The book is a dairy of sorts written by an ESL secret operative posing as a foreign exchange student. It’s not hard to decipher what’s going on in the book. It’s easier to understand most create your own Engrish results. So what if the sentence structure is a little out of whack. It’s still an interesting social commentary with enough bizarre twists to keep you guessing.

I wouldn’t suggest this as a first book for someone who was pointed in the direction of Chuck Palahniuk’s books. It’s not the worst, I don’t imagine this will the next to get its film rights sold.

Like normal, I like to keep my reviews very light. I’m not a fan of having someone give away the story before I’ve had a chance to crack open the book so I’m not going to do that here. If you’d like to ramble about it though, feel free to leave a comment and I will gladly join in.

The movie is about a mathematician who believes he has stumbled upon pattern of numbers that can be found everywhere in nature. It’s an oldie in black and white. Okay, so 1998 isn’t that old but it is in b/w. Here is a quote from the main character relating to his attempt at finding this pattern.

11:15.
Restate my assumptions:
1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature.
Evidence:
The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism.
My hypothesis:
Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well… Right in front of me… hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.

As the movie goes, his discovery gets him into things a little deeper than he wants to be when more than one other group of people wants what they think he knows. I don’t like spoilers so I will end my pseudo review right there. It’s a good movie so long as you can manage the fact that it is a movie and not a documentary.

As for making me want to head out to the bookstore… I did end up buying a couple of books on mathematical theory. Not exactly the most exciting thing I’ve ever read but interest boosted by the movie was enough to help me push through the books.

Because of my on again off again relationship with formal education, I’ve only had one 200 level college math course (and nothing higher). At the time it wasn’t my cup of tea because I didn’t see the point. The teaching assistant in charge of our class couldn’t explain a real world application for what we were learning. Combine that with me catching mono that semester and I mostly called that class quits with the exception of showing up to midterms and finals.

Oh, and before I completely forget… Here is the extended trailer for the movie:

After first reading through them I was glad that I had only paid the cost of used. Had I paid the combined cover price of $74.99 I would have been sorely disappointed. Maybe I’m completely wrong on this. Even now as I type this I find myself pausing to re-read sections of the books.

I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who find these books to be worth far more than the $75. Maybe after looking at these again I will feel like I’ve robbed someone by getting these for less than $20 shipped.

For the time being, my original opinion on Fresh and Fresher stands. The author seemed to try to hard. The second book is layed out better than the first. The “Background Killer” sections from the second book were interesting. The first book seemed to spend too much time talking about the same websites, or at least it did in the first few chapters. The quotes kicking off each chapter in the first book were more interesting than those used in the second book. Minor stuff I know.

The writing was about as exciting to read as my own. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad. All the same, the writing was not as engaging as some other books on the same topic. Reading Fresh and Fresher did not make me want to pound away at my keyboard or start sketching out ideas on paper. There are a few books out there that gotten me to do so. I did jump online a few times though to check out some of the more unique sites I had not yet seen.

I do enjoy reading bits from Curt Cloninger’s website, lab404 (warning, there are times where you will want to flee from the site design). I still want to take a look at another one of his books, Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for print and new media designers. You have to hand it to the guy… He sure does know his way around the world of subtitles.

I know. I’ve accused him of trying too hard while I myself have tried too little. I’ve really only designed a couple of sites recently. This site is using a prefabbed template. Where do I get off questioning the value of his books? Well, I did buy the them for inspiration. I guess I was expecting more based on the opinion of others. Sorry.

If you read the Bible, you probably thought about one thing that myself (and many others) have pondered… Where are all the stories of Jesus from infancy to age 33. Surely he did not live an uneventful life, doing nothing but his carpenter thing until his early thirties and then all the sudden decide that since he could heal people that maybe he should. Wonder no more. Christopher Moore has shown us the light.

Christopher Moore’s book “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal” fills you in all all the great god stuff that the Bible forgot about. If you take your churching real serious like, you might want to pass over this book. I myself found this book to be laugh out loud funny in a number of parts of the book.

It’s got everything you love from the Bible (whores, bestiality, violence against children) and it adds some Kung Fu, more whores, . If you are religious, you should still enjoy the story. The story takes a humorous attempt at explaining the life of Christ but it isn’t exactly flat out blasphemy. The closer the book gets to the crucifixion, the more serious the book gets. There is also a multiple page afterword by the author where he gingerly steps through how he wasn’t trying to offend (and where he did his research).

