Sentential Links #195

Linkage....

:: What would Earl Warren, the California governor nominated as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower (reportedly, to his lasting regret), and who served from 1953 to 1969, think of this new ruling? He would have opposed it vigorously. How do I know? I asked him.

:: I cooked again today! It's so weird -- this isn't like me at all. It's a happy side effect of being pregnant again, I guess.

:: We’ve all probably had the experience of reading a great SF novel and lending it to a friend—a literate friend who adores A.S. Byatt and E.M. Forster. Sometimes our friend will turn their nose up at the cover, and we’ll say no, really, this is good, you’ll like it. Sometimes our friend does like it, but often we’ll find our friend returning the book with a puzzled grimace, having tried to read it but “just not been able to get into it.” That friend has approached science fiction without the necessary toolkit and has bounced off. It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s not that they can’t read sentences. It’s just that part of the fun of science fiction happens in your head, and their head isn’t having fun, it’s finding it hard work to keep up. (Terrific essay by Jo Walton on the particular difficulties of reading SF.)

:: Oh Syfy, where would I be without your crappy movies about homes made of bones? Where would I be if you didn't start all movies about haunted houses with some kid being forced to climb over a vine tangled iron fence to retrieve his Babe Ruth baseball before getting mangled by some evil house? THAT is just good writing, bitches. I see nothing wrong with going inside the door that the evil house has so generously opened for you. Nothing ever bad ever happens then, right? (One of my favorite blog finds in quite a while. This fellow produces an astonishing amount of content on a daily basis. He makes me look as though I have blogstipation. Yes, I just made that word up.)

:: I have long considered Caitlin Flanagan the most flagrantly stupid woman in print.

A rich woman who lives in one of Los Angeles' most pretentious neighborhoods with a staff of many, yet has the blazing nerve to tell less well-off working wives that they ought to stay home with their kids, Flanagan is the Phyllis Schlafly of the Late Boomer set. She writes about domestic subjects in a reactionary rage so extreme that it often seems self-wounding. If the more politically correct moms in Flanagan's neighborhood decided it was healthy for kids to be raised with pets, Flanagan would slaughter puppies on her front lawn just to prove them wrong.

:: I've been fuming for several days now, thinking I wanted to write a nice, long, expletive-filled, no-holds-barred rant about recent political developments. About cowardly, disarrayed Democrats who don't have the conviction of their own ideals, and about a President I still basically like and respect, but who really needs to get it through his head that the other side ain't going to play nice with him, like ever, and it's time he drops the "cool and aloof" thing and actually leads his frickin' party. A party that I continue to vote for because I really have no other choice -- it's not like a third-party candidate has a chance in hell of getting a national seat; Mr. Nader, I'm still pissed at you! -- but which continually lets me down and embarrasses me. (Tell me about it. F*** the Republicans, f*** the David Broders of the world who wet themselves if something gets passed with zero Republican votes, and f*** the United States Senate which set this situation up by taking their sweet time because of their stupid traditions. Pass the damn bill. Now.)

All for this week.