That’s how many days of High School are left. There’s still finals, and graduation, and all the accompanying hoopla, but only 12 days of classes. I think I am as excited for the year to be over as my students. I keep thinking of all the things I have let slip while maintaining the schedule of Grad School and High School. I haven’t picked up the guitar since last August. My posting here slacked off to once or twice a month. I haven’t built even a tenth of the additions to the website that I have planned out in my head (and now I have the itch to redesign the whole thing again!). I haven’t really had the time to read much of anything outside schoolwork or stuff that pertains to my thesis. So yes, I am just as happy as summer to get here as my students are.

It was a bit of a surprise how time consuming teaching turned out to be. I have been told that it becomes less intensive in the second year, which makes sense assuming that the same courses are being taught, but I was unprepared for what was going to be required of me just to be prepared for class. Add in the time required to grade 150+ essays two or more times a month (50 graded yesterday, 100 more in the cue for the rest of the weekend) and it would be an understatement to say that my expectations were naive.

Regardless, I discovered I really enjoy the time spent inside the classroom. Sure, there are times where the kids drive me nuts (just as, I am sure, there are times when I drive them nuts), but at the end of the day, I actually feel pretty good about myself and what I am doing. And that’s a sentiment I haven’t had about a job in a very, very long time. I think I’ll even miss it a little next year, as I am going to be going to grad school full time to finish the Masters in one fell swoop. At least now I know I have yet another employment option when I finish the degree.

And that is what I look for most in almost all my decisions… options. The ability to always have a choice, and the courage to take responsibility for those choices… that, I think, is the key to happiness. Or, rather, it is the key to my happiness. The key to your happiness may well be a seven layer burrito for I know. I can’t help you there, unfortunately. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.

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On the turntable: Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Velvet Revolver, Prince

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And I blame Hotmail.

I have had a Hotmail account(s) for well over ten years now. In fact, I think the only communication tools I use that are older are ICQ and the US Postal Service. I used to use the hotmail address specifically as a gaming account. Whenever I registered for a game, online or otherwise, I would use that email. By the time I stopped using it, about 8 or so years ago, it had become utterly useless as an email account due to the vast amount of spam it collected. I haven’t been to the in-box there in I don’t know how long and, unless they recycle inactive accounts, I shudder to think of what the spam box must look like.

Still, though, I used their IM service to keep in touch with some friends, so I didn’t turn it off completely, regardless of how much the MSN Messenger application sucks tiny brown dust bunnies. Interestingly, to this day, I have friends who use only MSN Messenger. I also have friends that use only ICQ, and others that use only Yahoo, so, naturally, I switched to solutions that allowed me to run a single app. Currently, I use Pidgin (thanks Nick!), and I find it more than suitable for my minimal needs (not to mention it has a very active dev community). But, alas, I digress… back to Messenger.

I am not sure how I am suddenly such a popular fellow to the IM Spam artists out there. I don’t publish my hotmail address anywhere. I don’t publish my MSN handle anywhere. Somehow, though, I have landed on some porn site’s list, and I am getting flooded with adverts for webcams bimbos and other assorted nonsense. I just received my fifth since starting this post, actually.

The reason I blame Hotmail? They are easy to blame, and they won’t care anyway. And they are owned by MS, so what other reason do I really need? Most likely it has nothing to do with Hotmail at all, though. Most likely someone mined MSN addresses from somewhere and mine got sold to some crazy blast IM service not too different from the blast email services that fill up our in-boxes with Cialis ads.

Needless to say, I am a bit irked. But, there is a solution to my irkness. Those of you whom I chat with on MSN, you have about a week (or less, depending on my mood) to contact me about my handles on other services (ICQ, GTalk, Yahoo, AOL). After that, I am going to disappear from MSN, most likely for good. In the world of IM, there are other options, and one less app to load at startup makes me happy.

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Title: The Jennifer Morgue
Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Golden Gryphon
Year Published: 2006

First Line: The guys from the “A” and “B” crews have been sitting on their collective ass for five weeks, out in the middle of nowhere.

Bob Howard is James Bond for the Generation H4X0RZ. Set in the same universe as The Atrocity Archive (reviewed here), the exploits of the secret agent of the occult are continued with a much longer, and more robust adventure. It isn’t technically a sequel, but without reading the former, the history and depth of the relationship between Bob and Mo, his fiancé, are lost. Still, the nature of their relationship is clear, and the book stands on its own very well.

The Jennifer Morgue is, without a doubt, a page turner for most of it’s 267 pages. While I am far from an aficionado of Ian Fleming’s books, I think that Stross draws the parallels very well, and creates in Bob Howard a reluctant hero that is very much not James Bond. His wit seems is almost self-deprecating and his charm undeniable in a “the geek shall inherit the Earth” kind of way.

Perhaps the single greatest exploration Stross embarks upon, however, is a connection he draws between Bob and Ramona, an alien possessed by a demon. Bob and Ramona become “entangled” by a form of advanced magic, and become physiologically entwined. They share thoughts, emotions, and physical conditions even when separated by great distances. The intimacy of this strange union reveals a depth of character work not often seen in genre novels. The journey the two of them take is remarkable, and I found myself utterly captivated by their evolving relationship.

And it’s a good thing, too, because without that relationship I would not have enjoyed The Jennifer Morgue nearly as much as I did. Though I still think the universe he has created is wonderful, Stross is very much a “Hard” Science Fiction author. His character work, as I mentioned, is as good as anything out there, but there is no mistaking that this book is about the occult technology of his universe. Indeed, there were whole chapters dedicated to explaining aspects of it that trudged onward with little or no actual advancement of the plot. Thankfully, these chapters were over and done with by about the mid-point of the novel, but they made the first half very tedious to get through.

The last half, though, and specifically the final 100 pages or so, make up for that tedium, and then some. The final action scenes, and then the denouement in the final chapter between Bob and his fiancé, are simply fantastic. I was a bit disappointed with how the relationship between Bob and Ramona ended after so intimate an adventure, but I think it was done as it was intentionally in order to heighten the final status of that relationship (yes, I left that purposely vague so as not to spoil anything).

Following the novel is a short story titled “Pimpf” which takes place, sensibly enough, once Bob has returned to The Laundry after the events of The Jennifer Morgue. It is a nice story and reveals a bit more characterization about Bob and, perhaps more importantly, more characterization on the inner workings of The Laundry, but I found it to be the least effective addition to the universe that I have seen. To me it seemed little more than a parody of selfish government in action, and it did little to advance the universe on the whole that Stross has created.

Also included in the hardcover edition is an essay titled “Afterword: The Golden Age of Spying.” Here, Stross goes into great detail on the history of the British spy thriller and espionage in general in the UK and US. I found it very interesting at first, but it quickly turned into a history lesson and I ended up not finishing it.

All in all, The Jennifer Morgue is an enjoyable read, especially for those interested in character and relationship development. The technical aspects, for my taste, are overdone, but I am not the technophile I once was and preferred to engage my Willing-Suspension-Of-Disbelief-O-Meter at a lower level than normal in order to remain interested. While additional books in this universe will likely not be at the very top of my To Buy list, they will undoubtedly find their way into my library all the same.

Next on the Reading List

American Gothic Tales edited by Joyce Carol Oates

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