2014 — 7 July: Monday
As a kid1 I enjoyed watching a mobile crane at work manoeuvering sections of road drainage pipe, while trying to work out how to emulate the crane in Meccano. Hence my acquisition of the inner-toothed gear 'ring' for mounting the cab on, atop its little wheeled base. I had no idea until a couple of minutes ago that this sort of fascination malingered. I've just been watching a chap clamber on to his fork-lift truck, detach it from the back of his delivery lorry, and then use it to unload a delivery of some boring-looking flat stuff for a neighbour.
Who would have thought...
... that an empty battery compartment of a portable electronic gizmo "could" be used to conceal explosives on a flight to Americaland? What must it be like to have an incisive brain and work in the security business? Or is it more of a global industry by now? I foresee yet longer queues as people struggle to remember how to switch their noisome toys on. Beware the flat battery! (Link.)
Waiting patiently...
... on my front doorstep on my return from a last-minute whimsical fishing trip in Soton was this, not-so-little — indeed, sumptuous — gem that I'd spotted a passing reference to last Wednesday evening while I was browsing the Comics Journal web site. Michel Choquette's book was 39 years overdue, but well worth the wait.
He played his part in bringing my heroine Shary Flenniken to the National Lampoon back in 1972.
I drew a...
... blank in Forbidden Planet as their books basement is currently closed off by a sewer flooding issue I wasn't keen to investigate in, erm, any depth. However, I got luckier in each of the two branches of Waterstone's:
Eagleman is a new name (to me) though he gets off to a good start with his tour of the subconscious by quoting a line from Pink Floyd:
There's someone in my head, but it's not me.
I know each of the others. Shubin brought us "Your inner fish" just over five years ago. Roach is (sometimes, literally) disgustingly entertaining (and often hilarious), and not snaffling what is very likely to be the last of Maupin's "Tales of the City" novels would definitely be an unnatural act.
Needless to say...
... I haven't entirely given up on moving pixels for entertainment. I re-watched "The truth about Cats and Dogs" the other evening, and so decided I could try another Janeane Garofalo 'vehicle' (having admired the lady since first encountering her as the much put-upon "Paula" in the sublime "Larry Sanders" show).
"Someday Funnies" is wonderful. [Pause] "The Matchmaker", alas, is not. And I did give it nearly 20 minutes.
On the other hand...
... this little snippet (from "The Fuller Memorandum") was much more to my taste:
It's put me in a theological frame of mind, and I hate that. Let me try to explain...
I generally try to avoid funerals: they make me angry. I know the purpose of a funeral is to provide comfort and a sense of closure for the bereaved; and I agree, in principle, that this is generally a good thing. But the
default package usually comes with a priest, and when they start driveling on about how Uncle Fred (who died aged sixty-two of a hideous brain tumor) is safe in the ever-loving arms of Jesus, the effect it has on me is not
to make me love my creator: it's to wish I could punch him in the face repeatedly.
I'm a child of the enlightenment; I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a
Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist. Consequently, I'd much rather
dismiss theology and religious belief as superstitious rubbish. My idea of a comforting belief system is your default English atheism... except that I know too much.
See, we did evolve more or less randomly. And the little corner of the universe we live in is 13.73 billion years old, not 5,000 years old. And there's no omnipotent, omniscient, invisible sky daddy in the frame for the
problem of pain. So far so good: I live free in an uncaring cosmos, rather than trapped in a clockwork orrery constructed by a cosmic sadist.
Nicely put, I felt.