There’s going to be a novel and movie about a presidential candidate’s Body Man. I can feel it. The topic is too rich.
I’m not talking about his body guard. Or some wardrobe guy. Or, please, some sexual thing (good grief, people). I’m talking about the dude whose task it is to free up the candidate so he can focus on meeting, talking, etc. instead of rousting about for a pen or cell phone.
Check out this NY Times video on Romney’s body man.
One of my favorite stories of all time featured two characters in just such a relationship. That would be Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien writes in his letters that he based their relationship on his observations during his military service in World War 1 of the relationship between a batman and his officer. “Batman” being, not a Bruce Wayne wannabe with a utility belt, but a Soldier-Servant assigned to an officer in the British army of the time.
I want a story about a body man. Or a body woman. It feels so delicious.
Published on Saturday, July 27, 2002 in the Washington Post
F-16s Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region
by Steve Vogel
WASHINGTON — For Renny Rogers, it was strange enough that military jets were flying low over his home in Waldorf in the middle of the night. It was what he thinks he saw when he headed outside to look early yesterday that floored him.
“It was this object, this light-blue object, traveling at a phenomenal rate of speed,” Rogers said. “This Air Force jet was right behind it, chasing it, but the object was just leaving him in the dust. I told my neighbor, ‘I think those jets are chasing a UFO.’ ”
Military officials confirm that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base were scrambled early yesterday after radar detected an unknown aircraft in area airspace. But they scoff at the idea that the jets were chasing a strange and speedy, blue unidentified flying object. Read more here.
I don’t automatically assume it was methane creatures from Jupiter or our long lost cousins from Alpha Centauri. But I do find it interesting. Was it some new military craft? An exercise? Something the military has seen before? From another nation? The possibilities are endless. Here’s another link to the full article since the WP appears not to have archived it online.
On Writing Excuses someone talked about writing an epic fantasy in a limerick. I figured I’d give it a go. Of course, it’s a slight cheat, but epic nevertheless.
A tiny man with a ring
Said I’ll save the world from this thing
He traveled to Mordor
But in very short order
Was trounced by the chatty bling bling
Not many people understand creativity. Dewitt Jones, a National Geographic photographer, does. And this video on the creative process, HOLY COW, it’s so good I had to buy it so I could watch it whenever the yearning took me.
But this isn’t just for artists. The principles of creativity apply to any creative endeavor–from writing and drawing to building microchips and parenting.
Go here. Watch the brief clip. Then watch the whole Clear Vision video. Tell me what you think.
On your left you may observe King Charles the 1st of England, the man who mandated the collection of urine. It was a patriotic thing.
Dude.
I love, LOVE, finding out how they used to make things. And it seems that making gunpowder back in the day spawned all sorts of jobs that beg to be put into a novel.
You’ve heard of tanners, bakers, tailors–how about a peterman, as in a collector of saltpeter?
QUOTE 1: “By the end of the 1500s, the standard formula for military-grade gunpowder was saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust in the ratio 6:1:1.
At this time, the only source of potassium nitrate was from rotting organic matter, especially rotting meat and urine. The saltpeter supplier would send out teams of collectors who would locate promising places to dig (abandoned privies and dungheaps) by tasting the soil before digging it out and carting it off to be boiled, strained and evaporated to produce saltpeter of the required purity. It is said that throughout Europe no privy, stable, or dovecote was safe from saltpeter collectors or ‘petermen’.”
QUOTE 2: “In 1626, King Charles I ordered “his loving subjects [to] carefully and constantly keep and preserve in some convenient vessels or receptacles fit for the purpose, all the urine of man during the whole year, and all the stale of beasts which they can save and gather together whilst their beasts are in their stables and stalls, and that they be careful to use the best means of gathering together and preserving the urine and stale, without mixture of water or other thing put therein. Which our commandment and royal pleasure, being easy to observe, and so necessary for the public service of us and our people, that if any person do be remiss thereof we shall esteem all such persons contemptuous and ill affected both to our person and estate, and are resolved to proceed to the punishment of that offender with what severity we may.”
There are more interesting facts in the short article. In fact, a number of the pages at that site yield up some gems like this Rudyard Kipling poem:
Gold is for the mistress, silver for the maid
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade
“Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall
“But Iron–cold iron–is master of them all.”
What else is there to say? (btw, this is the best clip I’ve seen)
One more…
ma-ma.
I would be so freaking tempted IF I had the skinny body of 20 years ago. As it is those little wings probably wouldn’t do a thing and I’d drop like a stone. Yeeeeehaaaaaaasplat.
