Christopher Moore's Blog

Wow, I just got an invitation to come to Camp Obama here in California?
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Well, I got some pages done today, but I didn’t really expect to get much done before the end of the month, what with the Democratic Convention in Denver and the threat of world-ending nuclear war in Poland, so why not go to camp.

Imagine us, all of us Obamamaniacs, out by Lake Barrack…

Itinerary: Camp Obama

8:00-9:00  Non denominational prayer breakfast — secret Muslims not allowed.  (You CAN be Muslim, but you have to be “out”. )

9:00_10:00 Group Hope by the dock (followed by the “HOPE TEST” — no one will be allowed to leave until they have sunk a three-point shot in front of a crowd. Hook shots from the top of the key will also qualify, but only if there are no perspiration stains on the shooter’s underarms.)

10:00-11:00 Bowling instruction by Billy Ray Jones Johnson. (Can you look cool in rented shoes?   Oh yeah, I think you can. Billy Ray teaches you how.)

11:00-Noon Intramural three-legged race: Empowering the Team Player in You.
Cougars vs. PUMAs (Your partner not pulling her weight? Don’t forget to tell her she’s pretty.)

Noon-1:00 Lunch with Keynote:  “How to not scream, “But he’s so fucking old! Human life means nothing to him! He loves war! He’ll get us all killed!”   We don’t roll that way at Camp Obama and you won’t roll out of here like that either.  You will learn how to participate in a measured and civilized debate of just how fucking old and War-crazed he is.

1:00-2:00 HOPE FLOAT AT THE LAKE
The seminar will be given in a flotilla of canoes lashed together.  Participants will learn:
1)Where they live.
2)How many houses they have. (We have to know this stuff, evidently. People will ask.)
3)Why the only reason that volunteers are not being paid $5 million dollars a year is so they don’t have to worry about that camel through the eye of a needle parable.  (Secret Muslims and Jews, ask your Christian Brothers. Catholics, ask your priest – psssst, New Testament.)
4)Why, out of respect for Native American cultures, there is no Camp Obama team called the Hopi.  (But why it would totally rule if we could get them on board.)
5)And finally, use of Hope in the application of basic lifesaving skills, and how much more effective the former is when combined with the latter.

2:00-3:00 – Crafts! Basket-weaving, lanyard-making, pottery throwing, and guided meditation: The Hope Against Audacity: Participants will learn how to keep from loosing their mind when confronted with the following audacious precepts:
A)Human life is sacred in the womb, but not in a house in Iraq or New Orleans.
B)Everything should be left to the wisdom of the Market, except for no-bid military contracts and Medicare drug programs.
C)The definition of victory is never ending the game.
D)Knowing what arugula is makes you an intellectual snob.
E)Spending time in a prison camp thirty eight years ago gives you special super powers.
F)Spending money you don’t have is somehow different and better than just paying your bills as you go. (Because that’s worked so well on everyone’s credit cards and mortgages.)

Participants will also learn how to weave “Obama-Mama” into their lanyard or basket gifts for their mothers.

3:00-4:00 — CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. YOU GUYS PICK THE CAMP OBAMA ACTIVITY FOR 3:00-4:00 o’clock and put it in the comments.  (Stay in the spirit of things. No Hannity/Limbaugh talking points. I am, after all, firmly, in the Obama-Rama. Although, any activity that involves keeping Joe Biden from saying patently stupid shit will be appreciated.)

Hey kids. I know I’ve been remiss on the blogs and posts here. I’m locked down, trying to get a new book finished before the tour in February. I promise I’ll start producing some web material soon.

For now, let me confirm the release date of the new book, Fool, will be February 10th. And that the next book will be — well — here’s the first paragraph:

“The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge, shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, emergency back-up mistress of the greater Bay Area night, and my manga-haired love monkey, Foo Dog, stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public. Which isn’t, like, as bad as it sounds, because the general public kind of sucks ass.”

So, there you go. Now, back to work for me. As always, you can email me at BSFiends@aol.com if you actually want to get a personal response. I try to answer my MySpace messages, too. I’m not able, however, to respond to all of the general MySpace comments (I have to draw the line somewhere or I’ll never get any books written.).

