More Randomness
Bah, I had most of this written up but a power blip made me lose it. Die power blips, die!
Okay, let's start out with more questions from that interview meme, these ones from monkeykong...
1. You keep a fictional 'alternate journal.' What drove you to writing that story in this format as opposed to, say, a novel?
Well, when I first started my alternaljournal, I did it at a time where I pretty well wasn't writing anything. I wanted to, but I could never find the discipline. At most I occasionally did what I called 'ego writing' - writing myself into a fantastical situation. It got sort of mary sueish at times. Still, it got me writing, but not enough... I still tended to stall and not write for long periods of time. So when I was trying to think of a way to force myself to write more, I hit on the idea of a fictional journal. I tried them before, privately, but I never managed to keep up with it. But I thought if I did it publicly on LJ, the thought of other people reading it might force me to keep up with it. And so it did.
A realtime journal has certain characteristics that help out in that respects. One of my stumbling blocks tends to be connecting from one thing to another. For example, I know what scene is next, but I have trouble writing my way to get there in a way I like, and wind up stalling. But with a fictional journal, time itself is the connection. I don't have to write the connection, I can write the next scene when it occurs and, if needed, write "so here's whats been happening since I last wrote". Also, I can use my own tendencies in writing to skim over things like descriptions, and refer to things vaguely rather than directly. If I don't know how to write about something, I can write up an excuse for why I couldn't write about it before, and then write about it in retrospect, summary. Also, to a certain extent, I'm able to schedule myself better. I can schedule gaps in action and interesting points if I want to take a break, or schedule more interesting things for times I expect to have more free time.
I've been at it since December of '04, even though I don't post as often as I used to, partly on account of doing more 'real' writing, but I still call it a success, despite the fact that I'm sure almost no one is reading it. I occasionally get the urge to write another one, maybe a 'me with superpowers' or a zombie apocalypse realtime journal. With my current writing schedule that seems unlikely to get off the ground, but I still consider it now and then.
2. Least favourite Firefly character? Why?
Probably Shepherd Book. Not that I dislike him, I just like all the others more. He seems the least necessary and most expendable of the group, such that when the rumors first circulated that someone would be dying in the movie, my thought was, "I hope it's just Book". He did get a few great moments though, particularly his 'kneecaps' like.
3. In the imminent zombie holocaust, how long do you think you would last?
I actually thought I did this once as a segment of my What I'd Do With... series, but apparently if I did, I forgot to tag it. Maybe it's lost somewhere in the untagged wilds of my past. Or maybe I started it and never finished it.
Basically, it all comes down to the type of zombies.
Generally speaking, no matter what the type of zombie, I'd probably be safe for the first little while. Chances are I won't have to leave the house on the day it starts and by the time it hits full swing I'll have heard of it. So I could hole up in my apartment until I run out of supplies, and maybe raid other nearby apartments that have gone empty because people were out when the apocalypse happened. But sooner or later I'd run out of supplies, and that's when the problems start.
If it's a fast moving zombie, a la Dawn of the Dead, I'd probably be dead. Similarly, if the zombies keep their own intelligence (like in Marvel Zombies), or get a group mind, there's probably not much chance for me. They'd probably get me the first time I went out for supplies.
Now, if it's a classic shambler, my outlook improves considerably, so long as they don't swarm and sense people from far away. I can understand if non-zombielike movement or sounds attract them and/or strange lights, but if it's a situation where if I'm quiet and careful they'll start to wander off and do their own thing, then I might be able to last beyond that initial holeup period and make a few trips to nearby stores for canned goods. I live quite close to a grocery store, so, although it's a big risk, I might make it. I'd call it maybe a 50/50 chance of lasting a month, but the chances go down significantly after that if I'm on my own, probably levelling off after about a year. I'd say maybe 10% chance of making it to the year, but if I do, about a 50% chance of getting through each additional year.
My best chance would be with I Am Legend style zombies (which were technically vampires, but they acted zombielike), or to a lesser extent the Rage 'zombies' of 28 Days Later. In these cases, the creatures sleep during the day, so my chances improve dramatically. I would be very capable of holing up during the night and doing what I can during the day to improve my life and make it livable. In the case of the Rage zombies, I only have to do it until they starve to death, and then I'm pretty well safe. I Am Legend is a somewhat longer proposition. I don't think I'd go around killing the vampires during the day there,at least not as an everyday occupation, although I might do some of it near where I choose to hole up.
