One of the things I have been doing is blogging on culture and life in Portlad over at Metroblogs. Unlike my fellow authors there, I try to stay away from politics. The world has enough ill-informed opinions.

For me anyway, the report from Oregon is that August is once again an uneventful time of year. The boy is getting ready to start first grade in a couple of weeks, and with the SC2006 show coming up in November, high gear is just around the corner.

Martin didn’t like to announce himself when he entered a room, but Mr. Humphreys insisted on such protocol ever since a stealthy underling had once startled him into his first stroke.

“Good morning, all.” Martin chimed as he pulled open the padded leather door. Had the door been wood, he surmised that a secret knock would have probably been in order, for this executive conference room was rarely used but for the purpose of impressing wealthy clients.

For some reason, the lights were dimmed. Humphreys looked over his reading glasses and waived him in. “Martin. Good. We have a quorum.”

Martin waited for a moment for his eyes to adjust. In the room was a tall, thin man he didn’t recognize. On the other side of the table there was Culper from the IT department and Laxton, their brooding corporate attorney.

Humpheys stood and gestured towards the stranger. “Martin, this is our new client, Mr. Ito.”

The man offered his hand and Martin gripped it firmly. There was something like an inside joke in the man’s eyes as he turned back to Humphreys. “I’m afraid I’m rather short on time. May we begin?”

They all settled into their chairs as Ito hooked up his laptop to the tiny data projector on the table. He seemed to move slowly, but screen came to life within a few seconds with what looked like some kind of 8 mm film leader.

“Gentleman,” Ito began. “Your firm has been selected to take part in a great undertaking. I represent a development consortium that prepared this film as means to break the ice, as it were.”

The screen flickered with what looked like a hand-held shot at an old european cemetery. Four men in dark suits and fedoras were walking through the place with flowers in their hands.

“The Consortium formed at this place called Josefov, the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in Europe. While the Nazis made it a policy to destroy Jewish cemeteries, Hitler had ordered that this cemetery be left intact.”

As the video continued, it panned over gravestones stacked up and leaning against each other like in some kind of morbid, abandoned warehouse. “There are more than 100,000 Jews buried in this small plot, the graves being layered 12 deep in some places,” Mr. Ito continued. “This is not unusual for European cemeteries where space is at a premium.”

Martin shifted in his chair. Where is he going with this? Doesn’t he know we do technology startups?

The video changed to what looked like a coffee house where the men in black sat around a small table covered with documents.

“These four scientists, Holocaust survivors and possibly the most brilliant men of their age, gathered at Josefov,” Mr. Ito continued. “They were consumed with one driving passion; How do we stop this from happening again?“

The video went to black and Mr. Ito brought up a slide. It just had one bullet:

“55 Million people die in this world every year.”

Ito motioned for Humphreys to bring up the lights. “As you can see, there is a plague on mankind, a plague brought to you by your own biology and evolution. All humans share one common failing–their mortality. I come to you today to seek your help to bring a new dawn to the age of man.”

Ito stopped and looked at each man in the room, one at a time. His face was weathered, lined, and serious as a stone. Martin felt a chill as their eyes met. He watched Ito blink slowly and take a deep breath before he spoke.

“Gentleman, we have discovered a way to bring people back from the dead.”

FlexRex, Fictional Blogger today announced plans to blog a novel in daily installments. The book, entitled IPO, is a twisted take on the VC market that we all remember so well from the dot com bubble.

“This story has been on the drawing board for years,” said FlexRex. “Now that I’ve got some experience blogging under a pen name, I decided the time has come to bring it to life.”

You can follow the story of IPO starting Friday, July 21, 2006 on blogs.sun.com/flexrex.

The past hundred-something days of this book report project have been very rewarding to me as a writer. Someone even called it therapeutic in a twisted sort of way. In any case, I hope you found something meaningful in there as I passed it along.

To me, finishing something is it’s own reward. So tomorrow I’m announcing my next writing project. And as hard as it was to do something for 101 days, I’m afraid this one is lot more ambitious.

So failure looms, ahead and behind. But if you are light, remember that success, like speed, is independent of the source.

Think of a grudge you held as a kid. Can you even remember the person you held it against?

I think that as adults we carry grudges in a different way. The process of selective disconnect is as simple as not returning calls or emails from people that once pissed us off.

Sure, so-and-so may have always been a jerk. But when there are more jerks than friends in your life, what does that make you?

When I first read today’s principle, I was like, give me a break. So I couldn’t do it with a straight face.

But then I thought of that one Bud commercial and I managed to characture: “I love you, man.”

Sure, it wasn’t sincere. But come to think of it, the last time I heard those words, it was just BS as well.

Last night I had some beers with a guy who is convinced that we’ve only got ten years left. World War III, he says, is coming to our backyard.

So what if this is really the case? Our 401K accounts won’t matter, our next President will be our last, and our kids won’t get to grow up.

But who knows, right? Even after all that goes down, maybe there will be someone left breathing long enough to determine that your side won.

As a white man in America, my personal experience with prejudice only goes as far as some people’s reaction to my Fargo dialect. When thusly snubbed, I silently thank them for raising their hands as human Red States.

The trouble with prejudice is that it frees you from responsibility. When the illegal immigrants, Islamofascits, and secular cheeseheads, etc. cause all the problems in your world, where do you file the fact that you probably have an ancestor that was one of them?

I usually stay away from politics, but today’s principle led me to discover the Achilles’ heel of US foreign policy:

You see, we’ve based our whole plan on exporting democracy. What people really want is stuff. Yes, I’m saying that iPods, cell phones, and Harleys will set the world free.

Stuff gives you everything that democracy doesn’t–stature, self-reliance, and an SUV to drive away from Hurricane Katrina. Best of all, people with stuff don’t blow each other up.

Enslavement to objects isn’t all that bad. You can always trade them for something else. And if you want your democracy cake and eat it too, go see the Al Gore movie in an air-conditioned theater.

You know, I only have about a week left on this 101 writing project and I think I’m really going to miss it. Especially when I get to reflect on something like today’s principle, which pretty much writes itself.

Now, I don’t think that love is really an antidote for fear; it’s really more of a narcotic. And when one is under the influence, judgment tends to go out the window. If you don’t believe me, just ask a divorced person why they married their eX in the first place.