Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Books

  • Searching for Steve Smith

    Monster Hike is a book in the spirit of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. As Avrel Seale approached 50, he decided he needed an adventure. A hike seemed just the thing. He can’t leave his job to spend months hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail and doing just a portion doesn’t appeal. He wants to do ALL of something.

    He decides to do the Lone Star Hiking Trail through the Sam Houston National Forest in eastern Texas. The trail runs about 100 miles, a distance he thinks he can do in the time he has available. But, unlike most long hike books, Avrel Seale isn’t looking for enlightenment, he’s looking for big foot. He’s convinced that big foot exists and that there is a large population living in the Sam Houston National Forest. He also believes that the USDA and the Dept. of Interior are covering up the existence of big foot and keeping the population down.

    Seale has been interested in big foot since he was a kid. He follows the research through books and organizations like the North American Wood Ape Conservancy, the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, and the Bigfoot Field Research Organization. He also follows a podcast called Sasquatch Chronicles.

    Seale believes because of the thousands of sightings, video and other evidence. He also notes that the phenomena appears to be worldwide, not just limited to North America and that sightings stretch back in time with consistent details. He subscribes to the theory that big foots can be found in forested areas that receive at least 40 inches of rain annually and that offer prey such as deer. The Sam Houston National Forest fits that description, offering not just white tailed deer, but also wild hogs. It is considered a hot spot for big foot sightings.

    So, while Seale follows the standard format of a hiking genre book, detailing the physical challenge experienced and providing some history of the trail, he also discusses why he believes in big foot, the state of the research and what signs of big foot he finds along the way. Along with the usual hiking gear, he brings audio recorders and a camera.

    He sets off, alone, and on his very first night completely freaks himself out. He sees and hears a helicopter and gunshots. He thinks it must be the government hunting big foots. He’s convinced (at least in the middle of the night) that he hears big foots killing a white tailed deer. Twice. He also hears ‘tree knocking’, which is thought to be big foots hitting trees to communicate.

    He feels better in the daylight and spends the second night in a camp, but still doesn’t sleep well. His brother is acting as support, and meets him at a trail head. Because he has slept poorly, he opts to have his brother pick him up each night and stay in an AirBnB with him. So, hike during the day and stay with his brother for most of the nights.

    Near the end of the hike, he finds what he thinks is an 18 inch long footprint. It doesn’t look like a footprint to me, but, I’m not exactly a tracker. He finishes the hike and feels elated at his accomplishment.

    As I’ve been reading rock-n-roll biographies, I’ve tried to make it an immersive experience. If the author talks about writing a song, I listen to the song. If they talk about a video, I watch the video. I even bought and drank Trooper beer. So, when Seale discusses (for example) The Bigfoot Field Research Organization, I checked it out. I even listened to part of a podcast. Apparently, through BRFO, you can join expeditions to search for big foot and they will train you in the correct, scientific, techniques. Essentially, you go camping with other people who are interested in finding big foot. Now, if you want to hunt big foot, well, look elsewhere. BFRO is strictly no kill. I bet the people that sign up have a blast!

    When this book popped up in my Amazon recommendations (I blame you people!), my first reaction was to roll my eyes. Then, I thought this would be a fun review for Glibertarians. I was right. Seale comes across as plausible. He explains why he believes in ways that mostly stopped me rolling my eyes. For example, to the question of why haven’t we found big foot if it exists – he answers by asserting that we have! There have been more than 10,000 reported big foot sightings. As the book progresses, he points out that even if he’s wrong, no one has been hurt and he has learned science and met interesting people along the way. Not a bad return for any hobby.

    Overall, I thought this book was a fun twist on the hiking genre. It didn’t change my mind about big foot, but it introduced me to a whole new sub-culture I had no idea existed. I rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

  • What Are We Reading – August 2019

    JW

    I picked up a refurbed Kindle Paperwhite recently, so I’m actually reading something, other than the articles in Playboy.  I took it with me on vacation and started “Leviathan Wakes”, by James S.A. Corey; book 1 of what “The Expanse” is based on.  I enjoyed the series greatly, so I thought it would be fun to see how much it differs from the book.  Short answer, if you go by the show’s seasons, quite a bit.  None of the gubmint characters who figured prominently in the show’s early episodes have been introduced as yet.  No Mars-Belt war in the show either.

    But, it’s solidly enjoyable read and good for the show’s background material, as I like punishing myself with that kind of minutia.

    Who knows, now that I have a Kindle just lying around, maybe I’ll finally start reading regularly again.  Maybe.

    jesse.in.mb

    Finally finished The Last Policeman. It should’ve been an enjoyable procedural set just before the world ends, but I had too much going on to read it in a single siting and it suffered by being broken up into little bits and pieces. I’m currently working on Anne Corlett’s The Space Between the Stars because it was available in the local public library’s audiobook section and it had name recognition from io9’s review of it. It’s actually pretty enjoyable. A plague wipes out everyone but a handful of people were isolated for various reasons spread across Earth’s far-flung colonial system. The government is made up of assholes and the main character just wants to be left alone.

    mexican sharpshooter

    I ain’t got nothin…I’ll pick something up for next time around.

    OMWC

    Most of my reading time has been with such fascinating places as LinkedIn and Monster. But I did pull down an old favorite off the shelf, Charles Coulson’s Valence. One of my long-time geekeries and the thing in college that sidetracked me from an original career aim of engineering to becoming a chemist was an inordinate fascination with what holds molecules together and why they have the shape they do. This book and Pauling’s Nature of the Chemical Bond were almost fetish objects to Young Man With Candy. Did I mention I was a geek? If you were always itching to have a really lucid comparison of the molecular orbital and valence bond approaches to understanding molecular structure and dynamics, you have found Nirvana. The math level is low enough that even old and rusty guys like me can deal with it- basic differential equations and linear algebra.

    Side note: Coulson was also a religious author and coined the phrase “God of the Gaps.” He was the PhD adviser to Peter Higgs of the Higgs Boson fame, and an early advocate of using science to improve food production in the Third World- I would not be surprised to find that he was an inspiration for Norman Borlaug.

     

    SugarFree

    I’m rereading The Expanse series, including all the prequels and interstitial stories. It is some really solid science fiction, something rare these days. I hope Amazon doesn’t screw the pooch with the new season.

    As a side note: Another Life, on Netflix, may be the worst science fiction television of the decade. The plot is derivative–a mash-up of a few other things and done poorly, relies on the “everyone’s an asshole!” model of character development to create drama, the science is laughably bad (why in the fuck would you need to do a gravity slingshot around a sun if you have FTL drive?) and it is seemingly produced and written by people who hate science fiction.

