Today, a round-up of things on my mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Olympics begin in a day or two.<\/p>\n
That I don’t know exactly<\/i> when they begin is a sign of how much I care.<\/p>\n
Which is to say that I care about the Olympics not at all.<\/p>\n
I’ve no intention to watch them. When I was eleven, back in 1984, I did. I especially liked watching the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo that year. I’m not sure why. But I did.<\/p>\n
Since then, no real interest. Oh, I turned it on a couple of times in ’88, wherever that was.<\/p>\n
By the time ’96 rolled around, did I watch anything<\/i>?<\/p>\n
To the extent that I care about the Olympics this year, it’s strictly on the politics<\/i> of the Olympics.<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee and the world are rewarding China for its deplorable human rights record. The world is turning a blind eye to China’s oppression of its people. China’s Olympics are a Potemkin Village — life in China will look rosy, events will be stage managed to a near-impossible degree, and when the Olympics are done the world will remember the image and forget the truth beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
These Olympics aren’t about sport. These Olympics are about the world giving tacit approval to China for its actions.<\/p>\n
Fuck the Olympics.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I just learned today that noted science fiction author, Dr. Ronald Chevalier<\/a>, has a new novel coming out this autumn, Brutus and Balzaak<\/i>.<\/p>\n I read some of Chevalier’s work when I was in college. I was reading Larry Niven and Philip K. Dick and Orson Scott Card. My friends, they pushed Chevalier’s work on me. I read it. To be frank, it wasn’t very good. Overwritten, overwrought. Listen to Chevalier read an excerpt from Cyborg Harpies<\/i> on his website<\/a> and… well, he needed a fucking editor.<\/p>\n But you know what? A lot of my friends like Chevalier’s work. I don’t know why<\/i>. I hold his work up as an example of what not<\/i> to do as a writer. Plain, simple<\/i> language. Why use the word “mammary” when the word “breast” works better<\/i>? But plain, simple language has passed Chevalier completely by.<\/p>\n Maybe Chevalier, when he was a young science fiction fan, just starting out, went to a mass reading of “The Eye of Argon” and came away thinking, “You know what? I<\/i> can do that.” But what he thought he could do wasn’t write<\/i>, but write badly<\/i>.<\/p>\n I met Chevalier at a convention a few years ago, and I have to say — the guy is a fucking player<\/i>. The man makes his female fans swoon, and it’s clearly not<\/i> for his wordsmithery.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “Junior!”<\/p>\n I can almost<\/i> say it with Sean Connery’s distinctive burr from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/i>.<\/p>\n I now have a Professor Henry Jones statue on my desk at work.<\/p>\n Nice. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, a round-up of things on my mind. The Olympics begin in a day or two. That I don’t know exactly when they begin is a sign of how much I care. Which is to say that I care about the Olympics not at all. I’ve no intention to watch them. When I was eleven,Continue reading “On Thursday’s Quick Hits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[468,364,4139,54,4124],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-indiana-jones","tag-olympics","tag-science-fiction","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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