Oh, and the image used of the cover of the book comes from maubrowncow’s flickr account and, yes, I am using under fair use as per the CC licensing that applies to it.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with Patrick McNeil, he runs a few websites on design. This book basically is a print form of DesignMeltdown.com, which is an excellent reference. I bought the book because it’s fun to look at and nice to smell is a bit easier to read when on a bus/plane/train/etc.

In addition to having a huge number of examples and some decent explanations on color theory and a lot of helpful color charts. My only gripe seems to be in line with what was found in some of the reviews out there… The format of the book could have been larger. I would have paid a few extra bucks for a physically larger book. The thumbnails of most the sites mentioned are just that… thumbnails. The book does provide the URLs of all the sites shown though so you can jump online and take a better look.

Oh, and for those of you who think you have beautiful website… The author of the book is preparing to put out a follow up to this one. If your site or a site you’ve made for someone else is print worthy, he is taking submissions. Submit your site on Design Meltdown if you think it has the stuff. You have until May 31st to do so. If your site gets selected, I’ll eventually end up having a tiny picture of your web page sitting on a bookshelf in my house. Maybe you can autograph it for me?

Update: This book is great. I don’t know how many times I’ve flipped through it since purchasing it. Having the ability to look at scores of site layouts while I’m not on my computer (or staring at a tiny screen on a cell phone) is more handy than I expected.

I am the avenging sword of taste and decency.

A couple of years ago I read an article on Cracked called Five Classic Novels That Bring The Funny. I hadn’t heard of two of the books on the list so I picked them up. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole was one of those two books.

It’s about an unemployed (or occasionally employed) modern day Don Quixote named Ignatius J. Reilly. Even though he is 30 years-old, he lives with his widowed mother. He lets her foot the bills until she finally makes him get a job to help out. Everyone family seems to have one, right?

Speaking of that, my brother’s 30th birthday is coming up very soon. I’ll have to stop by my parents’ house (where he lives). I guess I could have grabbed him a copy of Confederacy of Dunces, but I figured he’d get more use out of the breathalyzer I bought him.

Anyways, back to good old Ignatius… Ignatius is completely delusional and the rest of the world just doesn’t seem to live up to standards. He’s not the type to keep that a secret either, which causes all sorts of entertaining mayhem. He is the guy that you laughed at in school. He is the guy that your office mates snicker about by the water cooler. Well, that is until one of his grand ideas comes to a head.

In an attempt to not ruin the story for anyone else, I’ll stop there and instead tell you a little about the Ignatius I used to work with. He was socially awkward to the extreme. Think Milton off of Office Space.

He was the type that couldn’t be bothered with grocery shopping because that involved going out in public. He eventually started ordering MREs off the Internet because he could have a month’s worth of food delivered to work. Yes, delivered to work. You wouldn’t want the delivery people knowing where you lived would you… He’d have me help load them into his car when they showed up.

If he didn’t eat food that comes in a little pouch, he was ordering carry out from local restaurants under a fake name (apparently so the FBI wouldn’t know he liked wet burritos or black olives on his pizza). He eventually got himself fired on account of behavior that is highly frowned upon at most places.

He is still a little young for going to the movie theater though. Plus, at his age there is another children’s book to movie adaptation that he would probably benefit from even more…

Everything Poops book is funnier than Where The Wild Things Are anyways. The folks behind this video deserve an Oscar. Okay, maybe that is a little far fetched. Instead give them a Day Time Emmy.

I’m not going to discuss the plot of the story. There are plenty of places you can find reviews. Speaking of reviews… If you’ve seen other reviews, you probably have seen gripes about the layout/style due to the narration. “Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey” is narrated by multiple people who had some knowledge of Buster Casey or other information that relates to his story. I must be the fool because I found the presentation interesting. Either way, I doubt most Chuck P fans will be disappointed.

I think one of my favorite things about Chuck Palahniuk is how he slips in odd facts and other amusing tips into each of his stories. It isn’t just a piece of fiction, it’s also a little bit of an education. In that aspect, this book is no different from his previous works.

Like most things I read and enjoy, a few quotes stuck with me. Here are a couple:

“Something the wealthy know that most people don’t is that you never burn a bridge. Such a waste. Instead, you sell it.”

“Maybe that’s how any religious figure gets created – his friends brag him up, huger and huger, so they can get laid.”

“The future you have tomorrow won’t be the same future you had yesterday”

I know, probably just me being crazy. Since I’m crazy, I’ll share another little tangent… I’ve been using the name Billy Jacks online since 1996. I told you it was a tangent so what did you expect? I’m no Dr Doolittle though and I’ve not ever owned a bird.