Home
Fixed Razors, Got rid of car, rainy days...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 114
Slight sense of achievement, 2 electric razors, neither of which would even slightly trim my beard, instead merely pulling it out in bloody hunks. One even stopped doing that.
So get onto YouTube, watch a few how to videos, fix one, then oil them both.
And now 2 razors, good as new.
***
The car, the car, always in the forefront of my mind. Finally, finally, after 100 false starts I go up the hill, it's still there, tires flat, windows broken. I call BCAA. It's looking good, only have to wait for the tow truck driver, only about 20 minutes later they call back, my car, is it insured? How long has it been there? They're on to me, no tow.
And so I call the wreckers and they actually promise to recover it that day.
There are things in it I could use, a waterproof camo jacket, fishing rod, lures, but, damn, let it go, I can get all of the above for $10 at a garage sale next year.
The next day, through the rain and drizzle, I walk up to where the car is - and - praise the lord - it's gone. Should I have grabbed the plates? I don't know, I only know it's off the large list of things I have to worry about. Now there's room in my life for a working high-clearance 4 Wheel Drive Jeep.
***
And the weather, perfect, fall, clouds in the morning, rain, drizzle, cold temperatures. Wake up, have a coffee, go back to bed, the snow's coming down the mountain. You can see it, maybe 100 meters up, not so long now, not so long at all...
***
And reading, after "A Voyage to Arcturus" Bloch's book on De Sade is looking pretty damned sane. And I'm still getting pages of notes out of it. I'll be a little more thorough in my review, but he's excellent, and far more entertaining than De Sade ever was...
Progress at what cost?
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 191
Probably you heard about Saudi Arabia's plan for the "Line" - a "revolutionary" living/commercial/city that will when completed extend some hundreds of miles across the desert. Critics have denounced it for the displacement of indigenous peoples along the route, and various other things.
If you're not familiar you should take in their "vision" here: https://www.neom.com/en-us/regions/theline
It looks impressive. I was pretty skeptical, though, still am, I mean - anyone remember the hype about all the "World Islands" built in Dubai? Here's a refresher: The World Islands - hint, most are already eroded and under water.
Now, news that so far "The Line" Project has cost 21, 000 lives - mostly Nepali, Indian and Bangladeshi - with another 100, 000 missing. 100, 000 people missing. One Hundred Thousand.
Anyways, while it will be built, I'm reasonably certain that it won't take even a hundred years for it to be revealed as the colossal folly it is. A place for the new goatherds and survivors of the new stone age to take refuge from the heat, and wonder what in the hell we were thinking...
Link: https://www.archpaper.com/2024/10/documentary-reveals-21000-workers-killed-saudi-vision-2030-neom/
A Voyage to Arcturus
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 120
this, a "Sci-Fi" book written in 1920.
I'll quote a review:
A stunning achievement in speculative fiction, A Voyage to Arcturus has inspired, enchanted, and unsettled readers for decades. It is simultaneously an epic quest across one of the most unusual and brilliantly depicted alien worlds ever conceived, a profoundly moving journey of discovery into the metaphysical heart of the universe, and a shockingly intimate excursion into what makes us human and unique.
After a strange interstellar journey, Maskull, a man from Earth, awakens alone in a desert on the planet Tormance, seared by the suns of the binary star Arcturus. As he journeys northward, guided by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its inhabitants like no other, where gender is a victory won at dear cost; where landscape and emotion are drawn into an accursed dance; where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed; and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his astonishing pilgrimage. At the end of his arduous and increasingly mystical quest waits a dark secret and an unforgettable revelation.
A Voyage to Arcturus was the first novel by writer David Lindsay (1878–1945), and it remains one of the most revered classics of science fiction.
It read rather like one of those AI hallucinations that you can watch on Facebook Videos, the main character Maskull forever morphing, a sort of “Pilgrims Progress” written by a madman, reminding me in tone of Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, no more sci-fi, more a metaphysical investigation into what makes us human, with no clear answers at the end. A long, nightmarish read.
Page 47 of 875