The Byzantine Empire. All I knew about this was some of the beginning from a book on the fall of the Roman Empire that I read last year and the end from a book on the 4th Crusade that I read about three years ago. Now I know a shit load more but you know, fucked if I can recall much from this book. The trouble with reading a book about an empire that stretches over 1,000 years is that all the Constantine’s and Julian’s merge together. Now I am buggered if I can remember if Constantine IV was an ass or if that was Constantine VII.

I did learn about Belasarius, what a jumbo package of manslaughter he was! And now I know that the Roman empire didn’t actually fall until the 15th Century, go figure. Add to that the stuff about how St. Cyril taught the Russians to write, how byzantine came to mean sneaky and corrupt and how Greek Fire is not the same as Greek Fashion and I judge taking the time to read this book as not a complete waste of my life. Bueno!

I approached this book with some hesitation, primarily because of my innate distrust of anyone who uses three names, like Orville Vernon Burton. Two names dude, there are people out there with just one, like Cher or Seal who could do with a little restraint on your part.

This book came from the $5 table at my local supermarket and if it wasn’t for the fat guy with more than 8 items in the “quick” checkout I probably would never have read it. What a shame that would have been. About the only U.S. history I have bothered to read is Revolutionary War and Woodrow Wilson onwards. There is a big gap of 150 years there that has only been, for me, broken by a 3 volume history of the Civil War by Shelby Foote.

This book focuses on the years between about 1840 and 1900, centered on Lincoln and the Civil War of course, but covering all of the Reconstruction as well as the reactionary politics and rail road ethics that came to define the last half century before 1900. I learned a whole lot about American history that I never knew before, how the negro (as they were called) gained the vote and then steadily lost it, how the Democrat Party turned from being the slavery party of white supremacists into the liberal left that it is today. What a dance. Great book, well worth the $5. Perhaps even worth $10.

I don’t know if it was because this was the first book I read using my Sony Reader or some inherent fault in the book itself but I found this account of the fire raids on Hamburg to be an unsatisfying effort.

The author has tried his best to stitch together survivor accounts from both the RAF bombers and the poor bloody Germans to get that “there” feeling in his story but it doesn’t work. The book is lacking in detail and it just feels like he tried to make a 700 page book out of a 50 page story. Maybe it’s the fact that the fashionable way to write these accounts nowadays is to get interviews with the low level combatants hasn’t helped him here because there’s just too few of them left in any condition to recount their experiences.

Additionally I found the book too ready to assign feelings of remorse or horror to the Allies which just isn’t borne out by other books I have read. From my experience the fliers were just thinking about how to survive their 30 op tours to really give two shits about the civilians they were incinerating below. This book felt like revisionism and to tell you the truth, I wish the Sony Book Store had a better return policy.

This book, written over 70 years ago was controversial at the time, it’s subject being the plight of the “negro” in America in the 1930’s. I read it because it took me too long to get through the grocery store lineup and it was only $3. The protagonist, a violent and utterly poverty stricken balck man called Bigger Thomas, kills a white girl in the first 50 pages and then spends the rest of the novel getting in deeper with every chapter.

You know, I am sure I would have enjoyed this book if it had been written by a modern writer. But the trouble with reading old fiction is that the styles of writing become so dated. I found myself wading through molasses at times and it was a real struggle not to just flick through the book 5 pages at a time. The author keeps waahing on using 10 words where one will do, kind of like Cliff at work. Avoid this book, unless you have a time machine to put you back in the social context. Maybe this was “protest fiction” back in 1938 but now it’s just a curiosity.

An undercover cop, a drunk, a view from my window.

Ha bloody ha! If you could see me now you would see what I look like when I am dancing and clicking my heels together. Why? Because that tosser coke dealer who moved into the house across the street got pinched by The Filth today. To quote the local police…

On the 20th of August 2009, the Barrie Police Drug Enforcement Unit arrested a 25 year old male at his residence on Owen Street.

The male, charged with: Trafficking Cocaine, Possession of Cocaine and Fail to Comply with Probation will appear in Barrie Provincial Court on August 21st for bail.

This investigation is part of a police/community effort to address local concerns in the downtown core. A number of uniform and investigative officers have been working diligently around the clock to address these community concerns.

Not just that guy, but the whole cockroach nest got cleaned out. The landlords parents turned up as well so I got to entertain myself by thanking them for bringing prostitutes, cocaine dealers, addicts and other low lives into our neighbourhood. Farewell fucker! You are King of the World!!