dead brains don't dance

I changed the bed today (hey! that sounds like it should be the first line of a song), and used the opportunity to finally measure the tilt on the bedroom floor, chocking up Mac's side until the spirit she say "level". Turns out the floor tilts just a tooth short of 3cm over the width of the bed, so that's two leg extensions I'm going to have to cut.

This of course takes no account of the other strange distortions in the floor geometry that make going to the toilet of a night feel like I dropped a tab a couple of hours earlier. If there's a single level surface or right-angled corner in this house, I've yet to find it, though the only eldritch sounds in the night thus far have been the responsibility of the Tribe. This may change.

2010.4 Superluminal, by Vonda N. McIntyre
Another re-read after years, and I got a lot more out of the book this time round; I noticed flaws in the writing - beautifully written detail and a fine overall structure, but distinct shakiness in chapter-level execution, particularly in the first third - and the distinctly dodgy dimensional detail description (though how abstractions like those could have been described better escapes me), but the shortcomings were more than made up for. It's a good story, damnit, with excellent characterisation, and what I didn't even notice in previous readings was the transparent inclusion of women and PoC throughout. Not something that should be of note of course, but even now, 27 years later, it's depressingly rare. What's also rare, and achieved here, is a story that forms a beautiful whole; that ends well without in any way either feeling abrupt or awkward (Neal Stephenson take note) or tying events up into an artificial conclusion: the story continues on for all the protagonists, but the reader is left happy with the final period, and free to imagine what might happen next.

The book is refreshingly short of villains too; the characters who behave in unsympathetic ways do so for human reasons, and the Administrators merely behaved as they inevitably would in the real world - the one we meet in the narrative is as human and multidimensional (and even sympathetic) as any other well-meaning person constrained by the structures in which they operate. In fact, the only negative (if glancing) portrayal is of the US, and their relationship to and treatment of the Divers; that one rings true too.

So. Not a profound exploration of the human condition, but an enjoyable novel well worth its re-read nonetheless, and recommended.

In other news, we dragged ourselves to the cinema to see Avatar in its full 3D glory, and glorious it indeed was. The visuals truly are extraordinary, and the structure and execution of the film succeed in transcending the thin story, the multiple borrowings, the plot holes and the racefail. I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything I've read about the thing, positive and negative, but overall it's an incredible experience, and I'm glad that I've experienced it. Roz Kaveney's review sums the whole thing up better than I ever could, articulating my own thoughts and feelings in the process; that, along with this splendid metacontextual analysis (ahem), really say all that need be said.

Bringing myself up-to-date, here are ( my first two books of 2010 )

I'm onto The Long, Dark Tea-time of the Soul now, and having been vaguely maintaining some sort of connection between each books I've read since the end of last year - Švejk and these two - the obvious next step is American Gods. But having just read the bit about whales' songs being silenced by propeller noise, I'm pondering Superluminal. We'll see.

Still alive, but snowed under with werk (and counting the days till Summer Camp at the Bank Holiday).

I've just disposed of the enblighted upside down tomato plant, which was an arse as it was the only one showing signs of ripening, The other two (in a grobag) appear fine thus far, if green; if they succumb too, we'll likely be digging out green tomato recipes.

Whether the compost I put in the gravity inverter was infested with spores, the variety of tomato was particularly susceptible, or it just didn't like growing in the wrong direction, I don't suppose we'll ever know.

Post tomato destruction, I've just indulged in some therapeutically savage pruning of the Virginia creeper, which made me feel a bit better at least; all this after hitting brick wall this afternoon and having to collapse in a near comatose way on the bed for a while. Too Much Stress.

Our weekend was bracketed by death.

Friday night, maybe midnight or thereabouts, we were woken by mad scrabbling on the landing. Investigation revealed Ron with a new toy: another mouse was moments away from its end.

There was a degree of oh-buggrit-we-want-to-sleep-clean-up-the-bits-in-the-morning and we subsided; until, that is, Ron brought his prize into the bedroom. No way I wanted to risk the rodent being deposited in several bits on (or worse, in) the bed, so up I got and chased the PoD downstairs to grab hold of him at the foot of the stairs. For a brief moment.

Ron does not like to be thwarted.

He emitted his bloodfreezing scream of fury and slipped away (I wasn't going to try and hold on anyways), but the scream necessitated the opening of the Maw, and the Fangs Therein, and thus the now dead and still miraculously intact rodent was left behind for me to grab - quickly! - to enbag and, given the hour and my naked body, be hurled outside the front door for attention come the dreadful light of day.

