“It has to be said… there was little to laugh at in the cellar of the Quisition. Not if you had a normal sense of humour. There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic to Work Here But It Helps!!!

“But there there things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven.

“The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives.

“They had legends on them like A Present From The Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same.

“And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he’d send back a crudely coloured woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risqu頭essage on the back. And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale ‘Pop’ Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight obols for his retirement present and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he’d always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed.

“And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

- Terry Pratchett, ‘Small Gods’

My grandfather died this morning and all I can think of is, Who will look after his birds?

The countless nights waiting in the snow (or blazing heat, or meteor showers, or whatever) for nonexistent buses didn’t sour me on St. Albert Transit completely. Neither did the three-car-one-bus pile-up of late 2001. But this morning, the bus I was on lost its drive shaft. There was a hideous grinding screech, several thumps (as we drove over it), and the bus glided to an ignoble halt. The driver muttered something about a flat and stepped outside, returning a moment later with a gigantic twisted piece of engine roadkill. His exact words were “Anyone wanna know what a drive shaft looks like?” Those of us who knew the purpose of a drive shaft sat there in astonishment. It’s like, OK – your muffler falls off. Happens. You cry, and move on. And bumpers fall off too, no biggy. But… well, I don’t think I need to go on. This is not something that is supposed to just drop out of the bottom of a vehicle.

While I was listening to the busdrivers radio back and forth, I discovered that the exact same thing had happened to a similar bus a month before.

And now I hate St. Albert Transit.

My mother has a computer on her desk at work. I’ve visited her there and I’ve seen it. I also know that said computer runs Windows 95 and that she more or less knows how to use it. So I have no clue how the following conversation came about:

Mom: (coming into my room) Oh my God! Wow! Look at that!
Me: What?
Mom: All those! (gestures at my monitor) How did you get all those, all that, that, page full of site?
Me: Wh…at?
Mom: (impatiently) You know. All those little clickers! (points to my desktop, where I have maybe a dozen extra icons in addition to the ones you get on a newly-purchased computer). Holy! That’s quite a few. Do you have enough ROM for all of them, or should we buy you some more CDs? I heard Al saying you guys needed CDs.
Me: (completely at sea by this point) Um, I think I hear the phone ringing downstairs…

Just having returned from ‘The Matrix: Revolutions,’ I felt inspired to post an old journal entry from several months ago that seems halfway relevant:

“22 Jun 03

… And Al and I stayed up late to watch ‘Johnny Mnemonic,’ which is why I’m writing at 1:08 a.m. Not worth it at all. An incredibly bad movie. Really beyond belief. I hate that people will use that as a mental reference point when thinking of William Gibson or, worse yet, the entire cyberpunk genre that he began. They can get away with dismissing the whole body of literature by saying “Remember ‘Johnny Mnemonic’?” Good God. How could someone take that terrific short story, that story that was as clever and functional and beautiful and tucked-in as a VW Jetta, and transform it into this horrendous special-effects extravaganza (and I mean special in the other sense), rife with poor timing, incomprehensible plot twists, and seven zillion other pissy things that marred the purity of the story. And man! that acting. It kills me that they didn’t make a Neuromancer movie back when Keanu Reeves looked young enough to play Case. Keanu is the perfect Case, actually the perfect cyberpunk face – hard and white, stiff dark hair, mostly Caucasian. But more importantly, Case’s face would have a limited range of emotions, the permanent poker-face you’d need to stay afloat as a cowboy/con-man/middleman. It would have to be a fierce solipsist face with a necessary layer of faux brazenness, a wised-up futuristic face that said ‘I’m looking out for number one’ as well as ‘Don’t let it look like I’m learning from this,’ and that’s Keanu, that perfect look, dumb as a post, modern, cagy even in his apparent stupidity. Actually, what am I saying. There would be no way, even now, to make a Neuromancer movie unless it was animated.”

So yeah. Oh, and in case you haven’t read Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ yet, here it is. Goodnight, all!