Book review - Peter and the Star Catchers and some random thoughts.

 It's been awhile since my last book review and that's because it took me awhile to get through Peter and the Starcatchers by Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry. It's not that the book is that long it's that it just took forever for me to get into it and when I'm not into a book I don't seem to find the time to read as much as when I am. I love J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan and when I saw this book, it's suppose to be a prequel to Pan, several years ago I wanted to read it and it's just taken till now to get to it, it was not worth the wait. The first half of the book is very slow in it's build up, the tempo doesn't pick up and the story doesn't get interesting until the pirates board Peter's ship which is almost half-way through the book. Early on I realized if I was going to get any enjoyment out of this book, and there is some joy to be had from it, I had to let go of the prequel to Peter Pan idea and just read it as a story on it's on, a story that just happens to have some similarities to Peter Pan. Because this Peter is not the  Peter we all know and love. "The" Peter Pan is an archetype of adolescence, brash, brazen and bold. He's always ready for an adventure, he'll switch sides in the middle of a fight, he gets moody when he doesn't get his way and he doesn't understand when things aren't fair. The Peter in Starcatchers is just too precocious to ever be the Pan. The other big problem with this being a prequel is that Barrie's Peter Pan is as much a dream as he is real where as the Peter in this book is very much based on a real world. The story tries to explain all the wonderful things that just 'are' in Barrie's book and sometimes explaining things takes away all the fun.
  Now for some randomness. I shared this as a status update earlier but it's funny enough to bear repeating here, I overheard my four year old playing with two Batman figures yesterday and this is the conversation the two caped crusaders had. "I know your Batman." "You know Batman can turn into a kitty. Meow, meow." lol    
Now a story about the wee one, who's almost two now, he and I were sharing a can of roasted almonds and he squats down in the floor and starts putting almonds into his diaper, so of course I say, "Boy you already got two nuts in there you don't need any more."  Well he, despite my admonitions not too, puts the almonds in there and he's walking around and then he pulls them out and starts to put him in his mouth. Ewww. So I yell, "Sam don't eat those!" Thankfully he listened this time, and dropped them in the floor. I threw them away and then grabbed me some hand sanitizer.

Well I suppose that's all for now, I hope every one has a good week. Now let's go, "second  to the right and straight on till morning".

Sexual harassment 101

Once a month or so we have plant wide meetings at the good ol' distribution center where management tells us how things are going, where we're headed and generally blowing smoke up our, well you know. These meeting are also used for instructional purposes, where MSDS's are located, what to do in case of a spill and all the way from the home office ethics training. Ethics training usually takes the form of videos where 'actors' are playing out dramatic scenes, often to comedic effect, to teach us a lesson. Sort of like School House Rock without the cartoons and cool songs. This month our lesson was on sexual harassment.(I prefer her-as-ment but if your prefer hair-as-ment, I'm fine with that. It takes all kinds.) The vid. starts with Ann showing new girl Anita around the shop floor (the facts are the same the names have been change to protect the, well actually because I don't remember them) when Ann remembers she's suppose to have Anita at personnel by 11 but Ann doesn't have a watch on,and apparently there's no clocks on the wall and she must have left her cell phone at her desk, so she asks Jim (our heel in this scenario) if he's got the time. (No Ann! What are you thinking?) Jim's cagey reply is, 'I've got the time if you've got the energy'. While Ann looks a little put out she still fires back, 'You couldn't keep up.' So Jim, encouraged by this no doubt, fires off a few salvos of very thinly veiled innuendo which Ann deflects. Then Jim takes aim on the new girl, Anita, after all Jim and Ann aren't exclusive, he's a playa'. Jim says she'll be a great asset to the company and that he'll definitely keep an eye on her, then he nods and (holy shit batman) winks at them before strutting away. After Jim's departure Anita is aghast she asks Ann, 'How do you put up with that?' Anita say's , 'Aw, that's just how Jim is, you'll get use to him.' Well Anita and Ann have a nice little convo in which we find that Ann doesn't like Jim's remarks but assumes she just has to put up with it, because he's always been that way. Then the video presentation stops and we're asked a couple of questions about what was right and wrong and what the characters and us should do if we should ever find ourselves in this situation. The right answer generally involves some form of talk to them and then tell supervision. We've even got a hot-line number if you don't feel comfortable talking to someone on the premises, which is a good thing even though this blog is of course tongue-in-check. Two things really bothered me about this little info-drama, let us take a look at them. Shall we? Now let's go back a little bit and have a closer look at Jim, first off the two ladies are attired in clothing suitable for an office environment and are out in the 'shop', Jim on the other hand is t-shirt and jeans, regular work-a-day Joe, or Jim in this case. Jim is graying late thirties/early forties, he's got a bit of a paunch and the sneer of a paunchy, graying late thirties/early forties single man watching the high school cheerleaders practicing splits and kicks. He comes on all cocksure and smooth criminal like and it fits him like that bra fit the chick on Sienfield (if it doesn't fit you must acquit). So it's no wonder the women are uncomfortable with this sleazy want to be Lothario trying to lay his mack down. But here's my problem, imagine this scenario, imagine Jim flirting with these girls and now imagine that Jim is white! (lol,Sorry I'm going to use Pitt for my example and Mcconaughey had to get his two cents in.) Imagine that instead of poor perfectly cast graying, early thirties/late forties paunchy guy the role had been played by Brad Pitt, circa Thelma and Louise, all chiseled abs and a ten gallon hat of southern charm and he'd a said with a sly sideways smile, 'I got the time if you've got the energy.' You think these ladies would still have been creeped out or would they have been all batting eyelashes, bated breath, tittering little school girls. It's still technically sexual harassment (or hair-as-ment if you prefer) regardless of who says it but it's definitely not going to be reported if it's enjoyed.  The second thing that bothered me about this info-soap-drama was that our little Snidely Whiplash, Jim, this cockalorum, this braggadocio, this swaggering sultan of sleaze, this plucked pea-cock, this impudent imp, this brazen would be Don Juan, this big pimpin' faux-mack daddy, this eye-winking, head nodding, son of a bitch never told Ann what time it was! (Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol.)

