June 2005 Archives

I bought this book Wednesday afternoon at the airport and finished it by the time I arrived in Austin. However, due to poor weather it took me 24 hours of travel time, so reading a whole book is not actually that impressive.

"A Long Way Down" is Horby's latest, better than "How to Be Good" but worse than his other books. It tells the story of four potential suicides who meet right before the attempt, alternating narration between each character's point of view.

I do care about the different characters, even though each only gets a quarter of the air time. One of the four is this incredibly annoying and dense 18 year-old girl. She occasionally gets on my nerves but that's what she's supposed to do. She serves an interesting purpose in the novel, which is to make sure it never gets too maudlin, and in a novel about four suicidal strangers finding a reaffirmation of life through each other you can imagine that overly-sentimental prose is always lurking around the corner. The best example of this and I think also one of the best moments of the book is when the group is discussing how if they hadn't suffered then they wouldn't be who they are today. One of the characters is saying that she doesn't wish none of her suffering happened because then she'd be somebody different. The annoying young girl doesn't get it. When someone asks her how she'd feel if she were an entirely different person she replies, "That would be fucking excellent." It doesn't quite translate here, but it's a good moment. It takes a moment that is getting a little too heavy and gives it a humorous twist and it also forces the reader to confront what is a standardly accepted piece of cliche philosophy.

One of the four characters is an American (if you don't know, Hornby is British and all his novels take place in England, despite the Americanization that occurs in two of the three movies based on his books). The American guy mentions or thinks about 9/11 about ten times in the novel, which I found pretty amusing. I guess the rest of the world assumes Americans constantly talk about 9/11. I guess we sort of do, especially our president.

Important news about last weekend in Pennsylvania: It was a heat wave, an official heat wave! Why? Because it was 90 degrees three days in a row.

Texas scoffs at Pennsylvania.

Last night I dreamt I lived in a small town where the next election held a referendum on whether to close down all the public libraries. Someone had put together a detailed calculation as to the exact value of all the books in the library and how it wasn't cost effective. The day before the election I wrote this empassioned letter explaining how the calculation was incorrect because it only considered the purchase price of a book. The value of a book, I argued, is significantly more, because books have an intangible and incalculable benefit. I went on to write some shmaltzy stuff such as, "how do you calculate the value of 'Treasure Island' for the twelve year old boy reading under the covers, etc., etc.?" Pretty embarrassing prose, really, but I know how to play to my crowd. After the vote, the library closure measure, which had been polling at 56% in favor, ended up losing by 64% of the vote. (You'd think in a dream it might be a little more dramatic, but I suppose in today's polarized electorate 64% is a landslide.) Anyway, I became something of a town hero. It was quite compelling.

The point is that I have been having some vivid dreams lately. I think it's because I've joined a gym and have been working out three times a week. Sore muscles must be invading my sleep or something. I've been talking about actively joining a gym for about 8 years now and it seemed like my time in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania could be better spent getting in shape rather than watching TV in my extended-living hotel room.

1. Undo

2. You've made a mistake and the thing actually isn't done.

3. The thing that has been done is a repeatable task, such as closing a door or walking down the block. While, theoretically, it is in fact done, if one so chooses one could reopen the door or walk back up the block.

4. The thing that has been done is such a trivial task that referring to it as "done" is mostly meaningless, such as letting the water drain out of the sink. Yes, that water is gone, but if you're going to say "what's done is done" every time you flush the toilet things are going to get a little melodramatic.

5. Time travel

NOTE: This is sort of a stupid post, but last night it came to me in a dream. Honestly, I had a dream about this exact post (well, except for this note at the end). After all that subconscious preparation I figured I had better go ahead and post it. I almost got up at 4 am to do so, but I decided that I'd rather go back to sleep and if I couldn't remember in the morning the world would probably be better off. Unfortunately for the world, I remembered.

It has come to my attention that multiple people are concerned that the previous "would we still have legs" entries might be offensive to people who don't, in fact, have legs. I intended no offense, and I hope people realize I wasn't trying to comment on people who do or do not have legs but questioning whether a human being would need any independent means of locomotion if the ability to teleport at will were available. This includes cars and wheelchairs and, highlighted by the title not because of any bias but simply because of sheer percentages, legs.

No, I mean, really: Why would we?

Think about it.

Think about it: You're sitting on the toilet, trying to do your business, and then *ZAP* someone has teleported right next to you. A little more broadly, in a world where humans could teleport at will how could people maintain any notions of privacy or, for that matter, of personal property? If someone can teleport anywhere what is to stop them from popping into a neighbor's house and stealing their television?

