what a state to get yourself into

A couple of things I meant to mention at the end of the Spares book review: firstly I see I mentioned in the Never Let Me Go review the similarity of some of the plot points to the plot of the 2005 film The Island; well obviously the same goes for Spares. Since The Island and Never Let Me Go came out in the same year the film must have been well into production before the book was published, so it's on the whole unlikely that one was a rip-off of the other. The situation with Spares is a bit more interesting, though, since the film rights were purchased some time after its publication in 1996 by DreamWorks Pictures, the same company responsible for The Island. Coincidence, OR IS IT, et cetera. Michael Marshall Smith evidently felt it wasn't worth getting embroiled in a big legal battle about it, or, if he were being honest with himself, would have recognised that while the basic idea was his the film actually pursued the plot strand(s) that he toyed with in the early stages of the book but eventually abandoned in favour of exploring some different (and, arguably, less interesting) ideas.

The other thing worthy of mention about Spares is that it's set in Virginia, the same state in which House of Leaves is largely set (i.e. in that this is the state in which the Navidson house is supposed to reside). It could be argued that Mortal Causes and Lanark share some settings as well since some of Lanark (book 4, principally) appears to be set in a highly fictionalised version of Edinburgh.

Back to Virginia, though: I had occasion to consult a large-scale map of the USA while trying to set some questions for an online pub quiz some friends organised a couple of weeks ago and got to thinking about points where several states meet (or nearly meet). The famous one of these is of course at Four Corners, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. None of this resulted in a usable quiz question (although I did cash in the one about Pierre, South Dakota from here), but it set me thinking: what is the shortest straight line you can draw on a map which crosses four states? Depending on your point of view the answer could be zero, if you consider the quadripoint at Four Corners to be simultaneously in all four states. If you don't deem that to be an acceptable answer I think a strong candidate is the north-south line joining Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia, as below. Google Maps reckons it's around 18 miles; you could walk that in a day.

Obviously you can extend that question to larger numbers of states: I haven't considered all the numbers but I'll offer you the following theoretical 5-state journey of a little over 60 miles visiting (going NE-SW) Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Needless to say others have considered this question (or very slight variants of it) and, I'm happy to say, come up with the same answer. The only comparable one I could find is the line of just under 80 miles which connects Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas.

Finally, the pièce de résistance: a 10-state journey of just over 400 miles taking in (let's go SW-NE this time) Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Again, others seem to agree that this is the right area, although note that they're asking (and answering) a subtly different question.

come and have a rifle through my pottery barn

Here's a quick round-up of some recent arrivals in my Hotmail inbox. There's a lot of tedious low-level spam, which I won't bore you with, though I must say there has been a disappointing dwindling in the number of 419-type scam e-mails I get and also the amount of Arabic pornography.

I'm still getting mail from the barely-restrained potential spree killers at Bud's Gun Shop, though. Nothing as good as the bullet earrings for the wife, but I do like the way the latest assault rifle offer comes with a tasteful background of what appears to be (tastefully monochrome) blood and brain splatter, just to illustrate what you can expect to see when you decide to prove to your boss that you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it any more.

I've also had an e-mail from the apparently respectable retailer Pottery Barn; a receipt for a purchase I supposedly made on September 1st. Just to be clear, I have never bought anything from Pottery Barn, but I was interested to see what they thought I'd bought, especially as its original retail price was $121.99, though I apparently ended up paying a bargain price of $49.97. This was a branch of Pottery Barn in Edmonton, Alberta, which I apparently visited in person (i.e. rather than doing the whole thing over the internet), so these are Canadian dollars. At current rates of exchange that works out at £24.57 - not a fortune, but I'd want to know what I was spending it on. The trouble is it's almost impossible to tell from the description on the receipt (see below) which renders it as follows: CLFT CYL TBL LB BL.

Well clearly there's been a bit of radical disemvowelling and abbreviation here, so my best guess is that this is a CLEFT CYLINDER TABLE LABIA BALL, which I assume to be some sort of heavy-duty sex device which requires securing to a table prior to use.

Fortunately there's a product number on the receipt as well, and you can use that on the Pottery Barn website to retrieve the details you want. It turns out what's being described is CLIFT GLASS CYLINDER TABLE LAMP BASE, LIGHT BLUE. To which my reaction is twofold: a) how disappointing and b) bloody hell, one hundred dollars (Canadian, admittedly) for an empty bottle with a light bulb stuck in it. A two-and-a-half-feet high bottle (and presumably a reasonably large light bulb), but still.

poke her with the SOFT CUSHIONS

The recent publication of the CIA torture report and the accompanying media brouhaha is extremely interesting in itself; almost more interesting is what people's reactions to it, and the question of the use of torture in general, reveal about people's unexamined assumptions, and their willingness to examine those assumptions when invited to do so.

First a confession, freely offered, so there's no need to pull any of my toenails out (though, as we'll see, that probably wouldn't do any good anyway): I was prompted to write this by a good friend of mine retweeting something which on the face of it appeared to be pooh-poohing the findings of the report and offering a big American FUCK YEAH to torturing people.

pic.twitter.com/Br4MCfcdWG
— Jarhead (@LCplSwofford) December 11, 2014

Now I'm not judging anyone: other opinions than mine are available and maybe this was offered in a mocking, satirical sort of way, or just retweeted without due care and attention. Just in case it wasn't, it's worth noting that Eric Bolling, rather than being some sort of military intelligence expert, is in fact a Fox News Channel presenter and the man who achieved the fairly remarkable feat of making the United Arab Emirates seem less sexist than the USA. The original tweeter also appears to be a boneheaded racist, so it's all good.

The trouble is that if, like most people of a conservative persuasion, you're not really inclined to think too much about stuff, then there is a sort of appealing superficial logic to the use of torture: these are people who HATE OUR FREEDOM and will stop at nothing to destroy it, and so, sometimes, regrettably, it becomes necessary to get answers quickly and sometimes, regrettably, that means tearing up the so-called "rulebook", manning the hell up and doing what needs to be done.

