Saturday, June 25, 2005
The Justice of Nudity
New Attourney General Alberto Gonzales might be pro-torture and fanatically right wing about virtually everything, but at least he's not as wacky a prude as his predecessor, John Ashcroft, was. As a result, the
statuesque boobies are back in Washington's halls of justice.
After more than three years of being blocked by large blue drapes, two Art Deco aluminum statues of semi-nude figures in the building's Great Hall can be seen again.
The "Spirit of Justice" and the "Majesty of Justice," which loom over the stage in the Great Hall, were blocked from view by curtains installed by the department in January 2002, when former Attorney General John Ashcroft was in office.
When they were covered up, officials working for Ashcroft -- a devout Christian -- said the move to spend about $8,000 for curtains to cover the figures were made for "TV aesthetics."
The decision to install the curtains sparked a myriad of jokes and Ashcroft became fodder for late-night comedians.
Not to mention snarky bloggers. I'll miss him, if only for that.
Things of the Day, Saturday Edition
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
Soul-Devouring Worry:Leaking ceilings.
Answer of the Day:Because these feet were not made solely for walking.
Curse of the Day:May your envy and admiration battle for supremacy.
Books Lying Open:Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin
Movies to-see list:Howl's Magic Castle, now playing (Waiting for the DVD.)
Land of the Dead, June 24th (Possibly.)
War of the Worlds, June 29th (Definitely.)
Fantastic Four, July 8th (Definitely.)
Batman BeginsMr. & Mrs. Smith
Book Review: The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
My
unnecessary book review series concludes with another title picked up from a library giveaway.
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith, is a modern day novel of tomb raiding and adventure, set in Egypt and the rugged Ethiopian mountains where the Nile river begins. The titular scroll is an ancient manuscript, written by the eunuch slave of a Egyptian pharaoh, that contains coded directions to his four thousand year old tomb, purportedly hidden somewhere in a great stone gorge near the headwaters of the Nile, and unspoiled all these millennia.
Seeking the tomb is a young, beautiful (aren't they always?) female Egyptian archeologist, left alone after unknown attackers murdered her husband and stole all of their work. Desperate, she seeks out the aid of a male, Lara Croft-esque English adventurer, and together they work to travel to the dangerous land and unravel the mystery of the scroll, while evil forces conspire against them and monitor their every move.
It's basically Indiana Jones 4, or discount Clive Cussler, when you get right down to it. To the scores.
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
Plot: 4
Concept: 7
Writing Quality/Flow: 5/6
Characters: 4
Horror: NA
Humor: NA
Fun Factor: 4
Page Turner: 4
Re-readability: 3
Overall: 5.5
The Seventh Scroll isn't a bad novel, but at nearly 500 pages it's considerably longer than it needs to be, and it's not anything special. The characters aren't bad but they're not very memorable (one bad guy with some weird fetishes is the only one I remember anything about now, a week after reading it), the plot isn't bad but it's very straight-forward and lacking in twists or complications, and the writing is okay but never sparkling. As the scores indicate, it's a passable action adventure, but not one you'll stay up all night tearing through, nor one you'll remember long after you put it down.
I'd never heard of the author before snagging this novel, but apparently Wilbur Smith is actually pretty successful. I would have thought him a new novelist from this book, an amateur walking in the well-worn footsteps of Clive Cussler and Michael Crichton; an amateur who needs to learn how to compress his plots and needs to think up a lot more twists and turns on the way to the ultimate showdown next time. I would have been wrong, since Wilbur Smith is in his 70s, has nearly 30 published novels on his resume, and had more than 65 million novels in print, as of 1995, according to the dust jacket on The Seventh Scroll. None of which makes this book any good, but now you know.
The most interesting thing about The Seventh Scroll is something I did not know until after I read it and ventured to view the
Amazon.com reviews. The surprisingly, overwhelmingly-positive Amazon.com reviews.
Scroll is actually a sequel to one of his earlier novels,
The River God, and an unusual sequel, with the action set 4000 years later.
The River God was written from the POV of a brilliant eunuch who serves an Etyptian Pharoah, and eventually carries his master's body to the headwaters of the Nile and buries it there, in a hidden tomb. The very Pharaoh and the very tomb the heroes of
The Seventh Scroll are trying to find in that novel.
Many of the Amazon.com reviewers recommend reading
The River God first, and while I obviously didn't, I'm not even sure if that would be a good idea. I got some suspense from
Scroll just because I had no idea if the tomb even existed, and if it was where the heroes of the novel thought it was. I'd think that if you'd read
River already you'd lose a lot of the suspense of
Scroll, since you'd already know there was a tomb, where it was hidden, how it had been built, and what was in it. I may check out
The River God if I ever see it though, just out of curiosity.
As for
Scroll, as I've been saying, it's just okay. The characters aren't as cardboard as those in most action adventure novels, and the setting and background plot stuff (crazy jealous safari guide husbands, civil war and guerillas in Ethiopia, crazed private collectors willing to murder for an untouched Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb, fanatical Coptic Christian orders, etc) is interesting. The main thing that held back the novel was the plot, and its lack of complications. The hunt for the tomb and the details of it are fine, it's just that there's nothing else going on in the book, and the tomb hunt and then excavation are so straight forward that I kept expecting some wild twists and seemingly-insurmountable setbacks... I'm still waiting.
As it is this novel has an amazing amount of description about river valleys, dam-building techniques, Egyptian sculpture and statuary, and the geography of mountainous Ethiopia, but it's about three major plot twists short of being a page turner. That's why I say the length is too great; it's not so much the number of pages, it's the content of those pages. Most action adventure novelists are worse writers than Wilbur, and craft less interesting characters… but they're generally far better at cranking out involving, twisty plots, and those are what keep you reading. I suppose that Wilbur wanted to keep the novel somewhat realistic, and didn't want there to be half a dozen false tombs with ancient clues hidden in each one to lead on to the next, but there was plenty more unbelievable stuff in the story, and at least those sorts of plot twists would have made it more interesting to read. With a bit better plot this could have been quite an interesting novel. Pity it wasn't.
