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Saturday, May 11th, 2013
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9:58 am - Why H.R. 1406 is Bullshit
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http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr1406/text
I railed about the GOP being assholes for the party line passage of this earlier this morning on the bookface, but that's a shit venue for a dissection of why.
On the face of it, it's rankly pro-business and anti-worker, which is hardly a fucking surprise. But if you peel it back a layer, it's actively stupid and hurts the economy by taking money out of hourly employee's pockets.
The number one driver of economic growth and activity is consumer spending. Not business pending. Consumers. And people who make an hourly wage (as opposed to salaried executives or investors) spend a much greater percentage of their income... which means that for every dollar they take home, that's almost certainly another dollar that's going to be spent (or pay down accrued debts, or otherwise be circulated, and not end up just stuck into an interest-bearing account).
So, please, authors, sponsors, and supporters of HR1406, explain to me how this bill helps workers or the economy without using the term "job providers" or any other cipher meaning "more money goes to the business owners and stockholders, and less goes to the people who actually do the fucking work."
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
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3:32 pm - Dead in a hole
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This is something I already do, for the same reasons the author discusses:
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/improve_your_pull_instantly
Typically, I'll use a snatch grip up to 315 rather than get on risers, because, frankly, standing barefoot on cement pavers (stacked one or two high, to give a 1.75 or 3.5 inch deficit) is way less comfortable than having my feet on the rubber mats on my floor.
I haven't tried this approach explicitly with my trap bar, because I'm still using that with the 4" riser handles after doing heavy conventional pulls, so, effectively, I've already been pulling from more depth during my "warmups"... but I'd like to get to the point of being able to pull the same weights from the straight portion of that bar, if not from a true deficit, that I can currently handle.
Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to it, having given my shoulder another week off, a brutal massage on Sunday, and a sneeze-while-moving-just-so realignment event. Because, while it's nice to slack off, it's not me.
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, May 6th, 2013
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11:42 am - Picking nits
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6:44 am - Okay then
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| Saturday, May 4th, 2013
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11:37 am - Nice aim.
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So, yeah, the folks operating the heavy equipment to dig up and replace the sewer line in the alley alongside my house managed to cut my Verizon drop yesterday. Fortunately, the tech who was coming out this morning to relocate my cable and internet jacks was able to replace it, and has laid out a dozen "hey, don't do that again, dipshits" flags along the current line, which will be buried Monday or Tuesday.
I'll be sending a LOOK BEFORE YOU DIG, GENIUSES note to the city, because, really, the hole they dug is nowhere near my yard, so it had to have been someone fucking around in order to sever the line.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
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7:43 pm - And there was much rejoicing
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Big day yesterday:
Death Rejoices, the second book in AJ Aalto's Marnie Baranuik Files series (Amazon links: author & title), for which I did the editing, came out yesterday.
Obviously, I'm not remotely objective[1], though my review isn't some kind of hagiographic fawn-fest. :-)
It's cute, it's fun, it's gory, it's flirty, it's silly. There are high points and slow spots, but hopefully no gaping potholes. There's a fantastically hot sex scene and a couple of zombie labradoodles.
[1] For those who didn't click through to the amazon page for the book:
You think you know the paranormal romance genre, and then you run into this book. Part splatterpunk, part mystery, part farce, and entirely entertaining, it's got something for everyone - witty banter, sexual tension, creative vulgarity, and more clever characterization than three shelves of bodice-rippers put together.
If you're looking for Anita Blake, she's one aisle over towards knows-her-shit; if you want Sookie Stackhouse, she's hiding behind that hedge of helplessness, and if you want Anne Rice's vampires, they're either being outclassed by a guy who remembers Elizabeth the First but drives a Ferrari, or staked by the guy who's got Marnie's panties in a perpetually frustrated twist.
People who shouldn't buy this book include:
- You are averse to creative coprolalia
- You are afraid of spiders (or, at least, giant, head-leaping spiders)
- You feel sympathy for zombies
- You are uncomfortable being licked by Ogres
- You have had a fuzzy slipper sexually violated by a small rodent
People who _should_ buy this book:
- If all of the above sounds awesome
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
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9:26 am - Mansplaining
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Every so often, I tell the people who call me for help that I have no fucking idea how to fix their problem. I don't typically use that terminology, since it's frowned upon, but the sentiment is there.
