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It's always a bit of a letdown when you leap out of bed, ready to begin a new Internet day, only to discover that your inbox is empty. Oh, well. There's always the reflexive optimism of tomorrow.
Tomorrow promises sour weather, and so I might be spending it with the electronics unplugged, reading as long as the lights hold out. I'm nearly finished with Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field. It's an uneven book. Parts of it are quite gritty and arresting and queerly, darkly elegiac, while others are stultifying and dry as Kansas dustbowl earth. The character descriptions of the two killers and the jury-selection scenes were well-nigh unreadable for their uninspired mediocrity, but the description of Chrissie Campbell in the immediate aftermath of the murder was gorgeous and raw without tipping into the maudlin. I can't account for the wild vacillation in tone and apparent skill. I can only surmise that Wambaugh was still finding his voice as a writer when he started the book. It was only his second, and maybe he was still getting used to living in a writer's skin after so many years as an LAPD police officer.
I started the final phase of Wind Waker last night. I wasn't done collecting heart pieces(I had the mail-sorting game left), and I hadn't collected all the photos for the Nintendo gallery, but I was tired of picking my ass and waiting for the sculptor to finish them at the rate of ONE A DAY. So I copied the quest file to an empty slot and proceeded to Hyrule Castle. Even with a full arsenal of potions, it's going to be a grind. Not only does Ganondorf have three stages of final bosshood, but you have to fight the bosses from the previous dungeons, Puppet Ganon, and Phantom Ganon before you get to whale on him. And Puppet and Phantom have three stages of their own. So you fight ten lesser bosses before you even get to sniff the bossest of bosses. Zelda programmers are sadistic bastards. I beat two last night, but damn near gave myself a stroke in the doing, so I'm taking a few days off to let my aching hands and grinding teeth and dangerously-throbbing veins recover.
Tomorrow promises sour weather, and so I might be spending it with the electronics unplugged, reading as long as the lights hold out. I'm nearly finished with Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field. It's an uneven book. Parts of it are quite gritty and arresting and queerly, darkly elegiac, while others are stultifying and dry as Kansas dustbowl earth. The character descriptions of the two killers and the jury-selection scenes were well-nigh unreadable for their uninspired mediocrity, but the description of Chrissie Campbell in the immediate aftermath of the murder was gorgeous and raw without tipping into the maudlin. I can't account for the wild vacillation in tone and apparent skill. I can only surmise that Wambaugh was still finding his voice as a writer when he started the book. It was only his second, and maybe he was still getting used to living in a writer's skin after so many years as an LAPD police officer.
I started the final phase of Wind Waker last night. I wasn't done collecting heart pieces(I had the mail-sorting game left), and I hadn't collected all the photos for the Nintendo gallery, but I was tired of picking my ass and waiting for the sculptor to finish them at the rate of ONE A DAY. So I copied the quest file to an empty slot and proceeded to Hyrule Castle. Even with a full arsenal of potions, it's going to be a grind. Not only does Ganondorf have three stages of final bosshood, but you have to fight the bosses from the previous dungeons, Puppet Ganon, and Phantom Ganon before you get to whale on him. And Puppet and Phantom have three stages of their own. So you fight ten lesser bosses before you even get to sniff the bossest of bosses. Zelda programmers are sadistic bastards. I beat two last night, but damn near gave myself a stroke in the doing, so I'm taking a few days off to let my aching hands and grinding teeth and dangerously-throbbing veins recover.
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