Cold Bean Porridge and a Virgin Milkmaid

Iron Council by China Miéville

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gods and Jabber, I don't know why I love this one the most. It's not necessarily better than the other Bas-Lag Books (don't you dare call them a trilogy, don't you dare. Old China may write other books but he says he'll always come back to this; there's more to come), and it's nowhere near the worst. There's just something about this that feels so radically different, so alien,so apart from the others. Perdido Street Station was new and fresh and amazing, yeah, but it felt familiar enough--while still being strange and fantastic, of course--that you still felt just-so comfortable reading it (or as comfortable as you could be reading about sex with bug-people), and The Scar was a fun old adventure story, exotic and equally fantastic but still an ab-sequel to PSS.

But here, here, Iron Council rips us away from mid-1700s (Anno Urbis) New Crobuzon and tosses us thirty, forty years into a New Crobuzon that barely remembers the Midsummer Nightmares, and what's this? No more constructs? Jack's dead? Ben Flex is just a name? The fucking Militia's out?

You want the same old city, you wish it could stay frozen in time, but New Crobuzon is different. Changed. It's darker, uglier, more cynical. And even when Cutter and the others escape, chasing Judah on his quest for the Iron COuncil, the city still clings to them like an oil slick. The city in Isaac's day was hardly bright and cheerful, but back then it still echoed with adventure. Now the militia are out, and everything else had to go into hiding. It's time to go west to bring the Iron Council home.

That long out-west adventure/quest itself, and the long-ago middle piece detailing the long gestation and sudden birth of Iron Council, make up the bulk of the story, mixed with snatches of back-home reports of the small revolutionary movements taking place in the city, and this jump back and forth from cynical near-despair to hopeful optimistic questing is what makes this a hard, weird novel. It jumbles in places, it tosses about; it's not always a pleasant read, or an easy one. It's tougher, more political, more insistant. But it's so good. So rewarding. And even the end, that fat and unnatural anticlimactic-climax, that so-wrong final meeting of the Council and the City, even as you want to yell "that is not how it should have happened!" you cannot help but think "Yes, yes, that is how it was, how it is, how it should be." There is something strange and wonderful about Mieville's works that both frustrate and inspire.

Mieville likes playing with cities. New Crobuzon is exotic enough already, and the ship-city of Armada from TS was plenty awesome. Here we have Iron Council itself, the perpetual train, ungrateful child of New Crobuzon. Makes you almost giddy wondering what Old China will give us next.

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The Plot to Save Socrates by Paul Levinson

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
So. Twenty minutes into the future, a graduate student named Sienna receives part of a dialogue between Socrates and a supposed time traveler trying to save his life, which leads her to a hidden time machine in London where she sets off on her own journey through history to find out the truth.

You'd think with a premise like that, this book would be awesome, right? Right? Yeah, so did I. What we get, instead, is a weak, boring, convoluted story almost completely lacking in character development and plot. The setting is just barely defined (we get section headings like "Athens, 404 BC" and little else), and combined with the rest of the narrative (characters mostly talk for a while, then do stuff in short bursts) makes the story read like a half-assed movie script. It's a dialogue-heavy script--er, book--which I wouldn't mind so much if the dialogue was natural. And interesting. But all the characters sound awkwardly formal, with no change in voice from character to character. The whole book reads like a Socratic dialogue. That might be intentional on the author's part, but it doesn't make the story any more readable.

As for characterization--well, what characters stand out are either historical figures, which means they're ill-defined and completely static (sole exception being Alcibiades, who mostly just does stuff when the story calls for it) or the cast of main characters who are even less interesting: Sienna, the main character, passively reacts to events surrounding her--including death-- and shows up in various periods without her personality (oops! Must've forgot it in Athens!); Thomas, her mentor, who occasionally shows up with information but does little else (and when his character is finally fleshed out at the end, the facts are as dull as the rest of the book); and Heron, whose motives are never entirely clear. What's he doing now? Why's he helping them. Now why is he trying to stop them? Huh?

As for Socrates...well, considering the plot revolves around him, he only shows up near the end, where he completely nullifies much of the plot with his decision, and the ultimate revelation of Andros, the time traveler in the dialogues, comes with zero shock. Less of a bang, more of a halfhearted deflated sound. "Oh, that's how it is. Meh."

Basically, a huge disappointment. I can't really say why I suffered through this thing, except that it was a mercifully short read. Although the beginning was rather weak and rushed, I think I figured it would eventually get better. How wrong I was. By then, though, I was halfway through the book and figured I should finish. If anything, it provided a small history lesson to help me brush up on my knowledge of the trial and death of Socrates--although I imagine The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone, which was mentioned a few times in this book, will help much better.

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In the Heat of the Night by John Ball

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
A murder occurs in a small Southern town of Wells, and the first suspect, a black man who just happens to be in the wrong place (the town of Wells) at the wrong time (after the body is found), turns out to be Virgil Tibbs, a homicide investigater from California. It's a small embarrassment for the police that's made only worse when the friends and family of the murder victim request his help to catch the killer. Virgil Tibbs is just the man Wells needs, but definitely not the man police chief Bill Gillespie wants.

It's a good book and a good mystery (and interesting enough to add the rest of the Virgil Tibbs mysteries to my reading list), but as much as I hate to admit it, this is one occasion where I liked the movie more. The mystery here is woefully placed in the background, especially as three other suspects after Tibbs lead the police and the reader off the trail, so the revelation of the real killer is sudden and extremely unexpected.

