Dave's Fiction Warehouse

O ver the past couple of days I’ve built a new computer. That was the easy part. Now it’s a matter of getting everything to work as it should — not just all the speedy new hardware, but the new operating system known as Windows 8. So far I don’t like the OS much, but my wife does and I’ve heard that most people eventually warm to it. So I’m still learning and mostly restraining the urge to bitch and moan. Fortunately, I had the foresight to keep my old computer running and online throughout the process. Without it, I’d still be staring at a scene similar to the picture above. It’s true what they say: With Google and YouTube, there’s almost nothing you can’t learn. I sometimes wonder if all that “cloud” memory isn’t slowly replacing organic memory, and if the process won’t someday exact a dear price on the human race. We’ll forget all the important stuff and then the technology will go away. We’ll want to know how to build a fire or bring down a deer with a stone-tipped spear, and there...

W hat is art? That was the theme of Sunday’s New York Times crossword, which I finished in (for me) average time. It was titled “You’ll Know It When You See It.” I kept wondering if the creator had been inspired by Tilda Swinton. Swinton, you’ve probably heard, has since Saturday been periodically napping in a glass box at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Of all the stories appearing in the Times over the past week, I don’t think many have gotten the same kind of public response. People may not know exactly what art is, but they damned sure know what it isn’t. Me, I’ve seen a lot of weird things at MOMA, and the Guggenheim, and I just shrug at this kind of thing. I’m quite the sophisticate. I’m not one of those guys who looks at an abstract painting and says, “my kid could do that” — even if I’ve thought it more than once. My theory on art is this: If it evokes a feeling of some sort, even disgust, then you can call it art if you want to. Ditto if it’s a famous actress who is likely to...

I 've been reading Standing in Another Man’s Grave , the newest novel by Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin. I like the book a lot but I won’t really do a proper review — other people do that better than I. I mention it because this book strikes me as sort of a landmark: it’s the first crime novel I’ve read that really makes social media part of the story in a believable, matter-of-fact way. The venerable John Rebus, no longer an inspector but a retired adjunct to Edinburgh’s cold-case unit, is drawn into a case involving the disappearance of several young women over the course of a decade. The cases all seem unrelated until Rebus discovers that in two of them, pictures from the women’s cell phones were sent to someone on their contact lists shortly after the women were last seen. Over the course of the investigation, Facebook and Twitter and texting and streaming video all play a significant role. The aging Rebus is something of a luddite, but he’s also a shrewd cop. Even while some...

O ne thing about online convenience: Every way it makes your life easier contains the potential to make your life infinitely harder. Eventually you’ll find yourself cursing at your computer screen in impotent rage. Because the very thing that makes the internet so convenient — no human contact — is what makes it so maddening when the magic goes away. Today I find myself locked out of my online bank account. This has happened before. Ever since the swine at Capital One 360 took over my former online bank ING, my sign-in number appears to be good for only one or two accesses. Then it quits working and the account gets locked and I have to go through this long process to reset the number. I’ve done it four times now. I answer a bunch of personal questions, like who was the secret lover of my third-grade teacher, and I get a code via e-mail allowing me to change my sign-in number yet again. The problem today is that the e-mail with the code hasn’t come. Capital One 360 says they sent it, b...

I t’s March 19: Happy Iraq War Day! Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since we thrilled to the televised scenes of “Shock and Awe” in Baghdad. A little less than that since we watched that statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down, the images of ecstatic Iraqis beating on it with their shoes. I remember thinking at the time, “Well, that went pretty well.” Too bad the war didn’t end then. Today, those people known as Sunni insurgents set off a bunch of bombs around Baghdad, killing 50. That kind of thing used to go on Page One. Not so much now. I always wonder, when I hear of the latest atrocity in Iraq, whether any of the people we saw cheering in 2003 were among the dead today. If so, what a tough way to go. Imagine surviving the hardship and chaos and carnage for 10 freaking years, only to be blown to bits while you’re out shopping for produce. I once read Barbara Tuchman’s book The March of Folly (1984). In it, she examines the way governments tend to pursue policies contrary to t...

