My Ten Favorite Living Novelists

Not necessarily in order, although Rucker probably is at the top, since I've read all of his published novels to date, as well as most of his non-fiction:

1. Rudy Rucker

2. Neil Gaiman

3. Christopher Moore

4. Andrew Greeley

5. Neal Stephenson

6. William Gibson

7. Joe R. Lansdale

8. Michael Moorcock

9. Mike Carey

10. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Runners-up: Elmore Leonard (Maximum Bob), Dave Barry (Big Trouble), Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow), Susan Howatch (Church of England novels), Terry Pratchett (Discworld novels), and Anne Rice.

My intention over the next little bit is to write a series of posts describing what I like about each of the ten authors on the list. If I actually make it through this "series" I might try it with "My Ten Favorite Living-Challenged Novelists."

So, who do you enjoy reading? Have you read any of the above? Do you like 'em, loathe 'em, don't care enough to even complain? ;-)

Edit, January 7, 2011: Yeah, no follow-up posts for this little "series." I take this "slacker" title way too seriously...

More Evidence of the True Power

Last year I tapped a building-shaped something with my passenger side mirror. In my defense, it was winter and there was ice involved. The result was that my mirror was hanging limp from the side of my car with only the wires controlling its motor connecting it to my beloved Taurus.

I took the injured car to the mechanic, who looked up the replacement cost for a mirror and gave me a number that amounts to, well, more than I could afford at that moment (or, let's be honest, any moment). Fortunately, there was another customer in the shop at the same time, and he said the same thing happened to his brother a few years back. His brother just epoxied the mirror back on, cost next to nothing. My mechanic agreed to try that and it worked (and was a much less expensive fix). All was good.

Until yesterday, when the epoxy finally stopped epoxying. Of course this had to happen while I was driving up the interstate from a successful visit to my local comic book shop (it was Wednesday, after all). So, there's my mirror flopping along at sixty-five miles per hour and me the cheap jerk who can drop money on comics but won't properly fix his car.

When I get back to town I had a choice: leave the mirror alone until I can get to the mechanic or do something. Of course, there's only one something I can do at that hour, and proud, if somewhat awkward, child of Southern Illinois that I am, I do it: duct tape.

Duct tape, as we all know, is almost magical in its ability to be sticky. Let me illustrate. Last night we had a HUGE storm (I was tempted to capitalize "storm" as well, but some restraint is in order. It's not like Katrina resurrected and hoofed it several hundred miles inland.) Anyway, lots of wind and rain. And this morning... my mirror's still in place. The three strips of duct tape held. I was so proud of those little paragons of adhesive strength that I would've shed a tear if not for the years of anti-depressants that, quite frankly, have pretty much dried up my tear ducts for life. Duct tape is, as we all know, freakin' amazing! (and yes, I will get my mirror fixed properly... someday).

Martin Gardner: RIP

I came back to work after being out sick for a couple of days to find the news that Martin Gardner had died on May 22, at the age of 95. There are plenty of tributes and remembrances online by those who knew him personally as well as by those who only knew him through his amazing writings. This is yet another tribute...

Martin Garnder inspired me, turned me on to new ideas, entertained me, and gave me hope. His death changes none of that. The heavens are still there to wonder at even after a star burns out. But it is not wrong to mourn its passing.

The first book of Mr. Gardner's I read was Relativity for the Million. It was the first book on relativity I ever read, and it opened my eyes to the weirdness of the universe. Like many, I delighted in his columns in Scientific American (even when I couldn't always solve his puzzles!) His Annotated Alice and Annotated Hunting of the Snark deepened my enjoyment of my favorite "children's" author. The Flight of Peter Fromm hit very close to home for a seminary graduate and recreational math and logic guy who sometimes sways deep into the doubt-o-meter. The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener was a delight, as was, well, just about everything I've ever read by Mr. Gardner.

As someone with no formal training in math, Martin Gardner's writings have been one of my primary teachers (my other teachers include Raymond Smullyan and Rudy Rucker, both of whom, like Mr. Gardner, embody a deep sense of the whimsical as well as a profound understanding of mathematics). I will continue to learn from Martin Gardner throughout the rest of my life, because that is the kind of writer he was. And generations to follow will learn from him as well. His star may have burned out, but he was light years ahead of most of us, and it will take years before his light stops shining down on this world.

Nemo & Cthulhu: A Folk Tale

folk tales are often a bit earthy (read "raw and vulgar"), and this one is no exception. it might be offensive to some, but it is what it is

Then there was the time when Little Nemo saved Ol' Cthulhu's life. That was back 'round the time when Mister Curry was doin' them fish stick commercials on account of his ol' lady havin' kicked him outta 'Lantis for steppin' out with Miss Ariel. Lordy, if that weren't a terrible row! I 'spect that Mister Curry would still be up there on the dryside selling his kin as monkeyfood if them aliens hadn't showed up, making claims to 'Lantis and killing the merfolk. 'Course, as well you know, Mister Curry came back and kicked them ETs back into space. Naturally after such heroics, all was forgiven.

