Fletch by Gregory McDonald, chapters 1 - 5

So, I have a decision to make: Should I continue to read Fletch? Because quite frankly it's made out of shit. Well, that's not quite accurate. I've read five chapters and what it's actually made out of is 1970s adolescent boy power fantasies. And being a woman who wasn't alive during the 70s, I'm not sure I'll be able to make it all the way through without straining whatever muscles you use when making expressions of disgust. So, what do we have.

We have Fletcher, who, while dictating his notes to one of those old fuck-off tape recorders at the end of the second chapter, literally refers to himself like this:
"What Stanwyk doesn't realize is that I am the great hotshot young reporter, I. M. Fletcher of the News-Tribune, who so dislikes his first names, Irwin Maurice, that he never signs them. I am I. M. Fletcher." p.13
Okay, one: Thanks, author, for giving us that information in an entirely natural way. Tying in to one, Two: Nobody speaks like this, at least not un-ironically, and if they do, nobody wants to speak with them. Maybe this is why he has to tell it to his tape recorder. Three: Ugh.

So, in order to make his character relatable and likeable, at least to a certain type of man, we learn several things about good old (young!) Fletch. He was in the Marines and won a Bronze Star but hasn't gone to pick it up because he doesn't care or something. Two, he's been married and divorced more than once and his ex-wives are continually trying to get alimony from him. One of them left him because she feared him after he threw her cat out the window of their seventh floor apartment. This is relayed in such a way that it's clear the readers are supposed to side with Fletch and think she's being ridiculous. She is not. He doesn't like his editor, Clara. This is an interesting bit. It's the bit where the awesome male character who is top notch at his job is being impeded by the female who is (the male informs us without actual proof) incompetent but has her position because she is supposedly sleeping with the boss. Something Fletch never fucking shuts up about. In fact, his harassment of her is constant.

"I love you, too, bitch." "Don't get any crumbs in Frank's bed." "You sound relaxed and subdued, like just after sex." "...how is our editor-in-chief, Frank Jaffe, in bed?" "As a cooking writer. You know nothing about hard news. You know nothing about features. You know nothing about the mechanics of this business." "...you are totally unqualified and, I might add, totally incompetent. Go to bed with Frank if you like..." "...bitch editor." "You don't know what you're doing." "If you do that, Clara, you'll be dead before me. I will kill you. Make no mistake." "Christ, I wish I didn't have to talk to you, you're such an idiot." "Stupid bitch."
Most of that is in one conversation.

Also. Fletch is shacking up with an exploited 15 year old heroin-addicted child prostitute. So there's that.

I can already tell that Fletch is going to be made to look like a genius because everyone else is dumb as a brick. He calls up business offices and doctors and they just give him private information because... he says he needs it.

Also, he steals stuff from the newspaper library which is deserving of death by a thousand papercuts, frankly, and would be the worst of his character traits if he weren't a pedophile.
Have I mentioned he's apparently sleeping with a child? Because that should probably be mentioned multiple times. If it turns out he really is just living with her without any actual sex then awesome. He may be a thieving duplicitous misogynist pet killer but at least he wouldn't be a pedophile.

Oh yeah, what's the mystery. Some guy hires Fletch to kill him because he has terminal cancer and wants to leave the insurance money to his family without going through the pain of his illness. He's rich, it sounds like a story. Whatever. I'm sure there will be intrigue of some sort and Fletch will never be wrong and everyone else is just an idiot who gets in his way because other people are stupid but especially girls. God, it's like some of them might get to be your boss or something but man, it's cool. They're actually stupid bitches who only got the job because they're fucking the boss. You're still the man and way smarter than that stupid whore, guys, just read my Self-insert character and slip into the warm power fantasy of a really weird and gross man.
Also, something about drugs on the Beach. Who is the main supplier? Where is Fat Sam getting them? I'll try to contain my enthusiasm for the outcome of this mystery. Clearly, it's just as interesting as what Fletch cleverly titles "The Murder Mystery." I can see why people hire him to write words down.

Maybe I'll read another couple of chapters just to see if he can top pedophilia as his worst character trait. That's hard-going but I believe in him! He is the great hotshot, after all.

The Windup Girl ch. 17

Chapter 17:
                              Jaidee sits in his cell, shaven and dressed in a novice's robe, contemplating life and Buddhism. He gives up on the idea that his wife is still alive surprisingly fast and comes to terms with the fact that life is change. He meditates under a painted Bo tree and we learn that many species of tree have become extinct due to "Ivory Beetle".
                            "Who would have thought that the calorie companies would attack figs? The farang have no respect for anything but money." p.169. I really have no idea who Paulie is trying to appeal to here except those juvenile, self-righteous little shits who think it's cool to tell everyone why they're horrible and short-sighted in order to make themselves feel superior. It ain't aimed at Thai people because it's terribly unflattering to them as well. It isn't kind to anyone and maybe that's the point? Except no, because I think we're supposed to at least like, Jaidee. The whole, the companies can do whatever they want to the detriment of the whole world with no interference from any government, is shallow and silly. But I'm not a cynical twit.
                          Since his wife must be dead, he decides he can do as he pleases. He walks out of the monastery (this is a punishment, you'd think there'd be guards) and goes to find Kanya. He asks for a gun.
                             Akarrat (trade) is his enemy (environment). Well, it only took half the book to consciously get what Bacigalpi was doing. Oy. The morally repugnant against the maybe-not-as morally repugnant but still kind of asses. Isn't there some way for the two to co-exist? The set-up is too simplistic. There are greedy bastards who will ruin anything for a buck or power against...the world? Thais? Everyone else is down-trodden? Fundamentalists are evil as well; Green Headbands commit massacre and the Grahmites, arson. Is there no room for middle ground?
                            "How can one fight their money? Money is their power...We are fighting money." p.170.
                      Lots of lights for a land with no oil. Ah, coal. Cheshire cats. A rich girls party favor. I haven't mentioned them before because they're basically a side show meant to how illustrate the spoiled West brought ruin by being arrogant and privelieged. Jaidee and one of his former men, Somchai, break in to the Trade Ministry to find the file of the man who had been watching them when they burned the cargo at the airfields. He was also at Jaidee's demotion so that means he had something to do with the wife's kidnapping/murder. His file is curiously empty. They kill a couple of guards (guards always are expendable non-human entities) who try to arrest them for trespassing. Then the mystery man shows up, a battle ensues, and they are captured and brought to the roof. (Spring guns apparently fire blades.) Akarrat shows up with palace bodyguards. The Mystery Man works for the palace! Oh goodie. Jaidee kicks Akarrat, his muay thai background giving him +10 damage, and he's shot off the roof.
                     Notes: This book combines disgusting '70's plot and sexual politics with a smug, snotty 21st century overlay.
                        He continues to be incapable of showing rather than telling about the slums, poverty, food shortages, and world chaos.

The Windup Girl chapters 15 - 16

Chapter 15

 Emiko gets dinner from a street vendor and thinks about her situation. She's been sleeping with Anderson (Sigh. Of course) and has been examining her feelings about the free New Person enclave. She feels revulsion at first because she was raised to think of her kind as unnatural, 2nd class beings but the thought of being with others similar to her excites her as well. Interestingly she wonders who she would be able to have sex with there (the many armed workers? the created killers?) and whether she could stand sleeping with anything like that. I don't know if this is because she's programmed to feel she has to have sex with someone or because the Bac-man is kind of backwards in his thinking (or so we can learn that engineered workers have 10 arms. Of course these reasons could all exist together). I just find it odd that for someone who's sex life has consisted almost entirely of forced encounters, some quite brutal, this would be one of the main concerns she would have about her new life.

White Shirts (ministry men) come along to get food and assault the reader with exposition about Jaidee (he finally paid off his men with the stolen money) and she freezes so they won't see her jerky movements. She has no import license and will be "mulched" if caught.
 "...they bump against her with a self-confident maleness, though one white shirt's hand is touching her neck, as though accidentally pressed there..."
"The man who has his hand on Emiko's neck speaks [to the food vendor], caressing her idly." p.156

The Future! This just screams privilege. Male privilege or job privilege? Hard to say as the behavior of the white shirts is kind of nebulous. Other than Jaidee (who steals, commits arson, and beats up factory owners)we haven't seen them do anything. I think this scene is here to create tension. The White Shirts could discover Emiko at any moment! One of them is even touching her! Oh no! Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion! But it's interesting that Paolo decided to write this scene in such a skeezy way. Considering what I've read so far I'm not surprised.

