A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

Short Stories

After Charles Stross's "Toast", read two short story collections by Greg Egan, "Axiomatic" and "Lumiinous". The short story is a great format for sci fi, an author can explore an odd idea without wasting too much of his or the reader's time. Egan has some great stories. His physics and computer science are top notch. He seems to have gone dark tho. Per his website, he hasn't written a story since 2002. He has become active in Australian immigration rights and apparently hard physics. Maybe he's moved on past sci fi -- too bad for us readers, but, best wishes?

Re short stories, listening to "Alien Lanes" by Guided By Voices. I got this from a coworker who is I believe the world's expert on garage bands. GBV is from Dayton, OH and recently broke up. The album has 28 tracks, timings from 0:18 to 2:56. 7 of the tracks are under a minute, another 15 are under 2 minutes. Short attention span music?

Other CDs I got from this guy are:

• "Decoration Day", Drive By Truckers. Southern Rock (now a genre in my iTunes), decent, lead singer's voice not the strongest.
• "1965", Afghan Whigs. Decent tunes.
• "Emergency & I", The Dismemberment Plan. ditto.
• "Mack Avenue Skullgame", Big Chief. A movie soundtrack without a movie. Nice funky grooves. I don't have a Funky genre, I need to think about adding one.

Also got "Apologies To Queen Mary", Wolf Parade, from a young coworker. Nicely odd.

All of these are 3 stars. I am getting too much 3 star music. I may delete my 1 star, move the little in 2 star down to 1 star, and start splitting the 3 stars into 3 and 2. Apparently I have missed my true calling -- to be a librarian. I offered to organize the vast quantities of pharmacy materials my wife has. I recently reorged my browser bookmarks, came up with a new system I like. I do the same on an ongoing basis with my iTunes. So much information, how to keep track of it all. Google model, just search for it, doesn't work so well for music?