Sparing a life in WW1

After the first mortar explosion, we didn't bother with the slow crawl across the muddy ground any longer.

As the mortar shells kept on dropping around us, the nearer hits throwing huge explosions of dirt up into the air to rain down on us like stinging hail, we all rose up to our feet and ran, a ragged charge across the battlefield.  There was no time to think of strategy, of keeping a low profile, of anything.  All we knew was that there was danger, that we were on the brink of death-

-and our only shot at safety was in the trenches that lay ahead of us.

Danni California: Part 2

Continued from here.

It was the sixties, and all that folks could talk about was the railroad.

It was going to span the entire United States, they claimed.  It would stretch all the way from the civilization of the East Coast out to the wild West, to those hills that prospectors claimed were full of gold.  It would connect the two halves of the world, would let folks travel the whole length of the continent in under a fortnight.

Even now, although the great Trans-Continental project wasn't yet completed, there were already folks heading in both directions as fast as they could, searching for some sort of magical opportunity, as if they were certain to find it if they just traveled far enough.

"Slabs of Night Meat"

I glared down at the bank of TV monitors in front of me, despising my own existence.  God, I didn't want to be here, I said to myself in a depressingly common line of thought.

Outside my little walled-off cubicle, I knew that all these idiots were wandering around the expanse of the mall, staring dumbly into the window displays, their wallets growing lighter as the bags in their hands grew correspondingly heavier.  The flow of customers seemed never-ending, all of them with that same stupid, poleaxed look on their faces.

I glanced over at the clock, begging for it to go faster.  I knew that I was only supposed to go on patrol once every half hour.  The mall administrator had explained it to me, using that patronizing, condescending tone that made me want to slam my fist right into his smug little face.

"See, we don't want to make the shoppers feel like they're being policed," he had said to me, spreading his hands wide as if trying to say, 'what can I do, I'm just another working stiff like you'.  "And your presence can be intimidating."

I looked down at myself.  My uniform was baggy.  I had already managed to shed ten pounds, working towards completing my New Year's resolution, but the cheapskates refused to give me a new uniform.  So now I was stuck in the shell of my old clothes, feeling them hang off my shoulders and sag around my reduced belly.

At my waist hung my belt of tools - but no guns, oh no.  That wasn't suitable for mall security.  The most dangerous thing I had there was a snap-out baton, flimsy and slightly rusty.  It was balanced by a can of pepper spray that was probably a decade old.  The cheapskates refused to understand the idea of pepper spray "going bad" and refused to pay for a replacement.

It had only been eighteen minutes since my last patrol.  I still had another ten minutes to spend here in front of the monitors, staring as the fat little images of people moved from one screen to another.

But I couldn't bear it any longer.

I jumped up, the noise making Frank, my partner, turn and glance at me.  "Going on patrol," I told him.

"Seems soon," Frank remarked, but I knew that he didn't care.  Hell, the man probably preferred that I do it.  Frank was a big fan of hitting up the mall's Krispy Kreme store for their duds and leftovers, and it showed on his waist and big hips.  Hell, he was part of my motivation to lose weight in the first place.

"Yeah, whatever.  Let's see them fire me for it," I shot back, and headed out of our little booth.

I liked being on my feet, but sometimes, out among the slowly wandering slabs of night meat, I still felt trapped.  They were all so big, mindless wandering cows.  They existed only to mindlessly consume, munching on greasy mall pizza and sipping from oversized cups of Jamba Juice.  I sometimes felt like I was watching over the urban version of a farm.

Yes, that's what I was.  The urban farmer, patrolling my meat beasts, watching for the occasional coyote or fox that tried to cause trouble.  I was just there to keep order, to keep the cows happy and mindless.

One of the slabs had come to a stop in front of me, his cottage-cheese bulk blocking most of the walkway.  "Excuse me sir," I spoke up as he stared, his jaw slack, into one of the lit window displays.

Mister Night Meat didn't respond.  Behind me, I could feel the other cows moving their feet, starting to get anxious.  Why were they being blocked?

I reached out and tapped the man on the shoulder.  He started, turning to look at me as if confused about who he was.  "Yuh?" he said, the sound deep and guttural.

