I try not to link to every Achewood strip and think I do an admirable job, but this one, dealing with a young adult cat’s musings on whether or not he should propose marriage to his long-suffering girlfriend, is just lovely. Chris Onstad is one of the best writers in his medium, as I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me say.
Archive for May, 2007
31
May
Goodness gracious
Yes, I agree. Terrible title. There’s a weirdly self-referential point toward the end in which the narrator mentions how much he loathes the term, but that its aptness kept anyone (in his world) from coining a better one.
Moving beyond its title, one finds interesting characters, a very weird central mystery and much crazy semi-dystopian noodling. Huge, indestructible monuments start popping up with inscriptions announcing them as commemorations of future military victories. Their arrival is massively destructive, and the combination of losing city after city and just good old fashioned despair leads to economic downfall and political drift toward fascism – good stuff for pessimists. The central character would be a typical poor schlub caught up in matters he can’t understand, except he understands that he has nothing to contribute and desperately tries to disentangle himself from the efforts to understand and stop the power beyond the chronoliths (there’s that awful word again).
It’s a good, fast read – and the main characters are agreeably multidimensional. The twist at the end isn’t mind-blowing, but it does play with the reader’s expectations in a way I enjoyed. It’s occasionally worthwhile to look beyond our first reactions, I guess.
25
May
Something to Consider
If you’re disappointed in the war funding deal that just went down – I certainly am – this quick post over at The New Republic might clarify the reasoning of the Democratic leadership. It looks like a big-picture thing, and while that doesn’t make it any less disappointing, at least it makes sense.
24
May
Punting
I’m clearing off my to-do list including items from years ago, and that includes framing a sweet Ellen Forney poster for an old CD release party for not-exactly-seminal-but-still-awesome old Seattle queer punk band 66 Saints, which leads me to today’s question: Does anyone reading this have their album Dreamdate, and would you be willing to rip or copy it for me? I have pursued legal means of obtaining it, or so I do swear, and it seems to be just beyond the obscurity horizon. I will give you something memorable in return.
Jill and I just decided to open a hobo-fusion restaurant where all the food is cooked in cans over Sterno – right at your table. We want to call it Mess; possible locations include some super-trendy downtown spot or maybe just outside the train-car diner in South Seattle. We are hoping a friend at the Stranger will write an article about this new trend called “Boho Hobo.” The inevitable backlash will be known as hobophobia. Okay, I’m all out of stupid now, so you’re off the hook.
I do love science fiction that thinks big, and with Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan seems to be going for broke. The first and second generations of interplanetary colonists struggle against each other and against a pretty nasty environment – so far, it’s been done before. Okay, but the seas are filled with complex but seemingly non-organismic structures that adapt to each other and outside stimuli – getting somewhere now. And: the artificial intelligence that runs the joint decides to merge with these things and apotheosis results – all right, that’s a good time.
But! The story comes with characters. Lots and lots of characters, few of them multidimensional and none of them appealing – seriously, none of them. The main character, Kalypso, spends most of the book whining about how empty and misunderstood she is or reacting to her tormentors (she gets tormented quite a bit). It’s a bad sign when the reader wants the people in the book to shut up so the author can get back to explaining what’s going on with the computer and the artificial lifelike structures.
People flipped for this when it came out about ten years ago, and there are certainly elements worth flipping over. Still, its weaknesses manage to overcome its strengths.
With a title like that, how can you go wrong? Dennett is a philosopher who keeps himself well informed on current science, and in this 1991 book tried to shake up the way his peers thought about consciousness. He feels that our strong sense of its unitary nature is an illusion – one that gives rise to many nonsensical secondary beliefs. His Multiple Drafts model more-or-less explains consciousness as an accidental effect of multiple simple agents interacting (or conversing, if we want to veer off into anthropomorphization) in the brain as they maneuver our bodies through its various adventures. The best metaphor he can come up with is that our sense of self is actually our center of narrative gravity, which takes some getting used to. It’s not satisfying in the sense that it’s intuitively obvious, and has been attacked repeatedly over the years not just on that basis but also for stylistic reasons. Dennett is funny and pretty ruthless about eviscerating our intuitions, and that has enraged plenty of his peers, especially those who seek to claim special privilege for human consciousness like John Searle or Roger Penrose. It’s a good book, if a bit outdated, and I’m still picking up lots after two long, slow readings.
18
May
Green Up
Seattle residents already get about 90% of our power through green sources (though some fish-lovers dispute the holiness of hydro), but we can pony up a few more bucks to tell the city to buy more wind power from Eastern Washington and Oregon. Go here now to set yourself up for as little as $3/month extra. I’m a little embarrassed to relate this, but until the end of July they’re offering free organic coffee and chocolate to those who sign on. Speaking of which, who wants my coffee when I get it?
And seriously, why not throw $36/year at wind power? Or $72, or $144? If you’ve got a home office, as many of you do, the IRS eats some of the cost, so what’s not to love?
17
May
Bamboo sheets
I needed a new set of sheets a few weeks ago, so I trudged down to Bloodbath & Beyond hoping for some organic cotton that might not break the bank. I started at the wrong end and wandered lonely as a cloud through literally tons of fabric before stumbling onto the green aisle. They had pricey organic cotton for sure, but also pandalicious bamboo twill sheets that I had heard good things about via WorldChanging.. The color choice was unimpressive, but I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for my planet.
Dude, they’re awesome. Fluffy, soft and super-light, they turn my bed into a muppet’s uterus. Best sheets I’ve ever had. And since bamboo grows quickly and doesn’t require any kind of genocidal agents, it’s on good terms with its ecosystem. Weirdly, folks keep touting its slight antimicrobial properties, which makes me feel kind of naive and sheltered – what are you people doing in bed? Do pandas not get STDs?*
And then there’s this CNN article with a kickass headline but the unfortunate sentence “Currently the method of turning stalks into yarn is a secret closely guarded by Chinese manufacturers.” Um, how much mystery is packed in there, exactly? What awful truths am I destined to learn about my antimicrobial sheets? If anyone has more info, I’d sure appreciate it. (Oh, and I think the comments work properly now.)
* They have enough problems w/r/t reproduction anyway.
If anyone reading this hasn’t yet signed on with Netflix and plans to do so soon, I’ve got a couple of one-free-month codes for the asking. let me know.
You said it, sister