Brooks Hansen – The Chess Garden

I just finished this book. I’d have to say it’s probably one of the five finest pieces of fiction I’ve ever read in my life and would easily bump one of the 15 from one of my latest posts. I hope to talk about it more at some point in the near future, but it’s going to take a while to settle, it’s as moving and profound a work of art as I’ve experienced in a while. So dense I’m not sure where I’d start…

Sticky books

List 15 books you’ve read that will always stick with you — Don’t take too long to think about it. The first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.
From: (and in no particular order except what comes to mind)

1. Israel Regardie – The Middle Pillar (NF, occult)
2. Daevid Allen – Gong Dreaming 1 (music bio)
3. Edward Whittemore – Quin’s Shanghai Circus (fiction)
4. Aleister Crowley – (hard to pick a specific title, his work in general)
5. Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum (fiction)
6. Dan Simmons – The Rise of Endymion (science fiction)
7. The Book of Revelations (religious vision)
8. Deke Leonard – Rhinos, Winos and Lunatics (music bio)
9. Robert Anton Wilson – Cosmic Trigger 1 and several others (NF, bio etc)
10. H. P. Lovecraft – The Dunwich Horror and Others (horror collection)
11. Jack Vance – The Demon Princes (science fiction series)
12. The Real Frank Zappa Book (autobio)
13. Dion Fortune – The Mystical Qabalah (NF occult)
14. George R. R. Martin – A Song of Ice and Fire (fantasy series)
15. Tim Powers – Last Call (fantasy)

OK my 15m is up

Far Cry Predator (Instincts/Evolution), Steven Brust – The Paths of the Dead, Ursula K. Le Guin – City of Illusions, Doom 2 Master Levels, Doom 3 – Resurrection of Evil, Bentley Little – The Revelation, Daevid Allen – Gong Dreaming 1, Quake 2 and 4

So I haven’t done one of these what am I reading/playing posts for a little while now, so this kind of dumps the backlog of several months. I’ve actually been catching up with music a bit more of late, which I’ll post to Tom’s Unencumbered Music Reviews blog if and when I get a moment (URL in last post) and am still busy with the incense site which seems to continue to grow. I’m still astonished by the generosity of the people who love incense, lately I’ve gotten more than I know what to do with. Reviews after cut.

A few things….

Jack Vance fans like myself are eagerly awaiting the Songs from the Dying Earth collection at Subterranean Press, a collection edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois and featuring dozens of some of the finest spec fic writers out there paying tribute to one of the classic “science fantasy” milieus (somewhere between Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique stories and Gene Wolfe’s Urth quintet) . They’ve just put on line Lucius Shepard’s “Sylgarmo’s Proclamation” as a teaser and it’s a pitch perfect tribute in every way, with a knowledge of the Vance lexicon that goes as deep as the subtle humor and worldbuilding, yet kind of a different take on a tale of Cugel that has some nice Shepard coloring at work as well. I got incredible deja-vu reading this, like I was rereading a Vance story I’d forgotten. Highly recommended, if the rest of the stories are only half this perfect this should be a real treasure chest. Tributes are rarely about one insanely talented writer paying tribute to another insanely talented writer, but this one is.

Looks like I will be part-time contributing to a new music blog created by my long-time friend and Gnosis co-creator Tom Hayes at:

http://unencumberedmusicreviews.blogspot.com/

Tom and I are both at the “no hassle” stage of music reviewing, basically wanting to write only about things we have passion to write about, which generally means this won’t be a blog that covers a lot of new music or is up to date or comprehensive. It’ll also be intermittent, which works for our up and down schedules, and it means I probably won’t post a lot, but I’m looking forward to getting the bug again. This also means that Outer Music Diary, while still available as archives (thanks to Mike Borella!) will basically be ending its run formally.

And a heavy shout out for CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, which is possibly the best and funniest sitcom since Seinfeld. I’m not a huge fan of this genre but BBT’s look into geek culture with a cast who have insanely good chemistry and a comic genius in the works with Jim Parsons’ Sheldon is well worth looking into for anyone who has had experience with these types of personalities and quirks (progressive rock fans, TV fans, science fiction etc etc).

All things Doom and more

The Xbox special edition of Doom 3 comes with both the original games, Doom and Doom 2. I’m pretty sure, like almost everyone with a computer a decade or so ago, that I played at least the shareware levels of the first Doom way back when it was first released, but for some reason my only living memory is of the red, yellow and blue keys otherwise I’d probably have no idea. While both Doom and Doom 2 (which are basically the same game with small differences) are graphically primitive nowadays, I still think they’re quite a bit of fun, even if they probably weren’t envisioned as being played on a 46″ HD screen. I think between the two of them there are least 50 to 60 different levels, most of which I managed to get through, although one is always surprised what secrets are missed along the way. The only sticking point is that the Xbox port of Doom 2 fails miserably on the final level, freezing your system every time you try to reload a save. At least in this case I didn’t have any doubt I’d have beaten the big bad at this point with a bit of effort. But overall I’m amazed at how fun these are still, there’s something still quite visceral about levels as puzzles and demon carnage.

