Reading
Against All Enemies by Richard Herman This conforms to quite a few of the Rules of the Technothriller; Muslims are a bad lot (unless they’re Nation of Islam, because that’s Americanised Islam) as Sudanese radicals shoot down a B2 after a leak and the obvious suspect is the one and only Muslim at the airbase it launched from; women should stay at home- there are five speaking female characters and by the end of the book two of them are dead and three are safely married off; the military is always right- because bombing stuff solves everything.
Why Do People Hate America by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wynn- Davies One of the reasons is because the whole country so fervently believes in problem solving by violence as evinced in the previous book. This isn’t as polemically funny as Stupid White Men as the authors try to approach the subject dispassionately. Which is a shame, because the book is certainly supposed to be a wake up call to Americans about the insularity of their country and the danger it presents at home and abroad. I can’t help thinking a Moore style slap would have been a better way to do it than this gentle prod.
Watching
2 Fast 2 Furious. Just the sort of vacuous junk food film that gets America hated, though the cultural imperialism takes a beating when all but two of the cars are Japanese. Where the first film was Point Break with cars and fewer brain cells, this one is a Miami Vice episode with Nitrous Oxide and no Phil Collins on the soundtrack. And I think Devon Aoki as Suki could become my crush for the next couple of weeks.
The One Good Jet Li versus bad Jet Li without the old cheesey fall back of them being twins. A treatment of parallel universes that isn’t too goofy and has good enough fight sequences to keep you from caring.
Listening To
My MP3 collection on major randomise. About halfway through, 1521 left as I type.