If You Can’t Stand the Heat…

I usually enjoy dystopian novels.  They suit my general pessimism concerning the eventual fate of human civilization.  If you ask me, future generations might  be genetically disenfranchised from the moment of their laboratory conception, ala Brave New World, ground beneath the heel of an intrusive fascist regime as in 1984, or kept pacified by a regimen of medication and social pressure as in The Giver, but somehow or another, it won’t end well.

So it was with an enthusiasm undimmed by years of waiting that I reached the spot on my book list (many months ago now) occupied by Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.  Set in a future where books are burned by squads of government “firemen”, it certainly falls into the dystopian category.  I found its premise that an increasingly hedonistic society had willingly submitted to censorship in order to save themselves the hassles attendant on critical thought chilling and plausible – and an intriguing step away from the clear-cut oppression of Huxley and Orwell’s novels.

Upon reading, I found that the book also contained characters who display genuine humanity and boasted some thrilling moments of action to counterbalance the cerebral horror that comes with watching western civilization dead-end.  A good read, and highly recommended for fellow fans of the genre.  The 2002 film Equilibrium makes an excellent film counterpart – or substitute, if all copies of Fahrenheit in your area have been rounded up and immolated already.

Progress

Poring over old posts, I noticed that it has been over a year since I last blogged about what books I’d been reading.  Since The Plague, which is the last book I reported on, I’ve actually made substantial progress toward finishing my infamous List of books to read.  In fact, the very next list book I finished, Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy was the last book of the “Proctor” sublist.  Named for the character John Proctor in Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”, this was the fifth of the eight sublists which make up the list, so the tide was definitely turning.

As for the book itself, it was slow going.  Descartes, a formidable intellect, was also meticulous to an extent that would probably be medicated in our current age.  The concepts he was exploring and the lines of reasoning he pursues are fairly abstract, and there aren’t many good car chases to liven things up, either.

On a more serious note – I think that Descartes’ ideas relating to the proof of existence (you know, the cogito: “I think, therefore I am”) are very sound, but I was much less convinced at his attempt to extend these lines of reasoning to prove the existence of God.  I’m not saying the Big Guy doesn’t exist, mind you, just that Descartes, for all his method, doesn’t prove it – which I suppose is an argument for agnosticism.

Anyhow, I followed the Meditations up with a ton of other good books – and I’m giving myself the project of writing about one of them here each day this week.

Days Gone By

I’ve been reading the last page or so of posts from 2009, trying to get a handle on where I left this things, so I know where to pick it back up.  So much has happened since then, though.  The highlights, in roughly chronological order:

I finally straighten out the most dysfunctional of my family relationships – by ending it.

My professional DMing business doubles in size, and though it is still just a lucrative sideline instead of a career, it makes it a lot easier to get by.

My wife, the incomparable Ducky-Lou, makes the absolute most of her return to college, logging a 4.0 GPA and taking home the “Outstanding New Student of the Year” award – I’m  not even kidding, that’s a real award they give out – yeah, well, just ’cause you never won one…

In the inevitable wash of hubris accompanying her scholastic honors, Rebekah brings home a pair of kittens, hands them to me to raise, and promptly disappears on a two-week house sitting gig, trusting that all will turn out well.  For a week the disarming aura of cuteness radiating from the kittens pacifies Clem and me, while Gypsy, less easily swayed, nonetheless confines himself to issuing portentous growls from his series of kitten-proof hideouts.

Around day eight or so, the aura of cuteness wears off at about three o’clock in the morning when the kittens, who have attained full vertical leaping capabilities improbably early, knock every goddamned thing off of every countertop in every house on the block, clawing their way through countless screen doors ($30 each) to do so and causing the residents to spend the next day searching for lost prescription bottles or car keys, scrubbing at brand new soda stains in their carpet, and picking up the shards of family heirlooms.  Full-fledged, unanimous hatred of the diminutive devils sets in among the remaining members of the household.

Clementine carries off the role of cancer survivor with impressive nonchalance, chewing a tumor most of the way out of her leg to bring the problem to our attention, and then sailing through the operation and recovery period as the vets finish the job and remove another mass (also malignant) from her ear.  She seems to actually enjoy the vet visits and assures me that chicks will dig her new scar, a zipper-like affair on the back of her leg.

Whew! I can feel some of the rust flaking off, but it may take a few more of these things before we are again operating at full capacity.

Finally…

Recently, something prompted me to go back and read a lot of old posts, looking for something in particular that I’d written here.  Although I didn’t find what I was looking for, I did enjoy the reading, so I thought maybe I’d give this thing another go.  For starters, let’s just put this post up and see if anyone notices…