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Dude, my 401(k) is so sad. Okay, I'm being a wimp, and things could be worse, but I've lost almost a grand in the last few weeks. No, retirement, don't go... I love you. How big of an old fart am I? I'm 26, and I'm worried about retirement. I signed into my account this morning and moved my monies around to what I hope are happier places. The market sucks the ass right now, so I'm not looking for a huge return. I just want to keep what I have. Even the money market is poo at the moment, and it's usually a fairly safe place. Beyond that, I'm still not fully vested even though I've been working here five years. When the census goes in next week, they should change it.
Paul Auster has released two books in the last couple years, and I don't have either of them. It's shameful. I plan to take a long lunch, which will include a stop at the book store.
Work is super slow, and the boss is out until Thursday. I brought Shikasta with me this morning so I can read to my heart's content. A short introduction by the author (Doris Lessing) is included before the novel. In it, she writes:
The old "realistic" novel is being changed, too, because of influences form that genre loosely described as space fiction. Some people regret this. I was in the States, giving a talk, and the professor who was acting as chairwoman, and whose only fault was that perhaps she had fed too long on the pieties of academia, interrupted me with: "If I had you in my class you'd never get away with that!" (Of course it is not everyone who finds this funny.) I had been saying that space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now; it is inventive and witty; it has already enlivened all kinds of writing; and that literary academic and pundits are much to blame for patronising or ignoring it - while of course by their nature they can be expected to do no other. This view shows signs of becoming the stuff of orthodoxy. I do think there is something very wrong with an attitude that puts a "serious" novel on one shelf and, let's say, First and Last Men on another.
Typically, I don't get much out of introductions to novels, but I really enjoyed this on. Perhaps it is because I have a deep love of sci-fi and fantasy.
Paul Auster has released two books in the last couple years, and I don't have either of them. It's shameful. I plan to take a long lunch, which will include a stop at the book store.
Work is super slow, and the boss is out until Thursday. I brought Shikasta with me this morning so I can read to my heart's content. A short introduction by the author (Doris Lessing) is included before the novel. In it, she writes:
The old "realistic" novel is being changed, too, because of influences form that genre loosely described as space fiction. Some people regret this. I was in the States, giving a talk, and the professor who was acting as chairwoman, and whose only fault was that perhaps she had fed too long on the pieties of academia, interrupted me with: "If I had you in my class you'd never get away with that!" (Of course it is not everyone who finds this funny.) I had been saying that space fiction, with science fiction, makes up the most original branch of literature now; it is inventive and witty; it has already enlivened all kinds of writing; and that literary academic and pundits are much to blame for patronising or ignoring it - while of course by their nature they can be expected to do no other. This view shows signs of becoming the stuff of orthodoxy. I do think there is something very wrong with an attitude that puts a "serious" novel on one shelf and, let's say, First and Last Men on another.
Typically, I don't get much out of introductions to novels, but I really enjoyed this on. Perhaps it is because I have a deep love of sci-fi and fantasy.
