Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat

Earthquake vs. Fire

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The Sharks have been eliminated from the playoffs on a gut-punch ending: A missed call by the refs led to a tying goal with thirteen seconds left in regulation time, then in the second overtime the puck took a bizarre bounce and landed on the stick of the only guy on the ice who knew where it was.

For the final, I think I have to root for Boston. I’d lean Canadian, but Vancouver has the Sedin twins, who think their little douchebag goatees constitute playoff beards. They are wrong. Boston, on the other hand, ran Joe Thornton out of town, much to the benefit of San Jose. I was really hoping for a Sharks-Bruins final.

Next year.

So I’m sitting a Goosetown, a local bar with a ‘dive’ leaning, not afraid to let the juke box get loud (Jane’s Addiction right now), which inexplicably has an excellent WiFi signal. On the big screen is San Jose’s other professional team, one I once saw in person. The San Jose Earthquake is playing the Chicago Fire, kicking a ball listlessly around a field.

That both teams are named after disasters that caused suffering and death is probably indicative of something. For a while this game was just goalkeepers kicking the ball back and forth. At the half, there had been exactly one shot on goal. The other four shots were off-target, but one of them hit both posts. Credit where due, that was a pretty damn exciting moment, and one that provides a payoff for the fan(s).

Overall, however, the level of play is pretty low. I’ve not seen anyone lying on the grass with a feigned injury, but that’s largely because defenders seem afraid of the ball. Set plays send the ball into empty space and passes are not crisp. Overall, there is a lack of hustle, and that’s what I can’t forgive. You can suck at a sport, but if you give it your all I’m with you. The game would seem a lot less tedious if the guys on the field showed more urgency.

So: Soccer without people lying on the ground crying like little girls (not little girls who play soccer – in this country those kids are tough) is not the only problem with the game. It may remain forever a mystery what soccer would be like if the best players in the world actually played like men, let alone like middle-school American girls.

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Nose Pull-Open Thingies

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Over the past few years I’ve become an increasingly noisy sleeper. The primary cause is allergies; once the congestion starts there’s just no way to sleep quietly — whether I breathe through my mouth or through my nose, my sweetie will have something to keep her company on sleepless nights. She also has a lot more sleepless nights.

I’ve been taking allergy pills for a long time. I don’t think Claritin has any affect on me at all; I certainly couldn’t tell any difference on nights I forgot to take the little pill. I switched to a different one whose name I can’t think of right now, and it seems a little better, but not much.

Recently I decided to try a mechanical solution to my (and my sweetie’s) woes. Nose pull-open thingies (NPOTs) are basically pieces of plastic that you tape to your nose. The plastic acts as a spring and pulls your air passages open a little wider.

You know something? Those suckers work. We started with the CVS brand, and the first night was completely different than any I’ve had in months, if not years. There were two bits of adjustment; it didn’t take long to get used to the piece of plastic taped to my nose, but an area inside my right nostril was irritated, and that lasted all night.

I have a theory about that, if you will indulge me. My right nostril is very small, and pinched almost shut. (I’m not sure, but I think that indicates I have some cold-weather heritage influencing my nostril-size genes.) If I inhale sharply though my nose, the right nostril closes down completely. The irritation, I believe, is a result of air making contact with parts of my nose that almost never feel the arid kiss of the atmosphere.

NPOTs are more expensive than pills, but Costco carries a name-brand version in bulk, and bang-for-buck they kick the pills’ tiny corn-starch asses. Then there’s the added bonus that you’re not altering your body chemistry, or introducing an agent into your bloodstream that we might realize years from now is bad for you. (There’s the adhesive to worry about, I suppose, but I’ll take the chemicals on my skin over the chemicals in my blood any day.)

If breathing at night is an issue for you, give NPOTs a try. You (or your companion) might just thank me.

Thanks!

Getting Ready for the Game

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The Sharks are about to take the ice against the Detroit Red Wings. They won the first three games of the series, then lost the next three. Tonight the series ends, one way or another.

Honestly, I’m not sure I can watch.

Hey! Let’s make this a live blog, as long as I can stand it.

6:11 – whoever that was singing the national anthem was awesome. Nothing too fancy, just nailed it. I got a little misty

6:15 – strange circumstances – puck in the corner, neither team wanted to touch it first. Not sure why. A shark touched it and the whistle blew, a face-off ensued.

