- Strange Horizons is having its annual fund drive. I'm obviously biased, but I think Strange Horizons is a fantastic magazine, and, my own contributions completely notwithstanding, my favorite source for online genre criticism. More details about the drive can be found here, and here's a list of prizes to be raffled off among contributors.
- Forget Avatar and District 9, the most exciting thing to come out of this year's Comic Con is the Middleman 13th episode table read, which some kind and enterprising soul has put online for the benefit of those of us not lucky enough to attend in person. Besides being a good episode and a fitting ending to the series, the recording is also a chance to see the cast and creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach having a hell of a lot of fun (Mark Sheppard and Mary Pat Gleason ham it up magnificently, and Matt Keeslar is 100% in character from the word go). I have to say, though, that if the goal was to get me to buy the upcoming comic book version of the episode, the recording backfired, because it just reminded me of how much I need actors to bring TV stories to life (which is also why I haven't felt the urge to keep up with Buffy and Angel in their comic form). Much as I enjoyed this recording, it also made me miss this show even more.
- My Worldcon schedule, for those of you who are attending and/or interested:
- Thursday, 15.30
Handicapping the Hugos I: The Novels
P-511CF
Farah Mendlesohn (m), Paul Kincaid, Phillip Nanson, Abigail Nussbaum
Our panellists have read the Hugo-nominated novels: they tell us what they want to win, what will win, and why.
(I'm a late addition to this panel, so my name isn't on the program guide.) - Friday, 20:00
One Season Wonders
P-511BE
Jeanne M. Mealy, Lee Whiteside, Tara Oakes, Abigail Nussbaum
What can we learn from shows like Firefly and Life on Mars? What makes good television, and why do good shows fail to find an audience?
(I assume that's the American Life on Mars, in which case the lesson to be learned is: don't.) - Sunday, 19:00
io9: Threat or Menace?
P-518A
David D. Levine, James Patrick Kelly, Moshe Feder, Susan Forest, Abigail Nussbaum
The internet allows many more people to read more and more criticism about SF works...but what are the downsides, if any? In a medium which effectively imposes no word-limits, are critics becoming less used to the discipline of shorter forms? Are there other characteristics of online writing (the use of links, anticipation of comments) that make it different from print?
(I hasten to point out that the title was settled on months ago with no input from me and has no connection to the recent fracas.)
- Thursday, 15.30
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Monday, August 03, 2009
Off to See the Worldcon
In a couple of hours, actually, but the time between now and then will be spent packing, remembering things I've forgotten to pack, repacking, and fretting about the other things I might have forgotten. As usual, I won't be receiving e-mails in my absence, and though I may see blog comments I probably won't reply to them. Expect me back some time next weekend, though possibly not in blogging form until some time later. I leave you with the following:
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Sad Thoughts On a Happy Day
Like many Israelis, I hold dual citizenship, and in my case the second is American. People who know this have taken to asking me, in the last few months, whether I was planning to vote in yesterday's election, to which my answer has always been no. I don't approve of expatriates or, as in my case, their children, casting absentee ballots to influence the running of a country they don't live in, whose most direct consequences they won't feel. Still, I think I might have had a harder time justifying this decision if it didn't seem clear that both of the states I might register to vote in (New York and Colorado) were going to go to Barack Obama. Though I don't feel entitled to cast my vote as an American, it's been difficult to tamp down the little voice that says that as an Israeli and as a person who lives on this planet, I ought to have had a say in selecting the single most powerful person on it. In the last eight years, the American president has remade the world, for the most part in ways that have made it more dangerous, more volatile, more polluted, and more full of hate, and it was with tremendous joy and relief that I woke up this morning to discover that the next holder of that position has at least the intention, and hopefully the ability, to reverse that course.
At the same time, I'm wondering whether my investment in this election doesn't exceed the degree justified by the effect its results will have on my life and my country. It's one thing to care and worry about the winner of the presidential election, or even the balance of power in the house or senate, but the very next thing I did after checking those results this morning was to find out how California's proposition 8, which outlaws same-sex marriages, fared. Though I genuinely believe that it would be a shame if this proposition made it into law and annulled the marriages of thousands of people, sitting halfway around the world from California, is that really something I should be so deeply concerned about? Or have I just been caught up by the mood of the American-dominated corner of the internet I hang out in? Wouldn't I be better off wondering about the status of gay rights and gay marriage (or for that matter, civil marriage of any variety) in Israel?
Earlier this week, Israeli news site Ynet published an op-ed piece by author Yoram Kaniuk, in which he explained why he believed that, despite all the polls, McCain was going to win this election. Americans, Kaniuk stated, were too right-wing, too racist, too small-minded, to choose as their president a mixed-race, Hawaiian-born, Harvard-educated liberal outsider like Obama. The real America, according to Kaniuk, was the rural one, and the seeming surge of support for Obama was the result of the disproportionate representation of Obama's urban, intellectual supporters in the media and online. This was, quite obviously, a bone-headed article, and I can't decide who should be more ashamed of it--Kaniuk for having produced such an outdated, disconnected, and plainly mistaken piece of writing or Ynet for having published it--but what truly infuriated me about it was the unthinking ease with which it denigrated an entire nation and its citizenry. Everyone loves to put down Americans, but there's a high-minded provincialism about Kaniuk's article that seems peculiar to Israelis, who sometimes seem to love nothing better than to excoriate the sins of others while ignoring our own (of course, my belief that this tendency is unique or unusually strong in my countrymen could be yet another example of that provincialism at work).
It takes a lot of nerve to call America too right-wing when Israel has been slowly but steadily swinging to the right for over a decade, and at a time when militant far-right groups have grown so bold as to publicly call for violence against Israeli soldiers and elected officials. It takes a lot of nerve to call America racist in a country which has failed to integrate thousands of Ethiopian immigrants, and only a few weeks after riots in Acre demonstrated decisively just how divided the Jewish and Arab communities in this country are. It takes a lot of nerve to shake one's head over religious fundamentalism in America only days after a Jerusalem mayoral candidate triumphantly predicted that in ten years' time there wouldn't be a single secular mayor in Israel. We like to look down on America. We like to act shocked that Americans are slowly rolling back abortion rights, but the fact is that an Israeli woman still needs to pass a gauntlet in order to be approved for an abortion. We snicker about the battle over teaching evolution in schools, but I don't remember it on my high school biology syllabus. We call Americans dumb, but Israel's standing in international math and science rankings has been dropping steadily for decades. We marvel at America's failed occupation of Iraq, but we've been bogged down in a failed occupation of the Palestinian territories for more than forty years. There are many ways in which Israeli society and government are better than their American equivalents, but none of them are enough to justify the attitude, which seems to pervade Israeli discourse, that Americans needed to prove themselves yesterday, and that we have the right to sit in judgment of them.
I remember the last time I voted with a sense of purpose and awed determination, in the firm belief that the choice being made by my fellow citizens and myself was going to spell either the doom or salvation of my country, our last chance to get back on the right track. It was also the very first time I cast a vote, in the May 1999 direct election for prime minister between incumbent Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. I was only a month into my army service at the time, and had just started vocational training. That evening, the girls in my course huddled around the radio, and broke into cheers and whoops when the ten o'clock news exit polls called the election decisively for Barak. It was the end of three years of the most incompetent, self-interested, short-sighted government I had known in my young life, and now it was all going to get better. Within eighteen months, Barak's government was on the verge of implosion after a series of bad calls and mishandled decisions, and the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 paved the way for Ariel Sharon's election the following winter, and the escalating rightward shift of Israeli public discourse.