I think the personal property matter would be handled in one of a few ways. Perhaps society would develop to be "property-free," but I find this hard to accept. Maybe an teleporting alien race could develop that way, but teleporting humans would still want their stuff. So I think either there would be some way to create teleport free zones (bank valuts, bathrooms, your house, etc.) or, barring that, all personal property would be "lo-jacked." What I mean is this society would develop incrediby good marking and tracking technology, meaning you could code any owned item to yourself with an unbreakable but public key and you could find its location instantly if someone stole it. Theft would become mostly impossible. (For uncodable things like money everyone would simply use electronic accounts, which we're moving towards anyway.)

As for privacy the issue is a little more tricky. Let's assume there is no way to create teleport-free zones (if there is than privacy isn't a big deal)... In that case there'd never be a way to safely use the bathroom or have sex or simply do anything private. I think that the culture would develop such that teleporting into someone's personal space would become so taboo that it simply wouldn't happen. People don't run around naked very often in our society. Why? Is it because it is illegal? Yes, I suppose, but more importantly, people just wouldn't even consider doing it. It is so taboo and so wired into most people's brains that they would probably pass out if they had to be naked in public. Teleporting into someone's personal space would end up becoming like that. No one would teleport into someone else's bathroom without checking first not because it would be rude or illegal (though it would be) but because it would be unthinkable. Would some people do it? Yes, but some people also take off their clothing in public and commit murder (not necescarily the same people).

I'm not sure why I'm going on and on about this but for some reason I can't stop thinking about the teleporting society. Next up for discussion: A World Where Humans Teleport At Will - Would We Still Have Legs?

Think about it: You could build your house in any inexpensive remote location you wanted, regardless of where you worked or where your friends and family lived. Factories and office buildings could go anywhere because workers could just teleport there instantly. Restaurants would thrive solely based on quality, not location (in fact, it would suddenly take years to get reservations at the world's best restaurants because there'd be no travel limitations). Property value would essentially even out over time and become almost a commodity. Only business specifically tied to a land feature would have to pay for ideal space (ski slops, beach resorts, that sort of thing) but any inside space (dance club, bar, doctor's office) could be located anywhere.

Let's assume there's some limit to how much a human can take along during teleportation - you can't teleport your whole house, for example - I think current airline carryon restrictions are a good measure (one personal item and one reasonably sized piece of luggage). Therefore there'd still be a need for physical transportation and though cars would be rare (you'd only need cars for moving larger-than-luggage size stuff) there would be tons of trucks and trains bringing goods to all these remote office buildings and factories and homes. Would homes and factories and offices end up built near each other simply to save on supply transportation costs?

Man, the changes to society would be enormous. Would civilization be anything like it is now? Would we even recognize it as a human society?

I suppose in terms of discussing how teleportation would change human society, the cost of real estate is an odd starting point. But since I'm trying to sell my condo it's on my mind. Next discussion topic: If Humans Could Teleport At Will How Would Anyone Ever Feel Comfortable Using The Bathroom?

Unless you are incredibly anal, you probably haven't noticed anything different at MixedMetaphors.net. But there have been changes, and if you didn't know better you might think these changes were a step backwards, and, interestingly, you'd be correct. When I post two entries in the same day, instead of displaying the date once, the date is repeated for each entry.

The reason behind this is quite complex, and just to make sure MixedMetaphors.net is sufficiently obscure and boring I will explain these reasons to you. But, I warn you now: unless you really really want to hear about Movable Type minutia, stop reading now.

In my implementation of Movable Type I make excessive use of categories, in ways not entirely intended by the system. I can post to different pages of my site by setting the appropriate category label on the entry (blog, plog, books, or intro). I think that the default way to do this would actually be to have a separate Movable Type blog for each category, but screw that, I'm innovative. To add additional complexity, rather than simply creating a different template for each category I wanted to create one template module that each main category template could call. Standard object oriented programming concepts, you know, code reuse, cut down on maintenance and all that. Unfortunately, while Movable Type lets you easily step through each entry in a category, you can't set that category as a variable, meaning my template module can't use the default Movable Type category listing mechanism. Instead I have to step through all entries and use a special IFEQUAL block to compare the current entry to the variable category. Unfortunately this caused an additional problem around date headers. Movable Type tells you when you're displaying the first entry for a new date. However, since I'm not able use the default category filter and am manually skipping inappropriate entries, on days when I've posted in TWO categories (both blog and plog, say) the second entry will not show its date header, even though it’s the first entry for that category! Previously I simply avoided this issue by not posting two entries in two separate categories on the same day. This seemed like a big limitation. What if I finished reading a book on the same day that I wanted to write a new blog entry? Unacceptable! I came up with a complex way of fixing this issue involving setting lots of flags and doing lots of checks. Then I decided to show the date for every entry. Simple, effective, and of minimal cosmetic detraction.

