Ex Libris Sanctus Fnordius

New stories coming

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:17:05 GMT

I've written quite a bit in the last year, and a new project is brewing. That means lots of stories that until now have had only limited exposure to select audiences.

My question now: should I begin to post my old erotic tales here to drum up interest? After all, plans are underway to have a site devoted to my tales in early 2009.

(EDIT: changed to a poll)

Should I republish my older stories from 2007 and earlier here?

Yes

Where should I publish my new stories?

Nowhere

On the new site

Just here

Here AND on the new site

Far too long without posting, I know.

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:17:57 GMT

Well, I only feel slightly bad. It's not so much that I lost interest as I got all distracted. The main hazard of having Attention Deficit Disorder. I'll get over it, and I think you guys can accept it.

In any case, I've been busy learning how to swordfight. Both "stage" fighting and actual 15th century martial arts. Everything from how to tuck and roll with a two-hander to duelling with machete-like swords called Lange Messer. Rediscovering lost fighting arts that were just as sophisticated as the eastern martial arts.

But my role in the re-enactment troupe is a pacifistic one, namely a monk. An Irish benedictine, to be precise, a "Schottenmönch". Believe it or not, from the 10th to the 15th century, droves of Irish monks lived in what is now Germany and Austria, their abbeys famed for the libraries and the books they copied. That gives me an excuse not to be cloistered as well, as somebody had to carry the copies to the other abbeys.

But now, today, something happened job-wise. I got a call from a headhunter looking for web developers for a company in Munich. Sure, I'd be earning more, but it means having only a weekend marriage. I'm flattered on one hand, but on the other I'm nervous as heck: have I gotten too old to take risks like this? Can I subject my family to this?

I'm going to go to the interview. Who knows what may come of it?

Enough rambling. Time to waste time elsewhere.

In lieu of a real post... a meme!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:45:07 GMT

I am stealing this from discodoris ...

"What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place."

1984 *

A Clockwork Orange * bought in England in a used bookshop discodoris and poki took me to

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Tale of Two Cities

Addendum

The Aeneid

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

American Gods **

Anansi Boys *

Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

Angels & Demons I tried, but Dan Brown writes such gawdawful clichés with so many factual errors I threw it away. Perhaps the only author I have ever actually done that to.

Anna Karenina

Atlas Shrugged

Beloved

The Blind Assassin

Brave New World

The Brothers Karamazov

The Canterbury Tales *

Catch 22 *

The Catcher in the Rye

Cloud Atlas

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

The Confusion

The Corrections

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime

Crime and Punishment

Cryptonomicon

David Copperfield

Don Quixote Also Monsignor Quixote from Graham Greene

Dracula

Dubliners

Dune *

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Emma

Foucault’s Pendulum * The best cospiracy novel EVER.

The Fountainhead

Frankenstein

Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Gravity’s Rainbow

Great Expectations

The God of Small Things

The Grapes of Wrath

Gulliver’s Travels

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

The Historian : a novel

The Hobbit *

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Iliad

In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)

Jane Eyre

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

The Kite Runner

Les Misérables

Life of Pi : a novel

Lolita

Love in the Time of Cholera

Madame Bovary

Mansfield Park

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlemarch

Middlesex

The Mists of Avalon

Moby Dick

Mrs. Dalloway

The Name of the Rose *

Neverwhere *

Northanger Abbey

The Odyssey

Oliver Twist

On the Road * Yeah, I'm a beatnik. Add Naked lunch and Howl to the list too.

The Once and Future King

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Oryx and Crake : a novel

Persuasion

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

Pride and Prejudice But only because I was supposed to be Mr. Collins in a play that never happened.

The Prince

Quicksilver

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books

Sense and Sensibility

Slaughterhouse Five *

Tess of the D’Ubervilles

The Satanic Verses

The Scarlet Letter

The Silmarillion

The Sound and the Fury

The Time Traveler’s Wife

To the Lighthouse

Treasure Island

Ulysses

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Vanity Fair

War and Peace

Watership Down

White Teeth

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

Wuthering Heights

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

Sometimes I feel it should be more, but then I realise all of the Hesse and Kafka and similar just isn't on the list. So I feel better.

