Art

Book Review – The Lost Art of Steam Heat

I checked The Lost Art of Steam Heat out from the library because our house has a steam-heat system and it’s working, but not exactly correctly. We’ve had a repair guy out numerous times, but he hasn’t quite fixed the rather complex system, and I wanted to understand a bit more so I could communicate with him about it.
Holohan’s book does an excellent job of explaining the physics and engineering of steam heating to lay people. These systems really are a lost art – the people who designed and installed them were very capable engineers, and every system in every house was by nature somewhat different, and required it’s own planning and calculations to build and repair.
It’s not surprising that today’s repair people don’t understand how delicately balanced steam heating is, and how to identify what the problems are.
The Lost Art of Steam Heat
by Dan Holohan
Non-Fiction
Incredibly useful for owners of steam heating systems.

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Book Review – The Boy Detective Fails

Boy Detective Fails
Boy Detective Fails
Yeah, this book comes with a decoder ring on the back flap. You don’t discover this until a chapter or two into the book when you have to decode a secret message, but I’m telling you right up front because, well, that’s so frackin’ cool.

Joe Meno’s The Boy Detective Fails is a loving homage and send up of classic kid detective stories like Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys, but the mysteries it explores in this funny, scary, sweet, and surreal book are the grown-up mysteries of life. Billy Argo is the famous boy detective, who with his handy Junior Detective Kit and his sister Caroline and stalwart friend Fenton, rids the town of crooks and bad guys, hitting the front pages of the papers regularly. But growing up is a mystery all three children have trouble with, and ultimately, Billy must solve the mysterious death of his sister to save his own life.

The Boy Detective Fails
by Joe Meno

I highly recommend reading this book.

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Book Review – Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Fun Home
Fun Home
I keep putting off writing a review of Fun Home because I feel a sense of obligation to the book — one so well written deserves a well-written review, and I haven’t had it in me lately to try to write one. Here is my poor attempt to do justice to this fantastic book.

Alison Bechdel has been a popular, well-known cartoonist for over 20 years, penning the witty and and enjoyable “Dykes to Watch Out For” series, which is serialized in a number of publications and collected in book format over a dozen times.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is Bechdel’s extraordinary, resonant memoir, told in graphic novel form. But don’t think when you pick this up that you’d be reading a comic book – this is a piece of gorgeously-illustrated, lyrically-written literature.

Bechdel recounts her childhood, especially her relationship with her closeted and deeply conflicted father, who was both the owner of the local funeral home (the “Fun Home” of the title) and a local English teacher. Bruce Bechdel is a stern and exacting man who looms large in the lives of everyone who knows him, and Alison’s childhood is marked by both her attempts to reach out to him, and to rebel against his ideals and tastes. Bruce’s sexual orientation is an awkward and somewhat ill-kept secret in her childhood, but Alison doesn’t completely put all the pieces together until she comes out herself in college, when her mother fills in the gaps. Bruce Bechdel is killed a few months later in what may have been a suicide, and Alison is left to wonder whether her own coming-out, now overshadowed by the event, may have been a catalyst for it. Ultimately she finds a connection to her father by returning time and again to one of their mutual loves; classic literature.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel
Memoir

I highly recommend reading this book.

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Happy Imbolc

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Today is Imbolc, an Irish holiday:

Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals of the Irish calendar, celebrated either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring. Originally dedicated to the goddess Brigid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid’s Day.
The holiday is a festival of the hearth and home, and a celebration of the lengthening days and the early signs of spring. Rituals often involve hearthfires, special foods, divination or simply watching for omens (whether performed in all seriousness or as children’s games), a great deal of candles, and perhaps an outdoor bonfire if the weather permits.

Sadly, yesterday I completely missed that it was National Gorilla Suit Day. I had a lot on my mind. Oh, well, it’s on the calendar for next year.

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Locked on the roof? Seriously?