The main problem with that is that every single bit of it is bullshit on even a moment's reflection (so obviously the key is to avoid even a moment's reflection). Most of the arguments for the use of torture involve the wheeling out of some bullshit hypothetical "ticking time bomb" scenario that dissolves at the slightest scrutiny: how do you know you've got the right man? how do you know he'll give you accurate information? what motivation does he have to give you accurate information, rather than a) something he thinks you want to hear or b) literally anything that'll make you stop?

In any case, if you're into thought experiments, try this: let's assume that in the ticking time bomb scenario above, you've also got Mohammed J. Terrorist's wife and two-year-old daughter in the next room. Now Mo might be a tough guy, and able to resist things like having his fingernails pulled out with a pair of rusty pliers, but how would he stand up to seeing his two-year-old daughter raped in front of him? Not so tough now, eh? So we should probably do that, right? I mean, in this bullshit hypothetical situation literally thousands of lives are at stake, right? Or, heck, millions, if you like. And when billions of lives are in the balance, our effete western distaste for the brutal raping of young children will have to be put to one side. So we should swallow our pansy liberal pride, saddle up and get raping. The future of the civilised world depends on it.

Now you might say: well, yes, a moment's thought will reveal that the ticking timebomb scenario is bullshit, and indeed most of the well-established torture techniques are almost guaranteed to produce a mental state where you'll get nothing coherent or useful back, BUT maybe that isn't the point; maybe the point is to strike fear into our enemies. Couple of problems with that, firstly that that is almost the dictionary definition of terrorism, so we might need to reflect on who the bad guys are:

- secondly, one of the things that the limp-wristed girly surrender monkeys who drafted the Geneva Convention achieved was to save countless lives by providing a point to surrendering during a conflict: there's no value in surrendering if you believe that you, as a captive, are likely to be either summarily executed or slowly and lingeringly tortured to death; you might as well go out on the battlefield and try and take as many of the enemy as possible with you. If there is some structure that ensures your safety and survival once the combat situation becomes hopeless, well then that gives you a get-out that saves further pointless bloodshed.

So, to recap, torture is a bad idea because:

• it surrenders any moral high ground we might seek to occupy
• it is more than likely counter-productive just on a purely utilitarian lives saved vs. lives lost basis
• it does not work in terms of getting any useful information

Nonetheless some people have an almost visceral attachment to it as an idea. As always, examining your own motivations is the key here, and it would probably be better to admit that rather than some fictitious idea of obtaining information your key motivation here, in the aftermath of some atrocity that the person in front of you (probably foreign, most likely brown) may or may not have been involved with is a more primal desire for revenge. And if the pansy-ass liberals have ensured that you can't just arbitrarily kill people without incurring a substantial amount of paperwork then the least you can do to avenge your fallen comrades is POUND SOME FUCKING HUMMUS UP HIS ASS, GODDAMMIT.

and a luger and lime for the lady

My good buds at Bud's Gun Shop have been e-mailing me again; I think their latest may just be the best one yet. As usual here it is in screen-capped and text form:

Dear Dave,

One of the most common reasons for BudsGunShop.com customer order cancellations ?....."because she found out !" 

Never fear, we have a solution.  We have partnered up with Bling It On to create a unique opportunity to buy yourself another gun AND make her very happy at the same time !  How is this possible ?....just check out the video below........

 ......and this is not your basic costume jewelry.  She will find these unique ammunition based designs from Bling It On have been featured on the most elite runways in New York and fashion magazines across the globe.  Team Buds members automatically get 20% off when using your discount code.  Also, as Tony mentions in the video above, we will soon be offering a FREE set of 9mm earrings ($30 retail value) with the purchase of select firearms.

So go ahead.....treat yourself to that new gun you have had your eye on.  Just make sure she also gets a little something from Bling It On!

So, to recap, if your spouse is in the habit of thwarting your stockpiling of massive quantities of firearms and ammunition with that typical bitchy whiny female shit like Surely We Don't Need Another Gun and The Children Must Eat and Please No I'm So Scared then here's your chance to keep the little lady quiet with some shiny trinkets, which as we all know the ladies are genetically programmed to be unable to resist, bless 'em, like magpies. And the best bit is that all the jewellery is not only made from authentic spent ammunition, but is also hand-crafted by a gargantuan-breasted orange Christian lady.

Nice to see the meathead Bud's representative in the video is actually packing heat during his filmed spot with the buxom jewellery lady, presumably just in case she tries to asphyxiate him with her enormous tits. You really can't be too careful. It does just reinforce the between-the-lines message of the e-mail which says something like: yeah, you can butter the bitch up with some bracelets, but you know you're just going to get the same old shit next time you want to fondle a Glock, or get home late at night with the smell of gunpowder on your fingers. Perhaps if you were a real man you'd just VENTILATE HER SORRY ASS RIGHT NOW. DO IT. DO IT!!!!

when I hear the words Father's Day, I reach for my gun

My clever and beautiful daughter, in addition to being a) impossibly cute and b) a frickin' genius, was thoughtful enough to buy me a nice mug as a Father's Day present. Here it is:

I happen to know they were knocking these out for two quid in the Spar across the road, but it's a nice gesture nonetheless. And I would have been quite happy with it, had I not had a glimpse of what might have been (not wanting to be, you know, critical or anything) if Nia had been prepared to think outside the box just a little bit more. Here's what our friends at Bud's Gun Shop have to offer:

As always, click for a bigger version. As the preamble says:

Dear Dave, 

Father's Day is just around the corner and what Dad would not want a new gun!  Choosing a firearm for someone else can be difficult, however there are those basic guns that every Dad needs in their collection. 

Maybe next year.

god with the wind

It's the little things that bother you. And I'm not talking about the minuscule size of my genitalia, though I will concede that's a bit annoying. No, I mean the sort of reflexive goddiness that people retreat into in the event of natural disasters. How often have you heard the phrase "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families" or some variant thereof after people have died? Examples are easy to find; a quick Google reveals David Cameron doing it after the recent Woolwich murder, the Queen getting in on the act in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings last December, and various world leaders doing it after the Boston Marathon bombings in April - Canadian PM Stephen Harper and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg are the ones cashing in the specific phrase on this page of reactions. There were a whole host of them in the wake of Thatch's demise as well. Harking back to a recent post, recall President Reagan's twaddle about how the seven Challenger astronauts had "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" and "touched the face of God".

