Ah, those crafty Mullahs, ever on the watch-out for the 12th Man, uh, Imam, have spied out the nefarious rabbi father of Krusty the Clown and banned the very dolls created from the Simpsons.

But you know who they really fear? Maggie. The one with the gun.

It’s the Second Amendment thing, you see, what gave the common folk the right to bear arms, something only the elite had been allowed to do since the Middle Ages—and the elite, even the so-called democratic version, have been trying to take it back ever since.

Also the girdled wives and girlfriends, which brings back some interesting memories I won’t mention (this is a family blog). This was back when women used hairspray but men didn’t. Instead, for us, it was grease or oil—Brylcreem or Vitalis, as I recall. Awful stuff, really, even the smell.

Supposedly, according to the show, throwing trash on the ground was also common. I don’t recall doing that, expect for one item. Pulling over to the side of the road to dump the car’s ashtray. How many times did I do that? Too many to count. Shameless behavior, truly.

“A faint band of red has cut the throat of night and bleeds across the eastern horizon.”

I’m only half through this one but it’s already safe to say it’s as good as the first two about the Fair-haired Donovan, and well worth your time if you like complex, near-literary Celtic space opera.

Virga, life inside a Fullerene balloon thousands of miles in diameter, on the edge of the Vega solar system, is scifi author Karl Schroeder’s five-book (so far) series of swashbuckling tales. This is steampunk Victoriana where computers and other electronic devices cannot exist—unless a crucial part of the central “sun of suns” is turned off.

Great stuff, truly, though it’s not a future world I would care to actually live in, unlike the future world of Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict detective series. Virga’s hard science instructs as the romance entertains and the characters introspect, change and grow.

Well worth your time and money to read the first in the epic and don’t be surprised if you find yourself hooked. Unfortunately, they are fast reads. They go lickety-split. Having finished No. 4, a cliff-hanger, I must now wait until Valentine’s Day to receive No. 5. Sigh.

The once-fabled American (and African-American) city (affectionately called MoTown) is a burned-out shambles, thanks to gimme politics, socialist policies and predator labor unions. Photographs of the ruins (above) are part of a new gallery show in, of all places, Germany.

Via David at Spengler

After the war the American versions flew USA airmail routes cross-country.

I used to make plastic models of these and similar planes when I was Mr. B.’s age (11 going on 12) and hang them by threads from my bedroom ceiling.

Well, I did enjoy Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

———John Donne

Good stuff, about multiple human colonies, and friendly and enemy aliens in the spiral arm of the Milky Way, all trying to make sense of gigantic Builder artifacts that seem to electromagnetically converge on the planet Quake at Summertide.

The only odd part, especially for the late author Charles Sheffield who usually wrote hard sci-fi, was the superluminal travel via Bose Nodes, apparently some sort of piggyback off the Bose-Einstein quantum phenomenon.

But it isn’t explained and so it’s wave-of-the-hand technology more commonly found in space opera. Nevertheless, it was a thrilling read and I commend the tale to you and have already bought the sequels for myself.

Hardly bestseller material here, these single-digit sales months. Haven’t had a double-digit month since 15 sold back in April. Record still 27 for Knoxville alone in August 2010, thanks to a plug from power-blogger Instapundit. It’s a nice lunch-money hobby, however.

Thanks to all my loyal readers, including those who promised reviews at Amazon but haven’t gotten around to it. Several have good excuses, including one in San Antonio who’s seriously ill. Best wishes to him, of course, for a recovery soon.

Still in the works: polishing a Vietnam War novel which loyal-reader Snoopy was kind enough to read and criticize, finishing a Civil War digital regimental still in blog form, and writing a memoir about growing up in the Cold War.

War-Is-Us, obviously. One of these days I may do something different. Meanwhile, coupled with new violin lessons and full-time parenting, I’m busier than before I retired.