This is brilliant.
That is all.
Sunday, 12 October 2008
Friday, 10 October 2008
Missing The Point
It may no longer be at its best (or, in truth, particularly near to its best), but XKCD has been good to us over the years. Last year Vomiting Mike was kind enough to buy me one of their t-shirts as a birthday present (well, actually as three combined birthday presents, because the man is an idiot) based on this particular strip:
Much as I love the shirt, though, it can lead to complications whenever I wear it around the department.
Big Dave: What the Hell is that on your t-shirt?
SS: It's XKCD merchandise. I think the idea behind it is-
BD: Bollocks to the idea behind it, equation 4 is bullshit and chips.
SS: What?
BD: Look at it, Squid; you're multiplying the identity matrix by heart!
SS: So?
BD: So that must equal heart. Not question mark; that's just retarded.
SS: You're assuming a compatible matrix.
BD: What?
SS: Well, what if heart has a non-compatible dimension. 4x5, say.
BD: Then the expression itself is meaningless.
SS: The question mark represents meaningless, you fool, it's a maudlin statement on how
love can't be-
BD: And what's that supposed to be, a probability integral? This is the least mathematically viable piece of clothing I've ever seen.
SS: Christ, Dave, you need one of these t-shirts more than I do.
I love my job.
Much as I love the shirt, though, it can lead to complications whenever I wear it around the department.
Big Dave: What the Hell is that on your t-shirt?
SS: It's XKCD merchandise. I think the idea behind it is-
BD: Bollocks to the idea behind it, equation 4 is bullshit and chips.
SS: What?
BD: Look at it, Squid; you're multiplying the identity matrix by heart!
SS: So?
BD: So that must equal heart. Not question mark; that's just retarded.
SS: You're assuming a compatible matrix.
BD: What?
SS: Well, what if heart has a non-compatible dimension. 4x5, say.
BD: Then the expression itself is meaningless.
SS: The question mark represents meaningless, you fool, it's a maudlin statement on how
love can't be-
BD: And what's that supposed to be, a probability integral? This is the least mathematically viable piece of clothing I've ever seen.
SS: Christ, Dave, you need one of these t-shirts more than I do.
I love my job.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Funny 'Cos It's True
I've been idly wondering for a while whether there will be a parallel between the way the Conservatives reacted to the '97 Labour Landslide and the manner in which the GOP will respond to their now almost inevitable defeat at the start of November. It seemed that anyone with any real brains realised that a moderate centrist was the only viable choice this time around, but there are a great number of conservatives convinced that they should have chosen someone less wishy-washy. It's the usual refusal to accept any given evidence could possibly count against conservatism as an idea. Bush was a bad president because he was too neo-conservative, McCain is losing because he isn't neo-con enough. It's at least possible, and I would say likely, that these elements of the Republican base will make it horribly difficult for another moderate candidate to get anywhere in the primaries (and let's not forget that McCain was a moderate candidate, although at this point he'd promise to blow up the planet if he found out the Martians wanted it and had 270 electoral votes in their pocket-equivalents), and that until the Republican's allow their brand to become more moderate, the voters won't touch them.
I'll admit that it isn't beyond the possibility that another Bush would get traction, because of the nature of American politics. Even so, we potentially stand on the brink of a situation similar to that suffered by the Tories for eight or so years, with the hardliners repeatedly nixing any attempt at large-scale change and leaving Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard all bleating on about small changes to reflect current events, whilst Labour kept pointing out that the Tories used to be all kinds of shit and haven't bothered altering that fact. It's been obvious for years that they needed their own version of Tony Blair, and in Cameron they finally sort of have it (I say "sort of" for a number of reasons, but mainly because nothing he has done since taking control gives me any confidence that he isn't still bound to the hardliners, and just better at hiding it than Howard et al).
Turns out Kevin Drum is thinking along similar lines:
I'm not sure that I'd have chosen Labour as my analogy, but I don't really remember that period too well, and it's entirely possible that Labour were as divided between change and stasis, and I just didn't notice. Regardless, it makes far more sense (especially on an American blog) to name-check Blair rather than Cameron, so I guess it doesn't really make that much difference.
I'll admit that it isn't beyond the possibility that another Bush would get traction, because of the nature of American politics. Even so, we potentially stand on the brink of a situation similar to that suffered by the Tories for eight or so years, with the hardliners repeatedly nixing any attempt at large-scale change and leaving Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard all bleating on about small changes to reflect current events, whilst Labour kept pointing out that the Tories used to be all kinds of shit and haven't bothered altering that fact. It's been obvious for years that they needed their own version of Tony Blair, and in Cameron they finally sort of have it (I say "sort of" for a number of reasons, but mainly because nothing he has done since taking control gives me any confidence that he isn't still bound to the hardliners, and just better at hiding it than Howard et al).
Turns out Kevin Drum is thinking along similar lines:
...[T]he GOP is going to be riven by factional warfare for years, with moderates unable to get a purchase on the party apparatus because of the McCain albatross hanging around their necks. Eventually, like Britain's Labor Party in the 80s, they'll find their Tony Blair, but in the meantime they're likely to double down on the most strident possible social conservatism, convinced that the heartland will respond if only they regain the true faith. Ronald Reagan, who was more pragmatic about these things than any of them ever give him credit for, will be rolling in his grave. And Democrats, at least for a while, will go from strength to strength.
I'm not sure that I'd have chosen Labour as my analogy, but I don't really remember that period too well, and it's entirely possible that Labour were as divided between change and stasis, and I just didn't notice. Regardless, it makes far more sense (especially on an American blog) to name-check Blair rather than Cameron, so I guess it doesn't really make that much difference.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
None More Black
Warning: the following post contains a discussion of potential implicit racism in a tabletop war-game. If that isn't for you (and let's be honest, who could blame you), then I'd recommend tuning back in tomorrow, when hopefully I'll be spouting off about a more relevant issue.
For the rest of you, let me tell you a story.
Subbuteo is rubbish. It always has been rubbish, and it always will be rubbish, unless at some point the game is tweaked to allow tanks, air-strikes, or possibly a referee with a flamethrower. Part of its crapness can be accounted for by the fact that football itself is a feeble excuse for an activity, both dull on its own merits and responsible for the idolising of any number of selfish unthinking thugs whose complete inability to live within the confines of society is tolerated as long as they can kick something at a net with more accuracy than most. This is not to say all footballers are scum, just that the ones that are should be more clearly labelled. Possibly with gravestones.
