Archive for February, 2005
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown – review
Posted by smokingpen in Dan Brown, book reviews on February 28, 2005
Dan Brown wrote Angels and Demons. This is not his first book, and for those who have been in a bookstore within the past year you know that he has a wickedly popular book that follows up Angels and Demons – dealing with the same principle character, a professor of art history at Harvard University.
The book begins with this professor, Robert Langdon, rudely be awakened from a dream of him, married, climbing to the top of the great pyramid, by a phone call. Someone on the other end of the line is talking to him about The Illuminati, a group he has researched and studied for most of his professional academic career. He doesn’t buy the story, tells the guy he isn’t interested in some hoax, and in the end hangs up on the caller. The caller makes a second call and then tells the professor he is going to send him a fax; the fax contains a picture of a man, his head turned one-hundred-eighty degrees and the word “Illuminati” burned into his chest.
From that moment until the very end of the story the book does not stop with the action and readability. Admittedly, it took me about two weeks of, off and on, starting and stopping the reading of the book to finally start reading and not stop. My impetus to start reading, and not stop, was my pulling out of school, finishing a stack of other novels, to include American Gods, and having nothing else sitting around my room that really screamed at me to read them. There are still other books, fiction and non-fiction, sitting around my room, but at the same time, it’s not been super important for me to get to them right now. I have other priorities.
However, Angels and Demons, over about 500 to 600 pages, cover about eighteen hours of a single day. We start by learning that a top secret, high security, physics lab in Europe has been invaded and one of the top physicists now lays dead in his apartment. Max Kohler, the director of the facility, has put the apartment under lock and key and has caused the temperature in the apartment to drop well below freezing to protect the body of the physicist. From that moment forward we are taken on a ride through high-tech gadgetry and religious icons. The reader is taken from Switzerland to Rome and into the heart of the Vatican where a bomb of immense power has been placed by The Illuminati.
Robert Langdon is joined, in Switzerland, by the dead physicists daughter, Vittoria. She is Italian and also a physicist who has been working with her adopted father, a Catholic Priest, on a very secret project. With the death of her father she is the only person in the world who knows how to stop a chain reaction that will, inevitably, destroy the Vatican and possibly much of Rome.
The journey, form beginning to end, takes the reader on a journey of Rome, through a history of the Illuminati, into the sanctity of the Catholic church while revealing history and tradition in the election of a new pope as the College of Cardinals prepares to replace the previous pope, now dead for fifteen days. The reader is further taken into the bowels of Vatican City.
Outside of Vatican City Robert and Vittoria go on a quest to save the four preferred Cardinals who have been abducted by the Illuminati before they are killed. This journey takes them from one Cathedral to another, while determining and interpreting the symbols and clues in each that will lead them to the next Cathedral in time to stop the next murder – and branding. Each Cathedral represents one of the traditional four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and each of the Cardinals will die by one of four methods, by Earth, by Air, by Fire, and by Water. Time is of the essence, they have less than a total of four hours to accomplish the task, and in the end the outcome is less than optimal.
Without giving away the twist to the story, the bomb does go off as it requires very specially designed charging stations, at the last minute. A new pope is selected and Robert Langdon – over 569 pages – falls madly in love with Vittoria, who in turn, falls for him.
Dan Brown is an amazing writer who, I believe, stands on the cusp of writing another amazing novel after The Da Vinci Code or falling into the same trap that so many other writers have fallen into. Publish at any cost because anything they produce is going to make them a million dollars.
Angels and Demons is worth reading and makes me want to pick up The Da Vinci Code when I have finished reading the new list of books I have waiting to be read.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Bloggering Time
Posted by smokingpen in Personal Entries, religion on February 20, 2005
It’s Bloggering time. Okay. That was a rip from the Fantastic Four, the Thing, Marvel Comics. But still, I am here to blog, baby.
