What a review

There are several books over there on the right that I've finished recently but haven't reviewed, mostly for utter laziness and no other reason. Each is worthy of a good review and I hope to write them this weekend, perhaps even this evening. Stay tuned.

In any event, you'll note all four of them are travel or adventure writing. No fiction. Haven't had the yen to pull out a fiction book in a while, though I did just start reading Snow Crash for the umpteenth time because I love it. I do want to read fiction now, and I read a review of what sounded like a very interesting book in, of all places, The Economist this afternoon. The book is called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Sounded interesting. I had to pre-order it, since it's a British book that's due in the States until next week. If I wait til next week, I'll forget to buy it.

While looking around at other reading I happened upon Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which was evidently very strongly pimped by its publisher when it came out last summer (O Djibouti, Thou hast made me miss so much pop culture) as a wonderful new thing. I'm leery of wonderful new things, which often tend to be less wonderful than advertised.

I did not choose to purchase this book (I bought Absurdistan instead, since you have to buy two things to get the free shipping. Amazing; if I'd paid for shipping and only bought one book I'd have saved fifteen bucks overall. How do they do this to us?). The reviews were generally pretty lousy, 2.5 out of 5 as the average. Many reviewers gave the book a 1. I noticed fairly quickly that the first few reviews, which were amazingly positive (and pretentious at the same time, one of the criticisms of the book) were from within days after the book's publishing. Not enough for people to have genuinely read the book. The reviewers were (shock!) anonymous. Sony got sued for faking reviews of their movies, but then Sony faked the reviews and used said fake reviews to sell the movies; this is a bit more nebulous and difficult to prove, but it certainly seems as though the publisher added a couple positive reviews in days immediately after the book came out to boost buyer confidence. It's an anonymous forum and, technically, the reviews on BN.com or Amazon do not qualify as advertising. I wonder what the legal status of this sort of thing is.

Anyway. Barring the first few reviews which were almost assuredly fake, the positive reviews of the book were all notable for their backhanded compliments. Such as this one:

If you can get past the pretentiousness of the writing, you are in for a real treat.

I don't get that. If I have to "get past" something in the story, I'm not going to read it or enjoy it. If you read a restaurant review that said, "If you can past the awful taste, dining at Barth's Cafe is a pleasurable experience," would you go? I doubt it. Another favorite review of the book said that the prose itself was

a delight to read for it's own sake, regardless of where the story is headed.

Which is to say, of course, that this particular story isn't really headed anywhere. O-kay. I'm just jumping out of my chair to buy this, let me tell you. This one here is my favorite of all--and it's from one of the fake reviews:

Finally, a book worth the effort of reading it.

Excuse me? Worth the effort of reading it? Look, I put a lot of effort into writing things so that you the reader don't have to make a great effort to read them. That's the goal here. I wouldn't bother reading something that took a great deal of effort... well, except for I Am Charlotte Simmons; trying to finish that book caused actual physical pain, but I couldn't properly skewer it if I didn't read it, right? Right.

Anyway. Dear reader, I have a book I'm looking to publish, and I do hope it doesn't take you a great deal of effort to read it. If it does, please, put it down and tell me to hang up the pencil.

What a review

There are several books over there on the right that I've finished recently but haven't reviewed, mostly for utter laziness and no other reason. Each is worthy of a good review and I hope to write them this weekend, perhaps even this evening. Stay tuned.

In any event, you'll note all four of them are travel or adventure writing. No fiction. Haven't had the yen to pull out a fiction book in a while, though I did just start reading Snow Crash for the umpteenth time because I love it. I do want to read fiction now, and I read a review of what sounded like a very interesting book in, of all places, The Economist this afternoon. The book is called Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Sounded interesting. I had to pre-order it, since it's a British book that's due in the States until next week. If I wait til next week, I'll forget to buy it.

While looking around at other reading I happened upon Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which was evidently very strongly pimped by its publisher when it came out last summer (O Djibouti, Thou hast made me miss so much pop culture) as a wonderful new thing. I'm leery of wonderful new things, which often tend to be less wonderful than advertised.

