I just finished reading Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s new book “Dance of Death.” I feel I should warn you by saying that you shouldn’t start this book if you haven’t read their last novel “Brimstone.” Well, come to think of it, you may want to check out “Ice Limit,” “Relic,” Reliquary,” “Thunderhead,” “Cabinet of Curiosities,” and “Still Life Of Crows” before reading “Dance of Death.” You could also check out “Mount Dragon” too, but that one is purely optional.

Rarely are books so self-referential, and I’m not sure if I like all the references in these books or not. On one hand, it’s kind of neat to know that I’m getting all these obscure references that are sprinkled quite liberally throughout the novel. But on the other hand, I don’t really like having to go and re-read a bunch of stuff just to help me remember the backstory of one character. I’m sure it must be infuriating for a new reader.

Now I move onto the new Harry Potter book. I’m so excited. I hear someone dies in this one! (Don’t tell me if you already know!) Boy I sure hope it’s Harry. All he did was whine in the last book.

Post Script: Yes I know I’m a bad blogger. I realize I didn’t hyperlink all of those book titles above to Amazon. It’s late, and I just didn’t feel like doing it. So thpppppppppppth! Cut and paste’em into Amazon if you want to buy’em.

On Saturday Leigh and I were married at St. Matthew’s Church in San Antonio. It was a very small, private affair. There were only about thirty people at the ceremony, and afterwards we ate at Mamacita’s. (I’ll try and post a couple of pics from the actual ceremony later.)

We didn’t really have time to take an extensive honeymoon, as Leigh has been studying intensely for her board exams. We took a couple of days and stayed at the Biscuit Hill Bed and Breakfast. Here we are with Diane, who owns the B&B along with her husband Dean. The food was excellent, our suite was very nice, and Diane was very sweet. It was like staying with family.

We had planned on traveling the short distance from the B&B into New Braunfels and toobing down the Guadalupe River, but unfortunately it rained. Instead, we decided to visit a local vineyard. Now, I have to say up front that Leigh and I are not the most educated wine drinkers. When I hear the word wine, I usually think of Maddog 20/20, which I understand is not held in high regard in wine circles. We were quite lucky, in that the gentleman that served us during our wine tasting put us right at ease. There was no pretentiousness, we joked quite a bit, and he even got a Tenacious D reference that Leigh made.

If you’re ever in the neighborhood try and visit Dry Comal Creek Vineyards. If you go for the tasting, ask for Randy, and I promise you’ll leave with several bottles of wine.

Incidentally, the reason that I haven’t posted since last week is because my stupid internet service has been down. Road Runner just got around to fixing it today.

Yesterday Leigh and I attended the funeral of a very dear friend. Not only was he responsible for the burgeoning of our relationship while it was still in its infancy, he left a spot on our hearts that I’m quite sure will never be filled. He was probably one of the strongest men I’ll ever know, in both physical and intellectual aspects.

During the ceremony the preacher asked if anyone would like to come up to the podium and express what he had meant to them. Many people went up and said some heart-warming and heart-wrenching things, yet I was not one of them. I don’t know if I would have physically been able to stand there and speak. Although, after having thought about it a little longer I think the real reason probably resided selfishness. I didn’t want to share my memories right then. I wanted to hold them close to me and wrap myself in them like a blanket, and I would have felt like I was some how lessening those memories my giving them away. I had mourned with Leigh, and another friend of ours, and I didn’t feel that anyone else deserved to share our memories. I know that’s not true, and that’s not a dig at others that were stronger than I, but at that moment that’s how I felt.

Maybe that will change with time. Maybe not.

During the course of conversation tonight the subject of Starbucks came up, and I brought up Starbucks’ logo and it’s many incarnations. The first Starbucks logo was of a Siren with her tail fins split in lurid manner. Go here to see the different versions of the Starbucks logo.

For some reason a Siren in the the flying “V” position just doesn’t make me want to drink coffee…buy an overpriced CD maybe, but not buy coffee.

The Guardian reports that athletes participating in the “Visit Scotland Adventure Triathlon” must swim in Loch Ness, and will therefore be insured against bites from Nessie.

Well hell, if they’re granting insurance to guard against imaginary monsters then I’m calling my Farmer’s agent and getting a price quote for alien invasions. I wonder how much Godzilla insurance would be? Folks in Tokyo would buy that in a second. I bet vampire insurance is sky high this time of year.

Leigh and I went and saw the new War of the Worlds movie tonight. Despite Tom Cruise’s recent antics in the media, I found him enjoyable in the film. Ah hell, who’m I kidding? I find Tom’s antics enjoyable as well, albeit for reasons that are morally reprehensible.

