Month: June 2012

Gorging Myself on Books

books
books (Photo credit: brody4)

I am reading four books at once. Well, not at once, more like at the same time. I’m like a hummingbird darting from one nectar filled flower to another.

I open a  book, a quickly read a chapter or two, then set that book down and open another. I will do this until I have tasted each book. I will then pause and reflect on what I have just read.

This process will continue until I get to a chapter that hooks me. This is the defining moment. I have found that part of the story that so enthrals me that I can no longer continue my hummingbird reading. I will then have to finish that book. Preferably in one sitting, regardless of the books length, regardless of the topic, regardless of what else I might have to do.

I have always read this way. Partly because I am a very fast reader. Back when I was younger and had better eyesight and my concentration was total, I could read two thousand words a minute with seventy percent comprehension and eighty percent retention. I know this because my then girl friend was taking a speed-reading course.

My girlfriend, who incidentally later became my first wife, was an incredibly slow reader. It drove her to distraction. So when she started university, the first thing she did was take the speed-reading course. Part of the course was to take a test. You read an amount of prose and then you were tested on what you had read.

My Girlfriend wanted me to take the test as I could read, according to her, incredibly fast. That was when I found out exactly how fast I could read.

I don’t think that I can reach the dizzying heights of two thousand words per minute these days, but I am still damn fast. I have, though, improved my retention rate. I am not sure what that means. Of course the important thing about all this is the fact that I still love reading.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The four books I am dipping into at the moment are by all contemporary authors. Two are Scandinavian, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seems to have opened up a whole new market. The other two are American writers. The books are:

Burned by Thomas Enger, She’s Never Coming Back by Hans Koppel, Gone by Michael Grant and Nightmare by Stephen Leather.

So far it has been a tie between Leather’s Nightmare, another in his Jack Nightingale series and Grant’s Gone, the first in his series about a world with everyone above the age of fifteen ‘gone.’

I still haven’t hit that defining chapter yet. But when I do, you’ll be the first to know.

Related articles

Don’t read your old posts

Fun With Dick and Jane
Fun With Dick and Jane (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have learned the hard way that I shouldn’t read my old posts. Every time I do, I find something I don’t like about it. Or I’ll edit and re-edit the damn thing.

I can spend ages fiddling around with the sentence structure because on my second viewing I decide I put the comma‘s in the wrong spot or (God forbid) I didn’t use a comma at all where I should have.

Mind you, my nemesis is the comma. Well more accurately it is the ‘comma splice’ and all it’s annoying-ness. When I took Introduction to Writing at the University of Maryland it was my most common error.

My tutor would hand back my assignment with lots of little red circles scattered over the page like random holes made by a miniature shotgun blast. He would always tell me that I would have gotten the top grade on my little writing projects if I could just curb my incessant misuse of comma’s.

My excuse was always the same. “If I read the sentence in my head and I have to take an abstract, or metaphysical breath I insert a comma.” My tutor would shake his head at my ignorance and say, “Then stop breathing when you read or better still make your sentences shorter.”

I decided that short sentences were the answer. I became the Ernest Hemingway of English 101. Although to be honest I began to feel more like the author of the  “Dick and Jane” text books that occupy the first grade school library. Of course this Hemingway type of writing did not last long. In a very short time I was popping so many comma splices in my sentences that my tutor began to call me “Splicer.”

Ernest Hemingway in Milan, 1918

Eventually I mastered (a little) the use of the comma, but I still feel the overwhelming urge to insert them whenever I have to take a mental breath while reading the sentence. I graduated with a B average which was okay by me.

Comma splicer I might well be, but, I never dangled a participle or mixed up my tense’s. That would have been unforgivable.

Related articles

Magnetic Resonance Imaging Blues

I am having my MRI done tomorrow. I have to admit, I am a little worried. Not because of the MRI itself, but rather, what it might show. I have had one before, it showed the specialist treating my lower back problem what was happening and ultimately how he could go about fixing it.

In 1999 I got the results of my MRI and it finally showed everyone why my back was killing (metaphorically) me. I had a rotting disc in my lower back. I also found out that I had one leg significantly shorter than the other, although if he told me which leg it was I have since forgotten.

The disc, though, was the thing causing all the problems. I was told it was congenital, meaning that I had probably been born that way. Pieces of the rotting disc were getting lodged against nerve endings which was why nothing in the way of pain medication was really working. And believe me when I tell you, I was taking hand-fulls of the stuff.

I had my operation in September 1999 and they replaced my rotting disc with a titanium box filled with bone shavings from my hip. All very space-agey. They then put giant staples in my back to hold the skin together and sent me home.

And apart from my immediate concern that if I strained too hard at anything the staples might come out, I was fine. Once the staples were taken out and I finished getting back to ‘normal’ health wise, I then had to wean myself off of the pain medicine.

Everything was great for ages. I went through a sort of ‘Peter Pan‘ stage of my life. My back never bothered me apart from the odd time I would pull a muscle. Then I got injured at work.

Nothing dramatic just a short, fast, fall to the floor with the weight of three other people to propel our short journey. I noticed my back hurting after I had filled in the report of what happened and placed two of the people on report. All in a days work. Or so I thought. I went to work for three more shifts. Each shift I worked it became more painful to walk until I finally had to throw in the towel and go the the surgery.

After lots of physiotherapy and a load of pain pills later, I am still not back to normal. I am better, just not better enough. I know that I have somehow incurred some sort of nerve damage. But at 53, if I require an operation to put it right, I won’t heal as quickly as I did when I 41. It’s an age thing. And if I take too long to heal, I could lose my job and either way I am going to lose money.

