Movin' On Up

Hey all one of you that know this blog exists: I'm moving the good ol' blog over to wordpress (http://allthiseverything.wordpress.com/). I've never been that thrilled with blogger; we'll see if wordpress is any better. Blogger gets to keep the template, my login, the house, and half of one of the cats but no alimony. All the old posts are over there, so no need to ever come back here unless something goes horribly wrong with the new site.

I Evoke Brow XV:

Hyperion, Dan Simmons I had a hard time getting into this book, then I got sucked in, then I didn't like it too much, then sucked in again, then horribly disappointed by the ending, or rather the utter lack of an ending. I understand when books leave them selves open to sequels and I don't have a problem with it, but this book builds suspense for 500 pages and then quits just before the natural climax, without resolving anything, and after dropping a huge, impossible to foresee plot twist on the unfortunate reader. It's a good yarn, but bad Science Fiction. Though at times entertaining, it's too cluttered with with different styles, characters, ideas, and everything else. The different narrative styles Simmons employs seem forced at times. And the weaving of fantastic elements with hard technology left a bad taste in my mouth. Not one I'd recommend. Call it a 4/10. ----- Listening to: Disco Biscuits, February 24th, 2006

I Evoke Brow XIV: Play it, Leroy!

Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction I already put up a great passage from this book earlier. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is subpar. My plan is to work my way through Robbin's works chronologically—this is his first novel and it shows. Not that there aren't nice lines scattered about, but on the whole the style is heavy-handed and the plot and characters are seriously lacking. This bit, though, is hilarious:

"By this time she had reached the lowest limb [of the tree she had climbed] and John Paul helped her down onto his shoulders. Her crotch pressed against the back of his neck. She hadn't bathed yet that day although they had made love the night before. She smelled like the leftovers from an Eskimo picnic. He was inflamed."

That still makes me grin. I read that in the break room with a work friend and cracked up, then had to read it aloud to hurn, sending us both into fits of giggles. The rest of that week we kept working "eskimo picnic" and "he was inflamed" into normal conversations. ----- Listening to: LivePhish radio: crazy Landlady, can't figure out what show, dangit. For the record, it ended at 5:48 EST on 2/28/06.

Where the Buffalo Roam

Driving to work this morning, a large bison or perhaps wildebeest made a left turn into my lane, maybe a hundred feet ahead of me. OK, so not really. But for a split second I saw a black blob lurching across the pavement and my mind refused to process it as a car; all I thought was "beast," with the tiniest bit of alarm. Then my visual processing unit rebooted and all was well. For the record, I didn't start the morning off with a beer, bong-hit or anything stronger than a small glass of chocolate soy "milk." I figured I'd record the incident here so that if I've gone completely nutty and sliced my ear off or something, someone can look back and go, "Oh, that's when he started to go crazy." I will keep this site posted with further hallucinatory ungulates as they arise.

Quote of the Day

"The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dog­matists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living—busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing—they are busy taking over. Soon their sour tentacles are around everything: our governments, our economies, our schools, our publications, our arts and our religious institutions. Men who lust for power, who are ad­dicted to laws and other unhealthy abstractions, who long to govern and lead and censor and order and reward and punish; those men are the turds of Moloch, men who don't know how to love, men who are sickly afraid of death and therefore are afraid of life: they fear all that is chaotic and unruly and free-moving and changing-thus—as Amanda has said, they fear nature and fear life itself, they deny life and in so doing deny God. They are presidents and governors and mayors and generals and police officials and chairmen-of-the­-boards. They are crafty cardinals and fat bishops and mean old monsignor masturbators. They are the most frightened and most frightening mammals who prowl the planet; love­less, anal-compulsive control-freak authoritarians, and they are destroying everything that is wise and beautiful and free. And the most enormous ironic perversion is how they destroy in the name of Christ who is peace and God who is love."

-Tom Robbins, "Another Roadside Attraction"

I'll put a review of this up eventually, but I wanted to get this quote up right away.

I just think Sue looks very regal here. It's amazing how easy it is to improve pictures with Picasa. Just cropping is always a big help. 