Doom III looks surprisingly amazing still, as an Xbox game it’s still late enough to be wide screen and even if it’s not HD it’s quite great in that area nonetheless. The first two Dooms had little in the way of a story, substituting a bit of slow moving text in between groups of levels as a way of guiding you through the story. Doom III reboots the original story with a lot more detail even if the idea of a Marine fighting the devilspawn on Mars is still basically the idea. I did think the addition of an archaelogical site was a nice touch and basically found the whole thing creepy even if I’d normally be a bit annoyed at having to play an entire game practically in the dark, switching between flashlight and gun. But it was all suitably creepy and the boss fights were all fairly challenging without being impossible, mostly thanks to the instant save system. It was fun enough I ordered the Resurrection of Evil expansion. Even though I’m playing these games years late, I think they still hold up really well in the 360 world. And it’s a nice change of pace from Lost Odyssey, a Japanese Role Playing Game, which while quite epic and movie like, has nearly lost me with its incredibly tedious battle system (I’ve gotten through 3 of 4 discs and haven’t had the interest to continue on as of yet).

So anyway for the hell of it I checked out the Doom movie from the library to ensure I paid nothing, which is a good thing as it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life, not the bad you can laugh at, the bad that’s so boring you can barely care. I guess fighting devilspawn on Mars was probably too controversial for a Hollywood studio, so they turned it into a ridiculous zombie movie. Funny seeing Karl Urban (the new Star Trek’s McCoy) in it though. But overall the lamest Aliens rip off ever made and that’s saying something.

Digging my new Blu-Ray though. Rented 3 movies as a starter once I got it: Zach and Miri Make a Porno (typical of the dirty and sweet Seth Rogen-helmed comedies that are fairly common these days, mildly funny and surprisingly charming), Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (quite good this one, I’m generally very fond of most movies that run on musical conceits no matter what the genre and for some reason it hit deja-vu in a number of spots), and The Day the Earth Stood Still (no good on any front, as a remake, movie or parody, but with Keanu in tow I didn’t expect much better). I actually had better luck with the pay channels and kid movies, Starz running Wall-E and HBO starting up Kung-Fu Panda. Apparently my nephews have better taste in movies than many critics. Or perhaps I’m just much more into optimism than I used to be.

Perhaps the best stuff I saw recently is the last couple weeks of HBO’s In Treatment. Seems like no matter what the other channels are dishing up, HBO always has something of extraordinary quality to see and this pscyhological drama grew really sublime at the end, questioning the worth of therapy in general, touching on Jungian levels with talk about true selves and perfectly reflecting just how human the man in the chair is and in many ways how little different he is from his patients. Cheers to the writers, Gabriel Byrne’s tour de force performances throughout the series, and perhaps specifically to Alison Pill who’s role as a young 20-something with cancer was truly remarkable. Definitely one I hope returns for a third run. Especially as I’m so worn out with vampires that I don’t think I can stand a second run of True Blood. Quite frankly I’m glad it’s summer.

Got some books finished too, maybe more for another post if I get the urge, especially as none of them were memorable.

Peter Dinklage cast as Tyrion in HBO’s Game of Thrones

Link 1 Link 2

Dinklage is pretty much the perfect pick for this role, has recenty been touted as the fan favorite for Tyrion based on his roles in the cancelled series Threshold and others. He’s truly excellent. So far this series has the Midas touch.

Comcast fined

This is good news for those of us completely and utterly fed up wuth one of the filthiest companies on the planet. I can’t even begin to calculate the sheer frequency of sales calls that are (and hopefully were) generated by Comcast. Two of their subcompanies used to call nearly once a day until I started asking them to stop calling and at least one of them I believe continued to call even AFTER the 30 day window where they’re supposed to shut down. It never ceases to amaze me how crooked and intrusive this company is, so this a nice little victory.

Another example of Rovian nonsense

The latest editorial by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal is one of the better examples of just how inconsistent, misleading and insidious his writing is. I don’t want to reprint the article here, but I do want to address what I feel are the reasons why this article demonstrates how vague language can be used to completely mislead and reframe reality to the sheepherding of a movement.

Rove claims the Tea Party movement is significant, which we can take as his thesis sentence in the first paragraph, so I won’t yet wonder why we have to take his word for it, especially when it’s difficult to estimate the attendance of these events. The first misleading statement:

“Now Americans are reacting to runaway government spending that they were not told about before last year’s election, and which Americans are growing to resent.”

