On Dark Matter's Questionable Penmanship

I was all set to read an article called, "Has dark matter's telltale signature been spotted?"
but then I found out it was for subscribers only... so I was tempted with whispers of rumours, particle annihilation, and balloon experiments...only to be left hanging...

Story of my life...

So that you will not suffer the same disheartening result, I have discovered found *ahem* fabricated a graphic representation of...THE UNIVERSE, so that you may answer the article's titular question for yourself.

Readings: The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

The Jesus Incident, by Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom

What I liked:

Favorite Character: The Ship! I mean, SHIP!

Favorite Alien Life Form: The hallucinogenic kelp/hot-air balloon

Favorite Locale: Pandora. I liked the idea of a planet where an ocean-based life-form was dominant. So did Poseidon.

This scene did not actually happen in the book, it happened in my head...

Long-winded, rambling review (minor spoilers):

While I really liked the idea of an omnipotent spaceship floating around in space, destroying worlds, messing around in people's heads, and demanding that everyone WorSHIP it, I'm not as enthusiastic about some of the other things in this book.

One thing that irked me was the constant leering smarminess exhibited by many of the male characters. Now, I'm sure that some of this can be explained by the fact that this book was first published in 1979, back when women were routinely harassed and men spent hours in their 'cubbies,' sipping crappy wine, gazing at their erotic wall hangings, spying on the 'gals with surveillance feeds, and generally being creepy.

I admit, I have a tendency to latch onto details, and fume over them. I had to take a reading break after the character of Waela was introduced. We first see her as an awesome, powerful fighter; a survivor who through quick-thinking has managed to stay alive on a deadly planet...and oh, yeah, she hunches over a lot, because she's tall and "...men don't like tall women..."

WHAT??!!

You could be killed at any time and you're worrying about THAT??!!

Ok... I guess it could just be characterization....but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Anyways, back to the plot, which which not about tall women trying to disguise their hideous height... It was more about...Umm... well, an omnipotent spaceship, a thawed-out chaplain-sicle who changes his last name and becomes the devil, a poet that likes to talk to kelp and caress tentacled-hot-air-balloons, a female med-tech (who has to be told about atoms by the poet!!) that goes back in time and sees Jesus, some creepy old men plotting...something...oh right, and someone named Jesus Lewis that doesn't seem to be of any particular importance...

So to conclude...this 28 year old book is looking for readers who like kelp, shoulder massages, and talking about religion. Those too squeamish to spend time in the “Scream Room” need not apply.

For Josie....

Josie's latest post reminded me of something Poseidon once said. I think it's somewhat applicable (even though it's about a cell phone instead of a car), as it shows us the true nature of the world.

I wonder where Poseidon is these days anyways?

Not all my dreams are nightmares....

....some of them are just random....

After that last entry, I wanted to post something less disturbing, so here are some of my favorite dreams courtesy of my middle-school dream journal....

this is not my middle-school dream journal...

1. The one with the under-water masquerade, a talking fish, and a race to caulk a split grapefruit with blueberry pancake batter....

2. The one where I baked chocolate chip cookies....with an alien

3. The one where I went to play in the river, but met up with a militia that was searching for 'bioverbius materials'. They made me join the military, but then somehow we ended up sliding down a muddy hill. Slip n' Slide! Wohoo!

4. The one with a magic sofa cushion that could change one object into any other object

5. The one where we were all square dancing in a Norwegian Graveyard at midnight during a blizzard. All the girls were wearing fluorescent blue snowsuits, and the boys wore fluorescent yellow. There were lifeguards just in case...and also elves throwing snowballs at us from behind the headstones...

In the trees! Green Vampires?

Josie seemed miffed that I did not discuss my other vampire dream in my previous post
...probably because she was a featured character.


This dream had a lot of strange little twists, but sadly, not much of a plot to be twisted...


(WARNING: The following is the recounting of a fairly violent, bloody dream. Please don't read it if you find that sort of thing disturbing like I did while I was writing it.)

Blood Maples

I woke up, knees to my chest, crouched on the branch of a tree. The red light of sunset stabbed through the cool, leafy shade. I felt dizzy, strange. Why was I in a tree?


Something must have happened last night....


Oh yeah, now I remember...


I got turned into a vampire.


And me, a vegetarian... I shook my head. This was going to be totally gross. The thought of drinking warm, thick, blood made me sway. I started to fall out of the tree, but someone caught me. Josie.


