Post-Tropes

So, I read a lot.  This is no real surprise if you know me and/or read this blog.

I am about halfway through Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. And while I'm enjoying the book, I am also getting angry while reading it.

I've read lots of... okay, we'll call them post-apocalypse books, but it's not always an apocalypse.  Sometimes it's a disaster.  Sometimes it's a crash.

My favorite is Larry Niven's Lucifer's Hammer.  A comet hits the Earth, and things go bad and badly in California.

Another that comes to mind is David Brin's The Postman.

The thing these two have in common is mercenaries who end up as cannibals.

Now, in Seveneves, things are pretty dire, and there are a small fraction of humans how find a way to survive.  What makes me angry is that Stephenson isn't satisfied with just getting the survivors to struggle to survive, he has to add Politics.  And it's capitalized for a reason.

I guess it just is how I am, but political intrigue is not needed at this point in the book.

Not that I'm stopping reading, because if I feel this strongly about it, it's surely and enjoyable book.

Getting Framed

So, for my birthday today, I was given the gift of framing.  Specifically, I took two prints in to be framed.

Back when I was in college, Mel Blanc passed away.  I have always enjoyed the Warner Brothers' cartoons, and my parents knew it.  This was during the heyday of the WB Store, and my parents bought me this print:

It made me cry the first time I saw it.  I hung it on my wall everywhere I lived, but the frame ended up delaminating, and so it got shifted to a closet.  Today, it gets an additional matting, museum glass, and a new frame.  (The lithograph "Speechless" is still available here.)

Christmas 2014, I bought this print:

Little was I to know that just a few months later, Terry Pratchett would pass away.  I was thrilled when I got this, and was slightly teary today as we were designing the matting and frame to go with it.  (There are still prints for "Discworld Massif" available at Paul Kidby's site here.)

I will post pictures in a couple weeks when we have the final products hanging up

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...

Yes, it's been a while.  Blog momentum is difficult.

But anyway, you need to watch this:



It'd be great if every show could have fun recaps like this.  But then, not every show is on HBO and can thumb its nose at the censors hiding in Standards and Practices and the FCC.