"Hmm. Maybe I'm not a number. Maybe I am a free man!!"

I still have no clue as to why the pilfered corporate images I originally put up on posting #491 disappeared, one at a time. Nothing like it has happened since. Was there a faulty memory function at Google HQ?

I certainly couldn't say. Perhaps my wife is right: a short walk might be just the thing to clear my head of paranoid delusions....

Sweet Land Stories by E.L. Doctorow

There aren't too many perks to being laid low by a nasty bug, but spending time between the covers of a good book certainly qualifies. "Sick" books shouldn't be too convoluted or conceptual. They should have direct appeal, and they shouldn't be too depressing. E.L. Doctorow's Sweet Land Stories fits the bill perfectly.

My buzzing, dripping noggin isn't quite up to the task of composing a proper review for this book (or Doctorow, whose prose blows hot and cold for me). I enjoyed all the stories, but was especially tickled by the first, "A House On The Plains". What a ghastly, chilling Poe-like treat! My foggy condition probably helped, but Doctorow kept me guessing as to what this gruesome mother-son duo were up to, and surprised me with every nasty revelation. A delerious treat, for a delerious reader.

Working Within The New Google© Envelope

After whining about my pilfered images getting blocked by Google© (including the Ubuntu trademark, which is especially ironic), it's a little disconcerting to wake up and see my re-posting of the infringing images completely intact. I was so convinced we had entered a new, stricter era of blogging, that I toiled all afternoon on artistic representations of the images in question. I've gone ahead and put them up on my original posting.

Now, please understand that I was using an Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), and not a Paintbox-type application. What I've tried to do is take the original commercial images and render them in a way that is subtly, but markedly different, thus putting me in the clear with the Google© Gestapo©™. Click here, and see if you can spot the changes.

The New Year With Google©

If this morning is any indication, it looks like image posting with Google has become a little complicated. Up to now, I've posted any old image that suits my mood, never once worrying about copyright infringement. Two posts earlier, I posted this image...


...and this image...



...and this image...



...all of which are MIA less than 24 hours later. Paste Magazine's cover is still up (for the moment), but the others are gone. I'm surprised, given how I'm basically shilling -- free of charge -- for the lot of them (alright, so I was a little hard on geez, but still). Go figure.

Hale The New Year

I've taken several cracks at an official New Year's Entry, but deleted them all. They sounded like the product of a stuffed head, trying vainly to be taken seriously. That's because my head is indeed very stuffed. My older daughter began the holidays with a bronchial virus. The rest of us tried to dodge the proverbial bullet, but in fact there was no bullet to dodge: each sneeze was a blunderbuss fired at critically close range, and no-one was going to escape the viral enfilade.

So Happy New Year, one and all, even though January is one bonehead month to "begin" anything, nevermind a year. So far as I'm concerned, the new year begins in Autumn, in line with the new academic year, or Rosh Hashanah. And I don't bother with resolutions, because my temperament has a resolve of its own. Setting my primary focus, on the other hand, is something I could probably benefit from. More later ... maybe ... if I can clear my head enough to focus.

Below are some odds and sods that I've enjoyed from the year that was.

The Year That Was (The Pleasant Version)

Ubuntu Linux: I took the Linux challenge with my dumpster computer, after Windows froze up once too often. Red Hat, my original Linux OS, ran alright. But I had grown soft from prolonged exposure to Windows, and had a difficult time reintroducing myself to the codeline. Then my brother came by and installed Ubuntu 4. Whoah ... now we were cooking with gas!

Since then I've returned said computer to the dumpster (cracked motherboard, and a few other problems) and upgraded to Ubuntu 6.06: "Dapper Drake". Ubuntu's synaptec package is what makes the OS so very user friendly -- anything you need to install can be found quickly and efficiently. Still, as with any OS, Ubuntu is not entirely self-explanatory. But there are resources that make the learning curve not quite so steep as all that, including these two books. They get you up and running, and will likely even inject a little confidence to get you experimenting with codelines of your own.

So, overall the Linux experience has been a treat, with only one exception: Open Office. It's shabby of me to complain about something *free* -- and overall the Open Office applications work splendidly. But the folks running the message boards might want to take note: if you find yourself replying to a query by saying, "We have addressed this so-called 'problem' many, many times," I would suggest that you in fact have a genuine problem on your hands: namely a program that is profoundly counter-intuitive to the average user. Sure, it'd be swell if everyone thought the way programmers do. But we don't, so let's see if, in the next Ooo generation, we can't meet a little closer to the middle.

eMusic: it ain't free, but it's certainly as cheap as borscht. And the artists are actually getting paid, which is important. I've made some spectacular personal discoveries through eMusic, including Janiva Magness, James McMurtry, Dianne Reeves and The Reverend Horton Heat. I gave a few assorted Christmas collections a try, and didn't feel any of the usual residual disappointment for having been taken for a chump, because this time it cost me precious little money and took up very little of my energy. As Kool-Aid Man likes to say, "It's just pennies per glass, so how can you lose?"

Magazines: I'm pleased to see that Paste has become a force to be reckoned with. If you're old enough to have fond memories of reading Rolling Stone Magazine, you'll want to give Paste a look. Here are worthy profiles of Tom Waits, The Flaming Lips and Michelle Shocked, for starters.

This year saw the introduction of geez magazine ("holy mischief in an age of fast faith"). I kinda-sorta know some of the people involved; I really like them, so I'd very much like to see their enterprise succeed. But speaking frankly as a reader, geez has been a mostly ho-hum experience. I'm only going to buy so many issues advocating "living simply" before I take the advice to heart and stop buying the magazine altogether. The kids in charge of the ship are, I think, genuinely interesting; I have no doubt they know interesting people who know other interesting people. So here's my nickel's worth of advice: waste more paper on interviews. Your readers will thank you for it now, and the Lord will thank you for it later.

But the brightest spot on the magazine rack this year has been Stop Smiling. If The Believer and N+1 are the printed equivalent of the your old school's black-clad-smarty-pants' clique, Stop Smiling aspires to carry the torch of LIFE. Boomers get their due with tributes to Hunter Thompson and Lou Reed; their grandkids get meaty scraps like interviews with the RZA. Well ... more likely the old-timers are reading these interviews to figure out what's up with kids these days, but still: good on the Stop Smiling crew, say I. A little tip of the hat to America's Educated Middle is exactly what magazine publishers ought to be doing, and so far as I can see, Stop Smiling is the only rag out there aspiring to the job.

The Year To Be (The Pleasant Version)

Some treats I'm looking forward to, beginning with my reading docket:

Twelve Blackfeet Stories, by Mary Scriver. Her blog rates as a daily must-read. I can't wait to read the stories — her words deserve the permanence of paper and ink.

Infidelities: Stories of War & Lust, by Josip Novakovich. Mr. Novakovich (yet another fine introduction, courtesy of that purveyor of fine prose Darko V.) is a master at extending the generous invitation. I'm also looking forward to giving JN's Fiction Writer's Workshop a spin.

Blind Night by Cordelia Strube. I'd love to see this woman become as big as Barbara Kingsolver.

There's a host more, of course. I regularly raid the remainder tables of book stores large and small, and have got quite the heap of bound paper holding down a corner of my office floor. Stay tuned.