I love working in a bookstore.
Berk Brethed's new book is announced, and I've read an advance copy. They do this thing for kids books, where they release the actual pages from the book saddlebound with the dust-jacket (with no actual cover) so bookstores can preview the book but the publisher doesn't have to send out finished, salable copies. We got one for this new book, Flawed Dogs. It's a catalog of unwanted dogs at a "last chance" dog pound in a tiny (fictional) Vermont town. The poetry is a little simplistic, but you're reading the book for the drawings of grotesque dogs. I loved it.
Terry Pratchett's newest book is also very good. The story is better than early discworld, and the tendency to use (terrible) old jokes dwindles. Naturally, there are occasional slap-sticky moments and it wouldn't be a Discworld novel without bad puns, but the stories have come a long way since the beginning of the series. This newest book has some real character development (not that the last one didn't. It was also great. I get the feeling Pratchett likes Sam Vimes as a character), and introduces a whole new character set, complete with a history and a well-defined look into a future. I've been really impressed with the last seven or eight Discworld books, including the departure "The Last Hero." As the world becomes better defined, the stories only seem to get better. I liked it from the start, and the few that I honestly didn't like, I've liked better upon re-reading.
The other recent book I'm reading in advance is the Adventures of Samuel Blackthorne, Book 1, the Case of the Cat with the Missing Ear (from the notebooks of Edward R. Smithfield, D.V.M.). It's a Sherlock Holmes mystery set in San Francisco at the turn of the century, in a world peopled with talking animals. This story specifically deals with dogs mostly, but a cat appears and the suggestion is made of several other species on the burner for future books. Now, I admit, I'm not done with it yet. I'm about 4/5 of the way through, but I'm going to make a couple of judgments based on the 189 pages I've read so far (of 237 total) (in the advance reader. This does not necessarily mean that the final book will be exactly this long). The book is written very much in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle. With the exception of leaving out Holmes/Blackthorne's use of opium (which Doyle didn't introduce until the second story. Emerson's Blackthorne has more in common with the first incarnation of Holmes than with the second, although he does have the later Holmes' love of all subjects and supernatural preparedness. Here I site Holmes' rolodex of every person in Europe and Blackthorne's massive index of the types of hair of every breed of dog, cat, rat, bat, moose, horse, cow, "and a number of other animals."), this could very easily have been written as a "lost Holmes" mystery and rewritten with dogs. The oddness comes in the little details. Emerson often talks about different breeds of dogs, at one point having the minute protagonist identify a group of attackers by their hair (thus being able to determine their breed), and also by having Blackthorne sniff at every crime scene. It's a great book, and I am most impressed that Emerson didn't feel the need to dumb down the language particularly. It's still a pretty high vocabulary level, especially for a kids book. If my opinion changes when I finish the book, I'll update, but until then, I'm duly impressed.

Coming up in later reviews: The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and a new R.L.Stine book called Dangerous Girls. I guess I ought to go ahead and put a review of Wee Free Men up here, but I haven't written a good one yet.

There's a new vending machine in our break room. Inside, I found my old nemesis, Hostess Fruit Pies. They only have the lemon ones, but oooooh, fruit pies.
On the other hand, check out that creepy Twinkies web page. No, not SeanBaby's, the "real official" one. I mean, planet twinkie? We'll be lampooning that one in twenty years, right? Or have kids eaten enought twinkies that the secret chemical ingredients have sapped their naturally occurring lampoonides, and they'll have to appreciate crap at face value? Will the children of tomorrow be able to enjoy He-Man for the story? I hope not. Of course, they already don't know who Twinkie the Kid, Fruit Pie the Magician, The Corn Pop Kid and Mayor McCheese are. Will the children of tomorrow know the joys of crappy cartoon characters invented to move product?
Oh, wait, PoKeMon, right. I almost forgot.

Oh, hey! It was Flash's birthday Monday.

I had this idea, about precious chickens and fun. I'll get back to you.

On the phone with a publisher right now. Every thirty seconds, a recording comes on, asking me to push a button to keep holding. The other option is to leave them a message so they can get right to the business of ignoring it. I've left messages, but this is more... um, fun.

Everybody Needs it

Busy morning, busy night before.
This looks neat.
I saw a movie that I quite liked. It starts odd and gets odder, but hey! Wil Wheton's in it! So's Danica McKellar! It's a neat movie. Definitely a renter. The DVD has drinking games and a scavenger hunt.
Oh yeah, and we got a tent and sleeping mats. We are gonna be all campery! (and flashlights and lots of water, too)

additional: Keen or crappy? You decide...
If you'll notice on that link above, Captain Hook is listed before Peter Pan. 'Cause he's Lucious Malfoy. Hee hee! He may be a better Hook than Dustin Hoffman, who I think did an excellent job. I mean, he's no Hans Conreid, (aka Dr. T) but Conreid has really become quintessentially Hook, hasn't he?

