It's the last Thursday before Christmas, and since I'm going to New Mexico for a few days on Saturday, The Librarian and I decided to make tonight our Christmas celebration.  So, after watching Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which is great by the way, we exchanged gifts.

She got the book I Slept With Joey Ramone, written by Joey Ramone's brother, and the box set of Monster (thank you VERY much, Robert!).  And me?

Look, The Librarian gives the best presents.  Last year, she conspired with Momzerduck to give me the Rubber Duck Factory.  This year, though, she nearly beat that.  She gave me this:

It's a body pillowcase, in case you can't tell, featuring Nagisa and Sanae Furukawa!  Even better, it's a promo item, meaning it wasn't actually for sale.  Better still, I think it's from the game as opposed to the anime, since KyoAni's logo doesn't appear anywhere on it.  That's far from certain, though.

Yes, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but it's amazingly cool anyway!  Thanks, The Librarian!!!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:11 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 180 words, total size 2 kb.

So the past few days, I've felt a little disinterested in posting here at The Pond.  Obviously there isn't much going on in Formula 1 right now, points payout change notwithstanding.  My anime watching has sort of trickled away.  And despite a link to the Tone 4 post of a few months back in the recent Battle Of Midway RoundTable newsletter, I don't have any pressing need to write about the War in the Pacific at the moment.

However, I am happy to announce that Monday will see the beginning of the annual 12 Days of Duckmas series.  So you've got that to look forward to.

It'll be interesting, as I'm going on vacation next Saturday, and will be gone until the 23rd.  Well, my destination has a computer, I suppose.  I'll just have to upload everything ahead of time.

So I guess this post is just to say I'm alive and don't go anywhere!  Oh, and the following picture is completely unrelated to anything:

-Banner of the Stars, ep03

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 174 words, total size 1 kb.

Snow day!  Yesterday morning, there was nothing on the ground... the above is what greeted me when I stuck my head outside.  The University of Wisconsin-Madison, about 70 miles north of here, has closed for the first time since 1990.  Duckford has gotten around 10 inches, with another 1"-4" expected by the noon.

However, the bad part is going to be the wind.  We're expecting whiteout conditions later as the wind picks up.  Roads are lousy, according to the live chat taking place on one of the Duckford TV station's website, with pretty much everything outside of the city itself being dangerous and impassable.  In city, only the major East-West streets are clean; North-South are bad because of drifting.  The plows come through, but the wind just blows it over again.

A couple hours to our west, in the Quad Cities, Iowa, they're reporting blizzard conditions and emergency vehicles stuck in city centers.  That's what we've got to look forward to, yay!  I'll update occasionally during the day.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:07 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 174 words, total size 1 kb.

Winter has returned to Duckford, with a frickin' vengeance.  The drive home from the Duck U Bookstore took me nigh on 25 minutes instead of the usual 10-12.  About half of the trip was done blind; the snow was coming down so heavily that, when the wind blew just right (i.e.: at all), I could see maybe past the hood of the Duckmobile.

I'm glad I made it home, but I feel fearful for the ducklings back at Duck U.  This is Finals Week, y'see, and there were quite a few scheduled tonight.  Hopefully, the kids realized that their safety is more important than their grades and called their professors.

Still no word on if Duck U will be in session tomorrow... snow days are even better when you're an adult.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 135 words, total size 1 kb.

Pearl Harbor, 12/7/1941

Ceremony for those killed at NAS Kaneohe, Memorial Day 1942.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:34 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

Back in the early days of dive bombing, the British Air Ministry attempted to answer the question "what IS a dive bombing attack?"  In their definition, which was generally accepted by the various air forces, when the aircraft drops its bombs while descending at an angle of 20 degrees or less, it was executing a shallow glide bombing attack.  From 20 to 60 degrees, it was a steep glide bombing run.

However it was only when the pilot guided his craft into a plummeting descent of between 60 and 90 (also known as 'straight down') degrees that he was performing that most accurate, deadly and dangerous manuever, a dive bombing attack.  It was dive bombing that blew open the way for Germany's blitzkrieg across Europe.  It was dive bombing that helped pummel Pearl Harbor's facilities and airbases.  It was dive bombing that killed HMS Hermes, the first aircraft carrier to be sunk by aircraft.  It was dive bombing that sank four Japanese aircraft carriers at Midway.  It was (mostly) dive bombing that shut off the flow of supplies to the Japanese soldiers at Guadalcanal.  One could go so far as to argue that dive bombing won the naval war in the Pacific.

