Seeing Spots

The Sony Reader is delicious. Amazing. It makes me happy on many levels: it’s a dream to read, nice to hold, has buttons, is electronic and gadgety, and has a pleasing peppery aroma and silken mouthfeel. It currently contains a handful of books I’ve been meaning to read but have been too lazy to order (stuff like Green River Running Red and Under And Alone) – exactly the sorts of books I’d grab in paperback, read once, and never throw away. Exactly the sorts of books I bought the reader to handle.

And I dug out the booklight that came bundled yeaaaaars ago with Desperation/The Regulators, remember that? And read my little electronic motherfucker in bed in the dark with the booklight, woohoo! Good times.

(Note the “in bed in the dark” bit – yes, people, I got to sleep before dawn last night for the first time in a couple of years. Granted, I hadn’t gone to bed at all the night before, but still: sleeping in the dark! Neat!)

I can’t wait to post the thing I want to post… just waiting for permission.

More info on the Amazon Kindle came out in mid-April, and pricing is going to start above $400.  Thought-balloons reading “so what if it has EV-DO?  Who cares that it’ll handle Mobipocket content?” rose from my head as I ordered a Sony Reader.

The Reader will arrive tomorrow.  I spent the weekend (painting, making jewelry, being appalled at poop on the Sopranos) converting files into BBeB, downloading manga and running it through JE-Comics and PDFrasterfari, and picking the eyeballs of dried baby anchovies out of my teeth.  Oh, and This Is England is very good.  Would be a good double-feature with Suburbia (not SubUrbia.)

My whole e-book revolution is simply because my house is full.  Full.  Books in the kitchen, books in every room, books floor-to-ceiling on shelves we built in the hallway.  Our 1100sf house is lined and insulated with books.  I’ll still buy hard copies of books I want to own and handle, but I also read a lot of more mainstream paperbacks.  Since I can’t bring myself to part with even the crappiest of physical books, and since I’m a gadgetwhore, I’ll satisfy the paperback-thriller whim with a gadget and not need to worry about storing this Greg Iles book or that random cat-person fantasy collection.

Tonight I went grocery shopping for the first time in, no lie, two months.  The last time I went, my total was $200, and I was so scarred by the receipt that I couldn’t bear to go again.  Tonight I eased back into the world of buying food with a $26 visit.  Man, I need to get my garden going.  I hate paying for food.

Yet I like paying for gadgets, and gadget accoutrements, and books with which to gag the gadget.

Seriously, the Sopranos poop made me gasp and recoil.  Jeez.  I mean, the squat and everything!  But the whole episode involved dumping, so I see the point, but still.  Ugh.

Spike TV will be on River Street filming eight of the world’s best eaters as Verizon Wireless presents St. Patrick’s Celebration on the River!  The Competitions will take place Friday afternoon at 4 and Saturday afternoon between 2 and 2:30.  The competition will air on Spike TV at 7pm on St. Pat’s night.  Fans will see Takeru Kobayashi, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, “Humble” Bob Shoudt, Patrick Bertoletti, Timothy “Eater X” Janus, Richard LeFevre and Chipburger Simpson brave the gastronomical elements of Jalapenos, Corned Beef and Cabbage and Green Donuts!

I still have an Audible.com subscription, so I keep getting books.  I finished listening to Lisey’s Story the other night… THAT was a chore.  Guh.  I may have enjoyed the book if I’d read it on paper (doubt it), but I deeply disliked listening to it.  I hated all the stupid cutesy words & phrases – not even just the stuff related to the more fantastical elements of the story, but all the “secret language of marriage” bullshit, the “smucking” and the “book snake” and whatever he called the desk, “Dumbo’s big Jumbo” or something like that.  Hated.  And my GOD, sentences meandered so horribly, and in such inappropriate ways, that I felt like I was listening to a total stoner who couldn’t remember why they started talking in the first place.

But, hey, all the reviews say the book is hella literary.  Genius.  Perhaps this is so, but I was too blinded by irritation to notice.  And there was a good measure of secondary irritation: Lisey’s emotion was beautiful, and I’d have liked to see it clearly, without the’ SMUCKING’ CRAP.  *gnash*  It really felt like a bad parody of King’s most embarrassing habits.

