Starting to Read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

A couple of years ago, I finished reading Otherland, a four-part science fiction series by primarily-fantasy writer Tad Williams which explored the world of virtual reality, set one hundred years in the future. The author's writing impressed me enough to look into his fantasy works, although I have been distracted by other books in the meantime. However, this past weekend I bought a secondhand copy of the first volume in Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn fantasy trilogy titled The Dragonbone Chair. And I'm starting it today! Blog feedback later!

Slim Pickings on TV Tonight

Sinking into my customary, comfortable role on Monday evening as television-junkie-couch-potato, I had trouble finding anything good to watch after the Spike channel's presentation of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Even Rachel Maddow was missing from The Rachel Maddow Show. So I've been alternating between baseball and cartoons. Oh well, some nights are better than others. Let me go pop up some popcorn and then see what's on computer-TV!

Bonus Tracks on Extended Audio CDs

Since the advent of the audio compact disc with its approximately eighty minutes of space, record companies reissuing old vinyl albums on CDs have often used the extra available space to issue "extended" albums with bonus tracks. Usually these are primarily other versions of the original album's tracks, sometimes including concert recordings. And sometimes these alternatives are better than the original. For example, in the Monkees' Head CD, the song Daddy's Song was originally released as a track with Davy Jones as the lead singer. And it was difficult to listen to, putting it mildly. But with the CD release, a bonus track featuring Mike Nesmith on lead vocals poignantly captured the sad message in this song. Besides repeated material, a CD may contain new songs heretofore unreleased, and that is always a treat (especially with the older recordings).

Having said that, I obtained one of those "extended" CDs, this one of the great album Morrison Hotel by the Doors. The signature, opening track is the classic Roadhouse Blues. Well, the record company apparently liked Roadhouse Blues so much that they included four other versions of it as extra tracks! Why couldn't they have put some different material on instead (they did include some "new" extra stuff on it, to be fair)?

But bonus tracks aren't really a selling point of these CDs for me. Actually, it can be quite a nuisance if I'm driving and I want to hear the main, original tracks in random fashion. Then I keep getting the extra material, most of which I really don't want to hear. But that isn't really too much of a problem, either. I just advance to the next track. Still, I don't understand why concentrating on putting different songs on as bonus tracks wouldn't be a more lucrative sales strategy than piling on different versions of already-heard songs.

Three Celebrity Deaths

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson have all just died. I'm sorry they died and all, just as most other people are sorry as well. But it's not exactly as if any of us, as Jim Morrison once sang, are getting out of here alive either!

Death is naturally something we fear, since it is a great mystery (from the point of view of the survivors, that is). But it is inevitable, so we shouldn't mourn too much at the inevitable loss of those we know, either personally or through the media. Still, the pain of knowing that these people will no longer be around is understandable. And since we only know for sure of this one chance at life, we should take care to value it, both for ourselves and others.

Anyway, if we were to define death as the state of not being alive in our bodies, then all of us had already been dead for, at last count, some 15 billion years before we were conceived and born! So regarding death, one may say, "Been there, done that!"

Naturally, all of this excludes supernatural interpretations of death, which the reader is certainly free to indulge in or reject.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

I just finished reading Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, comprised of The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. As is the case with other reviews, I'm left with the dilemma of trying to express my impressions without revealing too much to anyone who hasn't yet read it. So here goes (don't say I didn't warn you).

His Dark Materials, to me, bears a disturbingly uncanny resemblance to Stephen King's much longer The Dark Tower series, above and beyond the titles. Besides the convenient literary ploy of having windows opening into alternate universes (with The Dark Tower it's doors), Pullman's fantasy resembles King's with its unlikely protagonists being responsible for not just saving the world, or even the universe, but ultimately for saving ALL of the universes (I miss the good old days when just saving the world was enough). And both series have a lot to say about the nature of good and evil, as well as the nature of God. Hey wait a minute, all this also sounds a lot like C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia!

The similarities to other works having been duly noted, Pullman does succeed quite well with his compelling characters and story. With a series like this, what I'm looking for the most are protagonists that I can either like or identify with, accompanied by an interesting, suspenseful sequence of events that they have to experience in their quest, whatever that may be. And the two protagonists, Lyra (introduced in The Golden Compass) and Will (introduced in The Subtle Knife) are truly compelling characters worth following. There are some really "bad" antagonists as well. And (what I like the most) a few characters who are so complex that they play an unpredictable, "wild card" role in the story's outcome. The plot also succeeds by carrying the reader from one dire situation to the next in an almost seamless manner.

