It Is Hard To Predict, Especially The Future.

I've started noticing myself developing a real problem with books written more than a decade or so ago, which is that any time the plot depends on the characters being out of phone contact with each other or on characters not being able to find out some piece of information that I could google up in less than three seconds, I feel weirdly annoyed. Which I know is ridiculous for a book that's set in, say, the 1980s, but is probably a legitimate suspension-of-disbelief problem for books written in the 1980s but set in the 21st century.

Of course, the rapid march of technology doesn't just mean that science fiction novels might be dating themselves more quickly than ever. It seems pretty clear to me that it presents some challenges to modern storytellers, too. I think that cell phone reception suddenly going out for no good reason is already something of a movie cliche, and disrupting cell phone signals now appears to be a common ability (or intrinsic talent) for supernatural entities.

I Would Rather Spend Daylight Than Save It.

So, I spent a couple of hours last night reading by flashlight. It was a horror novel, sort of, so I guess that made for an appropriate atmosphere.

And now we're off of Daylight Savings Time, finally. This is also something that sucks for us poor night-shift people. Where everybody else gets to sleep an extra hour in order to keep themselves on the same clock schedule, I have to stay up an extra hour. And then the sun's coming up while I'm trying to get to sleep, and by the time I'm finished my morning coffee, it's set and left me in the dark. I've been known to rant and rail against the whole concept of Daylight Savings, but, really, the truth is that I don't understand why we don't simply go onto it and stay there.

(And, of course, by Murphy's Law, I always do seem to be on night shifts when we switch off DST and mornings when we switch back.)

Powerless Owls

Annoying thing about being a night person #607: When the electric company needs to shut the power down for several hours to replace a transformer, they will do it when they expect most people to be asleep, leaving you with a good long while to spend wide awake in pitch darkness. With no computer.

*waves goodbye to the internet for the night*

An Extremely Useful Thing I Just Learned How To Do

How to tell Firefox to forget that misspelled word you just accidentally told it to add to its dictionary.

Shedding

Thanks to spending nearly every waking hour last weekend at work (and thus missing what was apparently a really good Halloween party, dammit), I found myself with only sixteen random hours to put in over the subsequent seven days. Whereupon I decided that I'd rather have my time off add up to a nice round figure, sacrificed a couple of easily spareable vacation days, and scored myself an entire week to spend not working, which is far and away my favorite thing to spend a week doing.

But I have not been idle! Well, OK, not entirely idle. Thanks to the time freed up by my hookey-playing ways, I now have accomplished the seemingly impossible: I have cleaned and organized my shed! Yeah, yeah, that may not sound like much to you, but that's only because you've never seen the inside of my shed. It formerly consisted almost entirely of a random, precarious jumble of cardboard boxes left over from when I moved in. More than that, it provided an excellent illustration of the "nature is trying to eat my house" principle. It's extremely easy to see how that structure could end up completely filled with dirt after a few decades because, man, it was already well on its way.

I'm pleased to report, by the way, that I didn't get bit by any poisonous spiders (as far as I've noticed), and that I only cut myself while slicing up boxes once. This should, I believe, bring my injury-per-household project ratio down a tad. Go, me!

What Do You Mean, "Very Long Wait?"

Will whoever has disc 2 of Stargate SG-1 season 5 out from Netflix please just return the damned thing now? Thank you.

Is It Cold In Here, Or Is It Me?

Your results:
You are Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze 33% Dr. Doom 28% The Joker 24% Mystique 24% Green Goblin 24% Apocalypse 23% Dark Phoenix 20% Magneto 20% Two-Face 20% Juggernaut 16% Poison Ivy 16% Riddler 15% Venom 15% Lex Luthor 14% Catwoman 12% Kingpin 9%

You are cold and you think everyone else should be also, literally.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Time Keeps On Slippin'

You know, when I bought my alarm clock, the fact that it automatically adjusts itself for Daylight Savings Time seemed like a really nice feature. Now it's not only useless, but actively dangerous. Thanks, Congress.

Well, at least I actually got one more hour of sleep today than I initially thought I did.

Did I Miss Something Important In July?

I just found a folded post-it note on the kitchen counter, where it had apparently fallen out of one of the pockets in my handbag. It says "7-25." Underlined twice.

I wish I had the faintest clue what that was about.

