Summer School

So I'm in a hurry to finish my Library technology degree in order to enter Masters degree program at San Jose State University. You do that in order to become a proper Librarian. As a male person in a field dominated by sexist women and angry lesbians, this is a serious challenge. Fortunately, they got more volunteers at the local library so won't need me on Tuesdays anymore. I was covering for some vacations for the last few weeks, but they're back now. So I can focus on my summer classes, which require a lot of reading. Thankfully, because of blogging, I've gotten quite good at composing essays, which is the main trouble for most students of online classes.

The 24 hours at LeMans is today, starting at noon French time and running until noon Sunday. It is in the dark right now. The prototype hybrids are amazingly quick. They race about 5-6 classes of cars at LeMans. It is amusing to note that the track itself, in the town of LeMans, is called Le Circuit de la Sarthe, which was NOT named for Jean Paul Sartre, famous existentialist philosopher. The race is very interesting, but it is a serious endurance race and its more intense than I can maintain interest for more than an hour at a time.

I continue to be genuinely amazed at the quality of Terry Pratchett's writing. I wish I could write like that, without actually copying him. I suspect what I need to do is look up American humorists like Samuel Clemens and include them in my books rather than the English ones that Pratchett uses. Pratchett was also able to take advantage of the various and sundry accents which grew over 2000 years of invasions and occupations of Britain. The USA only has about 500 years of invasions and we don't have enough stable populations, stuck in one place, to develop accents. The last century has lost most of them, thanks to radio, telephone, and television. This is unfortunate, since it turns out that making people live close together makes us want to kill each other, not sing Kum Bay Yah. Who knew?

We are having ribs for dinner tonight. I have baked a cake, and will be making cornbread after the ribs are done in a couple hours. The ribs are NOT precooked ones, so you have to wrap them in foil and cook slow for 2-3 hours, which is really a bare minimum. It is going to stick in our teeth. Good news is that I got Mirror Pond Pale Ale from Deschutes Brewery near Bend Oregon, a pale ale which in California we would not feel wrong to call an IPA, or India Pale Ale. It is tasty, though.

I have been thinking that when I start writing actual prose for Jeff's Luck, which is the working title for my novel about Jefferson State, I plan to include mention of Narrativium, something invented by Pratchett 30 years ago. It explains why certain cliche things happen so they can be mocked.

Oh, and its 98'F here.