I've also got to reluctantly single out Wilber's writing when it comes to action or sex scenes, because he's amazingly bad at them. I'm not quite sure why, but even during the numerous life and death struggles and the occasional kinky and somewhat explicit sexual interlude, his writing seemed so stiff and cold that I never felt any excitement. Of either kind. He's not boring in all of the writing, and he's not academic and dry in his descriptions, but for whatever reason the fight scenes and sex scenes always felt very remote and passionless.
I didn't glance at the author info until after I read the whole book, but my impression from reading it was that Wilbur Smith was an older gentleman, retired from some real career, and that while he knew a great deal about history and geography and everything else, and was technically proficient as a novelist, that he just didn't have the skill to make characters come to life. Especially not when they were doing dangerous or sexy things. And when I looked at the back of the book and saw the picture of the elderly white guy, and learned from his bio that he worked as a tax collector into his 30s before becoming a writer, I was sad to see my stereotype come true. He actually looks pretty spry in
the bio photo on his website, with a definite twinkle in his eye, and I'm judging him by just one book, but at least in the
The Seventh Scroll he seems to be a decent writer, but one without a lot of imagination or ability to incite emotion in his readers.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Congrats to Ebert
Maybe I should do a semi-daily links post, with quick pointers to all of the interesting articles I've seen, rather than not posting anything about most of them, and posting too much about the few I do post about?
Anyway, congrats to the best film critic in America, Roger Ebert,
who just got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I made fun of it recently when they gave one to DJ and variety show host Ryan Seacrest, but having one is still a mark of distinction, and Ebert certainly deserves his. And given that there are 2287 other stars there, it's pretty clear that quite a few people do not.
HOLLYWOOD -- For four decades, Roger Ebert's reviews have turned countless actors and filmmakers into stars. On Thursday, Hollywood returned the favor -- dedicating the 2,288th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to the Chicago Sun-Times' legendary film critic.
The occasion also marked another "first'' for Ebert, the nation's first Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic. According to the event's major-domo, Johnny Grant (known as the honorary "mayor of Hollywood"), Ebert's star is the first ever given to a critic.
"There are plenty of others out here with stars who have been criticized, but Roger's our first official critic," quipped Grant, joking that in the future, movie fans will now have the chance "to walk all over Roger" if they disagree with one of his reviews.
...
"When we are born, we are placed into a specific box, in a certain space and time," Ebert said. In his opinion, film is the one art form that most easily enables people to escape their own reality, "imagining what it is to live somebody else's life -- to be a different gender, live in a different time, to live in a different economic class.
"It is a truly liberalizing experience and makes people broader-minded as film makes it possible for them not to be just stuck being [themselves] day after day."
That being said, what's up with giving, like,
every single movie a 3-star score lately? Okay, not every movie, but it seems like he's getting more generous by the year, and being too understanding by scoring every film as it would be received by its target audience. It's okay, Roger, condemn some stuff for sucking. I loved his 1-star review of The Perfect Man, and didn't even bother to read several of his recent 3-star reviews of films I had no interest in. His The Longest Yard review, 3-star of course, was an interesting read though, just for the way he talked himself out of, and then back into, giving it that score. Even though, with reflection, he realized said rating was wildly too high for the latest piece of shit someone scraped off of Adam Sandler's poseur boot.
Weirdest Katie Holmes Story Yet
Unless you've literally been living in a cave you can't help but have heard about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, especially now that they're engaged. Is she just a "beard" for Tom's dubious heterosexuality? Is the entire thing a contractual sham? Is Scientology pulling their strings from afar? There have been a ton of amusing and scandalous articles published so far, but the
best one yet is here, courtesy of the ever-dubious Fox News.
The newly engaged Katie Holmes still has some explaining to do to her friends and family. There were 16 days in April during which no one seems to know where she was.
Holmes made a public appearance on April 4 at the premiere of "Steel Magnolias" on Broadway. She came with her publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnick, and a couple of other friends. They were there to support Rebecca Gayheart, who was making her Broadway debut. I know this because I spoke to Holmes at length during the play's intermission. She said she had just moved into her New York apartment and was looking forward to seeing the city.
Holmes was busy during that first week in April. On April 7, she was photographed at the Fragrance Foundation's FiFi event. Four days later, Holmes was still in New York and was photographed at VH1's "Save the Music" concert. She still had not met Cruise. Sometime that week, her friends say, she flew to Los Angeles for a meeting with Cruise about a role in "Mission: Impossible 3." The meeting took place after April 11. The next time anyone heard from Holmes was on April 27, when she appeared in public as Cruise's girlfriend and love of his life.
Where was she during those 16 days?
Somewhere during that time, she decided to fire both her manager and agent, each of whom she had been with for years and who were devoted to her.
The
article gossip piece also covers Katie's Rasputin-like new best friend and advisor, a prominent Scientologist from an allegedly corrupt and nutty family of Scientologists. It even gives a list of the other young, aspiring Hollywood starlets Cruise allegedly approached, and was turned down by, before finally latching onto Katie Holmes; a list that includs Jennifer Garner, Kate Bosworth, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, and Scarlett Johansson. It closes with some other amusing info I hadn't heard before; that Katie's long listed her favorite actor as Tom. Tom Hanks. Not Cruise, as she's often said since their "relationship" began.