Also, the use of the Thai word "Pla" instead of just writing fish. It's fucking tilapia, man. Stop it. I understand that using foreign words where there is an English equivalent creates an artificial distance between the subject and the reader (based on language rather culture). It accentuates the otherness of the land and people we're reading about, setting them in a space separate from our experience. This is constant reminder of the difference between the people being portrayed and the target audience. However, it also puts the language difference on the same level as the actual cultural differences. It is more effective (and subtle) to leave simple words alone and let the actual culture stand out. The "Wai" and "Khrab" have no real equivalent in English as far as I can tell and serve more of a reminder that attitudes and mind-sets are often culture-bound. Pla just means fish. Fish is fish. I can relate to fish. I like being able to at least somewhat relate to characters in the books I'm reading. It's hard to understand why the author is trying to make tilapia (something I often have for Thursday dinner) exotic.

Emiko goes to work and asks Raleigh about going North to the Windup village. He's not interested in talking about it but she presses him. She no longer wants to act like a servant or a dog. He tells her she needs to earn more to pay the bribes she'll need to make her way there. We get this lovely exchange. Enjoy!

"Even though he is old, Raleigh is still gaijin, born and fed before the Contraction. He stands tall...His bony hand fumbles at her breast, seizes a nipple and twists...His pale blue water eyes watch her like a snake's." (I think it's funny that all the Western foreigners are whites with blue eyes.) "...People in Japan might value a windup. Here, you're just trash." p.159

 Chapter 16

Goody, back to Hock Seng. He sits at his desk, forging a ledger, "reconciling the money he skimmed from the purchase of a temporary spindle" as he contemplates how to get into that danged safe. It's always locked and closed! Imagine that. That devil Lake doesn't trust him! I wonder why.The Dung Lord will become impatient! Maybe you should have gone to him after you had an actual plan. He's considering having Anderson murdered when the girl Mai comes to tell him there's a problem.

Two worker are ill. Hock Seng is afraid it might be the algae tanks that caused the sickness and that the foreign devil will use it as an excuse to close the factory. He bribes a rickshaw driver to take them to a hospital while thinking that it might just be easier to kill both them and Mai.

Yeah I'm giving up on The Windup Girl

     I've ended up reading everything but Paolo's "steampunk" novel. I can no longer renew it as some poor fool has a hold on it. It's so boring! I have several more chapters I've read and written about so I'll post them eventually but I can't go on right now. I have no interest in the trade and politics, the cynical premise and stereotyped characters, or the 70s setup. I don't care what happens to any of the characters. On to better books!

     I finished Fred Vargas' Have Mercy On Us All. Good book, gets kind of dark when it goes into the plague spreader's reasons but the melange of backstories and damaged characters makes a pretty, tangled mess. I'll have to continue reading the series.

     I also read Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner. Wagner is German married to a Finnish woman so the story is set in Finland with one character from Germany. This book was eh. The main detective's wife dies of a long illness in the beginning of the book and this colors his perceptions of the investigation into a series of deaths by smothering. We get chapters from the serial killers perspective which seem to consist entirely of single sentences as paragraphs. There's a number of chapters from the POV of one of the victim's summer flings who flies to Finland when he learns that she's dead and he inherited her apartment. The woman is portrayed as energetic, special, happy, and bright but her focus on some guy she met years ago and never saw or heard from again is just a tad creepy. The one thing I found interesting was how surprised other people were at how easily she talks to strangers. I think this might be a cultural thing because striking up conversations with people you don't know is practically taught from birth here. Also, the main character muses a couple times about how one of his colleagues is so cheerful he's hard to take seriously because upbeat people are seen as superficial and stupid. Apparently smiling = dumb and frowning/neutral = serious. It's a decent, short read but it's kind of repetitive.

      I also read The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, a first novel by a screenwriter. It takes place in 1867 in the Northwest territory. A man is murdered and a woman's teenage son goes missing and a whole bunch of people stomp off into the wilderness to go find him. The writing is generally good though she has a bit of trouble with tenses changing not just in the middle of paragraphs but also in the middle of sentences. She also seems to forget that we can't see who's talking or what facial expressions they're making. There are too many characters. Line, the Norwegian woman who runs from the religious community that took her in, is entirely without purpose. One of the main characters, Daniel Moody, basically does absolutely nothing and people just generally seem to have a 21st century mindset, especially about religion. Basically none of the plot points are resolved and a seemingly important thread about a bone tablet goes absolutely no where. However, the writing was atmospheric and descriptive and the main character, Mrs. Ross, was sympathetic and strong so it was a pretty good read despite the problems.

      I'm about to finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers which is absorbing and obnoxious by turns. More on that later.

The Windup Girl chapters 13 - 14

Chapter 13:

Jaidee remembers meeting and courting his wife. Then he goes to the Ministry to make an apology for being a thieving, destructive jackass. The punishment is harsher than I expected but actually more in line with real-life consequences. He did, after all, accept bribes (even if he didn't keep his end of the bargain) and destroy private property. (He also beats private citizens up.) Most of the cargo he torched was legit. He's sentenced to nine years doing penance as a monk while his children are relegated to Ministry care.

The most appalling facet of his public apology? Foreigners are present.
"Foreigners inside the Ministry compound. Traders and factory owners and Japanese, sunburned sweating stinking creatures, invading the Ministry's most sacred place." P.142.

The horrors! And yet I really think we're supposed to like this guy. Honestly, I see what he's trying to do but when it's offensive with one set of races it doesn't magically become okay when you flip things. At least I hope he's trying something that intelligent rather than trying to accurately portray Thai people because that would just be offensive. I mean it's already offensive but...Let's move on.

Chapter 14:

The aftermath of Jaidee's demotion from Anderson's POV. The foreigners who lost cargo have been paid reparations and one of them acts like a drunk idiot. Anderson talks with Carlyle and meets with Trade Minister Akkarat. Akkarat has a rivalry with Jaidee's boss, Pracha. Anderson and Akkarat talk about a possible deal: support from Anderson's company in exchange for samples from Thailand's genetic seed bank.

"Your people have tried to destroy mine for the last five hundred years."

"Ever since your first missionaries landed on our shores, you have always sought to destroy us. During the old Expansion your kind tried to take every part of us. Chopping off the arms and legs of our country...With the Contraction, your worshipped global economy left us starving and over-specialized." P.150. 

Somebody, either Akkarat or Paulie, has a very tenuous grasp on history and logic. This is just...silly. He's conflating Americans with all Westerners which is a very simplistic and unfair way of viewing things. Not all Americans have a white, Christian, European background and we certainly have nothing to do with anything that the Europeans did. Also, I missed the part where our country has done bad things to Thailand or forced them to specialize. Agency, remember? God forbid countries be held accountable for their own decisions. I mean, somebody pull out the tiny violin. And again, the imputation that free trade is evil. WTF?

Okay. I also read Andrea Camillieri's The Snack Thief. Montalbano gets a case where a man is knifed in the elevator of his apartment and this leads him to a shooting on a fishing boat, a Tunisian cleaning woman and her four year old son. The plot was a bit confusing but at the end there's one of those "Let me sum up" speeches which helps immensely.

Right now I'm reading Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas. I read The Chalk Circle Man and enjoyed it once I realized it was almost a parody of police procedurals. The main character Adamsberg relies more on intuition than interviews or forensics. He lets others handle that. There is much more philosophizing and musing on the meaning of life and things but it's engrossing all the same. In both books the crime starts with odd but non-criminal things that disturb Adamsberg enough to look into them. Inevitably they both turn into something deadly. The book I'm reading now has a guy pretending he's releasing the plague on Paris, complete with disturbing messages and preventative symbols painted on doors.

