A Dangerous Man by Charlie Huston – 5 stars.

Judging from my reactions to his previous books, I fully expected to love this one, the third installment of his Henry Thompson trilogy. And what do you know? I did. I am amazed all over again by Huston’s sheer talent, his stark, beautiful prose. A Dangerous Man was simply devastating. If you haven’t read any of Huston’s books yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.

You knew this was coming, didn’t you? So I’m on my way to Chicago this weekend for a friend’s wedding.

Fact 1: I couldn’t get an affordable fare on the way there that didn’t involve stopping at least once. So I am writing this from the Denver International Airport.

Fact 2: There was a horrific storm forecast for the midwest this evening. Of course, because they knew I was flying. You know, them. The bastards up there who have a vendetta against me.

Fact 3: Ergo, all flights going into and out of O’Hare are delayed. On the order of hours. Once I landed in Denver and checked the departures board, I found that my flight had been delayed by three hours.

I love flying.

Update 09/23/06 05:47: But wait, there’s more. I ended up landing 4 hours late in Chicago, not 3. The reason we were delayed so much in the first place was that the pilot of our plane got held up in Chicago due to the weather, and didn’t take off from there to get to Denver until almost 10:00 PM. At midnight MST, the airline staff began boarding for my plane, but made an announcement that we were still waiting on the pilot of the inbound Chicago flight to land. 10 minutes later, they made an announcement that the pilot had landed and was parked at his gate, but—wait for it—the jet bridge had stopped working. So the pilot was stuck on his plane and couldn’t get off to come to our plane. What I couldn’t figure out was why they didn’t move the damn plane to another damn gate because it was 12-fricking-30 in the AM and it wasn’t like there were no empty gates in the terminal.

Finally, they got the jet bridge fixed and the pilot came on board our plane. By this point I just had my headphones in and wasn’t listening to anyone. A couple of minutes later, the pilot came over the PA system and talked for a while, but I was past the point of paying attention by this time, and didn’t catch what he said, except for what he said at the end: due to some problem or other, there would be another 15 or 20 minute delay. Just great. So we ended up taking off from Denver after 1 AM, and didn’t get in to Chicago until almost 4:30. My late-night flight turned into a red-eye. Sigh. Story of my life, man.

What can I say? I guess I’m a follower. Another thing everybody and their brother has in San Francisco is at least one pair of Onitsuka Tigers. And these are another thing that became popular because they are actually cool (unlike some other things I could name). For those who don’t know, Tigers are a popular brand/style of sneakers, and today, I finally got myself a pair, while exploring some of the many cool little boutiques in my neighborhood. Here’s my pair:

Neat-o mosquito.

If you live in San Francisco, you know that everyone and his brother there has a Timbuk2 bag; in fact, you’re probably one of them.

If you don’t live in San Francisco, the odds are good you’ve never heard of Timbuk2. For those who don’t know, it’s a company that made a name creating high-tech, high-style, highly-customizable messenger bags for bike messengers in a city famous for them. And like I said before, everyone and his brother has one; you’d be hard pressed to spend a day in the city and not see at least a few people sporting one.

As for me, I’d always kind of liked how they looked—I’m a sucker for bags, especially messenger-style ones—but hadn’t been impressed by many that I saw to the extent that I felt I had to get one. Now, I’m not one of those people who has to have things that are unique or unusual, and rejects things that are popular just because they’re popular—after all, some things become popular for a reason. I wasn’t opposed to the Timbuk2 bag as a concept; I just hadn’t seen that many I liked.

But this was all before I actually visited Timbuk2′s retail location in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. I happened to be meeting some friends at a newly-opened sushi restaurant in the neighborhood, and had arrived early. Having some time to kill, I decided to walk into the Timbuk2 store, which was across the street, to see what the fuss was all about. To my surprise, a lot of the bags on display were more immediately aesthetically appealing than the ones I’d seen around town or were available on the website. It turned out that there were a number of patterns and colors you could only pick if you decided to customize a bag at the retail location, and they were all pretty cool looking. I had to leave in short order to make dinner on time, but my interest was piqued.

After a few days of thinking about it, I decided to go back and order one. I was told it’d take two weeks to complete, and I just picked it up from the store yesterday. I am very, very happy with how it turned out. Here’s a picture:

And here’s one of the lining:

Nice, eh?

So my Gelaskins finally arrived. Here’s a picture of my iPod with one of them applied:

A whole new iPod for $15. Pretty damn cool.

is just not having a good week:

Federal agents swarmed legislative offices around [Alaska] Thursday, executing search warrants in a coordinated series of raids that appeared to target the long-standing relationship between the oil field service company Veco and leading lawmakers.

One of the “leading lawmakers” in question is state Senate President Ben Stevens, son of US Senator Ted Stevens. Read the whole article, which while short on actual detail is quite alarming, but here’s an interesting bit:

FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said federal agents executed about 20 search warrants Thursday, not all in legislative offices. The warrants were executed in Anchorage, Juneau, Wasilla, Eagle River and Girdwood, he said.

[...]

No one would say what was the target of the Girdwood warrant. Ben Stevens’ father, U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, has a home and office there. Both were quiet and dark Tuesday afternoon. A neighbor said she saw no unusual activity at the Stevens home. A postal clerk reported the same for Stevens’ office, which is in the Girdwood post office.

A spokesman for Ted Stevens didn’t return several calls or an e-mail from a reporter.

Pork-barrel spending and corruption have always been uncomfortably closely aligned in my mind—the mindsets are so much the same; you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours—but I’m willing to concede that there is such a thing as a relatively honest lawmaker whose main interest is monetarily helping the people back home. In a state where legislators are elected almost entirely on their abilities to bring federal dollars home, however, you have to wonder whether that kind of political culture does not breed corruption. (Via InstaPundit)