• 30 September 2008 07:04pm: Waiting for my pizza so I can go watch daily colbert show report. Four sleeps till New York and thinking about which sweets to bring. Nice.
• 4 October 2008 09:35am: The line for immigration was terrible! But at least that made the security line short. Plane is full of yanks returning from vacation.
• 4 October 2008 10:27am: New York here I come!!!
• 7 October 2008 12:18pm: Today is a good day to see the ocean. Well, what passes for an ocean on the East Coast anyway...
• Today at 12:04pm: You can tell who someone is for by who they complain about, as you know they are going to vote for the other. Lizards *sigh*

twitter.com/plicease

Most of the time lately I wish that I didn’t quite have both feet so firmly planted in two totally different countries. How did I wind up yearning for a life at the same time in each?

I watched 4 episodes of Doctor Who today, and one yesterday. Four were recorded from when I was in the states and one was aired on TV tonight. Two of them were really good: 42 and Blink. The other three were kind of blah. 42 was obviously a reference to Douglas Adams, who was a writer for the original series, but I think it was also a sly reference to 24, even though there was no torture involved. Blink was cool because it was one of those episodes which didn’t focus on the primary characters at all, and instead you get to see the weird havoc wrecked by the Doctor. They’ve done this once before and I think it has worked well in both cases.

Went to Aunty Joyce’s for afternoon tea today. My mum is still intimidated by her, which is kind of amusing. It’s nice to see her; I feel like seeing once somewhat estranged family fills in holes that are worth filling in. It also gives me hope. Tonight Don picked up this manual thingy and read the title: “A Practical Guide to SAX” only it sounded like “sex” to me so I asked “how practical is it?” SAX is the name of some hardware thingy that mum has at work.

The calm after the storm.

I keep thinking that I am going to get organized and write one of those “real” updates that people so often talk about. (but seldom ever do).

Yes.

Yes, I am one of those people.

Babel

Tonight I went to see Babel. It was a good film. I liked the way events in the movie were connected, but disjointed. It sort of reminded me of Photopia (among the more innovative “games” I have ever “played”).

May you live in interesting times.

I was looking this up and apparently it has nothing at all to do with the Chinese. It must have been one of those mistranslation things, or maybe just some western guy made it up. In the case of the former, then maybe they should have used a babel fish.

“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the non-stop frenetic news reports on the television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...”

“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”

“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”

“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”

“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “Why?”

“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.”

—Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks For all the Fish

Today I trekked into the city to get Jasper Fforde's latest book The Fourth Bear. If you like Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett, you might like Fforde. I first heard of him when he did an interview on NPR in which he read a passage from his then latest book, where Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is forced to decide what kind of coffee to get when he steps into a modern (198x) coffee shop and is bewildered by the insurmountable choices (Hamlet being well known for his indecisiveness). Maybe you had to be there.

I was pleased to learn than Fforde's next book will be a Thursday Next novel.

Tonight I went to see the Australian film Jindabyne. See it if you get the chance.

"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on the television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "Why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."

So Long and Thanks For all the Fish by Douglas Adams