Yes, We Like To Think We're Civilized ...
For a change, I made the choice to NOT fall asleep on the couch and then get up and go to bed after Martha got home from work (we both tend to do that) so I was in bed from about ten pm last night and didn't get up until my alarm was near-ready to go off at seven am. And I get up then for Sarah and Jeffrey have been downstairs crashed on the couch for nearly an hour for they want to see Martha off to work -- her weekday job's from seven am to four pm.
Then they try to get back to sleep before I have to wake them thirty-five minutes later. I let the alarm on my phone ring until one of them (usually Sarah in frustration) hits STOP to stop it or it just expires by itself. And then I have to wake them, which actually isn't as bad as it sounds. For now I still drive our two to school even though most days they could walk; it'd take them about ten minutes. In fact, Jeffrey would love to do that! Though I admit I'm uncomfortable them being without a group for now.
Speaking of alarms in a roundabout way, it's a good thing when I was relaxing before work that I looked at another clock, else I would have been late as I would have not heard my get-ready-for-work alarm (Beethoven's "Fur Elise") because I'd left my cell phone in the car and didn't realize it until I had wondered why it had not gone off. But as it is I got to work on time and, after beholding the neatly-mowed lawn that Martha did herself while I was at work between four and seven Friday afternoon, I can focus more. I need to.
When I started yesterday reading the first Star Trek novel of the year, “The Sorrows of Empire” (ISBN 9781439155165) it occurred to me how unreal that science fiction franchise’s mirror universe – where the United Federation of Planets is instead the Terran Empire, where assassinating a superior officer to get promoted is routine, extermination of dangerous species is not uncommon policy to get what you want – is. Or at least in late 1967 when the original episode set there, “Mirror, Mirror” premiered I guess that it was. Quoth Spock from the main universe (perhaps the most enduring image from that episode is his counterpart sporting a beard): “It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men.” At least, we like to think we’re civilized …
It's so much fun when I get to quote myself. Occasionally I sound smart doing it ... anyway, the above paragraph is from a blog I wrote five years ago, and this weekend one of the books I bought at a garage sale contained an earlier version of "Sorrows" bookended by "Age of The Empress" set in the Star Trek:Enterprise years and "The Worst of Both Worlds" taking place in the early 2370s, with Jean-Luc Picard as a somewhat embittered archeologist working with the Resistance to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance finding a heretofore unknown quantity called the Borg that they think may help them.
Knowledge of our own Star Trek is hardly a prerequisite to reading and enjoying the anthology Glass Empires (ISBN 978116524595) -- it only took me the weekend to read it, but maybe that's because I really wanted to! Something about the bad guys winning (or at least your needing to cheer for them because the alternative's worse) is hard to keep away from, despite the fact that I'm part of a faith teaching this ultimately doesn't happen. Oh, perhaps the worst of the worst happens in one of the authors' "Shandies" given voice in Enrique Vila-Matas' A Brief History of Portable Literature (ISBN 9780811223379) translated from Spanish, but I'll have to reread it to tell you .. quite a lot of name-dropping and sashaying through Europe between the wars in this one.
Archie Andrews has been in high school since 1939? The freckle faced redheaded teenager and his friends it was a bit of a shock to NOT find funny, but in the first volume of Afterlife with Archie that I read yesterday (ISBN 9781619889088) where a well-intended spell cast by Sabrina over Jughead's pet Hot Dog -- and when did he find out she was a witch? -- has very unintended consequences ... well, what was it Benjamin Franklin said about the road to hell, that it's paved with good intentions? A much maturer yet much the same characters from the Archie comics find themselves banding together against those in Riverdale who became zombies, starting with Jughead, and eventually having to abandon Riverdale.
Chills, David
Then they try to get back to sleep before I have to wake them thirty-five minutes later. I let the alarm on my phone ring until one of them (usually Sarah in frustration) hits STOP to stop it or it just expires by itself. And then I have to wake them, which actually isn't as bad as it sounds. For now I still drive our two to school even though most days they could walk; it'd take them about ten minutes. In fact, Jeffrey would love to do that! Though I admit I'm uncomfortable them being without a group for now.
Speaking of alarms in a roundabout way, it's a good thing when I was relaxing before work that I looked at another clock, else I would have been late as I would have not heard my get-ready-for-work alarm (Beethoven's "Fur Elise") because I'd left my cell phone in the car and didn't realize it until I had wondered why it had not gone off. But as it is I got to work on time and, after beholding the neatly-mowed lawn that Martha did herself while I was at work between four and seven Friday afternoon, I can focus more. I need to.
When I started yesterday reading the first Star Trek novel of the year, “The Sorrows of Empire” (ISBN 9781439155165) it occurred to me how unreal that science fiction franchise’s mirror universe – where the United Federation of Planets is instead the Terran Empire, where assassinating a superior officer to get promoted is routine, extermination of dangerous species is not uncommon policy to get what you want – is. Or at least in late 1967 when the original episode set there, “Mirror, Mirror” premiered I guess that it was. Quoth Spock from the main universe (perhaps the most enduring image from that episode is his counterpart sporting a beard): “It was far easier for you as civilized men to behave like barbarians than it was for them as barbarians to behave like civilized men.” At least, we like to think we’re civilized …
It's so much fun when I get to quote myself. Occasionally I sound smart doing it ... anyway, the above paragraph is from a blog I wrote five years ago, and this weekend one of the books I bought at a garage sale contained an earlier version of "Sorrows" bookended by "Age of The Empress" set in the Star Trek:Enterprise years and "The Worst of Both Worlds" taking place in the early 2370s, with Jean-Luc Picard as a somewhat embittered archeologist working with the Resistance to the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance finding a heretofore unknown quantity called the Borg that they think may help them.
Knowledge of our own Star Trek is hardly a prerequisite to reading and enjoying the anthology Glass Empires (ISBN 978116524595) -- it only took me the weekend to read it, but maybe that's because I really wanted to! Something about the bad guys winning (or at least your needing to cheer for them because the alternative's worse) is hard to keep away from, despite the fact that I'm part of a faith teaching this ultimately doesn't happen. Oh, perhaps the worst of the worst happens in one of the authors' "Shandies" given voice in Enrique Vila-Matas' A Brief History of Portable Literature (ISBN 9780811223379) translated from Spanish, but I'll have to reread it to tell you .. quite a lot of name-dropping and sashaying through Europe between the wars in this one.
Archie Andrews has been in high school since 1939? The freckle faced redheaded teenager and his friends it was a bit of a shock to NOT find funny, but in the first volume of Afterlife with Archie that I read yesterday (ISBN 9781619889088) where a well-intended spell cast by Sabrina over Jughead's pet Hot Dog -- and when did he find out she was a witch? -- has very unintended consequences ... well, what was it Benjamin Franklin said about the road to hell, that it's paved with good intentions? A much maturer yet much the same characters from the Archie comics find themselves banding together against those in Riverdale who became zombies, starting with Jughead, and eventually having to abandon Riverdale.
Chills, David
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