What distinguishes Pullman in His Dark Materials from other similar works are his iconoclastic revelations concerning the true nature of God, angels, the Church, and other sensitive religious topics. Most of this comes out in the third book The Amber Spyglass, and (to me) almost sounds like the author is standing on a bully pulpit shouting out his views (much like Michael Crichton's distasteful excesses in his novel State of Fear). I suppose much of this is unavoidable since, having laid down so many mysteries in the first two books, it was necessary, to a degree, to explain them in the third.

Overall, I heartily recommend Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, especially to those readers who enjoyed other series like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark Tower, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. And, speaking of Lord of the Rings, I discovered that the movie The Golden Compass ended in its story before the book did. I found this out after, having just finished reading that book, I gave away part of its ending to my children, who had only seen the movie (the Lord of the Rings movie played around like this with the book's story line, too). One caveat to my recommendation: those who are firmly entrenched in their religious beliefs may be (quite) a bit put off by what comes out at the end!

Oh, one other thing. At the end of The Amber Spyglass, I noticed that the author planted a couple of seeds for future stories. It will be interesting to see whether anything comes of this.

The Group Metric and the Military

The Canadian alternative band Metric, fronted by singer Emily Haines (also of Broken Social Scene), runs through many different themes in their music. One of them is their strong opposition to anything military, not just war. This distinguishes them from what many in the United States do when they "oppose the war but support the troops". Metric makes no such distinction, as the two videos below show.





Metric has put out four studio albums so far, and each of them is great. Right now, I think I'd have to put them at #2, right behind Sufjan Stevens, in my list of current favorite musical acts. They are quite passionately negative about the military and war, though a bit too "anti-troops" for me (yeh, I'm one of those wacky "anti-war troop-supporters")! Here's a link to another anti-war hit of theirs, Monster Hospital.

No Fun Following Gators

Maybe this year I'll take a pass on the college football season. The University of Florida Gators, with their coach Urban Meyer and superstar quarterback Tim Tebow want a repeat of last year's national championship run and will most likely regard anything less than that as a failure.

Well, that's no fun! I like for the team I'm following to be good, but perfect? I would much rather have some very suspenseful games to watch, where the outcome is uncertain, than a blow-out season where game after game is a rout.

Not that I'm planning to root against UF this year. I'll still be a fan, but I think I may just decide to focus my attention on some other conference. The current favorite: the Pac-Ten. Why? I may find myself in a better position to watch some of their games, seeing that I get off from work at midnight. If following another conference doesn't work out, I may just skip this year until things get more competitive for the Gators.

Iranian Presidential Election

Anyone who has been watching the news is keenly aware of the unrest in Iran following the recent controversial presidential election over there. Incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner over supposedly reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, and in a landslide. No doubt exists in my mind that this was a fraudulant election. Boxes containing Mousavi votes were disposed of, the winner was declared before the voting was even finished, and Ahmadinejad won demographic categories that were believed to heavily favor his opponent. And people have been taking to the streets in protest, being met with intimidation and violence by the Iranian authorities (and responding with violence as well).

But I contend that this election was a complete fraud to begin with. Both candidates for "president" were handpicked by the so-called "supreme leader", who is nothing more than a ruthless dictator swathed in religion. And it is he, not the president, who controls this longtime UNDEMOCRATIC nation.

In order to have a truly functioning democracy, there needs to be freedom for candidates to openly campaign without press restrictions, something completely lacking in Iran. Also, there was no independent polling there to scientifically gauge the public opinion (this would have served as a rough guideline to the validity of the election results).

But I'm seeing all of this from the West, not from inside Iran. I get my information from the western journalists in Iran. And they get much of their information from those Iranians who tend to oppose Ahmadinejad, giving the built-in impression that he was very unpopular among the people at-large and should have lost his reelection bid. But, for all I know, Ahmadinejad would have won the election anyway, since there really wasn't any truly objective opinion polling there to indicate otherwise. The fact that there wasn't, though, shows the futility of even pretending that there was any democracy involved in this "election" to begin with. And does anyone seriously believe that getting opinions and reports from Twitter in Iran is a dependable way to get a pulse on how the Iranians as a whole feel?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme dictator of Iran, is in some kind of power struggle with another dictator wanna-be by the name of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. Apparently, Ahmadinejad represents Khamenei's power while Mousavi is in some way on the side of Rafsanjani. And people are dying in Iranian streets thinking that they are pushing freedom, when in reality they are considered to be expendable pawns in a power struggle between two cruel autocrats.

