I do believe that I don't believe.

-I believe that this White House is the most corrupt administration since this country was founded.

-I believe that we have pursued a course of foreign policy that has brought us to the brink of widespread jyhad, one in which was have become a hated nation, and one in which, for the first time in my life, almost 10% of the world would kill me on sight if given the option.

-I believe that unless new and pwerful programmers are brought onboard soon, this game will not ship on time.

-I believe that our tech leadership lacks the ability to successfully architect a piece of software in the timeframe we are attempting.

- I believe that my parents will lose their home due to sustained financial mismanagement, stubborn pride, and a complete inability to plan in advance.

- I believe that I will go get high.

-tf

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

The copy of this book I have is rag-tagged. It is well worn and well loved. I wonder what strange pathways it went down to end up at the Half Price Books near campus where I picked it up?

This is an older collection of Vonnegut short stories. Most of them were wonderful. They were not organized around any particular theme that I could detect. It seems somhow pedantic for me to talk about Vonnegut at all really. His wit and social satire seem so commonly understood that I'm not sure I have much to add that isn't already culturally agreed upon. So I'll just say this: I deeply enjoyed several of these stories. They made me think, and they made me smile and sometimes made me a little sad. While his writing lacks the finesse or poignancy of short story writers like J. Lumphar or Robert Owen Butler, his content is great. Vonnegut gives science fiction a good name.


Perdido Street Station by China Mevielle

Mevielle is a good writer. He isn't a great writer, but he has a fine vocabulary, especially when it comes to descriptors. I've not read his more famous book, The Scar. LT tells me that it is better than this one. I don't think I will take the time to find out.

Perdido Street Station is a fictional narrative without a genre. It is an organic, messy blend of sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk and horror. It is the tale of a scientist, his woman/beetle lover, and a lawful-evil
city. I mention the city specifically because it is probably the area in which Mevielle best succeeds. The City of New Cruzoban takes on a life of it's own, and I'll remember it's vile alleys, it's putrid rivers of slime, it's charnel houses, and it's brothels of Remade freaks long after I've forgotten the characters and the everything-plus-the-kitcken-sink plot.

I will give some bonus points for the best demon-summoning scene I've ever read.

This book is cool if you like science fiction. Mevielle has a great imagination, a competent narrative style, and a command of synonyms that lets him always reach out and find the perfect word, so long as he sticks to describing physical spaces.

On a personal note, I'm finally all moved out of theWarwick. Extra special thanks to all who helped in the herculean transformation. The place looks good. There is a realtor sign out front, and a lockbox on the door. Now we wait.

-tf

I've not forgotten about you, dear reader.

I just haven't finished a book in almost a month! It's terrible.

I'm nearly finished with Perdido Street Station by China Mevielle, and with Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut.

I'm also busy moving theWARWICK.

Stay tuned!

-tf

Spent the weekend fixing up theWARWICK. The current owners of the Kingfisher Creek house accepted our offer! Whooppee!!! So on June 4th, the Professor & I will take possession of a new home! I'm very excited!

Got some relatives in town tonight. We might go to Shady Grove... Alternately, showing up there with 10 people at 7pm doesn't seem very wise to me... Maybe I'll just stay home and try to finish Welcome to the Monkey House... Expect a review soon!

Also, BIG CONGRATULATIONS to El Cog, Ion Storm's newest tester!!!! Very exciting!

-tf

Well, it's Spring Break here. It's also St. Patty's Day. And it's SXSW... I'm just about to get summoned downtown by the Professor and her friends from BCS. I hear it's a zoo down there.

It's been some time since my last update. Since then, I've only finished one book. Review forthcoming. But a lot of other interesting stuff has happened.

We are all preparing to move out of theWARWICK. After a good 8 years of operation, theWARWICK will be closing it's doors on April 15th. Perhaps on that day, I'll write a retrospective. :)

I have found a new house, and am involved in contract negotiations right now... With luck, the Professor and I will be moving into a snazzy new place in the next few months. I'm very excited!

Mike is off to get an apartment and seems excited. Robert & his "Circle A" friends are looking for a house to rent out. That will be a lot of fun... Except for whomever gets stuck footing the bill.

Right now I'm reading Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House. But a few days ago I finished another book. Review follows:


Darwin's Children by Greg Bear

Darwin's Children is the sequel to the very interesting 2000 book, Darkwin's Radio. Unlike Darwin's Radio, Darwin's Children sucks.

The premise of the novels has to do with endrogenous retroviruses, which are sleeping in our DNA. They are activated, and cause mutations that lead to the next stage of evolution, in which a new species of children are born. This is all pretty interesting, to a point. But where Darwin's Radio takes us up to the point where the first child is born, Darwin's Children deals with the next 18 years, in which a repressive government takes over, and endless political manouvering ensues.

The book is very badly written, below even the minimal style bar that Greg Bear had set in works like Blood Music or Eon. The premesis is muddled. The supernatural plays a role, in a literal Deus Ex Machina scene where the presence of God is revealed in an MRI machine. The action is haphazard. The suspense is non-existant. The characters are unclear. (Even at the end of the book, I kept having to ask myself, "who is this person again.")

