Crazy Lawsuit Game

J and I watched Blindness over the previous two nights. It is based upon the book by 1998 Nobel Prize winner in literature Jose Saramago called "Blindness". The premise is a city (filmed in lovely Montevideo, Uruguay but unnamed in the book) is stricken by a plague of white blindness. The first people are quarantined to an older unused hospital. It goes from scary to depths of humanity pretty quickly. Most everyone is blind except for the doctor's wife (played by the always great Julianne Moore aka Maude from The Big Lebowski) who must be the sole eye witness to the depravity and vile sanitary conditions. A group of people (maybe criminals) take over one ward and take all the food and extort the other people. They eventually figure out that the soldiers at the gate are gone and they can leave and see what happened to the city. The small band of main characters make their way to the doctor's house and pick up a cute dog on the way. Their blindness eventually goes away and supposedly life returns to normal.

Definitely not for kids, not too much language, some female breasts and lots of asses. The one complaint I have is the removal of one of my favorite scenes from the book. Julianne's character finds a staircase at the back of a virtually empty grocery store which leads to a locked door where they keep the extra food. Since everyone is blind, they did not see the key hanging on a nearby hook. Doc's wife goes down, feels around, finds some matches, grabs some food, leaves and FORGETS TO LOCK THE DOOR! She comes back a few days later and the blind people have found the cache of lovely food, created a stampede and she returns to find the place on fire and basically hell on earth. Doh! Maybe next time she'll remember to lock the best place to find unspoiled food in the city that only she knows about.

The movie leaves that part out presumably because it didn't add much to the story, but I liked that part of the book. Even though she can see doesn't mean she catches everything.

I've always wanted to try a blind day or at least a blind hour or so. I think I'll do that once I'm done writing.

Labels: book, inhuman, J, movie, review

Inching closer and closer to the thousand post mark.

Excellent guess! Why yes I am writing and working on a Saturday! Guess what? I'll be doing much the same tomorrow! After a mildly writing summer, I can feel the crunch of that very early Dec. defense deadline and throw Thanksgiving in, and that's even less time to schedule meetings and defenses. Because trust me, the next two-three months are going to fly by and if I don't stay on top of everything, it'll be next May and a solid 8 years in grad school Yikes! 7.5 is plenty for me and waaaaay more than enough for J. (Not that it would be the end of the world, but I would much rather get it out of the way before ChrismaHannuKwaazika)

In the background is one of the many college footballs that will be dominating TVs from now till January. It is no secret that I love college football. The athletes aren't paid (much), the fans are crazy and mostly drunk, the coaches are ballsy and it's why universities exist. (You didn't think it was for academics did you? We bring in a few million in grant money but athletics bring in the big money.)

Yes there is big talk about Clemson winning the ACC, but if they win the ACC and then graduate a wonderful, well-spoken, well-written, mustachioed chemistry PhD? All the better! The Clemson Tigers' first challenge is against the Alabama Crimson Tide (Roll Tide Roll, and don't ask me what a crimson tide is, yes I know I'm from Alabama but I've never been able to figure it out) at the Georgia Dome tonight at 8 pm Eastern.

I won't have as much time this semester, but I expect to make a few of the Clemson Tiger Men's soccer team home games. (I will not be tailgating for football games until I'm done writing; besides, it's too damn hot to drink outside in Sept. anyway!) Their first official home game is on Monday, Sept. 1st against Georgia Southern, I think. That is also the day I give group meeting (which I'm also working on this weekend) and it's also the day I turn 29! Holy crap! I'll repeat that:

MY 29TH BIRTHDAY IS ON MONDAY SEPTEMBER 1ST! Woohoo! Of course the university is open on Labor Day, so I'll be working for most of it while J sleeps at home.

Also, my 4th blogiversary went by unnoticed by everyone including me on July 13th.

In other blog news, I purchased a copy (via Amazon) of both Bouncer Rob's book, of Standing on the Box, and The Waiter's book, of Waiter Rant. I haven't read either one yet, but I will after I'm done writing and gradamating.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday and cheer for the Clemson Tigers tonight at 8 Eastern, 7 Central, 6 Mountain and 5 Pacific!

Labels: book, Clemson, football, soccer, weekend, writing

I just finished reading #10 Bloodworld by Laurence M. Janifer from the Top 10 Most Obscure but Superb Science Fiction Novels from List Universe. We'll get to that in a second but first a story.