Yet it was the dive bomber that disappeared from the lineups of the various air forces almost as soon as World War II was over.  Why?

*THE PLANES
For all intents and purposes, there were four major planes designated as Dive Bombers in World War II.  Oddly, the worst of the bunch is the one that's best remembered and is thought of as the prototypical DB.

The Ju87, better known as the Stuka, was used by Germany as heavy artillery.  Luftwaffe liason officers were attached to Wehrmacht units as what we would now call forward air controllers for Close Air Support.  The Stuka would be called in to pummel strongpoints with the type of accuracy only available to dive bombers.  The Luftwaffe had better designs to chose from when the time came to begin preparing for war but the Stuka had the support of Ernst Udet, who was the Director-General of Equipment.  However, it was quite slow when carrying the usual bombload of 1100lbs, maxing out at about 150mph.  In comparison to the other planes on this list, it had a very short range of about 300 miles  It was also quite unmanueverable and could be hacked out of the air in immense numbers by even small amounts of fighters.  When escorted by fighters, however, the Stuka could be very effective.  It was able to dive vertically when executing an attack, which was devastating against stationary targets.  After the Battle of Britain, where the Stuka's weaknesses were brought to stark light, the plane should have been withdrawn from action.  Germany had no choice but to use it throughout the war, in upgraded forms, as there was no replacement.  Despite all this, it is images of the Stuka, stooping upon a target with its landing-gear-mounted sirens (called "Jericho's Trumpet" by crews) wailing, that leap to mind when the public thinks of dive bombing.

The Aichi D3A (Allied code name 'Val'), was the primary dive bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy for most of the Pacific War.  A contemporary of the Stuka, it flew slowly enough that drag from the fixed landing gear was not considered an issue.  It was rather sturdy for a Japanese warplane, yet manueverable enough to be able to hold its own against fighters when unladen.  While it generally could not dive as steeply as the other planes on this list, when combined with the highly experienced pilots of the IJN it was phenomenally accurate.  During the Indian Ocean raid at the beginning of 1942, Vals caught the British cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall 200 miles off of Ceylon and scored on 85% of their attacks, sinking both ships in minutes.  Later, Vals participated in the attack on HMS Hermes, scoring 40 hits from 70 planes.  With a maximum speed of 240mph (less with bombload) and a maximum range of 915 miles, it was perfectly suited to naval war in the vast ranges of the Pacific Ocean.  Its main weakness was that it could only carry a 551lb bombload, which was marginal against larger vessels.

The Douglas SBD, or Dauntless as it was commonly known, was used by the US Navy and Marines throughout WWII, though it was supplanted by the SB2C Helldiver in 1944.  It was never entirely replaced, however.  With a top speed of 255mph and a range of 770 miles without a bomb, the Dauntless was also quite nimble, racking up quite a few kills against the Japanese Zero.  Early in the war, it was common to see Dauntlesses acting as anti-torpedo-plane interceptors, though this practice stopped when the number of fighters carried by US carriers was increased.  It could carry a 1000lb bomb.  The Dauntless is credited with singlehandedly sinking six Japanese carriers, including four in one day at the Battle of Midway.  When carrying a bombload however, the Dauntless only had a combat radius of about 200 miles or so, fairly short in the Pacific.  It was also used by the Army Air Force as the A-24, but was generally unsuccessful, more from a lack of institutional enthusiasm for dive bombing than poor performance.

The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was the ultimate in dive bombers.  Able to carry a ton of bombs (or a torpedo) in an internal bay, it could go nearly 300mph with a maximum range of 1200 miles (unladen).  A big plane, it was rather unmanueverable and complex to maintain.  After early teething problems were ironed out, though, it became quite a useful bomber, participating in all major actions in the later years of the war in the Pacific.  It was never as popular amongst aircrews as the Dauntless, being nicknamed "Beast" or "Son of a Bitch 2nd Class", though later versions of the plane were undoubtably better in every way than the smaller SBD.  Due to a lack of targets, the Helldiver didn't ring up a large kill total of ships, though they were instrumental in the sinking of the Yamato and Mushashi, the IJN superbattleships.

Other dive bombers in World War II included the British Blackburn Skua, the Soviet Pe-2 and IL-2, the Vought SB2U Vindicator, the German Ju88 and the Japanese Yokosuka D4Y Suisei, which was the only plane that could argue the SB2C's title as "best dive bomber."

*THE TACTICS
Dive bombing was much more than just "point yourself at the target and dive".  