"However, because I sound like I know what I'm talking about, that's all you're really after."
"It is?"
"Yep. Reassurance that it's in good hands. Even though it totally isn't in any hands right now."
"Ummmm..."
"So I am going to throw this at somebody else who can actually do something about it."
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 28th, 2013
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5:53 pm - Unimpressed
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... with altogether too many things.
Work... well.
Tweet: 1123 | 373 | 660. My surprised face is in the shop.
My lifting for the last week and a half has sucked. Rest hasn't helped. Wind sprints haven't helped. Walking hasn't helped. (Eating like a normal person at the lovely belated wedding reception for friends last night didn't help, but, you know what, having a goddamned sandwich isn't the end of the world).
Tweet: "Recalcitrant Meat" is not, but should be, the title of my upcoming personal training memoir.
The meaningful shit with which I am frustrated thus enumerated, I now feel justified in going off on Stephen goddamned Moffat for sucking as a feminist, writer, and human being. I don't have the accumulated inertial nerd-rage of longtime fandom behind me, as many Whovians do, but I do have a functioning social conscience, and... dude, step away from the keyboard, and the show, before you fuck up any more.
Tweet: JESUS CHRIST IT'S A MOFFAT GET IN THE REFRIGERATOR
There are many and varied and valid criticisms of Moffat as a handwavium generator and misogynist dipshit, and it doesn't take much searching to find both academic and vitriolic criticism of his failings on both fronts, from his repeated stripping of agency to his weird fixation on The Doctor meeting companions as little girls to his dimunition of women to mere partners and birthing engines... dude, seriously, just shut the fuck up. You're not as bad as Joss Whedon, but you're approaching that same orbital zone.
In the most recent episode, "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" (s7e10 / s7.2e5 / 236, depending on how one reckons these things), there's an opportunity for an easy dismissal of a line that, upon its utterance, is misogynist on its face.
"You wouldn't understand," The Doctor says.
"It's because I'm a woman, isn't it?" Clara asks.
"Oh, no," he says.... and then gives both Clara and the viewers a look that very obviously means, "Yes, of course it is" ... when any sentient, sensitive, and mildly-informed viewer would practically be falling over themselves for the expected follow-on, "It's because you're human. Your little monkey brains... let's just file this under 'wibbly-wobbly,' eh?"
Making The Doctor a species-ist, a slightly condescending misanthrope towards our entire race, is an established part of the characterization, and is *less* offensive than actively crafting a No Doubt flavored "Just A Girl" dismissal. Though Moffat didn't write or direct the episode (Stephen Thompson and Mat King, respectively), he was the executive producer, and his input and oversight lay the blame for this at least partially on his doorstep.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, April 19th, 2013
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11:15 am - The cost
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A friend ruminated Twitterwise about the wildly disparate social attention being paid two of the big news items this week: the Marathon bombing, and the explosion of a chemical plant in Texas (we won't get into the hushed, bipartisan passage of CISPA or the relaxing of transparency for congressional stock trades, because fuck those people).
We know the name(s) of at least one of the Chechen bomb suspects, but has anyone heard the name of the company that owns the chemical plant that killed ten times as many people? It was notably absent from the coverage I caught on my morning commute (NPR's Morning Edition, 715-745 EDT)
I have a theory. It comes back around to privilege, because of course it fucking does.
When the cause of a dramatic negative event is an individual or relatively powerless group, it is easy to vilify and persecute them and run them to ground.
When the cause is evidence that industry deregulation compounded by cavalier disregard for safety inspections, as seems to be the case with the plant explosions, nobody, especially proponents of the "free market" want to hear word one about it, and the myth of the "liberal media" is complicit in allowing this narrative to go unreported and unchallenged.
This is what freedom from government oversight results in: death and carnage as the byproducts of greed and obeisance to the almighty fucking god of profit at all costs.
THIS IS THE FUCKING COST.
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(15 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, April 18th, 2013
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2:52 pm - Helpful
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| Sunday, April 14th, 2013
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10:33 am - Missing Bears, Lurking Kitten
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Mixed news on the young cat front.
