rumpole for the Defense
• Rumpole and the Golden Thread
• Rumpole's Last Case
• Rumpole and the Age of Miracles
• Rumpole a la Carte
• Rumpole on Trial
• Rumpole and the Angel of Death
• Rumpole Rests His Case
• Rumpole and the Primrose Path
• Rumpole and teh Penge Bungalow Murders
• Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
• The Anti-Social Behavior of Horace Rumpole
• Rumpole at Christmas

10. "The Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien. Tolkien, also a member of the "Inklings", the famous group of English authors that also included CS Lewis, writes my very favorite fantasy series. It is my favorite sword and sorcery novel because of it is also a powerful and unashamed Christian allegory about the misuse of power and the power of ordinary people.  A huge body of work and one of the most remarkable pieces of world-building ever done by a novelist.  The series in order:

• The Silmarillion (a prequel consisting of Tolkien's massive collection of background notes for his Lord of the Rings series. He invents most of two or three languages and a complete mythology of Middle Earth).
• The Hobbit (the lightest of the three follows Bilbo Baggins on a quest for treasure)
• The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers
• The Return of the King

11. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeline L'Engle.  A Newberry Award winner when it first came out, L'Engle tells the story of the highly intelligent children of two scientists. It begins by violating the first rule of novel writing (Never, ever begin a story with the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night." L'Engle doesn't pay much attention to such rules, spending time describing home-cooking over a Bunsen Burner in Mom's home laboratory and sending children across the universe via tesseracts with extra-dimensional old ladies. The books are brilliantly written and do not talk down to kids, challenging them at every turn to think hard about what they believe. Before the series is over, every member of the family is tossed about in time and space and become, not only a visitor to the past, but a part of the future. The series in order is:

• A Wrinkle in Time
• A Wind in the Door
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• Many Waters
• An Acceptable Time

12. "Harry Potter" by JK Rowlings.  I came to Harry Potter late and with some reluctance. I was put off by the sorcery quite frankly. Though some of my favorite novels (Lewis and Tolkien, for instance), contain quite a bit of it, they manage to use it to good purpose and not to dabble in evil. I wasn't so sure about Rowlings. Then, on the recommendation of a Christian reviewer, I gave the series a go and to my surprise, found that Rowlings was more of a child of God than she gives herself credit for. The point of the whole book is that you should always do the right thing. When you choose yourself first, the consequences can be worse than if you chose to do the hard and unselfish thing. She also emphasizes that no person can take everything on their own shoulders - that we must depend on one another and hold each other up. Her magic is incantational and not invocational which makes me feel better. The protagonists do not summon up evil spirits (unless, of course, they are evil. In Lewis' and Tolkien's work it was the same. Evil people inevitably summon evil spirits and that is more true to life than most of us want to admit.  Here's the series in order:

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

 In conclusion...

My birthday is coming up in April and I am very partial to boxed hardcover sets and first editions, so.......now you never have to wonder what to get me. You have the list. 

15 Foot-Stompin' Country Music Songs

There are a few country songs that, whenever you hear them, you can't resist stomping your foot and clapping your hands, singing at the top of your lungs while throwing in an occasional, "Yeehaw!"  Here's 15 that make me do that. You may not agree with me, but if you did this bunch as a set, you'd have everybody hoarse by the time the set was over..

1.  Thank God, I'm a Country Boy - John Denver's anthem to fiddling and country living is one I defy you to listen to without your foot starting to tap involuntarily.  Don't be ashamed of it. Go ahead and "Yeehaw" if you want.  

2. Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys - Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings do this one. I just love jumpin' in on the chorus.

3. Take This Job and Shove It -  The David Allen Coe version is the best one. He was the won that wrote it. Johnny Paycheck just did the first version. If you've ever had a crappy job, this one makes you weep.

4. Hey Good Lookin' - Hank Williams Sr. wrote some of the best foot stompers. It's little wonder given the dance halls where he built his career. My favorite version was by Buckwheat Zydeco. I love the way that accordion warbles.

5. Jambalaya - Hank Williams Sr. gets on my list again for this Cajun anthem. My favorite version is the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band rendition

6. Kaw-Lijah - Once again Hank Williams Sr. tosses out a rowdy party anthem about a cigar store Indian's fateful romance.  My favorite version is by an East Texas Celtic Band, Beyond the Pale. They do a medley version with bagpipes and fiddles.   