I'm not saying this to cast a pall over Obama's victory or suggest that America's future will prove as grim. Though I'm sure today's euphoria will fade, and that President Obama will make mistakes, compromises, or just decisions that his supporters disagree with, I truly believe that his election is a good sign for the future. I'm saying this because on February 10th, less than a decade after doing so for the first time, I will vote in my fifth national election, and just as I did on all but that first time in 1999, I will vote without hope that the results of that election will change my country's future for the better. I'm going to vote because I can't not, and I'll vote for Meretz, the same party I've always voted for, the only people who stand for something I can bear to give my support to, but I'll do so in spite of the fact that their accomplishments and presence in the Israeli political scene have dwindled and grown faint. I know that, no matter what their political opinions and affiliations, there are plenty of Israelis who share my disillusionment. It's the reason that voter turnout has steadily decreased over the last decade--because none of us can find anyone worth voting for.
In the midst of my joy when I learned about Obama's election this morning there was also a lot of sadness when I contemplated the fact that American turnout this year had reached such record highs. These numbers reflect not only how dire things have become in America, and how crucial this election was, but also the fact that voters had someone who excited and galvanized them, someone who got them to the polling station, and in some cases kept them there for hours and hours. I realized that it had been years since an Israeli politician had excited me, since I had thought of an elected official as someone I could trust or believe in. For my next prime minister, I face the unappetizing choice between two former occupants of that post, one of whom did a bad job and the other a spectacularly bad job, and a woman whose chief virtue seems to be the fact that, unlike a sizable portion of the cabinet she served on, she isn't being investigated for corruption. I don't think I'd like an Israeli Obama. Our politics are closer to the ground than the US's, and more accessible to the average voter--I'm not a very political person, but even I've had the chance to exchange words with members of Knesset, cabinet ministers, prime ministers and presidents--and our politicians suit that reality, right down to the sweat stains, unflattering hairdos, and occasional inarticulateness. Someone as handsome and charismatic as Obama would seem out of place here (as would his focus on hope, never a very prominent component of Israeli political discourse). But I would very much like it if an Israeli politician showed something of his integrity and gravitas, and made me care about their chances of making it into public office.
As the American election drew closer and Obama's victory became more and more likely, the Israeli media started beating around the question of whether a black liberal whose middle name was Hussein would be 'good for Israel'. This is idiotic on two levels, first because of the implicit assumption that Bush--who did nothing to advance issues important to Israeli security such as pushing for the meaningful implementation of UN resolution 1701 and curtailing the rearmament of Hezbollah, who turned a toothless and ineffectual enemy nation into a hotbed of terrorism, who so thoroughly squandered his nation's diplomatic capital that his best response to the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb is to loudly and repeatedly announce that it's nobody's business if Israel decides to take matters into its own hands, wink wink, nudge nudge--was actually good for Israel. But more importantly, it's an idiotic question because, at the end of the day, it's not the person in the oval office who determines Israel's well-being but the people in the Knesset, in the cabinet chamber, and in the prime minister's residence. The rest of the world might have sighed in relief at this morning's news, but for Israelis, that relief is still a long way off, and it's down to us and to our leaders to achieve it. In the next few months, as America winds down from this election and prepares for President Obama's inauguration, we're going to be plunged into the same feverish circus we've gone through four times in the last decade. That's three short months in which to get people excited about casting their votes again, and hopeful about what those votes can achieve. Otherwise, in two or three years' time we'll be gearing up for yet another round. I don't want an Israeli Obama, but I do want my leaders to have, as he seems to, both conviction and passionate intensity. I want Israel to wake up to a day like today.
At the same time, I'm wondering whether my investment in this election doesn't exceed the degree justified by the effect its results will have on my life and my country. It's one thing to care and worry about the winner of the presidential election, or even the balance of power in the house or senate, but the very next thing I did after checking those results this morning was to find out how California's proposition 8, which outlaws same-sex marriages, fared. Though I genuinely believe that it would be a shame if this proposition made it into law and annulled the marriages of thousands of people, sitting halfway around the world from California, is that really something I should be so deeply concerned about? Or have I just been caught up by the mood of the American-dominated corner of the internet I hang out in? Wouldn't I be better off wondering about the status of gay rights and gay marriage (or for that matter, civil marriage of any variety) in Israel?
Earlier this week, Israeli news site Ynet published an op-ed piece by author Yoram Kaniuk, in which he explained why he believed that, despite all the polls, McCain was going to win this election. Americans, Kaniuk stated, were too right-wing, too racist, too small-minded, to choose as their president a mixed-race, Hawaiian-born, Harvard-educated liberal outsider like Obama. The real America, according to Kaniuk, was the rural one, and the seeming surge of support for Obama was the result of the disproportionate representation of Obama's urban, intellectual supporters in the media and online. This was, quite obviously, a bone-headed article, and I can't decide who should be more ashamed of it--Kaniuk for having produced such an outdated, disconnected, and plainly mistaken piece of writing or Ynet for having published it--but what truly infuriated me about it was the unthinking ease with which it denigrated an entire nation and its citizenry. Everyone loves to put down Americans, but there's a high-minded provincialism about Kaniuk's article that seems peculiar to Israelis, who sometimes seem to love nothing better than to excoriate the sins of others while ignoring our own (of course, my belief that this tendency is unique or unusually strong in my countrymen could be yet another example of that provincialism at work).
It takes a lot of nerve to call America too right-wing when Israel has been slowly but steadily swinging to the right for over a decade, and at a time when militant far-right groups have grown so bold as to publicly call for violence against Israeli soldiers and elected officials. It takes a lot of nerve to call America racist in a country which has failed to integrate thousands of Ethiopian immigrants, and only a few weeks after riots in Acre demonstrated decisively just how divided the Jewish and Arab communities in this country are. It takes a lot of nerve to shake one's head over religious fundamentalism in America only days after a Jerusalem mayoral candidate triumphantly predicted that in ten years' time there wouldn't be a single secular mayor in Israel. We like to look down on America. We like to act shocked that Americans are slowly rolling back abortion rights, but the fact is that an Israeli woman still needs to pass a gauntlet in order to be approved for an abortion. We snicker about the battle over teaching evolution in schools, but I don't remember it on my high school biology syllabus. We call Americans dumb, but Israel's standing in international math and science rankings has been dropping steadily for decades. We marvel at America's failed occupation of Iraq, but we've been bogged down in a failed occupation of the Palestinian territories for more than forty years. There are many ways in which Israeli society and government are better than their American equivalents, but none of them are enough to justify the attitude, which seems to pervade Israeli discourse, that Americans needed to prove themselves yesterday, and that we have the right to sit in judgment of them.
I remember the last time I voted with a sense of purpose and awed determination, in the firm belief that the choice being made by my fellow citizens and myself was going to spell either the doom or salvation of my country, our last chance to get back on the right track. It was also the very first time I cast a vote, in the May 1999 direct election for prime minister between incumbent Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. I was only a month into my army service at the time, and had just started vocational training. That evening, the girls in my course huddled around the radio, and broke into cheers and whoops when the ten o'clock news exit polls called the election decisively for Barak. It was the end of three years of the most incompetent, self-interested, short-sighted government I had known in my young life, and now it was all going to get better. Within eighteen months, Barak's government was on the verge of implosion after a series of bad calls and mishandled decisions, and the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 paved the way for Ariel Sharon's election the following winter, and the escalating rightward shift of Israeli public discourse.