In fact, I'll not waste an further words on this book. It sucked. For 400 pages. End of story.

-tf

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

How little I knew about Truman Capote! Turns out that in addition to being the man who wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's, Capote also threw one the NTY's "Best 50 Parties of All Time" and was Harper Lee's childhood friend. Not only that, but the character Dill Harris in her book To Kill A Mockingbird IS Capote as a youth. Whoda thunkit?

In Cold Blood is one of the first "true crime" novels. It started the genre that later brought us things like 'Helter Skelter' and now has whole sections devoted to grisly wallowing in the deeds of Jon Benet Ramsey & Jeffrey Dahlmer. First, just the facts: In the 1950's Holcomb, Kansas was shocked by the apparently motiveless murder of a family of four. Capote's book explores in fascinating detail the events leading up to the murder and the subsequent search for, and trial and execution of those responsible.

Capote's style is solid, every page filled with direct quotes from the 'characters' in the story. The format is remniscent of a dective novel, or a thriller, made all the more engaging because every detail is 'true'. In In Cold Blood, Capote blurs the line between fiction and factual reporting, but does so in a way that strengthens both.

Cool book.

-tf

Roads by Larry McMurtry

Roads is a book that I will buy another copy of. While the first one will go onto my shelf, alongside all of McMurtry's other works, this second copy has a different fate in store. Roads is a book that I want to keep in my car. I want to paste a US roadmap to outside (like book covers in school) and annotate each highway and interstate segment with the page number on which he offers commentary on that artery. It would be great to always have this book with you while you were on a roadtrip.

Roads contains a dozen essays, each one of which is just a chronological ramble on LMM's drives from one place to another. His usual sardonic wit and attention to social structure and mannerisms is present on every page. He is rarely positive about any place he drives through. In addition, his fearsome arsenal of literary memories is brought to bear every few pages as he quotes, quips, and quibbles with and about the various author's whose hometowns he visits. He indicts Hemmingway's third wife for her tacky taste in furniture, praises Willa Cather's Arizona & Nebraska. In almost every county he explores, LMM is able to talk fluently about the works of those author's whose writings mention a particular landmark. I'd love to hear a conversation between he and Mrs. Anne Fadiman.

This book is also likely to be of interest to any other McMurtry scholars out there because of it's deep biographical component. He doesn't hesitate to remnisce (seldom elegaic, usually half-way bitterly) about those places which have touched his life when he passes through them. As a companion piece to In A Narrow Grave, this book serves to, in a sense, chronicle the last 20 years of LMM's mental progress (why do I want to use the word decay there?), literary adventures, and geographical wandering. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Travels with Charley by my beloved Steinbeck, and Lars Somebody's Travels with Lizbeth, written much later. Like those, this book is a travelogue, describing one man's undirected journeys across America; both the geographical patchwork of highways, roads, and interstates, and the far more interesting network of books, loves, and memories.

-tf

It's been a few weeks. Today is that strange and rare day, February 29th. I've been enjoying it, cause I don't expect to see another for several years.

The last two weeks have seen the Professor and I playing hosts. Last weekend her friend Kerri came into town from New Orleans. I guess she was eager to escape the Big Easy on Mardi Gras. As much as I like boobs and drunken tourists pissing in the streets, I still can't say I blame her. There is always something about having your city fill up with out-of-towners that makes you a little smug and a little irritated. At any rate, Kerri was a wonderful young woman who was quick to smile, liked a drink, and is obviously crazy about the Professor & Lil' Sis.

This weekend we had the esteemed Senator and his charming wife in from Houston. Since Jake has recently moved out of theWarwick, I finally have a guest room. We ended up partying pretty late into the night both nights and having lots of good, silly fun. The Chappell show, R. Kelly, Aqua-Teen-Hunger-Force, and the Marketing of Christ were all oft discussed topics. Good times.

I've been reading quite a bit. I finished Roads by LMM about a week ago, then this week started and finished In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Reviews of both up next.

-tf

The Professor & I went to Half Price books for the big V-Day. My present to her was an armload of books. It was great fun browsing the shelves together. She got wuite a stack & of course I picked up a few myself on the sly! Since someday pretty soon these books all get to be mine too, it's orth chronicling them here. In no particular order:

Synge Biography by David Kiely
The Blind Assassin by Margret Atwood
P is For Peril by Sue Grafton
Letters to Sartre by Simone de Bauvoir
The Courtisans by Joanna Richardson
Dictations on Haunted Writing by Avital Ronell
An Irish Voice by Gerry Adams
The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom by Caitlin & John Matthews
Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Cat Who Sniffed Glu by Lillian Braun
The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor Gadan
A Feminist Tarot by Sall Gearhart & Susan Renni
Le Divorce by Diane Johnson
From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
Miss Wyoming by Douglas Coupland
In Cold Blood By Truman Capote
Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
They Whisper by Robert Owen Butler
Black House by Stephen King & Peter Straub
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett

Can't wait to sink my teeth into a few! Stay tuned, dear non-existant reader!

