The Auld Lang Syne post

Warning. Happy New Year straight ahead.
But really, what´s to wait for in a Happy New Year?
I´ve been wished money, success, women, luck, even world peace in the ensuing year, every year.

I know I´ll catch a cold two or three times in 2006 (that same figure probably valid for diarrhea as well). I´m quite sure that I´ll end up slamming the distal phalanx of my small toe against some unspecified piece of furniture at the office when I´m walking barefoot before everybody else comes in early in the morning at least once, and twice for against the bed just before bedtime.
I also know that no that no money, success, women, luck, even world peace, will ever come my way next year, despite everyone else wishing otherwise.

So where do all those wishes go to, after all?

Theory: I guess once in about every 453 years those wishes come true; you´re standing by the water-cooler some sunny Wednesday afternoon and Wham!, an angel dressed up as Green Lantern comes up and hands over to you a bag full of money, success, women, luck, even world peace.
Green Lantern tells you, “Man,” says he, “Here´s the accruements for the 453 years of people wishing you money, success, women, luck, even world peace.”
“Thanks, GL,” I say.
So as far as all those wishes go, don´t bother. Please. Ain´t gonna happen.

American playwright Arthur Miller once said, or is thought to have said, “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” (which I totally borrowed from DC Comics´ Identity Crisis story, by the way. I´m not that familiar with Mr. Miller´s works, only thing I ever read by him is The Crucible, and both Arthur Miller´s The Crucible and DC Comics´ Identity Crisis rock!)
Anyway, back to “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”
Here´s my personal list of basic illusions exhausted in 2005: Money, success, women, luck, even world peace.

So.
Buy me a ticket for the movies, I´ll get you the popcorn, and we´re off just fine into 2006 ahead.

Re: Book review for week 52 (REDUX)

G´day... Next week´s book has been decided upon; since there wasn´t really anything interesting with Batman on it I decided to call off 10 Days as well. I know it doesn´t make much sense but that´s what I ended up doing anyway.

So I switched back to the old tried-and-true, time-tested method of "Bookstore Zen Navigation" which was mildly inspired by Douglas Adams´ works. The whole detailed process of BZN should make for a very interesting post later on, but here´s the basics:
First thing´s the budget, you gotta know how much you can spend in one outing, tops.
Second´s the roaming, which really isn´t very hard. You roam amidst the shelves, that´s all.
Then comes the tagging. You tag say, three or four books that would be your first choices. Then you automatically let them go.
Finally you must clear up your mind and choose a different book based solely on filling the blank on the following sentence: “Gee, I have no idea what this book´s about but I like its _________.”

Book I chose was, The Sheltering Sky (1949) from this guy called Paul Bowles, which and whom I know absolutely nothing about (technically not true but for the sake of this post let´s assume otherwise).
I chose the book for no specific reason other than, gee, I had no idea what that book´s about but I liked its title.

Also works for cover, the way the title is printed on its spine, overall color scheme, author with a funny name, et. al.

I swear to God that´s how I buy books. I was never the brightest kid back in school, and so on.

Book review for week 52

Hi. So. Just finished reading this book from 1920 called The Age of Innocence by this lady Edith Wharton, an American writer living in Paris at the time, pretty much like everybody else in the Lost Generation. One would think their being like the Superfriends or something, like you got Ernest Hemingway as Superman with a moustache and... naww. Scratch that.

Anyway. Some cool, cool book that one. Set in a 1870s New York and focusing on the upper echelons of the NY society, it uses a plot regarding the forbidden romance between a respected & respectable married man from the local elite to a woman with a questionable past, recently arrived from Europe, to convey that whole fin-de-siècle atmosphere: the changing of the times and values toward our modern conception of world.
The protagonist per se is himself a lynchpin of the customs and morals of a rigid and claustrophobic society bound by their own rules (more like tribal rituals and ancient, atavistic mores), and is thus faced with a gripping choice: Is one capable of placing his personal life & love above his duties to his peers?
Incredibly enough... the book is not boring and the story really flows! The narrative is easy and detailed enough to visually immerse the reader straight into it, but with none of that anal-retentive Tolkien stuff. It is actually like watching the birth of the 20th century...
Apropos of that, I think this book has one of the best last chapters I´ve ever read (second only to Jack Kerouac´s Maggie Cassidy); I love last chapters & outcomes, and the last chapter in The Age of Innocence crystallizes pretty much everything that´s come before.
The book won a Pulitzer prize in 1920, and was made into a movie with Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer some fifteen years ago (which I haven´t seen. Yet. )

Will go to the bookstore today. Runners-up are 10 Days That Shook the World by John Reed, and anything with Batman on it.
I´ll let you know.

Thanks for dropping by, and off to lunch.

Currently engineering a jailbreak

Okay. This is Kali-Yuga lookout station #42 standing at the edge of this big cliff off to nowhere. This is my first post, by the way. Lessee how this works. Testing onetwothree. Roger! Roger! (Two Rogers make a Captain America and a bad joke all at once).