    Brett L

    I went and picked up one of The Expanse novellas, this one the back-story on Amos. Had I read it before the particular book that dealt with Amos’s return to Baltimore (still a shithole, OMWC!, even in 2250) I might have liked it more. It really didn’t add much. As an aside, I binge watched the first three seasons of The Expanse. Although the character playing Amos is too young and thin, the guy playing him does a great job of capturing Amos’s core character as a nice guy who thinks kids should be protected and all other human life is completely worthless. It is a strange, friendly, dead-eyed psychopathy that the actor pretty much nails.

    I also read the first book of Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series. I give it a solid B. It breaks no new ground, the characters are fine, and the story moves along. It does kind of feel like the Koch brothers funded vision of The Laundry Files.

    For business, I picked up Effective Azure DevOps, because while I’m not drinking the devops Flavor-Aid, I did just lose a senior resource, and anything I can do to standardize and automate our build and deploy process will help me deliver a more consistent product and not have to do as much rework, which I no longer have the resources to indulge in where avoidable. Like any other set of IT practices, one should always be aware that your business is not necessarily the one the authors had when they created the process.

     

  • What Are We Reading for July 2019

    OMWC

    One of my “reading words” is “chrestomathy.” I have no idea how to pronounce it, and I keep forgetting to look it up. At least I know what it means, a selection of passages from an author to aid in understanding a language. So between reading “help wanted” ads, writing 75 different versions of my resume, and finishing up a couple paid articles, I grabbed the two volumes of HL Mencken’s eponymous Chrestomathies off our shelves for some comfort. And they really are quite soothing if you are a cantankerous and cynical person, as I am. In this case, the chrestomathy is designed to teach the language of criticism and invective, with a sharp turn toward literary and social insight. Besides his considerable wit, Mencken had a wonderful ear for the sound of language.

    It is not by accident that there has never been a book on Socialism which was also a work of art. Papa Marx’s Das Kapital at once comes to mind. It is as wholly devoid of graces as The Origin of Species or Science and Health; one simply cannot conceive a reasonable man reading it without aversion; it is as revolting as a barrel organ.

    -from “Jack London”

    He is a man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretenses. He is willing to embrace any issue, no matter how idiotic, that will get him votes,and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy

    -from “Notes on Democracy”

     

    SugarFree

    I was all over the place this month, reeling drunkenly from short story to short story, genre to genre, the only novel of note was a re-read of Fight Club, which I’ve done every couple of years since it was published in 1996. It is very, very close to being a perfect novel: black as night, funny and angry, well-written and bold. The novel has been overshadowed by the movie adaption, but the movie is all straight from the book, even lifting large chunks of dialogue directly, but neither diminishes the other. Both should be studied as how to adapt a piece of fiction for the screen, namely, if there’s a good reason to adapt it, maybe don’t throw out all the parts that made the work worth adapting in the first place. [casts Swiss’ patented narrowed-gaze at Altered Carbon, Less Than Zero, World War Z, Starship Troopers, Wanted, ad infinitum]

     

    jesse.in.mb

    My will to read has been blunted by two months of legal documents, application forms and fixing the sub-literate internal and outward-facing forms, paperwork and notices of my workplace. Perhaps I’ll finish the novel I’ve been 2/3 of the way through for four months on my flight to New Jersey today, but I’ll probably just watch a shitty movie on the in-light entertainment system instead.

    mexican sharpshooter

    I am afraid the only thing I read of consequence in the last month is my company’s compliance policy with GDPR, the SOP related to it, and the proposed rewrite I drew up and sent to the lawyers for approval.

    JW

    This week JW is reading palms…with his dick. Drop by JW’s Boutique Palmistry shop and find out the intimate details of your future by giving JW a handy.*

     

    *Lubricant will be provided gratis by jesse.in.mb, apparently this shit has an expiration date.

    SP

    I’m continuing to work my way through Jon Talton’s David Mapstone series in eBooks borrowed from the Maricopa County Library District. I’m on High Country Nocturne. I’m still enjoying them, but the emotional drama with the protagonist’s personal relationships has started wearing on me. I don’t do emotional drama in my own relationships, and I generally don’t want to deal with it in my escapist reading, either.

    However, what I’m mostly concentrating on currently are books on Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory loss, cognitive decline, and how to be an effective caregiver to people undergoing the process. I’m not necessarily fooling myself that we’ll be able to reverse it, but we might be able to slow the progression. Maybe.

    The neuroscience is always fascinating to me, but right now I am really reading to understand more of what my mother-in-law is experiencing and learn new ways to cope with the exhaustion and sadness I am encountering as we enfold her into our home and daily life. We didn’t expect it to be easy, but I’m not sure I fully understood how draining it is emotionally to witness her struggle all day every day.

    If I find any of the books particularly helpful or insightful, I’ll write a standalone post on the topic in August.

  • What Does This Button Do?

    Well, I’m in love.  No, not with anyone I’ve met online. (Some guy called “Papa” messaged me.  His profile is “Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.”  That’s it, the entire profile. **Slams laptop shut** Eww.)  No, I’m in love with Bruce Dickinson – lead singer of Iron Maiden – as portrayed in his autobiography “What Does This Button Do? ” He’s definitely my new imaginary boyfriend.

    I wasn’t a huge fan of Iron Maiden, but I had friends that were.  I appreciate what talented musicians they are and what a talented singer Dickinson is.  I’m always impressed by how long he can hold a note.  Especially since he runs all over the stage.  The concert videos look like a real workout.  Dickinson is a favorite for vocal coach reaction and analysis videos that make much of his control and technique.

    So, I put Number of the Beast on the stereo, cracked open a can of Trooper, and sat down to read.  It starts slowly and I found the early chapters before he goes to boarding school unclear.  I re-read them a few times and I still find them confusing.  Once he hits boarding school (and it hits back) it’s a great read.

    He attends an incredibly horrible and sadistic boarding school where he is bullied by upperclassmen and beaten by teachers.  He does find a few bright spots.  He loves drama and readily takes to the stage.  He has a great metal working teacher that tells the boys not only will he teach them to make a sword, he’ll teach them to use it.  So, he becomes a fencer.  There is also an art teacher that arranges rock concerts at the school.  Bruce attends the concerts – Wild Turkey and Arthur Brown among others, and they blow his adolescent mind.

    Once reaching university, he joins a band (teaching himself to sing properly from books) and is eventually recruited into Samson, which already had a record contract.  Samson led to an opportunity to audition for Iron Maiden.  The band liked him and he was invited to join once he passed studio checks, hearing tests, eye tests, drug tests and blood tests.  He was happy to learn he was STD free.  He didn’t just join a band, he joined a serious business, and Iron Maiden’s management treated it that way. At an award dinner an American executive tries to chat up Ron Smallwood, their manager, who snaps at him “I’m not in the music business.  I’m in the Iron Fucking Maiden business.”

