No one speaks English and everything's broken

Last night I was out with friends, Gavin and Simon and Vinny. None of whom is on LJ, as far as I'm aware. That feels ... almost unusual, these days. So we did that thing that pre-posthumans used to do, we talked a lot.

An hour before, I had broken a fucking tooth.

It's okay, though, I don't think they guessed. I didn't mention it.

Which is an odd sort of social choice, now that I think about it: to be private in public with my intimate friends, and open in private on the internets here, in conversation with almost-strangers and audited by anyone at all. But it seems to suit me, more or less.

Also, I am getting very tired of mending my fridge. All the door-shelves are held on by gaffer tape, and I guess cold degrades its sticky, because they keep falling off again. Really I should buy a new one. Or move to California. (I say that quickly, because if I don't someone else certainly will.) But, y'know. The price of a new fridge is almost the price of a ticket to California.

Speaking of posthumans, I am reading Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief. Which I wasn't sure I was going to like, for various little irritating reasons - I tripped on the first page, where he spoke of millions of things stretching to infinity: which is either just editorial carelessness or too subtle for my simple mind to fathom; and then there were too many misprints in the text; and then he will scatter hard-SF neologisms with a generous hand but stops to spell out "Chinese rice porridge" rather than saying congee and moving on - but actually I find I do like it after all. There is scuffing your feet in the gravel, and then there is lifting your eyes to the world, and they are different.

Also, reading a book reminds me every time, how much I like books. Today I really have to stay at home and work through Desdaemona at my desk here, but I really don't want to. I want to walk to town in the sunshine and sit in the Lit & Phil, among all those books; and then walk home through the centre of town, pausing to look at lots of books in shops and maybe buy a few. Is what I want to do.

Just call me Danglars*, and be done

The thing about taking everything out of the cupboard - the long, deep, high-shelved cupboard - is that sooner or later everything has to go back in again, bar only that stuff that can be thrown out.

Sooner or later meaning, apparently, later. "Not today!" is the common cry. Dunno how long I can keep this up; I'm already scrabbling over the mountains in the dining-room in pursuit of things I actually need right now. (Gaffer-tape to mend the fridge, proving-baskets to rise the bread, like that.)

It would be absurd - wouldn't it? - to make a map, of what gets stowed where. Like a careful supercargo* charting all his holds. But some things are by definition and necessity going to be stowed right at the back, behind everything else, invisible; and - also by definition - they will all be good and useful things that I actually sometimes need, or I wouldn't be keeping them, would I? So being able to say "the pasta machine? Oh yes, that's on the second shelf, rear right" would actually be valuable, and save work...

*plots*

*I should perhaps say, I learned the word 'supercargo' from The Count of Monte Cristo when I was a child, when I suspect that I thought it was somehow cognate with Superman. I've loved it ever since, and have every intention of writing a novel one day wherein Danglars will be the hero.**

**No, that's not my space-opera retelling of the Count. Definitely not. Wholly other project, oh yes.