-tf

By now it's evening. My earlier rant about my roomate seems very petty and mean spirited. Oh well. Never mess with another man's beer. Alas.

In the mean time, I just wanted to remind myself that on this day my very kind mother and father had all us kids & the Professor over for an exquisite Sunday dinner. There was fried chicken, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, rolls, brownies for dessert, a fire in the fireplace, and lots of good natured conversation. It was, as usual, one of the highlights of my week.

We are about to play some settler, and I'm finishing up readin the NYTimes magazine for this week, which has a fascinating article on virus authors.

The most recent trains from Non-Sequiterville:
A recent trip to the bookstore with LT really made me want to start reading more. He showed me a wonderful book on Science (sort of an 'all about science' type grimorie that was really cool. There were so many other things there I wanted to just sit down on the floor and browse. He also told me about some 'open-source' classes that MIT has started offering, in which all courseware & lectures are freely availible for anyone on the net. How fucking cool! So anyone with the time and inclination can become an MIT educated scholar! I really want to look into this!

I left Roads by LMM at work, so I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pyncheon. Wow. It is an incredible conjuring trick. He perverts language and structure so deeply. Much of it is flirting with the edge of non-sense, but some passages are just incredibly cool. It's about 800 pages long, and only slightly less dense than plutonium, so don't expect a review for some time.

Off to play Settlers with the people. SHEEP!

-tf

It's a grey sunday here in Austin. I'm holed up in my room after a tasty Thai Kitchen lunch, as is my heathen custom of a morning. (If you can puzzle out all the references in that sentence, good work!)

I'm currently furious at my roomates, or at least, at Cog. I After being awakened many times throughout the night to the sounds of drunken hooting, I finally wake up this morn. The entire house reeks of cigarettes. Why? Cause Cog & his slimy friend Proctor (who is apparently sleeping in my brother's room) smoked up the garage. Dumbasses. The downstairs is a mess, and when starting to clean up, I find one of my beers of the month opened and full on the counter. WTF? I go look in the garage, which is a mess and reeks, only to find that they have consumed ALL of my beers of the month! I only got to try one! Add to this that fuckhead is late on rent (that's late for both of the two months he's lived here) and I'm starting to get a little hot under the collar. I think that a good flaying will improve roomate relations greatly. When you pay rent, you get some priviliges, when you are freeloading, you had better fucking tiptoe. I am pissed about this, and blood will flow.

I unexpectedly started and finished a book on Friday. It went by so fast that it had not occured to me to chronicle it here, but I shall.


Anti-Bride Guide: Tying the Knot Outside of the Box by Carolyn Gerin

The debonaire and magnificent Ilan Mitchelsmith and his wife gave the Professor this book sometime this week. I picked it up on Friday night and promptly read it cover to cover in one sitting. (It's only about 100 pages.) Obviously, with my upcoming change in marital status, the topic of our wedding has been much on the Professor's mind. This book deals with the topic in an irreverent, wholly realistic way that is the anthesis of all the books and magazines put out by the wedding industry. It is divided into ten chapters which addess all of the major topics a future bride would need to consider. Things like "How to pick a location" and "How to plan your time" and "Cool ideas for non-traditional ceremonies" and "The cake" and "The food" etc. are all given a few pages. If you know a future bride who is a little overwhelmed about a wedding, and starting to really lose sight of things, this book is a fine cooling mist. The tone is one that really seemed to put the Professor at ease, and for the first time since our first stressful wedding conversation, I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this deal can acutally be the fun, laid back event that it should be; an event that brings our friends and familes together to join us in celebrating our excitement in being togther.

-tf

Well, for my first official meeting on FLX, I claw my way through rush hour traffic, arrive here at the ungodly hour of 7:59 am, only to wait around until 8:50 to learn that the meeting was cancelled, but bossman forgot to send out mail about it. Doh!

So I'm eating a nasty breakfast taco and reading. I'm switch hitting pretty fiercely here at work, trying to finish up Roads by Larry McMurtry, and also Peoplware and Small Unit Leadership. Will keep you posted. In the mean time I'll stare out at the grey day, eat my taco, and ponder why Town Lake appears to be flowing backwards.

-tf

The Beardless Warriors by Richard Matheson

Apparently Matheson was drafted and entered World War II in the European theater in 1944. This story is largely an autobiohraphical bit mixed with a high adventure story. If anything, it seems too... happy. It is also the most straightforward novel about WWII I've ever read. Comparisons to Norman Mailer's 'The Naked and the Dead' and Remerque's "All Quiet On the Western Front" and Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 are inevitable. Matheson's novel has none of the cynicism of Heller, none of the post-modern stylings of Vonnegut. He gives a very personal play-by-play account of a young man's introduction to an infantry squad and the ten days that follow. The action seqeunces (which comprise at least 80% of the book) are well narrated. It is no wonder that Matheson is such a hollywood favorite; his descriptions of physical spaces, characteristics, and stage direction are precise. The emotional depth in his characters is no deeper than the puddles gathering outside on First street. From the gruff sarge with the heart of gold (the cliche-ness of which one of his characters even comments on) to the numb protaganist, these characters are almost all stock.