In addition, the game mechanics of Subbuteo are pretty poor, sort of a cross between marbles and tiddlywinks, only at, like, seven thousand times the cost (give me Blood Bowl any day, at least that way vampires can get in on the action). The only time this wretched pastime has been of any interest in the entire history of its miserable, static-generating existence was when at some point during the early nineties someone accused it of being racist.
The argument was pretty simple; every single player was white, even in teams which were entirely black in the real world. Hasbro's defence, if memory served, was simple economics; cheaper to buy pink paint in bulk. Whatever the outcome of that particular spat, these days Subbuteo is a veritable explosion of ethnicity, so everyone got to live happily ever after.
My point in all this? Sometimes people offend by omission in the strangest ways. Also, painting is a serious business.
Let's talk about something else. One of the most interesting aspects of stories set in the future, to me at least, is how they deal with the question of race. Whatever criticisms you can level at the second two Matrix films (and God knows, there are plenty of options), I really liked the fact that every natural born human was some shade of brown. It made sense to me that decades of interbreeding between the only 250,000 humans left free would leave my pasty Caucasian complexion several rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder [1]. Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy imagined an interstellar human civilisation in which most planets boast populations almost entirely made up from people of one former Earth country. Simmon's Hyperion Cantos (yes, back to that again) works along similar lines, the idea being (though this is much more explicit with Hamilton) that with all the other things a colonial population will have to deal with on an unknown and potentially hostile world, it doesn't make a lot of sense adding ethnic strife to the pot as well.
Warhammer 40,000 (hooray! I approach my point) has a similar idea for different reasons. At least, probably for different reasons. By the 41st Millenium so much history has been lost that it's anyone's guess as to how the first colonies were put together, but certainly the march of the centuries has led to increasing homogeneity across the population of each human world. Which is all fine and dandy, in theory, but in practice it seems like every planet in the Imperium is crammed full of white boys. Cadia, Catachan, Mordian, Armageddon, the survivors of Caliban, not one of them looks like they can dance worth a damn. The Blood Angels have names that invoke Italy, the Crimson Fists (arguably) a Hispanic culture, on and on and on. A certain amount of effort went into using the Mongols as templates for the Attilans and the White Scars, in that they have long hair and/or silly hats (plus they ride about the place, how ironic), but in general, it's all so depressingly monochrome, Subbuteo mixed with Aliens.
The only real evidence that the galaxy wasn't colonised entirely by the Klan used to be the brothers of the Salamander Space Marines (see here, for example). OK, so they had an odd habit of dyeing their hair blonde, which made them look upsettingly like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, but still, they were unrepentantly non-Caucasian, and the universe was the more interesting for it.
So what do Games Workshop do? They take the only ethnic variant population in the whole damn galaxy and they mutate them the fuck up. No longer are they the latest generation of the original tribes of humanity, now they all have jet black skin and shiny red eyes. These days, apparently, you're either white or you're a grotesque deviant. It doesn't even make any sense, frankly. The 40K universe is renowned for the fact that an army's name and symbolism reflects their nature as well. The Space Wolves are Viking-like and unruly (and occasionally werewolves, or something), the Blood Angels are violent vampires, the Dark Angels are taciturn and brooding, etc. What's with this, though? Is it really just that the Salamanders are big fans of flame weapons (that, at least, makes sense) and flame, like, makes things black? They're supposed to look like they've been hit with their own weapons? That's like having an army of chainsaw wielding lunatics who are all missing limbs. Or is it just that they come from a moon that is always dark, and black is really, really dark?
It annoys me, is all I'm saying.
[1] One thing that always got me about The Matrix was that your residual self-image more or less looks like you. But then if you look like your parents in the Matrix, then the only possible explanation is that the machines have robots whose job it is to ensure that the right semen gets to the right pod. "What do you mean Stan and Sarah Elliot just got it on? They're eight thousand miles apart out in the fucking Real! I have sixty-three other copulating couples to get through tonight!".
I don't want that guy's job.
For the rest of you, let me tell you a story.
Subbuteo is rubbish. It always has been rubbish, and it always will be rubbish, unless at some point the game is tweaked to allow tanks, air-strikes, or possibly a referee with a flamethrower. Part of its crapness can be accounted for by the fact that football itself is a feeble excuse for an activity, both dull on its own merits and responsible for the idolising of any number of selfish unthinking thugs whose complete inability to live within the confines of society is tolerated as long as they can kick something at a net with more accuracy than most. This is not to say all footballers are scum, just that the ones that are should be more clearly labelled. Possibly with gravestones.
In addition, the game mechanics of Subbuteo are pretty poor, sort of a cross between marbles and tiddlywinks, only at, like, seven thousand times the cost (give me Blood Bowl any day, at least that way vampires can get in on the action). The only time this wretched pastime has been of any interest in the entire history of its miserable, static-generating existence was when at some point during the early nineties someone accused it of being racist.
The argument was pretty simple; every single player was white, even in teams which were entirely black in the real world. Hasbro's defence, if memory served, was simple economics; cheaper to buy pink paint in bulk. Whatever the outcome of that particular spat, these days Subbuteo is a veritable explosion of ethnicity, so everyone got to live happily ever after.
My point in all this? Sometimes people offend by omission in the strangest ways. Also, painting is a serious business.
Let's talk about something else. One of the most interesting aspects of stories set in the future, to me at least, is how they deal with the question of race. Whatever criticisms you can level at the second two Matrix films (and God knows, there are plenty of options), I really liked the fact that every natural born human was some shade of brown. It made sense to me that decades of interbreeding between the only 250,000 humans left free would leave my pasty Caucasian complexion several rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder [1]. Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy imagined an interstellar human civilisation in which most planets boast populations almost entirely made up from people of one former Earth country. Simmon's Hyperion Cantos (yes, back to that again) works along similar lines, the idea being (though this is much more explicit with Hamilton) that with all the other things a colonial population will have to deal with on an unknown and potentially hostile world, it doesn't make a lot of sense adding ethnic strife to the pot as well.