I'm not saying this to cast a pall over Obama's victory or suggest that America's future will prove as grim. Though I'm sure today's euphoria will fade, and that President Obama will make mistakes, compromises, or just decisions that his supporters disagree with, I truly believe that his election is a good sign for the future. I'm saying this because on February 10th, less than a decade after doing so for the first time, I will vote in my fifth national election, and just as I did on all but that first time in 1999, I will vote without hope that the results of that election will change my country's future for the better. I'm going to vote because I can't not, and I'll vote for Meretz, the same party I've always voted for, the only people who stand for something I can bear to give my support to, but I'll do so in spite of the fact that their accomplishments and presence in the Israeli political scene have dwindled and grown faint. I know that, no matter what their political opinions and affiliations, there are plenty of Israelis who share my disillusionment. It's the reason that voter turnout has steadily decreased over the last decade--because none of us can find anyone worth voting for.
In the midst of my joy when I learned about Obama's election this morning there was also a lot of sadness when I contemplated the fact that American turnout this year had reached such record highs. These numbers reflect not only how dire things have become in America, and how crucial this election was, but also the fact that voters had someone who excited and galvanized them, someone who got them to the polling station, and in some cases kept them there for hours and hours. I realized that it had been years since an Israeli politician had excited me, since I had thought of an elected official as someone I could trust or believe in. For my next prime minister, I face the unappetizing choice between two former occupants of that post, one of whom did a bad job and the other a spectacularly bad job, and a woman whose chief virtue seems to be the fact that, unlike a sizable portion of the cabinet she served on, she isn't being investigated for corruption. I don't think I'd like an Israeli Obama. Our politics are closer to the ground than the US's, and more accessible to the average voter--I'm not a very political person, but even I've had the chance to exchange words with members of Knesset, cabinet ministers, prime ministers and presidents--and our politicians suit that reality, right down to the sweat stains, unflattering hairdos, and occasional inarticulateness. Someone as handsome and charismatic as Obama would seem out of place here (as would his focus on hope, never a very prominent component of Israeli political discourse). But I would very much like it if an Israeli politician showed something of his integrity and gravitas, and made me care about their chances of making it into public office.
As the American election drew closer and Obama's victory became more and more likely, the Israeli media started beating around the question of whether a black liberal whose middle name was Hussein would be 'good for Israel'. This is idiotic on two levels, first because of the implicit assumption that Bush--who did nothing to advance issues important to Israeli security such as pushing for the meaningful implementation of UN resolution 1701 and curtailing the rearmament of Hezbollah, who turned a toothless and ineffectual enemy nation into a hotbed of terrorism, who so thoroughly squandered his nation's diplomatic capital that his best response to the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb is to loudly and repeatedly announce that it's nobody's business if Israel decides to take matters into its own hands, wink wink, nudge nudge--was actually good for Israel. But more importantly, it's an idiotic question because, at the end of the day, it's not the person in the oval office who determines Israel's well-being but the people in the Knesset, in the cabinet chamber, and in the prime minister's residence. The rest of the world might have sighed in relief at this morning's news, but for Israelis, that relief is still a long way off, and it's down to us and to our leaders to achieve it. In the next few months, as America winds down from this election and prepares for President Obama's inauguration, we're going to be plunged into the same feverish circus we've gone through four times in the last decade. That's three short months in which to get people excited about casting their votes again, and hopeful about what those votes can achieve. Otherwise, in two or three years' time we'll be gearing up for yet another round. I don't want an Israeli Obama, but I do want my leaders to have, as he seems to, both conviction and passionate intensity. I want Israel to wake up to a day like today.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
A Vacation in Bohemia
- In a word: lovely. Which encompasses both the experience--I've been in need of some decompression, and it was a chance to spend time with my family and celebrate both my mother's birthday and my brother's discharge from the army--and the setting, for which I need offer no more evidence than the following:
On the other hand, dear God is this city expensive. I've been to many popular tourist destinations in my day, and especially with the Euro so strong at the moment it was clear that this was not going to be a cheap trip, but much as I enjoyed Prague it was hard to escape the impression that this is a city out to bilk tourists for everything they have. The $3 water bottles (closer to $7 in the real tourist areas), the exorbitant prices at restaurants (which, surprisingly enough, returned to Earth almost as soon as we left the realm of tourist attractions), and most of all, the price of entry to almost every attraction, often completely out of proportion to the breadth of the exhibit in question and the care taken in its presentation. (Notable exceptions: the Jewish Museum, which for a not-unreasonable fee offers access to all the synagogues in the Jewish quarter and the extremely well-curated and presented exhibits within them, and the Museum of Decorative Arts, also in the Jewish quarter, which was both relatively cheap and so comprehensive as to be nearly overwhelming.)- For those craving roller-coaster rides, may I recommend the escalators on the Prague metro, especially those at Namesti Republiki station? Long, steep, fast, and just that bit off level, plus the stations themselves double as wind tunnels. Fun.
- The internet, making my life funnier since 1995: On Tuesday, Jeff VanderMeer sends Niall Harrison a Facebook friend request. Niall reads Jeff's profile and learns that Jeff and wife Ann are going to be in Prague on Wednesday, on their way to Parcon. Niall text messages me, I e-mail Niall my particulars, Niall forwards them to Jeff, and the upside is that on Friday I had a lovely breakfast with Ann and Jeff at their hotel, which turned out to be just around the corner from mine.
- Also on Friday: Shabbat services at Prague's reform congregation Beit Simcha, whose members meet in what was once a coal cellar. A tiny service--half locals, half tourists, and barely even a minyan--which tickled my nostalgia bone as it reminded me where our congregation was just fifteen years ago, if you replace coal cellar with classroom at local college. Where, to be fair, we still meet, though nowadays we have a rabbi and much higher attendance, so here's hoping Beit Simcha manage to take that step forward as well.
- Books read: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (great premise but skews far too young), Spook Country by William Gibson (I liked this book better back when it was called Pattern Recognition), and on the plane, 2/3 of Allegra Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls (beautifully written but, to me, less interesting in its topic than Intuition). More thoughts, I suspect, next time I do a recent reading roundup. I did not get around to reading the latest Fantasy and Science Fiction giveaway-in-exchange-for-blogging issue, but I'm quite looking forward to it as the table of contents is very promising, including stories by Geoff Ryman and Stephen King.
- Books purchased: because of the aforementioned high prices of everything, I restrained myself to just The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Excession by Iain M. Banks, and a short story collection by Karel Capek. I am also in receipt of two issues of Weird Tales, courtesy of Ann VanderMeer.
- While I was gone: Stargate: Atlantis was cancelled, which frankly is a bit of shock. What is the world coming to if formulaic mediocrity can't survive indefinitely on TV? Not to fear, another spin-off series, Stargate: Universe, which from its premise sounds like the Voyager to Atlantis's Deep Space Nine, is in the works (the preceding is not to be taken as implying that Stargate: Atlantis's quality is in any way comparable to that of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; I make no such assurances about Voyager), but I think I may finally be done with the franchise. This does, however, leave me with the question of what the hell I'm going to watch next summer.
