I have to say that I am a huge fan of The Stand, but I haven’t really been that gripped by anything else Stephen King has produced, although other people obviously have. So when Vicki recommended this book, I can’t say that I was champing at the bit to read it. But I have pledged to read every book recommended, within my power, so I duly ordered it from the library.

And I ended up totally loving it.

The book is broken into three rough chunks: a memoir section, a section on writing, and a section talking about a catastrophic accident that almost killed King in 1999. And all of the sections were completely awesome. They were crisp, elegant, beautiful, compelling, and I pretty much read the book at one sitting, because I got so into it.

I love the memoir section because it’s broken up into these little units. Rather than trying to tell the complete story of his life in 100 pages, King picked the most notable and interesting incidents, the strange memories that have shaped his life, the big events. I loved his description of the phone call about the paperback rights for Carrie. I also loved the stories from his childhood.

In the section on actual writing, King talks about the basics of writing, the toolbox, as he puts it, and the ways to develop written work, how to become a writer, and how to sell written work. I love the aside at the very end, where he mentions that if getting published is your primary goal, you should skip ahead to a vanity press. HAH! Anyway, for aspiring writers, that section is well worth perusing, for his rant about adverbs, if nothing else. Stephen King hates adverbs, apparently.

The bit about the accident might read like an afterthought tacked onto the end, but it was actually quite relevant, talking about how he pushed through after the accident to keep writing. (To keep writing the very book I was reading, in fact, which explains why the On Writing section is so delightfully cantankerous.)

So, I’d give On Writing a stealth thumbs-up. I approached with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised.

Demographics:

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King. Published 2000, 288 pages. Memoir.

A few months ago, a strap on my favourite pair of sandals gave out, rendering them totally useless. I promptly brought the shoe to Makela’s, and the woman behind the counter seemed confident that it was fixable, so I left the shoe with her, and a few days later she called, and I picked my shoe up, and lo and behold, it was fixed. I have, of course, gone back to wearing my favourite sandals everywhere, and I suspect that another strap may give out soon, but that’s ok, because I’ll just fix that strap..

I like to use things up. And that’s what this week’s “saving the environment with minimal effort” post is all about. Using things up is an important part of being environmentally conscious, because the more usage you get out of things, the less things you need to buy. And, naturally, the more money you save.

Most things which break are fixable, especially if you buy high-quality things in the first place. And often the cost to fix something is fairly low, especially if you are capable of fixing something yourself. You might be surprised by the number of businesses in your area which would be delighted to fix things like shoes, broken lamps, computers, chairs with woeful upholstery, and so forth. Many of those businesses are small, run from the home, and therefore typically low cost.

When I’m thinking about replacing something in my house, I always think about whether or not it really needs to be replaced. First, can it be fixed and used as it was before? If it can’t be fixed, can I repurpose it and use it for something else? When a pair of pajama pants gives up the ghost, I can cut them up into rags for cleaning. When my sheets tear, I can hang onto them and use them as drop cloths later. When a sweater becomes too holey to use, I can felt it and turn it into a cat bed, or use the felt in various craft projects.

When something breaks, think outside the box. And by the same token, don’t replace something that isn’t broken. If you don’t like it, figure out why you don’t like it, and how you can make it likeable again. If you’re bored with your living room, the solution is not to buy a new living room, it’s to rearrange the furniture, change the art, maybe change the covers on your throw pillows. Use your imagination. Use it up and wear it out.

A photographer with the Times got a rare glimpse into the lives of FLDS members, especially young women. The result is an interesting article and a photo set which I personally find fascinating; it’s like a look into a totally alien and hidden world.

Unidentified human remains and efforts to reunite them with surviving family members are the focus of this feature in the Phoenix New Times.

Too lazy to maintain a garden, but still desirous of locavore street cred? The New York Times profiles the solution for you! I give up. The green movement has officially died.

Door to door sales has a dark side, and no, it’s not disturbing you at the dinner table.

