caliarch.net

“I’d like you to punch me in the face,” he said.  As if he were asking me to scratch his back.

“Not that I haven’t always dreamed of it,” I said, “but why would you want it?”

“Hand-to-hand combat has been a common element of military training down through the ages,” he proclaimed.  “Long ago it was learned that recruits–no matter how much training they had received–tended to forget everything they knew the first time they got punched in the face.  In peaceful, affluent societies where brawling is frowned upon, this is a common problem.”

“Not being punched int he face a lot is a problem?”

“It is,” Lio said, “if you find yourself in hand-to-hand combat with someone who is actually trying to kill you.”

~ Neal Stephenson, Anathem

One wonders whether Neal Stephenson has some experience with the martial arts, cuz this is totally true.

Another important recipe I keep losing…

1. Preheat oven to 350°
2. Mix 1 can of soup with 2 cups of rice & two cans water.  Add spices (Lipton French onion soup mix, salt and pepper, garlic salt, onion powder, chicken broth, whatever).
3. Put half mixture in bottom of pan, then set 2 chicken breasts on top, then cover chicken with rest of mixture.
4. Cover & cook @ 350° for 1 hour; check ~ 30-45 minutes to see if more water is needed.

Oddly, I learned about this book by spotting it randomly in a bookstore back in the summer of 2007.  It had an interesting cover, so I picked it up and spend a few minutes reading the back & flaps of the jacket & perusing the first few pages.  After flipping through the rest of it and noting the, er, “uniqueness” of some of the formatting (more on this later), my curiosity got the better of me and I walked out with it, thinking I’d discovered some little-known but intriguing narrative gem.

Yeah, not so much.  After reading the first couple of chapters, I decided to try to hunt down a few reviews or critiques online & see what I could find, which quickly disabused me of the assumptions I’d made about the book when I’d first found it.  Googling [“House of Leaves” Danielewski] turns up over 100,000 results, and the Wikipedia page devoted to the book is some 15 pages long.  Apparently it’s had a cult following since its release in March of 2000.

So what can I write here about this book that’s in any way useful, without basically summarizing the Wikipedia page?  Not entirely sure, but I’ll try. (more…)