Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in jenmarya's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 19th, 2012
10:55 am	The Plagiarist, Hurricane, and Half Way Home by Hugh Howey Lest you think I am blinded by all things Howey, just cause I think Molly Fyde is so amazing I'll leave Peter if he doesn't read it, and Wool is lining up to be that calibre (though it isn't finished yet), I didn't like these three other books so much.  The Plagiarist's protagonist is a slick bastard out of Harlan Ellison's oevre, precisely that one with Haskell Barkin called, 'Would You Do It For A Penny?" (which is wonderful.) Slick bastard stories need a really strong plot (like Nesbo's Headhunters) and/or character development, both of which are absent. The premise would have worked a lot better if, rather than describing the joy of finding something on par with Shakespeare, Howey dared to show the discovery. Trying to empathize with a slick bastard's joy of finding a new Shakespeare doesn't work.  The Hurricane had wonderful detail about modern technology as society's and family's new dysfunction enabler, and about teenagers and about hurricanes on the east coast and about the wonder of tomatoes, but the thing devolves into a movie of the week. In fact, this could be a nice movie of the week. Maybe it ought to be, but one I won't watch. Usually Howey's skill of only giving you what you need to know to turn the next page only helps the story, but here the climax felt cut and paste, insert generic alcoholic here. It needed more detail to make it feel believable or unique. Speaking of believable, Half Way Home asks a lot of the reader at the beginning and end of this otherwise enjoyable story. I was telling P the set-up of the story and he was laughing--it's that hard to buy.  P also questioned the plot-- "If the rockets take light years to find new worlds before even initiating colonization, will the corporations ever so far away even still be in business to reap the benefits?" That said, the Porter character and the camaraderie were great. Would have liked to see the scene in which Porter admits his feelings for Kelvin since the rest of the story was rather thin.  I'm still gonna read everything this guy writes cause maybe there'll be another Molly or Wool amongst them. I hope he dares more. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 14th, 2012
2:40 pm	The Bern Saga by Hugh Howey Usually when a movie or book attempts multiple genres, they all wash out. Either so many things blow up you're lucky if the High Concept get a single sentence; or, as in Embassytown, there's so much High Concept, you're lucky if you get any story; or the romance feels tacked on; or the invented technology or world is so inadequately explained, you can't help laughing; or the military storyline drowns everything else out; or the time travel doesn't make sense, etc.. Usually you walk out of or close these things wishing to God there'd been one, just one truly suspenseful build-up and climax that brought it all together. Aw hell, most of the time you wish any one goddamn book or movie in any one genre manages a suspenseful build-up and climax. Hugh Howey's "YA" Bern Saga tetralogy grants you that wish like a masterful fairy godfather in about eight genres.  The self-published author was told by a traditional publishing house to change the titles and he refused. Good for him. If people are turned off by the kiddie-sounding titles, it's their loss. Ditto if they can't handle a few typos and at least one odd scene ending. Self-published and self-proofread --it's homemade--better cause it ain't perfeck!  Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue, Molly Fyde and the Land of Light, Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions, and Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace as a tetralogy does start out juvie--there is a teenaged protagonist-- but in the few months the four books chronicle, it becomes a story about very un-childish things, e.g. genocide, a masochist, hyperboreal steampunk sociopaths, blood-draining politicos, etc..  Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, 'the true measure of a man is not where he stands in times of complacency, but where he stands in times of adversity."  Howey excels in measuring his characters, no matter what age or species. From the first we see Molly Fyde bucking the system at an all-male starship academy and, like Larssen's Salander, getting bucked right on back. From there on out, Howey's Molly uniquely draws together a most unlikely cohort to beat the odds, end a war, and root out the evil in two universes. But it's never easy work. Adversity is the fertile soil of Molly's genius. She busts out of certain death situations using math, physics, psychological appeals, you name it-- this is one helluva teenager.  Highly recommended. Nonstop action, great characters and prose that doesn't get in the way of keeping you on the edge of your seat, not even in the eight or so genres it takes to tell this one story. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 7th, 2012