Even More Random Than Usual Random Links

The 8 Most Common Sci-Fi Visions of the Future (And Why They'll Never Happen): Exactly what it says it is. Rather an entertaining list.

Lolthulhu: Lovecraft and lolcats, together at last, and frighteningly funny.

Pirates vs. Ninjas: A careful examination of one of the definitive questions of our time. In powerpoint.

The Church of Google: This has pretty much convinced me of Google's status as a divinity.

Free Rice: Addictive vocabulary game that donates rice to the hungry for every word you get right. I made level 49 at one point.

If This Is Paradise, I Wish I Had A Lawnmower

Current book is The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which is all about what would happen to the world if humans suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth (although, so far, he's spent a lot more time talking about the past than about that hypothetical future).

I expected to find this book highly enjoyable and interesting, as when I was younger I frequently indulged in guilty but satisfying fantasies of being the last person on Earth, thus enabling me to finally get some real peace and quiet. (Think of Burgess Meredith's character in that old Twilight Zone episode. Indeed, the possibility of breaking my glasses was the only truly frightening part of that scenario for me.) Even now, I still rather like walking down deserted streets at night and imagining what it would be like if they really were deserted, trying to picture what things might look like a year or a century later.

Unfortunately, though, although it's perfectly good and readable, the book's main effect so far has been to forcibly remind me of the disturbing fact that nature is trying to eat my house.

I think life was more enjoyable before I became a homeowner.

Not Exactly Who I Was Hoping For...

Your Score: Rose

You scored 25% strength, 44% intelligence, 73% friendliness, and 21% escapology!

So you're in love with The Doctor. Who wouldn't be, with a gorgeous mug like his? But how much do you actually help him out? Not a whole lot. You're not the one who figures things out, and you're certainly not winning any awards for kick-assery. Even your solutions seem to cause more problems - remember the whole "swallowing the time vortex" thing? Yeah, that worked out well. Smooth.

Still, your pleasant enough to be around, and exactly what the Doctor needs to start getting over his emo side. It helps that you know how to dance.

Link: The Doctor Who Companion Test written by lobotomy42 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Nerdy in 'Querque

The Weird Al concert was awesome. I think Albuquerque may now be the best place to see Al, as this time it led to him doing, like, seven encores. The audience kept chanting for him to do "Albuquerque," and he kept pretending to not have a clue what we wanted, and coming out and playing random cover songs. He does a rockin' rendition of "Smoke on the Water," for the record. Finally he said, "Oh, you want me to do the song I wrote about the town we're in?" which led to what I am quite sure was the world premiere of "Rio Rancho" (that being the Albuquerque suburb the concert was technically in, as well very nearly the entirety of the lyrics). And then he did, in fact, do "Albuquerque," one and a fraction times. With extra doughnuts.

Also, there were Imperial Stormtroopers (although not during the encores). And I now have a "white & nerdy" t-shirt, which should serve to give people around me fair warning.

Yes, I Am White and Nerdy.

I think this is officially Albuquerque's Geekiest Week Ever, between the Mythbusters on Saturday and the Weird Al Yankovic concert tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to the concert, but, man, I am not used to having a social calendar this full. Three fun trips into the city in the past month, and I'm starting to get that overstimulated introvert thing going on. I think I'm close to reaching the point where I just want to crawl into a hole with a stack of books and not talk to anybody for a week.

I Think Sleep Is A Myth.

Good thing today: I'm going up to Albuquerque to see the Mythbusters! Live! Man, those guys are my TV heroes. Right up there with the Doctor, but, y'know, slightly less fictional.

Bad thing today: I knew I was going to have to cut myself a bit short on sleep to make the show, but I expected to at least get some sleep. Hello, insomnia, my old friend. Why do you always pick the least convenient times to drop by? I blame work, as things last night were annoying and complicated, and left me rather keyed up at the end of the shift. Fortunately, I'm not driving, but my friends might just have to carry me out to the car when it's over.

Dr. Betty's Healthcare Insights

Once again, I am forcibly reminded how much difference an adequate amount of sleep makes to my general well-being. Also, remembering to take my allergy medicine on time is helpful.

A Tiny Bit Of Self-Promotion

On the off chance that there's anybody out there who is not tired of hearing me go on and on about Doctor Who, I will point out that, for a mere $4 (or possibly $6.50, depending on where you are), you can now obtain a copy of the latest issue of Fred Coppersmith's Kaleidotrope, featuring about 3,000 words worth of me yakking on about how Doctor Who is perhaps the single greatest thing since the invention of oxygen. And, oh, yeah, also a lot of fiction and poetry by people who are not me, but who I am sure are all very nice folks, too.

