Two Seconds Longer December 21, 2005 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

Snow - fun only once!According to my favorite weather page, tomorrow will be two seconds longer than today. We’ve reached the wave trough of the seasons and now we are entering the long path out of the darkness. My plants and I will be happy that it no longer begins to get dark at 4pm. I mean, who thought of these seasons anyway?

I’m happy to say that I just received an acceptance letter from Dred Tales for my short story, “Dreams in the Dark Room.” According to the editor, it will appear there in January. Getting a short story sale in the middle of writing a novel is a bit like getting a Christmas bonus you weren’t expecting. It’s not your average story, nor would you want to read it to your kiddies (because of major sexual overtones.) Yet my father praised it as one of his favorite. Go figure.

Anyway, in my quest to quietize my life I’ve been modestly successful as of late, but there is this insatiable curiosity which keeps me peeking into those uber-blogs and web-portals such as BoingBoing and Slashdot from time to time. I also read a few magazines and belong to several political and environmental mailing lists. It’s hard to gauge the state of the world when one article talks about major deforestation while another talks about giant steps in environmental protection. Some articles talk about the faltering Bush regime while others boast of their unparalleled power. And underneath it all is this incessant drumbeat of new technology which just complicates matters by adding more questions to the debate. Wasn’t technology supposed to simplify?

Part of me is an uber-nerd. I’m hacking at PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification just because I can. But another part of me just wants to sit in a little cabin in the woods and say, “Ooh, look at that cloud.” Irreconcilable differences.

While not new, have you heard of Seiko’s e-paper watch? Apparently, the watch is made of electronic paper and not LCDs. This makes it extremely flexible. I’d like to see this in color and on clothing. Can you just imagine wearing a Hawaiian shirt, replete with hibiscus flowers that actually blow in the electronic wind? (I suppose I should be suspicious of e-paper too. This stuff could just make old-fashioned paper printing obsolete. Still, nothing smells better than the pulp from a newly printed paper book.)