JJ's Blog

READINGS FROM MAY 2026

2026-06-03T18:38:58.827-07:00

READINGS FROM MAY

These are the recommended books from my month of May.

All are worth reading. All of them are books I enjoyed.

But good luck getting your hands on Captain Cool! The book is a collectible that has, to my knowledge, never been reprinted beyond its first run. (I got a copy as a gift.) But it’s a story that seems too wild to be true. Yet there’s documentation!

As always, your mileage will vary.

ADDICTION BY DESIGN: machine gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

2026-05-28T20:20:48.806-07:00

Addiction By Design: machine gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

Originally published in 2012, this book began as an ethnography of slot machine players in my hometown. But what Schüll found was much more profound and troubling than a mere anthropological study, a process she relates in her preface to the 2025 reissue of Addiction By Design.

Would it surprise anyone to realize that casinos are designed to entrap us? It's not just that they want to lull us with comfort & luxury; it's that they are actively engaged in short-circuiting our judgment by basically hypnotizing us into a zombie-like state of mind.

And the psychological state that Schüll describes as the “Machine Zone” and the behaviors that this state elicits have ramifications well beyond slot machines. In fact, they explain much about how social media (indeed, all media) works, as well.

In other words, the lessons learned by casino and slot machine designers have informed social media and game designers on how to elicit “infinite scroll” behavior much the same way compulsive gamblers can be induced to enter the “Machine Zone” that Schüll describes.

This book goes deep into the details, from first-person accounts from compulsive gamblers to explications of how floor placement affects casino traffic, and, personally, I gained some strong insights about Sin City, one of them being why there is a shrinking footprint of table games on the Strip. (It all comes down to money, for sure, but the processes behind that shrinkage say a lot about our worst impulses.)

Now as I walk through a casino, furtively glancing up from my smartphone so I don’t trip over a bank of slots, I’ll have a better understanding of what I’m navigating. And maybe, just maybe, my opened eyes will better defend me against falling into the “Machine Zone” myself.

Get Addiction By Design here: https://a.co/d/0hm7I048

TASTES LIKE WAR: a memoir by Grace M. Cho

2026-05-27T15:57:21.417-07:00

TASTES LIKE WAR: a memoir by Grace M. Cho

A finalist for the 2021 National Book Award, this memoir recounts Cho’s upbringing as a mixed-race American child of the Korean conflict. Her narrative ranges from her earliest memories to her adulthood, circling back as events in her present recall, refine & ultimately reshape her past, using food & locations as touchstones.

As Cho figures out who she is, where she came from, and who she wants to be, she also grapples with the diverging fortunes of her parents, each of whom has their own complex histories.

Though Cho relates the story of her problematic American father with some sympathy, the real focus of her story is Cho’s mother, whose journey from Korea to America is fraught with violence, displacement & shame, not to mention serious mental illness, raising compelling questions of cause and effect.

What Cho recounts is deeply human, informed by the sweep of world events as well as the chaos of emotional conflict, and it is also incredibly humane, giving voice (however incomplete, however inchoate) to Cho’s forebears. It’s clear that this author is a compassionate, thoughtful and insightful witness, using the grist of her personal history to mill a remarkably rich story.

And Cho is the best kind of truth-seeking guide, for whom even the smallest discovered detail can yield a rumination on the largest questions. (For instance, what does it say about our culture that the word “whore” is almost always a pejorative while the word “soldier” almost never is?)

I found surprising, even troubling, parallels between Cho’s family life and my own, which speaks to the role that U.S. military action in Southeast Asia has played in so many lives. I guess the give-and-take between nations makes victims of us all, such that, whatever your particular heritage, none of us is immune to history.

And yet we persist. And some of us, like Cho, fashion sublime testaments as a result.

Get TASTES LIKE WAR here: https://a.co/d/0d4TAaAY

JUST READ: America, América by Greg Grandin

2026-05-13T17:50:15.921-07:00

JUST READ: America, América by Greg Grandin

“Who is an American? And what is America?” asks this book in its preface.

Pulitzer Prize winner Greg Grandin has written a history of the United States of America that focuses on how what we now call Latin America has been a pivotal influence on the formation of our place in the world order.

Going back over 500 years, Grandin makes a strong argument that many of the ideals that we assume as intrinsic to our idea of what it means to be an “American” were born from our relationship with the land & cultures south of us.

