Category: Connections

November 12, 2004 /

The problem with doing research on any old thing that pops into your head, which I do, it’s neat, thanks to Google, is that you end up with sentences of which you understand maybe two words. To wit:

“Like myobatrachines, sooglossids have a ventrally incomplete cricoid ring, horizontal pupils, winglike alary processes on the hyoid, and a divided sphenethmoid. Amplexus is inguinal.”

From a page about Seychelle frogs. I mean, I understand “horizontal pupils” but that’s about it. As has been the case ever since I read Wuthering Heights, in high school and at gunpoint, I have this dark suspicion that the narrator is unreliable–that, in this case, the author of that page is just making up words to fuck with me (Kris Straub has actually done this). I mean, “sphenethmoid?”

Now somebody comment on my Livejournal feed explaining what that is, and how I’m dumb.

November 11, 2004 /

Oh, sure, Cody Powell may have a cool devlog and I don’t, but I know what it’s like to double-wield Covenant plasma rifles. Does he? Well, probably by later today he will. I’ve got nothing! My life is ruined!

What’s it’s like, incidentally, is that somebody thought up a way to make Covenant weapons useful.

November 8, 2004 /

Twenty-four hours ago at this time, I was still talking about the fact that I’d seen Bobby McFerrin and Savion Glover perform, live. Today, at this time, I own Halo 2.

I’d like to have Lisa, Flora, Allison and especially Ken (who turned me on to Halo in the first place) to play the latter with me; I don’t, as they are casualties of my own private diaspora. But I had Maria to go to the show with me, and DC to encounter there. I’ll have the Thursday Night Grandkids to kick my butt at Halo.

Sometimes I feel bad about marking time in my life by video games and concerts, but there are worse ways to do so.

November 1, 2004 /

Save the world: eat more calamari.

Update 1243 hrs: Kevan points out that this story is over two years old, for those of you who don’t keep up with my LJ feed. I should really get around to updating this theme so I can have comments from people who don’t have Livejournals. I mean, wait! I’ll never have comments! Comments are bad! Crap.

Things Neils and Neals Say

October 29, 2004 /

Neil Gaiman: “And I’ll write another Neverwhere novel in two or three books’ time, I expect.”

Well, !

I was… can I say not impressed? I’m not trying to bash anything here. I’ll say that when I read it, I didn’t find the prose and plot of Neverwhere to be extraordinary. It was a good novel, but it was a first novel.

That said, the imagery of the book had an enormous impact on me–I am still in the process of writing that out of my system. I think Gaiman’s prose improved immensely in American Gods, and I’m eager to see its application to the Neverwhere universe again.

Neal Stephenson: “Accountability in the writing profession has been bifurcated for many centuries. I already mentioned that Dante and other writers were supported by patrons at least as far back as the Renaissance. But I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission.”

Stephenson’s answer to the second question in that series is the only clear and reasonable delineation I’ve read of why lit fiction and genre fiction are so distinct, and why they tend to sneer at each other. Even more to his credit, he never uses the word “jealousy” with regard to either side.

Plus, in the third one, he and William Gibson totally fight.

P. S. I just want to point out that this is the first time I’ve ever linked something on Slashdot, because I don’t read Slashdot. It could well be the only time I ever link Slashdot.