Officer Sam Wood is by far the strongest character in the novel--rightly so, considering his is the main viewpoint--but the main reason I prefer the movie more is because it brings Tibbs up front and center. Here in the novel, Tibbs is mostly a passive background character, doing much of his investigation off the page while the white cops work to solve (and bungle) the case. In a sense, he seems to act like the "Good Negro," unusually educated but mostly subserviant to Wood and Gillsprie, either politely deferring to the two men or quietly investigating on his own, careful not to disturb the white folk in their peaceful little town, only showing up to interrupt when he has to.

It may just be that Tibbs knows enough to keep his head down in an unfriendly place, but I still prefer the aggressive and hotheaded character from the films more. Tibbs seems to passively accept all the racism and abuse hurled at him in the book, whereas he resists it--famously so--in the movie.

That said, it's still a good book, and the number of changes made in the film helps the book stand on its own. Very interested in the rest of the series.


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The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century: Stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Finney, Joe Haldeman, Ursula K. Le Guin, by Harry Turtledove

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very good, very varied collection of storis. There were a few I didn't care for: "Timetipping" by Jack Dann was just weird, and I couldn't really get into Robert Silverberg's "Sailing to Byzantium," as well as one or two other less-impressive ones, but overall the stories varied from entertaining to excellent: "I'm Scared" by Jack Finney was especially good, as well as "A Gun for Dinosaur" by L. Sprague de Camp (more on that below), "The Man Who Came Early" by Poul Anderson, and "Rainbird" by R.A. Lafferty. But it was "The Price of Oranges," a powerful little gem by Nancy Kress, that really made the anthology. That had to be the best one.

I wasn't surprised to find Ray Bradbury's story "A Sound of Thunder" here, but I wasn't impressed either. This is the famous story in which a single mistake in the past ends up dramatically changing the future--that is, by fixing an election and ruining spelling bees forever. Never liked that story.

Butterfly effect or not, it always seemed to me the highest form of vanity to assume that the actions of a single human being can alter the next sixty-odd million years so much. I know, I know, it's time travel. But while it makes perfect sense to apply the butterfly affect to human history, because human history is just so brief (and, for that matter, it's easy to look at any chain of events in the recent past and find plausible ways to alter them), you can't expect me to believe that one tiny event deep in the past can change the course of tens of millions of years in such a radical way. Apparently humans are just that special, but I don't buy it. That's why I was surprised and pleased to read de Camp's story "A Gun for Dinosaur." Took a far more realistic approach (as realistic as time travel can be) to the matter: do what you want in the past, because there's too much time in the past for us to ever screw up. Not the greatest message either, especially in this fragile age of environmentalism, but at least it recognizes that humans aren't as special or as influential as we like to think we are.

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Hey, cool.

I guess this means my ever-lingering cynicism and doubt was all for nothing. Boy, is my face red.

But hey, President Obama has a nice ring to it.

Fuck yeah.

What a week. The stock market's crashing and we're all going to die. But hey, gas is $3.19 $3.09 $2.99/gallon! I gotta say, I'm almost tempted to vote Republican--except, well, I wasn't thinking clearly the other day when I registered and voted absentee for Obama. I guess I got hooked by that message of Hope and Change when I should've been thanking Our Republican Masters for cheap oil.

But seriously, I voted Obama. Congratulate me if you will, but I mostly voted for him because he seems better than McCain. Too cynical for Hope & Change & Stuff. Didn't think it would matter much anyway--I guessed way back in January that it would come down to Obama and McCain, and that McCain would win: no matter how much Obama inspired young voters, we're still outnumbered by the baby boomers, and I always had a feeling they'd be more comfortable with McCain. Adding Palin to the ticket only guarantees the crazy religious vote, which makes me even more pessimistic...

...but I noticed that Obama's ahead in the polls, so maybe All Is Not Lost? Hard to say. There's another month of this depressing election bullshit to slog through, but [eople aren't so charmed by Palin anymore, and Obama hasn't revealed himself as the Antichrist yet. So he could win. I'm willing to admit that: Obama might just win.

But it's October, and October is a time for surprises. Something could happen to fuck up the campaign and doom us all. But short of Obama's absent father turning out to be bin Laden, I can't think of anything. Palin either scares or amuses people, and nobody seems to care about Obama & that Ayers guy. Even if B. Hussein Osama Obama is exposed as a secret Muslim, I doubt much will change; the people who believe he's a terrorist already have their minds made up. But surprises could happen. And at this point, it'll have to take a really big surprise for McCain to win. Something huge. Something like...

The assassination of Levi Johnston.

Think about it. Here's this young all-American boy, Alaska's favorite son, Bristol Palin's high school sweetheart. (Really! They love each other--that is, he knocked her up--and they're going to get married. With a moosegun at their back, but whatever. He's a young man with a bright future ahead of him--he'll be a Palin!--and, I predict, a promising future in politics) Unfortunately, for McCain to win, he'll have to die.

[DISCLAIMER FOR THE FBI: THE FOLLOWING HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION IS ENTIRELY FICTITIOUS. I AM NOT INVOLVED IN ANY PLOT TO MURDER LEVI JOHNSTON OR ANY MEMBER OF THE PALIN OR MCCAIN FAMILIES. THIS IS A TEST. I REPEAT, THIS IS ONLY A TEST. WILL I BE ALLOWED TO BRING PERSONAL ITEMS TO GUANTANAMO?]