I was recently taken to task for abusing the much-abused phrase "by the way." I began an e-mail to a friend with this loaded clause, and he replied:

I don't think it is fair of you to begin a conversation with "By the way" as if we were walking down the street and something distracted your attention for a moment. We have not written to each other in a good long while and "By the way" just doesn't flow as easily as it should.

You have been warned.

I could not agree with him more. I looked up "by the way" in the dictionary and it defined it as "incidentally." I looked up incidentally in the dictionary and it defined it as "apart from the main subject; parenthetically." So, my friend is one hundred percent correct. It is nonsensical to begin a conversation with the phrase "by the way" because no main subject has yet been defined. You can only say "by the way" mid-dialogue.

Perhaps I consider my friendship with this e-mail correspondant to be an ongoing life-long conversation and therefore at any point a new topic is actually a topic change. But I will admit that's probably stretching it, even for me.

I have been given the grammatical smack down and I like it.

Is a modifier misplaced if based on context it can only have one possible meaning? If there is no confusion, can it be considered misplaced?

For example, take the following sentence:

"He was looking for an old man from the distant mountains who once knew his mother."

Theoretically, "who once knew his mother" is a misplaced modifier, because it is modifying the distant mountains as opposed to the old man. However, since the phrase is "WHO once knew his mother" as opposed to "THAT once knew his mother," it can't possibily be modifying mountains and can only be referring to the man. Obviously it is the old man who once knew his mother, not the distant mountains, because mountains aren't a "who."

So is this considered a misplaced modifier or not? Where does one go to determine these things? How can I answer all my immediate and trivial grammar questions?

As much as I love Amazon.com, the site seems to repeatedly fail me when it comes to providing notification of new books. Nick Hornby is out with a new novel, called "A Long Way Down" which I am excited to read. However, I was told of this by my sister. My sister! She had already got the book out of the library and asked me about it, assuming I had already read it. Not only hadn't I read it, I didn't even know about it. I realize we're only talking a matter of days here (it was released on June 8th) but, still, what's going on, Amazon? Why didn't I know about this? Nowhere does this book show up on my recommendations or on my new releases watch. I've bought every Nick Horby book from Amazon already and I've marked them all with five stars. How could Amazon possibly fail to recommend this to me? More importantly: I've actually told Amazon.com to put Nick Horby on my list of authors to watch! But (after a quick check) that list now appears to be empty, so some time in last couple of years Amazon apparently lost this data. That's a pretty bad move on their part, if you ask me. I essentially told them, "Hey, Amazon, I will give you money if you tell me about these books," and they said, "Forget it, we'd rather not have your money." Instead, my 'New Releases' section contained three (THREE!) different versions of Harry Potter 6, and when I checked 'not interested' for all of them and refreshed the page I was then recommended the book-on-tape version instead. I am NOT GOING TO BUY Harry Potter 6! Stop pushing it on me!

Anyway, the important news is that Nick Hornby is out with a new novel, "A Long Way Down." I'm going to buy it from Barnes & Noble out of spite.

Bob: I have come to peace with my own inexistence. The fact that I am a character in a short, unintelligible dialogue no longer fills me with misery. This is only, of course, because I have no choice in the matter.

Fred: Does that mean I can stop carrying you to the hospital?

Bob: No! Onward!

Fred: But you told me it was your all-encompassing depression that cost you the use of your limbs.

Bob: True, true. But now prolonged inaction has had the same effect, once mental now physical.

Fred: Perhaps if you just tried to walk.

Bob: As I only exist as predetermined text, the concept of trying is meaningless. Heave ho, my friend, heave ho!

Fred: Still, by your logic, you could be predetermined to try it.

Bob: Good point.

Fred: Well?

Bob: Apparently it was not predetermined to be. Onward!

Bob: Do you ever get the feeling you are a meaningless creation, intended simply to fill space while somebody else is biding time?

Fred: Uh... no.

Bob: Well, I certainly do.