I have no idea how much, if any of this is true, or if it's all just what we want to believe, knowing how fishy all of Tom Cruise's relationships have been, and how wacky
The Church of Scientology is. It's fun to poke at other people's lives though, isn't it? Especially when they're much more famous and rich than we'll ever be.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Bella and Fella Photo Page
Yes,
another page with pictures of cats. These are different cats though! My mom's cats, to be specific. She got the brother and sister kittens last Christmas, and I was lucky enough to be there while they were young and impossibly frisky. They're juveniles now, and still pretty frisky, and after getting two new pics of them last week, I spent a couple of hours putting together a photo page for them. Here are the earliest and latest photos of them; click to their photo page to see what came between.
Here they are lounging around, something you hardly ever see a kitten doing. Bella is orange while her brother is gray. He was larger as a kitten too, and he still is, though less noticeably now that they're both nearly full grown.
We now jump forward to June 2005, when the kittens have grown to adolescence. They're about nine months old here, and still sleeping together, though they chase and fight and wrestle now as well. There's absolutely no way they can fit into this little furry bed, it's the same one you see above in their earliest photo, but they don't seem to know that.
This is about how Dusty and Jinx play too; one attacks the toy while the other watches, waiting for his/her turn. We do not have a cool climbing thing like this for our cats, though we keep meaning to get one. It's about six feet tall, with multiple levels. The pipe-length at the bottom of this photo hangs from a rope, but apparently isn't really their favorite place to sleep. The top portion is a box, with about four inch sides; all the better to keep sleeping kitties from rolling out and crashing down on top of fragile decorations, I guess.
Click here to see more.
A Feast For Crows
Courtesy of Malaya's obsessive monitoring of
his site, word comes that George R. R. Martin's long-awaited book four in the Song of Fire and Ice series is finally complete, and has an official publication date. Mark your calendars and start rereading the first three, all in preparation for...
November 1, 2005.
As
I mentioned previously and as
Martin explains here, the fourth book, as written, is like 2000 pages long. So rather than publishing that behemoth, or simply cutting it in half, they've re-edited it and split it into two books that will cover the same time frame in the narrative. In the fourth book the action will continue in the six kingdoms of the south, and in the second book, the fifth in the series,
A Dance with Dragons we'll see what's going on in the north and the east. Given that my favorite characters are in the north (Jon Snow) and the east (Daenerys), I should be annoyed at having to wait an entire additional book to see what they're up to, but I'm just happy that Martin's still plugging away, and that we may yet see the saga conclude before his death leaves us with nothing but partial notes and a hack of a failed-writer son to extrapolate them into some godawful bastardization of the original great work.
I don't think that would happen; hell I don't even know if Martin has a son. But
it's not as if that sort of abomination
has no precedent.
Birthday Festivities: Day Three
The birthday week festivities wrapped up Wednesday afternoon, with one last surprise meal and a short shopping expedition.
Tuesday night Malaya cooked dinner, but she clearly had something else in the works for the next day, since there was a big Trader Joe's bag on the counter and two more in the fridge that I was forbidden to look inside. I resisted the temptation since I knew the surprise would be more fun (I never hunt for my Xmas presents in advance or try to guess what's in the wrapped ones either, for that reason.) and when I got up and showered Wednesday, and it was lunchtime and Malaya said we were going out, I was a bit grumpy. I'd been up very late working, I hadn't slept that long, and I was tired of going out, after doing it two days in a row.
Fortunately for me, my love knows me pretty well, and rather than leading me to a restaurant or some other shopping experience where I would have been annoyed, she'd prepared a ginormous picnic lunch. Meeting her at the door, I was confronted by a heavy cooler and a large picnic basket, neither of which divulged their contents to my curious gaze. Considerably happier to be heading for a picnic than someplace that I would have to tolerate other people, I hefted the tonnage that was cooled liquids, followed Malaya who had the basket in hand, and off we went. She drove, and soon enough we were parking at the local reservoir, and walking up into a grove of pine trees, and sitting down at a nicely-shaded picnic table. Once there we pitched a tablecloth, set the cooler and basket on the table, and Malaya started unpacking. And unpacking. And unpacking. She unearthed a truly impressive spread.
Seriously, look at all of that. We had a sliced baguette, four kinds of spreadable cheese, cut veggies, spicy hummus, watermelon, three types of grapes, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, Ritz crackers, cream cheese, bottled water, a bottle of sparkling Martinelli's apple cider, and a box of yogurt-covered raisins for dessert snacking. She'd even brought along the books we have lying open, for some after meal lounging and reading. It was unquestionably the best picnic breakfast/lunch I've ever had, it was even light and healthy, or at least it would have been if I'd taken it easier on the spreadable cheese.
After eating and lying around talking for a while, we left the reservoir and headed off for some errands. The birthday fun wasn't over yet either, since on the way to CostCo we stopped at Fry's, where she turned me loose in the DVD section with instructions to pick out a couple of movies or a game or whatever I wanted. I'd love some new computer games, but we just never have time to play them; hell, the
Warcraft III Battlechest is still sitting under her desk, never yet installed on either computer more than a year after it was purchased.
So movies it was. I picked
Enter the Dragon,
Kiki's Delivery Service, and
Castle in the Sky. The first one is a classic Bruce Lee movie we've always meant to get on DVD, and the last two are older masterpieces by Miyazaki, best known for his Academy Award winning film,
Spirited Away. My reason for picking them is mentioned in the Things of the Day post, below.
As always at Fry's, with their enormous selection and iffy organization, the titles were virtually impossible to find, and when an employee couldn't find either one on the shelf, they had to check on the computer to see that they existed, and go look again. The first girl I asked couldn't find either, but she was apparently just going on break and enlisted the guy working to look. He found
Kiki's, but neither of us could see
Castle, so we headed back over to the computer to run it again and see if they really had it in stock. While he was typing in the name, a lady who had been doing some serious browsing (she was taking notes) in the Anime section since my arrival walked over, a DVD in hand, and yes, it was Castle. God knows where they had it stocked; we certainly didn't see it despite looking through the entire "C" section.