1:50 pm	Wool Omnibus Edition (1-5) When Wired mentioned that a self-published author was cresting the sci fi charts with goood story, I jthought I'd give it a try. The first story hit me like a bazooka and I had to hold the kindle over my midsection to stop the pain. In short, it's about a widower sheriff in a post-apocalyptic world who is compelled to solve the mystery of his wife's death. As he does, parting veils of grief, the reader sees why he's been told to quit asking and what's revealed is a deeply interesting society, one you can't help comparing to ours. This story is the first of 5 interlinked stories, and one you can't stop reading, and one, once you finish, you actually need to heal from. The rest of the stories are equally pulse-pounding, though without the pain. I believe these stories won a poll of Amazon readers as to which series they'd most like to see filmed. I can see why. I don't know how much further Howey is going to go with the saga, but I'm hungry to read 6 and whatever comes next.  Howey's strengths: great dialogue, Cohen-bros-worthy; strong female characters; surprise twists; strong technical writing-- so many sci fi authors bog down here, but not this sometimes-yacht captain-- you sense he knows his way around motors, electronics, all navigation systems -- pretty much anything on a ship in a hostile environment; wonderful pacing--  Whedon would love this guy--just before things get boring, kill somebody or blow something up, check!; I'm in the middle of my third YA Howey book, the Molly Fyde series.  It's got a few flaws and I hear he's rewriting it, but damn is it good anyway. It feels like Buffy meets Farscape. The best thing about Hugh Howey is his writing. The next best thing is his youth-- he's got lots of productive years ahead and we gonna git lots more books. EXPLETIVE yeah! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
1:17 pm	Legend of Korra spoilers and disappointments Legend of Korra The expectations were so damned high, there's no way it could have matched them, but still: ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
1:14 pm	Daughter is not Cinderella She just acts that way. This Sunday, K asked if she could scrub the floor. So then she did. Then she brought me a cup of tea in bed, just the way I like it. :) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
10:13 am	Creamy Leek and Pangaius Gratin As requested, here's one for the spreadsheet. :)  mix the dip sauce well, and let it sit for 15 mins, while you make the rest: 1 tub philadelphia cream cheese 2 packets leek soup mix  2 cups milk (can add more-- ya want it all very wet)   2 filets pangaius, sauteed in a bit of oil til flaky 12 potatoes, peeled, sliced thin and boiled til tender   1 onion, diced and sauteed  Then just mix it all up, top with a sprinkling of 1/3 c grated parmesan and bake at 170° for 25 minutes. Serve with freshly ground black pepper. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
11:07 am	Things on Today's Walk One, someone had created a forest of hearts. Hundreds of red paper hearts hung from red ribbon from tens of trees.  Two, the bridge over the Dijle was cordoned off so people could play paintball. Hearts and guns, yep. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 17th, 2012
9:58 pm	Spicy Peanut Veggie Noodles Peter said I had to write down the recipe for this at least three times while eating it and then he made a spreadsheet in Google to track recipes just to house this one.  I swiped it from Smitten Kitchen and tweaked it just a bit.  First I oven roasted, in a bit of olive oil and soy sauce: 1 zucchini, sliced 1 head of broccoli 1 large spicy red pepper 5 cloves whole garlic 2 shallots Then you make Smitten Kitchen's great sauce: 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/3 cup warm water 1 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger 1 medium garlic clove, chopped-- I bumped it to 4 cloves 2 tablespoons rice vinegar 1 1/2 tablespoons Asian toasted sesame oil 1 tablespoon honey 1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes- I bumped it to two teaspoons Then you make a bunch of pasta, mix things, and the magic happens. Yes, it lacks the protein tofu and sesame seeds would add, but it doesn't lack in flavor. Maybe this sauce would even make tofu yummy. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
10:05 am	Thai Roasted Ginger Coconut Fish Instead of ice cream, last night I had an extra serving of this 'cause it's that damned awesome. Even if I whipped it up from fresh veggies and stuff in freezers and pantry. Even if it probably has as many calories as ice cream.  ingredients: 2 frozen filets pangaius 1 head of green broccoli, sliced thin, broken into bite-sized pieces 1 purple eggplant, unpeeled, diced 1 basket red cherry tomatoes onion, sliced 5 cloves garlic, peeled, whole 1.5 inch piece of ginger, minced olive oil soy sauce butter Lime Wok Mix can of coconut milk 2 tsp Sambal Badjak First, you take all the veggies (including ginger and garlic) and toss with just enough olive oil to get em glistening but not swamped, add a little soy sauce and toss again. Roast all that at 170 C for half an hour. Meanwhile, defrost your fish, panfry it in butter cause that's the only way your kid (the one who demands egg white-only omelets) will eat it. Salt and pepper the fish. Remove a fish for picky daughter who will then get plain veggies and rice alongside. (Admire CS, a woman with three children who refuses to make two menus and her kids eat what she makes, period.) Add veggies to fish with 4 tablespoons Lime Wok Mix, coconut milk and Sambal. Warm it all up. Serve over rice. I found myself warming up rice for breakfast in the mostly empty pan so no drop was wasted. And I don't eat breakfast. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 16th, 2012