My loft is the cleanest it has been since the day I moved in, I'm flying back to Pennsylvania tomorrow morning at 7:20 AM, and I no longer have a car. Oh, I sold my baby, my beautiful Honda S2000, she is no longer mine. Logic tells me I won't be needing her in Manhattan, and since I'm only back in Austin three more weekends this summer it seemed like the right thing to do once I had a good offer. But oh I loved that car. Love. Loved. Maybe I won't even have my condo for those final three weekends; it goes on the market this Thurday. I'm excited about moving to New York but these are sad days when you start realizing you are leaving home. Soon strangers will be viewing my house and casting judgement, soon strangers will be driving my car. She's quick tempered but forgiving, petite but powerful, not overly dressed but oh she's wild. I hope they treat her well.

I'm normally an easy going guy. Despite a sporadic but unchecked tendency towards road-rage I pass through most of life blithely ignorant of the constant annoyances around me. But despite this, there is a pet peeve that manages to burst through my typically calm exterior and turn me into a raging, spiteful misanthrope: Airplane lean-backers.

I cannot stand people who recline their seat on airplanes when I am sitting behind them. I despise these people. Leaning back in your seat on an airplane when someone is sitting behind you has got to be the rudest thing any one person can do to another person.

Yes, I realize that the seats on airplanes are made to recline. In fact, on some trips the flight attendant will announce after take off that people should "now feel free to recline their seat into a comfortable position." "No!" I want to stand up and yell! "Feel no such freedom! Your freedom in leaning is bondage to your fellow traveler!"

Before I mathematically prove that reclining your seat should be punishable by death, let's compare the positives afforded to the leaner compared to the negatives forced upon the poor passenger behind that leaner (the leanee). Keep in mind that I am 6'3".

Negatives forced upon leanee:
1) Practically impossible to use a laptop because the seat in front of you now forces the laptop screen down at a 45 degree angle.
2) Trying to lean forward to eat the airplane meal without spilling on yourself can actually involve hitting your head on the reclined seat in front of you.
3) Reading becomes a contortionist act because the reclined seat actually blocks the light in the area you would naturally position the book.
4) And, of course, your knees become crammed up against the seat in front of you. Maybe this isn't an issue for those under six feet tall, but trust me, it is actually physically painful and it reduces your already limited range of leg motion when a flat wall has lowered itself onto your knees.

Positives afforded to leaner:
1) You are leaned back a little.

I'd say that leaning back gives the leaner about a +2 on the comfort scale, but it causes the leanee at least a -8. And I'm being conservative in my estimates. Let's assume there are 100 people on the plane and they all lean back. The overall impact is a -60 comfort level! Everyone is unhappy! Based purely on a utilitarian view of average happiness, seat reclining should be illegal! Let's face it: Riding in a plane for five hours is uncomfortable. But we're all in it together. Why are we working to make it even worse?

I have to admit, I've begun to take my frustrations out on the leaner in front of me. If I get the timing right I can jam my knees up against the seat just as they start to lean back, preventing them from doing so. They'll try a couple of times and eventually give up, assuming the seat is broken. Oh, the evil glee I get from this, chuckling to myself for the rest of the flight. Unfortunately this is a difficult maneuver. Either you sit there the entire time with your legs braced for reclining pressure (which is even less comfortable than dealing with the reclined seat) or you need to get lucky. I've developed an amazing "spidey sense" that tells me when someone is about to lean, but it only works about a quarter of the time. Once I've failed to prevent a leaner, I spend the rest of the flight waging an immature battle. Mainly this involves banging my knees into the seat in front of me as much as possible, especially if I notice the guy has fallen asleep. It's childish, I know, but if I can't be comfortable because of him, he won't be comfortable either.

I do recognize that there are some exceptions, though they are few:
1) No one is behind you.
2) It's redeye. I think leaning should be disallowed even on redeyes but one has to pick their battles.

I think some entrepreneurial airline should start up flights with a no-reclining zone. I'd definitely give them my exclusive flying business. And while they're at it if they could throw in a no-baby zone flying would be perfect. And by perfect I mean still the worst thing you can legally pay money to experience, but slightly less so.

In the last three weeks I've been to Las Vegas twice. My first trip was to participate in the time honored Vegas bachelor party tradition. My second trip was to participate in the time honored Vegas bachelorette party tradition. The first trip was me and nineteen other guys. The second trip was me and four women. I was invited to the first trip because I'm a groomsman. I was invited to the second trip because I'm a bridesmaid. Or, rather, a bridesman. I've never been a bridesman before and still am not quite sure what to expect, other than being able to tell you that, no, thank you for asking, but I will be wearing a tuxedo.

I was very excited about these trips for multiple reasons:
1) I expected to enjoy some spending time in Las Vegas with good friends on both trips.
2) I imagined the nearly-back-to-back Vegas weekends was an excellent opportunity for me to perform an anthropological comparison of gender differences in the wild.
3) I was hoping for some hot girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-girl-on-me action.