I did not choose to purchase this book (I bought Absurdistan instead, since you have to buy two things to get the free shipping. Amazing; if I'd paid for shipping and only bought one book I'd have saved fifteen bucks overall. How do they do this to us?). The reviews were generally pretty lousy, 2.5 out of 5 as the average. Many reviewers gave the book a 1. I noticed fairly quickly that the first few reviews, which were amazingly positive (and pretentious at the same time, one of the criticisms of the book) were from within days after the book's publishing. Not enough for people to have genuinely read the book. The reviewers were (shock!) anonymous. Sony got sued for faking reviews of their movies, but then Sony faked the reviews and used said fake reviews to sell the movies; this is a bit more nebulous and difficult to prove, but it certainly seems as though the publisher added a couple positive reviews in days immediately after the book came out to boost buyer confidence. It's an anonymous forum and, technically, the reviews on BN.com or Amazon do not qualify as advertising. I wonder what the legal status of this sort of thing is.

Anyway. Barring the first few reviews which were almost assuredly fake, the positive reviews of the book were all notable for their backhanded compliments. Such as this one:

If you can get past the pretentiousness of the writing, you are in for a real treat.

I don't get that. If I have to "get past" something in the story, I'm not going to read it or enjoy it. If you read a restaurant review that said, "If you can past the awful taste, dining at Barth's Cafe is a pleasurable experience," would you go? I doubt it. Another favorite review of the book said that the prose itself was

a delight to read for it's own sake, regardless of where the story is headed.

Which is to say, of course, that this particular story isn't really headed anywhere. O-kay. I'm just jumping out of my chair to buy this, let me tell you. This one here is my favorite of all--and it's from one of the fake reviews:

Finally, a book worth the effort of reading it.

Excuse me? Worth the effort of reading it? Look, I put a lot of effort into writing things so that you the reader don't have to make a great effort to read them. That's the goal here. I wouldn't bother reading something that took a great deal of effort... well, except for I Am Charlotte Simmons; trying to finish that book caused actual physical pain, but I couldn't properly skewer it if I didn't read it, right? Right.

Anyway. Dear reader, I have a book I'm looking to publish, and I do hope it doesn't take you a great deal of effort to read it. If it does, please, put it down and tell me to hang up the pencil.

Why?

You let me down, Tampa. You had the opportunity to throw out a do-nothing 12-year incumbent on the city council and inject fresh blood to Tampa's political culture, and you didn't. You went with the tried-and-truly-pathetic. And people wonder why this town doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Public Service Announcement

If you live in Tampa, don't forget that today is election day! Vote Joe Redner!

Vote Joe Redner!

In my capacity as a private citizen, I wish to endorse Joe Redner for Tampa City Council District 1. The election is on March 27th.

Here is his website.

Joe is a controversial character, but let us consider the following:
The 12-year incumbent, Gwen Miller, has never engendered controversy in her official capacity because she never takes a stand on anything or speaks up at council meetings. She does vote at council meetings, but you could count on one hand the number of initiatives she has been responsible for in her 12 years on the council without taking off your mittens.

Joe Redner is, at the very least, his own man. And he won't sit idly by on the council and say nothing and do nothing. And he's certainly no member of the "good ol' boys club." If anything he's one of their top antagonists. Joe Redner will shake up the city council, and that's what we need.

Ask yourself the following question: Is Tampa a well-run city? Is our government responsive or responsible? If you answered yes, please send me some of whatever drugs you're on, because I want to try them! But seriously, folks, if you're a little nervous about Joe simply because of the business he owns, consider whether you're making the right judgment on the man. And consider, too, what exactly are you afraid of? We've already got lousy government. Give Joe a chance; I think he's exactly what the city needs.

Metaphor

Thanks to Rockee at GardenWeb for the following description of the Stargazer Lily:

it smells like cheap perfume on an unbathed person.

On a whole page dedicated to people's descriptions of the "stinkiest flower," that's my favorite (if you have some time to kill, though, the page is full of great ones).

Smitty's Garden

I was made jealous by some photos of Lucky Bob's garden and yard, and decided I needed to post pictures of my own little slice of heaven.

My slice is decidedly littler, of course. I think it measures 6x12 feet or something. And it doesn't have its own dirt, I have to bring dirt in. Nonetheless, you gotta admit it must be enough if I can grow a flower bigger than the plant it's on.

Now, my garden actually has some nice plants in it. Trees, for example. Like, four or eight of them or something. Here are a few. The main trees here are thevetias, a sort of yellow oleander that is unrelated to the oleander but looks just like one. There's only the one bloom; three days ago before the cold snap it had several. On the left is a jambo flame tree, although it has no flowers at all, and probably won't this year. Once I post more safari pictures I'll include one of a grown-up jambo flame tree.

The garden also has some flowers. They're pretty! Or, at any rate, they will be. It's still early spring, these are wildflowers. I promise. On the left are... um... I think dianthus and ice flowers. On the right are cosmos and Texas bluebonnets and black-eyed susans. Really!

