Not strictly memetacular

So, the idea behind the page 56 thing is to get the book nearest you, not the smartest one or the one you're reading or the one with the best line. That's what -- oh my, a car crash -- my last post was about. Still, I came across this in The Illuminatus! Trilogy last night, and thought you might be interested:

Besides, he had already formed his own theory about Fernando Poo: he was convinced that BUGGER--Blowhard's Unreformed Gangsters, Goons, and Espionage Renegades, an international conspiracy of criminals and double agents, led by the infamous and mysterious Eric "the Red" Blowhard--was behind it all.

"He" is 00005, a British secret agent. As best as I can tell so far, he's a fairly minor character. Seen Quantum of Solace yet? What did you think?

Page 56

The fifth sentence reads:

The roof of the hall was already burning brightly, the roaring flames painting faces bloody.

From Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword.

Blah blah blah

I've been thinking a lot about getting myself an iPhone. Of course, Telstra is an ass, so I'd have to spend almost a thousand dollars to get out of my current contract -- Apple can wait.

Read Lord of Light again recently; it's a great book and you should too, if you can. Started on The Illuminatus Trilogy. Speaking of the Illuminati (which I rarely do out loud, hidden watchers you see), they are making a film out of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. I guess it shouldn't surprise me since the first one was hilarious -- "just the way the pagans would have wanted".

I kind of had to read Lord of Light, since the book I read before that was The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. Well above average fantasy, of the kind you can't make any more because of Tolkien. You can't switch from stylized Nordic fantasy filled with Saxon verse straight to The Illuminatus Trilogy, hence the Zelazny.

Incidentally, due to cirumstances, I now believe that Infinite Jest uses the phrase "immantentizing the Eschaton". This belief feels erroneous, but it's there like an ill-fitting jacket that you can't get rid of since you need something to keep you warm and you can't bear the pressure of having to choose another one.

Lindfield is boring me a lot. That and circumstances (different from the IJ-possiby-erroneous-belief-inducing ones) will probably mean I'll be moving again. I hate moving. If you hear about a place to move to, let me know. Ideally it would be a share house with interesting and friendly people at roughly my age group.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas. I'm sick of 2008 and am willing to take my chances with a different year. Summer too.

Hard Gratitude

A couple of people have approached me privately, encouraging me to continue writing this blog. I'm touched by these sentiments, right down to the very pits of my undernourished heart.

However, if you feel that this blog has made your day that little bit brighter, might I suggest you express your gratitude in more concrete terms. To wit, send me a tub of candied bacon ice cream.

You know you want to.

(Actually guys, you have no idea how much your feedback and comments mean to me. Thank you so much!)

Fiction Genre Fiction

I'm OK with science fiction. A lot of it is terribly written, but on the whole I accept the genre.

That said, the kind I like best isn't really science fiction, it's economics fiction, fiction that addresses what the world would be like if the rules of scarcity changed. Books like:

• The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin (the best SF author ever. If you disagree, you are wrong.)
• The Culture novels, Iain M. Banks
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson (to a certain extent)

In most of these stories, societies solve the "limited supply, unlimited demand" problem by inventing technology which provides an unlimited supply. Hence, they become "science" fiction.

There's also a short story by Lord Dunsany called "The Bureau d'Echanges de Maux" which describes a market where evils, rather than goods, can be traded. Of course, Dunsany doesn't care about whether this market performs a useful economic function, so there's still areas to explore.

Libraries

There need to be more 24hr libraries with alcohol licenses. That's all I'm saying.

Measure Up

You may have seen the ads from our benevolent Government, telling us that we need to lose weight, trim down and start feeling better so we don't crush our public health system under megatonnes of raw lard.

You may have even gone to their website, where you'll find this wonderful gem:

The waist measurements above are recommended for Caucasian men, and Caucasian and Asian women. Recommended waist measurements are yet to be determined for all ethnic groups. It is believed that they may be lower for Asian men. They are also likely to be higher for Pacific Islanders and African Americans (men and women).

"African Americans"? Do black immigrants from the United States really make up that large a percentage of our population, or did the government just mean "people of African descent"?

To me, it sounds as if someone indulged in mindless political correctness. Please try harder.

