2006 midzman book list

Next Man Up; A year behind the lines in today's NFL - John Feinstein - great insight into the NFL.
Fargo Rock City - Chuck Klosterman - If you were a metalhead in the 80's, you HAVE to read this book. After reading you will be pulling out your copies of Out of the Cellar and Skid Row.

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Rabbit Redux - John Updike
Rabbit Run - John Updike
The Village - John Updike
Devil's Feather - Minette Walters - Bought this in Germany in the tiny english section, quite a dropoff in writing skill between updike and percy, but sometimes mindless suspense is just what the dr. ordered
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy - Meaning of life book, Love the writing style. Very Bret Easton Ellis in the 60s.
My Friend Elmore - James Barry - Disappointing follow up to MLP. Not sure there is a reason to read this.
Fantasyland - A Season on Baseball's Lunatic Fringe - Sam Walker - Absolute must read for anyone that has played rotisserie or fantasy sports of any kind http://www.fantasyland.com/
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr.
A Million Little Pieces - James Barry - Excellent book, the irrelevance of whether it is "true" of not is not to be debated.
Buffaloed: How Race, Gender and Media Bias fueled a Season of Scandal - Bruce Plaskett - Must read for all the haterz
Angels & Demons - Dan Evans - Poor 2nd half of the book like Da Vinci Code

nice

this is just a sweet picture (not as cool as purify in a cowboy hat after the lil' red slaughter of 2001) after a great game for buff fans...

i loved the cu-miami fight and i don't have a problem with went down at the "O.B." last night. john hessler and ray lewis were joking about it at the ravens game, and it was totally unforgettable to be there. freaking intense. i guess this can't go down all the time in college football, but every now and then makes for good theater. coker had to let that go down, he has to do something to have them get their swagger back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JWeE9KqZjQ

home

thrash metal song i wrote for the hell of it, hopefully marcus can turn it into a BIG, BIG hit...

i am paralyzed
by the need to over analyze can never sleep
and i feel the steady creep of
every day my brain
going more and more insane
everything is heavy
i take it all upon
i feel the explosion comin’
at the break, the break of dawn

in a world that’s filled with aliens
there’s no one to explain
why my words are meaningless
and they’re shouted out in vain
overstimulated
drowning in quicksand
i beat that motherfucker
with the billy in my hand

there’s no reason to run
there’s no reason to hide
i am back where I belong
back on the inside

RAGE

in general i consider myself a pretty mellow dude, and most people i know would consent to that assessment. espn has done something to make that mellowness dissipate with alacrity by putting lou "elmer fudd" holtz on at halftime of every weekday college football game. THIS MUST NOT STAND! I cannot take this slobberfest. and today, the suits at espn decided to have elmer pontificate about tiger woods at the amex championships. he is impossible to take when he is talking about football, but golf??? this really, really sucks since I am a completely hopeless college football addict. finding the mute button in less than 1.3 seconds on the remote has taken on epic relevance...

padre

Isn't the San Diego Padre Friar mascot dude exhorting the crowd when trevor Hoffman enters the game to "Hells Bells" blasphemous? or at least ironic...

tiger woods

just the way he struts up to the first tee, you know he is not someone to be fucked with. it is amazing what he is doing to a competition that is more talented and deep than anything golf has ever seen by a large margin. the young talent inspired by him and his money (gotta love economics, it never fails to attract the gifted and motivated) are getting the best instruction and training, which makes it more and more difficult for one athlete to reign supreme. tiger mentally dominates though, and with his physical skills, makes him real tough to beat.

snakeskin

sticking with the snakeskin theme, something bizarre occured yesterday at the old home depot. a strange freakfamily replete with children in roller skate shoes sliding on the pristine HD floor were buying the materials to put together a nice plexiglass animal cage. as i listened in it turns out this was a snake cage. nothing too strange there, many people have snakes, just not snakes around mommy's neck AT the home depot. i am not sure this is legal, sensible, rationale or any other typical red blooded american activity. but she walked around like it was just a scarf she had just picked up from dillards, not the freaking big ass boa constrictor beast that it was.

completely unrelated, looking thru pics and found this one, happy times south of the border.

madness

greatest rap line ever - uno, dos, tres, quattro - flesh-eating like the 12 holy apsotles. rhyming quatro with apostle is flat out ingenious or fucking crazy, either way it's all good.

take it upon yourself to rewatch wild at heart. the shit is wild. i would like to know what david lynch is freaking on right now...