It's a good thing that Vargas was on my list of authors to read before I read Patrick Anderson's review of her most recent book to be translated into English. Here's what he said: "Although Vargas is hugely popular in Europe, she remains largely unknown in the United States, a discrepancy I must attribute to the high degree of intelligence, sophistication and perversity that informs her fiction."

Lines like this reveal a hell of a lot more about the people who write them than about the subject of the sentence. Pat is either trying to shame people into reading the book by telling them they're too dumb to like it or he's congratulating himself and others who already read the books for being smart enough to appreciate them. The first isn't going to work. I don't know why critics seem to think that telling people they're stupid heathens will get them to read things the critics like but it doesn't allow for personal taste. "You don't like it? Well, I guess you just didn't understand." *Sigh* I encountered this attitude so much during the time I worked in the museum that I'm immune to it now. It's silly and childish. There's a difference between understanding something and liking it. If someone doesn't like something you enjoy it isn't a personal attack on you. And really, you don't need other people's confirmation that a book or work of art really is good before you enjoy it. Telling people they aren't intelligent if they don't like something is mean-spirited.

 The second reason he could have included that sentence can be summed up by a line from The Princess Bride: "Yes, you're very smart, now shut up."

 (I was always amused when tourists would ask me if I "got" Mark Rothko. What they were really asking me was, "Is it all right if I don't like Rothko?" I would explain Rothko's color fields as best I could with the disclaimer that I don't personally like them. People sometimes need reassurance that they aren't philistines if they don't like something considered great. Acting all snobbish about it will just push people away since they won't want to reveal themselves to disdain and then they have no incentive to learn anything new since the work will just bring feelings of shame and embarrassment.)

The Windup Girl Chapters 12

Chapter 12:

 Anderson yells at Hock Seng over the loss of their equipment at the airfield because somehow Jaidee's douchey behavior is the fault of his employee. Something about not paying bribes. Hock Seng continues to be a conniving jackass. Dog Fucker takes Hock Seng to meet the Dung Lord, a Thai with influence of some sort. The Dung Lord made it possible for the Chinese Malayan refugees to be in Thailand in the first place. Hock Seng offers him a deal; stolen kink spring wonder formula (from that danged safe) for a ship to restart his trade empire. Yeah, everything is run by spring. You wind them up and get power from the conversion of "calories to joules". Algea is involved in some way.

 It turns out Hock Seng murdered the yellow card who had the factory job before him. "You were starving. There was no other way. p.136. Really? I guess I'll just have to take your word for it considering we're never shown anything to support or refute your rather hysterical claim. This is a problem with the book in general. Paolo isn't very good at showing. He says the food supply is decimated, people starve, the world is in turmoil but all he shows us is people eating. Coffee, whiskey, noodles, rice, crab, laab mu, gaeng gai, salad, gaeng kiew wan, octopus, "markets full of vegetables", snack sellers, som tam, nam plaa prik, chile-laden pork, bamboo tips, rice beer. These and other references are scattered throughout the text. Nobody is shown having difficulty getting food. This gives the impression that people are indeed getting enough to eat. The same with the yellow cards. Yeah, we take a walk with Hock Seng through the slums but we don't see much more than a depressed area with people going about their daily lives, not well-off but getting along. You say they're all on the edge but I'm not convinced. Also, this book is boring and soulless.

 In other news I just finished Murder at the Savoy by Wahloo and Sjowall.

I liked this book like I've enjoyed the other ones but the ending and moral was a bit odd.

A businessman named Palmgren is murdered by a man who calmly walked into a hotel dining room, shot his victim, and then escaped through a window. Investigations show that Palmgren was kind of a jackass (to put it mildly) when it comes to his business dealings. He trades in arms with African dictators (this book came out in the early '70s), he ruthlessly managed his factories by closing down nonproductive ones rather than retooling them, and he was also a slum lord. Possibly. There wasn't much description of the conditions his tenants lived in actually.

Anyway, to give away the plot of the book, it turns out he was shot by a former office worker in a factory that was shut down two years before. The man took to drinking and started getting into fights with his wife. The building manager reported him to various civic authorities for noise violations and possible child endangerment and he was brought before the temperance board several times for his drinking. Times had changed since he'd gotten his office job 12 years before and he no longer had the training to get a "real job", as his wife puts it. Which means he was turning down jobs he thought were beneath him rather than taking one and getting the training he needed to find something better.

The building manager (this is a Palmgren owned building where factory workers were housed) eventually evicts him. (The detectives speculate that there was a conspiracy headed by Palmgren to get him out so the apartment could be rented out at a higher price. No facts towards this but...no facts towards this.) His wife (described as slovenly and wearing sleazy clothing) separates from him and he gets a lower paying job in another town. Because he obviously has no part in his downward trend (you know, the drinking, the spurning lower paying jobs, the fights, the fact that yes, drunken, argumentative daddy is not good for the kiddies) he's pitied by the detectives who muse how terrible it is that Palmgren's cronies will go on business as usual while this poor, battered man will spend the best years of his life in prison. The main character Martin Beck muses that nobody will miss Palmgren and that he hopes the murderer will get off lightly in his sentencing.

Bull. Shit. I don't care that Palmgren is a jackoff who (inadvertently) helped ruin this guy's life. I hate having to harp on the idea of responsibility and agency but really. The murderer contributed to his own downfall. He did not deal with his misfortunes well. The idea that the taking of a human life is not a tragedy because nobody will miss them is disgusting and more than a little disturbing. Yes, Palmgren is not a good man but that doesn't give anybody the right to decide that he doesn't get to exist any longer. I would argue that killing him is a far worse crime than shutting down a non-productive factory and having a building manager that doesn't like your face. I really hope nobody would argue me on this point but apparently '70s Wahloo and Sjowall would.

The introduction says that this book displays the ugly side of the left at the time and I have to agree. Capitalist business practices can be ugly (especially when gone to the extremes as they have in this book. I mean, gun running?) but what's presented here is only one side and I would still say that cold-blooded murder is worse for society.

Whew. It was a good book. The moral just bothered me a little.

The Windup Girl chapters 9 - 11

Chapter 9:

Emiko wakes and bathes.
 "She's pours a ladleful over her head. Water courses down her face, runs over breasts and ribs and thighs, trickles onto hot concrete. Another ladleful, soaking her black hair, coursing down her spine and curling around her buttocks." P. 102. I only quote this because I question not just the purpose of this scene but Emiko's entire presence in this book. 100 pages and two short scenes.
 We learn that she is routinely raped and tormented in her shared apartment. Yippee. She walks down to the seawall to find out about passage north but no luck. She has to disguise the way she moves because windups without papers are "mulched". A man accosts her. He fought windup soldiers and since she's a windup he tries to kill her. She runs, gets overheated, and is rescued by (of course) Anderson Lake.

 Chapter 10:

So Anderson rescued Emiko and now they ride together in his rickshaw. They talk and then he starts to make out with her while wondering if she wants to or just can't say no. Ask her, you moron!
 This feels like something out of the '70's. Beautiful Asian courtesan/prostitute is rescued by strong, stoic, blond-blue-eyed-white man in exotic location. Gag. Also, is there no oil left? If they can create truly marvelous wonders of genetic engineering why can't they come up with an energy substitute? Okay, Paulie, if oil is a no go for us, (message story, remember?) what are we supposed to do? Also, why Thailand? Or why not a Thai protagonist?

 Chapter 11:

 Jaidee muses on how stupid the Malayan Chinese (no, I don't know why it's not Malaysian) were to not integrate and become Muslim, unlike the Chaozhou Chinese who assimilated into Thai society, taking Thai names. He believes the "yellow cards" are at fault for not anticipating their own slaughter. He thinks about this while assaulting a Chaozhou Chinese for backtalk. Then he gets called to the Environment Ministry over the cargo burning. Someone has kidnapped his wife. His boss says he'll have to make an apology and accept demotion if they want to try to get her back.

 More limited background but still no idea what state the rest of the world is in. I still don't understand how anyone would continue to allow these "calorie companies" such control. Since I'm not a cynical twit I don't actually think any country would allow this or just bend over and take it from another country. How come only Thailand has managed to create new food?

