UPDATED: What the $#@!

30 minutes ago...

I was about 30 seconds away from that sweet oblivion called sleep when a sound tore me from the sheets and sent me throwing boxer shorts and socks in the air like a Mardi Gras festival looking for my flashlight.

What? Where do you keep your flashlight?

The last time a sound knocked me out of bed like this, my next door neighbor's son was in a car accident at the end of the street.

This was nothing like that - no parents running down the street, no large crash of metal. Instead, it sounded an awful like what I imagine a raccoon killing one of my neighbor's cats would sound like.

I jumped up grabbed the flashlight and put on a pair of sweats, some sandals and ran downstairs to the kitchen, shining my light through the window. Except for a steady sheet of rain I couldn't make anything out. The screaming continued. I was able to see that my trash cans, prior victims of raccoon ambushes, had remained untouched. The past summer the neighbor whose backyard ran up against my had said he knew that raccoons lived behind my garage. There's about 12" of space between the fence that divides our yards and the back of my garage, and with the trees that block everything it's almost impossible to reach except by straining and only then you can just get your head back there. The few times I looked back there enormous amounts of feces seemed to bear the raccoon theory out, but since cleaning it our periodically and spraying some Home Depot stuff back there I hadn't had an issue in months.

The screaming continued for another 30 seconds, then stopped. By this time I was properly armed with flashlight, large stick and protective footwear to venture outside. I made a (very) quick survey of the back yard and ran back inside. Nothing.

It was pouting, after all.

Update tomorrow, when I can get out back to see what's behind the garage...

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UPDATE (5/13, 8:00 AM): I checked outside this morning - no carnage, no overturned trash cans. Behind the garage there was a lovely pile of crap but no signs of dismembered cat, raccoon, or anything else that would indicate a battle of epic proportions.

More Book Stuff

One day after I put the final nail in the coffin of the book blog, I have two posts in a row about books. In yesterday's BOTM post I mentioned how there is a small pack of authors whose words have affected me so greatly I now squirrel away their novels instead of devouring them all at once, saving them for times when you just need to read something by them. Vonnegut is at the top of the list; Mailer sits close by, and although I didn't mention it at the time...

Haruki Murakami is right up there with them, and just released a brand new book.

If you haven't read anything by him, run and pick up Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or, for a slightly different feel, Norwegian Wood. He has some excellent short story collections like The Elephant Vanishes, and of course huge epic books like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. His writing has an immediately recognizable rhythm and feel - the protagonists are instantly identiafiable as Murakami-Men (or women, though rarely), and the situations fall somewhere in a land dreamed by Kafka, Borges, and Lao Tzu.

Grab one and get started. Definitely one of my favorite writers of all time.

BOTM for April

I got delayed in posting the BOTM for April, but now feels like the perfect time for a little distraction. It was again a low month for reading (I'm beginning to think that those days of reading 5+ books a month are gone), but with the passing of Kurt Vonnegut I had to break out one of the few remaining books of his I hadn't read, Welcome to the Monkey House.

No one else even had a chance.

Sometimes you read an author and you just have to soak up everything that person's written, as fast as you can, and that's great. But every once in a while you come across an author that affects you so deeply, on such a basic level, that you want to prolong the experience as much as you can. So you parcel out the books sparingly, savoring each one like a fine wine whose vintage has come and gone.

For me Vonnegut is at the top of that list. Welcome to the Monkey House provides wonderful snapshots of everything Vonnegut has done. Wacky SF, biting social commentary, even gentle, warm humor and love. Although most people would be familiar with "Harrison Begeron" with its image of people being "equalized" by any means necessary and its truly lackluster movie adaptation, my favorite piece is the gentle "Long Walk to Forever," which recounts Vonnegut's declaration of love for his future wife. It doesn't have the intensity of Slaughterhouse 5, or the cosmic scope of Cat's Cradle, but Welcome to the Monkey House perhaps provides a glimpse into all the facets of Vonnegut's skills as a writer and view of humanity.

• Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan - A lot of writers (for both books and the screen) have tried to take the seat of paranoia and future history formerly occupied by Philip K. Dick. Altered Carbon is the first of what to be a series of novels by Richard K. Morgan that sets itself in a universe where changing bodies is just a matter of how much money you have, and death begins to lose its meaning when your entire existence can be found in a cube located in the base of your neck. Ex-envoy Takeshi Kovaks slips his way into a hard boiled film noir world as he attempts to solve the murder of a man who is still alive. Instead of trying to perfectly emulate Dick, Morgan stirs his stew with doses of Chandler, King, and Heinlein to tell a story moves at a great pace. The fusion of old and new feels real, and was reminiscent of the Uplift novels by China Mieville. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next in the series.
• Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham - I never read Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, so I have nothing to base his new work Specimen Days on. It's three separate stories involving three people embodying different characters over a span of hundreds of years. Both New York City and Walt Whitman play key roles in each of the stories, and whether it's a modern story of terrorism, a future where cyborgs run to find a haven from persecution, or simply life, love, and loss in the late 19th century, Specimen Days tries (with varying success) to find what makes America what it is, and what it's destiny may be. Good, but I wasn't taken enough to strongly recommend it.
• The New Dad's Survival Guide by Scott Mactavish - It's short, it's funny, and it looks at how to deal with the impending arrival of a NFU (New Family Unit) in a guy's life. And I use the word "guy" purposely. Mactavish writes like a Everybody Loves Raymond episode - the book's written like a field manual, there's sage advice from Mr. T (BCF stands for Be Cool, Fool), and it preps the average guy for life starting from 1 month prior to birth up to 3 months after. It's a fun guide, and one I'm currently re-reading as we wait for our own NFU.

Short month. Right now I have two books going simultaneously, The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer and Bush at War by Bob Woodward. May is going to be an interesting month.

'Bout Time for an Update

For the past week it's been get up early to get to work so I can leave early to get to the hospital and then get home so I can get to bed early to get up early to get to work so I can leave early...

No real updates on the medical front. The Missus continues to be stable, and at this point (34 weeks) and although things should be fine if she were to deliver today, the doctors are going to keep her on the anti-contraction medicine for another week and keep her in the hospital, just to be safe. The baby seems to be doing great - string heartbeat, lots of movement, especially during mealtimes that involve the consumption of strawberries.

The boy loves him some strawberries.

On the emotional front both of us are coping in our own ways. She watches a LOT of television, despite the portable DVD player and movies and books and magazines. I on the other hand haven't watched any television (besides what I watch with her while I'm there). Much of my new sense of "calm" (if you want to call it that) came from reading one of Reforming Slacker's posts; although her intent for the post was not meant to be palliative, it sparked the thought in my head that yeah, this isn't exactly a rare occurrence in the world, and although it's new to me, this has probably happened millions of times before, and I'm not really an exception as much as a member of a fast-growing population of parents with similar stories to tell.

Quick, spontaneous plug for Reforming Slacker. You get poetry, you get paintings, you get wonderful insights which lately have referenced some of my favorite things, like Nabokov and Eastern philosophy. Plus, her cursor looks like a cup of coffee. Cool.

So, a quick list of other things that keep my mind off of things, and allow me to blow off some stress during the whole "wait for the baby" process.

1. Horror Movies - I have no idea why this is, but it seems that right now my mind is best distracted by all things extreme, music, and movies above all. And although I recently got turned on to the greatness that is Michael Apted's UP SERIES, it's mainly been classic horror films like HALLOWEEN, PHANTASM, and SUSPERIA that do the best job.
2. Death Metal - Hand in hand with the horror movies, the louder the music, the better ti soothes me. As the house gets more prepared, the need for all things violent has diminished. Yesterday my mother drove down and we managed to return and/or exchange the batch of baby stuff the Missus needed done, got to the bank, sorted all the baby clothes and put them in bins, and emptied the room so I can paint today. All to Neil Young's HAWESOME Live at Massey Hall, 1971. This morning, however, I'm playing The Melvins' Houdini at a volume that may not be legal in some southern states.
3. Microwaveable Food - Wow, you can microwave just about anything nowadays, can't you?
4. 7-11 Coffee - How does Starbucks even stay in business when, right down the street 7-11 serves genetically superior coffee at 1/3 the cost? Throw some free WI-FI in there and I'll call it home.

If all continues on it's even course, next week I may even get to use the Elvis Costello tickets I bought. Elvis Costello, man. Even the Missus considered skipping out on the birth to see Elvis Costello.