President Obama recognizes this and is being careful with his comments about the situation in Iran. Meanwhile, the same old motley crew of hotheads on the right are beating the war drums again, led by John McCain. McCain, if you will recall, tried to make political hay during last year's presidential campaign by making vague threats against Russia during that country's brief armed conflict with neighboring Georgia. And naturally, these blabbermouths are trying to make the tragedies unfolding in Iran a referendum on Obama's leadership. Someone needs to remind McCain that the campaign's over ... and he lost!

The whole way in which this is being reported in the media gives me the feeling of being severely manipulated. It's the "good guys" versus the "bad guys" all over again. From where I stand, though, I don't see much difference between the two camps. I have a feeling, though, that many of the protesting Iranians don't like either side and are desperately trying to topple the "supreme" dictatorship and actually have a president whose election makes a difference.

Beach Trip to Daytona

This past weekend, I spent some time with my family in Daytona Beach (technically Daytona Beach Shores). We all had a good time, but toward the end of the stay the temperatures skyrocketed to nearly 100 degrees (Fahrenheit), with the heat index reaching 110. And about 200 rescues of swimmers caught in strong rip currents were made on Friday and Saturday. So what did I do in the midst of this extreme heat and oceanic peril? Run on the beach and go out into the waves, of course!

Here are some photos of the beach:

Robbins Giant Steps: Decisions

Self-improvement guru Anthony Robbins, in his book Giant Steps, lays out many constructive ideas that may help one to achieve success. Many of these may seem to be self-evident, but many of us (me included) nevertheless tend not to follow them in our daily lives.

One of the most profound is the idea that “those who succeed tend to make decisions rapidly and are slow to reverse a well-thought-out position.” (Day 10)

I tend to do the opposite: hem and haw about an issue that is gnawing on me, avoiding any decision about it until the last minute (or even later) and then backtracking from it once the decision has supposedly been made. Seems obvious that this is a process doomed to repeated failure, doesn’t it?

Going hand-in-hand with Robbins’ “Day 10” advice is the one from “Day 7”: “The more decisions you make, the better you’ll become at making them.”

The key to any good decision, though, is something that Robbins included in his advice: Think out your decision and consider its consequences, as well as what types of decisions you may be making as a result.

Following Three More Baseball Teams

I decided to add three other teams to the list of baseball teams I’m trying to follow in greater detail this season: the Florida Marlins, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the Chicago Cubs. Why? Because I can regularly see them play on TV, that’s all.

Added to the five teams of the American League Central Division (a great choice, I might say), I think “eight is enough”!

So far this year, all eight teams are hovering around the .500 mark, with Detroit currently enjoying the best record and Cleveland (whose pitcher Cliff Lee recently almost pitched a no-hitter) and Kansas City vying for worst. But they are all very close to each other in the standings. Who knows who will prevail at season’s end!

Wooden Roller Coaster Chatter

While looking at YouTube to see if I could find that long wooden roller coaster I had described before on this blog as being “legendary” (it is Shivering Timbers at Michigan’s Adventure park in Muskegon County, Michigan), I discovered a few others worth that high billing. The most interesting of the bunch is much closer than Muskegon, Michigan: it is The Voyage at Holiday World in Santa Claus, (southern) Indiana (on Christmas Boulevard). Here is the link to a video of that ride. The above picture of The Voyage is from Wikipedia.

I have an annual-pass to Busch Gardens in Tampa, which is much, much closer than is Holiday World. And still it seems like a major ordeal to drive down there (about 130 miles distance from Gainesville). But that’s not all.

I have yet to visit a theme park where the simple act of walking through it isn’t thoroughly exhausting in itself. And in the hot summertime? Forget it! It makes me appreciate even more the single big coaster that Boomer’s of Dania, Florida had (well, I guess Boomer's is kind of like a theme park). If I lived down there I probably would have ridden it more than 100 times by now!