Perhaps if I weren’t so obsessed with the Dark Tower this year I’d be more forgiving.  (Came back to edit this: no, I wouldn’t.  The book sucked.  Sorry.)

On the other hand, I just started listening to The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night Time.  It’s premature, just two hours into the book, to say this, but I am in solid love.  I absolutely adore it.  And, see, Mr. King, THIS is how to meander properly.

In paper books: I was reading Vellum, but now I can’t find it.  This sucks.  I was enjoying it.  So now I’m digging on Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By.  Also The Complete Metalsmith (which makes me eager to play with acids and electrical currents, yes it does.)

In movies: this weekend I had a stack of good things to watch, artistic masterpieces, quirky indie flicks, glorious imports.  So I, of course, watched The Wash and Days of Thunder.

In me: cashed a check & signed a contract (in that order) for a movie thing, will give details later.  Am to be writing a story quicklike.  Am overwhelmed with my day job, and my insomnia’s now to the 2-hours-a-night point.  I was holding steady at 3 hours a night for the past three years, and not doing well, but 2 hours is kind of terrifying.  I’m starting to seriously worry that so little sleep could cause brain damage – I know it’s causing physical breakdowns – and major druggery seems like an awfully healthy option at this point.

Until the end of tonight’s Westminster dog show, Pedigree will be MATCHING all donations given to the Humane Society through their site.  Please go to Pedigree.com and toss the critters a few bucks today.

I live and work with lots of hunters.  For years, whenever someone treats us to donuts at the office, I decline politely and joke that I’d be all over some meat, if someone would only bring that.

So my boss has started bringing me game.  Yesterday he brought me a mess of quail.  I’ve never eaten, much less cooked, a quail, so I was at a bit of a loss.

So I made up a recipe, cooked the birds tonight, and am thrilled at how it came out.  I only write down recipes after I’ve cooked something – no sense recording anything that wasn’t particularly interesting – so I had to guess at the quantities, but they should work fine.  This would be awesome served with asparagus dressed with fresh lemon juice.

Marinade: all measurements are approximate

1/3 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup mirin
1/4 cup rice vinegar
3tbs honey
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 to 2 tsp ground red pepper
1/4 tsp five-spice powder

Put birds in ziplock, add marinade, squeeze out most air, seal.  Marinate
overnight, turning bag now and then.

To Cook:

8 quail, spatchcocked or semi-deboned.  Chicken parts would work fine too.
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup reserved marinade
1 and 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Bay leaf
3 large or 4 medium potatoes, cleaned and cut into bite-sized chunks
Your choice of fresh mushrooms

Pat birds dry, reserve marinade.

In a large saute pan over medium heat, melt 1/2 stick of butter.  Add 1/4
cup olive oil and 4 cloves crushed garlic.  Saute garlic until butter foams.
Add birds, brown on all sides, takes about 6 minutes.

Mix 1/2 cup marinade and 1.5 cups chicken broth.  Pour over birds.  Add
vegetables and bay leaf, bring liquid to boil, reduce heat to low, cover.
Simmer for 40 minutes (add five minutes if you choose to turn the birds at
any point, though it’s not necessary.)

Remove birds, set aside.  Remove vegetables, set aside.  Discard bay leaf.
Bring heat under broth up to medium & thicken to gravy using flour,
cornstarch, or both.  This only takes about a minute; birds and vegetables
should stay plenty hot.

Plate – mound potatoes, top with birds, dress with gravy.

Oh, and it turns out that quail are yummy little buggers.

I read Anansi Boys (on my Palm) and loved it.  Don’t know what to read next – it’ll be on my Palm, too, because I’m committed to choosing a dedicated device soon and want to really pinpoint my own useage needs.