My new car

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:57:08 GMT

So, this is where I talk about the new auto that I am driving.

It basically started when I went to get the ASU done. ASU is short for the emissions test that has to be performed biannually here in Germany, often in conjunction with the safety inspection. My little Opel Corsa failed; the catalytic converter wasn’t working. Now that is not good news, and replacing it would cost 500 Euros minimum. Honestly, the car wasn’t really worth it, so we started to look for alternatives, and I spent half a year actually risking a fine. Me, Mr. Take No Risks.

So I needed a new “pocket rocket”, something small and efficient. My first choice was the Citroën C1, mainly because it is so efficient and so tiny it was almost like driving a motorcycle. I liked it, but my wife was put off by the spartan interior. She favoured the VW Fox, but I just couldn’t warm to it. Finally, we settled on the Fiat Panda, as it had the efficiency I wanted and the carrying capacity we thought we would need from time to time.

Some other also-rans that did not appeal were: the Smart Fortwo (too pricey), the BMW Mini (pricey and not efficient), the Ford Ka (not efficient) and the Renault Twingo (a disappointment).

We even got lucky and got a good trade-in price for our old Corsa, so we closed the deal. And now, three months later, I am driving the little Panda and I don’t regret the choice. Well, I do wish I had gotten the Fiat 500, as those little buggers are sexy.

Oh, the new car already has two nicknames. I call it “Gino”, but because it has ES in the license plate, my wife has started calling it “Eselchen” (Donkey).

Back again

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:27:28 GMT

Well, after such a long silence, where to begin?

First things first: I’m still alive, nothing all that dramatic was keeping me away from updating other than procrastination. Instead, it was a slew of other things occupying my time. Work, discovering Facebook, the death of a friend, chatting with a different dear friend, a trip, a new car, getting involved in politics…

Er…

OK, quite a lot has happened. So much that I may forget some things, keep other things private, and focus too much on trivialities. But that’s always the risk we take. The main thing is that I’m writing again.

So, where to start?

Thoughts about That Saga

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:51:05 GMT

No, I didn’t read it. I read a few of the books aloud in German to my daughter a couple of years ago as a bedtime story, but I tag-teamed with my wife and never bothered to read the passages my wife or my daughter read, and only fulfilled my duty as a papa. For some reason it didn’t grip my imagination like Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman did. So I stuck to reading mere synopses, since my attempts to read the original English left me thinking Ms. Rowling was a pretty mediocre writer that owed a lot to her German translator for making the prose better.

But something about the last novel hit me, an idea that the author probably never thought about herself. She could have pushed the stories back into 1981-1988, and dropped hints about how the mundane and the magical were intertwined, how the paranoia and rivalries between Russian, Oriental and European traditions created both the Cold war as well as the Death Eaters and Voldemort. The struggle in the books could then be cleverly interwoven with historical events like Chernobyl or Lockerbie. I suspect, however, that Ms. Rowling wanted to make her stories “timeless”, which only very few authors can pull off and I doubt her writing is good enough to achieve.

Another thing that hit me was that for all the gaudy magic of the wizard world, they were being outpaced and outmoded by the muggles. (“A moving pictures newspaper? Big deal, I got that on my smartphone.”) In the events that I saw, those powers of rapid transport, healing and communication were already starting to fall behind technology, and the HP magical society seems static in many ways, only reluctantly adapting new ideas. In many ways, it was calcified, dedicated to resisting change and never questioning authority.

Which brings me to the final point, my personal definition of what is the difference between magic and science:

MAGIC is secret knowledge, carefully hoarded. Once the secret is known, it loses power. The less people understand about how it’s done, the more powerful it becomes.

SCIENCE is shared knowledge, and grows in power when shared. By sharing, it expands and creates new ideas, and increases the understanding of all.