2:04 pm	Perdido Street Station by China Mieville After wading through Metamorphosis, I needed a fluff break. I read one book (that should remain nameless) because its premise was unusual, the love interests are a psychic woman who sees out of the eyes of a serial murderer as he kills and the male cop who is trying to catch him. Mixing romance and serial killers didn't work for me. I kinda squinted my way past the sex scenes and all the clichees-- and it was hard to find anything not clicheed-- so I pretty much squinted around the whole thing. A few hours later, I was back virtually wandering the Kindle Store's stacks, looking for a better-written romance. I found An Ordinary Fairy, about a small town in Illinois and a photographer on location there who stumbles on the town's biggest secrets, starting with discovery that the town's grumpy hermit flies on insectoid wings to exercise her waggy-tailed, barking chocolate lab.  Fun!  Characters and prose are nice. And then I thought I'd try another China Mieville, Perdido Street Station. FLUP! If you felt all the oxygen disappear around you, that was me drawing breath, preparing to vent forth  ( Read more on why you should run to buy this book... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, March 5th, 2012
2:18 pm	The Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Story by Frank Ryan I've always been fascinated by metamorphosis. Who isn't? How the heck can something go to bed a grub and wake up as a sexy butterfly? Does it remember any of its former life? How about the transition, the horror story where the grub melts into goo and transforms? Was Larry Niven on to something in Draco's Tavern where he suggested caterpillars postpone metamorphosis as long as possible because only in their juvenile state can they live sentiently for years, whereas as adults they turn into sex-crazed imbeciles that live only a week? How did forces of evolution come to design land-based and marine-based metamorphosis? It is a freaky life-strategy. This book champions a theory as to how, a really cutting-edge, crazy theory that, when published in a scientific journal, prompted 99% of all other scientists to call that journal the new National Enquirer. Hybridization as evolutionary tool sounds Lamarckian, right? Right. I was excited about the prospect of this theory, having recently learned about horizontal gene transfer, and ready to hear Darwin awhirlin' in his grave. Now I've read the book, the theory does ask interesting questions, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The evidence is circumstantial at best (e.g; the Cambrian explosion happened! One of the Cambrian fossils (Nectocaris pteryx) looks like a hybrid! QED Hybridization was a factor in the Cambrian explosion!) At worst, the evidence isn't reproducible.  A world-renowned marine biologist, who'd never done any molecular biology (genetics), noticed interesting things: 1) water-based reproduction is haphazard. Sperm floats around.  2) the larva of very different phyla look the same. One baby can start out bilaterally symmetrical  and be a deuterostome, and either grow up to retain those characteristics or become radially symmetrical and a protostome. That's freaking weird stuff. It's so weird that other biologists have outright said that they refuse to consider marine larva while taxonomizing. But he, brave guy, hazarded a guess: maybe  the little floaty larva stage was such a wonderful adaptation for dispersal that other organisms adopted it after they'd settled on an adult form. And, he thought, they probably did that via hybridization.  So this fellow tried to create hybrids. He said he did so, a combination worm/ sea urchin. But a molecular biologist checked (a small percentage of) his hybrids and found they weren't; just a regular old sea urchin, known to be able to fertilize itself. Contaminated data! Ack!  In 2010, a team of molecular biologists came out saying that, genetically, a sea squirt (tunicate) does look like it shares half of its genes with chordates and the other half with nematodes and that there could have been a HGT event that caused it. But, based on the almost-nothing I know about genetic assignment based on molecular biology, that sounds iffy. We share 60% of our genes with fruit flies, but I don't think there was a hybridization moment there. That said, I learned a lot about metamorphosis. But I doubt I will pick up another Frank Ryan book. Guy can't edit. Most of his 13-letter words are frosting. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