If all this sounds like I didn't enjoy this book, I've given the wrong impression. It is an exciting account of an infantry unit whose members learn to work together to overcome the horrors of war. It reads like a John Wayne movie, or an episode of Band of Brothers. Yes, it's a little bit obvious and makes you feel a bit guilty, but it's still damn entertaining and well executed.

Yesterday morning on the drive back in from visiting the Professor in College Station I finished Matheson's The Beardless Warriors. Yesterday was so hectic that I didn't have time to write down my thoughts. It's grey and cold outside here. It's rush hour. So now is a great time for me to stay here at work and consider how pleased I am not to be invading Germany with an M1 Garand.

It's pouring rain here. Poor Texas. There are few things sadder than a black dog alone in the rain in the middle of the night.

This was a hell of a week. On balance, it was a very good one, really, as the very good outweighed the pretty bad. Three things of note happened:

1) Vic got a great job offer from a firm that seems like a perfect fit. This is such great news. It takes a real load off of my mind, and I know that it will lift a great weight from his shoulders, which in turn, takes another load off my mind.
2) Rebecca does NOT have cervical cancer. Words can't express how great this is.
3) Brute Force 2 was killed today. This sucks. Looks like I've got to figure out what to do next.

I'm reading Richard Matheson's The Beardless Warriors. It is a really wonderful novel about WWII. I expect to finish it this weekend, as soon as this hangover goes away and I can focus on words again.

-tf

PS: Godda,m I hate the DTs. When did I get to be such a fucking drunk? I can barely type because my fucking hands are too shaky. This sucks. Must stop.

Morning.

Here at the Professor's house, I just finished up the horror novel I'd been ripping through in the last few days. It was okay, except for the end, which was very unsatisfying. Review:


A Terrible Beauty by Graham Masterton

Set in modern day Cork in Ireland, this largely forgettable horror story details the intertwined investigation of two ritualistic mass murderers. The heroine, a tough detective superintendent in the Irish Guarda (don't know how to include an accent mark in this editor), starts by trying to track down historical information on a mass grave discovered on a local farie hill. The tale ends in a harrowing confrontation between her, a buddy cop, some random guy, and a modern copycat killer.

The Irish mythological darkness that pervades this story is cool. The main character is interesting and likeable. The plot is complex enough, and has enough forensic details and political intrigue to keep you going. A series of scenes dealing with the abduction, torture and murder of young women are pretty fucking grueseome. The end sucks, cause the rabbit pulled out of the hat is, well, dumb.

Writing and language are overall pretty good. Masterson won a Brahm Stoker award for another of his novels. Maybe that one will be a little better. In the meantime, I'll give this one a B+ (way better than most Koontz or Barker, not in the same league as Thomas Harris or Stephen King.

The Prof. & sis are ready to go. Check ya later. :)

-tf

This morning I dreamed that someone had given me an owl. It rested above the stairwell. It was tiny, and very soft. It would fly around the house as it wished, and come perch on my shoulder. It would lick my face if I stood still. It was a very cool dream. Perhaps Crysiana will take a small owl as a familiar.

A grey day is high time for another update. January always feels like today looks. O'ercast & dark. Tonight I'm quadruple booked. I need to get better at just saying 'no' to things. The problem is, I never really DON'T WANT to do a particular thing, it's just that usually in order to decline, I have to explain to someone that something else that someone else wants me to do is more important or interesting than whatever the subject wants me to do. Then of course, there are timing issues too. Maybe the secret is to wait until about 6pm before actually committing to anything, gather all the possibles together, then sort out and call back with confirms.

I just got something in the mail from the Wedding Channel.com. It was "The Groom's Companion" or something like that. It had a counter on the top of the email counting down the weeks until I am to be hitched. (I didn't know we had even picked a date yet.) It also had a bunch of dumb articles, each of which was labeled with a timer. "Packing for the Honeymoon: 2-4 weeks out." Every article was linked to a site which sold shit. "Click here to buy the perfect new luggage to go with your wedding." WTF? My old luggage becomes unserviceable because it might not match a bridesmaid dress during the one second that someone sees it in the trunk? I really think the whole thing is a sham, just designed to part folks from their money. I'm not just being a curmudgeon here. On the same topic, last night, the Professor was lamenting that no one would talk wedding stuff with her. (This was after I'd opened an elephant sized hole in the conversation, with an invitation for her to talk to me about the wedding.) Seems that what she meant was that none of the people (women) she is close to were willing to talk to her about it. They all were more interested in their own lives. Where's the sisterhood? Jerm has been saying for years that there isn't one. I'll point to this as people's exhibit DD sustaining this point of view.

