Greg Bear's latest novel, Vitals, was a very well written pile of steaming shit.

I was extremely disappointed in this novel. X-files syndrome galore. No plot tie-ups, no ending really to speak of, this thing sucked ass. It was far too possible and plausible and yet stupidly, inanely, without conclusion, without coherence. Maybe I should explain a bit. I hate half-cocked science fiction. It's a fine line really, but one that I think bares flushing-out (pardon my pun).

I love certain kinds of surrealist writing. And I (obviously) love science fiction. But there is an area where they should never meet. If you're writing what is obviously intended to be swallowed as a "hard science" science fiction novel, damnit, you better fucking have it all make sense at the end!

Don't get me wrong. This novel was written well. It's internally consistent. I'm not going to be looking for holes in the logic any time soon. What bugs me is that, at the end of the novel, we still don't know who dun it. In fact, we're scratching our heads as to who are the "who" candidates.

The first half, and yes, admittedly, toward the end, the narrative was compelling as hell. I kept turning the pages--completely unsuspecting--and after the climax, I raised my eyebrows... a timeline. A mother-fucking time line right there at the end of the book. I kept reading, waiting for a punch line. It never dropped, the other shoe is still out there floating in space.

One of two things is at fault here: pretentious writing, or lazy writing. Greg Bear could have really nailed it with this novel if you ask me, but he fucked it up good.

I've decided I don't use enough fucking descriptive terms in my god-damned blog.

I guess there's nothing for it but to celebrate the robots, robots who are "idealized post-modern savages".

=====
Ode to Fighting Robots

silver-fist, babelfish
low-to-the-ground--vaccumed to the wall--
full of flame-throwers and bandsaws...

spin like flin, an angry din
axes and sharp sticks.
Robots making robot toothpicks.

Majesty of microcircuitry.
Radio-controlled Andy Warhol waltzing on tripwire
white iron and ornery LED conspire

Still life in electro-strife--
an onlooker's geek rush and tussle
breed of new athlete's mind-muscle

dissatisfaction, stirs within
our saucer-shaped metal-killing-coaster.
If circuitry got sympathy, it would have been a toaster.
=====

God it's horrible. I'm like some kind of abomination.

Mondays are a bitch. Especially mondays that follow fairly satisfying vacations where you visit your girlfriend's sister, and find out how much cheaper housing is in the middle of nowhere, and finish your book, and start another really excelent book by Greg Bear, and watch that new cohen brothers movie, and go see a nice museum, and dance on the heads of needles wearing winged sandals and halos and togas all the while singing about lolipops and choochoo trains...

Yeah, so I guess that last didn't happen. But mondays are still a bitch.

I got a lot done today. Read slashdot, theonion, played some Cannons with Chris. It's funny, I really did get a lot done today. And I'm still working! My computer is upgrading itself... (mac osx software update RULES!) The onion and slashdot both had interesting articles. Plus, the onion links to a hello kitty dildo, which I may have to buy as a gag gift for someone, because... damn that's funny.

I'm getting excited to be on the road. In less than an hour, Laura and I will be on our way to Kansas. Yes, it's only Kansas, but it'll still be fun. My only real concern is that I won't get to play nearly enough video games while I'm gone. I probably won't have a ps2 at all! Plus, lately, I've been getting pretty into the copy of Summoner that I picked up for $10. It's not as bad a game as it first appears, and the graphics do get better as you play--although they're still nowhere near what a PS2 game should be capable of.

I'm also looking forward to hopefully finishing my book while we're on the road. Since laura can't read while she's in a car, I'm hoping I can make her do most of the driving.

Today has been surreal. I think it may be carryover from last night, when I watched the second half of Mulholland Drive. I rarely stop watching a movie and start it again, but for some reason this one wasn't grabbing me the first time. Hell, it didn't really grab me the second time either, but it left me thinking "I must have missed something.

So I turned to the internet, and found a really great article on Salon that explains the entire thing. Strangely, after understanding more of the nature of the film, it was far more haunting. I think I had dreams about some of the various aspects of the film. (unfortunately, my dreams did not incorporate the lesbian sex scenes.)

I guess I woke up somewhere in the middle of the night and told laura she was making too much noise. I don't remember this, but she decided to leave. I feel pretty bad about it, and will try to make up for it by staying at her place tonight.

I got a message from my illustrious friend Peter. His life rivals most novels in terms of plot points, and excitement. I'm always jealous of the kinds of things he gets to do. This week it was some kind of inline-skate-theater-event. I'll have to write back and tell him about my rollerblade Cyotes. (The rollerblades with 6" wheels.)