But it was 'round that time, maybe a couple years right after, that Ol' Cthulhu had woken up from one of those long naps he's so famous for and went swimmin' towards the surface, just to have a look-see as to what might had changed while he was sleepin'. I reckon it had been a couple hundred years or so since he had last been to the surface, seems I remember him sinking some English boats back when the Empire was still all the rage (ol' Cthulhu always had a soft spot for the French). Oh, maybe it had only been a hundred years since he last woke up: he was definitely at Poseidon's funeral, and that was back in the 19th century (or was it the 20th?)

Anyways, Ol' Cthulhu was a swimmin' around, frolickin' in the waves. You wouldn't know it to look at him, but Old Tentacle Head is a playful little Elder God. You probably don't know that he invented the beach ball and water polo and wrote the original version of "The Hokey Pokey." He also invented the first knock-knock joke: Knock-knock, who's there?, Cthul, Cthul who?, Hey, that's me! (I didn't say it was a very good one, just the first one.)

So, he was all frolickin' with some dolphins (after the French, the dolphins are his second favorite food to play with) when he beheld a strange metal monstrocity the likes of which he hadn't ever seen. Back in them days, the monkeypeople up on the dryside would build giant drills to pull oil out from underneath the ocean. We heard they also pulled it out from underneath the dryside. Hastur only knows what they needed all that oil for! Occasionally they'd dump a bunch of it into the ocean waters, which would get Mister Curry angry something awful.

Somehow or the other, Ol' Cthulhu, while investigating this weird mechanical device, got his tentacles all tangled up in the drill. Not only did this tie him to the machine, but in the resulting struggle, oil started to leak, covering Ol' Cthulhu from tentacle to toe. The dolphins, bein' a bit smarter than an Elder God, high tailed it away from the oil spill, but Ol' Cthulhu didn't have that luxury, on account of his bein' stuck and all.

You'd think an Elder God would be strong enough to pull himself free of drysider machines, but apparently Ol' Cthulhu has that same weakness to cold iron that other transdimensional beings have when manifest in the flesh on this plane of existence. So, Ol' Cthulhu was stuck and slimed something fierce. After a few hours, he was a bit fearing that he might be stuck like that forever. I dare spec'late that he was wishing he was back home in R'lyeh, snuggled in his bed and dreamin' his dark and twisty dreams.

Who should come along at this time but that crazy clownfish Little Nemo. Now, I've heard tell that the drysiders have told some children's stories about Little Nemo. I have to laugh, 'cause everyone knows any story involving Little Nemo ain't fit for children. "The Trickster of the Seven Seas" is what they call Little Nemo. It was thanks to him that Mister Curry lost his hand ('course, he was Emperor Curry then, but that's another story). Little Nemo also used to make drysider planes and boats disappear in an area 'round the island of Bermuda. He ended up selling most of 'em to the Grays who would sometimes visit 'Lantis on their trips to Earth (he also sold the crews to the Grays; Grays just love probing drysiders). Most scandalously, Little Nemo made the first mermaid just so's he could ogle naked drysider women without having to actually go dryside.

So, anyways, there's Little Nemo, coming to check out the oil spill, hoping for a good laugh I'd guess, and what should he find but Ol' Cthulhu himself, black with oil and tangled up in the drill. Little Nemo reckoned he had hit the motherlode! You gotta realize just how ridiculous Ol' Cthulhu looked, sitting on the ocean floor surrounded by oil, covered in oil, with all his tentacles twisted 'round the drill and knotted a dozen or more times over. The Trickster of the Seven Seas began laughing. Some folk say fish can't laugh, but I'm hear to tell you they can, and at that moment, Little Nemo laughed harder and louder and longer than any fish ever had before (and quite likely since).

Ol' Cthulhu looked around to see the source of the laugh, probably wonderin' who dared mock The Great Old One himself. I reckon he wasn't too surprised to see it was Little Nemo. I ain't sayin' they was enemies or nothin', but it's well-known there weren't much love lost 'tween the two. Story goes that Ol' Cthulhu was originally offended by Little Nemo's bright colors, but I heard tell they had a fallin' out over a girl. Whatever the case, Little Nemo showing up was 'bout the worst thing that could be added to Ol' Cthulhu's misery.