In these two cases I think the chances of suicide are probably my biggest risk to survival. But even so, I think I might do okay. One can never tell for sure about such things until you experience it of course, but I already cope with isolation, and a zombie apocalypse would ironically force me to have hope that I could find other people and maybe forge some kind of life with them if I could. And even if not, to get some sort of grim pleasure squeezing some entertainment out of such a grim situation, tracking down books I wanted to read but never could, and improving my life in small degrees.
4. What would your super hero costume be like?
It depends a little bit on my powers, but generally speaking, I wouldn't have one. If I had my choice of powers, then I wouldn't need one - my normal body wouldn't go out superheroing, and my 'ghost form' can look like whatever I want (which would by default be a ghostly normal human in everyday, though black and white, clothes). If I had some other power that I'd have to go out and about in order to used, my costume would be utilitarian and as non-superheroey as possible. My goal would be to blend. So, something that a person could be wearing while out and about. Jeans and a tshirt, perhaps. No identifable lables. Probably black. And maybe carry with me a little skimask type mask and/or a change of t-shirt for if I had to make a quick change. I don't want publicity and I don't wnat to be known, though. I'd rather operate as a vague shadowy threat to criminals that people only whisper about, rather than 'Hi, I'm Captain Famous!'.
5. Would you rather be a cult icon or a worldwide superstar?
I'd think being a cult icon would be preferable, containing something of the best of both worlds. Presumably (though not necessarily) as a cult icon you'd have some profit from it to live comfortably. You wouldn't be so famous as to be constantly hounded by people everywhere you go, but still get the ego boost of people coming up to you and telling you what you mean to them. And there's more of a chance of a major religion being formed around you. So cult icon sounds better all the way.
Remember, if you want questions from me, post here.
Book Foo:
Finished: The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons (Reread)
Started: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
Thoughts (some spoilers), selected quotes, and thoughts springing off from the quotes behind the cut.
As I wrote in the review of the last book, I originally had the memory that the two Hyperion books were pretty good, and the two Endymion books kind of ruined it. Then I'd come to the conclusion that the first Endymion book was better than the others, and so it must have been the last book that soured my impression of the series. And it does, to an extent.
See, this book is pretty good, in the style of and about as entertaining as Endymion... up until page 500 or so. After that, they begin seriously rewriting canon established in Hyperion for, as far as I could see, no good reason. It felt tacked on, to be honest, to include a bunch of characters from the first book, and try to explain how they really made sense because EVERYTHING YOU KNEW WAS WRONG! Or somejunk. Also here's where some of the more annoying plot elements come in, unrelated to that. So I enjoyed the book up until then, and after that, it was just okay.
Still, before that, it was fairly entertaining. A while back occamsnailfile made the point about a lot of SF having a 'one messiah that knows best and decides for everyody' not really being for her, and where, when you examine it, it's more power-fantasy than usual and often against the spirit of what we tell ourselves we believe. Although this series has the 'one messiah', it sort of subverts that by the message being one of sort of infinite diversity.
It's interesting to compare this series a bit to Ilium/Olynpos. There are some similarities. A lot of the technology seems to be echoes of each other. There's means for resurrection that are ultimately somewhat harmful. There's a teleportation technology that's initially limited to certain locations, but eventually gives way to people teleporting freely. I'm sure there are other aspects to it that I've forgotten now but noticed during the reread.
Anyway, some of the quotes I liked:
"As soon as life gets a foothold somewhere, it stays. You name it... arctic cold, the Old Mars frozen desert, boiling hot springs, a sheer rockface such as here on T'ien Shan, even in autonomous intelligence programs... once life gets its proverbial foot in the door, it stays forever."
"So what are the implications of that?" I said.
"Simply that left to its own devices... which are clever devices... life will someday fill the universe," said Aenea. "It will be a green galaxy to begin with, then off to our neighboring clusters and galaxies."
"That's a disturbing thought," I said.
She paused to look at me. "Why, Raul? I think it's beautiful."
"Green planets I've seen," I said. "A green atmosphere is imaginable, but weird."
She smiled. "It doesn't have to be just plants. Life adapts... birds, men and women in flying machines, you and me in paragliders, people adapted to flight..."
"That hasn't happened yet," I said. "But what I meant was, well, to have a green galaxy, people and animals and..."
