Pearly whites

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I finally upgraded to an electric toothbrush. I tried it last night for the first time. It's a strange sensation, and doesn't quite provide the tangible feedback through my fingers that tells me I'm doing a good job. But afterwards, my teeth were indeed clean. A $100 toothbrush is definitely a status symbol, as well as a badge of personal hygiene. But I will miss brushing away with a regular toothbrush. I was good at it.
An electric flosser, now that would be something. I am an obsessive flosser, but I think that process could be improved. Every day I feel like I'm going to strangle the tips off of one of my fingers with dental floss.
I have my 6 month checkup tomorrow morning. I'm feeling supremely confident.

Meet Ginger So this is

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Meet Ginger

So this is Ginger, the Segway Human Transporter. Check it out in action.
What's cool? Using sophisticated gyros and motors, it mimics a human's sense of balance, so it holds you upright. It senses where you want to go by how you shift your balance on it and it takes you there automatically. I've heard from folks who've ridden it that the feeling is uncanny. And it can move an adult around for a full day non stop on something like 10 cents of electricity. Until Harry Potter brooms become a reality, I suppose it's the closest thing to a machine that moves according to your thoughts.
Amazon.com is buying some for industrial use, so maybe I'll get to ride one in the near future at one of our fulfillment centers. To change the world, I'd have to want to ride this to, say, downtown Seattle to go catch a movie instead of driving my car. I'll have to think about whether that's the case. Where would I park it? How would I carry things? Will they build baskets for this thing?
The consumer model will cost $3000 and go on sale in a year. I can't wait to put one on my Amazon wishlist. I'll start saving now.
I think Dean Kamen is actually more interesting than Ginger. This on Kamen from Time:
A bachelor, Kamen lives near Manchester in a hexagonally shaped, 32,000-sq.-ft. house he designed. Outside, there's a giant wind turbine to generate power and a fully lighted baseball diamond; in the basement, a foundry and a machine shop. Kamen's vehicles include a Hummer, a Porsche and two helicopters--both of which he helped design and one of which he uses to commute to work each day. He also owns an island off the coast of Connecticut. He calls it North Dumpling, and he considers it a sovereign state. It has a flag, a navy, a currency (one bill has the value of pi) and a mutual nonaggression pact with the U.S., signed by Kamen and the first President Bush (as a joke, we think).

Show me MLB commissioner Bud

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Show me

MLB commissioner Bud Selig claims 25 of 30 baseball teams lost money last year. That's completely unbelievable. But let's say that it's true (and I'd love to let some auditors go over the books for a few months to check that out). Let's see, owners get hundreds of millions of dollars from Fox and ESPN and local networks to broadcast the games, they get huge new baseball stadiums that are funded by tax payers (I'm still bitter about paying for two damn stadiums here in Seattle), they raise ticket prices every year, and they can't make any money? What do they want, a government subsidy? If that's true, I should be running a baseball team. You bet I'd figure out a way to make a team profitable.
Except maybe the Expos.
Dean Kamen's secretive new device "Ginger" gets unveiled this Monday on Good Morning America.
Baseball gave out its end of year awards today. I find the whole process of allowing sportswriters to vote on these awards to be so imprecise that the awards are meaningless. The two Chicago sportswriters were the only two who voted Sammy Sosa as the National League MVP. I'm from Chicago, and even I recognize that Barry Bonds had a far better season. In the AL, as Rob Neyer points out, the only two sportswriters who had Boone--Ichiro--Giambi as their top three choices were the two Seattle Tacoma writers. These hometown biases might even out across a pool of writers and might not even alter the vote in any year, but to me it just means that the awards themselves are fairly arbitrary as a barometer of value among the top players. As are any subjective awards, right? We should all think for ourselves.

Dumber than he writes The

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Dumber than he writes


The literary world has enjoyed the whole Franzen-Oprah spat from
the sidelines. Nothing so fun since Wolfe and Updike traded barbs.
Really, Franzen comes off looking like an ass. Yeah, it's true,
Oprah has selected some real stinkers. Franzen's mistake is thinking
that he owns his brand and can declare himself part of the literary
elite. Most of the influence he can exert on his place in literary
history was done when he penned the last sentence of the book
and sent it off to the printers. His destiny is for the readers and
the critics and the world at large to decide.
He is a good writer. But about PR and branding he's a rookie.

