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Saturday Post – Hacks


Online predators (it’s not what you think) disguised as missionaries.

Independent bookstores turn a new page on brick-and-mortar retailing - The Washington Post-1Because pointing out that Thomas Friedman is vaguely racist (in a neo-colonial way) idiot whose grasp of current economic and socio-political realities is on par with a chimpanzee who has been locked in a room with a March 3, 1971 edition of Time Magazine.

Oracular revelations and the artist as mystic.

I’m not convinced by the author positing Norman Mailer as a great public intellectual (though, the author is very upfront about Mailer’s deep flaws), but it’s something I think about a lot. The idea of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert deliberately shrugging off the possibility of becoming ‘public intellectuals’ is interesting (and not something I would have thought of), but the point about Paul Krugman drills down to the real issue. Sort of. It’s not just that Krugman’s writing is typically specialized (I wish he would write more deeply about science fiction, apparently, one of his great affections). It’s that the ideal of the generalist is nearly impossible to attain. I read many years an essay where the author wrote that Goethe was the last Renaissance man (in the sense of being able to write and study and theorize as an expert in an incredibly wide range of human knowledge). He was not only a great poet, but one of the greatest novelists of all time. He was a scientist, who wrote innovative papers on meteorology. Too much is out there and available to humanity for someone to realistically be sufficiently well versed in a wide variety of intellectual fields (particularly the sciences) to contribute to a wide variety of fields.

Ooohhh… a new bookstore has opened up in Frederick, Maryland. Not so far away, or not so far away from my work. But otherwise, this is your standard (and, thankfully, accurate so far as I know) story about how indie bookstores are making a comeback.

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Weekend Reading – Oddly Inadequate


Space-Detective-1952The case can be made that he has been more successful than I.

Magazines in the poetry ecosystem.

I already knew this.

Just one of many things wrong with his books, I suspect. Not that I would know from experience. I’m not ashamed to say that I tend to avoid this kind of book. Though I did start (but never finished) Guns, Germs and Steel.

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I’ve Been Seduced By ‘Almost Human’


download (1)I know for certain that my friend Ryan (whose nickname in college was Satan) watches this show. I haven’t spoken to him about it, but he has a pact with his namesake, requiring him to watch every science fiction show and movie that comes out. So surely he’s watched this.

The two leads have good chemistry. The ‘human’ lead I think of particularly fondly, mainly because he was in The Lord of the Rings, playing Eomer. Rather like Kiefer Sutherland, who had such success with the right wing, masturbatory fantasy, 24, Karl Urban is maybe not a big enough presence for movies, but is just right for a television show that aims big.

The little touches of advanced technology that are added in, without detracting from the human element (or human-like elements; after all, the premise is that cops have androids for partners) remind one of William Gibson’s best work.

Anyway. I’m hooked. Along with Castle, this should keep me entertained on my Monday nights.

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Spoiler Alert!


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Tom Baker has a surprise appearance in The Day of the Doctor!

Matt Smith was talking, when you could hear a voice behind him. I thought, is that? Could it be? Please!

And there he was!

In a brief little featurette (their word, not mine), Steve Moffatt said something along the lines of ‘There was the Doctor [meaning Matt Smith, the actor currently playing the Doctor] and then there’s THE DOCTOR [meaning Tom Baker, who is still the gold standard and really, the person you mean, or the person you should mean, when you talk about ‘The Doctor’ in singular] walking up behind him.’

This is the first time Tom Baker has appeared in a Doctor Who episode since leaving the show (in stories like The Five Doctors, he declined to participate and stock footage was used to explain away his absence).

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Day Of The Doctor


Why yes! Yes, I am going to see the fiftieth anniversary special, Day of the Doctor in 3D at Georgetown on Monday, November 25th. Why do you ask?

And for all those who don’t know me and haven’t figured it out yet… we are talking about Doctor Who here.

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Apparently, this is a real thing.original

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Futurama Finale Made Me A Happy Kind Of Sad


Futurama is gone. And I’m sad.

I didn’t watch it religiously, but I always liked. And I remember my friend McBride expounding upon how it was the best show on television, better even than it’s older sibling, The Simpsons. This was during its first incarnation and I was rather dismissive of this particular opinion, but I respect him a lot, so I did, consciously or not, start watching the reruns on Comedy Central.

And then it came back.

And I realize why it is better, at least for me. I don’t have a traditional family. I have a better half, good friends, and random extended family in my home and my life. My relationships, oddly, are much more like those in Futurama than the traditional, nuclear family of The Simpsons.

And the finale was so sweet. Leela and Fry spending a life together, just the two of them. And Leela saying that she wasn’t lonely once. I had to go hug my better half after that. And then following the finale up with the pilot episode, because they (Fry and Leela) were ready to do it all over again.

So. TIme to start watching all of Futurama again.

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Frederick Pohl Died


I am embarrassed to say I never this veteran of science fiction’s golden era. Another name familiar to those who haunted used bookstore shelves, running their fingers over row upon row of spines with names like Pohl and Saberhagen and Burroughs and Asimov and Lackey and dozens more…

Have to get off my tuckus and read his classic (so I hear) The Space Merchants.