 There's also an anti-capitalism vibe running through this. "We haven't had heeya like this since the last Expansion. Money at any cost. Wealth at any price." P.127. Yes, of course, because if you forcibly limit people's ability to make money they would settle down and devote themselves to artistic pursuits. Wars would disappear! Peace on Earth, goodwill towards men! No one would ever again attempt to gain power or control over others. Really, I'm all for regulation of business and such but come on. Be realistic.

 Also the amount of detail used to say "Look! We're in Thailand! isn't this exotic!" is irritating. Take this sentence: "She wears the same blue pha sin that she had on when she made him a breakfast of gang kiew wan..." P.126. Pha sin seems to be a type of skirt. Maybe, maybe, you can justify the repeated use of the italicized pha sin. But why do we need to know what he had for breakfast except to add a foreign detail? There are a lot of foreign words introduced without translation that obviously have equivalent English words like: fish, foreigner, skirt, sir, yes, ghost, gangster, fun, canal, side street, why, karma, dharma, hot heart... This is silly. Maybe more on this later.

The Windup Girl Chapters 7 - 8

Mah bunny, Charlie, tries to eat the coffee table.

Chapter 7:

 Jaidee and Kanya stop disease-resistant pineapples from being smuggled in (the fuck? Don't they need stuff like that? Explain stuff, Paulie!) and then they bitch about how awful the world is and how it's all the fault of those terrible foreigners over a lunch of snakehead pla. Ahh!! Frankenfish! A wonderful reminder that invasive species go both ways. Jaidee is surprised to learn that his men are resentful that his rogue ways net them nothing but career stagnation and that he doesn't share the money he steals. He protests that they know it's there whenever they need it but I guess his men don't know how to read minds.

 This is one of those books that portrays all Westerners as the source of all men's ills with the poor brown and yellow people helpless against their greedy ways, incapable of any agency and certainly not fucking up their own genetic engineering projects. Everything the exotic Thais and Japanese create is wholesome and good for society (including the secretaries doubling as sex dolls, I guess) and everything Western (read: American) companies create is corrupt and imperialistic. Oh, blow it out your ass, Paulie. You do know this is a very neo-colonial, dare I say racist, world view? Also, I don't believe vegetation is that pathetic and incapable of adaptation. It'll be here long after we've gone. Haven't you seen The Happening? No? Good. That movie was terrible.

 Chapter 8:

 The next 15 pages are spent in a bar patronized by foreigners (farang, in italics, often) called The Sir Francis Drake. They bitch about losing their cargo to Jaidee's arson spree and how hard it is to be exploitationist smugglers. Anderson learns that ngaw is probably Rambutan. Carlyle, a big Trade man who involves himself in politics, comes in. He tells Anderson that a change in government is coming. Thailand uses a system of pumps to keep the sea from flooding the city (it's immersed other low lying cites like New York and New Orleans) and Carlyle has the necessary repair equipment in a warehouse in another country. He intends to hold it hostage so he can pressure the Thai government to allow laxer trade laws. He also lets Anderson know that he's onto him because most of Anderson's equipment originates in Des Moines. (Why? Why doesn't his company set things up so he can order from India or something?) Carlyle wants to make a deal. Anderson decides to kill him. Eventually.

 Also, Grahamites. A new sect of Christianity set against generipping. They also hate global trade because "food should come from the place of its origen, and stay there." p. 93. Apparently global trade causes famine. The food companies and their "calorie men" out of Des Moines engineer sterile crops so that people have to keep buying them. They export all over the world where they sterilize native crops. And this is somehow legal even after the practice has caused widespread devastation all over the world. Trade and politics! My God, this is boring.

 I'm also reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Two cousins in 1939 want to make their own comic to capitalize on Superman's popularity. Joseph Kavalier managed to escape Prague with the help of an old escape artist, smuggled to Lithuania in a coffin containing the golem. Samuel Clayman lives in New York City, dreaming of making his fortune as a cartoonist. When his cousin Joe turns out to be a trained artist he realizes the two of them have a shot at success. So far it's a fine read. This is not a book to rip through. The prose takes its time to set things up and explain background. There's a great explanation of the start of comic books and Superman's beginnings.

The Windup Girl Chapters 5 - 6

Chapter 5:
Anderson sits in his apartment and looks at pictures of fruit.


Chapter 6All right, all right. He comes across an old photo of a couple of men standing next to a roadside fruit stand upon which sits a pile of ngaws. However, there's no caption to tell him what the fruits were originally called. Anderson sits there, naked, in the heat, on his apartment's balcony and silently rages at the "fat, self-contented fools" (read: us, now) because they dare to look happy and have plenty. The outrage! How dare they not be clairvoyant! How dare they be content and pleased with their lives. Anderson wishes he could drag the men out of the image so he can yell at them, out of jealousy, and then murder them. Which is apparently what he did to Yates, the last guy to run the cover factory, though admittedly Yates drew first.
He figures that Gi Bu Sen is actually Gibbons, a former agricultural company generipper who supposedly died in a fire.

Okay, here's what I've gleaned. Our time is known as the Expansion. We were all horrible, self-centered individuals who behaved extravagantly. Then the oil supply ran out and the Contraction happened. The book takes place in the 22nd century. I think. Clippers and dirigibles are used for travel, Megadonts and "kink springs" for power. Crop diseases (released by Western companies) have wiped out a lot of the food supply and somehow global trade has collapsed. Which seems silly as even before steam there was global trade, it was just slower. For all this talk of lack of food, there's no sign of it. Show, don't tell, Paulie.


Also, I was right about not liking Anderson.


Chapter 6:
Hock Seng waxes philosophical about slums and banks while raiding his cash stash and we fade into a flashback of his escape from Malaya. All his family died and his workers turned on him out of fear for their own safety. The "Green Handbands" took over Malaya and blamed the Chinese and Buddhists for their trouble? Possibly? And the emerald headwear are Muslims? Or something.


Hock Seng takes his money for a meeting with "Dog Fucker" (Literal or metaphorical? A mystery for another chapter), underling of the "Dung Lord", who immediately places himself as a bad guy by claiming to have fucked Hock Seng's messenger to death. Thanks for that Paulie. We're not going for subtlety, are we? Also, Hock's sorrow at his past troubles seems to be more about the destruction of his trade empire and less at the massacre of his family. Paolo isn't very good at emotional content.

The Windup Girl cliff notes again chapters 2 - 4

Chapter 2: The aftermath of Anderson killing the megadont as told by his employee and 2nd in command, Hock Seng. Hock Seng is a "yellow card", a Chinese Malayan(No, I don't know why not Malaysian, Paulie doesn't like explaining stuff) refugee from the "Incident". Yellow Cards are allowed to be in Thailand but they're not allowed to take jobs that could conceivably go to Thais so they seem to primarily be beggars.

 The megadont rampage and death caused oodles of damage that will require more money from the investors for repairs, bribes, and brahmins/feng shui practitioners. In 8 pages Hock Seng refers to his boss as "foreign devil" or just "devil" 16 times, as yang guizi(foreign devil) 18 times, and even simply as "the creature" several times. Also, to him, Thais are lazy and stupid. He plots to steal proprietary blueprints from the main office. (An entire page is devoted to him wondering if the safe got left open in the chaos. It didn't.) I'm not sure if he's supposed to be an antagonist or just an asshole but he lets us know Anderson is a blond with "watery devil pool eyes." And he compares foreigners to aliens and petulant children. (Is this supposed to turn Western stereotypes about Asians and Westerners on their heads or is that just me? Because that's not clever.) I'm pretty sure we're supposed to dislike him but that's actually not clear yet. Anderson does kind of act like a petulant child but we still haven't had much substantial from his point of view.

 So recap. Damage is assessed (not good), megadont is cut up for transport, Hock Seng is a bigoted jerk who plans to steal from his employer.

 Chapter 3: An introduction to Emiko, the titular Windup Girl. She's a New Person, genetically engineered in Japan as a secretary (glanced over) and elite sex doll (important part). Her skin is so smooth that her pores are too minuscule to allow much sweating and she easily overheats in the tropical environment. She moves in jerky movements due to her programming and is basically unable to say no. Can you see where this is going?