So I sit here and worry, get crotchety and sometimes throw all my toys out of the pram. I get angry at the silliest of things and completely ignore the things I should get angry at. I am acting illogically and I know it, damn it.

So I’ll be glad when the damn thing is done. That way I’ll know if I even need to worry.

English: Photo taken in the MRI lab mri of my ...

Related articles

George Carlin (b:May 12, 1937 – d:June 22, 2008) George WAS the MAN

Playin' with Your Head
Playin’ with Your Head (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world lost a brilliant comedian when George Denis Patrick Carlin died. But George wasn’t just a comedian. He was a talented actor (Dogma, Car Wash, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) a master satirist, and author. He won five grammy awards for his comedy albums.

That’s right I said albums.  Back in the day, before cd’s and dvd’s and mp3’s we old folks used to listen to music on plastic or vinyl  records. Comics like George would put out comedy albums of their live performances. The oldie goldies maintained their popularity and their visibility through this medium.

Guys like Richard Pryor, Redd Fox, Steve Martin and even Robin Williams all did albums. They also started the same way. Working the comedy clubs and hoping that one day they would be able to perform in Vegas. Interestingly all the above mentioned comics did work on television. But Pryor and George were too raw for television. TV watered them down and they suffered for it.

No, these guys, these demi-gods who had the power and intelligence to make anyone see the absurdities of life and  the humour that we face in our everyday existence worked best live and on-stage. And the one comic who was the Man, the unadulterated master of this was George Carlin.

He started out playing the clubs. He was brilliant, he gave us the Hippy Dippy Weather man, Wonderful Wino Radio, and more. He was the man who was thrown off the stage in Las Vegas because he said the word shit in his act. This occurrence opened a door for George, it gave him the ammunition he needed to create his ‘Seven Dirty Words’ routine.

Classic Gold (album)
Classic Gold (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Seven Dirty Words evolved into ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’ and over the years the list got longer and funnier. George had the capability to make our fears and prejudices funny. He wrote a poem about beards during a time when long hair and beards were seen to be a bad thing.

His acts poked fun at God, politics, the constitution, law and our rights. Nothing was sacrosanct or taboo to George and we loved him for it. George constantly worked and he used to ‘guest host’ The Tonight Show regularly. He was the host of the first ever Saturday Night Live. He also did a yearly HBO special right up until four months before his death.

So lets take a moment to remember the irreverent genius that was George Carlin as we approach the anniversary of his passing. And while you are at it, recite to yourself, internally or out loud, which would be much funnier, the list of Seven words. In case you’ve forgotten or have never heard it, here it is courtesy of Wikipedia:

“ Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war. ”
—George Carlin, Class Clown, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”

So here’s to you George you definitely brought a lot the party we call life. I hope that where ever you went after you left us, they appreciate you as much as we did.

Last Words (book)
Last Words (book) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles

Men in Black 3 (2012) Here We Go Again…Again

Whether or not the third instalment of the Men in Black  (MIB) series was highly anticipated or not depends on who you talk to. Most critics agreed that Men in Black II was a ‘wash-out’ and  was mediocre at best.

Box office receipts tell a different story. MIB II grossed twice it’s production costs. Somebody must have liked it. And enough somebodies liked it enough (do you see what I did there?) for the studios to even consider making a MIB 3.

Will Smith
Will Smith (Photo credit: Alan Light)

Amblin Entertainment wouldn’t back a lame horse in the money stakes. They must have felt that the winning combination of Smith and Jones was a solid one. With a string of ‘hit’ films under their belts. Who wouldn’t pay to see Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith on the big screen together again.

Français : Tommy Lee Jones au festival de Cannes.

Add into the mix an intricate time travel plot (and hey! We haven’t seen that before have we) and casting ‘hot-as-a-rocket-blast’ Josh Brolin as the young Tommy Lee Jones and British actress extraordinaire  Emma Thompson and Men in Black 3 could just make up for the dull-as-dishwater second act in the series.

Rip Torn on the red carpet at the Emmys 9/11/9...
Rip Torn on the red carpet at the Emmys 9/11/94 – Permission granted to copy, publish, broadcast or post but please credit “photo by Alan Light” if you can (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course the curious side of me wonders why Rip Torn was replaced by Ms Thompson. Was he not allowed to participate because that would have violated his parole? In spite of the man’s personal problems, surely the film would have benefited from his presence. I always felt that his role of  Zed was sort of sacrosanct. Obviously not.

Word on the street is that Josh Brolin steals the show with his portrayal of the young Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and that he has Jone’s mannerisms and voice down pat. Not surprising really when you consider his portrayal of ex-President George W Bush Jr in  W. The man is a chameleon of an actor, just look at his films, not least of which was True Grit. He was almost unrecognisable as Tom Chaney.

Josh Brolin leaving the press conference of Tr...

Still despite the good box office returns of MIB 3 so far I will not  be queuing up to see the film in the cinema. I have spent my monthly allowable expenditure of seeing Red Lights with it’s talented cast. So as much as I adore seeing Tommy Lee Jones doing what he does so well and Will Smith is watch-able no matter what he does, I’ll have to give it a pass.

I will, though, be renting the blu-ray as soon as it is released and I’ll then be writing what I think of the film. Until then look into the light and remember nothing…

Related articles
Verified by MonsterInsights