TO GOVERN THE GLOBE by Alfred M. McCoy

Took me over a week to get through about the first third of this 320-page book. That section was mostly about what McCoy calls the Iberian Age (allegedly, when Spain and Portugal ruled the world). McCoy's prose is so academic and lifeless, it was hard to follow; reminded me of Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies.

Fortunately, things picked up when he dived into the "British Imperial Era", "Washington's World Order", and "Twenty-First Century and Beyond". Because I live in the present, I was more into the latter half of the book. And I found his prediction interesting that China will be the world leader around 2030 but its time of the world stage will last only about 20 years because of Climate Change.

The other book I read by McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, was much better. More focused and I don't remember the prose being so bone-dry.

One cool thing about To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change is that it reminded me of a book review I read years ago, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen R. Platt. I reserved that book at the library. Also, now when I read book review on Sunday and Wednesday nights, if I reserve a book, I'll tweet about for prosperity's sake — nobody pays attentions to my tweets anyway.

Anna Pitoniak

Maybe I'll reserve Our American Friend, or perhaps Necessary People 'cause Stephen King blurbed about it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/books/review/our-american-friend-anna-pitoniak.html

Post-Hero Hedges

With Russia's invasion of Ukraine on my mind, I was wondering where Chris Hedges would come in on the issue, since his show, On Contact, is on RT, Russia's propaganda organ. Wonder no more. He published an article today, "The Chronicle of a War Foretold". The gist of that pro-Putin piece is that NATO has been seducing former Soviet satellites, all for the weapon industry. I expected more from Hedges. Kinda depressing when your heroes are mouthpieces for whomever is writing their paycheck. No integrity in that public intellectual.

I removed RT from my Roku and cancelled my Patreon membership to ScheerPost (I had donated $9 a month to support Hedges' sporadic writing).

It's been bugging me for a while that Hedges is on RT. With today's technology he could host a podcast or YouTube show and reach the same audience.

Kind of nice to longer watch his show. I'm behind ever since it went from one to two episodes a week. Oh well, upward and onward. . . .

Counterpart

When I was reading The Ghost by Robert Harris, I checked out the Wikipedia page for its film, Ghost Writer, and the page on Olivia Williams said she recently starred in the series Counterpart. Thought I would check it out, since both seasons are on Amazon Prime.

It was OK. Started strong with the first episode, dipped a little in episodes two and three, things picked up for the rest of the first season, but the second seasons had numerous missteps.

One cool thing is that it reminded me of my Berlin vacation, and it looks like they used the STASI museum as the exterior for the government building where most of the series centers around. And I got a kick out of a couple Babylon Berlin actresses being cast, Liv Lisa Fries and Leonie Benesch; they were even in one scene together.

J.K. Simmons was great. I dunno, the show kinda lost me in the second season. I didn't buy how the alternate reality was created. From what I've read about East Germany, James Cromwell's character never would have been given the freedom to shut down the institute. Another thing that irked me was the obvious Berlin metaphor — they should have set it in a different city (East and Germany = the Alpha and Prime worlds).

Best parts of the series were the suspenseful spy sections, especially how Peter Qualye kept slithering out of almost impossible situations because he was married to the spy from the other side, Shadow.

I'm still confused by Ian Shaw's backstory. Did Management kill his wife in the Alpha world because he told her about the two worlds? I dunno, seemed like forced plotting.

And I think if the show was real, the secret of two worlds would've gotten out. Ya can't keep a secret like that from billions of people.

I liked how the show wrapped most of the plot strands up. Of course, James Cromwell got infected with the flu, so you could say when he drops dead, even though he's around a bunch of kids, it doesn't turn into a pandemic.

library reserves

Books I read today in the New York Times Book Review that I reserved @ library: Sequoia Nagamatsu' "How High We Go in the Dark" & Calla Henkel's "Other People's Clothes".

Ich bin ein Outlander

Well, it only took almost four years, but I finally finished listening to the German version of the first audiobook in the Outlander series. When I started it back in May of '18, I was trying to relearn German. I mostly listened to the 37-hour audiobook in the middle of the night, after I got up to go to the bathroom. I have several other audiobooks I bought that I'll need to get through. Maybe I'll finish before retirement!