A dive bomber would approach a target from around 10-15000 feet altitude, dropping in shallow dive down to about 5000-7000 feet.  Upon reaching the push-over point, a dive bomber would throttle back to about 50% maximum power, extend their dive brakes, and begin a steep dive down to around 1000 feet.  Each plane would reach a different high speed during this dive (the Stuka would hit around 350mph, while the Dauntless would hover around 240mph).  Upon reaching its release altitude (again, around 1000 feet), a pilot would retract his dive brakes, increase throttle and pull up steeply at around 5g.  Again, depending on the plane and the bravery of the pilot, the altitude would bottom out around 500 feet or less as the dive bomber rapidly exited the area.

Against an immobile target, a squadron of dive bombers would approach and dive from different directions so as to confuse the defending antiaircraft guns.  As always, however, coming out of the sun was usually the preferred method of attack, so as to limit the defender's visibility.

Against a ship, however, the rules were different.  In a perfect setup, a squadron would dive heading upwind and in the direction of the ship's travel (heading from stern to bow, in other words).  The planes would all attack from the same direction, one after the other, in line astern.  A vigorously manuevering target, however, did cause some headaches for a pilot.  He would have to change the attitude of his plane to follow the ship's path, all the while hanging against his seatbelt/harness.  

Early in the war, particularly for the Japanese, it was nearly impossible to shoot down a dive bomber after it began its dive with anti-aircraft guns.  Early gun directors could not deal with a plane moving at high speed and shedding appalling amounts of altitude in a short time, making a plunging dive bomber nearly invunerable.  Indeed, during the Battle of Midway, Japanese AA managed to shoot down only one Dauntless.  The best defense against a dive bomber at this time was to shoot it down during its approach, usually with a fighter.

*THE END OF A WEAPON
It was improvements in anti-aircraft fire that spelled the end of the dive bomber, however.  

By the end of the war, it was practically suicidal for any dive bomber to approach an American ship.  More (and better) AA guns, under radar direction, using proximity fuzes, could blow any plane out of the air at long ranges.  It was bad enough for a torpedo plane, having to fly in a straight line at a relatively low speed, but at least they could stay a good distance away from their target and still release their weapon.  For a dive bomber, however, which basically had to overfly its target, they were sitting ducks.  By the end of the war, a Japanese naval vessel, which never carried a particularly large number of AA guns even under the best of circumstances, could expect that it would have the number of AA guns doubled or tripled from what it had carried at the beginning of the war.

And though the Axis powers never developed the proximity fuze for their AA guns, when you're putting enough bullets in the air you often didn't need them.  German anti-aircraft guns were fearsome indeed, which is one of the reasons the Allies didn't use dive bombers much in Europe.  Indeed, the RAF and FAA, who are often credited with creating and formalizing the concept of dive bombing, never had more than a couple of squadrons of dive bombers at any time during WWII.  This despite the benefits of the type being on display against them in Poland, Belgium and France.  The reason given was that it would be too costly in men and machines, and it's hard to debate the point.

Another reason for the disappearance of the dive bomber was the rise of what is now called the multi-role aircraft.  The F4U Corsair, for example, could perform steep diving attacks nearly as well as the Dauntless despite the lack of dive brakes, had a longer range, and could carry a greater weight of bombs to boot.  The P-47 Thunderbolt was another excellent fighter that could double as an attack plane, as was the Focke-Wulf Fw190.  Using a fighter to do a bomber's job, and perhaps do it better to boot, made a lot of sense, particularly in the crowded hangar decks of an aircraft carrier.

The massacre of a squadron of dive bombers by such technology as a surface-to-air missile could easily be imagined, but by that time the dive bomber was no more.

*EPILOGUE
The dive bomber, in some ways, still lives on today.  It's not hard to see modern precision guided munitions (or "smart bombs") as the direct descendant of the bombs dropped by Stukas, Dauntlesses and Vals.  To continue the analogy, the air-dropped torpedo became the stand-off missile (such as the Tomahawk cruise missile or Harpoon anti-shipping weapon).  

However you look at it though, today's attack pilot still needs to do the same thing as the dive bomber: put a bomb on a relatively small target with skill and precision.

_{This post is dedicated to Mort Price, USMC, Dauntless rear-seat gunner.}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:39 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 1962 words, total size 13 kb.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:43 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

Otoko Tachi no Yamato, or "The Men of Yamato" in English, tells the story of the final sortie of that famed battleship.  Not from a strategic standpoint, mind, but from that of her men.  The script isn't brilliant, but you do know and care about these sailors by the time the American carrier planes begin to appear as the battleship approaches Okinawa.