6:16 – My pizza arrived. Looks good!

6:22 – a couple of big hits, including an open-ice check, have the crowd going.

6:26 – a break in the action. Neither team has looked dominant so far. Goat cheese pizza is working well.

6:34 – here we go! Sharks’ first power play!

6:35 – had a good shot, but Miller (Red Wing’s goalie) could see it all the –

6:35 ! ao! oo! Goal! Good guys take the lead!

6:37 – Bullshit! totally bogus penalty against the Sharks.

6:38 – aggressive kill – Sharks get a line change! Looking really good.

6:39 – almost a short-handed goal! Hard to tell its a power play.

6:41 – and when the power play ended, things got scary. Detriot was tipping the ice pretty dramatically. I found myself hoping for another San Jose penalty.

6:42 – Type not fixed intentionally: Detriot.

6:47 – Good guys having really trouble getting the puck through center ice… oh wait now they’re attacking well. Live-blogging hockey is tough.

6:48 – Goal! Rookie Logan Couture shows once again that he can friggin’ skate!

6:50 – end of first period. Sharks 2, Red Wings 0

— Intermission —

6:53 – I’m not sure whether this live-blogging thing is worthwhile. My main goal is to keep myself a little more detached from the game, but I’m not really coming up with any insights that might encourage readers to follow in real time or relive the game later. I’m thinking interesting stuff, but until I master stream-of-couscious no-look typing I think that hockey blogging might be outside my skill set.

6:55 – I will say that Rookies makes a pretty good pizza. I had the Kelly’s Goat, individual size, and it’s was mighty tasty, and much larger than what usually passes for an individual pizza around here. Amazingly, with the place packed to the gills, the service actually doesn’t suck tonight.

6:57 – The Sharks were the better team in the first period, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t some scary moments. That’s one of the things I like about Hockey — even when a team is dominating, a careless moment can carry an enormous cost.

6:59 – watching a replay of the first goal – it was a perfect pass. Thornton held the puck for an extra half-second before sending it to Setoguci, and that made all the difference. Another thing I like about hockey – the assist is almost as big a stat as a goal. Even the stats emphasize team play. (Brief moment to contrast with soccer.)

7:02 – I think I will maintain radio silence for the second period. We’ll have to wait and see about the third.

7:11 – except to say this: the Sharks are disorganized and sloppy right now. I’m watching the seconds tick by, waiting for the hammer to fall.

7:48 – end of the second period, happy the bad guys only scored one. I don’t want to know how much time the puck spent in each end; by the time the Sharks got it out of their zone all they could manage was a line change. Then the game was right back in front of their net. The last ten minutes of that period were rough to watch.

8:02 – still intermission. I’m at my own little table, and the group next to me doesn’t have enough chairs. The man standing has his back to my table. While I feel for a sports fan with no place to sit, the guy is very tall. My table is also tall, but not tall enough. The dudes ass is right here. I wish one of his shorter friends would offer to stand for a while.

8:05 – come on, Sharks! Play like you’re behind!

8:08 – Here in the bar, the cchant is on: Let’s go Sharks! It’s getting loud. Let’s go Sharks!

8:09 – shot off the pole! Aaaaaargh! (the best sound in sports)

8:11 – whoever wins this game plays in Vancouver on Sunday. I wonder who the Canucks are rooting for.

8:19 – Danny Boy(le) with the penalty kill hit of the game. Sweet!

8:22 – I didn’t see a penalty there – I think Detriot just got rooked. The good news for them: San Jose isn’t penalty killing anymore.

8:28 – hard to think in here right now. Sweet goal set up be Setoguchi. 3-1 Sharks.

8:30 – ah, shit. How many times have I see all the sharks on the same side of the ice? 3-2 game, six minutes to go.

8:39 – here it is. Detriot empty net. It’s on!

And I can breathe again. Sharks win. The final minute in a close hockey game is the best minute in sports. No timeouts, the guys down by one pull the goalie and throw everything they have on offense. A lucky bounce and it’s anyone’s game. make that game seven in the playoffs, and the intensity is that much more. Fans of both teams are having heart attacks ever fifteen seconds or so. This game was no different. As the clock ticked inexorably down, the Red Wings had their chances.

It’s far more fun to win a nail-biter than a blowout. When the Sharks cleared their zone with four seconds left, at last we could cheer.

