Forty-five years ago today, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal responsible for transporting hundreds of thousands of European Jews to their deaths, was hanged just outside Tel Aviv.  He had initially escaped justice by fleeing to Argentina after the war, but had been captured in 1960 by agents of the Mossad and brought to Israel for trial.

Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book on that trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem, was subtitled “A Report on the Banality of Evil” – and “the banality of evil” is now a part of our language and our understanding of human behavior, even among those who have never heard of Eichmann.

Eichmann in Jerusalem also provided one of the epigraphs for George Zebrowski’s 1984 short story “The Eichmann Variations”:

“And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations — as though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world — we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you.  This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang.”

In the alternate world of “The Eichmann Variations” (first published as the anchor story in Michael Bishop’s landmark anthology Light Years and Dark), Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina and smuggled to Israel just as he was in our world (albeit via submarine rather than airplane).  But here, instead of being tried and hanged himself, he is duplicated over and over again, year after year – and his doppelgangers are executed “Ten per hour, these years . . . it will be six million one day.”

“The Eichmann Variations” hit me like a ballpeen hammer to the forehead when I first read it.  It’s rare indeed that a story just over 3,000 words long is powerful enough to do that to me — and even rarer still that it’s powerful enough to hit me just as hard twenty-three years later.  It’s a tremendously disturbing story, and is supposed to be.

As far as I know, the text of “The Eichmann Variations” is not available online.  But it can be found in Light Years and Dark (Berkley, 1984), in Nebula Awards 20 (HBJ, 1985), and in Mr. Zebrowski’s story collection Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon, 2002).

It must be read.

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Another powerful story dealing with the same basic theme as “The Eichmann Variations” — and posing equally disturbing questions – is Terry Bisson’s “macs” (1999). 

It must be read, too. 

They are a busy lot, the dead.
They show up in darkened cities or work
or at my son’s high school cafeteria.
Years after his bad heart, arteries
silted, vast stretches of muscle
scarred and barren, finally quit—my father
wears a lime green polo shirt
his glasses held together by scotch tape.
He carries his bowling bag,
not as if it contained sins–
his vodka martinis
his string of one night stands
–but his blue marbled bowling ball
a little like Earth from space
except for three insistent finger holes
that say this is not a metaphor.
He seems pleased enough to see me.
I can’t think of what to say.
He is not about me. He never was.

James Patrick Kelly interview at the Nebs just hours before he wins his first Nebula for BURN.  That’s ten nominations, one win.  Wow.

I am intractably right-handed. When I try to do something without recourse to my right hand…well, at best, the effort lasts about three seconds. At worse, chaos right out of the I-Love-Lucy-Universe ensues. One of the more irritating things about encroaching age is that my using my right hand is not as easy as it used to be. The image above, by the way, is not my right hand, but it is someone’s right hand. In short order I may have a photo of my own to post.

A couple of years ago I started developing carpal tunnel syndrome. It was explained to me that I was very likely posturing in my sleep: squinching my thumb in close to my hand as I slept. So I was told to get a brace to hold my hand in a non-squinched position while I slept. The carpal tunnel problems diminished hugely. Then, lately, I’d been experiencing some soreness around my thumb; I was pretty sure this was RSI, but it wasn’t terrible, so I didn’t worry about it much.

And then, a few weeks ago, I was doing something and I felt a **pop** below my thumb. Doing certain things (putting my hand into my pocket; playing guitar; washing my face; holding hands with my beloveds) hurts like hell. Other things don’t hurt at all. Shortly the area below my thumb began to swell–not hugely, but enough. I let it alone for a while to see if benign neglect would wreak any change, but…no. Ow. So today I went to see the doctor, who clicked his tongue and agreed with me that I sure did something to my hand. X-rays were ordered. I will be informed of the news tomorrow, but I expect the medical consensus to be along the lines of “you sure did something to your hand.” What they’ll want to do about that, I don’t know.

Meanwhile, I’m trying not to use my right hand so much. Except that I am intractably, stubbornly, impossibly right handed. At the dog park I try to use the Chuck-It (no relation) with my left hand, but that doesn’t last long. At home, I try to open jars left-handed, pick things up left-handed. Not so much luck. Knitting: bad. Last week, when I was cleaning out the Barn, I was carrying, prying, sweeping, scrubbing, all right-handed. Sometimes hurt, sometimes not. Go figure. And writing? Writing anything more than a thank-you note or a check hurts. I can still type without too much discomfort, but what if that becomes harder too? Or if I’m ordered into a cast and can’t type for a few months?

I’ve heard all manner of uplifting stories about people who lose the use of their primary hand and learn to use the other. I like to think that I could do that, but right at the moment I’m kinda hoping there’s a quick fix. In the meantime, there’s NSAIDs and ice, and news about the X-ray tomorrow. As medical problems go, it’s not a patch on Rory’s leg, or some of the other stuff Brains have confronted. Maybe I’ll have to learn new tricks; learning things is supposed to be good for the mind, after all. As well as the Brain.