Picture the scene: a giant McCain rally barely a week before the election. John McCain is there, with wife and family. Sarah Palin is there too, with hubby and family, Bristol and Levi looking either scared or in love. The Palin fans are going nuts, speaking in tongues (ironic, isn't it, that "Drill, baby, drill!"--probably the very words that got him into this mess in the first place--are the last words young Levi will ever hear?), while McCain's supporters just look embarrassed. Suddenly, a shot. Maybe two. People scream. Someone falls. And in the chaos that follows, the shooter escapes.

And then, a shocking revelation: Sarah Palin and John McCain are unhurt, but Alaska's Golden Boy is slain. His wife-to-be Bristol is widowed, his unborn child will never know his father. The Palins withdraw to Alaska to mourn, and McCain suspends his campaign (again), this time out of respect for the dead. But in an act of sympathy for the GOP's fallen hero, the American public, shocked and saddened by this terrible, terrible loss, nonetheless gather together to elect McCain and Palin to the White House. It is a landslide victory, and Barack Obama returns to Chicago to do whatever it is that community organizers do. Whether the killer meant to shoot Palin and/or McCain, or really intended to hit Levi all along, is irrelevant: it's a brilliant stroke of luck, and the country can look forward to a golden age of government in Washington with those two mavericks in the White House.

Glory, glory hallelujah.

The real question is: Who shot Levi Johnston?

( Whodunnit? )

Is it just me, or did today play out like the climax of your average street basketball movie, where the basketball comes to a halt at the hero's feet, there is an epic pause, doves take flight, and people realize that this it it, man? Only there was no basketball. Just the election.

OBAMA: Hey, John, let's work together to save the economy, k?

MCCAIN: Sure!

(PAUSE)

MCCAIN: Hey! Everyone! I've decided to suspend my PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN--yeah, my CAMPAIGN to become PRESIDENT--so I can SAVE THE ECONOMY. Let's forget about Friday's PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE and the fact that I'm running for PRESIDENT because I CARE about SAVING THE ECONOMY more than I care about RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT. This is not about the ELECTION. I want to SAVE the ECONOMY.

(PAUSE)

MCCAIN: Oh, and Obama can come too.

(PAUSE)

OBAMA: ...

EVERYONE ELSE: *Holds breath*

OBAMA: I'm sorry, you can't be president.

MCCAIN: *melts*

KARL ROVE: *bursts into flames*

PUPPIES AND ANGELS: *Descend from Heaven*

EVERYONE ELSE: *Orgasm*

The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Haven't read all the stories here: I checked this book out from the library to read "The Lottery," and that story alone was so good I can't really justify reading the rest for free. This is something that needs to be bought, owned, and given a place of honor on one's bookshelves.

This is the first time I've read "The Lottery," and it feels like I'm about six years too late--from what I hear, this story tends to get read in high school English classes; if any of the courses I took in high school had provided this as reading material, I would've loved it. That's not to say I didn't like it now, but--after hearing about this story countless times since I left high school, and not having read it until now--the subtlety and the terror of "The Lottery" feels rather diminished by the fact that, before I even read the first line, I knew what it was about.

That doesn't mean the end isn't chilling ("It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.)--don't get me wrong, it may be one of the best damn endings I've ever read--but, to tell the truth, I really, really, REALLY wish I could read this completely ignorant of what this "lottery" everyone is so excited about really was.

Great story, yeah. I just wish the ending could be the best-kept secret in English literature, only known to those who have actually read it.

Did anyone else have that problem?


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So. Um. I had this dream last night. And, um, Barack Obama stopped on the campaign trail to, um, participate in, ah, a cabaret show for charity.

And I must say, he looked pretty good in fishnet stockings, doing the can-can.

At least it wasn't the other candidate. Thank you, subconscious!

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I'm hopeless at writing book reviews. Completely hopeless. Can't do it to save my life. I usually end giving too much detail in the summary and then stumble through a dissection of the theme. What a way to butcher a book. And with a book as great as Les Misérables, I doubt I could really do it justice. Besides, I probably can't say anything about the book itself that hasn't already been said before, so I'll offer some personal reflections instead. Hopefully that works. And here we go!

When I was about halfway through Les Mis, I came across an abridged version in a local bookstore. My copy, unabridged, is 1,463 pages. The abridged copy? Less than 500. I was shocked. Even though I could tell, from my reading, that it was entirely possible to cut out nearly a thousand pages, I still read the entire freakin' book.

And so should you! Because any publisher worth his weight, and any reader worth his spit, should know that this is not "Jean Valjean Goes to Paris." This is not a jolly little story about a guy who has a handful of adventures after he gets out of jail. This is Les Miserables--Les Freakin' Miserables, a title that cannot be translated into a wimpy language like English without looking incredibly stupid--and if you want the abridged version, go see the damn musical. Which is amazing, by the way.

But whether you've seen the musical or not, if you want to read the book, you will not read the abridged version. Don't you dare consider it. Yeah, I know, Victor Hugo frequently turns away from the main narrative to focus on side characters, historical events, religion, philosophy, and other subjects. That's why this isn't called "Jean Valjean's Excellent Adventure." Victor Hugo had more than a story to tell--he had an entire world. To cut all that out, so you just have the barest amount of the original story--well, I can't even imagine what that's like.

