Predictably Irrational

Maybe minimal blogging while in ghost ship mode as I wrap up my teaching (five more weeks).

Here's a great book I listened to, similar to Kluge.



Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

J.G. Ballard

I haven't read enough of him to offer a comprehensive opinion, but what I have read by J.G. Ballard (mainly short stories from the 60s and 70s), I liked. I've had a few of his audiobooks lingering on my computer for months, and I still haven't gotten around to seeing Crash (the 1996 Cronenberg one based on Ballard's novel, not the recent and more famous film that's completely unrelated), but now I feel I suddenly have incentive.

His voice and energy influenced the entire ethos of punk literature, informing and infecting the possibilities of speculative fiction. His dissection of narrative, his bizarre mind, will be missed. What has come down to us from writers like Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, William Burroughs, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and others would surely be different without Ballard.

Inherent Vice

I dreamed last night I watched a film of Gravity's Rainbow. There is no such film. Anyway, I've never gotten into Pynchon, but he's crapped out another book come August called Inherent Vice. I find myself strangely curious.



[Edit: Prüfstand VII is a German film apparently inspired by Gravity's Rainbow, but it sounds kind of impossiblish to find and I assume Pynchon didn't authorize it or anything.]

Stuff

I set up an Amazon Associates account because I realized the only lure to keep me blogging is the vague possibility of money. I don't expect anyone will actually buy anything through the links, but it gives me an excuse to keep better track of what I like. So here's a few more things I've liked lately. I encourage you all to buy crap through the links. I think I get a miniscule percentage even if you buy other crap through the links. Go!

First, I've been getting into John Huston's films. I'd never seen The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and loved it. Humphrey Bogart is dark and kind of dumb, brilliant, the best I've seen with him.



And that made me watch The Maltese Falcon again for the first time this decade. I don't think I ever appreciated it when I was younger. The dialogue was too fast and I couldn't see what the big deal was over some dumb bird. Now I see so much more. Amazing film, the godfather of all noir. Anyone seen the 1931 or 1936 versions?



The One Two Three of God

Pretty good audio from Ken Wilber, one of my favorite thinkers... not for beginners to his ideas though. A Theory of Everything remains the easiest place to start.

Tropic of Cancer

I finally read some Henry Miller. I didn't expect anything so non-traditional. Miller really is the proto-Beat.

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

Sort of a travel book as a guy goes around the world looking for happiness.

Kluge

Awesome book I just read, sort of a catalog of the funkiness of the brain with lots about evolutionary psychology. A "kluge" is (wikipedia): an ad hoc engineering solution, inelegant in principle but possibly elegantly pragmatic. Dude begins talking about how things like the eye and spine evolved kind of inferior-like and then takes it up to the brain, the ultimate kluge.



Kluge: The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind

Copperfieldian

Man, there are some crazy plane ticket prices right now. I was thinking about visiting the US at the end of the month (I'm not) and just looked and could get a round trip for $700. I also found a ticket from San Francisco to Ireland round trip this month for $380! I think people are cutting back on travel. I hope these prices hold out through the rest of the year when I'm actually traveling.

I feel my vacation taking its last gasp. I was in Seoul the other day and got a copy of David Copperfield to immerse myself in a 900-page Dickensian reality. Maybe it's my favorite Dickens book I've read. Tomorrow I'm bowling. I don't know what to make of Korea anymore. I think I've forgotten whatever I knew about teaching, it's been so long since I've had regular classes (mid December?). And I think my teaching quality has gotten progressively worse through the year. C'est la vie. After this I'm done working with kids. After this I won't ever do contract work, and even try to avoid housing leases for longer than six months. I just like to move on.

Did anyone see the 40-minute The Office the other day? I thought it was pretty good after some weak episodes, and found the pirated Jack Black movie especially creepy/awesome. Also found it funny they would watch a pirated movie in a major national sitcom.

Book Cover of the Day

The Power of Full Engagement

I've read a lot of personal development books, and this one is one of the best I've come across:



The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

It's given me so many ideas about stress, exercise, recovery periods, habits, and rituals. For anyone who feels they are depleted physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually - check it out!

Jail Life is No Picnic

I was reading a novel that has a car accident and it sparked my memory of my teenage years, when four guys at my high school were killed in a car accident. Thanks to google, it is preserved in luridly written prose:

It was 6:20 a.m., July 29, 1995. Starting home from an overnight camping trip with seven friends, he lost control of his father's 1987 Chevrolet Suburban and sent it tumbling across a barren stretch of the Mojave Desert north of Victorville. Like a Ferris wheel set free of its mooring, the 5,000-pound truck rolled across the desert floor, and with each revolution a friend vanished, a family shattered, a future dissolved.

When everything came to a shuddering stop, he opened his eyes and saw Jono, beautiful Jono, a swimmer with out-to-here shoulders and bottomless brown eyes that made all the girls weak, and he knew right away that Jono was dead. He turned to look in the backseat at John, a snowboarder with a taste for adventure, and he knew at once that John was dead, too. He looked out the window and saw the others, scattered in the wake of the truck. Steven, Drake, Pig, Joe, Tony. He jumped out the window and ran to each one, begging them to be alive.

