Lurker's Corner

Ur-booze

Link to an excerpt from A (Brief) History of Vice, to which I am currently listening.

I believe it was on Wil Wheaton's recommendation that I downloaded Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art" (amazon, audible) and am really pleased that I did. On the surface, it's a book intended as motivation for artists and is entirely framed around creative pursuits. Underneath, it's a book of motivation for anyone who does anything.

Notes:
( cut for the kind of spoilers I don't mind but you might )

Short version:
( because it summarizes the book, it sort of personifies spoiler )

(Paraphrased because no one has put it up on Goodreads yet and I have been listening to the book.)

There is a gathering of four people.
Our Scientist: I'm calling this Project Elrond.
Press Lady: Eh?
Scientist 1: That's why we're meeting in secret?
Press lady: No, really...eh?
Scientist 2: To make a momentous decision?
Press lady: WTF?
Our Scientist: (explains Council of Elrond)
Press lady: NONE of you got laid in high school, did you?

`. . . anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949,

...then there is a book you need to get around to reading/listening to and that is The Art of Procrastination by John Perry.

It's a two hour listen, so presumably a quick read. (For reference, most popular novels are between 10 and 15 hours and the non-fiction I listen to starts around 20 hours and I think 39 hours is the longest in my audible.com library.) The book is all about identifying oneself as a "structured procrastinator" and leveraging that brain quirk to advantage.

Read the essay that became the first chapter here. I really can't come up with better reasons to read/listen to the book that aren't made abundantly clear (to the right people, though there's certainly not much shame in not being a procrastinator if that's the way your brain rolls) in that essay.

Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries read by the author, Neil deGrasse Tyson, is a collection of essays written for Nature Magazine on a variety of topics centering around astrophysics. They have one real recurring theme:

SCIENCE IS SOOOOOO COOL!!!!11!!1!

No, really. Tyson is having way too much fun with this stuff. The book is divided into sections with titles like "The Meaning of Life," in which we find out we're most likely of Martian extraction; and the one to which I am currently listening, "When the Universe Turns Bad." Yes, you may insert images of the universe skulking about in a goth leather coat with spiked hair and black lip gloss here. Not that Tyson said any such thing, but it's what came to mind when he went over colliding galaxies, because we're totally being stalked by Andromeda, the bitch, and the heat death of the universe. Oh, the angst and emptiness. Well, sulky goth adolescent or flat, disc-shaped, star devouring Cookie Monster. Starrie Monster? Just keep the suns coming and no galaxies get hurt.

I especially grooved on the explanation of how enormous gas clouds become solar systems. Before the nuclear fusion begins, the thing has to get cold enough for the atoms to stick together. I swear it made sense when he read it, as did the explanation of why it takes a million years for new light to get out of the sun.

Highly entertaining and informative, this one is definitely worth the ride.

Quite unintentionally, I've listened to two books that treated vampirism as an object of scientific investigation, and they were both pretty good.

Robert Masello's Blood and Ice.

Penguins, the charge of the Light Brigade, sled dogs, Florence Nightingale and really mean seals (not the sexy military kind.)

Oh, and vampires.

Justin Cronin's The Passage (first of a trilogy.) I haven't actually finished listening to this one yet, so I can't give much of a precis. So far, we've got

nuns, Feds, death row inmates, viral shenanigans, Zero and the fact that this book exists because the author's daughter asked for a book about a girl who saves the world.

Oh, and vampires.

nialla42 with the phrase "I'd listen to (insert actor with fascinating accent here) read the phone book." No clue where she got it from, but it's one of my favorite fangirlism now as well as the reason my current listen is making me feel very, very dirty.

Niall Ferguson is a Scot. With an educated Brit accent that...slips...occasionally, making little shivers go up and down my otherwise-matronly spine. Listen to him here and know my shame. (hangs head)

(by the way? the book is about why it isn't Eurocentrism to say the West has taken over the world, but a statement of fact. He explained money pretty well in a different book, so I'm cutting some slack for at least another chapter.)

And still paying full list for the Kindle editions? Because in
Last Rites, David Wishart actually had the words "that's a hardware problem," coming out of the mouth of a minor character and it worked, in addition to being hysterically funny.

That is all.

A bizarre, nearly macabre, twist in the drama that was vacation scheduling last year resulted in ONE WEEK ONLY BUY NOW...wait, this isn't an infomercial...a week opening up in December, which I used to visit the folks in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Dad: ( Read more... )

Mom: ( Read more... )

Tiger: ( Read more... )

Curves: ( Read more... )

The Litigators by John Grisham: ( Read more... )

So, I'd like to say I came back tanned, rested and ready for action, but it was December in the Sierra Nevada, for cryin' out loud. My dad is an artisan with Weight Watchers recipes (where can I find a younger, less related version? I might actually give up solitude for an in-house chef and cheering section;) my Mom is still totally a mom, and I missed being there by the time the plane hit the end of the Sacramento runway.

Yes, I still suffer from that thing where when I try to speak French (3 years in high school and I was pretty good,) Spanish tries to come out and I revert gracelessly to English.

But I digress. I meant "I am inspired."

I've taken a notion to walk a half marathon on my 50th birthday (as posted yesterday)partly as an old-age defiance thing, and partly because the Weight Watcher's annual 5k Walk-It Challenge isn't all that challenging to me. It's meant to promote increased activity while training for it and I am already fit enough to hop on a treadmill at 3.7 mph until the little LED thing says 3.1 miles. Yeah, not challenging.

Also, I'm nearly done reading Christopher_McDougall's paean to barefoot running, Born to Run, available in paperback and Kindle and well summed up by this video, which I cannot figure out how to embed.

Additional inspiration provided by an unplanned trip to the doctor's yesterday for suspicious tightness of the chest, on of the better known symptoms of undiagnosed female heart attack as it is usually dismissed in ERs for what I actually had, which is newly discovered acid reflux (to which I will not link because...ew. Look it up yourself if you're curious and have a strong stomach.)

Note: No, I did not dial 911. Anyone who is in any doubt at all and has not yet educated themselves on the typically female heart attack symptoms should not pause prior to dialing 911 for tightness in the chest. I didn't do it because I'd read up on it in the past (and was not having any of the other symptoms) and am very well acquainted with my risk factors for heart attack (minimal: normal blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and lung function, plus my maternal survivor of a mild heart attack lives a less healthy life than I and waited to have hers on a hike in a Fijian rain forest in her mid-60s.) Yeah, it was still stupid to stop long enough to refresh my memory and decide to make an appointment instead. I would have been very, very chagrined (and possibly dead) had this actually been a cardiac event, so govern yourselves accordingly.

Good news: normal blood pressure, "excellent" EKG and an enormous load off my mind.
Bad news: Chocolate, caffeine, tomatoes and onions (all fave raves of mine) may very well be my triggers, as I'd consumed them all in larger than usual quantities last Sunday.

So with achieving wisdom, attaining a certain age, maturing like fine wine...whatever you call it, pushing 50 is now providing the real world reasons to eat right and exercise. Note to those younger than the Baby Boom: the real world motivation is always there, you just won't feel it until your dotage. :P