S arah Palin’s big message for Obama: “Step away from the teleprompter and do your job.” This from the woman best known for stepping away from her job to do the teleprompter. Palin, you’ll recall, bailed halfway through her governor gig so she could spend more time on TV. For awhile it seemed like a good move; it was easier than governing and paid better. She had her own reality show and was a regular on Fox News. Then the show got canceled and the people at Fox decided they needed somebody more capable of extemporaneous thought. For the past year she’s been kind of quiet, her fling with A-list fame apparently over. I almost felt sorry for her, in the way I almost felt sorry for Dennis Rodman when he was kissing the ass of a much shorter man in Pyongyang. Let’s just say the pangs of pity were premature. Palin’s back, bigtime. There she was at CPAC, mugging with a Big Gulp, branding Obama a liar, ridiculing gun background checks. She tossed off a redneck jest about Todd’s rifle and her ...

R emember the Seinfeld episode about the Pakistani guy? Afew months ago a new restaurant opened in our neighborhood. To my untrained eye, it looked promising. The place was squeaky clean; the service was attentive; the food was both interesting and good. Unfortunately, it was also eerily empty every time the wife and I stopped by for lunch. We kept coming back, certain it would catch on. Then after four or five visits, we quit. There’s just something about being the only diner in the room. You feel a weight of responsibility for keeping the owner’s hopes up. You feel you should offer suggestions. Worse, you begin to imagine the telltale whiff of desperation. You feel the boat sinking, and you don’t want to be on it. I mention this because another new restaurant opened in our neighborhood a couple of weeks ago. Unlike the first one, this one is going great guns. I watched it being built from the park where I walk my dog. Before it was even finished, cars were turning in and would-be cus...

L ucky me. Today I received this check in the mail for $1,350, from my good friends at U.S. Airlines. Apparently I can use it for round-trip tickets to any place in the country. Sweet. Now all I have to do is figure out where in the hell U.S. Airlines is, exactly. I know it’s not U.S. Airways, since that carrier isn’t known for sending out checks willy-nilly, especially since the merger with American. Checking the Internet, the only mention I can find of U.S. Airlines is in connection with long-running scam wherein certain crooked bastards send out real-looking checks in the hope of persuading idiots to sign on to a timeshare scheme. But that can’t be it. Because I’m no idiot. And it says right there on the check that it’s no timeshare scheme. Anyway, I’m off to deposit my check. And from there to Donnie’s Rent-to-Own Luggage to piss away a portion of my newfound travel budget. Easy come, as they say. And easy go.

The family that slays together... I 'm in a tough spot on the subject of gun control. Many in my extended family — including my 85-year-old mom — are staunch supporters of the NRA. They are convinced that President Obama’s most cherished dream is to eventually send troops around to confiscate every firearm in the country. I think that’s ridiculous. We get around the dispute in the way most families do: We don’t talk about it. I love my family and I won’t let any political differences get in the way of that. But as a way of venting, I will talk about it here. Again: Restricting private ownership of military-grade weapons does not equal tyranny. It is a way to make it more complicated for nuts to acquire the firepower necessary to kill dozens of people without reloading. Period. Look around: We have strict safety rules for cars and food and pharmaceuticals. We’ve long kept civilians from owning rocket launchers and machine guns and plastic explosives. Somehow the Republic endures. Of...

O f all the stories in the news today, the least interesting has to be this gathering of cardinals to pick a new pope. And yet there it is, topping all the news sites. The media love this stuff, the red robes and the chimney and the white smoke. It’s all about stagecraft. You’d think it was the season finale of “The Bachelor.” Maybe it’s just me. Reviewing the list of papal elections since I was born (five, not counting this one), it appears that none of them made the slightest difference in my spiritual outlook or standard of living. Only one pope had any impact at all on yours truly: Pope John Paul I, who inconveniently expired right after deadline and forced me to work later that night because we had to remake the front page. From that day forward, those of us on the news desk always invoked the phrase “Better see if the pope died” before calling it a shift. This isn’t Catholic-bashing, by the way. Far from it. I have great respect for all religions except that one with Tom Cruise i...

T oday I would like to acknowledge the birth of my second granddaughter. Ruby Eleanor Knadler arrived yesterday morning, weighing about six and a half pounds and sporting some slightly reddish hair. My son Dave Jr. tells me she’s not altogether happy to be out of the womb and into the world, but I’m pretty sure she’ll get used to it. We all do, right? At 4 months About the name: I love it. During the pregnancy, daughter-in-law Erika was reluctant to discuss possible names, her rationale being that people tend to influence one’s better judgment with their negative reactions. That’s true, when you think about it. No matter what name comes up, there’s always somebody who hated a coworker or classmate with the same moniker. That’s how so many people tend to get oddball names that no one has ever heard of. Ruby Eleanor just sounds right to me. Different, yes, but rooted in American tradition. I like names that are somewhat rare, but nevertheless are recognizable as names. I really detest th...