I Evoke Brow XIII: Brought to You By the Number "Q"

Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country This one goes on my list "Required Reading List." That is, books that no one should get a diploma (or a voters card or driver's license) without finishing, instead of fucking "Jane Eyre" and "Algebra." A blazing fast read, it is by turns funny, cute, and enraging (at the current state of affairs, not the author). Many, many choice quotes—two I flagged:

"By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for christmas."

"We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife."

Vonnegut points out that our current leaders trick people into thinking they are wise when really they are just decisive. Interestingly, this afternoon I read an interview with Stephen Colbert where he makes pretty much the same point.

AVC: You're saying appearances are more important than objective truth?

SC: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority—authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say "Listen to me, and just don't question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine"—the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. 'Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America's current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren't thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can't argue with the validity of that feeling.

But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there's only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies.

It's a good meme: I think it's fair to say that many people liked Bush over Gore and Kerry because while they rationalize (and let's admit, waffle), he is single-minded and he sticks to his guns. Sure, he's either simple-minded or grotesquely devious, but he does project confidence. I hate this country. Sometimes. ----- The rest of the Required Reading List, so far:

• The Cartoon History of the Universe (particularly Vol. 1)
• Animal Liberation (the New Edition)
• A Man Without a Country, Vonnegut

More will occur to me, I'm sure. ----- Listening to: Assembly of Dust 2005-12-09 Truck Farm, Sinner, Man With A Plan, Amplified Messiah, Speculator (!)

In Honor of My Birthday

Jerry Seinfeld, SeinLanguage:

"I am getting a little tired of pretending I'm excited every time it's somebody's birthday. I mean really, at this point, what is the big deal? How many times do we have to celebrate that someone was born? Every year, every person, over and over? All you did was not die for twelve months. This is the big accomplishment?"

This may be the only thing I ever support from this administration.

The gleeful muckraking that left-wingers (led by TIME) over possible connections between Abramoff and Bush is irritating. Frankly, it reminds me why I really hate both sides, just Democrats less so than Republicans. Everyone's getting in a lather over whether Bush had his photo taken with Abramoff. I don't even care if Bush was lobbied by the asshole: it's still a non-story and the White House is right to treat it as such. Even if Abramoff is as guilty as he appears to be, I don't think you can fault the President for having contact with him, unless you can prove that he was known to be guilty at the time. It doesn't even matter to me whether Abramoff embezzled millions from his clients, so long as he goes to jail for it. The problem here isn't one crooked lobbyist and whether he had ties to the administration or not; the problem isn't even the thousands of other lobbyist who are perhaps !% less slimy that this particular asshole; the problem is the power wielded by the industries paying the lobbyist. Fuck Bush. Fuck Abramoff. Fix the system. How? Well, that'll have to be a post for another day (don't hold your breath). Note: I find it amusing that for the most part, I still write these posts as though I'm addressing an audience. But in reality, I'm pretty sure about 1 1/2 people ever check this page. Silly Rabbit. ----- Listening to: my noisy library

9/10 Dentists agree: Bush is bad for your teeth

While writing the previous post I went googling for Presidents poor enough to rank with W. and I found this great article—Historians vs. George W. Bush. My favorite part:

“Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”

There's an old Mel Brooks line: "Tragedy is when I cut a finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole cover and die." Here's mine: "Comedy is a President so awful, Nixon doesn't seem so bad. Tragedy is it happening in my lifetime."