I say "'bout" 'cause what happened was even worse. Drysiders musta found out their drill had stopped working and used some of their technomagic to discover what had happened, 'cause right then a half dozen or so of their submarines showed up and started firing torpedoes at ol' Cthulhu. Now you'd think firing through an oil spill would be tricky, and I s'pose it was, but the monkeypeople obviously knew what was caught in their drill, cause puncturing Tentaclehead full of holes was one of the ways to drive his manifestation off of this plane. 'Least for a spell. Ol' Cthulhu really didn't want to leave, and let's be honest, being machine gunned by torpedoes is not exactly painless. Really, he didn't have a choice. He turned to the still laughing Little Nemo and asked for help.

Now in all the history of the 'verses til then, there ain't never been a record of any Elder God askin' any lesser being for help. The famous (and hysterical) story of Ba'al being consumed by the cosmic roaches being a prime example of my point. So, here's Ol' Cthulhu embarrassed, tired, hurt, trapped, and more'n a little scared, and he asks a clownfish for help. It's a wonder the stars didn't fall right out of the sky.

Little Nemo fell instantly silent, mid-laugh and everything. His clever brain seizing on how unique this situation was and working hard and fast as to how to best turn this to his advantage.

Remember, Little Nemo had already figured out how to make drysider vehicles disappear, so it would be easy enough to save Ol' Cthulhu from the immediate danger. It would take a bit more work (and callin' in some favors from some local cephalopods) to get Tentaclehead freed, but Little Nemo could do it. Ol' Cthulhu had already figured all of that out. That's why he even bothered to ask for help at all. The clownfish had it worked out a second or two after the meek little "please help me" had escaped the Great Old One's mouth. The only question, of course, was price. Right then, the drysiders launched another volley of torpedoes. Ol' Cthulhu spoke quickly, "I swear by my own unholy name I'll pay whatever you ask, goods not services, just help me!"

Lordy, I woulda given a couple millennia off my life to have been there. The look of desperation in Ol' Cthulhu's eyes, the fear in his voice, the total lack of godliness... Never before and never since has The Great Old One himself been brought so low! Even today, Little Nemo would probably say it was the greatest moment of his life, and I dare say it was.

Of course he made the submarines vanish (got quite a bit for 'em from a family of Grays that just happened to be visiting from Betelgeuse). And he cashed in several favors with the local squids to untangle Ol' Cthulhu. Now, you might think the squids would love Ol' Tentaclehead, but seems there's always been a bit of resentment, since they are true cephalopods and Ol' Cthulhu is just wearin' a mask, so to speak.

Regardless, Little Nemo got Ol' Cthulhu free, and the Great Old One was all awkward, not really use to needin' to be grateful and such, but Little Nemo reminded him that it was strictly an economic deal and he expected no gratitude, just payment.

Now you may be wondering why you ain't heard this tale before, and the answer is simple. Ol' Cthulhu bought Little Nemo's silence with his OTHER testicle. Which is why I always chuckle a little when some darn fool speaks of "the children of Cthulhu" 'cause folks, it just ain't possible!

Blogging in Private, Like in the Old Days

Since I discovered wiki on a stick, most of my "blogging" has been done in the form of a "secret" journal (like I have any real secrets...) Blogging is still nice, and interacting with the memories of y'all's ghosts inhabiting the comments bring forth the warm fuzzies in my heart-shaped void. But I get the feeling that vanity blogging has seen its heyday. All the cool kids are facebook and twitter junkies. And like old man Leary, I'm a total conformist.

All that said, there will probably be less on here in days to come than the sparse posting of recent months. But unlike those other times, I won't delete or deactivate the blog this time. Just in case :-)

Arcadian Blues

Menthol blue lips, hair the color of static electricity, eyes of flaming mercury, and skin as pale as moonbeams. She was so fey that she made Tinkerbell look like a Wisconsin farm girl. I didn't know whether she was bringing me a case or a plea for charity. Regardless, I could tell she was bringing trouble, probably more trouble than I'd care to handle. Our eyes locked, and my heart broke. She pursed her lips and sighed. Before she could even utter a word, my heart broke a second time, and I knew that whatever her problem was, I'd die trying to make it right.

It took all my will to glance down at the enchant-o-meter on my desk. It read "Null", which made no sense, because I was obviously under some kind of glamour. I tapped it and the needle bounced a bit before settling back on "Null". I shook my head and decided to trust my instincts. Without looking up I said, "Kill the charm or leave. I'll work for any who can pay, but I won't be anybody's wind up toy."

"I'm sorry," her voice was like honeyed lightning, "but I don't know what you mean."

Denial. Always their first response. Next will come offense, anger, false remorse, and then a subtle re-application of the magic after the earnest promise that it's been removed. On the best of days, I don't have the stomach for that, and today had not even been in the neighborhood of the best of days. I opened my desk drawer and withdrew my Smith & Wesson, pointing it at her and being real careful not to make eye contact. "Scram. I've got work to do and no time for games. Even with pretty little elf girls. Go harass the police or something."