Warhammer 40,000 (hooray! I approach my point) has a similar idea for different reasons. At least, probably for different reasons. By the 41st Millenium so much history has been lost that it's anyone's guess as to how the first colonies were put together, but certainly the march of the centuries has led to increasing homogeneity across the population of each human world. Which is all fine and dandy, in theory, but in practice it seems like every planet in the Imperium is crammed full of white boys. Cadia, Catachan, Mordian, Armageddon, the survivors of Caliban, not one of them looks like they can dance worth a damn. The Blood Angels have names that invoke Italy, the Crimson Fists (arguably) a Hispanic culture, on and on and on. A certain amount of effort went into using the Mongols as templates for the Attilans and the White Scars, in that they have long hair and/or silly hats (plus they ride about the place, how ironic), but in general, it's all so depressingly monochrome, Subbuteo mixed with Aliens.
The only real evidence that the galaxy wasn't colonised entirely by the Klan used to be the brothers of the Salamander Space Marines (see here, for example). OK, so they had an odd habit of dyeing their hair blonde, which made them look upsettingly like Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man, but still, they were unrepentantly non-Caucasian, and the universe was the more interesting for it.
So what do Games Workshop do? They take the only ethnic variant population in the whole damn galaxy and they mutate them the fuck up. No longer are they the latest generation of the original tribes of humanity, now they all have jet black skin and shiny red eyes. These days, apparently, you're either white or you're a grotesque deviant. It doesn't even make any sense, frankly. The 40K universe is renowned for the fact that an army's name and symbolism reflects their nature as well. The Space Wolves are Viking-like and unruly (and occasionally werewolves, or something), the Blood Angels are violent vampires, the Dark Angels are taciturn and brooding, etc. What's with this, though? Is it really just that the Salamanders are big fans of flame weapons (that, at least, makes sense) and flame, like, makes things black? They're supposed to look like they've been hit with their own weapons? That's like having an army of chainsaw wielding lunatics who are all missing limbs. Or is it just that they come from a moon that is always dark, and black is really, really dark?
It annoys me, is all I'm saying.
[1] One thing that always got me about The Matrix was that your residual self-image more or less looks like you. But then if you look like your parents in the Matrix, then the only possible explanation is that the machines have robots whose job it is to ensure that the right semen gets to the right pod. "What do you mean Stan and Sarah Elliot just got it on? They're eight thousand miles apart out in the fucking Real! I have sixty-three other copulating couples to get through tonight!".
I don't want that guy's job.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Thanks For The Memories (I'm Too Tired For Originality Today)
So the Guardian has up a thread on songs about memory. Specifically the nature of memory, and the tricks it plays, rather than "Remember that time I screwed that chick? That was awesome!", which I would guess invalidates about 98% of songs which deal with the topic.
Rather than join in the debate over there (which by this point is probably an argument about Muslim immigrants anyway) I thought I'd slap together my top five memory-related songs and display them here.
1. Avalanche - Ryan Adams
In which our alt-country hero finds a picture of a former girlfriend and realises that he can't actually recall who she is. "I can't remember you, remember us, or anything." He's built up so many memories over the years that they've begun to obscure one another, or run together. "She comes apart in the avalanche/ Fades out like a dance". It's a rather depressing reminder that even the people we think are most important to us right now sometimes just fade away given enough time apart.
2. Pictures of You - The Cure
"I've been looking so long at these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that they're real/ I've been living so long with these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel." At what point have you stopped loving someone, and have just started loving the memory of when you did?
3. My Selective Memory - The Eels
No video for this one, which is a shame as it's a beautiful song (anyone who's heard Fresh Feeling off of the Scrubs soundtrack will already know the string part, E has never been above a spot of "self-sampling"). It's also ridiculously depressing. When the singer sleeps, he has a vision of himself as a baby in the park, whilst someone (perhaps his mother, perhaps his sister) is next to him in a polka-dot dress. She leans in and whispers something in his ear, something that to this day he is sure is "Everything I need to hear". Every time he wakes, though, he can no longer remember what it was. "I wish I could remember/ But my selective memory won't let me." It's the use of the word selective that gets me. Is his memory deliberately hiding what was said? Why? Because it's bound to be a disappointment? Because it might make things worse? Or is his brain just perversely conspiring against him in the way they so often seem to?
4. Hard Candy - Counting Crows
A song about the benefits and perils of memory. On the one hand, whenever the character in the song is dissatisfied, he can reach into his mind and pull out memories of one extraordinary woman he once knew. He can't be sure of the specifics anymore, but that isn't really important anymore. On the other hand, whilst he sleeps he visits his dead mother, only to find that those memories are fading, and with it the comfort they used to bring.
Of course, whilst the specific images may not last forever, the combined effect still lasts, which is why waking in the morning with the sun shining on your face still makes him feel content. His emotional responses still carry memories that his brain has begun to let slip away.
Also, I should note that the album version of this song is somewhat less mental.
5. Chelsea Hotel #2 - Leonard Cohen
I may be cheating a little here, since this is a little closer to a threnody for the departed than a true discussion of memory, but it's my blog and I make the rules. Also, this is probably one of Cohen's best songs, which is really saying something. I guess I can sneak it in on the grounds that Cohen goes into incredible detail about this one memory, the conversation, the location, the (ahem) fellatio, works it all into his usual poetry about the nature of things, and then confesses at the the end that that's really all he remembers about their time together, on the rare occasions that he thinks about it at all. I like the idea that people tend to some up their entire past relationships with just one or two of the most beautiful memories, whilst all the more more mundane or even unpleasant surroundings fade into the distance.
Anyway, those are my picks. Any other suggestions?
Rather than join in the debate over there (which by this point is probably an argument about Muslim immigrants anyway) I thought I'd slap together my top five memory-related songs and display them here.
1. Avalanche - Ryan Adams
In which our alt-country hero finds a picture of a former girlfriend and realises that he can't actually recall who she is. "I can't remember you, remember us, or anything." He's built up so many memories over the years that they've begun to obscure one another, or run together. "She comes apart in the avalanche/ Fades out like a dance". It's a rather depressing reminder that even the people we think are most important to us right now sometimes just fade away given enough time apart.
2. Pictures of You - The Cure
"I've been looking so long at these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that they're real/ I've been living so long with these pictures of you/ That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel." At what point have you stopped loving someone, and have just started loving the memory of when you did?