Your author guy is going to be on Live Wire radio, Saturday, June 21st, at 8:00 pm.
Details at:
http://www.livewireradio.org/
I have no idea what to expect. Sounds like it could be like Prairie Home Companion.

Until I figure out how to embed a movie here, check out the MySpace blog post:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=95547714&blogID=406520022&indicate=1
Here’s the first installment of the LONG VERSION. I’m guessing this takes fifteen minutes or so to look at. The remaining 300 photos tomorrow:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=95547714&blogID=406552439
COMMENTS: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=202963#202963

Let’s face it. I’m a gadget guy. I like shiny new machines, sometimes because they are shiny and new. I have an Iphone, an Xbox360, 2 Playstations, two Macs, five PCs (4 of which I built), 3 flat-screen TVs, 2 Tivos, 4 Ipods, 3 Digital SLRs, 4 digital point and shoot cameras — well, you get the idea. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a luddite, or anti-technical. I am not averse to change, nor am I nostalgic for the “old days” that never really existed. Neither am I evangelical about technology – I don’t have any unnatural affection for my Macs, and I don’t have any built-in revulsion for my PCs, or vice-versa. I like stuff that works, and I get pissed off at stuff that doesn’t. Okay. Just so we’re clear.
So, despite my misgivings about E-books, which I’ll go into in a whole different blog, I bought a Kindle from Amazon. My history with the electronic book reader is this: I tried to demo the Sony reader three different times in various book stores and there was never one that worked long enough to actually tell what it was like. But it was obvious that electronic paper had some possibilities.
Then, about two months ago, Amazon’s Kindle PR division contacted me and asked me to do a blog for them, which I linked to here. I started looking into the Kindle machine, reading reviews, asking friends, checking out the specs. After all, you couldn’t sign on to Amazon without being hit in the face with another Kindle promotion, and I sign onto Amazon a lot. (Note ridiculously long gadget list above.) So, even through Amazon had sent Kindles to my friends Neil Gaiman and Daniel Handler for review, and not to me, and I had done a blog for them (for fucking nothing, despite the fact that I actually get paid to do this – a lot) I ordered a Kindle. And eight hours later (I’m not kidding, eight hours) they lowered the price by $50.
So, you know, good start. So, here are my observations. And yes, this does go on a bit.
First, the good:
Kindle delivers available books in about 60 seconds through a free cellular data network, anywhere in the country. It’s fast, there’s a pretty good selection, and the screen is easy to read, with scalable fonts. It’s light, and the battery supposedly lasts a pretty long time, as power is only required to turn/change a page, not show text (it’s not back lit). They ship it with a very nice leather cover, that almost completely negates the size and weight advantage, but does protect the Kindle if it’s strapped in, and you can surf the internet, search Amazon products, and subscribe to and read blogs, magazines, and newspapers that are available from Amazon. You can also mail Word or other text documents to yourself and for ten cents a piece, Amazon will convert them to Kindle format and send them to your Kindle. These are all cool things. With a cheap SD memory card, you could easily carry 200 books with you in this little machine, and it highlights, clips, makes notes and bookmarks text.
Which means that the Kindle is not a complete P.O.S. It is, however, at least in this generation, a partial P.O.S.
The Not So Good: 1. No place to hold it. Every place you grab it does something — activates some function.

2. No page numbers. They have reference numbers, but not actually page numbers. There’s no way to find something or tell someone else how to find it. If you change font size, the reference numbers change. So, for instance, you might say, “Oh my God, there’s the funniest line in that new Sedaris book!” “Really, what page is it on?” “Uh, 2023 of 4432 in the second biggest font.” “Oh, yeah, that means something to me.”

3. There’s no place to clip the light they sell you to clip on it, and without the light, it’s dark. Of course you can clip it to the cover they sell you but…

4. It falls out of the cover. There’s a tiny “ledge” that’s supposed to keep the Kindle in place, but it doesn’t work. Yes, I could put a piece of stick-on velcro on the back and solve this problem, but I just paid $400 for this thing, I shouldn’t have to add velcro to make it functional.