"The police can't help me. Please, Mr. Tyrrell, you're my only hope."

"Then it sucks to be you, sweetheart. Unless you can turn the mojo off, you need to walk out now." I flipped the safety off and hit the laser sight with a flourish. The pistol began to make a satisfyingly ominous hum. "'Cause in seven seconds, I'm pulling this trigger. Six. Five. Four. Three--"

The door closed behind her. Then my enchant-o-meter starts beeping like Merlin himself was here. I shook my head and pressed the reset button. The grandfather clock in the corner read nine thrity-five. This day was already too long, and my secretary wasn't even back from the coffee and donut run yet. Have I mentioned how much I hate Mondays?

Poor Lonely Blog

My poor blog is a twitter widow. Stupid twitter vampire, sucking all the minutes out of my so-called downtime. Someone, pass me a virtual clove of garlic. Or at least the URL for Twitheads Anonymous...

Because There Wasn't Enough Coolness in the World

http://www.myjones.com/limited/wizards

Christopher Moore: A Brief Appreciation

When I first read Practical Demonkeeping I was a seminary drop-out with a penchant for Lovecratian beasties and dark humor. The book resonated with me, to say the least. My second reading of the book was less than a week after I had finished it the first time. The last time I read it was when I was going through my divorce. There's a marriage falling apart in the book, and honestly, I wept while reading it that time. Everything Moore has written has been fun, funny, and strangely meaningful for me (well, I can't honestly say "everything." For some inexplicable reason, I haven't read Fluke yet).

Now we are moving towards the release of Bite Me which continues the story of the vampires begun in Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck. Moore's vampire protagonists are, in every way imaginable, cooler than Lestat, except in the area of actual coolness (where, frankly, Lestat is king, except, perhaps, as portrayed by Mr. Cruise). His books are not for children, at least for values of "not for children" that include "children shouldn't be exposed to scenes of cannibalism, sex, drug use, vulgar language, and demons." Maybe adults shouldn't be, either. But the residents of Pine Cove (as well as the other denizens of Chris Moore's imagination) are a likable, maybe even lovable, group of wacky and wonderful people. I almost feel like a Pine Cove citizen myself, at least while under the spell of the reading of his books. The nearest I've ever had to such literary comraderie are the patrons of Callahan's in Spider Robinson's books (which I was always tempted to read with an Irish coffee in hand, just to add to the atmosphere).

Not all of Mr. Moore's books are set in Pine Cove. The most recent book, Fool, is a Moorean twist on the Shakespeare's King Lear story. A bit of a temporal departure from the contemporary setting of most of Moore's novels, it is, nevertheless, an endearing bit of saucy Shakespearean pastiche (and recently out in paperback for those of who only, um, thriftily read a library copy of the hardcover).

Fool is not the only one of his books set in a different time period. Lamb, of course, sits firmly at the turn of the calendar, being the tale of Christ as told by his childhood pal Biff. While potentially offensive, the book takes seriously that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. There is no denigrating his deity nor his humanity. There are bits that are completely made up, but it's a novel, one written by an acknowledged master of humor and weirdness. If you want to be really offended, dig up a copy of Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man.

So, April 1... Bite Me. Crossing fingers for fast access to the library's copy.

Crossovers Are Dreamy

"So, what do you know about vampires?"

She glanced up from her paperwork to see her partner's earnest face. He was serious. "They're featured in a number of bad novels and worse movies, strangely popular these days with prepubescent girls."

He smiled, "I mean real vampires."

Scully glared at her partner. "Mulder, there are no vampires. Historically, there are anecdotes of living humans drinking blood, or even bathing in it, in an effort to preserve youth or gain strength. In 1983, anthropologists from the University of Maryland documented a tribe of living, breathing blood drinkers on a small island off the coast of New Guinea. But real honest to God undead children of the night? That's too far out there, even for you."

Mulder walked through the doorway and slid into the chair across from Scully's desk. "Ever hear of a place called Sunnydale?"

"No. I'm guessing California, Arizona, or Florida?"

"California. A small town a couple hours from LA. They have vampires."

"And you would know this how?" Normally, Fox Mulder's obsessions were aliens and government conspiracies, usually at the same time. Paranormal, but hardly supernatural. This vampire thing seemed to be coming out of nowhere.

"Remember Dale Cooper?"

Scully's eyebrow raised slightly, "The Laura Palmer case, right?" Special Agent Dale Cooper was the only Bureau agent considered more "out there" than Fox Mulder. Scully had only met him once, and that was years ago before he had gone out to Washington state to work on a murder investigation. Like Mulder, Dale Cooper was an attractive man who gave no warning of his "eccentricity" until he opened his mouth. And then one wondered how he had made it so far in the Bureau. Some men are better seen and not heard.