"How could you do this?" I accused her, "I thought you were a vegetarian too."


"Don't blame me," she said wrapping her arms around her knees, "One of the others got you while they were hunting."


I stared upwards, the limbs of the tree were filled with crouching vampires watching the sun slowly disappear below the horizon. I touched the scar tissue on my shoulder. Which one of them had done this?


I heard a scuffling noise from a nearby tree, then a soft murmur. Josie was staring intently in the direction of the sound.


"More vampires?" I asked.


She shook her head, she had a funny look on her face.


"Humans," she said, "They're hoping we'll mistake them for other vampires if they hide in the trees."


Around me vampires began leaping from their branches and landing with soft thuds, like apples, on the ground below...murderous apples, bloodthirsty apples, ok, maybe not like apples at all. More like acorns.


"Where's everyone going?" I asked.


"It's breakfast time," Josie said with a decidedly non-vegetarian smile, "You hungry?"


"For blood?"


"What else?"


"No thanks. I think I'm going to throw up instead."


Josie shrugged and leapt off the branch.


"Suit yourself," she called from the darkness of the ground.


I sat and watched as the vampires dragged the screaming humans out of the tree, ripping and shrieking and decapitating. I turned away. I didn't want to see anymore. Finally, the screams stopped.


Josie swung back up on the branch next to me. Her face was red, not because she was embarrassed, but because it was covered in blood.


"All gone," she sang with a smile.


"I don't think I'll ever be hungry enough to do that," I said.


"Don't worry," she said, patting me on the shoulder, leaving a bloody smear on my shirt, "You will. And anyways, blood tastes a whole lot better than meat. I would never eat meat."


I wondered if she thought this made her somewhat less disturbing.


"I need to show you something. You won't need to do it tonight, but after you start hunting, there's something you'll need to do, to ensure....proper digestion."


"What?"


"I'm going to teach you how to recycle," she said bringing her hand up towards her chin.


"Like newspapers and plastic bottles?"


"Not really," Josie answered. She drove her fingers through the skin under her chin and then hung upside down, and proceeded to drink her own blood from the wound.


That was it. I jumped off the tree. Being a vampire was lame and gross and I was never going to drink blood and I was never, ever going to "recycle." Surely, there must be another way to survive....surely....




* The original dream also included an angel that appeared in a bonfire...for no apparent reason

The 1st Law of Thermodynampires

At brunch today, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series came up. On Meyer's website, it explains the idea for the series came to her in a dream...

Well, I've had my share of vampire dreams too, some of them quite amusing. This is one of my favorites, unfortunately, I don't think it would make for a best-selling YA series....

But I'll pitch it to you anyway....

The 1^st Law of Thermodynampires*

When 17-year-old Sadie** stumbles into a patch of freezing mist in an abandoned construction site, she finds herself transported to a realm untouched by time or entropy. She meets a pair of renegade physicists and soon learns that they've found a way to live outside the laws...of the physical universe!

Initially dazzled by their science, Sadie begins to realize that her hosts' hospitality isn't quite as generous as she thought. If all the data points towards a horrific hypothesis, can Sadie save herself from a chilling conclusion?

*I'm sure someone else has uttered/written/thought this before, but as far as Google knows, I just coined the term “thermodynampire!” Wohoo!

**Named for this guy, naturally.

***There'd be sequels, "The 2nd Law of Thermodynampires," "The 3rd Law..." etc.

Dystopian Desserts: Hot Milk Disaster Cake

Umm....



I can explain.....

Readings: The Starry Rift

The Starry Rift
edited by Jonathan Strahan

I enjoyed this collection of short sci-fi stories. I read it over the course of a month or so, picking it up when I had a bit of time. There's a wide range of styles, from an 'old-school' spaceship drama, to the tale of a genetically-altered-gorilla-boy trying to cling to the shreds of his internet-fame

My favorites in this collection included:

-"The Dust Assassin" by Ian McDonald (Mechanical monkey bodyguards!)

-"Incomers" by Paul McAuley (A mysterious man on the second largest moon of Saturn...)

-"The Surfer" by Kelly Link. (Surfing-messiah + pandemics + soccer + aliens)

I also enjoyed Neil Gaiman's, "Orange," which confirmed some of my suspicions about fake tans and "Ass-Hat Magic Spider," by Scott Westerfeld because the title made me laugh.