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August Reading:

Deep Writing - Eric Maisel. This dude is so douchey-lucy; his books are a riot. The idea of this books was bilk the crazies use a lot of pseudo-psy talk and meaningless abstracts while whining about genre books vs. real, profession literature and how *you* with the help of abstractions like TRUTH and BEAUTY can write.

Alone With All That Could Happen - David Jauss. More douche. This guy re-wrote passages from Joyce and O'Conner to learn us how to do it better. Also, female writers suck at POV and time management. He constantly schilled a book of short stories he edited. It was like reading an infomerical.

Bread & Jam For Frances; Best Friends For Frances; A Birthday For Frances - Russel and Lillian Hoban. I loved this series dearly as a kid, and why wouldn't I. These are charming, kitchy, rhyming delights. Why are badgers eating lobster salad sandwiches and having sack races? Why do they sometimes wear clothes and sometimes eschew them? Now I know how a jam jar feels... FULL OF JAM.

Nerds: A brief history of the internet - Stephan Segaller. Not an easy read, but for the most part, worth it. The early chapters (the late 30s through early 60s) were CRAZY-- they envisioned the internet and how to build it before most cities had even a single computer. Computers didn't have monitors or keyboards or mice. Switches, they used switches Hawaii had wireless (the alohanet) before nearly everyone had internet.

The end chapters lamed out. Did you know it was the hippies who really created the internet? Tru fax guys. Sure, engineers and geniuses built computers and etc needed to run networks, but the hippies talking about the Grateful Dead via bulletin boards is what really made the internet. Boo. Boo. Boo.

Also, the final chapters discussed all the awesome technology of circa 1997. AOL IS THE MOST POWERFUL COMPANY IN THE WORLD. WILL AMAZON SURVIVE? THE DEFINITION OF A MODEM IS...

Hippies and AOL (moar like lol) aside, it's a fascinating read.

Inamorata - Michael Manning. Lovely, lovely pROnz. Petplay, futa, costumes, yum. Awesome drawings, arty and detailed. Happy sigh.

In the Lake of the Woods - Tim Obrien. Murder mystery full of creepy and sad.

Bang The Keys Jill Dearman. Strike 3 for the writing how-to's this month. Appropriative of everything from Jewish faith to the AIDS epidemic. I'm pretty sure the Native American stuff was made-up (find your totem on these FOR REALZ animal tarot cards). Occasionally flat-out racist ("I'm sorry my Asian friends but I love gongs"), and the wretched, whose-bright-idea-was-it-to-put-a-window-in-front-of-the-sun "humor". 212 pages of lines like "The Law Firm of Nameless Desires and Misplaced Fears. May I help you?"

No you may not.

(no subject)

Season 2 of The Colony is wonderfully trainwrecky. My complaint about last season was that it was a collection of super geniuses. Of course, they're going to survive. This season they have a slightly more realistic mix (though, I'd still like to see a few office workers or similar), and their personalities play closer to the usual reality show crew:

The unlikeable
The idiots
The ones with inflated senses of worth
The second fiddles
The Superstars

My favorite is Sally. Total superstar. She's a mechanic and she fixed a tractor and got it to run on rendered pig fat (it was maggoty and inedible, the pig fat not the tractor). She's a builder and a doer and she's has the cutest Boston accent. And freckles.

Anyway, after a few episodes of the Colonist getting thier asses handed to them by raiders, the Colonists decide they need a leader. They voted in Sally.

I was torn and it created a sort of quasi ethical question for me. I adore Sally and I think she's a capable leader. Much more capable than the majority of folks on the show. She is super awesome at a lot of things (not to mention she's willing to do the skut work of life: washing dishes, digging bio fuel out of a roach-covered fryer, etc.) and because of all that, I felt like she was too valuable to be the leader. Her skills and work ethic and time might be wasted on governing.

How unfair is that, right. Like, no promotion for you; you're too good at what you do. Way to punish excellence.