“A nation,” he heard himself say, “consists of laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon it isn’t a nation. … Are you really so scared of terrorists that you’ll dismantle the structures that made America what it is? … If you are, you let the terrorist win. Because that is exactly, specifically, his goal, his only goal: to frighten you into surrendering the rule of law. That’s why they call him ‘terrorist’. He uses terrifying threats to induce you to degrade your own society. … It’s based on the same glitch in human psychology that allows people to believe they can win the lottery. Statistically, almost nobody ever wins the lottery. Statistically, terrorist attacks almost never happen.”

From William Gibson’s new book, “Spook Country“. He hasn’t written a bad one yet.

One of the side-effects of working on any genre of puzzle is that you can put your head into a kind of overdrive on whatever neurons are firing to solve those puzzles. When I was in high school and living with my Dad, we went through a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ period, when there was always some 3,000 piece monster slowly coming together on the dining room table. I got so I would see jigsaw puzzle-piece patterns in everything. Carpets, wallpaper, piles of sand … anything.

I’ve lately been working on the Jumble puzzle to move it into the blog, and again (it ain’t the first time) got into that mode. I woke up at 4AM today with the inspiration that “Albus Dumbledore” is a jumbled version of “A Doubled Slumber”. Hmmm. As I woke up (I’ve been watching zombie movies lately, so going back to sleep isn’t really an option), the letters slid around to “Double Subdermal”.

So call it what you will, but I place great stock in these Jungian inspirations from the subconscious. This confirms my suspicion that we will learn in this final Summer of Harry Potter, that the good wizard is not dead, but like Merlin, simply sleeps again.

Because I’ve enjoyed the Mighty Girl blog, and because it was recommended by Matt Baldwin, who writes Defective Yeti, another favorite blog, and because I liked the title, I bought Margaret Mason’s book “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch/100 Ideas for Your Blog“. A very rapid waste of $20.

The book is the length of an extended blog post, and has, in fact, two ideas and a lot of filler. Save your money.

Quoting a blog quoting a blog, but still: Excellent post in author William Gibson’s blog:

“But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, ‘I should sit here and I should be entertained.’ And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.” - Zadie Smith

‘High Fidelity’ by Hick Hornby turned out to be a great read, which surprised me. I really like the John Cusack/Jack Black/Stephen Frears (Dir.) movie version, and my usual experience has been that I’ll like the book or the movie, but rarely both. Notable exceptions to the Rule, ‘Field of Dreams’ and ‘The Natural’, like ‘High Fidelity’ take important liberties with the original story. The movie version of ‘The Natural’ is a New Testament story, and the Bernard Malamud story is an Old Testament story, although the common religion is baseball and both of the stories work. W.P. Kinsella’s ‘Shoeless Joe’ needed to be paced differently to find a good screen version in ‘Field of Dreams’ (not great … some of the casting decisions were completely mailed in). The source of the dramatic resolution in the movie version of ‘High Fidelity’ is modified in a subtle but critical way (although the resolution remains the same … I told you it was subtle), and I think it makes a better story of it. I’m not a big Hornby fan … ‘How to Be Good’ was Bad, and ‘Fever Pitch’ was vapid. But the book is smooth and captures the out-of-gear state of the middle-aged male psyche really well.