[NON BLOG] The Parental Units

Mom and Dad got into Kingston at noon yesterday, and I got to see them in person at 1:30 outside of the JDUC. We had lunch at the Grad Club, then walked around the town. Today, we had lunch at the Sleepless Goat, and went back to my office and packed up my sundry books and supplies. Tomorrow, more packing. In the minutes and hours in between, I'll be finishing up my last essays.

The impending weeks will be intimidating, but it's very good to see them again indeed.

[REVIEW] Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory and Barnes' The Merchants of Souls

Lately, I've been listening to mashup mp3s. Mashup--also known as bastard pop--is a relatively new genre of music. To quote Neil McCormick, "[b]astard pop is the rather clever name being given to a new form of bootlegging, where two or more wildly different tracks are combined to (it is hoped) original effect, usually without worrying too much about who actually owns the rights." As this Wired article makes clear, mashups are a genre enabled by new generations of audio-processing software.

I can personally attest that the results can be quite catchy. For instance, as I write these words I'm listening to a mashup of Missy Elliott's "Work It" and Cameo's "Word Up," "It Works The Word." (The mp3, incidentally, can be downloaded here.) And now, it's Faithless vs Eurythmics' "Sweet Insomnia." Quite fun.

The whole idea of the mashup inspired me. To date, all of my book reviews have either been essay-length commentaries on single titles, or they have included multiple paragraph-length entries. What if, I wondered, if I did a mashup book review, combining two books which at first glance have nothing to do with each other, but which on closer examination have interesting points in common? So, here it is: A mashup review of Alison Landsberg's academic tome Prosthetic Memory and John Barnes' far-future science-fiction novel The Merchants of Souls.

( First, Landsberg's work. )

This brings us to The Merchant of Souls (New York: Tor, 2001), the third book of an expected five in John Barnes' Thousand Cultures setting.

( What are the Thousand Cultures? )

( What happened before The Merchants of Souls? )

[BRIEF NOTE] Hitchens on Moore

Christopher Hitchens, in Slate, roasts Michael Moore. My favourite bit:

[I]f you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (. . .), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised.

[LYRICS] "When I Was Cruel"

( Elvis Costello's lyrics. )

I'm beginning to think that Elvis Costello is a minor deity. I must listen to him.