And you might say: weeeeeeeeeeelll, yeah, but where's the harm? Most of these people aren't really doing any actual serious praying, they're just trotting out a stock phrase because that's what they think people want and expect to hear on these occasions. Well, maybe the Americans really are praying, but I bet Cameron isn't, even after his heroically garbled declaration of religious belief.

To which I would say: yes, but words have power, and just because these have been dulled by familiarity to the point where we almost don't notice them any more it doesn't mean they don't mean anything. If David Cameron responded to some terrorist atrocity by saying something like "at this tragic time I extend to the families my thoughts and gibbering woad-smeared incantations to the great and vengeful Nuclear Space Octopus" or "at this tragic time I extend to the families my thoughts, prayers and the frenzied nude ritual slaughter of a pregnant she-goat as the holy scrolls dictate" people would think: blimey, that's a bit mental, and rightly so.

You can see the same sort of thing from the media and Joe Public in the aftermath of natural disasters. A good recent example was the Oklahoma tornado - much media hoo-ha followed the news video piece about the slightly batty old lady who was bemoaning the loss of her little doggie (and her ENTIRE HOUSE, but, you know, priorities) only to have him snuffle his way out of a pile of debris while the cameras were rolling. It's profoundly revealing of the religious mindset to listen to the lady's reaction, which goes something like this:

Well, I thought God just answered one prayer to let me be OK, but he answered both of 'em. Because this was my second prayer.

So, to recap, then, you're thanking your God for sparing you and little Bowser while ignoring the fact that he's just FLATTENED YOUR HOUSE AND DESTROYED ALL YOUR STUFF. The guy is meant to be all omnipotent and shit, so why not divert the tornado out of the way of your house, or just not have a tornado in the first place? And if you've been spared by a divine hand, then are you saying that those who were killed were less deserving than you in some way?

Really, the aftermath of something like this would be a good moment for a bit of a re-evaluation of your belief system, along the lines of: crikey, my supposed God didn't do much to help me there, did he? I mean, yes, I'm alive, but why couldn't he have fixed things so I didn't get flooded/tsunami-ed/tornado-ed/whatever in the first place? And why did he have to kill that nice Mrs. Johnson from number 46? I mean, I can console myself by trotting out the usual "mysterious ways" stuff, but really, if literally anything can be hand-waved away with that then how would I ever know if God was looking out for me or not, or indeed if he exists or not? Maybe it's time to have a rethink. To put it another way, you either have to conclude that your God is at best capricious and/or incompetent or at worst actively malevolent, or you go with the mysterious ways, we cannot know God's purpose, it's all for the best approach and find yourself trapped in an unfalsifiable theory.

But, instead, paradoxically, people tend to cling to their belief systems all the more tightly when something like this happens. Which makes it all the more commendable when someone puts a hand up and says: no, actually I'm not going to go along with the normal default background goddiness here, I'm going to make a point. Like this young woman who responded to being repeatedly asked whether she "thanked the Lord" for not being tornadoed to death by very politely saying: actually, no, I'm an atheist. She was clearly slightly embarrassed and even apologetic about being put on the spot, but she stood her ground and didn't just cave in and say, yeah, OK, thank the Lord, thoughts and prayers, yadda yadda yadda, whatever. This is braver than it might seem, particularly in Oklahoma.

you may have my $25 when you pry it from my cold dead wallet

Here's the latest missive from your friends and mine at Bud's Gun Shop, the lethal hot-lead-propelling device retailer of choice for the discerning homicidal maniac. Apparently in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre back in December of last year certain sections of the pinko liberal sandal-wearing tofu-eating closet homosexual community made the ridiculous suggestion that perhaps the best way to avoid yet another round of gun-related deaths would be to make guns more difficult to obtain, rather than by the clearly more rational step of arming absolutely everyone, including schoolteachers.

Not to worry, though, because Bud's have got our back on this one, along with the good people at the Gun Owners of America and the National Rifle Association, and by "good" here I mean "terrifyingly deranged", obviously. They won't see people's Second Amendment rights eroded, hell no.

Dear Dave, 

Are you concerned about your gun rights and the current attacks against the Second Amendment? We share your concern and are now offering a unique way for you to take a stand and donate to the NRA and the GOA. Both of these organizations are in Washington doing what they can to preserve gun rights. Convincing lawmakers to do the right thing is not cheap ! We want to help. For the next week (3/8 - 3/15), Bud will donate an additional 20% of the profits for all Silver 2012 Second Amendment Dollar’s purchased.  

The 2012 $25 Gun Dollar features the popular Ruger LCP. It is gem proof minted and is as flawless as the Second Amendment. Every 2012 Gun Dollar contains one-half Troy ounce of pure .999 fine silver. Order now to get the one of the last remaining 2012 $25 Gun Dollars and make a donation so that the Second Amendment stands firm in preserving your right to bear arms and protect life. 

Our popular 2012 One AV Ounce Copper issue is still in stock as well. Stay tuned for the 2013 Gun Dollar issue, it is in the last stages of development and should be released soon.  

