Messages from the Void #1
Oh, hello there. It’s me, Paul. I’ve got oodles of time on my hands at the moment, so I thought I’d put it to something constructive, i.e. a blog. I’m going on almost three months of unemployment after a not-fun layoff, so I’ve got a touch of the cabin fever. I’ll be updating here every once in a while with thoughts, musings, what I’m into at the moment, and maybe a playlist or two. I don’t know. It’s a blog.
Here’s what’s going on in my world at the moment.
I’m loving re-reading Dr. Emma Southon’s fantastic A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It’s sharp, insightful, gossipy and fun as hell, AND it’s a great reminder that elite Romans were, almost to a person, complete dickbags. One of my favorite bits of the book is when Southon relates the story of the exceedingly unlikeable emperor Tiberius going Poirot on a suspicious defenestration.
I also started reading Orbital Decay from sci-fi author Allen Steele. I’m a big fan of the kind of sci-fi trade paperbacks you can get at second-hand bookshops, and I had previously picked up another of Steele’s works, A King of Infinite Space, at my local Half-Price Books (shout-out to the North Lamar location — solid crate digging space if you’re into 45 rpms too). I enjoyed A King*, the story of a spoiled trustafarian Gen X-er type who wakes up a hundred-odd years in the future—for reasons you’ll just hafta read about. The protagonist is absolutely sympathetic, but it becomes clear from the jump that he’s not a great person. The guantlet he runs through a near-ish future solar system is both humbling and cleansing. Funnily enough, Orbital Decay is the first in Steele’s “Near Space” series, while A King is the last.
We’re now solidly in the Holiday season. That said, because of the aforementioned lack of a gig, I’m not in the merriest of head-spaces. I’m trying my damndest to stay positive, though. It’s a daily struggle, and one I frequently lose, but I still wake up every morning and try to tell myself, “Today could be the day.”
*Just a bit of a content warning: it came out in 1997, so a few bits of language haven’t aged particularly well. But it’s an otherwise fun yarn.
Hail Freddie!
Millie looking like a hen a’layin’.