Foreclosures in California are up by 261% from 2007!

Rant about your spouse on YouTube, get charged with spousal abuse.

Junk collectors in Haiti handle dangerous substances on a daily basis for pennies.

Have you ever read a book which sort of sneaks inside your mind and stays there, in a subtle way that makes you want to wheel around and say “hey now,” but you get the sense that if you do, the book’s elusive power will have vanished? That’s kind of how I felt reading The Power of the Dog. It was a subtle, quiet sort of book, and at first it seemed to meander in no particular direction, but then suddenly everything started to pull together, and I was compelled to finish it.

The author actually grew up in the environment he wrote about, which lends an air of truth to the book. I loved the language, which was often stark and sparse, yet extremely descriptive. Savage brought the characters together with just a few strokes of the pen, provided a background which almost seemed to speak through omissions. It’s a showing sort of book, not a telling kind of book, and that, I suspect, is why it packs such a punch.

It’s a book about arbitrary evil, and the depths of bitterness which can skulk in someone’s heart. It was also kind of a sobering lesson about what happens when you hold grudges and anger so long that you’ve almost forgotten your original reasoning. The Power of the Dog may just be my favourite book this month, and I suspect that I will be reading it again in the reasonably near future.

Demographics:

The Power of the Dog, by Thomas Savage. Published 1967, 276 pages. Fiction.

With the broken trees, already, people! I like trees. Trees are pretty, and trees are neat. While I hate what they are doing to downtown, the solution is not the mutilation of the trees. What did the trees ever do to you, for Pete’s sake?!

(Sorry about the poor image quality; that’s my cellphone, since I didn’t have my camera handy.)

Trolling the Press Democrat the other day for scraps of news of interest, I noticed the headline “Outrage over prisoners’ right to blog,” and while it took me a few days, I did eventually click on it to find out what the deal was. And the deal is, pretty much, exactly what it sounds like. Prisoners blog by sending out posts in letters and relying on friends to publish them, and people get riled up about it.

The way we treat prisoners in this country is very intriguing, in a lot of ways, and it looks like the Internet is reshaping, yet again, the way we think about prisoners. It was interesting to read the strident railings against prisoner blogging from family members of victims, especially when contrasted with measured statements which pointed out that prisoners do, in fact, have first amendment rights.

And they do. That’s the simple fact of the matter. Committing crimes in this country deprives you of the right to freedom, assuming that you are tried and convicted, but it doesn’t abridge other rights. (With the exception of the right to vote, for felons.) Personally, I support the extension of basic rights to prisoners. I’m not a fan of the gulag, and I don’t think that prisoners should be isolated from society altogether. I’m not sure I’m quite as comfortable with the comparatively deluxe accommodations in some prisons, but I do think that prisoners should be allowed to vote, to pursue educations, the blog, and so forth, because these are all acts which promote rehabilitation and healthy function in society.

Granted, no one close to me has been murdered, and maybe I would feel differently if that was the case. But I feel like the Internet is a big place, and if I don’t want to read a murderer’s blog, I don’t have to. No one’s going to sneak it into my RSS feed, and people aren’t going to send me the link and say “hey, check this out.” Someone who chooses to live a very public life as a victim advocate might be confronted with such material more often, but, again, that’s a personal choice, and choices have consequences.

Obviously, I support measures which are designed to prevent prisoners from orchestrating crimes while behind bars, and I don’t support witness intimidation, evidence tampering, jury manipulation, and that sort of thing. But if a prisoner wants to blog about his experiences, I see no reason to stop him; I might choose not to read it, but I think I also might find prison blogs interesting, especially if I wanted to learn more about life in American prisons.

Inevitably, of course, I’m sure that not all prison blogs are all that healthy, and that some of them may very well influence society. Americans do seem to have a fascination with people who commit heinous crimes, and I doubt that restricting prisoner blogging is going to stop that. In an era where the Bill of Rights is increasingly less meaningful, thanks to figures in our government who are actively working to undermine it, I’m also glad to see any fight to retain basic rights, no matter who that fight is supporting.

