25 posts from December 2006

This wine from the Rioja region of Spain was a Christmas gift from my mother because I had told her that I like tempranillos and this was the only one they had in the local wine store.  Tempranillo is hard to find here in the states, and the first tempranillo I had was in Milwaukee at a wine-tasting.  It was actually a tempranillo-valpolicella blend, and it was a wonderful, wonderful wine.

Mom bought two bottles of this, one to send back with me and one to drink while we were visiting in Missouri.  She didn't like it as much as I did, and I have to admit, too, that this isn't as good as other tempranillos I've had since discovering them in Wisconsin.  This is a good table wine, and would go well with any hearty meat or meal with a heavy sauce, but it lacks the complexity and undertones of other tempranillos I've tried.

There was yet another fiber-line cut last night.  No long-distance, no Internet, no credit card processing... and that's not to mention what it does to my operation (which I won't mention here).  Gotta love deregulation.

Tophat

This is a picture Strixaluco took of me at a Christmas party we attended recently.

Now you see what my promises are worth.

Clock Tower

2 comments

A woman from a marketing company out of Madison, WI, emailed me through Flickr, asking for permission to use this photo of San Juan College's clock tower in a proposal they are sending one of the power companies that owns part of the two power plants we have here.  I'm flattered!  This was just a quick shot I took with my little 3 megapixel camera.  Who knew?

My final post for the evening, I promise.  Sideshow No. 8 is a Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay blend from Argentina that is very drinkable.  It's dry, and you can definitely taste the Chardonnay in it, but it is not so dry as to be astringent.  It's crisp, and clean, and I'm sure it would go great with fish or seafood, if I weren't drinking it by itself while I blog.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Today Show Book Club #8)

Alexander McCall Smith

1 comment

I read this for a mystery book group Christina and I attend, and though I didn't get it finished in time for my book group, I did finally finish it!

This is the first in a series about the first female private detective in Botswona.  The book has very little plot, being both a story about some of the first cases this detective took after starting her agency and about how she came to be the first female P.I. in the country.

It is duly noted that the author, Alexander McCall Smith, is not African and is, of course male, and yet it would be very easy to believe that this book was written by an African woman.  Smith obviously did his research, not just on the history and culture of Botswana, but of the way that Africans think and convey stories.

I've taken classes on South American and Carribean literature, and the similarities are striking, and perhaps has to do with the non-linear thinking of writers from non-Western cultures.  No. 1 jumps forward and backward in time, and starts telling us about the protagonist, Precious Ramotswe, by telling us about the life of her father, because the type of man her father is greatly impacts the kind of woman she becomes.  There isn't a big, complex case to solve - most of the cases she solves are simple and are solved within a couple of days - but this is refreshing for two reasons.  For one thing, it is more realistic, since the types of cases she takes - trailing the wayward children of rich patrons and obtaining proof of marital infidelity for worried wives - are typical of what most real-world P.I.'s do.  That is, most private detectives aren't called in by the police to help solve a giant diamond caper, like in the movies, nor do they tend to just stumble on murders all the time. 

For another thing, the description of these small cases helps continue the feel of non-Western literature throughout the novel.  This book isn't about a case, it's about Precious Ramotswe, and in order to not detract from the building of her character the book doesn't describe to us a major case that she broke, like most detective novels, but rather it describes a series of smaller cases that show us rather than tell us about her ingenuity, her compassion, and her humor.

This is an excellent book, and I look forward to reading the next in the series.

Dead Lines (Bear, Greg)

Greg Bear

We listened to the audiobook version of this on the way to and back from Missouri.  We're home now (yeah!), and since big slushy dollops of wet snow are falling outside, this is a good time to catch up on my voxing.

The only other book I've ever read by Greg Bear was called Eon, and I don't remember being particularly impressed by it, either.  The problem is that I really want to be impressed.  I like Bear's concepts, I like his premises, I like the plot, and help me I even like the characters, to a point, but the glue that's supposed to bring it altogether is altogether the wrong formula.

The first problem is the characters.  I said I like the characters, and I do, because they are not two dimensional.  They are real people, with histories and complex reactions.  The only problem is that if they really were real people, I wouldn't want to meet them, and I certainly wouldn't want to accompany them for anything near the amount of time to complete an adventure such as this one.  The problem is that the characters are realistic, but they are not likeable.

