Reviews, Bad Friday's, Liars, etc.

Colonel Sun

I finally finished Colonel Sun. It took me longer than I wanted partly because of the house situation and partly because of the dull pace of the story. It very much seemed to me like Kingsley Amis trying to slip on the shoes of Ian Fleming and pretend to be him. When an author does that, it doesn’t work. The story falls flat and it’s like reading a bad imitation. Colonel Sun had its good elements but ultimately for me, it was a disappointment.

Essentially, the plot is that James Bond must battle a crazy sadist who wants to stage a terrorist attack at the end of which Bond and his section chief, M, will be blamed. This will destroy English credibility and cause world turmoil. Well, ok, seems reasonable enough for a Bond novel. But things get lost along the way. Once Bond sets out to find Colonel Sun in Greece, the plot sloooooows way down and I found myself losing interest many times. Bond hooks up with a girl named Ariadne who just doesn’t have the spark of, say, Vesper Lynd or Tracy. In the end, as you might expect, Bond saves the day and gets to have one last rendezvous with the girl. But it takes so long to get there that you don’t feel as elated about it. True enough, there is a gripping scene of torture from Colonel Sun near the end of the book but that is one of the few riveting scenes in the entire novel. My recommendation is to read it just to say you did if you’re a Bond fan and then put it back on the shelf to collect dust. Because I highly doubt you’ll be picking it up again. I am now into the John Gardner novels. So far, so good. Things are moving at a decent pace. I hope it remains that way . . .

The Culture of Fear

So I was milling around in the library looking for a good read and found The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner. It was mentioned in Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine so I thought it would be interesting at the least. I have to say it opened my eyes to how much emphasis the media places on things that will never happen or are not as likely to happen as we might believe. We get bombarded all the time and told to fear this and that when we should focus on other things. Glassner points out how many people in America are illiterate, how many go hungry, how many are homeless, etc., as issues that deserve our focus much more than, say, worrying about a plane crash or the bogeyman lurking in the shadows outside your home. The day after I finished this book, there was an ominous sounding report on TV about “killer colds.” I think so far, only 10 people have died from said killer cold but to have the reporters tell it, everyone on Earth is in immediate danger of death by killer cold. Please. There is also a discussion to some degree of alterity in the sense that we are consumed by the safety of self versus the evil intent of the other who lies in wait to do you harm. So this begs the question, naturally, who is the evil “other” in the bushes? Whether this is more scary or less scary is a matter of subjectivity, but Glassner points out that the other in the bushes is not the person you have to look out for—it’s people closest to you who statistically do the most harm. He uses as an example the media hype that molesters and kidnappers lurk around every corner to abduct every child but, in actuality, more children are harmed by the family members they are in contact with everyday, not by random strangers.

If you are looking for a thinky quick read, I would recommend this one.


*Why I will not be returning to Friday’s

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you will know that Friday’s is a place that my friends and I used to frequent. My friend Ericka still halfway lives there, I think, as she seems to always put Friday’s on any myspace survey regarding the last place she ate. I am taking myself out of the Friday’s fan club in a big way after having yet another shitty experience there on Friday. I’ve had bad get-togethers there and bad experiences with food and beverage. And this weekend was the last straw. My food was greasy and bitter and tasted like it had been fried in battery acid. Did they comp anything for me based on it being bad? Hell no. My cape cod tasted like rancid rubbing alcohol and, likewise, it was not comped either. So Friday’s can go straight to Hell along with the higher prices and smaller portions. Why should I pay MORE for LESS food? Honestly. I don’t know what kind of gross practices were going on but I have never had such a long-lasting stomach illness that came from food poisoning.

*And you really expect me to believe you? For real?

There’s this guy I know—I guess I would label him an acquaintance rather than a friend as I don’t know him well enough to put him in that category—and I think he thinks that I will believe almost anything he tells me. I get the impression that he likes me and wants to puff up his chest and seem cooler than he is. So he brags about, well, just about anything you can think of. He and I are totally different people with the exception of having a couple of mutual friends so I am puzzled as to why he feels the need to one-up me consistently and try to gain some sort of favor in my eyes. The final oddity came earlier this week and motivated me to include him in the blog. It was like a light bulb went on over my head and said, “Yes, he has now earned a place for me to gripe about him.” To paint a tableau vivant for you will help you to appreciate this story. This guy is not ugly, per se, but he’s not attractive either. I’d say conservatively he’s a solid 100 lbs overweight. If not closer to 150 lbs. He sweats a lot. He has a rather pompous attitude for a college dropout. His social skills and fashion sense are not neeeeeearly as suave and hip as he believes. Ok, so he tells me that he is now dating not one but two models. One is a swimwear model and the other is a jewelry model for a home shopping network! It took all my effort not to openly laugh in his face. I mean, really. “Dating” someone is not the same as adding them as a friend on myspace. I think there are some people in the world whose lines between fantasy and reality have blurred severely.