3. My Selective Memory - The Eels
No video for this one, which is a shame as it's a beautiful song (anyone who's heard Fresh Feeling off of the Scrubs soundtrack will already know the string part, E has never been above a spot of "self-sampling"). It's also ridiculously depressing. When the singer sleeps, he has a vision of himself as a baby in the park, whilst someone (perhaps his mother, perhaps his sister) is next to him in a polka-dot dress. She leans in and whispers something in his ear, something that to this day he is sure is "Everything I need to hear". Every time he wakes, though, he can no longer remember what it was. "I wish I could remember/ But my selective memory won't let me." It's the use of the word selective that gets me. Is his memory deliberately hiding what was said? Why? Because it's bound to be a disappointment? Because it might make things worse? Or is his brain just perversely conspiring against him in the way they so often seem to?
4. Hard Candy - Counting Crows
A song about the benefits and perils of memory. On the one hand, whenever the character in the song is dissatisfied, he can reach into his mind and pull out memories of one extraordinary woman he once knew. He can't be sure of the specifics anymore, but that isn't really important anymore. On the other hand, whilst he sleeps he visits his dead mother, only to find that those memories are fading, and with it the comfort they used to bring.
Of course, whilst the specific images may not last forever, the combined effect still lasts, which is why waking in the morning with the sun shining on your face still makes him feel content. His emotional responses still carry memories that his brain has begun to let slip away.
Also, I should note that the album version of this song is somewhat less mental.
5. Chelsea Hotel #2 - Leonard Cohen
I may be cheating a little here, since this is a little closer to a threnody for the departed than a true discussion of memory, but it's my blog and I make the rules. Also, this is probably one of Cohen's best songs, which is really saying something. I guess I can sneak it in on the grounds that Cohen goes into incredible detail about this one memory, the conversation, the location, the (ahem) fellatio, works it all into his usual poetry about the nature of things, and then confesses at the the end that that's really all he remembers about their time together, on the rare occasions that he thinks about it at all. I like the idea that people tend to some up their entire past relationships with just one or two of the most beautiful memories, whilst all the more more mundane or even unpleasant surroundings fade into the distance.
Anyway, those are my picks. Any other suggestions?
Monday, 6 October 2008
Literary Corner With SpaceSquid: The Hyperion Cantos
Over the last two months I've been working my way through Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos, made up of Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. I just wanted to mention that I finally finished the series last week whilst sunning myself on the Isles of Scilly, and that they are beautiful. The books that is, not the Scillies, though those too are awesome and anyone stuck for a place to unwind could do far worse than check them out, assuming you don't mind there being only one club on the entire archipelago, which is universally considered to be shit (I didn't go, since even the "best" clubs put me in mind of a cattle market under strobe lighting).
I really don't want to give too much away regarding the plot of the books (though some references to the underlying philosophy are inevitable), since it's both tremendously intricate and cleverly drip-fed to the reader. What appear to be universally known facts in the early chapters turn out to be star system-spanning lies later on. Events that seem unsatisfactorily explained in the first book finally make complete sense by the end of the fourth. It's an impressive achievement, even if there are some slight continuity slip-ups that creep in from time to time (whatever else you can say about these novels, they desperately need another proof-read).
This much, I can tell you. The first two novels are set some eight hundred years in the future, and mankind has reached the stars. Two methods for interstellar travel exist. First is the Hawking drive that allows star-ships to attain FTL speeds (which incur relativistic effects upon the occupants, leading to the concept of "time-debt"), an invention humanity developed itself; second are the farcasters, portals allowing instantaneous travel from one point to another, given to mankind by the AI's of the Technocore, one-time human creations which have now formed their own independent state in an unknown location or locations. It's a good thing they did, too, since humanity was forced to flee Earth hundreds of years ago in a mass exodus known as the Hegira because of... well, that would be telling. The Technocore and the people of what is now called the Hegemony have allied themselves against a third group known as the Ousters, humans who left the solar system before the Hegira began and now exist in forms unknown and within massive space fleets spread across unknown space, which nip into Hegemony territory now and again to cause mischief and the occasional planet-wide war.
In theory, there should be no contest between the Ousters and the Hegemony, since the latter's alliance with the Technocore gives them access to the most powerful tactical and predictive minds in the known galaxy. The problem is that the Ousters seem most interested in the backwater world of Hyperion, which is the only planet across the human realm that is impervious to AI analysis. The reason for this is the Time Tombs, bizarre structures on the surface of Hyperion that appear to be travelling backwards in time. At present they are empty, but then they would do, it's the moment that their backwards travel reaches it's "end" that the Hegemony has to worry about, since that's when whatever was/will be in them gets set loose into an unprepared universe.
The $64,000 dollar question: What exactly will emerge? No-one knows, or at least if they do they're not telling. The only clue is somewhat less than encouraging, a giant metal four-armed killing machine that stalks Hyperion, murdering at random and in exceptionally brutal ways. Named the Shrike, it is a legend to some, a God to others, and an executioner to more. It is said that each person "killed" by the Shrike is in fact impaled upon a tree of thorns to writhe in agony for all eternity, and there are those with good reason to believe that this may well be more than just a story.
That's the set-up, then, but it hardly begins to cover the sheer scope and invention of the Cantos. The first book tells the tale of seven pilgrims travelling to the Time Tombs, each for different reasons. These travellers explain their reasons for embarking upon the journey as they go, making Hyperion more a collection of short stories than a novel, though each tale ties in to the wider galactic situation. The individual stories themselves are almost uniformly excellent, and cover both a bewildering array of ideas (arboreal space ships, time-shifting soldiers, carpets that fly by manipulating the EM field of a planet, and Armageddon via black hole, to name just a a few), and a wide number of genres, from the quasi-horror story of the cruciforms, the film-noir-esque investigation into the death of Johnny, the love-and-war tale of Colonel Kassad, and the almost unbearably poignant history of the Wandering Jew. A couple of the tales are skewed a bit too much towards filling in background than they are about telling a satisfactory story in themselves, but even those are never less than entertaining. For all the pilgrims reveal to each other and to us, though, we leave them with scarcely more idea about what is going on than we did when we arrived, although we have begun the mammoth task of separating fact from fiction and truth from falsehood, processes with which the series concerns itself.
It's in The Fall of Hyperion, though, that Simmons gets serious. Events on and above Hyperion are reaching a head, and the stakes are much higher than almost anyone has realised. It is in this second novel that the true nature of the series becomes clear. The basic question: can humanity progress to a level to which it would be indistinguishable from Godhood, by reaching the so-called Omega point, and if so, what form would it take and would such a thing even be desirable? More importantly, how close have we already come, who and what represents our greatest developments towards this hypothetical point, and how might we best build upon these accomplishments, if indeed such a thing is wise?