The drive to work today felt more like swimming through traffic. I was probably still far too tired to be driving, but I don't feel tired. Just surreal. To keep with the water theme, I keep thinking stuff on my monitor is just floating there... like it's some kind of fishbowl.

how come it takes me so long to read a book now? I realize that I'm maybe halfway through the book I'm reading, and I posted on the 25th of last month that I started it. yuck that's slow!

Another former co-worker has started a blog! This time it's nancy, who used to be president of our company. She registered watressdreams.com a while back, and has just now gotten around to putting some stuff there.

I'm eating Teddy Grahams, and for some reason, my fingers are not content to pick just one at a time out of the box. Yet, my mouth seems only able to accept one at a time. I am constantly picking them up off my desk and lap. I must look like a total slob.

This weekend is a trip to Kansas City to visit a couple of Laura's sisters. Supposedly they have DSL, so maybe I'll even get to update my blog. Not that anyone reads this thing. ;)

How's this for a nice weekend:

Friday, I went and looked at houses again. Saw a couple that might actually be worth living in, but neither that we were so exciting that we'd have to buy RIGHT THEN. Straight from looking at houses to a bachelor party for a friend of mine from juggling. We played 8 player Halo on 2 X-boxes, one hooked to a big screen tv, and the other to a projection monitor type thing. The entire wall was Halo. Awesome shit. We stayed up far too late considering the next morning....

we woke up at 6:30 to go play paintball. Got there around 7:30, started playing at 8:00, played till noon. $75, but it was fun as hell. I have bruises but not as many as some of the guys (you can imagine how the groom got pummelled, as it was his party.) But in general, I didn't do nearly as well as I'd done playing halo.

After that, home to shower, then straight out to my friend Derik's to a lan party. My computer has been flakey at best lately, so I borrowed one of his "spares". It kicked ass!!! OMG. We played some maps by this guy Lake Trout. Everyone who showed up was awesome, and we played some kick ass 7 on 7 capture the flag. I even got the high score on one of the games!

Sunday, I woke up around noon, finished my taxes, fell back asleep, woke up at 3pm, did laundry with laura, mailed my taxes, and went to a movie party where we watched Mystery Train.

All in all, it was a good weekend. I need another one to recover.

wow, I'm a blog slacker. This week has been hell, working on a new site for Symantec. (TM) I'm getting fucking sick of working on yellow sites. Three out of the last four large sites I've worked on have been yellow. What's up with that?

Today is pretty yellow.

I once started a manuscript of poetry I was calling Yellow. At least, I think that's what I was calling it. You can see all the books I actually finished here: http://www.livingtech.net/oldpoems/.

My friend Meghan just started a blog, and has been showing me up by consistently writing interesting stuff... She had a headache this morning similar to mine. She told me not to publish her link cause the site isn't done yet, but I think it's good enough. I won't add it to my links till her "friends" page contains something other than "asd'fkjsadfj;laskf;jl"

My friend Jason has registered a domain name, and thinks he's going to be a porn barron.

It wouldn't be so bad if he just wanted me to appear on the site, it'd be almost flattering even. But he has to mention the fact that he finds my brothers attractive. *shudder*

There really aught to be a law.

songs recently aquired from Gnutella:

Otis Redding: I can't get no Satisfaction
Devo: I can't get no Satisfaction
Ben Folds Five: Brick (Acoustic)
Superdrag: Who sucked out the Feeling
Tattle Tale: Glass Vase Cello Case

The last is from the movie "But I'm a Cheerleader". The soundtrack was apparently never released, but if you look hard enough, there has been some clammor for it. I'm hoping to download the entire Tattle Tale album, because it's rare, (or at least hard to find). The song is awesome, and I've put it on repeat. (Otis Redding is awesome too.)

What's up? My roomate and I (flatmate heh.) are looking for a house. I'm not at all certain of my financial future, but I figure, if I'm pumping money into something to the tune of half my paycheck (right now it's like a fourth, but if I were to buy a house, it'd be like half), it might as well be something saleable in the future.

What else? There are a couple of short articles in the new issue of wired about blogs. It's crazy really, people thinking this will take over for traditional news. Who exactly (of those blogging) has time to do anywhere near the amount of research traditional print magazines put into their articles--for a blog? I'm not saying nobody does, but certainly not me, and certainly not in the numbers that would be needed to take away from traditional news-venue readership.