I was working on my RSS feeds, switching over the many blogs I follow daily to my email reader so they’d show up when there was something new, so I wouldn’t have to open up all these different blogs every day. For some reason, when I was doing the The Erin O’Brien Owners Manual For Human Beings instead of the most recent 20 or so posts, I ended up with this gem from November of 2005. I’ve read it all and I’ve decided you must too.

Crystals in Petrie Dish of Erin’s Mind
1. The window of the bank with respect to the location of the Mini is somehow in flux.
2. The bank is not moving.
3. You (owner and primary operator of Mini) are not in said Mini.

Equation Resulting from Crystals in the Petrie Dish of Erin’s Mind
1. 2,600 pounds of Mini Cooper + four percent gradient of parking lot + the earth’s inescapable force of gravity + manual transmission left out of gear + idiotic owner of Mini forgetting to engage parking brake = motion.

“SHIT!” I bark.

Excitement ensues.

Read the whole thing here.

I love Pachelbel’s Canon in D. We played it at our wedding. But this ex-cello player (Hi, Caroline!) doesn’t.

Click the pic.

Updated below.

This is a difficult post for me to write.

We have arrived at another tragic Memorial Day. Nearly a thousand U.S. soldiers have died since Memorial Day, 2006. Many more have been gravely injured, and Iraqi deaths number in the hundred thousands, in a war that has already lasted longer than World War II: a war Bush and Cheney masterminded (if you can call it that). A war ill-conceived and badly executed.

In our grief and rage after 9-11, we as a nation acquiesced to Bush’s desire to go to war against a nation that had no weapons of mass destruction and had nothing to do with the attacks of 9-11. Now our young men and women stand in the crossfire between warring factions. The Iraqis themselves have suffered horrific losses. Iraq is now a prime recruiting ground for Al Qaeda. A large majority of Americans want us out of Iraq, but our Congress lacks the political will to cut the president’s purse strings and force his hand.

Today we stand in solidarity with the soldiers and their families, who have dedicated themselves to serving their country. Our soldiers in Iraq are doing their best to honor their pledge in a difficult situation. We honor the fallen. We look to the newly elected Democratic leadership in Congress, who promised to stand up to Bush and end this war—we look to principled Republicans and Democratic hawks, who have admitted that this war was a grave error—to find a way of ending this insanity. Bring our soldiers home.

Jimmy Carter once said, war is an evil. Sometimes it is a necessary evil, but it is always evil. War inevitably results in horrors, and should never be engaged in except as a last resort. I mourn for those who have died, who have been injured, tortured, lost loved ones, or been displaced by this war.

I honor the fallen. I urge our leaders: stop this madness. Bring our soldiers home.

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Erin had this image over on her blog.

“They’ll never know what hit them!”

We now present another LBG masterpiece, this one rescued from the tapes of the same night as the infamous ‘Steamroller Blues’.

Scott McCullar on vocals. He is the Kwisatz Lumberjack.

Our Dark Lord Stevie Chuckles on harmonica, me and maybe Patrick Nielsen Hayden on guitars, Casey Hamilton on bass, Martha Wells and probably Kim Rector and Cathy Ruedinger on back-up vocals.

You know the drill. Click the pic.

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And there’s a late addendum as a result of Rachael seeing me working on this post, and awesomely pointing me to Brawny Academy and the Woodsy Wisdom video series. They’ll change your life.

I had to share this one (via). Magician Ursula Martinez takes “nothing up my sleeve” to a whole level. Hilarious, sexy, and as zuzu says, definitely NSFW.

These are my new entertainments, Little Tex and Secret Kitty.

Yeah, the Toxoplasma rulez. We all might as well just get down with it. Between me and Rachael and Caroline, it’s gonna be all kitties, all the time, here at EOB.

I haven’t posted much recently because She Who is Awesome has been hanging with me here all week. We camped last weekend in the forest with the WildAssed NeoPagans for a late Beltane celebration. Usually, Beltane gets a little over-heated. This one was relatively serene and reflective, and I enjoyed it a lot. Therefore, I must be getting old. I found a fair amount of time for tree-worship with the sacred Martin DC1E, and wrote a new rock song in the process.

As an antidote to leafy green calm, last Sunday Rach and I caught ’28 Weeks Later’.

It’s a well-executed fast-zombie flick, as I’m sure you know. However, the main characters and the military have to do some absurdly stupid things to move the plot forward. I can recommend it, but you have to turn off your brain occasionally. I wanted to strangle the lead kids in it a couple of times. Which, as it turns out, would have been a Good Thing.

We’ve both read ‘World War Z’ this week, and I recommend it without any reservations at all. Best zombie book ever. I can’t wait for the movie.

The main thing that both of these pieces of high art make obvious is that slow zombies are tough enough to deal with, no matter how silly they might seem. If it’s fast zombies, we’re gonna need lots of motorcycles with flamethrowers and shotguns. A donation now to the RnR Motorcycle Modification Fund could save your life next year. You can calculate your chances of surviving the Zombie War at the World War Z site. Rachael got a current 49%, which is disheartening. Need more guns and flamethrowers.

The kittens are mind-rottingly adorable, of course. Unfortunately, they have to share the house this week with Texas, Rachael’s cat. And he hisses and goes all Charlie Manson on everybody when he sees them. So we’ve bifurcated the apartment, with Texas getting the living-room and kitchen, and Little Tex and Secret Kitty getting the bedrooms and bathroom.

