Brooks Recommends - Foucault's Pendulum

It can be very easy and tempting and down right fun to spend all one's time criticizing other people and the work they do. After all when people come out with things like this, it's pretty much like they're asking for it. But as much joy as I often get from hearing or reading or doling out, take-downs (thus one of my new favorite podcasts!) I think it's important to take time and revel in what is great and grand and glorious in this universe. Granted, the ratio of great to mediocre is still pretty depressing, but there's still a tremendous amount of great stuff out there.

So today, I'd like to recommend my favorite novel, Foucault's Pendulum by Italian author and linguist Umberto Eco. Now, I don't know if it's great in the same way that Lady Chatterly's Lover is, but I also know that it's a hell of a lot better than those awkwardly written doorstops The Harry Potter books. Frankly, it's intelligentsia pulp, a genre that could claim Eco's first novel The Name of the Rose.

In many respects, Foucault's pendulum has a lot in common with the Dan Brown style genre books. The only book of his I've read is the DaVincci code (which I read on a depressing cross-country bus trip made only more depressing because I was stuck reading that tripe), in that it's about a possible global conspiracy originating with the cult of the Templars and using some pretty broad leaps of historical logic to try to substantiate that claim. But as opposed to Dan Brown's books (I'm presuming (I saw the trailer to the movie Angels and Demons and it looked like more of the same(except without Audrey Tautou and let's face it, why would you want to see anything without Audrey Tautou?))), and others of his ilk, Eco's work is primarily concerned with the validity of those leaps in logic.

 It's a conspiracy thriller which questions the fundamental assumptions of the genre. Without giving too much away, it's a book concerned with the philosophy of history. What does history mean? How does it effect us and vice versa? While there is some clunky stuff involving a computer program which is imbued with unrealistic power (it was published in the late 1980's), it's a relatively minor complaint. This is a book about ideas, and it dances through chapters on medieval history, occultism, and Italian politics with such glee and merriment that I would argue most of the book is comic in nature, despite the way it's bookended in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

What I'm saying is you should read it. I've tried to get many people over the years to read this book, and I've been pretty unsuccessful, but seriously, if you're reading this right now and have been half-heartedly looking for a good book to read, the I implore you, please go and read this. The first fifty pages might be a little rough, and his many tangential threads might seem pointless at first. But please, this master knows what he's doing.

And the word of the day is...

Here is a Sudoku puzzle for you featuring letters instead of numbers!

And on a completely unrelated note, here is a funny joke.

Accidental Youtube - Legal Interns Being Nerds

I liked the idea behind this entry that I did a while back and so thought I'd revisit it. I even used the same website! This time I came up with the uncommon interjection "Oyez". This was the first link that came up. It is a video of a perfectly normal bailiff performing a standard opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of the State of West Moorleens (??).



It's nice to know that people who join the legal profession are just as prone to terrible bouts of embarrassing nerd humor as the rest of us.

Looking at the Spring Thing

The great thing about IF? The graphics.

So... there are a few IF competitions throughout the year. There's the generically titled "IF Comp" which begins mid-fall but the other "big" competition is the "Spring Thing". There are several differences between these two competitions. For one, the annual IF Comp gets much more attention (at least from outside the IF community) and it gets a ton more entrants. I'm fairy certain these two facts are correlated. But more importantly, the fall IF Comp is more for medium sized works of IF, whereas the Spring Thing has no such limitations and is thus implicitly if not explicitly for longer form games. The only problem is that is takes a TON of time to write one good medium sized game. Last year they didn't even have a Spring Thing because not enough people entered (i.e. I don't think there was any). This year, there was a substantial uptick with it looks like six entrants.

Crosswords - The Pick Up Artist

Hey, beautiful. I couldn't help but notice you standing across the room, looking beautiful and lonely. And I remember thinking that all you needed was an arm around your shoulder and someone to talk to. What are you drinking? Looks tasty. Can I have a... No, no.... You don't have to call over the bouncer. Ha. Ha. I was just joking, see look at me. I'm laughing! You're laughing! Wow, God. It's good to laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Wow. You know, it's amazing, I feel like we just met and yet I'm already feeling this connection to you. Like I've already spent time camped outside your bedroom window with binoculars. What? No! No way! No! That must have been someone else driving a red Toyota Camry. Say, let's change the subject, you know I don't mean to be forward but, is it just me or do you seem a bit uncomfortable right now? Hmm? How about we ditch this crazy joint and go back to my place. I've got a pantry full of rip olives and a DVR filled with Hoarder's episodes, huh? How bout it? Or we could swing by here and solve my new crossword puzzle, or we could-- Woah! Woah! Okay, okay! I get the idea! You don't have to spray me with mace in the face twice!

The IM-Personals - Part 1

Remember: This is what Julie Andrews looks like

Okay, so I was trying to brainstorm a puzzle idea, and it hit me that if I could find a repository of images of celebrity impersonators and then select a few that missed their marks, that it could create a pretty awesome puzzle. Well, frankly, after perusing this website let me tell you that I grossly under-estimated how fascinating looking at people trying to look like other people can be. So I've decided why not draw out a few separate blog posts out of it, amirite? Just like the gummint draws the blood of our nation through taxing the wealthy. Amirite? Sorry, I've been hanging out with libertarians. (NOT ON PURPOSE!!)

Judging a Book by its Cover

I'm not going to waste time talking about why I haven't updated this blog for a while, since it doesn't really matter. Actually, I hadn't even thought much about this blog until last weekend I published a new crossword puzzle (and there are more on the way!) and it occurred to me that my profile directs people to this website.

So it occurred to me that I might as well give them something to look at, eh? So here's a new visual puzzle. I've taken the covers of 20 classic works of literature and clumsily removed the title and author's name using some free photoshop clone from the Chrome store. Some of these are famous covers. Many are not, but well read and observant puzzle solvers should get most of them. How many can you figure out? I'll post the answers on Friday.

P.S. - Click here if you want to see a larger version of the puzzle.