Sadly, expectation number three was a bust, but the good news is I had a great time on both trips and also was able to examine first hand the animal we call woman in her native habitat (Vegas bachelorette party). I suppose it is possible that my presence had a Heisenbergy effect on the whole thing and had I not been there the weekend's main activity would have been spontaneous naked pillow fights.

Here are some similarities between bachelor and bachelorette parties:
S1) lots of drinking.
S2) lots of hanging out by the pool.
S3) lots of sleeping late.
S4) lots of food, specifically at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse.

Here are some differences between bachelor and bachelorette parties:
D1) not quite as much poker playing in bachelorette parties.
D2) at a bachelorette parties the entertainment is more likely to involve Cirque de Soleil or the DVD-game home version of Family Feud.
D3) instead of trying to hit on all bachelorette parties within sight, when you are in a bachelorette party you just hang around and wait for bachelor parties to hit on you.

To elaborate on D3, I have to admit it brought me great evil joy to introduce myself to the bachelor party guys when they came by to hit on the women. It obviously hastened their exit from the scene, sending them off looking for groups with less manly bachelorettes, but in my defense, my bachelorettes were either married, engaged or lesbians and therefore not really interested in meeting bachelors (despite the "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" mindset). Nothing kills the mood of a bachelor more than when he introduces himself to four lovely women inquires as to their evening only to have a guy wearing a matching lei say rather gruffly, "Yes, we're having about as much fun as five girls can have."

I'm always excited when I find a new author I enjoy, especially when that author is critically respected and has a lot of books available for me to read, so good news about "A Prayer for Owen Meany": I loved it! It made me laugh, it made me cry, etc. I will definitely read more Irving. Plus I want to watch the movie, "Simon Birch," which was based on this book (though it looks like the movie changed things significantly, including all the character names).

I want to discuss something that may be a bit of a spoiler for the book, so if you don't want spoilers don't read any more. Since I don't think anyone reads my book track except for me I'm not going to worry too much about spoilers, but you've been warned.

It's always interesting when there are "miracles" in books or movies. It's no surprise that this book ends with a miracle because the narrator discusses it for the entire book. But how do you get the reader to "believe" in the miracle.

Miracles in books (or movies) can be either be predicted or a surprise.

A surprise miracle is one that occurs out of nowhere. For example, an angel appears or somebody who was going to die ends up being healed. Sure, it's a miracle, and you might believe it is happening simply because you believe the writing, but there's no real reason to believe the miracle other than the fact that the book tells you to believe it. This depends highly on the writing and the tone set by the novel, and if it is done well you will believe that in this world miracles can occur, if done poorly you don't believe in it. In a book anything can happen, so writing about an angel appearing isn't really creating a miracle for the reader.

A predicted miracle is one where the reader is told ahead of time that a miracle is going to happen and given clues as to how the miracle is going to happen, such that when the miracle happens the reader knew it was coming all along. This is like the miracle in "Owen Meany" or the one in M. Night Shyamalan
"Signs." A made-up example might be a character who, let's say, lost a leg in an accident and has a false leg, then years later is able to escape from some tough situation (everyone is chained by the foot?) and save a bunch of people because he is able to remove his false leg. It's a stupid example and seems more like a coincidence than a miracle, but with enough moving parts like that a novel can make it seem like a miracle. To do it well it must be both a surprise and inevitable, the signs must be there the whole time. Done poorly it is contrived (like my example) and the reader/viewer either predicts it ahead of time or says to himself at the time of the miracle, "Well, of course that guy had a false leg and was able to escape, the author wrote it that way so it would seem like a miracle." To seem like a real miracle the author's hand must somehow dissapear from view, the reader needs to feel that all the pieces 'fit' just right to make the miracle, that all the clues were simply natural details from the story. The reader must feel there is no other way the story could have gone.

"Owen Meany" does this perfectly. Even knowing that a miracle was coming and knowing essentially what the miracle would be it wasn't until perhaps the sentence before it happened (when it was already happening, really) that I gasped and realized what was going on, realized how all the facts that had been given to me over and over were suddenly shifting to create a miracle. It's almost like a solution to a good mystery, and is incredibly hard to do.

I want to explain the miracle in "Owen Meany" but (a) that would ruin it and (b) there's no way for me to do it right anyway. Any explanation I would give would make it seem contrived. You have to read the book, essentially be told what the miracle is ahead of time, and then still find yourself surprised at the end. That's the only way to understand it.

I have other things I could say about this book but I've already rambled on for too long.