Author: Bukkhead

I'm the writer here.
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Feeling Weird Today

I was going to tell you that I have low blood-sugar, but’s not true. I do feel like my head’s in a fog. But that’s not the feeling I associated with low blood sugar. I mean, think my body’s fine. When I have low blood sugar, I have drained feeling, and yeah, I feel it in my head. So my head feels funny when my body is sugar deprived, but I don’t think my body is sugar deprived, but my brain might be.

It’s times like these I depend on my to-do lists. I can’t concentrate, can’t get motivated, so it’s times like these I go to the list and just do what’s on ‘em one by one. Make the bed. Wash the dishes, fold the laundry. There’s a metaphor there. Fat me is in charge of what getting-skinny me is supposed to do. I don’t know what skinny-me’s role is. There’s probably a metaphor in there too.

Just now I had a cup of green tea while doing the Tuesday NYT X-Word using an R2-DS pen we got in some box of cereal, while listening to all of the They Might Be Giants songs I own on shuffle in my iPod touch. Now I’m writing this. Next: pull-ups and push-ups, a bunch of work stuff, 750 words at 750 words.com, floss my teeth, sort my inboxes, the daily doodle, the daily Lego photo.

And then I’m going to go try and fix a dishwasher. And then come home and eat tuna and soup. I might save the writing for after the tuna and soup.

My head is in a fog, but not a regular fog. It’s like tunnel vision but backwards, like I can only see peripherally, and nothing is easy to focus on. Don’t worry: I did the dream test, where you read something and then look away and read it again, so I know I’m not having one of those dreams where tangents lead to tangents lead to tangents.

Maybe I’m diabetic! I’ll have a piece of candy.

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks– review on Goodreads

The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A friend of mine in Chicago is starting a book club, and this is going to be their first book. So I thought I’d take a look. I’m not much one for non-fiction, or this kind of subject, but Rebecca Skloot is a fine writer, and I found the book to be very readable. A fine, good read. Engaging, compelling, interesting, and probably most importantly, eye-opening. There’s the praise.

Ostensibly an attempt to tell Henrietta’s story, this book ends up being more about the story of trying to tell Henrietta’s story. Maybe that’s the author’s intent. Maybe there’s some deep symbolism there. In as much as the cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks continued to live and multiply, so too does the ongoing effect of those cells on her family. Maybe. That’s seems a bit easy. I think what we really have here is just too little information available about Henrietta herself, and so she gets covered in a few short chapters.

There, of course descriptions of how her cells have set a course for cancer research, and genetic research in general. But the vast majority of the book seems to be around how Skloot has to deal with one of Henrietta’s daughters, Deborah, in order to get as much information as she can to write the book at all. Which is not a bad thing, per se, and it is a good story. But the book ends up being about itself, a book about what it took to write the book.

That’s what I got out of it, anyway. And just like you always suspect, in the back of your mind, that good guys are going to win, to survive, when you’re watching them put in danger in a movie, so too did I have that sense as I was reading this. “I’m holding the book, so Skloot must have succeeded in getting it written.”

Skloot manages to tell the story without making it just about racism and sexism and class. Those elements are present in the story, but Skloot doesn’t let them take over, doesn’t make this book just a screed. And she does give a good introduction, as much as needed, to the science of cell division, cancer, the commercial side of things, patients’ rights, rights to privacy, again without lecturing too much, to provide context for what Deborah is dealing with as she fights to understand and honor her mother’s legacy.

If, in the end, Skloot’s goal was to elevate Henrietta Lacks to the stature of important historical figure, and to make her a real person and not just a footnote through an examination of her families survival after her passing, then I’d say she succeeded, and the book is worth reading.

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Famous Pi on Pi Day

Semi-Fiction by Jason Edwards. I’m going to cheat and tell you what this story is about. This is the writer’s process, or at least one of a billion different process. It’s not always the process I follow, but one I sometimes use without really realizing it. Vaguery floats around, looking for an interesting morsel around which to coalesce. It is an unconscious process; even as I wrote this, I didn’t know what I was writing. I just wanted to write something, wanted to try out this little writing program called Dark Room. My apologies if the “ending” is not very satisfactory: since all endings are just beginnings anyway, I figure, why not use a beginning for an ending.

