"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood...starstuff."
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. ~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)
The first half the day was another scorcher. We made it to 93˚F, with a heat index of 106˚F. Then, about 2 p.m. we began hearing distant thunder. By 3:30 the sky had turned so dark we were were turning lamps, and then the rain began. Now the temperature is down to 75˚F.
I can't say I accomplished much of anything today. It was a tense, anxious, shitty day. Coming to terms with the consequences of the Delta variant and all those people who remain unvaccinated – and the politicians and conspiracy loons working to keep people unvaccinated. It is beyond overwhelming. Kathryn and I have already lost so much. The world has, since 2016, become something unthinkable. Truthfully, COVID-19 just feels like the latest blow to land. Well, I know what I mean.
I only listened to one story from the audiobook of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories today, but that one story was an absolute tour de force performance of "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash." It's not an easy story to read aloud. It's epistolary, only vaguely linear, told half via dream sequences, utterly raunchy, packed with French (plus German and Latin) and...well, I was impressed. So, thank you, Mr. Robert Fass. You rocked my little ring-tailed lemur world. In fact, you made me realize that a story I've always thought of as an oddity might be one of the best things I've ever written. "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash" has an odd history. It's one of the Albert Perrault stories. In a way, it's the Albert Perrault story. Originally, I wrote it for a strange little book that Ann and Jeff VanderMeer did, Last Drink Bird Head (though parts of it had already been written way back in 2006), and then it was also used in Sirenia Digest (March 2011), and then it was reprinted in Subterranean Magazine in 2012. It had almost before part of The Drowning Girl, but Peter Straub said no, and...fuck, I just realized I'm running late, and you likely do not care about all this shit. Point is, it eventually wound up in The Ape's Wife and Other Stories in 2013.
From Facebook today, because I get angry and say stuff:
If your excuse for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is that you "don't want to be part of the experiment," well, surprise, but refusing the vaccine actually makes you part of the control group, which means you're *still* part of the process of "the experiment." I mean, if you want to look at it that way.
~ and ~
Yes, I so, so love being lectured on "the science" by people who don't know antigenic shift from RNA interference from a goddamn hole in the ground, and never mind the people who have no clue what science actually is - that it's a process, a systematic methodology for problem solving producing provisional interpretations of available data, not an unchanging collection of "proven" facts. But, you know, "the science."
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
11:44 a.m.
The first half the day was another scorcher. We made it to 93˚F, with a heat index of 106˚F. Then, about 2 p.m. we began hearing distant thunder. By 3:30 the sky had turned so dark we were were turning lamps, and then the rain began. Now the temperature is down to 75˚F.
I can't say I accomplished much of anything today. It was a tense, anxious, shitty day. Coming to terms with the consequences of the Delta variant and all those people who remain unvaccinated – and the politicians and conspiracy loons working to keep people unvaccinated. It is beyond overwhelming. Kathryn and I have already lost so much. The world has, since 2016, become something unthinkable. Truthfully, COVID-19 just feels like the latest blow to land. Well, I know what I mean.
I only listened to one story from the audiobook of The Ape's Wife and Other Stories today, but that one story was an absolute tour de force performance of "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash." It's not an easy story to read aloud. It's epistolary, only vaguely linear, told half via dream sequences, utterly raunchy, packed with French (plus German and Latin) and...well, I was impressed. So, thank you, Mr. Robert Fass. You rocked my little ring-tailed lemur world. In fact, you made me realize that a story I've always thought of as an oddity might be one of the best things I've ever written. "Random Notes Before a Fatal Crash" has an odd history. It's one of the Albert Perrault stories. In a way, it's the Albert Perrault story. Originally, I wrote it for a strange little book that Ann and Jeff VanderMeer did, Last Drink Bird Head (though parts of it had already been written way back in 2006), and then it was also used in Sirenia Digest (March 2011), and then it was reprinted in Subterranean Magazine in 2012. It had almost before part of The Drowning Girl, but Peter Straub said no, and...fuck, I just realized I'm running late, and you likely do not care about all this shit. Point is, it eventually wound up in The Ape's Wife and Other Stories in 2013.
From Facebook today, because I get angry and say stuff:
If your excuse for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is that you "don't want to be part of the experiment," well, surprise, but refusing the vaccine actually makes you part of the control group, which means you're *still* part of the process of "the experiment." I mean, if you want to look at it that way.
~ and ~
Yes, I so, so love being lectured on "the science" by people who don't know antigenic shift from RNA interference from a goddamn hole in the ground, and never mind the people who have no clue what science actually is - that it's a process, a systematic methodology for problem solving producing provisional interpretations of available data, not an unchanging collection of "proven" facts. But, you know, "the science."
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
11:44 a.m.