'Lucky Billy' rolls snake eyes

One of my fellow Library Thing members (Kasthu) wrote that she got to page 29 of this novel by John Vernon before giving up in frustration. I'm afraid I wasn't even that successful: Page 19 was the breaking point for me.

And it's a darn shame, because I sure wanted to like this book. I love history, and I love stories about cowboys and the Old West, but this book manages to turn one of the most thrilling legends of American folklore into a dry, confusing, mundane tale.



As a rule, I don't mind POV changes within a book, but it needs to be done well. The shifts should be clearly noted, and there should be enough of a difference in tone between the various "voices" to make it easy for the reader to adjust. The first two chapters alternate a third-person omniscient narrator with a first-person narrator, and it. Just. Doesn't. Work. I get that those Old West fellas were laconic cowboy types, but Sheriff Pat Garrett seems to be on tranquilizers.

It was the sheriff's chapter that did me in, sadly: He was describing to some barmates what Billy the Kid (his former pal turned nemesis) was really like, and it just about put me to sleep. Somehow, I don't think that's the intended effect when you're talking about one of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild Wild West.

I guess I'll just stick with Marty Robbins' classic song version of the "Billy the Kid" story:

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Come for the Gobbler, stay for the Bleat

Image by Reznicek111 via Flickr

If you look at just one Web site in your life from this moment forward, please PLEASE let it be this one.
James Lileks, he of the ultra-amusing Gallery of Regrettable Food, has an in-depth look — with pictures! — of The Gobbler Supper Club Motel in Wisconsin. This sadly defunct edifice was a cheese-tastic creation, with more shag carpeting on the walls that even Elvis dared use to line the Jungle Room. I can't possibly do it justice, and I won't spoil the hilarity by trying to quote random lines here and there. Really, like the best of John Irving's farcical novel scenes, it's the cumulative effect of Lileks' prose and the unbelievable illustrations that build to a crescendo of snorting, gurgling, wheezing cackles. Just go. You won't be sorry.
Once you've caught your breath again, poke around the rest of Lileks' site. It's a crazy virtual junk drawer of fascinating bits and pieces, from snarky commentary on other countries' paper money to a collection of odd matchbooks. Reading his stream-of-consciousness blog, Bleat, has highlighted many an otherwise dreary day for me.

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F%&# you, penguin

I love the Internet. I know I've mentioned that before. But this is different. Those other love songs to the online world were about all the incredibly useful information that the Internet (and its overlord, Google) put at our fingertips, information that used to take a trip to the library and hours spent thumbing through card catalogs and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. (Are any of you old enough to remember those glorious green indexes to every article ever printed in a magazine? I spent hours in junior high looking up articles about Bucky Dent. That's him over there on the right. Be still my beating heart.)

But this link I'm about to share with you has nothing to do with learning something useful or necessary. It is sheer, unadulterated, irreverent goofiness and the kind of thing that the Internet was born for, as far as I'm concerned. Behold, I present to you ...

Fuck You, Penguin
A blog where I tell cute animals what's what.

Is this a great Internet, or what? Read more!

Sometimes the comedy writes itself

Another newspaper story made me laugh out loud tonight, and — what a refreshing change — it wasn't because of a typo or mistake. From the West Branch Times:

Joe White, Alliant’s manager of customer services for an area that includes West Branch, said he would have to know more about that town’s electric service before he could compare. He did say that West Branch has a lot of squirrels, referencing an outage in March where more than 1,100 customers were powerless for about two hours at lunchtime on a sunny day.

Yes, I live in a town where the squirrels outnumber the people, apparently. And not just any squirrels. These are your juvenile delinquent squirrels, your punk squirrels. I'm sure if I ever got a good look at one, it would be wearing a little black leather jacket, or maybe a guinea tee to show off its tattoos of naked ... otters? I don't know what turns squirrels on. Well, not four-legged ones, anyway.

Actually, this story kind of confirms a brainstorm I had when I was in college. In one of my geography classes, where we had to choose a research project to utilize our newly acquired mad mapmaking skillz, I toyed with the idea of trying to find out if Cedar County has the highest number of skunks per square mile of any county in Iowa. Because I'm telling you, the number of squished skunks on this county's roadways is unreal. You have to smell it to believe it. Clearly, this news story proves that it's not just skunks -- apparently the entire small-rodent population is out of control around here. Read more!