7. Okee from Muskogee - When Merle Haggard sings this song, it makes us all wish we wer Okees.

8. Luckenbach, Texas - Then Waylon Jennings sings this one and makes you glad you're from Texas.

9. Waltz Across Texas - Ernest Tubbs wonderfully twangy country anthem makes you want to snatch up your woman and twirl her around the dance floor.

10. Blue Suede Shoes - Elvis. I would have liked to see this one when he was playing at the Louisiana Hayride.

11. Elvira - The Oak Ridge Boys lit a big fire with this one. Oompapa, oompapa, mow, mow!

12. Achy Breaky Heart - To be honest, I included this one by Billy Ray Cyrus because next to "Boot Scootin' Boogie" (which narrowly missed this list) it was the country song that most irritated my teenage boys during their punk/garage band years.  I used to do this little dance.......

13.  Lucille - Kenny Rogers asks, "Why did you leave me Lucille?" It was downright heartbreaking.  Made you want to help him harvest his crops.

14. All the Gold in California - The Gatlin Brothers told where all that gold was in this rowdy song. My favorite version was one they did at the CMA awards once.  They sang "All the gold in California. Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in Kenny Rogers name!" I about fell off my chair.

15. Drinkenstein - Here's one you probably forgot by someone you would in no way consider a country singer.  Written by Dolly Parton and performed by a very Italian Sylvester Stallone in the very funny "Rhinestone".  The movie really hacked off country music fans, Stallone fans, Dolly Parton fans, critics and almost everybody except me.  I loved the film and Stallone's performance doing "Drinkenstein" was priceless.  "Budweiser you've created a monster....and they call him Drinkenstein." I just howled.

You probably hate some of my choices on the list, but I don't care. I like 'em all!

Tom

Ten Ways to Stop a Bully

Let me say up front that there are few things I find more repugnant in this world than a bully. Whether the bully is a playground hoodlum, a snotty cheeerleader or a third world dictator matters not.  Anyone who torments, teases or pushes around another person simply because he is stronger or because the person is vulnerable deserves to rot in a special circle of hell if I believed there were such a thing.  As it is, I think that evidence of bullying in our children and adolescents should be dealt with severely and swiftly.  Here are ten things you can do based on my own experience.


1.  Tell your Dad (or Mom).  This seems obvious, but it's surprising how many Dads will blow an opportunity to be a hero to his son because of some misguided notion that the kid needs to be tough and handle it himself. "I can't always be there to protect him." you might argue.  That's a truckload of fertilizer if you ask me. So what if you can't always be there?  If the times you are there to protect them are spectacular enough to put the fear of God into the young thugs, they will at all costs avoid a repetition of Dad getting into the act in future.  Sure your kid may get teased because Dad intervened, but the teasers will do so from a safe distance and no one will be left hanging by their shorts from a coat hook in the boys restroom.


A bully once threw rocks at my son and chased him home. I made my son tell me who it was.  As it happened the would-be felon was peddling his way back up the street at the time, having followed Micah home. I handed my son off to his mama for treatment, jumped in the car and burned rubber out of the driveway.  I caught the kid about 4 blocks away on his bike headed homeward.  I pulled up on the curb and cut him off with my car.  He stopped confused, wondering what was about to happen.  I jumped out.  Chris paled.  I strode up to his bike, place my hands on the handlebars and looked him square in the eye.  He started right into denials and trying to tell me I had no evidence. I shut him up with a look and in measured tones, told him this.

"You made a mistake going after my son. This time you get to go home lesson learned.  Next time, I pluck your fuzzy butt off that bicycle and drag you kicking and squealing down to the police station where I file charges. Then you will spend some time locked up till your mama comes to get you and then I will have some words with her. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

2. Confront the bully directly.  Worry about his mama later.  Yes the parents may try to get you arrested, but that only bothers you if you actually care. The cops will probably be on your side. If like me you'd rather go to jail than see your kid abused by some two-bit junior wiseguy, you prefer effectiveness to political correctness

The first word out of Chris's mouth was "BUT".  I cut him off.  "If you're going to tell me I can't, I can give you a demonstration here and now.  It's four blocks to city hall from here.  I can carry or drag you or you can indicate with a nod of your head that you understand that I will not tolerate your bullying my children - EVER AGAIN."

He nodded and that was the end of the bullying.  He never told his mama.  But I did!

3.  Follow through with the bully's parents.  Operate from the assumption that no parent wants their child to be a bully.


