Author: TSO

Sometimes good things happen to bad people.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people.  And sometimes our Legal Team has to talk TSO out of responding to cease and desist letters with an invitation for the nascent litigant to engage in sodomy with a rabid porcupine.  But today is a new day.  And Monday is St Paddy’s Day.  And a Seavey won the Iditarod.

I guess what I am saying is, yeah, we’re not retreating, just protecting me from myself.  So in the meantime I leave you with this thought:

May come a time in the near future where we have to start a legal defense fund. But it is not this day.

Sons of TAH! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we drink! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!

This may or may not interest anyone at all, but I’ve been thinking about it a while, and wanted to see if perhaps someone could point me in good directions on Fantasy books.  I don’t need it right now, because I just got Words of Radiance, which will take me a week or so.  As Jonn says though, we never know what posts will hit or miss until we post them, so I figured I’d throw this up.

Seriously though, if you have a fantasy author you love, kindly toss him in the comments so I can either affirm I’ve already read it (most likely) or can get it for my kindle.

So, roughly in order, here are my top 10 Fantasy authors.  One quick note, you will not find George R.R. Martin on this list.  The reason is simple.  His books are awesome, but he’s on like book 5 of 12, and the dude couldn’t take worse care of himself if he tried.  So Ice and Fire will never be finished by Martin.  It’s like Wheel of Time by my fellow Alum Robert Jordan, 14 books is too damn many, and Jordan died after like 11.  Thankfully, my #2 author stepped in and finished the series.  However, I am currently only on Book 6 of that series, and I needed a break, because the protagonist is so damn morose he makes me want to jump out a window.

1) David Gemmell:  Alas, he too is deceased, and I’ve read every single one of his books at least twice, some as many as 5 times.  Whenever I need something fairly light, with heroic and honorable overtones, this is it.  If you haven’t read Gemmell, you should.  Start with Legend.  It’s sometimes fairly formulaic, but if the formula works, don’t screw with it.  In the absence of anything else on my front burner, I always go back and reread Gemmell.

2) Brandon Sanderson:  For the reason I kept Martin off this list, a case could be made for leaving Sanderson off as well.  He has two books out now in a 10 part series.  Thankfully dude is young and looks healthy.  But even were he not, his body of work puts him at #2 on my list.  There were about 2 of his probably 20 books that I started to lose interest in, and almost put down.  And then finished anyway and found myself after the fact loving them.  Sometimes I get a little lost with him, but (unlike Martin) I don’t have to wait 15 fricken pages while he tells me about the plum wine they are eating at their dinner before he kills everyone in a paragraph.  His Stormlight Archive series (the 10 books) just had #2 come out, and I love it already.  I loved the first one so much I also have it on audio book, despite such costing me $50 and being 48 hours long.  If you are driving to Tibet or something from Wichita, get this book on Audio.  Either way, read his stuff.  His Mistborn series is his best other than Stormlight.

3) Patrick Rothfuss: Dude only has 2 books, and they are both straight cash.  (Name of the Wind, Wise Man’s Fear.)  I’ve read them both twice, have both on audio book.  He has one chapter about a dude playing a lute.  A chapter about a guy doing something in a medium (auditory) that doesn’t make sense in written form.  Or shouldn’t.  I don’t know how the dude does it, but that Chapter, and every one before and after are awesome.  I’m giddy over his next book coming out, but afraid to look at when that might be, because I fear he’s a Martinian-type slowpoke.

4) Michael Sullivan:  Like a year ago I had never heard of this cat.  Apparently he was just writing stuff up and giving it away or something.  Started writing his “Riyria Chronicles” for his daughter, who had trouble reading.  Then Amazon recommended him, and who can say no to Amazon.com’s recommendations.  His stuff is awesome.  Absolutely love it.  Not as dark as Rothfuss, not as confusing as Sanderson, not as cliché as Gemmell, the guy is really good.  Give him a look if you haven’t.