Apple iPod Lots of advertising

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Apple iPod


Lots of advertising for the new Apple iPod.
Certainly, for the price, it offers a ton of memory. I'm sure
it's easy to use, as most Apple products are. I see many
problems though. I don't know that MP3 players are really
essential gizmos for anyone I know. They fulfill a niche
market right now. I'm skeptical of static memory buffers
on hard-drive MP3 players because I use them primarily
when I'm exercising and if they skip while jogging that's
an automatic negative in my book. Maybe the 20 minute
buffer is sufficient, though. That's a lot.
But mostly, it's the Apple-centricity of the thing that
makes me wonder how lucrative it will be as a product.
The thing doesn't support Windows PCs right now, and
hey, all my MP3 tracks are on my Windows desktop
and that's probably the case for millions of users in this
country. The firewire interface which is embraced and
supported by Apple on its PCs is rare on PCs today.
Most Windows PCs require installing a firewire card
to support that, and that automatically the chance that
95% of Windows PC users will have firewire.
I love the way Apple computers look. But Macintoshes
are doomed to be niche items by economics. Any
product created for a Windows platform sells into
an installed base a gazillion times larger. It is
difficult to justify sinking heavy R&D into creating
products for Macs when you first should commit that
budget to Windows computers. Sure, OS X might
be easier to use than Windows XP (I don't know if it
is since I don't have Windows XP and haven't
really figured out all the nuances of OS X) but
it's not enough of an advantage to outweight the
economics.
That doesn't mean Mac lovers can't enjoy the Macs
they use, nor does it mean that Apple doesn't make
great products. It's strictly business.

Xmas shopping Christmas shopping has

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Xmas shopping


Christmas shopping has begun in earnest. Unfortunately today
I sent a Share the Love e-mail for all sorts of gifts I purchased
from Amazon so some recipients probably know what they're
receiving. I have been such a space cadet for the past month,
e.g. going to the wrong airport for my flight back to Boston.
I'd like to think these are the distractions of genius but more
likely they're evidence of the onset of senility.
The weather in Seattle now is brutal. Biting cold and heavy rain.
My next personal vacation will absolutely be to some place
sunny. Absolutely. My office is an ice chest. I am wearing
a scarf indoors. I may attempt to start a small fire using
old Powerpoint presentations.