The Movie Star Trek and Its Trick

With the new Star Trek movie, which I recently saw, comes a new departure from reality. We find out over the course of events in the movie that we are experiencing an “alternate” universe of Star Trek, put into play by using the device of time travel through a black hole. Nice ploy. Now, in subsequent Star Trek movies, the writers are free to mess around with this alternate universe, changing ITS course of (fictional/speculative) history with impunity and without any concern as to how it would affect future Star Trek scenarios (especially that of Star Trek: The Next Generation). Any character can now be killed off and any planet destroyed. After all, this is a different universe! As “cheap” as this strategy may seem, it does add a much-needed element of suspense to the series. Now, when Kirk (or Spock or Uhura or McCoy or Scotty or anyone else) is hanging by one hand on the edge of a cliff with his adversary trying to pry it off, we can never be too sure that (s)he’s going to get out of it alive. The writers are also free to write new scenarios regarding the Klingons and Romulans. And they are also free to introduce the Borg and Q, staples of Star Trek: the Next Generation (occurring later on the original Star Trek timescale), earlier in time to allow interaction with Kirk, Spock, and company.

Yes, I generally feel that time travel can often be used as a “cop-out” science fiction trick in that it is all-too-easy to present mind-boggling paradoxes to the viewer. Although this does happen with the 2009 movie Star Trek, it also works to liberate this series from any constraints regarding its adherence to the fictional “Star Trek history”. I say bravo!

Gandhi Statue at UNF

Here is a photo I took today of an interesting statue in the middle of the University of North Florida campus in Jacksonville, Florida. It is of the great twentieth-century Indian non-violent activist Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi.

His example is sorely needed in the midst of today's pervasively bellicose political climate, both domestically and abroad.

Poppy the Jumper and His Sons

One of the recent “light” news events adorning the national news channels was former President George H.W. Bush’s annual birthday sky-diving jump. This year, HLN’s Robin Meade was invited to jump as well, and was then granted an exclusive interview with the former President. I thought it was funny how the other networks covered this event, trying to crop out and marginalize Robin’s presence there.

After the event, “Poppy” Bush, still dressed in his flight gear, stood before the cameras and microphones, flanked on each side by sons George W. Bush and Jeb (I guess Neil didn’t quite count as a son on this occasion). I felt that our last President really looked small and insignificant standing next to his father. But he did seem very comfortable and happy in his retirement! Although I recognize that as President and Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush is ultimately responsible for the failures of his presidency (there were some successes as well), I can see from contrasting how he and other former members of his administration (like Dick Cheney and Karl Rove) behave nowadays that he would have been more successful had he been surrounded by a more decent, public-spirited circle in the Oval Office during his tenure.

And then there was Jeb standing there quietly on the other side. While his brother George was making his trademark offhand comedic remarks, Jeb was careful and polite with his comments. No doubt in my mind exists on his future in national politics, like him or not.

Lakers Win NBA Championship

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Lakers for defeating the Orlando Magic four games to one and winning this year's National Basketball Association championship. The Magic did blow two golden opportunities during the series to win games but played poor defense and missed easy shots. Oh well, they're unhappy now. But they exceeded everyone's expectations of how far they would go this year and had a wonderful season. As for Los Angeles, they played the Magic as a complete team (unlike Cleveland with Lebron James and his "cast of extras") in spite of the superstar presence of Kobe Bryant. They deserve all of the accolades they are receiving!

Starting Twitter Anyway

Having just written an article warning about the dangers of Twitter for short-tempered people (like Senator Grassley), and having also identified myself in said article as such a short-tempered person, I naturally decided to screw everything up by signing up on it myself.

For those already thriving on Facebook, Twitter may seem a bit redundant, as Facebook junkies already have a pretty good means of communicating every dinky little trivial thing going on in their lives (and with dinky little trivial pictures). The present (and future) value of Twitter for me depends on how much certain parties use it to dispense information about themselves. So, at least at the beginning, I have confined my "following" to various musical artists I enjoy listening to with the aim of finding out when their next CDs are coming out. I had quick success with this when I read that the Canadian band Broken Social Scene, one of my favorites, is back in the studio recording their next album!

As far as more personal "following" is concerned, I still don't get Facebook, much less Twitter. The way I see it, I say pretty much everything I want to say on this blog. Anyone with Internet access can read it if they want to. And many people who know me know of it, but don't read it. So why should I invest MORE time on other sites trying to reach them, already knowing how apathetic they are??!!

