George Orwell's Animal Farm

     You thought you knew what the book was about?  MSNBC is repeating their notion that it's really about Greedy Capitalists™. 

     Greedy capitalists like Michael Bloomberg, y'think?  George Soros?  Maybe?

     Flamethrower-level stupid.  This is why I don't blog so much about politics so much any more -- that much deliberate misapprehension is toxic in close proximity. 

Farewell, Jeffro, And Godspeed

     The world is a little bit less today -- Jeff Borland, known to the blogosphere as Jeffro, passed away yesterday.

     He was a good guy, treated by the Fates with undue harshness in recent years.  I miss him already.

Omigawd-Dark-Thirty

     It comes way early.  It creeps up on little cat feet, concealing claws the size of an eagle's talons, cruel and merciless and disinclined to allow dawdling on the Internet or over TV reruns.  In the dark and chill, it demands I pretend day is dawning  and later extracts revenge by leaving me hovering on the verge of sleep -- neither here nor there, unawake and yet not napping.

     And tomorrow, I'll get to do it again.  If it weren't for the chance of at least two breakfasts a day, it wouldn't be worth it.

Read The Fine Print

     The Mexican Mole Lizard has a somewhat disappointed expression, and no wonder-- Picture it, the Day Before Creation, all the little blob-like proto-critters receiving their assignments: the Pink Fairy Armidillo has already got hers, and is bobbing up and down with excitement, imagining tutus and magic wands rather than a career spent eating bugs in the desert.  Now the Hand of Fate turns to the next one, holding a contract.
     "Oh, wow!  I'll be a sleek, partially scaled critter, with hands and arms and a long tail and a kinda-handsome, person-like face?  I'll be under the surface most of the time?"  He signs with alacrity, and turns to the puggle-to-be beside him, "Dude!  I'm gonna be a merman!"

     Well, no; you see, Bipes biporus, the Mexican Mole Lizard doesn't even get to be a snake that can open doors (and thank goodness for that: "Bing-bong, mole lizard calling!"  No thanks). They're about the size of a large pencil, and hunt for scaled-down edibles underground.  They do have convenient little forelimbs -- and a permanent expression of mild chagrin.

Radio Theatre, Late Modern Style

     Samuel R. Delany's The Star Pit was produced as a radio play in the 1960s, starring the young writer himself.  One of the genuinely interesting things produced by Pacifica (WBAI, in this case) long before their recent descent beyond ordinary way-out-there-ness into ineffectual craziness.

Dinner For Breakfast Or Breakfast For Dinner?

     I'm not sure; with my days turned upside-down, I made another batch of Eggs Pomodoro, this one with chorizo and "sweet Italian" chicken sausage, mushrooms, green onions and half a Serrano pepper in the tomatos and tomato sauce.  Plenty of basil, rosemary, parsley and Italian seasoning, plus a tiny bit of garlic and celery seed, resulted in a very tasty sauce in which to poach the eggs.

     Tam likes everything but the eggs, which left one for me to take into work for lunch with a little more of the sauce.   

Long Slog

     I went into work -- North Campus -- a little after midnight.  I'm still at work (Main Campus) now and I'll be here until at least ten a.m.

     Oh, what fun!  But I did (with the help of a skilled tower worker) get one long-awaited task accomplished, so there is that.  And I'm considering some kind of Broad Ripple breakfast for my dinner.

     Whups, my five minutes are up!  Smoko's over.  See ya later.

I'm Sleeping In

     I have got to walk my working hours around the clock this week, starting with a 12-hour day, four days of Zero-Dark-Thirty to noon and ending with an early-teatime-to-midnight shift.  I already have a huge sleep debt and I've got to get it paid down before I even think about anything else.

Overheard, Poorly

RX (walking in to VFTP/TAORX C3I with a plate of nice slices of orange fruit): "Look, Tam: Minneola Tangelo!  Nature's candy!"