Also from the preface: “But America, América is more than a history of the Western Hemisphere. It’s a history of the modern world, an inquiry into how centuries of American bloodshed and diplomacy didn’t just shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also gave rise to global governance — the liberal international order that today, many believe, is in terminal crisis.”

Grandin has crafted a compelling narrative that contextualizes our current moment. It’s actually scary to me how many parallels he draws between now and what has happened (often many times over) over the past few centuries.

History rhymes, in a mulitlingual chorus that even the ignorant (willful or not) cannot afford to ignore.

Get America, América here: https://a.co/d/0eIcxh83

JUST READ: Separation of Church & Hate by John Fugelsang

2026-04-29T13:13:09.483-07:00

JUST READ: Separation of Church & Hate by John Fugelsang

Like Fugelsang, I was raised Christian, but the religion I grew up with bears little resemblance to what is practiced by many I know, so this book comes as a breath of fresh air.

Its rebuttal of difference & division and of grievance as an animating spirit is more in accord with what I was taught, which is that compassion and community matter more than conflict.

It helps that Fugelsang is also a working comedian, so his book is full of chuckles, despite its seriousness.

Get Separation of Church and Hate here: https://a.co/d/01ctVVuc

MIXED PLATE by Jo Koy

2026-04-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

Mixed Plate: chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy

This one hit home, because Koy's early biography has close parallels to my own. Not that I have any talent for comedy, but both Koy & I share a similar racial & cultural heritage, right down to having an Air Force father who married our Filipina mother and brought her to the States via Clark AFB. (But where Koy was raised by his mother after the divorce of his parents, I was raised by my father.)

Koy's rags-to-riches memoir is so authentic that I had to take my time with it. Again, the similarities struck me: the chaotic home life, the contentious social life, the myriad confusions of being "mixed," the endless struggle. And the differences were equally evocative. Where Koy hustled & risked everything in the pursuit of his dream, I buckled down and played it safe, keeping jobs I should have left. It was like reading a "what-if" version of my own diary.

But, as befits the story of a comedian coming into his own, there are laughs on every page. And Koy is clear-eyed about his own failures and shortcomings. In such clarity lies wisdom. This is one book where the audio version, read by Koy himself, adds dimension to the text.

But the print version has recipes! And the recipes that start some sections of the book managed to inspire both nostalgia and irritation, because no two families do anything exactly the same. (My Mom put raisins in her lumpia -- I know, it's crazy!)

In the end, Koy's story is so honest, so raw & self-aware, that I found it to be a profoundly uplifting read, making me more of a fan that I already was.

Get Mixed Plate here: https://a.co/d/06RmvTyw

Vigil: a novel by George Saunders

2026-04-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

Vigil: a novel by George Saunders

How it starts: A spirit of some sort visits an oil tycoon on his deathbed. What happens next is that Saunders is a particularly brilliant writer who is able to imaginatively embody a conceit, no matter how fantastical. This time, he imagines a kind of ushering angel tasked with shepherding someone completely unlike herself, eliciting all sorts of questions and sympathies (and not a few irritations) along the way, all done through dialogue that veers wildly from the hilarious to the heartbreaking, often sentence by sentence. It’s a wild ride, well-worth taking, covering way more ground than its mere 192 pages would suggest. Get Vigil: a novel here: https://a.co/d/09S6tnyD

BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan

2026-04-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

BUCKEYE by Patrick Ryan

Set in a small town in Ohio during the middle half of the 20th century, this novel tells the story of 3 generations of 2 families linked by secrets.

Describing its plot any further would make this book sound melodramatic, as if it were nothing more than a soap opera, but Ryan’s real achievement is in the emotional authenticity of his characters, even the minor ones. The entire cast rings true, and not just in a hackneyed way. The entire cast rings true, and not just in a hackneyed way. These are not caricatures. They are fully-fleshed characters living out their lives.

I found myself not just suspending disbelief. I actually started to care about these people, even when they weren’t at their best. And, again referencing (however obliquely) Ryan's plot, they all get their due.

I got to the last page of this book with deep sense of satisfaction, grateful for the journey.

Get Buckeye by Patrick Ryan here: https://a.co/d/00QKeSqE

JUST READ: THE ARROGANT APE by Christine Webb

2026-04-10T16:39:00.000-07:00

The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb

This book by a Harvard primatologist is a sustained and persuasive argument for a more ecological view of the universe and our place in it. I highly recommend it.