My only advice to those who are going to see the film would be to resist the urge to over-analyze the logic of the plot, because logic plays absolutely no part in the film. Truthfully, I don’t think Spielberg has any interest at all in logic. But that’s okay, because he has the ability to masterfully direct a big-budget B-movie, which pretty much defines War of the Worlds.

I’ve briefly scanned some (nerd qualifier alert!) movie forums tonight, and a lot of people are complaining about how this couldn’t have happened, or why the aliens should have done that or shouldn’t have done this. This movie holds up to those types of questions about as well as Independence Day does, so don’t ask’em.

If you’ve heard all about the old broadcasts by Orson Welles but have never heard them, well today’s your lucky day. If you have RealPlayer you can go to this site and stream the whole broadcast. If you don’t have realplayer and you end up downloading it from the previous link heed this advice: don’t let realplayer configure anything. When it asks you to choose between letting realplayer choose associations automatically or you doing it manually, you choose manually. Realplayer will set itself up to be the default player for everything. When you configure it only associate realplayer with realplayer files, e.g. .ram files.

If you don’t want to mess with realplayer (and I wouldn’t blame you…realplayer is more intrusive than our present administration) you can go to this page and download the War of the Worlds broadcast in mp3. There is a caveat to this one as well: the guy’s site is really slow, so set it to download right before you go to bed. He will also let you download every broadcast that the Mercury Theater ever recorded in mp3 if you have a Bittorrent client. First, download the torrent client. Then go back to that guys web page and download the torrent file. That file will open up the actual download, which could take a while. FYI- I don’t really like the original bittorrent client, so I use the Burst client. But use whatever you want.

And for all of those that are about to cry copyright infringement, just hold on. By law the broadcasts should be in the public domain. Some folks on the net have tried to get some of the broadcast taken down by way of threats, but no one has been able to prove legal ownership of them.

UPDATE: The torrent version is the fastest download by far, and it’s the one that contains all the broadcasts by the Mercury Theater Company. Streaming via realplayer beats them all, but you have to use realplayer.

After I published the previous post, I found this letter from a Londoner to the terrorists.

Posts will most likely be fairly spotty for today and tomorrow. I’ve had computer problems, and I’m reloading many of windows components as I type this.

Like most people I’ve been glued to the T.V. for most of the day; trying in vain to understand the mentality that drives a terrorist. I haven’t had much luck.

One thing that has repeatedly caught my attention in the broadcasts, are the interviews with Londoners. Their reactions have been quite striking. I imagine they have lived with the reality that the City must be a compelling target for terrorists, especially in light of 9/11. Yet, most of the British that I have seen interviewed have displayed a sense that today’s attack was an inevitability (in fact several interviewees voiced that verbatim). I would think that their reactions must be something of a let down to the terrorists, whereas our reactions to 9/11 must have been quite satisfying to their perverted sensibilities. I hope their ability to flow right back into their usual routines really galls the hell out of whatever organization was behind it.

One “journalist” attempted to classify the reactions of the Londoners as “stoic,” but that seems so reductionist to me. As Americans, we really don’t have a collected memory of a time when we were attacked on our own soil. So, when those planes smashed into the World Trade Center, we were ill equipped to handle the emotional and psychic overload that followed. In this we stand in stark contrast to the citizens of England. From the beheading of Charles I to the bombings of WWII and the attacks by the IRA, England has weathered plenty of attacks. It just served as a reminder how relatively young the U.S. is as a nation.

Cows are really, really stupid animals.

Several years ago I was an avid paintball player. My friends and I would get together for hours of shooting faux guns at one another. My friend Shanan was quite the enthusiast. He would spend hours modifying his gun, or hiking through the area we had marked off to scout good vantage points from which to shoot.

On one particular game day Shanan was running late. When he finally arrived he explained that the reason he was so late was that he had to finish constructing his Ghillie suit, because he wanted to play in it.

The suits that you just saw in that link are professionally made, but Shanan’s was quite the homemade job. He had glued, tied, stapled, and sewn bits of vines and weeds and grass to to a hooded jumpsuit. He looked like a walking bush, but apparently that was the idea.

His suit worked like a charm that day. He actullly popped me twice. The first time I actually ran into him because I didn’t realize the bush in front of me was a person. After we finished, Shanan asked if he could leave his suit at my house so he wouldn’t have to lug it around with him. I said sure.

The next week Shanan retrieved his suit form my porch where it had lain since last we had played. We had just settled into the woods when Shanan began yelling. We all left our spots to see what was wrong. Apparently fire ants had mistaken Shanan’s Ghille suit for a real bush, and had made a nest in it while it had sat on my porch. Shanan was covered from head to toe in welts.

He promptly threw the suit away, but I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten it.