Impressions of Berlin

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:21:12 GMT

Note: I mapped some of the details here...

Impression number one: Parking

The traffic and parking isn't nearly as horrid as I expected. We were able to find free parking on the "Strasse des 17. Juni", and walked from there to the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz. An interesting little walk through the park in the heart of Berlin. After a short restroom break, we continued onwards to...

Impression number two: The Holocaust memorial

It was well done. Tasteful. Sobering without being a full mallet-over-the-head cenotaph, but an attempt to make oppression visual in an abstract form. The monoliths that make up the field are grey, faceless, and start off low only to rise in the middle to overshadow the visitor. The ground is uneven, and it was possible to feel the intended unease. Under the field, there was an information centre that attempted to put names and faces of those murdered. I personally thought it did a good job.

Impression number three: The "government quarter" of Berlin.

Well, that wasn't really a new impression, but the last time I saw the buildings there was snow on the ground. But I enjoyed seeing the people walking around, the relaxed way cars were allowed to drive by the Reichstagsgebäude, and even found the line demarcating the old Berlin Wall interesting. The Brandenburger Tor was where some altercation occurred, as a stranger accosted some of the girls with verbal abuse. I didn't witness this, though, only the girls complaining about the man. The man in question was already walking in a different direction, apparently muttering under his breath. A muttering nutter.

Impression number four: shopping in Berlin

Actually, not much of an impression. I went and hid in a Hugendubel bookstore until it was time to go to the musical and for me to go to meet...

Impression number five: Anelej

At first I didn’t recognise her, as her self-description was "chubby little ball with glasses". I now wish I had taken a picture to show you how misleading that is. She isn't at all chubby, but has a very natural shape. Attractive in a slightly cherubic way, I guess you could say, an effect that is accented by her constant smile. If it wasn't for an SMS telling me what she would be wearing, I would not have recognised her.

Lena is a smart, witty person who I enjoyed listening to. She had a good mixture of geeky charm and a Woody Allen-like self-depreciating humour who made me feel like the klutz. She ordered extra napkins because (she claimed) she always made a mess eating ice cream, but to my chagrin I was the one making tiny spills on the tabletop, much more the slob than she supposedly was.

Now, for all this talk of having dinner and how attractive Lena is, I need to point out that this wasn't a date. Gender played no part in my thinking, except that at one time I caught myself staring at the tiny red shells that made up her necklace, fascinated and wondering if they were shells or fossils or even carved, and suddenly realised that I might be misinterpreted as looking at her...well...you get the idea. If this were a comparison, I would say she outclasses me. She's trilingual, whereas I'm only bilingual with enough French and Italian to fake my way but not hold real discussions. As a little example, as we were walking past the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, some man came up and said something like "Bon soir", and I rattled off "Je suis désolée; je ne parlais pas Français" as we made our escape. She giggled, and the poor guy simply stood there confused.

But Lena speaks fluent Russian as well as German and English. I have trouble with Cryllic, let a lone understand a Slavic language. There just aren't enough cognates for me to grasp, making all work I do for the Polish, Czech and Croatian subsidiaries an act of faith.

So we talked about this and that, agreed that Tom Holt starts off well but the endings of his books are often a car wreck, how Norrington was another example of where PotC:DMC went wrong, all of the other sins the movies committed by mixing elements from the 17th to the 19th centuries, the genius of Terry Pratchett and so on until my wife called, and it was time to say goodbye.

Fazit

All in all, it was very enjoyable. I hope Lena can come to visit, or that I will be able to meet her again next time I visit Berlin.

Hail Eris...

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 07:25:40 GMT

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

The obligatory pirate posting thingy

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:02:08 GMT

I'm more of a highwayman, a gentleman bandit, but what the heck...

Your LiveJournal Pirate Crew
LiveJournal Username
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest!
Cutlass or pistol?
What is the name of your pirate ship?
Where is your secret pirate base?
What kind of loot do you prefer?
What do you and your crew prefer to be called?
Parrot or monkey?
Argh!