She was sold to the unappreciative Raleigh to work in his club/brothel where she is regularly abused by patrons and co-workers alike. She hates her life. So. This chapter she is humiliated, raped on stage with a dildo, and brought to "papa-san's" office to meet with a gold-haired foreigner with corpse-pale skin and acid pool blue eyes. (Hello, Anderson.) She's ordered to tell him about a customer she had who told her about his gene-ripping aunt and a gene engineer name Gi Bu Sen. Anderson tells her that there are Windup enclaves to the North where her kind live free. She regains the will to live.

 Chapter 4: New character! Captain Jaidee Rajjanasukchai works for the Environment Ministry. He protects Thailand from farang(foreigners) and trade. Dirty, dirty trade. He and his 2nd, Kanya, are at the airfields shaking down customs officials from the Ministry of Trade. 200,000 baht to let in the foreign crates without inspection. And that's twice these guys have had to pay a bribe. But what's this? Oh no! Jaidee is the "Tiger of Bangkok", protector of the Kingdom and completely un-bribable. Though apparently he isn't above stealing. He has his men raid the dirigibles and burn the cargo.

When he gets home his wife worries he goes too far but he remarks that he is in the child queen's good graces which makes him harder to touch. So he hates foreigners and free trade, the root of all evil, and he's willing to be pissy about it. You know, I don't like any of these characters. They are all contemptuous of anyone they perceive as "other" and are very self-righteous about it. I don't know about Anderson yet as his chapter didn't actually give us much of a look at him personally but I'm willing to bet he's similar. Though it won't be presented as such, I'm sure. Also, stop peppering foreign, italicized words throughout the text for no real reason. Yes, we're in Asia. It's exotic. I get it.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi cliff notes chapter 1

Sunrise a couple days ago

Chapter 1: I'm still looking for more steampunk and this book is often recommended alongside Boneshaker so why not. However this takes place in the future which sort of defeats the purpose of steampunk. Oh, but there's a twist! (Isn't there always.) The oil supply has run out...or something. I'm not sure. So now things are run by manpower or megadont power. Computers are operated by foot treadle. (Can you generate enough power old-fashioned sewing machine style to run a word processor?) The food situation is messed up, somehow. Corporate conglomerates (in America, of course) rule food supplies with an iron fist. Fresh fruit and vegetables are extinct, I'm not really sure about animals, they aren't mentioned. Crop diseases are out of control. Calorie is king! Apparently. Hopefully that'll be run by us in more detail.

 Our main character, Anderson Lake, is operating a fake business in Thailand so he can scout the generipping done there to bring back old foods. Yeah, gene engineering is rampant which must be the source of the food problem. So he buys a funny-looking fruit called a ngaw and goes back to his cover spring-making factory where the process of kink spring manufacture is explained in way too much detail and then he gets flattened by a megadont. (He'll be fine.)

 I hadn't read the main cover blurb or the inside flap but I did after a couple pages. "...astute social commentary in poignant, revelatory prose" gushes Publishers Weekly. Oh dear, Paulie's got a Message. The windup girl is apparently going to be a genespliced, creche grown sex doll created for a Japanese businessman. So what I've gleaned so far is: Soulless, scheming corporate American business drones ruin and run the world food supply; Shifty-eyed, lazy, betelnut-chewing Thais create new food in an exotic, superstitious, literarily exploitable location; the Japanese are perverts. Well, that about covers it. I don't know about this one. We'll see.

Iain Banks sucks so let's move on

I just finished Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. I really liked Sci-Fi and Fantasy when I was younger but for some reason it just hasn't appealed to me in the last few years. However, recently I've been craving something implausible but grounded in reality. Therefore: Steampunk. My last foray into the genre was with Soulless by Gail Carriger. That didn't go so well. There are only so many times I can read the same joke in 100 pages and the romance plot was silly, rushed, and took up far too much space. Boneshaker seems quite popular so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

 Seattle, 1880. Back East the Civil War rages on, kept going by British interference and Jackson not being killed. 16 years prior to the events in the book a giant drilling machine plowed through downtown Seattle leaving devastation in its wake and releasing a toxic gas from underground. This gas, Blight, kills and corrupts, raising the dead as canabalistic creatures known as "rotters." (The word Zombie wasn't in use colloqially at the time.) The area was evacuated and a huge wall was built around the area to trap both Blight and rotters.

 Briar, the widow of the man who caused this sorry mess, works in the water purification plant and cares for her teenage son, Zeke. Zeke is convinced that his father didn't unleash Hell on Earth merely to rob a few banks, so he finds his way into the closed city to prove it. Unfortunately an earthquake collapes the tunnel he had used so Briar sets off after him by airship. Inside they seperately discover those people who stayed behind either because of sheer tenacity or because there's profit to be made through looting and the Blight-derived drug lemon sap. Over this wasted territory, where walking the street requires a gas mask and a gun, looms the sinister Dr. Minnericht. He has his own domain where he runs his crew, making crazy inventions and Blight drugs, and many of the locals are in debt to him one way or another. Briar and Zeke make their way through this dangerous area, moving from safe spot to safe spot, meeting those people who live there, who prove both help and hindrance.

 Okay, I liked this book. Briar is a capable woman, tough and good with a gun but still human. She's a nice change from the tough female character that seems written to out-male most men. Briar worries, frets, cries, and becomes afriad but she really holds her own both verbally and physically. Zeke does something stupid in that "I'm practically a grown-up, of course I know what I'm doing" way that teenagers have to kick-start the book but he figures out fairly quickly that he's in over his head. He's pretty resourceful, in his own way, and recognizes when he needs help. I never wanted to smack him so I'd say his characterization was well done. The other characters were memorable and interesting. The plot was dynamic and the action scenes were exciting. I had fun. I liked the ending. I like the way Priet lets main characters do bad things and doesn't excuse them for it. The rotters are an animal-like, putrefying horde, inexorable and full of menace. They and the Blight form an ever-present threat throughout the book. There aren't that many clockwork devices but there are a few neat ones to set the tone and of course there are the airships. I could have used more gadgets though Swakhammer's armored and masked bulk made up for that a bit.

 The one thing I don't get is why no one had gone in with masks to exterminate the rotters in those 16 years. Yeah, I get that territory status and the Civil War made things difficult out West but you'd think the locals could have mustered a few zombie hunting expeditions in that time. Cut the numbers down anyway. Oh, and what were the Chinese doing in there? They couldn't have just been in there to pump air down from the sky so why did they stayed in the closed off city? That aside; good book and I'll be reading more of her stuff.

White Noise by Delillo part 2

In a nutshell I found White Noise to be a self-conscious satire with interesting observations but no deeper understanding. And an obsession with supermarkets.

            Jack teaches Hitler studies in a small college town on the edge of Iron City. He’s married to his fourth wife, Babette, and they live with their four children from various marriages. Babette reads tabloid papers to an old blind man and teaches classes in sitting, standing, and walking at the community center. 15 year old Heinrich is skeptical of everything (including whether it is currently raining or not) and is the sort of person who will constantly refresh Google news for the updated death toll in the latest disaster. 12 year old Denise is a miniature adult worried about the medication her mother may or may not be taking. 9 year old Steffie is Denise-lite. Lastly, young Wilder, who I could have sworn was 2 from the way he acts but online sources says is 6, never speaks and, to be quite blunt, comes across as retarded. The story is told from the 1^st person POV of Jack who, other than being kind of nebbish, has no personality. Ready to read 326 pages about these people?

            Jack goes about his daily existence until a tanker carrying the dangerous Nyodene D crashes near their town releasing a toxic cloud of chemicals. An evacuation is called for but during the escape Jack is forced to stop for gas, exposing himself for two minutes. (This was a point of difficulty for me because the way the event is described they’re outside the radius of the cloud.) He’s told that this exposure could prove to be a fatal problem at some point in the next thirty years. Then life goes back to normal.