Yes, I'll confess, my eyes occasionally glazed over during some of Hugo's lengthier side narratives. Yeah, I started to get a bit frustrated when, about 800 pages in, Hugo was still introducing characters (the middle part, that great hump, is the hardest part to get through, but after all, it was the halfway point, and Marius wasn't exactly my favorite character). And, I'll admit, I got a bit frustrated during my final 2-day, 400-page marathon for the end when, during the more exciting parts of the story, Hugo took a step back from the barricades and the escapes and the recovery to focus on, say, the history of the Paris sewers.

But despite all that, I loved the entire thing. I couldn't help myself. This fantastic novel was never intended to be a thrilling action book. If I wanted to read something quick and exciting, I would happly grab any one of those grocery store books with a two-week shelf life. But Les Mis< isn't a couple of cliffhangers and a cookie-cutter ending. This (here's where the attempt at legitimate review comes in) is a story about Life, about death, about love, about loss, redemption, faith, hope, dreams, freedom, despair--hell, this is a story about Humanity in all its glory and ugliness. And to paraphrase a certain Monsieur T., I pity the fool who thinks he can get all that in the abridged version. 500 pages? Dubya-tee-eff?

I knew, when I picked this one up, that I wanted to read something big, lengthy, and dense. I knew it would be a challenge to finish in a reasonable time, but I wasn't worried. I had plenty of free time, wanted to lose myself in a good book, and Les Mis seemed the perfect book for the occasion. And I gotta say, I was right.

Now, on to War and Peace!

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I believe it was Freud, slippery fellow, who said that when we dream about flying we're really dreaming about having sex (a claim which caused Dream, of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, to muse "then what does it mean when you dream about having sex?")--so it must say something, then, that all my dreams have me stuck fast to the ground, immobile, as if slogging balls-deep through mud. My legs feel enormous and heavy; I can barely run--I certainly cannot fly.

But last night I dreamed I was sky diving--an activity which, if not quite flying, is at least falling (almost gliding) with grace; it still involves the sky. But that's not quite the truth: I never actually did it. Oh, I was going to: I had signed up to go sky diving, I was ready to go sky diving, I wore all the protective gear and everything (in this dream, sky diving seemed to require full-body protection: a giant balloon of a costume, all white billowy material, a friggin' HAZMAT suit--I was prepared!).

And yet--and yet!--I never got off the ground. Never. Because every time I went on or near the plane, or even thought about the plane, the sheer total nervous excitement of it all (I was going to fly!) made me unconsciously pull the release cord so that, every damn time, the parachute would pop open--say it with me!--prematurely. And I'd stand there, cord in hand, parachute spilling on the ground, embarrassed. And was that pity in my fellow sky divers' eyes, or laughter? Does this happen to everyone the first time they fly?

I spent three parachutes before I woke up. I never got to go sky diving.

As if I need anyone to interpret that.

I finished Victor Hugo's Les Miserables yesterday--all 1,463 pages of it--after starting it July 3rd. A decent length or time, all things considered. I may or may not be posting a semi-coherent review (I'm completely hopeless at reviewing books, but what's the point of reading something if you're not going to talk about it?), but in the meantime, some thoughts:

1. I've made up my mind about who I'm voting for (Ann Coulter for President!*), so I'm trying to avoid as much campaign drama as possible. 'Sides, it kinda says something about how irrelevant the election is when Paris Hilton gets involved. The real problem is, well, I kinda like her energy policy. As a moderate where US politics are concerned, I'm bored with the extreme Right/Left counter-counter-counter arguments. DO NOTHING! DO EVERYTHING! What about...DO SOMETHING? Why not drill for oil while working on new technologies? Well, here's the rub--because any candidate who seriously considers the idea will be mocked forever because THAT'S WHAT PARIS HILTON SAID HAHA YOU SUCK. Thanks for ruining centrism, Paris, you stupid bitch.

P.S. That swimsuit...thing...is hideous.

*Bumper-sticker idea: "Coulter/O'Reilly O'8: Betcha just threw up a little."

2. But speaking of old people, I've been kinda obsessed with Edna Parker lately. Currently the world's oldest person at 115, she's slowly working her way up the list of the world's oldest people. Everyone above her is dead, so she just keeps moving up the ranks. As of today, 6 August 2008, Parker is tied at #19 with Susie Gibson, both 115 years, 108 days. Naturally, Gibson is stuck there, but Parker keeps going. From there, it's only 16 more days to the 18th spot, and--well, all I can say is, Wikipedia may be reporting this factually and calmly, but I can imagine some sort of ongoing Vegas betting ring set up to see just how far she really makes it:

"Parker and Gibson are side by side now! They're neck and neck! Gibson is dead on her feet, Parker's gaining, looks like she could edge Gibson out of the spot! Can she do it? CAN SHE DO IT? It's the Ultimate Supercentenarian Life-Race, where every round is sudden death! Don't miss it!"

Sometimes I think too much.

3. So it's a good thing I know paradox_ninja. She's awesome. So's her family. In the past year or so, her dad, who is a doctor (or claims to be...), has hooked my head up to his computer to read my brainwaves (an interesting experience, but trust me, neural feedback hangovers are not pleasant) and--after running me through a series of simple exercises to test my flexibility and reflexes--tentatively diagnosed me with Erb's Palsy, all because my left thumb is incapable of bending independent of my left index finger. Turns out the left side of my body is slightly weaker and less developed than the right side, which was something I never really bothered to notice before, but now causes me to obsess over tiny physical imperfections which causes me to miss elections. I should probably keep my socks on until after November 4th.