It's an idyllic morning in the valley. A fresh snowfall has left the surrounding mountains and valley village bathed in a quiet white blanket. Vlad asks if I know my way around my guns. Of course I do, I mutter and then explain the safety and where to insert the bullets and we shoot through a clip or two. Bah, I forgot to pack extra ammo! My house sits down in the valley about 200 feet down from where we are now. Be right back. Once in my house (which is identical to the one we lived in here) I get the bullets and start to make my way back when I get a bad feeling. Something's wrong. The lights are off and I slowly creep my way around then windows, then I see it. A massive grey wolf. Shit. It hasn't caught my scent so I follow it as it circles the house. It comes to the back where screen covers the upper half of the door. He could tear through that in a heartbeat, I think to myself. I haven't had time to reload the clips so my guns are worthless. The wolf stands up on its hindlegs, peering and sniffing through the screen door. Aaaaaaaah! I shriek hoping to scare it away so it never comes back. My scream momentarily startles the wolf and I beat it in the head with a hammer. Nothing gruesome. It's like I'm beating the animatronic wolf, The Nothing, from the Never Ending Story.

Then I switch dreams to something I can't remember.

That scream woke me up. This morning I found out it woke J up too. I don't usually talk or scream in my dreams but I guess I really wanted that wolf gone. Also only in dreams do I condone the killing of wolves by beating them. Feel free to beat all the animatronic things you want in real life. The theme park might not like it though.

So Bloodworld. It's told from the protagonist's viewpoint as he's relaying the story to inhabitants of another planet (presumably ours or one similar) about how his home world was destroyed and his customs. I suppose in 1967 it was shocking but not so much by today's standard and he spends entirely too much time convincing us that it's okay where he comes from. Gah! I believe you already, stop interrupting the story! Basically there are 2 classes of people, Lords and Ladies, and the Bound men and women. The Lords and Ladies are very polite and refined and rule their world sanely. Apparently they can only do this by ordering around the Bound and occasionally torturing them. Yeah. At one point, Jo, the main guy, gets pissed at his mom so he sets off to one of their "remand houses", goes through the formal commands, selects a Bound girl who kind of resembles her and wants "Style B" (there is a Style A but people are shocked when it's asked for so it must be really messed up), then is led to an empty metal room which contains the Bound girl who is tied up, a fire with a bucket full of tools with insulated handles over it, and a chair. He then proceeds to brand the Bound girl and then explains to the Doctors "oh you sane men" about how their medicines are advanced and they are able to heal the Bound very quickly. They take joy in the pain of the Bound. That's a few chapters in, so no big spoilers.

*Spoiler alert* Don't scroll down if you plan to read Bloodworld*









He then falls in love with Elaine, his favorite Bound girl who he never tortured, and devises a way for them to be together but can't really come up with anything, nor does it sound like he tried. There are 2 murders on their city streets, then 2 more, which is unheard of in their Lord and Lady polite society, so a bunch of his friends decide they can do a better job of keeping the city safe than the current Council, they stage a coup, it doesn't work and are banned from the city, then they burn down the city and pretty much end their entire civilization.

I guess the message is if you beat someone enough, you lose the spark and then have to beat them more and beat different important people. I don't know. I'm just glad I can move on to the next one. The List Universe recommends it to Gene Wolfe fans and according to this Wikipedia quote:

Wolfe frequently creates an unreliable narrator to tell his stories. According to Wolfe, "Real people really are unreliable narrators all the time, even if they try to be reliable narrators."[2] Sometimes this is a person who is simply naïve (Pandora by Holly Hollander, The Knight), or is not particularly intelligent (There Are Doors) or is not always truthful (The Book of the New Sun), or is suffering from serious illness (Latro in Soldier of the Mist, who forgets everything within 24 hours).

So maybe that's true if they like less than perfect narrators.

Labels: book, dream

Homer Simpson to his son Bart in the Simpsons episode where Lisa starts ballet under Marge's pressure and realizes that cigarettes are what keep ballerinas slim and attentive. That may or may not be true. Homer's Operation Crazy Plan involved a cigarette stealing racoon.

Congrats to Ferrari on a 1-2 sweep during qualifying and the race. Kimi Raikkonnen took pole with Felipe a hair off in 2nd and the race finished with those positions juxtaposed. Kimi's bad luck struck again with a broken exhaust pipe but he was able to hang on for some much needed points. HUGE congrats to Jarno Trulli and Toyota for coming in 3rd against many odds. Molto bene Jarno!

I'm halfway through the NASCAR race but so far Brian Vickers is holding on at 23rd or so and poor AJ Allmendinger is 2 laps down because he couldn't get his car started after a pit stop so his pit crew had to push start him in the length of 3 pit stalls, not an easy proposition. The race coverage is 3.5 hours and I'm not used to that much racing with F1's 2 hour time limit. More on that later.

Cynical Chris shared with us a list of the Top 10 Obscure but Superb Science Fiction Novels. Some of them are available used on Amazon but being a poor grad student, I'll wait until later in life to purchase these, so I've been trusting Clemson's InterLibrary Loan to track them down for me. Don't bother asking them to find them for you unless you're a Clemson faculty/staff/student. But I'm sure your local library has a similar program!