Your capable first mate	the_pinklady
Your bumbling cabin boy with a heart of gold	snogger04
The aloof, yet honorable, pirate with a mysterious past	goddessgoddess
Is always the first one into the fray	nameless1kol
Is the naval officer who ruthlessly pursues your ship	sweet_sarnia
Is the comical pirate who is always drunk on grog	discodoris
Is currently in Davy Jones's locker	raeyn
The amount of money you make as a pirate	$106,934


This Fun Quiz created by Lynn at BlogQuiz.Net

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:40:13 GMT

There’s a strategy that I’ve been seeing recently, a sort of ad hominem attack upon critics of the Cheney/Bush administration. Whenever something goes wrong, invent an absurd opposing view, ascribe it to those dirty fucking hippies who are against you, and lie like hell. Just like the myth of protesters spitting on Vietnam veterans (psst…a huge part of the Vietnam protesters were veterans!), imaginary stories are being spread about how evil and scummy and downright disrespectful those dirty fucking hippies are to our Heroic Men and Women in Uniform™. It’s the Dolchstosslegende all over again, the power-hungry idiots blaming their own fucked up, ill-advised misadventure on somebody, anybody, but heaven forbid they admit that they were wrong!

It makes me mad. It riles me to see the smug ivory-tower pundits and Republican marketing wonks pretend they were right, and that the only problem is that we dare to question their authority. Reading the latest whiny pass-the-buck tirade from Kurt Anderson made me fume, but Tristero over at Hullabaloo says it much better than I do. Read it here.

All right, I can accept this

Mon, 07 May 2007 06:08:10 GMT

You are The Hierophant

Divine Wisdom. Manifestation. Explanation. Teaching.

All things relating to education, patience, help from superiors.The Hierophant is often considered to be a Guardian Angel.

The Hierophant's purpose is to bring the spiritual down to Earth. Where the High Priestess between her two pillars deals with realms beyond this Earth, the Hierophant (or High Priest) deals with worldly problems. He is well suited to do this because he strives to create harmony and peace in the midst of a crisis. The Hierophant's only problem is that he can be stubborn and hidebound. At his best, he is wise and soothing, at his worst, he is an unbending traditionalist.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

(It was either this or the Hermit, and from the description of the cards, I'm somewhere in between.)

Well, it's pretty close, I think

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:10:00 GMT

I always thought my animal side was a lynx or a coyote, some sort of solitary hunter. An ocelot is damn close, and I wasn't even trying to massage the test!

Now I am interested in seeing this when it comes out. It's based on a fascinating story, and it seems as if much care was given production. This and Stardust will me the two movies I am anticipating...

UPDATE: Apparently somebody has judged me differently. She's already changed from an ocelot to a lynx. I wonder what further changes are coming...

Business red tape definitions

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:14:59 GMT

ESPIO’S FIVE LEVELS OF BUSINESS DOCUMENTATION:

As provided by espio, a very good and kind soul who I consider a good friend to have (even if he does look and sound a bit nerdy!)

The Business Requirement: explains what the users want the system to do

Example: “The user will try to get the system to eat paint.”

The System Requirement: states what the system can, cannot, should and shouldn’t do

Example: “The system must not eat paint.”

The High Level Designs: technical descriptions of how parts of the system work

Example: "If the system encounters paint, it must not eat it. It must reject it [in this manner] and return [this error] to the user, and afterwards [do something else]"

The Low Level Designs: basically code fragments for how the system works

Example: "if (mouth_input = paint) then barf(), bitchslap(user, hard)"

The System Tests: a series of tests to check to see if the system works as the System Requirements demanded

Example: "Test 23: attempt to feed the system paint. Expected results: system barfs and bitch-slaps you. PASS/FAIL?"

I can dig it.

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:17:10 GMT

Actually, I'm a Smart Roadster

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:42:39 GMT

I'm a Mazda Miata!