This was not the end of the story, for on Saturday Mac went out onto the patio, and lying there, still in its (admittedly slightly punctured) baggie was the mouse. How it got from front to back, given our home is mid-terrace, is left as an exercise for the reader.

The weekend itself passed peacefully: I went shopping on my bike on both days, for food on Saturday and to Brislington Maplins for a can of airduster, Roomba, switches, for the cleaning of. The A4174/A4 junction really is a miracle of Bristol Cycling City planning: the only practical (for unusual values of practical) way of turning right on a bike is to filter between two narrow, car filled, lanes through one set of light and to another. The filtering bit is fine; the pedalling down the white line with vehicles overtaking on both sides mere inches away after the first lights change to green is less so. That the shedpark on Bath Road is entirely bereft of Sheffield racks (at least anywhere near my destination) just provides a little shining jewel of experience before the return, stopping at the lights heading straight on into Brislington, and feeling the rush of traffic again in a fine intimacy as the turn left filter goes green.

I'd decided to return via the Sweet Mart in Easton, to pick up the 5 litre can of olive oil I lacked carrying space for on Saturday. Taking a scenic route for a change, I diverted through the pastoral joys of St Annes, down to the river before crossing same next to the charming and friendly sight of the Village Centre. Thence to Barton Hill where the skies opened and I got as soaked as a very soaked thing. I dripped into the shop, bought my oil and a bunch of spring onions, and headed home. Pausing briefly by the Floating Harbour to tramline, tip over elegantly, and land on my arse. Was bound to happen one day, and no significant harm ensued (I'm too old to have retained any dignity).

Sunday night, The Aliens (being Mac and I, and friends Pat and Dave) acted as quizmasters for the first time at the monthly village quiz night at the Legion. The consensus seemed to be that our questions were too hard, but I think most had fun; we certainly did and might contemplate doing the same again in the unlikely event of being asked.

Oh, and I promised death after: that came at around 6am this morning. Mac got up to go bathroomward and discovered a cloud of feathers, an observant Henry, and a Ron, who was whacking the very ex blackbird in his jaws against the banister rails. That murdered sleep (as well as the bird) quite effectively for both of us. By the time I got to gathering up the remains, the part-chewed, feather-denuded bird was in Henry's jaws in the kitchen, being whacked against the floor and the fridge as H. leaped and swivelled in the air. I added the Bits to the bagged mouse from before, still awaiting final disposal, and vacuumed up feathers from the kitchen, hallway, stairs and landing.

Ron and Henry, or maybe Ron and Reggie, or possibly Doug and Dinsdale: I expect they were good to their mum.

Coo. After cleaning Mac's keyboard and persuading the library that giving me my reserved copy of Children of God last Friday meant that it's state should change from "reserved" to "borrowed", I nipped (or popped) out to the shops this afternoon, and found that my legs are a metric shitload stronger than hitherto. Hills stormed up without dropping gears, zooming away from everything at traffic lights, generally having huge fun in spite of the heat. Looks like going to Wales last Saturday was good for me after all.

I got most of the Things We Needed in spite of forgetting the list: koi sticks from Bedminster Down; muesli, malties, tamari, breadflour and juice from Gloucester Road, and, even better than that, a bunch of English asparagus. Just because. Forgot the crispbread, but I wouldn't have had space in my pack for it anyhow. I nearly came back with nowt, mind, as the card machine at Scoopaway was playing up and I was cash challenged; I certainly wasn't going to pay whatever gouging rate the Yorkshire currently chooses to charge for credit card cash withdrawals. All was well, though, and home beckoned.

Got surveiled by Sustrans acting for BCC (or possibly BCC acting for Sustrans) by the old railway bridge over the New Cut: hopefully that'll be one more datapoint against running buses over that bridge and up the chocolate path. Not that it'll help: the WOEP have the power of central government behind them, and I doubt that opposition to any of their plans, whether from councils or ordinary punters, will have any effect.

Time to stir fry that asparagus now. Nom.

A week ago last Friday was 29th May, and the tenth anniversary of ramtops' and my wedding; the start of a marriage that nobody (and least of all ourselves :) expected to last over a year. TWOTY+10 was both an arbitrary date and yet a milestone; we were planning to have a major celebration: Boston, to echo the start of our honeymoon, or a weekend in Paris. The TSA stopped the first, and lack of funds really scuppered anything remotely exotic, so we just took the day off work and headed to the Exmoor falconry (a favourite place we first visited just before our 5th anniversary) and points nearby.