This might be the last game for some great hockey players. Detroit is getting long in the tooth, and their captain and several other stalwarts may hang up their skates after this season. The kids will be all right, though.

Which leads me to wonder: Who will hate the Sharks? They are a young franchise, so they don’t have those ancient, traditional rivalries. They’ve knocked Detroit out of the playoffs two years in a row now; it would be a sign that they’ve arrived if Red Wings fans started saying “I hate the Sharks!” Is there any other fan base you’d rather be hated by?

I think that’s all for me tonight; I’m supposed to be writing right now. The downside of the good guys’ victory: more thursdays of hockey instead of internal exploration.

Thanks!

This is a Terrible Mouse Pad

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I don’t know why I left my little mouse pad in Prague. Sure, I was on the brink of having overweight bags, but the thing took no space and weighed practically nothing. I was confident, I remember, that once I got here I’d be able to pick one up for free somewhere. Mouse pads are like cheap flying disks in my mind; they are things you just don’t have to pay for.

Months passed, and then years, and I’ve been wearing the finish off my desktop with my unpadded mouse. Then my sweetie started having trouble with her mouse, and changing mice didn’t help. Her mouse pad was old and losing contrast, and the mouse’s laser was not tracking well. So, off to the mouse pad store we went.

Mouse pads cost about six or seven bucks, which is six or seven bucks more than I wanted to pay, but it actually is an important piece of equipment, so as long as I was spending money on one, I figured I’d get one that kicked ass. And there, hanging amongst the others, was a mouse pad that cost two dollars more, but looked to be awesome. It was the Bahama Pad Co. Always Smooth Micro-fiber mouse pad. For one thing, it didn’t have a photo on it. For another, it looked like it would be durable and provide a good surface for both gliding and for the laser, for years to come.

It is awful. I tore open the package when I got home, laid it down, and moved my mouse across it. There was a lot of friction. The motion was smooth, but it took (unscientifically) five times the effort to move the mouse across that surface of that pad than any slick surface. Was it because my mouse is relatively heavy and sank into the pad? No, the light of my life reported that on her wired mouse the friction was outrageous as well. No getting around it; this mouse pad sucks.

Unless you have a hover-mouse (Note to self: invent hover-mouse), stay away from Bahama Pad Co.

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Not Your Typical American Pre-School

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Would you want your kid to go to this preschool?

Near my workplace is a chinese preschool. I may be preserving a stereotype here, but it’s pretty obvious that some parents have a different attitude toward the early childhood years.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this. Are the kids allowed to have fun? Best outcome: they have a blast learning chess and calculus (or whatever they teach in preschool), carry that love of intellectual challenge into their adult life and form the heart of America’s next generation of scientists and engineers. Worst case: soulless zombies emerge and sterilize the planet.

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In Lieu of Sports, Let’s Talk NBA

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I’m at a sports bar, but tonight’s hockey is over and they have to show something on all these hi-def tv’s, so why not NBA? It resembles a sport in many ways.

One thing about the NBA: it’s about the personalities. It’s not Team A versus Team B, it’s Star A and his faithful sidekicks versus Star B and his scrappy companions.

I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the game, but I’ve picked up a few things about the league thanks to writers who are able to make the activity sound way more interesting than it actually is. One thing I’ve learned: Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers will never lose through lack of effort, and he’ll never sit when he can play. You have to respect that, even when sometimes he probably should sit. He would rather lose actively than win passively.

So tonight sports gave way to the NBA, Dallas vs. Los Angeles. I don’t know the numbers of any of the stars, but I watched the ebb and flow of the game with slightly-unfocussed eyes and… I couldn’t spot Kobe. Dallas was winning and I could imagine no scenario which would keep Kobe off the court but one: he was hurt even worse than he was usually hurt (the dude has played through some shit). In response, Dallas has a bunch of tiny little guys running all over the place. They’re fun to watch, even if they aren’t terribly effective.

Interruption from my story: NBA refs are watching a TV monitor to review a call. Really? The only thing this little game has going for it is its flow (until the endless timeouts at the end). Now you want to introduce video review?

To continue the interruption: This game is woeful. It’s close, but only because neither team seems to be able to stop being stupid. It’s not basketball, it’s 1-on-1, 1-on-1, 1-on-1, 1-on-1, 1-on-1.