"Sir, you can't stand in the middle of the path and stare," I told him, trying to keep most of the disgust out of my voice.  I didn't need another official reprimand.  "Step to the side, or keep moving, please."

The man gawked at me, but stepped over towards the window.  A moment later, the display once again captivated his attention, and he stopped - but at least now he was out of the way.

I kept on walking along the halls of the mall, my thoughts almost as dark as the night outside.

Danni California: Part 1

Author's note: I tried this once before, here: http://www.missingbrains.com/2013/04/part-1-california-rest-in-peace.html .  However, just because I abandoned the story then, doesn't mean that I've forgotten about it.  Time for a second try!

The man came into town every morning, riding in on his old motorcycle.  The creaking monster spat out clouds of black smoke behind it, belching so loud that the whole town could hear him coming.

He'd plop himself down at the bar, pulling out his typewriter, slowly feeding in a new sheet of paper.  He'd wait for Jenny to come around, bringing him the cup of dark sludge that the place had the audacity to try and pass off as coffee.

And then, laboriously, he'd start to type.

Book 7 of 52: "Pitch Perfect" by Bill McGowan

To start this review, let me say that Pitch Perfect is probably the best book on public speaking, bar none, that I've found.  This book has so much good advice, I'm actually considering buying a copy to keep it around permanently.

Let's face it - everyone hates public speaking.  Some people are better at it than others, and I like to believe that I, personally, am not the worst at it.  But still, whenever I have to get up and talk (even if it's just in a small meeting), I get nervous.  And presenting a more detailed topic, to a large audience?  I cringe at the thought!

In Pitch Perfect, McGowan starts by acknowledging this, and he first drills down on the idea of practice, practice, practice!  He explains how everyone goes through three stages: dread, acceptance, and enjoyment.  He emphasizes that it takes lots of time/practice to get to the enjoyment stage, but that it's possible!

He also brings up practice to show that all those people who are "natural" speakers are nothing of the sort - they have practiced!  This was a huge realization to me personally.  I always thought that some people could just stand up and talk, and their words would come out perfectly.  Oh, how I envied them!  But the dirty truth is that these people have to practice, just like everyone else - and if they don't, it shows in their next talk.

After these broader statements, McGowan buckles down and emphasizes everything that can go wrong, everything that makes a speech fail.  He touches on body language, overused words, the most common (and, coincidentally, the worst) ways to start a speech, and how to fix each of these points!  He shows how even experienced presenters shoot themselves in the foot, and how to avoid those same mistakes.

Finally, McGowan talks about some of the more specialized speeches - how to give a toast, how to speak at a corporate event versus a social event, and how to handle other parts of communication.  In the end, I finished the book feeling strengthened, but not overwhelmed.

In fact, only a day or two after finishing the book, I had to give a speech, and I put some of McGowan's suggestions into effect.  And I was astounded to see positive effects right away!  I would wholly recommend this book to everyone, and in fact have already done so to several colleagues.

Time to read: about 6 hours.  I really focused on going slower with this book to absorb everything.

Who's the real villain?

I stared up at the hole in my ceiling, trying in vain to blink back tears as I watched the caped man vanish into a dot.

In a sudden burst of anger, overcome with impotent rage, I stamped my foot.  I stamped both feet, jumping up and down and waving my arms and screaming, not caring about the ruined bits of electronics that were further crushed underfoot.  Tears were rolling down both of my cheeks, now, but I didn't bother to try and wipe them away - I knew that they'd soon be replaced by their fellows.

What would you change?

The waitress glanced over at the bearded man in the corner.  He had been sitting here for several hours, now, and she was starting to feel a little concerned.

This wasn't the first time that a senior citizen had wandered into the coffee shop and refused to leave.  The waitress could still remember that incident a couple of months ago, when a man with Alzheimer's insisted that his daughter "would be along to pick me up any minute."

That hadn't been so bad - until the man stayed for another four hours, staring blankly out the window and shedding all over the floor.

Book 6 of 52: The Circle, by Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers' "The Circle" is a narrative story that starts off as what sounds like a utopia, and very gradually shifts towards the other end of the spectrum, until we're eventually staunchly opposed to everything described in the book, all the actions that the characters make, or are forced/coerced to make.