We even watched Castle in the Sky Wednesday night, forgetting all about our supposed trip over to the dance class for about the 4th Wednesday in a row. No review yet; perhaps tomorrow, but it was interesting. Much more slapstick and wacky than Spirited Away, but similar in the "amazing secret world" aspect of Miyazaki's imagination. It had an odd ending too; despite the good guys making it out happy and successful, it was actually very melancholy, with a strong "The only way to preserve paradise is to keep humans away from it, since they'll just destroy it." message. I'll see how I feel when I write up the full review, and it's definitely a good movie, among the best anime you'll ever see, but it's certainly not anything you're used to seeing from mainstream Hollywood films.
Overall, I hardly know what to say about the three days of birthday fun. Malaya did an amazing job planning and executing them, and just for that she deserves credit. It's not easy to find stuff I want to do three days in a row, being as I'm happiest just sitting home and working on my computer or interacting with her on an one to one basis. If you've read my blog for more than the past couple of years, you'll probably remember that this attitude was precisely why I didn't make any effort to date or find a girlfriend before Malaya. I didn't imagine I'd ever meet a woman I liked (much less loved, being as I didn't entirely believe in that concept back then) who could put up with my hermit tendencies -- and I didn't want a girlfriend enough to put up with doing all the things I didn't want to do just to make her happy.
My best case scenario was a hot, intelligent, self-confident woman who had her own life and interests, enough of which overlapped mine that we could spend 2 or 3 days or nights together, per week. I figured I could put up with doing stuff I didn't really enjoy that often, that those things (going out to clubs, shopping, hanging with her friends, etc) wouldn't be that horrible with a woman I liked, that we'd do some stuff together I enjoyed, and that I'd still have 4 or 5 days a week to do my own hermity thing. And no, I didn't seriously think I'd meet a woman who would be cool with that, which is why I hadn't made any effort to do so.
Miraculously, as detailed extensively on this blog about 2.5 years ago, I met Malaya, we shared a ridiculous amount of overlapping interests, she was also hermity by nature, and was quite willing to spend most of her time at home, working on her computer beside me. I did not anticipate that I'd fall in love, and had no idea how much that would improve everything, and how much more fun doing things would be with someone I loved. Nor did I envision all of the new things I'd come to enjoy once Malaya introduced me to them, or how things I didn't like to do would become tolerable, or even fun, once I had her to do them with.
That all said, she knows me very well, and was able to pick activities she knew I would enjoy, she made food she knew I would like, and she left me enough free time that I could do some blogging and get some work done, without feeling like birthday stuff was consuming every bit of my time. In short, it was just about a perfect birthday, and if I could just switch off my unavoidable thoughts about how "she's spending too much money on me/doing too much for me" there wouldn't have been a worry in my head over the past three days. I'm even doing pretty well at not thinking about what I want to give her on her birthday in November, since that would just put pressure on me and take away from my happy funtime glow.
Thanks for the best birthday ever, Honey. Love you.
The Technology is 99.9% Accurate
Well, I don't know if it's that accurate, but here's some news I've been meaning to blog about. It concerns the mechanical detection of that largely-mythical creature; the female orgasm.
Here's the article, and you should just go read it if you haven't already, it's pretty short and most of the excerpts I'm about to snip are props for cheap attempts at humor.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark Jun 21, 2005 -- New research indicates parts of the brain that govern fear and anxiety are switched off when a woman is having an orgasm but remain active if she is faking.
In the first study to map brain function during orgasm, scientists from the Netherlands also found that as a woman climaxes, an area of the brain governing emotional control is largely deactivated.
"The fact that there is no deactivation in faked orgasms means a basic part of a real orgasm is letting go. Women can imitate orgasm quite well, as we know, but there is nothing really happening in the brain," said neuroscientist Gert Holstege, presenting his findings Monday to the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
This article is simply full of potentially hilarious material, but I think my favorite part is found in three little words in the previous paragraph, when the doctor says, "as we know."
Holstege said he had trouble getting reliable results from the study on men because the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes and the men's climaxes didn't last that long. However, the scans did show activation of reward centers in the brain for men, but not for women.
Holstege said his results on women were more clear.
When women faked orgasm, the cortex, the part of the brain governing conscious action, lit up. It was not activated during a genuine orgasm. Even the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious, Holstege said.
The most striking results were seen in the parts of the brain that shut down, or deactivated. Deactivation was visible in the amygdala, a part of the brain thought to be involved in the neurobiology of fear and anxiety.
Runner up for best line? It didn't work well to test on men because, "the scanner needs activities lasting at least two minutes." Wanna just kick every man on earth right in the balls while you're down there, Doc?
Seriously though, it's an interesting article and appears to demonstrate that for women it really is all about letting go and surrendering to the moment; just like every sex advice book says. I also liked the bit about the man's reward center lighting up, while there was no similar reaction in women.
The article doesn't mention it, but I'd be curious to see a study where each partner was tested while they were the ones giving the pleasure, rather than receiving it. What do women think when their partner reaches orgasm? I mean besides the obligatory, "Already?" On the other hand, I'd think that giving his partner an orgasm would light up the male reward center like a Christmas tree, since women generally require more time and effort to achieve one, and since (seemingly) every woman has a history of past boyfriends who couldn't or didn't give them that. It would be interesting to see if that varied by the technique used, too. It's much easier to get a woman off with cunnilingus than intercourse, for instance -- how an orgasm each way register for both participants?
I'd also like to see comparisons to homosexual partners. I'd assume that there's a vast difference between ease of giving a woman an orgasm and giving one to a man, though I can't say I've actually done any field testing on one side of that equation. But just going by anecdotal evidence and reports from women, none of whom ever seem to have had any problem bringing their male partners to orgasm, I'd think there might be a difference. Try the same bi-sexual man with his girlfriend and boyfriend, perhaps? As always, I have more questions than the research can answer.
