Jon
Jon Riis
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Hey! That's really Dahl's Chickens, not Jon Riis (pronounced 'reece.'
Male
38 years old
Balona, CALIFORNIA
United States
Last Login: 10/26/2009
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Jon's Interests
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| General | Literature, all kinds, including poetry.
Music: bossa nova, classical, romantic, a cappella choral, art songs, music with a melodic line, comprehensible lyrics.
I scanned a book once about "jazz chants" and later realized it's now known as "rap." Not new at all, but in The Projects used to be composed in clever, ingenious language some of which you could recite in front of your grandma without causing her to have a stroke. Sorry how it's degenerated into obscenity piled on obscenity. I have a good personal store of obscene words and phrases that I use occasionally (in traffic, personal mistakes and accidents, etc.), but when obscenity is used constantly until it becomes standard speech, it loses its intended impact.
Martial arts, all kinds. Work out daily. But pity how classical budo is becoming so commercial, with little kids being awarded black belts (provided their parents pay enough to "senseis.") For some purity in martial arts, read some books by Tri Thong Dang (Tuttle Publishing Company). | | Music | Unaccompanied cello suites by J. S. Bach
Some Country & Western (as it has both melody and harmony and usually a fine tear-jerking story
a cappella choir music
Mozart and Prokofief and Rachmaninoff
Cole Porter
Sir Tom Jones (what a great voice!) | | Movies | Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Fargo, The Mission, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, Syriana, Crash, | | Television | Frontline and NOW on PBS, The Simpsons, Band of Brothers,The Wire | | Books | Recent funny fiction by Jonathan Pearce (the American writer, not the Brit football announcer), especially Nobody's Fault, a book I edited. You can see it described somewhere on Balona.com. It's only partly funny since it's partly about a great earthquake and fire a hundred years ago.
Another one I worked on and is just out is the story of a terribly wounded Marine who is trying to make sense of his life after losing his wife, his job, and his job. You can get a whiff of it at Balona.
Octavian Nothing, by M. T. Anderson, grabs me by the vocabulary and its style and its political power.
I've been trying for weeks to get through Charles Patterson's Eternal Treblinka. It's very well written, but it's about the universality of our mistreatment of animals, and it's a gut-wrenching chore to read. Try it. You'll see what I mean. It may change some of your dietary preferences, too. | | Heroes | Ralph Nader, Jackie Robinson, T.E. Lawrence, Audie Murphy, Erin Brokovich (sp?) |
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Jon's Details
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| Status: | Single | | Here for: | Networking | | Orientation: | Straight | | Zodiac Sign: | Pisces | | Children: | Love kids, but not for me | | Occupation: | Editor |
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Jon's Companies
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BalonaBooks
Internet, US
Editor
Fiction
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2005+
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Jon's Latest Blog Entry
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At Work
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Plug it in! Plug it in!
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Use It or Lose It
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More Irritation
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Jon's Blurbs |
About me:
It's just that Dahl's pic is a whole lot prettier and more cheerful. I am a (Briggs-Myers) INTJ, not a joyboy. I edit books for BalonaBooks, but's that's for pleasure. My day job is in science, but I am also sneakily working on a piece of fiction that I will present to BalonaBooks for their consideration.
I don't like loud noises, except trombones. I like the color blue and some cats. I do like the personalities I see peeping out of dogs, but their smell isn't something I could handle. (They probably couldn't stand mine, either.) I like to read and am sad to see so many people not reading and (probably) instead, playing video games that somebody told me are good for your eye-hand coordination. How much of that does anybody need, except Tiger Woods maybe, and I bet he doesn't spend much time playing video games.
I wish drug companies didn't advertise on TV. The money they spend there means they have to jack up the price of their goods, and a lot of old folks and poor people can't pay for stuff they need. I wish fastfood outfits wouldn't brag about how big their servings are. Aren't many of us big enough as is? I wish car companies wouldn't show their products trashing streams, doing donuts on lawns, and passing on curves. Bad teaching.
I wish we Americans would get out of the habit of using "y'know" after every seventh word we speak. It's now something you hear even candidates for national office using regularly in their speeches.
I wish the TV networks would do what PBS does and systematically show the names and faces of the guys and gals getting killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I was a soldier and got shot at and blown up and have survived with no visible scars. I don't like hunting. I once liked mountain climbing, but recently I see a lot of people, including some wearing basketball shoes, in the high country playing loud hiphop on boom boxes, shooting at squirrels with 9mms (such people obviously have never served), leaving their trash on the trail. Time for some lessons on mountain etiquet?
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Who I'd like to meet:
Among the Living--
L'il Kim (the one in North Korea) and kick his butt.
The dude(s) who invented Skype What a great download! It's still free, but I bet it doesn't stay free for long.
George Clooney and shake his hand. Smart man. Good actor. Seems pretty wise. Like to say hello also to Richard Gere, Christopher Plummer, and Jeff Bridges, all fine actors.
Hilary Swank, Bette Midler, Annette Bening, Greta Scacchi,and Ashley Judd and give 'em all hugs.
The Dalai Lama and have him help me learn to concentrate. My mind tends to drift around.
The guys who write about those people in Balona, CA. (Balona.com) What characters! (I edit some of their work, so I already know them-- thus this sort-of commercial!)
Renee Fleming, what a gorgeous voice and vocal technique, not to speak of pulchritude. Doris Kearns Goodwin and have a chat with her about her great book Team of Rivals.
Among the Never Gone, Long Gone, and Recently Gone--
meet and have a confab with Jesus and Mohammed together and see how much they agree with what's happening nowadays and how they might differ;
Aristophanes,
Dante Alighieri,
Bill Shakespeare,
Mozart,
Tolstoy,
Abe Lincoln,
Queen Victoria,
Pasteur,
Freud, T.E. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, James Joyce, Ava Gardner (give her a hug, too),
Bobby Kennedy, William Manchester, Alec Guinness
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