Life Expectancy

I just finished a very fun book called Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz. If you have read any of his Odd Thomas series, you will likely feel a bit of deja vu with regard to the inner voice, mannerisms, and reactions of the story's lead character, Jimmy Tock. In fact, Jimmy Tock and Odd Thomas are very much kindred spirits in how they react to adversity, to bad breaks, and to the threats life throws at them. However, those similarities did not detract from my enjoyment of this amusing and touching story.

The story begins in August 1974 when Rudy Tock is at the hospital torn between the ending of one life and the dawn of another. Rudy's father Josef has had a stroke that has left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. He likely only has a few hours left on this Earth. In a different part of the hospital, Rudy's wife Maddy has been admitted to give birth to their first child. When Rudy goes to say goodbye to his father, Josef sits up in bed and with a strong and clear voice tells Rudy to write down five terrible dates that his grandson will have to endure. September 15, 1994, January 19, 1998, December 23, 2002, November 26, 2003, and April 16, 2005. Josef them provides a few facts to make clear the truth of his prophesy before he drops dead. Back in the expectant father's waiting room, Rudy is processing the passing of his father, the progress of the labor of his wife, and a seemingly deranged circus clown by the name of Beezo whose wife is also delivering that night in the hospital. When the doctor comes out to tell Beezo that his wife died during labor, Beezo loses control and kills the doctor and a nurse before grabbing his newborn son and taking off into the night.

The story then takes us through the life of Jimmy Tock as he grows up and faces the five terrible dates that his grandfather Josef had called out. Each date brings terrible suffering and trials into Jimmy's life and that of his family. However, the wonderful charm of this tale is how living through these horrific events only serves to bring life to Jimmy and his family. More laughter, more love, more enjoyment and strength in those he treasures. This was a very touching, quirky, amusing, and endearing story. Highly recommended.

Observations 64

My occasional blog series "Observations" was created to be an outlet to share a variety of topics that pop into my field of view as a result of a condition that many bloggers are afflicted with known as "blogger's eyes". In this state we view the world on the constant look-out for topics on which to write about. Today's blog came about from random odds 'n ends of things that I have noticed over the past few weeks.

• "Everyone claims to have a sense of humor, but some of them are lying and a significant number are fooling themselves." - Dean Koontz
  
• Some folks just don't understand our American rules for basic political correctness. I sat in a recent meeting with an older man from the former Soviet Union who was making bold statements about how a woman's purpose should only be to find a husband and not get involved with a career. I don't even think that he was aware of the rest of the folks in the room cringing.
  
• I sometimes think that church people are the most unintentionally rude folks I know. Pretty much any time that I am chatting with someone before service, someone else will come up and hijack the person to whom I am talking.
  
• Why do folks who should know better still talk about topics in interviews that they just shouldn't touch with a 10-foot-long pole?
  
• Have you ever had a boss tell you to make a presentation at a meeting that you really want no part of and then ask "How much time would you like me put on the agenda for your talk?" .... errr ... "How about none?".
  

Eau de Toilet

Lining the checkout lanes of most grocery stores are those blatant women's magazines with bold headlines about better sex, bigger hair, and diet secrets to drop 20 lbs in a week. One of the staples of these publications is the personality quiz, designed to tell you in a few questions what might otherwise take you years of expensive therapy. For some reason an idea for such a quiz popped into my head recently. The cover page headline could ask the question:

What kind of woman are you?

Well, the answer to that question all depends on what you would do in the following scenario: Your husband surprises you with a bottle of perfume as a small "I love you". After you take a hearty whiff, you are on the verge of stomach purging nausea. What do you do?

1). You tell your husband that this devil's vomit is absolutely disgusting and proves that he knows nothing about you, whereupon you storm off in a snit. When you emerge from your hiding, you repeatedly nag at him not to attempt to buy you anything of this sort again.

2). You tell your husband that this stuff is pig dung but he is the sweetest man in the world. You make him feel cherished and your attitude of love, appreciation, inclusive humor, and thankfulness serve to boost his self-worth and pull you closer together.

3). You tell him the gift is lovely and force yourself to squirt this putrid spewage on your body, thereby making him think you like it so much that he keeps buying you more, all the while making him think he has done good while you suffer and stew in silence, and your resentfulness builds to a crescendo.

4). You dump that unholy vial of foulness down the commode and never speak of it again hoping that he will forget.

5). You think that his gift is actually a cover for some guilt he feels for having done something evil. You convince yourself that he is likely having an affair or that he has already secretly divorced you for your younger hotter sister.

6). You fuss at him that your tight budget doesn't allow for such extravagances, perhaps even forcing him to slink back to the store to return his purchase for a full and immediate refund.

7). You take his gift of perfume as some sort of slight or dig ... "Are you saying that I smell, that I am disgusting to you?"

8). You ask him if he kept the sales slip and announce that you will be going out to do some shopping later that night.

Women, I can only say that when your husband makes an attempt, even if it is small, awkward, off base, or slightly misguided, you need to encourage him in love and build him up. It is amazing how thoroughly and how quickly a negative reaction to what was intended as a sweet gesture can destroy our self-confidence and weaken our connection to you.

Earth Awakens

The final book in Orson Scott Card's trilogy on the First Formic war (co-authored with Aaron Johnston) is entitled Earth Awakens. This story picks up just after the end of the second book, Earth Afire, where an alien insect-like race had come to Earth in massive numbers across China, the most populous part of the planet. The invaders began a terraforming program on a continental scale, destroying every living thing in their path. Tens of millions of Chinese had been eradicated and the human response had been mired in bickering, ego, and power struggles, while the Formics just continued on with their plan. However, thankfully, not everyone falls into the trap of gridlock and bureaucracy. Some people are defined by principles and the ability to act on them. In China, we find a team of special-ops soldiers working to destroy the aliens and thwart their plans. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered, they have even managed to destroy one of the alien landers. On moonbase Luna, two brave folks have devised a plan to board the Formic mothership and destroy it from within.

