Luxury Liner + rain
“I’m the kind of guy who likes to make a living running round.” (From Gram Parson’s [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005BC89/fishinguideto-20]anthology) Excellent album, especially for any alt.country or whatever it’s called now, fans.
As soon as I finally scooted out the door to attend to business, more like leisure as I’d been hammering on an upcoming horoscope all morning, I decided that I was sort of tired, and all I was going to do was hop over to the creek for a little dip.
When I crawled out of the [url=http://www.texasoutside.com/townlakemap.htm]creek, gathered my togs, and rolled on back, somehow, somewhere, a notion entered my mind. I took a detour, then another, and the next thing I knew, I was winding down the railroad tracks again.
From there, I cut through the hoods to Jo’s, then made my way homeward. The sky had been almost completely clear earlier, but it was clouding up in a most respectable way.
I got home, finished off my cup of coffee, looked at the time, and somehow, I’d spent two hours walking instead of just one. Means I must’ve cleared a good six miles. Much further than I thought. Or planned.
The skies just opened right up. Cloud burst. But just as fast as it rained, it dried out again.
It just goes that way, sometimes. I was home in time for rare reading “chez Kramer,” and I was trying to tie up any loose ends before hand. Almost stepped in front of the [url=http://www.astrofish.net/cam.shtml]webcam, dripping wet from the shower.
During the readings, as I turned the ringer off on the phone, the light flashed, indicating an incoming. I didn’t answer. A bout a minute later, the cell buzzed. Still didn’t answer, as I was trying to explain a Virgo chart. Finally, the beeper started to shake. I paused long enough to realize it was just Bubba, and since I wasn’t answering, the message would be a real simple, “dude, I wanted to buy you dinner tonight.”
Right.
The Diamond Age
[url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553380966/fishinguideto-20]The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
With a September [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380977427/fishinguideto-20]release of new book by Neal Stephenson, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to go back and reread [i]The Diamond Age[/i] one more time. So that just means I’ve read it twice, and I liked discovering the notes I’d made the first time.
Copyright date on the book is 1995. The “net” was brand new – gratuitous shameless plug, my first page went up in 1994 – and it was the time that was rebounding from a troubled economy. I can’t recall if that the spring/summer that I made so much money on the phone lines, but I did purchase the book, a big, hardbound first edition, and I did read it. Plus notes. I reread it the last two nights. Some of it is very clever. Some of it is funny. Some of it, in retrospect, shows a kind of flawed optimism about our future as humans. Doubt it will work out that well.
About halfway through the book, I got into a love/hate situation with the text itself, because there’s a strong central sub-plot that I just couldn’t be bothered with. Then there was that effusive use of really big words, plus some made-up words, and I couldn’t quite get over that.
The most grating aspect of the novel, though, is that optimism. Not that optimism itself bothers me, but it just feels like there’s a certain portion of the novel that’s written in the mid 1990’s, not quite [url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=28920&dict=CALD]fin-de-siecle novel, but almost.
Still fun. Still mind expanding in some ways. Regrettably, there’s a thematic elements carried over from previous works, and this time around, that annoyed me. Not a lot, and the novel itself certainly has a ripping good yarn going through it, but borrowing ideas from previous novels? Is that really fair?
What was fair, I lifted an idea of two plus expanded my own vocabulary, during this jaunt through the text. That’s a good thing.
Would I recommend it? Now that it’s in paperback? Well worth it. Belongs right up there next to [i]Snow Crash[/i].