I am becoming ever more cynical. Recently, it seems to me that ingroup/outgroup distinctions, along with ingroup loyalty and outgroup derogation, are stronger for most people than the things those people say they believe. Examples (callously lumping people together and ignoring exceptions for my own evil rhetorical purposes):

If the Democrats really believed their “save the planet” schtick, Democrat public servants would have drastically lower personal resource consumption than the average US citizen.

If Conservatives truly cared about reining in bloated programs and reducing the power of the Federal government, they would have been leading the charge against our military buildup since WWII in general, and against our two most recent wars, more specifically. Or at the very least they would have felt kinda conflicted.

If Conservatives were really opposed to giving social and political power to wealthy entertainers, to those with family, interpersonal, or criminal issues, or to those with and substance abuse problems, people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly would be unknown.

Most obviously, if certain among the Hollywood elite truly cared about justice (social or any other kind), there would be absolutely nobody defending Roman Polanski.

I think these (and many other) disparate ideologies/actions are examples of people supporting their ingroup and slamming the outgroup, rather than doing what their belief system tells them is right. What we do and what we say — maybe even what we think –are deeply at odds. The immediate rewards and punishments we get from our peers continually overwhelm the future rewards we may get from holding fast to the things we believe are true. We could (and do) argue about what we should think; but I sometimes despair of that mattering, because what we think seems to have so little effect on what we actually do.

Review of Sue Grafton’s T is for Trespass (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Alternate Titles: A very special Kinsey Millhone Mystery. T is for Tedious. Sue Grafton Discovers the Collective Values and Book-buying Power of the AARP. Ow My Ears and Brain Judy Kaye Please Watch a Detective Movie and Take Notes Before Reading Your Next Audiobook.

Final Grade: C- or maybe a D+. Past Alphabet Mysteries, though inconsistent in quality, were all entertaining, and with just enough offbeat quirks to set them apart from the crowded field of mystery fiction. They were slightly goofy, occasionally unpredictable film-noir detective novels, in which the femme fatale just happens also to be the hard-boiled detective. With this latest installment, however, Grafton has written a plot that could easily be discussed for 30 minutes on The View. That’s right; it’s one long, drawn-out, carefully politically balanced domestic dispute.

Continue reading →

Dear Ms. Grafton,

I am having… let’s call them “issues”… with your most recent novel, T is for Trespass. For a while, I’ve been listening to your books in audio form. True, I have to suffer through hours upon hours of Judy Kaye’s near-butchering of your work, what with her penchant for breathless melodrama at even the most mundane moments, but I can still see the quality through her vocal rollercoaster. As I lift weights and trudge on the elliptical machine in the morning, I see Kinsey nosing her quirky, semi-antisocial, incorrigibly curious way toward the resolution of yet another mystery.

We all know you’re not Jane Austen or even Connie Willis, but you’re good at what you do. And that is to write solid, entertaining hard-boiled (despite Ms. Kaye’s antics to the contrary) mystery novels about a protagonist who is described by her actions instead of her narrator; whose psychology is revealed more by accident than by introspection. The mysteries are entertaining, and the character is compelling. The rest ranges between excellent and palatable. Overall, good books.

This brings me to my point, which is: WHAT. First of all, I admit that S is for Silence worked well enough, despite your disturbing experimentation with a parallel historical narrative that had nothing to do with Kinsey. And what didn’t work wasn’t terrible. No hard feelings, for Kinsey’s sake. But with this most recent book, what is going on? Alternating chapters probing the psychological depths of a psychopathic nemesis? If that weren’t enough, NO MYSTERY? I mean there is one, more or less, eventually, but it really didn’t show up until CHAPTER TWENTY. Yes, over a week of workouts listening to Kinsey go about her winsome life, chatting up her lovable landlord, serving warrants on deadbeats, witnessing her friends’ uncomfortable relationship disputes, eating inedible Hungarian food at the adorable local pub — basically doing nothing. In your other books, this sort of detail provides a wonderful context, character glimpses, contrast to the action, etc. and I understand that you’re building suspense, and probably some other stuff, but holy freaking cow. Twenty chapters before the mystery rears its deliciously ugly head is too much. And even then, we’re headed for an unintentional mystery, in which Kinsey doesn’t know there is one for quite a while. This is dull. Why? Because following Kinsey following her nose is the best part of every book. I’m going on faith here, because of your last books. Don’t let me down.

I’ll finish this one, but when U is for … hits the shelves, I’ll be reading the reviews carefully before I invest.

Maybe I’m really just cranky because a third of the chapters are stolen by someone who isn’t Kinsey and is nowhere near as interesting. But isn’t that enough? I submit that it is.

Hooray! I have phone and internet again! And it only took a FRIGGIN’ WEEK! As I had begun to suspect, the cable modem was fried. Interestingly, so was my little Belkin 802.11g router, I think. Hm. Adding to the mystery, when I boot into Ubuntu (the machine the modem is physically hooked to dual boots), the clock now says something like, “January 8, 12:42 pm” or such. Counting backward, January 1 at 12:01 a.m. would have been sometime last Thursday morning, which is when I lost service. So, power surge killed modem and router in one blow? But they’re both plugged into surge protectors, and the protectors did not blow a fuse or trip off.

Anyhoo, $70 later I have a new router that’s way faster than any of my receiving equipment can possibly take advantage of. But it works, and here I am. Of note, this would have been fixed faster if the first 3 days of phone calls hadn’t gotten me repeated (and vague) reports of an outage in my area. I’m not sure there ever was an outage. If so, it was never really acknowledged or explained. On Monday, the CSR finally said, “there’s no outage; your equipment just doesn’t seem to be working.” So that’s frustrating. Was there an outage? Grrr.

In honor of feeling all internetty, here are some joyful Star Wars parody doohickeys just for Alex. Warning: one is Robot Chicken, and though it’s not the MOST offensive one ever, it has some, um, content. A little bit.

1. Comic based on a recent forum moderator’s comment, “there’s no homosexuality in Star Wars.” ORLY?

2. Teh Robot Chicken – Star Wars Episode II.

Finally, a comment on a news story I saw just now: The NYT calls Obama’s recent deal with Chrysler (in which the car maker declares bankruptcy in return for federal moolah and the ability to perhaps save itself in an alliance with Fiat) “…yet another extraordinary intervention into private industry by the federal government.”

Okay, I’m not going to argue the general fact that our President has pursued a very pushy — perhaps unprecedented — agenda of government interventionism in this economic crisis. But singling out this case as “extraordinary intervention into private industry?” How does this even possibly compare to the bazillions of taxpayer dollars flung willy-nilly at the banks and insurance companies over the past months? Here, Obama is intervening to make them declare bankruptcy. And isn’t that what they were going to do anyway, if they hadn’t gotten any government money?

Sometimes the media misses the boat. Me, I want to hear more about the extraordinary interventions into my friggin’ pocketbook, driven by massively over-lobbied financial institutions paying off congresspeople. Since that little ongoing debacle has cost this nation crazystupidtimes more money than the car manufacturer deals ever will, I want to see it front and center, with the critical tones the media seems to have reserved for the car industry.

And now that I’m all riled up, time for work.