You like to soak up the sun, but your tastes are down to earth. Everyone thinks you're cute. Life is a winding road, and you like to take the curves in stride. Let other people compete in the rat race - you're just here to enjoy the ride.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

(Actually, I think I'm more of a Smart Roadster or an Audi TT, but they aren't on the List)

A story written by Bea

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:50:26 GMT

The following story was written by my daughter with minimal help from me ("Dad, wie schreibt man 'caught'?"). I'm so proud of her first story written entirely in English that I'd like to share it with you...

The knight and the princess

In a land far far away in a different universe, there lived a king and his wife with their daughter. One day, a bad witch came and took the princes. The king and the queen were very sad about losing of their daughter.
One day a nice and handsome knight came into the kingdom. They told him: “Our daughter was kidnapped from the bad witch. The land of the bad witch is behind the seven hills, the dark forest and the great ocean. When you save her, she’s yours. She’s as pretty as you. Look!” They show him a picture.

“Well..., yes”, he answered.

Few minutes later he saddle up his horse and rode. A month later he passed the seven hills. In the dark forest he ran into wolfs, skunks and bears. Of course, he killed them all.

Then he came into a city and take a boat with his horse. The knight sailed the great ocean. A week later another boat appeared on the horizon. He saw a pirate flag. In a few minutes the pirates boat were next to the boat of the knight. They put out their canons and shot. The knight defeated the pirates.

He came to the land of the bad witched and arrived at the castle. Carefully he opened the door. The witch saw these and called her army skeletons, elves and vampires to kill the knight. But the knight was to mighty and killed them all. When he saw the witch, he was frightened. But he pulled out his sword and stabbed it into the witch. The fury rained from her breast. He ran into the room of the princes and together they left the castle and passed the great ocean, the dark forest and the seven hills.

The king and the queen were very pleased and happy when they saw their daughter. The princes and the knight married. One day they caught leprosy and go into the valley of lepers. They died within a week.

If the shoe fits...

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:13:44 GMT

I have to repeat, I don't believe in tarot or astrology or other forms of hokum. It does describe my outlook, though, about how I feel about the coming week.

Taurus: The Fool

Okay, my little Bull, let go of any negative connotations you may have with the term "fool". This is a delightful card. It's not about being stupid or pulling pranks. This card suggests lightheartedness in the face of new experiences. There is a new journey ahead, new plans to make, new opportunities, new faces...new, new, new. It's like having a clean slate. Isn't that fun?! What? Okay, some of you more control-freaky Taureans might not be so thrilled about all the new - if you're the plan-y, micro-manage-y type (and you know who you are!) But even you practical ones know - you know - it's time to take a leap.

Taken from Bohemian Path Tarot, courtesy of chadu

Beauty

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:46:42 GMT

Have you ever had a moment of perfect beauty twice in a row? I just have.

I was driving to work when the sun peeked out from behind the mountains. The sky was just clear enough, the horizon just hazy enough that as it came from behind the Schneeberg it painted the landscape into one of those postcard scenes. The colours were just right, the sun not too bright. I was struck by the absolute beauty of it. The perfect sunrise.

The neat part is that from that moment on I have been finding beauty everywhere. The curvature of the palm’s fronds (the palm on my desk). The clouds visible out of the office window. The fractals of coffee stains inside of my mug. It’s as if my eyes have been refocused.

But this beauty is always fleeting, and soon replaced by new forms and colours (that are also beautiful in their own right). There is unimaginable complexity and magic in that which we call ordinary and mundane, but it is all ephemeral. Sadness comes from desiring more than what you’re been granted. It’s why my daughter is extremely bad-tempered at the end of a wonderful day, even though she claims otherwise: she has a very high inertia, and when something good draws to a close all she can do is bitch.

But that doesn’t bother me. I have found beauty, and it surrounds me. All I had to do was change how I look at the world. Or better said, rediscover how to see the world and not what other people tell me to see.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to share a perfect sunset with my wife.

Somehow I suspected that.