- Of course, assuming it gets a second season, the answer to previous question would be The Middleman, which despite a cute but rather stiff pilot has turned to be quite delightful--think The Avengers by way of Pushing Daisies. The last episode I watched, featuring Kevin Sorbo as a 60s-era Middleman frozen in time, was hilarious.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Hello, Goodbye
Just popping my head in to say that I'm going to be vacationing in Prague for the next week--doing my part to make the internet just a little bit deader than it is right now. As ever, I won't be receiving e-mails, and though I might be able to see comments to the blog I probably won't get around to responding to them before I get back. Be good.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
And Now For Something Completely Different
Warning: the following post contains writing of a confessional nature, of precisely the type which regular readers of this blog will have learned not to expect. If that's not of interest to you (and honestly, why would it be), move along. I should have something book-related by the end of the week. This is just something I needed to post.
When my father died, everyone said how young he'd been. At eight years old, forty-six doesn't seem very young, and so, like so many other aspects of his loss, this one crept up on me as the years and decades accumulated between us. The older I get, the more untenable it seems for a person to die with so much of their life unlived, and so much left to accomplish. In a month my family and I will mark the nineteenth anniversary of my father's death, the amount of time it takes for the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars to synchronize with one another, so that the Jewish and secular anniversaries will both fall on the same day. Nineteen years is also the midway point between the age I was when my father died and the age he was. These are all meaningless facts and figures, of course, but sometimes that's all you have left.
Yesterday, the day before what would have been my father's 65th birthday, I was stopped coming out of a meeting by one of the project managers in my company. Was it possible, she asked, a little nervously, that my father was the Gideon Nussbaum who worked for Israel Aircraft Industries? As it turns out, he was her boss on her first job out of university.
When someone's been out of your life--out of all life--for as long as my father's been out of mine, they take up very little space. You have to work hard, make a little area that's all their own--the framed triptych my mother made of some of her favorite photographs of him, the kind of picture one keeps only when the person in it is no longer around to remind you of their face, which hangs above the Shabbat candlesticks in the house he bought but never lived in; the photo albums my aunt made as gifts for my Bat Mitzvah and my brother's Bar Mitzvah, which follow my father from infancy to adulthood; the ancient, shabby writing desk that was once his, and which none of us are willing to throw out because, chalked on its underside, is a heart with his name and the name of a high school sweetheart inside. But in my everyday life, my father is a rare figure. I can't honestly imagine my life, more than two thirds of which have passed in his absence, with him in it. There is simply no room for him--my family and I have grown and changed to fill the void he left. To encounter him so unexpectedly, almost as though we'd met by chance on the street, was therefore inexpressibly moving, and all the more so for the obvious affection and admiration with which this person spoke of him.
And it was also, at the same time, terrifying. My father's former subordinate spoke about his qualities as a superior, repeating the praise I've heard from my mother, from my aunt, and from his friends: his natural leadership and authority, his ease and friendliness. All qualities I wish I could find in myself but so seldom do. It's quite scary to think that someone who sees me several times a week will, from now on, think of my father and of those qualities whenever she does. And at the same time it's exhilarating. To know that the place I walk into every day, a huge part of my ordinary, mundane life, is connected to a man so completely lost to me that special days and times are set aside for his remembrance--in a way this is a greater motivation to excel at my job than any salary, bonus, or performance evaluation ever could be.
About a year before my father died I was speaking to another girl at school, having a serious discussion about people we'd known who had died, when she decisively trumped my deceased grandparents with her own dead father. I was shocked. Parents weren't supposed to die. Orphans belonged in storybooks, not ordinary life. For several years after my father's death I was the subject of the same curiosity with which, on that afternoon, I surveyed this girl. Classmates and younger children who, not out of any cruelty but simply out of the same horrified fascination I had once felt, would shamefully sidle up to me and ask a few indelicate questions. As time wore on, sadly, more and more of my contemporaries got to experience death firsthand, and soon my loss was overshadowed by that of classmates and friends, whose grief was keener and more recent than my own. From my observation of them, and from my own experiences, I've come to realize that what shocked me that afternoon twenty years ago was not so much the fact of a father's death, but the matter-of-factness with which it was reported. That my friend could speak of an unspeakable thing as if it were ordinary, because to her it was, just as my father's death quickly became to me. A fact of life, and soon not even a very prominent one. People die, and even when they're remembered, life goes on without them, and the pain of their loss becomes part of the huge tapestry of happy and sad events that make up a life. Yesterday, for a brief moment, my father reentered my life--a rare occurrence in the nineteen years since he's left it, and one that is likely to grow even rarer. I'm truly grateful, therefore, for this opportunity to meet him again.
When my father died, everyone said how young he'd been. At eight years old, forty-six doesn't seem very young, and so, like so many other aspects of his loss, this one crept up on me as the years and decades accumulated between us. The older I get, the more untenable it seems for a person to die with so much of their life unlived, and so much left to accomplish. In a month my family and I will mark the nineteenth anniversary of my father's death, the amount of time it takes for the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars to synchronize with one another, so that the Jewish and secular anniversaries will both fall on the same day. Nineteen years is also the midway point between the age I was when my father died and the age he was. These are all meaningless facts and figures, of course, but sometimes that's all you have left.
Yesterday, the day before what would have been my father's 65th birthday, I was stopped coming out of a meeting by one of the project managers in my company. Was it possible, she asked, a little nervously, that my father was the Gideon Nussbaum who worked for Israel Aircraft Industries? As it turns out, he was her boss on her first job out of university.
When someone's been out of your life--out of all life--for as long as my father's been out of mine, they take up very little space. You have to work hard, make a little area that's all their own--the framed triptych my mother made of some of her favorite photographs of him, the kind of picture one keeps only when the person in it is no longer around to remind you of their face, which hangs above the Shabbat candlesticks in the house he bought but never lived in; the photo albums my aunt made as gifts for my Bat Mitzvah and my brother's Bar Mitzvah, which follow my father from infancy to adulthood; the ancient, shabby writing desk that was once his, and which none of us are willing to throw out because, chalked on its underside, is a heart with his name and the name of a high school sweetheart inside. But in my everyday life, my father is a rare figure. I can't honestly imagine my life, more than two thirds of which have passed in his absence, with him in it. There is simply no room for him--my family and I have grown and changed to fill the void he left. To encounter him so unexpectedly, almost as though we'd met by chance on the street, was therefore inexpressibly moving, and all the more so for the obvious affection and admiration with which this person spoke of him.
And it was also, at the same time, terrifying. My father's former subordinate spoke about his qualities as a superior, repeating the praise I've heard from my mother, from my aunt, and from his friends: his natural leadership and authority, his ease and friendliness. All qualities I wish I could find in myself but so seldom do. It's quite scary to think that someone who sees me several times a week will, from now on, think of my father and of those qualities whenever she does. And at the same time it's exhilarating. To know that the place I walk into every day, a huge part of my ordinary, mundane life, is connected to a man so completely lost to me that special days and times are set aside for his remembrance--in a way this is a greater motivation to excel at my job than any salary, bonus, or performance evaluation ever could be.