"And living machines," said Aenea, "And androids... artificial life of a thousand forms..."
...
"Diversity's good," agreed Aenea. "As I said, it lets life shift into high gear and get on with its mindless business of greening up the universe. But there's at least one Old Earth species that hasn't diversified much at all... at least not on the friendly worlds it colonized."
"Us," I said. "Humans."
Aenea nodded grimly. "We've been stuck in one species since our Cro-Magnon ancestors helped to wipe out the smarter Neanderthals," she said. "Now it's our chance to diversify rapidly, and institutions like the Hegemony, the Pax, and the Core are stopping it."
Chose (segments from this long) bit because it goes back to one of my grand hopeful dreams for the far future. More life, in more forms. I wonder sometimes how much this book may have influenced my views. I have poor timeline memory, so I can't recall exactly when I got this idea that humanity should evolve in a thousand different directions and that would be grand, beautiful, and moreso if it meets other races out there that have also expanded. It may have been before this book, but I think this book might have helped cement it. I probably believed in diversity leading to strength way back since the Trek days of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), of course. The book can't claim any of that. Still, there's part of me when reading this book, deep within that screams YES. Not at everything mind you, but at this vision of greatness.
And not just in space. I think I'm a diversity-hog in general. A few weeks ago there was the new story around about scientists figuring out how to generate sperm from female bone marrow or something, with the implication that someday it might lead to women being able to procreate without men. I read someone's journal commenting on how it was amusing at how paranoid men seemed to get over the idea, and how they were reassuring themselves that women still needed men. But it wasn't my reaction. My first reaction was 'huh, interesting, I wonder how that works.' Then later, my reaction was, 'Cool'.
Frankly, I think it would be amazing and a great thing if they ever eventually perfect a way to do this, impregnate someone with sperm generated from female cells. I would love it. I think it would be stupid if it somehow led to all women doing this and getting rid of men entirely, because, well... I guess my basic point is why have ONE type of almost anything, when you can have two? Or more? Why not have diversity? Similarly with marriage... why not have more types? Gay marriages, great. I'm not personally interested in them any more than I'd be interested in reproducing solely with men if that were possible, but I'd love them to be more. Choice is the key thing.
Let's create intelligent robots, and let them join our community. Let's have clones, when it's safe, and not judge. Let's truly celebrate difference, because difference can mean more choices for everyone.
Sorry, waxing a little crazy-idealistic there for a bit. I'm done now. Oh, and another quote from the book, on a somewhat more wistful note:
"No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing."
Not sure I agree that it's a blessing, though...
Rainbows End is pretty good so far, and influenced my dreams (see below).
Moving on to Dream Foo!
One a cracky crossover with The Office, Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis, and Runaways. Another is book foo related.
Okay, the first one started out with a long SUV or van or something pulling into a garage. In it were people from The Office. Suddenly, the Cybermen jumped out! Most of the people in the office managed to escape, but the only one left in there was Dwight. He was scanned and told that he was a good candidate for Cybermanization, and told to report to the site. He did so, despite there being no escort. Pam tried to talk to him once he got out of sight and explain what the Cybermen were. By this time my perspective switched, and I was with the Doctor, who noticed that some humans we could see actually had Cybermen legs, and he figured they were temporary hybrids, still in human form so they could be more mobile but they were really eyes and ears for the Cybermen empire.
So me and Col. Shepherd from SG:A were off, running down the street. The human-Cybermen could see us sometimes when we came away from the wall (which we had to do every so often) and so they were tracking our progress. I told Shepherd it'd be better if we split up - he could cross the street where the sightlines weren't so great, while I'll continue on this path and continue to be tracked. (Though I considered he'd be better off if the Cybermen attacked, I realized that he was also the better choice to go off undetected and do some real harm to the plan). When I got to the end of the street I wanted to find some way to duck pursuit, and noticed a bookstore window, so I jumped through it.
People were inside and startled, and for some reason we didn't want to tell them what was going on, so a woman who was (suddenly) with me, after hearing someone in the store mistake me for Bud Bundy, thought on her feet and explained we were filming a scene from a movie called Bud Bundy Dies (I told her that 'The Death of Bud Bundy' would sound better). We left, and suddenly I was with Nico from Runaways. Except, instead of casting spells the normal way, it was sort of like D&D - she had to memorize spells and when she used them she forgot them. She didn't have any left, but she'd thought ahead and had little electronic datastores around the city that contained spells she'd emailed to them in advance. If she got to one of them she could download them into her brain cyberpunkishly. We found one and started looking and got a 'slow down time' spell but most of the rest of the info there was all spam mail because a spambot had got the email address of that datastore somehow. That's about when I woke up.
The second one was I was in a restaurant. Now, one of the key points of Rainbows End is wearable computers and contact lens displays that provide everyone with personal information all the time on request. In the dream, I had that.. and by looking at something and tilting or squinting in a certain way, I could look up more info on it on wikipedia. Likewise, the menus were all virtual, and I could look it up by looking at the restaurant itself. Not much actually happened in the dream, but still it was very cool to experience... far more than the book, the real sense of being in the future of technology, and it was cool.
And I tend to say that when you move, the new place isn't your home until you dream about it as such. Until then, it hasn't wormed its way into your subconscious. Likewise, for a book or TV show to get its way in there so quickly is usually a good sign that it's affecting me on a more-than-surface level.
On my floor, which is wood-panelled, there are a few dark spots, looking like burns or whatever, slightly ovalshaped. There's a big cluster of them in a spot that I don't see on a regular basis, but will occasionally see. Sometimes if I'm not paying attention or I see them when my eyes are a bit blurry or in the middle of focusing, spotting them sets off my OMG BUGS! reflexive reaction before I realize/remember what they are.
Heroes tonight, woot! (That's a general woot, not a comment directed at woot, unless she's also interested, in which case it serves both purposes) Bit of a shame Drive got cancelled, but I can't be too upset, I was only partway interested in it. Enough to keep watching, but not enough to be broken up at it being cancelled.
I've noticed while looking through some LJ entries (and adding tags to a bunch) from long ago year that I write a lot less now than 2 years ago. Huh. I suppose at least part of that is that I save up stuff to do in megaposts like this rather than posting every time I get the urge, though.
I think as of this entry I will be resuming my old habit of choosing my mood completely randomly, regardless of my current mood. Because you people already see too much into my psyche for my tastes! Also, because if I use my real moods I only get to use a few of my mood icons, and, well, that's not as much fun.
Okay, let's start out with more questions from that interview meme, these ones from monkeykong...
1. You keep a fictional 'alternate journal.' What drove you to writing that story in this format as opposed to, say, a novel?
Well, when I first started my alternaljournal, I did it at a time where I pretty well wasn't writing anything. I wanted to, but I could never find the discipline. At most I occasionally did what I called 'ego writing' - writing myself into a fantastical situation. It got sort of mary sueish at times. Still, it got me writing, but not enough... I still tended to stall and not write for long periods of time. So when I was trying to think of a way to force myself to write more, I hit on the idea of a fictional journal. I tried them before, privately, but I never managed to keep up with it. But I thought if I did it publicly on LJ, the thought of other people reading it might force me to keep up with it. And so it did.
A realtime journal has certain characteristics that help out in that respects. One of my stumbling blocks tends to be connecting from one thing to another. For example, I know what scene is next, but I have trouble writing my way to get there in a way I like, and wind up stalling. But with a fictional journal, time itself is the connection. I don't have to write the connection, I can write the next scene when it occurs and, if needed, write "so here's whats been happening since I last wrote". Also, I can use my own tendencies in writing to skim over things like descriptions, and refer to things vaguely rather than directly. If I don't know how to write about something, I can write up an excuse for why I couldn't write about it before, and then write about it in retrospect, summary. Also, to a certain extent, I'm able to schedule myself better. I can schedule gaps in action and interesting points if I want to take a break, or schedule more interesting things for times I expect to have more free time.
I've been at it since December of '04, even though I don't post as often as I used to, partly on account of doing more 'real' writing, but I still call it a success, despite the fact that I'm sure almost no one is reading it. I occasionally get the urge to write another one, maybe a 'me with superpowers' or a zombie apocalypse realtime journal. With my current writing schedule that seems unlikely to get off the ground, but I still consider it now and then.
2. Least favourite Firefly character? Why?
Probably Shepherd Book. Not that I dislike him, I just like all the others more. He seems the least necessary and most expendable of the group, such that when the rumors first circulated that someone would be dying in the movie, my thought was, "I hope it's just Book". He did get a few great moments though, particularly his 'kneecaps' like.
3. In the imminent zombie holocaust, how long do you think you would last?
I actually thought I did this once as a segment of my What I'd Do With... series, but apparently if I did, I forgot to tag it. Maybe it's lost somewhere in the untagged wilds of my past. Or maybe I started it and never finished it.
Basically, it all comes down to the type of zombies.
Generally speaking, no matter what the type of zombie, I'd probably be safe for the first little while. Chances are I won't have to leave the house on the day it starts and by the time it hits full swing I'll have heard of it. So I could hole up in my apartment until I run out of supplies, and maybe raid other nearby apartments that have gone empty because people were out when the apocalypse happened. But sooner or later I'd run out of supplies, and that's when the problems start.
If it's a fast moving zombie, a la Dawn of the Dead, I'd probably be dead. Similarly, if the zombies keep their own intelligence (like in Marvel Zombies), or get a group mind, there's probably not much chance for me. They'd probably get me the first time I went out for supplies.
Now, if it's a classic shambler, my outlook improves considerably, so long as they don't swarm and sense people from far away. I can understand if non-zombielike movement or sounds attract them and/or strange lights, but if it's a situation where if I'm quiet and careful they'll start to wander off and do their own thing, then I might be able to last beyond that initial holeup period and make a few trips to nearby stores for canned goods. I live quite close to a grocery store, so, although it's a big risk, I might make it. I'd call it maybe a 50/50 chance of lasting a month, but the chances go down significantly after that if I'm on my own, probably levelling off after about a year. I'd say maybe 10% chance of making it to the year, but if I do, about a 50% chance of getting through each additional year.
My best chance would be with I Am Legend style zombies (which were technically vampires, but they acted zombielike), or to a lesser extent the Rage 'zombies' of 28 Days Later. In these cases, the creatures sleep during the day, so my chances improve dramatically. I would be very capable of holing up during the night and doing what I can during the day to improve my life and make it livable. In the case of the Rage zombies, I only have to do it until they starve to death, and then I'm pretty well safe. I Am Legend is a somewhat longer proposition. I don't think I'd go around killing the vampires during the day there,at least not as an everyday occupation, although I might do some of it near where I choose to hole up.
In these two cases I think the chances of suicide are probably my biggest risk to survival. But even so, I think I might do okay. One can never tell for sure about such things until you experience it of course, but I already cope with isolation, and a zombie apocalypse would ironically force me to have hope that I could find other people and maybe forge some kind of life with them if I could. And even if not, to get some sort of grim pleasure squeezing some entertainment out of such a grim situation, tracking down books I wanted to read but never could, and improving my life in small degrees.
4. What would your super hero costume be like?
It depends a little bit on my powers, but generally speaking, I wouldn't have one. If I had my choice of powers, then I wouldn't need one - my normal body wouldn't go out superheroing, and my 'ghost form' can look like whatever I want (which would by default be a ghostly normal human in everyday, though black and white, clothes). If I had some other power that I'd have to go out and about in order to used, my costume would be utilitarian and as non-superheroey as possible. My goal would be to blend. So, something that a person could be wearing while out and about. Jeans and a tshirt, perhaps. No identifable lables. Probably black. And maybe carry with me a little skimask type mask and/or a change of t-shirt for if I had to make a quick change. I don't want publicity and I don't wnat to be known, though. I'd rather operate as a vague shadowy threat to criminals that people only whisper about, rather than 'Hi, I'm Captain Famous!'.
5. Would you rather be a cult icon or a worldwide superstar?
I'd think being a cult icon would be preferable, containing something of the best of both worlds. Presumably (though not necessarily) as a cult icon you'd have some profit from it to live comfortably. You wouldn't be so famous as to be constantly hounded by people everywhere you go, but still get the ego boost of people coming up to you and telling you what you mean to them. And there's more of a chance of a major religion being formed around you. So cult icon sounds better all the way.
Remember, if you want questions from me, post here.
Book Foo:
Finished: The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons (Reread)
Started: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
Thoughts (some spoilers), selected quotes, and thoughts springing off from the quotes behind the cut.
As I wrote in the review of the last book, I originally had the memory that the two Hyperion books were pretty good, and the two Endymion books kind of ruined it. Then I'd come to the conclusion that the first Endymion book was better than the others, and so it must have been the last book that soured my impression of the series. And it does, to an extent.