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:27:53 GMT

Of all of the chracters in all of the stories, I always felt the most affinity to the Merlin type. Merlin. Gandalf. ben Kenobi. Those guys were always my true heroes, never seeking the limelight but making the story move.

But I was kinda hoping for Deckard, though I suspect I'm too moral for the quiz. Ahem.

Well, duh.

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:42:53 GMT

You Are 0% Republican

If you have anything in common with the Republican party, it's by sheer chance.

You're a staunch liberal, and nothing is going to change that!

How Republican Are You?

Gee, what a surprise! I'm a full member of the SPD, the SocialDemocratic Party of Germany, and the dumb dumb tone of the statements, there wasn't a single one I could agree with. The testwriter would have done better to mix the statements so that you had to cross some and leave others blank for a 100% or 0% rating.

Romantic, yes, but a Sturm und Drang romantic

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 14:14:53 GMT

OK, so this seems to be the test du jour, and I decided to give it a whirl...

You scored as A Romantic. You're a romantic through and through. You may not ever have very many partners, but it's ok. You know that it's about the person who you're having it with, and that the sex is more of a fun biproduct - a very fun biprodict. You know how to make your partner happy, and that's what it's all about.

</td>

A Romantic

70%

Sex God

68%

A Slave To BDSM

65%

Virgin

43%

How are you in bed
created with QuizFarm.com

One of these days I'll have to watch this show

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 23:32:39 GMT

Believe it or not, I haven't seen a single episode, nor do I know what this name means. But I'm posting it here for your collective amusement...

Audrey Hanson
You scored 37 Idealism, 37 Nonconformity, 58 Nerdiness

Well, statistically speaking, law enforcement attracts a certain kind of male personality. Congratulaions, you're Audrey! You're a practical hard-worker with a sassy sense of humor. You have a good amount of vunerability behind your tough exterior, but you're still FBI material. Your best quality: Attitude Your worst quality: Attitude

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Idealism
You scored higher than 99% on Nonconformity
You scored higher than 99% on Nerdiness

Link: The Heroes Personality Test written by freedomdegrees on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

The Viking Pirates Take First Place!

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:42:44 GMT

Yesterday we all went to take part in the Faschingsumzug over in Stadtsteinach. The weather was nice, the sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky. OK, so it wasn’t nice, it was perfect. We put on our costumes, drove on over, helped get the truck decorated, and drank sips of bubbly whilst waiting.

I had hit upon the idea that since I was dressed like a pirate, I should join the ladies of the Weiberballet (Anette is one of them), and I ended up leading them, swinging the pirate flag and yelling out our battle cry. I purposefully didn’t shave, so I had a nice dark three-day-beard along with my normal goatee and moustache, fake dreadlocks, a red headscarf, a three-corner hat, a ruffled shirt and a pirate captain’s jacket. I don’t have any photos yet, but some were taken. I just have to get in touch with those that took ‘em.

So, we moved out, the music blasting from the trucks, I was hamming it up, and waving to the parade watchers. They were my adoring audience (I told myself), so I hammed it up for them. I waved, greeted, roared the “Helau!” traditional cry with a raw, gravelled voice. The usual thoughts about how I could be looking uncool were filed under “unimportant”, as Carnival is the time for fools. Act foolish. Have a good time! Arrrr, of course you can have your picture taken with me!

We had a great time, walking along the parade route, and unlike the Bayreuther the people in Stadtsteinach were happy, getting into the spirit. Of course, it doesn’t compare to Cologne or Mainz or Düsseldorf, but that’s not the point. The point is that we had fun!

So when the parade ended in the market square (the truck driving through, but the marchers all gathering in the centre of town), we stood around, eating bratwurst, steaks and pretzels and drinking beer, and the main stage had dancing acts on it from the host club. We were in good spirits, but then we really were happy when the first prize was announced for best group: the Faschingsgesellschaft Wikinger Bad Berneck! US!

