WordRidden

To the lights some jerk-off stole from the front of our house for no reason

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

i bought you because
you reminded me of the
granite-carved guide lights

which illuminate
the pathways and gateways of
gardens in japan.

you weren’t pricey,
plastic instead of granite,
little solar cells.

you weren’t too bright,
just enough to cast a glow
on the path out front,

to guide us at night,
coming home in a taxi,
walking down the street.

i knew you’d get nabbed.
at some point all things do here
if they’re not chained down.

you were placed, not chained,
beckoning kids, drunks and jerks
passing in the dark.

you were so fleeting,
a month of brightness, then gone,
stolen for no point.

people really suck.

Guide stone (of a sort)

3 comments

To the garden I didn’t know I wanted ‘til I had it.

Monday, July 19th, 2010

A poem of sorts.…

4:03pm 2 comments

A world without planes?

Monday, April 19th, 2010

No thanks.…

6:14pm 3 comments

Center for Jewish History on Flickr

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Another reason why the Internet is awesome.…

12:39pm 0 comments

SxSWi 2010

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

My fourth South by Southwest.…

8:20pm 0 comments

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Elsewhere

Lost In Translation
My professional site
Salter Cane
My rockstar alter-ego
Principia Gastronomica
Being a journal of culinary delights

Reading

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

I enjoyed this book so much more the second time around. I’m not sure why; maybe I’m just used to Stephenson’s writing style now, maybe I’m more open to the way his mind works, or maybe I had more invested in the characters after falling in love with the Baroque Cycle. It certainly didn’t hurt that, this time around, I was in a hot, steamy, chaotic place (Thailand) reading about another hot, steamy, chaotic place (the Philippines)

It was interesting to finally really see the connections between Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle. I particularly like the parallel relationships between the main characters (the brilliant genius and the brilliant not-quite-genius: Newton and Daniel Waterhouse, Turing and Lawrence Waterhouse), and I took great pleasure in recognizing references to things such as the white sultans of Kinakuta and Eliza Peak—stuff from the Baroque Cycle which hadn’t actually “happened” yet when Cryptonomicon was written.

Like with Pattern Recognition, there’s a certain “datedness” about Cryptonomicon now, but you just can’t write about computer technology these days and not have it seem dated 6 months down the line. That in no way detracts from the book, however; Cryptonomicon is of its time, but it feels timeless as well. Yes, it’s a very long book, and yes, there is codebreaking stuff in there that goes way over my head, but this book is worth every hour of time I spent reading it.

Further reading…