In Earth Awakens, we finally see the first movements of individual nations toward realizing that the threat that Earth is facing is not about one country. Slowly and awkwardly, bonds are beginning to form. The more cooperation that is seen, the better the odds that humanity can defeat the invaders and repel their future advances. The first major step towards the common goal of saving humanity is made when age old enemies China and India, begin to share resources. Initial agreements are brokered only at great risk to a small number of individuals. Out in space, a vulnerability is finally found in the massive Formic mothership which the special-ops tactical team is able to exploit. As is known from Scott's Ender's Game series, there were two Formic wars, and this battle was just the first. We learn that this mothership was, in fact, just an advance scout ship. In several more years the main force is scheduled to arrive to finish the job. Scott has set the next series on the second Formic war up quite well and we now understand too how humanity is able to develop a deep space fleet so quickly.

This trilogy was very enjoyable and tied in nicely with the groundwork that Card had already laid and developed in his earlier novels. Truth be told, this entry in the trilogy was noticeably the weakest. While everything was wrapped up tidily, it was lacking in complexity, nuance, and depth from the standpoint of the development of the characters and their interactions. The climactic scene was a bit amateurish and underdeveloped. However, I still would recommend this series and this book as the positives certainly outweighed the negatives.

Quick Hits 26

Sometimes I hear an utterance or catch a quick visual of something that sticks in my mind. As this sensory input rolls about in my head, several different outcomes are possible. It might be the case that after a moment of consideration, the input is deleted as uninteresting, trivial, or too much for me to deal with. However, another possible outcome is that the input keeps demanding my attention. It somehow wants me to wrestle with it and give it more than just a passing notice. In such cases, they can end up here, in my blog series called Quick Hits.

God has established certain laws of nature in his creation. Laws such as the conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, and increasing entropy. Do you think that He is bound to these laws that He has created? Do you think that his miracles violate his established natural laws?

What do you think?

Hacker

The novel Hacker is Ted Dekker's latest entry in his Outlaw series. The previous three books, which have all come out in the past year include, Eyes Wide Open, Water Walker, and Outlaw. The novel Hacker centers on a young woman named Nyah Parks whose father and brother died in a terrible automobile accident. Nyah's mother survived the accident, but it left her with degenerative brain trauma. Althought Nyah survived the wreck, it has left her with scars of a different sort. Nyah has lived a bit of a secluded life and has earned money by hacking into various company's computer systems, and then receiving payouts from these outfits in exchange for the vulnerabilities that she found. When the condition of Nyah's mother begins to worsen, Nyah gets her entered into an experimental research program. The only catch is that she needs to come up with $250k to pay for the treatments. Nyah's plan to raise the money is to hack into a security company to try to scam them into paying her off. However, when she does this, she uncovers some serious dirt that puts her life in grave danger when she is caught and her young helper is killed.

Nyah manages to escape the clutches of the company with the help of an FBI contact that she has worked with. Once free she seeks out the help of a fellow hacker named Austin (who we met in Eyes Wide Open). She and Austin had been close once, but one day he broke off contact with the world and kind of disappeared. However, Nyah tracks him down. Austin, it turns out, is slowly dying from an inoperable brain tumor. At one point he earned $10M from a company and spent nearly every penny of this money to set up some high-tech facility that allowed him to hack into his own brain. The story in this regard is more than a bit far-fetched, but somehow when Austin takes some special chemical concoction, it affects his brain such that he can enter the matrix to see beyond the "skin of this world". Ultimately Nyah joins him because she somehow comes to believe that this experience can help cure her mother.

I have read all of Dekker's published books and they tend to either be very good or very average. This story fell into the latter category. With Dekker publishing multiple books per year, it seems to me that he is aiming for quantity over quality. This book was marked by new-age dreck wrapped in some sort of Christian veneer. Shallow, unremarkable, under-developed, and utterly forgettable. In fact, this entire Outlaw series is all contrived flash and little substance.

Rumpelstiltskin

In the classic fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, a miller, desperate to improve his fortunes, carelessly boasts to his king that his fair daughter can spin straw into gold. The king then puts her to the test, sealing her in a room with a small pile of straw and giving her until the morning to produce the gold. Alone, the maiden weeps in despair until the goblin Rumpelstiltskin appears. For her necklace he will transform the straw. The next evening, the king ups the ante and puts the young woman in with a larger mound of straw. Again the imp appears, this time demanding the woman's ring in exchange for his services. Finally, the king promises to marry the girl if she can transform a room packed with straw. The troll appears, but the woman has nothing left to offer. With her life on the line, she offers to give him her first born child. With promises made, Rumpelstitskin produces the gold and then disappears. Some years later, the queen gives birth to her first child, having long since forgotten her oath. Yet Rumpelstiltskin appears to collect his end of the monstrous bargain.

While for many, fairy tales and their plot lines will never be anything more than quaint and dusty stories from their childhoods, but the story of Rumpelstiltskin is one that I have seen played out in several relationships, including my own. It begins when spouses avoid talking to each other about important issues. For me, I just didn't want to upset a peaceful evening or I just didn't feel like taking part in a heated discussion. We then walk away from these avoided encounters with the gold in our hands thinking how clever we were. Yet over time, this pattern of avoidance and side-stepping one another leads to a deep erosion of the foundation that once supported the relationship. Though we never gave it mind in the moment, sooner or later, the price has to be paid for our end of the monstrous bargain that we tacitly agreed to.