We would have stayed longer, but then we had to go help clean out the rented truck so that it could be returned. Thus we missed the other highlight of the day, when a huge straw effigy was set afire to help drive out the winter.

Today I’m sore, my knees are killing me, but we had fun. Tonight’s the traditional Rose Monday fancy dress ball, so the pirate costume will have an encore.

Arrr!

Top 50 SF novels meme

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 13:13:35 GMT

By way of that gifted game designer Chad Underkoffler I came across a list of Time's most significant SF novels between 1953-2006. Now say what you will about the list, there’s a meme that goes along wit this:

Bold any book you read
Add an asterisk behind those you read love *
~~Strike through the ones you read and hated~~
Italicise the ones you never finished, but at least started

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert *
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson*
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick *
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett *
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson *
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams *
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut *
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson *
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Trooper, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Idle musings during a boring day

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:58:42 GMT

I’m sitting here, more or less alone in an office with three graphic designers, listening to my iPod nano on shuffle play, and of course I begin to think about this and that. Like how something a lady friend said to me made me extremely happy, or how anxiety seems so prevalent for no reason, and other stuff. That’s when one thing I wrote offhand comes back to me:

“We are slaves to our amino acids.”

It was my way of turning into a sound-bite the idea that we are subliminally steered by pre-programmed behaviour. Our brains are set up before birth to interpret the world in certain ways, and the only real purpose of our body is to perpetuate the patterns stored in the DNA. Actually, they don’t even have that purpose, because nobody decided that life has a purpose. It just happens that certain patterns dominate, and we see this weave of patterns as a contest between parts of the pattern.

There is no contest. The patterns just exist, they just are. But trapped within the pattern, we cannot grasp it so we favour one part of the pattern, and do our best to make sense of it.

So where does free will come from? I really don’t know, but I suspect it’s subatomic nudging of quantum mechanics. Spirit comes from being able to exploit uncertainty. Our brains are complex enough that we can interface with them, making thousands of such nudges per second. Multiply the chances to influence tiny electronic impulses, and you have a way that a body can be controlled. It’s why we sometimes can defy expectations, why we can react differently from how we are supposed to react.

Of course, on another level I fear that this is not the case, that thoughts, self-awareness is the real illusion. Once I die I will no longer exist. And truth be told, although my life may be mundane and insignificant, I enjoy it too much to want to die.

I’ll cling to the idea that soul/spirit is able to exist without body, and that bodies can exist without spirit. A body without spirit runs on automatic. If the spirit relaxes control, it becomes for the spirit much like watching a cut scene in a computer game.

The other idea that I’ve been kicking around is that sometimes the body can’t be steered, and it takes over. Stress situations can cause this, I think. It takes effort to resist stimuli, and that’s why people can act without thinking. In those situations, the spirit can no longer control the flow of energy along the neurons. This is something a spirit cannot grasp, since the memory stored in those neurons doesn’t differentiate. If I remember it, the spirit reasons, then I must have done it.

Am I really this existential? I guess so. Once I start examining these sorts of things, not even getting shot with a super-soaker, no matter what xkcd says. But that’s OK for me, since it doesn’t depress me.

In the end, though, what I think doesn’t matter to anybody but me. What matters is what you think.

What do you think?

P.S.: The songs that came up as I was writing this were as follows…

Seamus (Pink Floyd)
Remembrance (Vince Guaraldi)
Cantaloop (US3)
Marooned (Pink Floyd)
Nadine (Frank Black)
54,74,90,2006 (Sportfreunde Stiller)

What kind of God are you?
Name
DOB
Favourite Color
You earthly time was spent	Supplanting kingdoms, punishing tyrants and levelling the empires of the wicked with the breath of your nostrils
Your throne is	A great mountain wreathed in silver cloud, attended by angelic beings of light, arced with lightning and bathed in glory
You wear	Nothing! And that is why people worship you
Your Godly superpower is	Unresistable charm and sensuality, drawing lovers, friends and enemies into your orgasmic grasp

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