That is not dead which can eternal lie

I was reading some short stories by H.P. Lovecraft today and stopped to ponder on his greatness. I don't remember the first thing of his that I read, but it hooked me and got me to keep on looking for more. I realized that the more I read, the more I enjoy it. There is a distinct reason for this that I haven't experienced with any other author.

His stories stand on their own as, for my money, the greatest horror fiction ever written. But what makes Lovecraft so rewarding to keep coming back to is the repetition of common themes and recurring names that build up into a common mythos that unites the individual tales. Each short story sheds light into a new dark corner of that hideous world, and enriches the entire Lovecraftian oeuvre.

The true genius of it is that the references are not explicit, but rather tend to act as little gems for observant readers to spot and exclaim, "ah-ha! I've seen this before!" It's like the second time through a good movie when you are hit over the head by foreshadowing and vague hints that just slipped by and failed to register in your consciousness during the first viewing. But it's even better than that, because it brings additional elements into the story you are reading that open it up onto a larger world.

I'm not sure where to go with this post. If you're an avid Lovecraft reader, I suppose you've already noticed the things of which I speak, and if not then you probably don't care. But you should care... one of the handy things about his short stories is that they tend to be easy to find online. If you've never read him before, go do it now. Then come back and tell me what you think. Take all the time you want; I can wait for you.

Sui Generis book club #4

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman

This was an interesting read. A book about the dangers and drawbacks of the medium of television, written twenty years ago. It's well done, and a lot of it is still relevant and interesting, but a lot of it is really out-of-date. All I could really think about as I was reading was how much things have changed since then. He talks about the impact of television on education before Channel One had moved into classrooms. Computers are only mentioned peripherally, and he writes, "I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology". It would be interesting to read a book written by him today, exploring the ways that Internet has eclipsed television, and in some cases even allowed for more of the rational discourse and logical reasoning that television was supposed to have stamped out. But I guess that overwhelmingly, it's just more of the same. Just with more potential, and infinitely more freedom of discernment... I don't know. The book felt like it was missing something, but that's not the author's fault; just the inevitable effect of time.

Sui Generis book club #3

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I heard the buzz on these books before the movie was announced, but didn't get around to actually reading them till now. I got The Bad Beginning for Christmas, and my first thought was, "I can't believe this cost $11.99." It is a very small book. I liked it, though, which means I'll probably have to read the rest of them. My favorite passage was about halfway through:

But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the
law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and
very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of
money.

Very clever. More than anything, this book reminded me of Roald Dahl's short stories. The best part is that you could read the entire series in a matter of hours. This novel was good enough to make me want to read more, but I'm going to get the rest of the books from the library.

Sui Generis book club #2

The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer

The story is about a fat philosopher who robs banks, mostly, but the book is all about wordplay and black humour and fast-paced wit. One zinger after another. Nice short chapters. I thought it was great, except for a couple of dirty bits that kind of caught me off guard. Otherwise it's a really enjoyable book. There's praise on the back cover from Tom Robbins, which is a good clue for whether you'll like it or not. I agree with his assessment: "Strange and wonderful! This cat can flat-out write!"

Sui Generis book club #1

Surprised by Joy short book review

If you hate C.S. Lewis, then you will not enjoy this book.
If you are a card-carrying member of the Clive Staples fan club, as I am, then you will find this book full of fascinating insights into the early life of a brilliant man. It's a quick read, so pick it up if you like Lewis or autobiographies.

Motorcycle Diary

I was telling my father-in-law a few months ago about my plans to buy a motorcycle. It must have made him nostalgic for his own biker days, because he went out and bought a vintage Honda Scrambler. It kind of sounds like a truck stop breakfast entree, but they look like beautiful bikes. I haven't actually seen his yet; it's currently being worked on at his brother's garage. He told me they would restore it and then I could learn to ride on it. Glee!