Barbara Ehrenreich is never one to back down from a fight, and this interview with her in the Guardian is awesome. If you haven’t read her searing exposes of the American wealth gap, you should, because they are extremely good, and they handily defeat the claim that this is a classless society.

Carbon offsets: do they work, or are they just greenwashing?

Newspapers are critical to society, in the eyes of many of us, so maybe we ought to start fighting to save them.

A new film about ALS follows a patient who wanted other ALS patients to see that they were not alone.

A crackdown on stolen cars has had interesting economic effects in Jenin.

A college with a unique business model raises questions about the big guns in the education field.

Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, doomed to repeat itself in an endless circle. Ouroboros, omphalos, the water falls behind, the water falls before. Tick tock says the clock, tick tick tick, counting down the seconds, counting down the days. Time becomes a loop, loop becomes a time, time loop becomes a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. Water falls behind, water falls before, searing hot and blistering cold, repeats itself.

So I was listening to NPR the other day, peacefully minding my own business and making some pancakes, when a story about the Veterans Administration came on the air, and I perked up my ears, because I am interested in veterans’ issues. (In case you’re wondering, it really is “Veterans Administration,” with no punctuation. I checked.)

Lo and behold, the story was a followup on the controversial decision made earlier this year by the VA to ban voter registration drives on VA property. I listened to the story with increasing incredulity, and my eyebrows slowly crept up while butter singed in the pan because I completely lost focus. It takes a lot to make me singe my butter, people.

As I hope most of you are aware, the abuse of veterans in this country is pretty widespread, and also extremely sad. Yes, the VA does provide a lot of benefits, including great medical care, when you can get it, but it also jerks vets around, tries to deprive them of benefits, and sometimes forces them to travel long distances for care. In recent months, I’ve read about fights to get disability payments, to which disabled veterans are entitled, along with disputes over health care for family  members, job placement assistance, and other services that the VA is simply supposed to provide.

But the voter registration ban is beyond the pale, to me. According to the VA official interviewed on NPR, the ban was put in place because voter registration drives are “disrupting,” which well they should be, to encourage people to REGISTER TO VOTE. Voting is a right in this country, and it’s a right a lot of vets don’t exercise, because they aren’t given the tools to do so. The military preys on people in disadvantaged circumstances, and works to keep them that way, and this is just another technique for doing that.

Of all the people in this country who should be voting this year, vets and current servicemembers are high on my list, because they are going to be directly affected by what happens in November. It is critical that servicemembers be able to vote, and to be able to do so easily, and the VA’s blanket ban on registration drives is, quite frankly, criminal.

I’m hoping it actually is criminal, as are many voter advocacy organizations, who are currently in the process of suing the VA to reinstate voter regisration drives at VA facilities. The ban wasn’t just wrong, it also set a dangerous precedent, and one I don’t much like the sound or look of.

Tattooing in Hawaii is a tradition rich with generations of history, so it was neat to see this article talking about the culture and history of Hawaiian tattooing. It’s nice to know that there are some parts of the world where tattooing hasn’t turned into a hipster cliche.

A train operator wrote about his experience with a suicide for the Guardian; I found the article rather interesting, and it answered a question I’ve always had: how do train operators feel when people use their trains to commit suicide?

Wayne Pacelle is the president of the HSUS, and he has a blog. It is neat. Go read it.

Beauty pageants in Rwanda have become charged with political issues, reshaping the way people think about beauty. (Thanks for the link, Vicki.)

IVF is 30 years old now, and perhaps it’s time to take a close look at how it’s unfolding, and where we want it to go.

Christian sex manuals? Yeah, they’re the new hip thing. And I think it’s awesome to see sexuality promoted in the Christian community.

Got a street racing problem? Get the cops to organize street races!