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The more you do it, the more you want it. The more you want it, the more you need it. The more you need it, the farther you fall. It's waiting at the other end of the tunnel. It's obscured by clouds, by lens flare, by your own blinding want. It trumps prior paper contract, verbal agreements, unspoken covenants. You want the little death, you want the fractally blossoming bud, you want the Möbius waterfall. You want it bareback, you want it sidesaddle, you want it on all fours. You want the bass solo that goes on for days, you want the chocolate-chip cookie that feeds you for an hour, you want the immortality that lasts for thirty seconds. You want it to the belittlement of your persona. You want it at the cost of your identity. You want it at the risk of what you need. It will supplant your construct of self. It will remake you in its own image, bit by bit, drop by drop, handprint by handprint. It will replace your sensibilities, your principles, your perception of the outside world. It's not sin. It's not aberrant. But it's not true to form, either. It's what measures you from crown to soles. ⎋
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Suppose you're a casual drinker; not a lush, not an alkie, not a secret sipper. Suppose you want a drink; not just a beer, not just a shot, but a specific mixture. But being an occasional, every-now-and-then, mostly social drinker, you're naturally ignorant that certain drinks avail themselves to specific moods, environments, and times of the day. A seasoned drinker might then scoff silently at your desire for a Tequila Sunrise during the dinner hour. But that's not your problem; your problem is that even though you have secured an acceptable substitute for a highball glass and filled it three-fourths of the way to the lip with ice, upon proceeding to the next step, you realize that you have no tequila for said sunrise. But you have vodka, which is just Russian tequila. Oh well, so you'll have a Moscow Sunrise instead. Until you notice you have no orange juice. You have...Tang. ... Oh well. - Tequila + orange juice + pomegranate syrup = Tequila Sunrise.
- Tequila + orange juice + blackberry brandy = Tequila Sunset.
- Vodka + orange juice + pomegranate syrup = Moscow Sunrise.
- Tequila + Tang + pomegranate syrup = Astronaut Sunrise.
- Vodka + Tang + pomegranate syrup = Cosmonaut Sunrise.
⎋
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Iced tea batter + lemonade frosting = Arnold Palmer cupcakes:
Read more at Endless Simmer.
Also:
Tang cupcakes. Oh yeah; I went there.
⎋
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You return to your old haunt, your privacy echo away from home, your playground of dirt finer than silt and dust smoother than skin. Back for more relative relics, back to collect a handful of temporal bookmarks, back to judge and compare, contrast and squint, rub the dirt and the dust off on your shoulder. Three here, then three there, soon nine and twelve.
Then six again. Then nine again. Then six. Then nine and twelve. Then they all started to look the same, the same men, the same costumes, the same alien landscapes behind them. The same flaming swords blazing a trail through the merciless eternity of vacuum, the same ancient abandoned cities of glass under crystal domes, the same flotillas of bones and stones and gyros that litter the thermosphere, the exosphere, the nöosphere.
It's too much. It's never enough. It's enough, it'll do, it's fine. More, less, now.
You need to surround yourself; with plastic, with paper, with particleboard inbetween. Your fort is still biodegradable after a fashion, still mortared with spittle and hot glue and masking tape, still your hermitage headquarters. And it is still functional, like a gingerbread house, it provides sustenance, it provides protection, it provides insulation and isolation and interconnectivity.
But does it provide joy? Are the walls just walls, the paper just paper, the glue and cardboard and ink, the ideas and germs and threads, the reluctant protagonists, the golden villains, the flawed heroes, the sympathetic monsters, the smart ships, the dead planets, the airy space between it all; is it just muslin gauze shielding against the hostile remains of the existent universe?
Too much, too many, not enough. More, more, no more. It's never enough, it's too much, there's no room.
Make room. Make time. Clear a space for joy.