            The rest of the book is more of the first part of the book, except there’s more anxiety about death. (This was in the pre-cloud part too. Jack and Babette like to argue about who would rather die first. The foreshadowing is less shadowing and more penciling in.) Jack discovers Babette has been keeping a secret from him and she manages to belittle his place in her life while loading her confession with an incredible amount of bathos. In the end Jack tries, in his ineffectual and bumbling way, to reassert control over his life, Wilder nearly gets himself flattened by rush hour traffic, and the whole thing fades off into the produce section.

Throughout, brand names are thrown around like invocations, dating the text even more. While looking at clouds at sunset we suddenly get the line, “Clorets, Velamints, Freedent.” Thank goodness for Wikipedia, purveyor of random information. While sleeping, one of Jack’s daughters breathes the words, “Toyota Celica.” I’ve never heard of that particular model but I’m sure their commercials were awesome. Random lines from the ever present TV and radio litter the text until they’re actually coming out of the mouth of a passerby, culminating in a torrent of nonsensical information from a drug-fried character at the end. Rather than being intrusive I liked how these lines remind the reader of the constant barrage of information and advertising that floods our lives. The naming of products out of context was less subtle and kind of silly.

            On the whole, this was a well written book. Events progressed nicely, plots points were wrapped up, and the descriptive passages were very good. His imagery of the toxic event, with the ever expanding cloud lit by helicopters and the refugees trudging along under the falling snow, was very evocative. The prose was generally readable and with only a few stutters flowed well.

            One final complaint: the dialogue was horrible. With few exceptions all characters had the same unrealistic speech patterns. Even a German accented woman eventually started monologing the same way as everyone else. It was like Don Delillo’s voice was coming out of multiple mouths, eventually giving me the creepy sensation that there were no individual characters at all but rather some sort of hive mind parroting the author’s internal thoughts. Like a master puppeteer having conversations with himself through proxies.

            This was a decent enough book but I don’t think it aged well and I couldn’t connect with it. Maybe if I had been more aware during the ‘80’s it would have more resonance with me. I’ll have to read Delillo’s more recent work to see how he’s changed.

*Clorets is apparently a type of gum now mainly available in stores in South America, the Middle East, and S.E. Asia. You can, of course, buy it on Amazon.

Velamints appear to be a mint. Surprisingly, they do not have a Wikipedia page. They do have their own Facebook page which informs all that they’re back.

Now I thought Freedent might be a dental adhesive but it is, in fact, a type of gum. It’s advertised as not sticking to dental appliances.

White Noise by Delillo part 1

I've read a number of books since I last posted but I'm going to focus on White Noise since it's been highly touted. This review is going to be too long. My thoughts about why I don't like the feel of the novel take up a good chunk of it so I'm going to split this in two. First post is on my personal thoughts about why Delillo's kind of a supercilious windbag and the second post will focus more on the book itself.

The blurb on the back of the cover of White Noise describes an everyman and his family jolted out of their complacent, consumerist existence by a man-made “airborne toxic event” which forces them to reevaluate their values and view of life. I started the book anticipating the journey of an average American family forced to abandon their comfortable way of life to flee a disaster of modern society’s own making. As they moved through a growing landscape of logos and brand names, stripped of the trappings of a sheltered civilization they would eventually confront the human frailties that consumer culture hides them from. Their familial ties would be strengthened by the ordeal and they would ultimately gain a deeper understanding of themselves and human nature. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Obviously I’ve never read Don Delillo before. So let’s deal with the story I got instead.

            I must make it clear that I am not a believer in the view of consumerism espoused by the book; that modern man hides behind shopping and the acquisition of things to deny the inevitability of death or that it makes people shallow and stupid. This is partly because I don’t believe that people have fundamentally changed in the last hundred years. For ages people who can afford it have been buying the latest fashion, carriages, furniture, food and drink, pets, servants, etc to boost their ego, flaunt their wealth, and compete with others. It’s just that now more people can afford to join this game what with higher purchasing power and cheaper products. I really don’t think it’s terrible to allow the less than wealthy the pleasure of options and nicer things. Brand names and marketing have obviously become more prolific but this really only seems to be a horrible thing is you believe the pursuit of money and goods is evil. Or, if you’re like Don Delillo and never learned the art of selective attention. Seriously, I contend that most of us had a disillusioning experience with marketing at some point during our childhood and came out of the experience a little wiser and more discerning. Advertising isn’t an all-consuming parasite leeching away at out vitality and intelligence but just a part of the landscape. Amusing, annoying, unavoidable, yes, but without real impact on who we are or how we live. This is apparently not what Delillo thought in 1984 when he wrote White Noise.

            I don’t know how to explain this novel other than to say that it’s very eighties and, to be honest, kind of mean. I admit I can get frustrated at how stupid people can be but, at heart, I find most people interesting and unique. Each person contains a secret world of experience, thoughts, feelings, fears, anxieties, crimes, loves, and hopes and they exist at the center of a web of connections leading outward in an ever-expanding tangle. Each person is a story and each story, if told well, has the capacity to be interesting. The people in White Noise are denied that delicate characterization that would have breathed life into the story and are, instead, caricatures, almost automatons. I know that was probably the point, to show the hollowing of self caused by rampant consumerism but in divesting them of individuality they become difficult for the reader to connect with. Plus, they’re boring.

Three day weekend

I'm taking care of the animals while my parents sort things out at our other house. Our dog has an infected cut on her foot and an ear infection so I have this entire regimen for treating her twice a day. Poor thing hates being left alone; she insists on being wherever I am, even waiting outside the bathroom door while I shower. She takes it hard when my parents are gone. She does wake me up in the middle of the night, however, and that gets old quickly. Then this morning my mother's alarm went off at 5:45. Half-asleep, fumbling with the buttons on that huge-ass thing she calls a clock radio I thought I'd managed to shut it off but it started up again a few minutes later and...well I think I might need to buy her a new one.

Work is tiring and a little bewildering. I still have no idea how much money they're willing to spend on resources. They want databases and journals but anything you buy for institutional use is hellishly expensive. Even a subscription for a once every two months journal from LWW through Ovid costs $1088 for full onsite access. If you pay $288 you can onsite access for one IP address. One! You may as well buy an individual subscription for the print edition if only one person can use it at a time. There are far fewer options for small institutions and I'm going to have to convince my bosses that free resources can be just as good. Make use of everything you can. Many journal sites allow you to view a number of free articles and Medscape and Pubmed are free to use. Netlibrary seems to be reasonably priced but they already have ebrary. I'm in contact with EBSCO about a couple of their databases so we'll see how that pans out. I'm just a little tired of talking to these people when I know we probably don't have the money to afford what they're offering.

I still need a new computer and the IT guys haven't fixed the printer for the students. I can use the printer fine which means I can print out call numbers but I have no tape. I've requested book tape so we'll see if I get that in a timely manner. I am also apparently in charge of faculty development so I've been looking for good books on curriculum and syllabus creation and planning seminars on using internet resources like ERIC. I want to find out more about the student population to judge what would be best useful for them.

Less reading, more movie watching. I finished Tropic of Cancer. It was amusing and I liked the writing though it wasn't always stellar. This was an early book though so maybe it improves. I'll have to read Tropic of Capricorn. The Tao te Ching was excellent; I'll have to read a more literal translation though for comparison purposes. Kismet was entertaining. There were cultural things that I didn't quite get. The Hessian, Frankfurter, Berliner stuff was confusing. Or maybe Frankfurters are Hessians? To Wikipedia! Okay, yes they are. And wouldn't you know it but some of my ancestors were from Hesse, Darmstadt to be exact.. Course they were Jewish. Anyway the tone of the book is noir-ish at times with its barely scrapping by private detective going after the bad guys to settle a personal matter. The writing is wry, sly, and friendly though sometimes the sentences are a little convoluted. The main character, Kemal Kayankaya, goes after a protection racket when he and a buddy end up killing two of its members while helping a local businessman. He wants to know what's going on and why these two people had to die. He gets beat up a lot and blunders around investigating (seriously, I think most of it was less detective work and more being really lucky) until he reaches the conclusion. It was a decent book and Kemal was an interesting character. He was blunt, a little unethical, and grumpy but a decent guy for the most part.

I'm reading The Fire Engine that Disappeared and it's not as good as the first few books in the series but it's still a good read.