Basically, things have gone from bad to… worse. Seems that the hospital finally sent me my bill and it was pretty significant. Shook my world. Caused me to fall into some kind of intense sweat, and now I am wondering how I am going to pay it. Money is so dirty. Anyway, got a second bill today from the x-ray department for the x-rays, which, just so you know, were included in the original bill and that takes me higher. Oh, so much higher.
Work isn’t going to pay for this. Meaning, I don’t make enough money to put any kind of a significant dent into what I owe and that kind of hurts. I’m a smart guy with lots of talents that can’t seem to get the shiznet together enough to actually get a good job. Makes you wonder what’s really going on here.
Anyway, that’s all a beside the point thing. Can’t go back and undo the hospital visit. Probably wouldn’t if I could. I thought I was going to die. Pretty much figured that the appendix was going to burst (that’s the abdominal quadrant the pain was in) and figured that I just had to suck up the experience. Uhm. Yeah.
When I got the first bill, Friday, I pretty much mentally shut down. I’d gotten up in the morning, went to the temple (in Boston) then came home and puttered around for a while. After looking at the bill I shut down (mentally) and took off for work. Pretty sad day when work becomes my brainless refuge. At work Harley was there, Harley is this twelve year old kid of one of my coworkers and a few of us take turns spending time with him. I didn’t really anticipate his being there and when I found out he was I went out and talked to him for a while. Nothing like a twelve year old to take your mind off of… well… money. They have no concept of money – but then, neither do I.
So, I went to the temple and I was there because I felt I like it was really important for me to go and while I was there I had some pretty interesting impressions. Going to the temple, for anyone who reads this that doesn’t know, is a lot about a oneness with God. That’s not really it. The temple is about families and the generations that have passed on before us. The work in the temple is for the people who are dead (often for hundreds of years) – read Malachi in the Old Testament. Anyway, going isn’t always about the work. Sometimes you go because you need to meditate, take stock of your life, determine whether or not what you are doing is worth doing or continuing, reorient, find your north star, and then chart a new course. Yesterday was about the meditation and the course. I needed to see if I needed to change my heading.
The feelings, the impressions, I received as I was in the temple really dealt with some odd things. First, I need to exercise more. Five miles a day. I probably ought to live off of Tums. Not really, but my problem (see earlier) really may be something simple. And finally, I need to redo my resume, I even had a format come to mind, and finally sit down and edit that book I wrote back in November.
So, last night I reformatted the chapters on the book. I think there were ten or twelve when I wrote it initially. They were wicked long. Now there are a significant number more. The chapters aren’t as long.
I need to get the chutzpah together and start reading the thing and then negotiate with Debbie to get her to go through it once for me, quickly.
Beyond that the only other thing that came to mind was a quote from a Priesthood Leadership meeting I attended a couple of years ago. Paraphrasing: Sometimes we have to step out into the darkness before a miracle can happen. There was a lot more to it, the next one hundred yards where we get to rest, but that initial step into the darkness that’s important.
Anyway, lots of things are happening all around me. I’m still out here. Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, right now. I’m amazed I mean that. Eight months (I think) and I am still only wanting to be out here. When I lived in Dallas, I moved because I wanted to be closer to my parents. Then my parents moved to Colorado (I’d already moved back to Utah because my dad said to me once, “Go where the girls are,” and Utah’s where the LDS girls mostly are) and I liked being close to them. Now I am close to no one and I couldn’t imagine my life any different. Well, that’s not really true. I can imagine going back to Utah but then I get sick to my stomach and I start to hyperventilate and the world starts to spin and….
Point being is that I planned to move to the East coast. I hoped to move to Boston. That is still a goal and one of the many directions in which I am heading and hopefully by fall I will be living in Boston and doing my Boston thing.
The important part to all of this is that I have to trust that I am doing what is right and that the money, the bills, everything will work themselves out. I may get to work another job and slave to pay everything, but they will work themselves out.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
American Gods – review
Posted by smokingpen in book reviews, protagonist on February 16, 2005
American Gods is written by author Neil Gaiman. Gaiman is best known for his work on DC Comics The Sandman series. I’ve never read The Sandman and couldn’t offer any ideas or insights on what it’s like or how it turned out, but I have recently read two of his books, American Gods and Neverwhere.
