Sentential Links #264

Linkage begins...now.

:: I wish the makers of air fresheners would be more specific about what their products smell like instead of having cutesy names like “Sunny Meadow” and “Early Morning Breeze”. (But how else does one describe these things, other than "Nice-smelling collection of chemicals #5"? I point out in comments over there how a lot of men's deodorants describe their scents in terms that aren't aromatically evocative at all, like "Fresh Sport" and "Victory".)

:: I feel like I've lost the connection to some of the deepest parts of my identity: whatever talents I have as a writer, my literary and cinematic interests, my curiosity, hell, my sense of enjoyment. Not being able to do the things I enjoy and by which I've always defined myself is generating tremendous anxiety for me. (Ye Gods, I wish I had something wise to say to Jason about this kind of thing....)

:: Seriously, it’s nice that there can suddenly be complete Looney Tunes cartoon physics in a comic defined by someone’s lingering death from cancer. (Ahhhh, ripping on Funky Winkerbean -- one of my favorite of all pastimes!)

:: DC is like Lucy and we’re like Charlie Brown. DC keeps yanking the football away and we keep yelling Aaugh! and landing hard. They’re very sure we’ll keep coming back and try to kick the ball again. And, knowing some of the perps fairly well, I can assure you they’re pretty smug about it.

So far, they’re right. (For some reason, I like reading reactions to DC Comics's reboot, despite the fact that I just don't read the comics at all. Weird.)

:: If you watched TV in the 1970s and 80s, you know it was wall to wall babes. Sure, the ladies had their Tom Selleck and David Soul; but, the guys had eye candy from the minute you powered that boob tube on. There were simply tons of actresses finding work in bit parts on sitcoms and one-time roles on The Love Boat, Fantasy Island or Love, American Style. Some got recurring parts, but mostly, you blinked and you missed them.

:: Look at it this way: Should the government tell the overalls factory to pay its employees a decent wage and to avoid using toxic chemicals in its fabric? Absolutely. Should the government tell people that they’d better wear shirts under their overalls and cinch up those straps tight? Of course not! (This blog mixes semi-serious political writing with photos of women clad in overalls, and nothing else. I swear I am not making this up. Believe me, this one is NSFW!)

:: When you come right down to it, Scooby Doo wouldn't have been a bad replacement for Fox Mulder given his credentials in solving mysteries and dealing with monsters.

:: If we can break the launch-price bottleneck, this century can be the time when humankind spreads across the inner solar system out to the asteroid belt. Twentieth Century science-fiction dreamed of the power of such a civilization, and those dreams may still be the truest prophecy of our time: At the end of the Twenty-First Century, with asteroid-based industries supporting GDPs a million times what we have now, interstellar flight will be a doable adventure!

The stars are not too far. (So writes Vernor Vinge, highly-regarded SF writer, whose sequel to his twenty-year-old novel A Fire Upon the Deep -- which I plan to re-read soon -- is imminent. I don't know if he's right or not, but it's so nice to find an SF writer who is willing to be optimistic, and who is not willing to give up on humanity going to the stars. Lots of other authors may write fun space operas with FTL travel and star-spanning cultures, but in interviews, they all seem to say, "Yeah, we're never leaving the Solar System, that's it." Vinge clearly believes otherwise, and thank God for that.)

More next week!