Sunday, December 12, 2004
Living safely ITP ("inside the Perimeter") of Atlanta, it's damn easy to forget what a backwards-ass place most of Georgia is. But, thankfully, I have Creative Loafing to remind me with a cover story on the moronic highjinks of our local creationists. The "evolution is just a theory" crowd. The six-day cosmogenesis crowd. The gleebs who've never read Darwin or Wallace or Huxley, Simpson or Mayr, Leakey or Johanson, Gould or Eldridge. The ones who think that fossils were put there by "God" to fool the unwary. Those people. These days, I'm so far removed from the idiot press of humanity, I hardly give those people a second thought. Until they show up on the cover of...oh...say Creative Loafing. I ripped the cover off and discarded it. I am striving to remove these people from my reality. I allowed them to muck up quite a bit of my teens and twenties. I fought them when I was teaching at UAB, when I was working as a paleontologist at the Red Mountain Museum, along with all the hundreds of others who fought them across the country. Apparently, we all fought them — in courtrooms and classrooms — so that, fifteen or twenty years later, everything would be exactly the same or worse. Well, I will fight them no more. They can believe their hokey fairy tales if that's what suits them. They can dumb-down science in public schools. It's not my problem. I just don't wish to be reminded that they exist in that other world. But I do keep waiting for someone in the state senate to declare that Atlanta proper should be exiled from Georgia for heresy and its yankeefied, queer, multicultural, evolving, high-falutin' ways. Maybe some nice Northern city would give us sanctuary.
Today, more preparation for my meeting with Marvel on Tuesday. I expect it to go well. I return to work on Daughter of Hounds on Wednesday, and I shall not be disturbed until Chapter One is finished.
Also, later this afternoon, I may go for a walk with Spooky. I certainly need the exercise. The weather's clear, but very cold. This is what wool is for.
Seems I spoke too soon about not being allowed to play an alien in Halo 2. Last night, I was permitted to do so, and the game immediately became much more interesting. And not just because I have this thing about humans. The alien part of the game is richer. The music's even better (and the music was good to start with). The graphic design is more exciting. It's just plain cooler. The hunt by Covenant for the heretic feels like something more than a Gulf War or Vietnam f-p shooter retooled for sci-fi. Of course, I know that sooner or later, I'll have to go back to defending what's left of Earth. But at least I have some hope that maybe, just maybe, the game will offer a resolution that's more interesting and forward-thinking than "Woo hoo! Kill all the aliens!" Oh, and I realised last night one thing that bugs me so much about f-p shooters — there's pretty much no peripheral vision, which adds to the contrived feel of it all.
Of course, I still have no idea why seven species of aliens — seven advanced cultures — have banded together to kick Earth's measely backwater butt. I know it's not oil, because by 2525 there sure as hezmana won't be a drop of accessible oil left anywhere on this planet. So, not knowing the full Halo backstory, where I assume all this is explained, I'm baffled at the motivations of the Covenant. Of course, a lot of Iraqis are probably wondering the same thing about America and its "Alliance."
(Caitlín! Politics, remember? Please.)
Oh, yeah. Sorry. But they aren't getting a sample of my DNA, even if it means I can't have a passport or driver's license or Social Security benefits. I don't drive anyway, 'cause I've only got this one eye here...you know?
(Just shut up and type.)
Fine.
I haven't mentioned how two and a half hours yesterday were spent in a nightmare of dial-up internet holocaust. Well, it was. Two and half hours trying to do things that I should have been able to accomplish in only twenty or thirty minutes. Best as I can tell, the phone lines were being baraged with holiday well-wishes to grandma and frelling 4-digit L. L. Bean and Old Navy orders. I struggled with AOL, .mac, Blogger, and Yahoo, but I suspect the fault lies not with those programmes so much as with the phone lines. But what do I know, eh. I'm just waiting...waiting...waiting for my DSL to return on January 6th.
Spooky and I are going to search for pumpkins from which to make jack'o-lanterns to set out on the front porch the week before Xmas. We need at least two good pumpkins. I think one should have a bloody, severed Santa arm protruding from its mouth.
1:41 PM
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