Get The Arrogant Ape here: https://a.co/d/01g0LIxc

MARCH 2026 READINGS

2026-04-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Last month's readings ran the gamut, from first-time reads to books I have revisited over and over.

Cassidy's history of capitalism through an exploration of its various critics, from the Luddites to (of course) Marx and Piketty, provides deep perspective for anyone aspiring to be more than a cog in the big wheel of commerce.

Get Capitalism And Its Critics here: https://a.co/d/09sOsDp9

Westover's Educated was a real page-turner, made all the more head-shaking because it's all true. Westover's revelations about her family are leavened by her clear-eyed self-awareness. It's the best kind of memoir.

Get Educated here: https://a.co/d/00KF04ZK

I have had the novel, Fives and Twenty-Fives, on my nightstand for a re-read for a good while now, and it really stands up. Pitre's narrative moves across a swath of characters and viewpoints, all of whom feel very authentic.

Get Fives and Twenty-Fives here: https://a.co/d/0bXi5xCj

Charles Bock's Beautiful Children made a big splash both nationally and here locally when it came out in 2008, and I wondered if it would hold up. I'm happy to report that it really does. It's a sublime work of fiction, the kind of story that rings scarily & heartbreakingly true. Though much of its subject matter & setting seems prurient, Bock wonderfully humanizes even the most traumatic incidents. This is a novel that haunts me, not least because it really nails my hometown.

Get Beautiful Children here: https://a.co/d/07PtKlD3

Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is a brilliant, contemporary reworking of the stoic viewpoint. Manson does more than just make a standup routine out of ancient Greek wisdom; he merely uses the punchline of this title to draw readers into a more considered discussion, complete with modern examples. I know far too many people who could take a few lessons from this book, myself included.

Get The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck here: https://a.co/d/00xo9c6A

Harry Fagel's Bellowing At The Volcano is his latest poetry collection, and it's a truly monumental book. Fagel's work is a lyrical autobiography, a kind of secular Pilgrim's Progress, rendered in a unique & passionate voice.

Get Bellowing At The Volcano here: https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/bellowing-at-the-volcano/

Soul Brothers is Rodney Lee's followup to Along These Trails, and it tells the story, from one poem to the next, of Lee's upbringing. Drawing analogies from Greek myth and pop culture, this collection is Rodney Lee's origin story, and it's amazing -- yet another artistic example of the universal shining through the specific.

Get Soul Brothers here: https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/soul-brothers/

FEBRUARY READINGS

2026-03-16T17:21:00.114-07:00

JANUARY READINGS

2026-03-16T17:20:25.691-07:00

A Description of Humanity

2026-03-16T17:20:00.000-07:00

They kill.

They breed.

They burn.

They pave.

- a description of humanity by the rest of the Earth.

December Readings

2026-01-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

DECEMBER READINGS

…started with another physics primer, this one by Helen Czerski, a physicist who uses ordinary phenomena like popcorn and coffee and ketchup to explain how the universe works. And, since my understanding of the underlying mathematics is largely metaphorical anyway, I always enjoy books like this.

Next was a revisit to Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, after it was mentioned by a friend. I had appreciated it when I first read it years ago, but, wow, this time it really hit me. What a masterpiece.

Then I dove headlong into the latest thriller by Tod Goldberg. The man knows how to entertain, and here Goldberg imagines a truly novel setup for a caper whose repercussions ripple across entire communities. Sure, there are lives at stake, but Only Way Out is also hilarious. I turned every page either laughing out loud or shaking my head ruefully. Highly recommended.

Michael Harriot’s retelling of American history with a focus on African-American culture is the dirty-mouthed cousin to The 1619 Project, and I consider both books a necessary antidote to the kind of washed-out mythology that permeates American discourse, especially at the street-level, low-info-voter level where I live and work.

Then I read Freaks of a Feather after realizing that I somehow own a copy. I do not remember ever purchasing it, but owning a book that I have not read makes me itch. Turns out that Tellessen’s memoir of his time in the U.S. Marines is both comprehensive and idiosyncratic, with a deeply authentic & ultimately winning voice.

Konnikova’s The Biggest Bluff is more than an account of learning how to play competitive poker. It’s also an examination of the ways in which chance rules our lives and how an understanding of this fact can be empowering. I hear she’s working with Goldberg on a TV series based in a Las Vegas casino. I have high hopes.