3:14 pm	Book Review: The Wild Life of Our Bodies by Rob Dunn What if I told you that you: still eat and are surrounded by plants that originated on cliffs? will be healthier with worms living in your gut? are still anxiety-ridden because your ancestors had to be to avoid being eaten? are still xenophobic because your ancestors avoided disease by being that way? With his sometimes-romantic, colorful prose, NCSU Prof. Rob Dunn argues eloquently that medical, psychological and ecological research suggests that many species we consider unimportant or disgusting are crucial to our well-being and many of our rotten behaviors are physiologically based. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2012
10:45 am	Facebook and Social Networking Say what you will about the disappointments of FB, it helped someone in Belgium find a lost dog somewhere in Illinois. First, FB helped confirm that she was in the accident--we weren't sure where Russ had left her. 45 minutes after the accident, the boyfriend of the EMT who arrived to help Russ posted on the "Lost Dogs Illinois" facebook page that she had seen the dog run from firemen at my brother's accident scene. That got a bit lost in the tide of posts since there was no picture or description. Then on Feb 11, I sent an email to a different group also on Facebook, called PetProject. They posted my email. Since I'd never met the dog, there wasn't much in my email in terms of description, but the accident was a memorable point and someone responded to that post telling me Abagail had survived the crash and pointed me to the first responder report. From there, I got a picture of her from my stepmom and posted it on both PetProject and Lost Dogs Illinois facebook pages. Then, people just kept sharing the picture I posted of her until someone reported that she was just found shivering on someone's porch. She's had 6 days of wandering in freezing cold staying within a one mile radius of the crash scene; loyal girl. She goes home with my dad later today. Yay!  I've had panic dreams worrying about losing my dogs, and the idea of a PTS-suffering dog being lost near a highway-- well, is there anything worse? So glad Abagail is ok. One less guilt factor for Russ, and he can be a bit more at peace. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 10th, 2012
7:40 pm	Departing from the Text Salmon Pasta 4 TBS pine nuts 1 leek 1 tsp olive oil 1 tsp lemon zest 1 tsp thyme sprigs 1 tsp basil 1/2 cup cream 120 g philadelphia cream cheese 1 TBS thai fish sauce 200 g smoked salmon-- pepper-encrusted Ikea brand will do. 450 g cooked, al dente penne pasta 1 avocado Toast pine nuts, set aside. Slice leeks thin, saute in olive oil. After cooking to tender state, add lemon zest and herbs, stir til incorporated, add cream and fish sauce. Turn off flame to add cream cheese. Once all is melted, let it get warm to mix well. Turn off fire. Add smoked salmon in torn chunks. Add pasta. Mix. Plate with avocado in slices like a pinwheel and top with pine nuts. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
11:40 am	Lamarck, horizontal gene transfer and speciation Confused I am. I just finished reading Microcosm by (guess who) Carl Zimmer. It's all about E Coli and the copious things we've learned from studying it. (Like, ferinstance, back in the dark ages, aka before we had electron microscopes, we could only posit how DNA replicates. Where did the two strands in a daughter cell come from? One old strand from the parent and one new one, two mixed strands, or two new strands? E coli to the rescue! Meselson and Stahl fed some E coli heavy nitrogen until they were sure that all DNA contained only the heavy stuff and then had them replicate without the heavy stuff around. BabeE coli's  genes weighed exactly what you'd expect if one old and one new strand comprised its DNA, and they continued to show that in further replication (as opposed to showing increasing amounts of lighter N if the mixed strands hypothesis were true). Et voila, we knew. Go, bacteria! Or, fer-other-instance, was Lamarck right? Can parents acquire traits and then pass them to daughter cells in one generation? E coli to the rescue. Oh, and slot machines. Salvador Luria was playing slot machines when he dreamed up this experiment. He figured that if he exposed a bunch of e coli to a virus and then separated them all out in separate petri dishes, if Lamarck were right, then, like lots of little pay-outs in slot machines, you'd see a bunch of e coli acquiring resistance to viruses in many dishes. If Darwin were right, there'd be only a few big pay-outs, and maybe further experiments might show how. Sure enough, Darwin''s big pay-outs bloomed in only a few dishes and further experiments (with velvet stamps- go, husband and wife team, wonder how they thought that one up...) proved that the resistant e coli had resistance before exposure.) It was very neat learning about operons, a suite of genes orchestrated by a switch. It was cool learning about flagella, which conned many engineering-minded folk into believing in a Big Engineer In the Sky. I totally always dig learning about horizontal gene transfer (HGT) cause I am crazily positive that some mix of genes-- parasitic, bacterial and viral-- is what it is going to take to tame cancer, and plus it's just really f*ing awesome. So that part was neat, looking at how natural selection directs HGT, looking at how people are trying to come up with smart drugs with e coli.  