About a year before my father died I was speaking to another girl at school, having a serious discussion about people we'd known who had died, when she decisively trumped my deceased grandparents with her own dead father. I was shocked. Parents weren't supposed to die. Orphans belonged in storybooks, not ordinary life. For several years after my father's death I was the subject of the same curiosity with which, on that afternoon, I surveyed this girl. Classmates and younger children who, not out of any cruelty but simply out of the same horrified fascination I had once felt, would shamefully sidle up to me and ask a few indelicate questions. As time wore on, sadly, more and more of my contemporaries got to experience death firsthand, and soon my loss was overshadowed by that of classmates and friends, whose grief was keener and more recent than my own. From my observation of them, and from my own experiences, I've come to realize that what shocked me that afternoon twenty years ago was not so much the fact of a father's death, but the matter-of-factness with which it was reported. That my friend could speak of an unspeakable thing as if it were ordinary, because to her it was, just as my father's death quickly became to me. A fact of life, and soon not even a very prominent one. People die, and even when they're remembered, life goes on without them, and the pain of their loss becomes part of the huge tapestry of happy and sad events that make up a life. Yesterday, for a brief moment, my father reentered my life--a rare occurrence in the nineteen years since he's left it, and one that is likely to grow even rarer. I'm truly grateful, therefore, for this opportunity to meet him again.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
While I Was Gone
I'm back! Had a lovely time. Once again, this trip was occasioned by a family wedding (as Niall said, my relatives get married in all the coolest places), and at least half the fun of it involved meeting cousins distant and obscure, many of whom I haven't seen in several years, and some of whom I met for the very first time this week, as well as their friends and relatives. The wedding was beautiful and the party in its wake great fun.
I also did the tourist thing, but everyone knows the New York highlights so I won't bore you too much with my version of them. I took a rather laid-back approach to the museums, wandering about them willy-nilly and poking my head into any exhibit that looked appealing. As a result, I had a somewhat dizzying experience at the Museum of Modern Art when I turned a corner and found myself face-to-face with Van Gogh's Starry Night. I had known, on an academic level, that the original of an image I've encountered hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of times in facsimile had to be hanging somewhere, probably at a location of MoMA's caliber, but to come upon the painting unawares really threw me. This wasn't an experience like going to see the Mona Lisa, and discovering that it is too small, and the crowd surrounding it too large, for any visitor to properly appreciate it. I had plenty of time and access to the painting, but I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that I was actually in its presence. I was left with all sorts of confused thoughts about the value of an original creation when its image has become throughly entrenched into our cultural subconscious, but luckily there was a gigantic Monet triptych in the next room to take my mind off them.
The New York subway system remains, I am sad to say, the least hospitable and comprehensible underground rail system it has ever been my misfortune to use. Confusing, contradictory, and, just when you need it the most, insufficient signage, a senseless enslavement of the underground map to above-ground physical landmarks that is, to add insult to injury, only sporadically adhered to (if you're going to name a subway station 23rd St., why are the exits on 22nd?), a downright bizarre distribution of both stations and lines, and poor maintenance of both stations and trains. I imagine it's a perfectly serviceable system for someone who knows the city, but as a tourist (and last time I checked, New York gets more than a few of these) I found it frustrating, and frequently chose to take a bus.
And then there's this:
Most of them should be readable, but titles are available upon request.
In what is becoming a tradition, two literary awards were announced during my absence (last time it was the Nebula and the Clarke). Anne Enright's The Gathering won the Booker, and Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. I'm not terrifically fussed about either. Of this year's Booker nominees, I'd only read McEwan's On Chesil Beach (in fact, I don't believe I'd even heard about the other nominees before the longlist was announced), and though I liked it very much, I didn't think it was substantial enough to deserve the award. All I know about Lessing is that Ursula K. Le Guin (who, in spite of my embarrassing indifference towards her novels, is fast becoming one of my favorite reviewers) savaged her most recent novel, The Cleft. Here's Adam Roberts, however, discussing Lessing's SF writing.
On Monday, Strange Horizons published a double review of Brian Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues, by Martin Lewis and Rose Fox. Neither one is particularly thrilled with the novel, and interestingly, both come at it from the perspective of big city dwellers--Lewis is a Londoner, Fox a New Yorker. I adored Spaceman Blues, but I'm coming to it as someone who has never been more than a tourist in either of these cities, so I'm going to have to think some more about their criticisms of the novel.
And finally, coming from J.K. Rowling herself: Dumbledore was gay. And in love with Grindlewald (though whether that love was requited remains unclear). On the one hand, how cool is it that the Potterverse's Xavier/Magneto, Gandalf/Saruman equivalent is actually canon? On the other hand, is a representation of homosexuality in the form of a character who is ancient, celibate, and traumatized into asexuality something to get excited over? And shouldn't this have been revealed in the book itself, for example in "King's Cross", which as it stands is an almost pointless chapter in which Dumbledore tells Harry things he, and we, already know?
I also did the tourist thing, but everyone knows the New York highlights so I won't bore you too much with my version of them. I took a rather laid-back approach to the museums, wandering about them willy-nilly and poking my head into any exhibit that looked appealing. As a result, I had a somewhat dizzying experience at the Museum of Modern Art when I turned a corner and found myself face-to-face with Van Gogh's Starry Night. I had known, on an academic level, that the original of an image I've encountered hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of times in facsimile had to be hanging somewhere, probably at a location of MoMA's caliber, but to come upon the painting unawares really threw me. This wasn't an experience like going to see the Mona Lisa, and discovering that it is too small, and the crowd surrounding it too large, for any visitor to properly appreciate it. I had plenty of time and access to the painting, but I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that I was actually in its presence. I was left with all sorts of confused thoughts about the value of an original creation when its image has become throughly entrenched into our cultural subconscious, but luckily there was a gigantic Monet triptych in the next room to take my mind off them.
The New York subway system remains, I am sad to say, the least hospitable and comprehensible underground rail system it has ever been my misfortune to use. Confusing, contradictory, and, just when you need it the most, insufficient signage, a senseless enslavement of the underground map to above-ground physical landmarks that is, to add insult to injury, only sporadically adhered to (if you're going to name a subway station 23rd St., why are the exits on 22nd?), a downright bizarre distribution of both stations and lines, and poor maintenance of both stations and trains. I imagine it's a perfectly serviceable system for someone who knows the city, but as a tourist (and last time I checked, New York gets more than a few of these) I found it frustrating, and frequently chose to take a bus.
And then there's this:
Most of them should be readable, but titles are available upon request.
In what is becoming a tradition, two literary awards were announced during my absence (last time it was the Nebula and the Clarke). Anne Enright's The Gathering won the Booker, and Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel prize for literature. I'm not terrifically fussed about either. Of this year's Booker nominees, I'd only read McEwan's On Chesil Beach (in fact, I don't believe I'd even heard about the other nominees before the longlist was announced), and though I liked it very much, I didn't think it was substantial enough to deserve the award. All I know about Lessing is that Ursula K. Le Guin (who, in spite of my embarrassing indifference towards her novels, is fast becoming one of my favorite reviewers) savaged her most recent novel, The Cleft. Here's Adam Roberts, however, discussing Lessing's SF writing.
On Monday, Strange Horizons published a double review of Brian Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues, by Martin Lewis and Rose Fox. Neither one is particularly thrilled with the novel, and interestingly, both come at it from the perspective of big city dwellers--Lewis is a Londoner, Fox a New Yorker. I adored Spaceman Blues, but I'm coming to it as someone who has never been more than a tourist in either of these cities, so I'm going to have to think some more about their criticisms of the novel.