Thank you,
Team Buds

This piece of finely minted boneheaded survivalist tat can be purchased here. Here's a sneak preview:

der phased plasma rifle in der 40-Watt range

It's been a good week for salutary lessons about the differences between the UK and the USA, and indeed the salutary differences between the USA and the rest of the USA. Amidst all the righteous schadenfreude in the wake of the presidential election result, though, I was reminded of some other differences by the contents of my junk e-mail folder. Here's a tempting special offer I was sent this week:

For those in a graphics-poor environment, or those who just can't be arsed to click on the image to enlarge it, here's the relevant e-mail text:

Our friends at Smoky Mountain Knife Works, "The Worlds Largest Knife Showplace", have an amazing offer for all BudsGunShop.com customers.  Simply purchase ANY new Glock pistol and receive your choice of FREE knives directly from Smoky Mountain Knife Works!  Yes, literally any new model Glock is eligible, as if buying one of the most dependable and reliable pistols ever made wasn’t incentive enough. Simply choose your FREE knife from the drop down selection menu on each new Glock item page.  Your FREE knife will automatically be added to your order and shipped directly to you while your new Glock ships to your local FFL dealer.  Click here to find out which knife is best for you: 
We are very pleased to offer you this additional value when buying your next new Glock at Budsgunshop.com.   Our advertised Glock prices include UPS Blue 2-day shipping to your local FFL dealer and now a FREE knife from Smoky Mountain Knife Works!  Go ahead....shop and compare this deal to other online dealers....we're confident you'll come back to Buds for your next new Glock!   
At your service, 
Team Buds

So, basically, Bud's have listened to their customers' feedback, and apparently a lot of customers are saying look, this supremely lethal Glock pistol is all very well, but it doesn't have the up-close interactive personal touch that I need. I mean, yes, I can pump my assailant full of hot leady death from several feet away, but I get the nagging feeling as I watch his bullet-ridden body twitching like a ragdoll as the bullets rip through his flesh that I should be participating in his painful demise in a more hands-on way. So as his precious bodily fluids leak away into my carpet, what I'd really like to be able to do is reverently lay the Glock down on an occasional table, cradle his head in my hand as he croaks out his last words, unsheath a glinting blade and slip it firmly between his ribs to usher him into the netherworld in the way that I think, in a very real sense, he would have wanted. Or, heck, I might just stick him repeatedly like a pig, gouge his eyeballs out and then piss in the sockets. Too much? OK then. So, to summarise, a free knife would be great. Yours sincerely, A Maniac.

I should stress at this point that Bud's Gun Shop does indeed appear to be a real establishment, so it's not a scam; I should also stress that I have literally no idea how I got on their mailing list. But it is a fascinating experience to look at their website and marvel at the gargantuan range of lethal weaponry available there, any one of which, as I expect they would say, is ideal for home defence. I marvel also at the sub-headings entitled "Youth Guns" and "For The Ladies". You can also buy a crossbow if, for instance, you feel like re-enacting the killing spree from We Need To Talk About Kevin.

I should also add that while I find the American fetish for guns fascinatingly weird I would defend anyone's right to own some knifeware that could potentially be lethal if used in the wrong way. Knives, after all, have uses other than killing people - I have some weapons in my kitchen that could gut you like a mackerel, but I don't expect the police to start visiting me now I've admitted to possessing them. And then there's my Dartmoor knife.

the last book I read

On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Before we start, chalk up another one for the list entitled Books I Bought Like A Gazillion Years Ago And Started But Never Finished Before Finally Getting My Thumb Out Of My Arse And Finishing Them, as previously alluded to a couple of times before on this blog, though just as I forgot Good as Gold when chalking up The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, I in turn forgot about this one when chalking up Good As Gold. Which means that while aside from the heavyweight duo of Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina (heavyweight in literary significance terms in both cases, and in actual physical terms in the latter case) I can't think of any others, that's not to say there might not be a couple more knocking around somewhere. I think this one was purchased in the big book-buying splurge I perpetrated when leaving my summer job at the Town Bookseller in Newbury in a last desperate cashing-in of my 30% staff discount, which means that it's taken me something like 22 years to get round to reading it all the way through.

So, anyway - Sal Paradise is an aspiring writer, scraping by in New York on the remnants of a military pension and handouts from his aunt, when he meets wild and crazy guy Dean Moriarty, a charismatic and unrestrained free spirit who persuades him to come on a road trip across the USA via Denver to San Francisco. After various crazy adventures Sal eventually ends up staying in and around Los Angeles for a while before rustling up the bus fare and heading back to New York.

Some months later Sal is with some relatives in Virginia when Dean gatecrashes the party with his wife Marylou (one of several he has in various parts of the country) and persuades Sal off on another trip, firstly to deliver some furniture for Sal's brother and bring Sal's aunt back to Virginia from New York, and then off across the country again to San Francisco, via New Orleans this time. Despite all the jazz-soundtracked nightlife and the crazy cats they meet on the way, Sal is eventually disillusioned by Dean's increasingly erratic behaviour and returns once again to New York.

The third trip starts a bit differently as Sal, bored and friendless in New York, sets off by bus to Denver to seek out Dean. They wangle a deal to deliver a new car to some guy (who may or may not be a mobster) in Chicago, and - just as the guy who entrusted the car to two crazy drunken bums should have foreseen - rag the arse off it, bounce it in and out of several ditches on the way and generally turn up in Chicago a couple of days early with the tyres on fire and the whole thing a smoking clapped-out wreck.

Finally, jaded with all this shuttling about between American cities, Sal, Dean and their new buddy Stan Shephard get hold of another car and go careering off across the border into Mexico, an exciting world of hot weather, spectacular scenery, cheap dope and accommodating underage prostitutes. After going hog-wild for a bit, as one would, they rock up in Mexico City, where Sal picks up a nasty dose of dysentery and is laid low for a while, whereupon Dean abandons him to head back north for more adventures. Chastened by this, and also lured both by the prospect of making a proper living from his writing and settling down with his new lady friend, Sal decides to knock the travelling on the head, leaving Dean to continue his wild adventures without him.

Kerouac famously based On The Road on his real-life travelling experiences, but had to change the names of the protagonists - Dean Moriarty, for instance, is a thinly-disguised Neal Cassady, just as Sal Paradise is Kerouac himself, and various other famous counterculture figures like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs play minor roles as well. Kerouac's claim of having knocked the book out in one big stream of consciousness over a three-week period seems to have been largely bogus, though.

To be honest it's a book probably best read in one's late teens, perhaps shortly after reading The Catcher In The Rye, as the themes of restlessness and longing for some ill-defined better and more exciting existence free of the stifling conformity and humbuggery of the older generation are very similar. To the more jaded eye the wild and crazy adventurers just conduct a series of largely unsatisfactory circular trips, constantly short of money and constantly alternating between feeling stifled and restless when at home and yearning for companionship and stability while on the road. The book is also suffused with Kerouac's love of jazz, and the newfangled bebop of the 1940s and 1950s in particular; I have to say that I've always found jazz mostly to be either plinky-plonkingly banal or noisily impenetrable depending on the particular genre (bebop would generally fall into the latter category), so Kerouac's writings on the subject, while evidently reflecting a deep love of the music, didn't do much for me. I think perhaps it's just hard to take jazz seriously after The Fast Show's merciless skewering of its self-importance. Niiiice.