Work today has been all about learning more Maya. It's a lot of fun to be balls deep in a 3D package again. Makes me feel like a real developer, not just a manager-type. I also got to write up my bio for upper management. Never a good sign. That means that they are looking for underqualified people to fire. Luckily, I've been at this for about 10 years now, and actually have a pretty good bio, especially for someone my age. Ah well. What can you do?

I've been bouncing around on the reading quite a bit. Still trying to finish: A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Creating Emotion in Games, Peopleware, Godel Escher Bach, Roads, and Quicksilver. But I loaned out Quicksilver to LT. Then I picked up Riddey Walker by a guy named Hobart, but couldn't get into it. So I grabbed Graham Masterton's A Terrible Beauty off the stack. It won a Bram Stoker award for horror fiction a few years ago. So far it is interesting, pulpy, and promises to be a fast-food novel. Fun! Will post a review when and if I finish it.

-tf

Time for another update. A few interesting things before I get to the meat.
First, the NYT Magazine has an interesting article on blogs and blogging today.
Second, it seems that my friend the Duff has run across this blog and wanted to add a few comments. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't yet support that. Too bad. Maybe they will eventually get their shit together.

This weekend was great. RS & I hung out with my little sister & her boyfriend on Friday, with my little brother & his girlfriend on Saturday night. Lots of fun both nights. On Saturday evening, several of us all went down to Ararat, a cool middle-eastern resturant. Good times.

After much delay, I finally finished The Crying of Lot 49 last night. Thoughts below.


The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

"Shall I project a world?"

This seems to be the most commonly quoted passage from Pynchon's 4th (and shortest) novel. The Crying of Lot 49 is a fascinating, very challenging novel written in the early sixties. Pynchon is one of the masters of postmodernism. This novel explores themes of self-delusion, paranoia, conspiracy theories, information theory, textual revisionism, and a bunch of other weird, disconnected and disconcerting topics. It is a largely linear narrative, on the surface, it tells a story of a young woman drawn into a strange subculture in central California.

Plot summary: Oedipas Maas had a very wealthy boyfriend. He died and named her executor of his estate. In the course of her duties, she discovers hints to the existance of a secret society called the Trystero, which serves as a sort of anti/alternate postal service, and (apparently) has for several hundred years. Almost everyone Oedipas comes in contact with vanishes or dies. She continues to trace a series of clues and strange connections which become more and more bizarre. She eventually begins to doubt her own sanity. She (and we) are offerend a glimpse into a weird, dark world before the novels close in which, to quote Bob Dylan, 'nothing is revealed.'

Language. Pynchon is a master of language. It is no wonder that he is sometimes compared to Nabakov. His prose is dense, his metaphors beautiful. His writing is superlative and surreal. I understand now why William Gibson is always compared in turn, to Pynchon, in whose stylistic footsteps he very clearly follows. Likewise, I understand a great deal more now about David Foster Wallace. It had for years seemed to me that DFW was in a league unto himself when it came to wordplay, linguistic gymnasticis, and bizzare plot threads and narrative devices. It turns out the DFW is very clearly emulating Pynchon, happily dancing along in the disorenting cloud of DDT left in his master's wake. Likewise, an exploration of Pynchon's obvious penchant for the language theories of Wittgenstein would be fun. I thoughts the Broom of the Systerm was original in playing with logos & language as a symbol. It is not. The Crying of Lot 49 very obviously paved this road decades earlier.

I had a really hard time at first knowing what to do with the conclusion of this novel. I didn't 'get it'. The Professor told me there was nothing to get. She described the book as just Pynchon being playful with language, and in large part it is. Last night though, after reviewing a few websites on the topic ( http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_lot49.html ) I began to think of the book as more like something out of a Lovecraft story. Like Lovecraft, Pynchon doesn't want to explain to me how the world outside our own works. He doesn't want me to 'get it.' He wants to give me just a glimpe into some strange 'other spaces' where the rules and laws and logic that govern here don't hold complete sway. He wants me to underneath dark bridges and watch the funeral pyre of a sotted bum, and think about all the information destroyed when his matress burns. He wants me to wonder what the symbol of Trystero means. He wants me to think about language and reality as binary, either real, or unreal. Then he wants to close the window. It's a taste of a very strange candy that is offered here, one that is not satisfying at all, just very stimulating.

-tf

I don't feel like I did the McMurtry essays justice with the anemic paragraph below. There is a lot more worthy of mention, and there are some really annoying typos. In fact the whole section could really use a rewrite. But instead, since I'm at work, I'll just drop a few more observations into an equally ill-structured paragraph and move on.

In A Narrow Grave by Larry McMurtry Part II
I think that Professor Stout's ideas about the use of nostalgia by writers in the service of identity formation really resonate in this book. Her focus is on Irish Drama, specifically Yates' tenure at the Abby Theater, and she wouldn't be caught dead reading anything about Texas, but her theories are still pretty applicable.

