Monday, January 20, 2014

The post that was going to be the third one on January 18th, but isn't

Yeah, I'd been planning to write three or more posts last Saturday, but that didn't happen. This would have been the third one. And now it's not. Anyway...

I've been thinking about how I should approach a certain issue. There's a popular site I visit almost daily. It's called "Facebook." You may have heard of it. No, I'm not writing blog posts about Facebook. Not quite, anyway. But I do see a lot of drivel posted on Facebook by Facebook friends. Sometimes I show up to debunk the stupidity, but I've been thinking about using this as my vehicle for such ranting instead.

The particular case that had me wanting to write about this on Saturday was a link to (and hearty agreement with) this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/why-are-childrens-books-are-still-about-white-boys_b_4227163.html

When I first read that, my inclination was to go through it, line by line, and explain in detail why the whole thing is disingenuous, stolid, and manipulative. I'm glad that I was distracted long enough to temper my annoyance, because doing that would be a giant waste of time.

In a far more egregious example, today I encountered a link, via Facebook, to this: http://www.upworthy.com/3-lies-about-food-youre-used-to-hearing-and-might-even-believe?c=tkp1

The Huffington Post and Upworthy. Of course, dammit. If you locked me in a room with the Huffington Post, Upworthy, and a rifle with only one bullet, I'd club the Huffington Post and Upworthy to death, break the door down, and shoot you for locking me in a room with the fucking Huffington Post and damn Upworthy. Yes, I realize they are websites and not individuals. Shut up. It's always the Huffington Post and Upworthy. I mean, it isn't really always them, but I've been desensitized to this crap from republicans, so they apparently don't count.

Sometimes I've responded directly to crap I see on Facebook. Sometimes I haven't. The idea I had on Saturday was to take to this blog as an alternative. There is also the option of simply doing nothing. Well, sometimes. At some point I'm going to vent...

Advantages to responding to drivel directly where I find it on Facebook
  • The person who posted it can benefit from my vast wisdom. People won't know they're wrong if I never correct them!
  • People can respond to what I've said, which creates discussion. Discussion is probably good.
  • I'll be attacking my problems head-on, instead of retreating to my personal blog like some kind of reclusive lunatic.
  • This presents a chance to belittle others. How could I pass that up?
  • If people unfriend me on Facebook because I made them feel bad, I won't have to keep seeing the crap they post and I trim down my friends list in the process, something I've been meaning to do anyway. Victory in discourse, victory in future ventures to Facebook, and victory through getting other people to do part of my work for me. Triple success.
  • People with genuine interest might see something I've written and actually learn from it. Keeping my wisdom hidden away is almost a crime.
  • I might save someone else the trouble of having to debunk stupid shit. On rare occasions, someone has done that for me. I guess I'd be paying it forward.
And for responding to drivel here, rather than on Facebook, here are some counterpoints to the above
  • The only people that see my debunking of drivel on Facebook at the friends of the individual that posted it in the first place. In contrast, anyone with the good sense to read my blog will catch everything I write here.
  • I'd rather not waste all day arguing with morons.
  • Well, I am some kind of reclusive lunatic. So there.
  • I can belittle others here, and it's easier to do. Facebook can't truncate the things I type here, or hide them amid a wall of comments by other people.
  • I like to be able to review what I've written in the past. Sometimes I spot flaws that I didn't notice at the time. If I spend a significant amount of time writing something that's going to be nearly impossible for me to find later, that's bad. Everything here is nice and tidy. Fuck Facebook.
  • It's not about educating the masses. It's about whatever is most convenient for me personally.
  • If I don't bother debunking crap, other people might be motivated to do so. I wouldn't want to take away their fun.
So yeah, this is quite the dilemma.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

January 18th post #2: Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook

Hey, it's the first book that I've read in 2014! I picked it up because I couldn't find much else that was small enough to comfortably lug around on buses and I liked Glen Cook well enough from the Black Company novels.

Having already gone through all ten Black Company novels before reading this makes me appreciate Glen Cook's skill as a writer. Cold Copper Tears is the third volume in the Garrett, P.I. series (which currently consists of 14 books). The idea is actually pretty simple: have a detective story (in the spirit of Raymond Chandler) set in a fantasy world with magic, elves, ogres, and such. The idea is interesting enough on its own and, at least in this one book, the execution is very good.

I liked the Black Company novels, but if the other books in this series are as good as Cold Copper Tears, then I'd favor it. This is a fun, witty book. I'm eager to read the rest of the series.

January 18th post #1: Star Surgeon by James White

I haven't updated this journal thing for a while. Rather than making one big post about everything I want to say now that I'm finally making an update, I've decided to do multiple posts on the same day. This was some sort of big deal back in my Livejournal days, but I can't remember the details.

At some point last year, shortly after graduating from college, I stopped reading altogether. I'd been in the habit of reading on buses and trains, sometimes getting so absorbed by my books that I'd finish them in binges rather than going to bed. Anyway, there was one more book that I read last year, around November and December. I didn't check it out from the library, so owning it let me read it over a more prolonged period.

My two favorite hobbies are science fiction and bad science fiction. I don't think I could pull off a terse explanation for the former, other than saying I think it's obvious why one should read science fiction. And if you don't, you're a nincompoop. But it's the latter that's the point of interest here. The classic, brilliant works of authors like Jack Vance and Frederik Pohl, both of whom died last year (with Pohl's death, I believe we've lost the last great author from the "Golden Age" of science fiction) have their obvious appeals, and maybe some not-so-obvious ones—they can stand on their own merits. Not every old science fiction book was actually so meritorious, and just because a story is bad does not mean that it can't survive to the present day, where I can procure it cheaply, sometimes for free.

I've reviewed bad science fiction before on this blog, although usually it was published in an anthology mixed in with good science fiction. This is something a little different. I picked up Star Surgeon and some other old paperbacks for free when I dropped by the library the day before their book sale and rummaged through a box of old books they were giving away (they were running out of room for books that could actually sell, so it was sort of a junk bin, I suppose). It's a 1981 reprint of a 1963 novel. This book is the second one in a series called "Sector General." It's about a space hospital, of course. Yes, that's right. A space hospital. In space. With space doctors. I know, right? It's incredibly silly and the plot moves in a way that makes the whole thing even sillier than I'm probably making it seem. And yet, some aspects of the writing are actually pretty good. Star Surgeon is corny and unconventional, but never so bad that it's irritating. And by walking that fine line, at least to someone that reads books the way I do, the experience is delightful. Throw in the fact that it's what's essentially what's been described as "pacifist space opera" and it's all rather bewildering. Sometimes I think Star Surgeon is so bad it's good, sometimes I think it's actually just good on its own, and most of the time I think it's so weird it's worthwhile, even if it's never truly great. I am definitely tempted to hunt down the rest of this series.