I leavened my previous 2 readings with another small novel by Denis Johnson. Nobody Move was originally serialized in Playboy magazine, and it’s the best kind of slumming for an artist like Johnson. It’s a raunchy screwball caper that, like Goldberg’s book, is powered by crisp dialogue, and I enjoyed every line.

Power and Progress, along with Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc., are sobering examinations of the ways in which capital once again finds insidious ways to exploit labor, through outright deception and brainwashing. Both books offer solutions to the current stranglehold that billionaire autocrats have on world power, but I’m not all that optimistic that mere votes can overpower money.

It’s just as sobering to ponder the history of tuberculosis that popular novelist John Green has published. Green is an engaging storyteller, expertly moving from a cruising altitude to street-level and back again. TB has been with us since at least the beginnings of what we call civilization. Yet, despite knowing what it would take to eradicate it (and actually possessing the means), our species chooses other priorities instead. If I weren’t already jaded, Everything Is Tuberculosis might push me over the edge.

I ended the month by revisiting two old favorites. The first was Driven, by James Sallis, his sequel to the novel which spawned a really fun movie starring Ryan Gosling. Sallis has always been a kind of guilty pleasure of mine, executing genre tropes with a poet’s sensibility and a serious economy of movement. The second fave was A Confederacy of Dunces, a comic masterpiece whose origin story is every bit as interesting and poignant as the story it actually tells. And the story of Ignatius Reilly is a whopper.

All of these books are recommended, though, again, I must remind you: Your mileage will vary.

NOVEMBER READINGS

2025-12-07T19:02:00.000-08:00

...started with more about Gregory Berns's research into animal cognition. And the more I learn, the more I move towards veganism. I'm not there yet, but I'm close.

And Jordan Harper's crime fiction is always both entertaining & disturbing in all the right ways, as is anything by Jason Pargin, whose latest novel is also hilarious, with a plot that does not disappoint. And Pargin writes absolutely hilarious dialogue.

I always return to my patron saint Vonnegut, whose aesthetic & worldview is endlessly rejuvenating in a way that the delusions of religion are not. And God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is Vonnegut's most direct indictment of those who would put property over people.

Finding out there's a streaming series based on it drove me back to Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, which is a satirical novel disguised as a screenplay that also manages to be heartfelt reckoning of generational difference. It’s a masterpiece that deserved the National Book Award.

Then someone told me about the audio version of Hawking's Theory of Everything, which is supposed to be in the author's own voice. But, of course, that voice is actually the computer-generated one developed for Hawking. It's both eerie and appropriate. I'll get into my thoughts on audio versus text at another time. Suffice it to say that I recognize that they are very different ways to experience a text, with very different results. And, yeah, more people need to develop at least an appreciation for cosmology, the real stuff backed by math & observation, not the make-believe stuff.

Eruption is a bit of candy with a cool backstory of one consummate entertainer finishing the work of another. I'm sure there will be a movie adaptation.

Proof is an important exploration of all the different ways we consider something to be proven: scientifically, legalistically, rhetorically and politically. That it was written by a mathematician is only fitting. I learned a lot.

Jill Lepore's book-length investigation into one of the weirdest literary figures of the 20th century is itself exceedingly weird. How could it be otherwise? Joe Gould was a deeply-troubled and troubling man who somehow managed to convince a lot of very accomplished people that he had a secret, unrealized gift. Or did he?

I rounded out November with some classic hardboiled fiction from Dashiell Hammett. It posits a jaded antihero manipulating his way through a dog-eat-dog city, as crimes and bodies start to pile up from the very first page.

OCTOBER'S READINGS

2025-11-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

...started with Chandler's The Long Goodbye, naturally. It's a plot for its time, but it goes down easy because of the author’s fluid, sometimes hilarious style.

Then I waded into World Travel, which is a weird posthumous addition to Anthony Bourdain's body of work. His literary executors have compiled a kind of global guidebook of Bourdain’s impressions of various travel spots, arranged alphabetically & with an eye towards apprising the reader on transportation options & costs, as well as advice on tipping rates. Interspersed are essays from people close to Bourdain, offering personal glimpses into the man’s personality and history. He left us all too soon.

Cole’s Code Over Country is another piece of in-depth journalism that provides yet more evidence of the corrosive nature of secrecy, especially when coupled with weaponry.

Lepore’s history shows us the true history of the American Constitution, a fluid document if there ever was, which is a nice antidote to the cockeyed rationalizations of such groups of the Heritage Foundation & the Federalist Society.

