"Sipping absinthe, as you do."
Mar. 8th, 2008 08:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eldritchhobbitHappy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thewordoffred and happy early birthday to distaff_exile. May you both have excellent days and wonderful years to come!
Here are a few notes of possible interest:
1. io9 has posted a list of The Twenty Science Fiction Novels That Will Change Your Life. What do you think of the choices? I don't know which science fiction novels will change your life, but at least two of the ones that changed mine (The Sparrow and At the Mountains of Madness) are on this list, and several other authors I would name (such as Mary Shelley, though I would have put The Last Man on the list instead of Frankenstein) are also represented. I'd have to think long and hard about my top twenty, but I know immediately that Frank Herbert's Dune, Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Connie Willis's The Doomsday Book, and Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would be included.
2. Newspaper Rock has an interesting review of Doomsday 2012: The End of Days, the History Channel documentary focusing on the Mayan calendar, Hopi prophecies, and the end of the world.
3. There's a new crock pot/slow cooker community for vegetarians and vegans:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
veggie_crock. (Thanks to homespunheart.)
Today's quote for the day is a joke, originally from He's Just Had Coffee viavulpine137:
H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.
As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.
They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching - the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.
A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.
Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past - the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.
Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…
“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”
thewordoffred and happy early birthday to distaff_exile. May you both have excellent days and wonderful years to come!Here are a few notes of possible interest:
1. io9 has posted a list of The Twenty Science Fiction Novels That Will Change Your Life. What do you think of the choices? I don't know which science fiction novels will change your life, but at least two of the ones that changed mine (The Sparrow and At the Mountains of Madness) are on this list, and several other authors I would name (such as Mary Shelley, though I would have put The Last Man on the list instead of Frankenstein) are also represented. I'd have to think long and hard about my top twenty, but I know immediately that Frank Herbert's Dune, Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Connie Willis's The Doomsday Book, and Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would be included.
2. Newspaper Rock has an interesting review of Doomsday 2012: The End of Days, the History Channel documentary focusing on the Mayan calendar, Hopi prophecies, and the end of the world.
3. There's a new crock pot/slow cooker community for vegetarians and vegans:
veggie_crock. (Thanks to homespunheart.)Today's quote for the day is a joke, originally from He's Just Had Coffee via
vulpine137:H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth are sitting at an al fresco cafe on the abominable plateau of Leng. Sipping absinthe, as you do. It’d be a nice place if it wasn’t for the maddening cyclopean architecture with the obviously alien non-Euclidean geometry, but it’s the only spot for unthinkably vast distances and it’s got a lovely view, so you make do.
As they sit there, the ground before becomes disturbed by the passing of a great Dhole, burrowing beneath the earth, space rippling around it as it goes.
They sip their absinthe as the Dhole is followed by a Mi-Go, flapping and screeching - the noise driving several nearby patrons mad.
A shoggoth comes after, shambling along. It takes some time to pass, so they order another round of absinthe.
Then a long train of the spawn of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, ooze, crawl and tilt their way past - the locomotive systems reminiscent of slime running down a rock… but sideways… unthinkably sideways.
Then for a moment, there’s quiet and the plateau is empty… and Derleth turns to Lovecraft and says…
“Good Lord, Howard. Today it’s just one damned thing after another.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2008-03-08 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-08 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-08 02:50 pm (UTC)It's really odd to see Glasshouse and Newton's Wake on that list--nice to see newer stuff, but man, talk about skipping over some obvious titles.
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Date: 2008-03-10 12:09 pm (UTC)I agree wholeheartedly about the list. Interesting, but weird.
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Date: 2008-03-08 04:09 pm (UTC)For me the three that changed my life were At the Mountains of Madness, I, Robot, and Frankenstein.
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Date: 2008-03-10 12:10 pm (UTC)Great book choices.
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Date: 2008-03-08 04:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-08 05:36 pm (UTC)I'd have Frank Herberts' Dune and P K Dick's Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep on the list along with Stephen Fry's Making History and H G Well's The War of the World, but have to admit that Fantasy is far more likely to rock my world view than SF!
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Date: 2008-03-10 04:46 pm (UTC)I do adore fantasy, and The Lord of the Rings definitely changed my life. I think my list would end up weighted on the side of science fiction as a whole, though.
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Date: 2008-03-08 09:46 pm (UTC)He took a duck in the face at 250 knots.
I don't know why I was surprised to see Pattern Recognition on the list but I was. I thought Spook Country was much less annoying than Pattern Recognition. Glasshouse surprised me, too. I liked Glasshouse, but it didn't change my life. I was pleased to see Perdido Street Station on the list. As much as I like lists, I don't think I could make a list like that myself.
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Date: 2008-03-10 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-09 04:48 am (UTC)"Wash is my copilot"
"Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"
"Who's scruffy looking?"
"Free Stan"
"I do not think that means what you think it means!"
"I thought we were living in an autonomous collective"
I could have selected about a dozen more, lol! I just stood there giggling and chatting with one of the owners who played me a Harry Potter song her husband did based on Alvin and the Chipmunks with the refrain "and I just kissed Cho Chang"
Wish you were there. ;)
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Date: 2008-03-10 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-09 03:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-13 12:15 am (UTC)