Pizza Slow, Mastodon posts, page 109

not my goofy ass sitting on a log reading Italo Calvino’s “The Argentine Ant” only to discover by feel that I am sitting on a damned ant hill as they crawl up my back under my shirt 😬🤣 ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6752551)

The Argentine AntA fantastical storyGoodreads

a log on the third base line of Rikki Streicher Field on Diamond at 19th covered with little tiny ants

the everloving wife and I made about an eighth of the way around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park with junior and my dad in the back seat yesterday (so about 650 pounds passenger load) in one of those little peddle boats before my legs said to turn around

Lovely to be on the water but I’m definitely getting a row boat next time. The “bike seat height” equivalent is bottomed out so my legs barely made it past 90 degrees at extension. I’m about 6’0”.

Photograph of Stow Lake with four fiberglass 2x2 boards on a small lack moored at a wooden dock, trees surround(photo from duckduckgo images search, but we were in a red one like that)

it usually drives me crazy when writers (borrowing another afterword word) peacock how well-read or at least broadly-read they are, or explode every scene into a McMaster-Carr order, but the half-a-dozen fields expanded in Novel Explosives and the etymology there-in kept my attention.

ninth book, a real (borrowing from the afterword) wrist-punishing, discursive, door-stopper: “Novel Explosives" by Jim Gauer ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29363276-novel-explosives)

Novel ExplosivesAmbitious, groundbreaking, and fiendishly funny, Novel …Goodreads

I looked for a review that resonated: https://books.substack.com/p/review-joy-williams-on-jim-gauer

Review: Joy Williams on Jim Gauer"Novel Explosives" is a big burning turning ferris wheel of a book with many colorful capsules of expertise and pods of excess. It is violent and profound, taunting, outraged. It is arrogantly discursive yet can possess the focused intensity of a knife’s tip.books.substack.com

The 2022 paperback cover of Novel Explosives, a frozen stellar explosion over a shattering black flower of flat glass centered in a field of sky blue with the title over the top and author’s name over the bottom in cream all-caps san serif.

tenth book, Matt Ruff’s “Lovecraft Country” sequel, “The Destroyer of Worlds” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61190257-the-destroyer-of-worlds)

The Destroyer of Worlds (Lovecraft Country, #2)“Another virtuoso blend of horror, action, and humor. .…Goodreads

I’ve been a huge fan of Ruff since “Sewer, Gas, and Electric" ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/71846.Sewer_Gas_and_Electric) and of course the Lovecraft Country show was also p good (although a bit scary for my tastes), so, picking this up after Novel Explosions was a great call.

Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works TrilogyFrom the New York Times Bestselling author of Lovecraft…Goodreads

The current hardback edition cover of Destroyer of Worlds, designed to look like a distressed pulp paperback printed directly on the cover rather than using a dust jacket (yay, I hate futzing with dust jackets)

eponymous peaks

picture of Twin Peaks next to Sutro Tower from McKinley Square, from which the side by side paid actually look like twins