Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I need a t-shirt that says “I don’t care where your cat or your kid pooped.” And I need to wear it to work.

My horoscope today:

No one is going to be catering to your needs today, dear Taurus, so get up and do things on your own. You will find that there is little sympathy coming from others, and strong opinions are a dime a dozen.

And this is different from any other day how, exactly?

From all appearances, Bruce Sterling has been reading Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum. Fortunately, it seems to have inspired (mostly) satire rather than imitation. Sterling does satire much better than thriller, and the last chapter proves it. Most of Zenith Angle is enjoyable, but it’s not Sterling’s best work.

Zenith Angle is all about cyberwarfare, the ultimate two-geek marriage, and the government’s response to 9/11, with a little bit of elk wasting disease and Bollywood thrown in.

Protagonist Dr. Derek Vandeveer gets out of private sector IT just ahead of the dot-bomb, and takes a federal government job that involves trying to explain and implement computer security for people who have no idea what he’s talking about. The most interesting problems are too expensive to fix, or political dynamite, or both. He pays for necessary equipment out of his own pocket. And his secretary is marginally functional, brilliant, and even less of a security risk than Derek himself. For a change of pace, he takes on a project that involves fixing a very expensive and badly broken spy satellite, despite being warned off; the project is a disaster looking for a fall guy. Meanwhile, his wife Dottie, is pursuing her career in astronomy in Colorado, at an extremely high-tech telescope facility. Most of the couple’s interaction is via email, although the few scenes in which they’re together are wonderfully believable.

The U-turn into technothriller is far enough into the novel that you may as well finish it, disjointed though it is. The high-tech telescope turns out to have two-way capability and is the cause of the spy satellite’s hardware problems. Derek discovers that his best friend is about to auction off the satellite-burning capacity to the highest Asian bidder, and he must be stopped. Fortunately, Derek has previously met (and field-tested) a handful of cyberwarriors who are perfect for the job. Disconnected bits and pieces of plot all come together in an action-pack climax, complete with Big Confrontation Scene. It comes off as formulaic and stilted, and the final scenes feel more like a setup for a sequel than an ending.

Bruce, I was with you until it went all Mission Impossible.

Not enough of my usual suspects are available for a second American Ellipse team, unfortunately. However, several of them did express interest in playing on competing teams when Doug and I do the sequel game (working title is Pacific Ellipse). Of course, that’s months off, as Doug has something else he wants to run after the American Ellipse finishes, but at least people can’t say there wasn’t enough advance notice. My other idea was to run a pair of simultaneous one-shot games along similar lines, possibly at a convention. We wouldn’t be able to do a whole Ellipse, of course, but we could do a race.

I haven’t read the book. Nor have I read Bourne Identity. Besides, everyone knows that the movie never turns out like the book anyway.

The film The Bourne Supremacy is like the film of The Bourne Identity, only without the female lead tagging along through the entire film. Car chases, fight scenes, explosions, the narrowest of escapes. Lots of “realistic” shaky-cam. I think that Matt Damon looks rather young to be playing the title character, but his name gets behinds in seats. Typical summer movie; I was neither impressed nor disappointed. I was just there.

My sister-in-law, who happens to be a fabulously talented painter, is working on a very interesting project…or, rather, has her friends and family working on it. She’s taken several 8″ x 10″ canvases, and had family and friends paint self-portraits. The intent is to hang them all together on a large stretch of wall in her living room. Last night, Ed and I had our turns.

Painting is not something I do well, nor is drawing. I have difficulty getting the lines to go where I want them; I realize that this is simply a matter of practice, but I haven’t taken the time. Perhaps someday. I was tempted to go all Picasso, but realized that it probably wouldn’t look intentional. Dali-esque, however appropriate, simply wasn’t going to happen. Noses are difficult for me, as are ears. And as much as I wanted to go along with Lori’s project and help her out, I didn’t want to botch the job, either. I’d actually been agonzing over it for some time.

Fortunately, I found a way to make us both happy. I’m taking advantage of the fact that when someone hangs a decorative mirror at eye level, I usually see myself only from the eyes up, with my head tilted back. (Side effect of being under five feet tall.) So, my painting starts at about the middle of my nose, and shows only the eyes, forehead, top of my head and hair. I put a lot of time into painting my hair; I simply couldn’t stop fussing with it. Life really does imitate art.

We were told not to sign our paintings, but as I am by far the shortest adult in the family–my ten-year-old-niece is almost as tall as I am–it’s easy to guess which one is me. That, and because I wasn’t told ahead of time not to sign it, and painted the Japanese character for “light” in the upper right corner. (”Liorah” means “I have light” in Hebrew.)

I had a truly fiendish idea this morning. I was talking to Doug about last night’s American Ellipse, in which all the players are on the same team. The game is run every other week, and as I am not in Doug’s other Thursday game, that leaves the spot open. It occurred to me that I know enough people to field a second American Ellipse team with no overlap. What if I were to run the two teams through the race simultaneously and the results of one game were used in the other? Two teams actually competing against each other! I am dizzy at the prospect.

Two weeks ago, one of my coworkers departed precipitously, and in a manner suggesting it was not planned…at least, not by the coworker in question. We were told that a replacement would start the following Monday. He would sit in the same place, take on the same work, etc.