Tam (deep into some kind of Quest or Adventure involving Orgs and/or Mujahideen who may or may nor have set us up the bomb): "What?  'Maya Angelou is Nature's candy?'"

RX: "Yes, Tam.  Yes she is."

I'm Tired

     I'm tired of a lot of things.  I'm tired of idiots.  I'm tired of BS.  I'm tired of doctors who can't be arsed to write up and fax a simple referral so my Mom can get the care she needs when she needs it, instead of when her surgeon has to cancel because she's got problems obvious to even his diagnostic skills.

     I'm tired of numb-nuts and riders of the drama llama; I'm tired of shallow morons and ponderous, amateur intellectuals; I'm even tired of real intellectuals.  I'm tired of culture wars, culture warriors, and I'm tired of "happy warriors" who leap into the fray yelling at me to follow when I wasn't even in the battle. I'm damned tired of the yahoos that dance along the sidelines, yelling variations on "Let's you and him fight!  Fight!  FIGHT!" with blood in their eye and the foresight of a mayfly.  You people are sucking all the beauty, joy and fun out of life and you're not even drinking the juice.  A pox on all of yez, a murrain upon your cattle, bit-rot on your hard drives and premature switch failure on your keyboards.  I'll read what I like, I'll judge it by any criteria that damn well appeal to me -- literary merit, authorial politics, personality, entertainment value, cover art and/or sheer whim -- and bedamned to anyone who demands I do otherwise, a damnation now threatening, from sheer frustration and annoyance, to spill over onto those who merely request or suggest criteria for evaluating SF to me.

     I'm tired of working in a business that is circling the drain, all the while shrieking, "Things are better than ever!" as profits shrink, paychecks shrink in terms of real-world buying power for everyone outside of top management, staffs shrink and they tell you you're such a valuable team member but never replace equally-valued staffers who die, retire or manage to quit.  They're replacing us all with robots and ever-sloppier standards and what worries me -- of all things -- is that they probably can't do it quickly enough to stay afloat long enough for me to reach retirement age, even if my job manages to dodge elimination or outsourcing until the bitter end.

     I'm tired of headaches, of gnawing pain inside the bones of my face that no reputable kind of doctoring can diagnose and the quacks* can't cure.  I'm sick of bad knees and fading hearing, of tinnitus and tiredness and slowing reactions.

     I'm tired of two-faced politicians.  I'm tired of empty-headed politicians.  I'm tired of self-appointed pundits who can't distinguish between incompetence, idiocy and evil and I'm tired that they appear to be our only choices at the ballot box. I'm tired of religious people and I'm tired of atheists, neither of which have, in the aggregate, very good STFU skills. I'm tired of tone-deaf partisan shills.  I'm tired of being embarrassed by Ted Nugent, who can't keep his feet out of his mouth or find graphic artists who can properly spell "Ammendment" on posters touting his speech at the NRA AM.  I'm plenty tired of professional PR shill Shannon Watts and her phoney-baloney claim to speak for "Mothers."  (Does she even have kids?).  I'm tired of legislators and of legislative alerts.  Stop inventing new crimes, dammit! I'm tired of overpriced .22 ammo and I'm tired of being too tired to go bust caps on my days off.

     And I am damn tired of bad weather.  Spring has hardly crept from its den, bringing cold rain and nights so chill I've had to turn the furnace back on.

     Need some better stuff.  Soon.

_____________________________________
* See "NICO," who was also -- and with nearly equal levels of controversy -- a singer who performed lead vocals on the Velvet Underground's first album.  Hunh.

Snow In Late April?

 Nope.

My Mom Is Back In The Hospital

     Mom went in for some routine surgery -- as much as surgery is ever routine -- but the surgeon took a look at her and sent her to the ER.  She'd been bothered by persistent dizziness and had been trying to get a neurology referral.  Mission accomplished on that, anyway, and while she's in hospital, they'll make sure she gets food she can eat.

     Keep her in your thoughts, please.