Ruminations
Oct. 30th, 2002 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI've finished watching a music video I've downloading via KaZaA, Sade's "Smooth Operator." It's a nice video: Mid-1980's cabaret singer loves a guy, she's shown that not only does he smuggle weapons but he's cheating on her, she has to keep a straight face as he's in the club with her and his mistress. She's underrated nowadays, I think; I've bought her latest album, and it's good.
Which reminds me of a mid-1980's cyberpunk novel by Victor Milán, The Cybernetic Shogun, sequel to another book, both set in the same world, where there have been two nuclear wars--the first a conventional NATO-Soviet exchange, the second some kind of Indonesian-Brazilian-Greater Queensland exchange following the nuclear destruction of Brisbane by one of the post-Three powers--leaving Japan on top. (At least for a time.) The main characters are concerned with the creation of artificial intelligences in a Japanese corporate lab; upon creation, the AIs are promptly tasked with the goal of trying to keep the world from completely collapsing. Two of the AIs further the collapse; at the end of The Cybernetic Shogun, the third is beginning the slow task of reconstruction. One sore point: No one is going to be launching starships if Christian fanatics are taking over Europe while the global economy collapses after not one but two nuclear wars.
I received my first Amazon orders today. I've blown, oh ~150 dollars Canadian on ordering books on-line using my credit card, half on amazon.ca, half on amazon.com. (Some books, like Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail, couldn't be ordered via amazon.ca.) Only two books arrived today: Foucault and Queer Theory, and Bert Archer's The End of Gay. I've heard a lot about Archer's book, and I've skimmed it--I can read two thousand words a minute, I can do that quickly. it is quite interesting, like Marjorie Garber's Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Yes, it makes plenty of useful points and provides a fair bit of conversation fodder. Another sore point: I don't like people universalizing from their personal experiences. I mean, I had no idea about my sexuality until I turned 22, so how can anyone else claim to develop universal rules? Bi-capable people are definitely a minority of the population in my opinion, though a larger minority than is commonly thought. I have to admit happily that, yes, I am turned on by Lenny Kravitz's "Black Velveteen." A cute woman he had in the video, pity I can't download it via KaZaA:
"Black velveteen/supple and clean/21st century dream"
Although having your artificial sex partner be programmed to wash dishes and recommend French nightspots seems, well, incongruous. Or something weird: I don't think that misogyny is exactly the right word. Then again, I'm not a woman; or, for that matter, particularly knowledgeable about women.
Well. To type in my notes, now.
Oh: I've realized that I've missed the episode contained the scenes where Willow used her magical powers to wreak vengeance on Glory for sucking Tara's mind. A pity: They were cool. If she could do that to a god ... Well, look what happened to Warren, stupid misogynistic serial-killer fuck lacking magical powers entirely. An interesting prefiguring of Season 6 developments.
Which reminds me of a mid-1980's cyberpunk novel by Victor Milán, The Cybernetic Shogun, sequel to another book, both set in the same world, where there have been two nuclear wars--the first a conventional NATO-Soviet exchange, the second some kind of Indonesian-Brazilian-Greater Queensland exchange following the nuclear destruction of Brisbane by one of the post-Three powers--leaving Japan on top. (At least for a time.) The main characters are concerned with the creation of artificial intelligences in a Japanese corporate lab; upon creation, the AIs are promptly tasked with the goal of trying to keep the world from completely collapsing. Two of the AIs further the collapse; at the end of The Cybernetic Shogun, the third is beginning the slow task of reconstruction. One sore point: No one is going to be launching starships if Christian fanatics are taking over Europe while the global economy collapses after not one but two nuclear wars.
I received my first Amazon orders today. I've blown, oh ~150 dollars Canadian on ordering books on-line using my credit card, half on amazon.ca, half on amazon.com. (Some books, like Robert Sobel's For Want of a Nail, couldn't be ordered via amazon.ca.) Only two books arrived today: Foucault and Queer Theory, and Bert Archer's The End of Gay. I've heard a lot about Archer's book, and I've skimmed it--I can read two thousand words a minute, I can do that quickly. it is quite interesting, like Marjorie Garber's Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Yes, it makes plenty of useful points and provides a fair bit of conversation fodder. Another sore point: I don't like people universalizing from their personal experiences. I mean, I had no idea about my sexuality until I turned 22, so how can anyone else claim to develop universal rules? Bi-capable people are definitely a minority of the population in my opinion, though a larger minority than is commonly thought. I have to admit happily that, yes, I am turned on by Lenny Kravitz's "Black Velveteen." A cute woman he had in the video, pity I can't download it via KaZaA:
"Black velveteen/supple and clean/21st century dream"
Although having your artificial sex partner be programmed to wash dishes and recommend French nightspots seems, well, incongruous. Or something weird: I don't think that misogyny is exactly the right word. Then again, I'm not a woman; or, for that matter, particularly knowledgeable about women.
Well. To type in my notes, now.
Oh: I've realized that I've missed the episode contained the scenes where Willow used her magical powers to wreak vengeance on Glory for sucking Tara's mind. A pity: They were cool. If she could do that to a god ... Well, look what happened to Warren, stupid misogynistic serial-killer fuck lacking magical powers entirely. An interesting prefiguring of Season 6 developments.
