Up to now, I’ve been confining my opinions on the lawsuit of the U.S. Justice Department versus Apple and the gang of five of the Big Six to my “News and Notices.”  While I’m definitely biased about this and my blog is basically op-ed, I started out thinking that this case is small potatoes compared to some of the bigger issues of our day.  Now I’m not so sure that the case is not a big, messy pommes de terre au gratin with lots of cheese where cleanup will be a challenge to any dishwasher, human or otherwise.

Let me elaborate on one compound word that is key here: price-fixing.  I didn’t quite understand where the government was coming from, but now I see the issues better.  Apple’s alleged behavior is ironically a 180-degree turn-around from their behavior with the music industry.  Steve Jobs’ company allegedly undercut record companies’ prices and forever changed the music industry.  What they allegedly offered to the Big Six publishers was a mechanism for the latter to avoid Amazon’s undercutting their prices—this is the agency model, where Apple agreed to sell eBooks at a publisher-determined price at their iStore as long as the publisher guaranteed that Amazon and every other online retailer couldn’t sell for less.  Amazon could sell the publishers’ eBooks (so they’re available for Kindle) but they couldn’t sell them for less (thus indirectly favoring the Kindle).

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#145: What’s next on my agenda?  While I’ve been thinking lately that my muses have discovered tasers, torturing me and Donna Carrick of Carrick Publishing to release my next books, I want to slow down a bit and think about what my next releases will be.  I have a plethora of old and new ideas.  It’s good to reassess which ones I will follow through on in the immediate future.  Here are some of my thoughts.

I liked both my old character, the DHS agent Ashley Scott, and the new one, Mossad agent Judy Epstein—two strong women you will find helping detectives Chen and Castilblanco in Angels Need not Apply (although Judy works behind the scenes).  Perhaps they deserve a more important role.  That would be something new to explore in my writing.  Although I haven’t neglected writing about strong women—Dao-Ming Chen and the two agents named above are but three examples—sometimes a character grabs a taser from a muse and goes at me too.

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It’s Saturday, December 31, 2011, and Mr. Obama has just given a New Year’s gift to terrorists.  Barack, the Avenger, just became Barack, the Santa Claus, with respect to Mr. Karzai and his entire corrupt government.  And Mrs. Clinton, his head elf, just goes along with it.  The Afghan leader, who knows he sits on a powder keg, is trying to make peace with the Taliban—our foreign policy gurus just helped him along the way.

Come on, Barack!  The friends of my enemies are my enemies—the Taliban showed their true nature many years ago.  They gave safe haven to al Qaeda members and terrorized and killed their own people.  They have killed our soldiers and civilian contractors whose only crime in that God-forsaken land was to work for the betterment of the Afghan people.  They have falsely accused men under their strict Sharia law and beheaded them.  They have stoned women who have been raped after accusing them of adultery.  They have killed girls whose only sin was wanting to study.  In brief, the Taliban are a blight on humanity, a pestilence that Pandora could have never imagined.

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The crowds forcing their way into stores on Black Friday or Blue Thursday confirmed my prescient labeling of Thanksgiving and the day after as black-and-blue events.  People fought and were trampled, shots were fired, pepper-spray was used—it was as if we were in Egypt but with consumerism as the goal, not democracy.  What do people outside the U.S. think of us when we become so mesmerized by the ownership of goods?  “I want your Xbox!” or “That’s my wide-screen TV” takes the place of “Down with the military junta!” or “Out with dictator X!”

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Due to the bad economy, merchants seem desperate to bring in customers to the malls, superstores, and boutiques.  If you are a patriotic American, I suppose, you’d start your Christmas purchases before Halloween…or, at least, starting at the same time you’re buying all that Halloween candy required to make the little tykes need fluoride.  Not only has Black Friday become a consumer tradition, many of those superstores are throwing their doors open to their super sales on Thanksgiving.

Not only do I hear about crazy consumers ready to forego the family eating orgy and head off for those sales, the store employees are forced to leave their relatives and friends to attend to the onslaught of zombies looking for those early Black Friday bargain.  Let’s call it Blue Thursday in recognition of how sad it truly is.  We should even adopt Elvis’ Christmas song—I’m sure someone can adapt the lyrics to reflect the forlorn turkey.  After all, that gobbler was sacrificed on the altar of family love and universal friendship—his sacrifice shouldn’t be in vain.