I’m not sure whether they entirely like that division. One of them has recently taken to peeing on my feet in the middle of the night. I don’t know if that’s an editorial comment or youthful exuberance.

They’re both playful, and as charming as hell, and are working hard to destroy all of the magazines in my bedroom, and I already adore them. Of course, that’s probably the Toxoplasma talking…

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Pic Credit to Rachael Harper.

The Secret Number for 05/27/07 is 254.

A few weeks ago, Rory wrote a post about Toxoplasma Gondii.

But damn, that kitty is cute…

Just under 13,000 years ago, the earth entered a profound cooling period in Europe and Asia that lasted about 1000 years. In conjunction with this was the die off of most of the mammoths in North America and Europe and the disappearance of the early Stone Age humans from North America. This was known as the Younger-Dryas period and until very recently there were several competing theories as to why this happened.

… at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. A group of US scientists that include West will report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet’s carbon into diamond dust. ‘The shock waves and the heat would have been tremendous,’ said West. ‘It would have set fire to animals’ fur and to the clothing worn by men and women. The searing heat would have also set fire to the grasslands of the northern hemisphere. Great grazing animals like the mammoth that had survived the original blast would later have died in their thousands from starvation. Only animals, including humans, that had a wide range of food would have survived the aftermath.’

Estimates put the comet as five kilometers in diameter. Link.

I’m a Bad Brain. I was out of town dismantling the last of the Barn and without internet connection for five days, and am therefore delinquent. Steve will no doubt administer a sound drubbing the next time we’re in the same area code. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I spent some time in airports this week–in San Francisco, Atlanta, Cincinnati and Boston, and of course the third thing I look for in airports, right after coffee and the restrooms, are bookstores. Not that my work has ever made it into an airport bookstore, where what they stock is generally high-profile stuff with a pre-sell (if you liked the last five James Patterson thrillers you’ll love the current James Patterson thriller, etc.). I just like bookstores. And sometimes friends’ books are there, too. In Cincinnati, as I walked past the CNBC News Store managed by The Paradies Shops, I saw a display advertising the Read and Return program.

The way the program works is: you buy a book at a Paradies airport shop in Atlanta (for example), and–theoretically, anyway–read it and swap it back at a Paradies shop in Sacramento–perhaps, if you’re a fast reader, on the same business trip (you’ve got six months from purchase, and the book must be returned with its original receipt). At which point you get 50% of the purchase price back. Woo hoo, right? Well, for the purchaser of the books, perhaps.

What isn’t clear is what this means to me, the author (or, perhaps, to James Patterson, the author). And what happens to the book? How do the publishers feel about this? Paradies’ sales may be up 20%, but does that mean they’re re-selling the returned books? If they’re not, are they treating the returned books as returns to the publishers? Or just tossing them? Are they considered to be loss-leaders, to bring in business on the theory that most people will buy more but won’t remember to return the books or will lose the receipts? If they sell the same book more than once, does the author get multiple royalties on the sale? And what does this do to the author’s sales record, if you “sell” the same book three times, but don’t actually sell three copies of the book?

As a reader, the program sounds kinda cool to me. As a writer, obviously, I have a lot of questions. The program isn’t new–it’s been going for three or four years. I’d be very curious to know what its collateral effects have been.

The air in Manchaca, Texas is muggy and grumbling this evening.  Low, dark clouds are shouldering against each other, and the buzzards who sleep on the Dark Tower at the end of the street are coming home to roost early.  The thunder is ominous but tentative, like a foul-tempered old man trying to make up his mind about whether a kid needs to be smacked.

It is on the verge of being Tornado Weather.

Growing up in rural Kansas, I learned how Tornado Weather felt, looked, and smelled.  And there’s a certain tipping point, a certain greenish tint and a certain thick, tense heaviness that the air takes on, when you know that something Big and Bad is going to happen.

The last time I experienced that feeling — when I had the sick, sure sense of inevitable meteorological doom – was on May 27, 1997.  I stepped outside that day, and the air was like atomized lead.

“It’s Tornado Weather,” I thought, and I spent the rest of the day watching the storm clouds, fully expecting them to try to murder my entire community.

But no tornado hit Manchaca that day.  Instead, an F5 monster mauled the town of Jarrell about forty-five miles north of here, killing twenty-seven people and scrubbing an entire subdivision down to the slabs.   (”F5″ was the most powerful storm rating on the old Fujita scale.)

I thought of the Jarrell tornado again three weeks ago, on May 4, 2007, when an EF5 wedge tornado destroyed Greensburg, Kansas, killing ten.  (The Greensburg beast was the first on record to hit the top of the new Enhanced Fujita scale, which had only been in place since February.  Lucky Greensburg!)

Both the Jarrell and Greensburg tornadoes reminded me (as did the 1990 Hesston tornado, the 1991 Andover tornado, the 1999 Moore tornado, and other Big Ones) of my most vivid memory from my pre-teen years:  The June 8, 1966 F5 tornado that devastated Topeka, Kansas.

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