Sean broke his alarm clock

“Mnrh… unh… grmh… Xander – quiet.” The cats had kept Sean up again. If he could just get Xander to be quiet. He rolled over and glanced at the clock.
“Huh? Whazza? Six a.m.?” Sean’s confusion cleared. It was not the cats this time.
“Six A.M.?!” His brow creasing in mounting fury, Sean rose to a sitting position.
As Sean became a physical manifestation of pure rage, his hands curled into fists.
“Another… NIGHT… WASTED!!!!” He had reached the point of no return. There was no rationalizing with his rage, and Sean liked it that way.
The look of the bald city-worker would have burned furrows in the wall if temper were converted to temperature. Kittens, knowing the inevitable war-path that this uncontrollable choler would take, scurried out of the room, glancing over their shoulders, knowing that distance was all that would keep them safe for now.
As one fist-capped arm came up, Sean’s angry gaze fell on the closest horizontal plane. Yes. Only that could soothe the savage beast.
Leveling a blow at the end-table-top, Sean raised his other fist at that same moment.
Jackhammers could not have made a more thorough job of the destruction that Sean’s fists of anger delivered upon the source of his ire, the alarm clock/radio.
As he razed the timepiece, Sean bellowed like a Viking warrior, “I AM ANGRY!!!” bellowing his defiance at Time, itself.
Never again would its shriek pierce the early-morning air, ensuring the prompt arrival of its client and target.
Sean rose from his bed, spittle just short of foam dripping from his face. Rage sated, he scratched his rear through light-blue briefs and trundled off to the bathroom to prepare for the day.

Into the bowels of the bowels of the library

Saturday, my wife, my friend and I went to a book sale at the Edmonton Public Library. These sales apparently happen three to four times per year. If I’d been informed of this earlier, my book collection would be much, much bigger.

This sale was incredible. It was held in the parking garage below the downtown library in Edmonton, Alberta. The books were placed spine-up on tables from one end of the garage to the other. When we got in, it was hard to tell where the line of tables ended. It was actually pretty intimidating.

However, we split up and plunged into the chaos that is bargain-hunting. Every eight-foot table had at least seven people, scanning the titles, hoping for that ONE book that would make the trip downtown worth it. I was no different. Any book that had the appearance of fantasy or even the illusion that I might like it, I grabbed and threw into a box. (Boxes that were left there, presumably after having carried the books to the tables in the first place)

Toward the end of my grab-and-stow, I was kicking two big boxes full of books. (My wife had come and dropped two large armfuls of books into the boxes). Satisfied, for the moment, with my haul, I dragged the boxes over to one side and began to sort.

I knew that I would not be willing to carry this many books to the car (My wife is pregnant and, while she may insist on pulling her weight, I won't let her) so I sat and scanned the backs of the books for something that would make me want to read them.

Gone were three "fantasy" romance novels, though if I could have torched them rather than just put them in the discard box, I would have.

Gone was the Shogun-era murder-mystery.

Gone was the historical fiction about Nazi Germany (silly me, I'd thought it was a history book.)

And gone were some genuine fantasy books that just didn't hold my interest.

I waffled back and forth about Elmore Leonard books. I like his writing style but I wasn't sure. In the end, they made it into the box.

Here, now, is the list of books that I bought at the book sale:

Sir Apropos of Nothing - Peter David

Two (2) Elmore Leonard books

Lord Valentine's Castle - Robert Silverberg (I believe this is the first Majipoor book)

CS Lewis' biography

Two (2) David Gemmel books about some assassin (I'm not familiar with Gemmel but I hear he's pretty good)

Taliesin and Arthur by Stephen Lawhead (Now I just have to find Merlin)

Two(2) Conan books by Robert Howard

Rebekah by Orson Scott Card

A collection of short stories by Stephen R. Donaldson

I would have gotten more but time was an issue and my wife had easily more than I did. Carrying the books we bought up three flights of stairs to street level was more than enough work for a Saturday.

In the end, we bought a large box of books (some of my wife's were pretty valuable) for twenty-eight dollars. (Hard cover books were two dollars, paperbacks were fifty cents.)

Most promising book: Lord Valentine's Castle. I'm curious about the Majipoor series.

First book read: Sir Apropos of Nothing - something about this book just caught my attention

.Best book found: My friend found a book on how to impersonate Elvis. Is this the best book ever? I don't know.

As it is, my book collection is now somewhat bigger, my wife and I are both happy in our purchases and my need for new books has been sated – until the next book sale.

Milk in the tooth-hole and other horror stories

Since having my teeth removed (by choice, no less!) I have been unfortunate enough to have holes at the back of my mouth, filled with sensitive, swollen gums.