But the main character in this movie is the Yamato herself.  No expense was spared in the making of this epic film, including a 1:1 scale set of the forward section of the ship, and the port side of the island area (the anti-aircraft guns in particular) that cost Â¥600 million (nearly $7million).

While the producers did wind up reusing a lot of the CG footage in the two major battle scenes, it's barely noticeable amidst all the chaos of war.  And make no mistake, this movie pulls no punches when it comes to the combat... if you can't stand the sight of blood, this is not the movie for you.

If you can stomach seeing people opened up by machine-gun rounds and the deck running red with blood, however, what you'll get is a war movie that ranks up near the top of the list.  It's not as good as Saving Private Ryan or the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, true, but it's lightyears ahead of, say, Tora Tora Tora or Midway.

While this screencap makes it look obvious that we're looking at models or CG, in motion it's nearly flawless.  The amount of detail is immense, both in the planes and in the Yamato herself.

But when the final attack begins, the great ship goes to hell in a hurry.  You barely notice that the whole fight is nearly 30 minutes long.

The sailors aren't supermen.  There's no "one man shooting down a squadron", or even a single plane, like you might see in an American war movie.  They're just there to serve the guns, and die.  And die they do, in droves. 

If you can find a copy of the movie, I recommend it heartily.  It's well-done, historically accurate, and beautifully shot.  You get the feeling that you're watching a documentary on the shipboard life of the Yamato, rather than a feature film, but it's never dull, despite the 2-1/2 hour length.

It's not perfect, but it's plenty good, and a fitting tribute to the men who crewed her.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:51 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 409 words, total size 3 kb.

In the previous post I mentioned that, free music notwithstanding, radio was never going to make me rich, but it was the greatest job I've ever had.  There are two distinct reasons for that. 

The first reason is, hey, it's radio!  Everybody listens to the radio, everybody knows what it is, everybody has an idea of what goes into it, and most people think it's a "cool" job.  "You really get paid to do that?" was a common theme when it came up in conversation.  Never mind that shows like WKRP in Cincinnati or Midnight Caller show only the fun part of the job (though Midnight Caller did it better than any show I've seen, they still got some stuff wrong), and not the show-prep, people think (or thought, at least) that Radio was a glamourous job.

The second reason, though, is the stories that everybody who works in the biz for any amount of time accumulates.  And that's what this post (and perhaps others down the road) will talk discuss.  What type of stories?  Well, pour yourself a cuppajoe, tune in WDUK radio, and listen to The Wonderduck.  And remember, all of these are true...

THE NIGHT DUCKFORD WAS DESTROYED
It was 1988, and I was working my usual Saturday night shift at the time, board operator for a recorded-on-vinyl national program, Cruisin' America with Cousin Brucie.  While it was a canned show, I still read a brief news and weather update at the top of the hour.  The newsroom was right next to the studio, with a small window set into the wall between the two for no good reason that I could ever discern; during the day, the news guy actually came into the studio to read the news, and at night the news staff went home.

Now, to understand what's about to occur, you need to know that I was the only person in the station at the time.  The sister station to mine went off-air at nightfall, so they had gone home, and I was three hours into my shift.  Since my show was canned, I had the door to both the studio and the newsroom open, in case some breaking news came down the teletype from either UPI or the National Weather Service.  Yes, teletype: computers weren't common yet, and the internet didn't exist at all.  All our news and weather came through the UPI teletype.  Important news was announced by a ringing bell and the chatter of the 'type.

So, I'm sitting in the booth reading something as Cousin Brucie turned and turned.  My news and weather update was five minutes in the past, and I could relax until the next commercial break.  Then, from the newsroom, came the peal of the bell and the rattling of the teletype.  Unconcerned, I walked over, ripped off the report and took a look.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 03:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 928 words, total size 7 kb.

In lieu of anything anime, F1 or rubber duckie to post about (one day there will be an anime about a rubber duckie that drives a F1 car and I'll have to shut The Pond down out of sheer joy), I'll instead talk to you about one of the great loves of my life.

Radio.