Our hero in Dead Lines is a former pornographer turned B-Movie director turned henchman for an old, retired producer in California.  We are told that the protagonist, Peter, is charming and has a way with women, and for proof of this we are told, again, that he has slept with hundreds of women.  We don't see any of this charm, either through his actions or his dialogue.  In fact, he is a man of few words who wanders through life depressed and barely verbal.  He has good reason to be this way, since his daughter died some two years prior to the beginning of the story, murdered by an unknown killer.  The problem isn't that he's a sullen, despondent man, but rather that the exposition and the other characters keep telling us that he's other than what the author shows us through the characters own actions and speech.  Further, I have to say I like the sullen, despondent Peter better than the promiscuous playboy the author ensures us that Peter really is.

And Peter's not alone in his promiscuity.  Every character in the book seems to think of sex as a handshake, and jealousy doesn't exist.  I realize that there are people like that in the world - many of them, in fact - but gathering them all together like they're at a convention and then populating a novel with them doesn't make for a good story.  Since their sexual exploits have absolutely nothing to do with the concept of the novel, don't advance the plot, and don't contribute to the themes, I really have to wonder why the author feels it necessary to use these types of characters to tell his story.

My next complaint is that occasionally to frequently, Bear digresses into long bouts of details concerning the action that, likewise, don't further the plot.  If this weren't an audiobook, I would look up a relevant passage and quote it for proof, but trust me, it's there.  We are given blow by blow descriptions of action that are completely mundane.  When Thomas Hardy did this, we forgave him, but most modern authors have learned from television one of the few useful things it has contributed to literature: the cutaway.

Finally, some part of the story make very little sense, and unfortunately I can't go into it without revealing spoilers, but trust me, things occasionally happen in this book that leave you scratching your head and wondering what the author ate before dreaming that one up.

All of that being said, Bear does have a nack for concepts, and Dead Lines shows that.  The idea is that wireless bandwidth is running out - cell phones, wireless laptops, PDAs, car computers, etc. are using up all of the available wireless bandwidth and it will all soon be gone.  A new telecomm startup, however, believes that it is has found a way around this.  The engineer/scientist/founder has discovered a way to increase the "information permeability of space," thereby allowing users of special phones, called "trans" to call each other using a sort of sub-space that exists below the quantum level.  No cell towers or infrastructure necessary.

The problem is that by increasing the information of permeability of space, these devices also allow other types of information, previously invisible and confined to sub-space, to communicate and have an effect on the macro world.  Specifically, people start seeing ghosts.  Our protagonist, Peter, starts to see them before most people, and though its never explained it's implied that it's because he is still pre-occupied with his daughter's murder and the recent death of a friend.

That's all I can say without revealing too much, but I will say that despite it's problems, Dead Lines is worth reading.

It's difficult sometimes, reading the public posts about embarassing details that some people post about their lives.  There is a blog here on Vox that I had been following on and off just because she gets a lot of comments, so she's always on my VoxWatch or the Explore page, which is full of facts that most people wouldn't reveal about themselves.  She gave the address to a man she had been seeing, and he no longer wants to have anything to do with her, and she can't understand why.

This isn't the first time I've known about someone to be bitten by what they post on their blog.  If you wouldn't show it to everyone you know, don't post it.  If you want to post a tell-all, don't use your real name, don't post pictures of yourself, and for God's sake, don't give other people the address.  If that's not the kind of blog you want, then make use of Vox's privacy features to keep your private stuff private, and think about how other people will react to what you post.

Just my two cents.

I went to the mall today to take advantage of post-Christmas sales to get the most out of a gift card my in-laws gave me for Christmas, and again I was confronted with how hard it is to buy brand new clothes these days that aren't ripped, faded, stained, punctured, or otherwise spindled, folded, and mutilated before they ever leave the rack.  Denim jeans, of course, are the worst, but now this fashion trend has extended to slacks and shirts.

This is a great trend from the manufacturer's point of view, of course, because they can sell defective merchandise and no one will know whether the defects are the regular "stylish" defects that were put there on purpose or whether they were caused by a machine operator who fell asleep at the lever.  I, for one, do not wish to buy damaged clothes and pay full price.  It may be old-fashioned of me, but I want to wear in my clothes myself.  I think once you've worn a pair of jeans for ten years, you've earned the right to wear them ragged.  They shouldn't come off the rack looking like you wore them on a cross-country trip; that's cheating.

Are we so lazy as a country that we really need someone else to wear in our clothes for us?  What's next?  Will restaurants start selling pre-chewed food?  Will car lots start selling brand new cars off the line that are covered in dings and scratches, carefully placed for stylistic effect? Will teenagers start to dye their hair gray, to make it look more aged?

Distressed jeans?  How about distressed jean-wearers?  I'm one of them.

Happy Boxing Day, whatever the heck that is.  I think that is the epitome of tradition - to celebrate a holiday the origins of which are a complete mystery.