What On The Road clearly also is is a thinly-veiled love story between the narrator and his fabulous unfettered male hero, in exactly the same way as The Leaves on Grey, Demian, The Great Gatsby and Le Grand Meaulnes (which Sal reads on one of his lengthy cross-country bus journeys) were. Interestingly in real life it was apparently Cassady and Ginsberg who were actually lovers.

The multiple journeys described in On The Road would seem to lend themselves perfectly to a map illustrating all the various destinations, but oddly such a thing doesn't seem to exist - here's an interactive map of the first trip, and here's one in Kerouac's own hand from the excellent Strange Maps. Slightly more tangentially, here's a series of remarkable graphical representations of the novel's text by artist Stefanie Posavec. [Postscript: here are a couple of maps - of varying degrees of clarity - showing all four trips.]

Finally, it just so happens that a film based on the book is due for release shortly. I can't make a recommendation either way regarding the film, but - for all its seeming like a bit of a period piece now with its talk of real gone cats digging each other and the like - it's a book you should probably have on your shelves. Just to be clear, that also means that you should read it, rather than just sit on it for 22 years.

On The Road also features in the Time magazine list of 20th century novels that's been mentioned here a few times before.

the year of the sexist olympics

Leaving aside a bit of disagreement on how best to handle the foul stench emanating from their groinal areas, we're all pretty much down with the idea of equality for the ladies, right? And what better place to demonstrate how egalitarian and groovy we've all become than at the giant festival of all that's best about the human race, the Olympic Games? Especially with the influx of lady athletes from some of the Middle Eastern states that have previously not allowed them to compete - that's all good, right?

Well, let me just offer a small counterbalance to the warm fuzzy feeling everyone seems to be getting about this. While it's certainly true that there were a couple of female Saudi athletes competing in the games, in both cases they hardly represent your average Saudi woman. The judo contestant Wojdan Shahrkhani's father Ali is a judo referee, and while she grew up in Saudi Arabia she doesn't live there, and 800-metre runner Sarah Attar was born - and lives and studies - in California. It's also fair to say that this development - forced upon the Saudis and others under the threat of exclusion from the Games if they didn't comply - hasn't exactly been trumpeted and celebrated back in the country, nor has it yet resulted in any changes to the way girls and women are discouraged and indeed actively prevented from taking part in physical and sporting activities.

But, hey, at least us enlightened Westerners are all about the equality and the celebrating of sporting achievement regardless of gender. Weeeeeelll, yeah, no. Have a look at the series of bizarre reactions to American gymnast McKayla Maroney's being unable to conceal her disappointment at losing a vault contest she clearly felt she should have won. No-one but herself to blame, as she overcooked the take-off on her last vault, pretty much missed the horse altogether and did a fairly spectacular arse-plant into the mat. She still won the silver medal, but clearly was pretty pissed off about the whole thing, and why not. Clearly female Olympians, and female Olympic gymnasts in particular, aren't really meant to want to win quite so nakedly, though, and should instead stand around smiling winsomely under several inches of slap and glitter and try not to sweat or anything similarly unladylike. I mean, I think there's a case for bringing some sort of prosecution against her and her parents for their egregious mis-spelling of "Michaela" as "McKayla", but that's about my only critcism.

In the spirit of not taking cheap shots at female gymnasts' appearance, I abandoned the link-following activities I was indulging in solely to garner a few cheap laughs about Beth Tweddle's teeth. I must just highlight the snippet that I found in the comments to this YouTube clip, though, as it may just be the greatest typo in the history of the world:

but she has shown that she is a world class qymnast- well done Beth!

I think we'd have to get our heads together and thrash out some clear rules, but the women's quimnastics is something I'd really like to see brought in for Rio 2016, even just as a demonstration event.

Just as a footnote, combine the religious intolerance, quickness to claim "offence", nasty authoritarian streak and general sense that there are ways in which women should behave and being a bit too assertive and shouty really isn't quite the thing and you end up with the situation the members of art-terrorism group Pussy Riot find themselves in in a Moscow courthouse at the moment. I suppose the difference is that while I reluctantly accept that there is an element of devout religious belief (however misguided that is in itself) associated with the restrictions placed on the Middle Eastern athletes, the religious element here is a pretty flimsy smokescreen, Pussy Riot's real crime being criticism of lovable old judo enthusiast and ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin.

the last book I read

Cell by Stephen King.

Clayton Riddell is a graphic artist, and he's in a pretty good mood, because he's just been to a meeting with a publisher in Boston who's interested in picking up some of his work. He can't wait to tell his wife and son the good news, but that'll probably have to wait till he's back at his hotel, since he doesn't own a mobile phone (I'm going to use the American coinage "cellphone" hereafter, just to fit in with the book's usage, and indeed title). He never gets the chance to make that call, however, since at 3:03pm that afternoon the pivotal event known as The Pulse happens, everyone who's using a cellphone at the time (or at any time afterwards) turns into a slavering feral beast and civilisation as we know it disintegrates in the blink of an eye.

Clay isn't the only person left unscathed, fortunately, and the few people left with un-fried brains band together and decide to head out of the city. Clay's little group comprises himself, Tom McCourt, who he met on the street immediately after The Pulse hit, and Alice, a teenage girl they rescued while temporarily holed up in Clay's hotel. They retreat to Tom's house in the outer suburbs while they try to come to terms with what has happened and work out what to do next. It turns out Clay knows what he wants to do next - head north into Maine to try to find his wife and son and check whether or not they've been zapped into a state of mindless savagery, and if they haven't whether they've been able to avoid being eaten by those who have.