"This is a snakeskin jacket! And for me it's a symbol of my individuality, and my belief... in personal freedom. " - Sailor

nothing is decisive

so - last night in herrenberg. as much as i have wanted to return to the USA there are always twinges of melancholy. did i take advantage of the opportunity to experience a new country as much as i could or should have? my mind fights with itself, this is nothing new. i finished my 5th book over an absolutely stupendous rinderfilet at the hotel gasthof restaurant that was apparently only available on the german menu, not the one in english. all this time craving some beef and there was one right under my nose the entire time. anyways, book 5 was "villages" by john updike. his writing style is excellent, but the subject matter not my cup of tea. looking forward to reading the first 2 "rabbit" books on the flight home. couple of great passages at the end.

on the truths of the christian religion (or to me, just western norms):
"one our wish to live forever, however tedious the actual experience of eternal consciousness might be, and, two, our sensation that something is amiss - that there has been a lapse or slippage in the world and things are not quite as they should be. we feel made for a better world, and the fault is ours that this is not eden. the second may be the more solid evidence, since fear and loathing of death can be explained as, like pain, a survival device selected and refined by darwinian evolution. because we fear death, we try harder to live. as long as our genes get through, nature doesn't care how we suffer."

on the onset of alzheimers:
"Owen and Julia are already turned in that direction, talking in baby syllables, touching each other as if for orientation in the dark, squabbling like mated toucans in a tropical jungle and then flying away in perfect forgetful unison."

that last line is a classic description of elderly (and not so elderly) couples...

boredom

2nd to last night in the herrenberg hotel i have spent the last 3 weeks in. i am ready to head back to the good ol' USA. not motivated to write anything new, so here are some of my ramblings (i think i was a bit pissed off that morning) against some george soros' bs a friend emailed me, george's blatherings are in quotes:


"First of all because when you wage war, you inevitably create innocent victims." - Let's see, were the people in the twin towers innocent victims? what is the response - pacifist jimmy carter style negotiation? it works so well for the French. and we should definitely have not responded to pearl harbor or Hitler's genocide of the jews. we created WAY too many innocent victims. He is morally equating terrorists and America, and i resolutely deny that flaccid argument.

"but the whole world order has been shaken as a result of the Bush administration's policies" - more absolute BS. like the middle east was just this stable democracy until big bad bush invaded iraq in 2003. WTF? this takes an absolute willingness to disregard the last 3000 years of history in the region. GW is freaking more powerful than JC and Muhammad in these peoples' eyes - not bad for a hick from Texas.

"U.S. households have a negative savings rate because of the double-digit appreciation in houses. That created equity that people have been withdrawing [in the form of home equity loans and cash-out refinancing]. " - how did this idiot make his millions again?? this has just been a transfer of credit card debt to home equity debt. So blame people's fiscal irresponsibility on rising home values? I have to admit, that is a new one to me. But luckily, Bush is ruining the economy so he is doing some good there. We'll have to blame this one on Clinton since he made the economy SO freaking awesome.

I just don't see any difference between his statements and anyhing else that every other leftist spews out on a daily basis. If you like I will nexus each of his statements and come up with essentially the same quote from some alfrankenjeanneanegarafolo clone (i love how the left can only find spokesmen that were former bad comedians--and they made fun of reagan being an actor). Really, it won't take me long and it is flooding here, so when i leave there will be nothing to do.

Here is what I would say to him -- OK, Israel did what all good pacifist liberals wanted and gave up the gaza strip to the arabs as a show of good faith and what not. Did this give us stabilized peace in the region? No, it just emboldened the arabs to intensify the shelling of INNOCENT victims in Israel and increased attacks on Israieli soil, and now we are on the brink of some real major $hit going down. Or we can take the US approach of going in and kicking ass and being safe at home for the last 5 years (NYT's attempts to help the terrorists not withstanding). I know what lowlifes respond to and it is not hand outs and negotiations. brute force and brute force only are what they understand. he should try his peace and love down at fremont in the max security.

getting lost

is easy in deutschland, i think that is why they have devised such superior road signage informing you at all times the 14 options available to you at any place in the country. so, the trip to stuttgart started on a positive note, arrived in the city in no time, even got to the city ring, that is when the madness started. i somehow was flipped onto an outgoing road and had to execute a bridge u-turn, something I am getting exceedingly good at. got back in the city ring, only to see a familiar town on a sign, tuebingen taking that slight right turn and getting thrown into an underground maze and flipped out onto the outerparts of stuttgart once more. this is the familiar pattern of my life in germany, going somewhere, getting lost, getting frustrated, looking for clues, seeing words like Vierwaldstaetterseedampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft and giving up and returning to the hotel. this is how i look after 3 weeks "in country"...









o well, went to tuebingen an had an awesome steak (rostbroten) covered in gravy and onions. a couple of Plis served up by a fine Kirsten Dunst look alike and it's all good. waiting on the 3rd place game, played coincidentally in the place where i was lost this morning (guess it was a good idea i did not buy tickets). hard to judge the country's mood for this consolation game,mainly because I DON'T SPEAK ANY GERMAN, but it'll kill a couple of hours and pils.




"The one good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain" - Bradlee

Time

too much of it and your mind finds ways to get you in trouuble, not enough and fight or flight cerebral cortex primitive reactions to simple "how are you today mr. millsap?" are met with extreme prejudice. anyways, i am in the former situation, so why not start a blog? get something knocked off the Top 749 things to do before i expire. heading to stuttgart in a few, will hopefully comment on the thrill of it in a pils induced haze.

“Perhaps there was a time when everydayness was not too strong and one could break its grip by brute strength. Now nothing breaks it – but disaster.”
- Binx Bolling, The MovieGoer