As a young duckling, I grew up listening to "The Great 89", WLS-AM outta Chicago.  This was back before they turned into the talk radio abomination they are now, and instead played music from high atop the downtown Burger King.  John Records Landecker (and yes, Records truly was his real name) brought his "boogiecheck-boogiecheck-ooh-AH" into Pond Central, amusing this fresh out of the shell duck every night.  Les Grobstein, the sports newscaster is a legend in Chicago, and has recently returned to the airwaves, too.  Lyle Dean, the main newsman, had the greatest voice ever. 

But it was Larry "Superjock" Lujack and Tommy Edwards that truly warped my brain.  As "Uncle Lar" and "Lil' Snotnose Tommy", they reported on bizarre goings-on in the animal kingdom in their world-famous Animal Stories segment.  Just hearing Lil' Tommy break up puts a smile on my face.  Better'n a shiny new dime!

But I grew up wanting to be Larry Lujack.  It didn't happen, but it was a nice dream while it lasted.  I only spent 10 years in the business and never made more than $7.00/hr at it, but it was the greatest job I could ever hope to have.

On Memorial Day in recent years, WLS has taken to bringing back some of their legendary voices for a full day of remembering the good ol' days.  Here's some snippets from the 2007 "Big 89 Rewind":

Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 304 words, total size 2 kb.

I've tried to avoid writing a post like this, but I can't do it anymore.  If you don't want a closer look at the person behind The Pond, then don't click on 'More', and enjoy the pretty picture.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:33 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 495 words, total size 3 kb.

It's time for a new thing here at The Pond: Ask Wonderduck (almost) Anything!

Here's how this works... you ask a question, and I'll answer it!  Dead simple!  But wait, there's more!  The best question (in my opinion) will get a full-length post devoted to the answer! 

Now, there are a few questions I won't answer: anything related to current politics or religion.  I started The Pond lo these many years ago in an attempt to get away from political or religious squabbles, and to this day I've pretty much managed to stay clear of those things.  If you DO ask a question related to such topics, please expect to be mocked horribly.

But wait, there's even more!

If you ask a technical question, I'll do my best to answer it correctly, but use it at your own risk.  So if you ask, say, "how do I install a left-handed widget in my 2002 Kia Econobox," the results are on your head, not mine.

With all that out of the way, Ask Wonderduck (almost) Anything!

How often do you get a chance to ask a hyper-intelligent duck that can type a question, after all?

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:19 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
Post contains 198 words, total size 1 kb.

This is the Tata Nano:

It has a two-cylinder engine that generates 35hp.  It is capable of accelerating to 37mph in eight seconds.  It can seat four.  The trunk does not open.  It gets about 55mpg.  It costs approximately $2200, making it the least expensive production car in the world.

It was apparently designed by Satoshi Tajiri:


This post was blatantly stolen from Top Gear, season 11, episode 03, in celebration of the new season, beginning Sunday, November 14th.

And because I couldn't think of anything else to post.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:04 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

The first combat experience of the Grumman TBF (latter named the Avenger) came at the Battle of Midway, with a detachment of planes from Torpedo 8.  We all know how that turned out: five TBFs shot down, and the sixth a flying sieve.

The pilot of the surviving TBF was Ensign Bert Earnest.  He later went on to fight with VT-8 at Guadalcanal.  He retired from the Navy as a Captain.  Along the way, he earned a Purple Heart, two Air Medals, and three Navy Crosses.

Albert K Earnest, CAPT USN (RET) passed away on October 26th at the age of 92.

May he rest in peace.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:23 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.

It's been a bad couple of days, emotionally.

Here's Yotsuba! and some penguins.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

October 25th, 2005 dawned cool and clear.  My alarm clock went off at 730am, as I was scheduled to open at the Duck U. Bookstore, but I just couldn't manage to wake up.  Even a good shower couldn't manage to clear my head.  Well, I'd been up late the night before, I just needed more sleep, right?  I got dressed and drove to work.

I assume.  Even at the time, I couldn't remember doing so.  One of the store's part-timers, who worked with me that morning, said that I seemed really out of it that morning, and I'm sure that's right.  But I was at work, and I had some stuff to do: a stack of invoices and credit memos that needed to be sorted and matched to their respective store-generated paperwork.

In the middle of doing that, however, something happened.  Something bad.

My heart gave a huge grinding thump.  Then it felt like it was tumbling down a flight of stairs for a moment, and then... it began to race.  I felt a cold sweat forming on my forehead and was, suddenly, very very warm.  I got up from my desk in the back room and walked unsteadily to the bathroom, wondering just what was happening.

When my heart kept racing, and seemed to be going faster and faster, I began to get scared... which, of course, made my heart go even faster.  I staggered back to the store and asked my co-worker to call 911.