It is worth mentioning that the essays cover a lot more fertile ground that just that mentioned below. LMM talks about the fliming of HUD, about a fiddler's jamboree in East Texas, about high plains whorehouses, about the dangerous bar-rooms of Houston, about the promiscious liberalism of Austin, and the violent injustice of the Texas border patrol (R. Cog Sr. for example).

There are a few good critical dissections of this novel. I read through them last night, and really wanted to carry on a dialog with the authors. These can be found in Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook, editor Clay Reynolds. These essays give LMM a great deal of credit. They also do so much more quoting from the gems in this work that I feel really slipshod about the job I did below. But, they got paid, or at least, accrued debts in the observance of their duties as observers.

Okay, gotta get back to work on BF2 now.

Last night late and over lunch I continued the downward spiral into the insanity that is Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49 is nearly concluded. What a cool, wild ride. Expect a post on it soon.

-tf

PS: It is so much easier to type here at work than it is at home... God my desk setup there sucks.

I just finished In A Narrow Grave. Review.


In A Narrow Grave by Larry McMurtry

Written in 1968 and now out of print, I was surpised to even hear of McMurtry's fourth book, titled 'In A Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas'. I thought that I'd read almost all of LMM's novels, and was going through a recent collection of Essays he wrote entitled 'Roads' in which we mentions that anyone who wants to know his opinion on Austin should read In A Narrow Grave. Luckily, my kind mother found the book for me in some used bookstore (of which LMM himself is said to own the largest in the state, somewhere up near Archer City) and gave it to me for Christmas.

In A Narrow Grave is a collection of 10 essays written in an elegaic tone. They deal with the character of several Texas cities, a farewell to the departed cowboy god of Texas, embodied (to LMM) by Frank Dobie's portrait of rancher Charles Goodnight and characters like Woodrow Call from Lonesome Dove, or the grandfather from Horseman Pass By. Indeed, LMM is clearly obsessed by the dissapearing myth of the cowboy. His entire tone is one of a wistful lament. Texas is a vast, empty space for LMM, now dead without his mythical heroes and indians. Reading In A Narrow Grave is like looking at a template for every LMM novel to date. His use of language is precise, folksy and possessed of a sort of tounge-in-cheek colloquial character. McMurtry repeats himself regularly, like the characters he describes, his thoughts keep coming back to the relationship between West Texas men and women, the status-obsessed provincialism of his hometown of Archer County (where he claims bestiality was rampant). It is his (and the earlier McMurtrys') love / hate relationship with his home soil to which he returns most frequently in this collection. While the focus is ostensibly on Texas as a whole, McMurtry seems to never be able to tear his gaze far from Archer County and his mythical town of Thalia. Like an old cowboy endlessly repeating himself around the campfire to any new bucks who will stop and listen, McMurtry seems stuck. In his essays he cannot leave Archer City behind, and as a man he can't seem to escape either. He is trapped by his books and his native land; stuck watching the plains suburbanize, selling used novels in a drafty warehouse, and hoping to catch a last glimpse of his cowboy god; a god who has already passed forever beyond his reach.

It has been a few days. New Years has come and gone. Garner X has come and gone. Both were lots of fun. I was surrounded by good friends and family, and things went off pretty well without and problems.

I'm back at work now, and feel like I'm now back in the swing of things. I've got a handle on the coming month's tasks, have greeted almost everyone and taken a barometer of the team mood. It's nice to see the parking garage filled with cars again now that everyone is back from vacation. Onward & upward with the creation of BF2! Today I'm trying to drill down into the customer satisfaction survey we recieved last month, working on learning Maya, dissecting reviews & how we are addressing their primary criticisms, and installing Call of Duty. I've finally given up on waiting for an Xbox version.

Several book reviews are just about to be posted: The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and In A Narrow Grave by Larry McMurtray are both within about 20 pages of being finished. So stay tuned!

-tf

I've been reading a book about running a bar.

I'm interested in this idea, of opening the Brodie Ln. Tavern. Mike calls it the BLT. I think that it would make someone a lot of money. The more I read about it, the more I believe in it. Initial cost / price scenarios look good. There are some problems though:

- High cost of failure. This is a comparatively risky investment, at least if you pay heed to warnings which suggest that a high percentage of new business fail in the first year. Don't want to get stuck owing an assload of money.

- How do you balance the time required to do this with a software design job & the other ways that you want to spend time? This would end up consuming all possible free time for the next... 30 years. Is that a good use of the rest of your time?

- I've never worked in a bar. Seems like I should work in a bar for a while before trying to enter that biz. Don't think it would be that hard, but I would have to hire to agressively compensate for my lack of experience in this area.

As I continue to read 'Start and Run a Money Making Bar' by Bruce Feir, I will no doubt have more boring thoughts to share on this matter...

Gonna see if I can find a way to edit the past blogs... I'd like to format the actual book reviews a little differently from the all the rest of the content.

It has been a few days.