BUT ANYWAY.

Paradox Ninja's mom, coyote_eyes, is a professor at UW-Baraboo, the local campus. She teaches psychology. She hasn't used me as a test piglet like Dr. Dad (yet), but she has shared some things from her classes. One thing she mentioned, from a question she put on one of her exams, was the idea of semi-plausible superheroes. That is, if you were to manipulate small parts of the brain, thus manipulating the parts of the body (external or otherwise) that those parts of the brain control, thus creating "superpowers," what would you do? Y'know, enhanced adrenaline for super-energy, refined optic nerve center for some sort of super x-ray vision, mutated pituitary glands for, um, something--that sort of thing, et cetera.

Me, I'd take the olfactory system--smell--and enhance it a bit. Really good sense of smell. Like, Perfume good. Then take that near-perfect sense of smell and blend it with whatever system controls emotion. Not emotion itself, actually; more the part of the brain that senses emotion in others. Empathy. Understanding how people feel. Almost--but not quite--feeling what they feel. Empathy. Take that, mix it with the olfactory system, and what do you get?

A nasal empath.

I smell what you smell.

Yeah, I know, doesn't make any sense. I just like the term "nasal empath." But seriously, what's your neurologically-enhanced superpower?

I should probably admit that I am not a hermit. It's just a label I like to cling to. I mean, I do have friends. I occasionally interact with people other than myself, and I have a job that makes me talk strangers. So I'm not a hermit. In that case, I'll settle for being solitary. I enjoy my solitude, but I'm not completely opposed to human contact, which is how I can justify occasionally leaving my hovel to meet people.

Still, I'm slightly (slightly?) misanthropic, hence the solitude. I don't like people. Oh, don't get me wrong, I like individual people, just not groups. Crowds. Strangers. I'm not entirely comfortable with people I don't know. It doesn't help that I have a poor memory for faces. I'm just not observant enough to remember people very well, unless I see them frequently. It took long enough to remember the regular morning customers when I worked the opening shift; when I switched to working nights, I had a whole new crowd to meet. And that's not taking into account the people who aren't regulars, the ones from Reedsburg who recognize me. Friends of my parents, mostly. Or people I went to school with.

Especially people I went to school with. It's been three years since high school, and my circle of friends from that time has shrunk a bit. Deliberately, I might add. The way I see it, there's no such thing as losing track of people. You keep in touch with the people you like, and forget about the ones you don't. That's why Facebook annoys me: the way I always saw it, Facebook was a way for the people who never talked to you in high school to keep in touch with you in college. But I'm not nostalgic about high school. I had a good time, sure, but I've moved on, which is why I'm rarely excited to bump into old classmates.

Yesterday, some girl came into the grocery store. She looked vaguely familiar. She recognized me. She seemed surprised, and slightly happy, to see me, so I figured we went to school together. But I couldn't quite remember who she was, so after helping her find the jugs of water and the ice, I decided to be a little tactless:

ME: Um, I hate to sound rude, but how do we know each other?

Long pause.

HER: Um, school...

ME: Oh, right! I kinda thought that. Sorry, you know how it is. It's been three years since high school, I don't remember anyone.

HER: Yeah.

She seemed slightly offended. A bit ruffled. I wasn't too concerned, since I didn't expect to see her again, or at least frequently. But in the polite obligatory chitchat that followed, she revealed that she had gone to some massage school somewhere, and was now a practicing masseuse, and all that. Bugger. I'm not the most relaxed person--usually very tense, in fact--and no doubt some sort of massage would've been good for me. But I probably insulted her by not remembering her, so there was probably zero chance of ever getting any special offers, or even, for that matter, an actual appointment.

There are probably perks to being friends with a masseuse, but looks like I don't get to find out what they are now.

I guess this is just a story without a happy ending.

Working in a grocery store, you tend to get bored. Really bored. Nothing happens, and when it happens, you tend to not blog about the nothing, often for months at a time (hello!). But sometimes, when bored about the nothing, you tend to think too much. That dang imagination runs wild.

Yesterday, I convinced a coworker that giraffes can spit acid.

There's this contest going on at the store, some drawing for customers, sponsored by some company. Winners get a trip to Busch Gardens. I don't know the full details, but next to the contest information is a small collage of pictures, chief of which is a photo of a friendly giraffe licking a small child. I've walked past it too many times to count, and there was always this tiny little thought worming around in my head. Something amusing. Then last night that worm grew wings, and I smiled, and I turned to a coworker and said, completely deadpan: "She's going to be sorry when it starts spitting acid."

HIM: "What?"

ME: "That's not safe. Didn't you know giraffes can spit acid?"

HIM: "No..."

ME: "Yeah, it's a defense mechanism. You know how llamas spit at people? Giraffes can do that too, but instead of just saliva, they actually throw up and spray stomach acid. Works against predators."

HIM: "I didn't know that."

ME: "Yeah, weird, huh?"