Off topic: I drank a Carlsberg beer on Wednesday night with dinner (crab cake, mixed vegetables, and french fries). Gave me a nice buzz, but I felt like crap all day Thursday and up to dinner time on Friday. Don't think I'll ever be drinking again. Just not worth it.

Mail call!

Came home last night from sister's for dinner (Superbowl leftovers) and was surprised to see not only my COVID tests had arrived but also a book on Duran Duran's Rio album — wasn't expecting the latter until Friday. Happy Tuesday!

Nirvana's NEVERMIND

I finally got sick of my old inferior cassette copy of Nirvana's Nevermind, and broke down and bought the remastered MP3 album. I actually picked up the vinyl a few years ago but only listened to it once, disappointed that "Endless, Nameless" wasn't on there. Speaking of that track, I'm keeping the version from cassette copy because it cooly cuts off at 4:19 (the official length is 6:43).

Smoke Or Fire's ABOVE THE CITY

I was loving Smoke Or Fire's "Indecision" from the Protect comp, blaring it once a day for about a week straight, so I decided to pick up one of their albums. I went with their debut on Fat Wreck Chords, Above the City, because it came out the same year as "Indecision". Good stuff. Reminds me of 90s alternative bands like aMiniature, Boys Life, Crumbox, Versus, and Vitreous Humor. I didn't keep on my iPod Smoke Or Fire's opening and penultimate tracks, "California's Burning" and "Cryin' Shame" — the former sounds like screamo and the latter is mostly acoustic; both don't jibe with the rest of the record. The other 10 tracks are awesome (clocking in at 19 minutes)! I like how there are pretty much no guitar solos.

P.S. Weird how Division Of Laura Lee's Black City came out three years earlier, in 2002, on compatriot Epitaph Records, and had cover art of a skyline too.

Suicide Machines' WAR PROFITEERING IS KILLING US ALL

I never really gave the Suicide Machines a chance back in the aughts, so I picked up War Profiteering Is Killing Us All, which is supposed to be their best. Nice to listen to an album where almost every track rails against the Iraq War. Interesting that the vocalist's melody of "Bottomed Out" sounds similar to "Ghosts On Sunset Strip". And pretty funny: the last track, "95% of the World Is Third World", sounds like he's singing "95% of the world is not woke".

I bought the album from Amazon because the record label charges $11 on Bandcamp. Who says punk labels are anti-capitalist?

The Book of Boba Feet

Watched the last episode of this Disney+ series Wednesday night. Overall, it was pretty meh. It was no WandaVision. I dunno, I liked the idea of Boba Fett's storyline in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Kinda wished they would've left it at that.

Another thing I didn't like was bringing back the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. I liked how it ended with the second season. Sometimes it's best to leave a little to the viewer's imagination.

Before cancelling Disney+, I watched The Simpsons episode where Aunt Selma takes the kids to Duff Gardens. Held up pretty well. Writing was really good, especially with the ending. I had watched another Simpsons episode several weeks ago, the one where Homer has heart surgery — oddly it was from the same season (four) and was only a couple episodes before the Duff Gardens episode.

THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides

I give this psychological thriller 3.5 stars out of 5. It's really good with a satisfying ending, but I've read lots of Hitchcockian novels and the thrills at number umpteen aren't as seat-gripping as during the first several reads or views. Also, there's no real subtext in The Silent Patient, mainly just plot. That said, I would gift this book to friends and family who read but prefer to be entertained rather than educated. And if a movie is made of this screenplay-ready novel, I'll definitely go see it.

Buh-bye, Krystal & Kyle

I unsubscribed from the Krystal Kyle & Friends podcast last night (I wasn't paying anything). Like Matt Taibbi, they seem to be sipping the right-wing Kool-Aid. It's difficult to give a concrete example of their sidestep to the right, though they have badmouthed Fauci. I dunno, I kinda give Fauci a pass because when the pandemic was at its worst, things were in a continuous state of flux with new information. Of course, Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski might say they're looking at the facts. I dunno, making of a habit constantly criticizing legacy media is something straight out of the right-wing playbook. For all the faults of the mainstream media, at least they're doing real reporting, not just reading a Twitter feed and opining about the news.

Dublin Murders

Didn't go to bed till 1:30 last night because I binge-watched the last four or five episodes of this eight-episode series. Really wanted to find out how it ended because I hated the ending of In the Woods. The series did a better job of the ending — adequate not awesome. I was really hoping it was Dreamcatcher, where that movie's ending was a million miles better than Stephen King's.