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I really loved the West Wing, most especially when Sorkin was writing for it, and I really do like Studio 60, for the most part. But lately the weird thing Danny’s doing to Jordan, the sort of creepy-stalkerish, pre-rapey, not really romantic, “refusal to take no for an answer” thing is really disturbing, especially since we know Sorkin’s setting this up to have them get together eventually. Note to Aaron – No really does mean no, dude. If you want me to start surveying the women around to to see if you’ve pulled this crap on them, I will. I’m not kidding. Cause you apparently think this kind of thing works in real life. But In real life it only works if you’re trying to get a restraining order.
And last night’s episode, where they get locked on the roof? Um, no. Like Jane Espenson calling for a moratorium on scenes where the character kicks a machine and it suddenly starts working, I’m making a new rule – no more locked rooftops. Really. Get a frackin’ key before you go there. Why would the door on the roof need to be locked anyway? Is Spider-man going to break in?
For all Aaron’s bitching that his audience just isn’t smart enough to get him, he certainly does insult the little intelligence we do have. But I guess I’m “just a blogger” so my voice shouldn’t be equal. After reading that Chicago Tribune piece I’m tempted not to watch the show ever again.

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Favorite Quotes

Maureen Dowd on Dick Cheney:
“In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.”

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Twitter

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Twitter is a strange little social network application that lets you give short bulletins of what you’re doing right now. You can update via text message or Instant Messenger, as well as online. You can link to your friends to see what they’re doing, and you can use the built in RSS feeds to keep up with everyone. That’s all it does. For some reason, it’s a hot new thing to do for several of the big name bloggers, though, who’ve written articles about it, so I was intrigued.

So here’s my profile. If you’re already on, let me know. If you get on, let me know. I just want to see what all the buzz is about.

Twitter Bird
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On the Subject of the words “Faggot” and “Dyke”

Other that some passing linkage, I haven’t weighed in on the controversy surrounding actor Isaiah Washington and his use of the F-word twice in the last three months on the set of “Grey’s Anatomy” and at the Golden Globes. The New York Times summarizes the events. Given that there has been lots of commentary, I think I should say something.

For me, the use of the words “faggot” and “dyke” are as unacceptable as using the N word. Having been the victim of a violent hate crime in which I was repeatedly called a dyke (an event where I was threatened with death and where I honestly didn’t know if I was going to be killed) I’ve had a particularly strong reaction to the word ever since, no matter who uses it (I’m still pissed as hell at that being called that recently, and still intend for there to be some accountability for it eventually.)

There are souls out there in the universe for which the words “faggot” and “dyke” are the final words ever they heard as they were beaten and killed. For that reason alone, I don’t think the use of them should be taken lightly, and I think trying to “rehabilitate” the words diminishes the suffering of those souls.

People who use these words with malicious intent should be shunned in the same way that we ostracize and revile people who use the N word. I care about free speech too much to suggest that there are words that should never be used (I think the fact that we censor “swear” words is egregious to say the least) but I do think we can institute social consequences for bad behavior where legal ones are not appropriate.

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Song of Ice and Fire to be HBO Mini-Series

According to George R.R. Martin’s blog, and according to Variety:

HBO turns ‘Fire’ into fantasy series
HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series “A Song of Fire & Ice” into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
“Fire” is the first TV project for Benioff (“Troy”) and Weiss (“Halo”) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.
The series will begin with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,” and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season’s worth of episodes. Martin has nearly finished the fifth installment, but won’t complete the seven-book cycle until 2011.
The author will co-exec produce the series along with Management 360’s Guymon Casady and Created By’s Vince Gerardis.
Martin’s series has drawn comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien, because both are period epics set in imagined lands. But Martin has eschewed Tolkien’s good-vs.-evil theme in favor of flawed characters from seven noble families.
The book has a decidedly adult bent, with sex and violence comparable to series like “Rome” and “Deadwood.”
“They tried for 50 years to make ‘Lord of the Rings’ as one movie before Peter Jackson found success making three,” Martin said. “My books are bigger and more complicated, and would require 18 movies. Otherwise, you’d have to choose one or two characters.”
Aside from writing the most recent draft of “Halo,” Weiss recently adapted the William Gibson novel “Pattern Recognition” for WB and director Peter Weir.

Sweet! I can’t wait to see this. I love these books. I get pretty bored with Fantasy fiction novels because they all seem to be built around the same cliches, but this series breaks away from most all of them, and is complex, well-plotted and interesting. It should make a great series.

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Online, Finally

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My new computer arrived this morning! Yay! It’s taken all day to get it up and running and online! Boo! Man that was a pain in the neck. Lots of tweaking of settings to get everything ironed out. And I at least have a good idea what I’m doing. For someone who doesn’t, that whole process would have sucked.
We had a few friends over to play board games and have dinner this evening, and now we’re sitting in front of the fire with the pets lounging around next to us, reading blogs. Yay!
I still have to get my pictures and iTunes libraries transferred over, and then I’ll be all set up.

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