Mouse Farts in a Wind Tunnel


June 14, 2003

Notes about some recent reading:

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
cover

This is a huge bestseller and it was recommended by a couple of trustworthy friends. What a mistake! It is 85% exposition (at least), and the rest is plot-grinding chase scenes and narrow escapes. Finding the non-fiction sources that this guy used is probably a better idea.

Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear
cover

Easily the best science fiction novel I have read in years. The only one that comes close is Chronoliths. I have a penchant for hard science in my SF and Darwin's Radio is plausibly based on recent advances in genetic science. What happens if so-called "junk DNA," formed from ancient viruses that were incorporated into the human genome early in our evolution, becomes active? The human endogenous retroviruses extract themselves from the DNA in some individuals and trigger the next stage in human evolution. It sounds a bit dorky put that way, but the science is impeccable and the way that Bear represents humanity's fear of the unknown is chilling. Given the recent rise of police state tactics in the US, his vision of the treatment of the virus children is only too believable.

Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
cover

The release of this sequel is what led me to read both books. This is a magnificent follow-up, at least until the final forty pages of the novel, when Bear seems to tire of the whole thing and crams in what should and could have been the foundation for a complete third novel. I felt cheated, especially since I had gone through something that only happens with the very best books: I slowed down and stopped reading as the end got closer, just to delay the time that I finished it. I should have stopped at the end of Part Two. It would have been better all around. Still, better than most SF published.

And since I mentioned Chronoliths...
cover

I almost gave this one a miss because of the dorky title. This is a review that I posted elsewhere at the time:

I just finished Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson (a Times Notable Book of the Year last year [2001]). It is a marvelous and gentle book that I think is damned in being relegated to the science fiction genre when the SF elements provide the only way possible to tell a particular story (if that makes sense).

In the book, a series of giant monoliths appear one by one around the world, forced back in twenty years time to celebrate the ongoing conquests of a warlord called Kuin. However, the story concerns one man and his family who have an odd and apparently coincidental relationship with the chronoliths.

What makes this novel so delightful is the way it focuses on ordinary life in extraordinary times. The way that Wilson paints a fully-realized world culture in the background, and follows the characters through twenty years and more, were subtly and sadly detailed.

When I was reading it I kept thinking "When is something going to happen?" even though things were happening. It didn't seem like the events occuring were as important as the characters' and the world's reactions to them. The prose just propelled me along in a way that refused exciting occurences, in place of loving ones -- even when exciting and scary things happened. And it wasn't until the very end that the point of the story was revealed. I can't tell you how unusual I find it to read something with a mystery at the core that I haven't figured out long in advance. Nevertheless, the ending had an inevitability to it that was astonishingly proportionate (the only word I can think to describe it) in a novel about coincidence, sacrifice, and genuine awareness and acceptance of those with whom we live our lives.
posted by el goose on 6/14/2003 12:35:19 PM | link

--------------------

June 13, 2003

Cross dress as a Goth Girl.

Just for fun!
posted by el goose on 6/13/2003 12:14:05 PM | link

--------------------

June 11, 2003

I had a lovely conversation with Gary Groth tonight. Love him or hate him, he changed the face of American comics. He called to thank me for my Fantagraphics order. He has a reputation for being really quite cranky, but I think he could be fun to hang out with him.
posted by el goose on 6/11/2003 10:06:26 PM | link

I have been combing through recipe sites and various newsgroups recently, trying to find a reasonable facsimile of the salad dressing served by Dojo Restaurant in New York. When I lived in the city, Dojo was my second home. I could eat there every night, and there were times that I did. Back then, I would go through food trends where there would be maybe one or two things I would want to eat, and nothing else. The other side of that was having specific restauarants that I would go to for specific food -- the pierogi place, the Indian place, the tempura place. the black bean burrito place.

Beyond the acting out of my food compulsions, Dojo always had something good. I remember when I was having a nervous breakdown during my comprehensive exams for my doctorate, a friend dragged me to Dojo for a break. It was one of the few times that I capitulated and had the Mississippi Mud Cake -- it musy have been something if I can remember it fifteen years later. I've found and tried a couple of recipes for that salad dressing that people have pieced together by taste -- it always seems to come out to some version of a miso sesame. I am obsessed. If nothing else, this will be how I manage to eat all the lettuce I get from the farm this summer.

Googling for Dojo: Pictures of the neighborhood I used to live in, including Dojo on St. Mark's. The first night I was in New York, after moving there, a woman I met took me down St. Mark's to Second Avenue to one of the Ukrainian restaurants for dinner. This was a Saturday night in August, 1986, and I was a total hick from the sticks. I had never seen anything like St. Marks Place in my life. I think my eyes must have totally bugged out of my head. It ended up being one of my most favorite and familiar places in the city after living in one of the NYU monoliths around the corner. That was back when St. Mark's Bookstore was still on the street, actually in two places at once.

I remember eating in a different restaurant somewhere along that street with a friend from school once, and a cockroach ran up the wall. At that point, I was a city dweller, so we just killed it and complained to the waiter, who gave us the "so fucking what?" face. If he had offered to give us something for free, we would have been happy, but he didn't, so we ate and then left without paying, neurotically giggling and complaining. This is the most obnoxious restaurant behavior I have exhibited in my life, as I don't usually expect or try to get free food from eating establishments. Only in a place like New York (or other Third World countries) would a thoroughly middle American dork like me learn to not vomit at the sight of a cockroach doing a forty-yard dash away from the nachos.

Later: Googling "dojo salad dressing" leads to an appalling amount of fanfic. Why am I not surprised?

posted by el goose on 6/11/2003 09:31:13 AM | link

--------------------

June 10, 2003

There are mouse farts, and then there is Mister Methane:
Yet there is a man for whom flatulence is not a problem, but a positive advantage. Paul Oldfield has, for the last 12 years, made his living from his extraordinary capabilities. As Mr. Methane, Oldfield is currently the world's only practitioner of the art of Le Petomane, or "controlled anal voicing," with a stage act has taken him around the world. Donning a Sherwood green superhero- style costume, mask, and cape and using only the power of his bottom, Mr. Methane "sings" along to classical music, blows out candles, and shoots darts at dwarves. Actor Kelsey Grammer (TV's Frasier) has said, "This man took the history books by the pages and really ripped one out for himself!" Howard Stern is such a fan that he is planning to back an Off- Broadway Mr. Methane show.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that he is a member of my father's family.
posted by el goose on 6/10/2003 12:34:43 AM | link

--------------------





HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MISTER ORWELL
ORWELL LINKS


CARLETON COLLEGE ALUMNI BLOGROLL

alanmacey.com
Alan Macey '91

Gavin
Gavin Sullivan '86

Helen's Loom
Arah Bahn '91

herebox
Mike Waggoner '01

Notes of a Left-Wing Cub Scout
Jeff Pasley '86

morman.com
Steve Morman '91

TwinsGeek.com
John Bonnes '89

A Work in Progress
Robert K. Brown '91







Old Mouse Farts






Make a blog:
Powered by Blogger Pro TM


Archives








i'm in ravenclaw!

Text copyright © 2000-2003 - elgoose.com
All Rights Reserved