romance, excitement

[freckles_and_doubt]

What's with the New Year? Two separate members of my Flist (no-one I know in person, she says, hastening to check the gossip-hounds) have reported the end of long-term romantic relationships in the last few weeks. Clearly the turn of the year is accompanied in many cases by the nervous twitch of new brooms. I retreat, as usual, into Dorothy Parker, who, in the character of Constant Reader, is charmed by a tome on Appendicitis which reports on "the love-life of poisonous bacteria. That, says the author, 'is very simple and consists merely of the bacterium dividing into two equal parts.' Think of it - no quarrels, no lies, no importunate telegrams, no unanswered letters..." Should my current long bout of celibacy pall (which I have to say, it hasn't yet), I shall definitely look into simple fission.

In other news, possibly deliriously happy, Scifi.com reports that George Clooney is developing a six-hour miniseries version of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, with Stephenson himself adapting. This is one of my favourite sf books EVAH, plugging straight into my Victorianist fixations, and I rather respect Clooney's artistic wossnames, so there is The Happy chez Extemporanea, I can tell you.