Encrusted with bits of windshield and chrome, the desert glittered in the morning sun like a diamond field. Nearby campers and dirt bikers, thinking a plane must have crashed nose first, came running toward the swirling plumes of smoke and found him sitting in the glassy dust, stroking the hand of Pig, his best friend since grade school. "It's my fault," he told them, sobbing. "I killed my friends!"

Yes, James, you killed your friends (!). I found his myspace page, where he has this awesome quote:
"Concerts are always killer but has to be the right band with the right friends."

But wait! He's also got a newly (ahem) "published" book about his time in jail!

("What's it like in the big house, Mickey?")

Wow, order me 140 copies and sell that mofo out!

Don't confuse this James Patterson with the bestselling author of the same name. V for Vendetta!



You know, I once had a writing teacher named Dan Brown. But not the famous one.

I swear, I'm the only one who made it out of Orange County.

Planet China

I've been recovering from a nasty cold. I took it easy this weekend and listened deep into J. Maarten Troost's Lost on Planet China. I like it because the author doesn't pretend to deal even-handedly with China. He is disgusted by a lot of things there and lets you know. It has a similar effect to Into Africa: I'm now both repulsed and fascinated by China. I'd be up for a trip there - but only a short trip to get the catburger flavor on my tongue. Then I'd get out as fast as I could.

I Presume

I was trying to hold off reviewing Martin Dugard's Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingston until I finished it, but I can't wait. It's so good. It makes me want to read biographies of all the main characters, and then read all the books those guys wrote themselves about their travel.



It goes twenty levels beyond "Livingstone was missing in Africa and Stanley found him... 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' "

It's also got subject matter that makes me wonder: is Dugard a really good writer or are the characters so off-the-map that it's guaranteed to be a good narrative? Okay, a bad writer could ruin it - I'm saying that Dugard didn't. This book sucked me in.

It also works as a travel book. I'm now both curious and repulsed by "darkest Africa", thanks no doubt to the lurid imagery and detail of the book. I wish I could write this well. I listened to it as read by John Lee, and it's one of the rare times I'm like, "Damn, I want to read this again with my eyes." I also want some more true adventure books like these.

Speaking of true adventure, I'm traveling across Korea tomorrow for an 11-hour hike at Seoraksan. I'm taking a vehicle, so it's not exactly Livingstone walking from one side of Africa to the other. But if I don't blog for a while, assume that I'm lost like Livingstone and come get me (après Stanley). But you can't say, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" You need to come up with your own catchy line.

Made to Stick

Fascinating book I just finished called Made to Stick by Dan & Chip Heath.



It explains (among other things) why deer kill more people each year than sharks.

Two Things to Be Aware of

1.
Neat post on yesterday's Boing Boing about millimeter wave scanners. They sort of undress you for one of those TSA agents - apparently they're being aimed at people not even going through the security line at the airport?? Here are the images from the TSA site:



But the wikipedia entry for Backscatter X-Ray, a related technology, has higher quality:



Whatever the quality level, I don't think most people are aware they're being so thoroughly undressed with scans like this, or that it might be affecting their health.

2.
In unrelated news, while browsing the top 100 books on Amazon I found this gem:



And then looked into her and she runs some weird awesome money cult. You know anyone with "Supreme Master" in their name has to be good for you.



Three cheers for cults.

Pre-algebra

This book looks quality.

Anywhere I Lay My Vomit

Surely one of my least favorite celebrities is Scarlett Johansson. I don't care what anyone says: She's ugly, a bad actress, and her name is hard to spell. So there.

I'm downloading her new album of Tom Waits covers. I'm only curious why David Bowie participated on a few tracks.

Okay, download done. Give me a few minutes to listen to this trainwreck.



Okay, I only played "Falling Down" and "Fannin' Street" (the Bowie tracks) and they're so-so. Sounds kind of over-produced to hide Scar's mediocre vocals (mediocals). Whatevs. Maybe I'll play it again and love her and wonder what I was thinking before! Doubt it!

Some books I've read or listened to lately and gotten something out of:

The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin - Gordon Wood
Big Sur - Jack Kerouac
A Whole New Mind - Daniel Pink
Bonk - Mary Roach
Naked Greed of the Flesh - me (an old novella I wrote)

EDIT: I googled "naked greed of the flesh" ten minutes after posting this and it was already indexed (and the only use of that phrase besides the April 27 entry).

The Omnivore's Dilemma

I was expecting a whiny Bay Area style Organic vs. Big Business book about food. Instead Pollan makes the situation far more complicated and now I don't know what to eat. I thought he'd make vegetarian out as the saintliest way to eat a meal. That's not necessarily the case. He even goes hunting wild animals and shoots a pig which he later eats and serves to his comrades.

What really intrigues me is how the military-industrial complex extends its fingers into the nation's food supply. I already knew U.S. farmers get fat government subsidies. But the effect it has (especially corn farms) upon the world economy and how it creates bizarre feedback loops is staggering, nauseating, perplexing. How you turn such a feedback loop off is the million dollar question.

Let's put food politics aside for a sec. Because you can't deny this book is well written. It's one of the few nonfiction audiobooks I've heard that makes me want to read the text as well. Pollan tells a good story. That's all I want from any book. It's a fat 13-hour narrative that I listened to going to work each day and I feel like an entire layer of the U.S. onion had been peeled away.

People want to eat good food and not destroy the planet and their health in the process. Why is that so hard to do?