I skipped down the list a bit and started with #2, William Tenn's "Of Men and Monsters". The book opens with the statement that all of Mankind contains 128 people. Whoa. That's bleak. Then we find out that we live in caves in the wall of a structure that houses horrible grey Monsters. We steal food from the Monsters to survive and hope to one day strike them down and take Earth back. An expedition goes out and all hell breaks loose. Our protagonist is forced to seek out others on his own. It reminded me of the ending scene from Men in Black where our galaxy is in a marble and a monster has a whole bag of marbles. I won't give away the ending but it's good.

Then I read #1 Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. This one is very exciting with seat of your pants action and suspense around every corner. We're introduced to the idea by reading about 3 separate events. #1 involves a single Roumanian (yes I spelled that right) who looked up in the sky and yelled "blue flames!" occasionally and a crowd formed which became a mob and the army was brought in to check out what was in the skies. #2 is a story about 2 convicts who escaped and were caught 14 hours later after being chased by a police force 27,000 strong. #3 centers around an automobile accident that killed 4 but not before one occupant related a story of a wasp getting into the car, distracting the driver and causing the accident. Our hero is recruited to be a wasp on a Sirian planet, who are currently battling the Terrans. His activities, which can only be considered terrorist, have an amazing and profound effect on the plant and the war overall. The Kaitempi, Sirian secret police, are around every bend and I think we're on narrow escape 7 or 8 by now. I only have 10 pages left but it has been a thrilling incredible ride. Plus the planet he has infiltrated is inhabited by bow legged purple people. His phase one propaganda stickers with hydrofluoric acid, HF, on them so they etch the glass when someone tries to remove the stickers with water, has been my favorite terrorist activity so far. His disguises and identities are imaginative and varied also.

I would highly recommend these 2 books and I'll go out on a limb and go ahead and recommend the whole list too. I'm thinking Bloodworld might be next.

Labels: book, Cynical Chris, F1, The Simpsons

That's the current topic of discussion at NewTalk.org which "presents focused discussions by experts on the most important domestic topics shaping American society today." Just take a look at who they have participating in this discussion. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC, Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta (who sounds incredibly smart and ambitious so good on you ATL for electing her), David Walker, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and many others.

Philip Howard is the moderator and is the founder and chair of Common Good, whose goal is to bring common sense back into America. He proposes to do this by reforming the legal system and restoring our sense of personal responsibility. I now plan to read his book "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America".

Please, join in the discussion, make your voice heard, and together we can fix America's government!

Labels: bad government, book, politics

Futurama is back on the air! Hooray! Of course they released the "new" episodes on DVD a few months ago but it was still nice seeing them on TV.

We watched "I Am Legend" starring Will Smith, a german shepherd, and lots of computer animation. There are some plot holes and unexplained phenomena like where did he find a pristine 2008 Shelby GT 500 Mustang and gas 3 years after most of humanity vanished? But other than that it was a good movie, very suspenseful with some scary moments. It really made me want to read the book. I'll pick it up after I'm through with my Mark Twain short story collection. I also realized that I don't have Bob Marley's "Love is my religion" song on my computer, which is a shame.

I was talking to a friend and he said someone stole all his Bob Marley CDs, which is wrong on so many levels. That's like a Gandhi supporter going on a "Eat All The Time" strike, a non-hunger strike, if you will.

Writing is slowly coming along. I need to get the papers I'm working on off the computer and into the hands of my advisor. It's too late for just talking about results and data; I need some tangible evidence that is good enough to publish. I have recruited J to help motivate me. It will work and maybe even bring us closer together.

I'll get the films from the Banff Film Festival up tomorrow. I left my notes at home. I will be climbing today after lab and maybe even do some cardio.

Labels: book, movie, writing

Yup, I'm still at work. 1/4 of our grad students are here today so I'm rocking out by my 25% self. I actually don't mind work by myself. I can play whatever I want on the radio. It's "quiet". (The drone of the hoods is always there) Um, I guess that's it. J has threatened me with violence if I go home early today. Since she has to work a full day, I do as well. I did sleep in a bit though (8 am) and didn't make it out of the house until 9:45ish what with showering, playing with the cats, scooping their litter boxes and washing the dishes. Tonight we'll be packing and cleaning the house. J loves coming home to a clean house and it's hard to argue with. Nothing is worse after a long road trip than coming home and cleaning for an hour or two to get the house liveable again.

I snagged the department laptop, and since the office is closed next week, it's mine for almost 2 weeks! Hooray! Yes, we might be getting J a laptop for Christmas, but this will keep us typing until then. Laptops are just easier and more convenient for traveling, obviously. In fact I had(have) a bad habit of pointing out or stating the obvious and therefore garnered the nickname of Captain Obvious. That was in high school if memory serves.

