May 2013
1 post
(Passionately detached)
“But ironic detachment is great! Nothing means ANYTHING!” — Gene Belcher, “Bob’s Burgers.”
March 2013
2 posts
moniquill:
regina-and-the-dragons:
Pause for a moment.
Does it seem weird to anyone else that the shrinking habitat of polar bears due to global warming gets more attention than the disruption and danger posed to Inuit communities by same?
Boosting the fuck out of this because TRUTH.
More generally, dubious claims of total extinction events following from climate change are in wide...
December 2012
2 posts
October 2012
1 post
Situations where the phrase “come at me, bro” can be aptly employed are so heartrendingly rare.
September 2012
3 posts
“Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations—Aristophanes, possibly the world’s first satirist, wrote his plays as Athens was becoming the dominant power in the region; Cervantes wrote at the height of Spain’s naval wealth; and Alexander Pope was born the year that England defeated the Spanish Armada. First, one scrambles for wealth; then one luxuriates in mocking the effeteness that...
“This is the real burden of debt we’re passing on to future generations: the...”
– David Graeber (via azspot)
July 2012
1 post
June 2012
5 posts
Ugh. →
I refuse to believe that this was real. →
3 tags
Three things
My sister is really much funnier than I am, which is embarrassing. We were talking about Avengers at two in the morning. My witticism was: “Vindication: almost as good as syndication.” Hers was: “Joss Whedon: if he can’t save cinema, you can be damn sure he’ll avenge it.”
Also, Margaret Atwood says, in the pretty good New Yorker science fiction issue: “I...
Dragons with “au” in the name: Griaule, Yevaud, Smaug, Maur. Are there more?
Edit: Glaurung!
Laurie Penny: “Stressful day. Whenever I feel shy, scared or am travelling alone, I put on this hat. It is the Cap of Fortitude.” pic.twitter.com/4ZrY8PrR
April 2012
11 posts
Man I hate "This American Life." →
Jack. Jack, love. Read this. →
And Laurie Penny shares your adoration for him, btw.
More or less. →
2 tags
Einstein is no longer a Jew, according to Timmothy...
There’s a Facebook post circulating at my school, based on an old urban legend about Einstein. It’s some asinine dialogue between a young Einstein and a strawman atheist. Now, Einstein believed in God, but the story itself is false. I won’t burden everybody by quoting it; a moment of Google-fu will bear me out. However. The post currently circulating is not only ignorant theism...
2 tags
Coldplay at a sporting event. Huh.
Decadence
0.
1. /noun/ a state of consummation and of surfeit. lose the concatenation in the tumult. be alive, forget. use the powers you’ve been given. exploit someone. 2. there are two responses to decadence: submit or destroy. the two are not so different that one can be told from the other, although for political reasons one pretends. i am perhaps a bit of a fascist too, sir, my...
1 tag
Judy Blume’s 120 Days of Sodom.
1 tag
John McNeil
Let’s get him out of prison.
Genre distinctions are useless →
Genre distinctions are useless. Published inAnalog, but it’s closer to magic realism — dealing with impossibilities that we might not recognize as such, because they take place in a realm that already seems numinous and halfway-impossible to most of us most of the time.
It’s a lovely story. Let that suffice.
March 2012
6 posts
3 tags
A tiny cabal is deciding the fates of millions of...
Depending of the specifics of the ruling, I may not have to pay car insurance in a few days. I also might not have health insurance.
You know, those Tea Partiers were right. There comes a time when the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.
4 tags
A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again →
Life is a lot harder without a college degree. And for some people (like me) it’s a lovely four-year middle-class vacation, within walking distance of a library. If you pick correctly you might even get laid a certain amount.
But fuck this shit.
3 tags
Hate realizing I've been full of shit
Talking to the Cosmologist Mermaid. She mentions Occupiers co-opting the Trayvon Martin vigil/suckiness thereof/general racism in Occupy. I say something to the effect of: “If this incident was one in a chain of events, then there’s a problem.” Get off the phone. Consider our society/history thereof for about four seconds. Oops.
What Tumblr is for.
A friend wants to put something on your Facebook wall. Problem is, it’s a picture of a lady shooting lightning out of her vagina. What are we to do?
To Tumblr! Away!
3 tags
These movies have sucked. I look forward to the...
So, I am really excited for The Avengers. Just felt the need to let everyone know, so when I’m crushingly disappointed you can all comfort me while feeling secretly superior.
http://i.imgur.com/oyZhY.jpg →
February 2012
16 posts
1 tag
Your local library
One day, you will move away, leaving all the books you could have read for free behind. So go now.
4 tags
Yes, people are scummy. →
I’ll be voting for Obama in the next election, but he has lied quite a lot.
4 tags
Oh Christ, they're using lasers now →
Scroll down a bit for the serious SF stuff (13 and 14). The visual grammar of 19 and 23 is straight out of Blade Runner. The guy with the beard in 25 looks like he’s just been through the Teind in The Iron Dragon’s Daughter.
Let’s not think about it seriously, shall we? It’s all a convenient fiction, an entertainment devised for our pleasure… .
All solidarity. Such...
3 tags
Unspeakable joys await (what?) →
What?
5 tags
You, like your father, are now . . . mine.
Just think: we will never escape Star Wars. They will keep making more at least until virtual reality gets up to, say, Matrix levels. At which point, I can be a Jedi.
So keep it coming, George. Future generations will have awesome childhoods.
Luminous
Greg Egan, the guy who wrote a gripping thriller about people doing math. Damn.
“Les grands ne sont grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux: Levons-nous.
...”
– “Inscription in French, Irish, and English on a monument to [Jim Larkin] on O’Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland. Although he used it in a famous speech, the slogan is usually attributed to the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794).” (Wikiquote, “James...
1 tag
Dawww →
The future
Five hundred years from now, I’ll either be completely forgotten or people will think I was pretty cool.
Which works for me.
5 tags
Of the Black Bloc and such
I am hesitant about the tactical efficacy of the Black Bloc at the moment, given that there still seems to be a great deal of public-relations work to be done. I’m also hesitant to say people don’t have the right to defend themselves (although clearly doing so has the potential to bring down even greater violence against everyone, including non-resisters). I believe that property...
7 tags
A thought
Ballard is to Conrad as Pinkwater is to Vonnegut.
(For some years I spent a lot of time making litanies of influence. I think Pinkwater/Waldrop/Lafferty/Davidson is a pretty good one. Interestingly, the specific tone of Pinkwater that I suspect strongly comes out of Vonnegut gets lost somewhere around Waldrop. Still doesn’t explain why they’re not better-known and more widely read,...
Things they don't tell you in English class
The theme of a work of fiction is the creation myth you accept or invent to explain why that work is as it is. Many creation myths have limited explanatory power: the first bit of Genesis, for example, tells you what God did, but doesn’t give you much about why. A proper critical assessment of this universe would pop in stuff about how God was writing about the experience of alienated...
Aha
Aha. So that’s why Lois Bujold has all those awards.
January 2012
5 posts
Near-future
Solar-system SF reading list for the somewhat near future: Vacuum Flowers, Growing Up Weightless, the whole Shaper/Mechanist thing (starting in Crystal Express and then on to Schismatrix), The Quiet War, and Leviathan Wakes (I hesitate a bit on this last, despite having enjoyed A Shadow in Summer much much more than I expected to — marketing prejudice dies hard, which is why genre needs to...