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It's too hard. It's not enough. You can't go on. It's too much. There's no time. It's not worth it. Just one more day. Just five more minutes. Do it tomorrow. It's too hard, you can't go on. You'll go on, it's too hard. You'll go on. And on and on. And on and on. And on and on and on and on and on. ⎋
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Even hot snots like J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer started out as cold boogers like everyone else before they got dumb and lucky enough to get picked up at random by a publishing house willing to take a chance on an untested formula. But in the years before this post-postmodern age of the pulp author as media darling, writers of sci-fi and fantasy had to cut their teeth in the pages of periodicals before even being considered seriously for regular publication. And even once the stars aligned sufficiently to generate such circumstances, the results were often campy, cheesy, and pandering to the lowest common (and most likely to pay) denominator.
Still, it's refreshing to know that the genre we know now matured so fruitfully from such humble beginnings.
  
Murray Leinster wrote stories between 1916 and 1969 and, as all decent renaissance men of the time were seemingly able to do, naturally transitioned first from mysteries to westerns, and then from there to science fiction.
Space Platform sports all the hallmarks of post-WWII can-do industrialism, it just gets the physics wrong. Of course we know now that it's potentially more feasible to build a space station in orbit, so seeing it half-built and earthbound on the cover comes across as a little off. Plus, what are those two stevedores doing in the foreground, fighting or dancing? Why don't you buy the poor guy a drink at least?
Space Tug is the companion to Space Platform, and the dozen years inbetween publication dates shows in the style of the art. While Space Platform's Pocket cover could have been copied directly from a Soviet propaganda poster promoting the rewards of labor, Space Tug's cover is a primary color nightmare. Just the segmented, piecey look of the astrodude's jetpack and the lunar lander with a paint job that wouldn't look out of place in the New York subway makes the whole landscape look more like a LEGO diorama than the Moon's surface.
The stylistic elements used for the cover art for Operation: Outer Space almost look modern with their retro-futuristics. Space suits bulky enough to hold pressure, but not so utilitarian to go without Star Trek-esque ranking colors and pseudo-bondage silver constraints as accents. Glowing pocket fusion reactors (that might look familiar to Stargate SG-1 fans) hooked up to the impractically clunky whosiwhatsit the protagonist in red is fiddling with. The only dead giveaways are the needlenose rocket parked in the crater over yonder and the flying saucers raining hot death down on the poor dopes below.
  
Andre Norton was an ridiculously prolific writer, equally skilled with fantasy as with science fiction, producing stories and novels for almost 70 straight years. This lifelong achievement is only bettered by the fact that Andre Norton is the pen name of Alice Mary Norton. Not to put too fine a point on it, but as hard as it is for a woman to succeed in what is essentially a man's world, it's multiples more difficult in a niche, boy's-club genre like science fiction.
Most of the covers published for Norton's work in the 1950s conforms to the romantic, space-opera, function-follow-form look of the day. Plague Ship has dudes in floppy jumpsuits with raygun holsters and a rocket that looks like a tampon, The Last Planet features a cute-but-probably-psychopathic robot and more dudes in jumpsuits with raygun holsters, and even though the dude on the cover of The Stars Are Ours! is armed with a refreshing tonic for his recently-thawed cryo-date instead of a raygun, he is in a jumpsuit.
What did we miss here? Why didn't the jumpsuit ever catch on as an Earthbound fad in the half-century since they started appearing on every asshole who wanted to ride a hot rod into space? No doubt the hassle of having to disrobe almost completely during visits to the lavatory had something to do with it. It's only a matter of time before people get over their squickiness and accept the personal catheter as just another modern convenience. Then watch out for the new wave of pret-a-porter as jumpsuits fly off the racks.
  
Poul Anderson, another grand master who helped to shape the genre, also had the mixed fortune of writing during the golden age of science fiction and rising through the ranks. Problem is, you'd never know from some of the art that (dis)graced his early books that he was one of the greater steerers of the genre.
While the font used for Orbit Unlimited recalls the stencils used for old-timey war time cargo crates, the rest of the action on the cover suggests a more jerry-rigged operation, if you can even call it that. Are the dudes in space suits in trouble, other than the fact that they're suspended in a vacuum with only thin tethers keeping them from spiraling away into the abyss? It almost looks like they're recovering from a recent space-skiiing wipeout, or trying to build a pup tent in space, or, I dunno, fishing for space carp?
The annoyance continues with The Trouble Twisters. Not only is the cover tinted a lovely shade of jaundice, it supports the obnoxious faux- abstract style that has wrecked the impetus to read countless of presumably perfectly inoffensive books. There's a recognizable sliver of a lunar surface at the bottom, the object hurtling along in the upper left is probably an asteroid, and the thing on the right is maybe an alien garbage scow or something. But what the frick is that monstrosity in the middle, some kind of schizophrenic Martian World Trade Center?
The Enemy Stars is the least objectionable of the bunch, with a pleasing combination of niche triggers bound to press a few fanboys' buttons: a decently populated starfield, a looming cerulean planetoid, and a trio of futurenauts making their way doggedly across a presumably alien wasteland towards the serviceable technology clumped on the horizon.
But why are they nude?
...
Next time: the cheaper the cheese, the fancier the flight.
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The pain still lingers; as if from muscle memory, as if from an afterimage pulling away from the retinas, as if from an early-morning alarm you forgot to turn off for the weekend.
The want still exists; tugging and pulling at your various internal bobs and gears, watering down your essential fluids during peak hours, dropping your sanguine sucrose down a topless hole at the striking of Selene's gloaming.
The need still haunts; commandeering your wits and will at the spear-point of long-distance wiles, scrubbing at your short-term memory with sponge and chamois, painting your face and tongue and eyes with spit and sweat and sebum.
The center still spins; always out of reach, never surmountable, teasing back and forth and to and fro and home and away, the concordance where the self is revealed as a hoax, where identity is stripped away like a motel bathrobe, where there really is no "I" at all.
The world is tiresome. The world is a trial. The world is toil and trouble and terror.
The pain, the want, the need; they are only clingy ribbons, vapors made flesh, residual bubbles brought forth from the scraping of membrane against membrane in the æther.
Rise not above, but away.
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So you lost the girl, so you scared off the boy, so you turned off your friends.
So respite evades you like a particularly guilesome fifth columnist, so the nights are spent supplicating to foam and down and flannel icons, so the days are a black Soviet train steaming slowly through the icy Urals.
So the future isn't what the past made it out to be. So to-day's ready cash is as liquid as yesterday's overdraft notice and as concrete as to-morrow's IOU. So you don't recognize the person in the looking glass, so your room feels more and more like your onion cellar every day, so you feel like maybe you once zagged when you really wanted to zig but should have zepped or zooled or zyzygized.
So? So what do you do? What do you do now?
Sleep a little. Drink a little. Wash a little. Draw a little. Plant a little.
Read a little. Bake a little. Cry a little. Touch a little. Write a little.
Bang the drum a little more slowly.
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If you took the nigh-unitelligible Scotticisms of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and the freaky neon dystopia of William Gibson's Neuromancer and bashed them together in the same pot, it might result in something resembling a book written by Jack Womack. Womack's speculative fiction is more social satire than proper futuristic sci-fi, and his "Dryco" series of novels in particular are flamboyantly dark and narrated by characters versed in a truncated pigdin English, an overt homage to Orwell's Newspeak. Elvissey is especially headfucky; in an Elvis-centric future society, two time agents are sent back into an alternate history to kidnap a young King and bring him forward in order to debunk his status as divine savior. Get it? Of course you do. Anyway, it all starts with Ambient, which is a confusing title, and a confusing term used in confusing ways in the story. "Ambient" describes a contingent of the population born with genetic and physical mutations, as well as the converts who decide to alter their own bodies voluntarily. And yes, Womack's Ambients listen to Ambient music, but it sounds more like screamo than new age. Here's the point, though: about a third of the way through Ambient, the question is brought up as to why Ambients call themselves "Ambients;" and the answer is, "Because they're forever all around." Contrast that with Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, which he said can be "actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener;" or, audio wallpaper. The subtitle of Eno's first record in his Ambient series says it all: "Music For Airports."So if ambient music is music created to be ignored, music designed to alter the perspective of the person exposed to it, music that passes right through you like ionizing radiation; what kind of person would a practical, post-postmodern, functional Ambient be? ... Quiet and introspective, speaking only when they have something relevant to say? Inobtrusive and indistinct, fading in and out of the scene, never staying too long, always arriving early and leaving without saying good-bye? Someone you know, but don't really know; someone you don't really notice unless they're not around? A shadow friend? A renaissance mechanic? A tinker of the heart? A human Rubik's Cube? An emotional Babel Fish? ... Sound like anyone you know? ⎋
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Don't retreat to your dark place. Don't sequester yourself in your privacy echo. Don't recuse yourself from your appointed path. You're not a mushroom. You're not a pincushion. You're not a Vodou dolly. Don't be afraid if you don't understand. Don't be afraid if you fail. Don't be afraid if it hurts. This is the life you chose, for better or for worse. This is the future you wanted to chase down and make your own. You volunteered, so stop complaining. The temptation is to taste the edge of fear, of failure, of uncertainty and doubt. The daydream is for respite amongst the masses, for relief in the middle of neurochemical chaos, for release from a hostile environment. The terrible want is for the leeching of pain and confusion and numbness from the crude body. Don't go there. You have too much worth. ⎋
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Last seen by way of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jencendiary:
01. Anyone who witnesses this entry is compelled to turn to stone post this meme viral survey and their current desktop wallpaper at their own blog on pain of death.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper.
03. Don't (consciously) change your wallpaper before doing this. The point is to see what you had (going) on (in your head at the moment). I regularly work with three different computers, not all of them mine.  We work with oversized widescreen monitors at GDI, and the higher resolution really brings out the texture in this wallpaper. The borders between the colors are sharply delineated in the center of the picture, but grow more unfocused towards the edges. It might be giving my co-workers the wrong message, though.  For whatever reason, I'm the most flighty with the wallpaper on the laptop, changing it almost daily, which runs counter to the productivity-based environment at GDI; the last thing anyone needs there is another distracting variable. This green one is neat because it creates the illusion of depth and motion in a two-dimensional picture. ( Change your wallpaper at least as often as your underwear: ) This is the first Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex wallpaper I've found that's both big enough to fit my screen without stretching, and depicts a Tachikoma in a realistic, not cartoony, way. I have a soft spot for these cute "think tanks," as I do for any machine with a sense of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice. I found these and a lot more at 4scrape. You have to filter through a lot of screen captures, porn, and varying degrees of 4chan wank to get to anything decent, but it's worth it. ⎋
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Aztec xocolātl cupcakes, a variation on last week's Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes:
Read more at Endless Simmer.
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Is there someone here? Is there a presence in the room? Is there a name by which you are summoned? Is it Diana? Is it Adam? Is it Juno? Is it Pilot? Is it Echo? Is it Jason? Is it Sun? Will you speak to us? Will you say something, a word, a question? Will you tell us where you come from? We mean you no harm, but you are not welcome here. This place is not your home, but we are not here to repatriate you. You have made your presence known, and we are compelled to render unto our retainers that which belongs to them. What world is your home? This world? The next world? The sea beneath the water? The silver sky above the night? Is there someone there? Can you hear us? Are you there? ⎋
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While "golden-age" science fiction magazines carried the same Americana themes, soft-science concepts, and post-war ideals as their perfect bound counterparts in the paperback section, the cover art often suffered. Suffice it to say that a magazine cover serves the same purpose as a book cover; to draw the potential buyer in with bright colors, flashy typography, and starbursts of barely contained keywords like "cosmic," "infinity, and doomsday." If there's any spare white space, add in an arcing rocketship, some fire of indeterminate origin, and the occasional suggestion of sex; dippy cleavage, an elevated calf, cameltoes on a jumpsuit, etc.
- Group 1: More Goddamn Rockets
   The rockets portrayed on the cover of If: Worlds Of Science Fiction are pretty conventional and utilitarian, obviously designed to carry warheads and not astronauts. Still, the styles of the time (August, 1957) bleed through: the cherry-red paint job of the missiles, the Cadillac influence on the steering fins, but even a dozen years after the close of World War II were dudes still sporting fur-collared bomber jackets? It's hard to tell who's in deeper shit on the cover of Amazing Stories, the poor flaming dope about to be crushed by a teetering black dart, or little fishbowl-headed Billy running as fast as he can with a full load in his spacesuit. "Mooommm! I don't wanna be an astronaut anymooorrre!" "You're paying for that rocket out of your allowance, young man!"The red rocket for Imagination, while probably not drawn to scale, is still a rather petite design; like a woman's razor, or a tube of lipstick, or an electrically-powered handheld appliance of some sort. Check out the silver accents at the tip, the fluting around the exhaust, and the little landing feet at the ends of the fins. Too bad the two fashion plates on either side appear increasingly worse than the other as you look between them. The nice lady on the right at least took time to coordinate her colors, but maybe the E.T.'s species are genetically color-blind, who knows?    Minimalism at its worst for the December 1957 cover for Imagination. Not only is it false advertising, (the story is more concerned about administration than devastation) but the layout of elements is the archetype for every mismatched-couple-hurrying-away-from-imp ending-danger cover art and movie poster that's been churned out for decades since. OMG RUN AWAY FROM THE GIANT FLAMING CHEEZE BALL WTF At least the science implied by the art for Satellite is slightly more feasible. The arc of the Earth is a little less extreme, the rocket-powered asteroid is suffering the effects of hitting the atmosphere at such a steep angle, (despite the green corona, WTF) and if potential alien invaders wanted to deploy a first strike against our planet, sending a giant space rock with a fusion engine crammed up it on a collision course with the intention of kicking off a new Ice Age would be the last thing we would expect. Another cover from Imagination, but this one isn't so bad as the first of this group: an invading flotilla of shiny cobalt saucers, a city in ruins, and jumpsuits! It's practically a hat trick of iconic Golden Age sci-fi clichés! Still, there's a glaring blank spot in the upper left-hand corner of the sky, and an even more blatant disparity in costumes. Why does the dude get such comfy-looking, blousy togs, (with epaulets and a chest insignia, even!) while the woman, (in distress, of course) has to make do with the chafing shame of the form-fitting catsuit? She doesn't even get a belt, and that outfit would only benefit from one, honey. - Group 3: To The Stars, With Difficulty
   The cover art for Galaxy is actually pretty neat, because it tells a story in a single picture. Crashed spaceship. Empty pressure suit. A robot all out of chewing gum. The title itself, "To Avenge Man," suggests one of the better aspects of science fiction, a story told from the perspective of a non-human protagonist. While today's audience has been spoiled rotten by the tiresome Star Trek axiom of the prevailing human spirt, a story centered on an honor-bound machine must have been startling back in 1964. Similar to Amazing Stories's flammable clusterfuck from the first group, the space dorks posing for Imaginative Tales really stepped in it this time. Ignoring for a moment the skullcaps and shirtsleeves that make them look like the morning zoo team from Radio Spanish Inquisition, it really only looks like the crispy critter-to-be under the rocket's nether regions is screaming something like, "YOOOU BASTAAARD FRAAANK!" While it may be Frank's fault that he hid his chronic sweaty palms from NASA's screening committee, how was he supposed to know he was ever going to be put into a situation where he would have to pull his co-pilot up from a fiery doom? Finally, the collection The Second World Of If appeals to our sensibilities with a no-brainer cover bound to tug at our manifest destiny heartstrings. A sleepy Earth bobs in the distance, its terminator between night and day striped with gradient pastels, little dudes in bunny suits stroll around wielding vaguely functional doohickeys, waving at each other in a right neighborly way, and all around them, the desolate charm of the Moon's chalky, stinking, airless desert. SCREW EARTH LET'S MOVE HERE ... For whatever reason; budget constraints, low-ball artists, or sudden death deadlines, the fronts of some of these pulpy periodicals never quite match the compositions created for their more sturdily-constructed brethren, which doesn't necessarily make either better or worse than the other. While the art made for these mags was primarily providing indirect advertising for the printed product, it still manages to convey the same pioneer spirit that colored the days between Sputnik and Apollo. Oh well. ⎋
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What are you like in person? What are you like in real life? What are you like when no one is looking?
Do you want anyone to know?
How much do you reveal? How much do you hold back? How do you know what to release and what to retain?
What don't they know?
What do you keep? What do you keep close, closer, closest to you? What do you keep hidden, keep buried, keep in lockdown?
What would it hurt to let some of it go? Who would it hurt if some secrets were released into the wild? Where is the sense in dying with a heart heavy with footnotes?
The truth is always beautiful, even when it hurts like Hell.
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Joey Biscuit: Hey, wanna make some cupcakes for me?
me: Sure, why not. The conversation was a little more involved than just that, but not by much. The original order was for four dozen cupcakes of varying varieties. We only really needed three dozen. I started on Thursday and ended up with five by Saturday. This is the story of those five dozen. - Dozen The First: Gluten-Free Vanilla
 Real men take their cupcakes with sprinkles.We pretty much have the baking thing down in Cat Spit Kitchen, vegan or otherwise, but the gluten-free chops are still a little embryonic. After a few mishaps involving xanthan gum, it became evident that there is no real magic bullet when it comes to a vegan binder in baking, it's all dependent on the situation. My binder of choice is flax seed, and while these cupcakes were passable taste-wise, they're rock-solid in the structure department. Okay, poor choice of words. Dense, but not chewy. Firm, but not rubbery. Vanilla with notes of oatmeal. - Dozen The Second: Gluten-Free Chocolate-Coffee
 It's the all-seeing eye of Sauron! No chocolate is beyond his sight!The idea for this one came partially out of the need for more gluten-free practice, and the want to incorporate instant coffee into a recipe. malibish recently tweeted about using coffee for ice cream, which reminded me how I used to put it in brownies. Two tablespoons of brewed joe went into the batter, an additional teaspoon of granules went into the frosting, along with another teaspoon of coffee extract. - Dozen The Third: Maple-Walnut Redux
 Maple: it's not just for Canadians any more.An all but bulletproof recipe. with a lot going for it. It's sweetened only with maple syrup which, while still just another form of sugar, at least doesn't carry the stigma of refined white. It uses spelt flour which, while not gluten-free, is smoother than wheat flour, possesses more protein, and is more easily digested by the body. And if you take off the walnut, it's nut-free. - Dozen The Fourth: Mint Julep Redux
The decision to make these boozy brothers was made before I remembered I was making these for a kid's party; a faux pas that may have jinxed the recipe from the start. They came out of the oven underdone in the middle, the tops started breaking during de-panning. they kept slipping out of their little hippie diapers during frosting, and the mint I picked came with tiny little white flying bugs on the leaves. And then, when it came time to transport, it recalled the occasional episode of Ace Of Cakes when you wonder why those dumbfucks don't invest in a proper delivery vehicle instead of just tossing shit in the back of a POS van and then bitching about how their cakes fall apart when they arrive at the wedding/bat mitzvah/ quinceañera/Viking coming-of-age ceremony/whatever.  OMG CUPCAKE-TASTROPHE WTFOh well. These were the weak links anyway. - Dozen The Fifth: Mexican Hot Chocolate Style
 The bad girl of the cupcake world. You know you want her, but she'll crush you like a bug.Definitely the clear winner of all the batches. A tender, fudgey crumb made über-moist by the use of coconut milk, tiny little crunchies courtesy of almond meal in the batter, a dynamic nose-tongue connection by way of freshly ground cinnamon, and the secret ingredient: cayenne pepper. The first bite is like any other bite, om nom nom, etc., then blam, ka-blooey, wicka-wicka-wicka; a little blossom of heat in the back of your throat. Just like the Aztecs used to eat before that asshole Cortez came along. ... Lessons learned: don't give kids too many choices, it's more acceptable to give kids coffee than alcohol, and everyone looks like a kid when they have a cupcake in their hand and frosting on their face. ⎋
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Tell her she looks nice. Tell her she's silly and strong. Tell her she can do anything. Tell her that you miss her. Tell her what you're afraid to tell her. Just tell her. Tell him you'll always have his back. Tell him he's a good man. Tell him he can do anything. Tell him that he makes you all mixed-up inside. Tell him he's enough. Just tell him. Tell her the truth. Tell her how much it hurts. Tell her what you want, what you need, what you already know is going to happen. Tell him what he wants to hear. Tell him how it feels. Tell him what you want, what you need, what you deserve. If you don't, the story stops. ⎋
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Just say no. Just say maybe. Just be noncommittal. Just be hedgy. Just be wishy-washy. Just be bipartisan. Just be ambiguous.