Anyway, the "wanna bet" thing bugged me. Nisenholtz just sounded like we're going to have more opinion columns in Time Digital, which would (in my opinion) be abysmal. Blogs, for me, are not a news source. Unless you count "finding cool new interenet sites" a newsworthy item--which I do, but which many people would not. Anyway, for me they're more like reading a non-fiction book or something. It's fascinating how much poetry we can find in people's everyday lives.

UPDATE: Mozilla seems to have some issue today with refreshing the bottom blogger frame. I had to resort to Exploder to post this entry.

On my screen I can count over eight visible places I could be entering text. Watch the blinking cursor. Keep track of window order. onFocus. onClick. onLoad. onLook. onSweat. onWrite.

________________
Depth of frame.

render template
upchuck doctype
crosseyed browser compatibility
nslookup dictionary.com
________________


I haven't been paying attention to this whole blog thing this week. And why haven't I been able to find a decent archive of April Fools day site modifications. Everyone does it... change their site just for april 1. I particularly liked GameFAQ branding themselves GameFaX, and covering only X-box titles. I should have looked for more of them, but didn't even think of it until today because I was too busy playing Dynasty Warriors3 in a snowstorm.

Amelie may very well be the best movie I've ever seen. I want to see it again--soon. I was amazed by this film over and over again. The poetry was exhilarating, and the cinematography extraordinary. I don't know what else to say.

Oh yeah, I meant to post this pic of me in my new office earlier this week, but I forgot:

you too can be a Cyberlovah.

things I want to get this weekend:

a get-well card for my grandmother, who slipped and fell, breaking a finger or other bone in her hand...

an oil change for my poor neglected car.

easter candy on sale at target.

A shaver for my scalp. (also, probably, from target)

I know there was more, but I can't remember. Today is another boring addition to my existence in Plymouth, MN. I'm considering writing a novel while at work. I could just write a sentence or two in between every menial task I perform, and I'm sure a few weeks later I'd have hundreds of pages.

Henry's Diary is one of the coolest things I've ever read. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age.

Last night Laura and I found Ocean's Eleven on DVD (the old one) at Target, so we bought it for Jason, then watched it. It was ok. nothing too special, but certainly not bad. Jason lied though--both Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin sing in it.

I'm trying to decide if I should go to unicycling tonight, even though laura probably isn't going to go, and I'm suppoise to hang out with Travis. (he wanted to go, but he's not home...)

OK, now he's home, and we're going to go.

a week in this hell-of-an-office.

an email list that was formerly limmited pretty much to porn and dirty jokes has now been the main avenue for discussion of this news. None of us even have real details on this thing, but we all have opinions!

Chris--one of my favorite coworkers--has posted several cries for peace, including the full lyrics to "you are my sunshine"... Isn't internet debate great!?!

I got an email from alex, who is in Japan. Apparently he's taken it over. I wouldn't schedule any vacations for there in the near future.

Tonight I'm suppose to see the original "Ocean's Eleven" with Jason, who is thinks my preference of color movies over B&W is a crime of some sort.

that's all the news that's fit to blog. Or rather, all of it I'm bored enough to type...

we are sweet nothings

sealed in our boxes of humanity
taped up and mixed, melted together
you never know what you're going to get
a live one or dead one,
happy or sad.

we can be the whispered kind too
a word on the morning breeze
a meaning left to be imagined
our lives are like this
implied on a lover's lips.

I've already spent a large chunk of my time at work today logging my hours for the last two weeks. We're suppose to log hours daily, but I'm far too busy to spend an extra five to ten minutes a day trying to figure out what I've been doing all day. I was just thinking, what if I had to do this with my weekend?

• 12 hours playing Tetris Worlds
  
• 17 hours sleeping (not including last night)
  
• 3 hours having sex
  
• 3 hours unicycling on friday
  
• 3 hours playing Tetrisphere
  
• 2 hours doing internet research on Tetris variations, and Neil Voss, who did the soundtrack for Tetrisphere and The New Tetris (both for N64)
  
• 2 or 3 hours reading my new book, The Eyre Affair
  
• 1 hr compiling and then packing my laundry to go to the laundrymat
  
• 1 hr driving to/from laura's place on the way to the laundrymat
  
• 1/2 hr spent in line to get my oil changed at Valvoline (and leaving because it looked like another 1/2 hr would pass before I got in!

there's at least two hours unaccounted for. I'm not sure where those went. Maybe staring off into space. Maybe eating? Probably eating.

ode to my moronity

alas! the long island
slithering snake of a drink
sweet potato I
sip and gulp guiltily
she is a camera shudder
eyes closed, lips pucker'd
*urp*