I believe that Panda and Bear are no longer with us, due to the ill-advised "help" of some random woman who saw them wandering near the alley way and took them in to give them milk (they were too young to be able to cope with it). Well-meaning, but stupid, and I haven't seen them in more than a week. I am more than a little bummed out by this turn of events.
That said, my ears did not previously deceive, and there was, in fact, a third kitten from that litter, who, due to her shyness, is still around, and is, for better or worse, taking after her mother in the "I want nothing to do with you, hiss-hiss-hide" attitude department.
Here's Kodiak.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, April 12th, 2013
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8:45 am - NK v 2A
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So, here's a fun way to strip some people's gears:
Ask them their stance on firearms.
Then ask how they feel about North Korea's nuclear aspirations.
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, April 9th, 2013
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6:50 pm - Pimping
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So, yeah, I liked the first book after I ended up bantering with the author... and she retained my services to edit her subsequent efforts. Here is the first fruit of those labors, and I have to say, I enjoyed the fuck out of both the book, and the process. AJ Aalto says I made it more awesome, so who am I to argue with her? (I'm her editor, so of course I am to argue with her... she does my goddamned bidding if she knows what's good for her.)
Don't expect a lot of objectivity out of me, because of course I think it's good, but if you like bawdy, ballsy broads, splatterpunk romantic ridiculousness, or the vampire-boinking love child of Anita Blake and Mister Magoo, you'll enjoy Death Rejoices, now available for pre-order.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C9OF2VW
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 29th, 2013
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5:09 pm - The conservation of felines
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| Monday, March 25th, 2013
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6:04 pm - Have some kitten video
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| Sunday, March 24th, 2013
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12:26 pm - Ridiculous Naming Conventions
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Provisionally naming the kittens, "Bear" and "Panda". If there is a third, it may end up something potentially more ridiculous.
Of course, they responded most strongly to my uninflected "Moo" and "Bark" this morning, so their species identification skills are... unrefined.
They have begun clambering after me when I got up to walk away. They have discovered that the laptop is a source of light, warmth, and motion, and were all up on my keyboard and screen.
In an effort to encourage their human socialization, I put an unwashed t-shirt in a cardboard box with one side torn down, so they'll get used to my smell and whatnot. I manhandled them for a good fifteen minutes or so while CS took a boatload of screenshots like this, most of which are ending up on the bookface.
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(16 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, March 23rd, 2013
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2:52 pm - It's the skull of a dead possum, not a bust of Pallas, and it's under my bathroom, but....
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There was a meeping, as of chickens peeping, peeping by my chamber door.
Three week old kittens, ahoy.
Rufus' most recent litter. Both are female. Neither was impressed by being caught up. I will leave them under the house for another week or so before trying to get them into a box on the porch or basically anywhere easier to get to, and continue to work on their socialization (there may be a third still sequestered in the insulation beneath my old bath tub; I couldn't tell if there was an additional source of vocalizations).
During is a couple weeks from having a litter of her own, so it's about to be kitten-tastic around GMBAN.
current mood:  blah
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(13 comments | comment on this)
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11:20 am - SRS BZNS
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| Friday, March 22nd, 2013
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2:45 pm - Unreasonable
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http://mckitterick.livejournal.com/737403.html
If the DHS wants to see your personal electronic devices within a hundred miles of the border... well, fuck you and your terrorist Fourth Amendment ideas, citizen.
Chris has already done the link-chasing and embedding for your dining and dancing pleasure.
Which is to say, it will do your blood pressure and cortisol levels no good whatsoever.
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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12:28 pm - Shufflin'
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I am not a fan of deadlines, especially arbitrary and urgent ones imposed by others.
This meant I was ... unhappy ... with AJ Aalto when she asked if I could have her entire manuscript edited by... well, suffice it to say, my first text message when she said it was "ha ha ha fuck no."
