Perch!

I didn't know they were edible. Fun to catch, tho.

• Just finished David Wong's "John Dies At The End". It was very good: very funny. and actually a little scary at times. Crazy other-dimensional demon nightmare monsters attack the world and two slackers have to fix it. Feels a bit like an R-rated slacker Ghostbusters, but gets away with it by being so funny. I'm about to start the sequel.
• Almost done with Nabokov's "Pale Fire". It's a brilliant and interesting construction: a 999-line poem followed by a critique of the poem done by someone who really wants the poem to be about something else - can't say much more without giving it all away. And while Nabokov was a brilliant writer and observer, the style he uses feels a bit dated 60 years out: very intricate, allusive, witty but exceedingly dry; some of his sentences take effort to fully appreciate.

  Also, I struggle a little with the story because the narrator sounds so much like legendary buffoon, Ignatius J. Reilly, that I can't take him seriously (am not yet sure if I'm supposed to, either). And since I can't shake the physical image of waddling, slovenly, hypochondriac Reilly, I can't believe the narrator could have physically done any of the things he says he did. My fault, not Nabokov's, though.

• "Snow Crash" was fine, except for the plot. The futurism was fun - though so much of what Stephenson describes has become Hollywood stock that I feel I would've enjoyed this much more if I'd read it 20 years ago. The ancient-religion-is-a-human-meta-virus thing felt silly, though.

You?

Boarded the return flight from Dallas to Raleigh at 2:40. Person next to us says that a guy a few rows back has a loose armrest on his seat, and that maintenance has been called. At 3:00, the pilot announces that maintenance has been called. At 3:15, a maintenance guy shows up, looks, leaves. At 3:25, maintenance guy returns with ... a roll of duct tape. Fixes the loose armrest with careful application of said tape. At 3:35, we leave: 35 minutes late.

Also: The Dallas airport has a Fox News store. And, the smog around Dallas/Fort Worth is utterly horrid. Those two facts are almost certainly related.

Today, Mrs C and I will be marrying our two female cats, Tricksey and Pepper. Our four-way inter-species marriage will be a shining example of the power of pure love.

We've been waiting for this for a long time. Thanks, SCOTUS!

Yes, the clouds above the water are blue and red. Or, at least that's the astounding illusion created by the brilliantly colored water, mineral deposits and bacteria create when they reflect sunlight back up into the steam above. You see it from a half mile away and you're sure you're going to need a gas mask to approach any closer. But they let you walk right up to it: 100 yards, 100 ft, still blue and red, you're expecting to choke and die any second now, 10 feet, 5 feet, and then you see that the clouds are really white and smell the same as all the other Yellowstone springs: hydrogen sulfide.

Yellowstone is pretty frikkin amazing.

Minus my beloved Leatherman. Finally found an TSA agent who thought it was worth stopping the X-ray machine and searching my camera bag over. Bah.

Jackson, WY by nightfall.

My fucking HP printer refuses to print anything until I update Adobe Flash Player for Internet Explorer.

What The Fucking Fuck?

As a lifelong career criminal, although I no longer enjoy the right to keep and bear arms, I'd like to take a moment to express my appreciation to the National Rifle Association for nonetheless protecting my ability to easily obtain them through its opposition to universal background checks.

Upon release in a few years from my current federal sentence on bank robbery and weapons charges, I fully anticipate being able to stop at a gun show on my way home to Connecticut -- where new laws have made it nearly impossible for a felon to readily purchase guns or ammunition -- in order to buy some with which to resume my criminal activities.

And so, a heartfelt thank you to the NRA and all those members of Congress voting with them. I, along with tens of thousands of other criminals, couldn't do what we do without you.

Gary W. Bornman,
The writer is an inmate at the federal "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colo.

Courant.com

It's National Bourbon Day!

Woodford Reserve, here I come!

(please allow me about 8 hours to get there, tho. shit to do)

Rubber Band Portraits