Sentential Links #119

Dispensing with the pleasantries:

:: When I was in the 5th grade, I got my very first handbag.

:: A chilly morning and the crows are cawing overhead as they fly out for a day of adventure before coming home to roost and talk about it together.

:: At any [rate] it seems clear to me that even the "optimistic" scenarios for Iraq now amount to promising to bear huge costs for a smallish chance at an unclear payoff.

:: Aging and retirement hardly resemble the "golden years" one often sees and hears.

:: The reason I wouldn’t call it [Firefly] the best science fiction show is because it isn’t science fiction. It’s space opera. (BZZZT! Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction, not something separate entirely.)

:: Think about that, won’t you; eat one piece of fruit and suddenly you’re responsible for the inevitable heat death of the universe. God’s kind of mean.

:: They've got our future, damn it.

It's not the shiny future of jet packs and food pills — oh no, that's not what Japan is about. Nevertheless, they've got it and they're living in it, damn them. They've got express trains that run on time and accelerate so fast they push you back into your seat like an airliner on take-off. They've got skyscrapers with running lights, looming out of the sodium-lit evening haze — a skyline just like the famous nighttime scene from Blade Runner except for the shortage of giant pyramids (and they're building one of those out in Tokyo bay). And they shave their cats.

:: Ah, if there’s one thing that’s going defuse a violent situation and calm down a dude who’s got a gun out in his boat, it’s condescendingly tousling his hair, then pumping him full of caffeine. That’s just the sort of crowd control techniques you learn at Mountie Academy!

:: I turned fifty a couple of months ago, and this is my first letter to Santa since I was five, so I have a long list: (Lots of snark here, and salty language. Also, it's a weird hybrid of blog and message board.)

OK, that seems like a good place to stop. Tune in next week!