    The Number of The Beast album was huge.  The tour was extended several times.  While drugs were around and easily available, Iron Maiden mostly stuck to beer, generally after the work was done.  They weren’t just messing around.  They did drink a lot and engage in rock-n-roll shenanigans.  On tour in Japan, he doesn’t like what the constant partying is doing to him and decides to make a change.  He starts bringing his fencing kit with him on tour and training and competing whenever he gets the chance.  Eventually (after changing from right handed to left handed fencing), he represented the UK at the European championships.

    The Iron Maiden machine rolled on, making new albums every year or so and going on tour. Creative differences started to arise and none of his songs made it onto the Somewhere in Time album.  Bruce decides to just be the singer and writes a novel.  It sells, so he writes a second.  Because, why not.

    On the next album, he’s again part of the writing team, but still discontented, probably with his personal life as well.  He mentions that Iron Maiden’s success had changed his living circumstances.  He now had a big house with a pool (because he hates to swim), a fancy garden (because he hates to garden), a tennis court (because he doesn’t play) and he can’t walk to the local pub (because he wants a pint without having to drive) and a fancy garage for the expensive car he never drives.  He thinks a lot about leaving music altogether.

    He doesn’t.  Instead, he makes a solo album, then a second and pursues getting his pilot’s license.  Once the second album is complete, he leaves Iron Maiden.  While pursuing a solo career, he does a concert in Sarajevo during the war.  He writes the screenplay for Chemical Wedding.  Because, why not.

    He gets his pilot’s license and buys a small plane but really wants to fly the big planes.  So he becomes an airline pilot.  He didn’t like the training program, so he writes a study guide and ends up one of the trainers for British Airways.  Because, why not.

    He eventually returns to Iron Maiden and is one of the pilots for Ed Force One – the Iron Maiden plane that they use to tour the world.  Note that the entire time he is working as an airline pilot, he is continuing to tour.  I love the image of him requesting time off to go do a gig.  Oh, and somewhere along the way, he helps make Trooper, the Iron Maiden beer. The last part of the book covers his battle with throat cancer (he’s not impressed with morphine) and return to singing.

    Overall, this book is very focused on his musical career and activities that touch on that.  He leaves out his personal life and much of his entrepreneurial activities.  (He is apparently a big investor in air ships as well as an airline maintenance firm.)  I enjoyed his self-deprecating humor and his discussion of image in rock.  He says he realized early on that he would have to be ‘substantial’ because he wasn’t good at the image part.  As examples, he describes his stage outfit for Samson, which included a custom made, gold lame jock strap to be worn over his pants and his design for his Somewhere in Time tour outfit – an outer space D’Artagnan maybe made from a space lizard.  His descriptions made me giggle.

    I have no doubt that this autobiography is every bit as carefully curated as Billy Idol’s.  I just like the person portrayed much, much better.  What a fascinating, curious, and restless man he is.  I give it five stars for being such an interesting portrait of someone who never stops reinventing himself.

  • What Are We Reading – June 2019

    jesse.in.mb

    Gregory Maguire – Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about this book. Everything about it feels like it doesn’t resolve, but maybe it’s just a good reflection of life and the small role we play in it.

    Currently working on Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I’m not sure why I like post-Colonial/Indian diaspora literature as much as I do. I distinctly remember reading Roy’s first novel The God of Small Things years ago but couldn’t tell you the plot now. TMoUH reminds me a bit of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children with long ambling digressions and personal stories inextricably tied to the historical moment of independence and the partitioning of India and Pakistan. Like MC, I am constantly flipping between getting lost in the daily moments of the characters and just wanting her to get to the fucking point.

     

    OMWC

    I have the Alpha and Omega of essay collections. Let’s start with Alpha, and it encompasses the startling fact that, once upon a time, Fran Lebowitz was actually funny. Yes, amazing. While unpacking boxes of books to be shelved in our new home, I ran across my copy of Social Studies, which was a birthday present given to me when I was in grad school (and admittedly had a bit of a crush on her). This was before she had her long period of writer’s blockade, and morphed into a shrieking harpy resembling Linda Hunt on a bad day. These essays are actually funny, self-deprecating, and showing some insight into the culture of the time. Nothing profound, mind you, but fun and amusing, reminiscent of a similar oeuvre of Robert Benchley forty years previous to this. If you see a remaindered or used copy, grab it.

    The omega is my later-in-life idol, Jorge Luis Borges, who could do it all- novels, short stories, poems, and essays. A brilliant and profound talent, with an imagination that only comes once every few centuries. Being the dullard I am, I have been enjoying another book dug up in our move, Selected Nonfictions, which covers language, history, culture, literature, politics, art… well, everything, really. And in this collection is my single favorite Borges essay, “The Art of Verbal Abuse.” I bet you were thinking I’d pick, “I, a Jew,” you fucking anti-semite. But every essay in here is a gem, immaculately translated, and bursting with insight and beauty.,Don’t wait for a sale or remainder, just buy this. Now.

     

    mexicansharpshooter

    I read this.  I read it for ALL OF YOU.  That’s it.

     

    JW

    Staff: We asked JW to tell us about what he was reading, but we found him curled up, sobbing in a blanket fort with a flashlight and a dog-eared copy of Old Yeller and figured he’d get to it later.

    SugarFree

    I have continued my Lovecraft Mythos kick, reading both early Mythos contributors, especially those writing while Lovecraft was still alive: Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Edward Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Henry Kuttner; and Lovecraft’s self-identified influences, collected in H. P. Lovecraft’s Favorite Weird Tales: The Roots of Modern Horror, edited by Douglas A. Anderson. While familiar faces appear–Poe, Machen, Bierce–I enjoyed reading the more obscure authors like M. L. Humphreys, whose story in the collection, “The Floor Above” (1923), is the only story he or she ever published and oft-anthologized “The Night Wire” (1926) by H. F. Arnold, another lost author. (His or her only other two short stories have never been republished since they originally appeared in pulps.)

     

    Swiss Servator

    Beer list, wine list, spirits list, contract for work, contract for work, contract for work, continuing legal education, continuing legal education…wait here it is!

    Luther’s Small Catechism

    So the United Methodist district I live in is shriveling under the sweaty hand of the bishop who is ever so slightly to the left of Chairman Mao. She has packed the district with mini-mes. And this coterie of pudgy, earnest leftwing, 50-60 somethings are too engaged in various protests and public temper tantrums to conduct much of a church. So I went Protestant shopping. Just across the bean field from my house sits a Lutheran church. So I wandered over, went to a traditional service. Met the pastor later on and he gave me a copy of said book. I got homework. Man, these people are serious. But, I guess it is good to do some due diligence, so I am about 20-25% through right now. I get a bit wary of the “with Explanation” part, but that is just the libertarian in me, I guess.