Back...and forward It's been a

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Back...and forward


It's been a while, huh? It's been a busy couple of weeks
in my world. But you know, I'm way behind in my novel
writing and it's highly doubtful I'll make it to 50,000 words,
so while I'm not giving up, I'm going to restore some much
needed balance to my life.
I've racked up some serious miles in the air recently. Just
back from Thanksgiving weekend in Boston where I got to
check out baby sister Karen's newfound life after graduation.
She seems set up pretty nicely. Cool roommates in an
old house in Brighton. A solid job programming for Raytheon.
A fancy new Jetta to get around. A brand-new YMCA gym
just down the street. A good sushi restaurant nearby. She's
probably the one member of our family you could drop down
just about anywhere and socially she'd be well-connected
in no time. I don't know Boston well, but I feel like I know
it much much better after just a few short days there.
I've been reading A Beautiful Mind and I highly suspect
that the movie starring Russell Crowe will shy away from
many of the facts of his life. Note in the trailer the text
that notes that the film is "inspired by the life of John Forbes
Nash". John Nash had several homosexual relationships,
fathered a child with a mistress who he abandoned, in a
way. All that stuff about code-breaking will probably be
fictional as well.
I'm as big a believer as anyone in the idea that movies
should not strive to imitate books to the T. They're two
different mediums. Why should painters strive for photo
realism if photographs do the job better? Important painters
felt the same way and turned to things they could do which
cameras could not, e.g. cubism. Why do people find it to be
a good thing that the Harry Potter film stays
true to the book? But in the case of A Beautiful Mind, I find
it disturbing that they'll be distorting the facts of his life
so blatantly to avoid some of the perhaps more unsavory
aspects of his life. Geniuses are often messy to portray,
difficult to live with. To make Nash out to be some sort of
saint--why not just give the character a different name, then?
It's the one problem I had with Good Will Hunting, which
is a favorite of so many. I enjoyed the film as well, but come
on, Matt Damon's character is never really challenged. The
plot gives him some paper demons to battle and triumph
over. Of course it's not his fault he was abused by his
dad. Otherwise, he's a genius. The film would have been so
much better if they gave him some real character flaws,
some real problems to overcome.
A side thought which scared me: the peak of most math
geniuses mental powers is age 30. I think it's probably
likely the same for mental powers of many sorts. Yikes!
I have two years and change to harness the peak powers
of my brain! What should I be doing to maximize that time?
I firmly believe that the next cell phone or PDA I buy that will
be worth owning will be a combination of the two. Namely, a
PDA that I can speak into like a cell phone, like the first
generation Handspring devices with the optional snap-on
cell phone attachment, except integrated. Then, hopefully,
I'll have one wireless device that syncs seamlessly with
my Outlook address book. Looks like a few candidates
are emerging. The Samsung SPH-1300 looks very promising.
Handspring is coming out with the Treo next year, which is
different in that it has a Blackberry like keyboard. If you're
thinking about getting a new cell phone or PDA, I think you
should wait for one of these suckers. True, it won't be as
small as one of those midget phones popular with the
techno-elite today, but if done properly, this next generation
device will fulfill the promise of true tech convergence in a
way that the electronics industry hasn't been able to deliver
in years.
Another cool gizmo: remember in Johnny Mnemonic
or other futuristic sci-fi hacker movies how people could
type on imaginary keyboards in the air and have their
keystrokes recognized by computers in their brains? Meet
the Senseboard Virtual Keyboard. Imagine the
strange looks you'd get from people sitting next to you on the
plane as you type in the air while wearing a pair of electronics
LCD goggles attached to a wearable computer.
I remember I had to take one Science, Technology, and Society (STS)
class in college. That stuff seems a lot more relevant now than
it seemed then, what with cloning, bioligical warfare, etc. in
the news all the time. It sure seems like society could use a
great thinker in this arena. It seems like we're all spinning our
wheels on the issues, but not furthering the debate.
Cool fact...
In most industrialized and highly educated societies, fertility has
fallen to, or below, the replacement rate of two children per
childbearing female lifetime. It is a strong indicator that
the world's population will stabilize with increased education
and development. That's a good sign. Still, it doesn't detract
from adoption, which is a new thing with me. People are all
so worried about biological clocks, but don't forget about
adoption. Give a kid a home and fight world overpopulation.
Someday, instead of driving gasoline guzzling cars, we'll drive
hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles of all sorts. It will be a bit
sad to give up our right to high-powered sports cars, but I've
been in this "save the world" mood ever since Sept. 11. Thus
the adoption/clean air kick.
I read this about the U.S.--its population is 1/4 devout, 1/4
secular, and 1/4 mildly interested. In the wake of Sept. 11,
churches everywhere saw a spike in attendance, but now they're
back to normal.
Why use the revolving door? To keep hot or cold air from escaping
the building. Of course! Duh.
Philip Morris is going to change its name to Altria Group Inc.,
supposedly to distance themselves from their cigarette business.
But they'll still be selling cigarettes as hard as before. Just their
name is changing. Hmmm. I'd like to see them adopt Malcolm
Gladwell's suggestion and reduce the nicotine content in their
cigarettes, to make it harder for people to become chemically
addicted.
I'm feeling fairly energized. I was a bit overwhelmed there for a
bit, with lots of crazy things going on at work--a new position,
my manager of three years leaving in February, things that would
rank high on the stressor list within the workplace. In general,
I think I was feeling, mmm, small. The time away has helped.
I'm ready to kick hard this last stretch of 2002. It turns out I'll
be kept back in Seattle instead of going off to the distribution
centers this year. I have some mixed emotions about it, as
I think it's a big part of being at Amazon to go away and help
during the holiday season. It's just the right thing to do. But
I think I can make some huge progress cranking back here
in Seattle, too.
I'm ready for a year of purposeful living.

