Sentential Links

Links.

:: Driving around Seattle in The Beast to my book events and TV appearances took me right past the restaurants where Marcus and I had eaten, the movie theaters where we’d seen films, the coffee houses where we’d lingered and talked and fallen deeper in love.

:: It wasn’t that long ago when the entire human race couldn’t be bothered to look beyond the tip of its collective nose. Now we can look into the fires of the Universe’s birth, into that forge itself, and tease out the secrets of how we came to be.

That’s why astronomy is cool.

:: Nothing makes me happier than having something to be pissed off at. I think that’s why I continue to enjoy sports so much. Now, I can’t complain too much, as being a Pittsburgh fan of a certain advanced age has allowed me to experience an unfair amount of sports euphoria in my life. (Yeah. I'm from Buffalo. So shut it.)

:: Joel had such an impact on my listening enjoyment particularly within the science fiction genre. His scoring of all three Stargate series left such a mark on me over the years. His music was majestic and beautiful and simply a thrill a minute to enjoy. (I honestly know nothing about Joel Goldsmith's music. I should explore it one of these days, I suppose. He was the son of Jerry Goldsmith, and he died of cancer last week while in his 50s. Very sad.)

:: Okay, so before the nerd hordes charge with their bat’leths held high (or Mjolnir replicas, or whatever), I’m not going to say I didn’t enjoy watching The Avengers. Indeed, I came out of it feeling truly entertained. (So there's a mildly negative review of The Avengers out there. Oh well, to each his own. But what a poopyhead.)

:: There are a couple of reasons for my ignorance and I'll start with the most personally damning one: I'm a man in a traditionally patriarchal culture and that means that I've been privileged enough not to have to think about these things. I've been able to live successfully under the assumption that my culture is not just the dominant one, but really the only one. That men and women share a culture and that their experiences in that culture are more or less the same. I've always known that women have it tougher than men, but I never grasped the idea that the way they experience the world is fundamentally different from the way I do.

:: Sex is just a distraction from what was really going on, from what he was really about. (I am in awe of this post.)

More next week!