    As I am in the Commandments, and the basics still, I can’t say much about the more advanced points. Also, I have not been ordered to burn OMWC’s house yet. So I have that going for me.

  • I Want to Tell You About Heshi Socks: A Review of The New Right, by Michael Malice

    First thing first:  About the socks. I bought a couple pairs of these in response to Michael Malice’s book and his delightful podcast (Promo Code: Welcome30).  They are indeed nice.  I am not going to say these socks will change your life when you buy them.  If a pair of socks changes your life, chances are pretty good you are homeless or your life otherwise sucks.  So grab a pair of these socks, and if they change your life, please consider reevaluating the choices you made to get to this point.

     

     

    This is my review of Anchorage Brewing Co Easy Evil Black Raspberry Saison

    As a quick primer on the author:  his Wikipedia page can be found at this link.  For those refusing I enact their labor, Malice is an anarchist is the purest sense.  He is best known for his appearances on Kennedy or his previous book, Dear Reader:  The Unauthorized Biography of Kim Jung Il.  He is has a fairly well-known presence on Twitter; essentially as a troll with a large following.  Ever wonder where the reply of “Your*” in response to the proper use of the word, “you’re” (or vice versa) came from?  That started with him, and is meant to generate an indignant response from the person who made the mistake of making a statement using the second person, is incapable of arguing the merits of the idea, and instead focuses on grammar.  That is what trolling is after all, an attempt to manipulate the emotional response of a half-wit to the troll’s delight.  His latest book The New Right:  A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics, is available here on Amazon.  It is a treatise if sorts, on how culture is derived from the fringe of society and how that fringe is made up of various factions on “the right”.

    He has certain definitions and views that should first be identified before this book is further discussed.

    Conservatism vs. Progressivism:  There is no functional difference between the two, aside from acceptance of the pace and direction culture moves.  He consistently defines a conservative as, “a progressive driving the speed limit”.

    The New Right:

    A loosely connected group of individuals united by their opposition to progressivism, which they perceive to be a thinly veiled fundamentalist religion dedicated to egalitarian principles and intent on totalitarian world domination via globalist hegemony.

    The Cathedral:  An oversimplified definition may be the “Evangelical Left”; universities, the media, and expansive government.  He cites Mencius Moldbug for the concept but a more convenient quote (for me) is from Jim Goad:

    […]cultural progressivism, egalitarianism, social justice, or whatever the fuck you’re calling it these days–is simply Christianity with God removed.  Your “God”–your untouchable premise–is the naively childish and entirely unscientific notion of innate human equality.

    A way to think of this book, is a comparison he makes on his interview with Michael Malice on his podcast to the classic, Dante’s Inferno.  In this book, with assistance of a Roman poet/philosopher Virgil, Dante descends into Hell to witness the eternal punishment of sinners.  One discovers with Dante, the further along the book, the further removed from grace the sin, the further he must descend into Hell, thus the harsher the punishment.  Here the further along the reader goes, he or she descends further from “safe” and “respectable” cultural and political thought.

    Safe and respectable according to whom?  The Cathedral.  This choice in metaphors is not made lightly.

    This book otherwise takes a long look at the intersection of various subgroups that make up the right as Malice sees it.  He begins where many at this site presently are:  the convergence of Murray Rothbard/Pat Buchannan (Anachro-capitalist/Paleo-conservative) wings that came about in the early 1990’s.  This is prescient for me, because this is several years prior to my coming of age and any explanation I was ever given to this philosophy was framed negatively.  He then presents others such as Milo Yionopo… Yoiunoppo…  He presents others such as infamous homosexual agent-provocateur Milo and how The Cathedral, with some success, attempted to take him down a few years ago.  We see this today with Steven Crowder, though his forays with the Cathedral are far too recent, and probably too blasé to be discussed by Malice in this book.  In later chapters he discusses other figures such as Mike Cernivoch, Gavin McGinnes, Anne Coulter, Jared Taylor, Pax Dickinson…and beyond.  It is thorough exposé across a wide spectrum of free thinking people, united only in their opposition to progressives.

    One can look at this book, and the comparison to Dante’s Inferno and view it is as a bit of a warning.  To whom is this warning directed?  At the risk of being declared a heretic around here…you.  YES, YOU.  THE READER.

    OBEY

    An analogy he constantly uses, in spite of it being a cliché, is the red pill.  This of course is a reference to the 1999 movie The Matrix and essentially means one is exposed to the existence of the lie that is Wonderland, and taking the red pill means remaining in Wonderland and following the White Rabbit where it takes you.  In this case the lie is the Cathedral, and the pillars that hold it up.  Once one takes the red pill, he or she becomes acquainted with the symbols and the methods the Cathedral uses to keep the population under control.  The problem of course, is in The Matrix, Morpheus only gives Neo a single red pill.  This is important as only one is needed.  Don’t take the entire bottle.  Another way perhaps to look at this is the movie They Live.  Here it is not a red pill but a pair of sunglasses that allows the wearer to see people as they truly are.  The problem is continually wearing the sunglasses will eventually become painful to look through.

    The analogy of the sunglasses however has several limitations, hence Malice chooses the red pill.  To begin, one first takes the red pill and discovers the truth:  there is no functional difference between progressivism, and conservatism; only the speed at which one is traveling on the road to serfdom.  The problem he finds, is once one discovers this, and immerse oneself in the literature, one begins to question everything.  One sees the media is not to be trusted, then then seeks news and opinion “elsewhere” (ALTERNATIVE FACTS!!).  Once others point out inconsistencies, and that the opinions one seeks “elsewhere” are also to not to be trusted, one descends further into the inferno, and finds oneself making unnecessary if/then connections, or connections that are dangerous to make.  i.e. George Stephanopoulos worked for the Clinton administration and expects to be taken seriously as an objective journalist (red pill), then Nick Gillespie is a cosmopolitan cuck that simply wants to be accepted by his establishment colleagues in the media (two pills), which becomes John Podesta being a tool of a secret society of child molesters (too many red pills), then escalates into taking “race realism” seriously because (((They))) are behind it and casually using racial slurs is okay if the context allows (empty bottle).  “Blood and soil” is all that remains, cowboy….

    Slow down, and think about what you are doing.  Yes, this has occurred here in a site comprised of people that identify themselves as libertarian.  Who remembers PapayaSF?

