A real story needs a messy ending.
Leonard Cohen — Machine of Death
Leonard Cohen
The attendant held out the distinctive yellow and orange envelope.
“Thank you Mr. Su” he said cheerfully as Kam took the envelope. “Have a nice day, Sir.”
Kam stepped out of the arcade into the Pacific Avenue rush. He squinted against the low October afternoon sun. Damn, no sunglasses.
He crossed the street to the new two-story Starbucks and stood in line behind the usual collection of black clad teenagers, under-employed hipsters, and multi-level marketers in cheap sports coats. Kam stared at the logo on his envelope. A laughably cheap image of crossed fingers on a background of the initials LD and the motto “Only Time Will Tell.” He flipped the envelope over and fingered the flap. Turned it back over and stared at the crossed fingers again. His brother had told him that the initials LD stood for Lucky Dayz and that the company that produced the AnswerMachine™ had originally been in the business of manufacturing claw crane games and bar-top slot machines. In fact the machine itself was originally designed as a fortune telling game called “How Shall I Die?” The designer had had the brilliant idea of getting cryptic sounding answers by taking random phrases from a live connection to Wikipedia. Marketing had loved the fortune cookie vibe of the answers but had nixed the name in favor of the less definite AnswerMachine™. Still ‘everyone’ knew that the machine only answered one question — How am I going to die? And ‘everyone’ knew that the machine was never wrong.
“Lucky Dayz. That’s rich.” he said aloud and then remembered he wasn’t alone.
He turned the envelope back over and slid his finger under the flap. There were two pieces of paper. A closely printed double-sided “Guide to your Answer”. He ignored this and looked at the 3x5 card with it’s happy orange border and the LD logo in the corner.
“Leonard Cohen?” it read. “What the fuck, they’ve given me someone else’s results.”
He shoved the papers back into the envelope and stuffed it back into his messenger bag, elbowing the man behind him in the process.
“Oh, sorry.” He apologized as he stepped up to the counter.
Americano in hand Kam walked to the condiments bar to get half-n-half. Waiting behind the goth girl adding four Splendas to her soy latte, his curiosity got the better of him and he dug the envelope out of his messenger bag. As he pulled out the card the Guide fell to the floor. An older woman with lots of precise spikes and angles in her gray hair stopped to pick it up for him. Handing it over she stiffened when she saw the envelope in Kam’s hand.
“Superstitious nonsense.” she muttered Continue reading “Leonard Cohen — Machine of Death”
#fridayreads 1.jun.2012
Picked up The Jewel Hinged Jaw, Samuel Delany. Because Delany came up in a conversation recently and then I came across this little screed on io9:overmind http://io9.com/5910814/what-samuel-r-delany-can-tell-publishing-about-its-latest-trend
Typically shallow but hits a pain point of mine about how many authors have succumbed to the production line via ghost writers and co-authors and how the product has suffered.
In the midst of Gods without Men, Hari Kunzru. Mixed reviews on Amazon but recommended by a couple of people I trust. I’m glad I started it. Yes, the narrative structure is a bit odd and there doesn’t seem to be a capital ‘P’ plot, but not everything in the world has to follow the three act arc.
Sandman Slim, Richard Kadrey. Read because I found the single phrase “like God’s tiny tyrannosaurus rex” in an excerpt amusing. I’m not a horror fan but it was funny enough to send me looking for another Kadrey. (and it went well with migraine.)
HebrewPunk, Lavie Tidhar. One of my favorite writers of the moment disappointed me. Admittedly one of his early efforts. Not worth the time even if you like Yiddish myth and legend. Sigh.
Wind Through the Keyhole, Stephen King. A fairy tale. I like fairy tales. This made up for the last 2 Dark Tower books.
A bunch of dog training books. Because the world moves on and the puppy raising books that I leant someone so long ago and never got back are outdated anyway. The basics never change. The tricks of the trade are refined. The research updates enough to make the sequence of assigned tasks a little different. I have yet to find my replacement for the nicely balanced approach of “Mother Knows Best.”
PS When you bork the Kindle app on an iPad because you are switching iTunes from one computer to another you lose all of the samples that you have downloaded and thus lose all of the books queued for possible inclusion in your reading list. Is that hellishly annoying? Or a fresh start?
Leaving Gmail. It’s Not Me It’s You.
New Look Sux.
That’s the title of an email thread that went around my universe. No one likes the new look of Gmail. You can search the web for details of the usability nightmare. But let me just offer this one tidbit. The CSS is so broken that the pages often don’t render well in Google’s own browser.
That, and so many mis-steps with privacy and cross product snooping and then there are some things that the Google universe just won’t do for me. (I need better calendar management. I can’t keep track of my glasses…)
Not that my Google account won’t be going away altogether. It’s just going to go back to being what it was intended to be in the first place. A quarantine for mailing lists that allows me to just not see them when I need to focus on other stuff. A decent chat client. An RSS aggregator. A website analytics manager. Lots of things. But not a mail manager and not a calendar manager.
What to Do About It
I have access to Microsoft Office 2010 and Office365. I have domains that I can use for email addresses. I can move away from GMail to an Exchange server. Importantly I can move to an Exchange server that I don’t have to manage. That’s a variety of black magic that I don’t have time to learn right now.
My choices are not appropriate for everyone. . If you aren’t doing business with your email addresses or you enjoy the arcana of running your own email servers you can leave GMail for a lot of other products. But those paths are not what you’re going to find here.
First up… A Plan.
There are 4 parts to this dance.
- Get all of the data out of Google. I“ll need Gmail, Chats, Contacts, Calendars.
- Prepare local machines with copies of Office 2010. [a]
- Set up Office365. Microsoft’s cloud based Office product. [b]
- Set up mobile devices to use the new Exchange based account. [c]
———-
Notes
[a] There are lots of these machines. All except the one I’ll actually be using for email already have Office 2010 on them. Figures doesn’t it?
Office 2010 finally does conversation threading — the one thing I most desired in an email reader. And the biggest reason I haven’t switched before. It also allows back-dated entry in calendars. Something Google calendars doesn’t. I really need this. I track most things in a Moleskine, only transferring them to the electronic calendars at the end of the week. Moleskine’s only hold 6 months worth of stuff. I need at least a year’s worth at tax time, no?
[b] I’m only using the Exchange server. Office365 also offers Sharepoint (Magpie makes a hex warding sign) and an online meeting thing and other business stuff that I don’t use. Yet.
[c] I’ll miss my better-than-Apple’s-lame-version calendar app. Otherwise this is a no brainer. Follow the directions given in the setup menu.
Brief Note: Who’s in Your Twitter?
Coming under the heading of Don’t Put Yourself in the Position to be Jealous.
I have a twitter stream full of authors whose work I adore, or whose way of working I admire. Every time one of them gets a good review, publishes a book, or places a story, I cheer. I love that the world is going to see more of their work.
But the ones whose stuff I think is mediocre and who I think have chosen to be mediocre. Um, no. I don’t have the time to spend with their psyches.