Tag Archives: My Books

JPod

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The flyleaf describes Douglas Coupland’s new novel as “a lethal joyride into today’s new breed of technogeeks.” I very much enjoyed two of his earlier works, Microserfs and Girlfriend in a Coma, and offer these nuggets from the introduction to his latest novel:

Life is a contest between you and everyone else.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless poor people.

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

You can’t fake creativity, competence or sexual arousal.

Nobody has ever been happy in a job they obtained by first handing in a resume.

After a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless. — pg. 248

I think computers ought to have a key called I’M DRUNK, and when you push it, it prevents you from sending email for twelve hours. — pg. 386

The Long Tail

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The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (Wired) explains why you can’t find movies like Sorcerer (Roy Scheider) at the corner Blockbuster but can at Netflix. Anderson’s easy-to-follow-explanation is a tad long but an informative piece. In the (near) future, everything will be available online. While nobody cares about everything, somebody cares about every thing.

Quotes from William Gibson novels

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William Gibson –touring to promote the paperback release of Pattern Recognition– was interviewed by Leo Laporte on Tech TV’s The Screen Savers. Leo asked some good questions, including one about Gibson’s creative process. Gibson said he did not work out the plot in advance and wrote from day to day with no idea of what would happen next. He said he waited for the first sentence and everything grew (“fractally”) from that. And he would never consider going back to edit that first sentence because the story would (I think he said) “collapse.”

“The ghost was her father’s parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Nirita.” — Mona Lisa Overdrive

“I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pair of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.” — Burning Chrome

“Through this evening’s tide of faces unregistered, unrecognized, amid hurrying black shoes, furled umbrellas, the crowd descending like a single organism into the station’s airless heart, comes Shnya Yamazaki, his notebook clasped beneath his arm like the egg case of some modest but moderately successful marine species.” — All Tomorrow’s Parties

“The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic.” — Virtual Light

“They set a Slashhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair.” — Count Zero

“The sky above the Port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” — Neuromancer

“Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.” — Pattern Recognition

Pattern Recognition

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Finished William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and enjoyed it as much as expected. With the characters and settings still in my head, it was strange to read (on Gibson’s blog) how real they are for the creator:

“One odd moment, sitting in the lower lobby of the SoHo Grand, Cayce’s entrance suddenly unspooled and I looked up, almost expecting her to walk in. And simultaneously reminded I don’t know what she looks like; she’s written “from inside”.

This means zip to anyone that has not read the book. Other nuggets that got some highlighter:

“Like sitting in a pitch-dark cellar conversing with people at a distance of about fifteen feet.” (pg4)

“The future is there, looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. (pg57)

“Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, athletic shoes or feature films.” (pg67)

“Musicians, today, if they’re clever, put new compositions out onthe web, like pies set to cool on a window ledge, and wait for other people to anonymously rework them. Ten will be all wrong, but the eleventh may be genius. And free. It’s as though the creative process is no longer contained within an individual skull, if indeed it every was.Everything, today, is to some extent the reflection of something else.” (pg68)

“History erased via the substitution of an identical object.” (pg194)

And my favorite…

“She is increasingly of the opinion that worrying about problems doesn’t help solve them, but she hasn’t really found an alternative yet. Surely you can’t just leave them there.” (pg92)

Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

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I’ve spent the last few minutes of the last few nights on my back laughing so hard tears trickled down to my ears. I’m highlighting my way through Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams.

“You can ignore almost everything that is asked of you and in the long run it won’t matter. Either the tasks will become moot or your boss will forget what he asked you to do, or someone else will do it.” Or, “If you stall long enough, every corporate initiative ends, even layoffs.”

I particularly enjoyed the description an encounter with a salesman for a local radio station that was trying to convince Adams to buys advertising for the resturant he co-owns. Adams asked the sales person how many listeners the radio station had.

“The sales weasel explained, ‘You have to spend money to make money.’ I pointed out that he probably knew the number of listeners and that I could decide on my own if it was worth knowing. The weasel responded by explaining how many human beings lived within listening range of his station, i.e. weaselmath. I asked how that mattered if they weren’t actually listening, just potentially listening.”

“Then he explained that it’s much more expensive to advertise on other radio stations on a cost-per-relevlant-listener basis. I asked how he knew that if he didn’t know how many listeners he had.”

“He explained to me that some of my competitors were advertising on his station and they must be getting some benefit or they wouldn’t be doing it. I pointed out that most of my competitors weren’t advertising on his station and if not advertising wasn’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it. It wasn’t a good meeting.”

God help us if radio listening ever becomes as brutally measurable as the Web.

Two Types of Journalists

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I recently read Carl Hiaasen’s new novel, Basket Case. While I don’t share his passion for the environment, I do love it when he rants about the state of journalism. I hope he doesn’t mind my sharinging a few of this thoughts here.

“Only two types of journalists choose to stay at a paper thats being gutted by Wall Street whorehoppers. One faction is comprised of editors and reporters whose skills are so marginal that theyre lucky to be employed, and they know it. Unencumbered by any sense of duty to the readers, theyre pleased to forgo the pursuit of actual news in order to cut expenses and score points with the suits. These fakers are easy to pick out in a bustling city newsroomtheyre at their best when arranging and attending pointless meetings, and at their skittish, indecisive worst under the heat of a looming deadline. Stylistically they strive for brevity and froth, shirking from stories that demand depth or deliberation, stories that might rattle a few cages and raise a little hell and ultimately change some poor citizens life for the better. This breed of editors and reporters is genetically unequipped to cope with that ranting phone call from the mayor, that wrath-of-God letter from the libel lawyer or that reproachful memo from the company bean counters. These are journalists who want peace and quiet and no surprises, thank you. They want their newsroom to be as civil, smooth-humming and friendly as a bank lobby. Theyre thrilled when the telephones dont ring and their computers tell them they dont have e-mail. The less there is to do, the slimmer the odds of them screwing up. They dream of a day when hard news is no longer allowed to interfere with putting out profitable newspapers.

The other journalists who remain at slow-strangling dailies are those too spiteful or stubborn to quit. Somehow their talent and resourcefulness continue to shine, no matter how desultory or beaten down they might appear. These are the canny, grind-it-out pros who give our deliquescing little journal what pluck and dash it has left. They have no corporate ambitions, and hold a crusty, subversive loyalty to the notion that newspapers exist to serve and inform, period. They couldnt tell you where the companys stock closed yesterday on the Dow Jones, because they dont care. Once upon a time they were the blood and soul of the newsroomthese prickly, disrespecting, shit-stirring bastardsand their presence was the main reason that bright kids lined up for summer internships.”