My brother, Jack, sent me, a couple of years ago, to a book signing. He paid me something like 20 dollars to stand in line for a few hours (suggesting I get out of bed on a Saturday before 8 a.m. to get in line) at the new downtown public library in Salt Lake City, UT. The result was that I stood in line with a bunch of Goths and Goth wannabe’s who were dressed, in the middle of July, in black and dark red and purple all waiting for this person – this author I’d never heard of, to sign copies of their books.
When I got there the line was already significant but had not left the main lobby of the library. I considered whether or not I would remain in line – and found out later on that Jack didn’t really expect me to continue standing in line – I eventually joined the growing line of counter-culture kids and waited for Neil Gaiman to arrive. At the time I promised myself that anyone who wrote something that appealed to this specific subset of the populated probably wasn’t worth my time. On top of that, I was the person that people, visiting the library, asked what was happening. I really had no idea.
Recently, because of my job working at a bookstore, I came across the Neil Gaiman books. He has three that we stock on our shelves. One of them is a collection of short stories. The two books, Neverwhere and American Gods, just kept jumping out at me saying, if they could speak, “Read me. Read me.” So, after looking at those titles, realizing that I have had very little to do for the past couple of weeks, decided to buy the books and read them.
The latest read was American Gods. American Gods is a book that follows the protagonist Shadow from the point he is getting out jail and we learn that you do your own time, while in jail, and not do someone else’s time (in other words, don’t get into trouble and don’t let other people put their problems on your shoulders) through his going home on plane and in car to his wife’s funeral. The very first part of the book introduces several key characters that Shadow meets and interacts with throughout the book.
American Gods deals with what happens when people from the old world, Europe, Asia, Africa, Egypt, come to the American continent. They bring with them their old beliefs and customs, but, over time, these beliefs and customs become shallow and eventually fall into nothingness leaving behind a disparate collection of gods and beliefs for the people to not believe in any more.
Pretty quickly the reader is drawn into a forthcoming conflict between the old gods from the old world and the new gods dealing with culture, media, and modern bias. The nation is filled with technology, television, movies, and the deity we have created from them. These beings are in conflict with the more experienced gods of the old world who came over with the peoples that eventually inhabited the land.
Shadow is the main character in the book. We follow his movements, his learning, his wisdom, his experiences, his stupidity, and his betrayal. The book, though not high fiction, is a pretty good read, fast in pace, long in pages, and interesting. Even if you aren’t into the science fiction/fantasy genres, the book carries the reader forward in such a way that you learn a lot about the different kinds of deity, demi-gods, imps and creatures that were worshiped or believed in, the beliefs that followed the travelers (by choice and otherwise) into the new world, and what might’ve happened to them if they were forgotten about.
My favorite part in the book is when Wednesday (one of the many gods in the book) begins to share with Shadow the nature of what it means to be a grifter and his favorite two man swindles. There is this one where a gentleman takes an old violin into a restaurant, eats a fine meal, realizes he’s forgotten his wallet, and leaves his precious violin as collateral until he goes and gets his wallet to pay the man. A second man sees the violin, asks to look at it, declares that it is a rare antique and that he would gladly pay half a hundred thousand dollars for the violin.
The characters all seem to work very well together and Gaiman takes the reader out of the world of the impossible creating, in my opinion, a rather plausible environment that removes the belief barrier.
In the end, the most memorable thing about the book is said by Odin, “America isn’t a good place for gods.”
This book is worth reading.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
General Update
Posted by smokingpen in Personal Entries, school on February 16, 2005
I work at Borders. This is not something that I enjoy. I’m not exactly certain whether or not this is directly related to working with books all day long (yeah, an oxymoron I’m sure), or if it has more to do with the nature of the job: directly interacting with the buying public; of course it could be the rock solid work schedule and lack of forgiveness when I need/want to call in sick. In any case, I am not happy at my present position.