5. It shuts down. I took it to Los Angeles for a weekend trip. I’d charged it before I left, and it’s supposed to be good for 7000 “page turns” on a charge, but even with the wireless off, it just stuck on a page on the second day, so I had nothing to read. I’ve never had a real book, “lock up”.
6. Reading on the screen is disorienting. I read a lot on a screen, more than I read on paper, but reading a novel on a screen is disorienting. The screen is still pretty small, and a full page of text from a book isn’t displayed. You never have a feel of how far along you are in a book. You don’t know how far from the end of the chapter you are. There is a little line of “progress dots” along the bottom of the page that’s supposed to indicate how far along you are, but it doesn’t feel “real”. It think if you could make it default to page numbers that mirror the real book, and you knew you were on page 44 of 400, you’d have a better idea. The progress numbers aren’t always right, either. I loaded the manuscript of my new book into it. The reference numbers keep showing things like, 2483 out of 98. Which, you know, is confusing.

So, the Kindle, in my opinion, just isn’t quite there. And understand, I think there’s a certain inevitability to electronic books, so this is not a rant against the form. For some things, particularly college courses, I think e-books could rock hard. But until there’s a generation who has never read or worked with paper books, the “analog” aspect of the reader has to be a lot better. You’ve got to somehow simulate the good things about paper books (and I don’t mean the smell or the fact that you can tear the pages out and wipe with them if you’re stuck dropping dooky in the woods), while taking advantage of the assets of e-books.
I’ll have a whole new blog on e-books soon, in which we’ll explore how you can decorate your garage to accommodate your own homeless author guy, who just got Napstered out of a job.
Meanwhile, e-book owners, share your thoughts.
COMMENTS: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=202482#202482

So, people are always asking me what I’m reading. And usually, I’m reading something for research, or some book someone has sent me for a jacket comment. (I have a two-foot stack of books on my desk right now that I’d love to read and comment on, but then, I would never be able to write another book.) It’s an occupational hazzard or just a hazzard of life, I guess. There are more books to read than you’ll ever have time to read. But when I was in Europe last month, doing a whole month on a couple of carry-on bags, I could only carry one book at a time, and since I was in Italy most of the time, there were very limited English language titles I could buy. So I got to read some books for fun that I might not have picked up otherwise.
First, I was in Siena, a very cool Medieval City in Northern Italy, when I ran out of reading material and so I picked up Northern Lights, the first book in Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series. It’s a young adult fantasy, and I have some trouble getting engaged in some YA titles, but I absolutely loved this book. (The Golden Compass film was adapted from it, but I hadn’t see it yet, fortunately.) I was never able to finish a Harry Potter book for some reason, although I could certainly see the appeal. But here, for the first time in a long time, I was completely lost in the story. (Perhaps because I was trying to drown out the sound of Italian guys on cell phones on trains. Travel note: Italian guys never shut up. Ever. If they are awake and there’s not food in their mouths, they are talking. Especially if there’s a woman around. I wanted to have a T-shirt made with the letters S.T.F.U. and point to it in these situations, because clearly, even with 3000 years of civilization, they have never learned to Shut The Fuck Up.) Anyway, giant armored talking polar bears. Yes! Northern Lights creates a very rich, alternative world that looks much like early 20th Century England, only more steam-punky, but the main thing you need to know is: Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Sure there’s a cute and spunky little Pippi Longstockingesce girl, there are Dickinsean street urchins (which you can now order n sushi bars in London – they are served with English hot mustard instead of wasabi) and a hydrogen-stealing zeppelin pirate, (a species rumored to have once existed in the Castro in San Francisco), but they had me at Giant Talking Armored Polar Bears. Hijinks ensue. (I’m reading the second book in the series now on the Kindle, which sucks ass in so many ways I don’t have time or room to enumerate them, so I don’t know if it’s any good or not because I can’t get past dealing with the stupid machine.)
So then I read Heat, by Bill Buford, which is sub titled: An Amateur’s Adventures ans a Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. It’s about working in restaurants, but it’s also about learning about food, about obsession, about the restaurant business, a biography of Mario Batali, and an overall history of Italian cooking. This is a terrific non-fictuon book that I probably would have never finished if I hadn’t been traveling, and I would have been poorer for having missed it. Buford is a talented writer, but also has the ability to humble himself as a student, which makes him a good teacher. I learned a lot about food, about restaurants (and I used to work in them) and about Italy. If you eat, you should read this book.
I picked up Michael Chabon’s book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union in Verona. Chabon doesn’t need me to sell his ability as a writer, he’s won tons of awards, including a Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. This book, however, I think is my favorite. It’s a noir mystery, so Chabon gets to show off his ability to turn a phrase, but it’s also a very high-concept alternative-history, wherein the state of Israel was not established in 1949, but the Jews from the post-war diaspora were relocated to a colony in Sitka, Alaska. So you have a detective story peopled entirely with people who speak in a Yiddish idiom, intermingled with Tlinglet Indians, one of whom, a giant, is raised at the adopted son of the main character, and so is a practicing Jew, right down to his yarmulke and the fringe of his garment. It makes for an extraordinarily interesting story, peppered with Judica and hard-boiled kvetching. If you’re Jewish, you really need to read this book, but if you’re not, you’ll probably learn something in addition to being entertained.
Finally, I read a book off of my “read for comment” pile that I chose because it would fit in my computer bag. Captain Freedom, by G. Xavier Robillard, is a very funny send-up of the super-hero genre. I won’t go into detail because it won’t be out until early next year, but leave it at: “it’s a hybrid of The Tick and Mark Leyner’s, Et Tu Babe. Very sharp, funny social satire. Meanwhile, you can check out G.’s Blog at http://www.alldaycoffee.net/
Comments: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?t=15090