Things of the Day, Thursday Edition
Quote of the Day: (
QotD Archives)
"Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it."
--Anatole France
Soul-Devouring Worry:Too few things, too many days.
Answer of the Day:Because they're never available used at Blockbuster.
Curse of the Day:May you be all ready to go, and have two days to wait.
Books Lying Open: Clash of Kings, by George R. R. Martin
The Seventh Scroll, by Wilbur Smith
Movies to-see list:Land of the Dead, June 24th
War of the Worlds, June 29th
Fantastic Four, July 8th
Batman BeginsMr. & Mrs. Smith
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Birthday Festivities: Day Two, Continued
Malaya's surprise of the day was a trip to
The Bone Room. I first heard of it years and years ago, I was on their mailing list more than a decade ago down south in San Diego, but until yesterday, I'd never been there. As you'll see if you browse around their site a bit, they basically sell dead animal parts. All sorts of parts, including bones, skulls, claws, teeth, horns, and so on. They've also got lots of huge tropical insects mounted in glass cases or just in plastic bags, a few stuffed animal carcasses, weird jewelry and baubles, feathers, animal pelts, and much, much more. We spent a good hour+ browsing and hadn't gone through half the stuff there, and it's not a very large store. Just crammed, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, with cool stuff.
Malaya said I could have whatever I wanted, though that's obviously got to be kept within reason in a store filled with $500+ skulls and articulated animal skeletons. We got some jewelry, some cool pewter pendants, a rabbit hide that the cats went crazy over, skull key chains, a 10" brown and white striped African porcupine quill, and lots of other small items. Our one larger purchase was my birthday present, and you saw a glimpse of it in the earlier update. The cats went crazy sniffing it too.
It's some kind of sheep skull, but what type we do not know. The tag in the store said simply "fancy sheep," and it's obviously a male, with those horns, but that's about all I can tell you. I'd like to know more about the provenance, so I'll probably try to identify it by the horns at some point. It's going to be just one of many in my eventual bone/skull collection, after all.
I put it above my monitor, of course, and yes, it's staring down at me even as I write this. I love it, and it seems like a "write more fiction" guardian to me, but then again I've always loved skulls, so I would think that.
Lastly, this has nothing to do with my birthday, but I found the staff of the Bone Room curious. The owner is just what we expected; old white guy, looks sort of professorial, seems slightly-cranky while being absurdly-knowledegable in his field. The store was much busier than I'd have expected though, and his staff, three women in their early twenties were very busy selling things, answering questions, and doing a lot of phone orders. One looked average; brown hair, okay face, slightly pudgy, etc. Just like 90% of the women her age I see in a given year. The other two were amusing though, in that they were super-goth girls. Like above and beyond the
Suicide Girls minimum requirement. All black clothing, huge tattoos on their arms, neck, back, etc, jet black dyed hair; one in dreads and the other straight and perfect like Morticia Addams, much facial jewelry, etc.
They were sort of "lipstick goths," to coin (?) a phrase, in that they were slim and feminine in looks, and very normal in their mannerisms. Entering that store for the first time has to be a strange experience for anyone who has done business with the Bone Room over the phone, since while we were there I heard both the goth girls taking and making orders, and they both had perfect phone voices and manners. They were friendly and helpful, so I'm certainly not complaining about their look or style; I've just got to wonder what they look like when they go out clubbing if that's how they dress for work. Also, I'd be interested to hear how they decided to go that far goth, and how they ended up working in such a strangely-appropriate place of business. Not that I'm ever likely to gain answers to any of these questions; I'm just thinking aloud.
After exhausting ourselves and our budget in the Bone Room, we picked up some sandwiches at
a tiny Greek sandwich place in the area, and drove down to the Berkeley Marina, where we braved gale-force winds to eat our sandwiches and fruit salads in the open air looking out over the bay, towards the distant Golden Gate bridge. Next stop, Japan. I might be exaggerating a bit when I saw "gale-force" but I've never before had pieces of lettuce actually blow off of my sandwich.
From there we headed home, and while I did some computer work Malaya was off to the gym. She returned around 6, and I left shortly thereafter for Kali class. The Birthday stuff was not over yet though, and when I got back at 9:30 she'd made salad, cooked a big crustless quiche-like thing, baked catfish and veggies, and even scored fat slices of my two favorite types of pie: pecan and cheesecake. It was quite the feast, and made all the more delicious by the fact that I did not have to prepare it, clean up after it, or think about it anyway.
I'm feeling a bit guilty about the all the birthday stuff at this point, since I've never done this much for Malaya on her birthdays past, and I honestly don't know that I ever will, much though I'd like to. She doesn't expect me to though; she's doing all these nice things because she really loves me and wants to do nice things for me, and while that's an odd concept to wrap my brain around, I'm working at it.
Hers is really the best attitude to take towards someone else's fun, though. Don't do it because you expect recompense, or equivalence. Give someone a present or a card or whatever because you care about them and because you want them to have it. Don't tie your own hoped-for card or present or whatever to that, since that turns it from a gift into an obligation, and it will make you unhappy if you don't get as good as you gave. Besides, if you follow that math you probably owe your parents a car, a down payment on a house, and about four new wardrobes, and that's just getting started on what you owe them for raising you.
This is rationalizing, a bit, since I've gone in on the card and gift and such for three of our mutual friends in the past year, and none of them remembered me in any way this week. I could get angry about that and feel ripped off, or castigate them for being thoughtless or ungrateful or whatever, but what would be the point in that? They're all very busy in their real lives, and they're all friends of Malaya's that I just know through her, so really, what did I expect? About what I got, to be honest. They've done lots of small things I've benefited from in the past anyway, and who am I, the one who usually ignores it almost entirely, to complain about other people not paying enough attention to my birthday?
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Birthday Festivities: Day Two
Today's destination was...
the Bone Room! At last, my precious.
More tonight.