Hubris

Note: I'm playing with the style of my post a bit here as an experiment. If you like it, great, if not, leave a comment. One talking point that keeps cropping up from Republicans defending Bush's continuing abuses of power: we're at war the Commander in Chief has a responsibility to protect us, extreme measures are necessary in warfare, etc., ad infinitum. Bullshit. We are at war, in Iraq and Afghanistan (remember me!). What we are not at War with is "Terror," any more than we were or are still at war with "Drugs." The concept is ludicrous. We were attacked on 9/11/2001. Well guess what: we've been attacked by terrorists before; (whatever the Bush apologists might like to think) we will be attacked again. Creating an ephemeral "War on Terror" only obfuscates the reality of the situation. Other countries cope with attacks, take steps to limit their exposure, and try to restore normality. Our own country has managed to do the same in the past after plane hijackings, the Unabomber, or the Oklahoma City bombing. In contrast, it's absolutely typical of the current administration to exaggerate the threat of things we fear to catastrophic levels. Bush and Co.'s MO is to use fear as a weapon to terrorize the (disturbing gullible) public and solidify their power. In doing so, they move the country further and further from the true democracy of my ideals. The threat of Terrorism is never going to go away. Even when our great-grandchildren have force fields (and, one would hope, jetpacks) our enemies will find ways to terrorize us (an IPod melting virus?). It is essential that we don't compromise our morals or legal system over an endless conflict: that way lies 1984, Brazil, and a host of other works. Good fiction...Bad reality. The latest travesty to draw my ire and provoke this post is the President admitting he broke the law in authorizing wiretaps and other invasions of privacy without warrants and refusing to stop doing so. Pure hubris. It may be that these wiretaps were essential to national security or that they provided necessary intelligence; I hope so. Regardless of their effectiveness, they reflect the President's belief that he is above the law. It's Clinton's "Executive Privilege" writ a hundred times worse. It's not the specific act that bothers me so—it's the principle that an impeachable offense is supposedly rendered palatable, even honorable, for a Wartime President. Here's a quote from an email from Dr. Rusty Shackleford ("The Jawa Report") to August J. Pollack, reprinted on xoverboard.com:

I would simply point out that historically President's have done far more during war time than Bush. For instance, FDR ordered censorship of all media during the war. Was that impeachable? Lincoln ordered prominent Northern Peace Democrats to be jailed. Did he violate his oath of office. Wilson ordered the jailing of antiwar protesters during WWI. Did that make him Hitlerian?

This upsets me on so many levels. First, we're elevating Bush to the ranks of FDR and Lincoln now? I would've thought climbing above the Nixon/Hoover/Coolidge strata would have been a prerequisite. (Then again, this is a man who went from AWOL to Harvard Business School and from losing a congressional race to Governor. He rebounds better than Rodman.) Second, these examples of censorship and illegal search and seizure are favorable comparisons for Bush's actions? On what planet? You can admire FDR and Lincoln without accepting that their misuses of executive power were also praiseworthy. The President's always lived in a fantasy world—Katrina was hard proof of that—but now he's apparently cast himself as (WARNING: pop culture reference) Jack Bauer, torturing villains and smashing terrorist plots. But I don't need to tell you that the real G.W. is no hero. ----- Listening to: Brock Butler - Suburban Speedball (2006-01-06) and it's a damn good thing too. Without Brock's soothing tones this post would be much less civil.

I Evoke Brow XII: The Vorpal Blade

Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) A man and woman skate through the frozen canals of a northern European city:

"The Comte d'Avaux moved through the Hague's canal-network in the gait of a man walking across red-hot coals, but some innate aplomb kept him from falling down even once. "Would you like to go home now, monsieur?" "Oh no, mademoiselle--I am enjoying myself," he returned, biting off the syllables one by one, like a crocodile working its way up an oar.""

Lately I've been putting little post-it notes next to lines I particularly enjoy in books I'm reading so I can come back later and record them here. This is the only line I flagged in this 1000 or so page novel; the only one that I thought was particularly clever (and could stand on it's own, without much context, a prerequisite for me). But, lest you think I didn't enjoy this book, the problem wasn't a lack of good writing: what I needed was a huge post-it to cover the entire text. This book succeeds on every level; engrossing is far too pale a description for the incredibly variety and eloquence of the techniques Stephenson uses to immerse you in the 17th century. The story is at times bizarre, funny, thrilling, titillating, amusing, educational, and always interesting. Stephenson's books are in that elite group that keep me up reading into the wee hours of the morning. This was one that I—almost literally—couldn't put down (putting those em-dashes to good use!) I knocked it out in about a week or so. It was rarely more than ten feet away from me: I took to work, to the bathroom, read it at breakfast. By the end I was utterly sleep deprived. I had to force myself not to immediately jump into the next volume (which I unfortunately read first)—I needed the rest. 10/10 ----- Listening to: Estimated>Eyes>(an excellent) Throwing Stones>GDTRFB gd1983-09-02

Because I won't remember this:

From a brief article on typography:

Hyphens are the most bastardized character in design. The shortest of the group—hyphens—are for hyphenating compound words or words over line breaks. It’s slightly bigger brother, the en-dash, is used to describe a range, as in “1865–1904.” The em-dash rings in as the heavyweight champ of the three and is used as a graceful pause or interjection in a sentence. And do remember the golden rule: two hyphens don’t make an em-dash. En-dash: Mac (opt+hyphen), Windows (alt+0150), HTML (–) Em-dash: Mac (opt+shift+yphen), Windows (alt+0151), HTML (—)

Good to know. ----- Listening to: Franklin's Tower gd1983-09-02

Quote of the Day

Something has been bugging me lately: why do quotes always appear with the author following the quote? I often find myself skipping to the end of a quote to find the author before I read the quote itself. Many times, quotes don't even make sense without knowing the author, yet they still are formatted this standard way. Some quotes work fine with the standard format, when the author isn't essential to give the quote context. Some are even enhanced by this layout, when discovering the author gives the reader a little "aha!" moment. Here's an example:

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. --Benjamin Franklin

This one works fine with the standard format: the quote makes sense before you know who the author is, and discovering that one of the Forefathers is responsible for this extremely leftist statement (given the current political landscape), delivers further weight. But look at this example, from Baseball Prospectus:

"It might have been turned on really loud.... Sometimes the speakers will blow if it's turned up really loud. That has happened, especially if it wasn't, like, Sony. Some of the electronics out there nowadays can't handle the decibels a lot of times." --Ryan Dempster, Cubs pitcher, on an incident which involved Sammy Sosa's stereo being mysteriously destroyed last fall (Daily Southtown)

I think quotes like this should start with the author (and explanation, if appropriate) and then the quote. So you'd have:

Ryan Dempster, Cubs pitcher, on an incident which involved Sammy Sosa's stereo being mysteriously destroyed last fall (Daily Southtown): "It might have been turned on really loud.... Sometimes the speakers will blow if it's turned up really loud. That has happened, especially if it wasn't, like, Sony. Some of the electronics out there nowadays can't handle the decibels a lot of times."

Ahhhhh. Sure, it's a niggling point, but I keep butting my head up against quotes like these and I'm sick of it.

Things I Hate

Over on T.I.P. Thom asked everyone what they hate. I thought I should archive my response for future genuflection: I hate... people who proselytize people who don't know how to care for and control their dogs PDA Cold rain (when it could be snow if it was 2 degrees colder) Waking up when it's still dark ignorance factory farms 90% of what's on tv and 99.9% of what's on the radio seafood (though suddenly I like shrimp) people who wear sandals and a t-shirt in January Tech Bitches Fox News Extremists of any sort, but particulary right-wingers talkers at movies cell phones at the library colin quinn jimmy fallon shots Urban sprawl in general and the city of Atlanta in particular Country music censorship America (only sometimes) The South (almost all the time) racists little dogs fluffy cats reality shows The Red Sox, Braves, Mets, Orioles, Devils, Islanders, Nets, Redskins, and Cowboys Frat Boys skim milk

Portfolio - Liquid Sculpture

Stunning photography. Consider all these "on my wishlist." Michael Waugh- Liquid Sculpture

The Sect of Homokaasu - GasGames

Instantly addictive. I'd love to see the same sort of thing as a screensaver, just balls gravitating on each other--that sounds kinda dirty, though. The Sect of Homokaasu - GasGames

Buddy Icons with Custom Text

Useful AND free? Get out of here... http://www.buddyiconbuilder.com/

I Evoke Brow XI: "No more time to tell how"

Mind Game by the staff of Baseball Prospectus Surprisingly disappointing. I've been dying to read this book for months and I was sadly let down. Not that's it's not informative and, at times, interesting. It's just that there's not much new for devotee's of the BP website. This book would have been a revelation to me a few years ago--now, I'm apparently no longer the target audience. And while I love the authors work on the website, their prose is not in the same league as the classic Bill James books that set the bar for this sort of publication. Even when James discusses research that has been since surpassed or even refuted, he writes with wit and charm. Jim Baker, a Jamesian apostle, at times brings something to the table, but on the whole Mind Game is rather dull if you already know sabermetrics. My rating: 3/10 For the average baseball fan: 8/10

Disheartening

I haven't posted anything in a while, and I haven't posted any political comment in a long while, but I can't let this on slip by. Is there any measure by which the Republican leadership does not suck ass? Apparently the economy is doing ok. And my tax return is going to be $30 or so larger than it might have been. And that's all that really matters, right? Fuckers. http://thismodernworld.com/2594