Thoughts For Today, Ancestral Dreams

A Photograph of H.G. Wells, it makes me want to grow a handlebar mustache.

Thoughts For Today

I went back through my telephone list of contacts for the disadvantaged. I went to each website and looked for a summary paragraph of what each agency did. I added this to the contact list. Then I added a few more contacts which I found on their websites which I had missed. One of my colleagues is writing a telephone script for contacting the agencies, something flexible enough that it won't sound rote. This is more about getting across the same message than selling something.

There has been a follow up to the New York Times article on street lit or urban fiction in libraries on library journal. This article from Library Journal recommends a few urban fiction books.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6602977.html?nid=4683&rid=#reg_visitor_id_2&source=link

I spent some more time ordering books on construction this morning; carpentry, masonry, energy efficiency, roofing, carpentry, and similar materials. I am getting a bit tired of ordering right now. The new Nolo Law catalog came in with some recently published titles.

I have been feeling a bit disjointed today. Not at the top of my form. I am not fond of working on weekends. But, then life is like this sometimes.

On another thought, I have been finding the blog of Blogging Poet quite entertaining. He seems to resonate well with my view of the world. I really can't quite explain it. I like to pretend that I have limited poetic insight. I find it odd that someone would make the avowed claim of being a poet. More than anything, I find his writing to be quite funny at times.
http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/

I tried to read Hot, Flat, and Crowded Why We Need A Green Revolution And How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. I simply could not read it. The book is written in a conversational style much like Jim Lehrer's news hour or Charlie Rose. It turns my stomach. The style feels like I am watching PBS and being fed ideas by television. The author constantly quotes authorities usually governmental or scientific that are the most dry and unquestionably authoritative to prove his points. It feels like I am being fed propaganda.

I may agree with the authors points, but his style is almost Orwellian. The authority speaks and you should believe citizens. Some people like to have their opinions confirmed this way, I don't. I can understand why it is number one on the New York Times bestseller list, but I don't like it. For me, this is not a book which I can read.

I ran into another disappointment with Robert Zubrin Energy Victory. A major premise of this book is that wahabism or the form of Islam practiced by the Saudi family is the major cause of the United States oil and terrorist problems. Because of Wahabism we should switch to flexible fuel vehicles. There is plenty of vitriol against the Wahabis as well as some wild claims made about ethanol and methanol being the fuels of choice for our future.

Supposedly there should be a law that mandates all cars be made flexible fuel vehicles from now on. This is not likely to happen for various reasons which I don't want to go into. It is an interesting premise from an impractical book. If you have something against the Saudi Arabians you might really like this book.

Ancestral Dreams

I dreamed I was at Agincourt
I rode a horse and carried a black shield
The sky rained steel tipped arrows
I fell from my horse seeing red and died

I dreamed I was at the Coliseum
I held a begging bowl at the open gate
Too few coins fell for me to eat
I held my belly starving on the stones

I dreamed I was in a village
I chopped at the earth with a hoe
The earth was broken, barren
The lords tax took all I had

I was no prince, no king, no noble
But common with the worlds pain
The generations go with sorrow
Each one following into the next

Good Morning

David Tenniers (1645-1650) Stilleben. I rather like the globe in the background.

Good Morning

This morning my alarm clock did not go off so I ended up rushing to work and barely making it on time. It has been a rush, rush morning. Mostly, I have been taking care of the small details. Filling out forms for supplies, sick leave slips, and other miscellaneous things like redoing the central floor book display for the subject, the election.

I also spent a little bit more time looking for phone numbers for agencies that help the disadvantaged. Many of them are not listed in the yellow pages. They often require a certain level of confidentiality, so it is not always easy finding things like residential drug treatment facilities, homeless shelters, shelters for homeless families, and housing assistance agencies.

Anyways, two new books came in for me to read this morning, Thomas L. Friedman Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Why We Need A Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, and Eric Flint and Dave Freer, Slow Train To Arcturus. I rather like Dave Freer's writing; it is humorous science fiction and fantasy. His official site is http://www.doctormonkey.com/ . I rather liked his science fiction novel, Rats, Bats, and Vats.

As always, I spent a bit more time ordering career and industrial books. I was looking at Worldcat using my New York Public Library Card. I have library cards for Westchester, Queens, and New York Public Library. I use all of them regularly.

This evening I read some more of Slow Train to Arcturus on the train home. It has a nice surprise ending which makes the book different than what I expected. I won't give it away.

I just caught up with reading a bit of Twitter. DCagle on Twitter had a nice gallery of politcal cartoons for the week. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27362174/displaymode/1107/s/2/ Sometimes it is good to take a break for a laugh now and then.

Good Morning

A good place to find crap, old books, old comic books, and kitsch.

Good Morning

This morning, I entered a contest to win a Neil Gaiman poster. There is going to be a new book out about Neil Gaiman, Prince of Stories The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman by
Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette published by St. Martin's. This is a link to the contest. http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312387655&m_type=4&m_contentid=8573

For a little more science fiction, I put Eric Flint and Dave Freer's Slow Train to Arcturus on hold. One of the nice things about Baen, is that they put up the first eight or so chapters of a new book for free on the web to see if you like it for most of their new books. Not the whole book, but enough to make you interested. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416555854/1416555854.htm?blurb

I read Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, the graphic novel. I had read most all of the short stories turned into graphic novels previously so there was really only one surprise.

I really loved the story Craphound with art by Paul Pope. It has an absolutely wonderful quality to it. An alien visits earth to collect junk. The alien understands flea markets, but wants to understand the essence of human nostalgia. He travels around with his human companion and collects junk, cowboy and indian outfits, ten gallon hats, old magazines and nostalgia. The aliens even trade technology for junk. I like Cory Doctorow's one page summary about why he wrote the story, it is almost as good as the story. The idea of Cory Doctorow being nostalgic over glow in the dark disney cards and victorian watches is neat.

This is a link to the free online version of the story:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17026/17026.txt

I think I am going to read Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution- and How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. This book is currently #1 on the Business New York Times list, and #3 on the general New York Times list. This has been one of the themes for my blogs for a long time. Take the time and learn about clean technology if you can.

This afternoon, I spent some time watching the new version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Tim Burton. I don't think it is as good as the old version starring Gene Wilder. I think it was still very entertaining and Johnny Depp did a good job. My favorite part of the movie is the Squirrel Room. I rather like the idea of trained squirrels able to separate the good nuts from the bad. This one part was better than the old movie. The rest was not as good. The childrens book by Roald Dahl of course is far better.

Sometimes when you read enough of an authors novels, you begin to recognize a pattern in their work. I found A Nameless Witch to be essentially a plot variation on Too Many Curses. Both are quest novels where the main character must ultimately defeat a great wizard. They have a number of quests to fill to reach that goal. I enjoyed the novel, but it was not different enough from A. Lee Martinez's other novels to say it was better or worse than The Automatic Detective or Gil's All Fright Diner. They are all enjoyable, entertaining and funny. It was another novel which I just sort of passed through on to my next read.

The only really good thing I can say about A Nameless Witch was the unique set of characters, a white knight, a demon duck, a beautiful undead witch, a troll, an animated broom, a villainous sorcerer, and a mystical fox.