And finally, coming from J.K. Rowling herself: Dumbledore was gay. And in love with Grindlewald (though whether that love was requited remains unclear). On the one hand, how cool is it that the Potterverse's Xavier/Magneto, Gandalf/Saruman equivalent is actually canon? On the other hand, is a representation of homosexuality in the form of a character who is ancient, celibate, and traumatized into asexuality something to get excited over? And shouldn't this have been revealed in the book itself, for example in "King's Cross", which as it stands is an almost pointless chapter in which Dumbledore tells Harry things he, and we, already know?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
New York, New York
Not that weeklong silences have been rare on this blog recently (she said sheepishly), but there's another one coming up as I flit off to New York for yet more family nuptials. Expect me back some time next weekend. As usual, I'm unlikely to reply to e-mail or comments until I get back. See ya.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
I Promise Not to Make a Habit of This
But look! A puppy!
Her name is Luna. She's a mixed Pointer, about two months old. In the 30-something hours she's been in the house she's managed to steal two shoes and do something adorable about once every three seconds. She's also figured out what the kitchen is for, and has perfected her dinner-table mournful stare (sadly, to no effect). Adoptive big sister Belle is dubious about the entire exercise, but recognizes that the foolishness of humans is something to be tolerated. If the fish have an opinion they have, thus far, kept it to themselves.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Home Again
Just popping my head in to say that I am back, safe, sound and exhausted, from my travels. Brazil was gorgeous and I will have pictures and reports up soon.
The big news from my period of absence is that M. John Harrison's Nova Swing won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Congratulations to Mr. Harrison and a hearty 'well done' to the judges.
In less satisfying award news, the Nebula winners were announced yesterday. Given the general mediocrity of the ballot, I can't quite find it in myself to get worked up over the winners, and of course things could have been much worse--"Unfinished Business" might have won the best script award.
Finally, if you haven't done so already, be sure to check out Andrew Rilstone's ongoing series A Sceptic's Guide to Richard Dawkins, in which Rilstone mercilessly filets Dawkins's failures as a religious historian and as a philosopher in his recent The God Delusion, in a sort of counterpart to Fred Clark's by-now monumental takedown of the Left Behind series. Be sure, as well, to read Bruce Alderman's hilarious The God Delusion: A Source Criticism.
The big news from my period of absence is that M. John Harrison's Nova Swing won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Congratulations to Mr. Harrison and a hearty 'well done' to the judges.
In less satisfying award news, the Nebula winners were announced yesterday. Given the general mediocrity of the ballot, I can't quite find it in myself to get worked up over the winners, and of course things could have been much worse--"Unfinished Business" might have won the best script award.
Finally, if you haven't done so already, be sure to check out Andrew Rilstone's ongoing series A Sceptic's Guide to Richard Dawkins, in which Rilstone mercilessly filets Dawkins's failures as a religious historian and as a philosopher in his recent The God Delusion, in a sort of counterpart to Fred Clark's by-now monumental takedown of the Left Behind series. Be sure, as well, to read Bruce Alderman's hilarious The God Delusion: A Source Criticism.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Leaving on a Jet Plane
Tomorrow morning, at an hour so ungodly that I shudder to speak it, I will be leaving on holiday to Brazil, where I plan to attend my cousin's wedding, do tourist things, and read many books. I'll be back on the 12th, so expect some report (possibly with pictures) some time after that.
I have no idea whether I'll have internet access during this time. It's possible that I'll be able to see comments to the blog, but unlikely that I'll respond. I definitely won't be reading e-mail.
Be good.
I have no idea whether I'll have internet access during this time. It's possible that I'll be able to see comments to the blog, but unlikely that I'll respond. I definitely won't be reading e-mail.
Be good.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
I Have the Coolest Little Brother in the World
Behold my slightly-belated birthday present:
As you might have gathered from the key in his side, this is a wind-up toy--Bender walks. He also comes with a detachable stogie and a can of Mom's Robot Oil.
(Available from, since I know some of you will want to know.)
As you might have gathered from the key in his side, this is a wind-up toy--Bender walks. He also comes with a detachable stogie and a can of Mom's Robot Oil.
(Available from, since I know some of you will want to know.)
Friday, June 23, 2006
Thursday, March 30, 2006
England, In Bullet Points
- In a nutshell: great fun. I spent time with my friend Avigail (yes, we have the same name), met new and cool friends, saw new and cool places, and just in general relaxed and didn't think about the things that I'm going to have to start thinking about now. A definite success.
- The flight out was divine, and even the flight back, as one-hour-delayed, packed night flights in which I get placed in the middle seat of the middle block of seats go, was fairly harmless. I finished my book and even watched those segments of The Family Stone which didn't seem completely boring without any sound, which frankly seems to me to be the best way to appreciate the film. Too bad the same approach couldn't do anything for Rent on the way out.
- The weather seemed to be on my side as well. It was cold, obviously, but I actually find that novel and refreshing, and it only rained for the last two days of my stay (although my innate Israeliness shone through when I peevishly wondered why the rain wasn't tapering off after 20 minutes).
- I've actually been to the UK about half a dozen times in my lifetime--four or five of them in the last decade, as Avigail and I exchange biannual visits. This trip was the first, however, in which I left the greater London area. Avigail is in the middle of a PhD program in Oxford, and we spent a great deal of time walking around that city, exploring the various colleges. We also took a few day trips--to Stratford-Upon-Avon and Brighton--one two-day excursion to London, and a weekend trip to the Lake District.
- And, speaking of the Lake District, here are some pictures:
Which, in all honesty, don't quite convey how beautiful it was up there. - Niall Harrison invited me to the BSFA meeting in London on the 22nd, which turned out to be great fun and not a little bit strange--all those people I had only known as disembodied spirits on the ether turning out to have actual faces and voices (Niall, when we first spoke on the phone: "But you're American!"). A tremendously cool time was had by me, at the very least, and I suspect by at least a few others (Niall has a few comments here).
- Shopping-wise, I had two objectives for this trip: homemade fudge and books. I'm happy to report that I succeeded on both counts. The fudge is, naturally, gone already. The books, despite some not-inconsiderable headway, are still a respectable stack on my desk:
Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
Old Filth by Jane Gardam
1610: A Sundial in a Grave by Mary Gentle
Climbers by M. John Harrison
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels by Nancy Mitford
Silverlock by John Myers Myers
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart (moronically retitled Firecracker in the UK)
Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper
Affinity by Sarah Waters
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
And, from Niall, review copies of Geoff Ryman's The King's Last Song and Simon Ings' The Weight of Numbers. - Things I learned about England: unlike every other country I've visited, including ones in which citrus fruit is not indigenous and not in any way a part of the local diet, in England 'lemonade' doesn't mean juice derived from a lemon. It means some concoction made of fizzy water and lemon syrup.
- On the day of our visit to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Avigail and I had a competition to see which one of us could find the most embarrassing Shakespeare-related gift item. I won (or, possibly, lost) with the Macbeth finger puppets, and also spotted a shop called "Much Ado About Toys". In Brighton, the most embarrassing gift item was a booklet of Pride and Prejudice paper dolls.