I've been taking it pretty easy, reading a lot and preparing for the coming storm that will be Garner X. My wonderful fiancee is still gone, so with the exception of some gaming sessions with the boys, I've been pretty sedate.


Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
I just finished Anne Fadiman's 'Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader' which my Aunt Terry gave me for Christmas. Overall it was an excellent collection of essays which belongs in the 'books on books' section. Think of it as subtly meta, but not very concerned with it's own meta-ness. It contained about 12 essays on the role of books and reading in the author's life. Fadiman has a peaceful, relaxed but elegant style. She is a self-avowed compulsive editor, and is clearly a voracious reader. Also a New York literary snob of sorts, but in a good natured way. She has a great ear for language, and an encyclopedic knowledge of quotations and the lives of many authors, mostly nineteenth century. She uses great phrases, like "ossified scintillia" which are just dripping with attention to the way letters and words work together. The first essay is one that describes the occasion in which, some years after her marriage and the birth of her second child, she and her husband finally agreed to let their two libraries co-mingle. This essay struck a particular chord with me in light of my upocoming change in marital status. Another essay compared reading to eating, pointing out the metaphorical comparisons we use when descrbing books ("devoured", etc.) Another dealt with her compulsive need to add marginalia. Another with famous inscriptions on fly-leaves. Etc. Great one on the English artic explorers, etc. This is not a book for everyone, but for the dedicated reader, it is a real treat.

...

I'm only a few pages from the end of 'In A Narrow Grave', so expect a post on that next. For now though, Cog & I have to put together a cheap entertainment-center I just bought for the downstairs TV.

-tf

Well, Christmas has come and gone. It was a mighty fine time. Lots of fun. Lots of food. Lots of family.

I received several books as Christmas presents, and since this blog is sort of focused on the books I read, I'll chronicle them here:

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas - Larry McMurtry
Ex Libris - Anne Fadiman
Imperical America - John Nerhouse
Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
Doubt : A History - Jennifer Hecht
How to Start and Run a Money Making Bar - Bruce Fier
American Studies - Author Unknown, cause Weezel already stole the book!

So, stay tuned, non-existant reader, for my thoughts on these books, when and if I read them!

I've read the first 1/4 of Narrow Grave, Bar, and Ex Libris, and all of them seem really cool so far!

-tf

Morning.

Well, after a fun night of playing games with the usual crew, I'm back here at joyous work. Only, the joke is, there's no one here! But, that does mean it's pretty easy for me to get some stuff done today... Like playing Deus Ex2, reading "Peopleware" and learning Maya. Exciting stuff.

And I get to pick up the turducken today from CM for Xmas! Fun!

-tf

Well, three things have happened since the last update an hour or so ago. I must be starting to come across as bored and narssisistic (s*4?) to be updating this all the time with such boring shit. But, oh well. Your fault if you read it.


User Interface Design For Programmers by Joel Spolesky
I finished The Spolsky book "User Interface Design for Programmers." Now, everyone knows I'm NOT a programmer, but this is was recommended to me as a top quality book on UI Design. This this is a topic that is pretty relevant to my continuing to draw water in this town, I picked it up, on BillG's dime. Plus, I can't really read a novel at work without looking lazy but I CAN read a book like this one, and just seem dedicated. A real go-getter. Upwardly moblie. Cheap corporate whore.

UID for Programmers is a B+ book. JS is a clever writer with a few good insights into how UI should be. He is able to offer several good rules-of-thumb for designing UI. The majority of his examples & focus is on (specifically) Windows GUI. There are good gems here, which build mostly on Donald Norman's concept of "Affordances" from his A+ book, "The Design of Everyday Things." Bottom line on the UID book is, you would probably get as much or more out of saving $25 and just spending 2 hours reading through everything on www.joelonsoftware.com where most of this material is covered anyway.

...

Next work books on tap: "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco & "Creating Emotion in Games" by David Freeman. Stay tuned here for this exciting look into the life of a guy who really isn't as dull as this blog probably makes him seem.

Which reminds me, I just skimmed the blog of a bona-fide hipster. It was a little depressing. Shit. I can overly not care about what I wear, shave my head over the bathroom sink, get high everyday, listen to Explosions In the Sky, and still not be hip-enough to keep up with the joneses. Fuck. (Hehee.)

Well, it's monday at noon here.

Last night ended up being lots of fun. Sunday dinner was excellent, got to watch my grandmother and sister make a gingerbread house, which is something that I remember from being a kid. Pretty cool.

Spent last night helping Cog move his stuff in. I enjoyed one of December's beer of the month brews. It was a Winter Warmer; very spicy, tasted like ginger and nutmeg. Very tasty!

I spent an hour playing Max Payne 2 last night as well. It was pretty underwhelming. More of the same from the first game, which I never thought was that good. Terribly linear, very stylized, but a style 'gritty cop with a checkered past' that was already a cliche in the 70's. And the basic game mechanic of 'enter a room, go into bullet time, and kill everyone in the room' just isnt' that cool. So I had to return to Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City, which is also by Rockstar, and generally a much better game.