There were negotiations for something more reasonable, and I delivered it to her last weekend; there have been subsequent bantering revisions based on my LARGE FRIENDLY LETTERS notations, which are comprised of such subtle and nuanced stuff as WHERE IS THE REST OF THIS FUCKING SENTENCE? and WHAT DID THEY NAME THE CAT? and I WILL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP IF YOU DO NOT LOOK AT A GODDAMNED MAP BECAUSE THIS COMMUTE VIOLATES EVERY KNOWN LAW OF GEOGRAPHY.
Editing is glamorous shit, folks, and don't let all those amazing writers littering my friendslist tell you otherwise.
Those of you who have experienced exercise with me, or come to me for advice in that dimension, probably recognize the tender and loving hand present here. Fortunately, this works well for everyone involved, and she has sent me some embarrassingly worshipful notes in response... whether that is sincere appreciation or a finely-honed sense of self-preservation is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-)
Booktrope, her publisher, will be dropping the book into retail channels sometime soonish, at least electronically; I will share specifics once I know them. Death Rejoices is a fun second book in her Marnie Baranuik series (Touched is the first installment, available from booksellers, Amazon, and presumably other places.
If you think that Anita Blake by way of Mister Magoo with a side of splatterpunk and creative vulgarity, sounds like a thing you'd enjoy, I'd recommend it. I am, in fact, already looking forward to the next installment, and not just because I ended up naming the cat.
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(comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 19th, 2013
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1:21 pm - Laurie Penny, superb human being
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10:25 am - Dicks
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For those folks who have mercifully been under a large, comfortable rock, the verdict for the Steubenville rape case was delivered over the weekend, and it was "guilty."
There has been a lot of justified anger over the reportage concerning this, because, with the notable exception of NPR, most major media outlets, and especially CNN, were focusing on the "tragedy" (scare quotes most assuredly intentional) over the consequences for this conviction on the perpetrators.
If you don't understand how or why that is a problem, you are part of the problem.
But, because I provide a blunt force public service, here's how to change that:
Non-consensual behavior is wrong. Don't do it.
If you do it anyways, you deserve to live with the consequences.
Because you're an asshole.
Even if you're a straight male athlete in a town where you're considered a minor deity because you do exciting things with a ball, or wear a badge, or anything else people think makes you special.
It doesn't.
And if you're one of the people so vigorously and viciously defending the perpetrators, because you don't think what they did was wrong, you're part of the problem, because you're saying that the victim is less human, less deserving of being able to live without threat of unwanted action forced upon them by others, than those people who decided to do so. If you're angry at people for reporting the crime or convicting the perpetrators, you're a moral degenerate.
Blaming the victim is never the correct response.
Making the jaywalking argument -- that is to say, "wearing dark clothes and crossing against the light is risky behavior, so that person deserved to get hit by a car" -- actively undermines your point, and reinforces mine, because what you're saying is, "Simply being around people like that is dangerous."
And let's be clear, the "people like that" were a group of the young woman's peers, her so-called friends, all of whom were people who not only didn't lift a finger to help her, or tell her assailants not to do it, but took pictures and video and posted to Twitter while it happened, instead. Let that sink in for a minute: if this had been almost anything but a sexual assault, these people would be considered accessories to the crime. But that's how toxic our culture is right now, that what is arguably one of the worst things a person can do to someone else is treated more trivially than mere theft.
Welcome to rape culture and the prevailing environment of male privilege. It pretty much sucks for everyone, and the people most stridently defending it are the ones the rest of us need to make it suck for the most, because they are the most concentrated form of the problem -- men's rights activists, rape culture apologists, and misogynists and bigots of every stripe.
That's why I am going to complain loud an long about inequality, whether it's based on gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, or what the fuck ever. If you're othering someone based on something they have no control over, you suck.
Don't be a dick.
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 18th, 2013
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9:20 am - Being That Guy
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| Sunday, March 17th, 2013
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9:23 am - Sitto's Meatball Soup
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so, this is my dad's mother's lebanese meatball soup recipe:
1# (450g) lean ground beef
1 egg
1 medium onion, minced
1 tsp dried mint
2 Tbsp fresh or dried parsley
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
salt to taste (~1/4 tsp)
1 L/Qt pureed tomatoes
1/2-3/4 cup rice
2 Tbsp oil
Mix everything except tomatoes, rice, and oil and make 1" (2.5cm) meatballs
Fry meatballs in oil until browned. remove from heat and place in deep cooking pan.
