Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Intimidating, much?
I hope not -- one thing I'm always trying to do as a reader is be self-aware of how easy it is as a reader to never stick your nose out of the comfort zone of familiarity (be it authors or genres). There's never going to be enough time to read everything worth the effort, even though I'm a big fan Sturgeon's Law that 99% of everything is crap. But this observation, from Henry James' preface to the New York edition of Portrait of a Lady, also holds true:
The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million--
a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every
one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its
vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the
pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of dissimilar
shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that
we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than
we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead
wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors
opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own
that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at
least with a field-glass, which forms, again and again, for
observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person making
use of it an impression distinct from every other. He and his
neighbours are watching the same show, but one seeing more where
the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white,
one seeing big where the other sees small, one seeing coarse
where the other sees fine.Never hurts to be reminded there are always other voices, other rooms, and other windows with a fine prospect you've probably never seen before.
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<i>surely there must be heaps more women writers of brilliant science fiction.</i>
Of course there are - Jo Walton, Cherie Priest, Mary Robinette Kowal, Nalo Hopkinson, off the top of my head...
Kage Baker's "Company" series is just brilliant. There's about nine in the series and I read all nine of them in the space of about two months earlier this year. (I was underemployed at the time).
That they are, but I'd strongly recommend reading them in order -- towards the end, Baker had a lot of narrative balls (and a cast of dozens spread over several million years) in the air and not a lot of time to hand hold noobs.
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Something went flying over a logic shark somewhere there...
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Random Play: Alt.Republic: The rolling mall, in reply to Tim Hannah,
I'm pretty sure they were trying to get Kirk's as their premier leaseholder, but they wouldn't leave the city, or couldn't get a good enough deal, or something.
Really? That strikes me as pretty weird because Kirk's entire brand is very high end retail not being a cornerstone tenant in a suburban mall (which is actually much sounder for an outfit like Farmers or the Warehouse).
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Elsewhere, the comic stylings of Sarah Palin are the early Christmas present you can't return for store credit:
"The latest round of publications of leaked classified US documents ... raises serious questions about the Obama administration's incompetent handling of this whole fiasco," Palin wrote.
"First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months?
"Assange is not a 'journalist', any more than the 'editor' of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'.
"He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Stick to getting you fan club to try rigging the vote on Dancing with the Stars, Sarah, the grown-ups are talking.
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180 Seconds with Craig Ranapia – 28 November, in reply to Petra,
Damn, that was beautiful. For someone who hated reading his own work (and poetry readings in general), he did a superb job of not "emoting" all over the very carefully worked music of his work. He's the kind of poet who makes it all look (and sound) so very casual and natural you can miss the craft involved.
And just to add extra delight, the poem was part of a broadcast guest edited by one of my favourite novelists, P.D. James (who among much else, was a former Governor of the BBC).
Nice radio show. Thank you. :)
No, thank you. Always nice to know you're not talking to yourself, like a crazy person. :)
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Hardly surprising to see most in here have taken up the shooting the messenger distraction which the US government has been crafting about the same time as Assange was pulled up on BS sex charges.
*sigh* So, I guess we should have sceptical examination of the way media folks treat others and whether they practice the standards they loudly preach to others for Rupert Murdoch.
And I guess, James, we shouldn't be asking any questions about the well-timed "distraction" where abusers (and their enablers) assassinate the characters of their victims to shift attention from their own douche-baggery. That's never happened before...
@nzlemming: I don't give a fuck if Assange is a walking turd. The history of the media is full of great people who have the people skills of Atilla The Hun with a migraine. But for someone who likes to preach transparency and openess, he sure has a very thin skin when it comes to facing scrutiny himself.
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thankfully, 3 News did not try to own that Facebook page - just a discreet note that it was 'associated with them"
Yeah, so "discreet" I didn't notice it when a link landed in my inbox. Think that was an accident, and there's nothing troubling about a news organisationm setting up Facebook groups on the downlow?
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Still, whatever your reservations about Wikileaks you've got to love the incisive policy and legal analysis of Sarah Palin (h/t Andrew Sullivan):
Inexplicable: I recently won in court to stop my book "America by Heart" from being leaked,but US Govt can't stop Wikileaks' treasonous act?
It's "inexplicable" to you, Sarah, because you're a psychotic moron. (Then again, we are talking about a woman who thinks it's OK to be a lying enabler of her daughter's Facebook fag-baiting.)
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Elsewhere, The Herald's rug don't match the drapes - again.
Headline:
WikiLeaks reveals US snooping on NZLead that doesn't actually relate to said headline:
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark is likely to be among top United Nations officials targeted by the United States in an intelligence-gathering exercise which blurs the line between diplomacy and espionage.
Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks yesterday released a quarter of a million top secret US diplomatic cables to a handful of newspapers. The cables reveal Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations.
Over-egg and half bake, liberally garnish with bullshit and you have a hot steaming #heraldfail pie!
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