May 2008 Archives

Inspired by yet another but-hang-on-a-sec about my least favorite neo-Marxist, but this sort of thing has happened to all sorts of people so much recently that it's really just a note to politicians in general: these days, we have the Internet, and the Internet has the most amazing set of facts available. This means you need to check your own facts before a thousand or so people check them for you, discover that your facts and the correction to your facts and probably the correction to the retraction of the correction somehow don't match up, and tell the other 299,999,000 of us about it...

(P.S. Welcome to the 21st century. Two-way media's a bitch, ain't it?)

And this is, despite the news organization which I know many of my readers do not trust, a video clip of a House hearing.  Money quote at 1:09, roughly:

Link: sevenload.com

For the benefit of those who don't feel like watching along, the word the Congresswoman (Maxine Waters, D-CA) backed off from was 'socialization', the technical term she was desperately searching for is 'nationalization', and the accurate description of the whole proposal is 'goddamned commie bullshit'.

Possibly even 'goddamned commie bullshit copied from Uncle Hugo'.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for satire.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for really good satire.

And when I am in that particular mood, I can always rely on Tom Sharpe to deliver.

This is actually a new copy of Porterhouse Blue, my well-worn old copy not having survived the transatlantic voyage.  As the blurb says:

To Porterhouse College, Cambridge, famous for rowing, low academic standards and a proud cuisine, comes a new Master, an ex-grammar-school boy, demanding Firsts, women students, a self-service canteen and a slot-machine for contraceptives, to challenge the established order with catastrophic results...

While not having attended Cambridge myself, my former university was certainly old and traditional enough in spots to make the conservative academic traditions being satirized clearly recognizable, and the likewise satirized liberal reformist tendency of the new Master is, of course, commonplace in many times and places.  The story flows fast through the conflict between these two tendencies, the former personified in Skullion, the old and crusty college porter, drawing together his usual cast of absurd but nonetheless real characters through absurdity and farcical happenings to a thoroughly satisfying and twisted climax.

Very highly recommended, although a cautionary note that those not accustomed to exceptionally English humor may want to become so first; you'll appreciate the book more that way.

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On the topic of Tom Sharpe, I was amused to note that the Amazon editorial review of Porterhouse Blue concludes thus:

"He is the author of eight other novels and two non-fiction books, Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, about South Africa."

Considering that they're both biting absurdist satires of life under apartheid, which involve, say, a widowed rubber fetishist murdering her Zulu cook with an automatic elephant gun,  a police chief stealing the heart of an Englishman from a framed Bishop, much of a city being demolished by exploding ostriches, and the entire local police force becoming flamingly queer after a dominatrix psychiatrist persuades the mad fascist secret police commandant to treat them all with anti-miscegenation electroshock therapy... well, I kind of hope the reviewer in question hadn't actually read either book.

Good grief, it's been a long time since I last blogged.  Must be the busy period.

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ObEldraeic: Well, now I have finally determined, after finishing the phonology, that I will never be able to pronounce my own language correctly.  It is not the alveolar trill - like the RR in Spanish perro - that does it, nor is it the thorn (TH) which - thanks to an impediment in learning the sound at a young age - I've never been able to pronounce correctly, nor even the click.  Rather, it is that I specified rhotic Rs.

On the other hand, at least I filled in some of the details of the alphabet-learning song-poem about Ailék the traäilékith¹ a!déra² and friends, so that's progress...

1. El. "lonely, lonesome" - or rather, the root word ailékith means that.  You can think of the tra- as an adjectivisation prefix, if you like, although that's not strictly accurate.

2. A Praecisian bluelife animal kind of like an indigo-furred, hexapedal woodchuck.  The pling represents a click in the Romanized orthography.

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ObEnglish: QUANTUM DOES NOT MEAN THAT.  IF ANYTHING, IT MEANS THE ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE OF THAT.  I KILL YOU WITH AN EIGENVALUE!

My brain crossed moe anthropomorphism with smart objects, intelligent agents, and pervasive AI about forty minutes or so ago, and now is trapped in a mingled-reality layer filled with tiny and unbearably kawaii obvatar sprites.

The unshockful future nevertheless sometimes hurts my brain.

Random meme stolen from Rimrunner, as I am bored.

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
One of the Girl Genius giveaway wallpapers, now I check.  Doesn't really matter.  I never see 'em anyway.

Q. How many televisions do you have in your house?
One, I believe.

BIOLOGY

Q. Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right-handed, except when using a mouse.  Or drinking while reading.  Or performing any one of the list of tasks I have decided should be carried out left-handed in the name of optimal efficiency.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
I am complete in myself.