I watched District B13, a French action film written by the director of The Fifth Element and wow, this is an awesome movie. It's short and not too complicated; the fight scenes are highly watchable and the two main characters are pretty hot. This is not a movie to spend much time thinking about; it's pure entertainment. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance however, is a movie to think about. Done by the director of Thirst it tells a story about desperation and revenge and ultimately shows how the drive for payback can lead to utter annihilation. The actions of the characters just seem to send everything spiraling into a black void of nothingness. Again, it could have used editing. Long shots of people sitting around eating or staring into space can set the mood or show the mindset of a character but you need to distinguish between the necessary shots and the self-indulgent ones. Anyway, good movie and Oldboy is next.

I also watched a French zombie movie called The Horde because, well, French zombie movie. It was eh. The characters were mostly 2-d and the action was so-so. The plot was only half told. The one thing I found odd was when the African guy was killing the zombie who killed his brother. He started screaming about how he was Nigerian. I wasn't quite sure what his nationality had to do with anything. Maybe Nigerians have a reputation in France of being bad-ass? I don't know.

I am reading Lao-tzu's Tao te ching and it's like woah

There are very few people around on Fridays so I spent most of the day by myself. That was fine. After four days of activity it's nice to have some alone time. I spent the morning putting the books I've already cataloged into some semblance of order so people can use the books in the library even if there's no OPAC up and they can't check them out yet. I need the new computer I've been promised; the old one keeps having conniption fits and it no longer lets me enter books correctly into the OPAC. I need the adapter to allow me to use the scanner to speed things up but that's a fairly low priority. I need the bar codes I ordered. I called the lady at Brodart and she said that the vendor will have them ready in 2-3 weeks. I had no idea it was that hard to print bar codes! I thought there would be some computer that could calculate what they should look like and just print them out. At some point, when I'm really bored, I should learn more about the complex world of bar code production but as long as I get them I'll be happy.

More pressing is that I need a printer to make call number labels and book tape to affix them to the spines. I could at least organize things better then. Everybody who comes into the library now looks at the shelves of books at marvels at how fast everything's coming along. Seriously, a collection of books on shelves does not make a functional library. After that there's policies to create and journals to subscribe to and instructional sessions to plan. Oy. I'm glad people seem happy though.

A co-worker has loaned me her Stephen Mitchell translation of the Tao te ching and I'm loving it. Some of it meshes with how I think anyway but makes clearer things I haven't been able to articulate. Some of it seems unattainable to me; I hold onto certain possessions very hard and I don't think I would be able to face death with such peace but it sets out something to strive for. Or not strive for as the case may be. To let happen. "...just do your job, then let go."

Getting close to finishing Tropic of Cancer. I've said enough about him already, I'm sure but he's fascinating in a way. His philosophical ramblings and clunky metaphors are mush and his attitudes towards other people, cultures, and religions show him to be a close-minded, juvenile little tit but the extent to which he opened himself on the page is captivating. I don't think he meant for it all to be there. He's like one of those teens who write fanfic self-inserts, making themselves to be clever and cool, looked up to and catered. They have a put on tortured facade but really seem like children pretending to be world-weary adults. He attempts to paint himself as some tragic figure surrounded be imbeciles. He's so silly but for all that he's very human in his need to make himself the hero. For some reason it's very interesting.

I'm reading Kismet by Jakob Arjouni. A Turkish detective in Germany gets involved in figuring out who's behind a bizarre new protection racket in the station district in Frankfurt. Kayankaya is a little grumpy and something of a smart-aleck. I'm about 90 pages in and it's been a good read so far. Quite a bit about the immigrant situation in Germany. The English edition was published last year but the book takes place in 1998. I don't know when it was first written.

I wish my appliances would stop nagging me

Library is almost done, furnishing-wise. Now I just need a computer with the scanner hooked up and I'll be set to get everything into some sort of working order. Oh, and some way of fixing the labels to the spines. I'll use scotch tape if I have to but there must be some better clear tape. The desk is big and dark and the chair is black leather. It all looks so shiny and important. One of the drawers even locks. I can have a locked desk drawer, how cool is that? I know, my standards are pretty low. Of course, I'm still getting used to the idea that I can decide when I'll eat lunch. I can use the restroom when I want without calling someone to break me and I can go home without being relieved from my post. I'm no longer constantly on camera. I find I don't know how to behave in such an unstructured setting.

Henry Miller amused me today in a way that may or may not have been intentional. His avatar character self-insert talks about how he lost his job. He has no home and roams about cultivating people he can attach himself to so he can leech money and food off of them. One of them gives him a wad of cash and while for a while he resolves to find a place to live, he instead starts blowing it on food and whores. The last woman, he steals the money back while she's out of the room. Next chapter he's talking about a friend who has invited Henry to live with him for a bit. Only this friend Fillmore has trouble with a woman he picked up, Jackie, who won't leave. As Henry says about Fillmore, "He had a genius for attracting homeless bitches." Yes, apparently he does. Fillmore gives him pin money each morning and leaves him to his writing. Henry feels pressured to put out (pages, of course) and muses that it would be easier if he were a woman because then he could "slip [Fillmore] a piece of ass." He only thinks this, of course, because he knows it will never be expected. Much easier to brag that you'd totally do something many people think is unpleasant or demeaning when you know that it will never be an option for you. Still, if he were serious he could still totally "slip him a piece of ass." Maybe the reason it hasn't happened is because Fillmore knows Henry wouldn't be worth it.

I think it's hilarious that some people see this character as a portrait of a nihilist, a free spirit doing only what pleases him, damn the constraints of bourgeois society, living without pretension and what I see is a nebbish little man with the impulse control of a five year old.

It's damp out

Work, work. Walls are coming down, carpet being laid, walls painted. That chemical mix of paint, drywall, and adhesives that doesn't actually smell good but does because it is associated with newness. The admin offices across the street are done but no one can move in because the internet hasn't been hooked up yet. Staff are floating, sharing space. Everybody is busy, harried, and tired. I try to stay out of the way and work on my cataloging list. There are a lot of donated books for the start of the library. Hopefully that means more money for more specialized books and for other subjects. A well-rounded (and accredited) library has more than just one subject.

The only thing I'm a little concerned about now is hours. They want the library to be open at all times they have classes. They have classes seven days a week, from about 8am - 9pm. Yeah, I can't work that often. A student could get a break on finances if they help out in the library but if that doesn't happen right away the hours are going to have to be shorter. Besides, school libraries aren't open that often. No library is open like that. Most close on Sunday, open a few hours Saturday, and close early Friday. I don't get paid to work lawyer hours.

I can't wait to actually move into the library. I'll have a space to put the resources I have already to organize them. I would like to get the students access to AJN and Nursing2011 if possible. I still have no idea how much money they are willing to spend on this. Database subscriptions are expensive but I don't know which ones they can afford. Cochrane Library? Something from Gale or EBSCO? Uptodate? That last one comes recommended but the cost can be about $25 per student. I don't know if the students really need something so sophisticated for their reports.

I feel like I'll be able to concentrate better when I have a permanent space with my own computer. Somewhere I can order books into piles to keep track rather than storing them in someone else's office. Maybe it won't feel so much like people are watching me. I know they don't quite understand what I'm doing. One of the women referred to my cataloging efforts as "your little project." You can't just slap a random number on the spine and stick them on the shelf.

I finished The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout. The first part of the book was pretty good but the second half lost focus and became something else entirely. The killer lost focus as well, switching from murdering "whores" (his definition of "whores" was basically the same as "women") to murdering Germans. The uprising of the Czechs at the end of the war provides a backdrop of chaos that the German, Buback and the Czech, Morava have to contend with. Only they spend a lot of time dealing separately with the revolution and almost none looking for the killer. Buback turns out to be an entirely worthless character, good only for repenting of what Germany did to Europe. His character is almost purposeless to the plot. He questions his nationality (he's half-Czech) and eventually goes on and on about how horrible the Germans have been. You could have cut him out and assigned the few investigative parts he played to Morava and still have a solid story. That is if the author hadn't interrupted his own plot. If Kohuot had wanted to write about the chaos at the end of the war then that's what he should have done. A tense, dramatic story could have come out of that. The search for the eponymous Widow Killer would have led to a good story by itself if it wasn't derailed by the main characters losing focus halfway through. There were two good story ideas but instead they got mashed together into an uncomfortable mix.

