Do Nada 1 August 1998

La la la, lazy Saturn's day, belly full of greasy chicken (yum!) and head full of words. As always. It was a wonderful day out today, sunny with a light breeze, essence of San Francisco Nice Day. Made me realize how much I'm bound to this place by being spoiled by climate, like growing up in low gravity. By all rights, I suppose, I ought to have been out and about in it more. But something in that air smelled like permission to slack to me, so slack I did.

Went out around 1 PM to have the usual shrug-quality brunch at Squat & Gobble (and yes, this time they remembered to actually *bring me food*, ceaseless wonders). I read the paper and as I'm thinking about it now, I can barely remember a thing it said. Standard. Oh, except I think there was more about the semen-stained dress, Clinton, and impeachment.

In a way, I almost hope they actually do impeach him for getting a blow job in the White House and then lying about it. Maybe that's what it would take to make people realize that, understandable as it may be, it doesn't really work to ignore Washington, to pretend it has nothing to do with reality. But I think that very danger will probably protect Clinton in the end - people in Congress are eventually going to catch on that if they take fun & games too far, someone might start seriously asking what the hell they think they're doing in there, anyway...

Then I came home, read a little mail, wrote a little Perl, blissed out to Tom Waits and the live Velvet Underground CD, and did nothing productive at all. Such luxury.

Ewwww! Sorry, but I just tried to wipe this little fleck off the screen, and noticed a big track left by my finger. Which meant that I also noticed, by contrast, that the rest of the monitor was covered in dust. Maybe I ought to clean this once a year or something.

Anyways, I was about to say that I spent most of the day reading Exile by (deep breath) Michael P. Kube-McDowell, a science fiction retelling of the Tianamen Square demonstrations and suppression. Brought back sad memories, and an uneasiness at how lightly I'd accepted the results, like everyone else. Another country, of course they're a repressive regime, you have to look forward not back, think about Prague in 1968 and look at it now, all that. True enough as far as it goes. But they really are the Butchers of Beijing, and they really have gotten away with it. It reminds me of a news story this week, about British plans to assassinate Hitler near the end of the war. A lot of the Army people were against the idea, because Hitler was such an idiot that he was winning the war for them. Good thing he was; what if they had had to negotiate an armistice? How much would we have ever found out, and how much attention would have been paid to it?

This being a novel, and an SF novel at that, of course it ends with a second successful rebellion, and the evil ruler is confronted with his defeat at the hands of the people before being cast down to his doom. Nice thought. Suppose that's why they call it "fiction."

Weird, just now - I went looking up that link on Amazon.com, and they list this book as being out of print. But I just saw it for sale, new, yesterday. Could it be .... conspiracy?

I also saw - a new Tom Clancy book! Woo! OK, I know, let me say it first: he sucks, his style is smellier than a Trabant and his politics might charitably be called "goofy." But I eat at Burger King, too. I'm a sucker for big complicated books, and he is so far over the top and down in the valley that it's funny. C'mon, the guy killed off not just the President, but ALL of Congress AND the Supreme Court AND the Cabinet, at the END of one book, just to set up the next one and put his alter-ego in charge of the country! It's wacky, it's fun. I have no taste.

Now, time for beer. Sam is off to Austin after this weekend, to study either theology or architecture. He had some kind of revelation connected to angels, lampposts, and Kierkegaard a month or so ago, so I get the theology bit. Not sure where architecture comes in, though. In any case, he's a regular at the same bar I am, so I should drop in and say Howdy and Bye. Let's just hope I don't say anything dumb to, oh, anyone else who might be working there...

Pray for me.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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