Q. What is the last heavy item you lifted?
I have not a clue.  Probably some groceries.  Or maybe a carboy of fermenting beer.

Q. Have you ever been knocked out?
No.

BULL*OLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
Yes, so I could make plans to be elsewhere at the time.

Q. If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
"Alistair NOTE THE GODDAMNED SPELLING Young".

or possibly

"Alistair PRONOUNCE THIS CORRECTLY OR I WILL STAB YOU IN THE ILEUM Young"

(I can live with some variation thanks to the Great Transatlantic Vowel and Stress Shift, but, shit, if the pronunciation you come up with isn't at least vaguely suggested by the spelling, STABBY TIME, 'kay?)

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
Black.  Fuliginous black.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item?
That would be a penny, right?

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
No.  I have no particular objection to homosmooching for money, but damn, I ain't that cheap.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
Sure, if I get it back right afterwards.  I can have it sewn back on for a damn sight less, and that means profit.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
No.  Annoying stupid people is worth more than that to me.

Q. Would you pose naked in a magazine for $250,000?
No.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1000?
As the previous memee said, "Define hot."

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
Depends on whether or not I think it a) should be taken, and b) is in an ethically permissible state to be taken, anyway.  If both of those conditions apply, I'd do it for free - or at least for expenses - which more or less covers the $1,000,000 case too.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket?
Wallet. Telephone.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
Haven't seen it, no desire to.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
Hardwood.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
Who the hell sits in the shower?

Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
None. Flip-flops are uncultured.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Last person who texted you?
AT&T.

Q: Last person who called you?
Amy.

Q: Last person you hugged?
Also Amy.

FAVORITOLOGY

Q: Number?
12.

Q: Season?
Autumn.

Q: Color?
Imperial purple.

CURRENTOLOGY

Q: Missing someone?
No.

Q: Mood?
Bored and irritable.

Q: Listening to?
Alice's Restaurant

Q: Watching?
Packets go 'blip'.

Q: Worrying about?
Bloody emotionalistas.

Q: Wearing?
Pants of some kind.  ThinkGeek 127.0.0.1 T-shirt.

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning?
My desk.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
Figure out the predicate-inversal system for my conlang.

Q: Do you smile often?
No, as rarely as possible.  It does not look natural on my face.  Also, hurts.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
No.

Leaving aside the general awesomeness of the movie, something which is already well covered elsewhere, I'd like to offer special plaudits to one of the best unobtrusive portrayals of household AI yet to appear on screen, or on the printed page, for that matter.

Probably I am the wrong target audience for this book, despite appearances; perhaps I should have found out earlier that nerve.com was "an award-winning erotic web site for the literary set", but while I'm normally interested in futurism and near-to-mid-future set stories, this book - which struck me as something of a tour of the unlovelier parts of some really fairly unchallenging, technologically and socially, futures - failed to do it for me.

It may just be that my Future Shock Level is pegged somewhere in the 3.x range, but it didn't really do anything for me in the provocative and stimulating area, either.

This isn't necessarily a criticism of the book per se, though; it would appeal rather more to people who need less from their hypothetical futuretech and futuresoc, I think.

Well, I have finally finished the Blending pentalogy (although not the Blending Enthroned trilogy, which is its sequel, so I guess together they make up an octalogy; anyway, it's going to be a while before the first of those makes its way onto my to-read shelf, per below, so it's a kind of ending, after all); and we get some closure, inasmuch as the sixth talent of a previously fivefold universe is revealed, the noble villains are sent off to a bad end, the invasion is resolved, and the next trilogy is nicely set up.

Alas, I am left dissatisfied.  The Blending pentalogy is a fun read, yes, but overall I concluded that the mere funness of the read isn't enough to make up for the flaws of the series, among which I number:

• The villains are all drawn in pure, fuliginous black.  Fortunately, we don't actually see them roasting babies for lunch on-screen, but they do pretty much everything else from the Irredeemably Horrible Villain checklist.  I like a heroic story as much as the next chap and more than many, but I need some shading, here.
• To not quite such an extent, but still a significant one, much the same effect in reverse applies to the protagonists.
• There's only so much of the same relationship fail-foo that a chap can stand before wanting to drag the characters off to the nearest therapist.
• And on that, I would have liked both more and faster character development, please.  (And on a particular note, the way the characters neatly escaped having to deal with their pasts - all previously set up - when it came to the final confrontation with the false enthroned Blending nearly had me pitch the book at the wall.  Just give me something, here.)

It's a fun read, it's a read that makes you want to keep reading, but ultimately, I am just filled with enh.