Tropic of Cancer is still interesting. The writing style is meandering and loopy but I like that. The main character is disagreeable and very immature but he's stopped going on and on about "cunts" and started talking about more interesting things. Losing his job, mooching off the friends he cultivates for the express purpose of a free ride, exploring the city, going out to eat. It's weird. I don't often come across a book I can appreciate even when I think the main character is utterly obnoxious. He reminds me of something the Nostalgia Critic said about Bella Swan in his Bum review of Twilight. "I think I'm tortured but I'm just pretentious." That's Henry. Oh, and for those who are curious because this book is known for it's explicit sex scenes? (I certainly was.) There really aren't any. There is talk about sex in an almost self-conscious 'I'm breaking the rules kind of way' but no real "scenes". When he does talk about it his descriptions are mechanical, focused on just hammering it home and it gives the impression that he must have been a crap lover. When he talks about what a woman wants there is only mention of her desire for 'that package of love shuttling between her thighs.' I'm paraphrasing a bit but that euphemism is his. At least he hasn't used the word wand, I suppose.

If Henry Miller weren't dead already I'd hunt him down to punch him in the mouth

I did my first bit of cataloging today. We haven't ordered any books yet, no where to put them, but they have extras to give the still being born library. The walls were knocked down today, everyone is getting displaced. People are office-less, wandering, sharing the computers in the faculty office where I've been placed. I listened to a student cry about her grade today; I just wanted to give her a hug. The fridge was moved across the street and there was a wheelchair and handicap toilet in the hallway. I think this will be the norm for a bit, though no longer than necessary with the director in charge. She knows what she wants and how to get it. For now I'll work at all the little various things that need doing and than, I'm sure, discover all the things I should have done. When things are less hectic I'll need some feedback on the books I've chosen. I think they look nice and I know they're pretty good but I don't know if they're great. I'll get better with practice.

One thing that struck me is the sort of images I'm coming across. I was looking for a free medical videos website and came across one that seemed likely. First page has a selection of stills from the archive that you can watch and one was a how-to for inserting a catheter into a man. Right smack in the middle of the page, hand gripping the goody and I hit the back button real quick while making sure no one was looking. Then I realized that they practice this stuff on dummies and there's no need for a NSFW tag. It is for work.

I've dug out Taylor's Introduction to Cataloging and Classification to take to work tomorrow so I can look up specific points about AARC2r. There is much tedious and anal work to be done.

I finished Six Geese A-Slaying. It was eh. It was bland and mainly inoffensive. Those damn city dwellers with their snootiness and their inability to deal with weather. Why, if they had weather like rural folk have weather, nothing would ever get done. They'd spend all day on the internet writing letters to the editor about how they can't be expected to work under such conditions and basically diva-ing up the place. Because everyone knows how big city Washington DC is. Drive ten minutes and you're out the other side dodging deer. And geese.

Henry Miller. Oh Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer was quite revolutionary for its time, (mainly because of the sex), but now you can find more raunchy stuff for free with a simple Google search. Granted, you still don't find this sort of stuff in most printed matter, but it just doesn't have the same illicit feel. Back in 1934 you could get in big trouble for having something like that sent to you through the mail. (The guy who was basically in charge of America's morals was Anthony Comstock, who was batshit. Wikipedia him.) So the sex is there but the shock value that made it such a "thing" in the '30s and '40s is gone. What you're left with is wonderful, brilliant prose wrapped around a disgusting little turd of a man who thinks he's too clever for this world. Let's see, what have I written about it in my notes.

Cynic of the more annoying sort. Enjoys portraying everything as filthy and then wallowing in it. Smug, believes he sees more than most people and feels clever about it. Starts off the book by telling us about the "cunts" he's fucked and how big his dick is, if that gives you an idea. Declares he no longer has a need for societal norms, how they hold him back and mean nothing, like he's practicing the defense for his own rape trial. Inwardly mocks all his "friends" who actually work while he sponges off them.

He talks about needing to do anything to survive, like he's been done a great wrong and is just barely getting by, but refuses to work which just makes him seem silly. Actually, his entire attitude and the way he and his "friends" interact puts me more in mind of a bunch of teenagers.

Oh, and he's a misogynistic, racist pig. All women are "cunts". There are two subspecies, the slut and the whore. That's it. Of course, he has great disdain for all people not himself but his supreme contempt is saved for the ladies. Seriously, I'll usually let this slide if it's one character that's a jackass but all the men in this book talk the same way. It's a very heavy layer of I want to stomp his head in, yes. Overall he shows a very dim understanding of people.

However, the book is interesting. I just have to grit my teeth and try not to laugh at the parts that are on the emotional level of a thirteen year old.

I like the book, I'm just not wild about the author.

Watched Fritz Lang's M, a German film from 1931 . Damn that's a good movie. This was one of the first modern movies. Peter Lorre plays a child murderer who's actions have started a city wide manhunt, creating terror, suspicion and paranoia among the populace. The police have the problem that any serial killer creates; he strikes at random and people don't notice him. Eventually the criminal syndicate, angry at the increased surveillance disrupting their business, decides to catch the murderer themselves. The whole thing is well-paced and at times very tense. Lorre gives a riveting speech at the end about his compulsion. I seriously recommend this movie.

In a shocking turn of events somebody wants to employ me

So I've been offered the librarian job. The terms will be sent to me next week for my approval and I'm totally terrified. I'm a beta person at heart and while perfectly capable of assuming an alpha role I'd rather not do it my first professional job. However, the project is exciting and much closer to home. I need to come up with a budget and talk to other librarians, find someone to mentor me.

I'm reading Body Count by P.D. Martin, an entirely forgettable detective story featuring an Australian woman working for the FBI in Washington, DC. She has psychic visions and she and her friend Sam and her new FBI boyfriend Josh are trying to find the DC Slasher. The writing is competent, the author did her research on criminal profiling and forensics, the plot generally moves forward, and the characters are at least somewhat engaging. She lays everything to do with the subject of profiling out as it comes up in informative paragraphs without being distracting. There is nothing very challenging or inventive (she does all right on the killer though). This is light reading at its best (as far as rape, torture, and killing go anyway). Also, I totally know who the killer is. The clues are not particularly subtle, unless they're a misdirect. If I'm wrong I'll be pleasantly surprised. If I'm right I'll be smug.

I'm also reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I love history and he has created an engaging character to bring this story of Augustus, Livia and their pawns, family, pawns to life. Livia is a manipulative, cunning, mean-spirited, ambitious woman and Augustus is her perfect puppet. I've tried to create a crib sheet to keep track of the Claudian and Julian families but the lines are all over the place. Graves does a pretty good job of keeping everyone and their story lines separate though. Each chapter sets out sets out an intrigue or theme based around Claudius and his kin so that it occasionally jumps backward and forward in time a little so that other family members stories can catch up. I'm going to take my time with this one.

I watched Naked Lunch. Ohhh well. What to say. It is obviously not the book. That's not really possible; the characters would blend one into the other and half the screen time would be nothing but guys have sex. I mean, a lot of people would watch it of course but then it wouldn't have Ian Holm in it and I think we can mainly agree that that would be a shame.

It combines the Interzone country (a fictional place nowhere they've set in Northern Africa filled with drug cabals, agents, and bugs posing as typewriters (that last part wasn't in the book)) with parts of Burroughs' own life, such as the accidental shooting of his wife and the writing of Naked Lunch. His hallucinations seem to mesh well with reality anyway, allowing him to wander through his time in Interzone acting as an agent writing reports and his book. He also gives monologues consisting of passages from the novel. He gains a pretty boy lover named KiKi and there are even more bugs and parrots and the 'black meat'. Then it possibly starts all over again but I'm not sure.

Honestly I think this movie is for people who've read the book and know something about the author. Though if it makes even less sense maybe it's more intriguing? It was good. I'm rambling and tired.