Miscellaneous

Prime Minister Sweater Vest

August Leave a Comment

Canada, you disappoint me. Sure, he’s not as bad as Mulrooney, but he’s quite clearly not good for this country. His party’s environmental policies are counter-productive, as are his economic policies (although I will admit, it actually takes some examination to realize this, and most voters are some combination of lazy and apathetic). He’s been caught lying in a civil suit, and his disrespect for the arts as an industry and artists as members of the larger Canadian community appalls me. He delivers his message well, and I can understand that his confidence, which borders on—and sometimes even surpasses—arrogance, can be comforting in these troubled times. But if the experiences of our cousins to the South have taught us anything, it should be that we should not, indeed we must not, accept short-term palliatives for serious issues like the dismantling of our manufacturing and forestry industries, the crushing debts faced… Continue Reading →

Point of Order

August Leave a Comment

Regular readers (or even readers who have read none of this site except the last post) will know that I’m currently reading Steven Heighton’s Flight Paths of the Emperor, and should be done with it in the next day or so. When I am finished with that, I will begin reading Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, which arrived in the mail this morning. I was given the book so that I would write a short review to be published elsewhere, and as such I don’t want to post a full review here until after the short one has been published in that venue, which will not be until October at the earliest. So: though it will actually be book #55 for the year, my review will have it labeled as #56 or more likely #57. This may not be a particularly important detail to most of you, but it’s important to me… Continue Reading →

Sweet Relief

August Leave a Comment

The flood damage is nearly all cleaned up now (my parents gave me a dehumidifier as an early birthday present, and it now ranks as probably the second best birthday gift I’ve ever received) and several of my lost books have been replaced, so posting should resume regularly in the next day or so. The good news, I guess, is that I’m only two books behind, so it shouldn’t be too much work to catch up. I’m not generally “that sort of reader”, but I am kind of disappointed that I will now have a crisp, new copy of Ulysses on my bookshelf instead of the well-used and much loved copy I had before. The old copy was as much a kind of trophy as it was a book that I read an enjoyed. Happily I don’t fall into the books-as-trophies category too often (the only other two examples I… Continue Reading →

Waiting For Hell (High Water’s Already Here)

August 1 Comment

There was a tremendous rain storm earlier tonight, and my apartment flooded. This happens every time it rains, and normally it’s just a half-gallon or a gallon of water near the outside door. Tonight several other leaks appeared while I was at work, and three rooms were soaked. Including the living room. Which is also the library. I haven’t finished a complete tally of the damages (that may take a day or so; my apartment is quite crowded, and finding dry places to put things while I try to assess the damage is not the easiest task in the world), but I can already see that I’ve lost close to two dozen books, quite a few journals and magazines, at least two CDs and one DVD (The Princess Bride). In any event, things will be a mess here for a few days at the very least, and updates may not… Continue Reading →

My Friend Nick is Missing

August Leave a Comment

If any of you folks are in the Seattle area (hell, even if you aren’t) please look at this: http://community.livejournal.com/seattle/5056342.html My friend Nick is missing. He’s got a wife and kids and another little one on the way. Please, if you have any information at all, contact the authorities. At the very least I hope you’ll all join me in wishing for his safe return and sending prayers/good thoughts or whatever sort of fellowship you can in the direction of him and his family. This site has also been set up to make more information available. Please keep your eyes and ears open.

Sigh.

August Leave a Comment

There’s a big update pending. In fact, I was going to finish the last few pages of Underworld and post about it tonight. But I’m right in the middle of a massive hard drive failure. Massive. So I’m spending the night making emergency backups and hoping my machine doesn’t crap out before I’m done. So no update tonight. And possibly not for a couple of months, depending on how long it takes me to get the scratch together for a new machine. I’ll keep you kind folks posted on how things are progressing whenever I get a few minutes in front of a public computer.

Some Minor Tweaks

August Leave a Comment

Just a quick post to let you folks know that I’ve tweaked the sidebar on the right to better reflect my reading habits and the subject of this blog. I’ve also redone the “About” page. More tweaks may or may not be happening in the near future. Further updates as events warrant (and yes, I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m not done with Underworld yet).