On Wednesday, the replacement suddenly turned in his resignation.

A meeting was called, and the next thing I knew, I’d been “auctioned off” and was the replacement’s replacement on the major, urgent, somewhat disorganized project he’d been working on. I was vaguely aware of the project beforehand, but hadn’t worked on it, and had only 24 hours to get up to speed on it before it was all mine.

After half a day on the project, I can tell you that ignorance is bliss.

The good news is that they’re not moving me to the “Desk of Doom,” upon pain of…well, pain, inflicted on whosoever tries it. It’s good to be popular. I think.

In which the captain of the American team entered in the Grand Ellipse meets a dreadful fate, and an unlikely assortment of hotel guests takes up his fallen banner.

The American Ellipse kicked off last night, although Doug was in New Jersey so I had to fly solo. (We had grand plans involving a webcam, wireless Internet and IM, which unfortunately failed to materialize.)

February 13, 1885. It was a dark and stormy night in Philadelphia; freezing rain pelting into half-frozen muddy slush. A few minutes after 11:00 PM, gunshots rang out on the fourth floor of the Society Hill hotel. Almost immediately thereafter, a body fell to the ground outside the dining room. A young lady from San Francisco succumbed to a fit of the vapors. A businessman from Chicago raced up the front stairs. A respectable Boston widow rushed outside, braving the weather to satisfy her curiosity, and collect some papers that were blowing about in the courtyard. (Was that a door slamming she heard at the back of the building?) A pair of Midwestern businesswomen in the ladies’ lounge emerged to find the hotel in an uproar. An elderly gentleman of Oriental extraction peered out of his patient’s room, but saw only a young man bounding up the stairs. And a drunken photographer missed the entire thing, despite his ringside seat.

The unfortunate individual in the courtyard turned out to be one William Guggenheim (of the New York Guggenheims), captain of the American team sponsored by (among others) his father, the mining magnate. An examination of the papers collected by the Boston widow seems to indicate that the TransAmerica team, as it is known, has been losing members left and right to injuries, disappearances, threats, and untimely demise; Guggenheim is only the latest. One of his bodyguards is dead, the other apparently frozen in place by some act of “wizardry” committed by one of three masked men. The Philadelphia Clarion’s most intrepid lady reporter, Miss Penelope Fletcher-Finch was first on the scene, long-suffering photographer Henry C. Watson in tow. Philly’s finest were not far behind; Detective O’Malley conducted careful interviews and collected evidence. Everyone was asked, as a potential witness, not to leave town or change hotels without first notifying the precinct.

The following day, official depositions were taken by the Philadelphia police. Isaac Guggenheim appeared in Philadelphia, to make arrangements for his brother. He also had a very private meeting with the gentleman from Chicago (Mr. Laughton). Certain plans were made; certain documents transferred. The show must go on, even if the cast is all understudies. The gentleman from Chicago accepted the captaincy of the TransAmerica Team. In between doing a little business with a representative of a Canadian railway, he managed to assemble his squad–the Boston widow (Mrs. Atwood), the senior Midwestern businesswoman (Miss Kingston), the Chinese medical practitioner (Dr. Hu), and the no-longer-drunken photographer (Mr. Carl).

Before Mr. Laughton can even finish sorting through the sheaf of documents transferred to him by the older Guggenheim brother, he receives a request for a meeting from a Mr. Luigi Cavatelli. Mr. Cavatelli “has the pleasure of representing a consortium of businessmen from the greater New York area, whose names I am sure you would recognize if I were to provide them, which I will not.” These businessmen have a considerable financial interest in the outcome of the American Ellipse, and are happy to assist the TransAmerica team in order to secure their victory. Unfortunately, Mr. Cavatelli’s principals are not the only ones who have a considerable financial interest in the outcome. One Nicholas Finnegan, whose principals are likewise a consortium of businessmen (from Boston) have made it quite clear that they are not supporting the TransAmerica team in this venture.

And so, we find ourselves at the main rain junction in Philadelphia, awaiting the 3:00 train to New York City, from whence Our Heroes will seek transport to the starting point of the Grand Ellipse–Panama City.

Quote of the game: “He’s not well!” –Mrs. Atwood’s niece, describing the unfortunate condition of Mr. W. Guggenheim

Mary Roach’s witty, conversational style makes Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers approachable and readable, despite the macabre and occasionally disgusting topic. While the author is never disrespectful or lurid, her arch commentary makes it much easier to absorb the fascinating information. (”The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back…”)

The book opens with plastic surgeons practicing face-lifts on decapitated heads. There are also chapters on automobile safety testing, cannibalism, gross anatomy labs, military equipment testing, forensic research, the medicinal use of cadavers, brain death and organ transplantation, decapitation and head transplants, test crucifictions, the history of body-snatching, and the funeral industry. It’s not for the weak of stomach, but it’s interesting enough that I highly recommend it anyway. Roach skillfully avoids going to far by diveritng the reader’s attention with a historical digression or personal observation; her pacing is excellent, and Stiff is a very good example of how to write about an uncomfortable topic for a general audience.