5) Joe Abercrombie:  If you are looking for a book with definitive good guys and bad guys, that has a conclusion that either makes you want to cheer, or at least ends definitively, don’t read Abercrombie, because you aren’t going to get it.  But if you like books in a sort of amoral grey area that are gritty as hell, this is your guy.  Dude is dark, and apparently Vengeance is his favorite attribute.  Even his protagonists are unlikeable at times, and then loveable in turns.  His book Heroes is essentially the fantasy version of Michael Shaara’s Killer Angels.  I don’t know if he patterned it after that, but that’s what it is.  Only talks about 1 battle, and it is the Shi’ite.

6) Kevin Hearne:  If you want a good humor book, but with all the ancient Gods clashing in a modern world, and you think Neil Gaiman is a douche (newsflash, he is) then read The Iron Druid Chronicles.  It’s about a Irish Druid who’s thousands of years old, and runs around with his wolfhound that he can talk to.  He’s battling Gods from all over the pantheon of Roman, Greek, Norse and other places, with werewolves and vampires being enemies or friends depending on the day.  Read his first book, and you’ll either be hooked, or it won’t be your thing.  But I love his stuff, and the conversations with the dog are really LOL funny.

7) Brent Weeks:  His Night Angel Trilogy about an assassin is 10/10.  His more recent Lightbringer series just isn’t working for me.  Some disagree with me on this point I believe, but his Night Angel are must reads.  Orphan kid living in slums grows up to be the sort of sword of retribution.  Awesome stuff.  Read it.

8) Scott Lynch:  I tore through his Locke Lamora series (3 books) in roughly a week.  And because I am an effin idiot, I read book 3 first, not realizing it was part 3 of 3.  Luckily the books are semi-independent.  Dude is seriously clever in the way he writes, and brings things together.  With lynch you know that the last 25 pages are going to be burners, as different plot lines come together, and you realize how much you missed earlier.  Absolutely love this dude, and rethinking now he should be higher on the list, but writing this pretty much off the top of my head.  Same as Weeks, this one features a Orphan kid made good.  If by “good” you mean a confidence man/grifter sort.  Each of his books got better than the preceding one and dealt with a sort of different topic, although again, it’s largely the same people and such.  Book 1 got slightly slow in the middle for me.  Whatever you do, don’t stop.  Book 2 was money.   Book 3 was super money.

9) Mark Lawrence: Dude.  Dark.  Seriously dark.  The protagonist is a wretched dude, and you almost want him to get killed.  You kind of hold out hope he’ll turn his shit around from being a selfish kid/badass, but that hope is somewhat fleeting.  It’s basically post-apocalyptic fantasy, but the feel is more swords and sorcery.  Only dark.  Like, ass of a bull moose dark.  You’ll either love the series or want to burn it.  Despite generally liking upbeat stuff more, I really did enjoy it.  His bio, linked above there, is probably why he’s so dark, he’s some sort of top secret rocket scientist dude working with artificial intelligence.   Loved his book, and would love to grab a beer with him, but only in a very well-lit pub.

10)   You know what, I am leaving this one blank for now, because writing this I came up with a host of authors I forgot and should have listed somewhere.  Daniel Abraham, Robin Hobb, Anthony Ryan, Brian McClellan and others.  I would go with McClellan but he only has one book out.  I would go with Hobb but some of her stuff was AWESOME (Farseer and Tawny Man) and some I couldn’t even finish.  So let me ruminate, since I am sure there are others.

A quick note: there are 2 authors that should be read immediately, but don’t exactly fit into this list, because they are post-apocalypse stuff.  A third is really quality too.