March 14th. Pi day. Isn’t that cute. I’m walking down a street somewhere in New Orleans. This place is supposed to be exciting. It’s not. This place is supposed to be warm, at least. It’s not. Maybe we’re too far past Mardi Gras. Maybe we’re not close enough to summer. Or even spring. Does spring start on the equinox? When’s the damn equinox. I’d rather not be wearing fleece, here in New Orleans.

My third visit. First visit: wife’s pharmacy conference. I came along for the ride, ran in the Mardi Gras half-marathon. That was fun. Bourbon street at nine in the morning is fun. I think we ran past Anne Rice’s house, because at one point there were people dressed like vampires passing out water and Gatorade. Orange Gatorade. Should have been red. But it was just one water stop.

Second visit: wife’s sister’s fiancée’s bachelor party. I was invited probably out of some sense of pity. I didn’t have a bachelor party of my own. Got married when I was 37. When you’re 37, you don’t get to have a bachelor party. If you’re 37, and you’re still doing the sorts of things that guys do at bachelor parties, things that you’ll miss once you’re married, you have no business getting married. But I digress. I was invited. I went. Whiskey and poker and steak dinners and city tours and few strippers. Typical, lots of fun.

Reason for third visit? I’m not sure. This is where the fiction begins. I woke up, and I knew I had a plane ticket. Couldn’t really remember why, but I checked, and my bags were packed. I almost remember that I packed them myself. I must have, because when I left the airport to get a cab, it was cold, and I knew there was a fleece for me inside the suitcase.

And the hotel, for that matter. They were expecting me. Walked right up the desk, told them I had a reservation. McGillan, I said, automatically. I have literally never heard that name before in my life. Of course, they said. We’ll just need a credit card. I pulled one out– it had the name McGillan on it too. I handed it over. Everything went very smoothly.

I also spied a driver’s license in my wallet, when I grabbed the credit card. But I’m afraid to look at it. Go ahead and laugh at me. When I got to the room (large, one king bed) I avoided all mirrors. I don’t want to see that I’m not actually me. Not yet.

And now here I am, walking somewhere in the middle of the place. Have you been to New Orleans? I bet you haven’t. It’s not a very large town. There’s the tourist part, of course, with a small slice for Bourbon street, a small slice for the waterfront. There’s a casino. Some jazz clubs you haven’t heard of, where musicians you haven’t heard of have played. But if you heard the music, you recognize it. “We heard that in third grade, during Black history month.”

That’s New Orleans. And I’m walking down clean sidewalks, not quite an industrial area, not quite residential, on the edge of the convention center district. Restaurants that cater to mid-week visitors looking for an authentic po’boy, jambalaya, or cat fish. I’ve had cat fish. It’s usually mushy.

Up ahead, I spy a sign. The word “spy” rolls around in my mind. Am I a spy? Have I been activated? Was I a sleeper, did I get a call yesterday, a cryptic word, a post-hypnotic suggestion? Am I Jason Bourne? Should I ask a cab driver to take me to the rough part of town, drop me off, walk into a pool hall and stick out like a sore thumb, invite trouble, an assault by three tough-looking youths, and me spinning around doing Jackie Chan moves with the pool cue and surprisingly useful empty bottle of Sazerac?

It could be like the witch trials, back in the day. If I survive, it’s proof I’m a secret agent. If I don’t, it’s proof I’m dead.

The sign hangs on the side of a building walled with corrugated metal sheets. I’m two blocks away now. 10 years ago my Lasik would have been good enough to read it by now. I can still see better than I did before the Lasik, but I can’t quite make it out yet. But there’s something compelling about it, something about its shape. I have no idea why I’m here, so I’m going to sate my curiosity and check it out. What else am I going to do.

First visit, wife’s pharmacy conference. I worked on my laptop, from the hotel room, and when I didn’t have to work, I wandered around a lot. The new waterfront mall. Bourbon street at 2 PM, not quite the night life I’d see during the bachelor party on my subsequent visit, but still some liveliness. I was teetotalling at the time, so I avoided the daiquiris, just got drunk from walking around. Not exactly drunk, of course. That’s artistic license. My point is, that first visit, even with the half-marathon notwithstanding, I spent a lot of time on my feet.