First of all, this statement confuses a general policy statement given during the campaign with the specifics and execution of that policy statement in office. It assumes there is a level at which there is some sort of agreement on what “runaway” spending is, while ignoring the fact that Rove was part of an administration that turned a surplus into a massive deficit. To be in full support of the massive government spending of the last 8 years while decrying it during the first few months is partisanship and no more. Were “Americans” told about the ”runaway government spending” that would occur under the Bush administration? Where was the resentment over this? All I see is a concerted effort to whitewash and ignore these figures and to sidestep the fact that the supposed party against government spending supported the president with the highest amount of spending in decades.

And let’s talk about “Americans.” This is part of the constant effort of the right to make it look like the country is in lockstep with the Fox News and Rush Limbaugh-led fringe, despite the fact that the Obama administration approval numbers in just about every poll taken since the election have been in the 60 percentile range. By using this method of defining Americans in this way, you could just as well say Americans are criminals, or Americans are Christians, or Americans are polygamists or Americans are Scientologists. It’s a misleading use of the language because its purpose is to make it seem that the majority of Americans feel the way the author does, which is contradicted, again, by the poll numbers.

“Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill.”

What this sentence does is define beforehand that those who feel the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill are elitists. It’s a method of demeaning and devaluing those who hold a negative opinion of these tea parties without at all taking into account any arguments for why the tea party may or may not be any of these things. It says, if you have a contrary opinion to this viewpoint you’re an elitist. It predefines a value without debating why it may be true. That is, if you’re not Christian, you’re not truly American, if you agree that the tax on the wealthy should be 39% rather than 36% than you’re quite clearly socialist, if you disagree with any of these things you’re not a patriot, the list goes on. These things might fly with those on the right but anyone with any sense is going to ask you to connect the dots. Exactly why is someone elitist for finding the tea parties any of those qualities? Rove doesn’t say and his readers and followers don’t question this. After all Fox News has been repeating these points over and over to the point where they become tenets of doctrine rather than hypotheses that must be proven with facts.

“The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration is angering voters.”

Sloppy. The many tax and fee increases enacted or under consideration are angering some voters. While Rove’s statement in itself isn’t necessarily incorrect, it presupposes that Rove is speaking for some sort of majority when polls continue to indicate that he’s really speaking of a minority, the same minority whose candidate lost in November.

“So far, Mr. Obama has decided to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 and avoid forcing Democrats to take a tough vote. But the tea parties reveal how hard it will be for the president to hide the Democrats’ tax-and-spend tendencies from voters.”

This presupposes the idea that Democrats are actually trying to hide something. How exactly did the Democrats hide spending increases (notice that the word investment never pops up when the right talks spending) in a stimulus bill whose language is actually public? I remember right after the bill passed going through a list of what money was going to what program. Rove writes, with backdoor language, that Democrats are aiming for backdoor taxing and spending, all of which is in clear view. It’s the continual rewriting of the economic debate to continually declare as a tenet of doctrine that government spending (read: investment) can never have a positive effect on the US economy or capitalism.

Let’s just be honest here. Some economists think spending works, some think it doesn’t. That’s the facts. Aspirin doesn’t make everyone’s headaches go away, pest control doesn’t necessarily always kill every cockroach, and the sky during the day isn’t always cerulean, so how can one say that spending is always bad? We can’t. But again, Rove’s method is to overgeneralize, to make it seem to his audience that there’s a majority viewpoint in what he says, when little could be farther from the truth. Instead a conspiracy must be at foot, as the secret agenda of quickly turning the country into some sort of parody of communism, fascism, Naziism or whatever the latest fearmongering tactic of the Limbaughs and Becks of the day is now being revealed to you. It’s all meant to evoke the Antichrist, the flag of the USSR, and all those things the right fear. Anything anti-doctrine is the harbinger of doom.

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25% while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.”

Obama must have superpowers. In 3 months he’s already ensured that he’ll be continuing to damage the economy for two years after he could possibly even be in office. To me this is similar to evangelical reasoning which says that when good things happen to you it’s the blessing of God, but when bad things happen to you it’s because you’re a sinner. When the economy is bad it’s definitely the fault of a democract, but when it’s good, it’s because of something Reagan originally did or the delayed effects of a Bush policy. After all we don’t need to wait and see if Obama’s policies work because we’ve already predefined them as socialist or fascist which means even if they do work it’s preordained to be “unAmerican.” And I don’t even have to go into the plans of Obama to actually cut the deficit by a certain point.

“It hasn’t gotten a ton of attention, but people are fed up with the complexity of their tax code and ready to do something about it.”