Mulder nodded, "That's right. You remember when he got back from Twin Peaks?"

Scully shook her head, so Mulder continued. "He wasn't right in the head. It seems a demon had taken over his body."

"Demon? You mean he had a psychotic break?"

"C'mon, Scully, you're Catholic. Surely you believe in demons?"

"Not without evidence," but she supressed a shudder as she remembered her childhood friend, Regan MacNeil. She shook her head to clear the memory. Some things were best left in the past. "So, what happened to Special Agent Cooper?"

"Long story short, a mutual friend exorcised him."

"I can't imagine you being friends with a priest." Mulder might have been less skeptical than his partner, but he was also far less religious.

"Wasn't a priest. A guy I met while studying at Oxford, named John Constantine. Really interesting guy, you'd hate him."

"Another paranormal investigator like you and Cooper?"

Mulder's eyes twinkled, "No, Constantine's an actual wizard."

"Oh, so you met him playing Quidditch? Or maybe Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Mock me if you want, Dana, but John's the real deal. I saw stuff when I was with him that I still see in my nightmares."

"So, this Constantine exorcised Cooper. And what does all of this have to do with vampires and Sunnydale, California?"

"I'm getting to that. Once Dale was himself again, he resigned from the Bureau. Dropped off the face of the earth for the past few years. Until yesterday, when this arrived in the mail." He pulled a small digital voice recorder out of his jacket pocket. "Dale always kept a detailed audio diary of his cases and experiences. This recorder contains entries from the past six months up through last week. I haven't listened to all of them, but what I have heard is... amazing." He pressed a button and the recorder started speaking in the unmistakable voice of Dale Cooper.

"Dear Diane, last night I was able to observe the Slayer in action. Phenomenal. Grace and wit paired with a toughness and, well, power, the likes of which I have never seen before. She makes the Shaolin seem like awkward school boys trying to dance on a planet with excessive gravity. She staked four vampires in the space of two minutes and thirty-seven seconds. I must meet this young lady. Tomorrow I shall approach her mentor, he is called 'a Watcher.' The message I have finally recalled from my time trapped in the Red Room needs to reach the Slayer before the return of the First Evil, which, I feel deeply from the top of my head to the soles of my sensible shoes, will be soon."

Mulder pressed the button again and smiled at his partner.

"A recording from an ex-agent, a notoriously unstable ex-agent, is not proof of anything. And what is a 'slayer' anyway?"

"I don't know," Mulder's grin grew wider, "but I intend to find out."

A Minor Note of Geekery

While I have been a dabbler in Linux for a while (Slackware 3.3 on a huge stack of floppies, for those interested), I haven't had a Linux box connected to the Internet since dial-up days. Mostly because I haven't had Internet at home since then. Lately, I have come into possession of an old Dell Latitude D610, which sports built-in wireless (as, I understand from some of my younger friends, is the trend these days). Add Slackware (we're up to version 13 now) and wander into one of the countless free public wi-fi spots (yay MickeyD's!) and suddenly I'm back online outside of the office.

Concurrent with this happy development, my phone carrier forced a data plan on owners of Smart Phones. While I do know some who have argued with them and gotten the plan removed, my battle with customer service was less successful. I can always swap out to my old Nokia brick (about the dumbest phone around) which will let me drop the data plan, but Smart Phones are nice (my current one, perhaps, less so: suffice to say it is running an OS out of Redmond; actually, that's unfair. It's been a decent phone, despite its many critics).

My carrier (oh, why the anonymity: it's AT&T, ok?) is finally getting an Android phone: the Motorola Backflip. So, while not an Eris, it is a Linux phone, and I am due for an upgrade in November. So, maybe... At any rate, thanks to the forced increase in my bill, I now have Internet access wherever I have phone service. Blogging, RSS, web surfing, email, twitter, podcasts, YouTube videos, WorldCat searches, all whenever and wherever.

So this is what it feels like to live in the 21st century? Kinda cool.

A Summer Memory To Help Distract Me From The Long Winter

It was back in those too, too warm days during the summer of 1983, shortly before my sixteenth birthday, that I met her. Well, that ain't exactly so. I had a vague awareness of who she was. She came from a large Catholic family and had a brother a grade ahead of me and a sister a grade behind. She was three years my junior, in my little brother's class, and she lived next to the city cemetery, which is where we first spoke to each other that summer.