Hugh Howey– Have a bit of a mancrush on this guy, his books are awesome.  I get them the day they come out, and generally finish them on the same day.  Here’s a weird thing about me too, I write to every author I read.  And sometimes they are nice and give me a perfunctory “thanks” and sometimes are really friendly.  Howey is #2.  He responds to all my asinine emails.  And his books are phenomenal.  Can not say enough good things about his works.  His Silo series is probably my favorite works of all time in this genre.  He’s an interesting cat too, they are made as sort of short stories, and jump around a bit, but then it all gets tied in together.   Without ruining anything, since you find out in the first 5 pages, everyone left in the world lives in underground silos about 130 stories deep.  From there it’s sort of Gulag Archipelago meets Mad Max.  The story is great, the anti-authoritarian overtones are awesome, all of it good.  And he did something I’ve never seen before or since.  He gave his world sort of over to his readers, and lets them write their own short stories in the Silos, and if he likes them he plugs them.  So, if you get consumed with Silo (as I did) you can read a bunch of $1 kindle stories in the same area.  Some hit, some miss, but they are $1.  I got his latest “Sand” to read in Greenland.  I ended up not being able to wait, and took a day off to finish it.   Really good, get Wool, which is Book 1 of Silo.

Justin Cronin: Sort of like The Stand.  Vampire type virus (damned military effing things up again).  Got picked up for a movie I understand, and it will be awesome.  Really good if you like the horror side of post-apocalypse stuff.  Read it.

John Barnes (Daybreak): If you watch Revolution, and love it, then go get “Directive 51” by Barnes.  Eco-radicalist types take out society.  Society tries to rebuild.

There’s a million other awesome post-apocalypse I love, but I think I have done that list before, and this is the stuff I am reading right now.

OK, have at it, who do I need to read?

I may be the only guy in America happy when a turd falls into his lap. Daniel Beckham is just such a peanut-encrusted turd.

Spoke with a concerned party in Los Cerritos, California this morning. Which is fun to say.  Los Cerritos.   Anyway, it seems that the above pictured chap has been into some shady shit. Let’s start with the account from HIS side.

Members of the Cerritos College Police Department took former US Marine Daniel E. Beckham, a former student and part time employee at Cerritos College, into custody on Thursday morning and is being held on a $25,000 bond.

Beckham has been transferred to Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail where he is being held on eight felony counts on destruction of government property.

[Added on edit]  Beckham survived two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was actually wounded in Iraq and is a “Wounded Warrior.”

Basically he went into the school’s computer system and played Monkey Throws Poop with various grades. He got caught. But we must excuse him because he is a combat veteran. We know that from the Change.org petition to let America’s Latest Hero walk:

Daniel is an honorable, decorated Marine Corps veteran who diligently attended school at Cerritos College as a pre-med student and in the Disabled Students Programs and Services Department.

Just how heroic? That’s unclear, but we do get this:

Beckham is also a decorated war veteran who served in the US Marines in both Iraq and Afghanastan [sic] from 2007 to 2010.

OK, everyone get your shocked face ready.

Medals he is entitled to per fleet marine reserve: Marine Select Reserve Medal. National Defense Service Medal. /fullstop.

Actual Discharge: OTH

So let’s just start with a round of, “who can identify the ribbons” and we’ll go from there.  He has some pretty awesome Eric Estrada hair, but you can’t just be making stuff up there super troop.

Kind of an interesting study that resonates with me:

Soldiers returning home from war may find themselves engaged in a battle of “warring identities” as they transition to civilian life….

An analysis of the veterans’ reported experiences shows that many had commonalities to their stories, in particular the sense that their combat experience was something that few could understand and that they felt “alien” among family and friends.

Many of the soldiers also spoke of combat as a time when they felt “safe,” even more so than when returning to the United States. The military is a highly regimented institution where soldiers develop identities that give them a sense of order, obedience, and collectivism, the authors write. When they return home, “behavior is suddenly voluntary and the lack of regimentation (and a larger sense of purpose) is a basis of distress.”

Many soldiers have difficulty creating an identity when they return to civilian life, Smith says.

“You’re making sense of who you are again and that’s a process that we all do in life on a regular basis, but in this case you return and it’s distressing trying to make sense of yourself after this combat experience.

“Within the total institution of the military, while there are threats and harms, it was also profoundly shaping who you were and your sense of self. That order and identity is no longer part of the everyday after exiting the service.”