Just don't say yes. Don't sign anything. Don't be concrete. Don't lean into the wind. Don't stand up in the middle of a nor'easter. Don't box yourself in.
You only have so much time. You only have so many hours in the day. Precious hours, precious days, only so much time. You give most of your time away. You get so little back as compensation. You get so little back. You only have so much.
So you keep what matters. You keep what you need. You keep it close. You collect only that which brings you joy, generates beauty, and maintains balance. You strike a balance between outside and in. You sign an armistice with neighbors and lovers. You line the demilitarized zone with poppies.
And you sacrifice what forces you into painful contact with the earth.
You have no love for Gaia, but you have no investment in her torment, either. You are fully vested with Diana, and yet engage in regular and open trysts with Ra. And still you pine for the the security that Echo can never give you.
You hover, so briefly, with every step.
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When did fell creatures of the abyss become so boring?
For the past few months, Your Humble Narrator has been slogging through two very different books. The first is Team Of Rivals, an intricate, thickly-layered, painfully researched multiple biography of Abraham Lincoln's Civil War cabinet. The other is Twilight.
Laugh if you want, but there is a method to this seeming madness. Given the choice between enlightenment and ignorance, I'll take my chances with reading a hyped book and making an educated judgement instead of drawing half-baked suppositions when I don't really know any better. I did the same thing with Godless, The Da Vinci Code, and The God Delusion; among others, and it's something I encourage everyone to do, no matter what their choice of mass media may be. Challenge yourself to understand why you like or dislike something, instead of just following it or demonizing it blindly.
But whether it's the complementary complication of a complex history lesson, the disorganization of time management at Monkworks and GDI, or the schizophrenic meteorological and neurological moodswings, Twilight is, so far, the death of me. It's not that it's a particularly poorly-written book, but it also isn't terribly well-crafted, either; it falls into the purgatory of being neither good nor bad, it's merely mediocre, middle-of-the-road, meh. And because it isn't interesting enough to keep me engaged for more than a chapter or two at a time, but it also isn't so incompetent as to be laughably readable, it puts me in an uncomfortable position; that of considering whether or not I've already crossed the point of no return and should just barrel through to the end, or decide that it really isn't worth it to continue wasting time hacking away at it piecemeal and give up on it.
This isn't a casual decision, in light of the above credo towards knowing and not knowing. For some readers, starting a book is akin to entering into a verbal contract; while breaking it won't necessarily have any documented repercussions, it can be like going off your diet; something in you feels guilty for not being able to follow through. On the other hand, five fingers: there are countless numbers of books both superior and inferior to Twilight that have gone completely unread by Your Humble Narrator, and yet somehow, the planet still spins. So how is it that starting and stopping a book halfway in is the greater evil than completing or never starting a book?
Adding to the burden, not only was this book a gift, but I asked for it; no one at a book club pushed this thing on me, I volunteered. And if you volunteer for something, you really have no grounds to complain.
Oh, well.
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