21. Everything I Learned About Business I Learned From Monopoly by Alan Axelrod

This was a very cool little book that I got from Rick for Xmas last year. I thought it would be a book about tips and tricks for how to win at Monopoly, or at least do better, like the book I got from Summer at Christmas 1997. That was the Monopoly Companion.

This book is not that. It is a guide to doing business Monopoly-style. As the author notes in the introduction, many parents and older folk think Monopoly is a great way to teach kids how to be responsible with money. Well, unfortunately the lesson that is reinforced in Monopoly is that risk is the key to success. Risk and pushing risk, taking chances, investing as deeply as possibly in sources of revenue, and making deals with other players until you are ready to stab them in the back – those are the lessons of Monopoly.

This is an interesting book for me to read right now because I am just starting the business plan for two ventures I'd like to start – a magazine and the Mashomack Boatshop that I spoke of earlier (on 8 December).

The business plan has a lot of mystique around it, like it's so hard to get right and write it and only an experienced person should be writing it. All false, as far as I'm concerned. It is just like a screenplay. Just another writing format to use to convey information. No big deal.

Anyway. I found the format of the book to be entertaining – short little bits of Monopoly wisdom followed by short little stories that illustrate that wisdom And clocking in at 200 pages it was a quick read.

"Fail not our feast"

So one of the 7th graders had a birthday party last week, on Friday, and nobody showed up. Not one kid.

We asked if the kid thought it was because of the snowstorm, but that didn't seem to be the case.

I want to respond in some way, to say it's OK, or will be, or help the kid just say, "fuc.kem" but I'm not sure what to do.

if only

Copyright New York Times Company Dec 5, 2005

A man from Arkansas scaled the fence surrounding the White House on Sunday while President Bush was inside and was immediately captured by Secret Service officers.

20. Hero by Dan Barkan

This was a good yarn.

I'll save the gory details for the final draft, and send my full critique right to the author himself. Dan wrote a short first draft, 68 pages, and it was a fun read.

The story is about many things, so perhaps the easiest way to describe it is to describe the characters. My favorite was Jinx, the young rascal that Hero, the main character pals around with at Hux War University. These two are fesity and fun, and she is irreverent and daring, but loyal and true to Hero. Next are Ghazi and his father Raj Alai. They are contacted by angels to perform a quest. And there is Angry Pipe, the tattooed, agnostic elf. He becomes the surrogate father for Hero and Ghazi late in the story as the quest's goals are shifted, or perhaps a better word is postponed. On the other side is Smoke, more a thing than a person. he's powerful and he's bad. He's in league with the mechanical Night Eaters. What are they after exactly?

I look forward to the long/full version.

that was close...

So a kid who attends the high school I teach at was stabbed in the neck Thursday after school. Seems he was walking back from his house (picking up his jersey for the basketball game) and he walked past a neighboring school. He saw a friend of his get into a fight, so DM rushes in. A friend of the other kid in the fight jumps in and stabs DM in the neck, cutting his carotid artery. DM's friend N puts his tshirt on DM's neck and they walk to Beth Israel hospital (which is right across the street from our school). Then the stabber tries to catch up to DM and crew to finish the job. The cops arrested him. The stabber is 14 years old. After surgery and five pints of blood, DM is in ICU and is expected to be OK.

Wild.

Mashomack Boatshop

I am midway through setting up a nonprofit boat shop. The idea would be that the group, called Mashomack Boatworks, would take beat up and broken down sailboats, rowboats, dinghys, and rebuild them. If it used to float we'll rebuild it, might be one of our mottoes.

Ideally high school kids would do the rebuilding, but I would be open to community folks coming by and helping. I don't know how to build boats by scratch so it couldn't be a boatbuilding thing, yet, but that would certainly be in the long term plan.

It's quite a process to set up a nonprofit, but it's going. I already have an Employee ID Number (EIN) so I can start hiring folks. And I have a Fiscal Sponsor, so people can start giving donations (boats or money or tools or space) as soon as they want. No website, yet, and just a staff of one.

Mashomack is a Native American (Long Island) word for "those who go by the sea."

1000 miles

I finally got 2005's 1000th mile on my bike today. I've done very little riding so far this school year. (I haven't been taking the train or driving either, spending many of the nights in the area.) Half of the 999th mile was on the Queensboro Bridge, that fine old span, that Gothic Beauty, that no fare thoroughfare. It's not as impressive as some of my other cycling milestones, and compared to them 1000 miles ain't squat. But I did ride my bike to work in February, getting a split lip from the cold. And I did wipe out into a snow bank after I hit some ice on the uphill end of the Queens-bound side of the bridge. I definitely wasn't feeling groovy then. And I only almost got hit by two cars, which, I think, is pretty good for 12 mos/1000 miles worth of riding.

19. Rules of the Wild by Francesa Marciano

There were time I thought this was for sure a chick book. The narrator is a woman and the main thread is her finding and losing love, BUT it's not chick-lit.

The book is about Euro and Ameri expats living in Kenya and all the twisted reasons they are there and all the twisted relationships they get into. Ultimately it is a journey of discovery for our narrator, Esme.

Some of the dialogue in the begining is so bad you feel sorry for Marciano, but the description and protrayal of the characters is so good you forgive her immediately.

This was a good book and I strongly recommend it.

18. You are Going to Prison by Jim Hogshire

Well, if I wasn't scared enough about going to jail, I am now.

Nothing about the experience sounds good. Or survivable. Hogshire goes through each step of the process, from seeing the rollers/flashing lights behind you all the way up to the electric chair. He even tells a beautiful little story about a Quaker who skips out on $10 bail and winds up in a Detention Center "covered wagon," a pair of bunk beds with a blanket thrown over top. Seems the war protestor spent hours getting gang raped and beaten up. Speaking of rape, if you go to jail, there doesn't seem to be much chance of not getting the shaft, so to speak. No anal rape metaphors in prison, it's all ass-banging reality. And there isn't much comfort in coming to the end of your sentence - it seems that is an even better time to get fu.cked in the keester because the bad guys know you don't want to get in trouble (by getting into a fight) just before you are about to get out because doing so might extend your sentence. And there are lots of ways to get your sentence extended. Jail is bad. Don't fu.ck up.

17. Stormrider by Akira Yoshimura

Not that great. I'm reading a lot of duds this year.

This is the story of Hikozo, a young boy from a small village in Japan who get s agig as a cook's apprentice on a merchant ship. The ship gets into a big storm, gets dismasted, drifts, and is rescued by an American whaler. Then the castaways go on to America and various adventures.

There is almost no conflict in this story. It's more like Yoshi's writing a (boring) diary of Hiko's (boring) life. Toward the end of the book I had taken to calling it Boringrider. I'm falling asleep just trying to write this entry.

16. The Dubliners by James Joyce

A collection of short stories. I had never read any Joyce, or so I thought, until now. I had read the story "Araby" in my intro to lit class at Suffolk Community College. Loved it then. Loved it now. This whole book was excellent. Each story was a delicious little bite. The last story, "The Dead" left me breathless toward the end. These are short stories. Nothing like what they put in One Story, the New Yorker, or the Atlantic. Excellence. More Joyce to come.