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The Big Book of Quixotisms
Dec. 18th, 2008 11:35 amI'm awake, but every muscle and every bone seems to ache.
I don't have to write about the sky this morning, because the blind is down. But there's snow coming. Tomorrow. Substantial snow, it would seem. I can sit here and watch it. For a while, it will take the sharp edges off winter, and I won't tear my eyes on the view from my windows.
No writing yesterday. I read Angela Carter aloud, because sometimes that helps to prime the pump, so to speak. "The Smile of Winter," "Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream," and "The Merchant of Shadows." There's this passage from the beginning of "The Smile of Winter" that says how I feel about the heaviness of the sky far better than I have ever managed:
"The coastal region is quite flat, so that an excess of sky bears down with an intolerable weight, pressing the essence out of everything beneath it for it imposes such a burden on us that we have all been forced inward on ourselves in an introspective sombreness intensified by the perpetual abrasive clamor of the sea."
I think I'll have all my teeth pulled, cutting to the chase, and replaced with titanium teeth that are tinted that shade of black just before green, or that shade of green that comes just before black. I'll have the prosthetic modeled on chimpanzee teeth, with fine large canines, sharp enough to pierce. We'll, I would, were I afflicted with that sort of money. If I were, I am quite certain I could find a dentist who would deign to perform the procedure.
I'm not sure how to describe my feelings about President-Elect Obama having chosen a bigoted bastard like evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. I don't think I'm surprised, just a little more sickened. I understand Obama's desire to create an environment of inclusiveness, but I don't quite grasp how one fosters inclusiveness by providing a platform for those who seek to exclude. In fact, one does not. But politics has never been overly concerned with fact. Rather, it is concerned with mollifying as many people as possible, an act which will always be at odds with fact.
Last night, we watched the latest episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it was a decent enough episode. Though I am perplexed that the problem of the three dots, already solved, is still being solved. Did Cameron just not bother telling Sarah? Another episode without much Thomas Dekker, and that helped. I do hope that when the geeks with a hard-on for self-aware AI get around to teaching it morality, they don't start off by begging the question with the concept of a "god" (or goddess) as arbiter of right and wrong. But they probably will. One would think that intelligent, educated people could find a better basis for their beliefs than "Because God [fill in the blank]." If that's the best reason you can come up with to justify a belief in the sanctity of human life, the race is lost before it's run.
Likely, I will not write today, either. I should try to get Outside before the storm gets here.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, in the interest of helping me to offset the unforeseen deficit of December caused by my miscalculations. Thanks.
I don't have to write about the sky this morning, because the blind is down. But there's snow coming. Tomorrow. Substantial snow, it would seem. I can sit here and watch it. For a while, it will take the sharp edges off winter, and I won't tear my eyes on the view from my windows.
No writing yesterday. I read Angela Carter aloud, because sometimes that helps to prime the pump, so to speak. "The Smile of Winter," "Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream," and "The Merchant of Shadows." There's this passage from the beginning of "The Smile of Winter" that says how I feel about the heaviness of the sky far better than I have ever managed:
"The coastal region is quite flat, so that an excess of sky bears down with an intolerable weight, pressing the essence out of everything beneath it for it imposes such a burden on us that we have all been forced inward on ourselves in an introspective sombreness intensified by the perpetual abrasive clamor of the sea."
I think I'll have all my teeth pulled, cutting to the chase, and replaced with titanium teeth that are tinted that shade of black just before green, or that shade of green that comes just before black. I'll have the prosthetic modeled on chimpanzee teeth, with fine large canines, sharp enough to pierce. We'll, I would, were I afflicted with that sort of money. If I were, I am quite certain I could find a dentist who would deign to perform the procedure.
I'm not sure how to describe my feelings about President-Elect Obama having chosen a bigoted bastard like evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration. I don't think I'm surprised, just a little more sickened. I understand Obama's desire to create an environment of inclusiveness, but I don't quite grasp how one fosters inclusiveness by providing a platform for those who seek to exclude. In fact, one does not. But politics has never been overly concerned with fact. Rather, it is concerned with mollifying as many people as possible, an act which will always be at odds with fact.
Last night, we watched the latest episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it was a decent enough episode. Though I am perplexed that the problem of the three dots, already solved, is still being solved. Did Cameron just not bother telling Sarah? Another episode without much Thomas Dekker, and that helped. I do hope that when the geeks with a hard-on for self-aware AI get around to teaching it morality, they don't start off by begging the question with the concept of a "god" (or goddess) as arbiter of right and wrong. But they probably will. One would think that intelligent, educated people could find a better basis for their beliefs than "Because God [fill in the blank]." If that's the best reason you can come up with to justify a belief in the sanctity of human life, the race is lost before it's run.
Likely, I will not write today, either. I should try to get Outside before the storm gets here.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions, in the interest of helping me to offset the unforeseen deficit of December caused by my miscalculations. Thanks.
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