That last part might seem counter-intuitive, but for me it is totally accurate. The best sleep I’ve had since coming home from A-Stan was when I was back there as a reporter. And my stress level over there was significantly less than it is here at home. Here I worry about bills, meals, talking on the phone, all manner of mundane crap. Over there I just needed to worry about paying attention.

(I used the picture above of me in Afghanistan, because the tall lanky bastard with me just graduated from WO school this past weekend, and is now a Blackhawk pilot. I honestly couldn’t be more proud of him. I remember him telling me he wanted to try to do that, and I remember wondering how his 6-3 ass was going to sit in that seat. Congrats CWO Gibson.)

So I finished up early today with the Space People (12th Space Warning Squadron) and the Air Traffic Controllers and came back to my room to find “Family Guy: Road to the North Pole” on AFN. Which I am essentially watching from the North Pole. Dude, can’t top that. Go ahead, bring it!

Holy ballz is it cold up here. -37 wind chill this morning. Bad thing about a beard is that there is a waiting time after a shower before I can go to the chow hall, because literally the beard freezes inside 100 meters.

Anyway, about 1/2 done with my trip here. This place is awesome. Yesterday I went up to one of the Nike missile sites. (D Launch) We found an open shaft, climbed down the ladder and got into the boiler room. From there we did some spelunking in the dark until we made it out into the missile silo area. What happens though is that when the ice and snow up top melts, it drops down during the summer. That pools on the bottom, and then freezes again. So we are in the command are, and you can see chairs and crappers and such frozen underneath the ice by about 3 feet. Ice is really clear for some reason. Looking up you could see where the doors would open up to get the Nike missiles out to shoot.

I’m not a 60’s kid, so I have no knowledge other than the history channel on the “hide under your desk” thing. But it was easy to see how important this place was back in the day. It’s almost exactly equidistant between Moscow and DC.

Anyway, the internet blows up here, and posting this probably cost me the rest of my day’s bandwidth, but wanted to check in from the Arctic.

I’ve heard some funny stories in my day. Lots of them. There was one PFC in my unit that casually told a story one day about the time “me and some friends dug up a gentleman’s head to take him out for a good time.” That story was disturbing funny. I had another dude who had a great story about coming home from weekend drill to find that his then-wife had stolen everything from the house, including the dirty clothes he’d left in the washing machine. (This same chap had a series of stories that all ended with use of ether and a victim waking up to an erect man wearing only the upper half of a Batman costume.)

And I’ve seen comedians I love. Dennis Miller is hilarious. I love Bill Burr for his sarcasm and wit. And of course the late great (and all time TSO favorite comic) Patrice O’Neal. And I’ve never laughed as hard as I have with my friend, and the world’s funniest human being, David Bellavia. He has stories that he would tell and my sides would ache for days everytime I thought about how hard I laughed. He has one story about being a Match.com moderator that if I even think of it I start giggling.

Now, that said…..I was going through all the posts today, and came across a nugget on a post that got 5 comments. Which is ridiculous, because a post last week about masturbation got over 200. Now, I’m not saying Lilyea is in the league with the others for comedic delivery, but I nearly shit and drove off the road when he told me the story that he casually dropped into a post:

Yeah, I know Carcel Modelo [prison] pretty well, but my stay there was measured in days rather than months. I was there for kidnapping, but when the Canal Zone Provost Marshall told the Panamanians that the person who I supposedly kidnapped was in custody in the CZ, they let me go. But, it’s not a very friendly place. My toilet was a quart-sized milk carton, my bed was a couple of sheets of newspaper spread out on the concrete floor. Breakfast was a small roll and a cup of warm brown-colored water that they called coffee. Lunch was usually fish head soup, with real a fish head to prove it. So I have a sense of the conditions that Colonel Ruffer confronted. It was pretty scary and I wasn’t an undercover spy or anything.

Now granted he isn’t telling the whole story here. But for the love of Spongebob, how can your author drop a little nugget about spending time in a Panamanian Jail on kidnapping charges, and not a one of you said “Um, Bro, WTF?”