In this second book, these ideas are touched upon but not really discussed in detail. Whilst religion itself suffuses the novel (just as it ran through its predecessor), much of the focus is upon the consequences of such attempts to reach apotheosis, rather than the process. After all, the Time Tombs are proof that something of unimaginable power exists in the far future. Is it a human God, or one born of the Technocore? Are such distinctions even going to be relevant by then? Is there something else out there? All of these are important questions with the fate of mankind on the line, so you can forgive people assigning a low priority to the discussion of how all this came about.
The two things that Simmons does make clear is the two conditons required or humanity to progress as a species (and he is very careful to point out that progress is very different to evolution). Firstly, it cannot occur within a stagnant society. Human nature might desire stability, but that same nature requires fluidity to move forward. A vital component to the Human Godhead must be the conscious desire to alter oneself as philosophy and circumstances dictate (this is later explained with truly exceptional simplicity in Aenea's two word message to the universe in The Rise of Endymion).
The second component must be empathy. We begin, both as individuals and as a sentient species, as simple animals. We express our love for our parents and for our God (however we define him or her) by obeying their commands. As we develop, we begin instead to define our own love by our fear of losing that love from others. We no longer jump to attention because of the order itself, but because of a desire to prove ourselves worthy of love. It is in this context that we suffer the various kicks from the universe some call acts of God.
Simmons argument is that a third stage is reached when we no longer obey, or suffer from fear of what we lose by disobedience, but agree to enter into a partnership. We decide to do what we know we should because we recognise its legitimacy and because we love those that surround us. Keats, whose influence is obvious throughout all four books (it's no coincidence that Hyperion and Endymion are both works by the poet "whose name was writ on water") put it another way, that we rise from the level of animals once we become capable of forming permanent bonds of mutual affection with our friends, and then enter a new stage when we reach true love, the point where the "mutual" becomes less important (however desirable) than the "affection". The true Godhead, at least as far as anyone of us can reach it, is to act in a way totally contrary to evolution. Even cooperation with a group in a way that deleteriously affects ourselves is not without precedent in nature (Dawkins points out in The Blind Watchmaker that selfish individuals do better than cooperative ones within groups, but that cooperative groups do better than selfish ones). Total sacrifice, though, totally independent of gain to anyone but those you love, is far rarer. For devotion to mean anything, it has to exist independently both of primal survival motivations and of a fear of losing what you have.
Of course, the true key here is that those without empathy can't truly grasp what the concept means. On some mechanistic level they might understand its effects, and take advantage of it, but it is impossible to truly understand it any more than I can understand what it feel like to be a father just because I've met a lot of other men who have children. Something is lost in translation. Simmon's characters come to realise that whatever exists in the future, influencing "present" events on Hyperion in what is at one point referred to as a "four-dimensional chess game", it can be easily determined as to whether or not it was born of man or of machine by its level of empathy. It's an emotional Turing test, if you like, and one which is eventually put into practice, with surprising and far-reaching consequences.
The third and fourth books are set three hundred years after the confluence of events upon Hyperion. The human race has undergone great change in the intervening decades, but has once again begun to ossify. The desire for power and control and immortality has once again taken over from an inclination for change. Stasis, though, is living on borrowed time. The private revelations of The Fall of Hyperion are threatening to reach the entirety of humanity.
Endymion, more than anything else, is set-up. Which is not to suggest it is without merit, though I think it entirely unsurprising that it was the only of the four novels that failed to win the Locus Award for best science-fiction novel. In some ways it returns to the form of Hyperion, in that it feels more like a half-dozen short stories than it does a continuing narrative. Perhaps a better analogy though would be The Hobbit, or the first eight chapters of The Lord of the Rings, a tale of exploration and travel necessarily episodic in nature as the characters move from one place to the next.
Like Hyperion, though, Endymion becomes more than the sum of its parts. Aenea, the young girl around which these latter two novels are based (Endymion himself may be the narrator, but neither he nor we are under any illusions that this is his story) is convinced that each world they come to in their journey has been chosen for them to visit, by powers unknown, to reveal the true depth of the danger humanity finds itself in. Along the way, Aenea fills in some of the philosophical gaps left from The Fall of Hyperion, which along with its predecessor exist in some form within their universe as the Hyperion Cantos, written by one of the original pilgrims.
This is one of the latter books' chief conceits, that what we know from the original novels is in fact simply one man's telling of the story. He had access to a great deal of information of the comings and goings across the galactic stage, but he was still human, still fallible, and still reliant on the information he was given. At best this allows Simmons to radically alter the chess board in unexpected and fascinating ways. At worst it seems like a cheap cop-out to retcon the events into shapes that the author can do more with. But I digress.
As I say, Endymion does its job competently enough, as a reintroduction to a changed galaxy, to the characters that will alter that galaxy forever come The Fall of Endymion, and as a set-up for the coming interstellar crucible. It may not do it with the same flair or variety that Hyperion managed, but that book was so exceptional it seems almost churlish to lament the fact that Simmons couldn't quite pull the same trick twice.
Anyway, all is forgiven by the conclusion of Rise of Endymion. While it almost completely lacks the adrenaline-surge of the later chapters of Fall..., what it delivers is far more interesting. It is here, finally, after three-point-whatever novels, that we finally understand how we are to reach the Omega point. As is common in these books, the secret is revealed early, but makes absolutely no sense until later. Step 1: Learn the language of the dead. Step 2: Learn the language of the living. Step 3: Learn to hear the music of the spheres. Step 4: Take the first step.
What exactly Aenea means by that in terms of the plot is anyone's guess, at least for several hundred pages. When the big reveal arrives, it proves to be nothing less than a galaxy-wide manifesto for human (and non-human) existence for the rest of eternity. Of course, this is a world of cybrids and nanotech and Hawking drives, and Aenea's plan for sentient life unfolds in those fantastical terms. What is truly important, though, I think, is that the four steps can easily be interpreted in more mundane terms as well. Learning from history comes first; the dead, after all, will never change their story. Next, we learn from those that surround us, a harder task than the first, since no sooner have we understood one truth than it twists and bends in front of us as humanity rearranges itself into new shapes. Third, we learn from everything else that surrounds us, which doesn't really have a voice in anything but the most abstract sense, but needs to be heard all the same. Finally, take the first step: get off your arse and get into the game. Aenea gives plausible reasons as to why her own sci-fi flavoured version of this progression has to come in that order, but it works so well in our own world that I find it hard to believe Simmons wasn't thinking along more... earthbound lines.