So the group sets off again, making sure to avoid the groups of roving imbeciles wandering about. It soon becomes clear that their roving about is starting to settle into a pattern, though, mainly involving mass migrations during the day and inactivity at night, so the group travels mainly at night. When they hole up for a few days in an abandoned school it becomes clear that the behaviour of the "phoners" is developing some alarming aspects - firstly they seem to have taken to flocking together and roosting at night like birds, and secondly they seem to be able to communicate with each other telepathically. Joined by the School's headmaster and the one remaining unaffected pupil, Jordan, Clay's group hatch a scheme to wipe out their particular group of phoners, who have taken to doing their mass roosting activity on the school sports field. They achieve this in a quite lidderally explosive manner, by parking a couple of propane tankers from a nearby gas station in the middle of the field and blowing them up.

Unfortunately it turns out that the phoners' telepathic capabilities have become more powerful than the group can possibly imagine, and the great disturbance in the force occasioned by the fiery immolation of a couple of thousand people prompts a reaction from the phoners - firstly the public torture and execution of various "normies" yanked out of various houses nearby, and secondly a visitation in the group's dreams from a mysterious stranger (who they take to calling the Raggedy Man) and vague premonitions of being the subject of some kind of mock-trial and ritual execution. Via further telepathic communication the Raggedy Man makes it clear that Clay's group are expected to head off on the road again to a place called Kashwak, where (it soon becomes clear) other groups of "normies" are being herded as well. Since the Headmaster isn't up to the journey he is further "persuaded" to take himself out of the game by committing messy suicide.

So Clay's group heads off again, and it soon becomes clear that they are being telepathically watched over and protected so that they can be saved for the ceremonial fate that awaits them at Kashwak. Two young hooligans who attack them on the road (killing Alice in the process) are telepathically induced into a messy murder/suicide combo as an example to others. So they remain unscathed as they make a quick detour to Clay's family home to discover - unsurprisingly - that the wife and son have moved on, and that they've probably been drawn to Kashwak like everyone else. Any idea that this (since it's a cellphone "dead zone") might be a sort of "normie" reservation where they will be allowed to live in peace is revealed to be a fantasy as it turns out people are being herded into tents as they arrive and exposed to a mobile phone signal that zaps them into the same state as everyone else.

Clay's group arrives at Kashwak (in a school bus they've picked up on the road, and with three new companions in tow, who have also engineered a phoner massacre and are similarly untouchable) and meets the Raggedy Man, who locks them in a barn overnight in preparation for the special fate he has in store for them the next day. Jordan is small enough to wriggle out of a window, though, and while the phoners are doing their nocturnal roosting activities he manages to drive the bus into their midst, at which point Clay blows up the large consignment of dynamite put there by their new travelling companion Ray, who had wired it up earlier, told Clay about it and then shot himself so that he couldn't give the game away telepathically.

So the gruesome public execution has been averted, the Raggedy Man is dead, and the group heads off north again. But what of the remaining phoners? Well, Jordan has a theory that the Pulse is gradually being degraded by some sort of worm/virus thingy, since the recently zapped people seem to retain more of their human characteristics and don't do the zombified flocking behaviour as well as the original zappees. He also has a theory that for these people a second zap might cancel out the first by inducing some sort of brain reboot, restoring the affected person to normal. Encouraged by this, Clay sets off again to find his son (the wife having been caught up in the bus explosion) and, when he eventually does find him, try this radical cure on him. The book ends with Clay and Johnny holed up in a motel, with Clay holding a cellphone to the boy's ear.

I used to hungrily hoover up every new Stephen King paperback as soon as it came out, after having read The Shining when I was about thirteen and deciding that it was the GREATEST THING EVER. I stopped doing that after the triple whammy of The Tommyknockers, The Dark Half and Needful Things convinced me that he might have jumped the shark a bit. Since then the only one I've read was the fairly bog-standard haunted-house story Bag Of Bones from 1998. So it's been a few years since I've read a Stephen King book, and like all of them (even the ropey ones) this grips like an intensely grippy thing, perhaps a rabid boa constrictor or a giant pair of pliers. It's easy to be snobby about this sort of thing, but the ability to keep the reader up till 4am desperate to know what happens next is a rare and cherishable gift.

That said, and while Cell certainly delivers on the grippiness front, this isn't up to the standard of his earlier stuff for a number of reasons. Some of those reasons are apparent from the knowing dedication at the front of the book: to George A Romero (director of the Night Of The Living Dead films) and Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend). Cell owes a big debt to both of these, from the zombified state of the first phoners to the more philosophical stuff prompted by their later incarnation as a hive mind. The delivery of the mind-erasing bug via electronic means has some echoes of the virus from Snow Crash as well, and there's some similarly weird large-scale flocking and roosting activity in King's own 1989 novel The Dark Half, though that was featuring actual birds. It's uncomfortably close to some of the themes covered by King's classic 1978 novel The Stand in places as well, from the small wandering group of survivors of a catastrophe to the shared dreams haunted by some beckoning demonic figure, though the Raggedy Man is a pale shadow of The Stand's Randall Flagg, and the climactic public execution of the "normies" (again, echoing The Stand) is escaped with hilarious ease by the simple means of waiting till everyone goes to sleep and then setting fire to them and scarpering. The details of what caused The Pulse and why are never really explored, either, and the notion that someone exposed to the decaying worm-ridden Pulse signal can be cured by re-exposing them to the same signal skirts perilously close to the cartoon trope of curing someone of the effects of a blow on the head by hitting them again.

I suppose the Romero dedication in particular signals that this is intended to be a big, goofy, tub-of-popcorn sort of book rather than aspiring to the cerebral end of King's output. You can see that from the way it starts; while King's longer books feature leisurely build-ups allowing us to get to know the central characters before it all kicks off, Cell has people biting each other in the neck by about page 3, at which point we've barely met Clay, let alone started to care about him.

I would say your prime King period runs from The Shining in 1977 through The Stand and The Dead Zone and up to 1980's Firestarter, which I think is the single best thing he's ever written. You really should read all of those.