I later discovered Chris was bullying other children in our church youth organization and went straight to his mama.  He left the youth organization a short time later and the hazing stopped.  The next summer on a T-Ball team, Chris took to threatening base-runners from my team.  The kids were all emotionally disturbed and abused kids from a local group home. Again, I explained to him and his mama (their coach) that my protection extended to these children also and when my kids got up to bat, I loudly and clearly told my kids they need not be afraid of this child.  His mama complained to the umpire.  I told the umpire I felt the reassurance was necessary as Chris had been telling base runners that if they scored he would beat them up.  The umpire warned Chris that if he heard that complaint again he would be permanently removed from T-Ball.  He then asked me politely to issue my assurances before the child entered the batters box.  I assured him that given his support in opposition to the bullying in question, I felt quite comfortable doing that.  Chris' mother was heard complaining later about what a terrible example I was to the kids. One of the other mother's told her she thought I had done exactly the right thing.

4. Teach by example.  Isn't it odd how people with fight to protect a system of unspoken tolerance for bullying behavior and will even oppose efforts to interfere with the very system of silence that supports bullying.  We develop this elaborate rules system that treats telling about abusive behavior as somehow an "unfair" method of dealing with it.  Instead, too often, we support a primitive tribal sort of self-government among children in which the strongest and most willing to inflict pain become the leaders.  If that's not the kind of government we want in our society, we damned sure need to be teaching it to our kids.

I taught my sons and daughter to loathe bullying.  I taught them by confronting bullies, not with violence, but with steely determination.  They all came to despise it when kids who were smaller or more vulnerable were persecuted and mistreated.  They all three got into trouble at various times for standing up to thugs on behalf of smaller classmates in school. I was proud of them and told their teachers so when the subject came up.




5. Don't allow fear to prevent you from confronting the bully.  One young thug beat up my middle son in sixth grade. He and a friend held him down an beat his face till his eye bled.  I had to take him to the doctor for the damaged eye.  The school wouldn't deal with the problem, wouldn't even give me the boys parents' names or bring in the police or acknowledge that the incident had happened.  So I went to the parents house and managed to explain to them that I was unhappy with their son's attack on mine (they spoke little English) and that I would see him arrested next time if I had to arrest him myself and carry him bodily to the police station.  Whether they fully understood or not, the boy certainly did. He was translating.

I risked a lot by confronting him at home.  His parents had little control over him.  The boy later killed a man and fled to Mexico. As far as I know, however, he left my kids alone after that. 

6.  Get involved at the local level.   It's all well and good to get involved in national anti-bullying programs or to watch Oprah episodes, but there is no substitute for direct LOCAL involvement.  After the incident with my son, a second incident followed that spurred us all to action.  A teenage girl broke up with her boyfriend at school one day.  He apparently texted his Mama about the girl having spurned him because Mama showed up at the school at 3:00 and attacked the girl right there on the front lawn of the school. Everyone scattered and no charges were filed again. The school did not want to get involved.

So a bunch of us parents decided we would get involved.  We began attending local school board meetings and ran our own candidates for the board when it was unresponsive.  We helped get the old school board voted out and replaced with concerned parents from our PTA anti-bullying task force.  They instituted a zero-tolerance policy.  That was the last time something happened like that on the school ground.

Did they over-react in their enforcement of zero-tolerance in order to be "fair" to certain groups.  You betcha!  A couple of times they got really ridiculous about stuff, but always we were able to talk them out of it.  It helped that the school administration knew that we were a group of parents who had no qualms about getting involved directly with the school board over issues like that.


7. Be willing to do what it takes.  The secret to dealing with bullies is to confront them hard and fast and do not let up.  It will mean inconvenience and discomfort on your part, but if you keep your temper and your wits about you and if you are brave, bullies tend to slink away into dark corners when confronted.  Like those big roaches, they scurry away from the light.  Talk about the bullying openly and name names.

One of the bullies we dealt with decided to get even.  My wife started getting obscene phone calls in the middle of the night after she had it out with the boy's mama.  The third time he called, she knew who it was.  When she answered the phone, she said, "Chris, I know this is you.  As soon as you hang up, I'm calling your mother."  She hung up and then dialed his home phone. It rang twice, a voice answered and she asked to talk to his mother.  He hung up and after that calls to his house received a busy signal.  The calls stopped.


8.  Don't let the teachers off the hook.  If there is rampant bullying, the teacher is not doing what he or she needs to do to stop it.  I taught school for five years and worked in a mental facility for kids and day care centers for 18 more years. There is no excuse for a teacher allowing bullying.  The kids will tell if they think you will do something about it.  Surprisingly, most parents of bullies will cooperate with you to do something about it if you offer to help them.  There are plenty of resources out there to help parents cope with bullying of their kids or deal with their own kids who bully.