Okay, so you’ve read my blogs and you know that all Italian bathrooms have a bowl to wash your junk in. Which, I guess is a good thing, because the showers are very, very small (at least in the hotels we’ve stayed in, and I think Charlee spent some serious Author Guy dollars for some of them, although not rock star dollars, because I don’t have the energy to trash the room at the end of the day.). In fact, unless I learn how to do a bunny dip (guys, ask your girlfriends who have cocktailed), it’s much like being in jail (ie. if I drop the soap, I just go on without it). I have not yet had the, uh, fortitude to use the wash your junk bowl, except to rinse out a couple of shirts, but I’d much rather have that foot or two of extra space in the shower instead of the junk washing bowl. Maybe my priorities are wrong, and like most people, I like to keep my fire engine clean, but I’m not sure I require a whole appliance just for washing one part of my body.
But that’s not what I’m writing about. I’m writing about the string.
Every shower in every bathroom in Italy has this string in the shower attached to a switch. For the longest time I thought it was to an exhaust fan — and perhaps the string to keep you from touching a switch with a wet hand. So, I didn’t figure I need to vent the steam, so never pulled the string. Turns out that’s a good thing, because the hotel last night had this:

So now I’m completely confused. And I haven’t met an Italian who speaks good enough English to ask them what’s up with the string. Take another look at it from a little wider angle.

See where the string ends. Right! So it can’t be for, “I’ve fallen in the tub and I can’t get up, right? Because, well, you could: a)just scream or b)make a sickening but loud thunk when you hit or c)not be able to reach the string if you’re paralyzed on the bottom of the tub.
So, is it that you are falling and you have the presence of mind to pull the string as you go down, so the alarm goes off and summons someone who saves you from drowning because your big, unconcious ass has blocked the drain? Seems unlikely, huh?
And say it is because you fell, but no one can hear you scream, but you can reach the string; how fucking loud is the alarm? I mean, are you going to set off an air raid siren. Because it seems like that’s going to scare a lot of people in the other rooms to death.
What the hell is the alarm for? Soap in the eye? Presumably, you could, oh, I don’t know, use your alarm string hand to flush that bad, bad shampoo out of your eye, right?
No towel?
Water way too cold? Please. No one else needs to be alerted to that. And let’s face it, unless you’re the Wicked Witch of the West, fire is a very unlikely event in the shower.
I honestly don’t know, so I’m asking you guys, because you always seem to know everything about traveling I don’t. What’s with the shower alarm string? And remember, there are no wrong answers, only wrong people, so if you don’t know, use your imaginations.
Comments: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=198695#198695

Misreading the sign, the Author Guy goes in search of TP for his bung hole…
Comments: http://bbs.chrismoore.com/viewtopic.php?p=198293#198293