OK, so think about this:
SRIs, Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, cause nausea, bloatin and gas. They cause ugly stomach upset combined with very acidic stomach.
Caffeine is an base. It reacts with acid in the stomach and produces salt and water. That's how I understand it, remembering from Chem 111.
Taking SRIs gives me pain all day. Drinking coffee makes me feel better. Hey!

Don't go near a movie theater this Christmas.
No, I really mean it.

OK, so no friggin way!

I found that here.

My little brother's a rock star. Yeah!

04/09/04: link fixed. -MN

SRI = stomach upset.

He said, "Fucker, I can hear the desperation in your thought."
I flipped him the bird, and when he turned to walk away, I shot him.

I need a new word. Sexy isn't covering what I want it to cover lately. What I'm trying to describe begins with the look of an inch-thick multi-gigahertz processor laptop, but it continues on to mean more than that.
Two examples:
a) I've recently spoken to a local woman who lived in Germany at the time of World War II. Her grandfather was an engineer who worked with Messerschmidt. Hearing her say the word Messerschimdt did things to my spine. She didn't say it sexy; she was not, in herself, particularly sexually attractive to me; she mostly just said it right, which is beautiful.
b) There was a girl at an open-mic performance last night. She had what I can only call a cherubic voice, but rich and clear. It was a voice like a bell and it was very, very pleasant. She played guitar cleanly and with an easy skill and grace. It was, again, not sexual, but it was what you sometimes gotta call sexy.
So, where does that leave me? Needing a new word. I'll play with it and think about it. If you get any ideas, I'm open.

It is 9:43pm, and I am standing inside a Church's Chicken that is trying hard to close for the night. The seating area is already closed, although the sign on the front says it will be open for another 17 minutes. I have placed an order at the drive-through, and have been permitted to wait inside for a part of my order that will take, she offered, about 4 minutes. She offered me a free soft drink, which I politely declined, as I am not in a hurry. I have half-an-hour, more or less. I don't mind waiting. There is a man behind the counter, behind the food. He is frying the part of the order that will take an additional 4 minutes, more or less, and looks both very intense and very distant. His ancestry is clear in his features and proud in his baring.
In my head, The Reverend sings a song called "Generation Why" that's got lyrics worthy of Tim (pre-influence, post-creepfeed).
There's a woman behind the counter with whom I have already spoken. She talks into a headset and takes orders quickly and precisely, but in with an unfriendly air.
There's a man standing at the counter, leaning over with obvious hostility in everything about his bearing. He is fat and tense, as if ready to spring ineffectually at any moment. He has a moustache and a tick that says he is a jerk and a smoker in need of attention and nicotine. When I parked my car and walked up to the door of the lobby, to wait for my order to be ready as instructed, He pulled up and parked in a handicapped space in front of the store. He stepped out of his car, fists clenched, and glared from the door to me. I felt pressed, and so said, "I think they're trying to close the lobby. There's still the drive-through." He responded, "No Way. No FUCKING Way," and clenched and unclenched his hands, turning a shade redder. I was afraid he would try to punch me, and took a subtle step back.
When this man growled, another man inside the lobby opened the door and said, "Are you guys waiting for the tenders?"
I said, "I am," and the other fellow shoved the man who had opened the door back, and stomped up to the counter. I made eye contact with the employee, and made a conciliatory shrug. I've worked retail, and I know that people suck. He looked from me to the newcomer and realized instantly what was happening. He went back to sweeping. I stood by the window, where I am standing now, at 9:43pm, and waited for my order as patiently as I know how to. I looked at the menu, watched the man sweep, and smiled quietly to myself. It's how I wait, when I have no place to be, and 10 minutes of cook time ahead of me.
My phone rings, and I chat for a moment with a friend I have missed of late. The woman with the headset says to me, "You're order will be ready in just a moment." I give her a happy wave and a faint smile, and keep chatting quietly. I'm enjoying the moment of wait, although that seems not to be an option. I think she's worried that I'm mad and I don't know how to assuage her concern. I did, after all, wave away a free soda.
The man outside is smoking a cigarette angrily as if it were making him late.
I notice for the first time, the woman behind the counter filling an order. I assume it's not the first since I started standing here, but it's the first I see filled. She uses long metal tongs to fill an order for a three piece mixed with biscuit. She is lightning quick with them, snatching pieces of chicken with absolute precision and stacking them into a paper box which she pulls from a pile and shakes into life with one deft motion. It is poetry to see her move so swiftly and so precisely. I think to myself, this is a woman who is good at her job and doesn't want to do it forever.
It is 9:47pm. She hands me a box containing precisely 20 assorted pieces of animal flesh. This will feed me and Toshi for several days. I say lamely, "You're very quick with those tongs. It's impressive." She very obviously wonders if I am being sarcastic, seems to realize that I don't mean anything terrible by it, and says "Thanks." I take the food, and head out of the lobby.
As I pass the newcomer, the man torturing his now third cigarette to death, I wish him a good evening. He glares at me for a moment, then says "Yeah." I go to my car, turn on the radio just a bit too loud, and drive the four and a half minutes home. It is now 10:01. I make a wish, turn off my car, close the garage door, and go inside.