9.  Come to terms with your own bullying.  The greatest tool you can have as a parent is a passionate moral outrage against bullying.  Unfortunately too many of us were jocks or part of the ruling clique in school and recognize our own school-age behavior in the bullying our own children do. It's hard to work up a whole lot of moral outrage against bullying if you were something of a bully yourself at that age.   If that's the case, you need to own your previous bad behavior and do what you can to atone for it.  You'd be surprised what a note on Facebook or an e-mail or letter to a kid you once picked on with an apology can do for that child as an adult.  You could save a life by asking forgiveness for your own bullying.  If you don't exactly save a life, you will certainly at the very least confer a little peace of heart on that person by your free admission that you did them wrong.

And it won't hurt you none, either.

10. Cultivate a culture of courage in your home.   Courage is the only effective weapon against a bully. Show your kids how to be brave, not by screaming and ranting and raving, but by steely-eyed, nose to nose opposition to the bullies of this world.  Hold up as heroes, men and women who had the courage to stand against thugs and tyrants. There are plenty.  As a kid, stories about King Arthur taught me that the strong have a duty to protect the weak.  My heroes were always looking out for the underdog. From Joan of Arc, Huss and Jerome, Jesus and Joseph, I learned how to take a stand for what's right, no matter what it cost you.  You may get yourself socked in the process.  I remember standing up to a bully in 7th grade who stole the basketball from a group of smaller kids.  I told him he was wrong and used a descriptor of his actions that he took offense with.  He hit me hard in the face.  Oddly enough, once you've been hit in the face once, you don't mind so much anymore.  Soon, taking a couple on the chin for a good cause actually feels pretty good.

And teach your family not to be afraid of lawsuits.  It's the latest form of bullying to become popular.  Using the fear of a lawsuit to control your actions is just another form of bullying and intimidation. But, that's why we have judges and courts to sort things like that out.  In my brief experience with the legal system, I was surprised to find that judges like nothing better than a plaintiff with a righteous cause and many of them hate bullies too.


So be of good courage.  I'm told the bullies are going to lose the war in the end anyway.

Tom

Top Ten Reasons Why Wal-Mart Isn't the Bad Guy!

Wal-Mart gets a bad rap from the media and the liberal community. They are characterized as an evil greedy company, exploiting workers and ruining American small business. I don't think that's true at all. Here are ten reasons why:

1. Wal-Mart promotes American manufacturing.  If Wal-Mart can find an American supplier, it will use them.
 A friend of mine worked for Wally World and assures me that if Wal-Mart can find an American source for goods they will buy American first. The company has to be able to deliver enough goods at a decent price, of course, but if an American company can do the job, they get first preference. Most companies fall short because they can't deliver the volume Wal-Mart needs.  That's not Wal-Mart's fault.

2.  Wal-Mart creates jobs by making other companies successful.
There have been many energetic American companies that have been able to meet the production requirements for Wal-Mart that have been made very successful thanks to their relationship with Wal-Mart. In addition, those companies create jobs in their communities in manufacturing, an industry that has been steadily shipped overseas in recent decades.

3. Wal-Mart discourages corporate greed.  
It's when supplier companies get greedy and decide to pay executives those 50 million dollar salaries and bonuses and jack up their prices that they lose Wal-Mart as a customer. If you've ever been to Wal-Mart's Bentonville offices, you would see a lean business in action. Offices are modest by corporate standards. They are all about business. Wal-Mart customers aren't paying for plush executive offices.

4. Wal-Mart passes the savings they make in dealing with suppliers along to the customer first. 
The customer gets a good deal because Wal-Mart doesn't waste a lot of money on admin like some companies do. And they do pass the savings to customers like me who would be in tough shape without the downward pressure on prices that Wal-Mart brings when it comes to town. Giving people a lower cost for goods, helps Wal-Marts customers make ends meet. Wal-Mart's competitive prices are a huge benefit to folks on fixed incomes. Local companies who can't match Wal-Mart's prices have to provide better service to their customers in order to compete. Wal-Mart has helped eliminate the nasty tempered store owner who used to act like he didn't care whether you bought something from him or not. Those guys don't survive.

5. Wal-Mart makes money.
Making money is actually a good thing. By its sheer volume of sales, Wal-Mart makes steady dividends for its stockholders. The shareholders are the ones at Wal-Mart that make a profit. It's a steady and fair profit. If you own a lot of shares, like Sam Walton's kids do, it can be a huge profit because the company sells an awful lot of stuff. If you bought those shares a long time ago, you might even be very rich right now.  So why is that a bad thing? There are people who have worked for Wally World for 30 years that bought the company stock options that are offered to ALL employees, even the lowliest front door greeter. Some of these folk never made more than $9 an hour, but are millionaires today because their stock has risen so dramatically in value since they bought it.