Didn’t Obama actually mention the same thing, like YESTERDAY? Could Rove even give him the credit of saying such a thing?

“The 2009 Tax Foundation survey…”

Read: surveys that support a viewpoint I hold are fair game, but those, like the ones that show great support for the Obama administration, can just be duly ignored. That’s the issue with polls though, you can pretty much pick and choose not only the polls you want to use but the data within the polls. It can be true for instance that in a poll for what taxes people want are going to show a low number at the same time that a poll showing the approval of a president who wants to raise taxes and spend money can be high. One does not predispose the other. 

“But to tap into that constituency Republicans will have to link lower taxes to money in voters’ pockets, and economic growth and jobs. They must explain why the GOP approach will lead to greater prosperity. Such arguments are not self-executing. They require leaders to make them, time and again, as Reagan once did.”

More importantly than linking an idea with approach is linking an approach with reality. A 3% tax cut for the wealthy did not trickle down and lead to  greater prosperity for the middle and lower classes over the last eight years. Surely there were other factors involved but that’s just the problem with stating economic ideas as doctrine. A trickle down theory can not operate outside of a box, it has to operate in tandem with a multitude of factors that all influence each other. This, it would seem, would lead to the idea that sometimes different approaches work and sometimes they don’t. The problem is that some of these different approaches are now being demonized by the right as “the other.” That is, if your approach adjusts a tax bracket, we hop all the way along the spectrum to the extreme side and start calling people names like “socialist” and “fascist.” If moving the tax bracket three percent during the Clinton years did not lead to the New Socialist Republic of the United States then, why would it do so now? Why isn’t the 36% tax bracked for the wealthy ALREADY socialist?

My memory isn’t that short. Clinton left with a surplus. Bush with a deficit. That only got there from spending. For a man who was literally part of this spending to be trying to hawk this bullshit about spending being a bad thing is truly hypocrisy of the highest order. That he’s still demeaning the English language and bending the facts on WSJ, Fox News and elsewhere while Bush has virtually been exiled by those who want to quickly forget who got us into this mess is a blight on the thinking human being who would add this man to the list of true believers, idealists and conmen of the past who think that might means right and that a statement of doctrine is somehow magically a fact.

“But political movements are often a reaction against aggressive overreach by those in power. “

These tea parties are somehow significant, but the election of Obama on the heels of an administration who practically defined “aggressive overreach by those in power?” is what, a footnote?

The Latest (long, read at your own peril)

I guess it’s roughly time for some updates. Of late, probably like everyone else, I’ve turned to thinking about financial stability. I bought my folks’ old Toyota Camry 94 about 2 1/2 years ago and it’s turned out to be a bottomless pit in terms of repairs. In the last few months I’ve had the car in the local shop about 5 times and this doesn’t include appointments for new tires and an oil change. The auto started cutting out on me especially at standstills so I turned it in only for $600 of tune up related repairs, only for the problems really to never go away. Apparently the problem is a big carbon build up, which means after having it in a bunch of times the next step, after my gas tank hits empty is to hit the local Chevron and get Techroline-laden gasoline to try and remove the carbon. I’m told this isn’t an issue that will leave me stranded but it’s really offputting when the car is at a stop. I’ve also still got a few hundred dollars of minor repairs needed doing, so it’s been a serious drag. But it’s increased my resolved to get fully debt free by late next year and ready for a new car as soon after as needed.

Huffington Post downloader

About 10m ago I got a virus notification at work on Symantec and then a call from our administrator. I’d gotten the bloodhound.exploit downloader caught by the program. My first thought was what did I accidentally click on to get this, so as for it not to happen again? At the time I was just scanning Huffington Post for news headlines, something I’ve done since in the early days of last year’s campaign. I did a Google search on the downloader name plus Huffington Post and came up with a number of hits indicating that this news site was probably responsible (I had no other windows open). So basically byebye Huffington Post. Kind of the last straw. My other two issues with the site were extremely misleading headlines on a consistent basis, usually to inflate the site’s liberal outlook (something I often share might I add) on something minor (and in several cases often fixed when people complained) and also a heavy emphasis on Hollywood-ish sorts of issues, long blogs on the fashion of Michelle Obama, loads of Perez Hilton celebrity stalker sorts of articles, basically all things I could do without. What I liked was having the headlines of Washington Post, New York Times, AP, etc etc all together, so I need to find a new downloader-free site that does the same thing. The only other time I got a downloader notification was a year or so ago at progrock.com, which is a place I never really look at or use but probably ran across when researching something. Now I get these things show up at all sorts of nefarious sites but it gets irritating when they’re at places you’re supposed to trust not have these things. Grrr.