- Those people on the bus. You know, the ones who read the paper and pretend to try to be discreet about it, but every time they turn a page it’s in your face? I hate them
- Hangnails. ‘Nuff said.
- The fact that this is only my third day back at work and it’s as if I had never left. Vacation? What vacation?
- Jocelyn, this one’s for you. Weather people. They are telling us it might snow in Montreal tonight. SNOW! May 16. I hate them too. Especially since they’re always right about bad weather but mostly wrong about the good stuff.
The fact that I know I’m evil. I don’t give a damn about most of humanity, but it freaks me out that the hummingbirds which just arrived at the cottage last week, might have to deal with snow! Poor things’ll freeze to death! (A friend says that’s because hummers have never given me any reason to doubt them, but I’m still pretty sure it makes me evil) - The fact that reading science fiction makes me feel stupid. Ive only just begun discovering the genre over the past couple of years (reading Dan Simmons Ilium right now – I love Dan Simmons, the Hyperion series was great – but yet again I’m wandering off on a tangent…). So yeah, I’m love the Sci-Fi, ‘cept when they get into all this quantum mechanics and quantum physics and quantum whatever the hell else and I can read a paragraph 10 times and still not have a clue. I suspect I’m missing that Sci-Fi-Nerd gene that would allow me to comprehend this stuff. Nevertheless I forge on; it’s Fantasy with robots.
- Being overwhelmed at work. I loathe not seeing the end of the tunnel, that whenever I make some headway into a pile, another one grows. I suspect that paper piles fornicate and birth other paper piles during the night.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This one's for Ian, whose blog today informed me of the heartbreaking* news of Jerry Falwell's demise. And damn, he wasn't even raptured!!! This from Slate
* Y'all read me so well, that was indeed sarcasm pure and simple
6 comments:
You wrote: "I suspect I’m missing that Sci-Fi-Nerd gene that would allow me to comprehend this stuff."
Actually, I think the "Sci-Fi-Nerd gene" is the gene that, when you start out reading the genre, allows you to breeze over those passages full of quantum whatits and causal do-dobees while you're reading, but eventually make you go to Wikipedia, or a more reliable source, to find out what those things might be, or are based on.
Dan Simmons's Science Fiction is wonderful (Illium and Olympos are my favorites, so far. Probably because I've always been really fascinated in The Illiad and The Odyssey), but I recommend staying away from his horror stuff. The Hollow Man was just bad.
A Sci-Fi book that I muchly encourage you to buy or borrow or steal is Ender's Game. If you buy it and don't like it, send it to me and I'll pay you the price of the book and the postage.
Jazz, I like sci-fi too, but it's hard to know what is the good stuff and what is crap. It's old now, but I loved the "Ringworld" series, don't remember the author.
V.
Thanks, Jazz: I'm a big Christopher Hitchens fan, even if I do sometimes disagree with him. This time, of course, I did not. I think, aside from his antisemitism and other bits of hideousness, the thing that galled me about Falwell was his rampant hypocrisy. He decried the whoring of charlatans Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart (whose saving virtue is that he 'is' Jerry Lee Lewis's first cousin which surely should make him interestingly 'bad to the bone' by default. But, at least those guys when they got caught out repented of their 'sins'. I don't recall Falwell ever making any such gesture for much greater evils than taking down the undies of naughty girls.
Thanks again,
Ian
I dip into the sci-fi world now and then. I call it "brain candy," but some of it can be profound too, if you find the right books. There's plenty of sci-fi out there that doesn't focus on the technology. You might like Sharon Shinn. I especially like her "Archangel" books. Another place to look for the good stuff is the winners and nominees for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (the main awards for science fiction). Amazon has the lists on their site and I'm sure they're around in other places too.
Tick - I'm not sure I have it in me to go search out what quantum physics is.. but I just might give it a shot. As for Ender's Game, I've noted the name and I promise I won't make you pay for it.
Voyager - I think that's by Larry (Louis?) Niven... never read it but heard it was good. Actually I loved the Gap Chronicles by Donaldson. Nasty dark stuff.
Ian - Glad you liked the article. Falwell was a revoltingly hypocritical old wanker wasn't he.
Jill - Thanks for the info. What I hate about discovering a new genre is the whole "oh my god, all these other authors I have to get aquanted with" syndrome. So many books, so little time.
Your into sci-fi? Took you long enough, any time you want some we have plenty of the old classics. Personally, I've pretty much moved on, since I like the good old fashioned hard technological sci-fi and that is getting herd to find with all the fantasy that is around now. Much prefer English murder mysteries... love the more cerebral enigmas than most of the hard boiled American styles.
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