    Here is a fun example.  SpongeBob Squarepants…is gay.  No seriously, here is an article that makes a rather poor case why SpongeBob is a homosexual.  The rationalist after taking the red pill will say, “C’mon, he’s a Sponge.  Sponges reproduce asexually and its a kids show.”  Too many red pills results in coming across sites like that, and thinking there is a “gay agenda” that is putting subtle messages into children’s programing in an effort to create acceptance of homosexuality, and even make children homosexuals themselves.  After all, the show’s creators said this was certainly not the case but they said it through establishment media and they can’t be trusted…

    …anyways, this beer pours in a manner that I can only describe as “Carbonated Merlot”.  If you are the type that likes sours, or saisons, there is nothing traditional about this beer to make you think it is either, so I have no idea if you will be into it.  The tartness of the black raspberries blasts its way into everything, and it immediately turned me off at first.  You have to let it warm up slightly to get anything else past that.  There is a hint of citrus fruitiness, as it is still a saison, that you might find after letting it sit for a bit.  This is not one to chug, because you probably won’t be able to from the tartness.  Sip it, and enjoy it with a book.

    So the bottom line?  I highly recommend this book, but tread carefully out there, Heshi socks are quite nice, and Anchorage Brewing Co Easy Evil Black Raspberry Saison rates a very respectable  3.8/5.

  • Billy Idol

    Fourteen year old Tulip lurrvvved her some Billy Idol.  Those cheekbones, those eyes, that mouth, the leather and the hair.  Just hearing his voice on the radio could make me wet.  But, after the Rebel Yell album, I moved on.  To real boys (Pete Swenson, mmm, mmm) and other artists: Depeche Mode, Prince, a brief flirtation with Metallica and a longer one with country music.  In fact, I didn’t know he had been in a serious accident until I read the concert brochure about 6 or 7 years ago at a concert at Wolf Trap.  (Dear God, I’m old, I saw Billy Idol at Wolf Trap!)

    It was a great concert; just a bare bones set, but he did all his hits with energy and conviction.  When he first came out, he did a strip tease to lose his white silk shirt and switch to a black leather vest (to match the black leather pants). He is still incredibly sexy.  After the strip tease, he ran out on stage right and posed with a fist pump and flexed his abs for people to take pictures.  After a moment, he ran to stage left and posed and flexed while the flashes went off.  It was a perfect acknowledgment of the nostalgia his concert represented, done with humor.  After the concert was over, I forgot about him again.

    Until…I came across his autobiography “Dancing With Myself”. Apparently, he wrote it without a ghost writer.  Hell, yes, I had to read this!  So, last weekend, I put the “Very Best of Billy Idol” on the stereo and sat down to read it.  It is a great read, but somewhat uneven.  He does a fantastic job of creating a sense of time and place in the early chapters discussing his time in Generation X and first arrival in the U.S.  The best part is getting a sense of what a fan he was – he was so excited to play on stages where he had watched acts.  The discussions about how he wrote the songs and what they meant is fun.  Once he can afford drugs everyday, (I was high and did something stupid), it does become a little boring.

    But, once I finished it, I was left with the conviction that Billy Idol is the greatest performance artist ever.  Better even than Trump.  I mean, he did name the book for his masturbation song, which is hilarious and punk as fuck. When discussing the writing of the song, he never mentions masturbation.  Instead, he says it was based on seeing Japanese teenagers dance with their own reflections.  Uh, huh. Fourteen year old me and my friends knew exactly what that song was about.  So, I’m not convinced that he is a reliable narrator.  I mean,  Billy, we’ve heard the song, and from reading the book, he is too smart for that.  So, again hilarious.

    From the beginning of the book, it’s clear that his goal is to become a rock star.  He mentions watching and discussing performance artists, while perfecting his own performance.  The music that gets him there is secondary, despite the book’s focus on writing the music.  His real goal is to be a rock star.  His first meeting with Steve Stevens focused on what it means to be a rock star and only secondarily on what kind of music he wants to play.

    His ultimate approach though, is to become a parody of a rock star.  His very name – Idol – is all about parodying the idea of a rock star.  And, he has always been a caricature or parody.  The leather, the hair, the first pumping, the sex, the drugs.  It can only be explained as parody.  Don’t believe me? Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvTaDn03qtQ (preferably with the sound off – any 80s video with the sound off is hilarious).  Not only is he parodying being a rock star, he is parodying himself being a rock star and laughing while he does it.  I mean, c’mon, the cunnilingus thing, the humping Steve Stevens.  Seen that way, this video is an absolutely brilliant performance.  Too bad he bought into his own performance and completely descended into sex, drugs, and rock and roll as if he were a Roman emperor.

    I’ve seen a lot of reviews of this book that talk about how he didn’t hold back and how sensitive it is[1].  My take is different.  My first thought on finishing the book was, “Christ, what an asshole!”  Yes, he’s careful to not throw other people under the bus.  He’s still an asshole.  If, every few pages you detail an example of how you were an asshole, you’re an asshole – drugs or not.  Finally, despite being a brilliant performance artist, I see him as an essentially shallow man who wrote an essentially shallow memoir.

    Fifteen year old Tulip would have given anything to meet Billy Idol.  She would have dropped to her knees and blown him and done anything else he asked.  Such is the power of celebrity and image.  Today’s Tulip looks back and thinks…ick, not enough Lysol in the world. Unless, of course, my view of him as the ultimate performance artist is correct.  Then, I want to smoke a joint with him, and maybe meet  John Lydon[2].

    On my stereo or on a stage, I like him just fine, but I have zero interest in meeting or fucking him.  I give his autobiography 4 out of 5 stars for the fantastic nostalgia trip it gave me and recommend it to any other child of the eighties.

     

     

     

     

    [1]Even a review on Amazon that mentions his respect for women.  Whaaaa???  Did we read the same book?

    [2]Interestingly, there are a lot of people who insist Billy Idol was never punk, just a hanger-on.  Johnny Rotten isn’t one of them.

  • What Are We Reading – May 2019

    It’s the last Friday of the month which means it’s another What Are We Reading. And while the autographed and (concerningly) waterproof print copies of H&H Vol 1: It’s Probably Just a Fart… No, No, It Was Definitely A Trump Election count, keeping up on the latest H&H blog post does not–but it is VERY slimming.

