PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

the condors are circling 2011-11-08 - 6:32 p.m. I hope everyone is now busily checking out my globe-trotting adventures and gnashing their teeth in envy that I am one of the few people alive holding both the Yellow Rail and the Madagascar Serpent-Eagle on her life list, because I would like to scribble to my diary about a few books I've read lately without worrying about spoilers. Read no further if you haven't yet read, but do plan to read, Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly or Ben in the World by Doris Lessing. Seems I already had a spoiler notice for Nine Dragons, after I booked my room in the ChungKing Mansions and then realized that it was the place where Harry Bosch, through his cluelessness as a jet-lagged tourist, managed to get his ex-wife blown away in random gunfire. I think he would have had an easier job getting her blown away in Vegas or Los Angeles. At the end of the day, if a bunch of guys are trying to hustle handbags, it isn't because they're interested in taking the risks of violent crime. About the biggest chance you're taking at ChungKing Mansions, as far as I could see, was that somebody will sell you a counterfeit Rolex. Even the money-changers were good value. Of course, there's something funny about the ex. Always has been. Year after year, novel after novel, Connelly has told the story that she lives fully comped as a poker player, first at Bellagio and then eventually in Macau. Of course poker players are not fully comped, no matter how high you play. Even the biggest players are only paying the room $14 an hour (at the Bellagio) and I'm not sure what is it at Macau, but say it's $20 an hour. There ain't nobody you're paying $14 an hour who can afford to comp you limos, body guards, and luxury suites. Clearly, our hero Bosch doesn't know enough about poker and how the room gets compensated to realize how ridiculous it is that they'd be giving her all these comps in exchange for poker action. The question, I suppose, is does Connelly really not know this? I strongly suspect that when our humble story-teller first got her involved with the gambling scene, no, he really didn't -- in other words, I suspect that he really thought the Bellagio would comp her big time to play there "exclusively." Now, at some point over the years, he must surely have been informed that, nope, it don't work that way, but in the context of his universe, he's stuck with it because it's been going on too long in previous volumes. So...At the end of 9 Dragons, Bosch has concluded that his ex was truly an innocent bystander, who got shot dead because he was stupid enough to flash a roll of money at ChungKing Mansions. (Although since the entire ground floor is lined with money changers, you will see that people are necessarily coming and going with wads of money all the time, and nobody else is getting shot, which makes the storyline doubly mysterious.) So now I am left to wonder. Is the dumb-ass random shooting story always going to be the story or is it entirely beyond the bounds of possibility that someday it would come to light that she wasn't a mere poker player at all but rather a money launderer or something of that nature where the poker play was just a front, and maybe, just maybe, the guys who shot her actually meant to shoot her and not just some random rich tourist? It would be a golden opportunity for Connelly to go back and address this deviation from reality. We already know that Bosch has all these brain farts when it comes to Eleanor Wish. After all, she hid an entire child from him for three years. So why not an entire criminal history? Actually, I think Connelly has already put out another book or two, so he may have already answered this very question. We. Shall. See. Oh, and on another front, I recently had the opportunity to read Ben in the World by Doris Lessing. It's a slender book. Poor Ben doesn't get so far as his mother fantasizes when she throws him away at the end of The Fifth Child. Well, in a way, he does, I suppose, -- you could, if you liked, say that he was a drug smuggler in France and a film star in Brazil, but he hasn't the capacity to enjoy or to even much understand his circumstances, and the last we see of Ben is the condors dropping from the sky in their slow, casual way to feast on his body. And the sad thing is, try as you like, you can't imagine a better ending for him, only worse ones. In the game of life, some people get dealt 3 ♣ 2 ♦ and their hand never improves.... back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford