Month: October 2004

William Gibson on Ronald Reagan

“You can go see the whole thing if you want to:”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2004_10_01_archive.asp#109830395050849655

bq. If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I’d certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan’s presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.

What’s that, Kerry’s a bad Catholic?

Funny enough, though, “Bush is a worse one”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005639.html.

Of course, Bush makes no pretense of being a Catholic–or even of going to a church–so, in this wierd, upside-down world we live in, that means he’s _less_ subject to criticism than Kerry.

While I wouldn’t mind a cheap, tawdry fling with Wonkette

(can one imagine having any other sort with her, and then being derided mercilessly for at least 18 hours on the site?), I imagine I’ll have to restrict myself to being amused by her use of such amusing phrases as

bq. …”but that’s why the baby Jesus invented mixers, buddy.”:http://www.wonkette.com/archives/tiny-jon-stewart-and-his-crushed-self-esteem-023725.php

Holy shit, Batman!

Well, first, “I’m glad to see William Gibson is back blogging.”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/blog.asp.

But, much more important than that, “Peter Weir”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2004_10_01_archive.asp#109820696339947239 (whose film “The Wave”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0076299/ I should probably view again sometime, to see if it’s as confusing now as it was when I saw it at 10 or 11) is currently slated to direct a movie of Gibson’s novel “Pattern Recognition”:http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0425192938&itm=2.

Although I haven’t re-read it yet, I think ??PR?? is probably Gibson’s best novel, period. Yes, better than Neuromancer, if, perhaps, less ground-breaking.

An interesting phenomenon…

When you know people who work at, or have worked at, some large company, like, say, eBay, or Amazon, they always seem to get hooked into the “wierd shit” list for whatever the purveyor is.

Thus, Alex Yan brings to my attention both “weaponry”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/search.html/sr=3-5/qid=1098124101/ref=sr_3_5/002-6239427-1189612?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=3415301&rh=a%3A3415011%2Ca%3A3415301 and “mascot costumes”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=sc_fe_c_4_0/002-6239427-1189612?%5Fencoding=UTF8&node=3402211&no=3402161&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER.

Furries, anyone?

James Duncan on the iMac 65

“Read the whole thing here”:http://x180.net/Journal/2004/10/13.html#imac.

bq. The new iMac G5 that I hinted at a few weeks ago has arrived. Of course, the first thing I did was open it up and admire it like the techno-porn star that it is.

Heh.

Oh My God

The inimitable “Fafblog”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/ succeeds in making “a pointed commentary”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_10_10_fafblog_archive.html#109770844064284783 about an ideology that focuses on 3500 fetuses and yet pointedly ignores the suffering of millions.

What if we are all the man in the high castle?

“What did Philip K. Dick know?”:http://www.geocities.com/pkdlw/MIHC.html

Will Shetterly “rebuts Patrick Neilsen-Hayden’s alternate-world scenario in which Bush won the 2000 election”:http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2004/10/what-if-george-w-bush-had-been-elected.html.

James Wolcott is a divider, not a uniter

“Writing about his experience at NY is Book Country”:http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2004/10/sunday_in_the_p.php:

bq. It gave me a good feeling inside watching these two bats go at it. When I began Attack Poodles, full of the idealism that accompanies the arrival of the first advance check, I dreamed of writing a book that would drive a wedge between ordinary Americans, that would bring strangers together and have them turn on each other within minutes without quite knowing why. And on this Sunday afternoon in New York came proof that I had accomplished my mission.

I hereby resolve to not talk politics

While–should I get back to any sort of substantive posting before November 2, which is unclear at this point–I may “link to things other people have to say”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/10/an_indecent_dis.html, or discuss the way my involvement in all this has changed me, I don’t think I can continue to talk about my feelings, because it’s obvious that when I do so I am unable to rise above fairly corrosive incivility.

So I’m going to stop. I’m unlikely to convince anyone, no matter how well I document the compulsive mendacity, or the failed programs or the disastrous policies, if I can’t even begin to make the case at anything less than a primal scream.

More yoga is probably the answer. Or more gin and tequila. It’s probably situation-dependent.