Monday, January 23, 2012

Book: A Thousand Lives

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at JonestownA Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Holy fucking shit. This book -- the first to include recently released documents collected by the FBI in the wake of the massacre -- blew my mind in terms of showing just how dangerous the mixing of church and state can be. One of the reasons that Jones got away with abuse, fraud, etc., was the fact that the church had friends in high places in government, in the United States and Guyana. Hell, Jones himself was chair of the San Francisco Housing Authority for a time, named to the position by Mayor Moscone, who he helped elect. Also, he was at the forefront of “faith-based initiatives,” encouraging members to open up group homes to house the folks being tossed out of mental institutions by dear Governor Reagan (with all of the government money going to the church of course), collecting foster children (some of whom ended up in Jonestown), feeding the homeless, helping addicts overcome. There was a perception that the group did so much good that reports of beatings, financial malfeasance, Jones’ drug use, etc., were discounted for years by authorities up. And ironically, the CIA was too worried about violating the church's First Amendment rights to investigate repeated reports from those who escaped the church that a mass suicide was being planned years before it actually happened.









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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Cautiously optimistic

For the first time in a long while, I feel like things might actually be getting better. On a personal level at least -- the world's still going to hell in a handbasket and an apocalypse is the best thing that can happen for the planet. But that's another blog post.

I'm keeping quiet though because the pessimist in me doesn't want to jinx it.

Book: The Night Soldiers

Night Soldiers (Night Soldiers, #1)Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Great variation of the spy novel, taking readers in time from the early days of fascism in Europe through World War II. This is the first in a series, and I've read the 10th and the 1st; I may have to read the ones in between.



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Monday, January 9, 2012

In case you were curious

"We should operate under the assumption that all of our jobs are being re-evaluated" is not a good tool for motivating employees. All it really does is upset their stomachs and cause them to apply for other positions. Not only is the possibility of losing one's source of income really scary but to know that you might get laid off despite working your ass off in what really should be at least two positions is more than a little off-putting.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Book: The Night Eternal

The Night Eternal (The Strain Trilogy, #3)The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I always appreciate a book where the protagonists aren't all sunshine and rainbows and in which the ending is more nuanced than just plain happy. For me, this was a perfect ending to a great series.



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Greetings and salutations

Yesterday marked a new year, one that will hopefully mark a great deal of change, so I've decided to start a new blog. Part of the effort is an attempt to be a bit more anonymous. I mainly used my prior blog to keep family and friends updated on moves and general life changes. As such, sometimes I felt I couldn't be too honest there. I'm hoping to rectify that a bit and give the world a piece of my mind. Not necessarily in paragraph, grammatically correct, or diplomatic forms, though. 

So what's on my mind? Lots of things; for instance, in no particular order: financial woes, knitting, books (I was sort of intending to make this a book blog but decided I needed it for other purposes as well), animals, the environment and how we're killing it, work, the end of the world, TV, religion and the lack thereof, skepticism, life in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana, family, cute kitten pictures, and so on. I'm gonna review books, rant a bit, do some mental masturbation, post pictures of stuff I like and stuff I don't, and whatever else I want to. Basically, this is gonna be an online diary sort of thing that may not always (or often) be profound or polite, but hopefully should be at least a little interesting.

Welcome!