Today work is dead. There are about 4 people in the office, out of 60. This isn't bad, cause it gives me a chance to catch up on some work reading, check out some of the new games for this Christmas, and piddle around learning MAYA. Right now I'm finishing up Joel Spolsky's 'User Interface Design for Programmers'. Will post a review a little later today. I'm also playing Ion Storm's newest, 'Deus Ex 2: Invisible War.' It's a better game than I thought it would be.

-tf

It's a fine Sunday afternoon here in Austin. Blue skied and clear as they say.

I spent this morning at Thai Kitchen, reading and visiting with the owner, Toy. He is a friendly and interesting Thai man, age 60. As I was the only one in the resturant, and he has been a distant friend of the family for about 15 years now, he sat at my table and talked with me for about an hour. He talked about what it means to be married, about thai food and health, about his travels, about my family and his. He used words like "sex" and "mafia" which were interesting to hear from the mouth of a relative stranger. He asked that he and his sister be invited to Rebecca and my wedding. :)

I finished Earth Abides. Damn. That is a really great book. I really need to find another copy of it to give to LT for Xmas. He is someone whom, I think, can appreciate what a wonderful work it is.


Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
I remember reading this book previously when I was a child living in East Texas. My Aunt Terry was always great about giving me books that were wildly age inappropriate. This is one of those. I picked it up again at Half-Price Books for a few dollar, and am very glad that I did. EA is the story of Ish Williams, a young man who survives a pandemic plague that sweeps across the world, leaving only 1/10,000 alive. Stewart wrote the novel in the 1940s, and seems to have been something of a naturalist, anthropologist and sociologist. The tale follows Ish's life for the sixty years after the Great Disaster. Ish crosses the country and takes stock of the ruins of civilization, then, in the company of five or six others, begins to rebuild it. Ish, Emma, Ezra, George, and a few other survivors start a small community in the hills above San Francisco. They have offspring, form a tribe, deal with other tribes, and observe the (de)evolution of human society. The final chapter of the 300p. novel is called The Last American, who is Ish. Mankind has reverted to a pseudo-primitive tribalism. Very cool.

Anyway, the book is great. It was obviously a big influence on Stephen King's The Stand, although this work stays largely clear of the horror / spiritual implications of a global pandemic, instead focusing on the social evolution of humankind in the generations that come after. Fascinating.

...

Next up: Sunday dinner with the family, featuring special guest Maggie Pearl Fields. Then King Cog will be moving in tonight, which is exciting. He's broken hearted currently, but that too will pass in time.

Next up on book review: A Random Walk Down Wall Street - called, by JoelOnSoftware.com "the only book you should read about investing." We will see.


-tf

Quiet day here in Austin today.

Went by Central Market South this morning to order a turducken for Christmas morning with the family. For those of you who don't know, a tur-duck-en is a cajun delicacy. You take a boneless chicken, stuff it inside a duck, stuff that inside a turkey. Usually there is stuffing of some kind crammed in there too. Cook for a few hours, and viola. I had one at Erin's house on thanksgiving, and it was great. The one we will be having on Christmas is to be stuffed with creole crawish etouffe. I hope it turns out well! Will keep you posted!

This afternoon was very quiet. Continued working my way through Earth Abides. Then, just to continue on the Apocalypse theme, I watched 28 Days Later for the first time. Pretty neat film. The 'Radically Alternate Ending' told through storyboards was the coolest to me. Second to that, the theatrical ending was probably the best. I really have to give props to their use of God Speed You Black Emperor music in the score. Perfect for that kind of film.

Tonight, I'm still missing my girl. Expect I'll spend the rest of the evening trying to finish up EA & maybe do a little editing on Vic's website for him.

Out.

-tf

PS: Oh yeah, Cog graduated today. Congratulations.

Okay. I've got it. This works, and is pretty easy to use. I'll try to start giving it a few minutes each day.

For now, since my lovely finacee is gone, and I'm still a little too hungover and broke to feel like drinking, I'll just keep reading. I'm trying to finish up _Earth Abides_ tonight, so I can move on to some other stuff. In the mean time, here are my .02 on the book I just finished...


Hell House by Richard Matheson
Hell House was written in the early 70’s, and I expect that it wasn’t a cliché at that time. Plot, loosely: a diverse group of people must spend several days in a haunted house, which was once the scene of a grisly orgy. The book was written with Matheson’s usual pulp style. Some of the descriptions were pretty fucking creepy. The Marquis de Sade type figure who ran the house was a good villan; some of the scenes of the ‘roman circus’ orgies were pretty visceral. Not much else here, but this is a classic horror novel, the basis for MANY films and novels since.

Out for now. Will post review of EA later, probably tomorrow.

-tf

Hi all.
This is my first stab at running a web-log since an abortive attempt at keeping one on thewarwick.net some years ago. I'm likely to use this just to keep track of the books I'm reading, music I'm listening to, etc. I expect low traffic, since I don't think anyone much cares about this except me.
-tf