Birthday Stuff, Day One
Yes, Day One. I'm as surprised as anyone by this development, but Malaya's got three days of stuff planned this year, and two presents. I'm not sure how that math works, but today was day one, and it began with a wake up backrub that turned into a full body rub, and then became a mall shopping expedition. Todai, our choice for dinner, is at the mall, but rather than heading straight for the food Malaya dragged me off into the depths of the tween-infested pits.
Ordinarily I dread such a journey with all the might my blackened heart can muster (to mangle a metaphor) but I was more curious today, since I didn't know where we were going. I was happy to see that our first stop was Wilson's Leather though, since it's hard to go wrong there. Malaya said I could have anything I wanted, so long as it was leather, or even fur. I don't want anything fur, but while I usually enjoy leather I didn't feel the need for any today. I've got a relatively new leather jacket that's the style I want it to be, at least until they make one in a style I like more, I have an old pair of leather pants that I haven't worn in years, I have a sturdy and nicely-battered leather bag that I've had since about 1988, and I have a leather wallet that doesn't need replacement. I also have a new leather belt that was $9 at TJ Maxx (vs. $30 at Wilsons for the exact same thing) and I'm not going to buy a leather hat or gloves or anything like that, at least not in June. Or not until I get my Lamborghini and can wear racing gloves while driving without becoming the laughingstock of every single other vehicle on the road.
I was given no advance warning about the leather-based present requirement, but thinking on my feet, literally, it occurred to me that my only dress shoes are uncomfortable, clunky things that I spent $22 on at a Payless Shoe Source some years ago. Plus they're only still black and acceptable for public exhibition through the grace of lots of black shoe polish, so with Malaya delighted by my suggestion, off we headed to Macy's. As it turns out they have quite a few leather dress shoes, so long as you like them black, or possibly dark brown, and shiny and traditional in design.
We browsed for a bit, saw none I liked that could still pass for formal, compromised, and eventually settled on ones that looked okay, and felt pretty good on my feet. They've actually got some padding in them, unlike my current cheap ones. Behold!
These are
Rockport Warringtons, and yes, they were expensive. I certainly wouldn't have spent the money on them, and would have settled for some near-look alikes that were $80 (or more likely have gone back to Payless and tried my luck again), but Malaya was buying, she insisted that I not even consider the price, and since I couldn't think of anything else I much wanted/needed for my birthday... this be them. I'll try to wear them a bit more often than I have my current dress shoes to get something approaching her money's worth, but it's not like I move beyond jeans and cargo pants very often, when I can even be bothered to not wear shorts.
I've got a wedding to attend in October, at the very least.
Also, as I said above, this was just day one of the birthday stuff. Malaya's got plans for us to do something tomorrow, and apparently I'll get another present then too, though I've got no idea what it is. Strangest of all, we're doing some more birthday stuff on Wednesday, and that stuff does not include a present; at least not one of a tangible, wrap-able nature.
The most unusual present of the day arrived in the mail Monday morning, and it was from my mom, with some collaboration from Malaya. It's a "shadowbox" they tell me, the craft project-impaired man. The concept is that
women people buy a box that's a few inches deep and covered by a glass front, and then they fill it up with scrapbook type stuff and other decorative elements. In this case mom put one together that could be entitled "Flux, as of June 2005." It's got pictures of me, Malaya, Dusty and Jinx, me doing Kali, and lists of my favorite authors, my favorite things/people, and more. You get the idea.
It's got quite a nice design as well, with silver and black the predominant theme, and there are even some little kali sticks inside, along with books, cool picture frames around tiny images that could represent characters from my ongoing fantasy novel. Take a look, and yes it's small so you can't read it, and yes I pixeled out Malaya's face and a few other bits of personal info that I don't want online.
It's certainly not anything I would have ever asked for or thought of, but I like it now that it's here and it's taken up a position of prominence on the shelf immediately above our TV. Here's to hoping the cats manage not to knock it down in a shattering disaster within the first week.
As for the birthday lunch/dinner... urf. I had one fried egg on toast for breakfast at around 1pm, we ate from like 6 til 7, it's 2am now, and I'm still full. We're eating a couple of small peaches now, but that's mostly just to chew on something sweet before bed, since our mouths are bored from doing nothing for the past half day. Nothing at Todai was great (Malaya might disagree when discussing their
saba), but everything was pretty good and as it's a buffet, there was a lot of it. My meal was free, a $23 dollar value, and that's a decent birthday present right there.
You'd think they would discontinue that birthday free meal thing, as many people use it, (When they seat you they ask if there are any birthdays, and I heard at least half a dozen from the maybe fifteen tables near us while we were eating.) but since most people there go in parties of 4 or more, and there's since never more than one birthday per group, I guess they make up for it in quantity. Free or not, Todai is an amazing value just for the sushi. Most restaurants you're paying $5 or so for two pieces, much more for expensive fish or in an expensive restaurant, and at Todai they've got 20 different types of sushi and it's all included. Just eat eight pieces and a few bites of dessert and you've broken even, and needless to say, but no one there just eats eight bites. Hell, most people eat $22.95 worth of just the giant crab legs, it seems like, much less the sushi.
More on the birthday stuff tomorrow, assuming I survive the festivities, and then the Kali class in the evening. Also, thanks to everyone who posted their birthday wishes. It's almost like you guys care, or something?
Monday, June 20, 2005
Party like... it's yo birfday...
I hadn't given my impending birthday much thought all day, but a few hours ago, when Malaya suddenly leapt up and scurried across the room, then returned with a card, and I noticed that my computer clock read exactly 12:00, I couldn't have hidden my smile even if I'd wanted to. I do love her so.
Happy Slapping Yobs
You've got to love those English headlines, eh? Despite the joviality of the wording,
this is not a happy article. It's about random assault, and a sign of lawlessness amongst the UK's youth.