I’m reading the leaked manual (which has since been pulled from the FCC site) for the Amazon Kindle E Ink machine, and it looks promising.  EVDO connectivity, data entry via ugly keyboard (the Sony Reader has no entry access – so no searching, or looking up a specific page number) – user-replaceable (the Sony’s batter is not user-replaceable, which is SO GODDAMN STUPID and is pretty much a dealbreaker for me)… and little bells & whistles, like a trapper-keeper cover and a detachable light.

The Kindle as pictured on various sites is fugly, but the specs & manual make it look promising hardware-wise.  Content-wise… since Amazon owns Mobipocket, and since Amazon is Amazon, it’s probably going to be better than other devices’ options.

Still have to wait, though.  There are rumors about a subsidized or subscription-based model, similar to a cell-phone plan, say.   Get the phone for cheap if you sign a contract, or pay a ton for the phone if you  just want the equipment… that sort of thing.

(But I’m an early-adopting gadget slut and I DON’T WANT TO WAIT.  *tantrum.*  Please, Amazon, release this thing soon so I don’t freak out and buy one of the stupid Sony things, because the instant I do that, you’ll launch yours for $50 if I buy two books a month, I know you will.)

(And why does the manual keep accidentally calling the Kindle “Fiona?”  Wonder which one is the codename?  Huh.)

I’d been eagerly awaiting the release of the Sony PRS-500 Reader, the first reader using E Ink technology marketed to English-language consumers.  There are other E Ink offerings, most notably the less-consumer-oriented Irex iLiad, but they cost a lot and don’t easily handle downloaded ebooks, whether or not there are DRM issues.

The Japanese precursor to the PRS-500, the LIBRIé, had an abysmal content lock: not only are books limited to the proprietary content offered by Sony, but the rights expire 60 days after purchase and the book deletes itself.  ?!

The good news about the PRS-500: no such self-destruct.  The bad news: again, Sony’s basically taken an iTunes model and limited available content to stuff purchased through Sony’s Connect e-book store.   (Dude, it has manga!)  It’ll display PDFs, but won’t reflow or zoom them, so the vast majority of PDFs will suck – oh, and apparently it won’t open DRM-protected PDFs.  Sony says it’ll open .txt, .doc, or .rtf files, but you have to use desktop software to convert them into readable formats… so no, it won’t REALLY open those.

Sigh.

I read from time to time on my Palm (Tungsten T5, aka “my boyfriend,” though I tend to yell at it and devote more time to fixing it than I do my actual boyfriend, the Tony T1) and am not too fond of it.  The screen is wee, and the backlight can cause eye fatigue.  And you really can’t read it in daylight unless you’re wearing a fur-collared trenchcoat and make yourself a tent on your smoke breaks, not that I do this.  Or do I?  Yes, I do.

There are two big, screaming up-sides of E Ink displays: they use a reflective capsule technology that makes them look “fake.”  Meaning, you know how Radio Shack will sometimes stick a decal on the screen of a handheld in hopes of simulating the display, but you can totally tell it’s a sticker because it’s all sharp and crisp and clearly printed?  That’s fake.  And that is what E Ink looks like.  It looks like the printed page.  It strikes the eye as having the same opacity & matte appearance as paper, and the text is far and away more crisp than an LCD can provide.  And it only uses power to load the page: you can, say, load a sheet of music and leave it loaded for days without the battery even noticing.  And, due to the capsule technology, burn-in shouldn’t be an issue.  (Iliad techs say there would be ghosting that you can refresh away.)

I want the hell out of this technology, and I want very badly to have a reliably broad range of books available in ebook format.  Yes, I adore real paper books, I do.  But since moving into my new house last year, my small, small house, I’m really feeling the space crunch and have curtailed my book-buying because of it.  I installed floor-to-ceiling track shelves in the office, and we have bookcases in every room of the house, and all of them are two layers deep and have books crammed on their sides on top of the nice upright rows.  I have books on top of the kitchen cabinets.  We built a floor-to-ceiling case in the little jog in the wall beside the bathroom.  I have books in my car, books at my place of employment.  And it drives me FUCKING NUTS, because *having* the books isn’t the important part – *finding* them is.  What good is a library when you have no idea where you last saw Aleph?

