Scenes from Fevered Dreams

Well, that sucked.

Over the weekend I took a turn and Monday ended up on antibiotics. I’m doing much better now, though the harsh light of day is shining on everything that didn’t get done while I was sick. I've been trying to catch up the past couple of days.

So, what have I been doing with myself? A little of this, little of that, lot of sitting on my butt. I knew it was time to seek medical intervention when I could no longer beat the computer at Free Cell.

I also caught up on a bit of old TV. I didn’t watch the last season of Angel at the time it aired because I didn’t much like the new story line. In fact, the arc that season was excellent and the series finale much better than Buffy. I also watched a little 24, but still haven’t gotten into it. I will say it’s a much more enjoyable show when you have it on DVR and can fast-forward past all the Kim-in-trouble segments.

Usually I read potboilers when I’m under the weather. This time the only one I made it through was The DaVinci Code. I read it mostly because of the cultural event is supposedly is. Odd to me that it raised the stir it did. First off, Dan Brown’s prose will make you pine for the literary stylings of, say Tony Hillerman. He also uses an annoyingly fluid point of view that shifts within a single scene. Some of my favorite authors consciously and effectively use shifting point of view, but Brown's use of the device just looks inept.

The whole controversy was over the MacGuffin in a fairly by-the-numbers thriller. The basic idea -- that the New Testament is made up of passages carefully cobbled from a variety of selected sources, is fairly old news for anyone who pays attention. The specific idea of Jesus as proto-feminist just sounds cringe-inducingly silly. Brown's protagonist comes off like an insufferable college intellectual trying to pick up feminist coeds at a mixer. Why anyone took this seriously enough to object is beyond me.

Meanwhile, I'm in the process of updating the sidebar. The Akron bloggers list is now the Blogrolling list that I used on GABB. I've added a couple of people to it. Most recently I added Diatribes of Jay which is a platform for extended essays by a very intelligent friend of mine who blogs semi-anonymously to avoid conflicts with his day job. This is yet another example of knowing someone casually for an extended time and neither of us knowing the other is blogging. He's worth a read, but leave yourself some time.

As usual, I have lots of ideas about lots of things going on and no idea when or if I'll have to post. Stay tuned.