Things I want to write about

• The Wall
• Zoo Station
• The kissing French couple
• Kreuzberg
• Cabaret
• Dogs
• Fines and hangovers
  
• Bikes
• Susan Sontag

Europe Reading List

• The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
• On Photography, Susan Sontag
• The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross
  
• Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin
• Tooth and Nail, Ian Rankin
• Soon I Will Be Invicible, Austin Grossman
  

Berlin #3

Right now, I'm in a small café near the Universität der Künste Berlin. It's obvious that great symphonies and the occasional revolution have been plotted here in caffeinated oblivion. The place has yellowing musical manuscripts on the walls and lit candles to go with my hot chocolate. Since I last wrote from Berlin, I've wandered around the city and seen many of the sights: two stand out.

The first is the East Side Gallery, a painted remnant of the wall that's about ten minutes walk from where I'm staying. The gallery extends at least a kilometre and is filled with colour, freedom, love and hope. I wish I could write down all that it made me feel, but I can't reach quite that far yet.

The second is a war memorial to all those who've died in any war, on the way to Brandenburg Tor from Alexanderplatz. From the outside, it's a simple brown stone building. What's impressive is the inside.

As you walk through the door, you see a dark room with high ceilings. The floor and walls are the kind of black-grey that reminds you of smoke, ash and death. The room itself is bare except for a statue in the middle, that looks like a person sitting. You can't make out the face or sex of the figuce, but you know she must be weeping for her dead child. When I first stepped in, the only thing I could think was, "Oh God, what have we done?".

I've been in buildings that were supposed to elevate the mind toward heaven, in houses that we designed to make me feel at home, cafes that make me feel more creative than I am and even haunted houses designed to make me feel scared. Until this week, I've never been in a building that conjures up the mix of grief and horror that comes from knowing that something is deeply, deeply wrong the human race and that I am a part of it.

Berlin #1, revisited

One thing I didn't mention in my first Berlin post was how terrifying I found the whole thing. It sounds silly now, but I was feeling more afraid than I have in quite some time — probably since my last job interview.

When I left the hotel in London, I knew theoretically how to get to the Luton airport (Luton!) and from there to the Berlin and from there to the Ostbahnhof and from there to the hostel. But theory isn't practice, and as Morpheus so wisely puts it, there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

So I spent the entire trip wondering what the hell I was doing and whether there would be a bed for me at the end of it all. There were momentary distractions while the plane was being shaken like an experimental cocktail, but overall doubt prevailed.

Things got a lot worse when I left the Ostbahnhof (is this the right one?) and started walking up the Strasse der Pariser Kommune (is this the right way?). I don't know if you've ever walked in the dark before along a road you don't know to a place you've never been. Whenever I've done it, time and distance seem to dilate: It can't be this far away, surely? Maybe I've passed it already? What if the address on the website is wrong? Maybe places are numbered differently in Berlin? Were the photos on the hostel website a total lie?

If you've ever been on a walk like this, you'll know the joy of seeing clear street numbers in the right order, of first seeing your destination and finally arriving there. The hostel turns out to be as nice as the pictures, and the staff were so friendly it completely caught me off guard. I went to bed with clean linen, a fresh towel and a mind perfectly ready for sleep.

Berlin #2

Today I wandered around town on my own. I walked up Karl-Marx Allee until I reached Alexander Platz in Mitte. Once there, I climbed the tallest tower in the city and surveyed the realm that will soon be mine. There's way too much fog here.

I turned my gaze to the East and saw the buildings wrought by Stalin and the factories and the river. I saw the people's park and ruins of an abbey and a clock that shows all the times of the world. My gaze turned West and the Tiergarten and the Dom and the Reichstag were among the things I beheld.

I descended to the streets of the city and saw people cycling and shops slowly opening. Eventually one shop offered me a European power adapter, which I accepted with gratitude and humility. Thus exhausted, I returned home on the U-Bahn, where I spoke partly in German and partly in English with an eighty-year old woman who studied theology years ago.

Today, I'm tired and do not want to do anything. Let's see what happens.

Berlin #1

Decisions are funny things. Yesterday, if I had to decide whether to stay a week in a hostel in a foreign city I would have said "No, I want to go home", but I'm here thanks to a decision I made months ago. We'll see how that one works out.

Right now, I'm going to explore the city, perhaps even on an organized tour.

Epic

Finally, the Launchpad Epic is over. It's been two weeks of very intense activity, with training, workshops, arguments, presentations, lightning talks and pirate costumes.

The training was dull but everything else was really good. I did a couple of lightning talks and one full-length presentation, and people seemed to like all them.

I'm continually amazed at what a cool company I work for. There are so many smart, competent, interesting people in the same room, actually getting things done.

Now I need to figure out how to get to my hostel in Berlin...