    OMWC

    Of all the Founding Fathers, the least known was the most interesting. Gouverneur Morris had a withered arm from a childhood burn and a wooden leg from a carriage accident, yet still managed to penetrate every vagina that came within reach. He was a brilliant intellectual, a witty conversationalist in several languages, a deep thinker, and wildly undisciplined. Though James Madison generally gets the credit for the Constitution, the actual writing of it was mostly in Morris’s hands. “We The People of the United States…” is pure Morris. Gentleman Revolutionary is Richard Brookheiser’s somewhat brief but eminently readable biography. Morris’s death is somewhat truncated at the end, but I’ll do the spoiler and tell you about it anyway- he dies of an infection caused by his own attempts to remove a urinary blockage by means of reaming his peehole with a whalebone. With no anesthesia, of course. I hope you’re wincing as much as I am.

    Robert Park is a physicist who taught at University of Maryland for many years before becoming Director of Public Information for the American Physical Society. His weekly What’s New columns were “don’t miss” reading for me, and were entertaining, educational, and often infuriating to their targets. Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud was the first (and better) of his two books summarizing case studies in pseudoscience and junk science for fun and profit. One useful distinction Park wrote about was the difference between pseudoscience and junk science, and of course, Langmuir’s genius essays on pathological science make frequent appearances. Park covers various “free energy” scammers, the idiocy and uselessness of manned spaceflight, TV and news media’s roles in the propagation of ignorance, the use of junk epidemiology by lawyers and NGOs, “quantum healing” health frauds, and even the UFO crazes. Delightful reading.

    SugarFree

    I read Patricia Highsmith‘s delightfully acidic Little Tales of Misogyny, a book of very short short stories about all the different ways women are awful. A lesbian misogynist is not as odd as it may seem. I’ve met a couple here and there. To hate something you desire… one will probably shoot up a Shapes in a few years.

    And I’ve been drawn back into The Devil’s Dictionary for probably dozenth time since reading it in high school. If you are ever sick of feeling good about your fellow humans, Ambrose Bierce will set you straight.

    HANDKERCHIEF, n. A small square of silk or linen, used in various ignoble offices about the face and especially serviceable at funerals to conceal the lack of tears. The handkerchief is of recent invention; our ancestors knew nothing of it and entrusted its duties to the sleeve. Shakspeare’s introducing it into the play of “Othello” is an anachronism: Desdemona dried her nose with her skirt, as Dr. Mary Walker and other reformers have done with their coat-tails in our own day — an evidence that revolutions sometimes go backward.

    THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science. The modern Theosophist holds, with the Buddhists, that we live an incalculable number of times on this earth, in as many several bodies, because one life is not long enough for our complete spiritual development; that is, a single lifetime does not suffice for us to become as wise and good as we choose to wish to become. To be absolutely wise and good — that is perfection; and the Theosophist is so keen-sighted as to have observed that everything desirous of improvement eventually attains perfection. Less competent observers are disposed to except cats, which seem neither wiser nor better than they were last year. The greatest and fattest of recent Theosophists was the late Madame Blavatsky, who had no cat.

    DEMAGOGUE, n. A political opponent.

    mexicansharpshooter

    I read more than children’s books this month.  Today’s entry is An Economist Walks Into A Brothel, by Allison Schrager, Ph.D.  This is one of those books people read at the airport in front of their boss while traveling because it has a vague relation to work.   The title aside, it is pretty interesting.  The first chapter focuses on The Moonlight Bunny Ranch outside of Carson City, NV.  She business model of the brothel is not necessarily selling services but in selling and delivering them in a manner with the least amount of risk.  For example, as ENB pointed out numerous times, sex workers often experience violence due to their existence in a black market.  As a result, the workers pay an insane fee to the brothel, but why?

    The legal brothel removes nearly all of the risk.  The risk to the worker, in the form of violence, being stiffed by their customer (or a dirty cop), and financially.  The workers are tested weekly, reducing the likelihood of disease, which manages the risk for the customer.  Schrager goes on to explain how risk is managed in other industries as well.

    SP

    I’ve had slightly more recreational reading time this month than I have since the relocation. So, I’ve been diving into two mystery series that are set in and around my new hometown.

    Scottsdale is home to The Poisoned Pen bookstore, from which I used to order. It’s fun that it’s just a short hop away (depending on traffic). The store hosts many, many author events, and I’m hoping to get up there to see Brad Thor in late June.

    First up, the Lena Jones mysteries by local author Betty Webb.  I am really enjoying this well-written series. The protagonist is not a cookie cutter PI and the cases are interesting. Jones is based in Scottsdale, a place I have only rarely ventured (see above), but the cases take her beyond the borders of her city. I’m on book 6.

    I’ve also started Jon Talton’s David Mapstone series. I’m on book 3, Dry Heat, written in 2004. My favorite passage so far: “All these SWAT cops in their paramilitary attire, what did this mean for the health of American civil society? Like surveillance cameras everywhere, pre-employment drug tests, and other subtle assaults on the Constitution.”

    The Mapstone books are set in Phoenix proper, with the native Phoenician protagonist having just moved back to his family’s home in the Willo Historic District at the start of the first volume. Mapstone is a PhD historian, formerly a Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy, who is now working as a cold case investigator for MCSO. A nice glimpse of this fast-changing city from a different perspective.

    The library system in Maricopa County is great, with some really terrific resources. I’ve been able to do my casual reading via ebooks from OverDrive. Sorry AMZ.

     

    jesse.in.mb

    Soooooo, I accidentally bought the second book in a series that I wasn’t reading because it was on sale because the plot summary was very similar to the other series by the same author. A.G. Riddle likes his grand genetic conspiracies about human origins. I put away the first two books in the Atlantis Trilogy this month because of some serious sunk-cost fallacy. The books aren’t as bad as some of Brett’s book-club choices, but they aren’t something I’d generally recommend unless you were going to spend time sitting on a very expensive beach and pretend to read while you really watch beautiful people who are having more fun than you walk around in next to nothing, or on an airplane. Currently audio-booking Hiddensee by Gregory Macguire (of Wicked fame), and reading The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters, which has been more charming than I anticipated. I’ll let you know next time (or not).

    Brett L

    Since last I posted here, which I can’t remember how long it has been, I read all of the novels (but not short fiction) in the Expanse series by James SA Corey. The first four or five were great. The sudden appearance of Admiral Thrawn with a super-fleet of alien Star Destroyers I mean, the Martian guy, same plot. Anyhow, good plot. Cool that it took about three books just to set up the main plot. I kind of wish they hadn’t unleashed partial/potential immortality on their universe (Corey is the pen name of a duo), but there is some great space opera along the way. I also read the first two installments of Mark Lawrence’s Impossible Times series. I really loved the Jorg/Red Queen universe. I’ve been so-so on his Nona Grey books. Impossible Times is set in 1986 England where a teenager who’s just finishing leukemia chemotherapy meets his future self, who tells him they invent time travel to save a girl young he just met from brain damage. This young man (Nick) happens to be the son of a math prodigy who strolled in front of a bus. His only resources are his D&D group that happens to include the popular scion of a Motorola VP and a different young athlete. The plot of the first book is entertaining, but the way time travel is set up, it is a foregone conclusion that everything had to happen that way. Also, there’s a random young psychopath who exists only to add constraint and difficulty to the mission. The second book is more of a mess. Both are eminently readable, but feel lots of shortcuts are taken.

