Making progress...
So I finally finished up The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Jesus Christ that book fell apart at the end. It was like Heinlein had a lot of really cool ideas about solipsism and the idea of the "World as Myth" as he refers to it; that anything we can possibly dream up becomes another universe somewhere out there, and that we're basically living in a universe now that was just dreamt up by someone else. Well, he had all these ideas, but he really failed to get them across in the book's first 350 pages, so he kinda crammed them into a monologue or two within the last 30. The other pages were seemingly pointless outer-space adventures, wherein a number of odd things happen to the protagonist. Towards the end, two characters, in the span of one page, explain how a number of quirky little happenstances came together and caused aforementioned events. I felt like the whole end of the book was a cop-out, and the revelations that were dictated by a literal "mysterious council" could have been brought to light in a much better way.
I should've just reread Starship Troopers.
But since I finished that, I was able to move on to The Catcher in the Rye today, and I just read half the book in one sitting. I like it. Caulfield/Salinger loves the word "crumby."
And now for something not related to books
Every day I become more and more aware how completely idiotic insurance salesmen are. Every day at work I take dictations for people who either can't form complete sentences, or who can, and do so fairly well, but never actually make a point. Today though, two specific instances stuck in my head. I usually forget them because I listen to so many dictations every day they all sorta blur together, but anyway...
It's not uncommon for the insurance agents who call us to simply recite a long list of facts about a particular client for us to turn into an email for them. Usually simple vital statistics, age, height, weight, marital status, family members, etc. They mention kids a lot too, because they love selling life insurance policies on children. This particular agent called us up doing this very thing, but when he got to the part about children, he said this:
"Client's wife just had a child about two years ago."
At which point there is a short pause, like he's taking a second to think about what he'll say next,
"That child is now two years old."
It might not be as funny to anyone who didn't hear it, but I actually laughed out loud in the middle of a quiet room.
The other one was also maybe exclusively funny to me. The agent was talking about a client named Gil, who was concerned about his life insurance policy because he had married a Japanese woman, and might be moving to Japan. Apparently, some insurance companies won't cover you if you move overseas. Well, at one point in the dictation, the agent mentions the man's wife, and very clearly calls her Shizue (pronounced shee-zoo-ay). He then says that it should be "spelled S-C-Z-E-U-A." Now, I've taken Japanese for a semester, and I am 10,000% positive that Shizue is spelled like I spelled it, right there, but when the agents spell things out, we have to spell them the way they say.
There's also the repeated dictations we receive about the mental patient who gets out regularly and threatens to kill everyone in earshot if they don't give him his government check, but that's another story entirely.
I should've just reread Starship Troopers.
But since I finished that, I was able to move on to The Catcher in the Rye today, and I just read half the book in one sitting. I like it. Caulfield/Salinger loves the word "crumby."
And now for something not related to books
Every day I become more and more aware how completely idiotic insurance salesmen are. Every day at work I take dictations for people who either can't form complete sentences, or who can, and do so fairly well, but never actually make a point. Today though, two specific instances stuck in my head. I usually forget them because I listen to so many dictations every day they all sorta blur together, but anyway...
It's not uncommon for the insurance agents who call us to simply recite a long list of facts about a particular client for us to turn into an email for them. Usually simple vital statistics, age, height, weight, marital status, family members, etc. They mention kids a lot too, because they love selling life insurance policies on children. This particular agent called us up doing this very thing, but when he got to the part about children, he said this:
"Client's wife just had a child about two years ago."
At which point there is a short pause, like he's taking a second to think about what he'll say next,
"That child is now two years old."
It might not be as funny to anyone who didn't hear it, but I actually laughed out loud in the middle of a quiet room.
The other one was also maybe exclusively funny to me. The agent was talking about a client named Gil, who was concerned about his life insurance policy because he had married a Japanese woman, and might be moving to Japan. Apparently, some insurance companies won't cover you if you move overseas. Well, at one point in the dictation, the agent mentions the man's wife, and very clearly calls her Shizue (pronounced shee-zoo-ay). He then says that it should be "spelled S-C-Z-E-U-A." Now, I've taken Japanese for a semester, and I am 10,000% positive that Shizue is spelled like I spelled it, right there, but when the agents spell things out, we have to spell them the way they say.
There's also the repeated dictations we receive about the mental patient who gets out regularly and threatens to kill everyone in earshot if they don't give him his government check, but that's another story entirely.