He seemed convinced, but he also didn't seem very interested, so I dropped the subject. But my mind was racing. I had this idea, I was running with it, he seemed a good audience. Sure, I'm not good at lies or tall tales and I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face for long, but I knew I could go on for a bit before he smelled the bullshit. He wasn't interested enough, but it would've been fun to go on:

"Yeah, I don't know how closely related llamas and giraffes are, but the evolutionary principle is the same. It's the same thing as cows throwing up their cud, too, but for an entirely different purpose. There aren't too many predators that go after a giraffe, especially since they'e pretty hard to catch, and they have a vicious kick. But if a giraffe is cornered, weak, sick, whatever, it's only got one more defense left: it throws up. Other animals do that too, but they usually bring up semi-digested food, whatever they ate last, stuff that smells bad enough to make the predator go away. But the giraffe is unique--it vomits pure stomach acid, and a lot of it. Giraffes have big stomachs, and some strong acid. Food on the savannah isn't easy to digest. Strong stuff. Any predator gets a faceful of the stuff, he's not coming back for more. It doesn't kill--at least, not always. Usually just irritates the skin, blinds a bit. But enough of a dose at once can really burn--sometimes kill.

"But that's also why giraffes have long necks. With all that muscle working behind it, they don't just spit acid--they shoot it. A full-grown giraffe can shoot a stream of acid fifty, sixty feet, and over a pretty wide area. So the predators that hunt in groups and packs all get taken out at once. Lions, leopards, hyenas. People.

"And funnily enough, that's where dragons come from. Legends of dragons, I mean. It started with an angry giraffe turning on a band of hunters and throwing up at them, and from the survivors, the legends grew. That's why tribesmen in Africa don't hunt giraffe. And by the time the stories reached Europe and Asia, the big, gruff, unruly giraffe with an unusual defense against predators had turned into, well, a giant, scaly, fire-breathing monster of myth."

I didn't tell him that, but I wanted to. I really did. I sensed a story coming on--a story that would laze about in my head for a while and never get written down (until now!), sure, but a story nonetheless. Because I kinda like this. It's a funny idea.

That's where dragons come from.

Working in a grocery store, you--there's--it's--ah, bloody hell, I got nothin'.

I don't know when keeping a LiveJournal turned into a chore, but here we are. Used to be I was clever and/or witty odclay, but somehow I opted for style over substance and became boring ol' jacobford. Or maybe I just moved out and got my own apartment and became a hermit. Either way, suddenly there's nothing to write about anymore but my job, and even my job's nothing to write about. Woo, I'm some sort of semi-big-time manager-type person. Hey, my new boss is a clown (truth! The woman hired to replace the customer service manager who up and quit a month and a half ago is a professional clown with her own Wikipedia page--which is actually kinda cool, as long as she doesn't introduce new uniforms or anything). Woo, same old customers, same old muzak, same old, same old.

As for the rest of it, I got nothin'. I guess that's the tragedy of being a hermit: all the time in the world to blog, but nothing to blog about.

Woking in a grocery store, you learn to tune things out. Like the muzak. Especially the muzak--and especially when that muzak is the creepy stalker-esque oldies muzak from the good ol' days when it was considered sweet and charming and romantic and socially acceptable to harrass a girl who doesn't like you anymore with a barrage of letters despite the numerous mail returned unopened with "RETURN TO SENDER" stamped on the front, or to sleep on your doorstep all night and day/just to keep you from walkin' away/oh god another restraining order what've I done wrong?/lalala hey! but I digress. It's easy to tune that out.

The Backstreet Boys? Not so much.

And it looks like some kind and decent soul changed the muzak from Crazed Weirdo to Ye Olde Nineties. Hurrah. So instead of bands like Creepy Boy Next Door or Old Man in the Park, we get such timeless classics as the Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion (whose heart just keeps goin' on, and on), Hanson, the Spice Girls. Actually, the Spice Girls really aren't too bad. Everyone likes the Spice Girls. I am not ashamed. But don't let me go all nostalgic here. After all, despite those bland "If you remember this!...!lol" groups on Facebook, it's not like everyone grew up in the nineties. Not everyone remembers a time when Saturday Morning cartoons were actually good--and, as I found out yesterday, not everyone remembers the other great (or just too-annoying-to-forget) hallmarks of the good ol' days.

Yesterday. Pierce's Market. I was working. There was a small slow period between customer avalanches. Then the Backstreet Boys, singing about how they wanted it that way, knocked me out of my manager-ing jive. "Oh, god," I muttered.

"Ugh, the Backstreet Boys," Kelsey said. Kelsey was one of my cashiers, this high school chick, fifteen or so. Give or take a few months. Whatever. "I hate the Backstreet Boys," she said.

Kudos to her. "Yeah, someone switched it to a Nineties station about a while ago," I said. "It's been like this all week. Celine Dion, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Hanson."

"Hanson?" Kelsey said.

"You know, Hanson?" I said, "Mmmbop?"

She gave me a funny look. "I don't know what you're talking about."

SHE'S NEVER HEARD OF HANSON

I feel so old.

Working in a grocery store, there's never much to blog about. It's the same old story; day in and day out, week after week, foodstuffs and drinkstuffs and otherstuffs travel along that short conveyor belt, get scanned, get bagged, go away. It's not an exciting job. The people are the same. The muzack doesn't change (although someone recently switched the satellite radio station from Oldies to 90s, and man, I haven't heard the Spice Girls in a while). The same old job you have now is the same old job you had yesterday, so try not to expect anything new tomorrow. Nothing big will happen.

So it was a big surprise when my boss quit last Monday, two weeks ago.

There he was, ol' LeRoy, Mister CSM, Customer Service Manager, sitting there in the office, asking me how my weekend went--he cared because I was there, at the store, li'l Customer Service Representative that I am--when the company president stopped by to chat, I went down to watch the registers, and twenty minutes later he grabs his coat and storms out. Left me there holding the clipboard. Nice of him to wait for my shift to start before jumping ship. How thoughtful.

