Why you buggin'?

I'm in the middle of reading Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron. This came out in 1967, which may have been the height of the New Wave of science fiction. It's about the battle of wills between a rabble rousing talk show host and a corporation that sells the promise of immortality. As with a lot of stories written in the past about what to them was the future it's fun to compare it to how things really turned out.

Stuff that's sort of right:
* There's legalized and commercialized pot in the novel's setting. That's sort of a patchwork issue in the United States. A lot of people in the late sixties probably expected this to happen at a much faster rate than it actually has.

* Portable networked telephones that people take everywhere. The book also has vidphones, which sort of exists. Apps like Skype and FaceTime seem more popular in real life

Stuff that's mostly wrong:
* Jack Barron's show is called "Bug Jack Barron" and it's a call-in show where ordinary citizens call in with their grievances and Barron helps them take on the institutions that are oppressing them. Populist TV hasn't really played out like that.

* Mississippi is a nation within the nation, ruled by blacks. Ha ha, no. At least to the second part.

Of course it's not really a prediction form, it's a novel. So how does it stand up? Pretty well. Spinrad does the police in different voices, making sure various characters sound distinct from each other. Of course then we come to women, and I'm not sure it's actually good in that respect. There seems to be a lot of hysterical housewives, even if they're supposed to be something other than that.

Still, worth digging up.

Empathy

One challenge in life is to perceive what other people are seeing, to understand how they might feel about something. Some people, I'm sure, are better at it than others. Me? I at least expect other people to feel something. As far as getting inside their heads I guess a lot. Some guesses are more accurate than others.

Who will bell..?

Marionettes Petting Cats Ver. 1 from Krista McGuigan on Vimeo.

If you're held up by strings, I'm pretty sure getting in a cat's face counts as living dangerously.

And yeah, I know, cat videos on the Internet, dime a dozen. Still I loved some of the expressions in this.

White outside, dark inside

Today was the first big - really big - snowstorm of the winter. I had a couple of things I was going to pick up at the library. Couldn't of course. The library never opened, as I was pretty sure they wouldn't. In fact nearly anything that required leaving the house was out. But by now I know the signs, so I'm at least not particularly disappointed.

(Header explanation: White outside because of the snow, while a lot of places have the lights off because they're closed. Just in case you were wondering.)

Surprises

Watched an old Veronica Mars tonight. Having to do with the theft of Troy's car and some steroids another guy had stashed away in it. Quite good.

And I thought Troy was such a nice guy. Well, actually I thought he was a complete and utter simpleton, but the harmless kind. Guess you shouldn't assume.

Easy as...

While I do read mysteries on a fairly regular basis - among other things, as variety is the spice of life - I don't gravitate that often to Agatha Christie. And when I do read her it's more often Miss Marple than Hercule Poirot. Nonetheless I did read her Poirot novel The ABC Murders and was glad I did. Notable things about it:

* It was published in 1936 and concerns an apparent serial killer, although not described in those terms. Christie was well ahead of the curve here in terms of cultural obsessions. Classic detectives like Poirot don't generally look into serial killings, although Ellery Queen did in Cat of Many Tails.

* But the case isn't quite what it appears to be. Christie changes things up in the eleventh hour, momentarily getting the reader off-balance perhaps.

* While Christie might have a reputation as something of a snob, that doesn't really come through in this novel. The victims cut across class lines and all are taken seriously. All the families have complex reactions, too.

Sly

I have to think it must be pretty fascinating - breathtaking at times - to see foxes in your backyard. They've evolved for stealth and speed, and in a way they're the most catlike of wild canines. City life is more my speed than the country, but spying the occasional fox would be one of the better compensations.