I finished Hans Jurgen Massaquoi's book, Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany. For some reason I expected a first hand account of the Holocaust, but instead was greeted with a much larger story about Hans and how he was raised in Germany, watched it slowly morph into Nazi Germany, surviving WWII, surviving the horrible food shortages after WWII and then following him on his harrowing adventures across the globe, from Germany to Liberia to Nigeria to the USA and eventually back to Germany. I recall one passage from the book where a co-worker at a factory in the States was warning him about the Jews and that Hitler had the right idea. Needless to say it completely shocked Hans, who barely escaped Nazi Germany alive, and destroyed his idyllic image of America being the land of the free and equality. He's a big proponent of accepting and learning about other cultures because if you don't, it really isn't much of a stretch to go from "those damn Jews" to the Holocaust. It only took Germany 12 years.

I don't really know why I expected a first hand account of the Holocaust. He mentions seeing trucks full of emaciated people and then later, those same trucks completely empty. He also shared a story of him taking a stroll toward a mountain whose name escapes me and being stopped at the gate. But really, if you were committing genocide would you let some teenager stroll through your operation? Yeah, neither would Hitler.

A big thanks to Hans Jurgen Massaquoi for sharing his stories and maybe one day I'll return the favor.

Hans is married and has 2 sons, a doctor and a lawyer.

Labels: book, Germany, review

- Amy Wang, Futurama

I had a good meeting with the boss, and that coupled with me giving him my first chapter next week should propel me well into the new semester and get me the hell out of here by May. J scared the shit out of me yesterday when she mentioned that I needed to find a job and somewhere for our family to live in the coming year. I've been saying the job search starts in December for so long I had quite forgotten that it was, in fact, December.

So where to look? We had a speaker last week from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. It was a very good talk and I was made aware of the existence of that particular Max Planck Institute. I don't believe I have yet regaled you with stories from Seth's EuroTrip '99 but I worked at a different Max Planck Institute during that summer. Gorgeous facilities and a nearly limitless budget courtesy of the German government, it's THE place to do research in Germany if not all of Western Europe. So obviously I will be applying there. Hopefully my particular areas of research will catch the eye of the advisor I would like to work for over there. Then we would just have to start learning German and looking into what it would take for us to take the cats with us.

Back on this side of the pond, I'll probably look around Orlando, Birmingham, the Pacific Northwest and maybe even the Northeast some too. We have ties to the first two cities and the other areas, neither one of us have lived there before and it would be an exciting adventure. Sorry Midwest, we're not really considering you, well, Colorado is on the list and maybe Montana but those aren't really Midwestern states. Of course, you will be the first to know when something goes down and I still see myself blogging in the future, so no worries there.

Everyone knows that 3rd world countries aren't the greatest. But J found a particular aspect of that knowledge particularly troubling recently. J just assumed that mail would arrive to any part of the world expeditiously but little did she know, that is not always the case. Once while living in the Dominican Republic, our family was astounded when we received a letter through the Dominican Postal Service from a friend in NYC that arrived in 3 days time. Un-freakin'-believable. Normally we didn't rely on the local postal service at all, instead paying for a mail service based out of Ft. Lauderdale that flew mail to a couple different places in the Caribbean.

We asked my parents if we could send them some Christmas presents through the mail and my father informed us that it usually takes 2 weeks to 3 months and that they might have to pay some taxes to customs to actually receive it. They suggested donating a toy to Toys for Tots, or keeping them when they come back in May for my graduation.

I'll start Seth's EuroTrip saga in the next few days. It'll be nice to write for pleasure instead of science writing for work. Hitler just invaded Poland in "Destined to Witness."

Labels: book, Europe, J, job search

It saddens me to learn that a majority of Americans don't read books anymore. They occasionally read magazines and newspapers but books even less frequently.

Currently I'm reading Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans Jurgen Massaquoi. It was brought to my attention by Cynical Chris. I'm only 80 pages in or so but I'm really looking forward to this book. First I like hearing about historical events from different perspectives and according to Hans, there weren't many black people in 1930s Germany, which by his account helped him survive the Holocaust, which targeted not only Jews but all "non-Aryans". Second I don't have many black friends and the ones I do have didn't grow up in Nazi Germany and then travel to Africa and then to the States. Hans is the grandson of the first Liberian ambassador to Germany after WWI and his mother was a German nurse who opted to stay in Deutschland when Hans' father and grandfather fled to Liberia during the run-up to the Holocaust.

And to you wacko nutjob Holocaust deniers, yes, it's another first hand account of the Holocaust. To the wacko nutjob white supremacist Holocaust deniers, a first hand account of the Holocaust by a black man, so suck it.

Turn off the TV every once in a while. Read a book. Take a walk outside. Play cards or a board game with your family and/or friends.

Writing my dissertation is still a daunting task.

Labels: book, reading