Reading & Watching

I recently finished Rudy Rucker's latest, Postsingular. Like all of his books, it was a wild ride through far out ideas. It was also very well written. I dropped a line about the book on amazon.com (my first, and perhaps only, time writing for them).

I'm currently reading Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms. I picked this up last year at a used book store, because I've like the little Lansdale I've read. He's an author from East Texas and writes a lot about East Texas. Since my dad and his whole family are from there (and fled back there after sojourning in the Midwest long enough to sire my siblings and I), I have some kind of weird (but sadly explicable) fascination with the place (Dr. Freud can stop reading now!)

I've put off reading the thing for so long because, quite frankly, it's a horror-mystery violent murder kind of story. My stomach for this genre has been gradually fading over the years. It's a good read, just dark and disturbing in places. I'll be glad to be done with it.

Other items tossed around my apartment with bookmarks in them: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, The Nature of Number, and Devices of the Soul. I know, sad, sad taste in recreational reading.

I've also downloaded Richard Dawkins's 1991 Royal Institution Christmas lectures. This is a series of lectures given by scientists in the UK for children. It started with Michael Faraday back in the day (19th century, I guess). Anyway, Dawkins has made his lectures available online. It is amazing to watch an Oxford professor trying to connect with a lecture theater filled with children. It is disconcerting to watch him tell them that there is no creation in the universe until late in its history (i.e., after we arrive and start creating). It's rather like telling a room full of children that there is no Father Christmas (only worse, if you happen to believe in God, like, say, I do). This is the same man who says labeling a child "Christian" or "Hindu" is akin to child abuse. I've only watched the first two of the five letures, and a sense of fairness compels me to finish them (that and, despite his rabid atheism, he is a charming and engaing communicator), but scientism (as opposed to science) seems to be the order of the day.

On more mundane viewing, my friend Patti has kept me supplied with tapes of The Office, so I am current on one TV show! That's probably enough (although I'd really, really like to be seeing Heroes in real time).

Well, enough snore-fest trivia of my doings and happenings.

PS - I just checked out four more books while I was here at the library posting this. I think I may have a problem...

CSI Lincoln

"Damnit, Wren, that was evidence," the sergeant barked.

I looked up from my half-eaten Krispy Kreme. Sure, this kitchen was a crime scene, but it was obvious the victim had not died because he had eaten a poisoned donut. The bloody body with the detached head (87.5 cm away from the severed neck, I had measured it) suggested that, maybe, decapitation was the cause of death. That or explosive gas pressure, but that was too horrible to contemplate. The UV blood sniffers didn't detect any blood on the closed box of donuts (let alone inside said box). The victim, one Mr. Samuel E. Perkins, age 47, lived alone. The donuts were going to go to waste, which would have been the second crime committed on these premise in the past twenty-four hours. And besides, I had skipped breakfast. Again.

"I dunno, Sarge," I began, between bites of my Chocolate-Iced Creme-Filled delight, "I think finding a large, sharp object covered in blood might be evidence. This, this is just a little taste of heaven." I held the box out to him, "Want one?"