Hey, Sharon&Jon, Peter David is the name I was trying to remember.

"How Is What You're Doing Good?"
It's a useful question to ask oneself.

Again, I'm sorry.
They're my Two Blogs, and they go TweetTweetTweetTweetTweet like little birds.
Don't click on all of those. It's the same joke over and over.
I know. I hate me too.

I'm sleepy. It's a good afternoon to be sleepy. The clouds are thick, the sun is dim and the air is heavy. My work is tedius today: entering books into the computer. It's a good job, but one that involves making tiny motions over and over again and not thinking too hard.
The beginnings of a song have started in my head. I'll look into that a little further.
Odd badness all this week. Work has been my escape.

Oh yeah, and about 850, Sherbie, since you asked.

So, it seems that I now have 2 blogs, because of some silliness that happened when Blogger switched over. I need to find a way to put the two together. I have this idea, and I'm gonna try it out. We'll see...

OK, so, wheras this is a little harsh, I have to agree with him. That movie was too long and too bad.
It should have been a tight 97 minutes, more or less, instead of almost twice that. It's different with, say, Lord of the Rings, which is a long movie that actually includes two or three hours worth of events and still makes people complain because important stuff is left out.
How bad was Hulk? Watching it at the Drafthouse couldn't make it enjoyable. Not even a snack and ice cream could make that movie better than terrible. Think about that: Amy's chocolate ice cream couldn't make that movie good. Amy's makes broken legs OK.

And I look in your eyes
and my head explodes again.

So, Barbeque sauce is one of those art forms doomed to stagnation. At its best, the sauce is a thick, sweet, tomato-based fluid for marinating and cooking meat or other grilled items. At its most complex, it contains such wonders as black pepper or black-beans and corn. At its simplest and, apparently, most historically accurate, it's ketchup with sugar added.
From what I hear, that's the origin of what we today call barbeque sauce: cowboys on cattle drives in the early-to-mid 19th century cooked with a sauce made of sugar mixed with ketchup.
Personally, I think that limits the end product. Perhaps, if we think about it historically, a wider variety of sauces can be called Barbeque, but still, with the origin being two commercially manufactured products being mixed, and a market of approximately six thousand brands and types of sauces available today and relatively unchanged since the 50s, I'm going to posit that there will be few if any big advancements in barbeque sauce in the near future.
In fact, I'd say that there have only been two real advances in barbeque sauce technology, ever: one was, of course, the invention of Ketchup. The other, I'd say, is the relatively recent discovery in this country of real peppers.
The import and growing of habanero peppers (as well as other "exotic" pepper varietals) has only recently become big business, and these spicier and tastier peppers have only become available in the common grocery store in the last quarter century. They allowed barbeque sauce to change and become, far from just ketchup with sugar in it, very spicy ketchup with sugar in it.
Happy 4th.
My intent is to barbeque, besides the obligatory rump roast, portabello mushrooms (which, yes, I have the materials necessary to french fry, in case one of my readers thinks I misremembered) and firm tofu, both of which are wonderful with a spicy barbeque sauce, smoked on mesquite briquettes.
Oh, yeah, and live music is probable from these fine folks.

Updated 7-15
The rump roast was predictably tough. I braised it in butter and a homemade barbeque sauce, and it came out to be very edible, but the really nice meat was the slightly better cut of meat that I just put on the grill until it was cooked. It came out tender and smoky and really very nice. I also tossed on four yams which came out soft and sweet, as yams are want to do. It was good, and the music played after was very nice. I had a little squabble with Toshi after, but it was nothing serious and was fixed as quickly as these things are fixed.

Hey!
Good birthday, sez me. Toshi came and visited me at work and brought me SpiderMums and cake. We had hamburgers, and I learned that there's a new Tricky record, and, wonder of wonders, a new one from Poi Dog Pondering.
A neat day so far, and it's only half happened.
Also odd-badness, but I won't dump that right now.

"I am so mad at you right now."
We all agreed, that was the best way to end that speech. "Won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more" lacks a certain panache. If I were resigning the presidency, I'd have to do the "mad" line.

HEY, JON!
LOOK! How cool is that?
Almost as cool as I think this is, I hope.
Niftiness, it do abound!

I haven't posted in a while again.
It's inventory, and I've been busy with lotsa stuff (related and un-).
Also, there'll be a party for me on Saturday.
Everybody's invited.
Hooray.