Watch out for "happy slapping," the latest youth craze to sweep Britain.
It's not a new dance step or even a new designer drug. It's a criminal assault.
Groups of teenagers approach an unsuspecting person and begin punching and kicking him or her while capturing it all on their mobile camera phones. The images are later uploaded and shared on the Internet.
The fact that I half wish I were there to be set upon by just such a pack, so that I could finally try out some of the wrist and arm break techniques we're always learning in Kali class, is probably a wee sign of overconfidence. It's just that beating such idiotic yobs half to death would be such fun, and that since the UK isn't the dangerously gun-flooded US, you can take a chance on an honest fight, since odds are the asshole coming after you doesn't have a piece in their belt.
The whole article is worth a read though, since it's hardly about happy slapping, and is more about yobs, and is more about the perception that UK society is becoming more lawless, even while crime rates are falling. A perception we share in the US, and one I suspect is fed by the same style of "all crime all the time" media coverage. It's also nice to finally see a proper definition of the word "yob," since I knew its usage, but not its proper etymology.
Happy slapping is the latest manifestation of what Britons call "yob culture." The word "yob" dates to the 19th Century--it likely derives from "boy" spelled backward--and it denotes a kind of loutish, anti-social behavior associated with working-class youth in Britain's urban centers. The British soccer hooligan is the quintessential yob.
There's even some quotage from a self-proclaimed happy slapper, posting on one of the popular yob blogs. It's a useful education for anyone (such as myself) who thinks only US teens babble on in AOLese while remaining perfectly-oblivious to how idiotic they sound.
"I happyslap people," explained "Huni bo" from Sleaford on a popular yob blog. "I dnt see nowt wrong wit it tho, ima good person! Its well funni tho!!"
"It's not funny," replied Spartanette from Swansea. "If it's just among mates and you actually know the person, then it's harmless, but when you do it to someone you don't even know, you deserve a beating."
"So I deserve a beatin yeh?" replied Huni bo. "Wes onli do it ppl lyk are age ish, say from 15 -- 19 or 20. summats, wunt do it to an old man, even though they keep avin a go at us, an it dus are heds in!"
Ahh, the English. Even as his syntax and grammar awake an unquenchable desire in me to beat him to a bloody pulp, I can't help but love his slang usage. "Does our heads in" is just so precious!
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Book Review: L is for Lawless, by Sue Grafton
My unnecessary book reviews series continues, with a mystery this time. See
the first entry in this three-part series here; more for the review explanation than the book review itself.
L is for Lawless is the um... lemme see... ABCDEFGHIJK... it's the twelfth! The twelfth novel in Sue Grafton's ongoing private investigator Kinsey Millhone series. Like the other three (
Gumshoe,
Homicide, and
Quarry), I've read in this series, this is not a mystery novel as much as it is an detective story, with Kinsey once again starting off working on a small case that quickly escalates into a large and dangerous endeavour that she is lucky to survive. I'd like to see one of these where she goes in expecting great danger and a huge risk, just for a change. You'd think she'd become sort of skeptical, given that she's narrowly survived 15 or 20 of these so far.
This time Kinsey's looking into the background of a dead man, one who told his children that he was in the military during WWII. All they want is the military to pay for his funereal expenses, but the Army says they've never heard of him, and Kinsey is called in pro bono, through a mutal friend. As always, there are ominous signs right off the bat, when his old apartment is broken into and his seemingly-worthless belongings are ransacked moments after Kinsey gets involved. Who would do such a thing? What were they looking for? Who was the old man really, and where was he during WWII if not in the Army? All questions are answered in the novel, and you'll thrill (or not) along with Kinsey as she travels cross country, gets dragged into a treasure hunt for stolen goods from half a century ago, and finds hidden relationships between characters that you'd never have expected going in.
To the scores.
L is for Lawless, by Sue Grafton.
Plot: 6
Concept: 6
Writing Quality/Flow: 6/7
Characters: 7
Horror: NA
Humor: 5
Fun Factor: 5
Page Turner: 7
Re-readability: 4
Overall: 6.5
This book isn't really any better than the other three I've read in this series, and yet I enjoyed it the most of all of them. Like all of Grafton's work, it's a very quick read, and I put away the last 200 pages of this one the night before a recent trip, reading it in the tub in hardly more than an hour. I wouldn't call these books junk food, but they're definitely closer to a snack than a meal, and they read as or more quickly than any novels I've ever cracked open. I don't think Grafton is a very good writer, and her plots are always a few twists short of what they could be, but she does have a J. K. Rowling-esque ability to string together flowing prose, and to keep a story moving along briskly. If you want a novel to get involved in, blow through quickly, and forget in a day, Grafton's an excellent choice.
In addition to being the best overall of the four I've read in this series,
Lawless has by far the single best scene; one that had me laughing out loud while I cheered on the actions of one character. That joy didn't last all that long, but I still remember my surprise and enjoyment as I read that scene, and just for that one I bumped up the overall score a point, and gave this one a better score for humor than I had any intention of awarding it.
I'd say more, but there's really nothing more to say. If you've read any of the Kinsey Millhone novels, you pretty well know what to expect from this one. She eats junk food, she jogs once, she dresses lazily, and she gets in completely over her head and is soon unarmed and scrambling to survive by her wits while surrounded by semi-hostile and very dangerous men who never make her feel threatened as a woman, just as a person. It's far from great, but it's the best one in the series so far, at least in my opinion. The majority of Amazon.com reviewers
don't seem to agree, giving this one a mediocre score, but what the hell do they know? Exactly.
Father's Day and Birthdays
Happy Father's Day to all the fathers and potential fathers out there. "Who am that baby daddy?"