It was, frankly, dull, reading long-winded explanations of so-called ethics nested in science fiction stories about genetic modification and playing god. I was aghast that that took up page after page and yet the whole question of speciation was ignored. Zimmer, Dude! When does a species become a species? If I'm an e coli bacterium and I get a bunch of genes from some viruses and I pass them on to my daughter cells and suddenly we've got hairs that let us colonize bladders, are we not a new species? Is that not outrageously close to Lamarck? How can you limit yourself to one teeny paragraph concluding that natural selection really limits how successful a HGT can be? If a bunny develops, uh antlers, yeah! and passes that trait to its young, how many generations does it take before you call it a new species, however shortlived? I wanna see more pages on THAT, though I guess the conclusion of studying e coli is really that we are all entities in progress, and that nature cares more for phylogeny than taxonomy. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
2:55 pm	reviews watchings: Merlin: Increasingly campy, less fun. Provides opportunities to show K how, via youtube, people do special effects make up to simulate wounds and frozen-looking skin. Sherlock: Benedict Cumberbatch just bothered me the first season- is it even legal to mumble with such a highbrow accent?-- but he's grown on me. A lot. Plus, Moriarty's an engaging bad guy. readings: At the Water's Edge : Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea by Carl Zimmer-  My first introduction to macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium. Fascinating look at the development of life on earth, first from fish to everybody, and then, more or less, from a 'dog' to whales, the latter using first just the morphological evidence and then, just a wee, agonizing bit, genetic. Zimmer seems as entranced by the notion of seeing with sound as I am, noting things like the fact that a dolphin can tell you what a tangerine-sized metal object 200 meters away is made of (interestingly enough, there are patents out there on using ultrasound  to "look" inside sealed containers full of hazardous material to find out what's in them without opening them) so it was sweet to read the story of the bones as a story arc of how sonar developed... I liked learning that less interesting baleen whales and sonar-using toothed whales developed from a common ancestor... And then he drops the bomb, looking at the DNA: baleen whales are descended from toothed whales and they frigging gave up sonar. Apparently. WTH? Why? Tell me, someone.  Don't tell me they didn't need it anymore-- maybe they wouldn't need it for catching food, but it's too useful for sensing in the dark or turbulence, communication, and checking on the health of podmates. Not to mention etching things with ultrasound. (Maybe toothed whales have artifacts out there we haven't found.) So. Was it a virus? And no, other whales aren't less interesting, just GAH!  With ultrasound as a means of communication, we had a chance at rigging up an ultrasound machine and talking to a toothed whale. With baleen, we gotta start from scratch.  But they all have amazing brains. What do they do with them? Book does not address these wild ramblings, but it prompts them. Good book! Soul Made Flesh by Carl ZImmer  Nice melding of history and science to show the beginnings of neurology. Book could have been subtitled, "The stinking church has done so very much to screw with science. "  Three things stood out. One: so many animals died so people could understand how the body works. Sad. Two: in the 17th century, no one was expected to specialize. I think of Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes as philosophers, not people who sliced open animals. But back then, everyone was doing it. Even Christopher Wren was a scientist before he got dragooned into architecture. I didn't know. Three: cortical neurons take so much energy, only one percent of all of them can be activated at once. If a brain can't amass clever PLA's (programmable logic arrays) or facsimiles thereof, that person is SOOL (shit out of luck). Headhunters by Jo Nesbo  Could not put it down. WIll be a great movie. You can't even like the protagonist but you don't need to. What a plot. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012
10:46 am	Everything But the Kitchen Sink Chili 21 ingredients? It's a record!                                                                                               serves 4 people onion, diced 3 chipotle (jalapeno) peppers, each 3 inch long, diced 3 tablesepoons adobo sauce from chipotle can chili powder cumin unsweetened cocoa powder oregano salt 1 clove garlic      All the above gets sauteed in olive oil til it's heinously dark red/brown. Now add 1/3 cup green lentils (dry & nuked in small bowl of water on high for 10 minutes, change water, repeat until lentils are splitting) 1 can of tomato flesh with basil      Taste and adjust seasonings. Simmer 7 minutes. Now add 1 cup of leftover roasted veg from the previous night. roasted potatoes (diced, lightly coated in olive oil, sea salt, fresh thyme and rosemary, roasted on 150 C for an hour), roasted fennel (sliced thin, lightly coated in olive oil, sea salt, fresh thyme, and rosemary, " ") roasted green beans (just lightly coated in olive oil, sea salt, fresh thyme and rosemary, " ") chipolata, about 9 inches long, sliced thin (wait! that's not a veg! Hey, it was in the leftover container. Yes it wrecked the veggie         aspect of the chili but in a good way)     Taste and adjust seasonings. 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (brings out the flavors so you can taste something besides the burning of the jalapenos)      Simmer 10 minutes or so. Serve on brown rice. Toss on some diced fresh onion for firebreathing significant others. Enjoy the burn. Fennel and jalapenos play together surprisingly well.      (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