Me and my circle spent more than a little time in the cemetery. In part because we liked hanging out among the dead, in part because we were all a bit too weird for normal company, but mostly because it was one of the few places to hangout in a tiny little Midwestern town. The river ran along the small wilderness just north of the cemetery, and the deer trails and fallen trees were as much a part of our territory as the gravel roads between the tombstones. Sometimes we even hauled our books and dice and character sheets out to the old concrete table in the rarely mowed "nature study" area just outside the cemetery where we battled breeze and bugs to play AD&D under the canopy of trees.

Mostly, however, we just walked and talked. We discovered time travel and reincarnation and warp drive and the perfect government and the funniest joke and the best strategy for dealing with the Kauffman retrograde, all while wandering among the silent gravestones. We bemoaned the tiny redneck culture we had been born into and waxed eloquently about the futures our dreams dared to believe in. We were young and foolish and full of ourselves. We were geeky children who believed ourselves destined to be high fantasty romantic heroes arising from our humble births.

But that first day I ran into her, walking in the cemetery, I was alone. It wasn't terribly uncommon for any of us to go on long strolls alone. Some thoughts need to sit a spell in the cool, dark cellars of the mind before they are ready to serve. Given the year, I was most likely reflecting upon the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos and the unique role humanity plays in that struggle (like many, Neil's title "One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock" described my youth sadly perfectly). In those days, I favored Chaos over Law, but that is hardly the point of this memory.

She was in shorts and a tank top. A cute twelve-year-old with big eyes and an endearingly shy smile, as I learned when I said "hi" as we passed.

That was all, and we both went our own ways. And there was evening and morning, the first day.

The next day, as I was walking to the cemetery, my path took me past her house. This was my typical path into the cemetery, and I thought little of it when I saw her on her porch swing reading. Another "hi" as I waved and smiled, not even slowing down as I strode past the girl and through the gates into my kingdom.

When, five minutes later, I saw her approaching, I didn't think anything of it. If I had lived next door to a graveyard, I would have spent as much time as possible there. Just before we passed each other, she stopped and said "hi."

"Hi, again." I smiled. She smiled back, and my heart came alive.

We talked for a while, and I arrived home feeling a strange and wonderful happiness that lasted well into the night. And there was evening and morning, the second day.

Throughout that summer we would "happen" to meet in the cemetery, where we would talk for hours about life and music and our families and books and religion. We laughed and we teased and we listened to each other with all the intensity of the young, with all of the sincerity of nearly mystical communion. She was, in terms of secrets and trust and laughter and sharing, the closest friend I had ever known up til then (with all due respect to my friends, who were all good and true, this was... different, as I suspect most of them would understand). We never kissed, we never were a couple, it was never that kind of relationship. It was all purely and sweetly good, a magic moment in a time and place where one foot was always firmly planted in the realms of faerie.

And, naturally, it didn't last. The end of summer summoned us back to our regular lives, and that was good as well. It was a brief and delightful interlude in my life, one of many lights that linger in the twilight of my failing memories and dying heart.

The Morning The End Finally Started

"Now, there. My Zootie is a good girl. You can't say things like that about her!"

The speaker was Zootie's mother, Mrs. Gladys Reynolds. Mrs. Reynolds is a paragon of a certain type of Midwesterner: grossly overweight and even more grossly under-educated, clad in the very best of Wal-mart clearance, her head filled with reality TV, crime dramas, and conservative preachers. For some reason, I always think of people like her as human donuts.

Mrs. Reynolds had been called in by our fearless leader, Principal Edgars, to discuss this morning's incident. "Incident" may be too mild a word, since Sheriff Tommy Briggs was also present at this little meeting. Apparently, Zootie Johnson had attempted to drive a sharp pencil into the left eye of Steve Ellison. Steve is a bit of a trouble maker (and perhaps a bit more than a bit), but he's not "let's seriously maim this jerk" kind of trouble. And, to be fair to Mrs. Reynolds, Zootie is a good kid, not the kind to say a harsh word to anyone teasing her (and there were many who teased the girl), let alone one to take up sharp writing implements against her tormentors. But a classroom full of students were witnesses. Unfortunately, the teacher had his back to the class, writing out the quadratic equation on the chalkboard, and turned around just in time to see Steve forcing Zootie's hand (still gripping the pencil) to the desk while calling her a "crazy bitch." By the time I had reached the back row, the danger was over, and I had the lovely duty of escorting the two combatants down to Principal Edgars' office while the rest of the class worked on factoring equations 1-10 on page 52 of the textbook.

"Mrs. Reynolds, no one is saying Zootie's not a good girl," I said.

"I am," said Edgars, shooting me one of those "shut up, I don't need your kind of help" looks. Edgars would have fired me his first year as principal if he could have found even the slightest pretext. Unfortunately for him, I'm a good teacher with a squeaky clean life.