See, this book is pretty good, in the style of and about as entertaining as Endymion... up until page 500 or so. After that, they begin seriously rewriting canon established in Hyperion for, as far as I could see, no good reason. It felt tacked on, to be honest, to include a bunch of characters from the first book, and try to explain how they really made sense because EVERYTHING YOU KNEW WAS WRONG! Or somejunk. Also here's where some of the more annoying plot elements come in, unrelated to that. So I enjoyed the book up until then, and after that, it was just okay.
Still, before that, it was fairly entertaining. A while back occamsnailfile made the point about a lot of SF having a 'one messiah that knows best and decides for everyody' not really being for her, and where, when you examine it, it's more power-fantasy than usual and often against the spirit of what we tell ourselves we believe. Although this series has the 'one messiah', it sort of subverts that by the message being one of sort of infinite diversity.
It's interesting to compare this series a bit to Ilium/Olynpos. There are some similarities. A lot of the technology seems to be echoes of each other. There's means for resurrection that are ultimately somewhat harmful. There's a teleportation technology that's initially limited to certain locations, but eventually gives way to people teleporting freely. I'm sure there are other aspects to it that I've forgotten now but noticed during the reread.
Anyway, some of the quotes I liked:
"As soon as life gets a foothold somewhere, it stays. You name it... arctic cold, the Old Mars frozen desert, boiling hot springs, a sheer rockface such as here on T'ien Shan, even in autonomous intelligence programs... once life gets its proverbial foot in the door, it stays forever."
"So what are the implications of that?" I said.
"Simply that left to its own devices... which are clever devices... life will someday fill the universe," said Aenea. "It will be a green galaxy to begin with, then off to our neighboring clusters and galaxies."
"That's a disturbing thought," I said.
She paused to look at me. "Why, Raul? I think it's beautiful."
"Green planets I've seen," I said. "A green atmosphere is imaginable, but weird."
She smiled. "It doesn't have to be just plants. Life adapts... birds, men and women in flying machines, you and me in paragliders, people adapted to flight..."
"That hasn't happened yet," I said. "But what I meant was, well, to have a green galaxy, people and animals and..."
"And living machines," said Aenea, "And androids... artificial life of a thousand forms..."
...
"Diversity's good," agreed Aenea. "As I said, it lets life shift into high gear and get on with its mindless business of greening up the universe. But there's at least one Old Earth species that hasn't diversified much at all... at least not on the friendly worlds it colonized."
"Us," I said. "Humans."
Aenea nodded grimly. "We've been stuck in one species since our Cro-Magnon ancestors helped to wipe out the smarter Neanderthals," she said. "Now it's our chance to diversify rapidly, and institutions like the Hegemony, the Pax, and the Core are stopping it."
Chose (segments from this long) bit because it goes back to one of my grand hopeful dreams for the far future. More life, in more forms. I wonder sometimes how much this book may have influenced my views. I have poor timeline memory, so I can't recall exactly when I got this idea that humanity should evolve in a thousand different directions and that would be grand, beautiful, and moreso if it meets other races out there that have also expanded. It may have been before this book, but I think this book might have helped cement it. I probably believed in diversity leading to strength way back since the Trek days of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations), of course. The book can't claim any of that. Still, there's part of me when reading this book, deep within that screams YES. Not at everything mind you, but at this vision of greatness.
And not just in space. I think I'm a diversity-hog in general. A few weeks ago there was the new story around about scientists figuring out how to generate sperm from female bone marrow or something, with the implication that someday it might lead to women being able to procreate without men. I read someone's journal commenting on how it was amusing at how paranoid men seemed to get over the idea, and how they were reassuring themselves that women still needed men. But it wasn't my reaction. My first reaction was 'huh, interesting, I wonder how that works.' Then later, my reaction was, 'Cool'.
Frankly, I think it would be amazing and a great thing if they ever eventually perfect a way to do this, impregnate someone with sperm generated from female cells. I would love it. I think it would be stupid if it somehow led to all women doing this and getting rid of men entirely, because, well... I guess my basic point is why have ONE type of almost anything, when you can have two? Or more? Why not have diversity? Similarly with marriage... why not have more types? Gay marriages, great. I'm not personally interested in them any more than I'd be interested in reproducing solely with men if that were possible, but I'd love them to be more. Choice is the key thing.