Back to the original topic. Kobe Bryant is not playing at the moment. He’s sitting with a towel over his shoulders, between men who are obviously not his teammates. So I gotta figure he’s hurt pretty bad. And I have to think he’s not close to his teammates. No sort of “I’m with you all the way, boys!” vibe coming from Kobe’s seat away from the rest of the team.

As I’ve written this, the Lakers have come from behind and overtaken the kids from Dallas, without one of the best players in the history of basketball. And I wonder if, to Kobe’s credit, he knew he wasn’t the guy tonight, and put a towel over his shoulders and sat one row back.

Kobe Bryant hasn’t done much over the years to earn my respect (rhymes with: rape charges settled with money), but if he can learn when to sit during a basketball contest, accept that there are others who can do better (at least for a moment) then perhaps further growth is possible.

But seriously, that’s not going to happen.

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I Hope I’m Wrong

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As the first period of tonight’s Sharks-Red Wings hockey match came to a close, the Sharks were leading 1-0. Detroit is a good team, however, and I knew they would not go gently into that 3-0 deficit.

“The next team to score will win,” I told my beer. It’s not a prediction I make often, but I’m right more often than I’m not. Alas, it was Detroit who scored next, tying the score at 1 apiece, on what appeared to be a pretty dubious penalty. So it goes.

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A Big Muddled Milestone Approaches

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Down near the bottom of the sidebar over there, you’ll see a few stats about this blog. There is one stat of which I’m really rather proud, even though it’s not really my accomplishment. The credit goes to you guys out there.

Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas will soon have its 10,000th comment.

That’s a big deal. All those comments represent a huge amount of content and, well, intelligence that this little media empire would not have had otherwise. The comments are the second layer, the extra reward for those who choose to dig a little deeper.

How should we reward comment 10,000? Certainly it should not go unmarked. My first thought is to offer the same prize I did in a previous contest: the winner provides the opening sentence and I write a silly story based on that. It was a fun prize, especially since Bob (Bill Bob’s brother’s brother) came up with an excellent opening that resulted in Elephants of Doom.

Is there a better prize? Leave your ideas in the comments!

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Movie Time!

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Last week the Blockbuster Video store in out neighborhood closed forever. On the last day of operation my sweetie and I took a walk over to see what gems they had on their shelves that we couldn’t possibly live without. At three bucks a pop it seemed like a good chance to grab up a few good flicks.

The most exciting acquisition from my point of view is Black Sheep, a light horror film from New Zealand that features… yes, it’s New Zealand so it has to have… zombie sheep. I saw this flick at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival (The Cannes of the East!) with Fuego, at a midnight showing with a thousand other heavy drinkers. Fun was had by all. That disk is scratched up pretty badly and our DVD player is persnickety, so I won’t be able to inflict it on my sweetie until I burn a fresh copy.

Meanwhile, we’ve had some fun with some of the other movies. One night we watched Due Date with Iron Man and Zach Gallafanagashammalammadingdong, followed by Dinner for Schmucks with Steve Carrell and other people I’m told I’ve seen before. The two flicks are pretty much the same story (wacky interloper exposes then heals the vulnerabilities in the other guy’s relationship), but they’re told very differently and are both good date night options. Dinner for Schmucks I especially enjoyed, as Steve Carrell masters a moment of seeming contradiction and makes us believe it.

We also hauled in The Crazies (I think that was the title). Back in the day I’d seen previews for the film and I thought it looked promising. Still, those preview-makers are good at making shit look like caviar. Turns out in this case, while there were a fair number of WTF moments (Why aren’t they staying together?!) the film worked pretty well. The ending was… perfect.

That same night we watched a movie with John Travolta as a shaved-head kinda-wacko secret operative out to whack a bunch of bad guys in Paris. It’s a partner movie, and it’s the other character (played by what’s-his-name) who really grows. It was a fun movie, if you’re able to ignore: a) roughly 5,000 bullets are launched in the direction of the good guys, and only one hits flesh; and b) the writers had no clue at all about electronic countermeasures and routine security procedures. Near the beginning what’s-his-name does something that would be sure to cause a major international incident, but somehow it comes off as success.

So, the flick wasn’t perfect. It was still a fun ride. Audi might be the big winner here, as the car chase figured their logo prominently. My sweetie might have spoken their brand name out loud for the first time in several years.

We still have a big pile of movies to go, from that ridiculous movie with that chick in it to the one where all the people do intense stuff. I can’t wait!