Because of financial concerns, of late, I am in the middle of a job search. Looking for a new job is… interesting at best. What I’ve discovered is that New Hampshire has some rather interesting employment search engines. They are dynamic and somewhat easy to use. The rub, with these search engines, is that it leaves an eddy where I should have met or directly spoken with someone – in the past – that doesn’t exist now. Companies can disqualify you before you’ve even had a chance to prove you’re capable – or incompetent – to do the job.
Last week I discovered two companies that excited me. One was the McLane company, a distribution outlet started in Temple, TX by a family I sort of grew up with; and SigArms, the American arm to the SigSauer Arms manufacturer out of Sweden. I own a P229 .40 S&W handgun produced by these people and absolutely love the way it shoots. Because I like the product so much being a part of this team would be exciting to me. McLane would be exciting solely because I have worked, twice, in the trucking industry and thought it might be fun to do it again. Some fields just draw you.
Along with the job search I also received the scores from the SAT II:Writing test. Got a 640 on four hours of sleep and an 8 out of 12 on the essay. Not the best score (I personally think I could’ve done better by about 100 points on the one and at least two points on the other had I had the forethought to take the night preceding the test off. That would’ve been an investment in the future – and in my applying to Universities. However, I didn’t. The test scores seem to be in line with what I scored in high school… and to think that I didn’t get much more sleep back then either.
In truth, the best way for me to have improved scores would’ve been to edit a bunch of writing over the preceding days to prepare myself better for the nature of the test.
Along with the test scores I received a letter from Boston University. They sent it encouraging me to finish the transfer application process. That was flattering and exciting all at the same time, and frustrating because I don’t really know whether or not they send those letters out to everyone – or if they send them out to people sitting above a certain threshold. If so, what is that threshold? The feeling I had, the day I took the test, and this seems important to me, is that my test score would be sufficient to the task ahead of me. The task is getting into BU.
Anyway. I am still looking for a job. Still working at Borders. And still wondering how I am going to make ends meet to accomplish what life holds for me.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Trip to Dartmouth
Posted by smokingpen in religion on February 9, 2005
Since moving to the east coast I have found, as usual, that the people I tend to rely on are the ones I meet at church. I met Andy at church, more specifically through church, at an institute class my dad was teaching in Copperas Cove, TX. He’s someone I’ve kept in touch with. However, since moving out here there’s been a half dozen people who’ve taken the time to be interested in me and what I am trying to do… mostly its getting to Boston, but that’s another story another time.
One of the families I’ve met out here has two little boys, both beneath the age of five. Their older, on Saturday morning had a stroke. Apparently, this happens to something like 5 in 100,000 children each year. He’s been in the Intensive Care Unit at Dartmouth Hospital (about an hour away) since Saturday morning.
I wasn’t in church on Sunday because I was sick. Neither, for that matter, was Andy or Debbie or the girls because… well, the adults were all sick and the girls are too little to take themselves to church. My mother suggested that I wasn’t to little to take the girls to church, but the key here is that we were all sick… so, none of us knew that this family had gone through any of this until Monday or Tuesday when Debbie and Andy were taking food to another family in the branch. Then they were told what had happened.
Last night, when I got home from work, Debbie told me what was going on. This affects me, not to the personal or moral extent where I’m unable to speak, perform, or act… but at the same time: what do you say to people who’ve gone through a tragedy like this?
Anyway, my first reaction is that I have a level of responsibility to these people. My calling in the church, my lay position, is within the branch’s elder’s quorum presidency. This brother is a part of that quorum. They are a part of the branch. They’ve become… friends.
This evening, when Andy got home from school I said, “I’m thinking of driving to Dartmouth.” It’s an hour from here to there.
He said, “I can’t stop you.”