Let's create intelligent robots, and let them join our community. Let's have clones, when it's safe, and not judge. Let's truly celebrate difference, because difference can mean more choices for everyone.
Sorry, waxing a little crazy-idealistic there for a bit. I'm done now. Oh, and another quote from the book, on a somewhat more wistful note:
"No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing."
Not sure I agree that it's a blessing, though...
Rainbows End is pretty good so far, and influenced my dreams (see below).
Moving on to Dream Foo!
One a cracky crossover with The Office, Doctor Who, Stargate Atlantis, and Runaways. Another is book foo related.
Okay, the first one started out with a long SUV or van or something pulling into a garage. In it were people from The Office. Suddenly, the Cybermen jumped out! Most of the people in the office managed to escape, but the only one left in there was Dwight. He was scanned and told that he was a good candidate for Cybermanization, and told to report to the site. He did so, despite there being no escort. Pam tried to talk to him once he got out of sight and explain what the Cybermen were. By this time my perspective switched, and I was with the Doctor, who noticed that some humans we could see actually had Cybermen legs, and he figured they were temporary hybrids, still in human form so they could be more mobile but they were really eyes and ears for the Cybermen empire.
So me and Col. Shepherd from SG:A were off, running down the street. The human-Cybermen could see us sometimes when we came away from the wall (which we had to do every so often) and so they were tracking our progress. I told Shepherd it'd be better if we split up - he could cross the street where the sightlines weren't so great, while I'll continue on this path and continue to be tracked. (Though I considered he'd be better off if the Cybermen attacked, I realized that he was also the better choice to go off undetected and do some real harm to the plan). When I got to the end of the street I wanted to find some way to duck pursuit, and noticed a bookstore window, so I jumped through it.
People were inside and startled, and for some reason we didn't want to tell them what was going on, so a woman who was (suddenly) with me, after hearing someone in the store mistake me for Bud Bundy, thought on her feet and explained we were filming a scene from a movie called Bud Bundy Dies (I told her that 'The Death of Bud Bundy' would sound better). We left, and suddenly I was with Nico from Runaways. Except, instead of casting spells the normal way, it was sort of like D&D - she had to memorize spells and when she used them she forgot them. She didn't have any left, but she'd thought ahead and had little electronic datastores around the city that contained spells she'd emailed to them in advance. If she got to one of them she could download them into her brain cyberpunkishly. We found one and started looking and got a 'slow down time' spell but most of the rest of the info there was all spam mail because a spambot had got the email address of that datastore somehow. That's about when I woke up.
The second one was I was in a restaurant. Now, one of the key points of Rainbows End is wearable computers and contact lens displays that provide everyone with personal information all the time on request. In the dream, I had that.. and by looking at something and tilting or squinting in a certain way, I could look up more info on it on wikipedia. Likewise, the menus were all virtual, and I could look it up by looking at the restaurant itself. Not much actually happened in the dream, but still it was very cool to experience... far more than the book, the real sense of being in the future of technology, and it was cool.
And I tend to say that when you move, the new place isn't your home until you dream about it as such. Until then, it hasn't wormed its way into your subconscious. Likewise, for a book or TV show to get its way in there so quickly is usually a good sign that it's affecting me on a more-than-surface level.
On my floor, which is wood-panelled, there are a few dark spots, looking like burns or whatever, slightly ovalshaped. There's a big cluster of them in a spot that I don't see on a regular basis, but will occasionally see. Sometimes if I'm not paying attention or I see them when my eyes are a bit blurry or in the middle of focusing, spotting them sets off my OMG BUGS! reflexive reaction before I realize/remember what they are.
Heroes tonight, woot! (That's a general woot, not a comment directed at woot, unless she's also interested, in which case it serves both purposes) Bit of a shame Drive got cancelled, but I can't be too upset, I was only partway interested in it. Enough to keep watching, but not enough to be broken up at it being cancelled.
I've noticed while looking through some LJ entries (and adding tags to a bunch) from long ago year that I write a lot less now than 2 years ago. Huh. I suppose at least part of that is that I save up stuff to do in megaposts like this rather than posting every time I get the urge, though.
I think as of this entry I will be resuming my old habit of choosing my mood completely randomly, regardless of my current mood. Because you people already see too much into my psyche for my tastes! Also, because if I use my real moods I only get to use a few of my mood icons, and, well, that's not as much fun.