A few months before starting this blog, I had an extremely bad cold for two weeks. I was literally unable to get out of bed - or do anything at all - the whole time. I was just stuck in a mental haze, conscious enough to be aware of aching joints, sore head and throat, and having difficulty breathing, but not able to form many thoughts beyond that.
I'm told the symptoms of coming off heroin are similar to a 2 week debilitatingly severe viral infection. If nothing else this gives me more sympathy for someone going through cold turkey - if I'd been able to stop feeling hideous by snorting a gram of white powder, I wouldn't have hesitated.
-----
However, I've been well enough to write this blog, do some graphical work yesterday, and attend a completely pointless meeting last night.
The SWP Central Committee had decided what the Portsmouth and Southampton branches really needed was a joint "aggregate" meeting, addressed by a member of the CC. Telling them what they already know (civil servants and teachers have been on strike) and what they would like to believe but know to be false (the strikes herald a new age of working class resistance).
Oh, and there's 8500 usenet pictures of gentlement in various stages of undress and intimacy waiting to be sorted. Maybe 2 dozen will be usable for advertising pills, and a few hundred...will find another use when I have the strength. It's an oddly sexless procedure.
-----
Just as I'm about to click the mouse to publish this entry, the radio tells me that Stanislaw Lem has died at age 84. He was a Polish writer of novels and short stories who used science fiction as a vehicle for satire on the Stalinist government he lived under, and for some creditable philosophy about epistemology, politics and AI.
You might think of him as the East European version of JG Ballard. Personally, I regard his work as some of the most audacious and genuinely thought provoking literature I've read, and a vidication of science fiction as intelligently relavant to the modern age.
Anyone who thinks science fiction is the flashing lights and childish morality of Star Trek should read Lem. Actually, everyone should read Lem.
-----
Oh, I almost forgot:
No comments:
Post a Comment