So boys and girls what did we learn today? The beautiful people of the world get by with a lot more crap than the rest of us can and small insignificant facts can really drive me to distraction.  In closing I'd like to share a quote that combines our topic of sexual harassment (or hair-es-ment, if you prefer) and my goal of comedy.

"Joey. Do you like movies about gladiators?"

These old bones and of course a book review.

I had a pretty nice and way too short weekend. I feel like the last three days have been spent in a time vortex. Friday night the eight hours I spent at work seem to have lasted just shy of infinity and then the past two days flew past like wind through the sun roof on a gorgeous faux-spring day. I worked on my van some and seeing as how I'm neither a mechanic nor a handy-man I didn't accomplish too much but I did manage to clean my battery cables and get my battery looking nice, so that's something. I watched the slam dunk contest Sat. night it was pretty entertaining and watched The Big Lebowski which I thought I would like so much better than I actually did, dude. Saturday night also found me fighting a headache most of the evening, worse one I've had in some time. It's mostly gone but ever so often it hints at wanting to hurt again. I think perhaps it's something in the air. Pollen? Maybe. Sunday found me trying to watch the Daytona 500, I like racing but it just takes way too long to finish a race so I usually end up napping and reading during the race. I really don't like the new style of racing they're doing this year with the two car drafts, a car can't do anything on it's own and they have to wait until the last lap to make a move. So I watched it, but just sort of. Sunday afternoon Alex and I played a few games of back yard b-ball, he won two out of three, and it was lots of fun and good exercise. Of course old man that I am I spent Sunday evening watching the NBA all star game with an ice pack on my knee and today I can barley make it up and down the stairs. The NBA all star game was good, in the second half. The first half the East didn't really play too much and it was just the Kobe Bryant show, Lebron came back from half-time fired up and made it a close game. The West still won however and Kobe still got MVP, but at least it was a game.