4:57 pm	Lemony Chicken potstickers adapted from Grace Parisi's recipe Ingredients 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for sprinkling 1 cup water 1 pound ground chicken 1 cup thinly sliced cabbage 1/4 cup chopped cilantro 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest (for reference, a teaspoon is 5 ml, a tablespoon is 15 ml) 1 tablespoons finely minced lemon pith (white stuff--it's healthy) 1 tablespoon lemon juice 2 tablespoons snipped chives 2 tablespoon minced fresh ginger 3 large garlic clove, minced 1 large egg 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup vegetable oil for frying 2.5 cups chicken broth Mix flour and water, knead til smooth, cover and set aside while you make the filling, at least 15 mins. For the filling, mix all ingredients well. Divide the dough into 4 parts and each quarter into 12 balls, roll til as thin as possible. Now follow the beautiful directions or even the recipe over here at La Fuji Mama. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
1:12 pm	NIghtmare Christmas Market Last friday it was Kaia's school's christmas market. We arrived and Kaia went to the 1st grade booth so she could help sell her handicrafts. There she was told by L (K's classmate) that she couldn't be there. L was adamant. K left and wailed and said I should have signed her up. I never saw the sign-up sheet. I went to one of the two 1st grade teachers to ask if K could sit there. The teacher said yes and, since I asked, went to the booth and told L that Kaia could sit there. K sat, happy. All the other booth runners left. Moments later another kid, A, came and kicked Kaia out. I told A her Juf had just said Kaia could sit there and it wasn't A's turn yet. A said it was not true and was adamant that K could not be there. I pulled A's chair out from under her butt and gave it to my kid. A still didn't relinquish her spot. I wasn't going to throw A bodily anywhere (though the urge was strong). Kaia became another weeping heap and my dad's wife took her for a refreshment. Meanwhile I went to another teacher and that one sent me to the parents committee to ask about the rules over manning booths. There I learned that kids had to have signed up for that right. Then I went back to A and apologized. She said Kaia was welcome to sit in the booth. But by then Kaia was sick of the whole shebang. We left. I'm still cringing so much I think my forehead's developing a foreskin. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 5th, 2011
2:36 pm	The WindUp Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi Serious, gripping novel. Won Hugo and Nebula and craploads of other prizes fairly. Excellent plotting, characters, even prose. And there's a ghost;  Shakespeare and Dexter's writers would approve.   The WindUp Girl is set in a frighteningly believable future with giant corporations but without fossil fuels (no nuclear or solar power, even). All the energy people have is hand-cranked, foot-treadled, or animal-generated. Genetic modifications created by the megacorporations have resulted in plagues that took out most people and plants. Life is precarious, but-- and this is the great part--it's set in a believably-extrapolated Thailand, a place where life is already precarious now. It's exotic on all imaginable levels, not just the future.  Saffron-robed monks chant to improve the success of a factory.  Children are employed to climb into unstable pits to inspect teak drive shafts.  Environmental police burn incense to protect themselves from plagues. The people lionize (ok, tiger-ize--it's so wonderfully Thai) a former boxing champion turned customs officer who repulses incursions by megacorporations.  Every aspect of this book is linked with Thai culture. The author disavows any fidelity, but I'm sure he's just saying that to cover his ass.  The plot is a many-armed thing that never slows. In the midst of an examination of what it means to be foreign, there's industrial espionage, mad scientists, lots of backstabbing... and even a strange sort of love story.  The eponymous character is a Japanese import, a genetically modified human, created by huge corporations, and who is hated by Thais and routinely abased by them in Bangkok sex shows. She exists only because her pimp pays huge bribes to the authorities.  And yet, she's the catalyst, a symbol for downtrodden masses, of determination to overcome genetic imperatives. Highly recommended. Didn't hurt to learn the author is an Oberlin alumnus. :)  (1 Comment |Comment on this)