So there you go. Endless invention, epic space battles, killer time-shifting robots, multiple genres, musings on the nature of Keats, and a coherent philosophy regarding how humanity can and should become something better. It also has the best sex scenes I've ever read, in case that sways you. If Peter F. Hamilton ever read any of them he'd swear off ever trying to write another omni-sexual bionic-enhanced orgy scene ever again, and both I and literature itself would thank him for it. Rather than the clinical and/or voyeuristic blow-by-blow (sorry) account of what gets stuck where and when, Simmon's characters' sexual encounters focus entirely on the feeling of sharing youself with someone you adore to such an extent that it makes your ribs hurt. The sex is incidental, Simmons is describing love.
In fact, that works as a more general description of the series. Books about love, in pretty much every single one of its iterations. If I sound uncharacteristically sappy, then I promise you I'm not any happier about it than you are. I'm guessing the sudden arrival in Fall... of the idea that love is an essential element of the universe came as a surprise to plenty of readers, given that Simmons, through Aenea, tries to justify its inclusion in the Cantos (it's an odd feeling reading an author use a character he is writing to justify the ending of a book he wrote but was also written in the universe he is writing in, if that makes sense; reading that back gives me a headache). And, yes, it kind of took me by surprise as well. Usually in the kind of books I read love is just a cheap way to increase the emotional impact when Captain Killian Redthrust's new wife gets eaten by a rampaging space lizard forcing him to swear an oath of undying revenge. But it works, it works very well, and it's really nice to come across a unashamedly atheist philosophy that isn't depressingly nihilistic (Nietzsche), offensively selfish (LeVey), or just an excuse to give organised religion a good kicking (Dawkins). I always wondered if the faithless could ever get themselves organised into something greater than any of that. Frankly, you could do worse than using this as a first step. Or, given Simmon's ideas, perhaps I should call it Step Zero, or even the Alpha Point.
I don't think it matters. Time to get in the game.
Right, that should do for now. I'll try to be a bit less heavy next time around. Anyone want to hear my thoughts on Noddy?
I really don't want to give too much away regarding the plot of the books (though some references to the underlying philosophy are inevitable), since it's both tremendously intricate and cleverly drip-fed to the reader. What appear to be universally known facts in the early chapters turn out to be star system-spanning lies later on. Events that seem unsatisfactorily explained in the first book finally make complete sense by the end of the fourth. It's an impressive achievement, even if there are some slight continuity slip-ups that creep in from time to time (whatever else you can say about these novels, they desperately need another proof-read).
This much, I can tell you. The first two novels are set some eight hundred years in the future, and mankind has reached the stars. Two methods for interstellar travel exist. First is the Hawking drive that allows star-ships to attain FTL speeds (which incur relativistic effects upon the occupants, leading to the concept of "time-debt"), an invention humanity developed itself; second are the farcasters, portals allowing instantaneous travel from one point to another, given to mankind by the AI's of the Technocore, one-time human creations which have now formed their own independent state in an unknown location or locations. It's a good thing they did, too, since humanity was forced to flee Earth hundreds of years ago in a mass exodus known as the Hegira because of... well, that would be telling. The Technocore and the people of what is now called the Hegemony have allied themselves against a third group known as the Ousters, humans who left the solar system before the Hegira began and now exist in forms unknown and within massive space fleets spread across unknown space, which nip into Hegemony territory now and again to cause mischief and the occasional planet-wide war.
In theory, there should be no contest between the Ousters and the Hegemony, since the latter's alliance with the Technocore gives them access to the most powerful tactical and predictive minds in the known galaxy. The problem is that the Ousters seem most interested in the backwater world of Hyperion, which is the only planet across the human realm that is impervious to AI analysis. The reason for this is the Time Tombs, bizarre structures on the surface of Hyperion that appear to be travelling backwards in time. At present they are empty, but then they would do, it's the moment that their backwards travel reaches it's "end" that the Hegemony has to worry about, since that's when whatever was/will be in them gets set loose into an unprepared universe.
The $64,000 dollar question: What exactly will emerge? No-one knows, or at least if they do they're not telling. The only clue is somewhat less than encouraging, a giant metal four-armed killing machine that stalks Hyperion, murdering at random and in exceptionally brutal ways. Named the Shrike, it is a legend to some, a God to others, and an executioner to more. It is said that each person "killed" by the Shrike is in fact impaled upon a tree of thorns to writhe in agony for all eternity, and there are those with good reason to believe that this may well be more than just a story.
That's the set-up, then, but it hardly begins to cover the sheer scope and invention of the Cantos. The first book tells the tale of seven pilgrims travelling to the Time Tombs, each for different reasons. These travellers explain their reasons for embarking upon the journey as they go, making Hyperion more a collection of short stories than a novel, though each tale ties in to the wider galactic situation. The individual stories themselves are almost uniformly excellent, and cover both a bewildering array of ideas (arboreal space ships, time-shifting soldiers, carpets that fly by manipulating the EM field of a planet, and Armageddon via black hole, to name just a a few), and a wide number of genres, from the quasi-horror story of the cruciforms, the film-noir-esque investigation into the death of Johnny, the love-and-war tale of Colonel Kassad, and the almost unbearably poignant history of the Wandering Jew. A couple of the tales are skewed a bit too much towards filling in background than they are about telling a satisfactory story in themselves, but even those are never less than entertaining. For all the pilgrims reveal to each other and to us, though, we leave them with scarcely more idea about what is going on than we did when we arrived, although we have begun the mammoth task of separating fact from fiction and truth from falsehood, processes with which the series concerns itself.
It's in The Fall of Hyperion, though, that Simmons gets serious. Events on and above Hyperion are reaching a head, and the stakes are much higher than almost anyone has realised. It is in this second novel that the true nature of the series becomes clear. The basic question: can humanity progress to a level to which it would be indistinguishable from Godhood, by reaching the so-called Omega point, and if so, what form would it take and would such a thing even be desirable? More importantly, how close have we already come, who and what represents our greatest developments towards this hypothetical point, and how might we best build upon these accomplishments, if indeed such a thing is wise?