I said, “You’re right, you can’t. But I would probably listen to you if you told me not to. However, I shared this with you because I wanted to know if you wanted to go with me.” Andy is this family’s home teacher. After some short discussion and Debbie getting home we left for Dartmouth.
The most amazing thing to me hasn’t necessarily been the drive, the discussion, my going into a place (hospitals) that I can’t stand to walk into… but the resolve and recovery of a little boy who, four days ago, was immobile. Their thought was that this little boy (who in truth is no little boy) was going to die.
Last night he was moved out of ICU and put into a regular children’s hospital room and that’s where Andy and I found them this evening. Debbie asked us to stop in the hospital gift shop for something and so we purchased (Andy purchased) a shark puppet. We discussed it, looked around at other stuff, and decided on the shark puppet.
In the room there’s the parents who both looked tired and in serious need of sleep. They really needed sleep and it was clear that neither of them had enough of that. Admittedly, for the parents, my heart went out to them; but the primary fixture in the room was the hospital bed and in the hospital bed was occupied by this little boy. He had a smile on his face and was throwing himself around already adapting to his situation.
The stroke paralyzed his right side. His mother tells us he is left handed. In order to move about, to get what he wanted, sit up, etc., he throws himself against the paralyzed side until it does what he wants it to do. The outcome, this kid can move around.
Upon receiving the shark the first thing he did was to take a pirate ship toy he had on his bed, set up the pirates, and then to attack it with the shark. Apparently, the shark was a pretty big hit. As we sat there speaking with the parents the shark transformed, in the hands of this child, from a shark to an airplane to a spaceship and back to a shark.
We didn’t stay long, but in the end, it was nice visit. The family is doing well. The region is expecting snow this evening. And here, in a week or so, we may be called on to do more to help them out.
It really is amazing to see the resilience of a little child. What would lay out, and kill, most adults this child is smiling through and adapting to. There is hope where, a few days ago, there was none.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Flake
Posted by smokingpen in On Writing, Personal Entries, experience on February 8, 2005
You know. Sometimes life just feels as though it is falling away from you. Not literally. Literally would probably be scary and this isn’t meant to frighten.
Instead of going to school full-time I’ve found myself back on the street looking for a job. That doesn’t mean that I am out of a job… though some days I wish I were. Borders has served its purpose. The store is fun, for a while, and the people there are… well, I keep thinking back to watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Clementine… someone who is my age who works in a bookstore and has no direction in life. A flake.
I don’t want to grow up to be a flake. But you see, here’s the deal. I kinda feel as though I am one. Or, better, I have been one.
For the most part I don’t make and keep friends. Many people, that I’ve known in the past, have gone the way of the wildebeest. Not really certain which way the wildebeest went, but if I have to guess, I would imagine the wildebeest went the way the buffalo almost went, the way of the dodo, the way of the woolly mammoth. The wildebeest is probably dead and so are most of my friends – well, figuratively my friends have all disappeared.
It’s kind of rare for me to keep a group of friends for long. I move a lot. Not like I move a lot of places, for the most part a lot of my moving has been in the same area, just blocks or miles away from each other, and the outcome is that I walk away from the friends I have made to find new ones elsewhere.
There was this girl I saw a few years ago. She was from Scotland, born in Wales, and would say, when I suggested things that annoyed her, “I can’t be bothered.”
You see, that’s the way it is with me. I can’t be bothered. It’s not that I don’t like my friends or the people that I meet. I just can’t be bothered.
I said to a professor the other day, “Don’t feel bad if you never see me again. I have a tendency to leave and not say, ‘Goodbye.’” My habit is to up and move and not say goodbye. I apologized in advance because I pretty much know that chances of my sitting in that professors classroom are slim.
You see. To understand me is to understand what my motivations are. Motivation. Singular. My motivation is writing. At least, my motivation has been writing. Occasionally I do it rather well.
Tonight, well, there are lots of mistakes in what is written.
