Arctangential

I am going to do that whole “50 books a year” thing this year. That isn’t to say I don’t read (at least) 50 books most years, I’m just going to write more about it this time. I know I’ve written about my reading before, but in the past I felt this need to write 3-4 paragraphs about each book when I finished it, which made me put the whole thing off to the point where I simply didn’t feel like doing it any more. All I’m going to do this time is note when I finish a book, and how many pages it was. Nobody will care. That’s OK.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year and all that.

I was at a store the other night and I was working with one of the employees there to get some credit on some kind of rewards card based on some certificates I had. The details are entirely unimportant and even less interesting. What is important is that we did the whole thing and then he went off and then I did some shopping and then tried to spend some of the credit on some DVDs. However, there was no credit on my rewards card. I mentioned to the cashier that I just put credit on there, and he asks me who helped me.

This is where the trouble starts; I can’t think of how to describe this guy. I think I tend to focus on details about people rather than their overall look, and all I could think of about him were that his fingernails were very dirty, he had a huge piece of dead skin hanging off his lower lip, and he seemed very stoned. While these were all accurate statements, it’s not the kind of way you want to identify someone you don’t know to one of his co-workers.

In panic, I looked around the store, hoping I could just point him out, but he was nowhere to be seen. Finally I stammered, “He was – he was wearing a sweater.” This didn’t help much, and we both looked around the store for a while, but to no avail. Then he asked me, “Did he have curly hair?” “Yes!” I replied excitedly, although in truth I had no idea as to the nature of the hair in question, it seemed a reasonable answer. He walked off to a door marked “Employees Only” and stuck his head in. A moment later he backed out of the room and behind him was the man who had helped me earlier — with curly hair! He wasn’t wearing a sweater though; it was one of those fleece vests, over a t-shirt. However, nobody said anything, my credit was applied and all was well.

I got the DVD for Fishing with John which is wonderful and I encourage you all to pick it up.

I finished the final Harry Potter book early this morning. It was OK.

I think I understand why some people were upset with the books. It’s not that they’re particularly bad, but they’re just not particularly good, either. There are plenty of other examples in the genre that are just as good, and a not-inconsiderable number of examples that are significantly better. Rowling’s success seems to me (and probably to others) to be some quirk of fate or some miracle of marketing more than any kind of artistic success. I’ll just that that I did enjoy reading the books, and I found some of the plot elements fairly compelling. I had two main complains with the series:

First, the “magic incantations” I think were largely stupid. Grammatically incorrect Latin is not magic. If it were, every first year Latin student would be igniting his textbook every time he screwed up the declension of ignis. I’m not saying that I know more (or anything) about fire than Ms. Rowling, but that whole thing just struck me as incredibly jarring every time a new spell was introduced. The whole incantation thing was a great opportunity to make some clever and inventive puns, and mostly it was just dumb.

My more fundamental complaints has to do with setup and backstory. When reading a fantasy novel, or particularly a series of fantasy novels, the backstory of the world is often as (or more) interesting than the actual plot. A common tactic used by writers of fantasy is to weave the “plot important” facts into the backstory along with other piece of flavor, so that when some important revelation appears from the background, it seems to be arising from the rules of the world as they’ve been set forth and not from the author’s contrivance.

Rowling basically 100% fails in this capacity. Every important revelation is revealed to us scant chapters ahead of time. Without “spoiling” things, there’s a very important revelation about the mechanics of wand ownership that strongly affects a final confrontation. This whole “wand lore” issue could have been mentioned as early as the first book, and would have been a really interesting through-line to follow throughout the series. Hell, it even could have been mentioned early in the 7th book, but instead it’s brought up just a few chapters before it becomes important. This is a pattern throughout all the books, and it’s frankly pretty disappointing.

Anyways, that’s all. Good but not perfect, and certainly overrated books.

Now I’m reading Anansi Boys. It’s very good.

The other day I was thinking about the time that Barry Bonds (I think it was) sneezed so hard that he broke his own rib. I wanted to make a joke about that, to say that I wanted to be even stronger than that, and to use a hyperbolic example to emphasize my point. I thought of a few lines, but I wasn’t sure which one was best.

First, I thought to expand the reaction to elsewhere in my body:

“I want to be so strong that when I sneeze, I break my own leg!”

Then, to elsewhere in space:

“…so strong that when I sneeze, I break somebody else’s ribs!”

Then, there’s the scatological example:

“…when I fart, I break my pelvis!”

And finally, the combination:

“..when I fart, I break somebody else’s arm!”

What do y’all think? Which one is funniest?

I was in Half-Price Books the other day (which, by the way, is a wonderful store and if you live near one, you should visit it at your nearest opportunity) and while I was browsing $1 CDs, a middle-aged couple walked in. They were looking for an audiobook; I know this because the husband asked the sales clerk (loudly) where the audiobooks were kept.

After being directed to the section, clearly labeled “Audiobooks” near the front of the store, the couple begins to discuss that the book they’re looking for is “that Harry Potter book, by J. K. Rowling”.

“Now would that be under ‘Harry’, ‘J’ or ‘Rowling’?” asked the wife, clearly unable to modulate her voice for indoor speaking.

“I just don’t know,” said the husband, equally unable to speak quietly, and went over to ask the clerk again, who explained that audiobooks were sorted alphabetically by author, and then had to further explain that the book in question would be under “Rowling”.

Returning to his wife, the man passed on the information, which I suppose had been heard by every person in the store SAVE his wife, and then then proceeded to search for the audiobook. After 5 minutes or so, having not found it, they begin to discuss if such an audiobook would even exist. “Maybe they never made one,” ventured the husband, and went to ask this also of the clerk.

I lost track of the couple after this point, but as I was leaving the store (with about $80 worth of books, CDs and DVDs (a light day)), the wife was having an animated discussion with the clerk, trying to figure out if they possibly had a secondary cache of audiobooks elsewhere in the store where this elusive “Harry Potter” might be found.

I don’t understand why people can’t speak indoors in a reasonable tone of voice. Nor do I understand why people can’t understand that a used book store does not always have every product in the world available. But what I REALLY don’t understand is how two people can make it into their 50s without understanding how media products are arranged on shelves.

What also upsets me is that these people are allowed to drive and also to vote.

I like the idea of monks. I think that, had I lived 600 years ago, I would have been some kind of cloistered monk. I probably would have enjoyed illuminating books or inventing champagne* or something.

I don’t mean the tonsure or the cassock or any of the religious stuff, really. What I mean is the removal of oneself from the world. Going away from everything, using as little energy as possible to keep oneself alive, and using absolutely the rest of your energy in the service of some greater good. The problem I have with being a real monk, of course, is that what they do with all that extra energy is pray. I don’t feel like praying actually does anybody any good except for, maybe in some cases, the person praying.

So what I think would be a good idea is some kind of secular monk association. It would be similar in a lot of ways to the religious monks: people would join up, either for their whole lives or maybe just for a certain number of years. While in the organization, they would have no possessions and would do nothing apart from the least possible work to keep themselves alive and comfortable and maintain the physical plant of the organization, and the rest of their time would be spent doing their work. As to what exactly they’d do, I’m not sure; nor am I sure how money would be handled. The work would have to be something which produced a result which directly improved the lot of the world. The result should probably be usable to fund the existence of the monastery as well.

Imagine groups of purely dedicated people working essentially non-stop on some medical problem, and their solution being released to the world free of charge. Imagine how much more work could be done by a group of people so purely focused,without having to worry about their family or their commute or mowing the lawn or paying rent. I think it’d be a good thing.

[*] And yes, I know that Mr. Pérignon probably didn’t really invent champagne, per se. However, I’m confident that, had I been a live at the right time, we’d all be drinking Dom Avignon ever New Year’s Eve.