Current mood:

sick

Ugh.
I'm sick all right. Freely running nose, sore throat, coughing up phlegm. The insides of my collarbones itch. Headachy. If I felt up to it I'd go to Wheatsville or Whole Foods for wild cherry bark tea, but it's because I need it that I don't feel up to it. Isn't that lovely?

Even if I was feeling better, we've got a thunderstorm underway. It knocked my internet connection out for a few hours, which sucked.

Got hold of the audiobook of Very Bad Deaths. I'm most of the way through it. It's pissing me off a little; Spider Robinson's weak points are all showing through. And there are a few things that really get to me.



In order of annoyance:

Ok, the first thing is just minor, not really pissing me off, just making me roll my eyes. All the brand-names. Pointing out at every possible moment that the main character uses a Mac (just like every other one of his computer-using characters), Netscape, iTunes, drives a Honda Accord... the kind of details that get crammed into inexpert fanfic. I'm surprised that we don't find out the brand of cellphone he uses, too.

The continuing "science fiction readers are smarter than other people" theme. If it had been one character in one book, I wouldn't have a quibble. But it creeps in everywhere and it's insufferably smug.

Pot. I've smoked pot. I enjoyed it, even it's been years and I doubt I'll be smoking it in the near (or even intermediate) future. But it is not an amazing wonderdrug in every way. Having the protagonist hold forth on how it improves driving I would forgive as the character's word, not the author's, if he didn't prove it immediately afterward by saving himself and the stodgy anti-drug police officer sidekick from a wreck (from the passenger seat) while stoned.

All three of the above can be neatly tied up under the umbrella of "all of Spider Robinson's protagonists are self-inserts".

But what made me angry was an utterly gratuitous piece of homophobia.

A female cop (the same one who commits the unpardonable sins of disapproving of pot and not being a coffee snob) in excellent physical shape, repeatedly passed up for promotion, because she's straight and all the meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean lesbians resent the beautiful butch woman for being straight, so she has the worst assignment. What the hell, Spider? I mean, what the actual fuck? Why?

It's stopped raining while I've been typing up my little rant. Eeek, sunlight! Heheh.

Well, I think I've whined enough for now.