Moving on

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Congrats to Polly on her marriage to Ed. I attended the wedding this weekend. It was like a mini-reunion, to see some old classmates, visit the Bay Area again. I get this feeling at all weddings I attend, a feeling of envy for the happiness that the bride and groom share. It's not really jealousy, because I feel it even when I attend weddings of people I've never met. I wonder if other people feel that, or if other married couples feel that. It's a magical thing. Polly looked so happy and ready, and by the end of all the ceremonies I thought, "Of course, this makes total sense." I don't think married life will be a change for her at all.
My manager of three years is also going to move on to new things early next year. That has been a strange thing for me to deal with. It feels like something that I wish wasn't happening so soon but which also is clearly the right thing for him so that he can pursue his lifelong dream. Most people find the timing to be strange, but his decision, like Polly's marriage, also makes a lot of sense to me. His reasons for wanting to do it make complete sense to me. It will be an adjustment for me, because we've gotten to the point where I can tell what he's thinking, he knows what I'm thinking, we don't need to spell everything out. We share the same general philosophy on most business things, so we don't need to hash everything out. When he has criticisms for me, they're ones I anticipate or that make a lot of sense to me.
So many people are wondering if I'm leaving as well, because he and I have worked together for so long. I've gotten more e-mail asking me about that than anything else. I didn't realize how closely people associated me with him. That thing they say, about people quitting managers and not companies...I can see why that is. If you are fortunate enough to work for someone you admire and can learn from, work can be a fairly painless thing. Otherwise, work is hell.
I watched the meteor shower in SF from a rental car. It was impressive. Sharon, Alan, and I also ran into some deer who had somehow wandered into a suburban neighborhood in the valley. We were driving along at 3 a.m. and suddenly they were there alongside the car, a male and a female. One of those strangely magical evenings when you wonder if you're dreaming.
God I miss San Francisco sometimes. Friday I stayed with Lorin, and when she left for work in the morning on Saturday I just went for a run from California/Fillmore down the hill to the water and then all the way along the water's edge to Fisherman's Wharf and then back. The hills killed me of course, but the sun was out, people were sitting outside of cafes sipping coffee, and it was the most cleansing hour-long run I've had in ages.
The whole weekend was exhausting. My sleep deficit always widens when I travel a lot. Last week's trip to LA and NY and all the time in the rental car this past weekend driving out to Polly's wedding in the middle of nowhere outside Sacramento have left me feeling slow of mind and foot. The new travel security rules make flying a huge time-suck.

New trailer for Attack of

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New trailer for Attack of the Clones


It's a good one, borrowing music from Episode I. Hit
refresh once on your browser to bring up the page. Seems like
a much clearer storyline than in the first film.
Harry Potter opens on about 8,000 screens this
weekend. Good lord! That's the highest ever. I thought
the long run-time would limit their box office, but it doesn't
matter if you have every screen in the theater showing the
film. Just doing simple math, if you believe most of the
screenings this weekend will be 85% full, the box office
will be massive. My personal estimate for the weekend is
that the movie does $82M, which would break the record
set by The Lost World for Friday to Monday openings.
Let's say $82M to $87M.
While many are touting the fact that nearly 1 million
tickets will be sold online for this film, that in no way
should reflect online penetration of online ticketing. People
are just using any means necessary to secure a limited
commodity, and that will not be the case with 98% of
movies playing on a screen in the U.S. over the next year.
A tasty tidbit from Bill James new book, on Barry Bonds:
Barry Bonds
Certainly the most un-appreciated superstar of my lifetime;
Bonds, [Craig] Biggio, and [Rickey] Henderson the three
most un-appreciated. Probably the second- or third-best
hitter among the 100 listed left fielders (behind [Ted] Williams
and perhaps [Stan] Musial), probably the third-best baserunner
(behind Henderson and [Tim] Raines), probably the best
defensive left fielder. Griffey has always been more popular,
but Bonds has been a far, far greater player.
The ten best players of the 1990s:
1. Barry Bonds
2. Craig Biggio
3. Frank Thomas
4. Ken Griffey Jr.
5. Jeff Bagwell
6. Rafael Palmeiro
7. Barry Larkin
8. Roberto Alomar
9. Mark McGwire
10. Greg Maddux
The number two man, Biggio, is closer in value to the
number 10 man than he is to Bonds. Biggio passed
Bonds as the best player in baseball in 1997.

Missing year! Sometime earlier this

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Missing year!


Sometime earlier this year, for some reason, maybe to impress
upon some vendor that I was older than I looked, I took to telling
everyone I was 28. And somewhere along the way, I lost track of
time and started believing it myself.
Duh. Howie and Mark in L.A. are like, wait, when did you suddenly
become older than us? I'm like, let's see, 2001 minus 1974, carry
the 1, oh my god, I'm only 27! Man, what a space cadet am I.
But damn, it felt great. It's like I've lopped a year off of my life!
I have an extra year to hit all my 30 before 30 goals! No way I'll
miss out on those now. That was the highlight of the week.

