Tech Decks and Click-Throughs

First it was Heelys, now it's Tech Decks. A couple of weeks ago I bought my son a pack of two finger boards. When we got home, he gave one of them to me with a "Here, Daddy, this is for you, to keep." Which was really sweet and was what I was secretly hoping he would do. Since then I've been bugging the DM as I click away at it all over the house. She hasn't said anything about it, but it's got to be annoying. I usually try to wait until she's not around, but sometimes I can't help myself. When she goes into another room, I start clicking at it like I'm sneaking in a smoke. This is just the latest in tickish things I like to do.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've learned to ollie, and I've also been thrashing on the bathroom bowl sink. Now that I can feel how it works, I can see getting much better at this thing.

Yes, I'm a dork.

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I've added Google ads to RtN, which is kind of silly because it's just a personal blog with unimpressive traffic numbers. Still, I'm interested in click-through rates, as I have another site in mind where I would definitely want to use them. I also added an Amazon link to purchase my favorite book, A Confederacy of Dunces. If you've never read it, I suggest you do, no matter where you get it.

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

"Ignatius! So you got yourself fired."

"Please, Mother, I am near the breaking point." Ignatius stuck the bottle of Dr. Nut under his moustache and drank noisily, making great sounds of sucking and gurgling. "If you are planning now to be harpy, I shall certainly be pushed over the brink."

"A little job in a office and you can't hold it down. With all your education."

"I was hated and resented," Ignatius said, casting a hurt expression at the brown walls of the kitchen. He pulled his tongue from the mouth of the bottle with a thump and belched some Dr. Nut. "Ultimately it was all Myrna Minkoff's fault. You know how she makes trouble."

"Myrna Minkoff? Don't gimme that foolishness, Ignatius. That girl's in New York. I know you, boy. You musta really pulled some boo-boos at that Levy Pants."

"My excellence confused them."

Buy A Confederacy of Dunces.

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

I'm way overdue for one of these.

It is a great pity that John Kennedy Toole is not alive and well and writing. But he is not, and there is nothing we can do about it but make sure that his gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy is at least made available to a world of readers.
--From the Forward by Walker Percy

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

Ignatius rejects his mother's idea that he consider psychiatric help:

"They [psychiatrists] would try to make me into a moron who liked television and new cars and frozen food. Don't you understand? Psychiatry is worse than communism. I refuse to be brainwashed. I won't be a robot!... The only problem that those people [psychiatric patients] have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. That's why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions."

"Ignatius, that ain't true. You remember old Mr. Becnel used to live down the block? They locked him up because he was running down the street naked."

"Of course he was running down the street naked. His skin could not bear any more of that Dacron and nylon clothing that was clogging his pores. I've always considered Mr. Becnel one of the martyrs of our age. The poor man was badly victimized."

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

I'm overdue on a new excerpt.

The scene: After Ignatius takes on a job as a hot dog vendor on the streets of New Orleans and eats all of the hot dogs, his boss is none too pleased. Ignatius claims the hot dogs were stolen by a kid with a gun.

"Perhaps he was very hungry. Perhaps some vitamin deficiency in his growing body was screaming for appeasement. The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts? I see nothing unusual in the matter."

"You are full of bullshit" [says the boss]

"I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society. The youth, crazed by suggestive television programs and lascivious periodicals, had apparently been consorting with some rather conventional adolescent females who refused to participate in his imaginative sexual program. His unfulfilled physical desires therefore sought sublimation in food. I, unfortunately, was the victim of all this. We may thank God that this boy has turned to food for an outlet. Had he not, I might have been raped right there on the spot."

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

If you're currently suffering the dreadful misfortune of never having read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, allow me to give you a short moment of salvation, direct from its hallowed pages. Part 2 in a series.

"What's this hanging out your bag?" [says the policeman]

"What do you think it is, stupid? It's a string for my lute." [Ignatius, our hero, answers]

"What's that?" The policeman drew back a little. "Are you local?"

"Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city [New Orleans] is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, Antichrists, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me."

The A Confederacy of Dunces Excerpt of the Day

This is the beginning of a new regular feature here on RtN. For those of you who don't already know, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces is among the greatest books ever written. It's ingenius, shocking, hilarious, and on more occasions than I could count I was forced to put the book down, close my eyes, and shake my head at a paragraph or passage that was so perfectly written I couldn't bear to move on and leave it behind.

So every now and then I'll post a short excerpt from the book, if for no other reason than to remind myself of how extraordinary it is. (It won the Pulitzer, so I'm not the only one who thinks so.) Today, I think it's appropriate to start with the opening paragraph.

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.