I revisited Hersey’s Hiroshima before tackling Pelegrino’s Ghosts of Hiroshima, both of which detail, in stunning specificity, the absolutely horrific consequences of our deployment of atomic bombs. We can only hope we never unleash such terrors ever again.

Science Under Siege details the rampant anti-intellectualism of our time. It’s tribal, which is our nature, but its targeting of the scientific method may have long-lasting, dangerous effects, the least of which will be the hastening of the end of the Pax Americana we’ve enjoyed since the end of the Second World War.

I’ve long been a fan of Michael Connelly. His attention to realistic detail allows me to forgive his obvious use of plot conventions. After all, he has to keep the movie adaptation in mind as he writes!

P Moss is a Las Vegas treasure, and his Screwing Sinatra is a master-class in reworking various American legends into an almost-slapstick pastiche that nevertheless ties itself very neatly into a delicious package. Golly, this was fun to read!

Matt Haig’s popular The Midnight Library is a wonderful little fantasy with a kind of It’s-A-Wonderful-Life message, while the amazing George Saunders walks us through some Russian masterpieces, showing why he’s both an engaging teacher AND a talented artist in his own right. For this book, I recommend the audiobook, which enlists an impressive cast of actors to give voice to the 7 short stories that Saunders surveys.

Finally, my favorite book of October was How Dogs Love Us, which is both an appreciation of humanity’s best friend and a nuts-and-bolts description of science at work. What can I say? I’m a dog guy, and this book was both illuminating and heartwarming.

September Readings

2025-10-01T12:36:00.000-07:00

...began with Zusak's heart-tugging memoir about his pets & what it means to have pets as part of the family, instead of mere ornamentations. Then I rolled through retired LAPD detective Rick Jackson's true-crime memoir of a memorable murder case, followed by a revisit of Vonnegut's "autobiographical collage" in Palm Sunday. All 3 books are highly recommended.

But then my nephew challenged me to read Infinite Jest with him. It would be my 3rd trip through DFW's magnum opus, and it took me more than 2 weeks. But it was worth it. I had forgotten how laugh-out-loud funny this book is. And it was sobering to see that what was once absurd when Infinite Jest first came out is now a little too on-the-nose.

Maria Ressa's book, which came out shortly after she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is must-reading for anyone trying to grapple with today's weaponized surveillance economy and how journalism, as the 4th Estate of any working democracy, must adapt. Orwellian is almost too-tame a word for what Ressa went through and is warning us about.

And Harp's true-crime dive into the criminal underworld of Fort Bragg serves as further evidence of something I've known for a while: secrecy is inherently poisonous. It is a breeding ground for the worst of our impulses. A secret may be a situational necessity, but it should always be a temporary condition. Otherwise, it is deeply corrosive, providing cover for all sorts of atrocity, even from people who would otherwise not be capable of such.

Attica Locke's Guide Me Home is the conclusion of her Highway 59 trilogy, and it's a book that almost requires a reading of the first 2 novels. But I did enjoy it.

And Mary Roach is a national treasure. All of her books should be required reading, and Replaceable You is a strong addition to her catalog. She is funny, informative, and she writes in an infectiously conversational style that makes her subject matter truly delicious to digest.

Finally, a prompt from someone online (a para-social contact, if you will) led me to revisit Powers's The Yellow Birds as an audiobook. I have a deeply ambivalent relationship with audiobooks, but they're just so damned convenient. More on this later, but The Yellow Birds is such a lyrically-written book, so full of emotional authenticity, that it's hard to criticize. It begins with a well-worn trope: a young man going to war. But then the book goes somewhere (forgive me) completely novel. I recommend it.

2025-09-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

August Readings

August’s readings started with another Chandler, because why the hell not, which led me back to Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, a book that channels Chandler through a 70’s post-hippy haze of conspiratorial shaggy-dogs, as if it were an origin story for the Dude in The Big Lebowski.

Then came The Meth Lunches, a book I cannot advocate for enough. Foster does heroic work here, both as a writer and as a human being. And, as I considered Foster’s particular form of community activism, I recalled the voice of James Baldwin and thus revisited his The Fire Next Time, which, like The Meth Lunches, should be required reading for anyone who considers themself an enlightened human being. Both books articulate a worldview that I wish was more prevalent: that of “loving rage” towards all. “Angry Generosity” may be a better term. It’s profound empathy coupled with righteous indignance that the society we’ve created is not better.