Weekend of Gluttony

I left for Duluth with J on New Year's Eve morning. The weather was cold and windy, and the farther north we drove, the more snow there was on the ground. We arrived just after noon and had lunch at a great place called the Lake Ave. Cafe. There was a really weird couple in the booth next to us, a young woman and an old man, and we spent the whole time trying to figure out their relationship to each other. They were creepy. The food was great, but at the moment I'm drawing a total blank on what we ordered.

After lunch, we found our B&B and drove around a bit since it wasn't check-in time yet. We spent some time at Big Lake Books & Records, which was a crazy place with homemade wooden shelves all at different angles. We didn't check out the adult section. Snow was starting to fall when we headed back to the B&B and settled in. The lady who runs the place (innkeeper? proprietress? hostess?) was a bit eccentric, but very nice. We had a room with a view of The Lake. I ordered a bottle of sweet white Romanian table wine from the cellar and we drank a couple of glasses, then we piled on blankets and took a nap for an hour or two.

Dinner was at Fitger's Brewhouse Brewery & Grille (or just "the Brewery"). While we waited for a table, I explored a local wine shop. Found a bottle of NZ Cloudy Bay Chardonnay for $28, but didn't shell out for it. They had a good selection of Argyle wines as well. Nice place. Fitger's was a really cool establishment with a great vegetarian menu. J got a big, delicious rice burger, and I ordered the fish & chips along with a beer sampler platter. Seven little beers for five dollars--awesome deal. We were stuffed.

We had the B&B all to ourselves when we got back, so we played cards by the fire and then went back up to our room for more wine. The original plan was to return to Fitger's at 9:30 for a jazz show, but we didn't feel like going back into the cold and we were getting sleepy anyway, so instead we just curled up and went to sleep around 10:00. On New Year's Day, we slept in and coffee and orange juice were brought up to our door. We had breakfast at 9:00; bread pudding, grapefruit, eggs, and some sort of tomato thing.

There was time to kill before lunch, but not much was open that day, so we took a scenic drive with great views of Duluth and Lake Superior. There was just an inch or two of snow on the ground and everything was powdered white and pretty. The roads were just a bit slick, but not too bad. Our big going-home lunch was at Bellisio's, where our waitress assured us they had the largest wine list of any restaurant in the entire Midwest. Nice. It came in this huge book that I could have looked through all day. In a quick perusal I did find one bottle for just shy of $1,000, but I settled for something more in my price range, a flight of four Super Tuscan wines for $12.

It was the best lunch I'd had in a while. We were there for about an hour and a half, and I wanted to stay forever, walk around and see all the wines (displayed in gorgeous floor-to-ceiling racks along the walls). I told J that this might be my only chance to touch a $1,000 bottle of wine, you know, maybe just stick it down my pants for a second. But J was getting antsy to go, so she went to warm up the car while I used the little boys' room. There was ice in all of the urinals. After a minute of being fascinated by this, I realized that I was probably too satiated and lazy to operate a motor vehicle, so J drove while I took a happy wine nap.

Yesterday she said to me, "I feel like all we did this weekend was eat." Yeah, it was a great weekend.

Categories: wine, travel

As if starting law school wasn't enough

I suppose I'm the last one on the Internet to hear about this "101 in 1001" idea--I'm pretty sure I noticed it on a few other law blogs. Bear with me if you've heard this already. I'm going to write about it anyway.

Basically, the challenge is to make a list of 101 specific tasks and then accomplish all of them within the next 1001 days.

Obviously, this was right up my alley. I'm already so into the idea of making lists and setting goals and working to learn or do new things. It wasn't hard for me to come up with a couple dozen things right off the top of my head, and everything just fell into place after that.