Second visit, brother-in-law-in-law’s bachelor party, there was also a lot of walking. I’m an early riser, so while the guy’s slept it off, I would get up and see the city in the morning. If another of them was awake, we’d eschew the cab and go for a long walk to one eatery or another. One afternoon they guys wanted to visit the World War II museum, and I decided to skip it. I’m not passing judgment, I just can’t stand that kind of thing. Went for a long-ass walk instead.

Is that why I’m here now, on my third visit? Just to walk around all over the place? I read a story once, might have been a book, about this guy who decided to just start walking all over the place, and for some reason people start to join him, and soon there’s a crowd of folks walking across America, and the crowd grows and grows, picking up more people, until the author reveals it’s this thing the Earth is doing to cure itself of the cancer called Humanity.

Did some failsafe trigger inside me? Do I have some sort of cancer of the soul, did I unconsciously book myself a ticket for this place where I had, a few times before, just walked around for no good reason? I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times, walked my legs off there too, so why not Vegas? I’ve pounded the streets of Paris, a fool’s errand, walking around looking for the Bastille, stupidly unaware that it had been torn down at the start of the revolution. So why not Paris. Why not Seattle, San Jose, Washington DC. My feet have seen a lot of pavement.

One block away from the sign now, and I can finally make it out. It’s a gigantic Pi symbol. I remember this place. It’s called Famous Pi, and yes, they make pizza. A feeling of completion comes over me. I wandered by here during the bachelor party, and yes, it was March 14th that time too. Took a picture, sent it to my sister’s wife, who appreciates math jokes. Famous Pi on Pi day. Isn’t that cute.

And now here I am again. I check my pockets– no phone. So I’m not here to take another picture. I check my wallet. No cash– and a placard on the door of the place says they don’t take credit cards. You’d think, whatever complicated machine put me on this path would have known that. So I’m not here to eat.

I check my gut. I’m not even hungry. But I’m apprehensive. Add I don’t even know why. But I don’t hesitate. I walk right in.

The smell of garlic, cheese, bread. I look around– none of this is familiar. I’d only ever taken a picture from the outside, didn’t go in. So this is new. There’s no one here, except a guy behind the counter, who looks at me.

“McGillan.” he says.

And then it washes all away. I’ve been to New Orleans more than twice before. I’ve been here dozens of times. I don’t have a wife– I’ve never been married. I’ve been to a few bachelor parties, but never in this city. Everything I was thinking I was, before, I’m not. I’m someone else entirely.

“Luther.” I say.

“Welcome. We’ve got a story to write. Sit down. Get you something to eat? On the house.”

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A Few Words About That Book Review I Just Posted

Before I wrote that review of Promise Me Eternity by Ian Fox, I posted my misgivings over at Reddit, to see if anyone thought  I should give the author such negativity. For the most part, they said yes. Here’s that posting, which you’ll see has a few paragraphs I used in the review itself.

Additional note: a few days later, someone from Reddit has sent me a private message, asking me to read his book too, and provide “cruel cold feedback.” Oh boy.

Every time I finish reading a novel, I write a review on Goodreads. These are more like diary-style blog entries, but whatever. It’s about discipline, trying maintain an active reading habit. A few weeks ago, this guy sent me a message, via Goodreads, asking me to read and review one of his books. He sent me a coupon so I could download it for free from Smashwords. I figured, why not?

It’s really a horrible book. The characters are flat, stereotypical, and at the same time unrealistic. Entire chapters are dedicated to extraneous characters who have little, or nothing to do with the plot. The writer lavishly describes what they do, where the go, what they eat. It’s all very over the top.

A lack of verisimilitude pervades every aspect of this novel. None of the professions that the various characters possess are described in anything approaching a realistic fashion. I realize that most fiction takes license with this kind of thing (have a doctor watch Grey’s Anatomy, you know what I mean). But this novel shows not only lack of understanding, but a complete disregard for any attempt at reality.

There’s a plot, in the sense that people face conflict and attempt to resolve the conflict, but there’s no pacing to the novel, no rising action, and the climax is muddled. At no point is there a sense for why we should care about any of this. Deus Ex Machina in spades. I don’t mean to insult youth, or even insult inexperience. But the novel really does read as if it were written by an intelligent twelve-year old trying to sound like an adult.

