Tuesday, June 14, 2005
trip, book, song
Hey guys!
Looks like I'm gonna try and pull off an overnight train ride to see some of you in Vermont over July 4th weekend! Have you all changed that much in 4+ years??? Your photos look normal (relative to how 'normal' we were in high school) but who knows what to expect?
I'm almost wrapped up with Season 4 of Mr. Show. I've managed to not devour 10 episodes in one day, but much to my surprise on two of the episodes so far I got to see the comic stylings of a younger Gordon Crisp from Freak and Geeks!!! He is the missing link between the two shows I own on TV, there must be a meaning to it all.
Oh by the way there is a minor actor in #1 movie the Blues Brothers (a non-speaking role who played one of the Illinois Nazis) who also has a minor role in #2 movie Fargo (he was the guy who called William H. Macy a f--in' liar). So there.
I just wrapped up a book I'd like to recommend to ya'll... of just talk about. I have been a science fiction kick for a couple of years now. Using old short story collection and this list as a framework to explore modern science fiction classics. I have had some really wonderful and surreal reading experiences, but I have also picked up what's entertaining to people that like to read sci-fi and what would be entertaining to people that like a good fictional concept.
Gateway, byFrederik Pohl is one of the latter I think. The concept is that there is a future with very little natural resources and very little jobs or careers that offer any sort of upward mobility. However, on an asteroid in our solar system a whole system of tunnels was discovered, with hundreds of alien spaceships perfectly intact in these tunnels.
These spaceships are hundreds of thousands of years old and they still operate, only in ways that no humans can understand. They don't know where they can go exactly, they don't know when the fuel gets empty, but they do go faster than any human spacecraft to further reaches of the universe, to planets and systems that are set by a course-setting device that humans don't know how to control exactly. Humans can ride in these and submit themselves to a russian roulette style of prospecting. There is a high ratio of mission failures and crew deaths, but if a prospector happens to find an alien artifact or something that can be used to keep the human race alive through the use of new alien technology, they can get tons of wealth and be set for a life of luxury for the rest of their lives.
That took a little too long to explain, but I hope I convey to you the sense of hopelessness that is pervasive throughout the book, where the only chance to get out of a life of misery and poverty is to take one of these ships which might blow up, run out of feul, or take too long to reach its destination to the point where you starve--and take it to a random unknown location under a distant chance that it is near a planet that is capable of being explored for a ticket to freedom and what in the book is called "Full Medical" meaning all the health care you need. Anyway, there was a lot of tension and the book was well written. As with a lot of sci-fi books, it is part of a series of novels, so there are some unfunished elements, but standing alone its very entertaining, even with a slightly abrupt ending.
Finally, check out this link to a song by Sufjan Stevens called.... Chicago! It's one of those songs that is really awesome the first 2 or 3 times you hear it, then you think its kind of sappy, then you listen to it a few months/years later and its great again! You know... those kind of songs.
Click on download on this webpage to listen!
So I'm in the state where I invested my time in a novel and now I want to decide what to read next, so I'm open for suggestions. However, I want it to be fiction, and it doesn't have to be sci-fi but I would like it to be as dynamically unrealistic as possible without being too bizarre. Something thrilling, not strictly emotional. Like a political drama or something. Anyway the floor is yours.
Looks like I'm gonna try and pull off an overnight train ride to see some of you in Vermont over July 4th weekend! Have you all changed that much in 4+ years??? Your photos look normal (relative to how 'normal' we were in high school) but who knows what to expect?
I'm almost wrapped up with Season 4 of Mr. Show. I've managed to not devour 10 episodes in one day, but much to my surprise on two of the episodes so far I got to see the comic stylings of a younger Gordon Crisp from Freak and Geeks!!! He is the missing link between the two shows I own on TV, there must be a meaning to it all.
Oh by the way there is a minor actor in #1 movie the Blues Brothers (a non-speaking role who played one of the Illinois Nazis) who also has a minor role in #2 movie Fargo (he was the guy who called William H. Macy a f--in' liar). So there.
I just wrapped up a book I'd like to recommend to ya'll... of just talk about. I have been a science fiction kick for a couple of years now. Using old short story collection and this list as a framework to explore modern science fiction classics. I have had some really wonderful and surreal reading experiences, but I have also picked up what's entertaining to people that like to read sci-fi and what would be entertaining to people that like a good fictional concept.
Gateway, by
These spaceships are hundreds of thousands of years old and they still operate, only in ways that no humans can understand. They don't know where they can go exactly, they don't know when the fuel gets empty, but they do go faster than any human spacecraft to further reaches of the universe, to planets and systems that are set by a course-setting device that humans don't know how to control exactly. Humans can ride in these and submit themselves to a russian roulette style of prospecting. There is a high ratio of mission failures and crew deaths, but if a prospector happens to find an alien artifact or something that can be used to keep the human race alive through the use of new alien technology, they can get tons of wealth and be set for a life of luxury for the rest of their lives.