My own dad doesn't read my blog, which is probably for the best, but I mailed him yesterday and I'll likely call him today. He already got his card and present though, since I gave them to him while I was in San Diego earlier this month and he insisted on opening them before I left. It's a good thing I never got into the habit of buying him an ugly tie every year, since he's been retired for years, and probably wears two ties a year, at this point. He got a drill this time, since the one he had was old and all metal and literally threw sparks out over your hand when you used it. I'd have sooner stomped logs down into a wood chipper barefoot than used that drill in the rain.
I also left a card and gift for my stepdad while I was in town. I'm not sure I wanted to set that precedent; I took him out to lunch a couple of times back when I lived there, but despite the fact that he's a really nice guy, and the fact that he's been married to my mom for a decade, I never really got into a yearly habit of doing anything with him on this holiday. After all, I didn't meet him until I was in my 20s, so it's not like I'm turning my back on the man who helped to raise me or something. I figure it's okay to start gifting him now though, since what I give him indirectly benefits my mom, and since I'm trying to be more adult and remember holidays and birthdays and such. In any event, he's already in his 70s, so it's not a cross I'll have to bear for too many years.
Joke! It's a joke, FFS. I hope he outlives you all.
As for Birthdays, yesterday was Malaya's dad's birthday. He doesn't read the site either, thank god, or even know it exists, so I'd wish him a happy one here, but what would be the point? His daughter spent some time with him yesterday and gave him a nice gift and my best wishes as well, so that's that.
And by a strange coincidence, it's my birthday on Monday. Yes, I'm turning 29, again, and I have no idea what I'm doing or if I'm getting any presents. I didn't ask for anything, and as I often quip, "If you ask for nothing, it's quite possible that you'll get it."
As for the proximity of my B-day to Father's Day, that's never mattered thus far, other than some "this dinner is for both of us" times out with my dad. Now that I'm in a relationship where I can imagine one day having kids of my own though, it occurs to me that it must suck sharing the day with yourself. It's not exactly like being born between December 23-27th, where you just get lumped in with Xmas every year and hate everyone so much right then, but kids are ungrateful little shits in the best of circumstances, and giving them an opportunity to act appreciative of you just once a year is probably an open invitation to outright rebellion. As well as receiving two ugly ties I'll never wear.
Luckily for him, Malaya's dad has but one child, and she's obedient and thoughtful and wonderful in every way, so I'm sure she's spent her life making sure he felt special on both of his June days, and extra special on the days when the holidays double up. And with any luck she'll twist the arms of our future spawn enough to make sure they do the same for me.
I suppose I'll post something Monday night about the birthday, but don't expect too much since I have no idea if I'm getting anything or doing anything. I do know that we're eating at
Todai, since Malaya loves sushi and since that Asian buffet restaurant gives a free meal to anyone who goes there on their birthday. They're strict about it too; checking ID and everything, but with a huge buffet that's like $22 I guess that's to be expected. I'm not a big sushi fan, mostly since I prefer both fish and rice hot rather than cold, but I'll eat a little of it, and they've got coconut fried shrimp and fried rice and miso soup and lots of other good stuff.
As for a present, I'm at a loss there too. I've known Malaya for more than two years, and over that time we've both had two birthdays and two Xmases. Our usual thing is to pick one $100ish item we want, and have the other person buy it for us. You'd think with two presents per year they'd be memorable, but last night we were talking about it, and between us we could not think of all eight gifts. We eventually remembered all of mine, but could only think of three of hers, and one of those are the leather pants I promised that she still hasn't collected. As for my l3wt, she got me a cell phone in June 2003, snowboard bindings Xmas 2003, misc DVDs and a few other things last June, and hiking boots for Xmas 2004. This year I had nothing on my list and can't think of anything I really want or need, but since Malaya never asked, I'm assuming she's had something cool in mind all along. I'm pretty curious to see what it is too, at this point.
I have no idea what my mom or dad are getting me either, though since dad's basically giving me his 4 year old car later this year when he buys a new, post-back surgery appropriate one, I certainly don't expect anything more than a card on top of that. Mom got me some cross training shoes while I was in San Diego, and shoe inserts to go with them, but she's usually very good at sending something odd and creative that I never would have thought to ask for, so I won't be surprised if there's more on the way.
As for other people, I have no idea there either. I don't really socialize with anyone else, other than people in Kali class and some other friends of Malaya, and since I never told any of them it was my birthday, I'm not expecting anything. Malaya might have gone behind my back and tipped them off though; she's tricky like that. She does know I'm not much into socializing and going out though, so she wouldn't set me up with a surprise party or big group outing. Then again, if I expected her to do it it wouldn't be much of a surprise, now would it?
Something is only skin deep...
Why it's better to date a model than marry one?
I'm not sure if this "the wonders of makeup" photo is depressing or encouraging. Click it,
or these words, to see several more examples of similar transformations. I saw that page shortly after I saw
this compilation of photos giving a time lapse of Paris Hilton's various facial surgeries. The images are not related, except by theme, but they got me thinking, and I can't decide if it's depressing or encouraging.
On one hand, the "Anyone can be beautiful if they try hard enough." message is sort of encouraging. Plus, it's a painful reminder that no one really is, and that those who appear to be are probably lying.
It's definitely depressing that so many women think they need to undergo plastic surgery, or an hour+ of makeup, just to face the world, or that their entire self esteem is based on their appearance. It's also depressing that men do their part to create a world where female appearance is that important.
Yet at the same time, isn't it nice to think that other people out there are spending so much time on this short of bullshit, thereby leaving more resources for the rest of us to work on things that are actually important? Of course if you just piss away that time watching TV, or eating potato chips, or reading blogs, or worst of all, writing one, what's the difference? Other than saving money on nose jobs and eye liner, I mean.
Mostly it's just fun to look at photos of people and see the secrets behind them. And my god was Paris an ugly duckling in her teens. No wonder she's such a slut now; in her head she's still that ugly, gawky little rich girl, and all the attention in the world isn't enough to fill the void inside.
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