I'm not going to share the entire list (unless someone out there actually wants to see it), but I will say that as I wrote it out, it began to look like the training regimen for a sexy international superspy. Check these out:

1. Learn to hotwire a car
2. Learn to ride a motorcycle
3. Practice a martial art for one year
4. Learn to speak conversational French
5. Learn to use a handgun at a firing range
6. Spend at least a week in Japan
7. Learn to give a professional-quality massage
8. Jump out of a plane

[update: if you decide to jump on the bandwagon and are having trouble calculating the date 1001 days from now (I did), then here's a handy tool to make it easier. My deadline is Wednesday, September 11, 2007. At least that won't be difficult to remember.]

Days go by

I've been so busy filling myself up with the true spirit of Christmas that I haven't had the heart to blog. It was a very strange feeling to decorate our little Christmas tree in our little apartment with just my new wife. "This is something I'm supposed to be doing with my family," I told her. Then I realized in a new way that she really is my family now. It was a strange, wonderful, magical thing. I stopped by my parents' house last night and picked up some ornaments to decorate our tree. It's like I'm really growing up.

Tonight is the party with my local friends to celebrate our successes with novel writing attempts. Dr. Vono and I both reached 50,000 words last month. His wife made some significant progress on hers but slowed down to focus on quality. And my other participating friend had computer issues and lost her novel for good. According to the official site, it looks like there were 5,891 verified winners this year. I can't find a number of total participants, though, so that number doesn't mean much to me. I'd like to say that my friends and I came out overall above the average success rate. Although, to be honest, what really makes WriMo a success is what you get out of it personally. You can't really quantify that.

Personally, I'm glad I did it. NaNaWriMo helped to jumpstart something that I've wanted to do for a long time but might never have done without that kick in the pants. Now I'm just trying to stay on task and actually finish this thing.

Final WriMo Report

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo; entries are officially due at midnight to be considered for "winner" status. Since I wrote my fifty-thousandth word some time ago, I'm just coasting into the final stretch. My final word count for the month is 61,829. I slowed my writing down dramatically after reaching the original goal, and since then I have begun the odious task of editing and pulling together all the random fragments I wrote as they came to mind. I am pleased to say that at this point I have a mostly chronological, mostly written, mostly not awful, first draft. Victory is mine!

Learning Dvorak

Now that my novel is well on its way, I have moved on to the next big challenge: learning a brand-new keyboard layout. I have to confess that I am really a geek at heart. My first major in college, before switching to Business, was computer science. I am fascinated by the invention of new & better ways of doing things. So when I heard about the Dvorak keyboard layout*, a free way to input data that reduced the stress on my fingers and might even increase my typing speed, I wanted to give it a try.

Originally, I expected it to be harder than learning to type for the first time, since I'm not only trying to program my brain to use a new method but also to de-program myself from using the old one. In fact, I think that learning QWERTY gave me a framework to build from, and I think I'm learning this layout much quicker than I would have starting from scratch. I'm using it right now and I will for at least the next month, and if it's working for me, I'll stick with it. In the meantime, don't be surprised if my posts are a little shorter for the next week or so.

*also see here for the article that turned me on to this crazy idea in the first place

I won!

I seem to have lost my post from last night to internal Blogger problems. There's no time now to write much, but I just wanted to report that I have passed 50,000 words in my novel. More later...

(More) I wrote my 50,000th word some time between 10:00 and 10:30 on Sunday night. This means that I "finished" my novel in just two weeks, which is now my personal record to beat next year. As I suspected all along, however, I am nowhere near to the end of my story. So, although I will continue to write at a frantic pace until I'm really done, I'm going to try not to bore everyone with it as much as I have been. It's time to get back to talking about other things.

Did I mention that law school reports have started going out? Three of my nine schools requested reports almost immediately after I submitted my applications. Two more were requested over the weekend. I am delighted. It is cause for celebration, and so I baked my famous Vegetarian Enchiladas for dinner last night. J helped, and we had a fun couply bonding time in the kitchen. I supplemented the spicy Mexican-style food with an ice-cold Japanese beer. I would have preferred a Dos Equis, but beggars can't be choosy after all.

words written yesterday: 3,329

Categories:
writing, Categories: law school