However, what makes The Circle great is how smoothly and gradually the world changes, leaving us nodding along, unable to gather enough energy to stand up and voice a complaint.

In fact, reading The Circle puts me in mind of a prank pulled in the TV show, "The Office."  In this prank, Jim slowly adds nickels into the handset of his coworker Dwight's phone.  This makes the receiver grow slowly heavier and heavier.  Dwight, of course, doesn't notice until one day when Jim removes all the nickels - resulting in Dwight smacking himself in the face with the suddenly much lighter phone.

Similarly, the changes that we see in The Circle creep up on us slowly.  We feel slightly uncomfortable about them, but we can't quite put a finger on how it's wrong, why we should be opposed - especially when the characters offer such compelling arguments for these choices.

The Circle, the self-titled company featured in the story, is the ultimate tech company, a mixture of Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley companies.  Everyone who works for The Circle enjoys amazing amenities and benefits - but they also are subjected to a hectic lifestyle in which they have virtually zero privacy and must always be acting for The Circle, even in their free time.

There's nothing particularly interesting about any of the characters, and they're mostly one-dimensional, but that seems to be the point here.  We don't need rich and detailed characters, because in the world of zero privacy, we are reduced down to one dimension.  Passions and hidden hobbies just become another facet of our "profile."

In one particularly chilling passage, the main character is slowly convinced that secrets, all secrets, are evil and should never exist.  "Nothing should be kept secret," she eventually proclaims.  "Secrets are lies, and privacy is theft."  As I read this passage, I kept trying to think of a situation where this was not true - but I was having a hard time disproving the statement, even though I disagree vehemently with it.

In the end, there isn't much of a conclusion - but again, it may not be necessary.  The Circle is intended to show us a future, not to solve it.  And for those who can overlook the at-times banal narrative, that future is disturbing and alien.

Time to read: 3 hours.  For a 400-page book, this goes very, very fast.  Most of the writing is quite light.

"I love you, but I can't wait to kill you."

I stared at the screen in front of me, watching the green text scroll by on the black background.  Lines and lines of information, most of it moving by too quickly for me to read.

Of course, I knew that I didn't have to strain my eyes to capture those fleeting words.  Everything was logged, was being saved and preserved.

All I had to do was wait for my program to finish.

The Angels: Trapped in Stories

As the angel's story came to a close, we felt as though we were returning back to our bodies, as if we'd drifted away, becoming insubstantial ghosts as we watched the angel's story unfold.

I was the first person to shake off that feeling.  "Ugh, that storytelling ability you all have is really annoying when you stop talking," I complained.  "Always feels like a hangover when we have to push our way back to reality..."

Book 5 of 52: "Towards Zero" by Agatha Christie

If you're not seeing a picture of the book above, tell me...

There's a reason why Agatha Christie is one of the best-selling mystery writers of all time.

Every time I pick up one of her books, I expect something quaint, slow, and old-fashioned, something that won't ever manage to hold my attention in this modern era, where I can see a serial killer go on a rampage and eventually be captured in under an hour on television.  Next to that level of action, how can I ever care about the dull little murder in some small English village?

Every time I pick up one of Agatha Christie's books, this is what I expect.

And every time, I'm amazed by how deftly she weaves together a plot that keeps me guessing up until the last few pages.

In this book, we follow a group of wealthy urbanites as they take a retreat out to a chateau on the side of a lake, where they grew up.  The primary source of tension in this retreat is due to the fact that not only has wealthy Nevile Strange decided to bring his second wife along - but he's also invited his first wife there as well!  It's a recipe that's guaranteed to cause tension, and there's plenty - even before a murder knocks off the matron of the house, and everyone becomes a suspect.

Our detective, Superintendent Battle, goes about investigating in his usual mild British manner, but the more he digs in, the stranger things become.  In the end, I was certain I knew who the murderer was, as did everyone else - and then twist!

Of course, I won't reveal that twist here.  If you want to know, well, click the book above to get to Amazon, and read it for yourself!

Time to read: 2 hours.  I can do a Christie book a day.