Irony, thy name is Consumer Reports

Some of my favorite blogs are those on the Consumer Reports web site. Written by CR editors, they offer great consumer information and advice on a variety of topics, from Cars to Health to Electronics and more. Their advice is usually spot on, but it's not always supported by the rest of the site.

An example of what I mean showed up in my Google Reader today. A post on the Electronics blog was titled "Earth Day tips: 7 ways to greener printing." Here's number 2 on the list:

2. Instead of printing out e-mails, Web pages, and other documents, read them on your computer screen. A free application called CutePDF makes that simpler by turning such items into easy-to-read PDFs.

But at the end of the post, there's a Print This Page link. What's missing are links allowing readers to save the article to an online bookmarking site, such as Delicious. Wouldn't that have been more in keeping with the spirit of the blog post? Read more!

Unprovable but indisputable facts

You will never, ever be disappointed when an Internet message-board comment begins:

Not too many know about this because it was kept secret by the war department.

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Seeing-eye radio? IRIS is on the air

One of my favorite volunteer gigs these days is to be a reader for the Iowa Radio Information Service (IRIS). IRIS is a statewide network of volunteers who read the newspaper as part of a radio broadcast that can be picked up by specially tuned receivers. The receivers are provided at no charge to Iowans who are blind or have a visual or physical impairment that makes reading difficult.

I jokingly tell people that this is the perfect volunteer job for me because I love to hear the sound of my own voice. Actually, as a former journalist, I like the idea of remaining at least tangentially involved in the news business, and I believe that there still is news (especially local) that can't be gotten from either radio or television. I first got involved with a similar group when I lived in the Quad-Cities.

The NBC Nightly News recently focused its "Making a Difference" feature on a similar program in New Jersey. Watch this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here in Iowa City, IRIS operates out of a conference room at WSUI/KSUI radio. From 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. 7 days a week, 365 days a year, two volunteers take turns reading the local news, opinion, obituaries and sports from the Cedar Rapids Gazette. (Programming for the rest of the day's schedule is produced in Des Moines or by the national InTouch network.) As with all things, the best of intentions can sometimes go awry. I have had mornings when my reading partner never showed up, leaving me to stumble through the hour alone. There have been mornings when I have been the no-show. Once in a while, the radio station staff will inadvertently lock us out, or the newspaper carrier will forget to deliver our papers. Somehow, the show goes on.

Even after 15 or so years of volunteering here and in Rock Island, I'm far from a professional radio broadcaster. I have learned a lot about reading out loud, though. One of the lessons I learned early on when one of APRIS' listeners wrote in to complain politely that we were reading too slowly. It seems our natural instinct is to slow down and over-enunciate when we are reading out loud, but that listener assured us that reading at a normal pace was much more tolerable.

I've also learned from IRIS how to pronounce the names of a lot of small Iowa towns I've never been to. We have a cheat sheet of phonetic spellings for towns in our Eastern Iowa broadcast area. That's how I know it's Ne-VAY-da, not Ne-VAH-da like the state; it's Mont-i-SELL-o, not Mont-i-CHELL-o like Thomas Jefferson's home. I can tell my reading partner is not a native Iowan when they read a story from Maquoketa and pronounce it Ma-kwo-KEE-ta. Another morning, I remember my non-sports fan partner was repeatedly flummoxed by a sports story about the Iowa football team and specifically one of the Hawkeye players, Kenny Iwebema. I think she pronounced poor Kenny's name about 12 different ways before she was done with the story, but having started the story she gamely soldiered on to the end. (For the record, it's pronounced Eh-WEB-uh-muh. I think.)

Like most operations run entirely by volunteers, IRIS is always in need of a helping hand. This spring, the Iowa City operation was shut down for a couple of weeks when the Iowa River floodwaters crept uncomfortably close to the KSUI studios and damaged a transmitter. Other IRIS broadcast locations around the state were affected. As if all that wasn't enough, the upcoming transition to digital television means that IRIS will lost its ability to broadcast in some areas of Iowa unless some alternative transmission methods are found. If you'd like to make a donation or find out more about volunteering, check it out. That's also the place to go if you know someone with a visual or physical handicap who would enjoy having an IRIS receiver in their home. Where else are they going to get serious news and unintentional comedy all wrapped up in one early-morning hour? Read more!