Whatta Fiasco

No, it wasn’t like a frog on a windshield. It was a frog on my windshield. What to do? What to do? I couldn’t just drive onto the highway with a tiny frog clinging to my windshield, waiting for him to get blown off by the wind. When I got to the stop sign I turned off the engine and hopped out to shoo him away. But when I hopped out, he hopped off. Here’s hoping he hopped the right direction and found his way to safety.

I had the most luscious dinner last night. Filet topped with a broiled bluecheese crust. Fork tender. The mushrooms and fresh noodles were almost as good as the beef. My modest contribution involved shedding tears in the process of dicing red onion for the salad. Now I’m wondering what sort of meal I could offer that group of friends.

Tsai Ming-Liang casts a cynical eye on a young man who quits school to seek revenge against a hoodlum who vandalized his father’s taxi. But that makes it sound as though something happens in this film and that isn’t quite accurate. Mostly it’s an eerie look at a seamy side of Taipei with a repetitive and completely appropriate soundtrack. And don’t miss the use of tides as a metaphor. Surprisingly good for as bad as I’m making it sound.

[greencine]

Munch munch crunch. Another junk food snack book.

[amazon]

I know that summer will be ending soon. I’ve begun to see the signs. Yesterday morning while driving into work I noticed that the sign on the front of The Edge of Hell (the home of my daily gargoyle fix) was lit up. This morning the sign was off again but one of the windows was cracked open. It’s autumn cleaning time, but when you’re cleaning a haunted house, do you sweep away the cobwebs?

This week I pulled the trigger on buying a piece of software to manage my books and what not. (It’s Delicious Library.) After playing around with it a bit, I decided that I didn’t have to have a scanner or a fancy web cam to make it work well. But as I was getting titles entered, I was reminded of a bit of history that had slipped my mind. To wit, I and many of my books are older than the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Also, even if a book has an ISBN, that doesn’t mean that anyone has bothered to scan an publish the cover art. After the authors of this bit of code went to the trouble of writing a spiffy interface that lets you view your library data as a series of covers sitting face out on shelves, it just seems a shame to have the wrong cover art showing. These books are not my books! Imposters!

But the crickets in my shower (sadly) agree that summer is almost over.

This is the first book of a trilogy? The good news is that it doesn’t feel like it. The other good news is that not only is there more to come, but the second book (Effendi) is already out. This is another one of those books that, on the face of it, I shouldn’t have ever read. It’s a murder mystery in an alternate universe. I’m glad I picked it up anyway. There’s a bit more cardboard and glossing than I’d prefer, but as a whole it works well. And now that I know there’s more to come, I’m looking forward to seeing how he fleshes out these characters.

And, although this book couldn’t really be considered cyberpunk, what it most reminds me of is George Alec Effinger’s Maurid Audran novels, starting with When Gravity Fails. And if you missed those the first time around, When Gravity Fails has just been reprinted, with Fire in the Sun and The Exile Kiss to follow. Go bug your local bookseller to stock both the Effinger and the Grimwood books.

[amazon]

A quick (under 150 pages) and well written introduction to some of the complexities developmental biologists (and others) are working on. Along the way you’ll pick up another way of describing wind chill and an understanding of what the developers of hydrid crops are shooting for (maximum yield ain’t it) and why the differences between bats and zebrafish as species aren’t nearly as interesting as the differences among zebrafish as individuals. Among other things.

[amazon]

This was one of those DVDs where I pulled it out and thought, huh. Why did I put this one in my queue? Pool players. Mobsters. A crooked tournament. Eh. But it turned out to be this feisty little New Zealand film about… pool playing lads, violent mobsters, and women of questionable virtue wrapped around a crooked pool tournament and a failing bar. But in amongst all the sex (plenty) and violence (lots), there’s this sweet romantic film, with camera work and a story structure that could have been cheesy, but somehow it all works. Don’t expect to see lots of actual pool playing. It’s just a fun movie.

[greencine]

It’s a sly little murder mystery where the murderer is known from the first page and each chapter brings another corpse, but the motive and the intended victim aren’t revealed until the end. Nicely done and not a bit longer than it needs to be, making for a swift read. Now I have to track down a copy of Borges and the Eternal Orangutans, which is what I was looking for when I found this instead.

[amazon]

Patricia Highsmith’s first novel and the basis of the Hitchcock movie, which I haven’t seen yet. But, boy howdy, can I see why Hitchcock decided to use it. This is one deeply creepy novel.

[amazon]

This was originally a series of short stories, here strung together in all their glory. I find Haviland Tuf to be a worthy literary decendent of Nero Wolfe, but spooneristic Tolly Mune holds her own as a notably strong, older female character. Just good fun.

[amazon]