Tired, pup Just returned from

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Tired, pup


Just returned from a long business trip. Two days in L.A.,
a day in NYC. An early early morning flight Tuesday, a
red-eye flight Wednesday night. Lots of late nights leading
up to the trip, pulling together Powerpoint presentations.
Stress levels were high heading into it. I don't think I could
be a salesperson for life. The constant travel wears me down,
and the constant emotional swings of trying to close deals
and then keeping your partners happy can make the
universe seem very arbitrary. All weekend, I was dreaming
about my presentations, dreaming about work.
But for the most part, things went well. A couple times today,
in cabs around NYC, I just passed out cold and woke up
completely disoriented and realized I was in NYC. I half
expected to hear Penelope Cruz whispering "Open your eyes."
I am over 12,000 words behind on my novel. That's the
one depressing thing about this month so far. I just didn't
have any time to write this past week. I tried to write
on the plane flight back and managed about 2,000
words before I zonked out. I've started to realize how much
of a marathon this will be. 50,000 words is a hell of a lot
of words.
I leave tomorrow for San Francisco for Polly's wedding. Then
next week I leave for Boston on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.
I'm back for a few days, then off to Kentucky for a few weeks
in the distribution centers for the holidays. Then back again
for perhaps a week or two before I zip off to Chicago. I
really dislike being in Airworld these days. That's a term coined
by Walter Kirn in his latest novel, Up in the Air. For
anyone who's had to travel much in their job, I highly encourage
the book. Kirn's protagonist, Ryan Bingham, is a consultant
who has a goal of accumulating one million frequent flier miles,
and along the way he doles out truths about what he terms
Airworld, the world of the constant flier. Funny stuff. I used
to enjoy being in airports in a strange way, the sense of
being on the move. Now, with all the security restrictions, I can't
stand it. It's even more of a necessary evil than ever.
Lots of people I've worked with for many years, the old-timers
at Amazon, are leaving. I missed a whole bunch of goodbye
happy hours and dinners today. And in the next few months
I know of a few more who will be moving on to new new
things. There are just a few left from when I started. I just
realized that by next March, only one person, our CEO, will
be left from the group that interviewed me for my job.
That, with all the time I'll be spending away from Seattle the
next few weeks, leaves me with the feeling I might just
float away. The key to stabilizing my mind, at least, is
isolating the next big thing for me. Without that, it will
be hard to shake this feeling I have--nostalgia? Wistfulness?
I feel like I'm passing through this town. Maybe it will
pass.
I did manage to finish the first Harry Potter book at JFK
airport this afternoon, waiting for my flight. Just in time
for the movie. Now that I've finished the book, I must
say that I still don't understand the whole craze. It's
a kids book and yet all these people older than I am are
planning massive outings to see the film. I didn't find it
particularly well-written (it uses all sorts of literary devices
that should only be tolerated by young readers) and
is no more creative or engrossing than any number of
books I read as a kid. Maybe I'm just being a big
sourpuss. I'm completely pumped if I'm Warner Bros.,
though, knowing I've got a massive movie franchise on
my hands. Serious cash cow.
Yeah, Bill James published a new Historical Baseball Abstract!
Some of the most treasured books from my childhood are earlier
versions of this book. An essential book for baseball buffs, but
even more so he is one of the few journalists out there that
has the type of counter-culture or counter-establishment
viewpoint that distinguishes all the journalists I find interesting.
Kinda like Noam Chomsky. Anyway, Bill James is probably
the most influential figure in baseball journalism in the past
10 years or so, even though his disciples are just now starting
to peek in on the periphery of baseball journalism. If you
love mathematics and baseball, get yourself a copy.
Meredith finished the Ironman in Florida. Man oh man. What
a stud.
Britney is everywhere, and these days she is all about her
cleavage. She is in the last five minute of her fifteen, and she
had better milk it for all it's worth.

