Still Raining

Monday, 11 May 1998

New feature starting today: A daily Web Log.

Man, it's just been gray and wet for what seems like forever. WNEW is marking the occasion by playing only songs that mention rain or storms until it turns sunny again. That's actually kind of nice; WNEW tends to play the same songs over and over, and this is forcing them to dig a bit deeper into their record collection.

That's about the only nice thing about it. I can feel myself getting all stiff and lethargic again, since I'm not walking around outside like I was while it was sunny and warm. And the apartment is cold. Colder than it was in the winter, since the building's heating was on then, but isn't now.

I've finished Greg Egan's new book, Diaspora. It's pretty good, though heavy on the techno-prose. Some of the plot revolves around theories that explain physics as the interactions of hyper-dimensional structures; the prose that feeds this information to the reader, which is necessary to understand the story, is pretty bland. I'm glad I read up on the subject a few months back, ptherwise I think my eyes would have just glazed over. While Egan is great at coming up with mind-blowing science-fictional ideas, I find I'm building up a resistance to having my mind blown in that particular way. I wish he was more of a stylist, and more adept at creating interesting characters. Though it would be tough to depict characters in realistic, yet convincing ways in a book like Diaspora. It's the sort of setting where, well, what's convincing isn't necessarily what's realistic, where the characters are pretty far past being human. And I think Egan places more faith in the reliability of simulation than I do. I liked the ending, though, which was more than I could say for Distress.

The library turns out to have a copy (several copies, actually) of The DK Art School: An Introduction to Oil Painting, but I didn't bother to take it out. I'll leave oil paints for the day that I get tired of acrylics, if I ever start using acrylics again. Until then, there's no point in spending time and money on a new (and expensive) medium. I did take out a copy of Claudia Nice's Creating Textures in Pen & Ink with Watercolor, from North Light Books. This one's still in print (or at least still available in stores) if I decide I like it enough to want to buy it.