The Zoo over Ambuscade Street

Happy Birthday to the Rachan!

Several weeks ago, bossman tells me to provide X information to Y individual. So I do. Today, I get an email from Y individual, as a reply to that email, asking for X information. Which was in the email he replied to. Dipshit.

I'm apparently still not providing enough feedback to bossman about my daily activities. Really need to do that, but I hate taking the hour or so out of my day it usually ends up taking to tell him what I'm not doing since I'm talking to him. Ah well - must make the man happy, he has some influence on my raises, bonuses, and promotions.

Fu-Master speaketh:

"Even though gas prices are going through the roof now, they're going to go back down soon."

Ah, the faith of the terminally clueless...

I'm currently reading The Companions, another book by Sherri Tepper (you may remember the title from the book meme a few weeks or so ago). Sherri Tepper, if you've never read any of her books, specializes in making your head explode, usually in the last ten or so pages of a book, although certainly not limited to only those ten pages.

She has a phenominal talent for telling a story that seems semi-straightforward or normal, and then throwing in an unexpected twist that completely changes your perception of everything that came before. Family Tree is one of my favorite examples of this.

As a direct consequence of this effect, I have become determined to not let her catch me off guard. I will not be able to prevent the full shock, but I'm trying to at least have some indication that the twist is actually coming, and what part of the story it relates to.

I'm not so much reading The Compantions as I am attacking it. I'm forcibly extracting as much information as possible from each page, and connecting it to other seemingly-unrelated information from other sections. I rip each word from the page and rend it apart like the enemy it is. The light of reason will be my guide.

So far I don't think I'm doing too bad. I made the connection that Strange Thing A was awefully similar to Strange Thing B, and could be connected to Strange Thing X if one twisted the book sideways, squinted, and tried really hard. I then connected those three Strange Things to Strange Thing Q, although I'm unsure of how that connection works at this time. Stacey was noncommital when I tendered forth my theory, which may or may not be a good thing.

Even if my head does explode once again during the course of this book, that's OK. Any author who has Conservative pro-life Senators raped and impregnated by aliens in one of her books because their politics say that's fine is OK By Me!

(I'm going to be putting a big batch of wallpapers up tonight - get your requests in now if there's something specific you're looking for.)