Throw the book at 'em (except you can't cuz it's a library book)

I'm currently reading I tried reading Andrew Pyper's The Demonologist, but ran up the white flag after just a few chapters. Couldn't get into it at all. You ever hear the maxim "show, don't tell"? Well, a writer can feel free to disregard it if said author can make their narrator a great teller. Pyper disregards that rule, but his narrator isn't. The guy just says everything, which isn't engaging.

One problem with a lot of books aiming for popularity is that what they're really aiming for is a movie adaptation, so a lot of the work is shunted off to the hypothetical filmmaker and crew. The novelist's only job is to put the plot through its paces. Character, atmosphere, the things that make the book something to experience, are simply not the author's job.

This book had a lot of blurbs on the jacket, though. All the reviews I saw online were glowing, too. Maybe critics just get trained not to expect much of certain books.

Lights out

The light in this room is out. That is, it won't come on. It's been like that for a few days. I flipped the switch on Saturday night and nothing happened. It's not a huge problem, but it's an annoying one and over the long haul would be pretty unbearable. It makes it impossible to read a book in this room and much harder to type because you have to peer at the keys.

There is a guy who can fix stuff like this. First you havve to call the owner's answering service, though. There's a number downstairs on the wall but it seems to be out of date. Luckily I got the real, new number from one of my neighbors tonight. Before that I called the other number and seem to have just gotten some lady's answering machine. Because she didn't say she wasn't with the property company I left a message about the light. She probably wondered what that was all about.

Lobster Thermidor au Crevette with a Mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

I see here on my dashboard that Blogger has enabled spam filters on comments. I've checked and it seems to be working. Of posts that are at all recent the only comments are by my regular commenters, or at least legit commenters. So good job there.

When I did get spammers on here they pretty much all wrote in Mandarin, which was...optimistic of them.

Tunesmith

With the recent passing of Jon Hendricks, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross join the Ramones in getting back together. That gives me all the excuse I need to play one of their delightful songs, or it would if I needed any.

[redacted]

Was going to do a post comparing the commutes of students at various high schools in the Providence area. Abandoned that idea because I couldn't find the right opening.

Remainder: I do notice that Hope, the East Side school, doesn't actually have many East Side kids going to it. East Siders in public school, I'd guess, more often go to Classical, which is somewhere in what they call the West End.

Based on traffic today I'd guess that Hope was open the day before Thanksgiving, but Classical might not have been. Of course some schools start their year before Labor Day now, so maybe they already had a one day head start.

Tokens of...

For one reason and another I find myself thinking about crows again tonight. I hope her bond with these birds is something that sticks with this girl as she grows older.

Thinking of you.

Tracks

Recently I leafed through The Hobo Handbook by Josh Mack. Really, it was just something I picked up on a whim at the library. The book offers advice to those thinking of setting out on the rails as a hobo, although that's not the only method of transit discussed. Bits of history are interspersed as well.

The word "hobo" conjures images of the Great Depression or earlier. But the culture is still around, in a form. Even thriving in a sense.

How to feel about this? It's good that there's an escape hatch for people who want to live outside the grind. But in a way the piecemeal and makeshift aspect of hobo life is spreading throughout society, especially in the profusion of gig economy jobs. That might not be so good.

Also read Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May Off the Rails recently. Including it in the same blog post because it also deals with rail transit. The London Underground, to be specific. There are murders being committed in and near Victoria Station. A faceless escapee named "Mr. Fox" seems to be responsible.

This is the first entry in Fowler's "Peculiar Crimes" series that I've read. I liked it. What I especially like is that Fowler writes a contemporary murder mystery in a fanciful way. It's there in the flash mob distractions and the arguments with Bryant and May's boss over just how ridiculously ancient they are. Most contemporary crime fiction tries for realism, with diminishing results. Nice to see an author not bothering.

Green with...

Learning. Deals at the grocery store aren't always what they appear.

Say they sell bagged salads. There's an offer: buy one get one free. All well and good if you're a family and can consume both in a week. If not, check the sell-by date really well.  Not that it's a lot of money, but you do have food spoiling on your hands.

Actually if I had a still and was indifferent to taste, I might be able to get drunk off this.

Senseless bling

I saw some daytime chat show today. They were talking about this new product. It's a jewelry box for an engagement ring that's also a phone box. That way your phone comes out when your proposing so you can immediately post video on social media. So to sum up, the world makes less and less sense to me by day. First of all, what if she says no? Second of all, is there no such thing as a private moment now? Third, the first two combined.

To be fair, one of the hostesses also seemed less than dazzled with the idea.

Seen a little

Recently at a friend's house (actually the house of a couple of friends and their kids) I saw the first two episodes of Stranger Things. Netflix show, set in Indiana. Seems to be sort of a cross between ET and the works of Stephen King, especially IT and Firestarter. A brief breakdown.

Best thing: The acting. Fair dialogue, too. Even the characters who come off as sort of jerky are pretty well drawn. I liked Barb, although I knew from hearing things that she wouldn't be around that long.

Worst thing: The suspicion that I had just watched the opening act of a nine hour story Rod Serling could have wrapped up in 25 minutes.

Middle thing: While the show is supposed to have a "summer movie" feel, the video cinematography undercuts it. The picture is sharp and clear, but flat with no feel of a world beyond the edges of the frame. Sometimes this works for the mood of the story. Other times less so. And the teenage makeout scenes wind up looking like porn.

Still, I can see why people have gotten into it.

Connect for

So I finally hooked up the new router I'd gotten from the broadband company. Didn't go well at first. I couldn't keep the coaxial cable connected so I tried using an ethernet cable. Which didn't work because apparently the ethernet port is dead. Long story short, I finally made a breakthrough on how to use the coaxial cable. Probably no closer to hanging out a shingle as an electrician, but it was satisfying.

Potent potables for $400

Today I picked a liquor bottle off the street and took it home for eventual recycling. Not a little nip bottle, either. It could hold, like, a quart. And it used to hold pineapple vodka.

I've never been a big vodka drinker. It doesn't have much of a flavor and the flavor it has is unpleasantly medicinal, like cough syrup that doesn't do anything abut your cough.

Apparently even a large portion of those who do drink it agree, because the market has been flooded with variants that just add one soda poppy flavor before you even start mixing. Pineapple, raspberry, blueberry, etc. And if you wonder whether the trend has hit the point of absurdity yet...

...wonder no longer.

U

Two persons of average appearance and demeanor walk into a drinking establishment. One turns to the other and says, "That's 'bar' you idiot! It's always '...walk into a bar.' You've blown our cover already!" They turn and leave, the senior still cursing the junior as their ship rises into the ionosphere and beyond. The junior vows to rise above this scapegoating.

? again

Not sure when it happened that teenage boys started calling each other "nigga" all the time, but it's gotten dirt common. And this is, like, independent of race, so you hear it from and to white kids, black kids, brown kids. This is better than one group hurling it as a weapon - which obviously still happens - but the whole unthinking nature of it has some serious downsides. That kind of thing is all well and good with everyone until it's not.

Plus, job interviews. I don't think "Nigga just look at my résumé" is going to fly.

The way we were

Haven't read this book yet, but hearing about it has gotten me curious. Was civilization, which is to say the organization of society around permanent settlements, a mistake? Did prehistoric band societies have a better idea? In a sense, I'm sure this is true. Modern civilization prioritizes many things that perhaps don't need to be priorities.

On the other hand, how many of us are equipped to live outside of civilization? I don't have any illusions about myself on that score. So perhaps the challenge is to find lessons from outside our own society and learn them. And be humble.