See? Even with massive bouts of procrastination, I do finish things.

We Are Living In A Material World, And I Am A Material Girl.

Your Score: The Empiricist

You scored 100 Materialism and 30 Phenomenology!

There are those who say that the truths of the universe can all be spun from a person's own head, but you know that knowledge is founded in sensory experience. You are the Empiricist.

The Empiricists presented the first true challenge to Rationalist dominance in Europe. Though they never achieved the sort of contorted reasoning found in Descartes, the Empiricists started a major shift in Western philosophy and the eggheads have never looked back. You live life by trial and error and don't believe anything is true without good reason. However, you leave more room for the internal world of personal experience than some, because after all, how can you truly know you aren't splotches of paint?

Thinkers you may agree with: John Locke, David Hume, George Berkely, Richard Dawkins
Thinkers that may challenge you: Immanuel Kant, St. Thomas Aquinas, Carl Jung

Link: The Metaphysician Test written by Jaylhomme on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Profit!

Happy surprise of the day: going to check the expiration date on my passport and discovering $50 in Canadian currency stuck inside it. I need to go and exchange those suckers, now that they're actually worth something!

Currently Meme, Featuring Two Whos For The Price Of One

Current clothes: Gray sweats, black Farscape t-shirt, white socks. No shoes.

Current mood: Lazy and procrastinatory. Last night's zombie-comedy-and-Indian-food expedition notwithstanding, this has felt very much like the kind of weekend for lying around watching DVDs and maybe doing random very small tasks around the house, rather than working on any of the more ambitious projects I ought to be doing.

Current music: The Who, The Ultimate Collection, disc one. I read an article a few years ago where some teenager who'd barely heard of any band formed before about 1990 was sent to various classic rock concerts and asked to report his opinions. He seemed fairly lukewarm towards most of 'em, as I recall, but he thought the Who rocked. I regard this as objective proof that the music of the Who is of timeless, ageless awesomeness. As if any such proof were actually needed.

Current annoyance: The fact that aforementioned unproductive mood has persisted for over a week now.

Current thing: Doing damn little, as per above.

Current desktop picture: A black-and-white Doctor Who wallpaper I found somewhere on the internet. It features the First Doctor standing in a wood looking, well, very First Doctor-ish, with Barbara and Ian (and the TARDIS) looking on.

Current book: The Last Resort by Paul Leonard. Yes, it's yet another Doctor Who novel. I do read books without the words "Doctor Who" on the front, honest. But I'm trying to get through these Eighth Doctor novels sometime before we end up on Doctor Eleven. I'm only a few chapters into this one. So far it's kind of confusing, but interestingly imaginative.

Current song in head: "Don't Let Him Go" by REO Speedwagon. Oh, the embarrassment.

Current DVD in player: Disc 1 of Crusade. I've actually seen five episodes of that now, though; I was told to watch them in a different order from the one on the discs. Sadly, the best things I can say about it so far are that it has one appealing character, and that sometimes it comes very close to being good. In the other DVD player is disc 2 of season 2 of Farscape. (Hi, Dad!) And in the VCR is a tape with a couple of episodes of Cosmos. I stumbled across the boxed set somewhere for $14, new. Even for a semi-obsolete format, you can't beat that with a stick. And, man, call me a sap -- a nerdy sap, even -- but I still find that show incredibly stirring. Dr. Sagan isn't exactly telling me anything I haven't already known for most of my life, but I still keep sitting up, leaning forward and going, "That is so cool!" Cosmos, to be honest, is probably responsible for me being where I am right now, as reading the companion book in the 7th grade was highly inspirational for making me want to study space science in the first place. I actually find myself vaguely tempted to pick up a copy for my nephew, as all kids ought to have the opportunity to let Carl Sagan inspire them to grow up and study science. And, Carl's wardrobe choices aside, the show is, all things considered, remarkably un-dated.

Current refreshment: Mint-flavored tea.

Current worry: I'm feeling too lazy to be worried by anything right this very second.

Current thought: "Don't let him go. Don't let him go!" Aargh. *bashes brain* Play some Who instead, damn it!