The winds of change they

in

The winds of change they are a'blowin


Okay, I give. Uncle. It's been an all around shitty week, a
few brief happy moments notwithstanding. I finally waved
the white flag at the gym tonight. I felt weak the whole time
I was lifting, then I got on the treadmill and about a mile
into it I was so light-headed I had to stop and sit down.
I thought I was going to pass out, or throw up, or pass up
and throw out, or something. Diiiiiiiiiiizzzzzzzzy.
I sat down on the stair and held my head in a towel for
about ten minutes until I could stand up again. Not too
many weeks do I feel mentally, physically, and emotionally
beaten up, but this is one of them. I remember Virginia
Woolf writing about the feeling in Mrs. Dalloway, as if the
fabric of one's identity is being attacked at the perimeters
by a hundred scissors snipping. One tries not to let it
unravel. Eventually, if you manage to hold it together,
strength and resolve return and one goes back on the
attack. The simpler motto? When recovering from illness,
ease back into workouts. Seriously, who am I trying to
impress?
So tonight, tomorrow, it's time to retreat and lie in
the trenches. Too much stuff for me to absorb this
week, too many mind-blowing revelations, most of which
I can't share, but I am just starting to come to grips
with a whole list of things. A series of minor and major
epiphanies.
One of those happy moments: Todd and Juli came over
and baked me lasagna. I flipped through their wedding
pics. I'm glad that some of my married friends can make
time to visit. I also learned something very strange--wedding
photographers keep your negatives for something like
seven years! I can't help but think that in a few years that
higher quality digital cameras will prevent these sort of
hostage situations.
I was helping my father edit some cover letters for his
application for teaching jobs tonight. It's a very strange
thing, writing a recommendation for your parents.
Really, most of us are living recommendations for our
parents. It's not as if we're baby sea turtles, abandoned
in some nest on the beach, left to make a mad dash
across the sand with our flippers.
Salman Rushdie wrote an interesting, short article in
the NYTimes on Nov. 2. He started it:
"This isn't about Islam." The world's leaders have been
repeating this mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous
hope of deterring reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims
living in the West, partly because if the United States
is to maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford
to suggest that Islam and terrorism are in any way
related.
The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it
isn't true. If this isn't about Islam, why the worldwide
Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden
and Al Qaeda? Why did those 10,000 men armed with
swords and axes mass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan
frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why
are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men
who died fighting on the Taliban side?
He concluded it:
"The restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal,
its depoliticization, is the nettle that all Muslim societies
must grasp in order to become modern. The only aspect
of modernity interesting to the terrorists is technology,
which they see as a weapon that can be turned on its
makers. If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam
must take on board the secularist-humanist principles
on which the modern is based, and without which
Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream."
I seriously have a hard time following this whole war
on terrorism now. For a short period after Sept. 11, I
felt like I was on top of all the latest developments. Now
it doesn't seem like there's one good place to keep track
of everything. It's just one giant, complicated mess.
Theme of the day is "Broken" off the soundtrack for
The Insider, by Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. A hidden
gem of a soundtrack, though by its nature a movie soundtrack
not by John Williams or that isn't a rock compilation is
usually unknown. In a close second place, the track "Faith"
off that same soundtrack. I remember when I was in
high school, or was it junior high, applying for some
scholarship/recognition program, and the main essay asked
that you analyze a work of art (fiction, music, painting, etc.).
Young, naive, I chose a piece of music. I think it was some
piece by Beethoven. I wrote this exhaustively long essay,
analyzing every measure of every minute of the piece,
breaking down the key, tonality, interplay of instruments,
etc. What I realize now is that you can't really write about
music in that way. It is an emotional art form, and a language
quite different from the written word. All I can really say is
that "Broken" reflects the way I feel this week, and "Faith"
is the way I think I'll come through it.
Or "Halah" by Mazzy Star. Howie and I went to see Jesus
and Mary Chain and Mazzy Star when we were at Stanford,
and they turned out the lights and Hope Sandoval sang Halah
while tapping a tambourine against her hip. Bittersweet.
V.S. Naipaul wrote in the NYTimes Magazine on 10.28.01:
[In response to a question: What do you think were the
causes of Sept. 11?]
It had no cause. Religious hate, religions motivation, was
the primary thing. I don't think it was because of American
foreign policy. There is a passage in one of the Conrad short
stories of the East Indies where the savage finds himself with
his hands bare in the world, and he lets out a howl of anger.
I think that, in its essence, is what is happening. The world
is getting more and more out of reach of simple people
who have only religion. And the more they depend on religion,
which of course solves nothing, the more the world gets out
of reach. The oil money in the 70's gave the illusion that
power had come to the Islamic world. It was as though up
there was a divine supermarket, and at last it had become
open to people in the Muslim world. They didn't understand
that the goods that gave them power in the end were made
by another civilization. That was intolerable to accept, and
it remains intolerable.
Old, old friend Julie sent me more photos of her and Paul's
new baby. Babies are lucky. They get to sleep, eat, and
work out all the time. It's no wonder they gain weight so
quickly. It's like those marathon runners who just run
all the time, otherwise they're sleeping and eating or
just lying around while coaches give them massages.
I've worked for the same manager, Jason, for 3 years now.
That's a long time. It's funny, in the early days of Amazon,
I used to run into him late nights at the copier machine.
It would be like 11pm on a weeknight, we'd be at the
office, and we'd be walking around in our undershirts
because the central air went off at night and we'd be
roasting up on the fourth floor. I think of all the people I
know that are around my age, he is the most instinctive
business person I know.
I thought all month I wouldn't write in the weblog because I
had to work on the novel. Turns out writing the novel puts me
at my PC most evenings, and when I hit a dead spot I turn
to the weblog to try and get the word flow going again. It's
like creatus interruptus.
Um, yes, I'm behind in my novel to the tune of about 3,000 or
4,000 words. I'm on a plane most of next week so I think I'll
be able to make it up.
I'm amazed by how many random e-mails I get from people
I've never met who correct me on things on my website or
write just to comment on something. Everytime I come home
and find an e-mail from some name I've never seen before,
I think "Oh!" It's like having a random stranger show up at
your front door and tell you that you should've used more
sugar in your recipe last night. And then the person walks
away and you never see them again.

