A Bit More Detail

Me, my guilty pleasure is Star Trek tie-in novels, most specifically the ones that have been written in a shared continuity over the past fifteen or so years.

What can I say? Well, not only do I like reading but I am a Star Trek fan. I do like revisiting many of the characters and settings of the television series and movies in print. The novels written in a shared continuity explore, with an enjoyable degree of consistency and at least a minimal level of skill, a universe that’s fleshed out, and in many cases given considerably greater and more plausible detail than any of the canonical productions ever have or are likely to go into. There’s even an active online community: I know at least four people on my Livejournal friends list through Trek literature, either as readers or (in at least one case) as a writer. (The TrekBBS Trek literature forum can be a fun place to hang out.)

Is this high literature? No, but I don’t think everything I read has to be high literature. Is it the only literature I read? No. (The only fiction? No.) So, what’s the harm?

And you?

Me, I plan to go to work and catch a movie with friends. You?

(Yes, it’s a light [FORUM] post. There’s space for these.)

A Crooked Timber link quotes Victorian cookery writer Isabella Beeton‘s paradigmatic book Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management on the subject of coffee.

-It is true, says Liebig, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions; but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and it is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them. Science, which accuses us of so much in these respects, will have, in the first place, to ascertain whether it depends on sensual and sinful inclinations merely, that every people of the globe have appropriated some such means of acting on the nervous life, from the shore of the Pacific, where the Indian retires from life for days in order to enjoy the bliss of intoxication with koko, to the Arctic regions, where Kamtschatdales and Koriakes prepare an intoxicating beverage from a poisonous mushroom. We think it, on the contrary, highly probable, not to say certain, that the instinct of man, feeling certain blanks, certain wants of the intensified life of our times, which cannot be satisfied or filled up by mere quantity, has discovered, in these products of vegetable life the true means of giving to his food the desired and necessary quality.

So true, Isabella, so true. (I’m typing on my laptop in Starbucks on Church).

Snow, greeting me as I anticipate shoveling the stairs. (And the laneway.)

Love is a great thing, yea, a great and thorough good. By itself it makes that is heavy light; and it bears evenly all that is uneven.

It carries a burden which is no burden; it will not be kept back by anything low and mean; it desires to be free from all wordly affections, and not to be entangled by any outward prosperity, or by any adversity subdued.

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrants them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down.

Though weary, it is not tired; though pressed it is not straitened; though alarmed, it is not confounded; but as a living flame it forces itself upwards and securely passes through all.

Love is active and sincere, courageous, patient, faithful, prudent and manly.

This could as well be titled as a [META] post, too; it’s tagged as such, anyway.

Many of you may have noticed that my posting frequency, particularly text posts, has dropped off of late. It’s because I’ve come to a crisis: if people are confirmed in their political beliefs (by and large), making political commentary or criticisms largely irrelevant, is there any point in writing said texts apart from preaching to the converted?

I’m not going to abandon writing, here and elsewhere, fear not. I’d just be writing things that don’t deal with politics.

What should I do? I solicit suggestions and criticisms of all kinds.

Johnny Pez’ linkage to Garbage‘s signature song “Only Happy When It Rains” reminded me of my own fondness for the song, expressed way back in 2005.

I’d still compare Shirley Manson to Sylvia Plath, the two authors with their own lyrics angrily and hopelessly communicating their depression to their audiences, telling everything including–in a passive-aggressive style–their belief that nothing can be done to change things for the better. I’d still say that the song is a great one, on-target and lyrical and well-sung and well-performed, and I’d still say that the video is good accompaniment.

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn’t accidentally tell you that
I’m only happy when it rains
You’ll get the message by the time I’m through
When I complain about me and you
I’m only happy when it rains

All I’d add is that I now get how this song is fundamentally a sad song.