This was a day of relaxation, of culture consumption, of some writing and a little reading and more writing.
Back from Boston, I went to bed late, and so awoke early enough (Jyoti getting up early, Cindy and her mother getting up early, though I haven’t seen Cindy since that first night) but went back to sleep until I felt it was time to role out of bed, 7 hours of sleep later.
I’ve had the weirdest dreams recently, and last night’s was no different, combining distant friends, colleagues, family, and different locations — home, vehicles, and hotels — into one semi-coherent dream plot. Among other things Amy (Boston) managed to vomit on my back, ruining my “good” black, long-sleeved “over-shirt” but fixing or changing it was delayed. There was a conference coming up, a grad student sort of thing, and Lynn was organizing it, as she did this year, and I was putting on an important key note type presentation, but as all the guests were arriving to stay — at an expanded version of “my” old home, I discovered that what had been my room had been converted into a room for guests and I was left roomless if not homeless, and this angered me more than anything. But fixing this injustice had to wait, for I ended up stuck in a car with some out of town guests, with me riding shotgun, but then we’re parked, waiting for the driver, when someone from the backseat starts f**king with things and the car is going this way and that way in the driveway, and here I am trying to get control, but I still have the vomity shirt on … alas.
It was one of those dreams.
I reread the Whedon / Cassidy run on Astonishing X-Men (to day: 21 issues) this afternoon and evening before deleting it from my drive. I’d brought it along to give to Amy. The art is gorgeous, and the dialog sparkles in a way that it hasn’t since Morrison to an extent, but with a love that Morrison never had — only Claremont had that love for these characters. And as weak as Astonishing is in terms of being a good serial, monthly comic, well-paced, etc. (the problems? delays, slow schedule, drawn out arcs, retread territory), some of the characterization is the best some of these characters — no, perhaps all of them — have had in years or decades. And for Scott? Perhaps ever. The only comparable run was, I feel, after Jean’s first death, when he left and went to sea. But here, once he loses his powers, he becomes fun in a way that he’s never been in any of the comics, cartoons, or movies. And if for nothing else, for this Whedon should be praised.
I have the first Fantastic Four movie to watch; the other one is out or coming out. I suspect the latter, but soon.
In the process of doing some other writing today I came across a bunch of great links, some of which I could not incorporate into that other writing, but I can put them here.
Such as some history of the Reeperbahn in Hamburg, the name for which stretches back in the 17th century, with its reputation as an “entertainment” region going back about that far, too.
The Economist has a great article about results seeming to show a connection between genetics, and racial subgroups in particular, and tonal vs. atonal languages. I’m not a Whorfian, but this is not really a Sapir-Whorf result. It is, however, interesting, though the matters of cause-and-effect are still problematic.
And I’m growing to like Google Books … it makes it easy, with certain texts, to find relevant passages that regular bibliography searching in a library would never reveal. I found Styles of Enlightenment (by Elena Russo), for example, with sections on the etymology of “ingenium.”