- I don't know what the hell clotted cream is, except that I suspect its name very aptly describes its effects on my arteries, but I want more of it.
- Scary discovery at Heathrow airport: all the food stalls close at 9 PM. Scarier discovery at Heathrow airport: no passport control at the departure end.
- So, how have you been?
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Returned
The original plan for this post was to report on my travels, possibly with pictures. But, quite apart from the fact that it's election day and I've been volunteered for six hours on a polling station committee, there seem to be about a hundred e-mails, twice as many updates on my various RSS feeds, God only knows how many updates on my friends page, and about a dozen hours of television to catch up to.
This may take a while.
I've got some posts of substance planned, though--my review, finally, of Battlestar Galactica's second season, something about the Hugo short fiction nominees, and maybe even some stuff about Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle. And, possibly, some pictures.
This may take a while.
I've got some posts of substance planned, though--my review, finally, of Battlestar Galactica's second season, something about the Hugo short fiction nominees, and maybe even some stuff about Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle. And, possibly, some pictures.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Away
AtWQ is going on hiatus for the next two weeks as I enjoy my graduation gift to myself--a trip to the UK, visiting friends and hopefully not freezing to death (apparently, it's still winter over there, whereas I am already seriously considering my summer wardrobe). Expect me back some time around the 27th, with tales of my travels and possibly some thoughts about Battlestar Galactica (in a nutshell: "Lay Down Your Burdens II" rocked and even did a little to retroactively improve my opinion of part 1; the winter season is four for ten, and I'm not at all certain that the shocking reboot is enough to get the show back on track).
Feel free to poke around the site if you haven't already done so--the 'Posts of Note' section to the right has some good starting points--or explore the blogroll. I should be reachable by e-mail, but I can't promise a prompt response. By the same token, weblog comments will probably be ignored until I get back.
Have a lovely two weeks--I certainly intend to. See you on the flip side.
Feel free to poke around the site if you haven't already done so--the 'Posts of Note' section to the right has some good starting points--or explore the blogroll. I should be reachable by e-mail, but I can't promise a prompt response. By the same token, weblog comments will probably be ignored until I get back.
Have a lovely two weeks--I certainly intend to. See you on the flip side.
Friday, July 15, 2005
While We're on the Subject of Defining Ourselves Through Cultural Preferences...
About a year ago, a blogger called Terry Teachout published something called The Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index, which spread through blogdom like wildfire, inspiring dozens of imitations. In theory, the purpose of the TCCI was to let readers of Teachout's blog see how compatible they were with his cultural preferences. In reality, I suspect most people couldn't care less about their score and simply enjoyed the fun game. But, since a Cultural Concurrence Index is a) fun and b) a good way to introduce yourself, I thought I'd have one of my own. Some of the questions are mine, and others come from various other CCIs I found on the net.
The rules are simply: for each of the following questions, select a preference, column A or column B.
1. Gaugin or Van Gogh?
2. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?
3. Cats or dogs?
4. The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth?
5. Robert A. Heinlein or Isaac Asimov?
6. The Martian Chronicles or Something Wicked This Way Comes?
7. Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins?
8. The Moonstone or The Woman in White?
9. Hamburgers or hot dogs?
10. Any of the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen?
11. Jane Eyre or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall?
12. Wide Sargasso Sea or Jane Eyre?
13. Grosse Point Blank or High Fidelity?
14. PC or Mac?
15. Election or Ghost World?
16. Spider Man or Spider Man 2?
17. Batman Begins or Tim Burton's Batman?
18. Oklahoma or The Music Man?
19. Bus or subway?
20. Short novels or long ones?
21. Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
22. In the Bedroom or Lost in Translation?
23. A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night (the plays, in both cases)?
24. Coffee or tea?
25. "Friends" or "Scrubs"?
26. Rent or Angels in America?
27. Strictly Ballroom or Moulin Rouge?
28. Andrew Lloyd Webber or Stephen Sondheim?
29. Glory or The Mayor?
30. Summer or winter?
31. The Simpsons or Futurama?
32. The Sopranos or Deadwood?
33. "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
34. East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath?
35. Dune or The Lord of the Rings?
36. Rushmore or Groundhog Day?
37. Nonfiction or fiction?
38. Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon?
39. Neuromancer or Pattern Recognition?
40. Sleeping Beauty or Fantasia?
41. Kill Bill vol. 1 or 2?
42. Star Wars or The Matrix?
43. Kirk or Picard?
44. Hardcovers or paperbacks?
45. Doonesbury or Calvin and Hobbes?
46. The Little Friend or The Secret History?
47. The Mists of Avalon or The Once and Future King?
48. Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine?
49. Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman?
50. Alien or Aliens?
51. The Hours or Mrs. Dalloway?
52. The Hours: book or movie?
53. A Christmas Carol or "Gift of the Magi"?
54. Ursula K. Le Guin or Madeline L'Engle?
55. Monsters Inc. or Finding Nemo?
56. Aladin or Beauty and the Beast?
57. The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or The Speed of Dark?
59. Doomsday Book or To Say Nothing of the Dog?
60. "Funeral Blues" (AKA That Poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral) or "Lullaby"?
61. Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett?
62. The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
63. Tintin or Asterix?
64. H.G. Wells or Jules Verne?
65. Jonathan Carroll or Stephen King?
66. Jonathan Lethem or Michael Chabon?
67. Emily Dickinson or Dorothy Parker?
68. "After Apple Picking" or "Fire and Ice"?
69. Philip Pullman or J.K. Rowling?
70. Philip Pullman or multiple compound fractures?
In each of these questions, I prefer the B option. So, in order to discover how culturally concurrent we are, count the number of B answers you gave, divide them by 70, the number of questions, and multiply by 100 to get your percentage of Abigail Nussbaum. Which should tell you if you want to keep reading anything I have to say or if you want to run screaming for the hills.
Just to be clear, I'm not kidding about that last one.
The rules are simply: for each of the following questions, select a preference, column A or column B.
1. Gaugin or Van Gogh?
2. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny?
3. Cats or dogs?
4. The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth?
5. Robert A. Heinlein or Isaac Asimov?
6. The Martian Chronicles or Something Wicked This Way Comes?
7. Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins?
8. The Moonstone or The Woman in White?
9. Hamburgers or hot dogs?
10. Any of the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen?
11. Jane Eyre or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall?
12. Wide Sargasso Sea or Jane Eyre?
13. Grosse Point Blank or High Fidelity?
14. PC or Mac?
15. Election or Ghost World?
16. Spider Man or Spider Man 2?
17. Batman Begins or Tim Burton's Batman?
18. Oklahoma or The Music Man?
19. Bus or subway?
20. Short novels or long ones?
21. Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?
22. In the Bedroom or Lost in Translation?
23. A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night (the plays, in both cases)?
24. Coffee or tea?
25. "Friends" or "Scrubs"?
26. Rent or Angels in America?
27. Strictly Ballroom or Moulin Rouge?
28. Andrew Lloyd Webber or Stephen Sondheim?
29. Glory or The Mayor?
30. Summer or winter?
31. The Simpsons or Futurama?
32. The Sopranos or Deadwood?
33. "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
34. East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath?
35. Dune or The Lord of the Rings?
36. Rushmore or Groundhog Day?
37. Nonfiction or fiction?
38. Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon?