I'm glad I bought and watched Dublin Murders. Sarah Greene as Cassie Maddox was really good, but I thought Killian Scott as Rob Reilly was miscast (I pictured him differently in In the Woods). However, Conleth Hill as Superintendent O'Kelly was amazing! Just noticed today he was Varys in Game of Thrones.

I never read The Likeness. I imagine it was faithful to the novel where Cassie never finds out who Lexie was, since Cassie dumps her ashes to sea . . . the box says "Jane Doe". Tonya French must specialize in lazy writing. First, in In the Woods, she never explains what happened to Rob's two friends, and in The Likeness, she never explains where's Cassie's doppelgänger came from.

Some observations, while they're fresh in my head:

• Rob sleeps with his roommate in Dublin Murders, but in In the Woods it happened in the past.
• Rob's mother is alive in the series, but in the book I don't remember her being around when he's a detective.
• Interesting that in the series, Rob's mom says his two missing friends never liked him. I don't think that was in the book.

My Amazon review:

Customer Review

Johnny Ostentatious

4.0 out of 5 stars an-mhaith

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2022

Very good ("an-mhaith" in Irish, according to Google Translate). I purchased this series from Amazon Prime because I thought one of the books DUBLIN MURDERS is based on, IN THE WOODS, was excellent except for the ending. I was hoping the series would be like DREAMCATCHER, where that movie's ending was a vast improvement over Stephen King's. DUBLIN MURDERS had a better ending than IN THE WOODS (DUBLIN MURDERS' ending was adequate not awesome). Oh, and the acting was top-notch, especially Sarah Greene as Cassie Maddox, Conleth Hill as Superintendent O'Kelly, and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Frank Mackey.

Robert Harris' THE GHOST

I read a library copy of Robert Harris' Second Sleep in 2020; enjoyed it so much that I downloaded the audiobook for a second "reading". And over the years, I've read Fatherland and Pompeii. So I picked up his The Ghost at my local library (odd they had it on the shelf, since it's a small branch). Always meant to watch the film adaption, The Ghost Writer, but never got around to it, even though I like Ewan McGregor, and Pierce Brosnan is good in certain roles.

* * * SPOILERS BELOW * * *

I was really enjoying this novel, mainly because it's about a writer. About halfway though, I found it implausible that the the ghostwriter would sleep with the ex-Prime Minister's wife and that he would investigate what got the previous ghostwriter killed. But I wound up giving this novel 3.5 stars because about the last 50 pages packed in a lot of plot. And I liked how Harris ended everything.

Most of my friends had long since entered the kingdom of family life, from whose distant shores, in my experience, no traveler e'er returned.

Chapter Three, p. 41

All good books are different but all bad books are exactly the same. I knows this to be a fact because in my line of work I read a lot of bad books — books so bad they aren't even published, which is quite a feat, when you consider what is published.

And what they all have in common, these bad books, be they novels or memoirs, is this: they don't ring true. I'm not saying that a good book is true necessarily, just that it feels true for the time you're reading it. . . .

Chapter Four, p. 71-2

We had put up with soon-to-be-forgotten actors who had egos the size of a Roman emperor's, and entourages to match.

Chapter Seven, p. 148

"You know, people get it all wrong. It isn't having power that's exhausting — it's not having it that wears you out."

Chapter Fourteen, p. 326

"He [Adam Lang] may not have had an ideology, but he sure as hell had an agenda."

Chapter Fourteen, p. 333

I was like a screenwriter producing lines with a particularly demanding star in mind: I knew he might say this, but not that; might do this scene, never that.

Chapter Sixteen, p. 384

Wrecktrospective

Going through one of those phases where I regret selling and giving away most of my record collection. For the most part, I backed up songs I loved, not whole albums. Case in point, Fat Wreck Chords' Wrecktrospective. I no longer have the CDs, so I bought the digital version this morning. Only 12 bucks, and I had been kicking myself for not saving from my long-gone CDs NOFX's "The Separation of Church and Skate" (doesn't have intro like on The War on Errorism), Dillinger Four's "AMERICASPREMIEREFAITHBASEDINITIATIVE", and Smoke Or Fire's "Goodbye to Boston" demo.