I'm So In Love With You, I'll Be Forever Blue

[snurri]

I got my first LJ comment spam last night! It turns out, this guy? His wife left him for another guy? And there's video now on the Internet of her doing this stuff with the other guy? That she would never do with the first guy? So this guy wanted me to see the video of his wife and this other guy? . . . Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. BUT, I figure this is some sort of rite of passage, and I fully expect to have chanting and nude bonfire leaping later.

I am experiencing the fatigue and heartburn that usually presage a cold. (Does anyone else get heartburn pre-cold? I hardly ever get it, so if it happens two nights in a row I can be pretty sure I'm getting sick. I've never heard of this as a cold symptom, but there it is.) I suspect that by tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning, I'll be miserably stuffed up. So I have that to look forward to, which is nice. (Maybe I should pass on the nude bonfire activities.)

It occurs to me that the whole Astronaut weirdness really just signals a new acceptance of the Astronaut people into our culture. Now they really are just like us! Just because they come from space doesn't mean they don't occasionally decide to murder each other. Man, I can't wait until the first Senator plots someone's murder. What? Why are you laughing?

I wonder if Pynchon already knew that the Vikings used crystals to navigate when he wrote Against the Day? (Which is AWESOME, BTW. It has airships and anarchists and journeys through the center of the earth and that's just in the first hundred pages. I'm still reading, though, so please don't spoil me for anything!) (I must say that the linked article is some pretty bad journalism: "Vikings were a seafaring race from Scandinavia who used their longboats to explore and conquer parts of Europe, Greenland, Iceland and Russia." WTF? The Vikings were a separate race? Did they came from space as well?)

Look! Smart people talking!

The fashion must-have for WisCon 50. (Via Warren Ellis.)

Excuse me a second. (What? Really? . . . huh. I, uh--are you sure?!? Well, I just thought . . . OK, fine.) Sorry, folks. Turns out Astronauts don't actually come from space. Turns out they are HUMAN BEINGS. (Vikings too?) Vikings, too.

Now I've got a wiggins.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

>I fully expect to have chanting and nude bonfire leaping later.

Dude! In this weather you'd have to leap _into_ the bonfire, to avoid freezing to death.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it's like there, but here it's already getting a little better. So, no plans for self-immolation.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

Vikings, like Astronauts and the Aztecs, were seeded on Earth lo these many ages ago, by mystical beings from a distant galaxy. They were sent here to balance the scales of Good Vs. Evil and protect the fledgling human race from Senators. It is not working.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Are you the one who gives Thomas Pynchon his ideas?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

You silver-tongued devil.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

They spend so much time out there with the high energy particles shooting holes in their brains, by the time they get back they might as well be from space.

(That and, NASA asks them questions like, would you be willing to give up your family and your job and put your life on hold for 5 years for the chance to go into space? 10 years? 20 years? And if you flinch, you're out.

...might be selecting for a certain kind of personality, there.)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Cosmic rays! Do they come back all stretchy?

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Apparently they come back all green and capable of superhuman feats of rage!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Dude. Those are gamma rays and they have nothing to do with space. Just a bomb site in the desert. I thought you were some kind of scientist! Feh.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Gamma rays from space are going to destroy the Earth.

I think the horrific revelation of that certain knowledge is what drives the astronauts mad...

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Hulk will outlive them all. Hulk is the strongest of them all! Why won't they leave Hulk alone?!?

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Freddie Prinz Jr. can't love you like Hulk can!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Hulk is going to destroy New York now! It's all your fault, Betty!

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Now I've got a wiggins.

Ralph or Chief?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

[Shudders.]

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

That's a wiggum. S.

[susansugarspun.livejournal.com]

I bet he did know, actually. Matt keeps trying to lure me into reading Pynchon by telling me that it's chock-full of history of science. (Like the Duck in Mason & Dixon. Which I haven't read.)

Just, uh, for the record, my not having read Pynchon isn't a principled stand or anything, it's just that I keep not getting around to it.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Is Gravity's Rainbow the one you keep starting, putting down at page 32, and never picking back up?

[susansugarspun.livejournal.com]

That's the one. The thirty-odd pages that I read (and have read five times), I absolutely love. I adore it. There is no reason at all that I haven't gotten any further.

Maybe this should be my new project.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Would it help if we offer to mock you if don't put in 10 pages a day?

... she says, having been stuck at pg. 84 of The Female Man for the past year.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

The Female Man isn't even long. You have no excuse.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Also, my college roommate? Was a comparative lit major, and she hated hated HATED having to read Gravity's Rainbow. Her bitching about it made for pretty funny stuff... but it pretty cemented a permanent excuse for not reading it into my brain.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

For me the thing about Pynchon is you can't read him fast, as I imagine she probably had to for a class. I do about a chapter a day, two if I'm pushing it. And it's not because I don't want to read more, but because there's a lot to absorb. The prose isn't that dense, it's just the ideas.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Mason & Dixon is my second favorite, I think. Although I haven't read Gravity's Rainbow.

And yeah, I think you would geek out over some of the stuff. This book is totally SF with lots of alternate science history stuff. Tesla's made an appearance already.

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

Nothing without Tesla. It must be about time for the Tesla backlash. Right-wing, nativist Edisonades celebrating the victory of the kid from Menlo Park over the evil Hungarian immigrant mastermind, that sort of thing. You heard it here first!

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Wiscon _50_? That's optimistic of you.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

Er, by which I mean, it will take that long before we're wearing that, not that there will be 50 Wiscons.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU FOR COMPLETELY KILLING MY URGE TO REPRODUCE.

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

My pleasure.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm nothing if not optimistic.

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

Turns out they are HUMAN BEINGS. (Vikings too?) Vikings, too.

Wait, Astronauts are Vikings? Now it all kind of makes sense, actually.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

We may have just found the missing link.

Thanks for all the science, everybody!

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Does anyone else get heartburn pre-cold?

I get a cold spot between my sholderblades that no hot shower can fix.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Really? Bodies are weird. I can't wait until we're all just bits of data, and snot is just bad output.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's an actual cold spot on my skin that other folk can feel (and not one I just perceive.)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Are you by chance an avatar of some hidden universe?

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I am sadly not geeky enough to get this comment but here is a superhero icon to hide that fact.

[snurri.livejournal.com]

It just sounded like something that might happen to someone who turned out to be an avatar of some hidden universe. But I will proudly carry the flag of geeky comics knowledge.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

Well then there's still a chance I am. FEAR ME PUNY MORTALS!