The point is that I run and hide. I don’t keep friends for very long. My expectation is that six months after I am gone I am forgotten. Rarely do I have the opportunity to prove whether or not that is true.
My problem, it would seem, extends beyond my apparent lack of relationship skills… family, friends… into work. I don’t keep jobs for very long either. Six months, a year, eighteen months and I am gone. Long term endearment to a workplace is really something that comes with need. I need to pay bills and have financial stability in my life and I keep a job around for a while longer.
C.R. England was a job that kept me in a home, kept me eating, and kept fuel in my, then, diesel Jeep. The bookstore has been a job to keep me in a house and food in my belly. It hasn’t paid for much else, except the odd book here and there.
The time has come for me to make money so that I can take care of bills that have been hounding me for a lot of years. The time has come for me to reconsider my actions. Truth told, I am not the best person to have a relationship with and I don’t come off as the best person to employ – if they want me for any longer than what I feel I need.
My direction is pretty solid, in my mind, and my goals are defined. Now it’s time to find a way to make things work. Relationships included.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Clemetine from Eternal Sunshine
Posted by smokingpen in Personal Entries, school, work on February 2, 2005
So, my life got flipped, turned upside down. As of yesterday, February 1, 2005, I am no longer a full time day student at Southern New Hampshire University and am relegated back to the declination of night student starting in March. The details of why I have fallen, so far, are not important, but the notion that I am not pursuing the dream… you know, go to school full time, has been shattered. Regardless, I am taking it rather well, looking forward to the next two classes (at night) and wondering what the future holds.
Part of the reason to attend day classes was to get more credit hours out of the way. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be attending SNHU’s CE (Continuing Education) department during the spring and summer sessions… I do have a certain number of credit hours I wanted to knock out of the way before the start of the next school year… and by looking at my schedule, at the number of classes I can take over the next three terms, and the number of credits I wanted to end up with, I will end up within three credit hours of where I wanted to be by the end of the summer.
The problem that has arisen is that I now need to find a job that pays a lot better than the bookstore where I work. Bookstore are fun, and all, for someone who doesn’t know what they want out of life – or Clementine in the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That life is no longer my life. I have plans. I have a dream. I’m going somewhere, someday, Mr. Formanellie (That 70′s Show parody of some John Travolta movie).
As a result of no longer being in school the stack of books I have became rather obsolete. I don’t need them. Fortunately, for me, the bookstore has agreed to buy them all back for what I paid for them… but I have to have the receipts. One of the receipts (not for the series of books purchased with that receipt) was located in my playwriting book. So… I got the larger portion paid back to me (or put back on my check card) and was sent home to find the other receipt.
Anyway, anyone who knows me (and Debbie and I had a short discussion on the unfairness to whomever I marry in this regard) knows that my living space (i.e. bedroom) is a disaster. Has been a disaster. And continues to be a disaster. Not exactly the best source of finding things in a pinch. Truth told, I am still looking for my wool beanie, skull cap… whatever you call it, among the ski items I tossed in a pile and never did anything with.
Right this second, right now, it’s not so bad. The reason, I needed to find that receipt. School books are expensive. As such, getting the money paid for them back is a good thing. Because I am poor (read previous entry) and have some bills that need to be paid… two of which stopped me from getting all of the financial aid I needed for school, I pretty much have a road ahead of me where getting the money back would be a VERY good thing. Money is good, debt is bad. Apparently this is something I need to learn VERY VERY badly. At least, that’s what the financial aid people told me yesterday.
Regardless, spent the bulk of the evening looking through papers and receipts for the darn thing and then, on a whim, looked in the leather coat I’ve been wearing lately and there it was. Heh. Imagine that. The item I was looking for was actually on me while I was returning books and could’ve been used had I known it was there and I didn’t and had to come home, start laundry, and clean up the bulk of my mess just to learn that, well, I had it on me all the time. Kinda funny. At least, it was to me. The real joke, though, is that I actually worked on cleaning my room.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly