Posting from email

So now I have to choose another book to read. Something by Hunter S. Thompson perhaps? I also have Albert Camus on my list.

Those of you who are perusing by, take a moment to let me know what good books you've sunk your teeth into lately.

Branchin out into Moviz

Well since Lolita has no more words for me, I was relegated to reading the free rag on the metro, what a huge Super Coup!

I just got my coupons for the redbox DVD rental machine at our local Giant. I think it's a great idea, and huge cost saver, with the poential to compete with Blockbuster in a big way. I wonder if they're publicly traded. For one thing, I know everyone who got Netflix stock back in the day are pleased.

Since I don't have a reading book, I'll add some words about movies. I love movies, not in the sense that I love the actual movies themselves, but movies, as a library-whole. Trailer just watched: Smokin' Aces. I don't know if it's supposed to be a more is better take on Lock Stock and two Smokin' Barrels, or even Snatch, clearly of the same genre, but MORE! Let's have a whole heap of misfits and throw them together, 5 original jokes for each type, which only they could pull off, a total of 25 jokes, at 100 million per joke, that should bring in the profits nicely.

1 week 1 Lolita

Sadly, I've finished Lolita, and said goodbye to old Humbert Humbert. Through the whole book I had a hard time putting a movie-star face and physique to him. He seemed more like Adam Krug, probably because I only read Bend Sinister a few months ago. What reinforced my difficulty was the fact that he was European. I really enjoyed the author's afterward, in which he addresses his critics. How human. My favorite part, and this to me felt as good as petting a kitten or a baby rabbit, was this:


___Lest the little statement I am making here seem an airing of grudges I must hastedn to add that besides the lambs who read the typescript of Lolita or its Olympia Press edition in a spirit of 'Why did he have to write it?' or 'Why should I read about maniacs?' there have been a number of wise, sensitive, and staunch people who understood my book much better than I can explain its mechanism here.
___Every serious write, I dare say, is aware of this or that published book of his as of a constant comforting presence. Its pilot light is steadily burning somewhere in the basement and a mere touch applied to one's private thermostat instantly results in a quiet little explosion of familiar warmth. This presence, this glow of the book in an ever accessible remoteness is a most companionable feeling, and the better the book has conformed to its prefigured contour and color the ampler and smoother it glows. But even so, there are certain points, byroads, favorite hollows that one evokes more eagerly and enjoys more tenderly than the rest of one's book.

How soothing to read a justification for writing expressed this way. I admit I find it strange to be referring to myself as soothed by the words, but I don't have a better way of putting it at the moment. I don't want to say heart-strings, because it's not really the case. It's more like coming out of a cold building and feeling the warm sun on my skin.

I can't get my blog composer to put in spaces or tab ahead of the beginning of the paragraphs of my quoted text. If you happen to wander by, and know the answer I'd appreciate your input.

No Reading

Yesterday my wife picked up Lolita, and I'm glad. However, I drove to work today, my morning meeting was somewhere else and no metro to get there. I haven't had a chance to read the book, needless to say.

I do want to make a comment about the book I'm reading though. I realized why Manhunt is increasingly annoying to me as I get into it more. After reading Greelanders, I came to enjoy the straightforward narrative style and the minimum fluff that comes from having a story to tell. In Manhunt, the story would be over all too quickly, and the book much too thin to give the author a good return on investment. So I have this book, full of conjecture (he must have seen; he was disappointed to know), unnecessary detail (he heard the floorboards creak above his head as he went under the stage), the small bits of action only barely balances the tedium.

While writing my entry I had a thought about the assassination attempt on secretary Seward, and it took me to wikipedia. I just read all the pertinent facts about the assassination, the people involved, the hanging of the accomplices, and even one theory that Booth escaped and a double was killed instead. I think I'll be able to return Manhunt with no guilt.

Gallaudet protest

Well, now for a little info about myself, I am partially deaf, and I have other people in my family who are deaf. We know people at Gallaudet University, and hope the situation there concludes in the best way possible.

At this point, what is best? History has clearly been made, and people will noise about this for decades to come. The protest is real, the division is real, and there is bad feeling that the current university president will never shake from here on out. Will Fernandes resign, or will she stay? If she resigns, she looks as though she really would have done a bad job, and her future prospects are poor, since other employers would probably have concerns about her viability in terms of support from co-workers and students. If she stays in office, she might crib from any other leader who's been the victim (yes victim) of public protest and attempted coup. She will simply shore up her defenses, engage her supporters and plow on with a focus on the school and a positive outlook, and let her results speak for themselves.

What really bothers me is that I haven't heard anything hard against Fernandes except "we don't like her personality" or "she rubs me the wrong way," "she alienates people." Seriously folks, does that mean she won't be able to do her job? But she was hand picked by Jordan! So that makes her incompetent? Did she destroy some critical program with her blundering ways? Did she eliminate critical people and cripple the education system? How exactly is she going to make life hell for the students at Gallaudet, other than simply existing as a person hated by some handful? In my opinion, many of the protesters are parroting back what some central brain trust is feeding them in terms of WHY WE ARE HERE and WHAT WE WANT. Do any of those students really think they're up against the end of their school as we know it today? I think it's more the thrill of being part of it, and skipping classes, yay!

Related articles... Well actually just a bunch of links on the topic:
http://news.gufssa.com/category/press-releases/
http://news.gufssa.com/2006/10/13/arrests-ordered-by-dr-i-king-jordan/
http://www.ridorlive.com/
http://kansas4fssa.blogspot.com

Manhunt

My next book, now that I've finished Grendel, is Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson.

Last night I got to the library just as it was closing. I wasn't even planning on going in, we were returning The Magnificent Seven, with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and some other good guys, one bad guy and his gang, and a bunch of farmers. I dropped the video outside, but then realized I only had 5 pages left in Grendel, and would be destitute of reading material for the trip down and back today. Heaven forbid I should actually get work done on the commute, like I keep telling myself I should. The good thing was, I had my laptop, so I could work if I wanted. At any rate, the library was open, so I rushed inside, trying not to look too wild. I first checked the reserved shelves, to see whether Lolita was there, but still nothing. I looked for recommended books, and most of them were popular writers, or scary books for Halloween. I found this one, it looked half interesting, and was something I'd not really read about or thought about before. And non-fiction would probably be a good break from all the casting of spells and devils and monsters of my last two books.

So far it's pretty blah but readable. I think the author clearly took the time to get quotes, limit the text to facts, and put sufficient bridge sentences to explain the series of events. I guess coming off of something juicy and philosophical like Grendel makes Manhunt seem dry. Then again, there's the exciting cover of a drawing which shows Booth shooting his single shot pistol into Lincoln's head, and in the other hand holding a knife in case the shot went awry, so it's not all bad. I just look at the cover and remind myself this is an exciting book.

More Grendely goodness

Grendel is now fully enmired by the dragon's influence, and has killed quite a few of our poor thanes over the course of years. I find it interesting, and, well, disappointed, but not bothered by the fact that I can sense the author at his late night lamp inserting his thoughts via Grendel's observations of others. I sense him asking himself, "I want to throw this in... how might I best tie it to the times?" Poor buffeted Grendel is a lovable character in his battered and confused state, in spite of the evil he does to the poor small hairless humans to whom the earth has been given.

I like how the author inserts time, silence, and waiting into his descriptions of events. It's a good device for invoking introspection on the part of the characters, and at the same time thought on the part of the reader. The mind is an interesting tool, it has time, in the space between one sentence and the next, to re-create, then observe and think on the scene the words have just dictated to it. Occasionally though, my mind needs more time than that small space, and I look around the train car, at the people travelling with me.

Strippers

I just wasted maybe 15 minutes reading up on the Duke lacrosse team case, in which a stripper accused three members of raping her back in April. It was a RSS on gmail, the ones that scroll across the top, and it said something about DNA testing didn't clear the lacrosse team members. What's up with that? I think I have heard that DNA isn't 100% conclusive, but it should be a strong factor against the accuser. I also read up some more about the case and the people involved. This being the internet, I wondered if her name had been leaked, and it had, and There was a page on dilby.com with a whole bunch of information that really makes her look bad. The prosecutor hasn't dropped the case though, so there must be something under the surface that's going to come out after this is all over. The question in my mind is, who really wins after this is all over? The lawyers, pretty much.

Note to self: I'm so glad I have my own personal escort for life, of my choosing, who is my equal and partner in every way. Escort doesn't really sound right... (thumbing through the internet) she's more of a consort in this sense and in this sense. She is my queen.

Today's excerpt

Now I have left the fair land of greenies, their fjords and such, and find my nose in my next book, which lay fallow till now.

Grendel by John Gardner. I mentioned it earlier as being by Somebody Else, but no harm done, right?

This is the Beowulf story, from the monster Grendel's perspective. What an enjoyable read. This line gave me a chuckle:
Now and then some trivial argument would break out, and one of them would kill another one, and all the others would detach themselves from the killer as neatly as blood clotting, and they'd consider the case and they'd either excuse him, for some reason, or else send him out to the forest to live by stealing from their outlying pens like a wounded fox. At times I would try to befriend the exile, at other times I would try to ignore him, but they were treacherous. In the end, I had to eat them.
Ok so it was several lines.

