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Actual Books
Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics,
Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™
“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
-- Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
-- New York Observer
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING.”
-- John Hodgman,
author, The Areas of My Expertise and correspondent for The Daily Show
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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Blogging will be slow for a bit; must work on the book. Still, something fun to share:
Psyched up for Oz' first test against South Africa, which I'll have on while working in a few hours. Which reminds me:
I've been working my way through Pageant Of Cricket,
a 600-page tome on the game's history filled with thousands of photos
of the games' greatest players -- all of whom seem to have died
tragically, usually after a long decline of addiction, mental problems,
and general dissolution.
Actual excerpts, chosen entirely at random from the last few pages (I'm up to the turn of the 20th century):
Arthur Shrewsbury scored two centuries
in a match for the first time in his career in Notts' match against
Gloucestershire... but declining health and melancholia overshadowed
his soul, and in the following May he shot himself.
or
The 1901-02 English tourists knew of
the dangerous reputation of Jack Marsh, the Aboriginal fast bowler... A
colourful dresser, he began to drink heavily, and in 1916 he was killed
in a street brawl in Orange, New South Wales.
or
Albert Trott... lifted a ball from
Nobel, during the MCC match, right over the Lord's pavilion, a gigantic
hit... A victim of dropsy and booze, Trott shot himself at his
Willesden lodgings in 1914.
or
K.L. Hutchings... the Kent and England batsman was blown apart by an exploding shell.
Yeesh. Pretty damned dangerous sport, from the looks of it.
I'm not sure I've picked the right pastime after all. And here after I've spent the last month learning to squeeze out a flipper.
How depressing.
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