But that’s my take as a reader. As a writer, I am questioning whether this kind of harsh judgment is even necessary. This guy wrote, proofread, and self-published a 400 page novel. I’ve written a few novels, but I’ve been too lazy to self-publish them. So I admire his work ethic. He reached out to me, and I assume he’s reached out to others. He’s making the effort. I can forgive ignorance (have to: I’m possessed of so much of it) but I can’t forgive laziness.

So I’m conflicted. On the one hand, this novel is so bad, I feel that pointing out its flaws ironically gives it credit, in that it’s worthy of being nitpicked. And it really isn’t. On the other hand, who am I to judge? I’ve heard horrible things about Twilight, for example, and what passages I’ve read were indeed horrible (in my opinion). But so many people love the book, who am I to tell them they shouldn’t love it? And maybe that’s the same for this guy’s novel. What credentials do I even possess that would legitimize a harsh review?

Perhaps silence is golden. But I should write back to this fellow, and tell him *something.* I don’t want to be cruel or mean or discouraging. The book’s already published, so there’s no sense in fixing it, and honestly, I don’t think it can be fixed anyway. But it’s not like I want to tell him to stop writing. Or publishing, for that matter. I reject the notion that arbitrary scholars get to say what’s good, so why should I get to say what’s bad?

TL;DR: Was asked to read a book, which turned out to be horrible, but who am I to judge.

Any suggestions?

 

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Promise Me Eternity– review on Goodreads

Promise Me EternityPromise Me Eternity by Ian Fox

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I was asked by the author to read this book and write a review. I’m afraid I do not feel this book is a very good read. And I was reluctant to post what will mostly be negative things, but it seems others have also been asked to read and review, and so I am more or less echoing what they’ve said.

The characters are flat, stereotypical, and at the same time unrealistic. Entire chapters are dedicated to extraneous characters who have little, or nothing to do with the plot. The writer lavishly describes what they do, where the go, what they eat. It’s all very over the top.

A lack of verisimilitude pervades every aspect of this novel. None of the professions that the various characters possess are described in anything approaching a realistic fashion. I realize that most fiction takes license with this kind of thing (have a doctor watch Grey’s Anatomy, you know what I mean). But this novel shows not only lack of understanding, but a complete disregard for any attempt at reality.

There’s a plot, in the sense that people face conflict and attempt to resolve the conflict, but there’s no pacing to the novel, no rising action, and the climax is muddled. At no point is there a sense for why we should care about any of this. Deus Ex Machina in spades. I don’t mean to insult youth, or even insult inexperience. But the novel really does read as if it were written by an intelligent twelve-year old trying to sound like an adult.

I will admit that I may not be the right audience for this novel, and I recognize there are others who have read this and enjoyed it. Perhaps I am a snob. And I do think the author deserves credit for putting in a lot of effort, and jumping through the self-publishing hoops. But in the end, I simply could not immerse myself in the book, as I was too distracted by what I felt was amateurish writing.

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I Am a Werewolf

fiction by Jason Edwards

from Diary of a Wolf Man by Paul Lucas:

I am a werewolf. Do you want to me to talk about the change? It hurts. Do you want me to talk about running free in the woods? It’s exhilarating. There’s really nothing more for me to say. Ask a ballerina what it’s like to perform in front of a theater, packed. She’s lithe, she’s supple, she’s graceful, she has dancing in her DNA– but not words. She can’t tell you. And even if she had the right words, you wouldn’t understand. She’s an alien, she’s a one-way mirror. I’m a werewolf. I’m blood and fear, moonlight and rage. I might as well talk about quantum physics.

Or molecular biology. My condition is not natural. I’m the one percent who survives one percent of the time. A werewolf is nothing but the inevitable consequence of metabolism taken to the utmost extreme. The beast hunts its prey, and devours the protein. But it must be living protein. So the beast infects its prey with enzymes that keep it alive. The prey burns through its energy stores, begins converting its own body into more protein. It lives while the beast feeds. Eventually, even magic cannot keep the carcass alive. The beast leaves behind a pile of offal.

Sometimes, but very rarely, the prey escapes before the beast is done eating. But it is infected, and it continues to change. It goes mad. It really is very painful. You don’t know how painful it is, and you will never know. Pain is just a word, and words have no meaning, wrapped in that kind of Hell. Hell is just a word too. Eventually, the body dies, the beautiful complicated interlocking systems broken down, converted to a pile of protein. It’s almost worse, to die like that for nothing. If you’re not even food, what’s the point.