One little aside: the novel's opening action occurs on the edge of Boston Common, which immediately set off the Woo Hoo I've Been There alarm - here's a picture of my friends Jonny, Graham, Matt, Alex, Matt and Dominic on Boston Common in late summer 1994 while we were over there for Matt's (the one on the right) wedding. Fortunately cellphones hadn't been invented so we were able to enjoy a leisurely afternoon eating ice-cream and throwing a football about without getting attacked by drooling zombies.

clutch ado about nothing

While trawling around the web looking for reactions to Levon Helm's death I came across a post on Jerry Coyne's excellent website Why Evolution Is True saying pretty much the usual stuff - i.e. The Band were great, he was great, shame he's dead, here's some clips - but also reproducing a section of the lengthy New York Times obituary I linked to. Here's the relevant bit:

In the Band, lead vocals changed from song to song and sometimes within songs, and harmonies were elaborately communal. But particularly when lyrics turned to myths and tall tales of the American South — like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Ophelia” and “Rag Mama Rag” — the lead went to Mr. Helm, with his Arkansas twang and a voice that could sound desperate, ornery and amused at the same time. 

The word "ornery" is a bit of a mystery to non-Americans, I think. Anyone who reads a lot will have seen it used and have a vague idea of what it means - awkward, intransigent, bad-tempered - but I suspect no-one outside of North America would ever use it in spoken or written English. It's probably possible to be more specific than that, in fact, as it seems to be to be a rural middle-America good-old-boy sort of word, i.e. not something you'd ever hear the east coast urban sophisticates using. I suspect most non-American English speakers who heard it used in conversation (particularly by someone with a strong American accent) would think that they'd just misheard the word "ordinary" and be slightly puzzled by the context. It turns out that you wouldn't be entirely wrong, as it happens, since "ornery" is a 19th-century contraction of "ordinary", although the meanings have diverged quite a bit since then.

Another strange thing that struck me while watching Sky Sports' PGA tour golf coverage, including of course the Masters, is the use of the word "clutch" to describe the holing of putts under pressure, as in these two articles describing recent tournament wins by Mark Wilson and Luke Donald. These two articles take the definition somewhat more loosely and use it to describe putts that are a) on the 18th green for tournament wins and b) fairly long. In my mind that's not what "clutch putt" really means - I see them as the sort of putts from 10-12 feet and in that you have to hole reliably on the back nine on Sundays to win golf tournaments, and that Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus used to knock in as regular as clockwork.

"Clutch" as an adjective is used (though less often) in sports other than golf, though, like "ornery", overwhelmingly by people in North America. Here's a few headlines relating to basketball, American football and motor racing. No-one seems to have much of an idea where the usage originates from.

headline of the day

I suppose it is a bit like harpooning a walrus in a bathtub, spearing an elephant seal in a wash-basin, torpedoing a manatee in a paddling pool, or any other even easier variant of shooting fish in a barrel, but I offer for your enjoyment anyway this splendid example of tabloid innumeracy - here's a heart-warming story in the Daily Mail about a couple who share a birthday (July 19th, since you ask) who have now had a son who - wait for it - was born on the same date! Now I'll grant you this is fairly unusual and a nice little conversation piece at dinner parties before the wine kicks in and someone comes out with something toe-curlingly racist, but perhaps not as noteworthy as the Mail headline suggests:

A quick moment of reflection on the number of days there are in a typical year, and the obligation for any baby, I don't care who your parents are, to be born on one of them should prompt the amateur mathematician to smell a bit of a rat here. You can see where the Mail have got that number from - all three of them have the same birthday, there are 365 days in a year (let's forget February 29th for the moment, just to keep things simple), therefore the probability of all three having the same birthday is one in (365 x 365 x 365 = 48,627,125). Right? Well, no.

For starters, the odds of two people sharing a birthday are one in 365, not one in (365 x 365 = 133,225) - the point being it doesn't matter which day the first person's birthday is on, the second one just has to match it, and has a one in 365 chance of doing so. Add a third person into the mix and the odds of them having the same birthday (and therefore that date being shared by all three) just adds another factor of 365 to the mix, i.e. the probability of the whole thing - boy meets girl, discovers they share a birthday, impregnates her, baby is born on their mutual birthday - is one in 133,225. No millions involved, still less 48 of them.

However, we're not interested in the probability of the whole shooting match, just the baby bit, since the parents getting together and sharing a birthday bit has already happened. The odds of this are going to be at best (or worst, depending how you look at it) one in 365, and they are only this until you know you're pregnant - once you know this the range of available dates for the baby's birthday narrows considerably. Let's assume that we require the baby to be born healthy and normal in all the usual respects - if you're in a first world country with decent medical care this probably means a window of 24-40 weeks after conception as possible birth dates (and the lower end of that could be touch and go survival-wise). That's 16 weeks, i.e. 112 days. So, unless you already know you're out of the game (if the Parkers had conceived in August, for instance, there's absolutely no way the baby could be born on July 19th), you're actually only looking at odds of one in 112 or thereabouts. Less of a snappy headline for a news story, I'll grant you.

Probability is inherently counter-intuitive and hard to grasp, though, even for quite clever people, never mind Daily Mail readers. The notion that throwing ten heads in a row doesn't make a tail more likely next time is a hard one for some people, people whose heads would probably explode if confronted with either the birthday problem or the Monty Hall problem, both seemingly simple situations where the obvious "common sense" answer is wrong.

Interestingly, this article applies the birthday problem's conclusion (i.e. that you only need a group of 23 people to make it more likely than not that two of them will share a birthday) to the handy existing data set of all the US Presidents (of which there have been 43, making it over 90% likely that there'll be a match) - sure enough James Polk and Warren Harding share a birthday, November 2nd. QED!

i find your lack of pulse disturbing

It's old news now, as it apparently happened back in July 2010, but is anyone else mildly alarmed at the news that former US Vice-President and cartoonish supervillain Dick Cheney has taken advantage of being off most people's radar to get himself bionically transformed into DARTH FRICKIN' VADER???

He's more machine than man now, twisted and evil.

Basically Cheney, who has a long history of heart problems, has been fitted with a device to assist the pumping of the blood round the body, one of the side effects of which is that he will henceforth HAVE NO PULSE!! How creepy is that?