Now on to the books. I finished The Sandman volume two The Dollhouse this weekend, very, very creepy. I'm not a fan of serial killer stuff and this one was chock full o' them, it really wasn't my cup of tea throughout much of it but Gaiman made it all alright toward the end. I believe he used the killers (he even says as much when Morpheus confronts the Corinthian) to mirror the darker impulses of humanity. Not sure where this comic goes but I'm sure it will be twisted and interesting.
I also finished reading Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Good book and very different than anything I've ever read, our heroine Tita unwillingly infuses the food she cooks with the emotions and feeling she has as she cooks them. This is a love story, where love isn't an emotion but a force of nature and God help who or whatever tries to stand in it's way. While there were parts of this book I wished had gone other ways overall I loved the way the writer takes you different directions and leaves you hoping and pulling for Tita, and the ending... wow. That's all I'm going to say. The style of the book is unique as well, it's written as a cook book with each month holding a different recipe that's tied to the events going on in the chapter.

quickie blog

This is an attempt to write something without over thinking it and really just an excuse to write. I've got ideas for stories in my head one I've been incubating for years and every so often I think of something else for it and then get excited about it for a little bit but every time I've ever tried to 'put pen to paper' it goes horrifically wrong and I usually don't get past the first paragraph before I've given up. So this is going to be a wham, bam, thank you mam, off the cuff , free flowing blog. I listen to lots of different types of music, my main stay, the one I always come back to is country. I like that it's about life as I know it and that it can be funny or serious and occasionally deep but mainly I like it because it's easy to sing along to. The last few days however I've been in a pop mood listening to Rhianna, 'sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips they excite me' when I heard that a part of me was like whoa! Rhianna, tmi,tmi and part of me was like yeah, you go girl. Bruno Mars, 'I'd catch a grenade for ya', Keisha, 'don't mess with us, got Jesus on our necklaces' yes that's really a line, and Katy (thank god for her)Perry, 'you make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream'. At first I wasn't all that crazy about that song but then it reminded me of Rain and me and I started liking it, people often tell us we still act like teenagers. I think it's because we still really like each others company. We still joke and pick and we still have the hots for each other, that helps too. I started on the pop fix after coming off of about a week of metal. I was jamming out to Metallica as much as possible for a while there. It's great music for working out to, very testosteroney (wow, imagine spell check not liking it when you add a y to a word to try and make it an adjective) with that thick bass line, thump, thump, thump. Kinda primal and kick-ass in a UFC kinda way. But while it's great for the gym I find that's it's not so great to listen to before bed are really before work, for me anyway. The week I was really into it I was ill most nights at work and the night I switched to the dance/club stuff I stopped being so damn hard to get along with. I downloaded a book today on my kinle, which I'm still loving btw, called Shit My Dad Says it's the book the t.v. show is based off of, I've not seen the show yet, I need to dvr it. But while waiting for my wife in Target one day I leafed through it and decided I needed to read it, it looks hilarious. Of course I'm already reading 3 books so I may not get to it right away. Anyway the book is based on a twitter (I don't know what you call it on twitter, page? profile?, I'm a real twit when it comes to twitter (har,har)) will go with account that started with a guy quite literally twitting shit his dad said. So let's recap, the show based on the book based on the twitter account based on a guy who moved back in with his dad. Got it? Good. I said all that to say in the opening pages he (the writer) says he was once mortified by his dad but now realizes that his dad is the least passive-aggressive person he knows and it made me wish I could be that way because I'm one of the most passive-aggressive people I know, and I hate it. I'd love to just tell people what I really thought, but I just can't do it, not usually anyway. I guess I'm just to sensitive, that or I'm just a big ole pussy. (I really stretched myself to not write wussy there.) I'm so wishy-washy on things I should have been born a fish. A mind may be a terrible thing to waste but an open-mind is just plain terrible, at least to the person in whom it is housed. Or turrable if your Charles Barkley. I had a good day today, I feel good, I got a good rating at my health screening, I had fun hanging with Rainy, work went well and I was hungry and I ate some eggs. That last bit, with the eggs, just happened. So, to make a long story short (someone yell 'Too late'), the three bears decided little girl tasted better than stupid porridge anyway and they all lived happily ever after, well not Goldilocks.