We stopped for a greasy spoon breakfast in Burnham on Sea, then headed on to Porlock (stopping and buying some asparagus, with some anticipation, at a farm shop along the way). We had a wander, then tea and scones in Porlock, before finding our way through the mesh of country lanes to the Falconry. Two flight displays - buzzard, vulture, owl and hawk, then after a break, an eagle - in the blazing sun. One day, we'll book ourselves a day there working with the birds.

We drove on to Porlock Weir in the late afternoon and had a wander on the beach and around the village before beer and (excellent) fish pie at the pub, before finally heading home.

A very good day indeed.

So. Not only did Ron bring in a pigeon on Friday, and (when finally induced to drop it) left it such a state that I had no real choice but to break its neck - not one of my favourite things to do - but, on Friday night as I was drifting into sleep, I heard screaming from downstairs.

It wasn't quite the full high-pitched horror of a trapped frog and, indeed, when I tracked down the source by the front door, it turned out Henry had caught himself a toad. Truly, Spring has come to us with the start of May. The toad I deposited by the pnod in the hope that it escape to croak in life rather than death for a while longer yet.

Yesterday, I finished the initial clearing of the garage. It's by no means finished, but there's a lot more space; specifically for both bikes to be accessible through the main door. Mac has ordered hooks, bikes, for the hanging of: when they arrive they'll be installed, one set on each side, to further improve matters.

Later in the afternoon, I went out for a short bike ride. Well; I intended it to be short, but kind of got carried away in an it's-only-a-bit-further-to sort of way for 32.6 miles. I felt like a bit of hill-climbing practice (look at the elevation profile on that Bikely link), so up Wild Country Lane and Hobbs Lane to the A38, finding I'd forgotten just how steep Hobbs Lane actually was. Having climbed that far, I thought I'd just go a bit higher up to the Airport perimeter, which was High Enough, so straight back downhill-all-the-way to Brockley and the A370, which would be a lovely run if it weren't for the appalling state of the road surface. Thence via Chelvey to Nailsea West End, and having got as far as the Blue Flame, there seemed little point in not going the extra few miles to Clevedon.

This is where things went a bit awry: I thought I might take the coast path to Portishead, something I've wanted to walk for a least a dozen years now. Was fine for the first few miles; a bit narrow, but no problem to cycle along. Later, it got narrower, and rougher, and (occasionally) steeper, culminating in a sense of balance error and investigation of the attributes that gorse bushes share with kittin extremities. I have a lovely collection of scratches along the length of my left arm now, including down-not-across my wrist and a goodly few punctures in my hands. Thereafter I showed greater respect for the lack in capability of my road tyres, and pushed (occasionally carried) the bike where the track was less than flat and clear.

All this, of course, ended up taking several times as long as I had expected. No problems thereafter, though: I stopped to phone Mac with an I-aten't-ded phone call on my way out of Portishead and then via Sheepway, Portbury, Pill, Ham Green and the Avon cycle path to home, with my end point coincident with my start point but (by Bikely's/Google's calculations) 13' lower down. Long Ashton is Sinking: I fear the Belgians down there may be digging again.

Today I am mostly aching.

I'm currently waiting on my LJ entries and comments being imported into DreamWidth; not sure yet how I'll be organising my rare and otherwise erratic posting, but it'll probably be DW mirrored to LJ with comments enabled in one place only, likely DW. Or something.

I've also slumped into that twittering thing for any demented person who might be interested, though there will be no sign (beyond this post) of that spilling over to LJ/DW.

Right now, I've got to go and deal with the skyrat that Ron has just brought into the house. It's not dead. Yet.

I imagine anyone reading this already knows about Amazon's latest piece of idiocy. If not, you can read more from Hanne Blank or libertango, amongst many others.

Hal usefully provides a link to an online petition; my additional comment on signing was:

It's odd how the only people whose sensibilities ever seem to need protecting are those in denial about the diversity and variety of human relationships. Amazon will not be getting any orders or new referrals from me for as long as this egregious policy remains in place.

Unlike petitions to government, this might even have some small effect upon Amazon, if they realise they stand to lose more income and shareholder value through keeping this policy than reversing it.

ETA this link to a useful definition of Amazon Rank.

ETA2 naamah_darling links to this somewhat derailed thread at amazon.com.

There's a new widget on my web site, until the weekend. Can't put it here, as it's a mixture of Javascript and Flash, but it's a neat little reminder for turning off your light on Earth Hour: click on the pendulum, and you get a countdown clock on your page.

You can get your own (or just paste the code below into a web page), if you've anywhere to put it.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.wwf.org.uk/earthhour/earthhour.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://earthhour.wwf.org.uk/?utm_source=sites&utm_medium=noscript&utm_campaign=ls">WWF's Earth Hour</a></noscript>

HTT to Qwghlm for the link.