Merry Christmas!

That was the greeting on an email that popped into my mailbox bright and early July 1. Surprised the heck out of me, of course. A friendly stranger had promised himself last December to give me a “Christmas in July” smile (and that you did, B).

So Merry Christmas to you, too. And why not?

It’s Independence Day. But it’s hard to celebrate the birth of freedom while enduring freedom’s death agonies. Somehow this weekend’s three-day pops, sizzles, and crackles of fireworks sound hollow (wonder how long it’ll be before SWAT teams mow children down in their living rooms for illegal possession of sparklers?). But we can still exercise our inalienable right to be contrary.

Like Samuel Adams (in this otherwise drivelous list of factoids about the founding fathers), we can still be tricksters. We can be suburban guerrillas. And highway heroes (H/T C^2). We can, with luck, smarts, and timing, survive the fall.

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It’s a great Fourth for Cory Maye, who’s finally going to be free. That nice young man could use a little help getting on his feet (and getting out of Mississippi, too, we can hope).

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I know I’m a few days late with this. Thanks for being patient while I deadlined. This last six weeks I’ve had more commitments than I usually have in a given six months. They’ve left me tired, numb, and dumb. But I’m starting to see the end of them, and possibly even the return of my brain.

Well, the Return of The Brain might be too much to expect.

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I’m two weeks late with what follows. Do you remember Mac the Knife’s wonderful Outlaw Brigade store on Zazzle? Well, it’s still alive and fun, though not quite as well as it was.

Mac sent this word, saying he thought I’d have the proper snark for it. But frankly, even on better brain days, no amount of snark would be sufficient:

It seems that the estate of Robert A. Heinlein is claiming a copyright on the phrase “An Armed Society is a Polite Society” and they contacted Zazzle to have all of my products with this quote on it removed, which they did immediately. This quote is from “Beyond this Horizon” which he wrote in 1942. Seems like they are taking copyright to an extreme here when they can claim copyright on a line from a book that has made its way into general discourse, but I do not have the time or the money to try and fight it. Zazzle says I cannot even use the phrase without the authors attribute. I do have a niece who is an IP lawyer with a firm in Washington DC and I will ask her opinion to see what she says, but probably will not take it any further.

Anyway, you and I are now the only two people on the planet that have merchandise with this quote on it from the First Freedom Outlaw Merchandise Store.

You know I’m for creators’ rights and against the bizarrely fashionable notion that artists, writers, musicians, and inventors are just cattle to be milked for the benefit of anyone but themselves. But really. Heinlein’s long dead. Virginia Heinlein is long dead. Nobody who played any role in creating that phrase benefits from this. Snark fails me. This is pure BS.

Oh yeah. When I’m as dead as those guys, please feel free to take any damn thing I ever wrote and have fun with it. And don’t let any “estate of” tell you otherwise.