Thanksgiving blog: Cool stuff. Cooking for 93.

The odds that anyone is going to read the blog today are so slender, it's improbably ridiculous.



However, for those of you who have tripped over my website today, you will not go away empty handed.  



First up: have you ever had to cook for relatives?  On Thanksgiving?  Without any help from the vast army you're feeding?



If the answer is yes: enjoy.













Next up, you've seen my videos -- and if you haven't, look in the right hand margin, and you'll find them soon enough.



However, now that I've seen this awesome group, I think I should hire them before I try doing another one.

Fighting and Writing, what is Krav Maga?

In one of my DragonCon reports, I noted that various authors have various reasons to have fight scenes in their novels: to honor those who have fought, to get realism in the writing, to come to grips with wars they've been in.

I'm not so high-minded.

There are some situations my characters won't be able to talk their way out of … in the case of A Pius Man, when there are people who start shooting up the Spanish Steps with a full on assault of automatic weapons and RPGs, then there is only so much good harsh language can do for my protagonists.

The same goes with my theories on close-quarters combat. Unfortunately, most of my early fight scenes were taken by watching stuntmen dancing in various and sundry TV shows and movies. In fact, one of my characters, Sean A.P. Ryan, was a stuntman before going into the mercenary business—which is the only way that I could justify some of the crazier stunts he went through.

Why not just use a real martial art? Really? Which one? Tae Kwan Do, which has been referred to as a sport by even black belts I've met? Karate, with kata dance routines that have about as much to do with an actual fight as ballet (I should know, I went for that when I was ten)? I had come across penjakt silat, an Indonesian martial style, in Tom Clancy's NetForce novels; it was very practical, but overly complicated for writing purposes. MMA hadn't been popular when I started writing, and that, too, is merely a sport (high kicks are nice, but MMA doesn't have to deal with being kicks between the legs).

However, a few years ago, I was exposed to a system called Krav Maga. Not in a standard media, but in a video game—Splinter Cell, to be exact. Yes, for you video game nerds, Sam Fisher is using an actual style of combat. They didn't just make it up as they went along

Later, I picked up novels based on the series 24, written by John Whitman. And, wow, it was practical.

And Krav Maga kept popping up in things I read. After a while, I took a hint, and I did some research into Krav Maga. I started by doing some research into John Whitman.

I discovered he was a black belt in Krav Maga. And he was more than an authority. He was apparently The authority in the United States.

For me, Krav Maga worked from a writing standpoint. It was simple, it was straightforward, and, most importantly, it used weapons. Not to mention that it was a style that was practical—a kick to the groin is a standard weapon, one that's practiced repeatedly; eye gouges are another tactic, one that I've never seen in a standard sparring match.

It was so much better for my writing, where all of my characters are … very practical. MMA is nice, and the fighters are all real athletes, but I don't recall the last MMA match that required having participants defend themselves against a knife, or one where someone is bleeding from bite marks.

I decided to look into Krav Maga a little.
[More below the break]

(Scott) Murphy's Laws of Spying.

(Scott) Murphy's Laws of Spying.

1.MURPHY WAS AN OPTIMIST
2.A relaxed spy is a dead spy.
3.Keep your head on your shoulders, or someone else will keep it…mounted on their wall.
4.The worse the weather, the more you are required to trail someone through it.
5. When your target drives to work every day like clockwork, the day you arrange for a car bomb, he'll walk.
6.If your mission is going really well, it's a trap.

7.Throw rocks before grenades— it desensitizes the reflexes of who you're throwing them at.

8.And remember: five second fuses are three seconds long.

9.The easy way is always booby trapped..

8.When in doubt: improvise. It's hard to trace a bomb when it's made out of Bisquick.



10.Make it tough for the enemy to get in.... and you can't get out.



11.Even paranoids have real enemies.



11.The shortest distance between two points is money.



13.Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.



14.Control the situation. If you can’t handle the variables, the variables are going to handle you. The moment that happens, they will handle you right into a jail cell if you’re lucky, and a field execution if you’re not.



15.The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.



16.Guns may be nice tools, but they leave behind other problems. Bodies are messy and hard to dispose of unless you plan in advance. Try not to kill someone unless you really have to. And if you have to, invest in plastic wrap, gloves, and hefty bags (see: Dexter).



17.The closer the synagogue the better the bagel.



18.The spy who plans for everything to go well is usually the one who will be shot in the back with his own gun. Conversely, the spy who plans for everything to go to hell from the first minute will never have to use a single contingency plan.



19. Invest in people. If you rely solely on a multimillion dollar piece of equipment, the more likely someone is to circumvent it with something found at Wal-Mart.



20.“Guns make you stupid. Duct tape makes you smart.”

Corollary 1: Tracers work both ways.

Corollary 2: The seriousness of a gunshot wound is inversely proportional to the distance to any form of cover

Corollary 3: The complexity of a weapon is inversely proportional to the IQ of the weapon's operator.

Corollary 4: Friendly fire – isn't.

Corollary 5: The day you need to clean your gun is the day the SWAT team arrives to kill you.

Corollary 6: A gun is hard to explain the security. A magazine you can roll up into a tactical baton, isn't.