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Dropbox Just Saved My Ass

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I’ve been a big fan of Dropbox ever since my brother used them to share files with me for postproduction on some film or other. To summarize: Dropbox is totally sweet.

I keep all my writing in my Dropbox folder, so it’s automatically up-to-date no matter which keyboard I’m typing on at the moment. Save it on one computer, it’s updated on all the rest. Not too shabby.

This evening I opened up one of my stories, and it was not all there. In Jer’s Novel Writer, it’s possible to save just a part of your story. For Allison, I export each episode as XHTML for simple(r) transfer to the blog. It works pretty well.

One thing about the export feature: It’s possible to export a part of your story and replace the file with the entire story. I’ve made this really difficult to do, with messages that read something like “Are you totally high?” and the default response “No, I’m just confused. Don’t overwrite my master file.”

Yet, today, I opened the master Allison file and found just the last episode. The definitive versions of all previous episodes are here in the blog, but there were half a dozen episodes stretching far into the future that were gone. Lost in a puff of ones and zeroes. I hadn’t even intended to export the chapter in that format, let alone overwrite the master. Yet somehow I had.

I gaped at the file, thinking about the chapters I’d lost. Fencing club! Holy crap! Seiji’s torment turned up to eleven. The destruction of a city. A killer robot in the hot springs. Poof. Gone. How did I do that?

But then there’s the other part of Dropbox. The part that remembers all versions of all your files for the last 30 days. For free. I pointed my browser to my home base and moments later my spectacular brain fart was erased. My file is back, only it turns out I haven’t written the killer robot in the hot springs episode yet.

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Time Flies

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Tonight I’m being served beers by someone named after Disney’s Little Mermaid.

Yep.

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Beer Blogging Thursday!

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If you were to look back over my episodes for the last few weeks, you might notice a trend. Thursday seems to be a good day as far as productivity goes. Why is this?

Well, as you might guess by the title of this episode, there is a nascent tradition here at MR&HBI — Beer Blogging Thursday. Rather than go straight home from work, I take a detour for a couple of hours to a local sports bar and knock out a couple of episodes. I’m shooting for a new installment of serial fiction every other week, along with the usual blather.

At this very moment, I’m taking a little break from work and thinking about what I’ll be producing this evening. Two short book reviews, for sure (one a wrap-up of my thoughts on that damn epic I mentioned previously, the other a review of a novel by an undisputed master). I’ll take some time out after those to play with Allison a bit, but unless a miracle happens you won’t see the fruits of that labor until next week. Later tonight there might be some commentary on hockey, as well. Who knows?

I know there were several other things I had planned to tackle today, but at the moment I can’t think of them. I probably won’t publish all my output today, but instead spread it out over a few days.

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A Few of My Favorite Spams

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There’s a part of this blog that you, my dear readers, do not get to enjoy. Only about one tenth of one percent of the spam contents get through to the viewing public, and I try to be quick about getting rid of them. The other dozens of spam that get filtered out before they are posted are for my pleasure alone.

Hundreds of other spam comments don’t even make it to that list each day, but are filtered out and chucked unceremoniously into the void (Note to self: digital afterlife.). It’s quite possible that five thousand comments are blocked for each that gets through.

Sometimes I’m tempted to defang particularly choice slices of spam and let you folks enjoy them too. Often the spam comment is funny on its own, while others gain extra funny points from context. For instance, one that says “It’s hard to find knowledgeable people on this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks” gives me a chuckle when it’s attached to the Suicide Squirrel Alert Broadcasting episode.

A few recent standalones:

  • Irony Department: I appreciate that you place excellent content out that is fine and good-written.
  • Another Sort of Irony: Great post however you should try and getrid of all this spam comments.
  • Gibberish Department: A person essentially help to make seriously posts I would state. This is the very first time I frequented your web page and thus far? I surprised with the research you made to create this particular publish incredible. Excellent job!
  • Odd Synonym Department: Suited post! this will midpoint sustain me.
  • Odd Synonym Department 2: Hey may I notification some of the word from this blog if I relation back to you?
  • Proof That Robots Don’t Have a Sense of Aesthetics Department: Amazing blog layout here. Was it hard creating a nice looking website like this?
  • Accidentally in the Spirit of the Blog Department: Man if i ever saw two racoons fighting over a blogs itd be this one, nicely done my friend. Keep it up.
  • Inscrutable Department: Unknown message
  • Robot Problems Department:I truly enjoyed %BLOGTITLE%. Unfortunately, trash is a major problem in the united kingdom today.