Not a big deal, really. He was a good guy--got me hooked on the original Star Trek, hurrah--but not the most competent manager I've worked with, and that upper-case R in the middle of his name annoyed the heck out of me. LeRoy. LeRoy. But the problem, the annoying thing is, he quit. On a Monday. Kevin, his predecessor, had been fired on a Friday, and the following Monday the folks in charge had replaced him with LeRoy from the Portage store, so holding things together for a weekend was no big deal. At least, I assume so; I was just a little guy back then, lane jockey, no authority or title whatsoever, so I never noticed.

Now, though, I'm a CSR, Customer Service Rep, a rung or two below LeRoy on the jumbled hierarchy of the grocery store, so I'm feelin' the heat. Where I was just a part-time supervisor, originally filling in one or two shift each week to cover the days LeRoy and Pam, the other full-time CSR, had off, I'm suddenly a full-timer. No more dividing my time between day shifts, opening the store, and bein' in charge. Now I got LeRoy's shifts. In charge five, occasionally six (overtime, bay-be!) days a week, hoo-ah.

Of course, I just have the shifts--not LeRoy's job. And, far as I know, it's all a temporary thing. The ads are out. The store's looking for a new manager. After the fifteenth, after they find someone, it's all over for me. Back to part-time, filling in for the others...

...unless Pam gets the manager spot. She's been working at Pierce's for about ten years now, knows her way around the store, certainly deserves that kind of promotion. She's much more qualified for the job than LeRoy ever was. She's got my vote. Plus, there's the possibility that, y'know, since she's currently the night CSR, so if she were to get the promotion to manager, working the day shifts, then the full-time night spot could very well open up to, oh, yours truly. How about it? 'Sides, since she and I are already full-time employees with benefits, they'd just need to hire someone new, part-time, to cover the other Customer Service shifts on our days off...

But that's the most efficient move, which means it's probably not gonna happen. Still, it's a nice thought, maybe getting that kind of promotion. I've been a full-time supervisor since LeRoy left, and I'd hate to go back to doing it part-time, opening the store and working 6-2:30 on my other days. Seems like a bit of a letdown.

Of course, part of me still wonders if another promotion is what I really want. It's not a bad thing, but still, since becoming a full-time employee (with benefits!), I've been finding more and more things anchoring me to the grocery store, to Reedsburg, to this little half-life I have. Still don't have a good reason to go back to college, but I am starting to think of other things I want to do. Other plans. But I can't just quit my job without being certain of something else--and it's becoming increasingly harder to become certain of anything else. It's a comfortable job I got there. Like I said before, if I keep working, five, ten years, where'll I be? I could have it good. I could be a part of the family.

I watched Fight Club again a month ago, while drinking, although I mostly sat staring at the wall because I know the movie mostly by heart. Good movie. Better than the book, which I just picked up for a re-read a few days ago. Good stuff. And sure, maybe Palahniuk's brand of anachy starring Brad Pitt is now too popular and mainsteam to ever be taken seriously, but the potential is there. Maybe Chuck is right. Maybe what I need is a Tyler Durden. Maybe what I need is a human sacifice.

Maybe I just need someone to Raymond K. Hessel my sorry ass.

So. Wisconsin Primary was yesterday, and I have a confession to make: I didn't vote. Really. I know, I know, it's really awful, but I do have some good reasons:

Reason #1: Ragnarok is coming! Ahead of schedule, too. See, Fimbulwinter's only been going on for a few months now, but apparently the great wolf Hati has decided to go ahead and devour the moon ahead of schedule. Total lunar eclipse? You people are just in denial.

Reason #2: I know I'll be banished from Blogdom for saying this, but I AM NOT ENAMORED WITH BARACK OBAMA. Or any other candidate, for that matter. Okay, so I was in love with Ron Paul for a while, him with the IRS-ending and the war-bashing and the awesome-making, but I eventually realized he was waaayyyy too keen on states' rights, and we all know how leaving issues up to the states went for gays in, oh, two-thirds of the country in the 2006 midterm elections. Oh, heavens no, we can't let government re-define marriage, but we sho' can let 'em de-fine it!

Reason #2: (Continued) So, no Ron Paul for me. Which leaves us with, oh, B. Hussein Obama (Ann Coulter doesn't think her readers are too bright, does she?), Madame Clinton, Mister "He's Prolly Gonna Winnit" McCain (What, you think those baby boomers and old folks are going to step aside and let us youth take over so soon?), Guy Huckabee, and Mike "Here's Lookin' at You" Gravel, who does seem kinda cool--Ron Paul without the states' rights stuff--but really, the call to "vote for the candidate you like, not the one who looks 'presidential' " only works with the front-runners who have more than a Marshmallow Peep's chance on Easter. Kinda pointless to toss away a vote on a guy who gets less than 1% of 'em anyway.

Reason #2: (Additional) And as for the other guys, well, lessee--maybe it's because I'm cynical, but Obama has yet to inspire me or make me believe in how cute and fluffy America will become if we just hope, and I just don't see anything special about Billary, and although McCain is prolly gonna win he's just another old white Republican and I don't care, and it would be awesome to have a president named Huckabee but that guy kinda scares me, so that leaves, um, nobody. And I'd much rather not vote than vote for the guy or gal I don't care about but maybe care about a leeetle beet more than the others, thank you. Here's me being cynical again but I don't think much will change no matter who takes the throne next January--see, there's this monster they call the Military-Industrial Complex, and which head would you like to lop off first? Guess I should go to Burma and join the revolution, 'cause maybe democracy needs a jump-start.