And sometimes, even more rarely, the prey escapes, and it’s only barely infected. The enzyme gets into the blood, into the brain, into the endocrine system. The body burns, hot, and in this early stage, you can never get enough to eat. You have never know such hunger. Naturally, at first, you turn to sweet things, sugary foods. That kick. But it’s just a kick. Just a punt, and you need a catapult. You need a rocket launch. If you’re lucky- actually, if you’re lucky, you starve to death. They find you twisted on your kitchen floor, emaciated and drained, your skin still hot for days.

But if you can get on top of it, if you can stay fed, if you can get that protein, you can survive. That’s what I did. It chased me through a city park, had me, bit me, and ran with me into the middle of the road. We were hit by a car. I woke up in a hospital, surrounded by doctors and nurses. They were pumping me full of protein. I got on top of it. I survived.

Why wolf? It’s in our DNA, all animals share DNA, and the enzyme just reprograms you for a little while. It would be elegant if it wasn’t so horrifying. The full moon rises, and ancient strands of valine, threonine, alanine, and glycine, time wearied patterns, respond to the pull and begin to devour you from the inside. You grow, literally grow, like a baby grows into a young adult, but in the space of a few hours instead of a few decades. This is what I mean when I say it hurts.

It’s an efficient process but it consumes unworldly amounts of energy and there’s nothing left to do then but feed. Find something alive and keep it alive until it’s dead and then find something else and do it again. You’re gifted with all the tools to do this: hearing and smell and eyesight and speed and agility and, oh, right, what do you call the opposite of morality?

Because you’re aware, you’re so aware of every single moment. There’s no amnesia. A creature that grows from man to wolf in the time it takes to watch a bad movie has the advantage of certain evolutionary benefits– the man who woke up in his own bed, washed of the night’s blood, was easily naturally selected over the man who woke naked in a field surrounded by slaughter with no memory except yesterday’s growling stomach.

This is why I don’t talk about the change, talk about running in the woods. Those are romantic notions, and ask yourself this the next time you’re tooth-deep in a piece of fried chicken and you forget for a second that you have a job and a family and a cock and a Playstation: what if your entire existence could be defined in that salty bite? What if, when you took that bite, the result wasn’t bloat and shame, grease and fatigue, but instead it meant strength and power and more rage than any one man can justify stifling? Would you, at that moment, answer silly questions about how the fried chicken was coated with flour, why they chose those colors for the paper napkins? No. You would just keep eating. Just keep eating and eating and eating and eating. Until it was all gone.

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I Hate Ted Mosby

I hate Ted Mosby, but let it be known that I do not hate the actor who portrays him, John Radnor. Or Josh Radnor. Or whatever. And this is a valid point, because I do very much like the other actors on How I Met Your Mother. I absolutely adore Alyson Hannigan (who doesn’t? I kill them). Neil Patrick Harris is the man. Jason Segel’s got chops. I don’t know much about Cobie Smulders, but she’s good looking, and she’s Canadian (I have sort of a thing for Canadians. And Jewish girls. And Indians. Just don’t ever introduce me to a Canadian Jewish Indian girl. Just don’t).

I don’t know anything about John or Josh or Jack Radnor. When I Google him, his not-as-Ted Mosby face seems alright to me. So maybe he’s the greatest actor of all time. Because when I see his Ted Mosby face, I am filled with hatred. I just don’t like that guy. He’s smug. He’s arrogant. He’s lazy. He’s a misogynist (oh yes he is god damn it. Maybe you say Barney’s the misogynist? At least Barney doesn’t fool himself and others into thinking he wants more than what he wants).

Look, I’m not prepared to do a deep analysis of the character, or the show for that matter, because I really try not to watch it. My wife watches it. My sister-in-law and her husband watch it. Everybody watches it. The people who award Emmys watch it. And I’m not saying I’m better or cool or hip because I don’t watch this hit TV show. And I’m not trying to be secretly cool by saying I’m not cool. I know I’m a loser. But I’m no Ted Stupid-Head Mosby.