6. Wal-Mart restores the corporate ladder.
People are always lamenting that in today's world you can't go to work for a company pushing a broom and work your way up to company president.  Well, Wal-Mart is one of the few American companies left where you can literally start out pushing a broom and wind up in the upper echelons of the company by dint of sheer hard work.  A friend of mine who has a disability, started out working at the changing room desk at our local Wal-Mart Superstore.  Despite having to work from a wheelchair, she wound up in just two years becoming head of their local community relations office doling out thousands of dollars to local charities and community groups. Being in a wheelchair, she could find few other companies that would even consider hiring her.  But Wal-Mart aggressively hires folks with disabilities and gives them a fair shot at advancement. Yes they hire and lay off a lot of seasonal folk and it may take several runs at it before you "stick", but once you're in, if you do your job, you can move up in the company.

7. Wal-Mart gives back to the community. 
The bulk of Wal-Mart's charity goes to small local groups like school bands, the Scouts, church groups and civic organizations. At a time when the Salvation Army is being banned from some storefronts for being too "religious", they are out in front of Wal-Mart every year and make a lot of money there. Wal-Mart's thousand dollar matching grants program may not seem like much to you, but these small donations do a tremendous amount of good to community groups - the kinds the big foundations won't even bother to consider funding because the impact of their project is too "limited". Somehow Wal-Mart has figured out that lots of little grants can have as big an impact as a few big ones.



8. Wal-Mart has created the word's biggest non-taxpayer funded working prescription drug program for the poor.
Wal-Mart's $4 generic drugs program provided the biggest help to the nation's uninsured I've ever seen. With it's extensive and growing list of generic drugs that they offer for $4, Wal-Mart has created a tool to get everything from pain pills, to thyroid medication to psychotropic drugs to patients who need them. I led a local group that was trying to find a way to get psychotropic drugs for mental patients. We couldn't find a single charitable medication program that was giving away or providing low cost prescription meds to the poor that would even consider helping with medications for mental patients. When Wal-Mart came out with their generic list and we found that it included anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds and other meds for people with mental disorders, we were able to quit looking.  We didn't have anything else to do. Wal-Mart actually sent their med list to local doctors. The doctors have now started prescribing from the Wal-Mart list for their uninsured patients instead of handing out prescriptions for the most expensive medicine available (from the company that gives doctors those trips to Jamaica as incentives for prescribing their product).  Critics do complain that none of the "latest" meds are on the list. Well in my own family's experience, the older meds that Wal-Mart offers for $4 are tried and tested and I don't see those meds being the target of lawsuits like so many of the newer ones.  And they work.  My wife has one expensive newer medication and she's been able to get that one through the "evil" drug company's patient assistance program because she is disabled.  The rest we get for $4 each of a three month supply for $10. Not only that, but other drug stores in the community have lowered prices on their own generic "lists" as well. One grocery store-based pharmacy now advertises $3.99 medicines, cutting Wally World's price by a penny.

9. Despite Internet rumors, Wal-Mart does offer health insurance to its employees.
An older lady I know, who went to work as a greeter at Wal-Mart, was able to have some work done on her bad knee after she went on their insurance program. Don't believe everything you read in some breathless anti-Wal-Mart e-mail your Aunt Matilda sends you.


10. Wal-Mart promotes World Peace!
One last thing that a lot of folks don't think about is Wal-Mart's contribution to the prevention of war. Because we do buy from China so much, it would be foolish of them to attack us. We're their biggest customer. They couldn't afford to damage their trade relations with us.  Wal-Mart isn't the reason China is such a threat to us. What's the biggest threat to our nation's security is the politicians in our government that have sold their votes to China in exchange for campaign contributions!  The truth is, if China were really smart, they'd donate to conservatives.  Capitalism props up their whole system. Without the vast economic engine that is capitalist America, China would collapse of its own weight. If the president and liberal congress succeed in making us a socialist nation, our economy will be destroyed, America will stop buying from China and China will lose the cash cow that makes their communist system viable. What then will prevent them from conquering us and plundering, especially with those same politician dismantling our military deterrent as fast as they can? It may be that Wal-Mart and other American companies like it are almost the only ones out there (besides what's left of our military) on the thin blue line between us and the "commie menace".

So "Viva la Wal-Mart!" is what I say.

I'm just telling you what I think.

Tom