Ready Player One Though I hadn’t planned it this way, I read newcomer Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One at the tail end of a long string of video game books this year: Jeff Ryan’s Super Mario, David Kushner’s Masters of Doom, and Harold Goldberg’s All Your Base Are Belong to Us. This book is, uniquely among them, a fictional narrative, but exudes every bit the same sort of geeky joy that the others did.
Eric Gunnink, 12/18/1956-5/29/2008.
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of heightthis motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirmnewly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly rootsand should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead he called the moon
singing desire into beginjoy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoicekeen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father’s dreamhis flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grainseptembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable isproudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the darkhis sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and soldgiving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of amthough dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeathand nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
A long time ago, I ran a comparison of various command-line compressors in Linux. Recently, intrigued by the rise of parallel computing and the emergence of multi-processor versions of old *nix favorites like gzip and bzip2, I thought I’d give the benchmark another go.
Jamaica is one of those places which remained under foreign rule much longer than anyone probably realized; it didn’t gain its independence until 1962, before which it spent a little over three centuries as a British colony. Though its previous European tenants, the Spanish, had gifted it the uninspired name of Santiago (St. James), the British managed a hairsbreadth more historical sensitivity by opting for Jamaica, an Anglicization of the Arawak Xaymaca, meaning “land of wood and water”.
Though slightly better-known than other well-touristed locales of the West Indies, Jamaica’s status in popular knowledge is limited to its notoriety in the transatlantic slave trade, in which slaves from West Africa were rather unhappily exported to the Caribbean, where they were sold to sugar plantations, the sugar of which was used to make rum and other goods, which were then shipped to Europe and New England, where the proceeds from their sale allowed for the further purchase of involuntary labor from Africa. Jamaica’s other crowning achievement is the cultural institution of Bob Marley, whose musical contributions were immense, but whose legacy in the form of pot popularization and Rastafari I could do without.
Though notorious for its production of marijuana (“Jamaica Red” is one popular variety) and duly famous for its Blue Mountain coffee, tourism is Jamaica’s most lucrative and important industry, comprising about half of its national income. This past week, my new wife and I, by way of a honeymoon, became one of approximately 1.3 million people to visit Jamaica every year.
Despite the implication of the title, it was a stylish marriage; more importantly, it was my marriage, long in coming and sweet in arrival. It was an eight-year courtship, longer than this blog’s relatively short life (during which she was occasionally featured); it becomes easy—discouragingly easy—in a relationship of such length and regularity to lose sight of its uniqueness. Perhaps that is why, even as the appointed day (October 9th) drew closer, I felt little anxiety. The wedding was, in terms of dedication of time, about as involved as washing my windows.