Jack Bauer, Improbable Commercials, and Other Things Found on the Interwebs

My brain is dead today, along with my arms and back. As such, there will be little to no creative writing. Instead, I bring you the things that have gotten me through the day the last few days.

First is the 100 greatest moments in 24. Not only are there snarky comments on all the events, but there's YouTube clips for all of them. Truly a momentous undertaking, one worthy of all the beer and women that can be thrust upon these fine men. Also, since my mom is inexplicably suddenly into 24, this is her chance to catch up. Or at least know what I'm talking about in when I reference crazy things in that crazy show.

Next, we have the Montgomery Flea Market. Its just like. A. Mini. Mall. And also, completely insane.

Here's an interesting essay from a woman who didn't feel complete until both her legs were cut off. In much the same way that some people feel like they were born the wrong sex, this 'Susan Smith' feels she has two too many working limbs. This reminds me of a passage out of Neal Stephenson's Cryptnonomicon, where one of the characters is commenting that sometime around the age of five or six, your brain patterns just get stuck, and sometimes on very weird things. For example, his wife, for some reason, can't get off sexually unless the sex happens on antique furniture. This Smith seems to have the same problem. It doesn't appear to be sexual, but at six years old, she decided that what really needed to go were her legs.

And finally, I bring you a video from Japan. I don't know how I found it or why I ended up watching it, but this only confirms my firmly held belief that the Japanese are incredibly weird, especially the people who make anime.

The Tortoise and the Eagle

I read a lot. Most days, I'll down fifty or a hundred pages. Sometimes more. Reading this fast means I run out of books quickly, so I've learned to reread books. Those that I like, I'll reread often. Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, which is probably my favorite book, I've read at least a dozen times, but most likely more.

Since I reread my collection fairly often, I find there's parts that I keep coming back to. My favorite passage, the one I think about a lot and have even tried memorizing a few times, is also from a Pratchett book. It comes from Small Gods, which is not only an amazing book, but also probably my personal explanation for my religious feelings.

The particular passage I love is from the first page and a half. It doesn't have a title, but if it did, it would probably be called "The Tortoise and the Eagle." Or possibly "Making Friends. Then Eating Them." Terry Pratchett's a weird guy.

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.

And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap...

And then a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle.

And then the eagle lets go.

And almost always, the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on practically anything else. It's simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.

But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.

One day a tortoise will learn to fly.

I don't know why I like this so much. I appreciate the wit and the creativity, and I like how this passage ties together much of the book, but in a way that you don't realize until you finish the novel. But I can't explain what it is about this passage that draws me back again and again. Its possible its the message of getting back for betrayal, or that what the bully does eventually will come back to bite them in the ass (it seems that everything comes back around to the mental anguish I suffered in middle school). Possibly I just like Aesop-like fables. Or maybe I really like the transition (or lack thereof) from "What a great friend I have" to "Then the eagle lets go." But whatever it is, I keep reading the passage and I keep enjoying it.

Books This Year

The year is only 19 days old, and already I've devoured quite a few books. I thought it would probably be a good idea to write down the books I'm reading and a few thoughts about them.

1. The Blind Side by Michael Lewis*
If you like football, especially of the college variety, read this book. It is simply stunning. The book is basically about the evolution of football and how the left tackle became the second highest paid position in football, while also requiring a physical freak to play it correctly. But really, it's the story of Michael Oher, a poor uneducated boy from inner city Memphis, who came out of nowhere to become the most highly recruited player in the country. Along the way, Lewis touches on the horrible conditions of living in the inner city, White Flight, the kindness and bizarreness of white Evangelicals, Coach Ogereon, the double standard of college education when it comes to athletes, and the West Coast Offense. All of it is well written, engrossing, and fun.


2. Moneyball by Michael Lewis



I loved The Blind Side so much that I went out and immediately bought this. Its about the Oakland A's, one of the poorest teams in professional baseball, and how even though they are constantly outspent, they manage to win consistently. This is because, and this is the part I love, they're run by a bunch of nerds. Nerds who love statistics. Baseball is a game of traditions, and according to scouts, players should look a certain way. If they don't meet the profile, they'll never make it to the pros. For the A's, how they look is not important at all. Rather, its about what they actually do. And it works. I know very little about baseball, but while I learned about the sport in this book, what I really learned is that someone with a bit of extra knowledge and the courage to exploit it can make a killing. Also: Statistics are cool.




3. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama


Obama may be the current political it-boy right now, but don't let that dissuade you from reading his new book. It is, quite simply, amazing. In a country divided by religion and partisanship, he preaches a middle road, one that has the potential to bring a lot of the country together. He makes no apologies for being a Democrat and fairly liberal, but he is willing to understand and compromise with the other side. Will he make a good president? I don't know, I need to hear some specifics about his policies. His book lays out some, and they sound good, but I'd probably need to know more. And he could probably use more experience, having been in Washington for only two years. But having spent years of his childhood in Indonesia, having a multicultural and multiethnic background, being obviously very intelligent and well spoken, and being able to listen to the demands of others, he may be just what this country needs.




4. Ringworld by Larry Niven



This was one of those impulse buys, made while looking through the Science Fiction rack at Books-A-Million. I had heard of the book, but had never really heard anything about it. But I love reading about world creation, and basically, that's what this book is all about. Niven created a world that is literally a ring, encircling a star (think of the place Halo takes place on). Its approximately 600 million times the area of Earth, making it absolutely massive, and would be nearly impossible to ever overcrowd. The story itself was OK, and it definitely shows its age (having been published in 1970), thought not nearly as much as say, Asimov's Foundation Series, where everything is based on nuclear technology. An enjoyable book, and I'll probably read its sequel, which goes more into how the Ring was built, but it doesn't really crack my consciousness in the way the last three books did.


Currently I'm reading State of Denial by Bob Woodward. It's good, though slightly dry. But after only getting a third of the way through it, it's stunning how completely inept the Bush administration, and especially Donald Rumsfield, was at planning this war. I'll have more to say once I'm through.


*I did not actually read this after the start of the New Year, but I loved it so much that I wanted to include it.