"Mrs. Reynolds," Edgars continued, "Your daughter attempted a lethal stabbing this morning. Her ineffectual weakness is the only reason Steve Ellison is still alive. Beyond being a violation of the school's policies concerning violence, this is a criminal matter." He nodded over at the sheriff.

Sheriff Tommy stirred a bit and made as if he might say something, but Edgars was on a roll. "Priscilla Johnson is a menace. Her antisocial ways have finally culminated in the violence that I believe I warned the faculty of on numerous occasions."

Mrs. Reynolds looked horrified, "You been talking about my Zootie to the teachers?"

"Not Zootie in particular," I inserted, before Edgars could continue his bashing of Zootie (and that was the first time I'd ever heard anyone refer to her by her given name), "but yes, Principal Edgars has expressed concern that some of our students are not as involved in school activities as he would like."

"Zootie doesn't like sports. She likes reading and writing. That don't make her bad."

"No," I agreed, "it doesn't."

"Well, I think this morning's events suggest otherwise. Self-involved dreamers are just waiting to snap. Students like Priscilla need to be engaged with other students. They need to have relationships with real people and not just live in their imaginary worlds, where they see real people as invasive and threatening. People like Steve Ellison." Edgars had no love for Ellison, but he obviously had a larger axe to grind with students like Zootie. For the life of me, though, I couldn't imagine why.

Autobiographical Random Nonsense Best Avoided By Readers with Discernment

Once upon a time I knew... everything. Well, everything that mattered. I knew the streets of my neighborhood, the names of my friends, and how to enjoy life. I walked, biked, tossed frisbees, even played a little ball with my best friend (poorly, but with a certain enjoyment). I read myths, novels, comic books, science books, and biographies. I prayed naively, without doubt and without pretense. I laughed and cried freely. I had parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and vague dreams of doing something in that distant time when I finally "grew up." I was in elementary school, and life was good.

Ok, so romanticizing childhood is a favored past-time of old people who feel they have missed the boat. I know just how whack my childhood was: I lived it, right? It was better than some and worse than others, but even then, I knew it was a blessing. A blessing that was dragged through mud and broken glass, a blessing that occasionally found itself lost in a metaphorical desert, bleeding and crying, but a blessing nonetheless.

I liked to draw as a kid. I was never any good, but I enjoyed art, especially in junior high. Painting and drawing, and, to a lesser degree, sculpting. Like shop class and home economics, art class produced something from working with my hands. Like most people, producing something tangible with my own hands was deeply satisfying.

I've always always enjoyed music. Not surprising, since most people I've met do. I have absolutely no skill in producing it. Strangely, in high school ALL of my friends were skilled musicians. One of my friends, a scientist-musician, once assured me that given my love of math, there was a musician inside me, but I'm still skeptical.

But there was never a question about my creative medium of choice. I've been writing for as long as I can remember. Not well, and not consistently, and (until the Internet) not publicly, but working with words, ideas, stories... has always been a part of who I am. At one point, in high school, I thought about becoming a writer, but even in high school, being "grown up" and making such decisions seemed far away (oh, silly dreamer! Methinks you needed a bucket of cold water and a swift kick in the rear).

It's odd, given the opportunities to write available to me now, that I don't. Well, not so odd. What keeps me from trying to produce anything of substance is fear. Fear that I have neither the ideas, the talent, nor the discipline to produce anything worth more than the self-published drivel that appears here. Strange, the ten-year-old me wrote a vampire story: pages of painful plot, silly dialogue, and stock characters. No fear, though. I kept it in a blue binder that had a Battlestar Galactica insignia sticker on the cover and spent hours on it: making changes, adding chapters, etc. Couldn't tell you whatever happened to it. It wasn't my first story, but it was the first one I remember working on.

Old people may romanticize childhood, and I am as guilty as the next codger. But maybe, in our defense, there was something romantic about childhood. Not merely the fabled innocence of childhood, the innocence being a necessary condition for the romance, but some largeness in our souls that, I don't know, for want of a better phrase, lived more than we do now.

Or maybe that's just more rose-colored navel-gazing. Dunno. I think of Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien: grown ups who, I believe, kept a romantic vision that most of us seem to lose. In my best moments, I can almost see the grail, shimmering in the last rays of twilight, calling me West. Sometimes, I can sense Chesterton, just beyond the pale, like a Christian Obi-Wan Kenobi, urging me to take up my sabre. But usually, I just pay my bills and take my meds. And, that, as they say, is life.