Not content with joining the ranks of the undead, I now expect Cheney to have his left arm replaced with a chainsaw, like that guy in the Evil Dead films, or possibly be plumbed into an armoured chair like Davros, in which case we'll all be OK as we can just go upstairs and hide.

quote of the day

I've seen this attributed to Democratic senator Tom Harkin, but it seems that it's probably older than that. You can understand the temptation to keep recycling it though, as it's nice and pithy:

Politics is like driving. To go backward put it in R. To go forward put it in D.

Obviously the party references place this firmly in the USA, but so does the unthinking assumption that everyone will be familiar with the layout of an automatic gearbox. I don't have any figures for the ratio (if you'll pardon the pun) of automatic to manual transmission cars sold in the USA, but the general references in US book and film to a "stick shift" being something weird and exotic suggests it's quite high. This article from September 2006 suggests that the ratio (pardon the pun, again) is about 4:1 in favour of manual transmission in Europe; I wouldn't be surprised if the situation were reversed in the USA. I suppose the sheer size of the place means the ratio (pardon, etc.) of driving along in a straight line in the same gear to stopping and starting and going round corners and shit is relatively high compared to little old Europe.

If anyone has a definitive set of figures I'd be interested to see them. Well, I say interested, I'd tolerate them. Well, I say tolerate......[etc.]

[Footnote: this article suggests that less than 10% of cars sold in the USA now have manual transmission. Lazy bastards.]

why didn't he just heal himself?

It would be remiss of me, particularly after my ill-concealed glee over Jerry Falwell's demise a while back, to fail to mention the death of another American evangelical big cheese this week: Oral Roberts.

Less given to inflammatory media outbursts than Falwell, Roberts' main concern was pretty simple: money. Lots and lots and lots of lovely money. Not for him the orthodox view of Jesus' teachings as promoting a life of poverty and simplicity, rich man/eye of camel and all that stuff, oh no. Tucked away in the New Testament among all the lengthy tracts urging you to give away all your money and shuffle about in sackcloth and sandals hugging lepers is this little nugget in the Third Epistle of John:

Beloved, I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

- which apparently makes the rapacious pursuit of wealth not only OK, but pretty much officially sanctioned by the big man. The most famous example of this is undoubtedly when Roberts went on TV in January 1987 to tearfully tell his followers that they had three months to donate $8 million, or God would "call him home". Needless to say they coughed up, and - miraculously - he survived.

The picture in the right is from this gallery of faith-healing pics from 1962; you can see the P.T. Barnum showbiz element pretty clearly. Once TV got in on the act in the 1970s and 1980s they cleaned their whole schtick up, brought it indoors, made it look a bit more churchy, got rid of the sawdust and the goats, that sort of thing.

What isn't clear from any of the obituaries that I've read is how he came by his extraordinary name. What I can tell you is that his full name was Granville Oral Roberts, so that, in a very real sense, "Oral was his middle name". I can't find any further information on where the name came from, or what possessed him to use it in public life in preference to Granville. Maybe I'll give his brother Anal a call later and see what he thinks. I know, it's a cheap laugh, but still funny. As is this Daily Kos headline: Jesus Prepares To Receive Oral.

only the mighty hammer of Thor can protect Kentucky now

We've all looked and chuckled at lists of strange laws, like the one that says you can't flag down a London taxi if you have the plague, or put pretzels in a bag in Philadelphia, or enter the House of Commons wearing a suit of armour. Time moves on, laws become irrelevant, and frankly it's a lot of hassle to revoke all the irrelevant ones, so in a lot of cases they're just left lying around on the statute book never to be invoked in real life again.

So when I read that the state of Kentucky had, as the result of a lawsuit filed back in December 2008, repealed a law requiring explicit praising of God in any official documents I chuckled to myself and expected to see that it had been lying around unnoticed in some sub-clause since about 1820. Not so, however. The following paragraph is from a list of the responsibilities of the Executive Director of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security:

Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3)

- and was apparently inserted not in the early 19th century, but in - get this - 2006, at the behest of one Tom Riner, a Democratic state Representative and, yes, that's right, evangelical Christian. I think it's profoundly revealing of the sort of internal mental contortions the religious go through each and every day to try and parse this response to the judgment into a form that makes any sense:

Riner said Wednesday that he is unhappy with the judge’s ruling. The way he wrote the law, he said, it did not mandate that Kentuckians depend on God for their safety, it simply acknowledged that government without God cannot protect its citizens.

What? Wait, I.....what? How does.....what?

don't want to drive a bus? you are not alone

The atheist bus adverts continue to be a rich source of humour and entertainment. The latest little nugget of absurdity comes from Des Moines, Iowa, where bus driver Angela Shiel had an attack of the vapours on learning that the bus she'd been assigned for her shift carried an advert by the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers on its side. The advert is the same one that's been appearing on a few billboards around the USA recently, and carries the message below.


The interesting thing to consider here is what exactly it is about this that a Christian would find offensive, regardless of how absurdly sensitive they are. For all its anodyne wording the original advert was at least making a (qualified) statement about God's existence (and sure enough one bus driver had a Jane Austenesque fit of pearl-clutching and swooning at the "starkness" of it all); as this guy points out all the American ad is saying is that atheists exist, and that there are at least two of them. Pretty uncontroversial you would think. But no, apparently not.

Also worthy of note is the always reliably loopy WorldNetDaily's response. Mainly notable for the absolutely textbook bit of anti-Semitic well-poisoning in the headline, as follows: "Former Jew claims...." Well, you're not going to believe anything he says after that, are you? Certainly not if you're one of WND's core constituency, i.e. insane right-wing fundamentalists (and indeed mentalists).

I recall a film review section in one of the old Monty Python books which simply read "Well I liked it", claims non-Nazi. The difference being, of course, that they were joking.

Here's a couple more atheist billboard ads for you - actually one of them isn't really an atheist billboard at all. Can you spot which one it is?




Actually Rev. E. F. Briggs sounds like he could be a character in a Monty Python sketch. It would be better if he were called Rev. E. F. Gumby, though.