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Indie authors know all about the internet as a home for cottage industries.  Even if you use Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online retailer as a distributor, an indie author still has to publish, market, and sell his or her books.  The author’s writing or content is the industrial product and the reader is the customer who buys that product.

Services for authors and readers are a natural for internet cottage industries.  Google “ebook formatting” and see how many different services you find, for example—or “eBook cover design.”  There’s a website with info on forensics and many websites that discuss some or multiple aspects of the writing trade (see the list in “Steve’s Writing” here at this website).  For readers, there are services from the monolithic Goodreads (that probably started as a cottage industry) to websites or blogs more focused on reviews (see Holly Hook’s bargainebooks) to several online ezines—eFiction is one of the latest and open to submissions.

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I don’t like to gloat, especially in these circumstances, but I told you so.  The U.S. government, through the loose lips of Mr. Mullins, has finally spoken the words—Pakistan is playing a duplicitous role in the war against terrorism.  This was no secret, at least not for me.  All the evidence was there.  Every sane person on the planet knew this was happening, but no one in officialdom would or could admit to it.  Why do you think we went after OBL without telling the Pakistanis?  Why do you think they shouted “foul” at not being told?  The claim that the spy agency is helping terrorists is no surprise.  What is a surprise is that the Afghan government is so weak that the spy agency’s bloody fist can strike all the way to Kabul and the U.S embassy.

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Last Sunday Pradnya Joshi wrote an alarming article titled “We Knew They Got Raises.  But This?”  It was in the Business section of the N.Y. Times.  I say “alarming” because, not only were American CEOs not particularly hurt by a recession that has hammered the U.S. middle class, they managed to eke out on average a measly 23% raise over their pay in 2009.  The median pay for top executives at 200 companies last year was reported in this article to be $10.8 million.

Why is this obscene?  Let’s assume that the hypothetical median executive really works his butt off 24/7, 365 days per year.  That’s 8760 hours.  So, $10.8 million translates to about $1200 per hour.  That’s about 165 times the federal minimum wage.  Of course, no CEO works 24/7 365 days per year, not even if his alias is Iron Man.  He enjoys his yacht, his summer home, his time on the golf course, a mistress or two perhaps—all of which take time from his job.  He puts his pants on the same as me—and, unlike me, takes them off for the mistresses while the trophy wife is in the country club (the membership is often paid as a company benefit).  Are you getting the idea?

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Many people view AARP as a relatively harmless special interest group.  Now this view might become more cemented in the national conscience since Betty White is doing some irreverent and risqué commercials for them.  However, I’m not particularly a fan of AARP.  During the debate about drug coverage for seniors, they sold out to Mr. Bush and Big Pharma.  The result was Medicare Part D with the famous donut hole, that extension to Medicare that confuses many seniors and allows insurance companies to play fast and loose with their drug needs.

In addition, I always have resented the idea that 50+ meant “retired,” which is absurd and probably why the original name was changed to the acronym.  Of course, the threshold was put in place in order to latch on to more members.  While the cost of membership is minimal, it all adds up to a tidy sum, I’m sure, but not to nearly as much as what they make selling insurance to elders.  In many ways, they are part of the medical insurance problem.

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One thing I’ll give the British royals: they aren’t under the radar.  The paparazzi give them no peace.  Even if the media wasn’t always on their trail, the royals’ only job now is to appear at functions that keep the rabble away from members of Parliament so these illustrious individuals can tend to the country’s real problems (note that I said “tend to” and not “solve”—these bozos are only slightly more effective than our own Congress people, but that isn’t saying much).

We send the President, the President’s wife, VP Joe Biden, or Joe’s wife to similar events.  The Brits recognize the importance of these state events and maintain a whole staff of royals to do the job.  Great for country spirit.  They’re one up on us, having separation of ceremonial wastes of time from state, in addition to church from state—since the Queen is head of the Anglican Church, it all makes some sort of Yorkshire-pudding sense.

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