Reason #3: I noticed last night that my middle left toe is slightly shorter than my middle right toe and I was trying not to hyperventilate. Ok Jacob it's okay don't worry stop obsessing stay calm stay calm stay calm OH GOD I'M NOT SYMMETRICAL.

Ok, I lie; I'm not really drunk. The fact that I drank plenty of non-alcoholic liquids before and between the consumption of said alcoholic liquids prevented that. That's me, ever so cautious. But I do think it's worth noting that I finally decided that the whole "My grandfather drank himself to death right before my 21st birthday" act was getting old and morbid, and that I stopped wallowing in self-pity and had a coupla drinks with a friend. Not enough to get drunk, although I am feeling quite relaxed at the moment. It's a nice feeling--although, as it turns out, Superbad doesn't really improve much when one has been drinking. Fight Club, on the other hand, is as good as always.

Obligatory (Not Quite) Drunk Post, Out.

HALP HALP THERE'S NOTHING TO BLOG ABOUT.

I've suddenly turned into what I hate the most: the silent blogger. He Who Does Not Blog. Silent for weeks, then a sudden, brief, completely pointless entry. What the hell was that? I've always hated that. If you have a blog, update it--once or twice a week, at the very least, is that so much to ask? Can't be too hard to write something slightly interesting, right? Right? Wrong. Suddenly everything goes dead, and now I can't criticize anymore because hey, lookitme, I'm that guy.

But seriously, it's winter. It's really winter. What with the snow and frost and wind, all the cold and more snow, and some extra cold to boot, it's cold and snowy and there's nothing to blog bout, except the cold and snow. And you can only blog about how it's snowed again, it's still cold, before it gets boring.

Could be it's the start of Fimbulwinter, the Great Winter in Norse Mythology that precedes Ragnarok. Three years of snow and frost and wind, of cold and more snow, and some extra cold to boot. It could happen in Wisconsin and no one would bat an eye, although they would crowd the grocery store whenever the they heard rumors of another storm on the way or the sun being devoured by wolves. If June comes and the snow hasn't stopped yet, we'll know for sure.

(Aside: Ah, Ragnarok. If there's one thing I love about The End of the World According to Norsemen, it's that things aren't sugar-coated. With the Book of Revelations, you get lakes of fire and rains of blood and swarms of locusts and plagues and death and dying, and everything is going to royally suck, and there will be a huge battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell, because God loves you. With Ragnarok, the gods don't care. Loki and Odin and Jörmungandr and friends are gonna go nuts, and everyone who gets in the way is fucked. Bo bullshitting us there. Thanks for the warning. We appreciate your honesty. Aside over)

But winter of epic proportions or no, I've become quite the hermit. When it's too cold to go out, I'm not going out--and since I already very rarely go out, I go out even less. Downward spiral. Unfortunately, if I don't go out, nothing happens--and I can only write about nothing for so long.

The good news is, it's a good excuse to avoid going home. Don't get me wrong, I like my family--but when I live only ten, twelve miles away from them, visiting for dinner is waayyyy too easy. I could stop by for dinner every night; I could see my family all the time! So why don't I? Because it's fricking depressing, that's why. If I lived a few hundred miles away, sure, I'd cherish the occasional visit home--but, when I live barely ten miles away and can stop by any time, I don't want to. Makes me realize how I've barely gone anywhere.

At least I have my Netflix. Oh, Scrubs, how I love thee. It's just a good thing I can only get one disc, eight episodes, at a time. Give me a full season at once and I'll forget the world exists. Not a bad way to make it through Fimbulwinter, of course, but I gotta go out sometime.

The good news is, partly thanks to the distractions Netflix provides, I haven't been buying any new books, thereby keeping with that birthday resolution (Aside: at some point I need to make an addendum--addenda? addendi? ok, fine, an amendment--to that "read more than I buy" rule because, y'know, what's the point in reading books if that's all I do about them? Seriously, I need to start reviewing shit. I need to make it known that I read something--I need to log my books! Seriously! Only problem is, I can't review a book to save my life. Sure, theferrett can, baeraad can, they do it all the time, but me? Need to work on it. Blargh. Aside over). 'Sides, what with this Fimbulwinter going on, I reeheeheeeally don't care to drive to Madison for a book spree. Sure, I want new books, but it's cold, roads suck, I'm a hermit. And I intend to stick to this resolution the best I can.

Of course, not spending my money on books means I can spend my money on other things like, say, the complete series of Arrested Development. On sale at Amazon, all three seasons for under $50. Nice. Gives me something to watch between my 8-episodes-at-a-time Scrubs binges. Funny, though; I'd always see ads for the show when it was on tv, and it never interested me. But, while I was in Pennsylvania last month for my grandfather's funeral, my older sister had a DVD with her, so I watched a few episodes--sitting in the chair my grandfather died it, to boot. How's that for morbid? But anyway, good show, good show. Comfy chair, too. Slightly creepy, though...

Lastly: Don't panic! Just found out the price of stamps will go up a penny starting May 12. 42 cents now. They're probably doing this in honor of Douglas Adams and nobody gets it.

Links to news stories: the last resort of the desperate blogger. Soon I'll be doing memes. This is what I'm reduced to. This!

So long, and thanks for all the fish.