A while back I acquired whiteflies. I hate whiteflies. They're horrible dreadful little creatures and very hard to control. Desperate for a solution, I went to the store and bought oil spray and soap spray, and I decided to splurge and spend three dollars and buy ladybugs. Really! Here they are, chowing down on whiteflies on a happy poinsettia. Believe it or not, the things seem to have more or less got rid of the whitefly problem entirely. Unfortunately the key lime tree still has a nasty cottony-cushion scale problem, but perhaps with time the ladybugs will take care of that, too.


My garden has an indoor portion, as well, and, although said indoor portion consists only of silk plants and three Christmas Cacti, I actually have flowers. This cactur apparently decided it was more of a Christmas and Easter thing. Pretty, at any rate; I'd never seen a Christmas Cactus this color before.

So there. That's my garden. I'll post photos when the wildflowers bloom, and the baldcypress leaves come out.

Relaxing

I tell you, it's nice to go off on a good rant from time to time. I've been feeling so much better today, I can't even tell you. I saw my doctor today, too, and admitted I was actually feeling better... hopefully word doesn't get back to the office.

Today I'm listening to a piano suite of music transcribed from Philip Glass' opera Orphée. I've never heard the actual opera, nor do I know much about the Orpheus legend, but this transcription is very nice. The CD also includes the 4th Knee Play from Einstein On The Beach, which sounds very strange (the title, that is) but which remains the first song I would wish to learn to play were I ever to acquire a piano. That seems a bit unlikely, but I may pick up the sheet music just because.

On the drive home today I was thinking about the fact that lately, I've had dozens of ideas for stories and I've failed to write any of them down. So of course I can't remember any of them. I need to start writing these things down so I can work on them at home. Going to the pottery studio last week turned my muse on again, thank goodness, but I've got to find a way to make her sit still for me so I can actually remember an idea long enough to write it down.

The only thing I've been able to remember is the idea I came up with (thanks to Smittygirl) for a superhero to add to the stable of superheroes in The Reporter: Hash Brown Girl. She's Hash Brown Girl, and not Hash Brown Woman, because she hasn't figured out how to use her unusual power for good (or evil, or whatever). See, at the snap of a finger she decomposes into hundreds of little cubes. As I see it, in this state she is essentially impervious--she can be fried, boiled, mixed into a hash, set on fire, thrown into a lake, mashed with spoon, or frozen in a river, and she'll be just fine. I suspect she's probably capable of resolidifying even if some of the hash browns go astray. How many can go astray I'm not quite sure. I like her character because, as interesting as her power is, I certainly can't come up with a way to make it useful (apart from the obvious asset of it making her very hard to kill), and neither can she (I realize this is cheating, but only sort of).

Perhaps I should just nibble away at that story for a while and hope the muse wants to come for a longer visit.

This one's about chicken

Really.

I bought chicken breasts today.
I think they use steroids on these chickens. I looked and looked through the piles of chicken breasts to find the smallest packages, because frankly sometimes I want a chicken breast that's smaller than a ribeye steak and that a normal sized human (which I maintain I still am, even though the median size of humans in this country is expanding by the day) can consume in a single sitting with a side of sauteed vegetables and some rice and still feel comfortable rather than stuffed full and bloated. Call me crazy.

I bought the smallest packages I could find, but there was a catch, you see. Instead of four breasts (or at the least three breasts with tenderloins), in each package I got three breasts, two of which appeared to be from a normal chicken and one of which, the one hiding under the printed part of the label, was clearly from a steroid-injected mutant chicken, or perhaps some sort of turkey/chicken or condor/chicken hybrid. It's the size of two normal chicken breasts.

What bothers me is that I can get normal sized chicken breasts by going to organic food store, where they sell chickens that have had no steroids and been fed exclusively on non-fertilized non-insecticized grain, grass, or whatever. They're smaller, but I'd like smaller. And as I see it, they have less stuff in them--no steroids, no pesticides, no fertilizers--and I don't want to pay for that stuff in my chicken anyway. It's chicken. But if I buy the organic chicken, it costs half again as much.

So, what I actually want is less. But to get less, I have to pay more. It's very confusing.

Stew's Done!

I apologize in advance for the following rant. Children and sensitive pets should consider skipping it. It's been stewing for a year plus so if you're inclined to be bothered by excessive A)negativity or B)foul language... don't complain because I warned you.

So today was one of my coworkers' last days at work. He's retiring, and technically he's a superior, not a coworker, but he's not in my chain of command and, anyway, he's retired. So it doesn't matter. Back to the point. He's a nice guy, I like him. He's aware I've been trying to get out of my job for some time and helped a bit last autumn to get the process moving again.

He stopped by to say goodbye, or at any rate see you later. Among the things he said were, "Don't let the job get you down," and "At least they're giving you a paycheck."

Too late. The job has got me down. I'm not going to apologize for that or make excuses and I don't need to explain matters, either. The amount of time I've been sitting in that office going absolutely nowhere is not to be sneezed at and regardless of whether it should or not, the job has got me down. I hate the job more because of that. Fuck the job.

And I was thinking about the second comment a bit later in the day. Nearly everyone I've spoken with--and bear in mind I never speak to anyone at my job about how much I want to leave my job or how much trouble I'm having doing so, apart from my boss, people come to me to chat and always ask about it (my favorite is "Gee I thought you'd be out of here already," one of the most irritating and cretinous things anyone could possibly say to someone in my position)--has said the very same thing. At least they're still giving me a paycheck.

Did you know prisoners in penitentiaries making license plates get paid? They do. Pennies a plate, but at least they're still getting a paycheck.

Well fuck them, and fuck their paycheck. I don't want the fucking paycheck anymore. If they weren't giving me a paycheck, do any of these dribbling morons think I'd still be at work? I'd love to stop getting a paycheck from my employer. I would love it! I fucking hate them! I hate going to work, I hate being at work, I hate doing the work, I hate talking to people at work, I hate seeing people at work... I hate everyone I work with. I even hate the people I really like at my workplace, not because they're bad people, but because I hate having to go there to see them. I work with people I would gladly hang out with socially, but I don't because I really hate them even though I also like them. I hate them because of work. Even though I like them. (It's confusing, I know.)

I don't fucking care about the god damned paycheck any more and as far as I'm concerned if they forgot to mail them I'd be better off. I could at least stop going and call the whole fucking waste of time off and find a better job.

FUCK THE GOD DAMN PAYCHECK! Leave me the fuck alone already! I don't want to talk about the trouble I'm having with separation right now, not with people at work, not with anybody. The situation sucks. Let's leave it at that, okay? If you can think of nothing else to discuss with me then for God's sake leave me the fuck alone! It's bad enough already.

I don't want the money. This job makes me so fucking miserable I actually contemplated suicide a couple years ago. Can you imagine that? And since then the job has actually got worse! Way fucking worse! God forbid they should find a way to fix the fucking problem. No, they just grounded me and made me even more fucking miserable than I was before. And by God I've managed to get by all this time without blowing the goddamn place up. I think I deserve a fucking medal. (I'm going to get a phone call tomorrow because of that line. That's one of the things I hate about this job; officialdom doesn't "get" sarcasm and they read my shit because they think they have a right to. Fuck them. Fuck you! Are you with one of the pissant agencies that pokes into everything we do? Here's a fast tip for you: I am not a threat, I just hate you and everything you stand for!)

Fact of the matter is, focusing on the paycheck is a loser's prison. I'm not interested in clinging to this job because they're paying me. The paycheck in no way compensates me for the misery caused by the job itself, and insinuating that it in some way does, or could, or should, is deeply insulting. I would rather sell my house and posessions than continue being employed in a job I detest this much simply because I'm getting a paycheck. If I have learned anything from my time with my present employer, it is that in truth I can get by with far fewer things than I actually have. Perhaps it is time I start doing so.

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof of that building a few blocks away Is On Fire!

Actually, I just wanted to use that headline. The rest of this post is garbage.

Yes, it appears my neighborhood is burning to the ground. This weekend there was a fire at a retirement home condo just across the river. Then last night, between ten-thirty and God knows how late (Smittygirl and I slept through it, or at any rate when we did wake up we didn't identify why), two buildings a few blocks away from mi casa caught fire. The one was actually a nice historic theatre, although it had been vacant for many years.

I like the fact that this newspaper article points out that "customers' pizzas were left sitting inside the shop" at the Domino's. I guess they get their pizzas free then, right?

One After Another

I have mono.

What the hell is with that, huh? I thought mono was a disease for high school students. I mean, I'm almost... well, I'm too old to be getting mono, that's for sure. This is ridiculous.

But it's true. The test came back positive and all the symptoms line up. Ugh.

I want to whine but I'll spare you. Smittygirl... she may not be so lucky (although she is so far lucky enough not to have mono--or at any rate her test was negative).

Every cloud has a silver lining, though: I'm totally using this as an excuse for cutting out of work early.