I became a book collector by necessity: I read.  I do have some good “treat” editions, but most of them were either gifts from the authors, or the ONLY available editions, and therefore my only opportunity to read the books.

I’d be *thrilled* to have a good dedicated ebook device  using E Ink, but so far, the Sony doesn’t look like it’s going to cut it.  I ran some titles through Connect, Mobipocket, Fictionwise, and Ebooks.com.  Connect didn’t do TOO badly, but all the others were still better, and Mobipocket had the most things I checked.  (That’s not saying much.)

Tonight I was out back with the dogs.  Using my Palm, I went to Mobipocket.com and bought Anansi Boys.  It downloaded in about ten seconds, and I read the first two chapters.  Fast, easy, allows for impulse-buying on the spot, and it works.

I’ll try my best to resist the allure of E Ink for this first wave (unless the Irex iLiad suddenly allows you to run Mobipocket and eReader.)  Amazon’s working on an E Ink device of their own, with the ugly-ass prototype codenamed Kindle.

If someone makes an E Ink device that:
1. Displays a variety of formats, and therefore expands the available library
2. Contains wi-fi so you can purchase & download books on the fly
3. Suggests that developers realize that the device is a tool & the books are the reason we’re all interested in the tool…

I’ll buy that.

(And it would be extra-fun, she says, a TOTAL girl now, if the device were housed in a book-like “binding,” in an array of styles, so I could have an awesome forest-green tooled-leather “book” with gilt “edges” and have it contain tons of different books.  Ooh.)

For now, most books available in ebook format are big sellers (though where was Jonathan Strange?  Where??) because they justify the purchase of the rights.  I’d really like part of the publishing revolution to focus on dumping money into electronic rights.  It sure as hell makes more sense to me than having a paper book available on the shelf for two weeks before being stripped and pulped does.

I’ve always had cycles of creativity, which tend to run on the same timetable as my social preferences.  For a couple of years I’ll write my ass off & be incapable of being social; then I’ll shift to being very artsy-craftsy and more engaged socially.  That’s a big reason why I’ve never been interested in writing full-time.

I mean, when I’m in a writing phase, I am simply not capable of doing art.  My spatial perceptions & dexterity just aren’t there.  And when I’m in a visual phase, my language skills fail me – I forget what words mean, transpose letters, and have serious comprehension problems.

Yeah, I think it’s weird too.  It’s been going on like that since I was a little kid.

2006 was a banner year for me in the visual/physical arts, however.  I got into Asian Ball Jointed Dolls and have been really enjoying the hobby; painting their heads has been particularly fun.  The vast collection of eyeballs and body parts I have hanging around the house is fun, too.  And I started making doll-scale fine jewelry, tiny sterling rings & the like – handcutting sheet metal for ring bands, hand-setting stones, fabricating and soldering details, etc.  The pieces sell for good money, too – as well they should, them sumbitches are little bitty.  I have to use tweezers and a magnifying glass to make them.

In August, for my birthday, Tony made a lifelong dream come true and rented a cello for me, for three months.  I made really excellent progress and now own my own student cello (which I upgraded with good gutcore strings & a carbon-fiber bow.)  I really enjoy it, though I have no feeling in the fingers of my left hand.

(Today I threw out my left shoulder at work somehow, feels like some ligaments are out of whack, and I can NOT raise my arm – even when I try to soldier through the pain just to see what the range of motion is, some general in my nervous system overrides my plans and disables my arm.  So no cello practice for me today – my first day off in months, sniff.)

But, I’ve committed to a segment in a new anthology, so I’d better accelerate this cycle, or find a writing-brain to borrow (yet still be able to make jewelry, because that shit is lucrative and being on salary, there’s no chance for any additional income unless I sell stuff.)

However, judging by the sketches I did the other night to show Robert so he’d help me refine a character design, my visual-arts skills are probably one one motherfuck of a downswing right now, which bodes well for fiction.

(Speaking of which, after reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu & Other Stories, I allowed myself the great and long-denied treat of re-reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.  What a wonderful damn book.)