A lifetime (or maybe 10 minutes) later, two EMTs showed up.  One of them starting asking me questions ("How do you feel?" "Tired." "Do you know where you are?" "Duck U." "Do you know who you are?" "I'm Batman."), while the other began pumping up a blood pressure cuff on my arm and holding my wrist.  After a second, he said "I can't get a pulse."

My heart was going so fast that the EMT could not distinguish one individual beat from another.  My blood pressure was too high for the cuff to read.  They got me on a stretcher and began to roll me out of the Bookstore, just as my boss walked in.  "Are you okay, Wonderduck?" "I'm going to the Hospital, Andi."

In the ambulance, the EMTs hooked me up to high-tech sensors and discovered my pulse was around 250bpm, my bp was a number I can't remember now, but was something like 300/200.  Ook.  Fortunately, they knew just what to do.  "We're going to give you a drug that'll stop your heart for a real short time.  It might be a little uncomfortable."

Yeah.  Uncomfortable.  Go ahead.  Zap.  Yup, he was right... a brick rested on my chest, but the heart didn't slow down.  Zap again.  Bigger brick... and my heart slowed down.  Ahh.

In the ER, they discovered my magnesium and potassium levels had cratered.  Since these control the heart AND brain function, which explained my fuzzyheadedness and my heart going faster than a dance club on speed. 

They kept me overnight, and the only thing on the TV was a World Series game that had gone into extra innings... which the hated White Sox won, dammit.  A bad day all around.

I had suffered something called Superventricular Tachycardia.  It isn't usually life-threatening, but that hardly matters when it's happening to you... and the longer it lasts, the more dangerous it gets.  In my case, it had gone on for nearly 45 minutes before they dropped the bricks on my chest, which is plenty long enough.  I now take a medication to hopefully prevent it from ever happening again, and potassium and magnesium supplements, just in case.  I've also stopped drinking caffeine (coffee or colas) and alcohol completely since the former is a stimulant and the second fights with the preventative medication. 

So today is the 4th anniversary of my first brush with mortality... and what could have been my last, too, if I hadn't done one simple thing.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you feel something odd going on with your heart, CALL 911 IMMEDIATELY.  You might think "eh, it's nothing", but you'd feel really dumb if it stopped altogether, wouldn't you?

So, please, if you get nothing else from The Pond, ever: call 911. 

I can't afford to lose more readers.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 723 words, total size 5 kb.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:21 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 4 words, total size 1 kb.

...he wants his car back:

The limited edition Lotus Exige Scura.

"It’s the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it..."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.

As long-time readers of The Pond know, in my prior life I was involved in the theatre... or should that be The Theatre?  In amongst all the myriad shows I worked on or performed in (somewhere close to 200), there had to be a favorite, right?

Well, yes, but nobody's ever heard of The Mating Rituals of the Male, which was a one-man show/senior project that a friend of mine wrote and starred in.  After that, however, I find that I have to go with a pair of plays that will be forever joined at the hip.

The first, everybody knows... or, at least, they should: William Shakespeare's Hamlet.  The second is not so well known, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, R&GAD is about two minor characters in Hamlet, characters who are confused about why they're in the play Hamlet, and confused about what's going on in Hamlet, since all they see of it is what occurs in the precious little time they're in the script. 

It doesn't so much "break the fourth wall" as not believe the fourth wall exists in the first place; the play is, the audience is integral to the existence of said play, and that's that.  While the titular characters don't ever actually dialogue directly with the audience, they quickly realize the situation they're in, and therefore there must BE an audience, Q.E.D. ("We're actors-- we're the opposite of people!" is a line that will never fail to make a theatre person laugh)

The movie of R&GAD is a minor masterpiece in and of itself, starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman as the two leads.  As indicated in the play, however, neither is entirely sure which is Rosencrantz and which Guildenstern (though the credits reveal Oldman is Rosencrantz, Roth Guildenstern).  Richard Dreyfuss, as the scenery-masticating Player King, is also present to good effect.

I bring this up because this evening, I stumbled upon a short story that is brilliant in concept: what would happen if Shakespeare managed somehow to see R&GAD?  Fortunately, the author of this work is up to the challenge, but then Harry Turtledove does have a thing for alternative history, doesn't he?

SF publisher Tor has made the entire short story, "We Haven't Got There Yet", available on their website, for which fact I am eternally grateful. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:51 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 397 words, total size 3 kb.