Girl in a Cage

Sophomoric fun with the DVR

So you know how at the beginning of Law and Order SVU, the guy intones that "sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous"? Well, so our DVR started recording right in the middle of the introduction, so I hit play and this stentorian voice goes.. "einous." I broke into a fit of giggles, and while my long-suffering wife sat there patiently just trying to watch her stories, I kept hitting the review button and hearing the voice of authority going "einous...einous...einous...einous..."

Aw, maybe you had to be there.

Braiiiiins

I'm reading and enjoying Max Brooks' World War Z, which purports to be an oral history of the zombie war. I picked up Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide about a year ago and didn't finish it--the idea of a survival manual for how to deal with zombies was a great magazine article idea that didn't quite make it stretched into book length. So I was unprepared for the excellence of World War Z. This is really an amazing book.

First of all, pretty much every zombie thing I've seen focuses on a small group trying to survive and gives little hints about the worldwide situation, but World War Z actually offers something new, which is a look at the big picture.

That might not be enough to recommend it on its own, but this is not just a story about people blowing the heads off of flesheating zombies. It's about fear and government ineptitude and impossible choices and how extreme circumstances bring out the best and worst in people, sometimes the same people. There are several scenes from this book that are haunting me, but not in a zombie way--he really makes the whole thing believable, and so I really buy it and find myself moved by the heartbreaking things some of the characters have to see and do. It's light on gore by zombie standards, and much lighter on humor than Brooks previous book led me to expect, but it's heavy on imagination and ideas. Really a great book that deserves a wider audience than it'll probably get.

Unfortunate

Well, I don't care what that overrated anti-semite T.S. Eliot said, as far as I'm concerned October is the cruelest month. I blame the Jews! Kidding, kidding. No, Mr. Gibson, I won't be your myspace friend, so stop askin'.

No, actually, I blame cancer for October being the cruellest month. So I'm kinda in maintenance mode this month, and haven't had a lot of brilliant thoughts on pop culture to share. But then, that's never stopped me before! (rim shot!)

Anyway, one dim spot in an even dimmer month is the release on October 13th of Lemony Snicket's The End, book 13 in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I am very curious as to how he's going to pull off the ending. Because, on the one hand, we've suffered through so much with Violet, Klaus, and Sunny that we can't really stand for it to have a miserable ending. But, on the other hand, the whole point of the series is that life is cruel and there are precious few people you can depend on, and some hearts-and-flowers ending would deinitely undercut that.

I am really really looking forward to this book, and I really admire the author for putting together such a wonderfully nasty series of books, but also because he's damn good. After offering up the standard "If you've never experienced it, you can't possibly understand" description of how the Baudelaires feel when their parents die in book one, he offers this on Uncle Monty's death in book 2, the Reptile Room. I honestly think it's the best thing I've ever read on this subject.

"We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us well end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. The Baudelaire orphans were crying not only for their Uncle Mondy, but for their own parents, and this dark and curious feeling of falling that accompanies any great loss."