Living

Season’s Regreetings

THE NEXT TIME SOMEONE OUTSIDE your comfort zone wishes you a merry holiday-you-don’t-celebrate, don’t take umbrage — just wish them a happy “Same To You.”

This three-syllable Teflon Shield of Banter will save you from giving and receiving earnest but endless dissertations on cultural supremacy, cultural relativity, hegemonic religion, religious hegemony, justified indignation and getting-over-whatever-someone-else-thinks-“it”-is. (We’re all busy people here — who has time for such nonsense?)

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Crit

Of Relativity

“WE ARE BUT A MOMENT’S starlight” — but some moments seem longer than others.

Etc

Clam Shirt Sits

IT’S TIME FOR THE FAMILY gifting list, but since all I really want for the holidays is an idea for another blog post I now have that. (Thanks Stan!) However, my relatives are kindly pestering me for details, so here — reduxed from an earlier list — they are:

Fig. 1.

– A working lightsaber, phaser, jetpack, hovercraft, warp-capable spaceship or rubber-band machine gun
– Pair of blue jeans, size 36-29
– Pair of grey or khaki slacks, size 36-29
– Several black long-sleeved T-shirts, size L
– Socks, grey or black or white cotton
– A Blue Sun T-shirt
– A pea coat or brown duster (size L)
– One of them iPoddy iPaddy iPhoney things
– Flight lessons or why not just an ultralight?
– Canoe or kayak
– Backpack stove
– A gift certificate for Artscroll or Feldheim Books, Orion Telescopes or Archie McPhee
– A functioning national health-care system to keep from further falling through the crack
– A successful diagnosis of and treatment for chronic pain, nausea and dizziness
– Knowledge of and conversation with extraterrestrial sentience
– Or at least the discovery of some sort of extremophilic goo on Europa, or Ganymede, or Titan, or Mars
– A full set of TOS, DS9 and SW:CW DVDs
– Any Serenity/Firefly books or comix
– A fair and just solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict
– What the hell, all conflicts from international to intradomestic
– An end to militant ignorance, uncivil snark and attituder-than-thou vacuousness
– More compassion for everyone, by everyone
– Clarity of thought and perception
– Bring the boys (and girls, now war-weary men and women) back home
– Global high-tech green moneyless libertarianism

All and each of which are well substituted by a hug, smile or anchovy pizza. May we all be blessed by seeing what we already have — and what we can give to others.

Crit

December Is Science Fiction And Fantasy History Month

PASS IT ON. (WHY? BECAUSE, as Stewart Sternberg, who got the idea following a Twilight fan’s public ignorance of same, puts it: “(W)e owe it to ourselves to promote quality work and to invite the young into our fold, giving them a perspective and understanding of the traditions and tropes of our literary world … how it has helped us vent our angst, voice our identity, and celebrate our optimism.”

Science fiction (which I first grokked when I was seven; I didn’t discover fantasy until I was 15) taught me that things were possible outside my 1960s New Jersey existence: that some day, we might have space stations, an international computer network, cleaning robots and two-way TV — not to mention an understanding between races and nationalities that there are more exciting human games than trying to whack each other lifeless. Learning that others shared these secret goshwow dreams has, in some cases, helped me face another day; “being” a science fiction fan feels like membership in a vast underground culture of people who get it. That’s probably common to many in the pre-postpunk and earlier demographics but may not be so now that multimedia SF (film, TV, videogame, webcast) is more dominant than the book-and-zine scene of our youth — before Google and Harry Potter, or cheap access and cultural prevalence, science fiction and its acolytes led a more furtive existence. But the camaraderie’s the same — and likely always will be.

In short: Those who know not the joys of Vance and Bester, Leiber and Brown, Ellison and Sturgeon, Asimov and Clarke, or even bookbound Tolkien are, Arthur-like, unaware of their great heritage; from the first murmurs of Capek and Gernsback to today’s CGI-fueled cyberdreams — and those of us who remember the past are obligated to teach it. Squa tront!)

More: http://house-of-sternberg.blogspot.com/2010/11/science-fiction-and-fantasy-history.html

Living, Torah

Mindfulness Question

EXACTLY WHAT IN YOUR LIFE requires an opinion? And can kneejerk acceptance be as valid a personal evolutionary strategy as kneejerk fulmination?

Contemplating these questions may not make you wiser, but may make you happier. (But there’s no real guarantee of either.)