    JW

    All I been readin’ is the Bible. But not that fake Bible all the rest of you have been fooled by. I only read my Grandpappy’s Bible. He went thru and cut out all the parts about forgiveness. Grandpappy’s God is a vengeful God and you will all pay in blood for your wickedness.

    Riven

    One of these days, I’m going to finish Crucial Conversations. As I said last month, it’s been pretty helpful for me, professionally. It’s a short book and it should not be taking me so long, but I guess I just haven’t had time. I do, at least, have my next book lined up: Great Minds Speak to You. This was a gift from my sister for my birthday last month. It’s not something I would have picked out for myself, but it takes all kinds, doesn’t it? The version she got me comes with an audio CD, as well… just in case you really want them to speak to you, I suppose. I’m not really sure what to think of it, but I’ll give it a shot when I have some time. I notice that “A Course in Miracles” is a purchase suggestion, based on my interest in Great Minds Speak to You. Maybe you’re not familiar with that book, but it was a favorite of my father’s in the last decade or so. Hm. Seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree at all, does it?

  • What Are We Reading – April, 2019

    Another last Friday of the month and another scramble to present ourselves as citizens of the world: growing intellectually and emotionally by exposing ourselves to the ideas and experiences of others to better understand that which exists outside of ourselves and empathize with those who think, feel and live differently than we do…and also a lot of genre fiction, mostly because of Brett.

    SP

    So I picked up Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe by Lisa Randall. With a title and subtitle like that, one might think this is going to contain groundbreaking research. This is, after all, written by someone who, “studies theoretical particle physics and cosmology at Harvard University.”

    Well, here is what the author says just two pages in: “This book explores a speculative scenario in which my collaborators and I suggest that dark matter might ultimately (and indirectly) have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaur.”

    You know WHO ELSE had collaborators!

    OMWC

    Unpacking our books, I ran across one I hadn’t read in decades, Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark. In theory, this is a book about critical thinking, examining people’s beliefs regarding alien abductions, faith healing, ESP, spirit mediums, “recovered memory” as part of the Satanic Panic of that time, and many more. Sagan’s continuing theme is that we do not educate our kids well enough for them to develop an effective bullshit filter, and that they don’t learn science properly, it being taught as a collection of facts rather than as a process of arriving at truth (or at least a better approximation of truth). There’s a lot of good stuff packed in there, but it’s difficult to resist yelling and throwing the book across the room since it assumes that teaching must be done by government schools staffed by highly paid government indoctrinators. If only he had examined THAT assumption critically… Lot of gratuitous swiping at religion, much of it deserved, much of it just for effect and moral preening. And somehow, he skims over the evil Janet Reno’s role in sending innocent parents and teachers to jail for secret child sex rituals. Bleh. Read James Randi’s Flim Flam instead.

    Twenty years ago, when Food Network was actually about cooking and teaching, there was a wonderful show called Taste, hosted by David Rosengarten. Each week, Rosengarten would take a single ingredient, teach about it, and demonstrate several dishes to feature it. It was stark, simple, no bullshit, and a delight to watch if you were serious about upping your cooking game. I bought his Dean & Deluca Cookbook, and it rapidly became of one of my go-to books when tackling something new. Something bad must have happened because Taste vanished without a trace. Rosengarten hasn’t, though, and I have been reading It’s All American Food for pleasure and to get ideas on things to cook and how to cook them. Like me, it’s divided into two main sections, the first being American takes on ethnic cuisines (where we twist, bend, and blend dishes into something unrecognizable to its native land, but somehow even more delicious because of the mixing of influences- appropriation, if you will), and the second being regional American cuisines, a concept foreign to non-Americans, who generally don’t understand the rich variety of our geographically diverse foods and cooking methods. Well fuck those Euro-weenie snobs, America is a food paradise, and this book is a celebration of that.

    jesse.in.mb

    Morieux and Tollman – Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexiy without Getting Complicated: Part of my friend’s “Ha, you’re in charge of people…well, let’s fix you” series. Six Simple Rules is short but dense and occasionally feels obtuse, but the ideas that landed have provided immediate paths forward for problems I’d thought were intractable. I see myself referencing the concluding chapter and the rule summaries repeatedly while I struggle through the implications of some of the denser sections.

    Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler – Crucial Conversations I have mixed feelings about this one. It starts off overly self-helpy and frequently praises its own efficacy as part of the way it describes thinking about how you enter into necessarily intense conversations with others. I probably would not have read it if my friend (who has trained with this group professionally) had not pushed it as hard as she did (still trying to fix me), but I’m also glad that I did. It’s helped me avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of saying nothing to avoid conflict and being pushy when I think I’m right in both my personal and professional life and I’ve passed it on to a few friends and coworkers where appropriate. (I was almost done with this one last month but not quite there).

    Recipes for the Cuisinart: Food Processor by James Beard: So I was trying to track down a brioche loaf recipe that I used to make when I first started baking. Everything goes in the food processor, rise, punch down, shape into a loaf and let it rise again. Apparently this recipe was ultimately James Beard’s fault from a midcentury cookbooks put out by Cuisinart. I had to have it. While I was messing around on this front I also picked up America’s Test Kitchen – Food Processor Perfection. I’d recommend the latter over the former although the recipes look solid in the Beard one, they’re also largely midcentury. The best bit was Beard takes a bunch of standard recipes and shows how the device can be more effectively used to speed it up rather than following the recipe as linearly. The ATK one seemed a bit obvious until I started hitting how to effectively slice and grind meat. The BF and I have done bulgogi from thinly shaved tritip, meatballs from short ribs and flap meat and a chuck roast lasagna that have each been spectacular. The food processor managed to steal precious counter space from the Kitchenaid this month.

    Kevin Panetta (author) and Savanna Ganucheau (Illustrator) – Bloom: Cute gay bildungsroman centered on a family bakery in a small east coast town.

    JW

    Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibu. Riven promised tentacles and busty women in school uniforms, but this is just an erudite exploration of the psychology of characters who are both alien in their setting, but contemporary and fresh in the way that the author addresses them as fully realized players in their world. While I’d conten-Oh! Beach volleyball. Later gators.

