june 2004
For my good friend who at least tries to align his consumption with his values, from John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up", a portion of a sadly relevant prayer:
"Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassiumsulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt. Amen."
[24 June 2004] link?
Happy that I got a chance to talk with Miss Stacey Jean the other evening. She's begun her new role as grad student...and all the work and challenges that that role implies. Still...she sounded good...and grounded...and confident. Well done, Miss Stacey.
Happy that I dropped into The Other Change of Hobbit last night, wherein I found the new paperback edition of Charlie Stross' "Singularity Sky" which I am looking forward to reading...after I finish the John Brunner.
Happy about other things too...despite my mood of cynicism about the general state of affairs...don't let the bastards get you down.
[20 June 2004] link?
Via sfgate, the question of the moment.
[19 June 2004] link?
I finished M. John Harrison's "The Centauri Device" the other day. I liked it very much, perhaps not as much as I enjoyed "Light" which is shortly to be published in the U.S. I was planning to go right back to the Kim Stanley Robinson I had started, but got distracted by that battered copy of John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up" sitting atop a pile of books. So, okay, perhaps after reading "The Centauri Device", with its evocation of the Losers of the Galaxy rising up against warring powers on Earth, a title like "The Sheep Look Up" was just too irresistible. After all, look around. We are the sheep. What are we looking up at? Bleat. The kind man with the sharp knife to slit our throats? Bleat. I was thinking about this notion, us being the sheep and all, as I strolled down to BART the other morning. The way the world works, the human world, the elites run the world. When the day is done, they rule as they have always ruled. Human history is one long pyramidal recounting of hierarchies at play. Those on the top ruling over those on the bottom. Occasionally, history offers up a little revolution as distraction, but revolutions have a way of enshrining new faces, and sometimes old faces, at the apex of the pyramid. Welcome to the cynics corner. Bleat.
[19 June 2004] link?
The incredible g-d requested my attendance at a late Friday afternoon showing of "The Stepford Wives". While I can't say that I am falling over myself in appreciation of the film, it was serviceably entertaining, and a pleasure to watch Christopher Walken, Matthew Broderick, Glenn Close, and Nicole Kidman, among others.
[19 June 2004] link?
Last night was my long awaited excursion to the Pacific Film Archive, for a triple bill in its Los Angeles in film series.
The first film up was Robert Culp's "Hickey and Boggs", starring Culp and former "I-Spy" colleague, Bill Cosby, as down on luck private eyes pulled deeper and deeper into a case.
Next - and I can't believe that I had not yet gotten round to seeing it -was Peter Bogdanovich's first feature, "Targets".
Finally, third, and the reason for my attendance and eager anticipation, was John Boorman's "Point Blank", starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Carroll O'Connor, Keenan Wynn. Shot - and shown here - in Panavision, the film begs to be released on DVD. The fight sequence in the L.A. club, violent, choreographed visually and aurally, ending in a woman's scream, is as fine - or finer - film sequence as the RKO Radio Music Hall set piece in Hitchcock's "Saboteur". Electric!
[13 June 2004] link?
Bruce Sterling is an engaging talker. He has a certain wry way with words...but heck! He's a writer! That aside, his wry way with words, a certain laconic stance in his storytelling, all wrapped up in that soft accent, makes him a delight to lend ears to. And that's just what friend Drew and moi did last night when we ventured over to the Conference Center at Fort Mason for the talk sponsored by the Long Now Foundation.
We got there early, arriving about the same time as one of my long time heroes, Stewart Brand. The place filled up quickly with an intergenerational mix of academic chic and counter culture geek, with a little dash of hypertext goth thrown in for good, and striking, measure.
So...what was the talk about? What did our fair speaker have to say?
He gave us an amusing tour through the idea of the Vingean Singularity, its implications for us and for the professional writing science fiction. For myself, I am not sure that the singularity hasn't already occurred, that it hasn't swallowed us whole like Jonah by the Whale, and that our primate brains just haven't grokked it.
Much of last night's talk is already in print. A good writer recycles. You can read a good bit of it here, and more of it here, courtesy of the fine folks at the Whole Earth Review [Send them money!].
But reading it is not quite the same as listening to the man. The Long Now Foundation is nice enough to put the audio files from their monthly seminars online. Look out for the June 11, 2004 talk...and listen!
[12 June 2004] link?
Ahhhhh....the muse of Borderlands Books. Or...the guardian spirit.
[08 June 2004] link?
This past Saturday I indulged my recently acquired guilty pleasure and stopped in at Borderlands Books. The visit has pleasantly complicated my current reading, since I acquired, and have now started to read, M. John Harrison's novel, "The Centauri Device". Harrison is such a damn fine writer. He plunges you right into another place and time. He has just the right way with words. He doesn't overwrite. I read his "Light" earlier this year and consider it one of the best science fiction novels that I've ever read. Wherever you're at...whatever you're doing...stop and pick up a book by him - right now!
[07 June 2004] link?
This coming Friday over at Fort Mason, the Long Now Foundation is having one of its monthly seminars, this one to be presented by Bruce Sterling. I think I'll go. Drew might come too.
[05 June 2004] link?
This morning's New York Times had an interesting story by Nicholas Kristof about one U.S. soldier, Sean Baker, who volunteered to pretend to be a prisoner in a training exercise at Guantánamo Bay and was so badly injured by the other U.S. soldiers - who thought he was an inmate - that he wound up being discharged as a result of his injuries.
To top it off, the military spokesperson acknowledged that she had "misstated the facts" when she "told reporters that his medical discharge was unrelated to the injuries he suffered in the training drill".
Of course, there doesn't seem to be a groundswell of outrage and concern about this. P'haps, if he had been an Afghani or Iraqi detainee there would have been more concern...maybe even Congressional hearings...y'think?
[05 June 2004] link?
Over at boingboing this morning, I found a link to a series of lectures on science fiction and fantasy. I am listening to the first one as I write this, the lecturer discoursing on Wells and Verne at the moment.
[05 June 2004] link?