I don’t like Glee, either, cause I don’t like the singing much, although when they’re not singing, when Sue Sylvester’s on the screen, that show is awesome. I don’t like The New Girl, because it’s basically a one-camera sitcom painfully stretched to the multi-camera format. I don’t like Up All Night except when Maya Rudolph is on the screen, and of course I admit Christina Applegate is an amazing actress, and c’mon, Will Arnett is a genius, so okay, I do like that show, but I don’t like that I like it. I tell you all this so you can contextualize my dislike for How I Met Your Mother based on Ted Please Catch On Fire Mosby.

I also hate the theme song to the show. Which really sucks, for me, because pretty much the whole time I’ve been writing this, I’ve had it stuck in my head.

Did you know there’s a web site called tedmosbyisajerk.com? It was made by someone on the show, not a real person, so this is the writers themselves saying the man’s not worth a small pile of bee barf. Judging from the website’s content, it’s actually based on an experience someone had with Barney, but that’s not the point. The point is, I hate him.

And I am not alone. There’s Facebook pages dedicated to hating him, blogs, web content; they call him whiny, a schmuck, self-centered. The word that keeps popping up again and again is “douche.” Don’t know if I agree with that. I mean, I do– not in the same way Schmidt on the The New Girl is a douche (re: douchebag jar) but Ted Mosby is for sure a douche in that sense of I-don’t-like-him-so-every-bad-word-is-okay-to-use-to-describe-him.

Do you hate Ted Mosby? Think carefully. Search your soul, look deep inside your heart. You do, don’t you? You watch the show, but it’s despite, not because of, Ted Cracker Please Mosby. I knew it.

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White Noise– review on Goodreads

White NoiseWhite Noise by Don DeLillo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

White Noise is a post-modern novel. At least that’s what I was told, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to rebel against the label. What’s post-modernism? A reaction to modernism, which was a reaction to realism, which was a reaction to… I don’t know, God, I guess. And we only invented God as a way to explain death, to be less afraid of it. White Noise is about death, and how scary it is.

Don DeLillo’s post-modern novel “deconstructs” otherwise familiar institutions, such as the traditional family, for example. The main character is on his fifth marriage (although two of the previous marriages were to the same woman). He lives with some, but not all, of his children from those previous marriages, and some, but not all, of his current wife’s children from her previous marriage. But this is not a “dysfunctional” family, nor does DeLillo bother to show us how they’re oh-so functional. White Noise portrays things exterior to the labels slapped on them after the fact.

People argue with the main character about the meanings of words, the absurdity of accepting concepts merely as their given or shared by society. Folks are fascinated by trivia, ephemera, the detritus of desiderata. Subjects are taken out of their institutional contexts, stripped of judgement, and then reinserted to perform on their own merits. Or something. Look, I wrote a brilliant review just a few minutes ago, then accidentally deleted it without saving. I am not at all happy about this.

I don’t want to write some kind of critical analysis of the book, I just want to tell you whether you should read it or not, why I gave it four stars. I mean, Don DeLillo, right? He should get five stars, yes? Maybe I’m just not smart enough to get sucked into a book like this, maybe I need more plot, more character development. Usually in these reviews I rant and rave about how bad or good a writer’s prose style comes across. Don DeLillo’s writing is matter-of-fact, which is a good thing in this context. He doesn’t try to impress us with verbal brilliance. Or replace “impress” with “distract.” Or replace “distract” with “fool.” I don’t know if he set out to write a post-modern nove, or if that’s just how he thinks.

But it doesn’t matter what he thinks, but matters is what I think, and what I think is that nothing really matters. I can tell you this, after reading White Noise, I don’t know if I’m eager to read more so-called Post-Modern novels, but I do really want to go watch a few gorgeous sunsets. Not because they’re a symbol of anything. Just to see how beautiful they can be.

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Running Knows

Who knows what it is to be running?
Only he who is running, running, running, knows…
Ru-u-u-u-u-un! Ru-u-u-u-u-un!
Ru-u-u-u–u-u-u-unning knows!
Run running knows! Run running knows!

Iphigenia in Brooklyn, P.D.Q. Bach, S.53162

As soon as I got out of the car and walked in the door this morning, I could smell that unmistakable aroma: ammonia. It meant only one thing, that I was burning protein on my morning (treadmill) run at the gym, instead of glucose. Not necessarily a bad thing, but in an amateur like me, it was probably a sign that I had been running too hard.