    SugarFree

    I read a lot of things here and there this month, but the highlight was definitely Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, a novel that contains all the fluids a body can produce, and in excessive amounts. Either a brilliant dissection of the constraints patriarchy places of women’s bodies or a disgusto-porn novel put out by a respectable publisher, it is a pretty wild ride; Walt Whitman taken to the logical extreme:

    Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with
    doctors and calculated close,
    I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

    Riven

    Well, I didn’t manage to get to the books I said I’d hoped to read this month in our last “What Are We Reading.” Wah wah. But it was tax season! And my birthday! And other excuses! Also, I had some personality conflicts at work, which I complained about at length to jesse.in.mb. He said he had been reading this one book, and it had been really helpful for him. So, I also have been reading Crucial Conversations. I have not yet finished it but I’ve tried to using some of the things I have read about at work, and it has been massively helpful. I agree with jesse.in.mb’s thinking above: pretty self-helpy and self-congratulatory so far. I am hoping to actually finish it in May, but even if I don’t, I’m pleased with what I have taken away from it up to this point.

    Can you believe JW believed me? I’m always promising tentacles and busty women in school uniforms–you’d think he would have learned by now.

    mexican sharpshooter

    This month the best book I read was about a cat named Pete, or Pete the Cat if you will.  Today he made a big lunch.  Most people think Pete is a child–he’s not.  He’s a total stoner and if you need proof, here is a photo of the stoned kitty.

    Now Pete was hungry for lunch, and he discovered the sandwich he made was far too large for even Pete with the munchies.  He just kept adding things between two slices of bread until he realized he just had a giant stack of food between two pieces of bread.

    So he invited a couple buddies over, and they each got a piece of the sandwich.

     

  • What Are We Reading – March 2019

    Has it been a month already? Where does the time go? Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess. It’s been a fun 30 days or so, right? … Right?

    Heroic Mulatto

    I am currently reading Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn. Compared to the first entry in his reboot of the Thrawn trilogy, Zahn does a better job with his characterization of Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the first novel, I felt that Zahn played up the ‘fish out of water’ angle too much and Thrawn’s rise read much more like the diary of an Imperial officer with Asperger’s Syndrome who took too much colloidal silver. With Thrawn: Alliances, we see a Thrawn capable of simple and routine social interaction without shitting his pants mid-conversation. That having been said, as a character, Thrawn now seems to suffer from competence porn syndrome. Zahn has yet to find the middle ground where Thrawn can demonstrate that he is the galaxy’s absolute master of military tactics and strategy while still having a realistic and suitable foible. In the end, it could be that despite having created the character in the medium of print, Zahn’s Thrawn cannot compete with the quiet menace of Thrawn as depicted in the Star Wars: Rebels animated series.

    jesse.in.mb

    Andrew Mayne – The Naturalist (books 1-3). Ran through these on Audbile pretty quickly. They are easy enough procedurals although the second and third books lost some of the charm that the first book had because the main character had blossomed from a nerd to a thrill-seeking serial killer hunter by the second book.

    Arkady Strugatsky – Roadside Picnic. I’d been chipping away at this for a while but had mostly stalled out. I’m glad that I took the time to finish it. The enigmatic ending was perfect for the story (although there’s still something that throws me off about Russian genre storytelling). The afterward by one of the authors is a delightful sampling of what it took to get a bowdlerized Roadside Picnic through the publishing process in the USSR.

    I power skimmed a few the books in Humble Bundle’s Eat Like a Geek bundle. Nothing super exciting there. Ice Cube Tray Recipes was a good reminder that I have everything I need to make jello-shots, but a lot of the recommendations were banal for someone who frequently portions and freezes things like homemade chicken stock or caramelized onions in ice cube trays as is. Chinese Street Food looked intriguing. I’m waiting to hear back on a few books with recipes featuring a recently legalized “herb.” I mostly picked it up for the Medieval feasts and Edwardian cooking books, which I’m putting off until I have the chance to dig into them. I really enjoy modern takes on historical cooking such as The New Art of Cookery, A Spanish Friar’s Kitchen Notebook.

    JW

    I’ve been super busy lately, but I am always ready to make time for my favorite author, Chuck Tingle. His latest works have really opened my eyes to the importance of continuous consent and learning to be comfortable with the occasional dry spell. Mr. Tingle is likely the most erudite commentators on contemporary sexual discourse and is absolutely probably not a pen name of SugarFree.

    SugarFree

    I read the Ray Electromatic series by Adam Christopher, a science fiction spin on the oft-imitated Raymond Chandler genre. Set in an alternate 1960s where robots–the clanking metal variety–were introduced and then rejected by the public, the lead character is the last of his kind and the only one programmed to be a private detective. Working in a cliched LA full of secrets, lies and sin, Ray untangles mysteries–when he’s not working his sidejob as a hitman.

    Riven

    Well, I haven’t been able to do much reading outside of investment/work-related articles, but I can tell you about what’s on my bedside stand! …Get your minds out of the gutter; it’s just a big stack of books. OK, it’s a small stack of comic books and two proper books. The first one is Black Jack by our very own Moriah Jovan. Not my usual sci-fi or fantasy, but I am looking forward to branching out while still staying in some familiar territory. (Jack is an “uncouth bond trader,” so maybe there’ll be some interesting finance-related subplot(s)?) I bought this book–and the next one–last August. So. Super busy, or at least too busy to sit down and read a paperback. This month, though! Maybe! The other book is The Very Best of Charles de Lint, which was recommended to me by jesse.in.mb. He had me at “crow girls.” I’m sincerely hoping I can get to each of these in the next month, and give you guys a proper review at the end of April. Wish me luck. Or don’t. You’re adults.

    mexican sharpshooter

    I read an actual book during my vacation in Ireland.  This time I picked 1491:  New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. Why would I do that?  As it turns out most of the B&B’s I stayed in happened to have a TV, and quite frankly Irish TV is disturbingly British which means they must love their game shows…

    At any rate, this book is thoroughly researched and suggests many of the lessons we were taught about life in Pre-Columbian America is, to be blunt, wrong.  One of the myths that seems to perpetuate the most is that the Americas were an untouched, pristine wilderness when the first European settlers arrived.  Not so.  What is now postulated is the earliest Spanish explorers arrived in Florida and brought pigs with them.  Why pigs?  Because refrigerators weren’t invented yet and Spaniards like pork.  Pigs often carry diseases and since they are mostly domesticated a plague could’ve jumped from humans to the pigs, or vice versa.  Pigs escaped, became the invasive species they still are today, and came in contact with the Native Americans.  The Native American’s, of course, had little immunity to these diseases and died in biblical proportions.  The explorers left and decades later settlers arrived in time to find that nature had reclaimed most of the continent.

    Its a thought-provoking point of view that if you are into history, I would certainly recommend.