Sometimes, context is everything:

  • This really answered my problem, thank you! – on the episode titled All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku
  • This is a really good read for me, Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I ever saw.Thanks for posting this informative article. – on the page titled Suicide Squirrel Alert Broadcast System
  • i came to dance dance dance, i hit the floor cause that’s my plans plans plans – on a review of In Cold Blood.
  • this is what it is all about man i would kiss you right now for posting this thanks! – on a post about very bad wine.

As a final note I have to say that some of the spam is actually informative. Did you know they were still making the Zune? I certainly wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t for spam.

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Move Complete!

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It seems fitting that on Road Trip Day (7.000 on the Muddled Calendar — good golly how time flies) that this site should also find itself at a new home. The journey was not without some bumps and a lot of emails to the tech support team at GreenGeeks. Things seem to be running smoothly today, though, with a one hitch on the back side that should not affect you, the faithful readers.

One thing for sure: the site loads a hell of a lot faster now, and there are still things I can do to make it better yet. Average load time is about 10% of what it was before. That is unbelievably huge.

I’ll be posting a pretty darn geeky episode once I get the last issues ironed out, for people looking for answers to the same questions I had. In the meantime:

Elevator Ocelot Rutabaga, everyone!

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The Fox Woman

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I’m sitting in a bar right now, laptop open, Jane’s Addiction stomping through my ears, thinking I should take advantage of this little slice of me-time to write a book review. There is a big pile of books for me to review at home, but The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson is insisting that it be the one. In fact, I can’t even remember what the other ones are (with one exception, but I have ambitions for that review – I hope to discuss the changing landscape of the publishing world and embracing the digital age, a review that requires research, facts, and perhaps even an interview with the author. Facts are hard.)

I mentioned The Fox Woman a while back; after reading for an hour I went to sleep and the world of the book filled my dreams all night. That’s some pretty potent imagery at work.

Note: Kij is a friend of mine. My unavoidable bias is reflected in the fact that I would not post a review of her work if I didn’t like it. I liked The Fox Woman.

It’s not a complicated story, really, though it seems desperately difficult to the characters involved. Two women love the same man. One of the women is a fox, and for her love is simple and all-consuming, an animal interpretation of love, and she is willing to take human form (and bring her entire family along) to get what she wants. The man’s wife is a sophisticated noblewoman of the Japanese court, bound by tradition and honor, forced to limit her expressions of love to poetry (on carefully-chosen paper) passed to her husband by servants.

The wife fears the foxes living on their estate. She knows well the enchantments they are capable of.

Two women love the same man, and each has an entirely different world to offer him. The fox woman’s world is an enchantment, a world built with magic, tailored to be perfect for her lover. The man’s wife offers a precocious son, and a life of wealth and ease. She could offer him so much more, if she could find a way to tell him.

The man, for his part, is restless. He loves his wife, and wishes there were a way he could express it to her. They communicate through poetry, but what should be the language of lovers has become shrouded in imagery, obscured behind metaphor. Both long to say “Meet me by the pond and let’s rut like crazed weasels in heat,” but it’s hard to make a proper poem (one that will withstand the dictates of propriety) on that theme.

Our fox woman, Kitsune, longs to understand poetry, but it is her ignorance of the artifice that is her greatest strength. She is a fox and foxes just don’t think that way. Not, at least, without a lot of suffering first.

There is a time when everyone but Kitsune knows that her magical world is crumbling, that it cannot last. We all aware as readers that a crisis is coming, and I found myself getting impatient for the shit to hit the fan. I had foreboding, but I think a specific building threat would have given the coming events a vector; rather than “this can’t last” I would have been thinking “holy crap when the priest gets there anything can happen.”

Even as the crisis unfolds, however, we have few clues about the outcome. In this magical, spiritual world, suffering seems certain and death is possible, even for the main characters. What does it say that I entertained the idea that a first-person narrator might die during the story? To answer my own rhetorical question, it says that the writer had me all the way.

I felt the pain, I felt the love. The story meanders, but then again so do I. It’s a good read.

I don’t want to give anything away, but the end was perfect for me. I closed the book and stayed in that world for a while, thinking past what Kij gave me, satisfied but not glutted.

Note: if you use the above link to buy this book (or a Kindle, or a new car), I get a kickback.

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