Pour tomato puree into the frying pan (with the meat bits and stuff still in it) and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, to get all the seasoned meat goodness into the tomato sauce and off the pan.[1]
pour tomato mixture over the meatballs.
add enough liquid to bring tht total volume up to ~ 2qt/2L, flavoring with a dash of pepper, allspice, cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp of dried mint (note: i tend to go a lot heavier on the mint, but this is what the recipe calls for; you can doctor it up to taste by the bowl, or modify the recipe afterwards)
bring everything to a full boil and then add the rice. when it reaches boiling again, reduce heat and cook until rice is done (15-20 min).
as with anything with some savory spices in it, it's usually better the second day and beyond, so scaling this up to make a double or triple batch if you have a big enough cook pot is actually an awesome idea. :-)
Serves... some. I have no idea what one serving of soup is by volume.
[1] You fancy cooking types call this "deglazing," but my brain is a douche, so that becomes "declasse," as sung by Prince a'la "purple rain," so fuck that term. just absorb the deliciousness.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, March 16th, 2013
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9:40 am - Playing the money card
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I make no secret that I support my local NPR station, and when there was noise about the federal government cutting funding, I bumped my annual contribution by an order of magnitude, because fuck those guys.
This puts me in the amusing position of occasionally abusing my privilege as a donor for personal reasons. The usual perks are stuff like access to cultural events or social soirees, which I have never taken advantage of. Instead I ask for inexpensive swag - an extra 4oth anniversary travel mug, or, this morning, a set of NPR temporary tattoos.
Because, fuck yeah, I will wear the shit out of those.
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(8 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 14th, 2013
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4:26 pm - Haiku
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New employee has had a couple incredible, brain-cramp issues. I warned them that I would be putting my ticket resolutions for them in the form of haiku.
Document scanning
Can be tricky business;
Hit the "Scan" button.
and
Appointment window
Occupies darkened display.
Please turn power on.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
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6:07 pm - She noticed
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http://etcet.livejournal.com/961855.html
"I like your new decor."
Discussion of things to go above the sink and between the cabinets, about which I am deeply lukewarm:
Pot rack, fine. I use three, maybe four of my pots. They live on the stove because I use them all the fucking time and never have guests.
Hanging a fucking rug-like thing behind it has absolutely no appeal, and if she does it anyway, the goddamned thing is going on the floor or out on the goddamned porch.
Today's dose of this guy is brought to you by our telco guy fucking the dog entirely deploying a software update, resulting in me doing the equivalent of my average teammate's worth of work tickets today (which was about half the team's total output).
Fuck it, it's squat day. Giving blood tomorrow. Missed last donation chance due to creeping crud. This will put me at either three or four gallons, total, since I started donating here in Florida.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
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10:52 am - On freelancing
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I am, occasionally, still a paid freelance journalist and blogger, so when the minor dust-up between Nate Thayer and The Atlantic crossed my twitstream this morning, I used it as a slight sanity break between work items at my day job.
Summary:
- Thayer wrote a piece which The Atlantic wanted to re-use/have summarized by the author
- Thayer points out that doing so for free is not going to work for him
There's nothing wrong with that narrative, and, in fact, that's the way it's supposed to work; getting eyeball exposure is what bloggers do on their own time (witness: this, my wordpress blog, and so on), whether they monetize that via ads or referral links or whatever.
When you're hired to do something, you should get paid for doing it in some kind of real and tangible and, most importantly, valuable manner.
But what blew my mind about this is what Thayer said near the end of the correspondence, that he was previously offered a $125,000 retainer to write six articles. Twenty-one thousand bucks an article is... well, it's quite a bit more than what I'm accustomed to, by about a factor of 100 to 1000. The hundred-dollar figure for the 1200 word summary is a lot more in line with the pay scale I, and the other freelancers I've worked with, usually see.
Assuming that these are weighty, five to ten thousand word explorations, the price per word is still fairly astonishing, and none of the full-time writers I know of command nearly so rubust a sum.
Thayer's summary:
https://natethayer.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-freelance-journalist-2013/
Atlantic's:
http://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=699462885&message_id=2523507&user_id=NJG_Atlan&group_id=0&jobid=13303265
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Thursday, February 28th, 2013
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10:42 am - That word, "Man," you keep using... I do not think it means what you think it means. [Fitness]
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T-nat has been kind of douchetastic lately, but after my boss mentioned repping out on the bench press with 225# reps, here’s one… that scales for bodyweight.
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_mantathlon
I think that, in the interest of letting [coworker] compete on even footing (since pullups are a nil), we could replace the pullups with, say, 1.5x BW deadlifts to make sure that the back and legs are worked… because, look at this meathead author, doing absolutely *no* leg work whatsoever.
Fucking typical, broseph. Fucking. Typical.
Next week is my de-load / take it easy week, so I may throw this in the mix, and maybe re-test Valeria to see how I'm doing on that. I know my pullups have suffered from gaining weight, but the rest... should be interesting.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
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10:53 pm - [Review] Carrion Comfort, Dan Simmons
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I'm going to say this right up front:
Stephen King doesn't know shit about what makes a horror story great. His cover blurb, proclaiming Dan Simmons' sophomore effort, Carrion Comfort, "One of the three greatest horror novels of the 20th century," is frankly and flatly ignorant, in addition to being laughably inaccurate. This wouldn't even be a top-three book in King's own body of work, and nobody's going to mistake the guy for a grandmaster of anything but pulp (and I say this as someone who owns about five linear feet worth of King's books in hardcover and trade paperback; I read just about everything he wrote up through the turn of the century; I may be performing a hatchet job, but it's an informed hatchet job). Guillermo del Toro penned a similarly effusive and purple blurb, presumably in exchange for the other six shots of absinthe he'd been bribed with to write it.
Even the meta for this novel, released as a 20th anniversary special, where Simmons details the novel's journey to publication, is a steaming pile of overwrought hubris. It weighs in at thirty-two pages, most of which is Simmons' assertion that he's smarter than the publishing industry and, specifically, an editor he takes pains not to name, but describes unflatteringly (both physically and intellectually) who, eventually, I came to sympathize with... her eventual assertion that he scrap everything but the title was an opinion I shared about five hundred or so pages in, too.
So, to the text itself. There are, to its credit, very few typographical errors[1], though it's obvious Mr. Simmons (and whomever may or may not have edited this thing) doesn't know the first fucking thing about physics, firearms, sharks, or vampires. He's watched too many episodes of Starsky and Hutch to be able to write a decent action scene (frenetic, disjointed, implausible... it's almost painfully obvious that he wrote this book to end up as a movie, even including a Hollywood producer and a couple sexy starlets who serve almost no purpose but to be sexual objects).
Leaving aside the story's specific shortcomings, there's the small matter of craft, which can be most easily and kindly be summarized by saying that the author bit off way, way more than he could chew. This book wants to be a psychological monster horror story wrapped around some plucky discrimination victims interwoven with a political potboiler. It manages this trick with all the grace and elegance of a truck full of cheap beer going over a guardrail and rolling down an embankment made of lawn jockeys, rejected Tom Clancy novels, and Bram Stoker's spinning corpse.
The villains are supposed to be psychic vampires, and, early on, it's suggested that they draw power, sustenance, and longevity from using their power to compel people in their thrall to commit acts against their will, specifically murder and/or suicide. Unfortunately, the only one who appears to have resisted the ravages of time particularly well takes a mid-caliber bullet to the forehead before the end of the first act, and the author actively ignores the fact that one of the chief antagonists becomes exponentially more powerful, causing a substantial amount of sustenance-providing chaos, while remaining little more than a breathing corpse. Maybe this was Simmons' way of suggesting they don't draw power from exerting power.... or maybe it's just sloppy writing. But if this is the mechanism upon which the entire horror premise is built on, maybe you ought to think it through a little more comprehensively and pay attention to the rules of the world you build. (To this end, I'm currently giving the author of the book I'm editing a ration of shit over the logistics of her characters' commute and how a made-up drug might work with a made-up physiological condition, because they're introduced and need explaining to keep secondary things from unraveling.) When it's something as large and prominent as the mechanism by which your vampires vampire, you might want to not fuck that up or ignore it altogether.
Likewise, there are broad hints that the bad guys are a shadowy, world-controlling behind-the-scenes force, ensconced in the halls of quiet power (because that's never been a cliche).... but without ever actually doing much more than pulling some strings to fatally harass friends and family of the protagonists, and the protags themselves. Illustrative of petty tyrants, or just a cheap swipe at Washington, carried out by someone who thinks that J. Edgar Hoover was actually the most powerful man in the world during his formative years?
The topic of race, in a couple of dimensions, is slathered on this book so heavily that you'd think Al Jolson used it to wipe his face after a show. We have the young black woman whose father is killed teaming up with the Holocaust survivor, teaming up against a bunch of white people; all but two of which are old white guys in suits (one of whom is a former Nazi officer; another is a closeted televangelist); the other two are a young white guy who is a blatant sexual predator and an old white woman who is an overt, old-school Southern racist. Racial tensions were high in the late 70's, and there were plenty of cold war fears to go around, but, really, having the FBI used as puppets to go shooting up the Philadelphia slums, while not a finger is lifted by local police, and the Mossad being white-kinghted to aid the protagonists is laying it on a bit thick. What passes for moral ambiguity is almost immediately undermined by sermonizing on both sides, good and bad.
Simmons admits in the foreword to more or less ripping off the collective gestalt of the child-monster horror trope that was big in theaters during the late 1970's. I'd love to say this is a complex and heady blend of body-snatcher paranoia with notes of victimization (two of the three main protagonists are preyed on ("Used" in the book's parlance) by the bad guys at various times, and the author isn't at all shy about calling it "mindrape" early and often, but that's a lot more credit than is due. This book has pretentions of moral philosophy, but it's flat and preachy and, frankly, Neal Stephenson does "here are several paragraphs of completely irrelevant and sanctimonious shit I think is interesting and am going to force you to read now" better.
There's also the matter of what is simply bad writing. We have a scene where we're told, "Natalie awoke to the sound of an explosion." She spends one sentence disoriented and getting dressed, and two sentences looking for the other people she was sharing accommodations with. She then steps outside to admire how nice and blue the sky and how pleasant the weather is "Natalie went downstairs and out the front door, marveling at the blue sky and warm air" (page 487 in the TPB edition). Then she spends a sentence checking out the landscaping. Then she walks around the yard to see where the noise is coming from. JESUS CHRIST IT'S AN EXPLOSION LET'S CHECK OUT THE SCENERY. This kind of inept action is endemic, even without Checkhov's gun masquerading as a bandolier of C-4.
In the book's favor, it kills off a love interest early and unapologetically, it doesn't flinch about depicting some touchy shit (even ineptly, at least Simmons is trying to make some social commentary), and is blissfully ignorant of the Bechdel test, which it skirts fairly thoroughly (since the aforementioned baddie is a mean old broad, she talks to both of the other main female characters, though they do spend most of this time discussing their plans, which generally revolve around doing harm to various men).
[1] As anyone who lived at the time knows, the personable gentleman who hosted Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom was named Marlin Perkins, not Martin. At the time, fucking this guy's name up would be the contemporary equivalent of saying "Darryl O'Reilly" or "Bob Stewart"; the man was the host of one of the most popular shows on television, and there were a lot fewer fucking channels back then.
Very little of the foregoing has probably gone unsaid by the folks at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11286.Carrion_Comfort ; however, I'm not going to plow through all of those before hitting "post" and putting this thing behind me. I may, in fact, perform the act of near-sacrilege and tear out the page upon which the person who gave it to me penned an inscription before remaindering the book to my favorite used book store so that someone else can subject themselves to it.
One half of a reheated Clancy/King slashfic out of five.
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| Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
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6:59 pm - Roomy
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So. Almost done. There's the matter of putting shoe molding around the perimeter (unfinished, because I'm going to paint it exterior-of-house-TARDIS-blue after my parents vacate) which will happen Thursday, whenever the "certificate of occupancy" inspection happens, and the delivery of the tv stand and actual lamp next Tuesday (along with the TV that rooms to go included as their incentive package; that's a best buy trip over weekend)... need to get a carpet to quell some of the echoey-ness and keep the coffee table from being quite so ready to roll around.
not pictured: recliner, plain black bookshelves, ikea storage nook things, huge gorram pile of receipts.
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8:09 am - You're still gonna be your parents' kid
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My folks have been here for about two weeks for their snowbird stint, and, finally, hopefully, tonight we'll have furniture for them to occupy the new space [ETA: as I was typing this, they called to say they'd be here to deliver it in a few minutes].
Pro: I haven't had to cook or do dishes
Con: They eat a lot of stuff I would prefer not to
Pro: I get to peripherally enjoy Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy! and my mom's crossword puzzles
Con: Fox News
Pro: They brought their cats
Con: Their ideas for decorating are... sketchier than mine.
It's this lattermost point I'd like to speak to at the moment. Where the window used to be above my kitchen sink, there's now a small blank wall, which will have a pot rack hung in front of it, but is a prominently blank spot between the cabinets. I'd entertained the idea of having a pass-through to the new room, but that's impractical. So, hang a poster there.
Mom said, "We saw two when we were out, and almost got one for you. There was a beach scene and a beer pong one."
"Well, the beach scene is in keeping with what I had in mind. I could just laminate it and put it up behind the pot rack..."
"Oh, I was going to get you the beer pong one."
Note: I've only played beer pong once in my life, four years ago, with a bunch of more or less non-drinking friends.
Semi-relatedly, the older gentleman two doors down passed away, so his estate is being sold off by his kids. "Estate" is possibly freighted with inappropriate connotations; what the man owned was a bunch of books, a ton of LPs, and more creepy fucking clown paintings than anyone not named on this list should possess. I managed to keep them from buying any, but he also had a thing for owls, which is what my oldest sister and her family have as their thing, so we didn't walk out empty-handed (I spent a dollar for one of Carl Sagan's books, a 25' tape measure, and a crescent wrench).
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| Sunday, February 10th, 2013
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6:24 pm - Murph is a bastard
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http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/000881.html
UGH. A good half of my pullups were embarassingly weaksauce.
Splits were:
- 11:20 for the opening mile
- 24:50 at the end of the first half of the things (I was doing sets of 10/20/30)
- 38:45 at the end of things
- 51:44 for completion (so, 13:00 for the closing mile)
I say again: UGH.
I am really looking forward to seeing the new program Josh has in store for me.
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| Saturday, February 2nd, 2013
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6:51 pm - In the paraphrased words of Wipe Club: "Do More Squats"
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For those of you who aren't familiar with Wipe Club's "Throw More Dots" remix with the leek-spinning polka....
And for those of you who have no idea what the fuck "Throw More Dots" is from....
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| Sunday, January 27th, 2013
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6:53 pm - Visitors: The Foodening
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Because no conversation among folks who live, or have lived, in New Orleans is complete without discussing food...
Waitress: "Can I get you anything else?"
TWH: "Some hot sauce?"
Waitress: "Tabasco or Lousianne?"
TWH: "Lousianne, please."
The requested sauce delivered, TWH puts a dainty shake on her omlette. I proceed to dump about an ounce and a half onto my hash browns and breakfast burrito.
TWH: "Oh, right... Buffalo."
I managed to redeem my lack of speeding exploits by pimping out the ludicrous contents of my hot sauce rack.
Me: "I've got some Dave's Insanity, and some Blair's 2AM Reserve..."
PM: "They make stuff hotter than Dave's insanity?"
Me: "They make scarier shit than what I've got, and I'm afraid to open it. You don't fuck with hand-lettered, signed, wax-sealed shit with a Death's Head on the bottle. They figured out a way to make pure capsaicin crystals."
TWH: "Why would you do that? That's not flavor, that's just...."
Me: "... suffering."
Back at the house, I was whipping up a relatively mild pre-workout blend of creatine, Beta-alanine, and Muscle Pharm's Assault.
TWH: "You don't mess around with your pre-workout shakes."
Me: "This is just so I don't die after what I did yesterday. Yesterday's blend had the works, including some Watermelon Robitussin shit that... yes, tastes about like the face you're making."
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etcet