holiday inspired reading

Okay so technically Super Bowl Sunday is not a holiday, but it should be. In honor of Super Bowl week I read Playing for Pizza by John Grisham it's one of Grisham's few non-legal stories although he does manage to insert a lawyer of two into the book. It's the story of a journey-man third string NFL quarterback, Rick Dockery, he's got a rocket arm but after a few concussions he's contact shy and tends to throw bad passes trying to avoid a hit. His most notorious, and last, NFL appearance was in the final quarter of the AFC title match he was playing for the Browns and went in with a 14 point lead only to throw 2 interceptions and fumble the ball to loose the game. After the game no one in the NFL will touch him and so his agent gets him a job playing for the Italian NFL (which Grisham says in the author's note is a real thing, American style football in Italy complete with their own Super Bowl) for the Parma Panthers. It's a neat little story, nothing earth shaking or life changing, it goes pretty much the way you think it will, football wise anyway, Rick's personal life throws you a little curve which helps to keep the story interesting. Nice light read.
So now, new week, new holiday, Valentines day and in honor of said romantic holiday I'm reading Like Water for Chocolate. It may of course be in the unrequited, even sad vain of love, I'm not sure. But it is, I believe, considered a romantic book and it's been sitting on my shelf for quite some time quietly awaiting it's turn.

Not a book review blog

The last few blogs I've put up have been about books and while that's fine and all I like to think there's other things I can discuss as well. So... , so I've also been reading through the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (it seems so funny not to write abridged here) I thought I'd go comedy, history, tragedy and then some sonnets, (wash, rinse, repeat) and save the long poems and the apocrypha until the end. And I did this until I read King Richard the Second which led right into The First Part of King Henry the Fourth which, by strange coincidence, led right into The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, which is where I am currently. Judging by King John I didn't think I'd really like the histories but these others have really moved right along and that's mostly thanks to Shakespeare's Falstaff. Falstaff and often Prince Hal spend a lot of time calling people names and Falstaff is constantly finding ways of getting out of doing things. For example the famous line, "The better part of valor is discretion..." is said by Falstaff after successfully playing possum to avoid a fight and then after Prince Hal has killed the other guy (I can't remember his name right now) and walked away, Falstaff gets up stabs the guy in the leg and throws him over his shoulder as though he's just slayed him. Hilarious. This isn't a book review in case your wondering because these are plays I'm reading. Okay that doesn't hold water. So what? What else should we talk about? Politics? Religion? I get on my nerves talking politics and religion to myself I don't want to drag you poor folks into that. Fitness? I'm still on my diet, though I'm still having a hard time sticking to a fitness regimen, life can be hard on us lazy people sometimes. Work? It's going good, finally got 40 hours in this week, first time all year I do believe. Oh!  The elephant in the room, Super Bowl XLV, I'm excited. I like football, I love the Super Bowl. Years when I've barely followed the teams I've watched the BIG game and this year we watched football every Sunday and we are soooo ready to see Pittsburgh vs. Green Bay. I say we because you see, dear hearts, my lovely wife loves football even more than I do. So every Super Bowl is a big event at the Spurling household, we have decorations even, but this year is even bigger because my number 2 team and possibly Rain's favorite team is the Steelers. I also really like Rodgers and the Packers, so I think this is going to be a great game. No blow out like it has been at times. So tomorrow is all about getting ready for Sunday and Sunday is like Christmas and Monday is like the day after Christmas but without the long return line at Wal-Mart. The game starts at about 6:30 but pre-game shows start at about 10 a.m. (I told Rain I might not be able to go to Sunday school with her). Well actually pre-game shows started this past Monday, but you know what I mean. Okay I've rambled on (it's in the blog name) long enough. Live long and prosper Orson, Mork out na-nu, na-nu. Shazbat, it's the finger thing makes me confuse them.

book review - Odd and the Frost Giants

This is a kids book written by Neil Gaiman and it's very short, in fact my only complaint about the book is that it's way too short. I've read longer short stories, it's more like a tale told in front of a fire place on a winters night by some avuncular character than an actual book. But it's a good tale, so that's not so bad. It's the story of Odd (which according to Gaiman wasn't an Odd name in those times and in that place but even though Odd's name wasn't odd, he was) who as a young viking had faced many difficulties in his short life when one day he rescues a trapped bear from a tree only to find that the bear is actually the Norse god Thor who, along with Odin and Loki, have been transformed into animals and banished from Asgard. Of course Odd saves the day and rids Asgard of the conquering Frost Giant. I thought it was pretty neat that instead of a white hat/black hat dual morality Gaiman presents Odd instead with Gods and Giants that are equally culpable in their distresses and has him find a suitable solution to the problem. I plan to try and read this to my two little ones if I can con them into turning off their games and t.v. programs long enough.