39. Neuromancer or Pattern Recognition?
40. Sleeping Beauty or Fantasia?
41. Kill Bill vol. 1 or 2?
42. Star Wars or The Matrix?
43. Kirk or Picard?
44. Hardcovers or paperbacks?
45. Doonesbury or Calvin and Hobbes?
46. The Little Friend or The Secret History?
47. The Mists of Avalon or The Once and Future King?
48. Babylon 5 or Deep Space Nine?
49. Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman?
50. Alien or Aliens?
51. The Hours or Mrs. Dalloway?
52. The Hours: book or movie?
53. A Christmas Carol or "Gift of the Magi"?
54. Ursula K. Le Guin or Madeline L'Engle?
55. Monsters Inc. or Finding Nemo?
56. Aladin or Beauty and the Beast?
57. The Royal Tenenbaums or The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or The Speed of Dark?
59. Doomsday Book or To Say Nothing of the Dog?
60. "Funeral Blues" (AKA That Poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral) or "Lullaby"?
61. Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett?
62. The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
63. Tintin or Asterix?
64. H.G. Wells or Jules Verne?
65. Jonathan Carroll or Stephen King?
66. Jonathan Lethem or Michael Chabon?
67. Emily Dickinson or Dorothy Parker?
68. "After Apple Picking" or "Fire and Ice"?
69. Philip Pullman or J.K. Rowling?
70. Philip Pullman or multiple compound fractures?
In each of these questions, I prefer the B option. So, in order to discover how culturally concurrent we are, count the number of B answers you gave, divide them by 70, the number of questions, and multiply by 100 to get your percentage of Abigail Nussbaum. Which should tell you if you want to keep reading anything I have to say or if you want to run screaming for the hills.
Just to be clear, I'm not kidding about that last one.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Hello World
When I was 10, or maybe 12, my mother gave me a copy of I, Robot and made me a science fiction fan for life.
Asimov is a good way of introducing children to SF. He's not a great stylist, but there's an immediacy to his prose. He doesn't use ten words where one will do and doesn't bury himself in description. His robot stories conform to a very simple formula - the three laws of robotics assure the complete safety of humanity. The system is flawless. Here's how it went wrong.
Kids like formula, and Asimov knew his audience and gave them exactly what they expected, in clever and unexpected ways. These same qualities are probably what attracted him to mystery writing, in particular his Tales of the Black Widowers.
The Black Widowers are a gentlemen's club who meet every month with a guest. Each time, the guest introduces some trivial but vexing puzzle (the one I remember involved a chemistry grad student whose thesis advisor was threatening to scupper his career if he didn't name the one unique element on the periodic table). In every story, the Black Widowers are flummoxed. Without fail, the Widowers' faithful waiter, Henry, solves the mystery.
The Black Widower stories are fiction as a puzzle. They have the same weight and literary merit as a crossword, and are probably a little less challenging. Still, after more than a decade, they've lingered in my mind because of one small detail.
At the end of every meal, The Black Widowers ask their guest to justify his existence. That's a tall order, and one that I've always struggled to answer. Asimov, being an educated white male in the 1950s and 60s, has his guests justify their existence through their professions - they were policemen, doctors, scientists. That's probably not an approach that would fly nowadays, and anyway I don't have a profession yet. When I do, it's hardly going to save the world. I suspect most people would have to admit the same.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying, I resisted the notion of starting a blog of my own for a long time. The internet doesn't seem to be in desperate need of yet another weblog, especially not the kind I'm going to write. I'm going to talk a lot about books and television and movies - things I tend to think about too much and formulate complicated opinions about for which I have no outlet. I'm a science fiction fan, as previously mentioned, although I read plenty of other stuff. By the standards of 95% of the population of the planet, my reading tastes are hopelessly esoteric. By the standards of most of the remaining 5%, I'm stuck in the mainstream.
I'm Israeli, but I don't think I'll be writing about politics too much. I'm 24, and one semester away from a degree in Computer Science from the Technion institute in Haifa. Every six months or so, I dig out a copy of a short story I've been working on for years, tinker with it relentlessly for a few weeks, realize it sucks and put it away for another six months.
I am female. I belong to the Reform Judaism movement and up until a few years ago I attended synagogue regularly. I still go on holidays, light candles on Friday nights and keep kosher. I have two dogs.
This blog exists because I wanted to post a comment on another blog and needed to register with Blogger to do it. I have no idea if it will justify its existence. I have no idea if anyone other than my mother will read it. I have no idea if it'll still be here a year, six months, a week from now.
I'm casting my words out into the ether with the full knowledge that they will be lost in the din. The sheer arrogance of the act is overwhelming.
Should be fun.
Asimov is a good way of introducing children to SF. He's not a great stylist, but there's an immediacy to his prose. He doesn't use ten words where one will do and doesn't bury himself in description. His robot stories conform to a very simple formula - the three laws of robotics assure the complete safety of humanity. The system is flawless. Here's how it went wrong.
Kids like formula, and Asimov knew his audience and gave them exactly what they expected, in clever and unexpected ways. These same qualities are probably what attracted him to mystery writing, in particular his Tales of the Black Widowers.
The Black Widowers are a gentlemen's club who meet every month with a guest. Each time, the guest introduces some trivial but vexing puzzle (the one I remember involved a chemistry grad student whose thesis advisor was threatening to scupper his career if he didn't name the one unique element on the periodic table). In every story, the Black Widowers are flummoxed. Without fail, the Widowers' faithful waiter, Henry, solves the mystery.
The Black Widower stories are fiction as a puzzle. They have the same weight and literary merit as a crossword, and are probably a little less challenging. Still, after more than a decade, they've lingered in my mind because of one small detail.
At the end of every meal, The Black Widowers ask their guest to justify his existence. That's a tall order, and one that I've always struggled to answer. Asimov, being an educated white male in the 1950s and 60s, has his guests justify their existence through their professions - they were policemen, doctors, scientists. That's probably not an approach that would fly nowadays, and anyway I don't have a profession yet. When I do, it's hardly going to save the world. I suspect most people would have to admit the same.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying, I resisted the notion of starting a blog of my own for a long time. The internet doesn't seem to be in desperate need of yet another weblog, especially not the kind I'm going to write. I'm going to talk a lot about books and television and movies - things I tend to think about too much and formulate complicated opinions about for which I have no outlet. I'm a science fiction fan, as previously mentioned, although I read plenty of other stuff. By the standards of 95% of the population of the planet, my reading tastes are hopelessly esoteric. By the standards of most of the remaining 5%, I'm stuck in the mainstream.
I'm Israeli, but I don't think I'll be writing about politics too much. I'm 24, and one semester away from a degree in Computer Science from the Technion institute in Haifa. Every six months or so, I dig out a copy of a short story I've been working on for years, tinker with it relentlessly for a few weeks, realize it sucks and put it away for another six months.
I am female. I belong to the Reform Judaism movement and up until a few years ago I attended synagogue regularly. I still go on holidays, light candles on Friday nights and keep kosher. I have two dogs.
This blog exists because I wanted to post a comment on another blog and needed to register with Blogger to do it. I have no idea if it will justify its existence. I have no idea if anyone other than my mother will read it. I have no idea if it'll still be here a year, six months, a week from now.
I'm casting my words out into the ether with the full knowledge that they will be lost in the din. The sheer arrogance of the act is overwhelming.
Should be fun.
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