In the Wake of the Rabbit Hole

jacob login:. welcome root. oh one two seven one eight three two. patch upload complete. sendmail compile in five four three two one.

wh1t3rabb1+: Hatter, you still online?

hatterm: Yeah, Rabbit. What's up?

wh1t3rabb1+: Not much, dullsville in server city tonight.

hatterm: Um...... ok?

wh1t3rabb1+: So, entertain me, man!

hatterm: Your dead end job. Not my problem. Besides, I'm kinda busy here.

wh1t3rabb1+: Do tell?

hatterm: I do have a life offline.

wh1t3rabb1+: So why are you typing right now?

hatterm: She's not here yet, and besides, I thought (foolishly!) that you might have wanted something important. Something related to the game.

wh1t3rabb1+: Game, shame, tame the lame, and does this SHE have a name?

hatterm: Not one you'd recognize.

wh1t3rabb1+: And what about our young friend with a penchant for blue gingham dresses and leather jackets? Does she know you're making late night tea with strange women?

hatterm: Why would she care?

wh1t3rabb1+: Oh, I doubt she would. But the question is, does she know?

hatterm: How would she? Some of us don't tweet our lives away. Speaking of: not a word of this!

wh1t3rabb1+: And why not? We've established no one cares.

hatterm: Yeah, well, my private life is, well, private.

wh1t3rabb1+: That's rich!

hatterm: I'd think a paranoid security freak would be sympathetic.

wh1t3rabb1+: Right, one who tweets his life away? I'm all about public things being as public as possible and private things being totally private. You texting your date makes it public.

hatterm: Whatever

wh1t3rabb1+: Anyway, compile's finished. Gotta reboot the email server. Don't do anything with her that I wouldn't!

hatterm: Dude, you're gay.

wh1t3rabb1+: And you could only be so lucky. Seriously, though. When the other she finds out, heads will roll. She might not care, but she cares, if you take my meaning. And even if you don't, I'm outta here )

Since When Does "Do No Evil" Include "Make Deals with Spooks"?!?

Google asks the NSA for help.

As loquacious as I am, I have no commentary. Just a prayer (and a rather strong desire to leave the Internet and buy a cabin in Montana or maybe one of those commercial flights into space, since US government sponsored flights are going to be a thing of the past, so kiss Starfleet good-bye, thank you very much Mr. President... but that, as they say, is another story.)

Snarky Comment

From a web site:

“Many useful academic materials are increasingly available via electronic online access.”

electronic online access? As opposed to, let’s say, “mechanical online access” or “steam-powered online access” or, in deference to the cyberpunks, “direct neural online access”?

Eris Gets Her Due!

An Android-based phone named after Eris! How amazingly cool is this?!? The Droid Eris, makes me wish I was a Verizon customer...

All This For One Little Rhyme?

Lemon Demon has a delightful little tune about the infamous Spring Heeled Jack (lyrics). I make this post only to document my quoting of this line:

And people in the area reek of mass hysteria

For some reason, this line has been making a lazy circuit in my head (completing a lap once every two and a half hours, which, perhaps, sheds light on the size of my head...)

Currently Reading

+ Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Godel (by John W. Dawson)
+ Against the Day (by Thomas Pynchon)
+ If Einstein Had Been a Surfer (by Peter Kreeft)

Just started Logical Dilemmas. Kurt Godel was the greatest logician of the 20th century. John W. Dawson is one of the scholars responsible for the publication of Godel's Collected Works and is therefore well-qualified to write a biography and commentary on Godel. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems were the subject of my master's project in theology (basically a warning about how not to apply them to philosophical and theological topics).

Against the Day is long, to the tune of over a thousand pages. Mostly, my fiction reading these days is a bit shy of that (by some 700 plus pages). So far, the story is interesting, like most of Pynchon's work, and is filled with a cast of intriguing characters, crazy adventures, and deep wit. I know this will take me a while to finish, but so far, I am glad to be spending time in the company of the Chums of Chance. Hopefully, this will warm me up for the other two large novels I'm committed to reading in the coming year: Anathem (by Neal Stephenson) and The Brothers Karamazov (by, of course, Fyodor Dostoyevsky).

Peter Kreeft has never published a book that I have not (a) thoroughly enjoyed, and (b) been challenged and inspired by. Even his textbook on logic caused me to rethink my long standing prejudice against the "old" logic in favor of the "new" mathematical logic. If Einstein Had Been a Surfer is a conversation among three characters who individually represent science, philosophy, and mysticism (and yet, these are no two-dimensional allegorical personifications. Kreeft's characters are real people, even if they do not really exist). This book is about the search for a "Theory of Everything." The book itself does not present the details of such a Theory (no Nobel Prize in physics for Kreeft for this one!), but by talking around and through and about the issue, the reader is lead to understand better what such a theory would entail. As always from Kreeft, this work is a creative, well-reasoned piece of scholarship that is easy to take as entertainment (I'd say "mistake" but I rather suspect the reader is supposed to be entertained, in much the same way Plato entertained and instructed us with the Socratic dialogues). Recommended if you like thinking about everything.