Nothing much else for today. I had some interesting thoughts about men and women, and the answer to it all, but it's gone from me now.

Cocaine can

I've found I like to keep a dimple in the side of my coke can, no bigger than a dime, which fits my thumb knuckle. In this way I faciliate the raising of it to my lips for a sip. It's actually diet coke, the silver can with red, white, and silver logo.

On my way in I wandered onto the fact that Coke is so common in usage, as a word and as a drink, that most folks don't ever connect Coke the brand to cocaine, the illegal substance which gives its name, harking back to a time when this stuff was new and unregulated. Then in another instance of random connectedness, I had to laugh at this on best-of craigslist.

Thoughts prompted by morning's reading

Reading more about our Greenlanders hasn't gone as rosily as expected, and Gunnar's son has been burned at the stake for sleeping with an Icelandic woman. As it says in the book, 'The punishment had fit the crime fantastically, like a huge man's robe on a tiny child.'

I started thinking a little, and came up with another of my short sayings, or proverbs. I thought about a society... actually I think my mind had wandered to voting, and I briefly remembered a blog post where the author said he didn't vote, because he didn't know enough. I thought to myself, that's part of the same reason I don't vote, the other and slightly greater part being the fact that the person before me on the paper is only there because of funding, either his/her own deep pockets or the deep pockets of someone, that someone not being struggling middle class peons.

That led me to think of the community level politics, and there I take the tack that if I lived with the right people, they would be voting as I would, and the folks in office would do the job as though I had voted for them.

I thought to myself, I'd be willing to move if the community started burning the wrong people at the stake (to relate this all back to what I was reading), but I know in my heart that sometimes I'm braver in thought than I am in action, especially as I get older. In my mind, as I moved from place to place, bumped because the community was either too liberal, or too supersitious, I ached for a place where I would have no complaints, where evil was identified correctly, and the solution identified correctly. I think I've forgotten my proverb, but it ran something like this:

"Most communities are either too liberal or too superstitious."

I then thought about the two words, liberal and superstitious, and wondered whether they were the right words. Some people are superstitious in their defense of the liberal point of view, and some people are liberal in their defense of their superstitious point of view. By superstitious I would encompass conservative, religious, just-because, and close-minded people. With the word liberal, I mean all those people who are less superstitious than I am.

Towards the end

The Greenlanders were due back to the library, but thanks to Mr. Renewal and his good pal Mr. Online, I now have till 10/30 to finish the book and return Gunnar, Margaret, and all their pals.

Things are looking much better for the scroungy band, the great hunger that lasted several winters is now 8 years ago, and farms are beginning to prosper. Not only that but the book-long fued between Asgeir's family and Ketil's family is stitched up some by marriage between Asgeir's granddaughter (granddottir) and Ketil's last surviving son.

One of my favorite things about the book is all the talk of luck, signs, omens, and things of ill or good portent. We, civilized beings that we are, don't think in such terms any more, or at least, any more than the stifled impulse will allow. I like the conversations between the characters, and the examples of their reasoning. For example:

... . And after he left, a surprising thing happened, and that was that Jon Andres Erlendsson appeared at Gunnar's booth with some men that he knew, all proserous farmers from Vatna Hverfi district, and he asked for Helga Gunnarsdottir in marriage.
Now Gunnar invited the men inside his booth and asked them ot sit down, and the mne, who numbered seven, with Jon Andres, were all men Gunnar had known in Vatna Hverfi district, or else the sons of these men. They were men whose envy of Asgeir had turned into pleasure at the trick that had done Gunnar out of his steading, or so it seemed to Gunnar. Although they sat about smiling, as folk do when there is talk of marriage, their smiles seemed evil and false to Gunnar, and aroused in him a painful sense of shame that he had not especially felt since his removal to Hvalsey Fjord. These were men who had amused themselves by repeating the verses of Ketil the Unlucky against Margret Asgeirsdottir, who had clung tight to Erlend Ketilsson in every case against Gunnary, who had gossiped about the Gunnars Stead folk whenever they could. Now one of them said to Gunnar, "My friend, it is not usual for a man to remain silent when the master of such a steading as Ketils Stead, and all the steadings that go together with it, makes such a proposal."
Gunnar said, "Indeed, I must hold on to my thoughts if I am to make something of them. I had no notion of this."
"But the maiden is well past the ideal marriage age. How many different thoughts can there be of such a case?"
Now Jon Andres Erlendsson said, "A man must come to a reply in his own way, and it seems to me wise to let him do so, rather than to distract him and tempt his annoyance." And so everyone sat about for a little while longer. Gunnar looked at the fellow, and he saw that he had not lost this quality that he had had earlier, when defending himself in the action of Kollgrim's dunking, a quality of smoothness and a charm that had to be likened to something bright--a fire, or a star. If Helga's gaze were to reveal something unsightly about him, Gunnar could not imagine what it would be. And his friends looked to him in all things, it was easy to se that. Gunnary looked away from him, and reminded himself o fthe injuries done to him and his father by this man and Erlend, and even Ketil, if old stories were to be believed. Jon Andres said, "Old man, you are scowling, and thinking of what has gone before, but it seems to me that these things may be laid to rest now, for I am heartily sorry for my father's sins and my own." The other men nodded and smiled in aproval at this speech.
"Nay," said Gunnar, "I am thinking of what is to come, for business remains unfinished that endangers many folk, and it seems to me a sign of unwisdom to let it linger."

