Friday I'm in love has to be one of the best songs known to man. It may even be my favorite cure song, although it's got stiff competition, especially in that remix of close to me on the "mixed up" album.

I got up early for work today, so I can leave early and drive down to chicago for the Stevenson's Toss Up juggling festival. I'm pretty excited, because I hear they have a great space, and there will be lots of people. Plus, I have this new weirdo haircut that I want to show off.

I have had many comments on the new haircut this morning... I've had two people say it looks like I'm wearing some kind of helmet, (including a very blurry-eyed Laura this morning), but my favorite was from Alex, (a designer here at work) who said it looks "evil".

Greg Bear's latest novel, Vitals, was a very well written pile of steaming shit.

I was extremely disappointed in this novel. X-files syndrome galore. No plot tie-ups, no ending really to speak of, this thing sucked ass. It was far too possible and plausible and yet stupidly, inanely, without conclusion, without coherence. Maybe I should explain a bit. I hate half-cocked science fiction. It's a fine line really, but one that I think bares flushing-out (pardon my pun).

I love certain kinds of surrealist writing. And I (obviously) love science fiction. But there is an area where they should never meet. If you're writing what is obviously intended to be swallowed as a "hard science" science fiction novel, damnit, you better fucking have it all make sense at the end!

Don't get me wrong. This novel was written well. It's internally consistent. I'm not going to be looking for holes in the logic any time soon. What bugs me is that, at the end of the novel, we still don't know who dun it. In fact, we're scratching our heads as to who are the "who" candidates.

The first half, and yes, admittedly, toward the end, the narrative was compelling as hell. I kept turning the pages--completely unsuspecting--and after the climax, I raised my eyebrows... a timeline. A mother-fucking time line right there at the end of the book. I kept reading, waiting for a punch line. It never dropped, the other shoe is still out there floating in space.

One of two things is at fault here: pretentious writing, or lazy writing. Greg Bear could have really nailed it with this novel if you ask me, but he fucked it up good.

I've decided I don't use enough fucking descriptive terms in my god-damned blog.

I guess there's nothing for it but to celebrate the robots, robots who are "idealized post-modern savages".

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Ode to Fighting Robots

silver-fist, babelfish
low-to-the-ground--vaccumed to the wall--
full of flame-throwers and bandsaws...

spin like flin, an angry din
axes and sharp sticks.
Robots making robot toothpicks.

Majesty of microcircuitry.
Radio-controlled Andy Warhol waltzing on tripwire
white iron and ornery LED conspire

Still life in electro-strife--
an onlooker's geek rush and tussle
breed of new athlete's mind-muscle

dissatisfaction, stirs within
our saucer-shaped metal-killing-coaster.
If circuitry got sympathy, it would have been a toaster.
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God it's horrible. I'm like some kind of abomination.

Mondays are a bitch. Especially mondays that follow fairly satisfying vacations where you visit your girlfriend's sister, and find out how much cheaper housing is in the middle of nowhere, and finish your book, and start another really excelent book by Greg Bear, and watch that new cohen brothers movie, and go see a nice museum, and dance on the heads of needles wearing winged sandals and halos and togas all the while singing about lolipops and choochoo trains...

Yeah, so I guess that last didn't happen. But mondays are still a bitch.