In this second book, these ideas are touched upon but not really discussed in detail. Whilst religion itself suffuses the novel (just as it ran through its predecessor), much of the focus is upon the consequences of such attempts to reach apotheosis, rather than the process. After all, the Time Tombs are proof that something of unimaginable power exists in the far future. Is it a human God, or one born of the Technocore? Are such distinctions even going to be relevant by then? Is there something else out there? All of these are important questions with the fate of mankind on the line, so you can forgive people assigning a low priority to the discussion of how all this came about.
The two things that Simmons does make clear is the two conditons required or humanity to progress as a species (and he is very careful to point out that progress is very different to evolution). Firstly, it cannot occur within a stagnant society. Human nature might desire stability, but that same nature requires fluidity to move forward. A vital component to the Human Godhead must be the conscious desire to alter oneself as philosophy and circumstances dictate (this is later explained with truly exceptional simplicity in Aenea's two word message to the universe in The Rise of Endymion).
The second component must be empathy. We begin, both as individuals and as a sentient species, as simple animals. We express our love for our parents and for our God (however we define him or her) by obeying their commands. As we develop, we begin instead to define our own love by our fear of losing that love from others. We no longer jump to attention because of the order itself, but because of a desire to prove ourselves worthy of love. It is in this context that we suffer the various kicks from the universe some call acts of God.
Simmons argument is that a third stage is reached when we no longer obey, or suffer from fear of what we lose by disobedience, but agree to enter into a partnership. We decide to do what we know we should because we recognise its legitimacy and because we love those that surround us. Keats, whose influence is obvious throughout all four books (it's no coincidence that Hyperion and Endymion are both works by the poet "whose name was writ on water") put it another way, that we rise from the level of animals once we become capable of forming permanent bonds of mutual affection with our friends, and then enter a new stage when we reach true love, the point where the "mutual" becomes less important (however desirable) than the "affection". The true Godhead, at least as far as anyone of us can reach it, is to act in a way totally contrary to evolution. Even cooperation with a group in a way that deleteriously affects ourselves is not without precedent in nature (Dawkins points out in The Blind Watchmaker that selfish individuals do better than cooperative ones within groups, but that cooperative groups do better than selfish ones). Total sacrifice, though, totally independent of gain to anyone but those you love, is far rarer. For devotion to mean anything, it has to exist independently both of primal survival motivations and of a fear of losing what you have.
Of course, the true key here is that those without empathy can't truly grasp what the concept means. On some mechanistic level they might understand its effects, and take advantage of it, but it is impossible to truly understand it any more than I can understand what it feel like to be a father just because I've met a lot of other men who have children. Something is lost in translation. Simmon's characters come to realise that whatever exists in the future, influencing "present" events on Hyperion in what is at one point referred to as a "four-dimensional chess game", it can be easily determined as to whether or not it was born of man or of machine by its level of empathy. It's an emotional Turing test, if you like, and one which is eventually put into practice, with surprising and far-reaching consequences.
The third and fourth books are set three hundred years after the confluence of events upon Hyperion. The human race has undergone great change in the intervening decades, but has once again begun to ossify. The desire for power and control and immortality has once again taken over from an inclination for change. Stasis, though, is living on borrowed time. The private revelations of The Fall of Hyperion are threatening to reach the entirety of humanity.
Endymion, more than anything else, is set-up. Which is not to suggest it is without merit, though I think it entirely unsurprising that it was the only of the four novels that failed to win the Locus Award for best science-fiction novel. In some ways it returns to the form of Hyperion, in that it feels more like a half-dozen short stories than it does a continuing narrative. Perhaps a better analogy though would be The Hobbit, or the first eight chapters of The Lord of the Rings, a tale of exploration and travel necessarily episodic in nature as the characters move from one place to the next.
Like Hyperion, though, Endymion becomes more than the sum of its parts. Aenea, the young girl around which these latter two novels are based (Endymion himself may be the narrator, but neither he nor we are under any illusions that this is his story) is convinced that each world they come to in their journey has been chosen for them to visit, by powers unknown, to reveal the true depth of the danger humanity finds itself in. Along the way, Aenea fills in some of the philosophical gaps left from The Fall of Hyperion, which along with its predecessor exist in some form within their universe as the Hyperion Cantos, written by one of the original pilgrims.
This is one of the latter books' chief conceits, that what we know from the original novels is in fact simply one man's telling of the story. He had access to a great deal of information of the comings and goings across the galactic stage, but he was still human, still fallible, and still reliant on the information he was given. At best this allows Simmons to radically alter the chess board in unexpected and fascinating ways. At worst it seems like a cheap cop-out to retcon the events into shapes that the author can do more with. But I digress.
As I say, Endymion does its job competently enough, as a reintroduction to a changed galaxy, to the characters that will alter that galaxy forever come The Fall of Endymion, and as a set-up for the coming interstellar crucible. It may not do it with the same flair or variety that Hyperion managed, but that book was so exceptional it seems almost churlish to lament the fact that Simmons couldn't quite pull the same trick twice.
Anyway, all is forgiven by the conclusion of Rise of Endymion. While it almost completely lacks the adrenaline-surge of the later chapters of Fall..., what it delivers is far more interesting. It is here, finally, after three-point-whatever novels, that we finally understand how we are to reach the Omega point. As is common in these books, the secret is revealed early, but makes absolutely no sense until later. Step 1: Learn the language of the dead. Step 2: Learn the language of the living. Step 3: Learn to hear the music of the spheres. Step 4: Take the first step.
What exactly Aenea means by that in terms of the plot is anyone's guess, at least for several hundred pages. When the big reveal arrives, it proves to be nothing less than a galaxy-wide manifesto for human (and non-human) existence for the rest of eternity. Of course, this is a world of cybrids and nanotech and Hawking drives, and Aenea's plan for sentient life unfolds in those fantastical terms. What is truly important, though, I think, is that the four steps can easily be interpreted in more mundane terms as well. Learning from history comes first; the dead, after all, will never change their story. Next, we learn from those that surround us, a harder task than the first, since no sooner have we understood one truth than it twists and bends in front of us as humanity rearranges itself into new shapes. Third, we learn from everything else that surrounds us, which doesn't really have a voice in anything but the most abstract sense, but needs to be heard all the same. Finally, take the first step: get off your arse and get into the game. Aenea gives plausible reasons as to why her own sci-fi flavoured version of this progression has to come in that order, but it works so well in our own world that I find it hard to believe Simmons wasn't thinking along more... earthbound lines.