Gunnar is talking about Jon Andres' former friend Olfeig who is a menace to all the farmers in that area. Interesting to note too are the comments at the end of incidents and conversations such as this one, which tell us what people thought of events. In this case 'people' thought that Gunnar was foolish to turn Jon Andres down, and reminded themselves that not for nothing he was considered unlucky.

My picture

This is me
Apparently the way I get a picture on my profile is to put on in a post and then find it later.

On Introductions

I am thinking of giving The Greenlanders to my brother, and I pictured in my mind, his reading of it. I felt a tick of anxiety over his formative moments with the book, which brough my mind to my own formative moments with the book.

Beginnings, in writing, to me, are so important. I hate waiting for a book to pick up, and it must be ego, but I look for the author grasping for the loose folds of my shirt, trying to draw me behind the curtain into the world of the book.

My book will grab people with a long ramble. Anyone who has no patience for my rambling wouldn't enjoy my writing anyway. However much I break my sentences into bite sized bits of steak, the whole could not be anything but a ramble.

The times when I cannot write an email, a letter, a journal entry, or any bit of writing to others of more than two sentences, my struggle becomes which of the 360 degrees of life forms my starting point, but once I have the seed, that seed punctures the skin of thought and the words usually flow outward.

On the topic of beginnings, I love this quote from Orson Welles, "whether you have a happy or sad ending depends upon where you stop the story." I would say the same is true of beginnings; where in the story shall the author start?

And in dancing, the start of the dance must be sure, and confident, or the girl does not recover her trust, and I dance more jovially to make the rift less painful. (thinking more) a confident dancer isn't necessarily undone, however, there are chances to start fresh even within a song, it's possible to hang time and then start into the rhythm again.

Less and less

The Greenlanders are now facing lots of misfortune. People have died of sickness and starvation, and there are fewer cows, and not much forage for the sheep and goats. The hunting isn't going well, the wild animals have less to eat and are less plentiful, and there are fewer men to go out and hunt. At this point, I wonder how long the downward slide will continue. I imagine that the end of the book will be, "they all sailed away back to Norway or Iceland and gave it up."

Storytelling

As a testament to Jane Smiley's writing, and the tales in The Greenlanders, yesterday I told my wife about Margaret and Asta, who lived apart from everyone during the summer and had to stay with another family and help out during the winter. We were doing some finishing touches on the 2nd bedroom.

Regarding painting, I'll remember from now on not to use grey primer where I plan to put white paint. The worst of it was I had some white primer I could have used. The grey primer suited the walls fine, which were to recieve a dark periwinkle, but the same grey primer was also put onto the borders around the doors and on the baseboard. 3 coats of paint to cover that grey primer with the white, and in some places I'm not entirely sure it's covered. I'll leave it to the wife to decide.

Grendel and Greenlanders

I now, in addition to Greenlanders, have Grendel from the library. I even started the first 10 pages of Grendel, written by Something Adams. I haven't finished Greenlanders, but at least I'm halfway there, does that count?

One thing I love about Greenlanders is the stories are easy to remember and I could tell them to my children. On second thought, just because they're easy to remember doesn't mean they'll necessarily come to mind and intact. I think I should be caveating easy to remember with the following: for at least an hour.

On writers:
One writer I have consisently enjoyed is Nick Nunziata's writing on chud.com, I happened over there randomly, back when it only had a handful of DVD reviews, most of which were written by him. The Matrix II review stands out in my mind, probably because my bookmark was set there, before I updated and simply put chud.com.

How many other people bookmark a site in a random spot but really only want the main page. my toothpastefordinner bookmark always goes back to the hampster with the incredibly fast heartrate. I kinda wish I'd never seen a picture of the creater of that comic, he looks friendly enough, but now I can't read the poorly drawn napkin comics withouth thinking of his wookie-like features.