That took a little too long to explain, but I hope I convey to you the sense of hopelessness that is pervasive throughout the book, where the only chance to get out of a life of misery and poverty is to take one of these ships which might blow up, run out of feul, or take too long to reach its destination to the point where you starve--and take it to a random unknown location under a distant chance that it is near a planet that is capable of being explored for a ticket to freedom and what in the book is called "Full Medical" meaning all the health care you need. Anyway, there was a lot of tension and the book was well written. As with a lot of sci-fi books, it is part of a series of novels, so there are some unfunished elements, but standing alone its very entertaining, even with a slightly abrupt ending.
Finally, check out this link to a song by Sufjan Stevens called.... Chicago! It's one of those songs that is really awesome the first 2 or 3 times you hear it, then you think its kind of sappy, then you listen to it a few months/years later and its great again! You know... those kind of songs.
Click on download on this webpage to listen!
So I'm in the state where I invested my time in a novel and now I want to decide what to read next, so I'm open for suggestions. However, I want it to be fiction, and it doesn't have to be sci-fi but I would like it to be as dynamically unrealistic as possible without being too bizarre. Something thrilling, not strictly emotional. Like a political drama or something. Anyway the floor is yours.
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Hey Jonah, Nothing pops out - bookwise, but I will warn you away from 'State of Fear', by Michael Crichton. It is very looong and a tad boring (resembling Stephen King novels), and I normally like his stuff. I am currently reading 'First They Killed My Father,' a book by a Cambodian gal during the Khmer Rouge times, but it is non-fiction. - It is one of Vy's, and I thought I would die of boredom, but it is proving to be a good read. Good luck in your quest...Have you read the Dan Brown (The Davinci Code) books yet?
# posted by 
: 12:19 AM
: 12:19 AM
well i'm not sure if i have much to offer in the book corner. i gave laura some piers anthony books--the incarnation of immortality series--and she's been enjoying them. that would bring you back to science fiction, though. and i have to agree with the dan brown recommendation, if you haven't picked his books up yet. they're pretty dramatic, as well as somewhat unrealistic.
but what i really wanted to say--i listened to the sufjan stevens song "chicago" and really enjoyed it. thanks for posting the link...
but what i really wanted to say--i listened to the sufjan stevens song "chicago" and really enjoyed it. thanks for posting the link...
# posted by : 10:31 AM
: 10:31 AM
well thanks for the suggestions.
Melissa, Laura did lend me Da Vinci Code, so like just about every literate person on the planet I've read that, and was entertained by it, but in a very straightforward way. I'd look like such a conformist too if I was carrying around Angels and Demons on the train, though. But I'll keep it in mind. I looked up Piers Anthony books on a sci-fi author databse and it looks like the Immortality ones are fantasy (correct me if I'm wrong) which doesn't pique my interest as much as science fiction although I've read some books that blur the distinction between those two genres.
I don't know if I described my interests very well. Basically, I like science fiction because if its really good it creates very unfamiliar images and sensations in your mind (and if you're lucky in your subconcious while you're dreaming) but it grounds those images within a framework of a perceivable future society. It's almost hallucenigetic at times so I don't need to start taking recreational drugs. If there is any other literature out there that can have that effect while still being coherent, I'd be up for it.
But I found a classic nonfiction narrative on the Watergate scandal called All the President's Men, which my Mom gave to me a while ago. That might be my next book.
But keep expanding my horizons. I have a bunch of scifi in my backlog and I might get bored with just reading that. well.. probably not.
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Melissa, Laura did lend me Da Vinci Code, so like just about every literate person on the planet I've read that, and was entertained by it, but in a very straightforward way. I'd look like such a conformist too if I was carrying around Angels and Demons on the train, though. But I'll keep it in mind. I looked up Piers Anthony books on a sci-fi author databse and it looks like the Immortality ones are fantasy (correct me if I'm wrong) which doesn't pique my interest as much as science fiction although I've read some books that blur the distinction between those two genres.
I don't know if I described my interests very well. Basically, I like science fiction because if its really good it creates very unfamiliar images and sensations in your mind (and if you're lucky in your subconcious while you're dreaming) but it grounds those images within a framework of a perceivable future society. It's almost hallucenigetic at times so I don't need to start taking recreational drugs. If there is any other literature out there that can have that effect while still being coherent, I'd be up for it.
But I found a classic nonfiction narrative on the Watergate scandal called All the President's Men, which my Mom gave to me a while ago. That might be my next book.
But keep expanding my horizons. I have a bunch of scifi in my backlog and I might get bored with just reading that. well.. probably not.
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