I then shifted gears and blazed through the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights, which was so wonderfully entertaining. I have always enjoyed well-curated anthologies, and Goldberg has assembled a dazzling variety of voices here, all based on mixing crime and Hanukkah.

After finishing & digesting Choy’s sharply-argued history, which spoke deeply to my own familial past, Amazon’s algorithm threw me a wild recommendation: a contemporary cozy mystery set in a Filipino-American restaurant! I went with it, and I was not at all disappointed. Talk about authenticity! Manansala gets the culture, the comedy, and the cuisine perfectly, all while crafting a plot that kept me riveted.

Abrams’s oral history of hip-hop was a lot of fun, and it caused me to revisit Questlove’s own consideration of the history of the genre, after which I finally got around to reading Penn Jillette’s novel, Random, which is both a wonderful manifestation of a conceit *and* a nice vehicle for some offhand philosophical asides. Jillette has always been a fascinating & accomplished entertainer, and Random is a great addition to his body of work.

Walker’s Why We Sleep is an eye-opening survey of the current state of sleep research. I like reading about actual scientists doing actual science, and Walker dispels more than a few popular myths about slumber and its effects. He even provides a set of rigorously-tested recommendations we should all follow.

And finally, I got to Carlin’s Last Words. He, like Vonnegut, is a patron saint of mine, and Last Words is Carlin at his most autobiographical and aspirational, if you can believe it. It’s infused with an elegaic sensibility, which you’ll especially understand once you read about Carlin’s dissatisfaction with how his career played out. I miss him very much, as we all should.

2025-08-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Meth Lunches by Kim Foster

I was on my third go-around with this book before I really started to enjoy it.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s an enjoyable book, and Foster is an engaging and talented wordsmith. But this story is an exercise in a kind of brutally-honest, hand-to-mouth empathy that hit me hard, more for Foster’s fearlessness than for the fact that I know the people & places whereof she writes. In the time chronicled by this book, Foster puts her money where her mouth is by putting food in lots of other people’s mouths. And some of those people are difficult to feed, to say the least. Feeding them becomes complicated for Foster, but it also becomes an enrichment.

Moving into a fixer-upper in downtown Las Vegas just as the Covid pandemic hits, Foster & her family are on the frontlines of the battle between the have-nots & the housed. And, by stationing a fridge in her front yard for anyone to take from, she wields food as both a salve and a bridge as she moves from encounter to encounter, sinking roots deeper & deeper into the unforgiving caliche we call soil. But, unlike those chroniclers who parachute into Las Vegas with entrenched preconceptions, Foster is both perceptive & invested in the city she’s writing about.

It’s not easy helping people. Anyone can hand someone a sandwich or a few bucks and move on. But really helping someone? It costs you. It cost both Foster & her family. But Foster makes & nails the argument that it should cost — that this cost is necessary — because paying that cost is what turns us from mere humans into people who are humane.

To belabor a critic’s cliche, I think The Meth Lunches is required reading, not only for everyone who lives in Vegas, but also for anyone who wants to learn about the complicated relationship between ideals and policy, between what it means to have good intentions and what it actually takes to produce good results.

The Meth Lunches: Food & Longing in an American City

By Kim Foster

https://a.co/d/7Rmu48g

YOU ONLY GET 2

2020-11-11T10:19:00.002-08:00

Fast, cheap, or effective: you only ever get 2!

It's a truism that I've seen proven over & over & over.

Ideology

2020-10-07T18:22:00.001-07:00

How much inhumanity does your ideology allow?

As I get older, I get less & less tolerant of the excuse of pragmatism for inhumane actions.

PRIORITIES

2020-09-30T17:08:00.004-07:00

There's all of us.

Then there's each of us.

Then there's everything else,

in that order.

STUPIDITY & BRUTALITY

2020-09-29T16:13:00.002-07:00

Stupidity & brutality are never news.

They are weather.

They happen everywhere, all the time, differing only in local circumstance.

TRUTH & LOVE

2020-09-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Truth & love are the bedrock values of any ideology worth a damn.

They are my core values.

By truth, I mean reality as it is, not as I wish it to be.

By love, I mean the selfless regard by which we must interact & cooperate.

Bloodsucking Vegas: a vampire noir

2020-08-15T21:12:00.003-07:00

I wrote a vampire novel a while ago. It's called Bloodsucking Vegas: a vampire noir, and it's set in Las Vegas, my hometown.