"Irony" What is postmodernism? Jackson

in

"Irony"


What is postmodernism? Jackson Lears contemplates the
birth of irony in The New Republic.
Me, I've absorbed a sense of irony from the world around me.
Try defining irony. It's one of the more difficult words in the
English language to define without using the word itself.
The holidays used to cheer me up. Nowadays, they fire up
my sense of irony.
Pre-post-modern Christmas: Happy Holidays
Post-modern Christmas: "Happy Holidays" (pronounced out
loud as "quote, unquote, happy holidays."; now, for an aside
within a parenthetical--why do we say "quote, unquote" before
the phrase we are trying to put in quotes instead of saying
"quote" before the start of the quotation and "unquote" after
we've finished pronouncing the quotation? When did that whole
deal start? End of aside)
I had my first bout of holiday stress today. When I was a kid,
I had no idea what holiday stress was all about. Well, now
I know. Humbug.

Rings around Potter I really

in

Rings around Potter


I really love movie soundtracks. I'm not sure for how long, but you can
listen to a lot of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack by Howard Shore
online. I can't wait to see that movie.
I am about halfway through Harry Potter, the first book, and I
still stand by my contention that Lord of the Rings kicks Harry
Potter's lightning-bolt tattoed butt. The book, maybe the movie,
maybe even the soundtrack (last great soundtrack by John
Williams? It's been a while).

Math is fun! Yeeee-ha! Mathworld

in

Math is fun!


Yeeee-ha! Mathworld is back online after a long
court battle.
Was too sick to write too much yesterday, so now I'm
2,000 words off my pace. Woozy, with a bad hack,
all this week. Very annoying. Hurts to look at my
computer monitor. I'm always disappointed in my
immune system when I get sick.
ESPN.com is causing serious javascript errors in IE6.
They need better QA.

Pant, pant I'm up to

in

Pant, pant


I'm up to 8,081 words total in my novel. Man, it's hard work.
The Nanowrimo word counter lists some people over 20,000
words already. Someone claims to have 64,700 words done.
Are you kidding me? When I think of what I have written with
my 8,000 words so far, I realize 50,000 words isn't necessarily
a very long novel. But it will still be a painful getting to the
finish line.
My great breakthrough was setting the high school football
scene in the present tense.
I'm having problem finding the time to write my novel, get
my work done at the office, and leave time for working out.
In fact, I'm pretty sure my life will lose its balance this
month.
I move offices tomorrow.
I'm really, really tired. I think my biorhythms are low right now.
I'm not feeling all that peppy.