What’s too hard? I ran a warm-up mile at 6 mph (10 minutes per mile) then ran a “fast” 5k, the first half at 6.7, the second half at 7.1 mph. Over the last half mile I bumped the speed up to 7.3 and 7.5. The latter’s an eight minute mile pace, which I am capable of doing for about three miles, on a good day. And then a cool-down mile at 6 mph. Overall, didn’t seem too hard.

Heart rate on the warm-up: about 155, easily ten BPM more than it should be for me at the speed, suggesting a bit of dehydration. On the first half of the 5k: 165, also a tad high, but not horribly so. Second half: 175, approaching my theoretical “max,” and understandable at that speed (for me). On the cool down mile: 160, too high, definitely due to dehydration. Note that after the 5k, resetting the treadmill to get on the cool down, my HR dropped to 120, so that last 160 was not merely slow recovery. And after the second cool down, my heart rate dropped below 120 in just a few minutes. My heart’s good an healthy.

Every once in a while, as I ran, I did little cadence checks, and pretty much every time I was hitting between 90 and 94 strides per minute (per foot). That was at all the different speeds, which means at the high speeds, I was taking longer strides. And this is supported by my Nike+ device, which was behind by about 3/10 if a mile—it was counting my usual stride length.

So, I’m concluding that longer strides burned up all my available glucose, and once the fast-twitch fibers where engaged, they remained engaged, eating up protein, as evidenced by my high recovery HR. That’s not the most scientifically rigorous conclusion, but we’ll see if I can apply it to my next run: if I’m going to run long, I need to keep that heart rate from cresting. No long bursts (yes, that’s an oxymoron).

The good news is that at no point where my muscles too tired to sustain the effort, nor was I ever out of breath. My calves and ankles weren’t too happy, but that’s a different issue altogether.

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Airborne Toxic Event

My to do list says “blog!” and Mondays are for book reviews because I’m supposed to read one book per week. But I haven’t finished last week’s book, White Noise by Don DeLillo. I’m almost done, could probably finish it today and write my “review,” but I want to get my every-day to do list done NOW! Damn it! I could just fake it. No one reads these damn things anyway.

I’ll just go over to a few other websites, see what they have to say, see if it jibes, say something similar. For example, Wikipedia says:

White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made catastrophes, and the potentially regenerative nature of human violence. … The novel’s style is characterized by a heterogeneity that utilizes “montages of tones, styles, and voices that have the effect of yoking together terror and wild humor as the essential tone of contemporary America”

(quoting Frank Lentricchia, editor of New Essays on White Noise, apparently).

Now me, I’m a writer. Those of you who have waded through my self-indulgent pages know this. You know that a writer is someone who is compelled and accomplishes, as a reason for being, stringing together words in sentences in a chronic or at the very least pathological fashion. Nothing to do with being published, having readers, actually finishing anything. As long as I am wont to go blah bah blah, I’m a writer.

So, as a writer, I have to wonder, what’s the deal with themes? Do writers set out to have “themes” in their books? I never do. Not ever. I don’t say “I think I’ll write about the break-neck speed at which we’re forced to live these days, sacrificing sleep for sensation, the irony being that we’re dulled by stimulation, numb to anything except the joy of oblivion.” No, I just think it would be cool to write a story about 4 kids who decide if they can stay awake for 96 hours straight. And style? I can assure you, I don’t ever set out with a fixed style in mind. I just slap the words together in a way that seems to work.

But then, I’m no Don DeLillo. Thank god! If I was, and if I were ever published, I’d have to compete with the other Don DeLillo! Can you imagine, someone walks into a bookstore, says to the guy wearing glasses: “The latest from Don DeLillo, please,” wanting the book a friend of a friend of my mom told them about, only to get the other Don DeLillo’s book instead! Which is why writing should never be about praise. They’d read the book, find it excellent, tell their friend, who tells their friend, who tells my mom, who tells me. “They said they liked the theme of novelty academic intellectualism, and appreciated your montage of styles.”

And me, not knowing that’s what I’d written, I’d be all “Gee, cool!”

Anyway, there’s 500 words. Enough for a blog post. See what I mean about writers being those who just @#$%^&* write, and to hell with the results? I’m a god damned natural.