and a man with a caged bird for a brain

[freckles_and_doubt]

One of the drawbacks of the academic lifestyle (apart from frustration, futility and intellectual snobbery) is, quite simply, paper. Piles of paper. Enormous tottering piles of books, printouts, photocopies and scribbled pages of notes occupy every surface in my study, and occasionally come slithering down in even more confusion under the paws of the cat that curiosity killed. Even worse, such pillars of prose tend to bury beneath the verbiage those less muscular works of innocent fiction that can't fight back.

Which is why I've only just now unearthed, from beneath the feral strata of Angela Carter criticism, China Miéville's Un Lun Dun, a copy of which tsukikoneko gave me for my birthday, lo these many moons ago. I'm half way through, and it's amazing! While not quite having the political kick of his adult fantasy, it's a powerful ecological fable framed as an alternate-world narrative whose closest relative, I think, is Alice In Wonderland: word games, social inversions, precise nonsense illogic, quirky illustrations and all. The heroine is currently questing madly in the company of a trio of embodied word-creatures (Cauldron, Diss and Bling) while dodging packs of evil carnivorous giraffes.



Also, there are binjas:



I am a very happy reader.

Last Night I Dreamed: that someone hired me to play a fairly major supporting role in a TV sitcom, in full knowledge of the fact that I have the acting ability of a stunned herring with stage fright. Apparently I only needed to play myself.

Comments

[kadekraan.livejournal.com]

Last Night I Dreamed: I snuck off and went skydiving by myself (no idea who flew the plane). I had some trouble with the thingy you use to open the parachute, but after some fiddling managed to get it open just in time. I landed near a house in a village in China and was invited in to tea.

I like stories...

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

A tale of how the toppling of paper in one part of the world can lead to enlightenment in the other:

I find it so wrong that they have readers digests as the only way to pass time in my doctor’s surgery (in fact I am considering changing doctors just to get better literature). However this time it has precipitated the coming of the full circle of the cosmic-whatsit, you see I read of a Binja attack some months ago in the doctors waiting room...

The story stuck with me because it was so bizarre. A lady putting out her wheelie bin was attacked by said bin and left pinned and helpless, until a kindly stranger rescued her. This has been worrying me, wheelie bins going feral are just against the natural order of thing. However I now know it was a Binja attack and normality and balance in my little part of the universe is restored. Hurrah!

Re: I like stories...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I dunno if this was a binja - maybe a renegade binja? in the book they're good guys, a protective order sworn to loyalty and self-sacrifice. I suppose the telling details include whether it was using nunchucks in its evil lady-pinning attack.

Re: I like stories...

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

I possibly need to take the time to address a missive to the program scheduler at the Dr Phil show or even Jerry Springer: When Binjas go bad, survivors’ tales

The readers digest ommited nunchuk details...but that could be an example of the tardy school of journalism to which they are know to subscribe. I will be alert, having dissed the readers digest on line I expect I may become the target of their highly trained and possibly evil rogue Binja…excellent…another excuse not to take out the rubbish!