I never was much of a "show and tell" kid in early elementary school. But I do remember some classmates who would regularly get up in front of the class and relate everything that happened to them the previous day, from the moment they got out of bed in the morning to the moment they fell asleep at night. Right or wrong, I instinctively feel uncomfortable with this type of behavior. Which may go a long way toward explaining my current attitude about Facebook and Twitter.

Anyway, with sites like Twitter, I am certain that caution is the best policy!

Weather "Blown"-Casts

Last weekend, I turned on my television and tuned in to the weather station. The forecast was for generally clear-to-partly-cloudy skies, but for Monday there was nothing but rain and storms predicted. So I braced myself for a dark and damp Monday. Come Monday morning, though, I looked at the same channel and saw a forecast of clear skies and sun! But lo, ahead, on Wednesday, it did look quite stormy (to the prognosticators). On Tuesday, that prediction for Wednesday held up. But once again, come Wednesday morning, the outlook was once again for clear sunny skies. But wait, a very rainy Thursday was forecast! Then Thursday morning came around (are you sensing a pattern here?) and the forecast once again was severely changed. And not a drop of rain fell the entire day (leading to my previously reported excursion to Devil's Millhopper).

So this past week, there have been three days (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday) for which the meteorologists predicted much rain and stormy weather. And each time the forecasts were drastically altered when the actual days arrived.

Which brings me to the question: Since weather forecasts are continually changing as the forecast day approaches, when (if ever) can one come out and they that they "blew it"? I've heard a lot over the past several years about how accurate forecasters are regarding the severity of the upcoming hurricane season. Almost always, these "predictions" are modified as the hurricane season progresses. But isn't that kind of like "cheating"? I mean, if I were watching a football game and one team unexpectedly scored five touchdowns against the other in the first quarter, wouldn't it be a little too late for me to change my bets (if I gambled, that is)? With the weather, shouldn't the term "forecast" be altered to "mid-cast" or "blown-cast" when the target day (or hurricane season, if that's the subject of the forecast) is already upon us and the prediction is being changed?

Devil's Millhopper Visit

This past Thursday, I drove over the two miles from my home to where Devil's Millhopper, a Geological State Park, is located. It is a huge, ancient sinkhole sporting its own special variety of plant life (as opposed to the surrounding land's flora). This is a rather modest, small park, with a $2 parking fee, a small picnic area, and visitor's office in the front. A 0.6 mile nature trail loop (which I naturally had to run) encircles the sinkhole. The bottom of the Devil's Millhopper sinkhole (117 feet deep) can be gradually reached by descending a long, twisting wooden path/stairway. Actually, the descent was quite easy; the walk back up was a killer!

Anyway, here are some pictures I took of my experience.

Baseball Geniuses, Please Explain

I'm sitting in my recliner late in the evening, surfing channels on my television. There are a few baseball games on, although none of them have any of the American League Central Division teams that I'm following. But there was a close National League game involving the St. Louis Cardinals and the Houston Astros. It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied 1-1, and the home team Astros were up at bat to try and win the game. The Cardinals pitcher was throwing a lot of balls, even walking a batter. The inning progressed to the point where Houston had runners on first and third with only one out. And then the St. Louis manager did something that leaves me scratching my head (I'm glad I'm not a Cardinals fan).

Remember me telling you that the St. Louis pitcher was having trouble pitching the ball into the strike zone? Well, their manager decided to intentionally walk the next Astro batter, loading the bases with one out. Yeh, I understand that only the runner at third counted at this stage of the game and that this tactic would give more opportunities for putouts and double plays. But it also had the harmful effect of putting the Cardinal pitcher's back up against the wall. He could no longer afford to walk another Houston batter (or else walk in the winning run for them), and worse, they knew it. So naturally, the next Houston batter came out swinging, since he knew that he would be getting good pitches in the strike zone to hit. And surprise, surprise, he looped a single into shallow centerfield, allowing the winning run to easily cross the plate.

Sometimes I think that these managers simply think too much and end up outwitting themselves. This sort of nonsense usually happens at the end of close games. Deliberately loading up the bases by intentionally walking a batter is only useful if both (1) first base is the open base (thereby creating a very viable double play scenario) and (2) the pitcher is confidently throwing strikes and is having no control problems. Or, if a particularly dangerous, clutch hitter like Derek Jeter (of the Yankees) is up at bat (better having him as a base runner instead of a batter in this situation). None of these conditions existed for this game, so I'm really not sure what the St. Louis manager was thinking.