So there you go. Endless invention, epic space battles, killer time-shifting robots, multiple genres, musings on the nature of Keats, and a coherent philosophy regarding how humanity can and should become something better. It also has the best sex scenes I've ever read, in case that sways you. If Peter F. Hamilton ever read any of them he'd swear off ever trying to write another omni-sexual bionic-enhanced orgy scene ever again, and both I and literature itself would thank him for it. Rather than the clinical and/or voyeuristic blow-by-blow (sorry) account of what gets stuck where and when, Simmon's characters' sexual encounters focus entirely on the feeling of sharing youself with someone you adore to such an extent that it makes your ribs hurt. The sex is incidental, Simmons is describing love.
In fact, that works as a more general description of the series. Books about love, in pretty much every single one of its iterations. If I sound uncharacteristically sappy, then I promise you I'm not any happier about it than you are. I'm guessing the sudden arrival in Fall... of the idea that love is an essential element of the universe came as a surprise to plenty of readers, given that Simmons, through Aenea, tries to justify its inclusion in the Cantos (it's an odd feeling reading an author use a character he is writing to justify the ending of a book he wrote but was also written in the universe he is writing in, if that makes sense; reading that back gives me a headache). And, yes, it kind of took me by surprise as well. Usually in the kind of books I read love is just a cheap way to increase the emotional impact when Captain Killian Redthrust's new wife gets eaten by a rampaging space lizard forcing him to swear an oath of undying revenge. But it works, it works very well, and it's really nice to come across a unashamedly atheist philosophy that isn't depressingly nihilistic (Nietzsche), offensively selfish (LeVey), or just an excuse to give organised religion a good kicking (Dawkins). I always wondered if the faithless could ever get themselves organised into something greater than any of that. Frankly, you could do worse than using this as a first step. Or, given Simmon's ideas, perhaps I should call it Step Zero, or even the Alpha Point.
I don't think it matters. Time to get in the game.
Right, that should do for now. I'll try to be a bit less heavy next time around. Anyone want to hear my thoughts on Noddy?
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Best TV Show Ever
I leave the intertubes for a week and the whole world goes crazy. Even the Guardian saw fit to discuss the fact that Palin winked at the camera during the veep debate. The woman fails to blink adequately and apparently the Democrats have to enter crisis sessions. Plus we get treated to another round of "gosh, she's so plain-spoken and average, that's exactly the kind of earthy common sense we want from the person who gets to decide if we reduce Russia and then ourselves to a nuclear wasteland".
I think it may be time to admit the truth to ourselves. The GOP are so intent on turning this election into American Idol that they're freely admitting it to the press. Just two days ago, McCain's campaign said it was going to go back to "comparing" their candidate's character with Obama's. Anything to avoid dirtying their hands with anything so icky as policy.
Maybe we should give up entirely on the idea of the people of the US voting for the person they feel more qualified to deal with the country's myriad problems. It was never that likely anyway. Instead, I suggest we embrace the politics-as-entertainment in its entirety and commission The Crystal Maze: Presidential Race Edition.
Think about it! Why put up with Jim Lehrer droning on when we can have Richard O'Brien prancing around in leopard skins? Let's see Palin wink at the camera halfway through wading through sludge whilst our host plays a blistering harmonica solo! She only has three minutes to drill for oil in Anwar, and if more than two caribou herds get their migration patterns disrupted then it's an automatic lock-in! Looks like McCain picked the wrong team member for a skill game in Post-Iraq-Oil-Crisis Zone!
Then the week after, it's Obama's turn. Can he grab a dangling crystal whilst simultanously crafting the New Deal in the face of the Wall Street Crash in Great Depression Zone? Will Biden have what it takes to travel to Civil War Zone and single-handedly break the chains of three dozen slaves in under two and a half minutes? And which of the two teams will do best in the giant transparent representation of Abraham Lincoln's head, which silently cries glassy tears for the death of the country he worked so hard to keep together and make greater, as they grab for the golden actual votes and try to separate them from the silver fraudulent votes? Will McCain even realise the difference?
This is the only fair way to choose. We can even build the set in a folksy town hall, if McCain won't stop bleating about it. Then we'll make all the votes out to look like they're from Florida. All of America's proud political history, contemporary political apathy, and endless political corruption, all in two one-hour specials that are easy for Chris Matthews and his hideous synapse-free zombie-bobblehead minions of idiocy to digest. Kinda sends a thrill up the leg, don't it?
UPDATE: Oh, and my e-mail is now fixed, for those as have it.
I think it may be time to admit the truth to ourselves. The GOP are so intent on turning this election into American Idol that they're freely admitting it to the press. Just two days ago, McCain's campaign said it was going to go back to "comparing" their candidate's character with Obama's. Anything to avoid dirtying their hands with anything so icky as policy.
Maybe we should give up entirely on the idea of the people of the US voting for the person they feel more qualified to deal with the country's myriad problems. It was never that likely anyway. Instead, I suggest we embrace the politics-as-entertainment in its entirety and commission The Crystal Maze: Presidential Race Edition.
Think about it! Why put up with Jim Lehrer droning on when we can have Richard O'Brien prancing around in leopard skins? Let's see Palin wink at the camera halfway through wading through sludge whilst our host plays a blistering harmonica solo! She only has three minutes to drill for oil in Anwar, and if more than two caribou herds get their migration patterns disrupted then it's an automatic lock-in! Looks like McCain picked the wrong team member for a skill game in Post-Iraq-Oil-Crisis Zone!
Then the week after, it's Obama's turn. Can he grab a dangling crystal whilst simultanously crafting the New Deal in the face of the Wall Street Crash in Great Depression Zone? Will Biden have what it takes to travel to Civil War Zone and single-handedly break the chains of three dozen slaves in under two and a half minutes? And which of the two teams will do best in the giant transparent representation of Abraham Lincoln's head, which silently cries glassy tears for the death of the country he worked so hard to keep together and make greater, as they grab for the golden actual votes and try to separate them from the silver fraudulent votes? Will McCain even realise the difference?
This is the only fair way to choose. We can even build the set in a folksy town hall, if McCain won't stop bleating about it. Then we'll make all the votes out to look like they're from Florida. All of America's proud political history, contemporary political apathy, and endless political corruption, all in two one-hour specials that are easy for Chris Matthews and his hideous synapse-free zombie-bobblehead minions of idiocy to digest. Kinda sends a thrill up the leg, don't it?
UPDATE: Oh, and my e-mail is now fixed, for those as have it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)