My teeth have never been to happy about cold and I guess it’s only natural to guess that the tooth-holes left behind by my wisdom teeth would like the cold about as much.

Boy was I wrong.

The searing pain of a cold mouthful of milk invading my tooth-holes left me shaking and shaken. Like nothing I’ve ever experienced. However, I learned something about life in general and pain in specific. Everything’s mental. The pain that shot into my brain was trying to tell me that something was terribly wrong. My brain was not strong enough to deny these impulses and so had me shaking and shaken. I was even transported back to the dental procedure when I could feel the drill going into my jaw bone. It’s amazing what my brain will do to screw with me.

It’s all mental.

Three teeth, one low, low price

I find myself once again drawn to this blog spot. This morning, I had three wisdom teeth extracted. One was giving me a problem and I figured that getting it removed was going to mess me up enough so that getting three out would be more worth it than getting one out on several different occasions. The fourth one does not look like it is going to present a problem so we decided to skip that.

Now, my life is an endurance test - which will happen first? Will my wounds repair themselves or will I go mad? The pain is entirely endurable. The blood was off-putting but again, there was nothing there that could break me. Now, in the wake of my overwhelming desire for a steak, a cheeseburger or some potato chips, the itch coming from my stitches is driving me batty.

I enjoyed a protein-fortified milkshake this evening and my sister was kind enough to bring me by a Wendy's chocolate ice-creamy dessert. The relief that the cold brought to the inside of my mouth makes me happy.

I finished three books last week, and now I'm working on some more:

Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman: This is a collection of short stories by the author who wrote American Gods and Neverwhere. Some are weird, some are wrong, but they're all definitely readable.

The Fires of Heaven - Robert Jordan: The Book-11 re-read is on. The forsaken are making their moves, the tower is split and Mat gets real cool in this book.

Blog! The Blogging Blogger's Blogged!

One hundred years ago, I imagined the internet as being my own personal publishing house. I would put stories up and Norwegians would go insane over the adventures of Goose and Viking. Hey, *I* thought they were funny. Why shouldn’t everyone else?
“Ya, da Goos und da Viking, dey so fah-nee!”

I believe that my disillusionment with the World Wide Web has never been higher than it is right now. Sure, there are some good sites. Pro Football Talk has a scathing rumor page that I enjoy on a more-than-daily (probably on a more-than-is-healthy-for-me) basis. And there are vast heaps of information that I’m more than happy to tap into when looking for a shortcut or even just an answer to a programming problem. Regardless, based on percentage of content, you would think that the internet was all about pornography and salesmen. Isn’t it?

I’m starting to learn that the internet is whatever you want it to be.

As a research tool, it is nearly invaluable. Anything can be found there. Some things cost but if you want the good stuff, you have to pay (as a second-last-semester research paper taught me ad nauseum).

As a self-healing support-system, the internet provides many links to information, or discussion forums where anyone from an alcoholic to someone who wants to lose weight can find support.

I believe, however, that the internet has become the time-waster that TV is. Sure, TV can be useful. You can watch documentaries, demonstrations, news, whatever. But its main function is entertainment.

This is going to lead to a long, probably rambling, (I love to ramble) monologue about how, while people talk about a life that exists after death is where we will be rewarded and how this life is work-filled in preparation for the test that leads to that paradise, they use the majority of their non-work time entertaining themselves in non-productive leisure. (See? Ramble on…)

Truly, though, as work becomes more automated and people have more free time, do they want to spend that time doing more work or being entertained? TV, books, the internet – all of these things have many possible uses, but by far, the most widespread is entertainment.

How does this fit in with the idea that life is a hard lesson for admission to the afterlife? Are there going to be a whole lot of REJECTED stamps on people’s foreheads as they are jettisoned off to Hell?

Does this obsession with filling leisure-time with idle entertainment have something to do with the deterioration of society as we see it? Is society even deteriorating, or is it just that I’m getting old?

Oh, another side of the internet – pseudo-intellectuals spouting off about the deterioration of society.

Books I’m reading:

Chainfire – The latest Terry Goodkind novel in the Sword of Truth series. Magic and wonder – Richard’s wife goes missing. Richard is the only one who remembers that she exists and nobody believes him… again. Something’s hunting him. Hilarity ensues. This novel makes me wonder – is Goodkind tired of this series? If so, just have it end at the end of Faith of the Fallen, erase the other books from the records and go write another Atlas Shrugged.

The Shadow Rising – Book Four in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Is it wrong for me to re-read this series every time that a new volume comes out? If so, I don’t want to be right. This is the second-best story in the series, with Perrin kicking Trolloc hiney and Rand learning about his ancestry.

Dragons of Autumn Twilight: The first in the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It’s fun and I’m reading the series more out of nostalgia than anything else.