Unwind In The Beginning

 

 

 

 

 

"My kids fought over who got to scrape the ice and brush the snow off the car windows this morning -- I'm not sure whether I should be honored or terrified by that." I used this as a Facebook status this morning because this is actually what happened before I took to kids to Grandma and Grandpa's where they are staying the night tonight, leaving Martha and me (snif) all alone at the house. It wasn't quite as slippery at ten in the morning as it was at four when Martha was delivering the papers on our route, but why tempt fate?

Unlike the teenagers in Neal Shusterman's novel Unwind (ISBN 9781416912057) who find themselves in an America where the pro-life and pro-choice forces on abortion "compromised" by agreeing on the sanctity of life ... until you're thirteen, when from there to your eighteenth birthday your parents, guardians, or the state can donate you for the title process which cuts all parts of your body up to be used by whoever needs them donated, thus arguing you don't really die. Connor, Risa, and Lev all face this and end up on the run. And some hypocrisy on both sides gets exposed.

All of us have hypocrisies to expose.

Now where was I? Oh yes, I got home after work last night to pork chop dinner with fries after I picked up some last stocking stuffers for the kids -- and if they're reading this before December 25, NO I'm not going to tell you what! -- and settled in to watch a movie before all going to bed. Of course, due to one of my meds I usually end up napping on the couch and THEN waking up and going to bed! Seriously, caffeine and even the herbal teas do not help me, especially when I feel no need to do great or potentially great things for a few hours. But the dishes and laundry must be done.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Wait, wrong one ... I mean, it's the right one, but I haven't completed the book of Genesis lately -- actually, my chapter by chapter Bible reading has me near the end of Micah right now for the third time running. Peter David's novel adaptation on the "Babylon 5" universe, his novel In The Beginning (ISBN 0345424522) deals with 23rd century Earth flexing its galactic muscles and about to get them kicked -- hard, near to extinction -- by the Minbari. Backstory to the late 1990s TV series itself, it's framed by Londo Mollari, the Centauri ambassador turned emperor and all around power player ...

so how much of it is objective from even his standards (and he as much admits this in narrating the story) as his home planet's literally coming down around him ... well, I leave to you to judge. I think having not watched that much of the TV series is an advantage reading books like this. It's very human. Evidently so is "no cuts, no buts, no coconuts", what the kids were saying and singing in the back of the car this morning and said was in a song from The Three Stooges movie (and it's to a Taylor Swift tune?) -- looked this up on urbandictionary.com this morning and found it,

like much of life, nonsense

David