The Explorers Club | Operation AXIOM
My treasured readers doesn't care about the fifth anniversary of "The Explorers Club." This grieved me at first, until I recalled who I am, & for what I stand. I am The Last Angry Man. It is my supreme joy & privilege to be a Blue Tree Whacker, I stand by our ancient motto, our credo, "Alienate the audience." Of course! Alienate the audience! If "The Explorers Club" is what they don't want, then it is "The Explorers Club" I'm going to give them. (Also, agonizingly long, painfully detailed "This Week in Motorsport" posts. Yeah!) The audience doesn't care about the fifth anniversary of "The Explorers Club," which in an odd way validates the projects, which began with the caustic words, "And now for the insults: you lot are terribly ignorant." But ignorance is not that great an insult; ignorance is easily enough overcome, which means it really is no insult at all. No, the far worse condemnation of you lot is not that you are ignorant, but that you are incurious. You've no wish to know anything about the world beyond your own parochial interests, your own petty concerns. Fie, I say! Fie on that! Fie on you! Quixotic though it might/must be, "The Explorers Club" shall not give up its quest to broaden your horizons, to open the eyes of you troglodytes to the boundless vistas beyond your own intellectual shores. We continue, out of spite if for no nobler reason. Spite!

Project PALINDROME
Crunch time. All first drafts are due by the New Year. No exceptions, no excuses, no extensions. I need to put my head down & power through this last bit of the work, for on 1 January I begin a new project, an entirely new challenge about which I shan't say more until I've devised a code name & am ready to give full details. (Expect this within days at most.) Time to spend December in the PALINDROME.

Grow or die.

The Queue
A Princess of Mars is an incredibly short, page-turning read. I cannot wait to read more of Burroughs. Should I next sample his most famous & enduring work, Tarzan of the Apes, of which I own a copy, or continue with the Barsoom stories? That is the kind of conundrum with which I am only too happy to wrestle. First, vampires; then, more spies.

Recently
Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence
John le Carré, Call for the Dead
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

Currently
Christopher Moore, Bloodsucking Fiends

Presently
John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
David Ignatius, Body of Lies
Len Deighton, City of Gold

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Heidi Swedberg and the Sukey Jump Band, "Dream a Little Dream" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Heidi Swedberg is also an actress, best known for playing Susan Ross, George Costanza's ill-fated fiancée, on the glory that was Seinfeld. For my money, Susan's storyline was quite possibly Seinfeld's funniest.